where a blade was sunk some time ago

by Mira-Jade

"And sometimes, the Pit would give something back – something stronger than that which had been fed flailing into the bitter earth." Talia rises. Bane follows.

3. into a scabbard tucked

Author's Notes: Hello my dear readers! I have to stop and take a moment before the chapter to thank-you for your amazing support! I replied to those I could individually, but this was my record for anonymous reviewers, and since I could not say so privately here we are now - thank-you for reading and taking the time to leave your thoughts.

This chapter ended up being a wee bit of a beast, even compared to the first two, and that is even after I split it in two (I know, my muse has words. Shush), which means that this story will clock in at six parts now, rather than five. You have my permission to cheer. :p

And, on that note, I wanted to take a moment to say that since these chapters as so huge, they take a lot of effort to churn out - and that means it is always going to take some time for me to update. More than the writing process is the time it takes for editing these chapters and I am going as fast as I can. Thank-you for reading, and don't worry too much about updates - this story has swallowed my soul in the best possible way. ;)

And, that said, on to the story . . .

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III. "into a scabbard tucked"

She knew the mask had worked when her friend awakened, not with silence, but with a gasp.

Instantly, Talia herself was awake, snapping upright from where she had fallen asleep kneeling at his bedside. Her knees ached from the hard wood floor, and her fingers were stiff from the night's chill, but her eyes were bright and instantly searching as they snapped to her friend's face – looking above the hard black shape of his mask to find his eyes.

Her heart gave a sick twist in her chest when he finally caught her gaze. Sadness and such a sharp, staggering sense of joy warred for supremacy in her until the joy finally won. It was a new emotion in her – an intoxicating sensation that left her fingers tingling and her skin warm. She could finally see him, she rejoiced. Him, and not a dull, lifeless figure who bore the face of her friend. It was the first time since she had fled the Pit that she had looked upon him, and saw Bane staring back in his eyes. It had worked, she rejoiced. The venom had done its work, and now Bane looked at her with awareness and understanding - the feat as monumental as the ocean draining through a seashell.

And then her joy sobered. Grief cut through her euphoria like a blade as his eyes widened, and his hands came up to touch his face . . .

"What is this?" he asked, speaking for the first time since they had made their ascent. His words came out slow and slanted, as if he had to work around his confines – the ruin of his mouth and the weight of his mask – in order to speak them.

"It is a mask," she felt her words spill out of her mouth, one and then the other, speaking her childhood tongue – a language she had not spoken in what felt like so many years. "The mask . . . It is to keep you from feeling pain. It delivers a compound that numbs your wounds and keeps infection at bay. We were not," her voice faltered. It was thin in her mouth. "We were not sure that your body would accept it. It could have killed you . . . but here you are, with your eyes open and aware upon mine . . . I have missed your eyes, my friend." She laughed a little, the sound sparking half mad on her lips, forced as she was to find humor in the face of such a dark situation.

The mask twitched upon his face, just barely, as if the muscles underneath were trying to move. They were searching, feeling out new sensations and committing them to memory until they became second nature to his skin. Bane's fingers traced over the twists and tangles of the mask, creating a picture in his mind's eye where his own eyes were blind to see, and Talia felt the sharp feeling in her gut intensify. It twisted, like a blade.

"It is only a first crude effort," she said next, speaking quickly so as to distract him – to give him something to concentrate on other than the feel of metal and leather closing him in. "The next models should be less cumbersome – more comfortable. Does it pain you?" she asked, her voice pitched with her concern. "Is it too loose? Too tight? I can fix that now."

She raised herself up on her knees, leaning forward so that she could find the straps that held the mask to his face. Halfway through the motion, one of his hands left his face in order to catch her arm by the wrist. His grip was strong, surprisingly strong, and she instantly went still out of instinct as much as anything else.

Talia tilted her head, waiting for him to speak, but she only heard the sound of his breathing, low and labored through his mask. She did not push him to utter the words she could see battling in his eyes. Instead, she waited.

"My apologies, but it is hard to speak," when he spoke, his voice wheezed, the air filters catching the sound and perverting it to something garish - apparition shaped, as if stolen from some child's nightmare. Even still, its cadence was oddly rich and warm as it hissed and whirled in her ears. It was not Bane as she had known him, but she could hear traces of him in the shape and timber of his syllables - it was still him underneath everything else.

"That sound . . ." Bane echoed her thoughts, and even though his voice was so much different, she could hear the perplexment in his voice. Its shape was a familiar one to you.

"Is nothing more than your voice," Talia finished for him, her voice firm. "Yours. And the sound of it matters little if it means that you do not feel pain."

A heartbeat. She watched, and saw the corners of his eyes crinkle. She imagined that his mouth worked, trying to find his words."Have you seen beneath it?" he asked. She could not hear it in his voice, but she could see it in his eyes that he dreaded her answer.

She locked her jaw, considering just how to reply. Her eyes flickered, falling down, and he read the truth in her silence before she could discern what words to offer to him.

He was upset, that much she was immediately certain of. He did not speak, but his breath came too quick and too shallow, almost hiccupping until his mask struggled to keep up with him, the contraption wheezing and hissing with the effort it made. He sounded like he was hyperventilating, the stress and the shock of everything – from the Pit to now – finally catching up to him and sinking its claws into his still tender flesh. Alarmed, she leaned forward, ignoring his iron grip on her arm as she brought her other hand over to cup his face.

"Shhh, my friend, it is not worth the struggle," she tried to sooth, tried to lay the beast before her still with nothing more than her words and the whisper of her touch. She tried to anchor him through the force of her will alone.

"How can you speak so calmly?" he finally wheezed out when his breath had quieted enough to allow him to say so. "It is a horror that lies beneath this; an abomination." Over her wrist, his grip was like iron. She could feel her bones grate together, and she raised a brow at the strength of him, wondering if it was simply his fervent feeling or the elixir in his veins that gave him such strength.

She did not fight his grip on her. Instead, she raised her other hand, and traced a curious finger over the rise and fall of the wires and the metal, over the smooth plates and the grating that covered his mouth.

"My horror, perhaps," she gave, her mouth crooked. "But then, you always have been." And that was all that she would say on the subject. She held his eyes like she would face an opponent, never looking away; and willed them to say much where her mouth could not. She did not apologize for the scars he bore in her name. She did not thank him for the sacrifice he made. She did not thank him for being the thing that made it possible for her to rise.

Instead, she leaned down to rest her forehead wearily against his, as she would have done when she was a child. His skin was warm. The leather of the mask was cool. A heartbeat passed, and she felt his iron like grip release her wrist. Her skin there ached. Later, she would check for bruises.

But, instead of pushing her away, he put his hand on her shoulder, as if uncertain that the shape above him was really her. His fingers curled against her, the barest of caresses, before raising just slightly to find her hair. His touch was curious, having only ever seen her shaved and boyish. Now she had a woman's tresses, nearly all the way down her back – she refusing to cut the length of it, even when her tutors had insisted that the locks would be a weakness in a fight. It would give an enemy something to hang on to.

But she did not regret her decision to keep it as Bane's fingers combed gently through her hair, curiosity and amazement and awe like a flame in his eyes. She felt her cheeks flush at the attention. Her smile was something she could not keep from her face.

"My father would have you stay," she finally said after some time had passed, her body almost liquid in its peace as she kept her perch over him. "In gratitude for my safe passage through the years and then to freedom."

She felt his fingers curl in her hair. They hooked. A heartbeat passed, one and then another. "Where else would I go?" he finally said, his voice echoing from his mask.

There was nowhere else for him in the world, that much her travels had shown to her in spades, and at the thought a part of her mourned. But another part of her, a larger part, knew that it was not the bounds of necessity or a lack of options that tied him to her. It was more. Her lips turned up where his could not, and she pressed her finger to the grating that covered his mouth. It was warm. She imagined that she could feel him breathing. "Where else would you go, indeed?" she asked instead, returning his words with a smirk. Hers, hers, hers, the cold flame inside of her sung, and for a moment that flame burned.

A rush of heat against her fingertip. A snort from him, then. "I will be nothing but a bane to you," still he promised. Still he vowed.

"Perhaps," she tilted her head. "But not yet."

.

.

The League of Shadows gives them a new purpose; a new direction, a new life.

In those first days, it was hard for Bane to walk, let alone do anything more strenuous than that. The first time he had tried to move from the bed on his own, he had hardly been able to stand without falling, and she had been sickened to see the full extent of his body's damage. More than the scars and the never-ending pain, their most imminent battle laid in the sickness that had seeped down into his muscles and his bones, stemming from so many years with his inability to move while plagued by the ruin of his face.

Slowly but surely, he learned to walk again. At first the steps he took were small, starting with small turns about his room in the healing wing. He refused to lean his weight on her when she offered, instead using the wall or a walking stick for support. She was brushed away when he fell, and she learned how to stand to the side and watch quietly each and every time he struggled to rise to his feet again. Her hands made fists at the unexpected lesson in patience and dignity, but she did not push when the hard cast of his eyes asked her not to. When he was well enough to walk past the healer's chambers, he chose to take his walks around the upper corridors of the east wing, she always walking a careful step behind him, offering her support in silence. He liked the high parts of the temple, where the balconies gave one an unparalleled view of the peaks around them. His breath misted as he inhaled deeply of the cold spring air. His eyes were wide as he took in the view of the mountains rising up before them. His mask had had to work in order to keep up with his breath as it came quick and heavy in his mouth. The sound was ragged in counterpoint to the howling sound of the wind through the canyon below.

And soon, he was not leaning on anything to walk, but rather walking on his own strength. Eventually, he started doing small things – things that she remembered from the Pit, sit ups and lifts with his body weight alone in order to slowly regain muscle and build strength. The trainers of the League were harsh, but no more harsh than the demands Bane put on himself, and as a result, slowly but surely, whispers started to wind of the man with the ruined face who was rising through the Demonhead's ranks.

Then, some time later, when he was finally strong enough to hold his own, Bane slipped into the day to day training that the others – Talia included – went through on the way to their initiation.

The days continued on like this. Every morning they were awakened early by the sound of a gong. They would wash their hands and faces and then head outside to jog on the glacier that cradled the monastery on the side of the mountain. Their lungs grew as strong as their legs with those runs, and the ice and snow became a teacher as much as the hard eyed sensei who watched them with critical eyes. After their run, they returned to the temple for a breakfast of rice and vegetables – which were grown in the hamlet below, and then the trainees would all break up to work with their own tutors for the day. Each member of the League had different talents, and each were given personal attention and consideration so that each part could better serve the whole. After lunch, a group of trainees would hike down to the hamlet and then hike back with packages and supplies– each assisting in the running of the monastery from day to day. Those who didn't make the run assisted in kitchen work or laundry or cleaning. They grew the crops that sustained them. They felled the animals who fed them. They mended their own clothes and cleaned their own weapons. After the menial part of the day, it was time for study, and then another run as the sun fell, before all would dine in the great hall for dinner – supping on more rice and smoked fish and hot green tea, before retiring for the night.

