Torture of the Archivist
Memory 12
“See ya later, Vision!”
The blonde boy nodded his head in acknowledgement at Darcy and Monica’s joint departure from the study room, one hand raised in a half-wave, eyes glued to his laptop monitor.
That fateful day in April last year had christened Victor with a new name - Vision. A reference to his “prophetic genius powers”, as Darcy had put it.
It started with only Darcy and Bruce calling him that. Then Monica. Then other kids he’d barely spoken to before. His fate had been sealed the moment his teachers and professors seemed to take the nickname in stride as well, giving him a nod or wink as they said it, indicating they were in on some sort of joke together.
In all honesty, Vision liked the new name. “Victor” had always felt too formal, and reminded him of when his father would call for him at home. He enjoyed the whimsical and fantastical aura of the name Vision. Like a codename for a secret agent, or a superhero from one of the comics he adored reading in his spare time.
Bruce had introduced him to comic books. While they’d always caught Vision’s eye in the past with their dynamic colors and vibrancy bursting from the thoughtfully crafted pages, he knew his father wouldn’t approve, so he hadn’t pursued the interest. Until he became friends with Bruce one day in their programming class, partnered together for a project. They’d quickly bonded over their shared love for programming, and Bruce’s gentle but understanding nature appealed to his own anxious demeanor. A few days into their friendship, Bruce introduced him to the Transformers and Marvel comics he read online, sucking Vision with him into a new world. Comics were a perfect clash of art and storytelling, and he let himself fall into the love he’d always suspected was lingering just out of reach.
Incognito tabs did wonders. What Ultron didn’t know surely wouldn’t hurt him. Or Vision, for that matter.
On that particular day, Vision was vigilantly picking apart the code of a programming assignment, attempting to file away some nuisance thoughts in his mind. If only he could access the inner workings of his brain, write a line of code to suppress the thoughts and feelings that impeded his plans, life would surely be much easier.
That’s what he’d spent the last half a year attempting. Getting Wanda out of his mind.
Every conversation, every joke, every feeling they’d shared together, Vision cataloged away solemnly, nestled inside too many layers of folders inside folders than the situation probably warranted, ensconced into the back corner of a shelf. Compressed, zipped, compartmentalized, put neatly away - no longer needed, he reminded himself.
Wanda had somehow wormed her way into his core code. She wasn’t just some ancillary program - she had embedded herself into the daily routines that kept him functional. While brushing his teeth, his hand on the counter tingled with anticipation, awaiting the vibration of the counter from her texts she no longer sent. When Vision sat in the study room, he swore he saw her ghost, the faulty firing of an abandoned neural pathway in his brain producing her blurry outline in the seat across from him. During chemistry, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled with her phantom gaze. Whether she actually watched him or not, he’d never know.
Confirmation would burn him alive with guilt, and denial would drown him in the murky waters of self-loathing. Safest to keep that Schrodinger’s box closed, he concluded.
These moments would stir his memories, and the box tumbled out of his bookshelf, as if possessed by her ghost. All of the files splayed open on the floor, the pages of thoughts and feelings spilling out of the 3-ring bindings that gleefully snapped open at the opportunity. Overloading him with too many images and sensations at once, he’d flee, chasing the air leaving his lungs, his too-fast heartbeat, the blood in his face and hands.
Like a virus, she’d invaded his every cell, and had written herself into his life. Vision couldn’t just delete his chest, his lungs, heart, mind - though on his loneliest nights, when he cried into his pillow, carefully muffling his sobs so his father wouldn’t hear, he selfishly wished he could. But he knew he couldn’t. So he did the next best thing.
If he can’t delete his emotions, then he’d turn them off.
Which had been his original plan upon entering Westview Academy. Stay away from everyone else - emotionally speaking, anyways - until he could live life on his own. Making alterations to his plan had been a mistake - had landed him right where he swore he’d never go back to. Well, no matter. The past was the past - all he could do now was correct his mistake.
