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.

4. steel, crucible forged

Author's Note: First of all, I have to take a moment to thank you all for your amazing, amazing feedback. Your guy's response and support has been nothing short of extraordinary, and I am humbled as an author. And then, I have to apologize for just how long this beast of a chapter took me to write. I don't know how many of you were reading my updates in my profile (if you are ever wondering about a story's progression, I try to keep tabs there), but a few of the scenes here gave me quite a headache and I had to take a step back from the story for a week or two in order to refresh my muse.

And so, that said, I have to admit that I did not mean for this chapter to get this long. I kind of shot myself in the foot when I plotted these chapters by sections of Talia's life rather than actual blow by blow scenes, and as a result I literally had not one place I could chop this down without disrupting the pre-established pattern and flow of the story. I think that most of you will enjoy all of the extra words, but for the few of you who are going you're killing me with the word count, I apologize . . . most sincerely. I recommend reading this chunk in a few settings. With coffee on hand. ;)

But, that is enough of my rambling. For now, here we are with the moment you have all been waiting for . . .

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Part IV: "steel, crucible forged"

A month had passed since that day in Kabul, and once again, Talia danced.

The atmosphere around her was heavy this time, the air shaped to judge rather than to teach, and so Talia danced silently with Ubu as her partner, her brow furrowed and her commentary kept in her mind rather than on her lips as she spun in time to the music around her. The steps of the dance had become rote for her over the past few weeks, and she found herself adjusting to the sway of the music as she did to the sway of a fight, a constant ebb and flow of bodies and hands.

On top of the dancing, and the etiquette lessons (which had came as a surprise to her – truly, there were how many forks she needed to memorize? She? Who had eaten with nothing more than her fingers for the first dozen years of her life?) had come parts of her days that she reported to the Lady Sandra – or Shiva as she was becoming to be known in their circle of assassins. There she had been given a different kind of instruction, a Lady's tutelage of how to sit and stand and hold herself before others. She was taught how to talk, to flatter, to gossip with the rich and the privileged of the upper crust. And yet, first and foremost, she was taught the lessons of the language of the body. She learned how to read eyes and feints and double feints as the lies they were. She learned how to plant suggestions and give falsehoods of her own. She learned how to entrance a man with the turn of her wrist and the sway of her step. It was a new world that opened up before her, a world that was filled with a fool's gold light as much as it was with shadows, and slowly but surely, Talia learned. She progressed.

And she rose.

The reports from Shiva must have been flattering, for Ra's' eyes were upon her as if to judge this day, and Talia knew that a task had been assigned to her. She needed only to prove herself ready.

And so she danced, her eyes low and hooded, the sway of her body promising if not wholly inviting. The music spun, and she remembered a night in her rooms, with hands like a brand at her waist, and her heart like a storm in her chest, fit to strike the land below.

As Ubu turned her, her eyes darted to the pillars of the training floor, one after the other, but their shadows were empty. She fought the urge to bite her lip as she turned away, feeling a pang in her side and swearing that it was not missing. Bane had not joined her lessons since that night he danced with her, and Talia felt the loss of him like a blade after it had been drawn from skin. It was an empty feeling that she cared not for.

But she had more on her mind than her friend and his absences as the music picked up in tempo. She paid mind to her feet, to her hand on Ubu's shoulder, to the way her boots scraped against the floor, the way her braid fell to rest between her shoulder-blades before fluttering in the air again.

The waltz spun, and then it settled. The last notes rested on the air, a farewell that promised.

And Talia looked up from beneath her lidded eyes, and smiled. She felt a low thrum in her veins, the same that came when she would steal bread away from a man twice her size, and she knew that she had done well.

A heartbeat passed as Ra's studied her. His gaze weighed, and Talia tilted her head to his appraisal and dared him to find fault with her eyes.

"You are ready," Ra's finally announced, pride in his eyes if not in his voice, and Talia turned away from Ubu in order to press her fist to her open palm and bow to her father.

"Where I am needed by the shadows, so let me be used," she muttered, the vow on her lips uttered as it had been by the hundreds of souls who had been wielded by the League before.

Ra's did not bow, but he did incline his head – respect in the barest of forms, before turning. Talia bit her lip as she watched him leave. Ubu too nodded to her as he passed, reaching over to briefly squeeze her hand, an easier affection in his eyes that Ra's', before he turned to follow his master.

Talia lingered for a moment in the silence before finally turning to face the empty space where Bane should have been. Just barely, she frowned. Her gaze lingered, searching the shadows, before she finally rolled her eyes and turned away with a curse, refusing to look back again.

.

.

The island was called Malé, the capitol of a nation of islands and atolls, southwest of India and just east of the horn of Africa. If the Pit had been hell on Earth, then Talia was sure that they had found heaven in the Maldives – a lush string of tropical wonders where she had known nothing but for the harshness of the desert and the cold severity of the mountains throughout the majority of her life.

During the first day of their arrival, when she was not looking over plans and charts with her father, she laughed as she walked through the tourist crowded streets, marveling over the scent of salt on the air and the impossibly blue shade of the sky above and the sea beyond. Ubu bought her a necklace of cowrie shells from one of the local booths, and showed her the paths where the coral itself was the footbridge that connected the smallest of islands, one to the other. She had learned to swim those many years ago when she had passed through the lands that the Jordan touched, she had dipped her feet in the Red Sea and the cobalt blue waters of the Mediterranean, taking her fear of so much water in one place and squashing it as she learned to read the currents and the tides - but this was the first time she was able to take an hour to dive, and the wonders that existed underneath the waves were equal to many she had seen above the water.

She had tried to explain her finds to Bane – who could not walk in the sun drenched land during the light of day. This was not some backwater bazaar or ancient part of the orient – this was sun tanned lines and money and power, and Bane with his mask could never sink into such a crowd. The knowledge picked at Talia, feeling his absence as a chasm – one that had been steadily growing over the past few weeks.

. . . a chasm. It was small, but it was there, with his shadow now behind her rather than at her side. At first, Talia had almost been thankful for the little bit of space, needing time as she did to collect her own thoughts in order. The day with the urchin and the dance in her room before . . . her mind was a current of thoughts and feelings and more, and she needed the force of it to slow before she could process it. She needed to be able to think, to analyze and plot. Thankfully, the mission in Malé was a distraction, and a much needed one at that, giving her mind something else to settle on rather than her conflict of emotions where the strongman was concerned.

The day and its wonders passed, and then the night came. The exhilaration of the tropical sun and the salty air was forgotten as Talia donned the shadows, letting the cause she lived for and the lives she served settle into her veins and etch itself into her very bones. She settled her heartbeat and calmed her mind, making her thoughts a blade, her body a polished weapon, a sharp knife in a jeweled hilt.

There was a function to be held in one of the governmental halls, a fundraiser for the president of the Maldives – a man who owed Ra's and the League of Shadows a favor for their help in two of the three coups that had occurred in the last ten years (the third the president had dealt with himself, and had almost regretted his slight in a most painful way. He was never one to shun the shadows who had given him his power after that). On the surface, the function was a charity dinner, but underneath, it was a meeting for arms dealers – mainly between a man from Somalia and another from Ethiopia, both representing two sides of the factions that were assisting in tearing the horn of Africa apart. They were meeting with a dealer from the south of India – thinking it wise to import arms over the Indian Ocean rather than down from Europe and the Arabian lands, and then south and then east into Africa. The conflicts in that area were as many as they were old, and many were based in older wounds than those who fought them truly knew about.

Asad Rahim was her mark for that night, a slow blade hidden in plain sight where a blade in the dark just would not do. It was her job to catch Asad's attention that night – to lull him into a false sense of safety and security with her words and eyes. Later, when the night was through, she would plant a blade in his chest when he would have expected a much different ending, and then that blade would be planted in the Indian dealer's rooms – thus destroying any further shipping plans, at least for the time being until the matter was further looked in to. By that time, the rest of her father's men would have done their work planting their evidence and silencing the mouths that needed to do so before taking control of the shipments themselves and ending the ring of warmongers for good.

And so, where her sturdy boots and her sharp knives would not be needed, she prepared for a different fight.

She sat before her mirror, and painted her face like Shiva had taught her – darkening her eyes and reddening her lips until it was as if a stranger wore her face, as if another soul had taken up residence in her eyes. She smiled as she had been taught, with lips curved to invite and teeth flashing to beguile, and tilted her head curiously as if to define the look in her mind, as if to say this is me, this is me, this is me, before finally becoming that person.

She was to be Miranda for the night, like the Shakespearean maiden of the same name, seemingly naive and pure with her loveliness – the likes of which not even Juliet or Ophelia could match, but with a will of iron underneath that would flame when least expected, as it did when she stood against her father's words when he had condemned all to die . . .

Ubu had smiled when he had suggested the alias, and she had not understood at first. Now she rolled the name on her tongue, and deemed it suitable where her mother's name for her was not.

After painting her face, she curled her hair, twisting it up into an elegant coil at the back of her head. She let strands come down to frame her face, to brush teasingly at the skin of her neck. The dress she was to wear that night was a shade of blue, dark like the nighttime sky. The fabric was smooth and cool and more expensive than anything she had ever worn before. The dress was sleeveless, the neckline a modest cut that only let one glimpse the tops of her breasts, but it left a descent amount of her back uncovered, enough so that she felt open and exposed when she put the dress on, her arms too cold and the fine hairs at the back of her neck standing on edge at the sensation of the air upon her skin. The heels to finish the look had taken some use to walking in – and even more to dance in – but she could hold her own now. And they did add a certain grace to her stride, forcing her body to sway as she stepped . . .

She finished the look with a simple strand of pearls around her neck, resting against the hollow of her throat, hinting at wealth without boasting of it.

And finally, she looked like a woman when she stepped back from the mirror in order to judge her appearance. She looked like a woman . . . a woman named Miranda and not the girl Talia who played at swords and knives and knew more of the dark parts of the world then women three times her age, no matter what their smiles hinted at.

Miranda, she breathed . . .

. . . and Miranda she became.

When she stepped out into the hall beyond it was with an elegant stride, her head tilted high into the air and her jaw a strong line where it met her throat.

Beyond her door, Ubu and her father were already waiting for her. Ubu was the first to beam over her appearance, resplendent himself in a tuxedo of his own, and decidedly handsome in an exotic way – a way she would not have attributed to the assassin before this night. "You look utterly enchanting, child," Ubu praised, leaning forward to brush a kiss across the back of her hand, a very real affection in his eyes as he stepped aside to let Ra's look over his daughter. "As lovely as a dream."

"And just as deadly, we can hope," Ra's added, looking her over critically before nodding sharply in approval. He too was dressed for the night, wearing a black tuxedo with a long cream coloured scarf draped about his shoulders, easily claiming to a haughty elegance like one born to it. Even so, his eyes were still the same, as if he wore armor instead, and Talia stood up straighter under his searching gaze, meeting him stare for stare. There was a touch of a smile at his lips at the gesture from her, something sad in his expression that could have been fond – in another time, another place, perhaps - and she felt a pang in her side as she remembered her mother, and how much she must have looked like the ghost of Melisande in that moment.

But Ra's did not comment about the shadow loitering in the corridor with them, one way or the other, and Talia did not ask. She merely breathed in deep, and smoothed her hands down her side, feeling the satin of her gown cool and slick to the touch. She felt like a wolf in sheep's skin in that moment, convinced that any who looked hard enough could see her teeth, could see the claws beneath white wool if they all but glanced with her with the intention to search.

Her thoughts were cut short by the sound of marching footsteps, the cadence of soldiers, even if not one of the League were dressed to that part. Bane and four of his men were walking down the hall to them, the men dressed as members of the wait staff, and Bane as nothing particular – wearing the dark clothes he normally favored when doing the bidding of the League. His mask made it hard for him to walk about disguised, but he had a knack for hiding in plain sight when needed. He would hide that night, until she drew the man away, and then . . .

Talia fisted her hands. She forced her pulse to be a river, perfectly calm, perfectly serene, with nary a ripple to its surface.

She could feel his gaze on her back as they came close enough to make a definite image. She imagined that she could feel it like a flamepoint against her skin as his eyes traced from the exposed skin of her back, finding the highs and lows of her spine and following them up to the curve of her neck, the teasing strands of her hair that had escaped her coil to touch her skin. The pearls she wore were a garrote, catching his gaze where they made a shadow against her throat, like dots on a map, invited a traveler nearer.

And she inhaled. Her pulse raced and her skin itched. When she fisted her hands, she could feel the acrylic points of her nails bite into her skin, as if seeking blood.

"This dress feels like a net," she said when Ubu's eyes flickered between her and the masked man with a interest that was based in amusement where her father's was decidedly not. "But the heels could be weapons in of themselves - I could become very used to them." She smiled sharply, trying to offer a light comment where she could feel Bane's eyes drinking her in, as if trying to devour her whole

Her breath was thick in her lungs. Her heart struck a staccato beat, and she turned . . .

To see Bane resolutely looking at her father, and not her at all. "All is done as you have asked," he said, addressing Ra's as if she were not there at all, and Talia felt a rise of irritation fill her, although she knew not why. She bristled, her blood rising to her cheeks, even as Ra's nodded his head at the strongman, pleased.

"Then we are ready," Ra's waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Let's move."

That was her cue. Ubu stepped forward, and offered his arm, and with a bow of her head she twined her arm through his own. She turned to stare down the hall, her eyes set stonily ahead, and she did not look back, even as she could feel Bane's eyes on her, watching . . .

She squared her jaw, and told herself she did not care. She had a job to do now, a part to play, and thoughts of her masked friend would only set a sour look on her face.

