Kitty began to hyperventilate as the barrel of Barsad's assault weapon pushed her from the bottom steps of City Hall into the mass of unruly citizens on Grand Avenue. Her feet left the ground, and she felt herself being lifted by sturdy hands until her body was positioned horizontally above the mob and passed forward.
She stared helplessly into the ugly November sky, absurdly fretting that it would be the last thing she'd ever see before the end came. Her body weaved back and forth as if she were floating on water. At any moment she expected her limbs to be ripped away one by one.
Then a startling notion came over her.
She was being handled carefully. She'd seen this sort of thing at rock concerts, when performers fell from the stage into the mosh pit, allowing themselves to be caught and carried aloft in a sacred expression of trust between themselves and the audience. The understanding was that no harm would come to the performer, and the trust was such that the performer knew he would be deposited back on the stage to resume the show.
Kitty's suspicions were confirmed when she was gently dropped on the roof of a burnt-out car. She shivered as she got her bearings and met the eyes of an adoring young man standing in the mob below. He was vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place him. She suspected she had probably worked with him at some point, but she had never paid much attention to her fellow cast-mates, let alone understudies, unless she felt threatened by their talent.
"Come on, Miss Nash, you know what to do!" He shouted.
Kitty noted that he had addressed her as 'Miss Nash', which was the way she had long demanded to be addressed in the theatre wing.
"What do you mean?" Her panic returned as she realized thousands of pairs of eyes were focussed on her. "What the hell am I supposed to know?"
"You're Julie Jordan from Carousel, Miss Nash! Sing!"
"Oh!" Kitty cried, finally understanding. "Of course! I am Julie Jordan!"
A winter storm loomed on the horizon as Kitty summoned the theatrical gods. Closing her eyes, she centred herself, clasped her hands together and began to sing. At first her delivery was shaky and reluctant, given that she feared the mob could turn on her at any moment.
Her confidence grew as the people fell silent and her voice soared, just as it had done seven performances a week at the Brett Addams theatre.
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
She was in full-on performance mode, with arms opened as wide as her cuffed wrists would allow, and palms pressed against her heart.
From his position at the top of City Hall's main entrance, Barsad watched in stunned silence. She should have been dead by now. Instead, she had captured the crowd.
"What the fuck," he eventually managed, nudging the Russian mercenary standing next to him. "Go get Bane."
"No need," Bane rumbled, emerging from the colonnade to re-join Barsad. The masked man's frown was so deep that his second-in-command couldn't tell whether he was angry or intrigued.
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
For your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone
Although there were some scattered boos and a few angry scuffles, the roar of the crowd was undeniably in favour of Kitty.
Barsad gulped, blinking away unexpected emotion. "That was beautiful, man."
Bane cast the sniper a cautionary look, prompting him to quickly change his tune.
"Can you believe that, brother? You're supposed to be the guy who stands on cars and performs. She just stole your act!"
Gripping the straps of his heavy vest, Bane watched her disappear as a pair of arms removed her from the roof of the car. He then retreated inside without comment.
"Mind telling me what that was all about?" John Blake shouted. He shoved Kitty into the passenger seat of his stolen car, leapt over the hood and unceremoniously plowed through the moving masses of people. "Your latest act of self-absorption?"
"What are you doing, you idiot! Let me out of this car! I had a captive audience, goddamit! I could have turned them against Bane. You had no right to take me, and you know what Detective Blake? I'm tired of being kidnapped, so let me go this instant," she demanded as she struggled in vain to open the passenger door.
"I"ve never known anyone with an ego like yours to have a death wish at the same time. What were you doing out there, anyway? You could have gotten yourself killed!"
"Bane had his gunman push me into the crowd. I guess he expected them to swallow me up, but they weren't having any of his shit. They passed me to the roof of that car. A man recognized me and encouraged me to sing."
Kitty frowned for a moment, lowering the volume of her words.
"It's my job, you know? It's my only redeeming quality, the fact that I can sing," she added in an uncharacteristic moment of self reflection. "Well, that and I can cook, too."
"Why did Bane want you dead?" Blake asked, calmer now. "Did you burn his dinner or what?"
"He...didn't want to play along with my amnesia anymore because he found out my ex-fiancé left me at the altar, which made me more interesting than Jenna. He got rough, so I told him the truth. How I had wanted to make him fall in love with me, how I had wanted to hurt him. I... um, said some pretty nasty things, like no woman could ever love him. I sort of apologized, but the next thing I knew I was being herded into that mob."
Blake pulled the vehicle into an alley in order to cut her zip cuffs with his pocket knife. He noted her pallor and the fact that she was trembling.
"You got lucky. Depending on the food supply, the mob switches sides by the hour. So no more thinking you can be the hero, 'cause next time you stand on the roof of a car you may not live to tell the tale. Bane's sniper can cut you down with his eyes closed."
Kitty gaped at Blake as his words sunk in. "I could have died out there," she blubbered. "I could have been...trampled to death!" She rocked back and forth as the reality of the close call rolled over her in terrifying waves.
"I could have been squashed into the pavement like... like a bug. Stomped on by thousands. Scrubbed away by a street cleaner!"
Her many sins washed over her like a hot flash. Selfishness, entitlement, ambition and cruelty were the first ones to come to mind.
Kitty dropped her face into her hands as she relived the stark terror she'd experienced when Barsad pushed her into the waiting mob.
"Would anyone care if I died, Detective Blake?"
