Chapter Two: You're Not my Friend
Bane was helpless to watch the fleet of vehicles departing, he could still hear Anja's cries of terror before they abruptly stopped.
He knew many different ways to make someone's screaming cease within the blink of an eye.
Bane picked up both of his children, their little chests heaving in fear as they were also rendered impotent as they watched their mother depart.
In the sky above, the gas giant Jupiter with its angry storm that was visible for sky gazers for just a few hours, Bane concealed his emotions from his children, shut down his expression into one of complete neutrality, his suffering was not one that had many witnesses.
Bane brought the children inside and settled them in front of the large fireplace before adding wood and torn shreds of paper, bringing the flames back to life as he wrapped a heavy blanket around his children. He pulled a satellite phone from a dark wood cabinet, a phone filled with numbers of contacts that he'd made with people he had met all over the world.
As Bane dialed the first of many numbers of the evening, he prepared squat mugs of rich cocoa and whole milk together for his sobbing children. He whispered to them softly, soothing words they were able to hear amidst the anguish and gnashing of teeth.
In the sky above, Jupiter turned its attention from the upheaved household to the caravan of vehicles fleeing Bane's property.
Anja had been screaming.
A deliberate strike to the base of her neck had rendered her unconscious.
She would've crumbled to the filthy floor of the sturdy utility vehicle if Jericho hadn't caught her in his wiry strong arms.
He secured her onto the upholstered bench seat before settling next to her, staring down at her clothed belly, so much unexpected and delicious potential.
Anja was so much more than Jericho ever could've imagined, carrying Bane's child made her near-priceless, he briefly closed his eyes and thanked his god.
Jericho opened his eyes after whispering his gratitude's to the divine and laid a large hand, the skin weathered from the sun, on Anja's belly that was beginning to bloat as cell division occurred inside her, the embryo small in its beginning formation.
His dark eyes moistened as his thoughts went to the past, his eyes dark, deeply brown, the minute flecks of green buried themselves in the mahogany depths, unmined pockets of jade.
Jericho eventually took his eyes off of Anja and turned his attention to his own satellite phone and series of calls to make as the bulky vehicle was driven at the safest top speed on the icy roads on the way to the airstrip where a fully fueled plane was waiting to fly from Alaska, and after a few plane changes, to the continent of Africa.
For a while, several constellations moved through the night sky, eavesdropping on Bane and Jericho's conversations.
One of Bane's phone calls was to a brother-in-arms, now a physician. His comrade would be in the air within an hour of Bane's phone call, he'd check on the children and bring ammunition along with his medical bag.
Every moment since witnessing Anja's abduction, Bane was pulled in 4.5 billion directions.
He was forced to keep his composure in front of the children.
Bane needed to prevent vulnerability from leaking into his tone when speaking to others, not allow his anguish to shine through.
While he moved through task after task, comforting his children in between, Anja moved further and further from his arms and heart.
On the rear bench seat of the bulky utility vehicle, on the way to the idling aircraft, inside Anja's just growing uterus, the plum-sized fetus's bone marrow was just starting to form, beginning to produce its own white blood cells.
Anja didn't feel Jericho's eyes on her as she lay unconscious.
She didn't know that she was being driven to the airfield, on the airfield was a waiting plane, fully fueled, which would get them a good distance from home in Alaska in order to reach a larger plane capable of flying her across the ocean.
Bane wanted eyes on the departing convoy of vehicles, needed to know where they were headed. In between comforting his children and making calls to encrypted numbers, he dispatched a drone up into the night sky.
The matte black drone raced after the bulky, utility vehicles, Bane able to watch the camera feed from inside the toasty warm cabin.
The drone's feed reflected the vehicles heading towards the remote airstrip.
Bane's heart was at once in his throat when the vehicles all screeched to a halt, armed men spilled out.
Bane narrowed his eyes at the square HD screen as Jericho emerged from the rear of the vehicle, his sharp eyes scanning the sky, knowing Bane would've sent up eyes.
Jericho smiled as he spoke in a harsh language to a man that looked like a child but had a full beard, until he was brought a rifle with a high-powered XTR scope, taking his time to get the drone within his sights.
Bane was staring at the screen, indirectly down the barrel of the rifle as Jerico's thin lips pulled into a smile and he pulled the trigger.
The drone exploded with technological glory, the camera feed falling away from Bane's screen, leaving himself looking back at his own pained face.
At the cabin, Bane continued to stare at himself, "Anja," he whispered, his tone strained.
As if she'd heard him, at the airstrip, Anja began to stir as she was lifted from the bench seat, crying out as she cracked open her eyes, trying to look everywhere at once.
The bright lights of the airstrip blinded her, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut.
The strong arms that cradled her felt like Bane's.
But they were not, they belonged to someone who cared nothing at all for her.
Anja shouted and tried to squirm out of her un-charming prince's arms as she was lowered into a stiff-backed seat, her hands were batted away as though they were thistles in the wind, a seatbelt buckled and cinched tight around her midsection.
She forced her eyes open, swiveling her head like an owl having a grand mal seizure, trying to understand where she was in relation to time and space.
Her throat was too dry to form coherent words, what little moisture was coating her tongue evaporated in an instant when her eyes landed on Jericho sitting across from her, his hands casually resting on his knees, his lean legs were slightly parted, he appeared relaxed.
