Chapter 4: Rogue Operation
The communicator clicked off. The silence in the suite was heavier than before, charged with the unspoken words from the call.
Aria sat up, the sheet falling away. “You’re going.”
“We’re going,” Ronan corrected, already moving. He snatched his pants from the floor. “Dick, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Beast Boy. Me. Full tactical.”
“And me.” It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t look at her as he zipped his pants. “No.”
The word was a door slamming. “Ronan.”
“Aria, you heard him. A dozen heat signatures. This isn’t a recon. It’s a purge. You’ve been a vampire for three days. You don’t know how to fight in this body. You’re a liability to yourself and to the team.”
“So I just sit here? In this room? While you go clean up the people who did this to me?” Her voice was rising, sharp with a fury that burned away the last of the post-sex haze. “I have more right to be there than anyone!”
“Having the right doesn’t mean you have the ability.” He finally faced her, his expression shuttered. “It’s not a punishment. It’s tactics.”
“Bullshit. It’s you deciding what’s best for me. Again.” She got off the bed, stalking naked to where her clothes were piled. Her movements were jerky, angry. “Just like you decided to break up with me ‘for my own good’. Some things never change, do they?”
He flinched. A real, physical recoil. “That’s low.”
“It’s true.” She yanked her jeans on. “You don’t get to make this call. I’m going.”
“You’re not.” His voice dropped, the vampire coolness seeping into the words, making them frost. “Dick’s orders. And he’s right.”
She stared at him, her green eyes blazing. The hollow feeling was back, but it was filled now with a boiling, impotent rage. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream. She wanted to taste his blood again just to wipe that detached, tactical look off his face.
He saw the storm in her and his posture softened, just a fraction. “You won’t be alone. Jude can stay with you.”
The name hit her like a bucket of cold water. “Jude?” she whispered, the fight momentarily knocked out of her.
Ronan pulled a fresh black shirt over his head. “You remember Jude. Still as obnoxiously annoying as ever.”
A flood of memories, warm and human and agonizingly distant, washed over her. Jude Vale. Ronan’s older brother. The goofball, the prankster, the guy who’d drive them to shitty diners at 2 a.m. and laugh so hard he’d snort soda out his nose. The one who’d ruffled her hair and called her “half-pint” and knew, just knew, when she and Ronan had had a fight without either of them saying a word.
He’d been there. For everything. Until he wasn’t.
“He knows?” she asked, her voice small.
“About me? Yeah. He’s known since the beginning. About you?” Ronan’s jaw tightened. “He got the crash course an hour after I carried you in. He’s… processing. But he’s Jude. He’ll be here in twenty. Try not to drain him. He’s annoyingly type O-negative.”
There was a history in his words, a burden shared between brothers that she was only now glimpsing. Ronan hadn’t been alone in his secret. Jude had carried it too. The knowledge should have comforted her. It just felt like another wall.
She finished dressing in silence, the fight gone, replaced by a numb resignation. Ronan finished gearing up—dark, reinforced clothing, subtle armor at his wrists and chest, a communicator in his ear. He looked like a stranger. Like Nightwing’s darker shadow.
He came to stand before her. He didn’t touch her. “This isn’t a betrayal, Aria. It’s a holding action. Your fight is coming. I promise you that. But tonight, let us do our jobs. Let me do mine.”
“Which is what?” she asked, looking up at him. “Killing the monsters so I don’t have to?”
“Keeping you safe so you can learn what you are,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
A chime sounded from the door. “That’s my cue,” Ronan said. He hesitated, then leaned in, pressing a hard, brief kiss to her forehead. His lips were cool. “Be pissed at me. It’s better than being scared. Jude will make you laugh. Try to let him.”
He was at the door, sliding it open.
“Ronan.”
He paused, half in the hall.
“Come back,” she said. It wasn’t a plea. It was an order.
A ghost of his old smile, the one from before the fangs and the frost, touched his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”
The door closed. She was alone.
The silence was a living thing. She could hear the distant, sub-audible hum of the tower’s generators, the whisper of air through vents, the frantic, tiny heartbeat of a mouse somewhere in the walls. Her own stillness was a cage.
