A/N: Hello, faithful readers! I wanted to say that I appreciate the messages of concern. I am 25 weeks pregnant with my husband and my first child and everything is going really well now! Yay for babies! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Talia leaned against the stone wall of the training room a week later and grasped her left ankle. She gently pulled her heel up and back until she felt a stretch in the front of her thigh, and she held the stretch for a good thirty seconds before switching sides and repeating the motion.

She lowered herself to the cold, hard floor and pulled her left knee up against her chest. When she felt a stretch in her lower back, she stopped pulling, holding the knee against her chest for thirty seconds and then switching sides.

It was her daily stretching routine, one she repeated before any sparring endeavor. She always got to the training room early enough that she could stretch alone, in peace, with time to think in the dank silence of the room. As she sat up, she brought her left arm across her body and held it with her right arm above the elbow, stretching her shoulder. She inhaled deeply as she stretched, focusing her mind and her breath on the task of training.

She was jarred from her single-minded concentration by the sound of the heavy wooden door creaking open. Expecting to see Bane in the threshold, Talia prepared to tell him he was early, but instead of her protector-turned-lover, she saw her father standing in the doorway.

He smiled gently at her and stepped into the dim light of the training room.

"Good morning, daughter," he said softly.

"Father," Talia acknowledged with a respectful nod. When she made a move to rise from the floor, Ra's al Ghul motioned for her to remain where she was and continue stretching. "Back so soon from New Delhi?" Talia asked.

"My task was completed more quickly than was expected," Ra's said cryptically. He rubbed at the scruff on his chin and said, "You're to have a different training partner for a while. I've already spoken with Bane this morning."

Talia struggled to control her outward emotion, but her heart pounded. She swallowed and wondered what her father's motivation was. "All right," Talia said simply. "Who is it?"

"Najaah, the sister of Aashir," Ra's informed her. His aquamarine eyes glinted a bit as he waited for her response. Talia tried to give none, but she did verbally protest,

"Father, she is even weaker than her brother."

"So she is," Ra's nodded. "Aashir is back in shape enough that he will train with Bane. If he can not do so, and if Najaah can not hold her own against you, then the two of them will have demonstrated that they do not have a place in the League of Shadows."

So, Talia thought harshly, if Najaah and Aashir can not train with Bane and myself, then they will be gone. Aashir, that pest who's done nothing but flirt with me and mock Bane, could be gone, along with his obnoxious sister. It is up to Bane and me to boot them out of here. That should be easy enough.

"On the other hand," Ra's al Ghul continued, taking Talia from her thoughts, "If Aashir is able to defeat Bane, and Najaah able to defeat you, in regular practice, then perhaps it is you and Bane who require re-evaluation. After all, the two of you have had many hours of practice together. If you are not able to defeat Aashir and Najaah, I would need to determine why neither of you would have seemed to have made adequate progress."

"You know very well, Father, that Bane will destroy Aashir with his fists," Talia said haughtily, rising to her feet and putting her hands on the hips of her black linen tunic. Ra's al Ghul grinned crookedly.

"Aashir and Bane will be training with the bamboo sword, which, as I recall, is an area of particular expertise for Aashir," her father informed her. "As for Najaah… do not underestimate her kickboxing skills. Ah… here she comes now." Ra's glanced out the doorway as though he saw someone approaching down the hallway. Najaah stepped through the threshold, nodding politely at Ra's al Ghul.

Her inky black hair fell from her crown in a high, silky ponytail. Her dark almond eyes glittered with determination, glowing as they stood out from her caramel skin.

"Good morning, Talia," Najaah nodded, though she hardly sounded friendly. Talia simply nodded in response. "Already stretched and ready?" Najaah asked, and Talia nodded again.

"Go ahead and begin when you're ready, ladies," Ra's al Ghul commanded, shutting the door behind him and stepping into the room to observe their scrap.

Talia got into a fighting stance, putting one arm up to protect her face and the other arm a little lower to protect her body. She had hardly settled into her stance when she was struck with a straight jab from Najaah. She didn't have time to react, and the punch struck her left cheekbone. She hissed in anger and quickly reacted with a cross punch. She missed, and Najaah threw an uppercut that struck Talia's jaw. Talia grasped Najaah's wrist and twisted hard, but as Talia was twisting, Najaah threw her other hand into a hook shot, punching in a circular motion with her lead hand as her legs rushed forward.

Najaah's right knee thrust up into Talia's abdomen, and Talia furiously hooked her arm under Najaah's knee and managed to trip the other girl, sending her crashing to the floor. She heard her father laugh from behind them, seemingly amused at how closely matched the two young women were. Talia knew this was her chance to get Najaah to submit; she had her opponent on the ground, and now was the time to act, before Najaah could get back up. She leapt atop Najaah, mounting her with a leg on either side of her waist, and clasped her knees down onto Najaah's biceps.

