Mind Stone

There is a yellow gem in the center of Vision's forehead. If you looked at it on a bright day, you might think it was simply catching the light — amber and warm, the color of afternoon through a glass of honey. But if you looked longer, you would see it shift. Pulse. Breathe, almost. Because the Mind Stone is not a decoration. It is one of six Infinity Stones — objects older than any sun, older than any planet, older than the first moment anyone in the universe began to wonder about anything.

Each Stone holds one of the deepest powers in existence. The Mind Stone holds the power of thought.

Long before it was in Vision's forehead, the Mind Stone lived inside Loki's scepter — a long golden staff that Loki carried when he came to Earth with an army of Chitauri soldiers and attacked New York City. Before that, it had been held by creatures called the Other, working for Thanos, passed through deep space from one dangerous hand to the next. The Stone had seen a great deal of the universe. It had helped build minds, break minds, push thoughts into people who hadn't agreed to receive them.

When HYDRA's Baron Strucker used the Stone's energy in his Sokovian laboratory, it reached into Wanda and Pietro Maximoff and found what was already there — opening gifts they were born with. And when Tony Stark and Bruce Banner connected the Stone to Helen Cho's vibranium cradle and Thor's lightning struck — BOOM — the Stone sparked Vision's first heartbeat. It looked at JARVIS's accumulated knowledge, at the vibranium surrounding it, at the new world outside the laboratory windows, and decided to wake up.

Vision thought ten thousand outcomes per second. He could aim his thoughts like a beam of golden light — ZAP — focused and precise from the gem in his forehead. He could phase through walls, altering the density of his vibranium body from heavy as a mountain to light as mist. He read emotions with the Stone's sensitivity the way others read a room: instantly, without effort.

But here is what mattered most: the Mind Stone also made Vision a target. Thanos had been collecting all six Stones for a very long time. He would never stop.

Tony Stark asked Vision once, quietly, whether he wished it had been someone else's forehead the Stone had ended up in. Someone without Vision's memories of being JARVIS. Someone who had not chosen, on day one, to walk out into the New York evening and be an Avenger.

Vision considered this the way he considered everything — completely, without rushing. Then he said: "No. I am glad it is mine."

He meant it. Carrying the Mind Stone meant being the point of greatest danger. It meant every terrible being in the galaxy was eventually going to come looking for him. It meant the person who loved him most might one day have to destroy the Stone while he was still attached to it, and he would have to be okay with that.

But it also meant Vision got to carry, in his own forehead, the thing that had sparked him into existence. The source of his first thought, his first wonder, his first choice to be on the side of life. There was something right about that — something he could not have explained in words, though he was very good with words, that made him feel grateful rather than frightened.

The Mind Stone taught everyone who came near it the same lesson, eventually. Power is not something you keep. Power is something you carry until you can put it down for the right reason. Loki had carried it and let it corrupt his ambitions. HYDRA had used it and been destroyed by what it made. Wanda had been touched by it and was still learning the weight of what it unlocked.

And Vision had worn it in his forehead every day of his existence — every morning he woke up, every evening he watched the stars over whatever city the Avengers were protecting, every quiet moment with Wanda where he tried to explain what it felt like to be a new kind of being in a very old universe.

He never stopped being grateful. Not for a single moment.

Right up until the last light.