#mb; project: killcode

SUNDAY — JULY 29 — 5:11AM

WHEN BENTLEY OPENED HIS EYES ON SUNDAY MORNING, IT WAS REALLY BRIGHT IN HIS BEDROOM. And warm. And the ceiling was really… orange? And weeping willow-y? And his bed didn’t feel like a bed at all?

With a sudden gasp, he sat bolt upright, panic and adrenaline flooding his veins like gasoline and sending a wave of volatile dread seeping through his entire body. His eyes flicked to the golden sunrise, to the fountain, to the grass he was sitting on, to the trees above him, to the building he was supposed to be in, to the Chloe that was laying on the ground next to him.

There was no way he had…

Chloe startled awake at his outburst, her face twisting up in confusion, eyes flicking around just like his had before she shot directly onto her feet. “Oh shit!”

Bentley pushed himself off of the grass, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Oh my God.”

It wasn’t super late in the morning, at least, judging by the dim sunrise. He dug his phone out of his pocket in a panic and, squinting into it, he was extremely relieved to see that he had no texts. It was 5:13am.

Asten was so back at the dorm already.

How had they managed to fall asleep out there? He couldn’t even seem to fathom deciding to sleep on the ground when he wasn’t even supposed to be outside in the first place. All he’d been thinking about the previous night was Chloe and how stressed out her breakdown was making him. He never once thought about going to sleep. And yeah, he’d been pretty tired, but… sleeping there hadn’t even been an option in his mind, yet somehow, he… they…

“How the hell did we fall asleep?!” She half-shouted, whipping her phone out of her pocket and cringing at the screen. “My roommates all knew I was coming out here to meet you! They’re gonna think we slept together!”

Bentley ran an anxious hand through his hair, glancing at her in confusion. “…Didn’t we?”

Chloe looked at him with this absolutely gobsmacked, absolutely appalled look on her face, before she seemed to realize… something. “I’m not even going to begin to explain that to you.”

Bentley had no idea what she was talking about.

“God, I… I’m so sorry, Bentley, I didn’t mean…” Chloe scrolled through something on her phone, her cheeks flushing red, cringe deepening. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s… okay,” He replied, though the fact that he was practically already vibrating from anxiety proved otherwise. He was so dead. Asten was literally going to murder him.

“It’s so not okay! Can you even imagine the rumors that’re going to spread if I don’t shut them up fast enough?!” She basically yelled, tugging at her sort of messed up ponytail. “No, no, no. This is so not how this was supposed to go.”

Did she mean that everyone would think they, like, kissed? Or something? What did that have to do with sleeping next to each other? 

When Bentley said nothing, but looked back down at his shoes, she continued: “Your roommates went to that party, right? There’s still a chance they’re not back yet — you should go, now. This is such a disaster…”

“Last time they came back before sunrise…” He trailed off.

“Shit. I’m so sorry, Bentley, I didn’t… and… God,” She ran a hand over her face. “Okay. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all going to be fine.”

Bentley didn’t say anything just kinda… stood, thinking about how much Asten was going to kill him.

“Hey,” Chloe’s hands were suddenly on his shoulders, and he locked eyes with her, brown on brown. “It’s gonna be fine, just go now before anyone sees. And… and don’t sleep with anyone till you’re married!”

Bentley didn’t say anything to that (because didn't they just sleep together?!), but he did get out of his own head enough to comprehend that he needed to go back to his dorm. Like, yesterday.

So, without a word, he turned, and he went.

He was about halfway there when he realized he didn’t have his keycard.

Which meant someone would have to let him in.

“Shit,” He groaned as he came out of the stairwell on their floor, the sixth floor. He took a quick glance both directions down the long, wainscoted hallway, and when it came back empty, he quietly moved toward their door and whipped his phone out of his pocket.

He tapped on one of his very first contacts. It rang… and it rang…

“Bentley?”

Bentley sighed heavily, running a hand over his face. “Hey, Bell… I need you to let me into the dorm without waking anybody up.”

He heard Bellamy exhale. “That won’t be hard. I’m the only one here.”

Bentley creased his brow as he walked up to their room. “What? I’m at the door.”

Hardly a half-second after he spoke, the call ended, the lock clicked, and the door opened. Bellamy was standing on the other side — his hair was sort of messed up, and his big brown eyes were dull and sleepy. He was wearing some blue pajamas that reminded Bentley of the sailboat ones he used to wear.

“Sorry, Bell, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” He cringed as he stepped through the door, kicking it closed behind him. 

“S’ okay. I don’t sleep much anyways,” Bellamy replied quietly, shoving his phone in the pocket of his pajama pants. Bentley glanced around the dorm, his gaze landing on all four of the bedroom doors that were just… sitting wide open.

“Where’s Varian? I thought he didn’t go to the party,”

Bellamy shrugged, walking over to the living area and plopping down on one of the couches. “I don’t know. Did you go to the party with them? I thought you were here all night…”

“I’m sorry, I would’ve stayed if I’d have known you’d be by yourself,” Bentley cringed (He was really good at this stuff, wasn’t he?) “But no, I didn’t go to the party — I had to talk to someone.”

Bellamy creased his brow at him. “All night?”

“I fell asleep on accident,” He replied, making his way over to the couch and plopping down next to him. “After I saw what happened to everyone last time they partied, I decided it wasn’t for me.”

Bellamy didn’t say anything, but just kinda looked down at his hands and fiddled with his pajama sleeves. Bentley could hear the little machines whirring beneath them.

“What’s wrong?” He questioned. Bellamy glanced back up at him, looking sort of surprised, but quickly looked back down.

“Nothing,” He muttered.

“Bell…”

“It’s okay, really. I don’t want you to feel bad…” He trailed off, and Bentley sat up a little straighter, turning toward him slightly.

“Feel bad for what?”

“I…” Bellamy started quietly, glancing at Bentley then down at his hands again, tugging at his own sleeves. “I… I had a nightmare and… when I woke up, nobody was here…”

Bentley internally threw himself off a cliff.

Of course Bellamy would. Why wouldn’t he? With Bentley’s relationship with luck, he was surprised his roommates didn’t just straight up die in the middle of the night.

Bentley exhaled heavily, watching as Bellamy continued to pick at his sleeves. “I’m really sorry, Bell. Was it bad?”

Bellamy just kinda looked down at his lap. “The dream wasn’t so bad, but then I got up and no one was here, and…”

There was a familiar little quiver to his voice that made Bentley feel even worse about leaving than he had about Chloe.

Bellamy sniffed lightly, turning away. “It was really scary…”

Bentley sighed lightly, lifting his right arm and draping it loosely round Bellamy’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”

“It wasn’t your fault I had a bad dream,” He shrugged, wiping at his eyes without turning back around. “It just freaked me out, is all. I thought you were at the party and I didn’t want to bother you…”

“You can call me for anything, no matter what I’m doing. I’ll answer — I promise,” Bentley replied, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “I hate that you were by yourself.”

“It’s okay… it really wasn’t a big deal, just… sometimes I can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep, and it made me really scared…” Bellamy continued, and Bentley frowned.

“That’s how a lot of my nightmares are, too,” He replied quietly, with a soft sigh. 

Bellamy looked over at him. “I heard that you had one the other night. Was it bad?”

Images flashed through Bentley’s mind in quick succession — Varian bleeding out in Dick’s arms, Rockie getting shot right in front of him, Asten falling off the roof, Nico getting his head beaten in... “Yeah. It was bad.”

“I thought so. I heard you… screaming. But I didn’t know if I was actually awake so I… didn’t come out. I’m sorry…” Bellamy trailed off.

Bentley patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, Bell. I wouldn’t have, either.”

Bellamy sniffed again, glancing forward at the floor ahead of them with a few quick blinks, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. 

“Do you want me to do the frogs again? You seem tired,”

“No, that’s okay,” He replied with a small shrug. “I’m not that tired.”

Bentley watched him, observing quietly for a few minutes as his blinks got progressively longer. 

“Are you sure about that?” He asked with a soft smile, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “It’s okay to be tired. I’m tired and I just woke up.”

Bellamy smiled faintly in amusement, glancing over at him for just a split second.

Bentley sighed lightly. “It’s okay, you can go to sleep. I won’t go anywhere — I promise.”

"...are you sure?" Bellamy muttered.

"I'm sure. Unless you'd rather be alone,"

"No. No, being alone is..." Bellamy trailed off, picking at his sleeves. "Scary..."

A beat passed.

"My head hurts,"

Bentley rubbed his shoulder lightly. "Do you want some medicine?"

"No..." He muttered, fiddling with his fingers some more, like he was nervous about something. "Can I just..."

Bentley watched him carefully, but he never spoke again. He just sort of looked down at his lap. "Can you just what?"

Bellamy shrugged and looked away, abandoning his question entirely.

"You can ask. I can already tell you the answer is most likely yes," Bentley replied, earning a faint smile in response.

"I... was going to ask if I could..." Bellamy trailed off, continuing to pick at his sleeves. "If I could maybe..." His eyes flicked down to Bentley's shoulder, and suddenly, he seemed to understand.

"Oh, yeah," He replied immediately. "I'm not gonna say no to that."

“Are you sure?”

Bentley hummed. “Super sure.”

With that, Bellamy settled himself down on the couch and grabbed one of the blankets from the back of it, draping it over himself. Then, with an attentive glance to Bentley, subtly and tentatively moved until the side of his head came to rest on Bentley’s shoulder.

"Sorry if that’s… weird, I just…”

"It’s not weird," Bentley replied, smiling faintly as he adjusted his arm so it was comfortable for both of them. "I've probably spent more time in the last three years sleeping with someone else next to me than alone -- so I don't mind. It's actually nice."

“Oh… okay,”

A few moments of silence passed, and Bellamy settled in farther, adjusting his head against Bentleys shoulder with a quiet sigh. “Y’know, I… think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Bentley said nothing, only glanced at him. By the time he’d managed to work up a response, Bellamy’s eyes were comfortably closed, his breathing had evened out, and the machines on his arms slowed until he could barely hear them anymore.

If Bellamy kept talking like that, Bentley was gonna have to ask Bruce if they could take him home.

—

“-must’ve woken up and came in here,” Was the first thing Bentley’s ears registered when his senses started coming back to him. He was laying somewhere, but it wasn’t his bed. It was…

Oh yeah — the couch, in the living area. He wasn’t sitting up anymore; He seemed to be laying across it, and there was a blanket thrown over him that hadn’t been there before. Bellamy’s presence had all but vanished from his right.

“You think he noticed you were gone?”

“I hope not. He was dead asleep when I left,”

It was Asten and Valor whispering — though Bentley probably wouldn’t have been able to tell in his half-awake state if it weren’t for their opposing accents.

“Are you gonna tell him?” Valor questioned.

“Unless he noticed I was gone, no. I’m not hungover anymore, so it shouldn’t matter,”

He wasn’t hungover, so it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter that literally yesterday Asten had given Bentley a speech about not keeping secrets, and then did something the same night that he planned on keeping secret. (What kind of world was Asten living in where he could just… be all hypocritical like that? Bentley wasn’t allowed but he was?)

Bentley fought the urge to huff dramatically and, instead, stayed eerily still on the couch, pretending to sleep. (He was pretty good at that.)

“You’re welcome, by the way, for being the puke dad again,” Came a third voice, with a distinct Russian lilt. 

“Yeah, yeah, thanks for waking up and coming to the hangover rescue. Where’s Koa and Rockie?” Valor questioned.

“Koa’s throwing up outside. I think Rockie’s out there with him,”

“Jesus, that kid gets sicker than anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Valor sighed. 

“He also gets drunker than anyone else,”

“Because he's obsessed with beer pong. He played it at least thirty times last night,”

Bentley just listened as the voices moved about the dorm, a few doors opening and closing and sounds bouncing around. An unidentifiable amount of time later, the distinct sound of the dorm door opening and closing pierced the air — it must’ve been Koa and Rockie.

A few more voices came and went — small talk, mostly. Bentley didn’t listen because he was too busy being absolutely pissed that Asten had the audacity to be such an arrogant hypocrite after he made Bentley cry about it the day before. 

Eventually, the voices faded into the other rooms, and the dorm went quiet again.

Bentley, extraordinarily angry but not mean enough to disturb everyone’s sleep, forced himself back to bed on the couch.

He’d talk to Asten later.

Later came sooner than he wanted it to… but at the same time, took all too long to come around.

He shuffled back into his and Asten’s bedroom at nearly eleven in the morning. The dorm was practically dead — not a soul had come out into the living area since they’d all returned earlier. Part of him kind of wanted to cry (because he couldn’t be mad like a normal person.) and the other part of him wanted to, like, burn something down. 

For now, he decided to find somewhere in the middle to float.

He went into his and Asten’s room, kicking the door closed behind him and glancing at the top bunk. Asten was laying up there under his blankets, but his arms and phone were sticking out, and his screen was on, signaling that he was awake.

“Hey, B,” He greeted casually. “Why were you in the living room?”

Bentley breathed in and out, staving down some of the anger that threatened to make him, like, yell. “Bellamy had a nightmare. We were both in there, but he left,” He replied curtly.

He pulled his desk chair out and sat on it, then heard Asten shift, as though he were trying to look at him from his bed. He must’ve given up because his head never appeared from under the covers.  

“I didn’t hear you leave,”

Was he seriously trying to make Bentley think he was home all night?

