Just a note at the beginning, this fic will be pretty dark in places (not all the way through but these two are literal monsters and they're bloody enough on the show as humans). There's a reason this fic is called 'Red in Tooth and Claw'. Also both main characters deal with a combination of self-loathing, depression and suicidal thoughts, particularly at the beginning. It that is a possible trigger then maybe this isn't the best story for you.
So, if that hasn't put you off, I really do hope you enjoy it. While a Vampire/Werewolf AU the premise and setting of the show has not changed and the characters themselves are still, at their roots, the same broken, twisted people who are far more alike than they realise. Ed and Oswald fall in love no matter what universe they find each other in.
To quote Alberto Moravia: "We all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating."
just a king and a rusty throne
I'm a fly that's trapped
In a web
But I'm thinking that
My spider's dead
Lonely, lonely little life
I could kid myself
In thinking that I'm fine
Always - Panic! At the Disco
When Jim Gordon tells Oswald Cobblepot to never come back to Gotham he thinks he is being merciful. He thinks he is sparing his own conscience. He thinks he is saving Oswald's life.
Well, for all of Jim's good intentions, Oswald dies anyway. As it turns out, trying to swim in freezing river with a recently crippled right leg does not come with a 100% guaranteed chance of survival.
Oswald feels what should have been an inhale of crisp air pour into his lungs; instead black, murky water claws down his throat, frozen nails scraping his windpipe. He chokes on his last polluted breath, tries to raise his head above the waves but icy tendrils wrap around his ankles and drag him down and down and down.
The world is swallowed up in darkness. Ice fills his veins, asphyxiation of the coldest kind suffocating everything warm in his body.
Gotham City swallows Oswald whole.
Then it spits him back out.
The world is numb and sharp and far, far too bright. Oswald can barely see for the white pulsating at the back of his eyes. Everything is cold and it hurts. The pain is intense; pure and paralysing. He doesn't know how he manages to breach the surface of the water, doesn't know how he makes it to shore but, somehow, he does.
When he sees the man, fishing a short way from him, the rational part of his mind, the human part, registers him as a threat. A possible witness to his escape. A risk.
Yet, as Oswald shuffles closer all those thoughts melt away like snow and all that is left is this deep hunger, gnawing at his insides. The ice in his veins is jagged and sharp and every move hurts but he has to go closer, he is so thirsty.
He forgets to grab the knife. Instead, he tears out the man's throat with his teeth. Jugular sheared open by serrated points and its warm, a sticky spray spatters across his face - the blood is hot, scorching his throat with each greedy swallow but Oswald doesn't care. He drops to his knees as he gulps it down, his frozen veins slowly filling with the facsimile of life.
He drinks until something instinctual tells him to stop, that his prey is drained dry. Oswald's mouth unfastens from the ruined skin with a wet pop. He isn't shaking anymore.
Never come back to Gotham.
The words ring in his ears, a command which demands obedience. He has to leave. Escape. Deal with this...problem somewhere safe. Right now his mind cannot process reality, cannot even discern what reality is. In the midst of the panic which is building beneath his chest, whining behind his eardrums, his thoughts fall back on the world he used to live in.
Fish Mooney still wants his hide, discovery is too dangerous. He cannot risk it, not after what Jim has done for him.
So, Oswald flees.
The man on the riverfront is found three hours later. It takes the police a further four days to decide on a verdict: it was not murder, but an unfortunate mauling by feral dogs. Three people attend his funeral.
Something strange happens while Oswald runs away. Every step he takes away from Gotham is that little bit heavier, the muscles in his leg seizing up inch by inch. The constant ache in his bones makes it so much easier to lash out, to bite and kill those arrogant men-no, boys in the car who dare to mock him. Oswald's teeth are sharper than any knife he's ever wielded. Not a drop of their blood goes to waste.
He tries to sleep but finds he cannot. In the hours of night when unconsciousness should overcome him, Oswald's mind is full of music. Gotham sings to him, a discordant, haunting, ever-present siren call which caresses his mind, clasps his neck and pulls. Each second he spends running away only causes the city's call to grow louder; crescendoing, demanding, insistent. Come back. Do not forsake me.