Every time the box fell off the shelf, Vision no longer fled, refusing to cower to her specter haunting his mind. Unwavering, except for the slight tremble of his white-knuckle fists, he would methodically gather the scattered folders and files, organizing them back into their places, seeing them for what they really were. These words, recollections, emotions - all of this was nothing. Before him was just a cardboard box. A specifically labeled box, which held just as specifically labeled files. Files that contained papers and pictures of the past. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to be emotional about. Just a box that had fallen from its place. Just rebellious neurons firing away without his consent. Just teenage hormones, attaching lofty feelings and ideas to a girl he’d only known for a few months. Just one girl of the approximately four billion on this planet. It wasn’t as if he’d never feel happy again - he was just being dramatic. Just a stupid, naive, sentimental boy. Just stupid Victor. Just, just, just -
It took a lot of practice. To reduce the crushing weight on his chest, heart, and lungs to a dull ache, regaining a semblance of command of his vital organs. But over the course of summer break and two months into his sophomore year, as he sat in the study room, he felt slightly more in control than before. Even if the pain truly wasn’t less - moreso that he’d built a tolerance - he would willingly accept the lie that maybe he felt a bit better, just so he could breathe a little easier.
But life has a way of mucking up the best-laid plans. Just as Vision thought her gone, as he thought it safe to breathe, there she was again.
Knock knock knock!
Startled, he glanced up from his code and was met with a terse stare. Not quite a glare, but a steadfast expression - unyielding and determined. Jawline popping out a bit from the tension, eyebrows slightly knit together, lips pursed, maybe even a bit swollen from being bitten and toyed with anxiously.
Unlike before, the girl standing on the other side of the glass door was no apparition of his imagination. Her eyes gleamed with the sparks of a boric acid fire, emerald and lively, flames flitting about in her irises from the withheld breath of words yet spoken. No amount of misfired synapses, of smoke and mirrors, could simulate the life of the true Wanda Maximoff. Thus, he knew it, undoubtedly, to be her.
Separated by a single pane of glass. He considered her, then the bookshelf. The box, the folders, the files. The exchanged words, recollections, emotions he’d spent months retrieving from their routine descents to the floor and returning to their places. She was just one girl. One of approximately four billion on Earth. He was just a hormonal teenager. A sentimental, naive boy. Just stupid Victor. Just, just, just -
“A vision!”
A sweep of his arms, and the box gladly tumbles off the shelf.
A small smile and wave of his hand, and Vision welcomes her memory through the glass.
Memory 13
Oh, how she had missed this.
Like besieging a castle, Wanda stormed into Victor’s study room that overcast September afternoon. She’d planned the heist as she had always used to - down to the finest detail.
Wanda knew that particular afternoon was the time to strike. Victor would have lunch, and he’d be alone, his usual acquaintances busy with club activities. This was information she’d covertly obtained during some recon missions from the shadows of the library shelves over the past couple of weeks. While not her proudest moment, thieves are beggars, not choosers. Morality is best left pondered by philosophers and her overactive conscience at hours better spent asleep.
All of the study rooms were full today, so Victor had been forced to rent out the archive instead. Which was perfect. It was nestled comfortably in the farthest back corner of the library, out of sight of most passersby. Besides the glass door, it had only one small window to an unused school parking lot, making it the most secluded of the study rooms.
Wanda executed her ambush. She knocked resolutely on the glass door, unwavering intent masking her nerves. Even professionals need practice to stay sharp, and the dull march of the past months blunted her dagger. God, how long had it been since she’d last done this? She couldn’t even recall her last major score, the last time they’d shared a genuine laugh together, the lost memory a misplaced trophy in her mind vault.
Victor beckoned her inside with a wave and a tightly guarded smile, as he had always used to do. And Wanda gladly welcomed his challenge, striding through his castle gates with purpose.
As an archive, this study room held a different atmosphere than the others, setting a different scene than usual for this caper. Silken sun beams muffled by thick, musing clouds draped over the center of the room like a veil. Victor sat with his back to the window, unconsciously allowing the sun to crown his golden hair with its light. The court’s subjects, lazy specks of dust fat with riches and years of peace, swayed lightly in the rays, carefree and unperturbed by her intrusion. Towering columns of forgotten books taller than Wanda framed the throne of Victor’s chair on both sides, almost seeming to part to permit her an audience.
Her proximity to the treasure made her skin prickle with adrenaline and anxiety. Her hands itched to swipe the shiny prize, desperate to capture the smooth validation of his reluctant but irrepressible grin, to claim and covet it for herself. But this was a delicate job - precision was critical to success; she couldn’t afford to be hasty, to make a mistake.
