Hi! First, I apologize for the delay of this chapter. I just wanted to make sure it was a good quality chapter before I posted it. So thanks for all the new follows, favorites and reviews! You guys are awesome and really encouraging! Thanks!

So, as usual, I don't own Batman or anything Nolan-verse. I just own Lucy.

And before I give you permission to enjoy this chapter, I am dedicating this to ZabuzasGirl for being so damn patient with me and even PMing me about the progress of the chapter! Thank you!

Enjoy!

Chapter 8:

Drip.

Drop.

Drip.

Drip.

The steady, rhythmic pitter patter continued on faintly as Lucy finally started to come to. Her eyelids lazily slid open and all Lucy saw were dark, blurry shapes. Lucy thought she was dreaming, either that or she's woken up before John's alarm rang and it was too early in the morning for the sun to be shining. With that in mind, she was about to close her eyes again when her cheek was suddenly lightly struck by something cold and wet. Immediately, she blindly reached up with her hand and swiped it across her cheek. Lucy cracked her eyes open again and squinted at her fingertips, quickly realizing they were glistening with water.

Water? What in the world? Lucy drowsily thought to herself before another cold, heavier drop of water landed on her head.

Lucy jolted up into a sitting position and instantly regretted moving too fast. Her head started to throb like someone had dropped a cast-iron pan on her head, and her eyesight was incredibly bleary. She groaned a bit and lifted a hand to her head, lightly pressing her palm down to suppress the throbbing. When she drew her hand away, she found it wet again, but not with water.

Lucy rubbed her fingertips together and brought them closer to her eyes, finding a deep, vivid red spreading itself on the pads of her fingers. As she looked closer, Lucy felt a lurch in her stomach.

Is…is that blood? Lucy thought, her thoughts making a scramble for reasonable explanation. Why am I—Wait.

Lucy stopped short in her train of thought, as realization settled in. Her drowsiness instantly disappeared and her eyes shot wide open, taking in her unfamiliar surroundings. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, but it didn't take long for Lucy to realize everything was completely off.

She wasn't on the pull-out couch, but rather she was sitting on a lumpy mattress on a creaky, rusted metal bed frame. A rough, brown blanket sat tangled on her legs and her very own satchel acted as her pillow, the dried blood stains on its canvas surface confirming that. When she looked around her, she didn't see their quaint little living room. But in its place was a murky, dank concrete-walled space with a caddy corner filled with computers and TVs stacked on top one another, each flashing their own images and information. She could hear the buzzing coming from the screens, but as she listened closer, she could hear more: sounds of rushing water that mixed in with the sounds of deep, male voices in conversation. Following the trail of sounds, Lucy found herself looking out from the small creaking bed into a huge, circular space where a waterfall was crashing out of an opening near the ceiling.

Lucy craned her neck to see more, but couldn't. So slowly and cautiously, Lucy untangled her legs from the sheets and got up from the bed. Her legs felt wobbly and weak but she was still able to walk herself over to the rails just a few feet from her. She grasped the damp metal railing in her hands and hesitantly looked over, unsure of what she was about to find; and what she found, she was certainly unprepared for.

Below her, upon levels and levels of dirty concrete walls and floors, men of all adult ages were scattered about, guns slung across their bodies as they worked on a variety of jobs Lucy knew you would never see on the streets of Gotham. Lucy leaned further over the rail and saw that majority of the men were either down below drilling and pouring new concrete across the foundations or some were scaling the tall support beams and hooking wires and mysterious small boxes onto the circumference of the domed ceiling.

She leaned back over the railing and rubbed her eyes in complete confusion. Lucy tried jogging her memory but came up empty handed. Frustrated, she sighed deeply and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to think harder because none of this made sense to her at the moment, and she desperately wanted to make sense of things. But as soon as the cloudiness separated in her head, everything started to rush back to her.

The stock market.

The highway chase.

The police.

Batman.

Bane.

