She Rises by Paradisical815
Featured Song: "This Girl is Taking Bets" by Thea Gilmore
Chapter Eleven: The Gunslinger
Two days later she was drinking a cup of coffee and reading when a gun was set on the table next to her by a big hand in a familiar wrist brace. She looked up, surprised, and Bane was looking down at her over the mask, his gray eyes dark.
"I picked the Beretta for you," he said, raising his eyebrows. "It's lighter."
She took it, slowly, wrapping her hand around the grip and flexing it. The weight of it was solid and heavy and it felt good in her hand, like it belonged there. That scared her but there was a measure of strength in it, too, and she looked back up at Bane, giving him a small nod that was only a little grudging.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," he said amiably, his raw voice sliding over the words. "You aren't going to the hospital today. We're going down to the old police station and I will teach you how to use that as it was meant to be used so that you are not reduced to throwing it at anyone else's head."
"I shot those two guys just fine."
"Yes, you are quite the sharpshooter from three feet. My decision stands."
She nodded again, very grudgingly this time, not wanting to talk to him, and she felt him watching her over her shoulder for a long while as she drank her coffee, like a masked angel of death.
000
"You're still holding it wrong."
She tightened her jaw, ignored him, and pulled the trigger. There was a bang and a jolt that reverberated up her arm and it hurt and the bullet hit the cardboard cut out in the place that would have been a man's stomach.
Bane was sitting in one of the chairs lining the wall behind her, bent forward, his hands clasped between his knees. She felt his eyes burning into her and she tried to ignore that too but she couldn't; it was a physical thing, a tingling in her spine and a brush on the back of her neck.
"If you can't kill a man with one bullet, maybe you don't deserve to kill him at all."
"You know what?" she snapped, cocking the gun with far more force than was necessary, refusing to look at him, "I got this, thanks."
"Do you?" His mechanical voice was amused. "Let's make it more of a challenge, then."
She raised the gun to her eye level, arm straight in front of her, when suddenly the cutout began moving back on the track till it was at the end of the range and presented a much smaller target. Her jaw tightened more and her fingers tapped out a quick rhythm on the grip of the gun, but she drew in a breath and held it, looking down the length of the gun. She wasn't a bad shot, but she wasn't necessarily a good one, either. She figured it didn't really matter if she didn't hit someone in their stomach or their heart or their head. Bane, of course, thought differently. It was all about accuracy with him.
She pulled the trigger and the kick reverberated down her arm, jerking it back; she'd missed the cutout entirely. Bane chuckled behind her.
"At least you'll be fearsome in close quarters."
She drew in a deep breath and raised the gun again. She fired and it clipped the shoulder; Bane gave another chuckle. It sounded so strange, coming from the mask; like thunder itself had been given lungs and was laughing.
"Would you like to learn?" he asked, and his voice was amused behind her.
"I am," she said shortly, raising the gun up again. She heard movement behind her, the shifting of clothes and the hiss of the mask and then footfalls and she stiffened, not wanting him to come any closer to her but knowing he would. And he did. He stood behind her, so close she was overwhelmed by the smell of him and felt the heat from him body on hers, and he put his hands on her hips. Her reaction was sudden and entirely physical and it made her sick, but it was biology and she had little control over it. Her stomach flipped and he angled her hips, pulling them back against his with his big insistent hands.
"Stand up straight," he said, his mechanical voice full of a quiet authority, "and keep your arm tight. Turn your body to the side so that the target you present is as small as possible. Breathe in, and exhale as you fire. No, girl, don't hold your breath. You will shake and that will interfere with your aim- breathe."
He had pulled her back into him, her back to his chest, and she felt the strange rigidity of the brace he wore pressing into the middle of her back. His hands were warm and heavy on her hips and she heard him exhale, his chest moving against her back.
"Fire," he said, and she pulled the trigger. Her arm jerked up with the kick and she saw the cutout jump back and when it had stopped moving, she realized she'd hit the bullseye.
Get away, please get away, please stop touching me-
But he wouldn't. She knew that. It was another display of power, another way to make her uncomfortable and, more importantly, to mark her as his. He would not stop touching her and she would not stop hating him for it.
