Bane
It was a breezy and humid summer night in Panama. The street was loud and pungent; people were dancing, drinking and mingling with each other as the festivities had just begun. The outdoor tiki bar they were standing in had red and green lights draped everywhere, giving it an eerie glow. He could smell the ocean from here, that briny odor wafting through the air like cologne. The band had grown steadily louder as the pretty waitresses served bottomless rounds of tequila to them. He watched as Rana conversed with the men who were now talking up a storm about current events.
"This is why we need a foreigner's perspective," the bald man said to his friend as he looked at Rana with a friendly smile. His friend nodded in agreement as he took a sip of his beer.
"Would that I could," Rana replied, "but we've got an early flight to catch tomorrow." She looked at Bane and the two gentlemen turned their heads in his direction.
"I'm afraid she's right, gentlemen," Bane said as he glanced at her. The crowd had suddenly erupted in cheers as the band played a popular tune. He looked around and back at Rana as he raised his glass of liquid courage. "A toast," he proposed to her and the two strangers, "to our new friends in Panama." All four glasses clinked in unison as people continued swaying around them.
"You are sure you will not spend another day in our city?" The formerly silent man asked Rana. He was a well-built and hairy man, his skin sunkissed to a glowing brown. She smiled politely, nodding a silent no.
A couple of drinks later, Rana had become more comfortable with the two men and they scrapped the idle chatter for more sensitive topics. They were discussing the state of Panama's government and the widespread corruption that seeped into every crevice like "dirty water" as one of the men put it. Before long, the drunken outpour of barely comprehensible quips took place until Rana couldn't quite balance herself. Bane splayed a hand across the small of her back and steadied her just as she swayed and laughed it off. "We'd best be off," he said as he now held Rana around the waist with one arm. The sunkissed man eyed him irritatingly, as if he had ruined the party.
Rana went on a sprawling rant as he closed the taxi cab door and the driver zoomed off into the night. "It sounded interesting enough," she said as her eyes fluttered in and out of that drunken stupor. "Why else would he propose something like that?"
"I don't understand," he replied, unable to stop himself even though he knew she wasn't quite herself, "it seemed as if he had barely spoken to you." He was referring to the quieter man of the two.
"Yes, but don't you see?" Rana asked, her eyes alight. "He can change the course of his country's future with our help." She looked at her hands now and marveled at how the spotty illumination of the street lamps had danced on them just so. And then she turned and looked up at him, and he realized she may not have been as drunk as she seemed a moment ago. "I can see it, Bane," she said quietly. "This is what I've been searching for."
None of it quite fit. It wasn't making sense in his mind's eye. Two mysterious men spent a couple of hours with Rana and had somehow convinced her of assisting them in changing their country's future? He couldn't manage to talk her out of a good argument if his life counted on it, so how was it that their cause had swept her off her feet so willingly? Something was not right.
Rana had decided to extend their trip for a couple more days and in the hours they spent apart, Bane went ahead and looked into the origins of the men they met at the bar. What he found was alarming and not entirely unexpected; no relevant information could be found on their current whereabouts and they seemed in no way affiliated with the country of Panama. They were either following he and Rana all this time or they happened to stumble upon a chance opportunity. His gut told him it was most likely the former. He grabbed his mobile and dialed Rana's number. "Where are you?"
"She is safe for the time being," a thickly accented voice answered. It was the man with the sunkissed skin from last night.
"You're looking for something, are you not?" Bane asked, his voice cool and collected.
"That we are, but it seems your girlfriend is uncooperative at the moment."
"Tell me what you're looking for and I'll give it to you," Bane said. The man on the other line chuckled coyly before sighing.
"It is never that simple, señor," he said lightly. Just then, he heard a scream that he could've recognized from the ends of the Earth - it was Rana's voice and it sounded like she was in pain. His heart sank into his stomach at the realization that she was being tortured or worse.
"Where have you taken her?" He asked, his sense of urgency rising with each passing second. "Tell me now." It was a lethal command, an ultimatum.
"The answer you seek is within your reach," the man said before hanging up. Bane looked at his phone in disbelief before spinning around to search the vicinity. He was like a falcon eyeing his prey and spotted the slip of paper before registering its meaning. It was sitting on a nearby dresser in the hotel room. Carefully scripted cursive letters detailed an address not far from his location.
When he stood outside the barred entry into what looked like an abandoned shop front, he realized the tiki bar was just across the street. It wouldn't open until sunset. He banged on the rusty metal gates and stood there for a minute before the foggy glass doors creaked open and the balding man instructed him to come around the back. His eyes narrowed in on the pudgy figure, a man who seemed harmless the night before. Wrong again, Rana, he thought irritably as he ran around the block and toward the rear of the building. He reached behind and gripped the familiar handle of the Turkish dagger he carried with him everywhere. He didn't believe in guns, they were too loud and too risky. Knives and daggers were his weapons of choice and had saved him more than once in his life. That was yet another thing he and Rana had in common - ammunition was of no use to them, they knew the old ways of physical combat and pressure points, the true art of overwhelming their enemies. This wasn't the first time they found themselves in a sticky situation; each could carry their own but they were stronger together. Still, he couldn't help but feel the unease creep over him as he drew closer. This didn't feel right.
