No Holds Barred, pt. II

[whiskyrunner]

Title: No Holds Barred
Pairing: Bane/John Blake
Words: ~10,500 [/54,500]
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Based on this prompt. Talia brings Bane a gift in the form of fiery detective John Blake, intending to watch Bane break him -- but Bane likes John's spirit too much to try and quench it, and is too head-shy about sex to use him in the way Talia wants. Too bad John thinks he's a psychopath.
Warnings: attempted noncon, dubcon, violence
part one, three, four, five, six


*
Barsad takes John up to the roof one morning shortly after John's failed attempt to save the cops.

“Why are we here?” he asks, when he sees that no one else is there. A flutter of anxiety passes through him and almost at once fades. Barsad, laconic and staid, doesn't frighten him half as much as Bane does. In fact, he feels a kind of grudging liking for the man. If he were a cop, John thinks he'd look up to him.

“You are going to learn to fight,” Barsad says.

“Oh.” John pauses. “Does Bane know about this?”

“Bane ordered this. He says you're sulking.” John opens his mouth angrily to refute this, but Barsad is already slinging his ammunition belt to the ground. “Show me what you've learned from your police training.”

John shuts his mouth. Obediently, he goes through the motions with Barsad, grasping the familiarity gratefully. He shows Barsad all the holds and defensive maneuvers the academy taught him, guiding Barsad's hands and moving in slow motion. He's glad for the distraction, truthfully. The death of the cops keeps him up at night. Barsad is silent, his hands quiet where he grips John.

“Real time now,” he says. John squares himself, and Barsad attacks at once. John grabs reactively, moves to throw him. In one lightning-quick twist, Barsad puts him in a joint lock and forces him to his knees. John doesn't even see how he does it.

Barsad helps him up. “I can see what Bane means.”

“Okay,” John says, irritated now, his pride wounded. “So I'm sloppy. Make me better.”

He raises his fists, but Barsad shakes his head impatiently and grabs his arms. He positions John the way he wants him and makes him stand there.

“Find your balance,” he says, circling John. Then he shoves him from behind. John pitches forward. Barsad seems to be tiring of his inept student already. He sighs. “We start with the basics, then.”

Barsad seems to have perfect balance. He goes through a few exercises with John, making sure he holds his limbs exactly so, and shows him how to move. It's not like any exercise warm-up John's ever done. It's slow, it's ... something like t'ai chi, if he had to guess, but it's not like he knows a lot about martial arts except what movies have told him. It would be relaxing, if Barsad wasn't barking at him every few seconds to straighten his spine and breathe from his abdomen. And he feels a little stupid when he has to hold each pose. Barsad makes all of this look natural. He could do this all day, John realizes-maybe this is what he does all day, when he's not busy being second-in-command to a psychotic warlord.

The sun is high in the sky by the time Barsad decides they're done with that and instead starts something he calls tui shou, or “push hands”. He makes John stand an arm's length from him, both their arms raised and in light contact with each other. He moves slowly, pushing at John, forcing him to bend and pivot without moving his feet. Several times John loses his balance again and has to realign his stance. Now he's starting to grow impatient.

“Soft,” Barsad urges every time he lands a slow-motion blow. “Softer. Relax and rotate with the blows. Don't push back.”

“So you're teaching me to take a hit,” John says, annoyed. “Not to throw one.”

“Only when you can take a hit can you redirect one. Hit me, if you're angry.”

John should know better, but he is angry. He feels like Bane and Barsad are mocking him with all this. He flings a rapid punch at Barsad's face. Barsad-perpetually sleepy-eyed, whippet-lean and wiry Barsad-tilts out of the way, strikes John's arm aside and grabs him by the throat with the same hand, sweeping a leg behind his in the same motion. He shoves against John's throat, and John hits the ground with a strangled gasp. It happens in less than a second.

“Stop if you like,” says Barsad, eternally unruffled. “Or you can get up and keep doing exercises, if you'd rather learn how to do that.”

His pride and his rear are stinging considerably, but John lets Barsad pull him to his feet. They keep exercising.

***
Blake dwells on his failure to save the police officers for a long time: Bane can sense it weighing on him, even after he orders Barsad to start training John. He hangs the cops' bodies where they can be seen through a window from the living room, to remind him, but it doesn't remind Blake in the way he hopes.

He thinks about it, too, when Blake says, “You could have killed me instead of them.”

Blake is a whelp who naively believes there are no worse fates than death, but Bane can read the conviction in his eyes. He would have offered himself. To what end? Any one of Bane's men would offer their lives in his service, but those policemen were nobody special. Bane would have died to see Talia freed from the pit, fully expected it, even, but that was different, too. Talia's purity made him love her. He would have done, and will do, anything she ever asks of him.

The same sort of purity shines brightly in Blake, and that causes him a confusing tangle of emotion.

Barsad has told him how some of the men look at Blake. Men always want to destroy pure things; it's their nature. He tells Barsad to teach Blake how to fight, serving two purposes. It's a good channel for Blake's incessant restlessness, as well as a preparation should he need to defend himself. Barsad is able to spend at least an hour or so with him on the roof each day. Blake always seems even more sullen than usual when he comes back to the penthouse. If Bane is there he gets to watch Blake curl up petulantly on the couch after a shower, nursing various bruises and moving stiffly.

“Don't push him,” Bane warns Barsad. He delegated this task to Barsad because he knows that Barsad will be more careful than Bane knows how to be. His right hand looks faintly exasperated.

“He's in good shape and he learns quickly. I don't give him any more than he can handle.”

Bane is pleased to hear his captive is learning quickly. He wants to see how high the bird can fly before he inevitably falls.

Any concern for Blake washes away when he sees Talia again. He sheds his vest and belt for her, lies face-down and lets her rub away the ceaseless aches of his body, and is annoyed when the guard outside allows Blake to find them like this.

“Oh,” he says, faltering in the doorway.

He's panting lightly, flushed with a sheen of sweat. He's obviously come from the roof. Usually Bane is elsewhere during the day; Blake seems unsettled to find him here, let alone Talia.

“Come in, John,” Talia invites him. “There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“You look pretty intimate.” Blake speaks to her sharply, his words barbed. Bane tenses under her hands. She rolls the heels of her palms against him soothingly.

“You can join us if you like,” she says sweetly.

