Chapter Eleven: The Fire Rises
After the Joker caught his breath, he stripped the uniform from Arnold's body and assessed his reflection.
"You look fine," the Joker purred as he pushed his greying hair back before retrieving Arnold's keys and making his way to the hospital wing to wait for Bane after he wrapped up his last court-ordered session with Maureen. Whistling a cheery tune.
As the Joker's whistling increased in volume and some of the perverted guards fell in line after their marching savior, snakes being led out by St. Patrick on the way to the hospital wing and not the Emerald Isle, upstairs in Maureen's sunny, corner office, Bane let out a low groan as he bent his head forward.
Maureen leapt to her feet, shouting for Ferguson as she pressed two fingertips against Bane's neck, finding his rapidly pounding carotid pulse.
Ferguson was in the room in seconds, closely followed by Boris.
Maureen watched the two men release Bane's shackles as he slumped further forward, threatening to topple to the floor.
The moment that Bane felt the last ankle cuff being removed, he gave a guttural declaration of war and yanked hard on the arm rest of the chair, ripping it clean free.
Maureen didn't have the voice to scream, and Boris didn't have the time to react as Bane brought his arm up in an uppercut motion as he clenched the arm rest and skewered Ferguson like a plump, juicy pig. Ferguson's skin split as the end of the wood pierced the softness at the soft underside of his chin and continued upwards until the wood splintered against the inside of his skull.
Bane had a shred of genuine regret as he ripped the arm rest free of Ferguson, ducking swiftly as Boris swung for his face. Bane pivoted sharply and shoved the wood stake, soaking with blood, inside Boris's chest cavity, becoming Abraham Van fucking Helsing ending Nosferatu's life for the final time.
Boris's pierced lungs spasmed and his face turned beet red as he gasped for air and clutched at the gaping chest wound.
When Bane withdrew the wood sword from the hole pouring blood in his flesh, his body sagged with flaccidity as he neared complete neurological death.
Bane stared down at the bodies, broken out of his life-taking fugue when he caught Maureen's movement in his peripheral vision.
Maureen had no choice but to back up until her large desk was between them as she met Bane's eyes, inhaling sharply as he shook his head, a solitary drop of blood flew from his thick fringe of eyelashes.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," Bane finally said and dropped the arm rest to the floor where it landed with a wet sound.
Maureen held her hands out to her sides, her eyes darting around the office that she knew every square inch of, further knowing that there was no way past him, the bodies slumped against the closed office door served as lifeless, fleshy door stops.
"What do you want? A car? Drugs? You can have it, just talk to me."
"Are you curious to know how I'm feeling right now doctor?"
"Yes, very much so," she said quickly, taking the wind out of Bane's sails.
"Improved. Truly," Bane said hoarsely.
Maureen remained silent, watching him a beat before speaking breathlessly. "What do you want?"
"Talia's last words."
Maureen blinked and blew out a breath as Bane resumed sitting in the broken chair, letting his strong thighs slightly spread.
"Read them to me."
Maureen nodded, afraid as she never took her eyes off him longer than she needed to as she pawed for his files.
She couldn't keep her hands from visibly shaking as she read from the page.
"Fox showed me how to operate the reactor core, including the emergency flood, there is no way to stop this bomb. Prepare yourselves...my father's work is done."
Bane closed his eyes and pictured Talia's face before he spoke.
"Read them again."
"Fox showed me how to operate the reactor core, including the emergency flood, there is no way to stop this bomb. Prepare yourselves...my father's work is done."
Maureen watched his face as he kept his eyes closed when she was done speaking.
Behind his closed eyelids, Bane was left unsatisfied by Talia's words. "Read them again," Bane growled on an exhale.
"Fox showed me how to operate the reactor core, including the emergency flood, there is no way to stop this bomb. Prepare yourselves...my father's work is done."
Bane opened his eyes, "thank you doctor. Now please come around from behind the desk."
"Oh, that's not necessary. You can be free of here without me in tow, honestly, the guards have guns but they're not exactly physically fit," Maureen stammered, thinking of Arnold and his fat broken face.
