Chapter 34: 14 Talia's lies
(Chapter Unedited 3/26/19) Proof Reader on Hiatus

Several hours later, in the last fading light of the sunset between the first stars, Bane headed downtown having finally found out Talia's current location. His feet heavy with fatigue, body still ash laden and singed, but he made good time in hopes of seeing her.
Somehow while searching for her, the smallest feeling of expectation and desire had grown, the longing for her comfort had faded into a hazy thought that she might show him some understanding, though he could not understand why he craved it.
Before long he was speaking with one of the mercenaries stationed outside of the courthouse, and they scampered off to go find Talia, he went to where he had said he would meet her, an abandoned building a block down that had been offices in the Gotham before his and Talia's occupation. He assumed no one would be there, not with his mercenaries patrolling the streets so heavily and the adjoining buildings having been made into living quarters for his mercenary army.
As he had suspected the building seemed abandoned and he went to the second floor, taking the stairs and waited, leaning against the wall by the stair well.
Time passed slowly, and he awaited Talia's arrival with a familiar ache in his chest. Part of him still wanted to see her, wanted to know she was safe. It felt like time passed too slowly. Poisonous thoughts of Kathryn, how she had said Talia was using him, seeped into his musings, and he had even agreed with her somewhat, but his heart betrayed him. He still wanted to see Talia. Needed to see her. Not only for her, but to know if the reactor was truly destroyed.
He reached into his pocket to grab the crimson string he usually fiddled with, but it was gone and his thoughts changed from Talia to Kathryn, he wanted to see we too, though he assumed she was safe. Her bright complexion, wit and golden hair. It was like war between Talia and Kathryn, he compared the way they walked in his mind, how they ate, gentle curve of Kathryn and the hard edges of Talia. He thought of how Talia would laugh ruthlessly and Kathryn's laugh was genuine, she laughed at things she enjoyed not things she was proud of. He pictured Talia's face, almond eyes, drawn brows, her nose straight and lips always expressing more then the rest of her. Kathryn however had a rounded face, cheeks with smile lines, a nose that made her friendly and lips with curved corners and a pouting complexion. Her eyes were her point of expression, truthful, bright blue and wide with wonder.
The door to the stairwell opened. Momentarily he tensed, ready, but he quickly recognized Talia's slender form as she quietly entered. She had her hair down around her face, and her eyes were wide against the dark, she hadn't seen him in the shadows, and she looked the opposite way, her back too him, and for moment he loved her.
"Talia," she turned and relaxed, her eyes looking him up and down as she registered that he was there. She went to him, getting close enough to lean against the wall next to him, a gentle thin hand alighting on his. She was freezing cold.
"How are you my friend?" She asked, her voice lilting and falling over the words, her accent familiar to him and it echoed in his head. He had somehow forgotten the inflection she used on words in their time apart, and now it came rushing back.
"Well enough," he felt cautious, their last meeting had left him feeling like his tongue was raw around her as e had forgotten it until he was in her presence.
"There's been a few surprises, but nothing we didn't plan for." He explained, thinking of Kathryn and fires and Jokers.
"That is thanks to you, " she prompted, and he knew without both their brains they wouldn't have been able to take Gotham at all. They had made the perfect deadly team. Only when together. It hadn't always been like that, he remembered a time before they became sharpened and honed by the world. Remembered when Talia al ghul was just a girl without a name and he had done everything he could to protect her. Protect that which could not protect itself.
"It all feels like it's been too easy," her words interrupted his musings.
Talia sounded slightly disappointed he noted. Her hand squeezed his as if prompting a reply, and she shifted her weight towards him. She was so familiar with him, like nothing had happened between them, but he remained silent. Wondering what kind of relationship he had let Talia create between them. They were a team, but who was he without her? She would still be Talia al ghul, daughter of Ra's al ghul, but he would be no one.
For a moment he wondered what kind of team he and Kathryn would have made if Talia had not come before her.
"No one suspects me," she said cooly, but her words jarred him. She was oblivious to his discomfort, her eyes distracted.
