A/N:

** Reminded from the last chapter:

The bloody pieces of newspapers that were completely shredded inside the box held nothing but a human ear inside. The cuts were clean and straight, clearly made by someone who had used a knife before. The skin was pale, almost turning blue, which told them that ear had been separated from its owner a few hours ago. Bane's nostrils took in air as he talked to Luz again.

'Stay close to Olivia, I'll find out what's happened.'

25. One End of the Street

'Who gave you this?' Bane grabbed the cardboard box with a brusque movement of his hands. He didn't touch the inside, he only inspected it with analysing eyes hoping to find any signs of who could have been the perpetrator or to whom that human part actually belonged. Jane had calmed down and had taken her role as a police officer. It came to her naturally, like trying to cycle after a long time without sitting on a bike. The beginning had been wobbly, but she had managed to come back on track.

'No one. It was left on the floor in front of the door. They drove east,' Jane carefully tilted the box to move the ear around.

Bane hurried to take the walkie talkie from his room seething at the idea of having someone trespassing the borders and possibly taking two of his men going unnoticed. He stepped outside and, from the top of the staircase, he followed the cloud of sand that quickly moved east.

'Black motocross bike, white helmet,' Jane told him before he could ask about the details.

Bane nodded at her without taking his eyes off the forest. He opened transmission through the channel used for emergencies and commanded two of the teams working in the east and south-east to hunt the rider down, and keep him alive. His stare was harsh, and so was his grip on the walkie. Impatiently, he waited for a response from any of his men, his eyes resembling those of a hawk plummeting down to kill its prey.

Jane stepped back inside, took a pair of latex gloves from the bathroom, and used one of Bane's sterilised waterproof protectors for the plaster as a surface to place the box upon. She ripped the protector in a half, extended it over the table by the window and carefully placed the ear on top of it. Very methodically, she took the pieces of newspapers and arranged them in a straight line so that she could read all of them clearly. The box was made of standard brown hard cardboard material and it had nothing written on it. The words of the newspapers, however, revealed a quite clear message. "Will not listen." "Listen." "Must learn to listen.". Those were only the first ones. Jane turned her attention back to the ear, and swallowed her yet to be consumed breakfast before putting her fingers on it.

'Do you have any idea of whom it might belong to?' Jane asked turning the ear around and inspecting the cuts more closely. Bane waited for her to look at him. 'What is it?' she asked again.

'Barsad and Alison have disappeared.'

'What?' Jane was startled. Only a few hours ago she had seen their shadows walking away from her, and heard their voices in the distance. The whole community had been there that night, it was impossible that they had gone unnoticed.

'No one has seen them or heard about them since yesterday night,' Bane noticed the words that Jane had spread on the table and frowned at their sight. 'I know it's been Alison's brother.'

'But, they left, with Chase, and three women. They must know something!' Jane took her gloves off and brought her hands to her mouth.

'The three women were Luz's daughters. Olivia is with her right now.'

'Olivia...' Jane scratched her forehead as she pressed her eyelids together. 'The ear is not pierced. It's not Allie's.'

Bane exhaled deeply, his shoulders sinking down as the air came out. He kept staring at the pale blue ear, trying to find something that would tell him that it didn't belong to Barsad, but without a DNA test it was impossible to know. Jane's hand landing softly on his neck snapped him out of his thoughts.

'I'm sorry,' she said stroking his skin.

Bane fixed his eyes on the walkie talkie. The green light that had just turned on announced an incoming message. At the beginning they couldn't hear much, low voices rumbled, someone cried in pain. The voice of one of his men finally spoke. "We got him, boss. We got him" Another cry. "Black motocross bike, white helmet. We got him." Bane's chest filled up with air, his back strengthened, and his fists cracked. Jane looked at him feeling how her heart accelerated, how that little dark side of him that Luz had mentioned was growing strong again. The Bane from Gotham was coming back, but far from being afraid, Jane found herself feeling perplexed at her inner self for being drawn towards him.

'This is about to get nasty,' Bane said with a slight hint of delight.

...