Najaah growled in frustration and squirmed beneath Talia but was completely pinned. Her black eyes glittered with anger, and Talia was suddenly overcome with rage. She was not certain why; she had little reason to distinctly hate this woman, but she felt nothing for her other than hate in this moment. Perhaps it was because of how her father had mocked her. Perhaps it was because her father had associated Talia's potential failure against Najaah with a failed training against Bane. In any case, Talia needed to defeat Najaah. There was no alternative. So she began pummeling Najaah's face while she pinned down the older girl's arms with her knees. Talia's fists pounded, one after the other, against Najaah's jaws and face, until blood started leaking from her nose and Najaah finally cried out,

"Fine, Talia! You've won!"

Talia threw her hands up and began crawling off of Najaah. She wiped Najaah's blood from her hands and stood, and Najaah heaved herself off of the ground. Both young women looked to Ra's al Ghul.

"We shall try again tomorrow morning," Ra's said. "I've got a lot of other things to do today. Najaah, go to the infirmary and get that nose and jaw cleaned up. Talia, come with me. We're going to go watch Bane fight."

He turned to leave without another word, and Talia began to follow him anxiously. Behind them, Najaah asked,

"May I come see my brother, sir?"

"I've just told you where to go," Ra's al Ghul answered simply, continuing out the door.

Talia followed her father through the doorway and down the hallway. On other side of the corridor, there were additional training rooms, in which Talia could hear initiates grunting and groaning as they fought. Finally, they reached a heavy wooden door that Ra's al Ghul heaved open, and inside stood Bane and Aashir, facing one another in a silent standoff.

The two men held bamboo shinai, and Ra's chuckled under his breath when he and his daughter entered the room.

"Well, you look positively ready to begin, then," Ra's said. "You'll be delighted to note, Bane, that Talia handily defeated Najaah. I'm sorry to inform you of this news, Aashir." He sounded absolutely giddy as he spoke, and Talia began to realize just how amused this entire scheme was making her father – just how manipulative Ra's al Ghul was.

Bane's hand gripped his shinai more tightly. Aashir stared at Talia. He did not look at her with the same smarmy, cocky expression he'd used in the past. He looked a bit angrier, a bit more determined. One of his eyes was still healing from being blackened and had shadows of green and purple around it. His angular face shifted as he gritted his teeth.

"Well?" Ra's al Ghul held his hands out expectantly. "Let's see, then, gentlemen."

Aashir and Bane touched the tips of their shinai together to begin the parry. Just as Bane stepped forward and raised his sword, Aashir struck low, hitting Bane's hand and making a contact before Bane could even swing. Bane swore under his breath, his curse hissing through his mask and echoing off the stone walls of the training room.

Talia chewed on her lip anxiously. The men started over and this time it was Aashir who stepped forward first, raising his sword high above his head and swinging so fast and hard that Bane didn't have time to block him. Aashir's shinai swung downwards diagonally and to the left and hit Bane atop the head, which just looked rather silly.

"Fuck!" Bane yelled, more loudly this time, and Aashir began to look smug. It would only take one more contact before Aashir would have won the match. Bane was strong, but the shinai was not a weapon of strength. It was one of agility, of speed and of sprightliness. Talia had a feeling that Aashir would not make this a dignified loss for Bane.

She was right.

The two men lined their shinai up again, and then Aashir took a hurried and giant leap backward. He swung his shinai back up over his head. Bane tried to take the opportunity to strike, but Aashir was too fast. He swung his shinai as hard as he could directly at Bane's mask.

It was the same thing that Talia had done to Bane with her own bamboo sword, though she'd done it by accident. Aashir had done it on purpose. It was all Talia could do to keep from crying. She watched helplessly as Bane staggered backwards, frantically trying to reattach the pipes that had been knocked loose by Aashir's shinai. He made a choked sort of noise and his back hit the stone wall, his fingers fumbling with the tubes that fed him anesthetic.

Beside her, Talia's father sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead, as though he could not believe he'd put his faith in a man so dependent on medication. In front of her, Aashir chuckled under his breath at the sight of Bane struggling mightily with the contraption strapped to her face. Enraged by the reactions of the two men, Talia rushed forward toward Bane and urged his trembling fingers away from his mask. She began to screw the conduits back into place, but then she saw the self-conscious look in his jade eyes, and he angrily pushed her hands away.

"You don't know what you're doing," he said roughly. "Let me do it, Talia."

