Chapter Twenty-Two: The Understatement of the Century
As he slept, Bane never once lessened his hold around Gwendolyn's naked form, anxious for when she was healed enough to fuck.
The morning sun rose and illuminated the windows of the Tri-Towers, the shafts of sunlight streamed through the heavy blinds of Gwendolyn's medical suite.
Bane stirred first at the sound of urgent, soft knocking on the locked door.
He was angry upon rising at the disturbance and pulled on his clothes, making whoever was knocking wait for him to open the door.
Bane opened the door to find Irina's pale face.
He eclipsed the small woman, made her shiver in the darkness of his shadow.
She began to speak at his silent demand for the interruption.
"Talia called, she's on her way," Irina stumbled over, looking to the left and right before continuing in a low whisper. "August didn't want you to know she was coming but I see what you feel for that young woman."
Bane struggled for his words at the tiny woman's spoken truth. "Doctor Fell would be displeased to know what you're disclosing."
Irina nodded; her features touched with sadness. "He would," she said softly before adding with a stronger voice after she sniffed hard and cleared her throat. "I love August, but money has corrupted him, he doesn't need to know about this conversation. She'll be here in an hour."
Irina turned on her heel and walked away briskly when a technician began whistling from an adjacent hallway.
Bane closed the door, locking it and pulling the curtain across it, finding Gwendolyn awake, her eyes on him.
"Is everything okay?" Gwendolyn breathed, unable to discern Irina's hush whispering.
Bane mechanically exhaled, "we'll need to leave soon," he stated, his mind moving in a billion different directions, so much unknown once Talia arrived.
As Bane removed Gwendolyn's IV line and helped her into clean clothes, less than an hour away, Talia was moving quickly towards the Tri-Towers.
Talia had picked one of the shiny Italian sportscars from Bruce Wayne's fleet of exotic cars. The miles fell away fast as she only grew closer to the Tri-Towers.
As Talia downshifted, the supercharged V6 engine responded, all the cylinders open and gulping the premium fuel, back at the Tri-Towers, Bane packed a duffle bag with medical supplies, zipping the bag closed after filling the empty space with soft rolls of gauze.
Gwendolyn watched from the hospital bed as Bane moved around the room, muttering in low mechanical grunts to himself.
The wicked quick car got Talia to the Tri-Towers in a record land speed time. She pulled the car to a stop near the entrance and marched across the lobby, her Miranda Tate heels clicking on the imported dark grey tile.
On the top floor, Bane didn't know that Talia had arrived earlier than Irina had anticipated.
Irina was unable to steal away a second to tell Bane. Doctor August Fell had asked her to wait with him to greet Talia as she stepped off the elevator.
Irina had tried to say she needed to use the bathroom, but August had grabbed her hand, squeezing hard. "You can wait," he said with a tight smile.
Talia and August greeted each other with warm words and a long hug.
The two were different as night and day but their elitist cabal brought them together like bread and fucking butter.
"Where's our patient?" Talia asked, giving Irina a curt nod.
Doctor Fell escorted Talia to Gwendolyn's room, Irina trailing behind.
August Fell was the only person in possession of the master key to every medical suite.
He opened the door and pulled back the curtain, finding Bane sitting in the rigidly backed chair, writing in a notebook and Gwendolyn propped up by pillows as she sipped at her scalding coffee, the television volume on low.
The screen was alive with the film trailer for the newest installment of the savior man spider.
Bane had stowed the baggage in the small closet next to the bathroom, everything looked as it should.
"My friend," Talia purred as she swept into the room on an air of designer parfum.
Bane rose, projecting penitence, remaining silent, waiting to be allowed to speak.
"Please leave us doctor," Talia said without turning around.
August nodded and left, rushing Irina out.
Behind his mask, Bane clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw popped as Talia's eyes slid over to Gwendolyn, her pupils flashing with dark fire as her gaze slithered back to him. "I don't know why you wasted the effort my friend, you should've called me, there's a million others just like her."
Bane remained silent, his whole-body filling with tension as Talia walked towards the foot of Gwendolyn's bed.
"I heard about what happened, why did you save her?" Talia asked, her eyes searching Bane's visible features.
"The people of Gotham listen to her, believe her, have been mourning her absence," he stated, recalling the earlier news footage of the candlelight vigils outside of the OWL Newsgroup skyscraper.
"There are others who command attention," Talia murmured as she slid her hand to her rear waistband and pulled out a compact gun.
Gwendolyn closed her eyes as Talia raised the gun, "this one is too damaged for public consumption," she spit as she pulled back the titanium hammer.
Gwendolyn waited for death, wondered if it would be hurt to be hit with a bullet, to die.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she waited for a bullet to bury itself in her chest, blast through her ribs, the splintered pieces puncturing her lungs as her heart was decimated and left singed from the gunpowder.
