Work Text:
After all the years he's lived - been undead, whatever - Edward is still kind of shit at being a vampire. He knows it. His family-
Edward isn't sure if they've realised as well, if they know what he gets up to in his endless nights without sleep. The first, most important rule of being a vampire is don't draw attention to yourself . No shows of speed, no displays of strength. No using their powers for anything unexplainable.
It's a rule he has gotten very used to breaking.
The first time Edward used his power to save someone, a scarce few weeks had passed from his turning, fangs still sharp in his mouth, cutting up his cheeks, the terrified heartbeat of the man in his arms too tempting. But rather than blood, he'd found a different addiction there. An even stronger pull.
A mission.
Edward had been saved by Carlisle's benediction and he's saved again by his self-given purpose. Eternity, rather than stretching indeterminately long, has a driving force now. So he breaks this foremost rule of vampirism almost from the get go, saves people and pulls in whispers and rumors and legends even if they are barely more than that.
Bats, swooping overhand in the alley as his parents were killed. Bats, an ever-present symbol in the stories about vampires. An interjection between who he was and who he is, fear and purpose both-
The tales have a name for him.
The Batman.
He'd carried the mantle with him over the years, during moves and shifts in their family, shifts in the world. Has learned to use technology and deduction where he can, to become someone who can help even without his vampiric powers. Wearing a cape and a cowl makes him feel human.
Edward had been afraid at first that Forks, Washington, had no space for Batman. It's a small town, filled with surprisingly kind people and a lot of trees. Mainly trees, Edward has to admit, but those rarely need saving, so he's focused on the people.
The mask he's fashioned for himself is as dark as the trees here; the car he constructed and changed until it retained little more than its hull whistles along the roads at speeds faster than Edward himself. Surprisingly, he needs both of them. There's a spree of petty crime plaguing the town and the sheriff seems disconcertingly unconcerned with it.
Perhaps two break-ins at the grocers don't quite make a terrifying crime spree, but it's still worth doing something about.
The second break-in shows that once again, the only thing missing is alcohol - Vodka, mainly, so bad taste on top of criminal intent - which makes it pathetically clear the criminals must be teenagers. It's easy enough to hack into the sole traffic camera Forks possesses and watch the cars that drive past, to pick out the likely candidates and track the car to their home. Or to their parents' garden shed, as it were, where they are lounging in a drunken heap.
"This is an exceptionally poor choice for a criminal hideout," Edward informs them.
The boy sitting closer to him gives a startled scream, the girl following a second later, once the surprise has managed to penetrate her brain.
"You- what are you doing in here?" she demands.
"Informing you of your poor choices," he answers, "and confiscating this."
He grabs the leftover bottle, because these idiots will give themselves alcohol poisoning.
The boy - Mike or something similiar, Edward vaguely recognises him from school - squints up at him.
"Who are you?"
The teenagers are too drunk to remember this anyway.
"I'm Batman," he says.
He leaves a note on the sheriff's desk later that night, complete with the teenagers names, after filching their wallets to check. It's not the kind of crime that warrants Batman really stepping in as more than a half-remembered shadow; he will just wait and see what the police does with the information now.
Edward waits for the chief of the police - a middle-aged man named Charlie Swan - in the darkest corner of his office. The man walks in, still half asleep.
"Fucking hell - who are you?" He catches himself fast, however, "what are you doing here? How did you get in?"
Edward doesn't answer; him hauling himself through an unlocked bathroom window into the police precinct is hardly relevant to this conversation.
"Do you intend to do anything more about the grocery store robbery?" he asks instead, in a bid to distract him. Charlie Swan squints incredulously at the figure in the corner of his office, looming quite unnecessarily with shoulders covered in a cape that ought to be at least a few pounds of fabric.
"That was you ?" Charlie asks in return, once he’s caught himself. “Those kids were fucking terrified when I went to talk to them the day after. Jabbering on about shadows and bats, of all things. And now-”
He takes a step forward, toward the looming shape in the corner.
