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bossymarmalade) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thejusticelounge2014-11-08 07:39 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-11-08 07:39 am
waiting to finally be caught
[jason encrypted text]: where is talia?
[BRUCE ENCRYPTED TEXT] Why?
[encrypted text]: because i want to know
[encrypted text]: i’m not in the mood to be jerked around and asked a million questions bruce
[encrypted text]: if you know where she is tell me
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Supermax isolation in Blackgate.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] My question still stands: why?
[encrypted text]: don’t really see how it’s any of your business
The next text comes almost an hour later.
[encrypted text]: i got a message the other day that i think she sent
[encrypted text]: but if it’s not from her it’s from someone that wants me to think it’s her
[encrypted text]: i just wanna make sure she’s okay
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] You know better than to think I wouldn’t ask, Jason.
An hour later.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] What was the message?
[encrypted text]: it was in arabic
[encrypted text]: she said to be careful
[encrypted text]: if it was her i mean
[encrypted text]: i know it doesn’t sound like much but if she’s locked up tight like she’s supposed to be it must have been pretty damn hard to get a message out to me so i figure there’s got to be some reason for it
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] She told you to be careful.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Getting a message to you would have been next to impossible.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Thank you for telling me.
[encrypted text]: yeah she did i have no idea why though
[encrypted text]: you’re welcome i guess
Ten minutes later
[encrypted text]: so about how impossible would it be for me to get in to see her?
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Damn near impossible.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Do you need to see her?
[encrypted text]: i need to find out if it was actually her that tried to contact me
[encrypted text]: cause either it was and that’s gotta mean there’s probably a pretty damn important reason she went to the effort to get a message to me
[encrypted text]: or if it wasn’t her someone sure as hell wants me to think that it was and i need to know why
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Meet me on the Watchtower.
When the results popped up onto the computer screen upon the Watchtower, Bruce sat up so quickly in his chair that he felt the muscles in his back sizzle with the rapid motion. Instantly, his mind turns to a familiar strain—the Cave. If he had been in the Cave, with his Computer, the resources he needed, the puzzle of the diamonds, the one Jason had brought him, wouldn’t have taken nearly this long. Running off his backups, routed through the Watchtower, Bruce had only been able to determine that the diamonds were filled with a volatile organic substance a few weeks ago, after much trial and error. The samples that Jason had brought back, the ones that Bruce had been able to find around the city, had rapidly diminished in that first stage, leaving Bruce with one, maybe two, viable samples.
The mistakes hadn’t stopped there. Transferring the samples had ruined one, left Bruce with the final one, that had been processing for days on end, the Watchtower’s system taxed to the limit as he attempted to run the DNA sequencing on every known organism, to determine why the liquid had been deposited in diamonds—an organic substance was needed to keep it contained, keep it whole— scattered around the city.
PARTIAL DNA MATCH
Bruce looked up at the screen, and brought up the sequencing of the DNA, jumping graphs that looked like analog squiggles against a black background. Exhaling, Bruce moved his hands to the keyboard, typing in commands so he could bring up the partial match (partial match? the machine had been chugging away for triple the amount of time it should have ever taken) his brows knitting further when he saw:
Zatanna Zatara.
Eyes narrowed, Bruce pulled back, staring up at the DNA samples that had been entered into the database over the summer (some with signed agreement forms, others curiously missing them). It wasn’t a complete match, and in fact, there was barely anything that would have held up in a court of law, if Bruce had needed it to.
It was a good thing Bruce had long abandoned the idea of needing to defend anything he did to a jury of his peers; he had none. Staring at the blueprint of the mitochondrial markers, then, the hapoblock—
Jason’s footsteps barely register until the younger man is in the Monitor Womb itself, Bruce’s arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixated on the screen.
It’s not the response he expects to get, but Jason’s not complaining. He pushes himself out of bed, where he’s been for most of the day, dozing on and off for hours at a time, the talisman around his neck keeping his dreams at bay. As he heads out the door, he realizes he’s still wearing it and tucks it into his jacket pocket as he heads off to the nearest zeta platform.
Minutes later, he’s walking through the Watchtower halls, nearly getting lost once before finding his way tot he Monitor Womb. He pauses in the doorway for a moment before approaching Bruce’s chair. His eyes narrow as they flick up the the screen that the man’s watching so intently.
