Aurora lay quietly in her bed, her arms resting behind her head, her ankles crossed; blankets and pillows thrown onto the sparkling white floor. She stared at the equally white ceiling, counting the brown divots that tediously traveled across the panels. She listened to her roommate whisper rapidly to herself; spewing ill-fated warnings for all that believed in hope. "The night- the night falls," she had murmured earlier in the day. "Abandon your desires. Abandon your hopes and your dreams. The night- the night falls."

Sunlight glowed yellow into the area, gently kissing the curtain that separated the two sides of the spacious room like a veil between worlds. Hilda Burns was an eccentric woman; kind when in her right mind, crass when not- always hectic. She loved to sing in the mornings, but only when it was raining. Her voice was unpleasant- she screeched off key, infuriating the nurses in their hall and scaring the other patients. Aurora liked her.

"Turn on the light, Hilda." spoke the woman hastily, her voice strained with panic. "No, no, the light- the light will attract the children."

Aurora rolled onto her side, laying her face on her arms, her eyes dancing across the glowing sheet; listening.

"Hilda, the light; you must turn it on! You must turn on the light!"

"NO! The light will attract the children! We must save them. We must save the children!"

"The light, Hilda! Turn on the light! How can they see without the light?"

"No, the light ends! The night- the night falls."

"Good morning, Ms. Donovan."

Aurora's eyes remained on the curtain, her head slightly turning in acknowledgement of the male that had entered her room. "My name is Blake. I'll be moving you and Mrs. Burns into the rehabilitation room for group therapy."

"The night- the night falls."

"Take her first," spoke Aurora quietly, her head returning to its original position. "She doesn't like to be in here alone."

Soon a strong shadow joined the outline of her neighboring bed. The tenderness in his voice as he spoke to the crazed woman filled the room, his hands resting on her blanket. Hilda went silent. They were still.

"Is it alright if I move you?" he questioned.

Hilda didn't speak, but soon his silhouetted arms began to move, gliding across the curtain as he fixed her blankets and pillows, pausing as he unlocked her wheels.

"I'll come right back for you" he said quietly as he pushed Mrs. Burns' bed around the drape.

Silence. Finally.

Aurora took a deep breath, her mind beginning to fill with the madness that had become her life. Twice a week she suffered through private sessions with Maverick; listening to the condescension in his voice, the judgment in his words. Twice a week she would watch him roll his eyes at her every sound, redundantly questioning her about her life after she had run away, and blatantly expecting her to become overwhelmed with emotion and a sudden need to be heard. He was a fool.

Every day she was forced to sit in on group therapy sessions with several other patients where she would have to smile and answer polite questions in order to earn time outside, or roaming privileges around her floor. Neither interested her in the slightest.

"I'll start getting some paper work together for Arkham," Maverick's voice floated back into her head. She remembered hearing him converse with one of the nurses outside of his office earlier that week. "She'll be a shoo in for them."

Arkham Asylum was the home of Gotham City's criminally insane and the end of her unlived life. People weren't lawfully able to be thrown into Arkham after committing a crime, or lack thereof- they had to go through the psychiatric hospital, be tested, be shrinked, be committed. They needed to be accepted in, recommended, and lied on.

Gregory was going to throw her in Arkham for the rest of her life, holding tight to the falsehood of his innocence. He would write her off as unmanageable; a danger to herself and those around her, and he would let her rot. She would perish in a cage as the angry child that set out to wound her gracious and loving father; wrongfully imprisoned and enraged.

Her body ached. She pushed herself up from her bed, swinging her legs over the side. She rolled her ankles, pressing her feet flat on the cold hard floor, pointing her toes; she stood. Her body screamed. She stretched to one side, relishing the soreness in her muscles, than back, wincing at the snap in her spine, than to the opposite side, again appreciating the tender spots in her ribs and belly. She bends down, placing her hands flat on the floor. Her arms are shaky yet firm as her legs slowly spread and lift off of the ground. They rise simultaneously, gently coming together again, her toes at a point, above her head, completing her hand stand. Her body is in agony. Her elbows bend, lowering her face down until breath from her nose wafts dust particles about on the floor. Then her elbows extend, and her shivering arms lift her body up again.

