Chapter Fourteen: Day Ten at Sea: The Sea Will Always Remember Carrying You Home
Bane let his breathing slow, the mechanical hissing sound of his mask grew faint as the entourage of recently liberated men drew closer. The quintet of men hailed from Romania, Egypt, and Eastern Europe. Their ringleader was fierce and had a number of scars to rival Bane's.
Despite the blood these men had spilled over the decades, they never had a chance against the onslaught of Bane's rage.
As Bane aimed at the base of one of the men's throats and squeezed the trigger, back in the adjoining containers, Lena slipped into a pair of designer jeans and a long-sleeved silk blouse. She found a pair of pointed-toe flats before retrieving her department issued .45 and emptying the gun magazine of each remaining fully jacketed .240 grain bullets.
Lena picked up one of the remaining 24 rounds from the super high capacity .45.
She pressed her lips together as she moved the pad of her thumb in slow circles around the rounded tip of the bullet.
As Lena slid the bullet back into the magazine, further down the deck of the cargo ship, Bane's next bullet whizzed by another of the encroaching dangerous men as the man pivoted at the last possible nanosecond.
Bane grumbled in a mechanical melody as he moved with liquid serpentine grace and reptilian fluidity to surprise the man whose bullet he had narrowly avoided and snapped his neck. The man was clinically dead on his feet for two full seconds as his body swayed before he crumbled to the deck.
The leader of the benevolently liberated faction pulled two steel blades from his waist band and began circling Bane, quickly joined by the other two men, one holding a tire iron and the other a wickedly sharp machete, the end of the blade chipped from the earlier impact against a resisting skull.
The three men joked amongst themselves in a language that wasn't known to Bane.
They were discussing how to truss up their masked benefactor, all of them were unmoored from reality in their underestimation of Bane.
As Bane's nervous system turned electric and he embodied the drive of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini in his infernal quest to bring the two shores of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean into one, singular Italian territory, back in the adjoined cargo containers, Lena thought of the oath she had taken to the people of Gotham City.
She couldn't ignore the hot and cold juxtaposition between the two sets of vows she'd spoken.
"I'm sorry," Lena whispered within the solitude of the container. "I can't bring you back and will not die for your memory," she told the silence as she continued loading the fully jacketed bullets.
"I vow to stay next to you," Lena murmured in a low hum as she continued sheathing each bullet into the magazine. As she continued to fill the magazine to capacity, further down the cargo ship's deck, one of Bane's surrounding attackers lunged forward in stereo with the Romanian ringleader.
Bane blocked the downward swing of the tire iron but ended up having his forearm sliced open from wrist to elbow by the machete. The blade cut through his skin and muscle, easily parting the flesh, exposing the wet tissue and its weeping cells.
Bane grunted as he thrust his hand out, his fingers tightened around the well-worn handle of the European rondel dagger as tightly as Genghis Kahn grasped the blood clot in his fist upon birth, a couple heartbeats away from fulfilling his destiny.
As Bane buried the blade deep in the man's belly, severing the vertebral artery, back in the adjoining containers, Lena placed the last bullet in the chamber. "To share your life, bed, and soul," she breathed out heavily as she replaced the full magazine in the sturdy, dependable .45.
Lena paced the length of the container, her thoughts swirling in the manner of making a chimichurri sauce in an industrial blender.
Her heavier footfalls made the healing burn on her upper thigh twinge from the large, activated muscle. Her heart's superior vena cava dumped her deoxygenated blood as she held her .45 loosely in her right hand as she pinched the bridge of her nose with her left.
"Is he my enemy?" Lena asked the empty air around her. "Is this the life you want?"
As no one answered her, further down the deck, blood fell to the ground as the man with the poorly applied tattoos swung the machete around with the intention of opening Bane's throat, seeing if the masked man was composed of flesh and bone or if he was biomechanical in nature.
