Chapter 1

This day would have been great. Seriously great, Tony thinks, while staring at the ceiling of his one least favorite conference room in the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. Today, he would have even considered, for once, not starting drinking before noon. But considering what is going on right now, and it is not even eight A.M., Tony is not too optimistic about not drinking today. In fact, a glass of hard liquor would help him now. He could just sneak out of the room and grab one of the bottles of vodka he has hoarded all over the place. But one look at Nick Fury and he knows that the one-eyed man wants him to be sober. So Tony Stark has no other option than to stayseated on this really uncomfortable chair in this dark, small conference room where Nick Fury always breaks the bad news to them.

"You can't be serious" Natasha blurts out, when Fury finishes. Tony has the same thing in mind and he is genuinely considering having a brain tumor that gives him the strangest sort of hallucinations. But he had JARVIS checking on him some days ago and there is no way a brain tumor is growing that fast. In his mind he goes through everything he has eaten in the last 24 hours instead, he searches for possible traces of psychedelics, but no, all he has eaten have been some scrambled eggs Bruce brought him when he decided to stay in his labs for a few days. Other than that, coffee. But neither Bruce nor his coffee maker would drug him, would they? And he is actually sober at the moment, so there can be no way he is hallucinating.

But why the fuck does he still hear Nick Fury's voice then, explaining that Loki is to be banned on Earth?

"Repeat that. I think I just had a hallucination." Normally, Fury would roll his eyes at him or at least hint at a smile. But he doesn't. Shit just got serious.

"Odin" Fury repeats, and with a side glance to Thor who sits on his side for once looking serious, he adds "Allfather, has decided that Loki Laufeyson will be banned on Earth without his magic. It is up to us what we do to him, although Odin has made his disapproval towards us killing his son quite clear." Fury clenches his teeth. "Trust me, I don't like it either."

"My brother may have caused your realm great sorrow, but you have my word that he will rehabilitate." Thor doesn't look as stern anymore as moments before, but there still is a deep line between his eyebrows.

"He and the Chitauri have killed hundreds of people. You can't just send him back here!" Tony noticed Bruce going just a little bit green around the nose and laid a hand upon his shoulder in a calming manner.

"My brother was in rage. He just recently learned that he is not Odin's biological child but a descendant of a race he loathes. I have spoken to him and he does not seem to understand the consequences of his actions. My father wishes to give him a chance to understand what he did and living with your race is how he wishes him to do so."

This time, Tony can't stay silent. "You don't actually believe he will understand anything, do you? Your brother is nuts. He's a psychopath. He made it clear what he thinks of us Midgardians. And why does your daddy think it's a good idea to send him back to us of all things? Couldn't he just be shipped off to the Frost Giants?"

"Unfortunately, Loki destroyed half of their realm. He is a traitor in their eyes and frost giants treat traitors with death." Thor still doesn't even grin a bit and the grave look on the demigod's face is giving him goosebumps.

"Well, unfortunately, Loki destroyed half of New York City, including my own fucking tower –the one I just finished building up again. He is considered a war criminal. Do you know what we do with most war criminals? Right, death sentence." He isn't sure if this is even true for alien gods who want to take over the Earth, but he doesn't care; they don't need Loki, they don't want Loki. At least he doesn't.

"Shut up, Stark. I didn't call all of you here to discuss if Loki will be shipped down here, I called you because he is going to arrive in a few hours." Fury sighs and sits down. "I don't like it either, but we have been made an offering that we can't refuse."

"So taking care of Loki is just part of a deal? What kind of offer is it that you would say yes to something like that?" This time it's Clint who is speaking.

Tony takes a look around. Everyone seems to be pissed off. Bruce looks calm and has his eyes closed, but Tony can see a faint green shimmer on his face. He absent-mindedly pats the doc's hand and hopes for the best. Agent Romanoff has her lips pursed and looks as if she is ready to strangle someone. She is staring in Fury's direction, but Tony nevertheless shifts back in his chair until he is half hidden by Bruce. Hell, even Steve looks disgusted by the idea of having their favorite God of Mischief over for vacation. And Steve almost never puts off his overly friendly and understanding super soldier mask.

"Odin is willing to hand us back the Tesseract."

Oh fuck. Tony feels dizzy and next to him, Bruce leaps to his feet and bolts out of the room, alarmingly green. Even Thor looks surprised at this announcement. Which doesn't make sense since Thor surely has served as a mediator between Fury and Odin. But when has the huge demigod ever made sense?

"You still want weapons" Tony spats out. An obvious observation, but it is all his mind revolts around right now.

Fury nods. "We want to prepare ourselves for possible invasions. The events of the last couple of months have shown us that we have to arm ourselves for defense. And you've made it very clear to not produce any weapons for us."

