Talia remained calm. She merely blinked lightly and said, "Yes, just like when I was a child. If I hadn't crawled out of that tomb passage with my last breath, the monsters in there would have torn me to pieces."
"There were many other times too. If I hadn't killed them, or if I hadn't managed to run away, they could have done whatever they wanted to me. No one would have come to save me."
"Maybe you realized long ago that he didn't love you, and you admitted and accepted that fact. But what's even crueler is that what he loved was the value you provided."
"But it wasn't really that valuable." Talia smiled. "No individual Assassin could possibly accomplish his grand ideals. They were just as important to him, myself included."
Talia relaxed, curling up in the armchair in a manner more at ease than ever before. "You may think I carry his bloodline, that at least the bloodline has some value. But Demon Blood provides no power. I'm only an ordinary person. Everything I can do came from training acquired later in life."
"Ra's al Ghul only had one descendant, not because my mother was anything special, but because he knew descendants would offer no help toward his grand ideals and might even become a burden. I was merely an accident. If I hadn't inherited my mother's beauty and been able to help him gain a foothold in high society, he wouldn't have acknowledged me as his daughter."
"When children pay the true price during their childhood, the world gains another orphan. And the greatest tragedy of their lives is that they fail to realize they are orphans, or refuse to admit it."
"What about you?" Talia still couldn't help asking. "Why did I see you as