Chapter Eighteen: Eaten by Light and Swallowed by the Darkness
As Talia approached the clearing where Bane waited, a calm descended over him, every nerve ending charged with the knowledge of being an apex predator. Just under three miles to the north east, Thera sat behind the wheel of the roomy sedan and drummed her fingertips on the tops of her thighs.
She smelled the sour odor of anxiety emanating from her every pore as her mind showed freeze frame after freeze frame of the blood-letting horrors happening in the clearing.
Thera squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her temples trying to push the images out of her mind.
"He's coming back for me, he's coming back," she repeated over and over, her eyes flicking over to the glove compartment.
As Thera continued to talk herself off the ledge, Bane's heightened senses alerted him to the approaching vehicle with Talia and whomever else had pledged their loyalty.
Bane shrugged his shoulders and swiveled his head from side to side, his neck cracking as a giant goose egg of adrenaline crack open in the center of his brain and filled him with electricity, more oxygen rushing inwards and plumping his nervous system with life-taking anticipation.
Samantha cut the headlights of the large utility vehicle and put it in park. The dangerous quartet spread out, only Samantha and Kirov remaining together as they prepared to approach Bane and the mapped marked clearing from the south.
Talia stomped in a straight line from the parked diesel drinking beast of a vehicle towards where Bane indicated he'd be. Leaves and branches crackled and broke under each of her steps. She wanted Bane to hear her coming, she still was under the delusion that he was permanently at her heel, begging for scraps.
Talia's face was twisted into one of arrogance and smugness as she stepped into the clearing, casually pulling a leaf free from her silken hair that she had snagged on her approach.
Talia raised herself to her full height and held her chin high, feeling falsely emboldened when her eyes landed on Bane standing among the wooden sun-bleached crosses.
She misread his expression, if her bone marrow could've spoken, it would've told her to shut up, retreat, rethink or die.
Talia freely chose her own fate, thinking the allure of her attention, affection and cunt would get him back in line.
She decided on an initial gentle approach. "What has happened to you? What has made you fall away?"
Bane remained still and silent as Talia continued. "I will give you absolution," she murmured softly as she held his eyes and added. "Ask for my forgiveness."
Her nostrils flared as he chuckled lowly, never blinking, or looking away from her.
Laz's voice boomed from the darkness within the trees before he joined Talia in the clearing and addressed Bane.
"You have disappointed the League of Shadows with your childish actions," Laz began and let his katana come into view. The blade vibrated with restrained power, wanting to consume lives.
The thousand upon thousand times folded steel gleamed under the moonlight as Laz continued lowly.
"Your heresy has signed your death warrant; your weakness has condemned you."
Bane flexed his hands and with astonishing speed withdrew a modified M114 minigun and fired to his left. Upon depression of the trigger, a glut of armor piercing bullets went from the firearm's magazine, directly into the bodies of the lithe, clever Samantha and toxically masculine Kirov.
Bane's heightened senses had detected the brush of a dry leaf under the steel-toed boots Kirov wore.
Talia barely suppressed her surprise when she heard Samantha and Kirov cry out several times, an off-key melody from the soprano and alto, if they'd possessed musical ability, before they both fell silent.
"You're still a coward, still a turncoat to your oath," Laz growled and advanced quickly towards Bane, the blade extended upon his approach. The steel a phallic display of life-ending capacity, made more dangerous by the man that wielded it.
Talia's breath grew shallow and her eyes too dry and wide as she watched the blade descend in a downward arc and bit back a cry as Bane pivoted and brought a serrated curved scythe diagonally across the front of Laz al Ghul's body.
The austere man gave a low grunt as he felt the blade open a wet line and begin to weep red tears.
Laz quickly turned and brought the blade down and caught the side of Bane's arm and ripped his flesh open in a smooth line from his shoulder cap to just above his elbow.
Talia gave a gasp as she watched both men bleed, sweat running down their faces as their hearts beat harder and they squared off, the white crosses between them.
The men regarded each other over the barrier of the nameless dead, their chests heaving, each pump of their heart, pushed more blood from their bodies.
"Heretic, you shall die for your actions against the League of Shadows," Laz spit, anger flashing in his eyes.
"You are but afterbirth, you belong in a science lab to be studied," Bane hissed and held the scythe out to his side as he added in a low growl. "I own the light," he growled as Thera's image took over his retinas for a moment.
