Author's Note:Some explanation for Talia's current position is probably warranted. I have her working at LexCorp because that's where she is in the 'Death and the Maidens' and also early Superman/Batman story-lines. For anyone needing more details, check out Talia's Wikipedia page under the section 'LexCorp'. I felt it fits into the story, because I always imagined Lex and Ra's have a non-interference policy, much like they do in Young Justice animated series, and it's also a bit of hiding in plain sight. Enjoy and please review!
Bruce strategically timed his trips to Metropolis so that he would arrive early Friday morning, spend the day at the local branch of Wayne Enterprises, and have the weekend for… other things. To make it easier to pretend the trip was not entirely personal, he put in a solid twelves hours at the office before returning to the high rise penthouse in the middle of the city. Separate from any other apartment in the building by a key card restricted elevator, Bruce was nonetheless not at all surprised to see Talia when the doors slid open.
"I really need to update my security," he said wryly, stepping out into the hallway.
"I could leave," Talia offered with a completely straight face and actually made a move for the elevator. Bruce held up a grocery bag.
"Can I bribe you?" Talia pretended to seriously consider it. "Grass-fed lean steak, salad with raspberry dressing, baby potatoes and red wine."
She arched a brow. "Cabernet Sauvignon?"
"Merlot."
"You do realize the food needs to be prepared." Her tone made it clear that she was not stepping near a stove and had absolutely no faith in his abilities in the kitchen.
"I can cook." This was met with extreme skepticism. "I don't often, but I can. If you're willing to supervise and make sure I don't burn the place down…"
"That is the only way this will happen." She took the bottle of wine from him pointedly and lead him to the living room. "As it happens I have a gift for you."
The doors closed behind them, and she turned and held up a USB drive between two fingers. It was Bruce's turn to raise a brow.
"Tell me those are all of LexCorp's dark, dirty secrets."
"I am offended," she said, though her voice was tinged with amusement. "Corporate espionage is a serious crime, and Wayne Enterprises is a competitor."
He figured as much and couldn't really fault her for laying low. It would probably be a major scandal if a high ranking employee of LexCorp and Bruce Wayne were even seen together in public. If it was discovered that she leaked any information to Wayne Enterprises, the consequences would be unpleasant to say the least.
"Now if I were to find out about any illicit - dare I say, criminal - activity," Talia continued, "it would be my duty as an upstanding citizen to report it. Perhaps to… this city's own guardian? Anonymously, of course."
"Of course." Bruce grinned, pleasantly surprised that she was willing to send intelligence to Superman, if anonymously. The two were rarely on speaking terms. "I'm sure that can be arranged. So what's my present?"
"After dinner, provided we survive the preparation process."
Despite earlier protests, she did rinse and prepare the salad. As whole the preparations ended up being quite painless, with Talia making only small corrections as he worked most of which consisted of telling him what spices to add to the steak and potatoes. Other than that they worked mostly in silence.
The table was set and the wine poured a half hour later, and when they were settled Bruce watched for her reaction as she cut into the meat for the first time. Talia thoughtfully chewed and then followed the small bite with a sip of wine.
"Quite adequate," she declared and tilted her head at him slightly. "How did you acquire this skill?"
"Osmosis, mostly," he admitted taking a sip of wine himself. "When I was younger and traveled a lot, I eventually got tired of eating out and experimented a bit. I don't do much cooking at home, but sometimes I hear Alfred and Jason discussing various things. Guess some of it sunk in."
Talia blinked. "Jason can cook?"
"Pretty well too."
The reset of the dinner conversation kept to other safe topics. Talia spoke little about her work, but mentioned that she had struck up a friendship with a neighbor of hers which surprised him. She was not a social person unless she had to be, even less so than himself or Jason. In fact Bruce wasn't sure she had any friends, certainly not any other women.
When food was gone and dishes abandoned in the sink, they retired to the living room and Bruce opened his laptop. Talia took a seat next to him, tucking her bare feet beneath her, one arm propped on the back of the couch. She handed him the flash drive and watched as he booted it. For a few seconds Bruce couldn't quite understand the amused look on her face, then he looked at the screen and groaned.