Bentley shrugged with a short huff. “Not sure you could hear the door from Mason’s house, anyway.”

Asten’s head did pop out, then, and he sat up on the bed. “Did-“

“I’m not stupid, Asten. I was awake when you left, and I was awake when you were telling Valor you weren’t gonna tell me,” He huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “What the hell?”

Asten didn’t say anything, but worked his way off the top bunk and sat on Bentley’s instead, crossing his arms. He looked tired, like he’d just woken up, but sort of offended at the same time. “Not everything I do is your business, B.”

Bentley narrowed his eyes at him, wanting nothing more than to set his hair on fire. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie,” Asten scoffed.

“Well, you didn’t tell me the truth,” Bentley spat, leaning back in the chair. “There’s no gray area between an honest person and a liar.”

“What-“

“You just gave me an entire spiel over keeping secrets just to go and keep secrets. So what, you’re allowed to but I’m not? I’m supposed to let it slide when you do it, but you’re allowed to get upset at me? Sounds pretty hypocritical,” Bentley hissed. Asten’s eyes went cold again, his expression darkening.

“You have to tell me where you’re going because you’re an innocent little nepobaby who’s naivety will get you killed,” Asten spat back. “You don’t know half the shit that goes on in this world — I do.”

“… So, because you had a shitty life, the rules don’t apply?” Bentley asked, tapping his fingers on his arms. “You’re allowed to go do whatever you want and expect me to just sit here at your command like a dog?”

“I’m trying to protect you,” 

“Bullshit. That just sounds good. If you were actually trying to protect me, you wouldn’t leave the three youngest roommates in the dorm overnight just to go get drunk out of your mind,” Bentley was practically fuming at the ears, but he made doubly sure not to raise his voice too loud. “I wouldn’t even care about you going out and getting wasted if you’d just tell me first!” 

Asten rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Why’s it such a big deal all of a sudden?”

“It was a big deal to you yesterday,” Bentley replied. “But I guess that doesn’t matter, since you’re a hypocrite and all.”

Asten was glaring daggers. “Bentley.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” He ordered, locking eyes with Asten and forcing them to stay there no matter how uncomfortable it was. “You said something. You did the opposite. Tell me you’re not a hypocrite.”

Asten was pissed — Bentley could tell. He had this cold sort of feeling that radiated from him when he was really mad; one that would make passersby afraid he was gonna punch them if they got too close. He opened his mouth to reply, but Bentley beat him to it.

“I may be younger than you, but you can’t walk all over me anymore. You helped train that into me,” Bentley muttered. “So if you’re allowed to go do whatever you want whenever you want without telling me, so am I.”

“Bentley-“

“And I’ll start by telling you, now that it’s convenient for me, that I snuck out of the dorm and stayed with a girl last night. All night,”

Asten’s horrendously-pissed-and-angry face cracked a little to reveal something like disbelief, and vaguely, shock. “Yeah, sure you did.”

“Unlike you, I’m not a liar. Ask Bellamy, he had to let me back in this morning. Or you can consult my call history and find where I asked him to let me in,” Bentley replied, pulling his phone out of his pocket and tossing it on the desk with a bam!  “Or maybe you can dwell on the fact that I was sleeping in the living room in different clothes than I went to bed in?”

Asten didn’t say anything, but his mouth was open, like he was debating on it.

Then he huffed deeply, like he was really irritated. “Who was it?”

“Not everything I do is your business,” Bentley mocked, rising from the desk chair and pushing it in, grabbing his phone and shoving it back in his pocket. “I’m done arguing with a wall.”

“Where are you going?” Asten asked as Bentley approached the door.

He swung it open, glancing back at Asten just long enough to say: “Maybe I’ll tell you when it’s convenient.”

Then he left their room, and he left their dorm, going nowhere in particular.

Everything in high school was bullshit.

--

tag list that never works lmao

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

@xiaonothere

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 12:02AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wayne,” He corrected quietly.

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

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

Jesse Todryk.

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

“Probably Damian,” The minion replied.

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

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

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

“Well! Isn’t it little mister-“

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

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

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

“Jesse!”

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

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

“He wasn’t hurting us!”

“He was gonna!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other Bentley and Nico rounded on him immediately.

“Oh my God!” Nico shrieked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God, oh my God,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bentley almost stepped forward to him, but she continued-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They wasted no time.

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

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

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

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

“Because it’s fun!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dorm melted away.

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

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

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

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

The Secret Keeper only twitched for a second.

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

"Stop breathing," The Secret Keeper muttered.

"No!" The other Bentley shouted.

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

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

Everyone was going to die because of him.

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

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

Gently, someone grabbed Bentley's hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Trust who?!"

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

"I promise!"

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

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

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

Slam!

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

Slam!

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

Slam!

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

The door slid open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know,"

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

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

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

"I know,"

--

tag list that KINDA works lmao

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

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

MONDAY — JULY 30 — 5:02AM

AFTER AN EVENTFUL DAY OF NEVER COMING OUT OF BELLAMY’S ROOM, BENTLEY WOKE UP ON MONDAY MORNING LAYING BACK TO BACK WITH HIM. 

And the first thing he thought about was Bruce.

He wanted to tell him. He wanted to tell him everything so bad — about the parties and the nightmares and the teachers and Tyler and Chloe and the (maybe?) Secret Keeper and his father. He wanted to just lay it all out at his feet so he didn’t have to deal with it alone anymore… but he couldn’t.

Because if he did, Bruce would come get them and take them home, and someone else would move into the dorm. He’d never see any of them again.

He had to show Bruce that he could do this no matter what kind of problems he had — he was thirteen, and he could deal with his issues by himself. He didn’t always need his dad or his brothers to swoop in and do it for him; he was capable. More than capable.

So for now, he decided, not a Wayne in the world would know a thing. Would it be easier on him if they did? Sure. But getting whisked home to live a life of solitude while every other teenager in the world did whatever they wanted didn’t sound like an ideal situation. Plus, he was pretty sure he’d have lost his mind if he didn’t stop homeschooling when he did.

It was okay. He was okay. Everyone was okay. Everything was okay.

He’d just focus on school — it was a good enough distraction. He did have seven classes to survive, and nine friendships to maintain.

(Or eight, if… Asten didn’t want to talk to him.)

So he decided that’s what he was gonna do. Just be a teenager, and try his best to forget about all the existential dread stuff.

He woke up, blocked the number his father had called him from, and left Bellamy’s room to go get ready. 

It was only a little after five, so he was able to get into his room and do everything he needed without waking Asten up, which was nice — because he wasn’t sure where they stood. They hadn't talked at all since the fight, but Bentley did end up in bed arrest in Bellamy's room, so he guessed it wasn't really either of their faults.

He grabbed his bag and all of his things out of his room and left, shutting the door softly behind him. Should he go back in Bellamy's room? Or just sit and the dining table and do something silent?

That moment was about when his phone vibrated in his hand.

The name on the text message was Chloe Singh. (He'd changed it almost immediately after she gave it to him.) It said: Hey, meet me at the fountain at 530?

He didn't even have time to think about replying before a second one came: Or at breakfast, if you're not a psycho that wakes up at 430 for school like me.

Bentley hummed to himself, typing a quick response.

Just text me when you're ready. I'm already dressed and all.

He hardly had time to look away before another message blipped onto the screen. Oh, okay! I'm ready then, haha.

With a faint little smile and a shrug, Bentley made sure he slid his keycard into his phone case and made for the door, leaving the dorm with his schoolbag in the dark.

When he made it down the stairs and the several sidewalks it took to get to the fountain with the willows, Chloe was already there in her uniform with her bag. Her blonde hair was tied up halfway with a black ribbon, and pin-straight so it looked extra long. She glanced back at him when she heard him approach and sent him a friendly wave, which he returned.

Were they technically friends now? How many times did you have to cry in front of someone before you became friends?

With that on his mind, Bentley made for the bench she was on, dropping his bag near his feet and taking a seat next to her.

"Good morning," She said quietly, eyes focused on campus staff that seemed to be moving something into the art building across the way, past the willow trees.

"Good morning," He replied.

"Listen, I just... wanted to apologize for Saturday night," She sighed, looking down at her lap and deflating slightly, a stark comparison to how confident she looked in class or the halls. "I had a massive breakdown and it was really weird. I word vomited so many unnecessary details."

Bentley shook his head, glancing over at her. "Don't apologize. We all have our moments. I, in particular, have had at least thirty since I moved into Redwood."

Chloe glanced at him, furrowing her brow. "I never imagined Bruce Wayne's heir would have moments."

"I wasn't always his," Bentley shrugged, forcing his father's voice out of his mind, focusing on Chloe's brown eyes that were watching him. "Anyways, it's no problem. Breakdowns suck, but they suck even worse if you're alone."

She blinked and looked away, then back. "That's why I wanted to say thank you," She continued, glancing down at her hands, fiddling with her fingers. "For being there for me. I... can honestly say I don't have anyone else, as pitiful and attention seeking as that sounds. Living a double life is really hard when everyone only knows the fake part."

Bentley watched her breathe in deep, then blow it out. "Anyways, not to get all pitiful. I think I have the rumors handled on my end... my roommates were the only ones who knew I was going to meet you, and they swore they wouldn't say anything. What about yours?"

"Only two know I was gone, and they won't say anything," Bentley shrugged. "I think we're safe."

A beat passed.

"Thank God," Chloe exhaled, brushing her long blonde hair over her shoulder. "I'd never forgive myself if a chimp like Tyler Abbott got ahold of information like that. He'd have the entire campus believing whatever he wanted about us in, like, ten seconds."

Bentley didn't reply.

"Hey, you okay?" She continued, lowering her volume just a little. "You seem preoccupied."

Bentley shook his head in an attempt to shake himself back into the present and out of whatever routine of self loathing his mind was trying to put him in. "Yeah, just pretty drained. I've been really stressed lately."

"I'm sorry..." Chloe mumbled, and Bentley shrugged.

"It's not your fault," He continued, waving her off. "What about you? Were you okay after the other night?"

Chloe shrugged. "Same... just kinda drained. Emotions and their stupid, stupid existence have a way of doing that. But I'm feeling okay now. Practice for cheer tryouts starts after school today, so I pretty much am required to be okay."

A beat passed.

"So... did you and Layla end up having fun at the dance?" She questioned, looking across the way at the willows, a little hint of something he couldn't quite place filtering through into her words.

Bentley shrugged. "It was okay, but I... didn't go with her. I went with my roommates. To see the band that was playing."

"Oh," Chloe nodded to herself.

Another few moments of quiet passed.

"I... wanted to ask you something," Chloe started, turning to face him slightly on the bench, getting this... he wasn't sure. Embarrassed sort of look on her face. "You can totally say no if you want to; I know I'm not the easiest person to stomach."

"What is it?" Bentley questioned, turning toward her a little, too.

Chloe breathed in and out. "I know I was really mean and weird and stuff when we met, and I don't have any clever excuses to talk myself out of that. But I still... wanna be friends with you, if you want."

Bentley watched her nervously tuck a piece of hair behind her left her, her brown eyes straying down to the bench they were on.

"Yeah... I'd like that," Bentley replied, watching her anxiously pick at her nails. "But you... I don't want it to be some kind of ploy for your mom. If we're gonna be friends, I just... want to be friends. Not for anybody else."

"A hundred percent," Chloe nodded. "She won't have a clue I'm even talking to you anymore. She seems to have moved on in her searching for my perfect future divorce since I blew it with you already. Which means we're in the clear."

Bentley hummed in acknowledgment, glancing at her for a moment more before looking out at the trees again. "Can I ask an awkward question?"

"Sure," Chloe shrugged. "Can't be more awkward than me word vomiting my entire life's story, and my mothers."

Bentley found it in himself to chuckle at that. "I was just... wondering. Since you were only kinda acting, did you... mean what you told me? In class?"

Chloe glanced over at him quickly, her brow furrowed, before she seemed to realize what he meant. Her face flushed pink and she looked the other way. "That you're hot? I-I mean, yeah, I guess..."

Bentley didn't say anything.

"God, why can't I talk to you?" She mumbled, resting her elbows on her knees and dropping her head into her hands with a nervous little laugh. "It's so weird. Being, like, real. I always know what to say when I'm pretending."

Bentley shrugged. "Maybe you should... not pretend."

"I can't do that!" She said suddenly, sitting up. "My mother would disown me if I even thought about acting contrary to how she wants."

Bentley hummed. "How does she know what you act like here at school?"

Chloe looked up at him, a cringe spreading across her face. "She's the assistant Dean. She lives on campus."

Bentley blinked. "Oh..."

"Yeah..." Chloe shook her head. "I literally can't get away from her and her prying eyes through the school-day. That's why I wanted to talk to you now, before the day starts."

Bentley couldn't even imagine his father watching him like a hawk like that. When he first went to the Wayne's to, quote-on-quote, destroy them, he could hardly fathom the anxiety caused by the fact that his father may have possibly been watching. But Chloe's mom, putting her up to something out of greed, punishing her when she failed, watching her to make sure she was perfect... maybe they weren't so different after all.

Bentley didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“So, are you liking it so far, here? I’ve heard Gotham is way different from New York,” She questioned. (How many times was he going to be asked that question?)

He shrugged. “New York is really cool. I like it here. It feels more… alive.”

Chloe nodded, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “There’s so much that goes on, it's hard to get away from it all. That's why I like it so much here.”

