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maccreadysbaby · 1 month

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A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: death and gore

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!

here’s bentley and his friends going through it™︎

part thirty-one

❝ HOMEBOUND ❞

MONDAY — AUGUST 17 — 10:42PM

BENTLEY, ASTEN, NICO, AND DAVIS DIDN’T MOVE AN INCH. Instead, they all stared at the bodies of the guards that had just choked to death on nothing.

Nico’s glowing white eyes faded back to their normal blue, rolled back into his head, and he fell over without a warning. Thankfully, Asten was quick and close enough to keep his head from hitting the white tile of Dr. Keene’s screwed-up child experimenting facility.

Bentley blinked, taking several moments to look back and forth between the pile of dead guards in the doorway of the sterile white room, and Nico. Had he just… killed them all? With superpowers?

He turned back to Nico and Asten — the latter now had the former’s head on his lap, and he was staring at him, stunned. So many people were… dying. Bentley had to have seen at least twenty people die right before his eyes in the past, what? Thirty minutes? And each one at the hands of people he knew as friends. The thought made him kind of dizzy. He’d seen so many people die.

He flinched when Davis’s metal glove landed on his left shoulder, and when he met his eyes, the green orbs were dancing worriedly across his face and bloody frame. Bentley looked away and sniffled quietly. “You think you can walk so I can carry your friend?”

Honestly, Bentley was running on nothing more than fumes and fear, and had been for at least a solid few days. The added pain and terror from the gunshot was almost inconceivable, blending into one big blur of full-body agony that he couldn’t stop crying over. Even though Davis said the shot wasn’t that bad (he knew it would be a very different situation if he had been shot in the chest or head), keeping himself from falling over seemed to be the most laborious task he’d carried out in a long time.

But… Nico was passed out, and Bentley wasn’t yet. He wasn’t sure how many steps he’d get in — but if worse came to worse, he was probably small enough that Asten could get by with dragging him or something. So, as much as he wanted Davis to keep carrying him around, to hide his face from the world and pretend he was in Bruce’s arms, he wiped at his furiously leaking eyes and nodded for him to carry Nico instead.

With that, Davis moved across the room to pick him up, which he did while enduring the longest death glare Bentley had ever seen Asten throw in someone’s direction. He didn’t argue, though — much to their surprise. He just stood up once Nico was securely in Davis’s arms, eyes flicking over to Bentley, around the sterile white room. He also sent a glare to the Synchronizer that surely would’ve made it wither had it been anything but metal and machinery.

“We have to get to Titus. He’s on the other end of the facility,” Davis said, shifting Nico around until his head was securely against his shoulder. He was holding him bridal style like he’d been carrying Bentley, and Nico looked really small in his arms.

Asten breathed in, brushing a hand over his blue and black hair. He was still standing ahead of the Synchronizer where Nico had hugged the life out of him. “Titus. The one who can teleport?”

“Yeah. He can get you guys out of here, if we can get to him. If. I’m not sure how far we’ll make it with no self defense. I would offer up my hands, but they’re kinda full,” Davis glanced down at Nico momentarily, something like the vaguest hint of nostalgia or deja vu swirling in his green irises. “We-“

“I can help with that,”

Bentley, Asten, and Davis all flinched in tandem when a fourth voice came — a disembodied female voice that had no obvious user. The voice had come from near the back wall, across from the door, but… there wasn’t anybody there.

Bentley wasn’t, like, losing his mind, was he? The thought made more silent tears slide down his face. He’d lost so much blood he was losing his mind.

“Who’s there?” Davis questioned, taking a few steps past Bentley in the direction of the mysterious voice. Asten moved toward them, ever so slowly inching away from the Synchronizer and ending up at Bentley’s left side.

Suddenly, eliciting a flinch from Asten and a gasp from both Bentley and Davis, the redhead girl that they’d ejected from a Synchronizer on their search for Asten and Nico appeared out of thin air. She was standing against the back wall of the room in a hospital gown that mirrored theirs, picking at her nails. Her light blue eyes seemed to be an odd mixture of color that made them look silver, and her red hair was long and wavy down her back. Her face had much more color than it had earlier.

Davis glowered dangerously at her, tugging Nico closer to himself. “Who are you?”

She stepped forward, a ghost of a smile growing on her petite face. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hurt your little sheep. I’ve been following you since you let me out of the machine, which I’m here to repay you for. That is, if you can get your teleporty friend to get me out of here, too.”

“How are you going to help us?” Davis questioned, his voice layered thick with uncertainty and doubt. The girl smirked — smirked.

“I might be straight out of the mad scientist’s oven, but I have a pretty good handle on this whole superpower thing,” She explained, glancing down at her own blank nails, strangely nonchalant now — way calmer than she was earlier. “The names Lydia. Lydia Venice. And with me at your disposal, you’ll be able to walk your happy selves straight to the other side of the compound without a hitch.”

Her freakishly calm demeanor didn’t go unnoticed by Bentley. Either she was adapting extremely well to being kidnapped and experimented on, or…

“And how am I supposed to know if you’re being mind controlled?” Davis questioned, mirroring exactly what Bentley had been thinking. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. What if she was just going to take them back to Dr. Keene? Put them back in the machines to finish the process?

“I guess you don’t… but I feel like myself right now. Making my own choices and all that,”

Bentley would’ve been intrigued in the conversation, had the blood loss been taking less of a toll on him than it actually was. The floating feeling was now putting a fog over everything in his mind, and he was really cold. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, and it seemed to be going way too fast even though he was literally just standing there.

That’s about when his legs decided to give out beneath him.

Thankfully, a pair of arms looped around his middle in a rather un-graceful way, catching him in a position that made his shoulder momentarily set itself ablaze with agony. He let out a cry. Why? The pain? The trauma that was being burned into his head for the rest of his life? He wasn’t sure. But he was pretty sure it was enough to cry about.

“Whoa, whoa. I’ve got you, red,” Whispered probably the most comforting voice in the room.

Voices were running in the background, Davis and Lydia, but the Bentley was too focused on the fact that Asten had wasted no time pulling him gently back onto his feet. He slung Bentley’s arm around his shoulders, looping his own arm around his torso so he could hold him up. Nearly all of his (minimal) weight was leaning into Asten’s right side, which might’ve felt bad about if his mind wasn’t floating like he was fresh off of anesthesia. He noted the fact that he kind of felt like he wanted to hurl. He also noted the fact that everyone was suddenly looking at him.

Davis stared at him for a solid ten seconds, before he huffed and looked back at Lydia with a tense: “Fine. How are you going to help us?”

She smiled. “Observe.”

She walked over to the Synchronizer in the room, and with the cock of an eyebrow, put her hand on it. She disappeared. The entire Synchronizer disappeared with her.

“Whatever I touch turns invisible, too. If you hold onto me, no one will see us,” Her voice came from the nothingness in front of them.

“Alright…” Davis sighed to himself, blinking a few times to right his mind. “But if you try anything-“

“You’ll kill me?” The girl reappeared and cracked a strangely genuine looking grin, cocking a hip to the side. “I’ve seen quite the spread of bodies you’ve left in your wake, Reaper. This time and last.”

Davis scowled, a far-off look growing in his eyes momentarily. Bentley remembered hearing about the last time Davis had killed a bunch of people — if his brain wasn’t so foggy he might’ve even remembered what Dr. Keene said the reason was. But he couldn’t. He felt like he was drifting away into darkness. Like the agony was fading and so was he. Even the crying he’d assumed would be endless was tapering away due to the haze he couldn’t get out of.

