A/N Thanks again and again for the response you guys, I think I'll just blabber on with my gratitude every chapter ;D
Short reference to Dickens in this, if you saw Bane knitting in the movie, you know why ;)
Hope you enjoy! Things start to pick up in a crazy way after this chapter, so I hope you stay tuned. For those wondering about inmate #3, don't worry, questions will be answered and the reveal is coming soon. Please remember to review! I love feedback and questions. :D
THREE
Cell #1 – Bane
When Cebjan places his folding chair outside the door to Bane's cell, he wonders if he should apologize for their rather heated discussion last week. As he sits down, however, he notices that the man's mind is preoccupied with something. Bane sits, a thread of tension running through his body, and he doesn't look up at Cebjan.
"Good morning, Bane." Cebjan folds his legs and rests his hands patiently in his lap. Bane still doesn't acknowledge him, sitting on his cot with his mind elsewhere. After being ignored for a minute, Cebjan reaches for one of his files and begins to make notes. He knows how to be patient.
Another five minutes passes before he hears the rasp of the mask and the slightly garbled, yet cultured, voice come from within. "You do not write your notes in English."
Cebjan cannot hide his surprise.
Bane still doesn't look at him. "The English alphabet is comprised of a majority of long dashes, half-curves, and a few tell-tale downward loops. The words in most common use have our writing hands move in a tell-tale fashion. But you use too many short, sideways dashes..."
Bane leans back, folding his hands behind his head as he settles against the wall to his cell. He finally looks into Cebjan's eyes. "I thought that perhaps you were writing your notes in Cyrillic, as per your background, but that is a language far more florid than English...though your hand moves in a fluid manner, it does not describe the various accents used in that language either. Indulge me, Nikolaj, what language do you use?"
Cebjan is impressed, though he tries not to show it. With a secretive smile on his lips, he softly says, "Latin."
"Latin?" Bane looks at him sharply, his voice heavy with suspicion. "I see."
"You don't believe me, Bane?"
"I thought perhaps Farsi."
Cebjan's eyebrows lift up again, betraying his surprise, but he mildly shakes his head. He considers Bane for a moment, before his pen sketches across his page again, and Bane watches intrigued. He is sure it is not Latin.
Finally, the masked terrorist comes to his true intent. "I want books, Nikolaj. I am starved of reading material in here. And I want to speak to James Gordon."
Cebjan puts his pen down, unsure of whether to feel suspicious. It is an unusual request. "Why would you want to speak to the police commissioner?"
"That is none of your concern."
Cebjan wonders if he should press the matter, but decides against it. After their conversation last week, he is lucky Bane is speaking to him cordially at all rather than antagonizing him. He nods amiably. "What kind of books do you want?"
Bane has already lost interest in him, staring up at the ceiling. "Whatever you think I'll find interesting."
Sensing a dismissal, Cebjan gathers his notes and gets up.
Cell #2 – Dr. Jonathan Crane
"The guards tell me you haven't been eating, Doctor Crane. You need to try or you'll make yourself sick."
Crane lies huddled on the floor, his eyes glassy and his face a still mask. Softly, ever so softly, he says, "Doctor Crane isn't in right now."
"Who am I speaking to?" Cebjan presses. Crane has been like this for over a week.
Crane ignores him, his mind tuning out. He looks at Cebjan as if the doctor were part of the wall.
"You said the scarecrow was coming soon. What will happen when he does?"
Crane looks at him now, with those large, watery blue eyes. "Then God help us all."
Bane notes with a hint of amusement that none the books they have given him are in anyway politically overt. He wonders what poor library they rummaged to bring him this eclectic, and somewhat pitiful collection. A bible, a rather dry biography on the author Charles Dickens (though none of the man's own writings), a few short comedic French plays, strangely a manual on the manufacture of Swiss watches, a slim volume of poetry from the Middle East, an anthology of Nordic mythology and a copy of Young Werthe in its original German.