But, to her surprise, he did let her go. His hands lingered on her hips for a few more seconds, warm and heavy and it was like having a firestorm around her, breathing behind her, but then his hands fell away, the mask hissed and he took a step backwards.
"Good," he said, his voice lifting in a filtered parody of pride. "Again."
She fired and then fired again and again and again, ignoring the burning in her chest and her wrist as her arm kicked back and then back and then back, she fired until the gun was empty and the bulls eye target of the cutout was blown full of overlapping holes.
When the gun was empty and the room smelled of gunpowder, she let her hand and the gun fall to her side. It was heavy in her hands and it felt more like an extension of her, now, than it had earlier, with her hand still shaking from the shocks and the grip warm from her heat. She wondered, suddenly, if this was what she was, what she was supposed to be, what she always had been; if she was the girl with then gun, and she felt a rush of power.
A gun makes a girl a god.
"Very good," said Bane, and there was nothing mocking or amiable in his voice now; it was metal being dragged across concrete; it was smoke and ice. "I might be able to make a killer of you after all."
She straightened up slowly and turned to look at him. The gun in her hand and the smell of smoke gave her courage. She felt bigger, somehow, than her short and chubby body, she felt immortalized by the gun he'd given her.
She didn't say anything to him, just looked at him. His gray eyes were ancient and a burning sort of cold; she was reminded of Arctic oceans, deep and ancient and cruel. For a few seconds they just looked at each other, and for the first time, Katty felt like his equal. He was something more than human and now she was, too, and she faced him down even though she had to look up and she felt something inside of her expanding.
Wordlessly, he turned, and she was subjected to his back and the high collar of that dark coat.
"Reload your weapon," he said, his mechanical tone careless in front of her.
She did, quickly, then flicked on the safety and tucked the gun into the front of her jeans.
They walked in silence out of the old, abandoned building and the cold hit them like a living thing as they walked through the streets. It was very cold, and very quiet, and Gotham felt like a ghost town.
Twelve thousand people, she thought to herself. And no one's home.
And it was his fault, the man beside her, tall and imposing and inhuman, with the mask that hissed when he breathed and the voice like thunder. She wondered suddenly how things would be different if he hadn't decided to inject her with the tracker; he'd been kind, those days after the attack, or as kind as a man like him could be. She knew that there was no world in which Bane would be soft or gentle but he'd been kind, at least, and, holy hell, she'd gone fucking grocery shopping with the man who had destroyed her town.
She glanced over at him. He was looking straight ahead, his face behind the mask measuring and calculating and cold.
You're an idiot, said a voice in her head that sounded very much like Brooklynne Bell, who she missed with a strange, sad burning.
She looked back to the street and the buildings and the snow falling gently from the gray sky. It was December fifteenth. Bane had been in the city for over a month, and she had been with him for about a month even; she was twenty years old; her family and friends were in danger, there was a tracker in her wrist, two holes in her shoulders and a mercenary who smelled like smoke and chemicals and thunderstorms at her side.
She had never felt more alive.
000
Bane took her back to the apartment, left her at the doors to the building and told her to go up before turning and striding away from her back into the ghost city that Gotham had become. She watched him walk and her hand found the grip of her gun, almost unconsciously, and she realized how familiar he was to her. She'd known it for a while, of course; she could tell when he was smiling and when he was angry and when he was annoyed and considering all she had to go on was his eyes, that was no mean feat, but this went beyond that. She knew the slope of his shoulders and the length of his arms and the fact that he always wore a brace around his back and another one on his right wrist. She knew that he was slightly bowlegged and that he carried string around in his pockets and he made things with it, like he didn't even realize he was doing it- she knew he grabbed the neckline of whatever he was wearing when he wanted to be impressive or when he was just standing still, and she knew that the only thing that made him human was Talia al Ghul.
And you, said a quiet voice, and this one sounded like Caroline.
Somehow, he had become her world. There was nothing romantic or happy about it, she thought as she climbed into the mirrored elevator, because she hadn't been given a choice. He had taken her friends and her family and her city from her and he controlled her every movement with the tracker in her wrist and with threats and with his ancient eyes.
She stepped out into the apartment, shrugging out of her coat and she turned back and looked at the clock over the elevator. It was still fairly early; only noon.
