Hello fellow earthlings...
I am sorry if it seems as if I have not been on this planet at all these past few weeks, but I have my reasons. I have an entire plot for this story, I already have a plan for how it will end and possibly how it might move into a sequel, but. The issue at hand here is now that Ren is in the pit there are multiple ways in my head that she could escape, but I have an insanely hard time typing it out. I don't know what is going on, but every time I type stuff it doesn't flow well. Here is what I was working on... All I ask is that you guys give me your opinion on it. Should I continue with this or should I skip to the part where she escapes and is in Gotham again... Either way is fine with me. I just don't want to force things and it just doesn't flow well after I read it, so if I have to I might as well move on and get back to it when my mind can put this shiznit down. :)
Chapter 13: Journey
Ren knew what she had to do, but even if she did. How would she do it? Her heart was still shattered, Bane hadn't broken her spirit, but he had definitely broken her heart. She looked up from her bowl of soup, Nazir sitting across from her eating his. After she had woken it was hard for her to distinguish reality from the abstract. Her fears seemed to be more real than she herself could say and acknowledge. She wouldn't fail.
"There has to be another way out." Nazir stopped and glanced up at her, shaking his head.
"There is no other way."
"How else do they get the prisoners in, the above must be a distraction to them, a goal. How do others get out if they can't escape that distraction." Nazir sighed, shaking his head.
"There is no other way." He repeated, she lowered her head back down to stare at the soup. What could she do? "Bane doesn't want you to escape."
"It is not his decision." She replied hoarsely, taking a sip of her soup. Bane seemed to be a name now only associated with pain and suffering. It had always been that way, but she could see it more now than she ever had before.
"Do you hate him? He didn't want you to hate him, when he brought you here."
"I don't know how I feel about him." She whispered to not only herself, but in response. It wasn't a sufficient response, but at least it gave Nazir a distant thought. "I don't want to talk about him."
"Then we can't talk about escape either." She slowly placed her bowl down, it and then her hands went to her knees. She was sitting Indian style on the concrete floor beside the bed, her hair hung over her shoulder.
"What about Bruce? Will he escape?" Nazir snorted as though she was joking about something and shook his head vigorously.
"Only one has escaped."
"Talia. I know." Ren said, she took a deep breath as flashbacks of her child came to her mind. Talia did not know what she had been through and Talia would never know. To say that Ren was envious of Talia's childhood life in this prison was an understatement. But that envy was hid so well-
"There is no other way." Ren exhaled through her nose, she bit her bottom lip. A portion of the light from outside the cell, gleaming in on the side of her face.
"Then you know what I have to do." She stood up and walked towards the entrance of the cell, she looked over her shoulder at Nazir. "Come, walk with me." Nazir stood up hesitantly and followed after Ren, there was a dull curiosity that told him she was up to no good.
"Bane, he didn't bring you here to be trapped. He was trying to save your life." Nazir explained as they both cleared the staircase with fast feet and began making way for Bruce's cell.
"I don't care why he brought me here. In fact if he hadn't, I wouldn't know my true purpose."
"Which is?"
"To save the League of Shadows." She could feel the tension in her words, not even she herself believed them. She was afraid. She was human. She was unsure of herself. She was human. Sometimes she wished she wasn't. She stopped at the entrance to Bruce's Cell. He was hopelessly staring up at the ceiling with sorrow filled eyes, in obvious pain. Nazir placed a hand on her shoulder and she looked over at him.
"Do not do it." He warned in barely a whisper, she shrugged his hand off her shoulder.
"I have to get out of here." She gazed over at Bruce again. "He is the only one who can help me."
"And how do you know?"
"I don't." She stepped forward into the cell, her legs unconsciously taking her closer to the bunk. Bruce slightly tilted his head over, his eyes gradually coming towards her. Their eyes connected and she could see the hatred within his own. "You may think that we are very different and we are." She gulped, eyes shifting to the ground. "But there is one thing we have in common, we both were put here by Bane and we both want to stop him."
"You are going to rot down here." He whispered, it was a promise, his gaze strict and unwavering. She stepped away, knowing it would be no use to continue further. She looked up at Nazir, who was standing in the doorway with a sad look on his face.
"I have to get to the top."
"There is only one way." He said again and she took a deep breath.
"There has to be another, I don't trust it."
"There is no other." That was when she detected the wavering in his words, she could not discern if it was out exhaustion or out of lies. She didn't press the matter any further.
That night she was restless. Although she trouble sleeping mostly ever night since she had been in the pit, this time it was different. Something had been gnawing at her the entire time, something deep down inside telling her there was another way. She had no doubt that she could complete the climb, but why waste her time trying to do that when there was a quicker way to go.