During those first few weeks, Bane had lingered behind the group of trainees during their daily runs, his mask struggling to keep up with his labored breathing. The thin air threw him, and his body suffered as the Pit tried desperately to hang on to its last inflicted horror. In those early days, Talia had loitered back with him, using her name and her glower to keep the whispers silent and the curious eyes staring straight ahead rather than behind.

And then, the day came when he was outrunning even her – carrying more weight than any other from the hamlet as if he were some beast of burden instead of anything mortal blooded and boned, never once blinking from the weight. Talia knew not when it happened – but soon her friend, whom she remembered as a rock, strong and unmovable – started to gain weight and keep it. He built muscle and strength, his tall and lean frame turning into something truly menacing, truly capable of causing destruction and hurt . . . The healer's warnings were fresh in all of their minds as Bane sharpened his mind in order to function past the venom that fed him, and he rose above the expectations of them all.

Together they grew, in more ways than one.

Some days, she was taught the art of patience by hanging upside down on the ceiling with nothing but the spikes in her gauntlets and the strength in her arms keeping her perfectly still, perfectly invisible, for hours. What does this teach me? she had asked Ra's, not out of petulance but out of a thirst for knowledge, and her father had offered a small smile and said, Patience. It was the patient warrior who won not only the day to day scuffles, but the greater war that they all played their part in. Like a slow blade, he had said, and she had stayed still on the ceiling for the better part of the day – controlling her breathing so that she did not feel pain, did not feel fatigue, and reflected that this was one lesson that Ra's could offer her no more on. She had learned it already in the bowels of the Pit, and she could not bring herself to forget.

And some days, there was no combat training, but rather training of the body alone. They were taught agility and the gymnast's arts. She learned how to shape her body into forms she would have at one point thought freakish or impossible. Each muscle in her body was a weapon, and with the League she learned how to strengthen each and every one, how to use them to contribute to the whole until she could do things that mere men would call uncanny – impossible. But the impossible was merely a matter of applying oneself to its defeat; the walls of the Pit had taught her that many years ago, and under her father's tutelage, she continued those teachings until she could etch their dogma into her very bones.

And then, not at the side of any of the League's sensei, but rather at the feet of Ra's himself, she studied the movements of Alexander and Caesar; of Hannibal and Scipio, Sun Tzu and Attila the Hun and Cyrus the Great. Her father spoke of the Napoleonic wars as one who had fought in them. He lectured of the tactics of Charlemagne, the arrogance of Hitler. He schooled her in the ways of every massive army that had ever walked the earth – speaking of their strengths, their weaknesses, and finally, their downfalls. Long has it been to the League to keep balance in the world – theirs was a game of kings, Ra's said, and the men and the women of the League had long been used to cutting weeds away from the tree of humanity – and they would continue to do so until the world was free from injustice. She was taught tactics and war games - the sport of generals and cloak and dagger movements and belief. She was taught to embrace the League's teaching as her flesh and bones and skin; as her everything . . . everything in her but for the cold flame at the core of her, ever burning.

The world would have to burn, Ra's preached to her and she took the words as her own. The world would have to burn, the fires purging it until only the righteous and the just stood poised to refill its shores. The fire would rise; the League would set it.

It was how it always had been. It was how it always would be.

.

.

Months had passed since she had brought Bane back with her from the Pit. It was a cold evening that they spent together, one where the blizzard winds raged outside, keeping all of the trainees indoors for the evening. Rather than building her body, she had her texts to read for the day – Julius Caesar's own memoirs, with Ra's neat hand having written in the margins, pointing out words to remember and others to discard. The words on the pages were still in Latin, as it was better than a translation for one to understand the original intention and meaning of the words. She had already poured through his seven missives from Gaul, and was making her way through the third book of the Commentarii de Bello Civili. She had the journal flipped upside down on her chest, forgotten for the moment as she laid on her back by the small coal burner in her room, the blankets from her bed again nested on the floor instead.

Bane sat cross-legged next to her, polishing and sharpening his arsenal of knives. He sat very close to her, the closeness between them born of the days from long ago, in the Pit, where touch was something both soothing and grounding, as necessary as breathing. They were alive, the touch said, and they were safe. They would continue to be so if they did not leave each other's shadows. Absently, Talia traced a nonsense pattern on his knee as she considered what she had read, the canvas material of his pants coarse under her fingers as she remembered the shape of a scar that dwelt beneath. When Bane would switch from one blade to another, his hand would pass through the ends of her hair – not a caress in intention so much as muscle memory being carried out, habit and instinct both entwined. She would turn into him in acceptance as much as anything else, and their odd dance carried on without ceasing, day after day. She knew that their bond was a cause for whispers – the Demonhead's daughter and her pet beast ever the topic of conversation, but long had there been such whispers about them, and in that, too, there was familiarity.

"I do not see why you even bother," Talia said then, her voice drowsy between the warmth of the burner before her and the contentedness that followed a day of hard work.

"With what, little one?" Bane asked absently, not turning to look at her as he inspected the tip of a blade. A billao, she narrowed her eyes to give the weapon its right name – a dagger from the horn of Africa, with a long straight blade and a buffalo horn as a hilt. The blade was wickedly sharp and strong, and she knew from experience that her friend knew how to do damage with it.

"With attending to the blades," she said, her voice shaped to tease. "My father is constantly cross with you for forgetting steel in a fight in order to use your bare hands."

Bane shrugged. "Who am I to look past my strongest weapon?" he asked before placing the whetstone down. He looked around, but Talia found it first, and handed him the sheepskin sheath for the weapon.

She sat up, carefully placing the journal down on the wood floor before peering over curiously at her friend's arsenal.

"And besides," Bane continued conversationally as he went on to the next weapon – a small knife with a crooked blade, "It is good to know any weapon one may face – even if that weapon is not the one you would prefer to use yourself."

"Wise words," Talia inclined her head. Her hair was loose for the night, it dipped into her eyes with the motion. "And yet, I do believe that that one is mine."

She looked more closely, and indeed, he did have a khanjar in his hands – a dagger she had gotten from her time in Oman, whose purpose was more for decoration than anything else. The blade was worn by men after passing from childhood – and it had been a gift from the family she had stayed with. More than that adulthood, it symbolized vengeance, and before she had left the sand swept lands, the patriarch of the family had bid her to do well to bank the fire in her eyes, lest it grow to consume her. She bit her lip at the thought, and wondered if she would ever return to return the blade once the fire in her died.

Bane raised a brow at the accusation. "Perhaps, you should not be so careless with your things, then."

"Perhaps," she said, mimicking his voice to the best of her ability, "you should not be such a thief."

"Says the child who could not go for minutes without searching my pockets for bread, all of those years ago?"

Talia rolled her eyes, and made a lunge for the dagger. Bane easily held it away from her, pushing back against her forehead as he did when she was a child trying to pry an apple from his hand. She bounced back and pouted. There was a veritable arsenal before her, and yet she was strangely slow to turn another of his blades against him in order to recover her own.

"I am not that child anymore," she said instead, looking up to catch his eyes, glinting as they were over the thick shape of his mask.

"Indeed?" Bane asked as she crossed her arms and glared. "Such a small thing you are before me – all petulance and ire."

She rolled her eyes and swatted at his arm. He moved the dagger further away still. "It is not fair," she said next, her mouth turning in a crooked line. "I do not remember you being so large."

He moved the dagger closer, a hairbreadth away from her searching hands. "And I do not remember you being so small."

"So small?" she echoed him. "I have grown a good half meter since those days – I am a child no more."

"Still so tiny," he continued as if she had not spoken at all. "Bird boned and glass limbed."

Her jaw hooked, recognizing the challenge when she heard it, all the wall is too strong for you and these bars will always hold you tight and so Talia moved. She struck, kicking at the lineup of blades before her, the sound distracting Bane who turned to look. When he turned, she used the millisecond she had in order to find that pressure point in the crook of his elbow that would lessen his grip, surprise more than anything else making it possible for her to find that second pressure point on the back of his hand in order for him to drop the blade completely.

The khanjar fell into her waiting palm, and Talia scurried a space backwards, holding the decorative weapon at the ready before her. "But not so weak after all. Yes, my friend?"

If he had wanted to, a true fight would have left her bruised and bloodied, but instead, Bane's chuckle was low in his mouth. It hissed from his mask. "Never that, little one," he said, his form relaxed and easy, and slowly, very slowly, Talia lowered the blade. "But then, I never said that you were weak to begin with."

He had not, she remembered, her pride assuaged for the moment. She dropped the blade completely, sheathing it before placing it to the side. Bane watched her for a moment before going back to tidy up the blades she had kicked, and a heartbeat later Talia moved to help him, tucking them into their places so that they could be put away for the night. As she moved, Talia felt the familiar weight of the weapon she kept strapped to her arm.

She bit her lip, and looked Bane out of the corner of her eyes. He was not looking at her, not at that moment, and she let her gaze linger – on the bare curve of his skull and the thick line of his brows, relaxed rather than pulled tight. While the shape of him before her was a stranger to her memories, he was as familiar as the breath in her lungs.

She inhaled, finding her center, before saying, "I still have it, you know?"

"Have what?" he asked, turning to look back at her.

Her smile quirked, and instead of answering, she brought out the dagger that he had given to her all of those years ago. She kept his eyes, even as they fell from hers in order to search out the weapon in her hands. With a reverence normally kept for those things holy, Bane reached out to take the small dagger from her – the blade that was once too large in a child's grip was swallowed by his. When he spoke, his voice was heavy, a stone that his mask forced into words. "I did not know you kept it."

"I am not one to pass over what has aided me before, Baldassare," she said, a vow lingering in her words to one listening. And Bane was, as always, listening. "For anyone or anything." For Ra's, or the curious whispers, or in favor of the dozens of pretty and exotic blades she could bear instead of the one she had strapped to her wrist.

Bane bowed his head, and she felt a moment like some ancient goddess accepting the piety of a priest. Her chest tightened. Her mouth ached as if she bore the same scars he did.

