A Fair Price
by TwinEnigma
Nota Bene: Slight references to Batman Begins and ABC's Once Upon A Time.
Warnings for chapter: violence
4.
The prince knew that he must make amends for his actions. He returned at once to the mountain and brought the blade to the old man.
"You have served me well, dear boy. You are free," the old man said. "But before I give you your reward, you must answer me one question truthfully."
"As you wish," said the prince.
"Dear boy, did you look inside the rags?" the old man asked.
"Yes, I did," said the prince and plunged the blade into the old man's heart. "Here your evil and all the horror you have wrought ends."
But the old man merely laughed as he lay dying. "Foolish boy, don't you know what you have done? You would have been free and I would have given you the greatest of treasures as I might a son, but now this curse that was my fate is yours!"
With a clap of thunder, the old man died and the prince arose, forever transformed.
And that was how the lost prince became the Great Dark One.
Bruce doesn't know why or when or even how he made the decision and, in some distant part of his mind, he is screaming that Ra's is right, that this man he's trying to save is the man who killed his parents in cold blood, and that he should kill him because it's his right. But it doesn't matter, because the second he refuses to kill him and raises that sword to prevent Ra's from doing it to prove a point, he becomes an enemy of the house of al Ghul and he now has to fight if he wants to live beyond today.
"You fool!" Ra's howls at him, enraged. "You would have been as my flesh and blood! I would have made you a prince in the League of Shadows!"
"You would have made me a murderer," Bruce counters, blocking, "No better than him."
And then Ra's smiles cruelly and intentionally steps into a strike that should have only wounded him. The blade slides through his flesh cleanly as Bruce can only watch in horror while his momentum drives the blade all the way in. "Go back to Gotham, boy. You may cling to your moral superiority as much as you wish," Ra's hisses, clutching at him and drawing him closer with inhuman strength, "But you and I will both know the truth. You are a shadow."
Ra's eyes then roll back into his head, his breath stopping.
It takes all his effort to wrest free and, badly shaken, Bruce flees.
But the blood does not come off his hands.