"You are incorrect doctor."
"On what?"
"I cannot be free of you, nor do I desire to be."
"I don't understand," Maureen said, growing more anxious as she set the file on top of her cluttered desk, wishing she had the candy bowl back in front of her, desperate to waterboard her feelings with sugar.
"You were painfully accurate on the judge being wrong about the amount of needed time under your evaluation."
"How so?" she asked, genuinely interested as some of her fear got pushed aside with interest.
"I require a considerable amount more time with you."
Maureen remained wordless as she swallowed hard, allowing Bane to add in her silence.
"I fear that there is no end to my need."
"And I'm supposed to what? Travel and treat you?" she scoffed.
"Yes."
Maureen laughed, "okay," she started to say before Bane stood, killing her ability to form words.
"I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug," Bane murmured to her as he tried to estimate how many steps it would take him to circle the desk and wrap her up like a caveman, further how many more steps it would be to take her back to his cave and fuck her after eviscerating a T-rex.
"Stop, I won't be extorted by your perversion of the oath I took," Maureen said as she put her hands on her hip, not caring that her body language was not one of penitence, that she was not doing to be easily controllable in any way.
Bane nodded. "I did not mean to insult you, but yes, we'll travel, you'll treat, and we'll live far from here."
Maureen blinked hard as she began to feel light-headed.
Bane tried to capitalize and begin to circle the desk. Adrenaline coursed through her as he pursued her around the large, antique desk.
Maureen kept just far enough away from his long reach as she spared a glance at the bodies blocking the door.
"No exit," Maureen thought as her mind raced, thinking of the useless items she could throw, hollow against a tank.
"I can't just disappear; people will look for me," she tried.
"I'm going to say some words to you doctor and I'd like a one-word response of the first thing that comes to mind," Bane said with a neutral expression, catching her off balance with the sharp U-turn.
Maureen frowned; "I don't suppose I'm in a position to say no."
"I'd note your refusal."
"Will you sit down first?"
Bane nodded and resumed sitting without much delay.
Maureen remained standing, certain he was going to bolt from the chair, fearing his hands would find her throat and end her life.
"Guilty."
"You."
A small smile teased Bane's lips before he continued.
"Fear."
"Yes."
"Sex."
"Marriage."
"Marriage."
"Love."
"Love."
"Gone."
"Is your husband at home now?"
Maureen looked away from him for a moment to her wedding photo, briefly returning Josef's still frame smile. "He's home when I'm at work," she murmured, thinking of the brushed bronze urn on the mantle.
"You said he was kind."
Maureen nodded.
"Unlike me?"
Bane didn't wait for her to speak as he quickly added.
"Could you see a life with a man like me?"
"What kind of man do you think you are?"
"More psychoanalysis?"
"No, I'd really like to know who you think you are."
Bane foolishly didn't consider her turning his question into a harpoon and pierce his side before he spoke.
"I'm a protector," he murmured, watching Maureen grow still even as her eyes darted around the room, no exit unless she could pull the dead sacks of flesh away from the door before he could intervene.
"Loyal," he continued, standing as he easily added. "Strong."
"Time to go mobile," Bane grunted as he moved closer.
"Think about this, please," Maureen pleaded, hating the belly-dragging groveling evident in her tone.
Bane narrowed his eyes at her, his gaze piercing, sliding through her blood-brain barrier as he decided how far to press her in the house of pancreatic nightmares.
Maureen clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her sudden scream as Bane moved with liquid ferocity and gripped the end of the desk, sliding it abruptly to the side, clearing the path between them with the accelerated pace of Alan Quartermaine.
Maureen scrambled backwards until she was stopped by the floral-filled windowsill. Her fingertips plunging into the rich soil as she caught herself from falling backwards with his quick approach.
Bane paused within touching distance as Maureen caught her balance and stood on shaky feet, trying madly to keep outwardly calm. She held her hands up between them. "Please think about this, how it could affect your imminent future."
"I am thinking about my future," Bane quickly delivered.
The wet bluntness of his words made Maureen's face warm to a flattering blush. She held her breath as Bane reached out and closed his large hands around her narrow wrists.
