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maccreadysbaby · 2 days

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A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: angst

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!

terrible bad plan number 19284728 is brewing (and so is something else)

part thirty-five

❝ ARSONIST ❞

THURSDAY — SEPTEMBER 3 — 7:00AM

ASTEN WAS… REALLY, REALLY, REALLY SICK. Just within four hours of arriving at the Manor, he’d thrown up three fever medicine attempts, gone up to a hundred-and-four temperature, and hadn’t been able to say a coherent sentence the entire time.

Bentley and Nico had taken up residence on a loveseat situated in the corner of the dim guest room, and Nico was curled up across it, dead asleep with his head on Bentley’s lap. Alfred kept checking his temperature frequently with a forehead scanning thermometer. The screen always turned green, which meant good. Asten’s always turned red.

Surprisingly enough, Jason had taken it upon himself to stay in the bedroom basically the whole time. Bentley wasn’t really sure why — maybe he cared about Asten because they were both from Crime Alley? He didn’t really know, and he wasn’t going to ask and ruin it. He liked having Jason around so much, even if it wasn’t for him. Dick and Bruce kept going in and out to fetch things they needed and to give Nico’s parents updates. (Asten’s uncle, Sam, didn’t seem to care much about updates. He never picked up Dick’s calls.)

It had taken a while for Nico to stop crying. Everything seemed to be taking more of a toll on him than Bentley realized. Especially distancing himself from his parents; that was the worst part. With the whole adoption surprise and now the superpowers, he wouldn’t even begin to let himself near them. And for a kid who had never really been away from them to start with, it was pretty hard. Sleeping was the most peaceful Bentley had seen him in a while, so he stayed dutifully still as to not disturb his slumber.

The guest room had been silent for a while, apart from Alfred checking Asten and Nico’s temperatures every now and then. Currently, he was out of the room, searching with Bruce for a medicine Asten might be able to stomach better, and Jason went with them to get more liquid for the drip, leaving Nico and Bentley the only two in the room.

It seemed like absolutely everything that could go wrong, was going wrong. And Bentley was always to blame.

“Remember Titus?”

Bentley flinched with a gasp when Nico spoke, very nearly whacking him in the face. He glanced down, and Nico was looking up at him, blue eyes glazed over a dull. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

Nico sat up with a small, forced snicker that didn’t really reach his eyes. He ran a hand through his fluffy blonde hair and sighed, rubbing his face. “Sorry. Apparently I’m so tired that sleeping is hard.”

“I’m sorry,” Bentley mumbled, glancing over at Asten. “And yeah. I remember Titus.”

Nico pulled his knees up on the maroon loveseat, rubbing at his eyes with his hands. “He ran… or, teleported away after Asten told him about his parents. Never showed back up. Didn’t this happen to him before he got superpowers? The sickness?”

“Uh…” Bentley glanced over at Nico, who was waiting expectantly for an answer to the question he already knew the answer to, and then back over at Asten’s limp form. Only his head was visible beneath the beige quilt. “I guess so…”

“It’s all there. Fever, throwing up, delirium, vertigo, fatigue, sweating, loss of consciousness. The only thing Dr. Keene talked about that we haven’t seen from him was burning pain,” Nico explained in a whisper, fiddling with his pajama pants. (Bentley’s sailboat pajamas, actually. They had him change after he admitted that Asten had indeed thrown up on him.)

Bentley blinked a few times. “But Titus was sick as soon as he came out of the synchronizer. It’s been over two weeks since we were there.”

Nico shrugged, resting his head on his knees. “I dunno. It was just something I thought about.”

“Didn’t Titus’s sickness just go away after five days?” Bentley questioned, glancing over at him, and Nico replied with a simple nod.

“It’s starting day six for Asten.”

Bentley turned back toward their sick friend. He watched in silence as Asten turned his head with a groan, making the cool washcloth Dick put there flop off onto the mattress.

