Hotel Bella Monico
Drinking alone. Well, at least I’m contradicting yet another of my Father’s rules. Talia thought boredly, tossing her long ponytail over her shoulder.
Getting up from the peacock chair, Talia strolled across the conservatory floor; swirling her tumbler of arak, before taking a sip of the beverage.
Raising her gaze upwards, al Ghul could practically feel whatever presence loomed outside of the conservatory, long before the silent alarm began alerting her from her wristband.
Switching her drink to her left hand and drawing her medieval scimitar silently from the scabbard on her left with her free hand, Talia stood poised as she turned around to face the looming figure at the window.
“Talia.”
Smiling benignly up at the familiar figure, Talia sheathed her sword and turned back around, “Really, Beloved? After all these years? A simple phone call beforehand would have sufficed. At least then I would have had time to change into something more accommodating, then my training clothing.”
Talia strolled back over to the table and pulled over the decanter of arak, reaching for another tumbler and pouring a shot of the clear, sweet liquor into the green glass.
“But I suppose old habits die hard. It’s all right, I forgive you.” Talia turned back around and offered out the tumbler to The Batman. “How was your journey? Has our darling son been behaving himself? And have you seen my dear Jason lately?”
Batman entered, slowly, he wouldn’t drop his guard around her because he knew her. She was a jewel laden viper, in the end, and as soon as he forgot her bite… he found venom in his veins. His hands made no twitch or motion towards the glass she held out to him and he felt tension in his jaw. “Talia, this madness must end,” He tried to sound as hard as he could, not the hard where he would bang her up against a wall or draw blood, but the hard of a loveless relation. “I know you have another baby.” Batman paused. He realized only when he spoke of the child out loud that he didn’t know what he wanted to do about it. He didn’t… want the child, he hadn’t come here to demand to be given his son because he knew that she would most likely make another child but he couldn’t simply leave this boy to have his soul blackened, mind washed with thoughts of world domination, and more Al Ghul madness scrubbed into all places where childhood innocence should live. For those reasons, he knew he should take the child. Then again, who had the right to take a baby from its mother? Bruce frowned, the gray, there was no black and white like Clark always thought. No right, no wrong. Only this muddy water he seemed to exist in. “Show me the boy, Talia.”
Sighing heavily, Talia took another sip from her glass before putting down the tumblers back down on the table.
“You’ve grown so cold this past decade.” She glanced back over her shoulder and walked up to Bruce, running her hand over his exposed jaw. “It’s hard to remember our wedding night, when Damian was conceived. Your words and the heat between—” Talia pulled back her hand suddenly and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“—I waste my words, don’t I? I don’t need to remind you of any of it. I don’t need to hear how much you—” Talia turned around. “—hate me, now. I’ll take you to our new son.” She walked out of the conservatory into the main room of the apartments.
Glancing behind at Bruce, Talia offered a thin smile, “He’s more like you than Damian was at this age. Damian…was a different baby,” she turned back around as they headed towards the bedrooms. “My father used to say watching me and Damian, was like watching my mother and me. I hated to hear him say that.” Talia paused in front of the nursery door.
“Because every bit of good that was ever in me was all but gone by the time I was in my late-teens, and I had to watch history repeat itself with Damian.” Talia looked back over at Bruce.
“However much you want to believe it, Beloved, that’s why I got Damian to you as soon as I was in a position to do so.” Talia glanced aside, “Things are different now. I no longer fear or submit to my Father…but it was too late for me to do any good for Damian.”
Talia pushed open the nursery doors and nodded at the two nannies keeping watch nearby the large crib. They inclined their heads and exited via one of the other doors. Walking silently across the room, Talia bowed her head over the crib and smiled down at Tallant, sleeping soundly.
“But there was another child,” Talia murmured. “One my Father had insisted be created in case Damian didn’t survive. Ra’s hid away this child —suspended in an incu-womb— when he saw how strongly I cared for Damian, he didn’t want me to have affection for anyone more than himself. He hates you so much because you won’t be a dutiful son and I love you still so deeply.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of another child of ours out there, somewhere.” She brushed her hand against Tallant’s ruddy cheeks.
“After my Father died, it took me years to find our second son. I was going to raise him after I had delivered Damian to you, then Ra’s came back and you ‘died’,” Talia paused and picked up her baby, cradling the sleeping infant gently and adjusting him as the year old child shifted and whimpered.
“His name is Tallant. It means Great swordsman. His Arabic name is Thaanin ibn al Xu’ffasch, The second son of the Bat. Damian being Ibn al Xu’ffasch, naturally,” Talia walked over to Bruce and offered out a waking Tallant towards him, the dark-haired infant rubbing his dark blue eyes.
“Tallant, this is your father,” Talia whispered to her son, raising her brown eyes up to look solemnly at Bruce. “He’s a very good man and a valiant hero. You must try to be like him.”
Bruce was ground bitter from the state he saw Damian’s mind and body in. “I don’t believe that you will ever be free of your father,” He said without pause. “By your will or his.” He followed her into the bedroom, feeling the lingering sensation of where she had touched his jaw. He felt anticipation but it was barely more than cold tension, he was braced, as if for a bullet- not a baby.
He didn’t know where she drew the line anymore, he had realized that he never had known. In the end, he felt Talia was a creature of her own, wild in a way, but faking being tame. She would bite you when you forgot that she was not a house cat but a tigress, he believed. “Maybe in another life, another time, Talia, a place where you truly were free of your father, maybe there, things would have been different for us but that’s not the world we live in,” Bruce looked at the small boy’s face. “Not our world. How much more of my genetic material do you have? I don’t want any more children made, Talia.” He narrowed blue eyes. “No more.” His next words, the demand that what was left was destroyed or he would destroy it himself. One way or another, by whatever means he had to go to see it cleared thoroughly but the boy silenced the thoughts. He was not so cold to deny his own child, no matter how that child had come to be.
He saw her offer Tallant to him and with black gloves he took the boy. Bruce curled the waking child along one thick glove, minding the sharp points and the bumps. He was quiet as he looked over the child, searching for what was similar to Damian and what was different. He looked for a Wayne. He looked for an Al Ghul. He was angry the child existed but not angry at the child for existing, he just felt the weight of a child bearing his blood but not his care. Damian had been damaged enough in such short time. “Tallant.” He said firmly.
