A/N

Sorry for the wait guys, these few chapters have taken a bit of time because I've been trying to give them as much love as possible. We're delving a bit into the inner thoughts of Bane and - dun dun dun, someone finally shows up after a long time. ;)

The scenes for the Pit with this chapter are what pushes this T rating almost over to an M, just to give you guys a heads up. Nothing overly graphic, but gruesome concepts. Hope everyone enjoys, and remember to leave feedback and questions. Cheers! :)

NINE

The Field

The crow glides smoothly in the air, its wings lifted by an invisible thermal current, hot air pushing it upwards and it caws its delight of feeling such freedom. Gliding, soaring, it arcs in lazy circles, the circles tightening as it descends closer and closer to the ground.

Crane watches its trajectory, knowing it will land on his shoulder, and he is glad. Something within him has stilled, and inside he feels like ice. Calm and cold.

The crow caws one more time and then he hears a fluttering, feels something soft beating at his ear and the pricks of claw points settling into the flesh of his arm. It worries at the bag with its beak, cawing once more to let him know it is here.

Crane does not need the mirror to see it. He turns his head to his side, the burlap scratching at his face in its rough caress, and he has never felt better. His voice is quiet, but not small anymore. "I am the watcher in the field. I am one of the pagan gods. I am the shadow."

The crow tilts its head, as if observing him closely, and then once again it caws as if to say – I believe you.

The crow then hops a few times on his shoulder before flitting briefly into the air again, landing on his chest, its claws hooking into his shirt. It begins to peck and worry at his shirt, tearing the material away until his chest is exposed. It caws three times, loudly into the air, and Crane sees the horizon darken with the flight of a thousand black wings.

The crow stabs his chest, its beak perfectly formed for ripping out strings of flesh. It burrows and burrows until it has made a hole where his heart should be and squirms its way inside.

Crane begins to laugh.

A murder of crows, the largest he's ever seen, descends onto the field, coating him, armouring him.

Several land on the wooden frame and begin pecking and tearing at the ropes that bind him. Little by little the ropes fray.

The Pit

The blind doctor gropes in the darkness, his ministrations clumsy and fumbling. Bane is reminded of the doctor's previous fumbling hands that had so irrevocably ruined his face, but the only bitterness he tastes in his mouth is from the fresh intake of venom.

The canisters clicking into place, Bane redoes the clasps of his mask himself. The doctor sighs in relief, his arms trembling from the effort of replacing the canisters without sight, and he sits back down on the floor.

"These past few days I have been suffocated by the smell of blood."

Bane places a large hand, heavy, on the doctor's head, but it is a soothing rather than crushing weight. "It is a good smell, and the pit has a thirst."

He says no more, leaving the doctor in his gloom. He's sure the old man knows deep within his heart what is coming, so the words need not find their way to the dank air.

The demon looks to his work and crosses his arms against his chest in satisfaction. At the mouth of the pit, in the centre, is a large pile of bodies. Every unfortunate soul trapped down in this prison, Bane has hunted and taken their lives with only his hands. The dreadful machine he is building stares back at him with blank, accusing eyes but he does not feel their recrimination.

He stands quietly, until his ears finally pick up on the muffled, terrified sobs of one still left. Prowling, Bane makes his ways through the shadows of the prison until he finally comes upon the cell with the last person left.

He is an old man, his hair white, his throat wrinkled, and unashamedly he sobs into the rough robes given to all the prisoners here. "Demon...demon..." the old man whispers, trembling.

"Do not fear your end." Bane's voice croons out of the vents of his mask, tinny and strange in the blanket of quiet. He reaches, almost gently, for the old man, pulling him up to stand on his feet. "I am only taking the last days of your misery."

With a savage twist the man's neck is broken, and Bane carries him as he would a child to the centre of the pit. With the old man slung over his shoulder, Bane climbs up the flesh pyramid with one hand until he has reached the top and lays down the new mortar.

The descent is a little treacherous, so Bane takes his time, making sure each step is sure. At the bottom he looks back up to the pit and the ladder he is making. It is still too short, but he does not worry.

The Pit is where he was reborn and it hears his prayers. It will send him more bodies soon. It is always hungry.

Now the nights are completely silent. Only the light breathing of the blind doctor penetrates the darkness, but even then it is so quiet it might not exist. Bane sits in his old cell, his fingers tracing over the lines of brick and stone, as the doctor would trace his fingers over a face to memorize it.

Bane is finding the old memory of a face. A child's face.

"Talia...if you are anywhere, would you not be here?"

He is a child of the shadows, but there is one shade looming over him he is finding hard to find the courage to face.

If I were the sorcerer Ra's al Ghul was I would make you again with stone and blood and tears.

But this pit was his cauldron now, with stone and blood and tears mingling aplenty, and it was not for breathing new life.

His life had no purpose before and it did not seem to have one now with her gone. The child, the woman had given him more than freedom from hell. She had given him a duty, a calling, a responsibility and so had risen a broken beast to be a man again.

And now what am I?

If Ra's al Ghul still lived he would have gladly snapped the man's neck for separating him from Talia all those years ago. But that death was Bruce Wayne's, not his. If Bruce Wayne, if the Batman still lived he would break him again and this time would not stop until his skull had been crushed to pulp and sand in his fingers. But that was gone as well...all deaths cheated from him.

Where are you? Haunt me...haunt me and mock me for not being able to save you, pour all of your poison in my ear for failing you and make me relive my disgrace for every day I live...

...just don't leave my side...

