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custommadeazula · 5 months ago

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“I GUESS THAT PLOT ARMOR ISNT SO THINK ANYMORE”?!??!

how could you do this to me @maccreadysbaby I trusted you with my feelings!

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: emeto, violence, gore, major character death (ive always wanted to list that)

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

I don't have any words for you guys except I'm sorry and I'm crying too

part fifty-three

❝ DENIAL ❞

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 12:49AM

BENTLEY LED BELLAMY OUT OF HIS CELL AND INTO THE HALLWAY, WHERE EVERYBODY ELSE WAS WAITING IN THE ELEVATOR, HOLDING THE DOORS OPEN FOR HIM.

“Go,” Bentley said quietly, ushering him along toward the doors. Bellamy was still crying softly, (And, honestly, Bentley was just about two seconds away from bawling his eyeballs out, too.) Rockie was just waiting outside the elevator doors for them, fidgeting anxiously with the keycard he had.

Bellamy glanced back at Bentley when they approached the elevator, and Bentley rubbed his back reassuringly. “Go ahead. It’s going to be okay.”

With a quiet hiccup, Bellamy wiped his eyes and moved forward. Koa reached out for him, drawing him into the elevator and resting his hands on his shoulders to keep him there.

“Get off campus immediately. You’re going to get your powers back when you get to the surface, so if anybody tries anything, kill them,” Rockie ordered to the group, reaching into the elevator and tapping the keycard there. “We’ll be up soon.”

“You’re not coming?” Bellamy asked suddenly, his brown eyes lingering on Bentley’s face, wide with dread, with fear.

“I… I’ll be up soon,” Bentley replied. Rockie pushed a button on the inside of the elevator and stepped away, a piercing beep cutting through the air.

“What?” Bellamy muttered, seeming almost startled, his eyes flicking to the elevator’s panel on the inside, then back to Bentley in a panic. The doors started closing and Bentley saw Koa hold tight to his shoulders to keep him from running back out, a few sad sobs ripping their way out of him as the doors slid shut. “No, Bentley! They'll kill you!”

The doors closed fully, and the machine whirred to life, leaving Bentley and Rockie in the white hallway alone.

With an exhale, Bentley looked down at his socked feet, lingering for a moment in the silence. What if that was the last time he’d see one of them? Varian? What if Varian didn’t wake up? What if it was the last time he saw Vera? Or Koa? Or Valor? Or Summer? Or Bellamy?

Bentley flinched when Rockie’s gloved hand came to rest on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Bentley said nothing, but gently shrugged his hand off. “Fine.”

Rockie sighed heavily, turning and starting back down the hall, toward the elevator that led back to the main part of the facility. “Asten and Layla are in the medical wing already — I saw them being escorted in there along with some other kids,” Rockie shook his head. “They're moving so fast I guess they decided to cut out steps of the protocol.”

Bentley blinked at him, turning and following closely behind. “So what you’re saying is-“

“They’re probably already getting drained. The process takes about four hours, they've been in there for maybe thirty minutes. Kids... typically start to die about three hours in,” Rockie explained quickly. He made it to the elevator and tapped the keycard on the panel, summoning the elevator back down to them. “And now that security is looking for us, it’s gonna be one hell of a fight to make it there. They’ll shoot on sight.”

Bentley watched the elevator doors slide open, nodding to himself. “Then let’s... stay out of sight.”

“Yeah,” Rockie scoffed, stepping into the elevator. Bentley followed. “Simple.”

“It is simple, when you have me,” A fluttery falsetto came in Bentley’s head. “Hey. Sorry I’m late to the party.”

“Charlie,” He whispered, settling into the elevator and turning his head slightly away from Rockie. “Where have you been?”

“What?” Rockie asked.

“I kept her distracted for a little bit, but then she realized it wasn’t you there,” Charlie explained with a soft sigh. Rockie pushed buttons in his peripheral. “So I went about screwing with the guys who watch the security cameras and made them see nothing. As well as routing all people away from you in the halls, while simultaneously fighting for my life because the Secret Keeper was trying to murder me inside my own head. You’re welcome.”

Bentley exhaled heavily as the doors slid closed and the elevator dinged. That's why he hadn't seen anything? Anyone? That's why everything had gone so good? Because of Charlie?

“Thank you.”

“Are you losing your mind right in front of me?” Rockie questioned, waving a gloved hand in front of Bentley’s face. “Who are you talking to?”

Bentley glanced over at him with a soft sigh as the elevator kicked into its ascent. “It’s complicated.”

Rockie just blinked at him.

"Go on, explain it," Charlie urged.

Bentley sighed heavily. “The Secret Keeper, the telepath? She's like an alter ego forced into a girl's body, so there’s, like, two different people inside of her. The original girl, Charlie Reins, uses the Secret Keeper’s powers to talk to me,” He explained quickly as the elevator rose up the shaft. “She said she’ll help us, but you have to do what I say.”

"Help?" Rockie scoffed.

"Yes. She can read minds and see the future like the Secret Keeper. She's the only reason I made it through this place last time," Bentley continued.

Rockie narrowed his eyes at him, and a long moment of silence came where Bentley glanced anxiously at the elevator doors. Rockie hummed quietly to himself for a minute, glancing around the tiny room. “Are you lying to me right now?”

“What?” Bentley questioned incredulously, scrunching his face up in Rockie's direction. "No, I'm not lying. I'm not like you."

It looked like Rockie debated on saying something, but decided on sighing instead, looking away from Bentley and crossing his arms. "You can stop with the cheap jabs now, they're getting a little old."

The redhead glanced over at him. “Sorry, I just assumed you stopped caring about my opinion when you walked out on us.”

Rockie suddenly turned, and Bentley didn’t even have time to react before he grabbed him by the front of his jumpsuit and shoved him back against the elevator wall with a thud, standing over him unsettlingly. Bentley'd forgotten how tall he was. “If I didn’t go with them, they were going to kill you all, one by one, until I caved,” He hissed, the damn near most venomous sentence Bentley had heard from anyone since he moved into Redwood. “But if I had known you were all going to be fucking assholes about it, maybe I would’ve let them.”

Bentley wedged his hands up between the two of them, channeling all his currently available strength into shoving Rockie in the chest. He stumbled maybe a foot or two away. “Don’t touch me.”

For a few moments, neither of them said anything — they just looked at each other. Rockie’s green eyes were glowing like they always did, but somehow they were different. Bentley wasn’t really sure how. Almost like some aspect of them had been stripped away, peeled off.

Rockie crossed his arms tightly. “I didn’t even do anything to you,” He mumbled, his voice strangely small, his eyes drifting down to the floor. “You're acting like I shot you in the foot and tossed you in a cell myself. All I did was walk away.”

Bentley crossed his arms tightly, too.

“And that was enough,”

Another moment of silence passed.

“When people are scared, they show you what they really care about,” Bentley exhaled lightly, eyes drifting to the floor, then back up to Rockie. “And you walked away.”

“So I’m the bad guy now, for not wanting to die? For not wanting you to die? Is that it?” Rockie questioned, flicking his hands out to the side. “You don’t seem to understand, Bentley. When they said I would be punished for staying, they planned to kill you all. It’s been the deal since the beginning — if I betrayed them, they’d kill everybody I cared about. It never mattered before, because I never had anyone…”

Bentley didn’t say anything, just watched Rockie look back down at the floor, dragging the toe of his tennis shoe there. “Hate me if you want to... But I saved your life by walking out. And I'd do it again.”

Suddenly, the elevator jolted to a very abrupt stop with the loud sound of metal scraping on metal, knocking both Bentley and Rockie off balance. Rockie stumbled into the wall and Bentley nearly fell into him.

Both of them, eyes wide, looked around in a panic.

“What the hell?” Rockie muttered.

“She had them disable the elevators,” Charlie said into Bentley’s head with an irritated sigh. “But the others made it out before they did. Don’t worry. I’m working on it.”

“They disabled it,” Bentley repeated, glancing around the small white box they were trapped in. “Charlie said she’s working on it.”

Rockie moved for the doors, trying futilely to shove his metal gloved fingers in the crevice between them and pry them open. Bentley glanced up — there was what looked like an emergency hatch there on the ceiling, a square outline among the white, but they didn’t need it if Charlie was going to help, right?

He glanced back down at Rockie, who was still pulling on the doors, almost frantically.

“They won’t open. We’re probably stuck between floors anyways,” Bentley said. Rockie didn’t say anything, but kept tugging and pulling at them, not even sparing him a glance.

“Rockie,” Bentley started, taking a step to the side in a bid to see his face. He furrowed his brows when he realized that Rockie was suddenly breathing in a familiar manner — quick, and shallow, like Bentley when he got too stressed out.

“Rockie?” Bentley questioned, taking another step to the side. “Are you claustrophobic?”

“No,” He gritted out, still prying at the doors.

Suddenly, a stab of pain ripped through Bentley’s skull, and he reached a hand out, resting it on the elevator wall to support his weight.

“You think you’re so clever, getting Charlie to distract me. Who’s to say this isn’t all part of my plan? That it’s not all supposed to happen like this?” The Secret Keeper’s voice came in his head, and she laughed; a bubbly, sinister sound. “The babybird’s stuck in a cage while his friends are dying. You’re playing right into my hand, Bentley.”

“Get out of my head,” He ordered softly, bringing his hand up to his right temple when a spike of pain stabbed him there. He didn't see Rockie look back at him.

“It isn’t that easy,”

Suddenly, the elevator melted away around him, replaced with the white abyss he’d grown so accustomed to. With an irritated exhale, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked around at the nothing in the room.

"Well? What're you gonna show me?" He questioned, throwing his hands out to the side. “Get it over with already.”

The Secret Keeper laughed. "Eager, are we?"

“I have somewhere to be,” He replied with the shake of his head. “So, what is it? Asten bleeding to death? Layla with a flatline?”

“Look at you! Growing a spine!” The Secret Keeper chided, fizzling into view only a few feet away from him, giggling and beginning to circle him, slowly, like a vulture. “Baby Bentley isn’t such a baby anymore! It’s a far cry from that ten year old I met four years ago who vomited when I first showed myself.”

“What the hell do you want?” Bentley asked, turning in a circle as she rounded behind him, following her with his eyes. “Why do you insist on being a constant pest?”

A separate voice suddenly came, a whisper among the white; a familiar whisper — Charlie. So faint the Secret Keeper didn’t seem to hear it. “Bentley, don’t believe what she shows you. She can’t kill me if weren’t not in the physical world.”

“I think you should ask yourself that question,” The Secret Keeper sneered, reaching out and dragging her fingers across Bentley’s jawline and chin as she walked. He brought a hand up and whacked hers away; he didn’t really know what he’d expected, for it to feel real or for him to phase right through her, but to his surprise, he was able to slap her hand away from him.

She chuckled at him. “You’re welcome. I’m the one who brought this out in you, you know. I made you this way.”

“You have nothing to do with who I am,” Bentley scoffed, turning as she rounded him. “My family made me who I am.”

“Your family?” She laughed. “You finally stepped up and became brave when you were facing me eye-to-eye on that rooftop. You only grew a spine to defy me. You don’t need a spine to live with the perfect little family — you don’t grow one that way. You grow one through trials. Fighting.”

“I-”

“Even if you were to win, Bentley, you would have my scent all over you for the rest of your life. I’ve left my impression on your personality — you’ll never, ever, ever be able to get away from it,” She explained, not even allowing him time to speak. “I’m part of you now, Babybird. My memory will always be there, crawling across your skin, running through your veins. After all, we’re both just villains, aren’t we? Puppeteer?”

Bentley felt himself tense for a second, but he shifted his weight in an attempt to hide it, blinking in a bid to rid his memory of the name.

“Ooh, struck a nerve?”

“Don’t call me that,” Bentley ordered, his gaze drifting down to the white floor.

“Why? It’s who you are. Pieces of your father, pieces of me — you could be unstoppable, if it weren’t for all of those dreadful emotions you can’t seem to contain,” She chuckled. “I show you the simplest things, and you crumble completely.”

Bentley just watched as she slowed to a stop in front of him, twisted stitched and bleeding smile still stretching wide across her features. “By the way — I have someone for you to see.”

She held a hand out by her side, and smoke swirled under it. Charlie materialized there. She was on the floor on her knees, no longer in her purple dress, but a white jumpsuit like the one Bentley was in.

Bentley inhaled at the sight of her. Her blonde hair was red at the ends with blood, and her jumpsuit, once solid white, was now three quarters crimson. Her face was busted up and scraped and bruised so bad she hardly looked like herself, shallow, precise cuts from a knife arcing up from either side of her mouth to imitate The Secret Keeper’s signature smile. The cuts made almost half of her face red with blood, and it was still coming, running down her neck and all over the rest of her. Her blue eyes were dull, and she wasn’t really looking at him. Or anything. She was just kind of… staring off.

She can’t kill me if we’re not in the physical world.

Bentley, though the sheer amount of blood threatened to make his world swirl out of focus, merely drew in a breath.

The Secret Keeper held out her opposite hand, and the same dagger she’d tried to stab Bentley with appeared in it. Chains came from the abyss above them and latched onto Charlie’s wrists, jerking her arms up above her head.

She can’t kill me if we’re not in the physical world. Bentley forced himself to remember her words. She couldn’t kill her. She couldn’t kill her. She couldn’t kill her.

The Secret Keeper stabbed her in the chest directly in front of Bentley and twisted it with a sickening laugh.

Bentley’s stomach lurched at the explosion of red that immediately stained her jumpsuit even more than it already had, and the blood-curdling, strangled sounding scream she let out made something writhe beneath his skin.

“Don’t react!” Her voice came, a whisper, but he was already snapping a hand over his mouth in a bid to quiet the sudden and intense wave of nausea that made him feel really sick. The Secret Keeper was just laughing. At Charlie. At the knife. “Put your hand down! Be unbothered!”

Bentley snapped his hand down by his side, keeping his lips pressed into a firm line — the last line of defense should his body actually decide to make him throw up. Could he even throw up in the white place? Or would he just be throwing up in real life?

The Secret Keeper pulled the knife out, splattering blood on her face in the process, and she looked over at Bentley. Charlie had gone slack and nearly unconscious in the chains.

Bentley swallowed hard, forcing the nausea down, forcing the terror off of his face and out of his head so maybe she couldn’t feel it. He replaced it with hatred and disdain instead.

She couldn’t kill her.

He crossed his arms over his chest, trying really, really hard to keep his body language natural and free of tension while she was looking at him. With blood all over her face.

