Chapter Two: Would You Like to be the Voyeur to my Pain?
"You are the one whose opinion will determine my fate," he stated.
Maureen nodded, "I only evaluate, they're not obligated to comply with my recommendation."
Bane nodded.
Maureen stepped aside so Bane could walk by, closely flanked by Boris.
A moving wall of muscle.
Maureen watched the large, scarred man be led past her.
She settled behind her desk as Boris triple-checked that Bane was securely attached to the chair, his movement limited to carefully measured inhales.
As Boris closed the door behind him, taking a quick glance at the wall clock to ensure it matched the plastic digital watch around his thick wrist, Maureen smiled at the picture of her husband on her desk. The simple wooden frame with gold highlights, housed the favorite picture of her husband on one of their weekends on the water. The 8x10 photo captured Josef with his perpetual squint, too vain for glasses and even more squeamish to put contacts in his cerulean blue eyes.
Maureen's smile transformed her face before it returned to one of resting tension as she twisted her wedding ring around her slim finger until the princess cut diamond was looking up to the sky with sparkling brilliance. She twirled the ring in three revolutions as she did at the start of every session from her first day of residency and would continue to for every session to come.
Maureen looked at Bane as she flipped through the stack of papers and legal documents in his patient file.
"Good afternoon, do you have any questions about the process here or what the court has ordered?"
"You're supposed to tell the courts whether I am to stand trial for my role in Gotham's liberation."
"You're pleading guilty?"
Maureen didn't hear that often.
"I'm pleading for nothing from the courts or a favorable opinion from you," Bane stated.
"Well you're decisive. I'm going to read some required legal documents to you, unless you have any further questions before we begin."
Maureen smiled easily when Bane slowly nodded and began to read the legal lingo about the amount of mandated sessions and that she'd submit her evaluation to the court. She ended by explaining there was still some measure of confidentiality under her psychiatric care if it wasn't relevant to his mental state during the state of crimes in which he was being charged.
"How are you adjusting to being here?"
"Adjusting?"
"How's your pain?" Maureen asked as she glanced at his previous medication list. "Your pain medication was significantly reduced since discharge, how is your level of pain?" she reiterated.
"It's tolerable," Bane finally answered.
Maureen could see the skin pulled tight as he tried to keep the ebb and flow of his physical agony from leeching into his features. His nervous system was an electrical firestorm, nerve endings that were once soothed by the aerosolized opiate were now being whipped around wildly, raw. His pain was a hot pulse buried deep in his center, fused with his spinal cord, making the very cellular matrix of his bone necrotic.
Bane narrowed his eyes; he would not allow this doctor to be a voyeur to his pain.
Maureen made a check mark next to his sleep pattern before dragging the sharpened tip of the pencil down the page. "How's your appetite been? The hospital didn't note any food allergies."
Bane remained silent until Maureen looked up. "Your appetite and digestion."
"Adequate," he finally said as his shoulders began to ache from the tension under the tight restraints. Bane would never have given words to the actual truth.
He'd been plagued with acid reflux and bouts of vomiting from the Arkham Asylum's lackluster and heavily processed food.
Maureen skimmed the remainder of his medication changes from his Gotham General discharge to Arkham Asylum intake as Bane took the time to look around her corner office.
The walls were a sandy beige with enough teal accents that it looked like cleanup after a peacock bukkake party.
The wall behind Maureen's desk was cluttered with each framed resume, degree, and accolade as impressive as each inch of a porn star's prized cock.
Bane clenched his jaw and suppressed a twinge as a spike in his back pain made him squeeze his restrained hands into fists and dropped his eyes to the distraction of her shapely nose and wide-set green eyes.
He followed her small hand move to the candy dish as she made a few notes on a lined page. Her wedding ring caught the light as she plucked out the shiny, red candy-coated chocolates.
"How are you sleeping?" Maureen asked before she lifted her eyes from the different notes written from the varying surgical nurses that had overseen his care while in their operating room suite's.
