Chapter Three: Acceptance Ends the Struggle

Lena watched Gotham City burn, her brain's prefrontal cortex played her life on a loop behind her eyes. She watched the fiery inferno of where she was born and had called home until nuclear fission decimated every life from winged insects to the just born set of twin girls in Gotham General, amniotic fluid still plugging their noses and coating their fresh bodies.

Salt spray stung her eyes as she squinted into the sun as Gotham burned with white-hot flames, the Uranium poisoned the soil as Lena thought of her studio apartment. She imagined her Impressionist prints burning, her leftover wontons being charred beyond recognition and her first-edition novels being reduced to ash.

"Get your shit together Fischer," Lena ordered herself as she shook her head lightly and tried to stand. She'd never been one for being on the water and that in conjunction with the sheer upheaval of her entire life down to the very jostling of her cellular matrix within her bones and the physical pain of her shoulder made her knees weak and she clumsily crumpled back to the deck.

While Lena exhaled sharply and then held each subsequent inhalation for ten seconds, they continued to draw closer to the New York Port Authority.

The Port waited for them; the sprawling entity nearly breathed with the constant activity. If two of the Port's six tunnels were human hands, they'd be clapping. The remaining four bustling tunnels would be cocks that never grew soft in their excitement of Bane's approaching force.

The Port craved Bane's violent-fueled encroachment despite serving more than 45 million consumers a year and moving upwards of 200 billion dollars of cargo.

Bane wordlessly watched Lena struggle to stand as she watched her home burn, he looked past her shoulder to Talia's pyroclastic cremation among the millions of faceless and nameless Gothamite's.

Bane pulled a satellite phone from a durable zippered bag and tapped out a long number.

Lena half-turned when she caught Bane's movement and watched him dial another satellite phone that rang sharply from the pocket of a man waiting on a cargo ship that had a dead weight of 100,000 tons.

The stoic man was standing on a cargo container ship which was currently being loaded in the Port Authority, his home country's flag of yellow and blue billowing with the high winds.

Lena turned further around towards Bane, not trying to pretend she wasn't eavesdropping when Bane began speaking in a sharp foreign tongue.

Lena frowned, kicking herself for ignoring all the chances to further her language interpretation skills within the force, even with the incentive of greater pay.

Bane caught her interest and smirked under his mask as he was certain officer Fischer was trying to remember the next step in her law enforcement manual for the situation that was unfolding. Bane wrapped up the conversation with Ukrainian captain Aleksander Dymtrus before returning his full attention to Lena.

Lena longed to interrogate him on the phone call, unaccustomed to being in a spot where she wasn't in charge.

Their eyes remained locked as Bane stowed the phone safely back in the zippered bag. He lifted his eyes from hers for not a hair longer than a second to check the time.

Bane seemed to really take notice of her city issued uniform since first abruptly meeting her, he could feel the weight of her seven-pointed badge in his pocket.

He had a flash of remembrance of touching Talia's broken fingers still closed around the heavy steering wheel, rigor mortis had made her grip obscenely intimate and unbreakable. Bane dug some clothing from a larger olive-green oversized back up and threw the clothing at her feet.

Lena stared at the pile of fabric but didn't move more than to clear her throat and push an escaped lock of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear.

"You need to put those on," Bane demanded on an easy melody as Lena squinted down and could see the peeks of expensive labels from near unpronounceable designers and dry-clean only fabric.

Bane watched Lena pull the Hermes dress closer and how she delicately traced her fingertips over the luxe fabric.

He watched Lena continue sorting through the supple panties and stockings which had once belonged to Talia, packed with a pair of red-soled spiked heels in preparation for their planned escape to the Port Authority before Gotham City would be a radioactive containment zone.

Bane had held his anger inside as he was liberated from The Pit with dirt and grime smudging her skin and staining her fingernails. He smiled mournfully behind his mask as he remembered Talia having a heated discussion with an oil billionaire in Iran who refused to meet all of her demands. The billionaire, Bane, and everyone else watching was unprepared when Talia plucked a glossy beetle that had crawled over her multiple zeroed demand and chewed it neatly in half.

