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spite-and-waffles · 2 years

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I feel like neither the pro-Talia Al Ghul camp or the anti-Talia camp really care to delve deeply into the fact that she has been abused and used by her father her whole life, and is as tragic a character as Jason. Her fixating on a man as emotionally distant and obsessed with his mission as Ra's, knowing full well that he will never choose her or his children over it, is a completely accurate showcasing of the way people perpetuate their own trauma cycles.

And while I hope more people refuse to take anything Grant Morrison wrote about Talia to account, making her a good mother in reaction to it also just does not make sense. Just like Bruce, she's an example of someone who loves her child fiercely but is too traumatized and emotionally stunted to express it in healthy ways. Unlike Bruce she grew up in a literal terrorist cult and raised Damian in it as well. Her being exacting and teaching Damian to be ruthless and trust no one were all incredibly damaging and abusive, but it's also the only fucking way he could have survived the League or Ra's. Yes, she could have sent Damian to his father and keeping him by her side was selfish, but this woman, who had been starved of love and had never been anyone's priority since her mother died, finally had a person to be hers and only hers. It's horribly, tragically human to guard that love jealously and possessively.

The Tiger Mom as a trope is racist, but the emotional effects on women made to prove their worth as humans via motherhood is very much a reality that women of colour can relate to, and one not confined to just Asians. I'm only going to speak for my own people here, but the way Asian mothers make their sons their whole reason for being stems directly from the oppressively patriarchal cultures we grow up in, where a woman's worth is predicated on being a wife and mother and the highest honour she can aspire to is having a son. Ra's is the original patriarch who drilled into his daughters that they could never inherit his legacy no matter how much they proved their love, and that they owed him male heirs. Damian's very existence is tied up with Talia's idea of her own personhood and worth and achievement, which is why she piles on so many contradicting expectations on him - that he's fiercely independent but also stays by her side, become his father's perfect heir but take only her values, never be a pawn like she was, but align with her own wishes.

However you want to negotiate the racism of the way Talia is written is up to you obviously, but I feel that there's no realistic way that Talia can be a good mother (even in Son of the Demon she acted in Bruce's best interests, deceived him and abandoned her child, which actually might have been kinder than attempting to raise him in the LoA). I feel that making her one is an extremely simplistic way of dealing with the racialized misogyny her character is subjected to, and a disservice to real-life children of mothers like her, who love their children fiercely but perpetuate abuse cycles because of that very love.

For me, deconstructing and reaching past the misogyny and racism means humanising her and not making her value and sympathy as a character contingent on how good of a mother she is to Damian and Jason. Trauma and abuse slows or arrests your emotional development and makes it difficult to regulate your emotions and impulses, which is why it's a requirement for traumatized people to cognitively work on themselves in order to be good parents to their own children. Talia cannot. There's absolutely no therapist she can trust, the last time she felt close to someone she was decieved, tortured and brainwashed by her, and not only can't she get away from her father but she received a harsh object lesson from her sister on what happens when you try. This woman is a goddamn victim in every possible way, even more than Jason. It's also one of the reasons I don't buy that she allowed herself to be close to Jason, maternal feelings notwithstanding.

(Also her sleeping with him was pretty gross and unnecessary of Winick, whose writing is far from unproblematic when it comes to WoC, but it makes for a fascinating character deconstruction because afaik it happened right after Nyssa tortured her until she was brainwashed against Ra's and Bruce. So at that point in time she was basically in tatters and locked in the same self-destructive spiral as Jason, and maybe she wanted to nuke her sense of maternal care towards him in a bid to feel less emotionally vulnerable. I love this kind of psychological yarn balls in fiction.)

Absolutely none of this should absolve her choices. None of this means she's a good anything or that she should be seen as a purely sympathetic and wronged character. She's obscenely rich and powerful, ruthless, cunning and manipulative. She's one of the most dangerous people in the world. She's not fit to raise anyone. But if you can't accept all of that and square it with a fiercely loving heart and find a deeply human character then I really can't relate to you.

