Tim's contribution to the journey had been assembling their toolkit – the tent, sleeping bags, cooking apparatus, and other paraphernalia they would need on the trail – and he had taken it as seriously as he took every task he was assigned. He had spent hours doing product research online and in person, and on more than a few dozen evenings since Christmas Dick had gone looking for him only to find him hard at work on spreadsheets full of complex calculations. The younger man had claimed that all the formulas and coded lists would help him determine the best gear for their purposes, but he had just chuckled kindly at such 'typical Timmy' behavior and gone about his own business.

As they made camp, however, he was reminded why he had passed the job to his little brother to begin with. The tent went up like a dream, rising with even less effort than it had taken them on their practice runs at home. The ground pads began to perform their self-inflating magic as soon as they were unfurled, and the sleeping bags fit atop them perfectly. What had looked like a cramped space when it was located in front of a fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion ended up feeling pleasantly cozy against a backdrop of towering birch trees, and he nodded his satisfaction. "You made good choices with all of this stuff, bro," he called over his shoulder.

"Mm…we'll know for sure if it rains again, or gets cold or windy or-"

"Shh!" he cut him off. "Don't tempt it! Besides, I have confidence in your math. It looks so comfy in there that I almost want to try it out right now."

"You'd better eat first. Remember Alfred's imperative?"

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere near bed until I'm ready to sleep. There's way too much to enjoy out here, and I have a feeling I wouldn't wake up until morning no matter how good my intentions might be otherwise." With that he zipped the door shut and made his way to where Tim had pulled out their utensils. "How's dinner coming along, anyway?"

"…Well, we have a way to cook it now," he announced as he held up their small stove.

"Ta-da! Awesome."

"So where are we doing this?"

Dick jerked his head towards the trail. "I noticed a big boulder about a hundred yards ahead. We'd be far enough from the tent there."

"Somebody was paying attention in the bear briefing," Tim smirked. "Worried?"

"No. I just didn't figure you wanted to have an excuse to find out how effective the pepper spray you picked out is."

"…Yeah, I'd prefer that the efficacy of that particular piece of equipment remain a mystery to me for all time. I'm not a fan of not getting surprised by large furry things with claws. The boulder it is."

Carrying their bear canisters, the stove, and a small pot into which fit their plates, cups, and forks, they made their way towards the long, low rock Dick had spotted on their way in. "Hey, this is better than I thought," he said as they drew close.

"There are plenty of flat spots for cooking, at least."

"Heck, there's room to eat on top of it. We won't even have to sit in the dirt." To prove his point, he clambered up without setting his load down. "...Ooh, it's warm up here. Like, a nice warm; it's not the car roof all over again."

"That's a plus. Here, take the stove; I don't want to risk banging it on anything." A second later he, too, stood above the earth. "Nice. Dinner with a view."

They decided on curried rice, and thanks to the instructions Alfred had written on the side of the bag holding the dry mixture they were eating in less than ten minutes. "Omgod..." Dick slurred over the first bite.

"So good," Tim answered in an equally reverent voice.

"Alfred, god of cooking," he intoned jokingly as he held up his plate towards the east, "we offer our sincerest thanks."

"Somewhere in the house he just said 'you're very welcome' and doesn't know why."

"Hehe. I hope Bruce and Dami didn't hear. They'll think he's losing it."

They fell silent after that, too busy shoveling rice into their mouths to talk. Dick hadn't realized how ravenous their short trek had made him until he'd caught a whiff of spice and chicken bouillon, and now he ate at a pace that would have earned him a horrified look had he tried it at the dinner table. Starting out, he worried that there wouldn't be enough food to fill them both up; as he reached the bottom of his serving, however, his concern shifted to what they were supposed to do with leftovers. The beast in his gut was more than satisfied with what he'd given it, but he didn't dare stop until his plate was clean...

"Ugh," Tim fell back to lie against their stone cushion. "So full. Stomach...near explosion point..."

"Join the club," he groaned.

"Is it possible to eat so much in one sitting that you actually rupture something, do you think?"

"Not for a healthy person. Well..." he reconsidered "maybe it is. I know people who have been starving can die from food overload. But we're not starving, so I don't think we hit that point. Even if it feels like we did." Stacking his plate on his brother's, he leaned back against his hands and tried to think of anything other than the acute overage warnings that were radiating from his midsection. "...Too bad we won't be able to see stars tonight. The trees will be in the way."

"Yeah...tomorrow, though, we'll be in the clear."

"Yup. Any idea how far it is to the edge of the forest from here?" The path to Asperity Falls was mostly located above timber, he recalled, and once they had left the forest they were in tonight there would be little to block their view of the sky.

