"Sounds like you've just got a crush on Wanda. I guess it's a normal, inevitable part of you exploring human nature, that you'd… I guess, become attracted to someone close to you. It's normal to have dreams like that every now and then. The brain can't help what it shows you when it's running free like that." Tony shrugged, "I'll do you a favor and keep that just between us, though. Scout's honor."

Vision drummed his fingertips against the surface of a window, gazing out at the training hall where Wanda was practicing close-quarters combat techniques with Miss Romanoff. Wanda did her best to keep pace with Romanoff, however… she often became frustrated and resorted to her scarlet magic.

"It's getting worse." Vision murmured. Wanda had kicked high for Romanoff only to have her ankle grabbed and weight thrown aside. She landed face-first into the mat beneath them. Romanoff helped Wanda back up to her feet. Wanda's slight frame had the faint shimmer of sweat and an alluring flush to her features.

"Every little detail acts to… remind me of these erotic dreams. It's no distraction by any means, but it's terribly …frustrating. I can still follow many processes of thought and analysis on the side, and yet… it is as though these unintentional allusions to sexual curiosity have no end. No end in sight. I have more important duties to expend this energy on. Surely there is a way to work around this?"

Tony took a long swig from a tall container of electrolyte-rich drink. He stared out the window, standing beside Vision with a towel over his shower-dampened head.

"Welp. I don't know what to tell you. Can't turn love off." Tony rolled his shoulders in a shrug and cast Vision a teasing grin.

Vision turned to him, eyes widening slightly.

Cackling quietly, Tony added, "Hands to yourself or you'll get pregnant and die. Don't beat your meat or you'll go to android hell. Welcome to human sexuality in the western hemisphere."

"I… what? I don't believe either of those outcomes are even remote possibilities."

"I'm joking. Sometimes pretty girls will catch a guy's attention. Talk to her if she's on your mind that much, no need to play clergy. For all you know, getting to know her might be the cure to the crush. They come, they go, we all go home happy. I just… wow, gosh," Tony gave him a quick once-over glance, smirking, "I can't believe I'm giving you the talk, I mean, wow, son. They really do grow up so fast. Between dreaming of electric sheep and Little Red Riding Hood, you're like a walking Duran Duran album. Has any of this enlightened you at all, or…?"

"I don't think any of this conversation has enlightened me further, at all, actually."

"Heck, son. Heck." Tony said, before giving Vision a pat on the shoulder, "…you really are growing up so fast. Wow. Word of advice, the less you fret about it, the happier you'll be."

"Everything about the advice you just gave me has only encouraged further psychological micromanagement."

"Have a sleepover, then. Though I gotta warn you… sleeping with coworkers…? Gets a bit complicated sometimes."

Just the thought of Tony's implication felt as if something was short-circuiting in Vision's thoughts, "…and now I am compartmentalizing."

Lips making a straight line, Tony shook his head, "Can't say I didn't try to push you in the right direction."

Vision turned back to the window, back to Wanda far below, "Given my synthetic nature, I don't believe I am capable of succumbing to an anxiety attack."

"And that's you overthinking it."

"There is nothing to overthink."

"When you overthink it, it gets weird."

"…weird?"

"Well, yeah."

"How so?"

"Don't know, man… Just… weird. Humans are weird." Tony shrugged again and made his way for his office.

Vision hung in silence for a breath, alone, processing Tony's suggestions, "…all of this is weird."

Throughout all of this, the foremost thought in his mind was that this was a major part of human nature, the underlying structure of human impulses: to a human, life was a mere seventy years, estimate. Accomplishments on a temporal scale stretching beyond that time would require either one, a way to bypass one's expiration date, or two, another, younger human to continue one's work.

Cultures and histories rained through his head, letter by letter, verse by verse.

Perhaps for a moment, he'd drawn a human psychological connection between the idea of culture and religion against the drive for sex and reproduction. A singular goal—worship of a divine entity. Initially, worship begins as a wish for protection, a means of expanding one's lifespan beyond the threat of natural disaster or natural decomposition and oxidization. Worship the divine one, the Sophia, the Monad, the Demiurge, the Christ—worship and be granted, ultimately, more time. More time for what? To create. To create what? Legacy, to drive a knife into the surface of the earth and leave a scar that could outlive oneself. Or perhaps to create something more divine, to create something that could create happiness. An equation leading only to another problem in need of an answer.

Create an answer, they cry, perpetuate the belief in pursuit of this answer, pass it down along the generations.

All of it, however, upon deconstruction is merely human denial of mortality. Perpetuation through the vicarious pursuit of a single goal. Deconstructed further, moving from psychological motivation to physical motivation, there is only the instinctual human desire for lust and the reciprocation of hormones fueled by a drive for sex and reproduction. All means to the same end—perpetuate.

Neither of these things of which are particular issues to himself, as a synthetic man—he faces no approximated expiration date, only system destabilization and stasis until supplemental systems bring stability to major systems. An android's homeostasis. As a synthetic man, he does not even have the function for sexual reproduction. Perhaps a systematic cloning of major conscious drives into an appropriate vessel. But in that unlikely scenario, a successful transfer of consciousness could only occur with a duplicate body. Currently no scenario calls for that option.

