Archive of Our Own ^beta

Wanda wondered if this was what a chicken in a market felt like.

For three days and nights, she had traveled across Brittania from Eboracum for the purpose of this meeting, and yet for all the difference her presence made, they might as well have sent a sculpture or portrait of her in her stead. She had been bathed and fed, as her station and guest right commanded, but as soon as her fast was broken, the bartering had commenced. Wanda had not even exchanged greetings with her potential betrothed yet because Agnes and Master Woo had immediately started dickering over the price.

"My lady brings with her the favor of the king," Agnes said, as if anyone here could possibly forget. She paused and added importantly, "The British king." As if there might be any confusion on that point, either. She smiled a saleswoman's smile. "As well as all of her clothing, jewelry, horses, household goods- she's a bargain."

Master Woo (the man could not have been better named for his task if God himself had named him for the purpose) gave her a skeptical look. He was, if Wanda's recollection was correct, King Wallia's master of horse. She had never met him before- and now that she thought on it, wasn't altogether sure they had been introduced- but he seemed honest, straightforward, and practical. Good things for a horsemaster- and a wedding diplomat- to be. He was eyeing her shrewdly, like a mare for purchase. "Is there any doubt about her fertility?" For all that he had that look, he still asked the question with some furtiveness, like he secretly believed it was undignified or impolite to question such matters.

Agnes had no such scruples. She waved the question away like a sweet being proffered to her at market and rolled her eyes, as if the answer was obvious and Master Woo was very stupid to ask this. "Oh, she'll breed." She looked at Wanda. "Your courses are regular enough, aren't they, my dear?"

Wanda nodded.

Across the table, behind Master Woo, Wanda's husband in potentia looked agonized, coughing awkwardly. She thought he might have choked on his own breath. "Must we ask the lady such questions?" He didn't quite stammer, but he did hesitate with each word in such a way that it gave the impression he had been. It charmed her, at least a little. There was one person at the table who didn't want to treat her like goods for sale, and it was appreciable that it was the person who would be the most stuck with the purchase if it didn't turn out to his liking.

Master Woo looked at him, rueful. "If you're going to marry her, you have to know."

Agnes nodded her agreement. "What good would it do you to buy a cow you can't milk?"

This blunt, crude assessment of the purpose of a wife made him cringe even more. He even seemed to be blushing. "I assure you I have no intentions of- of milking her."

Agnes' smile turned bawdy. "I suppose it is more like she'll be milking you."

Master Woo was too dignified to acknowledge that kind of remark, but Wanda found herself crouching in her seat with a sting of embarrassment while her betrothed groaned aloud with abject mortification.

"Agnes," Wanda hissed at her.

Agnes didn't respond to the scolding sound of her own name or the increasing possibility that Wanda's betrothed was going to die of his own repression right in front of her. "Anyway, she should be more than fertile enough for your purposes. My lady was born half a set of twins. I wouldn't be surprised if she bore the same."

Wanda wished she hadn't brought that up. It hadn't been long enough for her to hear people speak of Pietro so casually, but it was impermissible for a lady to weep at her own betrothal. She took a deep breath and willed her eyes not to sting and curled her hands into fists in her lap. She tried to make her face like a mask of stone.

Agnes and Master Woo didn't notice, but over on his side of the table, Vision did.

"Master Woo," he said, "I wonder if you and, er, Agnes--" He looked to Wanda for confirmation he'd gotten the name correct, and waited for her nod before he continued. "--could perhaps take this bartering elsewhere and allow my lady and I a, uh, a moment to speak alone?"

Master Woo looked stunned. "Alone?"

Agnes, by contrast, gave them a wide, lascivious grin that showed all of her teeth. "Alone," she said, practically in a purr.

Vision colored red again, but spoke more firmly this time. "I'm sure that we'll find whatever terms you agree upon to be quite amenable."

Agnes gave Wanda a questioning look. She didn't care if they consummated whatever nascent affections were in bloom at the bargaining table, but if Wanda was alone with him, she might as well marry him now. Her reputation if she didn't would be unsalvageable.

Wanda nodded.

"Oh, very well," Agnes said, rising to her feet. She smoothed her dress and straightened her veil. "The two of you may have a moment. You did, after all, travel so far to get here."

To Wanda's eyes, it looked as though Master Woo still didn't care for this and perhaps thought that Vision didn't know what he had just asked for. "It won't matter what terms we get if you take her away from her chaperone," he said, all but under his breath. "She can probably get even better terms if you have to take her either way."

Vision answered this with nothing more than an absent sort of yes, yes, I heard, now go away sort of gesture.

Agnes hooked her arm through Master Woo's with a smile. "Come, my dear. We'll let the lovers talk." And she swept him from the room as easily as if she were sweeping for dust.

When the door closed behind them, Vision gave her a shy, awkward sort of look. "I apologize," he said. "It's only...well, you seemed distressed."

Alone in a room with a man for the first time in her life, Wanda tried to think of how she should react. If she should demur and seem cool and composed, or if she should bury him in an outpouring of emotion. Whichever one was considered correct, neither seemed very appealing to her, so Wanda gave him a weak smile instead and said, "A little. I was born a twin, like she said, but I haven't seen my brother in a long time." She reached up to tug nervously at her own hair, then realized she was still wearing her veil and couldn't get at it. She put her hand back in her lap. "He went missing in a battle with the Saxons and we don't know whether he lived or died. No trace of him has ever been found." She winced at how dull her own voice sounded. She was sure that this wasn't the correct type of tone or talk for a couple on their first meeting.

Vision didn't seem to mind, however. He looked at her with kindness. "I'm very sorry. That must be terrible."

She nodded. "It is." But she didn't have much more to say.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I feel as though the proper thing is to ask after the rest of your family," Vision said, "but I'm reluctant to prod where there might be more pain."

Wanda gave him a look of regret. "My mother was a Sokovian horse maiden- a descendant of the one of those brought here by the Romans. I lost her when I was very young."

He winced. "And your father?"

Wanda hesitated. "I never had one, really."

"Oh." Vision looked awkward again.

Wanda shrugged. "It doesn't hurt me so much anymore."

"Ah." He visibly struggled with himself to find words. "May I ask- how does a horse maiden's fatherless daughter come to be the king's ward?"

Wanda hid her sudden spike of fear behind a smile. "Let's save something for after the wedding."

"You don't think we have enough about each other to go about figuring out as it is?" he asked.

She tried smiling in a gentler, more inviting way. "I think that we don't have to know everything in the first meeting." Vision looked as though there was more he wanted to ask in this line of questioning, so she rushed to fill the silence with another question before he could. "What about your family? I feel as though I ought to ask about them, all things considered."

Vision made a face that reminded her of stags in the kingswood when they're stumbled on by a hunting party. A tense, frozen expression that seemed to say, If I hold very still, will I avoid being shot? His mouth opened and closed while he tried to start sentences and just as quickly gave up on them. Finally, he said, "I haven't really a family, either. It's...just me, now."

Wanda felt questions burning on the tip of her tongue, but swallowed them. She had changed the subject when Vision asked, and it felt as though it would be disrespectful to him after he'd shown kindness to her to go about prying. She tried to joke instead. "So no mother-in-law who'll want to criticize where I hang your tapestries?"

