Metropolis glowed beneath your feet as you hovered on a rooftop, the neon streaks from billboards cutting lines across the streets below. Kara Zor-El stood several rooftops over, addressing a group of muggers with a confidence that was equal parts precision and irritation. You adjusted your mask, Robin costume snug, and muttered under your breath, “Not exactly what I pictured when Brice finally let me patrol.”
She glanced up at the sound of your voice, cape snapping sharply in the wind. “You’re late,” she said, tone flat, eyes narrowing. “Did Gotham forget to remind you that time exists?”
“I was observing,” you replied, hands on hips, trying to keep your voice calm even though your patience was already fraying. “Someone has to make sure you don’t accidentally obliterate a street with your heat vision.”
Her lips twitched, not quite a smile. “Observation, huh? And what exactly did that accomplish? Enlightenment?”
“That you talk too much and throw people around like furniture,” you shot back.
“And you overcompensate for being human,” she countered, landing with a thud that made the rooftop shiver beneath her. “You really think you’re ready to be my partner? Or do you just enjoy being insufferable?”
“That too,” you said, shrugging, because arguing was easier than admitting how unnerving she was.
From that night onward, your patrols became a constant war of nerves, a dance of bickering and begrudging teamwork. Every rooftop, alley, and street corner turned into a battleground of ego and precision. You’d chase a fleeing criminal while she corrected your trajectory midair. She’d corner a suspect and you’d lecture about restraint, the two of you practically screaming over the wind and chaos of the city.
One night, a small-time gang tried to ambush you both in an abandoned warehouse. Kara was first through the door, fists glowing faintly. “Stay back,” she barked, voice harsh as the steel around you. You rolled your eyes and jumped in anyway.
“You think I need to stay back?” you snapped, ducking a swinging pipe and countering with a swift kick. “I’ve been in worse alleys than this before breakfast.”
“And I’ve been in fights where rookies got themselves flattened,” she replied, blocking another strike and punching a crate through a wall. “Do you want to be that rookie?”
The argument continued mid-combat, shouts and blows overlapping. You moved as a unit, instinctively synchronized despite the tension, and by the time the fight ended, neither of you had won the verbal sparring—but the thugs were in cuffs.
Even outside fights, clashes were constant. Date nights became strategy sessions disguised as arguments. Flying lessons turned into tests of endurance, patience, and willpower. Every suggestion, every correction, was met with resistance and counter-resistance, and somehow, it sharpened both of you. She pushed you to react faster, to think bigger, to act with less hesitation, while you taught her the art of patience, how to de-escalate without unnecessary destruction, and when to trust someone else’s judgment.
One night, as you flew side by side above the river, she muttered, voice flat, “You know, one day you’re going to realize I’m right about everything.”
“And you’ll realize,” you shot back, flinging a grappling hook at a fleeing criminal, “that I’m going to argue anyway.”
She growled, not amused, cape flaring in the moonlight, and you grinned despite the tension in your chest. The rare spark wasn’t warmth—it was friction, the kind that could ignite something bigger if either of you dared to admit it.
By the time the city slept beneath your watch, you both understood something unspoken: you were building a rhythm through conflict, sharper than cooperation alone could create. Each clash, each bickered instruction, each begrudging rescue was forging two rookies into partners who would survive not because of friendship or trust—but because you were stubborn enough, grumpy enough, and unwilling to let the other fail.