Disclaimer: As always I own nothing but the original characters and the plot. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it.

All About Layla

Blake had set things up for their guests in advance, the best whiskey Eames had in the house sitting out with glasses beside it, ready to be poured and distributed to his 'guests'. And once everyone was seated that was precisely what the feline started doing, uncapping the whiskey and beginning to pour it out while the wolves watched him intently, like he was a bomb that was about to go off at any second. A fair analogy for him, Blake had to admit, especially since what they had to talk about was bound to cause a few explosions all on its own.

Not being the cruel sort either, Blake spoke after the second glass had been filled. "To get straight to the point I don't know exactly how much you all know, Eames and Salar left the party a little early. So what's say you summarize what you know or think you know, and we'll go from there? Kingsley first, as the voice of reason."

So while Kingsley summed up what they'd learned in precise, to the point sentences, Blake listened while pouring the rest of the drinks and handing them out to everyone. And once served Blake took his place on the chair Salar had insisted he sit in, the other man ranging behind him to act as his protector. Not that the man would be able to protect him if the others tried to come at him with real intent, but that was okay, Blake knew he could protect both of them if need be. Probably.

And once Kingsley was done speaking Blake gave Bane an amused look, with a definite hint of pride in his voice. "You locked her up. Look who's found his big boy pants."

"Blake." Salar said only that, but his tone made all the other words he wanted to say clear.

"Right, sorry. I'm supposed to be behaving."

"Look at Barsad."

Doing as directed Blake stared into Barsad's eyes and felt like the lowest lifeform on the planet. Shit, he really was being an ass. A worse creature than Talia really, when he factored in the fact that the man in front of him was suffering so blatantly. Without a word, without a sound, but suffering, big time. And he was only making it worse.

Placing his hands on his knees Blake leaned forward so that his forehead was almost touching his knees. "I apologize. That was wrong of me."

"Tell me what you know of Layla."

Lifting his head, Blake nodded humbly. "Understood. And first and foremost, yes…she is alive."

"If what you say is true, why didn't she come to me? Let me know?" Unlike the others, who were stunned silent, Barsad continued to hold Blake's gaze, refusing to let what the hybrid had just told him sink in. He'd been lied to. Over and over he'd been lied to. He would not believe anything blindly this time.

"At first she couldn't. She was very badly injured during our escape."

"What happened?" Kingsley demanded to know, his voice harsh and raspy with emotion.

"We were the ones who sent you the information about the experiments in the U.S., and we knew when you were coming and what would happen to us if you took us in. We weren't like the other hybrids, we weren't born and trained to be soldiers. We were born to be assassins and spies. To kill, to be lethal, and pitiless. We couldn't have been debriefed and adopted into new families like the others. Many, most of those in the Gotham compound…they were too far gone to survive in the world in any normal capacity. They've have just gone out and done what they'd been trained to do. What they'd gotten a taste for from the start. Spilling blood and causing pain." A pause. "And that's why those of us still sane, still with some grip on our humanity, knew we had to blow up the compound to make sure the evil living there didn't get out when you came."

"The experts said the detonation was activated-"

"By Crane, yes. He found out, we're not sure how, but it was too late for him to contain us or deactivate the bombs we'd set, much less find them all by then. So he tried to blow the whole place up himself so that at least we wouldn't survive either. That's how she was hurt, she was one of the last ones out, and she was helping one of ours that had been shot in the leg during the escape. She was almost out…"

Closing his eyes for a moment Blake could still see it, remembering yell at her to hurry and thinking for one second, one second that she'd make it and then she and Bruce had been hurled by the force of the blast into the air, all around them smoke and fire and debris to cloud their vision and separate them more. And when they'd found them…

Feeling a hand on his shoulder Blake opened his eyes to see that Bane had gotten up and was crouched in front of him, concern in his eyes.

Smiling his thanks Blake cupped Bane's mask covered cheek in return for a moment, before continuing his story. "The hybrid she'd been helping, they went flying and she ended up acting as an inadvertent shield, taking the worst of the damage. She wasn't dead when we got to her, but it was touch and go. A lot of touch and go for weeks afterwards. And in the end…there was spinal damage." Blake turned his head to meet Barsad's gaze again. "She'd planned to help us out and then go to London after you. That was all she talked about. But she wouldn't have been able to protect herself from Talia, not while in a chair and half blind, and she knew you couldn't be with her all the time. That if necessary Talia would kill you both to get to her." A glance in Kingsley's direction, before back to Barsad again. "And bringing you to the U.S., to us…we couldn't risk it."

"But she's alive." Kingsley repeated, the grip he had on his glass tight enough to shatter it.

