To the Bone - Fade to Black - 1 of 3
Jul. 21st, 2010 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oroburos69
Title: To the Bone
Beta: lady_of_scarlet
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con, multiple partners, violence, cannibalism, angst, horror, hurt/comfort.
Summary: A riot erupts in Arkham Asylum, and Robin is locked inside.
Characters: Robin/Tim Drake, Poison Ivy, Bane, Killer Croc, Batman
Author’s Note: Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bitternarration, the winner of my offer in the Gulf Aid Now auction. Also, look at the warnings. I fulfilled each to the absolute best of my abilities while keeping the story reasonably plausible. This is the fade to black version. The full horror can be viewed here. Finally, I’m using this one for the caught in a robbery square on my H/C bingo (they were stealing away when they caught Robin...It’s a stretch, but the only idea I have). Additional thanks to kirax2 for her help with research and characterization.
ONE
The radio crackled. --The Joker is in the visitor’s centre.--
Batman said, “You need to finish this,” and put a lock on the door. “You know the code.”
Then he left.
There’s something in Ivy’s eyes, something behind them.
He thinks it’s moving.
The alarm screams. Her right eye bulges and ripples, pushed out from the inside. The iris is murky black, hollowed out and an indistinct shape inhabits the cavity.
A liquid thicker than blood slides down her face. “Did you think I’d let you get away with this?” Poison Ivy whispers. Her voice is dry as autumn leaves, but she’s no less dangerous for it. Her breath lacks heat and smells like rot.
Bane charged, acid green venom pumping into his veins from the pack on his back. His breath sounded like it came from a bellows, rattling up through his chest in a deep growl. Robin rolled out of his way, throwing a smoke bomb beneath Bane’s feet. Thick black fog quickly filled the room, powdery and chilled against his skin.
Bane crashed into the wall and it shook the ground beneath him. The guards in the corner were still breathing. If he could get them to the door--
The creak of leather heralded Bane’s recovery, his arms swinging blindly through the smoke, billowing clouds spreading in bursts and starts from his movements.
He would have to take Bane down before he could get the guards out.
Bane laughs from behind her. He sounds wrong. He looks wrong. The venom in his veins is dripping from his nose, from his eyes.
“I have to get out of here,” Ivy says into his ear and her voice is breathy, confused, a rapid change from her earlier anger. She presses against him, cool skin touching his. Her flesh is withered and soft, like the leaves of a dying succulent. Something inside her pushes outward, stroking down Robin’s chest in a long caress that he can feel even through the body armor embedded in his costume.
Bane mutters indistinctly. Green tinted sweat drips over his shoulders, coursing down the sharp divides between his muscles and pooling in the crook of his elbow. He pants through the leather mask covering his face, beads of condensation forming around the lips, coloring the white detailing with faint streaks of green.
Robin can’t move.
Poison Ivy snarls and bites his lip. The cut burns and spreads, a hot rush that races through his body, tingling in his toes and the tips of his fingers.
Robin can’t move, but the scrape of his costume over his skin is suddenly noticeable. He can feel the trickling drops of sweat falling down his back, the gentle tug of adhesive holding on his mask.
The thing behind her eye thrashes for a second. A thin trickle of greenish-yellow blood wells up from beneath her lower lid. It wets her fern-like lashes, clumping them together. “Contemplate the nature of your errors,” her voice is husky. Inhumanly so.
Ivy stands. The breeze of her movement is a tangible weight on his skin. Robin’s breath whistles through his lips, through his teeth.
“Bane?” Ivy asks. Bane approaches, circling like a shark around wounded prey.
The thing under Ivy’s skin swells, filling her withered flesh from the inside. “Remember that you brought this on yourself,” her voice strengthens abruptly, then dies to a hollow whisper. “Remember.”
The elevator groaned as it rose from the depths of the cell block, its doors screaming in protest as they were forced open. The cables holding up the elevator whined as the pressure on them lapsed. The grates on the floor jumped and shivered under a massive weight.
Robin jumped off a supply crate, abandoned when the prisoners of Arkham breached the upper level. He sunk his fingers into the grated ceiling and hooked his feet into the joint where the ceiling met the walls, suspending himself twelve feet above the metal floor. He tucked his cape over his stomach to prevent it from draping down. The ceiling creaked ominously.