However—however.

It seems as though, as much as his design was intended for as little human limitation as possible, there seemed to be certain vestigial functions. Vulnerable eyes for sight when surely, a proper design would have something more practical for protection of such organs. A tongue that cannot taste, but can still feel the burn of coffee and the bite of alcohol, form words that, in more practical design, would not even require a tongue or mouth. Nerve endings that not only alert him on a tactile level to threats, but could stimulate the flesh and blood nervous system within his vibranium shell with oxytocin and endorphins and push it to act, even foolishly, for more small pleasures.

The feel of Wanda Maximoff's skin against his own, the soft of her breasts against him, the scent of her hair—the fact he could sense smells although he could not taste, an imperfection perhaps? A flaw in a rushed design? The want for sleep, the want for dreams… was that all merely his own pursuit of human emulation as a protocol?

The want for her, was that too, merely emulation?

It had to be.

Wanda and Miss Romanoff had stopped sparring now, and were headed for the locker room, the showers. Wanda had stopped and glanced upward, at the second-level windows high above the mats within the training hall. She had a way of sensing exactly where he was. Approximated reason for this fell somewhere around the telekinetic nature of her abilities and—the voice of vestigial function—fondness?

Fondness.

A desire for proximity.

She stared upward at him. Perhaps she could hear his thoughts. Perhaps she could not bypass the event horizon of the mind stone. Perhaps he found himself wanting her to hear his thoughts.

Perhaps it was all placebo. Vestigial human functions. Anxiety. Paranoia. Functionless lust. Senseless, useless, illogical.

Vision could not understand the purpose of a function within himself that fueled sexual desire when, upon analysis, served no purpose. An android cannot procreate with a human, nor would an android procreate in a means other than the transfer of vessels. Even still, there was no necessity or desire for replication, therefore, no necessity for attraction. Was it a human desire, also, to simply crave sexual gratification for no purpose other than pleasure? Fondness? Proximity? This "sexual urge" was entirely pointless, for naught, a waste of time and processes, a—

"Stay with me."

He had said that to Wanda, in varying instances prior, and the memory of those words flickered through his mind again.

"Stay with me."

She smiled at him from so far away, although he could see it clearly from his vantage point. Her smile was a warm ray of light in the middle of black storm clouds.

His fingertips pressed against the window a bit harder for a moment, before he pulled away and left.

"Viszh…"

Lips parted. Breaths that needn't be inhaled, no function gained, no function lost, no carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Oxygen in, oxygen out. Lungs that only recycle.

"Viszh…!"

Lips part, breath breathed, vocal chords drawn up in the guttural moan of "V" and pushed forth, sideward. A tongue behind said lips, rising up behind the incisors, the distance between which could be likened to that of an event horizon and its singularity. All of this to the tune of Wanda Maximoff's voice, the reproduction of which was perfect in an android's synthetic mind, an android of impractical design.

He caught himself watching her lips more and more in the days that followed. In the training and sparring between them, the way Steve urged them all to seek control and awareness of their abilities. To know their furthest reaches and their limitations.

Vision watched her lips for this word—his name—when she shone scarlet and made unbalanced, wobbling efforts to levitate, to make herself, "as weightless as you, Viszh."

Each of her hands in his, Viszh had heard those words and felt a reflexive motion on his features follow—a smile. They were alone in the field outside the facility one evening, on a high, grassy hill overlooking (at a distance) both the facility and that one, very distant, very odd little "front" of a farm that had no actual farmers and occasional facility employees to feed the livestock—the sheep, of which, Vision had counted thirty-one.

Wanda's features were lit with gold and crimson as red as the coat and corset she'd taken to wearing on their missions. A shadow cast from a tall tree sixteen meters to their left had cast its feathered shadow across her features.

Wanda could not yet fly, but oh, how she had taken leaps and bounds in the time between the first pull of her weight as he had caught her in freefall versus that moment.

"If I let go of you will you float away like a cloud?" She asked, her eyes shining through long lashes.

"I have no intention of floating away from you." Vision had answered, lost in the soft flesh of her fingertips and palms against his own.

"Good. I'm a little afraid of heights. I'm… I'm very afraid of heights."

"Just… be weightless. Don't think about it." Vision had said, phasing lighter into the air, more weightless than a feather. Gravity's pull tugged less and less as he rose taller than the witchling whose hands he held.

Wanda laughed, "Viszh, I cannot simply… not think about it."

Her eyes cast downward for a moment, he could see the faintest trace of scarlet shadow painting her eyelids. It only made her irises glow like brighter crescents when she smiled back up at him.

"If you will forgive an abstraction, Wanda, what makes you feel like the world is falling away from you? Pleasantly."

"I… I am not sure. Sometimes I think about this when I manage a few moments of flight, but… I always think about, I lose my balance. I think about… I just feel the earth pull me back down… I… I think about…"

A brief memory of Sokovia flickered in his mind as he made the connection.

