Chapter Five: Day One at Sea: All-Encompassing Power Reduced to a Stain on the Asphalt

Bane's pupils dilated in the muted light as the generator dimmed. He parroted her movements and rolled to his side; the rounded corner of his muscular shoulder dented the mattress as he turned. Bane cautiously laid his other arm around Lena's sleeping form, small moans of pain and discomfort slipped from between her lips as he adjusted the opulent linen and molded himself behind her.

Bane inhaled sharply and exhaled on a shudder as his nervous system was overstimulated by the feverishly hot press of her bare skin that the gown didn't cover, smashed flush against his broad chest.

Nestled deep in his brain, Bane's pituitary gland ejaculated a glut of hormones to flood his system and only further enhance the spicy, warm, vanilla undertones of her exposed skin.

Bane smoothed Lena's messy hair away from the curve of her neck before pressing his masked face against the skin he revealed. He slipped in to sleep as he counted to ten as he inhaled and pulled the smell of her warm skin deep into his damaged and chemically supported lungs, holding it inside the stretched tissue, tasting her before he exhaled on the same ten count.

Lena's sleep was dreamless, the deepest slumber from her exhausted fears, anxieties and emotional bukkake.

Bane's sleep was in diametric opposition to Lena's as he lay next to her lightly snoring stillness.

Talia's smoldering bone fragments and glossy bits of yellow fat that had been destroyed under the radioactive wave from the neutron bomb called to Bane. The tiny slivers of Talia's grey matter were wet smudges on the asphalt of what was once the living city of Gotham as her charred remains called out his name.

On board The Maybutnye, Bane frowned and shifted uncomfortably as Talia chastised him as the cargo ship headed towards open ocean at a comfortable 20 knots.

"What are you doing my friend?"

Bane grunted in his sleep, clutched tightly in a hypnotic memory of Talia.

"My father was Ra's al Ghul, and I am his daughter, you're proving a bitter disappointment," Talia desiccated genetic strand hissed with near-palpable bitterness that stung Bane's sleeping salivary glands.

Bane shook his head from side to side, his abrupt movements disturbed the decadent linen and made Lena echo with her own sleeping moans as the jostling wracked her body with a fresh wave of pain.

"Why did you leave the city my friend? You were too be at my side," Talia asked, the random splashes of her cellular matrix from her broken bone were coated in dust but still vibrated with enough energy to make her voice carry to the center of his slumbering brain.

As Bane thrashed under the imported damask linen, up in the glass encased Bridge of The Maybutnye, Captain Aleksander Dymtrus stared out at the seemingly endless vast ocean in front of them, the start of many days with the same feel upon rising, enjoying a nice midday meal, and ending the evening surrounded by the sea.

The cargo ship would continue at 20 knots, every day for nearly ten days, being surrounded and cradled by the magnificent Atlantic Ocean.

Aleksander pulled his satellite phone from his cashmere sweater and found the magazine photo of Miss Miranda Tate after she had taken to reigning Wayne Enterprises promising peace and building a safer, more sustainable Gotham City.

Aleksander didn't know that his cock stirred to life at the site of the benevolent woman who was a true praying mantis and black widow spider rolled all into one. Aleksander didn't know she would crush his cranium between her straight, white, even, teeth and devour him before she even touched his dick.

On the deck of cargo ship itself, sweat beaded on the exposed skin of his skull, the translucent beads soaked the Kevlar straps that held his titanium breathing apparatus in place. Bane was currently breathing out of sync for the aerosol to effectively numb his pain and dealt with an encroaching wave of deep, bombastic, physical ache.

Talia continued to torment Bane as he was strapped in the stranglehold of his deep sleep. Talia's burst red blood cells called to him, splashed upon the rocks of Gotham City that was being reduced to an inferno of simmering radioactive soup.

"We're the same, we are from the same place my friend," Talia seethed, ugliness visible in her words as she cruelly spit.

Bane knew at the moment without opening his eyes that he was certain he'd see Talia standing over him angry, the warrior she was once.

Bane cracked open his eyes in the dark and in the dim he was certain he was looking at Talia's profile, masquerading as the philanthropic and very single Miss Miranda Tate sitting in one of the carved, ornate chairs. Her long, lean legs were crossed and the slit in her gown nearly ended at the top of her hip, the silky wall of fabric parted wide to reveal her lean, toned thigh.

Bane frowned behind his mask as he stood up, tired of Tala's games even as not enough of her existed in Gotham, the very air or surrounding body of water to ever generate a corporeal form of this detail, certainly enough of Talia didn't remain in pieces bigger than a grain of sand to speak her evil, lifeless voice.

