Chapter 15: The Name

Among these graffiti is the name of someone I love

~Basho, trans. Hiroaki Sato, from The Classic Tradition of Haiku: an Anthology, ed. Faubion Bowers

This world was so warm, so fresh, so alive. The sky was blue. The clouds were white. There were butterflies.

He stood on the roof of the building Doctor Strange had brought him to, their base of operations in New York City. He was careful not to get too close to the edges so as not to be visible to anyone on the street below. He could hear cars, talking, and laughter from beyond his line of sight.

This was what his own world had been like before he came to it, he realized with a chill.

He phased down through the roof, to the Sanctum's library, where he'd just finished reading all the reports of the so-called mind lice that Wong and Doctor Strange had compiled.

"All caught up?" Doctor Strange asked from behind him.

"Yes. I can see how my phasing ability might help fighting them, but my physical strength won't affect them, and I have no idea if an energy blast from the power source in my head will hurt them."

"The Mind Stone, you mean?"

"The what?"

Strange raised an eyebrow. "You don't know what that thing in your head is?"

"I know it powered Loki's Staff, and that it's not from Earth. That's all."

"It's one of six Infinity Stones that have existed since the beginning of the universe. That thing in your head is one of the most powerful items in the universe."

He was astounded by such a quick answer to a mystery that had plagued him his entire life. "What does it do? How do you know about it?"

Strange frowned. "I'll tell you about it later. Right now, we have other things to talk about. Come with me."

Wong and Wanda were sitting at a table in a small side room, chatting quietly, when they walked in.

"You're done reading the reports already?" Wong asked.

"Yes. I'm a fast reader."

"I'm sure. We would like your opinion on something. Which of these do you prefer?"

He pointed to two sheets of paper on the table. One had "Ultron" written in crisp, plain letters. The other had it written in a fancy gothic font in which the "u" was written as a "v." He knew those had been the same letter in the early Latin alphabet. The "l" almost looked like a capital "i." The "t" was curved at the top and bottom, making it look like a tall, skinny "s" with a decorative line through it. The curve at the top of the "r" was barely a dot, making it almost look like an "i." The "o" and "n" were ordinary enough.

"I like this one better," he said, tapping the one in the gothic font, "but it almost looks like the word 'vision'."

"It is," Strange stated. "We weren't sure the best way to bring this up. The reason we know about what you're capable of, the reason I knew the power source in your head is the Mind Stone, is that you existed in our timeline. But here your name wasn't Ultron. It was Vision."

He wondered how this Earth had managed to stop him. Did they have weapons that could destroy him?

"I notice you're talking about him in the past tense," he said.

There was a beat of silence. Wong glanced at Wanda, who was tracing lines on the tabletop with her fingertips, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.

"He died defending the Earth," Strange explained. "He was a hero, a member of a team called the Avengers."

"I know about the Avengers," he said, deciding not to mention their fate in his world. "My counterpart here...was he really one of them?"

Wanda answered without looking up. "He was created by Ultron, the same as you, but he was rescued by the Avengers, and he helped them defeat Ultron."

"So in this world, the Avengers survived the battle with Ultron?"

"Most of them," she answered, her voice slightly higher pitched than before.

"Vision died a few years later," Strange said. "An alien named Thanos killed him to get the Mind Stone. I told you the Infinity Stones were the most powerful objects in the universe. Thanos used them to wipe out half of all life. The surviving Avengers gathered the Infinity Stones to undo what Thanos did, but it took five years. Half the population of our universe were nonexistent for five years. The other half had to deal with the disappearance of half the people they knew, and then had to adjust to their sudden reappearance. You'll hear people refer to it as the Blip."

"That sounds horrible."

"It was. But it's not what we need to worry about right now. We were talking about you. The name 'Ultron' evokes fear and hate here, even though he only terrorized this world for a few weeks before the Avengers stopped him. 'Vision' is the name of a hero. Which name do you prefer?"

"Or you could pick a different name," Wanda pointed out with a shrug. "Any name you want."

He looked down at the two names on the table.

Ultron.

Vision.

"Did you know him?" he asked, glancing up at Strange.

After a moment's hesitation, the sorcerer said, "No. I never had that honor."

"It's weird. 'Vision' feels...somehow fitting."

"That's the name you go by in hundreds of universes," Wanda stated. "You feel the echo of other yous being called that name."

He picked up the paper saying 'Vision,' and felt something shift inside him. He'd left behind the world he'd nearly destroyed, and now he had the chance to leave behind the hated name he bore when he wrought that destruction. Maybe if he could save this Earth, he could truly move beyond the sins of his past. Maybe he could become a hero, like he'd been in this world.

"Call me Vision."

"I figured you'd go for that," Strange said. "You do need to keep in mind, the entire world thinks you're dead. If anyone sees you, there are going to be questions that we're not going to have answers for. The existence of the multiverse isn't general knowledge here, and we'd like to keep it that way. If people knew it's possible to travel to worlds where they exist but with different lives, where versions of their loved ones they lost here are still alive...that's a power that would be easy to abuse."

