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Martha’s as used to traveling with the Doctor as one can get, and it’s turned into somewhat of a game: stepping out of the Tardis, looking around for clues as to when or where she might be, sussing out what sort of place they’ve ended up.
This time, it’s an ugly place. The city’s dark and dank and has a terrible feel to it, a sense of pervasive danger, but of a very human sort, not the thrilling, horrible danger of ending up on the moon accidentally or being attacked by alien-witches.
“Where are we?” she asks when she realizes that this is an American city, but far, far from the America of her own time. “When?”
“Funny story ‘bout that,” the Doctor says. “We’ve slipped dimensions. This, Martha Jones, is a parallel world to your earth.”
“Hardly an improvement,” Martha says, curling up her nose. The Doctor walks at a quick pace, and Martha hurries after him.
*
Gotham is a terrible place. It’s worse than the time she had to be a shopgirl in the sixties, being here, but there are some things that inspire wonder.
The tales of the Batman made her laugh, at first. It was utterly ridiculous, a man dressing up in a mask and fighting crime, saving a city, but then she looks at the Doctor and thinks, sometimes all it takes is one.
Other cities are brighter and have even more fantastic heroes, she learns, but Gotham is where the Tardis thinks they should be and Gotham is where they stay.
And then the tales take a darker turn, whispers of the Batman being dead. The signal shines over the city unheeded, and Martha feels unsettled down to her very core.
*
Martha’s hurrying home (strange, how the Tardis, tucked away in a forgotten alleyway, has become home) when she hears the gunshot.
Even this terrible city can’t interfere with a doctor’s instincts. She hurries towards the sound of chaos, unconcerned with her own safety as she skids around a corner.
There’s a robbery in progress in a convenience store; the clerk is slumped against the counter, gripping his bleeding gut. The shooter is still there, eyes wide and terrified as a caped, masked figure looms over him.
Batman, Martha thinks, before realizing that the figure is no taller than she is, and long blonde hair is flowing down its back.
“I’m a doctor,” she says, hurrying inside, and she sees a glimpse of sparkling eyes as she hurries to help the clerk.
The girl’s voice is strong and clear, and by the time the cops arrive, Martha’s pretty sure that the crook will never shoot anyone else.
*
“So these… Bat-people,” Martha says to the Doctor over tea that evening. “Are they human, or are they something… more?”
“All humans are something more,” the Doctor replies, stirring his tea vigorously.
Martha rolls her eyes and interrupts before hearing again how brilliant her species is. “I mean, do they have superpowers? Because the girl I saw, she couldn’t have been more than twenty and she faced down a thug with a gun like she was bulletproof.”
“You’re barely more than twenty yourself,” the Doctor points out. “And you’ve faced down quite a bit more than a gun.”
But I had you, Martha thinks, and the stories that she’s heard about the Batman ring through her head. “It’s easy with someone there to help,” she says instead.
“Lucky for this Bat-girl that you were there tonight,” the Doctor points out. “You saved a life tonight, Martha. That’s no small deed.”
*
The Doctor is distracted with figuring out why they slipped dimensions when he’d intended to just travel through time, so Martha goes about her own mission: finding out more about the Batgirl she’d helped.
She isn’t quite sure why she’s so drawn to finding out what makes the girl tick, except that the brightness of her voice had clashed against the bleakness of this city, and Martha wants to find out what makes her tick. What makes her shine.
It doesn’t take much, really, to figure out from arrest records the general area that the girl frequents.
Martha studies the city maps, planning.
*
Martha’s been all over the universe, has seen terrible wonderful things, but the dark lonely streets of this alternate-American city make her conscious of all her weaknesses.
She’s armed, she’s prepared, but it doesn’t stop the tendrils of fear from settling in her stomach, from making her look around nervously at the strange night-time noises, doesn’t make her look any less like a victim.
But she watches and she waits and on her third night she hits the jackpot.
Batgirl is standing on the next rooftop over, yelling at…
Yelling at a child in a brightly-colored costume. Martha’s heard the stories about Robin, they go hand-in-hand with the stories about the Batman, and yet she’d envisioned someone grown but not quite past the recklessness of youth. This is a child, undeniably, horrifically a child, not even an adolescent yet.
Batgirl seems unperturbed, and Martha scrunches down on her rooftop, listens in on the argument.
“You have to listen to him!” Batgirl yells, and there’s that assurance in her voice, the commanding tone that Martha thinks she doesn’t yet realize she has.
“He isn’t really Batman,” Robin says. Cultured, snooty, overconfident. It’s a dangerous combination.
“As long as he wears the cowl, he is,” Batgirl replies. Martha thinks of the Doctor, of his silly tennis shoes and how he keeps saving the universe no matter how many times he dies, and wonders if Batgirl is as completely, hopelessly smitten as Martha is. If she is, she hides it better.