Bane's brain was instantly roughly slammed against the back of his cranium as he was brought back to watching Talia stab Bruce before marching off. Bane abruptly sat up, despite the spikes of pain that hadn't been covered with the Venom inhalant, like a cracked wedding cake and trying to fill in the missing patches with a thick, layer of buttercream.

Bane narrowed his eyes in the dim light as Miranda twirled the ends of her glossy, auburn hair, her features set stoically as she prepared to listen to Bane's excuses she expected laid at her couture encased feet.

Bane stood, the luxurious linen falling away from his nearly naked body.

"You think we have a bond because of our lack of light?" Bane asked Talia, who nodded her exfoliated Miranda Tate chin towards him, a wine glass suddenly in her hand as she sipped at the Old-World Vine Zinfandel.

"You merely adopted the light," Bane wheezed before he got his breathing apparatus back in sync with his controlled inhales and exhales. "I was molded by the dark, coddled in thin-winged creatures, their gossamer beauty was invisible to me, but they allowed me to live. I was suckled at empty breasts holding regret, pain, and suffering.

"Our house is as one, yet you're here with this abomination," Talia cruelly spit and the memory of breaking the Batman in the sewers were suddenly all he could see.

Bane stalked to the table where Miranda crossed her legs the other direction, giving him a quick glimpse of her shaved pussy without bothering to ever wear panties, Bane felt his hand clench in the memory of ripping the Batman's cowl free and giving it a firm squeeze before discarding it to land next to Bruce's unconscious and bleeding face.

Bane felt himself chuckle at Talia's words; he could smell the sour red wine on her breath as Talia leaned closer.

"My father was Ra's al Ghul, I am his daughter, and you need to continue his work," Talia demanded on a wet lipstick-coated snarl.

"You are only your father's daughter because of biology, you are in interloper in The League of Shadows, a former soldier," Bane musically rasped as he gripped the edge of the table and leaned closer to Talia. The odor of burnt hair, melted fat and red wine grew stronger as he continued. "You now exist in a pile of ashes, not enough strength to rise like a phoenix from Gotham. You are Miss Miranda Tate, the generous benefactor who spreads her legs to fuck the perceived powerful figures in this world."

Miranda tossed her glossy wave of hair to fall over her rounded shoulder, the bare skin interrupted by the thin burgundy strap of her gown. She laughed haughtily and leapt to her feet, her long legs even longer in the impossibly high spiked stilettos.

"You forget who I am, my friend," Talia seethed, anger distorting her features. "I am the League of Shadows, and you will look to me for when to take your next breath."

Bane slowly raised to his full height, remaining silent, his aerosol inhalant released with greater frequency as his agitation grew as Miranda continued, her tone growing shrill enough to raise the dead and maybe even the Titanic.

"You are nothing but a human stain on the concrete, killed by a weapon of mass destruction that you lusted over more than fulfilling your father's legacy," Bane murmured, his eyes swirled with maniacal bliss as Miranda's palpable anger and dark fury washed over her face.

"Heretic," Talia screeched and threw the contents of her red wine at Bane's nearly naked body. He expected to feel the vintage alcohol splash on his bare skin, he expected to look down and see drops of red wine roll down his rounded muscular chest and dive off the tip of his hardened nipples.

Nothing happened.

Bane stared down the front of his chiseled body, no wine filling in the ridged scar tissue.

Bane pivoted on his heel and turned around when he heard Lena groan like a pelican in heat, nestled under the extravagant bed linen.

He turned back to where he expected to see Miranda Tate standing stoically with her empty wine glass and found himself facing an empty chair, table, and space.

There was nothing there.

As Bane's eyes glowed in the dim light and a feral growl slipped from between his lips, he walked with feather-soft footfalls for a man of his conceivable bulk and stared down at Lena. In the shadow-shrouded container, his pupils dilated to capture and memorize all of her. Behind his mask, the tiny cochlea bones in Bane's ears vibrated at the sound of her exhales, saturated with weakness.

As Bane continued to hover over Lena's sleeping form, up on the cargo ship's bridge, Captain Aleksander Dymtrus looked through his personal phone of many unpublished pictures he had of Miss Miranda Tate.

Aleksander's breath always caught in his throat when his eyes danced over the photos she had let him take in various stages of undress.

Aleksander was a silly little boy at heart.

Aleksander truly believed he meant something to Miss Tate, he did not.

Aleksander thought, like countless Russian oligarchs, CEO's, billionaires dressed as winged rodents, that they were the only ones in possession of still frames of her intimacy. They were not individual in any way except for the size of their bank accounts, fracking drills and in Aleksander's case, the length, girth, and stamina of his cargo ship.

Aleksander stared down at the screen and his favorite picture of Miranda Tate.

In the photo, she was completely naked, except for large Italian sunglasses and a floppy, floral hat.

