Chapter 19: Ghosts
So huge is God's despair
in the wild cactus plain
I heard Him weeping there
That I might venture where
The peon had been slain
So huge is God's despair
On the polluted air
Twixt noonday and the rain
I heard Him weeping there
And felt His anguish tear
For refuge in my brain
So huge is God's despair
That it could find a lair
In one so small and vain
I heard Him weeping there
Oh vaster than our share
Than deserts of new Spain
So huge is God's despair
I heard Him weeping there...
~Malcolm Lowry, "Death of a Oaxaquenian"
Vision didn't have much preparation to do for the upcoming excursion to the Antarctic. It would be late spring there, so about the same temperature he was used to working in. As he waited for Strange, Wong, and Wanda to pack warm clothes and food for what Strange said could be days, Vision thought he heard something in the next room.
"Hello?" he called.
There was no response. The shuffle, which was probably too quiet for human ears to pick up, had stopped.
He was about to phase through the wall to investigate, but reconsidered. If it was Wanda or one of the sorcerers in the next room, they would have answered him. If it was someone else, he had to keep up his human disguise.
He walked through the door.
The room seemed empy. He frowned. Could it have been a mouse or some other small animal he'd startled? He was pretty sure he'd heard the movement of cloth.
Two portals opened. Strange stepped through one, Wong and Wanda entered from the other. Wanda's hands were glowing.
"Someone just crossed a magical ward around the Sanctum," Strange said. "We've got company."
Before Vision could say he'd heard something, someone dropped from the ceiling. He was dressed in black, a bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back.
"It was me."
Wanda actually laughed as she dismissed her energy. "Clint!"
Her smile was incongruous. It was a bright, real, full smile that seemed out of place on such a wan, haggard face.
He ran to her and swept her up in a hug.
Seeing his face clearly for the first time, Vision froze.
One arrow. Another arrow. Another arrow. Each tipped with a different substance. Each equally useless as it bounced off his vibranium skin.
"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" Wanda asked.
"I was a superspy, remember? I tracked the New York phone number you called me from to a payphone, hacked footage from surrounding security cameras and traffic cams for the time of the call, and used those to see which way you went, pulled footage from cams in that direction, and kept doing that until I tracked you here."
The look of terror in the archer Avenger's eyes as he realized he was about to die.
"I told you I'd visit when I could. You didn't believe me?" Wanda jokingly chided him.
"I'm not that patient. Anyway, I figured you'd be caught up in something dangerous. I want in."
Hitting him with so much force his body flew backward across a road and broke through the wall of the old church on the other side.
"That's out of the question," Strange said. "I'm sorry, Mr. Barton, but we are facing a foe that arrows and swords will go right through. Unless you've taken up sorcery in your retirement, we can't use you on this mission."
"What foe are you talking about? I'm sure I can do something."
"No. Doctor Strange is right, Clint," Wanda said. "There are these things that don't have solid bodies. They can make people go crazy. If you were with us...you'd be more of a danger than a help."
He stepped back, holding her at arm's length. "If it's so dangerous that I can't go, I don't think you should go either."
The body lying among broken stones, arms and neck at impossible angles. This Avenger was dead.
"Wanda is the only one with the power to destroy it," Wong said. "We will protect her if we can, but the fate of the world is at stake."
One down, seven billion to go.
"Clint, I'll be fine. I promise."
"You can't promise that. You expect me to just step back and let someone else I care about risk her life?"
"It's what Avengers do," Wanda answered. "We risk our lives to save the world. And yes, sometimes we lose that risk. My brother did, Vision did, Nat and Tony did. That doesn't mean I will, but just because I might doesn't mean I don't try. I mean, if I decided not to risk my life to save the world, I'd just die anyway, along with everyone else. So I am going to walk out that door, and do what I can, even if none of it makes any sense, because I am an Avenger."
He looked at her and smiled, a smile that contorted his face as it warred with tears. "God, you've grown up so much."
Her smile flashed again. "I can't tell you how good it is to see you, Clint, but I have to go. I'll visit you when I'm done with this. I promise."
Her accent—it couldn't be. Life couldn't be that twisted.
Of course it could.
He backed out of the room, barely remembering to use the door. He had to get away.
"What's with him?" he heard Clint ask.
Once out of sight, he took to the air, flying through walls to get to his room. He felt trapped, desperate. Was this what suffocation felt like?
A minute later, someone knocked softly at the door.
"Vision?" Wanda asked through the door.
"Please go away," he felt himself say.
"I'm not going to do that." She opened the door and stepped in. "You're agitated. More than I've ever felt from you, even after you were attacked by the mind lice. What's wrong?"
"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.
"Because we could use your help. And you didn't deserve the exile you were living in."
"You don't know the things I've done."
"Yes I do. We've been over this."