Bane stepped into the room with a decisive walk. They had driven far away from the settlement, past Chase's place where Bane had been taken when he had been shot. The place was dark and cold. The grey bricks that had been used to build the tiny cabin prevented the heat from trespassing the walls, and the tiny windows next to the roof barely let in any light. Jane waited outside alone. She had only seen four metal chairs placed around a table and one big lamp that ironically produced a very dim and foggy light. The rider of the motorbike was sitting on one of the chairs, but he stood up as soon as he saw Bane, and then, they had closed the door. Jane stamped her feet on the ground and placed her ear against the door. Only voices came out of it, Bane the loudest of all, followed by the rider, who was already shaking with fear.

'Did Jake send you?' Bane's muffled voice came out through one of the minuscule windows. 'Talk.'

The high pitched sound of metal sliding against metal grated on Jane's ears. Bane had stood up. Jane realised that she didn't need to be stuck against the door to hear their voices, so she rested her back on the wall by the door and begun to stir the soil under her boots with her feet. She hoped Bane wouldn't move his plastered shoulder too much, and that he would take it easy with that unlucky man. However, she also thought about Alison, and John Barsad, and the possibility that the rider with the white helmet could be involved with their disappearance. Bane did all the things she didn't dare to do, the things she imagined, like kicking certain people's heads, or breaking their jaws against the pavement. It was enough for her to picture it on her mind, but Bane needed to take it into action.

'It is your fucking fault!' the man screamed.

His pronunciation had been quite awkward, like his lips were broken, or his teeth, or his face in general. Jane sighed with nervousness and dared to peek through one of the windows. The rider was being held by the two men that had captured him. Bane was standing in front of him, his plastered arm decorated with drops of blood, his fist ready to hit again. This time he hit the liver, and the man fell to the floor spitting blood.

'Where is John Barsad?' Bane said infuriated as he pulled from the man's hair to make him stand up. Even with only one operative arm, Bane was much stronger than the three people inside the room.

'With Jake,' the rider whispered in pain, blood dripping down his face.

'Oh, really?' Bane looked down on him, literally and figuratively. He grabbed the man's chin and observed his face, the injuries that he had caused, the amount of blood that he had lost. The man began to laugh.

'...and that bitch of his sister.'

Bane turned his neck to his two men with surprised questioning eyes, and then looked at the rider again. It only took one second, Bane's fist impacted against the man's Adam's apple and he was gone. Dead. Out. Jane gulped bringing her hand to her own throat, and quickly disappearing from the window to come back to the wall by the door. The handle turned just as Jane hid her nervous hands in her pockets, and Bane stepped out. He repositioned his plastered shoulder, scratched the skin around it, and removed some drops of blood from his face.

'Call an emergency meeting,' he commanded the two men, 'then send him back.'

'In pieces?' the shortest man asked.

'Do as you wish.'

Jane tried to keep her stare up high while she remembered all the times she had faced quite troublesome situations at work, and convinced herself that it couldn't be worse than dealing with Gotham drug lords' victims. She followed Bane to the car, sat behind the wheel and awaited for the next directions, although none came out of Bane's lips. He supported his head on his still clenched fist, looking away at the woods, following the line of the trees towards the sky. The sound of his arm deliberately hitting the car made Jane jump in her seat because she hadn't expected it.

'Calm down.'

'Do not lecture me on that,' Bane said, 'drive to the settlement.'

'I wasn't going to lecture you,' Jane switched the key and turned the engine on, 'I just want you to calm down.'

Bane glanced at Jane as she drove, at her hands holding the wheel firmly, and the determined look on her face. He detested having to depend on her to drive him around the island, especially if it was to witness the death of a person. However, she didn't seem more unsettled than usual, she had stayed relatively calm after the initial shock, and had even taken initiative by analysing the cardboard box and its content. Bane was relieved to see that she remained emotionally stable, and felt how his shoulders were freed from that burden.

'You're a strong woman, Jane,' he said all of a sudden.

'Am I now?' Jane quickly looked at him out of the corner of her eye. 'Well, thank you.'

Bane adopted a more comfortable position on the seat without allowing his eyebrows to relax, 'I'd like to know what you think about this,' he said.

