Hey guys! I'm back! My holidays have just started, so I've been working on this. Thanks for all the new reviews, faves and follows! I'll be leaving home for Christmas but I don't think I'll be able to take my laptop with me, so I think after this chapter the story we'll be on hiatus. Sorry :(

Okay, we'll still be on the past/flashback thingie through most of this chapter! Thanks again to everyone

I do not own Teen titans or Batman or Alfred or whatever. So, yeah.

Last chapter…

"It's nothing now. But if you had been shot, Richard, I couldn't- I." She was about to choke on her own tears, but she managed to keep on talking, her violet eyes piercing through his mask "If something happened to you I… I couldn't live with myself…"

"Hopefully Batman sent Robin, at least we could bring you home to safety."

"He didn't send him for back up! I can't believe you're so blind! He sends him to keep an eye on you, on me. He doesn't trust me. He never did and he never will." She turned around out of his grasp, but before she could walk away he grabbed her wrist firmly, pushing her against his chest.

"I don't need his approval Raven. I trust you. I would put my life on your hands, I—I— to hell with Batman." He ripped his mask away, revealing his brutal cerulean eyes to her. She gasped in surprise but before she could utter a word his lips came crashing down on hers.

Raven was dreaming. She was sure of it. Here she was, standing in the arms of the one and only man that mattered, his lips on hers. She was definitely dreaming. Feeling no response to his initiative, he drew back from the kiss, taking a step back, and looked directly into her amethyst eyes. She just stared back at him, dazed, as if she wasn't really there.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say, his voice hoarse and hurt. As if snapping out of a deep state of reverie, she gripped his wrist tightly and focused her eyes on his, and that was it. No more words were required; the bond that linked them together sizzled and pulsed with new energy, fresh but overwhelming, like the tide of the ocean itself. That's all he needed to validate the swirl of emotions he was experiencing, she was lost in the same storm, lost in him.

She took a step closer to him and placed a trembling hand on his chest, on the spot where his heart was hidden from her. She looked thoughtfully at her hand and then raised her head to look back at him. When she did look back into his eyes, he captured her frame in his arms and her lips with his once more.

This time she responded without hesitation, electricity pulsing freely, carelessly, as they both lost the battle to the raging waves of emotion that finally managed to drown them. Their lips connected furiously as their hands roamed each other's bodies in a frantic manner, in search for reassurance, anchor. They both yearned for that connection with certainty, to prove that this whole situation was, in fact, real.

When oxygen was scant, their lips parted, both breathing heavily, but never leaving each other's gaze unattended, as if everything was going to shatter, or fade away, if they tore their eyes away from each other; their foreheads touching, their lips swollen. And so they stayed staring at each other, as if words were just useless artifacts from the past.

"Guys? Is everything okay?" Tim's muffled voice came from outside of the room.

"Yes." The birds replied in unison, Raven blushed slightly, looked away from his blue eyes and opened the door. "Nightwing was just heading to his room, right?" Raven added staring back at the unmasked vigilante.

"Yeah, yeah… I was going to sleep, I'm really tired. You take the couch Tim?" Nightwing answered and asked as he walked out of Raven's room pulling his mask back on.

"Yes, I'll stay tonight, I'll head back to Gotham in the morning, is that okay?" the juvenile sidekick said as he plopped down on the couch where he usually slept when he stayed.

"Great. See you in the morning kid," he saluted his young companion and then turned to her, "Good night Rae."

"Good night." She responded shyly as she closed the door.

Things were good for a while; neither birds spoke of the kiss incident directly, but something in their relationship had shifted, it was almost palpable, a constant flow of trust and reassurance surged through their bond.

Raven had begun her college classes at Blüdhaven University so she wasn't spending so much time at the apartment, but she still went out with Nightwing on his nightly patrols. One evening she came home from a long and tiring day only to find the apartment empty, a note with Richard's characteristic handwriting stuck on the fridge.