Bane pivoted sharply on his heel and pulled back his upper body in an accurate imitation of a King Cobra and dragged the dagger across the man's chest, the blade already dripping with blood, splitting the dark green tattoo of a naked woman in the center of his chest. The man howled in his foreign tongue as he dropped to his knees in front of Bane. His mouth fell open as though he wanted to suck cock but was instead gasping for air as Bane buried the dagger through his left eye, the orbital socket stopping the blade from fucking his eye socket any deeper.
As the two remaining men rushed Bane like defensive linemen rushing the quarterback after the snap, back in the twin containers that Miranda Tate had ensured provided every luxury, Lena continued to pace back and forth, her thoughts growing in their unsettled state, becoming a pyroclastic, land-locked tidal wave.
As Lena changed her back and forth course and made a detour to where the bottles of alcohol were lined up and filled a high-ball glass with a potent amber liquor, outside the safety of the adjoining containers, Bane caught one of the charging men with an elbow to the jaw and stunned the man long enough to open the second man's throat, slicing deep enough to expose the glistening white bone of his spinal column and light pink cerebrospinal fluid rained down from his ragged wound to mix with blood, tears and saliva.
The last man shook himself from his momentary fugue, swearing as he lunged forward and tackled Bane.
The man grappled for the dagger as Bane shifted and kicked the heel of his boot against the man's kneecap, forcing the joint to bend backwards, ripping the ligaments, arteries, and blood vessels.
Bane was on his feet as the man screamed in his sharp foreign tongue and abandoned any effort of getting the dagger from Bane's hands as he reached for his knee, worried it wasn't attached anymore.
Bane pulled a World War Two era dingy green hand grenade from his vest and pulled the safety linchpin, engaging the seven-second fuse that followed the four-second delay. He grunted and raised the broken and rigged to explode man in the air over his head in the same style as he had raised the costumed bat boy.
The man continued to shout for the entire seven seconds as Bane heaved him overboard. The man spun like a starfish before he turned into a giant, human fireworks display, exploding messily in a display of wet, intestinal ribbons and a flopping, flaccid esophagus.
Bane watched the remaining detritus of the man fill the sea air, the heavier bits falling to the churning Atlantic Ocean. "Success is only maintained by the constant use of violence and life-taking," he said to the water before walking heavily back to the adjoining cargo containers. He was the embodiment of strength and masculinity, intimidating enough that the Roman Orthodox church would formerly condemn him as the enemy of God.
As Bane made his way back, Lena took rapid sips of the strong alcohol, wrinkling her nose at the taste but eager for the relaxing warmth to spread throughout her chest and belly.
Lena nearly dropped the empty glass when the cargo container doors began to squeal and protest loudly on their rusted hinges.
Bane pulled open the door and as soon as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he found Lena standing with her legs parted shoulder-width and the .45 extended strongly at the center of his broad chest, not a tremor present in her whole body.
Bane slowly let his hands splay away from his body, palms up. He saw she was favoring her injured leg less than before, the slightness only obvious to those trained to suss out their enemies Achilles at a casual glance.
Bane's mechanical breathing hitched, becoming the whine of a car's serpentine belt needing to be replaced.
"Is this where you kill me officer Fischer, or walk into the light with me?" Bane asked easily as Lena's expression remained neutral, unreadable.
Lena clicked on the .45's safety and set it aside. "I meant what I said," she murmured as she walked towards him, drinking in the varying stages of dried and actively flowing blood, his torn skin and heaving chest.
Bane kept his hands out to the side and remained still as Lena raised up slightly and pressed her lips to the titanium mesh front of his mask. "I vow to stay next to you," she whispered before she turned her attention to his forearm's wound. "Leave it," Bane ordered.
"It's bleeding."
"It can wait," Bane growled. "Finish what you started to say," he stated just shy of demanding as he began pawing at her clothes.
The blood spilling from his torn flesh stained the fabric of her borrowed designer clothes, the luxurious threads drinking up his blood as his movements turned frantic. Bane's nervous system grew frantic as he pushed Lena backwards, when he couldn't reach the bed fast enough, he scooped her up and deposited her on the mattress top.
