Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I am going to die, Jason Todd thought to himself. His hand pushed at the locked door, the broken fingers a sharp pain that didn’t matter in the face of the agony of the rest of his body.

He could feel parts of his insides torn and bruised. There were bones grating against each other, where bones should be single pieces. He remembered the time he had dropped an overripe peach on Alfred’s kitchen floor. It had splatter across the floor in the same way his blood had.

He turned towards the middle of the room, where the bomb was counting down.

He couldn’t open the door. There was no lock to pick, at least not on this side, and nothing for him to pick it with and no way his hands could hold a pick steady enough to even try.

He couldn’t get to the bomb. He had a twisted knee and a broken ankle and the bruising everywhere else meant that he’d used the last of his willpower to get himself to the door. He couldn’t make it to the bomb. Not in time to try to dismantle it. And with his broken, bound hands . . . he ran into the same problems he had with picking the lock.

There were windows. But they were skylights in the middle of the roof or so high up on the warehouse walls that it would take some intensive acrobatics and rearranging of furniture to get close to them. If he were at a hundred percent . . . But he wasn’t at a hundred percent. And the windows were even further away than the bomb.

The only thing close by was Sheila's body.

He turned to look at the woman who had given birth to him, abandoned him, and found him again only to sell him to the monster who was blackmailing her. He wondered, in a bitter little thought that he couldn’t stop, which of those moments he hated her most for.

Her chest rose and fell.

She was still alive, Jason realized. He’d thought that when the Joker had shot her, she’d been killed instantly. She’d certainly been quiet when the Joker had been beating him unconscious. Then again, staying quiet might be the only reason she was still alive. He kind of wished he’d learned that kind of detachment from her. Learned to stay away and not help people. It might have let him stay alive longer. After all, he was dying at the age of fifteen. And she had made it to the ripe old age of thirty three.

The bomb said one minute left.

Well, Jason thought. No reason that they shouldn’t try to get one of them out of this alive. He started to crawl towards her. He could get between her and the blast. His costume- the Robin outfit, had some pretty sweet kevlar. And the cloak was fire resistant. He’d put himself and that cloth between her and the bomb. Maybe she’d get lucky.

Even if the bomb didn’t go off, Jason wasn’t surviving this. He could feel it in every wet cough as he moved towards her. He knew it in the way he couldn’t breathe deeply at all. He could tell, as the room blurred and darkened at an inconsistent rate, death was coming.

He was a few feet away from her when he realized she was speaking.

“Oh Lord God,” She whimpered. “Please- I’m trapped- don’t deserve this. Please. Help.”

She was praying.

Jason felt nothing but pity for this woman. It was kind of her own fault they were there, after all. And now all she does is ask for help that isn’t coming.

He lays himself down by her. He turns his back to her. He will not beg the universe to save him. He’s known he was going to die young since that first month he spent living in the streets of gotham without any more shelter than a sweatshirt and a full dumpster to keep off the cold and the rain. And he’s known, since the first time he watched Batman get beat up bad enough to not get up again, how his death would come. Jason is Robin, the boy wonder. Jason will die fighting.
Jason stares at the bomb. He can’t fight this. But he can face it head on. He counts down with it. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen. . .

“Help,” Sheila's voice is louder. Panting from the effort, her very last pleads ring out for mercy from a voiceless god, sounding out in the empty warehouse. “Please! If not for me then for my son. This is my fault. Not his. He doesn’t deserve to die. Please.”

Six. Five. Fou-

The wall of the warehouse bursts open.

Jason’s first thought is “Superman?” as he registers that the hole is human size.

Jason’s second is ouch, as he is lifted and suddenly in the sunlight.

Jason’s third thought, as his eyes struggle to adjust to the sunlight, is, embarrassingly enough, Angles are Hot. Even with malfunctioning eyes he’s pretty sure he catches sight of the most perfect woman he’s ever seen. And she’s carrying him.

And then the warehouse explodes. And his last conscious thought is ‘Hot!’ before the world goes dark.

Emmett and Rosalie are hunting in Ethiopia when their lives change forever.

They’re passing for a young couple on their honeymoon, so dramatically in love that the locals and group they are touring with just laugh when they spend their time ‘sleeping in’ at the hotel and sneaking off during the sunlight hours. In fact, they’ve only ever appear for dinner or breakfast with their tour group but no one has suspected a thing.

Carlisle is far too much of a worry wart. As long as Emmett and Rosalie don’t spend more than six months in a sunlit city they’ve never had a problem being recognized. Their beauty is always noticeable. But no one has ever hunted them down thinking that they’re vampires.

It helps that they leave any town immediately when Emmett has had an . . . accident.

No one thinks vampires, until a human turns up drained of blood.

So Emmett and Rosalie are playing human in the daytime and enjoying the empty wildernesses of Ethiopia in the night time. They’ll only be there a week before the tour moves them back to the relative safety of egypt. In the middle of the mess the United Nations are suffering (some american criminal has been declared an ambassador), almost all international tours in the area have been canceled. It’s a true miracle that this one is happening at all.

It’s a hot Thursday in January, when Emmett talks Rosalie into leaving the safety of their hotel room to sneak out to eat. They ate before they entered the country, knowing they would have a limited diet while they visited and that what wild animals were available wouldn’t be very appetizing. But, just to be careful, they had located a small lake a few miles outside of the city, mostly muddy since it’s the dry season, that had some signs that a deer or elk creature had been visiting it.

“Want to go out to eat?” Emmett asked, rolling over in the bed. His dark hair is damp from a shower and curls around his ears. He looks like innocent sin. He looks like a good reason for a new wife to keep him inside all day long.

Rosalie flips her long blond hair over her shoulder and tucks a neat bookmark into her textbook on building engines. “It’s still daylight, someone could see us.”

“Today’s our last day!” Emmett complained. “Let’s spend the day walking as far away as we can and see what we can find. We’re going to be stuck in a boat tomorrow. Stuck for days! With all those humans around. . .” He glanced to the side. His eyes are a dark gold. He wouldn’t say he was worried he’d have an accident on the boat. Self control is a constant battle for him. It’s ironic in the worst way that he ended up with Rose, who's never killed a human on accident nor tasted human blood.

Rose doesn’t make him say that he’s worried. She’s never poked at his weak points. She’s very open about her own. She smiles when he jokes about his lack of self control or mountain man personality. But she has never complained about him. She never makes him feel like he’s less than she is.

And he has never made her feel dirtier or more evil than he is. Not even those times she comes back from walks smelling like death. He always trusts that the men she murders leave behind a safer family or an unharmed woman. Carlisle, their ‘father’ in the vampire sense, was a very moral man and would have been so disappointed if he knew about Rosalie’s . . . hobby.

So Rosalie is quick to smile and agree with Emmett’s plan. They wrap up in order to hide from the sun. Emmett is especially careful. When the light catches Rosalie, people simply assume that the glimpse of sparkling stone they catch is her jewelry, not skin. And she is quick enough to cover up again when she slips up.

They leave just before noon.

“This is the only time I miss Edward,” Rosalie mentions to Emmett.

“He is a useful radar,” Emmett agrees, following her thoughts easily. “I wouldn’t say no to Alice showing up unexpectedly either.”

“Yes,” Rosalie agrees.

She is quite pleased with the way she looks. But sometimes she wishes that she had a gift like her brother’s or sister’s. Mind reading and future seeing are often more trouble than they’re worth, but they are incredibly useful when you need to go on a suprise hunt in the middle of foreign land.