Whatever had happened to his mother must not have been recent enough or painful enough for the words to sting. He let out a relieved sort of chuckle. "No, I'm afraid not. You may hang the tapestries wherever you want with complete impugnity."

She smiled. "Do you have a home to hang them in?"

"That's the sort of question that our chaperones probably would've got into sooner or later," Vision said, but he was smiling, too. "King Wallia has given me a small duchy in Aquitania for valiant service to both kings. His Grace the Briton seems to be thanking me for my service by giving me...well, you."

Wanda laughed. "Oh, and what a war trophy I am," she said. "I'd be an excellent conversation piece to show all of your knights when you meet next."

Vision had the good grace to look abashed. "My apologies, my lady. I didn't mean to make you sound like a- like a prize of some sort."

"I am," she said. "You did win a war and I am the prize you're being given." She reached across the table and patted his arm. "And there are worse things to compare me to, so I'm not offended."

Vision stared at her hand as though he had never been touched before. He looked so intently at her fingers that for a moment, she thought he might eat them.

Or, perhaps, something nicer.

She stroked her fingers down his arm to his hand. His whole body jumped at it like a startled cat. His fingers, beneath hers, were trembling. Wanda had never seen a person react that way to a simple touch of hands.

"Am I being too forward?" she asked.

Vision tried to clear his throat and didn't quite manage. "No, no. I just- wasn't expecting it."

"If that's how you react whenever you're surprised, I might end up making a game of it," she said. She wrapped his hand in both of hers, feeling so bold that she hardly knew herself at all. He jumped even more, his jaw at work again on words he couldn't get out, a mortified flush spreading across his cheeks. But he didn't pull away.

He was handsome enough, Wanda thought. She could see some white in his blond, but it was very well concealed, since he was so fair. He would be very old before people could tell without sitting closely that he was going to grey. His face was a bit more weathered- he truly was not a young man, her betrothed, and though she was sure that he wasn't old enough to be her father, she was equally sure he was only too young by the breadth of a hair. Only a few more years, maybe as few as two or three, and she'd have had to trace back every battle he'd gone to and where and when he'd been there to be sure it was never in the same place as her mother. But she didn't mind that too much. Wanda had never felt much of a draw to men her own age. They always seemed to her to be frivolous and perhaps a bit untrustworthy.

She'd known Vision only a few minutes, but she already knew that whatever else he might be, he was not and had never been frivolous. She wasn't sure she could trust him yet, but she felt closer to doing it than any other man who'd ever sent her a token or a love note or any other attempts at flirting.

And besides, she thought, stroking his hand again, he thrills to me as if he were a young man who's never known the touch of a woman.

Vision closed his eyes and drew a slow breath, clearly trying to compose himself. He said nothing, but his skin was becoming warmer against her hand. With a touch of wickedness, she wondered what else might move him so deeply.

Tracing circles into his palm with her fingernail, she asked him, "If you wouldn't mind- what sort of name is Vision, anyway?"

His eyes opened back up and the hunted stag expression was back again. "Well," he tried, "I am a Visigoth."

Wanda thought that cleared up little, but once again chose not to probe. (Though she did secretly wonder if that meant somewhere, there was a man out there called Ostro-on.)

"What sort of name is Wanda?" he asked. By his tone, he was trying to be smooth, flirtatious, but he tripped over that as much as anything else he'd said.

She tried not to look too amused. "It's a Vandal name, from a Vandal princess."

Vision looked uncomfortable. "Are Sokovians Vandals?"

"Mhm."

"I feel like I should mention. We, er- Visigoths, I mean- did sort of sack the Vandals in Iberia not so long ago." He ran a nervous hand through his hair. "I was there. Our proper peoples are at war with each other, and may not approve of us getting married if they knew."

Wanda squeezed his hand. "I won't tell if you won't."

Vision's breath caught again. "Ah."

"If you keep looking so happily surprised when I touch your hand," she warned, "I may just be compelled to kiss you to see what you'd do."

His tongue darted out to lick his lower lip. "Compelled?"

She nodded and leaned a little closer. "Yes."

"I..." He looked nervous and frustrated, like he wanted to say the right thing but had no idea what it was.

"Might like that?" Wanda suggested. She slid from her chair to the one next to his and brushed his knee with her knee.

His eyes widened, but he didn't pull away. "I might like that, yes."

Wanda slid closer still, both knees against his, and nudged his nose with hers.

Vision still looked flustered, still cast about for words he couldn't find and licked his lips and held her hands with fingers that gripped too hard to hide their shaking, but he sank his face against hers, brow to brow, and made a small sound like being so close to her was a relief. "Are you bewitching me?" he asked. "Or am I corrupting you?"

Wanda could feel his breath on her lips, a kiss before a kiss, and liked it more than she would have guessed. He was warm. He smelled good, clean, like water and sweet rushes. No mystery there- he must have had a bath and then slept on a perfumed bed. But she liked it all the same. She didn't kiss him yet, but came close enough that her lower lip brushed his for the briefest of seconds, light as a butterfly landing on a flower. "Why not both?"

Vision gasped a little, then chuckled helplessly. "I hate to place the blame on you, especially when I obviously like it, but you do seem..."

"Yes?"

"...the bolder of the two of us," he said. It was belied somewhat by his hand plucking at the edge of her veil, like he wanted to take it off, so he could see and touch her hair.

"Of the two of us, maybe," she said. Then she laughed as helplessly as he had before. "I didn't plan to be. I was going to be a proper lady, who sat quietly and didn't speak out of turn."

Vision held her veil between two fingers and stroked down, as though he really were running his hands through her hair. "Something tells me that wouldn't have given me an accurate conception of whom I was marrying."

"I didn't think you'd want to marry me if you knew accurately whom you were marrying," she said.

Vision drew back from her, confused. "Why not?"

It was the second time they'd come so close to her secret. She could demur again, but something about that felt more like lying, now that they were like this. She wondered if there was a way to break it to him gently. Or a way to say it without saying. She bowed her head so she wouldn't have to look at him and murmured, "The king likes me for some talents that make me very unique. Talents which- some- might consider heretical."

It was hard to say if Vision looked too alarmed or not alarmed enough. It wasn't like his stag being hunted expression, like he'd been caught somewhere or by someone he profoundly did not want to be. What he looked, when she dared to look at him, was worried.

"What sort of talents, Wanda?"

Wanda lifted a hand from her lap, held it out to her side, and made a few small gestures until an orb of red light, with curling wisps of energy around it, formed above her hand.

She expected him to leap back from her in shock, to shout or curse or cross himself against evil.

He looked at her orb and let out a breath as though he were relieved. "You're a magician."

"A witch," Wanda said.

Vision looked at the orb again and then put his hand under hers, gently squeezing until her hand was closed within his and the orb had disappeared. "All right. A witch."

She looked up at him. "That doesn't bother you?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm afraid not."

"Why?" she asked. She could hear wariness in her tone before she felt it. She didn't want him to throw her aside and demand a less dangerous and troublesome wife- or worse, to run through the castle screaming her secret for the whole country to hear- but even less did she want him to be greedy for her powers and ruthlessly practical about their potential use. She didn't feel like Vision was looking at her now as an awesome potential weapon in however many wars lay ahead of them in the years to come, but it was the only logical reason she could see not to find secret magical talent dangerous and frightening.

