Author's Note:

This chapter has been updated in my attempts to correct errors and make the story more cohesive. The rest of this author's note is the original text. Thanks to all of you for reading!

Hi guys! Sorry this chapter took longer than I planned. For some reason it was a real killer, I just couldn't get it right. The good news is that I now have lots of stuff already written for future chapters! I do want to warn everybody that my updates might slow down a little until after the first of the year. The holidays are always a little time consuming, but I hope to get a chapter out every couple of days at least. And as always, the more reviews I get the faster I tend to work!

Thank you to everybody that has reviewed, followed or added this story as a favorite. You guys are all awesome!

I hope you like this chapter, I know it isn't very action packed, but it is setting a lot of stuff up for the future….

-I do not own any of the Nolan characters used in this story; I only own my original characters and ideas. I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter Seven – Secrets

I need another story, Something to get off my chest, My life gets kinda boring, Need something that I can confess
'Til all my sleeves are stained red, From all the truth that I've said, Come by it honestly I swear, Thought you saw me wink, no I've been on the brink, so
Tell me what you want to hear, Something that were like those years, I'm sick of all the insincere, So I'm gonna give all my secrets away

- OneRepublic

Bane had lain with the small woman, just as she had requested, but it hadn't taken long before her sleeping body began to shake, and quiet whimpers had begun to leave her lips. At first he had risen from the bed and tried to just pace the cell, his hands clenching rhythmically at the collar of his shirt. When her shivers had progressed to painful thrashing he had considered approaching the bed again, but held to his pacing, trying to work out his own anguish. Feeling almost annoyed that her pain was intruding on his fresh grief.

When a bloodcurdling scream shook the silence of the cell he was no longer able to hold back, and had gone to her. He scooped her up into his arms like she weighed nothing and sat on the bed holding her close to him. It seemed as though her scream had gone on for eternity, and she had thrashed against him violently. He was shocked by the strength that her small body contained, and it was almost a bit difficult to hold her. And then her scream had abruptly halted, but her limbs had fought against him with renewed vigor. He tightened his arms ever so slightly, afraid that he might snap her like a twig if he gripped any harder. Then she stopped her fight entirely, her breathing ragged.

He had already known the answer to his question before he asked, but he had to hear her speak the words anyway. When she had confirmed what he already knew, he had been unable to restrain his body any longer. He moved with a speed he didn't know he was capable of without the mask. He had set her down and begun attacking the wall, his mind somehow dissolving and leaving only his rage and his sorrow.

Bane had continued to terrorize the wall for several minutes, allowing all of his rage and pain to power his screaming muscles. He had finally stopped in defeat when he felt small, tender hands touch his heaving back. They hadn't spoken a word, they didn't need to. She had reached down and taken his bleeding hand in hers, oh so slowly pulling his hand to her lips. She had ever so softly kissed each of his bloody knuckles, and then she turned and led him back to the small bed, lying down on her side facing him. Her eyes had been oddly luminous when she looked up at him. She had pulled him down beside her and placed their intertwined hands on his chest. Her voice was somehow warm and unbroken, hypnotizing even, telling him, "Sleep, Brother." And he did.

Tiana absently ran her tongue over her lips and tasted the unfamiliar flavor of Bane's blood. This brought the memory of kissing his injured hand to the foreground, and she scowled at the strange feeling that danced through her body. Those kinds of feelings were not welcome, and she brushed them from her system with a mental slap.

She lay staring into the darkness. Her thoughts twisted and painful, like roots of an old tree, oddly reaching into the sky, exposed to the elements by a harsh storm. She let her mind roam as she listened to Bane's deep breathing beside her. She had gone to him when she couldn't stand to watch him any longer, and had been mildly surprised by how easily she had brought him back to the bed. Her eyes strayed around the darkened room and fell on the battered wall at the foot of the bed. She thought again of his torn and bruised knuckles, saddened to think that he would have nothing to soften the pain of his new wounds. She had found the empty syringes and disposed of them while he slept off the effects of the large dose of morphine. She knew that she would have to try and steal more as soon as possible.

