Kendis was sad to say that voices in her head were not new.

She remembered all too well how it felt to hear Voldemort’s taunting in her brain during her fifth year. So when she first heard the voice, Kendis thought her Occlumency shields were slipping.

Kendis had been concentrating on the chopper’s carburetor, grease streaked across her knuckles as she tightened the last adjustment and muttered a threat under her breath. The bike was a custom commission for P!NK, which meant it needed to purr, snarl, and behave like it had been built for a woman who could fly through the air upside down and still land on beat.

The chopper ran, technically, but it was not up to Kendis’s standards. The idle had a faint hitch, the throttle response lagged by half a breath, and the engine note lacked the clean, vicious bite she wanted.

So she glared at the machine like it had personally embarrassed her and reached for the wrench again.

‘Come find me.’

Kendis’s head shot up, and her eyes darted around the room, but Isiah and Richie were crouched in front of a Harley-Davidson Softail chopper and having a heated discussion about the rear suspension, as if the thing had personally wronged them.

The voice had been soft and patient.

“What?” she muttered, looking around the garage.

Isiah and Richie stopped and looked over at her.

“You say something?”

“Nope.” Kendis shook her head.

Richie shot her a dubious look, but Kendis pointedly put her attention back on the engine.

But the voice came again days later.

Then again.

The voice always came at strange moments. At times she did not expect it. In the quiet before dawn, when she was grocery shopping, when she was in the middle of a conversation with Tony. The voice rustled through the leaves of trees when there was no wind, and it hummed of old, ancient magic sitting beneath Los Angeles like a sleeping animal.

‘Come to me.’

At first, Kendis strengthened her mental shields, but no matter what she did, she always heard the voice. It haunted her constantly, and no matter how much Kendis tried to pretend she was okay, she could tell that Tony and her friends noticed.

Kendis knew nothing would change if she did not get to the bottom of the voice. So with her wand in hand, Kendis did what she did best.

She went to solve a mystery.

---

“Sir, Kendis has left the building.”

Tony stopped typing and then sighed. He ran a hand across his face. There was a whine and a scratch at the door. Tony turned to see Alke standing behind his workshop’s glass doors.

He felt his heart sink as he stared into Alke’s sad eyes. Most of the time, Alke and Kendis were practically attached at the hip.

This was not the first time Kendis had started disappearing for hours at a time. Tony had noticed immediately. The thing about Kendis was that he noticed everything about her in ways that were both distracting and sometimes downright irritating.

From the moment Tony had met Kendis, he could not help but revolve around her, not unlike a sunflower following the sun’s path in the sky.

“You’re distracted,” Tony said to her one morning while he was staying at her house. He stood behind the kitchen island, trying his best to pretend he was not staring at her. Tony wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he also knew Kendis would give him one of those heartbreaking smiles and tell him she was fine.

He was pretending not to stare while she made her tea. “You nearly put cinnamon in your oatmeal this morning.”

Kendis froze mid-pour and then turned to give him a look. “I did do that.”

“You hate cinnamon in your oatmeal.”

“I know.”

Tony crossed his arms. “Are you sleeping?”

He already knew the answer, but he wanted her to be honest with him.

“Uh—” Kendis rubbed her forehead. “Tony, I am fine.”

“Kendis.”

“Tony.”

Tony took a sip of his coffee and sighed. He dropped it.

They had been together long enough for him to know that his spouse was ten times more stubborn than he was. Tony would not get anything out of Kendis until she was ready.

---

Then one day, Kendis kissed him on the cheek, patted Alke on the head, and walked out the door.

At first, Tony thought she was heading back to Enchanted Engines.

They often switched off between living at his place and hers. He had gone into the workshop, Alke trailing behind him. Dum-E, U, and Butterfingers stopped to say hello to the massive dog, and Tony got to work on the new armor upgrades he had been meaning to get to all week.

Kendis did not come home.

The thing about Kendis was that while Tony was all ADHD chaos who rode the wave of executive dysfunction like a champ, Kendis was autistic, and she kept a strict routine. Tony learned pretty early on that Kendis off routine was an emotionally unregulated Kendis.

Kendis was usually home by six, and then she would start dinner.

“Cooking is how I decompress,” Kendis had told him dryly the one time he tried to get her to rest and order takeout.

But Kendis missed dinner, and then she missed her usual ten o’clock bedtime. And the more time passed, the more worried Tony became. Kendis wouldn’t just leave Alke behind like that, and if she was late, she would always text him.

But days passed, and there was no note, no texts, and no phone calls.

Just days of endless silence.

Their friends had expected Tony to panic immediately, but Tony became frighteningly calm instead. He was going to find Kendis with the same hard determination that had made him build a suit of armor in a cave with a box of scraps.

Pepper later said that was how you knew it was bad.

Tony called everyone, but Jason and Ian hadn’t seen her. Hortense and Isiah looked increasingly alarmed the longer the hours stretched on. Alke paced restlessly around the mansion, whining and whimpering in a way that clenched around Tony’s heart.

Because Alke had always had a second sense about Kendis.

Tony believed in science. He still preferred things that were logical and explainable. However, Kendis had introduced him to a world that did not play by the rules. Alke’s behavior just confirmed what he felt: something was very wrong.

