A/N: Not too long, but BOY did it feel long when I was writing it! I started this out like three different ways and went through various fights with my Inner!Raven as well as with my muse as to what some of the realizations should be in this chapter...

All I can say, is bare with me...the next one is MUCH better.

Thanks: General thanks on 'emsscraps' as always. Special thanks to GuardianKysra for her quote choosing help, her support about the chapter and general plot-beta-work. As always. ((wink))

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Estranged
Part IX: Raven

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"I don't want to leave you/ Even though I have to. / I don't want to love you. / Oh, I still do."
- I Still Do, The Cranberries

The sight of Richard, long lashes curled against his cheeks, his face relaxed in sleep, strands of his jet black hair over his forehead was shocking to say the least. Oh, she well remembered what had brought him there and especially remembered fighting off sleep for as long as she could, thinking that when she woke, the night would be over and he'd be gone.

She remembered his tenderness laced with desperation, she remembered the look of utter focus in his eyes as he did things to her she had never even read about in her medical journals. She remembered how shocked she was, even amidst the passion, at the look of yearning in his eyes as he finally succumbed to his own pleasure. She remembered caressing his face then and wishing she had the words to ask questions he would never answer anyway.

She remembered, and would probably never forget.

She wasn't shocked because she didn't remember why he had been in her bed that night; she was stunned as to why he was still in her bed at all.

He slept on his back, the way he always had. His face, however, was turned toward her and his left arm stretched out under her pillow, his right arm laying against his bare chest, almost touching the place where the disheveled blankets started at his hips. She wanted nothing so much as to touch him. She didn't dare move lest she wake him but wasn't sure if it was because she didn't want to face him or didn't want to chance him leaving.

And that thought, more than any other, prompted her to sit up, very carefully, and slide out from the bed. She ran her hands through her tousled hair in a nervous gesture and stared at him from three feet away. She was naked, but she didn't really notice. She was trying to decide what to do. She wanted to stay so much that she actually considered dressing and walking out, checking out earlier and catching an earlier flight. She looked around the room, visually spotting her suitcases, purse, the clothes she had laid out for that day among their discarded uniforms, the extra pillows where they had fallen over the side of the bed, the black scrap of his mask where it had fallen forgotten after she'd thrown it. She mentally worked through how to get her bags into the hallway and considered calling for the bellhops from her cellphone.

She knew she wouldn't get away without waking him. He might look like Richard, but he was still Nightwing and she knew there was no way she could move around so much and not wake Nightwing. He might not stop her, but she couldn't seem to forget the words he had spoken, couldn't forget his accusations that she had run away--

She would not run away.

She couldn't lay back down with him, however, not and keep from touching him and if she touched him, she would be lost. She knew that. And if she stayed anywhere where she could see him, she wouldn't be able to resist. So she compromised. She found the sleepshirt and underwear she had laid out to wear after her shower the night before and forced herself to walk to the bathroom. Her eyes fell on the towel she had used after her shower the night before and hurried away before she could think on it too much.

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Rachel dated.

Not often, and certainly not recently, but she had dated. She had lost her virginity at age 20 not because she had felt oh-so-passionate about her lover, but because it seemed like the thing to do. She hadn't been disappointed, she had even enjoyed herself. But how could she imagine how pale all of her other experiences would be after the passion she had known that night?

No one she had ever met had measured up to him even before she knew what he tasted like, what his kiss felt like, how warm it was in his arms. 'Now,' she wondered as she turned on the shower and glanced at herself in the rapidly fogging mirror, 'How hard is it going to be to get over him now that I have the memory of this night to look back on?'

Her reflection had no answer for her and she closed her eyes to avoid the answer that was trying to come to her conscious. She didn't want to think about the what ifs. She wouldn't.

She wouldn't even think about what would happen if he woke up while she was in the shower. Would he leave then? Would he wake up and realize he'd fallen asleep? Would he come into the bathroom to join her?

She frowned as she dipped her head under the strong hot spray of water, closing her eyes and focusing on not thinking at all.

But it seemed her skin was still sensitized and the fall of the water traveling the planes of her skin ghosted his touch in her memory and she found herself pushing against the cream tile to keep her balance at the memory.

She saw his eyes behind her closed eyelids and try as she might to put any of what had happened between them out of her mind, the one thing she could not keep from seeing was the look in his eyes as he braced himself over her and met her eyes unerringly.

She loved him, she always had and she had never tried to deny it even to herself. From time to time, she had managed to forget--not that she loved him, not really, but more like she had managed to forget that love existed at all.

So this heavy feeling in her chest was not new, not unexpected, not shocking.

What was shocking was what she had seen in his eyes, what she had felt coming from him in waves but had never even had a clue of before: he had loved her.

Maybe, he still did.

All those years she had waited for him to come after her, charging into her life she had never dared to hope that it would be love that brought him. She had been content to think that he might come for her because he missed her friendship, her companionship and that had been enough. There had been heartbreak in her acceptance of the certainty that he wasn't coming for her after all. Heartbreak that had taken her long hours pretending everything was alright to heal. But the pain she felt then was nothing to the pain that bubbled up inside her at the knowledge that he had loved her, all those years, and even before she left--

He had loved her.

She didn't doubt it now, but the knowing of it was worse than the thinking he had simply forgotten her.

She wasn't certain what hurt more, thinking that he had simply forgotten her or knowing that he had loved her, but not enough.

Knowing he had loved her set in hard relief how different things could have been, it highlighted the path not taken which she had tried so very hard to pretend she hadn't wished for. Now she knew all that they had missed, knew that if it hadn't been for their stubbornness, they might have had a happily ever after. And she also knew that whatever love he had felt for her, it wasn't enough for him to come after her anyway.

Still, when she cried as the rapidly cooling spray of water beat down on her head and shoulders, it wasn't so much for what was past, but because she knew that none of it really mattered now. She knew that all those words they couldn't say the night before, the issues that had loomed so large and imposing didn't matter. She knew too that her loving him still didn't matter. Knew that even if he loved her now, that wouldn't matter either.

None of it mattered because she knew that regardless of how much she might want to stay with him, even if he asked and even if she stayed, she'd never really be happy in Blüdhaven. And she knew that Nightwing was a part of Richard and as much as Nightwing was needed in Blüdhaven, he wasn't needed in Shaver Lake. And Richard would never let Nightwing go, anyway, even if she ever asked him, which she could never do.

They were too far from each other and ultimately...

It was just too late.

Too late for love to fix it, too late for more than the one night...

Too late for them.

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A/N: Don't hate me. I can only say that it's not over yet. (It's close to being over, but not yet...)The next chapter will be very good, I promise. And I did sort of warn you guys that it would be angst-filled. But stick it out with me guys and you won't be disappointed, I promise! The next chapter will also include the scene that GuardianKysra originally told me she wanted me to write. (And it's only taken me nine chapters to get there! Heh.)