“Asten,” He whispered, breathing deep despite being relatively still. The Brazilian immediately whipped his head around, his hold on him tightening the slightest.

“What is it?”

Bentley sniffled, batting away the wetness in his eyes to no avail. “I don’t feel good,” He muttered, but he couldn’t bring his gaze up to look his friend in the eyes. How was Asten so warm and everything else was so cold? Bentley was freezing.

The blue haired boy grimaced, glancing back up at Davis and Lydia. “As much as I love spitting empty threats at people, you seem to have forgotten that ginger over here is literally bleeding out. Let’s get this trainwreck on the road, yeah?”

Davis and Lydia’s eyes flicked between each other, Bentley, and Asten, before the former nodded. “It’s now or never.”

Lydia walked toward the door, grabbing onto Davis and Asten’s hospital gowns as she went, tugging them along. Bentley and Nico didn’t have much of a choice but to join them. “You’ll still see yourselves and each other, but no one else will. They can hear and feel us, though, so don’t be idiots.”

Bentley walked along, and he was thankful for Asten baring most of his weight — the strangely dull agony of the gunshot was sending waves of pain pulsing through his muscles, and it made his legs not want to work. It made nothing want to work, really — not even his brain, which was still getting fuzzier.

They left the Synchronizing room and moved into the long, sterile, white hallways, Lydia’s hand staying on the others’ gowns all the way. For now, the corridors were empty, but they branched off into other halls and areas not too far ahead of them, and Bentley wasn’t sure those would be so vacant. Red alarm lights were flashing in the halls, but there were no alarms.

“Titus is in the medical sector,” Davis nodded to the left, down the long hall. Thankfully, they weren’t facing all the dead people left in Davis’s wake. Bentley wasn’t sure he could stomach staring at them all again, black growing and writhing under their skin like a parasite.

Lydia nodded. “Don’t pull away from me, and keep your mouths shut,” She ordered.

Bentley had no problem with that. The rag-tag group of five, one shot, one unconscious, all supposedly invisible, wearing matching hospital gowns made down the white hallways with Lydia at the lead. Bentley was hardly able to focus on anything except keeping his own two feet under him as Asten walked. Why was it so hard to move his feet the right way?

At one point, a group of guards with guns walked right past them without batting an eye, which meant they really were invisible. And Bentley had never been more grateful in his life.

For a long time, all Bentley saw was bright white and flashing red moving around him. The occasional guard or few passed every now and then, paying them no mind at all. Lydia’s plan was going, dare he say, good. Maybe he would actually make it home.

They were just about to pass a group of six, solid white, armored and gunned guards when Nico decided to wake up.

Screaming.

“No! No, I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to!”

Bentley was shocked back into reality at the noise, and everyone began to move. The guards whipped out their weapons, Nico flailed in Davis’s arms, Lydia whipped around to see what was going on and Asten flinched so violently he nearly dropped Bentley on his face.

“Hey, hey, shh, shh, shh,” Davis tried to hush Nico. He was squirming to the point where Davis had to set him down in favor of not dropping him, his eyes wide and brimming with tears, and the guards were aiming their guns around the hallway in a blind panic. Lydia hadn’t let go of them, and the men in white looked confused, which was a good thing, Bentley thought.

…Until it wasn’t.

Until they began to pull the trigger of their guns blindly, one shot after another, each one aiming in the group’s general direction. There were probably ten or twelve gunshots that erupted from the group, at least two of which were aimed pretty darn close to Bentley and Asten. Lydia let go of everyone in a panic, making them visible to the world.

Bentley was overtake by dread at the realization that he was really dead now. And so was everybody else.

There was a flash of yellow lightning.

Everyone stood, frozen, unmoving, unblinking. The guards didn’t move. None of Bentley’s group moved. Not a single one of the five captives hit the floor, screamed, or started bleeding like he’d anticipated. Bentley looked down at himself and Asten, examining for blood or gunshots hidden by adrenaline, but there was nothing. At least a couple of those guns had been aimed freakishly close to them.

Nico was now standing directly in front of Bentley and Asten, his chest heaving and eyes sparking with an ever present yellow electricity. His right hand was balled into a fist.

When opened it, all of the bullets that had just been shot fell through his fingers and dinged on the tile.

Suddenly, it all seemed to make sense in Bentley’s only half-working mind. Nico’s hands moving so fast he couldn’t see them, the yellow lightning, the letter from his real parents talking about the Speed Force — Nico had super-speed. Super-speed that was so fast he’d just caught a dozen bulletsthat had been shot not ten feet away from them.

The guards were stunned, and Davis used the moment of confusion to his advantage, flicking a glove off with one resounding click.

Bentley jumped when more gunshots rang out — directed right at Davis. There was another flash of yellow lightning and Nico was in front of the men with the guns. He dropped another handful of bullets on the floor.

Bentley made sure to look away when Davis used his hands to kill the guards — just like he’d told him — but Asten watched in some mixture of horror and intrigue. Bentley saw Davis move in his peripheral, heard the dull thuds of the guards against the tile.

Nico stumbled back away from Davis, knocking into Asten, who almost dropped Bentley again.

“Dude, that was awesome! You’re like the freaking flash!” He heard Asten mutter, like he wasn’t literally shot at twenty seconds ago.

Suddenly and silently, Lydia hit the floor in front of the three of them.

They all flinched and peered down at her — she had small streams of blood dripping from her nose, her eyes, her ears. She was staring at them… but wasn’t really looking.

Bentley inhaled sharply when he realized that she wasn’t looking at all. That her chest wasn’t rising or falling, that she was laying eerily still. In his peripheral, he could see someone standing a ways off in the hallway. Someone with platinum hair and glowing yellow eyes, a twisted stitched smile that would forever be engraved in his mind.

Nico let out a strangled whine at the sight of Lydia’s body, and then promptly threw up in the floor. Asten had a grip on his shoulder with the arm that wasn’t around Bentley.

Davis was suddenly in front of them, obstructing their view of the Secret Keeper. He thrusted the keycard he’d been carrying around toward Asten. “You’re almost there! You just go to the next hall and turn left — you’ll be looking right inside his cell. That should open it. Go!”

Bentley’s heart was hammering in his ears, threatening to split his ribs clean open. Nico looked so pale he might pass out, he was crying again, arms wrapped around himself and looking really tiny. Asten took the hand off of his shoulder to grab the keycard.

Davis un-latched his other glove, but didn’t let it hit the floor yet. He pointed down the hallway when not one of them responded, glancing behind them. “Go!”

“What about you?” Bentley croaked, the sting of tears behind his eyes starting up again. He didn’t have much of a response when Asten rubbed his back. He wasn’t sure he could take any of the self sacrificial bullcrap — he wanted to survive and he wanted Asten to survive and Nico to survive and Davis to survive. Davis had to survive. He’d saved Bentley so many times and death was how he’d repay him?

“What’re you gonna do?” Bentley choked.

Davis turned, moving just enough so Bentley could see the silhouette of the Secret Keeper standing eerily still at the other end of the hall. Then the waiter smiled fondly, green eyes sparkling a little even despite the circumstances. “I’m going to try and have a conversation with my girlfriend.”

Bentley blinked. They all blinked, and he looked at Asten, who look at him, and then at Nico, who looked at them.

