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 L van Am for following!

Some of the details revolving around Blake's gunshot wound are lifted from the comic books. I won't say which one – I do so want it to be a surprise – but I cannot take credit for the circumstances under which he was injured. They are the property of Alan Moore.

I've said too much.

Constructive criticism is always appreciated! Flames are always ignored.

Chapter Five

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

BANG!

Blake wasn't sure what hurt more: the hole in his gut or the sound of the bastard laughing. He hit the floor of his apartment, blood pouring out of him in a great fiery rush, and tried to defend himself against the three dark figures invading his apartment. The feeling in his fingertips slipped away quickly though, as did the strength in his arms, and he quickly succumbed to shock. The next few moments existed as flashbulb memories, still images that were burned into the back of his mind.

...a razor slashing through his clothing.

...fingers creeping below the surface of his skin.

...a disposable camera fixed against a clown's twisted face.

"Say cheese."

Exam light beating down on him. Strange's face in the darkness looming, hand poised at Blake's neck. The whirring sound returned, as did the ghostly spark of gunshots, and Blake started fighting, pounding away at Strange's arms and chest before the doctor could get any closer.

One very powerful hand gathered his wrists in their grasp, while another came to rest on his chest to restrain him. The strength behind the touch pierced through Blake's delirium. He wasn't fighting Strange; he was thrashing uselessly against Bane.

Blake collided with reality after that: hot and heaving, and then chilled and shivering a second later. The temperature of the exam room oscillated rapidly between frigid and sweltering. Not a good sign, but Blake couldn't think of anything long enough to remember why. He was too busy fixating on the brightness of the exam light, the shadows crawling across the walls of the room, and the gigantic mercenary who was poised to crush his sternum into his spinal cord with a little push of his hand.

Bane's hands were scorching against his chest and wrists, offering some respite from the chill in the room, but not much. Blake's body was covered in cold sweat, making the air feel all the chillier. "You're burning up with fever," Bane noted, articulating the swirling mess of nonsense thoughts in the smaller man's head. Blake tried to make some witty comeback, but he was transfixed by the small, wispy strands of smoke he thought he saw rising from Bane's mask.

Yet another bad sign.

"I'm fine," Blake shirked away from Bane's hand. The mercenary held fast.

"Your neck is swollen."

Blake hadn't noticed, but now he felt it: the stiffness of the muscles, the inflammation. The injection site burned. Strange's experiment was starting to take effect, whatever that meant. "You're running out of time," Blake muttered, shutting his eyes tightly as his vision spun and careened wildly out of control.

"You're running out of time," Bane released him slowly. Blake pulled his arms to his chest and started to curl in on himself, part-defensive manoeuvre, part-attempt to warm himself. He opened his eyes when Bane's hand landed on his cheek and got an eyeful of poison green liquid. "I have procured the Venom necessary."

A few turns, Blake thought to himself, the first coherent thought he'd had since waking - that was all it would take. Then Bane would tell him what Strange had done, he'd get the antidote come what may, uphold his end of the bargain with the mercenary and find a way home. He reached up and took the vials in one hand. Bane settled into a sitting position on the end of the bed.

"How much time do I have?" Blake asked. He liked the way the Venom looked under the light. Like alien blood from old science fiction films.

"Less and less the longer you delay."

"How do I know..." he felt hot again, aching, needed a minute to get his bearings. "How do I know you'll tell me what Strange did, after I do this?"

"You don't," Bane said simply.

"You're not going to give me a reason to trust you?"

"You shouldn't trust me."
"Do you trust me?"

"I trust your foolish mercy and compassion, your desperation to survive. You have been conditioned to betray yourself, little one, for the sake of others, even others who are unworthy. It's why you chose to defend Gotham, and why you chose to barter for your life in Strange's lab."

"You're saying you're unworthy?"

"I have failed in my mission to purge this rotten city from the world. My one true light was lost in the attempt. I have spent almost a decade in these desolate Narrows with madmen and psychopaths, rejects from your own mental facilities. There is no reason for you to save me except to save your own life."

"I saved your life once before," Blake pointed out.

"A debt I have since repaid many times over," Bane replied, "for which you have done very little in return."

Blake was not looking forward to sitting up. The bed, while not comfortable, was at least horizontal. He prepared himself as best he could, but he still only managed to rise several inches before fever, weakness, back and neck pain had him fall to the mattress again.

Bane caught Blake's wrists again, the younger man unable to resist from sheer exhaustion, and pulled him up by his arms. Somewhere, Blake thought he heard someone screaming, but their voice was quickly muffled by a heavy hand and hiss of a respirator. "Strange's men do not need to take you alive," Bane reminded Blake, "and I lack the mercy, compassion, and desperation not to leave you to them. When I let you go, you will be silent."

