1997-07-18 - Divided by the Demon's Head

There were benefits, albeit slight ones, to being a veritable princess of assassins in an assassin training ground. Talia merited a private room, as she had for nearly a year now. A room Bruce had come to know perhaps better than he should. That fact was an open secret among Kirigi's students-- that the solemn young man spent many a night with Ra's Al Ghul's daughter in such a closed environment was not bound to be kept secret long.
Still, the months had passed without the secret being shared, as far as either of the two young lovers could tell, with either the dojo's master or Talia's own father, and though the two were brilliant minds and peerless fighters in their own right, they were still young and flush with the sparks of their almost-secret romance to be as careful as they ought to be.
The false dawn an hour before the true's fingers stretch over the horizon begins to lighten the sky, and Talia stretches lightly as she stirs awake, then snuggles closer to the likely-waking form of Bruce, still half-asleep as she presses a light kiss to his bare shoulder. "Mnmmh. You should go back to your quarters," she murmurs unconvincingly.
Bruce stirs a contented noise issuing from his throat at the kiss placed on his shoulder. A faint smile forms on his lips and a hand slips along Talia's side to rest on her behind. "Should I?" he asks deadpan, teasing. An eye cracks open. "You may have to force me."
He knows he should be concerned about how comfortable he'd become in this woman's arms. She was a killer, a criminal, everything that he was training to fight. Though, here, now, it hardly seemed to matter. He was happy for the first time he could really remember since They died. The ache of Their loss seemed to dull in her arms and as much as he fought it, deep down, Bruce had to admit it felt good.
"Mm. If that is so, then you may never leave," Talia responds quietly, her eyes closing back as she nuzzles Bruce. "I do not have it in me to force you to go." One leg, long and lithe, slides over his hips, hooking around him. She was /so/ tired of late anyway, though that she spent more nights than not in Bruce's arms rather than simply sleeping might have something to do with that.
Besides, the most frustrating moment of her days were these, the moments before dawn when Bruce had to steal away from her back to his own room, his roommate pretending he did not notice. The hour until dawn that she had to lay without his was almost a form of torture, and not the sweet agony of anticipation the hour at the beginning of the night waiting for him to slip away and to her room. Perhaps this morning he might not go.
Perhaps he might not ever go. That thought thrilled her more than she cared to admit. The word was out from between her lips ere she realized she thought it.
"Stay?"
If there was one lesson life had taught Bruce Wayne it was that all good things must come to an end, even if temporarily. He leans forward rocking against Talia to give her a kiss, a real kiss, pressed hard against her lips. After a long, pleasurable moment, he pulls away again to look at her, studying her face as he strokes it with his fingers. "I wish, but you know I need to go. I will be back tomorrow night."
Talia's expression is a strange one for a moment, a twist of pleasure with sadness and loss, though just a hint of each. Tomorrow night is after all, another night, and just as the night prior to this one, she would find herself in his arms again. "I count the hours," she murmurs teasingly, placing another kiss on his lips, though a softer, gentler one that Bruce's own. "And the minutes." Another kiss.
It was hard to pull back from the kisses and the woman who bestowed them. Bruce let's himself linger against her for a moment after the second kiss is broken. He can feel her warm against him her scent, sandalwood, clings to his skin. He pushes away, sitting up on the reed mats that line the floor, suddenly chill without the blankets or Talia's warmth to ward it off. "So do I," he admits quietly. He stands then moving in the pre-dawn gloom to find his clothes and put them on before what would seem like an endless trek back to his own chambers. As he ties the draw strings of his pants he looks down at Talia and feels something tug at his heart, words that had been stuck in his throat for weeks suddenly come free and he gives them voice "Talia, I love you." They seem to echo in dim lit quiet of the room.
There are a few moments of silence after that admission, and they seem to stretch an eternity. Talia rises to her feet, her gaze hooded, revealing nothing during those moments.
But then, in a burst of motion, she is against him, her arms around his neck, her lips pressing to his, her curves tucking against his body, standing on her toes to lean up into the kiss-- passionate, hungry, almost demanding.
Those moments are silent too, before she breaks away, looking up at him. "I love you, too, Bruce," and the sound is soft, almost too soft to hear. "/Stay/," she pleads again, not letting him go quite yet.
Bruce wasn't ready for Talia just to leap into his arms like that, or to say what he said back to him, but she had, and the words had been sincere, he knew Talia well enough by this point to tell. He grips her to him and when she makes her offer to stay once more he find he can't refuse. "Alright," he says his voice hoarse. He knew Krigi would be displeased with them flouting their rule breaking, but, not enough to send them packing and whatever lesser punishment he concocted would be worth it. He kisses her again.
