She Rises by Paradisical815
Featured Song: "Into the Fire" by Thirteen Senses
Chapter Ten: Fire and Ice
"Boss."
Barsad's quiet voice broke through Bane's thoughts and the masked man turned, looking down into his subordinate's vacant eyes. He was a good soldier, smart and loyal almost to a fault, and so Bane didn't care at all that he seemed to be not quite there.
"The men have searched every inch of the part of town where she disappeared. There's no sign of her, and the other two are gone, as well. They've just vanished. Into thin air, it seems."
Annoyance filled him and he did not ask how three teenage girls had managed to elude men who killed and hunted for money. The men who had lost them would be finding out soon enough exactly how pleased he wasn't with them; there was no point in wasting his vitriol on Barsad, who was nothing if not competent. "And the family?"
The look that crossed Barsad's face then was almost impressed behind the vacant stare. "Gone, sir. They disappeared sometime last night, right out from under the guards' nose."
Annoyance gave way to anger and he was careful to control his voice when he spoke next. "And who was stationed outside the house during the time they escaped?"
"Nelson, Adris, and Jaime, sir. They swear that they didn't see anything. They're waiting for you outside. The four who lost the girl's friends are in City Hall."
"Good. I will kill them next." Bane's boots thumped silently against the floor as he moved towards the door, and the anger that coursed through his blood was familiar and strengthening. He didn't let it control him; it was simply a buzz, an internal release of hormones that he did not hesitate to use to his advantage.
The three men were waiting for him out in the hallway, and they all looked up, terrified when he stepped out of the old conference room.
"Sir, I have no idea how it happened, one minute they were just gone-"
"-we were surrounding the place, there was no way they should have been able to get away-"
Bane held up a hand and they fell silent, fear plain on their worn faces. He felt nothing, apart from the buzz of anger, no regret or malice or the weight of any vendetta. What was about to happen was simply something that had to be done.
"Don't be afraid, brothers!" he told them, his voice lilting and light and not reassuring at all.
"You aren't going to kill us?"
"Of course I am," he told them amiably. "But at least it will be quick."
000
The day after she'd tried to kill him, after he'd found her broken and bleeding and weak and he'd felt fire in his blood in place of ice, he'd given five of his men orders to bring in her friends, preferably alive. But he'd underestimated how slippery and how quick these people of Gotham were, and they'd gotten away, and so had her family, melting into the night.
It was extremely impressive, actually, but it was no more than a slight hitch in the overall plan. There was no way out of the city and only so many places to hide; it was just a matter of tightening the net around Kathryn's nearest and dearest. He would find them and he would use them; the girl needed to be controlled.
He had long since learned that there were only two ways to control a person and those were fear and love. Both were powerful; he'd always chosen fear, personally, as it was always easier and much neater. Fear didn't work with her, though; that much was painfully clear. It would keep her in line, up to a point, but she was constantly looking for a way out.
No, with her he had to be more than a menacing figure in the shadows. He had to isolate her and make her dependent on him without trapping her; cornering her would only result in more attempts on his life. He seriously doubted she'd ever succeed, but it was annoying nonetheless. He needed her afraid, but to control her completely, he needed her to love him, too.
He'd heard her thoughts on redemption, on forgiveness, and he knew how good she was. She was the kind of person who needed to believe that everyone was capable of redemption, and Bane knew that, if he gave her a reason to think that he wanted redemption, she would latch onto that and she would do everything in her power to "fix" him. And then it would be laughably easy to drag her down into the darkness with him.
Although, he thought, with a touch of something that might have been regret in a more human man, it will certainly be a shame to put out a light that shines so brightly.
Part of him, very small, very young and hidden very deeply, hoped that she would outlast him. But he doubted it.
000
He returned to the apartment that afternoon to find it empty and checked the time- she had ten minutes, so he pulled the digital pad that monitored her pulse and her movements out of his pocket and sat on the couch, waiting. She was only a few buildings away from the apartment and her heart rate was normal. He put down the pad and he waited, watching the doors that concealed the elevator.
They slid open a few minutes later and she stepped out, her hair pulled back from her cold-reddened face and there were snowflakes melting on her shoulders. Her eyes immediately flashed to Bane and her jaw tightened but she said nothing as she began to shrug out of her jacket. Bane followed her with his eyes, watching the jerky way she moved and how she winced as her shoulders jostled. He waited for her to speak and she didn't disappoint, turning to face him, crossing her arms gingerly across her chest, her face expressionless and her eyes burning.