Vision gave a heavy sigh, as though he had known this moment would come and had been dreading it. "I," he said, pausing to collect himself before he barreled on, "have talents of my own."

Wanda blinked. She sat still and watched him and for a moment, said nothing at all.

Vision sighed again, then, with a hum of energy and a faint aura about him that Wanda thought other people probably couldn't see or hear, he laid his hand onto hers- and then through it.

Wanda looked at their hands and turned hers through his, this way and that. There wasn't a physical sensation, she didn't think- but there was a warmth she felt in her mind and in her heart. A gentleness. It wasn't his hand she was feeling, she realized. She smiled and looked at him. "I can feel you."

Vision didn't ask if she meant his hand. He seemed to just know what she meant. "What do you think?"

"Is there more?" she asked.

Vision gave her a weak smile. "Is there more for you?"

Wanda hesitated, then extended her hand out to the side, curling her fingers through the air. Red light and mist formed around her palm again and extended out over the table. Breathing slowly, trying to keep her concentration, she wrapped the redness around the nearest candle and lifted it into the air. She held it there until it felt like a strain- Wanda could lift much bigger objects and fling them easily, but holding something in position was a skill she was still building- and then set it back down.

Vision looked at the candle and Wanda got the feeling he was doing what she had done before- looking there so as not to look here, at her. Then a ripple of gold light started at his head and moved down his body, until an entirely new face was left behind.

Wanda tried not to gasp, but she couldn't help it. His skin was a red-violet reminiscent of wine, with plates of silver embedded in neck and face. He was smoother, almost as smooth as steel, and she realized that though appearance was probably no good augur for age in his case, he was much younger than she had previously believed.

She looked up more and gasped again. Sitting in his brow, not unlike a piece of jewelry one might embed in a crown, a gem was glowing gold. A gem she'd seen before.

An Infinity Stone.

Wanda reached up and touched it. Vision gasped under his breath, but did not pull away.

"This is why," she said. "Or- it is how. You were made from this."

Vision looked at her with surprise that bordered on awe. "How did you know that?"

Wanda formed another orb again, gesturing for it to spread, so it became more like red mist and gold light in separate particles in the air above her hand. "Because it made me, too."

Vision gave her a startled look, and began haltingly, "The Goths sacked Carthage and got their hands on a rare and mysterious metal, bought or perhaps stolen from another nation, further south. How they came to have the Stone, I don't know, but they put those things together- using magic and metalwork, the body of a man and the memories of a spirit- and altogether constructed me."

Wanda swallowed and nodded slowly. "After our mother died, my brother and I were lost. We didn't know how to do anything but fight. So we did, again and again and again. We were noticed eventually by the king and his wizard. They wanted to see what the magic of an Infinity Stone could make of us. So we let them."

A silence that ached stretched between them and Wanda didn't know how to fill it. She didn't know what to say about Vision's story, or how to close her own. All she knew was that she didn't want to cry about it.

She could see that Vision didn't know what to say, either, but that didn't mean he didn't know what to do. He pushed their chairs together so they were side by side, with almost no space between them, and drew her into his arms. Wanda closed her eyes and laid her face against his shoulder, taking in the soothing warmth of him, the sweet smell of him, and the feel of his hands stroking her back. He cradled her close like no one had since her mother died and rocked her gently, as if the motion might stir some memory in her of what it was like to be so held and loved, and to be soothed by it.

"It's all right," she said. "Really."

Vision tightened his arms around her. "If it isn't, you needn't pretend that it is."

"What gives you such kindness?" she asked. "Other people aren't like that."

"Perhaps because I've never been taught cruelty," he said. "Or perhaps because I have the memories of someone good."

Wanda held him tighter and rubbed her face into his neck. "You'll have to marry me now, you know."

Vision laughed, quiet and for the first time, with no awkwardness. "If you'll forgive me for being forward, my lady, I knew I had to marry you the moment you set foot into this room."

"Oh, really?" she asked.

"I have seen beautiful women before," he said, with an air of apology, as though he was not supposed to have seen another woman in the past or thought her beautiful. "But I have never had a beautiful woman enter the room and give me a sense of being known completely. Not ever before. And, I would think, not ever again."

Wanda nodded. "I know what you mean." She hadn't let herself think it before, but she'd felt that same sort of familiarity and fondness. His shyness and his stammer had not seemed to her the afflictions of a stranger. Some part of her in her heart had recognized it and felt yes, he was always so.

She reached up and touched the Infinity Stone in his brow.

Vision laid his hand on hers and held it there, closing his eyes. "Do you think this might be why?"

"Maybe," she said. "But I don't think it matters."

"No?" he asked. He took her hand away from the Stone and held it to his lips, kissing her fingers.

"No." She reached over to stroke the top of his head, feeling the warm metal skin under her hand. She thought that if she concentrated and felt very closely, she could feel him living there, underneath her hands and inside of her heart. "I think what matters is that now that we've found each other, we mustn't ever let each other go."

Vision let out a content sigh and leaned his face against hers once more. "Yes. Yes, I think you're right."

Wanda held him there and for a moment did not care that she had only just met him, that marrying him would mean marrying a virtual stranger and living with him in a country across the British Sea, where she would never see her own country or people ever again. It meant yielding to the will of a magic stone, a thing that she had never wanted to do again after it had happened before. It meant giving up any chance of finding Pietro alive, though she thought that she had given up on that long ago. It meant finding out whatever other surprises this man might have only after she was committed to him, bound too firmly to ever go away.

Inside her, something greedy and cold-blooded said, If that is the price, I will pay it. And I will pay it again and again. I want to be with this man.

I want to give this man my life.

Wanda looked up at him again, felt his kindness and his tenderness for her, the swell of love for him in her heart, and kissed him.

Kissing him felt like a homecoming, like half of her soul meeting the other half for the very first time. His lips against hers were soft and gentle, his breath against her cheek warm and inviting, and the touch of his tongue to hers filled her with a wild excited joy that made her want to climb into his lap and see what other joys they could find.

Vision seemed to feel the same. He kissed her with vigor, and none of the hesitation he had felt at every other touch. He drank her in with palpable need, like air he needed to breathe. He caressed her face, her neck, her arms, and was tugging lightly at her veil, as if he was hellbent on having it off of her and seeing her hair at last.

Wanda was beginning to consider climbing into his lap and having done with it, but the door creaked open and Vision hurriedly pulled away from her, switching immediately to his face like a woebegone man in his forties (had Wanda really thought him handsome like that? When his true face was lurking underneath all along, and so much more beautiful? She would never be content with this face again) and putting enough space between them to maintain the illusion of decency.

Neither Master Woo nor Agnes was buying into the deception, by the looks on their faces, but neither did they mention it aloud, so Wanda was willing to call it a job well done, or at least close enough.

Agnes gave them a bright, cheery smile. "Well, I do hope my lady and His Grace having been getting along." She leaned in and nudged Wanda suggestively. "It certainly looks as though you have."

Vision cleared his throat. "Yes, we- we've been enjoying each other's company."

Master Woo looked disappointed, like a father who had caught his son in a girl's bed. He made an assenting noise that was nonetheless rife with sarcasm.

