Chapter Text
There's another way into Batman's cave. It took John a couple weeks to find it. An old well shaft, dank and dim, but wide enough to accommodate the ladder he erects. It's a little easier than rappelling into the cave every time he needs to visit.
And he visits a lot.
“I brought someone to see you,” he calls out today, straightening up when he leaves the narrow shaft. His voice bounces back at him. Above, he hears the creak and rustle of disgruntled sleeping bats. “You awake?”
There's a little cove toward the back, near the lift that goes up into Wayne Manor, where Bane is currently lying belly-down on a cot Bruce must have installed. He doesn't budge at John's arrival. When he's close enough, John pulls Harvey out of his coat and sets her on the floor. She pads away, sniffing and squinting her one eye. When Bane suddenly drags in a harsh, forced breath, she jumps and runs away, the fur down her spine bristling.
“I took her to the vet last week,” John says, pulling up a chair and slinging his backpack to the ground. “She's rabies-proof now, so hopefully she doesn't get anything weird from the bats. She only gained two ounces in three weeks, the vet thinks she'll stay around five pounds, which is pretty small, for a cat ...”
Bane pulls in another breath, and rolls over to look at John.
“And you?” he says. Every word seems to cost him. “Are you well?”
The broken mask warps his voice more than ever. It's even more mechanic, no longer human, almost robotic. Harvey, creeping up under John's chair, pulls back and hisses. He's never heard her hiss before. He nudges her back with his foot, embarrassed.
“You mean since I saw you twelve hours ago?” he says, smiling. Bane's gaze is hard and intense and entirely serious. John clears his throat. “Um, yeah. I'm good.” He pauses. “Are you?”
Bane's eyes crinkle into a smile. His face is tight with pain.
“Yes,” he says, maybe serious, maybe mocking. “I am well.”
Getting him here was one of the most difficult things John's ever done. The sewers were being flooded with people to clear out debris, homeless people, and terrorists in hiding. There was no way for Bane to stay down there without being detected, so John had had to help him leave. Around every corner he thought he could hear the clatter of approaching boots. The anxiety of being discovered probably knocked about two years off his life.
He feels bad for using Bruce Wayne's hiding spot, but if there's one place in Gotham where Bane can recover without being seen, it's here. Getting him into the cave was the hard part. Bane has been beaten and his analgesic-delivering mask is broken. Bones are cracked, muscles are torn. John hadn't found the well entrance yet and he still doesn't know how to get in from Wayne Manor. He'd helped drag Bane to the base of the waterfall and then froze, unable to believe he hadn't thought of how to get Bane up the rock face. It had taken them hours and hours to leave the sewers; it was almost dawn.
He was on the verge of panic when Bane suddenly roused himself from a glassy-eyed state and regarded John scornfully, then began to climb the rock himself. Without any rope or equipment. He made the no-doubt excruciating climb as quickly as he was able, sucking in loud, grating breaths; and once inside the cave, he dropped onto the floor, exhausted, and slept for two days.
There are still some days when John isn't quite able to believe he's a man.
Harvey spots a creeping insect and starts stalking it. John's pretty sure she's the bastard kitten of a feral cat and a house-pet, because there's a deep core of affection inside her despite what she's been through, but she's also wild enough to hunt. She's already killed two mice in John's apartment, which, he informed her, officially upgrades her from deadbeat status.
Her depth perception isn't the greatest, though, her being one-eyed. She misses the insect and hits the wall head-first.
“I take it,” Bane says slowly and dryly, watching her like John is, “this is my surprise guest.”
“Yeah,” John says, smiling. “Didn't you miss her?”
Bane scoffs quietly and puts his head back down on the pillow. In another moment, he's asleep.
John watches him for a bit, then opens up his backpack and starts pulling out supplies.
Bane sleeps a lot these days. Rest is the best nurse, John had to tell him at first. Bane wanted to be on his feet, working, stretching, exercising, fighting his body back into the shape he wants it to be. It's been a long time since Bane was incapacitated, and he's like a wild horse that thrashes because it doesn't know it's not supposed to stand on a broken leg. John didn't even have to argue him into compliance. Every day more toxin leaves Bane's body, and every day he is more of a man than the beast he used to be.
He tires. He sleeps. He dreams. He dreams about the pit—he thinks he's there when he sleeps, because of the cave—and he panics and lashes out. John finds him trying to claw the mask off his face, groaning at the unfamiliar way his body hurts.