Lena bounced once against the plush linen as Bane wrapped her up in his arms, fumbling at the front of his pants to free his rapidly thickening cock, growing more engorged by the second, the blood flow stretching the smooth skin taut. "Finish speaking," Bane groaned as he stroked the length of his rigidity, tightening his grip on his near painful hardness as he teased the head of his cock through her slick, wet folds.
"To share your life, bed, and soul," Lena managed on a strangled gasp as Bane plunged his stiffness into her wet center, stealing her breath at the end of each stab as he pistoned in and out of her at a rapidly growing frenzied pace, his nervous system becoming lightning in a bottle.
"Is the violence over?" Lena panted as his cock drilled past her soft, pink folds, making her toes curl each time he buried himself as deep as he could, stopped only by their intimate flesh kissing.
"For now," Bane rasped on a ragged melody.
"That's the most you can promise?"
Bane nodded, knowing he'd always be working behind the scenes like Stalin as the editor the Bolshevik weekly newspaper.
Lena's pink center spasmed around his cock as his pace grew erratic, following her right off the orgasmic precipice. Bane's ragged breathing took on a mechanical hum as he emptied his hot, sticky seed deep inside her as he dropped his head to the warm curve where her neck and shoulder met.
A few minutes passed; the silence filled with their combined labor breathing. Bane gave a low groan as his cock softened and slid out of her.
He settled heavily alongside her, their legs remaining intertwined as he pulled one of the pillowcases free and wrapped it tightly around his bleeding forearm to staunch the flow. "Be here with me now," Bane murmured and shifted until he could pull her close to the front of his body as he added. "Stay with me Lena," he begged melodically.
"I'm here," Lena whispered as she pressed her hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat strongly under her palm as she added. "I'm right here."
Bane fell into an exhausted sleep, Lena laid awake and listened to his breathing whistle mechanically as he breathed deeply. She eventually followed him into sleep and was awakened a while later to find Bane cleaned up and dressed as he awoke her by tracing his fingers in small circles on her exposed shoulder.
Lena rubbed grit from the corners of her eyes as she took in his refreshed appearance. "Are you okay?" she asked and coughed harshly, trying to clear her throat.
Bane nodded and trailed his fingers down the length of her arm and grasped her hand. "We're home," he murmured as he rhythmically squeezed her left hand.
Lena looked down at their joined hands, his cuticles cleaned of his enemies blood, his nails blunt. "Come home with me Lena," Bane whispered as he tugged at her hand. He would've willingly handed out his soul to any deity when Lena rose to her feet, the linen falling from her nakedness as she allowed Bane to wrap her up in his powerful embrace.
Hours later, they stepped onto Ukrainian soil, the start of their lives together. The Atlantic Ocean watched Bane and Lena walk away, hungry like a Great White Shark for more of the blood he had sacrificed for a safe journey.
The waves mourned for Bane, honored to have kept such an apex predator afloat.
Bane would remember the sea as much as it would remember him.
Six Months Later- Odesa, Ukraine
The sky was cloudless as Lena returned from her favorite coffee shop, unable to keep from snacking on a Persiki as she returned home.
The dome-shaped peach cookies had become a daily morning treat with her strong espresso.
She kicked off her shoes as she secured the deadbolt on the front door. "Are you up?" Lena called as she made her way to the cozy kitchen, finding Bane at the rectangular dining room table before he had time to answer.
"I'm here," Bane murmured as he stood when she appeared in the doorway. Lena felt color fill her cheeks at the sudden and heavy weight of his entire attention. She was certain she'd never get tired of him standing whenever she walked into the room.
"You're here," Lena parroted as she settled in one of the empty seats, watching Bane sit after she got settled.
Bane slid a hand across the smooth surface of the table and closed his hand around hers. "Thank you Lena," he murmured on a low melody, his gratitude renewed each time his eyes fell upon her.