It gets harder and harder to resist, impossible to ignore and, finally, Oswald gives in. Whatever he has become, Gotham City is a part of him; an inseparable part, it would seem. It is Gotham's air which preserves the walking corpse that used to call himself Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham's lifeblood which pumps through his veins, which sustains him. To try to flee his saviour would be a death sentence.
So, bent but not broken, Oswald comes home.
The rest follows naturally, he supposes just as it would have done if he hadn't...changed. No one can really tell the difference, no one ever guesses. Oswald ingratiates himself with Don Maroni, secretly spies for Falcone and all the while tries to win Jim Gordon's approval.
Everything is normal. Except it isn't.
Never come back to Gotham.
Jim's voice is the last thing he can remember before the roaring in his eardrums, a bullet shattering the air around him, the rest of the world drowned out in a screeching whine. It is Jim's voice which Oswald clings to as the rest of his humanity slips away, like fog on the sea at sunrise.
Jim Gordon grounds him, gives him hope and so, when he calls Jim 'friend', Oswald means it.
He yearns for the day Jim will echo it back to him and mean it too.
Until that day Oswald resigns himself to exploring quite what he has become. Whatever Gotham River filled him with has changed him, rearranged his DNA so now he only masquerades as a man. Sleep is a fruitless endeavour; no matter how heavy his eyelids grow there is no escape into the oblivion of unconsciousness. Every second is one of hypersensory existence - he hears everything, sees everything, smells everything. All the sounds and sights and scents of the city which before didn't even register, muddle together in a dizzying assault on his senses. The city is opened up to him and it stinks, putrid and festering.
Food and drink taste like dust in his mouth and he spits them back out, blood seemingly all his new physiology can stomach.
Gotham runs in his veins, cold and unrelenting and always, always hungry.
Oswald only ever hunts at night and he is always prudent to plot where (no longer sleeping at least affords him ample time for careful preparation). There are plenty of homeless and forgettables in Gotham, the street rats and sewer scum its benevolent citizens have forsaken, so he never runs out of prey.
The act of hunting is unlike anything else he has ever experienced. It is as if the human side of his mind clocks out for an hour, senses focusing, sharpening to a painful precision with a sole intention. It is like stepping into a different skin; the world falls away and Oswald Cobblepot ceases to exist as the thirst takes over.
It is never quenched. Oswald blinks back to himself, suit coated in blood and mouth thick with the sharp tang of iron - unsated. Unsatisfied. Still, it allows him to live on, if this can be called living.
Apart from the more 'practical' explorations much of Oswald's discovery about himself comes from others' reactions to him. On the surface he appears unchanged but every person seems to sense something beneath his skin, something they cannot quite put their finger on, which creates a battle of instinct in them. There is an instinctual revulsion, borne out of a primal sense of self-preservation and then also an equal opposite force of curiosity, attraction.
Oswald finds his words can spin webs around people and he watches, awed, as he mesmerises men from the common thug to Sal Maroni himself. He has always had a talent for endearing himself to people, playing upon their fears and desires yet this is different. Each time it feels as though the very air around him shifts to his purpose. Hypnotic is not quite the right word yet...it is similar. Light suggestion perhaps. Influence. It proves a useful tool.
Of course, as he learns more and more, it dawns just what these abilities brand him as.
Vampire.
He balks the first time he thinks it. Impossible. Ridiculous. And yet...as the days pass and discovery after discovery is made, the certainty of it settles as a cold, dead weight in Oswald's chest.
Vampire. Night walker. Lich. Ghoul. Incubus. Revenant. Rakshasa. The world apparently has ample names for whatever he is but none of them sound right, all taste like poison on his lips. His mother has another name for them - pijavica. Monsters of the night. Souls cursed to eternal damnation. Evil spirits who live with the sole purpose: to turn this earth into a living hell.
"Can people love monsters?"
Gertrud stops her sewing and looks up at Oswald with those intense eyes, the exact same shade of her son's. "Oh my little Oswald," she coos, accent slurring her speech, "a monster can only stop being a monster when they are loved."
Oswald's smile is too tight; he doesn't show his teeth. Whenever someone sees them they always know something is wrong, that there is danger even if they cannot tell exactly what.
She smiles back, gaze misty.
"Of course, Mother. You're very wise."
He never tells her. Of course he doesn't. How could he, knowing the way she could look at him, watch as the love which has kept him going dissolve into hatred and fear and revulsion. Would she curse him? Cast him out? Disown him?