“Charlie?” Asten muttered, eyes falling to the tile. “My God, you must’ve thought she was… for two years…“

“You guys need to get out of here. Get to safety,” Davis replied, agilely avoiding Asten’s statement. “Remember, the first hall that branches left, Titus will be straight ahead.”

Bentley pulled himself out of Asten’s hold and managed to stumble forward just far enough to wrap his arms around Davis’s torso with a poorly stifled round of crying. “Please don’t die.”

Davis patted the top of his head with his still-gloved hand. “You heard it yourself, kid — I am death. Now go.”

Bentley was gently pulled away by Asten’s hand, and despite everything that was screaming for him to stop, they ran. (Well, as much as Bentley could. He was more or less being dragged around by Asten, who had resumed their previous position.) They booked it down the sterile halls and turned down the first one to the left. This one was different — lined with large viewing windows that were accompanied by metal doors. At the end of the hall was a window and door, larger than the others. There weren’t any guards or scientists around. Not that they could see, anyway.

The three of them slowed to a walk, peering into the windows as they passed. Most of the rooms were empty, filled with cabinets of medical supplies and gurneys, but every now and then the gurney would have a human shaped bag that Bentley refused to look at any longer than he had to. Each room had a little plaque on the front, but none of them had any words on them.

Not that he would be able to read them anyways. His crying had ramped back up to a ten at the very prospect of Davis going head-to-head with the Secret Keeper. He wasn’t… he couldn’t… Davis… he had to touch to kill. As far as Bentley knew, the Secret Keeper — Charlie — didn’t even have to seeher victim to kill them. It was a battle that was already lost, and Bentley already knew the winner.

He could barely breathe.

Asten dragged the heap of crying disaster until they made it to the dead-end, to the largest room. Bentley managed to see that, through his tears, the plaque on that door read: Titus Lancaster.

But the room was empty.

Asten stepped right up to the widow, so close that it fogged up the glass under his breath. “Merda.”

Any shred of hope Bentley had dissipated at the sight of the empty cell. Dr. Keene said on video that had to make it especially so Titus couldn’t teleport out — why would they take him somewhere else? It wasn’t time for his mind control surgery yet, unless Bentley had been in the Synchronizer for a longtime.

They were all going to die.

Nico anxiously ran his hands over his hair, a few quiet sobs wracking his whole body. “This is hopeless!”

Bentley hiccuped, trying his best to choke back the endless crying, trudging through the fog in his brain to try and remember anything else that might help them. Nico plunked himself down against the wall and cried unabashedly, just like he had at the bus stop. Asten stared into the room like, if he looked hard enough, Titus would materialize there.

Even through the crying and agony looming over his head, Bentley managed to remember Dr. Keene talking about when Titus got sick. He remembered seeing him in the hospital bed on the video, and he remembered the second video, where he made him perform his abilities so Bentley’s father could see. And at the end of the video, he said…

Bless him; he prefers to stay in the rafters of his enclosure like some kind of bird at the zoo.

Bentley suddenly leaned forward, peering through the glass up at the ceiling. There were metal beams that spanned the length of the room, and there was a dark blob resting on one. “Titus,” Bentley said, pointing toward the ceiling.

Asten followed his finger with his gaze, and Nico threw himself off of the floor, both peering through the glass. They seemed to visibly relax when their eyes landed on the blob.

“Good eye, red,”

If Bentley were more lucid, he might’ve replied.

Just like all the other doors, there was a blue light next to the entrance to Titus’s cell — the one Davis had always tapped the keycard on. Below that light was a little screen, no bigger than Bentley’s hand, that read: EM Field Activated.

He and Asten shuffled toward the door, and the latter tapped the keycard on the light just like Davis had. After a moment, it turned green, and the words displayed on the screen changed — EM Field Deactivated.

The door slid open.

None of them moved for a moment, peering around, checking if there was a chance anyone had seen that. Through his own tears and now-slightly-blurry vision, Bentley couldn’t see much of anything except white.

Asten cleared his throat. “Titus?”

Quickly, the blob in the rafters shifted around, presumably to get a good look at them.

“A guy named Davis sent us. He… said you can teleport us out of here,”

In a whoosh of wind and color, Titus appeared in front of them. He looked worse than he had in the video — he was twelve, Bentley remembered, but looked like he didn’t even weigh sixty pounds soaking wet. The hospital gown swallowed him. He was only a little taller than Bentley, Nico’s height, but really frail looking. His skin was pale as a sheet of paper, and his deep gray eyes were sunken into his face, his nearly-black hair frizzed up in all directions.

Bentley wasn’t sure which of them was worse off.

Titus’s eyes flicked around warily, from Asten’s calculating stare, to Nico’s sobbing form, to Bentley’s half-red hospital gown. Then he looked at the door behind them, taking a few steps to comprehend if it was actually open or not. He seemed almost… afraid of it. Like he’d been tricked before, or something.

“Yeah, hey, we kinda need a fast exit here,” Asten said, glancing between Nico and Bentley, then looking back at Titus. “Will you help us? You’ll be able to escape, too.”

Titus’s deep gray eyes flicked between the three of them. “Don’t lie.”

“Wha- I’m not lying! We were kidnapped and put in a freaking oven and my friend got shot and we need to go!” Asten replied. Titus flinched backwards at the smallest raise of Asten’s voice, which Bentley didn’t much like.

Asten noticed and took a breath. “Please, Titus. We won’t hurt you. We need your help.”

“You’re just another test,” Titus muttered, backing up until he came in contact with the wall, sliding down until he could curl up on the floor and lacing his hands in his hair. “I’m not gonna try and escape, you can stop making me see things now.”

It made Bentley kind of sad how absolutely… broken Titus seemed. Like a kid that had been stripped of his entire personality and left with nothing but dread. What did he mean by seeing things? Had Dr. Keene been training him into submission like some kind of dog?

“Titus, hey,” Asten tried, looking to Nico for help. “We aren’t a test, we aren’t. You see the alarm lights in the hallway? We need your help getting out of here before guards come.”

Titus looked back up at them warily, his gray eyes watering. “Please go away.”

Gunshots came, making all four boys jump violently in their spots. There were no guards in their hallway yet, but Bentley could only assume the worst — that those had been aimed at Davis.

“Please!” Asten begged, looking out the window into the halls. “Please, please, please. Nothing bads going to happen, I promise. Just… please. We need out of here. Bentley needs a hospital.”

Panic shot through him like an arrow at those words, and he exclaimed: “No! Not a hospital — Wayne Manor.”

Asten didn’t seem to find it in him to correct him.

“Please, you’re the only one here who can save us. Our friend Davis — you know Davis? — he’s fighting the Secret Keeper right now and-“ Asten breathed in, glancing into the hall anxiously. Bentley was getting so floaty it got kind of hard to tell what he was saying. “-take Bentley to the Manor, and you can take me to Crime Alley. Nico-“

“I’m going to your house,” Nico replied firmly, hazy gaze fixed on Asten. “I can’t… I can’t let my parents see me like this. All screwed up and played with. I can’t.”

Titus stared at them, and Asten huffed. “Okay. Bentley to the Manor, us to Crime Alley. Then you can go wherever you want. Please. Please.”

That was the moment Bentley promptly remembered that Titus’s parents were dead.

“Please?” Nico added, a desperate attempt at getting Titus to oblige.

“I… can… only go where I’ve seen before,” Titus said softly, carefully unraveling himself from the ball. “I can do… Wayne Manor. Not Crime Alley.”

