"Why?" Straightforward question.
Wanda didn't do small talk, not really, not with him. She'd earned the right to ask directly a long time ago, back when he'd pulled her and her brother out of a Hydra facility that had spent years treating her like a weapon instead of a person.
"Because some of what I'm carrying isn't the kind of thing I want broadcasting to everyone with the right kind of eyes," Tony said. "Call it a precaution."
Wanda studied him a moment longer, then let it go, the way she always did when she sensed he wasn't going to say more. She'd learned that about him too. When to push and when to wait.
"You're leaving," she said instead.
"How'd you know that?"
"You have the look." She almost smiled again. "The one you get before you do something reckless and call it necessary."
"It's both, usually."
"That doesn't make me feel better."
Tony leaned back, bracing his hands against the stone wall behind him. Above them, the sky over Kathmandu stretched wide and blue, ordinary in a way that felt almost offensive given what he knew was drifting somewhere past Jupiter.
"Thor's team went dark investigating something," Tony said. "We got a signal a few days ago. Somebody's still alive out there, but barely, and we don't know what did this to them yet."
Wanda's expression shifted, something tightening behind her eyes. "You're going to find out."
"That's the plan."
"And if it's bigger than you expect?"
'It's Thanos,' Tony thought. 'Or something that works for him. It's always going to trace back to him eventually. I just don't know how far back yet.' He kept his face steady, kept the thought where it belonged, buried under twelve layers of processing that nobody else could reach.
"Then I improvise," he said. "Same as always."
Wanda didn't look convinced, but she didn't argue either. She reached out instead and closed a hand around his wrist, light enough that he could have pulled away easily if he wanted to.
"I keep having the dream again," she said quietly.
Tony went still. He knew the one she meant. She'd mentioned it before, months ago, in fragments she never quite finished describing. Something reaching. Something calling her by a name that wasn't quite her name.
"Tell me," he said.
"It's not clearer than before." Wanda's jaw tightened. "Just louder. Like whatever it is knows I'm listening now." She looked up at him, and for a moment the composed young woman training in these halls looked very much like the frightened teenager he'd carried out of a Hydra basement years ago. "It started right after the accident. When you were gone and I didn't know if you were ever coming back, as many thought you were dead."
'That timing,' Tony thought, and felt something cold settle low in his chest. 'The dimensional accident. The chamber's anchor destabilizing. Whatever she's hearing, is it possible it's connected to what happened in there?'
"Have you told Strange?" he asked.
"Some of it." Wanda's mouth pressed into a thin line. "He listens. He tries. But he's still finding his footing, still learning what she used to carry so easily." She didn't have to say who she meant. The gap the Ancient One had left behind still sat over the whole compound like a held breath, even now. "He says some doors don't open all the way. That sometimes what's on the other side notices before the door does."
"Sounds like something she would have said."
"He learned from the best." A faint, sad smile. "Doesn't mean he's her yet."
"Nobody's asking him to be."
"I know." Wanda looked down at where her hand still rested on his wrist. "I just miss having an answer that actually sounded like an answer."
Tony didn't have a good response to that, so he didn't force one. Some things didn't need fixing, just sitting with. He'd learned that much, somewhere across three evolutions and however many hundred subjective days.
"For what it's worth," he said instead, "you're not carrying it alone. Whatever's calling you. When I get back, we chase it down properly. Together."
Wanda's eyes flicked up to his, searching for the catch in that promise the way she always did. She didn't find one.
"You mean that."
"I don't say things I don't mean. I just say a lot of things I probably shouldn't."
That earned him the real laugh this time, short and surprised, exactly like before. She let go of his wrist and stood, brushing dust from her robes.
"Go," she said. "Before I talk myself into asking to come with you."
"Not this trip."
"I know." Something flickered across her face, quick and gone. "Just promise you'll tell me if it's connected. Whatever's out there. If it touches what I've been feeling."
Tony held her gaze and made a decision he hoped he wouldn't regret. "I promise."
She nodded once, satisfied, and turned back toward the training courtyard where the sound of practice staves still echoed faintly against old stone. Tony watched her go for a moment, the white silver of her hair catching the light one more time before she disappeared around the corner.
'Something calling to her,' he thought, opening a portal back toward Cairo. 'Starting right after the chamber's anchor broke. That's not nothing. That's a thread I need to pull eventually, and I'm about to fly straight into the kind of place where threads like that tend to lead.'
The portal rippled open in front of him, chaos energy bending the air at its edges.
Whoosh!
He stepped through, already running the math on how many more goodbyes he had left before thirty one hours ran out.
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