“If you react, I’ll kill you myself!” Came Charlie’s whisper, and then a second later: “Okay, inappropriate joke. I won’t. But you get how serious I am! I’ll work to keep her out of your head, but you’ve gotta keep all that disgust off of your face.”

Bentley drew in a breath, trailing his eyes across the blood on her face and pretending it didn’t make his stomach churn unsettlingly. “Are you finished?”

“Oh my God, Bentley!” Charlie whispered, sounding pleasantly surprised. “You’re such a fucking savage.”

I’m literally about to vomit, he made himself think.

“Yeah, well, don’t!”

The Secret Keeper, evidently still hung on his, quote-on-quote, savage question, stepped forward. Her eyes went colder than Asten’s old cell, and she dropped the dagger, the weapon exploding into a puff of smoke when it hit the floor, disappearing entirely. “Excuse me?”

Bentley lifted his brows at her. “Are. You. Finished? I have shit to do.”

The Secret Keeper cocked her head at him like a dog, taking a step forward, without a word.

“Get out of my head,” Bentley demanded, taking a step toward her. She creased her brow at him, almost like he’d… done something she hadn’t expected.

“What?” She growled, her cold gaze turning sinister very, very quickly. She started inching forward; dragging her feet across the floor toward him.

Bentley didn’t move. “I said get out of my head.”

The Secret Keeper didn’t speak; she only twitched. One of her eyes, and her left hand, like she was feeling for something that didn’t exist. A knife, Bentley assumed, since he was so royally pissing her off.

“Get out of my head!” He repeated, stepping forward again. The Secret Keeper looked down at his feet, like she couldn’t believe he was getting closer to her.

She stepped forward, too. “Who do you think you are, speaking to me like that? Why-”

“Get out!”

On the second word, Bentley gathered all the courage and bravery he could muster to step forward and shove her as hard as he could. She wasn’t very big, so she actually staggered maybe a yard away, and stumbled over her own feet, and then fell, and when she hit the white floor-

He jolted back into the real world with a gasp, standing in the elevator, one hand braced on the wall, the other laced in his hair.

At once he remembered the literal stabbing he had witnessed, and the bloodcurdling scream. He’d watched her stab Charlie straight in the chest. Like, stab.

He turned on his heel, dug his fingers into the stomach of his jumpsuit, and threw up a rather pitiful amount of bile in the corner of the disabled elevator.

Rockie, who had been sitting in the corner near the door, diagonal from him, moved with a soft: "Oh, shit."

Bentley's head was throbbing with the same murderous migraine he'd forgotten in his panic earlier; but it was a newer, worse pain. The room threatened to spin with every attempt to open his eyes, and his adrenaline began to be replaced by a toxic exhaustion, clawing up his ankles and making it hard to focus.

Rockie was suddenly touching him, one hand on his back and the other holding tight to his left arm, keeping him from swaying.

"You don't look very good," He oh-so-helpfully stated.

"Don't feel very good," Bentley murmured back, screwing his hand up in the stomach of his jumpsuit when it threatened to lurch again. He kept trying to open his eyes but everything just kept swirling. "I think I might faint."

"What? Please don't," Rockie begged, his head dipping down so Bentley could've seen him if his eyes were open. He could've swore he sounded... desperate, or afraid, or something. He couldn't tell just then.

It was about at that point that Bentley's legs decided that they didn't want to work, and they gave out beneath him; the only thing keeping him from hitting the floor was Rockie's grip, grabbing him firmly by the shoulders.

"Okay. Okay," Bentley vaguely heard him mutter. Rockie moved Bentley carefully, until his head came to rest on something that felt suspiciously like his shoulder, his arms looping around his back gently but tight enough to keep him from falling. "Okay. We'll just stay like this for a minute. That's cool."

Bentley managed to peel the hand that wasn't tangled in his jumpsuit away from his side and bring it loosely around Rockie in return, his eyes suddenly stinging like somebody had sprayed lemon juice in them.

"I wanna go home," He whispered, voice thick and sort of slurred from the strange half-conscious state he was in.

Rockie just sort of rubbed his back. "I'll get you home."

Bentley was conscious for just long enough to feel a couple of tears fall down his face, before the pain and the sound and the emotions all became one big blur of something, and he let the darkness take him away with open arms.

When Bentley came to, he was laying on the floor of the elevator, knees tucked up to his chest, his head situated carefully on Rockie's balled up sweatshirt.

"Hey,"

Bentley glanced up to his right, where Rockie was sitting, now only wearing a white t-shirt with his sweatpants. He looked different -- more tired, maybe? He was just sitting against the wall of the small elevator with one leg tucked, the other outstretched, looking at nothing in particular.

Bentley sat up and rubbed at his eyes, cringing at the weakness he could already feel taking hold of him, grimacing at the taste of bile that still lingered in his mouth. How long was he out? Had they moved at all?

Despite his questions, a small: "What?" was about all he could manage to say.

"You threw up," Rockie stated. "Then passed out. I think you might have a fever, too."

Bentley wasn't quite sure how Rockie would've checked his temperature without taking his gloves off, but he also didn't have the willpower to ask. He just hummed, sitting up and tightening his knees against this chest.

"We've been in here... probably another hour or two. If Charlie doesn't get the elevator up, I'm not sure we're going to make it in time," Rockie stated, still refusing to look over at Bentley, staring down at his hands instead.

Bentley didn't say anything. And then, for a second, his brain drifted off to something completely unrelated -- the fact that earlier, Rockie had been prying at the elevator doors like they were going to kill him.

"Rockie?"

"Hm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"If you don’t intend to insult me after, sure,"

Bentley blinked for a second. "Why were you so scared earlier? Of the elevator?"

Rockie sighed lightly, glancing down at his hands. Fiddling with his fingers.

“I…”

He heard Rockie exhale heavily. He thought at first that he wouldn't respond, and he didn't blame him. They weren't friends anymore, were they? Not-friends didn't tell each other stuff like that; they didn't answer those kinds of questions.

But finally:

"They started locking me in a six-by-six white room when I was eleven, trying to determine if my powers fluctuated based on... heightened emotions. Fear," He replied quietly, absentmindedly fiddling with his glove. "They locked me inside every day, for four hours. Three years straight. With her."

Bentley kept silent.

"It didn't even end up working," He mumbled. “My powers never changed. I guess the elevator just... reminded me of that room.”

Bentley didn’t say anything for a moment.

“But I’m fine. You deciding to puke your guts out distracted me,”

And suddenly, the elevator kicked back on, jostling them in the floor as it continued its ascent.

Bentley blinked, and Charlie’s voice came: “Finally!”

Rockie popped off the floor, wiping his hands on his pants. He turned to Bentley and held a gloved hand out to him. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah,” Bentley replied, reaching up and taking his hand. Rockie tugged him off of the floor and, after a second where he gathered his footing, he let go again. The world threatened to spin, but he blinked and shook his head and didn't let it.

“Are you sure you’re okay enough to-“

“Yes,” Bentley cut him off, despite the fact he felt mere moments from death. “I’m okay. Being passed out for a little while helped.”

“You shouldn’t have to be in a position where passing out helps,” Rockie exhaled, running a hand through his hair. He grabbed the keycard out of his sweatpants pocket and held it over to Bentley. Bentley was pretty sure he was supposed to have one on his person, but he didn't, and he wasn't sure where it went. “Here; just go back down and head out through the elevator we sent the others up in. I’ll take care of everything down here.”

“No,” Bentley was quick to reply, shaking his head lightly and looking back up at Rockie. “I’m not leaving.”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open right in the midst of their conversation — immediately, both Bentley and Rockie all but threw themselves backwards, thudding against opposite walls on either side of the door so they were out of sight. The sudden and panicky movement made Bentley’s vision swim and headache rage even harder than it had been, and he wanted to groan about it, but he didn’t. He wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

“Stay still. Don’t move,” Charlie’s voice came.

Bentley caught Rockie’s eye, and mouthed: Don’t move.

Bentley saw Rockie’s fingers twitching as a pair of footsteps grew near to the elevator door. Bentley just pushed himself hard into the corner and kept his eyes laser focused on Rockie's green ones, hoping his gaze would pin him down just enough to keep him from moving. Just for a second.

A man in white armor stepped onto the elevator.

He stood idly in the threshold and glanced around, quickly. His armor looked like metal — Bentley hadn’t noticed that before. He had a huge black assault rifle in his white gloved hands, and a helmet that reminded him of a welding mask.

The man looked around the small room, taking in every corner and crevice of white, nearly looking Bentley straight in the eye. He did a few passes of all the corners, his gaze not seeming to stick on him, or Rockie, not even on the sweatshirt sitting in the floor.

He huffed and stepped back out. Bentley heard the crackle of a walkie talkie coming to life. “They’re not here, boss.”

Rockie looked over at Bentley with this absolutely flabbergasted look on his face, and Bentley mouthed: “Charlie.”

With the shake of his head, Rockie reached over ever-so-slowly and pushed in the open door button, holding it down tightly.

“I’m keeping the Secret Keeper locked out of your minds, for now. She can’t see into them. Which means she can’t get your location,” Charlie said. “But she knows where you’re trying to go. So we’re taking a back way.”

Bentley merely nodded, even though she couldn't see him.

“Go out of the elevator now. Immediately go right. There’s a guard, but I’ve got him,”

Bentley gestured for Rockie to follow and hurried out of the elevator, taking an immediate right. There was a guard there, the same one, back facing them, holding his gun tight in his hand. Almost like he was guarding the elevator, waiting for something suspicious.

Rockie wordlessly grabbed Bentley’s arms from behind in an attempt to pull him the other way, but Bentley merely shook his head, quietly wrenching him arms from his grip.

The guard fell.

Rockie paused and stared, and Bentley moved farther down the hall, past the guard. There was blood running from his nose, ears, and eyes. Bentley looked away with a grimace, taking a few more steps and glancing down the halls.

“There’s a-"

Chi-chink.

Bentley turned at the sound of an assault rifle being chambered behind him.

Much to his relief (and slight terror?) it was Rockie. He'd grabbed the guard’s giant assault rifle despite his metal gloves, and was now scouring his limp body... for ammunition, Bentley guessed.

“What are you doing?” He whispered, glancing anxiously down the hallways around them. "Someone might hear you. We need to go."

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Rockie muttered. He pulled something out of the man’s waistband and slid it across the floor to Bentley.

A pistol. An actual, real pistol.

The thought of picking it up made his head spin.

A second later, the man’s keycard slid up beside it. And then a pistol magazine.

Bentley swallowed thickly. “Charlie’s gonna get us there in secret, Rockie... we don’t need-“

“I’m not going with you,”

Bentley furrowed his brows, his mouth going dry. “What?”

“You can listen to her if you want, but I don’t trust her. She’s part of the Secret Keeper,” He replied nonchalantly. “I’m going for Layla. The girls are drained in a separate room than the boys, so we aren’t going to the same place anyways.”

Bentley inhaled sharply. “But-”

“If she lies to you, the medical wing is at the very right end of the main hall with the siphoning rooms. It’s absolutely massive. The draining rooms have windows. You can’t miss them.”

“Please don’t leave,” Bentley mumbled, taking a step toward him as Rockie rose with the gun, putting a few full magazines in his sweatpants pockets. His hoodie had been long abandoned in the elevator.

“Bentley-”

“I don’t want to be alone,”

Rockie merely looked at him for a few moments. “Then come with me.”

“No! Bentley, you’ll die!” Charlie ordered frantically.

“No,” Bentley half-whispered. “If you go and try to shoot them all, you’ll... die.”

“If I’m going down, I want to take as many of these bastards with me as I can,” Rockie replied, turning on his heel, and heading for the main hall that was shining bright in Bentley's eyes. “Good luck, Bentley.”

“No, Rockie!” Bentley took a couple steps to follow him, but stopped short, a gnarly burn surfacing behind his eyes. “Charlie? Is… is he the one?”

Charlie resigned to silence.

And then, a few quiet moments later, after the burning had turned into watery eyes as had then turned into tears that fell down his face, Charlie whispered: “Don’t follow him.”

“Oh my God,”

Rockie disappeared around the corner.

“Bentley, focus. Don’t follow him. Keep going straight,”

“Was that the last time I’ll see-”

“Bentley, listen to me. There are guards coming. You have to move, now,” She ordered in his head. “You don’t have much time. Thirty minutes tops. This place has a filter and distribution system created for widespread use of sedatives integrated into the air conditioning, but the system was disabled years ago when they decided it would be a danger to personnel. The system goes through the entire facility, and the vents needed to be large enough for repairs throughout the whole thing. So the answer is, yes. You’re going to be crawling through the vents like a spy movie.”

Bentley said nothing, his mind still utterly stuck on the fact that Rockie was going to... die.

“Get the keycard and go into the next cell closest to you. Now!”

Bentley did as he was told, numbly heading to the next metal door, opening it, going inside, and closing it behind him. There was no one in it.

Rockie was already dead.

“I’ll tell you when it’s safe to leave,”

Bentley didn’t say anything, but just focused on keeping himself together, for Asten’s sake. What if Rockie didn’t make it to Layla? Would she die, too? Had they messed up somewhere?

“Stop thinking about it, Bentley,” Charlie ordered. “The guard passed. Go now.”

Bentley forced himself up and tapped the keycard again, the doors sliding open.

“Go back where you came from, near the elevator. There’s a mechanical room right next to it where you’ll have access to the vents,”

Bentley made his way back into the dark hall, the one with the elevator, scanning the walls for the doors she'd mentioned.

Suddenly, the loud, terror inducing, horrendous noise of several assault rifles plagued his ears from the main hall.

He stopped right after he'd passed the elevator, just short of the next door, the one he was meant to go in. The hall spun and he put his hand against the wall there to hold himself up, clinging tight to the keycard to keep from dropping it.

“Rockie…”

“Don’t go back for him, Bentley. Don’t,” Charlie ordered in his head, solemnly. “I’m… helping him where I can. Open the door, inside there will be lots of machines, and a vent large enough for you to fit inside.”

Bentley didn’t say anything. Instead, he kept his hand planted firmly against the wall and stayed exactly where he was, poorly fighting away a very sudden urge to vomit again.

“Bentley,”

He shook his head. “I don’t… feel good.”

“I know. I know. You can push through it. I know you can,”

Bentley exhaled heavily. He wanted Bruce. He wanted to go home. He didn’t want to be sick with a fever alone in the hallways of a facility where they were trying to kill his friends. He didn't want to listen to the gunshots that were probably tearing through Rockie's body, aiming to leave him nothing more than a lump on the floor. He wanted to go home.