In the end, her assignment went like clockwork, just as Shiva said it would – just how Ra's and the senior council had planned it to be. Ubu left her alone by the banquet table, and Talia had only to reach for a glass of champagne before one was being handed to her by her mark. She smiled like so, and watched Asad's eyes fall like such. She tilted her head, and shaped her eyes as if to invite, giving a false name and a false story, and then he was asking her to dance, and she was accepting.

Her role that night was part of a larger dance as a whole, a battle in the finest sense of the word, but easier to predict in its outcome. It was odd, even so, pulling the man along as if he had a string knotted under his rib, connected to her fingers, with her having but to snap on that thread for her will to be obeyed. She had been told by many that she was beautiful, but the idea was still an abstract thing to her, even after all this time – an age old instinct in her still thinking to shave her head and bind her figure. Mirrors had been far off things in the Pit, and beauty an even more dangerous thing at that, like her mother, with her lovely eyes and sad mouth . . .

And again, beauty was lethal as she danced. But the man in her arms knew not of that, knew not of the daggers hidden behind her smile, the spearpoints behind her hands.

She was able to hold herself through one waltz and then another with a strange man leading her. This was not Ubu and his mentoring ways, nor was it Bane with her eyes closed tight and his familiar voice in her ear, lifting her up . . .

Her heart skipped oddly at the thought, her breath rising as if trying to strangle her, and instantly her cheeks flushed at the memory.

Asad's slim hands on her waist became a weight, a phantom caress in her memory made tangible with another man's hands against her skin. She closed her eyes and could hear the echoing hiss of a breath as it was stolen through a mask . . . she could see dark eyes looking on her own and not brown and warm like the man before her now. She felt her cheeks flush pink as her imagination ran free from her, and it was not an actress' trick that had her pulse raising, her breathing quick, but real emotion, tangible and thick as Asad led her away from the dancing couples . . .

She knew what was to come, and her mouth spoke the words as if it were not her mouth. Her eyes promised and his hungered as he led her through the halls to his room . . .

It did not take much after that – his hands reached and hers denied. Her mouth burned where he attempted to kiss, and instead of affection returned there was steel in her hand and a blow in her mind.

His skin split as easily then as it would have during a battle, and Talia forced herself to hold his eyes as he whispered Miranda like a question, surprise in his eyes as he reached out a hand to grasp for the pearls at her throat as his body betrayed him, twitching and bleeding and failing him and the world turned sickeningly before her -

And then she was backing away from his corpse as Bane and his men stole silently into the room behind her. She turned from the still open eyes, and reached up a hand to touch the pearls at her neck, bloodied and sticking to her skin . . .

The blade made such a sound as it clattered to the floor. And Miranda faded as Talia turned, and escaped from the room.

.

.

The sand was white and pure under her feet, but the rolling ocean swam before her eyes as if taunting her. Her stomach turned. Her eyes hurt in her face as she tried to focus on that line where the sea met the starlit sky.

As soon as she reached the sand, she kicked her shoes off, letting them fall forgotten in some distant shadow as she stumbled a step and then another after parting the unnatural arch from her feet. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, cleaning the lipstick that had darkened her mouth. There was a red smear on her hand when she drew it away, and she felt her stomach give a lurch upon seeing it. It was a tacky, sticky stain left on her skin, and when she reached down to wash it off in the surf, her stomach heaved with the too quick motion.

She lost the contents in her dinner then – and she reflected miserably that she did not want crab and lobster again for a long, long time.

She sat there for some time, soiling the knees of her dress in the sand and feeling the surf rise to lap at her hands, deep in the sand. With a face, she wiped at her mouth with the saltwater, wincing at the taste but glad for anything to take away the taste of bile. The pearls she wore were choking her. She made a fist as she pulled them from her neck with a savage gesture, and threw them out into the waves.

There was a shadow joining her own as the pearls splashed in the deep, swallowed by the ocean and her waves. Bane said nothing, but Talia could feel his eyes, could feel his question, and she inhaled shakily before trying to explain.

"I do not know why I am affected so," she said miserably. "I am no stranger to death, and the man was a pig. He deserved the fate that the League prepared for him."

And had she faced him in the ballroom and shouted to him her challenge, would she have then found her stomach turning over the life she would take? Combat, she was no stranger to. Killing to survive, that too was necessary, and she was far from a stranger to death and her ways.

But she remembered Asad's hand as it stroked her cheek, even if the tenderness was that for a night and a night alone . . . and she felt . . . guilty? Was this guilt? Was this the burden that lesser men faltered under when they were faced with what had to be done?

Next time, she would twist the blade deeper and kill away the weakness in her. For now she breathed in deep and slow, and tried to calm the turmoil in her stomach.

"That man was not innocent," Bane said gently. He did not reach out to comfort her, to sooth her, but his presence was enough – her eyes drinking in his shadow on the sand even as she tried not to look out at the water, lest the rolling of the waves do her a disservice again.

"And had I met him in open battle with my intentions clear, I would not feel as I do now," Talia laughed dryly. "I do not understand why this death – over all others, affects me so."

Bane was silent, but she could feel the weight of his eyes. She got to her feet, and wished that she had more than seawater to wash her mouth with. The salt stuck to her tongue, making it sharp. Her stomach still rolled, but no longer did it look to betray her. How long had she walked the shadows and their ways? She did not understand why hands so stained could effect her so now. She brushed her wet hands on her dress, still tasting copper on her skin when she had tried to wash her mouth.

"Do you ever feel it?" she asked then, trying to put the thoughts in her mind into some semblance of order. She looked down at her fingers, flexing them straight and then curving them into a fist again. "The blood on your hands?"

Silence passed, pregnant and weighing. "Not for a long time," finally he answered.

Of course, she reflected. For how could he regret a loss of life when it was done for her and her name? For her father's approval in order to continually earn his place at her side? Honesty was a blow of its own and Talia felt her stomach turn as she thought of how completely his shadow was snared with hers . . . Had he ever wanted it to be otherwise? Had he ever regretted the bond he had with the Pit's only child?

Did he ever feel this way? With his hands stained and his stomach turning and the sea before him just so endless? A new irritation bloomed in her, one that was far from Asad and his surprised eyes. This one was older, pooling like hurt in the deep of her.

"You could leave tonight," she finally said, her voice catching on the end of her thoughts and bringing her mind to the open air between them. Her laugh was dry and brittle when it fell from her mouth. It struck like a blow. "My father would probably even prefer it. He would toast your name and your continued health. You need not stay here any longer." With me, the thought was unspoken on her tongue, just barely held in her mouth.

Bane looked oddly at her, but he did not ask which root her words had sprouted from. He simply weathered the storm of her temper, of the emotions she herself could not properly explain. "All I care for is here," he said at last, addressing the words behind her words. "Who would protect you else wise?" And his words turned with distaste there. He had not agreed with the assassination that eve – for any assassin waiting in the dark could have done what she had done. The whole thing was practice for her – a rehearsal for a dance more dangerous than this one. And its steps were those he did not believe she had to partake in. He had tried to protect her from this path.

Her blood slithered in her veins, though she knew not why. Always was she so to him? The child to protect, the little girl to keep safe? Was she such a burden to him? Did he feel nothing but responsibility for her soul?

She remembered the dance in her room, how her heart had thundered and how her veins had flowed with heat. She remembered too how the urchin had kissed her and Bane had been silent their whole journey back from Kabul as if to seethe . . . Would he view this new affection within her as childish need? Would he return it as the same? Did he already? And if he did not, what right did she have to ask even more of him when he already given all?

Her thoughts were a pain where actual blows were not. And so she bared her teeth against them. When she spoke, she wanted her words to slither – to wind and ensnare like ivy, just like her words earlier had seduced the dead man. "You wanted to kill him, did you not, my friend?" she finally asked, her voice low, aimed to wound. "You were disappointed that the blade was not in your hands when his life ended."

"I was not displeased at his death," Bane said carefully, his eyes narrowing as he watched her from the corner of his gaze, like one would watch a serpent uncoiling.

"Please, be honest," she said, stepping closer until she shared his shadow. She could hear the artificial breath of his mask, she could feel it as she raised herself up higher to look him in the eye. "Did you hate it?" she asked, her voice low, fit to wound. "Did you hate thinking that I was dressed so for another man? Did you hate that my words were for him? My dance? Did you want to kill him for the thought of his hands on my skin?"

His eyes were hard then, and normally where she could read all, they were blank to her, carefully hidden away and clouded. And she dared him to call her the child whose safety was his own. She dared him to say that she was nothing but a burden to him . . . she wanted to hear the words and then she could end the spiraling voices in her head and know.

"Tell me, did you wish to kill him?" she asked, and then her voice broke on the edges, a child unsure, with pearls and blood in the sand, and her stomach swimming – but it wasn't guilt, but fear . . .

She tilted her head up, and felt her pulse spike, fit to strike when he raised his hands . . . but not to push her away. He held one finger to her lips, as if to silence her. His frame before her was too tight, the tender gesture at odds with the tension in his limbs. He held himself as he would before a battle, as he had when she was a child and they picked out paths in the wall before them, as he had when he had told her that she must climb, and never look down again.

And her mouth burned at his touch as it had not that entire night through. Her mouth burned, and that too warm thing in the pit of her stomach flared, and she wanted as she had not since she had risen from the darkness of the Pit, and -

"Do not," he said slowly, his voice rasping as his mask tried to translate emotion into sound and failed, "Do not ask questions which you are not yet ready to know the answer to."

His words were a whisper, and his thumb was just as soft as it traced over her bottom lip. His eyes fell to watch the caress, but still they were hidden from her. They were too dark. The ocean behind her was like a heartbeat, constant where hers was skipping wildly in her chest. Her breath caught.

And he stepped away from her as if burned. He fisted his hands, as if to keep them still, before inclining his head – a farewell. And then, he turned, and walked back the way they had came, turning back to the resort and its walls, and the work that was still there to be done.

And Talia stood, fixed in her place as if she had roots in the sand, her heart hammering and her lips tingling. She wanted to scream then. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run after him and have him explain his words, explain the too warm flare of feeling inside of her. She did none of that. Instead, she reached down to pick up her shoes from the sand, and wiped them against the soiled material of her dress so that she could don them again.

He retreated, and she followed silently, the hunt gone from her stride. Behind them both, the ocean lapped hungrily at the shore long after they were gone.

.

.

Her next missions she went on with just Ubu for backup. This mark was smaller than arms dealers and their wide circles, and she knew that her target was more for practice again rather than anything else – a chance again for pretty smiles and coy words and a blade in the night. She looked this one in the eye when she killed him, let him see the knife and have his chance. Someday, she would be able to do away with even that.

Shanghai was all glittering lights and neon lights and overwhelming towers – a jungle of metal and chrome and rust and she hated it with a passion that she did not know she possessed. She wished for the open air of the mountains again, the brilliance of the night sky when not chased away by the artificial glow of the city all around her. She had never felt completely at ease in large cities, and she had never stayed in them for longer than she had to before.

This time, her mission took close to two weeks - she building her alias and her relationship with her target like a tragedian in some grand opera, and halfway through the first act, she included a package of her own along with Ubu's reports back to Ra's - a short Chinese broadsword called a dao which she had picked up from an antiquities shop during her tour of the city with Ubu. "So you can stop stealing mine," was the only note she included, the teasing words causing a lightness to bloom in her chest with the departure of the gift.

She was not sure what precisely she was striving to atone for, but she felt the need to offer something – anything, really. Even in her gifts, she gave steel, but she knew that he would see the offering for what it was, and at that she knew peace.

She kept the windows unveiled in their suite that night, and pretended that the lights of the city were stars and the wall at her back was a body, immovable as stone, and barely, just barely, she found sleep again. She had grown used to such falsehoods by that time.

.

.

By the time she returned to the monastery, Bane was already gone on a mission of his own – something involving a politician who had come to quarrel with Ra's and was now reaping the worse of it.

But there was a postcard from Makhachkala included in the reports for Ra's, with a football stadium of all things on the front, and Bane's neat hand proclaiming that it was not a terribly awful sport to watch.

And so, the chasm stilled, for a little while.

.

.

Two months passed in this manner – with them circling each other like the moon to the earth, pulling on each other and yet never touching. Talia would fall asleep by his side but wake up only hours later alone, and soon she gave up trying altogether, opting instead for sleeping with her back to the wall in her own room, with her eyes open on the horizon beyond. Where before he was the only one who would give her an honest fight in the sparring rings – each of her father's men too leery of inflicting to the Demonhead's daughter pain to be a real opponent – he was now cautious of her when landing his blows, and that was when she could get him to face her at all. The week prior, she had landed a truly mean blow to his throat that had deprived him of his breath and bruising when he had hesitated to put her in a hold when doing so would have brought him too close to her breasts. She hadn't apologized for the underhanded hit after, just turned on her heel and left, a voice in her head telling her that she was behaving as a child but unsure of what else precisely to do.

The day before Talia had been holding Shiva's child in the healer's wing of the monastery – the little girl who was the first in a line of genetically engineered soldiers for the League, the child being Shiva's ticket to a clean break from the clan of assassins who had furthered her education – marveling at the feeling of soft flesh and gurgled noises and such small hands, when Bane had come in for his monthly appointment with Healer Cain. The strongman had stilled in the doorway, taking in the sight of her and the child and the knives at her belt, before turning on his heel and leaving. Talia, who had known he would be there, but who had not planned the meeting – she had not – felt something prickle in her side at the rejection, like a blade moving through her flesh.

