Fic: The Silence of the Mind 6/7
Title:The Silence of the Mind
Author: alex_caligari
Beta: jellybean728
Characters/Pairings: Owen Harper
Rating: 14A
Summary: Owen is captured during the Year That Never Was. He quickly finds out that the worst tortures are not the ones he expected.
Disclaimer: All puppets still firmly attached to the BBC.
Author's Notes: Torchwood/Doctor Who crossover, set during the end of S1 and S3, respectively. Nothing graphic, but things will get worse quite quickly.
Chapter 1: International Relations Chapter 2: Anonymous Chapter 3: Boredom Chapter 4: Taking the Bullet Chapter 5: Hope Chapter 6: Rejoice
The engines shut off.
The sudden absence of sound instantly put me on alert. The airship had never landed during my captivity, so something involving Saxon must have changed. He was expecting something, perhaps. The lights were off in my cell, meaning it was probably night wherever we were. The last time I had been let out of my cell we had been over France, watching the Eiffel Tower fall. We could be close to Britain. Home. The word felt foreign to me. Nothing was home anymore, not with what Saxon had done. I listened to the silence for a while, but when nothing happened, I drifted back to sleep.
I was awoken again several hours later. The engines were running again and a voice screeched out of the intercom above me. “Citizens of Earth!” Saxon’s voice announced, “rejoice and observe.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list,” I muttered. Saxon’s announcements never before reached my cell, so this one must be special. Of course, I was left blind and ignorant, as usual, so the proclamation meant nothing to me. I had long ago stopped being afraid of what would happen to me. Saxon’s mind games had worn me out, and I no longer cared what atrocity he was about to undertake. I felt broken, and knew that Saxon had won.
Soon after I heard shouting and running, and didn’t move. I didn’t want to hear another failed escape attempt, another death outside my door. Voices shouting ‘Doctor’ and ‘escape’ failed to rouse me. The best I could hope for was the ship to malfunction and take us all to the bottom of the ocean.
Different voices. Metallic, childlike. The spheres. Their voices still sent fear spilling down my spine and into my belly. They were shouting as well. “Protect the paradox! Protect the paradox!” Nothing but nonsense. For the first time I felt safe in my cell. I was separate from all the chaos outside. It was all too loud, too messy.
Another voice ran by, one that I had heard before on this ship and almost thought it was a hallucination. “I know where it is! Come on! The spheres are the least of your worries right now.”
I didn’t think I could move that fast in my weakened state. I was across the room and pounding on the door before I could think about it. “Jack!” I called. “Jack, you bastard, let me out!” One pair of boots slowed down and stopped. I waited. I heard the outer door slide back. I scrambled back as the inner door opened.
It wasn’t Jack, but a female soldier, a mid-thirties woman with wide eyes. “You better get out of here,” she said. “All hell’s breaking loose.” She bolted down the corridor without another word, leaving both doors open.
It was a trick, I thought. A test. As soon as I step out of those doors, I’ll be gunned down. I had seen this kind of thing before, in animals. Livestock trained so that even if the gate was left wide open they wouldn’t leave the pen. The apathy I had felt before stirred sluggishly. I didn’t want to be livestock.
I stepped towards the door, and the floor suddenly rocked under me. I slammed into a wall, and it was the shock I needed. I tore out of the cell and ran blindly down the corridor. Soldiers ran past me in both directions. I realized that I was running down the familiar route towards the boardroom. The months of captivity slowed me down, and I was panting as I reached the double doors. I heard voices shouting, and a strange wind had picked up. We’re going down, I thought. I heard voices shouting from inside the room, some nonsense about time reversing. I felt so weak. My legs couldn’t support me and I slid down the doors to the floor.
If we were crashing, I might as well try to find a safe place to hide. I crawled towards a hollow spot in the wall. Ianto probably could have told me the proper architectural name for it, but for me it was shelter. The wind and the shaking increased, and through a porthole, the light was shifting rapidly. Something deeply fucked up was happening, and all I could do was hang on until it was over.
