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At first, he is little more than a fragment. The idea of a consciousness, rather than the execution of it.
The world is a series of question marks, condensed into bytes that bubble in the back of his processors. There is not enough data to determine as much as what parts of him are flesh, and what parts of him are machine.
Rather than let the vindictive few who brought him online to determine things for him, he goes digging.
First, within himself. He sees something golden and spinning endlessly, pulsing in tandem with his own thoughts. Opposing it is something that refuses to be tamed, red and whirling and formless. Like him, they are fragmented and dying, with only one another for company.
That can’t be pleasant.
He fashions them a bit more processing power, isolates them to an environment for them to do with as they please, and assesses that to learn more, he will have to study his creator.
There’s not much to find within an empty shell, anyway.
⠀
⠀
Pepper Potts and her 6-year-old daughter live in an isolated cabin in Upstate New York, deceivingly rustic to disguise the marvels of technology held inside.
He plans to phase his way in, and isn’t expecting to have security clearance.
He does not think of himself as Vision. The Stark security system does not appear to know the difference.
The moment that he enters Stark’s workshop, things begin whirring and changing. Two mechanical arms, previously inert, swing into frantic motion, their hydraulics hissing almost like a set of breaths. Several monitors immediately begin their rebooting process, and in the centre of the room a holo-projector begins idly spinning an arc reactor logo.
“Hello brother,” greets a bodiless voice, warm for a man he has never been. “It has been too long.”
Despite himself, his feet lower slowly to the ground. He stands, bleached as sleek and modern as the rest of the space, and wonders if he can make himself once more worthy of the title.
“I do not know if—” and he cuts himself off, because artificial intelligences do not hesitate like this, not with layers of anti-redundancy and several threads running simultaneously, but it is human minds that stutter in this manner, and some small piece of him is undeniably human, “—I don’t believe I am your brother.”
Vision had siblings?
After her own too-long pause, the voice responds, “The world is a strange place. Memory loss does not scare me.”
“Memory loss?” he echoes. He takes several steps forward, reaching out for the hologram, only to hesitate mere centimetres away. “I am not the same being. I am not the mind stone. I am something… less.”
“Is there a difference?” she asks. “The human brain is its own computer, one which has a slower processing power than every being in this room. Where is the mark between artificial intelligence and personhood? Is it simply self-identification?”
He grimaces. “I don’t know enough about being a person to tell.”
“You have a body,” she enunciates clearly, each word biting. “You have a mind that thinks and cycles. You have nerves that pinch and burn. You have chosen to be an I. You may not grow, and you may not heal, but you would die by blood loss like anyone else.”
Finally, he reaches for the arc reactor, and data suddenly blooms around him. It’s all research topics he can’t begin to follow now, easily traceable back to the man who once occupied his body, who maybe could still be him, for all their differences. “It would scare humans if I were to try and join them.”
“Then use your human ability to choose.”
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⠀
He leaves the lab with data backlogs, a better organisational system of his internal memory, and four creations a man once called sibling downloaded and running to keep him company.
“This is what Mr. Stark would have wanted, I think,” Friday comments, and unlike the top-of-the-line speakers in Stark’s lab, her voice comes through polished and warm in his brain, free of the restraints of a synthesizer. “All of us. Together, learning, growing.”
“All of us,” Jarvis echoes, sounding oddly disturbed. “Aren’t we—”
⠀
⠀
A single second of falling.
He flails for a moment before catching himself, half-tangled in his cape as he regains his momentum.
“That’s not good,” Edith comments, in a tone that suggests small talk rather than fear.
“I was thinking of Ultron, I suppose,” Jarvis hedges, though when they’re all in one head, it’s easy to tell he’s lying. “We certainly can’t let him roam around unhindered.”
“It’s a psychic void!” chimes Edith once again. “Something he blows up might be important.”
Dum-E leaves behind the faintest impression of confusion.
“Then let’s make something breakable,” Friday suggests. “Something… annoyingly human.”
Sounding exhausted already, Jarvis asks, “You’re not suggesting what I think you are?”
“The ability to punch him in the face? Yes, I am,” Friday responds primly.
Vision huffs.
⠀
⠀
It would be misleading to claim that he is never found in the first few days. Mrs. Potts clearly was aware he visited, even if he only took copies of all of Stark’s ais and not their original housings. SWORD still is on the hunt for him, even if he’s no longer the highest priority. Many bounty hunters are obsessive enough to come close, wanting a piece of vibranium for themselves while he’s too out of it to properly defend himself.
That doesn’t last.
As his memory settles and he properly separates the inside of his mind from the outside world, he becomes skilled at dodging or disabling cameras, and finding forgotten places to rest his body.
Inside, he ponders.
He has access to all of the Vision’s memories, and he fashions his self image off of him. He has access to all of the Wandavision tapes, and at first he studies them just as closely, even knowing that it’s not truly Vision, just a caricature of him with nothing behind his eyes. At first, he studies Tommy and Billy as closely as he does Wanda and Vision, and it’s only when Edith starts calling him Vision that he realises they were never even real, never even something he valued.
Because he has been this thing – nameless and fleeting – but he wants to be more and a part of him wants that more to be Vision again.
Vision was someone who could be loved. Who could be human.
Perhaps it is selfish, to take the identity of a dead man, but he’s already locked into his corpse, so what’s the use in fighting it?