Written for sibilantly's prompt on Tumblr:
Bane/Blake, post-movie. John's Nightwing, and Bane teaches him a little bit about the art of war.
Disclaimer: Batman, its universe and characters belong to their respective owners. I own nothing.
AN: This is my first fic in months, so I'm a bit rusty. Also, English isn't my first language and this hasn't been beta'd, so expect lots of mistakes. Feel free to point them to me, God knows I need all the help I can get.
Giving Notice
They've started giving him names.
John doesn't notice at first. He lives alone, cheaply. He has no television, and even if he did, he wouldn't have the time to watch it. His only contact with the news—local and worldwide—is the quick glance he gives the newspaper store every morning, barely enough to see the headlines and decide if it's worth spending a few dollars on. It usually isn't.
So when he first hears about it, it comes as a real surprise. It's lunch break at work, and John is staring blankly at the sandwich he bought, feeling anything but hungry. Pictures of the previous night flash through him, nightmarish in their clarity; he can see the rivulet of blood staining the ground like mud. Hear the crack of bones snapping under his fists. The alley's stench is in his nostrils, heavy, nauseating.
Eating is the last thing he wants to do right now. He has to, though, to fight off the bone-tiredness he now constantly feels—another consequence of spending his nights fighting.
Marc, one of his co-workers, is usually the one talking endlessly during lunch. John and the others are happy just listening to his blabber and eating in silence. But today another man—bald, in his forties, John doesn't know his name, or doesn't remember—starts the conversation.
"You heard about Nightwing?" he says, and suddenly everyone's attention is on him. His words first don't register in John's brain. He's out of it, today more than ever.
"I heard nothing," another man replies.
"You wouldn't. It's not on the news. Word is, he killed a man last night."
Silence reigns for a second. John feels his blood turn cold. He won't ask, can't ask—he doesn't want to know how they know. He doesn't want to know who Nightwing is.
"How do you know that?" Marc asks, openly sceptical.
"The guys down East told me. One of them saw him do it."
"He saw him?"
"Yeah, I know, I didn't believe it either, but he has a picture."
And he's showing it right now, giving his phone around. It takes an eternity to come before John, but when it does, there is no mistaking the slightly blurry shape of his own body, clad in the tight-fitting black clothes he favours—and some light falls right on his hands, on his bloodied knuckles.
John wants to throw up.
Instead he smiles and passes the phone along, and when the bell rings to announce the end of their break, he grunts along with everyone and resumes putting bricks upon bricks for hours.
After this day, it seems he can't not hear about it.
It's not a hot topic in town. If ever it was, then that time is long gone. The name doesn't appear in any headlines, isn't shouted by kids in the streets. There are no drawings of him on lamp posts and store blinds. But every other week or so someone casually brings it up and John can't stop his face from paling, his guts from clenching up.
Nightwing beat a guy up two days ago. Nightwing got that robber, I heard he left the money on the street instead of bringing it back. Nightwing got the Grants' killer. Nightwing did this, Nightwing did that.
There are other names. They call him "Shadow" and "Unknown" and "that guy". Fucking Batman 2. One day at the laundromat, John overhears a little lady tell her friend about how "that superhero wannabe did his thing again." But Nightwing is the name he hears most.
John doesn't know how to feel about it.
He doesn't like what he does anymore than he liked the police. He can't stop, though. Wayne put that burden on him by grooming him the way he did—as a successor, an heir of sorts. But even without that... he feels the need for it in his very skin. It burns in him every time he sees a bruised-up kid wandering the streets, or a man shiver on the asphalt, barefoot. Every time gunshots echo clear and loud through the city's incessant buzz.
They are everywhere. Aimless men and women keeping their eyes on the ground. Their minds beat to a bloody pulp, their bodies waning every passing day. Too used to it to bother fighting back.
It makes him angry.
He doesn't want to be the Batman, though. The Batman was one of a kind and never to be replaced. Plus, John doesn't want the notoriety. Bruce Wayne might have been used to it, but John isn't Bruce Wayne. He was never CEO of anything. His parents weren't murdered on their way back to their great big mansion. He doesn't have a fancy butler waiting for him back home, ready to stitch him up.
Hell, he barely manages to keep his home, as it is.
Even during his time in the force, when they used to call him a hothead, John didn't want to be a hero.
He just can't stay idle in the face of such abuse. Not anymore.
So he fights what he can—small thieves and petty murderers. Rapists. Store robbers. He leaves the big bad guys alone and stays away from the resurgent mob. He kills, when he has to. (He never means to, but it happens.)
But he doesn't use the gadgets Wayne provided him with when he can avoid doing so. No flash bombs or bat blades. The Bat, given to him by Lucius Fox, stays hidden underneath Wayne Manor. Just some black nondescript clothes, a gun, some protection. He doesn't have a sign, or a name—well, now he has, he thinks bitterly—and he doesn't need them.
He doesn't want to be seen. If people can't see him, they can't hinder him.
