Edinburgh
"Peace in our time," Mr. Stark muses.
Dr. Banner only takes an uncertain breath.
It's only a recording, stored in his memory banks. He has many of the sort, carried over from the AI JARVIS that gave him his voice and many of his basic capabilities. His earliest memories predate his body, sight, and consciousness altogether, and consist of many conversations with his father-for-all-intents
-and-purposes; Tony Stark.
For all the man's faults, Vision admires the ideals he holds at heart.
Vision imagines it frequently. Peace. True peace. He adores humanity, and all its failings. He loves Wanda for the complicated woman that she is, both traumatized and hopeful. So beautifully human.
He only wishes that society were simpler.
That there would be peace among their species. That they wouldn't quarrel as they do.
That they would accept Wanda Maximoff for the human that she is instead of naming her a threat for her mistakes.
Mistakes that, in her position, any of them might have made.
Mistakes that, in the wake of his devastating error on the tarmac during the Avenger's own unfortunate civilwar, he's beginning to believe he may have made himself.
He's not entirely certain if he revels in or fears that fact.
Nevertheless, he yearns for this peace on earth that Mr. Stark dreamed of when he set his creation in motion. He wishes that peace and chaos weren't two sides of the same coin. Lying on a plush mattress in a mothball scented but pleasantly decorated hotel room in Edinburg, he wishes near violently that they existed in a reality that offered such a thing as true peace. Wanda lies languidly across his chest, her face tucked into the crook of his neck so that she can feel her breath fanning over the expanse of his bare chest. He always worries that the vibranium plates interspersed between the softer synthetic flesh that makes up his body will make her uncomfortable, but she never seems to mind. She always wishes to just be close, and, well, he certainly can't complain. The fingers of one hand brush tenderly over the soft skin of her thigh, her left leg anchored securely over his hips. The other hand lays lightly splayed between her shoulder blades. He wonders if he should reach down to tug the covers back over her bare back, but he doesn't want to break contact. He doesn't want to wake her.
She has spent so much time unable to feel secure enough to sleep this deeply. It brings him both comfort and pride to know that it's only in his presence that she feels safe enough to let her guard down this way. Internally, he shifts some of his focus. He tunes out of the internet for now - he's been trained to keep tabs on the news and Twitter threads pertaining to the Avengers for quite some time - and redirects that energy toward upping his body temperature.
No covers? No problem.
He will keep her warm. He will keep her safe. He will keep her comfortable in any way that he can. And he will feel proud and warm just knowing that he is able.
At times, he ponders his own existence.
From the very beginning, he's known that what he is was never truly the intention that was in mind when he was first created. Sure, Stark wanted peace on Earth. But the being that he imagined enforcing such peace was not the other creature that Vision has turned out to be. Stark - and all the others, he's sure - had imagined something very similar to JARVIS. Something intelligent and subservient to well-intentioned creators, but this time with a body able to contribute to the good fight.
From the moment he exited Dr. Cho's frankly revolutionary synthetic flesh building cradle that served, more or less, as a womb, he had decidedly not been what anyone had expected.
From that point forward, he seems to have only baffled everyone further. Everyone, including Stark and himself. When he shot down Colonel Rhodes, it was a terrible, horrible accident that he will surely never live down. An error that JARVIS, as limited as its capabilities had been, would never have made.
One which he made because he had been distracted by the pretty girl in red. The beautiful woman who now lay with her every naked inch pressed against every naked inch of him. It all came so naturally, he almost hadn't thought to question it.
But when everyone else seemed to, he couldn't escape the skepticism.
Should he even be capable of such things?
Of love?
He doesn't know if he should be.
Frankly, he's not sure there are any standards at all that he can be held to.
He is a synthezoid, to be certain, but he is the first of his kind. He possesses flesh that, while synthetic and interspersed with unforgiving vibranium, feels nearly identical to that of a natural homosapien. He has a consciousness that, despite having access to the entire internet at will, has individual thoughts and emotions. He feels empathy, and hope, and genuine affection for everyone he meets.
Whether or not he should, he knows that he does.
He feels an all-consuming, breathtaking, short-circuiting adoration for Wanda Maximoff.
He cares for all of humanity, their good, their bad, and their endearing. He was programmed to, after all. Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner intended for him to be the savior of humanity.
