Work Text:
There is a common misconception that most members of the Justice League, and Young Justice itself, have about the team. The misconception has nothing to do with the team’s founding, its member’s regular behaviors, or even their preferred methods of relaxation. It does have to do with the team’s relationships, but not in the way that most people would expect upon hearing those words. Instead, the misconception is a fairly simple one about the team’s friendships. No, none of the team secretly hates each other.
The misconception is as follows: Kid Flash is the person on the team who best understands Robin.
That’s it. All in all, a fairly simple misconception. At the same time, correcting the misconception would be akin to setting off a nuclear explosion in the eyes of both the unsuspecting league and the team.
Except for two people: Robin himself, and Artemis.
Robin, obviously because he is the person involved in the misconception. And Artemis, because the truth is that she is the team member who best understands Robin.
There is a very simple reason for why Artemis understands Robin better than even Kid Flash, and yet no one realizes it. The reason no one realizes is also quite simple. In fact, they’re the same reason.
It’s Gotham City.
Everything connects back to Gotham.
Gotham City is one of the most dangerous and reclusive cities in the entire world. Its streets crawl with crime and the government is practically controlled by the gangs. The GCPD is a festing cesspit of corruption, with only a handful of halfway decent cops in the entire force. Arkham Asylum is little better than a revolving door, barely managing to keep some of the most dangerous criminals in the world contained for any decent length of time.
And yet, very few people outside of Gotham recognize just how bad the city is. Reporters regularly call it “America’s Lost City.” Citizens on social media often call it “The City of Despair.” On one memorable occasion, some senators even called Gotham “a hellhole that doesn’t deserve federal funding.”
Along with the names invariably come repetition of the statistics of murder rates in Gotham, the surveys that reveal 65% of Gotham’s population has committed at least one crime in the past, and the quotes from people who visited Gotham that describe the city as a nightmare brought to life.
But, as human psychology demands, people outside of Gotham just don’t understand. It is very difficult for someone to comprehend the severity of a situation unless they have lived through it. People will invariably look at things through the lens of their own lives, making connections and assumptions based on what they’ve seen.
The average person in the world will look at the statistics of Gotham, look at the latest studies of its people, and not comprehend the meaning of those words. They will not see the implications and consequences of each result. There will be a conscious thought that they probably shouldn’t visit Gotham and definitely should never move to the city, but beyond that, they simply do not get it.
Normal, average citizens don’t look at the latest report saying that Scarecrow has once again escaped Arkham Asylum, the 17th story on their news feed, and understand what that means for a gothamite. People don’t hear a description of the rampant governmental corruption which drove even the city’s district attorney, one of its best defenders, to insanity, and realize how it would affect the everyman. They don’t see the crime statistics and make the connection between the suffering state of the city and the dirty truth that many criminals are only trying to survive.
And, above all, the outsiders don’t think about the impact that growing up in Gotham would have on her children.
For Artemis and Robin, it starts simple.
It begins with the way that Artemis instinctively reads Robin’s body language when they’re on an undercover mission in a city in Spain. Kaldur leads the group, striding down the sidewalk with clear purpose in his every step, a turtleneck pulled up to cover his Atlantean gills. M’gann follows him, pressed close to him as she turns her head to scan the city and greedily takes in every bit of Earth culture that she can.
Robin is next, his hoodie pulled up and his shoulders hunched low. His hands are shoved into his pockets and his head tilted towards the ground, but Artemis doesn’t doubt that he is keeping a careful watch on everything around them. She can see the tenseness in his shoulders, the way that his steps are a bit too casually placed, how the perfect amount of distance to look casual separates him and M’gann.
After him is Wally, who is rambling softly in their mindlink about all of the cool things he sees and every restaurant that he wishes they could stop and eat at. Following him, her own shoulders hunched and her eyes narrowed as she sweeps the crowds, is Artemis herself. She has one hand shoved into her jeans, fingers running along the edge of her small knife, while the other loosely hangs ready at her side. Her hair had been carefully stuffed into a baseball cap to both conceal it and keep it out of easy reach. Everything she owned was spread across her person, from the bills shoved in her boots to the phone she had placed in her jacket’s inner lining.
Artemis is ready for anything. She could have her knife in hand and pointed at a mugger in less than a second, and there is no chance of someone pickpocketing her thin wallet when it’s been slipped into her left sock.
