Chapter Text
Tim Drake had a new problem.
The first time it happened, Tim didn’t even fully prosscess it.
It was during a routine patrol, rain-slick rooftops, the metallic scent of blood already thick in the air from a botched mugging below. The victim survived. The assailant didn’t. Standard Gotham arithmetic.
Tim knelt beside the body after the others dispersed, gloved fingers pressing lightly against cooling flesh. Hunger coiled low in his gut, sharper than usual. It had been longer than he preferred, three nights, maybe four. He’d lost track already.
He leaned in, His lips parted.
And then—
A sharp, splintering crack was audible in the air.
Tim froze.
For a second, there was no pain. Just the sensation, wrong, jagged, like biting down on shattered glass. His brow furrowed slightly as he pulled back from his leaning position, tongue instinctively brushing over where his fangs should have descended cleanly.
Instead, he felt edges.
Uneven. Broken.
“…what.”
The word slipped out under his breath, almost curious. He pressed again, more deliberately this time. His fangs extended—
or tried to.
A bolt of pain shot up through his jaw, sudden, sharp and violent, forcing a sharp inhale through clenched teeth. His vision flickered hot white for a split second to long.
Tim jerked back, hands flying to his mouth.
Blood. His blood.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
He stayed crouched there longer than necessary, staring at nothing, mind moving faster than his body. Assessing, Calculating, Categorizing the problem.
Fracture. Structural damage. Feeding impairment.
Not catastrophic, Not yet at least.
“…fine,” he murmured quietly, voice steady despite the tightness creeping in his chest. “Manageable.”
He wiped his mouth clean, rose to his feet, and left the body untouched to be found.
—
The second night, it became a problem.
Tim tried again, this time with a controlled source. Stored blood, chilled, clinically clean. Not ideal for his tastes, but it would suffice.
He tilted the container back.
The scent alone should have triggered the usual response of instinct, hunger, the automatic extension of fangs.
Instead, he had to force it. His jaw tensed.
Fangs descended halfway and pain followed immediately, sharper this time, his nerves screaming in protest.
Tim didn’t stop.
He pressed forward, forcing contact.
The moment the blood touched the damaged points, his entire body recoiled. A strangled sound caught in his throat as the container slipped from his grip, splattering dark red across the floor.
He staggered back, hands clamped over his mouth again, breathing shallow, unnecessary but reflexive.
“No—no, that’s…” he muttered, voice low, strained.
He swallowed instinctively, Regretted it instantly.
Nausea hit hard, wrong, impossible for something already dead, yet undeniable. His stomach twisted violently, rejecting what little he’d managed to take in.
Tim braced himself against the counter, shoulders tightening.
“…okay,” he said after a moment, quieter now. “Adjustment period.”
That’s all it was.
It had to be.
—
By the fourth night, he stopped trying in front of others.
By the sixth, he stopped trying properly at all.
He’d retreat after patrol, vanish into the quieter corners of the manor or the cave, attempting again and again in isolation. Each attempt ended the same way, pain, failure, rejection.
His fangs wouldn’t descend fully anymore.
When they did, they felt… wrong. Misaligned. Hypersensitive. Useless. Feeding became an whole ordeal. Then an impossibility.
So Tim adapted. Or tried to that is.
He masked the symptoms first, easy enough. He’d always been good at that.
He kept speaking to only the right moments. Moving when expected. Keeping up appearances during patrols, briefings, the quiet hours in the cave.
He avoided close proximity.
Avoided situations where feeding would be obvious.
Avoided Bruce’s gaze for longer than necessary.
The hunger, though, that was harder.
It grew so slowly at first. A dull, persistent ache. Then sharper. More insistent. Gnawing at him from the inside out.
By the end of the second week, it was constant.
A hollow pressure beneath his ribs.
A sluggish tightness in his limbs.
A faint tremor in his hands that he kept carefully hidden by keeping them occupied, data screens, keyboards, anything.
His senses started to dull at the edges.
Reaction time slowed, not enough for the others to call out, but enough that he noticed, they definitely noticed, Cataloged. Filed away under concerning.
Still, they said nothing.
—
“You’re off.”
Jason’s voice cut through the quiet like a gunshot.
Tim didn’t look up from the console he was typing away at. “Define "off.’”
Jason leaned against the railing above, arms crossed, red helmet tucked under one arm. “You missed a step back there.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
Tim finally glanced up, expression neutral, eyes sharp despite the deep faint shadows beginning to settle beneath them.
“…one step isn’t a pattern,” he replied evenly.
Jason’s gaze lingered a moment longer than comfortable.
Then he shrugged.
“Sure, Replacement. Whatever you say.” He pushed off the railing and left.
Tim watched him go. Waited until the sound of his footsteps disappeared completely. Only then did he let his hand tighten slightly against the edge of the console, knuckles paling beneath the glove.
—
By the third week, the hunger stopped feeling like hunger.
It became something else.
Something heavier and slower.
His movements grew more deliberate, not by choice, but necessity. Each action measured, controlled, conserving what little strength he had left.
He stopped joining them after patrol.
Stopped lingering.
Disappeared more often.
Bruce noticed.
Of course he did.
Tim could feel it, the subtle shift in attention, the longer glances, the way Bruce’s presence seemed to linger just a fraction longer in shared spaces.
But Bruce didn’t ask.
Not yet and Tim—
Tim made sure he wouldn’t have a reason to.
—
The mirror didn’t lie.
It never had.
It never will.
Tim stood in front of it now, fingers resting lightly against his upper lip.
“Just… reset,” he murmured to himself.
He inhaled unnecessarily.
Focused.
Forced it.
Slowly, carefully, he tried to extend his fangs again.
They emerged unevenly.
Jagged.
One shorter than the other.
Both wrong.
The moment they fully descended, pain flared, sharp, electric, radiating through his jaw and into his skull.
Tim’s breath hitched.
But he didn’t stop.
“…functional,” he whispered through clenched teeth. He leaned forward, grabbing a fresh blood pack from the counter.
This time, he didn’t hesitate.
He bit down.
The result was immediate.
Pain.
Then—
Nothing. No intake. No satisfaction.
Just the sensation of something fundamentally broken.
The pack slipped from his grasp again.
Blood spilled.
And Tim—
Tim staggered back, hitting the wall as the nausea returned, worse than before. His body rejected it entirely this time. A dry, choking sound escaped him as he doubled over slightly, one hand gripping his side, the other still pressed to his mouth as if he could somehow hold himself together.
“…fine,” he rasped after a long moment, voice barely above a whisper.
His reflection stared back at him, paler than usual now, eyes just a little too sharp, too hollow.
“Still… manageable.”
He slid down the wall slowly, controlled even in collapse, until he was sitting on the cold floor.
The spilled blood spread across the tiles, untouched.
Tim didn’t look at it.
Didn’t move toward it.
Didn’t try again, Not that night.
Not the next.
And not the one after that.
He stopped feeding entirely.