Another beat passed.

“So, if it's not off limits, what are your powers?” Bentley questioned, glancing over at her. “I haven’t seen or heard anything about them.”

“Oh, I…” Chloe started, looking off at the trees ahead of them. “I… uh…”

Bentley could recognize discomfort when he saw it. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, I just…” She trailed off, breathing deep and holding it for a second, then exhaling. “I don’t have any.”

Bentley furrowed his brow. Wasn’t Redwood only for metahumans?

“My sisters do, and I have the genes for it, I just… they… haven’t appeared yet. My mom says that sometimes it takes a lot to make them show up,” Chloe shrugged. 

Bentley vaguely remembered hearing something about that when he was dealing with the whole Dr. Keene disaster -- it was like how Nico’s super speed only started to show up after he learned he was adopted, and only really showed up after he got kidnapped and put in a big machine that messed with his DNA. He remembered that metahumans finding their powers was… usually due to trauma.

He wasn’t quite sure what that said about the rest of the Redwood students. But maybe it was a good thing that Chloe didn’t have hers.

“I guess we’ll just have to see, then,” Bentley shrugged.

“I guess so…”

They fell into a comfortable silence, looking out at the willow trees in front of them.

Okay.. maybe Bentley had ten friendships to maintain.

--

When breakfast came around, Bentley sat across the table from Asten.

They didn’t say anything to each other. Bentley looked over at him a few times, but he was always talking to Rockie, or looking down at the table, or across the room. Valor was watching the both of them -- Bentley noticed his gaze a few times, calculating, contemplating -- but when Bentley’s eyes met his, it always switched to a supportive smile, faint enough to go missed by everyone else but present enough to be a little comforting.

Bentley and Asten didn’t talk at lunch, either.

And when music theory came around, Asten only spoke to Rockie, and Bentley only spoke to Vera, and in free period, Asten sat with Rockie, and Bellamy and Valor sat with Bentley. It was…

Weird.

He went to practice soccer with Varian and Koa, and they talked about nothing and everything. He went to dinner, where Asten deliberately ignored him even though they were within whispering distance from one another. And then he did his homework at the dining table, and listened to his roommates talk, and hung out, and texted Chloe, and went to bed without saying anything to his best friend who was sleeping one bunk away.

As wrong as it felt, Bentley was the one who’d been right. Asten was a hypocrite and all the lovely things Bentley had said in his anger fueled haze. So, for this one time, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t going to allow himself to apologize.

If Asten wanted to talk to him, Asten was going to have to put in the effort.

And as far as Bentley could tell, right now, he didn’t care very much.

--

tag list that never works lmao

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

@xiaonothere

SUNDAY — JULY 29 — 11:24AM

BENTLEY FOUND HIMSELF SITTING ON ONE OF THE BENCHES AROUND THE FOUNTAIN HE’D MET CHLOE AT, ALONE.

The sun was shining, and the sky was a beautiful, cloudless blue, the afternoon air not too hot and not too cold. The campus was quiet apart from a few students here and there, maybe the occasional bird. Even despite the niceness of the day, everything felt sort of… wrong. 

Bentley and Asten had never actually fought like that before. Sure, they bickered like best friends and brothers did, but they’d never fought. They’d seen mostly eye to eye on everything since Bentley’s met him — at least enough to make arguments practically nonexistent in their relationship.

It was weird. Knowing Asten was in the dorm mad at him. It sort of made Bentley’s whole world tilt a little… just knowing that he was mad and Asten was mad back. The real kind of mad, too.

Bentley was the one in the right. And he knew he was the one in the right. 

But that didn’t make it much easier.

“Care for some company?”

He flinched when a familiar voice came from his left. Glancing up, his brown eyes locked onto Valor’s grey ones, bright and shiny in the sun. He looked sort of like he’d freshly woken up, and was wearing a big black hoodie and sweats, his arms folded over his chest.

Bentley cringed to himself, looking back out at the willow trees ahead. “Did you hear all of it?”

Valor shrugged, taking that as a yes to his previous question and and sitting down on the bench next to him. “I couldn’t tell what you were saying, but the tone of your voices was enough for me to deduce that it wasn’t a happy conversation.”

Bentley looked down at his shoes, scraping the toes against the pavement. “Yeah…”

Valor stretched arbitrarily, his wings flitting and making a series of loud poufnoises. “Well, if you wanna talk, I have ears. And if you don’t want talk, I… still have ears.”

Bentley smiled an empty, amused smile, but it only lasted for a few seconds before fading away in the morning breeze. Then he looked down at his feet and shrugged. “He’s started lying to me, and hiding stuff. He never did that before we came here. It…” Bentley trailed off, tapping his foot on the concrete with a few soft taps. “Makes me feel like he doesn’t trust me anymore…”

Valor hummed in acknowledgment as he listened, stretching his wings out, the right one lazily looping around Bentley’s shoulders like he’d done to Bellamy the night before. It was heavier than an arm and Bentley had to admit, it felt nice.

“Keeping secrets and lying doesn’t always mean he doesn’t trust you,” Valor suggested, glancing at Bentley, then across the campus grounds. “It’s more likely that he’s insecure — worried what he’s doing will change your opinion of him, so he tries to hide it.”

Bentley guessed that… made sense. 

He exhaled lightly, tapping his hands on his pants. “Why won’t he just say that?”

Valor hummed again. “From what I’ve seen and heard, you’re very emotionally aware and open.  Which is good. But it’s harder for other people to be that way.”

Bentley wasn’t sure how emotionally aware and open he really was, but he’d take it. He looked down at his shoes again with a soft sigh. “It still hurts...”

Valor’s wing tightened a little around him. “I know.”

As the adrenaline and blinding anger from the fight started to wear down, and Valor’s words started bringing things to light, he started getting that suffocating feeling he got when Asten was mad at him the day before. So Asten really was just… afraid, and he’d yelled at him for it? 

Everything at Redwood was just wrong. Everyone was mad and Bentley could never seem to be happy about anything — there was always something following him around and making him irritated or sad or upset or angry. It had only taken one school-week for him to get all weird and screw everything up. Like he always did.

Bentley rubbed a hand over his face with a heavy sigh, propping his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands. “I hate this. School is stressing me out, and Asten’s stressing me out, and being homesick is stressing me out, and pretending I’m not stressed out is stressing me out. I’m…” He paused and searched for a word, his eyes staying locked on the concrete below them. “…overwhelmed.”

A moment of quiet passed, and as he thought through all the things that was making everything so bad, his eyes started to burn, so he looked away. “And I’m not going to cry about it.”

He heard Valor sigh lightly. Then his wing left Bentley’s shoulders, and he stood up, turning to face him. “Stand up.”

Bentley glanced up at him in confusion. 

“Come on, stand up,”

After a moment of quiet, Bentley relented and pushed himself onto his feet. 

“Now do this,” Valor continued, holding his arms out sort of diagonally to either side. Bentley, with a confused look on his face, copied it. 

Then Valor, with a soft smile, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a hug.

Bentley was kind of shocked at first, because that wasn’t what he’d expected, but he gave in with a soft sigh and hugged him back anyways. Everything inside of him seemed to spin up even worse than it had been at the contact, like a tornado kicking up dust, and he tried hard to blink away the burn in his eyes that came back with a vengeance.

He tried to pull away because he so didn’t want to cry right then, but he also kind of didn’t want to pull away, and his conflicting, hesitant motions seemed to confuse Valor because he muttered: “What’s wrong?”

Bentley said nothing for a moment, blinking rapidly even though it didn’t help. Why was he crying so much lately? He wasn’t crying that much before he came to school… and he was thirteen. Not a baby. He shouldn’t have been crying at all. “I…’m sorry. I’m… not gonna cry, I swear.”

Valor moved, but it wasn’t to release him like he thought. Actually, Bentley was pretty sure his wings came forward and around him, too. “There. Now no one else can see you.”

Bentley didn’t say anything to that, but he did stop trying to pull away and held on to the back of Valor’s hoodie instead, pressing his forehead against his shoulder in a attempt to not have a spectacular breakdown. 

“Hey…” Valor tried, rubbing Bentley’s back lightly. “You’re trembling. Y’know you have full permission to, like, lose your shit, right? You don’t have to try and be okay. Sometimes that’s worse.”

Bentley didn’t say anything to that, but as soon as Valor spoke, his eyes started to burn tremendously worse. 

“I’m sorry…” He continued, and he hated how thick and cracky his voice was. He let go of Valor’s hoodie and brought his hands to his face, hiccuping lightly even though he was trying so hard not to.

“Don’t apologize. Just cry. It’s okay,”

And so Bentley did.

—

He and Valor stayed outside for a long while. And when they finally ventured back into the dorm, it was almost two in the evening. Bentley didn’t go into his room.

Instead, he found himself knocking lightly on Bellamy’s door.

It only took him a few seconds to open it. He only cracked it at first, like he was checking who it was, and when his brown eyes landed on Bentley, he opened it wider. 

“Are you okay?” Was the first thing Bellamy asked softly, stepping out of the way so Bentley could come in. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the door was closed behind him. “You look like you were crying.”

Bentley sighed lightly, sitting down on the bottom bunk of Bellamy’s bed. “I’m okay.”

Bellamy didn’t seem too convinced, and Bentley didn’t blame him. He’d literally cried what had to be every last bit of liquid out of his body and was now just sort of… floating. Almost tired, in a way. Numb. Foggy.

“I had a… moment. But it’s over now,” He continued. Bellamy didn’t say anything, he just sort of shuffled over and sat next to Bentley on the bed, watching him closely with a concerned look on his face.

“I’m sorry…” Was the next thing Bellamy said, glancing down at his hands, fiddling with his fingers. “You look… sleepy.”

Bentley shrugged. “More… empty feeling, I guess. I dunno. I’m…”

His sentence trailed off. He was going to say cold, but he realized that wouldn’t work if he wasn’t with Bruce — so he didn’t say it. He just sort of brought his arms up and around himself like he usually did and exhaled lightly. “I’m… sorry.” Is what he settled on saying.

“It’s… okay,” Bellamy replied. After a few moments of quiet, Bentley felt a small hand come to rest gently on his back. 

That’s when Bentley’s phone started vibrating in his pocket.

With a long sigh, he dug it out, glancing at the caller ID that was shining across the screen. It was an unnamed number. 

He declined it and put his phone next to him.

About five seconds later, it started vibrating again. 

With a huff of frustration, he picked it up and declined the call, then watched the screen, waiting. 

Ten seconds later, it called a third time.

He answered it and brought the small device to his ear with a curt, irritated: “What?”

“Bentley. Don’t hang up,”

Something Iike existential dread shot from his head down to his toes,  and he suddenly felt kind of nauseous. His mouth dropped open but he didn’t know what to say. Lots of things he didn’t want to think about started getting dredged up and made it hard to focus, to breathe.

“I know it’s been three years, and that you have a… a new father now, but… listen, I don’t have much time…”

Bentley barely managed to stammer out the words: “How… how did you get my phone number?” 

Wasn’t his father in prison? And wasn’t he, like, not allowed to have contact with Bentley anymore? 

“Look, I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you — but you have to listen to me,” His father’s voice started. It sounded urgent, serious, like he really needed to say something important. “I heard you’re at Redwood Academy, in New York?”

“How-“

“You have to get out of that school, Bentley. You have to go back to Gotham. Or… find another one, it doesn’t matter, just… you have to get out of there,”

Bentley opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t make himself, so all that came out was a squeak. His chest was suddenly constricting and tightening in a way that was reminiscent of the day he saw his father at the store, and he desperately wanted Tim.

He couldn’t breathe.

How had his father gotten ahold of him? And what did he mean he had to leave the school? He sounded serious enough, but when could someone like him ever be trusted again? Someone who was so determined to ruin Bentley’s life in every conceivable way?

Bentley ended the call without saying anything. His hands were shaking — so much that he could barely hold the phone. He tried to come back to himself, but he could hardly focus on reality through the gut-wrenching flashback reel of every other time he’d heard that voice. He couldn’t breathe.

He reached out to the side, toward Bellamy.

“Bentley?”

He thought about asking for Asten.

Instead, the name he forced out between gasps for air was: “Koa.”

Bellamy left the room not a second later.

Bentley grasped at his own shirt, unable to create coherent thoughts about anything. His chest hurt really bad and he wasn’t sure he was actually breathing in any air, which kind of made him feel like he was going to pass out, which only made him more anxious and his heart rate spike way too high. He ended up dropping his phone from how much he was shaking and he had to close his eyes because he was really starting to feel like he might throw up on Bellamy’s floor.

His father knew where he was. He knew where he was, and that probably meant he knew what he was doing, and where he was going, and who he was with, and that he wasn’t at the Manor, and he was going to kill them all. He was going to kill them all-

He flinched hard when someone’s really cold hand landed on the back of his neck.

“Hey, Bentley. It’s Koa. Can you hear me?”

Bentley might’ve nodded, if he had the willpower. Which he didn’t.

“Okay, Bentley, I want you to do something for me. Can you open your eyes?” 

He tried, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t breathe. 

Koa’s hand moved on the back of his neck up into his hairline, just like Bruce did — which meant he must’ve been paying close attention to Asten last time Bentley had an attack. “I’ve got you. I’m right in front of you — can you look at me?”

Bentley summoned whatever willpower he could into peeling his eyes open. Koa was sitting in front of him in sweats, looking calm as ever, even smilingslightly. Maybe a little tired, too? Or a still a little hungover? Did Bellamy wake him up? 

