Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gloomy as it may be, Gothams perpetually clouded skies make it an ideal residence for the nocturnal. From nighthawks, dragonic and nocturnal birds, to the grubs that squirm around in its dry, uncared for soil. For this reason, vampires also flock to Gotham, with many of their gatherings taking place in the gloomy City. Hence, Bruce Wayne stood in front of a Gala of vampires, a false smile plastered onto his face. The room was not quite as joyful as at a typical gala, the vampires present all wearing frowns, exchanging false pleasantries with grief overshadowing them. They were all skirting around the topic, but a broken glass cannot hold its liquid forever, and inevitably all conversations eventually became sour.

Bruce sighed. It seemed that he had to address the purpose of the gala, eventually, and the awkward avoidance of the matter wouldn’t last forever. He cleared his throat, hand held upwards to call all attention towards him. Quietening, the crowd turned to stare, red and soulless eyes trained solely upon him. It looked like a sea of rubies.

“Thank you all for attending.” Bruce gave them all a small smile, before his face twitched involuntarily back into a frown “I thank you all for your efforts throughout the years. You have all done…spectacularly. It has been so moving to see such different covens unite for this one purpose. This gala is meant to be a celebration of your efforts, above all else.”

The crowd started to murmur again, before quieting after he raised his hand once more.

“Unfortunately, despite everybody uniting to search, no human survivors have been found. It has been five years since their extinction event, and it is time to stop using our valuable resources on a lost cause. The human race is, officially, gone.” His tone was neutral, he had heavily rehearsed this speech, so that he did not have to think about it as he spoke. So that he did not have to reflect on it. At least, that was his intent, but he could not help but reflect regardless. He scrunched his eyes closed, taking a deep, shaky breath.

Bruce didn’t always like humans. To the contrary, he had spent a brief period hating them; chaotic things, they fumbled around leaving destruction in their paths, ruining both the natural world and their own lives over such trivial matters. It was only after they went extinct that he realised that they were, in comparison to him, inferior. He did not mean that to be condescending or rude, but their life experience and brain development was far below an average vampire, making them children in comparison to him. Stupid children, indeed, but still children. They did not always know better. He did not deny that there were humans that were inherently bad, but he no longer despised them for their overconsumption of trinkets, or their endless whines when their basic needs were not met. Rather, he had begun to find them adorable. Their hoarding behaviour, their neediness, their chaos. He missed it. He forgave them.

When they went extinct, he felt unexpectedly devastated. He had never actually gotten to turn a human– to strip them of their humanity and make them a vampire, just like him. It was seen as a sacred act to vampires, something special and rare. Indeed, he adored his coven, but he hadn’t made any of them. They were his in every sense but their vampirism. Jason and Damian, his two youngest, had both been turned by the Al Ghul coven, an extremist coven who had despised humans. He took them both under his wings, making them his own. His eldest, Dick, was already a young vampire when he took him in, but had lost his coven to an unfortunate accident.

He loved them all as though he did turn them, but his instincts still yearned for him to sink his teeth into a human, regardless. Into their oh so soft flesh, that he would never see again, all human remains having decayed beyond that. None of them had been good enough; not smart enough, not young enough, too obnoxiously loud. He had gotten so picky that he lost his chance. And now humans are gone.

He sighed, opening his eyes to see the crowd watching him, waiting.

“I hereby declare the human race officially extinct.” Bruce stated, his voice leaving no room for objections. And inevitably, there would be objections. vampires were a stubborn species, clinging to old beliefs until enough evidence piled up that they couldn't possibly deny it. Until a paradigm shift was forced into their laps, and they could no longer deny, could no longer stick to their traditional proprieties. Vampires had to be forced into seeing the truth, and that's something Bruce had realised a while back.

And now, in the eyes of the law, all humans were officially extinct, a call that should have been made years ago.

Chaos erupted.

—

Beaming and satisfied, Tim Drake let out a victorious laugh, throwing his arms up happily. It was done. He hadn’t noticed the hours tick by, hadn’t noticed the sky turning to night, and then to day again, too stuck in his little project to focus. But he had done it. A hydroponic garden. He had made a machine that would let him grow vegetables and fruits indoors, no longer needing to worry about the weather and whether he would have enough food available. A contingency.

He, of course, had his mushroom room, his ‘MushRoom’ as he dubbed it, where he had extracted the spores from wild edible mushrooms and grown them in his shed, but he tended to only get a harvest from that every two weeks. Similarly, his outdoor garden was unreliable in the harsh winter months, and his emergency stock of canned food had gone from 70 cans to 10 over the five year period.

Yet, he was still alive.

Tim wouldn’t personally consider himself a genius, he was just good at reading comprehension, and on the internet there were exhaustive guides on how to make hydroponic gardens, or on how to start a mushroom culture. He wasn't anything special, even though he was exceptionally young, at a mere 16 or 11 when the other humans…He stopped that train of thought, taking a moment to inhale, soothing himself. Regardless, he wasn’t an idiot, especially for his age, but it wasn’t as though he had invented any of the methods he had used for his survival. If vampires had decided to discard the internet, he wasn’t sure what he would have done. His foraging knowledge prior was minimal, and had slowly accumulated throughout the years. He likely wouldn’t be quite as sane as he was now, five years of isolation would take a toll on anybody. It certainly had taken a toll on him too, but he still understood what was or wasn’t reality, even if he had a tendency to pretend that everything was okay.

He sighed, curling up on his makeshift bed. He had stayed in his parents house for a period of time, but their artificial lawn and excessive use of pesticides made it impossible for him to properly grow crops. Therefore, he moved out, took up residence in a little woodland area, made a makeshift shelter and decorated it with stolen tech and library books (it’s not like anyone was around to miss them, right?)

Lines of shelves were adorned with old, musty books, letting out that classic ‘book smell’ which Tim had learnt was chemical degradation. It was messy, disorganised, chaos. As was his appearance, his eyes were slightly sunken in, his skin tightening around his cheeks as he gradually lost his baby fat throughout the years, his hair shabby from cutting it with a survival knife. Yet, he still carried a few semblances of himself from before…what had happened. His hair, albeit messy, still resembled the upper class perfect haircut his parents insisted on. It looked similar, just wrong. It was never meant to be this messy, but he merely found comfort in the similarity, no matter how distorted or ugly it was. He looked wrong, not like himself, but still so young.

He quietly wondered what his parents would have thought. About him. About all of this.

He missed them.

He still scrolled through their old social media posts sometimes, and simply reflected. Scrolling was one of his pastimes now that no new human content was being generated; he enjoyed looking at old human posts, or new ones from vampires, who had dominated human social media platforms after they died out. It wasn’t that they couldn’t make their own, rather, it would simply be inconvenient to do so. After all, they had built perfect good apps, why not honour their memory by making the best use of them? They used to be crawling with humans, filled with discourse and arguing. Perhaps a vampire or two would follow a specific tag or trend, if it caught their eye. Now, vampires coexisted on there peacefully, and Tim was the last remains of what once was, the one who was outnumbered.

He decided to tune into social media to see what vampires were up to. He didn’t anticipate anything particularly exciting, because frankly, vampires were a bit boring. He didn’t blame them. If he had been alive for eternity, he could imagine that he would also develop a bit of an obsession with the mundane, anything to keep himself occupied. Therefore, most of the posts were all related to vampire policies, updates on species recovery, or complex maths discoveries. It was all so boring, yet Tim sucked it up like a dry sponge. He didn’t know anything about the school curriculum, having barely even started school properly, but he knew random facts about quantum mechanics, vampiric political history and ancient history told from beings who had been there to experience it. It was one of the only ways he could occupy himself, after all. He liked to learn, he did not particularly care for the topics they discussed, but he remembered them.

That was why he was particularly surprised to see a new post, one which had 300 likes, an exceptionally high number considering there were only 200 covens overall, each composed of between 3-5 members, on average. The vampiric population was low.

‘Humans declared officially extinct by head of vampire affairs, Bruce Wayne’

The first post read, causing Tim to furrow his brows. That was silly, he was alive. How on earth could they possibly establish that? Evidently, their methodology had to have been flawed, or else they would have realised that he was alive, wouldn’t they? And Tim did want them to know he was alive.

He tried to comment.

