Author's Note: Welcome to the second annual Batman Christmas Countdown! We're starting off this year with some serious bro-bonding between Dick and Tim. This two-part tale is set when Tim is still Robin and before Damian comes on the scene. Part two will post tomorrow.

Be sure to either follow the story or check back regularly for updates, which will occur every day between now and the 25th. Also, keep an eye on my Batman blog (accessible via my profile page) where I will be posting fun things to go along with the stories.

If you missed last year's countdown or just want two holiday stories a day, check out the 2013 collection, entitled 'A Counting of Days'.

For those of you following 'Silent Treatment', I apologize for the lack of chapter yesterday. My flight came in extremely late, and I only had the energy to write a couple of pages. However, I will endeavor to post on that tale within the next couple of days.

As always, happy reading!

When the world had stopped spinning and he was certain that he was still alive, Robin looked to his left. Nightwing sat beside him, blinking in startled confusion. Suddenly, he grinned. "Well, that was exciting."

"Yeah," Tim snorted. "I love being in plane crashes, especially on Christmas Eve."

The other man's face turned pensive. "Yeah…Bruce'll be upset. Tomorrow's going to be totally thrown off now."

"Never mind the fact that we crashed the Batplane."

"That, too. But hey, at least we're together, right?"

Tim couldn't help but smile at that. They had both spent their fair share of Christmases feeling alone, and neither was eager to repeat the experience. The wilds of Siberia weren't his idea of a fun holiday getaway, but Dick had a point. "At least we're together," he agreed. "And we're out of the storm, too. That's a plus."

"Pfft," Nightwing sputtered as a flurry of flakes came through the broken windshield and hit him in the face. "Speak for yourself, bro."

"…Further back, maybe?" If they were going to be away from home overnight they might as well make themselves comfortable. The pair of narrow exam tables in the medical bay would serve well enough as makeshift beds, and there was sure to be food in the emergency bags that were kept on board at all times. They could easily weather a night or two in the middle of nowhere so long as they stayed put.

"Might as we-" Dick broke off as the plane shifted. A mighty crack rang out somewhere behind them, overriding the wail of the blizzard. Several more echoed it in the seconds that followed, each one sounding like the report of a gun. "…Uh-oh."

"What was that?" Tim asked.

"Uh…so you remember how right at the end there I was shouting that there was an open area I was aiming for?"

"Yeeeeah?"

"…Think that might have been a lake."

There was a nervous chuckle in his brother's voice, and it was not comforting. "Let me guess; that noise is from the ice giving out beneath us, and we're fixing to sink?"

Another pop-crack sounded. "Bingo," Dick verified. "…Do you want to say 'abandon ship', or should I?"

Unbuckling his harness, Tim stood up. "Let's save the time and just flee."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

Stopping only to grab the survival backpacks from a cupboard near the cockpit, the pair made their way to the main door of the plane. Dick pulled the emergency handle and pushed, knocking the barrier free and sending it clattering to the frozen surface below. They peered down at it, waiting to see if the ice would hold. When several seconds passed without any indication of trouble, they exchanged a glance. "…What do you think?" Tim inquired.

"I think the only way we're going to know for sure is to give it a try."

He grimaced. They'd be dead in minutes if they went into the freezing water, but they couldn't stay where they were. As if on cue, a whine came from the fuselage towards the rear of the jet. The floor shifted beneath them, leaving them standing on an incline. "…Great. Trial and error."

"Yup. Here, hold this." Dick shoved a coil of rope at him. "I don't think I'll go through, but if I do maybe you can pull me back up."

"Right." He watched in trepidation as his brother lowered himself to hang from the bottom of the door frame, then let go. His feet had been dangling just over a foot above the wind-polished lake, but he rolled when he landed despite the short drop. With his weight thus distributed he was able to move away from the plane without breaking through the ice. At ten yards distant he was barely visible, all but whited out by the weather that had crash-landed them in this predicament to begin with.

"Your tu-, -ob."

The radio transmission was garbled, but Tim got the message. Tying the rope around his waist, he sat down on the floor and scooted to the edge. Then he twisted around, grabbed the same spot Dick had, and allowed himself to dangle in mid-air. "Here goes nothing," he muttered, and let go.

There was no give to the ice that caught him, but that was fine; he preferred bruised elbows to a sub-arctic dunking any day. Keeping his eyes shut, he rolled in the direction that he'd last seen his brother. Only when he bumped into something solid did he look up.