He leaned in close to her, and she pressed her forehead against his, resting one hand over the fist that still held her dagger. Her other hand she placed on the side of his face, touching both mask and skin as she felt her breathing slow and align with his. The hollow place behind her heart – where she placed her feeling and weaknesses – ached in that moment. She wanted to ask him if he was happy, if the League was what he wanted from his life or if it was another prison without bars – as much as the mask on his face was. But she could not force the words out of her mouth. They were a weakness on her tongue – a fear greater than any hate she had gnawing on her bones.

But his breath was strong and steady and constant before her, and the flame next to them was warm and heady, keeping out the mountain air. She inhaled, closing her eyes as he passed her dagger back to her. For that moment, if that moment only, she could close her eyes and pretend that all was well, and know that a part of her spoke and believed with the absolute truth.

.

.

Eventually, a time came when she looked at her friend within his mask, and could not remember a time before he had worn it.

The venom that the healers had worried would cripple her friend became the thing that granted him strength. As a child, she had known Bane to be strong; and his strength had kept him – had kept her – alive where others had fallen. His strength had been formidable, his mind keen – a genius lost in the sand, even Ra's had to admit when asked, the words bitten through his teeth as if their very utterance offended him.

Now, he was nearly unmatchable.

It was near noon that day, and Talia could still feel the cold sweat of their morning run beading under her tunic as she stood on the balcony overlooking the training rings with her father. Ra's sat on one of the benches lining the balcony rather than standing to reign over all below, but there was not one acolyte who was ignorant of his presence. He held a long Chinese sword in one hand, a whetstone in the other, which he ran over the long sweep of the blade, giving it a razor edge. The tip of the sword dug a small groove into the wood beneath them, eating away away more and more as it was rotated in its master's grip.

Below, there was a pit of pillars on one end of the floor – about three dozen wooden posts that had been sank in deep so that their tops came level with the floor around them. About twelve feet down there was another floor for any unfortunate enough to lose their balance – where candles and other flames had been lit to deter falling and to increase the adrenaline of the one sparring above. The candles were harmless to the many trainees who took a tumble through them, but a burn was a burn, and its hot kiss was nearly as bright as the shame of the one fallen.

Sparring on such uneven ground was intended to be a lesson in technique and agility, a practical application of the gymnast's arts they were all taught, but Bane managed to turn it into a massacre even so. Many at first glance would have made the dangerous assumption that the sheer mass of him would have been a black mark in such a fight, but his balance was as good as any of those he fought against, and often he managed to surprise with his bursts of speed and agility in a fight. Those who underestimated him felt their error in the most literal of ways - after all, it was never wise to prejudge an opponents abilities, especially in the heart of the Demonhead's temple.

Bane had started off by facing a half-dozen of the League's intermediate shadows, but he had defeated them all so easily that the sensei overseeing the bout had clucked in disapproval at his felled students, harsh emotion on his normally expressionless face. Watching the fight had been a fully trained squadron of Ra's men, just returned to the monastery after some mission, and the twelve men there had offered to teach the masked man some humility with the battle arts. The sensei had approved, and Bane had accepted the challenge.

So far, only three of the original twelve remained. A few had rather serious burns that would need attending to, and one bore a dislocated shoulder and an arm he would not have use of for the next month. There was one other unfortunate soul who would not be walking for some time. The mouthiest one – 'mouthiest' being mere whispers amongst Ra's men, as each were trained to the extreme – would need to see to some dental work, which Talia felt fitting indeed. A part of her wished she still had her bone necklace from the Pit. His molars would have made a most fitting specimen. If there was one left in tact, that was.

"Have you ever seen anything so extraordinary?" Talia beamed as she leaned over the railing to better observe the carnage her friend wrought, her voice breathless on her tongue. A part of her wished to clap her hands together and bounce with her pride, but she did not. Instead she stood perfectly still, only her eyes betraying her regard as they hungrily drank in every move her friend made. "He tosses them too and fro like the sea would toss a boat. And these men – they are your very own, are they not?" she asked, even though she knew the answer. "Just returned from Cairo, if Ubu's gossip is to be believed?"

Ra's was not so quick to praise as she. He did not look up at her from where he twirled his sword so that the end stuck in the ground. The blade swiveled, catching the light. A muscle in his jaw tightened.

Talia waited through his silence, and felt her own jaw lock - a reflection.

And finally, Ra's asked, "What did he do to deserve the Pit?"

A heartbeat passed. She blinked at the unexpected question, but then narrowed her eyes, wondering at the root of his words. For nothing Ra's ever asked was unnecessary.

"I do not know," she answered, speaking slowly. "He will not tell me."

Ra's raised a brow, but still he did not look at her. "And yet . . ." he prompted, hearing the hesitance in her voice.

Talia paused, considering, before finally continuing. "The others in the Pit . . . they whispered."

Beyond them, she heard the sound of flesh upon flesh. The splintering of wood. Talia felt her mouth quirk. Someone had to have truly angered Bane for that one.

Ra's frowned. He had heard it too. "And what did those whispers say?"

Talia paused for a heartbeat, letting her gaze fall to the fight below and linger. If she told Ra's these things, it would be because she wished for him to understand, not so that he could pass his own form of judgment, execute his own form of the law. Two now stood opposite of her friend on the poles below.

Ra's jaw tightened, and when she saw that he would bid her speak again, she beat him to it and said, "Some say that he was lowered down with the warlord's daughter. They say that where his leader could not protect what he valued most, one of his men took the task upon himself." She said that one to hurt, to aim and barb, and Ra's did not reward her with a flinch of his eyes. Some parts were too worn for that. At least, too hidden, instead, to wear his pain openly.

A cry of pain. Talia, looking at her father, could not see, but she felt her smile turn crooked upon her face. One man left then.

"Most, though, most say that he had always been there – whether for some crime committed long ago, or for being born in the depths, as I was. Men in the Pit fancied him immortal. No one remembered a time before he was there."

Ra's snorted, his sword made a metallic sound as it slipped against the ground. "He is not immortal."

Beyond them, there was the sound of a body hitting the ground. And then, there was no one left to face.

"No," she gave, "he is a man."

The fight had drawn to an end, Bane only standing where a dozen men had stood opposite them. Talia turned from her father in time to see him as he looked up, searching for them on the balcony. When he caught her eye, he reached down to pick up the sword he had discarded early in the fight, a smirk in his eyes where he could not do so with his mouth, prompting her to roll her own eyes in return. He saluted her father lazily, before turning to bow deeply to her.

She felt the corner of her mouth quirk up, pride in her veins as the healers came in from the shadows to take those wounded from the dojo.

"And you?" Ra's asked then. "What do you think?"

"I believe that he was born there, the same as I," she said the words slowly, reverently, speaking from the cold flame in the core of her. "He was placed there to raise me up, for he could do nothing else." He could do nothing but think of the light as blinding, the shadows as welcoming. He was a child of the Pit, born in hell, and only together were they able to rise, one and then the other. It was what she believed.

"Divine intervention?" Ra's snorted at the idea. "Fate?"

She shook her head. "As I said, it was merely what I believed." Believe and thought and knowing – they were all different things, and yet, there was a religion of sorts to be found in her devotion . . . priests and pilgrims and devout, praying things.

Ra's shook his head, climbing to his feet only when the ring below them had cleared out. His eyes fell downwards, seeing the pillars that had been felled and the flames that had been extinguished. There was still an echo in the air, a chill - the sounds of pain that even the most callused of the League had been unable to hide lingering even after they were gone.

And as such, was it not easy for her to hold faith and belief in the face of such a force? She closed her eyes, and remembered her travels – the towering temples of Bagan; the holy river Ganges washing penitent ones of their sins; the family in Oman, praying with their faces in the sand, turning towards Mecca an unseeable distance away; the bright orange of a monk's robes; the sight of a cross, a dead man stretched on its beams with arms held open wide as if to embrace. Sentiment she had always thought and scathed, but she knew devotion in other ways, other forms . . .

And she could not yet give up her prayer.

.

.

A day came to them, near the end of their first year with the League.

Talia did not know the exact day she was born, and her grip on her own age was hazy at best. She was seventeen? Eighteen at this point? Time had been so fickle with its passing in the Pit, both crawling and flying by at turns. She did not even know the exact day she escaped from the Pit, not learning the parameters of a calendar and its application until stealing aboard cargo ships and learning their routes a few months afterward. She did, however, know the day and hour and second of when she had helped Bane ascend from the shadows.

And so, she used that as a day of birth – for both of them.

It was a relatively warm day in the mountains, still frigid but not unbearable. She and Bane climbed to her self proclaimed spot on the roof and took their supper away from the rest of the League before the warmth of a stubborn fire – burning hot even in the cold mountain air. For the special occasion, she had brought back a treat from the hamlet – servings of sakarni for both of them, a sweetened yoghurt and pistachio dessert, heavy with the taste of spices – cinnamon and nutmeg and saffron. The dish was one she had fallen in love with when she had first entered this area of the world in Kashmir, and the dessert remained a guilty indulgence she had been able to indulge in even in their haven in the mountains.

Bane always ate away from the rest of the League, and from her, at that. The simplest of day to day tasks took planning and care for his mask, he removing it and setting up an IV drip for everything from brushing his teeth to shaving and eating. He still sat with the others while they dined in the evening, and yet he had little care to expose himself to his brothers, even if they were all shadow bound and bred. She had brought the dessert in half to tempt him to removing his mask for the evening, hoping that he would open up in front of her, but that was a war she would still be waging for some time as he placed the offering to the side, content to sit and watch her rather than indulge himself. She had rolled her eyes at him, but his face was still a tender subject – a battle which she would continue to fight until he had no choice but to surrender. For she was stubborn, and patient besides, and Bane was not all unmovable stone and mortar. She knew that she could push the subject – she could command him, and he would expose his weakness for her, but she did not ask – wishing instead for him to decide when and where he would share all, as she already had.

And so, she sat and ate her sakarni while watching him with an open gaze. She continued to stare at him until he rose a brow – a more and more common expression without his mouth visible to others – and he called her out, "A picture may last longer, little one, and then I may be able to move freely without breaking your regard."

And the corner of her mouth quirked. "Your eyes are darker than I remember," she said simply, explaining her look. "I remember them blue – greyishly so – now, they are much darker. Nearly black."

Teasingly, Bane gestured towards the blade that she still kept in her sleeve. "If they displease you," the invitation was a taunt in his voice, daring her.

Her heart made an odd skip in her chest, as sweet as the dessert she savoured on her tongue. The knowledge that she held so much while offering so little lit an odd fire in her veins – one that was different than the cold flame at the center of her, ever burning.

"I spoke not to point out fault," she said, letting her words slither from her mouth. "I was merely unsure if my memory throughout the years was false . . . or if the venom in your blood has altered even that."