Twenty minutes passed with the sluggishness of dripping tar. She paced. She stared out the window at the dark bay. She tried not to think about Raven, about the mission, about the synthetic blood slowly turning to lead in her gut.
The door chimed again.
She took a breath she didn’t need and opened it.
He looked older. Of course he did. Five years. His black hair was shorter, messier in a deliberate way. He’d filled out, the lanky frame of a college kid solidifying into the broad shoulders of a man. He wore expensive jeans and a vintage band t-shirt under an open flannel. But his eyes—the same piercing Vale blue as Ronan’s, but lit from within by a warmth his brother had lost—were exactly the same.
He stood there, a six-pack of expensive craft root beer in one hand and a greasy paper bag in the other, smelling of french fries, motor oil, and the crisp, clean scent of a human who spent time outdoors.
For a long second, they just looked at each other.
Jude’s eyes scanned her face, her hair, the new sharpness in her features, the unnatural stillness. She saw the shock he was trying to mask, the grief, the effortful adjustment. Then, he grinned. It was a little wobbly at the edges.
“Hey, half-pint,” he said, his voice just as she remembered—a smooth baritone that always seemed on the verge of laughing. “Heard you joined the family business. Sucks, huh?”
The stupid, simple wordplay—sucks—broke the dam. A sound escaped her, something between a sob and a laugh. She stepped forward and he dropped the drinks and the bag and caught her in a crushing hug.
He was warm. So profoundly, achingly warm. He smelled like boyhood and dumb jokes and sun on pavement. She buried her face in his flannel, and for the first time since waking up in the lab, she cried without guilt, without hunger, without any reason except that Jude was here and he was hugging her and he knew.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair, his own voice thick. “I’m so sorry, Aria. I should’ve… I didn’t know where you were. He didn’t tell me until it was over.”
She shook her head, unable to speak, clinging to the solid reality of him. The heat of his body was a furnace, but she didn’t pull away. She let it bake into her cool skin.
Finally, she pushed back, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands. “You smell like a burger joint.”
“I am a burger joint.” He bent to pick up the fallen items. “Or, I brought one. Double cheeseburger, extra pickles, chili fries. The works.”
She stared at the greasy bag. Her stomach didn’t rumble. Her mouth didn’t water. A profound, soul-deep sadness washed over her. “I can’t, Jude.”
“Right. Shit. Of course.” He looked momentarily flustered, holding the bag like a bomb. “Sorry. Dumb instinct. Bring food. Fix things. Stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” She took the bag from him. The smell was pungent, overwhelming, but not appetizing. It was a memory. She set it carefully on the small table. “It’s really nice. Thank you.”
An awkward silence settled. He rocked on his heels, hands in his pockets, looking around the sterile suite. “So. This is where the magic happens, huh? Kind of a depressing pad for a bunch of superheroes. Where’s the beanbag chairs? The ping pong table?”
“I think the ‘magic’ happens in the meditation chamber,” she said, the words out before she could stop them. A fresh wave of heat flooded her cheeks. Not a blush—her body didn’t do that anymore—but a memory of shame.
Jude’s eyes snapped to hers. He’d always been scarily perceptive. The easy humor faded from his face, replaced by a gentle, pained understanding. “Ro gave me the bullet points. The rough stuff, anyway. He said it’s… intense at first. The feelings. All of them.”
“Yeah.” She looked away, folding her arms over her chest. “Intense is one word for it.”
“He also said you almost ripped Raven’s clothes off with your brain, so. You’re batting a thousand, kid.”
She whipped her head back to glare at him, ready to snap, but saw he was smiling softly, no judgment in his eyes. It was just a fact. A messy, complicated, awful fact. Her anger deflated. “He told you that?”
“He was freaking out. Needed to talk to a human. Or, you know, as close as I get.” Jude shrugged. “Don’t be mad at him. He’s carrying about nine tons of guilt on his back. I’m just glad he’s finally letting someone help him carry it.”
Aria moved to the window, looking out at the pinprick lights of the city. “He left me behind.”