With a soft exhale, Bentley stood, stretching and making his way to the edge of the bed. Asten still looked terrible — his face was fever flushed and he was sweating like no one Bentley had ever seen. That and the wet washcloth made his black and blue hair soggy and stick to his face. His lips were pale and Bentley didn’t think he’d seen his eyes open once since he’d arrived. It reminded him of when Tim was sick — scary.

With a pang of pity that moved through his veins, he dipped the washcloth in a bowl of cold water, squeezed it out, and put it back on Asten’s forehead.

An extremely dramatic groan was the first real reaction they got out of Asten all day. He didn’t say any words, but turned his head to the side to make the washcloth fall off again.

“I know it's cold,” Bentley started, grabbing the cloth and putting it back, keeping his hand over it so it wouldn’t move even if Asten did. “But it’s helping you.”

Asten turned his head from side to side trying to get it off, and Bentley apologetically held it there. Nico drifted up next to him with a quiet sigh.

“I wish he would be better already,” He muttered, huffing and crossing his arms. “He’s going to hate me.”

Bentley momentarily glanced at him, catching the calculating way he was looking at Asten. “Why would you say that?”

Nico shrugged, his dull blue eyes bouncing around the room. “On the third day, when his fever was really bad, I said we should probably call you or my parents or an ambulance or something, but he wouldn’t let me. He said he didn’t want any help. And now I brought him here.”

“You… did the right thing,” Bentley replied, looking back at Asten, who was still moving his head side to side. “The best thing for him.”

Nico nodded in silence.

Asten groaned unintelligibly, and one of his hands came up from under the quilt and pushed weakly at Bentley’s wrist.

“I know it’s cold,” The redhead repeated. Asten began to squirm slightly on the bed, his eyebrows pinching together in discomfort.

“G’off,” He halfway grumbled. Nico shifted by Bentley’s when an actual word came out of Asten’s mouth for the first time in a whole twenty-four hours.

“Not until your fever breaks,” Bentley replied, holding the cloth firmly in place. “I’m sorry.”

Asten didn’t like that.

“G’off!” He begged in his not-awake-but-not-unconscious limbo, and he pinched his face together in a way that Bentley knew all too well — that he was about to start crying. “Please… please…”

Bentley sighed lightly. “Okay. Just for a minute,” And then he lifted the cloth off of Asten’s forehead again. The older boy’s features softened, and he fell peaceful.

There was shuffling by his side, and before Bentley could turn to see what was happening, Nico scanned Asten’s forehead with their thermometer. Bentley counted to ten and then put the cloth back, to which Asten groaned dramatically again. Only a few seconds later, Nico moved Bentley’s hand and scanned Asten’s head again. And then again.

“What are you doing?” Bentley questioned, glancing over at him. Nico was staring at the glowing red thermometer screen like it had a picture of a unicorn on it, his blue eyes blown dinner-plate wide.

“He should be dead,” Was Nico’s muted mumble.

Bentley furrowed his brow and stepped closer to Nico, peering down at the thermometer.

The screen was bright red, displaying a large hundred-and-eighteen-point-four.

Bentley blinked, and then rubbed his eyes. Bruce had talked about Tim’s hundred-and-four being bad…

“Do it again,” He ordered. Nico reached forward and repeated the process, swiping the thermometer across Asten’s forehead. A hundred-and-eighteen-point-seven.

“This thing has to be broken,” Nico suggested, lifting the thermometer up and scanning Bentley’s forehead with it. It came back green — ninety-eight-point-four. He reached over and did Asten’s again.

A hundred-and-nineteen-point-six.

“You better put that cloth back on him. This is insane. Impossible, really. He should literally be burning alive inside his own body. Like, vegetable territory,” Nico muttered, scanning his own forehead with the device. Ninety-eight-point-seven.

“He can hear you,” Bentley muttered, dipping the cloth in the water bowl again.

“He shouldn’t be hearing anything! He should be dead!”

Bentley said nothing, wringing out the cloth. Nico checked Asten’s temperature one last time. A hundred-and-twenty-point-one.

