Three months, shmree months. I became massively distracted- as many of us have, I imagine- and also starting (guiltily) writing something else because I got stuck once more. It finally occurred to me to find a solution to a ton of storytelling that would've lasted a billion chapters in ONE chapter of pseudo-vignettes, if only to get things rolling a little more quickly. So, all of this being said, it's a little shorter than usual and a little but piecemeal-y, but here we go!
Reads, comments, and reviews are belov'd!
Day 2
"Who did you send to my apartment?"
The contents of the duffel bag were a curious mix. Practical denim and socks, a chunky sweater made of soft wool, a toothbrush, perfectly matched sets of underwear, a box of tampons, boots, deodorant, a nightgown. Mel's eyebrows shot up when her fingers had brushed the dark green silk. For one bizarre moment she'd imagined it to be her gown from the charity ball; instead it was a nighty, one she'd bought impulsively on a humid summer evening and had ended up shoved in the back of her underwear drawer and forgotten about entirely.
"Did you go?"
Barsad said nothing. She leaned back into the car seat and fixed her eyes on his face; watching, probing, searching for a microscopic fissure that might be an opportunity. His thumb swiped across the steering wheel, barely a twitch but a little thrill slithered up Mel's spine. Carefully she crafted her next sentence, imagining the collection of comfortable and functional items contrasting sharply with the presence of a green silk nightgown. If she could analyze the person who had packed it- and she had an ever-increasing notion of who that had been -that information could prove valuable. She was smart as hell.
"This strategy is transparent."
Torn from her scheming, Mel blinked. Barsad flickered his eyes at her once before looking back out the windshield at the empty city street.
"The Stockholm Syndrome method. Your energy would be better invested elsewhere. It won't work."
"I-I wasn't-"
She sputtered as her sentence died in her throat. A flash of embarrassment, of anger, of disappointment twisted in her chest. Such a clever plan, blown to rumble in seconds. Mel sat in the metaphorical pieces and glared at her shoes.
"Fine."
She wondered if the thumb swipe had been unintentional at all; she wondered if she'd ever stop falling into traps. It had been a long day. She wasn't used to bright fluorescents after so long in the dark little office and a headache was beginning to twinge behind her eyes. Was this to be her life now? A gullible creature who slithered cringing into the light to do her master's bidding? The embarrassment settled low as the anger and bitter disappointment tangled and bubbled into her throat.
"Stockholm Syndrome isn't a real thing, you know."
She scowled at her boots, her clenched toes hidden beneath the leather. The car drove on.
"A Swedish psychiatrist couldn't stomach that a woman made him feel incapable, so he invented it to discredit her. And everyone preferred to believe she had a diagnosis because the alternative was that the powerful people they'd put their trust in were incompotent."
Her mouth went on muttering the words as her brain listened with disconnected curiosity and confusion.
"So if you want me to shut up, or... I don't know- if you want to threaten me, or threaten the next botanist Bane kidnaps, you should rethink your strategy because she'll know you're wrong. Or," Mel's head thunked back against the seat as she tried to follow her own thoughts, "maybe she won't, or...I don't know-one way or the other, I do. It won't work. I know the difference between altered brain chemistry and someone advocating for herself."
Silence fell around them as she trailed off, hanging cooly in the air as she turned and stared hard out the window. God, her head hurt. She closed her eyes to block out the orange light of the setting sun.
"Credit where credit is due."
For a moment she wondered if she'd actually heard him say it. She was almost afraid to open her eyes, to look at him and find she'd misheard, but after a moment she did. Barsad was unchanged: hands on the steering wheel, face blank, pale eyes staring lazily in front of him.
Day 4
She sat on the cold metal stool as unpleasantness personified shuffled about on the other side of the lab. The other scientist was nearly always there when she arrived: tall and thin with cold light glinting off of his glasses. Barsad had barked an order at him on the first day she'd arrived.
"Stay out of Dr. Isley's way."
The scientist had merely snorted and pressed his glasses further up his nose.
"Fear not, working with pests is outside the scope of my studies."
Mel grabbed a handful of small frozen vials from the insulated coolbox and placed them on her workbench. In her periphery she could see him openly sneering at her as she shimmied on a pair of safety gloves. She ignored him and held up a single bottle to observe the nondescript viscous liquid inside.
Fucking prick.
Day 7
The car door rattled as she slammed it shut and sat moodily in her seat. Barsad gave no indication that he'd noticed her display. He shifted the car into gear and they drove back towards City Hall. Her head was aching again; from frowning, from the flickering fluorescents, from annoyance. Mel sighed heavily through her nose, scowling out the window.