Lucy let out a ragged breath as the recollections overwhelmed her mind. Yesterday wasn't some nightmare stemming from too many cups of coffee and her wild imagination. No. Yesterday was real. However, the last thing Lucy was able to recall was Bane driving them into that reeking entry way and everything after that goes fuzzy. But despite the fact Lucy forgot how she got here in the first place, she felt like she had a very clear idea of where 'here' was.

The sewers.

"I see you've awakened." An all too familiar mechanical voice hissed closely from behind Lucy.

Lucy felt her pulse jump in her veins and quickly pressed a hand to her chest to calm herself down as she turned to face the source of the voice. Out of the darkness, stepped the last piece of proof to Lucy that this was all indeed very much reality. Bane had long abandoned the jumpsuit and now donned a thick plated vest over his chest and a long, brown sheepskin-lined trench coat on top. Lucy much preferred the jumpsuit, at least then it only left one intimidating feature to the eyes—his mask. Now, everything else was out for show, emphasized and even more menacing than before. Lucy tensed and unconsciously pressed herself against the rails as Bane stepped further into the dim, artificial light of the sewers.

"Do not worry, little one. The disorientation will settle…eventually." Bane said, when Lucy's renewed bewilderment at his appearance put her at a momentary loss for words.

"Disorientation? I-I don't remember…" Lucy stopped mid-sentence, as she heard the foreign hoarseness in her voice for the first time since she had awoken. She felt a tickle in her dry throat and coughed a bit.

"Understandable." Bane said, referring to her unfinished sentence. "Regrettably, my men had no grasp on the concept of gentleness, and consequently, left you unconscious and bleeding from your head when they carried you here."

Her coughing subsided then and her hand automatically went to touch her throbbing head. She lightly prodded at the matted hair and dried blood, while she considered Bane's explanation. It was reasonable, as it filled in the cracks of her memory, but Lucy had strong doubts that a man of Bane's stature had any grasp on gentleness any better than he claimed his men did; and if she followed that same notion, Lucy suspected the possibility that perhaps Bane was the true cause of her injury.

"Injuring you is not my intention, little one." Bane suddenly said, as if he had read her mind, though his words were anything but comforting to Lucy.

She glanced dubiously at the massive man in front of her. Then what is your intention?

"After all, that would be a terrible impression to make bringing you into our 'humble home'."

Lucy looked around at the grimy, damp surroundings with uncertainty. "Here?"

"Ah, yes. Quite the sight, isn't it." Bane said, strangely conversational, as he moved to stand beside her in front of the rails. Lucy fought the urge to shy away from his side. Instead, she gave a wary sidelong glance, as he hooked his thumbs into his vest and slowly gave a surveying look to the floors and workings below. "Do you feel satisfied, now?"

Lucy, taken back at the sudden unusual question, looked up at him. "E-Excuse me?"

Bane didn't return her look, but continued to look down at his men. "One would think that every curious minded writer needs proof to go along with their work." At this, he withdrew a very familiar leather covered journal from the inside of his jacket and held it up for her to see.

Lucy's eyes went wide and a soft gasp tumbled from her lips as her arm involuntarily reached out for the object on its own accord. But Bane's reflexes were much faster than Lucy had anticipated and he easily caught her wrist in his free hand, without so much a look in her direction.

"Hastiness will get you nothing here, little one." He said, as if he were chastising her like a child.

Bane let go of her wrist and Lucy let it limply drop to her side, but still managed to nurse it with her other hand. In her head, Lucy was indignantly contesting the hastiness remark. She was hardly ever hasty, but her subconscious had reacted before she could slap a lid on it; and unbeknownst to Lucy, Bane was aware of this, construing from her simple movement that her attachment to the journal was a little more than skin deep.

Lucy didn't say a word in response. If her accidental hastiness didn't get her anything, then what would questions and backtalk do for her? She watched in painful yearning as Bane simply took her journal and slipped back into his coat.

"You will learn, Miss Blake," Lucy froze at hearing her surname spoken by Bane, his mask making an ominous hiss as he did so, "You will learn that there are many things required of a soul like yourself to survive in the existing conditions, both here and in your precious Gotham. You will learn to be…" He finally turned to her then, a gleam appearing in his eye as he found the right word. "Adaptable."

