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: I've been able to keep updating every three days so far, but between some traveling and NaNoWriMo, time got away from me a little bit with this chapter.

Thank you to LightningBlue, MsSpookiness, Sincerely Basil, penguinsfan18, and raventhearcher25 for following and/or favouriting; to Mrs. John Reese and Guest for the lovely reviews! Guest, I like seeing Bane's human side too, and I will try to go a little easier on Blake.

It's a pleasure to know that people are interested and enjoying the story. I hope the next installments are to your liking as well!

Chapter Six

Blake buzzed in and out of consciousness for the next several beats. The tile under his cheek got warmer as his body temperature went into free fall. His grasp on reality started to strengthen; he wasn't flitting about through memories or getting lost in a jumble of thoughts anymore. The shivers had subsided too by the time Bane turned the taps again, but that could just as easily be from exhaustion. Blake felt tired all the way to his bones when it was all over, but he couldn't let himself sleep. His neck throbbed in reminder that he was running out of time, that the tickling sensation between his shoulder blades was an omen of bad things to come.

Still, he couldn't find the strength to say anything. Questions burned on Blake's tongue about Strange's experiment – what the serum was doing to him, how Strange had managed to stabilize Venom – but his body lacked the reserves to voice them. He ended up as a puppet on Bane's strings again, lifted out of the shower and brought to rest in a sitting position against the wall.

The room wasn't spinning anymore, but Blake couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to enjoy it.

"Did you allow him to live?"

A towel, bristled from age, landed in Blake's hands. He stared at it through a crack in his eyelids, unable to figure out what it was for until a chill ran through him again. He forced himself to dry his face and hair, battling weariness the whole while. "Who?"

"The man who shot you."

Blake's blood ran colder than the shower had been. He glared at Bane. "It's not for me to decide who lives or dies," Blake said. His exhaustion overwhelmed the ferocity of his tone. Bane was prodding old wounds again, this time a wound that had cut even deeper than the bullet ever could.

"You decided that I should live," Bane remarked casually.

"Yeah, well, I didn't get much of a choice with him," Blake scrubbed at his biceps until the skin was raw. The slow burn from friction dulled the inferno raging in his heart, but Blake could still feel it pulsing through his body. He tried telling Bane, "I am not an executioner," but the line sounded tired, forced, rehearsed. Even someone half as astute as Bane would hear the cracks and know the truth.

"Given the choice, would you have killed him?"

"No."

Blake pressed a fist against his chest, trying to ease the rising tide of rage within him. His whole body pulsed. Sometimes, his heart ached, the answer was yes.

"Had you the chance to kill him before he shot you?"

Bane was just playing with him now, and Blake was tired of losing. He changed the course of the conversation back to the aftermath of the shooting, not the events leading up to it. "They put him away," he spat, "Life in a maximum security holding cell at Arkham. No hope for release."

"That is no punishment for the wicked."

"Neither is death."

"Is that why you let me live?"

"I did what I had to do."

"But not what was necessary."

"So it was necessary to kill him? To kill you?"

Blake's memory was still fuzzy about the past twenty-four hours, but he could remember the end of the Occupation like it was yesterday. The sight of the nuclear blast on the horizon, the chill of snowflakes on his skin, walking down the once desolate blocks to see crowds of people swarming the streets in celebration...and he remembered the sight of one hulking mercenary limping into the underground under the cover of darkness. They stared at one another, cop and criminal, for what felt like an eternity. It took Bane turning away to snap Blake out of his reverie and get him to pull his gun.

His finger stayed on the safety the entire time, even when Bane finally walked away. Something inside held him back: the blood on Bane's back, glossy jet on the sheepskin of his coat, perhaps. Blake felt his own emptiness awakening inside him out of empathy too. Bane had lost more than a city that day. Shooting him just seemed cruel. That bullet wound was going to kill him eventually. It was only a matter of time.

So Blake didn't take the shot when Bane took another step forward into the darkness. He didn't call for back-up either, not until Bane had vanished completely from sight.

He still didn't know why. Not completely.

"I had a responsibility to you too," Blake said. He heard his heart thundering in his ears, causing his whole body to vibrate.

Bane tilted his head ever-so-slightly, curious. "What responsibility?"

"You didn't...you don't deserve to die."

"You believe my life is sacred?"

"Life is sacred."

"Even a life spent in agony?"

"Even," Blake choked on his next words. He tried to tell himself it was from the sheer audacity of Bane's question but doubt made his skin crawl. "Even a life spent in agony."

Bane was silent, either considering his answer or giving Blake time to re-evaluate it. He then rose and walked across the room towards the door and hallway beyond. Blake thought at first he was going to be abandoned again, but he watched in horror as Bane locked the door and shut off the lights.

The shower room descended into pitch blackness, illuminated only by the dim light of the floor lamps from the hallway streaming in through the wide observation window. For a moment, Bane's silhouette was visible, but then even that disappeared from sight.

Fear clutched Blake. He searched the darkness, but he strained to see anything but the empty hallway outside the window. The hammering of his heart was now beating out of time with the rest of his body, which continued to pulsate.

And that's when Blake realized the vibrations weren't coming from inside his chest; they were coming through the floor. Someone was making their way slowly down the hallway towards them, someone heavy enough to rattle the whole wing at Arkham.

There was nowhere to hide. Even the minimum security wing didn't allow patients to hide in private shower stalls. The whole room was open and visible from the window on the far side of the room. One glance inside, and even though the darkness, Blake would be visible to whomever or whatever was thundering down the hall at that very moment. Humans weren't that large. Humans on Venom though...

Blake pressed his hands against the tile and fought the shaking of his limbs to drag himself forward though the dark. The closer he was to the door, the less likely he was to be seen. The floor rumbled threateningly with every step, the monster growing closer and closer with every passing second.

Before he could move though, Blake felt a massive hand wrap around his arm in the dark and hold him steady. He bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from making a sound. Bane, he told himself. Oxymoronic and ironic as it was, the grasping hand in the dark was just Bane. The familiar hiss of the respirator rewarded Blake's ears after a second or two of careful listening. How the big lug had crawled through the darkness without him noticing was disconcerting, but Blake didn't get a chance to ponder it. The footsteps were upon them.

Blake had read about the effects of Venom on individuals, even seen pictures of victims online. He remembered the malformed bodies – muscles swollen to unbelievable proportions, veins dyed green and bursting through the skin; the blank, milky eyes. Nothing would have prepared him for seeing one of the monsters in the flesh though. The light from the floor made the beast's bare chest glow eerie blue and painted his veins into spider webs with shadows. There was a black strap across his chest, like Bane, hugging his grotesque musculature. He almost took up the whole hallway with the girth of his shoulders, while his head sat atop them, comically small but plastered with a snarl so psychotically twisted that Blake felt nauseated.

He didn't even spare a glance for the window, the monster. The room didn't even exist to him. His milky white eyes were fixed straight ahead on the empty hallway, searching for something to tear apart and finding nothing. He disappeared behind the next wall and his footsteps traveled away.

Blake was still shaking even after the floor stopped vibrating. Strange had more Venom experiments wandering around Old Arkham.

The pain from his neck started to spread to his shoulders.

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