She made a sandwich for lunch and ate quickly, realizing as she did so that she'd lost weight. A few months ago, this would have been exciting, but now it was just another sign of all that had changed. It wasn't a lot; she was still chubby and curvy and she knew her body would always be soft, and she was okay with that. She was more concerned about what her body could do, and when it came to that, she was pleased.
But she wanted to be stronger. So, when she was done eating, she went into her room, stripped the bed of its sheets and dragged the mattress off of its expensive frame, propping it up against the wall. She slipped off her shoes, went into the kitchen, grabbed the bandages, and began tightly wrapping both of her wrists and her hands until there was enough support for her to flex her hands without pain.
"This is probably a really bad idea," she said to herself as she went back to her bedroom. She faced the mattress, shaking her arms out, flexing and relaxing her hands at the same time. And then she gave her head a vigorous shake, pulling her shaggy hair back into a ponytail.
She'd never really been known for good ideas, anyway.
000
They'd called themselves the Golden Four because they needed a name for what they were, but the name took them and molded them around it and at some point, it became the truth. They were golden, those four girls, but only when they were together. Separately they were blue and yellow, green and lilac, but the four of them together became golden and they glittered and they glowed. Katty was the oldest, by twelve hours, and she was blonde and curvy and blue eyed and she had a grin like a shark. Holly was born twelve hours after Katty and was the exact same height as the blonde girl, down to the centimeter, and she was beautiful in a way that people didn't expect to see in real life, with long dark hair and eyes the color of sea glass. Caroline was tall and slender and had a face that could have been painted by an old master of the Renaissance; she had a hooked nose, green eyes and red hair and she was the only one who didn't see how stunning she was. Brooklynne was the youngest but not the baby, almost a year younger than the rest, with light brown hair, a cherub-like face and eyes the color of cold northern oceans.
They'd been together when it happened, on November sixteen, a grey Tuesday afternoon. They were all students at Gotham University and classes were out; they convened at Katty's house, laughing and drawing and being the kids they were. Or, more accurately- the kids they had been.
And then they felt the first shake.
They rode out the explosions with shouts of alarm and cries of sheer panic; when the ground settled Brookynne ran for the TV and they saw Bane striding out onto the ruined stadium.
They sat in silence, listening to his words, filled with a disbelief too strong for fear. When he snapped the man's neck, Brooklynne gave an involuntary gasp and Katty's jaw tightened as her eyes widened and Caroline and Holly jumped back in complete shock.
The next few hours had been hell. There was no phone reception, no way to contact their families, and Katty refused to let them leave her house. Only when Katty's family came home did she get the other three home. Her dad opened the gun cabinet and took out a shotgun before loading the four girls up in the car and dropping them all off at their respective houses, the car filled with a tense silence.
That night, Katty's sister was attacked.
The next day she went to war.
000
She hit the mattress for a long time, long after bruises had formed on her wrists and the wounds on her shoulders were sore and chafed. It was therapeutic; the harder she hit, the less she had to think. There was an incredible focus that filled her as she punched it, again and again, draining the anger out of her, and she realized at some point that she wasn't not thinking, but, instead, that she was praying.
She did not notice Bane filling the doorway until he spoke.
"You might have better results learning to fight if you hit something that hit back."
She started but didn't scream and jumped around to face him, her heart pounding from the exertion and from surprise, sweat dripping down her face. He stood in the doorway, filling it with the sheer size of him, his hands hanging at his sides and his eyes measuring.
"Are you offering?" she asked him, brushing her sweaty hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. His eyes flickered over her, her slumped, tired posture, her shaggy hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she knew she did not cut an impressive figure.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you not want a gun because of your inability to physically best an opponent?" His mechanical voice was mild but his eyes were anything but.
"Yes," she said, raising her eyebrows. "But I like hitting things, too."
He raised his eyebrows too. "Do you want me to teach you?"
She thought about it for a second and then said, very honestly, "No."
His eyebrows rose up higher.
"But," she continued, "I don't really have any room to be picky."
Something shifted behind his eyes and he just looked at her for a second.
"I could teach you," he said, his mechanical voice sliding easily over the words with a practiced carelessness. "What if I offered you a trade? You return the gun to me, and I will turn your body into a weapon."
