Hello, people. Wow, lots of Batman stuff this month. This is pre Batman Begins, I love the character of Ra's Al Ghul, especially Nolan's vision of him. This story will explore his relationship with his daughter, Talia, and my OC, Algol who he adopts as his own. So, yeah, this'll hopefully be an enjoyable endeavour to read and to write. Please review, reviews are great. That's pretty much it, oh and this whole story was actually inspired by a song.

'Black Flies' by Ben Howard mostly the line 'comfort came against my will...'

i.

For as long as I can remember I have been mad. Yes, completely and utterly mad.

Mad to think I could fit in, even in these harsh surroundings. I have always been prone to 'frenzies' as my father thusly named them. He thought I could channel this 'frenzy', this heat, he thought I might channel it into my training to better myself. He was wrong. Madness cannot be harnessed, nor can it be subdued; I know this, for I have wrangled with my own demons alone and with futility for a number of years.

It is a black beast that ravages my mind, batters it like a furious Spring storm. It can be quite unrelenting in its offense. I never cry, though. I think that is to relent to this craziness, I only lash; bearing my teeth like a crazed wolf, I claw and scramble consumed in my need to hurt and tear. It is a most frightful ailment and not something many people are privy to about me. Only those that have encountered the beast even know of its existence.

My family are indeed the ones who have had the most contact with it.

My father is not truly my father. I have known this for as long as I have known him too. He pretended at first; out of love of me, I think. I will always bear a love for him for that, for I think his steady, unbending love is what kept the monster lodged in my mind at bay. Ra's Al Ghul is his name...was his name. I was more like him than my sister, Talia, ever could be. Where she was wild and uncompromising, I was patient and easy. I held no grudge against the world for my own lot in life; although I know she had a great deal to settle with this world. I understand some of her pain, although to comprehend all of it would be to unbar the gates of my animal and let it roam free and consume me. That thought scares me, so I distance myself from it, and from her.

Talia was a wild thing; unhinged and maybe as mad as I am. Although she never hid it well, throughout our adolescence she never conformed, much to our father's chagrin. She would snarl, lash out and break things. Her fury burned so with a red rage that could not be quelled, save by one; the man she called Bane. Her great friend. They were great friends, two animals' caged – kindred spirits. I felt that way about our father; although he was not mine I always felt a connection to him which remained unbroken until his death. He'd observe my training with such a careful eye I thought that maybe he thought me a more suitable assassin than that of Talia.

Which was true; I recall Talia's first kill. It was a messy affair, she cried, bawled and clung to her friend for comfort; drenched in the blood of her quarry. I was still quite young, too young and too engrossed in the blood that covered her shoulders to understand what it was that she had done. When my time came; I relished it. It was no personal endeavour against my mark, just simply what I had to do. I was destined to end that man and his line the day I was born; his time he had left was mine to give or to take. Our father's pride shone down on me that day and for the first time since our relationship as father and daughter began; I felt his love radiate through me and found that I wanted to make him proud. I craved his love like any daughter would.

He was a good father and a good kinsman to me and to Talia. She had his look, she did. The same dark blue eyes, that same commanding presence, she was definitely her father's daughter. I however, inherited more the look of our mother. Dark of skin with thick black hair, Talia's complexion was lighter than mine, more like her father than like our mother. Whoever my father was; whatever he was, gave me his eyes. Eyes that captivated and, made people stare; they were the colour of cherry wood, a deep, deep brown with an almost ruby hue to them. I remember the day my father – then nothing more than a stranger to me – engulfed me in his arms and took me away from the Pit. He looked into my strange eyes and I saw him shudder; the blood of his wife, my mother ran around my irises. I think he despised me in that moment, but it evaporated as I came into my maturity, I began to resemble his dearly beloved wife and he learned he could love me – the only unbiased link to his past.

He chose to love me and to care for me. My father was a remarkable man and sometimes I think it's truly unjust that I will never see him again...That thought too brings out my madness, so I will not think of it. Thinking back to my life before this one; I think it's amazing how much has changed. Now that I am a woman grown, I can appreciate what my father sought to achieve with me, he thought he could smooth away my madness, that same imprinting that smothered Talia's mind, he didn't manage to but I pretended that he did. If anything, just to make him feel better – I didn't want the brutality of failure to colour his attitude towards me.

And no one wants to be thought of as mad by their own father.

