Chapter Text
Tim is only four years old when it happens for the first time.
He’s playing with some building blocks, trying to make a tower when he sees it.
A crow was staring at him from outside his room’s window. The bird was perched on a low-hanging branch. Tim stared at it in a mix of curiosity and wonder.
He pauses in playing with his blocks and slowly walks towards his window. The child stands on his tiptoes to reach it better.
Tim rests his tiny hands on the glass as he peers closer. His nose gets smushed as he presses his face against it.
“Pretty…” The toddler mumbles.
The crow moves forward, its wings fanning out. For a second, it looked like the bird was going to hop onto the windowsill to get closer to Tim.
Tim holds his breath, waiting for the crow to make its move.
The crow gets ready to take flight and Tim’s eyes widen in excitement as he waits for it to get closer—when suddenly his door slams open.
His parents interrupt the moment and the crow takes off from the branch, startled.
Tim freezes as the crow flies away, leaving nothing more but black feathers in the wind.
His parents begin to talk to him, but their words are all nonsense.
Not because he doesn’t understand—Tim is highly intelligent for his age—no this was different. Their voices mold together, sounding unintelligible as if he was underwater. His vision grows darker and the room spins from all sides.
Tim clutches at his chest as something within him aches .
Sudden thoughts filter through his head at an overwhelming pace.
There’s a flash of long black hair and red eyes.
A murder of crows circling the night sky.
A bloody man was standing on a field and looking down on him.
Tim hates this man.
Tim loves this man.
Bloody fingers reach up towards him and he flinches back as they poke his forehead.
Big…Brother…
Timothy Jackson Drake wakes up screaming in a hospital bed two hours later.
The nurses are forced to sedate him when Tim has a hysterical fit. He rips the IV out and wildly bites the doctor who tries to calm him down.
The sedatives make him weak and his eyes struggle to stay open for long. Once he’s asleep, the nurses begin to gossip about the feral child and the foreign language he was screaming when he woke up.
They mutter that the child kept repeating the same words over and over again.
Ita…Chi…Ita…Chi…
His parents scheduled him to see a child psychologist a week later.
The lady is nice and looks at him with kind eyes. She speaks to him in soothing tones and gives him soft smiles.
She asks him questions and conducts some minor tests on him. At the end of the session, she hands him a piece of paper and a pack of crayons.
She tells Tim to draw the first thing that comes to mind.
Tim stares blankly at the paper for a few minutes before he slowly begins to sketch out an image.
The psychologist waits patiently as Tim draws.
Tim triple-checks his work before showing her the drawing.
The woman stares at it in silence before turning to look at him.
On the paper, Tim drew a pair of red eyes. The eyes were strange as they had comma-like patterns in them instead of pupils.
The part that the psychologist was worried about wasn’t the eyes though. It was the blood that was leaking out of the eyes that made her concerned.
“What’s happening in this image, Tim?” She asks.
Tim shrugs and stares down at the floor.
“He’s crying blood.” He mumbles.
The woman inhales deeply.
“Who is crying blood?”
Tim mutters under his breath.
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that, Tim?”
“My brother. My brother is crying blood.”
The woman’s brows furrow in confusion as she states in a soft tone,
“Timothy, you don’t have a brother. You’re an only child.”
Tim grits his teeth as a flair of hurt and frustration hits him.
“I am now.” He whispers forlornly.
“But…I wasn’t always.”
I used to have a big brother and he hurt me a lot.
He hurt me just as much as he loved me and I don’t know which one is worse.
I don’t know which one is worse.