A/N: Well here it is everyone, the last chapter in my fanfic odyssey. I just wanted to thank everyone for reviewing, favoriting, and following this story. It's definitely the most involved fanfiction I've done and all the reviews were awesome motivation to keep writing.

If anyone is interested in reading more of my stuff, my other current project is a third set of 20 one-shots (More Plotbunnies).

~Chapter Nineteen~

It was like being trapped inside of a tornado. All Bruce could see was black and it felt like there was diamond dust blasting across his face, flaying off his skin. Someone grabbed his arm. He turned and could only just make out the glint of Diana's tiara and gauntlets through the dust and wind and darkness.

"Earth's mightiest heroes." Darkseid's laugh was a jackhammer to the skull. He was holding a bleeding, broken Metron by the neck and as they watched he tossed the unconscious New God into the storm. "You should have stayed in exile. I shall grind your bones into meal."

Bruce reached into his pocket and felt the smooth, slick edges of the cube. He had to get closer for it to take down Darkseid.

Darkseid swept out his arms and lightning cracked through the clouds down to the scorched earth. Boom tubes opened, tiny bursts of light hundreds of feet above their heads, and hordes of parademons rained down on them.

Clark took down two with a burst of heat vision. Bruce saw in a flash Darkseid's brilliance—no sunlight meant that Clark's powers had a time limit. Bruce ripped through two monsters with a pair of batarangs.

Something crunched under Bruce's feet. He looked down and saw bleached white bones. With the blackness and the storms he'd almost forgotten that this was Earth. He paused and it gave a parademon the chance to slash him across the face with a rock-hard first. A two-foot-tall cutlass rose above his head.

Clark swiped it out of the way. "Don't think you want to be out of action again, huh?"

Bruce rolled his eyes and leapt over the heads of six or seven soldiers, gaining maybe a yard or two of distance. "Save the jokes for after we defeat the interdimensional madman, please."

Clark almost laughed but he didn't have the chance. Sixteen parademons all leapt on him at once, like a hellborn football team. Bruce glanced back for just a second, but Clark could help himself. The machine needed to get to Darkseid.

He could feel it thrumming warm and alive in his pocket, like it knew where it needed to go. There was chaos all around. He'd completely lost track of where Diana was. His whole mouth and nose were filled with the stench of sulfuric acid, his eyes watering down his face.

Claws sliced through his clothes but the sting barely registered. So hard to breathe in the smoke. Diana was in front of him, green parademon blood splashed across her bodice. He tossed her the cube.

****#*****

Diana snatched the cube from midair. It was practically shaking with vibrations now, tiny blue cracks breaking through the crystal skin. A parademon reached for her but she didn't even give it a chance—just sliced right through it with a swing of her fist.

Darkseid saw her and his red eyes went dark. Something froze inside of her. She knew what those eyes could do—hit her with omega beams that would shoot her straight into an Apokoliptian torture chamber.

An image bore into her mind, not hers but a gloating sick desire: herself tied up, naked and beaten, upside down with a ball gag in her mouth.

"You digusting cretin," she whispered, becase she knew the god could hear her over the wind and the howls and the battle screams.

Clark flew up a little bit ahead of her, so close to Darkseid that they were just a hair's breath short of there.

She held the cube up while she dislocated a parademon's jaw, and he took it.

*****#*****

The cube was burning and shaking. The blue cracks had widened into ribbons of light that would blind you if you looked right at it.

Clark didn't care. He could feel the lack of sunlight bleeding away his powers, feel that he had maybe ten minutes left of the kind of strength that Darkseid could appreciate.

The parademons got thicker. He swerved to avoid bolt after bolt of hard, broiling omega beams. But all he needed to see was the black-burnt ground beneath him and the hot anger boiled up.

He threw the cube as hard as he could at the center of Darkseid's chest.

It was the only time he would ever hear a god scream.

*****#******

Bruce woke up to the phone ringing. There was sunlight streaming through the windows. He was lying on his back on the bed, fully clothed. His head felt like it was full of cotton balls. All he remembered was sulfur.

He picked up the phone.

"Did that really happen?" It was Clark, sounding slurred like he'd barely woken up. "It doesn't feel like a dream."

"Did Diana call?" Bruce hit the alarm. Five in the morning.

"Yeah. She said she woke up in her apartment. Everything here looks fine." Clark paused. "That had to have happened, right? No way our brains made up twelve different alternate universes as some sort of crazy dream. Because my brain wouldn't want to make some of those up."

"Yeah." Bruce got up and looked out the window. The rolling greens and trees of the Wayne property spread out as far as he could see, just as they always had. But he knew he'd seen them black and decimated. "I think so. But I think the cube put it back."

"Are you sure?" Clark asked. "That we didn't just get hit with some sort of magical-dream-spell or something? It wouldn't be the first time."

Bruce felt something like a piece of paper crinkle in his pocket. He took it out and unfolded it to read the scrawling cursive.

"Bruce?" Clark asked, after a good minute of silence.

"It's real," Bruce said, and hung up the phone.

*****#*****

Alfred awoke to the sounds of pans clanging around in the kitchen. It was quite the bizarre sound—in fact, he couldn't remember the last time anyone but himself had actually cooked in the Wayne household. Equally bemused and concerned (who knew what a concussed superhero to get up to) he stepped downstairs.

Bruce was in the kitchen, mixing something in a glass bowl. Flour and butter and chocolate chips were smeared across the counter.

"Master Bruce?" Alfred asked carefully. If it had been Dick or Tim he might have shrugged the sight off, but this was certainly something to behold. "May I ask what you're doing?"

Bruce jumped and turned like he hadn't realized Alfred was there. He held up a piece of paper. "I…I found the recipe for Mom's cookies." He looked around him at the state of the kitchen and faltered. "Guess I made a bit of a mess."

Alfred smiled and took the recipe. "Well, sir, I'm certain there will be less mess if we finish them together."

"You don't think I can bake?" Bruce asked, with a sarcastic edge on it.

But he smiled too.