A/N: Expect another one tonight and then not another one until after I get back from the Bar Exam on Wednesday night. Happy Birthday, Kysra!

Thanks: Thanks to everyone for trying to encourage me after my little whining patch about the reviews. I didn't mean to fall into the 'review pity-party' bit, I was actually just a little surprised that people liked my comedy so much because I didn't really think I was very good at writing ongoing comedy. But I'm really glad y'all like this bit too!

Individual responses to reviews going up on 'emsscraps'.

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Estranged
Part III: Raven

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"Past days flit before us; feelings, thoughts, hopes, we deemed were dead, all rise again, summoned by that secret witchery, the well-remembered though long silent voice."
- The Mother's Recompense, Grace Aguilar

Raven had no regrets. Not really.

Yes, there were things she would have preferred to have gone a different way, and certainly she had made mistakes, but she would never dare to change a one of them, even if she could.

It had probably been after her first week with the Titans when she had realized the essential truth about life and choices. For so many years, she had hated the way the people on Azarath had treated her, she had hated the choices she had to make while there, hated having to come to Earth and hated having to face her father all alone.

When she met the Titans, she knew there was nothing about it to hate. It was just another choice. Another stone on the path that made up her life. There was always good that came with every choice, every mistake, even if there was also bad and things to be sacrificed and left behind.

She wondered about those missed opportunities sometimes, she grieved for what could have been as much as the next person, but she cherished what was enough to help her keep perspective.

It was why, while soaring through the freedom offered to her by the anonymity of a big city, while savoring the eclecticism of Blüdhaven's various and sundry occupants, she was never once tempted to wish she had made a different choice nine years prior.

For just a brief moment, as she watched the ebb and flow of humanity from her high vantage point above the antenna of the local news tower, she considered whether it might be time for her to pull up stakes from her comfortable little town and find a niche in the big city again. Maybe not Blüdhaven, she couldn't possibly live in such close proximity to her past, but some other large city: Gotham or Metropolis, maybe even somewhere closer to the sunny days and warmer climate she was now used to such as Miami or Los Angeles.

It took her all of that brief moment to decide that although the large city had it's perks, Shaver Lake California was her home now and she couldn't possibly leave it. Perhaps someday she'd have to leave it, and if that day came, she would accept it with as much quiet dignity and tolerance as she had learned to accept all the changes in her life.

'But that day,' she decided and descended the antenna for the roof off to her left that sported an outdoor pool, 'is not today'.

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It was amazing how easily it all came back to her. The levitating, the listening to the pulse of a large city, the feel of her magic stretching and moving inside her.

She had repressed the parts of her that had always reached out to sense other people's auras for so long that she had thought she might have forgotten how to do it. It had taken her so long to be able to master the control necessary to be able to prod someone's aura, test it, graze it, without poking or intruding on it. In her home town she didn't need to reach out with her senses first and nine years was enough time for any technique to grow rusty.

Still, there were no steps on the hard concrete of the roof behind her. There was no sound, no flapping of a cape other than her own, no shuffling of feet...

There was nothing to precede his presence...nothing except the press of his aura.

Nothing except the warm, gentle tingling she would forever associate with Robin.

It was amazing how easily the memory of it came back to her.

'I'm leaving.'

'Yes...of course you are.'

She closed her eyes, but it only made the memory stronger. Or maybe it was his nearness and she could feel him come closer, she could feel her own aura reaching out to him, she could feel the tug of the bond she thought she had cut and tied off long ago.

Part of her wanted to turn around and that part was at war with the part of her that wanted to fly away without turning to see him. She wanted to look at him, but she knew what she'd see. She wouldn't see Robin or even Richard. She'd see Nightwing. She wasn't certain she wanted to see Nightwing. She didn't want to see the hardness of his expression, the question in his eyes.

He had never forgotten how to mask his emotions from her, but she still felt the mass of emotion pressing against her. She couldn't tell what it was, but she could tell there was something. He felt like Robin, but she knew that wasn't who he was and it wasn't who she'd see. So, instead of turning around and instead of flying away, she stood stock still, pressed her eyes closed and waited, with baited breath, for him.

For endless moments, there was no movement save for the breeze blowing through her hair and wreaking havoc with her cloak. The hood had long since fallen and her long locks played around her shoulders and tickled her cheeks. She knew he was behind her, knew he was close...close enough for her to touch if she turned around, but he said nothing.

And suddenly, she heard it when he turned around and started to walk away from her.

She whirled around, pushing her cloak away from her, quick enough to catch him take the last few lithe steps before stepping up onto the edge of the roof.