"Triple encryption?" He gave her a half amused, half exasperated look. "Is this really necessary?"
She gave him an enigmatic look and simply said, "Precious cargo."
"Alright." Bruce tilted his head from side to side, stretching. "I see you're going to make me work for this mysterious present."
"I make it a point to make you work for everything." Her voice was low and husky, then her features relaxed into something gentler. "It will be worth it, Bruce. I promise."
He shrugged then straightened and began to type away at the keyboard. Bruce had to give her credit; it took him ten minutes to crack through the first level of encryption, but levels two and three took twice as long each. At the end, however, he saw that Talia was right: it was more than worth it.
Bruce clicked through picture, hundreds of them, and his grin grew wider with every one. They began with a swaddled, chubby-cheeked infant and slowly progressed to a very determined - though clearly not yet vertically stable - toddler and finally to the boy he easily recognized as his youngest son. In some of them Damian was wearing more traditional Middle-Eastern outfits while others had him in more western clothes. Talia was in a few pictures as well, sometimes holding him as a baby other times instructing the boy on wooden swords.
Without even noticing it, Bruce kept going back to the early baby pictures. "He was so small…"
"Not that small," Talia commented wryly. "Did you think all children magically arrive at your door between the ages of eight and twelve?"
"That's been my general experience, yes," he quipped.
"Well it was not mine, and I have the stretch marks to prove it." He blinked in what must have looked like utter bewilderment. "I am fairly certain you have seen me nude."
He chuckled, then reluctantly leaned forward and closed the computer screen. Talia looked momentarily surprised, until he took her arm and easily maneuvered them so that she was straddling his lap. Her brow raised in question until he surged up and captured her lips in a sultry kiss that somehow felt sweet at the same time. Talia pressed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and even when they pulled apart a moment later, their foreheads still touched.
"I'll let you in on a little secret." His voice rang with amusement. "Men don't see stretch marks. At all. We just see hips..." hands moved to rest on the curves of her hips then slowly under her blouse and up her body, "the arch of a woman's back. And these." His thumbs brushed the underside of her breasts, and even through a bra, Talia shivered.
"Odd." she bumped her nose against his playfully. "I happen to know for a fact that Batman is extremely detail-oriented."
"Batman is," he agreed, "but Bruce Wayne is a shallow socialite. Haven't you heard?"
Talia rolled her eyes. "Such lies are offensive."
Bruce kissed her again because he wanted to and because he found the idea of her being offended on his behalf of how people perceived his well-crafted civilian persona endearing. Talia could certainly play a part if she had to but there was rarely cause for it. At most, people tended to perceive that she was intensely private which - while true for him as well in reality - was the opposite of the image he tended to feed the media.
"A necessary lie," he reminded her.
Something flickered across Talia's face. It was gone within a split second, but Bruce caught the look. She hated that they had to hide this, hated the lies she felt she had to tell in the past. Again it came back to ends and means between them, just as it so often did whenever al Ghuls were involved. Talia had once told him that she approved of her father's goals but not his means, and Bruce believed that. She wasn't vicious for the sake of violence, but heaven help anyone who threatened her family.
To distract himself from the morbid thoughts, he pulled her close again.
"Bed?" he whispered.
"Bed," she agreed.
Talia awoke slowly, stretching against the soft cotton sheets. Her body felt wonderfully well-tested, which she found odd after the half a second it took her to remember the night before. A glance towards the large windows, however, explained it when she saw the bright streaming through the window shutters. It must have been quite late in the morning. A glance to the other empty side of the bed told her that her lover had already awakened, likely a while ago. His pillow felt cool to the touch.
Pulling the white cover with her as she rose, Talia wrapped them around herself and let the sheet trail after her as she made her way to the living room. Looking towards the open kitchen, Talia could see that there were two plates on the counter with eggs, toasted English muffins, and what she suspected were turkey sausages. Steam still wafted from both meals. Bruce was back in the open adjacent kitchen with his back to her, thoughtfully sipping a cup of coffee as his fingers tapped on the mouse pad of the computer before him.