"I cannot say," he said simply, and she knew him to speak true. After all, there was very little to use for a clear reflection in the Pit, and after . . . she knew that Bane did not even keep a mirror in his quarters. He had no need to, no wish to. The colour of his eyes was undoubtably something he would not consider had she not brought it up.

At the thought, the corners of her mouth quirked. "They please me," she said softly. "So you may keep them, my friend."

"Never let it be said that the lady is not the soul of graciousness," Bane bowed his head, the gesture sincere even past the teasing – honoring her where he would no other, not even the great and terrible Ra's al-Ghul.

And Talia fiddled with her spoon, and knew that, if she wished him to, he would remove even his eyes from his face for her. The knowledge was a heavy thing, a weight on her shoulders like the snow upon the mountains, incubating as much as it smothered.

Her lungs felt tight, even as she let her smile stretch, her lips chapped in the cold and the twilight. "And don't you forget it my friend. Don't you forget it . . ."

.

.

They were in the Arabic peninsula some months later, fighting off a ring of warlords called the Twin Suns, when the fighting took a turn for the worse. The men of the League were ferocious, a sea fit to crumble any structure standing under the leadership of Ra's al-Ghul, but while the League itself was immortal, the men who made up its moving parts were not without fault and failing, and many fell that day underneath the sheer force of numbers they had taken up arms against.

As soon as it became apparent that they had been misinformed about the numbers of the Twin Suns, Ra's had yelled for Ubu to take her away – she, who had just started going out on active missions a scant few weeks ago - where Bane had been doing Ra's bidding for a few months longer than that (her heart in her throat and her mind screaming weak, weak, weak, at her when she found sleep and sanity fleeting during those long nights he was away from her). Finally, the corners of their work were something she was allowed to touch, but the chaos and loss of control that came with a full blown battle? No. Ra's would not have it.

Her father's wishes and Ubu's determination aside, she still managed to find her way back to them.

And, of course, her father was not the only one displeased to see that.

"What is the use of giving you wings when you know not when to make use of them?" Bane's voice rumbled deep in his chest, the sound forced where he did not have the time to make his mouth shape the words properly, preoccupied as he was. At his back, Talia could hear the sound of skin meeting skin, of bones giving way under the force of his assault. Her hands flashed, and her sword was a high counterpoint to the low bass of his moves. Her heart thundered in her chest, keeping beat to the battle.

"Where would I fly to?" she asked instead. "All I care for is here."

"Here," Bane said tersely, "is a battlefield that will be slick and red when we are done – and not only from the blood of our enemies."

Her smile turned crooked as she angled her blow and slashed right. Feinted left. It took the barest bit of pressure to break skin, but a considerable deal more to make it through flesh and bone. She had to be clever with the men who wore armored plates. It was a dance as real as any other.

"Precisely," she agreed. "So who are you to order me away from the feast?"

A low wheezing sound escaped his mask – what would have been quite the exasperated sigh had he still had the mouth of a normal man left to him. "You will be the death of me, Talia al-Ghul," he said instead, his voice rolling.

"But not today," Talia merely smirked, ducking left, and coming back up and around her opponent, finding his back and the open places there when he did not turn quick enough to follow her. A body on the ground. Another man surged forward to take its place – a man who did not have much time left to him as Bane abandoned his own fight in order to take hers – catching the man's thrown fist and snapping it back into his own nose. Another mighty shove and Talia heard the sound of a snapping neck. Her heart made a sick leap, even after all of the time she had spent next to death and suffering.

"He was mine," she chose instead to say, pouting out her displeasure at being thrown from her fight.

A raised brow was visible over the mask he wore, "And now he is not," Bane replied, banter coming easiest with adrenaline and the battle's blood haze flowing.

Talia's grin turned crooked. Another slash, another moment of steel finding flesh; another man felled who underestimated the girl child armed with sword and the Demonhead's name.

But it seemed that for every one of the Twin Sun's men they killed, another three surged in in place of that one felled. Men kept on pouring in – one after another after another, and Talia watched as her father commanded his troops and refused to retreat, ordering his men and regrouping them time and time again. She could see the rage that loitered around the calm cast of his eyes, the stone like blow of his voice – and she knew that a head or two would later roll for whoever had given the Demonhead faulty information. For that brother's error had taken the lives of his brethren, and such a thing was not to be tolerated – not after all that they invested to train and initiate the men they lost.

Talia was able to put a dent in the mass with Bane at her back – where he was like a tidal wave, sweeping and merciless, she was more like an undertow or strong current. She knew Bane as well as she knew herself, and the ebb and flow of them together was a force to be reckoned with.

And yet, that was she with her back to Bane's, making his shadow her own. As the battle wore on, she knew not how, but they were separated, and she found herself in the rather precarious situation with having her back to the wall and facing a four man group of the enemy. She bit her lip, and pushed on as she was taught – using her superior speed and agility to keep her one step ahead of the enemy swords. But she could feel the length of the battle and the relative inexperience she had with the way of war catching up with her. Her muscles burned and her throat ached, and in its place the cold flame at the core of her burned bright – it was effervescent, burning white and hot behind her bones as she bared her teeth and fought back.

And then, she felt another kind of heat – the burn of pain, hot and metallic as steel pierced through a weak point in her armor in order to find the skin high on her back. It was a small wound, but it bit enough to draw blood, and if she was fortunate enough to walk away from the battle alive it would scar. She shrieked with the pain, doubling over before striking at the man behind her with a savage blow, her blade finding the tender skin in his throat and slicing.

The man fell. The sound of a body hitting the ground mixed with the echo of her scream and the sharp scent of blood, and suddenly Talia found herself no longer cornered and wanting in the heat of the battle, but rather reigning. She hissed, an unholy sound, as she struck out against the men around her, her hate and her passion and her battlelust making her see only a white light before her eyes as she struck and found flesh and bone and took as if it was her own.

And yet, feeling made her weak, taking away the clarity that a cool and calm head could hold during battle, and she did not see the blade behind her, aimed for her heart.

But it never made its target, not like the one before. Bane, who had tried to make his way to her since the knife had pierced her flesh, had finally arrived, and rather than the blade finding its place, the strongman took the blow high on his arm, the knife sinking in deep to muscle and flesh. But he gave not a sign of its sting. He did not even yank the blade loose as he instead turned on those who had thought that they could do her harm.

She did not move to help him, instead staying still in his shadow, drinking in the ferocity that her in danger had moved him to strike with. Many in the melee had stopped to watch him – the monster loosed from his cage as droves of men happened upon him and were done away with as if they were ants before a tidal wave.

And Talia . . . she could only think that she had never seen a man move that way – more like something born of nature and her ferocity than anything mortal flesh and boned. He swung and clobbered and clawed, and when his blows missed the men he fought away from her, his hands took thick pieces of stone and mortar from the pillars that held up the base around them. It was a berserker's haze, as real as anything the ancient men of old would have fallen into in a quest to please their gods. But Bane had no salvation of that kind, he had only a girl whom he had declared his own, and one path that he kept to, straight and steady.

His vision was white, she could only imagine, her heart in her throat. It was like that time in the Pit all over again – the sea of men versus her friend, only this time, Bane rose above them all, and swallowed even the sea, roaring his rage, his eyes flashing his anger. His fists were bloodied, his mask had come loose in the melee, and Talia could only imagine the pain coursing through his veins. And yet, he would not stop. He would not cease.

The battle was dying down around them – Ra's having dispensed with the Twin Sun's leader, and the men having quickly executed the survivors that Bane had not yet gotten to, and all had silently gathered in order to watch Bane as he made quick work of the group who had thought to deal to the Demonhead's daughter a fatal blow.

The remaining men of the Twin Suns were holding their hands – they tried to surrender, and still Bane plowed through their ranks. He was pitiless, as much as the reigning sky above, and Talia would not have bid him stop if not for the ruined state of his mask – the coarse and sickening sounds his mouth made as he tried to gasp in air around the pain – his body betraying him in a more vile way than anything else ever could.

Finally, Talia moved. She ignored her father's warning, and the hands that reached out to hold her back, and she stepped into the center of the fire. She stood between the pleading men with their hands up and her friend when he wore violence in his eyes, and she simply held out a hand.

"That is enough, my friend," she said, not even deigning to raise her voice. She knew he would hear her. He would hear her, and he would break from his haze. Her heart was slow, lazy in her chest. The cold flame at the core of her was a low simmer, banked and waiting.

And Bane's fist stopped a heartbeat from her face. He blinked, as if trying to focus on her – as if trying to see her past the bloodlust and the pain. His fist loosened, and it was the curve of the back of his fingers instead that he let rest upon her cheek. It was with fondness that he moved that hand back to feel her hair – the thick coil of her braid, and lower still to where blood had pooled and started to dry on her armor.

"It is done," she whispered, seeing as his eyes sharpened again – an animal scenting blood and knowing rage – instinct taking over as fierce as anything else that could have been taught with sword and shield. "There is no one left to fight."

Her father's men were taking advantage of the moment of respite from the monster held in thrall by the slight girl – rounding up the remaining members of the Twin Suns and binding them, the spoils left to the victors to question and do away with properly when the time came. It was justice, it was balance, and Talia held Bane's gaze and let her own harden – not to be crossed. The men would live – for now, at any rate, until the Demonshead decided their fate to the contrary.

"It is done."

When he breathed, his breath was shallow and uneven, wheezing and wet. He had to work his mouth in order to form his words – as he had in those early days before they had made for him his mask. "You are hurt."

"A lesson learned," she countered instead. "It pains me not."

"You bleed," Bane repeated, his words – normally elegant and so beautifully flowing – made simple by the pain, by the hiss of gas escaping the conduits on his mask.

"So do you," she whispered, reaching out to rest her hand on the blade that was still embedded in his arm. At the touch, he flinched, as if just realizing the blade was there, and she watched the moment where the pain became too much for his body to handle. She was quick, catching him as he finally lost the battle he had been waging with consciousness. She was not strong enough to hold him upright, but she was strong enough to slow his fall – gesturing with a fierce slash of her head to the men who had been waiting for just that moment.

Around them, she smelled blood and rot and the thick scent of sand, but it no longer mattered. Bane was hurt, and the wound at her back burned like something living – adrenaline finally fading and letting her body know each and every place that she hurt and held tender. But it did not matter. The League had won, and a step more was taken for balance in the world. Later, there would be time taken for rejoicing, along with healing.

On the long plane ride back to the monastery, Talia sat at Bane's side and gently pressed the tubes she could back into place, critically assessing how the latest mask he wore held up under real combat situations. She tilted her head and frowned, taking in a large and exposed conduit that had come loose in the fight. "We shall have to find a way to ground this one," she said to her father, who was looking down on Bane with an expressionless face. "It is too much a weakness in a fight."

