Chapter Thirteen: Fade to Black
"That was just my first taste," he managed, his mechanical breathing turned symphonic as he smoothed a hand low to cover her bare mound, "your body belongs to me."
For a few moments, the only sounds that rang out in the artfully staged bedroom were Bane's mechanical wheezes and Gwendolyn's low whimpers.
He felt a shudder wrack his skeletal system, he was poisoned down to the cellular matrix of his bone marrow with shame, guilt, and sickening regret.
Gwendolyn squirmed away from him and wrapped herself up in the satin linen, the perceived safety of a cocoon in the middle of fierce flames.
Bane wanted to say something to the silken lump she'd become but found he couldn't speak.
He hovered his large hands over her enticing shape under the bed linen, forcing himself to retreat to the living room of their pseudo-house.
Bane stalked heavily across the colorful area rug, not bothering to glance at the tryptic art on the wall of a golden lotus or cut crystal candy dish with tiny floral accents on a low, black lacquered coffee table
He turned on the large, flatscreen television, keeping the volume low, finding a news outlet that was reporting on the abduction of Gwendolyn Mourn.
Behind his mask, Bane smirked as the covering reporter detailed the hostile takeover of the OWL Newsgroup news station, brutal execution of Victor and Gwendolyn's violent abduction.
As the reporter continued speculating on the motivations behind the violence and abduction, Bane's mind began to wander. He felt mild discomfort start in his belly before it grew to a deep, stabbing twist in his gullet, a hot knife separating his internal organs from his visceral cavity.
He didn't understand what he was feeling and turned up his aerosolized Venom, adjusting the flow of hormonal assistance to his struggling pituitary gland. Nothing made the necrosis filling his veins change. Bane's confusing fog lifted as he began to understand he was tasting the bitterness of regret.
He clicked off the television, the room instantly blanketed in silence as he found himself unable to answer the question of what made Gwendolyn different than the large number of hostages that he'd never given even a first thought towards.
No one had ever rose to the level that he noticed them more than living beings that would die under his hands, there was never a flick of biological response to the countless heiresses, princesses, and whores.
Bane rose from the plush sofa and headed back towards the bedroom, with the door that didn't quite properly close.
His footfalls were like those of a cat from the behemoth of a man, finding her asleep.
Just Gwendolyn's nose and shapely lips were visible from the layers of linen she'd swathed herself in.
He settled on the mattress next to her, delicately settling his bulk on top of the covers.
Bane stared down at her sleeping face, watching her nose twitch from a single, stray hair. He reached out and smoothed the hair back, the rough pads of his fingertips lingering on her face, instantly transported back to the end, and beginning of the man he had learned to become.
Bane's father had returned hours past dinner was ready, drunk, finding the stew lukewarm and the bread stale.
He'd knocked Bane to the ground and locked him in a cabinet before proceeding to beat Bane's mother until her lungs spasmed as she began to aspirate from the spilled blood, called forth under the crush of curled fists.
Bane had kicked, pounded, and thrashed inside the cabinet. He became napalm inside a glass globe as he could see through the sturdy boards as his mother fell to the ground, his father quickly climbing on top of her before he began to manually strangulate her.
Bane had shouted and screeched until he was hoarse as he was rendered helpless, given a front-row seat to his mother's murder.
He'd forgotten how to blink as his mother clawed at his father's hands, her words gone from the pressure, her heart slowing, her brain dying, her soul departing.
The moment his mother passed from this plane of existence, something inside of Bane broke.
A part of him died and gave life to something else.
Adrenaline had filled his small body and he fell from the cabinet with the force he exerted against the heavy, locked door.
The young Bane was all a pounding heart and racing nervous system as she launched himself at his father, his fingers curled into claws, seeking soft tissue.
Bane's father never had a chance against the rage he'd locked up and let fester. He didn't know where to begin defending himself as he felt his flesh opening in multiple places, warm blood soaking through his clothes to land on the spotless floor.
The village elders would be alerted to the shouting by the animalistic cries.
