Neither Dick nor Tim spoke as they walked away from the boundary set by the force field a half-hour later. They had both been surprised when Damian had returned from his mission and reported no difficulties in directing the plane as he wished. All Dick could figure was that Batman wanted the aircraft for his own devices once he arrived and was trusting that Robin wouldn't leave the area in the meantime. It was a safe enough bet; the boy had disobeyed him in order to get here, after all, and he wasn't the type to willingly slink home in defeat.
Fortunately, though, he was the type to take care of business. He had found them water a mile and a half to the northeast, and it was there that they were headed now. They thought they could make it despite the increasing temperature, which seemed unaffected by the thick, steadily darkening clouds high above. Hobbling along on his makeshift crutch, Dick tried not to think about the look of guilt that had wreathed his littlest brother's face just before they'd turned away. It was a pointless endeavor, however, and he gave in with a sigh. It's not your fault, Dami, he thought as he fixed his eyes to the horizon and pressed forward. If we don't come back...please, please don't think that it's your fault.
"What's up?" Tim asked, his voice scratching in his throat.
"Thinking about Damian." They had to make it through this, both of them; otherwise, he was certain, the boy would do exactly what his father had done decades before and turn his feelings of culpability inward to fester.
"Yeah...me, too."
The other man's pensive tone caught his attention and made his cherished hope that some sort of an understanding between his brothers might come about flare. "Really?!"
"Uh-huh. But I'll tell you later, okay? Like, when we have water."
"...Complicated?"
"Yeah. Complicated."
"Okay. Limp on, then."
It wasn't yet noon, but the light bled out of the air the closer they drew to their destination. The world took on a yellowish tinge, and Dick could only guess as to whether it was the result of the storm brewing high above them or a side effect of worsening dehydration. There was little he could do about it either way, so he redoubled his efforts and pushed past the pain that erupted in his leg with each step he took.
"Oh, wow," Tim, who was walking a little ahead, muttered a short while later. "Dick...look at this."
He drew up beside him and looked down. The vertical plain of earth that had been exposed when the grassland had dropped during the quake met his eyes first. The dirt wall plunged into a sizable lake of indeterminate depth, which went on for a ways before abruptly ending. It was the water body's strange terminus in mid-air that had caught his brother's attention, Dick was sure, since it wasn't every day that they saw an invisible dam holding back what had to be several tens of millions of gallons of water. He could only imagine what it must look like from the other side of the barrier, but even from here he was impressed.
"That's incredible," he breathed. "It's like it's floating."
"There must have been a pretty decent-sized river that emptied out right around here. Hold on..." Shrugging off his pack and retrieving his guide book, Tim unfolded the map. "Yeah, look. This river, right here..."
"Asperity River?" Dick hunched in order to see.
"Yeah. Original name, right? Anyway...the trail crosses it past the point where we turned around. It says there's a bridge there, so it must be large. Bigger than Mosquito Creek, at least."
"It was large. If no water's getting out, none's getting in, either," he pointed out. "Unless the river starts inside the force field, it should be just about drained out."
Tim paled. "Um...what if it does start inside the force field?"
"...What do you mean?"
"Well...if it's fed from an underground aquifer or something...you know, like a really big one...and it's still flowing..."
"There's no way this thing's going to fill up, Timmy," Dick cut him off. "Think about how much water that would take." He sounded confident, but his reassurances were intended to soothe his own fear as much as that of his brother's. I don't think I can swim for long with my leg like it is, he determined. If this thing fills up...no. It won't. It can't.
"It would take a lot, but...not an impossible amount. Not over, say, several days, or a week. Besides, even if it didn't fill to the top it could make getting back to the Falls hell."
...Ugh. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it, okay? For now..." He cast a covetous gaze over the liquid below, forgetting its potential lethality in favor of focusing on its life-giving properties. "...I'm freaking thirsty."
"Me, too. The question is, how do we get down to it?"
"Hmm..." The surface of the lake was at least ten feet below them, and the slope in between was much too sheer to be scaled. "...Jump in?"
"As much as I want a bath, how would we get back out?"
