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She did not feel it, when her father died. That seems unspeakably wrong to her—she should have known long before she received the news, before the remains of the League of Shadows made their way to her, bowed heads and whispered condolences, to tell her of her father’s fate.
Dead, in Gotham, by his latest protégé; Bruce Wayne.
Talia wanted to reject it—surely that last is what proves it to be a joke, or a riddle that she hasn’t sussed out yet. Her father, Ra’s al Ghul, killed by a simple-minded soft-handed billionaire?
But then she unraveled the truth, thread by thread. Wayne would surely say that he did not kill her father, given his aversion to killing. Wayne, who loves his city, who was broken at a young age and wanted to turn to fighting evil—yes, those would have been attributes that appealed to her father. And Wayne’s trust fund, which could be used to such advantage, would have also been appealing. All of that, to say nothing of those factors she had not yet uncovered? Oh, yes; her father must have loved the lost little rich boy.
Further details come trickling from the lips of her father’s men as they waited for direction. How Wayne had rejected her father and the League, ran away home to Gotham. How the relevant factor, for him, had either been an insistence that killing was never acceptable—how pedestrian, how spoiled—or a revulsion to destroying his home. Well, her father never had liked half-measures. She wondered what he saw in the man, that he had believed Wayne willing to perform that final task for the League. Men far poorer than he were not prone to ruining the place they call home, and men far weaker than he were not prone to giving up hope so easily.
For all of the darkness inherent to the persona, Batman was proof enough of that. And Batman offered up the corroboration she needed. The armor and technical toys that only the richest of men could have provided for them. Her father’s fighting skills, his tips and secrets, adapted but still very much present. A stubborn attachment to Gotham, even when there are other tragedies in other cities. And that damned refusal to kill, as though sticking a poor man with a hospital bill for thousands of dollars isn’t going to lead to his death.
Talia watched the city that is her father’s grave, considering.
Her father was… Her father.
He was many things. She had not spoken to him in years. Some small part of her had dreamed of reconciliation, though she had known how unlikely that was. He would have never admitted to wrongdoing, and she had not done anything wrong.
Still… That he should have been killed, by a man who claims that killing is anathema, as though killing through deliberate inaction is not even worse than if Wayne had possessed the courage to kill him with a blade. That he should have been killed to protect a city that is, at its heart, rotten. It wore on her, all the more as she watched a mad dog tear through that same city, Batman unable to do anything more than chase him in a mad panic.
It took no time at all for her to track down the Joker’s real name, even with the League decimated and its remnant in shambles, so she had no idea what possible excuse Gotham’s Police Department could have for their ineptitude, much less Wayne. And the longer the maniac tore Gotham apart, the less pity she had in her heart for Bruce Wayne. This man could kill her father—allow him to die, pfah; she has no patience for semantics in this matter—but refused to kill a maniac who is ripping his beloved city to shreds. It made his dedication to Gotham seem all the shallower.
Then, the infamous night of the madman’s capture, when Batman snapped and killed Harvey Dent.
Talia lost all pity for the people of Gotham midway through the Joker’s antics. Harvey Dent was correct; they had been perfectly happy to allow their pet vigilante to clean up the streets right up until it looked as if they might become collateral damage. That they were so blindly willing to believe the story spun by Commissioner Gordon did not speak well of them.
These people were why her father died.
She gave it a year from the date of her father’s death before moving. A year to gather her thoughts, to cry and to brood and to decide what she wanted to do. Bane was willing to back whatever move she wanted to make, she had only to instruct him. Their men would follow, and the League would follow.
One year.