Starfire Friendship

This is a quieter story than most of the Nightwing stories. There is no big villain in it. There is no big fight. It is a story about a friendship, which is its own kind of superpower.

The friendship was between Dick Grayson and Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran. On Earth, Koriand'r went by Kori. In costume, she went by Starfire. She was Dick's best friend.

It had started in T-Tower, back when the Teen Titans were brand new. They had met as awkward teenagers — Dick had been fifteen, Kori had been the alien equivalent of about sixteen. She had crashed her escape pod into the Pacific Ocean a year before. She had escaped from her bossy older sister, Princess Komand'r, who had tried to marry Kori off in a political alliance that Kori had wanted no part of. Kori had stolen a ship, made it as far as Earth, and crash-landed in California.

When Dick first met Starfire on the roof of T-Tower, she had been levitating about six inches above the ground, glowing softly orange, trying to figure out which Earth food in the kitchen was edible. (Answer, according to Kori: most of them. Especially mustard. Kori loved mustard. She drank it straight from the bottle. Beast Boy had screamed the first time he saw it.)

She had looked at Dick. He had looked at her. She had floated over to him in midair, taken his face in her two warm orange hands, kissed him quickly on the forehead — and then released him.

"There," she had said, smiling brightly. "Now I speak your language. On Tamaran, we learn languages through contact. I am Princess Koriand'r. You may call me Kori. We will be excellent friends, I think."

And they had been.

They had been excellent friends for four years on the Teen Titans. Through every mission. Through every fight with Slade. Through every late-night pizza on the T-Tower roof. Through Beast Boy's terrible jokes. Through Raven's quiet brooding. Through Cyborg's "twelve-decker breakfast burritos." Through everything.

And then — when Dick became Nightwing, and decided to move to Blüdhaven — his single biggest worry, the one thing that kept him awake nights, was leaving Kori behind.

He worried about it the whole flight down.

He worried about it the whole first week at the police academy.

He worried about it for the entire month it took him to set up the Parkthorne Avenue apartment.

And then, one Friday night, about six weeks into his new life in Blüdhaven, Dick was up on the roof of his apartment building, in his Nightwing suit, doing his nightly check of the Blüdhaven skyline through a pair of binoculars, when he heard a familiar sound behind him.

A soft whoosh of air. The faint hum of Tamaranean flight.

He turned around.

Kori was standing on his rooftop. She was glowing softly orange in the foggy dark. Her long red hair was floating slightly in the air around her shoulders, the way it always did when she had just been flying. She was wearing her purple Starfire uniform. She had a paper takeout bag in one hand and a wide, bright, joyful smile on her face.

"Friend Richard!" she said. "I have come to visit. I have brought zorka-berry pies. They are from a small Tamaranean bakery I have discovered in Star City. I flew over there first, then to Blüdhaven. It took only forty-two of your Earth minutes. Please, may I sit down?"

Dick stared at her for a long second. Then he started laughing. He laughed so hard he sat down on the rooftop air-conditioning unit and pulled off his mask just to wipe his eyes.

"You — you flew from Jump City to Star City to here, just to bring me PIE?"

"Of course," Kori said, sitting down cross-legged beside him on the rooftop, the takeout bag between them. "We are best friends. Best friends bring pie. This is, I believe, a universal law."

That night was the first of many.

It became their tradition. Every Friday — every Friday Kori was on Earth and not off planet on Titans business — she would fly to Blüdhaven and have dinner with Dick on his rooftop. Sometimes they would patrol together afterward. Sometimes they would just sit and talk for hours. Sometimes Kori would help Dick make actual dinner in his small kitchen — although her cooking experiments were, to put it gently, ambitious. (She once tried to fry mustard. It is not recommended.)

The patrols, when they did them, were beautiful.

Starfire would lift off from the roof and rise high above the city — five hundred feet up, sometimes a thousand — and just hover there, her sharp Tamaranean eyes scanning the streets below. She had eagle eyesight. She could spot a getaway car turning out of an alley six blocks away. She could see a burglar climbing a fire escape from a quarter-mile up. She would whisper into her communicator, "Friend Nightwing. The southeast corner of Tenth and Vine. There is a man with a crowbar."

And down below in the fog, Nightwing would smile inside his mask and start swinging.

She was the highest scout he had ever worked with. The Titans had been good. Bruce had been brilliant. But there was something about having a friend who could simply LIFT off and SEE the whole city at once that made Nightwing's job easier, and made him faster, and let him save more people.

When the work was done, they would always meet back on the rooftop of the Parkthorne apartment. Kori would land softly. Dick would pull off his mask. And they would sit and talk.