And he calls for Talia. It's the only time he makes mention of her. To his confused mind, it must seem she is punishing him for his failure by refusing to come. So John sits with him instead, tries awkwardly to soothe him until he settles or lapses out of his daze and looks at John bemusedly.
It's been six weeks now. The nightmares seem to be getting worse.
The pain...
John kneels on the cot and peels away Bane's shirt to take a look at the skin underneath. The worst of it, at least on the outside, is burns and shrapnel wounds from the explosives off the Bat-bike (he still hasn't learned its official designation). These he tends obsessively, and his reward is healing scar tissue without any signs of infection. Before the city got back on its feet, John was quick to hoard any remaining antibiotics and medical supplies, worried foremost about these wounds, the most obvious and ugly.
But these wounds aren't the problem anymore. They're healing, and Bane isn't getting better. He's getting worse.
His breathing is laboured even in sleep. His scalp under the straps of the mask glistens with a sheen of sweat, and when John touches his face he finds it feverish to the touch. Bane's being slowly paralyzed by the pain, sinking into deeper and deeper stupours when he rests.
There is nothing John can do. Bane is dying.
*
John is at home, watching the news on TV, when his phone rings.
He mutes the TV. The reporters seem to find some savage delight in telling the world, every day, that Bane is still at large. Sure, he held up an entire city with a nuclear weapon, but he makes for great news. They've reached the point in the segment where they bounce a few theories off each other—Bane's dead, he's in the sewers, he's in Europe, he's running for governor for the state of Hawaii—and John figures he's not missing much.
It's Gordon.
“Hey,” the older cop says. He sounds tired, and John almost feels like a jerk, for a second, leaving him to clean up the city on his own.
“Hi,” John says. “You okay?”
“Never better,” Gordon says, like the cynic he is. John smiles, but it's quickly wiped off his face when Gordon continues. “Look, I need to ask you to do something. It may be difficult for you.”
“Sure,” John says.
On Gordon's end, he can hear a snappish voice in the background. Gordon's reply to the snapper is muffled. Then he's back.
“Sorry,” he says. “Can you come down to the station?”
“Sure. What for?”
“You'd be doing me a favour,” Gordon says. John sighs.
“I'll be there in twenty minutes.”
He makes it there in fifteen. The first cop he talks to greets him warmly—they all do whenever he's here, slapping his back and smiling at him, John the hero who saved the cops—and takes him to an interrogation room, where Gordon is already sitting at the table. Two men in suits stand off to one side.
“Am I under arrest?” John asks when the door closes behind him. He's smiling, but even as he says it he considers with a twinge that he very well could be.
Gordon glances up from the papers he's looking at. “Of course not. Come on in, Blake.”
John joins them at the table. After a pause, he takes a seat. It makes him feel like he's in trouble for something.
“Agent Hudson,” Gordon says by way of introduction, waving a hand at the nearer of the two men. “And Agent Choi.”
“From what agency?” John asks.
The two men exchange a glance.
“CIA,” Hudson answers.
“We have some questions for you,” Choi adds.
John turns to Gordon. “You said I wasn't under arrest.”
Again, lighthearted, but what is the punishment for harbouring an internationally-wanted terrorist, anyway?
“You're not in trouble for anything, Detective,” Hudson says, and attempts a smile. It makes him look like he ate something that isn't agreeing with him. Gordon sighs, and takes over.
“It's about the time you spent with Bane during the occupation,” he says. “We're having some trouble pinning down which men he considered intimates, men who would know his plans. Or where to find him.”
“Oh,” says John.
“Here.” Hudson shuffles through the papers and sets them out on the table in front of John. They're pictures, rows of mugshots of sullen-looking mercenaries. “See if you recognize any men in there who Bane might have spent more time with than the others.”
“What makes you think they'll know where he is now?”
“It's our best lead,” Choi says, scowling. “Look at the pictures.”
John shuts up and does. Most faces he doesn't know. There are four men Bane did talk to a lot, and he's pretty sure he could pick them out of this pile if they're in here, but he doubts they'd be any help to Hudson and Choi. First of all, no one knows where Bane is except for John (and Harvey). And second, most of Bane's men would sooner die than compromise their leader. Bane inspires a whole lot of loyalty in his men.
