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Jason was doing just fine, even if surveillance for this case was completely boring.
Batman had taken the high route over the rooftops, and it was Robin’s job to make sure none of the goons snuck out the back alley while Batman was being dramatically kickass up the front. He’d bolted the door, pushed a dumpster in front of it, then picked a place where he had a good view of the alleyway and all the windows which led onto it as well.
He couldn’t even see Batman being awesome from out here, and he could barely hear the screams either.
Boring.
The startled noises had died away, and so had most of the fight noises too. Batman must be winning; rogues and goons gloated when they got the upperhand.
Then there was one of the strangest damn noises Jason had ever heard. It was more like a vibration, a pulsing whine that got into his head and rattled things about unnaturally.
Jason ducked down so he couldn’t be seen, because he’s not a fucking idiot.
It got louder. More insistently weird. Dick’s scaly undies, that couldn’t be good.
Something big and blue and bright grinded and jolted into view down in the alley just below him, like reality was getting twisted around a single point in space. Fuck. It was probably alien. Supernatural. Magic.
He’d never had to deal with magically appearing shit before he nicked Batman’s tires. (There had been suddenly disappearing shit, but that was just street life.)
With a weird compression of the air in his ears, the noise stopped. The something big and blue was no longer bright. It kind of blended into the background, in a way it was hard to put his fingers on.
The sensible thing would be to stay up there and observe the weird magic-alien-eldritch box. He’s thirteen and survived Gotham; his self-preservation instinct is very good, thanks very much. But he’s also Robin, and it’s kind of his job to investigate weird things appearing in his city, when Batman is busy.
He was wearing his uniform. It was his responsibility.
Jason didn’t touch it, because he knew about contact poisons and also he’s survived Gotham.
He wanted to, though. There was something unnaturally compelling about it, though it sort of disappears when he didn’t look at it directly.
The door swung open, and a frazzled looking woman came out, blonde bob swinging with her movement, as she looked down at something in her hand, and then back up and out at the alley she… appeared in? Landed in? She kicked the door of her… box… behind her, rather decisively.
“Hello,” Jason said, because he’s met Superman before. He knows the first step to making aliens like you is to be polite.
“Hmm,” she said, looking Jason up and down. “Oooh, capes are in! I love capes. Never been much of a mask person, unless the situation calls for it.”
“It’s not really—” Jason said, wondering if attempting to justify the Robin uniform’s cape would be more mortifying than letting her think she was wearing it for fun.
But she was distracted, glancing back at her box. “Oh dear, I’m nowhen near when I thought I was.”
“Nowhen?” Jason asked slowly. Time travel. Well, he hasn’t got to meet a Time Traveller yet, though there’s a few fun files in the Batcomputer which B had thought he’d hidden behind boring file names.
“It’s a lot easier to be nowhen than nowhere, but there’s opportunity for both. Sometimes at the same time, though I wouldn’t recommend it. Terrible on your guts when you rematerialize in a timeline. Gas for days.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Though I’ve never managed nowhere myself, much as I mighta liked it.”
“I’m the Doctor,” she said, “and I’m uh—”
She raised her head, and sniffled the air. Not a thing Jason would really recommend, in this part of Gotham. They were within sniffing distance of Arkham, and the muck from the river wasn’t nice either.
“I need to go—down,” she said, with authority.
“Go down where?”
“I’ll figure that out as we go, I think. It’s on the air. I can smell it. Can’t you smell that?”
Jason raised his head, and tried to concentrate past the fishy-oysters-seaweed smell of the river, and the rank stink of Arkham. This wasn’t a pretty part of town. But there was something—strange, even for Gotham.
A scent that shivered across his senses. Tangy, like ozone before a storm, and metal in the air. His tongue started to tingle. As soon as he identified it, it was like it had always been there. He couldn’t figure out why he’d ever thought it was missing.
“You’ve got the scent, don’t you?” she asked.
Jason nodded.
“I’m the Robin,” he said, following her odd naming convention, and trying to lower his voice to sound more serious. Well, he’d been trying to do that for a few months now, but his voice cracked awfully whenever he tried to do the Batman voice, which was so annoying because he’d been getting good at it otherwise. “What’s the smell?”