"Maybe another mile? It's not far."

"Cool." They lay for a while longer, digesting and giving the occasional burp as their beleaguered stomachs adjusted to the huge load they had dropped on them. "We should clean up and stash the food," Dick ventured finally.

"Mm...is it getting dark?"

He looked over to find that Tim had crossed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "Sunset should be in an hour or so, but it'll be hard to see in here before then."

"Meh...okay. I'm up."

Once they were moving about their malaise lifted. It was no chore to clean their dishes, and as Tim went to broadcast the dirty water in the brush a distance away Dick set about repacking the bear container. The space that had been vacated by their meal would just barely be sufficient to accept their plates and forks, which were now scent-bearing despite the hot rinse they'd received, but everything would have to be organized differently for the trick to work. Midway through the can he came across a familiar plastic baggie and gave a hoot of joy. "Hey, Timmy!"

"Hey, what?" was called back at him.

"Come see what I found!" He watched, grinning and bursting now with both curry and joy, as his brother returned from his expedition. "Look," he presented the bag. "Marshmallows!"

"...That's great, and I'm sure I'll be more excited about it later, but please tell me you don't want to eat them tonight. Because I'll die, Dick. I really, really will."

"You say that like you think I have any more room for them than you do. The point is that they're here, though!" Smiling once more at the small white cylinders of sugar he'd packed halfway across the country, he set them aside with the rest of the things he'd pulled out. "...He must have heard me, huh?"

"You mean your whole 'praise Alfred, giver of good grub' bit?"

"Yeah. That's why he gave the marshmallows back," he joked. "But...'grub'? Are you channeling Wally? Because that's definitely a Wally word, right there. Actually..." He ducked his head and chuckled suddenly, remembering something.

"...What?"

"I was just thinking...did you know that he once made me teach him how to say things like 'food, please' and 'I'm hungry' in every language I knew? Even in Romani."

"Seriously? Clark would have to be concussed to send anyone other than you on a mission involving the Roma," Tim frowned.

"I know, but he insisted. He said you never know what's going to happen and that if he ended up in a camp somehow he wanted to make sure he'd be able to eat."

"I like Wally and all, but that's just ridiculous. Patting your stomach and gesturing to food is practically a universal symbol!"

"Hey, it's Wally. The only thing that comes above his appetite on the priority list are his friends and family. To be honest, sometimes I think he'd bump his friends down a notch if he was hungry enough."

"...It must suck to be a slave to your metabolism like that."

"Yeah, I guess. On the other hand, he gets some pretty sweet perks. Right now, for example," he swung his arm to indicate the array of foodstuffs spread out on the rock, "I wouldn't mind being able to put all of this back at super speed."

"Well if you stopped talking and tried putting it back even at regular speed, maybe you'd get somewhere."

Dick gaped in false disbelief at the playful taunt. "You say that to the person who spent so many hours coming up with a menu just for this trip, and then even agreed to carry it all on his back..." He crossed his arms and shook his head. "For shame."

"Yeah, it is pretty awful how you stole Alfred's credit just now."

"Stole Alfred's-" he sputtered. "...Hehe. Okay, little brother, now you're gonna get it."

"What are you going to do, withhold my breakfast? Because I'm pretty sure that would be enough to get you banned from peanut butter bars forever, and I know you don't want that."

It was all play, of course, and he had no intention of refusing his sibling food at any point in the trip, but he had been planning to threaten as much. Now that that option was gone, he was forced to play dirty. "No," he upped the ante, "I'm not going to touch your meals. Instead, I'm going to eat one of your marshmallows."

"Oh, the horror!"

"Yes, the horror, indeed." He was on a roll now, and kept his expression assertive as he went on from atop his rugged throne. "Not only will a tax of one marshmallow be levied on your head, but you will also be forced to witness the pomp and ceremony when I am awarded with extra peanut butter bars for having saved you from a sugar overdose at the hands of one of Alfred's most detested enemies."

"The dastardly marshmallow?"

"The dastardly marshmallow," he nodded gravely.

They held each other's gaze for a long second before Tim burst out laughing. "I don't...know how...you're keeping a st-straight face," he guffawed. "That was hilarious..."

It took every ounce of will that he had, but Dick managed to not give in to the chortle that was filling his throat. When Tim looked up again, caught sight of his haughty, wide-eyed stare, and doubled over anew, he could hold himself back no longer. "Heeheehee...I dunno h-how I did either," he confessed, almost falling from his perch as he shook with amusement. "Just...had to see your face..."