Finally, Ra's snorted. "Perhaps it would be a gift to the world to cut that cord now," he said instead.

And Talia narrowed her eyes, the tube smooth in her hand. Unconsciously, she leaned further still over Bane's body, glaring up at her father and daring with her eyes. "You may try," was all that she said, staring between the strands of hair that had fallen loose from her braid. Her skin was scrapped and bruised, but the blood she bore on her tunic was not her own. In her sleeve she felt the small knife Bane had given her all of those years ago. She could feel each tendon and muscle on her body, drawn tight, ready to strike.

And Ra's inclined his head. He did not take a step back, a graceful surrender. Instead, he looked Talia hard in the eye, and asked instead, "Why does this man mean so much to you?"

She hooked her jaw. She felt her gaze harden. "I have told you," she said in a voice that scathed, "that I would not be alive were it -"

" - not for him," Ra's finished. "You have said so. But you saw what he was like today . . . That power . . . that ferocity – all without cause or belief or containment. He does not believe in our cause, daughter. He is a loose cannon, an animal who will someday bite the hand that feeds it."

"His belief and conviction are stronger than that of any man I have ever met," she said, her voice low on her tongue. "He just does not believe in you."

Ra's shook his head. "He is a man without balance. Without enlightenment. And, someday," his voice dipped lower, shaped like a promise, "he will destroy you."

And Talia felt her heart stab like a knife wound in her chest as she thought of the way the blade had come that close. How it had not been for himself that Bane had faltered, but for her.

And she had already seen him scared enough in her name.

"No," she said, her voice hollow like prophesy. "Someday, I will destroy him."

.

.

Someday, she will think back on her time spent with the League, and think of peace.

She will think of sitting cross-legged on the floor before charts and maps, her hair pulled back and her throat bare as she crossed routes and plans and logs, playing with the lives of men as she would play with pieces on the chessboard. She will think of comradeship – of the rare moments of laughter and companionable silences with her father, of tea and gossip with Ubu as they worked their shift in the kitchens. She will think of the odd sort of bond that she had with her fellow shadows, each forged as they were to march, to fight and wage war as the League said live and breathe and fall.

And she will think of the evenings she spent, quiet and peaceful with Bane – reflections of her happier memories from the Pit. She will think of Bane's fingers in her hair, curious as ever as she nodded off to sleep before the fire. She will think about touching the skin of his jaw, and wonder how she simply thought him a friend. She will think about her bones, bound in the night, just barely holding the cold flame in the core of her from breaking through her skin – from consuming her alive.

She will think of these moments, near the end – the very end . . . and know longing.

.

.

And, at other times, she will think back on her time with the League and only remember every little thing that set her away from the standards even those at the edges of humanity set.

It was second nature to her, a survivors reflex to act first and act fast when a hand had come too close to her plate at dinner - flipping the dagger from her sleeve and bringing it down on the wayward appendage, skewering it to the table. She did not mean to hurt the poor man – who did not scream, a credit to his training - but instincts did as instincts urged, and Talia had felt the eyes that had snapped upon her with the deed done. The eyes of the others followed her, never whispering, not at Ra's al-Ghul's own table with Ra's al-Ghul's own daughter as the subject of their whispers. Even still, she had felt their stares crawl, knowing that they saw only the half feral girl whom the Pit had forgot. She knew, that in some circles, she was called a monster even more so than Bane . . . by the mouths who knew how to treat names and their weight with reverence.

She did not apologize, for she was the daughter of the Demonhead and she was Talia besides, and the syllables were foreign on a tongue who never was given to, only taken from. She did not apologize, but she did back away from the table suddenly, keeping her thoughts from her face, her feelings from her eyes. Both were weaknesses, and Ra's watched her leave with something hard and unreadable in his eyes. Talia only spared him a glance, feeling the stone of his gaze as heavy before her as the walls of the Pit had been all of those years ago. And, that evening, she could not find the strength within her to climb.

Bane, who had been sitting further down the table with an empty plate had watched her leave, but he did not follow her right away, wisely interpreting the way her body coiled against those she fled. She had fangs in that moment, and she wished to spare him her bite.

Instead of returning to her room and its shadows, she climbed to the roof – settling herself in her familiar roost as she took in the sight of the mountains at night, scarcely able to be seen without the glow of the stars above. Snow dotted the night around her, falling lazily from the sky, the flake's descent made short by the tall mountains who thrusted their faces arrogantly towards the heavens. They fell on the slick material of her coat, making darker splotches as they melted, not able to survive as they were once fallen.

Talia held her arms close to her body, and knew no warmth.

Bane did not join her for some time, and to his delay she would guess that he sat with the others through supper and then aided Ubu in clearing the plates, as it was their turn to do so. Talia felt a twinge in her side when she remembered she should have been helping them, but she pushed it away. Guilt was like the snow around her, and she had no use for its chill on her skin.

When he did finally make his way to her, he did not speak, not right away, for which she was thankful. Instead he leaned into the night, his back made a bow, pulled to strike, his strong arms like dragons at rest as he crossed them over his chest, hooking his hands in the straps of his vest. His breath misted on the air, even as it rasped from the black shape of his mask. Talia breathed deeply in and out, counting out her exhales as the silence between them stretched.

Her fingers flexed, one and then the other. She bit her tongue, wishing to ask if the man was okay, but unable to find the words. A heartbeat passed.

Bane settled, leaning his body to rest on the railings of the balcony. "Dache is well," he finally said where she would not ask. "He will not have control of that hand for the next three months, but he is in high hopes with the healers. You did him a favor by striking his right hand, his left is the one he has a particularly clear aim with."

Talia winced, and blamed it on the gust of wind that blew up from the canyon below. The ice in the air picked at her face, it stung her eyes.

"That is good to hear," Talia mumbled, her words soft under her breath.

At the sound of her speaking, Bane turned to her, his head tilted as if in thought. She met his eyes as if challenging him, and wondered why she bore such a fight in her bones at the moment. But he did not judge her – he did not pass sentence for the instincts that had kept her alive in the past, and would continue to do so in the future.

Still his gaze lingered. Talia set her jaw crossly and said, "You stare as if to search. What is it you look for, my friend?"

The corner of his eyes crinkled, even in the face of her annoyance. She knew that he smiled, even though she could not see his mouth make the shape. Finally, he humored her. "You are a reflection of your mother in look, but you are your father in gaze and expression."

She blinked, not really expecting that. But curiosity bit at her as she turned towards him. His body kept the wind from striking her, he as indomitable as the mountains around them. "Really?" Talia snorted her skepticism. "What do we have in common?"

"Three scowls," Bane responded readily. "And a truly impressive glower."

A laugh snagged in the back of her throat, more a cough than any expression of humor. It was rusty from too little use. Even still, he inclined his head when she raised a brow and looked at him dubiously, "And that look as well, little one. That look as well."

The corner of her lip pulled up, without her approval.

"A smile," Bane continued, his eyes glinting.

And Talia rolled her own eyes and swatted at his arm. "Perhaps it should be you rather than Ubu spinning his tales at the table at night – you have a tongue made for stories, my friend."

"Which you have long since known," he gave instead of striking against her words. He was a wave where Talia had been looking for a stone, and she felt her annoyance slip away, the shore soothed by the tide until she was merely tired from the energy it took to hold on to her ire.

She bit her lip, and thought about Bane's words. She thought about the shape of her mouth when it frowned, and the shape of her eyes when they reflected the ghost of Melisande to the world. She thought about the stare she would receive from her father in grey moments when he thought he did not see – when he would look at her as if searching, when the visage of her brought a look to his face not quite unlike pain. Even after so many years, she still did not understand the bond her parents had. She wondered in a moment of weakness, if her mother had known of the child she carried when she bargained her life for Ra's – when she begged to be lowered into the Pit in order to spare her husband such a fate. She wondered if Melisande would have still gave away her life in place of her husband's if she knew of the daughter she would commit to hell. She wondered, too, if every time her father saw her, he saw only that his wife was not saved – that another soul lived where the one he truly cherished had died. She was salt in a still open wound, and while Ra's words said otherwise, his eyes said enough, and Talia held her arms closer to her and thought about the way he had looked at her when she had stabbed poor Dache's hand . . . as if he had suffered a blow, the reminder of just where his daughter had came from and how she had had to work to survive striking him like a wound.

Her thoughts were heavy – they were weak – and they made the night air heavy on her shoulders. Her eyes were wet, even though no tears fell. The mountain wind stung at her weakness, driving the cold past the layers she wore and into her bones.

Rather than leaning on the railing besides her, Bane moved to stand behind her. She could feel the heat of him, and without thinking she leaned back in to him. His arms wrapped around her, steadying her, offering his strength as her own, and, ever greedy, she took from him.

"Someday, your hate will swallow you, little one," Bane said, his voice a rumble in his throat. She felt the rise of his chest against her back, the sound still as massive to her then as it had been when she was a child.

Talia winced at the words, his soft prediction striking her more harshly than any of Ra's' sneers over the weaknesses of her heart. "I hate as you hate," she said to counter him, her hands loose on the arms that circled her, as if holding him in place.

She felt his head shake against the top of her hair. His breath whispered, a counterpoint to the howling wind below. "My hate is not the same," he countered. "I am not a good man. I was not a good one when your mother descended, and I was still a bad man when you rose. That hate is my own to bear, but you – you were always hope in that godforsaken place. You were innocence."

At that she did laugh, the sound was raw, torn from her throat. "I have never felt innocent, my friend."

"But you were, a little piece of the sun who was trying to find the sky. And now you have found it, and still you live in shadow."

The way he said it made her raise a brow, and she tilted her head up as if to look at his eyes. All she saw was grey and black, the faint glint of light off the tubes of his mask. "The League is a cause you do not believe in?" she asked, finally giving voice to a question she had long since wondered at.

Bane chose his words carefully. "I think that Ra's al-Ghul is a fanatic, and his cause is one that will never be achieved."

"You do not believe?" still she asked. The logic of a dream and the faith in it were two different things.

"Do you?" Bane countered.

And she felt her answer quick on her tongue before she stopped and thought, truly thought. " . . . I want to believe," she finally answered honestly. "I want to believe that the Head of the Demon can wipe away the corroded parts of the earth with just a sweep of his hand, but . . ."

She wanted to believe that if enough blood was shed – if enough men died and enough shock rose in the world like hope, then peace and justice would follow. But who was to say that she would be one of those standing at the end? Should she not burn with the world that Ra's hated so much? Was she worthy of such a place?