Dick waved down at him and smirked. "Good times, huh?" he shouted over the wind as he offered his hand.

"Yeah. Fabulous." On his feet again, Tim looked back at the snow-blurred hulk of the Batplane. There was an obvious tilt to the craft now, and he calculated that the tail section was at least partially under water. It seemed that they'd gotten out with little time to spare, but he knew that escaping the wreckage had only been the beginning of their problems. Now they were stuck on a blizzard-blasted lake with no shelter and no cold weather gear save for the linings of their costumes, making them prime candidates for hypothermia. Worse still, he had no idea where the nearest land was. "...Well?" he hollered. "What now?"

"...Uh..." Dick turned about, staring into the blankness that surrounded them. "...This way!" he pointed after a moment.

Tim hesitated. "Are you sure?" How could the older man possibly remember which direction they needed to head in after the half-blind manner in which they'd landed?

"Nope! But we've got to go somewhere, right?"

That logic didn't exactly inspire confidence, but Dick's 'let's have an adventure' grin succeeded where reason failed. Sighing, Tim picked up the slack in the rope still binding them together and gestured for his brother to lead the way.

They walked with the wind behind them, letting their sleek emergency packs absorb the bulk of the gale's force. On more than one occasion a particularly hard gust gave them a boost, shoving them forward across the slick ice so that they were forced to either slide or fall. Every once in a while a cross-wind would momentarily clear the view some hundred or two yards ahead and let them see the flat expanse that lay before them. On the fifth or sixth time that this happened, Tim felt Dick grab his rapidly numbing arm.

"Look!" the older man exclaimed, pointing anew.

The storm shifted, and the white wall fell again. "At what?"

"There was something there!"

"Probably a bear," he predicted darkly. Their luck seemed to be running out; while they hadn't landed in the water, their dry state could only buy them so much life in temperatures like this. As if that wasn't enough the already-gray sky was darkening, foretelling the advance of the long Arctic winter night. Without shelter and fire they wouldn't last more than another hour. Tim found himself almost hoping that it was a bear up ahead, as death by mauling would be a much faster way to go than the creeping freeze that was looming on the horizon.

"Nah, it was too rectangular for a bear. Try again."

He blinked. "Rectangular? Wait...a building?!" If Dick had truly seen shelter, then maybe they wouldn't have to give Bruce the worst Christmas of his life this year after all...

"Yup. C'mon, we're a little bit off course. We need to go this way."

Tim was just beginning to wonder if Dick had seen some sort of a cold-climate mirage when the surface beneath his boots changed. Frozen blades of shore grass broke off under his weight as they climbed a low rise and left the lake behind. The wind dropped off as trees closed in, and a minute later they found themselves standing at the front door of a small but sturdy-looking cabin. "...It's locked," he observed, indicating a simple hasp with a rusted fastener fed through it.

"Frozen wood is fragile wood, little brother. Step back a sec."

He did as he'd been told. Dick launched a hard kick just to the side of the hasp once, twice, then a third time. Each blow made the ancient lock squeal over the sound of the storm, but it didn't give. Finally Dick stopped, panting slightly.

"Strong door," Tim commented.

"Not strong enough." Undisturbed by the lack of results his efforts had produced, Nightwing strode forward and wrapped his fingers around the latch. "Ready?"

"Um...for what?"

"For this!"

Tim had seen his brother perform a fair number of remarkable feats in the two years since he'd taken up the Robin mantle, but he'd never witnessed him ripping metal out of wood before. "...Holy shit," he gaped. "Channel Superman much?"

"Nah. You're giving me way too much credit." Dick held up the apparatus that now dangled from the door frame. "Look. It was only nailed in, not screwed. Besides, I think I loosened it up pretty good by kicking it. Now..." He pushed on the portal he had just unlocked. It swung inward roughly a foot and a half, then stopped. "...Ah, crap."

"What's wrong with it? Warping, or...?"

"I don't know. Permafrost, maybe. It doesn't matter; I think we can squeeze in if we take off our packs." Shrugging his own bag free as he spoke, he leaned into the darkness inside. "...Yeah. Okay, stay here while I check this out. I don't really want us both inside if the place collapses, you know?"

"Um...sure." The prospect of digging his brother out of a pile of rubble wasn't exactly the thought he wanted to be left with, but it was too late now. "...Just hurry up, huh?"

"You bet."

Dick slithered around the door and vanished. He was only gone a minute, but Tim's teeth were chattering by the time he reappeared. "...Can I come in now?" he asked.