“He’s keeping you alive,” Jude said, joining her. He didn’t touch her, just stood beside her, a solid, warm presence. “It’s the only thing he knows how to do anymore. Protect. It’s his whole deal. Kind of a one-track mind.”
“It’s infuriating.”
“Tell me about it. Try being his brother. ‘Don’t go out after dark, Jude.’ ‘Text me when you get home, Jude.’ ‘For the love of god, stop dating actresses, Jude, they’re always vampires.’” He said it with a perfect, dry imitation of Ronan’s deadpan.
Aria almost smiled. “He did not say that.”
“The last one? Yeah, he did. Turns out he was right. She was a vampire. Total bloodsucker. And not in the cool, tragic, my-brother way. In the ‘maxed out my credit cards on QVC’ way.” He sighed, theatrical. “The heart wants what it wants.”
This time, she did laugh. It was a short, surprised burst of sound. It felt strange in her throat.
Jude grinned, pleased with himself. “There it is.”
They stood in companionable silence for a moment. The tension in her shoulders began to ease, just a fraction.
“What’s it like?” he asked quietly, his gaze also on the city. “The… hunger.”
The question wasn’t clinical. It was gentle, curious. The way you’d ask someone about a strange country they’d visited.
She considered it. How to explain the void? “It’s… everything. It’s all the time. Right now, you’re standing next to me and you’re like… a fireplace. A bonfire. I can feel the heat coming off you in waves. I can hear your blood. It’s a rushing sound, like a river. I can smell it. Iron and salt and life. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. And it’s playing on a loop in my head, all day, saying ‘that, you need that’.”
She glanced at him, expecting revulsion, fear.
He just nodded slowly, absorbing it. “Sounds exhausting.”
The simple understanding undid her. “It is,” she whispered. “It’s so fucking exhausting, Jude.”
“And the other stuff?” he asked, even softer. “The strength. The hearing.”
“That’s the worst part,” she confessed, the truth she hadn’t even admitted to Ronan. “It feels good. Really good. I could push this window out of its frame with my pinkie. I heard Beast Boy turn into a fruit fly three floors up. Part of me loves it. And that part scares me more than the hunger.”
Jude was quiet for a long time. “When Ro first changed,” he said finally, “he broke down our front gate. Ripped it right off the hinges. He came to my window after, his hands all torn up, crying. Not because he was hurt, but because it had felt awesome. He was terrified of how much he’d liked it.”
Aria looked at him, seeing the memory in his eyes. “What did you do?”
“I got him a bandage. Ate a bag of chips really loudly so he’d stop crying and make fun of me for my chewing.” Jude smiled faintly. “He’s still in there, Aria. The guy who loves it when you steal his hoodies and hates it when you put the empty milk carton back in the fridge. He’s just… buried under a lot of frost and fang drama right now. And so are you. But you’re both still in there.”
Tears welled in her eyes again. God, she was so sick of crying. “I don’t feel like me.”
“You’re not,” he said bluntly. “You’re you-plus. And you gotta learn the plus part before it drives you nuts.” He bumped her shoulder with his, a brotherly nudge. “So. While the gang’s out playing commando, what do you wanna do? I brought cards. We could watch terrible movies. I can try to explain cryptocurrency and you can pretend to care. The night is young and undead.”
She looked away from the city, from the dark where Ronan and the others were moving toward violence. She looked at Jude’s open, kind face, at the ridiculous root beer on the floor, at the greasy bag holding a ghost of her old life.
The hollow ache was still there. The hunger hummed its low song. But for the first time, it wasn’t the only sound in the room.
“Explain cryptocurrency,” she said, sitting down on the floor and pulling her knees to her chest. “And if I don’t pretend to care, will you shut up?”
Jude’s grin was a beacon in the sterile room. “Not a chance, half-pint.” He grabbed the root beers, sat cross-legged opposite her, and cracked one open. The sweet, spicy scent fizzed into the air. “Okay, so, imagine a really, really complicated ledger that’s also somehow worth a Lamborghini…”
His voice was a warm, steady drone. She listened, not to the words, but to the sound of him. The human sound. The heartbeat. The life.
Outside, the city held its breath. Inside, for one fleeting hour, so did she.