"If I had my own laptop this would all go a lot faster."
There was probably a snowflake's chance in hell that anything would come of this, she knew that all too well.
"My work laptop" she clarified, scrubbing roughly at her face, "it has the software for this stuff, archives. I wouldn't be wasting all of this time doing shit by hand."
Barsad gave her a single dry glance and then turned back to the road. She flung up her arms in wilted exasperation.
"What do you think I'm going to do?"
To her credit it was a perfectly honest question, entirely free of subtext or motive. What did he think she would do? She didn't even know if there was normal internet in Gotham anymore, let alone access to things like email and social media. And, assuming they somehow still existed in this new world of Bane's, she wasn't stupid enough to suppose they woud not be tracking every stroke of every key.
"I'm a damn botanist, not a hacker, not a-not a soldier."
He said nothing. Mel leaned against her seatbelt and rested her forehead in her hands.
"I'm not even a chemist," she rubbed her temples, "You know that better than any of them. Mr. Mendoza."
The moment of silence that followed felt, somehow, different from the countless other such moments. Mel didn't say anything; she waited, listened, very nearly wondered if he would agree. Barsad said nothing. She noted it all the same.
Day 10
Labor Standards was the door beside her office. Next came Economic Development, followed by Construction and Inspections on the third. Beside the fourth was a gold plaque that read Lucinda Kane City Archives. Mel looked it over carefully as Barsad knocked on the door. She held a refrigerated case in her hands and had a creeping notion of what she would find past the closed door; she revelled in the final moments of conjecture and ignorance before the warbling voice bid them enter. All of the furniture had been pushed to the corners of the large dark room, leaving the space cleared of everything but a bed covered in an elaborate quilt and a desk and chair beside the fireplace. Bane sat gazing into the flames, twisting a length of cord between his fingers. The sight sent a spike of fear through Mel and she hesitated; what was the rope for? Barsad nudged her forward, his face as blank as ever. Gingerly she stepped closer. Bane did not react until she placed the case beside his massive boot; he gave no more than a fleeting glance first to the case and then at her, nodded, and looked away once more. Mel didn't move. Thoughts of underground tunnels, of dream waltzing with a reactor, of a huge hand twisting her bloody hair away from her face, of green nightgowns and orchids on south facing tables and red scarves all swirled through her veins as her heart beat erratically.
Then we must unshackle you.
That had been his ominous decree. His unsought pledge. His promise.
Bane looked back at her when she did not move away. His eyes bore into her and for a terrible moment she remembered the CCTV footage from the stock exchange, of the deadly speed and violence that she had not quite experienced first hand. He blinked slowly and turned his massive torso towards her. One hand tucked the cord into a pocket in his vest and the other he held out in an open gesture.
"You have my full attention, my dear."
His tone was cordial and her lungs released the breath she did not know they'd been holding. She swallowed and turned her gaze to the case. After several days of slow, unsatisfying progress it was now full of little canisters, just over two dozen representing hours and hours of her life wasted, once more, in a lab. Mel motioned to it with her chin.
"Those will be...administered... via aerosol, I assume."
This man had brought Gotham to its knees, had it cowering with the brutality he left in the wake of his every civil word. He watched her now in cryptic mild silence as he almost always did, as they all almost always did, as everyone almost always did, and it made the hole in her belly flare. Had he really assumed she hadn't figured it out? How stupid did he think she was?
"The peptides can't penetrate the blood/brain barrier. It'd be barely better than straight opioids, depending on the intended usage. Which," she added acidly, "I can only infer. Frankly, its an entirely inelegant-"
Bane moved to stand. The heft of his colossal form made no sound, the ropes of muscle curling and angling beneath his black shirt as he rose; through the mesh of the mask there was a crackling like a grunt. Mel fumbled, pressing back hard at the instant swell of intimidation.
"And unpredictable, untested-"
"It is a lasting dilemma, I imagine, for men and women of science," he stepped past her towards the fireplace, "the great analytical minds of any age must face this one same crucible."
The flickering light sent sparks dancing in his eyes when he gazed back over his shoulder. His tone was philosophical; his expression was wicked.
"To produce fact while resisting an appreciation for a little elegance."