“Hey. Will you hold this?” He questioned casually.

Bentley looked down when Koa grabbed his right hand and placed something in his shaking palm — something cold and wet. Was he holding ice?

“Thanks,” Koa continued, as though they were just having a typical conversation. Bentley looked at the little translucent crescent in his palm with a slowly growing puddle around it. “Try moving it from hand to hand, so your one doesn’t get too cold.”

Bentley wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at, but he obeyed the best he could — he was still trembling, but he managed to tilt his right hand enough for the piece of ice to slide into his left, leaving a trail of cold water in its wake.

“Good. You’re doing great. Now try moving it back,”

Bentley did as he was told, letting the ice slide back into his other hand. The cold on the back of his neck felt eerily similar to the cold on his hands, but he was so focused on not dropping the ice that he didn’t really pay it much mind. 

Koa nodded encouragingly. “Okay, now try tilting your hand to move it in circles on your palm, without dropping it.”

Somehow, he managed.

“Good! Now your other hand,” Koa added, continually and gently moving his hand on the back of Bentley’s head.

Bentley followed Koa’s directions for a while. He moved the ice in circles on his left hand, then his right again, then switched it back and forth a few more times before he realized… that he was breathing much easier.

When the ice was gone and he was left with nothing but wet hands, Koa, who was still crouched in front of him, patted his knee. “How are you feeling?”

Bentley took a deep breath. Besides still feeling a little bit nauseous like he always did after an attack, he felt… y’know. Better. He could breathe, and think, and his heart wasn’t pounding anymore, and he wasn’t so shaky.

“…Better,” He replied softly, glancing up at Koa, whose seafoam eyes were bouncing along his face, calculating, watching. “How did you… know that would work?”

“Tricks of the trade, I guess. Artimi and I have been trying out different ways to deal with attacks for a long time. Most don’t work, but ice usually does for him,” Koa shrugged with a faint smile. “It was a gamble trying it with you, but it looks like it paid off.”

Bentley took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m sorry.”

Koa smiled sadly, patting the back of his neck once. “No apologies, dude. What happened?”

Bentley glanced down at his green phone that was laying in the floor, then over at Bellamy, who was sitting quietly next to him just like he had been. Maybe… a little more freaked out looking. “I just… got into an argument with Asten earlier. That on top of school and everything else had me really stressed out and overwhelmed…”

His roommates didn’t need to know about his father. Not yet.

“I’m sorry, I know it sucks,” Koa squeezed his knee supportively with his other hand. “You’re feeling okay?”

Bentley shrugged. “Kind of like I haven’t slept in a year. But yeah.”

“Stress’ll do that to you. I’ll leave you to rest now, but if you need me I’ll be in the living room,” Koa replied, rising from where he was, his hands vanishing and leaving Bentley sort of… he didn’t know. Cold? “There’s a whole ice maker’s worth of attack help in the fridge, so don’t hesitate to come get me, alright?”

“Okay…” Bentley trailed off, taking another deep breath. “Thank you, Koa,” 

Koa smiled at him. “Of course. It’s in my job description.” 

Then he left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Bentley glanced over at Bellamy, who’d been eerily still and quiet by his side the entire time. The eleven year old didn’t say anything, he just glanced down at his fingers like he’d been caught watching something he was supposed to. “‘M sorry, Bell. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s okay,” Bellamy was quick to respond. “It’s not your fault.”

Bentley didn’t say anything to that.

Bellamy pushed himself further up on his bed, so he was sort of against the wall, emptying the left side of the mattress. “You can lay in here. I’ll stay.”

Bentley glanced back at him, smiling a quick, empty smile. “Thanks, but you don’t have to.”

“You stayed with me,” Bellamy continued. “You said you like sleeping with people around.” 

Fortunately for Bellamy, Bentley didn’t take much convincing. He quickly relented with a soft sigh and a quiet: “Okay.”

He crawled up to the top of Bellamy’s bed and got under the covers, settling in on the left side while Bellamy sat to his right. He didn’t realize exactly how exhausted he was until then — because, as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “Thanks, Bell.”

He didn’t say anything — but Bentley felt his hand land on his back and rub it gently through the covers.

He fell asleep within minutes.

--

tag list that never works lmao

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

@xiaonothere

FRIDAY — AUGUST 3 — 11:43PM

BENTLEY’S BARE FEET SKIDDED ON THE WHITE FLOOR AS HE RAN FULL-SPEED INTO A LEFT TURN, NEARLY FALLING RIGHT OVER DUE TO THE BLIND PANIC HE’D FOUND HIMSELF IN.

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear. The only instinct he could grab ahold of in that moment was run, so he was running; through the white hallways that reminded him so much of Dr. Keene’s lab, the back of his eyes burning spectacularly, because…

Her.

She…

He narrowly missed banging into the wall on his next full-speed right turn. Where was he going? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything other than the fact that he needed to run.

“Don’t be afraid, Babybird,” She cooed from nowhere, directly into his ears, his skull. “You were bound to find me again one day. Don’t act so shocked.”

Bentley pushed himself as fast as he could go, the burning behind his eyes quickly turning to full-fledged tears that started streaming down his face and strangled sobs that ripped their way up his throat. He had to get out of there. He had to get out. He had to-

“Careful where you’re going,”

Bentley skidded into another left turn as fast as his legs could move, blindly.

And as soon as he turned, he slammed face-first into something else — something that had been moving really fast, too. Something that made a muffled sound when they hit, and made a thump on the white floor just like Bentley did.

He forced himself up almost immediately, shoving himself off of the floor so urgently he careened into the wall from the force. Pain was blooming through his veins and muscles and bones but he ignored it. He had to run, he had to-

“Bentley?”

He managed to focus through his terror and tears on the person who he’d rammed into.

Rockie jerked himself off the floor, stumbling a few steps backwards. He wasn’t in a hospital gown like Bentley, but a solid white jumpsuit with nothing on it, the sleeves tucked down into his metal gloves. He was panting, and he also had tears streaming down the sides of his face, too.

“…Rockie?” He questioned. A loud wham erupted from the end of the hall, the direction Rockie had been coming from — so he lurched forward and grabbed Bentley’s arm and pulled him away from the sound, back the direction he’d just come.

“No, no, no, no, stop!” Bentley ordered, digging his heels into the floor and baring all of his weight against Rockie’s grip. “She’s this way, she was behind me, she was-“

Rockie turned to look at him, wiping his furiously watering eyes. “You can see her, too?”

Bentley didn’t say anything.

“My two favorite birds,” Her voice came, and Rockie looked around frantically, as though he heard her, as well. He pulled on Bentleys arm until he was haphazardly placed behind his back, protection that wouldn’t actually help against a psychopath like her. “Isn’t it kind of rude if we don’t invite my third favorite birdy, though?” 

Bentley and Rockie both whipped around instantly, hearts hammering in their ribcages when a bloodcurdling scream from a familiar voice ripped down the hall from somewhere they couldn’t see. “No!”

Rockie’s grip on Bentley’s arm was so tight it was painful, but Bentley couldn’t find it in himself to care. Between the terror and the crying, he couldn’t even think straight enough to focus on it.

“No! No, please!”

Bentley knew that voice. He knew it, and if he could get his mind to obeyhim for half a second, he might be able to tell who it was. But his mind didn’tobey — his heart was slamming around in his chest, booming in his ears, and it felt like his throat was full of cotton that was blocking his airway. He was having to put so much of his willpower into not having a panic attack that he physically couldn’t think about anything else.

Luckily, Rockie’s brain was working a little better than his, because he wiped his eyes with one hand and muttered: “It’s Bellamy.”

Bentley glanced down the hallway, and a new sort of terror and panic joined the terror and panic he’d already been experiencing — the inescapable dread that came along with the realization that she had him. Bellamy. And that he needed to get him the hell away from her.

Shit.

Without warning (or much thought) Bentley wrenched his arm out of Rockie’s grasp and started running toward the screaming.

“Bentley!” He heard Rockie call out, but it went mostly over his head.

Bentley took a few turns, listening dutifully for where the screams seemed to be coming from, and not much later, he heard Rockie’s footsteps coming from behind him. He turned one more time until he was sure he was on the hallway where the screaming was originating — it was lined with dozens of metal doors, all standing open, hall lights off but the dim lights in the rooms filtering into the empty corridor. 

Bentley inched down the hall, glancing into the doors one by one as he passed. Most of the rooms were solid white and empty, apart from the occasional set of chains attached to the floor or ceiling. He put a hand over his mouth to stifle his sobs into something quiet — not that that would help against a girl who fought him inside his own head.

He suddenly realized the sound of their footsteps had thinned to one pair, and that meant Rockie had stopped walking.

Bentley turned back, and luckily, the older boy hadn’t vanished. He was just standing at one of the doors, staring inside an empty room.

Bentley backtracked, walking up to the door he was looking at and peering inside. Bellamy wasn’t in there, but there was a set of chains attached to the floor, and a…

Rubik’s cube? Just sitting in the middle of the room? 

He glanced up at Rockie, who seemed fixated on the little thing for reasons Bentley wasn’t aware of, but he didn’t seem interested or even confused. He seemed like he could be, almost… sad? Or afraid? Something like recognition, nostalgia was swirling in his green irises, but not the good type; and Bentley wondered why.

“No! Please!”

Both Rockie and Bentley whipped around at the startling proximity of the screaming to them — like Bellamy was in one of the few rooms they were right next to.

Then, in one sudden moment that scared them all half to death, Bellamy shot out of the door right across the hallway (hadn’t Bentley just checked that one?) and screamed in terror when he saw them, skidding to an abrupt stop.

He was in the same jumpsuit as Rockie, his brown eyes red and streaming with endless tears. The moment his gaze flicked between them, and he comprehended who it actually was, he dissolved into a bout of quiet, entire-body wracking sobs, lurching forward and grabbing around Bentley’s torso for dear life.

“She-she’s gonna k-ill me,” He choked, crying so hard he started coughing. “She’s gonna- she’s gonna…”

“Why are you so scared? I haven’t even touched you yet,”

As much as Bentley hated it, he wiped his (still crying) eyes and forced Bellamy to let go of him, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him blindly, quickly down the hall with Rockie hot on their heels. He didn’t know where they were going. Somewhere. Anywhere.

And then all the lights cut off.

The three of them skidded to a blind stop, and Bellamy stayed pressed up against Bentley’s left side, holding onto his hospital gown like he’d float away if he let go. The only sounds that were audible in the dark halls were the soft telltale sniffles that came with all three of them crying. 

Then there was a faint click-click-click sound from right next to them. Then a clack! (The click-click-click clack! of Davis taking off his metal gloves and dropping them on the floor echoed in Bentley’s mind for half a second. Now that he thought about it, Rockie’s gloves looked just like his.)

“What’re you going to do with that hand?” Her voice came, with a mocking tone, confirming Bentley’s suspicions that a glove had been removed. “I’m in your mind. Nothing you do to me is real.”

The arms that were around him tightened, and Bentley looked down into the pitch blackness at where he thought Bellamy’s head would be if he could see.

“But what I do to you, that is real. If I want it to be,”

Bentley turned his head in the darkness when a pained noise came from his right. “Rockie?”

No reply — just dead, dead silence that lasted far longer than he’d have liked. Then came a simple thump.

The lights flicked on, and Rockie was unconscious in the floor, nose and ears pouring blood.

“Rockie!” Bentley tried kneeling down to him, but he suddenly couldn’t move, like his legs and arms and muscles weren’t obeying him. 

Like he was on the roof and she’d slid a noose over his head and he was walking to the edge against his will-

The only thing Bentley had control over seemed to be the fact that he was crying. His arms and legs just moved without him, and he took a few steps backwards until his back thudded against the wall. “Bellamy, run.”

Bentley saw his bloodshot brown eyes for only a millisecond before everything went black again. It felt like he was pinned to the wall — his muscles didn’t respond, none of them except for his face. Maybe because him crying in terror brought her joy?

The lights flicked back on, and she was standing directly in front of him, her face only inches from his, her hands baring down on his shoulders just hard enough to cause a little pain. Her stitched smile looked fresh, but it always looked fresh, and her amber eyes were drilling into his skull with an absolutely manic look about them. Her platinum hair was hanging down, and every time she exhaled, she blew the blood-soaked strands into Bentley’s face.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t try to fight. He just sobbed.

“You’re no fun anymore, babybird. What do I have to do to get a rise out of you nowadays?”

Her amber eyes slid over to Bellamy, who was standing a mere dozen feet away, mortified, staring with tears streaming down his face at a rapid rate.

Bentley tried to move, but his body didn’t obey. “Don’t touch him.”

He saw Bellamy turn to run in his peripheral, so the Secret Keeper let go of one of Bentley’s shoulders and pointed at him. “Don’t move, Birdy.”

Bellamy went rigid, stopped in his tracks — which likely meant she had his body, too.

“Don’t touch him!” Bentley repeated, louder, though it didn’t sound tough when he was crying his eyes out. A maniacal, sinister giggle bubbled up out of the Secret Keeper’s chest. 

“I don’t have to,”

Bellamy was facing away from Bentley, but he started screaming. Not the scared sort of screaming from earlier, but a worse scream, rooted in pain that couldn’t be explained by words.

“Stop!” Bentley shouted, trying his best to move his body even though it just wouldn’t move. “Stop! Do it to me instead!”