She grinned at him.
“Want to come with me and find out?”
Jason bit his lip, and looked back over at the silent warehouse where Batman definitely had everything under control. Then he nodded.
He clicked open his radio to B. “Investigating suspicious smell near Arkham. Pick A up some petunias, hyacinths and baby’s breath.”
(Jason had fun with Alfred picking out codewords which Bruce would accept, but find mortifying to say in the field. Petunias for ‘I’m safe’, hyacinths for ‘independent inquiry’, and baby’s breath for ‘civilian involvement’. A time traveller probably didn’t technically count as a civilian, under B’s logic, but Gothamites didn’t count as civilians in Jason’s, so he’d have to agree to a difference in technicality.)
B double clicked his mic in acknowledgement, and Jason turned to the woman. She was almost bouncing on her toes.
“Well, then, Robin, how do we get down? I need to see under the city. There’s something strange, deep down in the foundations.”
Jason considered that. There were natural caves out near the Manor, obviously, but he’d thought that the island of Gotham was granite all the way down.
“The sewers, maybe, but I don’t actually recommend them; we’ve got crocs. Access tunnels?”
The Doctor pursed her lips, tapping them with a metal tool of some sort. A multi-tool, maybe? It looked pretty high tech. Time traveller tech. Damn. Dick was gonna be so jealous.
“I think there’s a network of caves and cells sort of under Arkham.” Jason said, gesturing to the lurking hulk of a building that was more feeling and loom than anything had a right to be outside of Gothic novels.
The woman looked up the hulking mess of it, and then down, like she was thinking about the roadways leading up to it, the gutters and stormdrains and alleys that crossed the island.
“Like, there’s the above ground in Arkham which sucks, but I heard there was things going on below that’s even worse. B won’t tell me the details, but I’ve been listening for years, before I became Robin. Gothamites gossip, yeah, and Arkham is better than a telenovela.”
“There’s something twisted about it, isn’t there?” she said.
Jason shrugged, because of course there was something twisted about Arkham. It was Arkham. Even Metropolitans respected Arkham (in theory).
“It’s not a fun place to be, nope.”
“Well, let’s get in there, then!”
“You’re insane,” Jason said, with a sarcastic up-tilt which definitely made it into a rude question, if Alfie had heard him.
The next few minutes were a flurry of bonkers ideas. The Doctor suggested climbing, borrowing a 27m high robot, burrowing, teleportation, transmogrification (which she didn’t explain), and although Jason probably could break into Arkham, he really really didn’t want to have to explain to B why he’d done it on the word of a mad woman time traveller.
Oh. She’s a mad woman.
Jason looked down at himself, in his cape and boots and iconography. No one would stop Robin from booking in a prisoner. But then he’d have to leave her there. Well, probably better to have her be a specialist who needed to speak to someone inside immediately for the sake of the city.
It worked disturbingly easily.
The Doctor told the security that she was the Doctor, and Robin tried to look official instead of like a kid up past his bedtime.
Being convincingly Robin under fluorescent lighting required a lot more imagination than it did in a dark alley with Batman looming behind.
But soon enough they were making their way through the twisting dark corridors of Arkham, down and down into the depths of the structure, until the brickwork turned to stone work with rotting wooden lintels, and then to bare granite chiseled into a tunnel, with water trickling down the rock, gleaming eerily in the lights.
The screams got quieter as they descended. The Doctor kept pausing to test the air, flicking her tongue just a little, before continuing down and down and down. Deeper than Jason had thought Arkham went.
“What do you think we’re going to find?” he asked the Doctor, with his torch out showing the way.
“I’m not quite sure. It doesn’t feel right, not for the screaming the TARDIS heard.”
“You heard screaming? From the people upstairs?” Jason gestured above them, the light bobbing and weaving.
“Not me. I’ve got decent senses, but nothing on the TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS?”
“My ship. She’s a lonely old thing, but reliable when she tells me something’s out there that’s where it shouldn’t be. The TARDIS heard—someone like her, well, something alive that was sort of like her, and they were screaming.”
Jason shivered, and it wasn’t just from the cold, or the drips of water that ran down the back of his neck, or the barely-audible screams from the asylum patients above them.
“We’re close, I think.”
