Heartbeat
The heart of his city beats fierce and tempting below him. He hears it, always hears it. Never leaving him alone, it mocks his yearning teeth that ache for its taste. Fangs bared without even realizing it, he steels himself against the action.
Once again, for the thousandth time of his existence, he resists the urge to sink below the depths of blood. The rotten desire is staved off, for now.
A creature like him shouldn't face this inner torment, night after bloody night.
He should by all rights be out there, with the others of his kind, indulging his wicked thirst for the wine that fills all men's veins. Countless more have fallen, just as he is perpetually on the edge of doing. So many have given in to the bloodlust, and perhaps lost their minds in the process.
But not Bruce. He is different than the rest, if for no other reason than because he is so very similar, save for one glaring discrepancy.
He tends to wall away the memories of his past life. His only real life, he supposes; for now, he is not alive. Not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway. The others have all done the same – one, in particular, insists his time before being fatefully bitten never existed, and makes up the most outlandish of stories about it every night.
And the worst part is, it lures people in. Mortal folk want to hear the tragic story of how their simple fellow among them got bitten by a vampire, and transformed beyond recognition into one himself. Changed forever, immortal in the annals of time, and destined to seek blood evermore. All due to one unlucky bad day.
But none of his stories matter. They hold no value to him, or to the rest of time. All that matters is the magic spell they seem to work on people, as they draw closer and closer, utterly entranced by the chords his words have struck in their hearts, only to cease their heartbeats forever as he sinks his yellowed fangs and paints them red in the ocean of their jugular veins, laughing in ecstasy at the taste of his chosen drug. A few, like the unfortunate lawyer and the even more unfortunate psychiatrist, survive and become vampires themselves. The rest – so many more – do not.
Bruce will happen upon another of this demon's victims tonight. He feels it in the wind that sighs with a distant laughter, in the chill he barely remembers he can still feel, in the solid weight of his bones that move only due to his heightened mind's command. This paranormal intuition is one of the many gifts of becoming a creature such as him. He has grown accustomed to utilizing this semi-foresight; the dramatically increased strength, speed, and agility; the keen sight, hearing, and scent of the perverse predator he has become. His mind has become a calculating one, every detail rendering itself useful to his keen intellect.
It is his chosen duty to use his mind and prowess to his current goals, instead of the murderous intentions of those like him. The answer of why chases him around his memories, through every defense he puts up to shut the pain out.
It would have been a tragic story, just as much as any that he would conjure up on a nightly basis. A little eight-year-old boy, son of the wealthy aristocrats, out for a stroll at night. Rogue vampire catches them, can't control his bloodthirst. Ends the two parents' lives instantly, maims the boy in the neck and leaves, sated for the moment.
But the venom hadn't finished him as it had his parents, nor had it transformed him as it had countless others. He became the poster child of the one person whose life the vampires' poison had spared.
He had been – and still is – the first human mortal to make a full recovery from a vampire attack.
…or so everyone thinks.
No one but he had noticed, as well as perhaps his faithful servant. But over the years he felt the changes beginning, creeping into his conscience. The lust for blood was burgeoning in his throat. Fangs could be unsheathed from his gums. A new power in his body became apparent with each passing day.
And finally, when he had come of age, he secretly and anonymously took to the night with newly-fledged wings spread wide, ready for his prey.
But not to kill. And not to poison.
The drive was certainly there, constantly lurking underneath it all. He had to swallow it down again with more forceful determination each time it gathered its strength in his teeth. But never did he succumb to the siren call of another's ebbing pulse. It was this anomalous behavior that his reputation in the city nights was mounted on: he was, and would always be, the one vampire who never killed.
No one knew why, except for him. For it bit back a throbbing reminder every minute of his existence, though many times he found himself trying to ignore it.
He didn't kill, and didn't succumb, because he was still alive himself.
At least, somewhat. It certainly seemed many times that his heart was a dead weight in his chest, but when he least expected it, when he felt on the verge of betraying his long-sworn vow to never take a mortal's life – it beat. Maybe just once, maybe only a single flutter of a heartbeat, but there it was. And due to his heart's stubborn continuation, he could never in good conscience satisfy the desire of that other nature of his that clashed so recklessly with his living part.
Never to kill, and never to be satisfied. Such was the semi-life he was cursed to. Forever. Who knew if he would ever die, or if he would one day cease movement altogether and just lay in a coffin, unmoving but for that intolerable, unyielding telltale heart. But one thing he knew, that whether his body would live on or not, his name around the city streets – his symbol – would never die. In that element, he was truly an immortal. Incorruptible. Everlasting.
The wind picks up with its stench of fresh meat – fresh death – and he wrinkles his nose at the familiar aroma. Taking to flight, he leaps off the building and his arms-turned-wings blot out the heavens above him as he makes a course for the recent kill.
He knows who it is – those who say that vampires can tell the future aren't far away from the truth. The problem is, in not truly being an immortal creature of nightmare, he is not as nearly in tune with the currents of change as his rivals are. They can sniff out the dangers and opportunities much quicker than he, and arrive on the scene half an hour before him if they have a mind to. They surpass him as well in natural strength and speed – only his iron dedication to destroying the heathens that ravage his city has put him ahead of, or at least on equal footing with, the rest of them.