"Zatanna?" he says, tilting his head to one side in slight confusion, as he scans the screen, trying to figure out just what Bruce is analyzing.
Bruce doesn’t say anything back for a moment, still looking at the two sequences side by side, in an overlay, then back to looking at each individually, before he speaks.
"The liquid that was inside those pellets, the diamonds that you found," Bruce says, distractedly, without any second thought, it seems, to giving this information to the younger man. He is so lost in thought, his growing inability to determine how this makes sense, that there is no time for him to think beyond what ramifications there might be for imparting the knowledge with Jason.
Besides that, Bruce knows, in the back of his mind, he’s always worked better with partners, people who push back, ask more, make him look at things in ways he might not.
"An organic substance. Highly volatile, it basically.. evaporated the first few times I attempted to take it out, and having a match to Zatanna’s DNA.." Bruce trails off, shaking his head. "I can only make the conclusion that it has something to do with.." He stops short, exhaling sharply, not willing to bring the word into discussion: magic.
He narrows his eyes at the screen, to the point that any further consternation on the matter would leave him with a squinted gaze.
"The pellets? Wait from that place that got blown up?" So much has happened since the day with the giant duck, Jason’s nearly put them out of his mind. Brow furrowing, he leans on the back of Bruce’s chair, eyes scanning the screen more intently now.
"So it’s something supernatural then." Magic isn’t a word that rolls easily off Jason’s tongue ether, even after his recent trip to Shadowcrest. Absently, his hand goes to his pocket, fingers curling around the talisman there. He nearly asks if Bruce has mentioned this to Zatanna, but stops himself, assuming that he probably hasn’t if he’s still puzzling it over himself.
"D’you think… it could be connected to her mom? Cause found those way before she got her mom outta her head, and highly volatile kinda sounds right up her alley," he says slowly, trying to remember all he can about what he’s heard about Zatanna’s mother. For a moment, he recalls the induced dream, Zatanna’s dream, a blonde version of her beckoning him forward to his doom.
"Maybe she had more control over Zee than we know. But if these things just evaporate, why the hell was that guy leaving ‘em behind? Do they give off any kinda—I dunno—gas or something when they fade?"
Bruce shook his head. “The contents evaporate once they are removed from within the diamonds, but with no residual gas, nothing that would show up on a chromatograph.” That much, at least, had been done back in the Cave. Glancing back at Jason, Bruce continues to speak. “It’s organically derived, and seems to need to be in contact with other organic substances in order to maintain its integrity.” It makes sense, but only in the roundabout sense that talking about the supernatural, magic, does in Bruce’s mind. Locking the computer down to his security code, Bruce addresses Jason’s other concern. “The one you locked up, Jonathan Pike, alias Dallas, was the one planting these across the city.” He doesn’t sound as if he understands it either. “He’s never confessed to knowing the who behind it, so I may very well have to speak to Zatanna.” Bruce frowns, shrugging his cowl back on, and moves from the Monitor Womb, expecting Jason to follow. The change in subjects is abrupt: “..you’ll need me to get into Blackgate.”
Eyes still on the screen, he frowns. No gas is definitely weird. Generally matter doesn’t just stop existing, so it’s got to go somewhere. But if it is mystical, that complicates things. “Asking her about ‘em can’t hurt. Maybe she can do a locator spell or something and figure out where they came from even if she doesn’t know what they are.”
He’s still kind of avoiding the idea that Zatanna could be connected to them.
But then Bruce is up and leaving, so he pushes those thoughts and questions down for the moment to trail after him. He doesn’t have his helmet, though he had thought to change into the rest of his costume before heading out, a domino mask tucked into one of his pockets. “Right. Kinda figured I would. How’re we getting in?”
Bruce tucks Jason’s comment away for later, because he has a point, and it would be illogical to deny it: Zatanna has more knowledge of the occult and the mystical in her little finger than Bruce and Jason had between them. Not that Bruce would ever admit to it.
He continues to walk down the wide Watchtower corridor towards the Transport Bay, glancing up and down as if he were patrolling, instead of where he actually is. He doesn’t answer him until they are physically in the room with the zetas, and he is punching in security code after security code, to get them into Blackgate.
And even then, “the usual way,” is all he says before he steps onto the zeta pad, waiting for Jason to follow, and shoots them both down to the planet, directly inside of Blackgate.