Tim_the_human: Don’t be silly, I'm still here :)

He clicked send, satisfied. He had sent many messages to vampires through social media, but nobody had ever responded or even indicated that they had seen them. It was bizarre. When the loneliness got too much, when he was exhausted of the constant coldness, the aching yearning for friends or family or anybody, he would send messages crying for help. Once, his food resources dwindled, and he was certain he would die. Thankfully, he didn’t, but his plea for aid still haunted his post history. He accepted that nobody would ever reply to his messages, he accepted that he was totally and wholly isolated. He had no clue why. It was like somebody was manually blocking all of his messages, making sure that nobody could possibly see them. Why? From the comments, it was clear that vampires wanted humans to be alive, it was clear that they mourned.

With a small sigh, he continued to scroll. He enjoyed cyberstalking the Wayne Coven in particular, their dynamic amused him. Their head, Bruce Wayne, was a big figure in vampiric politics. Initially, he had started off as effectively a vigilante, protecting vampiric law from meddling humans, before being promoted after his commitment to justice had been recognised. Now, he had actual powers to make the law himself, to make calls like this. Clicking onto Jason’s profile, one of the vampires in the coven, he couldn’t help but let out a surprised laugh. The boy had been posting pictures of himself taunting his two siblings and his dad. Eating cake, showing off a new book. Sometimes, he dreamed that he was in those pictures, too, scowling at the boy and hiding his secret glee to be teased. He decided to comment.

Tim_the_human: Oh how fun! I'm not a vampire but picture number five really makes that blood cake look appetising, haha! How are vampires even sourcing their blood when humans are gone anyway? (Minus me) Did you synthesize it? Are you using blood storages? If so what will you do when they run out?

He hoped that didn’t come across as too much. When he felt an itch of curiosity, he had to investigate, had to expose the truth no matter how much digging or how much mayhem he caused in the process.

For once, though, he actually received a ping, indicating that somebody had messaged him.

Immediately, he felt gleeful. Did somebody realise that he was out there, a human? Are they coming to help him? To give him food and companionship?

After a moment of hesitation, he opened the message.

BruceWayne_Gotham: What are you trying to achieve here? Why are you masquerading, roleplaying as a human? You are being incredibly insensitive, all vampires are struggling with the news of human extinction right now, and you have the audacity to mock them? I’ve let you have your fun, I’ve let you continue to post throughout these past years because I assumed this was your perverse coping mechanism. But this has gone too far, and now you dare to message my coven member directly? You disgust me. Seek help.

Tim stayed still, shocked. Bruce had messaged him? Bruce Wayne? He had seen his messages?

Then, Bruce Wayne thought he was lying?

It made sense– the way his messages always seemed to vanish, the way that he never got any engagement. Of course he would be able to do that, he was the head of vampire affairs after all. He had access to technology beyond Tim's wildest dreams, tech he wished he could just dig his fingers into and investigate.

And it made sense that the man had come to that conclusion. He assumed that he genuinely believed that humans were gone. He must have done something to prove that, however flawed considering he was missed out.

But even so…

Tim sniffled.

He knew this shouldn’t affect him. He knew he wasn’t lying, he knew that the man was just defensive. After all, he was claiming to be the very last of his species. It was absurd. He was claiming to have somehow survived such a horrific occurrence. Bruce was nothing if not logical, and Tim’s entire existence was illogical. He was an anomaly. He can’t blame him, can’t be surprised that he was standing up for his own coven.

Yet it did. The message devastated him, plunged him out of his fantasy of living in normalcy, and caused him to face reality. He was alone, nobody believed him. Nobody loved him, but somebody was angry at him– disgusted, to use the man's own words. He let out a choked sob, shutting his laptop screen. THE Bruce Wayne, who he had been cyberstalking for the past 5 years was upset with him. Nevermind that the man's anger was wrong, it was still directed towards him. Towards Tim Drake. He closed his laptop, resting his head in his palms as he let out a deep sigh, tears falling onto his desk.

Perhaps the years of isolation had made him extra sensitive, but he couldn’t bring himself to reply just yet.

–

“Hey, Bruce, I need to talk to you.” Jason urged, sitting in front of the man. His eyes glowed a bright red, evidently shining with excitement that he had made a poor attempt at veiling. He and Jason had a tense relationship, recently, they occasionally broke out into proper, angry arguments. It wasn’t that either party had done anything demonstrably wrong, per say, but when you spend eternity with someone there will inevitably be disagreements. Therefore, Jason seeking him out must have been something big. Bruce always treasured moments like this, moments when one of his younglings would come to him, eyes bright and eager. Jason was a mere 400 years old, just barely a fully grown vampire. He gave him a smile.

“Jason.” he greeted back, “What can I help you with?”

He shoved his phone into his face, eagerly pointing to a message on screen “There's a human alive, there’s one left!”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed, before he let out a slow, long sigh. He recognised that username. @Tim_the_human. He had taken note of him in the early days of the human extinction event, curious as to whether he was telling the truth. He had been suspicious from the start, though, even his username was on the nose, who names themselves after their species?

“Jason.” he said slowly, his attempt at sounding soft not masking the coldness of his tone. “...That is not a real human. All humans are gone. They are extinct”

Jason deflated slightly, not because he believed the man, but because Bruce clearly didn’t believe him. “How do you know?” He demanded, desperate for it to be real. He always wanted a new human to join their family, always wanted a little baby brother to dote on. He had Damian, but he met him when the boy was already over 100 years old. Young, but It was different from a newly turned vampire, let alone a human.

Bruce sighed, patting the spot next to him, leading Jay to perch onto the sofa. “it would be impossible for a human to be left. We have searched every inch of the earth, used satellites, used heat detectors. There’s none.”

Jason’s gaze turned defensive, turning to look at him. “So? What if you missed this one?”

He shook his head, his gaze like steel “I looked into them years ago. They’re not human. Their intelligence is very obviously that of a vampire, very evidently drawn from hundreds if not thousands of years of experience. Humans are simply…too simple, to put it lightly. This…Tim knows too much about Vampire affairs. They even gave me recommendations to improve my bill” he hesitated, noticing the look of disappointment on his son’s face “But thank you for bringing it to my attention, Jason. You did good.”

The boy sighed, looking at the message again. It was…quite suspicious. The boy was asking questions that were incredibly well thought out, his curiosity about vampires peculiar for a human. Perhaps it was just some roleplayer trying to deceive him.

He glanced up, his frown evident “Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody pretend to be human?”

Bruce gave him a small smile, the boy was still learning, he loved when he looked to him for guidance. He would love more than anything to have somebody who he could train up. Somebody who he could teach, to mentor. He would just have to make do with his very much older, yet still developing vampire kids.

“The world of vampires is very cut throat, lad.” He informed, “People get bored. Years of being alive…it can make you do silly things for something new and interesting. They probably want to trick you, or me, so that they can humiliate you publicly. That, or they get some kind of entertainment from your hope.”

Jason frowned, but nodded. “That’s just…not right. It isn’t right at all.”

Bruce nodded vehemently. “I’ll confront them. I won’t let them mess with my coven anymore.”

He opened his own phone, and messaged them.

Chapter Text

Damian and Jason had a thing.

It wasn’t something that they ever named or explained, but it had long since become their unspoken ritual. Jason would sit back on the too expensive couch with a book in his hands, while Damian took the floor or a corner desk, sketchbook balanced on his knees, pencil in hand. They rarely spoke, simply greeting one another with a brief nod or grunt of acknowledgment before settling into their familiar rhythm of parallel play.

It was peaceful in a way that neither of them ever dared to comment on aloud.

Moonlight pooled through the high windows, casting pale shadows across the room. It caught in Damian’s dark hair, turning the ends silver like he’d been dusted in starlight. His tongue poked slightly from the corner of his mouth, a small tell of his concentration, while his teeth pressed faintly into his lower lip as he shaded with practiced precision. There was something oddly endearing about it, though Jason wouldn’t that admit even under threat of torture.

He watched him for a moment, half-smiling to himself before his gaze dropped back to the pages in his lap. He was somewhat jealous of Damian, and how he enjoyed art so much. Vampires tended to get sick of hobbies eventually, centuries leads to mastery which leads to mundanity. Perfectionism is perfect in every sense, which is what makes it so dull. Jason envied that the boy was centuries younger than him, that he could still enjoy the banal repetitive motion of pencil on paper, creating near perfect artworks, yet not quite.

That was what he liked about human fiction. It was simple, predictable, sometimes laughably so. Human authors clung to familiar metaphors, drawing the same tired comparisons over and over. Red hair was always fire. Love always bloomed like spring. Stories followed the same arcs, and plot twists were often visible from miles away.

But that was the point. That was what made it comforting.

