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Does the phoenix fear the fire?
Everyone knows it is necessary. The phoenix has to die in a burst of flame so that it can be reborn from the ashes.
But would that make it any easier to stand the sight of feathers turning to ash, of flesh withering, the scent of cooked meat in the air?
Talia al Ghul understands the phoenix. And she understands it would not.
After all, in order to be reborn, first you have to die.
Don’t move! I will even shoot you if I must.
Oh. So that’s how it felt. Pain lanced through her chest at the same time as a sudden weakness overtook her body; one moment she was standing next to her beloved, having foiled one of Father’s foolish schemes, the next moment she was on the floor, hearing a sickening smack and crack, watching another body hit the ground. Her murderer would join her in death.
But not in the fire.
It’s everywhere. Seeping into every pore of her skin, wrapping her in a blanket of agony, knitting together her perforated organs with the grace of the world’s clumsiest surgeon.
No matter what, my daughter must not die.
Talia must have heard it, the words echo around her head, hitting the sides of her skull. She does not have permission to die. The only thing she has permission to do – is burn.
An all consuming rage overtakes her body. She leaps upwards, suddenly strong, healthy, purified by the fire.
After all, there is nothing so pure as rage.
She does not recognize the people around her. They could be anybody, their features blend together, she sees Striss, who she had believed had killed her father, she sees Penguin, tormenting a child, she sees Qayin, who killed her mother, she sees Father –
And her anger demands an outlet.
There is no grace in the way she charges her target. No one would believe she’d been trained to fight since she could stand. But grace is not needed, when someone tries to interfere she grabs them by the lapel and throws them through the air. A crash is heard as they land.
Her hands feel like claws as she extends them around a throat. She doesn’t know who she is choking, only that she has to do it. He doesn’t deserve to live. Striss. Qayin. Saltzer.
Something blocks her vision – smoke, no doubt pouring from the fire all around them. She tightens her hands further, something hits her chest but she doesn’t know if it is a blow or merely the beating of her own heart.
“Talia! Talia, snap out of it!”
“What’s going on?”
“Get out of here!”
The words barely register in her head. Finally, fire engulfs her face and she stumbles back and rubs at it –
It’s not fair, the burning is supposed to be over –
“Did you just pepper spray my daughter?”
“She was killing you – should I have let her?”
She still only feels rage.
The fire pours down her cheeks in the form of tears, she barely can see. There are silhouettes in front of her with horns – a demon?
The demon rushes to her side and wraps a large leathery wing around her, and she draws a fist back and punches it in the stomach.
She knows she understood something. She understood my daughter.
Another demon approaches her, saying something under its breath – calm, calm, let it pass, Talia, let it pass –
But she can’t.
The words are still echoing in her head, still disconnected, nonsensical.
My daughter.
She feels as if she’ll throw up.
“Father?”
The demon continues approaching her, arms outstretched, as something warns it back, but Talia can’t care. She only sees her father. She sees herself sent as a tool, as a weapon, to fulfill some insane plot –
“Yes?” the demon says, as if it recognized the word.
“I hate you!”
The demon pauses, appearing slack, and Talia grabs leaps forward to grab it, but someone wraps around her from behind.
“Talia, it’s okay,” says the demon. Says –
Bruce?
All of a sudden, Talia feels cold.
The fire is gone, reality hits her like freezing wind. Father is in front of her, hands balled in fists, Faraday, Catwoman, and Robin are near the corner of the room, Robin trying to usher the other two back as Catwoman has Faraday’s wrist in one hand, forcing his gun to point to the ground.
Father looks past her. He stares at Bruce, who is behind her, with a rage she’s never seen before.
“You!” Father says. His voice is like a roar. “You stole my daughter from me!”
What?
Bruce starts trying to walk around Talia, to interpose himself between her and Father, but –
She is so damn tired of this!
She grabs him by the arm as he passes her and sweeps his leg out from under him. He hits the ground and immediately rolls away, out of arms reach.
Whatever.
Father’s rage seems to disappear in an instant, he outstretches his arms for her again, as if welcoming her to a hug, but Talia can’t stand it.
“I was stolen from you?” Talia asks.
“Talia, don’t – ” Bruce starts, as if –
As if what? As if he’s the only one allowed to be angry at her father?
“You cannot steal a person,” Talia continues, ignoring Bruce. “Though you can throw one away!”
“Are they going to try to kill each other again?” Faraday asks.
“Talia, this is not between you and I,” Father says, stepping towards her to put his hands on her shoulders.
“It’s not?” Talia asks.
Father grabs his mace from the wall, ready to fight Bruce despite being vastly outnumbered, and –
What a condescending asshole!
The ground shakes.
Everything seems to shift. The Lazarus Pit bubbles, threatening to leak its poisonous contents out into the real world.
“The volcano is going to explode!” Robin says. He starts, grabbing a weapon from his utility belt, and says “We need to end this!”
“No!” Batman says. “You need to get everyone off the island – this is between Ra’s al Ghul and me!”
Of course it is.
“You can’t just order us around like that!” Robin says, and Talia has to agree with him, but she finds her voice gone. She’s too tired, she’s too – too something.
Catwoman convinces Robin – someone has to rescue all of the captives and hapless League employees – and holds a hand out to Talia – offering her to come with them – but Talia rejects it. They may try to act like it, but the fight isn’t just between Bruce and her father, despite the departure of the other three.
“Are you two going to try to kill each other again?” Talia asks, finally finding her voice.
Bruce and Father stand there, Bruce with his hands up, raised, Father holding the mace, looking between Talia and Bruce with anger.