The prison is a slight improvement on Arkham, if only for the recessed lighting that guides their way down the darkened, foul smelling hallways, the see-through ballistic plastic cells darkened for most of the prisoners (it was night, down on Earth). It didn’t mean, however, that they were sleeping.
Inside most of them, there is movement, subtle shuffling or in the case of a few inmates, when they recognize the silhouette of the cape and cowl, a frenetic throwing of their bodily person against their confining walls.
Harley’s voice pings out, muted and muffled—the small door that would allow her to speak is shut—as Bruce turns the corner, heading for the last cell at the last part of the wing.
Talia has a light on, a small one, and one that Bruce notes, frowning, was not on the list of allowed items for her confinement. She’s reading, her legs tucked under her, the garish orange jumpsuit flooding her, making her look small in the context of the massive, near-empty cell.
Bruce stops, a respectable distance away, and speaks in a low voice to Jason. “Guards go on their rounds in fifteen minutes.”
It’s a lot less exciting than the last time he snuck into a prison, but really, that’s probably for the best. As Bruce punches in the code, he presses his mask into place, knowing that Talia’s got plenty to recognize him by other than his eyes.
Jason’s not overly familiar with Blackgate, so he sticks close to Bruce when they materialize. He sees a few familiar faces behind the cell doors, but stopping to chat isn’t really something he wants to do.
Spotting Talia through the cell door makes him freeze, anxiety suddenly settling into his gut. What if it really wasn’t from her? What if she doesn’t want to see him? Not like she has a lot of reasons to care about him anymore.
Still, they’ve already come all this way.
He takes a breath and nods. “I’ll try and make it quick,” he replies, voice barely louder than a whisper.
Hands twitching at his sides, he approaches the cell, footsteps almost silent. “Talia?” he says slowly. “It’s me.” He stops himself there, internally berating himself for how childish and almost nervous the words come out.
Rising up, Talia pads barefoot to the massive, clear wall of explosives-proof, bullet-proof plastic, and gestures to the door in the center. She cannot open it herself, the handle on the outside, but there is no impatience on her face. In fact, there is not much of anything besides a subtle joy on her face at seeing the younger man.
In the time she had moved from Arkham to Blackgate, it seems as though the woman had experienced a rejuvenation of sorts. Her hair, although not much longer, is shiny again, the sores and patches healed, and Talia had obviously begun styling it to hide it, preserve her vanity.
It was a promising sign.
When Jason opens it, she speaks low and hushed, in Arabic, “..you came,” she says and then smiles, before sobering. “The Demon’s Head.. He’s here.”
There’s a slight hesitation when she gestures to the door, but any worry fades when he sees even the slightest sign of happiness on Talia’s face. Jason casts a glance back at Bruce, his look telling more what he plans to do than asking for any kind of permission. Gloved fingers have the door open quickly and quietly as he steps into her cell.
It’s quite a relief to see her looking like herself again instead of the battered, beaten version he had met in Arkham months before. He nearly reaches out to pull her into his arms, but forces his hands into his pockets instead.
“Course I did,” he replies softly, Arabic slipping easily from his lips. His own smile never gets a chance to fully form as his brows knit together. “Ra’s? Why? What’s he doing here?” Before he can stop himself, one of his hands rises to gently grip her shoulder. “Is he after you?”
She exhales when he enters, moving closer to him, but not quite to touching, and when he moves his hands into his pockets, she pauses, stops.
“I didn’t expect..” She begins, before stopping herself, abruptly, when his hand moves to her shoulder. She steps in, closer, tilting her head to look up at him. “If he had come for me, I wouldn’t be here.” There is no bitterness in her voice, even if it lingers in the darkness of her eyes. She shakes her head, lifting her hand to push the soft-roughness of her fingertips against his cheek. “No, he is here, for a purpose greater than retrieving me.”
Talia shakes her head, once again, not moving from Jason’s side, even as outside the cell, Bruce moves closer. She exhales, “..I don’t know what you know, what Bruce knows—” The use of the other man’s name is strange for an al Ghul; even Damian was in the habit of referring to the man as ‘he’ or ‘him’ despite Bruce’s displeasure, “—but he is here.” Her eyes flicker to the door. “..there are guards here under his power.”
Though Jason doesn’t expect it, not with Bruce right outside, he welcomes the closeness. His hand remains on her shoulder, thumb moving in gentle circles, the other hand moves to grasp the one Talia presses to his cheek, his fingers curling around hers, rough calluses kept at bay by his gloves.