“It’s literally getting higher by the second!”

Bentley pressed the cloth back on Asten’s forehead, to which he protested by screwing his face up and squirming around on the bed some more.

“The highest internal temperature a person has ever survived is a hundred-and-fifteen-point-seven!” Nico exclaimed, tossing the thermometer on the table and staring at Asten with a strange look on his face. Bentley glanced over at him without a word. “What? I looked it up when Asten started getting sick.”

Bentley said nothing, but continued to hold the cloth down on Asten’s forehead. He could feel the heat radiating from him through the cloth. If a hundred-and-four was bad, how was Asten still alive at a hundred-and-twenty?

Asten groaned dramatically again, pushing at Bentley’s wrist with more force now. He grumbled, “Get it off,” coherently, like he was actually starting to wake up.

“I know you don’t-“

“Get it off!”

“But you-“

“Get it off!” Asten’s eyes snapped open that time, but they weren’t green anymore. They were…

They were…

Glowing orange.

Bentley and Nico both jumped backwards, and the cloth slid from Bentley’s fingers and splatted on the floor next to his feet. Asten blinked a few times and looked around the room, a bit disoriented, his orange irises bouncing here and there.

“Hey,” Bentley greeted nervously, sending a quick glance to Nico. Asten looked over at them, eyes flicking between the pair incredulously. “It’s okay, you’re at my place.”

Asten said nothing, but kept blinking like he wasn’t sure what was going on. Bentley bent down and picked up the washcloth from the floor, dipping it back in the water bowl and wringing it out. “And your fever is really really really high, so I need to put this back on you.”

Asten blinked, the glowing in his eyes unrelenting, the orange pulsing and moving like flames. “But I feel fine.”

“But you-“ Bentley started, but Nico elbowed him lightly. Their eyes met before Nico whispered: “He’s delirious. He was saying the same thing the other day, but he couldn’t even tell me his own name.”

Don’t argue with someone who is delirious, Bentley knew that much from helping with Tim. He nodded to himself and then glanced back over at Asten, who was now sitting up straight, looking around like he’d never seen and bedroom in his life.

“That’s great. I’m glad you’re feeling better, but your fever is still really really high. The cool cloth is good for you,” He reasoned, wringing it out again and folding it in half to fit on his forehead.

“No it’s not,” Asten argued, shifting away from Bentley on the bed. “It hurts.”

“It’s just cold, buddy. Lay back down,” Bentley tried, holding the cloth up. Asten pushed himself farther away until he was on the far edge of the bed, glaring at the cloth like it had assaulted him.

“No! Stop it! Get it away! It burns!”

“Shh, shh, stop yelling,” Bentley muttered, glancing at the door in a spurt of panic. If someone heard them, they were screwed. “It's okay, Asten. It’s just a little cool.”

“No it’s not, it burns!”

The washcloth in Bentley’s hand burst into flames with a loud whoosh when Asten said it burns. The redhead cried out in terror, dropping it on the floor with another strange splat.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Nico shouted, spinning around in a circle for reasons unbeknownst to Bentley. “Put it out! Put it out!”

Bentley, in a blind panic, grabbed the water bowl from the nightstand and dumped it all over the cloth (and the floor.) The fire went out with a low sizzle.

No one spoke for a solid five seconds. Bentley looked at Nico, who glanced at him with his blue eyes blown wide, a terrified but awestruck look on his face. Then he looked back at Asten, whose eyes were slowly turning from orange back to green.

Had he just…

Set that on fire?

With his mind?

With a grimace of discomfort, Asten laid back down in the bed, satisfied that the cloth would no longer be attacking him.

“Asten, do you-“

Before Bentley could finish speaking, Asten’s eyes rolled backwards into his head, and he fell unresponsive again.

“Oh my God! He is a metahuman,” Nico mumbled, glancing around the room warily. “We… we should clean this up before your family gets back. Like, now.”

