Chapter Seven: No Price is too Great
Bane was silent in the wake of the phone call with Hess.
Cain pulled the key from the bulky vehicle's ignition, following Bane into the warm home where Madeline was readying the children ready for bed.
After he kicked off his heavy boots and showered, cleaning off the blood from taking Al's life, Bane walked into his daughter's bedroom, finding her bed empty.
His eyes found Annalisa standing by the window in her dim room, staring down at her cupped hands.
"Why are you not in bed?"
"I cannot go to bed father," she whispered.
"Why is that?"
"I can't let mommy go."
Bane walked over and joined his daughter by the tall, triple-pane glass.
He looked down at her small, cupped hands and saw a moon bean from the brightest star that had penetrated the stormy sky from the briefest clearance of the snow.
Bane closed his large hands around his daughter's, "we shall never let her go," he murmured before he gathered up his daughter in his strong arms and tucked her into bed under the heavy linen.
A peek into Sebastian's room, found his ruddy-faced son sleeping soundly.
Bane heard Madeline and Cain talking lowly in the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of utensils against plates and bowls as he headed to the spacious master bedroom he shared with Anja.
He locked the door before sitting heavily on Anja's side of the bed, sliding his hand along the top of the comforter until he could grab the nightgown she kept under her pillow.
Bane shoved his face into the satin, waterboarding his senses with Anja's scent, filling his lungs with her essence.
He laid back, sagging heavily into the mattress, staring up at the ceiling before he closed his eyes as he breathed in and out with the gown's fabric smothering his face.
He rarely slept without Anja wrapped up tight in his arms like a king spider clutching an unctuous, silk-wrapped delicacy.
Before Anja in his arms, the darkness would find him when he closed his eyes, yank him into an ocean of liquid terror in the manner of the mighty Kraken, threaten to drown him.
When the darkness had trapped him, he'd roll over, turn his back, the stoic wall of muscle to her.
He'd never wanted her to see his silent suffering.
Anja would quietly reach out and touch him, rub her warm palm in small circles in between the wings of his shoulder blades, he'd reaped bountiful reprieve in her silence comfort.
Bane's thoughts moved to the last time he'd shared the bed with Anja.
His dreams had begun to turn necrotic, his brain tissue threatening to turn towards lividity before Anja's soft touch on the bare skin of his muscular back, his dense flesh was hot to the touch.
He'd let his eyes stay closed as he focused on the sensation of her palm moving in small circles between the prominent wings of his shoulder blades.
The darkness began to recede as Anja slid herself closer to him, sliding her arm around him, until no space was left remaining between their bodies.
Bane had rolled over, content to push away the pain as Anja's hands smoothed across his chest, her lips finding his, pushing a moan into his mouth as his hands yanked her nightgown upwards, exhaling raggedly as he rolled onto his broad back, pulling her with him.
Anja gasped as she shifted, letting her legs fall open to either side of his hips, finding his cock growing rigid as she fumbled his thickness free of his pajama bottoms.
Bane brought his hands to the supple flesh of her hips, squeezing hard as she pulled her nightgown off, letting it fall soundlessly to the surface of the bed. Bane held his breath as Anja licked her palm before she reached down and gripped his hardness, stroking his length until it pulsed in time with the beat of his heart.
Bane's thoughts were suddenly encroached upon as his eyes fell past her shoulder and upon the framed pages of her father, Doctor Leonid Pavel's, journal entries.
The very journal entries that Talia al Ghul had wanted her to decipher, decode and interpret.
The words of her brilliant father that Talia wanted Anja to distort in order to fit her vengeful and genocidal narrative.
The same pages that Bane had physically and mentally abused Anja's mind, body, and soul in order to explain the knowledge him.
Anja felt the change come over Bane and knew he was looking at the journal page that had her thumbprint from where she had smeared her father's messy scribbles and scrawls.
She kept one hand stroking and sliding along the length of his cock, raising her other hand to rest her fingers on his scarred lips when Bane began to hoarsely whisper under her.
"Shhhh my love," she murmured as she rose up until she could tease the sensitive tip of his cock at her tight opening.