"We don’t know much," he says honestly, even as his eyes flick towards the door. Towards Bruce. He’s certain that he’s the one Talia wants in the cell instead of him. There’s no jealousy in the thought, just a sort of sad acceptance.
He’ll never be the one she really wants.
"If B knows anything, he hasn’t mentioned it." Which wouldn’t really surprise Jason if it’s the case. His eyes narrow slightly. "D’you know which guards? I can get rid of them… but I guess that’d tip him off…"
Talia nods, because of course she knows, and something sparks in her eyes when Jason mentions wanting to ‘get rid of them’—it’s a subtly predatory glazing of her gaze, making the dark brown sharper, sparkle like a precious stone.
"No, you’re right," she states, near mournfully, bringing her hand down to his chest, resting it on his right bicep. "I’m not sure if he thinks I am.. up to task," her bitterness abounds, now, souring the words on her tongue like turned milk; she will carry Ra’s dismissal, abandonment, of her for the rest of her life. “..but I know what it looks like when a man is being tugged by puppeteer strings.”
When the door opens behind them, the air in the room growing a bit more stifled, Talia inhales, and exhales, pressing her fingers into Jason’s pectoral muscle. Her voice drops, into a low, curious tone. “..he would, too, if he weren’t so busy mourning what’s dead and gone.”
Behind them both, Bruce speaks in the darkness: “We don’t have much more time.”
Though he’s been kill free for months, Jason’s willing to break the streak should she give the word. He knows that look, and for an instant, it almost scares him, because any order she could give, he would follow. Without question.
"Then he has no idea what you’re capable of." His hands slide to her elbows, itching to pull her closer. He knows the sting of a father’s abandonment all too well, but doesn’t know how to offer comfort… Not with Bruce so close anyway.
When the door opens, his shoulders tense, though he keeps his gaze fixed on Talia. “Just hard to get through some people’s heads, I guess.”
It’s only when Bruce finally speaks that he looks back at him. Lips pressed to a thin line, he nods, not needing to be told twice. Turning back towards Talia, he hesitates before ducking to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see you again, dearest,” he murmurs in Arabic before pulling away.
[BRUCE ENCRYPTED TEXT] Why?
[encrypted text]: because i want to know
[encrypted text]: i’m not in the mood to be jerked around and asked a million questions bruce
[encrypted text]: if you know where she is tell me
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Supermax isolation in Blackgate.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] My question still stands: why?
[encrypted text]: don’t really see how it’s any of your business
The next text comes almost an hour later.
[encrypted text]: i got a message the other day that i think she sent
[encrypted text]: but if it’s not from her it’s from someone that wants me to think it’s her
[encrypted text]: i just wanna make sure she’s okay
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] You know better than to think I wouldn’t ask, Jason.
An hour later.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] What was the message?
[encrypted text]: it was in arabic
[encrypted text]: she said to be careful
[encrypted text]: if it was her i mean
[encrypted text]: i know it doesn’t sound like much but if she’s locked up tight like she’s supposed to be it must have been pretty damn hard to get a message out to me so i figure there’s got to be some reason for it
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] She told you to be careful.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Getting a message to you would have been next to impossible.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Thank you for telling me.
[encrypted text]: yeah she did i have no idea why though
[encrypted text]: you’re welcome i guess
Ten minutes later
[encrypted text]: so about how impossible would it be for me to get in to see her?
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Damn near impossible.
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Do you need to see her?
[encrypted text]: i need to find out if it was actually her that tried to contact me
[encrypted text]: cause either it was and that’s gotta mean there’s probably a pretty damn important reason she went to the effort to get a message to me
[encrypted text]: or if it wasn’t her someone sure as hell wants me to think that it was and i need to know why
[ENCRYPTED TEXT] Meet me on the Watchtower.
When the results popped up onto the computer screen upon the Watchtower, Bruce sat up so quickly in his chair that he felt the muscles in his back sizzle with the rapid motion. Instantly, his mind turns to a familiar strain—the Cave. If he had been in the Cave, with his Computer, the resources he needed, the puzzle of the diamonds, the one Jason had brought him, wouldn’t have taken nearly this long. Running off his backups, routed through the Watchtower, Bruce had only been able to determine that the diamonds were filled with a volatile organic substance a few weeks ago, after much trial and error. The samples that Jason had brought back, the ones that Bruce had been able to find around the city, had rapidly diminished in that first stage, leaving Bruce with one, maybe two, viable samples.
