1.
I’m tired of washing my hands
God, I wanna go home
– Julian Baker, home
Sokovia is a broken country.
Wanda struggles to remember life before the war – before bombs started dropping out of the sky, and the corpses started piling up in the streets, and the screams of agony of the ones trapped under the wrecks buzzed in her ears all day long. She has grown so used to it, she doesn’t even flinch anymore when a new kid shows up at the orphanage without an arm or with his cheeks grazed by the cement.
They’re almost fourteen now, their birthday just a week away. Pietro has been having nightmares about home again, she can feel him in her head, twisting and shouting under the covers of their simple bed. She buries his head in her chest and hums a lullaby her mother always used to sing. Sometimes she’ll stop and realize she has almost forgotten the sound of her voice, and then the sadness will come washing over her again like a wave, tears escaping her eyes before she can stop them.
“This is the last year,” Pietro declares sitting on top of the rickety stairs that lead to the dormitories.
Wanda smiles at his serious face, a hint of hair slowly growing right under his chin. His voice has gotten deeper now, he sounds like a man, not a scrawny kid with dangly arms. “Yes. The last year.” She echoes after him.
Ever since their parents died, Wanda has been searching for something. She’s not quite sure what it is, but she knows she won’t find it among the rats and squeaky springs of the bed she shares with her brother. Here, in this place of no one – where kids come and go like seasons, lost to the war or madness. She thinks about the shape of the couch that used to stand in their living room.
Living room.
Funny how a word can be so contradictory.
Pietro always lies to everyone but her. And on the night of their fifteenth birthday, he takes her hand to lead her out into the streets, and Wanda doesn’t drop it for the next two years.
2.
I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.
– Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Space is always a problem in whatever building they have found to occupy. Usually there’s at least thirty of them, if not more, all hungry, and dirty, and angry. Wanda doesn’t mind sharing a mattress with Pietro – they’ve slept in more uncomfortable places after running away from the orphanage: under bridges, in collapsed houses with empty chairs, on the soft ground of the forest just outside of town.
Constantly moving is not a problem either: there’s no time to settle down in the resistance. Pietro likes to call it that, as if they’re the rebels with spaceships fighting an evil empire coming from outer space. Come to think of it, their enemy isn’t so different from Darth Vader, though her twin would surely argue that Tony Stark is way worse than him.
And she can’t really disagree.
Organizing protests is a full time job she wasn’t prepared to take on at seventeen, but the hatred and anger she had been feeling in her bones for the past seven years have helped her pull through, along with Pietro.
Pietro, Pietro, her sweet boy with a handsome smile that makes all the girls swoon.
She laughs at the dirty looks they shoot her, jealous of the way Pietro never leaves her side. She clings to his body, now more muscular and definitely taller than hers, latching both her arms around his hips.
“I’ll start the first night shift,” he tells her kissing the top of her head softly, “Try to sleep.”
Sleep. Sleeping has been hard for Wanda lately and she can’t really say why. Something happens when she shuts her eyelids and slips into the realm of dreams. Because they’re not her dreams: she sees faces she doesn’t recognize, feels things she can’t possibly know.
One night, she lays in the corner of an abandoned station next to a man with grey hair and tired eyes. He tells her about his children – crushed under the weight of a car falling from the sky – and Wanda doesn’t dare close her eyes, too afraid of what she’ll see if she does.
And so she spends the time looking at the starry sky, wondering if there is more to this life out there, something greater she needs to do. The two a.m. breeze caresses her skin gently and she inhales deeply.
Whatever she’s looking for, she will find it. Eventually.
And it is funny how things that are so wrong sometimes seem to be there at the right time.
It starts with a tall boy with shaggy hair hovering around her for the entire day, following her steps carefully. He’s new, Wanda hasn’t seen his face before, not even at the protests.
“Can I help you?” she asks with slight annoyance hiding in the back of her throat, not even bothering to turn around from the sign she is painting.
