Where else would Loki possibly want to open a portal? It had to be Stark Tower. That was the only place in the entire city that fit the bill. The only place that would draw the amount of attention that madman so obviously craved. Tony would be damned, though, if he let that happen. Stark Tower was his and no one messed with his things. If they did, they tended not to survive all that long.

Flying at top speed, Iron Man finally made it into viewing range and zoomed in his HUD. Sure enough, that's where Loki stood, a smirk on his face just wide enough to be seen.

"Sir, the Mark Xll is not ready for deployment." Jarvis informed him and it took everything Tony had not to groan.

"Then skip the spinning rims, we're on the clock."

Touchdown was smooth as usual and the entire platform reared up and began to disassemble his damaged suit, exactly as it was programed to. Tony hid a small smile as everything worked and flowed just as it should. He knew he looked impressive and anyone saying otherwise was lying. Maybe show that bastard who he's playing with.

Glancing over when the helmet was removed, Tony could barely make out the Tricksters smirk as he turned on heel and headed inside of his tower.

Of course, Tony definitely didn't want him to step foot inside, let alone come anywhere close to anything of his. He had to hold back that protective urge, his brown eyes narrowed, Mine! Instead of showing this, Tony set his face and braced himself for what he was about to do. Loki couldn't intimidate him and he would prove it to this self-titled 'God.'

Once inside, Loki spoke first, placing one foot in front of the other in an almost cat-like way. Even though he didn't watch his steps, he walked as if each was carefully thought out minutes before. which, in some ways, wouldn't surprise Tony at all.

The other man held his back perfectly straight with a regal air and his small smirk widened, becoming feral and sharp.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity." He all but laughed. This was all a game to him, well, Tony would show him how you play this game. Loki was in his tower, so now, it was his game.

Tony clasped his hands behind his back and turned to look over the railing at Loki. He took a couple sideways steps as he replied with, "Uh, actually, I'm planning on threatening you."

Loki's sharp smirk was all teeth as he pointed with his scepter, "You should have left your armor on for that."

"Yeah," Tony acknowledged, glancing down at his own feet for a second, hands still clasped comfortably behind his back. He seemed to ponder those words for just a second before before finishing his thought. "Seen a bit of mileage and you have the uh," It was Tony's turn to point at the other, "glowstick of destiny." His hands fell by his side as he took the last of the stairs down to the common area.

"Would you like a drink?" He asked, watching the smirk shift into amusement on the other's face. He switched his scepter into his other hand, his eyes lingering for a moment on the glowing stone at it's head. He shook his head just slightly.

"Stalling won't change anything."

Tony put up one finger, "Nonono, threatening." Before turning around to look at the bottles behind his bar. "No drink? You're sure?" Pointing once again, this time at the drinks he had.

Loki's silence didn't affect his choice of course, "I'm having one."

When Tony turned back around, with his drink of choice in hand, Loki was looking out the window. "The Chitauri are coming. Nothing can change that." The way he said those words surprised Tony, but he kept his face schooled. He almost sounded resigned, but that didn't add up. The aliens were his allies, right? There wasn't time to ponder that before the Trickster turned back around, looking Tony straight in the eye, something was just off about this whole part of the conversation. He even dropped his smirk. "What have I to fear?"

Tony looked back down at the glass bottle in his hands and filed this away for later. He pulled the stopper off the bottle, "The Avengers."

He glanced up quickly to see the look of confusion on Loki's face. His expression was almost laughing at the name, the humor back in Loki's green eyes.

Tony rolled his own eyes, "That's what we call ourselves." He gestured with the stopper as he began pouring himself his glass, "Sort of like a team. Earth's Mightiest Heros kind of thing."

"Yes, I've met them." The amused smirk was firmly back on Loki's face and Tony pulled one on to match. Two can play this game.

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction on that one, but let's do a headcount here. Your brother, the demigod." Loki rolled his eyes at this and turned to walk back to the window and Tony took that chance to grab the Mark Xll's scannable bracelets. He might just need them later, "The super soldier, the living legend that kind of lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger management issues, couple of master assassins and you!" Tony pointed right at Loki as the Trickster turns back around, trying to put that smirk back on his face. "You, big fella, have managed to piss off every single one of them."

Loki is pacing at this point and Tony was already seeing this as a small victory. He obviously wasn't comfortable, even with all that regal pose and bravado. "That was the plan." He said with a little head jerk.