Fury is actually right. Tony had made it clear to never produce so much as a gun for S.H.I.E.L.D. But that was before all of this. He would have gladly manufactured every kind of firearm, bomb or grenade, just to prevent S.H.I.E.L.D. to retrieve Loki and the Tesseract.

"Why didn't you tell us… me before? I would have changed my mind."

But Fury pretends he can't hear him and continues, without even glancing in Tony's direction. "When Loki arrives today at five p.m. I want each of you ready. He will be escorted to S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters; this means none of you takes an eye off him until he arrives. Understood? You will take shifts to guard him and bring him food until we can be perfectly sure he cannot use magic." Thor grunts. This grunt probably means 'Do you question the word of Odin Allfather?', but Tony can't be exactly sure about it, because he feels himself getting up, knocking over his chair in the movement and he feels his fists pressing on the table before Thor has the chance to say something.

"You can't do that. You can't just send a war criminal, with or without his powers, back to Earth and have us taking care of him. We have fought him, remember? Hell, he pushed me out of a window. Of my window in my tower. You can't actually ask me to go anywhere near this crazy ass psychopath!"

He doesn't know how long he has been standing there, trembling, not able to move. Fury has left his outbreak uncommented and has dismissed the meeting before walking out of the room. It is Bruce, his hair dripping wet but otherwise seeming fine, who taps him on his shoulder. "Sorry, I went to the bathroom to cool my head off. The other guy wanted to throw Fury out of the building." His smile is small and lopsided, but Tony can't help to smile back when he turns around.

Sighing, he sits down on the table, arms crossed. "I can't go near him."

"I'm afraid you have to. You did sign a contract, Tony. And unfortunately, there is a section about guarding criminals. These assholes thought of everything." Bruce leans against the wall opposite to Tony. "But it's not only about Loki, isn't it? We all hate the idea of having him back, but you made quite a scene here. I could hear you even from across the hall. What is it all about?"

He can't talk about it, so he shakes his head and runs his fingers through his hair. "Let's go back to the tower."

Bruce drives the car back to Stark Towers and Tony seriously doubts they'd make it before noon. The doctor is driving like he wants to pass his driving test, he is cautiously keeping to the speed limit and even maintains safety distance. Tony would love nothing better than to whip the steering wheel out of Bruce's hands (he is apparently using both his hands to steer a car), but he fights back the urge to do so and instead fiddles with the radio until he finds some loud punk rock. Bruce turns the radio off an instant later.

"Why didn't you let me drive again?" Tony moans, when the other one stops at a crosswalk to let an old woman cross the street. Absolutely pointless. With Tony driving they would have been home twenty minutes ago.

"You didn't look ready to drive a car. You know, trembling and being all panicky." Bruce's eyes are fixated on the street before him.

"Come on, Bruce, then why are you driving like that? Do you want to win the award for driver of the year? Because there is no such thing." Bruce actually laughs at this but sobers up after a short moment.

"I can't risk causing an accident. Wouldn't be so great to go all big and green in the middle of Manhattan, last time it happened I caused quite much damage."

It makes sense, Tony admits. Nevertheless he is glad when they finally arrive at Stark Towers.

"I'm taking a nap. See you in a few hours," Bruce mutters, parking the car and handing the keys back to him.

A sudden wave of nausea overcomes him when he thinks of later and he instinctively wraps a hand around his mouth.

"Yeah, see you at Loki's welcome back party," Tony manages to say before storming out of the car.

He still feels uneasy when he enters the elevator, but the urge to puke is gone. He doesn't wait for Bruce to catch up with him and the doors of the elevator close before the doc has the chance to squeeze through them. Something is definitely wrong with me, Tony thinks, panting. He leans against the mirror that covers one wall of the elevator, waiting for the strange feeling to go away, but it doesn't. It feels like something squeezes all the breath out of him and it makes him lightheaded and his legs turn to jelly. When the elevator finally arrives at his floor, he stumbles out of it and almost doesn't make it to his bedroom, suddenly exhausted.

"JARVIS, wake me up soon enough" he calls his A.I. before drifting off.

He is surrounded by green. He sees nothing but a pair of unnaturally green eyes and he is drowning in them – the piercing green is everywhere and suddenly it is Loki, standing right in front of him, with his strange Asgardian clothing, his sleek black hair and his pale skin. He waves a hand and there are more and more Lokis, slowly striding forward, closing in on him.

"You cannot defeat me, human." None of the Loki-replicas move their lips, but now Tony hears laughing and it grows louder until he falls at his knees and covers his ears.

"I can defeat you. I have an armor. I have weapons", he whispers and when the laughing doesn't stop he lets out a cry. "I am Iron Man!" His voice resounds, making it sound like a war cry. Tony is alone again, kneeling on a black surface, everything is black, black, black. He closes his eyes, but there is Loki, inside of him, grinning like the maniac he is.