The billionaire was signing before he was even aware as Talia tossed the second half of the dying, bisected and gesticulating beetle body into the air and caught it in her mouth, surrounded by chapped lips which she curled into a cruel smile, one of the dead beetle legs was stuck between her two front teeth.

Bane was drawn back to the moving boat as they drew closer to the Port as he looked down at Lena fondling the obscenely rich and delicate clothing. He recalled the precise moment after Bane and Talia had separated for a while when they initially landed in Gotham City.

Bane had understood that she was going to go play the role of a benevolent and charitable billionaire, concerned with the very ground shrinking under everyone's feet. Bane knew that Talia had created the gentle and soft-spoken Miranda Tate in order to crawl inside Wayne and eat him from the inside out.

Bane had been unprepared the first time he saw Miss Miranda Tate out with the eligible bachelor Bruce Wayne. He felt his blood boil as he saw the splashy, tabloid headlines linking the two from public displays of affection from dancing on gala balconies, kissing while money was raised for children with cancer to inside gossip about drug-fueled sex-capades at Wayne Manor.

Bane clenched his teeth behind his mask until his teeth popped, the bony click inaudible over the rushing water as he remembered the moment that the bulk of Talia had melted away and was rebuilt by the polished, shiny, and dazzling Miss Miranda Tate. Talia forgot her roots, The Pit, the chromosomes of suffering she was born from, she fully embraced the philanthropic shell of Miranda Tate's life.

Talia had spread her toned thighs wide and masturbated herself with a blood diamond dildo until her pussy dripped money and she only allowed cocks with huge bank accounts invade, fondle, and fuck her wanting cunt. Talia no longer wanted to die for the city and fulfill her father's legacy, she wanted caviar on pearl spoons, people to drive her, open her doors and be afraid to meet her eyes.

"Change your clothes officer Fischer or I shall rescind your choice to be alive and gut you before I throw you overboard," Bane seethed musically.

He frowned as Lena glared up at him, remaining statue still.

Bane closed his hands into fists. "Throw her in the water, no variables. This is all unnecessary," Bane told himself as he started closing the small distance between them. Lena backed up as far as she could, the luscious clothes and smooth fabrics swaddled on her lap.

"Change your clothes or this ends now in your death officer Fischer," Bane said with beautifully melodic bluntness.

Bane paused as Lena remained rigid, he only knew she was living due to the rapidly pounding carotid pulse under the pale skin of her thin throat.

"This can just as easily end now officer Fischer," Bane seethed as he fished her seven-point GPD badge out of his pocket and waved it back and forth. "Tell all those that Gothamite's you tried," Bane mocked in musical amusement as the sight of her badge stirred Lena from her fugue and she sat more upright, watching Bane turn her badge in his massive hand, touching each tip of the star with his blunt fingertips, his ragged cuticles in stark contrast to the polished sheen of her shield.

Lena pressed her dry lips together as she only had eyes for her badge in Bane's large palm.

She sniffed hard and flicked her eyes in stereo each time he turned the shield clockwise, hypnotized by the 5656 in the circular center.

Lena fought to not close her eyes as she was bombarding by the memory of practicing with her classmate on the meaning behind each point of her shield.

She recited each to herself as Bane continued to slowly turn the badge.

"Service," Lena thought as a shaft of sunlight hit the badge and Bane continued to turn it in a clockwise circle. "Integrity," she thought as Bane began turning the shield faster. "Courage. Respect. Trust. Honor," Lena thought as her eyes moved to the seventh tip. She nearly screamed the word justice out loud when Bane easily folded the badge and could've continued folding it into the shape of an origami crane if he decided before flinging it into the ocean.

Lena leapt to her feet unsure of what she even going to do, she wouldn't have been able to catch her spinning badge even without a head start.

"You're a psychopath," Lena shouted as standing brought her closer than she would've like to the masked man.

Bane let Lena sputter and fall into silence before she finally looked past Bane's broad form.

"Where are we going?"

Bane waited a minute to speak, when he did finally answer, he pointed to the fallen clothes and shoes.

"Put those on and you'll see soon enough officer Fischer."

"Who are you?" Lena countered.

