Chapter Fourteen: Staticky Remnants
"Clean up," Bane murmured, adding in an easy melody. "We shall then talk about what is required of you next."
Bane turned sharply on his heel and left the staged bedroom when Gwendolyn returned his stare, not able to find words as the shifting in her current reality began to land around her shoulders, a suffocating shroud.
Gwendolyn watched the doorway long after Bane departed, eventually rising, and going to the mostly functioning bathroom. She realized how futile an effort it would be to properly cleanup, so many of her soaps and shampoos were TSA approved in size.
She emptied her bladder, using a damp washcloth to clean away the stickiness his seed had left between her thighs, smoothing down her filthy, sweat-stained clothes as much as she could before she made her way to the living area boasting the plush, roomy sectional sofa.
Gwendolyn passed through the bedroom's doorway, her eyes landing on Bane as he was absorbed in a breaking news segment about The Batman meeting his end at Wayne Enterprises.
Bane knew she was standing in the doorway as the platinum blonde anchorwoman wrapped up the news report with Gwendolyn's violent abduction. The anchor lauded laurels upon the missing Gwendolyn until Bane turned off the widescreen television, turning towards where Gwendolyn stood.
"You won't ever be that woman again," Bane stated as he closed the distance between them. "Tell me Miss Mourn," he asked as he reached out a hand and pushed a few strands of hair behind her ear. The rough pads of his fingertips smoothed across her supple skin, delicate as though she was a glass jar full of fire.
"What will remain?" he added in a series of mechanical wheezes.
Bane's knowing stare, the soldering energy in combination with his electric touch, made Gwendolyn drop her eyes and fail to suppress a flinch.
He allowed his hand to fall away as her heels sunk into the plush carpet of the staged living room before they began clicking on the tile of the chef's kitchen.
Barsad had delivered a cooler full of food.
A few of the younger militants were sent to regularly keep food stocked, most everything else could be found amongst the abandoned stores. The center of the mall which used to be filled with people, sardine shoppers packed in every nook and cranny, was now set up with tabletop tennis, pool tables, air hockey and a variety of video gaming equipment.
Even amongst rapists, murderers and thieves, there was a camaraderie formed around competition and a break from scarring and taking lives.
Bane watched her as she milled about the artificially bright kitchen, his gaze moving between the faux bay window which showed a view of the glorious coastline being pounded by waves and the particle board façade of the sliding glass door showed the city at night, lights glittering.
Bane scrutinized her profile as she put together a sandwich, smiling to herself as she thought about the last time she'd prepared her own food, she practically lived on set and there was always a buffet table or a runner to fetch whatever your taste buds craved.
"I prefer this version of you."
Gwendolyn rolled her eyes thinking he was talking about the broadcast he'd turned back to in the background. She couldn't see the television from where she was smearing mayonnaise on a piece of bread but remembered exactly what she was wearing during that monologue.
Her father had wanted to encourage male viewers with her plunging neckline and lifted cleavage.
Gwendolyn turned to look at him as she opened a small bag of barbecue potato chips, finding his eyes seeing into her arterial intersections.
"You don't need to hide behind that mask," he stated in a musical wheeze, liking the view of her without the stage makeup, being paraded around, told when to smile and wave.
"I could say the same thing about you," Gwendolyn rebutted, covering her smile with the back of her hand.
"Necessity dictates my situation Miss Mourn, who are you hiding from?"
Gwendolyn turned away, feigning extreme interest in selecting a soda from a choice of one kind.
She didn't hear his footfalls on the carpet, hearing his presence announced when his heavy boots hit the kitchen tiles.
Gwendolyn stood up straight, setting down the untouched sandwich.
She slid away from him, moving back along the length of the kitchen island.
Bane's eyes moved past her, drawn to the fake, happy macaroni pictures from toddlers on the fridge, quaint strawberry jelly fingertips on the stainless-steel door.
"Stop moving," he demanded in a sharp melody.
"I wasn't aware I was," Gwendolyn stated in a mostly strong voice.
But she was.
"I'm not the same," Bane told himself as he waded through the inky black memories of his early life, a life cut short.
Gwendolyn couldn't force herself to stand still as Bane rounded the island, deftly moving backwards in her wickedly high heels.
"Where are you going?" Bane asked, amusement dancing in his tone.