Taking a sip of his drink, Tony replied with, "Not a great plan," and walking back around the bar.

"When they come, and they will, they'll come for you." Loki's face set and a small amount of anger broke through his mask.

"I have an army."
"We have a hulk."

"Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off." He said, again gesturing with his scepter.

"You, you're missing the point." Tony was starting to get annoyed and he let this show through, wanting to throw the other off. Show him that he wasn't afraid, because he wasn't. Not even a bit. "There's no throne, no version of this where you come out on top."

He came to a stop about five feet from Loki he continued, "Maybe your army comes and maybe they're too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it." Just to be a dick, Tony takes another sip of his drink, his expression one of annoyance, but not of fear.

Loki began to take slow deliberate steps forward, a glare settling on his face and oh, so scary. "How will your friends have time for me," His anger and disgust reaching a boiling point. "When they are so busy fighting you."

Well fuck, hadn't been expecting this. Only a sliver of fear appeared on Tony's face. He forgot that Loki could do that mind control thing and damn this could ruin everything. Stupid!

The scepter began to hum as if it was heating up. As he took a half step back, Tony had nowhere to go. There was no way he could get away quick enough. Oh, miscalculation.

It glowed an unearthly blue as Loki raised it to chest level and the tip connected with the Arc Reactor.

Tony couldn't help the small flinch as a small amount of pain flooded his eyes. He winced ever so slightly, but his mind stayed his own. Barton told him what the mind control felt like. Maybe it didn't work.

The inventor quickly looked up at Loki's face and was relieved by the confusion there. So it didn't work. A bone deep ache settled inside him, but he shoved it away, again steeled his resolve. It hadn't worked. Was it because of his arc reactor? He couldn't reach Tony's heart? But his heart wasn't in the middle of his chest.

Loki raised his scepter once more and it glowed a second time as he reached out and jabbed Tony with it, this time the pain was double and it took everything he had not to show Loki with his expression.

He felt his insides turning to ice as his temperature seemed to drop. The blood in his veins froze and it took all his willpower to remain standing.

"This usually works," Those words were what pulled him out of his pain. He had to reply. He had to come up with something snarky.

"Well, performance issues… it's not uncommon. One out of five."

Loki snapped then and grabbed the inventor by the throat, throwing him across the room as if he weighed nothing at all.

Tony pushed the rest of the pain away, he might be very dead if the god decided to throw him out the window. "Jarvis," He said while standing back up, glancing at his wrists to reassure himself he had the bracelets on. "Any time now."

The second he was on his feet again, Loki again grabbed him, this time by the chin, smashing his face between his fingers. Oh, not good. The window was right behind him.

"You will all fall before me!"

"Deploy." Tony said, watching at the blue light turned on in the other room. Oh, this really needed to work.

Loki raised him up like that and the inventor managed another, "Deploy!" before he was thrown clear out the window. It shattered instantly under the god's strength before mark Xll flew through the air, knocking Loki right off his feet.

Tony was falling through the air outside and feeling the ice in his veins only getting colder. It chugged along slowly and it was hard to breath, that might have been the intense fear from the fall though, admittedly.

After way too long, or at least it felt like, he could hear the suit behind him. It was reading his bracelets and quickly latched onto him, but the ground was quickly approaching. This would be one hell of a close call.

The helmet finally snapped over his face, maybe ten feet from the ground at most and Jarvis's ever helpful voice sounded in his ears, "Sir, your temperature has dropped 3.4 degrees and is still falling."

"Well, so am I, buddy."

Tony 's thrusters ignited and he instantly flew back up to the tower, startling people that were still on the street., "Sorry!" He threw over his shoulder on the quick fly back up.

Quickly, he found the exact window. Tony hovered there, watching at Loki picked himself up off the floor. "Oh, and there's one other person you've pissed off. His name was Phil." Loki raised his scepter and Tony raised his hand. His repulsor blast was ready must faster and he fired, knocking Loki back, the scepter falling out of his hands.

This of course was all Tony had time for. "Sir, your temperature has fallen 4.8 digress."

WIth a groan, he took off to help the other Avengers, shivers raking through him. "Yes, Jarvis, I've noticed."

The pain from the jabs was worsening and Tony wasn't sure how much help he could be. Panting, he finally found the others and made sure they were okay.

