A/N: So this one blindsided me last night as I was listening to "Gifts and Curses" by Yellowcard and I knew I had a scene to write here, so I put the song on repeat and just wrote whatever came to my head. It wasn't until halfway through the second part of it that I realized it fit the 'memories' challenge vignettes I was doing. This has so many holes in it...plot holes that I don't explain, I know they're there, but the truth is, I don't really care. I wanted to show the two scenes I showed here and didn't really care about developing the rest of the plot. I hope you guys can live with that. ((Smile))

I said I'd go back to the angsty-darker stuff in these vignettes didn't I? Yeah, well, I had NO idea...

Thanks: I owe you guys the thanks for both 05 and 06. I will try to get those done today.

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Echoes
by Em

"...and my worst pains are words I cannot say / still I will always fight on for you."
- Gifts and Curses, Yellowcard

Fight
(07: I Promise I'll Be Back...)

There were tears in her eyes when she held Raven in place. "You still don't understand." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

"The only thing I don't understand is why you think I'll be able to make a difference?" she asked.

"Because you always have before," Starfire answered simply.

Raven shook her head, "That was years ago, Star," she said, her tone softening. "We were kids then," she sighed. "He needed someone who could share that moment with him and I did it, but that's..."

Starfire's hand to her lips stopped her from continuing. "You need to give him something to live for, Raven, please." The tears started to fall.

Raven felt the tears start to sting at her eyes as she couldn't hold up her mask of emotionlessness in the face of Star's tears. "Kori," Raven said softly, "You were married to him, Barbara was almost married to him, you both still love him, and he loves you, if you can't give him something to live for...what could I do?"

"That's just what I've been trying to tell you," Starfire insisted. "He does love us, he has loved us, but we weren't enough. We aren't enough. You need to give him something to live for. Only you can."

Raven looked suddenly frightened and small. "I don't know how," she admitted.

Starfire held Raven still when she would have walked away by placing a hand on either of her shoulders. "He's been waiting for you, Raven," she said, her voice breaking a little. "He's never loved anyone as well as you, he's never found someone to take your place in his heart though he's tried, but he hasn't, and the lack of it, the emptiness of it has made him careless and now he is going off and if you were to see his eyes you'd know he isn't going to fight to come back to us, Raven." Starfire shook her a little, "I saw his eyes, he doesn't care if he dies, he might even welcome it, please, Raven, please..."

Raven shook her head, "I can't..." she whispered.

"If you continue to question this, if you continue to push him away, he will die. We will lose him."

Raven met her eyes and the tears glittered on her lashes, "How can I give him something I don't know I have?" she asked.

"You love him, you always have, but you ran away because you were afraid of an emotion so strong it could have you welcome death instead of living without the one you love," Starfire said adamantly. "You gave up your life to Trigon once, so you would not have to survive in a world without him, do you remember?" she questioned.

"Without all of you," Raven insisted, but automatically, mechanically, as if it were a well worn groove in a record the needle falls into easily.

"And he braved hell to find you," Starfire continued. "He partnered with his mortal enemy, he let Slade take his soul back, all for you. For your life. Because he refused to believe you were dead." Starfire lowered her head for a moment, "We hated to believe you were gone, but Raven, only he was adamant that you were still alive, only he believed and risked it all."

Raven was crying and she didn't know when she had started or how to stop it. "I don't know how," she whispered. "He was always my hope, how can I give him something he instilled in me in the first place?"

"Just give him your love," Starfire told her. "He'll know what to do with it."

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"What are you doing here?"

Raven approached enough to still his hands in their preparation. He looked at her a moment in surprise at the contact after all the years, and gasped at the look on her face. Before he could question anything, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed him close.

When his arms wrapped around her, he felt something in his soul ease. As if something inside him had been fisted for so many years and only now was able to unclench.

"I'm sorry," Raven whispered against his neck. "I'm so sorry, Richard, please, I'm sorry."

He held her tighter, his eyes squeezing shut against the sudden burn of tears. He didn't know what she was apologizing for, but it didn't matter because it was her heart beating against his chest and he suddenly felt as if he'd come home and he didn't trust his vocal chords to speak even if there was something he could think of to say that was more important than holding her close and inhaling the scent of her.

"I didn't want to leave," she said, and he could hear the tears in her voice. Tears she hadn't shed even when she had feared bringing about the end of the world. "I was scared, scared of loving you and losing you," she continued, "And I didn't think."

He pulled away from her only enough to look in her watery irises. "What?" he managed.

"I love you," she said seriously and plainly, the way she did everything. "I was so afraid of losing you, of hurting, I thought I could live alright away from you if you were out there living your life and happy but..."

"How could I be happy without you?" he interrupted her, almost angrily, almost desperate.

She shook her head and the tears traveled down her pale cheeks, now flushed, "I didn't know."

He brought his hands to hold her face in place, "How could you not know?" he demanded. "How could you not see how much I loved you with each touch I thought would burn me?"