"Robin, wait!" she called before she could stop herself.

His whole body froze, muscles bunched, ready to leap, but he didn't move. "I haven't answered to that name for a long time."

She was surprised by the sound of his voice, so deep and emotionless. It was a different timbre, she knew that, but she couldn't help but remember the voice of The Batman. She took a few cautious steps toward him. She took a deep breath and lowered her hand to rest at her side, "Old habits."

He relaxed so that it didn't look as if he were ready to leap, but he didn't turn around to face her.

"Why were you going to walk away from me?" she asked when it didn't appear he would say anything.

"Why are you flying about my city?" he challenged, only a hint of some emotion in his voice.

"If you really wanted to know that, you wouldn't have walked away just now."

"If you didn't want me to walk away, you would have turned around."

She sighed. "I was afraid," she admitted, her voice barely loud enough to carry on the wind.

"Of what?" he asked.

"Of..." she trailed off, considering which of her fears best comprised the reason she didn't turn, "Of what I'd see in your eyes."

For a while, she thought he wouldn't speak. "I still cover them."

She laughed, and there was an edge of hysteria to it. That answer was the closest to the Robin-Richard she had known that she'd heard from him yet. "That never stopped me before."

He turned his face to the side and she caught her first live view of his adult profile. Her breath caught in her throat. "Nine years is a long time to keep up a skill without practicing it."

"You'd be surprised," was all she answered. She took another few steps until she was close enough to touch him if she reached.

Some emotion flitted across his face and she could almost physically see the change, the decision he came to, before he turned around to face her. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

Raven was staring right at his chest and she was too shocked by the realization that he had grown very tall to answer his question. She was not a short woman, but he was practically head and shoulders taller than she. It didn't used to be that way, she thought as her eyes focused on the symbol across his chest.

"Oh," she whispered when she realized what she was looking at. Without thinking, she reached out and carefully touched the tip of a well manicured nail on the beak of the bird. She felt his breath catch and she half expected him to pull away or push her hand away, and when he didn't, she grew bold. She let her finger trace the outline of the blue bird along his chest. Slowly, her finger made it's circuit, as if she couldn't be sure she really was seeing what she was seeing until she had verified it by touch. She had been so preoccupied by the expression on his face when she had seen the picture, she had barely paid attention to his uniform at all. And now, she was only just starting to realize that she knew the shape.

"Oh..." she breathed again when her finger had completed it's circuit. She looked up to his face. He was looking down at her, seemingly waiting for her. She raised her hand until it made contact with his chin. She let her hand trace the planes of his face from chin to cheek forgetting that it had been nine years since she had any right to stand so close to him and that even then, at the height of their friendship and kinship, she had never touched him this way. But the years had done much to mature her and while she had been an emotional newborn directly after her father's defeat, that was no longer the case. So, when her hands grazed the silky fall of his hair at his neck, she thought of nothing except the strangeness of the sensation, and when her fingers skimmed the hard line of his jaw, she felt more than just the high cheekbones, she felt the heat of him through the pads of her fingers.

She wouldn't normally need to touch him this way, despite her emotional growth, it wasn't like she went about grasping at every one she met and although she was more in tune with casual touching, it was usually more of a calculated move to comfort or of reassurance than it was an inexplicable urge. But with him, she was trying to merge two visions, two memories, two beings. She was trying to find the boy he had been inside the man he had become and it seemed that mapping the contours of him with her hands, much like a blind woman might, was the only way she could think to accomplish that.

Later, she would be surprised he let her get away with as much as he did, but in the moment, when her fingers slipped under the edge of his mask, she was thinking about nothing except getting a clear picture of who he had become.

When his hand finally reached out and gripped her wrist, stilling her hand, she jumped in surprise at the contact.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, his voice gruff.

"What's happened to you?" she asked instead. She could feel the tears pricking at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

She thought he might pull her hand away from his face, but he didn't, even though he tried very hard to keep his face neutral. "Why do you care now?"

"I've always cared," she answered.

He did pull away from her then and dropped her wrist as if it burned him, even through the glove he wore. "Yes, of course you have."

She felt the harsh edge to his tone, she could almost taste the hardness in his words hanging in the air between them and she searched for something to say but couldn't think of a thing. Or, perhaps, had too many thing she wanted to say to pick just one.

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A/N: This part and the next Part were the hardest to write because of all the emotion in it. So, I used a lot of music for it.

Soundtrack:

1. Asignatura Pendiente, Ricky Martin

2. Beloved, VNV Nation

3. The Bottom Line, Depeche Mode

4. Stormy Weather, Elle Fitzgerald