Jean looked out across the field.
The battle around them was still happening in pieces, Cyborg trading blows with a Kryptonian soldier, Captain Thunder driving back two more, Batman moving through the smoke. The Kryptonians who remained were the most capable of the ones Zod had brought, and they were making their accounting felt.
Kara was still burning through the six.
Barry was still on the ground, still bleeding with Thawne still circling him.
And Jean looked at all of it and thought about something Ethan had said before they came here.
About the Flashpoint and the inevitability of this timeline's end.
She felt it now and looked at the ruins of a city that had survived an entire alt-history war, and the handful of people still alive in it, and understood with the clarity that came only from direct witness what it meant for a timeline to be broken at its foundation.
This was what happened when history was rewritten without understanding what history was holding up.
'Barry,' she thought, and the thought was not unkind but it was very, very tired. 'Barry, what did you do.'
'If he saw this timeline, he saw many others like it.' Her eyes moved to the smoke. 'I need to apologise to him. When this is over. I need to tell him I understand better now why he is the way he is about certain things.'
Diana, kneeling in her chains, had watched Anna's enforcement of the peace on Arthur with wide, careful eyes.
Something in her had gone quiet since the white light was contained. She said nothing and only watched.
Then the portal opened.
Ethan stepped out of it with his coat moving and Elizabeth a step behind him, and he surveyed the battlefield.
His expression settled into something warm. "I am very proud of both of you," he said.
Jean and Anna heard it and immediately Jean crossed the distance to him at something approaching flight speed and hit his chest with both arms wrapping around him and her face pressing into his shoulder and she didn't say anything at first because the feeling in her chest was something that words would have been too small for.
The apology was rising in her throat anyway, forming itself against her will, and she started to speak it.
But his arms closed around her. "It's okay," he said, into her hair, "Don't be sad."
Through their connection to the Phoenix Force and empathy, words were largely ceremonial between them at moments like this. What he felt from her was a complex and honest thing, and what she felt from him was simpler and steadier and made the complex thing settle. She pressed her face more firmly into his shoulder and let the feeling move through her without fighting it.
A few metres away, Anna stood with her arms crossed and her expression doing something that was trying to be neutral and was not quite succeeding.
"And what," she said, after a pointed pause, "about me."
Ethan's head turned. Jean shifted slightly to his left side without being asked, and Ethan extended his right arm toward Anna with an expression that had not a single atom of hesitation in it.
"How could I forget," he said, "my cute southern Belle." A small, genuine smile formed on his lips. "Come here, my little Rogue."
Anna's arms uncrossed. She crossed the remaining distance and folded herself into his right side. His arm closed around her. She let out a breath she had apparently been saving.
Elizabeth, standing a few steps back, watched the three of them with an expression that was genuinely happy and also doing careful mental arithmetic about whether now was the right moment to mention that the battle was still technically ongoing.
She had almost arrived at a conclusion when the ground shook.
A heavy impact following the sound of something landing rather than falling.
They all turned to see that Kara had descended from the upper field, and she was holding in one hand, by the neck, an object that she then set down in front of her on the broken street with a distinct thud. It was the severed head of a Kryptonian soldier.
She looked at Ethan. "Any chance," she said, "you could help finish this."
Ethan looked at the severed head. Then at Kara. Then at his wives, still in his arms.
He sighed but did not let go of them.
"Of course," he said. "This war ends now."
The golden aura erupted from him in a wave that expanded outward with the patient inevitability of a sunrise, passing through the ruins of New Themyscira in every direction at once, touching everything, cataloguing everything and holding everything.
The telekinesis came first.
The few people on the battlefield stopped moving at the same instant, lifted slightly from the ground, suspended in the firm.
Kryptonian soldiers, the last Atlanteans and a final handful of Amazons. Victor Stone mid-swing, Captain Thunder mid-lightning, Batman mid-step through the shadow of a collapsed wall. Two speedsters. One ordinary woman with a rifle who had been firing at an Amazon and found herself suddenly, bewilderingly stationary in mid-aim.
Then the chronokinesis came. It moved through the people it touched like a warm current, finding the wounds and working backward through the sequence of their making, returning torn flesh to wholeness and fractured bone to integrity and blood lost to the veins it had left.
Then Matter moved according to Ethan's direction, ground appearing beneath each person in clean sections, the entire broken population of this battle arranged in a rough semi-circle before him in the time it took him to exhale. The Kryptonian ships, still burning above the city, folded into his inventory one after another with small, neat implosions of displaced air.
Then the golden aura receded and when it was gone, the silence that replaced it was the silence of people who had been in a war and were now standing in what felt, bizarrely, like order.
Ethan stood with Jean on his left and Anna on his right, both still close and watching the assembled survivors. Elizabeth stood behind them. Kara stood to the side, her arms folded, dried blood on her chin and absolutely no interest in removing it.
