"Tiiiimmy..." a teasing call woke him.

"Mmph...what?"

"It's morning, little brother."

"...Ugh." Everything he had was sore, from his toes to the back of his neck. Even the tops of his ears hurt for some reason he couldn't fathom in his half-conscious state. The only thing he wanted to do in his current state was go back to sleep.

"How'd you like sleeping under the stars?"

"Meh..."

"...'Meh'?"

He looked up at the sad tone that had come into Dick's voice. "No," he backtracked. "Not 'meh'. I didn't mind, honest." For all that sleeping outside hadn't been the smartest thing in the world for them to do, they'd gotten away with it, and when he ignored his body's various complaints he felt remarkably refreshed. "That part was...well, kind of nice, I guess. I'm just sore."

"Oh!" A grin flashed. "Yeah, I had that problem this morning, too. You know what will help?"

"...If you quote Bruce and suggest that I go for a run to loosen up, I will punch you," he warned half-seriously.

"Well I was going to say breakfast and pills, but if you want to go for a run..."

"Gaaah..." He yanked his sleeping bag over his head, but he was smiling. "No running! We have to climb today, do you realize that?"

"I noticed. That's why I made what I did this morning."

He peeked out cautiously at the man sitting cross-legged beside him. "...What'd you make?"

"Breakfast burritos with eggs, cheese, and smoked salmon. I also made coffee."

"...How did you get eggs out here?" Please don't tell me you climbed a tree and robbed some poor bird's nest this morning, he begged silently. For one thing, that's just cruel. For another, they're probably rotten this late in the summer.

"They're crystallized. Don't make a face, they're good! They're way better than powdered eggs, at least."

"Well...okay." Walking over to the stove would help his muscles limber up if nothing else, and even if the burritos were awful the coffee would probably taste alright. "...I have to admit, it smells good over here," he confessed as they drew closer. "Almost too good. Are you hiding Alfred in your pocket or something?"

"Heh. No, but I did spend a lot of time with him learning how to prepare all this stuff. I guess something like skill must have rubbed off on me."

Tim agreed after he'd taken his first bite. Somehow the flavors worked together, and when they were combined with the coffee he felt himself begin to truly wake up. His stomach was full by the time his last bite disappeared, but his brain craved more. "Do we have materials for another meal of that?" he asked.

"Mm-hmm," Dick nodded. "I figured we'd save it for the way back, when we really need the protein."

"And here I was going to suggest we have it for dinner."

"We can if you want, but we'll have to eat tuna patties for breakfast another day."

"Ew. No." Salmon he could handle first thing in the morning, but tuna was too much. "I'm good, thanks."

Camp came down just as easily as it had the day before, and by the time they were helping to lift each other's packs into place Tim was much less stiff than he had been when he'd woken. The ibuprofen he'd swallowed with the last of his coffee likely wasn't hurting that any, he reflected as they started on their way. So long as it did it's job, he could enjoy their walk.

As it turned out, he would have been too busy gasping for air to complain about the ache in his legs and back even if he hadn't taken anything for it. They had known they had to climb today, but neither had anticipated what that entailed. The start was misleading, made up of as it was of little five- and ten-degree tilts that were almost unnoticeable. Once they left the grassland behind and ventured into bare rock and scrub brush, however, the angles jumped into the twenties and thirties. At one particularly hellish spot they marched up what he was certain was a forty-five degree slope. It went on for three-quarters of a mile, but they didn't dare stop to rest until they reached the top for fear of being unable to get their momentum back.

Their lungs were crying for air when they finally completed their tortuous ascent. Judging from the wide spot in the otherwise faint and narrow trail that had been made here, they were far from the first hikers who had all but collapsed when they got to the summit. Tim gratefully joined the ranks of those who had gone before, dropping to his knees and shrugging off his load before he leaned back against it and closed his eyes. "Good thing that guide has such pretty pictures," he murmured.

"I know, right? Inspiration to keep going." A beat passed. "...It's downhill from here, right?"