She hears him falter, like a deer caught by headlights and steals a quick glance at his bright red face. Studying it more carefully, she finds scars running all over it and tiny holes piercing his pale neck. There’s other people in the room so she doesn’t feel scared, yet something about this stranger makes her skin itch. A flash of pain hits her head and she sees a long metal table. When she looks up again, the man has moved closer to her.
“They’ve been watching you,” he says slipping a piece of crumpled up paper in her hand, “They know you want more.”
Wanda unfolds it as the man is leaving. There’s a place and a name she has heard before, whispered in the crowds as a myth: dr. List.
She calls after the stranger, “What do you mean? Who is they?”
He turns around briefly and Wanda draws in a sharp breath as she meets his eyes – bright yellow sparks stare back at her for a second.
“Go there at midnight tomorrow and find out. He has been waiting for you two.”
3.
Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake –
& mistake these walls
for skin.
– Ocean Vuong, Someday I’ll love Ocean Vuong
The lab is always cold.
Wanda doesn’t even know what month it is anymore – she just knows she is cold. The soldiers’ hands are cold, the metal table they lay her on is cold, the doctor’s needles and knives to cut her skin open are cold.
She misses Pietro’s hot breath on the crook of her neck, misses sleeping in his warm arms so much. He’s locked up somewhere near, maybe a few rooms down the hall. She can feel him inside her, like a string tied to her heart, desperately pulling her back to him.
No, she thinks as they strip her down once again, I have to do this.
There is no greater pain than not seeing Pietro, not even touching the stone and waking up with her hands glowing red. She wishes she could tell him that she did it. She can picture him so clearly, looking at his little sister with pride all over his face.
One night she hears a loud noise, like someone crashing into the wall of her cell. She wakes alarmed and rests her palms against the cold concrete. They glow red and suddenly she can fully feel his presence again.
Pietro.
She can’t read his mind, there is something wrong with it. It’s moving too fast, like his brain has been put into a blender and mixed. Her face turns pale at the thought and she doesn’t sleep for the next week, Pietro’s body slamming against her walls again and again keeping her awake.
The first thing she learns to do with her new power when they bring her food is scare the guards.
Wanda waves her fingers in front of them, wrapping strings of red around their throats, and hisses, “Let me see my brother.”
It takes them a while to understand how to tie her down, so for now, all they can do is turn the key of her cell and lead her into a long grey room. She calls his name once, twice, three times.
There’s no one in the room.
Her grip on the guards’ throat tightens and they plead for their lives. “Where is he?”
“He’s in there! He’s – he’s there, I swear to you.”
“Wanda?”
She snaps her head to the right and sees him. Her hands stop glowing red and the guards fall down on the cold floor with a loud thud. She runs to him and buries her face in his chest, feeling his warmth once again after a year of seclusion. He holds her tight, whispering things she doesn’t understand. When she looks up at his face, she notices his hair color.
He smiles at her surprise and lets her curios fingers run through his white locks. “Do you like my new look?” he jokes with his hands still firmly on her back. Wanda laughs a little – the first time she has in a long time. “Maybe you should cut them.”
As she twirls a long strand around her finger, a little magic escapes from it and Pietro flinches. She quickly retracts her arm embarrassed and apologizes.
“Sorry. I’m still learning how to control it.”
“That’s okay,” he reassures her pressing a kiss to her forehead and Wanda feels safe once more, like they’re twelve again and planning their escape from the orphanage.
Pietro shows her his new power too, going so fast she almost misses it. It suits him: everything in his life has always been a run of some kind toward something unattainable. Before new guards arrive – this time prepared to face them more seriously – Wanda launches herself into her brother’s arms one last time and hears him whisper loud enough:
“Now we will kill Tony Stark.”
4.
I don’t remember how to say home in my first language, or lonely, or light
I remember only I miss you and goodnight.
– Kaveh Akbar, Do You Speak Persian?
She’s in America now and she wishes she was dead.
