VII.

To Want a Thing

John was wringing his hands as he sat at the Commissioner's bedside. Jim Gordon was scanning a bunch of papers with Foley on his other side – he looked anxious.

"You mean to tell me...You abandoned the chase to catch the thieves at the stock exchange to try and catch the Batman?"

He uttered with his gentle voice. Foley pulled at his collar and averted his eyes. The Commissioner's former partner looked like a foolish child beside the dignified – although hospitalised – Commissioner Gordon. Jim waited for Foley to respond without looking up,

"Jim...We had no choice."

Foley explained quietly. John watched carefully as Foley sweated,

"He killed Harvey Dent-"

"And it would have looked good on your résumé, eh? Catching the Bat would have been your crown jewel,"

The Commissioner commented nonchalantly as he peered up and eyed Foley with a hard glare,

"Hell, the Mayor would probably have given you my job."

John saw Foley turn his head away and turn his eyes away from his old friend. Jim was unabashed by Foley's embarrassment and turned to John,

"Tell me, son. Did you let Foley know of what I told you when you fished me out of the outflows?"

Foley's eyes darted over to John and flashed. John took a breath; he did tell Foley and his higher uppers about what the Commissioner had seen when he took to the sewers; an army. An underground army that was being primed for something big dwelt below Gotham's very sidewalks and not one of the pomps high up in the food chain wanted to know about it.

John bobbed his head, unable to lie to the Commissioner. Foley only glared at him harder as Jim Gordon looked over at him and shook his head slowly, disappointment rung in his voice,

"So you haven't searched the sewers like I would have ordered?"

Foley said nothing. The Commissioner sighed and folded the papers that were in his lap and placed them over on his side cabinet and said in an exasperated voice;

"Then you'd best get on that, Foley. Mark my words there's something brewing beneath our feet and if we don't crush whatever's going to spew out of those sewers; we'd better pray the Batman's around when Bane surfaces leading the charge."


The confine of Lily's warm prison was too much for her today. Kicking her legs free of a thin blanket, she thrashed around on her bedding; sweat trickling down her back, her legs all the way down her neck. She closed her eyes and revelled in this sweltering ecstasy. The padding under her slight back was soaked with her sweat; the heat of her body radiating down through the thick mattress. Her hair was slicked back, she had no care for it and let it tumble down the side like a dark waterfall of whisky spilled in drunken slumber, intoxicated as she was with the sheer warmth of herself in that moment. Smothering, it almost choked her; literally she was unable to breathe and a sharp pang of pain exploded in her chest. Lily's eyes snapped open,

Wave upon wave of pain washed over her torso. It was so much so that she thought that it was the end for her, she couldn't pull air into her deprived lungs; her fingers were blue, her knees locked up; she was lying on her side coughing, whooping and hacking as she tried to contain her body's convulses. It was difficult; she could hear people's growing annoyance with her noise. The clicking of tongues made her get up from her wonderful sleep and throw herself out into the vast chamber that everyone spent most of their time in.

Spluttering into her dirty jacket's sleeve, Lily leaned on the railing overlooking the outflow that Jim Gordon had used to give Bane the slip. Her mind began to wander, hazily and dreamily; the titanic complex was silent and muted, the only sound being the subway system rattling and rumbling somewhere far off, in another dark corner of Gotham and the constant rushing water. Lily thought of escaping the sewers and slipping down that watery shoot and taking her chances; Bane knew she thought this, Lily reckoned. He'd watch her during the day, he'd watch her as she helped out, but he'd never let her see him watching her. It was understandable; she didn't let him see her scoping him out either. Although, she was certain that he knew she peered at him curiously.

He'd been absent from their underground movement for the last few days however, Lily had missed the massive man straight away. His presence within his militia of mercenaries was both a comfort to them and an ominous reminder; they worked under a silent and invisible lash, and if they did not come up with results, they knew they would be broken in two, coldly and with absolutely no remorse. Bane was no such a man to be trifled with, Lily knew.

