TRIGGER WARNING: Violence, non-consensual touching, non-consensual administering of drugs.
Let's see how long I can see riding this creative energy! I sincerely appreciate all of the views, the saves, all of your kind words. Stay safe, stay healthy, and tell me what you think.
It would be a long time before Mel would see the person called Miranda Tate again, and that suited her just fine. After the giant disappeared behind the locked door she was left alone. She stood and watched the sun lower and set, watched the lights all over Gotham go out, listened to the sounds of madness blossoming across the dark cityscape. At some point it all became too much and she dropped to her hands and knees, curling into the corner, tugging at the door she knew was locked. Like a caged animal she paced and noisily gulped down air until she was absolutely exhausted. Sleeping on the bed felt too vulnerable. She paced. She tried the door once again. She stared out of the window. Finally, with her body half beneath the bed, she dozed off on the floor. The sky was still dark when her eyes snapped open- Hours later? Minutes? Seconds?- and her skin was cold to the touch. The window stood open and the frigid night air had crept in to cocoon her. Mel crawled across the icy tile and shut it. This was her choice. She had made this choice.
She was smart as hell, felt tired and hungry and frozen, and had been so so so stupid.
She had believed herself to be a beacon.
It was perhaps mid afternoon when the door swung open.
"Shit, look what's been hiding in here this whole time!"
Hearing his Gotham City accent gave her an odd little moment of warmth; she remembered the daffodil man. When the person crouched in front of her the warmth disappeared. His overall appearance was grimy, a flash of orange prison uniform peeking through his ill fitting armor. He took in her form with a greedy smile and fear swelled into Mel's throat.
"Get her up, we're on a schedule."
A second man rasped from where he stood in the doorway, this one grim-faced and staring intently at the floor, out the window, anywhere but in her direction. Grimy and Grim.
"Where am I going?"
It was the first thing she managed to gasp out. She didn't want the answer, didn't need the answer, but it was words and that was something. She felt a little flicker in her stomach, a flicker she remembered. A flicker that felt like Mel. Grimy wiggled his fingers as he snatched them around her arms, deliberately grazing her breasts and pressing against her with his body and breath. She arched away from the stench of sweat and sulfur. Grim had still not looked at her. She was smart as hell and some people just have patterns. Good cop, bad cop- good terrorist, bad terrorist?
"Go on now, lil' sugar daisy."
Grimy pushed her forward, giggling or wheezing or both. Grim turned into the hall without a word. She saw her chance; she stepped forward and addressed him firmly.
"He's making you look bad."
The blow that followed was so surprising, so vicious and angry and quick that at first Mel couldn't figure out what had happened. Then the pain bloomed across the back of her skull and she fell hard to her knees but Grim wasn't finished. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back; she tried to cry out but he pressed the muzzle of a handgun roughly into her cheek, hard enough that she could taste blood.
"Your world is over, do you understand?"
His fingers twisted more tightly into her hair and Mel choked on a gasp of pain. She could see his eyes now and knew that she had picked the wrong terrorist. They were savage and cruel and his expression dead and the combination made cold fear boil in her throbbing head. Grimy would kill her to justify his means; Grim would peel away her skin and relish it. She kicked and flailed and scratched.
"Get off of m-"
The blow came down again, this time on her face, and she crumpled.
"Whoa, man, cool it you're going to break her fucking neck!"
Mel laid there while Grim and Grimy screamed at one another and wondered if anything was broken but she couldn't tell through the pain and the blood in her eyes. She recognized the once decadent lobby of the John Daggett's building when they dragged her through it, now scattered with detritus and the security station deserted. How had they gotten there? Dully, as she was roughly chucked into a car trunk, it occurred to her that she must've lost time. The lid slammed shut and she was engulfed in darkness. Once she'd believed herself to be a beacon. Now she lay in the close oily air, her lungs aching with every breath that echoed in her ears, and she pressed her bleeding cheek into the dirty carpet and curled into the darkness like a womb. She knew she was being taken to her death now, felt it in her bones. She thought of seven little philodendrons on a bright window sill and the sun on her shoulders. Across space and time a giant water lily shifted languidly towards her and she stretched out her fingers but could not reach.