"I will eat you, swallow you whole. I will feed you real fear," Bane said as he side-stepped the graves out of respect and advanced towards Laz, moving with reinvigoration as he thought of his future, his whole life, sitting in the car in the dark woods, less than three miles away.
Laz gave a guttural shout and read Bane's body language wrong and shifted right when he should have gone left. His poor choice of movement left his flank open, the already vulnerable lacerated flesh exposed.
Bane swung the curved blade and opened Laz's lower belly and before his brain could register the extent of his injuries, his intestinal cavity rained down to the ground, blood, bile, and other thicker bits soaking into the dry soil.
"You will be eaten by the darkness," Bane growled as he swung the blade upwards and opened Laz's throat, simply accelerating what was already a sure death. He smiled behind his mask as he turned towards Talia whose expression was now one of a succubus, her lips curled into one meant to seduce.
Talia assumed she could easily get the hook back into his mouth. "Things are now as they should be, you and I will helm the destruction of Gotham City."
Bane shook his head, "you shall die, and I will live in the light."
Talia's anger bubbled over, "You're actually foolish enough to think that whore wants you? Has changed you? Has ….," she started to ask before Bane closed the distance between them in four large strides and slapped her across the face. He loomed over her after she tumbled to the ground.
"Do not speak of her," he ordered in an empty tone.
For the first time, Talia seemed to see him. Her bladder tightened as she had the sudden realization that the man that was her protector was also formidable, powerful, and nearly indestructible. She had foolishly thought him broken and only realized her mistake a few minutes before brain death and complete exsanguination.
"You always thought I wanted to fuck you; I feel pity for you. You're a lame animal that should've been drowned," he hissed musically as he yanked her to her feet and shoved the serrated blade abruptly into her body.
He covered her mouth with his large hand as her scream sounded raw, made purely of unashamed pain.
"Now I'm inside you," he grunted melodically and twisted the blade deeper under her ribs. "Is this what you wanted?" he murmured and applied further force until her flesh had no choice but to part at his sudden penetration. The steel filled her, hard and unyielding as it ripped through her vulnerable flesh.
The tip of the blade was centimeters from sliding into the opaque pericardial sac that housed her blackened heart.
"All you've done is take from me, I have broken myself for you, nearly killed myself in service to you. Your rewards are Trojan horses full of suffering and further enslavement," he hissed on a musical whisper.
Bane smiled behind his mask as he kept his rough palm firmly in place over her full, glossy painted lips.
She had enough venom to be able to glare when she saw his smile reach his eyes as he refused to give her any final coherent words.
"I'm going to collect all that you owe me. I'm going to take your life," he added on a melodic grunt and shoved the blade until it was stopped by the hilt.
The last two inches of the serrated blade slid through her soft pericardial sac and penetrated her heart.
"I'm inside of you, this is what you wanted me to beg for," Bane grunted and fought a victory shout when he saw that Talia's last conscious thoughts were of disappointment. She managed a frown when she felt his cock soft and flaccid being so close to her, no desire, or feelings towards her.
He pressed his body against her and forced blood to flow past his fingers as he compressed her chest cavity that was filling with blood. She died knowing that he felt nothing in the end, after a lifetime, she was now going to just belong to the dead, put in a hole in the woods without even a name.
Bane held Talia's body upright as she bled to death, he watched the light fade from her eyes, blood falling around her instead of the sticky come she wanted him to pump out while thinking of her.
Bane stared down into Talia's face that was still beautiful even in death, her features still soft and smooth before rigor mortis approached and wrapped her in its stranglehold. He let her lifeless body fall to the ground, crumpled and bloody, like the contents of a spontaneously purged loamy uterus.
As he moved his eyes from Talia's still form and then over to where Laz was cooling under the starlight, lividity certain to stain his skin like the brilliance of an Aurora Borealis, less than three miles to the north east, Thera's resolve finally cracked and she decided to go back on her promise to remain in the car.
She fumbled for the matte black firearm and zipped up her hooded sweatshirt before slipping from the car and starting back in the direction of the moon lit clearing.
As Thera approached, Bane speared the ground with a heavy shovel and began to dig a hole for the cluster of the surrounding broken dead.
Out in the surrounding dark, Thera tripped on a fallen log and nearly stumbled.
Bane paused as the tip of the shovel penetrated the dry ground, clouds of dust danced from the disturbed earth when he heard Thera's not so subtle approach.
"Thank you for staying in the car as long as you did," he called to where she was still obscured from his sight by the lush surroundings of trees and brush.
