Chapter Eight: He Wasn't a Killer; You Have to be a Killer
A sonogram confirmed the developing fetus within Talia's unconscious body.
Dr. Steele was compelled to taper her drug cocktail out of caution for the forming fetus.
He remained in the room long after the sonogram technician departed, he only had eyes for the machine measuring Talia's brain waves, watching as she rose closer to consciousness, the change too subtle to the untrained eye.
Roderick lowered the side rail of the bed, allowing him to loom further over Talia after he made a few pertinent notes in her chart.
He lowered himself onto an elbow as he settled his other hand on the swell of her lower belly, his fingers spread wide, a five-legged octopus as he tightened his parasitic fingers into a fist, pulling her hospital gown into his palm.
Dr. Steele returned to resting his hand on Talia's lower belly, his eyes traveled further to stare at her exposed intimacy.
"Seneca tells us that the two most important days are the day of your birth and the day you find out why," he whispered as he dipped his hand to hover over the soft skin of her femininity.
"This is the day I have found out why," he continued in a low murmur as he softly settled his hand against her, an involuntary shudder wracked his body when he felt the warm kiss of her intimacy against his palm.
He glanced at the paper readout of her brain waves before he leaned closer to Talia, lowering his lips to the side of her face.
Dr. Steele kept his hand still over her naked center, "who put that child inside you?" he asked her stillness, returning his gaze to where his hand rested.
"Is this a result of coupling with that beast across the hall?" he spit accusatorily as he began to tease his fingertips through her intimate folds. "Who did you lower yourself for, who did you spread your legs for?" he asked, a blush warming his face as he leaned closer to the side of her face.
Warm drips of saliva nearly slipped from between his lips as he took a deep breath, his little pecker quivering in his off-white underwear as he whispered raggedly, "I know you hear me."
A few seconds passed as Dr. Steele raised his head and stared down at Talia's unconscious face.
Just a couple further moments in time lapsed before Talia opened her eyes.
Talia's lips parted, her voice a long time in coming from the length of chemically controlled silence.
As Roderick yanked the pastel curtain on its metal track, cloaking them in a modicum of privacy, across Gotham City in Old Town, Bruce Wayne stumbled up the stairs of Selina's walk-up, after leaving Tom's Diner with his pie yet again uneaten, he'd bought a fifth of Jack at the corner liquor store.
Selina opened the door after Bruce's continual pounding seemed like it would never cease, she was ready to say exactly how much time she had for someone's Jesus Horatio Christ.
She was at a genuine loss for words, a foreign feeling to the sharp-tongued gal, "no one sees this side of you," she finally said as she opened the door further for Bruce to nearly fall over the threshold, an invited vampire with double the blood alcohol limit.
"I can't kill her now," Bruce slurred as he crawled to Selina's Blue Star fern and vomited a belly full of acidic bile into its specialty soil.
"I thought you didn't approve of murder," Selina stated with a chuckle as she walked around Bruce towards the little kitchenette, returning with an open bottle of tepid spring water.
"It wouldn't be murder to kill Bane though," he spit in between gulps from the half-empty bottle.
Selina leaned against the counter as Bruce scooted over to lean against the closest wall with the scuffed wainscotting.
"Is the baby yours?" she casually asked as she tossed him a damp dish towel.
"You saw the news?"
Selina just stared until Bruce dropped his gaze to her bare feet, her toenails painted a deep purple, gleaming dully under her harsh kitchen lighting.
"It could be," he finally said, "there's clearly a lot I missed about who she truly is," he added before returning to violate her fern's soil with his expelled bodily contents. "I cannot allow the legacy of Ras al Ghul to continue."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to kill Bane tonight, start there," Bruce said before he gave a series of wet coughs, "will you help me?" he asked looking up at Selina.
"Why don't you go sleep this off," Selina suggested, rolling her eyes as she helped Bruce to his unsteady feet, being completely dismissive of his words, swept them right under the world's biggest, braided rug.
She ignored his protests as he grew more and more dead weight, ending up practically dragging the billionaire to her sloppily made bed.
Selina chuckled at Bruce's monogrammed socks after she tugged off his snakeskin loafers.
