-TRIGGER WARNING-
Nonconsensual touching and nonconsensual drug usage!
I'll include a brief overview of the action in a footnote at the end of the chapter, so please feel free to scroll. Take care of yourselves. :)
Back to normal business: thank you all so very much for your reads, follows, subscriptions, and comments! I smile every time they tumble into my inbox.
It was 2:37pm.
An eerie little slither of cold went down Mel's spine as she stared across the empty lab. Dr. Crane had been uncharacteristically absent since she'd first arrived. Purely to redress his earlier violation of her station, at some point in the midmorning she had slipped over and poked through his things. All there was to find was some sparse typed annotations about equipment with a scrawled phrase at the bottom of the page: meconopsis relatus. She frowned and pressed against her fuzzy, tired brain. What sleep she'd gotten the night before had been restless and tense, jerking awake every few minutes in anticipation of something that loomed just beyond the shadow line. She'd run her fingers over the words. Meconopsis was a genus of papaveraceae, which contained a wide range of cultivations and functions. Poppies were members of papaveraceae, all of them from the great Persian scarlet to their small blue Himalayan cousins. Even the mad psychiatrist was working on a botany project while she made pharmaceuticals from snails. She'd scowled and shoved the paper away. No wonder everyone on the fucking planet thought she was a chemist. Something clunked dully in the hallway- something that she later suspected had been an air duct settling -and she'd scurried back to her station. She had waited, her heart pounding in her ears. Nothing happened.
Mel looked across the room at Crane's scrawled words once again. She looked at the door again, looked back at the computer screen again, all for the millionth time. The whole day had been the same cycle repeated over and over again.
Meconopsis relatus, door, laptop, repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
She was waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the fucking hexagons on the screen to become less complicated. Waiting for the building to explode. Waiting for the doorway to darken and the hiss of a mask. She did the cycle again, meconopsis relatus, door, laptop. Nothing happened. Her hands were clammy and restless on the workbench. She crossed her legs one way then, a moment later, the other way. It was naive to suppose her actions yesterday were going to go unaddressed. There was no fucking way. Meconopsis relatus, door, laptop. So why was nothing happening? Mel leaned close to the screen and cradled her face in her fingers. She didn't regret anything she had done and certainly didn't regret anything she had said. Maybe she did. Probably not. No, definitely not. Her eyes whizzed over the knotted molecular structure in agitation. No wonder the conotoxin needed to be administered in gas form. Suddenly something tugged sharply at her memory and she sat back. She closed her eyes and thought hard, weeding gingerly through the mess to try to pull it forward, whatever it was. It was still in there, Mel could feel it, but it hung swathed in darkness at the periphery of her mind. She pressed futilely against the shadows that concealed it, but soon gave up. Meconopsis relatus, door, laptop, meconopsis relatus, door, laptop, nothing nothing nothing.
When Barsad walked through the door hours later she jumped to her feet. Finally. Whatever it was would start now and she was ready. Something would happen. He led her down the same hall in silence, out into the evening, across the empty street to the same car. Nothing. The brisk autumn wind whispered through her hair and chided her in a thin voice. Not yet, it chuckled. When?, Mel wanted to yell but the wind whisked away in a new direction. They drove the same way they'd done dozens of times before. Barsad said nothing. She ran her thumb nail back and forth over her opposite palm, over and over and over. She waited and he just stared forward.
"Thanks for bringing me my plant."
The words bubbled out of her mouth. She had to do something, had to say something, had to make some small attempt at something happening or she was going to burst. He glanced at her.
"Julius. That's his name."
Barsad blinked and looked away. His thumb swiped the steering wheel. She stared forward at the same street and waited once again. They walked up the same front steps, through the same wide doors into City Hall. The path would continue across the lobby, up the same stairs and down the same hall to the same office at the corner of the third floor. Mel took a step towards the stairs; a hand closed around her elbow before she could take another. Her organs stuttered like an old car engine. Whatever it was that coursed through her veins was like anticipation or relief but it tasted old and sharp. She looked down at Barsad's grip. His face was hard.
"Don't fight. It'll make it worse."