The rumble of Bane’s voice filtered through the smoke indistinctly. A guttural snarl answered him.
The slowly clearing smoke swirled beneath Robin. He glanced down.
Killer Croc rose from the fog beneath him, baleful yellow eyes glaring through the black haze. Robin swung down, dodging away from the giant hand that swept toward him.
Croc snapped at Robin, teeth lodging in his cape. One great claw slammed into Robin’s side, sending him crashing into the ground hard enough to make it shake, the loosely attached metal shivering against its framework. Croc followed, crouching over Robin, the scales of his snout only inches from Robin’s throat.
“Bane says you’re my way out of here, boy.” Croc’s nostrils flared as he took in Robin’s scent. “And I want out of here.”
Bane dropped to his knees beside Croc, his chest heaving, gleaming in the dim light. “So here’s the deal, little Robin. You give us the code, and we don’t kill those guards you’ve been protecting,” Bane’s voice rose and fell in tune with the twitching of the tubes forcing venom into his system.
Bane looks at Ivy before moving forward. She nods and slumps against the wall, slowly sinking to her knees, glaring at Robin through the bedraggled strands of her hair.
Killer Croc is kneeling by the guards. His teeth shear through skin easily, making wet sucking noises as he tears meat from the bodies. One is almost whole. The other is not. White bone flashes where Croc stripped the flesh. The guards bleed slowly, blood draining at the pace gravity sets.
The last faint traces of the smoke bomb trail languidly through the air like the morning mist rolling in from Gotham harbor. Bane disturbs the smoke trails when he moves forward. “I was looking forward to being free.” His eyes glow, venom tainted, green like acid.
“Hurt him, Bane?” Ivy asks sweetly. She stretches, the obscene ripples under her yellowed skin stilling for a moment. Robin smells lilies, cloying in their sweetness. He breaths in, and imagines the fear leaving when he breathes out.
Bane twitches as if shaking off a buzzing fly. “Gladly,” his answer is delivered without hesitation.
“I’ll be done in a moment,” Croc says as he cracks open a femur, lapping at the pale yellow marrow inside. His hands gleam bright carnation red, his claws the startling white of bone where he licked them clean.
Robin closes his eyes. His heart rate accelerates, blood pressure spikes, respiration increases. He can’t move.
He breathes in.
Bane kneels next to Robin, the heat of his body pouring across the short distance between them. He touches the cut on Robin’s lip, sending spirals of pain shooting through Robin’s mouth, curling in his jaw and sparking in his teeth. An unsteady chuckle shows Bane’s amusement and he pulls down on Robin’s lip, opening his mouth and pushing his finger inside, pushing on the soft tissue of his tongue.
Robin exhales, his breath escaping shakily around Bane’s finger.
Robin paused. “Ten forty-seven,” he answered, letting his head rest against the cool floor.
Bane rose, heading toward the door and the electronic lock. Croc stayed in place, the dirty yellow-white of his claws lightly pinning Robin to the ground.
The soft sounds of the keypad rang out. Robin waited for the third tone before he twisted, pulling free and rolling away in the same motion. Croc pounced toward him, but Robin slipped past, tossing a sonic emitter to the ground and running toward the corner where the guards were propped up against the wall.
Bane entered the fourth number, and the electronic lock beeped twice before turning of, cutting off power to the locking mechanisms. The six inch long metal bolts holding the door in place didn’t move. The sonic emitter started to blare, almost louder than the alarm. Robin pushed earplugs into his ears as he blindly navigated toward the corner.
There was a large air vent located behind the guards, large enough hide them both. Robin had the vent cover pulled off and the first guard shoved halfway inside when he noticed a vine wrapped around his ankle and the rapidly spreading numbness in his limbs.
Robin collapsed.
“You sure you left him alive?” Bane asks, peering into the lenses of Robin’s mask. His finger lies inside Robin’s mouth, stoking slowly. It tastes bitter and metallic. Robin’s body tries to gag. His throat twitches.
“Quite certain,” Poison Ivy replies.