Let female characters of colour be human, morally grey and complex. Let fictional mothers be traumatized and deeply damaging without demonizing them. And stop moralizing female characters, I am begging you. We're far past Victorian England. Making them be on their best behaviour all the time to be sympathetic is oppressive as hell and not what storytelling is for.

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baticorngirl · 2 years

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An Ember of Uncertainty

Rating: K+/PG Fandom: Batman/DC (specifically Batman: Son of the Demon) Relationship(s): Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne Characters: Talia al Ghul, Bruce Wayne Word count: 3,778 Summary:

“I heard you two talking,” she began nervously. Her eyes went back to their partly-closed position, avoiding eye contact yet again. “Last afternoon. My father and you, at the end of the attack yesterday. About the future attacks of Qayin, about some… ambush my father wanted you to lead on him.” “Yes, that… happened,” Bruce slowly acknowledged. OR: As based on Batman: Son of the Demon, Talia is worried about Bruce's constant over-protectiveness of her and their unborn child. But this time, before she does anything drastic, she first decides to tell her Beloved that they need to talk. So, for better or worse, they talk. (For @brutalia-week, Day 2: Canon Divergence AU)

Author's Note:

This is meant to take place in Batman: Son of the Demon just a little bit before the scene where, in canon, Talia fakes the miscarriage. As I have plenty of other fics taking place in an AU where Son of the Demon works out, this is likely a bit of a prequel to them. (None of them are super connected though.)

Click here to read on Ao3 instead (which also includes a much more detailed A/N, if you happened to be interested)

Click here to read my BruTalia Week: Day 1 fic

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"Beloved,"

Her voice was careful, soft, slow; it cracked half-way through just the one word, then quieted so much that the second half was hardly audible. Her eyes weren't even open, having done no more than sensed him arriving from the other side of the room. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth once she'd finished speaking, methodically dabbing it along the saliva-coated inner lining. But other than that, she was still in every regard; her arms rested loosely on her lap, with the muscle completely relaxed, and her chin was nearly laid down on her upper neck.

"Talia?"

Bruce took several steps towards her, passing under the bright gold doorway trim. The chandelier was strung low, casting direct shadows onto the left side of his face from such small features as his nose and the curves of his eyebrows. It cast those same shadows on to the right side of Talia's own, as well. The light was so dim it couldn't even remotely reach the farther corners of the relatively small room; in those areas, the dull blue wall color appeared as navy, or perhaps even black.

"Come in," she whispered, finally beginning to open her eyes, though only partly. "Come over here." Her hand lifted, nonchalantly pointing to the chair across from her.

A small table, not more than two feet long, cut in between the two chairs, of which an even dimmer light than the small chandelier sat. It was simply a candle, flickering and dwindling like the rolls of ocean waves. Nonetheless, it scattered its luminosity all across the wood surface, with some light even spilling onto the floor below, as well as the wall, which the table was only a few inches from being pushed up again.

He walked over there, his footsteps piercing the current silence every second or two. It didn't take long for him to get there, though, and once he did so, he quickly drew the chair out from the table, only for that to create a much larger skidding sound. Bruce lowered himself on to the seat, feeling the bumpy bars of the back of the chair rub against his back.

"You said you wanted to talk?" he said, looking straight into Talia's eyes. The glare on them was bright and glossy; the candle itself showed a vague resemblance to the center of the reflections. The sight made him blink. "It's… clearly very important, considering just how alone and formal you requested it to be. Is… Is something wrong, Talia?"

"Yes," she answered, clear and definite in one single word.

"It is?" Bruce's eyes widened. "What's the problem? Everything's been so good around here, with our marriage, your father's allyship with me, and your…. Our…" Then, he leaned forward, struck with a heavy thought. "Oh no… it doesn't have anything to do with your pregnancy, does it? With our future child? Please don't tell me something's gone wrong with that… That you had a miscarr–"

"No," Talia lightly shook her head. "The baby is alright, for now."

