Chapter Text
Caitlyn had lived her whole, long life knowing three things for certain.
- Humans were to be respected as much as any magical being.
- No human is to be turned against their will.
- A sire never abandons their fledgling.
Those three things were so hard coded into her very essence, she couldn't imagine living her life any other way. It came to her as easily as breathing, it didn't require any thought to adhere to those three truths. And yet, she knew that not everybody thought the same way. Still, her family had dedicated their long long lives to make sure that those three truths would spread and be cemented in the very structures of vampire society. All of them in a different way, but all united by this very goal.
Her mother, calm and with a backbone made out of steel, argued for them in the senate. She never showed how upset she was by certain decisions the senate made, always kept her cool and just said, "we'll try again next time."
Her father as a researcher in a mixed medical facility. Working side by side with human colleagues, helping vampires and humans alike with the magic so inherently given to him.
It made Cait proud to be their daughter even if they didn't see eye to eye on everything. Like when she decided to join the police force as a consultant at first and later as the lead of the feral prevention and apprehension unit, FePAU for short. Too dangerous, were her mother's words. Too traumatic, her father argued at first. Later on, he admitted that he had tried to protect her from a world that was much crueler than he would have liked, but that he was glad that his daughter had been strong enough to go against their clear displeasure.
She was ripped out of her melancholic musings by a knock on the open office door.
"Ma'am, I have a phone call here, apparently a human has seen a feral." Her second in command let her know.
Cait raised her eyebrows. If whoever the human had seen had truly been a feral, they wouldn't have been able to call anymore. Ferals were out of their minds but that only made them stronger, faster, less hesitant. This human would be dead.
"What did they see?"
"Someone covered in blood, unable to respond, crouched at the end of an alley, red eyes. According to the caller there is this horrible sound too. Wheezing almost." Her second in command looked just as worried as Cait felt.
"Make sure the alley is sufficiently blocked to keep people from entering. I know a patrol is near there, tell them to stay at the entrance of the alley. They shouldn't get too close."
"Yes, ma'am." Her second in command left the room and Cait readied herself to leave the reports behind and go out there to investigate herself.
When she stepped out of the office, she saw the hopeful look of her youngest on duty. A vampire fresh from the academy, clearly eager to please. She smiled, still remembering the times when she had been like an eager puppy herself. "Let's go take a look. I don't think it's a feral, but whoever it is, they clearly need our help."
"I can go, ma'am?" The almost-fledgling asked her with shining eyes. She only stared him down. "Yes, ma'am. Of course, ma'am." He stumbled over his words. She almost smiled. Almost. His sire must adore him, she was sure, how could they not with his big, shiny eyes. It was a surprise they had let him join the police at such a tender age. Suddenly, she understood her parents better. She should call them when she got home.
"Make sure the car is stocked with blood bags. Something tells me we should be better safe than sorry."
When they arrived at the alley, Caitlyn could immediately hear it. The bone deep wailing. Full of hurt and fear. She stopped dead in her tracks. What the fuck. This was a vampire in deep distress. A young one on top of that. The smell of blood permeated the air. Something was incredibly wrong. She took a step forward before she remembered the youngling beside her.
"Three steps behind me at all times and bring a blood bag."
The almost-fledgling nodded with wide, startled eyes. She could feel the distress pouring out of him in reaction to the sounds coming from the shadows, but she didn't have time to calm this baby down. She needed to help the young vampire in the alley first.
"Get back," she ordered the two human police officers blocking the entry, "I don't know how they might react to my presence."
"Of course, ma'am," they immediately parroted, pale in the face and a slight sheen of sweat on their foreheads. Probably upset and terrified without knowing why. Humans were less receptive to vampiric distress, but even they weren't completely immune to the agony this particular one must feel in order to utter such sounds. Caitlyn herself felt nausea rise the longer she waited to soothe and take care. Each passing second felt like an eternity. The sound made her bleed from the inside, her slowly beating heart being torn apart right there in her chest.
She stepped inside the alley without wasting another moment.
"It's okay, darling," she gently called out, careful to keep her voice soft and low. "I am here to help you. Don't be afraid." She took slow, measured steps, staying in the light although the alley would have made it easy to blend with the shadows. The sound didn't stop, quite the opposite, it grew louder, more desperate and Cait took a hurried step forward. The vampire must have moved, she could see a trail of blood from one corner of the alley to the other. Probably to keep out of the sun. Smart, a detached part of herself registered, definitely not a feral.