No - she can never, never know.
Whatever the hell Oswald is, the more aware he becomes of his condition the more he realises quite how much society is obsessed with these creatures. They permeate their culture, the so-called mysterious denizens of the world's nightlife, reputedly prowling the streets for their next meal.
While every country has their own fascination with 'vampires' Gotham in particular idolises the elusive night walker, laps up every new piece of literature and speculation the city can create. Oswald has no clue why this fascination with evil is so concentrated in the city but it is an undeniable fact. There are even bars dedicated to them. Citizens go, dressed up in dark colours and high-necked dresses; some wear false fangs, others colour their eyes with contacts. People pay to live out sick, twisted fantasies; some even set up watch in the hope of catching sight of a real one.
Oswald goes to one once. Losing the ability to sleep leaves one with far too much time on their hands and one night he simply cannot face another book. He checks that his mother is indeed asleep, kisses her once on the forehead and slips away into the night.
Maison de la Mort. It is an establishment littered with the highest acclaim, infamous across the whole city (heaven forbid the Penguin be cheap). Its sophisticated dressing and slow, intense bass-filled music reeks of perfected theatrics - just enough to immerse the fan in the world of the night walker, with also just enough decent music and good drinks to captivate the casual onlooker.
It is one of the dullest experiences of Oswald's life.
He sits in a booth with deceptively plush velvet, lazily swirling an untouched glass of wine in his left hand. He watches. Young men and women and everything in between all dance, skin pressed together, bodies bucking and pounding to the incessant beat. Oswald has never been a particular fan of the typical nightlife scene (ironic now that he owns a nightclub of his own) yet that isn't the source of his boredom.
Everything is exaggerated, amplified. Each scent of sweat and alcohol and perfume shocks his senses like a taser to his nervous system. The flashing lights of blue and red and white, strobes and LEDs and everything so loud and big and so much it hurts. His legs feel stuck to the seat, trapped in this pulsating room which threatens to crush him.
Soon boredom begins to verge on discomfort and Oswald has no clue why he is still there. Maybe his condition has awakened a masochistic streak in him. Or maybe it is because there are some off duty cops dancing just across the room and part of him hopes he'll be caught.
Or maybe it is just a blessed relief to know he can feel anything anymore.
"Excuse me."
Oswald blinks, head jerking sharply up. Before him stands a tall man dressed in black leather, hair gelled and gleaming in the flashing lights - a bouncer. Sweat dapples his creased forehead.
"Good evening, sir. What can I help you with?"
The man's expression is stone faced, eyebrows drawn low together. "I'm afraid I've been asked to escort you from the premises."
Oswald feels a bolt of surprise run through him, cold and sudden. "Why?"
The bouncer's expression does not waver. "We've had complaints. You've been disturbing the guests."
It takes a moment for the words to register. All at once Oswald is gripped by the mad, hysterical desire to laugh, to scream, to kill this man and everyone in this club who dare to worship creatures of darkness, dare to long to be one of them when it is this agony pain torture-
"We have the authority to forcibly remove anyone who refuses to comply with house rules."
"No, no it's fine. I'll go." The words are bitter on his tongue. Oswald knows he could force the man to leave, to walk away, bend his will to his own… He could, but he simply doesn't care enough to expend the effort.
He steps out of the club into the smog filled street. Alone. He burns with an ice cold fury, hands shaking at his sides. Of course, of course the ones who claim to adore things like him would find Oswald 'disturbing', would reject the very monster they claim to idolise.
You shouldn't be surprised. Just look at you.
Oswald feels the truth, chill and icy, unfurl at the base of his skull. People worship 'vampires' for their perfect porcelain skin, graceful lithe movements, endless and eternal youth.
Why would anyone worship you?
Oswald Cobblepot was never enough before, always abnormal, odd, wrong in some way - why should his second life be any different?
In him beautiful feline grace is replaced with a lurching limp, crippled leg unfixed by Gotham's freezing waters. Stunning, magnetic beauty has not redeemed Oswald's beaklike nose and dottled skin. His teeth have stayed stained, nails dirtied and skin... Well, there is no allure in Oswald's appearance, no matter what words his mother may use to soothe him. His complexion is that of a corpse's: pale, drained and with a delicate blue tint around his extremities which has to be hidden with make-up.
There is nothing beautiful about him.