Shiva, adapt at reading body language to the extent that was uncanny, had thankfully said nothing to her but to comment on how her grip on the infant had lessened. Talia had left when little Cassandra had started to cry, and her mother had taken the babe to silently hush her, anger in her step and her hands fisted at her sides as she stalked through the halls, more than a match for the mountain around them.

That night, Bane had been absent from dinner – as he was more and more often as of late, and those next to her had given her a wide berth (no doubt fearing for their hands) whenever she reached past them for food she didn't really taste as it went down. Where Bane was known to miss dining with his brethren, he was never one to shirk his duties with her and Ubu in the kitchens afterward when it was their turn, but that night he did, and Talia threw cutlery and porcelain bowls into the soapy water and scrubbed with a vigor that was all stone walls and the teasing sky overhead – that was, until Ubu had taken the scrub brush away from her and sent her on her way before she did to the dishes a blow. She had felt her cheeks flame with her embarrassment, but thankfully the assassin said nothing about her black mood – though she knew that her father would be hearing a full report of it later, and that more than anything else made the sick feeling in her side twist.

Child, her mind whispered at her, the insult like arrows through the air. Silly and needy and weak.

Shut-up, she had hissed back to the voice, and that night she had stayed awake looking at the stars beyond her window, higher than even what the mountains around them could reach to.

When Ra's pulled most of the senior members of the League away for a manhunt in the middle east, off of the shores of the Mediterranean, Talia was itching for the chance to leave the mountains and do something productive with her hands. When Ra's named her with the others who would be accompanying him she had all but jumped at the opportunity to do something that did not involve dancing and a hidden blade at a man's side. She strapped into her armor and her strong boots and felt her skin settle over her bones as they made their way west.

She was grouped into the secondary team, along with her father and Ubu, and the day was just slipping into night when they were driving up the coast to where Bane had a primary contingent of the League's men in the port city of Tartus. They had been days ahead of Ra's, spearheading the search for a man named Ebeneezer Darrk, one of her father's most devoted disciples and favorite students, who had come to quarrel with Ra's teachings to the point of distention, taking a small group of the League's men with him when he left. They had been tracked to the ruins that dotted the landscape northeast of Tartus – a network of abandoned buildings that had gone back to the time of the crusades, and some even older still, to the ancient kingdoms who had once ruled the lands.

Ra's' convoy had been hugging the curves of the sea as they made their way north from where they had flown in from Lebanon, the dark of the night and the hushed whisper of the Mediterranean a soft and eerie backdrop to the expectation of death in the air. The very air around them seemed to whisper, still and silent as a hundred beings with teeth and scales prepared to march out into the night.

And, of course, their jaws could not be closed for too long. Their convoy only made it five kilometers north of the Syrian border before their caravan of trucks came under attack.

At first, Talia had only registered that the flare of gunfire looked like red ants flying off into the night. The ambush was color and sound and the smell of smoke and metal as orders were shouted, and a strong hand pushed at her shoulder, shoving her away from the cacophony of the battle from behind them. Ra's moved and Ubu yelled something she could not make out, and then they were all tumbling out of the truck when an explosion lit the night behind them, a shot from an enemy rocket launcher having found its aim and tearing through its target. Talia felt her heartbeat spike when she thought about flame and gas, and -

"Get down!" Ra's exclaimed, pushing her behind the nearest overhang on the rocky terrain, the boulders making some shielding against the bright explosion that followed, hot steel and ash raining down on their shoulders like rain in a storm. Instinctively, he shielded her from what the rockface left exposed, and Talia curved into herself like a ball – like she had when she was a child and the stares in the Pit became too much, and then the shadow of her father was moving, and the glare of flames from behind them was like a golden hand in the night, turning its palm upwards to light up the sky.

The moment passed, and Ra's looked down at her long enough to hiss, "Stay down," in a voice that bore no argument, his icy eyes narrowed as if to further enforce the command, though he needed not. Talia was trained for combat in close quarters – and her double swords and her tinny dagger were her weapons of choice. She knew that firearms had their place in combat, and that place was not one that had ever burdened her past the basics she knew of aiming and hitting her target.

So, Talia kept her two small pistols close to her chest while she curled in on herself, becoming a part of the rocky landscape around her. The shadows embraced her while she looked on the battle beyond her. Her heartbeat thundered in time to the waves just beyond them rather in time to the unnatural thunder of the firefight. Her eyes were adept in the dark, more those of a hunting animal's than anything more human – a gift from the Pit that did her a service rather than a discredit.

And that was why she saw them before they saw her.

Darrk's goons, she recognized the faces of the men who had left Ra's table for that of a traitors, and she felt her blood pulse with anger when she recognized those whom she had fought against and alongside, whom she had called Brothers, born as they all were by the shadows. They were talking quickly and lowly in Urdu, the language of the mountains not yet leaving them, even when the sand and the sea were warm and tropical scents in the air instead of the ice of Tibet.

Instinctively, Talia curled in closer on herself, cocking the safety on her pistol and quieting the adrenaline in her veins. Her eyes narrowed.

A canister hit the ground just past her hiding place, and Talia felt her heart skip as she realized what was happening – gas grenades. She glanced up, and felt the pieces fall into place when she saw Darrk's men strap masks on their faces, and she felt adrenaline spike as the cold flame at the core of her whispered run.

And so, she pushed through the rockface and ran.

Gas filled the air around her, and she placed her arm in front of her face and held her breath as tried to outrun the gas's hold. But the air traveled quicker than she could run. Fog billowed before her, sullying the air she breathed, and she felt her lungs burn with the urge to inhale.

One breath.

She heard steps behind her, pursuing.

Two breaths.

The rocky shore beneath her turned threatening, as if the rocks were fingers pulling at her feet, trying to cause her to stumble.

Three breaths.

Her stride turned drunkenly. She gasped.

The fourth breath forced her to her knees.

She choked and tried to fight past the black spots that were blotting before her eyes. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. She felt dislocated from her skin.

A fifth breath, and she fought the urge to close her eyes . . . No longer was the rock cutting under her hands. Her fingers had lost their desperate hold about her weapons. She felt hands at her arms, at her sides, voices muddled together above her.

A sixth breath, and the mechanical sound of breath being drawn through a mask filled her ears, and the sound set her teeth on edge. It was too sharp, it was not right . . .

And then she closed her eyes, and saw no more.

.

.

Talia awakened in Tripoli, Lebanon - a location she was only told later by Ubu.

She opened her eyes to the interior of a warehouse, which could have been anywhere in the world, and her mind was still too clouded to lend to her a logical deduction. The scent of water was strong in her nose, and past the high industrial windows she could make out the shape of palm trees, fluttering in the stiff breeze that blew in from the sea beyond them. There was sand underneath her fingernails when she flexed her hand against the ropes that bound them. Her wrists were chaffed, as if she had struggled long and hard, even with the drug she could still feel clouding her eyes, making her heartbeat too slow, her hands too unsteady.

Around her, she still heard the rolling tones of Urdu, joined by the local Arabic languages and a spattering of more earthy dialects she could not make out without concentrating. And concentrating was so far behind her when she needed to rest . . . she just needed to rest.

The next time she registered conscious thought, there was the quick flare of gunfire around her – shouted orders from one side and the next, and her mind struggled to work past the haze that had surrounded it, thinking only escape and caged and I must climb.

But her limbs were too heavy, even moving her fingers was a great work. Her eyes rolled drunkenly in her head, and her breath was sweet smelling with the drug that kept her so.

She flinched when there was a hand at her shoulder, moving to check her pulse, fingers warm at her throat and her wrist. She tried to form words, but she was hushed as the sounds of the battle still tickled at her ears from beyond them. The bonds at her wrists and feet were cut with sure efficiency, and she was lifted over a broad shoulder and carried away from the sound of the fight – of the living and the dying and those warring.

And finally, when the sunlight broke over her face she could make out the unnatural whirl of tiny mechanics; the hiss of gas, and that, that was what such a thing should sound like. She felt her heart beat sluggishly in through her stupor, warming her past her very skin, and wondered if this was how he had to fight to see the world as she let her hand curl uselessly against his neck where she tried to make a fist. She tried to whisper, she tried to say that she was okay – she thought so many things, but her tongue could only force a whispered breath from her mouth. She felt boneless, without strength left to her as her eyes fell closed again.

Then they were moving, and the task of staying awake was too much for her to bear. She leaned her head against him, and knew no more.

.

.

Her abduction put a temporary halt on the search for Ebeneezer Darrk, but not for long.

She had been only a day past leaving Healer Cain's wing of the monastery, and she wore a comfortable wool sweater over her normal wear, a steaming cup of po cha (a strong black tea with yak butter that the locals specialized in) in her hands that warmed the far reaches of her that her time in Tripoli had left cold. She sat quietly to Ra's' left while different reports were given to the Demonhead – Ebeneezer had moved his men, both those from the ruins outside of Tartus, and the few left alive from Tripoli to further south, to the catacombs that decorated the cliffs that rose above the Lipiti river. The senior members of the League were discussing tactics and weak points while their leader listened on in silence, each voicing their opinion on how to employ their men for the surest strike to ensure a quick and painless victory before Ra's would make a decision from the collected elements.

While Talia sat on Ra's' left, Bane sat in the seat furthest from Ra's, with his eyes trained steadily on the information before him. He had not met her eyes when he walked into the room, and he had not looked up at her since, even though Talia watched him more than she paid attention to the words being spoken, wishing that he would just look up so that she could catch his gaze. He had not visited her in the time she was in Healer Cain's care, though she could have sworn that she heard the deep breath of his mask while she slept. But that could have been her own imagination, fickle as it was as she was weaned off from the drug's hold over her subconsciousness.

Ubu had since told her that Bane had been at the front of the force who tracked her down, and it had been he that had carried her from the warehouse . . . Again, he was there when she was in danger, but when she wished for a friend, he was gone. Talia pursed her lips, and felt determination fill her, stronger than her uncertainty and her confusion. Something had altered between them, and she was not yet ready to let that go to pass.

She trained her eyes on the curve of his mask, the gleam of light off of his bare skull, and thought of the walls of the Pit, so many years ago. Silently she decided that this would be no different.

Ubu had just finished pointing out the highlights from their scout's information when he finally straightened from his maps, collapsing the pointer in his hand with a click of sound, drawing her attention back to the meeting at hand. "Do you wish for a contingent of men to be sent?" Ubu finally asked his leader outright. "The Seven Hands have just returned from Benghazi and are most eager to lend their services to end this man's life. Or your own squadron has been resting since Ulaanbaatar, they can be assembled within the hour to depart."

"That will not be necessary," Ra's waved his hand, his brow creased in thought from where he had leaned forward in order to prop his elbows up on the table before them. His hands were steepled, pressed to his chin, while the high back of his chair threw a long shadow from him, as if to give him the sharp wings of a bat.

Ubu's dark brow dipped in thought. "My liege," he said carefully, "I am not sure how well an intermediate squadron will hold up underneath the experience and ferocity of Darrk and his followers. If not the Seven or yours, then -"

" - Bane will go," Ra's finished for the other man, his voice smooth and oiled, and instantly Talia set her tea down at the tone, her eyes narrowing as warning prickled at her skin.

"A wise choice," Ubu said – for all knew how personal the matter of Darrk was to the masked man. Talia had been taken when he had not been by her side, and he wished for blood now. "Bane and the Seven then? Along with a contingent of support, that would be a wise force to go against Ebeneezer -"

"I said, Bane will go," Ra's interrupted, his voice mild, as if talking about the snow beyond the monastery walls. "Bane, and Bane alone."

Ubu's surprise was instant, and he echoed dumbly, "Bane alone?" while around the table the others of Ra's inner circle just barely curbed their words in order to peer curiously at their leader.

Talia had no such bonds holding her mouth. Instead, she was the first on her feet, speaking where silence had been expected of her. "That is a fool's mission!" she protested, the words leaving her mouth without a thought. "If you send him as such, you send him to die – it is a waste."

"If Bane thinks that the mission is not to his liking, then he has every right to decline it."

"That too is a fool's move," Talia retorted. For declining the wish of the Demonhead – or failing in a mission and surviving both meant ex-communication and an eventual death when Ra's spared the men to track you down and end your life.

It was unacceptable.

"The price each man pays for the League is high," Ra's said in a tone that brokered no argument.

"And he has paid more than most," Talia hissed, her voice falling from her mouth as if her tongue was forked, her mouth fanged. She bore venom in her eyes.

"Yes, he has - but for you, and you alone, not for the League and our cause, as you so often like to point out," when Ra's met her eyes, his own were cold, like the glaciers right beyond their walls. "Now, he can serve you again, by ending the life of the man who endangered yours."

Talia seethed, her hands turning to fists by her sides when Bane stood, drawing all eyes to him. He did not look at her, but rather at Ra's, his dark eyes clear, like a storm as it built on the horizon. "I will go," was all he said, his words simple. "I will go, and I shall see that Ebeneezer's head is brought back to you."

Talia exhaled through her nose, her expression murderous as she stepped back as if she had been struck. Next to her, Ra's inclined his head at the masked man's words, triumph in his eyes, and Talia felt her blood come to a boil as the cold flame inside of her burned.

"Do not fail me," was all that Ra's said, and then he stood as well, ignoring her seething eyes as he waved a hand, calling the meeting to a close. He turned and left, not sparing either of them a glance, and Talia stared at his turned back as if her narrowed eyes could be a blow in of itself. The rest of Ra's' council filed past her, none of them meeting her eyes but for Ubu, who shrugged in defeat before hastening his stride in order to catch up to Ra's. Talia knew the assassin would try to overturn her father's decision, but it would be no use. The Demonhead had a will of stone that Talia bore in her own chest, around her own heart, and she knew that there were no words to pierce that veil once it had been drawn.