Facing them are Victor Stone, Captain Thunder and Thomas Wayne, standing in a line. Lois Lane who survived by pure luck is now beside Batman, her rifle held at low ready.
Arthur and Diana are kneeling in their chains, at the forward edge of the semi-circle.
Zod, Nam-Ek, and Faora-Ul grouped together, the only surviving Kryptonians. The few remaining Atlanteans and Amazons. Barry Allen. Eobard Thawne.
And Ethan used telepathy to hold them in place, leaving them unable to move or even speak without his permission.
Of the many hundreds who had entered this battle, this was what remained.
Victor turned in a slow circle, taking stock. His gaze moved across the gathered survivors and then settled on Thomas Wayne.
"If he had this much power the entire time," Victor said. "He could have ended this when it started. Why didn't he?"
Thomas Wayne looked at Ethan for a long moment.
"When you have that much power," Thomas said slowly, "you need things to keep yourself interested. You need to decide when something is worth ending, and when it needs to run its course first." He paused. "I think this was partly entertainment... And partly a lesson being given to someone who needed to learn it."
His eyes moved to Barry.
Internally, behind the certainty of his voice, Thomas Wayne thought something he kept entirely to himself. 'Too much power is its own kind of trap. I hope he knows the weight of it. I hope it doesn't turn him into something that this world — any world — can't afford.'
His jaw tightened slightly. 'For Bruce's sake, more than anything. If that ever goes wrong in the original timeline, Bruce is the one who has to face it.'
Victor processed this. His head moved in acknowledgement and he stepped to one side, positioning himself between Arthur and Diana, his cannon arm powered down but still very much present.
Barry Allen exhaled a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a cough, and he looked at Thawne with the expression of a man who has been waiting for a turn to come around and has watched it arrive.
"You're finished," Barry said.
Thawne looked at him. Then he lifted his foot and brought his heel down on Barry's injured leg.
Barry inhaled sharply through his teeth.
"Shut up," Thawne said pleasantly. He straightened and looked at Ethan with the expression of a man choosing to be interested rather than concerned. "How fitting," he said. "The power of an anomaly."
Jean's eyebrow rose. Anna's rose at the same moment, which would have been funny under different circumstances.
Ethan looked at Thawne, "Anomaly," he said. "You're talking about me."
Thawne's chin dipped in confirmation and smiled. "Ethan Carter. Founder of Aeon Biotech in the previous timeline. Quite the figure, historically speaking."
His hands clasped behind his back. "And yet, in the future I come from, there is no record of you." He tilted his head. "I've always found that curious. Allow me to intro—"
"I know who you are, Thawne."
The pleasantness in Thawne's expression shifted.
"I suspected, for a long time, that I wasn't present in your future," Ethan continued, "And I think the reason is fairly simple." His eyes moved across Thawne. "If I was there, you wouldn't be standing here. You wouldn't be standing anywhere, for that matter."
Thawne held his gaze then Ethan turned to Barry.
"I wanted you to understand more of this," he said. "The consequences of the Flashpoint. I wanted you to sit in what you made... But my wives are bored, and I am also done with this. So. Let's end it." He raised one hand with his palm facing Barry. "That said. Don't think this is simply over."
Two white circles appeared in the air before him — clean, geometric, rotating slowly in opposite directions, their surfaces covered in symbols from a notation system that predated the language being spoken around them.
Strange runes moved along their edges, then the circles turned, locked. And then, with a motion that suggested less force than a push, they moved forward and settled into Barry.
Barry felt it. His eyes widened slightly. Whatever it was didn't hurt — it sat somewhere below sensation, settling in like sediment.
"That is a very specific spell," Ethan said before lowering his hand. "If you ever create another Flashpoint and I mean ever under any version of the circumstances — it will activate." He let the pause sit for exactly long enough. "It will place you in a loop. Ten Flashpoints. Each one worse than the last. You will live through every one of them, in sequence, from beginning to end, and only once all ten are completed will you come out the other side."
The colour that left Barry's face went quite completely.
Thawne, still standing behind Barry, looked at Ethan with an expression that was evolving in real time from smirk to something more genuine.
He let out a short, appreciative sound. "I like you considerably more now, Doctor Carter," he said.
Ethan's eyes moved to him. "You won't," he said pleasantly, "for long."
The magic circle that appeared in front of Ethan this time was different from the others — constructed from different runes, drawing from different patterns, assembled with the particular care of someone building something that needed to be precise.
Thawne read the intent of it before he understood the mechanism, the same way animals read intentions before understanding actions, and he moved. Or tried to.
Jean's eyes turned red. Her voice arrived before Thawne's next step could fully form.
"Please don't move," she said, "My husband isn't finished yet."
Thawne went still but not from choice.
