A Bane and Talia Christmas Story
"Tell me a story, Ba-ba," Talia said.
Bane wrapped his arms tightly around the toddler where they sat together in front of his brazier, blankets draped over them to ward off the night's icy fingers. "It's past your bedtime," he murmured into her ear and kissed her cheek. He glanced into the next cell where Talia's mother, Melisande, lay on her charpoy, watching her daughter and listening to their conversation with a contented, sleepy smile on her beautiful face.
"Just one story," Talia pleaded. "Please," she drew out the word and looked up at him with those sapphire eyes of hers that could always erode his resolve.
Bane sighed. "Very well. One quick story, then it's back to your cell. Promise?"
She grinned and nodded, squirming with delight.
He kissed the top of her shorn head through her ragged shemagh and tried to conjure up a tale for her, one he had yet to tell. Not an easy task after so many nights of stories since her birth. Sometimes he drew from his imagination, other times from things he had read in books; but all the books he had read here in their subterranean prison had been adult books. Even when he had been a child, there had been no children's books here for his mother to read to him.
Bane glanced toward the pit prison's massive shaft outside of his cell, remembered sitting out there earlier, looking up at the unattainable sky far, far away and thinking about how short the days were this time of year. The memory gave him an idea.
"I will tell you the story of Santa Claus," he said.
"Santa Claus? Who's that? Does he live here? Is he a bad man?"
"No, little mouse. He is a very good man."
"Like you?"
He chuckled. "Much better than me."
"Where does he live?"
"At the North Pole."
"Where's that? Is it far?"
"Yes, very far. Now if you hush your questions, I can tell you the story."
Talia bit her lip to still her inquiries and smiled to assure him of her obedience.
Bane returned her smile, then began his tale, the one his mother had told him long ago, the one he had almost forgotten. Talia sat enthralled as he told her of decorated trees and twinkling lights, and of the red-clad man with elves and magical flying reindeer who helped him deliver toys to good children all over the world every year at this time, around the winter solstice.
"But only to good children," Bane said.
"I'm good," Talia quickly insisted. "Aren't I, Mama?"
Melisande smiled against her meager pillow. "Most of the time, baby."
"Is that why Santa has never brought me a present?" Talia asked Bane. "'Cause I'm not good all the time?"
Bane frowned, tried to hide his regret for telling this story, causing her to believe Santa Claus purposefully neglected her. "No, that's not why, little mouse." He kissed her head again. "You are good. There is no child more deserving of a gift."
"Then why hasn't he ever brought me a present? Or was I just too little to remember his presents?"
Bane scrambled to think of an explanation that would ease her concern. "This prison isn't a place for children. So Santa doesn't even know you're here. He thinks only bad people live here, so he's never had a reason to come."
Talia made a small, sad whine, her fingers fidgeting with their blanket, her head down. Then, before Bane could say more, she suddenly lifted her head with a gasp. "Maybe he would come if we had a Christmas tree. He can't leave presents if we don't have a tree."
"Maybe," Bane said, grasping at anything to help her. "But I'm afraid there's no way to get a tree down here."
Talia frowned, knowing all too well even at her tender age that there were few things indeed that entered the pit, and any stick of wood that was brought here was used for fuel in their braziers.
"If only we had a tree," she murmured sleepily, staring at the sizzling embers in Bane's brazier.
"Now you've heard your story," Bane said. "You must keep your promise and go back to your mama to sleep."
Reluctantly, with much fussing, she acquiesced but insisted that he carry her to her cell, that she was too tired to walk the few steps on her own. Bane happily agreed, loath to deprive himself of her wonderful warmth here in his arms.
Once Talia was safely cocooned with her mother in their blankets, Bane slipped beneath his own blankets on his charpoy. Only the bars of their cells separated them.
Softly Talia asked, "Did Santa Claus ever bring you presents, Ba-ba?"
He smiled sadly at her. "No, little mouse."