"You fear falling?"

"I fear falling again… falling as I should have. With everyone I should have fallen with."

"You did not fall. I was there." Vision said. Wanda turned, following the weightless ghost of an android moving around her. Her feet were still heavily planted in the ground. She had not even jumped high in days—he had sensed anxiety since the flight from Manhattan. That reminder of how high they had once been, before she had the fallback of her powers to soften any collision with the earth—not unlike himself, she was still learning.

"I should have fallen." Wanda repeated.

"I could argue against that until the end of time. Perhaps I will."

"You would be outliving the very being you argue the honor of."

"Perhaps I would. But I would still argue it. Until my dying day."

"You wouldn't die, would you?" Wanda said, feigning a soft smile, "I can't imagine it."

"I suppose if the functions of my physical vessel were to cease entirely, then yes, I may perish. In the best-case scenario, I imagine backup systems would force my consciousness into a state of standby until an appropriate replacement vessel is located. And if it cannot, then perhaps I may simply remain nonexistent until each electric particle building my self dissolves."

"Don't say things like that. I don't like thinking about you fading away."

Humans deny mortality until the moment which they are faced with it.

"You're thinking too much, Wanda." Vision said, "Unproductive over-analysis overloads the system. Processes could be better put elsewhere. Perhaps …upward."

"I'm afraid to fall." Wanda's feet had gained several inches from the ground. The two figures revolved around one another in a slow orbit.

"I won't let you fall." Vision reassured her, "…you fear confinement. When you let go of that which binds you to the earth itself, you will overcome the confinement of the world entirely."

"You make this sound much... much more metaphysical than I think it actually is, Viszh," Wanda gave a weak, half laugh, rising higher. He was guiding her higher.

"Hold this distance from the ground. Keep it. Where you are on the geometric axis between the surface and 'upward' is your own. Of x, y, and z, you are here. It is your very own place. Yours and yours alone."

Wanda bit her lower lip. She was rising further from the ground, but still, he carried her weight, unwilling to cut her free until he knew for certain she would not fall.

"I thought I was getting better… better about heights. Better about… feeling like if I get too high up, I won't be able to find somewhere safe. L-like, if I fall, I fall. I fall and I die."

"You won't die. I won't let you die."

Twenty-four feet and nine inches separated them from the grass below, now.

Wanda's face was spelling panic as she looked down. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away from the earth below.

"Look at it."

She shook her head, "If I look down, I'll faint."

"We're only going higher from here." Vision felt something, some vague amusement in this. She was so safe, so very, safe, and yet she was so afraid. Was this that sense humans got when they jumped out of closets at one another? Amusement in controlled environments. Her hair lifted on a breeze, the shine of setting sun caught in amber and auburn.

Wanda shook her head, "I don't want to fall, Viszh, just take me back?"

"Trust me. Please." Vision said.

Wanda's brows were furrowed in tension. Vision did not find this amusing. Perhaps this was bordering on cruelty and the best course of action would be to return her to the ground. Wanda opened her eyes, took a deep breath and looked down. Fifty-one feet, three inches from the hill from which they departed. Her lips parted in a soundless gasp as she blinked and fought off vertigo. She sucked in another deep breath and forced herself to stare downward. They continued rising upward. Her grip on his hands tightened.

"Gosh, Viszh… you taking me to the moon?" Wanda feigned a joke.

Vision smiled.

Monotonous, he replied, "Yes. I'll fly you to the moon, to let you play among the stars."

Wanda nodded and, breathless, added, "And… you'll let… let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars?"

"In other words, hold my hand," Vision spoke, watching her and her eyes squeezed shut, her fair and beautiful features so visibly fighting off a storm of fear. He wanted so desperately in that moment to brush the hair from her face, behind her ear, to stroke her cheek.

"In other words," Wanda breathed, finally meeting his eyes.

In that moment, all he felt was… undefined.

"…darling, kiss me." Vision finished the lyric.

Ninety-seven feet, eleven inches from their starting point. That was where she held his hands tight and leaned up—he felt her weight against his forearms as she moved—and, indeed, she kissed him.

When their lips parted, neither had realized that he had let go of her palms. That his fingers were tracing across her jawline, the curve of her ear, the silk of each tress of golden brown hair. She fixed her eyes on his, her breathing rate elevated, her heartbeat, elevated, the entirety of both of their beings, elevated. Elated, subtly, juxtaposed by the silence that followed.

"I'm sorry." Wanda breathed, "I-I shouldn't have…"

"Do not apologize," Vision said, "…the feeling is reciprocated."

Wanda glanced downward. She winced. Then she shut her eyes and pressed her forehead against his shoulder, "Everything is spinning."

Despite visual cue, Vision could imagine exactly what she must feel at that moment. He had assumed the sensation flooding his brain was mere vertigo. But perhaps it was a shared neural response to sharing of impulses.

"We are revolving at a slight degree, perhaps you feel th—"

"I… I know what I feel." Wanda answered. This was cryptic. This was an open-ended statement that pertained to numerous possibilities that were beginning to flood and overload his system of priorities.

