He'd managed to slip in unnoticed.[i]
"Take this sinking boat"[ii]
Onstage there was music. An actor strummed gently on a guitar. An actress sang beside him, softly but somehow filling the lobby of the ruined bank-turned-theater. Odd. His informant said the play began at 2:00. Sedition could hardly be expected to keep time, he supposed.
"And point it home"
He marveled at the ability of youth and beauty to draw the eye. It was a rare day indeed when the masked warlord of Gotham could stand invisible in a crowd. Even if he was lurking in the shadows at the back.
"We've still got time."
He had to admit his eyes were drawn as well. The girl reminded him of someone.
"Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice. You've made it now."
Talia. She looked like a young Talia. Not exactly, her hair was too light brown, her face not quite right. It was her eyes, he decided. They looked like Talia's just as she made the climb. Hope. Fear. Love. But one sees in ingénues what one wants.
"Falling slowly. Sing your melody."
The boy shook his gold bangs from his eyes and bent back over the guitar, slowly shifting his weight back and heading for the left most of the three curtains that marked the entrances and exits. Still singing, the girl followed suit with the right most curtain.
"I'll sing along"
The song ended and the pair disappeared off-stage. The crowd applauded, the sound echoing off the marble and multiplying ten-fold. He clapped as well, albeit a little later than all the others. This was a new experience for him. He was not accustomed to plays and had not expected to see one in his final five months of life. Then again, he had not expected The Arts to be Gotham's last hold-out of resistance. There were worse ways to spend two hours.
"Boatswain!"
An actor ran through the center curtain like a bat out of Hell. More new experiences. He hadn't been startled in some time.
"Here master! What Cheer?"
They were swarming out now, men and women in rag-tag costumes, running around, yelling, and pulling at ropes hanging from pillars and attached to chairs. They wove between the audience members that surrounded them as they yelled their lines and elicited help in "steering" their "ship."
"What care these roarers for the name of King?"
He liked that line. It was getting difficult to keep them all straight. He clumped the sailors in one group in his mind. There were only three of them. The African American youth with the crown appeared to be the aforementioned King. The blond musician, his hands now empty of their instrument, was his son and a prince. There were three others who he labeled just that—"other nobility"—and a young woman dressed as an old man. Not Talia. A different one.
"All lost, to prayers, to prayers, all lost."
Why did the sailors have all the best lines? And where was that magician his spy had gone on about? Perhaps he had the wrong play. That was a silly thought. How many plays could there be in Gotham? Not old Gotham. His Gotham.
"Let's all sink with the King!"
"Let's take leave of him!"
The Other Nobility ran for the exits. The old-young man-woman was left alone in stillness and quiet. It was jarring. Uncomfortable. To have pandemonium and then nothing. It was a relief when he—the warlord decided to suspend his disbelief and accept the gender the actress projected—finally spoke.
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea, for an acre of barren ground: long heath, brown firs, anything. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death."
He staggered for a side exit, cane in hand, leaving true stillness behind him. The ropes were scattered across the stage. Whatever ship the actors had created it was most definitely wrecked.
The moment only lasted a breath before the curtains stirred once again. The center curtain parted to reveal—. His heart skipped a beat. That couldn't be right. What was he seeing?
Bane stared at himself on stage.
[i] The characters mentioned in this story belong to Christopher Nolan and . No profit is made off their use herein.
[ii] Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, "Falling Slowly" from the album Music from the Motion Picture Oncereleased 2007.
All quotes from The Tempest are taken from First Folio Facsimiles on Internet Shakespeare Editions ( . ). The author has modernized the spelling, grammar, and formatting.