He threw up on the facility's white floor instead.

By the time his stupid muscles stopped spasming and his stupid stomach stopped evicting everything from inside itself, he was crying, fully. Most of it was thanks to the fact that he'd probably just heard Rockie die, but there was a little bit of it, too, that came from how badly he wanted to go home, how terrible felt, how hopeless he was. How was he supposed to save everyone like this? Falling apart? Alone? Sick?

“I can’t do it,” He sobbed, his full weight still resting on the wall next to him. Tears were streaming down his face but he didn't see the point in wiping them off. “I can’t… I won’t make it in time.”

“You definitely won’t if you don’t try,” Charlie replied softly. “It’s not like you to give up. You can do it. You’re so close.”

Bentley exhaled, and then inhaled. He thought about Asten.

Without another word, he pushed himself on. To the next door, through it, and into a large room that had a bunch of machines, consoles, and a large air vent close to the floor.

He closed the door behind him and went over to it, ignoring everything else. It had a grate, but it wasn't screwed in like normal -- it was latched, and had hinges so it could be opened easily by workers.

He unlatched it and pulled it open, looking into the vents beyond.

There was maybe a six foot drop before the vent turned out of his sight. There were various pipes and tubes and ducting curling and swirling around in there, probably the systems Charlie had talked about.

With an exhale, he pushed himself inside.

—

He was in the vents for a good fifteen, twenty minutes. Thumping around like an elephant in heels, stopping occasionally to flinch at a myriad of gunshots he heard from above, to panic about Rockie until Charlie calmed him down enough to go on. He stopped once because he needed to throw up again. He was pretty sure he really was sick.

By the time Charlie told him he was ‘there’, he was pretty sure he was five seconds away from actually dying. But then he had to not, because he was there.

He had to climb up a maybe six foot span of vent that went straight up — much like the vent he’d come in. It wouldn’t have been so hard on a normal day, but today wasn’t a normal day, so it was hard. He managed to use the pipes and ducts for the whatever system organized around the vents to get him up there. And it was only when Charlie said ‘now’ that he managed to use every bit of remaining strength to kick the vent grate out.

He climbed out into a very, very white room. He couldn’t see all the way across it because there were privacy curtains everywhere, like the curtains in s hospital. But, from what he could see, it looked big. He’d come out in a spot that seemed like he was in a corner, surrounded by shelves full of medical supplies and boxes.

“Go out. Put the grate back as best you can,”

Bentley followed her orders, climbing fully into the room and grabbing the grate, propping it where it had once been in a bid to make it look normal. The alarms were still blaring, and he could hear people talking, footsteps pounding across the floor. He could hear the sound of nearby chaos — gunshots, hundreds of them somewhere outside the room.

“Bentley, the room is set up like stripes. There’s rows of medical beds surrounded by these privacy curtains that have kids in them. Right now, you’re in the corner directly across from the corner with the door,” Charlie explained. “You see that privacy curtain to your right?”

Bentley turned and looked at the large, bluish-green plastic curtain to his right, past a few shelves. “Yeah?”

“Go in it. Get in the bed. Grab the IV tube and hide it under the blanket near your arm. Now,”

With a sharp exhale, Bentley squeezed himself between two shelves and ducked under the plastic-ey curtains. There was a large, white stretcher on the other side, and a big, white machine with buttons, dials, and a few different long tubes sticking out of it.

Bentley all but tossed himself at the bed, squirming to get under the covers and grabbing the bundle of tubes from the machine, shoving them under the blanket and playing dead there.

As soon as he stopped moving, the curtain whipped open with a whoosh.

He held his breath and made his whole body still, trying his hardest not to actually pass out in the presence of a blanket and bed. He heard a few footsteps come into the tiny space, and then a hum. “Looks like someone forgot to start you up.”

There were a few beeps and a whir from the machine next to him, and he heard the person leave, the privacy curtain whooshing shut behind them.

There was a moment of silence that ensued before Charlie said: “Go.”

Bentley shoved himself out of the hospital bed, fighting off a wave of vertigo from standing so fast that was dutifully accompanied by a wave of nausea. He swallowed all the sickness down and pushed himself through the curtain and back into the empty space between them.

“Go right. Then turn right again — there’s only one walkway up here against the wall, you can’t miss it,”

Bentley merely went, his legs pushing him along with more willpower than his actual brain. He turned right, met with a long walkway, the left side lined with privacy curtains, the right with the wall. There was a break in the curtains every dozen feet or so that indicated a row.

“Walk ten paces, then go into the privacy curtain on your immediate left,”

Bentley started down the hall, counted to ten steps. On nine, he saw someone turn into the walkway from one of the rows ahead of him, so he practically threw himself to the side and through the next curtain.

“Feet up!” Charlie shouted.

The nearest thing Bentley could actually use to get his feet up was the hospital bed, but this one had a person in it. A boy he didn’t know, maybe eleven or twelve, with bright blonde hair and long eyelashes that reminded him of Dick. He was connected to several large whirring machines, and an IV tube was coming out from under his blanket, filled with something suspiciously crimson.

Sitting on the edge of the bed next to him just to get his own feet out of sight made Bentley feel a little sick again.

The person padded by without suspecting a thing.

“You can go now.”

Bentley climbed off the bed and turned back, looking at the boy. He whispered: “How do I shut them all down?”

There was a moment of silence. “What? No, Bentley, you’re here for Asten.”

“No, I…” He glanced at the whirring machine. At the evil, evil machine. “I can’t let them all die. Just tell me how to shut them down.”

“Bentley-”

“Please! It’ll stop draining everyone and I’ll still be able to get him,” Bentley begged. “I can’t leave them, Charlie.”

“Hold on! Hold on, just let me think,”

A few moments of silence passed, and Bentley merely stood there.

“Okay,” Charlie finally breathed. “Okay. Okay. Listen to me. There’s a main pump that controls all the smaller pumps in here, carries all the blood to another room where it gets filtered and stuff. You’re going to cut power to that pump. But you only have five minutes.”

“Okay,”

“Go back in the vents. If you run now, you should be able to slip in unseen,”

Numbly, Bentley listened to her. He climbed back in the vent and went to the next room over, (a control room, she said.), where his job was to beat the absolute hell out of some control panel and rip wires out of it until it stopped making noise. So he did.

After that, she claimed that he’d done it. She said something, told him a number of how many kids he’d saved, but he didn’t hear it. He threw up again in that room.

He blindly followed her orders back to the medical room he’d been in, and switched from curtained area to curtained area, narrowly avoiding all of the scrambling doctors and scientists who were trying to figure out why everything had stopped working. He was numb, blank, and he didn’t feel much of anything until Charlie directed him into one of the privacy curtains — the fourth one on the seventh row.

And when he opened it, all the feelings and stuff he’d been trying to keep an arm's length away slammed back into place inside of him.

Because Asten was laying in the bed.

He was hooked up to all the same machines as everybody else, but his blood wasn’t moving through the tubes anymore. His chest was rising and falling; somewhat quickly, but it didn’t matter to Bentley, as long as it was. He looked almost as white as a sheet of paper, and his lips were slightly blue from the loss of blood. But he was there.

Bentley made a sound akin to a wheeze as every emotion he'd ever felt in his life washed over him. He wanted to cry and scream and smile and kill something and dance and all kinds of things that, when he felt them all at once, simply resulted in him standing there.

“Through the curtain to your left, Bentley, there’s a tray with a few syringes on it; it’s a reversal drug. It will wake him up from the anesthesia. You can do it, okay?”

With a few poor excuses of breaths, Bentley swiped open the curtain next to him, trying hard not to look at the teenage boy in the bed. He scoured the small space for syringes instead, and he found them, on a small cart next to the quiet machines.

He grabbed one, turned around, and jammed it into Asten’s arm.

It took a little bit — maybe two minutes or so? — before he groaned lightly, his green eyes fluttering slowly open.

“Asten,” Bentley whispered, heading to the other side of the bed and starting to pull all the needles and tubing out of his arm. Asten stirred more, probably at the pain, his green irises flicking around until they finally landed on Bentley’s face.

“B’ntley?”

“Asten,” He breathed, a sense of relief washing over him that nearly made him bawl again. Asten went about sitting up, but proved to be really weak, so Bentley had to help him by hiding his back off the mattress. As soon as he was sitting upright, Bentley hugged him as tight as he dared.

“Bentley,” Asten continued. His arms came up very vaguely, and Bentley felt him grab onto his jumpsuit gently, his head lolling down onto his shoulder seemingly by itself. “M’ feel like shit.”

“Me, too,” Bentley muttered. “But we have to get out of here, okay? We have to get out of here. We have to leave.”

“You’ve created a distraction with the pump failure, and Rockie’s creating a massive diversion himself. If you go now, toward the exit that goes to your building, I can keep all the stragglers off of you. You’re home free.”

Bentley, as badly as he wanted to hold onto Asten and never let go ever, pulled away after a few seconds. “Can you stand?”

Asten didn’t say anything, but he did push himself off of the bed and onto the floor; which was immediately followed by the buckling of his weak knees and Bentley having to muster up strength enough to catch him himself.

“I’ve got you, buddy,” Bentley mumbled, trying his damn hardest to bare Asten's weight with his weak body. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Asten merely whined: “Bentley.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” He continued, pulling one of Asten's arms around his shoulders in an attempt to keep him upright. "Just try to walk as best you can okay?"

"Okay..."

"All you have to focus on is getting out, I promise. I'll keep everything else away. All you have to do is walk," Charlie said in his head. "You're going to come out of his privacy curtain and go right, down the walkway -- then left. The door is there."

Bentley, with some sort of strength he had to be getting from a place he didn't even know of, pushed himself and Asten out of the makeshift hospital room and out into the walkways, following Charlie's directions as best he could. After the right and left turn, and a little bit of a walk, the door to the room was there -- it led back to the main hallway. The bright one, that led all the way back to his building.

One long hallway, and then they were out.

"Only focus on walking, Bentley," Charlie reminded. "You're done fighting. I've got you."

Bentley didn't do anything but obey her. He opened the door with the keycard and went out into the hall. The gunshots were still audible, but had faded further away, so much so that they sounded like something different. Or maybe that noise was his ears ringing.

With every single step, Bentley was pushing towards complete failure. He could feel his strength slipping away like someone had shot a hole in the tank -- everything that had been bearing down on him for the past month; the stress, the sickness, the lack of self-preservation, the fear, the neglect; it was all coming back to haunt him at the worst time in the worst way. Asten's life depended on him, and here he was, sick and weak and hardly able to think a coherent sentence through the absolute agony that he was embodying.

Still, somehow, he kept walking. He wasn't sure what it was that was pushing him on; determination, or willpower, or spite, or fear, or hope. He couldn't decide what feeling was most prominent in the tornado that was him. He merely focused on putting one foot in front of the other, and holding Asten up, for a long, long time.

Until they made it a mere ten yards from the stairs and exit, so close he could see it, so close he could practically feel the EM field begging to give him his power back...

Asten said something.

"B, I'm... about to pass out,"

And then he did.

It took every ounce of strength left inside of Bentley to keep him from hitting the floor when he fell. The second pair of legs that had been somewhat spurring him on turned into dead weight in a split second. Bentley managed to grab him under the arms and pull him off to the side -- into a small hallway, the last small hallway before they made it out.

"Asten," He mumbled as he laid him down on the floor. He was still pale as snow, and still breathing, but completely unconscious.

Bentley grabbed at his shoulders and touched him, tried to poke and prod him back into consciousness, fighting off a horrendous migraine and the urge to vomit. "Asten, we're almost out, come on. Please. We're almost done."

Cli-click.

"Get away from him. Hands up in the air,"

Bentley drew in a sudden breath and grew eerily still at the sound of a gun being chambered behind him.

"Now. Get up,"

He knew that voice. He knew it, and he'd known it would come back to haunt him.

Slowly, hands raised in the air, he stood up, leaving Asten's limp form on the floor -- a silent hope that he would be left alone.

Bentley looked up. Back into the bright main hallway.

And there stood Mr. Keene. His math teacher. Dr. Keene's little brother. With a big, shiny pistol, aimed right at Bentley's head, and big, amber eyes instead of grey-blue, visible behind big glasses.

He flicked the gun to the left. "Well? Come into the light. Don't make any sudden moves."

Bentley stepped gingerly back into the main hallway with his hands up near his head, keeping his eye trained on the barrel of the gun as it followed his every movement, puppeteered his direction. He could feel his heart pounding out of his chest. His breaths were trying to force themselves in and out with a violence, but he didn't let them.

"Please," He mumbled. "Please. Just let us go."

"You destroyed my family. What are we supposed to do now? Let our legacy die because one kid couldn't follow the rules?" He asked; though Bentley realized it was probably her talking more than him. "I can't let you leave. Your story ends here, now, Bentley Whittaker."

"Bentley Wayne," He corrected. The gun was shaking in the man's hand, but stayed pointed at his head anyway, hovering probably eight or ten feet away from him.

"You ran from me, you cried because of me, you fought me, and you deceived me," The man mumbled, a look of relief, of contentment crossing his features. "And now... you'll die by my hand. It's the only ending. The only true way this story can end."

"Charlie-"

"THAT'S NOT MY NAME!" She roared through the man's mouth, the gun trembling vigorously in his hand. "I have no name. I am no one. I am everyones worst nightmare, and their perfect dream. And you, Bentley Wayne," He spat, she spat. "Are going... to sleep."

Bentley watched the barrel of the gun tremble as his grip tightened on the weapon, to pull the trigger, and-

Someone stepped in front of him.

"No,"

It was Asten.

"Get out of the way, boy," The man with the amber eyes ordered.

By the looks of it, Asten was having a hard enough time keeping himself up as it was. With his own head settling right between Bentley's and the barrel of the gun, his body begging to give out so badly Bentley could practically hear it. He was mere moments from collapse. They all knew. But even then, he didn't move.

Bentley stepped forward. "Asten, move."

"...No,"

"Asten,"

"No,"

"Get out of my way," The Secret Keeper growled through the man's mouth. "Or I'll shoot through both of you."

"Asten, move," Bentley ordered, his eyes burning, heart slamming around in his chest. "Asten, please, move."

"No,"

"Asten!"

"No,"

BANG!

Bentley and Asten and even the man with the gun flinched when the shot sounded, so loud and deafening it seemed to reverberate through the facility halls. Bentley's world spun, and his vision suddenly had dots swimming in it, though he didn't feel any pain.