"For now?"

He stopped breathing, for a moment, before she answered. One of his hands grabbed the wrist of his other one, clenching it in sudden fear. His nails dug in so much it began to string, but in that split second, his arm was as good as numb; he neglected to even notice the pains biting into the tender skin.

"I… I don't mean it like that, Beloved," she reassured, circling her head backwards, towards the wall which candlelight was still flashing on. "Not really, at least."

These words were instantly met with a rushing sigh of relief from Bruce's end. He blew out the air, making a loud whooshing sound in the process, which pushed at the candle in a way that almost pulverized it; the fire atop shortened to nothing more than a large ember. Only a moment later, though, it pushed back up, now just a bit smaller of a flame than it was before. Talia, as close as she was, saw all of these abrupt changes through nothing more than the lessening radiance of the nearby wall.

"Then what do you mean?" Bruce asked anxiously. His eyes were still big in diameter, with his previous relief starting to dilute with each and every second she refrained from elaborating.

"As I already said, nothing," Her head, already so odd and twisted in position, tilted ever so slightly towards the wall. "Just ludicrous, improbable fears, I suppose. That's all."

"Mnn?"

The noise was quiet and surprisingly high-pitched, with the person it was coming from in consideration. It was unsure, questioning; too unsure to even speak true comprehensible words, it seemed. It was simply a small speck of sound, peeping out like a little slice into the airspace surrounding. It was expressive, though, and loud enough that Talia could hear it clearly. She processed it, and the body language alongside it, like any other question.

She sighed, "It's not even really about the baby. A loose extension to my real, unrelated concern, at most. That's not why I brought you here." With her eyes trailing the wall downwards, she considered this thought and eventually nodded to it. "In fact, a desire for us to be keeping the unborn child in our minds more could be considered the exact opposite of why I called for this discussion. Not that I wish the child to be loved and cared about any less, I just…"

"What?"

Talia's eyes finally opened fully. They changed their direction, as well; although her head was still significantly titled the opposite way, her eyes themselves ultimately met with Bruce's. She kept this eye contact still and silent for a good few seconds, pausing before she answered this question. In these seconds, she bit her tongue— hard, pressing down like a cruel bear trap that her tongue had fallen into.

"I shouldn't start here," she said. "I really shouldn't start here."

"Then don't," Bruce replied calmly, but his eyebrows furrowed in concern. "What's going on here, Talia? Explain it however you like, but still explain it."

"I–"

She bit her tongue even harder now, so much that she swore she could taste just the tiniest fleck of blood dripping off the area her teeth clasped. Somewhere in the realms of her neck and jaw, a cramp surged in, forcing her mouth to completely freeze for an eerie amount of time. Bruce stayed silent throughout it, but his eyes widened and constricted with great concern. Even when she eventually spoke, the back of Talia's jaw was still sore from the cessation.

"I heard you two talking," she began nervously. Her eyes went back to their partly-closed position, avoiding eye contact yet again. "Last afternoon. My father and you, at the end of the attack yesterday. About the future attacks of Qayin, about some… ambush my father wanted you to lead on him."

"Yes, that… happened," Bruce slowly acknowledged.

His posture jumped upwards, suddenly perfectly straight from the startle. Yet, in a starkly different behavior, his head itself drooped down the second she finished speaking. It hung low with a similar nervousness to her own; not as extreme, but visibly present nonetheless. The chandelier now gave no light to almost the entirety of his face, with the only thing keeping it from turning into a blanket of shadows being the soft candlelight below, which still made little difference.

He stared at Talia blankly for nearly half a minute.

"Are you going to say anything about it?" she inevitably asked. "You can't sincerely expect me to have no reaction to that. You…you can't just say no to him. To Ra's al Ghul, of all people, at least if you have any intent of not becoming bitter enemies, and that's not even beginning to address the–"

"I know," Bruce nodded, "but it's the only way."