Polished black shoes scraped over Robin’s belly as Croc dragged the guard from the air vent. He dropped the guard carelessly, letting him fall to the ground, sprawled out beside Robin.
Robin heard the wet sound of flesh being torn apart, Croc’s low growl accompanied by a soft, weak vocalization from his prey. But it wasn’t until blood splattered across his face in an arc of arterial spray that Robin realized the man was dead, his throat torn out by Croc’s teeth.
TWO
Low keening distracts Robin from Bane’s hand. It cascades from note to note in an atonal mess of noise, mingling with the scream of the alarm. It’s coming from Ivy.
Bane tugs at the edge of Robin’s mask, the adhesive pulling until it feels like an ounce more pressure will cause his skin to tear off.
Ivy screams.
No one else seems to notice.
Yellow-green liquid pours out of her mouth, staining her Arkham uniform down the front.
Croc rises to his feet, casting the bone to the side. His tongue slithers out between the rows of sharp teeth, licking a smear of blood from his snout. The claws on his toes scrape over the floor as he walks toward Robin. The ground shudders under his weight, metal popping and squeaking with every step.
Bane loses interest in the mask, instead staring at Robin’s face.
“Hurt him!” Ivy cries out. There are two voices speaking from her throat. Neither sounds like Ivy, or even human. “Burn him, rip him, tear him, destroy him,” her voice fades away. Robin can hardly see her, his line of sight blocked by Bane and Croc.
Robin tries to move. His muscles knot up, straining against themselves but ultimately going nowhere. One finger twitches, and it feels like it’s dislocated, the pain stabbing up the length of his arm, coiling in his tensed muscles.
Croc curls his toes and the claws pierce the grated floor, twisting the wires and cutting through them. Robin can feel the ping-ping-ping of the wires tearing apart, the vibrations passing under him, passing through him.
Robin tries again, shifting the finger that had moved last time. Again he feels it twitch, damp skin rubbing across the rest of his fingers. Pain crackles up his arm, drawing the faintest of noises from his barely parted lips.
“He’s moving,” Croc comments. He sounds pleased by that revelation.
Ivy wavers unsteadily as she rises to her feet. The sickly green blood she vomited earlier trails down her front, dripping down her legs. “It wears off,” she says, the dual-tone voice gone. Her teeth, when she smiles, are light green.
A sharp crack echoes through the room, drawing Robin’s eyes to the wall. His optic muscles ache at the movement, slow and dull like old bruises.
The blood splattered tiles are shifting, bulging outward from multiple points, the grout cracking and dropping to the ground. A tile falls, shattering against the floor and revealing the pale vines--no, roots-- pushing through the concrete behind it. They trail through the blood on the ground, and form a thin white net over the partially dismembered bodies of the guards.
The roots are growing, the pale, thin lace protruding from the cracks in the wall thickening, becoming cords, then ropes. The wall groans under pressure, the color of the gossamer net growing over the bodies darkens to pale pink and the roots gain a sudden surge of energy.
“I like them wiggling,” Croc says. His teeth scrape against each other when he talks, the sharp triangles fitting together perfectly. There’s a scrap of bloody flesh stuck in the valley of two teeth.
Robin fights against the paralysis, forcing himself to move through the pain. He’s slow and it hurts worse than broken bones, but he is moving. Barely.
Something brushes against his over-sensitized skin, and he manages to tilt his head enough to look. Thread-like roots are growing over him, sliding over his feet like strange lichen. They find the gap between his boots and leggings, crawling inside his costume and along his skin.
The roots grow, lengthening and scratching along his skin, ripe and crisp with moisture.
“We really gonna to do this?” Croc asks. His tongue flickers out, licking the blood splatter off of Robin’s face. He tilts his head to look at Robin, his pupils flaring open.
The roots dig into the guards’ bodies, burrowing into raw, bleeding flesh. Robin can feel the burst of vitality they gain, the roots thickening under his clothes, growing wider, rougher, stronger. They twitch, thrumming with energy.
“Yeah. We’re gonna do this,” Bane says. His voice is tight with unidentifiable emotions.
Robin can’t--he doesn’t know--what they’re talking about. In the back of his mind, the clues are adding up, but he can’t seem to figure out the answer.
