Current mood:	gloomy
Entry tags:	fic, fic: dw/tw

Fic: Going Under
Title: Going Under
Summary: Hope dies last, they say, but when it does everything ends
Characters: Jack, Ten, Saxon, the Torchwood team
Spoilers: Last of the Time Lords
Rating: PG13 for mentions of torture
Word count: 2426
Notes: It's entirely thanks to xwingace that this thing ever came out of its Work In Progress State, without her help and suggestions it would still rot on my harddrive. This was partially inspired by tw_wotd_fic's prompt 'wayworn'. It still feels like being part of something bigger, maybe I'll get back to this one day. In the meantime, comments are love. *collapses*
Fic Masterlist: Here.



Now I will tell you what I've done for you
Fifty thousand tears I've cried
Screaming, deceiving and bleeding for you
And you still won't hear me

- Evanescence


Jack breathes in deeply, striding towards the Cardiff tourist information only days after he vanished, just as the Doctor promised.

Britain is still coming to its senses, his team still shocked from meeting Abaddon. The perfect time to slip silently back into the life he had left behind when he decided to cling to the wood of a transdimensional phone box. He smiles and enjoys the hugs he gets once he enters the Hub, staggered by the relief he sees in his team's eyes. They cared, and that's more than he'd hoped for.

He doesn't explain where he's been, desperate to resume the routine he despised so much before. He doesn't answer their questions after they make sure that he’s fine/not an alien in disguise/possessed. He trained them well, he thinks, and hugs them again.

"Classified," he snaps when they won't stop asking where he's been, why he was public enemy number three. He shoos them off eventually, sinking down in his chair, already exhausted from their banter. Ianto is the last to leave Jack's office, frowning slightly, mumbling something about coffee.

He tries to sift through the reports piled on his desk (thankfully the Rift has been silent, still digesting the temporal rewind), but the words refuse to form sentences in his mind. The Hub is weighing down on him, the claustrophobic feeling of being caged making him flee the building. He can only breathe again once he's outside, staring at the sea.

Too much of everything, Jack sighs. He has to get used to that again.


+++


On the first day on the Valiant he gets shot in the back three times as he tries to escape, and twice after that the guards kill him again to make him pay for the broken noses and hands of their colleagues.

The day gets worse after that.

"I like humans." the Master sneers after Jack has been thrown into one of the Valiant's holding cells. "Such... potential." Jack would grin, but the muscles involved still hurt too much from the gunshot wound that tore through them earlier.

"There is no other species in the galaxy so effective at killing and torturing its own kind. You make the Glarnexans of Sagev Prime look like saints."

Jack knows this for what it is: intimidation, the building of fear before the interrogation. He won't talk, because he has nothing to tell. He idly wonders whether rambling is a Time Lord trait, or if it's just the slightly unbalanced ones that love to hear their own voice. He can see the revulsion for the Fact that he is in this one’s eyes as clearly as in the Doctor's.

"Your history books," the Master adds, squatting down in front of the cage, his voice deceptively soft, "are the best manuals I could ever hope for."

The Master's smile would seem innocent, if his eyes didn't hold such insanity. Jack swallows, feeling like a bored boy's new toy.


+++


Jack stands on top of the Millennium Centre and gazes at the clouds on the horizon, hanging darkly over the water of the Bay. A storm is coming, he can sense it in his bones, taste it in the stale, heavy air and feel it on his skin as everything around him grows quiet. Not even the constant sea breeze howls through its usual paths.

The world holds its breath, waiting for the things to come, and it's at times like this that he feels some of the old fire return to his veins, something like excitement, something dangerous.


+++


Sometimes he's dragged up to the observation deck, facing an aged and impassive Doctor who simply stares at him with unfathomable eyes, while the Master tries his best to make them both beg to stop.

At first Jack endures these deaths with a silent defiance, but as the months trickle away, so does his hope that this will ever stop. He's trained to withstand pain, a few days of torture, but not without any hope of rescue, not for so long.