"More or less, I think. Hold on..." Shifting around, he opened a side pouch and reached in for the book he'd received seven months earlier. As he did his gaze flickered out over the land they had yet to traverse, and he froze. "Holy shit."

"Oh, no. Is there more uphill?"

"No. Dick, look."

"Timmy, what..." There was rustling as his brother shifted around, and then silence. "...Oh, whoa..."

'Whoa' was right. Below them sprawled thousands of acres of pine-covered hills, rocky outcrops, and deep, narrow valleys. Examining the lay of the land, it was obvious how people could get lost in such a place and fail to be found by even the most dedicated search party.

There was one major landmark, however, that stood out above every other notable point in the panorama. A thick white line flashed in the late-morning sun, a trace of a rainbow showing near its bottom. Watching it, he could almost hear the rumble of water hitting rocks. "...Is that it?" he whispered, pointing. "Is that...is that the falls, do you think?"

"It's got to be," Dick answered in an equally low voice. "...Didn't the guide say anything about this? This is amazing."

"Huh-uh. I think it just said that there was a nice view from the top." He snorted. "Talk about an understatement."

"Yeah, I'm thinking the author might have been jaded to have not mentioned this...you've got to take a picture, Tim."

"It won't capture it," he shook his head. "Guaranteed, it won't capture it." Nothing possibly could, not when what they were looking out over was making their brains stutter to a halt.

"Maybe not, but...who knows what the view will be like from below? The next time we see the water it might be too close to get a shot of the whole thing. Don't you want one like that?"

He had a point. Even though they had to come back along the same trail, there was no guarantee that the weather would be as good as it was today. In a place like this, everything could sock in in the next five minutes and veil the valleys beneath them in clouds and fog. There was no way he could imprison the spirit of such a landscape in a photograph, it was true, but that didn't mean he should waste a once-in-a-lifetime chance to try.

For safety's sake he had put his camera away when the path had grown intense. Now he dug it back out, steadied it atop his pack, and maximized the zoom. At their distance anything else would have been a mere speck, but Asperity Falls was tall enough that it almost filled the frame. Closing his eyes, he pressed the shutter button.

"...And you said you couldn't capture it," Dick said beside his ear. A hand landed on his shoulder. "That's a fabulous shot."

"Thanks," he replied, risking a peek. It was pretty good, but he still felt like something was missing. "...Maybe I'll try again, though. It could be better."

"You do that, and I'll work on lunch. I think we both earned double peanut butter bars after that climb."

"I won't say no to that," he nodded, and turned back to the viewfinder.

Several photos later he was neither more nor less satisfied with his success. His excitement, however, was rising anew. At the end of the day, he mused, we'll be there. Right there. His skin tingled as if it was already being subjected to the cool spray he'd seen hovering at the terminus of the cascade, and the prospect was almost too much for him to handle with any sort of calmness.

With a fresh dose of pain medicine in his system and giddiness swelling in his chest, he stood a short time later and waited for Dick to finish tucking their food away. "Ready?" he asked when the last flap was buckled into place.

"Can I step away and take care of a little personal business first, Captain Eager?" the older man grinned.

"I guess if you have to," he joked back. "But seriously, let's hurry."

"I'll be quick, I promise." Leaving his bag, he headed for the edge of the rise. "Be right back!" he waved just before he vanished.

"I get it, I get it," he chuckled. Turning away, he gazed out over the terrain they would be descending into for the rest of the day. The view arrested him once more, and several minutes passed as he studied it. Routes long ago scraped out by glaciers stood out at the base of the mountains, a few still sheltering little patches of snow. The deep slices made by alpine rivers glimmered in the bends through which the lifeblood of the region slipped by. Forests grew in some areas but skipped others, creating a patchwork of trees, grass, and stone.

It was so beautiful, he ventured, that even Damian would have had to agree with him on that point were he standing here right now.