She wanted to strike in that moment. She wanted to hit and scream and claw. Her fingers ached as they did after a climb. But there was no one to fight. No where to go. Just the empty mountain and the falling snow, and Bane's arms loose around her. Just barely, she leaned back against him, and felt his arms tighten in response.

"What is there besides the hate?" she finally half turned in his hold to ask. She could see the high part of his cheek from the shadow, the pale part of his eyes. The rest was grey to her gaze. "What do you feel besides that?"

She could not see the shape of his mouth. She could not see if he smiled or not. Instead, he tapped the side of his mask. "I feel nothing, little one."

His heartbeat was quick. Too quick. It jumped and spun, and Talia found her own rising to match its tempo its rhythm. She remembered being younger, years younger, how she had tried to match her breathing with his own and how her lungs ached with the effort.

Her smile was crooked upon her face. It accused. "You are a liar, my friend."

He said nothing,

The snow fell, gentle and easy, and Talia turned her face to the sky and wished for rain.

.

.

Nearing their second year with the League, the healers came up with their sleekest design of Bane's mask yet – hiding tubes and conduits so that he would move easier in a battle without having to worry for their integrity. The shape of it was still black and imposing, but it would sit a little easier on his face. It would breathe a little lighter on his mouth. And Talia was used to fighting battles one step at a time, forging out victories over the expanse of years. They were patient, and even the smallest of movements in the right direction were those to be savored.

"The voice," Healer Cain said as he poked and prodded at a few of the tubes to make sure of their stability. "I can give you your voice back, should you desire it to be so."

A heartbeat. Bane looked at her, and Talia tilted her head. She closed her eyes and tried to remember a time when he didn't sound as he did now. The memory was vague, a scent of dust and rain in a far off land.

"I have my voice," he finally said, and Talia felt the corners of her mouth quirk up, not quite a smile as his gaze met hers once more before falling away.

.

.

"This is ridiculous."

When Talia spoke, her voice was laced with as much venom as she could muster – more that of a petulant child rather than the young woman her father insisted that she started to act like. Her eyes were cross and her audience was decidedly amused as they took in her ire - of course they were.

Misogynists, the lot of them, Talia decided viciously. Every last one of them.

The dojo floor – the same floor that she had sweat and bled and drawn blood on had been converted into a gross parody of some fine man's ballroom, and Talia – with her tunic and leggings and her sloppy braid was playing the part of fine lady, waltzing with Ubu while balancing three stacked books atop her head. Ra's manservant counted out the beat in a too pleased voice – one two three, one two three – as if he were enjoying Talia's pain acutely. "Sadist," Talia breathed when Ubu went to spin her. She missed a note, and the books atop her head rattled alarmingly – again.

Past them both was Ra's, tapping his sheathed sword in time to the beat – a waltz by Shostakovitch that was starting to blend in with Tchaikovsky and Strauss to her ears. "You present a weapon that few others in the league can offer," Ra's said, his voice pleasantly level as he ignored his daughter's protests. "You can place yourself in positions the rest of the League can only accomplish through shadow. We do not always need a dagger in the dark, daughter. Sometimes, the sharpest blade is the one placed directly in the light – hidden in plain sight."

She raised a brow as beyond them, Bane – who was leaning against one of the red pillars and carving a bit of wood he held in his hands - let out a low snort that could have been a laugh had it not been distorted by the mask.

She glared over at her friend. "By that, he means that I have breasts," she seethed.

Before her, Ubu continued to chant, one two three, one two three, ignoring his pupil's outburst. The music dipped and twined, and Talia could almost hear the swirl of fabric and the slide of feet that would come with it.

"I think that your father is trying to say that a woman of refinement -" Talia tripped and the books on her head faltered dangerously - "can more easily manouver a fatal blow into place than a man."

She made a face. "Misogynists," she seethed, but, finally, there was humor on her face as she uttered the syllables.

"Forgive me, child, but had Bane a slightly prettier build, I would rather teach him than you – your feet are as stubborn as your mind, and you move like a mountain goat when not holding a blade -"

Talia purposefully missed her next step, digging her heel into Ubu's right foot. The man made a pained face, keeping any further sounds of pain tucked in his mouth. He settled for a mighty glare, and Talia smiled sweetly.

Beyond them both, Bane snorted. Ra's spared a moment to level a cross look at the strongman before turning to his daughter. "It is nothing more than theatricality and deception – and you have taken well to both so far. This is just one step more in your training."

Using the shadows and their cover, that Talia could agree with. Even so, the knowledge of what step her dance and smiles would take . . . This time when she spoke, there was no annoyance in her voice. But there was no humor, either. "If I had an enemy to face, I would rather march up to him and stab him in the heart. Why have to seduce a man, only to stab him in the back?"

When Ra's smiled, the expression was almost sad on his face. "Sometimes, the direct blow will fail to be the one that kills. It is the one that waits. The one that dips in slow from the one hand you never expected it from that will be the blow properly landed." He glanced at Bane before turning back to her. The next strike of Bane's knife against the wood was swift.

And Talia felt her temples ache as a familiar argument was made in a different shape. Before her, Ubu saw the loss of her attention, and, finally, he sighed. "There is nothing more I can teach you today, child. Go on now, I release you."

Smiling, Talia backed from him, and caught the books as she let them fall from her head. She held them for a moment as the waltz continued to spin around them.

"It is not freedom yet I offer you," Ubu warned. "You will learn this – even if I have to keep you past supper. So rethink your willingness to learn when you meet me here tomorrow."

And for all of Ubu's loyalty and easy humor, Talia knew that his threat was far from empty. And so, she bowed her head to him and crossed her heart. "A full mind, I swear," she vowed.

Ubu's eyes doubted, but he waved her away anyway. Talia bit off a grin, before turning to Bane, the hulking man falling easily into step beside her without she even having to call him forth. Behind them, Ra's watched them go with something unreadable in his eyes. For a moment, Talia weighed the look before shaking it away and thinking of it no more.

.

.

Later, in the darkness of her room, she played the record of waltzes again, and tried to force her heavy feet into the elegant lines Ubu had been trying to teach to her.

Her words may have have been sharp and strong – her dismissal of such a trivial lesson quick and easy, but the truth of it was that Talia was frustrated - daunted even by the idea of conquering such a seemingly insurmountable task. She had made her way through the world under the guise of a boy, had learned to make her gait strong and square, and now she was asking to curve and wind, to force her body to be a poison where she had been sharpening it as if it were steel . . .

But a weapon was a weapon, and so Talia played Chopin's 'l'Adieu' - the Last Waltz, thinking it fitting for the destruction she would be required to wrought with her smile and eyes. She liked the way the song dipped – wistful and spinning and then slow and melancholy, the dip and turn of the notes something she remembered on Melisande's lips back from their days in the Pit. . . A part of her, a part that was still soft and young wondered if her parents had danced before their days had became numbered – back when there was happiness amongst the fear of discovery. She hummed the notes under her breath as she spun around her room with the shadows as a partner, and counted in her head, one-two-three, one-two-three.

Her feet scraped, one over the other. The sound of her bare toes on the wood tapped in time to the slow notes from the record player. Her heart thundered as if she were marching rather than dancing. She made a face at her own body – the traitorous thing, hearing Ubu's scoldings in her head even though he was not there to voice them.

She was one step away from getting out her books once more – if the blasted things would keep her posture straight, then so be it, for she would conquer this – when she heard a whisper of laughter from the door of her room.

"Forgive me for startling you, little one, but you were quite . . . absorbed in your music." Bane's head was tilted, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

And Talia set her jaw at his presence and swallowed, her cheeks flaring red with being discovered.

"Or you simply step with a lighter stride than many would give credit for," she scathed in return to his too polite words. "You can knock, my friend."

He shrugged, the wide line of his shoulders rising and falling. "And miss you at study? I think not."

Her gaze withered before she sighed, turning from him. When she stalked (stalked, her mind insisted where her logic could truthfully say that she sulked) over to her chest to retrieve the books, his eyes followed her. Of her own volition, her stride curved, just slightly, at the knowing, and she rolled her eyes and wondered why she couldn't just move that into her attempt at waltzing.

"It isn't like I care if it is a skill I learn," she said over her shoulder as she rifled through her few belongings. Her voice turned with a note of petulance – a note she couldn't quite tuck away as beyond her, Bane moved the record to pause. The music scratched for a moment, discordant on the air, before settling into silence.

"Of course not, little one," Bane agreed smoothly. There was a note of humor in his voice, apparent even around the hiss of his mask.

She bit her lip. "I just do not like leaving something unmastered," she said – and yes, she could not disguise the petulance that colored those words. She felt as she did when she was a child and the wall had stumped her for the day – when she fell more than she rose and her knees were scraped and bloodied as a result.

She got to her feet, the tomes in hand. When she turned, she found that Bane stood very close. She didn't blink as she looked up at him.

"You are stubborn," he said, reaching out to touch the furrowed line of her brow, saying that he remembered as much as she did. She felt her throat make a warm movement. For a moment it was hard to swallow.

"Apparently, not stubborn enough," her mouth twisted about the words. She slipped past him, moving to the record player again.

"I wouldn't say that," Bane disagreed mildly. His eyes watched her over the dark shape of his mask. "Although, I would say that your progress would be swifter with more than the shadows as a partner."

Talia snorted. "The only other option for me is to invite Ubu up, and while I am stubborn, I am not a masochist."

Bane raised a brow, she glanced at the shape and read amusement on him. "I was not thinking of Ubu," he said, his voice level, and it took Talia a moment to comprehend his meaning. She glanced over at him, her eyes sharp.

"Now I know that I am not the masochist in the room," she said, the humor in her voice covering her skepticism and sudden (and much odder) apprehension. "Truly, you need not inflict pain on yourself this way, my friend."

"I prefer to think of it as bravery," Bane's voice rounded in amusement, and Talia felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up as if in warning. Her breath snared in her throat, making it burn as if trying to escape around a stone.

"Indeed?" she returned. "Such a fine line there is between the two."

He had moved to the record player again. "And you are stalling," he pointed out easily. "Are you afraid?"

She snorted – the sound a reflex on her lips. "Me? Of nothing." Her pulse jumped when she clenched her fists, betraying her lie.

"As I thought," Bane agreed with her. "Now, Chopin will not be the thing to pin your wings. Come now, again."

Talia hesitated a heartbeat, moving to hold the books in both of her hands, crossing them over her chest. Finally, her decision made, she placed the books aside, and stepped towards her waiting friend. Her jaw locked. She stared him in the eye as if they stood in the training rings rather than at a dance's start.

