Chapter Text
Tony groaned, squeezing his eyes shut further in an attempt to ignore the painful throbbing of his head. He was pissed, he had thought the emergence of Iron Man and subsequent eradication of the Ten Rings would be enough to stop his kidnappings. But apparently, they never learned. The ice was new though.
He slowly opened his eyes to assess his surroundings. He was completely immobilized in ice and he felt something trickle down the back of his neck. Great, head injury, dark room without his suit, but other than that he was intact and seemed to be alone.
Tony was tired. He didn’t want to do the whole song and dance where the kidnappers made some ridiculous demand and he disagreed and got tortured. He had enough going on in his life between running the company, managing and cleaning up after the Avengers, and keeping his identity as Iron Man secret. It especially didn’t help that Tony had met with the Avengers earlier today to introduce the UN’s Sokovia Accords to vehement dissent from most of the team. He made a frustrated sound at the memory.
At least since Tony was running the meeting, he had told the team that Iron Man was preoccupied with SI business and had already signed the Accords. He wouldn’t have to worry about his secret identity as Iron Man getting out due to this latest kidnapping. Pepper and Rhodey would already be worried sick and pissed off about this kidnapping. Not giving them an enormous PR disaster to deal with once he escaped was the least he could do. Silver linings and all that.
But given that he was enclosed in ice and he had the ability to heat up water, he supposed a sensational news story about his escape was in order. For forty something years, as far as anyone knew, Tony Stark had no powers. Howard had made sure of it. It wasn’t that unusual, most of the world didn’t have powers and those who did either kept a low profile or were usually recruited into the government. But Howard wasn't protecting him from being used, no. Dear old dad thought powers were aberrant and not befitting the Stark heir. Of course, that only encouraged Tony to use them more when he was old enough to realize Howard was full of shit. In the privacy of his home, under the watchful eye of Jarvis, Tony practiced and he was actually good at using his powers.
And so he got to work. He whispered a quick apology to Pepper and the inevitable headache this would bring her and then focused on boiling away the ice trapping him.
Within minutes, the ice had dissipated to steam and Tony started looking for an exit. Just as he found a door, it sprung open by itself as someone slowly clapped from behind him. Tony spun around to see Loki emerge from the darkness, still applauding.
“Loki,” Tony growled.
“You’ve caught my eye for quite some while Stark. One of the most brilliant minds on Midgard, keeper of the Avengers. And now this? Such a great display of power and precision. I’m intrigued.”
“What do you want?” Tony gritted out.
“Oh, I was hoping to use you as bait to lure the Avengers. Iron Man is my favorite after all. Excellent flyter that one is. But since you’ve proven yourself more than capable of defending yourself against my magic, you’re free to go.”
Tony was dumbfounded but he wasn’t going to question it. As he ran through the door, Loki called out after him, “Though I am curious why you aren’t on the Avengers. With your intellect and such honed power, you’d make a worthy opponent. More than Captain America, anyhow.”