"I manage," Bane answered after a short pause, thinking of the places he's laid his head in the past compared to his current form of imprisonment. But since the removal of his breathing apparatus, he'd been unable to sleep for long stretches of time due to his damaged nasal passages and contorted airways that even invasive surgical intervention hadn't corrected. Bane's chest still ached if he coughed or sneezed from the thoracotomy he'd underwent while at Gotham General.
Maureen selected a few more red candies before speaking. "Despite the penal code normally dictating fifteen months, the judge was swayed by the prosecution team and ordered eleven."
"Do you agree with the judge's decision?"
"No," Maureen said, her voice dropped to her one-thousandth percentile clinically solemn tone.
Maureen continued at the look of wordless, genuine surprise that flitted briefly across Bane's features before he shut his expression down.
"It requires time in order to properly evaluate competency, I don't take recommendations lightly."
Bane nodded in response as Maureen returned her attention to his file.
As Maureen turned the page, across the city, newly promoted detective-sergeant John Blake swaggered into the corner convenience store owned by a third-generation Greek family. He nodded at the young cashier and strolled to the back of the store to get a six pack of long-necked imported beer. Blake took his place at the back of a slow line and was fiddling with his new watch when two teenagers burst in the convenience store brandishing their daddies guns.
Detective Sergeant John Blake dropped his beers to shatter on the tile floor and held out his hands, certain he could calm down the two hooligans since he'd been given a medal and key to the city for saving the orphans on the bridge.
Blake was confident he could deescalate the young criminals because he saw the angry children behind their wanting to be adult, criminal faces.
The oldest of the two kids, a 14-year-old, swung his firearm towards Blake.
"Whoa," detective-sergeant Blake said in his most understanding police officer voice. "Let's talk son, there's a better way to be doing this."
"Shut the fuck up man," the kid shouted, spit flying from his quivering lips.
Detective-sergeant Blake nodded, "I get it son, here, I'll give you some money."
The kid's eyes grew wide as he watched Blake reach for his wallet that was nestled deep in his back pocket. The hand holding the gun belong to a child, and inside the child's skull was a still developing brain that had 11 years until it was considered mature.
The youth changed his life and the life of everyone else in that convenience store when he pulled the trigger in three rapid successions. Two of the shots went wild and the third lodged itself deep in the center of detective sergeant Blake's softened beer gut.
As Blake's belly continued to spew blood, eventually dying from exsanguination after the bullet had sheared through his abdominal aortic artery, across the city in the top floor corner office of Arkham Asylum, Bane returned his attention to Dr. Maureen Hightower's expansive wall of her educational proof.
He moved his eyes over each framed degree with its raised, foil letters. Each character, a vibrant color from firetruck red to the blue of the sky.
Bane's gaze froze on the one degree that stood out from the rest, one that didn't belong nestled among the science and neural pathways.
Maureen glanced up from the page at Bane's silence and knew exactly what he was reading.
"Sometimes when you spend too much time in the lab you need an escape," Maureen said, parlaying to probing him with her questions when Bane returned his eyes to hers. "Your last EKG showed some irregularities and the cardiologist prescribed therapeutic doses of magnesium and potassium. Have you had any recent chest pain, pressure or difficulty breathing?"
"No," Bane stated, his single syllable not inviting further exploration.
Maureen made another note in the blank margin before returning her eyes to his.
"Do you understand the charges that have been brought against you?"
Bane shrugged as much as the restraints would allow. "I'm already guilty in the eyes of your justice system," he stated in an even tone.
"Are you guilty in your own eyes?" Maureen asked as the point of the pencil hovered over the off-white page, poised to capture her observations.
"I am not bound by your laws," he deflected.
"They're not my laws, but they are laws that this country, state and judge act under accordingly. They're also the laws that I adhere to when evaluating and submitting my recommendations to the court."
Bane regarded her in silence until she continued. "Do you trust the attorney that has been appointed to you?"