She didn't hear or see him approach but Mel felt it when Bane was behind her. That ripple of something that was him, the massiveness. The behemoth closed his hand around the back of her neck and she was propelled towards the other side of the lobby, down the stairs to the basement. She'd been wrong; she wasn't ready.
"Wha-"
The air was thick as she tried to fill her lungs to form words. Finally she managed to fling a single word into the dark hallway.
"No!"
She stumbled and twisted but the hand half pressed, half dragged her onwards. It was like being caught in a riptide; she was driven forward even as she fought to run, even as she dug her heels into the linoleum, even as she clung to the familiar doorframe of the delousing shower. She lurched inside and whirled, looking for the mop or anything to use as a weapon. All of it was gone. All that was left behind was the old tile lining every surface.
And a chain shackle drilled roughly into the wall.
It had not been there before. Her brain observed it almost analytically because the truth of what it meant for her was too sinister. The voice that left her mouth sounded too calm, too reasonable.
"No."
It took a minor effort from one of Bane's hands to bring her to the floor. Mel darted and tried to crawl away.
"No, no no-"
When the shackle locked around her ankle she was still for a moment. The tile felt smooth and cool beneath her knees. The door remained open a crack and she could see the light in the hallway shining through like a tall bright pillar. She stared at it for a beat, for another, and then the madness hit her. Mel flailed, she spat and fought and tugged fiercely and aimlessly against the heavy chain.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
Bane knelt before her. In his hand was a small tray with a pile of fine blue grey powder at the center. As he brought a match to it and the powder began to smoke, Mel howled and swung a kick at the tray. Her foot made it less than half way before it was wrenched back to the floor. In a flash Bane's massive hand was curled around the back of her head and, like a lion cub scruffed in the mouth of an adult, she hung in petrified stillness. The mask whirred as he held the burning powder beneath her nose. His thumb stroked the place where her jaw met her ear. A sour tendril of smoke twisted into her nostrils she gagged and tried to turn away.
"Fuck you, I'm not-"
Later she would remember Bane's green eyes as they glimmered no more than a foot away. There was no anger in them, nothing malicious to cause her fear. They swam with anticipation, with sharpness, with melancholy. The smell of the smoke was overwhelming and she opened her mouth to cough when, suddenly, there came a swift punch from within her own guts.
She was frozen, terrified and in pain, then again, again, again.
Mel realized that something was writhing to life inside of her torso and she began to scream. She thrashed as it fought to bust out of her skin, to gouge out her eyes and ear drums and smother her as it plunged through her nose and mouth into the world. She choked on air, she withered in the cold, she wept and shrieked and begged all while trying to bite back the thing that fought to slither out of her for what seemed like hours.
The taste of blood exploded across her tongue.
She felt barely alive, like someone only just managing to keep their head above water.
Except the water was blood and it froze her flesh until it blackened and crumbled away.
There was coolness and strangeness in the crook of what had once been her elbow. Her lungs reformed as she fell fast and she gasped for breath, only to have it knocked out of her as she landed on coldness and hardness. As Mel opened her eyes and the old tile swam into focus, she rolled over and vomited until she had nothing left in her to throw up. Then she was pulled roughly to her feet and dragged, dragged up and up, back to the little office and laid on the floor in the dark. The room shifted and lurched and she clenched her eyes and knew nothing for a time.
When she next woke it was with her stomach growling, her brain pounding, and a throbbing pain in her elbow. Shakily she reached for Julius, and when he wouldn't look at her a sob rasped from her sour mouth. Then the door swung open and she was dragged back.
"No," she croaked, "please no, please no, please please please-"
The shackle locked heavily around her ankle once more and she was strangled with the smell of old sick and the horrible familiar smoke and then she was back.
For a man to know his purpose is a rarity. The knowledge could never be meant to reassure, to calm, to satisfy; for this reason a purpose could be neither a blessing nor a curse. It was simply inevitable. He had first known his purpose all those years ago as chaos swarmed around them in the Pit. His size, his wretchedness, the hole within him that the little princess curled inside and warmed- all had been for the purpose of her rising. As he lay bloody and ruined and staring forward into the path of his imminent death, he felt fulfilled. His work was complete. And yet, as the pain shattered through his skull and down the wreckage of his spine, he was ashamed to know the smallest whisper of a question. He had done what was necessary. But was that all?
