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On the occasions they meet face to face, often few and too far between, Talia consciously wears the same scents she did when he was a child — rose, jasmine, and a base note of something clean and smooth, like water from a spring. It never fails to soften him, to reduce the time it takes to carefully and systematically dismantle the walls around his heart, to gather him against her chest like he is much, much younger, and have their conversations nestled together under the low light.
He clings to her so tightly, sometimes. She has to allow herself to feel a fraction of the guilt, or else it threatens to crawl up her throat and suffocate her.
“I do not understand,” Damian insists, and Talia purses her lips at his dogged persistence, even as she strokes a hand through his hair. “He still keeps a picture of you in his nightstand, you know.”
“You should certainly not be rooting around your father’s nightstand,” Talia admonishes gently.
Damian turns his head into the press of her fingertips, like a cat seeking affection. “It’s a test. Whether I can get in and out without his notice.”
“I doubt very much he sees it that way.”
He makes a sound in his throat, catching himself falling for her ploy to distract him. “Maybe,” he regroups, “maybe, if you moved to Gotham.”
Something deep within her aches. “What is there for me to do in Gotham?”
“You can come to my school functions.”
“You don’t even go to your school functions. You hate that school.”
“Father makes me go, sometimes.” She’s amused at the edge of a disgruntled complaint, in that. She knows it’s petty to take satisfaction in the moments of friction between the two of them, but as long as it stays confined to her head, she assures herself it’s a victimless crime.
When she doesn’t respond immediately, Damian continues. “He would be happier, if you were there, too.”
“What are you basing this off of?” She has to laugh, if she doesn’t laugh, she will certainly tear her hair out. She can sense he is disquieted by the extra movement around her stomach and chest. “You have never even seen us when we were— at our best.”
“I know,” he says, with a painfully familiar stubbornness. “Based on how he talks about you.”
“Oh, Damian,” she murmurs, taking a moment to collect herself. They could bicker about it all night, if she didn’t choose her words carefully. “I don’t want you to think what I’m about to tell you is intended to malign your father’s character. He is a good man. He did the best that he could under an impossible set of circumstances.”
Gently, she tips his chin up to look at her, the familiar, indignant shape of his mouth making her smile. “And I also don’t want you to think I am attempting to dissuade you from falling in love,” she maintains. “Because love is such a vital, precious thing. Even when it’s difficult.”
Her grip on his cheek firms incrementally, though the undercurrent of tenderness remains. Warm, yet decidedly uncompromising. “But listen to me when I say,” she exhales a sound that she wishes she could strain the bitterness from. “Loving your father was exhausting. I loved only him. And I loved him much longer and much more intensely than he ever loved me. It was — almost like being held hostage, in a way. I found myself doing and saying things I never would have, if I wasn’t under the… threat, the burden of this love.”
Damian has not yet mastered the art of concealing his emotions, particularly when they rapidly well to the surface, the way they are now. While his mouth and brow remain still, there is new feeling in his eyes, heightened frustration and maybe, just maybe, something that approaches resignation. Talia is comforted by the possibility.
“I know it’s hard for you to hear, habibi.” Her hand returns to his hair, and her eyes lift to the window. The rain beats much harder against the glass. “But I am relieved to be rid of it. I am better for it. Stronger.”
“Mama,” Damian rests his head on her stomach again. “You are also alone.”
It lands like a blade, a brutally sharp point that slides neatly between Talia’s ribs. After too long a beat, she brushes over the curve of his ear. “Are you not here with me?”
“Not all the time,” he mumbles, sounding much more like a child than he usually does. “Not even often.”
She finds she can say nothing to that. Not unlike Damian, she is abruptly feeling far too many things at once, and needs a moment or so to effectively disentangle them. Embarrassment, at her isolation being so visible to her son, who she had hoped to shield from such demoralizing realities. Surprise, at the accuracy of his deduction, despite how brilliant and emotionally intuitive she knows him to be. An ever present current of frustration, that this is what her life has come to. And a pulse of resentful amusement, at how far it is from what she was once promised.
She smooths his hair back once more, her voice settling into the tone she’d take when he was a child and she was dispensing a lesson only she — not her father, not his slate of masterful instructors — could teach him. “We are never truly alone, Damian. Life is always moving, pulsing, reacting, around us. When things are quiet, we become better acquainted with the world. That is a privilege.”
“Yes, mama.”
She pauses again. “You don’t think about that often, do you? Me, being alone.”
