Disclaimer: DC characters property of DC Comics and DC Universe. I'm merely borrowing.

A Lonely Place

Chapter 1

May 19, 2010:

He should have been quicker. He should have lit the damn cave better. He should have made sure he got up safe. Why couldn't he have used the elevator? He should have made sure he did. All this could have been averted. Master of contingency plans, detective, strategist, fool. A Batman who protected his city and more, but couldn't even ensure the safety of his butler, his mentor, his...friend. Now he sat watch over the old man in a garishly bright hospital room, listening to the constant beeping from the monitors. The tubes coming from Alfred's arms and face looked unnatural, almost organic growths in themselves. Bruce was reminded of the last fight with Ra's Al Ghul and his stomach lurched. No, Alfred couldn't... he wouldn't. The voice that told him Thomas and Martha Wayne did, so many years ago, was pushed as violently out of his head as he could. It kept coming back though, snaking through his mind.

"Alfred... please.."

A low continuous beep was all that answered him. As nurses and doctors rushed into the room and past him, Bruce heard nothing, felt nothing. When the pronouncement came, he simply nodded and walked out of the building, not bothering to shield himself from the massive downpour that shattered through the streets of Gotham. As he drove back to the Mansion, Bruce ignored the buzzing of his cell phone. Missed call after missed call: Barbara, Jim, Dick, Tim, Selina, Clark, Diana, one after the other, the phone wouldn't stop ringing. The hallway stretched for miles before he reached the living area, his cell still buzzing in his pocket. All he could see was the green flatline of the monitor back in the intensive care treatment ward. He took the phone out, knuckles white as he gripped it. Clark. Now the house phone was ringing too, so deafeningly loud through the silence. He flung the cell phone at it, knocking it off its wire and sending both clattering into the gloom.

How long he sat there hunched by the side of the wall he did not know. Even when the dampness of his hair had all but disappeared, he still ascribed the wet droplets dripping off his chin to the rain.

2009:

The carnage was unbelievable. Clark Kent was used to his fair share of overturned tanks, exploding vehicles and toppling skyscrapers, but this could not even begin to compare to what he saw before him. Coast City had been completely obliterated. Ash rose from the streets in thick, agonised clouds. Mongul had been thorough. Horrifically so, as all Lanterns were too far from Earth, called away by a false emergency. They arrivied only when the mass of damage had been done to Hal Jordan's original home. The Green Lantern had plummeted like a stone through the sky, the shock rendering him unable to control his ring. Kyle Rayner had managed to catch hold of the grieving man before he crashed straight to the ground. It would have been no surprise to anyone if he went mad straight there and then, turned ballistic and destroy Star City where Green Arrow and a team of Leaguers had been deployed with great speed to counter the attacks of Parademons unleashed upon it by Granny Goodness. Darkseid's continued absence had only slowed the eventuality of another attack by Apokolips. Two hellish worlds teaming up against the blue green planet was a possibility to be expected, but it didn't stop the damage from being hard to take in.

It wasn't just the west coast either. Over the communicators the same was happening in Metropolis. The Metrotower provided enough resources to commit to that area, with more in the Watchtower against any Parademons who decided to go beyond the earth's surface which they had been beamed to via boom tubes. The strength of the League had been no match for the initial surprise attacks though. Clark clenched his jaw on remembering a comment Batman had made about it being 'too quiet recently', though the man had seemed glad for that, said it gave him added time to work on new equipment. Since the battle with Darkseid, Bruce had become all the more obsessed with harnessing technology in the face of rogue superpowers. Perhaps even before that, and Darkseid just made the necessity all the more apparent. He had passed off the comment as Bruce being characteristically pessimistic, who was to know how prophetic those words would be?

"Kal, Tokyo is being targeted as well, along with Singapore in South East Asia, I'm heading there now with Captain Atom and a few others. J'onn has sent others to Beijing, Dehli and Kasnia. Mainly flash raids and bombings by the looks of it. This all feels like it's distracting us from something bigger," Diana's voice through the comlink sounded as puzzled as it was strained.

"Some distraction, Diana! Bit big for that isn't it?" Flash's voice came up over the link.

Diana continued, "Why just go around committing mass destruction without any demands? Why not take over the Watchtower? They've all but ignored that. I don't like this." Superman did not like it either, but for now he concentrated his frustration on pounding the Parademons to dust. A yell echoed around him, and he saw Hal Jordan rise, bathed in green, sweeping his ring in an arc that caught the multitude of Parademons within the coast and sent them through a portal.