"Your friend back there, Clint—the Avenger known as Hawkeye...I killed him myself. In fact, he's the first person I ever killed."
She continued looking at him. "I didn't know that."
How could she act so casual? How could she not despise him?
"Where are you from, Miss Maximoff?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Are you alive in my world? Do you know?"
She hesitated for just a fraction of a second before answering. "No. I'm not."
"Because you were in the blast radius of the Sokovia Event, weren't you? You're not alive in my world because I killed you."
"It's entirely possible I was never born in your world," she said evenly. "But if I was, then yes, I would have died when Ultron turned my home country into a crater."
"How could you know that, and still...be in the same room with me?"
"Because it doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter? Do you think it doesn't matter to me that I killed you?"
"It doesn't matter to the mission," she stated.
His head was swirling. He wanted to understand her. He wanted her to understand. He wanted to phase through the floor and keep going until he buried himself in the Earth's core. He wanted to fall on his knees at her feet and beg her forgiveness. He wanted her to understand that he didn't deserve her forgiveness.
"The mission..." he said. "You will do what you have to for the mission, because you're an Avenger. You didn't say anything when I asked Doctor Strange. Did you know him? Did you know Vision?"
Her silence was a beat longer this time. "Yes."
"You were Avengers together."
"For a while. We were friends."
"Is that why you can be around me? Because you look at me and see him?"
There was an odd look on her face, pensive and almost...relieved, perhaps. "I know you're not him. Even if I can't see it, I feel it. You are a very different person inside. You're like his twin. His identical twin separated at birth. But it is because I knew him that I know I can trust you."
"It's not a matter of trust, it's...contamination. I have killed so many people. I am guilty. I am not something you want to associate yourself with."
"You think you're the only one here who's guilty? I helped Ultron."
He flinched. What she said made no sense to him. It took his mind a moment to parse it.
"What?"
"Our world's Ultron. My brother and I teamed up with him. At least, I thought we were a team until I found out he was planning to destroy the world if he couldn't control it. But before that, I would have killed for him if I had to. I tore people's minds apart for him."
"You knew Ultron?" Vision asked, still processing it.
She nodded sharply. "He..." She trailed off, bit her lip, and softly admitted, "For a while I thought he was my friend."
"He had you under the control of Loki's Staff." He said it as a statement.
"No. I joined him of my own free will. I wanted revenge, and thought he was my way to get it. I paid terribly for that mistake, but that doesn't absolve me of my part in it. I almost destroyed the Avengers, but they took me in anyway. And I'm not the only one. Clint has a lot of blood on his hands. Bucky was an assassin for HYDRA for decades. My...dear friend Nat," she choked slightly at the name, "was an assassin for hire for years. She murdered innocent people. She became an Avenger to try to make up for her mistakes."
"You were a friend of Natasha Romanov?"
"Yes."
"I killed her too." Even as he spoke, he was terrified of making Wanda hate him. The emotion didn't make sense. He wouldn't feel terror that she would hate him unless he harbored hope that she wouldn't.
"Bucky shot her when he was an assassin. But she let him escape with Steve Rogers because she trusted Steve, and believed protecting the world is more important than keeping scores from the past. If she were alive, she wouldn't care that you killed another world's version of her. And neither do I."
"She was in Novi Grad, trying to stop me from turning the city into a meteor. My job was to fight the Avengers, keep them occupied, keep them away from the core. I killed Clint Barton. Natasha Romanov attacked me viciously after finding his body. She fought with more skill and resilience than I thought a human was capable of, but she didn't know my capabilities. I discovered my energy beam by burning through her with it. She kept me occupied long enough for Tony Stark to make it to the core. He reversed the polarity, bringing it down before it was high enough to cause global extinction. Days later, after the dust began to settle, I searched the crater. I found charred bones that Doctor Cho later identified as Bruce Banner. Nothing remained of the others. We estimated there had been two point nine million people living in the area we'd turned into an impact crater. It entirely encompassed the country of Sokovia. Every pebble that had ever been part of Sokovia was turned into molten ash." He fell to the floor, unable to speak another word, unable to look at her.
She was quiet for seventeen seconds. It felt like the longest seventeen seconds of his life.
"This isn't going to work," she said quietly. "You are coming with us on this mission if I have to drag you."
"I never meant—" He looked up at her and choked. Her face was soaked with tears, but her expression was hard. It reminded him of statued he'd found with faces covered in clear ice from where snow had melted only to freeze as it dripped down. He swallowed. "I never meant to back out. I will do anything in my power to save your world."
"I know. So what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Why tell me this?"
"I don't know." He felt like he had known a minute ago, but now he didn't. It was like he'd forgotten. But he never forgot anything.
"Hm." She turned away. "Then let's go. They're waiting on us."