He stopped short of the open doorway ahead and slipped the dagger up the side of his watch, keeping it close. It was dark inside; he would be blind for the first minute as his sight adjusted to the new environment but he counted on his other senses to navigate the area. He stepped in a few feet before hearing the door bang shut behind him but he didn't move, he simply concentrated on the sounds around him. There were two, maybe three people inside this space. He could hear their rough breathing as they stood around him. "Where is she?" He asked into the darkness. A flicker of light came on overhead before the rest of the ceiling lit up. He was standing in what looked like a backroom warehouse. Storage boxes and crates were piled haphazardly everywhere.
"Do you not trust me, señor?" Asked the sunkissed man as he walked up to Bane. He seemed a completely different person now, his features somehow contorted from what Bane had remembered last night. He smelled of tobacco and scotch. "Your woman is still breathing. You are lucky for that."
Bane resisted the urge to knock him out with a swerve of his fist but kept his cool and decided to be strategic. Rana was an able woman, she could hold her own and he knew that wherever she was, she would find a way to escape or send a message to him. He leveled with the man before him and then looked around for a sign. Rana's sudden scream had broke him out of his calm and he jerked to his left, tracing the source of the sound. He turned to see the sunkissed man chuckling. Before he knew it, he punched the man square in the face, knocking out a few teeth as he crashed to the floor. Another man came out of the darkness and ran for him but the kid was no more than 120 pounds against Bane's immensely muscular build and before he could lay a finger on him, Bane had landed a fist into his stomach as he screamed in pain and fell to his knees. Bane ran down the path of crates toward the left end of the warehouse as he heard the sound of clinking steel chains grow louder. In and out he weaved between the storage bins and wooden crates before coming to a large metal cage. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight before him, his breathing ragged and his mouth agape in horror.
Rana hung in the center of the metal cage by way of those steel chains. Her wrists were tied above her head, bloodied from the strain of gravity. Her mouth was sloppily taped shut. The men had stripped her down to her undergarments. Her eyes were stricken by pain and what he saw for the first time in a long time - fear. He narrowed in on the balding man, who attempted to run past him and out the door but the man had underestimated Bane's lack of action since last night. Bane leapt back and shut the metal cage, trapping the man inside with him. He saw the look of fear on the man's face, this one nowhere near as comfortable in danger as his partner was. He threw a fist straight into the man's face, breaking his nose. The man yelled out in pain as he fell to the floor, whimpering. Bane ran to Rana, tore the tape off her mouth and lowered the chains so that he could undo them as quick and easy. She was breathing hard but didn't waste a minute.
"T-They have my papers," she said huskily as he threw her over his shoulders and kicked open the gate entrance to get out into the open. He looked around the warehouse and aside from it being too quiet there was, fortunately, an emergency exit on this end. He kicked it open and ran down the alleyway until he was in the middle of the street. He saw the owner of the tiki bar a few feet away and hollered at her. She came running, her face contorting at the sight of the half-naked woman slung over his shoulder.
"You must take her to this address," Bane said breathlessly, pulling a slip of paper out of his pocket and handing it over to the woman. "Stay with her until I return, do you understand me?" The bar owner nodded a silent yes and for whatever reason his gut told him she could be trusted. The woman ran back to the bar to lock the door. She turned around, managed to wave a taxi down and Bane ran toward it as he lowered Rana into the backseat. "What's your name?" He asked the woman.
"Manuela," she replied with wide eyes.
"I'll be behind you shortly," Bane nodded. "Go!" He watched the taxi zoom off into the distance. He took a gulp of breath as his fists clenched beside him. With Rana safe and out of the picture he could get down to business. The bastards were getting what was coming to them. He ran around the building and back to the entrance he had originally entered. The small dagger he had tucked into his watch was secure and the bigger one tucked in his belt was there as well. The scene was the same as he'd left it except the kid he knocked out earlier was just beginning to get back up again while the sunkissed man from last night was still unconscious. He walked over to the kid and picked him up by the neck of his shirt, shaking him back into his surroundings.