He was looking at the photos again, she realized. Talia cleared her throat, Bruce glanced back at her.
"Morning."
"Good morning." She walked forward and accepted the second cup of coffee he offered from her. "Thank you for breakfast, though it was not necessary. You could have slept longer."
He shook his head. "I'm used to running on only a few hours, but you looked like you needed it."
"Try to look a bit less self-satisfied." Talia smacked his shoulder playfully.
"Oh, I think we were both pretty satisfied." She made a face at him out of habit. "Yes, I know it's morning. I swear you used to be more romantic than this."
That... stung. Badly. Much worse than she imagined it would. She wanted to ask him what it was exactly he thought they were doing. Of course an affair could be sexual, emotional, or both, but Talia liked to pretend this one was just the former. To do otherwise would be to set them both up for eventual heartbreak and disappointment, the usual concoction of emotions that never failed to come every time their trysts fell apart.
It was more than guilt over Damian, and later Jason, that made her avoid him for the last nine years or ensure that their encounters were more often than not cool at best and hostile at worst. It was the utter hopelessness of there ever being something good, something long-term and sustainable for the two of them. How she missed being young and naive, being back in the desert with him during their brief and blissfully care-free marriage. There had been plenty of romance and laughter.
He had been her 'beloved' then.
In an effort to hide her discomfort, she reached for the kettle and he let her. Talia often wondered how much he could read of the complex emotions she tried to hide. She suspected it was more than what would make her comfortable. Holding the sheet still wrapped around her body with one hand and pouring the hot water onto the silk tea bag in the cup with the other, she pointedly avoided his gaze, but he had turned back to the computer anyway.
"Do you have any more photos?" Bruce asked pausing on another picture of Damian as a toddler, a bit unsteady on his hands and knees in the shifting sand.
"There are well over five thousand on that drive," Talia looked at him, grateful for the change of topic. That relief quickly vanished with his next words.
"I meant, do you have any of Jason?"
"No." She turned back to her tea, resisting the nervous tick to bite her lip.
Bruce raised a brow skeptically. "Almost two years and you never once took a single picture?"
"A year and a half," she corrected, "and you can imagine why he might not have appreciated if I pointed a camera at him."
"From what I understand," Bruce's voice was careful and measured, and she just knew she was not going to like whatever he said, "that was… later."
"Later," she repeated in affirmation. "You do not want to see images from before."
"He's my son," he said as if it was supposed to resolve everything. From Talia's perspective, it did, though not in the way he might have liked.
"He is," she agreed, setting her cup down. "And believe me, you do not want to see your child like that. You do not want those images in your mind, B… Bruce. It is enough that I have the memories. Let them be my burden to carry, my penance."
Her palms rested on the cool marble of the kitchen counter as she tried in vain to center her thoughts and emotions once more. She almost didn't hear it as Bruce put his own cup down and came up behind her. His arms wrapped around her sheet-clad torso, and he rested his chin on her shoulder.
"You brought him back," he whispered, and yes, his voice was not entirely steady. " You saved him where I couldn't. Whatever else happened, I will always be grateful for that."
Grateful. At best he would be grateful.
Her father's words to her after the first time she had suggested using the pit to restore Jason to everything he had been before his tragic death rang in her ears again. Talia did her best not to think about it, but sometimes she had to wonder if this was anything more than an expression of gratitude. Was it any wonder she did her best to harden her heart? Taking a deep breath, Talia skillfully untangled herself from his embrace.
"I am going to shower." Her tone was about as far from an invitation as it could get.
Bruce looked like he wanted to protest, but the cell phone in his pocket vibrated at that moment, and she used it as an opportunity to retreat back towards the bedroom and the adjacent bathroom. Before she was out of earshot, Talia thought she heard him mutter something about four missed calls.
Then the doorbell rang.