He shakes his head. “I don't recognize anyone in here.”
Hudson puts another photo on the table in front of him and points. “What about this men?”
There's a tiny pang in John's chest: it's a slightly grainy picture of Bane, with Barsad tailing close behind him.
John's been trying not to think about Barsad. All he knows of Barsad's fate is that he was shot, and John didn't see him being rounded up with the other terrorists. Common sense fills in the blanks.
Barsad. A part of John actually misses the guy.
“Is he a bodyguard?” Choi demands, when John doesn't answer right away. “Would he have overheard anything Bane was planning?”
“Does Bane look like a guy who needs a bodyguard?” John snaps, needled by the man's brusqueness. He's trying to have a moment, here. He takes a deep breath. “That's Bane's right-hand guy. Barsad. He doesn't matter. You'd never catch him, and even if you could, he's dead.”
Gordon, slumped in the opposite chair and rubbing at his temple, raises his head. Choi immediately pulls out a phone and starts punching stuff in.
“Barsad?” Hudson says, looking at the picture with renewed interest. “That's his name?”
“Yeah—why?”
“He's alive,” Choi says bluntly, not looking up for his phone, “and he's in custody.”
John's stomach drops right through the floor, down to the parking garage below.
“Oh,” he says. Hudson starts sweeping up all the photos into a manila folder while Choi speaks into his phone, headed for the door. Alarmed, John half rises from his chair. “What are you gonna do—torture him?”
“No, no,” Hudson says, forcing a smile. Choi rolls his eyes and leaves the room. “The US government doesn't—we have a guy who'll talk to him.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Thank you, detective, but we're taking over from here. Commissioner,” Hudson says, nodding respectfully to Gordon. Then he leaves, too.
John kicks the table leg. Gordon blinks.
“What's the matter?”
“I thought he was dead all this time,” John says, furious at himself. “Shit, I haven't even looked for him.”
“Why would you?”
“It's— I have to go,” John says, thinking that he needs to get to the cave so he can tell Bane about this news at once. “Sorry. Uh—I'm glad I helped.”
Gordon stops him at the door, a gentle hand on his arm.
“Don't be a stranger, Blake,” he says, looking suddenly old and tired. And old. “I know the occupation was rougher on you than on most people, but ... don't isolate yourself, okay?”
“I won't,” John says. Gordon gives him a quick smile like he almost believes it, a bracing pat, and lets him go.
*
Harvey greets John first thing when he returns to the cave, scampering out of the dark and arching herself again his legs. He'd left her overnight because she seemed to enjoy hunting the cave fauna so much, and he kind of hates leaving Bane all alone. He smiles and stoops down to rub her tattered ears. He's starting to see the appeal of the whole cat thing.
“Hi. Where's Bane, huh? Sleeping again?”
She gives one of her creaky little meows and strolls away. When John heads deeper into the cave, he finds Bane standing knee-deep in the pool, boots on the rock nearby and cargo pants rolled up, going through a series of stretches and breathing exercises. It hurts, if his expression is anything to go by.
“Hey, hey!” John is splashing through the water before he can think about it, wading messily to Bane's side. “What, uh, what are you doing?”
“Stretching,” Bane grunts. He relaxes his spine and lowers his arms. “I need to condition my body.”
“For what?”
“Healing.” Bane looks down at his hand, and John sees that he's trying to make a fist. His fingers curl stiffly, not reaching his palm.
The pain is paralyzing him. It started in his back and it's affecting all his limbs now. The evidence of it is unsettling. The indomitable warlord that John met almost half a year ago is fading. He brought Bane here to ... to help him, to repay a debt, return a good favour, that's all—but the thought of Bane dying is terrifying, all the same.
Bane drops his hand to his side and looks up at John, as if confused by his body's failings.
“I should be well by now,” he says. “I should be ... training you.”
“Come on,” John says, giving his arm a little tug.
To his relief, Bane narrows his eyes but goes along with John. They clamber out of the pool. This short walk leaves Bane panting harshly. To distract him, John says, “Training me for what?”
Bane sits heavily on the nearest ledge. He gestures loosely at the cave around them and gasps, “Taking up the suit.”