“Rose,” Emmett mutters, “Do you see that?”

Rosalie follows his gaze to the sky in the east. That way lies distantly spaced out warehouses and some factories. A helicopter is rising up. Rosalie narrows her eyes and focus and can just begin to see that there are two men, one flying and one making exaggerated motions with his arms. His skin is very pale and his hair looks like it has been dyed green.

“Emmett?” she asks. It’s a very nice helicopter. But his tone had implied something different than ‘Look a cool engine, Rose.’

“The man on the news,” Emmett muttered. “The american criminal who is now an ambassador? That looks like him.”

“Oh?” Rosalie says, looking upwards until she’s at risk of leaving the shadow of her hat and sparkling in the sunlight. Unfortunately, she knows her husband’s first thought in this matter isn’t wonder at the political situation.

“I want to see what he was doing.” And there it is, Emmett’s inability to back down from a challenge. Even one that’s not given but simply a mystery he hasn’t solved.

“We could get seen,” Rosalie notes. “He’s in the news quite a lot. Very public.”

“He’s well known for using bombs and threatening large scale destruction,” Emmett says. He knows his wife just as well as she knows him.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.” Rose agrees.

Even as they spoke, they knew the end result of the conversation and were well on their way towards the place the Helicopter had risen from.

Chapter Text

As they approach the area , Rosalie makes some simple calculations to narrow down the original trajectory of the helicopter. She is interrupted when Emmett stills her with a touch. She turns to him and sees his eyes are closed and his nostrils are flaring.

Then he takes off.

Rose follows him.

When he leads her towards the edge of town, she is able to see where they are headed. Slowly, as she filters out the many noises and smells that surround the area and focuses on the wearhouse, she can smell the blood.

People say that sharks can smell a single drop of blood when it falls in the ocean. That might be true if the shark is very close. But a larger amount of blood will certainly expand the area that the smell can travel through.

This is also true of vampires. A woman with a bandaid or tampon will catch the attention of the vampires within a few yards. But a woman who is bleeding out will catch the attention of any vampires within a half mile or so.

Rose could smell the blood in the air. Thick and metallic and sweet. And an undercurrent of a heavy earthy smell, like gravel and sand in the sun.

As close as they were now, with a bit of focus she could hear . . . begging.

“Please. Please. Please. Please, please, please. Please, Mary Mother of-” The woman must have been barely breathing, the sound was so soft.

“Oh Lord God,” She whimpered. “Please- I’m trapped- don’t deserve this. Please. Help.”

Rosalie is old. But every time she hears a woman bleeding and begging she remembers her own last breath. She remembers the feeling of dying. Coldness creeping up her body as she bleed out. The sound of drunken laughter. She freezes. Emmett stomps forward, a little too fast for normal humans.

This isn’t fair.

With this much blood in the air, there’s nothing she can do. And if she goes in there, even to hold that woman’s hand, she will always remember the face of that woman as she dies begging for help.

A vampire’s curse, that perfect memory. Maybe worse than the bloodlust.

“Help,” the woman’s voice grows louder. She pants from the effort. Her last breaths. Slurred words that Rosalie is too good at deciphering. “Please! If not for me then for my son. This is my fault. Not his. He doesn’t deserve to die. Please.”

Then Rosalie is moving faster than a human could process those words. Emmett is at the side of the wearhouse before her and punching the wall. Three punches, fast enough that they sound like one punch with a weird echo. Head level, and then moving down. Rose moves into the falling wood and plaster as his arm moves aside.

She takes in the situation in a moment. There’s the woman. There’s the boy, a teenager and the source of the earthy scent that she smelled in the blood. She catches a glimpse of dark hair and tan skin. Both are hurt and bleeding. And there- that could only be a bomb. Well, Emmett had warned her. And then she has the boy in her arms and maneuvers them back through the wall hole.

“Emmett,” She barks, to fast and soft to be heard by humans. “Shelter. Now.”

She follows her husband, trying to keep the boy stable as she runs. The warehouse explodes. They dodge the flaming debris. She notes that explosives would be very effective way to kill a vampire- all that flame, all at once.

Emmett leads them to another warehouse. It’s dark inside, windowless. She finds a spot in it that isn’t immediately visible from the front and kneels down. She doesn’t let go. Not yet.

There was a time, when Rosalie was young, when she had been Calisile’s assistant. A vampire nurse to his vampire doctor. She’d had no passion for the work but she had picked up a great many life saving skills.

“Rose,” Emmett said. “Can you save him? Do I need to leave?”

Emmett was hungry. And even well fed, he had difficulty in self control. If she was going to be able to keep this boy alive, she would need Emmett out of the room.

She took a single breath. She could taste the boy’s blood in the air. She could smell the pain he was in, a cloying scent with undertones of fear, hidden under the smell of burnt flesh. (She hadn’t dogged all of the flames, after all.) She could hear his heart stuttering and feel the blood it pushed out of his body with each beat.

She can’t keep him alive.

She’d need blood transfusions immediately and a ready surgery with a doctor who could remove his appendix and fix his spleen, liver, and kidneys while navigating around several broken ribs, any one of which might be shattered. Those bone fragments could cause even more problems. She wasn’t able to tell if the area around the heart was bleeding too, but she suspected from the sound of it’s stuttering beats that it was. He didn’t have enough blood to undergo the surgery. And there were too many open wounds to get blood into him fast enough to be able to perform the surgery. But none of that matters. The hospital is ten miles away and in the middle of a city. She couldn’t get there in time. She has no supplies or equipment or even a clean area to perform a surgery here. It’s impossible.

“I can’t keep him alive,” she says, dully.

He has dark hair.

It curls.

His eyes had been blue, when she caught a glimpse of them in the warehouse.

She didn’t know his name and he was dying in her arms.

“But you can save him,” Emmett says. He has such faith in her.

“I can’t keep him alive,” She insists.

“But you can save him,” Emmett repeats, looking at her intently. His eyes are dark and hungry. Once, before Rose, they had been blue. “His mother asked you to save him.”

Rosalie looks at him. She once carried Emmett in her arms, miles and miles with his blood dripping out behind her, just to get him to Carlisle and his vampire venom. She’d been afraid that she would kill him instead of transforming him.

She’s still scared.

But she looks down at the small boy, with curls in his dark hair that look just like Emmett’s (just like the baby she had dreamed of and never had) and a bloody, ruined face, just like her face was before she died. And she thinks, Maybe I can’t save him. Maybe he’ll be dead today no matter what.

But-

She leans down and bites.

Human blood is delicious.

Chapter Text

Jason is burning.

The warehouse bomb went off. The Angle abandoned him. He was left to live forever in the fire that just won’t kill him.

Let me die, he begs.

Why, he screams.

He remembers his mother’s prayer and in his desperation prays as well. He wants relief. He wants darkness and peace and freedom. He wants death.

Maybe he did die.

Maybe this is hell.

Cold hands run across his face. He can feel them.

They do nothing for the burning.

Soft voices.

Loud voices.

They mean nothing.

There is only the sting and bite and pain in his body..

Once Jason was hit by acid. Just a small splash from a much larger spill he had avoided. His arm had itched and burned as the acid had eaten away at his skin. Bruce had grabbed him and dumped him in their decontamination shower in the batcave and made him stay there forever, even though the water was cold.

Jason beggs Bruce to save him. He pleads for water, for ice, for the pain to go away and Bruce to just save him!

If this is torture, then what is its purpose?.

If this is hell, then why is he the only one suffering?