Such programming can't be held responsible for what he feels right now.
For the full feeling in his chest that almost tricks him into thinking he has a heart that can skip a beat in the way hearts do in romance novels. What he actually has is a synthetic, mechanical mimicry of a human heart, but he supposes that beggars can't be choosers.
Right now, he supposes he can't identify as anything other than simply a man who loves a woman very much, and is very, very, afraid that something terrible is going to come between them very soon.
He's felt it building for some time, now.
This intense sense of foreboding.
The Mind Stone pulses in his forehead. It lights the dark room around them, and he only hopes that it won't wake her. The feeling radiates through his skull, a sensation that he can only compare to a migraine. Dark images dance behind his eyelids, and he blinks them away. The flames, the destruction, the… The death.
He unwittingly lets out a small groan of pain and squeezes his eyes shut.
Can a synthezoid experience anxiety without due cause?
He tightens his arms around Wanda, and she hums. He stills immediately, hoping his stillness and warmth might coax her back into her slumber. But, as if her consciousness has been summoned by his discomfort, she stirs. She props the point of her chin against his chest, and he looks down to find half-lidded green eyes peering up at him.
"Viz?" She says softly. One hand trails lazily up his chest, making him shiver involuntarily. She tenderly cups his cheek. "What is it?" She asks.
He leans into her touch, sighing softly. "It is nothing to concern yourself with, darling. You still need rest."
"Do you want me to look?"
It's an innocent enough offer, but one that he does not want to take her up on. He's confided in her, about the foreboding visions that sometimes flood his mind, the way the Mind Stone sometimes pulsates in his forehead. The pain, and the anxiety that it causes. The feeling that has planted itself in his gut, like some kind of parasite has taken up residence in his body.
He's reminded of the zombie fungus that takes over the minds of insects, and compels ants to seek out conditions detrimental to themselves but optimal for the parasitic fungus. He wonders if something has infected his central processes. Is he vulnerable to such a thing? Is there such a virus that could infiltrate his defenses? Is he capable of possessing the faulty synapses that cause mental disorders in humans? Or is there something real, a tangible threat, that the Mind Stone is trying to warn him about?
She raises her hand, as she has many times over the past few days, to hover over the yellow-gold hued jewel set into his forehead. She's focused her telekinetic abilities onto it more than once since he first admitted his anxieties to her, but she hasn't been able to detect anything amiss. Suddenly, he finds himself afraid that she might find something different this time. That something might disturb this quiet moment between them. That something might compel them to get out of bed and dress for battle.
He catches her wrist, and redirects her until her palm rests over his chest. He carefully arranges each of her fingers so that her hand covers as much surface area of him as possible, and she only watches him with those eyes of hers. He can practically feel her concern rolling off her in waves, but Wanda has never been one to push him when he wishes not to be pushed.
She has patiently guided him through the ups and downs of learning to interact with humanity in a way that they will accept, if not outright welcome. She has worked with him until she could eventually accept his efforts to help her, and she has gained a desire to help him in return. Given her acknowledgement of her own nature, she has never been able to find fault in his. Even when she finds him to be rather self-sacrificing, she never prods him to indulge her in ways that she is not immediately comfortable indulging him.
She will expect an answer, of course.
She'd never let him off the hook that easily, and truthfully neither would he her.
But she will patiently wait until morning, if she must.
She will allow him these soft touches, this sensual manner of soothing his worries. And she will enjoy it herself, if his understanding of her body's reactions continue to ring true.
But come daybreak, she will surely wish to help him work through whatever troubles seem to ail him.
He adores her.
He withdraws his guidance, but her sleepy hands have become more alert, and they begin to wander of their own volition. He closes his eyes and hums in appreciation, the vibrations quickly reaching her fingertips. She reacts instantaneously, arching impossibly closer to him, her fingertips gripping harder and her mouth descending against his throat. He vocalizes once more, reveling in her reaction to it. He finds that it comes quite naturally, but he is equally pleased every time by her enthusiastic reactions to the noises her touch coaxes from his throat.
It had been his intention to distract them both from the images of destruction that have plagued his quiet moments recently, but he now finds himself quickly forgetting them entirely.
He is only a man who loves a woman very much.
If something is about to tear them violently from one another, then they certainly have no idea.