“Leave, Blake,” Bane growls.

Blake does, surprisingly. He backs out of the room and leaves with a last curious glance at them.

“How are you enjoying your pet?” Talia asks.

“I'm not,” Bane rumbles. “He is a waste of time, and he speaks his mind far too often.”

“He doesn't see yet,” she reassures him. “He will.”

He doesn't tell her how Blake had got to his knees for Bane. That was a lesson, nothing more.

He sees that Talia leaves safely, and when he returns, Blake is in their shared room, on one of the couches with a book. It's one he's already read-he seems to be cycling through the same stack of miscellaneous novels. Bane pauses, then goes over to the locked cupboard underneath the bookshelf. He unlocks it and sifts through the contents until he finds a small stack of books at the bottom. He withdraws one he thinks is to Blake's taste and locks the cupboard again.

When he stands in front of Blake, holding the book out, Blake just stares at him.

“What's that for?” he asks.

Air hisses in and out of the mask before Bane replies, “Reading.”

Blake seems skeptical. Bane has given him books before, of course, but that was before Blake was able to just walk to the bookshelf and pick one. Impatiently, Bane pulls his hand away, taking the book with it, and starts to turn, but Blake's hand shoots out and that's when he does something unprecedented. He touches Bane's wrist brace.

Bane goes still. Blake's gaze travels thoughtfully from the brace to the crude binding on his own wrist, put there again after Barsad aggravated the healing sprain.

“You broke it, didn't you?”

Broke. Shattered. Crushed. Bane should hit him for presuming. For guessing.

“One of my earliest injuries,” he answers, instead.

“The belt, does that help, too?”

Bane withdraws his hand. “It can.”

Blake's eyes are too knowing. “And the mask?”

Bane drops the book in his lap and walks away. “Barsad says when you stop sulking he might feel inclined to take you out again.”

“I'm not sulking!” Blake protests. Bane rounds on him.

“What do you call it?”

“You killed two cops. Am I supposed to be happy?” Blake snaps. “Just because I couldn't even-”

His cheeks flush hotly, and anger prickles at Bane. As though he forced John Blake to make his little proposition and see it through.

“I let one live,” Bane reminds him coldly. “Given your failure, I would call that very generous.”

“Well, I wouldn't.”

Bane is suddenly sick of the sight and sound of him. He turns and slaps the light off as he goes to bed, embracing the darkness, not caring what Blake does.

“I know now,” Blake says, after a minute has ticked past. That sharpness has crept back into his tone. “I couldn't get you off because I wasn't her.”

Bane snarls, an echoing, animal sound that silences Blake immediately. “Speak again and lose your tongue.”

Blake is wisely quiet for the rest of the night.

***
Days pass and John is putting on muscle where it was beginning to waste. Barsad teaches him faster-paced exercises, starts sparring with him. He beats John black and blue, but John is learning to absorb the hits. He tires less quickly. Frequently, some of the other men hanging around on the roof gather round to watch, and although they laugh riotously when John gets his ass handed to him, they also cheer the one time he gets Barsad on the ground (which surprises them both).

He's settling into a routine here, much as he hates to admit it. Wake up, sometimes in bed with Bane. Eat. Exercise and spar with Barsad. Shower. Read. Bane's officers are starting to regard him as an occasionally amusing pet, and sometimes they invite him to play a sort of board game that they call awale, laughing when he starts to win a meagre couple of games against them.

His more optimistic self, the one who actually believed he alone could take some sort of action against Bane from within, is receding. It's easier to live day-to-day, performing the behaviours that will earn him good food and little rewards, than risk everything and let himself grow weak again. The memory of the two dead cops weighs on him less. He saved one. He couldn't have done that from the outside.

Still, his old self whispers, he should be there.

When it all threatens to overwhelm, he goes through the first exercises Barsad taught him, focusing on balance and breathing. It doesn't feel so stupid now. He breathes from his belly and can feel himself calming every time. All the pain from the aches and wounds he's amassed at this place starts to recede.

He's doing this one day when he hears Bane's footfall the moment before he opens the door. Bane can move shockingly quietly in those heavy boots, for a man of his bulk. John stops exercising and sits on the window ledge, not wanting Bane to see him at this.

He's gazing out at his city when Bane enters, and he wonders, unhappily, where Gordon and the other cops are now. If they're okay; if that cop made it back to them to tell Gordon about what John is doing here. He can hear Bane moving quietly around behind him.

After a minute, Bane inquires idly, “You dislike having your wings trimmed, Robin?”

“I should be out there,” John says, distracted. “I have people who depend on me out there.”

He regrets saying it at once. Does Miranda know about the boys? He glances at Bane hastily.

“I know that anxiety well,” Bane says simply. He's talking about Miranda-Talia, John knows, though he can't figure out what the hell their relationship is.

“We're all going to die if her plan works,” John reminds him tersely. Lucius Fox, another trusted ally of Bruce Wayne, and Miranda herself told the resisting cops about the bomb's lifespan. Bane nods, squinting into the light.

“Gotham will survive, Blake,” he murmurs.

“We won't.”

“You're a good man,” Bane says, surprising the hell out of him. “I regret that you have been caught in the crossfire of our war against the corrupt.”

“There are a lot of good people caught out there,” John says. “Children. Families.”

“Men and women who indoctrinate their spawn with the same lies they gorge themselves on. You are a dying breed.”

“People need me out there,” John says desperately. “You don't need me.”

“You have no idea what I need,” Bane says, after a pause. His voice is dark enough that John takes this for the conversation-ender it is. He's learning to read Bane.

Instead of forcing the issue, he waits until Bane moves away and then gets up and starts exercising again. He doesn't care if Bane sees him at it. He needs to relax. Bane disappears into the bathroom.

When he emerges, John can feel Bane's heavy gaze settling on him. It makes his spine prickle. He keeps going, trying to shut Bane out. Breathe in. Bend. And out.

He jumps when he feels Bane's hand settling under his elbow, his other hand at the small of John's back, to correct his posture. Bane's hands linger. John almost stops breathing. After a minute, Bane's hands slide away.

John drops his stance and turns around. “Do you know how to do this stuff Barsad's teaching me?”

“The League of Shadows taught us many different methods of fighting. Yes, I know some of it.”

