Disclaimer : I do not own any of these characters, which are based on Christopher Nolan's TDKR.
Author's note : I am still working on Gotham is Yours but a lovely reviewer called MonDieu666 asked if I could write a section on when the relationship between Talia and Bane shifted to something less platonic. I had aimed to write a one-off and ended up writing 5 chapters. Hopefully they don't disappoint.
I. Bond
Bane stood firm atop two of the dozen wood pillars planted in one of the training rooms of League's temple. Six men were trying to pry him from his perch, hitting him with hard, thick rods. The big man weathered the blows, broke two rods, almost impaled a man, grabbed another one and threw him across the room, swiftly shifted to avoid a hit in the eye, grabbed the pole and rammed it in the assailant's clavicle. His movements were swift and assured.
Once he had defeated all six, he kept his stance, knees bent, arms open, a wheezing sound coming from his mask, his body dripping in sweat. He looked up at Talia, no longer the small child he rescued and protected, nor the young girl who had escaped the pit she was born in. She was a young woman now, already a fearsome student of her father's teachings, but a young woman nonetheless. Her hair was down to the middle of her back in a braid, she wore a crimson brocaded robe that accentuated the soft pink of her lips. She watched him with pride.
He almost lost his footing when six more ninjas came to replace the fallen ones, but he held himself up another pillar and put himself back up, yanking a rod that was aiming to topple him.
He had grown so much in the two-plus years since they had affixed the mask to face – eight months after they had brought him back from the pit, and brought him back from the dead.
It had taken Talia more than three long years to go back for her protector. After her escape, she had looked for her father for ages, it seemed, but she was fortunate that a man like Ra's Al Ghul easily heard of a girl searching for him, and let himself be found. She had inherited the dark beauty of her mother; it had not taken much for him to believe her tale. She had hoped he would go back to the pit with her at once, but upon hearing of his wife's death he put up a wall of silence between them and would not talk of it, though he took her in his organization – the League of Shadows – and showed her ways of being one with the world and of fighting its corruption. Her friend was always in her thoughts, their bond would not be broken, and she cursed herself for ever telling her father her mother had been killed.
Impressed by her progress and her stealth, Ra's started training with his daughter and that is when she started talking of her protector. She finally wore her father down when she said she would fight him to the death for the right to go back for her friend. Ra's had laughed, saying he would kill her and she said he'd have to before she stopped. He relented, as her devotion reminded him so much of his wife.
They found her friend in pieces, his face mangled and his strength gone, lying on the ground, waiting for death to claim him and stop his suffering. A spine injury and a botched operation had left him in perpetually agony. At Talia's pleading, Ra's brought him back with them and the League doctors proposed a novel idea: a mask giving him a continuous intake of analgesic, keeping the pain at bay and strengthening him. Ra's had been impressed that Bane had survived so much and in half an effort to please a daughter he did not know how to love and half out of curiosity, he had the doctors fashion the mask. It was a metallic contraption that hid half her protector's face, affixed over his head, covering his nose and ears, only his eyes now visible. Tubing, to deliver the drugs, almost formed a spider on the front, around a mesh that filtered his breath and his voice. She had spent every night with him as he recovered and adjusted to the mask, promising him she would never leave him again.
Once the mask was on, he had progressed in leaps and bounds; the muscles of his body reformed and his mass expanded, though it never impeded his movements. Talia had found sleep again, for once Bane had recuperated, she often snuck in his room to sleep in his arms. Her father had disapproved so she had to be careful, but she could not stay away.
Bane defeated yet this other assault sent by her father. Her heart started pounding and she could not control her smile. She saw Bane smile back at her from the crinkles around his eyes. She turned to her father overjoyed, but quickly lost her grin when she saw the look of revulsion he gave her. Ra's left without even looking at Bane and his broken opponents at the foot of the pillars. Talia never smiled except around Bane, and it troubled her father. He didn't like that his daughter looked for the approval of this man, who was no longer truly a man.
Her brow furrowed as anger started to fill her heart - how dare he dismiss her friend that way. Her father treated the man who had saved her as if he were a monster. She controlled the rage, tried to find balance again; she reminded herself that her father had also saved her in another way, had given her chances and means beyond imagining and had given her friend, now her brother in the league, another lease on life.
She turned back to Bane, trying to smile again and noticed he was looking at her intently. He was grateful to Ra's al Ghul, he shared some of his notions of the world, but there was only one opinion that mattered to him... his little Talia's.
That night, she had to wait particularly late to go to Bane's room to avoid being caught. When she crawled beside him and he took her in his arms, she knew he wasn't sleeping. She nuzzled on his neck and squeezed her arms around him as tight as she could. "I'm not hurting you am I?" she asked, her mouth on his skin, muffling her words. He laughed quietly and she giggled. She could not stop smelling him that night, wanting to get closer to his heat.
She moved to sit in the bed. Though it was dark, the moonlight from the small window allowed her to see his body and she knew he was looking at her. He would never be a monster to her, she thought as she put her hand on him.
"You've been bruised," she said, starting to glide her hands on his chest. It was a poor excuse, but she trusted he wanted to believe in the innocence of her explorations. The truth was, as young as she was still, she had been a woman for years now (proof of it came monthly), knew of men's looks on her and of the fascination their body held for her. She knew no one else fascinated her as much as he did.
She felt him tense up and he whispered: "It's nothing, come and sleep little one." It frustrated her to no end that he would call her "little one", but she decided to play with that. She pulled up her tank top revealing her right breast and rub under it. "I was bruised there too," she said in as innocent a voice as she could conjure. He looked away almost immediately and rolled on his back looking at the ceiling "come and sleep" he repeated, his voice strained somehow. A broad smile drew across her face.
She didn't pull down her tank top and laid her chest right on top of his, so he could feel her hard nipple on his skin, and she exhaled slowly on his neck. He shifted his hips away from her, bending his knee. She knew what he was trying to hide, had felt it on her leg. She was so curious, but she didn't want him to push her away so she pretended like she was falling asleep and didn't move any more. She felt him pull down her tank top until she was covered again, and she pretended to sleep through it. He knew she was faking, but he was grateful she let him dress her up again. They would have to stop sleeping in each other's arms, he thought, she was changing too much. Though her presence soothed him, and he couldn't really sleep well without her, the presence of her body troubled him more and more. Sleep seemed to want to visit him less and less, whether she was there or not.