Sweat tickles the side of her nose as her body forces itself to be healed enough for the type of stress she was forcing upon it. It had been two weeks since her surgeon told her she could return to exercising; which exercises he failed to mention. Her body needed to return to its normal abilities, those it learned in order to survive the streets of Gotham, preferably before she was thrust into the madhouse that was Arkham. And so she trained, painfully slow and with much difficulty, every day. In the mornings, before breakfast, she stretched her body to impossible lengths, forcing her limbs to come to life, to regain their flexibility. In the afternoons, before group therapy, she exerted her muscles to their breaking point in strength training, lifting various items in her room or lifting herself. In the evenings, while the other patients on her floor played games or relaxed outside in the fresh air, she would practice her agility, creating her own obstacle course in the rehabilitation room.

During the night she would slip from her room, and taking to the shadows of the dimmed halls, she would circle the floor several times, dipping under nurses stations- while they were working if she felt bold- practicing tiptoed flips off of vacant gurneys and over abandoned wheel chairs; causing distractions in one hallway and silently sprinting down another to escape searching eyes. Her record for clearing an empty hallway was 12 seconds- 20 with blockages.

Gradually, Aurora allows her legs to lower, pausing just before they lay flat on her bed. Red in the face and muscles quaking, she holds the pose, grunting against the burn in her abdomen, chest, and arms. Finally, when she feels as though her shoulders will give out, she forces her legs back up and over her head, arching her back as they go, lifting her hands from the ground as her feet touch down. She is upright and exhausted. She leans over, eyes closed and palms resting on her knees, as she slowly inhales through her nose and exhales through her mouth.

"Ms. Donovan, they're ready for you."

A gentle hand touches her shoulder and she stands up straight, her eyes connecting with a pair of soft brown orbs that watched her mere inches above her own. "If standing is too much for you, we can use a wheelchair," he speaks quietly, concern written across his young face. His features were delicate, his eyes deep, eyebrows, the same dark color of his hair, scrunched to show his worry, lips full and slightly pouted. He was sincere.

"No," she answered quietly, turning away from him and grabbing the hospital blanket from her bed. "I can walk."

Group therapy was a nuisance. Six patients, Aurora included, sat in a circle in the center of the rehabilitation room. They watched each other, eyes twitching, brows furrowing in suspicions as to why the others were there. Aurora was still, her eyes never leaving the multicolored frieze styled carpet. She ignored the wandering eyes around her, tuned out the excessively involved- red haired, blue eyed-therapist, Rebecca West, and instead focused on the ache that throbbed through her shoulders and hips from lifting herself in her room. The burn didn't bother her; she would still use the room as an obstacle course.

She sat with her feet planted on the ground, her shoulders slouched, her hands curled into soft fists resting on her thighs. Her face itched, she wanted to rip off the bandages that irritated her skin and rake her nails across her cheeks; she thought of a dog getting its belly scratched and thumping its tail against the ground in enjoyment.

It wasn't until an abrupt halt in the encircling conversation, and a sinking in her belly that her eyes lifted, her mind sharply coming into focus with the manifestation of dominance that had interrupted them. He walked slowly, deliberately, almost swaying as he moved, towering over the armed men that traveled at his sides. His muscles rippled underneath the blue patient scrubs hugging his legs, his torso bulged under the canvas material that constrained his upper body, his arms resisting the urge to burst through their restraints; his neck, thick with strength.

Recollections of damp tunnels and the stench of blood came to her mind; bulky shadows, heavy boots; a voice that sounded like metal; the eyes of the devil.

A thick metallic device with spiderlike tubes protruding from it covered his chin, mouth and nose. Large heavy sections wrapped around the sides of his face, obscuring his cheeks, while two tubes connected to a third segment, ran up the bridge of his nose and over his head. She knew from memory that the three pieces joined together, encasing the back of his head altogether; two metal latches, intricately designed, resting just behind his concealed ears.

His eyes, full of pride and wisdom, danger and intelligence, remained forward as he sauntered towards the group; wrinkles materializing at their corners as he waited for his security detail to set up a chair large enough for him.

The silence continued for several agonizing minutes after Bane had been seated, his ankles shackled to the legs of his chair, his eyes now watching Rebecca shift uncomfortably in her seat, pulling at the unfortunately short skirt she had worn.

Aurora returned her eyes to the floor, watching Rebecca's foot snag along her scrub bottoms as she crossed and uncrossed her legs, shifting from one direction to the other.

"Alright, let's get started," she spoke finally, her nerves at ease.

"You mean we haven't already?" An irritated male voice echoed loudly in the suddenly small room.

Aurora scoffed quietly, a half smile forming on her lips.

"Ms. Donovan." Rebecca smiles arrogantly as the infamous Aurora Donovan's eyes connect with her own. "We'll begin with you... since you seem to be in good spirits today."

