(Warning: it's a talky one.)

VI.

Fragile Spines

I should go quietly, broken and silent; left in the cold, my torn clothes cling so to my jutting body. My limbs ache and whine in protest, sores on my flesh burn like volcanoes, like molten lava; torturous. We are spoiled for choice in the vast array of ways in which we can rot and crumble. Fade away like so many mysteries; fade into the obsidian, unless maybe something great discerns you and plucks you from your pain.

The vast chamber was silent. Lily's chest heaved; she had managed to catch up to the workers who were taking the Commissioner to Bane. Presenting the older man to an unseeing Bane like two cats would present a mouse to their owner. Looking for a pat on the head and enjoying their power. Lily watched carefully, her eyes flicking from one party to the other; Bane was sitting; hunched over, his gigantean muscled back, the medical implement that was embedded down his ferocious looking spine was exposed to them, Lily thought maybe even vulnerably so, but it didn't seem to cause him any pain to lithely stand to his feet and turn an inquisitive eye on his men.

"Why are you here?"

One of the men booted Commissioner Gordon sharply in the ribs,

"Answer him!"

He had his lead pipe in his hand, grasping it and threatening to smack it across the Commissioner's face. Lily could attest to its potency in dealing out pain and licked her bust lip, not savouring the sour taste of blood on her tongue. She forgot her pain as Bane slowly and lazily seemed to step over to them, those three who had brought him such a prize; Commissioner James Gordon. Lily felt no pride seeing Bane's eyes blazing and the tenseness that was coursing through his arms and great hulking chest. She gulped and waited for his ruling;

Peering down, he raised an eyebrow,

"I was asking you." The man corrected his minion in the hat, "Why are you here?"

He asked again. Lily took a step back, that one little movement and she felt Bane's calculating eyes on her, rest there for no less than a second before twitching back to his quivering worker,

"It's...we brought you...Commissioner Gordon..." He bleated weakly.

"And you brought him down here?"

He asked in that same abrupt way that made Lily break out in hives. The other one, the more silent one seemed to be sweating more than the one with the hat, Lily heard this quibble,

"We didn't know what to do with him. We-"

Lily visibly shirked when Bane without inflection gripped his throat and squeezed it silently choking him down until he fell to his knees and finally to the ground with a splutter. Lily and the remaining thug remained before the alter of Bane's cool rage.

"You panicked," The big man explained with a nod.

The thug nodded his head, he was shaking; Lily could see his lead pipe tremble as Bane went on,

"And your weakness has cost three lives."

Lily didn't even shuffle, embedded in her hood, her hands stuffed in her pockets she was wringing them inside, grinding her teeth at the intensity of this scene Bane was breaking so calmly and so casually, like when a disappointed father finds out his boy's been flinging mud at windows and punishes him before his delinquent friends, a lesson in humility.

Bane turned, bending down with that colossal grace and gently brushed aside the Commissioner's suit jacket; plucking from Gordon's breast pocket, a lot of letters by the looks of it. Lily looked on as he turned his shoulder on the thug and her to quickly scan the letters. His face was unreadable, but she thought she saw one of his dark eyebrows quirk up,

"Search him." He ordered without looking up from the small bundle of letters.

Lily and the thug exchanged a quick and doleful look, she was about to move forward when she felt a meaty hand slam into her chest. She grunted and stumbled back as the thug scowled at her. He turned back to the Commissioner but stopped dead when he beheld Bane rolling up the letters eyeing them both coldly and glassily. Lily didn't hear him while she was doubled over coughing hard, Bane's metallic growl,

"Then I will kill you."

The thug swallowed a lump and was about to kneel down before Bane and search Gordon like he had been told to when the Commissioner, quick as a hare, rolled himself off of the ledge he was lying quite close to. Lily just barely managed to catch sight of the Police Commissioner as he was engulfed by the white waters that ran quickly down to the outflows. She was on her knees grasping her ears as gunshots rang out right beside her; she stole a glimpse of Bane who was regarding her quietly.

"He's dead." The thug stipulated with certainty to Bane, he was gripping his lead pipe as though it was his only lifeline.

Turning his eyes from her, Bane looked at the worker and shrugged indifferently,

"So show me his body."

His tone was so mild, Lily felt herself gaping; he spoke to the thug as though he were a maths tutor who was telling the pupil to show his working, accepting nothing less than the utmost absolute and wanting proof of how one could ever come to a certain conclusion.

The thug was panicking now, so much so that even Lily felt a little stirring of pity for him; even from her hallowed eyes she could see that he was petrified of Bane's wrath, and she did not blame him. Not for one moment did she blame him for the fear he seemed to possess for Bane, not when he was being so informal and blasé; almost like he wouldn't kill him. Holding out a hand, Bane waited for his second-in-command, Barsad, to hand him something that she couldn't quite make out from her vantage point on the ground. She watched quietly and unobtrusively as the thing Bane had just been given exchanged hands quickly and smoothly and was now in the quaking hand of the thug who had whacked her with the pipe.

"Follow him."

Bane commanded simply, allowing the man a furrowed brow at his orders before he put a bullet in his chest from a chamber of a gun that Lily didn't even see the huge man brandish. She jumped as the shot boomed and the man fell back into the foamy waves, just like his predecessor before him.

The girl's eyes slid up as Bane ignored her and handed the gun back to his second-in-command. Returning his attention to the letters, he walked back to where he had been sitting before; the scene over, five men dead and she left alone among the bustle as the workers pretended not to witness Bane's icy act of punishment. Slightly queasy, Lily got up and leaned against the railing until her swollen knuckles turned white. Moving forwards, she blinked over at Bane's turned back and watched him sit back down, hunched again, his back bare to her and his strange spinal graft.

"Bane?" She said quietly,

She saw his shoulders tense only slightly. Barely a twitch of a movement, but she had his attention. Shuffling forward, she smothered a cough before she could speak again,

"You're still here?"

Lily scowled and waved his comment away,

"Uh, y-yes, but, listen, Bane-"

"You are not to go in the tunnels close to the surface."

He commanded his back still to her. Lily peeped down and frowned,

"But-"

"But?" He counteracted.

Lily wondered if he thought she would challenge him after just witnessing his display a moment ago. She looked away, resenting the confinement and the craziness of this whole thing.

"Think." He said slowly, "Simply think, that is all I want from you."

Lily's brow puckered and she found herself gingerly circling round him, she could see the outline of the maw of his mask from here; she sighed as her eyes roamed all down his back and ruined spine. What was he exactly? She started when he got up suddenly and without warning.

"Go up there, you will be trampled. Go up only when I make it safe."

He turned and peered at her, making her back away; her skin white, the bags under her eyes prominent and even then she felt her decline as she coughed.

"You are not useless." He remarked suddenly when Lily's coughing abated.

"A deal bartered with life is not always a bad thing. You still have yours,"

Lily felt dwarfed as he took one step closer, the letters he salvaged from the Commissioner still in his huge grasp.

"You will see what you bought with it soon."

"And...What is that?" She squeaked as he looked down, his expression completely impenetrable.

Bane's eyes were fierce as he replied almost reverently, his tone losing its frosty edge,

"A place in the sunshine."