A/N: Okay, so for a coherent timeline I generally take the Snowball backstory as the most canon, with Brain naming Pinky from I am the BRAIN after they're spliced. I discount Leggo My Ego since it doesn't take place in the modern day and they were clearly parodying Oliver Twist and Clockwork Orange in the flashback, plus it involves Freud and Freud is way too obsessed with making everything about sex to take seriously anyway.
I love the idea of baby Brain being a carefree wild mouse who was taken away from his parents, even if it's just the beginning of a long line of trauma for Brain, and that's pretty much the only thing from that flashback I will accept in my personal timeline of events.
However, I can't just ignore baby Brain and baby Pinky cause they're too gosh darn cute. That's the great thing about fanfiction. You get to explore all these nifty ideas even if they go against your personal HCS!
Summary: Once upon a time, he ran around in the great outdoors, wild and happy and carefree. Until he wasn't.
He loved the Outside.
The Giver let him go. She was tired and didn't have much to give now, and he wanted to see everything beyond his Home. Home felt too small and he was barely able to twitch his tail while squeezed between the Giver and the Provider, but the Outside was big and endless.
He tumbled around the hills, climbed the roots of the big oak, and stomped around the fluffy white stems that blew away on the breeze at the slightest touch.
And most of all, he loved finding rocks and feathers and interesting things. Once he found a smooth and shiny rock that had another mouse in it, and the mouse moved when he moved and made funny faces when he made funny faces. He tapped it, gnawed on it until his teeth hurt, and squeaked at it, but the other mouse wouldn't come out of the rock.
He didn't like that rock anymore. The other mouse wouldn't play with him.
The Giver napped and the Provider found food. They didn't have time to play either. Were there supposed to be other mice? He'd seen others with many little ones, but there weren't any other little ones in their Home.
Sometimes he tried showing an interesting rock to the Giver and Provider, but neither seemed interested.
He loved his rockpile. If he sat on top of it, he could look out on the field and see everything. He added a new rock whenever he could, because something didn't feel right about his rockpile and if he kept placing rocks maybe he could find the perfect one that would make it feel whole.
Sometimes his search for the perfect rock took him farther from Home. He tried not to stray too far, always keeping Home within his sights, but some feeling compelled him to go further every day.
He pawed at a tiny pebble, but there was nothing interesting about it. So he kicked it away.
He tried the tree next, coming across a feather shed by one of the nesting birds above him. Feathers were fun to blow around and they made things look nicer. Maybe this was what his rockpile needed.
Taking the stem of the feather between his teeth, he clambered around a tree root in hopes of finding more things to add to his rockpile.
There was a strange branch on the other side. It looped around an empty patch of dirt, leading up to a low-hanging twig. Curious, he reached out and poked it, quickly withdrawing his paw when the branch was much rougher and scratchier than he expected.
Strange thing! Look out! a sound warned.
He backed up, placing some distance between him and the branch. He should trust that sound, the Provider taught him before he took his first steps Outside.
But he also wanted it. It was strange, but he also itched to have something new for the rockpile.
Approaching the branch slowly, he clutched the stem tightly in his mouth. Then he stuck the feathertip into the loop.
SNAP! He recoiled at the harsh noise, ears twitching madly as the loop sprang into the air and crushed the feather in jangled and clashed and rang above him, shining golden in the sunlight. Flattening his ears to shut away the noise, he squeaked as loudly as he could.
He shouldn't have gone out so far. He shouldn't have let Home out of his sights.
The grass rustled, and he whimpered and shuffled towards the familiar sight. The Provider was here! He could hide in Home's safety. He could curl into the Giver's soft belly.
Something roared above him.
The light was gone.
An enormous, hairless paw splayed open, ready to seize and swallow him whole.
He fled, tripping over flowers and nettles and countless blades of grass. His throat tightened until he could hardly breathe and he'd never felt so thirsty in his life, but he kept going. He didn't dare look back, not even when the ground trembled and darkness blotted out the sky.
There was a rapid beating in his ears, and he could no longer hear the birdsong or the clatter of pebbles underpaw.
Just as the darkness threatened to overtake him, he burst through a clump of grass and startled the Giver and the Provider, who paused in their foraging as soon as they saw him.
Home!