Aurora lifts her head, her eyes on the smug therapist. Rebecca had been waiting for this moment for a long time; waiting to pounce on her lovers' youngest daughter for spewing lies about him. She would be ruthless in her questioning- no doubt an attempt to protect what was left of Gregory's perfect name. Aurora expected nothing less; her father had been decent to Rebecca. He put her through school, gave her unjust promotions, and bought her elegant diamonds- and after he'd beaten his wife and daughters to a bloody pulp, compelling the mother of his children to believe that they suffered because of her- he helped Rebecca with her first addiction case.

The City of Gotham worshipped the ground Gregory walked on after he reportedly saved his beautiful daughters from the unruly clutches of their abusive mother. And not only did he protect them from her, he offered her free treatment from his lead therapist; his prodigy - his whore.

"This is your first time in group therapy with me," continued Rebecca, turning her body in her chair to face Aurora completely, as if she were speaking to a child. "so I'll start with rules." She flips her red hair over her shoulder, too preoccupied with her new target to be worried about the massive man that now sat in her peripheral vision. She droned on, disregarding the way Aurora's eyes lowered into angry slits as they watched her. It wasn't until Rebecca was no longer speaking and had returned her body to its previous position, a scornful smile plastered on her face, that Aurora felt the pains in her hands from having them balled into tight fists; she forces her hands down flat against her thighs.

Rebecca's hands finger through an open manila folder in her lap, pausing over several pages. "Aurora Camille Donovan," she begins again, the spite in her voice masked with professionalism. "Born December 5th, 1989 to Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Donovan-"

"I knew it was you!"

Aurora's eyes pull away from Rebecca, instantly connecting with a small pale man across the circle. His eyes were wide, his mouth-containing one old tooth- flapped about as he talked, saliva pooling at the corners of his mouth. He smiled, one of his arms extending out to her, pointing, the other elbowing the masked man in his side. "She's Dr. Donovan's little girl!" he exclaimed, his small feet stomping on the ground. "I mean, you look just like him!"

"Mr. Pulley, please." Rebecca's voice went unheard over the sudden muttering in the circle.

"Your story was all over the news! That was years ago though." His feet slowed their manic pace and he enthusiastically scooted to the edge of his seat. "Where have you been all this time?"

"Mr. Pulley-"

"The reports about your sightings just stopped one day. I thought maybe you died and they didn't want to air it. Y'know, for your dad's sake and all."

Aurora's gaze remained on the tiny man, her eyebrows faintly scrunched.

"Did you really try to kill him?"

Bane sat silently, his legs still chained to his chair. The group, infuriating and time consuming, had dispersed moments before, four patients heading out into the gated yard behind the rehabilitation room for fresh air, one -whispering about the coming of night- heading back to her room, and the last, the most recent entry, crossing the room in hassled strides, to the other side where a pile of discarded items lay in an unclaimed pile. He flexed his fingers inside of his jacket, watching Aurora haul a miscellaneous pile from the top of an old desk.

She paced for a moment, her hands on her hips, any expression she might have had, hidden under the bandages on her face. He watches as she begins to push tables together, stacking some and flipping others and turning chairs on their sides, wondering with a smile how the nurses, so keen on using the words "for your own good," could fail to see not only how sane this young woman was, but how unlike the rest of them she seemed to be. After a few moments of disemboweling the tunnel contraption used for strengthening arms and turning it inside out, she steps away from what he now realizes is an obstacle course.

Her arms lift above her head, her toes pointing as she stretches. She reaches to one side, than the other, she bends back and leans forward. Then she slips her scrub top over her head, over her gauze veiled face, and tosses it to the ground. Bane sits up in his seat, intrigued by her brazen attitude; captivated by the fury that is falling off of her in monstrous waves.

"Did you really try to kill him?"

Her eyebrows had furrowed a bit more, her eyes beginning to shift back and forth across her accusers face. "Excuse me?"

"Did you?"

A flame grew in her dark eyes. "Is that what they said? I tried to kill my father?" Anger and disbelief swelled in her words, her small hands once again becoming tight fists.

"Oh yeah, that was the scandal of the year!" The man, ignorant to the damage he was generating, continued on. "Your mother went off on a drug binge and beat you and your sister half to death. And your dad tried to help her out but she didn't want the help." He choked on his words as if emotionally invested, his words dripping sarcasm as if he were explaining the plot to a movie rather than the story of her life. "Your sister moved out, unable to handle the pressure of taking care of your mom, and so the responsibility landed on you."

Her fists quivered under the weight of her grasp.

"They said you blamed your dad for what happened to your mom and that you became emotionally unstable and tried to smother him in his sleep with a pillow."