Thump.

He forced his body to work. Forced his vision to return. Forced his brain to come back on.

The man with the gun was laying on the floor, the back of his head blown wide open, coating the white floor with crimson.

Red Hood was standing a few meters behind his corpse, pistol outstretched and smoking at the barrel.

"Jason," Bentley mumbled, taking a few steps forward in disbelief, settling just in front of Asten. "Asten, its Jason."

Chloe had done it.

They were going to be okay.

Bentley took another step toward the vigilante, but his socked foot nudged something that dinged across the white floor.

Bentley glanced down at it.

A bullet casing.

A gold bullet casing, right near his foot, rolling lazily across the floor from where he'd kicked it.

His eyes trailed to the dead man, from his exploded head to his hands, to the pistol on the floor a few feet from him, which had smoke slowly seeping from its barrel.

"...Bentley?"

Bentley turned around, his gaze catching on Asten's face. It was whiter than before; his green eyes were blown wide and glistening with something he couldn't place. His mouth was hung open in shock. His hands were hovering in the air near his torso, uncertainly, and-

There was a really, really large stain of crimson growing there.

Bentley's entire world came crashing down on his head as soon as he realized.

He lurched forward just in time to catch Asten before he hit the white tile, all but falling with him, keeping him from hitting the floor. He tried to make words but he couldn't; the only coherent noise that managed to escape him was a desperate scream:

"Jason!"

A mere second and the vigilante was by his side. Red Hood all but ripped his helmed off with a thunk, uncaring, tossing it to the side and letting it bounce across the floor with the sound of metal on tile.

"Talk to him," Jason ordered, his black and white hair frazzled and damp from the helmet, his face trained into neutrality even though Bentley knew him good enough to see the panic through it. "Talk to him, Bentley."

Bentley looked down at Asten. He was sort of laying across his lap, and Bentley had his head gathered in his hands, cradling it close to his chest, keeping him from looking down at the wound Jason was now putting pressure on. Jason spoke to someone, but it wasn't him. Did he have an earpiece in?

Asten kept taking quick, ragged breaths, and his hands, soaked with blood, came up to hold onto Bentley's arms that were around his head. "I guess..." He sort of gasped, sort of choked. "I guess that... plot armor isn't so thick a...anymore, huh?"

Bentley could feel the way his entire body seemed to be buzzing and trembling, and so he held his head higher to his own chest, brushing a couple of fingers across the hair near his forehead in a means of comfort. "It... It, it isn't... Its..."

"It's okay," Asten mumbled, his green eyes staying trained on Bentley's, his hands gripping harder at his arms. "It's okay. I'm okay, B, don't.. don't be scared. I'm okay."

Jason was talking. Bentley didn't hear it. Someone skidded into Bentley's view, a little ways down the hallway. A quick flinch and glance up revealed that it was Rockie, bloody and looking suddenly sick, with Layla wrapped tightly around one arm. His inhuman green eyes were scouring Asten's frame and when they met Bentley's, they were brimming with tears.

"It's okay," Asten continued to ramble shakily, grabbing and gripping at Bentley's arms sort of frantically, leaving blood everywhere. "It's okay. I'm okay."

His entire torso was red. Jason's hands were red. Bentley could see it in his peripheral.

"Asten..." Bentley said, vibrating from terror and adrenaline, unable to produce any real sentences. "Asten."

"It's okay. I'm okay. Don't look at it. It's okay," Asten continued to ramble, balling up Bentley's sleeves in his hands, keeping his eyes trained solely on Bentley's. For some reason, the corners of his mouth twitched up into a smile. A moment of silence passed.

"That's funny," He snickered quietly, his green eyes building with tears that fell over, down the sides of his face not a second later. "It... It doesn't hurt. Is Summer here?"

Bentley tried to ignore the fact that the entire right side of his peripheral vision was red. "Jason is," Bentley gritted out.

"Jason," Asten seemed to snap into reality a little bit more at the realization, and he tried to look down at Jason, at his torso, but Bentley's grip around his neck and head wouldn't let him. "Jason."

"I'm right here," Jason said. It sounded well-trained and vigilante like, but it wobbled at the end, and Bentley caught it.

"Jason," Asten seemed to relax his struggling to look for him, instead, just turning his gaze back up into Bentley's eyes. "Jason. I'm scared."

"It's going to be alright, okay? Just keep talking to us," Jason ordered.

"Jason. I'm scared," He repeated. "Is it... dark? I don't like the dark."

"Asten-"

"What is it like?" He asked, though his eyes were trained solely on Bentley's. "Is it dark?"

"Don't be afraid," Jason continued. Bentley realized that he'd stopped moving so much. Not a few seconds later he was on the opposite side of Asten, leaning forward so Asten could see his face. Why wasn't he tending to the wound anymore? "It's just like falling asleep."

Asten blinked, a few more tears falling down the sides of his face. "I don't wanna fall asleep."

He reached numbly for Jason with bloody hands until Jason peeled his crimson gloves off and grabbed them, holding them tightly so the three of them were just a tangle of arms with Asten's head in the middle.

"There's... something you need to tell Bruce," Asten said, his eyes flicking over to Jason, then back to Bentley. "You... you have to tell him I changed my mind, okay? He asked me, but... but I told him no, I don't... I don't know why I did that..."

"What is it, buddy?" Jason asked softly. "What do you want us to tell him?"

"That I changed my mind," Asten suddenly coughed, a little bit of blood splattering from his lips onto his chin. "That I do want... I do want to be..."

He gasped strangely, and an unidentifiable expression crossed his features.

"That you want to be what?" Jason pressed.

Asten looked over at him, and smiled slightly, with crimson stained teeth. A few more tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. "A Wayne."

Jason choked.

Jason choking was the last thing Bentley heard before Asten's arms, tangled up in both of theirs, went slack, and he went completely limp in his grip.

Silence ensued.

"Asten," Bentley muttered, cradling his head closer to his chest, lifting it up, higher. "Asten."

Asten's eyes were looking at nothing.

"Asten," Bentley tried again, softly, holding tight to him and blinking. He looked down at him and brushed his hair away again with a few fingers. "Asten."

Asten never moved.

Bentley stopped saying his name. Instead, he just pulled him closer, and Jason held his hands, and Bentley let his own head fall until his face was hidden in his black and blue hair.

And he didn't move.

Asten Evans...

was dead.

HOLY SHIT

tag list that KINDA works

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

@custommadeazula

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custommadeazula · 5 months ago

Text

very good friend! very good!

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: graphic violence, death

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

so... redemption arc???? yes???? does he even get a redemption arc???

part fifty-one

❝ VICTIM ❞

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 12:02AM

“WAKE UP, BABYBIRD. LET’S PLAY A GAME,”

Bentley blinked rapidly when he was suddenly forced back into consciousness against his will. He was surrounded by white — but it wasn’t the white abyss where the Secret Keeper took him. It was a room; with walls and a floor and a ceiling, all white, and a big metal door off to the side that had two keypads next to it.

Bentley, with a jolt of panic, jumped upright and looked down at himself. He was in one of the white jumpsuits from the facility, and both of his wrists were shackled to the floor on opposite sides of the white room by big, thick chains.

He couldn’t feel the water. He couldn’t see anything but the walls. He was trapped.

"No," He muttered, pulling against the chains, which did nothing more than make noise. "No!"

His head was absolutely pounding, throbbing with every passing second, and he felt like passing out and throwing up and dying.

“Good morning! Glad to see you’ve finally woken up!” The Secret Keeper’s voice chided, sending a stab of pain through his already throbbing skull. “I’ve made up a game I think we should play. Y’know, just to pass the time. It’s called: guess which of Bentley’s friends is going to die first!”

Bentley squeezed his eyes shut, shifting around on the white floor until he could pull his knees up and bury his head in them. He couldn't move his hands very far, so he rested them on his legs. “Leave me alone.”

The Secret Keeper laughed. “Don’t you wish it was that easy.”

And suddenly, a feeling came, almost like vertigo even though his eyes were closed. The brightness of the room changed against his eyelids. He forced his eyes to stay shut, forced his body to stay eerily still, forced his focus to remain on the legs of the jumpsuit he had balled up in his hands.

“Let’s introduce our contestants, shall we? There’s a whopping ten of them! I didn’t know Bentley Whittaker was able to make so many friends!”

“Wayne,” He corrected quietly.

“Look up!” The Secret Keeper suddenly roared, and Bentley felt a tug in his chest that drew his head up even though he didn’t want to. The chains were suddenly gone, and he was standing. He was standing in… the hallway of Gotham Academy? It was empty, and all the doors were closed but one, a few feet to his left. “Our first contestant, the obvious fan favorite, the one and only of the ten who’s been with you even longer than myself… Asten Evans!”

Two pillars of smoke were kicked up in the hallway, spinning for a few seconds before they became people. One of which Bentley would’ve been thoroughly pleased to never see again.

Jesse Todryk.

“Looks like someone found the Wayne. Doors open,” Jesse said, glancing back at whatever minion was following him with a smirk. His voice was louder than Bentley remembered, and it sort of echoed. He remembered him saying that exact sentence. Way back when Jesse had-

“Probably Damian,” The minion replied.

Bentley stepped forward, glancing into the open hallway door only to see… himself. His little self — what was he, ten? Eleven? — trembling on the floor of the school’s closet. Nico was right by his side, holding his arm but panicking all the same, his wide blue eyes stuck on-

Asten. He looked a lot younger. (How old was he when Bentley met him? Twelve? Thirteen?) He was on Bentley’s other side, but he rose slowly from the floor, moving for a nearby shelf and sliding a thick, heavy textbook off of it.

Jesse Todryk stopped in the doorway, spotted Bentley and Nico, and laughed sinisterly.

“Well! Isn’t it little mister-“

Bentley saw his little self flinch hard when Asten swung the book with absolutely no hesitation, the spine colliding with Jesse’s head with a terrible thunk.

“Vá queimar no inferno, seu filho da puta!” (Go burn in hell, you son of a bitch!)

Bentley watched in silence — his now self and his little self — as the bully slammed into the closet door and hit the floor with another thump.

“Jesse!”

“Oh my God, you’re going to get so suspended!” Nico exclaimed, still holding onto little Bentley, looking at Asten like he might cry.

Asten shrugged, letting the textbook thud on the floor. “It was self defense.”

“He wasn’t hurting us!”

“He was gonna!”

“The first friend little Bentley Whittaker ever had who was willing to hurt someone for him,” The Secret Keeper’s voice chided, sounding sickeningly sweet. “How cute, am I right?”

The school scene faded into a large swirling mass of smoke, only to be replaced with… the woods?

Bentley did a spin, glancing around. He was standing in a forest, a dark, nighttime forest. Smoke spun in the distance until it became people. Three of them, running full-speed through the trees, right at him.

He stepped out of the way when they got close — it was them. Little him, and little Asten, and little Nico. He and Nico were both bawling their eyes out, and looked like they were on the verge of absolute panic attacks, while little Asten was ushering them on from behind.

Was this when they were escaping the cabin? Didn’t Asten get caught in a-

Bentley flinched when a resounding metal SLAM! came, and little Asten hit the forest floor behind little Bentley and little Nico with a scream so shrill and agonized it still made his skin crawl even today.

The other Bentley and Nico rounded on him immediately.

“Oh my God!” Nico shrieked.

Asten, bear trap clamped down tight on his leg, only muttered under his breath: “Get it off.”

Bentley watched himself self stand uselessly off to the side, before dropping next to them, holding Asten up to the best of his ability.

He remembered being shocked that Asten wasn’t crying. If he had known back then just how much Asten cried to him now, how much closer they were, that they’d become brothers and lived together-

“These are freaking illegal-“ Nico muttered. Big and little Bentley watched him fiddle with the trap with nearly identical cringes on their faces, blood absolutely everywhere, coating everything.

That’s when the beam of a flashlight started panning through the forest. Glancing up, big Bentley saw a figure that looked freakishly like Dr. Keene stalking through the woods. (What would’ve happened if they were faster? Or if Asten had missed the trap?)

“Oh my God, oh my God,”

“Just…” Asten mumbled Portuguese under his breath. “Just take it out of the ground, and… and we’ll get it off later.”

“You’re going to drag a bear trap on your foot where? Onto a bus? A taxi maybe?!”

Bentley watched Asten pull the crowbar out of the tool-belt he’d been wearing and hand it to the other Bentley.

“Bentley,” Asten said seriously. “When he gets here, beat the hell out of him.”

Little Bentley stared at the crowbar with his eyes blown wide.

“The first friend to ever trust Bentley Whittaker with his life,” The Secret Keeper cooed. “Asten Evans was a lot of little firsts for you, Babybird. First partner at school. First sleepover.”

The forest faded away, and he was left standing in the white abyss, alone.

“But the question remains: will he be the first to die?” She giggled sinisterly. “He dies in so many ways across all of your futures, Bentley. Which do you want to see? Maybe simply freezing to death in his cell?”

Smoke swirled in front of his feet, spinning until it turned into Asten, laying on the floor, his lips purple, skin white, green eyes staring but unseeing. He had chains on his wrists that disappeared into the white, and a jumpsuit that matched Bentley's.

“Or maybe he’ll die right next to you, when they start extracting all of your blood to get what they need out of it,”

A stretcher appeared next to the frozen Asten. A stretcher with him laying on top, his eyes wide but unseeing, both of his arms hooked up to machines that were whirring, sucking blood out. They were spluttering now, like there wasn’t much left. There was a heart monitor off to the side, sounding a steady, long beep.

Bentley’s eyes started burning. He’d almost gotten them out of that place, but he didn’t. Then he’d almost gotten them out again, but he didn’t. What if this was really it? What if everyone really was going to die now? What if he'd failed for the last time?

He looked down at the white floor, distorted through the tears that gathered at the bottom of his eyes. “Please stop.”

“What? We’re only one contestant in! Let’s move on!” Both of the Asten’s swirled into smoke and vanished. “Why don’t we jump to… Valor!”

The white around him melted away, replaced by the blissful campus of Redwood Academy, outside of their building. The fountain and willow trees that he’d talked to Chloe under were there, in the distance, far enough that he could see it, but couldn't hear the water running. Smoke swirled on the benches there until himself and Valor took its place.

“All he ever wanted to do, all he ever did, was be a support system. He cares too much. Always has,” The Secret Keeper chided. Bentley watched Valor rise off of the bench and turn to past-Bentley. That Bentley stood, and Valor held out his arms. (Why did he think it was so stupid back then?) Valor hugged him.