She thought of the reason why he had taken all the morphine and a single tear fell from her green eyes. She felt like he had, in a way, started the grieving process for both of them. They had both lost Talia, although Tiana had never really had her in the first place. That thought made her all the sadder, knowing that now she never would get the chance to know the woman, or more precisely, that they would never know each other. Tiana had known her sister, but Talia had never known for a moment that the girl that cleaned her room and kindly encouraged her was her own flesh and blood. She mused that Ra's would probably be glad to know that Talia had gone to her grave without that knowledge.

Finally, with the image of her sister as Tiana had known her, in her mind, she drifted back to sleep.

Tiana stood looking at the sleeping girl with curiosity. She thought that the child looked like a boy, but she had overheard the truth. She was indeed a girl and had grown up in a horrible prison, deep within the earth. She had been made to look like a boy so that the men of the prison wouldn't hurt her. Apparently the men had killed the girl's mother, but she had been kept safe by a protector. Eventually the man had helped her escape, but Tiana had heard that Talia thought that the man had been hurt for helping her, and she wanted desperately for Ra's to go back for the man. Tiana rather doubted that would happen; her father had no love for men in prison.

Her father had sent Tiana to wake Talia and tell her to come for dinner, but Tiana was dawdling, just watching the girl sleep. She wondered what it would be like to have a protector, someone that would be willing to risk themselves for her. She imagined that it would be a wonderful feeling and hoped that someday maybe she would be able to experience it. She found herself imagining that her father did go and get the man and that he decided to be her protector. She found the daydream to be breathtaking.

Suddenly, Tiana was faced with the piercing blue eyes of the older girl and she jumped back from the bed as if she had been burned. The boyish looking girl sat up and stared at the younger child, her eyes wide with interest. Her voice was clear and sweet, "Who are you?" She had slid to the edge of the bed and was leaning forward with anticipation of Tiana's answer.

Tiana straightened up to her full height – only four feet – and tried to seem older than she really was. Her young and shaky voice betrayed her more than her small stature ever could have, however, when she replied, "I am a maid here miss, Mr. Ra's sent me to get you for dinner." As soon as the words had finished moving past her lips she turned and practically scurried from the room, leaving Talia to find her own way to the dining hall.

She had begun out of the room at a fast walk, but almost as soon as her feet hit the glowing wood of the long hallway she had broken into a run. She stopped when she reached the end, trying to decide where to go next, she began to turn down the shorter hallway to the left, planning to head to her room, but she heard a strange noise coming from the room that belonged to her father.

She moved her weight from foot to foot and her teeth nibbled at her lower lip as she tried to figure out what to do. After a moment of thought she finally moved to stand in the shadow next to her father's door, and peeked through the narrow gap in the wall near it. What she saw took her breath away; her father sat on the edge of his bed, clinging to a picture of a beautiful young woman. That wasn't what had rocked Tiana's small world however; it was the tears that were running down his face and the words that seemed to be falling from his mouth unbidden. She had to strain to hear what he was saying, but after a moment she began to understand. His words were choppy and confusing, "Dead… pregnant… in hell… and now she's here… another daughter… maybe this one will be the future… but she's gone…" Tiana had pulled back then, looking back down the long hallway in the direction she had come from.

The other girl was her sister…

Bane was awake, but his eyes remained firmly closed, willing the last year of his life to have been nothing more than a horrible dream. There was some evidence that pointed to that being a possibility, but he had suffered enough in his life to know that it wasn't a good possibility. He could feel a weak stream of sun hitting his face; he could smell the sweet scent of a woman and could feel a small hand resting within his; all good things, all things that he had felt before. But he could also fully feel his pain, and he couldn't feel his mask, and those were not good things. Finally he forced himself to open his eyes, and he knew the truth of the words that he had spoken to the Bat. There really could be no true despair without hope.

As the reality of his loss struck him again he could do nothing but lie still and think of all the ways he had failed. In his anguish he felt that he had never really succeeded in anything; he hadn't been able to save his mother's life when she lay dying, he hadn't been able to save Talia's mother from rape and death, he had failed to spare Talia the horrors of the pit… and now he had even failed to die properly. He had known that they would die at the completion of their mission, they had both accepted that fact, but they were supposed to die together. They had only been meant to die when they had successfully completed the task of returning balance to the world. Which he had also failed to complete…

He felt an overwhelming swell of hate hit him and it was all he could do to fight the bile back down his already burning throat. The list of people he hated was long, but there were a definite top three on it. He hated the Batman, for coming back and saving the day as he always did, but also for having lain with his Talia. He hated that damn Cat for siding with the enemy in the end, and for crushing his chest with the cannon on one of the Bat's toys. He most definitely hated those two people more than any others on that list. Any others… but himself. That was the hate that burned the deepest of all.

