Something coarse and wet was being dragged across his closed eyelids. It hurt, and his hand automatically shot up to stop whatever it was that was hurting him. His fingers closed around a warm wrist and he twisted it sharply.

"OW! Whoa! Rob, it's me!"

Wally? Robin immediately let go of the wrist and blinked his eyes open, only to slam them shut at the pain it caused. He groaned and raised a hand to touch the area around his eyes, but it was gently intercepted by Wally, who pushed his arm back down to his side.

"Just stay still for a sec," Wally said from somewhere above him, "I'm trying to get some of that stuff out of your eyes."

"What-what happened?" Robin asked.

"I'm a little vague on that myself," Wally replied, and Robin felt him dab at his eyes again. He gritted his teeth against the sting. "Something knocked me out and then when I woke up you were yelling at me to use your rebreather because of-"

"-Scarecrow's gas," Robin finished for him, remembering. "Right."

"You okay?" Wally asked him.

"Fine. Just-" Robin gestured at his yes. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah, aside from the fact that we're stuck in this smelly old lab, have no way of contacting our friends, got beat up by some overzealous Russian guy AND I just watched my best friend pass out from exposure to some gas, not knowing whether he was going to even recognize me anymore when he woke up or even if he was going to wake up, I'm awesome, " Wally paused and took a breath. "So…not that I'm not happy that you're awake and having a very lucid conversation with me right now, because I am. Extremely. But shouldn't you be going stark raving mad about now?"

Robin sat up slowly. His head was pounding and his eyes still hurt like hell, but aside from the bumps and bruises he sustained in the fight with Knyazev he didn't feel much the worse for wear. Which was definitely odd. "I should," he agreed. "But I'm not."

"No hallucinations?"

"No. Unless I'm imagining you talking to me, in which case you're a hallucination, but-" A warm hand closed around his wrist.

"No way, dude. I'm real."

"Well, that's exactly what a hallucination would say, isn't it?" Robin said, getting to his feet but keeping his eyes closed.

"Dude, now you're just being paranoid," Wally responded. "What are you doing?"

"There's water here?"

"Yeah, a tiny little faucet over there. The water pressure's pretty bad though."

Before he could ask where "over there" was, Wally took his hands and guided him towards what felt like a bowl made of stone. A sink, he concluded. There was a squeak and then the sound of running water. Robin cupped his hands under the narrow stream and splashed the water into his face, sighing with relief at the marvelously soothing effect on his eyes.

"So…maybe it wasn't fear gas?" Wally said from somewhere behind him. "Maybe it was just something to knock us out?"

Robin didn't miss the hopeful note in his voice.

"It's not Scarecrow's M.O. to use substances that don't use people's fears against them, but, yeah, maybe," he added, more for Wally's sake than his own. For now, he was going to operate under the assumption that he had been exposed to some kind of fear gas and that he would start to feel the effects soon, which meant that he was going to need an antidote ASAP.

"How long was I out?" he asked as he carefully pried open one eyelid with the fingers of his left hand and used his right hand to drip some of the water into his eye. It hurt like hell at first, but the sharp stinging sensation that had been plaguing him from the moment Scarecrow had sprayed that stuff into his eyes was slowly beginning to lessen to a dull burn.

"Maybe fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes?!"

"Give or take."

"Geez!" Robin carefully rubbed at his eyes one last time, then groped around for the faucet to turn it off. "We have to get moving!"

"Yeah, dude, I'd love to! Just, you know, we've gotta find a way to get out of this room first," Wally pointed out. "How're the eyes?"

Robin blinked rapidly and wiped the last droplets of water from his face. "Better, actually." His vision was still a little blurry and his eyes felt like sandpaper, but at least he was able to keep them open without being tempted to claw at them.

There was a sudden sharp intake of breath and he looked up to see Wally staring at him with a startled expression on his face. Robin stiffened. "What? What's wrong?"

"Your mask's gone."

Robin rolled his eyes and relaxed a little. "You're just noticing this now? We have got to do something about your powers of observation, KF."

