Chapter Eight: He's Making a List
"Give me the keys," Bane wheezed from the rear of the van.
Jane didn't move, only her eyes flicked up to the mirror to meet his.
Bane stared at her profile, unable to tell what was happening inside her brain.
"What is your mother most afraid of?"
Jane narrowed her eyes, filled to the veritable brim with anger, anxiety, and good old-fashioned fear.
Bane was reduced to Perseus, only able to meet Jane's reflected gaze, her eyes full of fiery hatred.
Jane turned off the ignition and tossed the keys back to him without turning around. The keys clanked noisily on the metal floor of the van.
"Join me back here."
"I'm fine right here."
"I'd prefer you to join me back here," Bane repeated on a wet rasp.
Jane remained still, blinking slowly as her gaze remained fixed through the windshield.
"When would be the best time to swing by 1742 Clover Lane?"
"Are you going to keep repeating her address as a goddamn mantra?"
"Yes, until such time I can dispatch someone to end your mother's life," Bane stated.
Jane pressed her lips together at the wash of Bane's words delivered on a series of rattling wheezes.
"What do you want?" Jane asked, trying in vain to keep her voice steady.
"I want you to join me back here."
Jane blew out a shaky breath before she crawled out of the driver's seat and settled on the gurney across from him, the same gurney that had held Talia's dead form, the limbs returned to soft flaccidity after rigor mortis had passed.
"Now what?" Jane asked when Bane remained in stony silence, his expression neutral, unreadable, a dormant volcano simmering with unseen, pyroclastic life.
"You will help me heal."
Jane fought from rolling her eyes, dropping her gaze to her injured wrist as she adjusted the bandage that had loosened from dirtying her clothes.
"What time does your mother get home from work?"
"You can't keep doing that," Jane snapped as she whipped her eyes up to meet Bane's. "Stop threatening my mother's life each time I don't act fast enough," she added angrily.
"How else shall I compel you to fall in line?" Bane quickly countered.
Jane's lips parted, unsure of what to say as she only exhaled, returning her gaze to her sore wrist as she tried to formulate an answer.
As Jane put her words together, across the city on the freeway, traffic snarled from a big rig accident.
Blake flipped on the cruiser's red and blue lights and sped up the shoulder of the freeway, the asphalt uneven.
McKay tightened his seatbelt.
He was in for a bumpy ride.
"How long you been with Gotham PD?" Carson asked as Blake kept the accelerator smashed to the floor, finding it difficult to puff out his chest like an insecure rooster with the snugness of his seatbelt.
"Closing in on fifteen years."
The two men talked in the front seat, a tennis game of one upmanship, throwing toxic globs of testosterone back and forth.
McKay smirked at them from the backseat before turning his attention to his phone and an app where he became a wizard that fucked unicorns and climbed a tree in order to turn into a ripe, juicy peach. He was closing in on a new ranking within the pixelated gaming arena for shooting maids while they were milking.
The Gotham City Coroner van that was now muddied and the letters covered filled with tension that clung to the oxygen molecules in the air.
The windows began to fog up from Jane and Bane's combined, ragged exhalations.
"Stop, I promise I'll do everything in my power to bring you back to full health. But I want your word that you will leave my mother in peace, no harm will come to her."
"You'd trust my word?" Bane asked, the slightest of flippancy stained his spoken words.
Jane nodded, "I know you're a man of your word."
Bane was that man.
He nodded, "you have my word that no harm will come to your mother now or in the future."
Jane's eyes widened slightly as Bane extended his hand, holding it in the air between them.
She let her hand move to meet his in hesitatingly slowness.
Jane's heart twitched and forgot how to beat for a second when his large hand closed around hers. "You have my word," Bane reiterated as they clumsily shook hands.
She felt a cold sweat start at the base of her back at the strength in the touch of his hand around hers, his capacity to painfully end her life with ease even in his diminished state.
Bane would not hurt Arlene Bell, he knew that Jane needed hope, needed something to cling to.
"Open the rear doors and step out of the van without urgency," Bane stated, releasing Jane's hand.
She was pleased to do just about anything to have her hand back as she slid down the length of the gurney and pushed open the heavy, paneled doors.