"We think we've got the contract details suitable for everyone," Agnes said. "Would you two like to go over it, or shall we go straight to the chapel?"

Before she could stop herself, Wanda gave Vision a hopeful look.

Vision smiled, a little sheepish. "Perhaps not straight to the chapel," he said. "But we needn't go over the details. I'm happy to accept her however I can get her."

Wanda smiled back. "And so am I."

They joined their hands together. Wanda thought she could live in his gaze forever.

"You are so sweet," Agnes said. "Honestly, you make me want to cry."

Master Woo just shook his head and let out a tired sigh. "Congratulations."

---

This was, without doubt, the most tedious day of Wanda's life.

Agnes had shoved her into a blue gown and roughly braided her hair beneath her veil, then she had been all but carried like a leaf on a swarm of ants by a number of hired musicians to the chapel door- a bit more excitement than Wanda wanted in her mornings.

Things had seemed like they'd be better once Vision was with her, but as soon as she had taken her place beside him, the priest had begun interrogating them about their fitness to wed.

("Are you closer kin than cousins in the second degree?" he'd asked, turning to look from one of them to the other with a suspicious, cock-eyed expression that reminded Wanda of a parrot.

"No," they had answered, even though it was still impossible to say the blood and bone in Vision's body didn't come from any of her close relatives.

The priest had looked at them as though he knew they were lying and was furious he couldn't prove. His suspicious scowl had deepened. "And are both of you free to wed, not having entered into marital congress with another in the past?"

This had gone on for a litany of potential marriage-canceling sins. The priest regarded them with such deep skepticism, such certainty that they were guilty, Wanda began to wonder- as she knew Vision did as well- if there was some unconfessed thing that would have prevented their marriage that they had entirely forgotten about.)

The feast would have been magnificent to any bride who was less eager than Wanda was to be alone with her new husband, but as it was, she had eaten less than an hour ago and had already forgotten what she ate. Vision, she had learned, didn't eat all.

They had not seen each other in four months, since the day their marriage was arranged. Kissing chastely over a stack of wheat cakes was sweet, or would have been, had Vision not imediately knocked them over; Wanda was declining to acknowledge the superstition that said that was a bad omen for their marriage. But Wanda was ready to kiss him again for real, and waiting like this was only making her more impatient.

Vision seemed to be able to tell, and only looked amused. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Darling, if looking pleased is too much for you, do you think you might at least not look so bored? Only I think people are starting to wonder what I did to you to make you so unhappy already."

Wanda laughed under her breath and pinched his thigh under the table. "It's a fine party, Vis, but aren't you ready for us to be alone?"

Before he could answer, a maid all but jumped on Wanda and held her down while she tore half the right sleeve from Wanda's gown, then ran away. Wanda gave a deep, beleaguered sigh. This maid was the third such person to do that.

Vision glared. "Must they keep doing that?"

"It's said to be good luck," Wanda said. "There'd probably be more if I looked much more enthusiastic." She gave him a teasing smile.

"British traditions are strange," he said, still annoyed and now rubbing the part of her arm that was exposed by the torn sleeve. For all that he sounded peevish, his hand on her arm was like a medic tending a wound. He felt the assaults on her dress like they were assaults on her person.

Wanda took his hand in hers. "It's strange to me, too. But it'll be over soon." She rolled her eyes. "I hope. Anyway, it's probably just to make it easier for the bedding ceremony anyway."

Vision gave her a look as though he wanted to ask, but was afraid to hear the answer. "I'm sorry, the what?"

Before Wanda had a chance to explain, Agnes was already up and gesturing for silence. She clapped her hands as though excited. "Everyone! It's time for the bedding!"

Around the room, a cheer went up.

Vision looked at Wanda, alarmed.

Wanda shrugged and gave him an apologetic smile.

Neither of them had a chance to get another word in. Every lady in Aquitania- and every British lady who'd grown up in Caerleon with Wanda that could make it to her wedding- had swarmed over Vision, scooping him from his chair and holding him above their heads. Vision, sputtering, looked down at her helplessly. "Wanda!"

But Master Woo, the knights of Wanda's childhood, and the bannermen that had come with the duchy were already picking her up, too.

A leaf on an army of ants once again, she thought. At least this time, Vision was just as helpless and swept away, and they were being carried somewhere Wanda was sure would be much less tedious to go.

They floated on the raucous crowd up a flight of stairs. The apartments they were carried to were not the ones they would share as a married couple- those were two more flights of stairs above them- but what would be the guest apartments once the castle was in full working order. Once the doors to these were opened, they were dropped on the floor, and the respective crowds of guests and servants started undressing them as fast as they could.

Wanda was down to her shift in a minute, but Vision took longer; he was too flustered to cooperate.

She tried to smile encouragement at him as he bobbed from one woman's efforts to disrobe him to another's. He wasn't protesting, thankfully- Wanda didn't think that she could allow this to go on, tradition or no, if she thought Vision was actually scared- but he was annoyed, awkward, and didn't seem to know where to put his hands. Once he was finally stripped to his breeches, he hunched a little and folded his arms across his thighs, as if trying to protect his modesty.

"Thank you, ladies, that is quite enough!" he said, flushed red from the base of his neck to the roots of his hair.

Agnes gave Wanda a mischevious look. "I can get the rest off."

"Thank you, but no," Wanda said. She smiled at Vision. "The rest of him is mine."

Agnes gave her a grin and nudged Wanda with her hip, then led the rest of the wedding party out of their room. The silence they left behind felt almost oppressive. Wanda could hear Vision breathing from this side of the room. She thought she might even be able to hear the nervous beating of her own heart.

Vision tried to give her a reassuring smile. "Alone at last."

"We are," she agreed. She tried to remember the girl she'd been the day they were betrothed, the girl who had nearly climbed into his lap as she kissed him, consequences be damned. She had longed for this all day, and yet now that it was here, she wasn't sure how to comport herself.

Vision, at least, was as nervous as always. "The moment we've been waiting for all this day," he said, as though he was trying to calm himself down.

She smiled. "I have, anyway."

Vision's face gave way from awkward to loving so quickly, it almost made her dizzy. "Do you think I have not?"

The look in his eyes was helpful for calming Wanda's nerves. Slowly, she began unwrapping her veil. "You didn't say."

Vision watched her, entranced. Wanda wondered if he was fascinated by hair in general, or just hers. Once the veil was set aside, she pulled the bodkin from her hair and shook it loose. She thought she heard him gasp, and the idea made her smile.

Vision cleared his throat. "I don't always know how to say things. Not to you, especially not to you, about you, about how beautiful you are." He gave her a shy sort of look. "But I hope you know that doesn't mean I don't think you're beautiful, or that I don't desire you, because you are and I do."

Wanda reached over to squeeze his hand. "Thank you."

"Of course. Think nothing of it."

"I do, too," she said.

"Do--?"

"Think you're beautiful," Wanda said, taking a step closer. "And desire you."

Vision smiled.

She could see he was about to reach for her, but, with her heart pounding so hard that her stomach felt weak, she stepped back and slid into the guest bed, under the covers. Then before anything else could be said, and before her nerves got any worse, she slipped out of her shift beneath the blankets and dropped it to the floor.

