onapalehorse | horrendousness

onapalehorse

From this.

"You will find strength, and peace."

He promises, with belief.

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From:

lasiurus

It's one of those moments where Bruce is suddenly very aware of the assumptions he's been making. Bane has the power and skill to take whatever he wants; the fact he doesn't does more to soothe Bruce than anything else could.

He hopes distantly that it's not a trick. Then he tunes out that part of his mind and slides his hand down Bane's thigh, holding his gaze defiantly as he does.

From:

onapalehorse

Bane reaches down and curls a hand around his wrist, drawing his fingers away, up, tugging them against his throat, folding them there and keeping Bruce's hand like that.

From:

lasiurus

"What-?"

Not fighting this, either.

From:

onapalehorse

"Perhaps tomorrow."

Though his own pulse is up, going hard. It's obvious he wants him.

From:

lasiurus

"Worried I'm out of practice?"

His thumb brushes up and down over Bane's pulse. He has the absurd, brief notion of driving Bane wild--then realizes he has no idea how he would go about doing that. In Gotham, people had wanted him and all he'd had to do was point and choose. Learning seduction, or even flirtation, was very low on his list of priorities.

From:

onapalehorse

"You are going to remember yourself. Perhaps it wasn't today, perhaps it may not be tomorrow- but the day after, or the day after that, you will jerk upright and realize what you are doing."

He murmurs, still holding tight to his hand.

"I need you to survive it."

From:

lasiurus

Bane has been right about everything else so far. And Bruce knows full well that he has gathered all his truly volatile issues, and stuffed them down as far as he can. It won't end well, but he has no other way to deal with them.

His thumb runs over the smooth metal on the lower half of Bane's mask.

"You're an honorable man, Bane."

From:

onapalehorse

"Once you do come back, I will break you back down again." He warns him, meeting his eyes. "You'll recover. I'll do it again after that. Worse every time."

From:

lasiurus

That snaps him out of the post-orgasm peace. He sits up, eyes hard and cold again, daring Bane to try it. (Ra's had loved that expression, had always smiled so faintly it was barely a twitch in his beard, and then had always knocked Bruce aside).

"I'm not going to be your puppet, or your servant. I'm willing to learn from you, to do what you ask so that the people I love are safe. But you will not reshape me."

From:

onapalehorse

"There you are."

He murmurs, prediction come true again, sitting up and stretching, broad chest shining with a little sweat from the morning sun.

From:

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?"

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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?"

From:

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."

From:

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?"

From:

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."

From:

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?"

From:

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."

From:

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...?"

From:

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.

From:

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."