"Point taken. Ah..."
"I know!" Tim held up one finger as he turned back to his bag. "I kept the rope we used when we were climbing down yesterday. The longer section should be enough to let us lower our water bottles and bring them back mostly full."
Dick grinned. "There goes my genius little brother, saving the day," he crowed.
"Only so long as the cord holds. It wasn't so good at that the last time we used it."
"Sure, but no bottle of water is going to weigh as much as me."
"True. See if you can find a rock that will fit through the opening, would you? If it's not weighted it will just float, and that would be useless."
After a few false starts involving stones that were just a bit too large or awkwardly shaped, they carefully lowered the first vessel over the edge. "C'mon, little rope," Dick encouraged from where he'd laid down beside Tim to watch the proceedings. The plastic container hit the water and sank down into it, sending up a series of glugs and bubbles. "Think there are any fish in there?" he asked, trying to distract them both from the tension of waiting to see if their line would hold once they started hauling it upward.
"If there is, it's probably some monster thing that's eyeballing my water bottle for lunch."
"...Lunch..." They had skipped breakfast, having nothing left that didn't require water to make, and the mention of food now reminded him that his stomach was empty. "We should eat."
"I agree. But first..."
Both held their breaths as the brimming canteen rose. If the cord broke now, it would be a disaster; they would not only still have nothing to drink, but the bottle would sink irretrievably to the bottom and leave them with only half of their current carrying capacity. Inch by inch the droplet-speckled container came closer. Straining over the edge, Tim wrapped one finger through the loop holding the lid on and yanked the precious fluid to safety.
"Yesss!" Dick hissed in triumph.
Now a scramble began. Between their exertions and their injuries both men were in desperate need of rehydration, and once they had their cure they rushed to purify it. Only the thought of how much more difficult their mission would be if they came down with a water-borne illness kept them from skipping that crucial step altogether, but to their relief the little UV-light wand worked its magic fast. Tim poured half of the supply into his brother's bottle, and for a minute after their only sounds were needy swallows and gasps of relief.
"...I don't think I could have gone much longer without that," Dick sighed when the worst of the dust had been cut from his mouth.
"Me either. Jesus..." Lowering himself carefully backwards onto the grass, the younger man blew out a long puff of air. "On the note of dehyrdration...I have an idea, I think, but..."
"What is it?"
"Well...it might work really well, or it might screw us out of time."
"Okay. So what is it?"
"It's just...that was scary, today. Being out here without water, I mean. I don't want to do that again. But if this lake is being made by the river, then the river must flow into it at some point. What if...what if we tried following the river upstream instead of going all the way back around on the trail that already almost killed us?"
Dick considered the proposal. There were several cons that he could enumerate right off the bat. They might get halfway to their destination and find the route impassable, forcing them to go around or turn back; they might be caught in a flash flood if an aftershock loosened a logjam or some other dam upstream; they might find it difficult to camp comfortably on the presumably rocky bank. There were many reasons for him to argue against the plan, and all of them were legitimate concerns.
On the other hand, the last thing he wanted to do was tackle the steep hillsides that had done their part to tear his skin to shreds the day before. If the river didn't have any other vertical drops between here and the falls they were targeting, the climb would be a hundred times easier. Plus, as Tim had pointed out they would be near water, and while the river could very well kill them it was also something that they required in order to survive. A renewed attack on the mountain trail might take days, and so far as they knew there were now no oases along the way; in the worst case scenario, death by flash flood would be much faster than death by dehydration.
Dick examined his rough crutch and tried to picture himself climbing a forty-five degree slope with it. Time and time again he saw himself falling, tumbling, scraping, screaming, and crashing. Yeah...that's not going to work, he grimaced. "I think it sounds way better than going back the way we came," he opined eventually. "Does the map show any falls before the big ones?"
"No. And I think that the elevation change is way less ridiculous, too. The actual falls are something like six or seven hundred feet below the hill we were on when...when the quake hit."
"I'm up for anything that will save us unnecessary climbing. Let's do it."