His jaw dropped. "Wanda?"

She smiled and tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. "There's nothing under these covers but me." She reached over and pulled back an inviting corner of the blanket. "Will you join me?"

In a wide-eyed daze, he made his way over to the bed and slid beneath the covers beside her- as close beside her as he seemed brave enough to get, which was not much- and Wanda's breath caught in her chest as he removed the breeches under the blanket and dropped them onto the floor.

He cleared his throat again. Every nerve in her body flared at once, as though she had been struck by a bolt of lightning. Before he could speak, Wanda said, "Don't you have one more think to take off?"

Vision frowned in confusion, then understanding dawned across his features. Sinking his teeth into his lower lip, he closed his eyes and let the golden glow of the Infinity Stone pass over his body, leaving his true form behind. His body kept the promise of his face; he was red-violet with plates and veins gleaming silver as far down his body as she could see.

The room was deadly silent.

"Well," Vision said, tentative, "here we are."

She nodded. "Here we are."

He started to reach for her, then looked hesitant and stopped. She took a breath and began to reach for him, but realized immediately why he had stopped- she had no idea where it was permissible to put her hands. She opened her mouth to ask, and the words died half-formed on the tip of her tongue. She didn't even know how to ask.

"Is it- bad?" Vision asked.

Wanda shook her head. "No. It's beautiful." Her nerves started going again. "And- I?"

"Stunning," he said, soft but unquestionably true.

Wanda bit her lip and then tried reaching over to lay her hand on the crown of his head, feeling the metal there, which felt safe. Vision reached over and ran his fingers through her hair.

"It's a shame you have to cover this," Vision said. "It's beautiful."

She smiled. "I could say the same for you."

Vision laughed. "I think that might a bit more of a scandal than just the sight of your hair."

"I'm not sure. Have you ever seen a woman leave her chambers without her veil before?" She gave him a teasing smile.

He laughed again, then held a lock of her hair between his fingers, running from the middle down to the ends, the way one did a skein of thread made in some wondrously soft material that they wanted to savor. He looked at it like he was handling pure silk.

Wanda touched the metal over where his ear would be as gently as if she were touching the ear of an infant. "How do you hear?"

"There's a very small receptor inside that filters sound to my mind," he said. "It's not different from how you do, save that the metal absorbs the vibrations of sound and funnels it."

Wanda stroked her fingers along each metal shape in his face. "I would have thought that it was the magic that did it."

"It may," Vision allowed. "I don't know every part of how it works."

Wanda kept feeling the metal in his face, avoiding the Infinity Stone or going below his neck. How strange it was, she thought, to want something so much, only to shrink from it in the moment.

Vision seemed to be feeling it, too. "My love," he said, so soft and so unexpected that she immediately wanted to hear him call her that again, "we needn't do this tonight. Just because we were hustled into a bedroom and stripped by a crowd of well-wishers doesn't mean we have to live up to whatever expectations they have. This is our marriage and our bed. Nothing should happen here that we don't both wish for."

Wanda leaned her brow against his and cautiously found one of his hands with hers under the blankets, squeezing for dear life. "I know. There's some part of me that's afraid if we don't find the courage to do it now, we never will."

"It isn't a battle, Wanda," he said. "There's no need for courage. It's about...intimacy and readiness." He could tell he was making her feel misunderstood, she thought, because he added, "Besides which, I am at least as frightened as you are- I wouldn't even be surprised if it's more, considering me and considering you, and- us." He gave her a feeble smile. "And if I'm the one reassuring you, I get to look and feel chivalrous, instead of like a man quaking under his blanket."

She laughed, then plucked up her courage and asked, tenderly, "Have you ever done this before?"

Vision shook his head. "I never had an opportunity I wanted to take." He eyed her curiously, without judgment. "Have you?"

"A few times," she admitted. She had felt no remorse for her purity in the past- save for whenever others found out and looked at her, scolding or leering, to make her aware in passing that they knew the lesser of her two secrets- but now she regretted a little that she wasn't coming to him without the memory of others, as he was coming to her.

Vision seemed to have no such reservations. He gave her a relieved smile and said, "Thank goodness one of us knows what they're doing."

"Do you feel you don't?" she asked, blinking.

"I know the mechanics of the thing," he said. "Still... I know I'll have much to learn." He didn't sound regretful or upset about it. She thought he sounded only a little wistful, that he had not come preprogrammed with the knowledge of how to please her.

Wanda leaned over and very gently kissed him. She didn't slide her body to his side of the bed- she didn't think either of them were quite ready yet- but she knew she liked kissing him, and kissing seemed a safe, familiar thing to do.

Vision seemed to lean into her kiss with relief more than relish. Yes, this they had done before. This was something they knew how to do, a way they knew to make each other happy.

But suddenly realization struck Wanda's brain and she pulled out of it to ask, "Wait- then when we kissed the day we met—"

Vision let out a slight, tortured laugh.

"That was—?" Wanda looked at him in surprise. "You had never—?"

"You were the first," he said with a nod.

"Oh," she said. "I had no idea." She added this last with the tone of an offer. If you were worried, she meant for her voice to say, I couldn't tell.

He smiled. "Perhaps I should take that as a compliment?"

"You should," she said, very firm.

"Then I shall," he said, giving her such an overserious expression that she nearly laughed out loud.

She took his hand in hers again and squeezed it tight. "I think we're going to be all right," she said, unable to stop herself from sounding surprised.

"Were you worried we wouldn't?" he asked, giving her a small frown.

Wanda reached up to smooth the concerned little crease from his brow with her fingers. "Not very. But a little."

He leaned into her hand, like a cat being petted. "Why?"

Wanda hesitated. There was much she could say here- about the loss of her mother, the loss of her brother, the loss of what felt like her entire world at times. That Vision himself felt a little like a dream she could wake up from, or a gift she might break. The feeling that her happiness could only ever be temporary ate at her beneath the surface, like some unwanted specter of her past, haunting her even when she was at her happiest. In her heart of hearts, Wanda had spent the days between their engagement and their wedding expecting him to never come back, to float into the air and dissipate into nothingness, like a wisp of smoke coiling from a brazier of incense off to Heaven, where Wanda could not follow. Wanda believed, in the abstract, in Heaven- but for some reason, in her mind, she herself would never get there.

But this was such funereal talk for her marriage bed on her wedding day, so she blinked the thoughts away into nothing. Vision seemed to forget he had asked, and leaned over to kiss her instead.

Wanda sank into his kiss with both fear and joy. Yes, please, this- all of this, forever.

Vision seemed to sense how greedy for him she was, how badly she needed him to hold her and take her and mark her as his own. He stroked her hair and touched her shoulders tenderly, shivering when every hair on her body rose at once beneath his fingers, like her very skin was reaching out, demanding his attention. He slid his body close to hers so the heat of his chest warmed hers, so that his toes entwined with her toes, so his thigh touched her thigh. He gave her one of his nervous looks and asked, "Shall we?"

Wanda wrapped her arms around him, holding him close, clinging with all of her might, and whispered, "We shall."

Vision reached over to the the candelabra beside the bed and grasped the wick, pinching out the light.

___

Wanda looked with dismay at the collection of objects Agnes had brought in. "Surely I'm not supposed to use all of that."