"The only way for what?" Talia could feel her voice quickly rising. "You used my condition as an excuse for it, for your foolishness."

"I'm trying to protect you," he defended. "This is a very high-stress, dangerous situation, and you're pregnant! You can't be in the middle of all this while there's a fragile, tiny baby growing inside of you!"

Talia's eyes were wide open now, quite different to their past half-closing position, but even more than that, her quiet stillness had completely vanished with this new-found anger. Underneath the table, she clenched her fists as tightly as they could, leaving dark imprints on the places that got most heavily pushed. Any nervousness was gone in a matter of a minute.

"This is also the kind of high-stress, dangerous situation that we need to have our priorities straight on. That we must be working on solving constantly," she explained, "lest be a fool, and in these situations, a fool is not something any one of us can afford to be, can we?"

"Yes, but I do have my priorities straight," Bruce argued, "and those priorities are you and the unborn child. Is that so wrong? To not want an innocent baby to be deprived of life, or an innocent woman have to experience the both emotional and physical pain of miscarriage? I only love you and want the best, Talia. So we must get you to safety."

"Not when we're in the middle of stopping nuclear war," she disagreed.

"But—" he stuttered. "The baby. And you."

Bruce felt the same anger as Talia, or if anything, an even stronger kind of rage. Every protective instinct in his body felt as if it went off at the same time, leaving all his muscles tense, and his arm, tightly grabbed again, feeling just as much stinging sensations as earlier. A sudden flush of heat took over his entire face, making it just the slightest bit more red than usual.

"—Will be killed in the nuclear war just as much as anyone else." Talia pointed out.

"It's not like I'm going to leave that unattended forever, Talia." Bruce stated. His lungs spiraled into a chaotic formation of breath-taking, up and down faster by the second. "I'm perfectly willing to go back to assisting you father and defeating Qayin, just the same as before, as soon as you're in a safer place."

"Considering the League of Assassins's many threats, who knows how long that could take? We'd need to find the perfect place, and then get me to it, and we already have much too little time to stop Qayin's plans. Even then, I don't necessarily even need to stop—"

Bruce quickly cut her off, "No. I understand you've gotten into the habit of always being a warrior and assassin, but if nothing else, you're going to be off the battlefield, period."

"If you stop doing any of the rest of this mess, I'm more than fine with agreeing to that."

His neck had gone back to having perfect posture, but his eyes, on the other hand, now darted towards the ground in deep thought. His head vacillated from side to side, but it was nothing compared to the extreme vacillating going on inside. WIth every new thought, his tongue solidly thumped against the skin behind his lips. Talia, still frowning in frustration, barely held back a flinch every time the distinct, surprisingly loud sound occurred.

"What counts as 'the rest of this mess'?" he asked curiously.

"Everything else that you're doing because of my pregnancy only." Talia answered. She'd gone back to staring at the wall, but as she spoke, she side-eyed him for a split second. "Most of it, at least. The ridiculous overprotectiveness, the prioritizing my healthcare over the people who are seriously injur–"

"Oh, I can't seriously be expected to do that, Talia," Bruce mildly shook his head. "Pregnancy isn't something you can just ignore! You need to act accordingly in almost every decision, and take all the precautions necessary to prevent complications to keep everyone involved as safe and happy as possible." Now, he changed actions, nodding to his own words instead of shaking his head to hers.

Talia didn't even begin to respond, but rather, quietly huffed at him.

"The happiest baby in the world," Bruce stately proudly, completely ignoring the reaction. "How can that be the case if they aren't even born?"

"But the poor soldiers who I'm getting arbitrarily prioritized over aren't happy," Talia pointed out. "Neither are the doctors you keep bossing around, or my father, or probably any of our assassins, or the people whose lives would most directly be endangered if the nuclear war were to start, or…"

Each breath of hers, unlike his, weren't very fast or loud anymore— Quite the opposite, even. If anything, they were significantly slower and less frequent than normal. While in a large pause in her speech, Talia wrapped her arms herself loosely; in a soothing motion, her fingers rubbed, massaged, and pushed over the muscles, just starting to get out some of the knots all this clenching had brought about. Every rub brought her eyes closer to how they'd been originally: closed, loose, and overwhelmingly tired.