"Thank you," Ethan said and worked the circle with focused attention, adjusting, combining, cross-referencing patterns that didn't know they were related, arriving at a construction that did exactly what he needed it to do. He reached forward and pulled a small piece of fabric from Barry's shoulder — it had Barry's blood on it from earlier. He took a second piece from Thawne's sleeve. Both went into the circle's centre.
The runes flared, settled and the circle moved into Thawne.
After Jean let go Thawne, he looked at his hands. He flexed his fingers.
"What did you do—"
"Nothing yet," Ethan said with a smirk. "When Barry corrects the Flashpoint and the timeline resets, the curse will activate. After that, you won't be able to access the Speed Force."
He paused, "In fact, you won't be able to gain any powers at all. I made sure of that. And your IQ will settle somewhere… average—on a generous day."
His smirk widened slightly. "I've made it structurally impossible for any future circumstance to grant you abilities of any kind."
His expression did something that was almost gentle. "Congratulations on your new life, Thawne. I hope it's a long one. But your dream of reaching home?" He spread his hands. "Not in this lifetime. Or the next."
The silence was total.
Thawne's face moved through stages. The cognitive disbelief. The search for the error in what he had just heard. The understanding that there was no error. The feeling that came after understanding.
"Fuck you, Carter."
Ethan tilted his head slightly. "I'm flattered," he said, "but I'm straight. You can express your affection for Barry in the next timeline, though. I'm sure he'll appreciate the company."
Jean pressed her lips together and Anna turned her head away.
The sounds that both of them made were technically laughter, presented in the specific form that women use when they are laughing and also feeling it would be somewhat undignified to be caught doing it openly.
Captain Thunder turned to Victor and said, quietly but not quietly enough, "Remind me to never make him angry."
Victor said, without any inflection at all, "You will not need reminding."
Batman's eyes had not moved from Ethan for the last two minutes.
Ethan looked at Barry. "Run," he said. "Thawne won't interfere. He has larger concerns at the moment."
With a snap of his fingers Thawne's body folded. It folded inward, and every direction it folded inward in was wrong, and the sound he made was the sound of someone discovering that sensation could be more inventive than they had believed possible.
Barry, watching this went very still.
"The curse is dormant," Ethan said. "It activates on reset. So." He met Barry's eyes. "Run, Barry, Run."
'I have wanted to say that,' he thought, 'for a very, very long time.'
Barry stood. He looked at Ethan, and at Jean, and at Anna, and at the ruins of the world his accident had made. His expression was complicated, he did not like the curse.
He understood the curse. He understood why it existed and what it was protecting and that the fear it was designed to create was the specific fear that would keep certain disasters from happening.
He made a quiet promise to himself—once Ethan had calmed down, he would ask him to remove the curse.
He looked at everyone who remained. His head moved in acknowledgement of all of them, one by one. Then he ran.
The lightning he left behind was red and brief and then gone, and the sound of it faded into the smoke-grey air above New Themyscira.
Ethan turned to Thomas Wayne. "I'll make sure your messages are delivered," he said.
Thomas Wayne looked at him for a long moment. Then his head moved, once.
Kara was beside Thomas.
Ethan looked at her with the same attention. "Yours too," he said.
Her head moved in the same gesture Thomas had made.
Ethan released his wives gently and turned to face the assembled survivors — Jean and Anna a step on either side of him, Elizabeth a step behind, Kara and Thomas closing the loose group around him.
He looked out across what remained of the field, across Arthur and Diana still in their chains, across Zod and his two remaining officers standing in silence, across the last living Atlanteans and Amazons.
"Now," he said quietly, "let's make sure none of you will be affected after Barry reset the Flashpoint."
He activated his Chronokinesis, carefully shielding Jean, Anna, and Elizabeth from the effects of the Flashpoint reset.
Jean leaned her head against his shoulder and Anna stood with her hands in her pockets.
...
Meanwhile, Inside the Speed Force
Barry ran through and the Speed Force opened around him the way it always opened.
Barry ran at full speed—until another version of himself appeared right in front of him.
"Stop!" he shouted, grabbing his other self and dragging him out of the path.
The moment they collided, a blinding white light engulfed everything.
...
The ceiling was familiar.
Ethan Carter looked at it for approximately two seconds before he was fully aware of himself.
He turned his head and saw Jean asleep on his left, her hair spread across the pillow, breathing with the deep regularity of someone whose last few hours had been extraordinarily eventful.
On his right, Anna lay with one arm across his chest, her expression carrying in sleep the particular stubborn contentment that she sometimes worked to hide while awake.
Ethan lay very still for a moment. "Oh My God."
...
Author's note:
Hi guys, how's the chapter?
I have to admit, I'm not completely satisfied with the last four chapters. I tried using a different AI to correct the grammar, but it ended up changing a lot of things, so I had to go back and rewrite parts of it.
If you spot any mistakes, please point them out—I'll make sure to fix them.
Also, we'll be moving back to the Marvel universe next, and there's a surprise waiting in the upcoming chapter. Try to guess what it might be!