He flips open the Middle Eastern poetry first and realizes it is not Arabic in nature, but actually written in an archaic form of Sanskrit that he is unfamiliar with. He turns to Goethe's novel instead, and settles onto his cot.
At the very least, the books help pass the day, and he only occasionally glances at Crane's cell. The man has slipped into near complete catatonia, and Bane can only guess as to why.
When night falls and the lights in the corridor shutter out in accordance to a predetermined schedule, Bane carefully folds the corner of a page and closes his book. He hears a mechanical whirr, the skid of rubber on concrete, and looks up to see the chair turning in his direction.
The chair then does something completely new...it extends a pale, withered hand towards him, fingertips reaching just short of the bars.
Only its eyes can be seen through the slit in the wrappings around its face, the eyes still too dark to be able to discern its thoughts. Bane looks cautiously to the pile of books on his cots and then to the chair. It nods slightly.
Standing up to his full, impressive height, Bane collects the books into one large hand and walks over to the other cell. He holds them out just short of the bars.
It points to the slim volume of poetry. Curious, Bane picks it up, glancing at its cover, and then passes it to the other cell.
The chair takes it from him, the dark holes where its eyes are locking with his, before its claw-like hand skitters to the control stick of the chair and whirls away from him.
Bane sits back down on his cot and watches as the chair reads.
Cell #2 – Dr. Jonathan Crane
Crane can hear the flutter of wings, dark wings, and buries his head deeper into his arm. He moans softly to himself and closes his eyes because he knows the crows will want to eat them.
His cell stinks. The stink rises from his body and he knows the guards will come tomorrow with the hose to blast water onto him, punishment for not taking care of himself. It doesn't matter, whatever they do won't clean him.
Bane, Big Bane, has already complained a few times every time Crane has wet himself, despairing that the world has gone to hell if the terrorist is the model of civility. But they don't understand – she...she never relieves herself, never eats, never does anything normal. Crane is sure that the big brute has already noticed this, but he hasn't asked the right question.
Why should she, when she has nothing to evacuate?
And then what does that make her?
He sees, he sees so clearly now, and he often strokes his own face in the delirious hope that if he touches it enough he'll feel rough burlap instead of his own skin.
Scarecrow...scarecrow...come soon...fly away...
"I thought you were the scarecrow, Jonny. The manifestation of your psychosis."
He didn't realize he had said anything out loud. Crane looks weakly at Bane and shakes his head, still trembling on the ground. "I thought so too...but I was wrong."
Cell #3
The chair's fingers skim over the dry, yellowed pages of the book of poetry, its eyes seeing the calligraphy better in the darkness. It reads, and it knows the day is coming soon.
Cell #1 – Bane
Bane sits on the floor, and even sitting he almost reaches to Cebjan's shoulder. Cebjan checks the two canisters on either side of Bane's mask, and then per usual taps the man on the shoulder to let him know his examination is done.
"They'll need replacing in about two days, I'll make an earlier visit for that."
Bane rises gracefully to his feet. "Did you have any luck with the Commissioner's office?"
Cebjan sets up his folding chair. "Commissioner Gordon will meet with you next week. He might arrive sooner if he could determine if your reasons were urgent."
Bane merely shakes a finger at him in a flippant manner, as if he were scolding a naughty child. Crane suddenly wheezes in his cell, catching them both off guard.
His tremulous voice breaks in the dank air. "I know why the masked man wants to see the police officer...it's obvious...I don't know why I'm the only one who sees it."
Cebjan turns, curious, to see Crane, still lying in his usual position on the floor. Bane glares at the little man. He's sure Crane is mad, but of late he's been annoyingly correct in his insights.
Crane, usually intimidated by Bane, doesn't seem to notice the animosity directed towards him. He isn't even looking at Cebjan who is giving him an encouraging smile. Instead he is staring at the chair in cell number Three. "The masked man wants to know why she's here. Who she is. What she did to come here."
Crane's eyes finally look to Cebjan, and as he has never done before, settles directly into Cebjan's gaze. "Because you won't tell him. But you know why."