“Now you’re breaking and entering into the office of a police official just to ask about it? You’re in far more trouble than them. ”
Typical, Edward thinks - Batman thinks. He has never gotten on particularly well with officials of the law. Little reason for this man to be the exception. He steps further back into the shadow, eyeing the way the sheriff’s hand is creeping backwards to where his handcuffs are held on the belt.
“You needed me to solve that case,” he says. It’s not like it matters , in the end, but-
“If you need the help again, just call for Batman.”
“This is Forks ,” the sheriff says, a bewildered tone to his words. “We don’t need any vigilantes here.”
The sun is creeping up, filtering through the slim gaps in the cloud cover. He has to leave. Edward disappears with all the supernatural speed granted to him and holes up to review what footage he’d gotten from that conversation, trying to figure out why the whole thing had felt so strange. Watching the minute movements of chief Swan's face, recalling his words, it stands out to him as clear as anything - Edward hadn’t been able to hear his thoughts.
Edward checks on the man again, just once, to see if that had been a fluke. He trusts his senses, his memory, has honed them all into well-practiced tools, but the alternative is - unlikely enough to require confirmation.
It’s not a fluke.
Edward can tell that Chief Swan rather likes the steak meal he eats at The Lodge from his expression - but he’s no more able to glean his thoughts on it than he’s able to glean his thoughts on the football game he watches after, or on the towering pile of paperwork gracing his desk. Edward finds himself chasing glimpses of the man. He doesn’t come away any more knowledgeable, save for the knowledge that Charlie Swan is rather overworked and takes an unhealthy amount of sugar in his coffee.
It’s worrying. Edward had taken to his vampiric powers with bad grace, at first. Knowing the thoughts of all those around him was as strange as it was invasive. He’d still tasked himself with mastering the ability. It is tremendously useful in pursuit of his mission, in dealing with criminals - which is far more important than his personal scruples. To be without the extra sense is oddly blinding.
Moreso, Charlie Swan’s strange immunity is fascinating. Fighting crime is a calling. A purpose. But what Edward likes best about it - not that such preferences influence his actions, he’s better than that - is the puzzles. Batman is a detective first and foremost.
And so he sets to solving this particular puzzle. Charlie Swan is a man who often takes his work home with him. The tree in the edge of his garden that's perfectly positioned for Edward to crouch in and watch him do it.
There is a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Alice, informing him that he's being a creepy stalker. Being able to read minds has made Edward very good at compartmentalising, however. This is for the mission. Somewhat.
Charlie reads case files over coffee, after slapping his ancient coffee maker a few times to get it to cooperate. It is the only appliance in his kitchen that seems to get any use, dust motes floating in the light that shines through the windows in an otherwise empty house. Charlie, it seems, is caught up in the middle of a tedious investigation of illegal logging in the woods surrounding Forks. Edwards' own investigations into the matter are similarly slow, hindered by the werewolves living in said woods and the fact that he has no official access to the casefiles. Chasing through the forest on the tail of the vague human-and-freshly-cut-wood smell is somewhat less efficient than getting the calls for it directly.
He squints through Charlie’s dusty windows and maps the mentioned locations on his own map, before adding the locations that he has found that apparently haven’t been called in yet. Then he gets quite thoroughly distracted from his task of watching Charlie by the investigation itself. He squints at the map; there’s a pattern there, he knows.
The issue is larger than he’d thought, he realises, when Charlie drags out old files going back years. The damage is not limited to a few trees, someone cutting down a bit of firewood: it’s entire swaths of forest, chopped down. Parts of it even the old protected growth on the reserve.
So this is an issue, because there is a rather large number of Forks’ inhabitants living in the forest or making their living off it.
Still, it's not until he finds an old map of the area and places it next to his own that he sees the pattern and then it’s blindingly obvious what he’s missed.
