When Vision escapes Westville, he falls to his knees and sobs.
He feels the full force of Wanda's grief. The love of his very short life is not someone he recognizes. She is consumed by her twisted coping mechanism. Vision fists the ground and clenches grass and earth.
She broke his trust. She broke his heart. He's not even real. He's dead.
The not human, not robot that never should've existed is dead. And yet he is still here, feeling something curious and volatile coil up inside of him. He thinks it's fury. Maybe it's his own grief. Grief for the life death stole from them, grief for her, for their fractured love. He's not sure, he's never felt this way before. Wanda.
And suddenly his arms can't hold him up anymore. He falls to the ground and rolls on his back. Tears flood his eyes, his throat is raw. He covers his face with shaking hands.
The synthezoid weeps alone under the stars when headlights cast shadows across the field.
~~~~~~~~~~
"You know he's not supposed to have feelings, right?" Darcy says to Jimmy as she takes a bite of Snickers.
Jimmy has his hands in his pockets, he's focused on Vision. His eyebrows pull upward, the corners of his lips downward as he watches the broken man recount the story to Hayward.
"He just had his whole life torn apart. He just found out that he died, and the woman he loved stole his body, reanimated him, and trapped him in a sitcom. If there was ever anything to make a robot have feelings, you're looking at it," Jimmy replies.
"Synthezoid," Darcy says.
Jimmy shrugs, "His heart's broken, that's all I know."
"Meanwhile, Wanda's still in there, with all those people," Darcy shudders.
"Not for long," Hayward steps out of the interrogation room. Vision is by his side. "Vision's going to help us save Westview."
~~~~~~~~~
They drug her.
That's how they save Westview.
When Vision returns, he has a lot to say. And while she's getting her heartbroken, they shoot Wanda with a tranquilizer.
Vision flinches when it hits her. She is weightless against him when he catches her. He is furious with her, but it pains him to see her so vulnerable. It was the only way.
Wanda is transported in a straight jacket to the RAFT underwater prison. Returned back to her cell where Captain Rogers once liberated her. Vision doesn't visit her for weeks.
He doesn't know if he can forgive her. He feels bad for himself, something he is not accustomed to. But Wanda never made him feel anything but delight and joy, she was the only one who could do that to him.
He feels bad for himself, a lone synthezoid in the universe, who learned to love a human, who made him feel more like a man than machine. And then she lost her mind. She was his bright shining light, his beacon in a sea of misunderstanding. She saw him for exactly who he was. Something he wasn't sure of himself.
Vision feels like he's swallowed gum again. All twisted inside. And that makes him think, why on earth did she create a perfect fantasy where we were always at risk of being exposed, of having to hide our true selves? Why was her paradise on the cusp of being shattered at any moment?
For the first time, a spark of hope flared in his chest. Perhaps, deep inside, she did want to break the illusion.
Her words echo in his mind.
"I don't know how this all started."
He decides to see her.
~~~~~~~~~
RAFT is a terrible place.
He is allowed in without much commotion. In fact, his old friend Hayward is there to greet him.
"I can't wait to show you our progress," Hayward smiles and slaps him on the shoulder.
They descend in the elevator together, Vision is silent while Hayward briefs him. She's no longer violent. Her new therapy regimen is helping immensely with her mood swings. And she hasn't attacked anyone in days. It's a breakthrough.
When they arrive, they are in a lab. Vision stands by Hayward behind the control unit. In front of them is Wanda, bound in a straight jacket laying on her back. All around her is a glass incubator.
She is pale and drawn. Her eyes are grey and glassy- her breathing shallow.
Vision feels physically ill. His hearing blurs as Hayward talks and gets fuzzy. Hayward motions meaninglessly to the control panel in front of them, and he points to one operator, he is exuberant.
Suddenly, the incubator alights with electricity that swirls around the glass and connects at multiple points within itself attaching to the only positively charged thing within reach.
Wanda screams.
It pierces Visions hearing fog, and the look of heartbrokeness on his face morphs into horror. I did this, he thinks. I did this to her. He looks at Hayward and speaks calmly.
"Stop it."
Haywards smiles and grabs his arm, "It helps," he reassures. Vision is shaking.
He watches the smile slide off Hayward's mouth, his face glows with an intense yellow light that supernovas into bright nothingness.
~~~~~~~~
Vision doesn't remember pulling Wanda from the wreckage. But he carries her bridal style onto a quinjet. The lab is destroyed. He nuzzles her half-conscious face with his. Tears falling onto her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Wanda," he whispers.
He would never let anyone hurt her ever again. Including himself.
