What Remains in Wayne Manor: A Prelude
Summary: To make ends meet, you start to give tours at the historic Wayne Manor. Around that time, you start having strange dreams.
Pairing: vampire!Bruce Wayne x reader
Words: 1.2k
Content/warnings: manipulation, blood, death, violence (it's a vampire fic), eventual hunter/prey dynamic, eventual descriptions of stalking
a/n: this is super out of what I normally write, so if you enjoyed this, please let me know!!
Martha Wayne comes to you in dreams. She usually guides you through her home and talks of her family.
Tonight, a darkness holds Martha by her throat.
You stand with her in a void. As hard as you try, you can’t make out the figure wrapped around her. Only her, bright blue eyes wide with fright, mouth agape in a silent scream.
With a trembling hand, you go to help her, but as you do, she vanishes along with her captor.
Despite its impossibility, you know with certainty what you’re seeing. Martha dissolves into the inky black around her before everything gives way to an expansive room.
Bookshelves press against carved wood panels. Moonlight slips in through the sullied glass of the wide windows. The years of grime cast shadows over sheet-covered furniture, bringing the whole room to life. Even in what little light there is, you see thick films of dust coating the intricate divots in the walls. In another life, this must have been a study. You can picture the serious conversations that had to have happened at the sturdy desk sitting at the back end of the room. The great doctor, Thomas Wayne, conversing with colleagues. You know their story. You recite it for visitors three times a week.
You’re in Wayne Manor, but not a room you recognize. Intuitively, as one knows things in dreams, you know this must be a room in the locked section of the house.
Just as your thoughts slip back to Martha, you spot her face. Not the horror-struck one from moments ago. Immortalized on canvas, now you find her hanging on the wall above an unlit fireplace. The color of her eyes has faded with time, an eerie companion for her less preserved self buried in the graveyard behind the manor. You imagine this room bathed in light the way it must be in the day. Wood warmed with golden light, the dust coating the canvas obscuring Martha and her family. Even then, this room doesn’t seem as though it would bring comfort.
Alongside his wife, entombed in a portrait, is Thomas Wayne; their son, Bruce, nearly the spitting image of his father, stands before them. Martha’s hand rests softly against his narrow shoulder.
Young Bruce’s face captivates you. You stare at a boy whose adulthood was marked by a moment only a few years away from happening when he sat for this portrait. The youth haunts his face; joy lingers in his eyes when the portrait in the parlor is utterly devoid of it.
A ghostly howl fills the room as wind blows through the chimney, your name seemingly whispered on the breeze. A shiver runs up your spine. You can’t escape the feeling you’re being watched, the same as any other time you’ve stepped into the mansion in your waking hours. Like something else lurks in the shadows just out of sight.
You whirl around in search of whoever—whatever—is watching you. Instead, you find a passage in the wall that hadn’t been there moments earlier.
As you step to the opening, you feel no fear. A sureness in your step betrays the circumstances of your arrival in Wayne Manor; you’re dreaming. Awake, you’ve never felt this assured in the old mansion, even in the main section that’s kept up for guests. In sleep, you feel yourself surrender to the manor, no longer fighting against whatever wanders out of sight.
Once your eyes have adjusted to the light, or lack thereof, you see a long stairwell stretching down to even darker depths. Cool, damp air brushes against your skin as it mixes with the stale, dusty air of the study. The smell of wet rock lingers with something metallic that seems harder to place the longer you try to identify it.
Your dream self doesn’t hesitate to climb down the steps spiraling ever down. Though you arrive at an old elevator only a second after you started to move, you get the feeling you’ve traveled a long distance. You press the button on the wall, not questioning if it will work, nor the safety of the ride as you descend. The door squeals open before you, and as soon as you step inside, you’re at the bottom. Between the empty spaces where the iron crisscrosses, before the door has even opened, you seen an expansive candlelit cave.
From above, you hear faint squeaks. You crane your neck to make out the rustling overhead, catching wings flapping in the darkness. Bats.
The opening gate echoes throughout the cavern. Your eyes stay fixed above you as you step out, seeking the shape of the bats as they flutter in the bleak, barely taking a moment to survey the actual cave itself before you step in something wet on the ground. Humidity lingers around you, and from somewhere deep within, you hear running water. You incorrectly assume it’s a puddle of water until you look down.
Were you awake, you maybe wouldn’t have identified it so quickly. But in the flickering candlelight of the cave, you know intuitively the dark puddle on the ground is blood. The rich, irony smell fills your nose, more than that of bats, more than the depths of the cave.
You stagger back as the situation you’ve wandered into dawns on you. The cave blurs as you spin back to the elevator, hoping for a quick escape. But the floors you’re certain were clean on your way down are now also slick with blood, pools of it collecting beneath your feet.
Urgency rises in your mind as you scope out another exit. Shadows dance along the walls from the flickering candlelight. You don’t notice the one shaped like a figure creeping towards you until you wheel around right into it.
You even can’t manage a scream. You feel absolutely frozen on the spot, like your body isn’t yours to control. Blood coats his chin, smeared across his lips. His armor glistens with it without a wound in sight.
The Batman’s mask stays clear in your mind as you jolt awake. Even as you clutch your sheets, clinging to the comfort and safety of your bed, the vividness of your bizarre dream hangs in your thoughts like a phantom. Whose blood coated the gruesome vision of his strong jaw? Had you lingered, would you have met the same fate as them?
Foolishly, some voice within you reassures you that no, you would not.
An hour passes. The more you force your mind from Wayne Manor, the more you feel it call to you, its yawning halls moaning your name. Its key sits by the front door, a haunting reminder that you’ll be there yet again come morning, this time without the security of visiting in your dreams.
You have the key. The thought holds more weight now as you consider it again. You could go there now, in search of answers for the horrors you’d seen in your sleep. It’s a terrible idea, but one that seems to have sunk its claws into you. One that refuses to be disregarded, nagging and awful until you give.
You spring from beneath the warmth of your covers, determined to know what remains within Wayne Manor.
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a/n: special shoutout to @jasontoddismyhusband for giving this a read through for me thank you thank you thank you 💛
also thank you all for reading! If you enjoyed, please consider giving this a reblog 💛