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spikey-fudger · 2 years

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So I edited photos of young Queen Elizabeth II to give her longer hairstyles and

P.S. I had to make her blonde on the third one because I literally can't see the changes to the hair after the initial edits.

#The Queen #Elizabeth II #British Royal Family #BRF #Duke of Lancaster #She's so beautiful with the long hair🥺#I stayed up most of the night watching ads after ads on FaceApp and Remini #Worth it tho #I just realized that I forgot about the earrings #Please ignore the missing/fading away earrings lmao

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everythingroyalty · 8 months

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ELIZABETH II (21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith 🕊️

#AND DUKE OF LANCASTER #royaltyedit #historyedit #queen elizabeth ii #elizabeth ii #british royal family #**#gif: uk

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maccreadysbaby · 1 month

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A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: death and gore

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

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

here’s bentley and his friends going through it™︎

part thirty-one

❝ HOMEBOUND ❞

MONDAY — AUGUST 17 — 10:42PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can help with that,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She smiled. “Observe.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Screaming.

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

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

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

…Until it wasn’t.

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

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

There was a flash of yellow lightning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He could barely breathe.

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

But the room was empty.

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

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

They were all going to die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good eye, red,”

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

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

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

The door slid open.

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

Asten cleared his throat. “Titus?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Davis might’ve been dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was he going to say?

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

With a puff of air, he knocked.

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

And then it did.

The door to Wayne Manor swung open.

“Bentley?”

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

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

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

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bstag · 2 months

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What do you feel about the house of york

I feel like it's a medieval dynasty that one a war. That's about it.

I also think that Richard Duke of York was nothing more than a jealous cousin that saw the perfect opportunity to climb the ladder and took it, justly paying the price. Edward IV's anger over his and his brother's death is understandable and so were his actions. Too bad that he didn't saw that the Duke of York's ruthless ambitions had trickled down to his sons Richard and George before they tried it with him. I think the Woodvilles were overtly greedy and took too much of the hand that fed them making the nobility hate them, and they also paid for it. I mean, arranging prestige marriages for every single Woodville? I get it, one of them was the Queen, but come on now, they clearly overplayed.

On the whole, I find this representation of the Yorks as this typical Good HeirsTM that took their rightful place on the throne and stepped up through harsh times that persists so much to this day lame and reductive. The truth of the matter is, they were never more just and GoodTM than the Lancasters. The Lancasters successfully organized a coup and sat the throne, the Yorks did the same, demonizing Henry VI and Queen Margaret of Anjou through propaganda as a freak and an overly ambitious femme fatale respectively, while casting their teenage son as a cruel bastard. All for defending fiercely what was by right theirs (we have Shakespeare to blame for that as well).

#wars of the roses #house york #house lancaster #edward iv #richard duke of york #george plantagenet #richard iii #Henry vi #margaret of anjou #edward of westminster #medieval warfare #medieval england #late middle ages

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eve-to-adam · 2 months

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How to make Richard of York angry, Season 7, Episode 12

Cecily Neville: What do you do when York sends you annoying letters? Isabel Plantagenet: I'll give him a tailored answer. Cecily Neville: Do you write even more annoying letters? Isabel Plantagenet: No. I send him lines from the Canterbury Tales, an answer he won't understand a word of. This makes him lose his mind.

#the wars of the roses #15th century #medieval england #medieval #historical #historical memes #cecily neville #richard duke of york #humphrey duke of gloucester #john duke of bedford #henry vi #house of york #house of lancaster #proud cis

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harryofderby · 15 days

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Wish we lived in a world where Thomas, Duke of Clarence was a bit more sensible and didn't end up getting himself killed in Bauge.

#thomas duke of clarence #house of lancaster #hundred years war

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destinyh3art · 11 months

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Watch "Richard III || Dynasty" on YouTube

youtube

So currently i am on this Aneurin Barnard obsession phase and it has been going on for quite a while. Like i am not able to move on from his performance as king Richard in the series. Hated the incest with the niece part and am very glad to know it most likely didn’t happen in real life. Btw, this edit just slaps.

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thepastisalreadywritten · 3 months

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5 February 2024

The King is being treated for cancer, Buckingham Palace has announced.

It has not said what type of cancer the 75-year-old has but confirmed that it was not prostate cancer. The King was recently treated for prostate enlargement.

King Charles III was crowned at Westminster Abbey in May 2023 alongside his wife, Queen Camilla.

How will the King's duties change while he is treated for cancer?

Buckingham Palace said:

"Regrettably, a number of the King's forthcoming public engagements will have to be rearranged or postponed.