"Yup. C'mon, there are beds and everything."

"Good." He passed their packs through the gap, then ducked inside. A frown formed on his lips almost immediately. "…It's colder in here than out there!"

"It's just cold-soaked. It should warm up quick once we get a fire going." Nightwing pointed his flashlight at a rickety metal stove. "I just hope that thing's set up for wood and not hooked to some fifty-year-old barrel of heating fuel."

"Wood...ah...you're not planning on going back out for that, are you?"

The light jumped to a heavy table with two benches tucked underneath of it. "There should be hatchets in our bags. I figure Alfred will forgive us for not sitting at the table while we eat if we tell him we had to burn it in order to survive."

"Heh. Yeah, you're probably right about that. So...chop chop on the wood, then?"

Dick laughed. "You're getting as punny as me. I love it."

Half an hour later full dark had fallen on the far side of the cabin's two age-stained windows. Tim didn't mind; a quick search of their home away from home had turned up a box of dusty candles, several of which were now serving to chase the shadows into the corners. Busting one of the benches up into stove-lengths had been enough to make him break out in a light sweat, and the eager little fire that Dick was stoking promised that he wouldn't get cold again anytime soon. The beds he'd been promised turned out to be little more than old metal spring assemblies covered with crumbling pallet mattresses that looked like they'd been made when the country still had a czar, but he didn't complain. Compared to the frigid end he'd been dreading an hour before, this place was the Ritz.

"Hungry, Timmy?"

He looked over to find that Nightwing had stripped off his gloves and was warming his bare hands before the flames. "...Are we using names?" he asked.

"Who's going to hear us in a place like this? I don't think anyone's been here since Putin was still in the KGB."

"So long as it wasn't the KGB that was in here last. Then we might actually need to worry." Snagging one of their bags from beside the closed door – it had fought valiantly to stay stuck on its hump of permafrost, but their combined weight had prevailed to shut it – he joined his brother by the stove. "I'm starving. Let's see what we've got..."

"Dehydrated potatoes," Dick read the first bag that was held up. "Yum."

"Better than starving. Oh, hey, jerky."

"Is it frozen?"

He bent the package, testing it. "Either that or old."

"It's not old. Alfred cycles all the emergency supplies every ninety days. Here, I'll see if I can find a pan or something. Once the top of the stove heats up I'll bet we can manage some sort of stew with this stuff."

"Sounds good to me," Tim agreed.

A dented pot was rustled out of the cabin's lone cabinet, and a large scoop of snow quickly melted down into a decent-smelling potato soup. The jerky proved problematic, however, refusing to become even remotely soft no matter how long it soaked. Another hour passed, and by the end of it both of their stomachs were grumbling. Finally Dick, now stripped down to the moisture-wicking base layer that they both wore beneath their suits, approached the stove with a determined look on his face. "...This is going to have to be good enough," he declared as he poked the concoction with a cracked wooden spoon. "I don't think the meat's going to get any better, and I'm afraid of burning the potatoes."

"I seriously don't care, to be honest," Tim confessed. "At this point it could all go back to the way it was when we took it out of the bag and I'd still eat it." If he'd been hungry before he was ravenous now, and he wasted no time in crossing from the beds he'd been shaking out to where Dick was dishing up dinner.

They ate without speaking, their elbows bumping as they sat beside one another on the only remaining bench,. When he had scraped his tin cup clean, Tim pushed it away and propped his elbows up on the table. "...Do you think he's worried?" he broached quietly, thinking of their surrogate father.

"I think he's out of his mind with worry," Dick answered with a heavy sigh. "Crashing isn't something the Batplane is supposed to do, and that goes double for when we're in it without him."

"And half a world away," Tim added.

"And coming back from a top secret mission that you weren't even technically supposed to be on," Dick finished. "Not that that could be helped."

"No. It couldn't." The JLA mission they were returning from had been assigned to Nightwing and Batman, but issues in Gotham had made the latter unable to leave the city. Dick had suggested that Robin, whom everyone knew would be ready to depart Young Justice for a spot in the full League before too much longer, accompany him. Bruce had grudgingly agreed, and Tim had been ecstatic.

Their task had been challenging, but in the end they'd succeeded in bringing down the leaders of a major international weapons-dealing ring. Everything had been going beautifully right up until they'd flown into the damnable storm that still wailed at them through the stove pipe from time to time. "...This isn't the Christmas Eve I imagined," he confessed slowly, "but I'd rather be here than at home wondering where you and Bruce were."

