Chapter 12

As she walks across the city to Bane's home, her heartbeat gradually increases. This is bad. This is really bad. Does she really think she can keep the fact Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham City a secret from Bane? He sees through her, he always has. Her knees begin to shake and she has to lean against a wall to steady herself for a moment.

Relax, she tells herself. Bane knows he is going to die tomorrow. Most likely, he won't even be there. Selina will wait in the apartment for an hour or so, then will leave and stroll in circles for a while. There is no reason for Bane to need to see her tonight.

He won't be there.

He's there. She nods at him when she walks in. He's standing at the window, looking out at the city. Parts still light up occasionally as electricity returns—this is one of those nights. When he sees her, he takes two steps forward, to stand beside the couch.

"Come here," he says to her. His hand extends towards her, beckoning. Selina obeys slowly, trying to act as she always would.

When she arrives at his side, he moves quickly to lay her out on the couch. She expects to be turned over and fucked immediately, but instead his hand moves to her ankle, to the tracker.

He takes a key from his pocket and removes the band from her leg. Selina stares at Bane for a second.

"Why…?" She doesn't know what to say.

"I think you've proven your ability to do as your told at this point. The tracker is no longer necessary."

Selina's heart drops into her stomach. She feels awe creeping into her wild emotions; awe that he trusts her despite everything between them; awe that he knows she will return to him without the initiative of the tracker. Then it disappears.

Because, regardless of what he may do, he plans to kill her come eight o'clock, the next morning. And nothing can change that. She feels anger rising, her cheeks flushing, fingers twitching to inflict whatever amount of pain is possible—because he has no right. She wants to scream at him, to make him as angry as she is.

But she doesn't. As meekly as she can manage, she says, "Thank you."

He gives her a short nod and moves away slightly. "But you would do well to remember that it can easily be replaced, and finding you, should you attempt to run, will only be a slight annoyance on my part."

But why bother? Why attempt to make things right by her before her death? It seems like a waste of energy, and Bane isn't one for believing in redemption, nor forgiveness.

Despite herself, her hands touch his shoulders, lightly, and she is unable to keep the memory of the feeling of his bare, muscled and slightly marred skin from her mind. He bends down and places his knee on the couch beside her. When his hand moves to her face, she flinches, conditioned to expect pain. Instead, the tough pad of his thumb brushes against her bottom lip. Without ceasing, he begins to remove their clothing. She lets him. She needs him to believe that this is making her happy, that his trust brings her joy.

She removes her underwear on her own, that being the only article of clothing left beneath her cat suit.

"The bed…" Selina murmurs.

"Here," Bane replies. Selina's thumb presses into his Adam's apple, feeling his quickened pulse. She feels sick. She isn't sure she can go through with this.

Although, it isn't as if she really has a choice. Parting her legs easily with his own, Bane nestles himself between her thighs and Selina feels him there, hardened and ready. A hiss escapes her in anticipation. She then feels his head, pressing into her slowly, more slowly than ever before. Anxiousness builds up inside her, making her knees twitch upwards. He does not push all the way in until she can't hold back any more, lets out a whimper.

Then, he abandons all foreplay, picking up to their usual speed, which he enjoys, but is well aware that it has the power to quickly send Selina over the edge.

As he fucks her, with all his dangerous prowess, in the heat of her building climax, she realizes that this is impossible. There is nothing Bruce can do; nothing will stop the bomb from going off. Gotham will perish.

But she can escape. Bruce is giving her a way out, which she can take no matter what happens to Gotham, in the end. She sees the clock out of the corner of her eye. Just past midnight.

Doomsday. Who knew she would live to see it? But she won't be seeing it. She's getting out, leaving this place forever. There is no other way.

Her hand moves from Bane's shoulder to his brow, then traces slowly around the back to his neck, still covered by the band of the mask. His thrusting has slowed to a stop, leaving him sheathed inside her, but stationary. Selina places no pressure on his neck, but he presses his head down regardless, touches her shoulder. Selina's breath catches because it is too intimate, too close.

"Bane…" She whispers.

"Ms. Kyle…" He still has never once spoken her given name. "If you would be so kind… to raise your hips…" She does so and his arm dips below her ass for his hand to cup her clit. She lets out the front end of a scream that she cuts off by slamming her palm against her lips.