Asten huffed. “That’s fine, that’s fine. We can figure that out after we get Bentley home.”

Titus let out a puff of air, then stepped forward slowly. He reached out, hesitantly, like they would bite him, and then he grabbed onto Asten and Nico’s wrists. “Don’t let go of him,” He ordered softly, gesturing to Bentley. “It’s gonna feel weird. Might hurt. Ready?”

Bentley wasn’t sure if he could survive any more hurt in one day.

Right then, a group of guards — probably ten — turned the corner into the hall. Bullets clinged wildly against the window of the room, not even making a dent in the glass.

“Go now! Go now!” Asten ordered. Titus closed his eyes, squeezed Bentley’s friend’s hands tighter, and then the world swam.

Bentley squeezed his eyes shut. It felt like he was falling, like he was spinning and whipping around in the air with zero control of where he was going. It felt like he had pins and needles across his entire body — the burn of his atoms being ripped apart and put back together in another location.

It only lasted for a split second, before there was a loud whooshing sound, and the ground seemed to rush into Bentley’s feet so hard he stumbled. It was cold, and Asten wasn’t holding onto him anymore, and he was laying on wet grass. He winced when the impact sent waves of pain pulsing through his whole body.

The only things that kept him conscious were the muted groans came from around him, so he looked up. The first thing he saw was the nights sky — big and black and cloudy. He, Asten, and Nico were sprawled on the dewy grass of Wayne Manor’s front courtyard, and Titus was in the middle of them, just standing there like nothing happened. He was spinning around, though, looking at the sky like he had never seen it before.

The Manor was there, glowing against the darkness of night. He didn’t know what day it was, what time it was, but he was home. Bentley had never wanted to bawl his eyes out more.

He used all of his remaining strength to haul himself out of the grass, his friends doing the same with grumbles of discomfort. His entire body seemed to be throbbing and screaming and he pretty much felt like a balloon with the amount of floating his head was doing.

“Want me to come with you?” Asten questioned, brushing dirt off of his hospital down. Bentley shook his head.

“No,” He replied, bringing his hand up to rest against his injured arm. God, he looked like a disaster. He felt like a disaster.

And Davis might’ve been dead.

“You guys go. I don’t want you to get in trouble,” He forced the words out of his mouth, looking back at them, probably some of the hardest things he’d done. He wanted to pass out so bad. So bad.

“You’re planning on telling them?” Asten questioned, his voice laced with a little tinge of venom.

Bentley blinked, glancing between Nico, who looked terrified, and Asten, who looked suspicious. Even Titus, who was crying now (Bentley guessed it was because he was free?) turned to look at him.

“I… uh…” He did not have the capacity to make a case right then. He just wanted to go inside.

“You can’t tell them, Bentley. You’ll never be allowed out of the house again, and you’ll probably be banned from seeing us for the rest of your life,” Asten stated, throwing a hand to the side. “Plus, you’ll never see the Secret Keeper destroyed.”

“Are you kidding me?” Nico questioned, crossing his arms and peering over at Asten with a dull glare mixed with tears. “We just got kidnapped. Bentley got shot. I got turned into some kind of monster… how can you still care about that?! We could’ve died.”

“Because the Secret Keeper killed my parents! I’m not resting until she’s underground.” Asten shot back, and the lot of them went still. Bentley wasn’t sure if he should pretend he didn’t know that or not, so to play it cool, he just stood there.

“You can’t tell Bruce, Bentley,” Asten directed his attention back to the redhead. “Lie to him; tell him you just got kidnapped and never saw us. We’ll be hiding out at my house, and no one will find us there, so we’ll still technically be missing. It won’t be so suspicious if we don’t show back up at the same time.”

A pit formed in Bentley’s stomach when he thought about lying to Bruce again, after all of that. It made him want to cry. All he wanted was to let them handle it.

He breathed in, stumbling faintly to the side. “I… I don’t…”

“You can’t tell him not to tell his dad, Asten. He got shot,” Nico spoke up, crossing his arms lightly. “That was freaking traumatizing and you’re asking him not to tell his family about it?”

“You’re hiding out at my house to avoid yours!” Asten argued, flicking a hand toward Nico.

“Because they’re not my real family!” Nico exclaimed, and Bentley blinked. Apparently they’d entered into truth-telling hour. “I’m adopted, and I can’t freaking look at them, okay?”

There was a brief moment of silence where Asten sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I know you’re into the whole can’t-tell-anybody-how-upset-I-am-so-I-bottle-it-up-and-act-broody thing, but not everybody is you, Asten. Some people will destroy themselves doing that,”

Asten huffed, looking back at Bentley and tossing his hands to the side. “Fine. Tell them whatever you want, Whittaker. I’m going to beat her with or without you. Let’s go. Gotham Heights.”

On command, Titus put a hand on both Nico and Asten’s shoulders, and without another word, they whooshed away in a mixture of color and wind. Bentley was left alone.

He breathed in the cold outside air, turning back to look at the Manor. He really had intended on telling Bruce everything, but now, he wasn’t sure what to do.

For now, he settled on dragging himself to the front door.

What was he going to say? How was he going to explain? He was pulling himself shot and half dead up to the door of Wayne Manor after hours, maybe days of being missing. He’d run away, broken into a cabin, gotten kidnapped, experimented on, watched one of his friends get turned into a metahuman, and got teleported home by a boy with superpowers. How was he supposed to tell them that?

Plus, he was pretty sure as soon as he saw somebody’s face, he’d start crying.

He made it onto the front entrance, facing those massive wooden doors just like he had the night Nightwing brought him to the Manor for the first time. Why were those doors scarier now than they had been then?

Bentley glanced down at himself. At his half-red hospital gown, his botched shoulder, his bare feet and bloodied skin. He looked like a disaster. He felt like a disaster. He was a disaster.

What was he going to say?

With not much more motivating him than the fact that he felt like death, he lifted a hand and tried the doorknob. Locked.

With a puff of air, he knocked.

A few terrible moments passed where he stood alone on the front step, waiting to see if salvation would come.

And then it did.

The door to Wayne Manor swung open.

“Bentley?”

Like that was the exact moment his body had been waiting for, the darkness he’d been fighting all night finally swept him away. And he let it.

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

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@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @flyrobinflyy @skylathescholar @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun @xiaonothere

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maccreadysbaby · 2 months

Text

A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: mentions of death, anxiety attacks!

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!

you GUYS this CHAPTER is a DOOZY. I’m so excited and also kind of jittery lmao. you wanted the secret keeper’s story? you got it fam

part twenty-eight

❝ THE TRUTH ❞

MONDAY — AUGUST 17 — 7:52PM

ON MINUTE ELEVEN, WHEN THE WHOLE CABIN WAS QUIET APART FROM THE STORM OUTSIDE, BENTLEY STEPPED TOWARD THE TRAPDOOR.

“No! Please don’t leave me up here by myself,” Nico begged, lurching forward and latching onto Bentley like some kind of leech. His fists were balled up in the left sleeve of the redhead’s jacket so hard his hands were shaking. (Or maybe they’d already been shaking, which was probable.)

Bentley met his big blue eyes, half hidden by his blonde hair, which were properly watering now. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be fast. You can come if you want.”

Nico sniffled even though his tears hadn’t fallen yet. “I want to go home.”