The Provider squealed.
And the spider's web swooped down from the sky.
He fell quickly, deeper and deeper as his limbs tangled against the webbing and dragged him closer to the spider's gaping maw.
He squeaked for his Provider.
No answer.
He squeaked for his Giver.
Only a low rumble replied.
It wasn't her, and he wanted her more than he wanted anything else.
The webbing opened, and he blinked at the sudden influx of light. A hairless paw appeared, seizing him by the tail and yanking him out of the webbing. He flailed wildly, unable to find solid ground for his paws. There was just air and a long, scary fall.
The hairless paw dropped him onto smooth, cold stone. The stone surrounded him from above, below, and around. There was no escape.
The shadows deepened, and his feeble squeaks joined a chorus of terrified cries as he was placed among other mice surrounded by stone. So close, but no mouse could touch another. The stone wouldn't let them. They wailed for their Givers, their Providers, their Homes. They begged for the Outside's light and openness.
The darkness closed around them.
Home was gone.
XXXXX
The whitepelts roared when he nipped them. He hated the pointy stick and how it jabbed, poked, and made everything hurt. He hated how stiff his tail felt.
And he hated the Mouse who shared his stone.
The Mouse squeaked, the sound too long and soft for the Outside. The Mouse stunk of hairless paws and whitepelts with only a faint scent of a Giver clinging to the too-white fur.
He growled at the Mouse, warning him to stay far away, but it didn't take long before the Mouse bothered him again.
The water was the only good thing in the stone. He could ignore the bitter taste as he sucked on the stone that gave him water. The motion was familiar, but it hurt too much to do it for long.
He couldn't bring himself to eat. He couldn't bring himself to do anything except hurt.
The Mouse nudged a food pellet over. The whitepelts hadn't given them any for a while. There were very few pellets left.
But he didn't care. He didn't want hard and tasteless pellets. He wanted sweet berries, crunchy seeds, and Home.
The Mouse squeaked, nosing the pellet closer with a stupid wag of his tail.
He turned his back to the Mouse, ignoring the disappointed whine behind him.
XXXXX
He awoke to a blue flash and deafening boom. Rain pounded the Outside, drenching everything in sight.
No Giver's fur to surround him. Nothing to protect him from the flood that would sweep Home away without mercy.
The cold seeped into his body. His fur stood on end, trying to find warmth among the cold. He trembled as another boom rattled the stone.
He hurt so much.
The Mouse cooed softly.
He ignored him.
A blue flash lit the stone, and the Mouse was much closer than he realized. He startled, fur raised and tail coiled around him protectively. He growled, but the Mouse just stepped closer.
Baring his teeth, he prepared to lunge and give a warning nip, but the Mouse dropped a fluffy pelt at his paws and slowly backed away. The Mouse's eyes were full of pain.
Flinching at another crash, he nosed his way underneath the pelt. He felt a little protected.
The Mouse flopped against the unnaturally smooth stone, curling into a tiny ball against the cold.
He had the only pelt in the stone. The Mouse had no protection.
The pelt was warm, but it wasn't fur.
Carefully clutching the pelt in his mouth, he dragged it over to the Mouse. The Mouse's ears pricked as he approached, letting out a squeak of surprise as the pelt covered him.
The sky boomed, much louder and frightening than before, and he scurried under the pelt, hiding from the endless flashes of light. A warmth he hadn't felt since his nights curled at his Giver's belly flooded through him, and he ached for more.
The Mouse's cheek pressed against his own. The gentle nuzzles soothed him, forgetting the hurt in favor of the soft coos, the long squeaks, and the steady beat of his chest.
His tail was stiff, but he didn't hurt.
Far away from Home, he found his warmth.
A/N: Not quite the grumpy Brain we know and love and want to bash over the head with angst, but it was a fun experiment even if the pronouns were excruciating to work around.
In my HC, Brain was old enough that milk wasn't critical to survival when he was taken, but he was still in the weaning stages.
Music: Soft, scary sounds for terror, thunderstorms and rain for aesthetic at the end, and the Land Before Time soundtrack.
Pinky trying to give Brain the food pellet was inspired by the cherry scene in Land Before Time, because I really like the cute baby flyers and how they showed Littlefoot ignoring the cherry due to his grief.