“He was the strong one. The protector. You never got to see what went on behind closed doors.”

Suddenly, the campus moved and swirled and changed colors until it became a really fancy house, bustling with teenagers and loud music and bright lights. There were kids everywhere. It took a moment for Bentley to find Valor in the chaos, but he was there. In the home’s lavish living room, on the floor with his back pressed hard against the side of the couch, his wings wrapped around himself… shaking. The music died down and faded into the background so Bentley could hear the way he was gasping for air, the way he kept choking and coughing on sobs that no one else in the massive place seemed to hear. He was trembling, he couldn't breathe, couldn't seem to gather himself. A panic attack?

Bentley almost stepped forward to him, but she continued-

“He was the first friend to ever take a bullet meant for you,”

The scene swirled and changed to when they were in their dorm a short week ago, Valor standing in front of everybody with his wings outstretched as a shield against all the white-armored men. One of said men shot their gun, and Bentley hadn’t noticed then, but he was peeking out at the armored guys around Asten’s head and if Valor's wing wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve hit him.

“Maybe he’ll die when his blood gets drained,” The Secret Keeper started, and the scene faded away and the white nothing returned. A stretcher that looked just like Asten’s appeared, but with an unmoved Valor on top, staring, with the beep of a flatline next to him. “Or maybe he’ll go down fighting. That’s more his style.”

Another Valor appeared a few yards away. His wings were solid red and wrapped around himself, and the deafening, constant bam, bam, bam of assault rifles came, hitting his wings and ruffling the feathers. Blood was going everywhere. Bentley couldn't see who was shooting him.

His wings finally seemed to give out, and they fell completely limp, leaving his whole body exposed. For a second, he looked scared. He was already covered in blood and scrapes and bruises, and his jumpsuit was crimson. And then this... expression crossed his face. Something like realization. Like contentment.

Bentley looked away and covered his mouth when the sound of the assault rifles came back, more than one of them, sending probably over twenty or thirty bullets directly into his exposed body with no hesitation. Bentley flinched hard when he heard the thud. Valor’s whole body turned red in his peripheral.

Bentley choked on his own sobs, not even trying to make the tears stop flowing now. (Were they all going to die because of him?)

“Please stop," He choked, and his legs seemed to stop working, his knees buckling so he ended up on the white floor again. "Please stop."

“Let’s move on, shall we?” The Secret Keeper completely ignored him. “Contestant three — Summer!”

The Valors melted away again, and the white morphed until Bentley was sitting in the hall of Redwood Academy.

He blinked the tears down his face and hiccupped, trying to get ahold of himself. It was getting kind of hard to breathe. This wasn't real, she was just scaring him. This wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't-

“Poor little Summer. What a precious little girl,”

Two pillars of smoke spun far off in the Redwood Academy hall, and past-Bentley and Summer appeared there. They were the only two in the corridor, and she was touching his face, gently. “All she ever wants to do is save.”

The scene swirled into a different Redwood hallway, but Bentley and Summer were there, too — it was near the art classroom, after Tyler had attacked him.

“Wanting to save will be her fatal flaw. It always is with people like her,”

Bentley watched her move just like she had that day — gently touching his wrists, his neck, asking if he was okay. He lied to her. Why had he lied to her? Why wasn’t he just honest?

The scene melted away and changed to one of Summer running down the halls of the facility they were trapped in, kneeling next to various bodies and students laying around, healing them one by one, telling them where to go to escape and to yell if they needed her. She was crying, too — because lots of the kids she tried to heal, she couldn’t get to wake up.

Her blonde-ish hair was a wreck, half stained with red, and her hands and jumpsuit were, too -- though she wasn't injured. Maybe it was the blood of everyone she was trying to heal. She knelt down next to a limp girl on the floor, in a jumpsuit, too, and touched her, moved her hands around. When after a few quiet moments, the girl didn't move, she stood up with a defeated scream of: "Shit!" Muffled and thick with tears.

That's when four armored men rounded the corner into the hallway, where she was standing, alone.

They wasted no time.

Summer didn't even have time to turn and look at them. One of them lifted a pistol, and BANG!

Bentley closed his eyes when the bullet hit her right in the left temple, and a few seconds later, there was a sickening thump that made Bentley gag.

“She never gives up,” The Secret Keeper said. “She always tries to make everything better. Like you.”

Bentley sobbed into his hands, wiping rigorously at his eyes, trying to force the urge to vomit away. “Why do you have to torture me when... I’ve already lost?”

“Because it’s fun!”

Suddenly, the scene died away and the Secret Keeper materialized in front of him, sick and twisted looking, alone with him in the white. She reached down and grabbed his hair, forcing his head up to look at her. “Because you’re the reason my family keeps failing! You’re the reason my father is in prison! I’m not going to leave his goals to rot when I could be carrying them out myself!”

She was screaming merely three or four feet from him, but he hardly paid any attention, just looking at her from where he was sitting. Crying quietly, trying to make sure he was still breathing, quieting the urge to throw up on her shoes.

“You ruined my life! You took my dad away!” She roared. “Contestant four — little Vera Levante!”

The Secret Keeper shoved him so hard he almost fell over, vanishing from his sight again. Their surroundings changed without his consent -- the white room slowly becoming their dorm. His and Asten’s bedroom.

“You two certainly have something special,” The Secret Keeper's voice crooned, sounding especially twisted now. “No matter how much you want to deny it. No matter how innocent and inexperienced and detached from it all you claim to be. I can read your mind, Bentley. I know parts of you that you don’t even know.”

Bentley said nothing as his and Asten’s bunk beds faded into view. He and Vera were sleeping in his bed, her arms closed around him even though he’d been a disgusting sick disaster back then.

“You saw each other at some of the lowest, hardest times,” She continued, and the dorm fizzled away, replaced by another dorm. An empty one, where he and Vera were sitting on the couch, taking a selfie. “She’s the reason you’re here. The reason you met your friends.”

The dorm melted away.

“The reason you’re going to die,” She chuckled. “Maybe she’ll die protecting you. Maybe I'll kill her myself, right in front of you, just to torture you even more."

Three pillars of smoke swirled and spun in the white a few yards from Bentley. Two became him and Vera -- and the third, a little ways away from the others, became the Secret Keeper.

Vera was in front of him, between him and the Secret Keeper -- she was twitching oddly, like she'd been electrocuted. Was Vera in her head again?

Vera was in a white jumpsuit, too, her black and purple hair in a half-fallen ponytail that kept brushing the other Bentley's face. Vera's hands were behind her back, and it took him a second to realize its because she was holding both of his.

The Secret Keeper only twitched for a second.

Then, with a laugh that sounded more like an animalistic growl, she stalked over to them and grabbed Vera by the face, and her brown irises turned a sickening amber.

"Stop breathing," The Secret Keeper muttered.

"No!" The other Bentley shouted.

Bentley looked down at his hands when Vera started to choke, tugging at her clothes and clawing at her throat, trying to get whatever was blocking her airway out. He saw the Bentley in the scene trying to help in his peripheral, but it didn't seem to work. And that Bentley just held her until she choked to death.

The real Bentley, the now Bentley, the only Bentley, sobbed pitifully, bringing up his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, burying his head there to cry.

Everyone was going to die because of him.

"Everyone's going to die because of you!" The Secret Keeper screeched, probably reading his mind. The scene disappeared, leaving just her and him together in the abyss. "Everyone you love is going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it! It's all your fault! LOOK AT ME!"

Bentley's head was forced up again. The Secret Keeper turned away from him and began to swing her arms wildly, in a manic, almost psychotic manner. Smoke began to billow and blow everywhere, and hundreds upon hundreds of little scenes began to materialize as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of little scenes of people... dying. Varian getting stabbed. Koa getting shot. Asten jumping in front of a bullet. Bellamy getting drained of his blood. Damian falling off a roof. Valor getting his head beaten in. Rockie getting his blood drained out. Bruce getting in a crash in the Batmobile. Jason getting his throat slit. Layla getting thrown off a Redwood Academy balcony.

Gently, someone grabbed Bentley's hand.

He flinched and whirled around, choking on his own tears and panic. Charlie was there. Crouched a mere foot from him, and as soon as their eyes locked, she lifted her finger to her lips in a shh motion.

Bentley stayed quiet, forcing his sobs down, his gaze flicking to the Secret Keeper, who was still flailing wildly in the distance.

He turned back to Charlie, her blue eyes only meeting his brown ones for a split second before she lifted her hand, a small tornado of smoke materializing in her palm.

He watched it spin there for a moment before it floated away from her, settling only a foot or two in front of him, on the floor. It spun and warped until it looked exactly like him, exactly like he did now -- sitting on the floor in his jumpsuit, crying, head tucked in and knees pulled up.

"I'll simulate your thoughts and reactions to stall her for as long as I can," Charlie said softly, reaching forward and grabbing Bentley's face to force him to look at back her. To lock eyes with her. "There's not much time, Bentley. He's coming." She said quickly.

"Who?" Bentley hiccuped, bringing a hand up to grab her arm. "Who's coming?"

Charlie looked up at the Secret Keeper in a panic, like she was waiting for her to turn around. "Listen to me, Bentley. He's coming, okay? I'm going to let you out of here. He isn't a bad guy, you have to trust him, okay?"

"Trust who?!"

"Just promise me you'll go with him, Bentley!" She shouted, frantically, eyes flicking back up to the Secret Keeper. "Promise!"

"I promise!"

As soon as he said that, he jolted back into reality with a small shout of terror, the white room coming into focus around him.

He was choking on his own sobs and could hardly breathe, forcing himself to sit up off of the white floor. It felt like forever that he coughed and spluttered and sobbed and choked and cried until a slam came from his door.

He looked up at it, dread pooling inside of him. Was this who Charlie told him to trust? Or people coming to kill him? Was he about to die or was he about to be saved?

Slam!

He forced his breaths to slow, his heard to calm. He forced his tears to stop and he sat still in the center of the room. If someone was coming to kill him, he'd have to fight back. Somehow, he'd have to.

Slam!

He couldn't let everyone else die because of him. He wouldn't. He was going to get out and he was going to get everybody out and everything was going to be fine.

Slam!

The screen next to the door, the one that scanned keycards to open the cells, suddenly glitched out, the screen malfunctioning and flickering a bunch of different colors until it finally went black.

The door slid open.

Bentley wasn't sure what he expected. He wasn't sure if he expected some random scientist, under Charlie's influence, or one of his friends that had been captured alongside him, or an armored guy coming to shoot him, or Dr. Keene's brother, or Batman, or The Secret Keeper herself. He didn't know who was coming, or how much longer he'd be alive, or if he was going to be tortured, but...

The person that came inside was the last person he ever thought he'd see again.

Bentley's eyes followed him carefully. He had a fire extinguisher in his hands, and he quickly made for the screen that opened the shackles on Bentley's arms and beat it and beat it and beat it with the metal canister until it was nothing more than a useless heap of metal on the wall. The shackles let go of Bentley's arms, hitting the white floor with a clack.

He rounded on him, then, his inhuman green eyes bright in the whiteness of the room. "Bentley..."

Bentley forced himself off of the white floor, every emotion he'd just shoved away coming back full force as he all but throttled himself forward, hugging Rockie so tight he thought he might strangle him. "I hate you!" Bentley sobbed into his shoulder.

"I know," Was all Rockie said, his metal-gloved hands coming up and holding onto Bentley, too. It felt so good at the same time it felt so... so...

"I hate you!" Bentley all but sobbed, choking on his own tears, balling up the back of Rockie's black hoodie in his hands. "I hate you... I hate you..."

"I know,"

Bentley couldn't even begin to comprehend everything happening inside of him. The sheer rage he felt being next to the one who betrayed them, the overwhelming relief that washed over him when he learned Rockie was okay. The far off urge to punch him across the face, and the more prominent one to hold onto him and never let go ever again.

"I'm so sorry," Rockie muttered, voice thick, muffled from the shoulder of Bentley's jumpsuit. "I fucked up. I picked the wrong side because I'm stupid, but I'm back now. I'm back now and I promise I'll get you out of here. I'll die to get you out."

"I hate you," Was all Bentley could manage to say, dissolving quietly into a crying disaster, and Rockie only held him tighter.

"I know,"

tag list that KINDA works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

@custommadeazula

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custommadeazula · 5 months ago

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currently reading teen titans v3 and the best part is that the whole team can basically fly or use speed to travel places but tim drake has to hold onto someone 😭😭

he just dangles in the air and it’s so funny to me

#dc comics #tim drake #red robin #dc robin #robin #teen titans #teen titans 2003

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custommadeazula · 5 months ago

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this was awesome to read! it’s going to be okay! they’re all going to be happy! they’ll be singing somewhere over the rainbow when all of this is over!😭

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: ANGSTTTTTTT

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

IM SO SORRY BUT DONT TELL ME YOU DIDN'T SEE IT COMING

part forty-seven

❝ TRAITOR ❞

WEDNESDAY — OCTOBER 19 — 7:09PM

“BENTLEY, WAKE UP!” He barely heard the telltale voice of Charlie in his subconscious. “You don’t have time for this… she has your location, and they’re coming!”

“Bentley!” Came a different voice. A familiar one. One that was real, coming into his ears, piercing his skull with a stab of pain. He swore he felt someone touching him. Well, he could’ve swore, if he were coherent, which he was pretty sure he wasn’t. “Bentley, c’mon. Wake up, buddy.”

“Carry him,” Someone else’s voice came.

That’s about when Bentley’s body decided to kick back on, and the absolute exhaustion and misery that he was embodying came flooding back. Every single fiber of his being seemed to hurt after Titus’s teleportation, and he was so tired and so run-down he felt like he could die if he wanted to.

Instead of letting himself do that, though, he forced himself back into the land of the living with a miserable groan.

“Hey, buddy. You’re okay,” Someone was touching him — there was a hand on his forehead; it was gentle, and cold, and didn’t feel like skin at all, but he reveled in the touch nonetheless.

He forced his eyes to open, the Redwood Academy ceiling swirling and swimming in his vision, light fixtures spinning and twirling around each other before they finally came to rest in their rightful places. Rockie’s face was hovering above him — he guessed that explained the hand on his forehead not feeling like a hand at all.

“He’s waking up,” Rockie called to someone behind him.

Bentley went to sit up, but it just made his head spin with a few harsh throbs of pain, and he winced. Rockie’s gentle hand found the small of his back and guided him up the rest of the way, rubbing lightly across the back of his shoulders. “Easy.”

