Dick Grayson was five years old when he found Kory, he'd tell people years later. He'd tell a lot of people—the Titans, Bruce, the media, Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd…

Koriand'r was six years old when she found Dick Grayson, she told people. She told fewer people, but her version of the story was still pretty well known.

They will never agree on who found who. The media prefers to think of Dick finding Kory, because it seems to fit their mental images better—a small, crying Kory and a smiling, also small Dick, at the site of a car crash. Bruce personally is of the opinion that Kory found Dick, eyes alight with curiosity and babbling in Tamaranian, and that Dick, friendly as he is, took to her immediately.

The truth falls somewhere in between, as stories have a strange tendency to do.

It's a starry summer night, and the moon hangs low in the sky, despite the late hour. Richard Grayson wanders through the woods, admiring the stars and the night air. He technically isn't supposed to be this far from his family's van, but he's five and curious and it's a warm night. His parent's didn't really expect him to stay near, even if they'll scold him afterwards for wandering off.

Dick sees a tree, and, in his five year old mind, he suddenly realizes that that particular gnarled oak tree is perfect for climbing. Grinning, he scrambles for the lowest branch and pulls himself up like he's doing a chin up, then flips himself on top, perching lightly on his feet. He grins and lets go of the branch with his hands, balancing on the balls of his feet. He pushes his dark hair out of his face and then grabs the next branch with a flying leap, and then swings himself forward to the next, treating the branches of the tree like monkey bars.

"Brahka?" Suddenly, a girl hangs upside down from the branch above him, dangling from her knees, eyes bright green and literally glowing. Dick yelps in shock, losing his grip on the branch he's hanging from. He screams and tumbles toward the ground, trying to contort his body to fall right, just like Mom and Dad have taught him.

Suddenly, the girl grabs his hand. "Malpor!" She yells, her grip as strong as steel, holding Dick in place. He stares at her, and he realizes that she's flying—hovering, really—and her eyes are wide and apologetic. "Seeno! Seeno!" She babbles, tugging him back onto a tree branch.

Dick stares at her as he sits down on the branch she deposited him on. Her hair is a thick, long, curly red mess. It reaches down to her waist and is hopelessly curly, with leaves and sticks stuck in it. Her skin is almost as dark as his own, just a shade or two lighter, which is strange in contrast with her scarlet hair and green eyes.

Her eyes don't have pupils, he thinks with a start. They were a bright, glowing green, with no pupil or white, not even any of the swirls or speckles of color that normal eyes have. She smiles at him shyly, tugging at the hem of the purple tunic-like shirt she's wearing. It goes down to her elbows and then her knees, with a belt cinched around her waist and metal plates attached to her shoulders and covering her neck, like armor. Her legs and feet are covered in more of the silver interlocking metal, which doesn't look very comfortable. He sees a shiny silver band in her hair, nearly lost amongst the curls and he thinks it looks like a crown.

"My name's Dick," he says to her. "Thanks for saving me."

"Rmal?" the girl looks uncertain, and Dick realizes she doesn't speak English. His heart sinks.

"Dick," he says, pointing to himself. Her eyes light up in understanding. She smiles shyly at him.

She points at herself, still floating in midair. "Koriand'r," she says. She points at him. She says more of her language, biting her lip.

"I don't understand you," Dick says apologetically. "Sorry."

"Dick," she says, floating down, sitting next to him on the tree.

"That's me!" He says, grinning at her.

She frowns, as if concentrating, then takes his hand. He tenses, but doesn't pull away. "Traska," she grumbles, staring at his hand intensely. She's careful as she holds it, as if afraid it will shatter in her grasp. She frowns and shakes her head rapidly, drooping slightly. "Ankhmorpork," she tells him, cautiously reaching for his face with her fingers. Dick freezes, but lets her fingers touch his face. "Traska, traska, traska," she mutters, squinting. Her eyes start to glow brightly, and he realizes her hands are really warm against his face.

Suddenly, the light fades, and Koriand'r lowers her hand. "Hello," she says, in clear, if slightly accented, English. "My name is Koriand'r of Tamaran. I am sorry I scared you earlier." She speaks earnestly.