Connor is behind her, but judging from the way his footsteps hit the ground a little too loudly for anonymity, he isn’t much better than the rest of their little group. Honestly, Artemis thinks as they turn a corner and head deeper into the foreign city, it’s probably a miracle they haven’t caught anyone’s attention. They must look like a ridiculous group of foreign teenagers who have no idea what they’re doing or where they’re going, and no way to get them out of a tricky situation.
As they pass by a small store, Artemis catches a faint glimpse of Robin’s face in the polished windows that line the street. A small frown pulls at the corners of his mouth, and Artemis has a feeling that she’s not the only one annoyed with her team’s apparent lack of common street smarts.
There is a reason that most people don’t realize the severity of living in Gotham City.
Gotham’s faithful residents are a bit different from the citizens of most cities. The air that fills their lungs is made of a healthy base of plenty of corporate smog, and seasoned with the remnants of airborne Joker Venom and Fear Toxin variants. The dirt underneath their fingernails carries particulates of Ivy’s latest attempts at fixing Gotham’s soil and the faint remnants of blood that will never truly wash out. Their skin bears the scars from years of casually dodging villain attacks on the way to work and is covered in a thin layer of ashes from Firefly’s most recent escapades, which will never truly wash off.
They are Gothamites, born and forged in the flames of the city they derisively, resignedly, and lovingly call home.
The outside world, beyond the harbor and past the few suburbs that Gothamites claim as their territory, just doesn’t get it.
There is, undeniably, a special unity and understanding that comes from growing up in Gotham. It makes its first appearance when your parents shove a gas mask into your hands at five years old and tell you to never leave home without it. It reappears when you stroll through the streets of the Diamond District, one hand on a concealed taser despite being in one of the safest boroughs of the city, utterly uncaring of the latest battle between Batman and Penguin happening two blocks over. It surfaces once again when, following the latest infection of the city’s air by Joker, you do nothing more than take out the Wayne Enterprises distributed Joker Venom antidote and inject it into your own arm, before pulling on a gas mask and continuing your homework.
The reality of Gotham, a city that poisons those who live there and yet gives them the complete freedom to be themselves, brings its inhabitants together.
It’s the very thing that allows for residents of Gotham to gravitate together when they visit other cities, the fearfulness of its own citizens unsettling to them. It’s the thing that causes Gothamites to band together in the wake of yet another Arkham breakout, digging out the weapons that every person has stashed in their home and standing guard in their homes. It’s the thing that keeps them in the city they were born in.
Because, as dangerous as Gotham is, it’s their home. It’s the only place that will look at their blood stained hands, the way they check every room and scan every person when they enter, the way they always carry enough supplies to survive for at least three days in an emergency, and welcome them with open arms.
This is incredibly apparent when, following the team’s ambush on a mission and them having to duck into civvies to escape, Robin is the only one whose actions Artemis understands.
They’re forced to split up to scatter the assassins on their tails. Artemis slips into a cheap thrift store, spends 30 dollars in five minutes, and reemerges almost unrecognizable. Her blonde hair has been covered by a baseball cap, she’s wearing a new jacket, a pair of sunglasses hides her eyes, and her jeans have been replaced by a long skirt. She even exchanged her sneakers for some cheap combat boots.
Artemis raises her phone and lowers her head, projecting the image of being focused on her screen while subtly watching the crowd around her. She does take the opportunity to open the team group chat though, sending a long description of her planned route through the city to the seventh prearranged meet up point. Robin echoes with a similar plan, detailing how he’s going to cut through the financial district and loop around the main park. Everyone else sends a simple ETA and vague direction of their approach. Wally, in particular, does not answer at all.
By the time Artemis finally makes it to the small apartment the Justice League had prepared as a safehouse in the city, she has successfully dodged two assassins by sliding down alleyways, avoided a normal mugging attempt, and lost every single one of her tails. She is also the third to arrive at the building.
Wally was apparently first, based on the way he looks up from the sandwich in his hands and frowns as she enters. “You also changed! Rob did the same thing, but I told him it was weird when he got here,” he mumbles as he swallows another bite.
Artemis takes a deep breath. Wally is still in his combat uniform. He clearly hadn’t made any effort to conceal himself any more than, presumably, just running here as fast as he could.