Vampire literature, in contrast, was maddening. Crafted over centuries by creatures who had mastered language, whose metaphors were so complex they looped back in on themselves, whose prose was elegant to the point of being unnatural. It was beautiful, but sterile. Sincere emotion got lost in the perfection. Jason liked that human writing could still be clumsy, earnest, even bad. Because when something is flawed, it still feels real.

Not everything perfect bored him, though. Not this. Not Damian’s steady breathing, not the quiet scratch of pencil on paper, not the shared silence that asked for nothing and gave so much. Moments like this he never critiqued. They weren’t brilliant or grand. They were complete.

Peaceful. Whole.

Until, inevitably, it shattered.

Thundering footsteps echoed down the hallway, each one intentionally obnoxious, like someone trying to stomp on their calm. Jason didn’t need to look up to know who it was.

Dick burst into the room with the force of a stage entrance, grinning so brightly his eyes scrunched into crescent moons. The smile was as much habit as expression now, the kind that had once been painted on for circus audiences and eventually became permanent. He slapped Jason on the back with theatrical flair, jolting him slightly in his seat.

“Hey, Jason,” he said cheerfully, flopping down beside him, lacking any grace. “How are we doing tonight?”

Jason didn’t look up. He turned a page in his book with a deliberate slowness. “What do you want?”

Dick gasped, throwing a hand over his unbeating heart in mock devastation. His brows lifted high, mouth agape in exaggerated horror. “Excuse me? I’m just being a good older brother. A great older brother, even. Checking in on my darling younger sibling. And this is the response I get? Sass? Disrespect? The audacity!”

He struck a dramatic pose, hand on hip, eyebrows raised, sassy.

Jason rolled his eyes, giving him a flat look. “Do you even know what ‘audacity’ means? And don’t pretend this is new, Dick. I’ve known you for hundreds of years. You only start with the small talk when you want something.”

For a brief second, Dick’s grin faltered. Not enough to seem serious, but enough to show that Jason had hit closer than intended. Still, he bounced back with a comically exaggerated pout.

“Maybe I just want company,” he said, voice wobbling with performative sadness. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe your poor, neglected brother is lonely and aching for the companionship of his sweet, innocent baby sibling. Hm? Wouldn’t it be cruel to turn me away?”

He swayed slightly, big eyes turned upward with calculated exaggeration, lower lip trembling just enough to seem pathetic, though both of them knew it was all theater.

Damian, still drawing, didn’t bother looking up. He merely muttered, “You're pathetic.”

Jason grunted in agreement, eyes still on the book, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

And just like that, the peace had shifted. It wasn’t gone, exactly. Just... changed. Louder, more chaotic, but no less familiar. Because this, too, was part of their strange, eternal rhythm.

Family, after all, was rarely quiet forever.

Eventually, Jason sighed, closing his book with a soft thump and placing it on the armrest beside him. “Out with it already. Don’t waste my time.”

“We’re literally immortal. You have plenty of time to waste,” Dick muttered with a huff, though he sat beside him anyway, posture casual but his fingers fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve. His eyes darted toward Jason, lingering for a moment before settling forward again. He clearly wasn’t sure how to ease into the conversation. “I heard you and Bruce arguing last night,” he said finally, voice lighter than the subject deserved. “You’re not having another falling out, are you?” He let out a loud sigh, rolling his head back against the couch cushions as if he were just so very exhausted by their perpetual drama, but his eyes were sharp with concern. Jason knew. He knew he hated fighting. Jason always knew.

“No,” He replied quickly. “We’re not. It’s fine.” He paused, letting the silence hang just long enough before adding, “I just thought I found a human, that’s all.”

Dick sat up straighter, interest piqued. “A human?”

Jason shook his head immediately, wanting to dispel the hope before it had time to grow. “I was wrong. Just some troll online pretending to be one.” He pulled up the account on his phone, passing it over to Dick, who scrolled through it with furrowed brows as Jason relayed Bruce’s reasoning. How the timestamps didn’t line up, always at night. The behavior was too calculated, the grammar was too clean, too intelligent, the emotions too curated. The sad truth was that vampires knew humanity better than most humans ever did, and they could spot the imitation. It was too perfect.

As Jason spoke, the excitement drained from Dick’s face. When he finally handed the phone back, his shoulders dropped with a disappointed little exhale. “Right. They’re extinct.”

Jason didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His expression had already said everything Dick was trying to avoid putting into words.

Still, Dick wasn’t one to let a mood linger too long without attempting to twist it into something a little less painful. He cleared his throat, then pulled a smile back onto his face, too wide, too polished, the practiced kind that always made Jason roll his eyes. The type that was so typically vampiric. “You do know what this means, right?” he said, nudging him. “Now that we’ve lost our chance at having a new, shiny, cute, little baby human to dote on and emotionally scar, you’re back on victim duty.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “I’ve always been on victim duty.”

“And you’re so good at it,” Dick teased, nudging him again.

Jason gave a tired grunt and gestured toward Damian without even turning his head. “Why not bully him instead?”

Across the room, the sound of pencil on paper stopped. Damian didn’t look up right away, but his body shifted, clearly tuned into the conversation. A half-second later, his eyes flicked upward, cool and calculating.

Dick’s face contorted into something close to horror. “Absolutely not. He’s more likely to bully me. That kid could emotionally kill me in under three sentences. Nope.”

Damian finally looked up, one brow raised, his smirk almost smug. “Like I would waste my efforts on you,” he said dryly, brushing eraser shavings off his page, some of which ‘accidentally’ flicked at Dick’s head.

Dick blinked, brushing them off with exaggerated disgust before turning to Jason with wide eyes that clearly screamed, 'You see what I deal with?'

Jason snorted, shaking his head. “You set yourself up for that.”

“I’m trying to be emotionally supportive,” Dick grumbled, dramatically slumping against the back of the couch. “And no one here appreciates my emotional labor.”

“Oh no,” Damian murmured, not even looking up from his drawing, “You? Seeking validation again? How novel.”

Dick clutched at his chest like he’d been stabbed, and Jason couldn’t help the quiet laugh that slipped out

Despite the banter, human extinction still haunted the room. It was a demon that they would one day work through and acknowledge, but that they would rather ignore for now. They had eternity, after all, and that meant plenty of time to push depressing thoughts away until. He would work through it eventually, and one day they would talk about it, maybe even get emotional. Not today, though.

He supposed this wasn’t too bad. It was near perfect, it was missing something, a person, but maybe that was okay. It was a bit boring to be around the same people all the time, but he supposed that was better than having something complete without any room to wish for more. It was nice, for once, to never be able to reach perfection in an aspect of his life.

–

A vampire wasn’t cursed or blessed, they were infected.

Vampirism, by its very nature, is insidious. Like a parasite, or more accurately a virus, it exists for one singular purpose: to replicate. To spread. To survive. It doesn't simply reside within a host, it inhabits them, twists them, immortalises them, reconfigures their instincts until the need to seek out new prey becomes as essential as breath once was. It wants to survive. Early vampiric scholars, before the internet made even arcane knowledge mundane, had described it as a sentient contagion, a self-aware plague that coaxes its host into action. The hunger was directive. A whisper beneath the skin, a pulse behind the eyes, a gnawing need that encouraged fangs to find flesh, to taste warmth, to turn the living into the eternal.

Bruce often found himself lost in that theory, particularly during the long, restless stretches of night when his fangs ached with no clear cause. He wondered, with a distant kind of numbness, whether that persistent ache was really purpose. Was this why he longed, almost obsessively, for some unsuspecting human to wander into his path? Was it vampirism nudging him to seek out new life, not simply to feed, but to share the curse? To propagate?

But even that thought felt incomplete. Deep down, Bruce knew it wasn’t just the hunger or the need to spread. He yearned for more than a victim. He craved a student. Someone fragile and curious, someone who would look up at him with wide, starstruck eyes as he explained the ancient, intricate systems of their kind, rituals, politics, power structures, forgotten histories. Information every vampire now had easy access to with a simple search query, but that few cared to internalize.

The internet, when finally adopted by vampiric society, had changed everything. Suddenly, centuries of oral lore and carefully guarded secrets were just…data. Accessible. Instant. The mystery, the intimacy of passing knowledge from elder to fledgling, was largely lost. And with endless time on their hands and limitless information available, even the most dim vampires eventually succumbed to boredom-fueled learning. Knowledge became commonplace. But understanding and reverence had become increasingly rare.

Bruce rubbed his temples as camera flashes assaulted his vision. Vampires. immortal, powerful, supposedly wise, had mastered the accumulation of information but forgotten the basics of civility. How had creatures that once moved in whispered secrecy become so invasive? Could they not understand what it meant to mourn?