Settling in the chair across from him, Wanda journeyed into his fortress, finding entrance in the cracks of his gaze locked with hers. While familiar, the interior of his eyes was not the same. Stares guarded by reinforced walls were dilapidated from disrepair, their proud luster concealed under budding mosses of varying shades of evergreen. Jagged holes littered the walls and ceiling, granting the sun access to sections of the castle long untouched by hope. Wanda brushed her fingertips along the thriving morning glory intertwined with the banister as she ascended the spiral staircase further into his labyrinthian eyes, leaves damp with a life she had never witnessed here before.
Some might call the overgrowth of blooming emotions neglectful, but it was decidedly more like Victor than before. While she could feel the pain resonating from the marred limestone walls of his irises, the gaping wounds became the catalyst for opportunity and regrowth. Nature dressed the scars in a healing salve of vines and lichens, soothing the rough edges to a dull ache in the veins of its constitution. The newfound company of wayfaring shrubbery and vegetation eased his grief, if only a little. The spread of the foliage was intentional, like a king reclaiming his throne, rebuilding his village from the aftermath of cruel wars.
Wanda entered the heart of the king’s study, the dilated depths of pupils still devoid of hope’s light, still encased in iron bars. Still unrelenting when she tugged at the barricade, urging it to bend, to free the boy inside. There he was, only inches away, toiling behind the desk unendingly, day in and out, as he always has, and maybe always will. The distance was so short, yet there were inexplicable infinities, uncrossable boundaries spanning the table between them. The blue of his eyes still swam with a murky sadness, but the corners of his mouth upturned a bit at the sight of her, her image bittersweet yet misty in clouded corneas.
With an exhale, she extended her appeal through the cell bars, struggling to retain composure over the creeping desperation crawling up her throat, endeavoring to crackle her words without her permission. Victor observed her blatant inner-conflict, expression bound into a controlled neutrality, attempting to obscure the disarray his castle was in.
“Look, Vic. There’s no way to say this without sounding weird or overly sentimental, so I’m just gonna say it.”
“This whole thing… you not being allowed to talk to me… it’s fucking stupid, okay? We’re in high school, for fuck’s sake. Almost adults. We can choose who we want to talk to and hang out with, and your dad or the school or whoever cannot monitor you twenty-four-seven to stop us. We aren’t fucking kids in elementary school; we can do whatever we damn well please. We can always talk through channels your dad doesn’t have access to; I know he doesn’t have enough time to constantly be searching through your shit, and I also know you’re good at being sneaky already. And… and I fucking hate this.”
She felt her throat begin to close up at her admission. But Wanda grit her teeth and fought down any tears threatening to well up; this was a moment of strength, of defiance, not of weepy, pitiable begging.
“I hate pretending that you don’t exist. Because the only way I can do that… is by pretending I don’t exist, either.”
Rebellious tears pooled into a plump droplet at her chin, splintering under its own weight and dissipating into the moss-covered stones of the castle floor, the nourishment from her suffering unrecognized yet appreciated.
“So can we just… be friends again? Please?”
Vision didn’t so much as breathe her entire rant, absorbing her voice with care, as if sampling an expensive chardonnay. Her words marinated on his palette, swirling into his core, intoxicating him. As much as he hated seeing her upset, it’d been so long since he last heard her speak, and the sound alone diffused a gentle warmth inside him.
If only she knew he had made up his mind the moment she knocked on the glass.
Lowering his defenses with a small grin of defeat, Vision accepts her defiant declaration, her emphatic pleas.
If only she knew he had no ability to ever deny her.
“Okay.”
Memory 14
It was Vision’s own fault things had turned out this way. It seemed he had developed a penchant for suffering.
He knew inviting Wanda back into his life would also invite nothing but heartache. After his father forbade all contact with her, Vision had set about trying to numb any and all feelings and memories about her. Which had been its own form of torture for him. His psyche seemed hellbent on breaking him down through relentless exposure therapy, reminding him of her at every turn to the point that her likeness caused him to tense in anticipation of the expected pain that followed. He’d conditioned himself like a Pavlovian dog. What he used to look forward to with excitement, he now only felt dread.