That's how he works. That's how he survives.
It lasts a few months more.
Then, one night, John is running after someone. And he knows he's being lured into a trap. He knows it because the streets are getting darker and narrower around him. Because even the homeless don't go where he's going. He knows he's heading right into a nest of something. One of the places he has taken care to avoid. But he doesn't care.
He's so tired.
John isn't surprised when the man he chases turns around and smiles at him. He stops his course and stares, and when the first punch comes, he doesn't even try to defend himself.
There are three of them, and he can tell as soon as the first blow lands on his stomach that they aren't what he's used to. There are iron plates on their knuckles—he can feel his ribs bruise and crack up, and when he coughs his mouth tastes of copper. They have guns and rifles. One of them laughs, and it is a crazy sound, not of triumph but of something far more unsettling. This, this is the laugh of a madman, of someone who enjoys hurting others. John doesn't stand a chance of leaving this place alive.
Except he does, apparently, because all of sudden the punches and kicks stop, as does the crazy laughter. John opens his swollen eyes and sees a mountain move in the dark, delivering swift and lethal blows. The three men fall like dying leaves.
And when the mountain emerges from the dark, all John can think is, Oh.
That's not a mountain. That's Bane.
Two years ago, this man was declared dead by a distraught Jim Gordon. John doesn't know why the fact that he is, in fact, alive, surprises him. Gordon isn't known for his reliability.
He's changed, John reflects as Bane stares at him. Hair, grimy with dirt and sweat, has grown on his head. His mask is still in place, but crooked, and one of its little pipes is clearly broken. He is still a monster of a man, but he looks... subdued, somehow. His eyes look as tired as John feels.
"You are the one they call Nightwing," Bane rasps. His voice is both melodious and grating, and it makes goosebumps run along John's spine. He has never talked to Bane personally before. The little he has seen of him in Gordon's TV, the day he revealed the truth about Dent and the Batman, had been enough.
He doesn't know why Bane is aware of his existence, but it can't mean anything good.
"You know me," John finally says. His throat hurts.
"I have been watching you," Bane nods, ominous.
For a moment they just stare at each other, and then Bane crouches down and his hand grasps John's hood.
John doesn't wear a mask. He relies on darkness and his own ability to go unseen. So when Bane pulls his hood down, his face is revealed in its entirety. He can't help biting his lips, and gasping because of how bruised and painful they already are. Bane just keeps watching him, until John can feel the beginning of a flush warming his nape.
"What do you want with me?" he asks when he can't stand the silence anymore. He shifts away from Bane and stands slowly, biting down a moan when he puts weight on his left foot. His ankle is killing him.
Bane doesn't move when he answers, "You are Bruce Wayne's legacy."
And this—this pulls a reaction out of John. "Fuck you," he spits. "I'm no one's anything."
Bane stands back up abruptly, and John can't avoid jumping backwards in surprise. If Bane notices—and he must have, for his grey eyes haven't once stopped watching John—, he doesn't say anything about it.
Instead, a sound close to a scoff filters through his mask, and he mocks, "Yet here you are, playing the hero in his footsteps. Breaking a little more each night."
John says nothing to that. It's the truth, much as he would like to deny it.
"You do not possess the training he had. Or the money. Who are you, really?" And suddenly his hand is in the crook of John's neck, thumb pressing against the hollow of his throat. John tenses, but Bane doesn't look like he intends to choke him to death. For some reason, the gesture is almost tender.
"I have seen many Batman imitators, Nightwing," Bane continues, seemingly unaware of the wondering in his voice. "They come in the form of men and women eager to take his place, to become the new symbol of justice. They die as soon as they appear, swallowed by the city. Their corpses are left to rot in the river and dry out on rooftops. But you are different. Aren't you, Nightwing?"
His thumb strokes John's neck. Up, down. It follows his adam's apple when he swallows, chasing the fluttering of his blood under a thin layer of skin and sweat.
"I have a feeling that you are his. That he offered you his place—threw the burden of his own mistakes onto you. Even as he died, Bruce Wayne died a coward."
At this, John tries to punch him. His arm is flung against the nearest wall without so much as a flinch from Bane, whose other hand is still pressed tightly against John's neck.
"Look at you," Bane says. He sounds amused. "You're like a bird in a cage. Uselessly flying around, pecking at the bars of your cell, you think that'll be enough to free you."
"What do you want?" John yells, voice shaking.
"For now, your name."
"My-"
He stares at Bane, incredulous.
"Why do you want to know my name?"
"I should know how to call something if I wish to have it."
Distantly, John thinks he should be alarmed by the sudden warmth flooding his body. He bites his lips, forgetting once again that he really shouldn't do that considering the sate they're in. "What do you mean, have me?"
Bane doesn't answer.
"Blake," John admits.
"Is that how your parents called you?"
"Don't you talk about my parents," John growls. Bane blinks, and assents, and the movement is so surprisingly respectful that John blurts out, "they called me Robin."
