Chapter Ten: Nothing Will Ever be Just Right
Gwendolyn lapsed into stony silence as Bane carried her the entire way back to the mall entrance, most of the windows had stayed safe from being vandalized. He decided to forgo putting her back in the SUV and driving the remaining distance, instead keeping her thrown over one broad shoulder. He wanted the extra time to sort his thoughts, he frowned with each step that drew him closer to the tall, glass doors, Gwendolyn's silence didn't make him notice her any less, didn't make his thoughts about her ebb in the slightest.
Bane's heavy footfalls echoed as he marched through the mall's sunny entrance, a large fountain of a mermaid dominated the space at the base of the elevators that had stopped working years before. The elevator carts remained stuck between floors, forever suspended on braided steel cables.
Talia looked up, her lips curling into a cruel smile when she saw Bane approach with Gwendolyn thrown over his shoulder.
"Put her down over there," Talia told Bane as she gestured at the chair behind her impromptu news anchor desk, completely opposite of the air-conditioned studio with catered meals and in-between snacks.
After Bane settled a wide-eyed Gwendolyn in the wooden chair, he joined Talia at a rectangular table that had a couple mismatched metal chairs tucked around it, one of the militants had dragged it from the employee lounge.
Talia reached out and pulled Gwendolyn's heels from Bane's hand.
He had paused to fetch her shoes from the SUV before continuing to the once bustling tech store that would serve as the pop-up news studio.
Talia traced the pad of her fingertip along the glorious, red-soled heels, footwear for the affluent and those that resided in Ivory Towers, suffering nosebleeds from the altitude.
She scoffed and tossed the decadent shoes on the table and marched off towards Gwendolyn, leaving Bane at the table alone, Gwendolyn's shoes in his line of sight.
He reached out, letting his hand hover over the shiny leather before plucking one from the tabletop. He mimicked Talia's touch, the wickedly high heel looked as small and fragile as a glass bird in his large palm.
If Talia had decided at that moment in time to turn around and look at Bane, her heart would've stopped beating for two whole seconds when she saw the softness fill his normally rage-filled orbs. She would've been nauseated at the sight of rebirth that began subtly in his visible features.
Talia never turned around.
Talia never suspected anything was amiss, she was certain she was the entire reason that Bane continued to exist.
She believed her blood and body was his eucharist. Talia really thought she was Bane's source of life and light, the sun and the moon, the earth below him, and sky above.
Bane forced himself to set the shoe next to its mate's before letting his eyes find Gwendolyn, her eyes wide and unblinking as she listened to Talia's passionate demands, spit flying from her lush, burgundy stained lips.
Gwendolyn fought squirming as Talia's words rained down around her, acidic daggers. The chair's back was too stiff, the seat too hard, the edge of the chair bit sharply into the back of her thighs. Goldilocks can suck a dick.
This was not her chair at The Morning Hoot, the leather supple under her couture-clad body, spinal support, the fucker even vibrated and got warm.
Talia exchanged a few words in the harsh, dead language to a handful of the tech guys, armed with AK-47's, about the plan to break into Gotham's airwaves. It wouldn't be a filtered and edited broadcast, no makeup person, not in HD, raw television.
Bane adjusted his stance and clasped his hands at the small of his back as Talia returned her attention to Gwendolyn.
"We're going to run through a practice first," Talia started, not explaining that the tech guys had run into a problem with some corroded wires.
"The camera will be here and stationary, there will be some images behind you, and you'll read from these cards for prompts, along with those notes," Talia added as she gestured to a paperclipped stack of neatly typed pages.
Gwendolyn was grateful for the distraction and the chance to look anywhere else. She eagerly dropped her gaze and looked through the pages, unable to hep from shaking her head, chuckling at what she was expected to read.
"What is amusing to you Miss Mourn?" Talia asked, her anger simmering.
"I'm not saying any of this, you can't possibly expect that I would," Gwendolyn scoffed.
Talia laughed, delighted at Gwendolyn's visible disgust. "That's lovely dear, every night you spew hate from between those beautiful lips."
Gwendolyn's lips parted, offended at any criticism of her and her show.
Talia continued before Gwendolyn could speak.
"Your words cause people to kill In your name, to maim and destroy whatever and whomever you condemn."
Gwendolyn shook her head, "those were all just coincidental, there were no found charges against me," she babbled, trying to remember exactly what her lawyer had instructed her to say.
"There are others," Talia said, each syllable saturated in smugness, continuing as she crossed her arms. "Yours is the loudest voice but I can find another voice, maybe not so bright, not as influential and beautiful but still far-reaching."
Gwendolyn narrowed her eyes, knowing she was the catch all fisherman wanted, she was on her way to being a media legend. Her hands barely shook as she tore up the typed notes of hateful and inciting rhetoric.
Talia gave an aggravated shout and moved with such speed, back handing Gwendolyn, her gaudy, antique ring scraping the corner of her bottom lip, calling forth blood.
Gwendolyn dropped her head; tendrils of hair fell and covered her face from view.
Bane couldn't stop from being propelled a few steps closer, stopping dead in his tracks when Gwendolyn looked up and caught his eyes. Her expression was neutral as she held Bane's eyes as she wiped away the blood from the corner of her lip, licking her thumb clean before blowing her hair out of her eyes.
Bane didn't hear anything further that Talia said as she pounded the surface of the makeshift news desk, her commands all delivered on her velvety, dulcet tones.
Bane was transported back to the only memory of his mother.
She was being beaten, presumably by a man that was his father. He was a small child, wearing an oversized undershirt, holes in the armpits, grease stains.
He was barefoot, fungus on his toenails from the poor conditions.
Lice, bedbugs or maybe some combination from the generations imbedded in the linens and piss poor mattresses on the floor.
The man had knocked the woman down for cooking something wrong and she stopped the blood before it fell to the floor from her split lip, she wiped it up with the pad of her thumb and licked it as she looked at Bane.
She didn't smile or frown, just as Gwendolyn had looked at him and then blew the tendril of hair out of her eyes as she looked up at the man.
Bane watched her give one last flicker of a glance down to the floor before she accepted the man's bruised knuckle extended hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. She'd wanted to make sure no stain remained because she would surely be beaten later for it.
Suddenly, instantly, Talia's meaning and importance fractured. With surgical precision, she became a decaying pillar of salt, she brought forth a suppressed pain, something primitive.
Talia was only filled with certain death, to be her Protector was to be condemned to a life of servitude and loneliness.
Gwendolyn would've made a bargain with any of the more than three-thousand deities around the globe to be anywhere else in that moment. She was suffocating in the airy, abandoned tech store.
"I need to use the bathroom, please," Gwendolyn managed, mostly coherent.
An armed man ran up with an encrypted satellite phone and handed it to Talia. After a few words were exchanged, she sighed heavily and held the phone to her chest.
She suddenly had an overflowing plate; they still hadn't been able to bypass their way into Gotham's airwaves.
So many calls to make, money, Wayne Enterprise stock, an account in Zurich.
Gwendolyn looked terrible and couldn't be seen like that or it would be known she was under duress, making the OWL Newsgroup even more money and power.
Talia rolled her eyes at the weak-willed, weak-minded female. "Go collect yourself, any more resistance and I will find a lesser attractive news anchor," Talia murmured and waved Gwendolyn away as she returned to the phone call with an allied billionaire who knew her father.
Bane's eyes drank in Gwendolyn as Talia threw a few parting words over her shoulder.
Talia's words in the dead language, gave life to the fire inside Bane's belly.
"Don't let her out of your sight and make her compliant."