His obvious reluctance to answer fills the narrow space between them. “Sometimes. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” An insufficient phrase to encapsulate how it feels to leave him, like a piece of her is surgically removed with each parting. How its absence registers as a constant, pervasive ache, which no amount of work or familiar company can dull. She clears her throat, decisive. “You should never worry about me. I am always alright. I have always found a way to be.”
“Yes, mama.”
“I love you, Damian.”
“I love you too.”
Though he turns his face a little further into her stomach, she knows she hasn’t done much to assuage his concerns. His perceptiveness and stubbornness are, after all, inherited traits with a dual, parallel lineage.
It’s drizzling in Bangkok. Talia checked into the Capella an hour ago, her usual massive suite with a panoramic waterfront view and a spacious private balcony. She finds she has even less patience than usual for dealing with the logistics of settling into a temporary living arrangement — adjusting the room to a suitable temperature for someone who grew up without air conditioning, handing over the evening gowns most likely to be worn for pressing, scrubbing the remnants of a long commercial flight off her skin.
She’s still unpacking her belongings when her personal phone rings. She glances at the name that flashes across the screen, then accepts the call instinctively, tucking the device between her ear and shoulder. “What?”
“Hello,” he says back, pointed, and she rolls her eyes. “How was your flight?”
“Fine. Same as it ever is.”
“Three weeks, correct? Until you’re headed to Beijing.”
It’s not like him to bother with small talk, especially to her, given that he knows she has a similar tolerance for it. “Correct.”
“Alfred will send Damian’s measurements before then.” She had forgotten to do them herself before she left and texted Bruce about it from the tarmac. The Hanfu she bought him when he was ten no longer fits, to no one’s surprise. “He grows so fast, these days. It might be prudent to go up a half size.”
She makes a soft noise of acknowledgment in her throat. “I’ll have the tailor build in the fabric for an extension.”
“Smart.”
He’s quiet for a moment, which she finds she doesn’t mind. She’s setting out the small number of products she travels with on the vanity. She screws off the top of a new tub of moisturizer, smoothing a line of it over her thigh. Murumuru and cocoa butter, with an undertone of vanilla. It sinks in with satisfying quickness.
Bruce clears his throat. “Damian and I discussed… a conversation, that you had.”
Her hand stills, fingertips resting on the face of her knee. She resists the urge to exhale a curse, pricking with quiet embarrassment. “And?”
“He found it upsetting.”
Her brow furrows in concern. “That was not my intention.”
“I know.”
She’ll have to call him, later. She expected that the conversation would linger, but that it was apparently weighing on him enough to spur a conversation with his father, is… troubling. Particularly when they’re both aware that Bruce is ill-equipped to provide any sort of emotionally satisfying assurance, at least in this context.
“Talia,” he says, and her attention returns to him. He stalls again. Though the stiffness is familiar, the hesitation is not. “Was that something you said to him to…. dissuade him, from pursuing that line of inquiry?” He pauses, meaningful. “Or is that something you believe?”
Talia lifts a hand to rub at a sore muscle in her neck, closing her eyes for a moment. She shuffles through a number of answers that feel — wrong, dishonest. She’s irrationally frustrated with him for initiating this conversation. For not just evaluating the most likely conclusions and unilaterally deciding how she feels, like he usually does.
“Does it matter?” she asks, finally.
“Yes,” he answers, fast and thick with unexpected emotion. It sounds like the beginning of a sentence, but she can practically hear him trying to wrestle the second half into submission. It’s a conflict she has always understood; how impossible it is to capture the depth of this feeling, combined with the particularly high toll vulnerability extracts, from people like the two of them.
Years ago, just the implication would have made her melt. Now, she finds herself shying away from it, even if that causes irritation with her own cowardice to curl sourly in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t need to hear it.” She gathers another silky bead of moisturizer on her fingertip. It gleams in the light of the vanity.
He seems to consider that. “I could say it anyway.”
Her lips twitch in a reluctant smile. “Over the phone?” she asks. “What would be the point of that?”
Another lapse, and she can almost hear him collecting himself, wiping away the spillage of emotion and allowing for the gratitude that it was slight. These days, it’s a mutual relief.
“I have a contact,” he continues, and she hears the creak of a chair. Is he in the Cave? “At a Batman Incorporated operation in Kabul. It’s a delicate situation, I would value your input, if you have the time.”
She briefly takes stock of how generous she’s feeling. “Send me the files and I’ll take a look.”
“It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Inappropriate,” she cuts back, like she’s not still smiling. “Talk soon.”
“Goodbye.”