Chapter Text
Talia becomes aware of her father’s shadow at the age of five. A boy with skin so white she half expects him to be translucent and eyes so frigid they put the winter sky to shame. He lingers in shadows and darkened corners, ever silent and ever watching. Her father never mentions him, not even when he perches on the arm of his throne or steals bits of meat from his plate. She half thinks she’s crazy for the first thirteen years of her life but doesn’t once dare to ask. Secrets get you killed in this world and this is one she’s not willing to die for.
He never speaks to her. Never seems to speak to anyone. He’d be an afterthought if his presence wasn’t so alien.
At the age of thirteen, the night before her first solo mission, she wakes to find him sitting on the edge of her bed. No scream comes; she’s learned the only one she can depend on is herself.
He touches a finger to his lips and she remains silent as the guards outside walk past. When the lights from under the door fade, he speaks for the first time.
“Tomorrow, you’re going to die.”
Talia’s hand curls around the blade beneath her pillow. “Is this a threat?”
“A fact.” His face is cold, emotionless. It’s like looking into the depths of a still pool; all she sees is herself staring back. “You will die many times in this world and you will pay dearly for your return.”
“The pit,” she understands.
“If you’re smart, you’ll start saving what pieces of yourself you have left. You’ll need them one day.” He stands. Instead of opening the door, she watches as he finds tiny handholds in the stone of her wall and begins to climb to the ceiling. There’s a small hole six meters up, where the smoke of her fires can escape. It’s barely big enough for his head.
“Who are you?” She calls as loud as she dares.
“When the time comes, I will scream for you. Follow the sound back.”
He vanishes out the hole like smoke, body contorted into impossible shapes. Talia lays down and stares up at that dark maw of space until her eyes blur and droop.
Three days later she can’t stop the sword from cutting through her chest. She slices through her enemy but it’s too late. Her knees fall out from under her as her mouth opens in a silent cry.
Across the room, she sees a boy’s eyes turn from icy blue to black as his mouth contorts into the shape of a horrific scream; the sound rings in her ears long after it’s over.
It’s the last thing she hears as she dies and the first she hears as she comes gasping from the Pit, naked and shaking as her heart restarts in her chest.
He stands in the shadows when her father holds a hand out. Always watching. Waiting.
This repeats twenty times in the span of a hundred years. Twenty times in which she dies to a scream and returns to one. And then it stops.
He’s sitting in front of a machine, eyes big as he presses his palms to the glass. She feels something sick in her stomach but cannot place just what it means. Motherly instinct? The desire to whisk her growing child out of sight and away from this creature no one ever seems to talk about.
“His name,” he says, “what will you call him?”
The last thing she wants to do is tell him. Still, she cannot stop herself.
“His name is Damian.”
“Damian,” he sighs, croons, growls. “Damian Wayne-al Ghul.”
She never told him who the father was.
The day Damian is born is the day she loses him, if she ever had him in the first place. It’s in the way he looks past her to stare into the shadows; the way his nose scrunches and his lips curl in delight; the way he waves his grasping hands and the way she cannot stop him from leaving her arms.
“Tim,” he babbles up at the monster that has dogged her life and death. She didn't even know he had a name to give.
Damian giggles and pats at a pale cheek with his own colored fingers. “Tim!”
Tim smiles a ghastly, jagged sort of smile down at him. It’s like watching someone learn how to feel for the first time; unnatural, yet impossible to look away from. There’s color in his face for the first time, a light in his eyes like the first thaw of spring.
“Damian,” he says like it’s something reverent, something holy. It’s the level of devotion a prince deserves but she cannot find it in herself to be pleased.
It’s then that she acknowledges the bitter truth: Tim scares her in a world where she is not meant to be afraid of anything. He’s the only being she fears save perhaps her father and he’s looking at her son like he hung the stars.
What bitter irony.
For the first time, she comes to him. He’s standing just outside Damian’s room, looking in like there’s nothing he wants more and less than to go inside.
“Normally you’re inseparable. What is it?”
He’s silent for so long that she half convinces herself he’s an illusion.
“I’m leaving.”
Talia blinks. He’s never left once; not that she’s aware of. “Leaving?”
“If I stay, he won’t turn into the boy he needs to be to survive what’s coming.” Tim turns almost human eyes on her. He looks drawn and tired. “I won’t be able to let you hurt him.”
“I would not—"
“You would. You know nothing else.”
They stand together, staring at the closed door in mutual contemplation. Finally, Tim sighs.
“You’ll do your best to kill the good in him, but remember death is never permanent. Not for an al Ghul. Do more than that and I’ll come for you. I don’t care what destiny says.”
Talia’s hands itch for her knives, but she does not reach. She knows better. “When will you return?”
“When I’m needed.” He turns to meet her eyes, small but oh so fierce. “Teach him well, Talia. Show him what he needs to know to survive.”
He’s gone before she can respond. They both know she will do nothing less.