An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Batman will take everything away from her—her family, her mate, her home. He will possess her body, he will be her husband, but… If Bruce—Bruce will be her mate. A little thing she’ll be able to hold to herself, even if in absolute secret. A thing that Batman won’t take away from her, even after she bares her throat for him to sink his fangs in and take.
There’s this one thing Talia will do for herself, before she bare her throat to Batman and let him take her away.
Parring: Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne
Rating: E
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1/1
Words: 12,049
Language: English
A late entry @brutaliaweek2025! For days 3 ("As long as Bruce is alive, my hope for love and freedom are alive.”) and 6 (Bruce and Talia have a blowout fight AND Royalty AU)
To my defence, this monster of story just wrote itself down. Took me way longer to finish than I'd like to because yeah everythime I opened its doc a new scene formed in my mind xD Anyway, it was very much fun to work on and I'm quite pleased with the final figure! You can read it on AO3!
Also, under the cut you can find some rambiling about the al Ghuls and my perception of the League's dynamics that DC keeps brushing under the rug... sighs. If it's your cup of tea, be my guest!
Otherwise, merry christmas and happy holidays!
I always find somehow difficult to find balance in Talia's character, tbh. Her personality varies very much from writer to writer and comic to comic, sometimes she’s a heartless woman, sometimes she’s a very emotional person, sometimes she’ll side with whichever Ra’s pull and sometimes she begrunges being an assassin. But this is an issue we find for pretty much every female character in male dominant fields, because they often are written as a bunch of stereotypes and plot devices for one specific story rather than an actual character that fits in between the narrative.
So it’s very difficult to balance her loyalty for her Father, at the same time she seems to hate every decision he makes. Her loyalty to Batman/Bruce, even though she never attempts to actually sabotage the League or her father directly, but when he’s in danger. And even her relationship with the League is very bury, as she seems to not enjoy killing, not wanting to be an assassin, but she’s still loyal to them to death.
Those issues, in my opinion, could be solved if only the League’s mythology and functionality would be explored and written properly, and Ra’s character were expanded behind the mask of supervillain like, well. All of Batman’s other villains xD So, yeah. I love the al Ghuls, I love Talia and Ra’s, but years of racism and orientalism practically ruined those characters in comics. Meanwhile I loathe for it, it’s very fun to me, as a writer, to mess around with them when there’s this whole blank space to fir in world building and character development hahah
I really hope I could balance Talia’s hate, anger, love, and loyalty on this story to form a complex group of ideals to her. I also have a bunch of ideas of the League’s structure and functionality (actually based in the real Assassin’s League that DC just completely ignored with that ‘eco-terrorism’ thing they insist in cast upon al Ghuls but makes no sense with how those characters act, for God’s sake), sooo I’m very much open to discuss them if someone wants to hear hahah
