SPOILER ALERT! - *DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED "DERAILMENT" OR PLAN TO READ IT. TRUST ME, READING FURTHER WILL RUIN THE STORY FOR YOU!*

Here is yet another version of "Derailment's" epilogue. I was quite hung up on Robin's nightmares for a bit. How could you go through a near drowning event, an avalanche, a cougar attack, and falling from a cliff and not have a few issues afterwards. You know what I mean? Anyway, this promised to be a long road to mental recovery, something I didn't want to get into here. (I learned my lesson after Lab Rat: Running Scared - Recovery should be its own story.) Lots of DaddyBats! ahead and sweet Hurt/Comfort for those of you with addictions . . .

Derailment - Not So Irrational Fears (V. 3 of the attempted epilogue)

Warning: Nightmare and Panic Attack . . . Rated T (eh, not so bad, but just in case)


The roar sounded like the end of the world! Ice, rocks, and sometimes an entire tree flew past him. Something scratch his face. Something caught his cape and yanked him from his perch and he was falling . . . falling forever. He screamed . . . not for his parents. They couldn't help him. They had fallen, too. No, he called for Batman; he called for Bruce!

Dick sat up as he jerked awake suddenly, the sound of Bruce's name still ringing in his ears. It was followed immediately by a sharp cry of pain. He grabbed at his ribs as his coughs compounded his punishment. Strong, warm hands grasped his shoulders as the bed dipped down only seconds later.

"Easy . . . You're safe. It's okay, Dick! I've got you," Bruce's voice reached him as the sound of his own coughing eased.

Dick whined, tears of fear and pain seeping from the corners of his eyes. Nothing hurt worse than having both broken ribs and pneumonia . . . At least, nothing in Dick's recent memories. Other things had hurt worse, but they were distant and this pain was immediate. He clutched at Bruce's shirt as Dick struggled to regain control of his breathing.


2 Months Later

They parked the Batmobile and took to the rooftops. Going up wasn't too bad. Robin stood beside Batman and looked out over Gotham. It had been eight weeks since Robin had been rescued along with his teammates. His pneumonia had been cured after a week of aggressive antibiotics but his ribs had taken a bit longer to heal.

Bruce had announced that it would be a short patrol as Dick was just getting back his strength and stamina and he didn't want him overdoing it. Normally, Dick would complain about being overprotected but, the truth was, he wasn't quite one hundred percent yet. And he had learned from experience, no matter how he disliked it, that pushing oneself too hard immediately after convalescing a couple of months will only backfire on him. He did not want to be grounded for another couple of weeks because he was stupid and hurt himself.

Batman was going over the plan for the night and the route they would be taking but Robin only heard every third word. He had stepped onto the low wall lining the edge of the building and made the mistake of looking down. It hadn't looked so high from the ground. The building, however, was twenty stories . . . That equaled approximately two hundred feet.

Barely anything when compared to a thousand-foot cliff, really.

Should be a piece of cake . . . Should be.

Robin gulped. His eyes flicked over to Batman, wondering if he had heard it. The evening was cool and getting cooler but a bead of sweat trickled down the side of the boy's face as his chest tightened slightly and his stomach churned. The nightmares had stopped several weeks ago. He shouldn't be feeling this way, not out here.

"Ready to go?" Batman asked but he didn't wait for Robin's answer. He shot a line and leapt out into space swinging towards the next building across the intersection.

Robin held out his own grapple gun but his hand was shaking too badly. He tried it with two hands which helped but not much. Another bead of sweat ran down his forehead. His breathing had increased in his body's bid to get oxygen. The shaking in his hands began working its way down his body until he was forced to step back off of the wall and back onto roof's surface.

Images of dangling above a thousand-foot drop, of falling, of being tossed and roiled in a torrent, great chunks of ice and rocks and trees skimming mere inches from his face and swirled before his eyes, making him dizzy, sick . . . Robin dropped to his hands and knees as he panted through what he knew was just a panic attack. That was all it was . . . a panic attack! He wasn't dying! He wasn't . . .

Eventually he felt something block the stiff breeze and large hands were gripping his shoulders. Batman . . . When had Batman realized he hadn't followed and returned?

"Robin! Robin, can you hear me?"

Robin had the feeling that this wasn't the first time he had been asked that. His mouth was so dry he didn't think he could answer so Robin nodded his head.

"What happened? Are you sick?"

It would be so easy to just nod his head, then Batman would take him back home but what then? Go to bed? Robin knew that those images would be there in his subconscious, waiting.

Almost as if he read Robin's mind, Batman pulled him up and against his chest. He wrapped his cape around the boy to protect him from prying eyes. They didn't want to advertise Robin's weakness if they could help it.

"It's the nightmare, isn't it?" Batman asked him. "You remember falling."

"I remember it all," he whispered into the Kevlar armor. He looked up worriedly. "I can't fly anymore, Batman! I can't fly!"

The cowl hit Bruce's expression but Robin saw Batman's lips tighten in response to his claim. After a moment, he nodded.

"I'll take you home for now," he told him, "but I won't let you give up just yet. There are things we can do to help you work through this. Let's give it a shot before writing yourself off, shall we?"

Robin nodded, shakily. "O-Okay."

Batman stood and watched closely as Robin followed him, ready to assist if he needed it again. The boy's feet slowed as they made their way back to the roof's edge, this time on the alley-side where they had parked the Batmobile.

"Do you need help going down?" Batman asked him quietly. "You can use the fire escape if you want or I can take you down using the grapple."

Robin glanced back at the door that led to the building's interior staircase longingly, but he knew that was out of the question. The less that knew about his weakness the better. He sighed. That meant getting down the side of the building by himself. He comforted himself, too, with the knowledge that Bruce would work with him at home to overcome this sudden, irrational fear he had developed.

Okay, maybe it wasn't completely irrational considering what he had gone through, but he had done all this before. All his life, Robin had flown. On the trapeze, off of buildings and skyscrapers . . . even once out of a cannon. He wasn't giving that up now and being Robin depended on it. He would get through this thing, too.

Robin wasn't done yet . . . not by a long shot.

Now, if he could just make himself climb down this little, metal ladder . . .


REACTIONS?

This will be the last of the epilogues that I will post for this story. The rest I had just deleted out of hand. But, yeah, you can see where this would be a problem that would take a few chapters to fix and then it would need a new climax to make it non-bleh. (I made LR: Running Scared non-bleh, btw, so it is still a wonderful read if you love DaddyBats! and an amazing Robin recovery.) So, this particular version of "Derailment's" epilogue was a no-go very quickly.

On the other hand, it was pretty interesting to me, nonetheless . . . What did you think about it?