Jericho wasn't relaxed but there was nothing to illicit fear from the pregnant woman on the verge of tears sitting across from him as the plane taxied and climbed high into the night sky.
Jericho looked away from Sofia only long enough to catch the eye of someone sitting out of Anja's line of sight.
At once, a hard-looking man with a missing eye brought over a bottle of water, the label ripped cleanly free of the plastic.
Where the man's left eye had been, was a mound of scarified tissue, spiderlike lines remained from the surgeon's poor suturing skills.
Anja pushed the bottle away, shaking her head, she was dying of thirst, on the verge of drinking seawater but she wouldn't allow it.
Jericho chuckled and murmured a few words in a harsh language to the one-eyed man who promptly handed Jericho the bottle and disappeared into a seat towards the front of the plane.
Anja watched as Jericho slowly twisted off the opaque plastic cap and took a couple small sips before holding out the bottle towards her.
Her hand visibly shook as she reached for the bottle, she was careful to avoid any contact with his fingertips. After a few hesitating seconds, Anja drank deeply from the bottle, pausing as she nearly vomited what she'd just consumed, continuing when the nauseating sensation passed.
"Who are you?" she asked, thinking she should surely be able to talk, unless he was only planning on finding just the right altitude before he threw her out of an airplane.
Jericho looked at Anja for a long time.
"Jericho."
He could see in her features that his name rung no bells, continuing without waiting for her to ask a follow-up.
"You won't know my name or significance."
"How do you know Bane?" Anja asked after a lengthy pause, her hunger making her light-headed.
Jerico never stopped looking at her as he rooted around in a paper bag, withdrawing a walnut.
Anja watched impassively as Jericho cracked open the beige shell with its deep mahogany seams with one hand.
She smirked, thinking of Bane's greater shows of strength, the shell's crack killed her smirk as it reminded her of her father's neck within Bane's strong hands.
Anja knew she needed to eat and was fine taking the shelled walnuts from Jericho's palm.
"Where is Talia?" he asked as he continued cracking open the walnuts.
"She's dead," Anja mumbled in between chewing.
Jericho nodded as he began to explain his history with Bane and the once living vengeful Talia al Ghul who carried light in a horn across the continents in search of all who had ever wronged Ras al Ghul.
He described a day that started like any other day upon the sands his home was built upon on the continent of Africa.
Jericho's simple home was amongst his flock of sheep, making a living through selling and trading the wool, milk, and cheese.
He'd been working under the sun with his young daughter, they'd been weeding their patch of yellow onion and garlic, the next day was already planned to work with the yams.
His daughter methodically plucked the weeds from the hot earth.
Jericho rose to his full height when he heard a series of loud pops from far away, he strained his ears, unable to hear more, squinting his eyes, finding nothing on the horizon.
After a while of no further sounds, he resumed squatting to work his fingers in the warm dirt.
Jericho and his daughter both looked over when they heard Maribel calling for them.
Maribel walked towards them, holding a tray with a pitcher of hibiscus blossom tea for herself and her daughter and ginger beer for Jericho.
Jericho smiled broadly as he watched his heavily pregnant wife close the distance between them, heavily pregnant, glowing as though lit inside by a thousand suns.
He inadvertently squeezed the walnut shell he was holding too tight, crushing the soft meat as well. He wiped his palm on his thigh before he resumed cracking and talking.
Emotion fell from Jericho's voice as he described hearing the popping noises again, this time suddenly too close.
His heart had threatened to bisect itself; his pregnant wife a stone's throw away and his young daughter clutching his leg.
Anja sat up straighter in the chair, adjusting the seatbelt as Jericho told her about the day his wife stopped living.
"Maribel was struck by gunfire between Talia and a rogue mercenary she was hunting who had wronged her father. Maribel was struck in the heart, certainly dead by the time I reached her, abandoning my daughter amongst the vegetables."
"As the gunfire continued, my barn caught on fire and the plow was destroyed. Maribel was near time to give birth and I found myself clawing at her garments, slicing into her belly until I reached the sac that held my child."
Jericho would never be able to stop seeing himself cut into his wife's skin, marred with stretch marks, an anatomical homage to a tiger's stripes. He'd sliced his way into the uterus. Until amniotic fluid spilled forth and he could plunge his hands into the warm wetness and pull out the baby.
"My son was dead," Jericho stated, "I tried to give him breath," he said, remembering the touch of his dead son's lips as he pushed his living breath into dead lungs.
"The firefight continued until they chased the mercenary into a field. That's when I met Talia," Jericho said, "and Bane."
"She skipped over to me, glory in her footfalls and words," he said, anger clouding his eyes as he described her introducing herself, offering apologies and nodding to the big, masked man who handed Talia a leather sack of gold coins, an astonishing value.
"I'm sorry my friend is what she said to me," Jericho stated, fury in his tone, "she is not my friend."
Anja cleared her throat, her discomfort growing, "I'm sorry that happened to you, if it's any consolation, her death had to have been panful."
She'd seen the diagram of the explosive in the parietal seam of Talia's skull, she imagined there could be vast pain or nothing.
"Talia and Bane left; the other men never looked me in the eye as they trampled my property. My daughter had never left the garden and has not spoken since, except her name. I have prayed for another wife, another child, a son," Jericho stated, his tone deeper as he stared at her, merely closing his hand around the walnut.
"God has seen my suffering and has answered my prayers, you have been delivered to me, you and the child."