Chapter Fourteen: The Foolishly Fatal Actions of a Dead Bat Who Fucks a Cat

As Bane tightened his fingers in Maureen's smooth, dark hair, back at Bruce Wayne's amusement park sized estate, Bruce couldn't shake the need to visit Arkham Asylum and press Doctor Maureen Hightower to expediate the process of delivering Bane to the Gotham City Courthouse.

Selina eventually tired of trying to convince Bruce to not go and instead dressed so she could accompany Bruce, thinking her presence would be helpful.

As Bruce and Selina headed to the Asylum in one of Bruce's many Italian sports cars, back in the lead Cessna, traveling at low altitude and equipped with radar-cloaking technology, Bane leaned closer to Maureen, close enough that he could detect the bitter coffee on her breath.

Bane continued speaking in the wake of her silence as he told her everything that she wasn't.

"You're not a prisoner," he whispered above her trembling, full lips.

"You won't be a victim," Bane growled as he squeezed his fingers into a fist in her thick, silken strands, still bound up tightly in a low bun, forcing her neck to stretch taut.

"You won't die prematurely or ever return to Gotham City," he murmured on a ragged groan as he dropped his lips to hover over the bare skin of her neck.

"You're saying everything I'm not," Maureen managed on a breathless gasp as his exhale made her openly shiver as she added. "Please tell me what I am."

Bane remained silent as he brushed his lips over her racing carotid pulse and teased the tip of his nose around the curve of her earlobe.

"Stop doing that," Maureen managed, her voice stronger than she felt.

"Or what?" Bane growled, not lessening the barest kiss of pressure of his lips on the corner of her jaw.

Maureen surprised herself with an actual laugh at his lowly spoken words

"I'm not exactly in a place to make any demands," she scoffed.

"You're quite wrong Doctor."

"Maureen, please call me Maureen."

"You're wrong Maureen."

"How so?" she barely managed, her neck growing sore from being hyperextended.

Maureen sighed in palpable relief when Bane lessened his grip on her hair, allowing her to raise her head and meet his eyes, blinking as she took a sharp intake with how close his lips were to touching hers.

"You're the one in charge," Bane moaned in a choked tone.

A girlish giggle escaped from between Maureen's lips, "what on earth does that mean?"

Bane tried and failed to soften his expression, to tone down the adrenaline that flooded his system and made his pupils dance with kinetic energy. "You're in a position to turn me down, to reject me," he managed on a series of staccato grunts.

Bane danced his fingertips down the side of her neck, moving the scarred tip of his index finger in lazy, counterclockwise circles in the hollow at the base of her throat.

"I hope to eventually coax sounds other than protest from you," Bane rasped, his wherewithal threatening to shatter as he forced himself to sit back in his narrow seat. He kept his hand firmly trapping Maureen's against the arm rest, feeling her fingers clenched tightly from the combination of her fear of heights and the man sitting next to her.

No longer a patient, His identity now murky, a mystery.

As Maureen shifted in the narrow seat and closed her eyes, forcing herself to count her inhales in through nose and out her mouth, back on the ground in Gotham City, Bruce and Selina arrived at Arkham Asylum.

Both immediately knew something was wrong at the sight of the inmates roaming the overgrown lawn surrounding the facility.

Selina's wide mouth, overcrowded with triple the teeth necessary, fell open when she looked up and saw the Joker's flaccid body flapping in the wind. Twelve of the inmates had circled the base of the flagpole, bowing in penitence, hoping their savior would return to life.

Bruce called Gordon, who told him to wait for Gotham's Police Department and SWAT team for backup.

Gordon was foolishly and fatally ignored.

While Bruce and Selina armed themselves to the eyeteeth and stormed the Asylum, up above everyone at a low altitude ceiling, Maureen's deep breathing was broken when Bane lifted his hand from hers, noting her knuckles were still white from their grip, as he plucked the black satellite phone from his pants thigh pocket.

"You cannot return to Gotham City to give your goodbyes in person, but I will allow you a single call to your husband."

Maureen opened her eyes to see the phone Bane held out towards her.

