Rated T for language and violence and the such

Barsad was absolute. No questions, no answers – utter loyalty. It was rare in this world and Bane valued it above almost everything. Unfortunately, loyalty did not come without a price; it was a commodity that was either earned or bought and bargained for.

Which is why he had the twenty year-old woman who shared Barsad's surname and those wide, blue eyes locked up in an apartment just across from City Hall. The brother and sister were close, fighting together from birth to survive and to breathe; the girl had sacrificed her freedom so her brother could live and prosper as Bane's right hand man. She didn't seem to mind particularly; Bane rarely saw her, and when he did she was utterly silent, not meeting his eye.

He had only heard her speak twice before the fall of Gotham.

He kept a lot of medicines in the apartment where she stayed; it was somewhere safe, with guards on the door each and every hour. It made sense to not waste resources and keep two commodities locked up together. The only times he came to see her was when he was injured and needed fixing up, needing the needles and the morphine that sat in a little box in the airing cupboard. She, rather than any who worked for him, saw him at his weakest; it was safest that way. She couldn't take advantage, weak, spindly little thing, all freckles and sharp collar bones. He noticed she had started to eat less and less the longer Gotham descended into madness; he said nothing.

One night he stumbled in; it was late and a small gang of four had attacked him, desperate hope giving their fight an edge. It had been teenagers – three boys and a girl. He'd snapped their necks one by one, saving the pretty one until last and meeting her gaze as he'd murdered her. But he couldn't pretend the pain of his broken mask wasn't swelling, slowing his walks; he became an easy target as he lumbered the short walk to City Hall. Once he'd gotten to the apartment he crashed his way in, stumbling in the pain that had grown after the stupid little bitch had kicked at his mask with the heel of her boot.

The girl had been sat on the sofa, staring at her hands. He caught her doing that a lot – sitting in silence, eyes barely blinking, lost in her own tangled thoughts. He had been tempted to ask her what she was thinking about, but knew he would get dumb silence in reply.

She was sat in darkness that day, the only light coming from streetlights down below. The girl never shut the curtains, letting the orange glow from the streets below light her way at night. She blinked rapidly when he flicked the light on, bringing her tired eyes and a glint of red hair into sharp relief. She seemed to have no reaction as he stumbled towards the bathroom, her gaze tracking him slowly.

He stared into the mirror, scowling as he caught a flicker of blood by his eye. Wiping it away furiously, he attempted to fix one of the broken teeth on his mask, but the violent shake of his hands was too much. Lurching his way back into the main room, he pulled up a chair by the table and rasped out,

'Little one – come. I need your assistance.'

For a while, the girl said nothing, a slow and steady frown growing on her face. Finally she looked up at him, as if seeing him for the first time, and slowly rose. Through his pain he recognised the grace in her movements as she uncurled from the sofa – remembering Barsad reluctantly telling him that his kid sister had wanted to be a ballet dancer – and moved towards him.

He didn't quite know how to react when she walked straight past him and moved to the fridge, taking out a carton of milk and leaning against the counter. She watched him as she unscrewed the lid with delicate fingers, taking a swig and drawing her hand against plump lips. The bones in her hand pushed up against paper-thin skin every time she flexed her fingers and he stared at the vivid blue of her veins. It would take only a second to slash them and have her blood spill on the floorboards, leaving a stain for all of the world to see.

She abandoned the milk on the side and walked over to him slowly, her face expressionless and utterly blank. He wondered if the reason he couldn't read her was because there was nothing going on behind the pretty mask.

Leaning her hands on the back of her chair so her skinny arms encircled him, she leaned forward so their faces were bare inches away, as if she were inspecting the broken parts of his mask. She chewed on her lip – not nervously. There was nothing nervous about her as she observed him, a mouse waltzing over the lion's paw. Finally, she told him in a thick, accented voice very similar to Barsad's,

'Go fuck yourself.'

The next day Bane pulled Barsad to one side and asked him slowly,

'What is your sister's name?'

In credit to the man, his right hand man tried very, very hard to keep his face straight as he answered – although Bane could see his left eye twitch,

'Pandora.'

Bane nodded slowly, then beckoned the scrawny man towards him. It took him half an hour to carve the words into the man's back – deep enough to scratch, not so deep they would scar; he was careful with scars now. If you wanted to leave a permanent message on a man's body you had to make sure it was the right one. When he was done he had left a nice little note for Pandora.

Do as you are told.

