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: This chapter's more introspective than anything else. I thought I might give Blake a break before Bane comes back. Thanks to all the new followers – raventhearcher25 and franny 93 - and those that added the story to their favourites. Please, enjoy!
Chapter Four
What had Gordon said? Detectives weren't allowed to believe in coincidence? Blake eyed the door blearily and stopped thanking his lucky stars. Bane wasn't the type to overlook minor details. He left the door unlocked because he knew Blake wasn't going anywhere, not with a debilitating back injury and some unknown experimental substance filtering through his veins. Or because there was nowhere for Blake to go. That explanation seemed just as likely. Blake was barely a match for Strange's men at what passed for his full strength these days. Facing down all the horrors the Narrows had to offer was just a good way to get killed.
Still, Blake rode out the last waves of pain with the knowledge that he would, at least, have a moment to investigate his surroundings. Maybe find a way to get a message to the cave. Find something to take the edge off his back. He used the chair as leverage and pushed himself into a standing position, fighting vertigo and nausea the whole way. His spine wasn't happy with having to carry him after being so recently manhandled, but Blake grit his teeth, sucked it the hell up, and got vertical.
He spent the next few minutes propped against the back of the chair: skull pounding, vision reeling, stomach churning, back burning, trying to hold it together long enough to get his bearings. The room finally, mercifully stilled, but the floor beneath his feet seemed to pulse in time with his heart. Blake focused on the walls and only the walls as he hobbled to the door.
The wing was quiet, ne'er as Blake could tell, but he still waited several long moments before opening the exam room door onto the hallway just to be sure. Minimum security would be an odd place to find Strange's men, he decided. The doctor would need the holding cells in maximum security for his Venom experiments, not to mention the laboratories and pharmacies for storing and mixing his compounds. He peered out into the dimly lit hallway and found it vacant as expected, but the darkened doorways facing him made Blake wary. He would have to be careful.
Using the chair in place of his useless right leg, Blake limped out into the hallway. There was a reception desk miles away at the end of the corridor, but even a cursory glance showed it had very little to offer by way of communications. A whole cluster of cables were draped over the counter having been torn from the computers and phone by whoever ransacked the place. Blake sighed, tried to console himself with the thought that he didn't have the strength to walk all the way down the hall anyways. Oddly enough, that didn't make him feel any better.
There was a small supply cupboard across the half from the examination room; that became Blake's first stop. Most of the boxes had been ransacked. Anything and everything that generated a high had been taken for sale on the streets or for mobs' private stashes. There was a small stack of new patient uniforms though and a couple bottles of disinfectant left on the shelves though. He grabbed one, a few clean towels, a clean t-shirt, and the last of the acetaminophen before leaving the room.
The mirrors in the nearby bathroom had each been broken by a single blow, likely a punch if Blake wasn't mistaken, and he hoped the parties responsible weren't on their way back to finish the job. He propped himself up in front of the least damaged mirror, gripping the sink with both hands to compensate for his right leg, and tried to find himself in the reflection. The man staring back at him was a sorry sight: blood and mucous caked from brow to chin, bruising on his neck from where someone tried to strangle him, tear streaks over his cheeks and into his hair. Blake's bottom lip quivered and he had to look away. It had been four years since someone had really done a number on him, even longer than that since he had to deal with the aftermath of a beating by himself. He had forgotten how hard it was to be broken when there was no one else around to help put him back together again. Worse, when there was no way of contacting someone who could.
His fingers grazed the incision on his thigh where Strange had removed the tracking device, and then they rose to explore the back of his neck. Blake wanted to stop, wanted to clean himself up and get back to the room, but he couldn't help himself. He had to know. Sure enough, his fingers brushed a swollen area on the right side no larger than a quarter. When he cleaned off the blood, he could easily see a small bruised puncture wound in the centre from Strange's experiment.
Blake grabbed the frayed hem of his ruined t-shirt and slowly eased it off. His whole back protested the movement, but he fought his stiff shoulders and throbbing scars, his tender face and neck, until the garment hung at his elbows. He tossed it aside. Tried the tap and got nothing but dirty water, so he wet a cloth with some antiseptic and started cleaning. First his face, which was surprisingly unharmed beneath the layers and layers of blood. He choked up when he cleared his neck, partly from the growing pressure, but more from the sight of bruises in the shape of handprints from a strangulation he couldn't remember. Memories of smoke and ashes, of a glowing face in the dark, nearly brought him to his knees after that. Blake ended up in the chair gasping for breath, one hand pressed tightly over the injection site. He really couldn't remember anything else, not how he got to Arkham or where Strange had nabbed him from or what Strange had done to him. Nothing.
He dribbled some disinfectant over his shoulders and collarbone to clean the wounds where...what was it Bane had said? The ceiling hit him? Blake's neck pulsed again at the thought, but his memory offered no clues. The smell of smoke felt familiar, firelight, chaos, and then a warm and merciful darkness. Nothing conclusive. Fragments, again, as fractured and distorted as the broken mirrors. Blake scrubbed his frustrations away with the rest of the blood on his chest, hissing through the sparks of pain that emerged when the disinfectant hit an open wound or he applied pressure to a bruise. He kept hoping to find a trigger, but all he ended up doing was rubbing his skin raw.
Blake propped himself up on his good leg then and circled in front of the mirror, trying to find anything else that might jog his memory. He ran his hands over his shoulder blades, his biceps, his waist, and then, somewhat masochistically, dared to let his fingers brush over the mess of scar tissue on his lower back. His nerve endings flared to life warningly; Blake was playing with fire, and he was going to get burned if he wasn't careful. He couldn't help himself though. He traced the long scar of a surgical incision with his fingertips and brought them to rest, in spite of himself, over the great puckered circle of scarring next to his spine. The final resting place of the bullet that ended it all.
The face in the mirror twisted. Trembled. Because the only thing harder than holding back was giving into what he was feeling. Vulnerability and weakness had become his bedfellows in the years following his forced retirement, but Blake had done his best to combat them. Now they were back again with a vengeance, and he had nothing to use in his defence. He was alone with little chance of rescue, Strange had turned him into a ticking time bomb of an experiment, and his only hope for escape was a madman who would just as soon tear his throat out as save his life.
Blake set his jaw and tried to remember himself. He had once been the Nightwing, protector of Gotham; before that, Blake gripped the sink for support, he had been a damn good cop and helped save a city from the same madman he found himself at the mercy of now. He could survive this. He would survive this. Hell, he'd see Bane and every other lowlife in the Narrows locked up at Arkham before the night was through.
He glanced into the mirror hoping to see Nightwing's half-cocked smirk or that hardened Detective's stare, but all he saw was a tired, trembling face and broken glass. Coincidence? Blake rolled his eyes. Nope, thought not.
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