Chapter Eleven: Day Seven at Sea: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance
Bane stared down at Lena as he roughly plunged his impossible hardness into her wet center. If a pathologist opened his skull and performed a living autopsy, reviewing the peaks of valleys of his neural pathways, they'd find the voyage deep in many ways.
He could feel the press of the stale air in the space of the rectangular cargo container, in an instant his body remembered being trapped in The Pit. Bane dropped his head to the curve of Lena's neck, his rhythm turned frenzied as he fought the visceral weight of recollections of confinement.
Lena's breathless panting, hot against the curved cartilage of his ear, the lobe smooth and saved from scarring, shook him back to reality. Bane closed his eyes as his passion peaked and he prematurely filled her tightness with his spilled, sticky seed.
Bane spoke biocentrically, "come outside with me," he breathed mechanically against the smooth skin of her neck, the front of his mask pressed against her strong carotid pulse.
"Outside?" Lena parroted lamely and gave a sharp groan as Bane let his cock slide from her center, wetness soaking the expensive sheets upon the retreat of his softening thickness.
Bane grunted musically as he pulled the luxurious duvet cover around her flushed nudity and scooped her up in his arms. He carried her to the well-secured double doors and emerged onto the deck of the cargo ship, the night sky cloudless and bright over the Atlantic Ocean.
Bane observed that Talia in her shrewd, beautiful, and benevolent skin suit of Miss Miranda Tate, had paid top dollar to ensure every luxury and need was met on the more than six-thousand nautical mile journey.
While Miranda had been priming cargo ship captain Aleksander's cock and fondling his blue balls for a free ride, she had guaranteed herself to be surrounded by containers of stolen tablets, phones, and laptops. Aleksander promised Miranda absolute privacy on the hopes he'd be able to fuck her mouth right before her clutching cunt.
Bane settled onto the metal surface of the deck, the welded rivets a small mountain range of bumps under his muscular thighs as he adjusted Lena until she was cocooned in the fine linen.
Overhead, the constellation of Orion observed them, the Hunter thrown to the night sky to be forever seen when he was killed and taken from Artemis's side.
"Why my city?" Lena asked in a ragged murmur.
Bane's initial answer was to wordlessly squeeze her tighter against his broad chest.
Lena closed her eyes when Bane began to speak, resting the side of her face against his firm flesh, hearing his words grumble and vibrate the tiny cochlea bone in her ears.
"Talia performed the physical action of raising me to the surface from the darkness of The Pit, using ropes where she didn't need them. I owed her and pledged my overzealous dedication and loyalty to the League of Shadows. A soldier fighting her war, serving her cause," Bane started in a factual, easy melody.
"The citizens under your charge meant nothing to me, they were all casualties of war, inevitable dominoes to fall with the rise of those that were stronger. Any that survived would've lived under heel or in the shadows, enslaved."
Back in Gotham City that was now smoldering, radiation thick in the air, staticky and lung-choking, if the cellular remains of the citizens could've spoken, they might've preferred to live, even if it was to be punished versus being reduced to charred smears on the streets.
"I survived," Lena stated flatly. "Does that mean I'm your slave?"
"No," Bane rasped and abruptly slid his hand under the lush duvet cover. Lena gasped as Bane traced the design he had branded into her supple flesh over the layer of cotton gauze.
"You're my hope and light," he murmured raggedly as he traced the open oblong rectangular shape, a simple hieroglyph that was more than three-thousand years old, gruffly adding. "My home," he coarsely grumbled as he had to pause to catch his opiate kissed air through his mechanical breathing apparatus. "I was strapped to a board to have my injuries repaired underground," Bane murmured as he continued tracing the ancient design he had burned into her flesh. "I could only move my fingers to draw in the sand and dead earth, I scraped this into the ground until my fingers bled," he added.
"And now what happens?"
Bane squeezed her tight, "now I forge my own path, you'll be at my side," he murmured in an easy melody.
As Lena shifted in Bane's arms until she could stare at his masked face, up in his private quarters, captain Aleksander Dymtrus scanned news page after news page on his satellite connected tablet, more and more astonished that Miranda Tate could've gotten herself out of Gotham City alive.
Aleksander continued to regularly try all of the numbers he had for the benevolent, beautiful, stoic Miranda Tate. He grew more and more furious as each call was met with a busy signal or out-of-service automated recording.