"Or… Well frankly, I am not happy," she admitted. "Are you even happy anymore?"

Bruce's eyes drifted to the side, clearly still thinking it over, but he quickly nodded even during those actions. "Of course I'm happy. Why won't I be happy? I'm happier than I've ever been in my entire life, as I already told you. Everything finally feels right again, with you… and… and the baby we'll soon have, and…"

"Are you, though?" Talia asked, raising an eyebrow subtly. Her eyes had opened some, but not much. "Lately, you've been worrying about whether or not I'm safe constantly. Is that considered happiness, to you?"

"My protection of you is necessary," Bruce stated dryly.

His posture completely let go the second he'd hear Talia's words. Instead, he dramatically slouched over. Similar to the situation with his hanging head, very few parts of the entire front of his body were hit with light. The candle continued lighting his eyes, though, and as he leaned forward, it gave them a misty, glowy blue aura; these blue orbs dashed around their white background, antsy and clearly avoiding the true question at hand.

"I disagree," Talia replied, with her chin stuck stubbornly.

Then, with them stubborn in every definition of the word, both mouths were tightly shut. The silence was only interrupted with tongue-to-lip clicking, an action which Bruce had swiftly taken back up out of mere boredom. It bothered Talia the same as before, but her silence continued regardless; the only reaction she had to it was a slightly unpleasant kind of expression.

"Talia, I don't want to make you upset or… feel like I'm disregarding your feelings about this whole thing." Bruce eventually told her. "There's just only so much I can do."

"But you won't listen," she complained. "You're completely capable of compromising with me on a solution, but you simply won't, will you? Because of course, we can't do that unless you take the time to, again, listen."

"Your compromise before wasn't reasonable," he argued. "Otherwise I might have listened to it."

"Fine then, if you don't want to, you don't even have to listen. But you do have to compromise in some way." Talia suggested, sighing loudly. "Why not just talk to me, won't you? Stop being so insufferably stubborn and actually converse? Just answer my question from before: if you're so happy, why are you constantly worrying that I'm going to die, instead of….being happy?" Her voice was rising at a terribly fast rate, and the tone alongside was snarky at nicest.

Bruce managed to somehow slouch even further downwards now, still so determined to avoid the question. But he didn't spout out excuses this time, or for the first few seconds, open his mouth at all. He thought about his answer, narrowing his eyes intensely. Yet suddenly, half way through these thoughts, his posture lifted, as did his intensely narrowed eyes. The entirety of his expression quickly softened.

"Because I'm…scared of losing that happiness," he slowly admitted, "is probably it."

Talia's own expression softened, as well.

"And you're scared of losing the baby, and me…" she finished for him. "I– I know that, Beloved. I know you're just doing this out of fear and love and whatnot, and I– I'm not…. I'm sorry. For getting so angry at you over it." Her eyes now went to the opposite of the closest wall, cast off into the distance of the rest of the room.

Bruce nodded and gulped, stuffing down a million emotions in the process. His entire face stared directly at the ground, at such an abrupt angle that even the candlelight failed to light him any longer. He held this position for a bothersome amount of time, and as he did so, Talia stayed just as silent. They both processed the conversation they'd just had in a million different ways; Bruce mainly just stayed still as he thought, meanwhile Talia kept making subtle turns of the head every so often.

With every one of these movements, Talia's head got lower and lower, inching towards Bruce's drastic position. Her eyes mimicked this uncomfortable behavior. They kept blinking much quicker and more frequent than normal, and eventually, she could feel the corners of them filling up with salty tear water.

"You said that our child couldn't be as happy with pregnancy complications." Talia abruptly blurted out her thoughts. "But in the same way, how are they –or I, for that matter– supposed to be happy without you?"

