Chapter 6: Library

(Quick note: I do not know how Jason's parents acted or even who they are, I went to four different wikies but I ended up OC-ing them.)

A seven year old Jason walked the dark hallways of his house. A small black teddy bear was held tight to his chest as he searched for his mother. The house was too big to live in for only a seven year old and his mother. His father he could barely remember, he was, as far as he could remember, killed by hunters.

His father, William Todd, used to be a famous mercenary around Gotham. He was rarely home anymore as he had begun to travel without Jason and his mother. Stella Todd, his mother, had been home resting and raising Jason since his father vanished out of his life.

"Mom?" Jason asked as he opened the huge wooden door to his parents bedroom. "Mom?" He asked again.

A form moved on the bed in the dark room, black curtains held the light of the sun out as they slept in the day. Stella lifted her body up from the bed, her long dark brown hair was a messy bird nest and her red eyes looked at her son. "Jason?" She started before rubbing her eyes. "What's wrong, dear?" Jason walked up to his mother and climbed onto the bed.

"I had a dream… It… I saw you die, a… a hunter." Jason started, tears formed in his eyes. "There was a man, a hunter."

"Oh dear…" Stella pulled her son to her chest and began to rock him in his lap. "As long as we stay inside, we'll be fine." She reassured him. "Come now, let's go back to sleep. It's almost midday." She laid down in the bed with her son to her chest.

Jason stayed awake a few more minutes, playing with the strap of his mother's tank top. Before he slowly fell into the calm rhythm of her heart. "We'll be safe…" He whispered to himself.

xXx

Jason had introduced Raven to the library, and immediately lost her. I lost her in my own library, how is that possible? He asked himself as he walked shelf after shelf trying to find her. It was almost like she knew her way around it, despite that she had never been inside the room. She would spend most her time in her room looking out the window or just avoiding him. The last fact bugged him, he wanted to spend time with her but she didn't seem to be open with him yet.

He wasn't about to push her though. She was kinda forced into the blood bond. Jason blamed her family. If they hadn't been out looking for her, stupid choice really, then she wouldn't be in the situation she was in. Not that he complained, he liked Raven's company, even if she didn't.

When Raven was around the vampire, he felt whole, like a missing piece of his life had finally been found. He never really thought that it could happened, he had only made the deal to not be so alone and not having Raven trying to kill him. He had to admit, she was beautiful.

Jason stopped in his tracks. Beautiful? Yes. No. A part of him was arguing that he shouldn't feel like this, but it was another part that drove him to it. To her.

After what felt like hours, he finally found her. She had found a spot in a window, luckily it was night so he didn't have to fear much. She sat in the high window with a lantern and looked at a scroll of some sort. For a minute Jason wondered how she got up there, since the library was about three floors high and she sat in the window on the second floor and it was no sign of how she managed to climb up. There weren't any footprints on the shelves, so something happened.

"How did you get up there?" Jason asked as he leaped up to her. "How?"

"Don't know…" Raven looked over the edge and almost gasped. "Wait, how did I get up here?"

"You don't know?" He raised a worried eyebrow.

"No, I…" Raven trailed off, suddenly she began to look sick, she turned pale.

"Raven…" Jason inched closer to her. "Are you afraid of heights?" He asked.

"What?!" She yelled, she was definitely afraid heights. "No! No, I'm not!" Jason noticed how her hands tightened on the wood of the shelf underneath. Her breath began to quicken and Jason saw the fear that crept into her eyes, he could also see that she was fighting the fear.

"You know it's normal to have fear, right?" Jason smirked a little at the sight, she looked so vulnerable whens she was freaking out.

"I began hunting when I was nine! I saw blood, my own and others, every day and THIS is what I'm afraid of!?" Raven cried.

Jason moved in, wrapping his arms around her shaking form. Faster than she could react, he jumped from the top of the shelf. Raven let out a terrified yelp as she turned her face into Jason's chest.

When on the ground, Jason let go, but Raven didn't. She didn't seem to notice that he had let go, so she was still locked to his shirt. "Raven? We're on the ground." He said.

Raven looked down at the floor and jumped away from him like she'd burned herself on him. "Thank you." She mumbled under her breath, almost too low for him to hear, but he did hear it.

He smiled devilishly, "What was that Raven? I couldn't hear you." He bent down and placed his hand to his ear to hear her better.

Raven raised an eyebrow before shaking her head. "Jason, let me keep my dignity."

Jason laughed as she rubbed the space between her eyes in frustration. "Come on, Little Bird, a proper 'thank you' is always in order." He laughed.

Raven frowned before elbowing him in the gut, she wasn't as hard as she usually would: Sending him to his knees that is. This one was more playful and told that she knew he was just trying to be funny. Still, Jason lost his breath and stepped back by the impact. "Worth it…" He gasped.

xXx

The two spent the day/night in their own worlds, in different books. They sat in front of the fireplace, letting the fire light the tall walls of the library. Jason would glance up at Raven sitting on the other side of the red victorian couch. She looked so calm and peaceful sitting there in her own world, her eyes scanning the pages. From time to time, she would look towards Jason as she felt someone watching her. Jason would drop his eyes to the page in panic, sometimes he sunk his head behind the book as he knew she was still looking at him. He would hear her let out a low chuckle before returning into her book.