“You must know a lot,” John muses aloud. Then, with a touch of frustration, “Why this-t'ai chi crap? Why not ... I dunno, kickboxing or-Brazilian streetfighting or something?”

“Offensive t'ai chi targets soft and vulnerable parts of the body using singular, crippling precision blows. That is what you need to learn. Don't underestimate its value, even if it is a primarily defensive strategy.”

John actually opens his mouth to say something stupid, then, to-ask if Bane wants to try the tui shou exercise with him. He shuts his mouth, flushing at the thought. Barsad is just about his height, flexible. John can't imagine any circumstance in which he would be able to unbalance Bane from a standing position. Besides, sometimes the exercise puts their bodies too close together, too intimate. Like dancing. It's not so uncomfortable with Barsad, but with Bane? Yeah, he got his fill of being that close to Bane when he was on his knees. He shakes his head and turns back to the window, resumes his stance.

Bane's fingers ghost over his lower back again, making him straighten further and draw in his breath. His entire spine tingles and his heart starts to race. He's still not used to Bane touching him, even though they live in such close proximity. He shuts his eyes. Wonders what's coming.

Nothing is, apparently. Bane withdraws his hand, and, without saying anything, he slips out of the room. John can breathe.

It gets easier every time Bane watches him exercise, after that.

*
He could almost swear it's planned, the way a young boy is dragged in front of Bane a few days later, for stealing. One of their own, a worker from the sewers. He'd snuck up on the pretense of visiting someone else and tried to make off with a backpack full of food. The guard with him thinks he's a spy. John sees the fear and anger in the boy's face and knows that same feeling. Something hot and sick roils in his chest.

“Kill him,” Bane says dismissively, barely looking up from the table where he and Barsad pore over lists.

“No.” John gets in the guard's way, bristling protectively.

Bane looks up, his attention arrested. The guard lurches forward, an attack, and John twists the gun out of his hands and shunts him aside with his own momentum. It's one of the first moves he was taught at the academy, sharpened by Barsard's cunning. He plants himself between the crying boy and Bane.

“You can kill me.”

“What would that accomplish?” Bane asks, spreading his hands. John takes a deep breath.

“Then my offer is the same as last time.”

He's managed to surprise Bane with that-he thinks. Bane's eyes reveal nothing. Then they narrow.

“You tried and you failed.”

“Then let me try again.” John's heart is pounding. He needs to try again, for this kid and maybe-maybe, in the back of his mind where he can't acknowledge it, for himself, too. He licks his lips and adds, “It's all I have to bargain with.”

Bane's eyes spark angrily. He stands and walks toward John, grabs him by the collar and half-drags him along.

John stumbles on their way into the bedroom, Bane slamming the door shut behind him. His throat tightens. Just what does Bane intend to do with him? Bane releases him, and he backs away, thinks about dropping it and escaping back into the other room. He's gone too far.

“Why would you do this?” Bane snarls, turning to face him. His eyes are blazing. “Do you think I hunger for you?”

The honest answer is yes, yes, I see the way you look at me, I feel your eyes on me at night, I'm not a fool. John takes a deep, shaky breath.

“It's just an exchange,” he spits out. “My mouth, his life.”

Bane relaxes slightly, his massive shoulders less tense. He drops into an armchair.

“Try, then.”

This time, John finds Bane already half-hard in his cargo pants. A small mercy. He strokes him to full hardness and gets on with it.

It isn't as difficult this time-it even feels familiar. John digs his nails into Bane's thighs and attacks his cock roughly with his mouth. Still too big, still an intrusion, but familiar. He goes quick and hard, uses everything he knows how to do, and frantically wills Bane to show any sort of reaction.

It never happens. John tries as hard as he can, no warm-up this time, gives it everything he's got right out of the starting gate. He forgets his situation, forgets his shame, forgets everything except Bane, Bane's scent, Bane's taste, and how to get more of it. To his unnerving embarrassment, he can feel his own pants getting a little tighter, and he clenches his fists tight in Bane's clothes. He is not getting off on this. He will not get off on letting Bane use his mouth.

But he's not using it, is he? He's letting John do all the work. John drags his nails angrily down Bane's thighs, then strokes with one hand, amazed that he still can't fit enough of the shaft in his mouth for his lips to meet his fist around the base of Bane's cock; then just touches, mindlessly, strokes and rolls his balls lightly in one hand, anything, anything for a reaction. He gets nothing, apart from the steady rasp of air through the mask.

He knows when he's beaten. It takes him less than twenty minutes to reach exhaustion, and he doesn't push himself this time. He stops, gasping for breath.

“I can't.”

“I thought not.” Bane stands, shoving John out of the way with one foot. John slumps there, defeated, catching his breath, and he hears Bane zipping up.

Failed again.

Bane crosses the room and opens the door. John scrambles up after him.

“Cut the boy's hands off,” Bane is saying dismissively when John catches him up. “That should satisfy us all.”

“No,” John croaks. He lurches forward and falls, his legs numb, actually grabs onto the leg of Bane's pants. Bane tries to shake him off irritably. “Please. Please.” He doesn't even know what he's saying; his tongue feels thick and stupid from the weight of Bane's cock on it. He can feel the guard and Barsad watching him and doesn't look at them. “Don't do this.”

“You have nothing left to offer me.”

“My hands,” John says. He stares at them, realizing. Bane is silent. John continues aggressively, “You want someone to punish. You won't kill me. Cut my hands off, let him go.”

“This matters a great deal to you,” Bane observes. John clenches his jaw.

“Of course it does.”

Bane tilts his head. Then he says, “All right. Your hands.”

He hoists John up by the collar, slams him down onto the table where Barsad is still sitting. It's Barsad, naturally, who tosses him a blade, a-a machete, and Bane catches it, grabs John's wrist in his other hand, slams his outstretched arm onto the table and yanks back his sleeve with frightening efficiency.

John squeezes his eyes shut, quaking. This will hurt. It's going to hurt a lot.

“Okay,” he says, breathing hard, in and out, teeth chattering. “Do it.”

The thunk of the machete biting deep into the wood table makes his body jolt all over when it comes. Bane leaves it there. John opens his eyes. He's still shaking. Still has a hand.

“Throw the boy onto the streets,” Bane orders. He stomps back into the bedroom, leaving John there, shivering, stretched over the table.