Edward leaves another note on the sheriff’s desk, asking the man to meet him later that night. By that time, he finds himself quite bedraggled from running through the forest all day; the cape is not quite made for encounters with the more gnarly sort of bramble bush. But it confirmed his suspicions. He picks out a thorn that had gotten caught in the armourweave fabric of the cape.
All for the mission.
Charlie Swan does not look particularly happy to see him. Edward assumes he’s mainly here for curiosity and the chance that Edward does know something as he tracks the turn of Charlie's lips beneath his mustache, the dark smudges under his eyes giving a tired slant to the man's handsome face.
“What is it? Some kind of farce you have going here. I told you, we don’t need a vigilante in Forks . Metropolis, or Star City, but Forks, of all the places, really-”
At least the sheriff seems to have let up on any notion of arresting him, if he is restraining himself to this muttering.
The truth is this: Batman is in Forks because Edward is. Edward is here because his family is, because there’s sentimentality buried in him like the last human weakness, because he could not bear to remain behind alone, not even for the city of his birth. Especially then.
Batman does not have a particular affinity for the truth, at least when it comes to distributing it to other people, so instead he says, “I solved the illegal logging case.”
As far as distractions go, it's a good one. The sheriff straightens, tiredness drained away with a glint in his eyes.
“How?” he questions. “You’ve been here for only half a year, best I can tell. This thing goes back years.”
“I have my ways,” Edward replies.
They are meeting in a darkened parking lot. The sole street lamp above is flickering, it’s light orange and dim. It takes away some of the mysterious air, but Batman is not a vigilante that needs to rely on such a thing
(This is a lie.)
Edward spreads out the map on the hood of the sheriff's car. Two colours of dots - blue for the sheriff's findings, pink for Edwards - trace across the map. The sheriff flicks on a torch he keeps at his belt, apparently fed up with the flickering light and Edward has to blink against the sudden brightness. The light shows what Edward had seen too - a line, tracking through the forest and connecting the sites.
“How’d you find those locations?” Charlie asks again.
“I have my ways ,” Edward insists.
The parking lot is dark outside the sphere of light cast by the flickering street lamp and Charlie's torch, dark and grimy with glass shards and fast food wrappers. Just as Edward thinks the air is uncomfortably humid, it begins to rain.
“Ah, hells,” Charlie curses, covering the map under his body best as he can. “Mysterious ways or not, you want to head somewhere with a roof to discuss this?”
Edward finds himself nodding.
It unravels from there. The sites follow a dirt road that made it onto Edwards old map and not on any of the newer ones, probably because it keeps disappearing into the underbrush - and it’s winding enough that it doesn't become obvious unless you overlay the sites with the old map.
“I’ll be damned,” Charlie says finally. He claps a hand onto Edwards shoulder that he isn’t quick enough to avoid, mainly because he hadn’t expected it. Charlie smells like dust and coffee and stress and the lingering smell of wet plant stuff that lingers everywhere in Forks. It’s the closest that Edwards has ever been to him. He pushes the thought and the accompanying hunger away. Irrelevant.
“Your help would be appreciated in catching them,” he answers Charlie instead.
Charlie shakes his head.
“ My help - I’ve been told how you vigilante types can get, but this is my job, son. If anything-”
Edward disappears before he can finish the sentence; he has a forest road to stake out. Telling the chief was a courtesy mainly delivered upon because Edward will need him to come and arrest whoever it is Edward will end up catching.
Given that it is the middle of the night and still raining, the stakeout is a cold, miserable affair. The memory of Charlies warm hand on his shoulder lingers like a brand. Edward is rather glad when the sun finally rises.
It’s sunny enough that he'd have to skip school, anyhow, so he spends the next days pacing the forest path up and down, until, on the third day, he finds them.
Well, one of them. One is enough, if he will tell them about the rest of the group.