"…odd," Vision stated, his tone sterile, "…this… this sensation is similar to the effect of the alcohol from Stark's party."

He heard Wanda quietly laugh against his chest. Just that fluttering sensation alone could have drawn a sigh from him. Certainly, now, the universe around them spun.

"I'm afraid to fall, Viszh. I can't… I can't lose someone I love like I lost Pietro," Wanda confessed, "…I can't… I can't ever love someone like I loved Pietro."

Vision stared upward at a single cloud, south by east, in the shape of a growing cumulous, "I have no siblings, nor have I family. I cannot imagine what the sense of love for one's family must be like. Nor the sense of losing one's family. But I can surmise that losing… losing you would be akin to losing the entirety of what I've gained and experienced thus far."

"Just stop."

A sting. "Of course."

He could see the faint hint of stars in the looming night sky. They blinked, not unlike the blinking of the glittering cityscape he had first seen in Stark's tower, the day he was born.

"I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean that. I'm just… I'm afraid of this. It's not fair to lash out at you, you're the only one I know who cares about me without some guilt or ulterior motive." Wanda said. He felt her arms moving, they were around his waist. Reflexively, his own arms moved to wrap around her small shoulders, one hand rising to stroke the long curls at the back of her head. She was bliss, personified.

"Pietro… loving Pietro was not like loving any man. Pietro was not merely my brother. We came into this world together and we should have left it together. Loving Pietro was not… was not like loving any boys in Sokovia through touch and sex. Entirely the opposite of that. Pietro was comfort, safety… home. A smile from Pietro, a kiss on the forehead when I had a fever, it meant so much more than any good-looking boy in Sokovia touching my body or kissing my lips. I would have been happy enough with just Pietro, even when he had girlfriends and secret lovers he hid from those girlfriends. It didn't matter as long as he was simply there, always. As long as… if I fell, he could be there… and when he fell, I was always there for him, always… except… except… when I wasn't. I couldn't catch him. I couldn't save him." Wanda's tears were hot against his chest, even through the clothing he manifested—he felt the burn, the sting of her suffering.

"Is that contentment to you, Wanda? Merely standing in the shadows, watching the one you love from a safe distance?" That apparition from the doorway flickered in Vision's memory.

"I am used to it. I've always watched the one I love loving someone else." Wanda answered, "Maybe I prefer it."

"You prefer to just watch." Vision said, something bending inside of him, groaning and on the verge of tearing in half.

"I do prefer it," Wanda said, her eyes dark as she faced him, "I can't be hurt by love a stupid game when I'm not a participant. I would rather never win than lose someone I love again. The outside is where I belong. Watching men and their dolls."

Closer. Closer, and closer to breaking, Vision breathed, "Dolls."

"I couldn't save Pietro and I can't even save myself, much less fly. Keep the doll, Viszh. I'm better in your dreams than I am in reality."

Broken, like an iron beam torn in half.

"I would be doing you an injustice by stepping into a hole in your heart that is shaped like Pietro." Vision felt the words leave his lips—words that felt in line with something in his chest, but cut like daggers through his mind. Through instinctual ulterior motive—those were words by which he would let her go.

But she would fly on her own, perhaps, then. An end to justify the means.

Her hold on him tightened. He shut his eyes and began to fade.

"Your brother is no longer in this world, on a corporeal level in which we can quantify, Miss Maximoff," Vision said. Her arms tightened until she slipped through him and she began to panic, stumbling, pawing desperate for something to hold on to, some way not to fall.

"Viszh!"

"I will not go on. This is knowledge of which you are keenly aware. If you seek to preserve a semblance of his life, his existence, then the only further action, sensibly, would be to move forward, carry on and become, truly, yourself rather than grieve safe ghosts for an eternity." Vision phased through her, behind her, and she was truly, then, shining a bright scarlet of terror as she raced for him, for grip.

"Viszh, I-I'm going to fall!"

"You won't fall."

"I can't do this—"

"You can and you will, and if you fall you know that I will catch you." Something burned in Vision's voice as he spoke those words.

Wanda's eyes were wide, filled with tears and anguish and fear.

"Compared to you the world is harmless. Under your fear, you are aware of this potential." Vision said, shifting around her slowly, "Fall. Do it. You know you will not die. Not beside me. Not in your own hands." — all humans fear death.

"Viszh!" Wanda had lost three feet, five inches.

"Do not fear what cannot hurt you."

"…hypocrite!" Wanda lost it. She was in freefall. Vision's arm lunged out, and he gripped her hand.

This was his first taste of frustration and anger as a cocktail, "How so, Wanda? How am I a hypocrite?"

"You're afraid of more than you let on. You… you are human, too."

"I… I am only an emulation."

"And what is that? A copy? You feared what you didn't expect just by getting drunk—" Wanda's words came through grit teeth, "You lost control and you felt fear. Don't… don't tell me to face my fears when you can't even face your own!"

"What is it I fear, then, Wanda?"