“You're a brave fool,” Barsad observes expressionlessly, when the guard and the boy are gone as well. He wrests the machete free with one quick tug, and goes back to his maps and lists in silence. John sinks into a chair numbly, not knowing what to think.

***
The longer Bane is near Blake, the more admirable qualities he finds in the man. His determination. His ideals. His reckless bravery.

But he cannot get past the way Blake fought for that orphan boy.

Bane could have done it. He'd even wanted to. Take his hands and make Barsad patch him up after, so that he would remain alive, in pain, ineffectual. Talia would have loved it.

It was the fact that Blake expected him to do it that stopped him. Blake knew all that, and would have gone through with it anyway, to spare the boy.

Bane lies awake at night trying to figure him out, and cannot.

What he wants is to set Blake free. Blake has no place here. He is too good; he shines too brightly. It will destroy him. If he were not a gift from Talia, Bane would send him out into the night right now. He catches Blake gazing out the windows often, perhaps thinking of the people he yearns to protect, and it hardens Bane's resolve. Gotham doesn't deserve a man like Blake. Selfishly, he wants Blake's goodness for himself.

Blake is starting to shut down in his presence, though. He's breaking, just as Talia had predicted. It's too soon. Bane asks him what he wants, brings him more books at his request, and still Blake is retreating in himself. He does his exercises with Barsad, learns to control his breathing, and shutters himself away the rest of the time. He is a maddening problem.

Bane plans and prowls and spends far too much time thinking about him.

Barsad presents a solution to him, inadvertently. Bane is visiting the abandoned parking garage under the building, where their weapons are kept and some of the men train. Barsad slips past him, a small bundle tucked in his vest, and Bane, curious, stops him.

“Our brethren from Blackgate found a playmate,” Barsad explains dryly, showing him the baby animal he carries. It's a small cat, with patches of grey fur here and there where the hair hasn't been burnt away. Its flesh is a raw, angry red, marked with yellowish blisters. “I'll kill it.”

Bane almost lets him go; but he thinks, in one startling flash, of the baby bird in the pit. The light of hope that had shone so vividly in Talia's eyes.

He drops the kitten into Blake's lap. Blake is sitting cross-legged on one of the couches, reading; he shrinks minutely from Bane's presence when he enters, which is familiar. Then he startles at the kitten.

“What is this?”

“It's a cat.”

“Jesus,” Blake swears, lifting its tiny form up in his careful hands. “What happened to it?”

The cat's face is soot-blackened, its muzzle burnt and marred, whiskers seared clean off. The burns stretch all the way up one side of its face to a mangled ear. Its eyelids crack open, squinting in pain, revealing one blue slit and an empty eye socket before it closes them again. Its pink mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

It is ugly. A broken thing.

“It's for you,” Bane says.

“Jesus,” Blake says again. Colour is starting to rise in his neck, his cheeks. “Are you-is this a joke? This cat is going to die. This cat deserves to die. Look at her, she's in pain-”

“I thought it would be something for you to do. I could snap its neck if you prefer.”

But when he reaches, Blake guards it instinctively.

“Christ,” he mutters; setting the kitten down in his lap, he uncaps his water bottle and pours a small amount into the cap. He lifts the cat again, angling its head, and trickles water into its mouth. A couple of seconds pass, and then the cat swallows, its tongue flickering out. Blake looks relieved. “If she'll drink, at least, maybe I can... I don't know. This is stupid. Do we have any spare ointment? Something for the burns?”

“I will find you something,” says Bane.

Blake is trickling water into its mouth again. “This is sick. I don't understand you.” He huffs, strangely ill-tempered in the face of Bane's gift. “Maybe we should put a mask on her, then she'll look like you.”

It's a surprising jab coming from him, but no less than Bane has come to expect from his fellow man. He leaves in search of first-aid supplies.

The kitten survives the night. It doesn't move or open its eyes very much in the cool moist towel Blake wraps it in; but there's still a flicker of life in it when Bane wakes in the morning. He leaves Blake to nursemaid the thing, and it's still there when he comes back, greasy from a fresh application of ointment, the worst burns now swathed in sterile gauze.

“Will it live?”

“I don't know,” Blake says, but there it is: that little spark of hope in his eyes. “She's hurt pretty bad. But she's keeping water down.”

Bane sits on the bed and watches him. Blake has deft, gentle hands, and he manipulates the kitten carefully.

“There's no point,” he says, as though trying to rationalize to Bane, “we're all dead soon anyway, but at least she has a chance, I guess. She deserves a chance.”

“Yes.”

“What do you care, anyway?” Blake is starting to bristle again. “It's just a cat. It doesn't fit in with your grand scheme. Do you get off on watching it suffer, or what?”

“It's a gift for you. Nothing more.”

“Well, you give some pretty awful gifts.” Blake tightens his lips, shakes his head. “I've gotten worse, I guess.”

Bane reclines against the headboard, folding his arms over his chest. “Such as?”

Blake is too tired to put up his defenses, like he usually does. He tells Bane, then, about a foster home when he was twelve, where the parents' own child received an array of shining toys on Christmas morning and Blake, the interloper, received a small bundle of previously-used, poorly-fitting clothes from a thrift store.

The telling of this story evidently taps a well of anger in Blake, and once he starts, he can't seem to stop. It pours out of him, hot and shockingly vicious.

He tells Bane about other homes where amassing stray children was a means of collecting a paycheck, nothing more. About the humiliation of having to pack all his worldly belongings into a garbage bag whenever he was shuffled to some new place. About the social workers who tried to make him talk about his feelings until he learned to pretend he didn't have any except for those which are socially acceptable. He seethes about the abusive homes, furious, still hurting, not because he suffered in them, but because he had to leave the younger children they collected behind, without the benefit of his protection or the simple comfort of a hug when they needed one.

At last, he exhausts himself talking about it, seems to sense that his carefully-crafted facade of apathy is fading. He says to Bane, cautiously, that it wasn't all bad. Talks about the boys' home and the kindly priest who runs it. The games they invented, the way the older boys looked out for the younger. And of course, his talk brings him to the home's benefactor, Bruce Wayne. Blake's childhood idol.

“It was a comfort, I guess,” he says, when Bane presses him. “That someone like him went through the same thing. You know?”

“Bruce Wayne was raised in opulence,” Bane says. “He has no idea of your suffering.”