"Dude! I've been a little preoccupied with other stuff, you know. Like, worrying about you."

Robin waved him off, but paused mid-wave when his gaze fell on Wally's bound hands. "KF! Why didn't you tell me you were still tied up?" Robin exclaimed as he swiftly moved to undo the wires around Wally's wrists.

"What, you're just noticing this now?" Wally mimicked. "I untied you ages ago!"

"Hey, I was blind! And unconscious when you did the untying. Better than your excuse."

Robin made short work of the wires and Wally rubbed his wrists with a relieved sigh. "Can you do anything about the inhibitor collar?"

Robin shook his head. "Sorry, they took my gloves and utility belt, so no lock picks. Besides, the lock is electromagnetic so I probably wouldn't have been able to get it open with just my lock picks anyway."

"Greaaaat," Wally commented, before giving him a side-long look.

"What?"

"Why are you not freaking out about losing your mask?"

Robin shrugged. "Bats don't freak out, neither do Robins. Besides, Scarecrow didn't seem all that interested in who I was. I mean, he just ripped the mask off and sprayed me in the face. I don't think he even looked," he said. "No sense in worrying about it now anyway. Gotta concentrate on finding a way out of here first."

"I already checked the door; it's solid metal, no locks or cracks on our side that I could see."

"Okay," Robin said, looking around pensively. "No windows, so we might be underground. Probably no outer walls either…"

"How about the air shaft?" Wally suggested, nodding his head at the small, square ventilation grid in the top right corner of the room.

"Perfect! Give me a boost?"

Wally positioned himself directly underneath the grid, bracing his back against the wall and lacing his fingers together. Using his friend's hands to climb up the taller boy's shoulders, Robin stood on his toes to inspect the grid.

"It's screwed shut," he reported. "Man, do I miss my utility belt right now!"

"Does that mean you can't get it open?"

"I didn't say that," Robin said with a grin, jumping down from Wally's shoulders and retrieving the wires their wrists had been bound with. He was back on Wally's shoulders and working away at the screws in seconds.

Robin.

"What?"

"What, 'what'?" Wally asked.

"I thought you said something."

"Nope. How's it goin'?"

"Halfway there."

Robin. You are weak.

Robin stiffened. "Batman?"

You are a disappointment.

The air around him grew cold and dark. He sensed a shadow towering over him, and a shiver crawled up his back.

"Batman? No, I- Why?"

You are NEVER going to be good enough. I never should have chosen YOU as my partner, DICK.

Robin whipped his head around, horrified, and stared up at the massive dark figure standing over him. "Batman, I- what did I do? What did I do wrong?" He turned, but suddenly the ground seemed to disappear from under his feet.

"Robin!"

He was falling, but all he could see were Batman's masked eyes glaring at him with supreme and angry disapproval.

oOo

"Robin!"

Wally felt Robin's weight slip from his shoulders and made a grab for his falling friend, but his fingers only grazed the fabric of Robin's cape and the younger boy landed hard on his butt.

Even without his superspeed, Wally was beside his friend in a second.

"Geez, Rob! What the hell? Are you okay?"

Dazed blue eyes blinked up at him. "Ow."

"You okay?" Wally repeated anxiously.

"Yeah," Robin replied, a slight tremor in his voice. "Yeah, I'm- fine."

"They've started, haven't they?" Wally said quietly. "The hallucinations?"

"Hallucinations? Uh. Yeah," Robin said, his gaze dropping to the floor. Seeing that Robin wasn't going to elaborate, Wally helped the younger boy to his feet. "Ready to try again?" he asked, purposely keeping his voice light. No point in dwelling on what couldn't be helped. He just hoped Robin would be able to hang on to his mind long enough to, you know, actually get them out.

Robin looked at him and set his jaw. "Yeah."

Wally patted his shoulder in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. Handing Robin the wires he'd dropped during his fall, Wally resumed his previous position against the wall. This time he wrapped his hands around Robin's ankles in case something else happened.

