Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of DC Comics, Christopher Nolan, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: After Hugo Strange uses him as a test subject for an experiment in the Narrows, John Blake ends up owing his life to Bane and relying on him to survive. Several years post-TDKR. AU.

Author's Notes: Thank you to Komi V for following, and to ChiChi-O for reviewing!

Chapter Three

Blake came to – minutes? hours? days? – later, blinking hard against the brightness of his new surroundings. The naked fluorescent bulb of an overhead lamp reflected off the white walls starkly, piercing his corneas from every direction. The only black spot was Bane, who drifted like a wraith from the closed door of the room towards the beds into the centre. They were in the exam room on the fifth floor, Blake concluded groggily, and Bane had knocked him out with a sleeper hold to make sure they weren't slowed down.

"Don't-" Blake tried to utter, but his tongue had ballooned while he was unconscious, muffling his voice. He reached up to his mouth frantically. The bastard had broken his jaw! Blake growled at Bane, mumbled some kind of threat or another – it wasn't like Bane could do any worse to him at this point – only to find that it wasn't his jaw that was the problem. Bane had gagged him with a rag. Blake tore it out, coughing and spluttering, and glared daggers at his tormentor. "What was that for?"

"In case you regained consciousness. A man who screams from being leaned forward is not about to keep silent from being carried up ten flights of stairs,"

Blake winced, feeling the ten flights of stairs in his back even if he didn't get to experience them first hand. When this was all over, he was going to see Bane got a maximum security, reinforced cell at New Arkham, and that they all but threw away the key.

Bane pushed one of the beds from the far wall towards the chair when Blake was currently slumped, and then sat down in front of the former detective. He looked like a predatory cat ready to toy with his prey some more, but when he leaned forward and presented Blake with a small tool kit, the former detective realized it was worse than that: Bane was ready to get down to business.

"Unless you feel the need to debate the trivialities of your current predicament further," Bane said, passing the tool kit to Blake, "I suggest you begin. The sooner you fulfill your end of the bargain, the sooner I will provide you with the means of counteracting Strange's experiment."

Blake's hands were bloodied and shaking as he took the kit in his hands, but Bane didn't seem the least bit concerned by it. On the contrary, he looked completely at ease, settled with the situation, as if Blake's hands were steady as a surgeon's. Even when Blake fumbled with the latch, the mercenary didn't seem to mind. He just tore off his coat and shirt, turned round on the bed, and bared his back for Blake to see.

Bane's back was surprisingly smooth. There was a single scar lancing his spine, leading into a great inverted cross at his neck that disappeared into the straps and tubes of his mask. Blake could imagine some of the tools used to create the wounds, even had brief glimpses of the circumstance under which they were incurred. He felt his own back prickle and throb at the sight in something akin to sympathy, but Blake couldn't claim to know cruelty the same way Bane did. Not even Gotham had produced the rare kind of monsters it took to make that kind of mess on a person, and Blake was pretty familiar with Gotham's monsters.

Strange had affixed the Venom pump to Bane's mid-back, just to the right of the spine using a black leather strap. It was a simple enough mechanism, similar to a pumps used for administering chemotherapy drugs. Two tubes launched themselves from the upper left corner of the mechanism through Bane's flesh. A small window showed the dosage per hour beneath them while two vials of Venom, poison green, glowed softly from the center of the panel. They were inserted into a dial side by side. A couple turns would remove them completely, but Blake knew better than to do that. To deprive Bane's body of Venom suddenly, even if it was being counteracted by his anesthetic, could send the mercenary first into a violent detox and then definitely kill him. They had to do this slowly, over the course of a few hours. Blake would gradually reduce the dosage as quickly as he could and then remove the pump. He only hoped the antidote for his own procedure wasn't such a time-consuming process, or that Bane would give him the answers before it was too late.

He eased himself forward in his seat, biting back a scream, to get a closer look. Changing the dosage would be easy enough, no tools necessary. Strange had counted on Bane's inability to reach the pump or remove it, and so he had placed the controls on the device's left wall, easy enough for Blake to manipulate. There was still one area of concern though, one Blake wasn't quite sure he wanted to voice.

"Did Strange have any more Venom available?" he asked.