'Well, to be honest, I'm a bit scared since I can't think of anything that they want in return for Alison and John. It looks to me like they mainly want to hurt you, like you hurt them, so they already have what they want.'

'I didn't hurt them, I was a fool and did what Jake wanted me to do, to kill Garrett for him. That man has always been a coward.'

'Well, technically it was me who killed Garrett,' Jane swallowed and felt a small knot in her stomach, 'have you ever met him? Jake.'

'Yes, a few years ago when he came back for Alison. He swore he would kill her if she turned her back to the family, which she did,' Bane sighed.

'It sounds like keeping the family together is important to them, and probably the image that is perceived of it as well. Maybe they want people to believe you did hurt them, you know, to keep a good image, with the mourning, having revenge, and so on... even though they didn't give a shit about that man.'

'You're very right,' Bane waited for Jane to park the vehicle to talk again. He wanted her to pay attention to his words, and not to the road. 'Come with me this time. I trust you will do well.'

Jane nodded repeatedly, first a little bit unconvinced, then more determined than ever. In a burst of energy, Bane pushed her against the wooden walls and released a long deep kiss into her mouth. Jane thought of Alison and Barsad, how they had disappeared from one day to the other, and she held onto Bane with all the strength that she had. Bane's full lips smoothly stroked hers, Jane bit them, then let him go.

She followed Bane closely when he walked along the perimeter of the enclosure to enter the forest following a wooden path among the thick vegetation. The humidity created by the wet leaves and soil made the air thick to breathe, and the heat became even more unbearable. When the last step of the artificially created staircase had been left behind, they only had to walk a few meters to find the place where the emergency meeting had been called.

Inside the place, the wooden beams used to support the thatched roof had been left uncovered. There was a bright brown furry carpet covering the dark wooden floor, and different types of chairs had been gathered around a big sturdy timber table. When she looked up, Jane saw that there was an open second floor with a railing that allowed people to look down at the table and talk to those sitting around it without having to even raise their voice. The people sitting around the table in question looked familiar to Jane. One of them, the one with the dark brown hair and thick beard had been the one that had taken Jane to Bane's room at the hangar. He hadn't had the hair covering his face then, but his angular face was very distinguishable, and his thick eyebrows too. The man nodded at her, but Jane didn't know if it was because he did remember her or because he was just trying to be polite in front of Bane.

'You might remember Dominic,' Bane pointed at him with his eyes.

'Yeah, I do,' Jane nodded and dared to look around.

There were two other men and one woman. The man that caught Jane's attention the most was the one standing alone behind the railing of the second floor. He was very pale, had blond hair and deadly blue eyes. He looked like a marble sculpture from Ancient Greece but with a short beard and a rifle hanging down his back. The armed sculpture supervised everyone's movements from his position, and at that very moment he was scrutinising her. He didn't bother to look away when Jane noticed, he kept staring until Bane nodded at him and his eyes could relax again.

'That is Fredrik,' he said catching the attention of the room as he pointed at the blond in question, 'he's not a man of many words.'

'I see.'

Jane approached the table under Fredrik's gaze. That man's face did not show any emotion at all, he was ice cold, like a robot or a granite stone. Jane deduced that he preferred to be alone since he didn't come down when Dominic officially opened the meeting, and also that under that deadly stare there was possibly a layer of constant worry. He reminded her of a fearful cat, finding the highest point in the place so that he could control the situation and wouldn't be surprised.

'Jake hasn't abandoned his fortress, of course that rat is still there,' the woman with dark red hair said with disdain.

'And it's still impossible to get into that place, too many people, too many weapons, too many civilians around,' the man in the green shirt talked.

'Does he live in the city?' Jane dared to speak.

'Uh-huh,' the woman replied with a roll of her eyes, 'he's accommodated himself in the VIP suite of the five stars hotel he owns. Classy, huh?'

'His father, however,' Dominic spoke, 'prefers to stay away from the crowds and has taken residence in one of their villasin the country side. That's where we think Alison and Barsad had been taken to.'