“We’re close to something sort of like a sentient time machine? That’s screaming in pain.”
The Doctor nodded. “Time and space ship. She’s versatile. Flexible too.”
“Are you Kryptonian?” Jason asked, being the only humanoid alien species that weren’t orange that he knew of.
“No, but I’m not human either. Haven’t been to Krypton in years. They’ve got an excellent fruit cider, though. I should pick some up when I’m next in the quadrant.”
Jason wondered if he should tell her that it was gone. But they were busy. Tracking down a—thing. Something. In pain.
He’s Robin. He can do this. Tracking down something buried in the depths under Arkham needs investigation, and it’s a Gotham problem. Even if it was an alien-time traveller who was telling him about it.
They came to a heavy and dark door, made of riveted metal like Gotham’s railway stations and raised bridges. Jason pointed the torchlight down at the ground, at some drag marks where the door had been opened over the years. Jason investigated the hinges (well oiled, heavy, early 20th Century, if not earlier), while the Doctor did something with the alien multitool.
“They’ve not been forgotten,” the Doctor said, listening to something Jason couldn’t hear. “Someone is doing something to them. Controlling them, unless it’s just torture for the sake of it.”
“This is Arkham,” Jason said. “It could be either. Or both together.”
“You ready?” she asked him. Jason nodded. Something alien screaming under Arkham. He’s as ready as he’ll ever be.
She stepped back, and with a flourish of that tool the door unlatched, and Jason started pushing the door in while expecting the Doctor to have his back, like B would.
The room was dark. Pitch black, if it weren’t for Jason’s torchlight bouncing around the room. A natural cave, with a trickle of water running right through the middle. Probably one of the tiny streams that joined the river.
He couldn’t see anything alive.
“Oh, you poor thing,” The Doctor said, moving towards what Jason had thought was a stalagmite formation, but of course it isn’t. She ran that tool through the air like she was tracing out the pathways of tripwires and anchor points.
It sort of looked like it might be someone curled up around their soft bits. Protection and despair.
“Is that—” Jason corrected his language. If they was alive, it wasn’t an ‘it’. “Are they alive?”
“This isn’t the whole Iiriijetashe, they’re much deeper and broader than what we can see here” she said, “but she’s alive.”
“Iir-eye-jee—”
“Iiriijetashe. At the very least she’s not lonely, which is always a pleasant surprise. This isn’t all of her. They didn’t capture everything, even if they got something rather important, I’d guess.”
Then the Doctor was leaning over the rock, and coaxing something like a face free from the water and the stone dripping down on them. Staring eyes. A mouth open in a snarl or a scream or rage.
“I’m going to need your help, Robin. She needs someone familiar, I think.”
“Familiar?” Jason said, and then wondered if maybe he’d caught her as Robin, and put her in Arkham and then whatever this was had happened to her. Surely that was a terrible version of being familiar, to something alien and scared.
“I don’t even smell like Earth,” the Doctor said. “But you’re a local. You’ll feel right to her. She’s a bit telepathic, but mostly an empath. You’ll feel like home.”
"And she's an alien, not an ordinary human sent to Arkham who got twisted up by some sort of experiment they did on her?"
The Doctor nodded. "Oh, she's as alien as I am. Iiriijetashe are a very interesting species. They never quite manage to stay in one body; they sort of have a few different organisms they can switch consciousness between, like a hive mind. The parent-trio send spores out into space, and where they land they'll gather resources and get the native fauna and flora to help them out and get established. Like somewhat benevolent parasites, with a life cycle that lasts millenia. She probably landed here when it was just a nice empty place on the flood plain, and used her telepathy and empathy to get help while she settled down into the bedrock. If she's happy here, she'll keep on living as your city for another few centuries, at the very least."
Alright then. Not what Jason had expected to deal with when he put on the cape tonight. An alien parasite that lives under Gotham probably isn't even in the top ten weirdest things about the city.
Jason nodded, and stepped up to the rock. She definitely wasn’t a rock now. He could see the curves of someone frozen and still, like coming across someone who had spent so long sobbing quietly that they no longer know how to make a noise.
A draft of wind tugged his cape, some sort of draft running through the caves.
Jason stepped closer.