The batsuit covers enough of his sparkly skin that Edward feels no compunction or fear of discovery when striking, gloved hand pushed over the man’s mouth and pulling him backwards. Interrogating people was easier when Batman had had buildings to dangle the criminals off of; repeating the same maneuver with one of Forks’ old pines doesn’t exactly have the same effect.
“What the hell, man,” the guy protests.
It was an easy enough thing to truss up the man's hands behind his back and carry him up the tallest of the pines. Now, the moss-covered branch is creaking beneath Batman’s feet as he dangles the criminal off it, the forest floor some forty feet below. A pinecone drops past him. Experimentally, he loosens his grip slightly, allowing the man to slide a few inches downwards. His scent spikes with panic, overpowering the smell of freshly cut wood.
“Talk,” Batman growls.
“Fine, yes, what the fuck, just let me down- ”
The chief is not pleased with his methods.
(The chief is even less pleased later, when he remembers that the call had come in on his private cell phone, and how had Batman gotten that number anyway- )
Still, they work together more often after that; Forks is not a true hotbed of violent crime, but there is always work for Batman. And with the work comes Charlie, arresting criminals and telling Batman that he should really stop being a vigilante here of all places
Edward looms across from the gas station and knocks two teenagers heads’ together when they talk about stealing gas; he lurks near the traffic light and tells three separate grandmas off for jaywalking; he rescues a cat out of a tree rather than just eating it and gets a scratch across his face for the trouble; he keeps close tabs on the werewolf population in case they choose to take a different route to peaceful coexistence; he works on finding the perfect concealer brand that will allow him to disguise the sparkling skin.
Crime doesn't sleep. Luckily, Batman doesn’t need to sleep either.
He still goes to school, sometimes. Those days are mostly spent staring out the window - even with the developments of the past century, one can only learn the krebs cycle a limited number of times before it fails to capture his attention entirely, never mind that Edward’s taught himself far more advanced science at home - and contemplating the mysteries of Forks. Most of those are not so mysterious that he can’t quickly solve them. Really there's only Charlie.
A year after they begin working together, Charlie's daughter comes to live in Forks. Bella Swan is a quiet girl, still awkward and unsure how she fits into this town; Charlie tries to make her feel welcome by buying purple sheets and making her coffee in his ancient coffee maker. Her mind, when Edward brushes up against it by habit, is entirely closed to him.
The feeling has, at that point, become quite familiar. Edward is more fascinated with the implication - the ability is apparently inherited - than the girl herself.
The effect she has on Charlie is also interesting. Edward looks at her across the cafeteria and meets her eyes when she looks over, watches as she returns his gaze for a long moment before finally turning away. He blinks, wondering when he'd last remembered to do that, and blinks again a few times in quick succession to make up for it.
Alice jabs him in the side with a sharp elbow. It actually manages to hurt, since she's a vampire too, and he turns toward her.
"What?"
"You’re looking at the Swan girl like-", Alice trails off, clearly wondering how to describe it.
"She's interesting," Edward grunts out.
Which isn’t the truth, not quite. The girl seems plenty interesting to the rest of the school. To Edward, she is mainly interesting in relation to her father, to the way she seems to make him less sure and happier and more distracted all at once.
Still, ‘interesting’ covers it well enough if he doesn't want to be accused of trying to eat her. She doesn’t smell quite as good as Charlie . He sniffs distractedly as Bella finally gets up and walks past, then deliberately turns away. Staring at Bella Swan is entirely unhelpful when it comes to understanding the girls’ father; and it’s not even that Edward doesn’t understand him.
Charlie is not a complicated man. Kind and dependable and steady, with an edge that comes from seeing people's least pretty side and a quiet strength in helping them anyhow. No. Edward thinks he understands Charlie. What he doesn't understand is why he still wants to be closer to him regardless; there is no mystery, no crime, nothing that ought to draw his attention and yet.
