Chapter One: The Aftermath of Forbidden Conception

"We both know I have to kill you now; you'll just have to imagine the fire."

Bane tightened the garrote around Bruce's neck, for now protected by the imported leather of his cowl.

Bane readjusted his grip and took a moment to bask in the pleasure that came with taking a life, before giving the stainless-steel an assertive yank, the muscles of his massive forearms flexing.

The stiff fabric of the double-stitched cowl finally gave way and the wire reached the vulnerable flesh of Batman's neck. The stainless-steel wire penetrated Bruce's skin with the probing intimacy of a lover and sliced through his pounding carotid artery and gave an encore bloodletting performance by severing his jugular vein until Bruce's body exsanguinated to death in Bane's strong arms.

Bane dropped Bruce's flying rodent costumed corpse to the ground and could hear Talia stomping away, yelling orders at a few of the random anonymous armed men to join her as she prepared to descend the concrete steps.

Selina Kyle screeched to a halt on the bat pod, her skintight suit clinging to her body as she straddled the bike. She was just seconds too late in every way to make any kind of difference to Bruce's life, her life or nearly every citizen in Gotham City.

Talia whistled and the armed men surrounding Talia opened fire on Selina and filled her to capacity with hollow point bullets. She didn't suffer much before she crumbled to the ground, the primary cause of death would be listed as a perforated aorta and belly full of blood and bile.

Talia nodded in satisfaction and shielded her eyes from the sun as she stared upwards at the sound of the approaching helicopter. A wide smile filled her face as Barsad landed the commandeered helicopter from Wayne Enterprise's Applied Sciences and pushed open the rear door.

As Talia crouched down and hurried towards the helicopter, across the city, Gordon blew out a relieved breath, the signal interceptor keeping the bomb from detonating.

What Gordon didn't know was that Talia had a back-up remote detonation switch set to detonate on a tight timeline. The red button she had presented to Bruce was for a show, to provide a dramatic flourish. Talia had decided she didn't want to die with the city.

"My father's loyalty slipped," Talia thought bitterly as she boarded the helicopter, the rotors impossibly loud over her head.

She looked over as Bane stumbled down the concrete stairs and joined her in the helicopter along with the two men that were deputized under Gotham's Reckoning before killing Selina Kyle.

Barsad fiddled with the control panel and navigated the helicopter out of Gotham City. They had a little more time then the pilot in 1945 to escape the toxic radiation cloud, but still felt their metal tooth fillings buzz in their jaws when they looked back at Gotham City where a now swollen and noxious mushroom cloud vaporized those in the immediate vicinity and would cause destruction for generations.

Bane glanced over at Talia, expecting to see jubilation on her features.

Instead she looked angry, her brows knit together, and she clenched and unclenched her hands into tight fists.

Bane looked back as Gotham burned thinking of the hopeless drones perished, Foley was dead before the real show, died dressed nicely though.

Blake and most of the bridge inhabitants all succumbed to drowning when the bridge collapsed, and they were plunged into the frigid waters. Blake died a failure, surrounded by other drowned orphans.

Gordon was vaporized, little bits of his broken DNA strands were far flung and persisted for years in concrete cracks and storm sewer grates.

Bane could tell she was angry and couldn't understand since Gotham was actively being decimated.

"What's wrong?" he wheezed. His mask still malfunctioning, his chest growing tight.

Talia shook herself free and patted his hand. "Rest now," she murmured.

"Tell me what troubles you," he tried to say assertively. "I can rest later."

Bane couldn't stop his biological process of putting Talia and her needs ahead of his, almost eager to live life knowing that one day he would sacrifice himself for her.

Talia rubbed her eyes; the helicopter blades had swirled up a lot of grit that was making her look like she was crying voluntarily.

She sniffed hard before she yanked at the laces of her heavy boots until she could kick them off. "There's not many places we can hide," she said on a tired groan as she slid her socked feet onto Bane's lap.

Bane reflexively dropped his hands to massage the aching arches of her feet as she closed her eyes before continuing.

"Everything I have done has been in loyalty to The League," she mumbled. "Everything I have done has been with honor and resolute diligence," she hissed.

The random men she plucked before death swept through Gotham nodded, Bane glared at them, they didn't know the woman they were looking at. He kept his frown away from Talia as she spoke though, he didn't like to hear her brag about her supposed honor.

Bane had been careful to keep his growing disgust at her off his face when she crawled into her Miranda Tate skin suit. Lately, when she returned to being an alleged woman of honor, more of Miranda stayed with her. Sometimes it was the expensive fragrance that clung to her hair, the mineral makeup swept across her cheek bones, her lips darkened by a stain sold at high-end boutiques.

His heart did burst with pride that she eviscerated the city but wanted her to explain her rising fury.

"Like I said, there's not many places we can safely go," Talia said before Barsad interrupted her.

"I'm going to need you to tell me any safe place, I don't want to burn through fuel unnecessarily."

Talia rubbed her nose with her sleeve before she spit out a set of coordinates to Barsad over the headset.

"Where are you leading us?" Bane asked.

"Do you distrust my choices."

"Never," Bane said quickly, "I was merely asking out of curiosity and in the hopes you'll finish speaking of this safe place."

Talia nodded in satisfaction and she continued speaking as Barsad moved the adapted Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter in the direction that Talia's coordinates directed.