It took several minutes, but eventually they calmed to the point where they could pack up their food. They had to stop to lean against one another in fresh fits twice on their way to stash the canisters in the brush, and they were still snickering as they walked back down the trail to their tent. By the time they had tucked their much-deflated packs beneath the rain fly, stripped down to underwear and t-shirts, and crawled into their sleeping bags, a velvety dusk was cloaking the trees. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance, but other than that and the ever-present shifting of the leaves high above the forest was quiet.

"...Okay, now these were a good choice," Tim said as he tested out his ground pad.

"Agreed. It feels like the couch in Bruce's study."

"Shit, you'll sleep like a baby, then, with as often as you fall asleep on that old thing."

"Hey, some weeks invading his study is practically the only way a person can see him without the cowl on."

"Tell me about it. I've fallen asleep in there before too, remember."

"Yeah...he's a dork."

"He is. But we all are." A beat passed. "Except Damian. He's just a tool."

"Tiiimmy...c'mon. It's not his fault."

"...Dick, if he's old enough to make a conscious decision about whether or not to kill someone, he's old enough to choose to not be an asshole."

He sighed. This wasn't a conversation he'd intended for them to get into tonight, but so long as Tim had started it he wasn't going to back down without lending his youngest brother at least a modest defense. "Look," he started, trying to figure out a way to keep his explanation simple and inoffensive. "Dami grew up surrounded by people who didn't want to get to know him. You know that. He was a tool – not in the way you meant it – to them, and nothing more. The few who didn't purposefully push him away were ambivalent towards him, and when people do that to you long enough...well, you get so that you don't want to share yourself.

"You stop trying," he breathed, staring up at their shelter's shadowy apex, "and you lock yourself up. Then, when someone comes along and does take an interest in you, in the real you, it's hard to trust them. Now when that happens to some people," he gave the figure next to him a sidelong look, "they put up a wall of polite civility and try very hard to convince you that there's nothing interesting going on behind it. I think you know what I mean." A grudging noise told him that he wasn't wrong. "But Dami's an attacker, not a defender. He doesn't build walls, he sallies forth and does his best to drive interested parties as far away as he can.

"But you can only ride out so many times before you get tired, the same as you can only keep walls fully guarded for so long. If someone's determined...well, sooner or later they're going to get in," he smiled. "At least if they have the right resources and information, that is. My point is, Tim, you can't fault Dami for being an attacker; it's the only thing anyone ever took the time to teach him until not so long ago."

There was no reply for a long moment, and he began to wonder if he'd gone too far. Then a heavy sigh was heaved. "...He's better than he used to be. I'll give him that much. You've...you've done wonders with that kid, Dick. He's still an asshole – I'm not retracting that – but...well, maybe he's not quite so much of a colossal one as he used to be. Hell, he hasn't tried to actively kill me in almost a year, at least not that I know of, so...that's saying something, I guess."

"It is saying something," he nodded, relieved that he hadn't screwed everything up with his monologue. "The fact that you just recognized his improvement says something, too."

"Yeah. That I'm probably an idiot."

"No," he reached out to touch his elbow. "It says that you can put the past aside and recognize changing circumstances. It says that you can take new information about the people you consider..." He didn't want to say 'enemies,' because he knew from experience that putting that word between any two members of his family hurt dreadfully. "...Not to be your allies and apply it in a way that helps you better understand how they operate. That's an amazing skill, Timmy, and you're one of the best I've ever met at it. Don't tell him I said this, but...sometimes I think you're better at it than even Bruce is." That's how I know you and Dami can get to some greater level than animosity, he kept to himself. That's where I've placed my faith, little brother.

A stunned but grateful glance was sent his way. "...Now that's saying something," a low whisper wondered.

"It's true," he smiled. "You know I wouldn't have said it if I didn't believe it to be true."

"I know."

"Good. Anyway...we should probably get some sleep, huh? Long day tomorrow." Think about what I said, he urged silently. Absorb it. You two aren't as different in some ways as you me; I know you both very, very well.

"Yeah," Tim agreed quietly. "We probably should. But Dick?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"...Thank you for bringing me on this trip. I...that says something too, you know? That...that you picked me."

Dick squeezed his brother's arm tightly, then released him and rolled over. "There's no one on earth I could possibly be happier doing this with, Timmy," he swore as he closed his eyes. "Not a single soul."

Author's Note: I've put the recipe for the curried rice up on my blog. Also, in a couple more chapters we'll get into the *real* adventure, so get ready! Thanks to everyone who has stayed with me this long, and double thanks to all you wonderful reviewers. Happy reading!