She stepped out of her cell and stood upon the edge of the catwalk, she stared down at the mini groups that had branched around the lower portions of the prison. There were small fires here and there that they sat around, talking amongst one another in a foreign language. The night was restless in itself, the pit was hell and hell never slept, it was dark and dingy. Much more colder than it was during the day, when that limited amount of sunshine leaked in from the top. The walls of the pit were littered with dark shadows that hardly anyone could see. But Ren could see them, they were taunting her, whispering to her the evils that she would find.
Her mind kept drifting off to Bane, she missed him, despite the fact that he probably didn't miss her. She felt that she was pathetic, a tragic hero and her weakness was the man without tangible lips. Or at least unseen, those lips she dreamed of, that mask was something that hid them, hid her dreams.
The most ambiguous moments she had with Bane were what she held the tightest, she would not allow the pit to take them away. It already was slowly rotting her insides, what else could she do? She felt these moments were her identity, those moments when Bane would say something to her that wasn't about work, when he would compliment her and it almost seemed genuine. However, even the most romantic phrases could be somewhat innocent.
She glanced over and down the metal steps leading towards Bruce's cell. He wouldn't help her and as she looked up to the wall and to that ledge, she knew she could only help herself. Her grip tightened on the rusty metal bars, her teeth clenched, and her eyelids drifted over her eyes with something of pain. The pain she could never get used to.
Suddenly the world seemed emptier than it had been before and there was a mellow silence throughout the Pit. Two arms encircled her waist rather roughly, she worked off of instinct and pulled her legs up to kick at the metal bar and pushed the stranger onto the ground inside her cell. She swung her elbow into his gut, grimy hands clawing up her chest and onto her lips to silence her cries. She could easily break his hold, but lips stopped above her ear and she froze.
"I know how to get out." A thick accented voice mumbled in her ear, she struggled away from the man and stood up, slowly inching away until she was against the bars into her cell. She leaned at him, trying to catch her breath as the dark figure lifted himself up off the ground.
"Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter. Don't you want to get out?" She spat at the ground, the dirt that had been encrusted around his fingers sticking to her lips.
"I do, but at what cost?"
"A simple one, all I ask is that you help me free upon your escape." She stared at his dark silhouette, he wasn't a very tall and intimidating man and by the subtle moonlight gleaming into the cell she could make out his dark brown skin. His dark eyes and black beard, body covered in a grimy substance.
"How do you know another way to escape?"
"Because I don't belong here." She squinted at him and shook her head, utterly confused at that moment.
"If you know how to escape, then why won't you do it?"
"The last man that tried died, you will have to be very desperate in order to escape this way." Ren was no idiot, but she was indeed desperate and she needed to escape as soon as possible.
"Tell me." She demanded firmly, although it might be her death wish, her curiosity was surprisingly still present. It even shocked herself that he wanted to know.
"There is a pipe that is thin, mud and sewage trails down it and into the pit. It leads into the outside world. It should be no problem for you-"
"Where?" She interrupted, her demeanor becoming harsh and impatient, impatience being something she wasn't entirely accustomed to. The man smiled, his rotten and broken teeth revealed past dry lips.
"I won't tell you anything unless you promise me freedom. I am in char-" Ren stepped forward and the man's words caught short. Everyone in the pit by now had determined that Ren was not someone to be messed with, if she was anything like Bane then...
"You will tell me, or I will make you." The man resorted to begging, he fell down onto his knees before her and whimpered, pleaded, did everything she was desensitized to.
"No." She whispered back, but then remembered what her father had said, what she had forgotten and now, what she needed to do. "Rise." She demanded, he stood up slowly and she placed a hand on his shoulder. "I will help you escape if you show me where this pipe is." She wasn't sure if she was lying or telling the truth. Should she help this man escape?
"T-Thank you." He muttered, he stood and left the cell, her fists clenched and she closed her eyes. She felt some unknown rage, but she wasn't sure who it was directed to. Her resentment towards Bane had dissipated, but her thundering heart had not. Perhaps that was the seed of her anger, the seed that lit the dirt beneath her feet and melted it like hot magma.
"I did not wish for you to find out this way." Nazir had found himself at the entrance of the cell, his shadow obstructing the moonlight from drawing into the dark and desolate place she had come to call home.
"I would have found out anyway. I knew you were lying."
"I suspected you did. It is a deadly task, I hope you do not go on with it."
"I have no other choice."
"Then you are on your own." He had treated her like a tragedy and she was, her fear of not knowing was something that had always taken advantage of her success. But this fear needed to be taken down and consumed, it needed to be controlled and she would conquer it by doing this. By escaping the pit.