Fates Change Chapter 44, a justice league fanfic

Waltzing Matilda

"Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
I got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrow
A couple of bucks from you?
To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me."

Tom Traubert's Blues – Tom Waits

Smallville

The battle continued. If anything, the forces of Apokolips were more desperate now that Darkseid was gone. Steppenwolf and Kalibak eagerly moved into the power vacuum. They abandoned the attack on the station and concentrated all their forces on the little farm outside of Smallville.

Batman kicked open the front door and provided cover as Zatanna and Artemis carried Lashina into the house. The other heroes were a bit surprised by this.

"What is she doing in here?" Dinah asked. "She's one of Darkseid's Furies."

Zatanna and Artemis set Lashina down on the couch. She slumped back, tears rolling down her cheeks, her eyes still vacant.

"I don't know what she is anymore,' Zatanna admitted. "We couldn't just leave her outside."

"What happened to her?" Dinah asked, moving over to them.

"Hell happened to her," Artemis said.

"I'll watch her, you go fight."

Everyone turned to see Aphrodite and Barda standing in the doorway. Suddenly Wally came to a complete stop.

"My God, you're gorgeous!" He immediately said.

"I didn't realize you believe in us,' Aphrodite replied.

"Gorgeous women, yeah, I believe in them." Wally said with a smirk.

"Wally? Could you come here for a moment?" Zatanna asked. When he did, she gave him a smack. "Don't be a douchebag!"

"Ow! Jeez, welcome home, Zee,' Wally complained.

"If you're done staring at the beautiful woman, we still have a fight on our hands,' Batman reminded them. Everyone nodded in agreement.

"I'll be helping Wonder Woman and Supergirl against the Furies,' Barda said, a she moved out the door. "I'll remind them what a real Fury is like!"

"I'm with her,' Artemis said. "I'm not a Fury, but this is a chance to test myself against worthy opponents."

"I'll hang back and help the gorgeous woman with Lashina,' Wally offered. This earned him a smack from both Zatanna and Dinah. "Ow! Or I could go outside and help deal with the parademons. They don't hit as much."

He was out the door in the next moment.

"Aphrodite?" Batman said.

"Yes?"

"If you could watch out for young Mary, we'd appreciate it."

"Of course."

"Um, well, thank you." With that Batman went back outside.

Dinah looked at Zatanna.

"Batman tongue-tied? That's a first,' she said.

"Well look at her,' Zatanna replied, motioning towards Aphrodite. "She's hot enough to make you want to switch teams."

"Did something happen in Hell you want to tell us about, Zee?" Dinah asked.

"Oh, shut up!"

Smallville

Lyla slowly got back to her feet. She had been sure she was about to die and then he was there. He'd save her, just as she always imagined he would. Maybe the shadow was right, maybe there was still a chance. Maybe the future wasn't written in stone, but changeable like everything else.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Lyla moved back towards the fight. It was her fight now and she would help end the threat.

Billy and Mordred used their new powers to help Shayera clear the skies of parademons. Jonn and the Lanterns were moving up to confront Darkseid's fleet and the two joined them. The tide of the battle seemed to have turned and the Justice league was on the offense now.

Diana and Hippolyta confronted the Furies. Artemis and Barda now joined them making it an even fight. Four on four, they fought, moving at top speeds, clashing again and again.

Batman was the field general on the ground, directing everything. Clark's taking Darkseid out had changed the momentum and the heroes fought with a renewed sense of hope. Bruce had to give a small smile as he thought about it. That was Clark's greatest power, the ability to inspire hope in others. Sometimes that was the difference between winning and losing.

Bruce had his own reasons for feeling hopeful. Selina's text about Masami had been like a ray of light into the darkness. He had put so much effort into reaching her, than when she was cut down it was as if he had taken the blow too. Tragedy had always been a part of his life. He knew it always would be; yet he continued to fight against it. Each new loss though, took its toll. It pushed him deeper into the darkness just as pursuing Masami had. Yet in pursuing her, he had fought something else, hope. That was what he had used to try and reach her. He thought he'd failed, but perhaps, just perhaps he hadn't.

She had a lot to answer for. The murders wouldn't just go away, but if she were actually trying to change, he would offer any help he could. Like his friend, Clark, Bruce believed in second chances. He had to or it was all for nothing.

Smallville

Dinah unleashed another powerful blast of her cry and took out several parademons. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins and the adrenalin working in every part of her. As strange as it might seem, this was where she felt most comfortable. Things were clear-cut, good versus evil, black hats and white hats, heroes and villains. She'd grown up watching her mother do this and as long as she could remember she'd wanted to follow in her footsteps. She was still young, only twenty-three, but this was the part of her life that needed no extra thinking. It just felt right to do this.

As she moved fluidly through the parademons, her martial arts training kicked in without a thought. She was focused on what she was doing, but still other thoughts came to her mind. Dinah wonder if her fellow heroes felt the same what she did? Was the private part of their lives the more complicated part like it was for her? It was so strange really; the public at large considered battles like this the hard part. While it was a struggle, for Dinah and she imagined for others it really was simple. It was sort of like a fire fighter. They saw a fire and knew exactly what they had to do. The League and its heroes saw a threat to the world and they reacted just like a fire fighter did to a fire.

The real struggle was in their personal lives. They were just like everyone else, stumbling around in the dark trying to figure everything out. Just because they had powers that didn't mean they had any more incite into how a relationship was supposed to work than anyone else. If anything, their powers and job made it more difficult to just have the same things everyone else did.

Dinah thought of Ollie and Clark. She had been out with both of them. They were as different as night and day, yet she wasn't sure she really understood either of them. They each posed unique problems and that wasn't even considering her own hang-ups and issues. It seemed relationships were just as difficult for heroes as they were for everyone else.