Time would be his educator.
Time would see him drawn out of the Pit and into the wide, light world. It would see him bathed and built and hated. It would see him masked. And, with the lessons that Time would offer, he came to see that it was not a singular offering that he was meant to give. The Pit had been a mold where he would come to be like no other man so that, when he was brought into the light, he would be something other. The kind of thing that creeps from within the crevasse, the kind of thing that those of light summon forth from places foul and ancient: a shadow. Evil, just like good, was necessary. He would be this necessary evil.
And so he became.
In moments of quiet, twisting well-worn cord between his fingers or watching a fire twine its tongues against the empty air, there were still whispers now and again. He remembered each second, each swell and each detail, of the moment he had first thought was his purpose. And, although Time had shown him differently, he wondered at it; at the warmth he had felt, at the trueness of the experience. On one such night he had sat and gazed out across the ocean; far out a storm raged, flashing and rumbling and leaving shards of lightning reflected in the churning waves. Thousands of nights had rolled away into the past since his banishment: thousands and thousands and thousands. And yet it was her voice that crackled through the satellite phone that night.
"Weaver."
He had known it at once, strong like a wave and soft as despair from a dark hole a lifetime ago. Bane had listened, had said nothing. She spoke again.
"Weaver."
Neither the heat from the desert sand beneath his feet- left over from the day's scorching sun - nor the whisper of the nighttime breeze from across the dark sea could soothe the ache in his soul. It was not pain nor joy, this ache. It was memory.
"Princess."
When they were reunited he felt a flare of that trueness once more, sharp and warm like loneliness, even as the Swiss winter wind chilled his flesh. The princess had risen. The little beacon that had never belonged in such a place. Time had been her educator as well, and the girl had become a woman. They had stood in the snow and regarded one another. Years wore away at bones and flesh but still she was bright and blue and very much herself. He wondered if she thought the same of him. As a woman Talia was resourceful, intelligent, ambitious; her impact investment firm in Bern was auspicious and respected. A small portion of its profits became contributing funds to the League although, she had declared with finality, this constituted the entirety of her connection. He had blinked slowly, then nodded. Loyalty, as he knew well, ran in one's marrow. He did not fault her for it, though he could not bring himself to revoke his hatred of the man whose name neither of them would utter out loud.
The circumstances, however, had changed.
Time had shown her that her purpose was to be that same loyalty, the completion of an inherited purpose of her father's: Gotham City. And it was bitterness that rippled through him when he understood. Surely there was more? Surely, after everything, she was meant for something more? And she assured him there was more. The city would fall to ashes, yes, and alongside its ruin would be the destruction of its vigilante. Bruce Wayne, the Batman. Talia had burrowed her nose into the collar of her jacket.
"It shall be a reward for my patience."
She had worn no gloves and when her fingers had curled around his they were chilled. Even so, as he looked down at the small clever hand and felt the unfamiliar gentle touch his face softened. He pressed his thumb against her wrist and felt the heartbeat inside.
"It shall."
And so they began.
It was many years later that he stood in the darkness, surrounded by the trappings of excessive and undeserved wealth. The lights of Gotham shone against the inky black sky and he stood in the empty room, waiting. It would be some hours yet until their pawn would join him and he bathed in the time and in the quiet. A slice of lamplight reflected his mask in the window. He blinked heavily. His fingers moved to brush over the mesh, to feel the hiss of air that whispered past his thumb and slithered along his shoulders and down his spine. It was a reminder, always, of the part he was to play. For although it was darkness all around him now, he was not in his own world. The world of light was open to him only so long as he paid the toll. Was he not doing it? Was not this final act, this cause he had taken as his own...did it not free him?
Sound from the next room filtered through the wall and his thoughts melted into the night. He listened to the quiet tinkling of the piano, something old and melancholy. Beneath the mask the man smiled bitterly. The occupant next door, this unknown musical shade, played for him a swan song. The smile grew even as his eyes hardened and focused back out of the window. Time, it seemed, could not be made more clear. His hand dropped from the mask to twist against the smoothness of his jacket.
