Chapter Four: Protecting The Cub

Her name is Victoria Anne Reid.

Smash!

She loves the color pink.

Wham!

Her favorite toy is Bluey the Bear.

Wham!

She loves Sesame Street.

Crunch!

With a strangled sob, she dropped to her knees when the concrete surface finally crumbled into sizeable chunks. Her hands were raw and red from wielding the metal cot frame, and her entire body felt as though it had been pulled through a wringer. Bane hadn't been to see her in hours, maybe days, seeing as time was elastic and forgettable down here. Sarah's hands trembled as she picked up the chunk of concrete, clutching the jagged edge in her hands. The bed had been bolted to the floor, but with some inner strength, she had managed pried it from the floor and lift it up perhaps four inches. It wasn't far for the heavy frame to fall, but Sarah doubted she could have lifted it any higher – the bed weighed nearly as much as she did, and her shaking arms were feeling the strain. Deep red welts had cut into her fingers from slamming the frame into the concrete, but finally, she had something she could use.

A weapon.

It wasn't much – just a piece of concrete shard, maybe four inches long, an inch thick, give or take. But it was enough. Her goal was the mask; her whole plan hinged on that it was used for more than just intimidation, and he actually needed it to survive. She had no way of knowing this, but it was a hope. And that was more than she had had for months. Sarah combed her brown hair out of her eyes and swallowed. Her body was pouring sweat, and she was tempted to run the tub and take a cold bath, except she knew that in a few hours she would be stiff, cold, and aching all over again. Now that she had her 'weapon', she was in business. She rubbed the concrete dust out of her eyes and went to crouch behind the door, her entire body feeling shaky with fear and adrenaline, but the pain was already beginning to settle in.

He would come see her today. She hoped.

Crouching behind the door, Sarah gritted her teeth and waited tensely for her quarry to walk into her feeble trap.

My daughter's name is Victoria Anne Reid. She was born on October ninth, and her first word was 'Mommy'. She loves her pink overalls and Big Bird. I'm her mother, and I'm going to get her out of here.

Bane didn't regret many things. But if there was one thing which he rarely did, it was underestimate something. Normally, he overestimated everything, prepared for everything and surprised by nothing. But he regretted underestimating the strength of a woman's ferocity when separated from her child.

He opened the door with no specific plans in mind – maybe some more psychological intimidation, more taunting, perhaps a threat or two – but he did have a packet of cookies in his pocket, and he planned to feed her again. She was probably half crazy by this time, and he fully expected her to be in the corner, worn out from her screaming fits. His men had reported that she had been slamming against something all day, although it had petered off later in the afternoon. This should have tipped him off, but for some reason he underestimated her. He forgot how quickly a woman's mind broke down to the essential level, with one animalistic goal in mind; to find and protect her offspring.

She blindsided him, something hard broke into his field of vision and crushed against his mask. He had one still shot of her, hair wild, eyes savage, before she drew back and struck him again. His hand was already on her throat and squeezing down hard, but the pain attacked him from all angles, ripping up the scars across his back, sending tears through his vision, and he roared in pain. He cradled his head, every inch of his face on fire, and tried to think past the pain. It felt as though thin metal rods were stabbing him in the face, the prickling pain slicing through everything. Whether he had snapped or neck or released her he didn't know, but he hear the fizzing, hissing noise of his precious Venom escaping into the air.

Sarah smelled something dank, medicinal and sharp, like alcohol with a coat of mold, and landed on her feet. Bane had seized her neck and actually dragged her to face level, lifting her off the ground, but by this time he was already clawing at the mask, desperate to reconnect his precious tubes. Her throat began to swell, but once she started scrambling away from him, one huge booted foot struck her in the lower back, right against her kidneys, and everything went black. Her hearing popped, whined, disappeared and then emerged again from the end of a tunnel – breath was hard to catch. She heard his breathing steadying, and she knew that if she didn't move right this instant he would bring that boot down again and crush her like an ant.

He cleared his vision of stars once his Venom began to kick back in, and after a few calming inhales of his toxin, he saw her mane of hair disappear around the corner. She was heading straight to his men, into the thicket of them, and she wouldn't last long out there. Bane crossed the hallway in two long steps, and stood in the doorway, watching silently as his heartbeat began to calm.

She was fighting her way through the crowd, her small jagged weapon gone from her hands, but she was bestial without any weapons at all. Nails, teeth, elbows, legs, any aspect of her body were used as a weapon. But she was thin and starved, and his men were growing fat off the land he had given them. Obviously, they didn't know who she was, but if she was running away and screaming then she was something to play with.

"Where is she?" Sarah screamed, smashing the nose of one of his soldiers. "Give me back my daughter, you son of a bitch! You give me back my daughter!"

He let the men have her for nearly a minute, let her clothes be torn from her body, and let the blows start raining down on her. If he left her there, she would be abused and torn limb from limb. His men were vicious and bored, the worst kind of dogs to let laze about the place, and they were evidently enjoying their fun.

