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Oliver yells in agony nearby. He's back in the midst of yesterday's chaos. A dream, it must be a dream. A trick his mind is playing on him, giving him foolish hope that he can change the past.
He has to try.
Bruce sees the robot aiming at Clark. Clark doesn't see it from where he's frantically defending a downed Green Arrow.
But Bruce does. He sees it and he can change the target.
He leaps in his path and takes the Kryptonite instead.
Clark turns at the muffled thump of Bruce's body hitting the ground and screams.
The last thing Bruce sees as his vision fades is more Kryptonite piercing Clark's chest.
Oliver yells in agony nearby. It's restarted somehow. Bruce has another chance, another run through the nightmare to see what he could have done differently.
This time, he instantly tackles the robot that would have killed Superman.
The robot next to it shoots Clark instead.
Bruce has heard Green Arrow's scream too many times now. This is too regular, too consistent. This isn't a dream, isn't his mind playing tricks on him. Which means that maybe Bruce can actually save Clark.
He tries everything he can think of, every tactic to focus the attack on him, to let Clark and Oliver fight their way out. He dies half the time, but doesn't care if it would only let Clark live.
But every time, Clark still dies.
It's something like 20 loops in before Bruce notices something odd. Clark doesn't react the same every time.
At first, Bruce had chalked it up to the butterfly effect and Superman's senses. Clark was constantly perceiving so much that of course he'd catch the slightest shifts and react differently due to that. It was a variable Bruce would have to account for in his plans.
But after so many of these loops, Bruce realizes that Clark reacts to things he had done in previous loops, as though he remembers them.
Maybe Bruce isn't the only one looping. Maybe he isn't alone.
Maybe Clark is still with him.
Oliver yells in agony nearby, indicating the start of another loop. Bruce is filled with a sense of hope he'd lost in the last dozen loops. Maybe he can get them out of this.
"Kal, duck! They have Kryptonite and it's a time loop!"
Clark drops over Oliver swiftly and looks at him with wide eyes. "DUCK YOURSELF!"
Beuce obeys instinctively, and a robot's scythe like arm whistles overhead. This hadn't happened in any of the previous loops.
"If I don't distract it by staying upright, that robot takes your head off!" Clark yells from his position over Oliver.
Oh. So it had happened, then. And this loop had started from Clark trying to save him. They'd been working at cross purposes the whole time.
The only way to get out was for them to both survive.
"Any time you're up you get hit by Kryptonite. I can take care of myself!"
"Then quit flinging yourself at robots yourself!" Clark barks at him. "I can't get a clear look!"
". . . oh!" Bruce ducks, and moments later, Clark's heat vision takes out a swarm of robots behind him.
Keeping low, they take out a number of the robots. Most of the ones that had killed them in previous loops were crumpled and sparking at their feet.
This was further than Bruce had seen the loop go. He squashes down the hope that maybe they'd broken it and survived.
As if to answer Bruce's wondering on whether they'd won, a giant green hand smashed the mass of robots. The rest of the battlefield looked similarly obliterated.
"You looked like you needed a hand!" Hal Jordan calls cheerfully. Bruce had never been more thankful to hear his friend's voice.
"We made it, then?" Clark asks, slowly getting up and bringing Ollie up with him.
"We made it." Bruce confirms, limping over to lean against Clark's shoulder. He is alive and warm and okay, and Bruce feels settled, as though the world was right again.
And it is, with Clark alive at his shoulder. Everything would be okay.