Aleksander saw his reflection behind her from when he had taken the photo on board The Maybutnye. Miranda had arrived on a helicopter with a nameless man who never exited the bird. She had brought sweet cocoa confectionaries and imported caviar with mother-of-pearl spoons.

Aleksander had allowed himself to be plied with copious squat glasses of amber alcohol to multiple flutes of champagne. Miranda made him so many promises and all he thought about was what kind of panties she was wearing under her sheath gown.

Aleksander found himself nodding to everything Miranda asked as she shimmed out of her dress and sat back, spreading her toned thighs wide. She let him snap herself making promises to be wetly fulfilled once she was safely across the ocean and settled in the Ukraine.

Aleksander let himself remain captured within a memory; he didn't smell the deception in the millions of gallons on seawater surrounding him.

As Aleksander eventually returned to checking the sonar screen and nodding with satisfaction, down in the faded, sky-blue 8 x 8½ x 40 cargo container, Bane watch Lena toss and turn under the expensive linen. In her fever-sleep, the excessive and overindulgent linen slipped away from her leg that boasted his metal kiss that had melted her skin as it cauterized itself free from flowing bloody tears.

Bane balled his hands into fists as he stared down at the revealed skin from under the slipped, luxurious multi-thousand thread count linen. The silken fall of the designer gown's edge had become stuck in the center of her wet, blistered burn. The stitched edging of the gown was glued in place under the sticky, seared flesh, the surrounding skin turning vividly scarlet as Lena's body tried to fight off an infection.

Bane knew he had to intervene before the glossy skin would eventually turn into a moist pit, spitting out infected weeping waves of viscous fluid and eventual deadening of the soft tissue.

Bane left Lena's side long enough only to rummage through the large rectangular medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Behind the innocuous beveled mirror, the cabinet was stocked with a pill, tablet, powder or injectable for whatever tripped your trigger.

Bane growled as his large, scarred fingers knocked over bottles of pale, peach rectangular tablets that absorbed quickly under the tongue and left sex feeling like every pore had been fingered, teased, and fucked.

Blue triangular pills that kept any cock hard for hours regardless of whether it wanted to fuck an adult, teenager, animal or child and everything that fell in between.

Bane grunted with satisfaction when he found pre-loaded syringes of a broad-spectrum antibiotic and a small selection of gauze pads, cotton swabs and rolls of hypo-allergenic tape.

Lena stirred as Bane settled all the medical supplies on the antique nightstand and began pulling at the linen to land softly on the floor.

"What are you doing?" Lena slurred as she squinted at the stacks of bandages, her vision clearing for a frightful two seconds when her eyes landed on the pre-filled syringes.

Bane ignored her as he finished stripping the bed, leaving just the liquid satin sheet under her.

Lena forced him to answer when she shifted and swung her good hand towards him. She barely had the energy to make her palm cut the air but still earned an irritated grunt from Bane as he easily plucked her wrist from the air.

"Officer Fischer, your leg is in danger of becoming infected," Bane stated on an easy melody, hoping, but knowing that wouldn't be sufficient enough of an answer.

"No," Lena shouted with more vocal strength that didn't physically match her movements and could only slide backwards a few inches.

Bane paused but kept his grip on her wrist firm.

He wished he would've approached Lena differently the moment she took a deep breath and dug down deep to find every remaining bit of strength inside her as she tried to kick away from him and break his hold on her wrist.

Lena was successful in creating a much wider valley of space between them, but her movements were short-sighted, and any victory never got the chance to live.

The abrupt effort caused her thighs to shift against each other, the supple unblemished thigh tore through the membrane over the bright, angry wound standing out on the other. As Lena propelled herself backwards, the edge of the gown was torn free from the epicenter of the wet burn.

Lena felt her eyes cross at the sharp, intense pain and howled loudly, suddenly feeling the crushing weight of being alone, afraid and in inconsolable pain.

"She's not Talia," Bane reminded himself as he tightened his grip on Lena's wrist, staring down at her unpainted, short nails. Not the glossy, crimson lacquered nails of the benevolent and gracious Miranda Tate, filed to a smooth point that she used to claw down the backs of billionaires and oil tycoons before finger fucking their wallets.

"She's not Talia," Bane thought as his eyes drank in the stained and disheveled silken shift covering her nudity that cost enough it could've kept the lights on in a poverty-stricken fishing village.

Lena blinked and tried tugging her hand free as Bane remained still and wordless. "Let go," Lena snarled as shock coated her fried nervous system. "Let go of me," she added in a shout imbued with artificial but empty strength.

"You're no longer in a position to bestow orders officer Fischer, the people you swore an oath to serve and protect are gone."

Bane gave a musical chuckle at her anger and the vulnerable fact that her GPD badge was sinking to the sea floor somewhere amongst the Atlantic. "You'll need to learn to serve another," he growled and yanked her towards him, painfully aware he was exacerbating her broken, burnt flesh.