Vision felt like her prey. Every day, he walked into the trap of the study room walls willingly, awaiting her arrival. Even though he knew the inevitable outcome, that Wanda pounces through the glass door and clutches his throat between the fangs of her open-mouth laughter as he flinches like a stunned animal, he dreaded it all the same. His mind couldn’t entirely believe she was real again, that her vibrancy truly existed in the same space as him, and not as the ghost that had haunted his periphery for so many months prior.
In the silent moments between baiting the trap and awaiting his predator, logic admonished his flights of insanity, pestering him with “what if”s - what if a teacher saw, what if a classmate talked, what if Wanda got tired of him, what if Ultron found out -
“Hey Vizh! Glad I could catch you for a bit.”
The predator pounced.
The new nickname pierced him, injecting him with a paralytic, his tongue falling heavy and limp in his mouth, unable to reciprocate the greeting. When he’d told Wanda his new name, she echoed it back to him, testing the consistency and flavor between her teeth, licking it off her lips with satisfaction, accepting his new title with chagrin. Now it seems she’s taken it a step further, marking her territory with an even newer nickname, claiming it as hers.
Vision was limp beneath her prowess, the only sign he hadn’t succumbed to death his heart pounding against his ribcage, howling to break free of its cell. Wanda stalked into the room, encircling him as she took her seat on the other side of the table. She haphazardly tossed her athletic bag onto the desk, daring him to flee, but Vision knew better than to try. Cheek rested in one hand, she clicked her claws against the table as she grinned at him, playing with her food, with his heart.
Wanda had sunk those claws so deeply in him that it hurt.
But God, he loved the thrill of her.
It felt like his brain was melting when he took in Wanda’s appearance. Messy curls were pulled back into a high ponytail, properly showing her face that was no longer obscured behind frizzy curtains of hair. Beyond those curtains were her eyes, illuminated by the stage lights of the setting sun shining in through the windows. Sparkles of mischief swayed in the gentle pastures of her gaze, swirling in the sun’s warm, orange glow.
Vision jerked his stare away, struggling to escape her jaws, but it was useless.
Rolled up sleeves betrayed the silky expanse of her arms, lightly traced by veins that trailed into her wrist and knuckles, popping in and out rhythmically as she drummed her fingertips along the wood. Persistent, teasing taps, chipping away at his sanity, evoking simultaneously a shiver of fear and a distant memory of those same fingertips along his thigh.
The taunting incisors of her toothy grin squeezed tighter around his throat, almost cutting off his airway. Not enough to make him bleed, to kill him, but to flaunt that she could. The lack of oxygen made him dizzy, yet paradoxically…
A bit euphoric.
Vision wanted her to squeeze tighter, bite harder. Let him pass out. Kill him. Would the euphoria be even greater then? To be brought that much closer to the razor’s edge of pleasure and torture? Would he be overcome with a feeling of exhilaration, followed by freedom from the agony of survival?
Cleats thudded onto the desk, nearly jolting Vision out of his seat in surprise. Wanda had put up her feet and leaned the chair onto its two rear legs, eyes fluttering closed as she stretched her back, almost purring with satisfaction, eliciting an image of a feline curling its spine the same way.
He could see her bare legs. Her shorts rode up from the new angle, revealing her thighs, thick with powerful muscle from years of playing sports.
Fuck.
Courtesy, logic, and self preservation rang between the pulses of blood in his burning ears. But the predator beckoned him closer, and it was almost like she knew, knew that he could never deny her -
Blunt nails of warning pinched his palms.
What the hell is he doing, he can’t be staring like this, it’s rude, inappropriate of him -
He averts his gaze again only to be captured in the faint gleam of her scheming eyes. Studying him through her lashes like a lioness stalking through the high grass of a savannah, covertly closing in on him. Vision felt the adrenaline of fight or flight churn his blood faster through his veins, his heart picking up pace to meet the demand, screaming at him to run, run -
Knock knock knock!
“Welp, looks like I gotta go. Catch ya later, Vizh!”
Wanda left in the same whirlwind she’d barged into the study room and his life with, jogging to catch up with Darcy and Monica across the library to get to practice. All he could do was watch her go, overloaded by too many conflicting thoughts and feelings.
Snatching his school water bottle off the table, he hastily downed its contents, letting his eyelids close, attempting to focus on the feeling of the cold liquid sliding down his throat, sore from the constriction of his own emotions. He hoped the gentle stream could untangle the confusion in his head. But he sets it back down with a large gulp , and finds himself no different than before.
