I am so so so sorry this took so long! I was on vacation, but as soon as I got back I typed it up. Please read and review, and thanks for the many people who already have. I like to hear back from people who read. This story is for you, after all:)
I woke up suddenly with a splitting headache. I knew that I was still in the tunnels, but I had been moved to another room. The room seemed smaller than it probably was, due to the boxes stacked around the perimeter. A single bed was next to a desk overflowing with papers, and two fluorescent lights hung high from the ceiling, making my headache worse. There was one window cut into the concrete that looked out over the main room of the tunnel. There was an entrance with a heavy curtain pulled over it, and when it was suddenly pulled back I let out a groan.
"You!" I spat at the man that came in. I recognized him as the man that had hit me with the gun. I tried to stand up, but as I did, I felt my arm jerk back. I realized that my left wrist had been handcuffed to a pipe in the wall.
"I prefer to be called Barsad," he said with a smile and a surprising Irish accent. "Finally, you're up. Took you long enough. I'll go get Bane."
"Who?" I asked.
He just smirked and left the room. A minute later, Barsad and the man with the mask appeared in the doorway. Barsad walked over to the desk and shifted through the papers, but the huge man walked over to me.
"What is your name, child?" he asked. I was slightly offended by his question. Child? I was almost eighteen. And no matter what my age was, I had left my child hood long ago with my parent's deaths.
"Emma," I whispered. I was embarrassed to find that my voice was so quiet, something that only happened when I was nervous or scared.
"It is nice to meet you, Emma. My name is Bane." His politeness threw me off, and for some reason only made me more scared of him.
"What brings you down here?" he asked.
"My brother, Will, I thought I saw him come down here, so I followed him and I got lost." I explained.
"I remember a Will," said Barsad. "Tall, brown hair, looked a lot like you. He wanted a job down here, but I told him to look across the river, out of Gotham. Last I heard he had gotten out of Gotham with a few friends to find work."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank you, Barsad," said Bane. A look I didn't understand passed between the two of them, and Barsad nodded his head and walked out of the room.
"You don't understand why you're here, do you?" asked Bane as he took off his heavy coat and placed it on the chair to reveal a black shirt under it. I didn't know how it was possible, but his size seemed to grow when he took it off.
I shook my head. I had only seen a group of men working underground, albeit with guns, but I didn't understand what exactly I had done to warrant being chained to a pipe.
"I have a job to carry out here in Gotham, and if the police were to know I was down here, it could destroy everything we've worked for." He noticed my confused expression and let out a laugh. "You will understand soon. For now, I need to keep you here. I will let you go when the time is right."
Outside of the room, a loud explosion went off. I winced in pain as my headache began to throb again.
Bane walked over to me and reached his hand towards me. I flinched away from him, but he surprised me by turning my face to the right.
"You're bleeding," he commented. I used my free arm to touch the painful spot on my head and was surprised when I pulled it away to find blood on my hand. Bane went over to one of the boxes by the desk and pulled out a bottle and a cloth. He poured some of the liquid onto the cloth, and then crouched down next to me.
I breathed in sharply as the antiseptic touched my open wound, but was relieved when a few seconds later I couldn't feel the wound anymore.
"Thank you," I said as I felt the headache begin to subside as well. Whatever Bane had in that bottle, it was strong.
Bane turned away from me and sat down at the desk, looking at the papers strewn haphazardly across it. He would read some papers and write on others, and seemed to be working on something intently. Every once in a while I spied a map of Gotham with X's all over it, but when I leaned over to get a better view, Bane slid the map away from me.
Time passed slowly for me. I spent a lot of time in still silence, just thinking, but being held captive by Bane was surprisingly boring. I spent almost all of my time watching Bane work, seeing as nothing else proved interesting. The damp floor was cold and uncomfortable, and I cursed myself for my outfit choice this morning: skinny jeans, a white knit pullover, and brown boots. I had put a little effort into my outfit to meet John Blake that morning, I realized, something which I had very rarely done since my parents had died.
Thinking about John Blake reminded me that I had his number- and my phone- in my bag. I looked around the room and found it stashed below the desk. If I wanted to get out of here, I knew that reaching my bag was my best option.
I realized just how entirely my life was in Bane's hands. There was no reason for him to keep me alive. But for some reason, he was.
Another hour passed. My teeth started to chatter loudly, as they usually did in the cold. Soon my body began to shiver as well. After a while, Bane couldn't ignore the obvious sound of my teeth chattering. He stood up and, without a word, draped his huge coat around my shoulders. It was unexpected, but I realized that unexpected was what I should learn to expect from him.
"Do wrist hurts. Do you really need to handcuff me to a wall?" I asked him, hoping to capitalize on his moment of humanity. He rolled his eyes and leaned down to take of the handcuff.
"You run, you die," he said simply, and I nodded to let him know I got the message. He took out a key and opened the handcuff, but grabbed my wrist when he did. He turned it over to see the scars that Nathan King had carved into my wrist so long ago. He shook his head.
"So young to try and end your own life," he said, almost with disgust. I snatched my hand away from him and growled, "Don't you dark assume to know anything about my life!"
He looked taken aback, and stood up quickly. Luckily Barsad came into to the room when he did, because I didn't want to see Bane's reaction.
"Some men have found the commissioner and have brought him down here. They're asking for you," Barsad said. Bane left the room with him, and, after waiting a minute until I could hear their footsteps disappear, raced over to my bag and rifled through it, trying to find the phone. I went throught my bag over and over but my phone was missing. I knew it could be anywhere in the room, but I guessed that my best bet was to look in the desk. My hunch paid off as I opened the top drawer to find my phone.
I hurried to turn it on, but it took while to power up. I breathed a sigh of relief as it finally turned on. As it said, "searching for service", I heard footsteps down the hallway. I hurried to dial 911, my fingers clumsily flying over the keypad, but before I pressed send the phone was snatched out of my hand. Bane was holding my phone, and he did not look happy at all. He easily snapped the phone in half and sent the pieces flying across the room. He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off of the ground, and for the first time that day I truly feared dying.
His fingers closed tighter around my neck, and I struggled to breathe. I began to see black spots on the edges of my vision and knew I would run out of oxygen soon. I gasped for air one more time.
"Please don't," was all I managed to choke out. Bane's cold eyes suddenly grew wide, as if he was surprised by what he was doing, and he let go. I dropped to the floor in a heap gasping for air.
"If you try to escape or contact anyone again, I will not hesitate to kill you. Don't mistake my indifference towards you for compassion," Bane said. Then he turned and left me alone in the room, more confused than I had been the whole day.