Blake decided that was true, but only because if Bane let him go, he might vomit. His stomach was being squeezed through his inflamed neck into his throat from all the pain in his lower back, and Blake tasted hot bile on the root of his tongue. He pursed his lips when Bane's hand disappeared and swallowed, swallowed, swallowed until the taste disappeared. The agony, however, only intensified. By the time he was upright, Blake was a blubbering, shivering wreck of a human being, held up only by the iron grip Bane maintained on his wrists.

The mercenary leaned forward suddenly, issuing another choked cry from the former detective in the process. Blake's mind was screaming about the end of days, about fire and brimstone, about all the terrible things Bane's shoulder would do to him. He went through his last rites in his mind as if Reilly were there with them, wishing that he hadn't pushed the family away after his injury, wishing he had told them about the surgery.

Surgery.

Blake didn't have time to ponder it, but the word was caught in his brain for a moment, along with a kind voice saying, "Just administering your first dose of anesthetic, Mr. Blake."

And then it was gone. Along with Bane's shoulder. Blake felt himself being eased down onto a stack of pillows arranged to hold him in a sitting position. His back was still in agony, but it was muffled somewhat by his neck, which pulsed hot and angry under Blake's chin. The mercenary had also turned around in front of him, placing the pump right in Blake's reach.

"Thank you," Blake muttered.

"It was necessary."

"Still – thank you."

Bane peered over his shoulder, his profile inhuman and menacing in the light. Blake thought he was going to get manhandled again, felt a twinge of fear that his attempt at being courteous would be seen as another delay, but Bane gave the slightest of nods. And that, apparently, was that.

Blake set the new vials on Venom on the bed and reached for the pump. His fingers fumbled over the device, stubbornly refusing to obey the commands sent from Blake's brain. The light was still too bright in his eyes, the room cold again, and twice his arms dropped into his lap, spent. Blake did not give himself the choice of giving up though. He used the pain in his neck to stay focused. Strange's serum was changing him, and he needed to know how. The only way to know how was to exchange the vials of Venom. So his arms had better start working, or else they were all going to die.

That seemed to be incentive enough for them. He managed to spin the two vials from the pump and replace them, fumbling only once, with the new vials. Blake then reached for the dials on the side and scrolled down the dosage to a reasonable amount for a first step.

"There," he said, spent. "I'll decrease the dosage again in a few hours. Let your body adjust. Now what the hell did Strange do to me?"

"Strange injected you with a serum derived from Venom," Bane said, rising from the bed. He grabbed one of Blake's arms and draped it over his massive shoulders, sliding his arm just under Blake's mid-back in the same movement.

"What are you doing?" Blake stiffened, moaning in pain from the pressure in his neck and spine. He put up as much of a fight as he could muster, but he might as well have been warring with a brick wall for all the damage he did. Bane had his legs hooked over his other arm by the time he finally stilled. He beseeched Bane breathlessly, fearing pain and whatever else was to follow, "Let me go. Please. Don't do this."

"You don't even know what I'm going to do."

Fever-addled as he was, Blake said, "I have a few ideas." This was the man that had broken Batman after all.

"Even if I were to administer the antidote for Strange's experiment now, your temperature will only burn hotter in the night. You will die long before the effects of the serum are reversed."

Blake was about to object, but Bane had already lifted him up.

The whole world disappeared in a great white out of pain, fear, and fever. Blake was aware of his own voice begging, pleading, though for what and how he didn't know. Words eluded him, thought confused him, feeling came in waves of hurt and sharps stings. He tried to focus, mind over matter like a pain specialist once taught him, but his mind was tapioca pudding and matter was a mountain of a mercenary.

Doors were being opened. Lights were being turned on. Blake felt himself descending onto cold tiles on his left side, wrecking his body with even more shivers. His mind spun like a spirograph on top of his aching neck. Bane's sweltering hand disappeared from his shoulder.

Taps squeaked.

Blake didn't have a scream left in him for when the water hit. A steady stream of cold, musty water poured over him, freezing him to the core. He tried to pull away, to curl up, to anything, but his bare foot slipped over the tiled floor uselessly and arms ended up coiled around his midriff. Bane yanked them loose and held them open to the water.

"Lie still. It will be over soon, little one."

"My name is John. John Blake." The fact that he wasn't little went unspoken, because anything was little in proximity to Bane.

"So the Nightwing has a name."

"Robin," Blake watched the water spin down the drain. The pain in his neck and back started to recede. Senselessness rose up to meet him.

From the darkness, he heard, "My name has always been Bane, little bird."

Only Bane would come up with a worse nickname for him than 'little one'.

Happy reading!