DC – I am Batman

Thursday night. He was in bed with his laptop open to a chemical compound analysis when the phone rang.

He didn't need to look at the number. The calls came on Thursdays. Midnight his time, morning hers, and the consistency said more about Talia al Ghul than any surveillance report could.

He closed the laptop. Picked up.

"Beloved."

Her voice landed in the dark of his room and stayed there. Low, unhurried. She never sounded like she was calling from across the globe. She sounded like she was in the next room and had decided to use the phone anyway.

"Talia."

"I can hear the city through your window. You're home."

The window was open two inches. Traffic on the expressway, a siren going somewhere south, distant enough to be background. She was right. She'd worked that out from ambient noise.

"How's the weather in Nanda Parbat?"

"Cold. The morning fog sat in the valley until noon. Father had a meeting with a delegation from the Kobra sect that accomplished nothing, and Ubu burned his hand on a kettle." She recited it flatly. The domestic details of a death cult. "Your father's council vote is next Tuesday. The transportation initiative. He has the numbers but Earle is working the board behind him."

He sat up in bed. "How do you know about Earle?"

"I know about everything that happens in your city, beloved. It's a small city."

"Gotham has eight million people."

"Small."

She said it with the calm of someone whose father governed civilizations. Gotham was a neighborhood. A neighborhood she'd decided to watch because he lived in it.

"The Falcone shipment through the narrows docks last Wednesday was ammunition, not pharmaceuticals. Your GCPD contact has the wrong manifest." A pause. "The crates were double-walled. The pharmaceuticals are in the outer layer, correct weight for the paperwork. The ammunition is packed inside. Standard League smuggling technique. Your Falcone contact is either compromised or lazy."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold. "You have assets watching Falcone shipping?"

"I have assets watching Gotham. Falcone shipping is included." She said it like it came with the morning news. "Also, the Wayne Enterprises board meeting moved to the fourteenth. Lucius Fox requested the change. He didn't tell your father."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Which is why I'm telling you." Another pause, shorter. "Mr. Fox is a good man. Good men keep secrets when they're protecting someone. You should find out who."

He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it for a second. Put it back.

"You're surveilling my city."

"I'm keeping informed."

"There's a difference?"

"The difference is that I'm telling you." Her voice dropped half a register. "If it were surveillance, you wouldn't know."

He rubbed his face with his free hand. The laptop was closed and the room was dark and Talia al Ghul was feeding him intelligence from a mountain fortress in the Himalayas like it was pillow talk. The Falcone manifest was useful. The Earle information was useful. The Lucius detail was a flag he would have caught eventually but she'd handed it to him weeks early.

"Thank you," he said, and meant it, and hated that he meant it.

"You're welcome." She let the words sit. Then: "You sound tired, beloved."

"Long week."

"The girl at the university."

His hand stilled on the sheet. "What."

"Alexis Kaye. Political theory. Impressive grades, mediocre social skills, problematic ideological trajectory. You've been meeting her on Thursdays. Café on campus. Her manifesto on institutional disruption was clever. The conclusions were reckless."

"You read her manifesto."

"I read everything that crosses your desk. She sent it to your student email. Your student email is not secure, Bruce."

"You hacked my email."

"I improved your email. There was malware from two separate phishing attempts that I removed. You're welcome for that as well."

He lay back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. White plaster, crown molding. He'd been staring at this ceiling since he was four years old.

"Talia."

"She's a risk. Brilliant mind, no grounding structure, pain she's converted into ideology. I've seen this pattern. Father recruits from it." She paused. "You're trying to redirect her."

"I'm having academic conversations."

"You're trying to redirect her. You do this. You find people standing at the edge of a bad decision and you talk to them until they step back." Another pause, and her voice softened at the edges. "It's one of the more frustrating things about you."

"Frustrating."

"Because you won't let anyone do it for you."

He didn't answer that. The siren had faded. Traffic on the expressway was steady and far enough away to sound like the ocean if he didn't think about it. Her breathing came through the phone. Slow, measured.

"What are you wearing?" he said.

She was quiet for a beat. "Excuse me?"

"You started this call with intelligence briefings and personal surveillance. I'm changing the subject."

"To what I'm wearing."

"To what I'm wearing."

Two seconds of silence. When she came back her voice had shifted, a half-shade lower, the precision still there but warmer.

"A robe. Silk. Green."

"Of course it's green."

"It's cold here, beloved. The robe is practical."

"Silk isn't practical."

"Silk is practical if you have standards." Another breath. The phone caught the sound of fabric shifting. "The sash is loose. I was reading when you answered. I'm in the chair by the east window. The one with the view of the training yard."

"I remember the chair."

"Do you."