Bane lingered, and finally he turned to look at her. Fuming, Talia let her eyes fall from where her father had been to where the strongman now stood, her gaze like a wave as it struck upon the shore.

"You will not go," she said to the silence between them, her words striking like a blow as she thought of Ra's and his will and how those around him bent to it. Always had the masked man shadowed her every step, but never once had she made a demand of him. Never once had she ordered.

Bane raised a brow at her, as if amused, and she had a sinking feeling in her gut when she realized that her control over him was like that the moon held over a wolf. He followed her because it was what he wished to do, but he was no beast tamed by her every whim. She could order him to do nothing.

The knowledge answered questions she had long since wondered at, but still she felt desperation claw at her throat when she realized that he truly did intend to take on Darrk and his followers alone.

He did not speak against her words, not right away. Instead Bane stepped closer to her, reaching over to hold her wrists, his thumbs resting where she had chaffed at her bindings and rubbed her skin raw. Bruises decorated her like bracelets, thick and purple and still raw and ready to bleed in the middle. The skin there ached, but she shivered at the contact and the tingle that threaded through her skin as a result. He had not directly touched her in so long, it seemed. And she had not realized how much she had missed it as that odd warmth in her stomach flared to life like a wind that blew upon a phoenix's ashes, coaxing the bird to life. She bit her lip.

"He hurt you," Bane said quietly, gently, his voice more of a rumble from his chest than anything that fell as sound from his lips.

"A wound that will heal," she trapped his hand about her wrist by bringing her other hand to hold over his, her fingers singing with the contact as it held. "A wound that needs only time."

"A wound that he will pay in blood for," when Bane spoke, the words were like a vow. His hand fisted about her wrist, and the skin there protested the sensation as it burned in a wholly different manner. Still, she did not draw away.

"And you think that you can march into his stronghold with nothing but your fists and your strength?" Talia finally snapped. "Darrk is one of my father's most accomplished students, and the men who left with him from my father's side are no mere hired guns. They are killers, shaped by the shadows."

"As am I," Bane said with a snort of laughter that had nothing to do with humor. "And I have beaten the mighty of your father before, little one. This shall be no different."

For the first time, the familiar endearment pulled at her skin, resting hollow in her ears. She did not like the shape of it as it sounded against the air, and in a moment of clarity she could admit that she wanted more. More than child or girl or something to protect. "Not like him," Talia shook her head, still disagreeing. "Not like this."

At her words, she felt despair rise high in her throat, stronger than any fear she had felt during her time away. She leaned forward, her forehead coming to rest at the skin right beneath his throat. Her head hardly reached his chin, but she did not feel tiny in his shadow, but rather complete, as if he was mass enough to fill in the empty places of her, the empty cauldron that she knew was her heart . . .

He released her wrist, and she brought her hands up to fist in the material of his vest. Slowly, very slowly, his arms came to rest around her, a tactile comfort that she did not know that she needed until then. For how could she explain that she held such a sick feeling in her gut at this? How could she explain her fear, gnawing at her bones like something living?

"It is not worth it," she finally whispered. "My father's wrath is nothing; I can spare you his ire, I can see that he sends someone else."

"Who else would be better to send?" Bane returned, she could feel his words as they rose from his chest, as they worked in his throat.

"At least you can go properly, with a squadron at your back," Talia returned. "Even Ubu and I accompanying you would be better than you, and you alone . . . "

She tasted acid in her throat at the words, and barely, just barely, she felt his arms tighten about her. She burrowed in closer to him, as if she could find a place for herself underneath his skin if she tried hard enough. Her heart was a stone in her throat, useless to her as it continued to beat. She had not held him in too long, she thought. Her arms were strong, but they were small when she tried to wrap them around him. Her heart hammered like a hummingbird's wings as she curved her fingers like talons in the fabric of his vest. Don't go, don't go, don't go, her heart beat against his chest. She felt her eyes burn, even though no tears fell. When was the last time she had cried? When she was little, and the dust of the Pit stung at her eyes? She could not remember. Even now, her desperation was just a dry burning, her grief a sick feeling in her chest.

And yet, his pulse was slow and steady before her. He was determined. She had not yet swayed his decision.

But Talia was desperate. "It is not worth it," she pleaded, her voice an airy thing that she did not recognise from her tongue. It was a mortal woman of flesh and bone who spoke so. It was not Talia with her skin like a wall and her eyes like the sky, pitiless and so far above so as to not even feel a blow from the storms when they blocked out the sun . . . "Please, my father is not worth the devotion you give to him."

His sigh in return was rumbling against her cheek. It worked in his lungs before escaping. "Do not make the mistake of thinking that I strike for your father," he reached down to tilt her head up, hooking his first finger beneath her chin in the barest of caresses. "Whether it be now or ever."

There was more to his words. She could see them behind his eyes, she could hear them bud on his tongue, and at them she could feel that new warmth inside of her simmer, a low, slow burn.

"Then don't go," she whispered, looking up over the black shape of his mask to meet his eyes. Normally, they were open doors to her, telling her everything without reservation. Now, they were just dark. The warmth in her stomach banked, just slightly, as fear made a harsh fist over her lungs. She couldn't breath for a moment.

"Don't go," she whispered again, the words soft as she turned into him again, closing her eyes so that it was just his heartbeat in her ears and the hum of his mask above her head. She breathed in time to the sound; her breath shuddered in her lungs.

"Don't go . . ."

.

.

Talia found sleep slow in coming to her that night. She was exhausted when she left the war room with Bane, but she did not trust him to leave as soon as her back was turned, so she hugged his shadow for the remainder of the evening, not even leaving his side when her body demanded that she sleep, the stress of the last few days making her limbs heavy and her eyes blurry. He stayed by her side, but only just, and she could read the tension in his frame, even though she had spent an uncountable number of nights by his side before. She had stayed awake at first, distracted by the sound of his breathing and the heat of his body as she slept carefully by his side, trying her best not to touch him with such a thick feeling of tension in the room.

When sleep finally did catch up with her, it was far past midnight, and when she opened her eyes not much later, he was gone.

She sucked in a sharp breath at the realization, her eyes narrowing as she reached out a hand to touch the empty space beside her. The sheets were still warm. He could not have gone far.

And so she opened her eyes to the darkness, her decision made as she swung her legs out from underneath the covers. Instantly, she was fully alert and ready to move as she made her way silently back to her own room.

She didn't take much with her – she just slipped into her black leggings and top before strapping on her Kevlar armor – a custom uniform made for all of the League that sat over her like an extension of her skin. Over the armor she wore her thick Tibetan coat and her sturdy boots, hiding the warring shape of her over the ware of all in that area of the world. She didn't dare leave the monastery by normal means – instead she threw a line out of the window, and then used that to rappel down the side, her breath thick on the early morning air and her heartbeat a possessed thing in her chest.

She made her way down the mountain in the pre-morning blackness, only stopping in the hamlet to procure a jeep to make use of the snowy roads. Those who lived in the town were no stranger to her face, and they handed her the keys without questioning. Talia didn't bother to hide her face, a part of her still simmering and all but daring Ra's to come after her this time.

She only had to catch up to Bane at Kathmandu – the nearest airport where the League had bought out multiple companies in order to provide quick and unquestioned transportation around the world. It was easy enough to find the flight schedule from the tower and figure out which of the small craft Bane would be taking, and even easier to steal aboard and wait in absolute silence, absolute stillness until the plane lifted off and started to eat through its journey.

She did not venture out from her spot in the shadows until Bane was well over Afghanistan, the warm tones of the country below a sea of fire in the light of the rising sun. Without saying a word, Talia plopped down in the copilot's seat, meeting Bane's cross eyes with an even stare of her own.

"What are you doing here?" he asked the obvious, his voice crackling on the edges as his mask caught his anger and struggled to spin it into sound.

"My father had not wished you to return," Talia shrugged, the shoulderplates of her armor making a synthetic noise as she did so. The words were not bitter on her tongue – they simply were, and they no longer held any weight as she locked them away with the cold flame at the core of her, resigned as to the path ahead. "I am here to see that you return, safe and sound."

There was a furrowed line in Bane's brow. She could see the debate as it warred in his eyes. But he had gone too far to take her back, and she challenged him to do so with her eyes. She would only find her way to follow him again, and know more danger when following his shadow rather than stepping with him side by side. She thrust her chin out, set her jaw, and let him read her all without speaking a word.

"I do not need your protection, little one," his voice was resigned, but she still saw the fight in his eyes. She could imagine the stern line of his mouth, the ruined muscle in his jaw that would be twitching beneath his mask.

"Undoubtedly," Talia agreed, "but you would be lost without it, all the same."

"Indeed," Bane drawled dryly.

"Now," she said, spreading out the navigational maps that she had stolen from her father before leaving. "Let us discuss the course you are currently on, and how it can be improved."

.

.

They landed at the Kleyate airport in the afternoon. After that they drove as far as they could, before abandoning the vehicle to hike the rest of the way to their target, coming from the south of Darrk's base, where the river was rapid and violent in its course, its twists and turns frothing with white water as it lashed against the stone barriers of its cradle. It spun and wound through its path, and Talia and Bane picked their way north, following against the current, keeping to the strong crease where the canyon walls met the river floor. Beyond them there was a thundering noise from one of the tall gorges that made up the cliff face. The river tumbled down the rock there – making for one truly massive, narrow fall, made unique for the series of natural stone bridges that criss and crossed before the fall. In the cliff face, near the top, and then stretching on for leagues in every direction, there were a series of caverns and tunnels, where Ebeneezer had holed his men. The catacombs held natural entrances at the top of the cliffs – further to the north, and then again at the east, where Darrk and his men moved supplies and men through natural openings in the caves.

Talia and Bane instead stood staring up at the indomitable waterfall. There were two guards visible – and another half dozen not so visible, she would guess. There was one guard on the first natural bridge, about a hundred meters up, and the second was on the second bridge, another twenty meters above that. The security here was thin, where the brunt of Darrk's men would be patrolling the more easily accessible entrances in the caves. There were few who knew of Darrk's location who would consider coming up from the fall – even amongst her father's men, who would rather take their chances with stealth and brute force, rather than climbing against nature and her might.

But Talia had never been one to turn down a challenge, and really, it had been too long since she had such a climb.

"If you recall, little one, it was you and not I who managed to scale the walls of the Pit at long last," Bane reminded her amicably as they stood at the base of the gorge, looking up.

Talia felt her lips stretch as she saw a shadowed line of rock that ran beneath the waterfall – where the spray and the angry foam would keep them from the eyes of the guards until they wished to become seen. "You are welcome to go in through the other ways," she returned just as conversationally, "It may do you good to go through Darrk's men that way. Stress therapy, wouldn't it be?"

Bane's laughter was a rumbling thing in his throat. It hissed unnaturally through his mask. "And leave your shadow unguarded? I think not."

"Then we climb," Talia nodded her head sharply as she turned and attacked the stone wall. The natural footholds were enough for her to hoist herself up nimbly, one careful move at a time. The rock was slippery from the fall, and moss and lichen grew in slick handfuls where the rock had been made fertile through the mist of the pouring water. Talia felt her heart hammer as the water caressed the open parts of her skin – the back of her neck and the rise of her cheeks. Her braid was a sodden rope over her shoulder the higher and higher they rose, but she did not falter and Bane did not fall, and slowly but surely they made their way to the top.

Once they were level with the first bridge, Talia swung herself over from the wall next to the fall, and perched carefully on the crease where the bridge met the stone wall of the gorge. She braced herself there, trying not to look down at the chasm below them, where the water from on high was rushing to meet its end and resting place in the blue pool so far below them. For now, more dangerous than a fall and their climb, there were armored men who patrolled the bridges right beyond them, and it was that which held her attention and nothing else.

There was one man on the bridge before them, another at the one right above them. If she moved quickly, she could dispose of the man on the lower bridge before the one above knew he was gone.

So she breathed in deep, expanding her lungs and feeling as her ribs moved with the breath she held. And then, she counted.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

When she hoisted herself up onto the bridge, the guard's back was turned. He had just made it to her end of the bridge and was now turning back to prowl to the other side. Talia turned off any feeling within her, and reached out, kicking at the tender flesh at the back of the man's knees, before holding out a arm to catch him when he fell, hitting the pressure points in the crook of his elbow to make him drop his riffle, before moving higher to find the tender spots in his neck, a mercy as she jabbed in hard and let his body fall off the side of the bridge and down into the white cauldron of foam below.

Her heartbeat was slow as she looked up to the bridge above them, staying carefully in the shadow created where the bridge crossed their own. When Bane stepped silently up behind her, she tossed the riffle she had taken from the guard, and he caught it easily, looping it around his back with the rest of his arsenal. Shaking her head, Talia looked up, knowing that they would only have so long before the guard above realized his comrade was gone.

So from her belt she loosed a thin black line with a hook at the end. With a hiss, the grappling hook released soundlessly before shooting up into the rocky underside of the bridge above them. When she saw that Bane had set his line as well, she waved a hand, and they both rose towards the bridge. The underside was wet with moss and hanging lichen, but the thick vines and draping fungus made for more handholds as they swung themselves over, and then up, again.

The guard was facing Talia when she landed in a crouch on the bridge before him. She smiled sharply at his stunned expression – recognizing him as one of her father's former men, and said, "He is behind you," in a stage whisper, as if sharing a secret. His eyes widened at her words, and he instantly spun about, knowing that the beast was never far from the beauty, and -

He met the same fate as his predecessor, and Talia clucked her tongue in disapproval. "My father would have had him killed for incompetence sooner or later, anyway," she remarked idly to the air.