She held her hands out, summoning her courage. "Well then?" she challenged.

Bane shook his head, but he humored her, stepping forward as the music started. The wrapped together easily enough – her hand on his shoulder and his at her waist. The notes rose, they invited, and he stepped left. She followed him, her body moving out of instinct as much as any of Ubu's remembered lessons. She stepped right. The dance continued.

She bit her lip, but refused to look down at her feet. Instead she tried to read the cues from his body, she tried to let him lead. But her steps felt forced, her feet felt too heavy on her body.

"Relax," Bane's voice rumbled deep in his chest. "You are as tight as a bow string."

"I am relaxed," Talia said too quickly, unfortunately missing the beat and stepping on his foot with her next move.

She felt her cheeks flush red, even as she bit back the apology that bloomed on her tongue. "I did not mean to do that," she said instead.

"I would gather," Bane said, ignoring the misstep and continuing on as if nothing was amiss. "You think in angles where you must now think in curves. You are letting your mind defeat you."

Curves, she tried to think – elegance in the turn of a wrist and the sway of a step. She could bend her body into any shape she wished when she fought – she could flex and move and adapt in the most literal of ways – but the fluttering lashes of a woman and the inviting tilt of head and turn of stride . . .

She bit her tongue, glancing up. "Where did you learn to dance?" she found herself challenging instead, taking his gaze away from her awkward feet with her words.

He rolled his shoulders. She felt his hand flex against her waist. "I simply know how."

"From before?" she asked, her words a question.

And his gaze slipped up to her eyes before falling to the right, where her hair had fallen from the messy bun she had tied it in from the night. "From before," he echoed, slipping away from the answer she sought.

She sighed, feeling the breath fall from the deep parts of her. But her lapse in concentration had actually resulted in a smooth flow of movement from her wayward limbs. She realized that just as she missed the next beat, as if reminded of how she should have been faltering.

She felt her eyes narrow, and the cold flame at the core of her spiked before Bane said:

"Try closing your eyes, little one," he suggested next. "Your mind betrays you. It hampers your body's efforts."

"Close my eyes?" she repeated dubiously.

"Shut them tight," he confirmed. "You are born of the shadow and the dark. Let them aid you now."

Still her gaze doubted.

"Trust me," he bid her, the words soft on his mouth, and at them, she could deny him nothing.

She inhaled, and held her breath in her mouth, and finally, she closed her eyes.

She could see nothing, but her hearing was heightened with the loss of her sight. She could feel her breath expand in her lungs, she could feel her blood thunder in her ears. This close, she could feel Bane breathe – the large flex of his chest like the sky as it blew in the storm. The hiss of his mask clicked in the silence of the night and the gentle strain of the music around them. The sad strain of the strings thrummed with her pulse, slithering beneath her skin to find bone and anchoring there.

Her hand flexed on his shoulder. She could feel strong muscle under her grip, like the rock on the mountain face. She felt her too fast pulse skip in her chest. It beat to an odd pattern. In her hand, his was large and warm – the hand that could crush a man's skull in his grip was made gentle and soft in hers as he held her fingers loosely, allowing her to follow rather than insisting that he lead. At her waist, she could feel his other hand, somehow searing on her skin – as if trying to leave a mark.

She bit her lip as she moved in the dark, trying to figure out how something as simple as a dance with closed eyes was more intimate than the nights she could not spend away from his side – innocent in intention where the world would dub it otherwise; the evenings when she would plot and study with her shoulder pressed to his and his hand playing absently in her hair.

It was simply different, her mind finally decided, at a loss.

And she continued to move through the shadows with him.

Without looking at what she was doing, she was forced to feel the music more than listen to it – she moved in time with it, unconsciously following Bane's body as he led her. And without her feet causing her to stumble, she found that she could sway – she could move as an arch, as a circle and a winding thing. She could understand in that moment, and as the shadows hummed and the music faded in her ears to the sound of Bane's breathing, she wondered why it had ever given her cause to stumble.

The piece faded, the strings holding on to their final notes before surrendering to silence, and the record scratched as it reached its end. Talia came to an awkward halt, holding her breath as Bane held her hand for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

"There," he said softly. "You understand."

"Thank-you," she said, the words honest and strangely breathless on her tongue. She felt her cheeks flame before recovering herself, and added, "For saving poor Ubu's feet tomorrow, that is. I fear that I was quite the trial for him today."

"Indeed," Bane inclined his head. "We wouldn't want him to suffer any more."

"For Ubu," she repeated, tossing her head imperiously, a smile touching the side of her mouth.

"For Ubu," Bane echoed.

And Talia stood opposite of him, unsure what to do with her hands, what to do with the silence. She closed her eyes for a moment, finding the shadows at her fingertips and the peace they promised before smiling – honestly and widely. "But, to be certain, it would be prudent if we tried once more, would it not?"

A moment passed. "For repetition's sake," Bane gave carefully, his eyes looking for something she could not name.

"Indeed," Talia let her smile linger as she thumbed the record into place again. Again, the air was filled with sound, and Talia this time let her eyes stay open wide.

"Once more," she beckoned. And Bane followed.

.

.

That night she tried to stay in her own bed until the dawn threatened to show its face and she still had not known rest. She stole into Bane's quarters with a silent step, tiptoeing over the creaks and loose spots in the floor before slipping into bed with him.

When he turned to her, his eyes were already open, but he said nothing as to her intrusion. Instead, he wrapped a heavy arm around her and she folded into him as a hand to a fist. The quick beat of her heart calmed as she settled, sleep weighing on her mind with a warm weight. The slow hiss of Bane's mask in the dark – a slimmer model that did not have to hold up to the rigors of combat, but rather the peace of night – was an easy, constant whisper that her breathing unconsciously matched as he fell back asleep with her by his side.

And still, Talia stayed awake in the dark, listening to the sound of his breathing for a long, long time.

.

.

They were in Kabul some weeks later, politely gaining information from a Russian trader – who on the surface ran silk from Dushanbe to Kabul and then north and east into the world, but underneath also sold secrets and whispers, of which the League had lately played a prominent role.

Ra's was not one to silence when he could simply turn the wagging tongue his way, but such tongues also had teeth, and they had to make sure that sparing the man would favor their interests the best. Bane would give the man a choice – and incentive to remember who the real powers in the world were. If not, then he was also the most ideal man to ensure the silk trader's silence. Ubu was a quiet shadow to them for the trip – the three of them all who were needed for such a task.

Talia made a face behind the veil that hid her mouth, thinking that she had only been allowed along since Kabul was one of the closer cities to their home in the mountains – relatively speaking, of course. As simple as the mission went, the risk of danger only came from the trader's other contacts gaining wind of their movements. Then, Talia thought, it would not be the other factions trying to stay their hand – it would be a race to the trader's throat.

Oleg – the trader they sought - had a spattering of booths in the bazaars that still dominated Kabul's more ancient parts. The streets were crumbling and crooked, all sand colored stones and archaic mosaics – faded and corroded with time. The buildings had stood against sand and sun and dictator and armies untold, and at the cornerstones of their alleys, the markets still thrived – alive with noise and confusion, sights and sounds and scents. Spices filled the air along with the smell of smoking meat and the floral scent of incense. Hagglers cried, selling their wares as they were met and bartered with, their voices raising, one over the other in order to garner the best price. Through the crowd, children ran like a school of fish through the coral, and Talia watched as their little and nimble fingers took wallets and purses and coins from the unsuspecting masses. Her smile quirked, remembering when a thief named Asaph had taught her the same when she had passed through this area of the world a few years ago.

While the children ran to and fro, she looked and saw the few older ones – young men about her age, not quite adults, but not children either – watching the children with sharp eyes. It would be to them to collect the spoils and report back to their handler even later in the day. It was a sad circle, but it kept bread in the children's stomachs, and so Talia did not say anything. Instead she watched.

But she did raise a brow, and catch the wrist of a child who thought to slip his hand into her purse.

"You make a mistake, little one," she said, taking a moment to let her eyes fall from her vigil – for while Bane and Ubu sought out Oleg in the crowd, it was to her to discern whether or not anyone else was looking for Oleg.

The child she had caught looked up – eyes narrowing, but not with fear, and Talia felt her mouth quirk upon the gaze. "Always seek out marks whose eyes are on the market, and not on you." Talia let the little hand go, and fished out a copper coin for the child, anyway, the little boy not even pausing to acknowledge the gift before scurrying back into the crowd from where he had came.

Across the crowd, Bane had found her eyes – his mask hidden beneath a long swath of grey cloth, not unlike what she wore. There was amusement there, and she raised a brow in return.

But then there was a whistling noise, Ubu calling them both back to themselves – and Bane and Ubu quietly made their way to where Oleg's nervous face had just appeared in the crowd. Talia hung back, and watched for other eyes on them, searching the crowd for other tails.

Humming absently under her breath, she turned to a vendor who was selling copper pots, and picked one up, watching the movements in the crowd in the reflection on the gilded surface, even as the owner of the booth started chattering about the pot's story – a relic from the time of Amir Nashad, so it would seem, and Talia raised a brow and saw the lie in the man's face – his eyes and too fast hands.

Beyond them, there was a scuffle. Talia turned just slightly so that she could see out of the corner of her eye.

A few booths over, the child who had tried to steal from her had been caught trying to pick up the cash box of a man selling thick woolen blankets. The child was babbling – mumbling in a string of frightened words that he had not been scared enough to utter when he was with her. The vendor was furious as he berated the small child, and Talia felt the bottom of her stomach drop, knowing that in this area of the world, the price for a failed thief was the loss of a hand. She placed the pot down, and started to move, the vendor behind her squawking angrily over the loss of her patronage.

The man beyond them was enraged and confident of his prowess over the youngster, and yet, the second the man turned – no doubt to flag down one of the gun bearing men who patrolled the stalls – the child slipped his too thin wrist through the man's hand, and took off like a sparrow through the crowd – instantly turning down one of the alleys that made up the cramped streets.

The man gave flight. Talia followed.

As soon as she slipped into the alley, keeping to the shadows where the smell of rotting things was rank and the air was cool out of the sun, she knew that something was wrong. She could see not the man nor the boy, and the sound of a chase was absent from the alley around her. They had not been fast enough to go that far in those few seconds, and Talia narrowed her eyes as she looked at the doors that lined the alley, wondering which had swallowed them.

It was just too silent.

The cold flame at the core of her was spiking uneasily, and when she turned – her feet suddenly anxious for the market and the mass of people it held – she found a hand reaching out of the shadows to grab her. Quicker than she could realize, she felt her back hit the wall, one strong hand holding her wrists over her head, and another held tight at her throat.