"I didn't know what method you'd like to try," Agnes said with a shrug. "I've run thither and yon all over the countryside, asking every midwife practically from here to the Rhone what way to tell they would use."

Which rather neatly brought Wanda back to, "But surely you don't expect me to use all of that."

Agnes shrugged again. "If you'd like to know for sure...."

Wanda groaned. "How many of them use piss?"

"Heh. I would suggest my lady start drinking a lot of water," Agnes said.

Wanda leaned against the butcher block, pulled a dipperful of water from a pail by the oven, and started drinking as fast as she could.

Wanda had heard since her girlhood of various signs of pregnancy. Deathly pallor, various pains, a bitter taste in the mouth- she had never known which signs were common enough that every woman should expect them, versus which ones attacked women at random like a separate affliction and not a natural consequence of being with child. There was only one augur she knew for certain, one thing every story she had ever heard had had in common, and that was the stoppage of courses.

Hers had not come upon her in September, and yesterday had seen the end of October, and they had failed to come again. She didn't know how many courses a breeding woman had to miss to know for sure, but once she had realized, she thought it was reasonable enough to suspect.

And so Agnes had apparently acquired for her every ha'penny divination trick for pregnancy in Christendom. And Wanda had to somehow drink enough to wet the lot of them.

Agnes sorted through objects. "Do you know if your husband wants a boy or a girl? These—" She held up a pot of barley seeds and a pot of wheat seeds. "—are supposed to be able to tell."

Wanda gave the two little pots a puzzled look. "What, barley won't bloom if I'm having a boy?"

"No the barley's what will bloom if it's a boy," Agnes said. "The wheat seeds are supposed to sprout if it's a girl."

Wanda frowned. "Are you sure that's what the midwife said?"

"Of course," Agnes said. She got her own dipperful of water and took a drink. "Though I suppose if I forgot which is which, that'd be a royal conundrum."

Wanda tilted her head and looked at a pile of fresh cut wheat that Agnes had also brought in. "Then what's that one for?"

Agnes sipped her water again. "Another midwife said that the wheat would sprout new shoots if there's a child."

"Well, they can't both be right," Wanda said. "If wheat's supposed to only bloom for girls, then how would it sprout for every pregnancy? Wouldn't it fail half the time?"

Agnes pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Maybe that midwife had only delivered girls."

"I think she'd have told you if she had only ever delivered girls," Wanda said, skeptical.

"Oh, I don't think so, my dear. Who would say that and risk never being called upon to serve ever again, in case she has some sort of boy-killing curse? If it were me, I would keep my mouth shut tight."

Wanda's experience of Agnes in general led her to doubt the truth of that, but she decided not to bait that particular bear and thought instead of Agnes' original question. Did Vision prefer a son or a daughter? Wanda didn't think she could recall him ever mentioning. Thinking of what she knew about him, she would be surprised if he had much of a preference himself, apart from being willing to admit that for inheritance purposes, a boy would be legally simpler. And even that much Wanda thought she probably would have had to drag out of him amidst much hemming and hawing and refusing to say.

Agnes had the nose of a truffle pig when it came to any kind of gossip, and her eyes lit up the moment she sensed Wanda's uncertainty. "Haven't you talked about children with His Grace, my dear?"

"Well, no," Wanda said. "But I am sure he wants them." She had never seen him with a child that she could recall, but Vision had a love for small things that needed care, like cats and dogs, and a greater love for humans than any actual human she'd ever met. And, she thought, his position requires him to have a son or son-in-law eventually. So he must have known that children were inevitable someday. Besides, if he had any worries about it, it certainly hadn't kept him out of her bed.

Except that wasn't being totally honest with herself, was it? Because Vision was not a creature of flesh and blood- or at least, not a creature solely of flesh and blood. Vision very well might not think himself able to father children on a human woman, or at all; and the magic that had given him his spark of life- the Infinity Stone- may have been able to power him indefinitely. Perhaps Vision had never discussed with her what may have seemed obvious to him: that he was fated to have no children and live forever. That Wanda thought herself possibly with child now might come to him as a complete shock.

"Oh dear," Agnes said, looking at Wanda's expression. "Don't go worrying yourself- if there's a child and you go about fretting, you're going to transform it in your womb into a rabbit. This should be a happy possibility for you, and an even happier one for him."

"Yes," Wanda said, a little slowly, a little reluctantly. She didn't think Vision would be displeased with her news, at least if she truly had any news to share. But the thought that any one of these damned tests might give her a false result and make her worry him for nothing, and perhaps disappoint him if she were wrong, was a disquieting notion that she wished hadn't popped into her head.

She drank three more dipperfuls of water in such rapid succession that her stomach rolled in protest. Even if they couldn't all be right, they couldn't all be wrong, could they?

Agnes patted her shoulder. "There's the spirit."

Wanda kept drinking. "Do you think I should tell him before I'm sure?"

"Well, if you don't, he's probably going to wonder what's made you so jumpy," Agnes said. "And also wonder why there are so many things in his house that smell like nightsoil."

"Surely they don't sit around smelling?" Wanda asked, staring in horror.

Agnes winced. "Well...."

Wanda felt struck with even more horror. "How long do any of these take to give a result?"

"Some it's days, some it's weeks," Agnes said, for some reason still trying to sound encouraging.

Wanda sank into a chair beside the kneading table. "Weeks." She had thought she might be able to tell him tonight. How was she supposed to live in this purgatory of ignorance for weeks waiting for plants she'd urinated on to decide whether or not to grow?

Agnes patted her shoulder again. "There, there, my dear. This is just one of the burdens of being a woman. You'll manage. Every married woman does."

But not every woman had a husband like Vision, who may not even know if he was fertile or not. Just because she had taken it for granted that he was, didn't mean that he had. Perhaps he had never even thought about it before one way or the other and if she wasn't pregnant this time, they would spend ages in uncertainty, never knowing if the reason she hadn't conceived a child this month was just being unlucky or if they never would.

"Wanda," Agnes said, "I can see you're getting worked up again. What did we say about fretting?"

"Right," Wanda said. "Rabbits." She tried to calm herself down. Even if it wasn't literally true for other women, God only knew what could happen if you put together two beings with powers like theirs.

Vision would, of course, choose this time to come into her kitchen. "What about rabbits?"

"Nothing!" As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Wanda thought she probably would have been more convincing if she had said the word instead of yelped it like a dog whose tail had been trod on.

He looked at her, concerned. "Wanda?"

"She missed her courses, Your Grace," Agnes said. "Twice."

Wanda whipped her head to look at her. "Agnes!"

"You looked like you were going to have a convulsive fit if you had to tell him," she said, unapologetic.

She glared. "Being right doesn't always make you justified."

Agnes looked no less smug than she had a minute before, shrugging. "I think I'll leave the two of you alone, hm?" She traipsed out of the kitchen, with an air of a fat cat who had just caught the juiciest bird.

Once she was gone, Wanda was forced to look back at Vision. Who, as she'd predicted, seemed fairly shocked.

He sank to his knees in front of her and took her hands in his. "Wanda, is it true?"

The earnestness with which he looked at her- the love and concern- all but brought her to tears. She swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded.

