A/N: Usual disclaimer, I do not own Batman, if I did I'd be dancing like a loon. I decided to write this because already I'm seeing fluffy Bane fics and thinking, maybe he has nice sex with Talia but that's because of a bond made yae many years ago. Everybody else? The only hug he'd be handing out would involve breaking the spine. Painfully.
Hope you enjoy ;)
In the ashes that remained of a great, dark, city, life still existed and so fear thrived. This was the way of the world. Bane stood over it like a king. His court was a filthy shamble around him, scurrying and scrapping to survive as, like a pulsing death, the timer of the dreaded bomb ticked down and down. Families that had once existed in a happy, suburban half-dream clutched at the remnants of their past lives with a hopeless desperation but, inevitably, succumbed to the terror that had engulfed everything around them. Like paupers they drew together in their ruined homes, gazing at the fuzzy images on their TV screens for lack of anything else to do. It was no longer safe outside; the sensible ones ventured out only to salvage basic amenities from the nearby stores. Months of repetitive looting drove them further and further out of their comfort zones and into the hands of criminals, and although this resulted in an increase of pain and sheer panic for Bane's pleasure, it wasn't enough.
He knew how people could learn to adapt to suffering, to see it as the norm. Before him people grew numb to his cruel ministrations and even harboured hopes they may be saved; graffiti tags and primitive etchings of a bat with sweeping wings were beginning to creep up the city's crumbling walls like days scratched in a prison cell. Scraps of paper, carried by the wind, revealed ballpoint cartoons of masked stick men being wrestled to the ground. These Bane crushed in his fist, casting the pieces back from whence they came. Hope in monitored doses was good; it made the blow of disappointment hit ever the harder. But this was like the first flames of a fire, smouldering, uncontrollable, rising, and Bane knew that he must make it fall.
"It's gettin' dark so early now," said Joni, peering anxiously out between the blinds. Shadows were already beginning to crawl across the sky although it was still technically day time, billowing clouds hanging over the house like the underbelly of a great, black beast. "Never seen it like this before. Must be 'cause there're no streetlights no more."
She shuddered.
"I don't mind sayin' it gives me the creeps, 'specially thinkin' about who's out there. It was bad enough going out this time before Bane came along, with all the crackheads and loonies hanging around, but now... Don't know what'll jump out atcha."
"Well, don't go at night then, idiot," came the reply. Her friend, Elle, who she now shared a house with for sake of company, was sitting behind her on the kitchen island running her hair through her hands. It was reddish-brown, like a chicken's back, and very short. She cut it herself with a blunt knife, tugging and sawing until it sprung up, ragged and ugly, from the scalp. This was a habit she'd picked up only after Gotham's collapse, as if making herself look tough and masculine would protect her from the horrors outside. Catching Joni's eye, she twisted it back from her forehead. Two stressed, pulsing veins stood out at the temples.
"Nobody's making you go out there," said Elle. "I'd rather you stayed home with me, but you never do. Why don't you leave when it's light, like everybody else does?"
"See, now that's why I don't," Joni pointed out. "Everyone's out there pushin' and fightin' over things, makin' trouble. It's stupid."
Another reason she went out after dark, one she left unsaid, was that Joni didn't want to be seen breaking into the abandoned houses where she would raid the refrigerators of people who were, most likely, deceased. This cloak-and-dagger approach to larceny wasn't down to fear of what others would think of her behaviour but due to the fact that Joni wasn't keen on anyone else getting the same ideas. There was always the danger that somebody would realize what hidden spoils were sitting there and plunder what she considered her private stocks dry. Joni, ashamed by her own capacity for theft and greed, pushed these thoughts aside and moved the conversation on before Elle spotted her discomfort.
"And it's worse when folks start talkin' to ya," said Joni. "'Cause things they say make me sorta nervous. People are plannin' to rebuild their lives, set up their own little communities again. Make a stand, even. They think we can do it, if we just try. But that's crazy... yeah, it's crazy talk."
"Why?" asked Elle. "I think it's a damn good idea. We shouldn't be cowering away from that animal, Bane. We've got to try and make something out of what little we have, because nobody from the outside world is gonna help us and we can't spend forever here like rats in the dark."
Joni drew a long breath and wrapped her arms around herself. She could feel the curves of her ribcage, starved contours of a body wasted by fear.