Several ragged breaths later, the shaking lessened. More feet came pounding down the corridor. I looked up to see a band of soldiers round the corner, led by a man who wasn’t wearing a uniform. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and his face was covered in grime and dried blood, but he walked with strength and purpose in my direction. My breath caught as I recognized him. Jack. My captain, my salvation, my bane. He looked none the worse for his captivity, but then, no marks would show anyway. I shuddered as I thought of how Saxon might toy with him, unique as he was.
There were voices shouting from the other side of the boardroom doors, and Jack strode over to them without hesitation. He didn’t glance at me; he probably didn’t even know I was there. I had tucked myself into the smallest space I could find, and deliberately made myself hard to spot. He was already past me when my brain recovered and I tried to call out to him. “Jack.” My voice cracked. It was barely a whisper.
Jack opened the doors, and I caught a glimpse of Saxon coming the other way and nearly running into him. “Whoa, big fella,” Jack said as he gripped him by the shoulders and spun him around. “You don’t want to miss the party. Cuffs,” he said to a soldier.
I swallowed and tried again. “Jack.” A bit steadier, a bit louder. But not enough. Jack was already through the doors with Saxon and the soldiers followed him. One man at the back must have heard me because he turned and looked at me. His eyes held confusion and fear, but no recognition. He blinked, then continued after Jack.
I curled up once more and closed my eyes. I was so weak, and the adrenaline rush from earlier left me drained and exhausted. I wanted to sleep for days but was afraid that I would be sick and choke to death. No one would notice enough to help me.
Instead I listened to the voices on the other side of the doors. They were intense, and desperate, and scared, and a few were unfamiliar. I barely twitched as a gunshot rang out, wondering idly who got the bullet. The screams started after that, and the sobbing. Then everything was quiet. I stopping fighting my exhaustion and fell into blissful unconsciousness.
The sensation of stiff and sore muscles was the first thing to enter my awareness later. My wonderful state of blankness was slowly being cracked and peeled away as I felt a hand on my shoulder. Someone was shaking me. “Sir?” a voice said, but the word didn’t mean anything to me. The feeling of latex appeared at my wrist and throat. “He’s got a pulse, but it’s weak,” the voice said. “His breathing is steady.” A crackle of static in response to the words. The voice was female, professional. The latexed hand gently lifted one of my eyelids and shone a penlight into it. I flinched away from it, and the voice became more insistent. “Sir? Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”
I moaned.
The woman’s hands moved over my body checking for injuries. She asked more questions, testing my responsiveness. I recovered my senses enough to open my eyes on my own and look at her. She was dressed like a paramedic, not like one of Saxon’s grunts. When she saw I was conscious, she asked again for my name.
“Owen,” I said. It felt so distant. My name was something that belonged to the past.
“Okay, Owen,” she said. I noticed for the first time that she had an American accent. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling? Any dizziness or nausea, any pain anywhere?”
I shook my head no, which in turn caused a headache to stab behead my eyes. “No,” I clarified. “Just tired. Headache.”
“You’re very thin,” she said. “You look like you’ve been held in a cave for months. I’d like to get you back to our medical unit, get some fluids in you.” She spoke again into the radio attached to her coat, giving instructions.
There was something very odd about her speech. How else was I supposed to look? “What day is it?” I asked.
She smiled. “I thought I was supposed to ask you that. It’s September 17.”
That was the day of the attack. The Toclafane. Nepal. Ianto, Gwen, Tosh, lost to me for months. No, a full year. “How are you here?” I asked the medic. “Saxon should have his own medical staff.”
“Saxon? The Prime Minister?” She didn’t call him the Master. “Saxon’s dead.”
I froze, then grabbed the medic’s coat, surprising her with my sudden movement. “What happened? How can he be dead?”
The friendliness had gone from her. She reached behind her for her bag, likely looking to sedate me if I turned violent. “He was murdered,” she said. “So was President Winters. Saxon made it look like those Toclafane killed the president, but no one’s really sure yet who killed Saxon. Those aliens seem to have disappeared as well.” She shrugged. “Another hoax, I guess. We’re just clearing out the Valiant, making sure no one else is hurt. What are you doing here?”
I paused and thought about that. “This may be an odd question, but what year is it?”
She eyed me. “2007.”
