[ Fourteen years, waiting for Chill's release with a revolver burning a hole in his suitcase; seven odd years away from home, being no one and stealing from his own pocket and living in the mountains, training with the League of Shadows. Bruce Wayne knows plenty about patience — though very little of his experience has seen the light of Gotham's day. And it's a different sort of patience, still made superficially tolerable by the trappings of privilege, than the sort that Miranda makes reference to.
Still, he continues on unfazed — not a whisper of that existence in his expression. (The Bruce Gotham knows has no patience at all.) ]
In my experience, it has a poor sense of humor. [ A beat. ] Impeccable timing, though.
[ How he must have waited, through the years; rain falling from a sky so far from his reach, the cold that seeped into the Earth, turning the pit into a tomb. Perhaps he did wait for her, knowing the light was too far from his reach, knowing salvation could only come from within. ] We were both children of the darkness, it gave you a sight lesser men lack.
Perhaps your reward is your doubt, [ Except the way Miranda says doubt sounds more like hope and want and that last light in a person that will not be stomped out. ] That last, illusive part of a percent.
[ He can't call it a revulsion. Mal's likeness even as a ghost all deadly and re-wrought into a stranger...even that he couldn't hate. He came close, but the love of her truth has always been too great. This face has nothing to do with her reasonably but it's interesting how sense - like a dream in those five functions, separate or together - makes such visceral points, whether one wants them or not: the chokehold familiarity of how fine the rest of her chin against her palm, how it's the same-different-same-different. Memory is dangerous of course. We end up remembering what we want to or don't want to and it's funny how little of it is about choice but habit, but reflex - I am that thing that wakes with you at night.
They say everyone has a twin they never meet. But Mal being who Mal was had always seemed to reject that joking theory by sheer force of her own singularity. Mal. Not some derivative or trailing thread of her, not a stranger who, however beautiful does not hold for what Arthur meant when he said lovely.
Then again it's not her fault, her face, the aesthetic of a dead woman. He's being unfair but this is his selfishness: the refusal to let go, the door always closed. The part of him that understands this counsels civility at least and when he speaks it's a neutral tone, a little the wrong side of tired. ]
Our doubts are weaknesses. Usually.
[ Depends on who you ask maybe, glass half full or empty. Glass not there. ]
Your father used to privilege the will to act above most other things.
[ His voice is neutral when he speaks of her father, but that, in itself, means something. You can respect someone without liking them, while resenting them. ]
Hope is a poison, the kind that men drink willingly after too long in the desert, throats parched and skin cracking under the weight of too long in the sun. The greedy, endless pull that ends in sickness, everything rushing back up as if in apology for thinking a vessel could hold so much after knowing so little. But oh how men know of want; endless and merciless. Want for the light, because they are afraid of the darkness. As if it were not the natural turning point— as if all things were not cyclical, bound to return once more if only they had the patience.
No, men know greed, and hope has left their hearts to reside in their wallets. This false hope, making them invincible, making them careless.
Making them blind. ]
Doubts have only as much power as we allow them. [ Her words are only for the pit, for the darkness that swallowed her whole and gave her back, anew. ] Some give their lives to doubt, and others need it to survive.
My father knew that without purpose, the will to act was an ordinary trait. [ Every man in the pit had the will to escape, it was the wait that broke them. ]
The League does not move of will, but of need, of a greater purpose.
And yet, churches stand tall all around the world. [ She looks to his throat, wondering if she will find a glint of gold under all that blue— another example of his misplaced faith. ] A man will wear a cross around his neck until the day he dies; a very long wait indeed.
[ Bane inclines his head. Not agreement exactly, perhaps, but conceding the argument to her anyway. ]
Will in service of an idea can never be destroyed. It survived your father's murder. It will survive you and I when we are done here and Gotham lies in rubble.
One world is all we have. [ Spoken like the environmentalist she would have the men with money in their pockets believe her to be. So few want to look into the life of a woman with a view for a greater world, a world better than the one Gotham now stands for. No one has time for an ideal, not even those who live their lives in the excess of it. ]
When the time comes, will your great many things be your legacy? [ Her smile suggests she's not trying to be morbid, but judging? Oh, she's very much doing that. ]
[ There's no cross around his neck. Blake may have gone to the orphanage owned by the Father, but he lost that faith a while ago. Better to believe in what is in front of you. ]
Patience, schmatience! The longer you wait to do something, the more likely it is that someone will stop you. I find that acting on impulse gets the best results! [Sure, even that doesn't stop Batman, but it at least makes it so the Caped Crusader can't predict what he's doing.]
