DC – I am Batman

Five days since Cain walked Cassandra off the compound.

He'd watched from the upper walkway. Cain with the bag over his shoulder, the girl behind him, that familiar shift in her stance as she scanned the gate for the last time. They went down the trail and were gone.

He still went to the east courtyard at dawn. The wall was empty and cold and the stones where she'd trained were bare and the first morning he sat there for ten minutes before getting up and going to Shiva's session. The second morning he didn't go at all. The third morning he went and sat for five minutes and the snow had melted days ago.

Shiva had been on the eastern wall when Cain left. He'd looked for her because the foreknowledge had given him that too: Sandra Wu-San was Cassandra Cain's mother. Shiva had watched the girl she'd had with David Cain walk through the gate and down the trail and she hadn't moved from the wall and she hadn't followed and when the car was gone she'd turned and walked back to the training yard and started her drills.

He didn't know what to do with that.

She'd stood on that wall for twenty minutes before the car arrived. She'd known Cain was leaving and she'd chosen a vantage that gave her a clear line of sight to the gate. She'd watched until there was nothing left to watch.

She trained harder that afternoon. He was the only one who noticed.

The dawn sessions with Shiva continued. She didn't mention Cassandra or Cain. She ran him through cascade drills until his eyes bled from the focus and his shoulder ached from throwing punches that she read before they formed. His one-in-five accuracy was climbing. One in four now, sometimes one in three on good mornings when the air was cold enough to sharpen everything.

On the fourth day after Cain left, she stopped mid-drill, looked at him, and said "Your anger is in your shoulders. Put it somewhere else or I'll put it there for you."

He moved the anger. She didn't ask what it was about.

Talia's sessions ran longer that week. She didn't explain why and he didn't ask. Evening conditioning became two hours instead of one and the sparring at the end of it was harder, closer, and she stopped pulling at the end of combinations entirely.

The balcony was becoming their place. He went there after evening conditioning because the view was good and the air was cold and it was the only spot on the compound where you couldn't hear anyone else training. She came because he was there.

Tonight the sky was clear and the stars were out and the valley was black and the wind was steady from the north. She was leaning on the wall, forearms on the stone, braid over one shoulder. Hair still up. She hadn't worn it down since the night he'd said "everything." Three weeks ago. He'd been counting without meaning to.

He stood next to her. Three inches between his arm and hers. It had been four three weeks ago.

They stood there. The wind came up the valley and his training shirt wasn't warm enough and he didn't care. The compound below them was mostly dark. A lamp in Ra's's study. The fountain still moving and still silent in the central yard. The cat with the torn ear was probably somewhere, doing whatever it did.

"You've been quiet," she said.

"I'm always quiet."

"You're usually quiet because you're thinking. This week you're quiet because you're angry."

He didn't answer.

"The girl."

"Yeah."

"Cain is what he is. My father tolerates him because Cain is useful and my father has tolerated worse for less."

"Your father tolerates a man who took a child and built her into a weapon."

"My father has lived long enough to make that calculation and not lose sleep over it." She turned her head toward him. The braid shifted against her shoulder. "You haven't. That's why you're angry and he isn't."

"I cleared the snow off my section of wall every morning for four days. She cleared it for me on the last one. Before dawn. By hand."

"I know."

"She can't talk. She can't read. She can't do anything except fight. And the one act of kindness she could think of was clearing snow off a wall so I could sit on cold stone and watch her."

"I know, Bruce."

He looked out at the valley.

"Shiva watched them leave," he said.

Talia didn't look away from him. "Yes."

"She's her mother."

"Yes."

"You knew."

"I know most things that happen on this mountain." She picked at a chip in the stone with her thumbnail. He'd never seen her fidget before. "Sandra made a choice a long time ago. The child was Cain's project. Sandra provided the material."

"The material."

"Her word. Not mine."

The wind came up the valley and the cold cut through his training shirt. He thought about a girl who moved like Shiva and flinched at doors and the woman who'd made her and then stood on a wall and watched her leave.

Talia's hair had come loose again. A single strand, free of the braid, caught in the wind across her cheek. She didn't fix it.

He reached over and tucked it behind her ear.

His fingers grazed her jaw on the way back. He didn't pull them away as fast as he could have. The pad of his index finger traced the line from her ear to her chin and the skin was cold from the wind and smooth and he was touching her face for the first time and he knew it and she knew it.

She closed her eyes.

Two seconds. Her lips parted. The breath she let out was visible in the cold air and it came out uneven.

She opened her eyes.

"Don't start something you won't finish, beloved."

He pulled his hand back. The cold air hit his fingers where her skin had been warm.

She caught his wrist.

Her thumb found the inside, the vein, the same spot Shiva had pressed after two hours of cascade drills. Clinical pressure. Counting. But Shiva had been reading his recovery. Talia was reading his want.

She held. His pulse sat at sixty-four. Resting. Steady.

Her eyebrows went up a fraction. She looked at his wrist, then at his face.

"You're not nervous."

"No."

"Your heart rate should be higher than this."

"Probably."

"But it isn't."

"No."

She was still holding his wrist. Her thumb was still on the vein and her eyes were steady and dark and waiting for the number to change.

"You want me and your body isn't even registering it."

"My body registers it fine. I'm just good at this."

"Good at what."

"Keeping still when I shouldn't be."

Her thumb pressed harder on his pulse.

"I'm good at it," he said. Quieter. "Doesn't mean I don't want to move."

She dropped his wrist. Set it down the way you set down a glass you intend to pick up again.

The wind blew. The valley was dark. A light went on in one of the lower compound buildings, yellow through a window, and then went off again.

They stood at the wall for a while. His wrist was cold where her thumb had been warm. Three inches between their arms. Less than it had been at the start of the evening.

"She used the cascade technique," he said. "Cassandra. The forms I saw her doing. The shoulder-to-hip-to-oblique chain. That's Shiva's."

"Cain would have learned it from Sandra directly. He'd have taught the child the same way."

"He taught her a technique from her own mother and she doesn't know that's what it is."

Talia was quiet for a moment. The wind moved the loose strand of hair again and she tucked it back herself this time. When she spoke her voice was lower.

"When you go for her," Talia said.

He looked at her. She was looking at the valley.

"Take me."

"Okay."

She nodded once. Then she pushed off the wall and walked away. The balcony was cold and his wrist still felt her thumb and his fingers still had the temperature of her jaw on them.

He stayed. Down in the yard, a League student was doing laps around the perimeter. Running steady, breath even, feet hitting stone in a rhythm that carried up to the balcony. He watched the student run without thinking about anything in particular. The runner's form was good. Consistent pace, no wasted motion.

He went inside. The corridor was dark and the stone was warm underneath his feet. His cot was narrow and the blanket was wool and he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and his fingers curled against the mattress and he could still feel the exact spot where the cold skin of her jaw met the warm skin behind her ear.

Three inches. Down from four.