DC – I am Batman

Her boot against his ankle, adjusting the angle. "Here. Weight forward." She could have pointed. She didn't.

Two weeks of this. Talia had made him her project. Morning forms, afternoon sword work, evening conditioning she'd added on day nine without asking whether he wanted it. She ran the sessions herself and they ran longer than they needed to and neither of them mentioned that part. A lesson on blade transitions became ninety minutes of correction that could have been done in forty. Conditioning became an extra hour of sparring that had nothing to do with endurance.

Day twelve, they ran the mountain trail together at dawn. Three miles on switchbacks, the air thin enough that the last half-mile was more will than oxygen. She ran ahead the whole way and waited at the top without breathing hard and when he crested the ridge she handed him water from a canteen she'd brought for him, not for herself. He drank. She watched him drink.

Of course he noticed. Dense wasn't something he'd ever been accused of.

Shiva trained him at dawn. Talia owned the rest. Between the two of them his days ran from before sunrise to after dark and the only time he had to himself was the walk back to his quarters, which took a few minutes if he didn't stop to look at the valley.

He stopped to look at the valley most nights.

Dinner was in the hall off the west courtyard. Long stone table, benches, food that was good and plain and never varied much. Rice, flatbread, lentils, roasted vegetables. A clay pot of yogurt that somebody replenished without being seen. Tonight there was lamb, which was rare enough that two League students looked up when the bowls came out.

Talia sat across from him. She'd been doing that since day three. Nobody else sat within ten feet of them because nobody at this compound was stupid.

She ate with small bites, straight posture, the bowl placed at the same angle every time. One of the older students had left a cup on the table at a careless tilt and she moved it six inches to the right without breaking eye contact with her bread.

"Would you kill one person to save a thousand?"

He chewed. Swallowed. Took a drink of water that was lukewarm and tasted like the copper pipes it came through.

"Depends on the person."

"That's not how the question works."

"The question works however the person answering it decides. One person and a thousand people aren't numbers. They're specific. The one has a name. The thousand have lives I don't know about. So it depends."

She watched him. The braid was over her left shoulder tonight and there was a callus on her right thumb from the sword grip that she hadn't had two weeks ago, which meant she was drilling more than she was showing him.

"My father would say the answer is always yes."

"Your father's been alive long enough to stop seeing faces. He looks at the world and sees math. He's not wrong about the diagnosis. The world is unsustainable, the ecology is breaking, the population is past what the planet wants to carry. He sees all of that and he's right. But his solution is culling, and culling is a math answer to a people problem."

She set her bread down. "And your answer?"

"I don't have one yet. But it won't involve a plague."

"How reassuring."

"You asked."

"I asked if you'd kill one to save a thousand. You haven't answered."

He looked at her across the table. The lamp behind her left shoulder was making the braid cast a shadow across her collarbone.

"If the one person was standing in front of me and I knew what they'd do and there was no other way. Yeah. Probably. But I'd remember their face for the rest of my life and I'd know I failed because there should have been another way. Your father doesn't think there should have been another way. That's the difference."

"The difference between guilt and conviction."

"The difference between someone who carries the cost and someone who thinks the cost is acceptable."

Her chin tilted. "Most men who come here either reject everything my father believes or accept everything. They condemn or they convert."

"I'm not doing either."

"No. You're making a third group." She picked up her cup. Drank. Set it down at the exact same angle. "A group of one."

"Suits me."

"It would."

A cat appeared from somewhere under the table and crossed the hall without urgency. Gray, thin, one ear torn. It walked between the benches and nobody acknowledged it and it disappeared through a gap in the far wall. He didn't know the compound had a cat.

Evening spar. South yard, the same yard where she'd corrected his grip two weeks ago, where the stones still held the day's warmth and the mountain air came in cold enough that your breath was visible for the first hour after sunset.

She'd changed into training clothes. Lighter. The braid was tight. She was moving differently tonight, sharper, and the first combination she threw had too much behind it.