"Where are her things?" He demanded, his voice deep and menacing. He felt the kid stiffen and then limp to the ground like dead weight. He could have been no more than 19 years old. He raised a thin hand toward an office to the right of the entrance. Bane looked at the kid and then at the seemingly unconscious figure on the floor. He wasn't taking any more chances with this one. He turned the sunkissed man over so that he was now lying on his back and sure enough, he really was knocked out, his nose bloody and broken. Bane frisked him from neck to ankle and pocketed the wallet he found. He stood up and made a beeline for the office. Rana's clothing along with her passport and other particulars were there on the grimy desk. He grabbed it all and did a quick scan of the room, looking out to the entrance every now and again to make sure the kid didn't move a muscle. The office looked abandoned and it seemed like this warehouse space was used momentarily out of convenience. As he exited the office, he stopped short of the kid on the ground. "Get up," he commanded. The kid did as told, his face streaked with tears, his hand sunk down to floor level. "If I hear or see you with either of these men again, I'm going to kill you. Do you understand me?" He looked down at the kid and the boy nodded. He pointed to the entrance door and the kid ran out before he could cry wolf. Bane pulled out a cable tie he had found in the office and chained the unconscious man to the nearest railing. He perked up at the distinct sound of movement down the row of crates toward the metal cage he had escaped from earlier.
The balding man wasn't doing a very good job of hiding but he was hiding no less. Bane walked down the row of crates slowly, guesstimating the corner in which the man had taken refuge. He saw the man poke his head out and point a gun, at which he ducked just as the man pulled the trigger and the BANG hit a crate that came tumbling down a ways behind him. He ran toward the man and knocked the gun out of his hand. The stubby man looked scared but tried to throw a punch his way, at which he grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm behind him. The man screamed in pain as he fell to his knees and cursed Bane in words he couldn't understand. Bane grabbed him by the collar and raised him up to eye level before punching him in the stomach and knocking him down once again. That should do it for now, he thought as he ran back out to the street and headed for a new destination.
He and Rana always had an alternate plan in place, it was just the nature of their travels and the situations they got themselves involved in. That said, they were set up in their new apartment on the opposite end of the city by that evening. The bar owner Manuela had been paid off and they figured she could keep her mouth shut just fine. Rana wasn't missing any paperwork and he had additional information he wanted to comb through, mainly the contents of the wallets of both men he had managed to snag before leaving the warehouse. "Who are they working for?" Bane asked himself aloud that night as he looked at the contents splayed across the desk in front of him. Rana was fast asleep and it was only a few hours later when he joined her, knocking out like an ox after the day they had.
"I'm so sorry," he heard Rana say, her voice laden with sadness and tears. "I never meant to hurt you this way but he - he is so important to me. He's the only family I have left." He felt a tiny prick in his arm and then the spread of sedative flowing into his veins like water. He was losing consciousness with each passing second. And then he felt her lips on his, apologizing over and over again. "I'm so sorry," she whispered as she pulled away. "I love you."
Bane's eyes flew open at the loud banging on the door. He heard multiple voices muttering in Spanish but didn't know what to make of it. He got out of bed and realized she was gone. "Rana?" He asked into thin air, figuring she was in the kitchen or restroom. Before he could search the apartment, however, the front door flew open and a group of uniformed men stepped into the apartment and knocked Bane faced down onto the bed. They cuffed him in a matter of seconds and he was so caught off guard that he didn't bother resisting.
"You are under arrest for the murder of a Panama citizen," the man said, his voice thickly accented.
"Where is she?" He asked the policeman, trying to turn around to get a good look at his face.
"I do not know who you are speaking of," the man replied. "You are coming with us to Peña Duro where you will stay until further notice."
Where was Rana? Had he killed the two men in the warehouse yesterday afternoon? He only remembered knocking them out, there was no way he could have killed them. What happened to the paperwork that had been sprawled out on the desk just last night? Was this some kind of a nightmare? He could feel the ground beneath him falling away as his memory faded and he was dragged off to what would be the next major part of his life.
Author's Note:
I'm so terribly sorry for the crazy hiatus! I wrote bits and pieces of this chapter throughout the last few months but finally mustered up some inspiration to wrap it up and move on. Very happy to be back considering the disorienting news of Affleck being cast as Batman. As The Batman tweeted earlier today, "That dose of Scarecrow toxin must have hit me harder than I thought. I had a terrible nightmare Ben Affleck was cast as Batman." Couldn't have said it better myself.
So here we have a flashback chapter involving mystery girl Rana and Bane. I'm alluding to the idea that instead of being born and raised in Peña Duro, Bane may have been set up by Rana to be imprisoned there. We don't yet know why but we know this is where they ended. I like the idea of Bane having had a life before his imprisonment so we can see how he's changed since then. And I created Rana because she fits almost perfectly within the world that belongs to Bane, Talia and Bruce. There were so many what-if scenarios in my head involving her that I wanted to bring her to life and weave her into the story.
As always, enjoy the read and please review/bookmark so I know you're still there! Next chapter should be up sooner than this one, I promise.