Okay. That’s mildly understandable considering he could lose basically any trail by just being faster than them. It doesn’t change the fact that Artemis’ eye twitches as he takes another casual bite of his sandwich.
Before she can even formulate the words needed to chew him out though, Conner and M’gann enter the room together. Conner has exchanged the Superman shirt he normally wears for a deep blue longsleeve shirt, but that’s the only difference. M’gann looks exactly the same.
“That was easy!” she exclaims as she enters the small apartment. “I just had to go into camouflage mode, and Conner grabbed a drying shirt from someone’s backyard. We lost whoever was on our tail.”
Artemis closes her eyes. She sucks in a deep breath, holds it for four seconds, and lets it out. She repeats the process two more times before opening her eyes and staring Conner down.
Robin strides into the room before she can decide if she should even bother voicing the criticisms filling up her head. At least he has some sense! Robin’s entire outfit has changed, from his boots being replaced by converse to the new jewelry he had used to accessorize his disguise. He even somehow got his hands on a curly brown wig, clutched in one hand.
She stares at Robin’s ever present sunglasses. Artemis does not need to be a telepath to see the sheer exasperation practically dripping from his limbs right now. She does, however, acknowledge that Robin must be purposefully letting her see his frustration, probably in some kind of show of support. It slightly warms her heart, which had curled up and resigned itself to its fate after M’gann and Conner walked in, to see that someone else understands her annoyance.
How could they not have the common sense to swap out their entire wardrobe and change their own body language as they headed through the city? How could Wally think that the smartest idea was to use the very powers they were well known for, to escape the people tailing them? How could they only give a simple ETA without details on exactly what streets they’ll be taking for the team to retrace if they disappear?
At least, by some grace, Kaldur should have a bit more sense. He’s their leader, the oldest of them all. Sure, it may not be by much, but he is still the one who's supposed to have the most sense in their little group. If anyone had done the smart thing, it would be Kaldur.
The apartment door clicks open, and every single bit of faith Artemis has ever had crumbles. She takes back everything nice that she has ever said about Kaldur. They were all lies. Kaldur doesn’t know a damn thing.
Their faithful leader walks in. He may be wearing a new shirt and have a beanie pulled over his buzz cut, but that’s it. There is nothing else different about him. He hasn’t taken the time to switch the bag he carries his water bearers in, change his pants, or even pick up a pair of glasses.
Artemis turns to look at Robin again. He looks dead inside. She would personally be inclined to agree.
And as assassins crash through the apartment’s glass windows and rise up with their weapons already extended, Artemis mentally curses out every deity she can think of. She also curses out every single mentor of her teammates.
It has become abundantly clear that Robin is the only other person on her team with any sense. Her teammates' mentors should have accounted for their apparent lack of natural smarts. At least the only ones stupid enough to not change were also the ones who didn’t exactly have identities in the human world for these assassins to track.
This very unity between the citizens of Gotham, the same unity that lets Artemis glance at Robin one final time as she dives for the bow concealed in the apartment’s umbrella stand and easily see the way he’s going to chew the team out later, is exactly what causes the misconception in the first place.
The origin of the misconception is, admittedly, understandable. Kid Flash and Robin have been best friends for years. They knew each other before the team was created, before they met Red Arrow and Aqualad, before everything. Artemis sometimes wonders if they might be physically joined at the hip. And they seem to be able to read each other's minds, even without M’gann’s help. Hell, Kid Flash is the only one of them who even knows Robin’s secret identity!
But, despite all of these facts, it is still true that Artemis understands Robin even better than Kid Flash.
Because Artemis, just like Robin, is from Gotham.
Artemis, just like Robin, is from a city that threatens to beat them into submission every day for daring to live their lives. Artemis, just like Robin, grew up with a deep seated knowledge and recognition of her own mortality on this plane of reality, borne from watching countless civilians fall around her. Artemis, just like Robin, has the blood of a city that will never truly leave her rushing through her veins and its will pumping her heart.
Gotham’s nightmares bring its inhabitants together. Artemis and Robin are some of those inhabitants. Gotham’s clawing hands have broken through their skin and hooked themselves into their very souls, forever tying them to the city and thus connecting them in shared acknowledgement.
Artemis understands Robin, and Robin understands Artemis.
It all comes to a head, at least partially, a few months after Artemis joins the team.
