Chapter Text
After two straight years of begging, pleading, bargaining, and reasoning with his parents to get a cat, Jack and Janet Drake finally, partially bent to the desires of a young Tim, and after all of his hard work and years of trying… bought him a hamster. Tim was slightly disappointed. Upset, even. He had wanted a cat. He really liked cats. Hamsters were just weird, chubby mice.
Still, he finally had a pet! Maybe he could work his way up from here to a cat! Tim was determined to keep his hamster happy and healthy so that his parents could see just how caring and responsible he was and let him actually get a cat. Unfortunately, Tim was also five years old, and the only adult who was in the house more than a few Times a year was his nanny, Britney, who only occasionally glanced up from texting her boyfriend to make sure that Tim was still alive and could not give less of a crap about his hamster.
Now, Tim was a very smart five-year-old who was really very mature and responsible for his age. But being very mature for a five year old only gets you to about nine, mentally. And even an actual nine-year-old shouldn’t be trusted to take care of a hamster all by himself. Tim really tried, though. He cleaned the cage once a week, fed and watered it every day. Well, when he remembered, at least. Despite this (or perhaps because of, depending on who you may ask), Tim came up to his room one day only about three months after he had received Pumpkin, and was greeted by the sight of her lying on the bottom of her cage, not moving. He went up to it and tapped on the bars a little.
“Hey, Pumpkin, wake up! I got your treats!” he said.
The hamster didn’t move. Tim frowned to himself and opened the cage. He held a treat out to Pumpkin, right by her face, expecting her to sniff, to move, something. She didn’t react. He looked really closely and realized he couldn’t see her little chest rising and falling with her breath. His eyes widened.
Tim ran out of the room and down the stairs to get Britney. He found her lying on the couch of the main sitting room, texting someone.
“Britney, I think Pumpkin is really sick! We gotta get her to the vet!”
The woman sighed dramatically and sat up, putting her phone in her pocket.
“Well, let’s go see what’s up with your dumb rat.” she said, rolling her eyes. Tim led her quickly up the stairs to his room, Britney following behind at a much more leisurely pace.
When they finally got to the bedroom, Tim showed her the cage. She walked up to it, undid the latch, stuck her hand in it, and poked at the unmoving form of Pumpkin. When the rodent didn’t respond, she picked it up, bringing it out of the cage and looking at it. She poked it again with her other hand.
“Rat’s dead, kid.” She said, not looking over to see the effect that her words were having on Tim, who felt like his soul was being ripped out of his body. He had grown very attached to Pumpkin over the last three months, despite still wanting a cat. She was the only kind presence that he had around the manor. She was his friend! She couldn’t be dead!!
Britney either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Tim was starting to hyperventilate a bit. Either was likely. Both were almost definitely true.
“I’m gonna go toss it.” she said, turning to walk out of the room.
“Wait!” Said Tim, walking towards her. “If s-she’s dead, I want to b-bury her!” he said, tears beginning to fall down his cheeks.
Britney rolled her eyes as she handed him the lifeless body of Pumpkin the hamster. She left him to his grief, walking back downstairs to the living room.
“I’m so sorry, Pumpkin,” He said, stroking the hamster’s fur with his fingers. “I should’ve done better. I should’ve taken better care of you. You-you deserved a better friend!” he cried. He was beginning to sob openly now, wailing as more and more tears rolled down his cheeks and snot poured out of his nose. He vaguely heard Britney telling him to shut the word-he-shouldn’t-know-yet up from downstairs, but he didn’t care. He was too upset.
He sat down on his bed and kept petting Pumpkin and crying, thinking about everything he could’ve done better. He didn’t deserve a cat. He didn’t deserve anything.
Tim was so lost in tears and his spiral of self-hatred that he didn’t notice when the cold little form in his hands slowly warmed up. He didn’t notice when its heart started beating again and its lungs started taking in air. He didn’t notice when it began to squirm a little in his cupped palm, under his touch. He did, however, notice when it stood up, looked around, and squeaked at him.