Hortense and Isiah tried to track her down, but every tracking spell came up empty. Tony had JARVIS scanning facial recognition, monitoring every government database, and hell, even tracking social media for any sign of her.

But there was no trace of her.

It was as if she had walked out of his mansion and disappeared without a trace.

Tony couldn’t sleep and has appeitite had all but disappeared. And he could tell that he was worrying Pepper, Yinsen, and Rhodey. Hell, even Lana had looked concerned when she stormed the mansion to cajole him into taking care of himself.

The Cerebral Flush was pooling their impressive intellectual might, and Kendis’s cousin Tristan had gotten on the first plane to Los Angeles. Tony knew Tristan was the director of Q Branch, and his leaving on such short notice was sure to kick up a fuss at MI6.

With all of their friends and family working together, they should have found her.

But day five passed, and Kendis was still gone.

Tony did his best to keep the search quiet from the Wixen government and SHIELD. Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys had shown up on day six and refused to leave, but Ron also refused to report anything to the MACUSA or the Ministry. He was always ready to put family above everything else, even his career.

And Kendis Black had been family to Ron since they were eleven years old.

By the end of the week, Tony looked like hell.

He sat inside Stark Industries, pretending as if he were a competent CEO and as if his life were not falling apart. Tony spent most of his time searching for Kendis and actively terrifying every executive on the floor.

The holographic projection in front of him blurred as he rubbed his eyes.

“Sir,” JARVIS said carefully.

Tony did not look up. “I said no interruptions.”

“Yes, sir. However… Mx. Black is calling.”

Tony went still, and his brain went blank for one terrifying moment.

Then he snapped upright so violently that his chair nearly tipped over.

“What?”

“She appears to be using a prepaid cellular device,” JARVIS continued. “Mx. Kendis requested that I relay coordinates.”

Tony grabbed his phone, his jacket, and his keys and ran out of the office, uncaring of the bewildered looks his employees gave him.

---

The coordinates led him north of Los Angeles to Sunland, California, near Kagel Canyon. If this had been a simple scenic drive, Tony would have thought it beautiful.

As Tony drove up the winding road, he could see lush green rolling hills interrupted by trees. The land looked wild and untamed. This was so far from the busy streets, concrete buildings, and grit and glamor of Hollywood.

“Arrival point reached,” JARVIS announced quietly.

As he parked at the top of one such hill, he got out of the car and looked out across the canyon. The land stretched across the mountains like something half-forgotten by the city.

It was all dry earth, stubborn green brush, and winding dirt paths disappearing into the canyon.

Live oak and sycamore trees cast long shadows over open patches of grass while the valley below shimmered in the distance beneath a hazy California sun.

As his eyes darted across the large clearing, Tony noticed that the air smelled like dust, sage, and old woodsmoke. But he felt a shiver run down his spine, the awareness of danger he had developed through too many battles as Iron Man prickling beneath his skin.

There was something not quite right about the place.

It was in the way that there was no sound of the typical movement of wild spaces. No birdsong. No chittering of smaller animals roaming. The silence carried a strange weight that Tony could neither define nor quantify.

Tony walked a bit farther, all the while cursing his decision to wear his five-thousand-dollar loafers that morning.

And then Tony saw her.

“Kendis!” Tony shouted as he ran over to her.

She looked exhausted. The Misfits T-shirt she had stolen from Tony was torn and ripped, exposing more of her tattoos than usual. Her jeans were shredded, and her boots were dusty as hell.

Kendis gave him a tired, awkward wave.

But Tony came to a stop, his eyes going wide as he took in the creature in front of him. At first, Tony thought Kendis was standing next to a tree, but it had a humanoid shape and towered over her.

Its bark formed the shape of its body. Branches twisted like antlers above its head, and its face shifted suddenly beneath the grain of ancient wood. A harsh wind whipped through its leaves, and Tony could have sworn he heard a voice.

He stopped dead and then took a step back.

“Absolutely not.”

Kendis winced and rubbed the back of her head. “Uh, I can explain?”

Tony marched toward her. “You disappear for a week, and then you show up with Treebeard here?”

The tree creaked, and the leaves rustled almost violently.

Tony really needed to start working on the suitcase armor because he would feel a hell of a lot better with gold-titanium alloy armor and a repulsor between them.

The leaves rustled violently again.

“Tony,” Kendis sighed with annoyed exasperation. “You offended her.”

“Good.”

“Kendis,” Tony snapped, his voice rougher now. “Where the hell have you been?”

Kendis closed her eyes and grimaced. “Doing tests.”

Tony narrowed his eyes immediately. “What type of tests?”

“…Magical tests.”

Tony felt a cold shiver go down his spine because he knew with deep certainty what that meant. Kendis looked away, and Tony suddenly felt sick.

The tests had been dangerous. Life-threatening, even.

“The deal was that I would be the one who throws himself headfirst into danger,” Tony replied slowly. He folded his arms. “You know, that is part of the whole superhero gig.”

Kendis did not say anything.

Silence fell between them, and Tony closed his eyes. One of the promises they had made pretty early in their marriage was that they would never yell at each other.