Bentley said nothing, but attempted a reassuring smile like Bruce always did. He, too, had nerves buzzing beneath his skin, threatening to vibrate him across the floor, but Asten was right; they couldn’t give up now. They’d come so far (literally.) and this might’ve been exactly what they were looking for. The key to taking down the Secret Keeper, to becoming a Wayne, to saving his family. So no matter how (not) scared, (not) anxious, and (not) desperate to go back to the Manor Bentley was, he was going to do it. He had to win.

“Guys…” Asten’s voice floated up from the dark abyss. Bentley could see the light from his flashlight go brighter and darker, like he was moving it around the room.

Bentley went for the stairwell, and, because Nico’s grip wasn’t letting up, he shuffled along behind him.

They took the dark stairs one step at a time. Bentley heard Nico gasp every time a piece of wood groaned under their weight. There was no telling what was down there — what Asten was seeing. There could’ve been people tied up. The newly missing citizens whose bodies hadn’t been found yet, or people that were… dead. There could’ve been dead bodies down there.

Bentley swallowed thickly, his heart whamming in his ribcage as they neared the bottom of the dimly illuminated staircase. All he could really see were plywood walls and a concrete floor.

And then Asten came into view.

He was standing with his back toward them, completely still, his flashlight aimed right ahead. The basement was big — the parts Bentley could see, anyways — and he was pointing the light at the farthest wall; a concrete wall.

It was long, and seemed to be full of… square doors? At least two dozen, lined in two rows. It reminded Bentley of something Alfred had in the butler’s kitchen — tall metal fridges with a bunch of square doors. But these weren’t those, these were made into the wall. Each door had a sticker on the front, some green, some yellow, and some red, but Bentley couldn’t read them from where they stood.

“Ah merda,” Asten muttered under his breath. Nico made a strange little squeak, and while Bentley couldn’t quite see him in the dark, he thought he felt what may have been his forehead land against the back of his shoulder.

He was obviously missing something wrong. What was it?

“What is that?” Bentley whispered, hardly audible. Asten opened and closed his mouth a few times, eyes not leaving the doors.

“It’s a morgue,”

Bentley said nothing. What was a morgue?

Asten cleared his throat, not looking back at them. “You… know what that is, ginger?”

“No…” Bentley muttered. Nico was crying. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what a morgue was.

Asten ran a hand over his blue hair. “It’s where they put people. After they… die. Morgues are… only supposed to be in hospitals.”

Bentley took a deep breath, his brown eyes bouncing across all of the metal doors. There were dead people in there?

They were in the room with a bunch of dead people?

Bentley fought away the slight vertigo that threatened to take over as he stared at the doors. Tons of them. Dozens of them. With dead people inside.

In an attempt to distract himself in absolutely any way possible, he kept looking around the room. He couldn’t see much from the flashlight’s beam, but he did catch a pile of boxes to the left, and a large desk with a computer monitor to the right.

He felt Nico’s grip leave his arm, and the telltale rattle-rattle-rattle-hiss-hiss of his inhaler came from over Bentley’s left shoulder.

They were in a basement full of dead people.

Bentley’s mind was only brought back to him when Asten dared to step closer to the doors, shining the flashlight on the closest door’s red sticker.

The words came into focus for Bentley in the light — OLIVIA WRIGHT, THE VOID.

Bentley blinked. He knew that name; both of them. Olivia Wright was a girl that went missing after seeing the Secret Keeper — presumed dead. The Void was a portal-shooting metahuman that the Wayne’s fought on patrol not too long ago.

Bentley heard Asten let out a puff of air, moving the beam of light to the door to the left, another red sticker. This one looked like someone had attempted to rip it off. Half of the words were missing, but the name THE SECRET KEEPER was still clearly visible.

The next sticker was green, with a yellow one haphazardly placed on top. Bentley stayed rooted to the concrete floor as Asten carefully peeled the yellow one up to read the green one.

DAVIS HENDERSON, THE REAPER.

Bentley breathed out. Davis Henderson. The waiter from the bar.

The yellow sticker on top only said one word: COMPROMISED.

Asten moved to the next one, a red sticker with a yellow one beside it.

TITUS LANCASTER, PATHFINDER, the red one said. COMPROMISED, replied the yellow.

Titus Lancaster — the twelve-year-old boy who went missing. Whose parents…

Bentley took a breath, blinking a few times to steel himself.

The next sticker was green. AMANDA TODRYK, THE RAVEN.

Asten froze there.

Bentley’s own thoughts seemed to startle him enough to make him flinch. It was her. It was Mandy Todryk — they’d found her. They’d actually, legitimately found her.

It didn’t feel near as good as he thought it would.

Asten grabbed the handle.

“What are you doing?! Don’t you dare!” Nico ordered in a violent whisper muffled by his crying, brushing past Bentley’s shoulder toward their friend. “Are you insane? Are you insane?! We have to go, we have to call the police!”

Asten’s hand just hovered there. He was staring intently at the door, and Bentley couldn’t see much of his face, but he could imagine his signature stormy eyes.

“Asten!” Nico pleaded. Like his near-shout was a pulse of adrenaline, Asten jerked on the handle, and the door popped open.

All three of them froze.

The square hole was deep, almost the size of a coffin, and vapor billowed out when the door was opened like it was refrigerated. Laying in that coffin-like-hole, the top of her head facing them, was Amanda Todryk. Amanda Todryk. She was staring at the ceiling of the box she was in, her light eyes unseeing, her skin whiter than a ghost and lips a ghastly blue.

Bentley’s hand found his mouth before he told it to. It was really cold in there. Asten didn’t make a sound other than a slow exhale, his green eyes focused, frozen.

Amanda Todryk was dead. They were staring at her body.

Bentley felt like he was going to pass out.

His mind — God, he couldn’t focus, he couldn’t focus on anything — drifted and wandered and only floated back when Nico turned on a dime, took maybe a half step toward him, and threw up all over the floor.

Bentley couldn’t move. Not when the quiet thunk of Asten closing the door came, not when Nico sat down in the concrete and started well-and-truly sobbing. Bentley felt like he’d swallowed a bee hive. Like he was vibrating into numbness, like he was in some dark, cold place and he couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear anything.

He wanted to go home.

A few more clicks and thunks came from the wall. Some distant part of Bentley’s mind told him that meant Asten was opening and closing the other doors.

A blur of time passed. Asten was at the computer — when had he walked over there?

For a while, the only occasional sounds in the basement were Asten typing, and periodic rattling from Nico’s inhaler.

They’d broken into a house and found a dead body. They’d broken into a house and found a dead body. They’d broken into a house and found a dead body.

“Ginger, come look at this,” Asten ordered. Bentley’s legs numbly carried him over to the desk without much thought — he wasn’t thinking very well anyhow. He wanted to go home.

There was a folder of videos pulled up on the screen. Each one had a different title, starting at SUBJECT ONE and ending at SUBJECT SEVENTY-NINE.

Asten clicked on subject one.

The video began to play, and a sterile white lab appeared on the screen. The only thing in the frame besides the floor, wall, and ceiling, was a large, white machine that stood probably two Bentleys tall. A conglomerate of machinery sat on top of it, as well as a button panel to the side covered with multicolored, glowing buttons.

“This is Dr. A. R. Keene. The date is March twenty-ninth, year two of the genome sequencing study. This is video number B101,” Their teacher’s voice came through the screen, though they couldn’t see him. “The Synchronizer, after it's year-long trial phase, is in complete working order. Now, the human testing will begin.”

The camera angle moved slightly as though the device had been bumped, and someone chuckled behind the camera.