His Majesty would like to apologise to all those who may be disappointed or inconvenienced as a consequence."

It said that he was receiving expert care and "looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible."

While the King is recovering, the Queen is expected to continue attending engagements.

"Her Majesty will continue with a full programme of public duties," Buckingham Palace said.

Despite stepping back from public events, the King will continue with paperwork and private meetings as head of state.

What does the King do?

The King is the UK head of state, but his powers are largely symbolic and ceremonial, and he remains politically neutral.

He receives daily dispatches from the government in a red leather box, including briefings ahead of important meetings, or documents needing his signature.

The prime minister normally meets the King on a Wednesday at Buckingham Palace.

These meetings are completely private, and no official records are kept of what is said.

The King also has a number of official parliamentary roles:

Appointing a government — the leader of the party that wins a general election is usually called to Buckingham Palace, where they are invited to form a government. The King also formally dissolves Parliament before a general election

State Opening and the King's Speech — the King begins the parliamentary year with the State Opening ceremony, where he sets out the government's plans in a speech delivered from the throne in the House of Lords

Royal Assent — when a piece of legislation is passed through Parliament, it must be formally approved by the King in order to become law. The last time Royal Assent was refused was in 1708

In addition, the monarch leads the annual Remembrance event in November at the Cenotaph in London.

The King also hosts visiting heads of state, and regularly meets foreign ambassadors and high commissioners.

For his first state visit, Charles visited Germany, where he became the first British monarch to address the country's parliament, speaking in English and German.

The King then travelled to France for a three-day state visit in September and to Kenya for a four-day state visit in October, where he acknowledged the "abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans during their independence struggle."

He also delivered the opening address at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in December, where he said: "The Earth does not belong to us."

Charles is also head of the Commonwealth, an association of 56 independent countries spanning 2.5 billion people.

He is head of state for 14 of these, known as the Commonwealth realms, as well as the Crown dependencies - the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

The Queen supports the King in carrying out his work and undertakes her own public engagements on behalf of the 90 charities she supports.

Where does the Royal Family get its money?

The Royal Family receives an annual payment from the taxpayer, known as the Sovereign Grant, which is used to pay for official expenses, such as the upkeep of properties and staff costs.

The amount is based on a proportion of the profits of the Crown Estate, a property business owned by the monarch but run independently.

It had assets worth £16.5bn in 2022.

The Sovereign Grant was worth £86.3m in 2022-2023, the same as in 2021-2022.

But total spending for the year was £107.5m, a 5% increase on the £102.4m spent the previous year, with more than £20m drawn from financial reserves to cover the shortfall.

The King also receives money from a private estate called the Duchy of Lancaster, which is passed down from monarch to monarch.

It covers more than 18,000 hectares of land, including property in central London.

Worth £654m, it generates about £20m a year in profits.

The Duke of Cornwall (currently William, Prince of Wales) benefits from the Duchy of Cornwall, which mainly owns land in the south-west of England.

Worth £1bn, it generated a net surplus of £24m in 2022-23.

The King and Prince William receive the profits from the duchies personally, and can spend the money as they wish.

Both voluntarily pay income tax on the proceeds.

In addition, some other Royal Family members have private art, jewellery and stamp collections, which they can sell or use to generate income as they wish.

NOTE: Edited

#King Charles III #His Majesty The King #Prince William #British Royal Family #Queen Camilla #Buckingham Palace #red leather box #Commonwealth realms #Sovereign Grant #Crown Estate #Duchy of Lancaster #Duke of Cornwall