“If they didn’t already hear you screaming,” Bentley muttered, grabbing the singed and blackened cloth out off of the floor. He sent a quick glance to Asten, who was unmoving.

Nico hurried over to the bathroom and opened the sink cabinets. “I thought it was crazy that I had superpowers. And now he does too?!”

Bentley said nothing, but instead, grabbed the empty water bowl and carried it into the bathroom to refill. He tossed the old rag in the trash and covered it with some toilet paper.

“You know, if he has fire based powers, maybe the cold really does hurt,” Nico suggested, grabbing a towel from the cabinet and heading back into the bedroom to mop up the floor as Bentley filled the bowl in the sink.

“Maybe,” Bentley replied. Everything comes with a downside, doesn’t it? Everything good?

Bentley brought the full bowl back into the room and put it on the nightstand. Nico handed him a new washcloth, and he dipped it in the water just in time for the bedroom door to swing open.

Jason was wearing a blue hoodie and gray sweatpants now, his hair slightly messy with the white part hanging down toward his eyes. He was carrying a few fluid bags in his hands for Asten’s IV. He paused abruptly after he closed the door, glancing between the three children (one unconscious and two rooted to their spots.) for a few seconds with his greenish-blue eyes narrowed. “What’re you up to?”

Bentley blinked, and with a cringe and a quick glance to a terrified Nico, replied: “Nothing, he just… woke up for a second. He… said a real word, too. A few.”

Jason, after a moment of silence and a few way too detective-ish glances, nodded in approval, making his way to the drip stand and unscrewing the old bag from the IV tubes. “That’s good. Will you hand me the thermometer?”

With a grimace, Bentley grabbed it from the bedside table and handed it over.

He and Nico watched in quiet terror as Jason finished changing out the IV bag and scanned Asten’s forehead with the thermometer. The screen turned red, and he looked at it inquisitively, then set it down on the bed with a sigh. “Looks like the fever might be going down, too.”

Bentley blinked once. Twice. Glanced over at Nico, who looked completely bamboozled but was trying not to. There was no way… what?

“What was the temperature?” Bentley questioned, dipping the washcloth back in the water bowl as a way to look like he wasn’t excruciatingly confused.

“A hundred-and-three-point-nine,” Jason replied. Bentley nodded slightly and wringed out the cloth, folding it and placing it gently on Asten’s forehead. He scrunched his face up, but didn’t wake.

And now the question was: had his temperature actually gone down that far that fast, or was Jason lying so he didn’t freak them out?

“Hey, Bentley,”

Bentley and Nico glanced over at the door that was sitting only slightly ajar, and Bentley shifted awkwardly at the voice that had come through it. Damian hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, why would he be calling for him now?

“Yeah?” He questioned.

He waited for Damian to open the door, but he never did. Jason didn’t say anything about it — probably because the assassin actually wanting to talk to somebody was a sign that he was finished hibernating.

“I’ll be right back,” Bentley said to Nico, who nodded.

Bentley moved from Asten’s bedside to the door and swung it open, glancing out into the hallway. It was completely empty, but Damian’s bedroom door was cracked open. No one else’s was.

“Damian?”

“Bentley,”

His voice was echoing from down the stairs, the foyer. Bentley gently swung the guest room door closed behind him and made for the stairs, thumping down them softly. He couldn’t see anybody at the bottom.

“Damian?”

“Bentley,”

When he reached the bottom of the stairs and could see the entire foyer, there was no one in it. The pale sunrise was illuminating outside the windows, making the whole house glow dimly, but there was no Damian anywhere.

“Bentley,”

The redhead turned on a dime, glancing down the hallway that led to the library and den. That’s where the voice was coming from.

His heartbeat was picking up. Why was his heartbeat picking up? Why was he sort of freaked out? “Damian? Are… you okay?”