“Still-the loss, I mean, that feeling of loneliness, of being-I dunno, left behind. He rose above it. I became a cop because of him.”

Blake falls silent, watching the kitten in his lap. Then he rubs a hand wearily over his face and forces a laugh. “But enough about me. How about you?”

“What do you wish to know?”

“I dunno. Where were you born?”

“Hell on earth.”

“Detroit?” Blake says, and then he's laughing at his own joke, which is bemusing and then, somehow, endearing. He scrubs a hand over his face again and says, “Sorry, I'm-sorry. Just tired.” He pauses. “What-what would happen if you took off the mask?”

“I would be in indescribable agony.”

“Right,” Blake says. He pauses again. “Why ... what happened to you?”

“I loved something beautiful, and refused to let others destroy it.”

Blake squints at him. “That's not cryptic enough for me.”

“I grew up in a den full of rapists and murderers,” Bane says. “It is the worst prison on earth. Nothing innocent can survive there. And so, when Talia's mother was raped to death in her cell, I became her daughter's protector.”

“Miran-Talia was born there, too?”

Bane nods. “But I would not let her die there. When her true gender was found out, I enabled her escape. She left the pit alone, and I suffered the masses' judgement.”

Blake's dark eyes linger on the mask. Bane turns his head aside.

“They chained me, and they beat and taunted and mutilated me,” he says to the wall. “And the doctor who couldn't fix me let me live. He let me live even knowing that death would have been a kindness. And so I waited in the dark for four years, breathing vapors from a rag just to keep my sanity.”

He clenches his hand into a fist, opens it again. He does that several times, bearing himself through that memory.

“Talia came back for you,” Blake says.

“Yes. A grown woman then, with a legion of her father's men behind her. The same League of Shadows who shaped your Batman into a fighter.”

“Did you train with him?” Blake sounds awed.

“I was excommunicated long before Bruce Wayne joined my brothers in the mountains,” Bane growls. “I left the pit a monster. Talia's father could not bear to look at me without being reminded of the brutality of the men who had killed his love. He exiled me.”

“But you had nothing to do with that,” says Blake. He hesitates. “Did you?”

“No.” Bane practically snarls the word. He is a monster in nearly every way-but he is not one of them. “My only crime was protecting his daughter from the same fate.”

Blake lifts his gaze to Bane's eyes for a moment and then looks down again, apparently not liking what he sees there. He appears to be out of questions.

Bane is wrong. Blake breaks the silence a few minutes later with another one.

“Would you do it again?” he asks.

Bane sighs through the mask, a soft mechanic wheeze. He unclenches his fist, anger draining from him.

“A thousand times over.”

*
When Bane returns late the next day, he brings burn ointment and tinned cat food. He's told his men to keep an eye out for the latter. Apparently, it is a small commodity among the poor who can't always reach the food trucks in time.

Blake is curled up against the headboard, reading again. The kitten is nowhere in sight.

“For your cat.” Bane drops the items on the coverlet in front of him. “The ointment is for burns. As we have no human burn victims here, I hope your conscience is assuaged.”

“I don't want the cat.” Blake's voice is uncharacteristically flat.

Bane pauses. “I see.”

“No.” Blake raises his head to glare up at him. “I finally figured out why you gave a fucking half-dead cat to me. You didn't mean it to get better. You wanted to watch me try to breathe life into this thing while it just got worse and worse until I said fine, that's it, and drowned it, because that would be better than watching it suffer. So, you win. I would do it, I'd drown the fucking cat. Is that good enough for you, did I pass your psychopathic test? Are you happy, knowing I'd kill something innocent?”

He's almost shouting. Bane thinks about that and determines it is probably not an unreasonable assumption to make. He's not quite sure how to respond to it, though. He's already told Blake the cat was a gift. Really, Blake can interpret that however he chooses.

Blake is watching him, still glaring, and slowly the furrow between his eyebrows fades. His anger is gradually wiped away entirely. He ducks his head, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“...Or you are really, actually, emotionally retarded enough to think that a half-dead cat is an okay gift to give to someone. Christ. Okay.”

“I can take the cat away,” Bane offers.

“No,” Blake mutters, “it's ... she's still in rough shape. But she's keeping some food down.” He sighs. “She's under the bed. I think she likes the cool floor.”

“I thought,” says Bane, remembering the bird, remembering Talia- “it might make you happy.”

“What do you care, if I'm happy?”

It's a good question. Bane doesn't care. Shouldn't care. Blake's eyes are curious, his face open.

The spark dims. “I guess I'm easier to control if I'm happy.”

“I have never wanted to control you,” Bane says. “I find you much more amusing when you act of your own volition.”

Blake snorts. “Yeah. That's what I'm here for, your amusement.”

“You always have been,” says Bane. “Did you not know?”

Blake's mouth twists. It takes Bane a moment to realize he's fighting a smile.

“I can't think what to call her if she makes it,” Blake says. “I don't think she wants a fancy name.”

“No,” Bane agrees, letting him change the subject. “Nor did I.”

*
Bane learns the cat is going to survive when he enters the room one night and sits down on the bed to remove his boots. The cat comes bounding out from under the bed and scrambles under a couch.

“Your animal is afraid of me,” Bane comments.

“She's not my animal,” Blake says. He's going through some of his exercises, facing the window, so he can watch over his city while he centers his body. “She's just some cat. I don't even like cats. And she's only afraid of you because she doesn't know you won't hurt her.”

“Wouldn't I?” says Bane.

“No,” says Blake simply. He exhales, shifts, and Bane watches, noting how much more fluid his movements have become. “You wouldn't.” He stops what he's doing, turns to face Bane. “Besides, you're huge. That's scary.”

“Nobody found me particularly scary until I put the mask on.”

Blake raises his eyebrows, apparently skeptical, and Bane suddenly notices the bandages on his fingers. He stands sharply. Blake doesn't shrink back when Bane approaches, not even when he grabs his hand and examines it.

“Barsad is showing me how to disarm an opponent with a knife,” he says. “He's a little more hands-on than they were at the academy.”

“Did he hurt you?” Bane demands.

Blake is silent. When Bane lifts his gaze, they lock eyes for a moment. Colour rises in Blake's cheeks. He pulls his hand back.

“Not-not really. He fixed up the cuts. I guess-I have to learn, right? Lots of people in Gotham carrying knives right now.” His shoulders slump, and he looks out the window. “Not that I'm out there with them,” he mutters.