“What’s the fun in that?” She laughed. She snapped her fingers and Bellamy fell like his strings had been cut, curling up tightly on the floor with screams and sobs of pure agony.

“Stop! Stop it, please! Why are you doing this?!” Bentley continued with a sob, glancing over at Rockie, who was still unconscious on the floor. “We didn’t do anything to you!”

“If I do recall, babybird, you tried to kill me,” She spat, venom on her tongue, amber eyes boring into his skull. “I think a little revenge is justified.”

“You were trying to hang me!” He cried, eyes flicking to Bellamy, who was still screaming. “Please. He’s just a kid. He didn’t do anything.”

She blinked once, twice, as though she was processing something. Something in her amber eyes shifted. “Say my name.”

Bentley tried to move, to wrench himself out of her grip, but he couldn’t make his body obey.

“Say my name!” She ordered, louder, almost desperately. Then she shouted: “Shut up!” But it wasn’t at him, it was almost… at herself?

“Say my name!” She repeated.  “Shut up!”

Why did she want him to…

To…

Bentley looked at her, choking on a few more quiet sobs. “Charlie?”

The Secret Keeper made a sound akin to an animalistic growl, flinching away from him and clawing at her own face like he’d sprayed acid in her eyes. 

He could move his fingers.

“Charlie,” He repeated, sniffling lightly. Bellamy’s screaming began to subside. 

“If you don’t stop talking, I’ll kill him right now!” She spat, pointing at Bellamy again, who screamed like someone had just stabbed him.

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie-“

The Secret Keeper covered her ears and roared like some kind of beast.

And then she stopped. 

And she looked at him.

Her eyes began to flicker — between amber and blue. 

“Wake up,” Her voice said. It was lighter, smoother, different. It wasn’t the Secret Keeper, it was Charlie. “Wake up!”

Bentley felt like he’d been shot in the head, like he was falling and spinning in circles at unimaginable speeds. Like he was hurdling through outer-space while it threatened to tear him apart.

A high-pitched ring squealed in his ears, so loud it hurt. White swam in his vision and morphed into a myriad of colors. And with a whoosh sound and a wave of vertigo that made him instantly nauseous, Rockie’s bathroom swam into focus.

Bentley was on the floor, his back braced against the sink cabinet and aching like he’d fallen. He had tears streaming down his face, and it was hard to breathe, like he had cotton in his throat-

Rockie jumped out of his asleep (unconscious?) state on the floor with a shout of terror, scrambling there until he was nothing more than a small ball shoved in the corner against the bathtub. Bentley might’ve said something to him, if he could get air to enter his body, which he couldn’t.

He forced himself to look over at Rockie. His nose and ears weren’t bleeding like they had been in… there. The nightmare, vision thing. (Bentley had been a hundred percent awake when he was pulled into that.. so he wasn’t sure what to call it.)

Rockie had his legs tucked up to his chest as close as they could go, gloved hands laced in his hair with his head down, sobs wracking his trembling frame. He looked eerily small.

Bentley thought again about reaching out, but he was crying so hard he couldn’t get his brain to listen. He just pulled his knees up, too, wrapping his arms around them only to find that his entire body was trembling violently.

“You were… in my…?” Rockie mumbled. Bentley guessed he was about to say nightmare. He wondered how long he’d been in there with the Secret Keeper alone before she pulled Bentley into it.

Bentley gave him a jerky nod.

And then someone across the dorm started screaming.

They finally managed to look at each other, their terrified, wide, crying eyes locking, brown and green.

Rockie pushed himself out of the floor on queue, but Bentley’s body didn’t obey as well as his — he thought about getting up, but he was teetering right on the edge of full-blown panic attack, and somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do anything.

“C’mon, buddy,” Rockie hiccuped lightly. “…I gotcha.”

Bentley didn’t fight when Rockie grabbed his arms and helped lift him off the bathroom floor. “It’s okay; we’re not in there anymore,” (Though it wasn’t as reassuring as it could’ve been, given Rockie was still crying, too — but he was managing to calm himself down much quicker than Bentley was.)

Bentley didn’t say anything, he just sort of stood there and let Rockie rub his arms because it felt like literally anything else would send him directly into an anxiety attack. (He had to physically fight the urge to lurch forward and hug him and have a breakdown, but that was okay.)

“I’m gonna go check on Bellamy. Do you want to come?”

Bentley nodded jerkily, and Rockie spent another second rubbing his arms before he turned and made his way out of the bathroom and toward the bedroom door.

Bentley followed along numbly. He had a throbbing headache forming at the front of his skull, and his head already kinda felt all fuzzy and staticky — like being on a foggy road and only being able to see a few yards in front of the car. He did not miss that feeling.

He blindly followed Rockie out into the living area, where strangely, no one was. Varian wasn’t in there anymore, and his bedroom door was open, indicating that Koa, too, was gone.

Rockie wasted no time going straight to Bellamy’s door and swinging it open. They went in, and it took a second for Bentley to focus enough on the room to realize something was… wrong.

Bellamy wasn’t in there.

Bentley managed to grab ahold of at least a little clarity as he glanced around the room. The bed was empty, the bathroom was open with no humans inside, the desk chair was pushed in with no one in sight, and Bentley felt that panic attack threat come roaring back twice as hard as it had earlier.

“Where did he go?” Rockie questioned softly, glancing around the vacant bedroom.

Bentley suddenly couldn’t breathe very good again. He started to hear things like the water in the pipes, and Rockie’s heartbeat, and his own blood moving in his veins, and-

Another heartbeat, twice as fast, pounding so loud it drowned out the rest of the noise, blood forcing itself through veins with a panicked violence. And then the feeling of something else closely associated with it came, moving faster and more freely— tears. 

Bentley let his eyes drift around the bedroom, to the bathroom shower curtain, under the bed, the top bunk, the wardrobe-

It was coming from the wardrobe.

He could breathe easy again.

Bentley, for a moment, just looked at the piece of furniture. It was the exact same one that he and Asten had in their room, a deep wood with a pair of big doors.

“What do you hear?” Rockie questioned, and Bentley glanced over at him, blinking.

“He’s in the wardrobe,” Bentley replied, moving toward the big wooden mass. “I can feel his blood.”

Rockie didn’t say anything. Bentley lifted his hands to the small round handles on the wardrobe, but stopped short and knocked on the front of the door instead. “Bellamy? It’s Bentley.”

There was a moment where nothing happened. 

And then the left wardrobe door creaked open the tiniest bit, and Bentley saw one of Bellamy’s brown eyes peek out to look at him. (Hopefully he didn’t look too terrible, but he was still crying real good, so the odds of that were pretty low.)

Bellamy just looked at him for a solid ten seconds, before the door swung open and he came stumbling out, immediately synching his arms around Bentley’s torso for dear life.

“It’s okay,” Bentley muttered, but it probably didn’t sound too reassuring, given the crying he’d been trying to stifle was coming back harder now that Bellamy was sobbing into his shirt. “I saw her, too. But she’s not really here.”

Yet.

Bellamy didn’t say anything, he just held onto Bentley’s shirt like he was on the verge of death.

Charlie Reins was alive.

The Secret Keeper was alive. 

Which meant something even scarier than her looming presence in Bentleys mind. It either meant that she had immortality, or that…

Or that…

Bruce had lied to him.

--

tag list that never works lmao

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

@xiaonothere

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 12:49AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” Rockie asked.

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

Rockie just blinked at him.

"Go on, explain it," Charlie urged.

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

"Help?" Rockie scoffed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bentley crossed his arms tightly, too.

“And that was enough,”

Another moment of silence passed.

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

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

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

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

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

“What the hell?” Rockie muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It isn’t that easy,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I-”

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

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

“Ooh, struck a nerve?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She couldn’t kill her.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, well, don’t!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Get out!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

"Hey,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Rockie?"

"Hm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

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

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

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

“I…”

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

But finally:

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

Bentley kept silent.

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

Bentley didn’t say anything for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you sure you’re okay enough to-“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man in white armor stepped onto the elevator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The guard fell.

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

“There’s a-"

Chi-chink.

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

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

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

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

A pistol. An actual, real pistol. 

The thought of picking it up made his head spin.

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

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

“I’m not going with you,”

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

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

Bentley inhaled sharply. “But-”

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

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

“Bentley-”

“I don’t want to be alone,”

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie resigned to silence.

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

“Oh my God,”

Rockie disappeared around the corner.

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

“Was that the last time I’ll see-”

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

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

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

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

Rockie was already dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Rockie…”

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

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

“Bentley,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With an exhale, he pushed himself inside.

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Feet up!” Charlie shouted. 

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

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

The person padded by without suspecting a thing.

“You can go now.”

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

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

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

“Bentley-”

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

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

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

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

“Okay,”

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

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

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

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

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

Because Asten was laying in the bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“B’ntley?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asten merely whined: “Bentley.”

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

"Okay..."

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

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

One long hallway, and then they were out.

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

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

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

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

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

Asten said something.

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

And then he did.

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

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

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

Cli-click.

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

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

"Now. Get up,"

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

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

Bentley looked up. Back into the bright main hallway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Charlie-"

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

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

Someone stepped in front of him.

"No,"

It was Asten.

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

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

Bentley stepped forward. "Asten, move."

"...No,"

"Asten,"

"No,"

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

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

"No,"

"Asten!"

"No,"

BANG!

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

Thump.

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

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

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

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

Chloe had done it.

They were going to be okay.

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

Bentley glanced down at it.

A bullet casing.

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

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

"...Bentley?"

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

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

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

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

"Jason!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Asten-"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jason choked.

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

Silence ensued.

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

Asten's eyes were looking at nothing.

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

Asten never moved.

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

And he didn't move.

Asten Evans...

was dead.

--

HOLY SHIT

tag list that KINDA works

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

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

WEDNESDAY — OCTOBER 19 — 6:19PM

HIS ROOMMATES WERE MISSING, AND BENTLEY COULDN’T BREATHE.

He’d gone in every bedroom searching for a phone, or a laptop, or anything he could use to call Bruce, but there wasn’t a single electronic left. It was all gone, vanished, alongside his friends. Even the wall phone had been smashed into an unusable heap.

He checked every room a second time, and even a third, but nothing, and no one, ever showed. 

Of course this would happen when he’d just finished being woefully sick. He didn’t even have the brain power to make coherent thoughts without having to think for a while first. He didn't know what time it was, or what day it was -- How was he supposed to find them by himself? Was it the Secret Keeper? He didn’t know where they’d gone, who’d taken them, if they were okay. His eyes flicked back to the blood streaking the floor. There was a lot of it. What if they were dying?

Bentley didn’t really realize he was having another anxiety attack until he had to sit himself down on the floor to keep his legs from giving out under him. He couldn’t breathe — his inhales and exhales were so ragged he could hardly cry correctly, and his whole body was trembling like a leaf.

What if one of them was already dead? What if they were being tortured? What if they were all already dead? And why was it always him left when shit like this happened?

Bentley…

He glanced up when that same sort of pulling feeling tugged at his chest, sobbing softly and bringing hand up to wipe at his eyes. When he opened them, he was in a solid white abyss.

Someone grabbed his shoulder from behind with a soft: “Bentley...”

He didn’t move, and he squeezed his eyes shut, tucking his arms around his head. He didn’t want to see her. He couldn’t face her like this. He couldn’t survive her.

“Hey, look at me,” He felt, heard her round on him, coming to a slow stop in front. “Open your eyes, Bentley.”

He had a pulling feeling that nagged at him, forced him to reluctantly do so. And it took him a solid thirty seconds to comprehend that it wasn’t the Secret Keeper’s yellow and black attire standing ahead of him, but a purple dress. Her hair wasn’t platinum, but a warm blonde, and her eyes were blue, not amber. There were scars and cuts on her face from a muzzle that had been removed. There were tears in her eyes.

“Charlie?” He whispered.

“Don’t say my name. She’ll hear you,” She whispered frantically, kneeling down ahead of him so she was similar to his height. Her other hand found his other shoulder and she squeezed them both. “You have to go, now. I kept you from getting taken, but I can’t keep her from finding out for long.”

Bentley blinked at her. The nagging, pulling feeling that had dragged him out of their dorm earlier was… Charlie?

Bentley breathed in. “H… how do you… how can you do that?”

Charlie glanced around as though she were waiting for someone else to appear, to attack. “I wish I could explain it to you now, but I can’t. We don’t have time. As soon as they realize they have the other ones but not you, they’re going to come. You have to go. I’ll show you the way… but you have to do exactly what I say exactly when I say it. Okay?”

Bentley sniffled lightly. “How do I know you’re not just her? Tricking me?”

Charlie let out a breath, a sort of sadness surfacing in her eyes. “I guess… you don’t…” She muttered, glancing down at the white floor. “But… you want to get to them, right? Right now, I’m the only shot you have. I’ll show you that you can trust me.”

Bentley breathed in, sniffing deeply, bringing his arms up around himself. “Why… are you helping me?”

Charlie looked at him sadly. “Because all of this is my fault.”

He didn’t say anything.

Charlie squeezed his shoulders. “I have to let you out of here before she hears us. Just, please — give me a shot, okay?”

The next time Bentley blinked, he was back in the dorm, and he was alone.

He exhaled shakily, blinking and glancing around the room. Everything was the same as it had been — broken, shoved around, and bloody.