"No," she said, without hesitation. His flat stare was questioning. "Maybe one day I can be a weapon, all of me, but if it's a trade, then no. I pick the gun."
It was eerie, how she could feel him evaluating her with that flat, measuring gaze. She knew he was thinking but his face and that cold mask gave nothing away, and so she pushed her hair back again and she waited.
"Fair enough," he said, after what seemed like a very long silence. "Follow me."
000
He was not a good teacher. He was mocking, and cruel, and he pushed her too hard and he laughed when she failed. He lectured her as he showed her how to twist her body, how to stand and how to swing, and his words adopted a kind of dark poetry that she didn't understand. He liked antagonizing her, and showing her all the ways she was wrong, and he was not gentle. Oh, she knew he was holding back, she'd seen him crush a man's windpipe with a single hand, but holding back did not equate gentle.
She tried to sweep his legs out from under him, crouching down, but he grabbed her arms and pulled her up before she could really try.
"No," he said, his mechanical voice filled with something very much like glee. "You are still acting defensively- if you wish to best an opponent, you must do more than merely not succumb to them, you must go on the offensive. If you wish to knock me off my feet, turn." He took her shoulders and physically turned her so that she was facing him head on. "Good. Now, instead of just sending your opponent to the ground- what could you do to accomplish the same ends while on the offense?"
She just stared at him. "I don't-"
"His knees, girl, do you think I wear the pads to make a statement?" He was definitely amused. "You break his knees. Hold your fists up, like this, and turn, again-" he'd let go of her shoulders and now made a tight circling motion with his finger and she turned to show him her profile, "-put your weight on your far leg and then kick forward. Use your body's momentum behind your foot, and you will break his knee. It is extremely difficult to fight with a broken knee. Go on, again- mark it."
She did and he corrected her posture, then gestured for her to continue. His eyes were burning. He'd taken off his coat and was wearing only that rigid vest over his pants and the braces around his back and wrist, and when he turned, she saw that scar snaking up his spine. She marked the movements he showed her.
"Good!" he said, his mechanical voice pleased in a mocking sort of way. "Again- do not mark it this time."
"You want me to-"
"Believe me, my dear," he said, and his voice was almost fond but there was that cold fire in his eyes, "you won't be able to hurt me."
She didn't mark it. She leaned back and then twisted forward, her leg swinging away from her body, and she was actually going to hit him-
In less time than it took to blink, his hand had shot out and caught her foot. He nodded at her, once, his eyes glinting above the mask.
"Good! Against a normal man, that would have been effective- you, however, have the misfortune of training with me." He twisted his wrist and jerked his arm up and she went sprawling to the floor with a loud swear. "Up."
She climbed to her feet, glowering, wiping her hands on her jeans. He held his arms out wide, his eyebrows rising in a challenge.
"What now?" he asked, mockingly. She heavily questioned her sanity for agreeing to this.
"You tell me, you're the teacher."
"And you make a poor student," he said easily. "Do you have nothing to try?"
"You're twice my size. Charging at you would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do."
She wasn't sure, but when his eyes flashed then, she thought it was a mixture of surprise and pride. He gave another deep, quick nod and let his muscular arms fall back to his sides.
"Good. You must recognize your limitations; your opponent certainly will and they will not hesitate to exploit them."
She thought it was interesting that he said 'opponent' instead of 'enemy'.
"What are your limitations?" he asked her, and for a second she just looked at him, at the way he stood, his sloping shoulders and dark eyes above the mask.
"I'm a midget, for starters," she said flatly. "I don't have a lot of experience so I mostly go on instinct, I'm not strong and… and I don't really have any idea what I'm doing."
His eyes searched hers for a minute. "The last one will be remedied in time. As for the rest- you are right. Any opponent you come against will be larger and stronger than you." He started to circle her, unblinking, and he did not take his eyes off of her. She stayed where she was, breathing heavily, and stood up straight. "So you must be more than a good fighter, brave little bird. You must be smart, as well."
He stopped in front of her, very close, looking down at her with his hands grasping the front of the vest. "How do you fight smart?"
"I- well, I'm smaller, so I can be faster."
He nodded and his eyes told her to continue.