"I thought you didn't speak English!" Dick says, fascinated.

"My people absorb languages from contact," Kory says. "I'm," she blushes. "Not very good at it."

"That's awesome!" Dick says. "Where's Tamaran?"

"Far away," she says, quietly. "My parents sent me away for my own safety—but my ship was attacked on the way and I crashed."

"Your ship?" Dick gasped, delighted. His bright blue eyes widen and his grin spreads. "You're an alien?"

"Yes?" Kory says, uncertainly.

"That's so cool!" Dick says. Then he frowns, suddenly realizing something. "So where are you going to go?"

Kory shrugged, and he realized that she looked lost. Not just dirty and hungry, but lost.

"C'mon," Dick says, taking her hand. "Let's go find my parents!"

"Why?"

"We're in a circus!" Dick says, grinning at her. "No one would look for an alien there!"

Unsure of what he means, but oddly trusting of the smiling boy with the pretty eyes, Kory floats them down to the ground. Dick takes her hand in his and leads her through the woods.

Kory fits in surprisingly well at the circus. She's smiling and eager and takes on chores with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. She's surprisingly strong, and Alex, the Strongman, takes a liking to her and gives her an outfit that looks like his own, but in purple and silver. Laughing, Haley calls her "Kory Anders—the Strongest Girl Alive!" and she soon performs alongside Alex, wearing her silver sequined leotard and bending metal bars and lifting Alex over her head with ease.

Kory's not the first "illegal alien" in the circus, but she certainly is the first one who's actually from outer space. The circus circles around her, protecting her and forging documents to claim she's one of them. And no one questions it, and then Kory has always been there, juggling bowling balls and helping paint tall things without a ladder.

The Graysons take her in, giving her the bunk above Dick's, which is close to the ceiling, but Kory doesn't mind. She adores the atmosphere of closeness, which she had always lacked back home, due to the necessity of court. She helps with the chores and sits down and does her best to learn English. She touches them all constantly, trying to absorb as much of the language as possible. When the others learn about this, Alex offers to help Kory learn Italian. By the time Kory is nine she speaks Italian, French, and Spanish, and she flits around the circus with Dick by her side, helping everyone and doing any chore that is conceivable.

Dick is so glad to have another family member, and the two of them are a cheerful, enthusiastic force of chaos within the circus. They play with Zitka the elephant, climb trees, perform daredevil stunts, and play practical jokes on the clowns.

When Kory is nine and Dick is eight, the unthinkable happens.

Kory is back stage helping Alex straighten out the bars from their act.

He chuckles, his deep voice reverberating pleasantly as Kory straightens out the length of steel that she holds in her hands. "Ah! You wound an old man's pride, little one!"

Kory just laughs at the familiar words, floating up to peck Alex on the cheek. "You're not that old," she tells him in Italian, loving the way the words sound.

Suddenly, there are screams and cries, and Haley is rushing through their tent, face pale as a sheet.

Kory realizes, suddenly, that something went wrong with the Flying Grayson act. She tears towards the Big Top, heart in her throat, worry keeping her feet on the ground. She rips through the crowd, screaming Dick's name on the top of her lungs, trying not to think about how the crowd is screaming and shocked into silence in turn.

She freezes at the edge of the ring, staring at the sight of two broken bodies crumpled on the ground. There had been no net tonight, there had never been need for it before, Kory had never thought there would be need for it, not when the Graysons flew through the air as easily as she did.

A numbness seeps over Kory, even as she realizes that Dick isn't on the ground. Alex is there suddenly, his huge arms wrapping around her. "Oh Kory," he whispers, his accent washing over her, but she doesn't hear the words. She just hears his voice, and that's all it takes to send her over the edge. She collapses into his arms, sobbing desperately, clutching at him with strength that could break bones.

She and Dick are bundled into Haley's own trailer, where police officers and CPS officials flit around, asking questions and demanding things like papers and school records, and Kory and Dick flinch together, wondering what they'll do if they find the holes in Kory's papers, if Kory will be taken away and dissected in a lab, like they do to aliens in the stories. They're wrapped in blankets and given mugs of hot chocolate, but they ignore the mugs and desperately try to understand what's going to happen to them. Haley is pale and talking to a man in a trench coat, who shakes his head a lot, looking regretful.