"I want a gun," she said flatly. He raised an eyebrow.
"And I should give you one because you asked so politely?"
"Because I have no interest in being a damsel in distress every time something goes wrong. I can't fight, not with my shoulders being screwed up, and my wrists too, so I need to be able to defend myself. So I should get a gun."
"While I wait for you to kill me in my sleep?" His voice was conversational but he made sure that his mechanical tone was a warning. She leaned back against the counter, crossing her legs at the ankles, unsmiling, with that burning look still in her eyes.
"If I killed you, I'd be getting my family delivered to me in bags, so that isn't exactly on my to do list. Plus, you saved my life." She did not sound extremely happy about the fact, but her eyes glinted and her soft mouth stayed in that hard line. "So I owe you. If you die any time soon, it won't be my doing."
He took that information and what it meant- that she was the kind of person who paid back her debts- while he studied her face and her body language. He was still slightly impressed that she met his gaze solidly and that she did not flinch away from him, despite her obvious dislike of him. He wondered how their relationship would have been evolving had he not shattered her thin trust by injecting her with the tracker. He wondered; but he knew it did not matter and it did not change what he would do to her over the next few months. He had five months to bend her and to break her.
"Alright," he said, his raw, mechanical voice light. "Would you like a Beretta 92 FS, or a .45 Christensen Arms Model Commander ACP?"
She did not seem to him to be the kind of person who liked knowing less about something than someone she was at a crossroads with, and he was right. Some sort of shutter closed behind her violently blue eyes and her body language tightened, like she was closing in on herself.
"Which- whichever one's better," she said, finally, her voice emotionless, and he unfolded his body, quickly moving over to her in just a few steps, pinning her body against the counter. He made sure to stand so close to her that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes and he was surrounded by the warmth and the smell of her, filtered as it was by the mask; it was intimidating to her and he knew it. She was very short and he was provided an excellent view down her shirt; the silver cross rested in her cleavage. She really was very pretty, if a massive pain in his ass.
"Do you know how to use a gun?" he asked her mildly, his mechanical voice sliding over the words. "What it means to point it at a man and sentence him to his death?"
"I killed two people less than a week ago," she said, and her voice was quiet but steady. "I think I'll get used to it."
"It is of course a possibility; you do certainly seem to have an affinity for death and destruction. Of course, it is also possible that you might even grow to like it." His voice had dropped lower, becoming a growl of mechanical thunder. Her lips parted a little in shock and the shutter behind her eyes opened again and he saw her shock very clearly.
"I will never like it," she said and her voice did shake now, "I hate it, I hate the blood on my hands-"
"Really?" he said, amused. "You seem more traumatized by the damage you've suffered than the damage you've inflicted. It's almost admirable, really, how selfish you are, while you operate under the guise of heroism. My people could take lessons from you."
Her jaw clenched and her eyes flashed with an incredible fire. "Get away from me-"
He leaned down, just slightly, bringing his masked face closer to hers, and when he spoke, his voice was a parody of concern. "Are you uncomfortable, little one?"
"No, I'm angry-"
"-and you are weak. You have nothing to do with all that anger but let it rise higher and hotter inside of you, there is nothing you can accomplish for all your rage. Howexhausting that must be."
He anticipated her movement before she knew what she was going to do, he recognized it in the tightening of her brows and the tensing of her shoulders; her face contorted and she swung at him with her right hand, forgetting that she was weaker than normal, and he grabbed her forearm and pulled her closer to him, twisting her around so that her back pressed against his chest and he tightened his right hand around the base of her throat. He could feel her heartbeat, fluttering like a bird- such a little bird- against his palm and her skin was smooth and soft, and he was wearing no vest this time; he felt her curves, pressed tightly against him, and a fire was lit in his stomach.
"I told you," he murmured and he felt her pulse increase, fluttering under his hand, "your opponent's body can be your greatest weapon. You simply have to learn how to read them, how to use them against themselves-"
She drove an elbow back and he twisted away before it could find his body, still grabbing her right arm, and he spun her around again, gently, although he knew it wouldn't seem so to her, and he slid his hands down to her wrists and locked them in a vise-like grip behind her back.
"And here I thought we'd moved past this," he said, his voice not unkind under the mechanical rasp. "It seemed as though you were beginning to feel affection for me-"
"No," she said, a little out of breath, her voice hard. "I owe you a debt. The second it's paid we're back to square one and I promise you… one day- one day this'll be over, either the bomb will go off or we'll be free and when that day comes, a hell of a lot of people are going to come for you." He almost wished he could see her face; her voice was shaking with something that wasn't exactly fear or anger, but something much stronger than either. "And I will be leading the charge."
