After putting some thought into the final prompt for this week, I decided to get a bit creative with it. Many of you are probably familiar with the Royal Family Verse, a special "setting" that I like to place one Robstar Week entry in each year. Well, when I was planning out each of the fics for this year, I realized that 1) I was six fics in and still hadn't made plans for an RFV fic yet, and 2) I didn't really have any good ideas to make "playlist" into a story. So then I thought, "Why don't I make the playlist, have it be an RFV playlist, and use one of those songs as a story prompt?"

What follows is a story set in the 'verse that's inspired by the song "You Are the Beginning" by The Family Crest. It's a sweeping, epic piece (The Family Crest is really good at those, I highly recommend the group) that gave me the mental image of Nightwing and Starfire standing together on a cliffside and staring down an alien invasion fleet. Because of today's theme, both the title of the fic and the lyrics at the beginning are from that song as well. Enjoy everyone, and happy Robstar Week!

Like the Fire, the Sun

Oh, what a love that gives
And then taketh all away
Oh, what a man will do
When a man's lost everything
When everything's changed

One of the less pleasant things Nightwing had learned from moving to Tamaran was that the Vega star system it was a part of was kind of terrible. Half the inhabited planets were veritable death-worlds, more than half of them seemed to be in competition with one another over who could make the most tyrannical and expansion-hungry interplanetary empire, and everyone who just wanted to be left alone had to deal with it. As loath as he was to admit it, he could see why some members of the intergalactic scene looked at the powerful warrior race of Tamaran and assumed they were just another gang of space thugs.

But he had also seen, time and time again, that those naysayers couldn't be more wrong. Starfire's people – his people, by rite and marriage – weren't some mindless brutes, they were survivors. He'd seen them wrestle beasts five times a man's size to the ground to stop them rampaging through the streets. He'd seen them cultivate carnivorous plants that made their mightiest Earth counterparts look like daisies because those plants' flowers and fruits had too much medicinal value to ignore. He'd read and listened to the long history of Tamaran, its greatest triumphs and harshest tragedies alike, and he could say with full conviction that he was proud to be accepted among its people.

And if the Citadel warlords thought they could take that all away, Nightwing – Mari'kesh in Tamaranean – was far from the only one ready to put them in their place.

Empress Koriand'r and Emperor Mar'ikesh stood at the edge of a jagged peak about a dozen miles out from Tamaran's capital. The empress hovered just off the ground, though what joy sustained her at a time like this her husband could only guess. The source of the small crackles of viridian light playing at her fingertips was much easier to identify.

"What are you thinking?" Mar'ikesh asked. His grip tightened a little on the carved fighting staff propped against the ground – heavier than the bo staff he'd wielded years ago, but a comforting presence nonetheless – and he peered up beyond her to see how much of the descending warships he could make out.

Koriand'r did not answer right away, but her nostrils flared as if in challenge and she squinted closer against the haze of distance.

"There," she finally said, pointing out one ship among many. "The Citadel disguised it well, but it's just a little too bulky to be practical for an ordinary fighter, and too well-guarded. That is where we will find the command center."

"Hmm." Mar'ikesh didn't have a Tamaranean's distance vision, so he would have to take her word for it. In spite of the dire circumstances, the corner of his lip twitched into the tiniest of smirks.

"So now all we have to do is head straight for the ship with the most firepower and the heaviest guard," he said. "Sounds fun."

Koriand'r could not bring herself to share his dark humor. "They will not take our children."

Mar'ikesh let his smirk evaporate. He wasn't sure whether she was thinking of their own children – evacuated from the capital, now, and hidden as safely as they could be in a distant fortress – or the children, the people, the future of Tamaran itself. Either way, he replied, "No. They won't."

With a concerned frown, he eyed her and added, "You're sure about this plan?"

The split-second of hesitation before she nodded was barely perceptible, not enough room for argument. "Yes. I can fly more quickly than a ship, and I'm a much smaller target. This is the best chance we have to end this quickly."

Mar'ikesh nodded back. "I'll be right beside you, even if I do need a ship."

The flight to meet the invasion fleet went by in a tense blur. Mar'ikesh was not the only one who needed mechanical assistance to get there – only the best fliers dared join their empress in taking this mission on without the protection of a ship's hull and shield, and in any case they needed the firepower to pierce the shields covering the command ship's hull. But they sent a single fighter ship, their smallest and fastest, and cloaked along with the empress and their fliers until they got close enough to open fire.

What followed were a few tense minutes of sheer madness that seemed to stretch on to forever, as fighter and fliers alike dove and weaved to avoid return fire all while trying to make a breach in the command center. Mar'ikesh could only wait, white-knuckled in his seat, while blasts from the Citadel's fighters strained the limits of his own ship's shields and fliers around him fell. He could not say how many were hit and how many recovered, but he did not see Koriand'r among them. Speed, maneuverability, and surprise all seemed to be working in their favor.

In that time of waiting and praying, it struck him all at once that he didn't know what he would do if he lost her. He had given up everything back on Earth to be with Koriand'r, with Starfire, when she had first been summoned to take the throne. They had both lost the lives they'd built for themselves twice over now, to tragedy and duty and love, but duty and love had given them a chance to build their lives anew. They had a family now.

If his children lost their mother while he was stuck waiting in a tiny fighter ship, he wasn't sure he'd be able to forgive himself.

The sudden crackling of the command ship's force shield tore him from his morbid thoughts, and the pilot of his fighter whooped as the shield finally dissolved under the Tamaraneans' fire. The gunners didn't miss a moment, and in seconds more the weaker physical hull of the command ship had been breached.

And then a new chaos broke out as the door to the fighter flung open and a Tamaranean flier leaned in to gather him and the other small handful of passengers. It was not Koriand'r, and Mar'ikesh had to fight to stop himself from making a leap of logic and assuming the worst.

Wordlessly, he undid his harness and took the flier's arms in a trapeze hold like he'd done with his wife so, so many times. The Tamaranean pulled him out and up past the wild and confused shots of their enemies, and in another several stretched-out seconds they were through the breach in the command ship's hull.

Mar'ikesh's racing heart skipped a beat when he saw Koriand'r there, already felling Citadel guards with a flurry of well-placed starbolts. He pulled the staff from where it was clipped against his back and moved to join her.

"If anyone tries to challenge you for the throne after this, I'm kicking their varblernelki myself," he quipped, swinging the staff wide to catch two Citadelians around the midsection and slam them against the wall.

Now, as the Tamaraneans were making headway, Koriand'r allowed herself a fierce grin. "And I will gladly watch," she replied, flinging two more Citadel warriors to the end of the hall with her eyebeams.

The two of them whirled around one another, working together with practiced ease and watching each other's blind spots as they fought. Before long the first wave of Citadel guards had been dispatched, and the Tamaranean team began making their way to the main control center. There they would be able to wreak havoc on the standing fleet's organization and – with luck – claim some of it for their own. If this mission went well enough, they'd weaken the Citadel's forces enough to end its invasion before it really started.

The two of them had found their paths changed twice each: Princess Koriand'r and Dick Grayson, to Starfire and Robin, to Empress Koriand'r and Emperor Mar'ikesh. They had rebuilt both times together, overcome countless challenges together, and now they could not truly imagine their lives taking any other path.

And whatever world they lived on, so long as they drew breath they were going to ensure that world was not lost.