Rae,

I'll be out of town for a few days, maybe a few weeks. I'll be in Gotham working with Batman on an important mission. I think this will be our last one together; we're still tracking thenew villain and he needs me here for a while. I talked with Flash and he'll be there to help you out.

Please take care, I'll try to be in touch.

P.S. There's Chinese food on the fridge.

She sighed as she thought of him leaving again, he'd been leaving the city a few times for two or three days before, tracking this new villain. Raven growled at the thought of Wally West coming to town to help her out. If that guy was as hungry as usual food would run out soon.

Richard had been training for three days straight with Batman. Meanwhile, they investigated the whereabouts of this new villain, Red Hood. There was something off about him, something quite familiar, but he couldn't put a finger around it just yet. Currently they were training and Batman was kicking his ass swiftly. Lately he was unfocused, his train of thought going elsewhere, heading towards Blüdhaven, specifically to his apartment and leading him back to a certain purple haired girl.

"Focus!" Batman growled at him as he knocked him down once more.

"When will I be able to go back?" the younger man asked.

"Until we find any clear evidence about who Red Hood might be, or his intentions, or his whereabouts. Or until you finally manage to focus!" The older man roared as he descended a couple of blows towards his ex-sidekick.

"I'm sorry. I worry about the safety of my city. I've been here for three days straight." He stood up and tried to direct a kick towards Batman's face but failed.

"Don't blame this in your city. We both know your city is in good hands. I know your troubles lay elsewhere." Batman caught his foot and twisted it, so Nightwing was again laying on his back on the floor.

"What do you mean?"

"The demon girl? Don't play dumb with me Richard; I know what you two have been up to." Gotham's vigilante pushed further, losing his patience as he paced along the halls of the bat cave, leaving his protégé behind.

"She's got a name, you know? Might as well use it." Nightwing stood up and followed his mentor closely behind. "And I trust her."

Batman turned around to face him and said "Well I don't. And I don't think this partnership you two began is trustful as well."

"I don't care Bruce." He snarled back, using his mentor's real name. "I trust her. She knows me, better than anyone I might say, she knows who I am. The real me."

"What?! She knows your identity? Are you insane Richard Grayson?"

"No! I trust her! If it weren't for our bond I would have died all those years ago when Slade's residue chemicals got inside my head. She entered my mind that time and she saw everything. Every memory I hid or possessed. She even saw my parents die, trough my eyes," he confessed, his voice cracking at the thought of his parents, but still he managed to continue, "She knows and she understands. We have a bond, and it works both ways. But I told her who I really was because I wanted to, she's even seen me unmasked. And I don't care!"

"Bond? You two share a mind connection? This is worst than I expected it to be! I thought this was you just having a silly crush with this girl. But a mind bond? What if she uses it to hurt you?

"She'll never do such things!"

"Fine you trust her, but what if someone uses her as a way to get to you, to us? Do you know how much damage that would cause? They could torture her just for information." Batman raged as he grabbed Nightwing by the shoulders and shook him violently, then pushed him away.

"I trust her." He repeated like a mantra, but the thought of Raven being hurt because of him, or tortured to get to him crept through his mind.

A few days more went by and Richard had managed to shut the bond almost completely. He was doing it for her safety he reminded himself almost every hour, as Batman and him worked on shutting it down, slowly, forcefully.

Little did he know that shutting it down for so long would end up tearing it apart, string by string.

When he finally went back to Blüdhaven, after a month of useless investigation work with Batman on Red Hood, he walked into the apartment only to find her things gone, no note nor clue of where she'd gone. As he phoned B.U., he learned that she had ditched college too. As far as he could tell she was no longer in the city.

It's for her safety, for her own good, he repeated silently.

How wrong he was.

Sooooo, that's it folks! Please leave a review! Liked it? Hated it? Boring? Want more? Need more?

Anyway! Happy Holidays! :)

-June