He closed his eyes again and began trying to figure out how he could make the men in this place kill him. He felt relatively confident that they would delay killing him for as long as they could, they got much more joy out of his life and his pain. He wondered how many of them he would have to take out before they would be forced to put him down. He figured that if he waited until they were in one of the main areas of the asylum and then attacked, he would probably need to kill four or five before they would just kill him. As his back tightened in an incredibly intense spasm he had to wonder if he physically could accomplish that…

He was pulled from his reverie by a small movement from the woman next to him, and he opened his eyes a crack to look at her. She was resting on her right side with her back pushed against the cold wall; her left hand gently held his and was draped lightly across his expansive chest. Her left leg was lightly wrapped around his and her face was buried into the side of his chest, her hair fanning all around her head in a wild nimbus of fiery waves. When his eyes touched at her neck it almost made him feel sick; it was a pallet of morbid colors, shaped like a large hand… his hand. The force of his grip had also reopened the cut on her neck, and he could see that it had bled slightly during the night. Overall the effect was a rather disturbing one; even for a man that had seen worse, had inflicted much worse.

Suddenly his eyes grew wide, and his muscles stiffened; the girl was stroking his head with her free hand, her caresses as soft as a breeze, but warm and comforting. Part of him was screaming to pull away from her, telling him that he deserved no comfort, and saying that only Talia was supposed to do that. But another part of him quietly whispered to just let it happen, that he would most likely never feel it again. After a moment he forced his eyes to look down at her face and he was perplexed to find that she still appeared asleep. And then the strangest thing happened, her mouth began to move and her sweet voice softly filled the air with the most absurd words he had ever heard, "Why don't you have hair?"

Tiana had felt that Bane was awake when she began returning to consciousness from the land of her haunted dreams. She could feel the heat of his rage radiating against her petite body. Being still half asleep she had impulsively reached her fingers forward and begun to whisper them across his scalp in gentle swirls. She had felt him go ridged, but continued anyway, having immediately noticed how soothing it was to her. All had been still for a moment, her fingers the only thing stirring in the room and she had begun to drift back to sleep. However, her drowsy mind wasn't quite ready to slip away and had decided to lighten the situation by throwing some random words from her mouth.

As soon as the words had migrated from her lips to his ears she found that she was abruptly fully awake. She didn't open her eyes, but knew that Bane had made some kind of a face because she could feel his scalp shift under her fingers. She continued to softly rub his head, but now that she was conscious it felt less comforting, and she felt oddly nervous about it. Her question hung in the still air for several minutes and she had decided he wasn't going to answer, when his melodic voice echoed off the concrete walls, "It never came back after… Talia escaped…"

After a couple more moments of silence, she felt Bane starting to pull away, and she disengaged her body from his. When she sensed that he was sitting on the edge of the bed she opened her eyes and looked at the grey expanse of his clothed back. She could see the top of the scar, that she knew ran the length of his back, peeking out of the top of his shirt, and she remembered helping the League doctor clean the wound that they had been forced to reopen. She was once again surprised that he could have possibly seen her there when he had been in so much pain.

"Did you know her?" Bane's voice was hushed, almost as if he didn't really want to know the answer, and Tiana briefly considered not answering him. Though she could not think of any valid reason not to share the truth with him, she also couldn't think of anything good that could come of it either. She stared off into space and tried to decide the best way to proceed on this very slippery slope.

Moments passed by as if in slow motion and she noticed Bane turn to face her with a strained expression. She could not hold back the truth from him anymore, and she took a deep breath to gain strength before she answered him. "Yes, I knew her. She didn't know me very well though…. Ra's didn't want us to grow… close…" Tiana's voice trailed off and she sat up on the bed, easing forward until she sat next to Bane.

