Bane turned at her grip, her words that seemed to caress him. He wanted to stay, but now was not the time. Bría was officially safe, safe from all harm, and that was how he wanted her to remain. But he had work to do, things to deal with, people to face. There were cops that needed to be hunted down, citizens that tried to escape had to be made examples of. There were courts to arise, he did not have time to simply stay.
"You've accomplished everything you wished to accomplish," Bría suggested to Bane. "Why are you so scared of what I can offer?"
"I am not scared," he replied, the smoothness in his voice suggesting that he wasn't lying. However, it did sound like there was more to his words than he let on. Although he had opened up parts of himself to Bría that no one else had ever been privy to, this was not one of those parts he could allow himself to reveal.
"What have you got to lose?" she inquired.
Bane turned to face her head on, raising his hand, the one with a brace on his wrist, and placed it upon her smooth cheek. Their skin on skin was electrifying, there was no denying that there was a strong connection between them. Over the past few weeks -or had it been months?- they had developed a bond that Bría had not had with anyone else before. She'd had flings and the occasional long term boyfriend, but she felt a different sort of attraction to Bane. It was less physical than it was carnal; this desire to be as dark as he was, she knew she could not reach that potential without truly experiencing more.
"We have four months," she reminded him. "Four months and then we're either dead or we're not. If we make it out alive, then what?"
"Then I will bring you to the League of Shadows, where you belong, where you will thrive and learn as the rest of us did."
"I'm your experiment, aren't I?"
"No, Bría," he breathed her name like it was mist. "I will not lie to you and deny that there is a connection between us, but I will tell you the truth when I say nothing can happen."
Then Bría figured it out, "The child. The one you saved, you love her, don't you?"
He was frozen solid.
She nodded, "But does she love you? As I do?"
Bane considered her words silently in his head, going over and over them. So much had just been laid out on the table. She knew of Talia, though whether or not Bría knew her identity was still a mystery to him. She knew that Bane was under control of someone he loved, and that perhaps Talia was using him as a means to an end. Bane would do what Talia asked, no matter what it was, but he wondered in that moment, if Talia asked him to harm or even kill Bría, he knew that he would not be able to do it.
Bría had admitted she loved him.
He lowered his eyes, ashamed.
"You are wrong to love me." Those were his last words before he stepped into the elevator and disappeared.
Silence enveloped Bría in a way that was comforting. To be alone in that moment was what she needed, and she quietly walked towards the big window again. Placing her palm on the glass, she sighed and watched as her breath fogged it up for a moment. She knew that she could not ask Bane to do what he did not want, that much was obvious. But that did not mean it didn't hurt.
Taking in her new surroundings, her new home, she wondered if there was an irony in taking from the rich and claiming it as her own. Of course there was, but none of it really mattered because in the end, they would all be gone.
What Bría needed to know before then, was the truth behind her dreams. The ones of a man she presumed was her father; there had never been a father in her life, and yet in her dreams she was a child and he was there. She should have remembered him, and yet she could not visualize his face. She could only hear a ghost version of his voice.
She knew her mother would have those answers, but she had severed all connection with her mother.
So, she wondered, how could she discover who she really was?
Wattpad unpublished everything I published. I'm so angry with how terrible the site is being managed. They shut it down for two hours trying to fix the problems, made the whole thing worse, and haven't done a damn thing about it.