"You think Bane'd let us do that after all he's done to ruin us in the first place?"
"Sure," said Elle, with an note of petulant sarcasm "Why not? Nobody's seen him around for weeks, just his dirty little cronies. He's taken out the big guys; the cops and the mayor and the rich people. I don't think he cares about the rest of us anymore. We're nothing. We're nobody."
"We're everything," said Joni. "Why don't people understand that?"
"'Cause he doesn't gave a damn," said Elle, and jumped down from the kitchen island with a punctuating thump. It was a gesture so childish that Joni fought the urge to grab her skinny shoulders and shake her. Elle was only fifteen, four years her junior but a great deal more immature than could be excused by age. She shunned sense and wisdom, burying herself in theories built on hot air in order to console herself in an unstable world. It didn't help she'd been brought up in a sheltered, middle class home where she was spoiled and numbed to the impact of global suffering. Joni, who found herself taking on the role as parent more and more with each passing day, found the girl exhausting, and her ignorance more tiring still.
"Are you really that naive, Elle?" said Joni. "Bane hates Gotham, an' he sure hates us too. He wants to make us hurt every last minute of our lives. You better believe it. You know anythin' 'bout war strategy, child?"
Elle shrugged. She stared a point beyond Joni's shoulder in affected defiance but Joni could sense her unease, like a bad smell, ripe and strong and shifting.
"Well, I do, a little. My Dad was in the military for nine years, and when he came back he used to talk about it a lot, tellin' me this and that 'cause my Momma didn't want to know. It scared her. Her parents were killed by African mercenaries when she was just a kid and she hated that Daddy might've done the same thing to somebody else in another place. Turned out he was just doin' technical stuff, mostly, but he learned how soldiers think and how to win a war- if you're the bad guy, that is.
"There's a basic idea that says you send in your troops to menace civilians- that's Bane blowin' up the stadium, seeāand you get the government to give way to your guys, and then you take over. But it never ends there, Elle. Remember, the people under Hitler's rule lived in a constant state of terror, never knowing when Nazis would break down the door and take 'em out to die. 'Cause that's where power comes from, Elle. Fear. But my Daddy never believed in it."
Joni paused, She wondered, for one in a countless number of times, where her parents were now, if they were anything at all. It was possible that they were dead, perhaps killed by one of the convicts Bane had released from Blackgate prison. There had been an incident three years ago in which three white skinheads had entered a ghetto and slaughtered thirty-five black men, women and children before being caught. Those men were now back on the streets, and it was all too easy for Joni to imagine her mother and father falling prey to them or someone similar. Elle's parents, in comparison, were apparently safe on vacation in Europe but her own, a typical black couple from a nice but unremarkable background, were lost. Just two more causalities.
"We're better to lie low and comply," said Joni. "They got a low sort of court fixed up now, and it's all run by criminals. I hear bad things happen to them who try to rebel."
"Trying to be normal again hardly makes a rebellion," Elle retorted.
"Nope, but it shows we can take the blows Bane's dealing out," said Joni. "And he don't want that. Eventually it's gonna get his attention, sorta like waving somethin' in front of a mean dog."
She splayed her hands and then brought them together with a sharp clap that made Elle jump.
"Some day," she said. "That dog's gonna bite."
She returned to the window again and looked out at the empty sidewalk.
"Joni," said Elle. She had come up behind her, pressing a cold hand to her shoulder. Her nails were bitten all the way down. "Don't you think going out at night, when it's most risky to be out there, is sort of like flipping the bird at Bane in itself? 'Cause you're saying 'hey big man, I'm here, I'm not afraid of you.' It is, isn't it? How is that any different from what we've been talking about?"
For a minute, Joni had no idea how to reply. Then she said, with flat conviction, "Angel-cake, it's something I gotta do for both of us. I think some mutiny's necessary just to survive."
At 2 AM the following morning, with the darkness closed over the city like a giant's fist, three women were found, brutalised, down separate alleyways in a Gotham slum. One's arm had been physically wrenched off at the shoulder, another had each major bone in her body broken as if she had been seized up and smashed, like a China doll, by some over-sized child. The last was bleeding from every orifice including her eyes. Every vessel had burst under unimaginable pressure. They had each been raped in varying degrees of brutality, but what all three had in common was the message they gave to whoever found them.
"Let Gotham and its people lie broken," they said. "Resist, and you will extend your suffering."