Wanda's other hand had taken to gripping his right forearm as he held her from falling. The earth's pull on her intensified the more her fury's flames burned. Tears were in her eyes. At that sight, Vision could swear he felt heavier.

"You fear losing this perfect state of peace you have, you fear losing control, you fear losing yourself for mere seconds because you think it's death, just like any child getting their finger pricked would!" Wanda's hold was slipping as his corporeal form dematerialized slowly, softening, becoming harder to grasp. Wanda pawed at his arm though her fingers were slipping through his silhouette.

"What is it, you believe, that I fear losing control over? I have the sense you are referring to something specific of which I am unaware. Perhaps a misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding…" Wanda said through grit teeth as she glimpsed downward, "…you can't preach to me that I should let go of my safe ghosts when you can't even let go of a dreamt doll."

Safe. Safe to be alone with a ghost in a waking life of mourning. Safe to be alone with a doll in a dream of what could have been. Doll. Marionette. The scarlet apparition in the doorway.

Anger stung. Penetrated. A nail pushed deep through his core until it tore through the other side.

"This is cruel, Viszh, I hate this!" A terrified, anguished sound escaped her, "Vision! Just, just put me down!"

Vision let the frustration at his lack of answers dissolve, "I am not the only one accused of cruelty. Here we are. Answers may not make us die, but perhaps they will expedite the process… and we are afraid of it. Look at us."

"To learn to trust is only a small death," Wanda said, "…that is what my brother used to say."

"And now it is what you say."

Wanda nodded.

She released his arm. She fell, seventeen feet, and then she slowed to a weightless stop. Vision could see tears escaping her eyes—they floated, too.

She floated alone for two-hundred and ninety-seven seconds before he rejoined her. The sun was gone, now. Only stars surrounded them.

"In that regard… if you'll forgive the abstraction, then if we die, we die together, then." Vision said only this to her, before slipping back down toward the earth. Wanda watched him, and he kept his eyes fixed on her, never straying too far. She rose higher. For a moment, he thought she would disappear through the clouds. But he sensed where she was, always. When she was once more, clearly in his sights, she descended but only of her own desire.

Away from him.

Nevertheless, he never strayed too far.

He did not see her for the rest of the night. She took her own route back to the facility, back to her room. He took his own route, but still, through the walls, he felt her at a distance. A series of dull, red lights in the shape of one Wanda Maximoff, burned out from the pressure he'd applied to her, in effort to induce crystallization.

His room was far lonelier that evening. Between their return to the facility and that day—approximately three days—he had procured a source for music. Somewhere between conversation about the pleasantry of it with Tony, Tony had dipped into his office and then returned with a device—some record player—"Now believe you me, my friend, vinyls are the shit,"—with, of course, modern functions. Tony had included a small "starter kit" of records from varying genres. Chet Baker, Miles Davis, even greatly differentiating artists from Elton John to some "Nirvana" to a certain "Iron Maiden" and a "Metallica" and an odd group referring to themselves as someone's "Bloody Valentine" — Tony's musical tastes were notably varied. Vision preferred the music of gentler tempo and tune.

Distraction through music. Perhaps this was what Tony had referred to when he had made another of his running jokes about some kind of "teenage phase" that Vision did not quite make heads or tails of. Was exploring music a trait more common to human teenagers than adults?

Vision gazed through the window at the stars—research had proven the statement in itself, as a statement, to be trite on a literary level, and perhaps, even, on a socio-psychological level. Stars were the only thing that reminded him this messy tangle of human entrapments were not the one core singularity of the universe. Stars were the thing that reminded him of Wanda Maximoff's eyes when she smiled or the skyline of Manhattan from the highest floors of Stark's personal Tower of Babel. At least the glistening lights of Wanda's eyes could be replicated in the duplicate residing within Vision's mind and dreams.

"You could have killed me."Her voice rippled in his mind.

Vision paused, glancing upward from the box of records Tony had gifted him. That voice was coming from inside of his mind.

"Are you angry with me?" Vision asked. His gaze was blank. Was he reaching that point of "humanity" — re; human stress as a distinctly humanexperience — that he was, as they say, speaking to himself? Or was he hopeful and correct in assuming Wanda's telekinesis had the mercy of reaching out to him? He could not speak to her, but oh, he was starting to suspect that she could speak to him. But only when she pleased.

Silence followed for a moment, before the voice repeated, "You could have killed me. You toaster."

Vision shut his eyes.

Vision turned his head in the direction of Wanda's room. Perhaps she was reaching out for him after an evening of blatant avoidance. The current time read 01:14 in the morning. He did not need sleep yet. Not for another 27 hours, approximately.

And yet, nowhere near the closure of his current waking cycle, he felt the siren call of his dream's spectre—that dreamt doll—reaching out for him.She was there, in his mind, tracing her fingertips along his torso, trailing downward toward his length and he felt, with so much certainty that shewas there, ghosting her lips over his own, over his chin and over the gem on his forehead with some kind of mercy.

"Just a doll." He murmured, pushing the thought aside. There was a pang of bitterness to that voiced thought.

How often had that doll in his dreams been Wanda? Or his Wanda?