“Charlie has ever-so-willingly offered herself up as test Subject One,” Said Dr. Keene, sounding a little exasperated.

A gasp came from off camera, and then a female voice chimed: “C’mon, dad! I can’t let you rise to scientific fame without me! And why are you sounding so proper? You said these recordings are just for you.”

Bentley blinked when a girl came into the frame — young, probably around Jason’s age. She had shoulder-length dirty blonde hair and large, piercing blue eyes. She crouched down in front of the camera and crossed her eyes, sticking her tongue out with an audible blegh noise. She was wearing a royal purple dress that, oddly enough, Bentley thought Steph owned, too.

“They’re also for my boss. He wants complete reassurance that the process is safe for his son. That’s quite enough, Charlie,” Dr. Keene sighed, and she stopped making faces and rolled her eyes instead. “Recent blood and DNA work goes to show that Charlie does not have the genetic mutation which turns common people into, what the press call, metahumans.”

The screen of a tablet appeared on the monitor when someone (supposedly Dr. Keene) held it there, full of charts and notes Bentley couldn’t really read. It disappeared just as fast.

Charlie sighed, glancing down at her nails. “Blah, blah, blah, science, science, science. Can we do this thing now?”

Dr. Keene sighed, and a few sounds came from behind the camera. “The internal Neuron Amplification System has been implemented inside the Subject for seventy-two hours. She’s reported minimal pain, and responds immediately to orders. The Subject has no memory of actions taken when the NeuroAmp is active.”

“I forgot to tell you, I woke up sore yesterday from all the hurdles you made me run. Maybe you can mind control me to go workout. Then I won’t remember hating it!” Charlie chuckled. She leaned forward and began to twist at her blonde curls like she could see herself in the camera.

“It’s Neuron Amplification, Charlie, not mind control,” He deadpanned. Charlie flicked a hand toward the camera.

“You make me do whatever you want and I don’t remember it. Pretty sure that’s mind control,” She said with a sarcastic smile. “It’s fine; I trust you, dad. Just don’t read my mind.”

“I can’t read your mind,” He replied with a sigh. “Shall we begin?”

Charlie jumped to her feet, only her legs visible in the frame. “Heck yeah!”

Dr. Keene moved onto the screen. He looked normal — maybe a little younger? — and he was wearing a stark white lab coat that fell to his knees. There was a symbol on the back of the coat, small and subtle.

“That’s the symbol that was branded on the Secret Keeper’s head,” Asten whispered. Bentley watched in silence as Dr. Keene tapped buttons on the keypad next to the big machine. A loud whirring and beeping came, and the whole front of the machine was lifted up and out of the frame, revealing a yellow, padded interior shaped like a person. There were metal clamps on the wrists, ankles, and torso.

“Please enclose subject,” Came a robotic female voice.

Charlie hopped inside like she was excited to get in the thing. She lined up with the person shaped padding, and the metal clamps closed around her.

“The full DNA exchange process takes anywhere from half an hour to three hours, depending on the genetic makeup of the subject,” Dr. Keene continued to speak. “My guess is that Charlie’s will take more around the forty-five minute mark. I’ll continue the recording then.”

He pushed a few final buttons, and the machine closed around his daughter.

The video cut, and Dr. Keene’s face was suddenly right in the camera, his light eyes boring into their souls. “Charlie’s exchange is nearly complete. We’ll see how she reacts when she comes out, if the NeuroAmp still activates under her altered DNA, as well as testing if her newfound abilities come forth as predicted. In the future subjects, the NeuroAmp will be administered inside the Synchronizer,” He gestured to the machine.

“Exchange complete. Releasing subject,” Came the robotic voice again. Dr. Keene stood up and turned toward the Synchronizer, getting out of the way of the camera as it opened. What looked to be smoke plumed out of the opening, making it impossible for them to see Charlie.

And then she stumbled out.

Bentley inhaled sharply at the sight of her ever-familiar, stringy, platinum blonde hair. Charlie was breathing so hard he could hear it through the camera, and her eyes were squeezed shut so tightly it probably hurt.

“Charlie?” Dr. Keene questioned.

She snapped her eyes open, and Bentley gasped: “Oh my God.”

Her eyes were amber, and glowing.

Dr. Keene… had he.. he had turned his daughter into the Secret Keeper.

“Dad?” She blinked, looking around the room. “Did it work?”

“I’m activating your NeuroAmp now,” He replied. Bentley watched as Dr. Keene merely stared at Charlie for a solid five seconds, before she stilled and stared back. Another person came into view — a man in what looked to be a white janitor jumpsuit on the other end of the room.

“I can use verbal commands to activate the NeuroAmp, or simply think of the actions I wish for her to undertake. For example; kill him,” Dr. Keene ordered.

Without any hesitation or awareness, with a hauntingly blank expression on her face, Charlie — the Secret Keeper — turned to the janitor-looking man. She cocked her head slightly, and his eyes turned amber. Blood began to run out of his nose, then his ears, then his eyes, and he collapsed without a sound.

“Internal NeuroAmp is functioning at full capacity. Subject has lost all free will,” Dr. Keene recorded. “Transition from human to metahuman is complete and whole — no visible genetic mutations or diseases recorded. Metahuman abilities confirmed to act just as predicted. I will take a full blood and DNA panel.”

Charlie turned toward Dr. Keene and held out her arm without hesitation, like he was about to take her blood. “I will email you the panel results and new DNA makeup, Mister Whittaker. You were right — we’re having a breakthrough. As of our first full conversion, the metahuman DNA exchange seems safe for Bentley. More tests and subjects will be sent to you for further analysis. We will destroy Batman — I can assure you that.”

Bentley froze.

Mister Whittaker was the boss Dr. Keene was talking about?

Bentley’s father was the one who’d created the Secret Keeper? Who was turning normal people into metahumans?

He didn’t even realize he was falling over until Asten caught him firmly by the shoulders, ordering: “Nico! Get that chair!”

Nico must’ve been nearby, because Bentley was sitting in a chair he didn’t even know was down there what seemed to be a half-second later.

His dad had been the man behind the Secret Keeper.

He was never going to get away from him, was he?

Bentley could feel arms on him — small ones that looped around his neck from behind.

He only snapped back to reality when Dr. Keene’s voice came again: “This is Dr. A. R. Keene, video B1701, coming to report urgent findings — Subject Eighteen is reacting rather negatively to the DNA exchange.”

When Bentley worked up the willpower to look at the screen, there was a hospital bed sitting in the center of a solid white room, with a very small person laying it. They had black hair on their head and ghastly pale skin, but Bentley couldn’t pinpoint their face.

“Subject Eighteen’s body seems to be rejecting the newly transformed DNA. Symptoms include: fever up to a-hundred-and-five degrees, severe vomiting and abdominal pain, delirium, fatigue, vertigo, periodic loss of consciousness, severe sweating, and bouts of severe and intense pain described as burning,” Dr. Keene explained. “Titus Lancaster is our youngest subject, therefore we are getting our hands on a few younger than him to see if they share the same reaction. As for right now, we are keeping close tabs on his condition and caring for him as best we can. Sickness ensued as soon as he emerged from the Synchronizer, and has remained constant over the past ninety-six hours. His abilities have yet to be tested. His NeuroAmp is unresponsive in his current delirious and/or unconscious state.”

The screen went black, then a white wall with a large window appeared.