Selina's teeth are pearly white and flash like the quick glimpse of a knife in a parking lot. Sadly, it is the knife that doesn't realize the magnitude of a gun fight it's walked into. ] To have the deepest pit, filled with all your many precious things, in the end.
It has given us both strength. [ Not the same kind, because Talia cannot possibly know the depth or expanse of her dearest friend's torture. Cannot fathom the kind of man he was before the mask, before the pit, before this life took his and threw it into the deepest of darknesses to wither and die.
When she was small, she wanted to know. Craved stories of outside of the pit, tales told in his native tongue of places far, far from here. Dreamt of words like succulent and plump and aqua, though she couldn't possibly imagine them the way they were meant to be known.
Now, she wonders who she hurt more with that childish curiosity; him, for making him relive those seemingly forever lost memories, or herself, for knowing he did it because she asked. ]
It will build this world anew, the way it has before and again. [ In every world there must be a steady hand, one willing to strike down the excess before it smothers the life that gave rise to it. The League has endured far more than Gotham, and it will continue to do so for as long as man scorches this Earth. ]
The ashes of this false city will serve as a reminder for centuries.
[ To believe only in what one could see or reason is almost the antithesis of belief. Belief is a powerful thing; more-so the belief in what cannot be proven, when it cannot be ultimately disproven.
For Miranda Tate, that is the belief in the greater good. ]
Ah yes, Gotham's clown. [ Another might recoil from the sight of such a creature, but Talia has seen madness, has lived among it, has risen above the petty chaos of a single mad man's mind. The man with the scars, the Joker as he calls himself, is just another product of this rotten city. ]
Impulse may work in Gotham, but there is a world outside this city.
[ His fingers moved to her cheek, brushing lightly over the porcelain seeming skin, so fresh with the blush of life and perfect as it had always been in his eyes. ]
When you get that look, my friend, I wonder what you are thinking. You were never one for brooding, though thoughts run deep for a mind as sharp as your own so I often chalk it up to planning and the future. But now…
[ The conversation wasn’t given to that, nor was that edge of emotion that seemed elusive as it flittered right on the edge of her expression. Contemplation and reflection were part of the lives of most, but he worried when she looked at him, and only him, in such a way. ]
You needn’t worry so much, my friend. Especially if such thoughts involve me.
That would be the surest way to secure failure. There is no logic to whimsy, nor structure. Spontaneity is best saved for when true opportunity is present.
[ When he smiles it's careful, brief, but for Talia he can always spare a smile. ]
[ Rome was ashes, but London rose, and London was ashes and now the world has Gotham. There is only so much even the League can do, Bane thinks, in the face of the corruption that is human nature.
But he doesn't say this aloud because it is Talia who is speaking, and he believes that she is capable of things that would be impossible for others. She climbed to the sun where hundreds had failed, after all. And then she came back again. ]
We will break Gotham's people first, and the world will remember that as well. That they died alone and in fear and without the will necessary to save themselves.
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Simple math.
THIS LOSER IS FROM BATMAN BEGINS PLEASE FORGIVE ME orz
these people with mal's fais he is like but W H Y
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LOOK AT THIS LOSERS (HANDSOME) FACE~
And what of fate, Bruce?
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bc your life is the hardest dearest, didn't you get the memo?
oh...he knew he should've read that more carefully...u_u
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YOU ARE MY GUINEA PIG IDK WHAT I'M DOING
Still, he continues on unfazed — not a whisper of that existence in his expression. (The Bruce Gotham knows has no patience at all.) ]
In my experience, it has a poor sense of humor. [ A beat. ] Impeccable timing, though.
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In this world, however, you will find the worth of an accomplishment, is measured in quality, not quantity.
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They say everyone has a twin they never meet. But Mal being who Mal was had always seemed to reject that joking theory by sheer force of her own singularity. Mal. Not some derivative or trailing thread of her, not a stranger who, however beautiful does not hold for what Arthur meant when he said lovely.