The mistakes hadn’t stopped there. Transferring the samples had ruined one, left Bruce with the final one, that had been processing for days on end, the Watchtower’s system taxed to the limit as he attempted to run the DNA sequencing on every known organism, to determine why the liquid had been deposited in diamonds—an organic substance was needed to keep it contained, keep it whole— scattered around the city.
PARTIAL DNA MATCH
Bruce looked up at the screen, and brought up the sequencing of the DNA, jumping graphs that looked like analog squiggles against a black background. Exhaling, Bruce moved his hands to the keyboard, typing in commands so he could bring up the partial match (partial match? the machine had been chugging away for triple the amount of time it should have ever taken) his brows knitting further when he saw:
Zatanna Zatara.
Eyes narrowed, Bruce pulled back, staring up at the DNA samples that had been entered into the database over the summer (some with signed agreement forms, others curiously missing them). It wasn’t a complete match, and in fact, there was barely anything that would have held up in a court of law, if Bruce had needed it to.
It was a good thing Bruce had long abandoned the idea of needing to defend anything he did to a jury of his peers; he had none. Staring at the blueprint of the mitochondrial markers, then, the hapoblock—
Jason’s footsteps barely register until the younger man is in the Monitor Womb itself, Bruce’s arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixated on the screen.
It’s not the response he expects to get, but Jason’s not complaining. He pushes himself out of bed, where he’s been for most of the day, dozing on and off for hours at a time, the talisman around his neck keeping his dreams at bay. As he heads out the door, he realizes he’s still wearing it and tucks it into his jacket pocket as he heads off to the nearest zeta platform.
Minutes later, he’s walking through the Watchtower halls, nearly getting lost once before finding his way tot he Monitor Womb. He pauses in the doorway for a moment before approaching Bruce’s chair. His eyes narrow as they flick up the the screen that the man’s watching so intently.
"Zatanna?" he says, tilting his head to one side in slight confusion, as he scans the screen, trying to figure out just what Bruce is analyzing.
Bruce doesn’t say anything back for a moment, still looking at the two sequences side by side, in an overlay, then back to looking at each individually, before he speaks.
"The liquid that was inside those pellets, the diamonds that you found," Bruce says, distractedly, without any second thought, it seems, to giving this information to the younger man. He is so lost in thought, his growing inability to determine how this makes sense, that there is no time for him to think beyond what ramifications there might be for imparting the knowledge with Jason.
Besides that, Bruce knows, in the back of his mind, he’s always worked better with partners, people who push back, ask more, make him look at things in ways he might not.
"An organic substance. Highly volatile, it basically.. evaporated the first few times I attempted to take it out, and having a match to Zatanna’s DNA.." Bruce trails off, shaking his head. "I can only make the conclusion that it has something to do with.." He stops short, exhaling sharply, not willing to bring the word into discussion: magic.
He narrows his eyes at the screen, to the point that any further consternation on the matter would leave him with a squinted gaze.
"The pellets? Wait from that place that got blown up?" So much has happened since the day with the giant duck, Jason’s nearly put them out of his mind. Brow furrowing, he leans on the back of Bruce’s chair, eyes scanning the screen more intently now.
"So it’s something supernatural then." Magic isn’t a word that rolls easily off Jason’s tongue ether, even after his recent trip to Shadowcrest. Absently, his hand goes to his pocket, fingers curling around the talisman there. He nearly asks if Bruce has mentioned this to Zatanna, but stops himself, assuming that he probably hasn’t if he’s still puzzling it over himself.
"D’you think… it could be connected to her mom? Cause found those way before she got her mom outta her head, and highly volatile kinda sounds right up her alley," he says slowly, trying to remember all he can about what he’s heard about Zatanna’s mother. For a moment, he recalls the induced dream, Zatanna’s dream, a blonde version of her beckoning him forward to his doom.
"Maybe she had more control over Zee than we know. But if these things just evaporate, why the hell was that guy leaving ‘em behind? Do they give off any kinda—I dunno—gas or something when they fade?"