"Boom tube." He heard the Lantern say, "To the Source Wall. May they rot beyond even the comfort of hell."

Touching down beside Hal, Superman spoke, "We need to get to Metropolis, they seem to be concentrating their attack on there now. You don't have to come.. they need folk up in the Watchtower to help coordinate things as well." Give the guy distraction. Losing a city, losing a planet, it didn't matter, it was all the same, the same cutting devastation that threatened to wipe your mind. Hal looked up at him with a rueful smile.

"No Supes, it's alright. I'll stay here. Crowd control, damage control, you name it. Take the other Lanterns. With those over in Star City, we'll be fine here." A nod later a blue blur fading into the distance was all that was left of Superman.

The comlink crackled again. "I know what's going on," the dark voice of Batman came out a harsh growl.

"Brilliant, care to share?" the sound of frequencies changing could be heard as Mr. Terrific routed all Justice League communicators and announcement systems to Batman's comlink. His voice boomed over the speakers,

"It's our old friend Braniac, but this time he's found yet another person to team up with. My old friend, Ra's." The voice darkened further as it continued, "The project is called Apocalypse, I don't think I need to explain further. Any hands to spare should make their way to Gotham, stat. Batman out."

Supeman dived straight towards the blood red sky in the horizon. A battle through a dark stormy night, how fitting, he thought to himself as raced through the clouds towards the heart of Gotham. The dome of the Batplane zoomed into view, sleeker and faster than before.

"Nice plane. I see you've made some upgrades."

"You haven't seen anything yet." The dome opened and Batman jumped out with a jet pack on his back. Only he had no cape on, a metallic vest around his torso instead. Mid air, components shot out from it, wrapping around him to form a large exoskeleton in dark grey and black. He was soon flying alongside Superman.

"Or maybe you have, what with that x-ray vision of yours."

"Nice suit. Very big. No cape?"

"Unnecessary. We going to chat here all day or take down that part synthoid madman?"

"Have you any idea how much I hate that robot?"

Ra's Al Ghul stood surrounded by chaos, his daughter beside him. The metallic tentacles protruding from his body glowed an unearthly yellow, as if Braniac was feeding off the effects of the Lazarus pit's liquids itself. "The streets will run with blood as red as the sky. You, my pitiful Detective, will be crushed under my hand personally. And You, Kryptonian, will watch your world be destroyed, again."

"I've heard that speech before, freak. And you were defeated then, or didn't your memory banks store that piece of information too?" Superman grit out. Tentacles whipped out and stretched towards them, stabbing through the air and into the steel of buildings, causing them to release whiplash tentacles of their own.

"Defeat does not exist within my vocabulary. Failures are but a test of stratagem."

All around he could hear the Leaguers once again being mobilised, like the epic battle just a few years earlier. The Lanterns led by John Stewart were razing through them as fast as possible. Cadmus had arrived on the scene in their aid, soldiers with guns designed to take out the unique bio-mechanic growths Braniac produced. Darkseid had been unstoppable, but did not have as quick the blitz like methods already executed on the planet. Ra's tendency for patience and planning had suited the machine fine, able to divert attention from beyond Gotham before showing himself.

"When I revealed myself in Luthor, my upgrades had not yet been complete. Before complete immersion in Darkseid's brainwave patterns, the fool had been distracted by that trinket from the Source. Now that I have bided my time and acquired enough knowledge through my galactic travels, I have created the ultimate solution to the fulfilment of my programming. Do you know what is built in this matrix, Detective? I'll give you three guesses." Two circles of machinery on either hand of the suited seemed to be generating a growing blackness between them. "No?" Ra's continued at Batman's silence, "Anti-matter. To create one must first annihilate, and that is what I seek to do."

"You talk too much, Ra's." Batman said finally, ducking away from a stream of metal coming his into his path," And both of you discounted a flaw to your plans." The ball of darkness continued to grow, and chunks of debris began to swirl in the city around them. Batman spoke again, "You forgot about humanity's spirit."

The creature did not get a chance to respond.

"I'm sorry, Father," said Talia as she slammed a glass ball into the circuitry surrounding Ra's Al Ghul's neck. It broke, letting loose the liquid containing millions of nanobots which set to work. The man-synthoid screamed in agony, and Batman had just enough time to grab hold of Talia before the darkened ball within Ra's hands imploded, then released itself, dragging reality along with it.