He was already snoring by the time she pulled the duvet up to his chin, turning off the bedside light after leaving a glass of water and couple of painkillers for when he woke up.
Hours and hours passed, the sunlight bled from the sky as Bruce remained nestled in a drunken coma, snug under Selina's blue-grey bed linen.
During that time, Gotham City citizens moved throughout their lives.
Back in Bane's heavily guarded hospital suite, inside his unconscious mind, he was once again staring up at Talia as she ascended the wall of The Pit.
The lack of a complete dose of comatose drugs kept him not quite as deep in his coma as Dr. Steele had calibrated.
Within the slowly rekindling neural activity of his brain, he watched Talia successfully make the leap from rock ledge to rock ledge.
Bane's heart began to beat faster, his chest swelling in pride as Talia escaped from The Pit.
This time however, he fought himself free of the ravenous crowd.
He gouged their eyeballs from their very sockets.
Bane roared as the rabid men pulled at him, his clothes tearing as his fists cracked ribs, crushed sternums and broke jaws.
He began the same climb as countless had before him, following the same path Talia had taken.
The inhabitants of The Pit cried out in anger at being denied their pound of flesh.
Inside his scarred skull, he climbed, used every cell to propel himself upwards, to leap, his body full of fear, no rope to keep him from falling to the ground and shattering his skeleton.
He could've howled at the goddamn moon as he landed on the other ledge, in the real world of his temperature-controlled hospital room, his eyes cracked open, a strained groan slipped from between his lips as he grunted and with effort summoned from the River Styx, raised a hand and yanked his IV line free.
Medication administration was immediately halted.
Theresa had a couple of days off and the alternate staff in her stead were less than competent and didn't pay as close attention as she did.
They didn't notice that Bane had cock-blocked the large bore IV needle, that with each passing minute he was growing more lucid.
Aware.
The strain of waking quickly had sapped Talia's energy and she drifted off into a sort of sleep, Dr. Steele eventually leaving her side to grab a nap and something to eat.
Bane continued to ascend to consciousness, opening his eyes and memorizing when he was left alone and unmonitored.
Gotham City continued to endure, rebuild, and move forward.
Bruce stirred awake amidst the tangled linen of Selina's bed after the sun set and the moon rose high in the night sky.
He fumbled for the glass of water, spilling half of it before noisily gulping the rest.
Bruce chewed up the painkillers, frowning at the acrid taste from the pills he crushed between his molars.
He squinted at a handwritten note that was propped against the clear, square take-out container from Tom's Diner, the uneaten slice of apple pie nestled inside.
Bruce, You're going to need some food in your belly, eat your pie, see you later Sugar
He crumpled up the note, throwing it to the floor, it was pushed under the bed by his rapid departure.
A wave of anger rose within him at Selina's flaky-crusted dismissal
Selina would later find the note when she gathered up her bed linen.
She'd cry, sinking to her knees with 4.5 billion regrets.
She'd wish she had never left the apartment, never left Bruce's side, took his drunk words as though he had his hand on someone's perceived holy book.
Bruce hastily dressed before rooting around Selina's dresser drawers for a rudimentary disguise before getting himself to the Gotham Medical Center, slipping inside through a window with a broken security sensor.
He was able to hack into the hospital's server, quickly find Bane and Talia's rooms even cloaked within their make-believe names, determining a route that would keep him undetectable.
Bruce struggled to control his breathing behind the latex fetish mask he'd found in one of Selina's dresser drawers as he crawled through an unused steel ventilation shaft.
He'd sent the route to his heavy watch and followed the green electronic path, his anger growing with each passing moment.
By the time Bruce dropped down into the large bathroom in Bane's hospital suite, soundlessly hitting the slightly sloped tile with a metal circular drain in the center, he was furious, ready to restore his dominance with Bane's head on a veritable spike.
As Bruce approached Bane's bedside, the only light in the room was provided by the various blips and blinks from a variety of monitoring devices, across the hall, behind Talia's closed door, Dr. Steele whispered to her as he brushed her hair.
Christmas green and red splashes of light bounded about the room, making the shadows dance as Bruce stared down at the Bane he believed was still in a medically induced coma, everyone believed that.
But it was just theatricality and deception.