Tony had grown up with the loud, screaming fights between his parents, and he did not want to fall into that cycle. If they were having a fight, they would discuss it calmly, logically, like grown-ass adults.

Open communication and all of that shit.

But right now, Tony wanted to shout. He wanted to scream. But most importantly, he wanted to take her in his arms and make her promise to never do this again.

“I’m deciding not to yell because you’re alive.”

“That’s fair.”

The tree spirit made a low sound like wood groaning during a storm. Then the wind shifted, and Tony stilled as he heard a calm and patient voice emerge from the sound of the wind.

She belongs to this place.

Tony stared and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hate that I understood that.”

“Wait!” Kendis looked startled. “You did?”

“I heard… something.”

The tree bowed slightly, and Tony wondered for the thousandth time when his life had become an episode of a weird paranormal CW drama.

‘Metal man’.

Tony pointed at himself. “Okay, first of all, rude.”

Kendis snorted for the first time in days.

Then she looked around the canyon, and something in her expression softened into awe.

“The land here is alive,” she said quietly. “Not just magically alive. It’s aware and ancient.”

“So that’s the reason the land hasn’t been developed.” Tony shook his head. “I did notice the lack of electrical lines and other houses. Do you know how rare undeveloped land with this many acres, this close to Los Angeles, is? I should have clocked that this was some magic bullshit the moment I didn’t see any houses.”

“Tony.” Kendis pinched the bridge of her nose. “You are not wrong, but a little more respect for the ancient magical being, please. And yes, it is unusual that land this powerful hasn’t been conquered by some magical colonizer.”

The wind rustled through the hills.

“But Concordia doesn’t want that.”

Tony blinked. “Concordia?”

The tree spirit inclined its head.

Kagel Canyon remembers before men carved roads through mountains.

“…Cool,” Tony muttered. “Terrifying. But cool.”

Kendis stepped closer to him. “We have been looking everywhere for the right home. Nothing felt real.”

Tony looked at her.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for a home that felt right,” she admitted softly. “Not some Beverly Hills luxury mansion and definitely not some ridiculous billionaire showpiece.”

Tony looked vaguely offended.

“You wound me.”

“You wanted a robot garage with a house attached.”

“I still want that.”

Kendis laughed quietly and then gestured around them.

“You wanted land to build something real on. I wanted somewhere that felt safe.”

The wind moved again.

And the entire canyon seemed to breathe around them.

Tony looked out over the land. His gaze traveled across the untouched mountains and the rolling hills. The bright blue open sky and the acres of land where they could build something real.

The Malibu mansion had been a billionaire showpiece. A place to lay his head and work in peace.

The only place in that house that felt like his own was his workshop.

But here, there were no paparazzi. No neighbors. No expectations.

And with Kendis and Tony overcoming the obstacle of magic and tech incompatibility, they could build a house that was truly safe. It would be a home, but it would also be a fortress, magic and tech weaving together to make something new.

Tony thought about the name Concordia, and he abruptly remembered what it meant.

Unity and people working together despite their differences.

Again, Tony was a man of science and logic, but he would never admit to anyone, not even Kendis, that this felt like fate.

“Developers tried to build here before,” Kendis said.

Tony glanced at her. “And?”

Kendis coughed awkwardly. “Concordia violently evicted them.”

Tony shot the tree creature a wary look. “Violently?”

The tree spirit swayed, and then a dead oak nearby abruptly split in half with a sound like thunder.

Tony stared with wide, frightened eyes. “Uh, okay?”

“There are rumors this place is haunted,” Kendis continued.

Tony looked around the canyon again.

The wind whistled softly through the hills.

Honestly? Tony considered, for a second, that he should drag Kendis to the car and haul ass back to Los Angeles. But Tony had lived through worse. Besides, he already lived in a smart house, and he was pretty sure Concordia could not be sassier than JARVIS.

Kendis looked at him carefully. “We could build here.”

Tony shot another look at Concordia, then back at Kendis.

“Okay.”

Kendis blinked. “Okay?”

Tony shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. We’ll build it ourselves, exactly the way we want it.”

Kendis smiled slowly, and goddammit, her smile was so soft that it made Tony’s chest ache.

The tree creature bowed to them, and Tony could have sworn he saw a smile on its… her face.

Home.

---

Several weeks later, while sketching plans across the kitchen table of Tony’s Malibu mansion, Kendis looked up thoughtfully.

“In my country, estates usually have names.”

Tony did not look up from the blueprints. “We are absolutely not naming the house after the haunted tree.”

Kendis grinned, and Tony shot her a distrustful look.

“What?”

“Not Concordia,” Kendis said with a shrug.

“Good.” Tony narrowed his eyes at her. “Because you are not the type to give up that easily when it comes to something you want.”

“What about Concord for short?”

Tony paused and then groaned.

But he had to admit that it kind of had a ring to it.

“Concord House.”

Kendis pointed at him. “See? It’s brilliant.”

Tony leaned back in his chair and reconsidered all of the life choices that had led him to this moment.

And somewhere deep in Kagel Canyon, the ancient magic of the land stirred in approval.