Whom pulled whom into back under the sheets would in later times, when they looked back upon this moment, never be entirely clear, but it was an hour after sunrise when finally the two disentangled themselves from each other to dress hurriedly and race from her room to their respective early morning chores-- late, of course, and having missed breakfast, but worth every moment of it.
It was the distraction of the morning's emotional pull, of course, that threw Talia off balance in the late morning sparring. Five rounds and she fell all but once to her opponent, under Kirigi's stern gaze. It was that, of course. Or fretting, perhaps, about what punishment the master of the dojo would mete out. And if she were tired, there was no reason for that, save an evening and early morning of lovemaking.
So when after her poor performance in the sparring match, Kirigi gestures for her to follow him for a private discussion, she thought she knew what to expect-- a lecture, perhaps, and more chores, and some sort of strenuous, tiring activities that would make her next several days a misery.
That her father stands within the master's private rooms, awaiting her, is certainly not what she expected.
"Father," Talia greets him respectfully, inclining her head.
Ra's al Ghul cuts a striking figure standing in Kirigi's private chambers, the screens pulled back to allow the a view of the asture cloud ringed mountain range beyond. These sorts of places stirred Ra's heart and so when he turns from the view, hands behind his back he seems at peace. Which is a good sign, because his face has fewer lines than it did when she last saw him, his hair was darker too and the distinguished silver streaks above both ears less pronounced. He had used one of the Pits recently, and contentment was a very good sign indeed it meant the customary madness had passed.
Ra's allows himself a smile as he unclaspes his hands and crosses the room to embrace his daughter briefly and chastely kiss her cheeks with paternal affection. Though he snifs as well as he pulls away. "Daughter," he says as the pair come into the shadow of his manservant Ubu who had stepped from a shadowed corner to attend his master.
It was a new one, still tall, still monstrously strong by the look of the corded muscle that showed on his chest and arms, and still bald as an egg, but a new one. Mayhaps the previous one had been a casualty of the madness caused by the pits. "How have you been?" asks Ra's then his emerald eyes taking in her face with the same sharp attention that Bruce's did, but decidedly lacking in the passion or the kindness in the doing so.
"I am well, Father." Not a lie, not at all. Not from where she stood, at least. She was happy, truly, for the first time in her life-- not simply content with her level of training, with what her father and the League required of her.
But observant eyes, coupled with the news Kirigi had likely given the man, told a different tale. In the past month, her prowess had faltered. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles belying exhaustion. Her gi still showed her curves as it tied around her, though those curves were slightly more filled than they were the last her father saw her-- not with muscle, but with a layer of plumpness and water retained that even her training was not removing. And, something that would be quite well noticed with as few women that were in training here-- she had not bled in three months. Perhaps just the training... a month here and there missed was expected as the body hardened itself and grew more skilled. But three months?
Especially when she was rumored to be sharing her bed with another student of Kirigi's, one who was not of the League.
Ra's notices the plumpness, the dark circles, the other signs of Talia's carelessness but his eyes give little of it away. At least to casual observers, but the slight tut he makes, almost inaudible, and the faint curling of his lip gives it away to Talia clearly enough. He turns then, regarding Kirigi. "If I may beg the use of your rooms for a moment, my daughter and I must have a family discussion," he says with a tone as unfailingly polite as the silk glove that hid the iron fist was unfailingly soft.
The iron haired master bows deeply "Of course," he says. "I will be overseeing training in the yard if you have need of me."
Ra's accepts the master's acquiescence with the faintest of nods and then turns to reguard his daughter once more not speaking until Kirigi has gone from the room. "So it is true there is a man," he says without preamble or pity "And he has given you a child."
It takes a moment for Ra's blunt admonishment-- for with that tone, that is what it is, truly-- to sink in. "I am..." Talia's mind spins, as the pieces click together. She had known, but she hadn't /wished/ to know. A weakness her father would likely take her to take for shortly, she realizes. She straightens. "Yes." She fights the urge for her hand to move protectively to her stomach. "And yes."
Bruce... how would he take this? a portion of Talia's mind spins, coming to terms with what is, wondering about Bruce and wishing he was here to share this with her.
But she is the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul, and she will be strong.
Ra's nods slowly as if he had hoped that somehow, impossibly, he had been wrong. Talia's reaction though confirms all and he begins to pace, as much to hide his own expressions from his daughter as the need for movement. "You know such matters are too important to be left to chance or the whim of feeling, from your loins will spring my heir, and his father must be worthy of making such a creature," he says as he turns his course allowing him to look upon Talia again. "And be worthy of my daughter," he adds before he follows the kindness with a cutting question "Is this one you've taken to your bed such a man?"