“Can you hear me, Bentley?” Charlie’s voice came into his head as a whisper, hardly audible over the whooshing of the water in the pipes that was still assaulting his ears.

He blinked once, twice, sniffing lightly. “Yes.”

“You have to do exactly what I tell you, okay? First, you have to go to the lobby of your building. Stay quiet, and don’t be seen. Not even by other students. You ready? We don’t have much time.” 

Bentley, with a few deep breaths, pulled himself off of the floor and went out the door without looking back. 

In the heat of the moment, he didn’t even think to check if there were any heartbeats left inside the dorm.

— 

Bentley made it to the lobby of their building by creeping down the six flights of stairs at an absolutely glacial pace, listening to the voice of a psychotic killer’s alter ego inside of his head.

(Maybe he’d wake up and learn this was all a terrible fever dream. It sounded pretty much like one.)

“They have entrances everywhere, so they can get students into the facility from every building without being seen,” Charlie said in his head, once he made it to the bottom of the stairs and through the door into the lobby. It was large, and empty, and fancy, as always. He took a few tentative steps forward, eyes lingering on the big glass doors that lined the front of the building. The sunset was shining through them, so it had to be, like, six, right? “There are EM fields as soon as you enter the facility. Same thing that was on Titus Lancaster’s cell in my dad’s old place so he couldn’t teleport out. You won’t be able to use your powers inside.”

Bentley moved close to the walls, past a few vending machines, as if that would help him stay hidden in a wide open room. “How am I supposed to get them out if I can’t…”

“I’ll help you,” Charlie whispered. “Go to the piano on the other end of the room. You’re gonna open the top of it like you’re cleaning it out.”

Bentley glanced across the lobby, his gaze coming to rest on the white grand piano that reminded him of Asten’s in Brazil — the one he’d heard stories about. 

“So the whole school, it’s… bad?” Bentley whispered, moving quickly toward the piano. He pressed his palms under the lip of the lid and pushed with all his might. When he got it high enough, a few braces unfolded to hold it in place.  

“No,” Charlie muttered. “It wasn’t. Look down into the piano. See those screws around the edges? Fourth one from the right. Push it.”

Bentley peered down into the piano, his eyes flicking across the strings and intricate woodwork until he found decorative screws lining the side closest to him, holding everything down. He found the fourth one from the right and pressed it, and it sank down into the piano with a quiet noise.

Something behind him clicked.

He flinched so hard passersby might’ve thought he was shot, whipping around as though he could actually do anything should a person sneak up on him.

Behind the piano, on the wall — one of the wainscoting panels had popped ever-so-slightly out of place, and a crack of bright light was visible between the panels that hadn’t been before.

Bentley cringed. “Tell me that isn’t-“

“A secret door, yes. The hallway beyond is clear. Go now. There’s going to be a flight of stairs, and at the bottom, you need to take an immediate right, just to duck out of sight,” 

Bentley shook his head lightly. Was he really going to risk it? Following the sort-of-Secret-Keeper’s voice into a creepy trapdoor in the lobby of his school building? He glanced at the front door again. Maybe he should go find a phone. Call Bruce.

“Bentley, this is time sensitive. One of your roommates is four minutes and eighteen seconds from being taken to their death,” Charlie continued. “You have to go. Now!”

Bentley blinked, then exhaled and shook his head, hurrying over to the wainscoting and tugging it open slowly. Beyond was a solid white set of stairs, with blindingly white lights and hallways past.

He shook his head again, some sudden kind of burn surfacing behind his eyes. What if this was all a ploy to get him down there without having to go take him, like they’d taken the others? Being lured in like a defenseless animal. He just wanted his dad…

“Bentley. Why are you crying?”

He brought one hand up and scrubbed at his fiercely watering eyes. “Please don’t kill me. I just want to save them,” He half begged, glancing at the white stairs. “Please… I just want to go home.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Bentley, I know you’re scared, and I know this is psychotic and crazy and sudden, but... but I swear I’ll do everything I can to protect you. All of you! In order to do that, though, I need you to move, now,” Charlie ordered, the final word holding such authority that the nagging feeling returned for a few seconds. “Three minutes and fifty-nine seconds.”

Well, what the hell? Screw it!

Bentley, with a choked sound that he bit back and a burn in his eyes he forced away, ducked into the trapdoor.

Silence. Complete silence, apart from very distant white noise coming from somewhere deep within the facility. He turned back and grabbed the lip of the door, tugging it closed softly.

As soon as the exit was shut, a sudden wave of weakness washed over him — like he was being siphoned off strength he hadn’t even had to begin with. The world seemed to spin and teeter on its axis, and he stumbled, rather ungracefully, into one of the white walls. Had she tricked him? Already?

“It’s okay, it’s alright! It’s just the EM stifling your powers. You’re okay,” Charlie all but rambled in his head, and she really sounded like she might’ve cared, if she weren’t the other half of someone who’d tried to kill him several times.

He was so close to falling unconscious right then that he didn’t think much about it.

“Hey! Don’t you dare faint right now!” She demanded. “Just breathe, it'll pass.”

Bentley didn’t say anything, but blinked rapidly, waiting for his vision to stop doubling, for his hearing to clear. The white swam and moved around him for what felt like an eternity if vertigo before it slowly settled back into place.

"There you go... see?" Charlie questioned. “Remember, duck into the right hall at the bottom of the staircase. It’s very low traffic.”

Bentley, with an exhale and shake of his head, pushed himself unsteadily down the stairs. A long, bright, white hall came into view, lined with doors and windows and other hallways that branched off and led in varying directions. He didn’t see anyone in the hall, only a cart parked outside of a door and a few randomly placed boxes, but he ducked right anyhow, into a narrower offshoot hall with less doors and lower light, pressing himself tight against the wall.

“Good,” Charlie chided. “Okay. Look out into the main hall — there’s another hall branching off from the left side, a few doors up from where you are now. You’re going to cross and duck in there on my queue. Don’t hesitate,” Bentley peered out beyond the wall he was against for a split second, glancing at a few doors that sat across from him, eyes traveling across the wall until he spotted the hall she was talking about. “Go now.”

He did just as she said, ducking low and running across the bright, main hallway into another, darker one.

“Okay, now you’re going to go down this hallway, take a right, and then pass two more hallways before you turn right again. It’ll lead you back to the main hall, but much further up, past the labs, which have windows and the most staff inside. It wouldn’t go well if you were seen going past one,”

How much time to we have? Bentley forced himself to think, as he crept down the hall and came to an intersection, glancing to the left and right. When it all came back empty, he went right.

“Two minutes fifty-six seconds,” She replied. “The EM had you out of commission for longer than I expected…”

What?!

He pressed on faster, passing one hallway, then another, then pushing himself against the wall at the next one. He peered around the corner into it -- empty, apart from a metal cart holding empty food trays that was sitting abandoned at the opposite end. With an exhale, he pushed off, hurrying forward as close to the wall as he could before he could settle, crouched behind the cart.

His heart was absolutely slamming out of his chest. Last time he was in a facility like this, he got shot. People died. Lots of them.

Charlie didn't let him think about it for long, because she started talking again.

“The cell door is directly across from you, but it takes a keycard to enter, which means you’ll be waiting to see a guy in a lab coat walk up,” She started. “Listen… I would mind control him for you, but the only reason she isn’t noticing me using her power to speak to you is because she has over five hundred people under her influence and her head is pretty full. You’re gonna have to take this guy down yourself,”

Charlie! Bentley thought in alarm. I can’t take a guy down — just walking in here nearly killed me!

“You’re gonna have to, Bentley. That man is coming to take your roommate to the sector in this facility where they… kill them,”

Bentley exhaled heavily, running a stressed hand through his hair. 

Which one is it? He thought. Which roommate?

Charlie was quiet for a second.

And then: “Varian.”

Bentley didn’t say anything, but gripped the edges of the cart he was hiding behind, hard. What do they want us for? Why are they doing this to us?

“The blood and DNA of a metahuman, when chemically altered, can grant unnaturally long life and health to whoever it’s injected into. My father wanted to be the hero that made humans live forever. That’s why he turned people into metahumans — for an infinite supply. And now, The Secret Keeper is carrying out his plan by… draining them of all their blood, and manufacturing it into a serum. What better place to get an endless supply than a place where people funnel their metahuman children and leave them there for the whole year?” Charlie explained.

Why can’t you just make The Secret Keeper stop?! She’s inside your body!

“My body is still under the influence of my father’s mind control — he has a chip in his head, and one in mine, right at the base of my skull. The last order he ever gave to her was to finish what he started however necessary. So she is. And I can’t overpower her will,” 

Bentley blinked. But you’re overpowering her will right-

“He’s coming,”

Bentley’s mind immediately blanked, and he glanced around the empty hallway. A set of footsteps started tap-tapping in his ears. Far off, from the main hallway, echoing from the left. How the hell was he supposed to incapacitate a full-grown man when he was having a hard enough time keeping his own body in check? There wasn’t even anything there for him to use!

“There he comes,”

On Charlie’s queue, a man in a long white lab coat entered Bentley's line of sight, walking up to the door across the hall. He had a few books in his hand, thick ones, like novels. He dipped his right hand into his coat pocket and dug around in it.

“Bentley, go now!”

With one last panic induced glance around, the only thing he came up with that was even near his vicinity was the metal card of food trays.

The man drew his keycard from his pocket and began to lift it.

With a shake of his head at how terrible of an idea this was, Bentley grabbed the cart and took off running as hard as he could, only letting go when it was a mere few inches from the man’s legs to jump out of the way.

The cart slammed into the lab-coat guy’s legs and sent him tumbling backwards, feet all the way in the air as he fell over the cart and landed on his back all folded over. Trays and books and his keycard all went flying, and one of said books landed very close to Bentley’s feet.

He picked it up rather quickly, and on impulse, took a few steps toward the man and just slammed the massive novel down on his face one, two, three times.

By the time he was confident enough to stop, there was blood pouring out of the man’s nose, coating the spine of the book and a little bit splattered on Bentley’s hands, too.

He dropped the novel with a thud, silently staring at the unconscious man for a few moments.

Shit.

“Don’t get in your head about it. Open the door,” Charlie insisted. Bentley shook his head and forced himself to keep going, stepping over the man and grabbing the small keycard that had skidded a few feet across the white floor.

“Quickly.”

Bentley jogged up to the door. It had the same little screen next to it that was in the old lab Bentley was synchronized in, or whatever. He tapped the card against it, it turned green, and the door hissed open, revealing a solid white, bright room.

Sitting inside, chained by two shackles anchored to the floor on opposite ends of the area, was Varian. The chains were pulled to their max to keep him from moving from the middle of the room, so he was just sat there with his knees pulled up and head down. He was wearing a solid white jumpsuit. Bentley could see blood splattered in a few various places; the neckline, the wrists. He had bruises peppered across his face, and Bentley could’ve swore there was blood in his blonde hair, too.

“Varian!” 

His head snapped up at his name, his brown eyes coming to rest on Bentley as the redhead skidded to a stop next to him, kneeling down to his level.

“Hey, Var,” Bentley looked down at the chains and cringed. How was he going to break chains? “I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?”

It seemed like it took a few moments for Varian to comprehend what was going on, but when he did, he got this look of utter shock and fear and... also of relief on his face. He moved onto his knees and grabbed the sleeve of Bentley’s hoodie, and Bentley wasn't quite sure what was going on until Varian tugged him forward and wrapped his arms around him.

Bentley exhaled, stunned slightly. Why did it feel like it had been a year and a half since he touched anybody? Talked to anybody? He gently brought his arms up and around him, too, bunching up the back of the white jumpsuit in his hands. He felt Varian dig his head into his shoulder. Neither of them said anything, but he didn't miss the way Varian trembled slightly, or the way the shoulder of his hoodie got ever-so-slightly dampened, so Bentley just let his head fall down into his shoulder as a measly form of comfort.

And it felt really good. And he was suddenly reminded how utterly exhausted he was, and made very aware of how easy it would be for him to pass flat out, right then and there, with Varian's warm arms synched tight around his neck.

“Bentley, you have to go, now,” Charlie’s voice came. It was softer now, like she felt bad for interrupting. “The panel on the wall removes the shackles — the same keycard should work.”

With a cringe of pity, Bentley pulled himself away from Varian, something inside of him writhing at the loss of contact. Instead, he rested his hands on Varian's shoulders and squeezed them lightly. “We have to go, okay?”

Varian looked at him through watery, red-rimmed brown eyes, eyes that were dull and different in so many ways than normal, and nodded. Bentley had to choose not to pay attention to the wetness around his eyes. 

Bentley pushed himself begrudgingly out of the floor and glanced around the solid white room, eyes coming to rest on two screen-panels next to the door. One looked just like the one on the outside, most likely to close the door from the inside, and the second was smaller.

Bentley made his way to the smaller one and tapped the keycard on it, and with a loud clack, the shackles opened and fell off of Varian’s wrists. He immediately brought his hands up to wipe at his eyes, inhaling shakily.

“Where is everybody else? Where are we? What happened?” He asked, his voice soft, shaky, his Russian accent much more prominent than it typically was. Bentley didn't take that as a good sign.

Bentley creased his brow. “You don’t remember?”

Varian blinked a few times, trying to rid his brown eyes of tears, but also maybe trying to remember? “I remember being sick again. And someone came into the dorm, but I was barely awake… and then I was here, and there were people, and they…” Varian paused when it got difficult to talk through the lump in his throat, sniffing lightly.