Vision thought back to the red figure in his doorway, the last time he slept, that apparition watching him distractedly make love to her carbon copy. Vision grit his teeth. Surely this was all in his mind. But nothing of this made any sense to him. Placebo, placebo, placebo. Reasonable doubt. Imagination as a human flaw.

Fascination. Fixation. Obsession.

"I'm getting jealous of your doll, Viszh."

Wanda certainly, must have been there. Watching him.

She watched him flee his own dream at the moment of climax out of fear.

Pathetic. Afraid to be human, to give in to human pleasures. Fear was easy to give in to, he noted—fear of rejection, fear of shame. How apt it was that he felt little fear for the threat of physical damage, but the fear of psychological damage seemed a singularity that threatened to pull him into a bleak eternity.

"Shame is relative. I heard you say it once. Think it, at least."

"What are you encouraging me to do, then?" Vision murmured.

"Let yourself fall."

"I am starting to think you may be the braver one of the two of us." Vision answered.

Vision shoved away these thoughts, closed off this bridge between wherever this voice came from—be it his imagination or Wanda herself—and sought to lock himself away until the night and its loneliness had passed and the others were awake for the day, apt to busy his priorities from her.

The source of her enticing words could have been either, one, a telekinetic Wanda herself, beckoning him her way, or two, his own delusion, his own placebo, his marionette taking sentience within his mind in effort to corrupt his actions. Logic over reason, Vision reminded himself.

The lust at the thought of Wanda biting her plump, lower lip as she eyed him coyly was a mere fabrication. At least, Vision tried to convince himself as much. Imagination was painting a picture of her, in her bed, slender form sprawled lazily amongst her sheets in an incense-scented veil of night. Alone, dreaming of him, of their kiss, hours prior—wishful thinking, perhaps.

That kiss.

It had happened.Not a dream.

She had smiled for the briefest moment when their lips parted. Although he could not taste the cerise color of her flesh, he certainly could feel it. He could feel the slightest tease of her tongue crossing over his lower lip.

She was very likely lying in her bed at that moment, those same lips parted in shallow, sleeping breaths.

Or perhaps she was not. Perhaps she was still awake, stacking cards with her scarlet magic as if it were some form of meditation.

He could ask her then, for forgiveness.

Vision left his scant room, filled only with soft music. He phased through the wall, phased through the corridors, and floated through the darkness like a ghost. It was only when he reached the final barrier between Wanda's room and the corridor outside of it that he hesitated. If she were asleep and did not notice him—the correct action would surely be to leave. But he knew, before even entering her room, that it would be difficult to do so.

That he would be liable to make the mistake of watching her. Then he would destroy any trust he had in himself as a being deserving of her attention. It could be, all of this could very well be a mistake.

"To err is human, isn't that what they say?"

Vision phased through her wall, hoping he would appear on the other side, at least, out of her line of sight.

As expected, Wanda was asleep in her bed. He phased in next to the edge of her bed, just to the right of her pillow, where her features held static like the porcelain of a doll. Heartrate low, brainwaves indicative of REM sleep. She was dreaming, and deep in it, and moreover, she was positively cherubic.

That scarlet figure in the doorway haunted his mind, his memory. Was she waiting for him there? Waiting to watch him from the shadows, perhaps. Bitterness stung at the back of Vision's mind for a brief moment.

Vision faded away and back again, this time over her. Weightless, but with only a distance of a few mere, miserable inches between his lips and hers, beneath him. Completely, physically translucent, as not to alert her to his presence.

He could watch her sleep every night, he mused. Just like this, completely unphased, with no fear of her rolling over in her sleep and bumping into his large, clumsy form beside her, stroking her hair, her cheek, her lips… Vision paused, feeling that familiar sting of shame in the back of his mind.

Perhaps the marionette copy was all he deserved.

Still.

He could happily wait there beside her every night, hoping that one evening, in her sleep, she may sigh his name on her own. Just the thought of it sent a hot chill through his body, stirring again, the solid throb between his legs.

Wanda startled him, shifting a bit wildly at first and then moving to her left. She inhaled deep and quick, twitching her nose a little and then settling comfortably again on her back. More was revealed, then, as her blankets had been tousled aside in her motion. Vision could not have taken in the sight with any more wonder if it had been possible. This was not a dream, by any means.

He could not feel it the way his human companions did. But the weather was warm that day. The last hurrah of summer, Clint had said.

Wanda had peeled off that tan, cotton top he was so familiar with at this point. It was off and it was gone, strewn somewhere on her floor. Unrestrained by the constraints of fabric, her breasts and slender torso were exposed. Dipping further, solidifying his fingertips just enough to peel the blanket downward, he answered his questionable (arguably pointless, and yet somehow mesmerizing) curiosity of her undergarments. Her panties were cotton, black, cut in the design of "boy shorts" and white at the hems. Form-fitting, crossing the curve of her hips and her pelvis. Under a delightfully Venusian mound his fingers traced across the shape her panties hugged, lips, flesh, a node of female nerves designed solely for pleasure. He had always lamented his lack of a sense of taste, but truly, in that moment, did he have a genuine, unanswerable curiosity of what her skin tasted like.

