An Unexpected Meeting [Talia]

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It was close to the evening and Jason was getting ready to head out. Sitting on his bed in the apartment that acted as headquarters for both the Red Hood and Jason Todd, fixing up his helmet for tonight's patrol. Gotham was still corrupted and the clown still on the loose of which were both things that Jason aimed to fix.

Finishing up on his helmet and moving to his guns, Jason grabbed both the ammunition boxes and the wipes to clean his gun which was covered in a drug dealer's blood from last night. He was proud of what he was doing, he was actually cleaning Gotham of it's criminals, where Batman was just recycling them in a way. Spitting them out to Blackgate, Arkham and back on the streets in no time with either  a prison break or short sentences.

He wasn't allowing these criminals go back out and harm Gotham, he was doing much more. He was eliminating the threat permanently of which was something every other vigilante refused to do. Was there consequences? Yes. Was he willing to overlook those? Yes.

As he finished both his helmet and guns, he moved back to his closet and swung it open, his Red Hood on display inside with small cardboard boxes holding the array of gadgets he used, from microbombs to a recording device for stakeouts. He sighed, wrapping the specially crafted armor around his torso and placing the white t-shirt over it before slipping the leather jacket on top of that as he geared up for a nights patrol.

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The knock on the door would be peculiar. Then again, per his contract, he would be notified, at her whim and will, when contact would be needed. This time the courier would have a cellular phone in a manilla envelope with a direct, yet personal note. He would have memorized the number of course, as she had instructed him when he was under her own protection in those earlier days.

Call me.

Perhaps it was not as personal. But as she had been in and out of the country, and not spoken with the boy in many days, now that she had returned, it was time to see his progress, and how far he had come in his own missions. So now, she would wait, her deep eyes flicking to the analog clock mounted on the wall.

She'd thankfully had some of her own things packed for this trip, instead of the formfitting, clingy fashions of the West. Loose-fitting silk trousers were tucked elegantly into her tall, well worn leather boots, which were now kicked upon the desk in her suite. She'd been able to get a high-rise with a glorious view. As such a view one could get in Gotham, natch. But as she cocked her head to one side, cradling her cheek in her palm, she could wish upon a certain dark haired, fair-eyed shadow seeking her out. That is, if he sussed out that she was in his city. And that was a rather large if, considering his single-mindedness and his purpose. Jason was much more easy to contact. He knew the price to pay for disobedience.

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Just as he was about to slip out through his fire escape, he was interrupted by a knock at the door. The knock was peculiar and at the same time all too familiar as Jason gently walked over to the door no longer in his gear to face a mysterious deliverer who just simply handed him a manila folder and strode back down the apartment complex hall.

The apartment wasn't all that much to Jason as he looked around tearing at the manila folder. It wasn't the manor and it certainly wasn't any of the penthouses. It was simply an apartment on the east end with enough closet space to hide away all necessary gear and enough room to fulfill his basic needs. He didn't need much outside of what he already had, and was quite thankful to the Al Ghuls for supplying him with such.

As he finally opened up the folder, his eyes lit up in confusion for a mere second as he studied the contents of which consisted of a cellphone and very peculiar note that indicated him to call someone. Walking over to his nightstand and and taking the small slip of paper concealed under the lamp with Talia's number on it.

He dialed and paced around his apartment steadily as the phone rang which allowed him to ponder the reason for the call. Was there a debt to be paid? Jason only hoped not as he did had be occupied with searching for the Joker. He had already spoiled his identity to Bruce who he knew was probably attempting to track him down as he waited for Talia to pick up her end of the call. The call connected as Jason looked up at the clock on the wall, taking advantage of the moment of silence.

"What is it?" He spoke briefly in a tongue that anyone outside of the two on this call would not recognize to avoid any sudden suspicious eavedroppers from learning the true purposes behind the call.

[Deleted]

Continuing to let her mind wander, then expand, then just as quickly snap to a fine focal point, she had to muse that the skyline here did a find purpose at focus. Even through it's never ending metallic screech, she had been able to find grounding.

So when the phone did ring, and she said nothing when it was brought to her ear, she had to comment. And comment she did, a melodic laughter flowing from her lips as she shifted, the loose fitting tunic shimmering as she reached for her glass on the desk.

"It seems the city has corrupted your manners, young one. You greet such a beloved friend in this manner? Has he gotten to you so much that you find your own anger and rejection bleeding through your veins so bluntly?"

Continuing in the tongue she had instructed him, he was probably widely unaware she could be at his own abode in under the half hour if he continued this path of behavior with her. Fingers grasped the heated glass as she brought it to her lips, savoring the steaming infusion, reminding herself at a later point to give thanks for whomever had placed the rich brew in her things before she had left.

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"Forgive me, Talia." He spoke in the tongue. "It is just not every day that I expect a call." He sighed when she had brought him up. The second culprit in his death and so far the only one he had managed to encounter.