"These people's trust is so easily bought by words." She looked back to him and he stared at her, wondering if he had let his life be bought by her pretty words. He had always loved that she was a pretty liar before, but now her lying confused him and Kathryn's voice rang in his ears. "She cares nothing for you." And for a moment, staring into Talia's sincere gaze he almost didn't believe Kathryn.
Then he remembered.
'This was a mistake,' Talia had said, her voice very hard, so hard it had cracked something in his chest and again in the moment seemed to weigh on him. He remembered her skin and her rushing to get dressed her words icee as she spoke
'You are no longer with me.'
And now he knew she had been right at that time, his soul had been following Kathryn and her brave, stupid beautiful self long before he had taken off the mask for Talia.
"You smell like smoke," Talia commented for the first time a slight edge of concern to her voice, as if she had just noticed he wasn't speaking to her. He pondered telling her what had happened, but he decided against it. The fire and the ambush was a minor thing when compared with some of the more dangerous moments they had shared in the past, and he was distracted.
Distracted by death. Distracted by a bomb and his promise to Talia. He had handed his fate over to her, determined to live for her, because he had been in love with her. Maybe he was in love with her, but she was a dark shade in his now much brighter worldview. Whether Gotham deserved to perish or not he did not know, but destroying the one thing he found truly good, the one thing in that moment he wanted to hold onto, felt heavy and wrong.
He absolutely wanted to continue surviving.
He had to fight every instinct that he possessed mot to hastily blurt out the questions that kept dominating in his mind. He was the consummate survivor who had signed over his soul and in doing so had doomed not only himself, but the only two people, women, that he had ever loved.
Now to simply wait for death to find them did not bring peace to him. But he was bound to Talia, and if she was going head first into the fire her revenge had lit, then it would be so. His new found feelings didn't stop fated destruction. The deaths of millions, and so he gently asked, already seeming to know the answer in his heart.
"Did you complete your task to deactivate the reactor?" There was no reason to be indirect with that particular question, and he hoped she couldn't feel the taint in his soul behind the deceptive mildness in his tone.
"Yes."
The room felt colder.
He didn't know what he had expected, hadn't known he had let any hope in, but the loss of it was clearly there. He gathered himself first before speaking and the whole room seemed to shift with him as he moved from the wall to walk hand in hand with her towards the end of the hall.
Talia's green eyes watched him, as if she knew he had considered betraying her, and he felt betrayed by his own emotions. He had known the answer already, but hope had persisted, hope he had never had before Kathryn. And even if by some miracle it had been founded in reality it still wouldn't have changed the bomb going off, he wouldn't have gotten it to the reactor. It was absurdity, and for the first time in his life he found himself questioning his own sanity as two parts of him clearly warred over the whims of these two women.
"You would follow me anywhere, wouldn't You," he had heard the question before, and his eyes narrowed as he felt the test in the statement now. Her hand felt colder on his.
"Yes." There was a threat behind his tone and her lips turned up at the corners, his answer seeming to please her.
"How did you deactivate it without the rest of Wayne's finger prints?" He questioned, knowing full well several of the prints the girl Selena Kyle had brought him had been faint and unusable for their purposes, though good enough for any normal records.
"I was able to retrieve the rest of Wayne's fingerprints," Talia explained, and they passed through a doorway and into a bigger office, with windows from floor to ceiling looking out onto the city. She pulled away from him to walk towards the glass, her fingertips pressing too it. Her breath leaving a foggy spot on the clear surface as she looked out over the city.
Kathryn's city.
"It was fairly easy once i got into the Manor," she explained, her voice delicate and for a moment he wondered when she had gone to the Wayne Manor a second time, as she hadn't found any prints the first time she had gone.
