A/N: Alright, this is it, folks. The last part until I get back from the bar exam, anyway. I leave tomorrow. I get up at six am tomorrow morning to get ready and be at the airport in time for my flight. Thanks for wishing me luck everyone! I hope you like the second part to The Confrontation between these two. It's not the end of the story, at all. BUT, just so you should know, this story isn't planned out to be a long, many chaptered piece at all. It might have another four or five chapters, six at the most. I haven't written them, but I know how it's going to go, so yeah. Just so you know.

Thanks: On emsscraps.

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Estranged
Part IV: Robin

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"Circumstances afford me / No second chance to tell you / How much I've missed you"
- Beloved, VNV Nation

Part of him couldn't believe he was actually standing within touching distance of Raven after so many years. He couldn't believe they were having this conversation. What was more, he couldn't believe he was actually saying all that he was saying. He didn't want to let her wonder what he meant by the words he had been unable to stop from sounding bitter. He didn't want her to look at him with those eyes that could always pierce right through his soul. He wasn't certain what he'd hate to see more in her eyes: pity or disgust.

He wanted to know what she was doing in his city and send her on her way.

"If you've come for help, tell me quickly," he said, his tone once again no-nonsense and unemotional.

"Help?" she echoed, shaking her head. "No, I don't need..."

He whirled on her, "Then what are you doing here, Raven?" he asked, saying her name for the first time in the entire encounter. The suddenness of his demand left her momentarily reeling. She was different, he could see that the moment he had stepped on the roof, but nowhere was it more obvious than the way the emotions played across her face so clearly.

He should be glad that she had found what she had gone off in search for. He should be glad she was able to show her emotions, that she'd found some semblance of normalcy. He knew he should, but he didn't. It was all he could do to keep from feeling the betrayal he had felt the moment she had left him all over again.

"Shouldn't you be off doctoring in that one-horse town of yours?" he asked, his tone not unlike the one he used with villains or lowlifes.

There was a moment when the emotion washed over her face unrestrained and he felt the old fear that would come upon them at any show of emotion on Raven's face. It had never been fear of her loosing control, for they had always trusted her to never lose control around them, but it had been a type of fear. A fear of seeing her crumple under the weight of sadness or pain, a fear that rose from seeing someone he cared about suffer without knowing how or being able to help stem that suffering. He had enough time to feel his own reserves cracking at the edges, to have to physically stop himself from reaching out to her, but just for a moment. For almost as soon as it came, it was gone, leaving behind only the cold, unemotional mask he was used to.

"Of course," she spoke, as if suddenly coming to a rather humorous realization. She stepped back, just out of his reach so she didn't have to look up at him anymore, "Who gave you the right to know anything about me?" she demanded, the ice never melting from her expression, the anger seething all the more dangerously underneath her icy control. "What kind of coward are you?" she asked derisively. "To skulk about finding out information about me, where I live and work, what I do," she laughed but there was no humor in it, "you probably even know what grades I got in med school, you bastard." She looked at him and if it would have been anyone else, he might have been afraid she'd take a swing at him. "What right do you have?"

He didn't understand why she was so angry. What right did he have? What right did she have to disappear from his life for nine years and then show up and expect him to what? Welcome her?

"If you're going to ignore that I exist, then do me a favor and carry it through all across the board," she insisted.

When he was certain he'd be able to maintain some semblance of control to his voice, he spoke, "You came to my city."

"For a convention I had little choice but to attend, not because I wanted to," she retorted.

The Convention, he realized. Of doctors. Of course. Three days. She'd been in his city for three days. "No, of course not," he replied before he could think.

She whirled on him, "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

He didn't know how to react to her. She was so different, and yet not. If he stopped to think about it, he knew this was the way she had always been on the inside, only she had never shared it with them except through insinuations. Still, even if he had always been able to pick up on her internal feelings, he was still confused by her blatant shows of emotions.

He didn't know what he should say, but he knew what he wanted to say and for the first time in a long time, he went ahead and said it, "What it means is that no one forced you to put on the uniform, Raven, even if you didn't want to be in Blüdhaven," his tone was clipped with the effort of keeping the emotion out of it.

She looked as if she was about to say something and at the last moment changed her mind. "I don't have to explain myself to you," she decided. She shook her head, and appeared resigned, "And I don't want to fight with you," she said, turning her back on him and starting to walk away. She could just take off from where she was standing, but she actually walked to the edge of the roof, for some reason she couldn't even think of. Maybe because it was the way she had always done it, she didn't know.