"Trust?" he scoffed, thinking of the diminutive man that couldn't stop sweating. "I have no use for the impeccably dressed, small man."
Maureen made a note as she frowned. "Do you feel you're getting fair representation? I can communicate a need for counsel change to the judge," she pressed.
Bane shook his head, "the slight man is of no consequence, my fate has already been decided. This process is mere theatricality and deception."
Maureen breathed in deeply through her nose as she considered his words. She knew that with the return of the Batman and newly minted Mayor James Gordon's call for peace, meant Bane would be judged, electrocuted, and buried so that the city could move on.
Maureen rooted around the candy dash for any stray red chocolates before she flipped through a few pages of lab values, her eyes moving across the pages until she landed on one of the many court-ordered lists of questions she needed to answer upon the completion of her competency evaluation of Bane.
"I'm going to review the individual charges against you," Maureen said as she glanced briefly up to Bane.
Bane nodded as Maureen began to read each felony and capital crime in which he was being charged.
As she made a checkmark next to each charge after she read it aloud, across the city, Selina Kyle's hips swayed as she walked to the center of the Queensboro Bridge with a bouquet of white roses clutched in her gloved hands.
She sniffed hard as she looked over the edge of the bridge and into the water that the Batman had evaporated into with the neutron bomb detonation. Selina held a crumbled tissue under her nose as she settled the bouquet on one of the steel beams.
Selina issued a piercing shout and turned with lightning-fast speed when a hand settled on the round cap of her shoulder.
Her glut of adrenaline was stopped dead in its tracks when she found herself facing Bruce, the billionaire Bat Boy, Wayne.
"I'm sorry I was gone for so long. I almost forgot how much better these look on you," Bruce murmured as he teased the edge of his manicured fingernail along the pearl necklace around Selina's throat before crushing his lips to hers.
As Selina let herself melt into Bruce's three-thousand-dollar, suit-sleeved embrace and let herself glimpse into the future about a happily ever after, like that fucking wooden Italian marionette who wanted to be a real boy, back in the corner office of Arkham Asylum, basking in abundant sunshine, Maureen noted the date in the top right corner of a lined notepad before she spoke.
"I'd like to run through some word associations to begin establishing a baseline. I'd like you to provide me a single word descriptor for an associated experience or feeling."
"Am I required to answer your questions?"
"No, you're not obligated to answer anything," she said quickly and made a few notations on the lined page.
"What would that mean for your trial recommendation?"
"I'd simply note that you were uncooperative and declined to answer my questions," Maureen answered, keeping her expression neutral as she added. "Are you declining to answer?"
"Ask your questions doctor."
Maureen nodded and turned her attention to the first word.
"Childhood."
"Myth."
"Death."
"Honor."
"Life."
"Domination."
"Murder."
Maureen looked up when Bane inhaled and shifted uncomfortably on the rigid chair, the positioning with the restraints made his back ache.
"Pleasurable," he hissed.
"Mmm hmm," Maureen murmured as she quickly continued.
"Fear."
"Imaginary."
"Light."
"Blinding."
"Darkness."
"Comfort."
"Weakness."
"Foreign."
"Pain."
"Tolerable."
"Birth."
"Enslavement."
"Happiness."
"Façade."
"Strength.
"Respect."
"Power."
"Life."
Maureen glanced up at the clock as she was nearing the end of the list.
"Love," she said, carefully observing him for any facial or physical movement.
"Frivolous," Bane answered after a pause.
"Sex."
"Necessary."
"Prison."
"Temporary."
Maureen nodded, prevented from adding anything further when a heavy, closed hand rapped on her office door.
"That's the time for today," she said as she slowly closed Bane's file and stood from behind her desk.
Bane nodded before Maureen opened the door to the tech Boris.
"Dr. Hightower," Boris said in greeting and fiddled with his large key ring to unlock Bane's cuffs from the straight-backed chair.
