She's never known the world above. Never felt the suns warm rays caress her face, nor seen it break over the horizon, shattering into a thousand brilliant beams across her smooth arms. They say you can't miss what you've never had, but no one can deny that this hell was not meant for the innocent eyes placed in a face like hers.
She looks up at the sky, blinking her eyes as a baby, and she grows.
Her mother watches her grow with such pride, as her child, so fragile and weak survives, hunts for scraps, and she learns not to cringe from the cold and the darkness; they are part of her, she needs no tutoring to melt into the shadows, for she was born of them.
Her hell is of fire and ice, each as brutal as the other, unrelenting, unkind, unfeeling, so she takes these as her mentors in the unseen pit, and she survives, in spirit rises above her broken inmates who long for the sun. She sees the light, but accepts her reality. She has not known fear beyond her infant years. Until now.
They come as the sun peaks over the lip of the pit, casting cruel cackling silhouettes onto the wall, and what she sees is seared, branded onto her eyes for eternity, shadowing her last speck of youthful innocence. She never was truly innocent, no one sent to the pit, left to the savage nature of hopelessness can be called innocent. She was ancient and young, bitterly experienced and incredibly naïve.
He watched her, from the time of her birth. He himself had been a young boy, only having seen his first decade. He had lost track of his real age when he had been flung into this ghoulish prison, hardly an infant, born of darkness, and he had looked upon her progress with interest. Nothing had manifested beyond mere curiosity. Until now, this moment.
He heard the scream as he passed. The screams of the woman plucked feebly at the strings of a heart long since frozen, he himself now a young experienced man of his second decade. She had only reached her tender first when he heard her cries, and those stopped him in his tracks. Tears pricked at eyes long dried of sadness, and the ice around his heart crackled with each second, each cry he heard. It shattered as a terrible scream ripped through the air and then silence.
The woman was dead. Then screams, higher than the woman's, tore at his heart, at his very soul. It wasn't a thought, wasn't a decision, it wasn't anything he could place. Without second thought to himself, he charged into the cell, ripped the breaking girl from their arms and ran, shielding her with his body.
No, nothing that young, nothing that pure could be exposed to those monsters. She was the last flicker of innocence that this demonic pit held, and those beautiful hopeful eyes looked at him with pure adoration and even… love. She looked into his soul, and from then on he was hers. His heart broke and he crushed her to his chest, and for the first time allowed love for this small child to enter his heart.
He protected her, it wasn't a conscious decision. He flung himself in front of bandits for her, battled his way through giants with her clutched to his chest, snatched food for her and told her to eat, not caring for his own hunger. He grew stronger as she did, and watched her grow, and he felt pride.
He was big, a giant over her, but while others ran and cowered from him, she saw nothing but her wonderful protector. He was her guardian angel, fiercely, loyally protective of her, willing to put his life on the line for her own chance at the best life he could give her down here. To him, she was his angel of hope, those eyes that sent a light flooding through him even in the darkest of days.
They are two and one together, one never apart from the other, and he will give all for her should she ask it, should she need it, for he wants her to have it.
He doesn't know what happened that day he saved her. All he knows is that he could not let her die. The day he found her was the day he became whole again, as much as was possible in the darkness. His little angel.
But one day it is not enough. One day they have to be parted, and he gave his all for her. This love is different, nothing like passionate love, but not like the love of father and daughter. Companions, he gives her his all, and she can only accept and promise him that she will never leave him to the darkness and shadows. Almost like brother and sister, but a relationship far more intense, born from a need to protect her and for her to hold him by her side. He is nothing like her mother, too fierce, too angry to be, but when he looks at her his eyes soften and melt, looking at her in pride and ferocious loyalty.
That day they come for her. He has protected her from so many who came to steal her food, her water, her very life, those who had came to cut her and beat her for sick enjoyment, he had stopped them, thrown them from the levels of stone walls and used his body as a shield for hers without thought for himself.
He does this now, for he knows he cannot stop all of them reaching her, and he dreads what they have in store for her. So he pushes her up onto the first stone ledge of the wall, and then cries for her to rise before his form is swallowed up in the mass of bodies. She looks down as she reaches the jump, where so many have failed, have fallen. She has no rope, no safety net, but she has grown without one for so many years until him. She looks down in fear, the most fear she has ever known, for him. She searches for him in the screaming mob, and she sees him, his features twisted in pure agony, but his eyes meet hers and his face for one second breaks into a joyful and triumphant smile. He has saved her, she will live, and that is all that matters, for he loves her, his little angel. He doesn't feel the pain for that second, but then the moment is gone, and he manages to cry one last thing out to her.
"Jump! Jump and live!"
With tears pricking her eyes, she jumps with a whispered prayer to her guardian angel, her loyal protector, and she lives.
She climbs from the pit and finds her father, but it is only after a decade of painful searching.
She is captured at the gates and forced to her knees before him, now a beautiful young woman.
He looks at her, her long hair tumbling down her back in waves like a dark waterfall in the night, emerald eyes scared yet defiant. She does not fear for herself, not since her mother was taken from her. No, she fears for her guardian, she fears it is too late, ten years later after she watched him go to his certain death.
She has to try, though, her angel can't be dead, she knows it, feels it.
