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Tony is drunk, but he's still an inventive genius. He makes the best of a bad situation
Tony was drunk, and angry. In large part he was angry because he'd been forced to break his AA pledge in order to defeat the Nameless but Really EVIL, Evil. He poked the huge body once more to make sure. Yeah. Dead, and more importantly, disarmed. The bubbling black sludge puddle of condensed Universal Evil it had shape-changed into numerous weapons was out of the corpse's reach and without a mind to shape it, harmless. Until another villain took it up.
He looked around the stony gray battlefield at the fallen bodies of Avengers, past, present, future, and alternate dimensions. He was alone again. Sometimes it seemed like he was always alone. Damn, he hated how self-pitying and melancholy he got when he was drunk.
The bodies began sliding back where they belonged, through rifts in the gray ground that wasn't really ground in this Void Between Realities, sinking through the River of Lethe. He'd been promised (by a Being who Tony couldn't quite remember, and couldn't quite forget) that they would be restored exactly as they were, in body, soul, and memory before they'd been plucked out of place for the battle. Which was nice except for the part where most of them hated Tony for morally dubious things he'd done that he hadn't wanted to do but which had seemed the lesser evil at the time. They wouldn't remember anything he'd done here to try to atone.
"It sucks being the Antihero, you know that?" he told the bubbling sludge. He was used to anthropomorphizing objects. Some of them were his best friends. The sludge probably did know what it was like to have circumstances dictate your actions. It was evil at the moment, but it hadn't chosen to be evil.
He prodded the blob with his latest incarnation of repulsor technology and pondered what to do with it. He could deliver it to Asgard, or NEO-SHIELD or any of the various Good Guy organizations around the universe, and hope they'd keep it locked up, but really, as the scion of a line of weapons' inventors, Tony knew that would be temporary. No, it would have to be neutralized, and neutralized NOW. "Tony's stuck with the dirty job, again."
He went over to the nearest Thor and laid his hand on that Thor's hammer. "I know I'm not worthy to wield you in battle, but if you let me use you to prevent battle, I swear I won't tell anyone else." He let his energy armor fall, leaving himself naked because he recalled a dim history lesson memory of Vikings going naked into battle... no, wait, that was Celts. With... blue paint? Maybe he saw it in a movie. Wow, he was so plastered. He laid his fingertips on the hammer and waited. If Mjolnir wouldn't help, he'd have to figure something else out.
The hammer trembled. Tony wrapped his hand around it, and it came up, no heavier than the hammer he'd used to forge his own armor, so long ago. "Thank you." Tony turned to his work, grateful that he was still drunk. Smithing with a hangover was a real bitch.
He had a hammer, a river, and plenty of indestructible stone to use as anvils. He'd worked with less. He couldn't make anything fancy, but that was all right, all he needed to do was make it harmless. He poured Lethe over the black bubbling until it forgot it was evil and cooled enough to be malleable. "Good boy," Tony said as he began working the metal.
Six months later Loki appeared in the Avengers' dining room, freezing them (Bruce wasn't there, having gone off to minister to a tribe in the Amazon basin or possibly Newark) in their seats with blasts from the Cask of Winter. Tony was the only one standing, as he'd come from the kitchen with dinner. He stood, frozen to the waist, hands full with the huge black cast iron paella pan he'd been bringing to the table. (After an experience with an omelet that will not be described, he'd learned how to cook at least basic meals. Really, frying isn't rocket science.). "Loki, don't make me do this."
"I am a GOD!" Loki sneered as he stalked over to Tony. "Mjolnir itself could not harm me!" He stabbed a jumbo shrimp. "Unless you mean to poison me?"
Tony sighed, brought up the pan and beaned Loki over the head, sending hot paella everywhere. The Aubusson carpet would never be the same. Loki blinked in confusion. "Ow." He looked around wildly. "Oh. I am... oh. I'm so sorry!" He waved his hand and the Avengers were free again. "Thor, can you forgive me?"
"Now, that's cognitive recalibration," Natasha remarked. "Will it hold?" she asked Tony while Thor was assuring Loki that they would always be brothers and other sentimental stuff that made the other Avengers look away. Well, except for Clint, who'd got his bow and had an arrow centered on Loki, just in case.
"Absolutely. The Frying Pan of Fate never fails." Tony looked at the paella-strewn carpet and the sad puppy face Steve was giving him. Steve hated wasting food. "Ok, I'm ordering pizza."