She blinked as the breath was knocked from her, and when her eyes focused – snapping to attention and quickly drinking in any detail that she could turn to a weapon, she saw that a young man held her – one of the teenagers she had seen overlooking the group of thieving children. He was slightly built, but in the way of one used to slipping between and under the broad parts of the world. His clothes were ragged, but well mended, sturdy and practical. His teeth were very white for a child of the underbelly of the city, made so by the dusky cast of his face. He was smiling at her, amused by how easily she had fallen into their trap.

It had been a staging, she thought, annoyed with herself – the man and the boy were no doubt part of the same crew, and Talia had fallen for their ruse like one of her father's green students, newly recruited from the world. Worse than that, she berated herself – she was like one of those who did not even make the climb up the mountain.

Sentiment, Ra's' voice seethed in her head, and Talia narrowed her eyes and thought but the child was such as I was, as if she were protesting her actions straight to him when a tightening of the hands over her wrists called her back to herself.

"You mad a mistake, little one," the boy said to her, as she had said to the child, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes. The words were oddly playful rather than malicious, and Talia had the odd feeling that she was been teased rather than berated with a captor's slandering.

She narrowed her eyes, and said, "Not as severe as the one you have made," in a voice that promised. Her veil had fallen in the scuffle, and her mouth made an annoyed line on her face. He watched the shape of her syllables, clearly amused, which made the annoyance in her veins burn that much hotter.

The young man smiled, as if looking forward to whatever she had in mind. He was all street smart – he held her wrists smartly, and Talia flexed, already finding the weak spots in his hold. She didn't see a weapon on him, but his clothes were baggy, and she wouldn't be surprised if a dagger or two were strapped to his body somewhere. He carefully held his body away from hers, not trusting her if she decided to kick or struggle.

She flexed again, and felt the dagger in her sleeve loosen in its holster. She only had to move that way and with the same movement that would break his hold on her would also put the knife in her hand. He leaned in close, and Talia felt her muscles tense, ready to move, when -

- to her surprise, instead of attacking, he kissed her.

Later, she will insist that it was shock and shock only that left her standing still. The hand about her wrist loosened, but yet Talia did not make a move for her dagger, too stupefied was she to move. The kiss was soft and sweet with that same sense of infernal teasing that had her wishing to wring the man's neck just a moment ago.

The hand that had been crossed over her neck, pinning her, had loosened as well, coming instead to rest on her side. She felt the pressure of a hand on her hip, right next to her purse, when the sensation was gone as quickly as it came – the teenager having taken a few large steps back and releasing her, smiling a lopsided grin.

"A thousand thanks," the urchin beamed, bowing mockingly and saluting to her before turning on his heel and running as fast as he could – and had Talia had not been trying to clear the mire from her head, she would have taken off after him.

Instead, she reached down, and felt in her purse. Empty. She made a face, more annoyance with herself than anything else as the annoyance sharpened into anger at her slip. Wonderful. She had been robbed for helping an orphan. The injustice of the world closed in on her like a fist, even as in her mind, she held the lose of that kiss more dearly than those of the coins, though she knew not why.

Slowly, she turned the other way, pulling her veil and hood back over her face and stepping into the clamor of the market once again. She searched, but she could no longer see Oleg. Instead, Bane and Ubu were waiting for her.

"That was fast," she commented, raising a brow. She hid the breathless tone in her voice behind arrogance instead, wishing to set the subject upon a path of her liking straight away.

"Oleg decided he wished not to talk," Ubu said, his voice as calm as if he were speaking of the weather. At his side, Bane was silent, his massive form a stone in the current of the market around them. "Ever and to anyone, it would seem."

Ah, then he had decided to take his own life rather than deal with the justice of the League. Talia felt another spike of annoyance in her chest – the trip wasted in more ways than one now.

"But I see that you managed to see the sights on your own while we undertook our business," Ubu chose to say next, and Talia felt her cheeks instantly turn flaming – embarrassment for her failure and something else lighting her veins as her gaze darted over to Bane and then back to Ubu again, the look stealing as a thief though a lock, though she knew not why.

"That would not have happened had I been dressed as a boy," Talia seethed sullenly, not offering any excuses for her failure and hiding behind flippancy instead. She was not going to stand there and explain how a mere kiss had left the Demonhead's daughter as defenseless as sand in the wind to her bodyguard – and to Bane, at that.

Ubu laughed, "Most likely not. But then, you would not have known the pleasure of a kiss, either."

On cue, her blush deepened. And Talia turned her face away, even covered as she was by her veil.

Ubu placed a hand on her shoulder. "Come now, a carafe of coffee is the answer to all of life's woes – my treat since I have the coin for it and you do not, before we make our way back. Such a waste leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth, and I wish to wash it away."

Talia nodded her agreement, falling into step behind Ubu and Bane – who had been silent through all of the assassin's good-hearted teasing. Behind him, Talia did not have to sneak her stare, instead letting her eyes fall openly on the wide line of his shoulders. She bit her lip, her heart still restless in her chest, even though the fight had passed.

And, as she stared into her coffee – Ubu carrying on the conversation about something or the other as Bane continued to gaze expressionlessly on the crowd, unable to drink himself in public thanks to his mask, she let herself reflect.

The pleasure of a kiss, Ubu had said, and the phrase turned oddly at her mind, picking at her thoughts even as the strong black coffee picked sharply at her tongue, the acidic taste bitter and bold on her palette. The pleasure of a kiss. Before, in the Pit, lust had been an ugly and degrading thing – an unholy exorcism of the body in a place that had no humanity left to it. Lust had been the thing that killed her mother – the thing that tore her into tiny pieces and left her nothing but a stain to the few minds who knew to remember her. Lust had been the blade at Talia's throat her whole childhood – it had been the reason she had to build her wings to fly, and lust denied an outlet had been the reason Bane had lost his face in the defense of her.

She knew that she had been lucky during those early years she had spent alone – for a girl absent a protector in the world was a target for all sort of tragedies – lust again a dark and violent smear on the cloth humanity spun. But then, during her travels she also learned that lust was something more than the strong imposing their desires on the weak. She had learned about the brothels and loose women of the night who welcomed men to them to coin. She had passed through enough dark alleys and corners to stumble upon lovers entwined – no pain inflicted but instead pleasure received with the meeting of bodies and the tangle of touch. Talia, who had grown thinking that lust was only something forced and coerced found that it was something that the world engaged in regularly – there were parts of the world that were voluptuous and sensual, and they, more than anything else, still baffled her mind.

And, sometimes, lust was more than even that – it was far from crude, but rather effervescent. When it was instead love (the idea of such a bond an abstract concept to Talia in her view of the world), she knew that that was just as much a trap, waiting to snare. Love had torn her parents apart, had signed Melisande's death, and had been the crucible to forge Henri Ducard into Ra's al-Ghul. The heart was weak, the body even more so, and Talia had never understood how such a weakness was able to hold so much of the world in its snare.

She pressed her lips together, and still felt them tingle. She curved her fingers over her small mug, the porcelain smooth to the touch as her thoughts continued to spin.

In the League, fraternization was strictly frowned upon – even on relationships as simple as merely friendship. The physical needs of the body were merely a weakness, and it was ignored in favor of serving a higher purpose, obtaining a higher goal. Unnecessary contact was forbidden as each student was independently trained, each person's unique abilities exploited and perfected before they were sent out into the world to carry on the business of the League. In the beginning, she had liked that – had found a peace and comfort in that, in having a home where she was not stared at with lust hidden and concealed because of her gender. Of course she was given looks of curiosity – for both her sex and her role as the Demonhead's daughter, besides, but she did not feel those looks crawl upon her skin. They simply wondered, no harm or maliciousness intended, and Talia even began to enjoy those looks over time – especially when she triumphed over one of her comrades on the dojo's floor. She would pause to study that look, each and every time before she reached down to give the defeated men a hand up.

Of course, Ra's' rules of fraternization did not seem to stretch to her – even though her friendship with her protector was something everyone in the League knew of, from the highest sensei to the newest recruit. But he did not forbid it, he did not cross the warning in her eyes, the knowledge that if he made her choose he was not necessarily the one who would win. At the thought, Talia felt the cold flame in the core of her flare, turning warm for just a moment. The warmth was calming, soothing, and at it Talia found her eyes slipping away from Ubu and his tale and instead to fall on Bane again. The cloth that covered his face warped and dipped in odd shapes from his mask, held tight over the ruined skin beneath. Talia stared, and for a moment she let herself wonder . . . the pleasure of a kiss . . .

She thought of the urchin's cool lips, the sweet sensation and the not unpleasant tingling in her fingers that had came as a result. As if thinking of an abstract thing, she imagined the pressure more firm, the lips over her own bruised and distorted. She still imagined her hands pinned over her head, the weight of a hand at her side, but not a lithe body before her own, but one large enough to block out even the sun . . . And her eyes snapped open at the thought. As quickly as the daydream came, she shoved it away, feeling heat rise on her skin at the very thought. Her veins pulsed with movement as she bit her lip, distracting herself with that and the heat of the coffee in her hands. She concentrated on the scent of the city and the desert in her nose.

And still her heart beat oddly.

Silly, she reminded herself. Silly and childish and weak. She turned the three words into a mantra, slithering through her head.

Silly and childish and weak . . .

Her mind made, she tuned back into Ubu's story – a tale of how Ubu's last trip to Kabul had been to recruit a pair of martial artists called the Wu-San sisters. He had traveled with the geneticist they all knew as Cain – one of the healers at the monastery who had assisted in the design of Bane's mask. The story took her away from her thoughts, even as she found her gaze turned to Bane every couple of words, falling on the cloth that covered his face, where she knew his mask to be.

Her heart twisted, as if trying to beat around a stone. Her skin itched, though she knew not why. When Bane caught her staring, he raised a brow, to which Talia turned away, her cheeks flaming.

Child, she berated herself, even as she felt Bane's eyes linger. Weak little girl.

She clenched her fingers around her mug. Bane looked away.

And she felt the stone in her heart give an odd twinge, as if a fist was held tight and trying to squeeze.

. . . yes, simple and silly indeed.

---

Author's Notes:

Whew, you all can breathe now. To those of you who made it through that chunk, I salute you!

And, that said, I have a general warning for the chapters coming up. This story is going to turn into a romance, and I know that some of you are a little squirmy about age gaps. I myself am not, under the right circumstances, of which, I definitely think these to be. So, if that does not float your boat, I recommend that you stop reading here and pretend that their's is just an odd sort of friendship right to the end.

And yet, if that sort of thing does not bother you, then by all means . . . lets go. ;)