She frowned, and fatigue pulled her eyelids closed. "We must have a Christmas tree. Then we will all get presents."
###
Melisande's gentle voice awoke Bane the next morning: "Child, whatever are you doing there?"
"I'm making us a Christmas tree," Talia announced. "Just how Ba-ba said they look. See?"
Bane sat up on his charpoy, found Talia in the back corner of her cell, adjoining his. She was crouched on the floor, a piece of chalk in her tiny hand. When she saw that he was awake, she grinned at him and pointed at the floor.
"Look, Ba-ba! I made us a tree. Now Santa Claus will come."
Bane stifled a groan as he got to his feet and shuffled over to the bars closest to Talia.
"See?" She hastily finished her drawing on the stone floor then stood next to it in triumph, beaming at Bane and her mother. "It's not green, but we can pretend the chalk is snow. Do you like it, Ba-ba?"
He hunkered beside the bars and studied the crude pyramid-shaped drawing, trying to figure out how he could make her understand without hurting her that even her little tree could not induce anyone to bring her gifts. But then an idea came to him, made him smile.
"I like it very much, little mouse. And I'm sure it'll make Santa Claus come. He'll know you're here now. The reindeer will smell your tree and bring him here."
Talia took a big sniff of the stale air. "I can't smell it."
"The reindeer can."
"Bane," Melisande's bereft voice drew his attention to her frown of caution.
He nodded to reassure her that he knew what he was doing. "But you must be extra good today. By tonight the reindeer will have smelt your tree all the way in the North Pole, but Santa still won't come unless you are good." Bane winked at Melisande. "So you must do whatever your mama and I say, without arguing, yes?"
Eager and excited, Talia turned the nub of chalk over and over in her hands. "I will. I will be so good. You'll see, Ba-ba."
After breakfast, Bane went to Dr. Assad's cell to borrow his scissors, then he took his pillow and one of his blankets into the stepwell, along with his needle and thread. There he cut away some of the cloth and shaped it into a crude outline of a dog. Using some of the old, broken-down stuffing from his pillow, he tucked the material in between the two cut-out pieces of fabric then sewed them together. He added tiny stitches for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Then he completed it by using a scrap of fabric left over as a bow around the toy's neck.
To study his work, Bane held the dog up to the light of the distant mouth of the shaft. Prisoners who lounged or conversed nearby glanced at him and his odd project but said nothing to him. They were accustomed to seeing him crafting toys for Talia, either from crochet or from carving small bits of wood.
Bane smiled at his product, but the expression faded quickly. He had wanted to sew a doll for Talia, not a dog. But giving her a doll would be dangerous here, for it would hint at her true gender, a reality that was kept hidden from the rest of the prisoners. He frowned. Little girls should have dolls, as his mother had as a child. She had told him about her toys, about the ones she had cherished the most, and her favorite had been a doll with blonde hair that she loved to brush.
Well, Bane decided as he hid the dog beneath his long, ragged shirt, a dog was not a doll, but it was better than nothing, and he knew Talia would love it, especially because it came from Santa Claus.
That night, while Talia and Melisande slept, Bane slipped the stuffed dog between the cell bars and laid it at the base of the chalk drawing of the Christmas tree. For the rest of the night, he could barely sleep, so eager to see Talia's reaction in the morning when she found the toy.
When morning arrived—a weak lightening of the night's darkness here in the depths of the earth—Bane pretended to be asleep, his back toward Talia's charpoy. He did not want his face to give away the secret before she made her discovery.
At last he heard Melisande's charpoy creak as one of them stirred. It would be Talia, he knew, for she had spoken with fervent hope and optimism last night that Santa would bring her a gift because she had been so good.
Melisande groaned softly in protest, whispered, "Go back to sleep, baby. It's too early. Stay here where it's warm."
Unable to whisper because of her anticipation, Talia insisted, "I want to see what Santa brought me."