Bane rose to his full height, relief flooding his limbs upon standing as Maureen moved back to her desk and watched Boris secure Bane's wrists to his side and adjusted the cuffs around his ankles so he could only walk in mincing footsteps.
"I'll see you the same time tomorrow," Maureen said as Boris led Bane towards the door.
Bane paused and turned as much as he could within the shackles, chains, and Boris's ironclad grip.
He was at once a pawn on a sprawling chess board, looking to promote himself. Bane knew that in the end, Arkham Asylum would be a place he could thrive, infiltrate every broken mind and rule, whereas prison would guarantee a sadistic warden with an underground fight club to the death before the state legally took his life.
"Tomorrow," Bane echoed and followed Boris without resistance.
Maureen closed the door behind the two large men who would've been planet killing asteroids if let loose in the orbit and returned to her desk. She rooted around in the candy dish for the last red candy before reopening Bane's file and flipping through to some of the last pages to some of the photos of the destruction and devastation that Bane had a strong hand in causing.
Maureen shook her head at glossy photo after gleaming rectangular image of a land-locked tsunami and its deadly wake before replacing the photos in the manila folder and putting it in her lower, right desk drawer.
She locked the drawer, wondering who the man responsible behind the damage was and what the hemispheres of his brain would say as she navigated through his tangled minefield of neural pathways.
As Maureen somewhat straightened up the top of her cluttered desk, rectangular pink erasers dotted the surface like sprinkles on a fat cupcake, Boris the tech, led Bane back to one of Arkham's secure elevator, multiple HD cameras trained on every angle.
Bane watched Boris slide a blunt silver key into the elevator's control panel and turn it to the right. Bane felt the cart give a gentle lurch before carrying him and the equally muscular psych technician to the second floor and down a maze of hallways to where Bane was being temporarily housed until it would be decided by the courts whether Arkham Asylum would be his new home for the rest of his natural life or whether he'd be transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary.
As Bane was escorted back to his chilly cell with its plain walls and cot style, olive-green bed that was attached to the wall, on the top floor, in her sunny corner office, Maureen sipped at her freshly made coffee and traced the smooth pad of her fingertip over the shiny leaves of her Elephant Ear fern.
She pressed the tip of her index finger against the rich soil she bought at a nursery on the outskirts of Gotham, the enriched soil was imbued with a slow-release fertilizer which nurtured the glossy leaves and sturdy stalks.
Bane looked over his shoulder at the sound of the cell door's metallic hinges squeak when the center slot was opened by his arriving lunch on a sunny yellow plastic tray.
He moved closer to the tiny window of his cell, the ten-by-ten square of heavily barred glass, imbedded with razor wire, let in a warm shaft of sunlight.
Bane pressed his face against the heated pane of thick glass, squinting through the wire at the other wing of the Asylum that he'd just been escorted from. He squinted until his eyes ached and pressed close enough to the glass that his rich brown eyelashes kissed the square of reinforced glass.
He narrowed his eyes, his pupils rapidly dilating in the brilliant sunshine washing over his scarred skin as he could detect about half of Doctor Maureen Hightower's botanical windowsill before he retrieved his lunch tray and settled it on the small table made from hard plastic that was bolted to the wall.
Bane tore open the single packet of real sugar and added it to the black coffee in the biodegradable cup that was adjacent to the corn starch utensils.
The oatmeal-colored spork couldn't be filed down and fashioned into a weapon.
He sighed heavily and forced himself to mechanically chew and ingest the dry cheese and meat sandwich, bruised red apple and paper bowl of strawberry gelatin. The medication that kept some of his pain at bay made him feel poor if he neglected the Asylum's subpar food.
As Bane continued to force himself to eat the overly processed bread and wash it down with the bitter coffee, back in Gotham City, Bruce directed his driver to head back to his sprawling estate before closing the partition, creating privacy for himself and Selina.
"Show me what I've missed," Bruce demanded raggedly before fucking Selina behind the heavily tinted glass and lapping at her soaking wet pussy like a starving man who'd found his oasis in the desert.
