Tesseract Child

Birthday

Because "It's my party I can cry if I want to," isn't really Robin's style.

Thor huffed in frustration. Robin was going to be late for camp. The boy had been wandering around like a shell-shocked puppy dog all morning. He'd had to ask him to do simple tasks four and five times.

"Robin, you can't take Bear to camp. Go put him in your bed."

"Robin your shoes are on the wrong feet and that shirt is on backwards."

"I already told you Bear can't go to camp, take him back out of your backpack and put him away."

"Friend Steve, a little assistance would be welcome," called Thor.

"It's his birthday," reminded Steve. He got down on one knee in front of Robin. "Can I borrow Bear for a moment." Steve held Bear up in front of Robin. "Okay buddy, take a picture of him with your fancy watch and then you'll have the picture for camp, deal?"

Robin nodded silently and snapped a photo of Bear with his watch.

"It's his birthday and he's not with his family so he's feeling a little uneasy," Steve simplified.

"You can talk with Batman and Red Robin tonight," Thor protested.

Steve and Robin stared at one another for the truth was one of the identity secrets that only Steve knew. Ignoring Martian memories for a moment, this was Robin's first special day without his family and there would be no more special days, no holidays, no birthdays and that was a lot for anyone to wrap their head around.

Steve ruffled Robin's hair gently. "I'll put Bear away for you."

Camp was less than asterous. Robin got separated from the group on the nature hike because he wasn't paying attention. He looked around the scenic stop. There were five trails he could choose from. Robin walked over to the trail map posted there. A vandal had torn most of the map off. It was useless.

A flash of lightening tore across the sky and it started to pour. Drenched in seconds Robin sighed. He turned the GPS in his watch on, looking to see if there was an online trail map. The park trails weren't shown but the roads were and his location showed. Robin took the trail pointed most directly to the park entrance. He could find the kinder-campsite from there. If lightening flashing across the sky and pouring rain were anything like as exciting as the family of raccoons the campers had seen the day before, it would be a while before the councilors got the campers calmed down enough to do a head count.

It was the wrong trail. After traveling down it for 45 minutes then checking the GPS to find the trail had looped off in the wrong direction Robin turned around and trudged back to where he started then just sat curled in a ball by the scenic stop shivering. The weather was bad and the satellite signal to the GPS was inconsistent. It was safest to just stay put on the main path until someone came along. It was probably what he should have done to begin with. 20 minutes later Peter came jogging along calling his name.

"I'm over here," answered Robin.

Peter came running up speaking on a walkie-talkie for a few minutes. "Hey little buddy, everyone's been looking for you."

"Sorry," answered Robin shivering. Robin walked back under his own steam surprising Peter a bit.

"Hey, I'm glad we found you before the 3 hour mark when we would have had to call your parents and the police and everything," Peter teased.

"It wouldn't have been a big deal. I have cell phone and locator in my watch. I should have looked up the phone number and called the camp office. I didn't think of it till now. Sorry."