“This is Dr. A.R. Keene, video log B2301, regarding Subject Eighteen’s recent health issues — the sickness, after five days, seemed to resolve itself. Titus’s NeuroAmp is still unresponsive, so he’s scheduled for surgery to implant a new one on August twenty-ninth. As of now, since I am unable to control him, we have him in an enclosed space suitable for someone with his abilities. Titus, if you would, make yourself visible to the camera,”

After a few moments of silence, Titus Lancaster appeared out of thin air with a whoosh on the other side of the large window. A white hospital gown hung loosely on his small frame, starkly contrasting his deep, nearly black hair. He had large, gray eyes that were bloodshot, and his face was lined with tear-streaks. Where had he come from?

“Please — perform your abilities so Dr. Whittaker can witness them,”

Titus looked straight into the camera through the glass that was keeping him enclosed. Directly into it, like he was staring into Bentley’s very soul. ‘Please help me.’ He mouthed.

“None of that, boy. Do as I say or you’ll be punished,”

On command, there was a whoosh and a blur of color, and Titus appeared a few feet away from his previous spot. Then again, a whoosh, and he was back where he’d started.

“As you can see, he has the ability to teleport anywhere in the world, so long as he’s seen it before. We have him enclosed in a box of electromagnetic pulses that he can’t travel through until we get his NeuroAmp implanted,” Dr. Keene explained from off-screen. “We’re keeping a close eye on his health and wellness. As of now, he is the fastest Metahuman to grasp their abilities. Besides Charlie. Other young children have undergone the exchange without health issues, so we aren’t quite sure what caused his sickness. Thank you, Titus,” Dr. Keene said, and the boy whooshed out of sight. “Bless him; he prefers to stay in the rafters of his enclosure like some kind of bird at the zoo.”

The video ended.

Asten moved the cursor around and clicked on one of the videos at the bottom. The screen came up, and the camera was pointing at the floor and shaking so badly Bentley couldn’t even tell what was happening — like someone was running with it.

“This is Dr. A.R. Keene, video log B5301. This is regarding Subject Seventy-One- no! Don’t go back until Charlie gets here!” There was a muffled shout in the background, but the camera kept shaking. “Subject Seventy-One suffered extreme emotional trauma by seeing another subject he once knew — his NeuroAmp is unresponsive to me, and his abilities have grown dangerous and deadly. He’s killed at least twenty-five…”

There was muffled running footsteps. “He is attempting to escape the facility. Charlie! I need you to knock Davis out, cold, and keep him down until I can fix his NeuroAmp.”

Davis. The waiter.

“Yes, father,”

“Abilities seem to grow more powerful, volatile in the presence of extreme emotional stress. This is common knowledge, as a natural metahuman’s powers typically surface under extreme circumstances. Davis holds the power of death — he can kill anything living just by touching it! But-but under such stress, death seems to radiate from him like a slow-moving shockwave. People who can’t even see him are dying rooms away as his radius of death gets bigger. I… I’ll send you more tests with severe emotional stimuli with other Subjects who aren’t quite so deadly!”

The video ended, and Asten navigated to another one.

“This is Dr. A.R. Keene, video log B8601,” Their teacher was actually in the camera this time, sitting ahead of a solid white wall, the camera trained on his face. “Regarding Subject Seventy-Nine, Amanda Todryk. My initial DNA scans revealed that she already had the genetic makeup of a metahuman whose powers hadn’t surfaced yet. I would typically dispose of her, because I avoid messing with the DNA of already established metahumans, but I put her in the Synchronizer just for research's sake.”

He looked down, like he had a clipboard or tablet in his hand. “And she responded very pleasantly to the DNA exchange. It didn’t destroy her former DNA like I thought, but actually fused itself into it. The synchronizer endowed her with the abilities I chose for her — the ability to fly — and after the fact, I had Charlie work her magic in Amanda’s mind; traumatize her enough to awaken her natural metahuman powers. Funny enough, they’re the most cliche superpowers of this age — the ability to commune with animals. Now, Amanda is in good health, her NeuroAmp is working, and she has two fully functional abilities. The ability to fly, and commune with animals. She lives in an enclosure with a flock of Ravens.”

Dr. Keene tapped a few times on the tablet they couldn’t see. “Since she’s so stable, I’m sending her to the cryogenic waiting facility on the outskirts of Somerset to await release. You know the address.”

Cryogenic? Cryogenic meant… freezing stuff, didn’t it? Was Mandy just frozen? Not dead?

“Give me the word when you want me to release her into Gotham and I’ll let her out. I use-“

The video was suddenly drowned out by a wham! that came from upstairs. Asten’s hand flew up and closed all the tabs on the computer, flicking the power button.

Someone was upstairs. Upstairs where the cabin was a wreck. Upstairs where the rug was moved and the trapdoor was standing wide open.

Asten hardly looked at Bentley and Nico before he had ahold of each of their wrists, pulling them across the room. “Don’t make a sound,” He whispered almost inaudibly, so quiet Bentley didn’t even know how he’d done it.

Bentley obeyed. There wasn’t much he could do, anyways. His mind was nothing more than panic and sadness and fear and anger and rage and terror all mixed together in a loud static that made him feel… nothing. Empty. There were so many things floating around in his head — Charlie, Dr. Keene turning normal people into metahumans, Davis, Titus, Bruce. It was so much that he couldn’t focus.

Asten pulled one of the fridges with a red sticker open, and Nico flinched away harshly — but much to Bentley’s surprise, there was no body inside. “Get in. Now.”

Footsteps thudded around the cabin above them, dust falling from the hardwood and settling on the concrete floor.

Nico, terrified, climbed in, and Asten shut the door. Then he opened another one with a red sticker — empty. Maybe that’s what red meant.

Bentley climbed in without hesitation. It was cold — the concrete box. Really cold. It went pitch black when Asten closed the door with a thump.

And he sat.

He couldn’t hear anything very good anymore, but he thought he might’ve heard footsteps. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His hands — no, his whole body was trembling but he couldn’t make it stop. It wasn’t from the cold. Colors were swirling in his vision even though all he could see was black, and if felt like someone was tying something around his throat — like he was going to choke and die.

He wanted to go home so bad. Why couldn’t they just live normally? Why was his father, Dr. Keene… why were they doing this?

His heartbeat sounded like a gong in his ears. His lungs seemed to be spasming for air, but he forced them with every bit of willpower left in his whole body to stop so he wouldn’t wheeze, so he wouldn’t give himself away. Everything just needed to stop. It all needed to stop. How was he supposed to make it all stop when it was spinning so fast he couldn’t see?

He heard someone thump thump thump down the steps.

He could hardly make out the difference between their footsteps and his own heartbeat. It sounded like explosions in his ears, in his head, boom, boom, boom, deafening to everything else. He pulled his knees up close to his shaking body, wrapping his arms around himself, too. Something icy streaked across his face, and that’s when he realized he was crying.

God, he wanted Bruce. This was a terrible, terrible idea, and now they were going to die from it. They were literally going to die and Bruce would have no clue where or when or how or why until Bentley was nothing more than a memory.

There was a slam.

They were going to die.

Bentley didn’t dare let himself move, not an inch, until the door to the box was whipped open again.

“C’mon, Bentley. We’ve gotta go,” Asten’s voice was near his head, and suddenly he was being touched, tugged. He forced himself out of the box, and as soon as his feet hit the floor, he fell.

“Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey,”

Bentley hardly noticed the strange maneuver Asten had to do to keep him from hitting the floor. He was on his knees, being held up by a pair of arms that were around him but were definitely not his own.