"Let music sound while he doth make his choice;"
His voice whirred even as he spoke softly; he had forgotten what it might sound like without the machine.
"Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music."
The interruption came in the form of voices, slick and sour from him and turbulent from her. Their exchange escalated and Bane turned his attention away, looking back out of the window at the twinkling, opulent city once more. Perhaps Talia was right, he mused as the disturbance next door stuttered to an end. Perhaps Ra's had been right; perhaps Gotham's time had come. There was no saving a place like this.
When the hall had silenced once more he slipped like a shadow into the piano room. The air was charged and unhappy. A wisp of perfume brushed against him, and he thought of the evening sun on wide tropical leaves. It was then that the orchid, tucked away in a location on a different table, seized his attention. He stared at the small white flowers, touched the newly dampened soil; it felt cool and alive against his finger. The little plant seemed to thrum with life, with potential, with a newly acquired sense of expectation. Her reentry through the door was tumultuous, a flash of bare arms and fervor and tear-tracked cheeks. The shadow regarded the shade and she looked back into him arrogantly; a broken, angry creature.
"If everyone is in the void, where does that put you and I?"
The smell of her perfume was clearer now. His lungs filled with it as it whispered past the mesh and through his lips. Once more, he felt that little flare of memory, of purpose.
She reminded him of his princess.
Mel wasn't sure exactly how many times it happened. She began to lose track of time in general; after a while the hunger stopped nagging, the headache stopped registering, she probably slept but couldn't be sure what was sleep and what was nothing and what was nightmare and what was hallucination. Everything blurred together.
One day, as she came up for air from the water that was not water, the thing that wriggled inside of her managed to slither free of her lips and after that there was no stopping it. The thing shot out of her eyes and nostrils and twisted into her ears and through her brain and then it made its way into her blood. It filled every vein, every artery, and then it became her air, her thoughts, her heartbeat; she realized that it was alive and she was alive and they were alive together.
Curling, twisting, unraveling and untwining inside of her.
What she called a body was truly just a husk.
A shell.
A pod.
It was protecting something precious.
Slowly, it coiled itself back through her eyes and veins and nestled contentedly in her belly where it had begun, humming and thriving. She floated and knew that that burning hole had never ever been a hole; never had it been an absence of being, but all the while had been something growing, incubating.
Waiting to bloom. Waiting for her. She was silent and suddenly so aware of how cold the world was, how cold and dark and and and-
They needed to survive, but how could they?
Something between a sigh and a gasp fluttered across her lips. Her mouth moved endlessly and soundlessly; she lost herself for a time, tangled in an emerald dream.
She thought of hexagons; hexagons that built shapes that traveled and coiled along synapses like vines-
over ageless trees and,
their leaves and their bark-
of the reactor, of fusion and the heat in which it produced, of its warm green lights like a dappled forest floor.
What pulled her back was a driving purpose. To protect. To save.
And warmth.
Such warmth and glorious heat surrounding her as she rose from the tiles, and she knew somewhere in her mind that he had her now. They moved away from the room that was a cocoon, and he was so warm-
Like the sun, like the sun that fed the thing that grew inside of her.
The coolness in the crook of her arm began to spread and the green cleared from her eyes. As she watched the neutral colored walls of the third floor move by them, Mel rested her cheek against his chest and fed on his power and heat. She felt a cloth wipe across her face and neck; she closed her eyes as the grime and salt tears came away. When a brim pressed to her lips she guzzled the cool water until there was none left, and then she was lifted and settled some place soft. She curled into it but it was when the heat returned- when he returned -enveloping her, that she sighed and basked and knew that she was ready.
Tilled, cleaned, watered, and warmed and ready to sink into sleep.
xo, trppnwtz
Trigger warning content synopsis: Crane does not return to the lab the next day and Mel works nervously, awaiting some kind of retribution for her actions. When Barsad brings her back to City Hall Bane brings her down to the delousing closet and, with the powdered drug created by the League of Shadows, prompts Mel to hallucinate that she contains something writhing and painful. This occurs several times until the thing busts past her control and she identifies it as a part of her and heartily decides that it has to thrive. Bane gives her the antidote in shot form and carries her back to the third floor to sleep.