Chapter Fifteen: The Face of a Dead Woman
Jane's sleep was erratic, she didn't end up finding much respite as the moon moved across the night sky.
Bane had long since ceased to need lengthy amounts of sleep, the damage that had been inflicted on his body from a lifetime of service and years of depending on his aerosolized serum had altered his brain's receptors, the lack of a need for sleep had become a side effect.
He found it difficult to concentrate on his list in front of him with Jane as a potent distraction next to him.
Bane found his eyes more on Jane as she kept her eyes closed and tried to keep her sounds of pain to herself.
Biology won in the sparse moments that Jane was able to find actual sleep, her wrist's throbbing brought her right back to the surface of painful consciousness.
Bane curled his large hands into fists as he fought an urge to reach out and touch her, to impart comfort. His brow pulled into a deep frown as he was confronted with the ugly truth that his touch did not offer solace.
The rest of the settlers in the encampment all spent their own nights as any other.
Most people had their routines, life continued as night bled into dawn.
Their closest neighbors Serena and Arnold Kozlov would both die within minutes of each other as the first rays of the sun began to banish the darkness.
The bright glow and shafts of sunlight became daggers thrown by Abraham Van Helsing to vanquish the night where Nosferatu called home.
Serena and Arnold's bodies could no longer metabolize the amount of drugs they pushed into their veins.
Their sluggish livers had grown large in their withered mid-sections, their hearts could no longer labor to keep steadily beating.
Serena's lungs stopped accepting air, the alveoli collapsed, and she stopped living.
Arnold had already lapsed into a state of unconsciousness and lingered until his face became warmed by the sun.
Arnold Kozlov died in the light.
In the center of Gotham City at the police station, Gordon, Blake, and the Special Agents had worked through the night.
Around 2am, they'd ordered hot wings and Gordon brought out a bottle of scotch to wash them down.
As Gordon was looking at photos of Talia's dead body after she'd been cut apart and neatly sewn back together, he reflected on how benevolent and generous she'd been as Miranda Tate.
He remembered her speaking to him after he'd confronted the chickenshit Foley.
"I hear you're looking for men Commissioner. How about me instead?"
"I can't ask you."
"My company built it, Bruce Wayne built it, he wanted to destroy it, It was me who didn't listen."
"Please."
Gordon had looked at Blake.
Then Miranda.
He shook his head as he brought himself back to reality, remembering how much his nod and simple words had put into motion what could've been the end of Gotham City.
"Let's go."
When the light began to stream into the van windows, Jane slowly opened her eyes. She'd put up some DIY curtains that took the edge off the light's sharpness and offered some privacy.
She rolled onto her back, aware of Bane's eyes on her back the moment she covered a yawn.
Jane pulled his coat tighter around herself, the chill strong that morning, snagging her thumb on the coat's wool lining.
Cramps roiled through her lower belly as she sat up, groaning as her stiff body protested the movement.
"I need to use the bathroom," she stated as she reached for her plastic bag of goodies, rooting around for a half-open bag of berry and citrus fruit chews.
Bane murmured an agreeable rasp and pushed open the rear van doors, waiting as Jane slid off the shoved together gurneys.
Jane ignored his extended hand, stepping down to land hard on the ground.
They weren't terribly far from the van when she caught the flash of movement as something tumbled down from the front of the coat, bouncing once on the ground.
Jane squatted and scooped the object off the ground before Bane could.
She half-turned when he reached out for it.
"What is this?" she asked as she narrowed her eyes at the small, weighted object she'd plucked from the dusty earth.
The fallen object was a muted gold locket.
Jane dug her nail along the seam before the locket pooped open with the tiniest of metallic clicks.
She was soon eye-to-eye with the face of the dead woman who was now particles in the moving water of the Atlantic tide, sediments of Talia swirled with the flotsam and jetsam in the seawater and were filtered through the gills of a Thresher shark.
The locket had belonged to Talia's mother, the gold was always pressed to the naked skin over her heart.
The photos were of Talia as a young girl and the other photo was of Ras al Ghul.
When Talia had embraced the skinsuit of the austere Miranda Tate she had wanted to ensure her locket was unequivocally safe.
She'd entrusted the locket with Bane who'd kept it inside the lining of his coat.
The roughness of the EMT's and morgue staff removing his clothes when he was labeled and toe-tagged had caused the lining of his coat to tear, creating an opening in the fabric, giving the locket time to breach the surface and tumble to the ground.