"I thought for a long time my father had never done wrong," she said wistfully and paused as Bane's strong thumbs kneaded the bottom of her feet. "I discovered his secret," she whispered and stared down at her hands, the fingernails still the glossy red of Persephone's pomegranate's.

"He acted without honor and fucked one of those sloths, those sheep he held such disdain for, their sloppy union produced a child," Talia spit out in a rush.

Bane was careful to not change his touch in any way and continued to massage her toes as she continued.

Talia described her father decades before, infiltrating a party in order to kill a world leader. Ras al Ghul had tracked the world leader to the discovered time gap in the security detail and was about to end his life when he saw Sienna Aurora Troy through a sliding glass door and felt his heart fall to his feet.

Ras al Ghul finished the job and washed his hands before tracking down the visionary woman he had spied from afar.

Ras found her at the bar ordering a dry martini. He watched from afar as she chatted amiably with a few guests before asking the bartender for a book of matches and disappeared in a darkened alcove.

Ras followed her and heard the match before the scent of sulfur filled the air. He found her leaning against a balcony that was stuffed with lush ferns, the tendrils and fronds teasing the golden skin of her calves. His eyes found her bare feet from where she had kicked off her bone-breaking stilettos.

"I don't believe I know you and I know all of Karl's friends." Sienna said, her voice hypnotizing Ras from the first syllable.

Ras looked up as Sienna moved her cigarette to her left hand as she extended her right towards him. His eyes couldn't miss the entire boulder on her left ring finger. "Sienna Troy."

"Who do you belong to?" he thought as he shook her hand, soft and smooth within his own solid and rough grip.

"Pleasure to meet you, Robert Armin."

Ras was sure that Sienna let her hand linger before she returned to the balcony and relit her cigarette that had gone out. He declined when she offered him a perfumed French cigarette.

"What brings you to the party Mr. Armin?"

"Robert please," Ras said and moved a few steps closer to where she was leaning against the balcony railing. "I have an interest in the Cayman acquisitions."

Sienna nodded, "I've had my absolute fill hearing about that."

"Have you?" Ras asked.

Sienna nodded, "Karl, my husband, is the one who organized the Cayman operation."

Ras nodded as Sienna stared off into the dim night.

She turned to him suddenly, "I saw you earlier."

"I saw you too by the bar."

"No, I saw you before that."

"When?"

"When you arrived at 8:47."

"That's very specific."

"I looked at the clock because I wanted to remember the exact moment."

"Why that moment?"

"Because I've never wanted to fuck someone as you and I wanted to remember the time."

Ras let his expression remain neutral as he closed most of the distance remaining between them.

"What if I said I thought the exact same thing."

"We could get killed, my husband is very jealous," she whispered and tried to move away from Ras.

"I don't care," he rasped and captured her in his massive embrace. Sienna covered her mouth to stifle her gasp as Ras's hand moved up the inside of her thigh, eager to find her intimate center.

"We don't have much time," she said on a ragged moan as she helped him get past her clothing and slide his fingers into her wet feminine center.

Ras could've willing drowned in her soft sighs as he teased his fingers in small circles around her sensitive clit.

Sienna's hands scrabbled at the front of his charcoal grey pants and fumbled at the zipper.

"We don't have much time," she whispered against his ear, impatient as she reached inside his pants to free his painfully hard cock.

"I will probably never see you again," he admitted on a ragged groan and met Sienna's wide eyes.

"I know," she finally murmured and shifted until she could tease the head of his cock at her wet opening. "You're the first man that has looked at me in years," she murmured and slid down the length of his rigidity. "Fuck me before you leave here," she grunted as their intimate flesh kissed.

Anything holding Ras back fell away as he moved his hands to her hips and yanked her down harder to meet his rigid masculinity.

Ras sat up suddenly and pulled her close, he cut off any audible sound she might've made when he swallowed her breath with his lips. He bent his legs at the knees and was able to change the positioning to rapidly plunge his cock into her until her thighs shook with a soaking wet orgasmic onslaught.

Sienna slid her fingers through his hair as she rode him until her thighs nearly gave out from exertion as he arched his hip upwards and spilled his hot, sticky seed deep inside her.

Ras never got to say anything else as shouts sounded from the upstairs bedroom where the world leader's body was discovered.

"Be well whoever you really are," Sienna whispered and chastely kissed Ras before skipping barefoot to the pool house bathroom and cleaning up before rejoining the party.

Sienna didn't know that her and Ras's furtive moment of passion would produce a child.

Ras left the party but kept track of Sienna through well-paid eyes and ears. He heard of her pregnancy and he also heard that her husband Karl was sterile.

Ras was out of the country when Sienna and Karl Troy were divorced.

Ras had been relieved to hear that Sienna had moved to a sleepy seaside town and was nearing the delivery date of the healthy baby according to the radiologist technician who sold him a copy of the sonogram and report.

Sienna's last day alive had been uneventful but she couldn't shake the cravings for peaches. She was leaving the grocery store with three pounds of peaches when she was hit by the drunk driver who crossed the median line and crushed her small hybrid.

"My father's slut whore mistress was killed instantly but the baby was okay," Talia growled. "My father mourned her."

"What happened to the child?" Bane asked and felt Talia's feet grow still in his hands.

Talia looked up at him and gave him a peculiar, crooked smile before she looked down at her watch.

"You'll be meeting her in just a couple hours, I didn't call ahead to tell her we were coming either," she added with a cackle.