“I never take a life intentionally,” Bruce says, “But your father may leave me no choice.”
“It is you who have left me no choice, Detective!” Father says, and swings the mace right at Bruce’s chest. Bruce dives backwards, out of Father’s superior reach. “It isn’t enough to poison the world? You must also poison my daughter?”
Stupid bile comes to Talia’s mouth, she can feel the rage, but she doesn’t know if it’s the Lazarus Pit or just –
Something inside her. Something she’s always lived with, something she could never let out.
After all, the phoenix doesn’t need a Lazarus Pit. Its furnace exists inside its own heart.
“I didn’t poison or steal Talia,” Bruce says, responding to Father’s attack with a kick to the face. “She rejected your ways, she rejected your warped values – she rejected you!”
Talia wishes they would both just shut up.
Father and Bruce fight dangerously close to the Lazarus Pit. With its life giving energy spent, it is now only the same type of poison that killed her mother.
Talia leaps at her father.
She has to knock him away from the Pit – Bruce has more protective gear – but she also has to shut him up.
“Talia, you’ll get me killed!” Father says as he hits the ground.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
The rage is present. It’s everywhere. Talia strikes Father to the face with a headbutt, then leaps off him, horrified by the blood that drips down from his nose.
It’s not fair.
She has no outlet.
She can’t bring herself to hurt either of them, and Father and Bruce are too determined to end each other. She’s trapped, a spectator, like she always is.
Father is gloating about something – being immortal? Being more than Bruce? – as the two continue to rain blows down on each other. Talia simply hates herself for her inaction as much as she hated herself for her action.
Without an outlet, the rage merely burns in her heart.
Talia’s beginning to understand how the phoenix can self immolate so well.
And then – it’s only a moment. Father’s mace connects with Bruce’s chest, and he presses him downwards, pushing his head towards the caustic chemicals of the Pit as Bruce struggles against him –
“Mama!” Talia says, though she doesn’t know why she says it, and she’s incited to action, she shoves Father again –
And this time, it is his flesh hitting the Pit. Searing and fizzling that’s been burned into her memory since childhood –
“No!”
Talia tries to reach in, to pull him out, but Bruce is there, pulling her back. Talia elbows his armored chestplate futilely, then kicks down at his knee with more success, but even though it must hurt he doesn’t let go.
“Talia, it was an accident – !” Bruce says.
“No, he’s dying, help him, please – !”
“I will if you stop trying to dive in after him!”
Talia nods, because that’s all she can do, and Bruce releases her and she sinks to the floor.
It’s not fucking fair.
Is that what it means to not be a spectator? Is the only action she can take patricidal? Is she doomed to watch the two men she loves most in the world kill each other?
Bruce yells as he reaches into the Pit, his arm seems to light afire, and he pulls out –
Oh God.
Father appears aflame. His flesh is burning, clothes gone, features nearly unrecognizeable, and Talia realizes it would have been much less cruel to leave him in the Pit.
But, despite the damage, he still speaks: “My flesh burns, Detective. I am in pain – and you must suffer as I suffer!”
Talia reaches forward to stop him, but when her hand comes into contact with him a huge blister forms and she yells. She removes her hand and sees the skin of her palm is all gone.
“Talia, keep back!” Bruce says, grabbing a quarterstaff off the wall.
Of course they’re still fighting.
Of course the Island is exploding, Father’s dying, and Bruce and Father are still fighting.
As the quarterstaff strikes Father, it, too, lights on fire.
Talia can only hear her mother’s final screams.
“Talia, get out of here!” Bruce says, and Talia does –
Because she has to leave the room and throw up.
The bile tastes as hot as the fire that must be tearing Father apart.
There is the sound of battle behind her. Father’s rage, Bruce’s grunts of pain, but none of it is as present in Talia’s head as her mother’s death. As knowing that her mother suffered as Father is suffering, and now Father is suffering as Mother did, and her entire family will be destroyed by that damned Pit and she couldn’t do a single thing to save them. She only made it worse.
Talia’s not sure how long the fight lasted, how much the island shook, before one of them – the victor – is at her side. Talia looks and sees its Bruce, though he’s been badly hurt – most of his chestplate is scored, she’s sure that underneath it, his chest is burnt.
“Come on, Talia,” Bruce says.
Talia lets herself be escorted out, though part of her is tempted to stay on the island, to let herself rest here, among all that was her family.
“I killed him,” Talia says when she and Bruce are on the helicopter Faraday, Catwoman, and Robin had found. “I killed my own father.”
“You didn’t kill him,” Bruce says. “He was still alive when you left. Blame me.”
Talia shakes her head. She may – she very well may blame Bruce, later, when she’s alone and replaying the fight in her head. Isn’t there a way he could have saved Father? It seems like he could do anything?
But right now, she just knows that she was the one who pushed him.
“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but it sounds like he made his bed and laid in it,” Catwoman says. Despite her early skepticism towards Talia, it sounds like her voice is pitched softer, as if she’s trying to act sympathetically –
And Talia hates it.
“You’re right,” Talia says, “You don’t know what’s going on.”
Catwoman doesn’t respond, but she does look at Bruce. Talia can’t bring herself to care – whatever was going on between them – maybe she should be jealous. But she can’t imagine herself ever being attracted to Bruce again, ever wanting to be with him or anyone else ever again.
Father was wrong – she wasn’t poisoned – she was poison. Or maybe she was fire. Maybe she was just like Father, just like her mother must have been in her last moments of life. The only thing she can do is damage those around her, so it’s better to not be around anyone at all.