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une-sanz-pluis · 2 months

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It was Gaunt who arranged Henry's marriage. The object of his attentions was Mary, the co-heiress to Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, who had died at the age of thirty in January 1373, leaving no sons, two underage daughters, and a very substantial inheritance. The elder daughter, Eleanor (born in 1366), was married to Gaunt's brother, Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, probably in 1374. What now happened to Mary (born in 1369–70) was naturally a matter of considerable interest to Buckingham. As long as she remained single, the entire Bohun inheritance would fall to him; were she to marry, he would be obliged to share it with her husband. Inconveniently, other duties now deflected his attention. On 3 May 1380, he indented with the king and council to lead an expedition to Brittany with a retinue of 5,000 men. During the following two months he did what he could to ensure that the Bohun patrimony did not slip from his grasp during his absence: on 8 May he obtained a royal grant of the custody of Mary's share of the inheritance during her minority; on 22 June Eleanor came of age and Thomas performed his fealty to the king for his wife's share of the lands. Shortly before leaving he even took the precaution of bringing Mary to stay with her sister at Pleshey castle (Essex), where he arranged for her to be instructed by nuns with the intention that she should join the order of St Clare. According to Froissart, ‘the young lady seemed to incline to their doctrine, and thought not of marriage’. Hopeful of having ensured the integrity of his inheritance, Buckingham shipped his troops to Calais and, on 24 July 1380, set out with his army on a campaign from which he would not return for nine months. No sooner had he done so than Gaunt made his move. Three days after his brother's crossing, he secured a royal grant of Mary's marriage, ‘for marrying her to his son Henry’, and shortly after this induced her mother, Joan countess of Hereford, to spirit her away from Pleshey and take her to Arundel, where the young couple were rapidly betrothed. They were married on 5 February 1381 in a service held at Countess Joan's manor of Rochford (Essex). The connivance of the king and council, who would have been aware of the blow this inflicted on Buckingham, is a measure of the financial and political leverage Gaunt exercised in Richard II's minority government. Gaunt attended and presented Mary with a ruby, as well as paying for the festivities; Henry's sisters, Philippa and Elizabeth, each gave their new sister-in-law a goblet and ewer. The king and Edmund earl of Cambridge (Gaunt's younger, and Buckingham's older, brother) may also have been there, for ten royal minstrels and four of Cambridge's minstrels received gratuities from Gaunt for enlivening the proceedings. There was nothing hasty or clandestine about the wedding.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)

#mary de bohun #henry iv #joan de bohun countess of hereford #john of gaunt #elizabeth of lancaster countess of huntingdon #philippa of lancaster queen of portugal #thomas of woodstock duke of gloucester #richard ii #historian: chris given-wilson #rebecca holdorph argues for an earlier wedding date iirc #also 'induced' joan to 'spirit' mary away? i don't think you could induce joan to anything she didn't want to #(ask john holland how he knows)#froissart's account of the wedding is problematic (refer to previous post) it presents the marriage as #a struggle for custody of mary between gaunt and woodstock - mary - the stolen bride - is effectively property in the narrative #(and the perspective of other women are ellided beyond the 'aunt' who abducted her who is presented as solely wanting to please gaunt)#(and the perspective of the other child/minor in the story - 13 yr old henry)#it's possible that mary did want to be a nun but it's also possible that froissart is fictionalising her perspective

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wonder-worker · 5 months

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"The late medieval nobility were not always gleefully ganging up on the king. On the contrary, a lord with pretensions of dominance would find his severest critics among his fellow nobles, who seem on the whole to have considered an inept king infinitely preferable to a colleague wielding excessive power. The isolation of Richard of York in the 1450s can be paralleled in the fourteenth century by Thomas of Lancaster, whose assumption of dominance in opposition to Edward II was much disliked, in spite of the king's own unpopularity."

-Rosemary Horrox, "Personalities and Politics", The Wars of the Roses (Problems in Focus), edited by A.J Pollard

#this chapter also points out how Warwick and Clarence found almost no noble backing outside their own immediate circle when they #imprisoned Edward IV - and were so demonstably unable to represent royal authority that they were forced to free him #I wanted to add that here originally but since the situation wasn't exactly the same as the two mentioned above I left it out #richard duke of york #henry vi #edward ii #thomas of lancaster #queue

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themidnightcircusshow · 10 months

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On one hand, John probably would have been a great king and could have potentially mitigated a lot of factors that lead to the war of the roses

On the other hand, John had no legitimate children, and no one, no one wanted King Humphrey I

#House of Lancaster #John Duke of Bedford #Humphrey Duke of Gloucester #John and Humphrey have a deathbed reconciliation... desperately trying to find literally anyone else who could take the throne

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mary-tudor · 1 year

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The Mortimer inheritance running in a Tudor prince: here’s how historian Sean Cunningham brings to public debate an often overlooked aspect of Prince Arthur’s Yorkist connection to his Mortimer’s ancestors and how he, an unofficial Earl of March, was expected to incorporate this to his kingship.

“Arthur's transition into the leader of Marcher society did involve a clever reinterpretation of regional history that put the new prince at the center of an old story.

The area that became the most important to Prince Arthur was the region in the Welsh Marches linking Worcester, Bewdley, Ludlow, Weobley and Leominster. Along with Shrewsbury to the north, Wigmore to the west and Hereford to the south, this was the centre of power for the Prince of Wales, and the area that his Council in the Marches dominated as representative of the more distant Westminster government.

In setting up Arthur's seat of power here, Henry VII was consciously merging several strands of political influence.

Those people that surrounded and served Arthur in the late 1490 knew that this region had been the heart of the lordship of the earldom of March. The last living earl had been the young Edward V before his father died and he disappeared.