"Let me hear you…" His hand gently removes hers and pins it to the couch, preventing its return. The other is too busy with the effort of supporting her weight on Bane's neck to silence her unreasonable noises. The sounds of pleasure come out unwanted, uncontrolled and uncontained. She curses violently, making him laugh. His hand suddenly squeezes, birthing a loud groan shortly before she bites down on Bane's shoulder. He growls, jerks backwards, pounds into her, resuming after his temporary pause in movement. Their eyes meet momentarily before Selina pulls herself upwards and plants infinite kisses and bites on the crook between his neck and shoulder.

She wishes it was still acting, but it isn't anymore. She feels as frantic—to touch, to lick, to knead—as she acts. In the back of her mind, she realizes how fake she must have seemed earlier. Bane seems to have mistaken it for keeping him happy for the sake of staying separate from the tracker.

Apparently he is confident enough that she will not attempt to silence herself again, because he moves his hand from her wrist to her breast, capturing an already hardened nipple between his searing hot thumb and index finger. She screams again.

God damn it, why does she want his body so much?! She doesn't want to be fucking Bane, especially with the blissful and terrible knowledge that Bruce is alive, somewhere in the city. She wants to see him, she wants to be with him, to feel his lips, his hands.

"Bruce…"

For a moment, she does not realize what she has done. She does not understand why Bane is suddenly pulling back, anger lacing his expression. The gravity of her mistake only hits her when her bare back hits the floor, but by then it is too late.

"I have been fucking you for five months, and you still fantasize about a dead man?"

Not still. There is no still. Selina never once fantasized about Bruce while sexing with Bane. She never even considered it. Furthermore, Bruce is not, never was a dead man. Bane knows that and it sickens Selina that he would continue to lie to her, even before what he believes to be her death. He would have her die with the belief that he trusts her, but without the knowledge that Bruce lives? Anger builds inside her.

But she doesn't say that. She doesn't say anything. She stares up at Bane with the blankness of a newborn child, because it doesn't matter. In Bane's eyes, after today, they will both be dead. What Selina says makes no difference, because there is no future. Selina, on the other hand, will escape. Gotham will perish behind her, and she won't look back.

Still, she expects Bane to hit her, to bring his foot down and crush it into her bones. As a few silent seconds pass, her muscles strain and tense with the expectation of pain—it never comes. He walks to the door.

He turns back, momentarily, to gaze at her. The anger is gone. She sits up, sensing some sort of information, maybe a confession of his actions, or perhaps something with more gravity, even. For an awkward moment, they stare at one another.

"Goodbye."

The door slams shut behind him. For a moment Selina feels herself go lax in disappointment. Then the weight of Bane's single word hits her, making her eyesight go black.

It is the end. His farewell was what he knew would be his final word to Selina. It is the end. He would never hurt her again. It is the end. Selina would never again be subject to his whim.

It is the end.

She's dressing before she truly can see the room again, pulling her black suit back on as she has hundreds of times before. Once she's outside—with the speed at which she moves, it is a miracle that she doesn't catch Bane outside—she stops for a moment to take in the feeling of the cold air on her sex-warmed skin, on the moisture between her legs that she failed to clean. Then she runs. She runs for five straight blocks without stopping or slowing down. She's wearing heels, but she doesn't care. It doesn't matter, the pain doesn't matter.

When she finally collapses due to pain and exhaustion, it is in a back alley that she normally would never stray into—it is ridden with filth. She slides down the walls and lies flat on the ground. When she stops moving, the thoughts creep up on her again. She does push ups to ward them off. Then, she falls asleep.

Necessity wakes her. Bruce awaits her presence. It is 2:30 AM and she made the mistake of running in the opposite direction of where she needed to go. She withdraws a mirror from her utility belt and checks her face by the light of the street lamp. It is still flushed, but it is difficult to tell with the mask on, as well as the shield of darkness.

By the time she actually finds Bruce, she is twenty minutes late and is in a pissy mood. Seeing his face—his real, beautiful face in all its glory—only barely breaks her free of the anger surrounding her.

"You shouldn't have…" she purrs to Bruce when they approach the Bat-Pod. It is a beautiful vehicle.

