A Rather Lovely Thing
He was called Bane. That was really all I knew about him. I knew he was dangerous; more dangerous than anyone the world had ever seen. He was beyond the spirit of a dictator, beyond any thought of war—no weapon compared to his strength-no man compared to his intellect—Bane was a machine like no other.
His theme was set to drums, his strut was intimidating and his eyes did more to the sanity of his victims than the pain his hands could ever inflict upon them. And so he did upon me.
Pain is always something bearable, something that can be tolerated for extended periods of time. But misery—misery and depression is what always gets to the best of us. And loneliness is what cripples us, our own personal reckoning, as Bane would have put it. He always put things in a revolutionary context. No matter how much he stood with evolution, the natural order of things, he certainly gave promise to the destruction brought upon by revolution. That's what gave him the power to take control of Gotham City, the dark, demented power of a man that was not insane, but of a man who's heart was lonely and who's mind neglected all emotion save for satisfaction and disdain. And what was I but a mere piece in his unconscious mind, a gnawing plague begging for a touch, a whisper, or a damn glance. A part of his conscious mind that he knew and saw and feared, but why Bane feared me I do not know. I did fear him though—my, did I fear him—and he knew it, used it to his advantage to over come me and the bond that grew between us. Time, though, severed that bond and I never wanted to see that man ever again.
Although we never touched, never kissed, never held each other, there was something ultimately there that neither of us was particularly fond of but grew comfortable with. But comfort is a strange and silly thing when one compares it to that man, a man incapable of most human emotion. And I learned to reflect that characteristic and hide myself behind him when my real emotions decided to appear. We were a fine pair for a very short period of time before I ran away from him. That was the worst mistake I honestly could have ever made, if only for my own loneliness, I burned him and that hurt me more that I had imagined. But I always had to run, it was in my nature.