Pandora had been with Bane for three years now. She was slowly becoming aware that she had gone mad at some point. She knew it was at its worse when her brother had stopped coming to see her – but really, it had started on day three.

She'd been in a stinking hovel in New Mexico, holed up. She was sweating, her clothes a sticky layer – but she diligently pressed her ear to the door, her heart hammering in her chest.

Pandora had seen a flash of Talia; she was beautiful, and she promised herself at that moment that she'd never be like the woman. She could hear that accented voice now, occasionally interrupted by Bane's low grumble, as they chattered away.

Bane had terrified her for the first year. She'd seen him without his mask once, accidentally walking in on him as he ate; there was a strange, delicate beauty to his scarred face, his mouth surprisingly full and pretty. Almost girlish. Even if the scars didn't constantly pain him, she could see why he wore the mask; he cut quite an intimidating figure in it, but without he looked shockingly human. That was the image she'd kept in her mind every time she saw him for the three years following that – she'd drawn him to remember how he looked. She had managed to memorise every scar as she sat to eat at the opposite end of the table, eating as much as she could, quickly and messily to spite him because he could not. He had obviously grown irritated with her staring but she hadn't stopped, even when her hands had started to shake.

A couple of words, a few choice phrases, kept on coming back to her through the door and she'd memorised them. They sounded strange and unfamiliar but she repeated them, over and over, staying up all night until she was sure she wouldn't forget them. She'd written them down too but paper wasn't permanent and she didn't want to have to rely on them.

Gotham City and break the bat.

It had been a month later when she'd absently drawn a bat outline on the corner of a book she was reading. Inspiration had struck then and she searched the entire room until she found an abandoned felt tip – thick enough so it was readable over the typed words in her book.

Later, she saw it as rebellion, but she knew in truth it was plain old boredom as she wrote on a blank corner of the page,

GOTHAM CITY, HAVE HOPE.

Tearing out the corner, she flipped it over and drew the same little bat. It looked remarkably flimsy, floating onto her lap – but she made another and another and another.

A month later when they moved from New Mexico into a small town close to Gotham, she had lined her bra with thousands of tiny scraps of paper.

She wasn't stupid; she knew not to do it from the same book. Bane sometimes came to check up on her and if he spotted a book with fifty of the pages missing he'd be a little suspicious. She had a total of five books and she started off with the blank pages at the front and back. She continued each time they moved, keeping a small box under beds or floorboards each time they moved.

Eventually one small box came to three, which came to ten, which came to twenty; all different sizes, all filled with the same thing. GOTHAM CITY, HAVE HOPE and the little bat drawing.

She'd become obsessed with it and she didn't want to stop – but three months into Gotham's reckoning, she could see the city needed it. The apartment across from City Hall was only four floors up and she sometimes sat on the balcony, watching through the railings that stopped her from throwing herself to the ground. She watched Johnathan Crane – a surprisingly pretty man she'd only ever heard of – watch her as he took a break from condemning the people of Gotham, puffing on a cigarette. His blue eyes cut into hers and once she, as a joke, had got a tin mug from inside and rattled it against the railings. He'd thrown his head back and – because he was mad like her, their brains scrambled, all sense of their own safety missing – he'd crossed the road. Watched by the people of Gotham, he'd taken out a pack of cigarettes and thrown them up to her, followed by a lighter.

It had unnerved her, but it delighted her – small, quirky acts of rebellion even from those on the inside, on Bane's side.

But she watched the bad bits too. She watched muggings, murders, watched people dragged kicking and screaming from the hall. Watched mothers crying over the lifeless bodies of their children, lovers ripped from each other's arms. She had nightmares of blood staining the snow and Bane's face, the mask glinting in the winter sunlight, his brother's head in his hands.

She knew she was mad. But she didn't regret taking the boxes out onto the balcony, laying them out in rows in front of her.

Pandora laughed as the scraps of paper began to fall to the ground. She had picked up a moment when the road was at its busiest – Crane's court was on a recess, and he was the first to spot her standing, small cardboard box in hand. This one had originally contained a stack of needles. Shaking it empty, she quickly started with another one – it needed to be a constant stream. Like snow. Gotham's Christmas present. It had rained yesterday and so the ground was pretty much clear of snow – her message was clear. Crane nudged the man next to him and the people began to snatch at the inky confetti, turning them over with curiosity. She grinned when the wind picked up one handful and she quickly emptied out another box, hoping it would carry out into Gotham.