"What about my future?" she asked shakily.
Bane dropped his eyes from hers to stare at her hands within his unbreakable grasp.
"I've become selfish since your introduction," he admitted as he added, squeezing her wrists with each syllable. "Unapologetically possessive."
"I've enjoyed our time in your office, but we now need to take our leave from this place."
Maureen sucked in a sharp lungful of air as his grip became just shy of painful, her breath was an audible hiss that was incredibly loud in the quiet office.
"You're being unreasonable," Maureen began to protest as he transferred the grip of her wrists to one of his large hands and reached for a pair of wool-lined cuffs from his pocket. The cuffs tingled melodically just as they'd chimed when he'd pulled them from Boris's dead body. They sounded again with a dangerous melody as he quickly closed them around her fine-boned wrists.
"Is that your clinical diagnosis doctor?" Bane asked in a solemn tone, but she could hear the laugh he kept to himself.
"No, this is all absurd, it will completely put the last nail in your coffin, please think about the retention of your life."
"My life?" he scoffed. "How long again until I'm publicly announced guilty and escorted to the electric chair?"
Maureen stammered for a coherent string of words.
"Please," she finally said, hating the pitiful sound of her words, her belly scraping the ground in penitence.
Bane tightened his grip on the chain connecting the cuffs and reached towards her face with the intention of brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear. He paused when Maureen flinched before he could make contact.
"I regret certain aspects of our meeting in this manner. I'm grateful for the others," he finally said and began tugging her forward by the chain of the sturdy cuffs.
Maureen dug in her pointed toe, snakeskin print heels, finding it futile to begin a game of tug-a-war with a god.
Bane paused as Maureen struggled like a worm impaled on a steel hook. He waited until her initial energy burst tapered before speaking.
"Doctor Hightower?"
Maureen couldn't corral her rapid breathing and wanted to brush hair away from her eyes. "Yes?" she finally asked.
"What would you advise a peer to do in this situation?"
"Well I, I couldn't imagine this would ever be a hypothetical," she said as she shook her head.
"If it was?"
"Stop."
"Stop what doctor?"
"Stop perverting my profession to fit your narrative, your reductive words are offensive."
"I apologize," Bane said sincerely. "Now is not the time however to finish this conversation," he murmured as he resumed tugging her towards the door, pausing to move the corpses with one hand while keeping the chain firmly grasped in the other.
"That comes later," he said before he yanked open the door and pulled her across the threshold.
"No," she said, uncharacteristically shrill. "Please consider what you're doing, this is all truly from a place of madness," she practically squealed as nervous sweat sprouted up on her lower back and forehead.
"I'm thinking of my quality-of-life doctor," Bane said, nearly slipping and saying he was thinking of his own happiness or at least a place that was contentment, adjacent.
Maureen pressed her lips together, the lights in the hall were overly bright as she felt her guts twist with a hot, nauseating coil.
"You can't," she said weakly, her breath hitching.
Bane regarded her for a moment, speaking as he swept his gaze over her beautifully frightened face before he abruptly yanked her towards him with an assertive tug on the handcuff's chain. "I am."
The unexpected force of his pull made an involuntary cry slip from between Maureen's lips as she fell forward into Bane's arms. She felt her chest tighten, and for a second forgot how to breathe when his muscular arms wrapped around her and lifted her off her feet until he was carrying her as though she was his new, blushing bride.
"What are you even thinking? Maureen shouted, overwhelmed by the power that she could feel running under Bane's taut skin, his closeness inundated her nervous system as she struggled in his unbreakable hold as he stalked towards the emergency exit stairwell.
Bane ignored her as he used his broad back to push open the heavy fire door before navigating the stairs with Maureen clutched tight to his chest.
Maureen grew still as he descended the stairs, afraid of falling if she continued to fight. All of her attention went to her skirt and how the hem that hit her at mid-thigh when she was standing, was suddenly even higher, allowing him the opportunity to practically bathe in the view of her lithe thighs and trace his eyes along the exposed skin.