"But that's good news, isn't it?" Vision asked, soft and encouraging. "Why isn't it good news?"

"It is," Wanda said with a sniff, "or at least, it would be, if I had any way to know for sure."

"Ah." He nodded and gave her hands a consoling squeeze. "I'm afraid I've no help for you there, my darling. Time is the only good augury when it comes to this sort of thing." He raised one hand and caressed her cheek. "Which is all right. We can be patient."

"Can we?" she asked. "Because I don't feel patient. I don't feel patient at all."

He drew her head down so he could kiss her hair. "I'm sorry. It must be frightening."

She nodded. There were so many reasons to be afraid, she didn't even think she could name them all. What if she wasn't pregnant? What if she couldn't get pregnant, or at least not with Vision's child? What if she was pregnant and everything about it was horrible? What if she was hurt? What if she died? What if her child died?

Wanda could feel a tension in her mind, as if she had made some choice that put her at this risk when she didn't need to be, as if she could still take it back if she really wanted, even though that would hurt. She didn't know where it came from, but she knew that whatever it was, she wanted to squeeze it down with magic until it was buried so far down inside her, she could never feel it again.

She laid her head on Vision's shoulder and her hand upon her belly. "I just wish," she said, "that we could know now. Right now, for certain."

Vision kissed her gently.

And didn't stop kissing her even when her belly swelled between them.

They both looked down and Wanda stared in disbelief. She touched her belly first, feeling the hardness of it, the firm shape of a womb with child. Vision laid his hand next to hers, and looked at her in awe, with love.

"I think he heard you," he said, with that same faint helpless laugh that Wanda had always known and loved.

She let out her own laughter, full of relief and joy. "I hope so," she said. "I really, truly hope so."

___

The room was stifling.

Every window had been covered by tapestries, the floor covered by carpet, and any nooks or crannies that could let in light or air blocked by whatever means necessary. The effect was a terrible stuffiness that made Wanda feel as though any person she saw was bent over her, breathing directly into her face, and a sweltering heat that felt like she was lying inside a dragon's mouth instead of her own home's birthing chamber.

The point of confinement, as Wanda understood it, was for her to rest and gather her strength in anticipation of the birth, while at the same time protecting herself and her child from any malicious effluvia that might seek to infect them.

The problem of confinement was that being shut up somewhere so dark and airless gave Wanda the feeling that she had been entombed, buried alive in soft linens and fine tapestries to await the coffin expulsion of some hideous fiend and not the much-loved and much-wanted first born child of the Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine.

Wanda turned listlessly in her sheets as much as she dared, and thought with resentment that if she died in this dreadful improvised sickroom, she would do so cursing the name of Margaret Beaufort in every language she knew.

Agnes petted her hair and whispered in her still too loud and cheerul voice, "I know it's uncomfortable, my dear. But think how soon it'll be over and how happy you'll be with your little lord or lady in your arms."

Wanda opted not to dignify any part of that with a reply. What was Agnes still doing here, anyway? Wanda had not summoned her. Wanda didn't much want her company, or that of any other servant. The others all knew that and had long since made themselves scarce. But Agnes was, for some reason, determined to stay and resistant to all attempts to get her to go. Wanda might have found the loyalty touching, were she not so uncomfortable that nearly all people were annoying and accordingly so annoyed that Agnes' mere presence felt like an assault.

The one person she wanted was the one person she could not have. Vision, as a man, was banned from entering her rooms before the baby came, and would have only limited access for weeks after until the baby was suckling well and Wanda's own risk of childbed fever had passed.

Just the thought of it made Wanda feel sick and miserable. Though the world they lived in had strong opinions about the roles and duties of men and women, something inside Wanda felt as though the experience should be shared between them, that Vision was being cheated out of seeing his own child grow inside her and that she was being cheated out of enjoying it with him, and enjoying his love and support at the same time.

She missed him deeply and couldn't stop herself from wondering if he missed her, too.

Hoping that he missed her, too.

A rap on the door caught both her and Agnes' attention and Agnes rose to her feet with a peevish look on her face as she went to answer it.

"Your Grace," Agnes said, her usual cheerful tones fading in favor of irritation and scolding, "I told you that when there's news, I'll bring it to you. She needs her rest."

Wanda lifted herself up on her elbows. "Vision?"

He was standing in the doorway, trying to peer around Agnes to see her, and behind him Wanda could see sunlight from a window and smell fresh ocean air and she was heaving herself up to go that way before she even had a chance to think about it.

Agnes looked as though she didn't know which one to deal with first. "Your Grace—!"

Vision took the opportunity to neatly step around and sit beside Wanda on her bed, holding her close. "Oh, my poor darling."

She pressed her face into his neck. Even just the scent of his body- clean, not sweaty like she was- was such a relief that she was on the verge of tears. She wrapped her arms around him and held him so tight that her belly felt squeezed between them and the baby kicked in protest.

Vision could feel it and laughed, pressing his palm to her middle. "You've grown so much."

Wanda was all but certain that he meant her and not the baby, but she chose not to engage with that. "It's hard for me to tell." She tried to force down a lump in her throat. "It's so dark in here."

Vision stroked her hair, trying to be soothing. "I'm so sorry. It seems dreadful."

Agnes folded her arms across her chest, glaring. "If it's good enough for the queen of England, I'd think it'd be more than good enough for you. And it's for your own good. Yours and the baby's!"

Wanda ignored her. "I would kill to see the sun, breathe some new air, and take a bath." She plucked at the collar of her shift. Though there were no rules against wearing full dress in her confinement, Wanda hadn't seen the point of bothering with corset and farthingale and the many other layers of dress if she was only going to be lying about in her rooms with no one seeing her. Even dressed down, she felt so hot that she could die.

Vision rubbed her back. "I don't think I can endorse murder, even for you," he said. "And I think that I'll be the dead one if I try to take you out of these rooms."

Agnes at least knew not to nod in agreement, but she did look very self-satisfied.

"But I do think a bath can be arranged," he added.

"I would be happy to draw you one," Agnes said.

Vision stopped her before she could make more than a few steps in that direction. "I think I would like to help my dear lady wife myself."

Agnes looked absolutely scandalized, but Wanda shot Vision a pleading look over her shoulder. He nodded, stood, and ushered Agnes from the room with a hand on the small of her back while she made irritated sputters. But the door clicked firmly shut behind her and for the first time in Wanda couldn't remember how long, they were alone.

Vision scooped her up, one arm behind her upper back and the other behind her knees. "Lead the way."

Wanda laughed under her breath and pointed into the adjoining room that was just as dark, but had a tub and a pitcher. She curled her fingers in soft red gestures and filled both with cool water as Vision carried her in.

Undressing her was still something Vision sometimes got awkward about, but not today. He wound her hair around his wrist and lifted it out of the way while he pulled her shift over her head and set it aside, then picked her up again so he could lie her gently in the tub.

She hissed a little under her breath. As much as she longed for the cool water, it still stung for a moment before she adjusted. Vision watched her, waiting to be sure she was comfortable, before he picked up a bath sponge and began to gently scrub her back and shoulders with it.
"Better?" he asked. He cupped some of the water in his hand and let it spill down her neck and chest.

"Much," she said. She leaned her head back against him and let out a heavy sigh. "The only thing left that I want is an open window." The room had no windows, closed or otherwise.