As Aleksander went back to watching a live news report about the carnage and staggering death toll in Gotham City, down on the smooth deck, nestled among the cargo containers of war criminals, billionaire pedophiles seeking a non-extraditing country and stolen goods, Bane stood with a groan. The bitter sea air exacerbated the deep aches in his joints as he adjusted her in his arms and carried her bridal-style back inside the adjoining containers.
Bane settled her at the small mosaic table and dropped heavily in the chair across from her. "What do you need?"
Lena chuckled and plucked one of the cloth napkins from the table and wiped her eyes free from accumulated gunk of old mascara and too many tears.
"Where would I even start?"
Bane stayed silent, his eyes seeing inside her, to the very fluttering of her heart valves.
"I wouldn't mind cleaning up," Lena finally mumbled when the weight of his gaze became too suffocating.
Bane nodded and rose to his feet, his knees popping in protest. He was immediately in debt to any worshipped deity when Lena's physical tension was less palpable as he lifted her and carried her to the tiny bathroom, as luxurious as Miranda Tate's money could buy, imported French soap in the shape of a fleur de lis was perched on the top of the small sink.
Bane paused at the flimsy door, speaking in an empty melodious tone. "There are some implements you might find helpful in that bag."
"Thank you," Lena whispered as Bane left her to her perceived privacy.
Bane heard her murmured thank you as he gathered up the spilled linen and set about remaking the plush mattress. During the spaces of time that Lena had slept heavily and continued the healing process, he had scrutinized every inch of the adjoining cargo containers for all of the perks Talia had paid for.
Behind the thin door, Lena rose to her feet and stood unsteadily in front of the oval mirror, assessing her reflection. Her eyes landed on the referenced silk-covered makeup case on a wire rack with a quartet of thick, ivory white bath towels.
She dug through cosmetics, tubes of gloss and palettes of pressed powder before finding a small blister pack with tiny white pills next to a bindle of cocaine. The 1.5-gram tablets of levonorgestrel were a frequent after-fuck necessity for Talia. She never traveled without the pregnancy preventing Plan B and was ready to ensure there was no international baby made on her trans-Atlantic fucking with the captain of the ship.
As Bane paced the length of the cargo container, he clenched his hands in and out of loose fists, wanting to return to the bathroom even if it was just to watch Lena breathe.
Inside the small bathroom, modified as much as the almighty dollar would allow, Lena cleaned up as best as she could before rinsing her face with the tepid water and patted her skin dry. She began untangling her hair with a comb as she met her eyes in the mirror. "What the fuck has happened to you?" Lena asked her reflection, shaking her head as she worked the comb's teeth through a stubborn snarl.
She sat back down on the closed toilet lid and combed her hair until it hung straight and soft. Lena slipped the elastic band from the handle of the comb and secured her hair back in a loose braid. She looked down the front of her body, frowning at the multiple bruises that decorated her skin, all in varying stages of discoloration and healing.
Lena spread her thighs apart and picked at the tape keeping the cotton gauze covering the flesh-searing brand. She hissed as she peeled the gauze away and could lay eyes on the instantly cauterized skin as it had parted under the white-hot curved steel.
"Is this what you want for the rest of your life? Is he the one you want for the rest of your life?" Lena whispered to the silence as she traced the perimeter of the branded shape.
"Is it?"
Lena flinched when Bane's mechanical question reached her ears. She crossed her arms in a rush to cover her nudity, not hearing him return to lurk in the doorway. "Am I?" he asked as he closed the small distance between them and knelt to a knee in front of her, his hands coming to rest on the tops of her thighs.
Lena looked away from Bane's searching gaze as she allowed him to pull her hands away from covering her breasts. He raised a hand to cup her jaw and lift her face to meet his.
"Do you want a life with me?" Bane asked on a musical rasp as he traced the rough pad of his thumb over her full lower lip.
In the space before Lena spoke, Bane felt the rare touch of emotional evisceration and the exposure of his vulnerability. His fear of rejection filled his head with white noise. It was sudden summer rain over the Serengeti, threatening to flood the underground tunnels of leaf-eating, fur-covered rodents, extinguishing all life it its watery wake.
"Am I?" Bane murmured on a choked melodical tone as he inhaled deeply and pressed his masked face close to her healing thigh and fumbled with the thick straps under his chin.