Lucy shivered as he uttered that last word. She didn't know what to make of what he said, all of his words as equally ambiguous as they were unnerving. It was like a revisit to the stock market and like then, it continued to bother Lucy that she was incapable of figuring this out.

"Why adaptable?" Lucy asked, having carefully picked her two words carefully as she decided to finally test the waters of conversing with this man. But she discovered that gave her nothing as well, when Bane brushed off her question and simply stated something else far from the original subject.

"You will see. For now, little one, you must clean yourself up and find something more suitable to wear."

He lifted one of his huge hands and flicked his fingers in a beckoning gesture. Some shuffling footsteps were heard behind Lucy and she briefly wondered how long that person had been standing there. She turned around and came face to face with a young man, perhaps her own age, looking down at her. Lucy narrowed her eyes in an instant, realizing there was something familiar in his shaggy dark hair and eyes yet she could not put a finger on it. Plus, the dim lighting was doing nothing to help distinguish anything either. As her eyes trailed up to his shaded face, Lucy quickly realized that he was staring down at her in a similar fashion. They held one another's gaze for another short moment, before they were forced to drop the staring when Bane's voice cut into the air between them.

"You will take Miss Blake to the bathroom and back here straightaway. You are not to take her anywhere else and you are to stay at the door till she is finished. Ensure that she does not return here bloodied and unconscious. Understood?"

The young guard gave a curt nod to his superior, but Bane had already turned his back to them, facing the rails again, looking at his army down below. He waved his hand in a consenting manner that bid them with silent permission to leave.

They left Bane and perhaps the brightest area of the sewers to move into a darker, narrow hallway. Both were starkly quiet the whole way, the only sounds in the air coming from the distant echoing of Bane's men at work and the sloshing their feet made as they walked down the sewers wet floors. Soon, at the end of the hallway, they arrived at a stained, white-washed door that wasn't hanging quite straight on its hinges. It took a second for the young man to jiggle the knob around and get the door open, and when he finally did, Lucy took the single nod of his head as the invitation to go inside. Hesitantly, she walked in and immediately scrunched up her nose as she took in the unpromising look of the bathroom: grime-ridden, tiled floors, walls splattered with some grayish black residue, and a single toilet and sink that seemed to be relatively clean—she says that loosely.

As she moved further into the bathroom, the door suddenly swung shut behind her, followed by the sound of a lock sliding into place. Lucy whipped around in an instant and walked back to the door. She peered out of one of the cracks in between the door and the door frame and found the guard posted right outside, doing just as Bane had directed.

They weren't taking any chances. Lucy thought to herself.. But then again, who would take chances with Bane in charge?

With a deep sigh, she moved away from the door and towards the toilet, placing the bundle on top of the toilet seat. Lucy unraveled the bundle and was briefly surprised at the provisions given to her. Inside, there was raggedy, but clean, face towel, one of those tiny hotel-sized bottles of shampoo, a comb that was missing a few of its teeth and what Lucy hoped were mostly clean articles of clothing. They were basic necessities, but even then, she felt like she was being treated more as a guest than what the situation labeled her in actuality.

She shook her head, dispelling those thoughts for the time being and walked over to the sink, almost recoiling as she caught her reflection in the mildew-streaked mirror.

Lucy was-to be completely blunt-a bit of a mess. Her black hair was disheveled and tangled with dried blood. Tilting her head from side to side, she found a dried trail of blood down the side of her dirt-smudged face and prodded around her head till she pinpointed her injury. Thankfully, Lucy discovered that there was only a moderate sized cut on her head, one that would heal on its own and not need any stitches to do so.

"Well, I've had better days." She mumbled to herself, before putting her hand down and reaching for the provided items to get cleaned up.