"Got it!" Robin announced only a few minutes later, and before Wally could say anything, Robin had pulled his ankles from his grasp and the weight on his shoulders was gone. He glanced up to see Robin smirking down at him from the ventilation shaft. "You comin'?"

Wally grinned, taking a few steps back before he ran up the wall, kicked off and twisted in mid-air, easily grabbing hold of the edge of the vent. The movement exacerbated the headache he'd been nursing since Robin had shaken him awake, but he ignored it and pulled himself into the shaft. When he looked up expectantly, Robin was already moving further down the vent. Great. It just figured that when he finally got a chance to show off his own acrobatic skills, Robin wasn't paying attention.

Sighing, Wally quickly caught up to his friend and they crawled along silently for a while, both concentrating on making as little noise as possible.

When Robin took a right at an intersection with barely a hesitation, Wally decided to break the silence. "Uh, dude? Do you know where we're going?" he whispered.

"Not really."

"Then how do you know-?"

"The air's being sucked out this way," Robin whispered back. "Feel it?"

"Uh." Wally paused and became aware of a slight breeze ruffling his hair. "Yeah?"

"Means it's a return duct. It should lead us to the end of the system. At the very least, we can check other grids along the way for- for-"

Wally looked up sharply and halted just in time to avoid bumping into his friend when Robin stopped suddenly. "What is it?"

Robin didn't answer, just stood frozen on his hands and knees, staring at something ahead.

"Rob?"

"I-I'm sorry," Robin whispered. "I-I didn't mean to…"

"What are you talking about?" Wally said, voice low. Then Robin's head whipped to the side for just a moment, as if someone had struck him, and Wally caught a glimpse of the other boy's face; his eyes were wide, his skin was pale and his bottom lip was trembling. Uh-oh. Not good. Not good!

"Rob!" Wally hissed. "Robin, whatever you're seeing or hearing, it's not real, okay? Can you hear me?" He wrapped his fingers around Robin's ankle and shook it lightly.

Robin's response was to whimper and move back, forcing Wally to back up a few steps as well.

"N-no, Batman. I- I swear I didn't! I don't know how-"

"Robin!" Wally struggled to keep his voice down while trying to get through to his friend. The fact that there was very little room to maneuver and that he was facing Robin's rear rather than his face rather complicated matters.

When Robin's voice rose to a shout, Wally did the only other thing he could think of that might bring the younger boy out of his hallucination: he pinched the outside of Robin's calf. Hard.

Robin jerked and Wally winced when he banged his head against the ceiling.

"Ow," Robin said, automatically bringing up a hand to rub at the back of his head. "What the-?"

"Rob?" Wally whispered.

"KF?"

"Dude, you with me?"

"Uh. I think so? Where- where are we?"

"Condensed version? Scarecrow and Russian dude jumped us, you were exposed to fear gas and-"

"-we're escaping through the air vent. Right, got it."

"You okay?"

Robin was silent for a long moment. "No," he whispered finally, "but we don't have time for a therapy session. Let's go-"

Before he could finish his sentence, a voice thundered down the shaft. "So the little bird is still thinking he can escape. Think again. I am coming to get you and your little friend and when I am find you, I am tearing. You. To. Pieces!"

Knyazev's growl bounced off the walls of the shaft, making it ring in their ears. It sent a shiver down Wally's spine.

"You heard that too, right?" Robin asked quietly, sounding uncertain.

"Yeah, dude. You're definitely not hallucinating this time."

"Okay, just checking. I guess we'd better hurry then," Robin said, immediately moving forward and picking up the pace.

"At least he won't be able to follow us into the vents," Wally remarked. "There's no way he'd fit."

"Yeah, but they might have blue prints of the building, which would tell them exactly where to look for us."

"Oh. Yeeeeah, that would be bad. Hey, Rob?" Wally began when something else occurred to him, and he wanted to smack himself for not thinking to ask about it sooner. "What's our time frame here? I mean, how much time do we have to get you the antidote?"