He felt his breath catch at the sight of her pale face emerge from the darkness, despite his pounding heart and fine tremor from the adrenaline dump.
Thera's eyes moved between the near bloodless bodies of the fallen uncle and niece and the masked man who had destroyed them. She blinked slowly as her gaze drank in his blood covered hands holding the shovel, his heaving chest, and full shiny black dilated pupils.
Bane recognized the natural fear being surrounded the freshly dead that weren't on her examination table waiting for her signature Y incision and neat black stitching.
Thera cleared her throat, bothered by the sight of the dead but torn between the feelings she had discovered while waiting in the darkened car by herself.
She looked down at her feet as she felt so many words come to the tip of her tongue. "He kept his word to keep me safe," Thera thought as she looked up at him.
The wet smell of spilled blood and other thicker, stickier fluids was heavy in the air.
She was distracted by the sight of his deeply lacerated outer arm; the blood flow had slowed until it seeped out of the clean edges of the wounds. The skin had no choice to fall open under the katana's gloriously proud blade.
"Your arm…," Thera said and skirted Laz's slaughtered corpse until she could hover her hands over his damaged flesh.
"It'll heal," he rasped and dropped the shovel so he could capture her hands.
Thera looked down as his hands squeezed around hers, blood smashed under his uneven fingernails and splashed artistically in droplets on his muscular forearms.
She couldn't help but scoff at his statement. "That will not heal right without medical intervention," she insisted. "Let me help you," she added.
Bane lifted one hand to cup her jaw, the tangy scent of the dried blood climbed inside Thera's nose as he smoothed his thumb along her full lower lip.
Thera closed her hand around his wrist and pressed her lips to a small spot of bare skin on the top of his hand. "Sit down and let me help you."
In the small space of time that she had pulled his attention from being a grave digger, fatigue had begun to stain the periphery of his nervous system and sitting down seemed like the best decision.
Bane sat down heavily and leaned against a girthy tree trunk as Thera traced her fingers along the wound's edge.
"This is a clean incision," she remarked as she squinted trying to determine what had caused the damage.
Bane let out a ragged exhale and closed his eyes as Thera continued to mumble to herself as she assessed the wound.
He opened his eyes when he heard her stand, accompanied by the crunch of dry leaves under her heel.
Thera answered him before he could ask. "I'm going to bring the car here and get the first aid kit I saw in the backseat."
Bane nodded up at her, she looked every bit a goddess as the moon light illuminated her. He blinked and a juxtaposed image of staring up from the dirt floor of the Pit in Pena Dura slid into his field of vision. He blinked again and the Pit was gone, she was still there, his savior from the darkness.
Thera squatted down in front of him. "Do you promise you'll be here when I get back?"
Bane smiled behind his mask as he nodded. "I promise," he said raggedly and reached for her left hand. "I swear it," he added with a firm squeeze.
After he released her hand, Thera returned to the car as quickly as she dared, guided only with the shallow starlight that leeched through the trees.
The walk to the car seemed to take longer than it should have to both Thera and Bane.
They were each locked in their frontal lobes which tormented them with bombastic images of pain and punishment.
Thera felt a spike of fear in her gut as she maneuvered the car back to the clearing, the return trip bolstered by the high beams. She had this sudden fear that the fallen forms would become reanimated and kill Bane.
As she drew closer, being careful of protruding jagged stones and rodent holes, Bane shifted on the hard, unforgiving ground, his eyes finding Talia's dead eyes on him. Her eyelids were beginning to droop like a stroke victim and a thick ropy glob of mucus tinged pink, dripped from the corner of her slack, flaccid lips.
Bane's eyes were pulled from Talia as the high beams lit up the clearing before Thera pulled the emergency brake and returned to his side, the royal blue first aid kit tucked under her arm.
He watched Thera slip on her invisible doctor coat and remained still and silent as she worked on repairing as much damage as she could with the limited supplies.
"How's your pain?" she asked, disappointed the kit didn't have suturing supplies.
"It's tolerable," Bane said as Thera pressed several butterfly closures bandages to his damaged skin.
"This'll have to do until I can get the proper supplies," she mumbled and rose to her feet.
Thera wiped her hands clean as much as she could on her pants as Bane followed her in rising to his full height, sparing a glance at the thick layers of gauze she had fixed around his heavily muscled upper arm.
She watched him squat and retrieve the shovel.
