Chapter 2: WandaVision

Now there is frost upon the hill

And no leaf stirring in the wood;

The little streams are cold and still;

Never so still has winter stood.

Never so held as in this hollow,

Beneath these hemlocks dark and low,

Brooding this hour that hours must follow

Burdened with snow…

...

Now there is nothing, no confusion,

To shield against the silence here;

And spirits, barren of illusion,

To whom all agonies are clear,

Rush on the naked heart and cry

Of every poignant shining thing

Where there is little left to die

And no more Spring.

~George O'Neil, "Where It Is Winter"

Edinburgh, Scotland

The rain was so fine it felt like pinpricks of pure cold floating in the air, perhaps more accurately called mist than rain.

Wanda didn't mind the chill. Honestly, she barely felt it anymore.

She hurried through the midnight streets to the condemned house on the outskirts of the city where she was staying. She had some food she'd scavenged tucked in a plastic bag: a few pieces of bread with some patches of mold someone had thrown away, and a few apples she'd pilfered from someone's tree.

The house she was squatting in was hidden from other houses by thick hedges. She quickly checked to make sure the streets were deserted, and levitated herself to the open window on the upper floor. The house was old and falling apart. The stairs had collapsed long ago, which made the upper floor a secure place for her to hide out.

In the dark, she wrapped herself in blankets against the cold, quickly ate her slapdash supper, then gave in to the temptation that constantly tugged at her.

Wanda had discovered this power a couple of months after the battle with Thanos. She had been missing Vision so achingly, she'd tried to find the signature of his mind with her powers. Maybe she was searching for his ghost, or couldn't believe he was really dead, or maybe it was a bout of temporary insanity. She'd searched so hard, she'd broken through something. The barrier between universes. She couldn't step through, but she could see. It took her days to learn how to navigate the multi-dimensional space and actually seek out a specific mind signature.

It came easily to her now. She could see into other versions of Earth. She could find and observe other versions of herself, and almost as easily different versions of Vision. There were so many Earths: probably billions of them, or more. Not all of them were habitable, and of the ones that were, not all of them had human life. But many did.

There were plenty of Earths where she and/or Vision didn't exist. And where they did exist, they didn't always meet. And when they did meet, they didn't always fall in love. And when they did fall in love, they didn't always work out. But the frequency with which they did was far higher than chance. She had already seen hundreds of versions of her and Vision living happily together. Her favorite times were when she came across her and Vision's alternates when they were meeting for the first time, and could watch them fall in love. She periodically checked back in on her favorite universes to see how they were doing.

Tonight her mind drifted through some universes she hadn't explored before. She would peek in at herself when she sensed her mind signature, and then look for Vision, moving on quickly if she didn't find them. When after a few universes she found them together, she stopped there and watched.

This was one of the versions of Earth where Vision's soul had been born in a human body. As far as she could tell, neither of them had powers. They were out on a walk, hand in hand, on a golden autumn day.

Her heart warmed at the sight of them.

In her search for happy versions of herself, she had, of course, come across the opposite. Looking through the universes, she'd seen horrible things, things that haunted her nightmares: dead worlds, worlds of suffering, versions of herself that shocked her to the core...

But it was worth it to find little moments like this.

She could stand living in this rotten world, in her hopeless life, as long as she could watch herself being happy elsewhere, with Vision alive and thriving.

Every night, she fell asleep in this cold, dilapidated house, wrapped in dusty blankets, watching scenes like this. She'd wake up in the morning and watch some more, until she got too hungry to concentrate. Then she'd go out and scrounge for food. She'd come back to her room and look through the universes again until she fell asleep again.

Thus she passed her days.