Wanda wants to be six feet underground with holes piercing her body from one side to the other, dirt in her mouth and lungs, and her heart split in half.
Instead, she’s in a large room that looks like a hotel, with one bed big enough to fit four people, and nothing in her suitcase except the memory of her dead brother. She hates the four grey walls they’ve confined her in. Not confined, the Captain would correct her, this is your home now.
Home. How could she be home on the other side of the ocean, in a place full of strangers, and without Pietro by her side. She lives like a ghost for the first few weeks, floating through the enormous compound in search of solitude and peace. Clint offers her to come back to his house for a while.
“Just until you settle in a bit more. You don’t have to start training right away.”
But Wanda is afraid of living without a war and she’s afraid of stepping inside a house full of life and children running around. She politely declines and instead tries on the suit Natasha has left on her bed with a note.
whenever you’re ready, room 25, first floor.
It fits a little too well.
Slowly, she starts adjusting to the new spaces around her: she puts up a few pictures from the magazines the Captain – Steve, has brought her, and she works up the courage to ask about her beloved sitcoms.
F. R. I. D. A. Y. makes sure to retrieve every show Wanda has asked for and piles up the cassettes and dvds near the new TV in her room. She trains, and she watches the Dick Van Dyke show, and she dreams about Pietro, and she trains some more, and she cries – so much it almost feels like her eyes will soon be dry.
Her English is improving too, mostly because of Natasha’s help and Netflix. She’s started diving into new tv shows, upon Peter’s shock after she had told him she had never seen The Office.
“It’s like an institution for us, if you really like sitcoms you should totally watch it.”
Peter doesn’t live at the compound with them, but he’s there often enough for Wanda to get to know him a little better. He reminds her of Pietro in so many ways, starting with his name. Peter. So American – her Pietro would have certainly made fun of him. But Peter’s kind, and sometimes when she looks with interest over his shoulder while he’s doing his homework in the common room, he’ll stop and try to explain to her as best as he can what he’s studying.
After a few months, Wanda knocks at Steve’s door tentatively. He opens up with that fatherly smile she has grown to love more and more and lets her in, “What’s up, kid?”
“I would like to start studying, if it is not a problem.”
“Studying, like school?” Steve asks surprised.
Wanda nods, “Yes. I promise it won’t affect my training.”
After that conversation, she fills her days with books and notes, her desk suddenly becoming full of papers laying around. She keeps training, learning how to control the strings of red that live inside her and she cries some more about Pietro.
She doesn’t think about him as much as she did before, but she still does.
When she’s not hunched over a new chapter of her art history book or blowing dummies’ heads off, she watches TV. She finds comfort in re-watching the same episodes over and over, because she knows how they end. Vision doesn’t quite understand that.
“I am merely surprised that you enjoy consuming again a piece of media you have already consumed. I thought humans liked seeing new things.”
Wanda’s lips curve into a smile. It’s nice to have someone so logical around her all the time. He makes her feel less alien. She loves to teach him how to be more human and Vision lets her, willingly. It’s kind of ironic really: a monster teaching a robot how to be human. Wanda can only try to make him understand.
There isn’t really a moment she can pinpoint when she realizes that she is somewhat happy.
Maybe it’s during one of their Friday dinners, when Clint swings by with his homemade bread and everyone laughs around the table, sharing stories and anecdotes. Or maybe it’s when she wakes up on the couch of the common area, her head settled on Steve’s shoulder and a blanket wrapped safely around her. Perhaps it’s during one of those long afternoons spent with Vision on the soft grass around the compound, his soothing voice reading to her and the sun blinding her eyes.
But Wanda knows, for the first time since the bombs had cut through her home like a knife, that she has found a special place.
5.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
– William C. Faulkner
Wanda hasn’t thought about home in a such a long time, she’s not even sure what home means to her anymore – Sokovia? Her room on the third floor of the compound? This bed, with Vision by her side?
He’s got his eyes closed, but she knows he’s not sleeping. He never does. He likes to joke that she could turn him off like a computer if she wanted to, but Wanda likes knowing he is always watching over her.