Melisande groaned again. "Oh, baby…"
Talia escaped her blankets, and Bane heard her little feet patter across the floor. Then she gasped and squealed, "A present!" so loudly that Gola and Abrams—the prisoners on either side of their cells—awoke and cursed her to be quiet. But Talia could not contain her joy. "Santa came, Mama! Santa came! And he brought me a present!" She reached through the bars and shook Bane's ankle. "Wake up, Ba-ba! Wake up! Look what Santa brought me!"
Bane sat up, pretending that he had just awoke, rubbing his eyes. "What's all the noise about?"
"He came! He came!" Talia held up the stuffed dog and danced. "He brought me a…a…" She drew the toy down closer to her eyes, her face scrunching in concentration.
Bane blushed. "Why, it's a dog, silly. Can't you tell? I can see it plain."
"Oh! Yes, yes, a dog. He brought me my very own dog." She hugged the pitiful thing to her chest and closed her eyes in pure bliss. "He came and I didn't even hear him, just like you said."
As Talia called across to Abrams, begging him to see what Santa had given her, Melisande—now sitting up—reached through the bars to take Bane's hand. Knowingly she smiled and privately said, "Thank you."
Melisande's warm, soft touch and the beauty of her smile, along with the sounds of Talia's happiness, were the best gifts Bane could ever hope for.
###
The following year, as the days grew their shortest once again, Talia greatly anticipated Christmas, but instead of a tree drawn on the floor, Bane crocheted her a small tree. The green item was adorned with multi-colored stitches to represent decorations, like the ones other prisoners had told them about. They hung the one-dimensional creation on the bars between their cells, and come Christmas morning—or what they designated as such here in a world that time had forgotten and where no calendars existed—Talia awoke to find another gift under their tree: a green and purple amigurumi dragon. That year, with more time to prepare, Bane had crocheted the toy in the shaft, away from Talia's prying eyes, putting as much detail as his skill and resources allowed into its genesis.
"One day, when he grows up," Bane told her, "he will fly you out of here. And his fire will punish the men who put us here."
But, of course, no dragon had been required for Talia's escape years later, long after cold-hearted prisoners had told her that there were no such things as Santa Claus or magical dragons. It had been their cruelty, their attempt to physically ravage her, that had sent her frantically scaling the shaft one day. Bane had battled the enraged inmates, giving her time to climb beyond their reach, then he had fallen beneath their fury, and they had nearly destroyed him. Yet, damaged in body and spirit, Bane had survived until Talia and her father returned to rescue him.
Even in their new life in the Himalayas with her father and the League of Shadows, Talia did not forget her love of Christmas, and both Bane and her father ensured that her first Christmas of freedom was memorable. They went into the valleys and searched out an evergreen that Talia deemed the most suitable, the worthiest, then they transported it to their monastic home with the aid of two yaks. Once the tree had been erected in the dormitory's common room, Talia insisted on decorating it herself, using a combination of homemade items like ribbons, bows, and tapers as well as a variety of Waterford crystal ornaments that her father had purchased for her during his latest journey away from the monastery. Bane and the other men of the League, who were in training there, happily watched and helped whenever she requested assistance.
"When I drew my first Christmas tree with chalk on the floor of our cell," she told her audience, "Bane told me Santa Claus would find me because his reindeer could smell the tree. So until I escaped, I always thought Christmas trees smelled like chalk." Standing at the base of the large evergreen after finishing her decorating, Talia drew in a long breath through her nose and closed her eyes. "This smells so much better than chalk."
Bane smiled at her happiness, though his expression was all but hidden behind the grotesque mask that he now wore to combat the pain and hide the deformities left by the beating he had received the day of Talia's escape from the pit prison. He knew his eyes, however, conveyed his expression to those around him.