"Try to outlast them," she said. He made no movement. She was suddenly very aware that she hadn't taken a shower yet that day, that her hair was greasy and that she stank of sweat.
"Try to- to land a lot of blows, hit them a lot, instead of going for one big knockout move." She wished he'd blink, or step away, but he did neither. She was suddenly very glad for the mask; she was glad that she couldn't see his nose and especially his mouth. It was a barrier that couldn't be crossed and that came with a rush of relief and something else, something deep in the pit of her belly that she did not let herself name.
"Good," he said again, his voice very low under the mechanical thunder. "That will be all for today."
And then he slowly turned and walked away from her.
000
She took a shower and emerged from it feeling like she'd been scrubbed from the inside out. She felt shaky and weak and sore but it was cleansing, too, in its own way. At least she was doing something.
She dressed and brushed her wet hair away from her face before going back into the kitchen to get her dinner. The sky outside the windows was dark and dotted by the falling snow; she was struck, very suddenly, by homesickness. She missed her family and her friends; she should be in her house, filled with Christmas lights and laughter and the scent of pine needles. Instead, she saw Bane at the table with a file spread open in front of him and something tightened in her stomach.
She made herself a ham sandwich, slathered it in ketchup, poured herself a glass of milk, and sat at the table across from Bane. She said a quick blessing, crossing herself tightly and then she started to eat, looking out the window to watch the falling snow.
There was a very surreal quality to this; the two of them at a table, going through files and eating a sandwich. It was a similar feeling to the one she'd had in the grocery store; it was like a glimpse of another life.
"You know," Bane rumbled, and Katty looked up sharply, her mouth full of sandwich and he was still looking down at the sheets in the folder, "I never did ask you what you think of this brave new world."
He did look up then and she swallowed, feeling very awkward, and his eyes burned into her.
"Are you serious?" she asked him, her brow furrowing. He lifted his eyebrows slightly. 'Do you honestly think I have anything good to say?"
He looked slightly amused. "No. But I am… curious."
She stared at him for a minute, caught completely off guard. And then her heart began to pound and she felt a familiar buzzing in her blood.
"Well, for starters," she said, and her voice did shake but not out of fear, "The body count has reached the thousands. A lot of the people dying now are starving or just freezing to death, and the crime rate has- has absolutely skyrocketed since you turned the prisoners loose on the city-"
"The bonds that held them were rotted and corrupt."
"But they held them," snapped Katty, leaning forward. "Since the Dent Act was passed eight years ago, the crime rate in this city decreased by eighty percent."
"The Dent Act was based on a lie."
"But- that's- sometimes it's about more than that. There was less murder and theft and rape, the streets got cleaned up, the average rate of income even went up."
"And is that worth it?" Bane asked, lifting an eyebrow. "If the good that has been done was based on an evil, does it still… count?"
She stared at him. "There are people who would be dead today if the Dent Act hadn't been passed. People who would have been murdered, in cold blood, just cause they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Obviously there was something going on with Dent and the Batman that we didn't know about, but that- that doesn't mean that what happened means any less. I mean, yeah, they shouldn't have lied but they did."
"And you would have that wrong go unpunished?"
"It- what- look, it isn't my job or my place to go around dealing out judgment or punishment. It should have been corrected, yeah, but seriously, you went about it completely the wrong way."
"The people are free now, from the corruption and the oppression of this... joke of a city."
"Are you even hearing yourself right now?" she snapped before she could stop to think about it. His eyes flashed in warning. "I mean… were you even… here? Did you even see what Gotham was before you razed it to the fucking ground?" Her eyes were flashing. "Because I lived here for twenty years and I can tell you that there is nothing "brave" about this new world. The world you created is broken, and… and messed up, and without rules or guidelines or, hell, any kind of moral authority, and as cool as that sounds to some kind of teenage anarchist, it doesn't translate well into real life. Clearly."
He leaned forward, clasping his hands together on top of the papers spread in front of him. "What you have seen… is the true face of Gotham. People become what they really are when they owe nothing to anyone, when they can do as they like without repercussions. You are angry with me for tearing this city apart, but I didn't. I merely made a crack and your… your people, your fellow citizens, they are the ones who turned Gotham into an open, festering wound."