“Whatever lets you sleep at night, spoiler,” Robin says meanly, and swoops off into the night. Martha gapes a minute at his mode of transport – impossibly tiny wires, fired from a gun – and then focuses her attention on Batgirl.
Batgirl kicks something angrily and then flops down, chin on her hands and staring out at the city.
Martha has been planning this moment since the convenience store, when Batgirl disappeared before Martha had finished administering aid to the shot clerk, and now, as she stands to say something, her mouth goes dry and none of her prepared speech will come out.
Batgirl turns, though, and narrows her eyes at Martha. “You’re the one who’s been doing all those searches.”
“What?” Martha blurts. “No! I mean, well, yes. But you don’t have to make it sound so accusatory.”
“People who try to find us are typically trying to kill us,” Batgirl replies.
“I’m not! Swear on it!” Martha says. “I’m not the killing sort.”
“You’re armed.”
“Gotham is the killing sort,” Martha explains. Batgirl cracks a smile. “I’ve been curious, since we met the other night.”
“You’re the doctor,” Batgirl says.
Martha feels a little thrill with getting to answer, “Yes.”
Batgirl waits.
“I’m curious about you,” Martha says. “This whole…” She almost says ‘dimension,’ but stops herself just in time. “Place.”
“You and the rest of the internet, lady,” Batgirl says, but she hops over the gap between the buildings like it’s nothing and settles down on the ledge near Martha, arranging her cape and looking expectantly at her. “What is it you want to know?”
This is going so much better than Martha had hoped.
*
“I found things out,” Martha announces happily when she arrives at the Tardis three hours later.
Only, as it turns out, she’s announcing it to just the Tardis, which beeps worriedly at her.
“Oh, bugger,” Martha says. “He’s figured it out, hasn’t he?”
She doesn’t stay to hear the Tardis’ response.
*
“Hey, Martha Jones!”
Martha twirls around.
Batgirl drops down from a fire escape, eyebrow raised. “Oracle sent me to find you. Apparently your companion is doing some interesting things.”
Martha doesn’t correct Batgirl on the fact that she’s the Doctor’s companion and that it doesn’t work the other way around. She just follows her through the maze of a city, finally arriving at an abandoned clocktower where Batman and the Doctor stand close, discussing something intently.
“Martha!” The Doctor says, delighted. “We’ve been brought here for a reason! There’s a time anomaly, see, and who better to fix a time anomaly than a Time Lord? None, I say.”
Martha is staring curiously at Batman, who doesn’t seem as looming a presence as the rumors had lead her to believe.
“Batman’s lost in time,” Batman says.
Martha looks at the Bat-symbol on his chest pointedly.
“The real Batman,” Batgirl says. She quickly turns to Batman. “Not that you aren’t doing a fantastic job, mind.”
“No, I think of him that way too,” and there’s that softness in his voice, the same one Martha hears in her own when she talks about the Doctor. This Batman must be something else, to be a mortal man who inspires the same sort of awe as an immortal one.
“I think I’ve keyed into his signal,” the Doctor announces, shaking his sonic screwdriver and holding it up to his ear. “Come on to the Tardis, we should be able to fetch him.”
“Just like that?” asks Batman distrustfully.
“Just like that,” the Doctor replies. “Time’s a wasting! No sense waiting around here when infinity awaits!”
*
“Time displacements aren’t common,” Batman says.
Batgirl snorts. “Please. Everything’s common.”
Martha grins at her. “The universe is a crazy place. I mean, on my earth people’d think you were bonkers, dressing up like rodents and kicking people in the face like you do.”
“We only kick criminals in the face,” Batman clarifies, “so that makes it okay.”
“Quite so!” the Doctor agrees. “I fancy myself a bit of a vigilante at times. The other day I scolded someone who littered!”
“And let’s not forget you, oh, saving the universe a time or two,” Martha adds.
“That, too,” the Doctor agrees, “but really, littering’s worse.”
Batgirl hides her giggles in her spiked gauntlet.
*
Batman orders Batgirl to remain in the Tardis while he and the Doctor go fetch the real Batman. The Doctor makes a series of complicated hand signals that Martha loosely translates to mean ‘keep the girl company, we’ll only be a moment.’
Batgirl rolls her eyes and leans against the console. “You always do whatever you get told?”
“No,” Martha says, “but sometimes it’s important to have reinforcements waiting. Like when plunging into an unknown time anomaly.”
Batgirl sighs. “I’m still not used to being on the A-team, you know? It’s hard for them to remember to trust me.”
“I think travelling through time and space to rescue your boss will show commitment,” Martha points out.
