Chapter Text
The first time Victor Zsasz kills, he's seven years old.
Though small, the grounds of his family home was lush with greenery- his father loved his gardening, often assisting the groundskeeper when he should have been in his office, working. Victor would beg to help out too, although he wasn't very good, and always ended up playing in the soil or collecting worms in a bucket. He'd get especially dirty if the weather had been bad, soaking his smart shirt in mud.
His father had his gardening, and his mother- well, his mother had her birds.
She spent a lot of time standing at the window of the second story, watching the birds. Sometimes, Victor would hear her get out of bed just as the sun rose- the careful creak of the window locks, and then the sweet tune of the birds as they sang for the sunrise. Victor's mother loved the birds. She told him all the names, although he didn't remember, and she drew them in her sketchbook. Sometimes, she'd give Victor her special charcoal and let him try, too.
He was about as good at that as he was at gardening. But every time, without fail, his father would pin his messy scribbles up on the wall, next to his mother's beautiful sketches in his office. 'They inspire me,' he'd say, 'especially yours, Victor, you're such a creative young man'.
Victor thought it was silly, because he knew that his scrawls paled in comparison to his mother's masterpieces, but he was delighted all the same.
On sunny days like that fateful one, at seven years old, his father was in his office with the pictures on the wall. His mother was baking in the kitchen. It was her birthday the day after, and they were having a small gathering of friends, so Victor was sent outside to play while she started preparing the food. He was promised he could lick the bowl when she was done if he stayed out from under her feet for a few hours.
"Yes, mama," he'd said, slipping into his shoes, more than happy to spend the day making a mess of their garden.
A seven year old doesn't have a very firm concept of time, though- so Victor was bored after a little while. He couldn't find the biggest twigs available and sword fight with his dad, because he was busy. Victor tried to distract himself by bug hunting, a favourite pastime of his- he would gather the bugs into a bucket from the garage, inspect them one by one, and then crush them under his boots or in-between his little fingers. His mother had caught him eating one or two, and he wasn't allowed to do that anymore.
He did find a parade of ants on the pathway, all following each other, although their arms were empty of any food, and he raced inside for his magnifying glass. Victor had learned a little while ago that if you held the glass right, the ants would start to smoke. He thought it was fascinating- in the same way he thought the makeshift, old graveyard in the woods behind their house was fascinating. He was drawn to it. This force that he, at such a young age, didn't quite understand.
He'd felt the same way at his brother's funeral when he was 5. Douglas had been older than him. Fourteen at the time, although he couldn't remember properly. And Victor had sat there with his mother and his father while they cried, not quite knowing what it was. Douglas had been sad and poorly a lot- Victor knew that- he'd been sad and he never really wanted to play, because he was listening to music or reading his books that were much too grown up for Victor to try. And one day, the doctor had shown up, and Douglas was gone. His father said it was his lungs. But Victor was already very good about knowing when someone was lying to him.
A kid at school had called him weird for his little magnifying glass trick. She had said that he was hurting the ants. That he was killing them. He had asked her if she had super hearing like a comic book hero, and if the ants were screaming. 'Dying things don't scream, though', Victor said, because they didn't, in his experience- his brother hadn't screamed. The girl ran to tell the teacher, crying.
The ants got boring fast, too. And Victor knew he wasn't supposed to go inside. He wandered, for a little while, poking at particularly interesting piles of soil waiting for plants, grabbing a few rocks that had somehow come away from their neat rows around the paths.
And then he decided to sit underneath his mother's bird trees. She never seemed to get bored of them. He'd asked her, once, why they didn't keep any in the house as pets.
'Oh, no, honey- birds need to be out in the wild. They need to be free.'
Victor supposed that made sense. He wouldn't like to be kept in the house all the time. Especially not if he had wings.
Although a child, Victor wasn't particularly energetic. He was often quiet, and still, seemingly lost in thought the way a much older boy would be. Sometimes he was thinking about the funeral, and then others about the graveyard close by- occasionally, he was thinking about the latest Scooby Doo episode he'd seen and how silly he thought it was that Shaggy was scared of all the ghosts and ghouls.
Then, sitting still as a statue, Victor was thinking about the birds. His mother loved the birds. The birds were free. They sang so lovely, although, if you asked Victor, the songs were rather sad-sounding. Melancholic, but beautiful. He wondered if it was because they were always in his mother's trees, despite their wings and their strange magic.
Victor's favourites were the big black ones, with the sharp eyes and the loud squarks. He shifted a little and tilted his head up. He could see a few of the birds, although none of his- ravens, his mother had called them.
When he moved to look forward again, one of the black birds was right in front of him. Looking at him with those eyes. He thought maybe he should be frightened, because he wasn't a very good fighter. But he wasn't. Not really.
Victor couldn't quite remember what happened, when his mother asked later. One moment, he and the bird were looking at each other, and the next he could feel it's warmth in his hands. The weight of it surprised him. It felt fragile, though- small, soft feathers, hiding softer, smaller bones.
He didn't remember standing up, walking through the big doors to their house, and into the kitchen. But he seemed to snap out of it when his mother gasped from the sink.
"Victor- what is this? Did you find this?"
Victor shook his head, holding it out towards his mother. She loved her birds. And she wouldn't be able to touch one, otherwise. Because she didn't want to keep it trapped inside.
"It's for you, mama. You like the birds. It's a birthday present."
His mother seemed to pause for a second. She grabbed the kitchen towel, and gently took the bird- its neck rolling unnaturally- out of Victor's small hands. She pulled it into her arms and spent a few seconds looking between the corpse and her son. Victor smiled at her, soft and pleased and entirely unaware of what he'd done. She stood up, called for her husband, and placed the bundle of towel and feathers on the counter.
"Merci, mon cher- thank you very much."
"Are you happy, mama? I thought the birds sounded sad. And you were sad you couldn't keep any in here. So I brought you one."
His mother picked him up, held him close to her chest. He could hear his father coming down the stairs. That evening, they made him sit down in the living room, in front of the burning fire. He sat on his father's knee.
"Victor, do you know what you did today?"
"I gave mama a bird. As a birthday present."
"Did you find it like that?"
"No. I did it. I think. The birds sound sad. They're always in the same tree. I thought it might like a change of, um- seen- scenery. And I thought mama would like to have one. Did I do something wrong? Are you upset?"
"No, son- you were trying to be kind, weren't you?"
"Yes."