Chapter 26: Changed State

The clouds had made a crimson crown
Above the mountains high.
The stormy sun was going down
In a stormy sky.

Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,
And hold your breath between?
In all the ages this can never be
As if it had not been.

~Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, "A Moment":

Robots were created to serve humans. That's what Tony Stark had intended for his Ultron project—autonomous androids capable of patrolling the skies for alien attackers, scanning the Earth to respond instantly to emergency situations.

Agreeing to keep Wanda warm and safe while she slept was a simple extension of his robotic purpose.

It was not because he wanted to be near her.

Wanted her.

She had fallen asleep within three minutes of lying down with him, and had been sleeping deeply for nearly eleven hours.

The kisses played over and over again in his mind. She had kissed him. She had claimed his lips with hers, just as if he had been human. All the times he had read descriptions of kisses in books, heard about them in songs, he'd never imagined it was something he'd experience himself. And even though he knew she'd only kissed him out of overwhelming relief and gratitude after her narrow escape from death, being kissed by her was something he would have for the rest of his life.

Just as he'd have the memory of this moment: holding her, keeping her safe and warm while she slept.

Her face was puffy, with livid bruises developing across her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was matted with dried salt. Objectively, nothing about the way she looked right now could be called beautiful, but the sight of her sleeping on his arm moved his heart as much as the most artistic paintings he'd collected.

Without warning, the ship began to rock again. Vision waited a few moments until he was sure it hadn't woken Wanda up, then he gently extricated himself from her and phased through the wall to the pilothouse. Wong and Doctor Strange were there. The waves were Southern Ocean typical. A row of billowing clouds to the south caught the sunlight in shades of dark red and rose pink. The sky above them was a limpid cerulean.

"We've left the pocket dimension," he noted, stating the obvious as a way of announcing his presence.

"The storm's passed," Strange replied. "How is Wanda?"

"She's sleeping soundly."

"Breathing and heart rate regular?"

"Yes."

"Body temperature?"

"It's returned to almost normal."

Strange nodded. "Good."

Vision thought about telling him he owed Wanda an apology, or his life, but decided not to bring it up. Strange already knew.

After a few minutes of nervously watching the ocean, Vision returned to Wanda's room. When he phased through the wall, he saw her awake, lifting her pajama top to examine a pattern of bruises down her side.

He quickly looked away from her state of semi-undress. "Sorry."

"I'm sorry," she said at the same second.

After a moment, he turned back to her. She had lowered her shirt and smoothed it out self-consciously.

"You have nothing to apologize for," he said.

"I think maybe I do. Last night..."

"You don't have to apologize for anything about last night."

"I shouldn't have kissed you. Not like that. It was selfish of me. I'm sorry if I pushed you into a situation you didn't want, or...weren't ready for, or didn't know how to deal with. I'm not exactly sure how to explain..."

"You don't need to explain. I understand."

"It's just, I know you don't have a lot of experience with people, and you were certainly not expecting that to happen..."

Both those things were certainly true.

"I'm sorry. I should have...I don't know...asked you? Warned you? Had more control of myself."

It was sweet of her to pretend she regretted kissing him because she thought it was something he didn't want, rather than because he was a genocidal murderbot.

She continued. "I really do appreciate that you helped me last night. You saved my life, and you took care of me, and I completely took advantage of you."

"It's like I explained last night, you were overwhelmed with adrenaline and endorphins after nearly being killed. It made you do something you would never have done otherwise. I understand."

"No, you don't understand. I like you. I like you a lot. And I'm not sure what to do with that. It's...complicated. It's so complicated."

The conflicted expression on her face and forlorn note in her voice made Vision believe for a moment that she was being sincere. But no, she couldn't really be attracted to him. It was just their circumstances: close quarters, a dangerous mission, these were conditions that could affect people, make them think they had feelings for someone they would never normally be drawn to. If he took advantage of her transitory infatuation, she might hate him when it passed. And it would crush him to be hated by her, the human he'd grown closest to. One he...