Maureen moved her eyes over his upper body and along his prominent collarbones. She dragged her eyes up his neck, settling her gaze on the pulse of his carotid artery under his skin.
Bane felt the weight of her gaze and scrutiny as he continued down to the ground floor, the medical wing his destination to hitch a ride out of there in one of the ambulances from Gotham City's Rapid-Response Paramedic Services.
Maureen narrowed her eyes as she studied every scar that further defined Bane's animal side and ferocity, scrutinized the curve of his skin pulled tautly over his sharp cheekbones. Her scientific mind went into overdrive as it competed in a cataclysmic battle in time with her growing fear.
As soon as Bane step foot on the ground floor, before exiting into the medical wing lobby, he turned his face towards her, catching her as she was memorizing the very curve of his ear and slight flare of his nostrils when he breathed heavily.
Maureen blinked hard but didn't look away.
Bane led the weight of his gaze wash over her, remaining silent before pushing open the door that spilled into the medical wing lobby.
Bane looked around in satisfaction as Isaak had the small hospital staff secured to chairs with a thick silver strip of tape over their mouths as he carried Maureen towards the nurse's station and gaggle of hostages.
Maureen forgot the upheaval in her reality as she looked over Sara, the med tech Neal, visiting podiatrist Doctor Phillips and Cassie who'd been snagged on her way to clock out.
"Are they okay? Did you let them get hurt?" Maureen asked, her anger growing as she resumed struggling.
Bane looked at Isaak. "Did you harm them?"
"No," Isaak said quickly, standing up straighter as he addressed Bane.
Maureen flinched when the Joker threw back a pastel curtain and performed a string of pirouettes across the linoleum floor. "He didn't hurt anyone, but I sure did," he howled.
Bane turned with Maureen still in his arms, tightening his hand on her thighs as he pulled her closer.
"Give her to me, I wanna show her a magic trick," the Joker squealed as he pointed at Maureen.
Bane half-turned, "leave us be laughing man."
The Joker would not be ignored.
"Hey, don't you turn your back on me, you may be a big man, but you'll still bleed like a pig when I slit your throat."
Maureen felt Bane grow still, he became a statue that was full of electricity, live wires that would melt flesh on human contact. He nodded towards Isaak, "your life if any harm comes to her," Bane growled as he passed Maureen over to Isaak who cradled her as though she was a priceless Faberge egg.
Bane fully turned towards the Joker as Isaak furiously nodded.
The Joker rose to his full height and squared his shoulders before grabbing the crotch of Arnold's commandeered pants. "As soon as I'm done with you, that little bitch is going to spread her legs and I'm gonna show her how I can make my cock disappear."
"You should've left, you will die inside Arkham," Bane rasped.
The Joker chuckled before he licked his palm and smoothed back his thinning hair. "You can't get out of here without me big man."
"Your use has always been temporary laughing man," Bane grunted.
The Joker looked over and found the tightly coiled fire hose mounted above the candy-apple red axe affixed to the wall behind the glass that was etched with Break in Case of Emergency.
"I think this qualifies as an emergency," the Joker squealed as he looked back at Bane and clapped his hands to his face in homage to one of the greatest paintings ever created by the immortal Munch, before he elbowed the glass and yanked the axe from the wall.
"Time to die big man," the Joker yowled as he loped towards Bane, exaggeratively skipping as he hoisted the axe high overhead, giving a shrill war cry that was cut off as Bane shot out a closed fist and smashed it against the front of his face. The Joker dropped like a sack of flour and began to howl with laughter as his split lip and broken nose poured blood onto the floor, along with thick strings of spit and snot.
The Joker spit out two teeth as he continued to laugh and struggle to his feet. "Alright, enough of these antics," he mumbled as he reached down for the axe, trying to gain a purchase on the handle, without taking his eyes away from Bane.
As the Joker closed his bloody hand around the handle of the axe, Bane casually reached down and grabbed the Joker's face, twisting his head sharply until the vertebrates of his neck were bisected. The Joker never got to make another knock-knock joke as his lifeless body sank to the floor, his bowels and bladder releasing as he fell forever silent.