The Field

When the crows lift off lightly into the air it is as if the tall man in the field has shaken them off like a layer of dust. They squawk and caw irritably at losing their perch but don't go far, settling again in the field of corn.

He stretches languorously, his muscles feeling a good, deep ache. His hand passes curiously over his face, feeling the burlap.

The scarecrow looks into the mirror and sees Jonathan Crane, huddled on the ground, hugging his legs to his chest. Jonathan waves meekly to him, a small, terrible smile on his face.

The scarecrow takes a bow, his limbs seem almost too long and flop about in motion. Then, balling his fists together, he raises his arms high and strikes down on the mirror's surface.

The mirror cracks and the scarecrow swings down again and again until it lies shattered in the field. The crows flutter and screech, still never straying far from their keeper.

Though his hands are bleeding the scarecrow doesn't seem to mind. If he is smiling, it is hidden, the smile he wears is the stitching on the burlap sack.

"How long have you been watching me?"

The man isn't given a chance to scream, a shard of mirror plunging into his throat and quickly ending his life in a warm mess. The scarecrow turns to his companion in the passenger seat of the jeep and grabs the sides of his face. The scarecrow breathes out and the fear toxin lacing his breath is sucked up into the panicked gasps of the struggling man.

"How long have you been here? Where is the preacher?" The scarecrow's voice seems darker and more terrible to the guard's ears, the fear toxin warping reality. He trembles, wetting himself, and grapples weakly with the scarecrow's grip.

The scarecrow tilts his head, patting the guard's cheek. "What are you afraid of?"

The guard's eyes start rolling in the back of his head, his clothes now drenched in sweat, but he manages to stammer, "C-Cebjan."

"When is he expecting you?" But the guard passes out, his fear overwhelming his senses. The scarecrow doesn't mind. He opens the other door to the jeep and kicks the unconscious guard outside. He drags out the body of the dead guard and watches him fall to the dusty road. Almost an afterthought, he takes the gun from the belt of the dead guard.

Closing the doors to the jeep, the scarecrow settles into the driver's seat, wiping blood from the steering wheel with a sleeve. Turning on the GPS system he notes the coordinates of the last trip the jeep had made, and begins down the dark, dirt road.

The crows fly over head, trailing behind him in the sky.

The Pit

When the new prisoners slide further down the ropes they are at first unsure of what the stench from below is. They curse their fate that they should be brought to this hell, a hell that smells of death, blood and rot.

When they are closer to the bottom and see what horror lies there, they cry out in terror, scrabbling with each other and trying to climb up the ropes. The guards at the top will not stand for such mutinous behaviour and sever the ropes instead, though they are puzzled when they hear wet smacks instead of the hard thud of bodies hitting stone.

Men fall from the sky into hell, gripped by fear and revulsion when they see the monstrous monument of dead bodies around them. Is this what the Pit truly is? Is this why this prison is feared above all else? Who is the demon in this place?

And Bane stands nearby, watching them as they moan in horror, trying to wipe the blood from their clothes, tripping over each other to run far away from the bodies.

Bane lets them go, he does not think they even see him standing in the shadows, so lost in their own terror and misery. He lets them leave, shaking from the living nightmare they have fallen into, and they go and shut themselves up in cells far away from the centre as if they can lock the horror out.

And at night he prowls his home and brings them one by one, building up his tower brick by brick and reaching further and further to the sky.

It is morning and the sun is beginning to shine down into the Pit, though it could be later in the day. It takes light much longer to reach down into the bottom.

Bane makes one last trip and goes to the cell where the princess was kept and the child was born. The only time he had been inside this cell before was the day he whisked the child away from the murderous, raping horde and saved her from her mother's fate.

It is small. Too small for the likes of him, a hulking brute of muscle and power. How ever could two people live in here and nurture what little innocence the Pit could sustain?

Bane does not sit in the place innocence was born. It was never his home. But he brushes his hand against the stone and inside he thinks, goodbye.

Bane rouses the doctor from a night of troubled sleep and says, "It is time, old friend."

The doctor bows his wrinkled head, out of sadness or resignation Bane is unsure, and he takes two of the venom canisters and places them into Bane's pockets. Then, Bane lifts him up and wraps the doctor's arms around his neck to carry him.

Bane stands at the foot of his morbid ladder and begins to climb.

Each foothold is soft and yielding, treacherous as men can be. With his strong arms he pulls himself up with other weaker limbs and slowly, but surely, he feels the sun shining warmer on his face.

The doctor clings to him, trembling slightly. He starts and grips tighter every now and again when an arm or leg snaps underneath them, shifting the weight of the pyramid.

But the demon rises, stepping on the backs of lesser men to the world outside.

Finally, they are at the top, and Bane gently untangles the doctor from him. The doctor sways, afraid, and Bane helps him find a sure platform on the back of the second last man.

There are unshed tears in the doctor's eyes, white as milk, and he sighs, "I can feel the sun."

Bane makes sure he dies so quickly he cannot feel any pain. He holds the man with one arm for a moment, pressing the dead man's ear to his mask. "You helped father the monster I have become. It is only right you cannot see the world outside you can never be part of."

He places the doctor as his last step, climbing onto the man's back and his arms reach up and find the ledge of the Pit. He pulls himself up, his arms straining, his hands slick with old blood, but the stone is hard and unyielding and does not let him slip.

Bane finally tumbles over the side, feeling sweet dirt and dust beneath his hands. The Pit has spit him back out again.

He lifts his head, he can almost taste the fresh air and how sweet it is.

He hears a sinister, tick tick tick...