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He thinks he sees her for the first time in the skies over Paris; it’s winter and the Seine is frozen, white and blue and empty just like he is now, and he’s floating in the flurry of white clouds that reach across the sky like ghostly fingers scraping away the sun’s warmth, and that’s where he catches it: a spark of red just in the corner of his peripheral vision, a drop of ruby blood against the blue sky backdrop. For a moment, he doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t twitch a muscle - he’s afraid if he turns his head even slightly that his theory will be disproven, that it will be nothing but a flock of birds or light refracted from the glass buildings that sit hunched along the Paris cityscape, that she’ll fade away like snow in spring. He’d rather keep her in his periphery than look at her and watch her leave him again.
It doesn’t matter. The cloud moves, and he moves and there’s nothing in the sky but him.
It doesn’t matter. She leaves him no matter what.
It’s spring again and he’s in Rio De Janeiro watching the sun set behind the Redeemer. He sees her, weaving her way between gaggles of sunburnt tourists who brandish their cameras like weapons. He half-turns from where he’s been standing in the shadow of a church, and cautiously raises a hand in greeting (reaching out for her).
Even from a distance, he can see the way her mouth trembles, like she wants to say something, speak to him across the distance that’s opened up between them like a cavern. For a moment, he thinks she’ll say his name (will come and rescue him, will come and tell him who he is -) but then she stops. His hand falls back down to his side, empty.
A camera goes click-click too close to his face, and he has to blink away the flash.
When he looks for her she’s gone again.
There’s a garden in London, purple crocus unfolding their petals like a bruise upon the earth, and she’s wearing a white sundress when he finds her, curled up beneath an almond tree heavy and sweet with white flowers. He hadn’t meant to find her but he’s not surprised to see her, and he stops and stares.
She’s cut her hair, he notices. He wonders if it’s as soft as he remembers.
“Hello,” he says, carefully.
She reaches out and touches the surface of the pond that bubbles at her feet. A dozen tiny orange fish swarm towards her fingertips seeking food. “Vision,” says her reflection, not looking at him, not looking at the fish, not looking at anything. Flakes of fish food appear in the water in a flash of red, and the fish happily tear into them.
There’s a long, aching pause, during which Vision wonders if his hands would still fit comfortably on her hips like they used to, if she’d still giggle if he kissed that spot on the back of her neck like she used to, what her white dress would feel like crumpled between his fingers if he bunched it up around her hips -
“What are you doing here?” Wanda asks, her voice quiet and scratchy where it floats along the spring breeze towards him.
Vision blinks at her. “It’s spring,” he says. “I wanted to see the garden.”
Wanda looks up at him, accusation in her eyes. “Paris, Rio, the Botanical Gardens,” she lists, flat. “New York, Sydney, and Cape Town before that.”
He doesn’t ask her how she knows where he’s been. “Yes,” he says, uncertainly.
Wanda’s mouth tightens. “It’s the route we used to take.”
He inhales. “Oh,” he says. Oh. He hadn’t realized -
“You’re tracing our footsteps,” Wanda murmurs. Her eyes are green like apples. He’s not sure if they used to be that bright. “Why?”
(I forgot - )
(I wanted to remember - )
(I wanted a part of you and this is all that’s left - )
“Wanda,” he says, helpless. That’s all the explanation his mouth will give. “Wanda -”
She stands up and sighs, brushing out her skirt as she turns away from him. “Make sure you see the cherry blossoms,” she says over her shoulder, walking away and walking away and walking away. “They’re lovely this time of year.”
Santa Monica in July, and the heat lays over the land like a physical thing, leaving the surface of his body damp and dewy when he shifts his internal temperature to compensate. Around him, the pier bustles and bursts with bright colors. He doesn’t have to look for her, but he does. (He looks for her everywhere. )
He finds her on the beach, tanning beneath a purple umbrella. “Are you following me?” he asks her.
She pushes her floppy straw hat up, conjures a pair of sunglasses on her nose. The sun has made freckles march like an invading army across the white planes of her cheeks. He longs to remind her to use sunscreen. “I’m sight-seeing,” she says.
“That is not an answer.”
She crosses her legs at the ankle. Her toenails are painted red like poison apples. “Nope. Guess not.”
He sits beside her, gingerly, in the sand. The wind makes her hat flop around atop her head. “Wanda…”
She turns her face towards him. “Yeah?”
The sunlight is blinding. “What are we doing, Wanda?”
“We’re not doing anything.”
“Why are you -”
“I was here first,” she says. Her lipstick matches her bathing suit. He longs to smear it, to taste it, to find imprints of it along his inner thighs. She looks at him over the rim of her glasses, her eyes curiously bright. “I didn’t follow you, Vision.”
He blinks.
And blinks.
“Oh,” he says faintly. Then, “Oh.”
“I’m following you,” he says.
Wanda sighs and turns back to the waves, watching as they crash against the shore. “I don’t know, Vision,” she says. “I just don’t know.”
He walks through Sokovia, or what was once Sokovia. Dust swirls in the beams of summer sunlight, and bits and pieces of broken stone still remain here and there in the streets where Novi Grad once stood.
He doesn’t see her here at all.
“Here,” he says, in October in St. Petersburg, handing her a scarf. “It’s cold.”
Wanda smiles weakly. “Thanks,” she says.
She shivers.
He doesn’t put his arm around, but he does turn to her where she’s beside him on a bench and asks, “What are we doing, Wanda?”
“How was your flight?” she asks.
Vision sighs. He will get no answer today. “It was well,” he tells her. “And yours?”
“I saw Tommy and Billy again,” Wanda says. It’s November, it’s Amsterdam, and it’s Wanda walking beside him for the first time in years.
Vision stops, surprised by the way his heart threatens to tear open at the mention of their sons. “Wanda?”
“In a dream,” she says. “Or a nightmare, I don’t know.”
He inhales deeply and lets it out very slow. He doesn’t need to breathe, but he’s read that it helps. “I don’t understand.”
“Me neither,” she says, smiling wryly, her eyes clouded. “It was… I don’t know. Stephen and I saw a lot of things.”
Stephen. The name has fangs. Jealousy feels foreign.
“What did you see?” he asks tightly, thinking of the weight of newborn twins in his arms, how heavy-light they’d been.
Wanda looks away. “Us, mostly. I lot of uses, in a lot of worlds. Guess we don’t do too well without each other.”
“Oh,” he says.
(I could have told you that. )
Wanda sighs. “Yeah.”
There’s a beat. “What are we doing, Wanda?”
She looks back at him, still smiling faintly. “I’ve missed you,” she says. “I kept finding you, but it wasn’t you you.”
He thinks he understands what she means. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.”
They keep walking. She slips her hand into his.
(I've been waiting for you all this time, I've been waiting for you for so long -)
(You are the only home I've ever had.)
"You're my home, too, Vision," Wanda whispers. "You're my home, too."
He laces their fingers together, which is rather difficult in mittens. "Alright," he whispers back. "That's alright."
He beats her to Edinburgh by three hours, sixteen minutes, and seven seconds.
“Vision,” she says, and this time she smiles.
“Hello, Wanda,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
She laughs, and tucks her arm into his. “Sorry,” she says. “Merry Christmas, Vis.”
“Happy Hanukkah, Wanda.”
They amble through the snow drifts, and around them Christmas carols drift through with the smell of hot chocolate and gingerbread, church doors flung open and spilling light into the streets. Vision thinks about winter in Paris, and Wanda puts her head on his shoulder.