Bane stared down at the Joker. His lips twisted into a smile, "always temporary," he repeated before marching back to where Isaak was carefully holding Maureen.
"Hang the Laughing Man from the flagpole," Bane ordered to where Hawke lingered in the closest doorway as he closed the distance between himself and Maureen, his fingers flexing as he wanted Isaak's hands off her body.
Maureen pressed her lips together and tried in vain to suppress a cry as Bane reached out with his bloody hands to take her back from Isaak.
"Where is the pharmacy?"
Maureen fumbled for her words at his question. "Um, it's right past the entrance of the B Wing," she murmured as she gestured past him.
"Bring her with us," Bane stated as he nodded his chin towards Sara.
Isaak was quick to push a tied and secured Sara on the rolling chair, following Bane as he carried Maureen to the pharmacy and waited until she used her laminated identification card to access the employee's entrance.
"Retrieve the medication you have prescribed for me," Bane hoarsely stated as Maureen whipped her face towards him, a frown pulling her eyebrows together, certain she'd misheard him.
Bane struggled to hold her gaze. "Your medication advice has proven helpful," he admitted on a ragged exhale.
The corners of Maureen's lips pulled into a smile, "has it?"
Bane nodded and kept his lips pressed into a line as he settled her onto her feet.
"Do not be foolish doctor," Bane warned as she went about collecting the bottles of medications that she'd prescribed, filling two white paper bags with the dark orange bottles.
Maureen pawed through the bottles, knocking more down than she could initially grasp as her hands shook. She pulled a Class 1 narcotic off the shelf and opened it, pouring the pills into her palm before slipping them into the cups of her satin bra, the oblong, bright green pills pressed to the underside of her breasts.
"If it gets too bad, take the pills," she thought as she filled two bags with all of the medications she currently prescribed for Bane. The pills kissing her skin would give her a fast, intense high before categorical and complete organ failure, closely followed by cardiac death.
Isaak stood just to the right of Sara, awaiting the confirmation of orders to come from his god, perched on a peak that reached higher majesty than Mount Olympus.
"I need your coat doctor," Bane said after Maureen had gathered all the bottles.
"Why?" she asked as Bane began to uncuff her wrists.
"I cannot offer you an explanation at this point, give me your coat," Bane added as he took a step towards her.
Maureen held up a hand, "fine, here," she said as she shrugged out of her white coat and passed it to him, frowning as his bloody hands stained the fabric above her stitched name.
"Thank you," Bane murmured, immediately distracted by the skin her coat had kept from his eyes.
She crossed her arms but held his gaze before he eventually dragged his attention away. He passed her lab coat to Isaak before he prepared to return the cuffs to her small wrists.
"Do you need to put those back on?" Maureen asked as she took a step backwards.
Bane remained wordless as he shot out a hand with reptilian speed and captured her closest forearm and yanked her towards him with enough force to nearly pull her out of her impossibly high heels.
Maureen futilely tried to squirm away as Bane cuffed her wrists and swept her back into his arms, having even more of her flesh to absorb without the coat. He turned towards Isaak, trying not to sweep his eyes across her exposed decolletage and swell of her breast under her olive-green blouse.
Bane pushed open the employee's only door of the pharmacy, pausing to look back at Isaak and Sara from where she was still tightly restrained to the rolling chair and nodded.
Isaak returned the nod and waited until the door closed before he began his work.
As Bane carried Maureen towards one of the waiting ambulances, once the employee's entrance door of the pharmacy closed, Isaak would shoot Sara in the heart with a .45 equipped with a silencer. He would then untie her from the chair and methodically remove her head and hands and place them in a triple-layered, red biohazardous waste bag before exchanging her coat with the one boasting the brightly stitched name of Maureen.
Biology would eventually prove that the body was not Maureen and that of Sara Carlton's, but a good amount of time would pass before a proper identification would come to pass.
Before Isaak left Arkham Asylum in the second ambulance, he would toss Sara Carlton's head, hands, and lab coat into the 400- degree, static gate, single cylinder incinerator.