Bentley blinked a few times as the world went out of focus and came back again. They seemed to be in a dorm building hallway. It was lined with carpet on the floor and wainscoting on the walls, with extravagant light fixtures and all the luxurious things it always had.

Bentley’s eyes flicked across the various figures that were spread around said hallway. Rockie was next to him, rubbing his back lightly, and a few yards ahead of him was Varian sitting on the floor, conscious, with his head dipped down between his knees. Valor was next to him, wings still synched, still covered in blood, squeezing Varian’s shoulders repetitively. He was speaking softly but Bentley couldn’t tell what he was saying.

Sitting against one of the wainscoted walls was Koa, legs tucked in with the muzzle still synched tight to his face. His eyes were still brimming with tears that fell sometimes, settling on the top of the metal that was covering his mouth and nose. A few feet away from him, against the same wall was Asten, lips still blue, still shivering, arms wrapped so tight around himself passersby would probably expect him to fall apart if he unraveled them.

Titus was gone.

Something cold and mean seemed to surface in Bentley’s chest — something like guilt. Something that said this was all his fault. He tried to push it away, but he couldn’t, tried to clear his mind, but it didn’t work, and the distant whooshing of water and bump bump of pumping blood filled his ears.

Wait… the sound of… water?

“Our powers,” He muttered, glancing up at his counterparts with a deep breath in an attempt to right himself. “We can use them now.”

Valor was the first one that seemed to comprehend what he’d said, and with a quiet grunt of effort, the wires around his wings snapped with a soft sound. He stretched them out widely, now nearly solid crimson instead of platinum, and Bentley didn’t miss the way his face twisted in agony when he did. Would he even be able to fly?

Asten was the second, who’s hands immediately lit on fire so hot and bright that the residual heat sort of burned even from across the hallway. Koa jumped to move away from him so his clothes didn’t spontaneously combust.

“We’re on our floor,” Valor stated, still squeezing at Varian’s shoulders, glancing over at Bentley. “We just have to grab Bellamy and then get the hell out of here.”

Bentley nodded, forcing himself unsteadily off the floor. Which was actually a terrible idea, because the horrendous spinning vertigo came back, and he stumbled rather gracelessly — the only reason he didn’t hit the floor was because he fell directly into Rockie, who was quick to put his arms around him.

“Hey, take it easy for a minute, okay?” Rockie muttered, rubbing his back a little. “You did it, Bentley. You got us out. You can take a minute to breathe.”

It was excruciatingly tempting for Bentley to, like, pass flat back out, but he didn’t let himself. He pushed Rockie away with a grimace. “We can’t, they’re coming.”

Rockie’s expression twisted into one of alarm. “What?”

“They’re coming,” Bentley repeated.

And as if his words were a very, very unfortunate queue, the door to the staircase that was only a few mere yards to their left slammed open with a loud wham, and people in white armor came flooding into the hallway, maybe ten, maybe fifty. Bentley spotted the large black guns they had clasped tightly in their hands, and-

“Oh shit!”

Bentley threw his hand up as soon as he saw them, and water came gushing out from beneath at least half a dozen dorm room doors, building up between them and the men like a wall in a split second. The deafening bang! Bang! Bang! Of firearms came, maybe fifteen or twenty shots. The bullets flew full-speed into the wall of water and never came out the other side.

“Go! Go! Go!”

Bentley felt Rockie grab his shoulder and jerk him down the hallway, his mind staying strangely absent as he focused solely on keeping the wall up between his friends and the guns. He felt someone else grab his arm, someone cold. Six pairs of shoes thundered down the mahogany-lined halls of Redwood Academy like a herd of horses.

Like he was living some kind of deja vu fever dream, he realized Asten was dragging him down the hall as fast as he could, which was too fast for Bentley’s legs with his mind so absent, which meant he was stumbling all over himself, just like he was in the woods when they were running from Dr. Keene-

They seemed to literally crash through the door of their dorm, each of them filing in as fast as they could. Bentley and Asten were first — then Varian, who looked half dead and was bawling his eyeballs out, being shoved through the door by Koa, who was also bawling his eyeballs out, followed by the final two — Rockie, who looked pissed, and Valor, whose crimson eagle wings were twitching angrily on his back like he was getting ready to fight someone. As soon as they were in, Asten (and Valor, and Rockie) slammed the door shut and held their weight against it.

Bentley released the wall of water and heard it fall, flooding the hall outside with an inch or two of water. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t do much more than stand in the middle of the dorm blankly.

They were going to die. They were going to die.

“How the bloody hell are we going to get out of here?!” Valor shouted. Bentley heard the weight of people slam into the other side of the door, knocking all three of his friends off balance. “We’re on the sixth floor!”

Bentley turned his head, eyes catching on Varian and Koa, who were standing off to the side of the room. The metal muzzle on the latter’s face was rubbing at his skin and making it raw — Varian, now forced into coherent-ness by the chaos — was trying his hardest to get it off, but it was so tight and immovable that messing with it just seemed to cause pain. There was a sudden crack! of electricity, and Koa’s whole body seemed to writhe. He stumbled back against the wall and slid down into the floor, threatening to lose consciousness completely, the only thing really keeping his eyes from closing being Varian’s constant, panicky touching of the thing on his face. They were both still crying, though Varian was a bit more frantic.

Valor broke away from Rockie and Asten and left them to hold the door, his giant wings gusting air around the dorm as he used all of his super strength to drag one of the couches over to barcade it. Then the second couch, then some shelves, then he came out of his and Rockie’s room dragging an entire wardrobe behind him. Then the bunk beds.

And all Bentley could make himself do was stand there.

“Bentley,” Rockie said. Bentley turned, locking eyes with him, brown on inhuman green. Focus. Focus. Rockie was helping maneuver the furniture against the door with Asten and Valor, but he pointed at Bellamy’s bedroom door. “Go get Bell. Put some water at the bottom of the window that’s deep enough for us to land in. We’ve gotta go that way.”

Orders. Orders. Bentley could follow orders.

He turned, scanning the living and dining and kitchen areas, listening close. He heard everyone’s heartbeats, slamming and pounding in their chests, their blood pumping at an extraordinarily heightened rate.

And then something else joined the heartbeats — something thin and quick.

Tears. From Bellamy’s bedroom.

Bentley hurried in there, throwing the door open and glancing around the room. The beds were empty, the bathroom was empty, everything was empty and-

He turned on impulse, glancing at the wardrobe settled against the wall near the door.

Bentley made his way over to it and grabbed the knobs, but stopped. If he was hiding in there, would he want the doors ripped open? With a clear of his throat, Bentley knocked on the wardrobe. “Bell? It’s Bentley. I’m going to open the doors.”

Bellamy said nothing, so Bentley slowly opened the wardrobe one door at a time.

Bellamy, in his tiny eleven-year-old stature, was curled up in the bottom of the wardrobe, legs tucked in tight, head buried in his knees. He was wheezing and hiccuping more than breathing, and Bentley could see the little blue blanket clutched in his hands that he hadn’t needed to sleep with in a while.

Bentley crouched down in front of him. “Hey, Bell.”

His brown eyes only appeared for a second, red and watery.

“Bentley,” Bellamy sobbed, all but shooting out of the wardrobe and colliding with Bentley so hard he fell backwards onto his butt with a thud.

Bentley brought his hand up to rest on the back of his head, synching the other tight around his back as a burn threatened to surface in his own eyes. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Bellamy only seemed to cry harder at the embrace, digging his head down into Bentley’s shoulder. He was trembling almost uncontrollably, holding onto Bentley in an absolute death grip that was so tight it sort of hurt. “Please don’t let them take me back, Bentley, I don’t wanna go back, please, I don’t wanna go back-“

“Hey, hey, no one’s taking you anywhere,” Bentley replied, rubbing his back. What did Bellamy mean, he didn’t want to go back? “We’re leaving the school. We’re getting out of here.”

“Bentley, we gotta go!” Rockie shouted from the other room.

With a wince of sympathy, Bentley went about slowly attempting to peel Bellamy off of him. “We have to go, okay? The others are waiting for us.”

Bentley managed to unravel Bellamy’s arms from himself just enough to stand. He made his way back to the living area with Bellamy’s tiny hands balled in the back of his t-shirt for dear life, his quiet sobs still assaulting Bentley's ears and making him want to kill people.

“Bentley, the water,” Asten reminded him. They were still shoving stuff against the door, and Varian was still trying to pull the muzzle off of Koa’s face.

Bentley closed his eyes in deep concentration, listening to the water in the pipes of the building. Not three seconds later, gallon after gallon of water started pouring out of the dorm room’s adjacent bathrooms, crawling toward the window like snakes and forcing itself through the cracks and crevices to make a pool on the ground below.

Bentley exhaled heavily, forcing himself to keep breathing, reaching back and grabbing onto Bellamy’s arms. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go look out the window and see if the water is doing what it’s supposed to, okay?”

Bellamy didn’t have much of a response to that besides his incomprehensible sobbing, but he did move when Bentley moved, which was fine. They shimmied over to the bay window and looked out of it, in a feeble attempt to calm both of their nerves.

It didn’t work. It didn’t work because, if Bentley squinted, he could’ve swore he saw… people, out there in the nighttime darkness. People in white. Staring at the water running from their dorm window.

“Guys…?” Bentley tried, glancing back at everyone else momentarily. “They’re outside. We’re trapped.”

“What?”

“What?!”

Valor and Rockie and Asten all simultaneously moved, jogging over as though they needed to see for themselves. Valor was the first to make it, though, grey irises traveling across the figures outside with a quiet: “Shit.”

A loud bang came from the dorm door, and everybody turned to look at it.

All the furniture that they had stacked in front of it shifted from the force of whoever was on the other side. Rockie lurched forward and grabbed Varian and Koa by the arms, pulling them — one on his feet, the other across the floor — toward the bay window where they were all standing.

With a bang and a crack, more of the furniture moved, the crack in the door growing wider.

“We’re going to die,” Bellamy sobbed, his vice-grip still tight around Bentley’s waist. “We’re going to die.”

The banging came twice more, and an arm came through the crack in the door. Then a leg. Bellamy buried his face in the back of Bentley’s shirt, and Bentley reached back, ensuring that he was fully behind him. Asten suddenly settled in front of him, doing quite literally the same thing to make sure Bentley was behind him. Koa, who was now standing to Bentley’s right, stepped backwards, nearly falling into him after stumbling over a torn down curtain rod. Silent tears were rolling down his face and settling against the muzzle that had been manhandled onto him. He had a death grip on Varian’s wrists, who he also forced to stand behind him just like Asten had done.

Rockie was the only person on Bentley’s left side, and slightly in front of them, looking ready to kill, and Valor took up a spot in front of all six of his roommates. He extended his crimson wings out with a pained wince, wide like a shield.

With a deafening crack, all the furniture shifted, the door opened, and people in white armor started pouring through the door.

(They were going to die.)

Bentley held tight to Bellamy’s arms as the chaos ensued. There was a gunshot, and Valor’s right wing flinched and curled slightly inward, though it didn’t move from it's place in front of them. Asten snapped his fingers by his side, and one of the men with guns' entire body burst into flames. He did it again, and then a third, and then a fourth until there were almost half a dozen burning humans staggering around their dorm. A few more spilled through the door, but a myriad of purple crystals sprung up from the floor, spiking harshly through boots and into legs and some even high enough to pierce torsos, leaving the entrance to their dorm nothing but red.

“Turn on the EM for dorm one-seventy-four!” Bentley heard someone yell amongst the chaos.

Suddenly, the same wave of sudden weakness washed over them all that Bentley had felt in the facility. He failed to suppress a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whine, the sudden loss of strength making his already weak body practically beg for him to pass out already. He vaguely heard a thump from near him, signaling that someone had fallen, and he felt Bellamy’s arms tighten around his torso with an alarmed: “Bentley?!”

Black and multicolored dots came and danced in his vision, threatening to sweep him away. He saw Asten sway just a little where he stood, but it wasn’t clear how much, because the room was still spinning.

“Please don’t pass out,” He heard Bellamy mumble from behind him, a few dreadful sobs ripping up and out of his throat.

So Bentley didn’t.

He forced himself to stay awake and upright, glancing to his right. It was Varian who’d passed out again. Koa was now sitting on the floor with his back toward all the men, and he’d gathered Varian up in his arms to keep him out of view from the men with guns. Nothing in the dorm was on fire anymore, but more men in white came in to drag the blackened and burned and impaled ones out, a few more settling near the door with their guns aimed directly at the seven of them.

“Don’t shoot them, you idiots, we need them alive! Move out of my way,” A voice came — the same voice that had called for the EM field to be turned on. Bentley watched as a man forced himself through the door in a white hazmat suit, one with a black visor over his face so they couldn’t see who it was. His voice sounded… sort of familiar, though.

“Activate lockdown protocol for this dorm,” He called to someone in the hallway. Not two seconds later, sounds like machines in the walls started to ring through the dorm. Then he turned back toward Bentley and his roommates. “A2, come on.”

Bentley pinched his eyebrows together when the man continued to look directly at them, like he was speaking to one of them. The black visor over his face kept Bentley from seeing who his eyes were on.

None of them moved.

The man stepped forward again. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown… attached,” He said with almost a solemn tone about him. “I knew this was bound to happen, but no matter.”

“What the hell are you on about?” Valor was brave enough to ask.

The man in the suit ignored him. “You completed your assignment. You finished it, you did a good job. Now it’s time to come home. You can’t truly tell me you’d rather stay here than with the people who raised you, can you?”

Bentley glanced over at Koa and Varian. Koa was paying the man no mind, still holding tight to Varian, keeping him out of sight. Bellamy’s death grip on Bentley never wavered. He glanced over at Rockie, who was flexing and balling up his hands in his gloves, and then at Valor, whose wings were still spread wide ahead of them.

“Come on, A2. You knew from the beginning that this wasn’t going to last. Come on, son,” The man held his hand out toward them. “You did good, and for that, you are to be rewarded.”

Not even a minuscule piece of dust moved.

The man tilted his head. “You know the alternative if you disobey.”

Silence ensued.

And then one of them moved.

Bentley could’ve thrown up when Rockie gently pushed past Valor’s left wing, slowly making his way across the room like an injured animal going back to it's owner after being lost for a long time.

“Rockie?” He found his mouth moving without his consent, and Asten reached backwards, grabbing onto his shirt as if telling him not to say anything.

“Don’t bother,” Valor muttered from in front of them, something laced into his words that Bentley couldn’t identify. “He’s one of them.”