He raised his hands, attempting to shield his face from the barrage of questions and lights.

“Yes, humans are extinct. No, I don’t believe there are any survivors. Yes, we’re reevaluating our funding strategies and resource allocations that were previously dedicated to human affairs,” he muttered, reciting the lines with the robotic cadence of someone who had repeated them too many times to count. The words tasted bitter now, meaningless, bureaucratic, and cold.

He slipped past the press and into the quieter confines of the meeting room, exhaling as the door clicked shut behind him. After so many centuries of watching the slow churn of justice and government, Bruce had grown impatient. Eventually, one either accepts the grinding pace of political machinery, or steps in to redirect its course. He had chosen the latter, becoming a politician not out of ambition, but out of sheer necessity.

He sank into his seat, its design regal but worn, and cast a glance around the polished chamber. The other members of the Vampiric Board sat in silence, poised and elegant, each representing some ancient bloodline or influential sect. He gave them a brief nod, a low grunt of acknowledgment, but they were already staring at him, eyes sharp with quiet expectation.

Unlike Bruce, they hadn’t felt the loss in the same way. Yes, they offered sympathy, as one might upon learning that the last of a majestic bird species had gone extinct. A passing sorrow, a nod to beauty now lost, but nothing more. Most of them had already turned a human before the end. They had tasted that bond, indulged in the transformative act, and sealed their legacy. Their grief was abstract. His was personal.

Because Bruce never got the chance.

And now there were no more chances left.

Clark had once spoken of Connor, his own turned, with such reverence that it bordered on worship. He would go on for hours, recounting the boy’s misadventures with an amused glint in his eye, pride softening his voice. Bruce, ever the grump, had feigned irritation at the endless stories, rolling his eyes at yet another anecdote about Connor’s latest blunder or bold insight. But privately, he had grown fond of the tales. He found himself internally smiling, even, though he would never admit it. There was something warm in those moments, something alive.

Then the false annoyance faded, and a real emotion took its place.

Envy.

It had crept up on him unexpectedly, like a shadow he had not noticed was his own. The realization struck him with uncomfortable clarity: he wanted what Clark had. Not the boy himself, but the bond. The connection. The legacy. He wanted to turn a human. To pass something on. To nurture and witness a transformation that was more than just biological.

That was the moment his perspective on humans started to change,

Now, sitting in the high chamber among the most powerful immortals in existence, Bruce felt the weight of that absence more than ever.

"Bruce," Clark said gently, his voice quieter than usual, measured. His eyes lingered on him with something between concern and familiarity. "Are you sure you want to be here?"

Bruce gave him a tired but appreciative glance. "I, out of all of us, was the most committed to human affairs," he said quietly. "If anyone should help decide what to do with their legacy, it's me."

Clark nodded, flipping through his notes, relieved not to have to press further. "All right. Human homes. Are we demolishing them?"

The words barely left his lips before Bruce was on his feet.

"What?" His voice interrupted, sharp and incredulous.

Diana, seated beside him, laid a calming hand on his shoulder. Her touch was cool and firm. He let out a heavy breath and reluctantly sank back into his seat.

"Bruce," Hal said gently, trying to soothe the sting, "you were the one who said we need to accept that they're gone. Vampires can't move on if the Earth is still littered with empty houses. They’re dead.”

Barry, seemingly unaware of the tension, chimed in with a grin. "And we can't forget about nature. I've been running projections. Knocking down human homes could create space for entire ecosystems to recover. Seriously, we're looking at hundreds of species being pulled back from the brink. Rewilding at a global scale. It would be historic."

Bruce was rarely sentimental. Centuries of life had a way of sanding down even the sharpest of emotions. Time eroded grief, dulled joy, made anger feel like a passing spark rather than a blaze. After so long, he no longer reacted with extremes. He simply observed and accepted. But this stirred something deeper. Something primal.

"This is all we have left of them," he said, his voice quiet and strained. "Their architecture. Their belongings. Their stories, embedded in the walls of their homes. If we wipe that away, we are erasing what little remains."

Clark spoke again before the silence could grow too heavy. "How about a compromise?" He looked around the room, then back to Bruce. "We keep what matters. Preserve items of historical or cultural value. Let vampires salvage what they want from homes, if they're sentimental. But the rest? The clutter, the decay, it's better to let it go."

Bruce opened his mouth, his eyes dark with protest, but Clark gave him a calm and steady look.

"We'll save what's worth saving," Clark continued. "But rotting food and crumbling apartments won't honor their memory. They'll just cause problems."

Bruce's jaw tensed, but he saw the sense in the argument. Slowly, reluctantly, he gave a single nod.

And so they called the vote.

Unanimous. Not a single voice opposed.

The age of humanity, its cities, its objects, its leftovers, was to be put to rest. Not with hatred, nor disdain, but with the solemnity of a final burial. Their legacy would be curated, preserved, and then allowed to slip into the soil, where new life might begin again.

–

Tim was starved.

For stimulation, for connection, for anything that might remind him that he was still alive and not just drifting through a prolonged, silent afterlife. Years had passed in his makeshift shelter, cobbled together from scavenged materials and decorated pretty from paint he had crafted from foraged plants, hidden away from a world that had either moved on without him or forgotten him entirely. His only company was the indifferent rhythm of nature, the occasional rustle of animals in the underbrush, the distant cry of birds that came and went with the seasons, and the slow decay of everything human he once knew.

At first, he had mourned, properly, deeply. He let the grief swallow days, then weeks, until time lost meaning. After the initial collapse of everything, he'd turned to the few possessions he had managed to hold onto: a stack of old books, worn at the spines from repeated readings, and a his little trusty device which clung onto the vampires internet services. For a while, he consumed knowledge voraciously, devouring documentaries, video essays, old forums, archives, and half-broken educational sites. He’d looped through subjects he never cared for in school, history, philosophy, physics, not because he needed to know, but because it gave him something to do.

But even learning, once his lifeline, began to stale. Without someone to challenge his ideas, to debate or joke with, without the sound of another voice offering insight or even distraction, knowledge felt empty, like reading a script to a play that would never be performed. He ached not just for information, but for interaction. It was connection he missed most. Learning with others, discovering alongside someone, the electric spark of curiosity that jumped between people when they solved something together, the praise from a teacher, those things couldn’t be replicated by silent screens or solitary thought.

Looking back, Tim realized how careless he had been with the life he once had. He had skipped school not because he disliked it, but because he had never understood its true value, its social value. If he could go back, he would absorb every word the teacher uttered attentively, he would sit next to classmates, speak up in discussions, try awkwardly to join in, even if he stumbled. He would try to make friends, however clumsy his attempts might be. He needed someone. Of course he knew it all, but that didn't matter.

The truth was, he never really had the chance to make any. A quiet kid, often overlooked, he had existed on the fringes, never disliked, but never truly known. And now, the world had taken even the possibility away from him.

Sometimes, in the long stretches of silence, Tim would wonder: was it worse to be completely alone, without a soul left to talk to, or to know that out there, somewhere, billions of people still lived their lives, but not a single one thought of you? Not with curiosity, not with concern, not even in passing. The ache of that thought, of being invisible among multitudes, was something even the silence couldn't match. He found comfort in this idea, that it was no longer his fault that he was so alone. He could displace the blame.

Except, of course, he had the vampires. Or, well, vampire. Ever since he realized that Bruce had been pulling strings to silently make his comments disappear, he grew frustrated, and eventually spiteful. How dare the man deprive him of this? Who was he to stop him from commenting on the vampire social media network?

Bruce's message still lingered, left on read.

It had been a week since the elder vampire had sent it, a week of agonizing over the words, of numbly reading them, and then growing enraged, his anger boiling. Why didn’t he believe him?

At long last, he messaged back.

Tim_the_human: Hi Bruce. Since you insist on ignoring my VERY REAL calls for help, I think it’s time you and I had a little chit chat. A heart to unbeating heart if you will. Have you ever considered that you never got to turn a human because you’re so obnoxious none of them even wanted to talk to you?

Was it vindictive? Yes. There was no denying that. But it wasn't cruelty that drove him. He wasn’t sadistic, that kind of violence had never interested him. What he wanted, more than anything, was something. A reaction. Some evidence that his actions still had the power to affect another person. After all, he had been starved of stimulation for far too long. Deprived not just of joy or novelty, but of the most basic kind of engagement.

The world had gone quiet, and in the silence, even the smallest provocation felt meaningful. He had grown hypersensitive, his mind raw from isolation and his emotions frayed at the edges. When you’re left alone long enough, even trivial slights feel like grave offenses, and fleeting moments of interest become temptations too strong to resist. And this man had just offended him.