"It's going to be fine. You will be fine, darling," she soothed and finally reached the end of the alley where she could peek around a big trash can. Huddled against the wall, buried under layers and layers of old, musty, slightly wet cardboard strips, was a figure. She could hear a fluttering heartbeat. Too fast for a vampire. And yet, bright red eyes squinted up at her and Caitlyn felt her chest cave in. She took a deep breath and her worst fears were confirmed. This was a baby. A literal fledgling. A few days old maximum. Not even fully transformed, which explained the too fast heartbeat. Someone had abandoned a baby out on the streets. She could smell it, under the smell of blood and garbage was the unmistakable baby scent of a freshly turned vampire.
She couldn't speak for a few long seconds. She felt anger come over her like a tsunami, making her vibrate in her skin. The fledgling chirped in distress, clearly scared out of their mind. So, Caitlyn forced all the negative emotions back into a carefully restrained little box.
"Oh, baby," she whispered, carefully lowering herself onto her knees, a safe distance away but close enough that she could intervene should the fledgling hurt themselves. "It's okay. I'm not angry with you, darling."
The chirp stopped, back to a constant whining sound; she could have wept in relief. She never wanted to hear that sound again.
"My name is Caitlyn. I am here to help you. I will make sure that you're safe." She reached her hand out behind her and fortunately the almost-fledgling, so old in comparison to the baby in front of her, complied immediately and handed her the blood bag.
"You must be so hungry, baby." The distressed whine stopped for a moment, as if in consideration, only to pick back up with double the force.
"Yes, yes, I know." Caitlyn slowly presented the blood bag in her hand. "I want to feed you, little one. Can you come out of there?"
The fledgling trembled, she could see it because the whole cardboard construct swayed. She held her breath, an easy thing to do considering that breathing was nothing more than a habit and in order to keep all her senses in peak condition rather than needed for survival. Slowly, so very slowly, a hand reached out under the cardboard. It was a strong hand. Calluses on the palm, strong knuckles, distinctly female, but not delicate in any sense of the word. Blood was smeared all over her skin in dried, brown red smudges. Caitlyn decided to ignore that for the moment. First, she needed the fledgling to get out of her hideout.
"The sun can't reach you, darling. I promise, you won't be hurt. It's fine. You can come out."
The reassurances clearly worked, or maybe it was her magic, reaching out with the promise of safe safe safe . Something so instinctual Caitlyn startled a bit herself. 'Keep the baby safe,' her thoughts seemed to scream.
"I promise I will keep you safe. Come out, baby." Her voice was so soft, she almost didn't recognise it, but it worked like a charm. The hand was followed by an arm, strong with muscle, a shoulder and finally a head. The fledgling was squinting at her, eyes still so so sensitive, still half buried under the cardboard but now Caitlyn could see her face. Her eyebrow was split by scar, as was her upper lip. She had a small tattoo right on the soft curve of her cheekbone, her nose was pierced. Caitlyn felt her heart stop beating in her chest.
"You're being very brave, darling. Good job. Come to me and you won't have to be hungry," she continued her soft talk, holding a hand out. The fledgling stared at her hand, then back at her face, and a single distressed whine left her full lips. She looked terrible. No fledgling should ever look like that. The circles under her eyes were almost as dark as her eyebrows, like someone had rubbed ash over her skin. Caitlyn could feel her magic reaching out, tendrils of it snaking around the terrified fledgling, trying to soothe a hurt that wasn't physical.
"I know it's scary. I know. But I promise you will be fine. I'm here. I will take care of you." The woman, because in human years she must have been in her twenties, edged a little further out of her hideout, crouching down in front of her, and Caitlyn smiled and offered her the blood bag. The woman snatched it out of her hand and started chewing on the plastic. Caitlyn almost teared up when she saw that the fledgling didn't even have her fangs yet.
