horrendousness

[onapalehorse]

From this.

"You will find strength, and peace."

He promises, with belief.

Comments

[lasiurus]

He bristles at the idea that he is just that predictable, that easy to push. He reaches over Bane and gets the coffee, not caring that it's gone cold.

"Do we get the news here?"

[onapalehorse]

"The papers have shut down, but I get reports from men with the noon hour meal."

He explains, stretching out, closing his eyes and willing down the lingering arousal, faintly pained.

[lasiurus]

"I want to hear."

It's not an order or a demand, but neither is it a request. He needs to hear, is what he means.

The hope that one of the Avengers might be alive out there is swatted away like a particularly loud mosquito. They're dead; they were among the first to die. Bruce would have been among them, if there hadn't been so much doubt as to whether or not he was really Batman.

He just needs to find Alfred.

[onapalehorse]

"When we go in."

He agrees.

"It is still early."

The wind is picking up, rustling the branches of the tree above them. A bee bumbles lazily by.

[lasiurus]

The answer satisfies even impatient, stubborn Mr. Wayne. He lies down again, not on Bane this time, but near him. He stares up at the leaves, through them to the clouds, past those to the sky.

"Did you do this? When you first got out of the dark?"

[onapalehorse]

"No. I was too afraid. I had lived there my whole life, was thrown into the pit too young to walk. When I saw the vastness of the sky, all I knew was fear. I crawled back into her tent and hid beneath blankets, in what darkness I could create."

He answers, voice low and soothing.

"And medically, I was a ruin. They could not work out the balance of the analgesic and the steroid, antibiotic and other compounds. I spent a year hallucinating, I think. Even at thirty two, that takes a toll on how you brave the world."

[lasiurus]

Bruce is only thirty-five himself, and he looks at Bane in surprise. He tries to imagine what that must have been like, and simply can't. He's lived in prisons, in solitary confinement, in caves. He's slept in hay piles and manure to keep warm. But he always had the sky.

"What were they treating you for?"

[onapalehorse]

He thinks for a moment, and then starts from the beginning;

"It was a prison for the evil, the unwanted, the unclean. But there were rules. Men could buy themselves in and out with bodies, and I was sent to serve the life sentence of a revolutionary who had fallen out of favour.

When I was seventeen, a woman came down into the darkness. She was pregnant, the child was born, a very young girl. The prison was a climate of violence, of predatory sexuality, and despite every effort, the mother was killed. I had been young there, I was a sympathetic thing still, and I was strong from fighting. I took in the girl. When she was- eight, I think, the press of attention for her became too much for me to fight against. I fought her up to the edge of the pit, she climbed free, I was left to their vengeance."

[lasiurus]

Bane doesn't need his pity, or his sympathy. Bruce does respect him a great deal more, though. It's one thing to want to protect the innocent. It's another to risk your life for them, when you had absolutely no reason to do it.

"They treated you after they attacked you?" And, another strange detail, "If she could crawl free, why didn't the other prisoners?"

[onapalehorse]

"There was a doctor. He botched the surgery badly. After that, there was a respiratory plague. Everything worsened."

He shakes his head.

"It was a pit, I told you. A child may frequently pull their body weight up more easily than a man. Small fingers finding little ledges that ours do not. With fear and no choice to lift her, to my breaking mind she fairly flew."

[lasiurus]

He's watching Bane, enthralled, concerned that places like that exist. He's been to terrible places, but never anything like that.

"Did she bring help? Was there help for prisoners...?"

[onapalehorse]

"It took her eight years. She came with the League, and took me as her own. She lifted me free, brought me to the men who made my mask, and then when I could walk a straight line again they trained me."

Stretching a little against the sunlight.

[lasiurus]

Bruce brushes his knuckles against Bane's leg. He's not fully 'back' to himself yet, doesn't question the urge for affection. He feels too good to maintain a real distance.

"I wish I could have met her."

[onapalehorse]

"No, you wouldn't. She would have skinned you and eaten your heart, for killing her father."

He answers, patiently still under his touch this time.

[lasiurus]

He frowns up at him.

"I've never killed anyone."

[onapalehorse]

"A man left on a train, roaring off tracks."

He tells him, reaching down to brush his hair back.

"If I could take you in my mouth, I'd make you come a third time."

[lasiurus]

The juxtaposition is so baffling he doesn't know which to react to or how to keep the reactions from mingling. He sits up, but straddles Bane's lap.

"He was going to kill me. Me, and fifteen million innocent people."

[onapalehorse]

"That's why I'm keeping you. And why I'm glad she never met you to skin you."

He answers, hands settling on his hips, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

[lasiurus]

He nods, glad to hear confirmation of what he had been hoping was the case. His thumbs brush along both sides of Bane's throat.

Ra's was evil, and too dangerous to be given to the police. But there are things Bruce has never said to anyone; it's easier to cling to the notion that it was all fully justified.

"I didn't want to do it. And I'm sorry that I caused her pain. I know the anger she must have felt for me."

And if it consumed her the way it almost did Bruce, and if Bane had to sit and watch the way Alfred had, then he's sorry for that, too. But he conveys that by sliding further onto Bane's lap and dipping his head to offer sharp little nips along his collarbone.

[onapalehorse]

"How many years has it been?"

He asks, quietly, trying to recall exactly.

[lasiurus]

"Seven years."

He doesn't have to stop to think about it.

[onapalehorse]

"Then it is seven years since there has been skin on my own."

He answers, hands still on his hips.

"We will move slowly, for both our sakes."

[lasiurus]

"Good plan."

That quiet, League whisper. He keeps exploring Bane with his mouth.

"How far does your network go?"

[onapalehorse]

"Far."

He answers, just as quiet, hanging on to his skin like he's drowning.

"They will have searched the city within two days, and will radiate out from there."

[lasiurus]

"Thank you."

Meaning it so fiercely it almost hurts to say. He kisses slowly up Bane's throat, to just under the mask, then down the other side.

"...Do you know what happened to the Hulk?"

Banner can't be dead. Guns don't kill him--nothing does.