But what defeats them most of all is their fear of him.
Few realize that vampires can still feel certain emotions, but even as he changed over the years he still knew those faculties were intact. But fear is the feeling that takes over where compassion diminishes in the soul of the transformed, and it is this primal terror that he draws from to give him the greatest advantage over his opponents. They fear the great demi-vampire, The Traitor of Our Kind, The Mortals' Champion, and the threat he poses to their existence.
They are the ones who fear his fangs, not mortals.
All of them…but one.
And he is the one that has killed the three girls Bruce descends upon now. His rank stench is everywhere upon their still forms. They weren't lucky enough to stay alive long enough for the transformation. But, judging from their faces still frozen in agony, their murderer kept them alive long enough to feel the venom's worst pains before the end.
There is barely any blood left in them. He likes to take his time with them even after his victims' blood stops squirting out in steady lulls and spurts. These girls are shrunken and pale. No more liquid leaks from the ravaged sets of holes on their prominently exposed necks and eyes. Oh yes, the freak even prefers to pierce his fangs into their eyes, and laugh horrendously as blood and vitreous humor swell like blasphemous tears.
It is moments like this that Bruce's heart likes to assert its existence, and beats rapid and hollow in his chest as he walks closer to the three prepubescent girls' sorry remains.
"Beautiful, wouldn't you say?"
He could almost say those words in unison with the voice, so powerful is the impending pseudo-psychic plague that swallows his mind three seconds prior to the spoken sentence. It is only ever such an acute sense, he knows, with this particular creature.
Out of the night steps the immortal menace, dark wings tinged to look almost an eerie glowing purple in the moonlight. None wear wings as true a black as Bruce's. He sticks to the shadows unless called upon to fight his demons, and this demon has never preferred backstage in the city's nightly dark performance.
The phosphorescent green eyes appear pupil-less and luminous, until another step closer reveals them otherwise. That is the most visible difference about this vampire that named his menacing self "the Joker"; most other vampires' eyes grow to a glowing yellow or a blood-stricken red. But it seems that, as all things do with this creature, he has even surpassed those despicable levels. He is certainly a different class of demon.
But then, so is Bruce, whose eyes have never changed from their pristine shade of blue, even after the many years that have passed since his attack.
Bruce regards the filth of decay and rot that composes the aura of the winged and moldy-haired heathen. The Joker steps towards him on the opposite side of the three girls, never taking his unnerving jewels of eyes from the dark figure.
Then he stops. "Then again, I guess you wouldn't say so. But I certainly can't blame you, having never tried it before yourself." The corners of his mouth turn upward, distorting the ugly scars that stream from each – the only clue to the monster's past of where and how he was bitten. But Bruce highly speculates that he created those scars himself with his fangs; he has certainly bitten his own lips himself when the bloodlust surges too powerful within him, just to give him a chance of feeling anything at all.
The twin green lights on the stark-white face leer with a mocking mirth. "Maybe one day, my dear fellow Bat, you'll learn for yourself the pleasure of the taste that only a virgin's lifeblood can bring." At that his grin widens to expose glistening fangs, still glassy and bright with the stains of fresh blood, the trophy of his feast.
Bruce lunges with an inhuman screech that reminds him all too well when he hears it that he and his fellow winged freaks are no longer classified as human, but animals. He uses his anger to smother the slamming, repetitive punch from inside his chest that always rises up strongest in the Joker's presence. Anticipating the furious attack from his fellow predator, the Joker unsheathes his fangs in full and answers with a macabre shriek of his own, welcoming the struggle to come.
Wings unfurl and flap in the tumbling pair, Bruce screeching and the Joker shrilling as wingclaws tear at pale and cold flesh, ancient blood oozing out only due to momentum and gravity. Death wafts high in the frozen and blazing air. The keens of two immortal foes are all that obliterate the curtain of silence that Gotham City is shrouded in.
Bruce aims a kick at the Joker's ribcage, sending him flying through the air, but the Joker rolls with the action and uses his wings to control his flight backwards. Bruce answers by ascending as well with a snap of unfurled dark wings, and collides them both on top of the five-story building nearest them.
They squirm and tear at each other there for a while, before leaping after the other on the next building, and the next after that. Bruce's heart won't stop beating, which he desperately tries to control lest he reveal his rumored weakness to his enemy, but once again it refuses to obey his will. He never could control his heart around the Joker.
Finally their ultrasonic raptor-like battle cries carry them to the heights of a skyscraper, where the Joker can't stop laughing in the midst of their raucous pitches and formidable attacks. Bruce's heart clamors to be let out of his chest, so desperate are its movements, stronger and more painful than ever before. His wings stretch out above the Joker's, and tear bloodied holes through the leathery membranes as he pins him down beneath him, ready to inflict the next wound –
– when the Joker's right wing escapes Bruce's grasp as it transforms, morphing into a solid, bleeding arm –
– and settles its palm on Bruce's beating chest.