Edinburgh is cold and damp, with rain endlessly pattering against the windows.
She used to hate the thought of allowing herself to settle in somewhere, especially with him. This is no time for love. Yet, Wanda can’t help but keep falling each time a little more: every moment they’ve stolen for the past two years, meeting in cafés, hiding in hotel rooms, renting tacky Airbnbs for as long as they could, has only led her closer and closer to the terrifying thought of staying where they are.
“You are awake,” Vision states beside her, his eyes still closed. She smiles at him and traces the features of his face slowly, like she’s an art critic studying a painting.
She brushes her lips with his own and his hands cup her cheeks, his weight shoving her gently into the fluffy mattress. Her hair – fiery red now, after a bad dye job done by Natasha in the bathroom of a sleazy motel – fall on the pillow like a crown around her head. Vision stops for a second and pulls back to look at her. Wanda marvels at the way he stares, unable to form a sentence. His eyes are fixed on her like those of a man in love with a woman, not an android in bed with a witch.
They kiss again, soft at first, and then rough – Wanda biting down his neck and shoulders, leaving marks wherever she can. Vision’s fingers slip on her waist and she sighs into his mouth. “I wish we could do this forever,” she says breathless.
Vision smiles before placing a small kiss behind her earlobe. “Forever is an unquantifiable amount of time.”
“All the more reason for wanting it.”
It has only been a few days in the apartment Vision in his human form – now, technically Victor Shade – has rented from a lovely old lady that lives across the hall. Apparently his charming English accent hadn’t gone unnoticed by her when they had met and she had asked him about his family. “A bit of this, a bit of that,” he had answered waving his hands a little. Then he had gestured to Wanda standing next to him, “She’s the only real family I have.”
They don’t count the hours they have like they used to, now they just try to live in the moment. When they’re not hiding home, Vision takes her around the city and talks perpetually about everything they encounter, big or small. And Wanda listens with her hand safely in his.
He pretends to sip cappuccinos and runs his thumb over her cheekbones. It’s in those moments that Wanda sometimes forgets that she is a criminal on the run, forgets that the flick of her wrist could destroy a city, forgets that she’s supposed to call Steve and Natasha to let them know she’s safe.
When Vision loves her under the covers of their bed, in their tiny corner of the world, and their bodies fit together like bricks of a house, Wanda allows herself to entertain that unspeakable thought.
Stay.
She remembers how she had read in a book once that home is where you go when you run out of homes. Yes, she thinks with her hands around Vision’s shoulders and his face buried in the crook of her neck, she understands now what the author meant.
6.
I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home — my only home.
– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Wanda drives away with the burning feeling of grief still rumbling in her chest. It settles in her lungs and suddenly she can’t breathe any more than she can think. The piece of paper she had found in her room is all she’s been able to concentrate on for the past few days. Those four words echo inside her brain and she can’t stop the wave of sadness that overcomes her when she steps out of the car to look at what could have been her and Vision’s home.
They have dismantled it, like many other houses – during the five years when half the world was gone, too many of them were empty and so (out of rage or desperation) they had started to tear them down, brick by brick.
She stands in the middle of the ruins, dirt and grass mixing under her unstable feet.
Her knees fail her and she falls to the ground.
There is no greater pain than to be so close to something and then lose it. She can feel Vision’s fingers on her shoulders, hear his reassuring voice behind her. And all it takes for her is to just let go.
She’s standing in the middle of their living room and he’s smiling at her. “Wanda,” he says looking right at her, “Welcome home.”
Westview is all she could ever want: quiet, simple, a regular American town with noisy neighbors to greet and bosses to impress. It’s a dream, her dream. And Vision is right beside her, throwing her a kiss when he leaves for work in the morning, tossing an arm around her when they watch television on the couch, holding their sons in his arms as he tries to lull them to sleep.