Bruce shook his head. “The contents evaporate once they are removed from within the diamonds, but with no residual gas, nothing that would show up on a chromatograph.” That much, at least, had been done back in the Cave. Glancing back at Jason, Bruce continues to speak. “It’s organically derived, and seems to need to be in contact with other organic substances in order to maintain its integrity.” It makes sense, but only in the roundabout sense that talking about the supernatural, magic, does in Bruce’s mind. Locking the computer down to his security code, Bruce addresses Jason’s other concern. “The one you locked up, Jonathan Pike, alias Dallas, was the one planting these across the city.” He doesn’t sound as if he understands it either. “He’s never confessed to knowing the who behind it, so I may very well have to speak to Zatanna.” Bruce frowns, shrugging his cowl back on, and moves from the Monitor Womb, expecting Jason to follow. The change in subjects is abrupt: “..you’ll need me to get into Blackgate.”
Eyes still on the screen, he frowns. No gas is definitely weird. Generally matter doesn’t just stop existing, so it’s got to go somewhere. But if it is mystical, that complicates things. “Asking her about ‘em can’t hurt. Maybe she can do a locator spell or something and figure out where they came from even if she doesn’t know what they are.”
He’s still kind of avoiding the idea that Zatanna could be connected to them.
But then Bruce is up and leaving, so he pushes those thoughts and questions down for the moment to trail after him. He doesn’t have his helmet, though he had thought to change into the rest of his costume before heading out, a domino mask tucked into one of his pockets. “Right. Kinda figured I would. How’re we getting in?”
Bruce tucks Jason’s comment away for later, because he has a point, and it would be illogical to deny it: Zatanna has more knowledge of the occult and the mystical in her little finger than Bruce and Jason had between them. Not that Bruce would ever admit to it.
He continues to walk down the wide Watchtower corridor towards the Transport Bay, glancing up and down as if he were patrolling, instead of where he actually is. He doesn’t answer him until they are physically in the room with the zetas, and he is punching in security code after security code, to get them into Blackgate.
And even then, “the usual way,” is all he says before he steps onto the zeta pad, waiting for Jason to follow, and shoots them both down to the planet, directly inside of Blackgate.
The prison is a slight improvement on Arkham, if only for the recessed lighting that guides their way down the darkened, foul smelling hallways, the see-through ballistic plastic cells darkened for most of the prisoners (it was night, down on Earth). It didn’t mean, however, that they were sleeping.
Inside most of them, there is movement, subtle shuffling or in the case of a few inmates, when they recognize the silhouette of the cape and cowl, a frenetic throwing of their bodily person against their confining walls.
Harley’s voice pings out, muted and muffled—the small door that would allow her to speak is shut—as Bruce turns the corner, heading for the last cell at the last part of the wing.
Talia has a light on, a small one, and one that Bruce notes, frowning, was not on the list of allowed items for her confinement. She’s reading, her legs tucked under her, the garish orange jumpsuit flooding her, making her look small in the context of the massive, near-empty cell.
Bruce stops, a respectable distance away, and speaks in a low voice to Jason. “Guards go on their rounds in fifteen minutes.”
It’s a lot less exciting than the last time he snuck into a prison, but really, that’s probably for the best. As Bruce punches in the code, he presses his mask into place, knowing that Talia’s got plenty to recognize him by other than his eyes.
Jason’s not overly familiar with Blackgate, so he sticks close to Bruce when they materialize. He sees a few familiar faces behind the cell doors, but stopping to chat isn’t really something he wants to do.
Spotting Talia through the cell door makes him freeze, anxiety suddenly settling into his gut. What if it really wasn’t from her? What if she doesn’t want to see him? Not like she has a lot of reasons to care about him anymore.
Still, they’ve already come all this way.
He takes a breath and nods. “I’ll try and make it quick,” he replies, voice barely louder than a whisper.
Hands twitching at his sides, he approaches the cell, footsteps almost silent. “Talia?” he says slowly. “It’s me.” He stops himself there, internally berating himself for how childish and almost nervous the words come out.
Rising up, Talia pads barefoot to the massive, clear wall of explosives-proof, bullet-proof plastic, and gestures to the door in the center. She cannot open it herself, the handle on the outside, but there is no impatience on her face. In fact, there is not much of anything besides a subtle joy on her face at seeing the younger man.
In the time she had moved from Arkham to Blackgate, it seems as though the woman had experienced a rejuvenation of sorts. Her hair, although not much longer, is shiny again, the sores and patches healed, and Talia had obviously begun styling it to hide it, preserve her vanity.