He had had quite the start, with Bruce fighting and discovering his identity at the very start, then he fought Grayson, then Drake and now the only one he felt was worth fighting and actually killing was the Joker. The clown had caused him so much pain, too much pain that even just the thought of the clown could spark a temper in him. He wanted no more then to take a crowbar and give Joker the same treatment he received, warehouse and all. Bruce had failed him and let him die at the hands of that freak, and thus had lost not only the admiration from Todd but he had lost the will to consider Bruce his father figured after he ultimately failed to avenge his not-so-death and left Jason to do so.

Talia, Ra's and the League however had replaced that, she had not only nursed him back to health and convinced her father to let him train and potentially join the League but she had also become Jason's financial aid when he had chose to return to Gotham and resume his vigilante activities under a new name. She had done so much for him and Jason couldn't think of much he could do to repay her even as he paced his apartment now. Surely she had a task for him, a place for them to meet, something for him to do that would help him repay the growing debt he owed her.

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Forgiveness. What a peculiar word. Certainly not a feature she had known as a young child, many years ago. Sighing as Jason had clearly slipped in his own training, she continued to listen to him bristle at the mention of Bruce. Of course the man who she clearly did not name would still get a reaction from him. A father's rejection created many, many differing circumstances in a person's psyche, her own included.

"Perhaps we need to have more frequent meetings, young one. With these manners, it is a shame for me to be linked with you, let alone my father. For you to forget-" She paused, setting her tea down once more. "where you have came from so easily is a pain one cannot forget." Her words were added with a quiet disappointment.

Declining to allow him the knowledge of her being in the city, she let the silence sit heavily between them. He had been quite focused on his own missions of vengeance, meting out a brutal form of justice. Tsk'ing lightly, she had to suppress the smile tugging at her mouth. The need for masks and costumes that ran rampant in this city was astounding. No one could do their own work without getting acknowledged for it. Always in want for the celebrity, and not for the job well done.

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She lectured him about his greeting and he frowned. He had been a big ball of rage since he had found out that not only the Joker was alive but about how Batman had also replaced him with another Robin. He expected it to happen but he never thought he'd would be alive again to witness it. "Apologies." He responded to her and his tone softened as he realized that she was disappointed in his greeting.

Talia was one of the closest things the boy had to someone who he felt actually cared about him and didn't even know if she really cared. She had more or less become the mother figure that he never truly had besides one who would smoke dope and drink all day and one that completely vanished until she had been set up by the Joker. He then became curious to the reason behind the call which no doubt had to have one, after all it wasn't every day the Al Ghuls had called him for just casual conversation.

"Is there a purpose behind this call?" He asked in the tongue for confirmation towards it's reason. Truly, if there was a job to be done he was positive they would have met in person or the carrier would have given more instructions. So he waited for her reply as he broke his pace and walked over to his kitchen counter where he got his hands on a lighter and lit a cigarette gently.

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Oh the dear, dear boy. For he was still a boy, and most men, and women compared to her were mere children. They had not experienced death, and survied. Yet, Jason Todd has, and risen from it's struggles, even if he had not overcome them yet.

"You let your anger consume you, and you will lose sight of your purpose." She started, pausing to sip at her drink, and glance at the skyline again.

Even his apology held notes of being held back from something more pressing than a casual phonecall. Yet he was aware, at least enough to be reigned in and appropriate for as long as the call's duration. If he did not come to heel when called upon, he would lose everything. And he was more than aware of such a loss, without her needing to gently remind him. The gentle swish of metal on metal caught her attention for the briefest of seconds and she clicked her tongue at him.

"You and your filthy habits. They will send you to the grave, again, if you continue," she chided him, before moving to answer his question. "The purpose of all connection is the deepening of spirit, Beloved. To turn a mirror into a window, a pool to a stream. You've felt alone in Gotham since your return. I know what it is to be surrounded by the faces of those who would call you family, and yet to wear the mask. To call yourself companion, and to trust only the counsel of only the deepest of thoughts." A quiet sigh reached out to him through the phone.

She yearned to reach out to him, to call him to her room, to console and turn him gently back to his true purpose with kind words and a soft touch. But young Jason would soon enough know she was a mere minutes journey from his own home in due time. As soon as the television started showing Miranda Tate in all her glory and her duty, he would be aware.

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Jason listened to Talia intently, she claimed his rage would make him lose sight of his purpose. It was the very rage within the young boy that ignited the flame to his purpose in the first place. There was still the young boy inside of him of course, the one tied to the chair painfully awaiting the final tick before the bomb went off to consume his body in flames.