A slice of light cut across her face and her heart clenched sorrowfully as she pulled the hand up to shield her eyes instead.
"What the fuck is this."
"Delivering the prisoner, boss's orders."
"This was part of your order?"
She recognized that voice though it now clipped along the plains of a different accent. It was like a cruel joke as she looked helplessly into the face of Ander Mendoza, his familiar form so unfamiliar wrapped in armor and weapons. His glacial eyes were blazing as they scanned her face and all she could do was stare back. Not-Mendoza closed his hands around her arms and she was pulled firmly but not painfully from the trunk. Mel slumped against him and her body remembered his and desperately sought comfort from something she knew. He hoisted an indifferent shoulder under her arm and they began to move.
"-told us to retrieve her from the apartment and bring her here-"
Footfalls echoed through the building and crashed like waves through her brain. When they stopped moving she dropped heavily onto the cold stone floor and not-Mendoza let her. To stay upright any longer seemed impossible, even for someone who'd once been a beacon. Her heart pulsed through her ribs and skull, thudding rhythmically in time with the sound of massive footsteps; through mats of hair she could see the boots coming closer, closer, and stopping in front of her.
"Barsad, what were the orders?'
"Retrieve Dr. Isley-"
"She tried to run and shit, seriously!"
Their explanation wove together with the warbling of Bane's mask and pressed into her ears, tangling with the memory Grimy's slithery touches and Grim's violence. Through the fog of death, through her exhaustion and pain something new smoldered. Not new, truly, something she knew well because she had felt it so many times before: something bright and burning that clenched in her stomach. She tried to speak but wretched dryly instead. Mel pressed her trembling palms against the marble floor and tried to sit up. The hole blazed. At first all she saw was the hand as it reached down and she flinched. This was it, she supposed, and there was blood in her eyes that at least she wouldn't have to watch it happen. The hand came to stillness in front of her face, palm up.
She waited. She waited.
She blinked; it was large, callused, a scar visible where the thumb met the immense palm, the nails short and square and oddly neat. Mel had never considered what the fingernails of a giant would look like. The fingers twitched once. In woeful astonishment she saw that the giant was beckoning, that he didn't want to pulverize her while she was curled on the floor. With her palms still glued to the ground Mel pushed with all of her strength and made it to her knees. She did not want to take the offering, a final act of cordiality before annihilation; after all that had occurred she did not want to run or plead or change anything. She just wanted to make it to her own feet. She pushed, she heaved, she allowed misery to flood her being when it was clear she could not.
She would not cry. She would never cry again.
Bane closed his fingers around her entire hand and hoisted her to stand before him. Mel wobbled and felt like a husk. She closed her eyes to focus hard on staying upright, refusing to give any of them the satisfaction of watching her crumple once more. The mask hissed and crackled above her head; a point of startling heat flared beneath her chin as he used a single warm finger to tilt her face up towards his. The air in the room increased in weight and she could almost taste it, like the sour bitter sting of battery acid. Mel inhaled and finally raised her eyes to look at the behemoth that held her life in his hands. Bane watched her placidly from where he towered high above. His finger left her chin and Mel felt him twist her matted, bloody hair away from her face. The action was simple, so gentle, so sinister, and her throat closed as if he had strangled her.
"Incontinent, the void."
The void?
The void.
Fuck.
Mel understood. Stale battery acid air filled her lungs as her throat unclenched. She would not die here, not yet. But she had not saved herself; she had made a choice a long time ago, a choice for the final word that had been a new beginning. Something chilly glimmered in his eyes, something jovial and lethal, then he blinked and fixed them over her shoulder. Her neck throbbed angrily as she turned and stared back at Grimy and Grim, at the bewilderment and outrage and wild fear that rolled off of each of them differently. Bane's mask whirred.
"Third floor, end of the hall will serve nicely for Dr. Isley."