Bentley’s eyes drifted back to Rockie, who finally came to a stop in front of the man in the hazmat suit. Bentley could see him trembling in the slightest.

“There, there,” The man reached forward and rested a gentle hand on the side of Rockie’s head, and he seemed to cave to the touch faster than Bentley had ever seen him cave to anything, subtly turning his head into the contact. “This was how it was going to be no matter what. I only wish you weren't hurting because of it.”

Bentley and all six of his remaining roommates looked on in silence, various expressions across the their faces at the prospect of Rockie being…

A bad guy?

Bentley, in particular, found himself starting to cry, clutching at Bellamy’s arms in a meager attempt to comfort himself.

How was Rockie… a… Bentley thought he knew him really well? Obviously he didn’t know everything, but he thought they were close, because he was allowed to go places and hang out with him at his worst times. Rockie had never done anything to hurt them — it was the same kid who made Bentley walk on the inside of the sidewalk when they went to town. Bentley could’ve sworn on his life that he could never hurt them.

He guessed he was wrong.

The world blurred through the tears that were threatening to slide down his face. All six of them were silent as the man in the hazmat suit quickly embraced Rockie, soothingly patting a gloved hand on the back of his head for a split second before he shrugged the teenager off, guiding him into the hands of a man in white armor with a gun.

“Take him down to his room, give him the reward I prepared for him. It’s sitting in my office,” The man ordered. “If you do anything of ill intent to him, I will kill and send your severed head to your mother’s house.”

The one of the guys in armor nodded and grabbed Rockie’s arm, tugging him toward the door.

The last thing Bentley saw — and would probably ever see — of Rockie Winchester was his inhumanly green eyes, filled to the brim with crystal clear tears. Even through the watery haze, Bentley understood the words behind the desperate look he sent his way before he was dragged out of sight.

I’m so sorry.

Bentley was unable to stifle the soft sob that forced it's way out of him. Bellamy’s arms synched even tighter around his middle, and Asten’s hands twisted up in his shirt, both attempting to give him a measly little semblance of comfort.

“Ah, yes,” The man sighed. “The sting of learning a friend wasn’t really a friend at all. I do wish it didn’t hurt, you know. He wasn’t supposed to get close to you.”

“Why don’t you just fuck off?” Valor snapped. That’s when Bentley seemed to remember that he was Rockie’s best friend, and that he must’ve been taking this way worse than he was.

“Unfortunately for you, Rockie wasn’t the only one of your roommates who’s a double agent,” The man snickered. “In fact, his only role was to watch over the other. E9, come on, we’re leaving.”

Bentley could’ve swore the color started to drain from the world around him. He sent quick glances to Koa, and Varian, and Valor, but none of them seemed keen to move.

Bellamy tightened his arms around Bentley and buried his face in his shirt with a sob so heart-wrenching it probably hurt.

And that’s when everything seemed to click into place.

Please don’t let them take me back, Bentley, I don’t wanna go back-

The man sighed in distaste, his partiality toward Rockie obviously not shared for Bellamy. He turned toward his men (that seemed to be multiplying, as there were always at least three behind him.) with a flick of his hand. “Nuke them, take E9 to his cell for punishment. When you’re done put this dorm on full lockdown. No one gets in or out.”

And with that, the hazmat suit man left, leaving the men with guns in their dorm with them.

Valor moved forward, to do what, Bentley wasn’t sure. In a flash it was over, because there was another gunshot and blood spurted from his left wing, and he promptly stopped whatever he was doing.

Something clattered in the floor next to Bentley’s feet. Something round, and metal. He glanced down at it and shuffled away in a panic, only to realize it was a-

Grenade?!

Someone fumbled for it. Bentley didn’t even realize that Koa had it in his hand until he’d lobbed it back in the direction of the armored men.

It went off beside Bentley and Asten’s heads.

There was a flash of blinding light, and a pain so severe Bentley immediately hit the floor before he could even think. His muscles were convulsing without his permission, spasming, almost, and whatever it was had him writhing on the hardwood in sheer agony, like he was on fire. He felt Bellamy and Asten’s hands slip away from him in the chaos. Something was crackling and popping around them, making his hair stand on end, and that’s when he realized they’d all been electrocuted.

He peeled his eyes open through the searing pain, catching sight of Asten and Valor on the floor ahead of him. He tried to move but his muscles weren’t listening.

“Be—ntley,” Came Bellamy’s broken voice from next to him, on the floor. He felt someone weakly grab onto his shirt, but he couldn’t find it in himself to move.

Boots thudded up to them — white boots, and the footsteps sounded like bombs when compared to everything else Bentley couldn’t hear.

They did something behind him. Bentley felt the hand get tugged away from him, and a mere second later, they were dragging Bellamy past him, crying and all, by the scruff of his shirt.

“Bentley!” He shouted, with more alarm, but it was difficult for him to move, difficult for anyone to move. Bentley reached out and just managed to brush the tip of his sock before he was dragged away, out into the hall. The dorm door shut, and a loud sound came — like a lock on a bank’s massive safe. One, two, three, four more came, lock after lock, and a few loud slams came from behind them, the windows.

Bentley wasn't sure how long he laid there, writhing and convulsing from the electricity, but he did know that Valor was the first one that was able to force himself up. As soon as his body was online enough, he went about slamming himself against the door, trying to break it open.

Koa was the second to force himself off the floor, quietly tending to Varian with silent tears streaming down his face, and Asten was the third.

He spun around, shaking out his hands and twitching in a strange sort of way that let Bentley know his muscles were still spasming. But nonetheless, he reached for Bentley and pulled him into his lap.

"Bentley, tell me you're okay," He muttered, sort of grappling at Bentley's clothes in an attempt to get him closer. The movement sent a small ripple of fire through Bentley's muscles when he tried to move them.

Rockie was bad, and Bellamy was...

Bellamy was gone.

The one person Bentley had sworn he'd protect with every single fiber of his being had slipped away in a mere moment, shouting his name, even.

Bentley brought his hands up as far as he could dare, latching onto whatever he could. He balled up the fabric of Asten's jumpsuit in his hands and pulled his knees up so he was nothing more than a heap of limbs indistinguishable from Asten's own, and he cried so hard he thought my might vomit.

He thought he'd saved them all...

But he'd really just killed Bellamy.

tag list that KINDA works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

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custommadeazula · 6 months ago

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thinking about what kind of funko pop I should ask for my birthday

should I get red robin, damian wayne, or cassandra my beloved

#dc comics #batman #batman comics #tim drake #batfam #damian wayne #dc robin #red robin #batgirl #cassandra cain

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custommadeazula · 6 months ago

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i just know tim drake would give the best hugs

#dc comics #batman #batman comics #tim drake #dc robin #red robin #batfam

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custommadeazula · 6 months ago

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and with this I stand by my belief that all superheroes /heroes in general should be girl dads

always thought jason would be an amazing girl dad

♯ I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO MY DAD . . . for teaching me everything he knows ( dick grayson & jason todd as dads ! )

— fem!reader as mom, fluff, not edited, based on this req.!!

. . . DICK GRAYSON !

dick was always great with kids; his natural warmth, patience, and humor made him a magnet for them, even before he became a father. he often thought back to his days as robin, remembering how bruce wayne took him in and gave him stability, and he wanted to offer that same feeling ( and definitely more ) to his children.

when you two first talked about having kids, he was equal parts excited and nervous about it. dick worried about balancing family life with his vigilante responsibilities, but he couldn’t wait to start a family with you. he knew that no matter what, you’d face it together

your first child, a boy, inherits your husband’s bright energy and natural charisma. from the moment your son was born, dick was a hands-on dad. midnight feedings? no problem. diaper changes? a breeze ( well, almost ). he approached fatherhood the same way he approached everything else—with passion and a healthy dose of humor

he’s not just the dad who builds the coolest blanket forts or makes pancakes shaped like bats; he’s the dad who listens, encourages, and shows up, no matter how tired he might be after a long night of patrol. even when exhaustion clings to him like a second skin, his kids come first. if his son wants to show him the new drawing he made, dick will sit down and marvel at it as if it belongs in a gallery. if his daughter has a nightmare, he’s at her bedside in seconds, stroking her hair and whispering how she’s okay and nothing’s gonna hurt her while he’s here until she drifts back to sleep

he’s the dad who remembers every detail about his kids’ lives—their favorite bedtime stories, their least favorite vegetables, the songs that make them smile—and makes sure they feel seen and heard every single day. when he’s with them, he’s fully present, setting aside his worries about blüdhaven or the weight of his world. to them, he’s not nightwing; he’s just dad, their safe place, the person they know will always be there no matter what

he teaches your son how to ride a bike, holding the seat steady as those wobbly first attempts make an appearance. “you’ve got this!” dick encourages his son, jogging beside him. when the first scrape happens—knees meeting pavement in a blur of surprise and pain—he’s there in an instant, crouching down with the kind of gentle urgency only a dad can master

his strong arms wrap around his son in a hug that says, i’ve got you, even as tears well up in the young eyes. he’s quick with jokes to soothe the sting, brushing dirt and pebbles off tiny palms. “hey, you know what? you’re officially a biker now. all the pros have scars to prove it.”

it doesn’t matter if he’s running on just a few hours of sleep or if his legs are sore from the night before. he’ll stay on that sidewalk all afternoon if it means helping his son find the courage to get back on the bike

when your daughter is born, it’s as if a new light ignites in dick’s heart, one that’s softer and warmer than anything he’s ever felt before. from the moment he holds her—tiny, delicate, and swaddled in pastel pink—he’s utterly smitten by the baby. his breath catches in his throat as her little fingers curl instinctively around one of his. it’s the smallest thing, but to him, it’s everything. he gazes at her with an awe that rivals the first time he stood under a gotham sunrise after a long patrol as robin

every little thing she does—every yawn, every sleepy coo, even the way she scrunches her nose—melts him completely. he’s the first to volunteer for late-night feedings, cradling her against his chest while whispering soft lullabies. “it’s okay, princess,” he murmurs, his voice low and soothing, as if the sound of it alone could shield her from the world

she’s the spitting image of you, but she’s got dick’s sense of curiosity and mischief. as she grows, it’s clear she’s a daddy’s girl through and through. dick spoils her with affection, often carrying her on his shoulders or letting her “style” his hair, even if it means showing up to patrol with hair ties

she’s the one who always convinces him to stay for “just one more bedtime story,” and dick can never say no to those puppy eyes. he does all the voices, acting out scenes with a dramatic flair that leaves her giggling uncontrollably

family movie nights are a regular occurrence. dick lets the kids pick the movie, even if it means sitting through the same animated film for the fifth time. he doesn’t mind—he’s just happy to have everyone snuggled up together

. . . JASON TODD !

jason never thought he’d be a dad. gotham wasn’t kind to kids, and in his darker moments, he felt like it had swallowed the boy he used to be whole. he worried his own traumas—nights spent cold and hungry on the streets, the ache of betrayal, the sting of abandonment—might cast shadows over the kind of father he’d want to be. how could he teach love and trust when his world had been built on survival and second chances?

the thought of holding a child, so small and fragile, scared him more than any villain ever could. what if he didn’t have it in him to be the kind of dad they deserved? what if his sharp edges cut too deep, or worse, he failed to protect them from the city that had failed him? jason had spent so long fighting his way through life that the idea of creating a safe, warm space for someone else felt like trying to plant flowers in a wasteland. and yet, the thought of building something good—something untouchable by gotham’s darkness—stirred a longing in him he couldn’t ignore.

when you told him you were pregnant with your first child, he was stunned silent for a solid minute. then came the slight tremble in his hands as he cradled your face and whispered, “we’re really doing this?” you swore you saw tears in his eyes, though he’d deny it later

he threw himself into preparing for fatherhood. between patrols, you’d catch him reading baby books, jotting down notes in that same serious way he planned missions. ( “what the hell is a diaper genie, baby? is it a genie for diapers, or does it genie them away?” )

when your first daughter was born, jason held her for the first time with an awe. he whispered promises to her, things like, “you’ll never go through what i did,” and “i’m gonna give you the world, princess.”

jason’s daughters own him. his rough, serious ide of personality melts into a puddle of mush when they so much as giggle at him. one pouty face, and he’s done for

when they’re little, he becomes a human jungle gym. they’ll climb all over him, pull on his hair, and stick stickers all over his face while he sits patiently, letting them “decorate” him. ( “you’re turning me into a unicorn, huh? cool. just don’t let your mom take pictures—too late? figures.” )

as they grow, he keeps a close eye on everything, from their friends to the neighborhoods they walk through. he’s not overbearing but has serious dad-radar. if they so much as mention a creepy guy or a mean teacher, he’s all, “do i need to handle this? no? you sure? okay, but say the word.”

by age eight, they’ve both mastered basic self-defense, thanks to “daddy’s fun time karate sessions.” he makes it a game—lots of laughter and encouragement—but underneath it, he’s deadly serious

when they’re older, he teaches them how to change a tire, handle their own money, and, much to your exasperation, how to throw a punch. ( “jason, they don’t need to know how to disarm a grown man at ten years old!” “baby, it’s gotham. yes, they do.” )

he’s the kind of dad who makes pancake breakfasts on weekends, complete with smiley faces and way too much syrup

on father’s day, his daughters surprise him with handmade cards every year. jason’s tough demeanor cracks every time he reads their scrawled messages: “daddy, you’re my hero.”

and jason as a father to teenage girls? lord, help us all.

when his eldest goes on her first date, he plays it cool—for all of two seconds. he grills the poor kid with subtle threats hidden behind a charming smile. ( “so, you like my daughter? good. treat her right, or you’ll have a real bad night. understand?” )

you have to remind him not to tail them when they go out. “jason, they’ll know you’re following them.” “i’ll stay a block behind. they’ll never see me.”

but despite his overprotectiveness, he’s their anchor during tough times. when they experience their first heartbreaks, he is there with hugs, ice cream, and the kind of pep talks that make them laugh through their tears. “anyone who doesn’t see how amazing you are isn’t worth crying over. you’re the todd girl. we don’t settle for less.”

deep down, jason worries about failing them. he knows what it’s like to lose everything, and the thought of his girls experiencing even a fraction of that makes his stomach churn

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custommadeazula · 6 months ago

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new jason todd fc just dropped y’all!