"I wish you wouldn't exert yourself like that, you're going to make your arm start bleeding again."
"I can't leave them littering the ground, their discovery is too risky even this far away from people."
"Can I at least help you?"
Bane held the shovel aloft in a much sexier, appealing pose than the male from American Gothic, and nodded in the direction of another shovel.
Thera followed the direction of his gesture and tentatively retrieved the second shovel that was situated near Talia's dead leather-booted feet.
They spent collective silence digging a wide grave, ensuring enough depth that the larger of the forest inhabitants wouldn't smell them beneath the earth and scatter their limbs across the floor of the woods.
Sweat rolled off Thera's face from the unaccustomed exertion, she paid a father and son landscaper to keep her yard maintained. Moisture soaked her lower back and she stripped off her sweatshirt as the next couple hours were filled with excavating earth and depositing the dead in a neat row. She wiped a hand across her forehead as she helped Bane cover them with the displaced dirt until the ground was once again intact.
Bane pulled the shovel from her shaking hands and pulled her into his arms, engulfing Thera with his overwhelming strength.
"What can I do in this moment?" he asked himself, his thoughts swirling desperately as he adjusted his grip around her until he could slip a hand into the depths of his pocket and withdraw the small square chip with a recipe for genocide and bodily destruction.
Thera looked up into his face as he loosened his hold on her, her eyes traveled the length of his unbandaged arm that he extended. She gave a surprised gasp to see the tiny square microchip nestled in the center of his palm.
She continued to watch, no words coming to her lips as he dropped the chip to the recently disturbed earth and smashed the plastic under his booted heel until the obscenely valuable square was reduced to plastic bits, no longer a threat to the living.
"No more running?" she finally said as she stared down at the small pile of electronic scraps.
"No more running," Bane murmured in agreement as he tugged his mask free and pulled her back into his arms with such a strong sense of urgency that he lifted her off her feet.
He pressed his lips to her, searching and seeking for her heart through their shared ragged exhalations and soft sighs.
~ Three Months Later in a Sleepy Seaside Town ~
Bane's eyes flew open and he sat upright, shaken from a deep sleep by the sound of broken glass.
He threw the cotton bed linen to the floor and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor and found Thera standing over a mess of glass shards, floating dangerously sharp in a pool of spilled water.
She looked up as Bane appeared in the doorway.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his breath returning to normal when he quickly saw that she had dropped a large vase of flowers. He recognized the yellow blossoms from the vine that clung to the side of their seaside cottage, nestled into the cliffs.
"It slipped," she offered and pressed her lips together as the thought of the broken vase evaporated from her present thoughts when she moved her eyes over his nakedness. He had left their bed too hastily to pull on any clothes.
Bane kept her trapped in his gaze as he lazily pulled his mask free. He curled his lips into a dangerous smile as he walked towards her. "Don't move," he rasped, aware of her bare feet and the copious glass confetti littering the floor.
"We'll get more flowers later," he grunted as he swept her away from the spreading water and fallen blossoms. Thera closed her arms around his neck as he settled them both on the sunny window seat that looked out over the surf crashing against the jagged coastline.
Neither could move their hands fast enough to relieve her clothing until the sunlight streamed through the window and warmed their naked skin.
Bane tugged at her hips as he pulled her thighs tight to each side of his waist and slid a hand down to stroke his rapidly hardening length, longing to bury himself inside her until their intimate flesh wetly kissed.
Thera tightened her hands on the caps of his shoulders and dug her fingers into his taut, muscular skin.
He forced a moan to spill from her lips as he assertively sank his entire length into her, anxious to drown in the feel of her body, the warm scent of her skin and breathless sighs.
Thera slid her arms around his neck and pulled herself closer to him, changing the angle and making his cock bump her cervix, causing jolts of near-painful pleasure to spark and reverberate along her nerve endings.
She pressed her lips to the hollow at the base of his throat and whispered against his warm skin, feeling his carotid pulse dance under her tongue as she licked a sloppy, wet line up the muscular striations of his neck.
Bane slowed his rhythm, "what did you say?" he growled.
He slid a hand to cradle the back of her skull and tightened his hand into a fist around the wall of her silken hair. He forced a cry from her lips as he pulled her head back, the skin of her neck pulled taut.
"What did you say?" he repeated and sank inside her a centimeter at a time, rocking his hips when he couldn't fill her any further.
Thera's lips parted as she felt her pleasure begin to peak.
"I love you."