“In the den,”

Bentley hesitantly made his way down the hall. He checked each room on the way — the office, the library — and they all came up empty, just like the family had left them. When he finally turned into the den, Damian was standing in the middle of the room in a green hoodie and black pants, looking completely and utterly normal. The room was normal, too — messy from movie marathons with an ever-burning fireplace that gave the whole thing a warm glow. Not a pillow was out of place, everything was just how it was the last time Bentley saw it.

He sighed in relief at the sight of Damian, stepping inside and glancing around. His fear quieted, replaced by something like, maybe, happiness? Shock that Damian was actually talking to him? “What is it?”

Damian looked down at his own socked feet for a few moments, fiddling with his hands inside his hoodie pocket. He looked alright. Good, even. “I just wanted to make sure you are aware… that… I do apologize for my previous behavior towards you.”

Bentley blinked, his eyes wandering around the den awkwardly. Right; Damian didn’t like apologizing in front of people, just like when they were in the car. “Uh… it's…”

“I… have to get used to how words affect you. You are different from my brothers. Richard and Drake and Todd — they can threaten one another and say the most crude things all day and still be friends at dinner. I… am still not sure how to effectively communicate with you,” Damian admitted, glancing down at the carpeted floor. “I am sorry for all those things I said. I did not mean them.”

Bentley breathed in and out, blinking. Damian wasn’t really one to go changing his mind, so maybe he actually hadn’t meant it in the first place? But it had sounded so sincere…

Bentley inhaled, muttering softly: “Do you really think everything would be better if I was gone?”

“No,” Damian sighed, shaking his head. Bentley glanced down at his own socks. Why did he feel like he was about to cry?

He heard Damian shift. “I think everything would be better if you were dead.”

Bentley glanced back up at him, and he had a strange, twisted smirk on his face that looked forced, mangled, even. So grotesque that it reminded him momentarily of the joker. Damian’s eyes weren’t blue — they were amber.

Bentley inhaled sharply. “You’re not Damian.”

He took a few steps back. The fake Damian cackled strangely, and in a blink, it wasn’t Damian anymore — it was The Secret Keeper, standing in the den, in the Manor, right in front of him. Her crooked stitched smile was bleeding, and the tips of her platinum hair were stained crimson. Bentley shouted in fear and stumbled backwards, fell over his own two feet, and hit the floor of the den with a dull thud.

“I can make you see what I want you to see!” The Secret Keeper shouted in a somewhat manic manner, spinning around, her stringy hair whacking her in the face. The den around them melted away into a stretch of the white hallways from Dr. Keene’s lab, sterile and bright and terrifying. Davis was laying at the end of the hall, straight in front of Bentley, covered in something scarily crimson.

His heart jumped. “Davis?!”

“I can make you hear what I want you to hear!”

“Bentley!” Someone screamed — a girl. Bentley turned around on the cold white tile and, at the opposite end of the hall from Davis, stood a small girl with long red hair. She was wearing pink overalls, holding a purple teddy bear. She was crying. “Bentley, help! He’s coming!”

“Vivienne?” He whispered. How did he know her name?

The Secret Keeper laughed, but he couldn’t see her. “I can reach into every future in every universe and show it to you. Your past, present, and future are mine!”

Bentley’s father suddenly appeared behind the redhead girl, running at her and scooping her up from behind. Vivienne screamed, dropping the bear and kicking and flailing as he carried her away.

“No! No, father, I don’t want to go to the closet! No! Please! Bentley, help!”

Was Vivienne Bentley’s… sister?

The white hallways faded and melted into a white room of nothing. Bentley had been there before.

“I can make your family hear or see anything I want. Why else would they ignore Nico’s windstorm? The screaming? Because they didn’t hear it,” The Secret Keeper stepped out in front of Bentley from nowhere, smiling twistedly at him, her eyes wide and wild. “Their minds are mine to guide. I’m building the foundations of a future where we’re guaranteed to win. Your family won’t know what happened to you until it’s too late, and if you try to tell them?”

She smiled at him with serious, dead eyes. “I’ll kill you. And all of them. And everyone.”