"It doesn't matter who I am, what matters is the plan," Bane answered in musically benign tone.

"What's the plan then?" Lena asked on an ugly sneer.

Bane felt his breath catch in his throat despite the controlled respiratory process from his mask and aerosol inhalants from opiate to trileucine base for therapeutic efficacy.

Lena was beautiful in her anger, a goddess who had molten lava running under her skin.

"Change into the new uniform or evolve to survive on seawater officer Fischer," Bane growled, his tone a bone-chilling crescendo that made her genetic sequencing collapse and fold out of spectacular fear.

Lena huffed and blinked when Bane turned away from her, she felt a dizzying rush at the perception of privacy on the open sea as she unlaced and kicked off her department-issued boots and practical cotton socks.

Bane was as still as though he was actively being carved out of marble. The mechanical hiss of his breathing apparatus didn't obscure the sounds of her GPD uniform fall away to be replaced by the liquid silk hum of Lena pulling sheer nylons up her legs, kissing her thighs.

Bane waited until the sound of the sea was all that remained before he turned back towards her, immediately overwhelmed by the multitude of emotions that arose when he observed Lena's lithe frame encased by the dark-green taffeta gown that Talia had purchased while masquerading as Miranda Tate.

Bane had possessed the power to harness the cosmos but still nearly found himself wordlessly gawking, his open mouth was covered by his breathing apparatus and Lena didn't detect his spasmatic central nervous system as his orbs pulsated with raw want.

Bane's silence made Lena nervous, her palms itched for her service handgun. Bane's mind had pushed him into a memory as real as stepping into an iron beartrap. He remembered seeing the snug-fitting dress on a velvet-lined hanger when he'd visited Talia without first announcing his arrival.

Bane narrowed his eyes at the gown that left Lena's shoulders bare and cut flatteringly into her cleavage before skimming her flat belly and smooth thighs, the thick hemline brushing the unevenly textured deck.

Bane felt his heart pushed and pulled around in his chest cavity as he hated seeing Lena wearing a dress that Talia had picked out for herself. He was also titillated by the thought that the dress had been picked out by her Miranda Tate skin suit, the luscious fabric had been purchased by a fraud of a human and was now being worn by someone who should've perished in Gotham.

Bane pointed to a short, white stool bolted to the deck. "Sit," he growled.

Lena glared. "I'm not a fucking dog," she spit as she stomped to the padded stool.

She yelped when Bane captured her good upper arm and yanked her off balance, his whisper was soon filling her ear.

"No," Bane murmured dangerously. "Dogs are better behaved, your insolence is becoming a problem," Bane seethed and within a couple minutes had a rope around her slim neck and secured in a solid reek knot.

Lena sputtered and flushed as she sat up, pulling at the rope, and finding the other end attached at to a sturdy cleat.

Bane stared down as Lena whipped her face up towards him, fury etched in her exquisite features. She swallowed her words back when Bane squatted in front of her and extended one large hand. Lena held herself still as Bane hummed a homicidal lullaby and traced the lines of her jaw and cheekbones.

Bane's eyes wandered over Lena and memorized the bare skin the gown left uncovered. He narrowed his eyes and felt a stab in his gut as he'd never have the chance to touch Talia, to brush his skin against hers.

He closed his eyes as he recalled Talia's dead form, tangled in the wreck in the inferno Gotham City had become.

Talia's shredded breasts were pulled apart with her broken rib cage, the most intimate moment Bane would ever share with Talia al Ghul.

"I will put you in a cage the rest of the way if I must officer Fischer."

Lena held his unblinking eyes for five full seconds before she tried to shake her head free of his grasp.

Bane tightened his grip on her chin. "I will not be able to entertain you much further if you continue insisting upon yourself."

Lena let her breath out in a barely controlled shudder and nodded, prickly relief squeezed her bladder when Bane released her grip and turned back to the boat's control panel as he took it off auto-pilot as they drew closer to the Port Authority New York.

Lena struggled to sit as comfortably as she could as she looked up at Bane's broad back. She tilted her head to the side and let her messy hair fall forward as she snuck one hand to explore the knot around her neck. Lena moved slowly and nearly held her breath as she kept her eyes glued to Bane at the control panel.