"And them?" Bane asked, nodding his head to where the cavern walls widened to reveal the tunnel entrance to the base. There was already shouting and the rounding of men, and a bullet landed in the stone wall not far from her head.

"Slow response time," Talia concluded, and then drew her dual pistols from where they had been holstered at her sides, "Utterly abysmal."

It was a mean firefight from a long distance, but she and Bane were able to make it to the lip of the tunnel, where Bane was finally close enough to fight with his fists, and then – ex members of the League or not – the fight did not last long as his fists struck and his blows met flesh, bowling through the ranks of Darrk's men like a force of nature as Talia picked daintily around the bodies, searching in the stone walls for the in she sought . . .

"There are more men coming," Bane said tersely to the air when he saw her still searching. "And I cannot hold every man in this base forever.

"You will not have to," Talia whispered, finding the weak spot in the wall by a bronze torch holder. She reached up and pulled, and the stone wall slipped away to reveal a secret passage – one of the secrets of the base that Ra's' scouts had found, which they had planned to exploit with a full team. But now, the secret ways through the rock would be the thing that made it possible for them to just maybe come out alive at the end. Only Darrk and his most trusted officers knew of these paths, but if his men were ordered to search the secret ways . . .

Well, they would just have to move quickly.

And so they moved. The ways were built by ancient kings and warlords, and so every few steps there were windows into the base beyond them – sometimes holes just large enough for the eyes to peer through, and sometimes whole frames which appeared to be framed paintings to the outside world which were really a double sided looking glass, letting them peer through while none could peer in. And noise traveled through the stone to reach their ears – Darrk's men were rallying, they were searching, tearing the base apart with a cold efficiency as they looked for the intruders and found them not. Talia felt her heart twist about in warning as she realized just how steep Darrk's numbers were. He had been recruiting since leaving the League, she concluded, which they had long since theorized about, but now knew for certain.

They had a small window of opportunity, she and Bane, and if not . . .

But such a thought had no place in battle, and so, she pushed it away. Forcing her mind to look in on the scene with a cold detachment, as if she were looking at figures on a chessboard, and not men of flesh and bone, with fire in their hands . . .

By the time they made it to the center of Darrk's stronghold, they had found Darrk himself – barricaded in what she assumed to be his council room, evident by the round table in the middle of the room and the charts and maps that littered the table and walls. This was the center of the spider's web, and at luck they were, with all of the doors leading into the room being barred and guarded from without, but utterly unprotected within.

They would only have this chance once.

Darrk was flanked by four guards, but four guards only. His weakness was his arrogance, Ra's had said when they were planning that first attack, outside of Tartus. And his arrogance would be his downfall now.

The backs of Darrk and his guards were turned to the secret entrance to the tunnels. It gave them not even a fraction of a second of advantage, but that fraction of a second was enough for Bane to get to work on the guards while Talia fired her first shot at the computerized mechanism of the door, sufficiently jamming it to Darrk's men beyond. When she turned, she expected the guards to turn towards her as well, but all four of them were busy keeping Bane at bay, the fight lasting longer than it had against the general troops at the entrance to the base. These men were League trained, backed with the belief of the righteousness of their cause, and they would not fall as easily as their brethren. But, fall they would, as all did before Bane and his strength. It was only a matter of time.

So Talia stepped forward to meet Ebeneezer Darrk and his first blow, catching his fist with her own and slipping under his arm to strike at his chest. The man was quick, though, nearly as quick as she, and he sidestepped her. He was a calm fighter, with a cool and collected fire, and once, he had been Ra's most valuable asset, given the missions that even the Seven were deemed not fit for. He had a broad, caramel colored face, and dark hair just streaked with grey at the temples, with warm colored eyes that now cooled in his face, taking her in with a detached interest as he returned her blows as if mocking her, playing with her as she switched techniques and styles on him in order to find something that would take him from his feet.

She merely needed to hold on against him, until Bane finished with the other four . . .

And she could tell the exact moment when Darrk stopped toying with her. He moved faster than her, his blows taking on a ferocity that made its ways past her defenses and her jabs in return. Talia had been trained and molded as far as her nature would allow, but the fact of the matter was that there were many out there still physically stronger than her, and Darrk was stronger than most, a battering ram with a single minded focus and determination, and an exact knowledge of the human body garnered from years and years of experience . . .

She knew she was in trouble when Darrk found that first pressure point on her body, and then that second and the third, dropping her to her knees as her legs buckled uselessly on her, her arms following suit as paralysis overtook her. He did not kill her, not yet, and a thread of awareness lit inside of her as just beyond her and Darrk, Bane stepped up his own attack. Dropping the second man. Then the third, and the fourth almost still . . .

Very few things caused Bane to lose control like her in danger, and as Talia felt her body betray her, her limbs turn weak and turn in on themselves, she had a very real fear as Bane turned incensed against the guards he was facing – his blows turned Herculean, his form turned chaotic and unpredictable, and she tried to get her mouth to work and stop him, to tell him that she was fine, that all was well, he only needed to stay focused.

For Darrk had a syringe in his hand as he stepped away from her, and she remembered how closely the Doctor had worked with Cain on more than one occasion as his taste for biological warfare and genetic manipulation had come to surface – for the betterment of the League at the time, but now -

"Bane!" she finally forced her mouth to shape the word in a scream, every muscle in her body straining with the effort, fighting against the paralysis' effects as she tried to warn him.

And Bane turned, following the sound of her voice and the ferocity within it. The four men he faced were dead, broken things on the ground, but Darrk was very much alive, and it took only him dodging a mighty blow once and then twice before the needle found purchase in her friend's neck, and . . .

Instantly, whatever was in the syringe was fast working. And she watched in horror as her friend's great form buckled, as he fell forward to kneel upon the ground, his breath wheezing from his mask as he lifted a shaking hand up to his mask, as if the venom within had started to pain him. Immediately, she had a sick feeling in her stomach as she theorized over just what exactly Darrk had dosed her friend with.

And, of course, she thought numbly, there was a reason that Doctor Darrk was such a formidable foe for the League to take an interest in his downfall. Of course, there was a reason that Doctor Darrk was chosen to be Bane's downfall in particular. There was a reason that one, even mighty as he, would not have returned from his keep alive.

Finally, Darrk turned from him to face her from where he had been watching Bane's pain with a detached sort of apathy. He wiped his hands down the front of his uniform, as if they had been sullied by his deed. Talia looked on him with a fire in her eyes that would have consumed if it had been tangible enough to touch. She drew her lips back in a grimace as Darrk tilted his head, regarding her curiously, an unkind smile at his lips. "Did you really think that your father had no contingency plan when it came to your masked friend here?" Darrk finally said. "Cain is mad, but he is unparalleled in his field, and in the end, it was as simple for him to create a reversal for the venom as it was for him to create the venom itself. One does not create a monster of Victor Frankenstein's proportions without knowing just where to press to lay the monster down again."

Of course. Talia processed the information numbly, such a rage in the core of her as the cold flame there burned. She felt fury and . . . betrayal lick at her veins, and at the latter she reeled sickly, even though she knew that she should have not been surprised. She should have expected as much herself, but . . . she had not. She felt helpless in that moment, watching her friend as his body betrayed him, as white foam leaked from the corners of his mask, and the tubes on his face buckled and bulged in unnatural shapes from the distortion of the drug within. Bane was breathing heavily, near hyperventilating as he tried to get control enough over his body and his pain to finish what he had started. But it was no use, underneath everything he was still just a man – mortal boned and blooded, and he could not fight his body's betrayal.

"Why are you doing this?" finally, Talia was able to move her mouth enough to speak. Slowly, very slowly, she could feel as sensation returned to the furthest parts of her limbs. She would be able to move soon, but not if Darrk capitalized on his window of opportunity and did away with them both.

But he was a fanatic, with a fanatic's gleam in his eye, and they over all else, relished in the urge to talk, to explain and commend themselves over their motives and their perfect plans.

"My father loved you once," Talia continued, trying to spark a reaction, trying to inflame an answer. "You were one of his foremost followers – his first student, his brother in all but blood. I do not understand what caused such a breach."

And Darrk snorted. "Your father is a weak man, and he has grown even weaker still in his affection over the past few years. The shadows allow no room for fondness, no room for familial emotion. I was there, in those months after your mother's sacrifice. He was a broken man, but the shadows picked him up and put him back together again – as they have for us all. And with that new found strength, an empire was born, a legacy, something as beautiful as Babel as it was raised towards the heavens. Long has the League fought against the dark points of humanity – and always has there been a Ra's al-Ghul, but Henri Ducard is the fiercest Demonhead since the first Ra's saw to it that Rome itself was felled, and Constantinople after it. Since the eleventh head saw that Napoleon was stopped, that Hitler was halted in his tracks. He took on that mantle, that legacy . . . and then forgot the very path he had set his feet on."

And then, and only then did Talia realize his error. Darrk was angry with her father and the League, but his motives were more than just a difference of philosophy. They were personal. He blamed her for her father's seeming weakness. That had been the reason Ra's had wanted her as far away from Darrk as possible, thus felling two birds with one stone when sending Bane to do the deed and ending the thorn in the League's side before it became something lethal.

But she only had to keep him talking. Already she could feel as sensation returned to her limbs. She would be able to move soon, but only if she stalled.

"Long has the League been a check to mankind when it has grown past what it should be allowed to do so. We are planning our most epic assault yet, one which we failed on years ago, but which we will not fail upon a second attempt . . . but your father . . . his caring for you blinds him, it hampers his vision. We were to be the surgeons, removing the tumor from the collective body of humanity before it became cancerous. Would Ra's see us dead in the end for such a perceived betrayal? Perhaps. But, once you were out of the way he would recover, he would move on, and he would lead the League as he was meant to – without hampering, without bias, and with a cold and collected mind."

At that, Talia laughed coldly. "Have you met my father? Nothing he does is steeped in fondness, or favoritism. Your fears have sadly fallen far from their mark."

And Darrk shook his head. "Then tell me why, why does that beast of a man still live," he flung his hand at Bane, as if swatting at a fly. "And not only does such a man still live, but he is allowed to carry on the holy business of the League, he is allowed to carry out its secrets and deeds, when he has not of belief of us or our cause. Ra's should have killed him years ago, and yet he did not – because of his affection for you. It is a weakness," and the word was spat. "A weakness which the Demonhead can afford not to have of."

Darrk stepped forward menacingly, and Talia tested the muscles in her arms, in her legs, and felt them sluggish to her response. Her heart hammered, and she willed to herself calm as Darrk turned from her in order to step towards Bane. He leaned over to take one of the long blades that had done no good in the hands of his men, resting silent and cold next to its wielder's corpse, and Talia felt the cold flame within her spike in warning in regards to his intention.

"And so, Ra's will dub me a traitor, and a villain, but I will do what he himself is not strong enough to do. And the shadows will rise again."

Another step towards Bane, another and another.

And Talia summoned control over her own body. She willed it to move, to fight, to act, to climb. . . Her limbs were sluggish in response to her commands, but even still she forced herself to reach over to where her pistol from earlier had fallen in the fight. Her fingers curled over the cold hilt. She aimed . . .

And she aimed true.

She missed the image of Darrk's body hitting the ground. Instead she heard it, a low thunder in counterpoint to the men right beyond them trying to make their way through the barricaded door. Instead, she was already on her feet, willing feeling to return to her limbs as she hastened to where Bane was lying. He was unconscious, she was both relieved and dismayed to see – she felt relief that he was not in conscience pain, but dismay at the thought of the path before them and how they were not out of this by a long shot yet . . .

There was a white film left on the tubes of his mask from where the foreign compound had bubbled over, and his eyes were glassy and far away when she checked them for a response. His pulse was slow and sluggish and his skin was clammy to the touch, but whatever Darrk had dosed him with had yet to kill him . . . For small mercies, Talia counted her blessings as she looked around her, looking for anything that would help her carry her friend . . .

Instantly spotting a makeshift solution, Talia went over to the thick tapestries that lined the wall, giving the cavern stone the appearance of normalcy. Bane was too heavy for her to move without aid, but she was not without resources, and she would not leave him behind, even when her skin itched and crawled with the need to get away, away from the blood staining the floor and away the weight of their task and the failure it was supposed to bring. She clenched her jaw, feeling her teeth too thin in her mouth before she drew her lips back, glowering at the russet tones of the tapestry in her hands.

As quickly as she could, half an ear turned to the goings on right beyond the room, she stretched the tapestry out on the floor, and with a huff she rolled Bane onto the cloth. "I must commend Ubu on his cooking the next time we meet," she said between her teeth, the black humor soothing the too quick thing that was swimming in her veins. "He is more accomplished than we would normally acuse him of being."

When he was settled, she balled the two corners of the tapestry in her hand and made a fist, and started the task of dragging Bane back through the tunnels. She was able to shut the mechanism of the secret way behind the painting just in time for Darrk's men to burst through the barricaded door in a flare of flame and black smoke.

A heartbeat, and she heard the cry go up – Darrk was dead.

"They will want blood now," she said to the shadows and the walls, her heart skipping.

She dragged Bane with a new haste in her stride, but her progress was slow due to the bulk of her friend and the rockiness of the terrain that she tried to travel. The secret ways seemed even longer on the way back than they had on the way in, when every step had seemed like it would bring the whole of Darrk's hive of men on them.

Talia bit her teeth, and clenched her fingers tighter over the tapestry as she dragged her friend on. Her fingers ached and the skin on her palms was raw, but it was a small price to pay. The muscles in her arms burned, but she did not stop, she could not stop . . .