“She is interesting,” Alice agrees, eyes tracking Bella more intently than Edward was. She’s distracted enough by it that she hasn’t even noticed Edwardss own distraction, which is plenty odd. Alice is the one out of all of them who has her hunger under the best control, perhaps because she is rarely entirely in the present to feel it. Edward has the same iron control, refusing to let himself be any less, but it takes more willpower, he’s always thought: and yet he is suddenly worried about his sister attempting to eat his coworker's daughter.
He sighs.
"Let's go. ”
Alice still manages to befriend Bella somehow. Even Jasper looks tolerant of the girl and even allows her close to him, which is a feat in itself. Edward eyes the way the human fits between Alice and Jasper speculatively. Interesting. Still, Jasper prefers to have at least two other vampires near him if he’s hanging around humans, just to be able to stop him - which is how Edward is roped into hanging out with them too.
Lounging around in Bella’s house, mostly, or meandering through the forest - there is not much to do in Forks, and not many places to go that aren't crawling with other teenagers.
Charlie's kitchen, he notes, looks more used now: there is a gleaming set of pans hanging over the stove that wasn’t there before, and two coffee mugs next to the sink. Seeing Charlie interact with them is - interesting. While wearing his cape and cowl, Edward's grown used to being treated as an equal by the man - a grey-side-of-illegal, possibly dangerous equal, perhaps, but equal.
The friends of Charlies’ teenage daughter, instead, are treated with the sort of indulgent fondness normally reserved for children and puppies, and Edward is frequently reminded that Charlie didn't truly get to practice much child-rearing.
This is the truth: Edward's name hasn't always been Edward. Or not just Edward; it is one of the names his parents gave him and it fits better now - a second name for a second life.
Edward at seventeen, when Carlisle turned him, had long forgotten how to be someone's son. Edward at a hundred and seventeen still doesn't know, not really; but they are family regardless, unlikely and all the more precious.He understands Charlie, who also has his family right next to him and doesn’t quite know how to deal with it, so he just ducks his head at the treatment.
Edward is meant to be the one picking Bella up from her trip to the city; Alice has gotten downright protective over her human friend.
He’s grateful for the fact that he’s begun travelling with the batsuit always at reach when he realises that Bella is cornered by no less than four thugs. Getting rid of them is not a problem either way. Avoiding note, however-
But Edward has made a study of exactly how fast a regular human may be and he always attends to the limits of it; still plenty strong and fast enough for this. Batman is occasionally spotted outside of Forks. It is fine.
Charlie's gratitude is an uncomfortable thing, after. Not for this. What Edward would have given, once, for someone to save his family in a dark alleyway-
Edward escapes it by disappearing into the shadows. By the time the next morning comes around and he finds Bella ranting to Alice and Jasper about vigilantes, he almost manages to smile about it.
The smell of foreign vampires lingers around town for a few days before they actually see them; Edward feels rather like a werewolf himself, walking around and constantly sniffing like a dog with a cold . But when they show their face, it’s not difficult to drive them off. Not difficult at all , which is a sign in itself.
Of course things go wrong again.
Edward already knows that something is really wrong, because Charlie never calls him. Not first. It’s a matter of pride, or principle, or perhaps because the man forgets that he can ask for help.
Charlie is calling him now.
“I’ll be there,” Edward says, “what's happening?”
“How long-” Charlie begins to ask, drowned out by the rush of the wind.
“-until you’re here?”
Edward hears the second half of the sentence not through the phone but from his place parked on the curb.
“Bella’s gone,” Charlie says next, climbing into the batmobile in a way that makes it clear he’s not even noticing it, “someone took her.”
Edward opens the window. Bella’s scent is there, but it’s muted, halfway to lost among the pines. But he has a guess anyhow. He drives back toward the city.
“And so you called me? ” He still can't help but question. Charlie is the one who is insistent on proper procedures.
More damningly, perhaps, Edward actually came - sped to help Charlie without knowing of all the details, even. He is more compromised than he thought.