Bane was aware of Bruce's approach, had found a return to more of himself as the day had bled into night, when a couple doctors had made their rounds and ordered pharmaceutical treatment changes, the medication technician was dispatched to his room.
Bane's long-term status of being in a coma had made several of the staff very laxed around him, too much.
Many techs used Bane's room with the large window in the bathroom to smoke, play on their phones and everything in between.
Several med techs had foolishly left their carts unattended, and Bane had been a ravenous beast in the candy store, greedy as he rifled through the various potent bottles, vials and peel-packs.
Bane began to self-medicate, dormant strength returning, his senses heightened with the surgical intervention, rising commenced.
Bruce scoffed behind the ultra-tight, sleek mask, his wet tongue pushing against the thin latex, his voice emerging as a hiss through the slick slit of the opening.
"Gotham's reckoning? You were ever that. You were born in The Pit and that's where I'm going to return your body," Bruce wetly growled as his hands shook in their effort to pick up the IV line.
Bruce nearly dropped the syringe he had filled with 30cc of a drug that was very similar to the cocktail medication in state-sanctioned lethal injections.
"You should suffer more," Bruce added as he depressed the plunger, injecting the syringe's entire contents into an access port that no longer penetrated Bane's vein.
No one but Bane knew that.
Bruce's eyes moved about the room as he let the medication do its job.
The alcohol was still in his system, slowed his reaction time when he returned his gaze to Bane's face and met his open eyes, his scarred lips pulled into a tight line, his expression unreadable.
"Wwhhat?" Bruce managed to sputter, the last coherent word he spoke, certainly worthy of being carved into history on some kind of stone phallic monument before Bane's hand closed around the front of his throat.
Bruce fell prey to complete and utter tonic immobility as his eyes grew wide, bulged from their sockets by the pressure.
"You have remained weak, an infant," Bane growled, his caramel eyes alive with chestnut fire, ghoulish flecks of amber were scattered across his corneas, resembling freckles.
Bane sat upright, his gown had been left loosely tied by earlier staff and slipped at his broad shoulders.
He tightened his grip on the front of Bruce's throat, rising to his feet, knocking over a stainless-steel tray as he hoisted Bruce into the air.
Across the hall, Dr. Steele whipped his head to the closed privacy curtain at the sound of the metallic bang.
He reluctantly left Talia's side and pushed open Bane's door to find the supposed comatose patient holding a masked Bruce Wayne by the throat, his feet kicking uselessly in the air.
Bruce choked as he clawed at Bane's hand, helpless as he squirmed in the air, a fish pulled from the water and held aloft over its salvation.
"I shall not allow you to live as your city falls, the people will certainly mourn your falling, you will be a martyr," Bane growled as his gown's loosely tied bow completely unraveled, his gown slipping to pool at his bare feet.
Bruce could hear his hyoid bone crack, his eyes rolling to the side when Dr. Steele burst into the room, a modicum of hope filled his swelling orbs that he might be saved.
Bane looked over at Dr. Steele, bearing his teeth, his expression turning hideous as he spoke.
"This is how you don't save a life."
Dr. Steele was a captive audience as Bane twisted his thick wrist and cracked Bruce's neck, the cervical vertebrates falling under the pressure of Bane's grip.
A gunshot rang out from beside Dr. Steele, shaking him free of his paralyzing fugue.
"No," he shouted to the Gotham City officer, "I need him alive," he added as he grabbed their forearm and yanked their gun muzzle to face the linoleum floor.
Bane pivoted sharply on his heel, moving Bruce's masked, dead body in the path of the incoming .38 caliber bullet.
The bullet hit the deceased Bruce in his dead spine.
A tech that rushed to the room at all the sounds, snapped a few pictures that were splashed on the website of a tabloid rag within several hours after a fat payload.
The black and white cover of the magazine was of a single photo under a bold-font headline.
Soon, going as viral as the plague was a photo of a nude Bane holding a dead, masked Bruce Wayne aloft in the air.
In the picture, Bane was powerful in his nudity, a glorious murderer etched in stone, a dark rectangle was printed over his flaccid length, heavy between his thighs.
Under the photo, printed in black letters, with the byline by L. Roy.
And that Ladies and Gentlemen, is how You Kill The Batman.