Bentley breathed in a shaky breath. “Please-“

“I can see everything that’s going to happen tomorrow, the next day, the next day. And if I play my cards right, if I keep the Wayne’s in the dark, Batman and his whole team will be gone in a few short weeks. Days,” She spun around again like she was talking to herself, tugging at her hair like she was going kind of crazy. “I can see everything that’s coming and it’s all mine!”

Bentley’s heart was pounding out of his chest, and he breathed in shakily. “Charlie-“

“I’m not Charlie!” The Secret Keeper screamed, and suddenly, she had Bentley by the throat. She slammed him into a wall he couldn’t see, his toes barely brushing the ground. She was only inches from his face. “I’m not Charlie!”

Bentley gasped for air, tugging at her hand with both of his. Why was she so strong? “You… were.”

The Secret Keeper stared at him blankly for a solid ten seconds, silent, squeezing his throat. Her amber eyes went unblinking for so long they began to water. She was shaking. “Help me.”

Bentley tugged and scratched at her hand. “Let… go,” He gasped, struggling against her strength. “Pl…ease.”

“Help me,” She whispered, but it sounded like her voice was doubled. Bentley’s eyes began to blur from the lack of air. Someone popped out from behind The Secret Keeper — someone purple. Bentley saw that their hands were encased in metal capsules, chained to the ground by huge, thick chains. He blinked twice, and the image cleared.

It was Charlie. The real Charlie, with blonde hair, with blue eyes, in the royal purple dress she wore the day she was turned into the Secret Keeper. She had a huge metal muzzle on her head that kept her mouth locked away like a dog. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face red from crying.

“Save me,”

In a literal flash of yellow lightning, Nico blipped into Bentley’s vision and slammed a metal fire poker into the Secret Keeper’s head like he was hitting a home run. The white room immediately turned back into the den, the voices faded, and Bentley hit the carpeted floor with a thump.

He fell into a coughing fit, his hand floating up to his throat. He was shaking, he could feel it — and his heart was pounding out of his chest.

Nico dropped the blood-splattered fire poker with a clang. The Secret Keeper wasn’t there anymore. Had she vanished into thin air?

“Are you okay?” Nico questioned, grabbing Bentley’s arms and tugging him out of the floor. He was breathing really fast, too, and he touched various places on Bentley’s shoulders and head. “Did she hurt you? Is your throat okay? Where did she go? Did I kill her?!”

Bentley stayed silent, focusing on getting air in and out of his body. His throat was going to bruise — how would he hide that?

Nico pulled Bentley into him, hugging him tightly. “Where did she go?”

“I dunno,” Bentley mumbled.

Nico sighed. “That was so weird. Charlie, she…”

“You could see Charlie?” Bentley questioned, and he felt Nico nod.

“After you came downstairs, everything turned white and I saw her. Like, really her, before the Synchronizer. She told me that the Secret Keeper was attacking you,”

Bentley sighed, his mind struggling to keep up with everything. “But… what?”

Nico pulled away with a sigh, running a hand through his fluffy hair. “I don’t know. All I know is that I saw her, not the Secret Keeper, and she warned me.”

A moment of silence passed where they just stood there. Was Charlie inside the Secret Keeper, like a passenger along for the ride? Doing everything against her will? Was she trying to get out?

“We have to tell your dad,” Nico finally muttered, shaking his head. “This is insane.”

“No,” Bentley ordered, shaking his head urgently. “We can’t- we can’t tell anybody.”

Nico cringed, furrowing his brows, turning to leave the room. “She’s just trying to scare you into silence. We have to tell them.”

“No!” Bentley grabbed his shoulder and tugged him backwards. “We can’t. She’ll hurt them.”

“We can’t just keep letting this happen!” Nico exclaimed, locking eyes with him. “She’s harassing you.”

“I’m not going to risk their lives. I’ve seen her kill people with one look,” He replied, exhaling heavily. He drew his hand back and looked down at the floor. “This is all my fault. The least I can do is stop getting other people involved.”

