Chapter Nine: Reshaped by Trauma
Jane stared at the side of the van's interior, running her fatigued eyes over the different OSHA and HIPPA regulations. Her body was drained, not enough energy to blink but her mind was chaotic, a roiling brew of anxiety filled Jane's vascular system, bathing her heart valves in potent fear.
Bane didn't sleep much. The epinephrine's effects eventually left his body but a dull, buzzing remained in its wake.
For a little while when the sky was at its darkest, Bane closed his eyes and found some recharging in an instant, deep state of REM slumber.
He had to lean back as twisting his thick trunk caused sharp bolts of pain from his modified chest tube, the straw made of 100% recyclable materials.
The moon rose high overhead, its full edges ragged.
The moon that seemed brighter in the cloudless sky kept watch over all of Gotham City and every inhabitant, whether it be winged, bipedal or four-legged.
The bloated moon illuminated the curtained sliding glass door of the hotel room with the roomy king-sized bed in the center of the city.
McKay murmured in his sleep as Dallas slipped under the covers behind him, molding himself against McKay's back, wrapping a muscular arm around him. Blake had been thrilled to drop off the two Special Agent's at the bougie hotel.
Selina was a four-legged, bipedal cat as she hunkered down in a garage she'd broken into hours away from the heart of Gotham City. She'd been able to pick the simple lock on the two-car garage's side door.
She'd crept close to the split-level home at the end of the cul-de-sac. The home was cloaked in darkness and the garage held a bunch of dusty exercise equipment, a couple baskets of laundry and a sensible hybrid with a dent on the rear driver's side door.
Selina huddled next to the water heater, pressing her body against the hot metal, practically purring as the front of her body began to defrost. She stepped away from the heat source long enough to paw through the baskets of clothes for a heavy blanket that she wrapped around herself before returning to the inviting warmth of the energy-efficient appliance.
Selina sniffed softly, her nose running from the cold. She hunkered down, not knowing that the homeowner's had the Second Amendment memorized.
The morning sun arrived, rising sluggishly in the sky, chasing away the darkness that shrouded Gotham City.
The warm rays warmed the outside of the van, perched on the outskirts of the sprawling Tent City.
The sunlight began to awaken the inhabitants of the encampment and soon the ambient noise of continuing life pulled Jane from sleep.
Jane rolled onto her back, her mouth dry, the corner of her eyelids gritty and smudged with mascara.
Bane knew the moment that Jane began to rise to consciousness by the change in the sound of her breathing. He watched her as she rolled over, keeping her eyes closed.
There was nothing to see on the ceiling of the van anyways besides a few spots where the metal was wearing through.
The medical examiner's office didn't generally do very well in any of the City Council budgets, no one really cared about what happened after someone died.
Bane was determined to be silent.
A stoic carved statue.
An involuntary spasm occurred at that moment in the space between his fourth and fifth ribs.
Bane's wet cough broke the silence.
Jane blew out a low breath as she opened her eyes and looked over to where Bane uttered a series of harsh coughs as the intercostal muscles between his fourth and fifth ribs loudly protested the straw she'd jammed between them.
Jane rubbed her eyes before sitting up, being mindful of her wrist, the ache having subsided to a somewhat muffled state under the snug, expertly applied elastic wrap. "Let me see," she murmured as she gestured towards his mid-section.
Bane pulled the sliced scrub top apart, exposing the early medicine style chest tube.
Jane narrowed her eyes at her incision and the edges of the skin, looking for discoloration or suspicious discharge.
"You'll heal," she finally said, dragging her eyes up to meet his as she added. "But the disease will remain."
Bane held her eyes, wordless, as Jane tried to look inside him, seeking what part of his brain was misfiring, the anomalous neural activity that made him a zealous murderer still fighting after the death of his Goddess.
"How many people have seen underneath your mask?" Jane asked, adding when he remained wordless, the only movement was the vibration of his ebony pupils. "I've never had a conversation with a reanimated corpse."
"I was never a corpse Jane."
She nodded at his moot point. "You were declared dead, and I've never heard the dead speak."
"That was an institutional failing within the system of which you're employed."
"Okay," Jane said after a lengthy pause, "why here? What now?" she asked as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.
"I'll heal in anonymity with your assistance, gather my strength before I build an army."
"An army," Jane echoed.
Bane nodded as he sat back, thinking of the hundreds of people within the Tent City on the fringes of Gotham City.
"These people feel as though they have nothing, I'll show them they have value," he began.
"Their hands will fulfill Ras al Ghul's destiny, their legs will move through the city, enslaving the unwashed and elite at my command. They will take each life I have written down without question or hesitation."
Jane only blinked as Bane continued.
"I will feed their spirit and nourish their bodies," Bane murmured, thinking of the established trade routes he was aware of that operated behind the scenes. He merely needed a phone with even a modicum of a signal capacity.
He only needed to communicate a few words to a memorized number to bring food to feed as much as 5,000 with just a stack of buttery crackers and half a can of tuna.
In three days' time, Bane would emerge from the van.
The rear doors would open much in the same way that Mother Mary found the stone rolled away from the tomb of her crucified son, the punctured flesh in his side just beginning to knit back together.
Bane closed his eyes, hearing the first piano note in his symphonic composition for genocide. His army would swarm, flank, circle, and strike.
They'd thieve lives quietly if needed or for the entire world to see, splashed on HD 4K screens.