When they finally made it to the rocky outcropping that led to the bridge – the lowest of the natural walkways, thankfully a pier lower than the one they had made their way in on, Talia felt her heart sink as she looked down, all the way down to the cauldron below. In her head, she had thought that there was less of a drop between the bridge and the pool beneath. There was no way she could carry Bane down that climb. Even if her friend was as slight as she, it would be impossible. And a jump was out of the question – they were very nearly a hundred meters in the air . . .

There was no chance of her surviving the fall, she thought numbly. From such heights, it was not the fall itself to worry about, but rather the likelihood of broken bones or concussions from the impact against the water – drowning killed more than the fall itself, and Talia bit her lip as she did the math and found the numbers to be ill to her liking. They would hit the water at such a speed . . . and that was before they had to deal with the currents and the violent undertow of the cascading water – which fell from more than another hundred meters above their heads before it passed the lower most bridge . . .

There was such a small likelihood that she would survive the fall, but Bane . . .

Suddenly, gunfire started to rain down on her from above, cutting into her thoughts. Incensed and cornered, she curled her lips back into a snarl as she glared up at Darrk's men from where they had taken up a point on the bridge above them. Instinctively, Talia shielded her head with her hand, and curved tighter into the outcroppings that hid her. Death only awaited them with Darrk's men . . . and that was an assured possibility. There were no numbers to consider there, no maybe or what if to weigh - for the human mind was easier to predict than nature and her ways. It was harder to know how much the human body could bend, how much it could bend before it was to break . . .

A bullet hit too close, and the rock next to her splintered, throwing shrapnel of stones at her eyes. She blinked, and steeled herself, her decision creeping upon her.

The possibilities of her survival were slim. But her friend . . . the venom had strengthened his bones, and turned to iron his skin. There was a chance that he could live, even greater than slim possibility that she could. For him, it was not the height of the fall that she was worried about, but rather how the water would effect his mask, already twisting uselessly from his face as his breath came in pained gasps, sickly and drawn deep from his throat.

And the sound tore at something deep inside of her – deeper than fear and logic and the instinct to preserve her own life. There was only him, and how he had given his all from the Pit until now. This was not a fight he could wage for her, but she could let him fall, and trust him to land safe, even where she would not . . .

In the end, it was an easy decision to make.

She shifted Bane's weight in her arms, and his head fell uselessly to rest against her shoulder. He moved as if he had no bones, and Talia felt her heart lurch sickly at the feeling of him as such in her arms.

"I could really use those wings right about now, my friend," Talia released the words from her tongue, hearing only them instead of the gunfire above her, the cascading water all around . . .

Over the lip of the walkway, the plummeting fall was all thunder and war, as if god himself held his hands over the earth and let water fall from between his palms to strike the earth below, fueled onward by the wind of his breath, the ferocity of his eyes. So Talia squared her shoulders, and looked up, and dared the water with its white hands to be the thing that would hold her down.

She dared it to keep her from rising.

And so, her decision made, she pulled Bane from their hiding place, counting between the rounds of the men up top and ignoring the calls that dared her to come any further than she already did.

Unflinchingly Talia stood, supporting Bane's weight with her own as the cascade thundered before them and the black clad men called . . .

And she stepped off of the ledge, not looking down at the water below, but rather the sky above, reigning mercilessly above them all . . .

Falling was a sick feeling, but she tried to ignore it the best she could as she held her body like a spear, trying to fall so that an injury would fall to her legs before her head, even though it mattered little either way . . . She held her arms around Bane, trying to keep him close, even though she knew that eventually the fall would make it impossible. Mere seconds passed, but they felt like minutes as the bridge above them became smaller and smaller, as the fierce fury of Darrk's men became nothing against the might of the thundering water and the cascading pressure of nature upon her shoulders . . .

A heartbeat passed, and Talia could have sworn that Bane's eyes flickered once, right before the angry water below swallowed them. She held her breath, the movement strangled on her lips with her fear and her resignation and she briefly had the sensation of strong arms holding her tight before the water slammed up to meet them, and then she knew no more.

.

.

She awakened to the feeling of strong arms pulling her from the current of the pool, curses in her ears and pain everywhere as her body protested her and her treatment of it.

Her eyes rolled sickly as she comprehended a pain in her side, fierce and pounding. Ribs, her mind deducted for her. She tried to move, just slightly, and felt tears prick at her eyes, but they did not fall. Ah, they were only bruised then. She shifted again, and winced. Well, perhaps one was broken, she amended. But she could move her fingers and her toes, and while every muscle felt sore on her, and her mind swirled drunkenly, nothing felt permanently damaged. She was hurt nothing past what could be repaired.

I am alive, the thought swam through her head, muddy as a slow current in a dry stream. I am alive, her thoughts curled in surprise, even as the very real pain in her side said that yes, indeed, she was, and -

Bane.

The thought snapped her eyes open, and she rolled from where she had been left on the shore of the pool, blinking through groggy eyes, hoping to see her friend, and instead seeing -

"Ubu?" she questioned, surprise turning her syllables. Her voice was thin in her mouth, her chest aching with the effort to speak. The skin on her cheeks was bruised and tacky with blood, she realized when her mouth moved. Still she forced herself to ask, "What are you doing here?"

The assassin smiled grimly in greeting. "You foolish, foolish child," he breathed once he saw that her eyes were open, but there was relief in his censure as he berated her instead of answering her question outright. "What were you thinking, taking such a leap as that?"

She winced as she tried to move into a sitting position. "I was thinking that it was the quickest way down from the top."

Ubu snorted, even as he helped her sit up. He muttered a curse in a language that she did not recognize before she crinkled her nose and asked, "What are you doing here? It was not - "

" - it is my life's work and solemn vow to protect the name of al-Ghul," he interrupted stonily, his dark eyes fierce. "Even when that protection must come from themselves."

And Talia let her head fall forward, as much out of gratitude as it was out of weariness. "I am grateful that you came," she said. "If you had not . . ." she would have drowned in that cauldron, and Bane would have been picked off by Darrk's men one way or the other.

Bane.

She stiffened again, looking around, an unreasonable panic filling her chest before she found the figure of her friend laying right next to her, bruised and worse for the wear, but still breathing. He still breathed, and that was all that mattered . . . they just needed to get away, back to their safehaven in the mountains, where they could rest and recuperate and live to fight another day.

Ubu saw the cast of her gaze. "Here," he said, slinging one of Bane's useless arms around his shoulders, and heaving in order to stand with the masked man's weight braced with his own. "I have a jeep close by. Can you stand for that long? I can't carry you both, but I can come back for you."

Could she? Her body screamed in pain, but it was not a question of if it could. It would. It would listen and obey, and she would walk of her own volition until they were in danger no more.

She hissed, but got to her feet, ignoring her pain as she looked up at the setting sun above them, the scarlet rays drawing her eye and settling the blood in her veins.

She exhaled, letting her pain leave her body alongside her fear. Only determination was left.

"I can walk," she said.

Ubu nodded, "Then we must move quickly."

It was one of the longest hikes of Talia's life as she all but jogged to keep up with the assassin's near run, who did not falter with Bane's weight added to his own, but instead became stronger with his purpose and his goal. The drive in the jeep was even longer as they went quickly to outrun Darrk's men, and Talia felt every bump and hitch in the road acutely as her side screamed in protest and the ache at her temples turned as pointed as a blade through skin.

More than her pain was her worry, and the sight of her friend, his head lolling uselessly from side to side and his breath wheezing sickly through his broken mask . . . Ubu saw the direction her gaze had taken, but he did not comment on neither that or the possessive way she kept her hands clenched over the masked man's during their journey. He merely said that he had medical supplies on the plane, and Bane only had to survive that long . . .

So Talia bit her lip, and waited.

It felt like separating her hand from her fingers in order to leave Bane's side when they finally reached the Kleyate airport, but she did so long enough to help Ubu with readying for the flight and the checkout procedures. While Ubu busied himself with the take off, Talia stayed in the cargo hold with Bane, her fingers shaking as she did the morphine drip and the IV line easily enough, the basic field medicine that all in the League learned paying off in a grand way as she settled her friend in and saw that he was comfortable. From her rudimentary check, nothing appeared to be seriously damaged from the fall, but what she was more worried about was internal, and for that she could do nothing until they made it home . . .

When her work was done, she hesitated with her hands poised over Bane's mask. The tubes over his mouth and nose were warped and bent, bloated and misaligned from their attachments. This mask would be beyond repair, and the power of the drug in his system had even worn the paint away in some places, she noticed with a grimace.

He would be more comfortable without the mask, she reasoned as her fingers moved. It was just a dead weight on his face now, doing nothing where the morphine in his veins would be doing all to keep his pain at bay. It was not a violation of his privacy but rather a mercy, something a friend would do for a friend, she reasoned as she loosened the stays on his face, and gently pulled . . .

There was no time for her to stare, no time for her to map out scars and ruined things as Bane's eyes fluttered, trying to open sluggishly. And she realized with a start that where the drip was doing its duty in numbing the pain, and as pain receded consciousness came, and with it alarming changes. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, and his eyelashes fluttered, as if the weight of staying open was too much to bear. His head rolled on his neck, as if his spine was not strong enough to hold the weight of him. Talia ignored the pain in her ribs and the pounding at her temples – all which were superseded by the cold flame at the core of her, burning like a small sun as she leaned over him, trying to catch awareness in his eyes as she smiled weakly, hoping to pass her strength on to him – he, who was normally so strong – through her touch and her will alone.

It was a long flight back to the mountains, and yet she did not leave Bane's side to see to herself. Instead she tried to make Bane as comfortable as she could during the time she had. She wiped his forehead for him when his cold sweats came, and she talked to him the entire time, mumbled nonsense about anything and everything that she had no idea if he even heard as he swam in an out of delirium.

When they finally landed in Kathmandu, there was a medical team there to meet them – Cain included in their ranks, and Talia was shooed aside as the healers started on their work during the return trip up the mountain.

Along with the healers, Ra's was there to meet them, as Talia would have expected.

He delivered a withering look at Ubu, which the assassin returned with a deep bow and a respectful tilt of his head. But he did not apologize, and Ra's did not favor him with another look as Talia came up behind him, exhausted and cradling her bad hand about her aching side. Her hair had dried in thick ropes in front of her face, and her armor was caked with mire and the scent of dried riverwater.

"You deliberately disobeyed me," Ra's started before giving any other greeting, his voice striking, allowing no room for her to argue.

And still, her eyes flashed. "I disobeyed," Talia did not disagree with his words. "I disobeyed you, without any coercion and aid, against Bane's wishes as well." Immediately she threw that thought out into the open, determining to take her father's wrath upon her shoulders – upon her shoulders and her alone.

"He should have returned the moment he knew you had stowed away," Ra's countered, for he did believe that much possible of her. He didn't bother to argue that.

"To do so would jeopardize the mission," Talia returned calmly, "We were halfway across Afghanistan when I revealed myself, and he knew as well as I that the situation with Darrk required speed and a decisive response." I would have found my way regardless went unspoken between them as she tilted her chin up and challenged with everything in her.

And Ra's narrowed his eyes. He met her, matched her even, and so Talia looked up with the mountain in her spine and the sky above in her eyes and dared him to condemn the course she had chosen.

Finally, Ra's stepped back, a sigh released from his mouth, drawn from the deep parts of him. "You are too attached," he hissed, speaking under his breath but knowing she would hear him nonetheless. "You care too much, and it clouds your judgement."

Talia did not budge. Her nails bit into the fabric of her tunic from where she had crossed her arms. "He is my friend," she countered. "I owe him my life."

"Just a friend?" Ra's snort was derisive, filled with ire. "Any debt you owed him has long since been repaid, and it is foolishness to carry on this way for any longer. To do so would be detrimental to you, and, eventually, to him."

He met her gaze, icy eyes striking as if they were flung stones. Talia held his stare, knowing that her eyes were she same color, the same shape, and when she wished too they could hold the same weight. He was not immovable before her.

"I believe that I have broken a rib," she finally said as stiffly as she could, no inflection in her voice for the better or the worse. "So I would ride back with the medics, if you have no further need of me."

Still holding her gaze, Ra's stepped aside. "You are free to go."

Without altering her course, she continued to walk straight on, refusing to let her father see how his words had affected her.

"But it would be best of you to consider my words," even still, Ra's' voice rang out after her, "and consider where your loyalties lie."

.

.

After returning to the monastery, she had to wait the better part of two hours before Cain had finished enough with Bane in order to tend to her. While there were other healers who could have looked her over, she disliked allowing anyone that close to her unless she absolutely had to. And Cain she trusted more than most for his diligence in his care of Bane throughout the years, even if that diligence had nothing to do with Hippocratic empathy and everything to do with the fleshly part of sciences – the knowledge of the human body and its flaws and strong points.

In the end, Cain informed her that only one of her ribs was broken, but three more of them were bruised. The faint pain she had had when she moved her wrist revealed that it was sprained, a pain that had only became apparent to her once the adrenaline of the day and its events, and her fierce emotions that had flared as a result, had faded away. Her ribs she could do nothing but for to ice the bruised flesh and give it time. Pain suppressors were rarely given in the League, unless it was of the utmost importance to the body's recovery, and so Talia breathed in with her discomfort and breathed out, trying to inhale deeply enough to make sure her lungs and the tissue therein was not strained by the weakening of her rib cage. Cain wished for her to stay in the healer's wing of the monastery overnight to watch for concussed symptoms, and so Talia stayed on her thin pallet until the night fell beyond the high windows, fiddling with the bandages on her wrist and feeling where her face felt too thick, the skin on her cheeks broken and bruised from her collision with the water.