Some turned away disgusted. One crying teenage girl spent a long time staring at the message in the palm of her hand. Jonathan Crane laughed, shaking her head, as she carefully threw his lighter down – aiming for his head. It hit his shoulder and he rolled his eyes, shrugging his shoulders.

When she was done the ground below her was smothered in the white paper. She knew some of the scraps of paper had carried – and the story was travelling too, as the teenage girl with tear stained cheeks got to her feet and sprinted away. Pandora smiled sadly at three years of work, millions of bits of paper giving Gotham its message – its hope. Its Christmas present.

Beginning to shiver, she made sure there wasn't one tiny piece of paper left on the floor of the balcony, and went back inside to await the consequences.

She hoped he killed her.

'Only hope was left within her unbreakable house, she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not fly away.'

Pandora stared up at Bane. She had been sat watching through the glass patio doors all day, watching people stare with curiosity at the paper shrapnel – watching them picking up the paper, scoop handfuls into their pockets or set fire to the little pieces, watching them burn with scorn. She smiled all the way through – didn't stop when Bane entered the flat and quoted at her. She replied in her husky, accented voice,

'Hesiod's Work and Days.'

'Good. You know your name-sake well then? Are you not happy in your jar?'

Pandora hummed a response, listening to the way Bane's boots thudded against the floor. She heard him shrug out of his coat, his breathing heavy and mechanical through the mask.

'Turn around.' When she didn't move, didn't answer, his voice took on a darker edge, 'remember what happened to your brother last time and turn.'

Through the knotted madness in her mind, something clicked; something instinctive told her she didn't want her brother to be harmed. A detached part of her explained she would be sad if her brother, whose name she couldn't even remember now, were to die. A faint thought flushed through her – memories of a life of travelling, a blind flash of sunshine and sand that whispered India, buildings as tall as giants screaming London. She and her brother, hands held, all over the world.

And here, also, in Gotham. She did not like it here. If it wasn't snowing it was raining, as if the sky were in mourning, and she could feel the cold in her bones.

Rising slowly, she turned to stare at him.

To her shock, he was undoing screws and flipping catches – taking off the mark. A chill ran down her spine and she remembered what it was to fear.

Finally it was off. The scars looked better – less raw – than when she had seen them last time.

'The first time you saw these scars,' he explained, pulling a needle out of his pocket and rolling up his shirt sleeves, 'you could not look away. The whole time you did not take your eyes off me.' Injecting himself with what Pandora assumed was morphine, something in him relaxed, a bare twitch of the shoulder; the drug, she knew, would provide some relief for a small amount of time. 'I want you to remember that I am human.'

His navy eyes bored into hers and she looked away, chewing at her thumbnail, feeling his eyes drift to the curve of his neck and her delicate throat, bobbing as she swallowed. She felt how vulnerable the sharp knobs of her spine were and turned her face to her knees so he got the top of her head, her hair the faded colour of rust.

'I suppose you recognised the irony of your name giving Gotham hope, little Pandora?' He started up conversationally, tone subtly but absolutely changed. He was mocking her and she sank back into her usual silence. She had not spoken for so long that her own voice, deep and lilting, felt odd to her own ears. 'Jonathan Crane seems quite enamoured with you. He finds you… entertaining, I think was the word he used.' Bane slowly crossed the room, and Pandora mentally noted he looked smaller without the mask. A line of stubble edged across his jaw and he had one crooked tooth. He would have been handsome in another life. 'Perhaps I should give you up to him.'

She stared up at him blankly; at this point she wasn't entirely sure who Jonathan Crane was. She certainly would never known of his toxin – his poison – and her eyes communicate no fear. 'Perhaps not,' Bane muses, coming to a stop a few metres in front of her, peeling off his heavy boots and socks. 'Tell me the legend of Pandora's Box.'

Pandora stared up at him, face crinkled into a frown. If it were possible, he seemed madder than she was at this moment. When she said nothing, breath hitching, he clutched at her chin, fingers pressing bruises into the soft skin of her jaw.

'Uh – she was created as the, um, first woman. She was beautiful and made from clay – the gods breathed life into her. It was as a punishment because man kept on stealing fire, and so she was given to one of two brothers. They got married and were given a box from Zeus. She was told not to open it but – um, one day she, uh, she did. She let out all the horrible things, all the evils, but she let hope out too. And, um… That's it.'

Pandora's English wasn't quite good enough to expand but Bane seemed satisfied, releasing her jaw and digging his hand into his pocket. She blinked a few times when he pulled out the handful of paper and let them drop to her feet.