He wouldn’t have done it under normal circumstances. Not if he had been healthy, not if he had been surrounded by others, not if he had been able to simply talk through his thoughts with someone who cared. But solitude corrodes judgment. And his thirst for interaction had twisted itself into something sharper, something irrational.

In the quiet echo chamber of his own mind, the idea had taken on a strange logic. A confrontation would be thrilling, maybe even cathartic. The man didn’t need to be hurt, just disrupted. Just shaken enough to remember what it was like to feel vulnerable. And in doing so, perhaps, Tim could remind himself that he still existed. That he still had reach. That he could still matter.

So yes, it was vindictive. But it was also the cry of a creature who had been alone for too long, reaching out in the only way he could.

He grinned upon seeing the man typing, typing, typing… seconds turned to minutes, to an hour, and he was still typing. He silently wondered if he was typing a massive wall of text, or if he was so befuddled he constantly had to delete and rewrite his message.

BruceWayne_Gotham: I am not in the mood to deal with this. Which coven are you from? I will be feeding this back to them.

Tim frowned. Where was the drama? The swearing? The paragraph he had sent last time? This wasn't what he wanted!

Tim_the_human: I’m NOT from a coven, I’m a human. I’m not surprised if you don’t know what one is, I would live under a rock too if I had your face.

He wondered if this was cyberbullying. Was he a cyberbully now? Was he cyber bullying his vampire idol?

Then, three dots appeared again.

Typing, typing, typing…

Tim was wounded. The man never replied, he left him on read.

Maybe, he thought, he would get some attention if he did something worse.

Maybe someone might actually notice him.

The idea didn’t come to him all at once. It slid in slowly, like a shadow stretching under the door, unwelcome, but not entirely unfamiliar. As the hours ticked by from his message, the read receipt taunting him, a seed was placed in his mind. He wasn’t proud of it, and he didn’t want to want it. But after so much time alone, the thought began to bloom like a corpse flower, a plant which smelled of rotten meat. He was disgusted by it, gagging at even the idea.

…He had become familiar to the smell, seeing the corpses of all of the humans, he felt so enraged. Rightfully so, infact. Considering the size of the population, vampires hadn't even disposed of every body yet, leading to several unpleasant encounters in his strolls.

He didn’t crave harm for harm’s sake. He wasn’t violent by nature. But he had learned, through painful observation, that kindness rarely earned attention. Politeness went unnoticed. Patience was invisible. You could sit quietly with your hands folded, asking nothing, demanding nothing, and still be forgotten. Still be left alone, like his parents did oh so often. He had been so good for them too. But cruelty? Cruelty had weight that could drag others down with him. The idea was weighing on his mind, too.

It pulled.

And he snapped.

Chapter Text

Perhaps he was being just a touch dramatic, Tim mused, his chin balanced lazily on his open palm as he gazed out of the window. Birds pecked at the small pile of nuts he’d gathered earlier on a walk, free and fulfilled in a way he had never quite managed to be. Then again, didn’t he have the right to be dramatic? He barely liked to admit it, but he knew he was clever. He had always been quiet, composed, sharp-eyed. He had to be. That’s what high society demanded , the well-mannered, carefully carved product of years of social refinement. Even now, utterly alone in a world that no longer belonged to his kind, his posture remained mostly upright, his hair meticulously neat.

And yet, something vile had always curled deep in his stomach, something coiled and hungry, clawing just beneath his skin. Not evil, exactly. Just suppressed. A need for chaos, stifled for so long it had begun to spread and multiply like bacteria. It was finally time to feed it.

School had, in many ways, dulled him. As much as he longed for the structure of his old life, it had always been mind-numbingly repetitive. His vision would blur, his mind drifting far from the present, escaping into fantasies where he wasn’t the polished, obedient student, but something more dangerous. In those daydreams, he would hack into the school’s systems, flooding the loudspeakers with hyperpop until his English teacher stopped droning about Macbeth and looked at him, really looked. Or maybe he’d build a small drone, use it to swipe trinkets from unsuspecting classmates and plant them in other students’ bags, then watched chaos erupt.

Of course, he never actually did any of that. He wouldn’t dare. He was perfect, after all, the ideal heir, the image everyone wanted to parade around like a prize.

But that didn’t mean he hadn’t indulged a little. Quietly. Privately. His bedroom was home to a cluttered, mostly forgotten collection of strange little creations. A deepfake generator, crafted to fake scandals that would never be published. A dog whistle, just outside human hearing range, though not outside the range of his calculus teacher’s hearing aids. A lockpicking set he never used. Just small things. Nothing that ever left the confines of his mind and desk.

Until now.

For the first time in his life, Tim realized with startling clarity, there were no rules anymore. The vampires had made it very clear: unless humanity threatened the wider world, they would not interfere. They barely intervened in global wars, let alone personal grievances. And now, with him being the last human left, there was no one to punish him. No expectations. No one to impress. The laws had crumbled. All that remained was… him.

He could do anything.

And it hit him with the force of a freight train.

His chest tightened, and laughter rose before he could stop it. It was quiet at first, then louder, more unhinged, until it rang out sharp and wild, like wind chimes in a storm. The birds outside startled and scattered into the trees.

He didn’t care.

He didn’t need to be good anymore. Or respectable. Or perfect. For the first time in his life, he was truly, viscerally free. Free to tear down everything they’d built, and to do it with a smile.
He wouldn’t hurt them. Not in a way they could trace. At least, not until he had had a bit of fun. No, his weapon would be subtle, a whisper in their pristine system, a ghost in the machine. He would unmake them with doubt. Break their rhythm.

The following days passed in a blur. He hunted through the streets humanity has abandoned, scavenging scraps of broken tech, wires, circuit boards, gutted laptops, anything he could bend to his will. His hands shook with anticipation, his heart pounded against his ribs. Let them see him. Let them wonder. There was no image to maintain anymore.

Eventually, he was ready.

He started small, just enough to chip away at Bruce’s certainty. He wanted him to be paranoid. After all, vampires lived and died by routine. Without it, what were they? With time as endless as theirs, structure was the only thing anchoring them to reality.

So he tampered with Bruce’s calendar, inserted meaningless appointments, cryptic celebrations, deadlines that never existed. Nothing obvious. Just subtle distortions in the order Bruce depended on.
And he watched the fallout through their disgracefully unsecured camera system.

Bruce sat alone in the meeting room, visibly thrown. The calendar clearly listed a session for this time, on this date. He had read it several times over, annoyed at being called in on his rare day off. But no one came. Hours passed. He didn’t complain, he had endless time, after all, but something bothered him. A crack in the gears.

Tim stifled a laugh, eyes glued to the screen.

Next, he escalated. Vampires were exquisitely sensitive to both temperature and sound. So he bumped the building’s internal temperature just slightly above normal. Then introduced a barely-audible
high-frequency tone into the speakers.

Bruce frowned. Adjusted his collar. Glanced around the room like he was searching for a buzz he couldn’t quite place. Something felt off, though he couldn’t say what. Another tiny fracture.
And the days kept coming. More phantom meetings. Missed deadlines. Bruce began arriving to work looking harried, red-eyed, hastily apologizing to colleagues who hadn’t even expected him. Nobody understood what was going on, but the tension in the building was growing thick. People snapped faster. Disagreements dragged on. And no one could pinpoint why.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

It was entertaining, sure, watching Bruce unravel thread by thread. But Tim hadn’t started this just for fun. He wanted to be seen. Recognized. He deserved it, after all.

So he made a decision.

He would be bolder.

—

Bruce exhaled slowly, a rare frown tugging at his brow, the kind of expression that had grown nearly extinct along with humanity. He wasn’t used to confusion anymore. Not in this world. Not after all that had happened. Life had been strange when humans were still around. Odd, volatile creatures, like soft, endearing Mogwai with a tendency to transform into gremlins when left unsupervised. He’d never been able to decide if he loved them for their chaos or loathed them for it. Perhaps both.

It had fallen to him to correct them. Not as Bruce Wayne, esteemed elder of the Wayne vampire coven, that would’ve been a scandal in and of itself. Vampires weren’t supposed to meddle in human affairs. It was a law they took seriously, as it ensured compliance and peace with the human governments.

So instead, he put on a mask and called himself Batman. A brooding, faux-mortal figure operating under human limitations. An illusion. But it worked. He hunted criminals in the shadows, a creature of justice among mortals. Eventually, others followed, first Dick, light-footed and loyal as Robin, then Jason, who passed the mantle reluctantly to Damian, their latest addition.