Suddenly, there's a commotion outside, and the trailer empties except for the two kids.

"Let's run away," Kory says. It's the first thing she's said since the Big Top, and her voice feels rough, like someone has scraped the inside of her throat with sandpaper. "They'll separate us."

"Where would we go?" Dick asks. He sounds tired, like all he wants to do in the world is go to sleep and wake up in a world where the whole day never happened.

Kory doesn't have an answer for that. Just then, Haley, the man in a trench coat, and another man in a suit walk in, and they're looking right at them.

"Mr. Haley?" Dick asks.

"Dick… Kory…" Haley rubs the back of his neck, looking somewhere in between tears and anger. "There's… been some questions… about the safety of keeping you two at the circus." He looks like the words are painful to speak, but it's a blow to Kory and Dick, a sentence of foster homes and separation.

"What?" Kory's voice is so small.

"Mr. Wayne here," Haley says, plowing on, "Well, he said that you two could stay with him. Until we work something out. More permanent like. I'm sure Alex or any of the others would happily take you in once we've been cleared."

Dick and Kory stare at the man in the suit. He's tall, with icy blue eyes and a thick jaw. He wears a suit like it's all he ever wears, like he's not actually sure how to wear normal clothes. He smiles at them; it's a smile meant for paparazzi and for super model dates, not a smile for comforting small children. It looks like someone copied it right out of a magazine, without making it reflect in the rest of him. It's clear to them, if to no one else, that Mr. Wayne, whoever he is, is faking or lying or something. Kory wonders if he's even real; he looks like he belongs in a story book, where generous rich men just slip into the lives of ordinary children and change everything with a snap of their fingers. Kory and Dick cling to each other, and wonder just what it is they're getting into.

The first real hint that Kory gets that something is wrong in Wayne Manor is Bruce's hands. Kory might have lived among circus performers for years, but she has never forgotten what a warrior's hands look like. Bruce has scars and callouses, barely noticeable unless you know what to look for. He's also well-muscled; not like Rico, who had biceps the size of Kory's head, but a carefully cultivated sort of muscle that can be hidden.

Dick and Kory have rooms next to each other, but they always end up in Dick's room, curled up under the sheets, whispering stories to each other.

Dick's the one who figures it out, the one who finds the passageway behind the grandfather clock, who recognizes the car and the suit, who puts a name to the man who hides behind Bruce Wayne's immaculate suits and fake smile.

Batman.

Bruce reluctantly starts training them, setting them on weights and runs and various things to try to improve their strength and endurance before he starts them on weapons. It takes him longer than he should to realize that Kory doesn't use the weights he assigned her and Dick to use—she's taken to using the dinosaur.

"She's an alien," he says to Alfred, confused by this as she starts to fly across the cave to Dick. "How did I not know…"

"I'm not sure, Master Bruce," Alfred says, his judgment obvious despite his bland tone and expressionless face. "I mean, it's not as if she flies to breakfast every morning. Or has eyes that are completely lacking in pupils."

Bruce has no appropriate response for that.

"Clark, I think I adopted an alien."

"You adopted them? I hadn't heard that."

"No! I have custody—"

"So what you're saying is that you have custody of an alien?"

"Shut up."

"Look Bruce, I know nothing about children. How about I give you Ma's number and she can give you some advice."

"Clark—"

"Sorry, Lois and I have a date, gotta go!"

Click.

"Kryptonians."

"Is that a bad word, Bruce?"

"No Kory, it's, um, an alien species. That I know. About."

"Isn't that what Superman is?"

"Yes Dick."

"Were you calling Superman?"

"You know Superman?"

Starfire and Robin take the streets of Gotham by storm, fighting tooth and nail to prevent more children from ever being hurt like they were. They fight for justice, they fight to protect, they fight to recover.