The patient words were like those of a parent speaking with a child. A superior, a permissive educator. Mel had once been able to brush this kind of comment off with nothing but a pinch of irritation. Pamela, it seemed, could do no such thing. Not in this new, dark world where every day might be her last; where it had been promised that her shackles would fall away. Bane the titan had advanced on her, slanted over her like her reactor, filled her with terror and the savage need to drag herself to her own feet. This man, the man who stood silently before the fire, was brushing her off without saying no. He sounded tired. Mel's fingernails cut hard into her palms. After all of this, after everything the last decade had offered, was she expected to settle into quivering servitude?
She was smart as hell and was owed much, much more.
"That would depend on my definition of elegance."
Her tone was arrogant and she didn't care in the least. For the first time she watched as, almost imperceptibly, Bane's eyebrows rose. She noted it.
"To assume otherwise would be generalizing."
"Generalizations," he turned his back to the fire and Mel felt the overwhelming intensity of his full attention, "assumptions- based upon generally held knowledge or reasonable observations -are received in science, are they not?"
"As a basis for hypothesis, yes."
"Hypotheses which with the proper method are molded into theories, which are inspired by assumptions?"
The hole inside her seethed and Mel took a step towards him.
"A proper method does not mold. Proper method has no opinions, it shows the truth regardless of opinion or intention."
There was a small voice in the back of her mind that begged her to move back, to tuck a curl behind her ear and gently draw her eyes away from Bane's. Aggressively, she muzzled it and, when it had crumpled into silence, the corner of her mouth lifted. She smiled.
"Unshackled by assumption."
Mel could feel her heartbeat hammering in her palms and in her throat as Bane moved towards her, stopping only when he was only a hair's width away. She could see the weave in the fabric of his shirt, could smell him in the fibers: leather and human and metal. The mask whispered over her head and she tilted her chin back and found the stab of his eyes boring down.
"Your definition?"
Instinctively she sought the expression behind the mask. His fingertips ghosted against her arm as he breathed.
"Concise."
"Simplistic?"
"No."
Bane inhaled as though to counter but Mel spoke first.
"Intentional."
She pointed to the case.
"That is not intentional. It's a reaction, not a solution."
Disdain dripped from her words- perhaps more than was due, perhaps more than she even truly felt -but the truth remained. The little canisters were as inefficient as lab produced heavy water, as ugly as dead roses coated in wax, as pointless as endless hexagons blinking unhappily across a computer screen. His lethal green eyes glinted like knives and slowly, languidly, they creased at the corners.
"You could do better."
Mel didn't know what she would've felt if his words had been a question. But, no, it was a statement, spoken darkly and low enough that she could physically feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest before the sound crackled out of the mask. Her response was similarly low but lighter for there was nothing dark about this truth, not to Mel. It was simply a fact.
"I could do better."
The warmth around her wrist was unexpected and she started. Bane raised it high, pressing his thumb along her palm until the backs of all of her fingers lay flat in his. He ran it lightly over the crescent shaped marks where her fingernails had dug into her flesh then moved lower to press firmly into the pulse within her wrist. She watched and neither her heartbeat nor her mind was calm; resolute, perhaps. Stubborn. Audacious.
"That's what the shadows tell me."
"Hmm."
He pressed solidly into her wrist once more then released her hand. As it dropped back to her side Bane craned his head lower, arching over her more entirely.
"Not shadows, Pamela."
The mask rattled.
"The fire."
Day 12
"Eat."
The single word was all Barsad said before moving away down the stairs. Mel leaned against the wall and exhaled. Since learning that Bane's slept just four doors down the familiar little office had begun to feel like a different place. She felt like at any moment the door might open to reveal the behemoth, like at any moment she might notice a pair of sharp green eyes, she felt like…
She didn't quite know the entirety of what she felt.
A wisp of steam caught her attention and she glanced over, then froze. Three items sat in a row on the desk, the steam wafting from the first: a plate of stew. Beside it was something that she had once taken entirely for granted, had plunked down in front of every weekday morning with boredom twisting her face. A purveyor of hexagons, the source of the ill-fated WE messages that had paved her road. Her laptop. It sat there in her dark office prison like an inanimate ghost; she took a half step forward, almost in awe, then faltered once again. A sound like a sob bubbled out of her mouth and she was barreling forward, tripping to land on her knees before the third item in the row. Still in his little terracotta pot, looking perhaps a little wilted and a little worse for wear but very much himself, was Julius. She choked. Tears of joy were still tears, she reminded herself firmly even as she pressed her nose against the smooth, striped leaves. They wrapped around her cheeks, brushing her eyelashes. They sat on the floor like that, embracing and content and unaffected, as outside the evening darkened into night.
xo, trppnwtz