I had no name when I was born either. My mother died so soon after my birth, the doctor simply called me Algol 'the ghoul'. It was fitting, considering the ghoulish circumstances surrounding my conception. My mother had been raped and killed by the men, the prisoners of the Pit. My father, my sire, it was said, took my mother, took her many times and consigned her to stay at his side until he was done with her. It gets hazy after that, I could never get the doctor to tell me more; he simply shook his head and looked away; although I noticed that he was impeccably thorough when it came to my safety.

"Algol," He said one night as he locked the cell door, "You are a devil, and devils must be locked away."

He said it as though he was breaking this news to me, he may as well have broken the news to me that I was a girl. I was very aware how dangerous I was, how nefarious...

Unabashed I lowered my eyes and pressed my soft forehead against the bars,

"I know that..."

For I did, I did know what I was. I was something unholy, something born of evil; something truly wicked, that's why I was still here, still trapped beneath the earth. I turned away from the doctor's anguished face and sat on the cot at the far end of the cell and watched them all; all the men. Talia was long gone at this point; she promised me that she'd return, that she'd come back for me, her sister and her friend, the protector. I watched them all with an indifferent curiosity, like a tiger might look back at the people who flock to zoos to gawp at them; resentfully at first, but after a while the resentment fades and you find yourself gazing back with the same curio that they eye you with. Mutual misunderstanding.

Of course, I was a little boy to them, but on more than one occasion they would leer at me closely and almost slaver. Their hunger, their cruelty did not frighten me; I found my madness then, that's when I found that I would tear them all limb from limb before they laid even a finger on me. There was one however who never looked, even when we shared a cell, he refused to even look at me. Once he did, and his eyes quickly darted away; like his own eyes had been burned at the sight of me. He was very sick, Talia's protector. His face all bloody and his back twisted. I tried to offer him some comfort, but he turned his broken back on me and looked to the wall, ignoring me and the doctor completely.

The doctor simply shrugged and carried on with his treatments until Talia's friend was 'better'. He sat very still and looked sad, I remember pressing my little face against the bars, the new doctor bustling around behind me while the old one watched me silently from his cell. I watched Talia's friend, hoping that he'd move; with Talia gone now, I felt I had some obligation to that man, but he never tilted his head to catch my eye, nor even looked over to my side of the prison. He just stared ahead as if his life had truly lost all meaning without his young ward. I sighed and looked down; I felt so heartbroken that I had no one down there. That all changed when my father appeared, falling from the sky like a mighty albatross, he entered the Pit and knelt before Talia's friend.

For the first time in months I saw his head move only a touch as he and my father locked eyes for the first time. Everything went by in a whirl then, father motioned for his men to help Talia's friend before he cast his energetic blue gaze over the rest of the prison until it fell on the doctor's cells. I recall seeing the inclination of his head as he strode over to me, my tiny hands gripping the bars, my wine-red eyes peering up at him and he knelt before me too and asked in a gentle voice in my own native tongue,

"What is your name, wee one?"

I was transfixed on the face of my father just as much as he seemed to be with me, his eyes were wide and his breath uneven as he stared at me. I pushed my hand through the bars and touched his face, feeling his prominent cheekbones and he closed his eyes and I saw a tear roll out from under his light eyelashes.

"Algol," I whispered, "Did my sister send you?"

Slowly his blue eyes opened and I saw his laboured smile as he pressed a hand to my own and I felt the warmth of family for the first time since my sister had left,

"Yes, sweetheart, she did."

He rose to his feet and I watched him enter the cell, no man had ever come into my own little cell before and I stepped closer to him, if Talia had sent him then I had no reason to doubt him. He fell to his knees again and looked over me; my closely cropped hair, my skinny little body; he looked appalled and so very sad. Knowing as I do now, I understand his horror; his wife was dead and the only remnant of her that remained was these two little girls, he must have felt overwhelmed then. I empathised with him; took his hand and pressed it against my heart and said,

"Please don't cry, birdie."

He frowned and cocked his head,

"'Birdie'?"

I nodded, "Doctor says that only birds come from the sky,"

I pointed up at the hole which he'd come down, the blue sky shone brightly through it.

"Birdies can fly, so they shouldn't cry."

He smiled and I felt good making him happy so I smiled too, my hand still clinging his and he looked at me for another moment before bundling me up in his strong arms. I wrapped my wiry arms around his neck and felt truly safe for the first time since I'd ever opened my eyes and been introduced to this cruel existence I had known.