"Robin," Bane repeats.
His eyes are still on John's face, studying him.
"I cannot let you break now, Robin."
John exhales. "What?"
"Bruce Wayne took something precious from me," Bane goes on. "Something irreplaceable. That he died without my taking something from him as well doesn't sit well with me, Robin Blake. No, it doesn't sit well at all."
"So I suppose you're going to kill me now, to even out the odds." John's voice doesn't shake, but it is a small comfort.
"Indeed I should," Bane acquiesces.
The world has stopped around them. John is conscious only of the hand gripping his throat and the eyes drilling into his. For a second he is sure of his own death. Can almost feel Bane's hold tighten around his windpipe, ever-so-slowly, shutting more and more precious oxygen away from his brain.
And would it be such a loss, really? John hadn't intended to be alive come morning, even without Bane's presence.
So that's it, then, he thinks. The end of John Blake, orphan boy, former cop and last ally of the Batman. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. There's no one waiting for him back home, no parent, no sibling, no lover. Just a long list of failures and an electricity bill. He thinks of his mother's smile—or how he imagines it anyway. Time has blurred its memory a long time ago.
John closes his eyes.
Bane's hand moves, then. Slowly, his fingers trace along his chin and his cheek, hovering over his eyelids. His thumb lands on his lower lip, avoiding the blood.
"Not now," Bane murmurs. "Not like this."
His digit traces John's lips, pressing slightly on a cut in the corner. It stings. John's eyes water, still shut.
"I will see you destroyed, but not now, when you are already this close to breaking."
"I'm not broken," John says.
"Not yet," Bane agrees. "But tell me. What did you wish for, when you came here?"
John hesitates.
"I have seen you avoid this place, and others like it, for years. Yet tonight you came flying with enthusiasm. Tell me, Robin, did you not wish for your own death? Was it not for you an easy way out?"
Blunt fingernails dig in the skin of John's temple. "I cannot let that happen, as I'm sure you have surmised already."
"What is it to you, the way I die?" John asks, exhaustion seeping through his voice. "As long as I die? Why bother saving me if you're gonna kill me anyway?"
"Oh, but I crave more than just your death," Bane answers with a smile creasing the corner of his eyes.
Then his hands grips John's face and smashes it on the wall. Pain makes John's nerves explode, and he grunts more than screams—his voice is as damaged as the rest of him.
"Robin Blake, if you ever wish to overpower me, you cannot be alone." Bane's face is already slipping into nothingness, flooded by the dark bordering John's vision, yet his words brand themselves into his memory. "The Batman understood this, in the end. Even weakened as I am by physical pain, even as torn and wrecked with grief, I am stronger than you. Fine allies. Find me. Destroy me before I destroy you."
And in the last instants preceding oblivion, John hears him whisper, "Do not disappoint me."
John wakes to the pungent smell of urine, sweat, and something rotten. Light is streaming from the sky, making him wince through his pounding headache.
The state he's in is laughable. For a moment, he thinks about what his co-workers would say upon seeing him like this—caked in blood and dirt, lying in grime, like a dying rat. Nervous laughter menaces to burst out of him.
He stands up, slowly, testing the strength of his ankle. It supports him, which means it isn't broken.
Good, he thinks furiously.
The bodies of the three men who attacked him are still there. Their necks are visibly broken. John doesn't let himself wonder how none of them—including himself—has been mugged yet. He thanks the isolation of this part of town and leaves.
The walk home is painful. He doesn't want to face the long streets and avenues, where people will undoubtedly stare and whisper in his trail—maybe even call the police on him. This isn't how he wants to be seen by his former colleagues, as stupid as the thought is. He drags his bad foot through alleys and abandoned yards, using as many shortcuts as he can.
When finally he arrives to his flat, he is lucky enough not to cross paths with any of his neighbours. He opens the door, drops his keys and crashes into his bed. The old mattress makes an angry noise under him.
He stays like that for a long time. Thoughts nag at him half-heartedly. He should clean up, disinfect his wounds. He should call his work and apologise for his absence. He should eat something. He should. He should.
He should go back there, and find Bane, and kill him. As he ought to. As the Batman should have done, two years ago, before dying a martyr.
Heat runs through his muscles. He feels restless. He feels angry. He feels humiliated.
He feels like a child.
Bane is alive. Bane wants him alive, for some reason, and John is not going to let that opportunity pass by. So many questions stay unanswered—what has Bane lost, that he should want to spite a dead man's soul so much? How does Bane know about Bruce Wayne in the first place?
Why, John thinks, didn't he kill me outright? What does he want from me, what is it that he wants destroyed in me?
Bane's fingers have left a searing ghost of their touch on his skin. John feels branded.
Fury simmers in his guts, leaks out of him by bursts of hot breaths, makes him see stars. His hands burrow in his sheets, tearing into cheap polyester.
"Do not disappoint me."
"Oh, I won't," John says. "I won't."