"You are no one without your armor, mortal."

With that, he is in his tower again, standing by the window. He checks his wrists, his bracelets are gone. Loki is next to him, a glowing ball of blue energy burning in his hand. His eyes, his unbelievable green eyes that make him unable to look away, to move, to do anything besides standing there in shock make Tony shiver when they pierce through him. Loki smiles, the corners of his mouth curve to a frightful grimace. He says nothing, but in his head Tony can hear him. You are no one. Over and over again.

Then Loki touches his arc reactor, fingers curiously brushing it. "Let's see how well you can fly without your armor, Man of Iron."

Tony feels the glass shatter behind him, pieces of it piercing his skin. He spreads his arms and all he feels is the wind, slashing him open like a blade while he falls in almost infinite space. Above him, Loki is still grinning widely, when he finally hits the ground.

When he opens his eyes again, he can't see anything but bright sunlight. "Where am I?" he murmurs, shielding his face off with his hand.

"Sir, you are located at the floor of your bedroom in Stark Tower. It seems you had a nightmare, Sir." Is this amusement in JARVIS' voice? Coughing, Tony sits up, and indeed, he is in his bedroom, right next to his bed. He must have fallen from it, when…

He shudders. No, he doesn't want to think about the dream that he just had. Not at all. But somehow he knows he will have the same dream over and over again, and he is sure that actually seeing Loki in person in a few hours won't make it better.

"How long do I have until…?" he starts and thankfully JARVIS is the most intelligent A.I. there is, which is of course because he has made him himself, because he doesn't even have to complete his sentence. "Exactly two hours and twenty-three minutes, Sir. And Dr. Banner suggests you have something to eat before you go. Preferably at his place. "

Twenty minutes later, he knocks at Bruce's door, two sandwiches in his hand. Bruce temporarily lives with him, which means he has a whole floor for himself, but they are in the same building, which means they are almost living together. How he managed to persuade Bruce to move in Tony still hasn't figured out, but as far as he can remember, it included a whole lot of alcohol and a huge sum of money he donated to Doctors without Borders. He also asked Natasha, Clint and Steve to move in with him, but none of them seemed willing to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, which he totally could understand. Not.

"Hey, bud." Bruce opens the door to his - apartment, and grins. "I see JARVIS delivered you the message." He grabs one of the sandwiches and goes back to the living room to sit in front of the huge plasma TV without asking about what happened to him earlier in the car, and Tony is thankful for it.

"There is a documentary about Norse mythology on history channel. Check this out, there is Thor." He points his finger to the TV where some blond guy with a ridiculous helmet and a hammer in his hand is riding a horse.

"Oh, and look, Loki. Oh come on, this man does look nothing like Loki!" Bruce laughs out loud and Tony asks himself how he manages to find this funny with a few hours left before they are meeting the actual Loki again while he is tensing and tries to concentrate on his sandwich.

"Or we could just watch something different. Hey, reruns of The Big Bang Theory!" Bruce says, with a side glance to Tony and switches channels.

Four episodes of The Big Bang Theory and a few bottles of beer later, JARVIS announces it is time for them to leave soon. Tony again feels his body growing tense. He has actually forgotten of what they are going to do for a short time.

Green eyes. Maniac smile.

He shudders. "Tony, what are you doing?" Bruce asks, putting the bottles away and turning off the TV.

He barely manages to wave a hand at him. It is like something is sitting on his chest, pressing against his ribcage and keeping his lungs from being filled with air. His eyes widen, when there is no more air going inside his body, he tries to suck it in but he fails, he tries to call Bruce for help, but he can't move, can't breathe, can't think.

When he feels something seizing his shoulders, jerking him upwards, his first instinct is to struggle against it, but he can barely move and his stomach is about to revolt.

"Tony? Tony!" He can hear Bruce's voice, but he is far, far away and it is barely a whisper against a loud, piercing scream that just doesn't stop.

When Bruce slaps him in the face, he notices that it is himself who is screaming. He lets himself fall back on the sofa, breathing hard. His stomach is still revolting but Tony doesn't care anymore. He runs his fingers through his hair over and over again, but it doesn't make sense – any of it, because he hasn't been dreaming about the fall out of the window for weeks and he hasn't been afraid for weeks. But still, all he can see when he closes his eyes is a frightening pair of green eyes. He needs his Iron Man suit right now. Maybe the Loki in his dreams has been right. He is nobody without his armor.

Is this what he is afraid of?

"What the hell was that?" Bruce asks, gaping at Tony. "You hyperventilated. You fucking screamed my ears off."

He asks himself the same question, but actually he already knows the answer.

"Panic attack" he manages to get out before he pukes on the coffee table.