Bruce freezes, and wishes his heart would for once do the same. But, stubborn as he is, it declines the notion, only beats even stronger against the blackened-purple palm that presses against his chest that long ago ceased to require breathing motions.
The Joker's eyes defy the impossible as they gleam brighter still, and refuse to release Bruce's paralyzed blue gaze. "So it is true…" he murmurs in a tone so lethal that its power alone would have killed Bruce were he not dead already. Well, nearly dead, at least.
"I told them it was true…" the Joker continues lowly, as Bruce remains helpless in the clutches of his eyes, "…but they never once believed me. They couldn't – they didn't want to – imagine that a vampire could still have a heartbeat. Could still be…alive…"
His tongue licks over his bloodied fangs at the word, with such a sickening savor that Bruce's heart nearly quivers for a second. The word alive for the Joker contains nothing but the invigorating promise of another kill.
The Joker's eyes flare wider at the split-second faltering of the pulse beneath his hand, and he pushes his touch with more force against Bruce's chest. His arm grows darker, signaling the transformation from arm to wing. From hand to claw.
Bruce instantly recoils and jumps away from the Joker. He cannot stand that inhumane touch so close to the last remnant he has left of his dying humanity. It sends a cold shock through his system that nearly stops his heartbeat for a painful second, before combating it with a flood of aching heat. Wanting to purge the corruption from his being.
The Joker approaches him with a single step. He counters with a step backward. He wants no more breaches of distance between him and this monster. Never again.
"You really are something, you know that?" that mad voice bridges over the distance between them. "Most of us, like me, we're known as the demons that climbed out of Hell. But you…"
He takes several steps forward, and Bruce has no more roof space behind him to step on. Instead he fans his wings wide in warning, but such a gesture has never deterred the Joker from him before.
"…you…are an angel fallen out of Heaven, aren't you? Always trying to get back up and reach the top again, avoid falling the rest of the way and becoming the next Lucifer." He runs a wicked tongue along the length of one of his fangs. "The next me." Bruce stiffens. "And you wanna know what gave it all away?"
"What?" Bruce asks half-mockingly. It wouldn't hurt to realize what it was that revealed his hidden quest.
The Joker lights his eyes and brands them into Bruce's immortal remnants of his mortal soul. "Why," he slithers, "those beautiful blue eyes, of course."
Their faces are inches from each other, the Joker menacing and powerful, Bruce wary and defensive, on the alert. Each tensed to the other's next move that they can barely decipher from the raging, chaotic current of sixth-sense that has towed them under at this close proximity to the other monster. At this point, anything is possible from the other, and any sort of reaction is beyond their control.
"Don't you want to know it?" the Joker whispers. His breath rakes Bruce's face with its fetid reek of decay. "Don't you want to know the taste? Just a single drop of mortal blood?" The fangs are bared tauntingly at him, still soaked and slicked with the girls' blood, less than an inch from Bruce's mouth. The Joker still senses the same temptation through the living pulse so close to him now, throbbing spasmodically and begging to be drained from the dark Bat's neck. Just so…close…
And there it is, as Bruce's teeth shoot forward the instant the Joker's fangs take hold, puncturing two clean and even holes through the other's lips. The Joker may be an undead vampire with no beating heart to speak of, but his blood still sits cold in his veins, and the instant it touches Bruce's fangs the pleasure sensors in his teeth scorch with agonizing electricity. He groans in surprise at the intensity of the high, and his own heart skips a few beats before returning with renewed vigor as his jaws clamp down even tighter around the mouth of the Joker. He relishes the pain of two equally brutal fangs sinking into his own flesh, and the Joker is yelling into his mouth at the unequaled sizzling euphoria that ravages his being as this impossible pulse releases the most delectable blood he has ever sunk his teeth into.
Their blood, warm and cold, dribbles down their pale chins as they cinch their jaws even tighter around each other, and wings unconsciously unfurl fully and hold aloft in full span behind them, reveling in this newfound addiction.
Bruce recedes in his bite's strength, only to snap his jaw harder still into the pale skin, eliciting a sharp cry from each of them. Blood surges against Bruce's fangs, and it is only after a few recurring fresh waves of the liquid do they both realize what it signifies.
Joker's heart has, against all expectations and scientific inquiries, begun to beat as well.
They break apart from each other at the revelation, and half-uncurl their eyelids to each other. The Joker is starry-eyed and triumphant, Bruce exhilarated and thirsting, and they smile slightly at their new secret vice before savagely piercing four new holes into their mouths, heartbeats squeezing together and wings folding to wrap around the other immortal's body.
For once, they have found what it truly means to be alive.
A/N: I only have one request for a Christmas present this year: will someone PLEASE draw me a picture of Vampy!Bruce and Joker kissing each other bloody in each other's wings, or an inch apart with bloody fangs? It's just too sensual an image I just can't rest until I see it drawn, and I have no drawing skills. To whoever does, it would make me the happiest slash fangirl on the planet. Thankies in advance!