Not-Mendoza materialized at her side, his indifferent shoulder taking control of her body once more for which Mel was grateful.
"See that her wounds are tended to."
The hands that had once spun her so elegantly through a sparkling ballroom guided her away- across the floor that was like an ocean, and not-Mendoza a boat. Grim and Grimy were left to tread water with the roiling dark clouds of a hurricane overhead.
"We brought her straight here!"
"Boss, I swear to fucking god there-"
Then there were no more words, just a horrible cracking and squelching and the sound of wetness and bone and muscle hitting the floor. Screaming, pleading, a shrill shriek of fear before it was cut off by a wet ripping sound. Mel clung to the spot between not-Mendoza's shoulder and neck; she did not turn around to look.
There were just so many reasons not to accept an unknown pill from a strange man. So, so, so many reasons. There were entire classes, entire books, entire notions held communally across cultures based solely around this very idea. Her mother gave her a pinched expression.
"So why on earth did you swallow it?"
Mel shrugged. Because he'd handed it to her. Not-Mendoza grunted and held her shoulder still.
"That is not an excuse, Pammie. It was careless."
Her mother turned away to pour a drink- to 'settle her nerves with Dutch courage', as she liked to say. The bottle materialized out of the air in the small office at the end of the third floor hallway. It was odd; she was there sometimes, pacing, sipping, scowling elegantly. She hadn't been there with Mel when not-Mendoza handed her the tablet, when she'd been scrubbing the blood from her face with a paper towel in a ladies room, when she had watched the pink water swirl down the drain. Mel slumped into the couch and stared at the stains from sweat and dirt and blood on her once white blouse.
"It was silk," her mother groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose, "nothing on God's green earth will get those out."
Mel shrugged again and not-Mendoza made an impatient gesture with the hand holding the surgical needle.
"Stop moving."
The little pill had also been white, but white like powder or marble or snow. Her blouse was creamier like an egg shell in a nest of twigs or, or….cream? What else was the color of cream? Bones, maybe. Bones nestled in desert sand that had been bleached and warmed by the sun for days and months and years, not bones freshly ripped and shredded and bloody.
"Dear, you're being very morbid."
Mel ignored her half-present mother who only she could see and hear. There were no windows in the office. Everything inside was useful and uninteresting: a desk and chair, shelves packed with city code or manuals, a sensible couch. The snow white pill did the butterfly stroke through her belly as it clenched and growled; she tried to remember that last time she'd eaten anything but soon gave up. She stared at not-Mendoza's face and he frowned as he stitched her forehead. He pulled the thread taunt and she felt her skin tug.
"What?"
His voice was gruff and unpleasant. Her mother clicked her tongue to express her distaste before vanishing once more with the musical tinkling of ice in a glass. Mel closed her eyes.
"Nothing."
The needle wove back in though she felt no pain, no nothing, only the sensation of numbness and flesh pulling. Where the pain should've been there stood a void- a fucking void, where unappreciated music goes to and pain should be and where her choices went to set her goddamn life ablaze-
"Language, Pammie!"
Mel opened her eyes and fixed them blearily on not-Mendoza.
"Does it feel good to lie?"
He blinked and stitched.
"I didn't."
"Truth by omission is lying, Mr. Mendoza."
Her mother nodded her head supportively as she freshened up her drink. Not-Mendoza pulled the thread taunt once more.
"If you say so."
He snipped the thread. Mel felt woozy or possibly just a dreary combination of exhaustion and hunger. She slid clumsily down to the lumpy cushions and curled into them, flooded by the sudden and profound urge to sleep forever. Somewhere nearby her mother sat at the piano and played Ständchen. Somewhere nearby the man who was not Mendoza gathered the medkit and moved to leave.
"Wait," Mel's voice was muffled by the fabric of the couch, "what's your name?"
The cadence of his footsteps wavered ever so slightly. The piano music adapted to match the new rhythm.
"Barsad."
