Chapter 27: Unmoored

To what shall I liken this life?
It is like a boat,
Which, unmoored at morn,
Drops out of sight
And leaves no trace behind.

~Manzei, Manyoshu 351, from 1000 Poems from the Manyoshu

It had been three days since Wanda's battle against the rogue wave. She still ached from it, but she was physically nearly recovered. Psychologically, it was slower going; she still saw the monstrous wave looming over the ship every time she closed her eyes.

She had woken up several minutes ago, but didn't want to get up, so she was pretending to still be asleep. If Vision could tell from the changes in her breathing and heartbeat, he made no indication of it.

She'd managed to resist kissing him again, but she hadn't been able to resist asking him to join her in bed each night since. All she would say was "I'm cold." That was all the prompting he needed. And it was true; except for when she was with him, she hadn't been able to stop feeling chilled. Still, she wouldn't keep inviting him to her bed if she hadn't been certain he wanted to.

She resolved to tell him today about the decision she'd come to. If they both survived this, she couldn't just let him go back to his world alone. She was going to ask him to stay with her. And if he wouldn't, she would insist on going with him, to keep him company, to help his world heal, to spread the word among the survivors that Vision had saved them all. It would be a difficult conversation; he wouldn't want to let her, she'd have to make him see it wasn't his choice. She didn't feel like it was a choice at all, really; as much as she would miss her Earth and the people here, she wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge that she'd consigned Vision to a lifetime of solitude.

She and Vision were both roused by the alarm blaring. She was out of bed in an instant and pulled on her coat and boots before rushing to the pilothouse, arriving at the door a few seconds after Vision, and a split second before Wong stepped out of a portal ahead of her.

"Lǎotiānyé!" he swore when he caught sight of what Doctor Strange had spotted out the front window.

Dead ahead of them, rising out of the ocean, was the largest mind louse they had seen yet. It was the size of a building. And it was heading towards them.

Wanda took a deep breath. Ready or not, she was up.

She went out on the deck. Strange and Wong followed her.

"Wong, hit it from below; I'll attack it from above. We have to keep it distracted from Wanda."

"Got it."

Strange floated into the air. He split his image into dozens of forms, and each darted around the creature and bolted it with a rope of yellow energy.

Wong muttered some spell while moving his hands in complex gestures. Spheres that looked like golden bubbles shot from his hands at the center of the creature.

Wanda summoned her power, gathering threads of mind to her fingertips. Had she recovered enough energy? Would she be strong enough?

She shot her energy at the creature, felt its power seeking her back. It was strong. It was old. Did the others understand what one this advanced could do? It was pure energy, but so was gravity, and gravity that was strong enough could crush a person.

She tore into it, trying to make it smaller, hurt it, break it until it was gone.

One tendril snapped into Strange, sending him flying. Vision flew out over the ocean, catching him before he could fall into the water. A dart-like claw jabbed at Wong, who narrowly rolled out of the way and caught the claw with a lasso of magic.

Wanda could feel it squirming into her mind. It bombarded her with images: monsters attacking her from all directions, people she loved being tortured in front of her, Vision being the one she was tearing apart instead of the mind louse. She didn't let them distract her. She had seen what it was, could read what she was fighting. She would not be deceived, would not deviate from her goal, would not let doubts weaken her.

But it reached her, physically grabbed her, pulled her inside it, assaulted her mind and body with every kind of pain. She screamed, but didn't stop.

"No!"

That was not her own anguished scream; it was Vision's.

He plunged into the heart of the monster after her.

No! It will destroy you!

The mind louse dropped Wanda. She caught herself just above the water and flew back to the deck.

The thing had Vision. He screamed as it grasped his mind, then fell silent as it tried to tear apart his body. But when it found the synthezoid was much, much stronger than a human, it focused more of its energy on him, trying to drill into him, becoming frustrated by the resistance of his vibranium body, something it had never encountered before.

It was distracted.

It was killing Vision.

Wanda summoned her power again, reaching deeper and further into the mind ether, not caring if she tore herself apart in the process, then focused it into the mind louse.

Vision suddenly felt the unbearable pain slacken. He began falling, and opened his eyes in time to see the monstrosity he'd been fighting disintegrate into wisps of glowing red smoke that faded to nothing in seconds. Some energy, almost like a magnet, stopped his fall and pulled him to the ship.

Strange flew to him while Wong checked on Wanda, who had fallen in a heap on the deck.

"Vision, can you hear me?" he asked in a clinical tone.

"Yes. Wanda? Is she..."

"She's in better shape than you."

Vision looked down at himself. There was a hole in his chest. Somehow, the creature had been able to break him open. The sight of it focused his mind on his own excruciating pain. It reverberated through all his systems. Parts of himself he could no longer feel, no longer control.

He was mortal.

He was terrified.

"Move. Let me see him," Wanda ordered.

"He's injured," Strange said, sounding somehow both authoritative and flabbergasted. He hadn't known the incorporeal being could physically harm the robot.

"It's not a wound you'd be able to do anything for, Doctor," Wanda replied with an authority and determination that brooked no objections.

She knelt over Vision. Her fingers moved over him. Her scarlet glow entered him, finding the broken connections in his circuits and skin and pulling them back together.

She had just used so much of her power to destroy their adversary that she'd collapsed, Vision recalled.

"Wanda...wait. Are you strong enough..."

"Shut up," she commanded.

He did, not daring to interrupt her again as she focused on healing him.

He felt...odd. A thrum went through his head with each surge of her power. The Mind Stone was responding to her, almost like it recognized her, like it was saying hello to an old friend.

Wanda sat back, panting and shaking.

"You'll be okay, Vision. You'll be okay."

"But will you?" he asked. He tried to move, tried to reach for her. He no longer felt like he was dying, but he was still in pain and weak.

She took his hand, holding it tight in spite of her own trembling. "I'll be fine. As long as we don't have to fight anything else for a while."

"It was you," he said. "This time, when it got into my head, it tried to drive me insane by making me think I'd killed you."

"It's okay."

"But I knew it wasn't true. I knew I could never hurt you."

"Vizh..." The way she was looking at him...

If he'd been strong enough to move, he wouldn't have been able to resist kissing her, robot or not.

He noticed Strange and Wong behind Wanda. They glanced at each other, exchanging a significant look.

"That's what you get for pulling the red thread," Wong muttered so quietly Vision barely heard it even with his enhanced hearing.

Strange rolled his eyes. "We're getting out of here," he announced. "You both need to recuperate before we risk facing anything else."

"What about the boat?" Wanda asked.

"We'll find another way," Strange answered with a confidence that seemed entirely unwarranted.

"Another way to what?" Vision asked. "Didn't we destroy it?"

Strange and Wanda simultaneously replied, "That wasn't the Source."