Jason’s hearing is clearing.

The voice is louder. He can tell from it’s pattern that it’s speaking in long ornate sentences. It’s pattern is familiar.

He can feel himself breath. He hadn’t realized he was still doing that.

Is this the end? Has eternity stopped. Can he die now?

“So close, little one,” the voice is beautiful and terrible. “Soon. Not long at all. Shhh . . . we’re safe. We’re alright. You are going to be just fine my little one. You’ll wake up soon, strong and hungry and Papa will bring you back a bear and Mother will help you eat it.”

Jason can still feel the pain.

The voice is singing. It’s gone through a number of different languages, some familiar, others not. But the voice is always singing.

“Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring, And if that diamond ring turns brass . . .”

“Then mama’s gonna buy you the whole damn world,” a new voice interrupts the singing.

“Like Papa doesn’t have plans to find a bear for the baby,” the first voice says.

“Like Mama isn’t already wrapped around your fingers, kid. And your hands, really Rose, the boy is still breakable, let those hands rest easy, now.”

There are hands on his. Jason can tell because the grip tightens.

“He’s started waking up. Do you have the car?”

“Yeah, we’ll make it out of here, Rose. It’s gonna be fine. Now why don’t you go check out the car and I’ll go ahead and carry the kid.”

His hands are free. His body is shifted and lifted and there’s air on his face.

It isn’t cool enough to stop the heat that’s burning in his skin.

No, no, no, no, no nononononoNO

There was begging. There was groaning. Sometimes silence. Sometimes screaming.

Jason knew that it was him.

He didn’t always. Sometimes, he was so caught up in the fire that he didn’t realize his head was tossed back and he was screaming until his throat gave out. Sometimes, he’d get confused over the voices he was hearing and think that the woman’s voice was the one that was begging. Like his mother. Sometimes, he just couldn’t stop the groans coming out anymore than he could stop his breathing.

But no matter what sound he made, nothing changed. Everything hurt.

He can hear water. There are the voices. There is the background rumble of the car. There is the sound of kreening. That’s him. There’s the burn. But now he can hear water nearby. Will they dump him in it? Would it be enough to end this?

But when the sound of water is strongest, they thump across something wooden instead and then the sound of water begins to fade. And the kreening turns to screams.

He can hear so much. Reactions in the engine, every time the road goes over a pebble, the bird song that they are racing past. The voice on the other end of the phone line.

“What time will he wake up?”

“You have maybe three and a half hours. Make sure you keep your phone out and the time displayed for me. Ah- two seventeen. Rose, you need to make sure he knows you won’t hurt him and that you won’t stop him from talking to Bruce. Ah- he’s listening! Rose he’s listening!”

“Are you listening to me, little one?”

He is.

“We’re just keeping you safe, son.” This voice is deep and rumbling. “You mother asked for help and we’re just trying to help. No one deserves to die like that.”

Is he dead?

“You’re still breathing sweetie,” This is the woman’s voice. The one from the car. Jason opens his eyes but the light hurts so he closes them again. He’d caught a glimpse of gold hair and pale skin. “You’re still breathing.”

“We won’t lie to you,” the voice over the phone says. “You’re hurt. It’ll be over soon. And then you’ll be stronger than ever.”

Soon?

. . . but not yet. Why isn’t it over yet? Soon isn’t soon enough. Why is it still burning? There’s no fire and they haven’t washed off any acid and WHY CAN’T HE JUST DIE?

The cloth was soft. They put him somewhere soft. Jason sunk into it like a stone into a cloud. He wanted this to be a coffin. No he didn’t. If it was a coffin then he’d be trapped. And no one would be able to finish him off.

They had to kill him before they buried him.

Please?

The pain changed. Jason gasped, his throat burning as he cut off a scream so he could focus on what was changing.

The pain and burning was . . . there still. But not . . . it was different.

He counted his breathing patterns as he felt himself.

Eight seconds in, eight seconds out. And yes, something was changing.

His fingers and toes didn’t hurt so much.

He counted.

When he reached 483, the pain was receding from his knuckles.

1255 and his wrists were itchy but not in a painful way.

He felt a smooth hand reaches out and touch his own. It wrapped around his hand like a promise.

“O partigiano portami via,” the woman sings, “Che mi sento di morir.”

The fire is burning out.

He has counted to 4720. He may have lost track of some numbers. But he’s caught up in the way that the pain blinks out in his limbs. And the weird way that the fire in him is drying out his throat. It hurts in a new way. He’s so thirsty.

And then his heart begins to speed up. It’s burning. It hurts as the fire begins to speed down the freeway of his veins and arteries and towards the war that his heart is beating in his chest. It flares like a firework with each beat an new explosion of flame. It beats faster and faster and faster and the fire builds and builds and he’s crying out because the fire is going to blow up his heart and dissolve him in a pool of acid and he’ll die.

And his heart shutters. It squeezes out one more beat. And then another. He can feel it draw in for one last push. And the push never happens.

He gasps open and the air is easy in his lungs. He chokes on it. The expected struggle never happens and the air is too full of scent and taste. His eyes jerk open- something strange in the easy with which they open, something at odds to his dehydration- and he sees!

A single glance . . .

The room is clearly a sitting room. There are dust motes in the air that dance around each other like small planets orbiting each other in impossible patterns. There is light streaming in from wide windows that line two sides of the room. It’s sunset, if he’s reading the lighting right. He can see a small bird, white and black and yellow chirping in the trees outside. He can hear it chirping. It’s some kind of finch. The couch he’s laying on is velvety and blue. He can see the lines of wood grain on the ground individually. He can hear the bird half a mile away sing, but can’t hear the breathing of the man and woman in the room.

Conclusion based on evidence: He isn’t human anymore.

Batman is gonna hate this.

Rose has been waiting for this moment for days. Throughout their illegal and incredibly expensive race to their most remote safe house, she had dreaded this moment coming before they were ready for it. And during each of his screams, she had wished it to come immediately.

Let him wake up from the pain, she had wished. Then corrected herself, Let him wake up when we are safe.

They made it to their family’s home in Russia, a lovely house deep in the Kamchatka Kurile Taiga. Surrounded by forest, with an old dirt road winding its way to their home and miles and miles from civilization, the house is at complete odds with its surroundings. Wide open windows make it look vulnerable and breakable in the wild wood.

The home was originally set up by Alice and Jasper, as a place to run to if they ever needed to make a very distant get away. It’s ridiculously secure for a vampire. It has running water but no heat and almost no way to make fire. Its large windows provide easy visibility to see incoming danger. Not that that would be much of an issue, since unexpected visitors would be heard long before they were visible. It also contains three different types of identification for the whole family: one set of Russia ids that say they are citizens, one set of passports saying they are American citizens, and one set of paperwork that shows they from Spain on work visas. Whichever is most convenient at the time could be used.

Rosalie can’t bring herself to be surprised that Alice, the little sister with a gift for seeing the future, made a perfect hideout for a newborn vampire five years before he was turned.

And now his eyes are opening, the bloody red eyes of a newborn, and he’s trying to figure out how to breathe without a heartbeat. He sits up from the couch he’s been laying on. Rosalie moves back a little, from where she was kneeling by his chest. She doesn’t let go of his hand.

“What’sGoingOn,” his voice comes out too high and too fast and his free hand is over his mouth faster than any human’s hand could be. His eyes are flashing between them and the room almost too fast to truly take anything in.