The door shut with a snap, and it was as though a bucket had been perched on its narrow frame; a bucket filled with a heavy sleep and a ceaseless stream of strange dreams that all came tumbling down into the dark office to engulf her.
A seven piece orchestra played something exquisite and unspecific as she spun by, plucking and pressing their instruments with their heart shaped leaves as she waltzed from giant lily pad to giant lily pad. Her gown that was a million hexagons all interlocked swirled over her skin and about her ankles as her dance partner dipped her low, low, lower still. Mel gasped and clung to the void with whom she danced.
"Smile with your mouth, dear, not your forehead!"
Her mother fluttered her petals as she glided past in a whirl of sparkling red, and Mel tried to reach out but then she was laid flat and the cool water lapped at her bare arms. The giant lily pads floated away to follow the dancers and she stared up at the void that took form into something dark with arms, so many arms, that arched all around her like a huge metal spider. She saw now that it was not emptiness, not a void at all, but something hulking and massive that gazed back dangerously with two points of bright green: the reactor, her reactor, her hope, her lifeline, her ruin. It throbbed with sound, pulsing and dissonant and pain shot across Mel's forehead and she was rising from the darkness, from the tunnels beneath Gotham, from slumber. The sound followed her as she awoke, hissing quietly as she shifted and opened her eyes.
The little office would have been completely dark but for the desk lamp. Bane sat beside it and the pale light made the metal of the mask glow. With one huge hand he turned the page in a familiar binder; he did not look up when she stirred. Mel was somehow more tired than she'd been before, tired in her bones and in her brain. She laid perfectly still and watched him sluggishly. He turned the page once more. The leather coat and the motorcycle gear were gone leaving him in a simple black shirt and trousers and the effect made him appear almost like a man. The mask shattered the illusion.
"Is this because of what I said at the party?"
Bane made a sound in his throat, something like a hum, and it surfaced as a whirr. He closed the binder and studied the front.
"Yes."
Mel supposed she could blame champagne or the cockiness of another lifetime for speaking to him all those months ago, for engaging with a behemoth that every fiber of her being told her was deadly. To have the last word. To show off her cleverness after being humiliated. She buried half of her face in the synthetic fabric of the cushion and closed her eyes once more. Now, in this new world where she lay humbled and listless, she wanted nothing more than some peace of mind. She would not be saved, could not go back and change anything, but it somehow was a relief to know how her grave had been dug.
"Why?"
In the darkness and silence she received no answer.
"What's the point?"
Her head ached and still he said nothing. She scrunched her eyelids hard when she felt the sneaking prickle of a tear. She would never cry again.
"You got what you wanted. You got your bomb."
The prickle crept into her throat and she clamped down on it harshly. Never. Again.
"You sent Miranda, or whoever she really is, to...to...mine me for information. I don't have anything else."
Mel felt a ripple in the air, truly felt it more than heard it or saw it. She opened her eyes but he appeared just as he had been before: unmoving, unbothered. Shakily she pushed herself up to one elbow.
"What?"
Bane said nothing, gave her no indication of anything. His mask warbled disinterestedly as he slowly swiped a thumb across the printed title on the binder. Her binder. Her proposal. Her day. Hers. The voice that tore from her lips was almost wrathful.
"Answer me!"
"Tell me, doctor, are you familiar with the allegory of the cave?"
Mel's chest heaved as she grappled for something like composure and she sank onto her back. Once the swell of anger had bubbled out of her mouth she felt as thought she'd been turned inside out. God, she was tired.
"I'm a scientist, not a philosopher."
"For a scholar of your quality, what should stand in the way of the boundless pursuit of knowledge?"
There was no recognizable accent in his voice; he had none of the vague European coyness of not-Miranda, nor the sensuousness of not-Mendoza- Barsad, she reminded herself acidly - leaving a listener no clue as to his allegiances. In what did he believe, in who, and why? And his tone. Gentlemanly she'd once thought to call it. Polite, indifferent, inhuman and mechanical, and intelligent. Exceptionally intelligent, dangerously so. A giant he may be but this was no lumbering beast. For the first time in a long while Mel felt that the playing field had shifted out of her favor. She made a careless gesture with her hand, as casually as her aching and exhaustion would allow.
