Hey there everyone! This is my prequel fic to another fic I'm going to be writing called "The Melting Point of Iron." Hope you all like it! This is the first chapter, and please please please don't hate me after the end! Not all is as it seems! It's written from Tony's POV. Please review! And don't hate me. Please?

As I grabbed the nuke and redirected it, I, Iron Man, Tony Stark, knew this couldn't possibly end well. For one thing, I was holding a nuke, a nuclear weapon of mass destruction! For another thing, I knew very well that this whole venture could possibly kill me. I was about to sacrifice myself to save all of New York, but that didn't mean I liked it. As I neared the portal in the sky, I came to realize the closer I got, the closer I was to death.

And as I entered the space-realm of wherever I was putting the nuke, that was when I remembered that the mark VII Iron Man suit didn't have a built in oxygen air system. Why hadn't I built in that oxygen system into the Mark VII?

It was my last thought before I threw the nuke at the alien's home base with all the energy I had left in me. Then I closed his eyes and the darkness took over.

They looked at the sky expectantly, waiting for Tony to come flying back down to Earth… literally.

"Come on, Tony…" the Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, whispered into the open air. She needed him to come back before she could with Loki's spear-scepter thing, but there was no sign of him.

Suddenly a command was issued at her from her earpiece that kept her connected to the other Avengers. It was Captain America, Steve Rogers, telling her to close the portal. But Tony was still up there… And as much as everyone pretended to dislike Tony, he was what kept the group together. He wasn't the leader, obviously, because that was Steve's job, but more like the snarky second-in-command. At heart, he was a friend to everybody, even if on the outside he appeared to only get along with Bruce because they could understand each other's science talk. She couldn't close the portal on her fellow Avenger. Good thing Natasha's eyesight was better than anyone else's, because only she could see the little speck of red and gold against the darkness of the portal, and knowing Tony would make it, she poked the Tesseract with the spear and the portal shut, Tony falling earthward.

But when it was noticed that he was falling and not flying, they began to become concerned. He should be flying, not falling, something was wrong.

Before anyone else had the time to react, the Hulk jumped up, grabbed Tony, slid down the side of a building, and lightly dropped the metal-encased man on the ground. Steve, Thor, and the Hulk stood surrounding the unmoving figure. Steve tore off the gold-colored faceplate to show Tony's closed eyes. He checked for a pulse; it was faint, but it was there.

"What are we going to do?" Thor asked, "We need to revive him!"

In answer to that, the Hulk roared, loud as he could, enough to wake any normal person...

But Tony didn't move.

I opened my eyes to greyness.

I sat up from where I had been sitting on what I guessed was the floor of wherever I was. I only guessed it to be the floor because that's where gravity was keeping me anchored; all around me was grey, stretching on endlessly forever. There didn't appear to be any walls or a ceiling to where I was, just endless grey. Fantastic.

"Hello?" I called out, "Where am I, what's going on, how did I get here, why am I here, wherever here is?"

"Here is, here is… here…" The room responded! Or was that just an echo of my own voice? I called out again.

"Hello?"

"Hello, 'ello… lo..." I was right. It was just an echo. I was utterly alone.

"Not alone."

Wait! That was another voice! From behind me somewhere… I turned around, only to see more greyness. And what it said… It said I wasn't alone. But I had said as a thought in my head that I was alone, right? So how had this voice known that I had thought I was alone? Unless I imagined the voice…

"No, Tony, I'm not imagined. I'm real."

I whipped around to see a rather beautiful woman, wearing a white dress, tall and rather intimidating, and normally, nothing intimidates me. "Who are you?"

Her dark eyes scanned me from head to toe, and I shivered a little. I could almost feel her gaze. It was a weird sensation. It was a feeling of warmth, almost like the look like someone would give you when they haven't seen you in a very long time and they were happy to see you; yet, there was something a little off about it; something not right.

At this point I realized I still had my Iron Man suit on; curiously though, the faceplate was gone, the metal that kept it in place frayed as if the faceplate had been ripped off. Weird.

"His pulse is weak," Captain America told the others over the communication system, "Someone get a medic. Tony's still unconscious, he needs attention. He's barely breathing, he could have injuries we don't know about, hurry!"

The Hulk smashed his fists into the broken road in displeasure. "Hulk want Iron back. Hulk no like when friends die."

Thor consoled the upset Hulk. "All will be okay, friend. The Man of Iron will not die. We cannot let him, because he is our friend."

Natasha smiled, interjecting. "And friends don't let friends die."

Clint came in to the conversation. "What's this about Tony dying?"

Natasha, still on the roof of Stark Tower, replied. "After Tony came crashing back to Earth he didn't wake up. He's barely breathing and may be in critical condition for all we know. He's not dying, exactly, but if he should be okay. Nobody is dying."

Tony had nothing to say about this, of course. He just lay there, unconscious, as the medical team lifted him and the gold-titanium alloy Iron Man suit onto a stretcher.

Meanwhile, as much as they hated to leave him, the other Avengers went off to meet Natasha at Stark Tower, where they would deal with the evil villain that caused this whole mess in the first place; Loki.

I repeated myself. "Who are you?"

"I am the ruler of this land, the In-Between," stated the Woman in White, as I felt like calling her.

That got me thinking. What was this "In-Between" she was talking about? I assumed it was the name for where we were, although why anyone would want to rule a big expanse of grey was beyond me. "Well, why is that?"

"Because it is what I have been assigned to do. By whom I know not, why I have been given no indication, but it is my duty nonetheless."

Well, okay. "What is this "In-Between, and what am I doing here, then?"

She smiled. "Why, Tony, you're about to die."

I blinked at her in shock. Well… this can't be good.

Like I said, DON'T HATE ME! It's not as it seems! Really!

Review please!