A/N: I feel asleep before posting this, but I woke up before I slept through the whole night. That's not important, I just wanted to let you all know.
"How did you sleep?" Slade asked when Robin finally stirred next to him after a long, cold night.
The teen stretched and stared at the fabric of the tent. Truth be told, he hadn't slept a single night since he left The Tower. The closest he'd ever made it to actual rest was a half-awake stillness and the fleeting micro-sleeps where his body simply shut down for seconds at a time. He hated those moments. They came with a terrifying stiffness that coursed through his body, as if he entered some small paralysis and his mind passed through a black cloud. Worse yet was the jostling that accompanied waking, a painful and sudden stab of reality as if he needed some sort of reminder that his body was still alive.
"Fine," he lied. "You?"
"Same," the villain answered, reaching forward and starting to unzip the tent. "Thanks for not kicking me in the balls."
"Don't get too comfy with the idea that I won't," Robin muttered, putting his hands over his face, roughly massaging the skin and yawning. "So what's the plan for today?"
"Well, I thought we'd start with a nice pot of fresh coffee, read the paper, and maybe do some yoga before we make our grocery list."
"That's it. I'm kicking you in the balls."
"If you don't want dumb answers, don't ask dumb questions," Slade suggested helpfully as he crawled out of the tent and offered a hand to his companion that was promptly ignored.
"It's actually a very valid question," Robin defended. "Bruce might be on his way here, but there's guarantee that he'll make it." He paused, realizing the cruel bluntness of his words. He didn't allow himself to dwell on it. "We need a back-up plan. If he isn't coming, then we need to find a way off this roof."
"Such little faith in the Bat," Slade smirked, zipping their little tent closed. "I wondered what you would have thought if you'd known I was coming."
"Hell. If I'd have known it was you, I'd have run the other way," the teen snarked as he walked to the edge of the rooftop and silently began to calculate. "But, really, we need to think up a Plan B."
"I gave this some consideration last night."
"Me too… Just how good is your healing factor?" Robin asked carefully.
"I wouldn't survive the fall. Well, I might – but I'd be eaten before I was in any state to move."
"What about the drop to the fire escape? It's about… I'd guess only about 50 feet."
"You're forgetting about the overhang on this building. I doubt I could gain control of the fall enough to land on it. And if they blew it off the side of the building like you said, then it's likely not very stable. Even if I managed to grab hold of it, there's no guarantee that it wouldn't fall apart and send me straight to those bastards."
"What about your rope? What kind of line is that?"
"It might hold. But there's nothing here to secure it to. You'd have to hold while I climbed down. Not sure that I trust those scrawny arms. No offence."
"Hey, I held the line while you and your fat head climbed up," Robin gave the man a cocky smile, tensing subconsciously as the villain walked to him and peered over the side of the building. He let out the tiny breath he'd been holding and motioned vaguely to the blacked metal that clung to the side of the building, "There's the escape."
Slade's eye narrowed as he peered below, noting a mass of jagged metal and the large pile of rubble that had fallen to the ground. "Look at the blast patterns near the top... The wall itself was blown away, which means there's hardly anything anchoring the bolts. It won't hold."
"Yeah. I was afraid you would say that."
"There's only one option that I can see, and I don't think you'll like it."
"You're right. I don't." Robin answered with a frown. "But I think it's the only other option we have. You would secure the rope from the top, and I would climb down to the top window and swing inside. It'd have to be me… I don't think I could hold the line if you were to swing back and forth."
"I agree. And from there, you would need to go get supplies. Which, I'm guessing those are all at the Tower?" Slade asked, his voice surprisingly respectful, or at the very least not aggressive, which Robin considered impressive.
"Not all of them. I have a cache close by. I'd have to travel on street level, though… That's a practical death wish."
"Any chance the building has any useful supplies?"
"I doubt it. The residents living here took everything with them to the rooftop. We flew them and everything with them back to the tower."
"You might be able to make a bomb. Blow through the roof and I'll come down."
Robin seemed to consider it, "Maybe… but that will draw more of them to us. Even if we were together when we left, we'd still be on the street. With your healing factor… No, honestly, I'd probably do better on my own. I'm smaller and faster… I don't know… we're probably screwed either way."
"Glad to see you're optimistic," the villain smirked.
"I'm just being realistic," he sighed. "I guess I could always shoot you and run away while they eat you."
"That's the spirit," Slade gave a boisterous laugh and ruffled the boy's hair. He expected the teen to pull away, but the hero simply frowned, glaring at the dead swarming below.
A/N: Do you think that optimism is a good or bad quality during the Zombie Apocalypse? Would it be useful to survival? Discuss...