"I don't know. But I'm guessing that the worse the hallucinations get, the less time we'll have. Eventually I'll either lose my mind or die from heart failure."

It was stated so matter-of-factly that anyone who didn't know Robin as well as Wally did would think he wasn't bothered by this at all. Wally swallowed, and cursed whoever invented those damn inhibitor collars. He and Rob could've been halfway to Mount Justice by now.

"But the good news is that we missed our check-in ages ago, so the Team should already be hightailing it here."

Unless they ran into trouble too, Wally thought. But he was not going to think about that. Nope. "They'd better get here soon," he muttered.

It was another five minutes before they found their exit. There had been no more hallucinations nor had they heard anything more from Knyazev. It wasn't reassuring.

Robin soundlessly removed the grid that was blocking their way out and they both jumped down from the shaft. Wally took a moment to get his bearings. They were standing on a small, square platform in some sort of tunnel; the air was stale and there was dull light coming from a row of glowing fixtures fastened to the ceiling.

"Where the heck are we?"

"No idea. I think it's an old subway tunnel or something. See those tracks over there?" Robin said, pointing at a gap between two platforms. "Doesn't look like it's still being used though."

"A subway tunnel? What's it doing here?"

"Dude, seriously, who cares why it's here? Let's go!"

"Right. Right."

They jumped down from the platform and Robin crouched to put his ear against the metal tracks.

Wally stared at him. "Uh, what are you doing?"

"Checking if there are any trains coming."

"I thought you said this tunnel wasn't being used anymore?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not, but, better safe than sorry." Robin was quiet for a minute, a look of concentration on his face. "Okay," he said finally, straightening up. "Seems clear."

"Great. Soooooo which way?" Wally asked, peering into the dark of one tunnel.

"No idea. I…"

Robin's voice trailed off and Wally looked over to find him staring at something over Wally's shoulder. Expecting Knyazev looming over him, Wally whipped around, automatically falling into a defensive stance, only to be looking up at…nothing.

A feeling of dread settled in his stomach, and he turned back to Robin, who was still staring at a point over Wally's shoulder. The younger boy began to stumble backwards, his eyes wide and frightened, and tripped over the tracks. For the second time that night, he landed hard on his butt, but this time it didn't jolt him out of whatever terrifying hallucination held him in its grip. He backpedalled frantically until his back hit the wall behind him.

Wally groaned. "No, no, no, no, no, not now!" He crouched down in front of his friend and clutched his upper arms. "Come on, Rob, stay with me! Stay with me, c'mon on!"

Robin was shaking his head, murmuring something Wally didn't catch. Suddenly, the younger boy cried out and dropped his face in his hands. "NO!" Robin shouted, shaking his head again vigorously and trying to push his back even further against the wall as if he wanted it to just swallow him up.

Wally shook him lightly. "Rob! Rob, look at me! C'mon, dude, I really need you to look at me right now." He carefully pried Robin's hands from the boy's face. "Look at me, Rob. Please."

Slowly, Robin's wide eyes rose to meet his own. His pupils were so blown that Wally could barely even see the blue irises anymore. "W-Wally?" his friend whispered.

Wally could feel him tremble beneath his hands and smiled encouragingly, hopeful. "Yeah, dude, it's me. I'm right here, see?"

But Robin's eyes grew troubled and sorrowful, and Wally's hopes were dashed. "Wally, I-I'm sorry." Robin said, lifting a shaking hand to touch Wally's cheek. "I'm so sorry. I-I never meant for you to die. It's all my fault… All my fault! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

Oh no. Wally closed his eyes and hung his head, feeling defeated. How the hell was he supposed to get through to Robin if he thought Wally was dead? Taking a deep breath, he raised his head and gently took Robin's chin between his thumb and index finger, forcing his agitated friend to meet his gaze again.

"Robin, look at me," he pleaded. "I'm NOT dead, okay, dude? I'm right here, I'm ALIVE!"

The words had only barely left his mouth when the wall beside them exploded.