"So…" Jason started. "What are you reading?" He asked, trying to start some conversation.

"It's about a knight saving a village from a dragon." She said with a small smile.

"Sounds pretty cliche, doesn't it?" Raven laughed lightly.

"Maybe, but I like cliche, romance, fantasy stories." She admitted.

"Fantasy? You live in a fantasy." He pointed out, aiming at himself being a vampire.

"Maybe, maybe not. But these are different. Have you ever heard about dragons in our world? I know vampires, werewolves, and some other mythical beings exist in our world. But dragons, I don't think so."

"Okay then…" He paused. "Romance?" He smirked. "You like romance stories." He pointed out with a smile as he placed his own action book next to him.

"Don't judge me." Raven lifted the book higher into her face, blocking her view of Jason.

"Come on, Little Bird." He lowered her book, she struggled for a second before letting it happened. "Why do you like romance stories?" He purred.

"N-No reason." She stammered and began to crawl backwards on the couch. He began to crawl over her, caging her body within his arms. He looked down at her face as blood poured into her cheeks. "J-Jason, this is a little too intimate!" She whimpered and looked away.

Jason chuckled before lowering his face to hers, his nose brushing against her own. "Come on, Little Bird, you didn't give me an answer…" His lips were only a breath away from hers and Raven had to fight the strange urge to lift herself to meet him. "Why do you like romance novels?" He asked again, sinking low enough to give her the ghost of a kiss.

"J-Jason…" She stammered, all she had to do was lift her chin and their lips would be sealed. It would be so easy, yet she fought the urge.

Jason smiled cockily before placing a small kiss on her lips, it was over before Raven could really react, but she felt the aftermath of the soft kiss. His lips were surprisingly warm and soft.

To Jason, her lips were soft with the warmth he actually expected. She was human after all, or as far as he knew she was human. Her blood had tasted a little different from other humans when he drank it. Human blood was warm and tasted like something sweet, while hers had half the temperature and tasted a little more sour. At first he brushed it off with the thought that she was a hunter and could possibly have poisoned her blood, but if that was the case, why wasn't he dead?

Raven looked at Jason across the couch after a minute, she was trying to be mad at him. But she found no strength in it. "W-What was that?" She asked, her voice shaking with so many emotions she couldn't even count them.

"Hm? Oh, nothing…" He waved her off, but it did little to stop her.

"No, really, why did you just do that?" Her voice was becoming stronger as she managed to find strength in her anger.

"It's called a kiss, Little Bird." He smiled teeth at her, she growled. "Want me to do it again?" He asked.

Raven's eyes widened in… She didn't know. "What!?" She cried. "No! No! No!" She turned away with a blush on her cheek. She couldn't face him right now.

"Your blush is saying otherwise." He commented. Raven began to sink into a blanket that had fallen off the couch when Jason kissed her. Raven hid her face in the black wool.

"Shut up…" She mumbled. Jason laughed.

xXx

Far away from the ex-enemies. Sat four sad family members. Victor, Richard, Kori, and Garfield sat at the dinner table with Raven's old belongings on the table. It wasn't much, considering that she usually was out. It was about six books in total, one journal from her mother, two mythical books, one unopened book with a lock, and two romance novels - The last ones they were surprised to find. -. There was an empty bag and a ton of different silver weapons. Knives, daggers, maces, swords, guns, bullets, a spear, an axe, a scythe, a few wooden stakes, spears and knives. Next to that there was about three jars in the bag Raven owned. The jars containing: Silver dust, water that was marked 'holy', and a wooden cross with a pointy end marked 'emergency only'.

The family looked over the items in hope to find anything to save their sister.

"There has to be something!" Garfield cried. "She hunts those monsters on nightly basis, there has to be something we can do!" He flipped the pages of one of the books marked 'weakness'.

"We have to keep-" Victor started.

"I think I found something." Kori stated as she placed Raven's mother's journal on the table. There was a map. A map of Gotham, it was clearly drawn by a child. The map showed the city, a small camp with a cross, a castle over the mountains, a few rivers, and a road leading to another city. The cross marked camp was named 'home' which was what made Kori speak up about it. "It seems like, Raven has had another home before here. Maybe it is still there." She said with hope.

"Maybe, isn't that eight years ago, right?" The others nodded to Richard's words. "Hopefully it's still there, maybe something was left there."

"Can't we just use one of her weapons?" Garfield asked as he picked up a silver knife. He accidently pushed a hidden button on the knife, suddenly the blade blade flung into the wall opposite of them, Victor barely dodged it as it flew in front of his face. "Or maybe not…" He placed the knife handle down with two fingers careful not to touch more than an inch of it.

Richard pulled the silver blade out of the wall and placed it back in the handle, it was a thin thread holding them connected. Richard laid the weapon on the table glaring at Garfield. "I don't think we should touch these things, one: They're Raven's. Second: We don't know how to use them."

"Agreed, do don't want to cut off one of our own heads with them." Victor said as he looked up from the map Kori had presented him with. "I think we should look at this camp and see if we can find anything."

xXx

I'm sorry I'm taking so long with my stories, I'm lazy and actually writing an amuture novel while writing fanfiction and I keep getting ideas. Sorry, see you when I update again.