Vision watched the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed slow and deep in the midst of a dream.

His fingers trailed upward from between her legs, tracing the curve of her belly and circling the dip of her navel. Creamy-fair skin, soft with the slightest hint of muscle growing below. Wanda was no athlete, no walking weapon like Miss Romanoff. She was soft at the edges, something Romanoff had pointed out playfully, much to Wanda's chagrin. She was toned, however, and as the weeks went by, becoming less timid and slight.

Should you awaken at this moment, I would enthusiastically accept my execution at your hands, Wanda Maximoff.

Still translucent and scarcely fading through the surface of Wanda's flesh, Vision loomed downward to plant kisses against her breast that she would not feel. His hands ghosted over the curve of her breasts, unable to caress as he would please. He heard and felt Wanda's heartbeat against his temple as he kissed downward. It hitched up a beat when his other hand slid up across her thigh and for the teasing little white hem of her panties.

Do not forgive me.

Lower he kissed, toying with the edge of what he imagined was self-loathing. Curiosity, he justified himself with, was driving this.

Just wake up and destroy me here.

"Viszh…" Wanda sighed in her sleep, startling him nearly into phasing through the floor in escape and terror. She was still, however, very much asleep, to his relief. Wanda inhaled long and slow as he continued to kiss downward across her panties, across the outline of plush lips beneath the cotton. He could feel heat under his lips and could smell an intoxicating, light and mesmerizing scent that only left him craving more.

"Stop…"

Vision froze, his body beginning to fade in anxious humiliation. Fade. Fade out of existence entirely.

"…stop… stop being so melodramatic… hand me the creamer? The ribbons are red."

Vision remained still, glancing around her room. There was no coffee creamer in her room, and he could not imagine why that was her priority at a time like this.

Her tongue passed through some unintelligible words for a moment before, in a full code-shift to Sokovian, Wanda murmured, "This… this coffee is so hot…"

At this point, Vision realized this must have been that human phenomena of sleep-talking.

He was not sure if he should continue his effort to fade out of existence by means of humiliation and self-loathing or just continue kissing her mound over her undergarment. After a moment's debate, he opted for the latter, letting his lips phase through the fabric. It garnered a quiet moan from his slumbering test subject. Which, in turn, sent a shockwave of pleasure through him straight down to the tip of his member.

"Not… not, not,not on the ribbons…!" Wanda sighed again, her words a mix of Sokovian and English.

Vision let his tongue slip through the fabric, across soft lips and folds with a texture like hot, wet silk. The sensation on his tongue was unlike any other he'd ever felt. Nothing he could have ever imagined, although, he had to confess he had not exposed his tongue to a large many textures in his time, yet. Wanda's legs moved, her hips moved, and again, he froze as if caught, before realizing her body was only reflexively grinding against his mouth and legs parting slightly. It took all his effort not to caress and squeezeher thighs in more solid palms and give himself away as he licked.

The rise and fall of her chest was sending more curious urges between his own legs. With little more thought over it, Vision stroked his length, from base to tip, just as Wanda had in his dreams. It was almost enough to send a shudder through his body. At one time, waking up with hardness like this, he had shuddered when the silk of sheets pulled across his tip, sensitive and untouched. It felt pleasant enough in his palm and even better when he found a steady rhythm not unlike the Wanda who had caressed him in his dreams.

A bitter curiosity lingered in his mind—had it been his Wanda that kissed him, stroked his body and drove him to the brink of bliss? Or had it just been a Wanda, constructed of memories?

His tongue depressed into her, garnering a sharp inhale. Her legs moved slowly, bending at the knee as her back arched and her fingers dug into sheets. Wanda's breaths hastened and he let his tongue delve deeper before turning attention against the bundle of nerves that made her tremble. At some point, he had lost a bit of concentration on his solidity—when her hand, pawing sleepily, and yet frantically for grasp, landed hard and gripped tight on his wrist.

Vision's other hand, still stroking his length with growing intensity, gave his own body a taste of the pleasure he gave Wanda.

"Don't stop…" She breathed, words clearly Sokovian, "Please, don't stop,"

Heat in his core and thunderous waves of pleasure rolled through his body from the hardness within his hand. Vision felt a familiar, aching pull toward euphoria as his body succumbed to the bliss of accumulating endorphins. Stroking harder, pumping his fist faster around his length, Vision moaned quietly against Wanda's wet sex.

"So close…"

Too close, logic gone, allured fully by the siren song of curiosity and lust.

Wanda's back arched as she gripped his wrist tight and cried out. Wetness spilling against his tongue spiked pleasurable interest in him. She shuddered, riding waves of blissful release and trembling as his tongue continued to lap up her juices worshipfully.

He could scarcely tell if she was still asleep or not. Her body was hot and yet chilled with a sheen of sweat. Wanda's chest rose and fell with deep breaths. He kissed upward across her lower belly, drunk on her pleasure. His tongue traced over the curve of her breast, marking one nipple with deep, sucking kisses.