And that, putting on the mask, normalising it, that had been his first, and greatest, mistake.

Because others took note. Vampires began to copy him, but without the same principles. They created alter egos not to protect, but to torment. They wore their disguises like masks at a masquerade, skirting the very laws Bruce had bent with such caution. Soon, he found himself humanity’s last line of defense. A role he’d never asked for but couldn’t abandon. Others stood with him, like Clark, occupied in different cities, but the damage had already spread, ravishing the whole world.

Some had reasons. Ivy, for instance, had always loved the planet more than its people. After millennia of watching humans poison the earth she revered, her retaliation was… inevitable. She didn’t care that it was illegal. Bruce had to stop her anyway.

But the real horror began when the wrong person was turned.

Turning was a delicate process. Vampires were selective, cautious. Turning someone forcibly, without care, without preparation, was seen as an abomination. Dangerous. Newly-turned fledglings required years of care, guidance, and discipline.

One man, Bruce never learned his true name, had been turned against his will and abandoned. A reckless, unstable human to begin with, his transformation only deepened the cracks already spidering through his mind. Left alone, untrained and unmoored, he spiraled.

And became the Joker.

That horrific grin, wide enough to split his face in two, still clawed its way into Bruce’s dreams, curling at the corners like something half-sentient, always smiling, always watching. His cheeks, flushed a grotesque rose-red, had the sickly sheen of feverish glee, as if his skin could barely contain the madness roiling beneath. And that hair, that obscene, electric green hair. It wasatted and curling like algae left too long in stagnant water, always slick, always wrong. It never moved like hair should.

Bruce could still remember the first time he saw him smile after the turn, fangs poking from a smile that didn’t belong to any sentient being, more like it was etched onto a mask of skin he had sewn onto his face. There was something inherently broken in the way his mouth hung open, the way laughter poured out of him like bile, like something his body needed to expel or drown in. It was joy weaponized.

And the eyes. God, the eyes. Glassy and bloodshot, ringed with purple bruises and hollowed. They were soulless. They shimmered with an unholy light, not the soft red gleam of a vampire’s power, but something else entirely. Something feral.

Bruce often jolted awake with phantom laughter echoing in his ears, high-pitched, grating, so gleeful it bordered on the inhuman. There were nights he swore he could smell the burnt sugar stench of scorched skin and carnival smoke.

At first, the damage was chaotic, but manageable. Villainous, yes, but within the realm of clean-up. He killed indiscriminately, destroyed with glee. And Bruce followed close behind, always a few steps behind, always repairing what he could.

Then he escalated beyond the point of recovery.

It started with coordinated chemical attacks, poison in the water systems, the crops, the livestock. Deadly gas pumped into open spaces, making the very air itself treacherous.
Humans died by the billions before the vampires even knew what was happening. Six billion lives lost in mere days.

Vampires moved fast after that. Emergency food stores were distributed. Bottled water. Rations of cans. Survivors were gathered into small camps, monitored carefully, partly for safety, partly to keep grief from swallowing them whole.

But the Joker found them. Of course he did. And in hindsight, gathering everyone in one place had been a fatal mistake. He orchestrated a simultaneous bombing of all 195 human camps, with help from other vampires who shared his hatred for humans, he wiped them out in a single day.

For a time afterward, they clung to hope. Maybe there were others out there, unaccounted for, hidden away. And a few did surface. Briefly. But they died too. Hunger. Poisoned. Murder.
After that, the world went quiet.

The silence stretched on, long and unbroken. Time passed in stillness. Days bled into years. Without humans, life lost its tension.

And Bruce… drifted.

Things had once been vibrant. Difficult, yes, infuriating at times, but interesting. The kind of mess you could do something about.

Then it ended

…

So why now, all of a sudden, did everything feel wrong again? Why this creeping sense of disorder? Of mounting stress? It was too familiar, the same prickling instinct he used to get when something in Gotham tilted sideways. When the humans were acting up again.

Something was off

Despite the unease curling in his gut, Bruce couldn’t deny it, a part of him stirred with something dangerously close to excitement. It was faint, dormant for years, and unfamiliar in its return. Like the flicker of an old engine stuttering back to life, the sensation left him uneasy. It was the same anticipation he used to feel in the early days, back when the city still crackled with unpredictability, when justice was a tangible, thrilling pursuit instead of this slow, administrative suffocation. He had thought himself long past such things, the sudden jolts, the puzzles, the pursuit, but the thrum in his chest said otherwise. Something was happening. Something real.

At first, he’d dismissed the calendar anomalies as clerical mistakes, irritating but ultimately mundane. Admin errors happened, even in a near-immortal bureaucracy. He tried to ignore them, rationalise the inconsistencies as someone lower down the chain inputting data incorrectly. But the inconsistencies persisted, multiplied, until his once-flawless schedule was flooded with nonsense. Meetings with people who didn’t exist. Appointments with no listed purpose. Notes scrawled in a tone that felt almost…mocking. He stared at the calendar for longer than he cared to admit, searching for logic in the disarray. That’s when it struck him: these weren’t system errors. Someone was doing this manually. Someone was interfering.

Irritated but unwilling to show it, Bruce made the executive decision to abandon the digital calendar altogether, a move he despised. He didn’t like disruption. He loathed unpredictability. But more than that, he hated being toyed with.

He hadn’t yet connected the dots. The temperature fluctuations, the persistent high-frequency noise that ghosted the edges of his hearing, the subtle agitation rippling through his coworkers, he chalked it all up to external factors. Nothing deliberate. Nothing coordinated. And yet, the sense of disorder pressed tighter around his temple each day, a pressure he couldn’t quite name.

Unbeknownst to him, Tim watched all of it unfold. Quietly, gleefully. Observing the first cracks form in the pristine façade of Bruce’s composure, noting each frown, each sigh, each slip in the routine. He wasn’t ready to reveal himself, not yet. There was more fun to be had first. But the fact was he didn’t want to be noticed this early at all. He was still human, however, arrogant, intelligent, but still different to a vampire. He wasn’t familiar enough with their day-to-day life to blend in.

Then came the emails.

He had decided, Ah, screw it. He’d already been noticed, why not torment him more overtly now?

They started off sporadic. A few curious messages here and there, all from burner accounts, weird names he didn’t recognise, addresses that couldn’t be traced. Some were benign. Vampires requesting minor assistance, clarification on laws, appeals for support. Bruce, always efficient, responded to those with his usual clipped professionalism. Others were critical, pointing out flaws in the legal system he had spent centuries building. He didn’t mind those so much either. They were helpful, even. He made note of the suggestions, revised policies, and thanked the anonymous sender. He assumed they were just passionate citizens. That was, until the volume shifted.

Suddenly, his inbox was overflowing. What began as five or six manageable emails became hundreds, then thousands. All hours of the night. Messages layered with sarcasm, faux sincerity, and increasingly elaborate taunts. Some were short and cruel. Others were long-winded monologues on philosophy, law, and entropy. His filters failed to catch them. They were too cleverly coded. His aides were no help; they assumed it was a systemic error, a virus perhaps, but they had no leads. And Bruce could barely do his job. He couldn’t find the real messages anymore. Couldn’t respond to anything urgent. His productivity plummeted, and people were beginning to notice.

A week in, he figured it out. It wasn’t a swarm. It was a single person. The writing style was consistent, all of it came from one source. One mind. A mind that was clever, deliberate, and obsessive.

So he replied.

His fingers hovered above the keys longer than necessary, unsure of what tone to strike, unwilling to play into a game he didn’t yet understand. But something needed to be said. A message sent, a line drawn. Eventually, he typed:

‘Dear whoever you are,
I do not know why you are doing this, but you have my attention. Please explain what you would like, and I will see what I can do.
Sincerely,
B Wayne.’

It was curt, colder than most of his correspondence. He stared at the message for a moment longer, then hit send. A sigh escaped him as he leaned back in his chair, head tilting toward the ceiling as if searching for answers up in the concrete. This wasn’t how he liked to work, but there was something oddly nostalgic about it. He hated that part of him felt…alive again.

Not far away, Tim grinned. Bruce had noticed him. Him. Out of everyone, the unshakable Bruce Wayne had stopped and written back.

His heart thrummed.

He was seen.

Meanwhile, Bruce was quietly considering whether or not he was a villain.

–

Technically speaking, Alfred had retired from his duties as a butler quite some time ago. Not that anyone would believe it. He had once served Martha and Thomas Wayne with quiet precision and unwavering loyalty, though even then, he’d always intended for it to be more than just a job. That’s why he’d taken the post in the first place. When the time was right, he would have offered them the change, immortality. He simply hadn’t accounted for human fragility.