Tim let out a laugh of pure joy that quickly turned slightly hysterical. Running over to the hamster cage, he quickly put Pumpkin back inside, where she immediately started to burrow into the substrate. He put some of her favorite treats in her bowl and she crawled back out and began to eat them, content. Tim watched his little hamster with sheer amazement. His friend was back! It didn’t matter how it happened, or that it really shouldn’t have happened at all, she was here! Pumpkin was okay!
Tim vowed to take much better care of her from then on. He also decided to shove the memory of what had happened that day into the dark recesses of his mind (which no five-year-old should have, but Tim was mature for his age) for him to deal with later, or possibly never.
Whichever came last.
***
Unfortunately, the universe had other plans for Tim. incidents like that became more and more frequent as Time went on.
Dead flies on the windowsill started buzzing again when he ran his hands over them. The long-neglected flowers in the manor’s gardens sprang to life at his touch. A dog that had been hit by a car on the road in front of his house rose to its feet unharmed when he patted its head.
You could say Tim was a little bit freaked out about it.
Britney had been willing to write the Pumpkin incident off as her simply being wrong about the hamster being dead. She was much less willing to let go of the Time Tim revived a squirrel that had been absolutely smeared onto the road by the tires of a car and it knitted itself together and ran for the nearest tree. She quit a few days after that, packing her bags and leaving in the night.
When his parents got home from their trip, they were shocked to learn that she had left Tim by himself, but they were so impressed at how well he took care of himself after she left that they simply decided not to hire another nanny when they left for Nepal three weeks later.
Tim was okay with that. He had finally shown his parents how responsible he was! And he never liked Britney anyway, she was mean and smelled like cigarettes all the Time. It was better that she left.
Plus, he could get a cat now! Nobody was there to tell him no, anyway! He had found a pretty brown tabby in a ditch on the side of the road. He brushed it with his hand, and it sprang up and followed him back home. He named it Cyrus, because cats needed to have respectable names, and he loved it more than anything. His parents, forgetting their promise that he could have a pet, had made him give away Pumpkin when they had come home, claiming that she was dirty and smelled. Tim was… upset about that. But his parents were right. They were always right. And he refused to cry in front of them. His dad always said the men didn’t cry and threatened to give him something to cry about when he did, so he didn’t. He didn’t cry when he had to get rid of Pumpkin.
He would do a much better job of hiding Cyrus next Time they came home.
He didn’t have to worry that much about his parents finding Cyrus, apparently. A couple weeks after he brought him home, he ran away. Tim was out all night searching for him, walking miles in the freezing weather that came with a November in gotham. He was exhausted and shivering when he finally decided to go home. But he swore that he would go back out the next night and find that cat, no matter what.
When Tim woke up, though, he was still shivering despite being drenched in sweat. He felt so cold and tired. His body hurt all over. His head was swimming and snot filled his nose and throat.
He may have forgotten to get his flu shot.
Tim slowly sat up and with great difficulty got out of bed, and started what felt like a miles-long trek to the downstairs bathroom to get some cold medicine. And water. He really needed some water. He dragged his feet down the hall that seemed to stretch on for miles, the blanket he had draped over his shoulders dragging behind him as he still shivered.
He finally reached the stairs after what felt like hours. Gripping the banister with one hand and using the other to hold onto his blanket, he slowly began to make his way downstairs.
He was on the fourth step down when his foot caught in the blanket and sent him hurtling down the rest of the flight. His head hit one of the steps at an odd angle as he fell forwards and he felt a sickening crack in his neck. And then he didn’t feel anything at all.
Tim came to lying at the bottom of the stairs in a shallow pool of blood. His pajamas and blanket were soaked in it. He quickly scrambled back before realizing it was his own and frantically beginning to search his body for injuries. There were none? Where did all that blood come from? His head whipped up towards the windows. It was dark outside. Hadn’t it just been morning? He had been… going to get some cold medicine and water. But he didn’t feel sick anymore. He felt really good, actually. Strong.
Then he remembered the fall. The crack he heard. He looked back at the pool of blood. His eyes widened and his stomach twisted itself in knots as he came to a sudden realization.
He had just brought himself back from the dead, hadn’t he?