It's said to himself rather than to Bane, but Bane feels it.

“If I were to let you go...” he starts.

Blake looks at him, eyes suddenly burning with an urgent question. Bane forestalls him by continuing sharply, “If I were to let you go, you would use the knowledge you have of Talia to kill her.”

Blake's face falls, then clouds with anger. “Are you kidding? She's one of the only people who knows how to stabilize the bomb. Is that really your reason?”

“I would never,” Bane says in a low growl, “risk Talia's life.”

Blake grinds his jaw and just stands there, not saying anything. They're both silent for several minutes, watching the damned city.

“She would destroy you, as well,” Bane says quietly, at last.

“I don't know,” Blake says, equally quiet. “I'm getting pretty good at taking a hit.”

The corner of his mouth twitches as he says it, just a bit. He looks at Bane again.

“That thing Talia was doing to you-massaging you?”

“Yes.”

“I could do that,” Blake says. “She's not here that often. And it helps. Right?”

Bane eyes him, seeking out his motive. “Why would you do that?”

“Because,” Blake says, shrugging, looking out the window. “You gave me a half-dead cat. Fair's fair, right?”

“Yes,” Bane says, after a long, thoughtful silence, watching him start his exercises again. “Fair is fair.”

***
“Are you crazy?” John demands. “I mean, are you crazier than I already thought you were?”

Barsad gestures impatiently. Today he's taken John for a car ride and a short walk-his first time leaving the building since he arrived. He doesn't try to run. Barsad's got his rifle, and however good John is getting at being “soft” and deflecting most blows, he's pretty sure he can't deflect a bullet.

But Barsad has slung the rifle and his ammunition belt to the ground. They're on the beach. He wants John to walk onto the ice.

“It'll crack,” John says.

“Not if you have learned to displace your weight evenly.”

“I'll drown,” says John stubbornly.

“Only if you fall in,” says Barsad, which isn't at all reassuring.

A hot wave of recklessness sweeps over John. He walks onto the ice. Maybe he can walk all the way across, out of this crazy city. But he doesn't get very far before it groans under his feet. He stops.

“Here,” says Barsad, satisfied, right behind him. “Warm up first.”

John's wearing a borrowed coat-he has no idea where Bane got it from, whether its previous owner is dead or not. It's not very warm, but he still glares when Barsad makes him take it off. Little snowflakes land on their exposed hands and faces and melt away.

“In the mountains we would do this in much harsher temperatures,” says Barsad. “You complain too much.”

John keeps his mouth shut. He hears that from Barsad all the time. He talks too much, complains too much. He starts the exercises in silence. The ice creaks unsettlingly under his feet and he shuts his eyes, stomach pitching slightly. He's never been a very good swimmer.

“Barsad, if I fall in-”

“I'll pull you out,” says Barsad calmly.

“Why are we doing this?”

“The city is right there,” Barsad says, his face betraying nothing, “if you happen to beat me.”

John looks. There's no one, no guards on the shoreline to watch them. He turns back to Barsad, who is smiling slightly.

They start warming up. The exercises are comforting, making John's blood flow, chasing away a little of the cold. Then Barsad wants to do tui shou. John's feet slide on the ice. “Rotate your body,” Barsad reminds him. “Mind your environment.”

They practise silently for the most part. Barsad rarely ever speaks except to offer guidance or explain what he wants John to do. He barely has to correct John during these exercises anymore, so it's a surprise when he speaks again.

“Don't make any more of your little deals with Bane.”

John nearly slips. He catches himself and straightens up, lowering his hands. Barsad copies him.

“It doesn't matter,” John says, after struggling to find words. His ears burn in the cold air. “I can't even get him off.”

“You presume too much about him.”

“He doesn't want me. I get it.”

“He doesn't want you that way,” Barsad corrects. He raises his hands again, ready to resume, but John doesn't move.

“He's in love with Talia,” he says, trying to rationalize, because there must be some reason for Bane's apathy when he's always watching John so carefully in the privacy of his room, like he's never seen anything quite like John. Barsad shrugs, a loose roll of the shoulders.

“My brother is devoted to her. I don't think he's ever lusted for her.”

“I've seen the way he looks at her. Like-”

“Like she is the only star in his sky,” Barsad says. “Do you know where they met? Then you must know the fate he saved her from. How could he ever lay a hand on her?”

He doesn't expand on that, and John struggles to make meaning of his words. Barsad cuffs him, lightly, trying to get his attention back, and John shakes his head and raises his hands.

They run through a few more motions before he stops again.

“Why did he agree,” he blurts out. “If he doesn't want me that way.”

“You belong to him. Anyone's mouth on a man's prick feels good.” This time John is able to deflect Barsad's less-playful cuff. “Perhaps if you spent less time talking about Bane, you would already be doing what he expects you to learn.”

John lashes out and Barsad buffets his fist away harmlessly. He encourages John to surprise him like that. John knows he's tense, stinging.

“Fine,” he says. “I won't do it again. But he could have just said no,” he adds.

Barsad grunts, and hits him in the head. Stars pop into John's vision; he recoils.

“We're warming up!” he protests. Barsad shrugs again.

“You hit first.”

John scowls, and attacks him. He's tired of this, suddenly. He's sick of being a prisoner, sick of all the jeers and catcalls from the Blackgate prisoners and the knowing stares from the militiamen who call him Bane's whore in their own tongue. He's sick of lying next to Bane at night and pretending he can't feel the mercenary's gaze on him and he's sick of being Barsad's punching bag. He centers his weight. He feels how the ice shifts under him. If he wins, his city is right there. He only has to hit Barsad hard enough to distract him for a moment. Barsad indulges him, letting John probe his weak spots, just long enough to make John's confidence climb.

He's doing it. He's on the ice, sparring, circling, doing this amazing, crazy thing. The ice groans, makes noises like gunshots under their feet, and John is doing this. His spirit soars.

Then Barsad stops playing with him.

“We all have to fall through the ice,” Barsad tells him, very calmly, as soon as John is conscious and shivering violently on the shore. “Sometimes once is enough.”

Barsad has to half carry John up to the penthouse when they return to the tower. Bane is in the bedroom, sitting at the desk. His eyes narrow when he sees them.

“What did you do?”