Cebjan looks mildly to Bane, who for once is standing right by the bars of his cell, his massive arms folded across his chest. "Is this true, Bane?"
Bane leans forward, the tubes of his mask clicking against the metal bars as he stares down the little man. There is no humour, contemptuous or otherwise, dancing in his eyes now. They are merely filled with suspicion and a cold anger. "Are the words of the madman true? Have you been deceiving me, Nikolaj? I am sure you must realize I am a man not to idly anger."
Cebjan takes his chair and folds it, tucking it under his arm. His expression is still mild, but Bane sees the steel in the doctor's eyes...the danger he had seen a flash of before. "Am I supposed to feel threatened by that, Bane?"
Despite his new revelations of their mild doctor, Bane did not wind up in this prison after destroying most of Gotham for being a man easily intimidated. He tilts his head to the right, the rasp of his mask and the sour smell of the venom reaching through the bars. "I may stand on the wrong side of the bars...but I am a pupil of confinement. There is no prison that can truly hold me."
The doctor takes a step back, and inwardly Bane feels a small flicker of pleasure in scaring the other man. But this feeling instantly dies out when Cebjan says something he would never have expected in a million years. The doctor looks at him, his eyes smiling, and says, "Really? I thought you fell."
Bane feels as if someone has suddenly let off an explosion, his ears ringing. No one knows of the Pit...only Bruce Wayne because he threw him down into that dark hell. But that part of his past had remained a secret to the rest of the world.
"Who are you, Nikolaj?"
Cebjan is already walking down the corridor, ignoring him. He stands in front of the metal door, waiting for the electronic locks to disengage. He says quietly, so only Bane can just make out what he says, "I am a man who does not hide behind a false name."
Bane watches him go, thunderstruck.
The doctor leaves, the metal doors sliding shut again and leaving an empty clang to echo in the corridor. Bane's hand curls around one of the bars of his cell and grips tight, testing its strength. He is smart enough to know where there is no exit.
"Crane...do you know who that man is?"
Crane pushes his hair out of his eyes and a smile stretches his lips, always on the verge of breaking. "Yes."
"Who is he then?"
Crane pushes a finger to his lips, his eyes dancing and his head shaking to and fro. "I can't spoil the surprise."
Bane shakes the bars to his cell in a rage, the whole corridor seeming to shake as he curses the mad man, now hooting and laughing in his cell with abandon.
Cell #2 – Dr. Jonathan Crane
Crane works feverishly, now that it is nightfall. He slips out of the prison uniform and his fingers hunt for the seams that hold it together. Once he feels the ridge of thread and cloth, he brings it to his mouth and with sharp teeth grit the material together, shearing and worrying at the cloth.
It is when he begins ripping up the garment, the sound grating in the night air, that he hears the brute's breathing change. As expected, Bane's voice, slightly weary, pierces through the night air.
"For goodness' sake man, put your clothes back on."
Crane squats, huddled like an imp in the darkness. He looks at Bane for a moment, decides it's a waste of his time, and goes back to ripping up his uniform.
"Crane, what on earth are you doing?"
Crane takes a long strip of the uniform and examines it, holding it up in the darkness close to his face so he can see it. He decides it will not do and tosses it aside, rummaging for a fresh piece.
Bane's voice is impatient now. "You've been rude enough to wake me so have the courtesy to answer me, you mad wretch."
Crane finds a suitable piece and places it against his mouth. The rough texture, swaddling his lips, guarding his face feels so good he hums happily and decides to humour the brute. "I'm making a mask."
"Is that what you'd call it?" There is a momentary silence before despite himself, Bane asks, "Why?"
"I need it. Soon."
Crane can hear the suspicion in his voice. "What's happening soon?"
Crane merely shakes his head fervently, his hair flopping about, and starts tying the rags around his face. His laughter, bubbling up like a waterfall, is muffled by the crude wrappings about his face and he hugs his arms to himself in glee.
The wing is silent for the rest of the night.