Jane blew out a shaky breath as she hopped out of the van, conscious of the many eyes on her. She struggled to not rubberneck and meet the gaze of anyone watching.
On the way to the encampment, Bane had dug through his bag of belongings that had been removed from his body when he was thought to have been dead. One of his long-sleeved shirts was more intact than the scrub top. He's slipped on a few layers of clothing that had made it through without being scorched by gunpowder.
Jane took a couple steps back as Bane stepped down from the van, the distance to the ground considerably shorter with his broad frame and longer stride.
"This will be fine," Bane declared, the epinephrine continuing to keep his frontal lobe and sensations in the stratosphere as he paced the perimeter of the clearing where Jane had brought the van to a stop.
He turned to see Jane crossing her arms over her chest, clearly cold from the chilly air as the sun sank lower in the sky.
She would've welcomed a lump of coal from Santa or Scrooge, gratefully penitent for the warmth.
Bane looked away from where Jane stood, the cold filling her. He swept his gaze around the patches of high grass and berry bushes.
"The van will be better suited with the dropping temperature," Bane stated, his voice betraying nothing as he walked back towards.
Jane saw him approaching with a defiant stalk, an apex predator homing in on a meal of flesh and blood.
Bane followed Jane into the rear of the van, depressing the locking mechanism after pulling the doors shut.
Jane settled back on to the gurney that had carried Talia to her fiery corporeal reduction.
She lightly massaged her swollen wrist with her fingertips, palpating the tender flesh as Bane rooted through the bag of belongings that had been removed from his body and duffle bag found at his feet.
Jane watched as Bane brought out a large notebook, the cover a deep olive green with folded edges.
He dug into the bag, his fingertips dragging the plastic depths until he could pluck free a stubby pencil.
Jane watched Bane write, the pencil moving on the paper in a language that reminded her of some of the topics of study in her Cultural Anthropology classes.
Bane paused in the middle of an intricate letter at Jane's blunt words.
"I'd like my necklace back."
He set the pencil and notebook aside in order to reach into the breast pocket of his torn scrub top.
He pulled the thin silver chain from the cotton hidey-hole, holding it up, letting it glint and glimmer from the last of the sun's dying light through the dusty, dirty windows.
Jane's eyes tracked the chain's movement as he held it between the scarred pad of his index finger and thumb.
"Perhaps later," Bane finally rasped as he dropped the necklace back in his pocket, his tone not inviting compromise.
Jane pressed her lips together as Bane held her eyes for a few heartbeats before returning his attention to writing.
Jane watched the eraser end of the pencil move in its mesmerizing fashion within Bane's thick fingers.
As Bane turned to the next page in the notebook, a loose sheet of paper fell to the metal surface of the van.
Jane was able to pluck the paper off the floor before Bane could make the attempt. The plastic straw that was doubling as a chest tube, stood erectly from Bane's muscled side and prevented him from bending too hastily.
She ran her eyes over the language that was close to being dead, sprinkled with names she could clearly read.
Names of officials in Gotham City, members of city councils, CEO's.
"What is this?" Jane asked as she held up the paper, the words facing him.
As Bane reached for the paper, outside the van, at a nearby camouflaged tent that was obscured behind a patch of cattails, the single occupant of the tent turned up the volume on the radio station that played Christmas music twenty-four hours a day.
"You better watch out."
"You better not cry."
"You better not pout."
Fred and Haven's lyrics in a C major continued as Bane set the notebook aside, focusing the weight of his full attention on Jane.
"It will eventually be a thousand names for the thousand lives I will take in Talia's honor."
Jane looked down at the paper, frowning at the names she could clearly read.
"Commissioner James Gordon," she read aloud from the paper.
"Detective John Blake."
"He's making a list."
"He's checking it twice."
"He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice."
"The Gotham Police Department."
"Robert Ales?" Jane asked as she looked back across at Bane, the name familiar from somewhere.
"The CEO of the OWL Newsgroup."
Jane nodded as she scanned the rest of the page.
"He'll kill you when you're sleeping."
"And he knows when you're awake."