He watched her now; the same young woman he had earlier conceived to be empty was in fact filled to the point of rupturing; fueled only by the devastation of her past and by the rage that flowed through her. She rolls her shoulders and lowers herself to the ground, indignation hardening her petite muscles.

For the second time that day Bane is taken aback as Aurora takes off with speed that surpasses any expectation he had of her. She leaps over the desks with precision, kicking off of tables, and using the toppled chairs as stepping stones to build her force. She leaps from the last chair, sliding across a barrier two tables high and falling into a perfect tumble. As her feet touch down on the floor, she uses the force built up in her legs to shoot herself up into the air, her hands catching onto the exposed rod from the rehab machine and swinging her body up over the top of the tunnel.

The force from her legs continues forward as she lets her hands slip. Her feet pass over her head in a flawless back flip before she lands silently on the carpet, one leg stretched, ankle touching the floor, the other bent, knee to her chest, the fingers of her right hand barely brushing the carpet, her other arm outstretched, fingers spread, palm facing outward.

"Impeccable."

He would not underestimate her again.

The room was dark but his eyes observe the room as if it were broad daylight. It is quiet; the hospital staff, those that were favored, had retired for the evening, while the rest stayed behind to keep their patients in line. Four armed men, Gotham's finest, stand just beyond his closed door, none of them valiant enough to enter into his temporary domain- none of them willing to stare into the eyes of their liberator.

He sits calmly on his bed, ignoring the soreness of his back and the throbbing of his encased arms; his eyes taking in the emptiness that surrounds him. The hospital had taken the second bed from his room in an attempt to isolate him. At this he smiles. He had been isolated for much of his life; his relief coming in the form of a small child, terrified of the darkness. At this his eyes soften.

Talia, his little one- she filled his mind constantly- always troubling him, always mocking his incarceration with her freedom. He wondered about her, even worried on occasion- trying his hardest to tolerate the filth he had been plunged into. Now, his cramped muscles relaxing for the first time since his confines being placed on him, he thought of her, their past together, the way he would hold her through the night as she cried silent tears for her mother; she had missed her dearly.

"Bane," He could hear her voice, see the way her large brown eyes stared up at him in the dark, her small hand searching for the warmth of his chest. He would reach for her then and pull her closer to him. She would bury her face into his neck, her tiny arms hugging herself in the freezing night air of The Pit, and he would rest his chin on the top of her shivering head, breathing in the scent of life and of love that seemed to linger there. She was his to protect and to care for; to shield from the wickedness that had claimed her mother's life.

"I am here, little one." He would always say, his tired eyes refusing to close, refusing to let the monsters that haunted her nightmares come for her in the night.

He angered them with his tenacity; his vigilance and his strength crushed many men that dared to approach her. But even with his ferocity, they were too much, even for him. They overpowered him, bringing him to his knees. How dare he hide such a prize beneath his arm during the night? How dare he keep a luxury so divine all to himself? How dare he conceal her fragile body from them?

They were unwavering in their attack; the hoard of ravaged men looking to destroy the only light, the only innocence left in the shadows of their abyss. He could not allow her mother's fate to become her own, and so he carried her through, hoisted her onto the ledge, and let them take him.

"Goodbye."

He watched her climb; nails gripping into the flesh of his face, tearing into his skin. Gashes wept blood beneath his assailants, his nose torn, his lips shredding under the claws of his enemies. He felt nothing.

"Deshi Basara!"

He fought them; trying to break those that stood against him in order to bring agony to a child. A child that, as he watched, scaled the wall of The Pit, her tiny arms pulling her, her small legs leaping, inching closer to her freedom.

"Deshi Basara!"

Rise, he had thought, a hand trying to wrap around his neck. Rise to your freedom, little bird. And he laughed, flesh dangling from his mangled chin, when her arms, illuminated with the light of the sun, were able to rest. She had done it! She, the only innocence left in their forgotten hell, had lived; her light was not destroyed. She was beautiful as she turned back once to peer down into Hell on Earth; to find him, her brown hair glowing red under the rays of light.

So far she had risen; so high above where he would live out the rest of his days.

The inmates let him be when they had rid themselves of their contempt. They left his wrecked body to the prison doctor. It wasn't until the doctor had done his work and laid him to rest that he awoke, his body begging for death to escape the misery. But he did not die. He survived, day by day, hour by hour, wasting away under the biting pain of his injuries.