Their deaths had left a hollowness he couldn’t quite name, but the decision to turn their son had come easily, almost instinctively. He would not lose another Wayne.
Since then, his role had shifted, less servant, more guardian. And whilst he had no obligation to, he still did his old duties, tethered by affection and a quiet sense of duty. After all, they still had needs, and that was all the reason he required.

Especially Damian.

Young by vampire standards, Damian had yet to shed his human edges. Where the others had dulled and smoothed over time, Damian remained sharp, imperfect in a way that made Alfred inexplicably fond of him. The boy still frowned when he concentrated. Still insisted on doing things the hard way.

Tonight was one of the rare, quiet ones.

Bruce was out, investigating something he’d been characteristically vague about. Jason and Dick had gone off on one of their late-night escapades, exploring the ruins of old human towns, looking for lost trinkets to rescue before the demolition teams arrived. That left the manor still and calm, its silence wrapping around the drawing room like a warm blanket.

Candles flickered lazily in their holders, casting soft shadows across the floor. Damian sat cross-legged on the rug, a needle and thread in hand as he tried to repair a tear in his old Robin uniform. A moth had gotten to the sleeve.

The uniform hadn’t been worn in years, there were no more villains terrorizing humans because there were simply none to terrorise, no children to protect, but it still mattered to him. It was a part of who he had been. Of who he still was, perhaps.

The fabric was thick and unforgiving, and Damian’s stitches were uneven, his jaw tight as he pulled the thread through. His brow was furrowed, expression one of deep offense, as though the fabric itself had betrayed him.

Alfred watched from his usual armchair, sipping from a fine porcelain cup. He didn’t say anything at first. He rarely did when Damian was working like this. But eventually, when the boy let out a low, frustrated sigh and set the uniform down with a quiet thud, Alfred finally spoke.

“I could do it for you, if you’d like,” he offered, voice gentle, not looking up from his tea.

“I know,” Damian replied simply, and picked the garment back up again.

Alfred didn’t press. That was the unspoken agreement. When Damian insisted on doing something himself, it had to be left alone. He had been raised to believe effort was the only acceptable apology, that mistakes were meant to be mended with discipline and sweat. Alfred wouldn’t rob him of that process, not when it seemed to bring him a strange sort of peace.

The moment remained still for some time, until the front doors creaked open and soft footsteps echoed through the manor. Bruce entered, shoulders heavy with exhaustion.

Alfred raised a brow and gestured toward the empty seat across from him. “Master Bruce,” he greeted warmly. “Come sit down. You look like death.”

Bruce sighed and sank into the cushions with something between a groan and a grunt. “Alfred.”

“What’s troubling you?” Alfred asked, voice kind but undeniably curious.

Bruce frowned, almost childishly, and rubbed at his temples. “There’s… someone tampering with my work,” he muttered. “I think it’s a new villain. Or maybe an old one. I don’t know. Everything’s just… off.”

Damian, still focused on his stitching, didn’t miss a beat. “Messing with your work? How devious. How dastardly. Truly, the pinnacle of evil,” he said, tone perfectly deadpan.

Alfred clicked his tongue. “Now, now, Damian. His work means quite a lot to him. So, what are you planning to do about it, sir?”

Bruce exhaled slowly. “For now, just… track them down. Try to get a sense of who they are. But if they keep pushing, I might have to bring Batman back.”

That got Damian’s attention. His head snapped up, eyes sharp with interest. “Does that mean I can be Robin again?”

Bruce glanced at him, amused. He reached out and ruffled Damian’s hair, “If it comes to that, champ… Sure, of course. You’re back in.”

Damian’s mouth twitched into the faintest of smiles.

Alfred watched them with a fondness he didn’t bother hiding. The world may have changed, but he was happy in his little world.

–

Tim decided, just for the fun of it, he would message Bruce again on his social media account.

Tim_the_human: Hi, it’s rude to not reply, you keep doing that. But okay, if you won’t offer me help, I’ll accept that you’re just a horrible person who won’t feed a poor orphaned human child. ):

BruceWayne_Gotham: You’re the same person sending the emails, aren’t you? Spam and hate were tolerable, but pretending to be human is going too far. Please respond to my most recent email with your demands.

He frowned. Not the response he wanted.

Tim changed his username to ‘Bruce Wayne hater.' and decided to use it to slander his name. He sent the deep fakes he had prepared over the past few days of 'Bruce' saying terrible things, how he was glad humans were gone.

It became too much.

BruceWayne_Gotham: Stop. Just reply to my email, please.

Bruce_Wayne_hater: fine.

Chapter Text

A quiet ping signaled a reply to his email.

“Mr. Wayne, if I did want something, would you actually give it to me? Or are you just trying to distract me until I get bored and quit?
– T.”

Bruce read the email once, and then again. His entire body stiffened, breath held and shoulders squared. The screen’s pale glow reflected off his features, sharpening the grim line of his mouth. If his heart had still been beating, it might have stuttered. The message was so brief, hardly anything to evoke such rage inside of him, but he knew. He wasn’t seriously inquiring about anything, he was taunting him. He had come to understand a few quirks of the man since they first started their back and forth, and he knew beyond reasonable doubt that he was not the type to negotiate. All the same, he replied.

“That depends. Is it something reasonable?
– B.”

He knew it wouldn’t be reasonable. Of course it wouldn’t. Nothing about this individual had been even remotely reasonable. Weeks of chaos, interference, needling disruptions of daily order, this wasn’t someone looking for peace. He’d long since abandoned the polite language he afforded the public. This person didn’t get “Kind regards” or “Sincerely.” Just clipped, begrudging replies. In a way, that was a kind of intimacy. He never dropped formality for people he didn’t think mattered.
The reply came almost instantly.

“Hm… what if I asked you to build a huge statue of me in your manor? And leave it offerings every day? Like i’m a god :) Would you do that? Or is the budget a little tight?
-T.”

Bruce’s jaw clenched, teeth grinding just enough to draw a pointed glance from Alfred across the room. The butler said nothing, merely observed with deliberate calm. On the sofa nearby, Jason leaned toward Dick and muttered something gleefully conspiratorial behind one hand. They were gossiping about him
And he knew that this individual was trying to evoke a response, he wouldn't submit to that.

“This is not a game. Serious requests only.
– B.”

A pause. Then:

“Then why are you still playing?
– T.”

Bruce exhaled slowly, resisting the urge to throw the phone across the room. It was a childish impulse, one he hadn’t indulged since Gotham still buzzed with traffic and the sky wasn’t quite so quiet. But the question lingered.

Why was he still playing?

No, no. He wasn’t humoring ‘Tim.’ he was maintaining control. He couldn’t let this spiral out of hand, couldn’t let this presence wedge itself any deeper into his beautiful peace. He was doing the responsible thing.

Without a word, Alfred appeared at his side, moving with the practiced grace of a man who’d navigated centuries of crises without once spilling the tea. He set a porcelain cup gently on the table and
placed one hand, warm and steady, on Bruce’s shoulder. The message was unspoken but clear, and Bruce was eternally grateful for him.

Bruce took the cup, wrapping his hands around the warmth without making a move to drink it. He stared into the tea instead, watching his reflection ripple with the steam. He looked… older. Harsher. Like something that had been chiseled out of stone and left to weather.

Jason and Dick stood up without being asked. “We’ll go,” Dick said quietly. “Let you think.”

Alfred lowered himself into the seat opposite Bruce with the ease and grace of an elder vampire. He was, after all, far more ancient than Bruce.

Eventually, Bruce spoke.

“…Why is he like this?” His voice was quiet, unguarded in a way that was rare. “I’ve faced sociopaths, megalomaniacs. But this one, he’s something else. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want blood. He doesn’t want recognition. He wants my time. Why?”

Alfred didn’t answer.

Bruce stood, too agitated to sit still. He began pacing, walking around the room with a petulant scowl. He had only met one villain like this before, but he didn’t want to think about that laugh, not right now. “Maybe he’s just bored. Maybe immortality finally cracked him. Maybe I should offer him a position on the council and let him argue constructively. Would that fix it? Would that make it worse?”
He walked around the room.

He was spiraling, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop. His routine had been eroded piece by piece, and with it, his composure. The calendar disruptions, the sensory manipulation, the messages, they were intentional. A campaign of psychological torture. And Bruce, for all his discipline, was reacting exactly how Tim wanted him to.

Alfred let him rant.