The mid-town tunnel's blocked by debris," he tells her. "But the cannons have enough firepower to make a path for people. Wait until the fighting begins."

As she looks for the controls, she growls, "You're gonna wage a war to save your stuck-up girlfriend?"

"To start it—" Selina finds it and pushes the ignition. It roars to life.

"I got it." Bruce ignores her comment, but she certainly won't be repeating it.

"We have forty minutes to save this city," he tells her.

"No, I've got forty minutes to get clear of the blast radius, because you don't stand a chance against these guys."

"…With your help I might." There it is—he's asking her to stay, to die with him, for him, for Gotham. In the fight against Bane. Had he done so earlier that day, she would have agreed in a heartbeat, simply because of the love-induced stupidity created by his sudden return.

"I'll open that tunnel, then I'm gone." She forces herself not to care.

"There's more to you than that."

Her throat closes up and her eyes prickle with tears. When she speaks, she cannot keep her voice from cracking. "Sorry to keep disappointing you."

No one has ever said that to her before; no one has ever bothered to care. She feels sick. She looks up at him.

"Come with me. You don't owe these people… anything more… You've given them everything!"

She needs him. She can't be alone. She was alone for so long, in the dark.

He looks at her with level eyes, as if he understands what she is feeling. It strikes her, suddenly, that he probably does. He has always been alone.

"Not everything." He makes a move like he wants to touch her, but he holds back. "Not yet."

Without saying goodbye, he walks away from her.

The bike roars to life beneath her fingertips.

As she drives, tears sting at her eyelids, flying into the wind behind her. She speeds up. She knows there is no way for Bane to be tracking her, but it doesn't matter, it isn't Bane she's running from.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

Will it end? Why can't she have peace, just for a moment? And why are the men in her life trying to destroy her, from the inside out? Be it Bane, attempting to be right in Selina' eyes before they both perish, despite the fact that everything that's happened between them should say otherwise, or Bruce, being perfect and good and seeing good in her even when she is sure there is none to be seen.

She screeches to a stop and pushes herself off the bike; hits the nearest wall with the most powerful kick she can muster. She does so three more times before realizing that she's throwing a tantrum like a child.

"Get out, get out, get out!" She whispers. The pandemonium in her head is ripping her apart. There is too much confliction, too many sides to every thought. Nothing is simple. Nothing is easy.

She gets back on the bike and recommences her drive toward the tunnel entrance.

There are too many choices and she knows none of them are right. None of them will make her happy, truly happy. Every option has an infinite number of terrible things that will occur, should she choose it, and she's sure it isn't worth it.

She arrives at the pile-up of cars and spots the hole Bruce climbed in through. Once she opens it, she estimates it would take all day for the entire city to exit through it. There isn't nearly enough time for that.

People are going to die. That much is unchangeable, especially if the freed police force wage war on Bane's personal army of criminals.

Bane. By now, he must have seen the fiery bat blazing on the bridge. He knows Batman has returned and that likely shows Selina's outburst during sex in an entirely new light. Selina scoffs to herself, because she is the last thing Bane would worry about once Bruce's return is known.

From behind her, an explosion echoes with all the violence of her heart. She presses the trigger and watches as the doorway to freedom opens up before her.

But he didn't say goodbye, not like Bane did. Bruce left it—their relationship, the future, everything—open ended.

In doing so, he left her hope.

Bane had taken all of it away. He made her so sure that there was no possibility of a future, of salvation. But Bruce gave it all back.

She smiles to herself, because that's what Batman has always been about: hope. The aim was to be a symbol, to show that anyone can be a hero. Anyone can put themselves aside for the good of others.

There's more to you than that.

She bends down farther and presses her forehead into her arm, laughing hysterically now. This is it. This is the defining moment of her life; this is the storm. She can feel it in her bones. This is the moment in which she must make a decision about who she is.

Is she selfish?

Is she a heroine?

And what is she willing to do?

Herself or Gotham? Life or death?

Bruce or Bane?

In light of that question, she flares up angrily. Every choice but the one falls away. She turns the bike around.

It takes her three minutes to get from the outskirts of town to the city center. Then it takes her eight minutes to figure out where Bruce and Bane are. She gets it out of a couple of Bane's men that still believe her to be working for him. Five and a half minutes later, she drives through the glass doors of City Hall.