"Then," Talia continued, "the next year Bane crocheted a Christmas tree for us, and every year we hung it until it was stolen from us when the inmates killed Mama. They took everything from her cell." Some of the brightness had faded from her eyes but returned when her father put a consoling arm around her shoulders. She smiled up at him then at Bane. "But Bane crocheted another tree to replace it, and we hung it every year, didn't we, habibi?"
"Yes," Bane said. "There were many times when I insisted we use the yarn for fuel for our brazier when our charcoal was exhausted between resupplies, but Talia begged me not to."
"Well," her father said with a smile that could not conceal his grief for his wife and his daughter's suffering, "those days are gone now." He kissed Talia's hair, which was growing out and would one day be as long as her mother's. "You will never want for anything the rest of your life. I swear it."
###
"Bane, wake up! It's Christmas morning!"
For a moment, Bane thought he was back in the pit, for Talia's words were so familiar, prodding him every year in this same way. But he lay on a mattress, on a bed, not a charpoy, and his wood-paneled, monastic bedroom smelled dry and clean, not damp and musty like his cell.
Having burst into his room, Talia's small form—eleven years old now—bounced against him on the small bed, and her hands gripped his shoulder where he lay on his side. She shook him. "Wake up, habibi! You must open your presents."
Bane moaned. "The best present would be more sleep, habibati."
When Talia tugged the blanket away from his shoulder, he tried to claw it back, but she giggled and deprived him of it. "Don't you want to see what I got you?"
He groaned in capitulation. "Of course."
"Then come on." She grabbed his hand and pulled him over onto his back. He could not help but smile at her radiance. In turn, she laughed and kissed his mask, then hopped off the bed, still holding his hand. "Hurry."
"Your noise is going to wake everyone."
"I don't care. Papa is already awake. He said he will be down to the tree soon."
"Perhaps we should wait for him."
"No," she elongated the word, tugging him until he sat on the edge of the bed. "I can't wait any longer. I didn't sleep all night."
Bane chuckled. "Very well. Let me replenish the mask's drugs, then we can go."
The mention of the mask momentarily shadowed her face with guilt over his suffering for her sake. To counter such sadness, he hurried to the medicine cabinet for his analgesic, then pulled on his shirt. By then Talia's excitement over the day had conquered her melancholy, and she raced ahead of him out the door and down the flights of stairs to the common room.
When Bane arrived, he found all the tapers had been lit upon the tree, a mystery that delighted Talia. Bane figured Akar, the serving boy who adored Talia, had lit them just before first light, knowing Talia would be down there a short while later. Akar was not there now, of course; he would have returned to the warmth of his bed to enjoy the rare morning when he had been given permission by Talia's father to sleep as late as he liked.
Talia was half-hidden beneath the tree's boughs, digging through a mountain of presents—most of them for her—to locate her gifts for Bane.
"While you're under there," he rumbled through the muffling mask, "bring out the ones from me." Then when she reappeared, he chided, "You really should wait for your father before you open your gifts."
"I'll just open yours, after you open the ones from me. I'll wait for Papa before I open the rest."
With a wide smile, she dragged the larger of her two gifts toward him, then placed a smaller, lighter package on top. Both had been decorated festively with bright paper and fancy, handmade bows. An unexpected lump rose in Bane's throat, and regardless of his ever-present physical pain, he felt like the luckiest man alive.
They sat facing one another, as if they were the only people in the world, as they had each Christmas morning in prison. The mountain world beyond these walls was placid; no wind rattled the frosted windows, and everything inside the monastery lay in peace, the only sounds made by the fresh fire in the large hearth—another favor from Akar. Its crackling dance behind Talia threw a glow around her.
She smiled almost shyly at him and whispered, "Open them, habibi."
He found that his fingers trembled as he reverently untied the bow on the smaller gift, savoring every moment as he unwrapped the paper.
"Oh, Bane," Talia said with giggling impatience, "just tear the paper. It's not like we have to use it again."