Oswald hears something. Slowly, as if too sudden a movement could detonate this violent force of hate inside him, he turns. It takes a moment for him to recognise that it is someone moaning. The sound comes from a hidden side alley, nestled against the club. He steps forward, another stuttering step and the darkness falls away, like scales from his eyes - one of the few perks of his new life.
A little way in stand two men, both sporting dark costumes and brightly coloured hair. They are pressed against the wall, hips rocking into one another, hands and mouths greedy on the other's skin-
Oh.
Part of Oswald registers the appropriate embarrassment, knows he should look away but all the same he stares, transfixed, unable to wrench his eyes away from the obscene spectacle. Maybe it is because whenever they come up for a snatched breath he can see the one against the wall is wearing almost an exact copy of Oswald's suit. There is another moan and, with Oswald's heightened senses, it sounds like it's coming from his own mouth.
After an eternity it stops and Oswald feels as if the floor has been swept out from beneath him. The night air is too silent. He still cannot leave, no matter how much he pleads with his limbs to move.
And then, the one in Oswald's suit leans back, lips stretched in a lazy smirk, and bites down hard on his partner's neck.
For some reason, it infuriates him.
Ice cold rage races through his veins as he lurches into the alley, jaw clenched painfully tight. The sight of that act burns behinds his eyelids; an insulting, revolting parody of what Oswald must go through weekly just to survive and here two strangers warp it into something disgusting and lewd and pleasurable-
He bites and tears and rips with nails and teeth and it is over so quickly for both of them, too quickly, screams cut off in gurgles but Oswald carries on. Even once everything in him tells him to stop he cannot quell this fury. It feels like it takes a decade for him to finally finish, until there are tears mixed with blood and saliva, until their faces and flesh are unrecognisable from before, until that suit is torn into shreds.
He stands, one hand against the wall. Blood, too much blood, pounds in his ears, bubbles under his skin. He feels dizzy, the smell of sewage and sweat and carnage filling his nostrils. The shame of it chokes him.
Oswald knows he should hide them, do something to cover up the act but he cannot. He is only stone and painted marble, there is nothing rational left. All he can do is run.
That is the only time he ever kills out of bloodlust rather than hunger.
In all of his time in Gotham's underworld Oswald never meets another like him. He is not even sure if others exist, yet while is not so egotistical to imagine he is the only one, he is overwhelmingly grateful for his continued ignorance. If he ever did meet another Oswald is sure it would end with his swift and lethal rejection of that world.
Still, it is not all miserable. His newfound abilities mean he is nigh unkillable - he has not put to test the stakes and beheading myths but he does know that whenever shot or stabbed (which does occasionally happen) there is no pain, as if his nerves are dead. Oswald still has to act the part but it can give him a little advantage.
Sleepless nights mean he has ample time to work through his reading list and carefully map out his plan to become King of Gotham. Oswald even gets his own bar, and from none other than Fish Mooney. That is an ironic victory because if all of Gotham idolises vampires, then the one who truly emulates them is Fish. Unsurprisingly she loves their carnality, viciousness and, of course, deadly sex appeal.
Not once after seeing Oswald again since his resurrection does she suspect that he is one of her idols. It gives him a sharp thrill of pleasure each time they meet, sweeter than any other vengeance. Deceiving, defeating the woman who has condemned him to perhaps an eternal life as a cripple - it brings more satisfaction than he could have ever imagined.
He plans to tell her the truth just before he tears her throat out.
Yet for all of his success and revenge, Oswald is not happy. He supposes he never has been truly happy in his life, but this is a deeper kind of unhappiness. Before, at least he had his mother yet now he must keep her at arm's length, spending every day sure in the knowledge that he would die a second death if she ever rejected him for something he could not change. Isolation and dislocation from the City which he is tied to pains him far more than the ever-lingering hunger.
As the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months that despair only grows, expanding like a black hole set to consume everything. And so, he looks to Jim Gordon more and more as a source of hope. After all, if it weren't for him Oswald would not be as he is, would not have survived the river without his last words ringing in his ears. But, for all of The Penguin's pitiful attempts to extend the hand of friendship Oswald finds himself rejected over and over again.
Jim's vision is stunted, corseted by a child's morality, black and white. Oswald does not exist on that spectrum and so, Jim can never be his salvation. He tries pathetically to offer the hand of friendship to the man but he spits him out, like a bad aftertaste.