“I’m not stupid, ” Charlie says. “I’ve seen you - you’re strong. Fast. More dangerous than any kind of criminal we get up here, even. I didn’t use to trust it.”
He pauses. Edward takes a hasty breath, wondering when he’d last remembered to do so.
“But this is my daughter. ”
Edward drives faster rather than answer, the Batmobile’s wheels whirring along the road at speeds that are probably inadvisable, with an officer of the law next to him.
“I am,” he finally admits. “More dangerous.”
“You’re not human.” Charlie voices it like it is obvious; perhaps it is.
“I used to be.”
It is as much of an admission as Edward can afford to make.
“Whatever price it takes-”
Edward interrupts him. “There isn’t a price. Not like that. Just-”
James and Victoria - if it is both of them - are human-feeders both. Stronger and more powerful than him on account of it. They’re not trained and he’s won over bigger disadvantages, but loading the deck a bit-
“Is it blood you need?” Charlie asks from his side. Edward whips his head around so fast that his eyes must gleam golden in the dark. Charlie is - scared, but most of all, he smells of determination. “It is, isn’t it? I should have known.”
“How would you know ?”
“The whole bat thing.”
Which. Fair.
“Also you know a concerning amount about Forks’ building renovations for someone who hadn’t lived through it. So?”
“I suppose,” Edward agrees.
The thought is more tempting than it should be, but it is also a necessity, so he will allow it to himself. Charlie himself looks a bit lost, tilting his head to the side, when they come to a stop near the building Bella must be in; her scent is far stronger here.
Edward leans away slightly from the offered neck.
“That is-”
-reserved for lovers.
“-unnecessary,” he says instead. Rather, he pulls Charlie's arm over toward himself. Charlie has strong arms, a slip of a tanline where his uniform usually ends. Edward turns the arm around and, without much further ceremony, bites down.
The next minutes are lost in the haze of blood-rush. He leaves Charlie behind - the man would not appreciate Edward dawdling when it comes to protecting his daughter.
He’d been expecting James and Victoria. They, clearly, hadn't expected him.
At least he assumes so, given Victoria greets him with a drawled, “well you’re not Alice.”
He isn’t Alice. No. Instead, he’s a vampire freshly on a blood rush.
He’s vengeance.
He’s the night.
He’s fucking Batman.
Alice and Jasper will be here soon, probably, there to rescue the girl that they’ve grown close to. By the time they get there, the fight will be finished. James and Victoria fight well, for vampires. Most vampires don't bother to get any good at it - they will always be stronger, faster, better than their prey, so what’s the point?
Edward has. Edward’s practiced enough that it would turn even a baseline human dangerously lethal. On a vampire - well.
“Close your eyes,” he advises Bella.
These two have practiced a little, from how it appears. By far not enough to stop him tearing their heads off.
Bella is lodged safely between Alice and Jasper by the time the rush wears off; it leaves him all the time in the world to face Charlie, pale and bloodstained and just standing there. He's pale enough that Edward worries about having taken too much. Edward has been a goddamn fool tonight. Answering Charlie's call without hesitation. Drinking his blood. Human blood could be - fine, if it’s willingly given, Edward is a purist about it in a different way to Carlisle, but Charlie's blood? He’ll never stop thinking about it now. About him. But that is still something he could compartmentalise away, if not for one more thing. Charlie knows. Has figured it out.
It makes Edward more vulnerable in front of him than he’s been in a long time. Charlie looks at him, dark eyes even darker in his unusually pale face, and he’s prepared for the ultimatum.
No space in Forks for vigilantes - and even less for monsters.
Instead, Charlie steps closer, only half a step away, and says “thank you.”
Another step, and he repeats the sentence against Edwards lips, his chapped and warm where Edwards are cold.
Then he looks past the bulk of the batsuit.
“What are Bella’s friends doing here?”
Well, that will be one uncomfortable conversation.