"He doesn't care," he laughs one day, waking up (yet again) in his own blood, the Master already waiting. The sensation of cut flesh is still tingling all over his body, making him twitch, his mind screaming with something more than pain. The Master's questions stopped weeks ago; Jack's of no use now that the Master knows everything he ever did. He's just entertainment now.

"You got the wrong companion, pal," he laughs, staring at the ceiling so he doesn't have to face the Doctor's impassive brown eyes. Not once in the months of torture has the Doctor so much as spoken.

"He hates me as much as you do," Jack giggles, but the pain of a laser beam cuts him off, throwing him into that familiar darkness again.

"Time Lords and their instincts, funny thing, eh?" he gasps as he wakes up again. He begins to laugh, the pain, his predicament, his 'wrongness' suddenly so very funny for a reason he can't even begin to grasp.

Reality is no place for him anymore; the darkness of death is a place to hide in, holding no terror any longer. He clings to the blackness now when life and pain and anger call him again, tearing him from the peace that death offers.


+++


The first raindrops hesitantly hit the ground, not yet brave enough to land on him. Jack closes his eyes and listens to their silent rhythm, growing constantly louder and quicker, until a roar of thunder in the distance blots out the constant drumming of the rain. Lightning slithers through the sky in the distance, and the rain becomes a constant white noise, soaking him to the skin.

He looks up at the leaden sky, the torrents of cold, Welsh rain running across his face unhindered. To a stranger, it would almost look as if Captain Jack Harkness was crying.

He stands perfectly still, and wills the storm to wash the world away.


+++


Such a fascinating mindscape

The words are tearing at his resistance, their very presence causing unbearable agony in his skull. If that voice wasn't holding him conscious, he would've died already. He made the Master finally lose his patience, and now the alien mind is tearing through his defences without any effort.

So many dead ends, so many tricks...

The hole in his memories is slicing into his sanity as it is dragged to the forefront of his thoughts, and he gasps. Everything he remembers, anger, fear, abandonment, loneliness, is dragged to the surface again and all he can do is struggle, no matter how futile his efforts are. He had his training, knows that his soul might survive this if he hides the essentials well, but Gods, it hurts. He can do nothing as his entire mind is unravelled by careless hands.

... and isn't it delicious?

He screams, and for a moment he imagines the old man in the wheelchair moving, but when he finds the strength to look, the Doctor hasn't moved. His disappointment mingles with the memory of hurt, of finding out he was left on purpose. The alien mind clawing through his feelings purrs with delight when it notices.

Oh Captain, I could play with you all day...

Jack knows the words are a lie, their sneer revealing repulsion, and for once he can't help being thankful for being something that a Time Lord can barely stand.

The connection snaps so suddenly and violently that Jack is thrown backwards physically, and leaving his mind bleeding. Any wit he'd managed to hang on to, all the hope he still clung to, is smothered by the torrent of agonising memories he never wanted to relive. There's no help coming, this is all there is now. Hope dies last, they say, but when it does it truly ends.

He tries to remember who he is and what just happened, but the shards of his memories are too sharp to move among them. He curls into himself and tries not to think, not to feel the pain of images and feelings he can't place.


+++


The wind strengthens, the water now carrying the salty tang of the sea. The coldness seeping through his soaked clothes makes him shiver. His coat flaps around him.

The world is dark and grey, only sporadically illuminated by the lightning. The distant thunder crawls nearer, but he doesn't move one inch. Rain is dripping out of his hair, pooling down towards his neck and he can't suppress another shiver.

The city below is empty, and even if someone was mad enough to be outside in this storm, they wouldn't be able to spot the dark figure in front of the even darker clouds.


+++


"Come and see, my pet," the Master sneers, forcing him onto his knees with the chain around his neck.

He's never been out of his cage, not that he can recall. He doesn't remember his name, but it doesn't matter, no one uses it anyway. Today, he had snapped a guard's neck when the man came too close to his cage during feeding time. It felt so good, he didn't even mind the bullets tearing into his flesh in retaliation when others noticed. He's still excited. He thinks he likes killing, his Master seemed pleased at least.