She and Wally had only just walked into the briefing room with the intention of joining Robin and Kaldur in their training, when the zeta tubes activated. Artemis raises an eyebrow as Batman walks out of the zeta beams without breaking stride. How did the man always manage to look so casual while doing the coolest stuff?
“Computer, national news,” he orders as he approaches the center of the room. Artemis frowns and stands up straight. It’s obvious that something is happening. Batman, while normally pretty curt, is rarely this abrupt. Whatever’s happening is serious.
Cat Grant’s face fills the holoscreen as Artemis falls into position with the rest of the team. They watch as the massive plants tear entire skyscrapers in Metropolis into pieces, the league barely being able to beat the beast back.
In all honesty, Artemis thinks as the team begins to discuss the Kobra Venom intel they had pieced together over the months, the plants kind of remind her of Ivy’s plants. But that would be ridiculous, because Ivy is a Gotham villain and they tend to remain in Gotham. No other city would react to their various plots and aesthetics quite like Gotham does.
“Batman, is it possible the plant thingy’s on Kobra Venom too?” she asks instead. Since it’s not one of Ivy’s plants (because Ivy can’t have expanded beyond Gotham’s borders, Artemis really doesn’t want to think about what that would mean), then it must be being boosted artificially instead of with Ivy’s typical methods.
Batman agrees with Artemis’ suggestion and she preens a little bit. Artemis may now be Green Arrow’s protege and part of a team of young heroes, but there will always be something slightly surreal about speaking to the man who had been protecting Gotham from the shadows for most of her life. Just like it was slightly surreal being Robin’s friend.
Little her would have been freaking out long ago. Now, she’s just permanently trapped in a state of annoyance at how the other child heroes, especially Wally, act.
Artemis is snapped out of her thoughts when a face she never wanted to see personally appeared on the holoscreens in front of them. The man’s bleach white face accentuates his crazed eyes. He giggles, sending a wave of sheer panic through Artemis’ veins, and taps on his own forehead before backing up slightly.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt your regularly scheduled mayhem to bring you this important announcement,” the Joker’s voice echoes around the briefing room. Every hair on Artemis’ arms stands up. The knife he’s playfully swinging in his hands glints dangerously even through the holographic screens. “from the Injustice League!”
Her heart drops. Joker’s cackling laughter fills the air as she stares at the sight on the screen. Poison Ivy, the Poison Ivy, is joined by five other villains. Some of them she recognizes from the League’s briefings on major villains; others she recognizes from her own battles against them. Then, of course, there’s Joker himself.
Artemis is not liking where this is heading. She curls her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms, as she listens to the rest of the self-proclaimed Injustice League’s introduction video. They remain fisted even as the team begins to discuss their new mission to attack the central control system. Artemis may take the opportunity to lightly slap Wally’s shoulders, but she curls her hands back up as soon as they return to her side.
The pressure is one of the only things that’s keeping her grounded right now.
Most of the bioship ride to the Louisiana Bayou is spent in silence. Artemis has a feeling that her teammates are mentally retracing the plan and committing it to memory. It’s what she’s doing. Or, it’s what she should be doing. More accurately, Artemis is spiraling a bit.
Poison Ivy and The Joker. The Joker and Poison Ivy.
There are a few things that every Gothamite learns as a child. Don’t drink the tap water, never trust anyone on the streets, always carry a weapon, have your eyes peeled at all times, and always be ready to run. They also learn a long list of instructions for each of Gotham’s common rogues. For Two Face, be wary around anything that comes in pairs. For Freeze, be alert whenever there’s a sudden cold spot. For Riddler, never try to solve a puzzle you stumble across.
Ivy’s is quite simple: get to an industrial area without a lot of plants, and pray that she doesn’t take an interest in you.
Joker’s is even simpler: run.
And yet here they are, purposefully heading into the middle of a heavily forested swamp to face off against both Poison Ivy and the Joker.
She is breaking both of those foundational rules in one fell swoop.
Artemis takes a deep breath and raises her head from where she had been staring at the floor. She looks towards the front of the bioship, Robin’s usual spot, and pauses. His masked eyes are already locked on the glass in front of him, visible in his reflection. Even with the white lens covering his real eyes, Artemis has a feeling that he’s looking directly at her in the glass.
She wasn’t stupid. Artemis grew up in Gotham, had lived in one of its worst neighborhoods for her entire life. She had been very young when Batman first showed up, and she could hardly remember a time before constant villain attacks.