Her mind whirred to life, her nerve endings dancing electrically, becoming intertwined as she struggled to find her words.

Maureen's eyes darted, the irises dilating frantically. "He won't be home," she finally managed.

"You said he was home while you're at work," Bane reminded her.

"I was going to originally take today off," she tried to deflect.

"For what reason would you do that?" Bane immediately pounced.

"Um, just to make for a long weekend, I have a lot of stuff that I need to catch up on around the house."

"What tasks?"

"Nothing you'd find very interesting," Maureen chuckled and clasped her hands in her lap, trying like mad to not nervously wring them.

"Quite the opposite, share these unfinished tasks?"

Maureen raised her eyebrows as she listed off the pile of laundry, dusty baseboards that called her name and perpetual soap scum that never completely seemed to go away.

"Call your husband," Bane interrupted and set the phone in her lap.

Maureen shook her head, "Josef won't answer the phone."

In that very moment, Bane's need to know everything about Maureen was fanned to a pyroclastic inferno. As soon as the Cessna safely landed, he would send Isaak Cain on a fact-finding mission to look into every corner of Maureen Hightower's life.

Bane grunted as he replaced the phone in his pocket before reaching over the arm rest and capturing her closest hand, wordlessly squeezing it, never letting go until the small plane landed on the beach town's short runway.

As Bane let Maureen marinade in her own thoughts, back in Arkham Asylum, Bruce and Selina split up to cover more ground and get a better sense of understanding of what had happened under the Asylum's roof.

Bruce sprinted to Bane's empty cell before taking the stairs nearly three at a time until he could start digging around the file cabinets and desk of Doctor Maureen Hightower.

Selina went towards the hospital wing and was quickly captured and overwhelmed.

By the time new Mayor James Gordon found her bruised body barely swathed in her skintight latex suit, Selina was long dead after her brief stint as a living flesh puppet for the cocks of the damned.

Bruce's manicured hands stopped pawing through a stack of papers when a crunching noise sounded behind him.

Bruce put on an easy and reassuring smile when his eyes found Tommy McShane holding Maureen's antique candy dish, shoving handfuls of the chocolates into his mouth, smacking loudly.

Spit and melted chocolate dripped from his wet mouth.

"Did you kill her?" Tommy asked in a childlike voice. "Did you kill my doctor?"

Bruce looked around the room for others and shook his head. "Who's your doctor?"

"Did you kill her?" Tommy repeated, his eyes glazing over as he dropped the antique, glass bowl, not even flinching when it shattered into a million pieces. "Did you kill my doctor?" Tommy droned and squeezed Maureen's bloody lab coat closer.

Tommy had stripped the lab coat from Sara's dead body, the corpse that he believed to be Maureen. The blood-saturated lab coat never had the chance to dry from Tommy's continuous flow of fat, salty tears.

"Whoa, whoa," Bruce said gaily as Tommy pushed away from the shadows and shuffled towards him.

"Did you kill her?" Tommy droned as he held Maureen's bloody lab coat to his chest like a lost child looking for its mother in a busy shopping mall.

Bruce didn't register the dormant murderer as a threat, Tommy was crying after all.

McShane's dormancy suddenly fell away.

Tommy rose like a murderous Phoenix as he launched himself at Bruce, wielding a brass letter opener that Maureen had kept locked in the top drawer of her now vandalized desk.

Tommy repeatedly stabbed Bruce, shouting in tandem with each plunge of the pointed metal with gold filigree work.

"Did you kill her?" came Tommy's voice as he buried the blade deep in Bruce's side, piercing a lobe of his fatty liver.

"Did you kill my doctor?" Tommy shouted as he angled the letter opener down the front of Bruce's neck, the point of the metal parting the skin at the base of Bruce's exfoliated throat.

Bruce barely clung to life as Tommy rolled his muscular body over until he was belly first on the bloody office floor.

Tommy spit blood out of his mouth as he reached down and yanked back Bruce's head, pulling until the billionaire bat boy's neck was stretched long and lean.

Tommy slit Bruce's throat, from sophisticated ear to ear, digging the blade deep before dragging it across the pampered flesh.