Kori told Dick stories of Tamaran.

She told him about the K'tarr'm festival — the great Tamaranean spring festival, where the whole sky turned nine shades of purple as a special atmospheric phenomenon, and the whole population came out into the streets to dance and feast under the violet sky. She told him about the moons of Tamaran, all eleven of them, and how on certain nights all eleven were visible at once. She told him about her sister Komand'r, who was bossy and difficult but whom Kori still missed in a complicated way. She told him about her parents, the King and Queen of Tamaran, both of whom had died when she was young. She told him about the war that had ended her childhood. She told him about her escape, the long journey through space, the crash into the Pacific.

Dick listened. He listened very carefully. Sometimes he asked questions. Mostly he listened.

And then Dick told Kori his own stories.

He told her about Mary and John Grayson. He told her about the trapeze. He told her about Haly's Circus, and the train, and his mother braiding his hair before each show. He told her about the night the ropes failed. He told her about Bruce Wayne kneeling beside him in the sawdust ring, in the silence. He told her about Wayne Manor. He told her about Alfred's hot cocoa. He told her about the night he first saw the Batcave.

He told her things he had never told anyone else. He told her about the little folded photograph of Mary and John he carried in the secret pouch of his belt. He told her about his mother calling him mio piccolo robin.

Kori listened. Sometimes she cried, easily and unembarrassed, the way Tamaraneans cry — they consider crying to be a perfectly normal part of having strong feelings. Sometimes she just took his hand and held it. Sometimes she said small wise things that Dick remembered for years.

She was the only person on Earth, besides Bruce and Alfred, who knew Dick's whole story.

There was one famous night in Blüdhaven that everybody who was there still talks about.

It was a Saturday in late October. A gang from out of town — twelve men, well-armed, well-organized, sent by a rival mob from up the coast — had decided to make a statement. They were going to storm the Blüdhaven Twenty-First Precinct house and free three of their colleagues who had been arrested earlier that week.

Twelve heavily armed men against one precinct of mostly older officers and one rookie Officer Grayson on duty. It was supposed to be a slaughter.

It was not.

Dick had been working the late shift. When the first shots came from the parking lot, he ducked behind a desk, called dispatch, and reached for the small silver T-communicator in his pocket — the one Kori had given him as a joke, a backup for the standard police radio. He pressed the button.

"Kori. Blüdhaven Twenty-First Precinct. Now."

He didn't say anything else. He didn't have to.

Kori had been visiting for the weekend. She was, at that exact moment, sitting on Dick's rooftop on Parkthorne Avenue eating cold leftover zorka-berry pie and reading a book about Earth history. She heard the communicator beep. She heard his voice. She read the situation in half a second.

She dropped the pie.

She launched off the roof.

She crossed Blüdhaven in seventy seconds at full Tamaranean speed.

The first gang members in the precinct parking lot had no idea what was happening. They saw a streak of orange in the sky. They saw it come down. They saw it land — gently, beautifully, like a small comet touching grass — in the middle of the parking lot.

Standing there, glowing orange, her long red hair flowing in the cold night air, her green starbolts crackling around her fists, was Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran. She did not say anything. She did not need to.

The first gang member fainted.

The other eleven turned around and ran.

Starfire did not even fire a single starbolt. She did not have to. She just stood there in the parking lot, glowing softly, until the twelve men had either run away or thrown down their weapons and lay down on the wet pavement, hands behind their heads.

Sergeant Amy Rohrbach, watching from the second-floor window of the precinct, lowered her own service pistol. She turned to her partner — a quiet older officer named Mick — and said softly, "I really need to ask Officer Grayson about his friend from out of town."

(She never did. Amy was smart like that.)

That was the kind of friendship Dick and Kori had.

It was not the kind of friendship that needed to be in the same city. It was not the kind of friendship that needed to be face-to-face every day. It was, instead, the kind of friendship that could span half a continent and still feel close, because they knew each other's stories all the way down.

When Dick was tired, he called Kori. When Kori missed Tamaran, she called Dick. They called each other at midnight just to say good night. They sent each other voice messages full of dumb jokes — Kori was getting much better at Earth humor — and bad puns and song lyrics. They were each other's home base.

Years later, when somebody asked Dick Grayson who his best friend in the world was, he didn't even hesitate.

"Kori," he said. "Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran."

And then, after a moment, he added, "She brings the best pie."

Best friends.

Across two cities.

Across a whole continent, sometimes.

Across an entire galaxy, when Kori was visiting home.

It didn't matter. The friendship still worked.

That is the kind of thing the best friendships do.