#jason todd #red hood #luigi mangione #dc comics #batman comics #I know I’m a bit late to the party but I wanted to join

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custommadeazula · 7 months ago

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okay I’ve gotten pretty far and why does EVERYONE have a crush on tim drake

started reading young justice vol 1 and why did nobody tell me they are all UNHINGED

#dc impulse #dc secret #dc #dc comics #dc robin #tim drake #red robin #conner kent #bart allen #cassie sandsmark #it’s too early to remember everyone in yj I’ll add them after work

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custommadeazula · 7 months ago

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hot take: the best thing a superhero can be is a girl dad

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custommadeazula · 7 months ago

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started reading young justice vol 1 and why did nobody tell me they are all UNHINGED

#dc comics #young justice #dc robin #tim drake #superboy #conner kent #dc impulse #bart allen #wonder girl #cassie sandsmark #arrowette #greta hayes #dc secret

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custommadeazula · 7 months ago

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@maccreadysbaby a token of my appreciation after all of those chapters (of course this didn’t take nearly a whole week to make what are you talking about😀)

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: none

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

THE POOR BABY TRIED HE WASNT GONNA LET YOU DOWN OKAY HE TRIED

part thirty-five

❝ OUT OF THE LOOP ❞

SATURDAY — AUGUST 4 — 3:44AM

IT HAD BEEN MIDNIGHT WHEN THE NIGHTMARE-VISION-SECRET-KEEPER DISASTER HAD TAKEN PLACE, AND BELLAMY HAD CRIED UNTIL THREE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING.

Now, it was three-forty-five, and he had managed to cry himself into a light slumber, his head and shoulders pillowed on Bentley’s lap, the older boy’s hand repetitively smoothing down the hair on the top of his head. They were sitting on the bottom bunk of his bed, and Rockie was there, too, sitting at the foot of the mattress in silence.

None of them had really spoken. Apart from quiet consolations to try and help Bellamy calm, no words had been shared, only subtle pitiful glances or vague gestures.

That was okay. Bentley was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Bruce had lied straight to his face. Back when he had just woken up from nearly dying, while he was in the midst of having some kind of emotional breakdown, Bruce had lied to him. Without batting an eye, without the slightest bit of visible guilt or regret, he’d lied to him.

Had Bentley been naive to believe Bruce would never lie to him? Had it been stupid to assume he’d always tell him the truth? Everybody lied, he guessed. Hell, he was a trained liar. But somehow, now that Asten and Bruce were both lying to him, it… seemed to hurt him a lot worse than his pitiful little I-live-on-the-streets lies from back in the day could’ve hurt them. He had to lie. He had to because of his father — but Bruce… Bruce didn’t have to lie.

And he did anyway.

Why would he do that?

“Is that the first time you saw her?” Rockie whispered after a long, long time of silence. Bentley glanced over at him, and he was just looking back, his red-rimmed green eyes sort of glowing in Bellamy’s dim bedroom. Not a second later he looked down at his gloved hands and fiddled with his fingers.

“… No,” Bentley replied, glancing down at Bellamy, continuing to smooth down his hair.

Rockie inhaled and exhaled. “Varian told me you… weren’t born a metahuman. And you’re from Gotham. So does that mean… she…”

Bentley glanced back up, but Rockie avoided his eyes.

“I got kidnapped and turned. By her and her people,” Bentley replied quietly, looking back down at Bellamy. “So did Asten… and another friend of ours who moved away after.”

Rockie breathed in and out, again, but didn’t say anything.

“That was almost four years ago, though, and I thought she was…” Bentley shrugged, trailing off. “Do you… see her often?”

Rockie shrugged, eyes laser focused on his hands. “Off and on for the last five or six years.”

Bentley blinked. That was even before she ransacked Gotham.

That was closer to when Asten’s parents died. The first sighting of the Secret Keeper ever, in Brazil.

She had her hand on Rockie even back then? Why?

“I think I was eleven when I first saw her,” He continued with a soft sigh. “I thought I was gonna die.”

Bentley hummed. “Did you tell your parents?”

Rockie went quiet for a moment, and Bentley realized that maybe he didn’t have parents anymore. So he backtracked with quick: “Nevermind, sorry…”

“The people I lived with knew,” He replied anyways, with a faint shrug. “Didn’t care.”

Bentley didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t. He just looked back down at Bellamy, and a few beats of silence passed.

“He always said his head hurt after he had nightmares. I just… never guessed it would be her,” Bentley trailed off, glancing up at Rockie, then back down. “Does Valor know? About you? And her?”

He saw Rockie shrug again in his peripheral. “He knows I have nightmares, and… sometimes I space out and it’s hard to get my attention again. But he doesn’t know why. I’m usually good at handling it so I don’t freak him out by having a breakdown or whatever, but… I don’t know. Tonight was different. I’m usually in there alone.”

Bentley didn’t say anything, and he heard Rockie draw in a breath, fiddling with his fingers.

“What was she doing to you? Before we ran into each other?”

Bentley blinked, looking back up at him. “Before I ran into you? She was just talking to me.”

“And you were screaming?”

Bentley creased his brow. “No.”

Rockie looked down at his lap with an exhale. “She made me hear you screaming, then. I thought she was torturing you.”

That made Bentley wonder if Bellamy had even really been screaming, when she talked about inviting her third favorite bird. (How were they supposed to deal with someone who could make them hear and see whatever she wanted?)

“What do we tell them? Everyone else?” Bentley asked, swallowing lightly. “We can’t just…”

“We can just tell them that you and Bell had nightmares. That I was here to… y’know. Help,” Rockie suggested. “It isn’t very far from the truth. We can’t tell them about her, otherwise she might…”

“Yeah,” Bentley was quick to reply. “I know.”

Rockie sighed. “I would feel so bad if she started doing this to everyone else because of us.”

Bentley opened his mouth to reply, but that’s when he heard the dorm door open and, after a few minutes, close.

At almost four in the morning.

Bentley’s words died in his throat, and he didn’t say anything at all. Where had Asten gone at eight that he didn’t get back from until four in the morning? If that was even him coming home and not Valor. Bentley guessed he shouldn’t have been so upset — he and Asten had (kinda) decided they could do whatever they wanted and didn’t have to tell each other... But it still dug under his skin like needles anyways. That he had to offer up that option simply because Asten didn’t want to be agreeable.

A few moments later, a knock came on the bedroom door, and a voice whispered: “Bentley? You in there?”

It was Valor, and Bentley found himself huffing.

“Go ahead, I’ve got him,” Rockie said, shifting on the end of the bed up towards Bellamy.

Bentley obliged, wiggling out from under Bellamy without waking him and letting Rockie take his place. It was a weird maneuver to make with a sleeping child. With one last glance to make sure Bellamy didn’t wake (he looked asleep as oddly peaceful), Bentley left him with Rockie and made for the door, opening it wide enough to glance out.

“Hey,” Valor sighed, running a hand over his face. He looked tired — his gray eyes were dull and his posture was less than alert. “Asten’s asking for you.”

Bentley glanced around the dorm, quickly noting that the lights were out and Valor was the only one visible. He slid out of the bedroom and closed Bellamy’s door behind him, glancing in the direction of his and Asten’s room. “Where has he been?”

“We looked for him for a while, but he wasn’t on campus,” Valor’s eyes flicked around for a second, awkwardly, almost. Maybe like he felt bad, or… didn’t want to tell him? “You know my friend that throws all the parties? I guess Asten’s been talking to him one-on-one… Mason’s dad owns this huge nightclub in town, but it’s been closed recently for construction, so… Mason and whoever he wants to bring pretty much have free reign of the entire thing.”

Bentley just blinked, and Valor frowned at him, as though he’d made a facial expression involuntarily. So first Asten went to parties, and now he went to a literal nightclub?

“He’s… really, really drunk, Bentley. Like, blackout drunk. I’m not sure what they gave him, but he’s probably going to be out of commission for most of the day tomorrow,” Valor sighed lightly with a cringe. “He’s sick as a dog and won’t stop crying. He wants you.”

Bentley glanced toward their bedroom door, which was closed tight. “Will he… even remember it if I go in there?”

Valor shrugged, pity splaying across his features. “If I had to guess… probably not. But you never know…”

Bentley sighed lightly, glancing backwards at Bellamy’s door. “Who’s in there with him now?”

“Koa,”

Bentley didn’t say anything for a solid thirty seconds. On one hand, Asten was crying and sick and asking for him, even when they weren’t talking. Asking for him when he was in pain and upset and… there was a part of Bentley that said he couldn’t possibly ignore that. That it was kind of his job as a brother and as a best friend to throw away whatever little turmoil silent treatment they had going on and just be there for him when he needed him.

But there was the other part of him, too — the little jerk part that said Asten had snuck off to a nightclub by himself, and he should pay for it by himself; that Bentley wasn’t going to be there to baby him through all his bad decisions just because he shed a few tears when he wasn’t even sober enough to comprehend why. It wasn’t Bentley’s mess to control or clean up — it was Asten’s. That Asten was Asten’s mess, Asten’s responsibility.

Would that be too harsh? Bentley was always one to wear his heart on his sleeve and try and make everything better…

But Asten had been mad at him for avoiding conflict.

He huffed lightly. For the first time in his life, Bentley decided that Asten… wasn’t his problem.

He swiping a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. “Look, I’m already having a rough night… do you think you guys could just…?”

Valor nodded instantly. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Did you have another nightmare?”

“Yeah,” Bentley lied straight through his teeth, glancing down at his feet. (Because he couldn’t just tell Valor he’d been jerked right into Rockie’s bad dream while he was very much still awake.) “It… was a bad one. And then Bellamy had one, too.”

Valor frowned. “I thought you looked tired. Is Rockie in there with you two?”

Bentley merely nodded, and Valor smiled faintly.

“Alright; get in there and go to bed. I’ll handle Asten,” He replied, glancing back at their bedroom door.

Bentley cringed and asked: “You sure?” (Just to make it seem like he wasn’t super relieved a blackout drunk Asten was off his plate. Even though he was. So, so, so relieved.)

“Positive,” Valor said with a reassuring smile, lifting a hand and patting him on the head like a dog. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” Bentley replied. Then he gave Valor a little smile and retreated back into Bellamy’s room, closing the door behind him.

He pretended he didn’t feel guilty about it.

—

With everything that happened, Bentley only got about an hour of sleep that night. And not even that one hour went uninterrupted; because his phone decided to start ringing right at the tail end of it, when he was finally drifting into something deeper than a doze.

With a soft groan of frustration, he shuffled around in Bellamy’s bed until he found the device and turned the volume off. The screen was practically blinding in the dark dorm, and the clock on it said it was almost noon. The caller ID that was displayed across the phone read Bruce. For some reason that made Bentley kinda sad.

With a small sigh, he brushed his hair out of his face and maneuvered himself out of the bed. He and Bellamy were lying near the top while Rockie was spread out on the foot, all of them sleeping to the best of their abilities. Which wasn’t very well.

He sort of climbed over Bellamy and made his way out of the bedroom. The living area was empty, but he wasn’t surprised, given the others were out until four a.m.

Then he remembered that Asten was super hungover, and that meant maybe awake, and that meant Valor was maybe awake. So, just for good measure, he left the dorm and went into the empty, long hallway, keeping his foot in the door so it didn’t close and lock him out.

Then, with a sigh, he brought the phone to his ear with a soft: “Hello?”

“Hey there, chum! How are you?”

Bentley very suddenly had to fight off the violent urge to start crying at the sound of his dad’s voice; something stabbed through his chest, and he quickly realized it was betrayal. “Bruce…”

A moment of quiet passed where Bentley just bit his tongue in an attempt to make his eyes stop watering.

“What is it, buddy?”

“The…” He trailed off, looking down at his socked feet. Memories from last night’s dream-vision played over and over in his head, and his eyes burned. “The Secret Keeper, she… she’s back, and… she’s doing the same thing she did before. You… told me she was dead.”

A moment of silence filtered through the phone.

“That’s great, bud. I’m so glad to hear that,”

Bentley’s breathing hitched in his throat, and he blinked in shock. “…W… What…?”

More silence came.

“You’ll have to bring them back to the Manor so I can meet them sometime,”

Bentley glanced down at his phone to confirm that Bruce’s name was on the screen. “Bruce? Can… you hear me?”

“Yeah, I can hear you,”

Bentley sniffed lightly, brushing his hair out of his face. “Did… you hear what I said? About the Secret Keeper?”

“Yeah, I said you should bring them to the manor. Sorry, I might’ve cut out, I’m in my car,” Bruce continued, and Bentley scrunched his face up. It was like he was having an entirely different conversation with him.

“Bruce?”

“Yeah, bud?”

Bentley breathed in. “I said the Secret Keeper is back. She’s bothering me and my friends again.”

“I’m sure everyone would be super excited. Dick in particular,” Bruce chuckled. “He’s practically dying to meet your friends.”

“What are you talking about?” Bentley muttered, his eyes burning again until a few tears fell over, because apparently he was losing his absolute mind.

The sound of a blinker vaguely came through the phone. “Okay, I love you, too. And tell Asten I love him. Bye.”

“Wait, Bruce!”

The call ended, and Bentley looked down at his screen, complete and utter bafflement written across his features. Why couldn’t Bruce hear what he was saying? Like he was hearing something else? Was Bentley hearing wrong? A few tears fell on his screen and he swiped them away.

A sudden jolt of pain stabbed through his head, and he winced, nearly dropping his phone from the way his muscles writhed.

“You can’t possibly think I was just gonna let you tell your daddy on me,” Her voice pierced his mind, echoing in his skull. “You two just had a lovely conversation about how much you love this school and your roommates, courtesy of me.”

Bentley cried quietly, shoving his way back into the dorm and letting the door close behind him.

“I have a foothold in everyone’s heads. Everyone will see and hear what I want. Sorry, kid, but your family is going to stay blissfully out of the loop,”

Bentley’s heart was already pounding out of his chest again as he made his way across the dorm. Another stab of pain came, and her voice never returned. A headache, one that he’d recently managed to shake, formed at the base of his skull.

He went back to Bellamy’s room and closed the door behind him in a not-so-calm fashion.

The only reason he’d even survived her last time was a time traveling speedster and the sudden realization that he could bend her blood, both of which she hadn’t predicted. How the hell were three private school roommates supposed to do it alone?

He sobbed lightly to himself, sitting down against Bellamy’s door just like he used to when his father locked him in the closet.

Last time this happened, his family had at least a clue about what was going on. How was he going to do this without them? Deal with her?

For a long time, he just cried in Bellamy’s floor. And sometime later he felt a presence to his right, and someone with big metal gloves carefully reeled him into a hug.

He never went back to sleep.

tag list that never works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy

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