"Anja, I'm sorry," he gasped as she began to slide down his throbbing thickness, her intimate walls stretching to accommodate his rigidity.
"Shhhh," she whispered as she began to smooth out her rhythmic sliding up and down the length of his thickness, her gasping and the fleshy sounds of their bodies kissing, became a wet metronome.
"Forgive me," Bane rasped as his fingers tightened on her supple hips, "I killed your father, forgive me," he added, forcefully begging.
Anja rocked her hips forward, stealing Bane's breath before she pressed her fingers back to his lips, whispering, her words fragmented by passion. "We're here now, this is us now," she murmured as she slowly rose up until just the tip of his cock remained in her tight center, adding as she lowered herself, incrementally slow down his shaft, "our children are safe, sleeping, content and we are here."
Bane's eyes flew open as he clutched Anja's nightgown in his strong hands, "you will be here again," he stated to the ceiling, "I will bring you back here," he growled as he clenched his jaw and balled his hands into fists.
Days passed without another phone call from Hess.
Bane stewed, paced.
His anger and frustration turned inwards, he receded to the large, insulated shed at the rear of the property.
It was closer to a cabin than a shed, the floor was concrete however, not like the brilliant hardwood floor of the house he shared with Anja and the children.
There was a metal drain in the center of the sloped floor, the air was astringent from a recent wash of chlorine in a dead-end effort to find Anja on his own.
Bane paced the room, clenching his hands in and out of tight fists, his cheek twitching as he clenched his teeth thinking of ripping the man's tongue free of his mouth, the nerve endings twitching under the harsh florescent lighting.
The man had been very fat, morbidly so.
He was a line chef at the Greasy Spoon and Fork, the only diner immediately off the interstate, tucked right next to a gas station and public shitters.
He ate the food from same shitty menu he served, his blood moved thickly through his arteries, his cholesterol would've killed him in just a couple years if Bane hadn't on that unseasonably clear day.
For seventy-two hours, Bane stalked around the property, restless.
Cain left him to his own thoughts and breathing room.
He felt a twinge of concern when he glanced out the window at one point and saw Bane retreating into the forest with an axe once it stopped snowing.
On the other side of the world, the 4,320 minutes passed entirely different for Anja.
In a sense, her time was simpler, quieter.
Her days were routine, woken early to pray, instructed to repeat words of penitent and praise.
Anja was fed, comfortable, Babagorl attached herself to Anja, wanted her praise and to make her smile. She'd sneak into the tent as Anja was deeply sleeping, dropping to her hands and knees, crawling until she would eventually rest her head against Anja's slowly swelling belly.
Anja was a woman of science.
She knew she needed to eat and sleep, attempt to keep her stress level down.
Inside of her uterus, the embryo absorbed her nutrient-rich diet, her uterus growing to the size of a grapefruit, she felt the slightest of pressure deep in her belly, but nothing overly noticeable.
Bane spent time in the wooded area of his property, ripping down branches, his breath coming raggedly as he became a rageful god of the forest before the phone call came from Hess.
He stalked through the trees, a veritable lord of the earth, burying the axe deep into trees, bringing back armfuls of wood to his shed, planing the wood into planks, sanding and beginning to build a crib for the baby that Anja was carrying.
Bane had considered building a ship and sailing to the Rock of Gibraltar if necessary to find Anja, he'd locate the Golden Fleece and trade it for her and his unborn child.
The phone call from Hess came as Bane was sanding curved finials for the crib.
He dropped the square of coarse paper as he accepted the call and raised the satellite phone to his ear.
"Your contact has been impotent for the price you demand," Bane rasped.
"Consider your tone, I may very well still decide to rip your face free before I burn you to death in the Tower of London."
Bane waited for Hess to continue, a billion retorts on the tip of his tongue.
"The trail is faint, undetectable to anyone else but me," Hess boasted. "I'm tracking where she was taken from whence she was taken from your homeland, but the cost has risen, and I require more from you."
Bane stared down at the unassembled pieces of the crib for his unborn child, some of the wood still rough to the touch.
"No price is too great," Bane eventually rasped before ending the phone call.