"What do you mean?" he finally picked up his head, puzzled.

"Oh, nothing," Talia quickly blushed in embarrassment. "Just those ludicrous, improbable fears I mentioned earlier, I suppose."

"Hmmm," Bruce said, and he nodded, seeming to accept this as a final answer for a good half a second. Eventually, he bit his lip and continued, though. "Would you… Would you like to tell me those ludicrous fears? What they're about? Would you like to…. Discuss them? Tell them to someone?"

Talia gulped. She could still feel the tears pushing at her eyes, barely resisting the urge to let them go spilling out. Her eyes were still visibly glossy, even as she tried to keep it from looking so, and the sight made Bruce deeply frown. Her lips were also quivering, a vibration sensation that only made it more difficult for Talia to hold in her tears. Thus, she let them come out– slowly, and quietly, just like her next words.

"You keep putting my protection above not just your common sense, but the bare bones of your ability to protect yourself." she said. "I– I just worry that, with… I'm scared that… Well, Beloved, it's becoming more and more apparent that, in this situation, with you not prioritizing your own safety in the slightest…"

The tears stained the places they rolled down, making Talia's face feel almost soggy.

"You're a lot more likely to die than I am, I fear."

With those hard words out, she instantly brought her hands up to her eyes, frantically wiping the tears away with the ends of her fingers. It mostly worked, as it wasn't more than a few drops that came out before she was easily able to swallow the rest back down, but her face held the temporary blotches of red-tint even after.

"The thing you don't seem to understand, Beloved, is that between what I just said, the possibility of the allyship breaking, and just the general stress your behaviors could put on the child, we're just as doomed with your overprotective behavior as if you didn't try to protect me at all."

She breathed out in some futile attempt to calm herself, but the only thing she achieved was for the candle in front of her to flicker completely out.

Bruce fixed his posture again, but then, just as he'd come to the perfect position of sitting, abruptly pushed himself up. It only took a few slow, unsteady steps for him to completely circle the table, until he was directly behind his wife; the shadow of her body spilled on to him. He gently leaned over one of her shoulders.

"I know you already apologized, but I really should, too," he gave in. "You were obviously hurting and worried just as much as I was, so… I'm sorry if it was self-centered of me, to not listen anyway. I'm sorry for being defensive, and… oh, you know what I mean."

Talia turned her head to face the shoulder he looked over, "Yes, I do."

She was still upset. She was still very, very, upset. But with this apology, she managed to calm down significantly; her lips had completely quit quivering, as had her other fidgeting body parts, such as her shaky arms and hands. The frown on her face severely lessened, as well. In fact, the more time since the apology, the more the frown disappeared; eventually, a small, hopeful smile even began to surface.

"I take it that means you will listen about this, from now on?" her chin slanted upwards, but in a much kinder way than before. "I take it that you're willing to come up with a compromise about it?"

Bruce instantly nodded, "I'll expect you to keep off the battlefield and away from danger as much as possible, but in return, yes, I'll compromise. I won't prioritize you an amount that hurts others, including the whole war-prevention situation, but most importantly, I promise that I'll try to remember my own self-preservation skills enough that you, or the child in the future, won't have to worry about something happening to me."

"That… that works," Talia agreed. "Thank you."

Now, she got up herself, forcing Bruce to stop his leaning; with them both standing, her shadow covered him even more fully. His suit, which was oddly similar in color to the room's walls, appeared a mix of navy and black in the lack of light. Talia grabbed both of his navy-appearing gloves, holding the hands inside them tightly. She squeezed them both, letting her small smile grow into a bigger one.

Talia looked Bruce directly in the eyes. "I know things can be messy with the two of us, and then my duties to my father, but…we're going to figure this all out. Somehow." she said, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath in. "If not for ourselves, then for our sweet, precious baby."

"For the baby," Bruce repeated, smiling back at her.

Then, defying all logic and science, the candle lit right back up.

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