"Ditto," Dick nodded. "On the plus side, the plane itself and both of us are all carrying tracking devices. I'm guessing Batman will show up as soon as the blizzard clears enough to let him in. Then we'll go home, see Alfred, and have Christmas just like normal." A warm hand squeezed Tim's shoulder and shook him gently. "Just think; we'll probably be allowed to have all the Christmas cookies we want after completing a mission and surviving a plane crash. Speaking of that...you're not hurt, right? I probably should have asked that earlier, I know, but I was a bit distracted by trying not to become an abominable snowman."

Tim shrugged. "Eh. I'm a little banged up, but it's nothing a hot shower and some bruise cream won't fix. How 'bout...you?" He yawned. "Ugh. Sorry."

"I can't fault you for yawning, bro. I've been doing it for twenty minutes. But I'm fine, the same as you are. Bruises and soreness, blah blah blah."

"Mmkay. Good."

Several minutes passed without either of them saying anything. Tim's eyes were just beginning to droop shut when Dick nudged him with an elbow. "...C'mon, little brother," he encouraged. "Let's at least give those beds a try before we rule them out and start sleeping at the table."

"...Huh? Oh..." He straightened up, rubbing his eyes. "Is the fire okay?"

"Yeah. I stoked it good earlier, and I banked it after I finished cooking. It should keep it toasty in here until morning."

"'Kay." They stumbled to the back of the cabin, blowing out candles along the way. Tim pulled a ragged, vermin-chewed old quilt over himself and lay staring into the darkness. Some Christmas lights, he thought, would really jazz the place up... "Damn it!"

"What's up?" Dick's sleepy voice sounded.

"Nothing. It's just…we missed Christmas lights viewing." It shouldn't have been a big deal, but it was. In his opinion the best things about Christmas at Wayne Manor were the traditions, and the annual Christmas Eve lights viewing outing was one of his favorites. His parents had had holiday habits, of course, but half the time they'd ended up curtailed or forgotten all together because of a business trip or a last-minute society to-do. That didn't happen under Bruce's roof, where family-centric celebrations were practically sacred. Of all the days of the year when they might have been stranded away from home, he lamented, why did it have to be tonight?

"Oh...you're right. We missed having cider and gingerbread in front of the tree, too." A heavy sigh came from the other bed. "Alfred told me he had a new recipe for the cream cheese frosting this year..."

They were on a melancholy roll now, and Tim kept it going by listing off another of the holiday moments that the blizzard outside had denied them. "Christmas pajamas." What he wouldn't have given to be able to change out of his hard-used costume and into clean, warm flannel…

"Watching holiday movies until we all fall asleep on the couch and Alfred makes us go to bed."

"Yeah…poor Alfred."

"Yeah, he's probably just as worried as Bruce is. I wish we could at least get a radio transmission out." They'd tried, but the interference from the storm had been far too fierce.

Tim winced guiltily. "...I meant because he's going to be up all night putting out presents, and we're not even going to be there in the morning to open them and validate his hard work."

"Oh. That, too. But I guess with how things are he'll be up anyway, you know?"

"Mm-hmm." Nobody slept when a member of the family was missing, and with two of them lost Tim imagined that it hadn't been a very festive night back home. Filling the tree might distract the butler from his worry, but that wasn't the point.

"...I'm sorry I crashed the plane and ruined Christmas, Timmy," Dick apologized.

"It's not really your fault, Dick. I didn't figure you wanted to crash any more than I did, especially not tonight."

"No. Especially not tonight. You're right about that. But..." A beat passed. "Well, at least we're together," he said, echoing the sentiment he'd voiced back in the plane's crumpled fuselage.

For the second time that day, the point made Tim smile. "Right. At least we're together, and that's a lot better than it could be."

"Exactly! And cheer up; maybe Santa will show up in the middle of the night and whisk us home in time for breakfast."

He snorted. "I'm not going to hold my breath for that, if you don't mind."

"Aw...keep your fingers crossed, at least?"

It was absurd – crossing his fingers would do literally nothing to help a rescue arrive faster, and he knew it – but he didn't argue. If nothing else, hoping for Santa to come was a Christmas activity that he could take part in with his brother. With no other traditions available to them tonight, he determined to seize the one he had. "Okay," he gave in, wrapping his middle and index fingers around each other. "I will." For some reason the hopeful gesture made him feel a little better. Opting not to explore why that was, he rolled over and closed his eyes. "G'night, Dick."

"Night, little brother. See you in the morning. And Merry Christmas."