Kory swoops through the skies, flying alongside Dick, laughing as he somersaults across roof tops. Her hair is dyed black to match Dick's, an attempt to hide her identity. The mask hides the glow of her eyes. Kory was allowed out a few weeks before Dick, because she had been trained before for war. That's what Gotham is, after all, to Kory. It's a never ending war, and Kory and Dick throw themselves into it, giving it their all.

They meet Batgirl, who turns out to be Barbara Gordon, and she joins them, fighting with them, and she becomes their friend, their companion. The three of them are the terror of Gotham, ripping through the streets and bad guys with laughable ease, or at least that's how it seemed to them at times.

They found the Teen Titans, and Kory and Dick grow up, slowly, awkwardly, painfully. Kory shoots up past Dick, and starts wearing makeup and heels. Bruce is relieved to discover that Tamaraneans don't menstruate, so he doesn't have to explain that part of life. Kory reassures him that she knows everything she needs to know about puberty and sex, and promises her hibernating period will only be three weeks, and she's fairly sure it will happen in summer. Bruce calls Clark constantly to complain about alien physiology, which amuses Clark to no end.

Dick grows too, but by the time he's done growing, he's five foot six, and Kory is over six feet, not counting her fondness for heels. It's amusing, watching her tower over him.

Kory and Dick move to Bludhaven, Kory to do charity work, Dick to work as a police officer. They live next door to each other, and eat their meals together. And at night, Nightwing and Flamebird patrol the streets.

Jason enters their lives, a loud, precocious child with a mind of his own and a stubborn streak a mile wide. Kory and Dick both whisper insults about Bruce's parenting to him, just loud enough for Bruce to hear, and promise him their apartments as escapes from the gloom and doom.

Kory and Dick work to change the system, and it's exhausting and painful, trying to treat the cause as well as the symptoms, but they believe as hard as they can and work until their fingers bleed and they fall asleep where they stand, because it's right.

Barbara Gordon gets shot, and they go to her, holding her and telling her it will be alright, even though they all know, with an aching clarity, that their days flying together are over, and they all cry, because endings always are sad. Kory threatens to hunt down the Joker, and Dick has to talk her down, and he's not even sure if he believes everything he says, but he knows that Kory cannot do this, because she will, at the end of the day, never forgive herself if she does.

They go back to the Titans, and work with them. Barbara Gordon learns to use a wheelchair and begins to build something bigger than she ever had dreamed of as Batgirl. They save the world time and time again, and they laugh with their friends. Barbara Gordon becomes Oracle, forging herself anew out of computer fiber and ones and zeroes. And when she's ready, she calls Dick and Kory, and shows them what she's built, and they are awed and hug her, and tell her she will be the best of all of them.

Kory and Dick are offered memberships in the Justice League and they turn them down; there's no time, not for Bludhaven and the Titans and the League. They go to Gotham to support Bruce at charity functions, and the media loves them, snapping pictures and calling them the most eligible brother/sister team in Gotham. Kory and Dick drive them crazy, dancing with everyone and each other, and sometimes each other's dates or Bruce. The world has forgotten they were circus brats, and now they're a part of the glamorous elite. It grates, sometimes, the things that people say sometimes, because they've forgotten Dick and Kory started with nothing, and still work, because they won't take Bruce's money to support themselves, despite the galas and the paparazzi that peppers their lives.

And then Jason dies, and the world grinds to a halt again.

They're in space when it happens, and Dick and Kory scream at Bruce until their throats are raw for not telling them, for not coming to them, for firing Jason, for scaring Jason off, for letting Jason run off, and then the three of them collapse in a pile of tears and hugs, missing Jason desperately.

Kory and Dick stay in Gotham for a while, but Bruce is hostile to Nightwing and Flamebird's presence, and eventually they need to get back to work. They hug Bruce and Alfred and leave, wondering what they can do to try to fix their broken father figure.

As it turns out, the answer comes in three parts.

Part one is Tim Drake, who becomes Robin with little prompting from them, changing the outfit and changing the role. He comes to them, constantly full of questions and admiration, and Kory and Dick laugh at him and watch goofy movies with him and start to mend their broken family with his help.