“Yeah, you’d know,” Batgirl says. “What’s it like? Being out in the stars?”
“Amazing,” Martha says. “And terrifying and wonderful and awe-inspiring.”
“Just like you’d imagine, then,” Batgirl says thoughtfully. “I’ve met people from the stars, but the thought of going terrifies me.”
“And yet, you’d jump in a police box to travel into an unknown time?”
Batgirl rolls her eyes. “I’d do that and more for Batman, even if he is a dick.”
Martha bursts into laughter. “Yeah, well--”
She’s cut off by the sudden jolt that she recognizes as the Tardis taking off. “No! Stop it,” she yells uselessly at the Tardis. “The Doctor’s not on board!”
She stares at the console, trying to visualize what the Doctor does in this scenario, but it’s always just a blur of motion and babble that flies right over Martha’s head. She’s relatively sure that some of these gadgets don’t actually serve any function.
“What can I do?” Batgirl asks, looking wide-eyed at the console. Martha remembers how inane it looked when she first stepped aboard.
“I don’t suppose your boss has one of these and taught you to use it?” Martha asks.
“Not quite one of these, no,” Batgirl confirms. “I can fly a helicopter?”
“Not quite the same, no,” Martha agrees. She experimentally jabs a button. Nothing seems to happen.
Then, a second later, the Tardis lands.
“Good job!” Batgirl says brightly.
“Yeah,” Martha says grimly. “Could you be a dear and peek outside? Tell me if we’re in some sort of horrible wasteland?”
Batgirl hurries to the door and peers outside. “Not a wasteland, no,” she announces. “We appear to be in a forest.”
“A forest?” That wasn’t good.
“A big ole forest,” Batgirl confirms. “Not at all Gotham-y, unless if you count the fact that it looks creepy as fuck.”
“That’ll do, thanks,” Martha says.
“But.. wait,” Batgirl says, and then flings open the door and runs outside.
“Brilliant,” grumbles Martha. She takes one glance around the Tardis, says firmly, “Don’t go anywhere!” and follows Batgirl into the night.
*
“Help me!” Batgirl says when Martha catches up to her. The forest is dark and deep and not the least bit lovely, and Martha looks around, worried, as she approaches Batgirl. She’s helping a man who appears to be wearing a home-fashioned Batman costume, and she figures pretty quickly that this is the real Batman that they’d come to rescue.
Martha checks his stats quickly. He’s injured, yes, but nothing fatal, and she nods to Batgirl to grab him under one arm while Martha hefts the other. Between the two of them they manage to haul him to the Tardis, in Martha’s case one labored step at a time. She’s rather unused to carrying overly muscled men about.
The Tardis is still there, thank goodness. Martha isn’t sure what she would have done if it had disappeared.
Once the door shuts behind them, the Tardis shakes and rumbles and they’re moving through space and time. Batgirl is too busy questioning Batman, who is dazed and barely conscious and seems as though he’s concussed.
“Move,” Martha tells Batgirl, and quickly checks his pupils. One is blown. “Stay still,” she instructs him.
Batgirl is at the door, and she carefully opens it. They’re back to whatever time they left the Doctor and Batman in, and Batgirl instructs Martha to ‘take good care of him!’ while she hurries out to find them.
“Don’t worry,” she keeps reassuring the man, even though he’s too out of it to worry. “You’re safe.”
Batgirl returns with Batman and the Doctor in tow.
The Doctor seems happy that they’ve found the missing Batman, and spends several minutes congratulating the Tardis on being clever.
“Oi,” Martha interrupts. “What about me?”
“Oh, you already know you’re clever,” the Doctor says carelessly. “And besides, the Tardis did all the work, discovering the dislocated timestream and all.”
“Quite,” Martha says.
*
After they’ve arrived at the proper Gotham, the Gotham that belongs to these Bats, Martha feels a twinge of regret that she’ll never see this city again.
“It grows on you,” Batgirl says brightly. “It’s home, you know? Even when you get away from it, it’s still there, in your blood, just waiting to come out.”
Martha shudders. “No, thank you,” she says. “You can keep your Gotham blood. Me, I think it’s a terrible place to visit.”
Batgirl looks insulted.
“But the company’s worth it,” Martha adds. “Really, you just rocketed off into an unknown place because you thought you saw your boss! You’re mad, girl.”
“You’d do the same,” Batgirl replies with a toss of her hair. “And for far less noble reasons.”
“Just as noble,” Martha corrects. “They’re just as noble.” She gives the girl a hug, feels all the layers of armor and weapons the girl wears just to roam her own city, and gives her an impulsive kiss on the cheek. “Keep safe,” she whispers.
“What’s the fun in that?” Batgirl replies, squeezing her tight.