Now he's up here, can feel the sun on his skin, its warmth making him smile. He had forgotten how good it felt. Down in his cage, somewhere in the bowels of this ship, he often longs for things he can't quite grasp anymore. He will try to remember sun, he thinks he likes it. Maybe he'll take the smell of fresh air up here down with him, reminding him of rain, how good it felt on heated skin.

The old man in the wheelchair feels familiar somehow, but he can't say where he saw him before. He'd never been down to his cage; he would remember the discomfort this one radiates. He has to think of blue, and doesn't know why anger fills him so suddenly at the sight of the geriatric. He growls, pulling at his restraints, his hands itching, the dark anger inside blotting out the faint memories of safety and trust.

"Go on then, my pet. Kill him slowly," the Master whispers in his ear, loosening the chain that keeps him away from the man in a wheelchair who feels like the root of all his problems. He lunges forwards without thinking.

Jack

He recognizes his name, and it surprises him enough to stop his hands from taking revenge just a little longer. The voice in his skull is young and achingly familiar. Hands that take care to look like they're keeping him at bay nevertheless hold him close ever so gently.
The screaming darkness in his mind comes to a sudden halt, like a storm suddenly losing its force. Suddenly there's silence, something he hasn't known for a very long time. It's strangely soothing.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry

He knows the voice means it, feels something gentle stroke his mind, shutting out the darkness and putting things back where they once were, before the pain, before... it all comes rushing back, memories, and that feeling he thought he'd lost so long ago.

Martha's still alive, Jack. Just a little longer. Trust us.

It was called hope, he remembers now.

The Doctor has a plan, and did his best to hide it. He should've known. Something yanks him backwards, and he finds himself at the Master's feet again, the Laser Screwdriver making him curl up in pain. But he can still faintly hear the Doctor in the back of his head.

Never doubted him, never will

His own words thrown back at him, sounding hollow.

"I'll have one of the Joneses feed you from now on" the Master states as he drags him back to the darkness of the lower decks. Jack would smile if the pain weren’t eating him up, maybe that means he'll finally have someone to talk to.

"Let's see what happens if you snap one of their necks." Jack doesn't reply, not willing to reveal the wholeness of his wits, it can come in handy to be considered broken. He won't be able to play that role for long, and he hopes against all hopes that this will all be over soon.


+++


"Sir?" the quiet voice can only belong to one member of his team, Jack knows. He blinks, wipes the water off his face and turns, finding an unsteady Ianto, trying to keep his balance while holding an umbrella in one hand, the other instinctively - yet uselessly - groping the air for something to grab, a railing, a safety net. There isn't any up here, Jack knows. This is why he's here, after all.

The drumming of the rain is fainter now, the dark clouds of the storm no more than a shadow on the horizon, the wind driving the storm to the north, away from Cardiff.

"Sir, are you alright?" There's a hesitant pause before the next question. "Jack?"

He will never understand why his false name feels so intimate whenever Ianto uses it.

A ray of sunshine breaks through the bleak clouds, the brightness making Jack squint and the animal inside hide back in its dark corner. The light hurts and he wants to scream, but he is mindful of the man behind him, doesn't know how that one would deal with his demons. Ianto has enough of his own. Jack desperately wants to know how he manages to keep them at bay, how he hides them so well.

It'll take time before he gets used to the sun again, Jack muses, or any kind of weather. He needs a very stiff drink, Jack decides, and the daily routine to keep his mind from wandering away too far. In this time line, he's been away for mere days, which is convenient regarding uncomfortable questions. Nothing much could've happened in mere days, his team thinks, and how can you explain something that never happened?

He can still see curiosity and concern in Ianto's eyes, even though his face is shadowed by that ridiculous umbrella. He's waiting for an explanation, maybe, but Jack has no strength for this yet, maybe he never will.

"Of course I'm all right, why wouldn't I be?" Jack smiles weakly, steadying Ianto with his soaked arm as they make their way back down to the Hub.