Gwendolyn didn't know where she was thinking of escaping to and had no words. There was a certain futility merely being in the same room with Bane, let alone in nearly a muscular arm's reach.
Her mind raced as she continued moving backwards on her couture heels with every heavy step from Bane towards her. She was transported back to the marble kitchen island of their ranch house. Being handled by the masked man was better than growing up with her father, afraid to turn off her lights and go to bed.
Her father made her overcompensate for her fear by being brash and bombastic on the air, hate speech her first language, ugly language from such a striking woman.
"Is this worse than being at home with daddy after he sent everyone else ahead to church, never actually trying to fuck me but not bothering to try and hide his small but mighty prick as it poked against the fabric crotch of his dress pants," Gwendolyn thought as Sunday mornings were her least favorite part of the week.
Bane paused at Gwendolyn's faraway expression, remembrance clouding her corneas before they cleared like the morning fog.
He wanted to know what she was thinking as she blinked rapidly and met his eyes.
Bane stopped moving as he saw past her obvious beauty to her sweat-stained clothes, heavy wrinkles, and long runs in her pantyhose.
"I won't be my father," Bane thought as he moved like a fast-spreading fire and settled his large hand over hers, trapping her hand on the counter.
"I don't have to be anything like my father," Bane thought as she couldn't seem to stop from lifting her free hand and pressing her fingers against the front of his mask.
Bane captured Gwendolyn's small hand, keeping it pressed a few seconds to the front of his mask before he lowered her hand and pressed her palm over his strongly, thudding heart.
She licked her lips at the warm touch of his dense musculature under her palm.
Bane didn't blink or speak as he tightened his grip around her small hand and tugged her closer.
"What do you want?" Gwendolyn asked breathlessly, a shudder racing down the length of her spine.
"Talia needs your voice Miss Mourn," he answered automatically as he pulled her into the circle of his arms, feeling a quake low in his belly at how well she fit within his embrace.
"But what do you want Bane?" Gwendolyn whispered, her voice threatening to break as he lowered his face to hers, the mechanical ventilations louder when they were soon sharing the same breath.
Bane froze at the sound of his name slipping from between her lips.
Bane became a planet chaotically falling out of orbit, careening through the galaxy with enough force to destroy the sun in the wake of her question.
As he struggled to form a coherent answer, across Gotham City, Detective Blake and a few other GPD officers scoured the footage of the vans tearing away from the OWL Newsgroup high rise.
Many of the vehicle license plates were missing entirely and all were painfully generic makes and models.
Blake paused on a frame of the surveillance footage and zoomed in as much as possible, adjusting a slate-grey knob for sharpness and another for contrast.
He leaned so close to the footage that his breath fogged up the HD screen, his lips pulled into a wide smile, exposing his dental bleached, straight, even teeth as one of the vans boasted the remnants of an 'Employee Parking' pass from the abandoned strip mall.
The militant whose laziness was the first domino in the entire weight of the Gotham Police Department descending on the mall would be killed. He'd be given no time to reflect on his taking the easy way out as his throat was slit from ear-to-ear.
No words were present anymore, just the gurgling of air and blood moving through the severed vascular intersection of the young man's throat. The white gristle of his spine peeked from the gaping maw his neck had become, a blossoming red flower before his heart stopped beating and he collapsed to the tile floor.
The militant's blood filled the tile's grout lines until he was eventually collected and identified by the coroner.
He was bagged, tagged, and later cremated and buried in Potter's Field when no one claimed his body.
As Blake and fellow officers got to work pulling information about the abandoned mall and someone got a hold of the Department of Motor Vehicles to find out their vehicle history, back at tiled island, the surface gleaming under the artificial lighting in the staged kitchen of the shuttered home store, Bane's hazel orbs filled with flecks of burnt caramel as Gwendolyn repeated herself.
"What do you want?" she asked on a shaky exhale as she raised her free hand and tentatively settled it on his broad chest.
Bane shook himself to the present, knowing it was suicide to give further life to his thoughts, dreams and hopes with the punishment he'd doled out to men and women who'd crossed Talia al Ghul in the past.
Bane shook his head, a faint mechanical growl emerging on a hot exhale though the front of his mask to brush against her face. He knew he had no claim to her voice as he dropped his hands and retreated without a further word to the living area, turning the television back on to a news broadcast in progress.