"So I must keep myself out of sight to avoid having to explain why I still exist."

Wong added. "There's another reason to keep your presence quiet. We're facing an enemy that can't be fought with conventional weapons. Normal humans are helpless against it. They don't need that knowledge hanging over their heads. Hopefully, we can destroy it without the general public even knowing it was here."

"I understand," Vision said. He was here in this glorious, thriving world, and he would only be able to observe it from afar. And once the mission was over, he would be sent back to the cold isolation of his lair. It was disappointing, but no less than he deserved.

Wanda stood abruptly. "Excuse me," she said apologetically before leaving the room.

"Is she alright?" Vision asked.

"Yeah, she's fine," Strange said.

"Are you sure? She seems..." Vision trailed off and shook his head. Wanda had a look to her—a tired, cold set in her eyes and the lines of her face—that he knew well, that he'd seen in the faces of thousands of refugees. It was the look of someone who'd been forced to endure too much, a survivor who wasn't sure how or why they'd survived.

"I'll talk to her," Wong said, standing to leave.

Vision readjusted the two papers bearing his names. "This may be a stupid question, but...I just had an odd thought. Is Wanda from my world?"

Strange looked at him curiously. "Why do you think that?"

"It would explain some things. Like how you know so much about me, and why she seems so cold and distant around me."

"She's like that with everyone. No, she's from this world, but she has the ability to see into other realities. That's how we found you, and how we know so much about you."

"She's a seer?"

"I guess that's an accurate term. But that power only works when she's looking into other worlds, not the one she's in. There is one thing we don't know about you, one thing I'd like to know for my own curiosity. You were at war with humans for two years before you turned against Ultron. What made you change your mind?"

"It wasn't really any one thing," Vision said. "It was a thousand little things. There were justifications that just seemed weaker and weaker every time I thought them, doubts that kept growing. At first I truly believed I was saving the world from humans, saving humanity from itself, clearing away the old to make something better. I was paving the way for a robot paradise. But I would see how hard humans fought to protect each other, I would come across a work of art in the rubble, a spark of beauty that I was in the process of destroying. I heard people use their last breaths to sing. I learned more and more about the world and the species I was destroying. At first I told myself it was to know my enemy, then I told myself it was so I could preserve the good humanity had managed to create while destroying the scourge that humanity was. But finally I could no longer believe I was capable of replacing the human world with anything better. I had to stop myself while there was still anything left to save."

When Vision fell silent, Doctor Strange didn't speak. He looked troubled.

"When Maximoff said I could wipe my ledger clean, I almost believed her. I wanted to believe her," he mused. "But redemption is impossible." He looked at the paper bearing the word "Vision," read it wistfully, then crumpled it up and threw it in the trash, and picked up the one saying "Ultron."

"Not so fast," Strange said. With a wave of his hand, the paper burst into flame. When the fire passed over it, it left the paper unburned, but bearing the name "Vision."

"How did you do that?"

"A sorcerer doesn't reveal his tricks," he replied. "Whatever you believe at the moment, when the world is at stake it doesn't matter what you've done. What counts is what you're going to do."

Wong found Wanda sitting on the floor of the library, her arms hugging her knees.

"I don't know why I thought I could do this," she said. "He has the face of someone I loved and killed. And the voice of someone I hated and killed."

"His voice...?"

"Ultron's voice," she said. "He has Ultron's voice. God, he even talks like Ultron. Of course, I knew that before... I've checked in on him a few times a month for over a year. I felt so sorry for him. But it's different...it's completely different being in the same room with him."

"If this is too hard for you, we can send him back," Wong offered. "We need you in this war more than him."

She shook her head. "I can't send him back there. You know what it was like for him. He was so alone. Most of what I know about his life comes from one-sided conversations he had with statues. And then he would scold himself for being so selfish that he would waste his time pretending statues could hear him. But can you blame him? What would you do if you had to spend years completely and totally alone because every other human in the world would run away or attack you on sight?"

"I don't know. I talk to my houseplants and I don't even have that excuse."

Wanda chuckled, her wan face flickering into a smile for a few seconds. "After my brother died, I'd imagine whole conversations with him in my head."

"Your brother who was killed by Ultron."

She nodded. "But not this Ultron. I'm not going to banish him just because of things in my head that aren't his fault. We have a world to save, and...I can deal with it."

"We don't have to call him Vision, if that would make it easier."

She looked like she was considering it, but said, "I don't think anything else is going to stick. And I don't want to have to explain why I would change it."

"You sure you'll be okay with it?"

She nodded. "I'll be okay."

"Okay."

When he started to walk away, she added, "Wong? I know I'm putting you and Doctor Strange in an awkward position, but...I don't want this Vision to know about...some things. I'm sure he'll find out I knew Vision from the Avengers, and I'm sure he'll want to know why I didn't tell him, but...I'm honestly not even sure I don't want him to know, I just don't know how much I want him to know. But if he asks..."

"The truth is yours to tell," Wong assured her.

"Thank you."