She tried tugging the rope in either direction but made no progress. Lena paused when Bane's melodic words rained down around her without turning around.

"If you pull that in the wrong direction and it will tighten uncomfortably."

Lena's hand froze on the impromptu rope necklace and glared at the rounded caps of his shoulders.

Lena sniffed and dropped her hand to her lap as she continued staring at him. "I'd really like to know where you're taking me."

"Why does it matter officer Fischer?"

"I'd like to know what to expect, what I should do."

Bane looked over his shoulder and met her eyes. "It doesn't matter what I say. I can't dull the harsh edges of ownership."

Lena felt her mouth fall open at his words. "Ownership?" she repeated lamely.

Bane watched her continue to process dumbly as he set the autopilot and returned to squatting down in front of her.

Lena couldn't retreat further, "ownership?" she said again.

Bane nodded as Lena coughed when the rope tightened as she tried to put more space between them.

"Where are we going?" Lena asked, her voice ragged from the minute strangulation.

Bane shifted until he could sit on the small stool, his joints ached from being so close to the sea for too long.

"I've secured travel on a Ukrainian ship," Bane vaguely answered.

"Ukraine?" Lena asked.

As Bane nodded and Lena's forehead pulled into a frown, not too far away at the New York Port Authority, Ukrainian captain Aleksander Dymtrus watched the cargo containers being neatly stacked on his 1,200-foot ship.

He nodded down at his paperwork indicating the contents of each container measuring 8 x 8½ x 40 ft.

Aleksander hailed from the capital city Kyiv and made a few notations for the containers labeled Diplomatic. Those containers were safe from any kind of inspection from any port or branch of law enforcement.

Those particular containers were reserved for traveling billionaire pedophiles, war criminals and people who needed to travel without Interpol, Russia or the NSA knowing.

Talia had first seen the boyishly handsome Aleksander at a party she was attending as Miss Miranda Tate. She was smoking on the balcony as she nursed her second dirty martini.

Aleksander had joined her on the balcony and asked for a cigarette even though his pack was clearly visible in his coat pocket.

Talia smiled and warmly laughed as she lit the end of his borrowed cigarette with a cherry red lighter.

Talia and Aleksander chatted, and she felt a tickle between her thighs when she found out that the handsome man with the strong bare hands was also a sea captain.

Talia knew she had secured an out from the city before it began to burn when she closed the distance between herself and the young man and found his cock rock hard behind his pants when she rested her palm over his zippered rigidity.

Talia pulled her dress up past her hips and spread her legs wide. She pushed her hands down on Aleksander's shoulders until he dropped to his knees. She smiled at his obedience and leaned back to hold her pussy lips apart before pouring the rest of her martini to wash over her wet cunt.

Talia's hand snaked out and she stopped the tip of Aleksander's tongue from touching her swollen clit as she whispered. "If I call you soon and need two rides out in a hurry will you accommodate, no notice and no questions asked?"

"Nichoho (anything,)" Aleksander murmured before burying his face between her thighs and fucking her tight center with his tongue.

The young sea captain hailing from the second-largest country in Europe enthusiastically licked, slurped, and teased Talia's intimacy as he made her orgasm descend swift and fierce.

For the remainder of her life, Talia would let Aleksander get close, spread her legs wide for him but never let him dip more than his tongue inside her wet hole. Talia kept Aleksander panting and instantly hard when he saw her in the hopes he'd get to bury himself inside the philanthropic, respected, and filthy rich Miss Miranda Tate.

As Aleksander checked the saved spaces for the cargo containers he was holding for Miss Miranda Tate, he felt his cock grow uncomfortably hard between his pants. He shook his head and tried to push aside his annoyance that he'd received a call from the only number Miranda had given him and a man with a gravelly, spine-tingling tone instructed him to expect two items within hours.

Aleksander let himself be bullied by the caller because he was distracted by the fantasy that he was going to finally be able to fuck Miranda. She'd be at sea with nowhere else she'd need to be except swallowing his cock in her every hole.

Aleksander didn't know that the two items of cargo were not what he was expecting, that came later.

