Tesseract Child

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Because he was far from home.

Thor held Robin firmly because frankly he didn't trust what Robin would do with two hours of sleep watching his favorite Uncle disappear into a deadly tunnel of darkness with an explosive boom louder than a thunderclap. What he did was flinch like he'd been struck then start to hyperventilate.

The child's eye were unfocused staring where his Uncle used to be. Thor took the hearing protection off of Robin and called to him trying to get his attention. "Rob...an's...ay... Lis... lm...Robin..."

Robin knew Thor was talking to him. He was tumbling in the center ring with his dad. M'gann and Uncle J'onn's minds pulled at him, people were dying and a tunnel of darkness burned though him swallowing him whole in intense fire and pain. Typing at a terminal with numbers swirling in a whirl pool not sure what was real or dream only that everything he loved would end unless the tunnel stopped.

"Robin son, please breath with me slowly. Superman is well. The transfer will not hurt him. Robin calm down. Can you look at me please." Thor took Robin into the Tower. The Captain opened the door for them worriedly. Thor sat Robin on a chair in the lounge. He'd seen warriors with battle sickness. This looked a little bit like that. "Robin you need to calm your breathing." He'd expected the child to bolt after his uncle not to shut down in quite this fashion.

The Captain held a small cup of water with a straw in it. You don't go through an entire war without learning how to recognize and treat hyperventilation, and flashbacks. He knelt beside Thor, "Robin can you blow bubbles?" Robin didn't seem able to hear them.

Robin's vision grayed into a pinprick of light that exploded into vivid nightmares.

When Robin passed out. Thor huffed a little worriedly and carried him to the infirmary asking Jarvis to relay to Dr. Banner what was happening.

"Lay him on the bed and put a pillow under his feet," instructed Dr. Banner. Bruce pulled out a warmed blanket and tucked it around the child. "He should be alright in a little bit." It was only a few minutes before Robin's eyes fluttered open again. He looked disoriented and frightened. "Hello there Robin, can you pretend you are blowing out birthday candles for me."

Kid Flash who'd blearily woken when Thor burst in with Robin in his arms, watched concerned as Robin with too fast shuddering gasps tried to follow instructions. He limped out of his bed and took Robin's hand kneeling beside him. "Foooo...Blow on my nose. Just like that."

"I can Foo longer than you can Foo," challenged Kid Flash making a game of it. It took a little while but Kid Flash had the most success and soon Robin was breathing normally.

"I'm sorry," whispered Robin. "When the portal opened my brain vomited all the bad portal stuff at once."

"Rob, I've had eight years to pull myself back together from that mess. It's been hardly anytime at all for you. You look like you're working on almost no sleep and you got wigged out. Screw flashbacks you got Kid Flash back and I got your back."

Robin let slip a tiny smile. "That was Limburger cheesy, extra smelly, like stinky old socks cheesy," whispered Robin shyly.

"No way that was top notch American processed cheese product."

Kid Flash gave up and climbed up into the bed beside Robin because he was seriously uncomfortable kneeling beside the bed and the other side of the room was too far away. Robin had his hand in a death grip.

They started chatting about: "X-Box is old school... Soup can fly now 'bout ten percent of the time ... Good old Wall's gonna be inlaws with outlaws and Arsenal of the many names, whose cat is Cheshire and were you in the know of that being a Bat and all?"