Lena closed her eyes and couldn't help but rest her hands for balance on the backs of his broad shoulders as she felt his scarred lips and rough skin of his chin brush against the sensitive burn. "Am I?" Bane asked in his real, ragged voice, spoken as though his lungs were full of holes and hung like rotten curtains inside his massive chest cavity.
"Yes," Lena answered on a voice choked with tears, she felt her eyes burn as Bane moved his mouth to her femininity at the apex of her thighs. "Am I?" Bane asked as he ran the tip of his tongue through the shell-pink folds of her pussy, seeking and urgently probing for her tight, wet center.
Lena cried in between gasps of growing passion when Bane would surprise her and roughly shove his tongue in her tight pinkness before returning to her clit that was growing in sensitivity to the height of Olympus. "I'm sorry," Lena thought and sniffed hard as she tightened her grip on Bane's shoulders. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you," Lena thought, Gotham City now further way with each traveled nautical mile.
"I want to live," Lena thought as she covered a sob and cry of absolute orgasmic magnificence as she tightened her thighs around his shoulders and rode out her pleasure against his scarred features. Bane had to quickly slip his mask back in place and kept the side of his face resting on Lena's belly as he caught his own breath and let the aerosolized opiate soothe the wildfire of nerve pain that had cropped up from being too long without the mask.
As they each caught their breath in the cramped bathroom, Lena kept her legs wrapped around Bane's wide shoulders and thick neck as he kept his masked face pressed against her belly. She cried for not being a part of the millions of lives that were ended when Gotham City became a funeral pyre. Lena also sniffed hard as tears fell from the waves of pleasure that continued to wash through her, slipping through her brain's blood brain barrier and swirling about her pleasure center.
Bane squeezed his eyes shut as his Venom needed to work overtime in putting out the multiple fires that had sprouted throughout his contorted vascular system and shoddily arranged nerve endings and ligaments. Behind his mask that was now firmly in place, he licked his scarred lips, groaning to find them wet from her innermost intimacy. He shuddered as he recalled with saliva-inducing memory, the taste of her pussy flooding his mouth as he fucked her with his tongue.
As Bane caught his breath, each mechanical exhalation held the scant remnants of Talia's toxicity slip from his tortured lungs out through his scarred lips. He had not realized the depth that Talia had crawled to, how she had hidden in the pocket of his intestines and remained nestled among the polyps. Talia had tried to take root inside him, curl around the base of his spine, fill him like an autoimmune disorder and destroy from within.
After Bane's breathing returned to its mechanically controlled rate, he pulled the fallen linen up and around her naked body, reluctant to hide her nudity before gathering her up and returning to the adjoining container. He settled her back at the small mosaic table where he had set out a selection of dried fruits and couple slices of hearty oat bread.
Lena was hungrier than she realized, as she ate the dried dates, Bane had to busy his hands with remaking the bed so he wouldn't stare at the errant bread crumb clinging to her lower lip.
She looked over as Bane smoothed his hands over the sheen of the duvet, his ragged cuticles snagging the expensive threads. Lena wiped her mouth with the linen napkin as she watched Bane pull back the covers on one side of the bed before repeating the action on the other side.
Lena sipped at a heavy mug of citrus tasting mineral water as Bane tossed some of the decorative only pillows to land soundlessly on the floor.
"Are you going to bed?" Lena asked carefully as she watched Bane begin to slide out of his remaining clothes, letting them stay exactly where they fell off his formidable frame.
"Yes," Bane answered, musical amusement very present in his tone as he turned towards her adding. "As are you."
Lena cleared her throat as her words were momentarily unavailable as her eyes absorbed the vascular striation of his naked body and thick cock hanging heavily between his legs. "I'm not really tired though," she started and trailed off as he stepped away from the bed and moved towards her.
"I said nothing of sleeping," Bane rasped in a haunting melody.
Lena couldn't stop the involuntary flinch as Bane approached and was even worse at keeping a wince from washing over her beautiful features as the hard seat of the chair bit into her bruised skin.
Bane dropped heavily to his knees in front of her, his strong hands pulling the luxurious linen from around her until he could stroke, caress, and savor her naked skin, his eyes lingering on the discolored spots, streaks and blemishes he had created on her supple skin.
"I swear to you I'll take care," Bane murmured musically as Lena allowed him to wrap her up in his naked embrace, their bare skin kissing as he pulled her impossibly close. He held her close for a few seconds, waiting until she met his eyes. "I swear," he reiterated in a broken melodic tone.