'You and the Pandora of the myth are similar, are you not? Both beautiful, both releasing hope into a dark world. Or trying, at least. But the Pandora of the myth was punished, was she not?' When Pandora's head tilted to one side he clarified, 'when she let out the evils they stung her. She was in great pain.'

He took a step back, beginning to pace back and forth in front of her, bare feet padding gently against the floorboards. He didn't seem like he was going to talk any time soon; he was considering her punishment, Pandora realised.

Feed the fire, her madness whispered into her ear.

'I did it as rebellion. I did it because I couldn't do anything else – because Gotham needs hope and because you and Talia are…' she struggles for words and opts for a clinical-sounding slur that her brother had once murmured to her, 'psychopaths. Because what you're doing is mindless destruction and so I thought I'd give mindless hope in return –'

She was interrupted by the crack of a gun tearing across her face.

For a moment her vision swam with blackness – but determinedly she fought back, pushing against the darkness, eyes fluttering. Scrambling up she flinched at the dull sound of the gun hitting the floor. Raising a hand to her face she gingerly clicked her jaw from side to side and stared at the blood against her fingers. Bane was staring at her breathlessly, eyes wild.

'You forget, little one,' he sneered, his voice flat and empty, 'that I have your brother under my control.'

Pandora turned her head to one side, spitting blood from her mouth and wincing from the pain there. She refused to cry.

'I do not remember his name,' she gritted out furiously. 'I haven't seen him in a year.'

The back of his hand met her face and she was on the floor again, whimpering, legs crumpling beneath her.

'Pandora was a weak, foolish woman,' Bane spat out, aiming a kick to her stomach that had her curving in on herself, gasping as the wind was knocked out of her. 'She let curiosity get the better of her and condemned the world to darkness. You have only condemned yourself.'

Raising herself until she was at least a little elevated from the floor, Pandora glared up at him. Somewhere in the back of her head she noted that Bane, usually so concise with his deaths, was really drawing this out. He was a black mark against the ceiling, willing to torture her, and she was more than willing to accept. She hadn't felt in so long pain was welcome.

'You're a stupid cunt, you know that? Pandora was… She was Anesidora. You know what that means, don't you?' She saw the blankness on his face and let out a loud, high-pitched, insane laugh. 'She who sends up gifts. "Pandora rises from the earth".' He stared at her, the fury growing in his face as she sneered. 'Sound familiar? Deshi basara. Rise.' Every word was mocking him, each sound spat and curled in hatred as she glared up at him. He was poised, ready for action – yet did nothing when she reached for the gun and staggered up, turning away from him – instead moving to the balcony. He followed her curiously as she stepped through the glass doors and into the open. The light was starting to dim and yet again it was busy; she wasn't sure if this was because court had just finished for the day or because curiosity had brought people here. Either way it worked to her advantage.

She turned to him, her back to the crowd, as a few started to point up at her, mouths gawping, spotting Bane against the sky too. Two pigeons, battling it out like scabs. Hand shaking, she raised the gun to the side of her head, teeth gritted.

'If you kill yourself your brother will die an excruciating death,' he told her. All the theatrics to his voice had gone; this was plain and simple, an ancient threat that had her hand faltering. When he saw that he laughed, loud and long. 'See, little one! You are weak! You are a woman of words, not action, and that will be your downfall.'

Slowly, Pandora considered Bane.

'You're right. Killing myself would be weak,' she told him carefully, turning to look out on the crowds, inspecting a few faces. She saw her brother down there, staring up at her, ragged breaths shaking his chest. She smiled down at him and pressed her fingers to her lips in greeting; when she turned back Bane had come to join her at the balcony so she could address him and the people below. The gun was still pressed coldly into the side of her forehead. 'But you think I can't act? That I can't create an example of myself – give other people bravery and courage through my own actions so that they may rise up.' She turned her back on Bane for a moment, shouting down at the crowds, aware of her brother silently pleading with her. 'Do you hear that Gotham? I act so that you might be brave!'

At this moment her mind was more tangled, her madness more encapsulating than ever before. There was a small part of clarity that told her that, although it was true – her own horrific act would, perhaps inspire others – this wasn't the best idea.

She ignored the clarity, delved deep into the dark knots of her brain, and brought the gun to her knee. She had fired before anyone could move.

Her screams and her blood filled Gotham as she crumpled to the balcony floor.

One shot? Probably? Unless you guys want to see more idek.

I just got this plot bunny and I had to write it.