The idea of not having to conserve and recycle everything possible was still a new concept to Bane, and he hesitated to follow Talia's directive. So she dove in, helping him peel away the paper until only the box was left to open. Inside, he found perhaps a dozen skeins of various color and yarn types, along with a crochet hook with an elegantly-carved wooden grip. He peered closer at the design, turning it over and over.
"They're dragons," Talia spoke the obvious. "Remember the toy dragon you made me for our second Christmas?"
Speechless because of the ever-expanding lump in his throat, Bane nodded. He swallowed hard and smiled at her. "Thank you. It's beautiful, habibati."
"Open the other one," she urged, pushing the second box even closer to him, eagerly kneeling over it.
Overwhelmed by such a bounty, he murmured, "All right, then," and began to unwrap the box, then paused and grinned at her before tearing into the paper as she had with the other gift. When he opened the box, he saw the rich maroon spines of ten books, the titles of each embossed in gold, as was the author's name: Shakespeare. A mixture of the Bard's comedies and tragedies.
"Talia…" Reverently he reached inside to pull forth Romeo and Juliet.
"I loved hearing you read Shakespeare when we were in prison. So did Mama. Now you can read to me again."
He opened the book, and tears tried to form as his fingers passed over the words on the pages. The books lacked the mildewed smell of those worn volumes he had often borrowed from Dr. Assad. He buried his mask in the pages and breathed deeply, closed his eyes.
"Thank you, habibati," he said, momentarily hugging the book to his chest before returning it to the box. "I have plenty of room on my bookshelf for these. They'll have a place of honor."
Talia embraced him. "I'm so glad you like them."
When she sat back, she looked immensely pleased, but her gaze now wandered to her gifts beside her.
"Your turn," he urged. "Open them." He took one of the four boxes—he had not been as skilled at wrapping as Talia—and placed it in her lap. "This one first."
All of the gifts but this one had been handmade, mainly things he had crocheted or carved. This one, however, he had requested her father obtain for him, which he had gladly done.
As Talia unwrapped the gift, Bane said, "That first Christmas, do you remember what your present was?"
"Of course—the stuffed dog." She glanced up at him with a sparkle in her eye. "The one you made me, not Santa Claus's elves."
"Yes, but that's not what I wanted to make you."
Talia clawed at the tape on the wrapping. "What did you want to make?"
"Something for a little girl. But I couldn't do that, of course, not when we tried so hard to make everyone believe you were a boy. So that's why I got you this gift."
Her blue eyes flashed up at him with intrigue, and she increased her efforts to open the package. When she at last gained access to the box, she gave a small gasp and drew forth a dusky-faced porcelain doll with long, dark hair, wearing a dark olive green and brown abaya with maroon accents.
"She reminds me of your mother," Bane said. "Your father helped me find it, of course. He knew what to look for."
"Oh, Bane… She's beautiful." Talia's fingers gently trailed over the doll's hair.
"That's what I wanted to give you all those years ago—a doll, a proper doll, like other little girls have."
Tears spilled down Talia's cheeks. "She's perfect. Just like Mama." She pushed aside the box and threw her arms around him, still holding onto the doll. "Thank you, habibi. I love you so much."
"I love you, too, little mouse."
She sat back, fondling the hem of the abaya, self-consciously sniffing back her tears. "You know what the best gift is, habibi?"
"Not the doll?" he teased.
Talia smiled demurely. "Not even the doll." She set the toy aside and took his hands in hers, then looked deep into his eyes, and for a moment Bane forgot that he wore the mask, forgot even the pain. "Remember how you said my dragon would one day fly me out of the pit?"
"Yes."
"Well, he did. You were my dragon. You made it possible." Her smile softened even more. "You are my gift, this moment is my gift. The best gift—we're both here, together."
He leaned his forehead against hers, the closest gesture to a kiss that he could manage because of the mask. Through his eyes, he returned her smile. "And we'll always be together, habibati, until the very end."
Talia's smile broadened. "Merry Christmas, Bane."
"Merry Christmas, Talia."