Once Edward was believed to be dead, Arthur's mother, Queen Elizabeth, became the last heir of the Yorkist kings and therefore the most prominent living descendant of the Mortimers as earls of March.

Arthur was being linked to that earldom and the Mortimer family as a direct expression of his mother's lineage and what it represented. The earldom had for many years been a critical part of the House of York's power.

Mortimer blood was also a factor in building a Yorkist claim to the throne. Elizabeth's grandfather Richard, 3rd Duke of York had been a product of the marriage of Anne Mortimer and Richard, Earl of Cambridge, one of Edward III's grandsons. Anne was the sister of the last Mortimer Earl of March - Edmund Mortimer, who had died in 1425.

Richard, Duke of York had inherited the Mortimer estates and the dormant Mortimer claim to the crown through dual descent from Edward III. It was Edward IV that brought this fusion of rights and entitlements together when he became king in March 1461.

For Prince Arthur to be seriously considered the fulfillment of the prophecy of King Arthur's deed to lead Britons in a new and glorious age, the kings subject were expected to know the significance of the story. They were probably helped out in their recollections by the representation of parts of King Arthur's story in the pageantry that accomparied many ceremonial events in which the royal family was involved.

When Prince Arthur visited Coventry in 1497 he was greeted by a pageant that featured King Arthur and the other eight of the Nine Worthies, in which the legendary King of Britain made a speech of welcome. This entertainment carried an important and repeated message about the legitimacy of the place of Henry VIl's family in the long line of England's rulers.

It is possible, however, that there was a more specific justification for Henry VI's use of the legends of early Britain, namely Prince Arthur's inheritance of Mortimer power and his presence in the borderlands of England and Wales.

The Mortimer family had shown considerable interest in the Arthurian stories as part of their genealogy. The legendary figures Cadwaladr, Brutus and Arthur were viewed as ancestors and not mythological predecessors. When the Mortimers married into the family line of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth in 1228 they absorbed the descent of the princes of Wales growing from Cadwaladr.

A genealogical roll of the Mortimer family provides some valuable evidence of how Arthurian tradition was heavily promoted by family members as they developed their relationship with King Edward I in the 1270 and during the English war with Prince Llewelyn ap Gruffydd before 1282.

Later Plantagenet kings allowed the Mortimers to build up vice-regal power along the border from their castles and estates at Wigmore, Ludlow, Cleobury and Chirk. Even after the treason and execution of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March in 1330, the family were able to recover their influence in the Marcher lands.

(…) Even after Edward I’s conquest of Wales and Henry IV's defeat of Owar Glyadir a century later, the annexation of Wales by England was never seriously contemplated. The English Crown's authority was exercised by deputies from within the regional communities that knew the people, landscape and history of the March. They were the king's intermediaries and were agents whose relationship with the Westminster government and court was essential to the achievement of aspirations of national security and stable rule.

Henry VII's interest in ancient British stories was a prop to the extension of his royal authority generally, and that of the Marcher lords in particular. It fitted with his grand scheme to revive an older form of lordship for his son in order to create a foundation of loyalty for Arthur's future kingship. King Henry's prominent use of the red dragon standard associated with Cadwaladr - still one of the most identifiable of Tudor images -(…).

In November 1493, Arthur was formally granted the lands and rights of the earldom of March during the king's pleasure. He was not expressly given the title, which had already been in Crown hands for thirty-two years, but this was an absorption of Marcher power into the new regional force that Arthur was to embody.

Once he held the power and estates of the earldom of March, Arthur acquired the real and the mythical associations of the earldom into his personal lordship. His arrival as a new border figurehead offered Arthur the potential to build a very strong and stable structure of lordship in the communities of the Marcher region.

Since it distilled his personal power into a more potent form, immediate acceptance of Arthur's inheritance of the March was as important as a boost to Arthur's royal presence as was his national status as Prince of Wales after 1489 or earlier title of Duke of Cornwall.

As he grew into his role, Arthur would develop this network and nurture the service of families connected with the earldom of March and the Yorkist Prince of Wales without the need to labour his relationship to the legendary power of King Arthur.

At the end of 1485, the threat posed by opponents biding their time in Richard IIl's northern power base was the most immediately pressing problem for Henry VII. Unfortunately, he could not simultaneously relax his efforts to promote his kingship and make the presence of the regime felt elsewhere.

In the areas where encouragement was offered by the loyalties of those who had already declared their allegiance to the new regime, the king moved swiftly to establish his allies. Henry VII could not afford to be seen to be undermining, manipulating or threatening the old Yorkist and Mortimer networks.”

Cunningham, S. “Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Who Never Was.”