Chapter Two: Blue to the Sky, Orange to the Thigh
Jane kept her sprained wrist pressed to her chest; her knuckles smashed in between her breasts as Bane waited for her to move.
"Disable the lock," Bane repeated, sitting rigidly upright as a spasm of pain washed through his broad, muscular body.
Jane shook her head, unable to make her feet move, unwilling to lock herself in the small room with the bringer of death.
Bane rose to his feet, gritting his teeth as his multiple cracked ribs made it difficult to breathe.
Despite his diminished state, his simple act of rising to his feet caused a trill of fear to dance along Jane's central nervous system, making her fumble the epi-pen, dropping it where it rolled towards Bane on the sloped floor, coming to a stop on one of the metal grates in the floor.
Sometimes autopsies got messy and visceral contents would splash over the stainless-steel table and puddle on the floor, the sloped floor was easy to spray down, the half-dozen grates allowed for efficient bodily fluid drainage.
Jane watched as Bane took a few steps until he could slowly squat and pick-up the plastic, medicated pen, never taking his eyes off her, the wide orbs pulsing, energy flashing from trying to suppress the look of pain from lighting up his scarred, sharp features.
"It goes the other way," Jane heard herself say in a hollow voice when Bane didn't have the blue end of the pen pointing towards the heavens.
Bane grunted and flipped the pen the other way before pressing it against the outside of his muscular thigh, depressing the button that delivered the dose of epinephrine into his body.
His blood pressure instantly rose, and he was able to take in a full breath as his respiratory system relaxed under the medication's tsunami wave, his lungs filling with the cold air touched with the scent of sterility and the dead.
A rush of energy welled up inside him as he turned into little Ollie fucking Twist as he waggled his fingers at her, each digit tingling with impatience. "Give me another."
Jane moved laterally back towards the medicine cabinet that she'd automatically locked, protocols and all.
In the scuffle, her twisted braid had tumbled loose. Bane's eyes zeroed in on the long, thick braid when she briefly turned her back to root around the plastic box of first-aid supplies for another epi-pen.
The strong rush of epinephrine created a pyroclastic explosion in his core, closing the small distance between them until he could grab her braided length of honey-brown hair.
Her scream was cut off before it began as Bane wrapped her twisted length of hair around her slim throat, cutting her air just enough to stay conscious as he yanked her back against the front of his nearly naked body.
Bane kept her immobilized by her own thick, conditioned hair as he reached for one of the epi-pens with his free hand and jammed it in his other heavily muscled thigh.
Jane felt Bane's body vibrate with the potency of the additional, not medically advised stimulant that made his heart threaten to pound out of his chest. Bane could've thrown his head back and howled at the goddamn moon with the amount of capacity he had for power.
His pain and injuries were forgotten under his stimulated cardiovascular system as he tightened Jane's hair around her slim throat.
"Disable the lock," he rasped, his voice even stronger from the small needle.
Jane felt herself nod and forced herself to move as Bane led her towards the reinforced, steel door.
She reached out her left hand, the barest of trembles visible in her fingertips as she tapped in the override code, preventing anyone accessing the door from the outside. Jane whimpered as she hit the oval, green enter pad of the keyboard, sealing herself in with the risen god, hungry after being disturbed from what should've been his eternal slumber.
Bane grunted in satisfaction as the door beeped twice in high succession before he pulled her back towards the metal table, pushing her into the swiveling office chair.
Jane loosened her hair from around her neck and rubbed the sore skin of her throat, a harsh coughing fit rendering her speechless for a few moments in time, her eyes watering.
Bane waited until her breathing had smoothed out to a manageable degree before speaking.
"Where are the clothes that you removed from me?"
Jane cleared her throat, coughing hard before answering. "The boots are over there," she said, nodding towards a cardboard data box before adding. "The clothes were not salvageable, but I can find you a pair of scrubs."
Bane nodded, giving her wordless consent to walk to the other end of the room and root through a wire rack of scrubs from extra-small to double-x.
Jane hesitantly walked towards him with a haphazardly folded pair of scrub pants and top with the single pocket over the breast.
"I'm not sure they'll fit, you're a big guy," she nervously murmured.
"For you," Bane said after a brief pause, staring down at her before taking the clothes from her hands.
Jane looked anywhere but Bane as he slipped into the pants and top, the pants adjustable with their drawstring, the top fitting for the most part, the fabric stretched tight over his broad chest.
The room's chilly air made his dark pink nipples harden under the stiff fabric.
"Where is she?" Bane asked after he'd tied the pants drawstring into a looping bow.
Jane didn't need to ask who he was talking about; she'd seen a lot of the news about his collaboration of raining terror down on the city with Talia al Ghul.
She pointed towards a chest-high locker where Talia was resting in the metal drawer, heavily air-conditioned so she didn't start to rot.