"Give in."

Exhales escaped him at a dizzying rate. He kissed up along her neck, each stroke pushing him closer to an unknown brink.

That was when he felt naked arms rise up, wrapping around his shoulders.

"I was having… such a good dream… You woke me up, you toaster." Wanda sighed.

"I… Forgive me…" Vision half-moaned through ravaged breaths.

Wanda bit her lower lip, her sleepy features hiding the trace of a malevolent smile as she stroked the back of his neck with one fingertip.

"Forgive you. For violating me?" He could not tell if her tone was amused, angered, or some cocktail of reactions he'd not yet seen on a human face.

Vision's forehead pressed against Wanda's pillow. He resisted the urge to kiss her neck, "Are we to have the hypocrite conversation again?"

He felt Wanda shake her head, her fingertips tracing down along his shoulders, "Two wrongs don't make a right, Viszh… but I'll call us even."

"To err is human." Vision moaned through grit teeth.

He felt Wanda turn her head and felt her lips soft against his temple, "So you listened to me."

Vision stroked her face with one hand and her lips wrapped around his fingertip. She sucked, gently, and he watched an amused grin curling at the corner of her lips. Another threatening wave of ecstasy rolled through Vision as he answered, "I did… and I… I'm giving in. As you suggested."

Wanda's tongue slipped out, stroking long and slow against the underside of his middle finger, gazing up at him with half-lidded eyes. Letting his finger slip free of her mouth and trail down along her chin, her neck, her collar, Wanda leaned up and brushed her lips against Vision's. It was every bit akin to the last time their lips touched—in those moments, Vision lamented his inability to taste.

For the second time, he felt with the sort of intensity that drew his every sense away from the world around him. Lips softer than silk, warm, wet when her tongue crossed his lips and grazed against his own. The gentle flick of which sent a trembling jolt of need through his body, shaking him to the core. Wanda had a way of waking something inside of him. Subtly, at first, awakening thought, and overtly now, she awakened absolute desire with each tracing of her fingertips along his back and each sigh of precious breath against his mouth.

"I guess I am, too." Wanda confessed.

Perhaps that was what it truly felt like to be most alive, most human. Indifferent to the universe itself, pulling the most precious being into one's arms, one's kiss. This goddess of night, of dreams and the entirety of his soul—and oh, at this point, he was very certain it existed within him, for she herself, in her Monad divinity had crafted him one—would be forever burned into his memory at that moment. Her golden-brown hair like an autumnal halo around her face. She gazed up at him through those crescent moon eyes, setting him aflame as their bodies joined. In that moment she was pleasure personified, lust manifest in flesh and scarlet, if only to him and his own isolated, artificial universe.

When her lips pulled away, kiss-swollen and parted, a quiet moan carrying his name stung hot against his neck and shoulder. She held him desperately, rocking her body against his, her legs wrapped tight around his waist. He gave and moved she pushed him onto his back, her body hypnotic as her hips ground against his. Sensations he could have never imagined burned away the dull ache of longing he'd settled for since this mess of want first began. Her fingertips trailed down across his chest, his abdomen, running along sensitive lines carved into carmine flesh. That in itself had only confirmed what he already knew—that it was her who had experimentally traced her tongue along each sensitive path on his body.

Rhythmic, pleasured cries were muffled through tightly sealed lips as Wanda's body rocked faster. Vision hadn't even realized when he'd gripped the blankets beneath them or tightened his grasp around the curve of Wanda's hips.

"Oh god… Viszh… if you're dreaming, don't… don't wake up… stay with me…"

She drew him closer and closer to the edge, and in return, he slipped his arms around her and pulled her slender body closer.

Her hair was a silken veil around them as he stole one more kiss, trying desperately to stifle the involuntary moans and gasps trying to cross his own lips, "I'll stay with you always, Wanda."

Her forehead pressed against his own, her pitch heightened and quickened sighs came, "Oh my god, Viszh…!"

That was the last he saw before release stole over him—euphoria, a loss of time, a crash of some kind of vertigo. Blissful heat spilling between them, their bodies a tangled mess of lust and gasps. Their whispered cries were silenced by a kiss, deeper than any before. Fingertips dug deep into skin, soft bruises that would remain for days, and then a momentary break in consciousness followed. Something dreamlike, for a mere few seconds. Had he been careless, he could have phased straight through the floor in a ghost's freefall. Like gravity itself ravaged him to the core. He lost himself, eyes shut, seeing stars behind his lids.

When it began to fade, they held each other as if for dear life. His breaths were heavy and her name repeated on his lips like a mantra.

It was then that he opened his eyes again, finally. Still alive, although that could have certainly been very much why the word for "orgasm" in French translated to "small death" — this was what humans did, perpetually. They died only to be reborn.

Wanda sat up, planting a kiss against his lips.

"Viszh…" She sighed into his steady, deep breaths.

"That was… that was, very, intensely… definitely odd…" Vision breathed.

Wanda giggled and shook her head, "I… didn't think you could do that."

"Neither did I." A small laugh.