Ivy laughs. The roots push him up, looping around Robin’s arms and legs, raising him above the ground on twisted pillars. The sudden growth tears open the seams of his leggings, ripping them from his ankles to his knees.
Robin sways in the creaking bonds, limp and immobile. Helpless. The roots support him at his elbows and they take the weight of his torso.
He feels like a sheet of plastic, cracking as it bends, each movement making him breathless with pain. A fifth growth of roots surge from the floor and tangle in his hair, curling around his face. They slither into his mouth, coiling on the palette, insinuating themselves between his teeth and hollows of his cheeks.
Ivy bends over and whispers in his ear, “If you bite, I’ll make you like it.”
Fade to Black
Croc’s leathery skin creaks as he looks at Ivy, his pupils narrowing. His sniffs the air, his nostrils flaring, a gleaming string of blood and spit hanging from his jaw where Robin knocked his tooth out.
The twitching roots that cover the floor stir, Ivy obviously willing to help if she needs to.
Robin pants, heat pouring through him. Sweat beads up at his brow, on his neck, stinging as it seeps into open cuts that he can’t quite feel. He tugs his body armor into place. The white ceramic plates stain milky pink where his hands touch them.
“She’s manipulating you, Croc.” He’s surprised by how cold his voice is, because he feels more scared than angry. “She’s using you.”
Croc roars, a deep rough cough that rattles the ceiling, and charges at Bane. Ivy’s plants snap forward, wrapping around his ankles but Killer Croc tears through them, ripping them apart with the hooked claws on his feet and hands. Bane lunges, leading with a punch to Croc’s stomach that he shrugs off.
Poison Ivy dodges away from them, laughing happily.
She dodges toward Robin.
He moves before he even thinks about it, throwing himself into a side kick that sinks deep into Ivy’s side, knocking her head first into the wall. Moving hurts, but he ignores it, taking the advantage he’d gained. She collapses, falling between the corpses of the men she killed, one green hand landing in the cracked open chest cavity of the guard that Killer Croc ate.
Robin follows her down, driving his knee into her chest with a move designed to knock the breath out of her. He puts enough force behind it to break bone, his leg pushing deep inside her. Ivy feels like rotting fruit, wet and loose under his hand, worms writhing under the surface. He pulls back to hit her again (and again and again and again) but Bane yanks him off her, slamming him against the wall.
His ears start to ring and the breath is knocked out of him, but Robin surges forward, going for Bane’s eyes. He misses, his hand knocked down by Bane’s forearm, so Robin knees him in the balls and twists, elbowing him in the side of the head, the crack of bone on bone echoing loudly.
The sound of gears grinding is quiet compared to their panting breath, but Robin can’t shake the feeling that it’s important for some reason. Bane swings at him, and he dodges, yanking out a dozen of the tubes that connect to the back of Bane’s mask. Acid green venom sprays out like arterial blood, splattering across Robin’s skin.
Bane cries out, dropping to his knees as venom and blood spill out of the torn ports to his skull. Robin slams his foot into Bane’s head, aiming for the temple, hitting as hard as he can. He follows up by using the heel of his palm to break Bane’s nose.
Bane begins to slump over, and Robin hits him again, cracking his jaw. It feels good, feels right, so Robin punches him, the torn skin on his knuckles stinging at the pressure.
The leather wrestler’s mask is dripping blood and venom onto the floor. Bane is out. Down. No longer a threat.
Robin puts his foot on his neck. He could stomp. It would crack open the cartilage of the trachea. Bane would suffocate within minutes. He could press down slowly, cut off the blood supply to his brain. If he moved up a few inches he could stomp on the shattered remains of Bane’s nose, send bone shards through the nasal cavity and into his brain. He could--
“Robin.”
Robin freezes and pulls his cape tight around himself. “Yeah?” he asks, watching the blood leak out of Bane’s mask.
“He’s down. Back off,” Batman’s voice holds a warning; one Robin learned to listen for before he ever put the costume on.
He steps down.
To the Bone - Fade to Black 2 of 3
To the Bone - Fade to Black 3 of 3
Epilogue