He didn't know just what drove Talia to do this for him. There wasn't a bone in his regenerated body that hated the Al Ghuls for bringing him back but thinking of it now he would have much rather stayed dead. The truths he had to face now were brutal on the boy as Bruce replaced him with a new Robin and that the Joker was left much more unharmed then he would have expected him to be. He was positive that Bruce, the closest thing he had ever had to a stable father would avenge his death properly by putting that psycho in his place.

She informed him that his mistakes would send him to the grave again and he couldn't hold himself back from mumbling in agreement. She finally revealed to him the purpose behind the call as he took a drag from his cigarette and looked over the Gotham skyline. Unfortunately however the East End didn't provide the prettiest views with it's neon signs and billowing smoke.

"He's replaced me, Talia." He confessed. "I just - I expected different from him. I was positive that I wasn't something so expendable to him." He sighed as he ran a hand through his hair and took another huff from his cigarette before looking around his apartment. "I thought I actually meant something to him outside of a fresh pair of tights."

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When he responded, she made sure to be present. He was still hurt by how Bruce failed to kill that clown. What Jason was still unable to comprehend, is that Bruce held himself to such a strict set of morals, that while the clown had done irreparable damage, time and time again, he would never kill the creature.

It was peculiar, but it was one of the more endearingly insane things about Bruce. He was just as peculiar in his own damning ways. Still, that was not the topic at hand.

"He will be aware of the error of his ways, Jason. Trust me on this. And he is a man held back by his own standards. He has replaced his counterparts time, and time again. Richard. You. The next will be replaced only in time." She concurred, sighing lightly once more.  In time, even the youngest child to take the mantle of Robin would be replaced, sadly.

"That is why you are with us now. You are able to exact your revenge and execute your own plans of vengeance where he is failing. Why else do you think my Father has lost faith in the man as well?" It was truly a question that was in dire need of an answer.

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At a brief pace he could navigate the cramped room in under five seconds, walking wall to wall and then back again. Such a small apartment, not unlike the one he spent the majority of his childhood in, a disgusting hovel like any other in the concrete arm pit that is East Gotham. From the open window a stagnant breeze crawled into, filling the basic residence with a choking atmosphere of smog and decay. It had been four exhaustive years since he last found himself living in the recess of Gotham's slums, perhaps it was fate that after all the pain he had experienced, all the self sacrifice and lost that he was back in the very place that he began his journey. This was his second chance at life, but it had to begin under the same circumstances and this time he wouldn't make the same mistakes.

Upon the stain riddled bed of mesh wiring and springs masked with a millimetre thick brown mattress sat the now discarded helmet that he planned on wearing. It was built to be useful and not comfortable so Jason chose not to wear it when it wasn't needed, saved him an irritated scalp. One of the only other pieces of furniture that was dotted about the enclosed space was a folded out metal chair not unlike the ones you can find at low tier sporting events, and that too wasn't the most luxurious of items to own. This basic living actually suited him quite well as not only did it mean that he could be mobile and away in a few moments if emergency demanded it but it served as a reminder of where he had crawled from and what Bruce had now lowered, not that he would ever forget that.

Smoke ran from his nostrils like fumes from industrial stacks, filling the room with a dank haze of grey poisonous fog. Out of all the ways that he could die, Jason placed a smoking related end at the foot of the list so he saw no harm in indulging himself with the apparently harmless addiction, not if was to be potentially shot in a few hours if things turned sour. For a man who schemed for months he still retained that cavalier devil may care attitude to existence, if he's too go out then he'll do it dragging the Dark Knight kicking and screaming with him. "Dick was as slow as he was stupid, Wayne had to replace him with someone better but there's no way this new punk's got anything on me. I guess Bruce is scraping the bottom of the barrel now any way." At one time Dick was like an older brother to him, but brothers especially end up fighting. Even during his time as Robin Jason viewed Grayson as too passive and disengaged to be a real vigilante, he never seemed to have the same passion and grit that Jason thought that he offered to role as Robin. "It doesn't matter, he can send all of his cronies at me and it won't make any difference, I'm better than all of them combined."

Floorboards of a dusty grey complexion bent and groaned under the firm boot of Todd as he moved over to the open window, flicking his burnt out cigarette into the wind. As he moved the desert eagles that he had holstered to his legs remained firmly tied down. He was packing enough heat to take on a small army. "You know why, Bruce is weak. He's an old man who is too proud to admit that he's wrong or do what's right to save this hole of a City. Ra's knows that while Batman rules Gotham, the criminal classes will be protected from his 'divine' wrath, something that we'll need to change."

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The vitriol that infused his blood since she had brought him back was almost contagious. If she had not the years on her, the wisdom, and moreso the training, she would have been swept up in his utter hatred for Bruce Wayne. Considering she knew the man, and knew him well, she had not quite entertained his obsession with exacting justice in a suit and with his toys. It would be amusing no doubt as to see such a spectacle. But for this boy, this barely legal man to be thrown aside, left to the wolves, it pinged a slight maternal urge in her. So she had sought to bring him from the cusp of the undead, and was now raising him in ways Wayne had utterly neglected to do.