"Is that so?" he said, his voice low and amiable, his hands tightening on her wrist, and he ran his thumb gently over the lump of the tracker, pleased when he felt her tense and even more pleased when he heard the hitch in her breath. "I look forward to it."
"Me too," she spat. "Let go of me."
He considered pulling her closer to him- her body was very warm and very soft- but let her go after a few seconds, his hands falling away from her body. She jumped away from him like he was an electric current and when she turned to look at him, the look on her face was different than any he'd seen on her features before. He was used to her fire and he'd even seen her relatively comfortable, laughing and smiling, but this was different. This was cold and ancient and a promise; her eyes did not burn. Her eyes were ice and every line and curve of her body was set into a challenge. It would have been impressive, to anyone but him, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
"Such anger," he said softly. "For such a small, young thing. It will destroy you, you know. It will rip you apart from the inside out and not even I will be able to pick up the pieces."
She didn't speak but kept him locked in that ice emanating from her violently blue eyes. Her skin was pale but there was a red flush in her cheeks and her shaggy hair was falling around her face and for the first time, in that moment, with that eternal anger, she became beautiful.
She still didn't speak and instead straightened up, despite her wounds and the pain she was obviously in, and she walked past him with her head high, the scent of gardenias and laundry detergent trailing after her. He watched her go, turning as she moved past him, his eyes on her until her door slammed closed.
"So, that's what it will be," he murmured to himself without really realizing it. "Her own anger will break her."
000
Strangely enough, sitting on her bed with icy rage flowing through her blood, Katty realized the exact same thing. Really, she'd known it for a while, since the night he'd forced her to attack him over and over and the fire had turned to ice in her veins; she knew that this would be her downfall. It wasn't that her anger was unjustified, or misplaced, it was the sheer ferocity of it. It was the desire to see him bleed and very suddenly she remembered Talia and the poison she'd whispered, remembered the woman's assertion that she, Katty, was good, and her own question, more to herself than to Talia-
"What if I'm not?"
Because she wasn't. She tried to be, she wanted to be, but she knew what she was and the stain on her soul extended far beyond Bane and the things she'd done since she'd been taken. She would always try to be good, but that didn't change the fact that it always came back to this, to the fire in her blood that turned to ice. She always burned; she was used to that. But when the ice came, when it filled her like it did now, she did not recognize herself. She became calculating and exacting and hard and vengeful and, now, she became murderous.
And it would be her downfall.
She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Her hands were curled into tight fists, and the pain from her nails digging into her palms, the soreness in her wrists and the stinging in her shoulders gave her an anchor. She sat like that for a long time.
It was about more than life or death between them, she knew that. It was about souls. It was about corruption and redemption and the abyss that could swallow a person if they looked too deeply into it. It was a horrible cosmic tango and she had to come through it with her soul intact. She'd put herself back together before, piece by piece, and she could do it again. It was a vastly different situation, of course, with more at stake, but the principle was the same. She had to know her limits and recognize her weaknesses.
And her weakness here was that she wanted to believe that everyone was good, or capable of it, when it came down to it. It was more than want, really; she needed to believe that people, all of them , could be redeemed, even men like Bane. And that, while noble, would lead her blind because she would latch onto anything good and golden and she would try to fix him.
She was a fool. A sentimental, hopeful, naïve, romantic fool. After he saved her, because he'd been gentle and because he'd smiled at her, she'd let her guard down. He had let her see what she'd wanted to see; he'd shown her hope. He'd been kind to her, for a few days, so that his cruelty would strike all the deeper. And she'd fallen for it because she needed to believe he was good.
She released her right hand out of the fist and wrapped it around her cross. Still with her eyes closed, she began to pray, the same prayer she'd whispered over the still-warm body of Abby James, the prayer that found her lips whenever she was overwhelmed by the strength of her own failures.
"Have mercy on me oh God, according to Thy great mercy, according to the multitudes of thy tender mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin…"
She did not hear the quiet mechanical rasp outside her door.
To be Continued
A/N: I had originally planned on making this chapter longer, but after finishing this part, I decided to end the chapter here, because if I made it any longer then it would lose its power and this needs to be a really powerful section. SYMBOLISM YAAAAAY
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Paradisical