Tommy held the bloody letter opener out to the side as Bruce's remaining blood gushed forth from the severed arteries.

Tommy released Bruce's hair, lush with product, to plop wetly on the soaked carpet.

"It is finished," Tommy murmured as he plunged the letter opener into Bruce Wayne's side and went back to kneeling in front of Maureen's windowsill garden, mourning the woman he loved above all.

As Tommy continued to cry fat, crystalline teardrops falling on the palm fronds, up the coastline, the pair of Cessnas landed in the quaint, off-season beach town.

Isaak had secured several fishing boats that he'd stay at with the remaining team while Bane and the doctor went to a beach house that was in bad need of a renovation.

Sebastian would drive them.

Maureen was in a fog as she was moved from the Cessna to a nondescript diesel truck.

She watched the beach town and all the memories that came flooding back, all the summers with her parents.

The cabin, for all it wasn't, at least didn't have a leaking roof. The power and water had also been turned on.

As soon as Bane arrived at the beach house, Maureen urgently needed to pee.

Bane gave the bathroom a cursory search before leaving her alone in the bathroom, keeping the door open but not where he could easily peek.

Maureen let out a slow breath as her overly full bladder began to release. She tore off a strip of the double-ply toilet paper as she fished the narcotic tablets from her bra. She folded up the tissue envelope and looked around for where to hide them.

Maureen flushed the toilet as she stuffed the tablets wrapped in paper, deep inside a decorative conch shell.

She crossed all her fingers that Bane didn't decide to lift the shell to his ear to hear the ocean.

Bane's voice came from just outside the open door.

"Are you done?"

Maureen stared at her reflection as she answered yes.

She never took her eyes off her tired reflection as Bane entered the bathroom.

Maureen saturated and added soap to a washcloth and began to scrub her face clean as Bane moved to the shower and turned on the spray to full blast. He watched the clear water hit the tiled floor, hypnotized by the steam that began to rise in time with the growing temperature of the water.

In the same way Talia reminisced to the billionaire Bruce Wayne about feeling rich the night she was able to bask in front of a fire, Bane found the same pleasurable warmth and memories from bathing in a body of clear water.

Water that wasn't polluted.

Water that wasn't stagnant and filled with living creatures.

The joy of being able to look down and see your feet, no seabed littered with detritus, to truly feel clean.

Maureen watched him as she dried her face, pausing the cloth when he closed and locked the door. She continued to watch him slide out of his heavy coat before reaching down, unlacing, and kicking off his boots, his eyes never leaving hers.

"What are you doing?" she stupidly asked, quite apparent he was growing closer to being naked.

"I desire an untimed shower with adequate soap and clean water."

Maureen turned her attention back to the sink and drying her hands as Bane pulled off his shirt and walked towards her.

She tensed as he came to stand behind her, their bodies nearly kissing as he folded himself around her, laying a hand on either side of her, gripping the edge of the sink, keeping her locked within the circle of his arms.

"Look at me," Bane managed on a groan, his breathing growing ragged in rhythm until Maureen looked up and met his eyes in the mirror's reflection.

"What are you doing?" Maureen managed as Bane lifted his hands and settled them on the rounded caps of her shoulders with the barest of pressure, feeling her grow tense as her whole body stiffened.

"Some of what you said was accurate in our sessions," he murmured as he began to rub his large hands in circles over her upper shoulders and the back of her neck. Bane kneaded the knotted muscles of her upper back, keeping the pressure of his thumbs steady in slow circles as Maureen spoke.

"What did I get right?" Maureen murmured as Bane's touch started to blur the lines and threatened to become enjoyable.

"I do have needs I am unable to freely admit," Bane whispered as he pressed himself closer behind her until their bodies were gently touching.

Maureen began to have difficulty forming her words as Bane began to massage the length of her spinal column until he eventually settled his hands on her hips and moved his thumbs in slow circles in the gentle curve of her lower back.