He was distracted from her, he didn't understand how Talia's vendetta worked, didn't see how ridding the world of one broken city would change anything. But it'd never mattered that he didn't see it, what mattered was that Talia did. Until now, and Kathryn had led him to believe there was a chance at something greater. A Faith he couldn't comprehend, in humanity, in God, in herself. Something unseen yet something to conquer explore and understand. Life didn't seem like such a little thing to give up anymore. He watched Talia, her breathing white in the air and her green eyes bright against the light of the city, and she seemed so full of life again, like the small child he had known. If she could only feel what he felt about the world, only understand the feeling that something more was out there. A feeling Kathryn had created, a restlessness she had gently forced into him without even trying. He couldn't even begin to explain it to Talia, but every part of him wanted too. He wanted her to have the same hope he realized.
Her voice brought him back, right before he reached for her. Wanting to suddenly hold her again.
"Bruce Wayne for all his care is very promiscuous." There was a hidden laugh behind her tone, but what she said made Bane's blood run from a hopeful warm to a cold so still it hurt behind his eyes. He stopped still. Time seeming to slow as he pulled his hand away from hers. He stared down at her, his eyes dark behind the mask as the implication of her words sunk in.
Talia had slept with Bruce Wayne.
Her lips continued to twist into a knowing little smile and he watched her, as his hands slowly turned to fists without his willing them too. Images of the Batman filled his brain, and the feeling of a spine breaking against his leg. The anger he had felt towards that man, so strong and unfathomable even for Bane, that he had gone back to the pit. The place he had vowed never to enter again, just to make sure that man felt the same pain he did. He wanted the Batman to feel the loss of the city he loved so much, because Bruce Wayne, for all his antics and flair, had been the League member that had always been just a little bit better.
Rahz al ghul had adored the man, even after his betrayal, had taken to obsessing over the winged knight of Gotham, who at the time was no one, but to Bane he had been haunting. Every accomplishment, bested by a man who wasn't even there to fight. But all words of praise from Al Ghul had gone to Wayne, and it had made Bane furious.
But to know Talia had slept with him, used the one thing about Talia he had cherished as his, as a weapon in their plot, it burned in him. It burned and it burned like he was still in the warehouse the flames licking all around him. It hurt like rejection and heartbreak and lust all colliding and snapping in two. His jaw set and my God he was sure he could feel the pain of his old injuries and his spine tingling again, because of how long he had held his breath.
And Talia?
She just watched him cave in on himself with that sweet little smile on her face. Like she had won something.
He was moving towards her before he had thought about the motion and he caught her throat in his one hand and his fist slammed into the glass above her, and he heard it crack with the force, but only saw that stupid smile on her face.
It grew wider as he pressed her into the glass and he knew she knew he wouldn't, couldn't, hurt her.
But even as the glass splintered in a halo above her head. Bane remembered the anger he had felt towards her when she had left him in the pit. Remembered the rage each time she had approached him after. She had left him, abandoned him for years before she came to find him. She had let him rot in pain and misery, more then once coming close to death. She had forgotten him there and all that anger at her from before was back so strong it tasted vile on his tongue. Worst of all he knew when she had done it, knew from before how she had acted different when they were together, how she had pressed him to remove Gotham's dark knight while kissing him desperately.
He snarled inside the mask and it came out as a curdled hiss.
"Bane," her voice was quiet and she brought her hands to the hand around her throat and pulled his fingers away with ease. He couldn't hurt her, he couldn't, so he let her, but She didn't move away from him. Just stood, holding his hand to her chest, the smile slowly fading as if she realized she had gone to far.
"I have to go," she whispered, but he was frozen, something in his brain debating between loyalty and devotion, love and lust, and the passion he had felt for Talia only seconds before she had told him, just to spite him, what she had done.
It was easy for him to realize he didn't understand, the "why", behind her smirk and the pain he now felt, as if he was back tangled in the sheets, his mask off and his heart being broken again, only worse this time. He could only guess and that would drive him insane.
So, he moved away from her without an answer to his question and watched her go. Feeling more then rage and anger in his bones, this was something he could not put a word to. He needed a cure for the pain, his mask wouldn't fix this. He needed a cure for this aggression that threatened to take over him. There was a snarl on his lips, and the agony, hurt and brokenness was turning into the sound of war drums in his ears.

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness of witherings, of tarnishings."
- Anias Nin