“He went through the ice,” Barsad explains, disentangling John from himself. “He did well.”

Bane seems to understand and accept that, to John's frustration. He'd rather see Bane punch Barsad through a wall. But Barsad leaves unscathed, shutting the door behind him.

“Strip,” Bane orders.

John does, not even caring. Let Bane see. He's done with this insanity. He tries to say so, but can't coordinate lips and tongue and chattering jaw. Bane pushes him to the bed, makes him lie down.

It takes John several efforts to force out the word: “Sh-sh-shower.”

“Mustn't rewarm you too quickly.” Bane sounds almost-amused? It's as difficult to coordinate thoughts as it is everything else. There's a sweeping sound, and then Bane's coat-warm, soft, warm-is covering him. John curls up under it, trying to soak up its heat. Bane pulls the covers over him and the coat and disappears. He returns with a glass of water.

“Your lips are blue. How long were you under?”

John shakes his head, puffing out a shaky breath. “C-couldn't g-get out.” The ice closing in over his head; that's the last thing he remembers.

Bane makes him sit up a bit and tips some lukewarm water down his throat. John swallows some as best he can, and nearly chips a tooth on the glass when another wave of shivers wracks him. Bane takes the glass away.

“Would you like your cat?”

John laughs, starting to feel a little loopy. She'd love that, being smothered under the covers, surrounded by Bane's smell. “No.”

Bane seeks out the kitten anyway, grabs her by the scruff and deposits her on the pillow next to John's head. To his surprise, she dives under the covers with him right away, pressing her quaking body to his. She really is afraid of the beast with the metal face.

“Ah,” John gasps, the rasp against his chest making him writhe. “Sh-she's licking me. F-fuck, I h-hate cats.”

Disgruntled, Bane draws back the covers and the coat so he can take the cat away. Instead of tucking John back in, he starts to shed his vest, his shirt, his belt, his wrist brace.

John twists his face away when Bane gets under the covers, embarrassed. He tries to resist when Bane pulls him closer. Bane growls, pinning him easily. His bare arms wrap under John's chest, and he's-warm. His body is like a furnace.

“We all fall through the ice,” Bane says, just as Barsad had. John huffs another little shaky laugh.

“E-even you?”

“Yes.” Bane pushes the coat out of the way, so that he can keep John's back against his chest. God, he's so warm. John wants to turn and burrow right into him, and that's a bizarre thought.

He lets Bane's body heat leach into him through his back, even lets Bane rub his chest with one hand. This is the weirdest situation he's ever been in. It's almost-intimate, until Bane's mask brushes his shoulder and makes him jump, reminding him who he's with. Bane moves his face away.

It's an hour or so before John stops shivering quite so violently, starts becoming more aware of the silence. Bane's probably going to crush him like a bug for this, but he has to say it. He licks his cracked lips.

“Barsad said you've never slept with Talia.”

Bane is quiet for a minute. Then he says, “Barsad didn't lie.”

“Why did you let that cop and the boy live?”

Bane's been rubbing his chest for so long that it doesn't feel weird until he stops.

“I couldn't get you off,” John says.

Bane laughs harshly, a grating mechanic sound that makes John understand why the cat is so afraid of him. “Nobody can do that.”

“You knew I wouldn't. And you still let me try. And you let the cop live, and that boy.”

“You must be broken more slowly than that, John,” Bane says. “Two cops seemed effective enough.”

But that's not satisfying enough for John. If Bane were still trying to break him he'd be doing more about it than handing him abused kittens to nurse.

“You are trying to keep me happy,” John says, “in a weird, twisted way. You actually think killing two cops and sparing one is being nice to me.”

Bane is starting to tense. His voice is clipped. “I wouldn't presume so much.”

John gets it, what Barsad said on the ice, suddenly. He says, “I'm sorry if I made you feel like you were-forcing me. I shouldn't have just assumed that you ... intended to, later.”

Bane lets him go. John immediately misses his warmth.

“You assumed?” Bane grates, and by his tone John knows he's edged into dangerous waters. “Because I like your body, and mistakenly thought I might enjoy your mouth, you assumed I wanted to have you by force?”

“No. It was-it was what Talia said, when she brought me here-”

Bane laughs again, with a wheezing effort. “You are not the first pet Talia has brought to me.”

“What happened to the others?” John dares to ask.

“Like you, they feared me,” Bane says. “And, like you, they could not satisfy me.”

“Has anybody?”

“No,” says Bane. John can sense his anger dissipating like a blown-out storm cloud. “Never. The drugs for the pain numb me to pleasure.” His breath hisses out of the mask. “Knowing that, what will you do with the information?”

“Pity you,” says John, honestly.

Bane seems surprised by that. John doesn't know why.

*
In the morning, John wakes to another man's weight crushing him into the mattress. He thrashes.

“Stop,” Bane orders. John does, lying there on his belly. He's still not wearing anything. Barsad never taught him how to get out of this.

“What are you doing?” he demands weakly. Does Bane think their talk last night was John opening himself to something beyond blowjobs? His heart pounds.

“You want to touch me the way Talia does?” Bane asks, instead of answering.

John nods, because he can't think what else to do.

“Then let me do it to you first.”

John rests his cheek on the pillow, pretending he's okay with this and his heart isn't beating a mile a minute. “Okay.”

Bane's fingers are-surprisingly gentle. He's holding back. He kneads John's muscles, just hard enough to straddle the line between oh-God-that's-good and fuck-that-hurts. He buries his face in the pillow and swallows his moans.

“Did Barsad teach you about nerve and pressure points?” Bane asks conversationally, when he's been doing this for a while.

“No, not yet,” John mumbles lazily, moving his head so he can speak. “He's all about defensive stuff.”

“Ah.” Bane brings his thumb up to John's neck and rubs a careful little circle. “He never told you about this one?”

“No,” says John, too sleepy to be alarmed. “What's that one-?”

Bane hits him so swiftly and effectively that for a half-second John thinks he's been struck with a knife. Intense pain engulfs him and is almost immediately gone again without a trace, leaving his brain locked in static paralysis. For several seconds he lies there, stunned. Then his brain comes back online and he tries to shove himself away from Bane, realizing in the same instant that one side of his body is numb and unresponsive.

“What-” he chokes out.

“If I let you touch me I make myself vulnerable to you,” Bane bites out. “Do you understand?”

