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#later while Damian is tying him up Ed is just like
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Batfang
By: SassyShoulderAngel319
Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Jason Todd/Red Hood
Rating: T/PG-13
Original Idea: @burkgolden gave me a lot of fantastic inspiration for this one!
Notes: (Masterlist)(By Character)(About Me) This one... really got away from me. Not sorry. Had too much to tell. Also, y’all, this is me we’re talking about. AU’s like this are bound to happen. XD ;-P
@welovegroot @jason-redhood @jason-todd-squad
^^^^^
“If you turned Batman into a vampire… could he, like, actually turn into a real bat?” Red Hood asked as he swung through Gotham while I leapt from building to building beside him.
I laughed. “Eventually,” I said. “But it’s a difficult trick to master. Even for Batman… it would probably take at least a few days.”
“How long did it take you?” Red Hood continued.
“A month. And even that was considered fast,” I said.
“Huh.”
Gotham was the best place to be a vampire. It was almost never sunny, overcast reigned supreme, it wasn’t even warm very often.
It was also full of criminals who I could feed off without feeling guilty.
I never killed any of them, but I didn’t feel bad about preying on people who preyed on innocents. If I took 40% of a criminal’s blood every two weeks, I could survive indefinitely in Gotham.
“But Bats is stubborn and really smart. So he’d master it faster?” Red Hood asked.
“Possibly,” I said playfully. “Though you or Damian might even cotton on faster than Batsy, Jason.”
“So how come you’re not flying around Gotham as a bat right now?”
“Because you’re talking and I can’t reply without a human voice box.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault.”
“Yup,” I replied.
Jason laughed. Then cut himself off. A moment later, I heard him sigh. “Got a ping. An alleyway half-a-mile north of here is having a scuffle.”
I tsked. “An alleyway. Always an alleyway,” I muttered. “This is Gotham. They could be mugging someone in broad daylight in the middle of the road and people won’t even be fazed by it.”
“Well… maybe that’s the one level of discretion Gotham criminals have,” Jason joked as we changed direction and started heading north.
Half-a-mile wasn’t far. As I jumped between two buildings, I spun in the air. Black mist surrounded me and my form rearranged itself into that of a bat. I flew after Jason toward the alleyway, following him since he had a HUD inside his helmet with a map. All I knew for certain was the endless amount of human blood pulsing through the city. It was hard for me to pick out locations unless blood had been drawn. Exposed blood was so much more potent than blood safely pumping underneath someone’s skin. Even a single drop.
We made it to the alleyway. Jason dropped off the roof of one of the buildings and parkoured his way down while I swooped, mist surrounding me again and transforming back into my true form, fangs bared and a hiss in my throat.
Gotham knew for a long time that all the Bats and Birds in Batman’s little gaggle of children were 100% human. Then Duke came along. A metahuman. And then, more recently, I joined too. And Gotham learned that one of the Bats was an actual vampire. As a civilian, no one would guess that I wasn’t human, so the Wayne family was still safe from suspicion.
One of the criminals swore. “It’s Hood and Batfang!” The other two whirled, surprised. The victim fell on his backside on the ground.
All three of the criminals opened fire. I heard Jason swear and start evading while I charged straight in, bullets pinging off my skin.
We made quick work of the criminals; subduing them and tying them up. Jason sent the victim inside for safety while I stole a quick drink from one of the criminal’s wrists. Jason politely looked away. He always did. Claimed that he could handle a lot, but drinking blood weirded him out.
I straightened up and turned to Jason with a smile, wiping blood off my lip. Usually I was a clean drinker, but it was hard when the meal struggled against me.
My smile dropped.
Jason was holding his abdomen. The smell of exposed blood—that I’d missed in the heat of battle—filled my nose.
Jason swore and staggered backward.
I ran forward and caught him, lowering him to the ground. “Hood? Hood!” I pleaded. “Stay with me. Stay with me. We’ll… we’ll… we’ll get you help.” My body shuddered as I breathed in the smell of his blood. I’d smelt it before. He bled almost every night. But there was more of it than usual. And the amount increased the potency. “I’ll call an ambulance and—”
“No,” he protested. “Agent A…”
“There’s no time to get all the way there. I have to get you to a hospit—Hood? Red Hood?!”
He’d gone limp in my arms, eyes fluttering closed.
I grabbed his commlink and shoved it in my ear. “Batman!” I exclaimed. “It’s Hood! He took a bullet to the gut. He’s bleeding out. What do I do?”