For a moment, he watched her go, thinking he would let her. Then, at the last moment, he stopped her. "Then why did you fly around in that outfit where I was sure to see you?" he asked.

She stopped and turned around. Her expression, for the first time that night, was completely unreadable. "Maybe it wasn't about you," she answered. "Maybe I missed it." She didn't seem convinced and she knew she wasn't convincing him. She shrugged and she looked tired. She turned around and looked out at the city. "Maybe I just wanted to see if you'd come."

'If he'd come?' he wondered. She said it as if she thought he might see a glimpse of her and not follow it. She said it as if she hadn't been the one to leave him. "You sound surprised I'd do my job," he managed unemotionally.

She exhaled and shook her head, "That's not what I meant."

He knew exactly what she meant. Did she really think she could leave his life for nine years and show up one night out of the blue and that he'd come bounding happily after her like some dog that missed its master? What right did she have to expect him to? "You left," he spoke, so low he wasn't sure the wind didn't carry it away before she could hear it. When she didn't respond, he wasn't sure if he wanted her to have missed it or if he would repeat it. Without really registering what he was doing, he took one step, then another closer to her. "You left me, Raven."

He was close enough to watch her eyes close and know she had heard him that time. Maybe she had heard him from the beginning.

"I didn't leave you, Rob..." she caught herself before finishing his old name. He watched her fight with some emotion she managed to keep off her face. "I went away, but I didn't leave you."

He hated that he had already said so much. "It doesn't matter," he dismissed softly. He stepped up until he was standing next to her, face out toward the wind. "That was a long time ago."

"I'm here now," she said tentatively, turning to look at his profile.

"Not because you chose to be." There was no reproach in his voice and he was glad of that.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, turning her head back to take deep breaths of the wind pulling at her hair and teasing the tears building on her lashes.

"You could've come find me," she said, also softly, also without reproach, but with much more emotion then he expected.

There were so many words he felt hanging between them, things he knew she wanted to say but didn't and things he wanted to say, but didn't know how. She admitted to being afraid of what she'd see in his eyes...hadn't he been afraid of what she'd see there too?

"And who would I have found?" he asked, turning to look at her profile. "Raven, or Rachel?"

She turned to meet his gaze, "Me," she answered, the one word seeming to impart so much more. She exhaled and let her hands fall at her sides, "Just me."

He saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and couldn't stand to look at her so he looked back out at the city. He couldn't tell her he didn't know who he was anymore. "It doesn't matter," he repeated instead, dismissively.

She nodded, "It was a long time ago," she echoed his earlier statement.

He glanced at her but he couldn't read her. When had he lost the ability to read her? "Yes," he answered. "A lifetime ago."

She looked away as well and sighed, "Too long," she added, "too late..." she continued, her voice lowering close to a whisper, almost to herself. After a few moments of silence, she exhaled as if she had been holding her breath for a very long time. "I go home in the morning," she announced.

Nightwing didn't know what to say. His mind wasn't blank, on the contrary, he was thinking of too many things and couldn't seem to pick the right one. It wasn't until he was faced with the possibility of her leaving his life again just as quietly as she had entered it, that the haze of conflicting emotions that had been swirling inside him started to clear.

Was he really that angry at her?

Did he want her to leave?

Or did he want her to say something that would change everything?

He mentally shook himself. How could he expect her to say something when he didn't exactly know what he wanted her to change? Hell, he didn't even know what he wanted her to say. But faced with the blunt fact of her departure, again, he wished he did. He wished he'd had more time to figure it out.

"Home," he echoed.

As if she found the answer to a question he didn't know she had asked in his statement, she closed her eyes and it seemed as if the wind gently lifted her off the ground and carried her until she was floating over open air, just before the edge where he stood. She turned to him and opened her eyes, the glowing white of her power shining from them, the prickle of her magic raising goosebumps on his flesh. "Goodbye Ro..." she stopped and exhaled, "Nightwing."

Nightwing watched her go and wondered, "...too late...?"

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Soundtrack:

(1) Somewhere In Between, Lifehouse

(2) Extreme Ways, Moby

(3) Always On Your Side, Sheryl Crow & Sting

(4) What Hurts The Most, Rascall Flatts

(5) Estranged, Guns N Roses

And Especially (6) Listen To Your Heart (Edmee's Mix), DHT

A/N: I wasn't too sure about the way I ended this...And no, in case you didn't read my other notes elsewhere, this isn't the end of the story!