'That has been confirmed,' Bane said unfolding a giant map of the island and surrounding the place with a red marker, 'Jagger has seen them there alive.' Jagger. Kurt Jagger. Jane remembered him as well, the one that she had been looking for in the hangar, the one whose photograph stood closest to Bane after Barsad. 'He will assist us with the extraction,' Bane stated.

'What if we wait a bit more?' the woman said, 'what if we give them time to think about what they've done and to visualise the carnage that is about to go down on them? It's not the first time that Barsad's been kidnapped. He knows what to expect and how to behave. That could give us time.'

'I do not think that's going to happen, Victoria,' Bane said slowly following some lines in the map with his eyes.

'Why not?' the woman insisted.

'The sole purpose of this kidnapping was to end with their lives, to hurt you, and that's what they're going to do if you don't get going,' Jane took a deep intake of air when she finished her sentence. 'I think,' she added as a wave of shyness overcame her again.

'You think right,' Dominic said looking at her, 'we're going to loose them if we don't go there.'

'We're going to loose more people if we do go there,' Victoria talked again.

'Would you care to listen to a thought I've had?' Bane said raising the volume of his voice, clearly getting annoyed at the hen house in which that room was turning into. 'As I said before, Jagger will assist with the extraction. They know your faces,' he pointed at Victoria, Dominic, and green shirt, 'but they don't know Fredrik's. He'll go there, meet Jagger and take them home.'

'Easy said,' Dominic blurted out, 'hard done. We don't know if they'll be able to walk. Fredrik takes Barsad, Jagger takes Alison, who covers them?'

Bane's eyes stopped looking at the map even though his face was still directed towards it. Dominic had a point, a very good one. They'd received an ear, so the chances that they had been tortured were quite high, especially knowing the thirst for Barsad's blood within Jake's people. Bane gulped.

'Don't you have any more men?' Jane asked surprised. After seeing hundreds of people wanting to burn Gotham alive, she thought that Bane's army would be a little bit more crowded.

'Jagger's infiltration must remain a secret, only the people inside this room know about it,' green shirt informed her, 'the more people who know, the higher the chances of having him uncovered.'

'I can go,' Jane said under Bane's sudden glare, 'I have experience with this, I can go.'

Before Bane could even pronounce himself, Dominic let out a laugh.

'No problems with me,' Dominic said, 'your GPD archive has been passing through our hands, and I do believe you have the experience.'

'I'm okay with it,' Victoria nodded and stared at green shirt.

'Fine,' green shirt agreed.

Bane's fist clenched around the red marker as they looked up at Fredrik. The Greek sculpture seemed uncomfortable with all the eyes looking at him, so he merely nodded and finally stepped downstairs. He was taller than green shirt, but shorter than Dominic, and when he came up close, Jane could distinguish the constant furrowing of his brows and the Nordic features of his face. He took a quick glance at the map, followed the lines that Bane had drawn with his fingers, and then stepped aside.

'Jane, you're staying here,' Bane whispered trying to keep his resolve. Victoria and Dominic glanced at each other with a worried look, and without moving one single muscle of their bodies, they kept listening to their conversations although of course pretending not to. Fredrik stepped aside with green-shirt, leaned against a wall, and stared at the ground while cleaning his hands from dry soil. 'That place is not Gotham,' Bane continued.

'I want to go, and I will go.'

'I strongly recommend that you stay here. Although, considering that you are not a child anymore, you can do as you wish. But, let's reach an agreement, shall we?' Bane told her after a while, his body tensing up under the pressure of having to let her go, 'you go with Fredrik, you become his shadow, do what he says, say what he tells you to say, understood?' he turned to Fredrik, 'and you... I don't need to tell you anything.'

Fredrik went back upstairs and disappeared in the shadows of the second floor. Jane heard the movement of some boxes, the distinctive sound of weapons, and Fredrik's deep breathing when he tossed down a pair of bullet proof vests. Bane pointed at them with a brusque movement of his neck, and forced himself to keep working on the map. Jane put the vest on already feeling the rush of adrenaline flooding her veins. She thought of Alison, and Olivia, and the many times she had faced dangerous operations in Gotham. She could do that. She was sure of it. Fredrik came back down carrying knee and shin guards, protective gloves, and a pair of gas masks.