“Bring him back to HQ. Now.”
I shook my head. “There’s no time. I’ll never make it before he dies. The only way he could survive that long is…” I trailed off.
“Batfang? Batfang? What’s the only way he could survive?”
I released a long, quiet breath, fluttering my loose hairs. “I’ll call you back,” I said, ripping the earpiece out of my ear.
“Batfang? BATFANG!” I heard Batman shouting through the comm, but ignored it.
Carefully, I cupped Jason’s face in one hand. “I love you,” I whispered to him. “I can’t lose you. Don’t hate me. Please.” Leaning down, I inhaled the intoxicating scent of his exposed blood. My body shuddered again as I breathed it in.
I sunk my fangs into his neck.
The microscopic holes at the bottom of each one released a shot of venom into his bloodstream. His whole body tensed and convulsed.
I scooped him up and ran back to the safe house he and I had been sharing for the last year, setting him on the bed and perching next to him. I brushed his bangs out of his face. The white streak he usually kept hidden was grey with grime and sweat.
“Just sleep, darling. It’ll be over soon.”
I started to sob, despite not being able to shed tears.
^^^^^
“Gotham and Blüdhaven are the only places I can feed without feeling guilty,” the vampire girl said to Batman while Jason watched with his arms folded in the shadows.
“Why?”
“Because… preying on people who prey on innocents? That’s kinda their Just Desserts, isn’t it? And for me, well, it’s just… dessert.” She smirked a little to herself, finding her own joke funny.
Batman rolled his eyes at the pun. The girl tensed as though she was about to get punched. But Batman’s fists remained curled at his sides.
“You’re not leaving even if I want you to, are you?”
“All due respect, sir, I can actually turn into a bat. So I think I kinda fit in around here.” She beamed again. “You can call me Batfang. It’s not the best and I’m trying to figure out a better code but I know how to handle myself and feeding off criminals is fine with me. I’ve never killed anyone I’ve fed off before. Not knowingly at least. Maybe when I was a fresh turn I might have gone too far and the poor meal never recovered but fresh turns have the least control.” She paused. “And, also, no. I’m not leaving even if you want me to.”
Jason emerged from the shadows. “I’ll keep an eye on her,” he said. “She’ll be safe with me. I’ll keep her in line.”
Batman’s eyes narrowed behind his cowl. “You think I’m going to trust you with her? That I don’t know your history of crossing the line?”
Jason glared at Batman. “I can keep her in line from either side of the line, Bats,” he snarled.
“Here,” the vampire girl said, pulling a pill capsule out of her bag and delicately holding it. “I keep a few of these on hand. It’s full of vervain. The skin of this thing so much as breaks inside my mouth or stomach and I’m a goner. I imagine with your guys’ skills, it wouldn’t be too difficult to force-feed me one if I step out of line.” She dropped the pill into Jason’s hand and passed another one to Batman.
Her black eyes bored into Batman’s. “Keep me in line,” she said. There was a challenge in her voice that said, “But you won’t need to.”
Jason couldn’t help but smile. He liked her. She was feisty.
^^^^^
Jason woke up to a burning pain in his neck. A dull ache in his abdomen and a toothache reminded him of the shot through the gut he’d sustained. How long had it been? Had everything turned out alright? Had Batfang…?
Oh $#!+—had Batfang gone ballistic? She’d told him once when they first started dating that powerful surges of emotion could cause a vampire to go absolutely berserk and slaughter every human nearby in a frenzy and drain them all dry. Oh man… he hoped she hadn’t gone crazy. Just when she’d been building up a reputation as a feared but respected Gotham vigilante…
The sound of sobbing roused his attention. His senses… they were in overdrive. Like he’d just come off a dose of fear toxin gas. He was aware of the threads underneath his fingers. The light against his eyelids. Something that smelled really good and really strong, but was unfamiliar. She must have cooked something in her endless box of recipes that she’d collected. His mouth tasted like he was recovering from an illness. But the sobbing was the most prominent sensation.
He peeled his eyes open—shielding them as sunlight blinded him—and sat up.
A familiar back in a familiar short, light, thin black cape was curled up in a ball on the other side of the bed, hair brushed over one shoulder. She was shaking. He knew she couldn’t cry, but he forgot all about it as he moved to wrap his arms around her. “B… baby?” His gentle tone seemed loud to him—so he couldn’t imagine how much louder it was to her with her heightened senses. She flinched, recoiling away from him. “Babe what’s wrong?”