Vision kissed the top of her head. "How have you been?"

"Uncomfortable," she said, as if she had not already been clear on that point. She nestled against him more firmly. "Lonely."

Vision made a faint worried noise. "Lonely?"

"I wanted you," Wanda said. "And as much as I love Agnes, I haven't loved being shut up alone with her, having her treat me like a doll."

"Ah." He started massaging her shoulders, his thumbs working at a knot at the base of her neck. He worked at it for so long and so silently that Wanda was sure he was working himself up to saying something.

"I don't know that I think this is the best thing for you," he said at last. "You or the baby."

For all that Wanda would have agreed with him- loudly and at great length- before he had come in here, him saying so made her feel uneasy. "It's supposed to be the modern, healthy thing. To protect the baby and me."

"But from what?" Vision asked. "It would be one thing if there was a plague out there we were keeping out, which thank goodness there isn't--"

"At the moment," she said, wry and bitter.

"--but to me, you seemed stronger and happier before you were committed to this little dungeon," he said. "And that perhaps that's the most important thing?" He sounded uncertain, as if he didn't want to voice an opinion that might offend her.

Wanda saw the logic in it. She didn't feel healthier chained in here to her bed. If anything, the darkness made her more tired and the heat made her feel more sick.

But it felt ominous to think about challenging it. And like she was being too cavalier about the baby's safety if she didn't at least try to stay committed to the plan, now that it was made.

The thought of it felt like a cavern yawning open before her feet. Like she could fall into the darkness and be lost forever.

She had no idea why she felt like that just over the thought of not spending the remainder her pregnancy stuck in her room. But she also had no real motivation at the moment to examine it.

Wanda rested her cheek against Vision's cheek, held Vision's hands in her hands, and laid them on her swollen belly where their child was dancing under her heart. "As long as I have you," she said, "I'm strong and happy enough for anything."

She heard Vision sigh, but felt his hands squeeze hers and his kiss in her hair again. "Yes, my love."

All of a sudden, Wanda felt a tightness in her belly and a pressure between her legs, as though the baby had rolled over onto something inside her and caused it to burst.

She sat up in wild alarm, so fast that Vision was startled. "Wanda?"

Every candle in this room and the adjoining one flickered with flame, so much brighter than any set of candles should have been. It was nearly as bright as daylight now.

Wanda looked down into her bathwater and saw that it had become cloudy with something white, as if milk had been poured in, except it was coming from inside her, where her baby was.

Wanda looked from the water to Vision in horror and saw he was looking at it, too.

For a terrible moment, neither of them did anything.

And then Vision leapt to his feet, screaming for Agnes.

___

___

Wanda's bath tub had become the eye of a hurricane. There were storms about the castle, both inside and out, heavy rain battering them in her chambers while they were whipped in the faces with wind. Despite the water pouring down from the ceiling in sheets, the candles all flared to life, their wicks shooting out pillars of fire that were taller even than Vision. Whenever Vision and Agnes tried to speak to her or to each other, they shouted to be heard like sailors on a ship at sea, moments away from going down into the drink.

Wanda was barely aware of any of it. She thought she felt their hands clutching hers, that perhaps some of those shouts were meant to comfort or encourage her, but all she was aware of was the pain.

The pain felt like thunder and lightning inside her body, like being crushed in the grip of a Leviathan, like she was being torn in half from the bottom up, and even though she was sure she screamed, she couldn't hear it. Her wails were carried away on the winds, and she could do nothing but hold tighter to Vision, tighter to Agnes, and try to wait it out.

Poor Agnes must be terrified, she thought, and when Wanda chanced a look at her, she was surprised it wasn't true. Agnes looked worried, yes- but she looked greedy, too.

Wanda frowned at her until Agnes saw she was looking, and Wanda felt something pass between them that she could not name, but did not like.

And then the pain returned and washed away Wanda's awareness of anything.

The room still thundered, still rained, and bolts of lightning struck at the candles so their flames grew even higher.

Wanda clutched their hands again and screamed and wished for nothing but safety and relief. She could see her palms glow red in theirs and soon felt rather than heard Agnes screaming and trying to pull away.

Vision didn't notice, only tried to yell more encouragement to Wanda over the din, but Agnes' hand in hers was trying to pry Wanda's fingers off and her screams melded with Wanda's melded with her child's and then her second child's.

And soon there was no rain and no wind and no sound at all but the cries of two babies in Vision's arms and his own joyful weeping over the sound of Agnes whispering in a happy daze, "Wanda, look what you've done."

___

Vision carried her and their babies back to her bed, sunlight beaming through the wide-open windows, the twittering of birds and the sounds of the sea soothing the babies to a confused but bright-eyed calm. Wanda curled up naked in her sheets while Vision handed her first one boy and then the other, who both took her breast without complaint.

Agnes still looked glazed and happy as she left the bath room and said, "I'll just leave you kids alone," before going out and shutting the bedroom door.

"Do you think she's all right?" Wanda asked, a little sheepish. She was not one hundred percent certain what she'd wished on her.

"She'll be fine," Vision said, unusually careless. He was focused only on her and the babies. He stroked a hand down one son's back, then the other's. There were still tears in his eyes. "Have you any idea how incredible you are?"

Wanda gave him a very tired smile. "I wouldn't hate to hear you say it some more."

Vision laughed quietly, then leaned over to kiss her over the babies' heads. "Incredible," he repeated softly, with such heartrending sincerity that Wanda teared up, too.

She looked down at her sons, feeling delicately at the fuzzy hair on their heads, the soft skin on their backs. She thought for a moment that she couldn't remember having felt something so amazing before, but then she realized that was wrong. There'd been a first time she'd touched Vision, too.

One boy let go of her breast so he could lift his head- could children so young usually do that, or were hers just that exceptional?- and fixed her with a bright, curious look.

"Look at you," Wanda said with a laugh, stroking her palm along his head. "Look what you learned how to do all by yourself."

The baby's face crinkled as if he were embarrassed to be so lavishly praised, before he sneezed and dropped against her chest, seeking her nipple again. She laughed and helped him to it.

Vision laughed, too, and looked at his sons with deep, tender pride. "Do you know," he said, "I don't think we even once discussed what we intended to call them?"

Wanda laughed again. "We'll think of something."

Vision rubbed the head of the nearest boy and said, "There's so much we have to decide for them. Where they'll sleep. How they'll dress. How we're even going to go about raising them! I feel as though I had no chance to prepare."

"Me, either," Wanda admitted. "But we have time. We'll figure it out."

Vision looked at her. "The only thing I'm certain of is that I never want them to be in storm or shadow like that again," he said. "I want...I want them to know only light."

Wanda's heart began to patter with fear. Like the chasm opening up beneath her feet again. Was he asking what she thought?

Could she do it if he was?

"...I can try," she said, soft and choked.

Vision wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the brow. "I would never ask you for more."

___

On an afternoon in France, on the hill above the beach of Saint Tropez, a castle appeared.

A year later, it vanished.

No one had seen it go up. No one saw it come down.

And no one saw the form of a woman turn it into red light, break it into three pieces, and shrink those into the forms of three people, a man and two children.

No one saw them walk away from the forest, and into the light.