She did feel familiar. Scared and familiar. Just being around her made him want to cry.
Hold on. Did the Doctor say she was Gotham? Not just living under her?
He wanted to cry those tears he hadn’t let himself cry when he was on the street. Cry the tears he doesn’t cry when Batman and him find someone dead who should be alive. Cry just with the overwhelming complicated majesty of everything terrible and full of awe when he thinks about Gotham herself.
Fuck. His domino was going to fill up. With tears. Fuck. But this is more important than a silly secret identity.
He tugged the domino off his face, and it hurts from not using the solvent, but the tears were enough to loosen the bottom half.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he told her, reaching out a hand to touch one cool stone shoulder. “We ain’t going to let them keep you here.”
How?
The question echoes through his head. He looked over at the Doctor. He needs to free her more than he’s needed to achieve anything in his entire life.
The Doctor nodded.
“I’ve got a ship,” she said. “I can take you far away. You can regrow on another planet, if you want.”
A snarl rang through his soul at the very idea.
Mine. No. Mine. Stay. Here. Mine.
“Then we’ll free this node of you they trapped,” The Doctor said, “and since this place is yours you’ll take care of it.”
She said it sternly, but with confidence.
Jason was hit with a wave of possessive insistence. Avarice and lust and pride. So much pride.
“Alright then, let’s get you out of here,” the Doctor said. “Hold onto her while I figure this out, Robin. She’ll feel safer with you protecting her.”
Jason sat down beside the definitely-not-a-rock, and tried to figure out where her boobs were (if she had any) so he could avoid holding those. He ended up with one hand on something which looked like it might be her head, and the other on a limb that he really hoped wasn’t a tentacle.
The possessiveness curled around him. Familiar. Warm like a humid summer night, one of the good ones where he was swinging through the buildings of Gotham for fun. Like when he’d found a niche under a bridge when he was on the streets, and he’d never felt safer.
The Doctor was doing something a little further away, untangling things, yanking on things which screeched when she tugged, but Jason just basked in feeling warm. Safe. It was like being home. Tea with Alfred, and the silence of 3am patrols when nothing had gone wrong, and the possessiveness that he’d always felt towards Gotham himself. Sure, it was a terrifying place, but it was his terror to fear and love.
“Brace yourself, Robin,” The Doctor called. “I’ve almost got the last of this.”
Something big and huge started unravelling.
The cave screamed, and the voice in his head screamed too. He could definitely hear her now.
The ground rocked, and he wasn’t going to run. He’s Robin. He wasn’t scared. He wouldn’t. He curled himself around her, whoever she was, and hoped that nothing would fall.
Mine.
He was hers. Of course he was hers. He wouldn’t be anyone else’s at all.
Then the rock he was curled around vibrated, shifted, and it was sand in his hands now, and it was a woman. It was something like a woman, perhaps?—why do so many aliens look humanoid anyway? Should they be calling them something other than human-oid? That seems really species-ist. He’d have to ask Uncle Clark.
“Hello there,” The Doctor said. “Did I get all your important bits? Leave anything behind that needs rattling free?”
The woman shook her head.
She was beautiful. Only an inch or two taller than Jason, with huge luscious hair and copper-toned skin, and the deepest, blackest eyes he’d ever looked into.
The feeling of spreading wings and swift violence and long drawn out revenge flicked through Jason’s emotions. He could do that. He would do that for her. He’d do anything for her.
“Stop that,” the Doctor said. “The boy’s halfway in love with you anyway. You don’t need to encourage him. He’d paint your streets bloody for you as soon as you let him anyway.”
The woman made a noise, and then the feelings pulled back and disappeared like a midnight thought he couldn’t quite hang onto.
Damn. That felt almost lonely. But also a great relief to be alone in his own head again.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She smiled, and then rested one petite hand on his cheek, letting him kiss the palm because he wanted to. There was nothing he wanted more.
“No. Thank you, Robin,” she said, and it was so hard to focus on her. He wanted to see everything, but she was so huge and existed in so many different ways at once that it was hard to hold onto anything.
“I won’t let you die in my territory, I promise.”
She kissed his forehead, and it felt so cold it was like it froze his entire frontal cortex, and he came back to himself a few moments late, like he was missing time. He’d probably just been staring, since she’s so damn beautiful and his hormones are enthusiastic chemical monsters.