He did. Wide, dark wood, cushion that had been replaced at least twice since the frame was carved. He'd sat in that chair once after a sparring session that had gone longer than either of them planned, and she'd stood behind it and put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her thumbs into the muscles where his neck met his back, and he'd let her, and they hadn't talked about it after.

"I was reading a report on Chinese rare-earth mineral exports," she said. "Very dry. Much improved by the sound of your voice."

He closed his eyes. She did this. Moved from intelligence handler to this without a visible transition, and the absence of a transition was the point.

"I can hear you stop breathing," she said.

"I'm breathing."

"You were. You stopped. Just now, when I mentioned the chair." She was smiling. He could hear it in how the consonants changed shape. "You're blushing."

"You can't hear blushing."

"I can hear you stop breathing. Same thing."

The room was dark and he was lying in bed in Wayne Manor holding a phone to his ear and Talia al Ghul was in the Himalayas in a green silk robe with a loose sash in a chair he'd sat in once while she put her hands on him, and the distance between them was six thousand miles, and the heat low in his stomach said the distance wasn't doing what distance was supposed to do.

"You're dangerous," he said.

"You like it."

He did.

They were quiet for a few seconds. He could hear her breathing and she could hear his and neither of them spoke. A dog barked somewhere outside the manor grounds. Her breathing shifted, and he heard her settle deeper into the chair, and the fabric moved again.

"I want to ask you about Cassandra," he said.

The shift was immediate. Her breathing changed first, a half-beat quicker, and when she spoke the warmth was gone. Careful. About a child.

"She's learning," Talia said. "Slowly."

"Learning what?"

"Words." A pause that was longer than her pauses usually were. "A few per week. I sit with her in the evenings when Cain is in the field. He deploys frequently. When he's gone I go to her room. It's..." She stopped. "It's a room. A cot and four walls. No books, no screens. He keeps it bare because stimulation competes with the body-language training."

Her voice went flat on the last two words. Cold enough that he heard the anger she wasn't performing.

"I hold up an object and say the word. She watches my mouth. She doesn't repeat it. Not out loud." Another pause. "But her lips move. She shapes the word without sound. And then she looks at me. To check if the shape was right."

His grip on the phone had tightened. The edge of the case pressed into his palm. He made himself loosen his fingers.

"How many words?"

"Forty-three. I keep a list. She learned 'cup' last week. She held the cup in both hands and her mouth made the shape and she looked at me." Talia's voice thinned. He'd heard that register maybe three times. "I have never seen a human being that pleased by a syllable."

He pressed the heel of his hand against his closed eyes. The dark behind his eyelids was warmer than the dark of the room.

"Cain doesn't know."

"Cain is displeased with me for allowing her contact with anyone outside the training regimen. He doesn't know about the words specifically. If he did, he would consider it contamination." Her voice went hard on the last word. Precise. "He would stop it. So he doesn't know."

"You're taking a risk."

"I'm aware."

"If Ra's finds out-"

"Father values my judgment. Cain is a useful contractor. The hierarchy is clear." She paused. "And I would not stop even if the hierarchy were unclear."

He pulled his hand away from his eyes. Stared at the ceiling. Talia al Ghul, who ran assassins for a man who wanted to burn the world to its roots, was sitting in a bare room in a mountain fortress teaching a twelve-year-old weapon the word for cup. Forty-three words. She kept a list.

"Thank you," he said. "Talia. Thank you."

"Don't thank me, beloved." Quiet. "I did it because you would have."

He let that sit. She let it sit. She'd said "because you would have." Not "because it's right." The difference between those two sentences was where Talia al Ghul lived, and it was also where she could go.

"When I come for her," he said. "And I will."

"I know."

"I'll need your help."

"I know that too." A pause. "I've been drawing maps of Cain's compound. Entry points, guard rotations, the room where he keeps her. I update them weekly."

"How long have you been doing that?"

"Since the day you watched her train from the balcony and your knuckles went white on the railing."

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

"You weren't going to mention it," he said.

"I was going to mention it when you asked. You asked."

He almost laughed. It caught in his chest and came out as a breath.

"I miss you," he said. It came out before he'd decided to say it, which was how it worked with Talia. She ran faster than his filter.

She was quiet for three seconds. When she spoke her voice was stripped down to a register he heard maybe twice a year. No imperial distance, no intelligence handler. Just her.

"Goodnight, beloved."

She hung up without saying goodbye. She never said goodbye. Every call ended like a door left open.

He put the phone on the nightstand. The screen glowed for a few seconds and went dark. The room was quiet. Traffic was still there, and the open window let in air that was cooler than the air in the room, and he lay on his back with one arm behind his head thinking about green silk and forty-three words and a girl whose lips moved without sound.

A plane went over, low enough to hear the engines. He tracked it across the ceiling until the sound faded.

He didn't sleep for a while.

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