Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I am planning on making this story into quite a long one using influences from the comic books as well as the film. I hope you enjoy the narrative and get as much pleasure reading it as I do writing it. Reviews and comments would be much appreciated. Thank you, R.
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor do I intend to infringe the Batman franchise or its characters. I merely wish to expand upon the brilliance that has been created in order to fulfil my longing for more.
There is power in every great leader; a power that can be sensed whether visible or not but with power comes a great paradox. Weakness lies at the heart of all of us and we try hard to disguise it but great leaders know how to hide it best. It is in making our weaknesses an illusion of strength that we may lead and lead well. It was the mask of Bane that people feared the most; pipes curling round like intertwining teeth, his eyes so penetrating as you were forced to look at his only human feature. But the mask, so terrifying, was his one weakness. It was a weakness that Bane and everyone who knew him feared and he knew that one day, should he lose that fear; his reign of chaos would fall from the high place of power he found himself in and dissolve with him.
ᴃ
When people refer to the "gutter" when talking of a foul place Gotham is the image it provokes. The street lamps lighted a red running stream of filth from the man bleeding behind a dumpster, cats mewled as hunger consumed their bloated bellies, children trudged shoeless throwing punches for fun. The hospital, which was once a beacon for the victims of its horrid city lay quiet since the Joker blew it all up eight years prior. It had been rebuilt and painted fluorescent white, "a triumph" the mayor had said "a symbol of new hope". Indeed the city had seen a great improvement since Harvey Dent's heroic demise but when evil is driven from its conspicuous dwellings it finds darker places to carry out its mischief. Like so many others, the Batman had resolved to sweep the lasting problems in Gotham under its blood stained carpet and ignore all of those young boys going missing in the sewers.
I was a neuroscientist in London researching chronic pain in arthritis. My team and I had got to the point where we were curing arthritis in rats and then primates using stem cells so we were sent to Gotham's neuroscience laboratory to begin testing on human subjects. Dr Potts, our specialist said there would be many who would be willing to accept small amounts for our clinical trials.
"I expect a lot from you," Potts said to me. "We need someone who will take risks; a person who is brave. And a young girl like you is expected to make mistakes should it go wrong where as I have my reputation!"
The medical world would always be full Potts's and it should not have driven me to swap my suburban born lifestyle for surviving in a wild city. However, with my bottom lip pouting against him I went determinedly to take his backhanded compliment and show him I was the best he had. Despite having a team of four others with me I was the one who had a real eye for pain that the rest of those private school toffs had no idea of. I was four when I saw my mother's eyes bulge quickly outward then glaze over. Her furrowed brow turning soft as the metal railing we had crashed into impaled her abdomen. I had wondered, as I lay in wait for the fireman to cut me out of the cage of metal that had saved me, if she was hurting in that moment. Had she survived would she still be in pain? To my colleagues, our job was a fascination but to me it was taking away pain I see in people's eyes that they ignore. I will start small, I thought to myself. So that is how I came to live in Gotham amongst the world's most deviant in a city full of weeds whose roots the authorities could not pull out.
My apartment was in a new tower block in the good end of the city, the good end defined by the length of time it might take for you to get robbed. It was on the twentieth floor, low down compared to the buildings that surrounded mine as if I were in some strange bar graph where the correlation of results had all been anomalous. The apartment was decent size consisting of two double bedrooms should I have visitors, not likely considering I had no friends or family nearby, a little square kitchen and a gaudy bathroom protruding with curling gold knobs and taps. The walls were all white, each line connecting to another instead of the rolling features smoothly curving from room to room that I was used to in my little Victorian flat back in London. Despite it reminding me very much of the lab I worked in day to day, there was a quiet safety separating me from the unruly atmosphere outside. The first night I moved in I had the compelling urge to play I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday out loud to drown out the modernity and take me back to my beautiful London suburb and the peaceful people who resided there. I never however, got any trouble from the neighbours since they themselves were all of a similar social standing and a trouble avoiding disposition. It made them fleeting and unfriendly, impossible to even say hello to for the less people you associated with in Gotham the less likely you were to run into someone undesirable. It was only the super-rich that seemed protected from this in their private residences and chauffer driven cars, lavish parties guarded by giant doormen and corrupt lawyers getting each and every one of them off. Yes, Gotham did not seem like a place I would settle down in as my intentions were in no way to stay for long but circumstances always do tend to muddle you up when you start making plans for the long term.
Gotham Neuroscience Laboratory was a fifteen minute drive from my residence. I could have easily walked it in five and avoided the traffic but our orientation advisers at the lab had insisted we drive so that in the evening when it was dark we might not wander into the shadows.
"They'll spot you in a flash you foreigners. Us locals walk for a reason but you guys you walk like tourists. They'll get you quick." said Carl our orienteer.
"Who will?" I said.
"A smarter question would be who won't."
And so every day I drove my little car only a portion of the way through the city to the lab I would remain researching at for only a few months before I was on Gotham's radar.