"Sure they would. You got plenty of fans," Blake assured her.
"I'm not talking about fans. I used to have friends. I used to have a family. I used to hold dinner parties."
"I think you need a drink," Blake observed, rolling his eyes as he pulled out of the alley and headed in the direction of his modest mid-town apartment.
Kitty's own personal reckoning continued and she turned her haunted expression on the young detective.
"You're not listening to me, Detective Blake! No one would care if I disappeared off the face of the earth. I've damaged so many relationships in my life. I've hurt and alienated so many people, and made enemies. Why should they care if I died?"
"Save the self-pity for later. There's no way you can go home now. That's the first place Bane will search if he goes after you. Looks like I have myself another roommate," he mumbled irritably.
In the damp, cold sewers beneath Gotham City, a moody Bane stoked the fire that was his only source of warmth. He had just finished brewing his afternoon tea, and was now sipping it through a metal straw that slipped neatly into his specially designed mask and allowed him to drink.
The straw was no use to him at mealtimes, when it became necessary for him to remove the mask in order to eat. He refused to have his meals puréed, because he wanted to eat like a man, no matter how much pain he endured. With morphine he could linger over his meals for up to 30 minutes.
Kitty's harsh words had unsettled him, causing him to denounce her to the people, and have Barsad push her zip-cuffed into the mob surrounding City Hall.
What would she say now if she saw him sipping tea through a straw? He reckoned she'd likely dissolve into cruel laughter.
He tossed the remainder of his tea into the wash, and turned his attention to retrieving a wooden crate from beneath his bunk. It contained the books that informed his inner life. History, classical translations, poetry, and literature.
He had put it to Kitty that he wasn't capable of love, even though he had never known for certain. That theory had never been tested.
If there was a hole in his life, then he filled it by living vicariously through some of literature's most prominent romantic heroes. Bane rummaged through the well-worn volumes and retrieved one of his favourites, considered one of the greatest novels ever written because of its keen insight into human nature.
Inside the book's pages, Mr. Knightley was quick to offer his disapproval when the self-centred Emma Woodhouse decided she had a talent for match-making. Her interference in other people's lives eventually threatened her own personal happiness, thus Emma received a well-deserved comeuppance. However, her new-found maturity earned her a marriage proposal from Knightley. He had always told Emma the truth, no matter how painful. Truth was a tenet of Bane's own philosophy.
He reached for another volume and found the aloof Mr. Darcy, a man of prejudice unexpectedly bewitched by Miss Elizabeth Bennet, a proud woman beneath his social standing. Humiliated after she refused his proposal of marriage, he nonetheless earned a second chance with her when he nobly stepped in to save her family from social disgrace. Bane never offered his adversaries a second chance, yet he had always believed there would be one waiting for him when the time came.
Digging a little deeper into the crate, he found the romantic hero he was looking for — Mr. Rochester, the troubled master of Thornfield Hall. He was a man who flaunted the rules and harboured scandalous secrets, much to the distress of Jane Eyre, the governess who had fallen in love with him. Afflicted with blindness after sustaining grave injuries in a fire, he was ultimately redeemed. He married Jane, his vision improved, and he was able to see the son she bore him. Affliction was something of which Bane knew a great deal.
He clapped the book shut, prompting a cloud of dust to surround him.
What kind of "masked monster" could have a happy ever after?
Kitty had accused him of being a neutered 'yes' man — words that rang in his ear even as he was shaken from his reverie by an all-too familiar voice.
"What was that spectacle at City Hall this morning?" Talia demanded sharply. "Imagine my delight as I watched you feed Kitty Nash to the lions, only to be let down so spectacularly. You failed, brother!"
"I did not fail. Our plan is proceeding as expected, my dear," Bane replied lazily. "There is no need for concern.
"You served her up to our enemies as a traitor. You left her to die at their hands, but they did not comply with your wishes."
Bane remained composed as he began to talk his way out of a situation that had taken him as much by surprise as it had Talia.
"Perhaps they did not wish to kill a woman, or perhaps they were merely dazzled by her celebrity. However, Katrina acted as a ray of sunshine peeking through the grey clouds above the city. She had no notion when she began to sing that she was feeding the people hope to poison their souls."
"That's your job, brother," Talia scolded. "No more contractors. No more Daggetts and cat burglars, and no more of this girl. Where is she now?"
"She escaped in a stolen vehicle with a man, possibly a plain-clothed police officer. The car was abandoned south of mid-town."
Bane's fingers twitched. He was done with Katrina Nash. He wanted no more contact with her. She had messed with him, unsettled him, and now all he wanted was for her to be gone. He'd been a fool to have ever abducted her in the first place. It was a bold, yet fanciful act. In some small way, he blamed it on the influence of the books he cherished.
"I will assign the job to Brother Barsad," he grunted.
"No. You brought this stray cat home. It's your responsibility to personally put her down."
Bane's stomach lurched when he realized she had spotted the book in his hand.
"Give me that," she insisted, snatching it away from him before he had a chance to comply.
As he watched her carefully peruse the pages, he dearly wished he had reached for a more masculine novel other than the Gothic romance that now held Talia's interest.
At any moment he expected her to offer the smile he had seen many times before — the one that made her look as though she were speaking to a small child.
However, her sober expression never wavered, and she returned the book to him.
"I too have books," she simply said. "It doesn't change the fact that we are called to this life. Don't ever forget that, my friend."
Author's Note: "You'll Never Walk Alone" is from the musical Carousel, by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