“Christ! Let me up!”

Bane moves aside, allowing John to roll away from him, cradling his paralyzed arm. He breathes deep. His body's starting to tingle; that must be good.

“You're psychotic,” he gasps. “What the fuck was that?”

Bane's eyes are narrowed, flinty and cold above the mask. “I'm not a fool, John Blake.”

“Neither am I,” John snaps. “Do you seriously think I'd be dumb enough to try and pull that? On you?”

“Then why offer?”

“You let that kid live. I appreciate it, all right?” Bane is silent. After a moment John spits out, “I know this is a really difficult concept for you, but sometimes people do nice things because they can.”

They stare across the bed at each other. John is panting, still holding his arm. He flexes his fingers.

“Maybe I want to help you and this is the only way I can think how to do it,” he says.

Bane's eyebrows knit. “Help me,” he echoes.

“Yeah. Help you.”

When Bane says nothing, John rolls out of bed and starts gathering up clothes. One side of his body is still slower to respond, but he drags his clothes on as quickly as he can. The kitten pokes her head out from under the desk; he stoops down to pet her marred head and pours some milk from the mini-fridge into a bowl.

“I am,” Bane says quietly from the bed, distracting him, “in some pain now.”

John turns to face him. “Yeah, well,” he says, “that's what you get for nerve-striking me in the fucking neck, asshole.”

“At least you learned,” Bane says. “You're always complaining that Barsad doesn't teach you offensive maneuvers.”

John grumbles. He could swear that's a joke.

“Okay,” he says, after a brief internal argument. “Lie down then.”

Bane hesitates. Then he obeys, lying on his stomach with his arms folded under his head. He's obviously tense. John joins him on the bed. He must be nuts to do this, to willingly get back in bed with this monster, but he could swear they're developing a rapport, and he intends to make use of it.

He straddles Bane's back, and once again it's brought home to him just how big Bane is. His knees are stretched out wide on either side of Bane's waist. He settles gingerly onto the broad expanse on Bane's back, vaguely fascinated by the twitch and flex of rippling muscle under him.

A brutal scar runs from Bane's neck down his spine. Curious, John trails a finger down it.

“What's that from?”

“Surgery,” Bane rumbles, “by an incompetent doctor.”

John shuts up and focuses. He's never given a massage before. He's not sure where to start.

“Start with the shoulders,” Bane says, as if reading his mind. “Press in hard; the harder the better.”

John flushes slightly at that, but obediently gets to work. He digs in hard with his fingers, then rolls the heels of his palms down, with as much force as he can channel through his arms. God, Bane's shoulders are huge.

It's about half an hour or so before he can actually feel Bane starting to relax. It's kind of fascinating, actually, as he goes along; cataloguing all the scars on Bane's back, noting Bane's reactions when he touches them. Questions are dying to burst from his lips, but he bites them all back. He thinks he knows what most are from, anyway. Saving Talia.

A thousand times over. Bane is devoted to Talia. How can such a ruthless killer have such a big soft spot? What is it about Talia? As far as John can tell, she's as crazy as he is. Maybe he likes that.

“Why did you save Talia?” he asks.

Bane is quiet. Then he says, “When her mother was killed, I saw how the pit turns men into monsters. I had already learned to kill and maim from a very young age just to survive. Protecting Talia gave me hope that I might find redemption. She was something innocent.”

“She's not so innocent now.”

“I couldn't have known the ideas her father would possess her with when I helped her to escape.”

“It's her idea, isn't it?” John says, sensing a gleam of light in a very dark passage. “Destroying Gotham.”

Bane sounds amused. “Does it matter whose idea it was if I subscribe to it? Gotham is a blight upon the world, John, and must be cleansed. There is nothing innocent left here.”

“How can you believe that?” John asks, impatient. “You and Barsad both. You're both smart guys-at least I think so. Why this devotion to Talia's madness?”

Bane rolls over, depositing John onto the mattress with surprising gentleness. John picks himself up sullenly.

“Madness?” says Bane, eyebrows raised. “Has Barsad told you about himself?”

John shakes his head.

“As a young man, Barsad had a beautiful wife and son,” says Bane. “And when soldiers came to his home, they raped his wife, and killed her, and they killed his infant son for screaming while they committed this atrocity. Then they burnt his house to the ground, so that when he returned, there was nothing left for him to bury or even to remember them by. That is what happens when a group of people with authority is given too much power. That is why we, the League of Shadows, must restore balance. And when Gotham is burning, it will send our message to the world.”

“I-” John's throat feels tight. “I don't think you seriously believe that.”

“Gotham is a corrupt city, John. I see nothing here worth saving.”

“Even me?” John challenges.

Bane pauses. Then his eyes crinkle into a wry smile. “John Blake,” he says slowly. “The last just cop in Gotham.”

It's almost enough to confirm John's suspicion-that Bane is developing a blind spot for him, too. Slowly, but it's there.

“Do you still want redemption?” he asks.

“This is my redemption,” says Bane. “Fulfilling the purpose of the League of Shadows: purging this city.”

“You're not a good person,” says John. “I think you could be, though, you know. Kind of weird and crazy, but good. I think it's in you.”

Bane watches him, breathing steadily. His eyes are unreadable now.

“You look at me and see a monster,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“You know what I think?” John demands. He's about to say that he thinks Bane got so tired of people being afraid of him that he started wanting to give them a reason to be afraid; and he wants to say that maybe the mask isn't so nice to look at, but at least he knows there's a person under there. Before he can say any of this, though, Bane suddenly drags him in close, making him writhe and shout angrily, and flattens him.

“Enough,” he says.

He's not angry, but John knows he's done with this conversation. He glares at Bane.

“You're still cold,” Bane says, pushing him over easily, pressing John's back to his chest. His hand slips under John's shirt, splays over his heart. “I can warm you.”

Abruptly John doesn't want to fight, because he is cold. The mask brushes his ear, and he doesn't flinch this time. All the tension leaves him, and he relaxes into Bane's rough hands.

“I think I'll call the cat Harvey,” he says.

“Harvey?” Bane echoes.

“Yeah. It's kind of a mean joke, I guess, but apparently Harvey Dent wasn't such a nice person anyway, so. They say half his face was burnt off before he died.”

“How unexpectedly cruel of you,” Bane says.

He sounds pleased.

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