Free Batman 5 - Batman Begins by Dennis O'Neil

ever met until now has been worthy of mingling his genes with mine nor worthy of the company of my daughter. Bruce Wayne may be an exception to this unhappy rule.
    If I have a son of my own I will not need Bruce Wayne and Talia may then devote herself entirely to my comfort and convenience. But none of my consorts have given me the male offspring I desire. A noble son-in-law may in the long run prove to be as satisfactory as a noble son.
    Bruce Wayne may yet prove unworthy of the beneficence I contemplate bestowing upon him. There is yet ahead of him the ultimate test that he like the others will surely fail. If he does not fail it I will summon Talia.
    Bruce seldom saw Rā’s al Ghūl and wondered if their mysterious host even lived at the monastery. Sometimes, though, Rā’s appeared on his raised platform, or on the balcony overlooking the glacier, and watched, erect and motionless, his hands hidden in his sleeves. He never spoke, nor made any kind of sound at all, but his presence was always palpable.
    Rā’s was on the platform the morning Bruce, bare-chested and wearing shorts, was fighting with a bald Japanese man of his own size and build. Someone shouted his name and for perhaps a half second Bruce was distracted. Could he have been called by Rā’s himself? No, the voice had been Ducard’s. His opponent struck twice, to the chest and jaw, and Bruce dropped.
    When Bruce fully regained his senses, Rā’s was gone.
    Ducard stepped forward and looked down at Bruce with disgust. “Childish, Wayne.”
    “Resume!” Ducard ordered, motioning to the Japanese man who had knocked Bruce down, and a few seconds later, Bruce was punching, blocking, kicking, ignoring everything except the opponent in front of him.
    So intent was he on his training, so involved in the tasks Ducard set for him, that Bruce all but forgot that months were passing, that the color of the sky and the angle at which the sun hit the glacier changed and the air both inside and outside the monastery was warmer, then colder.
    Later, he reckoned that he had been at the monastery just under a year and that, after the initial period of adjustment, he was happy in the rambling building above the glacier. He forgot his old life, in Gotham and on campuses and the jet-set watering holes of the world and, eventually, his memory of his parents also dimmed. What was the color of his father’s hair? Of his mother’s eyes? How did they sound in the morning? At bedtime? He could summon the memories by force—he had learned that he could summon any memory by force—but they did not come unbidden into his dreams now. But the sight of them sprawled in the street amid bloody pearls—that did not diminish, nor did the hot bite of hate that inevitably accompanied it.
    He never learned the names of his fellow trainees, and there had been hundreds of them. Ducard had made it known that any unnecessary fraternization would be severely punished and no one doubted him. But Bruce felt close to these anonymous men of varied nationalities, closer than he had ever felt to anyone except his mother and father and Alfred. They may have been nameless, but they were pieces of something of which he, too, was a part and that gave him a commonality with them that often felt like affection.
    None of them stayed for long. A new group seemed to arrive every few weeks or so, receive instruction, and leave. Only Bruce remained, although his skills were plainly superior to those of everyone except Ducard. He would ask, “Does Rā’s al Ghūl have something special in mind for me?” and Ducard would turn away, refusing to answer.
    Eventually, he stopped asking.
    Ducard remained aloof, always the savagely forthright instructor, never the friendly mentor, but a bond grew between him and Bruce regardless. Bruce could not have given it a label, or even described it. In neither his personal experience nor his reading had he encountered anything like it. But he knew it was there, as he knew