“Hey, buddy,” Asten patted him on the back firmly, but he barely felt it. He barely felt anything besides his own trembling and the sobs tearing their way out of him. (It wasn’t helping that Nico was standing to their left, absolutely crying his eyeballs out, too.) “I know this sh- this stuff is scary, but you have to stay with me so we can get out. Please breathe.”

It was pitch black in the basement apart from the flashlight that was laying on the floor — where Asten had dropped it to catch him, he assumed. There was no light streaming from upstairs, which meant the trapdoor was closed.

Asten stood up, dragging Bentley with him. “Can you run?”

Running, right now, was the last thing Bentley felt like he could do. But it was also the only thing he could do to save his own life.

He nodded jerkily.

Asten grabbed their flashlight and turned to the staircase, creeping back up the stairs with his bag and light in hand.

Bentley glanced over at Nico, whose right hand seemed glued over his mouth. His face was flushed red and he sounded more like he was choking than actually crying.

“C’mon, guys! He’s out back, I can see the beam of his flashlight!” Asten ordered. Both Nico and Bentley, both varying degrees of numb, pushed themselves forward.

Bentley couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe when Asten shoved them up the stairs, couldn’t breathe when they ran as fast as they could out the front door, couldn’t breathe when they bee-lined for the woods instead of the road they’d come down.

They were going to die.

“Bentley. Bentley, c’mon dude. Breathe. We gotta go,”

Bentley was trying to breathe, but he couldn’t. The air he managed to suck in was coming out as nothing more than painful wheezes, and his heart felt like it was going to rip his chest open. They were in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of Somerset, and not a single Wayne knew about it. The only sounds that came to his muffled ears were the crunching of leaves and the clinking of the crowbar against other tools in Asten’s toolbelt. Everything was a blur of black and dark and he could hardly see.

Nico was lagging behind, crying too hard to run properly. That was fine, because Bentley’s inability to breathe was making him pretty slow, too.

“He’s freaking coming, you guys,” Asten whispered anxiously, whirling around and trying his best to keep the panic off of his face, for the sake of his younger friends. The crowbar hanging on his belt nearly hit Bentley in the stomach with the speed he pivoted. But Bentley was too focused on trying to get air into his lungs through his wheezy sobs and splutters to see Asten’s green eyes flick nervously between the two of them.

“Jesus…” He muttered, and Bentley felt Asten’s hand land on the side of his head. “Are you having a panic attack?”

Bentley was pretty sure he absolutely was.

He wasn’t able to respond between the ragged breaths and cries that were forcing their way out of him, so he didn’t.

“Nico, can you-“

“I’m getting it!” The blonde exclaimed through sniffles and sobs of his own. He dug around in the pocket of his blue jacket, and Bentley heard the telltale shake of his inhaler right before the hiss of the medicine being released a couple times.

“Here,”

Bentley saw the quick exchange of the inhaler from hand to hand, and Asten started shaking it, leaning down farther so he could see Bentley’s face. His hand had moved from his head to his shoulder and stayed firmly there.

“You gotta breathe deep when I shove this thing in your mouth, Whittaker. It’ll help you breathe,”

Bentley nodded quickly, and Asten promptly put the inhaler in his mouth and pressed on it. He sucked in about as much air as he could force into his rebelling lungs.

“Perfect, just do it one more time,” Asten stated, moving his hand from Bentley’s shoulder to the back of his neck to keep his head in place. “Nico, you see anyone?”

“No,” He whimpered, his voice obstructed by his near endless crying. Asten pressed on the inhaler again, and Bentley made himself suck in what felt like a gallon of air. (It wasn’t actually that much air at all.) The medicine made him feel kind of woozy for a moment.

Asten kept his hand on Bentley, but stood up straighter and looked around the woods, behind them at the cabin they’d come out of. “We have to go. You think you can run? I will not hesitate to give you the most terrifying piggyback of your life.”

Bentley forced a few more breaths in and out, and while the inhaler wasn’t making his stomach stop cramping or his panic fade, he wasn’t gasping for air so much anymore.

Nico squeaked, a high noise in the back of his throat, and jerked on the sleeve of Asten’s jacket and choked on a few more sobs. “I see him coming.”

Bentley turned back, and the unmistakable ray of light coming from a flashlight not that far behind them made him want to curl up and die.

“Run, go,” Asten ordered, ushering Nico out in front of him. “You got it, Bentley?”

“I got it,” He murmured. Running from Somerset to Crime Alley probably wasn’t ideal for someone still in the midst of an anxiety attack, but he didn’t really have a choice at this point. Asten shoved Nico’s inhaler in Bentley’s jacket pocket, and they started running.

The cracking and crunching of leaves under their feet was nearly deafening in the pitch black, vacant forest, and the dim light from the moon and stars were their only source of vision, as Asten’s flashlight had been abandoned when Bentley wasn't paying attention. Asten stayed in the back, behind them like some kind of bodyguard.

Bentley was so focused on not falling and not throwing up and not hyperventilating that he shouted in fear when there was a loud metal CHINK! and Asten screamed.

Like actually screamed. Bentley hadn’t heard a sound like that since he’d been poisoned, and definitely not from Asten. It sent both him and Nico pivoting backwards instantly.

Asten was on his hands and knees in the leaves and dirt, heaving for shaky breaths, and there was a bear trap on his right leg.

There was a bear trap on his right leg.

“Oh my God!” Nico shouted, dropping to his knees next to him. Bentley stood in a mixture of shock and terror before Asten forced out the words:

“Get it off,”

He wasn’t crying, but he was batting tears out of his eyes. How was he not crying? How was he so okay? Bentley dropped down into the dirt on the other side of him, fighting to keep himself present.

Even in the dim light, Bentley could see the blood soaking through the leg of his pants. A lot of blood. And Asten was trembling, so Bentley put a hand on his side to give some kind of support. He had no idea how to remove a bear trap.

“These are freaking illegal-“ Nico was muttering (and still crying, now harder than he had been.) as he examined the trap, trying to figure out any way to get it off.

And there were footsteps coming. Bentley had only just heard them, glancing up, and he could see the beam of a flashlight panning through the forest.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Nico murmured, bringing one hand up to his mouth and sobbing into it.

“Just…” Asten cursed under his breath, leaning into Bentley slightly. “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?!” Nico squeaked. Asten reached for his toolbelt and pulled out the crowbar, holding it out to Bentley. The footsteps and flashlight beam were getting closer, and they wouldn’t be able to get away in time.

“Bentley,” Asten said seriously, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and attempting to hide a grimace of pain. Bentley looked down at the long, cool piece of metal he put in his hands. Wasn’t getting beaten by a crowbar how Jason died all those years ago?

He didn’t have much time to think about it, because the footsteps were getting closer, and they weren’t going anywhere.

Asten was hit by a wave of trembling, and he squeezed Bentley’s shoulder. “When he gets here, beat the hell out of him.”

Bentley looked back at the flashlight in the woods. Nico was crying hysterically, hands hovering and gently touching the bear trap.

“Hey!” A voice came — Dr. Keene’s voice. A voice that would’ve been reassuring if Bentley’s life was normal. “Don’t move!”

He held tight to the crowbar, bringing it up in front of him, ready to swing. He’d never hit anybody like that before. What if he wasn’t strong enough?

Something thudded and bounced on the ground next to Asten. They all looked at it.

Was that a grenade?

The world went white.

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

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