Bane walked to the locker and tugged it open, pulling out the long tray, Talia's broken, bruised body still under a dingy grey sheet.
Jane watched Bane's face as he uncovered Talia's face, his movement as gentle as a snowflake landing on a blade of grass.
She knew what Talia looked like inside and out. Jane had been the one to open up Talia, catalog her internal and external injuries before bagging up her organs and stitching her closed.
Bane traced the rough pad of his finger over the top of the Y incision that had opened up Talia's body, making her chest blossom as her insides were exposed to the harsh overhead lighting.
The edges of Talia's dead skin was puckered around the thick black suture.
Bane brushed the pads of his fingertips across Talia's closed eyelids, the sockets depressed as the connective tissue broke down in the early stages of decomposition.
He felt his chest tighten and looked to the left, not wanting the young woman in dark green scrubs who could handle a bone saw with ease to see his face contort with emotion.
Bane squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a few measured, rattled breaths.
When he opened his eyes, he was facing the identification tag for the locker of the dead adjacent to Talia.
His eyes moved back and forth across Barsad's given name.
Bane pressed a large hand flat to the outside of the drawer holding the broken meat of Barsad's body.
"Rest now brother," he murmured before returning his eyes to Talia's face, her cheekbones even sharper as the flesh slackened. Under her porcelain skin, bacteria began to multiply, it would soon distort her beauty with internal gas and subsequent bloating.
"Where do you burn the dead once you're done with them?" Bane asked without taking his eyes from Talia's still, slack face.
"It's off site."
"Take me there," Bane ordered as he picked up Talia as though she was a bride.
Bane felt a strangled gasp slip from between his scarred lips as one of Talia's dead, broken limbs slipped from his grip, her arm bending backwards and swinging like a pendulum.
Jane felt herself shake her head, knowing that locking herself in the room with the boogeyman was one thing but leaving he confines of the building would mean she could be lost forever in the ether, sucked through a black hole of fear and terror, turned to ribbons of spaghetti noodles.
"I am not asking you," Bane growled as he adjusted his hold on the dead, broken Talia al Ghul, beautiful in death, exquisite even with the lividity that stained the back of her thighs and curve of her bottom a deep purple.
"Please," Jane whispered as she thought of her mom.
"Take me to where you burn the dead," he said in a dangerous tone.
Jane swallowed hard as she walked back to the first-aid supplies, hating to take her eyes off of him as she wrapped her wrist with a reusable, stretchy bandage, hissing with pain as the swollen skin was compressed under the wrap.
Bane watched Jane gather up her coat and even her thermos, her body's shock process beginning to take root, forcing her into a fragmented auto-pilot mode. She picked up her purse and pulled out her keys before Bane's voice rang out.
"Gather up whatever supplies you have for preserving a life."
Jane set down her purse and fumbled in a large plastic bin for a collection bag.
She stuffed the bag with the remaining handful of epi-pens, wound dressings and other supplies that were designed for the living.
Jane moved with deliberate slowness, her mind whirring as she tried to think of any tactic to delay leaving the room.
Jane's eyes moved over the stainless-steel countertops, evaluating anything she could wield as a weapon.
Every sharp, serrated object could inflict tremendous damage, but her wrist hobbled her, she was a bird with a broken wing at the mercy of a powerful cobra.
Bane could feel Jane's thoughts in the same way that a Great White shark could smell blood amidst the seawater.
He settled Talia down with the delicacy of a jeweler handling a priceless gem.
Bane stalked towards Jane, taking advantage of her attention shifting to a tray of various numbered scalpel blades.
"Don't," he seethed as he stopped short of penetrating Jane's breathing space, her thoughts were reckless, dangerous, would be fatal.
Jane's shoulders tensed and rose as she slowly turned to find Bane within striking distance.
She stared up at him, her eyes moving over his face.
Bane narrowed his eyes. "You're not afraid," he stated.
A small smile pulled at the corner of Jane's lips as she continued to stare.
In the space of time before she spoke, Bane felt like the young woman in cotton scrubs was scrutinizing his exposed flesh for weakness, seeking a place to bury any number of sharp, serrated objects in the morgue.
Bane was correct.
Before she spoke, Jane found her eyes tracing the path of his thick arteries under his skin, the epinephrine's effects making his vascular system bloat.
Jane's mother told her that she shouldn't be afraid of people, she shouldn't fear others when she could take a number ten blade and carve a human being into a wet pile.
Jane wasn't afraid of someone whose heart valves she could tease apart, unwind his DNA strand, and peel his skin like an orange.
"You can't leave here without me," Jane stated as her wrist ached in time with each beat of her heart.
"You will deliver me to the promised land or die where you stand," Bane rebutted.
Jane shook her head, "I'm not driving myself to my own death."