Time passed, but still she could not sleep, even with every part of her body was screaming for rest. She closed her eyes, but all she saw was the white static of the water falling around her. She still felt the unimaginable weight of it upon her shoulders, forcing her down where she tried to breathe past the weight on her chest and the foam filling her nose and her lungs . . . and then she remembered strong arms holding her close, protecting her through instinct alone when his own pain was overwhelming and the roar of the cascade was like the heart of a storm all around them, and -

Talia could no longer sit still. She needed to move.

She rose from her bed, looking around to make sure that the healers had all retired for the night. This part of the wing was reserved for Ra's and those closest to him, and the rooms here were private where the general men of the League would have been treated in the open parts of the wing, where the beds were lined up in groups and neat rows, one man being treated right along side the other. She was thankful for that privacy as she rose, tightening the sash around her sleeping tunic, and picking at her leggings almost self consciously as she bit her lip and slipped into the hall beyond.

The first corridor was empty, and the candles in their holders had been extinguished for the night. It was dark around them, but the ins and outs of the monastery were those she knew as well as she knew the bones in her hand, and she picked easily through the dark ways, stepping around the creaking places in the floorboards and those thin, as silent as a shadow flickering on the wall.

And, as she walked, she was not alone in her thoughts. Her father's words from earlier haunted her as if they were spoken into her ear, as if Ra's even now stood by her side.

Just a friend, Ra's voice whispered through her head as she turned a corner slowly, peering for others and making sure that she was indeed alone.

Just a friend.

And at the echo of his voice, she held her wrist around her bruised ribs, as if to protect them, the cold flame at the core of her flickering, banking on the odd sort of warmth she could feel fill her bones, stronger than her pain and her discomfort and her prior inability to understand. . .

You must consider where your loyalties lie, Ra's had said.

She breathed in deep, and felt her chest ache with the movement, her bruised ribs protesting the movement. She exhaled.

Just a friend . . .

There had been so much derision her father's voice when he had said as such, as if he had come to an understanding on a truth that Talia had long since found beyond her grasp. She bit her lip, and she remembered how the water had thundered around them and as strong arms held her close and every thought in her mind determined and defiant and I can't let him die.

She couldn't.

Just a friend, Ra's sneered in her mind, ever on the wings of her thoughts. Just a friend . . .

Or more than that?

It was the ultimate question in her mind, one that had the cold flame inside of her banking, flickering as if in question.

Carefully, she considered her father's words, holding them up before the light as if to examine them and lend their weight for the better or the worse in her hands. She did care for him, the understanding swirled in her mind, like a wave before it broke upon the shore. She cared for him very much, that, at any rate, had never been a secret to anyone to anyone who knew them or know of them. Theirs was a relationship of the closest knit, and she had always loved him, as her friend, as her benefactor and confident and closest companion . . . and her savior.

But did she care about him in the way her father had implied? Did she care for him as a woman cared for a man?

At merely the question, she felt a warm flare of feeling, deep inside of her. It was stronger than the pain in her ribs, stronger than the cold flame at the core of her . . . It was warm and effervescent as she thought about the months of awkwardness and hurt feelings between them. She thought of the wrongness of Asad's touch, and how sick she had felt after that deed . . . and then she thought about the fascination she had felt in Kabul, when the urchin had started this long train of events . . . She remembered the disquiet in Bane's eyes, and his distancing himself from her just after, as if she were something to guard against, as if she were something that would burn him.

At the thought, her jaw squared, as if accepting a challenge. She thought about a lover's bond, the type of closeness that had prompted Melisande to commit herself to the Pits so long ago . . . she thought about the severance of such a bond, how such a thing had been the catalyst to turn Henri Ducard, a hard and righteous man, to Ra's al-Ghul, the demon's head himself, as cold as the mountain upon which they now stood and just as indomitable. She thought about herself, were she ever to lose Bane, and she felt . . .

She couldn't breathe for a moment. It was the night before all over again, when terror had cloaked her bones and she had pleaded for Bane not to go. A part of her would die if he were to pass from her side, and she knew that the severance would be one she would not be able to bear. They were entwined in fate's web, he or she, for better or for worse, and -

. . . would she ever be able to know that closeness with anyone else? The League of Shadows was not a place where one considered families and their bonds. They did not think of spouses or children, only how justice could be served through the Demonhead's commands, and one would not weave a family into that tapestry when one was prepared to die at any moment. Talia had never expected to be a wife, to be a mother . . . but she had an empty space inside of her that latched on and latched on hard to the kindred soul underneath Bane's skin. He had been the one who had thrived in the darkness with her, and . . . she could not imagine sharing that bond with anyone else. Even if Bane would not return her affections as she now understood she felt them, she would never be able to share that closeness with any other . . . She never wished to, she realized next, the truth in her heart a staggering thing that built in her throat and expanded . . .

She exhaled.

Her feelings were a warm tempest in the cauldron of her soul at that moment. She felt light, weightless almost, as if her contentment and her peace should have been something that spilled through her skin and shone through her pores. She felt powerful in that moment, content in her skin and sure of her stride as she selected her course and committed herself to walking upon it. Her voice hummed in her throat, as if she wished to scream and laugh out her understanding, even as she picked her way to Bane's empty portion to the wing in silence, only the shadows shifting in response to her step, as if to welcome her presence, as if to bow of one of their own, from their own . . .

Bane was sleeping when she finally slipped through the doorway of his room. It was such an oddity for her to see that she stopped and stood at the foot of his bed for a moment before proceeding. Even though she had shared his side many a time at night, he had always seemed to sense when she was awake, for his eyes seemed to open and awareness creep upon him whenever she was near. It was hard for her to remember a moment where he had truly slept and she watched and guarded, and so she stopped trying to search for an old memory in favor of carving one new. She paused to watch him for a moment, feeling her heart settle at the strong rise and fall of his, taking in the soft line of his brows, relaxed as they were, and the smooth shape of his forehead, the round curve of his cheek as it met his mouth . . .

And that was when she realized that he did not wear his mask.

Talia held her breath inside her mouth as she crept closer, her eyes flickering to the IV drip that kept him sedated and numb before softening in understanding. Her steps were cautious as she came near, as if she were a pilgrim at Mecca's shrine, near certain that her touch would stain something so holy . . . even when that something had hands stained as red as hers, with a face ravaged by the black parts of humanity and its deeds . . . She had not seen his face in years, not since that day she had risen with him from the Pit and the days thereafter when his mask was just being constructed for the first. She had thought that she had memory enough to recall since then, but this . . .

There had been no time to study his face when he had been unmasked on the plane before her, no time to observe and reflect during the journey back to the mountains. How could she of, with the pain in her side and the adrenaline thick in her veins and her mind swimming with black thoughts and black outcomes? It had been all she could think of, and only hours later, Talia looked back on herself before this day and wondered how she had been that same girl, with such a surety in her step, and a purpose in her mind now . . .

Biting her lip, she reached out to touch, to trace with her fingers what she saw with her eyes, but she found that she could not make her fingers connect with his skin, as if any whisper of a touch would have been a grievous theft without his eyes open and aware upon hers. Instead her touch ghosted in the breath of space above his mouth, over the scars that made up his chin and what remained of his nose . . . She sickened to see how torn the cartilage of his face was, how his nose simply did not exist in some places, and how the bone of his chin was peeking through the layers of skin and scar tissue, tiny blue veins pulsing through the surface of the entire catastrophe like a road map, saying this was where he had been struck, this was how he had suffered. The skin was still red and raw, the wounds still tender as if they had been inflicted days ago rather than years, and she felt such an ache in her heart, such a sick sort of regret at the sight of them that she felt her eyes burn as tears built in their dry ducts, summoned from the sudden surge of emotion she felt, deep inside of her . . .

"I am sorry, my friend," she finally whispered the words she had held inside of her for so many years. Her fingers rested in the air above the mangled shape of his lips, wanting to touch, but unsure of her right. "This is all my fault," the words continued to pour from her, unable to cease once she had finally forced them from thought to sound. "And if it were not for me . . ."

He would never be here, she thought numbly. He would still have a face, his eyes would not have changed color, his body would not have warped so to bear the weight of his wounds . . . He would still be safe and sound and . . .

Trapped, she finally conceded.

He would still be a man of the Pit, lost to the horror of the sands and the greater enemy time that reigned cruelly above them all. He would not have risen, had he not born through hell as he did. He would not have felt snow against his skin, or breathed in tropical air once again. He would have known nothing but for the Pit and its horrors until he succumbed to the weakness of his own body or the constant power struggle of the other prisoners. Her mind struggled with the cost of his freedom and the price he had paid. And all for her . . .

She bowed her head, resting her chin against her chest and closing her eyes. She felt heavy in that moment, her new found feelings – the strength of her regard and her understanding of it - making the knowledge of his pain strike twice as fierce as her own . . . She shared his pain now, even more than she had then, and she could not . . .

She sat down carefully next to him, trying to not let her additional weight disturb his rest as she let her hand fall away from his face, such a weariness in her bones as he . . .

. . . as he gently reached out to cover her hand with his own, catching her. When she lifted her head, his eyes were open and aware upon hers, glinting oddly in the darkness around them. His grip on her wrist was soft, but tension curved in the shape of his fingers. She could feel its beat in his pulse.

"How can you look upon me with such a softness in your eyes?" he finally asked. His words were whispered, drawn from the back of his throat, and at the sound of them, Talia tilted her head, just slightly, as if to hear him better. His voice was deeper, rougher than it had been all of those years ago in the Pit, but it was not the breathy baritone that the mask provided to the world. This was different, and yet . . . the same. It was still him, still Bane, still . . .

"These scars were inflicted in my name," Talia felt the words falling from her mouth before fully comprehending them in her mind. "They were borne in my honor, for my freedom. You paid a ransom that should never have been yours to pay, and in doing so you branded yourself as mine and mine alone. How can I ever look upon you and know horror?"

She could actually see the line of his mouth at it turned up at the corner, just barely, and her eyes drank in hungrily of the sight, finally able to see all of him before her. Just as quickly, his mouth settled into a grim line, and Talia felt her skin itch at the emotion as it was tucked from her. She felt slighted, though she knew not why, and she fisted her hand as if to resist the urge to reach out and touch him, to find with her fingers what she could not discern with her eyes.

"Talia," he finally sighed, releasing her wrist, even though her hand lingered, just a hairbreadth away from skin. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to make sure that you were okay," she said, a vast understatement for the turmoil in her soul, but the statement accurate enough. "I worried for you."

"You need not," Bane said dismissively. "I have borne worse than this."

For me, Talia felt with a pang, but tried to school her expression so that she showed naught of her thoughts on her face. Instead she turned again to drink in the shape of his scars with her eyes. "And these, do they pain you? I know the drip is not as effective as the venom of your mask, but I do not know . . . " she curbed her words, at a loss for how to proceed.

"They are merely numb right now," Bane finally said gently. "They ache like an echo . . . a memory of pain."

Her fingers itched, wishing so badly to touch, as she carefully kept her hands by her sides. Her knuckles were white, her mouth tight lipped.

"I hate that they had to cause you any pain. What you went through today . . . you should not have. It never should have happened," she finally said, her voice low in her throat, thick with emotion. "And I . . . I hate that my father projects his own failings on to you. It is not fair, and now it has caused you pain."

Bane sighed, the sound a low rumble in his throat, odd when not being hissed out through the confines of his mask. "He is being a father in the only way he knows how, little one. If anything else, do not begrudge him for that."

She snorted. "You are too generous, my friend."

"He is simply trying to protect you," Bane said, his words oddly disapproving, and Talia narrowed her eyes at him. "When he cannot act with his words he will respond quickly and decisively where laxed actions have cost him dearly before."

"Protection . . . from you?" she snorted. "What protection would I need?"

"More than you think," Bane said, his words quick and sure, and oddly . . . disparaging. There was disapproval in his voice, anger even, but not for her. And if not for her . . .

For him.

Understanding lit, slow and steady in her as the cold flame inside of her pulsed with a white light. Her father was not the only man in her life who sought to shield her from what they did not deem her ready for, and at the knowledge, she felt her mouth set. Her eyes narrowed. Her heart beat quick and evenly as it did before a fight, when she was ready to take up arms, and she took the challenge in stride and thought only let it come.

Slowly, so slowly, she reached out to gently touch the side of his face, right where the ruined skin of his cheek met that unblemished. Her fingers rested on the familiar thin scars on his jawbone, while her thumbs just barely lingered on where the mask normally covered, on that which was foreign from her view . . .

She was sitting next to him on the hospital bed, her body an arch before him as she leaned down, slowly, so slowly, a foreign fear and nervousness tangling with her determination and her curiosity, in order to press her lips to his mangled mouth. The kiss was soft, chaste, a bare meeting of lips that nonetheless sent a shiver running up and down her spine as she dared to press a little harder, move a little closer, mindful of his bewildered gaze and hesitant to cause him pain, but drunk nearly on the sensation as she moved her lips against his in one soft kiss after another. He did not kiss her back, not right away, and Talia felt nervousness part from her as she pressed her lips harder to his, almost desperate for a response. Somehow she had gone from sitting demurely at his side to slip gently over his body, her small form not even a shadow to the massive bulk of his as she straddled his waist.

He only moved to stop her when she slid her mouth from his, to kiss the scar that stretched from the corner of his mouth to where the mask tucked underneath his chin. He pushed her away then, a strangled sound in his throat that sounded like an animal awaiting a blow, and she fought the urge to flinch.

"Please, stop," he said hoarsely, holding her wrists to prevent her touch, turning his face from hers when she tried to return to him again. She flexed against his hold, but it was absolute. He was unyeilding. They were at an impasse, he holding her wrists, and she straddling his chest, as if the slightness of her weight and the determination in her muscles could keep her by his side. They glared at each other, each one holding their own.