Then, when Bruce finally paused to breathe, Alfred spoke.

“If I may, Master Bruce… it’s been a long time since you looked this alive.”

Bruce stopped moving.

He turned. His expression was unreadable.

“…That’s not funny,” he said.

“I wasn’t joking.”

Bruce stared at him.

Then, reluctantly, against his own better judgment, against every instinct that told him to remain composed, Bruce laughed.

It wasn’t loud or fully formed, just a small, startled sound, brief and breathy, torn from somewhere deep in his chest like it had been trapped there for decades, buried under layers of discipline and grief. It slipped out before he could smother it, before he could remember that he wasn’t supposed to feel amused.

His hand came up automatically, like he might catch the sound midair and shove it back inside.

But it was too late.

The corner of his mouth betrayed him next, tugging upwards in a crooked, involuntary twitch that made him look almost human again. It felt like something older, rawer, more complicated. A man who had known loss intimately, who had carved order out of chaos and now found himself almost missing the chaos.

He glanced down into his tea again, as if the swirling amber liquid might hold an answer to a question he hadn’t let himself ask. And then, softly, more to himself than to Alfred, but not so quiet it couldn’t be heard, he said:

“…It is nice,”

A pause, long enough to carry weight.

“To have a change of pace.”

The words hung there in the silence between them.

They were a truce, really, between the man he was and the boy he used to be. The boy who had once chased shadows through alleys for the thrill of it. The man who had buried that boy in endless responsibility. And now, the version of him that was quietly crawling back to the surface, rescued by someone clever enough to play with him.

“What does this say about the world we’ve built, Alfred?” He questioned quietly, “Are we doing everything wrong?”
___

Tim was startled to receive a message. It was on his social media, not his email anymore. Somehow, it felt more personal that way, like a knock on a door instead of a letter slipped under it. The screen’s light flickered against his face as the messages appeared.

BruceWayne_Gotham: I don’t know what you want, or what I can actually give you. However, you have my time. Would you like a chat?
His mouth went dry. The usual fire inside him, the defiance, the bravado, felt strangely muted, as if the words reached a place he wasn’t used to exposing.

Then, almost too quickly:

Bruce_wayne_hater: I would, actually.

The silence that followed was weighty. No flashing cursor, no typing dots. Just a quiet stillness that pressed in on him.

Finally, he prompted him again.

Bruce_wayne_hater: Did you ever actually care about humans?

The question hung there.

BruceWayne_gotham: With all my heart.

He stared at the screen, a chill running down his spine.

Bruce_wayne_hater: Then why won’t you help me?

The words stabbed sharper than any accusation or threat he’d thrown before.

BruceWayne_gotham: You are not human. If you were, and please do not take any offence to this, there is no way you would be this sane. Humans need companionship, and it has been years since they officially went extinct. You would be inconsolable.

Tim’s fingers trembled slightly, but the next message came fast.

Bruce_wayne_hater: This is the internet, you have no idea how I truly feel.

And then, silence again.

Tim waited, heart pounding.

After what felt like an eternity, he typed again, unsure if it was courage or desperation.

Bruce_wayne_hater: If you did find out I was human, would you care for me?

Almost instantly, the answer came.

BruceWayne_Gotham: I would. You would be the most spoilt human to ever exist. But unfortunately, you aren’t. Do you truly believe that you are? It would be foolish to hope, but I cannot fault you for your own delusions. We can offer you treatment though.

Tim’s breath hitched. The screen was cold and silent now, but in the quiet room around him, something shifted. He felt exposed in a way that terrified him.

BruceWayne_Gotham: You know, you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not to be cared for. Do you not have a coven? If you really wanted company you are very welcome to apply for the Council. I would accept someone with your intellect, you would be an asset to vampire-kind
This was possibly the first compliment he had had in a long time.

Bruce_wayne_hater: Thank you, but humans can’t be on any vampiric authority boards.

BruceWayne_Gotham: Very well, if you still want to pretend, you may. I’ll be patient. Just know I am here, and you have earnt a fraction of my time. Use it as you please.
Tim continued to stare at the screen for a long time after the messages stopped, breath hitched, body frozen. He realised reluctantly he was shaking. The last message stuck there like a thread unpulled and by god did he want to tug and tug until nothing was left, until Bruce’s intentions were completely exposed to him. He told himself it was surrender, a white flag disguised as civility, but part of him feared it wasn’t surrender at all. It was a trap lined with warmth.

But all the same…

He had won.

And he really should have felt smug about it. His clever schemes, they all worked, they did what he wanted them to. But the part of him that had danced around firewalls gleefully now felt burnt, shrivelled up and no longer truly there. Because this had been a game to him, he never actually wanted to reach a satisfying outcome, he just wanted to play, to be entertained. And like that, the brief glimmer of catharsis extinguished, and he was left empty again. He never had a goal, he wanted to unmake the man but he did not have any intentions for what to do next.

Instead of the harsh words of challenge he was after, the words on the screen were too soft.

He shut the laptop gently, not wanting to shatter the fragile connection they had established together. As he leaned back in his chair, it groaned beneath his wait, scraping against the floor with a gentle scree, before the room was completely silent again.

What now?

Bruce hadn’t called him a threat like he was egging him too, he wasn’t in some interrogation room, staring into batmans cowl like he had been desperate for. He had wanted to be seen, but he wasn’t ready to be understood. He wanted to remain like priceless art, there to watch and admire but not to be torn apart so viciously. Because Bruce hadn’t threated him like a criminal, he had spoken to him like he was a person, and he just wasn’t sure if he considered himself one anymore.

A small voice in his head whispered, taunting him, telling him that this was the truth threat. Batman never killed his enemies, he knew really that ‘super villains’ were just a ruse for vampires who skirted the lines of the law, they couldn't be killed or locked up forever. No, he talked them down, made them into what he wanted them to be, rehabilitated them and even offered them real power, just like he had for Tim. And this was worse, so much worse.

He stood abruptly, knocking over the chair. It clattered to the floor behind him with a sharp crack that startled even him. His chest was tight.

He shouldn’t have asked that question. ‘If you did find out I was human, would you care for me?’It had slipped out. Like a child asking a ghost if it could be their friend. Like someone reaching across a burning bridge and pretending it hadn’t already crumbled.

He dragged both hands through his hair and let out a dry, mirthless laugh. “God, I’m pathetic.”

That had never been part of the plan.

Nowhere in that list had he accounted for what would happen if Bruce Wayne had started to like him. Had started to play his game too. He should have known really, that the man wouldn’t be an innocent victim.

Even worse, maybe Tim was starting to like him back. He wanted to indulge, to reply and have long intellectual conversations with someone who for once had more knowledge than he did. He had never had that dynamic and he knew it was what he needed. But was it what he wanted? He did not know, he was a clever little human that could unravel the mysteries of the world but he had never learnt to understand himself. He had always been too compliant to his parents wishes, never introspective because whenever he tried (like this) he always fell apart, wishing he hadn’t.

He sank to the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up. The quiet hum of servers throbbed in the background. Each beat was steady. He closed his eyes, and saw the words again. He pressed into his sockets, causing himself to see stars, but he couldn’t get rid of them, they were seared too deeply into his memory to ever forget.

‘With all my heart.'

'You would be the most spoilt human to ever exist.'

'You have earnt a fraction of my time.’

He should stop. He had to stop. He wanted that more than he could possibly comprehend, but his body rejected the notion, he was so desperately lonely that he had adapted, with isolation now being his comfort.

A new voice in his head started to whisper, still harsh. What if he didn’t stop?

Before he had time to reflect on that thought, another message popped up

BruceWayne_Gotham: but don’t think that means I won't stop hunting for you. I’ll find you one day, whether that means you turning yourself in or me dragging you from your coven and forcing you into a mature conversation. Stop this chaos, and perhaps I'll go easy.

He smiled, a mix between amusement and relief. Perhaps all hope wasn’t lost. He could still harass him, it would just be different. His blade wouldn't aim to cut quite so deep, simply caress and draw blood. Because really, he was the monster in a world of monsters, he was the only one causing mayhem and disruption after centuries of vampires doing the same. And he accepted that, he embraced it, he wouldn’t change because an olive branch was passed his way. At least, he wouldn’t wholly change, but he could be softer. Still wield his weapon, but make it a butter knife, not an obsidian blade.

He changed his username.

Darkseeker_01: Maybe I want you to find me.

He never clicked send.

He didn't hear the rustle of hedgehogs outside, the tiny mechanical whir lost under the hum. He wasn’t watching his back anymore.