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. He was even only 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 the old, musty books, letting out that classic ‘book smell’ which Tim had learnt was chemical degradation. It was messy, disorganised, chaos. To match, 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.
“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, tech. There’s none.”
Jason’s gaze turned defensive, turning to look at him. “So? What if you missed 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.”
Jason 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, frowning deeply “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.” 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.”
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 back.