V.

Your Wild Form

Lily didn't think after that hellish night, were she pledged her servitude to Bane in return for her life it could get any worse. Her coughs began to make her whole body tremble and violently convulse, her back ached constantly and the shakes that rattled her hands and knees made her practically useless when it came to working. She was ignored mostly, by the mercenaries, Bane's militia. They all eyed her like she was dirt, even in this climate; Lily's social standing wasn't very good. With a sullen face, she sat in the tunnels that ran like a spider's web underneath Gotham and peered up at the rounded upper half of her circular surroundings, she blinked as a frozen droplet fell into one of her shrouded, vacuous eyes.

No one came up this tunnel, she knew; she'd watched the workers for a couple of days before she sneaked in and made herself a little cocoon away from the other worker ants. She let out a breath that was like dry ice, she watched it curl and dissolve away; her breath was very ragged, her little husk of a frame fragile. Lily thought that her chest must have been caving in at this rate; she drew in another uneven breath and let her head fall back. She'd probably die in here and it'd serve her right. John was most probably mad at her – he always was.

She would rather die down here away from him, he was her only tie to reality anyway, and if neither of them were there to share that connection was she still in reality? If he wasn't there to consider her, to worry about her, was she even real? What if she forgot him? She thought that she'd rather forget him and lie beneath Gotham for all eternity with no one remembering her – Lily was too proud to be remembered for being a vagrant, kicked to the gutter; swamped beneath the corporate turbines, swallowed, engulfed and eventually completely submerged and strangled of all wealth; spiritual, physical...There was none to be had in Gotham City for Lillian Bell.

She was spent, slumped in a damp tunnel, her legs barely bending to fit comfortably in this rounded environment. It seemed that she spent most of her days finding a place to lie down and fall asleep. In her dreams she always saw the sun, lovely surroundings, and a paradise of warm air, dry and balmy. Her hands were always golden, not once when she slept had she dreamt of the strange water-marked hands she had right now. Lifting one up, she gazed at it ponderously; her fingers were swollen now to the point where if Lily squinted enough she thought they looked like spoiled sausages. With a heavy sigh, she looked away. Her hand dropped to the wet floor limply.

In this darkness with the harsh light of the white lights that bore down on the tunnel floor, a long white finger pointing at Lily, obscured by only her own shadow. Had her bones finally found a place to lie down and begin to become entombed under the city? Her home and her torment? Most likely. She didn't fully understand what Bane had meant about 'liberating' Gotham, but she'd seen others try;

Everyone who lived in Gotham had seen the feat try to be done. It was almost as if the sombre city's citizens wanted to see who could prevail and make Gotham a shining metropolis of wonderment. Gotham was no Eden, nor was it a place for people with thin skulls.

Lily's attention was drawn for a moment, a serene and placating moment; a rush of hot air whooshed by her, warming her cold bones, ruffling her now-listless hair into a carnival that flicked behind her and making her sit up like a hound on point. Eyes bright, she gazed down the tunnel and saw an amazing inferno blast by the tunnel's opening. With a gasp and a groan she got up slowly and stared down the barren tunnel and her lips parted; a bang and a blast? She had been told to go back to Barsad and inform him of anything suspicious should she run across anything. An explosion, that was suspicious, wasn't it? She deemed it so and began to wander down the tunnel's length, the air was still wonderfully dry, the blast burning up the damp air and making it almost breathable.

Her eyes felt wide, wider than they had ever felt in weeks. Her sight felt sharp, something was giving her the energy to continue down this perilously curved metal path. She slipped with a small grunt but carried on nonetheless, the curiosity nipping at her brain. Peering out of the perfectly round mouth at the end of the line, Lily peeked round and then back again; she could smell burning. With a frown she emerged from the tunnel like the rat she was and gingerly stepped down the rest of the pipe until she could hear running water. She could hear noises, grunts and exclamations; Lily was invested now; running downwards, Lily ran to the other opening, the one the flames must have come from. Her chest tightened, she was overtaxing herself; she leaned heavily on the walls, the slime and dampness making her curl her nose. Looking at her strange hands, she saw the grime and frowned down on them vacantly for a moment,

"Hey!"

Lily's head snapped up. Standing before her were two men, she didn't recognise them. In-between them however, Lily recognised him. Commissioner Gordon was hanging as limp as her hands between the two men. One of them, he had a hat on, spat,

"Hey, slack-jaw, get over here and help us!"

"Uh..." Lily started backing away,

"D'you want us to go to Bane?" The other one threatened as the Commissioner groaned absently.

"I don't think-" Lilly began with a shake of her head.

She was cut off as the one in the hat smacked her over the mouth with a lead pipe. Falling back, Lily could taste blood in her mouth, glaring up she resentfully watched as the other laughed and the one in the hat grabbed the Commissioner's lifeless arm. Lily wished the Commissioner would just wake up and smack his firearm off that brute's head, but she couldn't ignore the ring in her ears any longer and looked on as the two men left her to take back their prize to Bane.

"Well, now. Here's your chance to escape, it'd be so easy, too."

Lily froze. She didn't look up. She knew that voice, but she hadn't heard it for weeks, could he really be just to her right standing in the mouth of one of the many tunnels?

"D'you mean I can leave?"

"Only if you truly think about what you'll be forfeiting."

She wouldn't look. It wasn't like her to not be curious, she had just earned a smack across the mouth for it in actuality, but she wouldn't look round at him in case he was there.

"Will you choose to go back, I wonder."

"Will you kill me?" She uttered in the black.

"When the time comes." There came a decisive reply.

"What do you want from me?"

Lily felt her brow furrow in the darkness. Her chin still pressed against the ground. She still wouldn't look round; if he was there she didn't want to see him. With his mask covering his face, menacing the very gloom from the corners, frightening the already terrifying. She could feel Bane's primal poise and felt her skin prickle,

"What do I want from you?"

He scoffed somewhere off to her side. Lily's hair stood on end as he went on, his sharp voice reverberating off the echoing chambers of the sewers,

"Nothing. You've given me all you have. It is I who will give you everything."

He was there. He had to be. Lily was homeless and a little depressed, not mad. She surely hadn't run mad. Slowly, very slowly, she turned her head and felt blood trickle down her chin; she felt pain then, more than she ever had; her back and her mouth, her hands all of it converged in that one movement to see if he was standing by the tunnel's opening.

She thought she caught a glimpse. A brief flicker, an apparition, a phantom? Something in the gloom perhaps? Something baleful and eerie moving around her like a wild shadow, circling her like she were defenceless prey, ready to be scooped up in the jaws of something dangerous and violent.

Alone, she was completely alone. She blinked to see if he'd be there that time but he simply wasn't. Her brow knotted and she got up strenuously and with great effort; he had been there. She had heard him. Lily cast her eyes around the tunnel; she could still vaguely hear the two men dragging Commissioner Gordon off further and further into the bowels of the sewers. With a sigh, she tugged on her jacket and limped after them, trying to forget her small brush with madness.