"He knows you've been very fucking bad."
"Who else is on your list?" Jane asked, holding out the paper towards him.
Bane plucked the paper from her amazingly steady fingertips, continuing to write after he tucked the paper away.
He named other city and law enforcement officials, CEO's and their underlings, certain academics, and other news journalists. Bane spoke each name while writing it out, the pencil moving in languorous fluidity.
Bane didn't know that Batman had survived the blast, or his name would've been at the top.
The news of Bruce Wayne's death hadn't reached his believed to be dead ears.
The tabloids were in love with the story of the billionaire with the perfectly coifed hair and even white teeth swan diving to splatter onto the concrete.
Many believed it was a suicide due to anything from an impending sex scandal to some good old-fashioned white-collar crime.
"Is my name going to end up on your list?"
Bane paused his writing before setting the pencil down entirely and looking up at her as he spoke.
"I'll revisit that after I've completed my list," he vaguely answered, the epinephrine's effect beginning to recede, leaving his nerve beds raw, exposed.
Leaving him vulnerable.
Bane knew that Jane needed hope as he spoke in a strained rasp, taking measured breaths.
"If you do, you will precede only me directly in death."
"You're going to kill yourself?" Jane asked, the surprise plain in her voice.
"Wouldn't you give your life for someone you love?"
Jane was quick to nod. "If it meant they would live, but that woman is definitely gone," unable to help but glance at his calloused hands, Talia's ashes still stuck under his blunt, uneven fingernails.
Bane opened his mouth to speak, nearly admitting that Talia was his entire world and existence.
He was lost without her.
Talia had been Mercury, him orbiting in fealty.
Her fire was snuffed out and he'd been banished to deep space, lost to the pull of Neptune.
Bane was only existing, his breathing automatic. It would have been better if he'd truly been a corpse, carved up by Jane, his organs examined and weighed before being placed into a plastic bag, zip-tied and sewn back up into his hollowed out visceral cavity.
He remained silent, abruptly turning his attention back to his handwritten list of the naughty and naughtier.
Jane echoed his silence.
The temperature outside dropped with the dying of the light, and she suppressed a shiver when the cold filled the van.
Bane glanced up and watched as Jane began to pull at the sheet over the gurney's rigid padding.
He reached over into the bag of belongings that had been stripped from his declared dead body and tossed his thick Shearling coat to land next to her.
Jane released the end of the sheet she had bunched up in her good hand, the Gotham City Morgue letters printed in a cold, black font.
She was too cold to dismiss his offer and quickly slipped into the heavy coat.
"Thank you," she murmured gratefully as the wool smoothed along her body, the fibers holding his woodsy, masculine scent. Jane felt like she was in a cocoon with the comforting warmth of the heavy coat.
"You're going to get cold, and you can't risk an infection with that," Jane said, sitting up straight, gesturing at the modified chest tube.
"Thank you for your concern," Bane murmured in a dry rasp as he returned to fishing in the set of plastic bags.
Before Jane could say anything, Bane pulled out another epi-pen and had the needle jammed in his thigh before her lips could part.
"You should be careful with those," Jane began to caution, pausing at the smile that pulled at the corner of Bane's lips.
Bane was intrigued by the sneer of Jane's beautiful lips before she spoke. "You know what? Fuck it, take them all," she hissed before reaching over and adjusting the head of the gurney to a moderate incline.
Bane narrowed his eyes, a deep frown pulling at his forehead as he watched Jane lay down, her back to him, buried in the bountiful warmth of his wooled coat.
He wanted to defend his earlier words about Talia and what it meant to love.
To sacrifice.
To serve.
Complete and utter devotion.
Bane wanted to impress upon Jane of having a heart that only beat for another, your soul intertwined with theirs.
He didn't, instead he turned his attention to his list. The epinephrine had him back to feeling robust, full of fiery passion in planning vengeance for the loss of Talia's life, finally fulfilling Ras al Ghul's destiny.
Inside the camouflaged Gotham City Coroner van it was cold, filled with lofty plans and an unknown future past the rising of the sun.
Downtown at the tri-level Gotham City Mall, it continued to look a lot like Christmas.