Perhaps she'd been naïve when she started thinking she could have it all. Like many people before her she had slowly come to the realization this was difficult at best and some times it was impossible. Nothing is perfect in this world. Utopias are the things of myths and stories. Life is much more like a bar fight where everyone takes their shots. No one walks through it unscathed for if they do they aren't really living.

Poets and dreamers can talk about beauty and truth, nobility and honor and make it all seem possible to reach so sort of perfection. The rest of us slowly realize through our own experiences that life is never going to be perfect. It's about struggling, embarrassment, foolishness, sadness, mistakes, regrets, stupidity, anger and lost chances. It's also about laughter, friendship, love, success and happiness. It isn't a thread that runs through our lives, but pins on a larger map. Moments define us, both good and bad. It's about walking into a club feeling really good and then tripping over the first step and falling in front of everyone. It's about making love and without words knowing you fit with the other person. It's about sitting around a table with friends telling silly stories and laughing. It's about those moments that make up our memories.

Dinah didn't have it all figure out yet, but she thought she was starting too. She had friends and people she loved. She'd made some mistakes, but she didn't regret most of them. The future was out there and those pins on the map, those moments would pop up randomly when she least expected them. If it didn't work out with Clark, she would be sad, but she would also know that wasn't the end of her story.

Some times it isn't the destination, but the journey that mattered.

Smallville

Diana dodged Bernadeth's blade and backhanded the Fury. She turned to see whom she could help. She saw her mother, Hippolyta battling Mad Harriet and Artemis matching blades with Gilotina. So many things had changed in Diana's mind recently towards those two women. It seemed so long ago that her life was on an ordered path and then everything had changed.

Had it really been only a few months since the tournament? The betrayal, the confusion, the anger had almost overwhelmed her back then, yet she had managed to make it through. Artemis, what would Diana have done if she hadn't been there for her? They had grown as almost sisters, yet now they were something more. What exactly they were was still to be defined.

Hippolyta was her mother, her actual mother. That was both shocking and exhilarating for Diana. Now that she knew the whole truth a seismic shift had happened within Diana. All her life she had grown up thinking one way, but now she had to readjust her beliefs. She was only now starting to understand the sacrifices her mother had made for her. There was still some anger over a few things that had happened recently, but it was the big picture she tried to concentrate on. Her mother had been willing to sacrifice her life to save her. No words could express her love better than that.

So as she turned towards Steppenwolf and Kalibak, Diana felt a renewed sense of purpose. She would concentrate on this battle now.

Epilogue:

(A/N – I know there is probably more to this story, but I'm going to end it right here. I was going to end it with Clark, Lyla and Lashina taking off on one of the Javelins to find themselves again. Through trying to help someone else, Lashina and Lyla, Clark would rediscover who he was and had been all the time.

I was going to jump five years into the future and show Mary, Mordred and Billy as young adults.

I was going to have Hippolyta remain as Wonder Woman and Diana as Queen. I was going to have Aphrodite join the League.

Then I realized definitive ends weren't what this story was meant to be about.

I'd like to thank everyone that read this, especially those that hung in there through the several different versions. I do really appreciate it.

I kept coming back to this story for one reason really, me. I wanted to finish it. People having a problem thinking this was Superman and Hippolyta fiction or Mordred sleeping with his mother and so many other things sidetracked it in the previous versions.

It was never meant to be about any of those.

The first version was going to be about Mary Marvel and Mordred and the difficulty in making the transition between teenager and adult.

Then something happened.

I had an accident. I slipped on the ice and was injured. I realized in that moment how quickly things could change. That's why I came back to this story over and over.

Now it's done. Parts of it I'm satisfied with and some I'm not. It was done for me and really only me and now it's finished.

I'm stopping here because to go further would be kind of counter productive. This is just a slice, a moment in these characters lives. To give this story a definitive ending seemed as if it would go against everything the story has been talking about in all the previous chapters. What happens next is up to you the reader to decide. It could go the way it seemed to be going or everything could change by one of them simply slipping on some ice.)

Coda:

Here's the last scene of this story.

The javelin was all packed. Clark carried the limp body of Lashina into the sleeping area and got her under the covers. The trauma she'd experienced in Hell would take a long time to recover from, but he'd decided he would be there for her and give her a second chance. He tucked her in and then went back to the outer door. Lyla was standing nervously just inside of it. He wasn't sure what they were going to do, but perhaps as he went looking for himself, she would find out who she was finally.

"Why don't you get unpacked and I'll get us ready to take off,' he offered with a smile.

She returned it shyly, nodding her head in agreement.

"Okay."

He watched her walk slowly towards the sleeping area. She was still a bit of a mystery to him, but they would have plenty of time to talk. He was just about to close the door when a familiar voice called to him.

"Clark."

He turned to see Bruce moving towards him.

"Are you sure about this?" Bruce asked.

"Yes."

"Alright then."

They didn't seem to know what do say for a moment.

"Bruce?"

"Yeah?"

"I'll be back. That's a promise."

"Good to hear."

They shook hands and then Bruce took something from his cape and handed it to Clark.

"A little music for the trip."

"Thank you."

"I'll see you when you get back."

Bruce turned and walked away. Clark closed the hatch and got the trip underway.

They had left the solar system with no real destination in mind. The ship was on autopilot. Clark picked up the CD Bruce had given him and slipped it into the sound system. Lyla was standing behind him as the music started.

"That's lovely,' she commented.

It was Rod Stewart's version of Tom Traubert's Blues. Clark raised his hand towards Lyla.

"Dance with me."

"I don't know how,' she admitted.

"Then it's time you learned."

She took his hand and he eased her into his arms. They slowly began to sway as the music played.