"You're sure? I don't know what we're going to find. I mean, we might get to the river and find out it's just a water-filled gorge."
"Sure, we might. And if we do we'll still have the option to turn around and go the hard way. But if it is passable...look, I don't want to scare you, little brother, but I really don't think I can do those hills again. My leg's already stiff as a board, and everything we've done today has been flat. I think its going to lock up completely the second I introduce it to a slope. If we can make it up the river, I stand a heck of a lot better chance of not slowing you down too much. I don't want to have to tell you to go ahead of me, you know?"
"I wouldn't do it," Tim swore, sitting up with a hard look on his face. "Absolutely not, Dick. We're not splitting up out here. I don't care if I have to carry you, we're not splitting up."
"I don't want to split up either," he reached over the grip his shoulder. "But if this is really as big as Dami said, then it's not just you and I in danger. It could be the whole world, and as little as I like the idea of splitting up I want the planet to be shaken into space dust even less."
"...Then I guess we have to follow the river, because I am not leaving you behind."
"Okay. The river it is. Hey," he smiled, "we've got water and a plan of action now. Look at us go, huh?"
"Heh. Yeah. Go us," came back sarcastically.
"Aw, c'mon. We're doing way better than we were an hour ago." Cheer up, Timmy. We're still together, we know where we're going next, and we're not even dying of thirst anymore. Things could be much, much worse. "Speaking of an hour ago," he leaned back gingerly on his hands, "you never told me what got you thinking about Damian."
"Oh...right. Damian. Well..." He trailed off, scratching the back of his head. "He just...he caught my eye right after you turned away. He...signed something to me. I guess that's what I've been thinking about."
"Really? What did he say?" Please tell me it wasn't mean. Although he did tell you how to keep from bashing your face on the force field when you didn't believe him at first, so maybe he actually said something less than awful to you. A guy can hope, at least.
"He said...it's weird, but he told me to make sure I don't die."
"Aaaww!" Good boy, Dami.
"He said it would make you and Bruce upset if I did-"
"Obviously."
"-but...I dunno, Dick, but I kind of felt like it might make him a little upset, too, and not just because you and Bruce would be out of it. I know it must have been a side effect of the dehydration or something, because there's no way he would give a shit if I didn't come back from this, but..."
"Buuuut?" he pressed when Tim trailed off.
"But it was kind of nice thinking that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't hate every single atom of my being. Even if I'm wrong – and I've got to be, I know it – it was still a nice feeling."
He could have squealed. "You're not wrong, Tim," he insisted. "Deep down, I know he cares about you. He might not like to admit it, not even to himself, but you're his brother just as much as I am. It's just that it tends to take Dami a long time to recognize the good in other people, that's all. When you start out life being told to view everyone as your enemy, that's easy to do. You don't want to see the good in your enemy, because if you do it makes it much harder to validate attacking them. Maybe," his lips spread so broadly that they felt as if they might crack, "he's finally letting himself acknowledge some of the good in you. Maybe he's finally starting to see you as something other than an opponent."
"To be honest, I'll be happy if he just stops being such a little jerk all the time." Tim gave a snort. "Think I can rack up some brownie points towards that end if I really do end up carrying you up the river?"
"I'll tell you what," Dick chuckled. "In the interest of brotherly love, I'll tell him you did even if you don't have to. Sound good?"
"Yes, yes it does."
"Cool. Now...let's see about some lunch, huh?"
"I'm game. You think Alfred will let us slide if we break into his surprise a day early?"
"How can he be mad if we tell him we used it as fuel for world-saving? Let's see what we've earned."
"Awesome."
Despite the global threat they had to deal with, the trek they had to make in order to do so, and the ordeal that they had already gone through just to get to this point, Dick found himself humming happily as they set up their meal. Fresh water, lunch by an insane, impossible lake, a new game plan, breakthroughs on the Tim versus Dami front, and... His thoughts halted as he leaned forward to watch his brother pry the cardboard away from their hidden treat. ...And Alfred's finest chocolate chip cookies, he finished his enumeration as Tim cheered. With all of those things working in our favor, we've got nothing to complain about.