Hurt and upset, Talia stumbled away from him, back toward her father. Ra's al Ghul put his hands on Talia's shoulders, and Talia didn't know that she'd ever felt so unwelcome a feeling as that of her father's touch at that moment. Ra's began to guide Talia from the training room. The last thing she saw before she stepped through the doorway was Bane, gasping in deep breaths full of anesthetic, and Aashir, laughing malevolently at what he'd done to the man Talia loved.


In the middle of the night, Talia lay alone in her bed, thinking back to the week before when things had seemed so perfect. Here, right here upon these sheets, Bane had made love to her. He'd told her she was perfect; he'd claimed her for his own.

Today, everything had been shattered… by her father. He'd obliquely threatened both her and Bane; he'd hinted that he suspected there was something amok in their training. Bane had lost miserably with the shinai and had been humiliated in front of Talia.

She tried to fall back asleep, but the claps of thunder outside and the bright flashes of lightning made it difficult. Talia thought back to an instance in the Pit where it had been storming like this, and she'd been terrified, for it had rarely stormed in the desert. Of course, it had been Bane who'd brought her comfort then.


"Aaaagh!"

Bane chuckled from across the cell, where his solitary candle flickered meekly. "It's only thunder and lightning, little one," he said calmly. "It will not harm you. Not while I'm here."

Talia trembled where she lay on the small bed. "W-what makes the thunder and lightning?"

"Well, you see, little one," Bane said, closing his book and edging toward the squat bed, "Long ago, there was no rain at all in the desert. Nothing at all grew. Then, one day, a fox wandered into the desert."

"A fox?" Talia asked. "Like the creatures I've seen in my books?"

"Just like them," Bane nodded. "The fox wandered into the desert, and he could find neither food nor water there. So he lay down on the ground and he looked up to the sky and howled desperately. The spirits in the sky heard him howling so loudly that they had to drown out his yelps and sobs, for his howling made them so sad that that they began to cry. And their tears were the rain. And the sounds that they made to drown out the fox's pitiful wailing… that was the thunder. Then, the spirits in the sky needed to make sure that things below were still growing, even when the clouds had made it too dark to see. So they flashed light to see that the rain was making things grow… and that was the lightning. More animals had followed the fox into the desert, so there was need for more rain, and more thunder, and more lightning. So, to this day, those things continue, even in the desert."

"Oh." Talia had nodded. It seemed a bit far-fetched… ridiculous, even. In fact, Talia was relatively certain that Bane had made the entire story up just for her. But it still made her feel a little bit better, to think of a hungry, thirsty fox wandering the desert, having his cries answered by spirits in the sky.


Talia was jolted awake by the sound of her bedroom door creaking open. She half-expected to see her father standing in the doorway, just as she had seen him standing in a threshold earlier that day. But then she heard the steady, slow rush of breath through a filter, and she knew that it was Bane in the darkness. Her suspicion was confirmed when a flash of lightning glinted off the metal of his mask. He shut the door silently behind him and locked it quietly, stepping slowly into Talia's bedroom.

"Hello," Talia whispered, trying not to sound grumpy.

Bane said nothing. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of dark drawstring pants and his mask. He peeled back the blankets of Talia's bed and slithered between the sheets beside her. Talia wanted to ask what was wrong, for he still said nothing. He just inhaled deeply as he pressed his mask against the back of her head, burying it in her dark curls. He slinked his arms around her form, and the skin of his large hands was hot through the thin material of her cotton pajamas. He pressed his palms against her breasts through her shirt, and Talia's breath hitched in her throat.

"I'm sorry," he whispered finally.

"For… for what?" Talia asked, her voice snagging. Thunder clapped outside and she startled. When she flinched, Bane's hands tightened around her, sliding down to the hem of her shirt and hiking it up so that his fingers could glide against her bare skin.

"I'm sorry that I pushed you away earlier," Bane said. "I was ashamed. I did not want help."

"I understand," Talia nodded, and it was the truth. She felt her shaky breath quicken as Bane's fingertips reached her exposed, hardened nipples and fiddled with them. He groaned a little through his mask, and Talia felt his stiffness pressing against her back. "Will you take me again?" she prodded him quietly.

He was silent for a long moment. "When did you last bleed?" he asked her awkwardly.

Talia rotated on the sheets to face him and furrowed her eyebrow in embarrassed confusion. "What?"

"Your… cycle. When did you last bleed?" Bane looked just as embarrassed as Talia. She finally answered,

"Two weeks ago, I suppose."

"Then, no. Not tonight." Bane shook his head firmly and continued, "It's not worth the risk, even if I… no. I can't put a child in you, Talia."

"Aren't there ways…?" Talia's voice trailed off. She thought she had heard female initiates mention pills that could be taken and things called condoms that could be used to prevent pregnancy, but of course they didn't have any of those things tonight, in this bedroom.