“It’s alright,” Rosalie assures him. She takes the hand she was holding and puts it to her chest, just under her collarbones. “Take a moment. Breath with me. In-”

He looks her in the eyes and follows her slow breathing. Emmett doesn’t move from where he is sitting on office chair to the side. He gives them a moment of peace before speaking in a slow, human pace.

“You are breathing out of habit. You don’t need too. We said you’d breath and you are, but your heart has stopped beating. You were dying. Changing you was the only way to save you.”

The boy closes his eyes. He continues to breath. Rosalie knows that it’s mostly for comfort. Breathing is the way to get information about the world around them through their enhanced scent and taste.

“I’m Emmett McCarty and this is my wife Rosalie. We’re something like vampires.”

The boy breaths in. His face is expressionless, even with her ability to pick up micro expressions.

“I’m thirsty,” he breathes, like sharing a secret.

“I’m sorry,” Rosalie breaths back. This is her fault. “That will never go away.”

He whimpers, soft and low, something humans wouldn’t hear.

She lets go of his hand to wrap her arms around him.

The couple is very nice. Jason will give them that. They listen to him and give him time to think without pressuring him and answer his questions, even the ones he doesn't know how to ask.

“We call ourselves vampires, because we drink blood.” The woman explains in soft tones. She has warm gold eyes and rich blond hair. She smells nice, too, but in a way that whispers in the back of his head that she is dangerous. “We also have heightened senses, superhuman strength, and it is very difficult to harm us. You’ll also find other side effects, like a perfect memory, an easier time acquiring skills, and that it’s almost impossible for us to lose a skill one we learn it.”

“Everything about who we were when we were alive is enhanced,” The man, Mr. McCarty?, adds. “So if you had a talent or gift when you were alive, then you will have it now but exaggerated to an inhuman degree.”

“I was a pretty girl,” Mrs McCarty explains. She’s the most beautiful woman Jason has ever seen. And he’s meet Amazons and Meta-humans. Mrs McCarty looks like she was carved from ivory and gold by an artist who made no mistakes. Her face and body were perfectly symmetrical and unblemished. Her hair and eyes looked like they were spun from the same vein of gold. Jason suspects that even without his enhanced vision, she would be glorious to look at.

“One of our brothers was very charismatic, and very empathetic,” Mr McCarty describes. “And now he can manipulate other people's emotions from across a room without speaking to them.”

Jason has met Metas before. If he couldn’t feel the thirst in his throat, he would assume that they were just superstitious people talking about Metahumans.

“Weaknesses?” He asked. He wasn’t sure he liked his voice like this. He’d just gotten used to his deeper tenor voice. He’d liked manipulating it and playing with it. This new, smoother voice sounded like some kind of voice actor or radio host, and not like Jason at all.

“We’re flammable,” Mrs. McCarty said immediately. Like she was unaware how dangerous it was to hand out information that could lead to her death. “But fast enough to outrun fires, usually. I got you out of the explosion without too much difficulty.”

“Our skin is like stone, hard to hurt,” Mr. McCarty continued. He’s slower in speech, sounding thoughtful but not suspicious. “But any Meta with super strength or other vampires can tear us apart and set the pieces on fire. The stonelike quality of our skin means we also glitter in the sunlight.”

“We have to avoid being seen like that,” Mrs. McCarty continued. “It doesn’t hurt us or anyone else, but if we get caught then the Volturi take it to mean that we are too clumsy to be be allowed to live.”

“The what?” Jason asked. Mrs. McCarty seems pleased that he uses more than one word and is listening.

“The Volturi are a family of Vampires that are very old and very strong,” she explains. “They are, more or less, the royal family of Vampires. They enforce the only rule we have and keep us safe from humans.”

“That rule being that no one find out that vampires exist,” Mr. McCarty interrupted to explain.

“Because they would kill us if they knew we went around chewing on humans?” Jason asked. He needed to know. He hadn’t really been ready the first time she held him and asked, but he was curious now.

“Yeah, that is a main reason,” Mr. McCarty said plainly. “It’s harder to attack people who travel in packs and carry flamethrowers. I’m sure that the Volturi are very invested in keeping their prey easy to catch.”

“It also keeps our homes safe from being bombed or set on fire.” Mrs. McCarty added with a small smile at her husband. Then she turned and looked at him. “However, in this family we only eat humans by accident.”

Jason isn’t sure how to feel about that sentence. It assumes that biting humans leads to their deaths? So he asks, “Does that mean we kill humans if we eat them? If we need to drink blood to survive how do we not eat humans?”

The couple look at each other, exchanging that look that means they are having a conversation without words, and then turn back to him.

“Most vampires do survive primarily by killing and eating humans.” Mr. McCarty admits, “To be healthy and in control, a vampire must consume four liters of blood every seventeen to twenty days. Vampires have venom in their teeth. If they do not finish their kill, then it infects their victim and turns them into a vampire as well.”

“However,” Mrs. McCarty takes over, “In out family, we take our blood from animals, not humans. This means that we have to take more blood in, to get the same effect, roughly 5.8 liters every thirteen to fifteen days. It’s a tradition our Father, the man who turned us into vampires, began, and we do our best to follow.”

“Animal blood isn’t as satisfying,” Mr. McCarty cautions, “It tastes off even when it comes from real predators and then you have to be careful not to affect the environment too much by hunting your prey to extinction in your area.”

“If it’s unsatisfying, is that why you have accidents?” Jason leans back against the couch behind him. Mrs. McCarty lets him, even though it pulls him completely out of her arms. She gets up from where she was crouched beside him and sits on the couch instead.

“Yes,” Mrs. McCarty says.

Jason thinks about it.

Jason isn’t going to kill. Killing is . . . not what a hero is supposed to do. And despite his thirst, he understands that hurting others to get what he wants is wrong. He’s not going to grow up to be like Willis, his birth father, or like any of the thugs he sent to jail as Robin.

He has a lot of questions.

“Do you know who I am?” He starts with.

Mr McCarty snorts. “We know you’re Robin, the kid hero from Gotham. Not just someone dressed up in his costume, but the real one, since the real Joker tried to kill you. We also know that Sheila Haywood was your mother.”

Mrs McCarty takes both of Jason’s hands in her’s again.

“I’m sorry,” She tells him blunt and honest, “With the bomb- we couldn’t get her out too. She’s gone.”

Jason looks at their hands. He’d set the issue aside, since it seemed unlikely she’d survived. He . . . wasn’t sure how he felt.

“She didn’t- I mean- I’d just met her . . .” Jason whispers. It sounds too clear for such a soft sound. “I went to go meet her and she tricked me into going with her to the Joker . . .”

“Oh,” Mrs. McCarty’s face is filled with understanding and more than a little anger, “That would be why she was saying that it was her fault.”

“It’s because we could hear her calling for help that we went to investigate,. Well, that and the smell of-” Mr McCarty stops himself and then continues, “We went over because we saw the Joker in a Helicopter and then found you when we followed her voice. She might have betrayed you, but she did help you in the end.”

Jason wonders if that makes it better or worse. Is he supposed to mourn her? Do they need him to cry? He isn’t going to.

“You can hate her, if you want,” Mrs. McCarty says it like she’s commenting on the weather. “Or you can love her. Or you can do both or neither. She’s gone. And you have a very long time to decide what do feel about that.”

Jason feel a little bit of relief that she isn’t expecting anything from him he can’t provide at the moment. But with that aside, he needs to get back to what he was concerned about.

“If you know who she was, do you know who I am?”