The battle passed in a painful flash, all the while, Jarvis was keeping tabs on his temp and his shaking intensified. He felt like he was freezing and out here in the cold wind, even with his heated suit, it was unbearable.

When the nuke came through, his almost fevered mind came up with the idea much quicker than he could have hoped and calling Pepper turned out to be a dead end when she didn't answer.

By the time he entered the void, his temperature had dropped 10 degrees and was still falling. The cold of space cut him right to the bone and he let the nuke fly. He watched as it hit dead center on the enemy ship and watched the explosion as his suit shut down. The pain and the ice that was forming on the suit was to much for him as he quickly started to fall through the darkness.

Everything went dark and his thoughts reached beyond him. He heard a voice, a small and almost silent voice, in his mind. He replayed the entire confrontation with Loki and that expression on his face, the resignation about the Chitauri, it wouldn't vanish to the back of his mind.

Afghanistan was suddenly on his mind as his fall continued. The torture that clouded his eyes whenever he looked too deeply in the mirror, it was in Loki's eyes. Maybe that was the other part of the expression he couldn't place. The rage right under the surface as he thought about the ten rings was right there in Loki as well.

The voice in his mind whispered thoughts that couldn't be his own, a fight that he wasn't having.

He saw the hulk running towards him and his anger snapped. "Enough! All of you are beneath me." Standing back up, he swept his cape out of his way, trying to regain his composure. "I am a god, you dull creature and I will not be bullied by-"

Hulk grabbed his ankle and he was beaten into the floor three times and then two more just for the fun of it.

He laid there in agony as the green berserker walked off, "Puny god."

The scream of Hulk startled him back to consciousness. "What the hell!"

Frantic, Tony looked around. He saw the Captain, Thor and Hulk all standing around with worried faces, even the Hulk seemed worried and that was certainly odd. "What just happened?"

Trying to bring some control back to the situation, Tony added, "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

The Captain smiled, that was a good sign, even if it was only there for a moment. "We won."

Tony sighed in relief, "Alright. yay. Alright, good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day." Still on the ground, Tony was exhausted and he didn't even know what was coming out of his mouth. He was in so much pain, the shivering was back and he just needed to talk, anything to take his mind off the cold and the pain.

"Have you ever tried Shawarma? There's a Shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."

Then of course, Thor had to ruin everything. Just like he always had, even since they were children. Huh, that was a strange thought. Okay, not going to think about that one.

"We aren't done yet."

Captain looked over his shoulder. "And then Shawarma after." Tony asked hopefully.

Apparently they weren't done, but there was no way Tony could do anything. "Guy's I hate to say it, but can someone else go capture Loki." Somehow, even with the dead weight of his armor, he managed to sit up. It definitely took all of his remaining strength. "twelve degrees, sir." Jarvis chimed in.

Thor nodded and began to wind him hammer. "He cannot be far."

Tony retracted his gauntlets and rubbed his face, rubbing his palm into his eye before pulling his hand over his face, "He's on the 56th floor. The Hulk beat him to a pulp. He won't be moving for a while."

Thor nodded and took off, but the comment caught Tony off guard and he just stared at his hand for a moment, Captain America noticed, "Stark, what is it?"

"Oh nothing." Tony said quickly. Just that was only a dream. There was no way...

"I have Loki." Thor said through the comm and Tony's' eyes widened. How did he know where Loki was, that had just been a dream!

"Great, hold him until Shield gets there, I think Stark might need a hand getting home, maybe some medical attention.

"I shall wait."

"Come on, Tony." He said as he hauled himself up and holding his hands out to the man in the suit of armor. Only a second of staring lapsed before Tony took his hand. He stumbled forward, right into Steve's chest and groaned. "Damn, I think I might have broke something."

From his spot, Tony couldn't see Steve's eyes widen as his forehead connected with his uniform. Steve instantly pushed him back at arm's length. His eyes scanned the other man quickly before he reached out and placed his hand on Tony's forehead, as if checking for a fever."Tony, you're freezing."

The inventor managed to force out a sigh through his slightly chattering teeth. "Thanks, Cap, tell me something I don't know."

"Was it space?" He asked and Tony latched onto the easy explanation. "Yeah, probably. There's no heat out there, you know."

Notes: So, this is a thing. A thought jumped in my mind from a prompt, but i twisted it around a bit. I have almost a full story in mind too. Please review and tell me if you like where this is going. I have never tried my hand at FrostIron so here goes nothing. New territory, weeeeee.