Part two is Stephanie Brown, who bursts into the family in a flair of eggplant capes and bricks. She's not like the rest of them, with a desperation to stop her father, to prevent him from hurting anyone else. She's raw and hurt, but she smiles and hopes and Kory's heart aches when she sees her. Steph created Spoiler for herself, but Kory gives her Starfire, an offering to bring her close to the family, because Steph fits, and it's not right to have a Robin without a Flamebird, not really.

Part three is Cassandra Cain, silent and loving, with a heart so big that Kory thinks that she'll burst open for her compassion. Cass believes in change, embodies that belief, and fights harder for it than anyone Kory or Dick have ever seen. She becomes Batgirl, with Babs' blessing, and then Kory and Dick are comforted, because Bruce isn't alone anymore.

The three of them are just as chaotic as Dick, Babs, and Kory were, loud and laughing and fighting tooth and nail. It's different, yes—they're less family and more friends, they're different people, and they change the roles that they were given, but its legacy and it's comforting and it's sweet, and Kory and Dick and Babs watch them and feel nostalgia sweep over them.

Then Jason comes back, and everything goes to hell again.

Kory and Dick rip through Gotham searching for Jason, because Cass and Steph and Tim are searching for Cass's mom (the echo of irony hits Dick as he fights Jason, and he prays that they will be alright).

Jason aims a gun at Kory, and Kory lets her arms fall to her side. She looks at him, her eyes sad and far too old.

"Is this what you want, Jason?" She asks, her voice soft and kind. "Then do what you must."

He stares at her, hand shaking as it holds the gun. "What do you mean?"

"I won't fight you, Jason," she says, her voice full of determination and fire. "You're my brother."

Jason stares at her, disbelieving. "You… you…"

Dick hits him from behind, knocking him out.

"He needs help," Kory says, touching his face gently, feeling all the languages Jason's learned sweep into her mind.

"We'll get him help," Dick vows, determined and grim.

Cass, Steph and Tim return, bruised and aching, with circles under their eyes and heavy hearts. "Shiva is my mother," Cass whispers, throwing her arms around Kory. Kory hugs her back, and wonders what else happened, because Tim and Steph look like they've cried for days and Cass trembles under Kory's iron grip. She does not press, but she does mourn as she watches the three of them grow up under her very eyes.

Then Damian enters their lives, and Bruce dies, and Kate Kane arrives out of nowhere, and the Question returns to Gotham, but now she's Renee Montoya, and Kory and Dick are drowning in the changes, but there is no time to go numb this time, because they have to make their family whole again.

Dick takes up Batman, and Tim is offered Nightwing, but he declines. He and Cass go in search of Bruce, refusing to believe that he is dead. Steph stays behind, returning to the name of Spoiler, and Kory and Dick feel her heart break as she sets out on her own. But Babs and a girl name Wendy swoop in, and Steph grows up. Damian is Robin, and there's no Starfire for him, and no Batgirl for him, but Jason becomes Nightwing, and Kory is glad to have a partner again.

Tim and Cass return, after a year has passed. Cass is Black Bat now, and Tim is Red Robin, and Kory's heart aches for the children she once knew, but she watches as they embrace Steph, and she thinks; it all turned out well enough.

Bruce returns, and then there is Batman Inc., and then Kory looks around the Manor one day, and she looks at Bruce, and she suddenly sees.

He looks like the man who walked in to the trailer all those years ago, but he's changed. There are streaks of grey in his hair and he wears slacks and a shirt (Bruce is still incapable of wearing jeans, but Kory has faith he might master it before he turns sixty). But he smiles at Jason, one arm tucked around Selina's waist, and she realizes, with a laugh, that it's a real smile, not that lonely caricature of one that he wore that painful day. She looks around, and sees her family. Alfred, Bruce, Selina, Dick, Babs, Jason, Tim, Steph, Cass, Damian, Renee, Kate, Maggie and Colin all are here, laughing and happy, and Kory smiles and turns on the music, grabbing Dick's hand and dragging him into the middle of the room and starting to dance.

Kory and Dick takes Babs flying that night, and the three of them fly over Gotham again, just as they had in the years before. Dick on his grapple and Kory with Babs in her arms, powered by sunlight and joy. And it feels right.