Bane stands over Bruce, a gun to his head. No. In a flash she has made her decision; there is no time to think. She pulls the trigger and blasts Bane away, throwing his body into the far wall. For a moment, she looks at Bane's unmoving body with a feeling of dread. It is as if the floor has fallen from beneath her, and she stands over an abyss. She can feel everything closing in on her, trying to suck her down to where she sent Bane milliseconds earlier.

Bruce looks at her. His presence pulls her back. She feels suddenly free—using the word Bane used when he first met her—liberated. It's as if the world has opened up in front of her. But it hasn't, not yet.

"About that whole no guns thing…" She says to him. "Turns out I'm not as committed to it as you are."

He just shakes his head, a faint smile on his face. But there's no time.

"We have to force the convoy east to the entrance to the reactor. I need you on the ground, I'll be in the air. Go!"

This time Selina doesn't try to convince him to run. She just nods does as he says. In a split second she's back on the pod, waiting for Bruce to alert her via the audio connection running between all of his 'toys.'

They head north, where the convoy is slowly being pushed, oblivious to the fact Gordon has dismantled the trigger's ability to access the bomb. Still, it is only a matter of time before Miranda Tate, or Talia al-Ghul, as Bruce informs her is her real name, reaches the convoy and steers it in the opposite direction.

Bruce and Selina arrive at roughly the same time, planning slightly ahead of those running the convoy, ultimately able to push it one way, then the other, throwing them off guard. They shoot some missiles at Bruce, from a tumbler, which he evades by firing into buildings and a parking garage.

The convoy, now narrowed down to the sole truck housing the bomb, driven by Ms. Al-Ghul herself, falls to a lower level of the highway.

Commissioner Gordon himself comes running out, obviously stunned by the turn of events. Gordon looks at her with recognition, but there are more important things to worry about. "Give me a hand! We can get a cable on it!"

He moves around to the front of the truck, where none other than Miranda Tate sits. Selina does not understand at all, but when Tate speaks, she hears the subtle change in accent. It resonates the memory of Bane's own.

"Fox showed me how to override the reactor…" She says, looking blissful. "Including the emergency flood. There is no way this bomb will be stopped."

Selina's heart skips a beat. Bruce explained to her the make-up of the chamber earlier. If the chamber is flooded, there is no other way to stop it.

Gordon, Bruce and Selina crowd around the entrance, listening carefully to Miranda Tate's words.

"Prepare yourselves…" She says. Her voice grows weaker as she turns to look directly at Bruce. "My father's work is done."

With a gasp, her eyes close, body goes limp. She is dead, and soon they all will be. Selina's eyes close for a moment. She doesn't understand what is happening, not really. She doesn't know who Talia al-Ghul is, nor why she desires so greatly to destroy her city, nor how she seems to be connected to the two men in her life in ways Selina cannot comprehend. But what she does understand is that all hope is lost. Then, she feels Bruce moving away.

"What are you doing?" Gordon asks, coming alive again as the Batman grabs a cable from his vehicle. He attaches it to the bomb.

"I can get it over the bay," he says, already walking back towards the cockpit. Selina and Gordon follow after him.

"Set it to fly over the water, then eject?" She asks.

Bruce glances at her without stopping. "No autopilot."

No. She realizes what Bruce is going to do and follows after him. Her heartbeat speeds up.

"You… could have gone anywhere—done anything…" She's stumbling over her words. "But you came back here—" He doesn't know it, but she's in hysterics.

"So did you," he tells her, and she can hear the happiness in his voice. He is proud of her. Would time not be so sparse he would praise her for her decision—her willingness to change for the good of others.

She stares at him, his aura, his bravery, his selflessness overwhelming her. She loves him.

"…Then I guess we're both suckers," she says, and she kisses him, hard. It's the second time, but this one is 100% real, and she anxiously needs him to understand. He kisses back and she feels all their feelings, all their emotions passing between them.

One more time, she looks into his eyes, and he looks into hers. The next moment he is gone from her.

A/N DRAAAAMAAA. Sorry this took so long. It's a massive chapter! Until next time, xxx.