In a short amount of time, Lucy had washed and wiped her face and hair clean of all blood and dirt, even going as far as untangling her damp tresses with the comb and gathering them into a ponytail. Afterwards, all that was left were the folded articles of clothing still sitting on the toilet seat. Lucy looked down at her own clothes and idly started to rub at the dried stains of her own blood on the collar of her blue shirt, before skimming over the rest of her attire. They didn't look bad as Lucy had thought—stained for the most part, but torn at one or two places, but they certainly weren't in the same state as they were when she left the apartment; and therefore, probably not in the right state of being re-used. But just as she resolved to change her wardrobe and reached for the clothes, a hard knock came down on the door.

"Are you done in there?" The husky voice of the guard came through the door.

Lucy looked over to the door for a moment before replying, "Er…Just a moment…I have to change…"

When silence followed her reply, Lucy assumed he was giving her the time she needed to finish up. So she quickly gathered the clothes provided and stripped out of her own, cringing as she realized she had a sickly bruise forming on her upper arms from the exchange at the stock market.

I knew I'd get a bruise. She shook her head and lightly prodded at the skin of her arm before yanking a navy blue undershirt over her head. It was followed by a loose, long-sleeved black pull over that kept slipping off her shoulders and showing off her slender neck and collar bones no matter how much she adjusted it. A pair of dark cargo pants soon donned her legs and her feet were comfortably still settled in her own boots. But what wasn't exactly as comforting was when she realized just how strangely perfect the pants and undershirt fit. Lucy didn't want to know how they got her size and she doubted any of these men had a size 0 waistline.

Pushing her discomfort to the back of her mind, Lucy glanced at herself in the mirror and deemed herself decent enough. So she gathered her old dirty clothes in her arms and walked over to the door, knocking on it to let the guard know she was finished. The door opened and she stepped out of the room in her new attire. There was brief passing of glances between Lucy and the guard, in which he took in her appearance and she tried once more to remember where she'd seen his face, before he turned away and quickly took Lucy back to Bane.

When they turned the corner, the young guard stood back at the entrance of Bane's alcove and let Lucy walk in on her own, her footsteps suddenly becoming significantly slower and more hesitant. When she looked up, Bane was seated on the edge of the bed Lucy had been sleeping on, his arms propped up on his knees while his fingers turned the pages of her journal. Lucy felt herself go stiff at the sight and concluded that she would never be used to anyone reading her notes after this.

"Ah, there you are." Bane looked up at the quiet shuffling of Lucy's footsteps and took the leather marker, putting it in between the pages of her journal as if it were a book he was going to be reading later. He stood up and walked over to Lucy and placed his hand underneath her chin, tilting her face up towards the light so he could see her refreshed appearance, perhaps the only one he'd get to see down here. "Much better, little one. Much, much better." He observed, sounding pleased.

"Thank you…I suppose." Lucy quietly replied, unsure of anything else to say to him.

At that moment, a few of Bane's good men came into the alcove. At the sight of his men, Bane let go of Lucy's chin and brought her to his side, his arm resting across her shoulders. Lucy agitatedly glanced at the hand on her shoulder for a moment, unable to understand the gesture. It was neither possessive nor restraining. It was—she didn't know what it was. But it was there and it looked immovable.

"Are we prepared to leave, Barsad?" Bane asked.

Leave? Lucy questioned, masking her curiosity as she looked towards the cluster of Bane's men standing before them, each of them looking almost as intimidating and hardened as their leader.

Barsad, whom Lucy quickly recognized, stood at the head of the group and stepped forward.

"Yes, sir, Dagget is on his way back from the board meeting, now." He informed him, Lucy's ears perking up at the name.

"Perfect. Come, we must return to the surface." Bane stated. Without another word, he started past his men and led the way into a different passage with a Lucy still in tow.

"Where…where are we going?" Lucy finally built up the nerve to ask. Bane had not relinquished his hold on her shoulders but continued to lead her alongside him to ensure that she did not fall behind or stumble.

"To your first lesson, little one." Bane answered simply.

"Lesson? On…on what?"

Bane seemed delighted by her question, but said nothing at all.

Oh Lord! Aish! Where is he taking Lucy! What is this first lesson! Why am I writing like this!

LOL

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So if you all would be so kind as to review!:)

Till next time! Bye lovelies!