Bane gazed up at Talia, his youthful features exposed to the distant light. Their eyes met across the gap. He mouthed a single word:

“Goodbye.”

Then the mob dragged him down. He disappeared beneath a tide of vicious kicks and blows.

Talia leapt for the sun.

“I climbed out of the pit,” she said, remembering the desolate landscape that had greeted her so many years ago. “I found my father and brought him back to exact terrible vengeance, but by that time the prisoners and the doctor had done their work to my friend, my protector…”

She reached out and tenderly touched Bane’s damaged mask, which bore testament to the suffering he had endured for her sake. He had paid the price for her escape—and was paying it still. Memories of blood and fury cascaded behind her eyes.

* * *

Led by Rā’s al Ghūl, the League of Shadows descended upon the prison. An army of assassins rappelled down the sides of the pit before unleashing havoc upon the prisoners.

The Demon’s Head himself was in the forefront of the slaughter, avenging the murder of his lost love and the captivity of his daughter.

The tempered bronze blades on his wrist-guards turned aside crude knives and spears. His sword tasted the blood of the prisoners. The butchery continued until Rā’s found a badly injured youth lying on a filthy cot. Dirty bandages veiled Bane’s face, but did nothing to relieve his endless pain…

“The League took us in,” she recalled. “Trained us…”

Bane balanced atop upright wooden poles as the League’s brutal instructors battered him with hard oak staffs, trying to knock him off his perch. Bare-chested, the scars on his back a visible reminder of his past, Bane dodged and deflected the blows, refusing to fall.

A crude mask—an early prototype—hid his face.

With pride, Talia observed Bane’s indomitable spirit, yet Rā’s turned away.

* * *

“But my father could not accept Bane,” she said. “He saw only a monster who could never be tamed. Whose very existence was a reminder of the hell he’d left his wife to die in. He excommunicated him from the League of Shadows.” An old anger crept into her voice as she contemplated the man lying on the floor.

“His only crime was that he loved me. I could not truly forgive my father…” She shifted her gaze to Batman. Her voice turned cold as ice. “Until you murdered him.”

Then Batman spoke.

“He was trying to kill millions of innocent people—”

She cut him off.

“Innocent is a strong word to throw around Gotham, Bruce.” She scoffed at the notion. “I honor my father by finishing his work. Vengeance against the man who killed him is reward for my patience.” She twisted the knife—in more ways than one—and was rewarded by a grunt of pain. Blood trickled down the side of the Dark Knight’s armor.

“You see, it’s the slow knife…the knife that takes its time, the knife that waits years without forgetting, then slips between the bones. That’s the knife—” With her other hand, she armed the trigger device. “—that cuts deepest.”