Tiana watched his face to see how he was absorbing the news and noticed that he looked less strained since she had answered. His face was mostly just contemplative, though she could still see the deep sorrow that etched his face. She looked at his scarred lips, noting the white lines that showed where some of the worse damage had been; absorbing the crease on his lower lip that indicated where a piece of his flesh had been removed during his attack. She was hardly able to pull her attention back when a moment later he nodded his head, "He did have a problem with her being close to others." They sat in amicable silence for a few more moments before he spoke again. "Ra's was also your father, no?"

Tiana remained silent for a couple of moments, nervously twisting a coil of long hair around her finger. She had noticed that Bane tended to keep his hands busy almost all of the time, and she suddenly felt the desire to do the same. She couldn't force her body to do any more than whisper her answer, but she had to get it out, "Yes." Abruptly she jumped to her feet and went to the window. She couldn't stand to see what Bane thought of this information.

Jim Gordon stood in the opulent office that belonged to Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, waiting for the good doctor to arrive. He was not happy to have been called to a meeting… already. Bane had been there for less than a week, and Dr. Arkham already wanted a meeting. Gordon was even less pleased by what the box next to him contained. Within it rested all the personal effects they had recovered that were believed to belong to Bane. Arkham had insisted that if his staff was to work with the monster, then they needed to analyze those items, but Gordon still had his doubts. He couldn't help but feel that Arkham planned to do something foolish with them. He had almost even left the box sitting on his desk at the office, but something had made him pick it up and bring it with him.

And now there he was; feeling annoyed that he had been left waiting for nearly 15 minutes, and already regretting the box next to him. "Ah, Jim! How good of you to come." Dr. Arkham's jovial voice sliced through the otherwise silent room like a silver knife. Gordon turned to him with a frown, he had always hated how little respect the doctor showed. Taking an unconscious step toward the box, he considered just picking it up and walking away, but Arkham's eyes fell on it and he turned gleeful. "You brought the items I requested, I see. And for that, you have my deepest gratitude." He sounded giddy and approached the box with an eager look on his face.

Gordon grunted in response, and felt even more annoyed when the handsome doctor began rifling through the contents without any word from him. He watched for a moment, and then, after a silent sigh of resignation, he spoke, "Yes Arkham, I brought what you asked for. I have to say that I'm not entirely happy that they will be kept in the same facility with the man that they belonged to, however. You are sure that you know what you're doing here? We can't let that man ever get his hands on this stuff. .." He trailed off when Arkham caught his eye and gave him an icy stare.

"Of course we know what we're doing here, Commissioner. We have much more experience with the long term care and rehabilitation of dangerously insane criminals than you do. Wouldn't you agree?" His voice was no longer friendly or giddy and Gordon suddenly wondered if the nuthouse was simply full of nuts or if it was run by one as well. It was a thought that he didn't want to ponder too deeply however, so he pushed it aside, and simply nodded his agreement to the doctor.

He stood and watched for a moment as Arkham went through the items, growing tired of being ignored, "So, why did you need me to with meet you already? Is he giving you trouble?" He was really quite concerned that Bane would prove to be too much for any prison. He had very much wanted to immediately execute the man, but knew that if he did that, he wasn't really any better than Bane. It had almost seemed worth it…

"Hmm…" The doctor paused for a moment and looked up at Gordon blankly for a moment, and then his eyes cleared. "Oh no… he hasn't been much trouble at all. He gave us a little attitude when he told him about the woman, but nothing that we couldn't handle." Arkham stopped what he was doing and stood back up, dusting his hands off on his grey suit jacket. "No, I asked you to come because this was sent to the Joker yesterday. The mailroom clerk felt that it deserves your attention and I agreed." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of lime green paper, handing it to Gordon.

Gordon looked at it with irritation and didn't move to open it. "You have all been handling this? How are we supposed to get prints from it?" The stupidity of some people drove him mad sometimes. The doctor just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his exploration of Bane's things. Gordon sighed wearily and cautiously opened the paper, only touching the very edges of the paper. The text was odd – as if a very old typewriter had been used to write it – but the words were even stranger, nonsensical even. Only when the item is broken can it fall to pieces and become the puzzle it really is. The puzzle will be your key. It was not signed; instead it simply had a large question mark at the bottom of the page.

Though there was no logical reason for it, Gordon shuddered.