Eventually Oswald gives up on that. Throws himself into violence and death and before he knows it the mob is his, Fish Mooney is thrown to her death and he is the King of Gotham. It is a glorious moment. All of his dreams, long held ambitions are finally realised, finally real. It is a blazing inferno in the midst of such darkness. He does not need Jim, does not Falcone, does not need anyone. He beat them all and now he lives as royalty. King of Gotham.
And then the inferno burns itself out.
Paranoia and emptiness cover Oswald like a cloud of dust. He sits on his throne and can feel his muscles freezing, feel the life dribbling away from him with each second that ticks by. It is as if he is turning to stone and cannot bring himself to care enough to fight it. Butch becomes the only person he finds he can talk to, the man made into a doll and it appals him but he is trapped, a fly in ointment. The King of Gotham, yes; but for what?
He finds himself asking that far too often.
As it would turn out, just this once, the Penguin had every reason to be paranoid. Theo Galavan.
He'd worked it out - who he was. What he was. The man summons him to his tower, just to tell him so. Galavan lays out all the damning evidence, all the things he'd picked up and pieced together to reveal the truth.
"I know exactly what you are Mr Cobblepot. And that means I own you."
Of course, it is terrifying. The first time someone other than Fish has found out and it is used as a weakness. Oswald fights past the terror though, spits back in Theo Galavan's smug face that no one will believe him, no one would dare to stand against him anyway.
"It doesn't matter if no one believes me, Mr Cobblepot. I still own you because, I have her."
His sister flicks on the TV and into being flashes footage of Oswald's mother, captured, alone, defenceless like a figment of every one of his nightmares finally made reality. On reflection it is amazing it hadn't happened before. It is also amazing he didn't lose his sanity right then and there.
He tries to influence him but Galavan just laughs in his face, spittle slapping Oswald on the cheek. Whatever was driving Galavan forward, it hardened his will into a iron-like band completely impenetrable to Oswald's pathetic attempts to bend it to his own.
Galavan smiles through every second of it.
Oswald convinces himself he's doing everything to save his mother out of love, but he knows that cannot be entirely true. He doesn't kill mayoral candidates, facilitate arson out of love - Oswald isn't sure whether the thing he's become is even capable of love. No, he acts out of guilt. Guilt that he couldn't keep it a secret, guilt that his mother is bound to discover the truth, guilt that he should have seen this coming and protected her better.
Guilt plagues him like flies on a corpse and he tells himself it will all be fine, okay, normal when he gets her back.
Then his mother is killed.
He half hopes the City will save her as it did him but, no. Her eyes close and stay closed. The worst part is the moment his mother breathes her last a part of Oswald whispers to drink her lifeblood, a voice whispering in his ear don't let it go to waste.
The impulse makes him want to throw up. And he would have done so. If he were human.
He gives up the hope that he is not alone. There is no hope for a creature like him, something less than human, a monster trapped in human shape. He can never be touched, never be stirred by anything other than a primal drive to drink. He is driven forward only by fumes of rage and revenge and then the bullet hits and it is like his body is split open and all the sewage spews out of it.
The moment that bullet bites into his flesh him Oswald Cobblepot dies. Just like his mother. He intends to starve himself, to leave Gotham, to dig himself a hole in the ground if he has to just to find an escape from this hell. There is nothing left for him.
And then, he meets Edward Nygma.
Boy oh boy was that an angsty way to open a fic. I promise it won't be this painful forever but felt it was important to get this part of Oswald's character. Being a vampire ain't all sparkly fun and games. I'm really excited to get this fic finished and posted - it's been a long time coming as the idea gripped me and wouldn't let go. As a result, this the longest thing I've ever written and is also un-beta'd so it may be a little rough around the edges. Still, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have had writing it!
As an aside, the word 'pijavica' is actually a name used for vampires in Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which literally translates to "drinker". In this Slavic mythology 'pijavica' is used to describe a vampire who has led an evil and sinful life as a human and in turn, becomes a powerfully strong, cold-blooded killer. Incest, especially between mother and son, is one of the ways in which a pijavica can be created. I don't believe the writers have specified what Gertrud's nationality so I took a bit of liberty because this definition is…an interesting one for Oswald.
Please do leave a comment on what you thought, and thank you for reading!