“No,” Mr. McCarty said. Then he expanded on that, “We double checked that Sheila Haywood wasn’t married. We wanted to know if you had a father we should discuss with you. But she wasn’t and it didn’t look like she had family. We didn’t look into it further than that. Secret identities seem important to your community.”

“And it wouldn’t matter much,” Mrs. McCarty added casually.

“Why not?” Jason asked. He could understand them saying they didn’t want to know. Getting involved with the superhero community was always a bit of a mess for civilians. But saying it didn’t matter? How could it not matter when they had saved Jason’s life? That seemed like a sure fire way to involve themselves with Batman.

“You’re a vampire now,” Mrs. McCarty explained. The anger had faded from her eyes. Her face as soft now, empathetic. “And vampires don’t die. We don’t age.

“And you’re a newborn one at that. You haven’t run into a human yet, but when you do you are going to have a great deal of difficulty in not killing them. And even if you don’t hurt them, you can’t- you can’t live with them. You won’t grow old or ever change. You won’t be able to eat with them or talk about what’s wrong with you. And so, you can’t see them. You’d risk their lives and your own.”

Jason licked his lips. His throat was dry enough that it ached.

“I can’t go home,” he asked, his voice a tiny thing in the back of his throat.

“No.” Mrs McCarty says. She looks at him with understanding. “I’m sorry. I lost my family too, to the change.”

“You could write,” Mr McCarty tags on. “Or even call. You’d have to be careful. You couldn’t tell them anything about vampires or let them find us, but you could tell them you’re safe. If you wanted.”

Jason looks away from them.

He wants to tell them that Batman is a hero. He wants to explain how good he is at saving lives and keeping secrets. But he remembers when Bruce found him on a balcony after a rapist fell off it. Bruce makes assumptions. Bruce acts on his assumptions. Bruce would hear ‘vampire’ and . . . make assumptions. Jason doesn’t know what to do about this situation. And he isn’t sure how Bruce will react. Better to find more information before he reports in.

Apparently, he has all the time in the world.

He’s an inquisitive child, Emmett notices. He supposes that makes sense. Batman is called a detective by some of the papers. Emmett and Rosalie end up sitting up with him late into the night, answering questions.

“We live very long lives, and no we don’t ever look older,” Rosalie explains.

“The oldest I’ve heard of,” Emmett tells him, “is the coven in Egypt. At least 5000 years ago they were at the height of their power and it is a long hard war to get to the top of the vampire food chain.”

“A wooden stake would most certainly break on our skin, not through it,” Rosalie smirks.

“No, crosses and holy water aren’t a thing,” Emmett laughs. “Carlisle, our father, still attends church sometimes. And our brother Edward would too, if he thought he could go to confession without giving a priest a heart attack.”

“Wars between vampires-,” Rosalie begins what turns into a long, convoluted lecture.

“I’m very young,” Emmett says before admitting he was born in 1915.

“Carlisle was born in the 1600’s,” Rosalie starts her new story.

“Carlisle is married to Esme,” Emmett lists the child’s new family, “Edward is his oldest. Then Rose. She brought me into the family. Then there’s Alice and Jasper. They were together when they found us. They’re sort of adopted, because neither of them were turned by Carlisle, but they wanted to be part of our family. Jasper’s great.”

In between his questions, they get a few of their own answered.

“I’m fifteen.”

“I’ll answer to Rob.”

“None of your business.”

Some answers. Not a lot.

Chapter Text

It’s still dark when Mrs. McCarty ends the questions.

“You need to eat.” She says. “Emmett found a bear’s den only ten miles away. And while you eat, I need to buy you some clothes that fit and make some calls to the family. Will you two be alright on your own if I go out?”

Mr. McCarty chuckles as he stands up from his chair. Mr. McCarty is a tall man, with dark hair that has a curl to it, and warm yellow eyes. “There’s nothing to be done here that I can’t do on my own. Go find us cloths Rose. And see if any of the family plans to drop by unannounced.”

Jason glances down at what he’s wearing. The shirt isn’t big enough to be Mr. McCarty’s. Nor is it small enough to be Mrs. McCarty’s. It’s a simple, large white t-shirt with the slogan of a band or show on it, one Jason doesn’t recognize. It smells softly of Mrs. McCarty, a scent of iron or maybe concrete in hot sunlight, probably left there since she’s been hugging him a lot. Both the shirt and the plain jeans he’s wearing are three sizes too big for him. The boxers, however, are clearly his size.

“What happened to my uniform?”

“Parts of it were burned into you,” Mrs. McCarty stated clinically and promptly. “I wasn’t sure what would happen to it if the cells changed while the material was inside you. I had to . . . remove it. And traveling with it was impossible. It was disposed of in Libya.”

Jason swallows. No wonder he’d hurt so much. It hadn’t just been the venom, Mrs. McCarty had removed chucks of his flesh after he’d been burned. He’d probably been skinned alive.

“How’d you get rid of it?”

“Deposited of it at a hospital waste station,” Mrs. McCarty answered. Jason was glad she was so clinical in her explanations. It made reacting easier. Like Jason’s costume and skin were nothing but dead tissue and cloth, to be burned with other waste at a hospital like any other patient's waste post life saving surgery. “It’s not going to be found Jason. You might have lost it, but no one else can use it now.”

Jason needs to stop thinking about this. The image of his costume with chunks of skin sticking to it, burning amidst trash . . .

“You seem to know a lot about the way heros, or vigilanties, think,” He forces himself to focus on.

“I’m quite old,” Mrs. McCarty states. “And you aren’t the first mask I’ve met.”

She gives him a grin that is slightly taunting. She clearly isn’t going to give him more information. And she knows how that’s going to sit with him. Jason grimaces.

“Now,” She leans back with a pleased smile, “Why don’t I get you some real clothes that fit and you and Emmett can go eat?”

Jason gets up and stretches, trying to figure out the edges and balance of this new body without being obvious about it.

“Where’d you get these clothes?” He asks.

“You never run out of questions, do you?” Mr. McCarty notes. He makes it sound fond, rather than reproving. His eyes are really warm. They make Jason think of the hot maple syrup Alfred pours over his waffles. “I’ll show you around the house in a bit. Alice and Jasper set up this place up as a safe house for us to run to if we needed to hide. And Alice likes cloths. There’s rooms here that double as closets. We bought you your own underwear on the trip up, but the rest comes from here. Come on, I’ll show you the house before we go out. It’ll give you a chance to adjust to the body changes.”

He gives Jason a knowing look. Clearly, Jason’s stretching wasn’t unnoticed.

The house is fancy. Not the way Wayne Manor is, with generations of history in each artifact and space enough to host a small country, but it is a large house and it’s decorated like something out of a magazine.

The walls are all a clean, seashell white. The floor and cabinets are the same brown wood. The appliances look new with their stainless steel siding shined bright. The public bookshelves are full of Russian literature in its original Russian and translated to English. The more private shelves, in bedrooms, are full of more mixed books in many more mixed languages. The main decoration seems to be shallow wooden bowls full of large grey and black stones. They are always placed in a place where they can catch the light from the windows or the lamps. Jason had always thought that that was a boring sort of decoration. But with his new eyes, the play of shadow and light on each rock’s imperfect surface, is absolutely fascinating. The only thing keeping him from feeling he’s wandered into a magazine shoot is the thin layer of dust over most surfaces and the stale scent of the air whenever they open a door.

“We’ll have to give the place a good cleaning,” Mr McCarty mentions as he opens a window in one of the rooms. “Which will take us all of a day if we wash out the clothing and bedding. We’re going to be here for a while though. Anything in particular you want to read or learn?”