As Aleksander turned his attention to a broken security tag from mislabeled container, while growing closer was the aluminum fishing boat Hope, still on autopilot as Bane waited for GPD officer Lena August Fischer closer to speak.

Lena broke her eyes away from Bane and stared down at the couture gown. "Trafficking?" she asked as she gripped the heavy dress.

Bane shook his head; relief didn't come for Lena as he stood up from the white stool and rummaged through a metal toolbox as he expounded.

"You will be safe from harm aboard the ship," Bane said as he turned towards Lena. Her eyes tried to be on both his scarred hands at once, seeking the contents.

Lena squinted as Bane fiddled with a metal wire and created a crude shape whose meaning was known only to him. He held up the coiled wire and scrutinized the design he used to draw in the sand in the dark, deepest, coldest pockets of The Pit. He manipulated the metal until it was to his satisfaction and dropped the wire cutters to pull Talia's cherry red lighter from his pocket.

Lena watched him flick the lighter until a bright orange flame appeared and was kept alive by the surrounding oxygen.

"What are you doing?" Lena asked as Bane held the metal coil over the flame. He let the twisted steel fuck the flame as it slid through the white-hot center, making the stainless-steel began to glow red.

"Lift the dress," Bane commanded on a breathless melody.

"What? No," Lena spit and tried to scoot furiously back to nowhere as Bane dropped the lighter and quickly closed his hand around her ankle, pulling her off balance until he could tug her closer.

Lena froze and her eyes widened so far, she was certain her sapphire irises would pop out of their sockets as Bane brought the red-hot metal coil close to her face, close enough that she could feel the heat emanating from the twisted steel.

"Where we're going, ownership is best indicated by a spot high up the inside of the thigh," Bane ordered mechanically. "The center of your forehead would also be recognized if you'd prefer," Bane hissed with musical menace.

Lena didn't trust her voice to try and speak as she quickly yanked at the heavy layers of her couture gown that had had been featured on the most recent episode of, "The Real Ex-Wives That Will Gobble Cock Live on Camera to Remain Relevant."

Behind his titanium mask, Bane's scarred lips pulled into a disfigured, pleased smile as Lena pulled the gown up to bunch around her hips.

"Spread your legs," Bane murmured, his lungs shuddered and caused his breathing apparatus to emit a mechanical belch.

Deep in the center of Lena's brain, her pituitary gland grew overstimulated, and a shiver started at the crown of her head and ran down to the tips of her big toes as Bane retrieved the discarded lighter and reapplied the flame to the twisted metal.

Lena squeezed her eyes shut as the metal began to glow with the intensity of the heat.

"Open your eyes officer Fischer, you need to be present for this," Bane ordered until Lena complied.

Bane let the cherry red lighter clatter to the top of the deck and let his large hand settle on the inside of her thigh, feeling a rush of saliva fill his mouth at the feel of her supple flesh under his palm.

Bane's Caramel dominated irises swirled with basal lust along with another feeling he couldn't name as he met Lena's wide topaz eyes. The only living beings that were witness to Lena's cries of agony were those that resided in the ocean and didn't speak with words.

Lena collapsed to the surface of the partially sanded deck as Bane pressed the red-hot metal to the soft, smooth skin of her inner thigh. Lena's vision turned grey on the peripheral and her eyes crossed as she collapsed, the back of her head thudded on top of the deck. The sound of her burning flesh filled her nose and made her moan even as her consciousness was rapidly ebbing away.

"We'll be spending a long time together," Bane growled as he put a fresh, white square of gauze over her seared flesh.

"Acceptance ends the struggle," Bane murmured musically as he straightened her clothes.

Bane plucked the red lighter off the deck and stared down at it as he cradled it in his massive palm.

"Acceptance ends the struggle," Bane bellowed to the same seas creatures that had listened to Lena scream herself into unconsciousness. He cranked his arm back and threw the cherry red lighter into the choppy sea with the perfect spiral of an NFL quarterback.

As Talia's lighter was swallowed by the ocean, Bane took the fishing boat off autopilot and pushed the engine to its absolute limits towards the Port Authority and a soon-to-be disappointed Ukrainian captain.