'Jagger will guide you to the basement, once there it should be easy,' Bane handed Fredrik some sort of grenade-like device, 'use it well.'

'What is that?' Jane asked.

'It will knock them down instantly for about ten minutes,' Victoria told her, 'it has a quite high concentration of Agera, too high for them to even feel their muscles.'

'Or use their brain,' Dominic added with a smirk.

After both Jane and Fredrik had equipped themselves with all the necessary, they followed Bane and Dominic through the forest. The weight of the vest was nothing compared to the weight of the two guns hanging down her belt, the knife hidden inside a pocket of a shin guard, and the rifle on her back. It did feel like she was participating in a special operation in Gotham, so that helped her focus her mind, and block out any external interference that would make her loose her nerve. Fredrik looked quite concentrated as well, he muttered things to himself in a language that Jane had never heard and moved his right index finger as if he were trying to solve a maze.

Before she could have noticed, they had reached a point where the forest trees beganto disappear, and a dusty road took form in front of them. Two black motocross bikes stood by the lane, two black motocross bikes with two white helmets hanging from the handlebars. Jane gulped, stopped next to Dominic, and then she felt Bane's fingers running down her hair and placing an earpiece inside her ear. When he was done, he attached a tiny microphone to her wrist, and stroked her skin when Dominic and Fredrik approached the motorbikes.

'It's a simple Push-to-talk,' Bane told her, 'Fredrik, Jagger and I will hear what you say, and you will hear us as well.'

'I know, I've used these before,' Jane smiled reminding him.

'Of course,' Bane glanced at the two men, 'are you sure of this, Jane?' he asked.

'Yes, I-'

'Ett, två, tre,' a voice came through the earpiece. Jane frowned confused, Bane nodded at Dominic. 'Ready,' the voice talked again.

'That's Fredrik. He's testing,' Bane said, 'reply.'

Jane pushed the little microphone on her wrist.

'One, two, three. Copy.'

She looked at Fredrik and Dominic, and when they both nodded, she approached the motorbike and put the helmet on. The image of Jane wearing the protective clothes reminded Bane of the time in the hospital, when she had been wearing the police uniform and her shoulders had looked broader than they actually were. She looked the same at that moment, with the black vest, gloves and guards around her legs, except that she didn't resemble a police officer, but one of Jake's henchmen. Jane sat on the motorbike, pulled the side-stand up with her foot, and ignited the engine. That was one of the images that Bane had been fearing the most, Jane being involved in one of their operations, carrying the weapons that she had sworn not to touch again, driving into a potential war zone. Who did he want to fool? That was his life, those were the only things he could give her: violence, and danger.

'Hey!' Jane called him. Dominic had entered the forest and stood under a tree waiting for Bane. Fredrik was already a few meters ahead, driving in a zigzag, checking that his driving skills were still up to date. 'It'll be fine, I've done this before,' Jane reassured him.

'This is not what I wanted for you,' Bane looked at the weapons.

'You know, whether I had met you, or not, I would still be dealing with all this,' Jane brought her hands to the bullet proof vest, 'our lives were not that different before, we were just at the opposite end of the battle.'

'Were we?' Bane's body expanded as to pretend that he was having a professional conversation with her.

'What do you think that a Gotham police officer does, Bane? We dealt with the League of Shadows, Crane, the Joker, and then... well, you. You were risking your life to exterminate us on one end of the street, and I was risking mine to kill your people at the other.'

'I do not appreciate seeing you exposing yourself to danger.'

'Well, now you know how I feel whenever I think about your CV.'

'I can take care of myself.'

'I can take care of myself too,' Jane closed the helmet and covered her face with the black opaque glass, 'this is just one more rescue mission, except that the kidnapped people are considered terrorists, and I don't have permits to hold these weapons.'

A/N:

- Things that I have learnt while writing this chapter: protective clothing!

- To find more about Regeneration, you can go to my tumblr: juliereedwrites

- A huge thanks for reading! I hope everybody's doing great and I'll see you soon with more Bane and Jane!