Dick surfaced from over the ridge, interrupting his thoughts. "Okay," he started. "Let's get this show on th-"

Suddenly, Tim was on the ground. "Ow," a complaint exited his mouth as his knees slammed into bare rock. "What the hell?" The world had given a jolt without warning, he realized. An earthquake, maybe? It must have been. Ugh. They were far from his favorite natural phenomenon, in part because there was no way of knowing when one was coming, and for one to have intruded on a perfect day like today made his flesh crawl. "...Dick, you okay?" he hollered.

"...Yeah, I'm good. You?"

"Where are you?"

"Still down. Hold on." He rose from where he'd fallen and took a tentative step forward. "You never answe-"

For the second time in as many minutes, he was cut off. "Whoa!" he cried as he dropped again. "Tim!"

"Dick!" Tim shouted back, clinging to the earth. The toss they'd experienced a moment before had been bothersome, but this new shaking was nauseating. He hadn't known that rock could roll in waves, let alone that the planet itself could shudder as if it were breaking apart beneath them. He hadn't wanted to know such things, he pleaded desperately as he was thrown about. All he wanted was to wake up, to wake up and see that this was just a nightmare, just a bad dream, just primordial panic taking over as he lay unconscious in his sleeping bag underneath the stars...

But he didn't wake up, and the roller coaster didn't stop. Something slammed into him from above after one particularly large shockwave, and he grabbed hold of it, hoping that it would turn out to be his brother. It wasn't, but he couldn't let go. He squeezed instead, his hands recognizing his pack even though his brain was registering nothing other than fear. Still the world shook, on and on until he was sure that this was the end of everything. There had been a nuclear war somewhere, or an alien invasion, or...it didn't matter. Up and down were interchangeable, Dick was rolling along somewhere else on their hill of death, and Bruce was a thousand miles away.

A tiny moan of denial tore from his throat as he realized that in the end, despite his best efforts to prevent it, he was going to die alone.

An instant after he had that epiphany, he thought he had died. The shaking subsided, leaving him flat on his back and clutching his bag; the screech and grind of the mountains moving in ways they had not done for thousands, maybe even millions of years faded away; the distant snaps and crashes of breaking trees and rolling boulders quieted. There was a moment of perfect, absolute noiselessness, and as he stared up at a sheet of featureless blue all he could think was that this was a rather disappointing afterlife.

Only when a hawk flapped hellbent-for-leather across his vision did he snap out of his shock. Turning his head sideways, he found himself mere inches from taking a likely lethal tumble down the very path that had gotten him here to start with. Giving a low cry, he skittered backward, dragging his pack with him.

When he'd reached a safe distance he stopped, resting on his battered and bloodied knees and choking back fearful sobs. Gotta calm down, he told himself. Pull it together, Drake. Pull it...pull it together. He took a slow, gasping assessment of the rest of his body in an effort to rein in the panic chemicals still thrumming in his veins, and found himself bruised but not broken. I'm okay.I'm okay. I'm...I'm okay. But...

His eyes widened. But where's Dick?!

"Dick!" he shrieked, all of the terror he'd been trying to hold back coming out in his brother's name. "...Diiiick!" Answer me, goddamn it! Stumbling to his feet, he glanced about frantically. Nothing was where he remembered it; all of the contours of the hilltop had morphed under the pressure of the quake, and he had no idea how many times he himself had been turned around from his original orientation. Scanning the valleys below was completely unhelpful, as they were now as shattered as his soul felt. Even the white line of the falls, a beacon, he had thought, that could be relied on, had disappeared. There was nothing familiar except the clear sky above, and even that wouldn't last forever.

With tears now pouring down his cheeks, he raised his hands – he'd jammed a finger, he noted, although who cared about that if he couldn't find his brother? – to frame his mouth. "Dick!" he wailed. "Diiick!" Please. Please,please say something. Scream, shout, anything. "Diiiiiiiiiick!"

But there was no answer.

Author's Note: And so it begins.

For those of you who went looking for my promised post on my blog yesterday, I offer my sincerest apologies. I was having internet issues until very late last night, so the post never made it onto the site. It is up now, though, if you're still interested.

Happy reading!