Bane couldn't believe himself. He had been sloppy, slow, and careless. A pathetic woman alone in a cell had been able to overpower him – her determination to reach her daughter was no excuse. He was at fault, he had been the one who ignored her manipulation, pushed her too far too soon, and now she had snapped. It took men weeks to reach this point, the point when they had nothing to lose, but he realized that Sarah had been at rock-bottom ever since she had been separated from her daughter. His hand raised to touch the bent silver bracket which she had smashed with her concrete weapon – she knew his weakness somehow, had known something even his men didn't know, and he didn't know how she became privy to this knowledge.

They were going to kill her. She could feel the hands, tearing, wrenching at her clothing and exposing her to the frigid air. A noose was around her neck, and she heard the catcalls and deranged screams. Fine, some warped part of her mind jubilated. Better she die fighting for her daughter then waste away doing nothing. She couldn't draw breath to scream, to utter a word – someone was yanking the noose, delighting in her constricted features and arched back. Hands yanked her legs apart, and were rewarded with weak, ineffective kicks.

The very moment – the exact second – she stopped caring about her daughter and began fearing for her own life, she blacked out.

Seconds later she realized she had hit the floor, and her brief unconsciousness was over. Sarah was dropped, backed away from, and she lay there struggling to breath. Already a puffy line of bruises were rising around her neck, and her throat felt swollen to the size of a pinprick. Her whole body convulsed as she tried to stand, and dragged herself to her knees.

"She is not to be touched."

It was Bane.

He crunched the fallen blade of a knife beneath one boot, snapping it cleanly in two, and bent towards her. Her features, framed with shaggy brunette hair, looked up at him with thick weakness and downright stupidity, dazed after her brush with death. Bane seized a fistful of her hair and dragged her to her knees; she tried to scream, both hands scrabbling at his iron fist, but he shook her harshly. "I will only say this once, my brothers," Bane boomed to his soldiers, "Those I claim for my own shall stay my own. If you see her again without my presence, you have my permission to do with her as you like. I shall not stop you."

Bane twisted her hair a little tighter as he dragged her further upwards, showing his taut prize to his men. "But today, my brothers, she is my property. I will not explain what will befall the man who attempts to claim my property."

He dropped her unmercifully, letting her already bruised body strike the floor. She twitched, and lay shivering at his feet like a thoroughly beaten dog. Bane could sense her rising anger pushing through her despair and pain – any moment now, and she would attempt to rise again. He kicked her once, not holding anything back, and the fight went out of her as she curled in a breathless ball.

Her vision swam in black stars, and then she focused on trying to breathe. Sarah could barely understand what was happening – he was claiming her? She glared up at him with as much anger as she could muster, and spat, "Give me Tori."

Bane looked down at her, and his hand was around her throat again in a moment. As he pulled her to his level, her frantic mind flew apart. How had she been able to overpower this man? Was his mask that much of a weakness? Two blows with a rock and she could slip past him? He was a monster, corded with muscle and as big as the universe. His eyes crowded into her mind and she knew nothing else. "In good time," He murmured, and she was set back down on the floor.

She didn't need an invitation to follow him, and after a split second of hesitation, she did so, limping on her twisted ankle.

Almost as soon as she was in his room, she saw Tori sitting on the bed. The ragged breath she drew was a sob of joy, and she tried to squeeze past Bane in order to reach her child.

He had other ideas.

Bane snatched her by the arm, twisting both of her wrists behind her back, and she heard the grating yank of a zip tie circling her wrists. "Tori!" Sarah cried, but a scrap of her own shirt was stuffed into her mouth. Bane tossed her on the bed with no preamble, and ignored her feeble, flailing attempts to reach her daughter. Bane scooped up the young girl and nearly threw her out of the room, earning a muffled, broken shriek from the mother. Tori wriggled, half asleep, and mumbled, "Mommy?" before Bane slammed the door.

Underestimated or not, she would still be punished.

A/N: I owe you guy an apology. What with riding the success of the last chapter, what with all the wonderful, truly inspiring reviews, I feel like this chapter is a disappointment. There were a lot of emotions I wanted to convey and a lot more things I wanted to include, but unfortunately I lost the first draft of this chapter. I know most of you don't know my writing process, but that was really crippling for this chapter's emotions. Usually I'm better if I bang it out in one shot, and when I had to rewrite this, I feel like some of the zip was lost. So again, I'm very sorry, but the more I try to edit and rewrite the worse it would come out. Hopefully, I can include some better emotions in the next chapter, and it'll certainly be a doozy chapter to write, with lots of Bane + Tori moments. And hopefully we'll be able to explore the girls' background a little more.

I also feel like Bane isn't terribly IC. This is a big problem for me, seeing as I wrote this story with the intention of giving him a little bit of his BAMF'ery back, when really I'm making him into this guy who can get overpowered by a starving mother. I'm really sorry, but an escape attempt had to be made, and Bane had to be at fault somehow – I hope to make it clearer in later chapters. This is just the beginning, that's my only excuse, and I really, really hope to either rewrite this, or rectify it somehow. :(