"Several cases of it," Bane replied, "located in Arkham."

"Good," Blake said, easing back into his chair. "We're going to need some. The vials in the pump are nearly empty. Even if I gradually decrease the dosage, the Venom's gonna run out before you're weaned off of it completely."

The air seemed to leave the room at that moment, and Bane went very, very still in front of him. Blake understood immediately. For such an imposing man, Bane was at his most threatening when he wasn't moving. Calmness and poise were always anticipations of violence, not promises to the contrary. Before the mercenary could make his move then, Blake grabbed the Venom pump with both hands and gave it a small tug, causing the tubes to pull on whatever they were attached to inside Bane's body.

The mercenary twitched. Infinitesimally. Blake knew pain when he saw it. Message received.

"Touch me," Blake said, "and I'll tell this thing out."

"Then we will both die."

"We don't have to. Get me the Venom. I can fix this."

"So desperate," Bane commented, voice lilting slightly with amusement. Blake wasn't sure if it was in response to his threat or his offer to fix the problem. "What is it, I wonder, that compels you to live, little one?"

Blake kept his hands fixed on the corners of the pump. "I want to go home." He thought he heard Bane chuckle; Blake didn't care. "We just need four more vials to make this work."

A slight shift of Bane's massive body saw the pump out of Blake's grasp. Blake reached for it, but his back stopped him, flaring with renewed vigor to the point where his vision was tinged with red. He groaned - from the lost opportunity, from the rising pressure in his chest – and tried again, lashing out with all his strength at the only card he had left to play.

Bane caught Blake's face in both his massive hands: one over his mouth, the other clamped all-too-tightly over the back of his head. Blake held himself steadily under the mercenary's grip, forcing himself to look his tormentor in the eye when their faces were made level with one another. I'm not going to die here, Blake told himself. He tried to send that message to Bane through his stare, but the mercenary didn't seem to be looking for shows of strength like that. Or stupidity.

Instead, Bane sent his own non-verbal message to Blake, pulling the smaller man's head up and tilting it up just enough to send his lower back into a spasm again. Blake went immediately into a fit. He threw his arms against Bane's in every manoeuvre he knew – punches, chops, elbows – but all he ended up doing was hurting himself; the slightest jostle of Bane's arms rattled the pain to life, sending it snaking through his central nervous system with a vengeance. Blake's left leg thrashed against the floor to find purchase. The heat was becoming unbearable. Like a white hot poker thrust deeper and deeper into the muscle. Like some kind of animal digging their claws into him and twisting.

"Your skills do not grant you power here, little one."

Blake fixed his hands on Bane's wrists and tried to pull his head out of the vice grip, but every way he turned, the mercenary offered resistance. Bane shook him until his eyes opened and they were staring at each other again. "You survive by my will because you are useful, not because you intimidate me. I will crush you, if I wish. None of your idle threats can dissuade me."

There wasn't enough room in Blake's chest for air anymore. He screamed long and loud against Bane's hand, a muffled, broken wail barely louder than their speaking voices had been before. He couldn't feel his fingertips anymore, making it difficult to keep fighting with Bane's indestructible, unmoveable arm. But he had to try. Had to fight.

At some point – Blake had lost track of time again – when he had gone completely limp, when his yelling had become sobbing and pain was the only thing he knew, whe he was sufficiently broken, Bane spoke again. His crackled voice was measured, with the same calm and poise he used to declare martial law with: "I will procure the Venom; you will honour our arrangement. Stay quiet, little one, while I am gone. Strange's men will be searching for the sounds of screaming, and I reserve the right to kill you myself."

Blake fell back into the chair when Bane released him. His limbs were shaking so violently from the exertion that he almost fell out of his seat. He ran a hand over his face, gritting his teeth, pulling himself together for one last angry glare at Bane. The mercenary, however, was finished with their conversation. He stalked out of the room and shut the door quietly behind him.

The pain had clouded his already murky thought process, but a small thought nagged Blake from his delirium. He raised his head slowly, fighting dizziness and the urge to cry out, and stared hard at the door, waiting. Beyond the sound of his own ragged breathing, Blake heard nothing but the faint sounds of footsteps retreating into the hospital.

Bane, he realized, had not locked the door.

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