“How long will we be here?” Jason asks instead of answering.

“Anywhere from six weeks to a year,” Mr. McCarty doesn’t get angry when Jason asks too many questions. He doesn’t give cryptic answers or try to make Jason guess the answer. Jason finds this rather refreshing. Bruce used to be like that. “It’ll take about a year for your eyes to stop being red on our diet. And it’ll take at least as long for you learn some kind of self control. But we could head home to Oregon or Washington for that or even crash at the Denali’s place in Alaska.”

“Denali’s?” Jason asks.

“How about I tell you on the way to eat,” Mr. McCarty offers. He’s got a half grin on his face and his eyes are smiling too. He’s not board of Jason or his questions yet. “You can stretch those legs running around and see what the world looks like now. And I can tell you all about my friends in Alaska.”

Jason feels a thrill of excitement run through him at the thought of going outside. He turns and runs to the front door, but waits for Emmett to join him before trying to open it.
He crushes the handle a little bit.

“Good job,” Mr McCarty praises him. He honestly praises him, not a bit of sarcasm or amusement in his voice. “I crushed so many doors my first week that Esme initiated an open door policy on the whole house. If the door was closed I wasn’t allowed to open it. Everywhere I could go had to stay open all the time. That was really great control, kid.”

“Thanks,” Jason says with a grin. He’s glad he’s not blushing. Can he blush? He peers out at the world. It’s early-early morning. No light peaks over the horizon, yet. But with the pale sliver of moon in the sky, Jason is able to see the whole world in startleing detail. The trees alone are works of art. The uneven texture of the bark and razor edges of the leaves look alien with the soft light playing on each line differently. A breeze blows by and Jason freezes as his mind catches each new position and change in lighting of the leaves. He can see the wind by the dust and earth caught in it. Everything is touching. Everything is connected.

“You were saying, about the Denali?” he asks, breathing in the air and dust. It tastes different than he expects. It feels earthy and wet, rather than dirty on his tongue. If feels safe.

The conversation about the women of the northern coven carries them over several miles. Jason isn’t sure how he’s able to pay so much attention to both the topic and the world around him, but he knows he isn’t missing anything.

“How fast can I go?” Jason asks, when he’s exhausted the topic of Alaskan vampires.

“Faster than me,” Mr. McCarty admits. “Newborns have all of their original blood still in them, and it burns slowly. You’re more full and energized. It gives you a physical advantage. Why don’t you try a few circles? Not too far away, I don’t want to lose you. But give it a five mile radius and run a few laps.”

Jason beams.

The child catches up to Emmett two miles from the bear. His eyes are red and even in the dawn his skin has a soft glow to it under the breaking light of the sun.

Emmett feels no guilt.

He’s aware of the trouble that they can expect. A family Rose and Emmett broke apart. A child whose body changed to that of a monster. A whole world turned upside down. But Emmett refuses to feel guilt for it.

Rosalie will carry enough for both of them, anyway.

He listens to the child vanish again into the distance. There’s a shriek of laughter and the creak of a tree falling. And unlike every other parent and guardian in the world, Emmett doesn’t have to worry about that. A tree falling isn’t going to hurt that kid.

It’s not a long trip to the den Emmett found. Robin has probably looped around it several times. But, for all his wild youth, his instincts will warn him away from a place that smells so strongly of vampire. Young vampires will only steal kills from others when desperate.

The child catches up to him when Emmet calls. And it’s a beautiful sight. The boy comes through the tops of the trees, jumping from branch to branch in a series of flips and twirls that look more theatrical than practical. He flips from the top of the tree and somersaults on the way down, curving once, twice, a third time, a forth, and ending a fifth time with a perfect dismount.

“DidYouSeeThat?!” He squeals faster than humans should as he flings himself forward. He stops a foot before he reaches Emmett and looks up at him, a lost look creeping over his face.

“I saw,” Emmett rumbles, reaching forward to ruffle the kid’s hair and draw him near. He tucks him under an arm and pulls him close. “That was amazing! Did you learn that as Robin?”

“Ah,” The kid looks even more lost, even though he’s in Emmett’s arms. “Yeah, sorta”

He’s quiet for a moment. His forehead and nose wrinkle as he thinks.

“The first Robin,” He tells Emmett. Emmett realizes the kid was deciding to trust him with this story. “He was an acrobat. He was able to do a quadruple somersault. It was amazing. I couldn’t ever do more than three on my best days.”

“You were close?” Emmett asks. He’s curious. But mostly over how far the kid will trust him. Robin is clearly uncomfortable with the whole thing, but he still answers.

“. . . no.” The answer was whispered. “No, we weren’t close. B tried to make us spend time together and . . . and Nightwing tried. He’s amazing. Like- so cool. But he’s really busy with important stuff. And he and B were- not so close as they were. So we never had much time.”

The kid, Robin, looks up at Emmett with a lost look.

“I could have gone to him for help,” He regrets. “When I decided to leave and look for my mom, I could have gone to him and he would have helped me. I was angry at B and ran away. But I could have gone to him.”

Emmett pulls the kid into a hug.

“I shouldn’t have gone on my own.”

“Maybe you made a mistake,” Emmett observes, tucking the kid’s head against his chest. “But that’s part of being human. What was the plan, originally?”

Robin takes a breath and then begins to describe how and why he wanted to find his mother. He tells how Batman found out and when to help him. He talks about how he approached his mother on his own. How he tried to help her. How he was betrayed.

“And then the Joker shot her,” He whispers. “And turned around and he- he picked up- there was- it was- and he got a crowbar- and he- and he- he.”

“I’m so sorry,” Emmett says quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

He pulls back from the boy, just far enough to look him in the eye.

“You didn’t make a mistake,” Emmett tells him honestly. “You were trying to protect someone. She was a stranger and your mother and you tried to protect her. You could have done it a thousand different ways. And maybe another way wouldn’t have gotten you hurt. But your way wasn’t a mistake. A man should be able to trust his mother. A hero should be able to trust the people he’s trying to protect. If the world had only justice in it, you would have made it out of there having saved her.”

Robin’s eyes shine with unshed tears. Vampire tears are made of vampire venom, the only liquid in their body aside from the blood they ingest. Emmett runs a thumb under the kid’s left eye as though he could push the tears back in.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” He repeats. He wants desperately for the kid to feel better. “When I was twenty years old and human, I decided to hunt a bear. It sounds reckless, but it wasn’t. I didn’t bring any help but my rifle and my grandfather’s hogleg and some knives to skin it with.”

He can remember the smell of gunpowder and the cold snow on the ground. The skies has been perfectly blue.

“It was early spring and people were hungry. The bear had been wondering to close to town and scaring people. And I was twenty years old and wanted to show people that I was a real man.”

That was half the story. He’d been considered an adult by those in his hometown. But he’d also been considered a troublemaker and ruffian. His grandparents hadn’t been able to discipline him the way they’d discipline his father, and their daughter-in-law had been exhausted trying to keep their farm in working condition while her son ran wild and her in-laws grew older and more frail. Emmett’s mother had caught him drinking in town instead of watching her cart while she looked for anyone who had food to sell. She’d been tired and hungry. He’d been drunk. Words had been said. He’d been desperate to prove her wrong.

“I thought I could bring back food for my family. I wanted to prove I could help. So I tried to wrestle a bear and the bear won.”

