Talia was, if nothing else, a master at inciting Bruce’s rage. He had know for a long time that he had a passion for bad girls, a penchant for sleeping with women who always turned out to be crazy, if not completely insidious, but Talia al Ghul was something else. He knew how to keep himself collected, and how to deal will nearly anyone that crossed his path with a detached cool that many people found utterly infuriating and yet, there she was, standing in front of him for no more than five solid minutes and she had already managed to crawl up under his skin and begin to pick away at his patience. All she needed to do was to affirm, just one more time, that Damien was her son, claiming him like the title to a piece of property… And he wasn’t sure just how civil he was willing to be.
What cut him deepest was her fucking arrogance. From the moment the words left her lips, Bruce doubted that Alfred would have handed anything over to her, let alone keys to the manor. Not after everything that had happened between them. No, she must have made friends with someone else, some generous soul that hadn’t had the pleasure to see the wolf under the sheep’s skin. How dare she act as if she had the right to cross that threshold unannounced, and completely uninvited. “I don’t know,” He said, with some reluctance, “I’ve stopped worrying about what motivates you as soon as I discovered who you were.” She was getting the better of him, and he knew it, eliciting an emotional response that she didn’t deserve. He paused and took a slow breath. Two could play the game, but he would be the one to win.
“Try it,” He said, once again calm and in control, “I’m a man of considerable means and if you think I’ll back down from a fight with you, you’re wrong. He is my son. Damian Wayne. And I may not be perfect, but you’ll always be a criminal.”
“If you want this fight,” He said, his utter hatred for everything she had done to him boiling up all at once, “You’re welcome to it.” It would be a St. Valentine’s Day massacre.
With Bruce himself away, it had been a while since anyone in Gotham had truly known who -- and what -- she was. She was ecstatic that, finally, just the sound of her name and what it meant that she was there actually meant something to someone. Bruce wasn’t naïve, Talia would give him that.
From the tone of his voice, she could tell she’d already begun to push his buttons, and couldn’t help her face splitting into a large grin, genuinely glad but wolfish and somewhat frightening. “He’s my son, too, if you’ve forgotten,” she said slowly. “And from what I hear, he’s taking after me. Unless baby Bruce was off stabbing kids in his elementary school classes, that is. Quite a legacy for the Wayne name, I suppose.”
She narrowed her eyes at his words. Sure, she may have provoked him, but she had plans for this evening that certainly weren’t going to make themselves. “Trust me, I want this fight. But I’ve got people to see, places to go. I did, after all, uproot my entire life to live with my son. The al Ghul empire isn’t going to run itself you know. I think I’m being very reasonable, asking for partial custody of the son that you don’t even seem to care about, but if you want to give me more evidence of your unfit parenting skills for the judge, go ahead, make a scene. See if I care.”
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