More Than An Equation

He swam in a river of data. Felt the eddies of variables and probabilities swirling around him. Dodged the rocky obstructions of constants and immutables. Again and again he navigated his way through the deluge of numbers… and again and again, he found himself at the same destination.

A Groundhog Day of critical error.

He had made a terrible mistake. Erred badly, in a way he had never believed possible. He'd thought he had accounted for all the variables: Distance. Wind speed. Target velocity. Coriolis distortion. A perfect hit. The outcome assured.

Somehow, he had missed one variable. The most important, unpredictable variable of all: Human behaviour.

He could not have known that Sam Wilson would detect the incoming shot. Could not have anticipated the Falcon's mid-air roll. Had no data for adjusting to a target that had, without warning, dropped out of the crosshairs. And because he had not accounted for the Human Equation, Colonel Rhodes was irreparably broken, for the rest of his life.

Again and again, the scene played out in his synthetic mind. The flash of light. The Falcon's swoop. The puff of smoke a silent S.O.S. as Colonel Rhodes' arc reactor took the hit. The swiftly decreasing arch of War Machine's failing flight, as inertia gripped his powerless suit. The fall. Gravity. So fast. He fell so fast, a silvery streak plummeting towards the ground like a falling star, its light so very nearly extinguished.

And whilst Colonel Rhodes has been hurtling towards the ground, Vision had calculated probabilities. Tried to figure out which variables were at fault. Hadn't even considered, until weeks after the event, that the fault might be his.

His body was not biological. It was not fuelled by chemical reactions, but by the mysterious Infinity stone in his forehead… the source of his intelligence and individuality. He had no frame of reference for what he was feeling. Had never truly felt anything before, because machines could not feel, they could only react to stimuli. Still, he suspected the feeling he was currently experiencing, this impossible occurrence of thought and emotion, might be guilt.

It ate at him, gnawing at his mind night and day. He didn't sleep, so had no dreams, but the scene replayed constantly, a proxy for absent nightmares. Each time the scene replayed, he ran through the equations again. Each time, critical error. A black hole had opened up beneath him, threatening to suck him in and swallow him whole. Error. He was not supposed to make them. Distraction. He was supposed to be above that. His processing power was significant; he could run a million computations in the time it took a human to think about what colour shirt he wanted to wear today.

There was only one explanation.

He was flawed.

Broken. A failure. An experiment in A.I. gone wrong. A liability to those around him. A—

"Hey."

Mr. Stark's neatly coiffed head popped around the door frame, followed by his body. Vision sat up a little straighter, moved one of the chess pieces forward, pretended he was actually interested in playing the game against himself. But he did not think Mr. Stark was fooled. Despite his propensity for getting easily distracted by shiny things, pretty faces, and his own reflection, Mr. Stark was surprisingly astute, at times.

"We're heading out to grab a bite," Mr. Stark said. There was a knowing look in his deep brown eyes. And something more… something that spoke to the guilt Vision found himself living in. "Wanna come?"

"Thank you, but as you know, I do not require sustenance," he replied.

"I know. But Rhodey needs a change of scenery—wants to stretch his legs in the exo-suit—and I think you could use an evening of doing something other than pretending to play chess against the Invisible Man. What d'ya say?"

"I must pass, Mr. Stark. There are… things… I must work out, before I appear in public again. But I thank you for the offer."

Mr. Stark shrugged. "Alright. But don't go throwing any parties whilst we're gone."

He suspected Mr. Stark was joking, but one could never be entirely certain. "I promise I shan't."

When Mr. Stark left, Vision resumed his processing. His thinking. That was all he'd done since Leipzig. Think. Process. Calculate.

Knowing he had crippled a man because of his failure was not the worst conclusion he had reached. There was also the knowledge that, had he not failed, he would have crippled a man. Had his shot impacted Sam Wilson's jetpack, the result would have been the same. In fact, it would have been worse, because Sam was not protected by a metal shell; the shell that had cushioned Colonel Rhodes, and prevented him from being killed on impact. The shell that had preserved that flicker of life long enough for some other, more capable machines, to temporarily take over the living for him.

Turn him into a glider, Rhodes had instructed. And with no thought for the consequences, Vision had taken aim and fired. He hadn't even considered that Wilson's jetpack would fail. Hadn't envisioned the man dropping from the sky like a stone. All he had thought was how annoying it was, that these men should attempt to go against the wishes of their leaders. That Captain Rogers, Sam Wilson, and their allies, would rather serve chaos by rebelling, than serve order by obeying.

Vision had been the most powerful entity on the battlefield, second perhaps to Wanda Maximoff, and when he thought back to how he'd processed… how he'd felt… at the moment he'd taken the shot which had changed Colonel Rhodes' life forever, he felt something else. Something that made him feel bad, because he had thought he could coerce them into obeying. Thought he could use his superior power to make them see reason. And, if not reason, then he could stop them. He had the strength to do that.

He thought the new feeling might have been shame. Before that moment, he had considered himself superior to humans. Above their petty disputes and quarrels. A more intelligent being, free from the shackles of biological life; free from corruption, and emotion, and flaw. He saw himself as something of a protector of their frail way of life. Now, he knew he was not superior. He was not a protector of humanity. He was a machine. A broken and defective machine.

He was so much less than humanity.

Perhaps free will, and acceptance of the consequences brought about by acts of free will, was why Captain Rogers had refused to sign the Accords. Mr. Stark and Colonel Rhodes had obeyed Secretary Ross. Vision had obeyed Colonel Rhodes. And now Rhodes was crippled, and the Avengers fractured into composite parts. Natasha Romanoff had switched sides. T'Challa had not been in contact since taking Colonel Zemo into custody. Peter Parker— child!—was back home, where he belonged. A home Mr. Stark should never have taken him away from. Another critical error.

The one person who could have helped him make sense of this chaos was in hiding. Wanda Maximoff had a special way of looking at things. A special way of making him feel. Around her, he felt… different. He didn't know, exactly, how to qualify the feelings. Just that when she was around, everything made more sense.

Now, nothing made sense. There was just the river of data, the stream of variables and constants, and the knowledge that every action he took, no matter how small, might have devastating consequences for the humans he considered his friends.

Every day he swam in that river, and felt it pulling him down into the undertow. Every time he reached the same destination, he lost a little piece of himself. Of all the variables, there was one that he knew he could never account for, because he could never understand it. Would never be a part of it. He would always be an outside observer of the Human Equation.