Talia's expression at that is as cold and as cutting as her father's. "He /is/," she says icily. "He is the finest warrior I have fought-- gifted, brilliant, perceptive. He is driven. Ask Kirigi," she says. "There are none here that can stand against him. He /is/ truly /worthy/."
She pauses, and almost scoffs. "Would I have given myself up to a man less than that? Freely given myself, my maidenhood, my body, to any man unable to prove himself so worthy of me, of the League and of you, Father?" Her eyes glitter. "You know other men have tried, and failed-- some most fatally."
There is a scouring look from Ra's as Talia seeks as if his eyes could strip away any lies, any emotion driven self-delusion from her words. The look lasts through it all, perhaps only wavering slightly at the subject of his daughter's maidenhood, which causes his fists to tighten. Though in the end he can find nothing his his daughters words or actions that give away any doubts. "We shall see, I will test this man of yours, this Bruce Wayne," perhaps he had asked Kirigi about him already. "If he is worthy as you say, the child will live and carry on the al Ghul legacy past when the Pits no longer sustain me. If not, then you will be rid of the child until a more worthy man can be found for you."
"I will not." Talia rarely defies her father, but in this, she would. She must. Bruce could not bear losing a child, this she knows. She knows her beloved's weakness, his one fierce need: family.
She would have him a part of her own, a son to her father, a father to her son. Or daughter. She had known that this morning when they had stayed past the dawn. She was already his, and a more worthy man than Bruce she would never find, not from what her father wished nor from what she herself wanted.
She hesitates for a moment, knowing better, even in her defiance, to risk her father's wrath. "I will not," she repeats, "for you will find him worthy too, Father. I swear it."
She glances towards the door. She wants to run to him, to tell him of their child, to find him and hold him a moment longer before her father begins to test him. "...I will fetch him for you, Father." She waits to be dismissed before she moves towards the door, though. She is not so foolish as to test Ra's.
Ra's watches his daughter his composure regained, and when she moves to fetch Bruce Wayne, he holds up a hand. "No, your time here is done, whatever it's fate, you are with child and can no longer remain in the company of warriors, you must retire to our facility on Isle Murjeno, our doctors will see to it you are kept comfortable, and your child, if worthy is brought forth into this world with every genetic advantage," he regards her again, his eyes hawkish. "I shall test this Bruce Wayne alone."
Talia has long been schooled in keeping her emotions from her face-- but she is only seventeen, and heartbreak is a new emotion to train away. She closes her eyes, not moving. She hears the order unspoken: that she will leave, immediately, likely in the company of someone her father had set to see her to the facility safely. She was no longer a warrior, in control of her own self, not until after the child was born, at least. She had no say in when and where she would go.
And she knew the order is to leave, without seeing Bruce again. She bites her tongue, grinding her teeth over it, only barely not drawing blood. A breath is drawn in through her nose, slowly, and out again, before her eyes open and rest on Ra's. "Yes, Father," she says quietly. "I understand."
Ra's nods at her agreement, it was expected. "Good," he says firmly. He puts a hand briefly on her shoulder before he lets go and nods towards the door. "Gather your things, Dusan is waiting at the rear gate to take you to your transport," he instructs her, naming his other shadow the albino servant known to most as the White Ghost. A formidable fighter in his own right.
Talia nods, and steps out of the room. She has nothing, really, there, that she would need to take with her. And she knows her father knows it. She continues breathing through her nose, her face an icy mask of unfeeling calmness as she makes her way to the rear gate, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, her eyes straight ahead.
'I'm sorry, beloved,' she allows herself to think, to look back at the dojo as the transport lifts into the air. Her hand rests on her stomach now. 'Test well.'
It is sometime later when Bruce comes to Talia's room. He had not seen her at practice all afternoon or at dinner. He was worried but he does not let it show but when he finds her room bare, no sign that she was ever there. He feels his heart turn to lead. She had spoken truly hadn't she? When she told him she loved him too.
So distracted was he by what he felt he didn't notice the black clad shapes moving from shadowed corners to grab him. However while his attackers have the element of surprise they don't have Bruce's skill. He throws off their hands easily and those who don't fall back are rewarded with fists and kicks that send them sprawling to the floor.
Their defeat is met with the sound of slow measured applause "Very well done Mr. Wayne, my daughter was right, you are impressive."
Bruce's eyes shoot up to look at the source of the voice and applause. He didn't know the face but he knew the name. "Ra's," Bruce grits out. "Where is Talia?"
"Gone," answers the Head of the Demon as he draws the sword at his side, its blade gleaming in the faint light of the room as the black clad assassins rise to their feet again. "Gone," answers Ra's as his men circle Bruce more wary this time. "At my command, but, you have other things to think about just now." The black clad figures close in, and the first of many tests begins.
Category:Historical Log