She was shaking her head and staring at him. "But that… that's not the point."
"And what is the point, pretty little girl?"
"The point is, it never should have happened in the first place. It's like I told you, human beings in a mob turn into monsters and you're the one who turned this place into a mob-"
"All I did was give the city the tools. You did the rest on your own."
"I had no part in this," she hissed, her eyes going wide in anger, leaning forward. "I fought back, and I'd still be fighting back if you hadn't caught me-"
His eyes glinted with amusement. "Yes. I know."
"Do you really think you've actually helped this city?"
A deep nod. "I know I have."
"Alright, you seem like a numbers sort of guy. Wanna hear some statistics?"
The skin around his eyes tightened but she continued before he could speak.
"First off, take me as an example. I was almost raped twice in three days- do you have any idea what the odds of that are?"
"You are a statistical anomaly."
"Yeah, that's what I thought too." She leaned forward, her eyes burning into him. Fire was pulsing in her blood and she felt her teeth beginning to chatter. "And then I started talking to some of the other people at the hospital, a lot of the women. You know how many women have been raped since you came to town? Hundreds. Fucking- thousands, Bane, Christ- as many women have been raped in the past month as in the past like, three years in this city- you know, when the Dent act that you really seem to hate was passed, after murder, you know what the next crime to decrease really freaking drastically was? Rape." She was shaking now, her teeth chattering, and his eyes were dark and unreadable. "National statistics say that one in every four women have been raped but- but in Gotham, after the Dent act, it was more like one in ten. Freaking ten. Now, since- since you "liberated" the city, it's about every other woman, because there are gangs of rapists that you freed roaming the streets, and the thing is, the stats that Dr. Langer has, he doesn't even think it's the half of it because most women aren't reporting it because why the hell would they? What happened to me was not an- an anomaly, that's why it's so messed up, if it was just me I could deal with it, but what happened to me is the norm, now. People are dying out there, Bane, a lot of them, every day. That isn't liberation, that isn't- it isn't freedom. It's humans in a mob."
"Is that why you fought back?" he asked, mildly, his mechanical voice a roll of thunder over her buzzing skin. "Is that why you tried to raise a rebellion that you knew would fail?"
"I did it because someone had to," she said shortly. "And I didn't know if anyone else would. I did it because that first night, a man broke into my house and tried to rape my thirteen-year-old sister, and I had to kill him. I did it because I love this city, because I love these people, and because I know there's good in them."
"All of them?" he asked quietly. Her mouth opened slightly. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say that there was good in everyone, even the masked terrorist now staring at her with burning eyes-
But she wasn't that girl anymore.
"Let me rephrase that," she said, quietly. "I did it because there are people in the mob who will wake up someday soon, and they will remember that they are human."
His gray eyes searched hers for a long moment. His mask hissed before he spoke, and his voice was very low.
"What if they don't?"
She was quiet for a minute.
"Well," she said, finally. His eyes burned into her and she felt like she was on fire. "There's a place in hell for everybody."
To Be Continued
A/N: FIRST OFF SOMEONE MADE A MANIP. CHECK. THIS. OUT. IT IS AMAZING OMG
musingsofaliterati . tumblr (.com)/post / 29091764288 / some- say-the-world-will- end-in-fire-some-say-in
Remove the spaces. and the () around .com
Also, I might not upload the next chapter for a few days. College starts back up in about two weeks, so I'd like to have a couple of chapters cushion for when school/work etc get super busy. But I also might upload it the second I'm done because I am so excited about what's about to start. SO I JUST DON'T KNOW
As always- you guys are seriously so incredible. I am so, so humbled and overjoyed by the response to this story. It is MASSIVELY inspiring. If I could reply to every review i could, but there's been anywhere from 30-50 per chapter (HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS DVSK;JFNVLDKJSNVSD) so it's isn't possible. But every review makes me smile and beam and flail like a lunatic.
ALSO ALSO. I highly recommend you pull up the songs at the beginning of each chapter in youtube to listen to. There will be some hints as to where the story is going and the songs are also picked to reflect the atmosphere of that chapter and of the overall story, so you might get something out of it.
LOVE YOU GUYS
Paradisical815