"Let me, baby. Come here. I will open it for you," she gently, but firmly insisted. The woman inched even closer, her knees now touching Caitlyn's where she kneeled on the pavement. She was clearly reluctant to let go of the bag and Caitlyn could have wept at the starved expression she saw in those young eyes. The cruelty of it gripped her heart ice cold and squeezing like a vice. This was a fledgling and her sire had abandoned her, all alone . The sire hadn’t even fed her properly after turning, hadn’t even made sure that her fangs had come in so that she could feed herself before leaving her to her own devices. Caitlyn wanted to kill them.
She pried the bag out of trembling hands with soft fingers and hushed reassurances. She lifted it up to her lips and let her fangs drop, then she punctured the feeding access and immediately held the bag out to the fledgling. The woman latched on with the eagerness of a starved kitten. Caitlyn almost melted to the floor. She felt her magic hum around her and the baby before her. The feeding was a messy affair. Caitlyn wasn't surprised. Obviously, the poor thing was starved half out of her mind. Blood kept leaking out of the corners of her mouth, running down her chin, jaw and finally her neck. It was to be expected with no sire anywhere to show her how to feed herself without making a mess.
"You're doing so well, darling. It's going to be fine. Just keep on drinking."
Tentatively, she reached out and patted over dirty, dark pink, almost red, hair. The fledgling hesitated, interrupted in her feeding, and Caitlyn almost snatched her hand back if not for how the young vampire suddenly pushed into the contact. A coo left her at the sight. She made sure the fledgling drained the whole bag, before she moved again. Turning her head, Caitlyn fixed her young companion.
"Bring me another one."
He scrambled to comply, clearly shocked by what he saw. When he came back, pale as a sheet, Caitlyn raised an eyebrow. "If you have to throw up, get out of this alley, recruit."
He bobbed his head and practically ran towards the exit. A few seconds later, Caitlyn could hear retching sounds. She turned her full attention back to the fledgling, who stared at her with big, afraid eyes.
"Don't worry about him," she soothed gently, making sure her magic blanketed the woman in a sense of safe, soft, warm. "You should drink more." She punctured the second bag and handed it over, however, this time, the fledgling didn't make any attempt to take it from her, but let Caitlyn hold it up, while she drank, slower this time too. Her hands flexed on her thighs. Those were strong too. This woman must have been in peak condition as a human. Caitlyn questioned what might have happened that she ended up as an abandoned baby vampire in a dirty alley.
After the second bag was completely drained, Caitlyn could see the impending crash coming. The fledgling tried to fight it, blinking her eyes open again and again. Clearly not wanting to fall into the post feeding haze, but it was a losing battle.
"It's fine, baby. You can sleep. I will take care of you," Caitlyn reassured, again petting the dirty strands under her fingers. The fledgling would need a bath. She was so lost in planning what she needed to do for this baby vampire before her, that she almost flinched when she heard the croaky "stay?".
"Of course, darling. I will stay."
Fingers closed around her wrist. Firm and surprisingly strong despite the bad shape the fledgling was in. "Promise."
"I promise." Cait couldn't help but smile when the fledgling finally gave into the haze right then and there. She closed her eyes, fingers loosening immediately, body going lax, tilting to one side, but Caitlyn was there, catching her before she could hit her head on the pavement. She gathered the prone form into her arms and stood. The woman wasn't light for a human, but for Caitlyn, one of the oldest vampires in the city, she weighed almost nothing. She exited the alley, hearing a gasp to her left.
"What?"
"Ma'am, your eyes. They're golden."
Caitlyn's step faltered. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," the recruit assured her. "Like my sire's sometimes are."
Well, Caitlyn thought, fuck. She hadn't planned to leave that operation with a fledgling of her own. She hadn't planned to ever become a sire. However, when she looked down at the smudged face of the woman in her arms, she couldn't regret it. Her magic still curled around the sleeping figure like a blanket and she should have known that this was how this would end. She had been too attached the moment she had heard the first sound of distress and the fledgling needed a sire to survive. It wasn't surprising that her baby stage magic attached itself to the first thing that conveyed safety and protection. That thing being Caitlyn and her magic.
"I will teleport to my father's clinic. The fledgling needs to be checked up. Tell Camille to call me immediately," she ordered the recruit and he nodded, eagerly.
"Yes, ma'am."
She could see that he had questions but she really didn't want to answer them right that moment. So she concentrated her magic and teleported right in front of the clinic at the city center, the fledgling still pressed tightly to her chest.