#damian should still be there!! maybe the batkids are little sould talia keeps around for company bc they couldn’t pay the toll

[bruciemilf]

What do you think Hades/Persephone Au Brutalia, with Talia as the Queen of Underworld and Bruce god of spring ?

OH. OH.

That has so much promise. I've always loved Persephone going to the Underworld willing, so I'll do the same thing here. But Talia is Queen of the riches, too. Riches are never truly pure.

Bruce being fascinated by humans. Bruce loving humans. Loving their resilience and their stubbornness and their steel unwillingness to go down easy.

But it's different with children. Children shouldn't carry the burden of resilience. And when little Jason Todd, Bruce's most beloved mortal, dies, -- murdered. He was murdered.

He can't sit by and cry. Tears without action is just water with salt. So he knocks on death's door, a tiny body breathing too quietly in his arms, and begs.

Talia's fingers are freezing. Ice and steel on his skin, tipping his chin forward, making him look death in the eye. And bruce doesn't flinch. " I don't control death. I tame it. "

"And you bend it. Please. An exception. Just for him. For my little bird."

Six seeds. For six months. Eternity isn't big enough a price for Bruce. Jason Todd was meant to live. Thought Bruce won't tell anyone a small part of him enjoyed licking pomegranate off Talia's hands.

" I'm trying," she says, " To make you...Comfortable. But I'm made of terrible, cold things. Things you don't deserve." Don't suffer. Not for me.

A common misconception about The Springbringer; No one survives without teeth. No flower survives winter by luck. " But things I want to earn. " Talia never touches him.

She's terrified he might wither and crumble. And so Bruce touches first. She melts for him, and he endures for her. "Would you let me earn you, sweetling?"

" Whatever you want, little dove."

Somewhere, In Bruce's garden, Demeter, -- thought he prefers Thomas, these days, -- screams so deep it shakes the earth.