The Joker was the worst member of Batman’s rogue gallery. Two Face may have executed members of Gotham’s government, Mad Hatter may subject innocent civilians to his mind control, and Scarecrow may gas entire sections of Gotham with his Fear Gas, but none of them held a candle to Joker.
It was Joker who committed mass murder for fun. It was Joker who had infected thousands of Gothamites at once with Joker Venom. It was Joker who repeatedly set up horrific crime after horrific crime while giggling maniacally the entire time just because it was funny.
Joker’s laugh haunted Artemis’ nightmares, and she had never even faced the man herself. The closest she had ever gotten to him, before today, was when she had run away from his attack on City Hall a couple of years ago.
But as Artemis had run with the crowd, sprinting away from the faint green clouds of Joker Venom in the distance, ducking instinctively at the gunshots that pierced the crowd’s screams, she had looked up. And she had seen Robin, probably ten or eleven at that time, swinging towards the center of the chaos.
Joker already haunted Artemis’ nightmares. Just what did he do to Robin’s?
When Joker had appeared on the screen, Artemis’ eyes had automatically flickered to Robin. She had seen the way he went stock still, tense and poised, as if he were ready to fight. She had seen the way that his hand flickered towards his jacket’s inside pocket, where Artemis knew he kept an emergency stash of wingdings. She had seen the way he twitched, so fast and small that anyone not already staring at him wouldn’t have seen it, when Joker began to laugh.
Artemis doesn’t want to know what Joker does in Robin’s nightmares.
Instead, she just continues to stare at his reflection in the bioship’s windshield. Something passes through them, something that confirms Artemis’ sneaking suspicion that Robin knows she lives in Gotham. He probably doesn’t know she’s Sportsmaster’s daughter (because why would he trust her if he did), but he must know that Gotham also runs in her veins. It’s the only explanation for the way he fixes his eyes on her, practically pinning her to her seat.
Growing up in Gotham gives its citizens a special type of unity and understanding. Artemis has been grateful for this many times, but never more than she is now. It is this shared understanding, the acknowledgement that they both crawled out of the same circle of hell, that allows Artemis to put together what Robin is trying to silently convey. She honestly isn’t fully sure how it happens, whether it’s just her reading his body language like she had been trained to, or if she just knew Gotham well enough to predict what any reasonable (well, reasonable enough to put on a cape and fight criminals) Gothamite would say in this situation.
I know that you know, and you know that I know. We’re of the same flesh and the same blood. Gotham lives on in both of us. We both know that the team doesn’t understand what they’re getting into with Ivy and Joker. But we do. We’ve seen the way they grab onto their victims, latch onto our city, and drag them into the pits of hell. We also both know the team isn’t ready for that.
Artemis nods silently. Robin’s reflection nods as well. She breaks eye contact first.
When the bioship crash lands in the Louisiana Bayou, in the middle of a swamp that is crawling with plants for Ivy to use, Artemis makes the stupid choice. She charges straight for Poison Ivy herself. Artemis focuses on taking her down, hard. Getting rid of her plants is the hardest part, but Artemis’ explosive arrows usually seem to do the trick.
She does instinctively flinch when Joker’s high pitched giggle echoes over their comms, earning a slash from a vine for her distraction. It’s a foolish mistake. But Artemis doesn’t have time to reprimand herself for it, instead focusing on rolling out of the way of Ivy’s next attack.
But when Joker’s faint taunts about carving birds fills her ears, Artemis doesn’t react like the rest of the shocked team. She doesn’t stumble in surprise like she sees Wally do out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t begin to throw harder punches like Conner, or wobble midair like M’gann. She doesn’t even loosen her grip on her bow for a second, not like Kaldur does.
What Gothamite hasn’t heard of Joker’s insane obsession with the bats? What Gothamite hasn’t heard the terrifying giggles of the Joker as he taunted one of the bats, closely followed by a devastating attack? What Gothamite hasn’t been forced to listen to at least one of Joker’s ranting speeches about how he would pull apart the bats piece by piece, and how he would concentrate most of his effort on the little songbird who had stolen the attention of his rival?
Artemis is from Gotham, and Gotham is used to this. Joker’s mania is hardly a surprise to her. So, she continues to fight.