She was offering him space, finances, and guidance. Even as he sought to rebel against her, she would reign him in. He was seeking to be so much more than Wayne, and in her eyes, he was succeeding. "Jason, he is always looking for another. There needs to be a backup in case one fails. Sad as it is, that is how the man works. And as of late, you have to have noticed how he is...preoccupied." By women, by his work as his alter person, by who knows what. It didn't matter specifics, even she knew that.

The subtle clicking on the other end meant he was pacing once more. She could hear it in the whisper of his 'outfit' the rough tools of murder against the fabric of his armored body. He was a sight to see, a handful of inches towering over her. But he was still young, something she had to remind herself of, time and time again. But he was so delightfully malleable. A hint of a suggestion and he'd be willing to parrot it back to her within a few hours time, claiming it as his own.

"I am pleased your own skills in observation prove true. Your forefather, as one could deem him, has not been able to ascertain my presence in his city. Now, I hope you can overcome his weaknesses, and seek me out. Not tonight, as I can tell you have more pressing matters at hand. But in three days time, find me. We will have much to discuss, Jason." And she would be sure to bolster his spirits. And feed his curiosity as she had been doing since his rebirth.

[Deleted]

With every syllable his focus continuously wrapped itself around her words, they were the soothing honey at the end of the hard day. Even if he would angrily deny it to any that accused it, part of Jason was still a child as he subliminally clutched on to any sort of innocent nourishment to counter his outwardly world weary perception. Talia was a woman fully grown, a spinsters of words and emotions, it is her game after all to persuade men to fall in line behind her Father. There was no denying her allure, she wore her words like an intoxicating perfume that lingered on all that she touched upon. And Jason was no different to any other man, he had wants and desires and of course a degree of lust, especially for capable Women. Jason wasn't entirely dulled by her seductive overtones, he knew that she likely gave little plight for his troubles but he didn't care, as long as she continued to back his work.

It was true that he had a debt to the League, and Talia in particular but they would probably only provide aid as long as his work could benefit their aims. "Yeah I'll come to you, no problem. It's about time we talked in person again, I've got a lot that I need to get done. If you can get me to Bruce I'll kill him, I promise." And with that he closed the phone with one hand, quietly standing with it pressed into his closed palm for a few moments. Out of the corner of his eye Jason saw a man standing in the mirror looking straight back at him, a figure of black leather and grey Kevlar. There was a distinct lack of equipment on his person, at least in the sense that Batman always wears his belt of goodies. Jason was dressed as if he was on the war footing only waiting for the order to charge over the battlements. But he knew that there would be only one person giving the orders, this was a democracy of one. No more old men whispering nonsense in his ears, indoctrinating a child to steal his innocence.

Lifting his arm outright, he placed his gloved hand on the glass which reflected his angered face before lashing out with his clenched fist, shattering the mirror into a dozen strains that still managed to stand on the wall now albeit broken into various jagged sections. As a child Jason would often sneak into a local church for sanctuary, to clamber under a roof as a storm raged outside. Those days were a blurry polaroid in his mind's eye, a flash of recognisable absence. Jason was not a holy man, but he understood the principle of an eye for an eye, that vengeance was as natural as drawing on breath and that it was his God given right to search for his retribution. There would be no forgiveness in his actions, mercy would only dull his blade. Turning back on his hell he picked up the helmet that sat on the stained bed, Jason held it before his gaze as he ran his tentative grasp over the smooth burgundy covering. Once Jason had dared to ask Bruce why he chose to resemble a Bat and he was told that Bats once embodied his personal fears so now he used them to instil terror into his enemies. So what did that say about Jason's choice? He knew who Red Hood once was, the nightmare that burned through his every waking thought but now he would abuse his own personal fears to fuel his crusade. And through the open window he was gone, his face hooded and sealed away from the City that he either desired to save or punish.

[Deleted]

Ever so pensive, the boy was. He always seemed to want to get the last word in as well, the phoneline truncated as he spoke his piece, and she was left with the dull dialtone of an ended call. Tossing the phone to her desk she stretched out, eyes still glued to the setting sun. He wished to exact his revenge, which was really a sort of deep rooted pain at the fact he saw Bruce replacing him, forgetting him, casting him aside. The fact he had been thrust from the 'royal' family of Bat, for some reason.

Shaking her head as she stood, fingers tangled in her long locks. She should cut them, but the length reminded her of easier, yet harsher times. When things were uncomplicated and just as complicated as now; it was just a matter of vision. Sighing again, she returned to the glass barring her from the heights of this dirty, dirty city shrouded in mystery. It was no Egypt, no France, no desert. But it was where she was to be. And would be, until her time was done for this moment.