Then again it's not her fault, her face, the aesthetic of a dead woman. He's being unfair but this is his selfishness: the refusal to let go, the door always closed. The part of him that understands this counsels civility at least and when he speaks it's a neutral tone, a little the wrong side of tired. ]
Our doubts are weaknesses. Usually.
[ Depends on who you ask maybe, glass half full or empty. Glass not there. ]
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[ His voice is neutral when he speaks of her father, but that, in itself, means something. You can respect someone without liking them, while resenting them. ]
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Hope is a poison, the kind that men drink willingly after too long in the desert, throats parched and skin cracking under the weight of too long in the sun. The greedy, endless pull that ends in sickness, everything rushing back up as if in apology for thinking a vessel could hold so much after knowing so little. But oh how men know of want; endless and merciless. Want for the light, because they are afraid of the darkness. As if it were not the natural turning point— as if all things were not cyclical, bound to return once more if only they had the patience.
No, men know greed, and hope has left their hearts to reside in their wallets. This false hope, making them invincible, making them careless.
Making them blind. ]
Doubts have only as much power as we allow them. [ Her words are only for the pit, for the darkness that swallowed her whole and gave her back, anew. ] Some give their lives to doubt, and others need it to survive.
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xcuse me that face sir
xcuse me, ur face
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The League does not move of will, but of need, of a greater purpose.
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Will in service of an idea can never be destroyed. It survived your father's murder. It will survive you and I when we are done here and Gotham lies in rubble.
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When the time comes, will your great many things be your legacy? [ Her smile suggests she's not trying to be morbid, but judging? Oh, she's very much doing that. ]
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[ There's no cross around his neck. Blake may have gone to the orphanage owned by the Father, but he lost that faith a while ago. Better to believe in what is in front of you. ]
Sometimes real saviors exist on earth, though.
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That she had found him once more, his face wrapped, was a moment of salvation he wasn't certain he would ever get. ]
That sight has served us both well.
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Selina's teeth are pearly white and flash like the quick glimpse of a knife in a parking lot. Sadly, it is the knife that doesn't realize the magnitude of a gun fight it's walked into. ] To have the deepest pit, filled with all your many precious things, in the end.
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When she was small, she wanted to know. Craved stories of outside of the pit, tales told in his native tongue of places far, far from here. Dreamt of words like succulent and plump and aqua, though she couldn't possibly imagine them the way they were meant to be known.
Now, she wonders who she hurt more with that childish curiosity; him, for making him relive those seemingly forever lost memories, or herself, for knowing he did it because she asked. ]
A strength we will need.
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The ashes of this false city will serve as a reminder for centuries.
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For Miranda Tate, that is the belief in the greater good. ]
You mean your boys in blue?
sorry for the wait!
The League does not act on whim.
[ How many times has she said the same words? Repeated them until they felt built into the very structure of her bones. ]
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Impulse may work in Gotham, but there is a world outside this city.
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[ He tilts his head, crosses his arms as he looks at her. ]
Other people that don't wear our uniform. People that help others.
[ People like Bruce Wayne - or rather his Batman persona. ]
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When you get that look, my friend, I wonder what you are thinking. You were never one for brooding, though thoughts run deep for a mind as sharp as your own so I often chalk it up to planning and the future. But now…
[ The conversation wasn’t given to that, nor was that edge of emotion that seemed elusive as it flittered right on the edge of her expression. Contemplation and reflection were part of the lives of most, but he worried when she looked at him, and only him, in such a way. ]
You needn’t worry so much, my friend. Especially if such thoughts involve me.
no problem at all!
[ When he smiles it's careful, brief, but for Talia he can always spare a smile. ]
What requires your patience this time?
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But he doesn't say this aloud because it is Talia who is speaking, and he believes that she is capable of things that would be impossible for others. She climbed to the sun where hundreds had failed, after all. And then she came back again. ]
We will break Gotham's people first, and the world will remember that as well. That they died alone and in fear and without the will necessary to save themselves.
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Yes, but I'm not too concerned with it. I find Gotham to be so much more... entertaining than most places out there.