"Vision, say something. Please."

He realized he hadn't spoken for over a minute.

"Miss Maximoff, you know what I am. You know the things I've done. You don't want anything to do with me."

She was quiet for a few long seconds, and when she spoke her voice was colder, distant. "But you don't know what I am. I've done terrible things too. Maybe if you knew, you wouldn't want anything to do with me."

That was impossible. "I've killed billions."

"But you've never caused the death of someone you loved. You have no idea what that feels like. What that does to you."

"Yes I do," he stated.

She looked up at him in surprise. "You mean Ultron?"

"No. I could hide my mind from the other Ultrons, but they couldn't block their thought from me. That is what made it possible for me to defeat them, knowing where they were and what they were planning. I remember every murder each of them ever committed, every destruction they ever imagined. Killing them wasn't like killing a father or a brother, it was destroying part of myself. But there was one person—one human—I cared about. She was the closest thing I had to a mother. Her name was Doctor Helen Cho."

Wanda waited expressionlessly for him to continue.

"Ultron used Loki's Staff to control her mind, to compel her to create me. I don't know if her death a few months after the Sokovia Event was a lab accident or if she emerged from the influence of the Staff—the Mind Stone—long enough to make sure Ultron could never use her brilliant mind again. Either way...it was my fault."

"Vision..." Her voice choked on his name. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

She was weeping. Weeping because of something that happened to him. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't say it was alright, because it wasn't alright. It was wrong, and unfixable. He couldn't go back in time and erase his own existence, no matter how much he wished he could. And now his past crimes were hurting Wanda.

She stood, walked to him unsteadily, and wrapped her arms around him.

She was trying to comfort him for a tragedy in his past that he'd inflicted on himself. He had caused the death of his creators—Tony Stark, Helen Cho, and Ultron. When he'd been ruminating on his robotic nature earlier, he'd considered the etymology of the word "robot." It came from the Czech robotnik, which meant 'forced laborer', from the Old Church Slavonic rabu, which meant 'slave', ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *orbh-, a prefix which indicated a changed status, as from freedom to servitude. It was also the root of the word "orphan." He was both robot and orphan. Orphan because of deaths that he'd caused, which shouldn't hurt him, because he was a robot. But they did.

And Wanda cared that he was hurting.

But he wasn't really hurting. He was a robot, incapable of real emotions. It was just a computer program—granted an unfathomably complex one—telling him that an anologous response to a certain set of variables was something that in a human would be emotional agony. The things he interpreted as feelings for Wanda were just algorithms. The apprehension of the loneliness and emptiness his life would be without her, the acute sensation of remorse and self-loathing he experienced when he reflected he'd most likely killed his world's version of this wonderful woman—none of those were real feelings. None of it was real. He was a robot.

He could feel her lingering fatigue and soreness in the way she held him. He slowly drew away from her, gently resting his hands on her shoulders.

"Are you... How are you feeling this morning? How much pain are you in?"

She gave him an exasperated look, like she thought he was deliberately trying to change the subject. "I've felt way worse."

"That's not an answer. You could have broken bones, internal injuries, a concussion..."

"I'm fine. I mean, I hurt all over, but nothing too bad."

"You should go back to bed. I'll make you breakfast and bring it to you when it's ready."

She smiled. Her smile was beautiful, but also sad. "You'd bring me breakfast in bed?"

"Yes. Why is that funny?"

"It's not. It's just... You're sweet. Vision, I hope I haven't made things too awkward. I regard you as a friend, and I won't...I won't step over that boundary again. I hope we can still play chess together."

"Of course. I love playing chess with you."

He said it without thinking, without analyzing the connotations of his words. His algorithms prioritized that he spend as much time with her as he could while he had the chance, that he take care of her needs.

He was devoted to her. He would die to save any human, but it was different with her. He would save her not just because she was a human, and therefore a life inherently worth preserving, but because she was Wanda. She was special. Every human was special, of course, but it was somehow different in a way he had trouble understanding.

She was special to him.