Boiling blood seared the skin of his cheeks and ears. Maybe he’s dehydrated; maybe he just needs to drink more water.
Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. While that was somewhat undeniable, reversing his decision wasn’t an option at this point. And he didn’t want to. No -
Gulp!
Maybe he’s just socially imcompetent. While that’s also somewhat true, that wasn’t the source of his anxiety, of his fears. His body wasn’t on high alert because he’s afraid of saying the wrong thing, it was because… No -
Gulp!
Maybe he’s just really anxious. And while that was also undeniably true, he couldn’t pin the source of his palpitating heart to that either. He knew this because he’d dealt with anxiety his whole life. And while he felt that same, creeping dread leading up to their interactions, he hadn’t ever felt this pleasing warmth of validation in its wake. No -
Gulp!
Maybe he still has a crush on Wanda.
Vision goes for another gulp, only to discover the bottle is now empty.
The water sloshes tumultuously in his gut as he rakes his hands through his hair with a heavy sigh.
Like two rival oceans fighting for sovereignty, his old and new feelings viciously overlapped each other. The fear of his father’s wrath hung over Vision still, yet his old feelings towards Wanda were also rekindling themselves. He was desperate to be near her, spend more time with her, helplessly addicted to her wicked wit and passion for even the most mundane, yet doing so made him paranoid of all that could go wrong. The two instincts warred within him - survival and attraction, need and want, logic and emotion, but the scales refused to tip either way as the game of cat and mouse continued for months until winter break granted him a reprieve.
At least, Vision had assumed it would be. But oh, how wrong he had been.
Vision and Wanda resumed their old text conversations outside of school, using websites and mediums his father wouldn’t think to check and that could be easily concealed or deleted. They spoke of everything and nothing at all, just content with each other’s company, even if only virtually.
Then one fateful December evening, the message came. The one that would haunt his mind for the rest of the month.
9:54 pm
I think I have a crush on someone
The scales tipped, the strings snapping under the increased weights. One ocean swallowed the other whole in his gut, smacking its jowls violently with crashing waves. Her grasp on his throat strangled him, her fangs finally puncturing into his esophagus, crushing his windpipe, killing him. Vision had imagined this moment to be exhilarating, ascending him beyond consciousness and the need to breathe. But all he felt was agony as his body stubbornly clung to reality, refusing to relent to unconsciousness, submerging him in the depths of rejection and despair.
This wasn’t how he wanted confirmation of his crush on Wanda. How he wanted to know that he would throw aside survival, need, and logic to bask in his attraction, emotion, and want for her. How he would endure the threat of teacher’s seeing them, classmates talking, Ultron finding out.
The revelation should’ve been jubilant, but it only tormented him as he was met with the suddenly too-real possibility that she didn’t like him back. The thought of her not feeling the same way made his body heavy with defeat, as if she truly had killed him.
Images of her being intimate with another boy threatened to bubble to the surface, but he shook his head, unable to stomach the idea. Wanda had told him she’d dated once or twice before, but they were innocent relationships; middle school flings between giggling children. But now, in high school, it wouldn’t be the same.
Vision had unfortunately been privy to many conversations between his male peers of their “conquests” with the other girls at the academy, their vulgar vernacular revolting, producing a sour taste that turned his stomach. No to say that Vision saw himself as “superior”, but the self-entitled youth of the academy were infamous for their horrid demeanors loosely masked by proper etiquette in front of their teachers and professors. Behind closed doors, most of them were truly awful. He didn’t want Wanda to be bragged about in the locker rooms between stupid boys as some kind of conquest, she was worth so much more than that -
A retch violently surged up his throat, jolting him upright in bed. He didn’t throw up, but he was close, his gut rioting against his runaway train of thought about events that may never come to pass.
Letting out a sigh, he tustled his hair with the palms of his hands, attempting to shake loose the anxious thoughts clinging to his scalp.
Vision knew he ought to trust Wanda. She wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t like someone like that. Whoever she liked was probably worthy of her affection. Unlike him, and all he and his father had put her through.
The self deprecation was not enough to extricate the hooks of jealousy.
10:02pm
Really?
Who?