Again, this was half the story. But the kid didn’t need to hear the whole fight. The bullets that hit the target only to anger it, the knives that did as much damage to him as the bear, the claws that tore into him; that could all be shared in a century or two, if the boy needed to hear it.

“If it weren’t for Rosalie, I’d have died.” Emmett finishes his short story. “You tried to help, kid. That isn’t a bad thing.”

Robin’s eyes were open wide.

“But I failed,” the kid states. Emmett thinks he’s trying to argue.

“Yes,” He admits gravley. “You failed.”

Robin searches his face.

“Failing is bad.” He states it like he’s testing a hypothesis.

“Is it?” Emmett asks, bemused. He isn’t sure what the kid’s looking for. “Or is it just part of the learning process?”

Emmett takes a step back and to the side, so he’s still got an arm around the boy as he starts to walk slowly into the forest.

“Let me show you how to kill a bear, Robin.”

Jason was excited. He was also confused. His memories of Bruce and Dick and Alfred and School and Gotham were dim things. He remembered them. But in the face of the crisp reality around him, it was hard really understand them. His eyesight was really bad then, did he see what he thought he saw? His mind was . . . slower and his body had been too. He didn’t understand how he could have thought he could help, when he’d been so . . . breakable. And didn’t the Joker prove that he couldn’t? That the Robin experiment had been a failure?

But was failure so bad? What Mr McCarty said- He couldn’t think about it now. Not when everything was overwhelming and he had a mission.

He needed to learn everything he could about vampires. He needed to learn how much of a threat he was and what the threats to him were. And he had to decide how much he could tell Bruce.

But first he needed to be able to focus. And to do that he had to sooth his thirst. He kept swallowing, his mouth and throat unbelievably dry.

It was hard to concentrate on anything that wasn’t his aching need. He was almost asking questions out of habit. He was only retaining information due to his new mind and what he suspected was a perfect eidetic memory. He wasn’t really able to think about what he was learning.

He hoped after eating he’d be able to focus more.

Mr. McCarty leads him to a part of the forest that’s dark and shadowed even in the light of the dawn. As they approach, Jason can hear the sound of something big breathing. (He can also hear the spindly insect legs scuttling, a heavy heart beating nearby, and the tiny beating echos of the small mammals and tiny birds flitting around the trees in the early dawn.) And over the scent of the rest of the forest (pine, stone, fur, feathers, flesh) and Mr McCarty (crushed stone and torn evergreens) there is another smell in the air. Rich and heavy, it sits in his mouth and nose and stomach the same way that Alfred’s warm beef stew used to on cold days. It makes the throat yearn and the stomach feel hollow.

Jason licks his lips and glances up at Emmett. His breath is coming quicker, as the need to hunt begins to take hold.

Mr. McCarty grins, wide open and easy. He steps back, giving the food to Jason.

“Go ahead, kid,” He says softly. “He’s all yours.”

Hunting is a natural instinct for vampires. They stalk the prey carefully, herding it into a favorable position, and then use their exceptional speed to grab it, their strength forcing it down. Finding a prominent artery, they sink their teeth into the flesh and let the still beating heart beat the blood into their mouth. When the heart grows weak, a vampire begins to suck, digging deeper into the cut it’s made, greedy for every drop. If the vampire is starving, even after the pints it has consumed, they may seek out other arteries to bite into or even tear open the chest cavity to lick up the exposed blood.

Newborn vampires are always starving. They generally tear apart their food for every drop. They leave messes behind them, and look a mess when done.

It takes about a year for the hunger to settle into controllable degrees. This is when the mind begins to work and exert itself, even in the midst of feeding. Year old vampires tend to feed more neatly, no longer feeling any driving need to shred into the stomach or chest cavity.

This is the time they present the most danger to the rest of the vampire community, especially if they are alone. They leave visible bite marks, are in control of themselves enough to go into human communities to hunt and even hold conversations with humans, and begin to figure out any gifts, powers, or talents that they now have. If they are alone, then they begin to desire an emotional connection and try to make a partner or a pack. But they lack experience and often feel too powerful to consider the problem of someone figuring out what they are.

Family makes all of this easier. Experienced Vampires can hide torn up bodies or dress them up to mimic animal attacks. They keep the child clean or out of sight when it’s covered in blood after eating. They teach the child to hide it’s attacks, remind it that it isn’t all powerful, and provide an outside connection that keeps them balanced.

Emmett watches as Robin seems to ignore instinct and dives directly towards the hulking bear. The animal startles, jerking upwards in the dawnlight, as the young man barrels towards him, one arm raising to show claws. But then Robin is twisting around the bear, grabbing the arm as he moves around it, twisting the limb as he pushes down. The bear falls backwards with a roar, landing on it’s back. Robin grabs it’s head with one hand and pushes it to the side, for easier access to the blood. The other hand tucks the capturned claw under his chest as he leans forward to bit down, trapping between them. He bites down. The hand that was holding the head moves to intercept the claw that rakes down towards his back. A leg twists up and around the bear’s own legs, pinning them down.

Emmett can smell the sweet tang of the blood as it spills into Robin’s mouth. This close to the kill, he can taste it, too. He’s careful not to move, lest Robin think he’s come to steal the kill from him. The bear’s heartbeat is like a jackhammer as it panics and struggles. Robin has it pinned too well for it to do more than struggle and try to roll over. Emmett’s proud. It’s a clean capture. He kind of wants to take a picture.

It’s not long before the heartbeat slows. Robin sinks in for another minute before pulling back. He licks his bloody lips, his gaze going down, towards the heart.

“Want to pull it open?” Emmett asks, keeping any judgement from his voice.

“Wouldn’t people wonder how it died if I did?” The kid’s voice is soft, but the longing in it is unmistakable.

Emmett is incredibly impressed. Robin must have excellent control to even think of cover ups in the middle of this. It’ll be useful in the future for any ‘accidents’ he has.

He’s careful as he pulls out a knife. It’s a nice stainless steel kitchen knife. It wouldn’t hurt Robin. Emmett’s been carrying it down the back of his pants without a sheath. But he doesn’t want to trigger any fighting instincts. Robin’s been trained to fight people who pull out knives.

“If you could cut him open with this, then people will assume poachers, if they ever find him.” Emmett explains, showing the boy the knife. He also confesses, “ It’s very unlikely that they will, though. The area is pretty isolated.”

“Better to be careful though,” Robin says, reaching out for the knife, voice heavy with relief. The bear’s arm, free of restrain, tries to hit the boy, claws first, but it’s so weak from blood lose that it doesn’t even cut the cloth of Robin’s borrowed t-shirt.

Emmett walks towards him slowly. He could throw the knife. But he wants to see how Robin reacts to another predator in his space.

“Thanks, Mr McCarty,” Robin says as he takes the knife. There is some tension in his shoulders. But he doesn’t hiss or growl or yell. Emmett stays there a moment, to see if Robin can stand going back to his kill with Emmett so close.

“Do you need some,” Robin offers, instead.

“No kid,” Emmett says, taking pity on the boy and backing off. “After this we’ll head down to the river, there’s some elk down there around this time of day. I’ll eat there and you can fill up on them.”

“Thanks, Mr McCarty,” Robin says, turning back to the bear. He slits open it’s belly easily, head dipping down to drink, ignoring the pained cries of his breakfast.

Emmett wishes he’d brought a camera. No one in the family was going to believe this.

At least Emmett thought to bring the knife. He can skin the bear a little bit. A memento of the first kill. Maybe he and Rosalie can start a scrapbook!