"Serve?!" Lena sputtered, her head spinning and skin screaming. "Serve you?! I will never serve you!"

"You had no hesitation in swearing an oath to protect the citizens of Gotham, serving them."

"I didn't commit crimes against them, I upheld their safety."

"You would've died for them? You would've stood in the way of certain death for the random faces of Gotham?"

"There's always someone stronger," Lena spit and sagged forward. Her face would've flattened to the decadent fitted sheet if Bane hadn't held her rigidly upright. Nearly shaking her when he couldn't discern what she mumbled as she dropped her eyes.

"What did you say?"

Bane waited a painfully long thirty seconds until Lena summoned some phantom strength from the underworld and looked up to meet his penetrative gaze.

"Yes, I'd die for them in what was once my home and I'll die for them as soon as you choose to kill me, what're you waiting for?" Lena murmured as she sniffed hard when he remained silent long after she had finished speaking.

"I know she's not Talia," Bane thought and drew in a ragged breath as he tugged Lena's lethargic form closer and gathered her up, his large biceps cradled her neck as he settled her to the smooth surface of the mattress. The back of Lena's skull remained supported by his muscular upper arm as he smoothed his free hand down the front of her body and began peeling the luscious gown away.

Lena pushed at him weakly, caught between fear and falling into a near-unconscious state.

Bane slowed his hand at tearing her gown free. "This will impede the healing," he grumbled musically as he deftly removed the obscenely priced fabric that reeked of money until her bruised body was completely bare to his eyes.

Lena dropped her top hand to the apex of her thighs, whimpering weakly as she tried to limit what was exposed to him.

Bane hovered a hand over the curve of her naked hip, born from a necrotic womb, fed by carrion through a toxic umbilical cord. He didn't know how to offer comfort, how to make her shivering subside.

Bane only knew how to punish, destroy, and kill.

Bane shifted until he could pluck a mint-green pill from the bedside cabinet next to the sterile syringe. He pushed the bitter tablet through her dry full lips, the pill beginning to rapidly dissolve in the scant saliva in her mouth. The invasion renewed her struggling as Bane pressed his rough palm over her mouth, her lips crushed against his scarred skin as the narcotic pill from a bottle boasting a hand drawn sleepy face on it delivered exactly on its sleep predicting doodle.

The pill dissolved quickly and leeched through her blood brain barrier and would've knocked her flat on the ground if she wasn't already wrapped up in Bane's formidable embrace, a silk-webbed wrapped treat for a set of fangs and hungry, glossy eyes.

"Why are you keeping alive?" Lena slurred as she neglected to keep her nudity covered.

Bane's chest grew sore from how fast he began to breathe, his heart began to ache in its girthy opaque pericardial sac, deep within his muscular chest.

Lena's hands fluttered uselessly as the pharmaceutical began to win the tug-of-war between her conscious and unconscious mind.

During the time when Lena could blink rapidly and watch Bane's hands, he deftly slid the needle into her opposite hip and began to clean and apply a thick burn ointment before dressing the burn.

Bane's eyes began to drift from the edge of the gauze and followed the light blue line of her femoral artery as it climbed up the inside of her leg and disappeared into the crease of her inner thigh.

"You're not Talia," Bane murmured in a tone low enough that only he could hear as he shifted Lena's limp form to her side and arranged the discarded pillows behind her head and others to support her flaccid limbs.

"You're not Talia," Bane melodically whispered to the quiet air above where Lena was breathing hard, finally forced into a locked room of pharmaceutical unconsciousness. He cleaned up the stained bandages and paper wrappers before he straightened the deluxe bed linen around her.

Bane extinguished the small glass lamp next to the bed before he slipped out of his royal-blue boxers and joined her under the decadent bedcovers. His exhale turned shaky as he settled his top hand on her bare hip.

Under the bedding, her skin was warm under his palm while the deluxe linen coolly teased the top of his scared knuckles.

Bane's control threatened to tilt and quake as their bare skin kissed. He groaned against the crown of her head as he curled his body around hers, no light could've peeked from between where their naked bodies pressed.

Bane thought of her slurred questions delivered on a frightened tone.

"What are you waiting for?" Bane could hear her ask as he had fumbled with her gown to expose her intimacy.

"Why are you keeping me alive?" she would've shouted again had she been awake.

"I don't know," Bane admitted to her unconscious body, Lena's naked skin teased him and made his cock grow uncomfortably hard against her. "I just know you're not Talia," he managed on a choked growl as he struggled to refrain from thrusting against her naked, supple skin.

Bane would've been content if sleep never found him as the cargo ship continued at a comfortable 20 knots towards the Ukraine.