He blocked the first two. Slipped the third. Tried to counter and she read the shoulder load and closed the distance before his elbow cleared his hip. He reset. She came again. Low sweep, which she never did, and when he jumped it she was already inside his guard with her forearm across his chest.

He caught her wrist. Redirected. Got two feet of space back and used it. The Shiva drills were helping. He could read the origin point in her shoulder now, sometimes, one time in four. Enough to not be completely behind.

She feinted right, went left, got past his guard and drove him backward. He planted his foot and tried to turn the retreat into a lateral angle but the stone was warm and his foot slipped half an inch and that was enough. She swept his leg and he went down and she followed him.

Full mount.

Her thigh across his hip. His back on the warm stone. Her hands on his wrists, pressing them flat beside his head. The braid swung forward and hung over his face and the end of it brushed his collarbone.

Jasmine. Through the cold mountain air, through stone and sweat, the jasmine was there.

He yielded. Tap with two fingers on the stone, the signal they'd been using since day one.

She didn't move.

One.

Her weight settled deeper. Her fingers were still on his wrists but the grip had loosened, not holding him down anymore, just holding him. The heat of her was coming through the training clothes on both sides.

Two.

The braid was still hanging. Close enough that if he turned his head the hair would touch his cheek. Her face was above his and her breathing was faster than the spar warranted.

Three.

She stood. One motion, clean, no transition between mounted and standing. She didn't offer a hand. She picked up the sparring stick she'd dropped and walked to the rack and placed it precisely in the slot it came from and walked out of the yard.

He watched her go. Didn't pretend he wasn't. The braid swung against her back with each step and she didn't look back and the jasmine was still in his nose and the warm stone was against his back and his wrists still felt where her fingers had been.

He lay there longer than he needed to. The stars were starting to come out and the stone was warm and he could still feel the exact line where her thigh had crossed his hip, the specific weight of her, the specific heat.

Then he got up and went to the battlements because his quarters were small, the bed narrow, and he wasn't going to lie in it thinking about her weight across his hips for the next four hours.

The battlements ran the length of the north wall and looked out over the valley. At night the valley was black and the stars were thick enough that the sky looked grainy and the air was cold and clean and smelled like nothing because there was nothing up here to smell.

She was already there.

Hair down. First time he'd seen it loose. It was longer than the braid suggested, past her shoulders, and it moved in the wind in a way the braid didn't allow. She was leaning on the stone wall with her forearms on the edge and she was looking out at the valley and she didn't turn when he walked up but she didn't leave either.

He leaned on the wall. Left about four inches between his arm and hers.

They stood there for a while. The wind came up the valley and his training shirt wasn't enough for the temperature and he didn't care. Below them the compound was mostly dark. A few windows with lamp light. The fountain in the central yard was just visible, the water still moving and still silent.

"Bruce."

Not Wayne. First time. His actual name in her voice sounded different from how anyone else had ever said it.

"Why are you really here?"

He looked out at the valley. Black ground, black sky, the line between them invisible.

"Someone has to be ready."

"Ready for what?"

Julia had asked the same question on a bridge in Paris and he hadn't answered. Kate had asked it on back stairs at the manor and he'd said "whatever comes" and she'd accepted it. Talia wouldn't accept either version. She'd been raised at civilizational scale. Her father planned in centuries. Vague wasn't a language she spoke.

"Everything."

Silence. Wind. Her hands on the wall, still. Then her chin lifted. A fraction.

"I've never heard anyone say 'everything' and mean it."

She pushed off the wall. Stood straight. Her hair blew across her face and she pushed it back with one hand and her eyes were dark and her mouth was slightly open and she looked like a woman standing in the wind at twenty instead of the daughter of a man who'd been alive since the plague.

"Goodnight, Bruce."

She walked away. He stayed at the wall. Four inches between their arms when she'd stood there, and neither of them had mentioned it.

The valley was dark and quiet. The wind was cold. Somewhere in the compound below, the cat with the torn ear was probably doing whatever cats did on a mountain at midnight.

He went to bed eventually. The stone was warm from underneath.