Then she was gone.
The feeling of her remained. Safe and home and terrifying.
The Doctor brushed off her knees, and held out a hand to Jason.
“Let’s get you home, then, Robin.”
Jason nodded.
He led the Doctor all the way back to the Manor on foot. It didn’t take long, though it should have taken over an hour from Arkham on foot usually. He didn’t really think about secret identities and what Batman would say.
He needed to be home.
He was safe, but he needed to rest.
Alfred was waiting at the front door. He looked over Jason’s messy uniform, his missing domino, and the bright eyed woman beside him.
Jason felt like he could almost fall asleep on his feet, but first he wanted a hug from Alfred.
So he took one, cuddling against Alfie’s chest like it was the best thing he’d ever felt.
“Thanks for bringing my boy back to me,” Alfred said, rubbing his hand through Jason’s hair.
“No problem. Any time I’m in the area, happy to do that.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m the Doctor,” she said enthusiastically, shaking Alfred’s hand. “I was taking good care of Robin, don’t you worry. He was an excellent help. I needed a local translator, see. We got it all sorted in a jiff.”
“Doctor?” Alfred said with incredulity. “Uh— you wouldn’t be the the Doctor?”
She beamed. “See, Robin, it’s not that silly. Alfred knew what I meant.”
“Do you remember me? Pennyworth. I was attached to Lethbridge-Stewart’s outfit in ’73. If that was you, and this new look is one of those complications of being yourself.”
“Pennyworth?” She exclaimed. “You helped untangle me from an absolute mess of plastic cording once! Excellent man in a crisis.”
“Thank you, sir. Ma’am?”
“Sir will do just fine,” she said. “I had the most marvellous capes then, didn’t I? They were velvet things, with accented lining.” She turned to Jason, “though I was never bold enough to have one in yellow. That’s marvellous. I don’t know if it’d go with my hair at the moment, though. I’ll have to wait, and hope the next body agrees with yellow. Maybe I’ll be ginger, finally. Can gingers wear yellow, do you think?”
“Did you ever catch your man, Sir? I wondered about that, over the years. I thought he might settle down just right if you two ever got on the same page about anything.”
She looked thoughtful, and like she was very far away.
“Something of the sort. For barely a moment. Ah, well, time heals all wounds or some such aphorism.”
“I suppose you’ve got time enough for healing.”
“Can’t say still long enough for that, Pennyworth. Too many things to see. Planets to do, people to be. I don’t suppose you’re looking for an adventure? Robin’s a dab hand at keeping his head in a crisis, and I’ve got a bit of an empty TARDIS at the moment. Plenty of room for a boy and his grandpa.”
Jason looked over at Alfred, and he was looking at her with so much fondness and wonder, that for a moment he thought that maybe Alfie would say yes. They’d write a note for Bruce, and run away with an alien time traveller and be home in time for tea.
Alfie rested his hand on Jason’s shoulder, and squeezed.
“Not now, Doctor. We’ve got lessons in the morning. Come back when Jason’s a little older, and we’ll see if he can go adventuring then.”
The Doctor looked at Jason, and winked. “How do you feel about a trip to the Andromeda galaxy for your sixteenth birthday?”
Oh, wow. That would be incredible.
“Really?” He said, looking up at her, then up at Alfred. “Sixteen’s old enough. Dick left home when he was sixteen.”
Alfred made a humming noise, which was basically his agreement-but-I-can-later-disagree noise.
“I don’t want to see you for anything more stressful than tea until Jason turns sixteen, Doctor.”
“Of course, Pennyworth.”
“However, I would quite like to have tea with you, Sir, if you have the time. You can tell me about your Master and how that all fell out. It’s an unsolved romance from my youth, and I don’t have a lot of those left.”
She smiled at Alfred, looking somewhat older than her face. And she must be old, if Alfred is asking about her romantic entanglements from when he was young.
The Doctor spun on her heels, turning back to Jason.
“I’ll see you when you’re sixteen, Robin. I’ll come to your party, and then pick you up for adventures, and I’ll pop you back home very likely on time. This time. Probably. No one will miss you.”