"It's Plato. A prisoner held in a cave, trying to make sense of the world by the only things they can see."
"Which are?"
The massive boots shuffled as he settled forward with his elbows on his knees. There was a wave of new energy about him now: forward facing, alert, interested. Mel noted it. Her heart began to pound and she could feel the throbbing in her skull. She knew the answer, knew what he wanted her to say but she did not know why. The playing field stirred, shifting, tilting. She felt him waiting, the intensity of his attention pressing on her. She answered.
"Shadows."
He nodded, just once, and with a little twinge of dismay and thrill Mel saw the corners of his eyes crease and knew he was smiling.
"May I call you by your name, doctor?"
She didn't answer right away; she weighed the choices. His fingers moved endlessly over the smooth front of the binder, over her name printed across the front. Her full name- not just Mel- the name with the doctorate, the name of a person who had been on the verge of greatness, a person who could spout Plato but couldn't see a trap as it was laid in front of her. A fool.
"Yes."
His eyes glinted in the darkness and her name lilted almost playfully from within the mask.
"What story do the shadows speak to you, Pamela?"
She had been Mel for so long; it ate away at her that this would be the moment she would hear her full name spoken, that she would become Pamela again. The hole within her flared suddenly, fueled by anger, fueled by this pillar of a man and this world and how she fit into his analogy.
Mel was the fool. Pamela was something new.
Pamela was a force, smart as hell, and owed him nothing.
"The prisoner has a chain around her neck, correct?"
Bane watched her from behind his mask and she bore back into him.
"Am I wrong?"
This would not be a monologue. She would have a goddamn answer. He blinked almost sleepily.
"Not at all."
The burning in her belly poured into her arms and she pushed herself upright. Blood rushed to her head and her cheek throbbed.
"So I am the prisoner and the shadows tell me the only facts I can reasonably surmise. What do you question," she tilted her head to emphasize the question, "my method or the facts?"
She did not wait for an answer this time.
"Because my method is sound. For example, you did something- you reacted -just now when I brought up Miranda. So, based empirically on my observation, the shadows tell me that you didn't send her anywhere. You're not really in charge, are you?"
The silence that followed thrummed with the potential of his reaction. She would not backtrack, would not buckle. But, shit, he was angry. Dangerous. It rolled off of him in waves. But she was right. She would not apologize for being right. She hated the tremor in her voice when she continued.
"You're not. So the shadows aren't always lies. They're just...inconsistent. And I have nothing else to base a theory upon since I cannot turn my head."
He moved so, so quickly. In a flash the behemoth was in front of her and her breath froze in her lungs as he bore down; one enormous hand grasping the couch beside her and the other curling beneath her chin once again. An impossibly large knuckle pressing up into her jaw while the thumb settled with a soft and terrifying promise of power against the place on her neck where her pulse beat wildly. Bane leaned in close to her face, close enough that she could see the scar over his brow. His eyes were green. They raked over her face as he slanted over her just like the reactor that she'd waltzed with in her dream. His voice was low and warm.
"Then we must unshackle you."
His thumb pressed more firmly into her pulse as he inhaled a long rattling breath. It was as though he were drawing in her fear, her outrage, and her whole fucking existence through the mesh. Referencing his metaphor had seemed a safe way to quell his anger; in a way she'd been right, though she could not tell if this would be worse. She arched her neck away from him but the heat of his touch followed, dug in until she choked out a small sound of pain, then was gone. Bane straightened; he swiped his thumb across her windpipe before allowing his hand to drop to his side.
"Rest now."
He looked down at her once before moving away and there was something like curiosity in his eyes. She watched him go, watched the door close behind his massive form, and only when the sound of his footsteps faded did she reanimate. She slumped into a trembling puddle in the darkness, gasping for air in shallow gulps. Pamela was not gone, but it was Mel who settled into an uneasy sleep.
xo, trppnwtz