Bentley made his way back over and offered Varian his hands, which he stared at for a moment before taking. Bentley tugged him out of the floor and onto his feet only for him to stumble alarmingly to the side. With a quick, panic-induced exclamation of: "Varian!" And the single quickest reflex Bentley had had in over a week, he grabbed Varian in what could only be described as some kind of bear hug to keep him upright.

“I don’t feel very good,” He muttered into Bentley's shoulder. He reached for the little machine that would typically be on his arm, but it wasn’t there. What kind of sick assholes would remove that?

“Bentley, you are running out of time,”

Bentley ran a stressed hand over his hair. What do I do with him, Charlie?

"He has to come with you. You don't have time to take him anywhere else,"

"Okay," Bentley muttered, mostly to himself, rubbing Varian's arm a little. “Okay. Alright. Varian? We've been kidnapped, and we have to go find everybody else, okay? All you have to do is walk. You think you can walk?”

Varian sniffled against Bentley's hoodie. "Ya khochu poyti domoy." (I want to go home.)

Bentley didn't say anything, but he didn't have to -- Varian forced himself out of Bentley's grip, swaying slightly to one side and wiping at his nose. "I can walk... I have to."

The rapid blanching of his face didn't really convince Bentley as much.

“You’re going to go across the hall, back into the darker one where you came from. Go, now,” Charlie ordered. 

Bentley grabbed ahold of Varian’s jumpsuit sleeve. “Okay, let's go. You got it, Var?”

Varian just let Bentley tug him out the door and into the bright white hall. He glanced around like he hadn’t even seen it before, his eyes lingering on the scientist who was still sprawled on the floor, unmoved, surrounded by trays and books and blood. Bentley heard him audibly gulp, and then he asked softly: “Is he dead?”

“No,” Bentley replied, tugging Varian into the darker hallway he’d come out of, out of sight from the main hall. “I hope…”

“Go to the end, take a right, and then another right at the next hall. It’ll take you right back to the main one again.” 

Bentley followed Charlie’s orders and went to the end of the dark hall, then turned right, glancing back nearly every five milliseconds to check up on Varian. He seemed to be doing okay, even keeping up, but the amount of color that wasn't in his face and far-off look in his eyes had Bentley assuming it wouldn't stay that way for long.

“Do you know where to go?” Varian asked, and Bentley merely nodded. “How?” He continued.

“I’m getting help. From a… telepath,” He replied vaguely. Glancing into the next hall, he took a right turn into it, and he could see the doors in the bright main hall again.

“Your next door is directly to the left of the hall when you come out. Valor. But you have to be fast — they’re on the way to his room right now, which means you need to be completely gone in exactly a minute and six seconds." Charlie urged, and Bentley settled with Varian at the end of the hall, against the wall. "Go… now!”

With a muted grunt and Varian's sleeve held tight in his grip, Bentley pushed himself off and took a sharp left turn into the main hall, spotting the next door only a few feet away. He quickly tapped the keycard on the panel, prompting the door to hiss open.

As soon as Bentley stepped inside, he exhaled at the sight. Valor was shut in a white box like every other room in the place. He was chained and in a jumpsuit just like Varian was, laying in the floor and facing away from them, trembling slightly. His wings were pinched together and strapped down against his back by what looked like thick metal wire. It was tight, and seemed to be digging in.

But seeing his friend all strung up wasn't the worst part -- the worst part was that, in a room full of solid white, there was a whole lot of red.

The white floor was splattered and coated with blood that was pouring from Valor's wings where the wires were cutting into them -- all of his platinum feathers were stained a deep crimson, and the liquid had been smeared and moved across the floor all over the middle of the room. There was more blood, too, less a smear and more a puddle, in the floor near the door. And splattered on the wall. And the door. Were those bloody handprints on the white walls? Why were there so many droplets of blood near the door?

Bentley forced himself not to focus on it and tapped the keycard against the little panel that released the shackles. He’d seen this moment before; Valor on the floor. Where had he seen this before?

Shaking the thought from his mind, he jogged over to Valor and rounded him so he could see his face — it was battered and bruised way more than he’d hoped, and there were streaks of blood streaming from his nose and also from a cut on his left temple. He seemed… unconscious, but not all the way — he had tears streaming down his face, and he kept shaking and jerking like he was having a bad dream.

“He nearly killed two guards in the dorm, and another when he woke up down here, so the Secret Keeper took it upon herself to keep him down. I can do a little bit on my end to get her out of his head, but you’re going to have to snap him out of it,” Charlie explained. “Once her hold over him is broken, she’s going to feel it, Bentley. She’ll know what you’re doing. You’ll have to be fast and listen to me if you guys want a chance to make it out of here.”

Shit.

Okay, Bentley thought, crouching down next to Valor. Let’s do it, then.

It wasn't like he had much of a choice unless he wanted to get kidnapped again.

With a soft sigh, he reached down and gently touched Valor’s shoulder, rubbing it slightly. “Valor, wake up.”

"Oh, come on. You'll have to try harder than that," Charlie mocked. Varian settled on his knees on the opposite side of Valor, fiddling with the wire that was synched around his wings in a feeble attempt to remove it. With the shakiness of his hands and unsureness of his movements, though, Bentley knew it wouldn't be of much use.

“Valor, listen to me,” Bentley tried with an exhale, shaking and rubbing his shoulder. “Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real, it’s fake. It’s just a lie. You have to wake up.”

“Bentley, I can’t use my powers,” Varian said suddenly. When Bentley glanced up at him, he was looking at his (now bloody) hands like one of them had been chopped off. He took note of the color of Varian's face, which was still turning more white, if that were even possible. Which it shouldn't have been.

“This place stifles them — none of us can,” He replied, continuously shaking Valor gently. “Valor, I know you can hear me, wake up!”

“No,” Valor murmured to himself, squirming on the floor, squeezing his eyes closed tighter and forcing tears to fall down the sides of his face. “Enzo… get off. No… Get off.”

Bentley wasn’t sure who Enzo was, but with the way Valor was acting, even unconscious, he decided he didn’t like him very much.

“He's almost there, almost out,” Charlie’s voice came. Her words were followed by a few choked sobs from Valor. "I'll try to force her out of his head!"

Before Bentley could even think about replying, Valor suddenly jackknifed himself upward, nearly slamming his head directly into Bentley’s with enough force to knock them both out. His grey eyes were blown wide and brimming with wetness — something Bentley truly never thought he’d see.

“Hey! Valor, hey, Valor, it’s okay,” Bentley stammered, holding his arms out toward him as though he were some sort of wild animal. “It’s okay. It wasn’t real — whatever you were seeing.”

“She knows,” Charlie’s voice came. “Thirty seconds, Bentley, to get out of that room!”

“Bentley?” Valor questioned, his gaze flicking between him and Varian. He was quick to swipe the tears out of his eyes at the sudden appearance of his younger counterparts, glancing around the room with an immensely confused look on his face, trying to gather his bearings. “What‘s going on?”

“Everyone was kidnapped, taken — we have to go, now. Someone’s coming,” Bentley urged, pulling himself to his feet and holding out his hands to him. “I know it’s a lot, but we don’t have much time. We have to get out of here.”

With that, Valor pushed himself onto his fee with Bentley's help, albeit a bit shakily. He still seemed to be trembling from whatever he’d been seeing. He winced at the wire on his wings — blood was still leaking from them at a freakishly steady pace.

“Varian,” Valor greeted through clenched teeth, eyes coming to rest on Varian as the smaller boy pushed himself out of the floor again, swaying slightly, just like he had earlier. Valor reached for him on instinct, though he stopped short when he managed to find his own balance. “You look like shit.”

Varian blinked a couple times, then gestured forward to Valor. “So do you.”

“Thanks,” Bentley saw the very obvious pain splay across Valor’s features when he pushed against the wire with his wings, trying to break it, he guessed. The only thing that seemed to change was the amount of blood hitting the floor — which increased a lot.

“Stop,” Bentley suddenly said, stepping forward in alarm, cringing at all the blood. “Our powers are stifled in here, you won’t be strong enough to break it.”

Valor promptly stopped with a pained grunt; and an unreadable expression filtered across his face. “Shit. No, we have to get it off.”

“We can’t!” Bentley replied, making his way back over to the door, peering out into the hallway. It was bright and empty, and the man he’d knocked out was still laying a few doors up the hall, unmoved. “We have to go.”

“No, Bentley, you have to help me get this off,” Bentley turned back around, and Valor was turned the other way now, trying and failing to reach the wire around his wings with bloody hands. “Please. I can’t have my wings tied up. Please.”

“Ten seconds!”

“I’ll try and help you, Valor, but we have to get out of here first. Someone’s coming,” Bentley replied. “We have to leave right now. Like, literally, right now. Come on. You got it, Var?”

Varian nodded even though he looked like a literal zombie.

Bentley peered out the door again, and he felt Varian come and settle behind him, grabbing onto his sleeve, this time. As quickly as they’d gone in, Bentley went out and rounded back into the dark hallway, Valor and Varian both on his heels. They went to the end of the dark hall and made a right turn so they weren’t visible from the main one anymore.

Bentley, with an exhale, turned to Valor, and Varian released his arm. “Okay, let me try.”

He didn’t actually think he’d be able to break the wire, and the dark hallway was completely empty and devoid of anything he could use to do so. He just ended up pulling and jerking on it to no avail, wasting time. He did try, because he told Valor he would, but raw strength, especially given the state of his body, was definitely not going to be enough. “I can’t, Valor.”

“Fuck,” Valor hissed, raking his bloody hands through his dirty blonde hair in a stressed, anxious sort of way that Bentley had never seen from him before. “Bentley, I can’t have these on me, I can’t-”

“Five minutes and thirty-two seconds to the next roommate. You’re gonna have to do a little more traveling for this one,” Charlie’s voice came, and Bentley turned, glancing into the empty hall.

Who is it? Bentley thought.

“Asten,”

“Bentley,” Valor pleaded, and he turned back around to face him. His gray eyes were welled up with tears again, which caught Bentley off-guard, and he looked… afraid. “Please get them off.”

“His wings were tied during the most traumatizing parts of his life,” Charlie oh-so-helpfully added, which definitely made Bentley feel way better about not being able to get the wires off. “It’s what she was making him relive over and over.”

Bentley exhaled, frowning as a wave of pity streaked through his chest. (He knew he didn’t like Enzo, but he wasn’t aware he was responsible for the most traumatizing things Valor had ever been through.) “We’ll have to wait until we find something to cut the wire with,” He started, running a stressed hand through his hair, too, locking eyes with Valor. “As soon as we do, I’ll get it off, okay? I promise.”

Valor didn’t say anything for a moment, but he blinked. The tears fell down his face at the action, so he looked away and wiped them off with a quiet: “Okay...”

“Varian,” Came Charlie’s voice.

Varian. Bentley glanced at him where he'd settled in the hall to his right just in time to see him sway dangerously.

Following Bentley’s concerned look, Valor lunged forward just in time to reach out and catch Varian before he hit the floor, completely and utterly unconscious. As expected

“His blood sugar is in the forties again,” Charlie said, and Bentley promptly remembered that was the number of his blood sugar the day he threw up on the sidewalk outside of the history building.

Bentley exhaled heavily, watching Valor lower Varian to the floor, obviously unaccustomed to the weight due to the loss of his super-strength.

“Shit. Shit! How the hell are we supposed to do this?!” Bentley murmured, lacing his hands in his hair and fighting back a burn behind his eyes. He was so tired and so overwhelmed, why was it always him? Why did he have to do all of this? He felt the telltale little signs of another attack coming on, which he did not have time for, which only made him more anxious, and-

"Snap out of it, Bentley! Asten's life literally balances on your speed right now!" Charlie ordered. Bentley forced a few deep breaths into his lungs and glanced at Valor, who was covered in blood, and then at Varian, who was unconscious and so white he nearly blended in with the floor.

Should I just leave them?

“No!” Charlie was quick to reply. “Valor’s leaving a blood trail, they’ll find them no matter where they go. They have to go with you.”

“Just go, we’ll be fine,” Valor started, completely opposing Charlie's advice, pushing Varian’s hair back off of his forehead in a very Bruce-like way that made Bentley's heart clench so bad he kinda wanted to throw up. He wanted to go home so bad.

“No, they’ll find you,” Bentley replied, swallowing thickly and dragging a hand across his face. He took a moment to put his other hand on the wall, letting it take his weight for a second. “You’re leaving a blood trail. We can’t risk you getting taken again.”

Valor glanced back at him. “I can fight off a few scientists.”

Bentley sighed heavily, shaking his head. “No, Valor. Look — there’s a telepath, in my head, telling me where to go and what to do. She said you guys have to come with me. She can see the future.”

“That was a very tame explanation of me,”

Valor pinched his brows at him. “A telepath who can see the future? Was she a student here?”

“Four minutes and forty-nine seconds,”

“No, she… uh…” Bentley trailed off, shaking his head. “We don’t have time, Valor. I’ll tell you all about it later, but right now, we have four minutes and forty-five seconds to get to Asten before he dies.”

“What?!” Valor squeaked, turning back to Varian's limp form. “Jesus, okay.”

Bentley said nothing as Valor scooped Varian up in his arms, not as effortless as normal, but still easily enough that it didn’t worry him that much. He just turned around and blew out a long breath, trying to force away all the urges to cry and throw up and scream and have a full-blown broadway production worthy panic attack. He couldn't. He couldn't do that right now -- not when Asten...