"I will not leave until we discuss this," she finally said. "You will have to throw me from this room."

He glared at her, but she just settled her weight more firmly on top of him, daring him with her eyes.

"You are so young," he leveled first at her, an obvious starting blow, but one that struck more at him than it did at her. For she saw no reason to worry on that regard where he saw every, and she tried to consider for a moment that this was even harder on him than it was on her – making the move from protector to lover. A part of her advised patience, and time . . .

But another part of her knew that she had what she wanted right before her grasp. And she refused to cower before what the rest of humanity said should not be. She lived beyond their rules, beyond their judgment, and she fretted not at it. "I am nearly twenty years of age - I am not a child," she simply said, her voice even, her words bold. "I am almost the same age as my mother was when she descended into the Pit – married for nearly a year, and with child, at that. And, if I recall correctly, I am the same age as you were when you decided to take me under your wing . . . My age matters not except for how it would trouble you, and you alone."

"I had more years to my name than you do now," he said disapprovingly, his brows knitting as if to glare at her. "And even if that was not the case, it would not be as simple as you say."

And she set her jaw, and tried to remind herself that he was used to living in pain. He was used to denying himself. It had always been she who was the selfish one between them, wishing for escape and freedom and the stretching of her wings. He could go on the rest of their lives as they were now. And she . . .

. . . she could not.

"What am I to you then?" she finally questioned, her tone unkind. "Am I simply a responsibility, a burden to you? If you had not one scar on your face, would you still be here, side by side with me? Am I just that child in your shadow still, a novelty to pass your time? Am I as much a wall to you now as the Pit was then?"

He did not shrink from her words. If anything he sat up straighter, such a feeling flaring in his eyes then that she didn't know quite how to translate for all of the power it held. When he spoke, she knew her words had struck their target as he said, "You have always been more than that to me." His voice was low, dangerous, steeped in such a feeling where normally he was so level, so calm and collected. She smiled in satisfaction as a chip in his armor broke in order to release a floodgate.

And so she leaned over him, close enough so that she shared his breath. She could feel his chest rise and fall from underneath her; she could feel his pulse beat quick and angry from where he still held her wrists. "Then tell me," she whispered fiercely, she dared.

And he met her challenge. "You were never a burden, then or now. Nor have I ever felt responsibility for your soul in any way that was not rooted in my regard for you. You have always been innocence to me, hope, even now where you have seen and dipped your hands in the darkest parts of the world . . . The scars on my face do not bind me to you," he all but spat the words, his mangled lips slurring the syllables in odd places, flinging them into her ears. "Instead they are an outward embodiment of that which I feel within. They are a physical manifestation of what truly lies beneath my skin . . . I was not a liar when I said that I deserved the Pit for my crimes. You were redemption, in a way, and to sully you with what I feel now . . ."

"What we feel," Talia interrupted, her words fierce, her syllables forceful. "I came to this conclusion on my own, without any encouragement from you." At that she laughed bitterly, her eyes narrowing. "No encouragement whatsoever."

"And is encouragement what you truly want?" he finally asked. "You have a beast beneath you in thrall, and you would glory in that attachment even as it tore you apart. And you are so young to so willingly bind yourself in such a way. That is the real reason I took your father's task of ending Darrk. Not only would I be pulling a truly lethal thorn from your side, but I would be saving you from a much larger threat in my demise . . . I would be saving you from me."

At his words, she felt something low and pained in her side. It hurt to breathe in that moment, the knowledge of how deeply he felt and how far he would go for that feeling. How could she make him see that that very worry, that very self sacrificing spirit was the very thing that she so adored? It was the thing that kept her grounded, that gave her hope that the world was not as black as her own experiences had shown her to be. "You are not the beast in this relationship," she finally said brokenly, any anger breaking from her tone for something softer instead, something deeper. "No matter what face I wear, it is a mask, the same as yours. I thought that you, of all people, would know that."

"You are a product of your environment," Bane said, his voice softening around the edges, turning from wound to balm as hers had. "Your life has made you, and you have risen underneath every force that has tried to hold you down."

And Talia smiled, finally the motion loosing some of its darkness for a real fondness to shine through – an affection that she could not wholly put into words, even though she tried. "Baldassare . . . so have you. Do you not see that we are not very different from each other?"

She paused, letting her words sink in as his eyes bored into hers. He did not breathe for a moment, and she knew that he desperately wanted her to prove him wrong. No matter how strongly he felt, every man had a breaking point – that, more than anything else, the League had shown her in spades, and she would push until he could fight no more. But she knew, she knew, that they would both be the better for it in the end.

So she continued. "When we returned, my father ordered me to figure out my feelings for you, and to pick a side . . . What he did not know is that I felt such a fear when you went up against Darrk on your own. Such a fear . . . and such a pain. I knew that I would have died had you fallen in your task, and I . . . I am not strong enough to deal with that. I would not have been, no matter what else I have faced and overcame." The words should have felt like a weakness to her, a flaw to admit and lay bare. Instead they felt like a strength as they left her tongue. They felt like a truth, fortifying her and steeling her bones. "You are, you are . . ." and she faltered, trying to put just how fiercely she was feeling into words. "You are like the sky to me," she finally settled on, her smile stretching and growing at the words, at how right they felt as they poured from her mouth. "You are the sky to me, a wall which I do not wish to climb, but rather a shadow thrown . . . You are a strength to me. You are hope," she finished simply, using his words as his own.

Somewhere during her speech, his hold on her wrists had lessened. Her perch above him had lost its violence. Instead she leaned against him as if counting on him to hold her up. Her hands fell to rest on his chest while his thumbs rubbed absent circles into the skin of her wrists.

"And if you . . . if you do not feel for me as I do for you," she breathed past the heavy feeling the words produced in her, thick in her throat, "I understand. I understand, and I will never ask anything more of you than you can give. But if you do . . ."

Her words faltered, unable was she to voice exactly what she wanted to. What did she want from him? She finally considered. She tried to think of their relationship in words the world used – a paramour, a lover, a spouse someday? She finally decided that there was no word that accurately summed up what she was to him and he to her. She wanted everything . . . everything he could possibly give. She was greedy with the thought of it, like one of the great wyrms of old as they sat atop their horde and coveted the gleam of gold and precious stones beneath them.

"I care for you more than words can express," Bane finally said softly. "But, I think that that is something you already know." I love you, she read in his eyes. But he would not say it aloud when this was still so new, when this was still so fragile and tender between them . . . but it didn't matter, for in the bones of her bones and in the heart of her heart she knew.

She knew.

And finally, her battle won, and her victory assured, Talia felt all of her strength and determination flicker into something softer . . . something almost timid as she raised her hands in order to softly touch the soft skin of his cheeks again.

Her touch was soft, her caress light, but he still seemed to shift from her, as if uncomfortable.

"Does this pain you?" she finally asked, her worry a tremor in her voice.

And Bane hesitated. "It is of no consequence."

With a sad smile, she leaned closer to him, something soft within her when she reflected that his face had known only a healer's touch over the years . . . and before that the skin had only known violence and pain inflicted. "My hands hold no pain," she finally whispered. "Not for you."

"On the contrary," he whispered. "They have the potential to be destruction themselves." And, for once, he did not mean the ferocity she could unleash on others, but rather the fact that he would make the earth spin on its axis for her. He was completely in thrall to her, and the responsibility of that gift was a sobering thing to her, an intoxicating thing to her. It was something she prayed that she would never abuse.

And so she gave in to the temptation to touch the ruined skin of his face, finding the upraised sensation of scars underneath the pads of her fingers. He shivered, a tremor that racked his body as she mapped out the places where he had suffered, the places that had been torn apart in her name. A horror, he had called them often. Something abominable, unworthy of sight or touch . . . but she had meant what she said earlier. The scars were for her and by her, as if he had been branded for her and her alone. And it was her horror that she now searched out and learned for the first as she leaned down to follow the path her fingers had taken with her mouth.

Desire was new in its intensity, but it was strangely soft in that moment, a low burning thing as she dragged her mouth from the smooth skin of his jaw bone to the mangled flesh of his skin. She paused to taste the bit of bone that was still exposed there, an intimacy that no other couple in the world could claim, a hum in the back of her mouth at the taste of him as he reached up a hand to fist in the thick fall of her hair, falling over her shoulders to curtain them both.

She drew back enough to look in his eyes then, finding them dark with an emotion that she could not name for how soft it was. She smiled, the expression dear, and his hands fell from her hair to fall on her face, returning her searching caresses as he mapped out the planes of her face with his hands, pausing to sweep fondly across her closed eyes, and linger on the curve of her upper lip, the full swell of her lower lip. She breathed, and could taste his skin. Her heart felt quick in her chest, beating as it did only before a fight, even where the rest of her was strangely languid, strangely sedate, willing to follow and be led as he finally leaned forward enough to kiss her.

It was an unused to experience for her. While she had practiced seducing a man in word and gaze, she had never allowed any to touch her person more than was strictly necessary. Now his lips moved slowly across hers, coaxing, teaching, and she mimicked his actions the best she could, moving to rest her hands on the broad slope of his shoulders. There was a warmth in her belly then, steadily growing as he kissed her, and she pressed closer to him, seeking out more of that sensation. The entire exchange was gentle and soft, but she felt the warmth within her stoke to a fire when his tongue gently parted the seam of her lips in order to taste inside. She could not contain the moan low in her throat as he tasted her, only knowing that she ached in that moment, and longed for more. So much more . . .

At her reaction, his hands curved to grasp even more tightly about her hips, the very motion possessive as his fingers sank into her skin as if to brand and mark her as he already had been marked for her. There was something darker about the moment as his large hands rose from where they had been resting on her hips in order to caress her sides, tracing from the swell of her hips to the underside of her breasts and then down and up again. Her ribs twinged slightly in protest at the contact, but it was worth it for the delicious flare of feeling that followed, the warmth that pooled in her chest and the tingles that ran up and down her spine at the foreign sensations, intoxicating as she gave in to them.

She had no idea how long they carried on like that, but when their touches ebbed to gentle caresses, she leaning her forehead against his and shared his breath while his hand still traced out absent patterns on her spine. She realized then just how completely she was exhausted after the physical and emotional events of the day. But it was a good weariness that clung to her bones, a contentedness that had her all but purring as she rested boneless against him. Her ribs hurt in their cage, and her wrist was sore from where she had placed too much of her weight on it, but it didn't matter. Not here, not now.

"I am sorry, but does this pain you?" she finally asked drowsily when she realized that she was still completely sprawled atop of him. She hadn't been the only one to ache that day, she knew, and she wanted to make sure . . .

"No," he said gently, though she doubted he would ever tell her otherwise. But his breathing was heavy, and not just from from her touch. She knew that the morphine was a poor substitute for the compound of gas in his mask, but it was enough, for now.

She shifted slightly, sliding off of him in order to curve into his side, utterly content in that moment as her eyes flickered sleepily.

"Rest," Bane said simply, ending her inner debate of whether or not she should stay by his side that night, and she raised her head just slightly to make sure he was sure when he simply said, "I'll be here when you wake up." And the words, so common and every day sounded like a vow to her ears. She caught them, and held them close.

She curved into his side, her head resting on his chest to feel his heartbeat against her ear as one strong arm wrapped against her shoulders and held her close. She felt content in that moment, content as she had not felt in months, and sleep pulled at her eyes with its siren song as she fought its call as long as she could.

"Goodnight, Baldassare," she whispered, her mouth moving against his chest as she spoke, her skin humming pleasantly as it molded against and found warmth in its mate.

And a moment passed, a dozen heartbeats. And finally, "Goodnight, my dear," he whispered, and her smile curved against his skin.

Softly, she closed her eyes and let sleep take her until the morning.

---

Parting Notes:

Doctor Darrk: Is the villain from the comics who did kidnap Talia as a ploy against Ra's. Her rescue facilitated Bruce"s and Talia's meeting and subsequent romance, and he was much as I described him here. I had fun taking that villain and situation to fit a Bane/Talia standpoint.

Lady Shiva/Doctor Cain: These were Cassandra Cain's parents, one of the amazing young woman to take up the mantle of Batgirl. They have a long and turbulent backstory with the League, and it was fun to allude to that here.

Darrk's Base: Was inspired by the Baatara Gorge waterfall in Lebanon - of the the many natural wonders of that country which I did not know about until writing this story. The funny thing was, that while plotting this, I was looking up unusual locations and already had this on my list. And then, during a trip to one of my favorite Lebanese restaurants, I noticed a picture of the Gorge on the wall where I had not before, and our waiter - who was originally from Damascus - was able to give me a first hand account of the fall. So, that's my fun story of the day.

How Far A You Can Fall Into Water: Yes . . . I looked this up. Apparently, anything more than 67 meters/220 feet is pretty much a no live situation. Even falling into water from a height of 67 meters, you'd be hitting the water at 80 mph - the biggest thing to worry then wouldn't be the fall killing you, but the broken bones/unconsciousness/concussion that would keep you from swimming to safety. Here I had their jump 'very nearly a hundred meters in the air' just for more interesting reading, and to better suit the picture of the Gorge I had built up in my mind. But kids, don't try this at home.

My Version of Ra's' Immortality: While I love the comic!canon immortal Ra's, the Nolan films obviously weren't following this line, so I made it so that there is always a Ra's al-Ghul, just a different man taking on the mantle at different places in time.

So, that said, I bid you all farewell until the next time! I hope to have an update out much sooner than this one, but hopefully I gave you enough to chew on here to last for a while. ;)