"My friend," Finally she returned to him; her body fully bloomed into matured curves, brown curls gently dancing against the exposed skin of her neck. "What has happened to you?" She peeled the filthy bandages from his face, exposing what flesh was left to the harsh air. He watched as her eyes, still innocent, still so full of life and light, filled with tears.

She saved him, set him free, released him from his hell on earth; and she brought him to her father.

Ra's Al Ghul trained him, modifying his battered yet already strong body to block out the pain, making him faster and silent. He fixed him with a mask, and sent him on countless missions: deliveries, recoveries, forewarnings, and assassinations before denying him. All the while Talia stayed with him even if only in his mind. She heated his body during the winter nights on the outskirts of mountain villages; she calmed his anger when words of another mission that would again keep him from returning to the warmth of her bed were delivered to his camp via hawk, and she soothed the pain that shot down his spine when he went to stand or when he walked for long periods of time.

His little bird; flown to freedom and back to hell for his soul.

He thought of her now. Her tenderness had grown hard over the years. The fevered way she used to claw at his skin when he loved her and the moans that rose from her core seemed distant. She would need him desperately, relentlessly giving her body to him, affectionately, fiercely; her love encasing him during the night.

His mind raced then, struggling to purge thoughts of Bruce Wayne loving her; thoughts of Wayne's soiled palms upon her naked skin, his undeserving hands touching her. Bane thought of her on top of him, her dark hair cascading down around her face, her hips moving against him, the fire behind her eyes dimming as the man she wishes only to kill, enjoys her.

His muscles have clenched again, flames burning beneath his skin. He vowed to kill Bruce Wayne the night Talia returned to him, her eyes low with shame, the smell of another man glistening on her skin.

"He must trust me fully" she had said to him, her eyes refusing to look at him. "He must know that he gave me everything so that when I crush him-"

Bane stopped her there, his hands clamped down around her small wrists. Her face turned away from him as he pulled her closer, only stopping when her palms pressed into his chest. He wanted to love her then, to throw her down and be with her, to erase any traces of Wayne that still plagued her- but she would not let him. She would sit in her shame, not wanting his touch, not wanting his words or his forgiveness.

"You need not explain yourself."

It was then that she left him. She no longer called for him, no longer found her way to his bed in the night while his men were on their rounds; she no longer spoke softly of her protector. He allowed her to wallow in the festering hate that grew in her, allowed her to sink in her self-loathing and the revulsion that brewed within her soul for her father and for Bruce Wayne.

He couldn't help her. She had to do it on her own. She would drown in her guilt or she would fight to survive.

And she was a survivor. She survived the failing of Gotham's demise, and she survived the impact injuries sustained when the truck carrying her nuclear bomb fell into an underground tunnel in the city. Almost a year later, she survived learning that Bruce Wayne had also survived, and when she learned that the only reason Bane had survived was because of the armored vest he wore on his chest, she came back to him.

He took her aggressively that day, the sounds of his name falling from her parted lips, her legs clenching around his waist, her nails tearing into the skin of his back, her teeth in his shoulder- he loved her.

His little bird had grown into a woman before his very eyes, and he marveled at the thought of her- needing hastily to return to the tunnels under Gotham where she now stayed, plotting cautiously to exact her revenge on the city. They needed a new participant, an accomplice of sorts that would throw Gotham through a loop.

Her plan was for Bane to be thrown into Arkham Asylum where he would have a variety of foot soldiers to choose from - men who wanted nothing but to watch the people of Gotham fall to their knees with their afflictions. They would release these men, train them, and use them as weapons against the people, exciting an uprising, luring out those that reveled in the filth of the city. There would be no more mercy, no more breaking of bones and imprisonment, and captivity in destroyed tunnels; the protectors of the corrupt would be crushed. Bruce Wayne- the Batman- would die by his hands, leaving the city to them. The City of Gotham would fall once again into the hands of the oppressed and there it would die.

His mind then shifted to Aurora. There had been light in her once, when she was young, as is with all people. Her light had been destroyed, a story not unheard of; but her light had been replaced. Darkness filled her as it would anyone that has suffered, but a flame- though feeble- also burned within her.

It was a familiar flame; one that if stoked, would erupt into a sweltering heat, one that could devour a nation in scorching vehemence. The fire that exists in this girl, blistering the underside of her skin, and desiring escape from its confines not only lives within his little bird, but also within himself.

He would free that fire in the same manner that Talia had once freed him. Yes, Aurora would be very useful indeed.

A/N: I'm so sorry for the long delay! I am someones Mommy and thus
on call 24/7. I made this update longer in efforts to make
up for my absence. I hope you enjoyed it! SO sorry again!