"I was afraid," she answered. "I..." she fought his hold suddenly, wanting to look away, unable to meet his eyes, but he held firm. When her eyes widened at the realization that he wouldn't let her go, and she looked almost panicked, he wiped at the tears on her cheeks with his thumb and brought his lips down to meet hers.

At first, all he tasted was the salty tang of her tears and all he felt was the soft velvet of her lips, but then her lips parted and she breathed and just like that, he tasted her, felt her and knew he had finally, finally, come home.

When they finally broke the kiss, he couldn't help but laugh, long and hard, pulling her to him and tucking her head under his chin, feeling the frantic beat of her heart match his and still he couldn't stop laughing. He laughed the way he hadn't laughed in years; the way he wasn't sure he knew how to laugh anymore.

"Now you tell me," he said when he was finally able to speak between laughter. "Now..." he laughed again and it was almost near hysteria. He let her pull back to look at him and he pushed her hair away from her face, "You have the worst sense of timing."

"Don't do this," she said, her eyes still scared, still desperate. "Don't go...not now."

"Is that what this is about?" he asked.

"It took Kori telling me I might lose you forever, yes," she admitted. "I can't lose you, not now, Richard, don't make me lose you now."

His arms tightened around her waist and hers slipped around his back. She pressed her cheek against his chest and he could feel her breathing even through the uniform. "I have to do this."

She was suddenly shaking. His Raven, the stoic, master of emotions, shaking. Shaking for him. "No, you don't," she countered and the cold resolve in her tone was the one that meant business, the one that brooked no argument. She looked up at him, catching only bits of his profile due to the angle. "Leave this alone, Richard, just walk away."

He swallowed, hard and a look of pain crossed his face. His hands were suddenly caressing her face, into her hair, tracing the lines of her jaw, the perfection of her nose, the curve of her lips. Her eyes fluttered closed at the tender touch. "I don't have a choice," his voice soft and pensive. "But I promise I'll be back."

That had been what Kori had asked her to assure. What she had thought she understood was all she could expect. She knew Richard wouldn't walk away from something of this magnitude, not this late in the game, not when there was no other option readily available and everyone was counting on him. She knew it. Knew it the way she knew she would never survive the loss of him. She thought she would be content with seeing the determined look of hope on his face, hope for the future that would ensure his return.

Her hands slid up into his hair, feeling the soft length of it caress her hands like silk, but she didn't stop until her hands were at the back of his head and she could pull him down to her kiss. She couldn't stop the tears from escaping from her eyes as she tasted him, felt him press against her.

When she pulled away, she couldn't pull away entirely and kept her lips a hair's breadth away from his, as if she would feed from his very breath. "You can't promise that," she whispered against his lips still wet with her kiss.

"I can," he whispered back. He bridged the distance between them so that he claimed her lips once more and she felt the bond she had tried so hard to smother flare to life between them. 'Love you,' she felt more than heard through his mind as he welcomed her presence there. 'Need you,' she felt. When they parted and he could speak again, he met her eyes unerringly. "I can promise I'll be back because nothing can make me leave you...not again." He seemed to be touching her as if he were suddenly allowed what he had wanted for so long and was trying to make up for lost time. "Not now," he added adamantly.

She nodded, and although every fiber in her being cried out against it, she pulled back from him slowly disentangling herself from him. "You carry my heart with you now," she told him seriously, like a prayer or an enchantment- words of power, certainly. "I cannot live without it."

He recognized the ritual in her words, felt it pulse through their bond the way he hadn't felt anything ever before and he felt his own soul respond, warmth spreading through him. He knew the way he couldn't know something said in mere words that if he died now, she would die. It wouldn't be a choice of hers whether to live or die, it would simply be. He could almost feel it like a physical thing, the beating of her heart inside the rhythm of his pulse and he knew that although she seemed calm, she was so frightened, for him more than for her. He could taste her smell on his tongue even standing two feet from her. He wanted to go to her, but he was afraid he'd never have the strength to go if he did.

So he did the only thing he could: "I will keep it safe and bring it back to you."

It wasn't until after he was gone and Raven sat alone and cold on the concrete of the roof that Starfire approached.

"I gave him something to live for," Raven said before Starfire could even ask.

"I know," Starfire said softly, sitting next to her.

Starfire watched Raven look at her the way those suffering from shock looked, as if they weren't sure this wasn't all a dream. "The bond's complete," Raven announced, her voice far away and fragile, more fragile than she had ever heard the empath sound. "After all these years of fighting it, protecting him—myself-- from tying us together that way..." she trailed off and shook her head. "It was the only way I knew how to..."

Starfire held onto her hand and nodded, "I know," she whispered.

Raven looked away, into the distance where Nightwing had disappeared as if she could still feel him, pulsing even across the miles, and when she spoke her voice was resigned; "I can't live without him now."

Starfire brought the other girl into the circle of her arms and pressed her close, steadily soothing her back as the usually stoic girl clutched at her clothes as if she were a last lifeline in a storm, "I don't think you were ever meant to," she answered.

The truth of Starfire's words broke the final vestiges of her control and for the first time since she was a small child, Raven wept.