"She was in a chair until a little over four years ago. She got word about a surgeon doing some pretty sweet things with spinal injuries, and though he didn't have a high enough success rate in my opinion, she figured her chances would be better given her genetic advantages. Plus we had the money at that point, so she went for it." A quirking of lips. "It took her a year but she was finally able to stand on her own, and about two years later she was up to leaving the chair behind and really move around without even a cane for help. She's about eighty percent now; she wears a vest that provides her back with support."

And seeing the question, the demand Barsad was about to make, Blake held up a quelling hand. "By the time she was strong enough to come to you, all our intel indicated that you were too close to Bane and Talia to be trusted without question. And that above and beyond that, you were too integral to the pack's survival to remove, especially when it was so obvious she's up to something with the other groups. Add in the fact that she was brainwashed along with you guys to put pack first…it stuck. So she decided that since you thought she was dead anyway…she decided to stay with us instead."

)

A moment of silence and then Barsad was on his feet, striding swiftly away from them before beginning to pace up and down the length of the room, his breaths coming out in harsh pants while he clenched and unclenched his fists. His obvious agitation was completely antithesis to who the man he was, but everyone in the room was too smart to go over and even try to touch him. He needed to process, and would lash out at anyone who interrupted that.

"Ogdin stated that Talia tried to kill her. This is true as you know it? Why?"

Dragging his gaze from Barsad's form, Blake met Bane's gaze and nodded. "You barely survived the Venom, your place as Alpha of your pack was no longer certain. She, Talia, had the mindset that she needed to secure Barsad's loyalty to her, as he'd be the next Alpha if you died. Beta-Layla, was the major hurdle because they hated each other, and Barsad was totally loyal to Layla and vice versa. So Talia got it into her head that she had to remove Layla from the picture permanently. She ambush her with a blade in a deserted part of your compound, we're guessing that she thought the element of surprise would give her enough of an edge to get it done and over with before she was caught. Layla kicked her ass. When your compound people found them Layla had a knife to Talia's throat and it was pretty obvious they were never going to coexist now, especially since Layla had gotten it out of Talia at that point that she wanted to take Barsad from her."

"And to protect Talia her father sent Layla to Gotham." Bane's eyes were grim.

"He wanted her executed, but the organization didn't want to waste her either. He agreed to send her to Gotham because outsiders tended to die quickly there, it was all but guaranteed for females."

Kingsley leaned forward. "Ogdin said she survived because of you."

"Because she protected Quinn." Blake corrected, not about to take credit where it wasn't due. "We'd have left her to die at first, it was all Arthur and I could do to protect Quinn from the psychos at that point. But Joker got ahold of Quinn one day, and Layla saw it happen. Even knowing she didn't stand a chance she jumped into the fray to help her, and we owed her for that. While we basically beat the ways of Gotham into her we got attached and vice versa."

Eyes narrowing, Kingsley repeated Blake's last sentence.

"She was too used to her old world; she couldn't wrap her mind around ours. There was no comradery, no honor, no playing nice, much less fair in Gotham. Kill or be killed, prove you deserved to live or Crane ended you. We studied the wolves, we all knew her every move, how she'd been trained to react and defend before she even got there. Beating our training into her as quickly as possible was the only way she was going to live."

"He's right." Salar chimed in, thinking to defend Blake, who might not realize how ready the other wolves were to lash out at someone, anyone at this point. "He's been training me and they studied us, know us. She wouldn't have stood a chance. I've been going home every night wanting to curl up in a little ball and whimper like a little girl, but he doesn't have the time to train me nicely either. Survival is more important."

Kinglsey gave Salar a look of understanding before trying to focus on something else. "You called her Beta earlier."

"Yeah. That's what the other hybrids started to call her after a while. Our beta, since when she came she was all about hierarchy and trying to figure us out in terms she could understand. The scientists tried to rename her Barbara, and she'd answer to it, but she preferred Beta of the two. She said Layla was dead without her heart."

Blake glanced in Barsad's direction then.

"And she's…half blind?"

"Yes. Nothing we could do there."

While they absorbed that Blake reached into his pocket and using his cellphone sent info to all their phones, Beta having hacked for that information a long time ago. "This is her file, un redacted. Your government didn't withhold data about her, Kingsley, we didn't want anything related to our compound to be out there for you to find. Not if we could help it, anyway. Crane had to send Ogdin monthly reports about her; he had the seniority to demand it."

This stopped Barsad's pacing, the man pulling out his phone along with Kingsley and Bane. All three turned their attentions to their screens, seeing for themselves the pictures, physical updates, and evaluations that made it clear that she'd suffered and greatly while in Gotham. But she'd been there. They'd been lied to about that before today.