Turning, she buried her face in his chest. “I’m so sorry, Jay. I… I couldn’t lose you,” she sobbed.
“Babe, what did you do?” He sounded so sharp.
She reached up and touched his neck. He hissed as the burning pain spiked.
Carefully releasing her so she wouldn’t fall over, he went to the bathroom.
“Uh… baby? Where’s my reflection?” he called. She just sobbed again.
Understanding sunk in. He slumped, bracing his hands against the sink. The marble cracked slightly under his grip.
“You… you turned me,” he said.
“Yes,” she muttered.
“You turned me. Into a vampire.”
“Yes,” she repeated.
Jason let go of the sink and slowly turned around to face her. She was still curled up on the bed, her hair a mess and her black eyes turning red. Both sclera and iris. She kept the black glamour over her eyes when normal people were around because the red tended to freak people out. Though she would let the red through when she was intimidating criminals.
“Why would you do that?” Jason asked.
“I told you—I couldn’t—” She paused to sob. “I couldn’t lose you, darling. I love you.” She curled up tighter. “Please… don’t hate me.”
“Babe… I told you I never wanted to be turned—”
“I know—but it was the only way to keep you from dying! I’m so sorry. I… I damned you!” Once again she dissolved into tears.
Jason shook his head, cursing his bleeding heart for how much he loved her.
^^^^^
Jason crossed from the bathroom back to me, wrapping his arms around me. “We’ll figure this out, babe,” he said quietly. “It’s just… I never wanted this.”
“I know. I know you didn’t. And I never had any intention of turning you. But… you were dying. Stomach wounds are so dangerous and you were already losing too much of it. Your life force was disappearing. I could feel it. You’re… I love you too much. I couldn’t… just let you die. Do you know what my life was like before I met you? It was fifty years of lonely darkness. Of empty interactions and passive acquaintances. I…”
“Wait. Fifty years? How old are you?” Jason demanded.
I met his gaze. The blue of his eyes was already turning muddy amber, turning to red. The first time he tasted human blood, the blue would be completely gone. “Seventy-one. Fifty years of that as a creature of the night. A monster in the darkness. Did I never tell you how old I am?”
“No!” Jason exclaimed.
“Oh yeah. I’m old. Well… I’m just as old as an average elderly person I guess. So I think I’m doing alright as far as aging goes.” I tried to smile but I couldn’t get over the terrible guilt eating me up. I’d directly betrayed Jason’s trust in me—and his wishes regarding his life.
“I think so too,” he said, giving me a squeeze. I burrowed into his side. “Babe… is there a cure for this?”
“Probably. Vampirism, like lycanthropy, is technically a curse—or a disease. There’s probably a way to reverse it.”
“So why didn’t you ever?”
“I don’t want to. I like who I am. Now anyway. I spent the first ten years of this existence loathing myself and despising the monster I’d become. And then one day I just… stopped. I… I realized as the times changed, that I was safe as a vampire. No one could rob me or mug me or hurt me anymore. And there was something incredibly freeing about that. And I embraced it. I learned martial arts and made myself better to defend other people. And that’s how Batfang eventually became a thing. Not until after your Big Bad Bat showed up in Gotham did I decide that a codename and costume might be fun, but I’ve been doing this for a while. But… if you really don’t want to be like me… we’ll find a cure.”
“If we did… would you take it with me? Be human ag—?”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I like being the way I am. But I’ll help you find a cure.” I sniffed. “First, though, we have to get you some sustenance. Otherwise you’ll starve to death within a day. But I do have to warn you: your fangs have little tiny holes in the bottom of the points. They’re downright impossible to actually see. Even for us. But that’s where your venom gets injected. You can’t stop your mouth from filling your fangs with venom, but you do have conscious control over releasing it. There’s a tiny bit of venom around your fangs. Not enough to turn a person into a vampire through feeding, but enough to numb the wounds and wipe the memories of the last few minutes from a victim’s mind. The venom inside your fangs is a slightly different chemical composition. It will turn a human into a vampire. So… when you feed, don’t release the venom. We don’t need anymore vampires in Gotham. I promise you that.”
Jason nodded. “Okay. What do we do?”
I met his eyes. “We’ll find a cure for you, darling. I swear to it on my soul that will never make it to heaven. But for now, we’re going hunting.”
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