"Yes?" Bane echoed.

"Well this isn't what I imagined as a lead-up to a proposal might be but yes," Jane answered, adding in the moments as he lowered his face towards her. "On one condition."

Bane froze, his lips less than an inch from touching hers. "What's the condition?" he asked, his exhalation hot against her lips.

"I want you to tell me you're done with this quest, this display for that dead woman."

"She is more than just a dead woman," Bane said in measured tones, speaking carefully.

Jane gave him a sad smile as she closed the space between them, pressing her lips to his before whispering, "in life she was more but she's not alive anymore. I drove her body to the crematorium for you," Jane murmured before she returned her lips to his.

Bane was compelled on a chemical level to return the press of her lips, increase the urgency as he pulled her closer.

Jane settled on Bane's lap, the blanket slipping, the fire bathing her back in warmth as she spoke. "I then drove you to the cliffs of Devil's Heart Cove so you could scatter her ashes. She is dead, her hold on you is gone," Jane added, her breath hitching as Bane's large hands settled on the roundest part of her hips, squeezing the supple flesh as he tugged her closer, her thighs falling to either side of him.

"I'm here in front of you," Jane said, shifting to grind their pelvises together, forcing a low groan from Bane as her voice dropped to near breathlessness. "I will not live a life with you in the shadow of the dead."

Bane settled his hands on the fullest part of Jane's hips, squeezing the supple flesh, bringing the center of their bodies as close together as possible, not a beam of moonlight could pass between them.

"Where do you want to live this life?" he asked on a stilted rasp.

"To live with you in the light, free from the ghosts of the past," Jane managed as Bane trailed his fingertips along the waistband of Jane's loose-fitting pants, yanking at the fabric with enough force that it tore.

She gasped at the sound of the cotton fibers ripping, dropping a hand to his thick wrist, "no, I want to know you're done with taking lives in the name of that dead woman."

Bane's chest rapidly rose and fell, his body temperature soaring as he moved his hands to Jane's waist and moved her off his lap, settling her on the hard ground before abruptly rising and stalking to the van.

Jane watched him yank open the rear doors of the van, briefly disappearing inside.

She jumped when he slammed the doors, returning to the fireside with his handwritten notes clutched in his large hands.

Bane didn't speak or even scan his handwritten lists a final time before he dropped each piece of paper into the fire, the flames flashing brighter as they devoured his words.

Jane watched the last page be eaten by the flames before Bane returned to her side, remaining silent, only reaching for her, pulling at her clothes, and pushing her onto the ground.

She allowed him to tug her underneath his formidable bulk before he dropped a hand between them, fumbling his painfully hard cock free from his pants, stroking his pulsating thickness before he settled a large hand on the inside of each of her inner thighs, pushing her legs further apart, exposing her intimacy to him.

He felt her shiver under his hands, her taut flesh close to shaking as he guided the rounded, sensitive head of his cock through her silken folds, urging wetness to flood her center as he teased her to a more and more stimulated state.

The flames that grew brighter as they consumed his carefully composed list, shed a moment of bountiful light on her femininity, the folds growing slick before he slowly slid his rigid length inside her, sitting back in order to watch himself impale her, to sink every bit of his hardness inside her, forcing her body to stretch around his thrusting thickness.

Bane's guilt competed with his raging lust as he plunged himself inside her with a growing fervor, sweat beaded up on his bare skin as he finally spoke, his voice a growl over the wet sounds of their bodies intimately meeting.

"We shall live in the light Jane," he rasped, his voice hitching as his rhythmic thrusting threatened to turn frenzied.

Jane didn't know as her eyes went from meeting Bane's fiery caramel eyes down to watch his cock fill her, that he was lying.

She didn't know that the act of him burning his list was hollow.

The stroke of midnight would herald the beginning of the end for Gotham City.

Bane had desperately wanted to abandon all goddamn hope, let Talia and her plan for vengeance die a natural death.

The moment Jane had first whispered her disapproval of Bane's activities, he'd fallen quiet and worked in the hours that Jane slept to accelerate the end of Gotham City.

Bane had his followers creating a vacuum around Gotham City, once ready, collective punishment would follow.

He would take Talia's vision, make it more violent than a supernova, the downtown would be turned into a warzone.

An infraction for one would be an infraction for all.

The swing of the pendulum would usher in the sixth seal, a great earthquake was prophesized, shaking, the moon turning to blood and the end of lives.

Bane perverted the earthquake metaphor to embody multiple manmade bombs planted around the city.

His disciples had been steadily placing explosives throughout the city, tucking them in every conceivable place amidst the city, C-4 Easter eggs.

The malleable Composition 4 material was easily placed out of sight, the entire city was stuffed full of the olive-colored compound.

The movement on the hands of the large clock over the Gotham City Exchange would start the countdown to the end of Gotham City, Talia's ashes would witness the destruction as the individual grains swirled in the flotsam and jetsam of the Atlantic Ocean current.