Her eyes hooded she leaned ever more further over the railing and wondered what it would be like to be on a boat; Lily had never been on one and thought it must have been wonderful; free, no one could get to you out at sea; alone in the blue. She sighed and rested her head on her hands and closed her drooping eyelids and felt herself begin to nod off to sleep She didn't know how much time had gone by before her eyes cracked open. She was lying back on the firm, chilly ground looking up at that high ceiling she had come to recognise as her new sky, the rivets and pillars unattractive clouds in a black atmosphere.

"First frozen alleyways, and now railings overlooking fast-flowing water."

Lily rolled over and stared at Bane. He was facing her, sitting on an ammunition box, his eyes intent on her and his mask foreboding in the foreground of her vision, in his hands hung a simple plastic carrier bag – what its contents were, Lily knew not.

"I asked you to think, which was obscure." He said ponderously, almost to himself.

Lily frowned,

"I meant take consideration for your actions, not think up new ways to kill yourself."

"What? No, I wasn't..." Lily stuttered for words, getting to her feet stiffly.

Bane watched her get up silently, broodingly. Lily shifted her weight; she hadn't meant to fall asleep at the railing, nor had she intended for anyone to find her about to plummet into the water completely dumb and unawares. Lily's hazel eyes slid away from Bane and she pulled her jacket over her shoulder. Bane regarded her as she did this, watched carefully as she coughed again; turning away from him. He observed as she sobered and came closer, tentatively like a squirrel;

"I took the liberty," He commented, throwing the bag at her.

Stiff fingers meant Lily couldn't catch it. It was a bad moment for them both then, she didn't think Bane had meant for it to fall ungracefully to her feet. He shifted but made no move to retrieve the bag; Lily was likewise, she eyed the bag at her ankles and cocked an eyebrow grandly,

"W-what's this?"

The built man shrugged curtly, his eyes never leaving her;

"You're unwell. That should help quell the fire in your chest. The smart in your bones."

"Oh?" She raised her eyebrows, "Thank you...I mean, thanks."

Still she didn't move to pick up the bag. One of Bane's hands hung languidly down in-between his muscled legs; Lily merely started at him, waiting for that weird mechanical rasp. She bit back a gasp as he got to his feet, his shoulders squared. He impinged upon her, looking down in his dismissive sort of way; Lily didn't back away, she stood her ground; cold in her thin-soled shoes, a shivering tiny specimen of someone, barely even a person, but Bane looked at her now as if she might be more. As if she might find her calling before Gotham's rapture.

The other mercenaries were beginning to come out of their little tents; rolling up their bedding and strapping their guns to their backs. Upon realising Bane staring down at the small girl, tiny in comparison to the Olympic mass that was Bane and his authority, they watched rapt as the mammoth sized up the mouse. She blinked as he came right up in front of her; the last time she remembered them being as close was the night he dragged her from the coldness of the alleyway and opened to her; a new portal of freezing.

Two people eyeing each other, one cold on the outside but warm; dreams of warmth and intimacy radiated from the small while on the other hand; warm on the outside, cold as ice on the inside, both pained both perceived with some level of disgust by the people around them.

Bane, for his brutality; the fact that brutality came so easily to him, his ability to break, to destroy. Lillian, because she was frail, soft and delicate all too much a woman to be living rough and sleeping in dank corners under doorposts, blanketed by the snow and shunned by the norms who all saw her as a failure, but that was up above; this was down below, where more wilder and darker things roamed than those conventional fools could ever imagine and looking upon Bane in all his brutish glory, towering far above her, she felt that maybe she could bring him down, like a lion brings down an elephant and once him; who else might she bring down in her ambition? What else could she bring down?

That's when she realised then the very depths of her desire to break all to her own will. Her eyes still locked with Bane's she thought what she might have to do to earn his respect. Then, peeking down between them, just like the hammer, the bag was completely domestic, totally ordinary; full of ordinary things. She bent her protesting knees and fetched the bag from the ground at both their feet and glanced up at him, her eyes dark and confident.

"Well done."

Was all Bane said before retreating into the darkness of his own quarters. Lily watched him leave, his swagger was not exaggerated; the alpha does not need to preen, it is always known who rules the roost and even though she seemed to have passed his little test, she was still nothing compared to him by way of sheer power. Lillian felt a deep and resounding feeling of jealousy and discovered to her horror that she hated him for that power he possessed.