A small grunt spilled from between Bane's lips as he imagined his methodical takeover, veritable mind control of the masses in exchange for a hot meal and being regarded as human.
Bane would be like one of the affected wolves of Yellowstone. He'd infect the brains like the toxoplasmosis that infiltrated the neurons of the wolves brains, changed them.
Outside the parked van that projected the façade of being on its last wooden leg, potent curiosity filled with air like operatic cicadas.
A good stone's throw from the camouflaged Gotham City Coroner van, a longtime resident of Tent City reclined in his squeaky chaise lounge.
He drummed his fingertips on the tops of his thighs as he narrowed his eyes at the quiet van.
He sniffed hard and spit on the ground before fishing a battered pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket.
He slipped on a knit cap, covering his fringe of blonde hair, obscuring the reason he was called Halo by those once they got to know him.
Halo smoked two cigarettes down to the filter as he stared thoughtfully at the van where there was no sign of movement.
No signs of life.
The next closest neighbor was a couple that were now so filthy, emaciated, and anemic that they were virtually unrecognizable was Serena Kozlov and her husband Arnold.
They'd once hosted benefit gala's that the Governor attended.
Serena was an heiress; her family had made their money in vodka.
Arnold was a hedge fund manager.
Their appetites grew hard to maintain and soon Arnold got creative with his math and figures submitted to the SEC.
Arnold's pristine white-collar made the Ponzi scheme like a goddamn speeding ticket in terms of violating the law.
They'd positively fucked over practically everyone they'd ever shared airspace with, some people they left penniless, homeless, and hopeless.
Some people lost so much in such startling rapidity that they were left with such emptiness and fearful of their future that they swallowed bottles of prescription meds and chased them down with the vodka from Serena's family.
They were practically drawn and quartered, people wanted to disarticulate Arnold like William fucking Wallace and hang his limbs from the streetlights lining the Gotham City Exchange.
Arnold and Serena lost everything, were ostracized, and banished from all that they knew.
Arnold had stashed some cash along the way and that money kept them stocked up on a steady drug supply for a while.
Their cash dwindled and the mother's milk they were suckling through the Fentanyl spewing supple nipple ran dry.
They had to resort to inhuman acts to keep their thirst just barely sated.
Serena used her cunt to keep them in a state that could be considered close to living.
Arnold began to feel less squeamish about sucking a cock in order to have something to take away the pain of reality.
They lived in a garish green tent.
They'd found it in a dumpster, still in the original packaging, never even unzipped.
The original purchaser decided they didn't like the peculiar shade of green once they'd gotten to their car. They had enough disposable income that they could afford to be a lazy sack and not bother walking back to return to tent because the dented dumpster was closer.
Serena and Arnold were dying, their organs were limping along, their heartbeats waffled between racing and sluggishness.
Each breath could've been the last one before death.
Serena and Arnold were far from their glory days of purchasing baubles at auctions and writing large checks to someone poor, checks that Arnold would later funnel into his personal account.
In the van, Bane opened his eyes, finding Jane's already on him.
Bane felt the smallest struggle not to blink or twitch, to conceal any reaction to Jane's penetrating gaze.
He'd kept his footing on the deck of a shabby boat on the Black Sea as squalls threatened to run the vessel into the Rock of Gibraltar but somehow Jane's wordless scrutiny was unnerving.
Bane had stalked the length of The Great Wall and walked the same path as the Pharaohs, been given safe harbor in the Cradle of Humankind yet the less than five-and half-foot tall Jane Amelia Bell, stained Bane's ferocity, and palpable masculinity with doubt.
Bane knew he needed to construct a line, parameters.
Not something drawn in the sands of the shore where Talia had become part of the flotsam and jetsam of the majestic Atlantic Ocean.
Not the printed flat line from an EKG monitor but a deeper trench around the van in the ground littered with the detritus of smashed cigarette butts, used needles and candy wrappers.
Jane took slow, measured breaths, acutely aware of her posture, expression, and tone as she spoke.
"There aren't many of those epi-pens left. How am I supposed to provide 'care'?" she asked, air quoting.
Bane smiled, thinking of the bustling bazaars in the Middle East, a place where one can find anything.
"Everything you need can be found all around us," Bane murmured.
Jane nodded. "Maybe, but if you have injuries to deeper structures, you'll need medical intervention and treatment I can't give."
Bane parroted her nod.
Jane was right without knowing that the blast from the Bat Pod, fired upon and presumably killed by The Cat, had a tremendous change to Bane's anatomy and physiological structures.
He had narrowly avoided death by his tactile vest taking the brunt of the projectile.
Bane's flesh was saved from being ripped apart and shredded to ribbons by the bits of flying shrapnel from the Kevlar sleeves of his reinforced long-sleeved shirt.
The impact forced his body to rearrange itself to keep from dying of complete exsanguination and total bodily trauma.
His sinews and ligaments threatened to snap before folding in a manner that kept them intact.
The projectile's blast threatened to open him from stem to stern, eviscerate his firm flesh, hollow him out but his vest absorbed the impact, did its job.
The air had been forced from his lungs until only the stagnant tidal breath remained. His heart rhythm had been reduced to a quiver and if the Gotham City First Responder's had bothered to hook him up to a cardiac monitor, his faint life would've been detected.
Bane had been partially healed by his declaration of death.
The shot from the Bat Pod had altered his anatomy, his was a landscape reshaped by trauma.