They found Bane wearing his father's skull as a cap, blood and viscera plastered to his tear-streaked cheeks as he cradled his mother's dead corpse. He'd had run to her vanity, carefully folded a tissue and wiped under her eyes, her eyes remained bulged open and blood shot. Her tongue protruded, fat, purple and bloated. Saliva and bile had spilled from her mouth, her slim throat, crushed.
The village elders found that his father had justifiably killed his mother and sent him to The Pit.
As he had been lowered into The Pit, a child descending into hell, he died as he was swallowed by the inky, black maw of The Pit and was born again when his feet touched the soil that was littered with the bones of the dead.
Bane shook himself back to the present, banishing his memories to the dark recesses of his mind, not wanting to remember initiation to his new life.
He narrowed his eyes in the dim room, watching her eyes move behind her closed, puffy lids. Gwendolyn's soft sighs and whimpers began to make his body respond. Bane unconsciously dropped a hand to brush against the front of his pants, feeling the damp fabric from the wetness that he had forced from her intimacy with his vigorous thrusting, making her body betray her.
He pressed his hand to the front of his mask, inhaling deeply, wanting to capture her essence and pull it deep to fill his lungs.
He felt fatigue pulling at him but didn't want to close his eyes.
Bane settled further onto the plush mattress as he traced his large hand down the side of her sleeping form under the satin bed linen. He reveled in the rush of potent sensations that bombarded him as his hand moved over her hipbone, the change in elevation as he smoothed down the outside of her thigh, wishing the linen was absent. He salivated with wet remembrance of how Gwendolyn felt under his hands, the fullness of her breasts and the electrical tension in her very exhale as her body stretched to accommodate his thick, stabbing rigidity.
As Bane gently laid his heavy, muscular arm around Gwendolyn's swaddled, sleeping form, across the city, Talia smeared on a fresh coat of a glossy lip stain, leaving her full lips looking like they were wet before she walked down the police lined hall in Wayne Enterprises.
Talia was the embodiment of the austere, genuine Miranda Tate as she pressed a manicured hand to her full lips as Bruce Wayne's body was zipped up in a black mylar bag. His cowl had been blown open and it was now just a matter of time before that was on every news station.
The abducted Gwendolyn Mourn pushed to the news cycle's back burner for a bit.
Miranda had to keep her gleeful smile contained as she thought about how much Gwendolyn would do for the opportunity to break the news about The Batman's true identity.
Talia never gave even a first thought to the idea that Bane might be growing obsessed over the abducted news anchor, that he found something he wanted above all else, something beautiful that would belong only to him.
As Miranda was interviewed by countess detectives and offered coffee by the rest, back at the abandoned, well defended strip mall, night passed and Bane remained awake, never closing his eyes longer than it took to blink.
As the morning sun began to shine on the vacant retail center, Bane felt his primordial needs began to grow hot in his lower belly. He forced himself to rise from the bed and sit across from her in a white, wicker chair.
Gwendolyn stirred awake, shifting under the layers of linen as reality came crashing down with a steady ache in every part of her body. She was aware of the skin touching between her toes, her hands throbbing where'd she'd clutched the bed linen so tightly around herself.
She struggled to sit upright, pausing as she pushed her tangled hair away from her face when her eyes landed on Bane, quietly sitting, observing.
Bane sat in the stiff-backed chair, the King of the Dead, scarred and brutish in stark opposition to the pristine colors of the room and backdrop of the faux sunny window.
"Miss Mourn," Bane stated, nothing more offered in the neutral melody.
Gwendolyn met his eyes, pain, and fear crystal clear in her cerulean orbs.
Bane let his eyes move over the bare flesh that was visible, seeing the dark bruises he'd made, stippling her supple skin with ugly broken capillary beds under her skin.
He felt his planned words falter to spill from his lips, he wanted to unwrap her beauty which was swathed in linen.
Gwendolyn pulled the linen tighter around herself as Bane rose to his full height, moving casually towards her, wordlessly setting a stack of towels on the edge of the bed.
"Clean up," Bane murmured, adding in an easy melody. "We shall then talk about what is required of you next."