“God, how is being this light even healthy?” Valor muttered from behind Bentley, dragging him back into the present.

“You’re going to go down this hall until you hit a dead end; it’ll turn right and force you back into the main hall. I- agh!”

Bentley blinked. Charlie?

For a few moments, all he got was silence. Terrifying, horrible, treacherous silence.

And then: “She’s trying to pinpoint your location, but I’m blocking her out, for now,” Her voice was strained, forced. “Anyway — You’ll be forced back to the main hall, and you’ll have to hurry down it, past two labs with windows until you see another hall that branches off to the right. I’ll see if I can keep the people inside from seeing you, but… no promises. I’m not exactly very powerful living in the Secret Keeper’s subconscious.”

Bentley sighed deeply. Okay.

“Come on,” He breathed, turning on his heel and continuing up the dark hall. He heard Valor’s socked footsteps behind him.

"Wait, Bentley," Valor's footsteps drew near to him. "Maybe you should take a second and breathe. You don't look too good."

Bentley shook his head. "There's no time. I'm okay."

Suddenly, red emergency lights started flashing on the walls, and a shrill alarm, sort of like one for a school fire, began to blare throughout the facility. It seemed to pierce his skull and hurt his brain, and he winced.

“That’s for you,” Charlie murmured. "The whole place is going to be looking."

Bentley shook his head. “Great.”

The three of them hurried down the dark hall, turning right once it dead ended and pausing at the entrance to the main hall.

“Don’t go yet! There’s people passing,”

Bentley held up his hand as a signal to tell Valor to stay still. He heard footsteps approaching, and after a few seconds, about ten men in full white-armor jogged by, with guns. They looked just like the guys from the old facility.

Luckily, they were in a rush, and Bentley and his friends shrouded in darkness, so they didn’t see them.

“Go now!”

As soon as the guys were far enough away not to hear, Bentley jogged out into the main hall, closely followed by Valor. He followed Charlie's orders, passing two labs with freakishly large windows and freakishly large amounts of people inside, and taking a right at the next hall. It was dark, but not as dark as the others.

“Fourth door on the left is Asten. Sixth on the right is Koa. Get them fast. The Secret Keeper knows its you, so she's sending people to their rooms as we speak," Charlie ordered.

Bentley hurried to the fourth door on the left, tapping the keycard on the panel almost frantically. He was pretty sure Valor said something, but he didn't really hear it.

The door to Asten's room hissed open, and smoke came out of it.

No, not smoke. Vapor?

Bentley glanced back at Valor in alarm, who simply looked back at him with Varian clutched tight in his arms.

And then it hit him.

A wall of absolutely freezing cold air seemed to slam into Bentley from the now-open doorway, immediately chilling him to the bone. It was so cold and dry that even without wind, it was a biting cold, threatening to numb his fingertips almost instantly.

"Don't come in. Keep Varian out here," Bentley ordered, then he stepped into the freezing cold, solid white room.

He blindly tapped the keycard against the panel that released the shackles, and the sound of them opening and clacking against the floor met his ears.

Asten was laying in a ball in the center of the room in a white jumpsuit like everybody else, perhaps the smallest Bentley had ever seen him. He was shivering so violently Bentley could see it from the door, and his tan skin was pasty and had an... almost blueish hue.

Bentley hurried forward, immediately shedding his hoodie in favor of a t-shirt that froze him to the bone. "Asten."

The closer he got, he realized Asten's lips were a frightening shade of blue, his eyes closed as though he were sleeping. His eyelids fluttered when he heard his name.

"Hey, Asten," Bentley started, crouching down and rubbing the shoulder that was facing him. Asten was cold, legitimately cold to the touch.

His green eyes flicked open, and he looked just about as coherent as Varian had. Could hypothermia do that? A wave of something that could only be described as all-encompassing guilt washed over Bentley, and he had to force it away in order to keep himself in his right mind.

"Here, sit up," Bentley ordered, halfway ushering Asten to sit upright, which was a challenge. It was almost like Asten's muscles and jointes were literally frozen. So much so that Bentley did most of the work of sitting him up and forcing his own hoodie over Asten's head.

"B?" Asten questioned, his teeth literally chattering behind his blue lips as he fumbled to force his arms into the sleeves. "I'm so cold."

"I know," Bentley replied, rising back onto his feet, holding his arms down to him. "Come on, I've got you. You were kidnapped -- we're escaping now."

Asten didn't seem to need any more explanation -- or maybe he didn't hear it. It didn't matter. He reached for Bentley's arms and as such, Bentley hauled him off the floor, taking a step back to brace himself when nearly all of Asten's weight was on him for a few seconds.

"Let's get out of here -- its too cold," Bentley tried, holding tight to Asten's arms and leading him out of the white room and into the dimmer (and warmer) hallway. His motor skills were at a solid, like, zero, his entire body and demeanor seemingly changed by the cold. Was he more susceptible because of his powers, or was it really just that freezing?

"Holy shit, he looks like hell," Was Valor's enlightening commentary when they made it back to the hallway. "His lips are blue!"

With his frozen solid motor skills, Asten tripped over his own feet right when they made it into the hall and Bentley had to use every ounce of strength inside of him to keep him from straight-up face-planting. "Its okay, I've gotcha."

"It's so freaking cold in here, B," He whined. Bentley got him standing again, rubbing at his arms in a poor attempt at summoning warmth.

"I know -- but it'll warm up in a minute," Bentley replied. Asten's eyes suddenly widened when he seemed to see Valor and Varian for the first time, and he inhaled sharply. "Oh shit. What's happening?"

Bentley sighed. "I told you -- we've been kidnapped, but now we're breaking out. We just have to get to Koa, Bellamy, and Rockie."

"Oh my God I can't even hear you because I'm so cold," Asten suddenly hissed, pulling the hood of Bentley's hoodie over his head. "Shit. And I thought Gotham winter was bad."

Bentley exhaled, rubbing his arms for a few more seconds before he stopped, glancing across the hall and counting to the sixth door. "Koa should be right over here. I'll-"

He made a noise of surprise when someone suddenly crashed into him, and the freezing, frost-bitten temperature of their body immediately told him who it was.

Bentley had to physically fight with himself to keep from passing out in the embrace. "Asten, we don't-"

"Here," Valor started, gently lying Varian in the hallway floor. He pushed his hair back in that Bruce way before he stood and swiped the keycard out of Bentley's hand, heading for the cell that Koa was in.

Bentley watched him tap the keycard and open the door, rubbing Asten's back vigorously in an attempt to create warmth. "It's okay."

Asten said nothing, though he seemed to sink into him the longer they stood there, reveling in the body heat. He was shivering like nobody's business. "Shit, Bentley, I'm so cold it feels like I'm gonna die. I don't wanna be here again."

Here as in a lab?

Bentley shook his head lightly. "It's okay," Seemed to be the only thing he could manage to repeat at the moment.

Not ten seconds later, Valor came back out of the room with a very terrified looking Koa clinging to one of his arms. He was in the same jumpsuit they all were, but he had a monstrous looking metal muzzle over his mouth and nose that strapped around his head in several different ways, synched so tight it looked like it was digging into his skin. He was actively crying -- sobbing, really, holding onto Valor for what seemed like dear life. And Valor looked like the absolute epitome of pissed.

He was quick to spit: "It shocks him when he makes a sound, like a damn bark collar on a dog!"

His statement was followed almost immediately by a crack! from the muzzle Koa had on his face, and Bentley cringed when he jumped so hard he hit the doorframe, and Valor suddenly grabbed him by the arms to keep him upright should he fall. "It even does it when he cries!"

"Bentley, you need to move -- sixteen seconds until someone reaches you," Charlie's voice came. "You need to go to the end of this hall and turn left. There's an elevator that'll take you down to Rockie."

Bentley nodded slightly to himself.

"We need to move," He said. Once Koa was stable, Valor went about picking Varian back up, and Bentley barely managed to weasel his hands between himself and Asten to pry him off. "We have to move, okay?"

Asten literally whined at the loss of warmth, but Bentley didn't let himself dwell on it, because he was doing good not to think about all the things that sort of made him wish he were dead. Like the fact that he sort of felt like he was going to die. Instead, he just grabbed onto Asten's sleeve and began to tug him down the hall, past more doors, away from the bright main one. They strode past Koa, who Bentley patted on the shoulder as they went by -- Koa grabbed onto his t-shirt and was pulled along with them.

Bentley took a left turn at the end of the hall, and a few yards ahead of them sat a pair of solid white elevator doors with flickering buttons. "That's where Rockie is. Come on."

The five of them went about stuffing themselves in one of the two elevators. There were no floor buttons on the inside -- Bentley had to activate it with the keycard, and it immediately closed and started going down.

And down.

And down.

He could've swore they were on the elevator for, like five whole minutes before it dinged, and the doors slid open, revealing a solid white hall that was bright and completely devoid of life.

"There's no one on this floor right now. You're going to the fifteenth door on the left side," Charlie ordered. "Take everybody with you -- I have recruited help coming your way."

Okay... Bentley thought, even though the Secret Keeper's not so creepy voice saying she had recruited help coming his way wasn't relaxing in the slightest.

He sent a glance back to everybody before he started down the hall. Varian was still very unconscious, laying completely pale and limp in Valor's arms. Valor was soaked in blood and his wings were still bleeding, leaving an alarming amount of crimson in the elevator alone. Koa looked nothing short of traumatized. He was still crying, but silently, only with his eyes, and he was shaking, flexing and balling up his hands over and over again. Asten was shaking worse, though. His lips were still blue and he looked as though he could fall over at any given moment.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Even with Charlie's so called help, he wasn't sure he could make it out of there. Not when they were all practically half dead, running on adrenaline and fumes and fear.

Nonetheless, Bentley pressed on, moving forward, and he heard three pairs of footsteps behind him that told him the others were doing the same. When he finally counted to the fifteenth door, he tapped the keycard on the panel immediately.

But not so fast that he missed the plaque on the door.

Subject A286

Rockie Winchester

He creased his brow as the words disappeared, the door sliding into the wall like all the others did. He would be lying if he said he wasn't afraid to see what these psychotic people had done to Rockie. He wasn't sure he could stand seeing Rockie go through anything else that year, anyways.

When the door slid open, Bentley was ready for anything. Blood, frostbite, puke, torture devices, mind control, literally anything. He even had a flash of a thought about Rockie being dead behind the door, because that'd be just his luck!

Of all the things he'd expected, prepared himself for...

Rockie being absolutely, one-hundred percent fine wasn't one of them.

He was just standing in the middle of the room. He wasn't even chained up, and he wasn't in a jumpsuit, either, simply dawning the same sweatshirt and sweatpants and his big gloves that he'd been wearing when Bentley saw him splayed out on the couch. He didn't have bruises or scars or cuts on his face, and he didn't look mortified. He looked... fine. Completely fine.

He turned on a dime when the door opened, and his eyes flicked between all of them, his expression varying as he glanced between everyones appearances. "Bentley..."

"C'mon, we have to go." Bentley muttered.

"Don't worry! Your help is here!" Charlie chided in his head.

Suddenly, with a warp of light and a whoosh that sounded like something underwater, someone appeared right next to him.

Voices exploded into an uproar around him, but Bentley didn't really hear what they said -- he recognized that black hair, and those grayish-brown eyes. Although, now, he wasn't in a hospital gown, and he was much taller than Bentley; older.

"Titus?" Came Asten's bewildered voice.

Titus Lancaster, the literal only reason Bentley survived getting kidnapped last time, was standing right in front of him. But he was much older, and much healthier, and much taller. And he didn't look so traumatized anymore. Scared. Now he looked... content, almost.

"You know this guy?!" Valor questioned.

Before either Bentley or Asten could answer, the elevator dinged open, and gunshots pierced the air, probably ten in a solid five-second window.

Everyone seemed to shove their way into Rockie's room in a panic, and Titus grabbed onto Bentley's arm. "Everybody hold on!"

"Wait!" Bentley exclaimed, an all new wave of violent panic surging inside of him. He looked around frantically "What about Bellamy?!"

No one spoke. Not even Charlie.

And then: "I told him to hide. When the people showed up," Rockie piped up, coming over to them from the center of the room. "When we were being pulled out, I didn't see him. He's probably still in the dorm."

The gunshots raged on with a terrifying vengeance, clinking and bouncing off of the white metal of the halls, and Titus squeezed Bentley's arm. "Everybody hold onto each other, make sure you're touching someone who's touching me. This is going to feel really weird and you might puke. Ready?"

Everybody seemed to grab onto each other despite the warning, and not two seconds later, there was a whoosh.

Bentley hadn't missed the feeling of Titus teleporting him; like he was falling from a building, getting whipped around like a piece of paper in a hurricane. He couldn't see anything except vague flashes of color every few seconds. And then wham!

He slammed flat on his back on something carpeted, so hard it knocked the breath out of him and then some. There was a myriad of thumps that echoed from around him, too, and various sounds of pain.

Bentley's vision swam, and his hearing was fading in and out of muffled, and he was so, so tired. He thought he might've seen a trademark stereotypical Redwood Academy light fixture, but he couldn't really make out if that's what it was or not.

"Bentley, don't pass out now. You're almost homefree," Charlie's voice came in his head. "Stay awake!"