The demon's head looks at her and recognition clicks into place. It can't be, he thinks. The guard raises his blade to her neck with a questioning glance at him, and she doesn't flinch. Instead, Ra's al Ghul looks her in her familiar eyes and asks her for her story. When she finishes, he is left in no doubt of who she is, for how could he forget that face, one he loved so dearly, now imprinted upon his own daughter.
They train together, and she asks after the first week if she may make a request. She keeps a cool face despite the fire raging in her heart. She asks… no, begs him to take her back, for him to help her rescue her saviour.
After two weeks a team is organised and they descend into the pit. She finds him, broken, beaten and in pain. So much pain.
He had known pain before, but a decade of agony left after being beaten to such an extent near killed him. All he had had left to keep him going was the memory of his little angel's face, and when the pain flared and he felt like he was being split open, the memory of that face kept him going, kept him alive better than the doctor's medicines. She had needed him and he had been there, because he had given himself fully to her, he lived for her.
He was on the verge of giving up a decade later, a now hardened man in his third decade when he saw her. That face… impossible. The next thought was horror, she could not have condemned herself to the pit, not again, no!
His heart ached to see her, but it was short lived. A swarm of men were behind her, helping her, keeping the inmates off her. He felt content. She was safe, she was healthy, and she was smiling… happy. But tears pricked her eyes as she ran to him, why, why did she cry, was she repulsed by him, the monster he had become?
"I'm sorry, Talia" he wheezed. "I'm so sorry. Please don't cry, please don't be scared. Please."
Talia stopped in surprise, mere feet from him.
"Repulsed? Why, why would I be repulsed? I'm so happy to see you, I feared you were dead, but you are here, you're alive and for that I thank you so much, my friend, my protector."
Bane was puzzled in his never ending agony. "Why do you cry then?"
Talia walked towards him and looked him in the face with pain in her gaze.
"Because of what they've done to you, because of me! Because you loved me."
He looked at her in shock, surprised that she didn't know. Didn't she know that it was all worth it, that he would endure this pain endless times over for her?
"Talia, I would have given all for you, I would have given you my life a thousand times over to secure your happiness. I swore to protect you, and I loved you so much, I still do, and I promise, I promise I will be by your side, I will give you everything and I will protect you no matter what."
Talia's eyes darkened at the way that he wheezed, he was so weak, she could see how much his speech had cost him.
"Talia." Ra's came up behind her. "He is in so much pain, it would be kinder to end it for him. I've spoken to the doctor… there's nothing else he can do. It's a miracle he's survived this long. Let me."
Talia watched in horror as he drew his sword. Before he could plunge it into him, she flung herself over him, shielding him from her father just as he had protected her so many years ago so many times.
"No! You have no idea how many times he has saved me, I owe him everything, he is dearer to me than a brother… even dearer to me than you, father. He protected me when you never did, when you didn't know me or did you even care what happened to your wife, my mother? He saved me from her killers. Please, please help him!"
He unwillingly took the broken man, and watched him as he and his daughter travelled together and conversed. Observation soon showed that Bane cared dearly for Talia, but he watched when Talia's back was turned, and Bane would look at her like a man drinking in water for the first time in the desert.
Bane saw that Talia had grown, grown from the young hardened girl he had once known and watched over into a staggeringly beautiful young woman, battle ready and tough. But when their eyes met his would soften, the cold blizzard in them would cease and he would allow her, his little angel to warm them.
They fixed him up when they got back to the empire of the demon, and now he wore a mask that held his broken face together now fixed, instead of the crooked way it had set before. His body held a myriad of scars long healed, white stripes lashing his body, catching the light as they trained. The venom pumped through the mask made his muscles build and tighten, until he became monstrous and terrifying. Not to Talia. To Talia, he was beautiful and perfect, every day with him painful and wonderful. Painful because when she looked at him she saw everything he gave up for her, he had suffered a thousand deaths over for her. Joy because he lived, and he lived and died for her, and he willed it to be.
He remained still fiercely, even violently protective of her, battling anyone who incited to put her in harms way. He would allow no harm to come to her.
Ra's, however, misunderstood. He thought of Bane as nothing but a monster, and this forced him and Talia apart. She spent more time than ever with him, and they sparred together, ate together and travelled together when the need arose. They were two and one together again.
Jealousy and prejudice caused Ra's to send Bane away, forbidding him to see his daughter, and this was the breaking of Bane. He ran and left himself to his misery. A monster like him, deserving of Talia, a queen amongst all? It was stupid and reckless. Hope was for the fools.
He never left the place he had first arrived at, a shack in the desert. Then one day, she slipped through the door. Hope once again sparked in him. Hope was for fools, he had said, but he swore he would do anything for her, and so a fool he would be for his angel.
They stayed together, fought together, brought down entire governments together and the demon's daughter sided with the monster.
She wanted to bring her father back when he died, to weep, to say sorry and to never leave his side, but instead she found solace in her guardian, and allowed vengeance to drive her.
He would give her all, all for her life, for her happiness, and so he dragged Gotham to hell.
She wanted Batman dead and broken. He would do it.
She wanted Gotham to tremble within its walls, he would make it so.
She wanted to finish her father's work, to die with Gotham so that they would feel the flames of her wrath? She wanted him by her side? He would do it and more.
For her, always for her and all for her.
"His only crime was that he loved me. Goodbye, my friend."
Yeah, I was reading all the Talia/ Bane fanfics last night and I really loved their relationship. Anyway, might do another one, might not, depends.
Please review, let me know what you think.