Maureen held her breath as Bane smoothed one hand up her back and brushed the hair off the side of her neck and hovered his lips over the pounding pulse in her throat. "I have wants I don't feel safe saying aloud," he admitted, his words delivered on a hot exhale that caused Maureen to shudder against him.

"You can safely share anything with me," she said as she cleared her throat and tried to stand up straighter, trying to ignore Bane's hot exhale that teased the back of her neck.

"From what you've gathered in our sessions to this point, what would your recommendation to the court be?"

Maureen took a sharp breath, "the time for that kind of decision is gone. I lost objectivity and couldn't trust my own opinion," she admitted, ashamed that he'd used her dedication against her.

"Can I share with you Maureen?"

"Yes," she answered as she looked up and found his reflected gaze.

"I want you to turn around and look at me."

Maureen turned around slowly in the small space that Bane allowed.

Bane's lips twitched, "now I need you to kiss me."

Maureen's lips parted as she didn't know whether to chuckle or try and run.

She tried to look around his broad shoulders until Bane caught her chin and forced her to meet his penetrating eyes.

"This isn't helpful," Maureen tried for, struggling to keep a modicum of calmness about herself.

"On the contrary," Bane rebutted and brushed his thumb across her lower lip. "This is proving to be quite helpful."

"For you maybe," she scoffed.

Bane nodded in wordless agreement as he turned up the intensity of his gaze until Maureen began to feel a blush crawl up her neck.

Maureen hadn't kissed a man since Josef had killed himself and suddenly she was faced with the threat of imminent and unexpected intimacy.

"Will you kiss me?"

"Does it matter what I say?" Maureen quickly countered.

"Yes," Bane said just as swiftly. "I want you to make the choice of your own accord," he rasped as he lowered his face.

Maureen didn't clearly nod or shake her head as she swallowed hard.

"I need you to choose me," Bane growled, not caring that his demand sounded more like naked begging.

A gasp fell from between Maureen's lips as Bane slipped his arms around her and pulled her flush against his chest. A grumble of satisfaction passed through Bane's broad chest at how perfectly Maureen fit within the circle of his embrace.

"Kiss me," he ordered on a hoarse breathlessness.

Maureen shook her head with more force, her vocal cords still paralyzed.

"No?" Bane asked, unable to conceal his astonishment.

"No," Maureen managed with the strength of a butterfly's single death throe.

"No, I can't trust you, myself or even my own thoughts right now," Maureen stammered.

Bane leaned closer, forcing Maureen to practically fall into the porcelain sink trying to escape him. Maureen had no choice but to cling to the muscled caps of his shoulders.

Bane capitalized on her slipping back into the sink to smooth his hands down to the outermost supple curves of her hips, moving in closer as he pulled her thighs tight to the rippling oblique muscles of his waist.

Through the thin cotton pants, Maureen could feel Bane's happiness at their closeness by the press of his engorged cock against her clothed center.

She pressed her lips together and suppressed a sob of relief when Bane finally spoke, his chest heaving with the effort to speak. "You may have some time to sort your thoughts, sort fact from fiction."

Bane kept one hand massaging the supple flesh of her hip as he moved his free hand to one of the thigh pockets of his cardo pants, tugging free the satellite phone.

Maureen watched Bane try to corral his breathing as he dialed Sebastian and told him he was needed for some babysitting.

Moments later, Sebastian knocked three times on the beach house's front door.

"Let him in before I decide to kiss you after all."

Maureen was certain her heart stopped for a full, clinically dead second, as Bane slid his large hand up the smooth fabric covering her inner thigh, cupping his hand over her clothed center, pulsing his hand lightly before reluctantly stepping away from her.

Bane watched Maureen smooth her clothes into place and let his thoughts openly shine in his eyes, a small smile twisted his scarred lips as Maureen's eyes tracked him unbuttoning and unzipping his cargo pants.

Maureen turned sharply and fumbled at the locked door before fighting not to stomp away in her spiked heels. He spoke to Maureen's back and waited to speak until she'd paused in her red-soled heels.

She didn't turn, only nodded at Bane's words he spoke to her back.

"You can trust Sebastian."

Bane watched the doorway long after she'd departed.