"They shaved off her hair. She was really proud of her hair." It was a totally unimportant, but none of them commented on that fact. Barsad had the right not to be rational.

"They shaved all our heads. One of the reasons my little brother is so obsessed with his hair." Blake rolled his eyes a little. "His little fuck you to them. She has it long now, she has long hair again."

Staring at the picture he was looking at Kingsley spoke to no one in particular. "She looks like a POW inmate."

"Yeah…being a POW would have been a step up for us. At least then half the hybrid population wouldn't have wanted to kill us just because they liked killing things. Though we were probably fed a little better than the average prisoner of war, gotta have a health body aside from the experiments and training."

Pause. "But speaking of pictures, I have some better ones to show you once you all are done looking at the other stuff."

"Pictures? Of her now? Show me." Barsad commanded.

Rather than argue, he wasn't crazy after all, Blake just nodded and got up from his seat, telling the wolves to crowd around the one couch and he'd get the laptop.

Retrieving the laptop from under his chair Blake set it on the coffee table in front of the wolves and then opening it up got it out of sleep mode and quickly access the file he'd downloaded onto a USB stick earlier. It was a file he kept on his home laptop of his favorite pictures of Beta, and he'd figured they'd interest the other men much more than the other files.

Putting it on the slowest slideshow setting Blake started it and then walked around the couch to stand behind Bane, wrapping his arms around the man's neck as he leaned against the couch, Salar at his side so that he could watch too, while sorta being on hand to protect Blake if necessary.

Not that it would be, all eyes and focus were on the pictures of the blue eyed, redheaded woman smiling out at them from the computer screen.

)

There were pictures of her alone or with others, primarily the twins, though with Quinn and Bruce as well. Her closeness to them was obvious in the posing and the way they touched in the pictures or looked at each other. Blake had asked Beta to go over the photos and take out what they didn't want outsiders to see when he'd learned that Ogdin was coming, just as a precaution, and Blake figured she'd chosen a number of the group pictures to punctuate the fact that the members of the Gotham compound were her family, and harming them would make her very, very angry.

It didn't surprise Blake that she'd removed pictures of herself in her chair, these were all more recent ones or where it wasn't obvious that she'd been disabled in any way. The fact that she wore an eye patch was pretty much visible with every photo, no way to get around it, when the damage done to the eye was not pretty and the eye patch was at least sort of dashing. The majority of the facial scars were light enough to cover with make up now though and hard to see in the photos as well. There was also a lot from their most recent trip to Disney, which was an annual thing on her birthday. She always looked her happiest at the Magic Kingdom.

Personally, Blake's favorite picture was of the three of them for a costume party, where they'd dressed up as characters from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'. Arthur had gone as Eddie Valiant, since he was all about wearing suits anyway, and Beta had gone as Jessica Rabbit. For himself, he'd gone as Roger Rabbit…sorta. He'd worn white rabbit ears, paws, and bunny slippers, and his low hanging red overalls had sported a white tail on the back too. That, plus drawn on whiskers, had been the extent of his costume.

He'd gotten hit on and called a Playboy bunny numerous times throughout the night.

Blake also felt Bane tense up in reaction to the picture, which prompted him to lean in and whisper that he had more pictures of himself in that outfit, if Bane was interested in seeing them later.

Raising a hand, Bane placed it over Blake's hand, gave it a slight squeeze.

"She always wanted to go to Disney World. One of our caregivers when we were young told her all about it." Barsad's voice was soft, his eyes never leaving the screen for a second.

"Yeah, so she said. That's why we took her there, to celebrate the first birthday she had where she was well enough to go. It's a tradition now, we go every year. A lot of the long term employees there actually know her on sight at this point. She never gets sick of it…for reasons I've never quite understood. Thankfully she only made us do the 'It's A Small World After All' once. Before it wasn't a good idea, those boats are friggin cramped, but she wanted to try it and it scared the hell out of all of us. You want to be mentally traumatized, go on that ride. Seriously."

"After everything you went through, a ride at a place like Disney scared you?" Bane tipped his head back to give Blake an utterly bewildered look.

"Trust me, Sweetie, I wouldn't even send…no, I would totally strap Talia to one of those boats and lock her in that place, but I'd feel some twinges of conscience for doing it and that's saying something."

"It is disturbing." Salar volunteered, tacking on the fact that he'd gone as a teenager with his family. "All those little animatronics, the scary smiles on all their faces, and there's just so many of them, like it's a horror movie or something."

Pleased with the agreement, Blake gave Salar's back a pat of solidarity. "Exactly."