“That's—” John's cheeks burn. Stupid, is what it is. Batman was trained in ninja arts and had all the resources and weapons money can buy. John is an ex-cop who knows a pitifully small amount of defensive t'ai-chi. “I'm not—he didn't want me to be Batman. He left me his technology so I could, so I could be a better detective, work outside the law, help people ...”
Bane gives him the sort of withering look this idea deserves.
“I know how Bruce Wayne's mind worked,” he says. “And I know how happily you risk your life for this city.”
“But I'm not even—look at me,” John says helplessly, spreading his hands. “If I were your size, sure—”
“Barsad was nearly my equal. He was your size.”
Was. The past tense kills John. For weeks Bane kept speaking about Barsad as if he were still alive, even insisted that they leave a message for him in the sewers (“at Batman's house”, in what Bane assured him is an obscure language) before moving to the cave. But Barsad's name has come up less and less over the past few weeks. Now, on the day that John finds out he's alive, Bane concedes that he's dead.
John almost opens his mouth to say that Barsad is alive, but suddenly he's afraid Bane will want to storm every prison in the state getting him back. He's in no shape for that. Not to mention John's aversion to law-breaking.
“Barsad's different,” he says finally. “He had the right training.”
“So could you.” Bane struggles to stand up, one hand pressed over his stomach. “If I were ... stronger ...”
“Stop,” John says, pushing him back down. He nearly trips over Harvey, who has reappeared to lie on John's sneaker and suck the water from his shoelaces but bolts for safety when Bane moves. John continues, “Look, you're never going to get stronger unless we fix your mask, and that means taking it—”
Bane's hand comes up to the grille protectively. He glares at John.
“—off,” John sighs.
“No.”
“Fine,” John snaps. His socks are wet and he has a headache. “Suffocate and die, see if I care.”
He stomps off to where he keeps an extra set of clothes and, with great foresight, another pair of shoes. It's not the first time he's stood in the water down here, intentionally or not. He changes his pants and socks and shoes and feels marginally better when his feet are dry again.
Take up the suit. It's ridiculous. It's stupid, is what it is; it's—exactly what John has trying to put out of mind, too busy tending to Bane to give it any real thought. He can't be Batman. He's no one, he's just some ex-cop, he's not ... Bruce Wayne.
No one is Bruce Wayne.
But Bruce believed in being a symbol. Batman was never a person: he was an icon. In that suit, that—body armour, maybe John could do it. Maybe he could do anything.
When he returns to the pool's edge, he finds Bane sitting on the same rock ledge, but his face is turned away. His breathing is lighter. John hurries forward, alarmed, and then he sees it. At his feet lies the mask.
He hovers, torn momentarily. Bane groans softly in pain and tilts his head even further away from John, one arm pulled over his face to shield himself. John picks up the mask.
He can see now why Bane is having such a hard time breathing: it's the way the teeth of the mask are crumpled into the grille, partially sealing off air flow. Apart from that, John learns nothing new. Only two of the bristling tubes are connected, feeding anesthetic gas to the mouthpiece. The rest are as broken as ever. He fumbles with them for a bit, just to give his hands something to do, wishing the stupid things would just reconnect on their own. He wishes, ridiculously, that Bruce had been a little gentler in that fight.
When he looks up again, he nearly drops the mask. Harvey blinks at him from Bane's lap, nestled in as though she belongs there. Bane doesn't seem to notice her. He's breathing easier than he has in six weeks.
“Here,” John says, edging cautiously closer and setting the mask down on the ledge at Bane's side. Bane doesn't move. Harvey rubs her mutilated face against his leg tentatively, seeking love. It's the mask she's afraid of, John concludes. It's always been the mask.
After a second, he asks warily, “Can I see?”
“No,” Bane rasps, face twisted firmly away. Disappointed but not surprised, John turns and walks away a few steps, shoving his hands in his pockets. He can hear Bane strapping the mask back on.
He needs help with the last few, finer clasps, though his face is fully covered again. When John looks down he finds Harvey on the floor now, staring up at Bane with every hair on her spine bristling in shock, like she can't believe her new friend has just turned into the monster with the metal face. John smiles at her bewilderment.
“Well?” Bane asks.
John sighs. “I don't know. I can't fix it.”
“I thought not.” Bane stands, wavering for just a moment. He shuts his eyes. When he opens them again, they shine with feverish determination. “No one alive can help me but myself.”
No one alive. And for the first time all day, it clicks. To save Bane, John has got to get to Barsad.