Ivy goes down in the end, defeated by a carefully timed electric arrow from Artemis and a punch from Kaldur.
By the time she makes it into the villain's domed base after the timely arrival of the Justice League, Joker is already unconscious on the ground. Robin stands in front of their main computer system, unharmed except for a few visible knife scratches. Joker has, once again, failed in his apparently never ending quest to kill the little bird.
He turns around as they approach him, and Artemis locks eyes with Robin for the second time that day. Once again, something passes between them, something that she can’t truly put into words.
Joker and Ivy will be locked up, temporarily at least. They both know that Arkham Asylum is little more than a stopgap measure. It won’t take long for them to be back on the streets, but for now, their city is safe from the duo. For now, the people of Gotham can sleep a little easier at night.
They also both know that the team doesn’t understand. They don’t understand the bullet that was dodged with the successful capture of both Ivy and Joker. Especially Joker.
They don’t understand why, when Artemis passes by the Joker, she pauses to grind her heel into his hand. She relishes in the feeling of his bones cracking underneath her foot, and a small smile forms on her lips. That was for the multiple people she knew who had suffered in his attacks. That was for her own nightmares.
They don’t understand why, when Riddler’s escape from Belle Reve is revealed, Artemis and Robin’s shoulders slump in resignation as they stare at each other. The duo just takes a deep breath as Artemis texts her mom to make sure that Riddler coverage is on their insurance plan.
They don’t understand why, whenever Gotham is mentioned on the news, both of them chuckle softly. If Conner were to strain his ears, he would be able to pick up a faint whisper of they’re selling us short with that flattering description when the reporters mention how Gotham is the worst city in America.
But that’s okay, because they don’t need to understand. The only ones who need to get it are Artemis and Robin themselves.
The team doesn’t even need to realize the truth about everyone’s little misconception. In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t, since that would lead to a series of uncomfortable questions about living in Gotham. After all, there is a reason that most Gothamites don’t bother talking about the details of life in Gotham, fueling the habitual lessening of Gotham’s problems in the eyes of the world. It may be a vicious cycle, but Artemis doesn’t care as long as she doesn’t have to explain over and over why she refuses to wear shoes that could come untied and trip her up, or why her elementary school had a mandatory first aid class.
Besides, the implicit understanding between Artemis and Robin is in the little things, the things that wouldn’t be noticed by anyone not intimately familiar with Gotham City.
It’s the way that Artemis, when Robin’s rebreather is destroyed on a mission after a villain releases a toxic gas, somehow pulls another one out of her pockets and offers it to him without a word. Except that this rebreather is a slightly different design from the team’s standard League issued rebreathers. Robin accepts it without hesitation.
It’s the way that Robin, whenever they come across a dead body on missions, easily slips into the role of a crime scene investigator without batting an eye. Then, without fail, Artemis will step up next to him and start to rattle off facts and details she notices that the team didn’t even realize would be needed.
It’s the way that Artemis commandeers the television and turns it to the Gotham City news after both her and Robin’s phones simultaneously blare a loud alert. The boy had leapt over the back of the couch and sprinted towards the zeta tubes without a word, not even bothering to grab his abandoned laptop or homework. Artemis doesn’t deign to explain his sudden disappearance or the anxiety curling underneath her skin. She only murmurs a silent prayer to Lady Gotham.
It’s the way that Robin always carries extra antidotes to common toxins on him, but on the rare occasions that he runs out, turns to Artemis for more.
It’s the way that Artemis steps up next to Robin whenever they work a mission in Gotham City, communicating plans and optimal travel routes with only a few words.
It’s in the little things, the things that the team and league don’t notice.
Artemis understands Robin, and Robin understands Artemis. They were both forged in the ashes of a broken city, one that had tried to pull them down and keep them trapped. And yet they were both here, fighting to protect that very same city.
They are both from Gotham, and she lives in them. Their lady’s streets are tattooed on their skin in invisible ink, and her debris fills their stomachs.
The team doesn’t get it. They will never get it. They will never understand the ironic feeling their two friends get whenever the general news brushes over the latest rogue attack in Gotham before returning to Superman’s rescue of a cat stuck in a tree. They will never make sense of why Artemis and Robin seem to gravitate together on some of the worst missions and in their downtime.
But they do.
Because Gotham brats always have to stick together. It’s the only way to survive.