When Rosalie was being turned, Carlisle and Esme sat at her side and explained exactly what was happening and what to expect, even as she was screaming in agony. She expected the thirst before she felt it. Until she turned Robin, she never drank a drop of human blood.

Emmett’s pleas, while he was turning, were for his family. Rose had explained, listening to him scream, that they where his family now. And he has always trusted in the fact of his family, always known they were there for eachother no matter what.

Vampires, for all they remember their turning and everything after, never seem to realize how it affects them. (If they did, then perhaps Carlisle would not have spent those three days with Edward, praying for forgiveness and apologizing. But if he hadn’t, where would our wonderful brooding man of guilt be?)

Emmett and Rosalie spent three days caring for Jason. They washed him, clothed him, carried him, and sang to him, as they fled the country. Jason doesn’t know it yet, but part of him will always trust that they will take care of him, even as the rest of him reminds him that everyone leaves him in the end.

But Jason won’t notice. He’s always hated how trusting he is of people who inevitably betray him. He’s always hated how he can’t stop suspecting those he loves of inevitable betrayal.

Jason’s love is complicated.

Jason was a mess.

He’d left the house in jeans, sneakers, and a baggy t-shirt. He was returning covered in blood, fur and mud.

“I’d strip off, if I were you.” Mr McCarty said, unfairly clean and put together. Even the stip of fur and skin in his right hand isn’t dripping like Jason is. “There’s a mudroom on the left of the house. I’ll grab you a clean towel and you can leave your clothes in there.”

“Probably a good idea.” Jason muttered. “Sorry I got them dirty.”

Mr McCarty laughed. “For your age, that was exceptionally well done. Most of us come back from our first feeding wearing most of the animal. You did an excellent job. Didn’t even tear the clothing, which I definitely did my first time.”

Jason grinned, trying to hide his uncertainty. He wasn’t used to this many compliment. Not when he was causing so many problems. It seemed weird.

Emmett leaves him to enter the house by the kitchen. Jason watched him leave. His arms and face were glittering in the sunlight. Jason turned to scan the forest around him. The green needles and leaves on the trees blow west with the wind. The air feels slightly chilly as Jason breathed in. He could smell the moisture in the earth from the dew that morning, the perfume of the pine trees, and the small rodents and birds that move around him trying to avoid the attention of predators. Jason licked his lips. They were still tacky with blood. He swallowed, but the warm drops of the sweet blood only soothed his throat for a moment.

Mrs McCarty was right, the thirst wasn’t going away. Jason was full to the brim, so full he could feel the blood sloshing around inside him, and his throat still felt dry. Mr Mccarty had told him it lessened with time, but had confirmed that it won’t stop.

Jason had survived for so long thinking of just one more day. He spent his childhood scared for his mother and planning how to eat for just one more day. He survived on the streets by getting just enough to carry himself over for one more night. Saying the right thing to survive in Ma Gunn’s house. Training and behaving well enough to be allowed one more night of training and food in the Manor. Being strong enough to face down one more criminal next to Batman. Being good enough to protect just one more person.

He wasn’t sure what to do with all of eternity stretching out before him.

For now, he goes around the house to the mudroom’s entrance. A bath will fill up the next hour or so.

The Mudroom was a small room on the side of the house, with a brissely outdoor carpet on the floor. Up against the wall was a bench with drawers underneath it and hook on the walls above it. Jason didn’t even feel guilty getting it messy. That’s what it’s there for after all.

He pulled his sneakers off, then his pants, and shirt. He’s wearing a loose pair of floral briefs underneath. They were stained with blood too. He pulled them off and grabed the towel that’s resting on the bench. He felt faintly annoyed at the thought that the McCarty’s had to change him like a child, but Alfred and Bruce have done the same when he’s been hurt, so he doesn’t want to complain.

He began to wipe the blood of himself, focusing on his feet and hands in an effort to keep the carpets from getting messy. He began wiping himself off and the red blood comes off onto the dark blue plush towle and smears and rubs into it.

--That blanket was blue too, wasn’t it? Black polka-dots and blue background. And when Jason had helped her stand up after she’d slid into her torn white dress, there had been smears of blood left behind. Just like there was now. Only this time it was Jason’s fault. Jason had been the one to pin down and to take. Jason had been the one to make the creature beneath him scream and cry and push away from him. There had been no bodyguard with a knife, just Jason cutting into the stomach and feeding and drinking and taking--

Jason jerks his head up and away. But his eyes catch on the formerly white shirt-

--the white dress was gaping open in the back and Jason stopped her from leaving the room with a hand on her arm and an plastic bag of safety pins. And Jason could see drops of blood on the front of the dress that could be from her bloody nose, the split lip or the bloody eye. She shivered when he pinned together the dress. He wanted to shake, too. But Robin was safety in Gotham and she didn’t pull away but accepted his arm around her to lead her away from the bed and out of the room and Jason wanted to cry and wanted to scream because he was scared. The woman leaned her weight against him. He was practically carrying her. She trusted him and that hadn’t worked out last time and it didn’t work out this time and he was so scared--

“Robin,” Mr McCarty said quietly. Jason could tell, from where his voice was coming from and from his scent and from the vibrations in the floor as he shifted, that Mr McCarty was in the doorway. He knew he was there, but he couldn’t look away from the dre- from the shirt. It was a shirt. “What’s wrong, Robin?”

Jason blinked away and looked into Mr McCarty’s warm golden eyes.

“I just-” Jason began but stopped when no real noise came out. He realized he’d stopped breathing and sucked in air so he could speak. “Just a memory. Got distracted. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, kid,” Mr McCarty said. And Jason was fairly certain it truly was fine. A man who didn’t mind Jason crushing door knobs and tracking blood into the house probably wouldn’t care if he dawdled a bit before bath time. “We might not be really dead but we as good as died. It’s hard on us all. Especially these first few months.”

Jason hummed. He grabbed his cloths and hid them all in the jeans.

The formerly blue jeans that now were-

--“Robin, did Felipe fall,” The deep voice asked, so shocked and hurt that Jason could taste his pain, “Or was he pushed?” And Jason can’t help but glance down twenty stories to the blue and yellow and spreading red on the pavement of fifth avenue.--

“Robin?”

It takes Jason a moment to realize that the deep sound of the voice is too gentle to be Batman.

“Is it the blood?” Mr McCarty asks. He’s right in front of Jason and his expression is so- trusting. And Jason has a hard time believing that this man could have killed even accidentally. And Jason wants to cry and he wants to lash out and he wants a hug and he can’t ask this stranger for it but he wants it and he needs it and-

Mr McCarty pulls the clothing out of Jason’s hands and sets it on the low wooden bench on the side of the room. He picks the towel up from where Jason had dropped it. He shook it out carefully and Jason wonders if it’s really the same color as the blanket had been. His eyesight has changed, does he see color the same way humans do? His memories of color are similar even if they were blurred, like he was seeing them through beer goggles.

Then Jason is being wrapped in the towel and lifted off his feet, one arm under his shoulder blades and the other under his knees.

It’s not the hug he wanted. But it’s close enough. Jason burrows into Mr McCarty’s arms and lets himself be carried up the stairs and towards the bathtub. He notices, vaguely, that Mr McCarty is carrying him at a slow human speed, rather than the easy sprint they used in the forest. He doesn't care enough about it to ask why. He’s just relieved that he isn’t alone.

He couldn’t stand to be alone right now.

Can a dead boy be alone, when his head is full of ghosts?