The kill shot never came.
As Gwendolyn's puffy eyes were squeezed shut, Bane crossed the room in two large steps and backhanded Talia, not thinking past saving his goddess.
Talia fell backwards and struck her head hard on the unforgiving floor.
Her skull cracked open like a freshly laid egg, her white and grey matter leaking through her fractured skull.
Bane stood over Talia and looked down at her dying form.
He watched one dark pupil shrink to the size of a pin and the other blown open as she stopped living. He stepped back as a pool of blood began to spill from her broken head.
Bane was shaken back to reality by Gwendolyn's hand on his forearm.
He turned to finding her keeping her balance on the edge of the bed as she smoothed her hand down his muscular flesh and gripped his hand.
Bane watched their fingers naturally weave together. "We should go," Gwendolyn stated as she squeezed his hand.
Behind his mask, Bane smiled, nodding his agreement as he helped her into a zippered sweatshirt and sneakers.
Gwendolyn looked down at Bane as he tied each set of shoelaces into a neat bow before gathering the packed bags.
He'd brought a wheelchair into the room earlier and had stowed it out of sight in the bathroom, unsure if he'd need use of his hands as they exited the Tri-Towers.
Bane never gave a fleeting glance at Talia's cooling corpse.
He pushed the wheelchair at a good clip, the staff all out of sight, the silence filled with loud warnings.
Bane slowed the wheelchair as they neared the elevators, finding Doctor August Fell standing in front of the only exit unless Bane carried Gwendolyn down the double-digit flights of stairs.
"This is not your fight," Bane stated, his tone carefully restrained.
August Fell kept his expression neutral, remained wordless but did not move.
"The queen is dead," Bane rasped on a deadly melody as he pulled a compact handgun from inside his jacket and leveled the titanium barrel at the educated face of Doctor August Fell. "Stand aside or you may join her in death," Bane added as he settled the scarred pad of his fingertip against the sensitive trigger.
Irina's voice was loud in the elevator lobby with its vaulted ceilings.
"August, please, let's leave."
Bane never turned to look at Irina or lower the handgun. His eyes were all for August Fell and the effect Irina's words had on him.
August looked over to where Irina's hands were clasped in the center of her chest. "August darling, you can retire now, leave with me."
August brought his intelligent eyes back to meet Bane's, "this is not my fight," Fell finally said, wearing a relieved smile that Talia was gone and no longer dictating how to use his skill set. He walked towards Irina after giving Bane a parting nod.
Gwendolyn watched August and Irina embrace before they headed down a hallway and took the second right, she never saw them again.
Doctor August Fell and Irina left the country soon after leaving the Tri-Towers, Fell had amassed enough money they could eat off disposable gold plates and drink out of mother-of-pearl glasses until the day they died.
After August Fell and Irina left, Bane and Gwendolyn remained the only occupants of the elevator lobby.
Bane pressed the elevator call button and pushed her wheelchair over the metal threshold, careful to keep from jostling her around too much.
The light, jazzy music was the only sound that competed with Bane's mechanical inhalations and ragged exhalations.
He readjusted his grip on the largest of the bags as he pushed Gwendolyn's wheelchair across the vast parking lot where just a handful of vehicles remained.
The keys Bane had snagged from the abandoned valet's station unlocked a diminutive, mint green hybrid.
Bane locked the wheelchair wheels before lifting Gwendolyn with as much delicacy as had the capacity for and settled her on the passenger seat. He let his hand linger on the outside of her hip after he clicked her seatbelt into place.
Gwendolyn felt her breath come faster as Bane dragged his hand up her side, around the outside curve of her breast, eventually cupping her jaw and tracing his thumb across her lower lip.
Bane wanted more at that moment and had to force himself to shut her door and squeeze his giant body behind the tiny steering wheel before hunching down in order to see through the squat windshield.
"Where are we going?" Gwendolyn murmured as Bane started the small hybrid.
He reached over and settled a large hand over hers, engulfing her small hand completely, squeezing in time with each melodical syllable he uttered.
"Far away Miss Mourn, to a place where people have not witnessed seeing your beautiful face on the television, falling penitent to your words, ideas and fall in line with your dictated morals."
Gwendolyn was sleepy from a pain pill Bane had given her before they got on the elevator that had dissolved under her tongue and was lapped up by her bloodstream.
"Where wi…..?" Gwendolyn started to mumble before her words slurred and she yawned deeply.
Bane kept his hand over hers and began drawing circles with the pad of his thumb on the top of her hand. "Rest now Miss Mourn; I'm taking us home."
Gwendolyn was caught up in an opiate stranglehold by the time Bane navigated the small hybrid onto the fast-moving interstate.