"Beseech you, sir, be merry. You have cause."
The nobility tromped onstage. The King, his crown in his hands, walked to the right corner of the stage and sat, unseeing and unhearing. He gripped the circlet tightly and uncertainly as if it would melt away if he loosened his fingers. As if the plastic were truly gold.
Behind him the courtiers continued, Gonzalo in his attempt at cheer, the Other Nobility in their mocks. It wouldn't work.
"Here is everything advantageous to life."
"True. Save means to live."
For the first time he wondered where they were meant to be. An island, yes, but where? How large? What did it look like? All they truly had was a bare stage in an abandoned bank. A few curtains. Some rope that had disappeared with the ship.
He filled in the scene with the desert of his home. Dry, hard, and unforgiving. That was the only advantage of The Pit: shade. Gonzalo was lying to ease his master's pain. Lies never helped.
The previous scene, however, had been green. A wide field at the foot of a mountain. Trees scattered around the edges. Covered in wild grasses. Like the place he had been just before coming to the city. He supposed they'd changed the name after the coup.
"Is not my doublet as fresh, sir, as the first day I wore it? I mean in a sort—"
"That was well fished for."
"—when I wore it at your daughter's marriage?"
They were pushing too hard.
"You cram these words into my ears against the stomach of my sense. Would I had never married my daughter there, for coming thence my son is lost, and (in my rate) she too."
The King finally spoke, strong voice breaking, crushed under sorrow. Bane knew it was coming. Talia had sat just like that after her mother's death. She never spoke, just stared at nothing. It was a blessing, in a way. She simply had to hide her head and everyone assumed she was another of the old, broken men lurking in the corners of their prison.
She was stronger for it. In time.
"Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss that would not bless our Europe with your daughter."
"So is the dearest of the loss!"
An Other Nobility and The King nearly came to blows, but a voice came between them.
"My lord Sebastian! The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness and time to speak it in."
Gonzalo stood perfectly still upstage, far from The King and the noble called Sebastian. He did not need to move. His face was stony. His voice reverberated through the hall.
That was the nature of truth, wasn't it? Never gentle enough, never at the right time. If he hadn't held up Dent's picture and spoken those words, someone else would have. Perhaps Gordon himself. He favored the shadows, but everything came to light eventually.
Still, he shifted uneasily. The words were as much for him as for the men onstage.
"In the commonwealth I would, by contraries, execute all things—for now kind of traffic would I admit. No name of magistrate. Letters should not be known. Riches, poverty, and use of service none."
Gonzalo was quickly becoming a thorn in his side. Perhaps his words in the stadium hadn't been entirely true, but they were necessary. Gotham had to tear itself apart to bring balance to the world.
He winced again. Gordon would say the same thing. Necessary.
"What? All so soon asleep? I wish mine eyes would (with themselves) shut up my thoughts. I find they are inclined to do so."
During his reverie, Ariel had crept back onstage. At the spirit's supernatural urging Gonzalo had ceased his stream of poignant words in favor of snoring, followed by The King. It was ridiculous.
"It is a quality of the climate."
Several audience members giggle at the unnamed nobility's quiet sarcasm. At least someone else had noticed the absurdity of the moment.
Absurdity of the moment. He was watching a play that had made brazen fun of himself and his colleagues, but the "absurdity of the moment" was an excess of sleeping spells. Plays.
"Say this were death that now hath seized them. Why, they were no worse than now they are. There be that can rule Naples as well as he that sleeps."
His gaze hardened on the conspiring pair. Betrayal would always meet with punishment. Bruce Wayne was languishing in a cell for that very offense.
"I remember you did supplant your brother Prospero."
"True. And look how well my garments sit upon me."
So, the Nameless Noble was the Evil Brother from the first scene. Prospero called him Antonio. And now he planned to repeat his sins. How very like Bruce, constant in his flaws.
Wayne was not the only one who came to mind. He thought of Dr. Pavel's abortive for and with the CIA, despite his earlier promises to The League. He thought of Ra's, who had thrown him from the closest thing to a home he was ever likely to have.
"But for your conscience—"
"Ay, sir. Where lies that?"
And not two months ago Bane himself had killed his supposed employer, John Daggett. That could be seen as betrayal. In the right light.
Phillip Stryver had been executed that morning. Exiled, he corrected himself. Stryver had stood outside and ignored Daggett's cries. Bane was not nearly as quick as he'd been with Pavel.
Everyone would eventually face justice. Even he.
The memory of Daggett's death came back to him, like a mirror reflecting Antonio's line. What had he said? "You're evil." "I am necessary evil." Is that what he would say? When—if—his time came? "It was necessary."
"While you here do snoring lie
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take…"
The rhyme was tenuous. Ariel, ever the deus ex machine, leapt on stage just in time to wake the sleepers. Despite Antonio and Sebastian's raised swords, the fire spirit had taken the time to glance at the audience before singing "conspiracy" and "conspiry-sigh."
"While we stood here securing your repose, (even now) we heard a hollow burst of bellowing, like bulls—"
Ariel snuck behind Sebastian as he stuttered out a cover story. As the human forced out the word "bull," the spirit made claws of his hands and silently roared in Sebastian's ear.
"—or rather lions. Did it not wake you?"
"I heard nothing."
Barsad was always there just when you needed him.
"Sure it was the roar of a whole heard of… lions."
Antonio's sardonic support barely convinced Gonzalo.
Sometimes the soldier id not always arrive with the expected, but it was always what was needed. Or at least it would work.
"Prospero, my lord, shall know what I have done. So (King) go safely on to seek thy son."
Dancing, Ariel led the unseeing nobles off.
Ferdinand was still alive. He'd almost forgotten that. Trust Barsad to say the one thing to restore hope. Shockingly, the man was an optimist.
The characters in this story belong to Christopher Nolan and no profit is made on their use herein.
All quotes from the Tempest are taken from Internet Shakespeare Editions, First Folio Facsimiles. The author has modernized the spelling, punctuation, and formatting.