Nico blinked a few times. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Their life was fine before I got here,” Bentley muttered. He sighed and walked over to the couch, plopping down on it and running a hand through his hair. “I should just go back to my dad. This is what the whole war is about anyways.”

Nico said nothing, but made for the couch, sitting down beside Bentley. He could feel Nico’s eyes on him but he didn’t look up from his socks.

“I… I’ve seen… some memories. Of your father,” He said softly. “You can’t go back to that.”

Bentley sniffled. When had his eyes become so watery? “I’d rather go back to that than watch them suffer for me. I survived ten years of it.”

“You can’t do that. They love you here,”

Bentley groaned, dropping his head down into his hands. “This is a disaster. She was right. Everything would be better if I was just dead.”

The den fell eerily silent and still. After a long while of nothingness, Bentley glanced up at Nico, who was staring at him in a mixture of shock and despair, his ocean blue eyes gleaming with crystal clear tears.

“Please don’t say that,” He whispered, almost inaudibly. A pang of guilt rang through Bentley at the sight of him, and he sighed.

Not a single thing that Bentley ever did went right, did it?

He cleared his throat softly. “Nico, I…”

“Stop. Talking. Just stop for a second,” Nico ordered, looking away and breathing deep, gathering his composure. He looked back at Bentley with glossy eyes. “The Secret Keeper is and has been tormenting you for weeks. Weeks she’s spent on you and the people around you. Ruining them to ruin you. And you’re letting her. You’re letting her ruin you.”

Bentley opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“You know what I see when I look at that? When I see her trying to keep you in this constant state of terror and anxiety and loneliness?” Nico questioned, a hand floating up to land on Bentley’s shoulder. “She’s scared of you.”

Bentley blinked. “What? No she’s not. She can kill me.”

Nico squeezed his shoulder. “They said in the video diaries we saw in that morgue that the whole goal of this operation is to destroy Batman — Bruce. Your family. Damian, Robin. Dick, Nightwing-”

Bentley’s mouth fell open. “You- I- what?”

“Don’t worry, Asten doesn’t know, just me,” Nico continued with a shrug. “It’s not that hard to figure out. If you look at the number and ages of the main superheroes in Gotham, they all line up with this family. Not to mention that Dick Grayson goes between here and Bludhaven, and so does Nightwing. And the connection between your father and the Secret Keeper and Batman — it just makes sense. Not to mention you look really awkward whenever we mention superheroes at all.”

Bentley exhaled. So, he put the whole family in danger, got himself kidnapped, lied about a billion times, and now his best friend knows Bruce is Batman. “Bruce is going to die.”

“I won’t say anything. Promise. Anyway, here’s what I was getting at-“ Nico moved his hands around in the air. “They could do this entire evil diabolical plan without involving you at all. They could go straight for the throat and take out Bruce and the family for vengeance and revenge and blah blah blah and never spend a second on you, but they’re not. The Secret Keeper is going through hell to keep you on your knees. You know why?”

Bentley blinked.

“Because there’s something in you that can beat them, and they know it,” Nico said. “They’re expending all this energy toward keeping you down when they could be using it on Batman and his crew. You’re not the same kid that bowed at his father’s feet and they know it.”

Bentley looked down. “But-“

“The Secret Keeper can see the future, and the only one she’s completely hellbent on keeping quiet is you.”

Bentley said nothing.

“And maybe you don’t want to tell your family. That’s fine. But I still believe that you can get the upper hand if you take it. You said it yourself, this whole war is about you. So climb out of the hole she’s trying to bury you in and end it,”

Bentley breathed in and out, glancing around the room. He could hear something moving, above them, in the ceiling, like water in the pipes. He could feel it pumping like blood in his veins.

“I might not be the best at using superpowers yet, but I’ll do anything you need me to do. We’re a team, and Asten is part of it too, okay? You’re not alone,”

Bentley swallowed thickly and nodded to himself.

How many ten year olds could say they’d started and stopped a war?

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

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