"Is this yours?" Jane asked as she turned back towards Bane, closing her hand into a fist around the locket when she found Bane's hand extended.
"That's enough questions," Bane rasped as he took a step closer.
Jane lowered her closed hand, tightening her fingers until her knuckles turned white when she saw Bane's increasing desire to have the locket returned.
"Is it yours?" she repeated.
Bane didn't want to discuss the locket; he just wanted it back.
He ignored her when she began to speak again and snaked a hand out to close around her forearm, his fingertips overlapping, squeezing the lean tissue.
Jane gave a startled shout at Bane's abrupt grip and tried to step backwards.
The uneven ground made her stumble, Bane reflexively tugged her towards him to keep her from falling.
He was thankful that he got the barest glance of Deborah as she took her regular morning walk with her thermos full of coffee. The French roast was sweetened enough to make her teeth hurt.
Deborah had heard Jane's first shout and hugged the broad trunk of a tree when her eyes found Bane tugging Jane towards him.
Bane didn't let Deborah know that he'd seen her as he dropped his voice to a low grumble.
"Your new friend is watching us, she needs to perceive my touch as one of passion," Bane growled as he dropped his other hand to her hip, smoothing to settle on the natural curve of her lower back, his fingers splayed on her taut flesh as he dropped his lips to Jane's.
He stole her breath as he pressed his scarred lips against hers.
Bane released her wrist so her could pull her closer, sliding his large hand to span the wing of her shoulder blade as he was able to taste a woman without the encumbrance of the mask.
He'd never thought that he'd be able to press his lips against another's.
A deep growl spilled through Bane's broad chest as he tasted the sweetness of the sugary candy on her lips.
He could feel Deborah's eyes upon them.
Bane knew he must make his touch appear to one to stimulate and excite over inflict pain and punishment.
Jane was caught between fight and flight, that frightening and paralyzing void known as freeze.
Bane felt her body grow rigid, knew how much he was taking from her, knew how much he was capitalizing on his greater strength and ability to consume and possess all of her.
Jane's body responded before her mind. She didn't want to notice every part of their bodies that touched, the press of his palm in the natural curve of her lower back, moving in slow circles, savoring every bit of contact.
He reluctantly lifted his lips, keeping Jane pulled close to the front of his bodies, not enough space for a shaft of sunlight to slip between their bodies, when he heard Deborah return to her morning walk with her honeybee sweet coffee, the gunmetal grey thermos had a good-sized dent in the side but kept her coffee hot.
Bane lifted a hand to cup Jane's face, tracing the rough pad of his thumb around her lips as he spoke. "She couldn't be allowed to witness violence," he growled.
Jane wished she could've pushed at his broad chest, but her wrist pain stopped her, she could only wrench herself free of his hold, slapping as hard as her skeletal aches would allow.
"You're a fucking caveman," Jane shouted as she threw the locket at him before spinning on her heel and stomping back to the van.
Bane's lips pulled into a smile as he watched Jane return to the van in an assertive march and yank one of the van's rear doors open before disappearing inside, slamming the door behind herself.
He ran his tongue across his lips, capturing every essence of her taste, the berry hint to the saliva they'd shared as he poked his tongue through her lips, tentatively fucking her mouth.
As Bane closed his eyes, grumbling with satisfaction as he savored the taste of Jane that remained on his lips, inside the van, Jane was angry at herself for the mixed feelings Bane's touch had elicited.
She emptied her bladder into a plastic bowl and dumped it out the side window. She cleaned out the bowl with a combination of a generic hand sanitizer and cotton wipes as a pained gasp escaped from between Bane's lips as he squatted down to retrieve the fallen locket.
He looked down at the locket nestled in the center of his palm, the metal was cool against his skin.
Bane closed his large hand into a fist and shoved the locket into his pocket before walking back to the van.
He opened the doors to find Jane sitting on the edge of the gurney, looking through his stack of handwritten papers.
Jane didn't look over when Bane pulled open the rear doors, she recognized a lot of names in his evenly spaced letters.
Despite her silence, Bane could see Jane's worry at what he might have planned in the immediacy.
Bane chuckled, uncharacteristically amused, "you can put that fear away, I need the energy to heal, I will not harm you."
"What happens when you regain full strength?" Jane asked as she looked over at him.
Bane heard her, silence was his answer before he ended up closing the van door.
Jane stared at the closed doors long after Bane walked away to find some uncongested air to pull into his damaged lungs and whisper the answer to himself.