"Not tonight, little one," Bane said again.

"Then… just let me please you," Talia begged, reaching between Bane's legs to ghost her fingertips over the hardness that had lagged a bit since they'd started talking. At her touch, he firmed back up again, sighing deeply through his mask as his hands clutched at her shoulders. Her little fingers quickly untied his drawstring and began pulling his pants down over his hips, urging him to lie on his back. Bane settled against Talia's pillows, a flash of lighting illuminating his mask as a clap of thunder masked another sigh.

She peeled back the blankets and beheld his erection, taut and long and thick. She began to stroke it gently, and in response Bane thrashed his head a bit against the pillow. Talia grew a bit excited by his response and moved her hand more firmly against him, gripping him more securely in her fingers as she glided her hand in a swirling motion. Soon enough, a pearl of fluid glistened at the tip, illuminated by the white flashes of lightning. Fascinated, Talia slowly lowered herself toward Bane's erection until her lips were upon the tip, and then she parted her lips and pushed the tip between them, into the warm wetness of her mouth. She swirled her tongue curiously around the tip of Bane's cock, tasting his flesh, and pushed him as deeply as she could against the back of her throat.

Bane's response was immediate and fierce. His back arched, his huge hands clutched ferociously at the sheets, and he grunted like a beast. He panted desperately through his mask, his heavy breathing veiled by the sound of the increasingly dense rain outside the window.

Talia liked his response. She liked how much he seemed to enjoy this; she liked how out of control of himself he was. So she fondled the orbs at the base of his shaft with one hand, and she used the other to pump his shaft while she followed with her mouth. Her hand moved in an up-and-down, swirling motion, while her mouth took him as deeply as she could again and again. His tip kept touching the back of her throat, and each time it did she made a swallowing motion as if she were trying to gulp down his entire cock. Meanwhile, her tongue swirled and licked and moved inside of her mouth, pleasuring his tip.

Talia was doing what came naturally, but she was moving in a frenzy. She couldn't help herself after a while. It was as if she couldn't get enough of him. He was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted, and she herself was more aroused by the experience of giving him pleasure than she'd ever been. She was moaning onto him, perhaps more loudly than she should have been, her voice vibrating against his skin in low, hungry hums.

Meanwhile, Bane thrashed and moaned quietly and gasped, whispering Talia's name over and over. Finally, he tried desperately to pull her head off of him, and Talia knew that he was close to finishing. Something compelled her to taste him, even if the taste was unpleasant. She wanted him, wholly and completely, and so she cried, "Hmm-mm!" when he tried to wrench her head from him. He sighed and groaned, and then his member pulsated and throbbed in Talia's hand. Her mouth was flooded with his essence, bitter and caustic, and she swallowed it as quickly as she could.

Talia slithered up the sheets, pulling Bane's pants back onto his body. She grinned at Bane and murmured teasingly, "There. All better. Is that what you came here for?"

"Not at all." Bane shook his head seriously. "I came here to apologize for being rude to you after I fought Aashir. That's all."

"No apology necessary." Talia smiled again, and they stared at one another for a long moment. Bane tucked a stray curl behind Talia's ear, and his jade eyes glittered.

"I love you, little one," he whispered.

Ten minutes later, after Talia had rinsed her mouth out and returned to bed, Bane was already asleep. She found that funny, that he'd completely collapsed into his pleasure and had fallen asleep in her bed. He'd never done that. Bane had never let himself go to the point where he would sacrifice either one of their securities so much as to fall asleep in Talia's bed, just down the hallway from her father… but here he was, sound asleep on his back, with Talia cuddling up beside him.

Just a few hours later, at four-thirty in the morning, Talia startled awake and found Bane sitting up beside her, wide-awake. She was hardly surprised to see him alert. She assumed that the previous night, he'd only drifted off to sleep for an hour or so in the wake of his intense gratification.

"I have to leave, Talia," Bane said, without any sort of greeting. The seriousness in his voice concerned Talia. "I've stayed far too long."

Talia nodded and swallowed heavily. "All right. I'll see you at breakfast."

Bane nodded. He'd come in only drawstring pants, so he rose from the bed and smoothed the material of his sparse clothing. He unlocked the bedroom door and his eyes flashed at Talia in such a way that she knew he was giving her a little smile. Then he opened the door cautiously and stepped slowly out into the hallway. The door did not close behind him, and Talia sat up slowly, worried.

"Good morning, Bane," she heard an amused voice say outside, and her heart froze.

"Good morning, Najaah."

A/N: Duh duh duhhhhhhhh. Uh-oh. Reviews are appreciated, as always! Thanks a million!