She has spent so long looking for a place to be, it almost frightens her how perfect everything is. Like someone took a look inside her head and decided to give her everything she ever wished for in life. To give her back her lover, no –
Her husband. She stares at the ring on her finger.
Deep down Wanda knows this isn’t her home. She has known all along, with every change of outfit, every kiss, every twist. It was always going to end up like this: her hands on Vision’s face and the memory of her love for him slowly fading away.
“So long, darling.” He says before disappearing once again from her sight, from her life.
She thinks back to every place she’s ever been in: Pietro’s arms, the orphanage, a dark cell, the room she had learned to call hers, every apartment and hotel she and Vision had shared – domov. Home.
Her mug of tea is a fragile shield against the cold wind of the north. Trees and rocks surround the cabin she is hiding in. It doesn’t matter that it’s small and full of drafts.
After all, it’s just another step to find her way back home.
+
7.
There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
– Homer, The Odyssey
In the very limited time Vision has had to get to know humans he has learned many things.
They are fascinating creatures, so fragile yet full of passion, and they have intricate rituals for almost everything they do: eating, cooking, dressing, grieving, loving.
He has discovered with time how to show his love for Wanda. For him, his feelings are just there – they exist inside him in a constant state, she is with him wherever he is. And he thought that was enough, just the simple fact of love itself being there. But he had quickly found out just how wrong he was.
First, there is kissing.
Kissing is, mechanically speaking, pressing one’s lips to another’s, tasting each other out with tongues and teeth as if, perhaps, to be closer to the other person. Emotionally speaking, kissing is not something Vision is comfortable comparing to anything else. The softness of Wanda’s lips, the inebriating smell of her, her small breaths exhaling hot air on his skin. Along with kissing there’s sex, another thing Vision cannot explain with merely his words for it is too foreign for his body made of wires to fully comprehend.
Then there’s words. He uses lots of them, maybe even too many sometimes, but words for Wanda are tremendously important. She is beautiful, that is something certain as the sun setting every new day, yet she likes to be reminded of it. Vision takes every opportunity he has to compliment her in new clever ways and make sure she feels safe.
I love you, feels strange on his tongue, but Wanda’s eyes light up like supernovas whenever he says those three little words.
He asks Tony about marriage when he’s in his office planning his and Pepper’s wedding. “It’s like a promise,” he explains with his fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee, “Or a vow, or an agreement even. A way to tell the world and your person how much you love them.”
So Vision starts running errands for Pepper and accompanies her to dress fittings. He thinks about Wanda wearing white and his hand lets go of the bag he was holding.
“My apologies,” he says picking it up and Pepper simply smiles knowingly. Two weeks later he’s sporting his human look and observing rings under a glass cover in a jeweler. He leaves empty handed, not because he doesn’t want to marry Wanda, but because he feels he must do something else first.
And slowly, but surely, Vision learns what home means and what it could mean to the two of them. He senses it first one morning in Rome, Wanda sitting down at the tiny table settled on the terrace of the apartment they have rented for the night. She’s sipping her tea silently, a sweet spring breeze sweeping her hair up in the air and he can’t stop thinking about how it all feels so familiar.
The feeling recurs again, from city to city, in hotels and flats alike.
Him, Wanda, a stove, a bed.
“If you could live anywhere, where would it be?” he asks her one night with her head resting safely on his chest. She turns around just enough to meet his eyes. “Somewhere quiet.”
After a few seconds she speaks again: “It would be nice to have a garden with rose bushes.”
That’s how Vision finds Westview – he takes the code word quiet and looks for places with enough space to have a garden. It doesn’t take him long to settle on a beautiful suburban house with three bedrooms and plenty of room for roses. Tony doesn’t question his transaction and in less than a month, Vision has bought a home for him and Wanda.
These are strange times: he’s not sure when they will be able to move there or if they ever will, but that doesn’t stop him from rolling out the copy of the blueprint of the house the agency has given him and tracing a red heart right in the middle of it.
to grow
old in
V.