It was a promising sign.
When Jason opens it, she speaks low and hushed, in Arabic, “..you came,” she says and then smiles, before sobering. “The Demon’s Head.. He’s here.”
There’s a slight hesitation when she gestures to the door, but any worry fades when he sees even the slightest sign of happiness on Talia’s face. Jason casts a glance back at Bruce, his look telling more what he plans to do than asking for any kind of permission. Gloved fingers have the door open quickly and quietly as he steps into her cell.
It’s quite a relief to see her looking like herself again instead of the battered, beaten version he had met in Arkham months before. He nearly reaches out to pull her into his arms, but forces his hands into his pockets instead.
“Course I did,” he replies softly, Arabic slipping easily from his lips. His own smile never gets a chance to fully form as his brows knit together. “Ra’s? Why? What’s he doing here?” Before he can stop himself, one of his hands rises to gently grip her shoulder. “Is he after you?”
She exhales when he enters, moving closer to him, but not quite to touching, and when he moves his hands into his pockets, she pauses, stops.
“I didn’t expect..” She begins, before stopping herself, abruptly, when his hand moves to her shoulder. She steps in, closer, tilting her head to look up at him. “If he had come for me, I wouldn’t be here.” There is no bitterness in her voice, even if it lingers in the darkness of her eyes. She shakes her head, lifting her hand to push the soft-roughness of her fingertips against his cheek. “No, he is here, for a purpose greater than retrieving me.”
Talia shakes her head, once again, not moving from Jason’s side, even as outside the cell, Bruce moves closer. She exhales, “..I don’t know what you know, what Bruce knows—” The use of the other man’s name is strange for an al Ghul; even Damian was in the habit of referring to the man as ‘he’ or ‘him’ despite Bruce’s displeasure, “—but he is here.” Her eyes flicker to the door. “..there are guards here under his power.”
Though Jason doesn’t expect it, not with Bruce right outside, he welcomes the closeness. His hand remains on her shoulder, thumb moving in gentle circles, the other hand moves to grasp the one Talia presses to his cheek, his fingers curling around hers, rough calluses kept at bay by his gloves.
"We don’t know much," he says honestly, even as his eyes flick towards the door. Towards Bruce. He’s certain that he’s the one Talia wants in the cell instead of him. There’s no jealousy in the thought, just a sort of sad acceptance.
He’ll never be the one she really wants.
"If B knows anything, he hasn’t mentioned it." Which wouldn’t really surprise Jason if it’s the case. His eyes narrow slightly. "D’you know which guards? I can get rid of them… but I guess that’d tip him off…"
Talia nods, because of course she knows, and something sparks in her eyes when Jason mentions wanting to ‘get rid of them’—it’s a subtly predatory glazing of her gaze, making the dark brown sharper, sparkle like a precious stone.
"No, you’re right," she states, near mournfully, bringing her hand down to his chest, resting it on his right bicep. "I’m not sure if he thinks I am.. up to task," her bitterness abounds, now, souring the words on her tongue like turned milk; she will carry Ra’s dismissal, abandonment, of her for the rest of her life. “..but I know what it looks like when a man is being tugged by puppeteer strings.”
When the door opens behind them, the air in the room growing a bit more stifled, Talia inhales, and exhales, pressing her fingers into Jason’s pectoral muscle. Her voice drops, into a low, curious tone. “..he would, too, if he weren’t so busy mourning what’s dead and gone.”
Behind them both, Bruce speaks in the darkness: “We don’t have much more time.”
Though he’s been kill free for months, Jason’s willing to break the streak should she give the word. He knows that look, and for an instant, it almost scares him, because any order she could give, he would follow. Without question.
"Then he has no idea what you’re capable of." His hands slide to her elbows, itching to pull her closer. He knows the sting of a father’s abandonment all too well, but doesn’t know how to offer comfort… Not with Bruce so close anyway.
When the door opens, his shoulders tense, though he keeps his gaze fixed on Talia. “Just hard to get through some people’s heads, I guess.”
It’s only when Bruce finally speaks that he looks back at him. Lips pressed to a thin line, he nods, not needing to be told twice. Turning back towards Talia, he hesitates before ducking to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see you again, dearest,” he murmurs in Arabic before pulling away.