2007? But I had passed a year imprisoned on this ship. It should be...but the woman was talking as if Winters and Saxon had been killed at the same time. So a year had passed for me, but not for the rest of the world. Or it had been erased, or rewritten. It hurt to think about it too hard, so for the time being I chalked it up to time fuckery. That excuse had helped explain many other situations before. The medic was still staring at me.
“I, uh, I was a person of interest.” Close enough. “I think I’m just a bit disorientated from dehydration. Those fluids you mentioned earlier will help with my cognitive skills.” That snapped her back into medic mode, and she helped me to my feet and led me down the corridor.
Unfortunately, while we walked I was able to catch my reflection in the polished walls. Long shaggy hair, and a pale gaunt face covered by permanent scruff. It was a small blessing that I was unable to grow a full Mountain Man beard; at least I was still slightly recognizable.
As we walked my thoughts turned to the others. I decided that this ship was the source of the time fuckery; the woman beside me clearly had no recollection of the missing year. She didn’t speak of Saxon with hatred, nor of the Toclafane with horror. So what of the team? If they had been held captive like myself, would they also have the same memories? If by some miracle they had remained free, would they have been caught up in the storm of forgetting? If they had been killed, would they return? It was a small hope, one that I tramped down and buried until I could prove otherwise. I had learned to mistrust hope.
“Where are we?” I asked the medic. The worry sprang back into her eyes so I added, “The ship. Where did it land?”
“Iceland,” she said. “Nearest port of call. I just happened to be doing some training at the university when the call came for English speaking medical staff. I jumped at the chance. Just though here,” she said, pointing at an open doorway with a stairway attached. I walked behind her into the bright sunlight, feeling just as helpless as I had during my twelve nonexistent months.
Chapter 7: Epilogue
Author: alex_caligari
Beta: jellybean728
Characters/Pairings: Owen Harper
Rating: 14A
Summary: Owen is captured during the Year That Never Was. He quickly finds out that the worst tortures are not the ones he expected.
Disclaimer: All puppets still firmly attached to the BBC.
Author's Notes: Torchwood/Doctor Who crossover, set during the end of S1 and S3, respectively. Nothing graphic, but things will get worse quite quickly.
Chapter 1: International Relations Chapter 2: Anonymous Chapter 3: Boredom Chapter 4: Taking the Bullet Chapter 5: Hope Chapter 6: Rejoice
The engines shut off.
The sudden absence of sound instantly put me on alert. The airship had never landed during my captivity, so something involving Saxon must have changed. He was expecting something, perhaps. The lights were off in my cell, meaning it was probably night wherever we were. The last time I had been let out of my cell we had been over France, watching the Eiffel Tower fall. We could be close to Britain. Home. The word felt foreign to me. Nothing was home anymore, not with what Saxon had done. I listened to the silence for a while, but when nothing happened, I drifted back to sleep.
I was awoken again several hours later. The engines were running again and a voice screeched out of the intercom above me. “Citizens of Earth!” Saxon’s voice announced, “rejoice and observe.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list,” I muttered. Saxon’s announcements never before reached my cell, so this one must be special. Of course, I was left blind and ignorant, as usual, so the proclamation meant nothing to me. I had long ago stopped being afraid of what would happen to me. Saxon’s mind games had worn me out, and I no longer cared what atrocity he was about to undertake. I felt broken, and knew that Saxon had won.
Soon after I heard shouting and running, and didn’t move. I didn’t want to hear another failed escape attempt, another death outside my door. Voices shouting ‘Doctor’ and ‘escape’ failed to rouse me. The best I could hope for was the ship to malfunction and take us all to the bottom of the ocean.
Different voices. Metallic, childlike. The spheres. Their voices still sent fear spilling down my spine and into my belly. They were shouting as well. “Protect the paradox! Protect the paradox!” Nothing but nonsense. For the first time I felt safe in my cell. I was separate from all the chaos outside. It was all too loud, too messy.
Another voice ran by, one that I had heard before on this ship and almost thought it was a hallucination. “I know where it is! Come on! The spheres are the least of your worries right now.”
I didn’t think I could move that fast in my weakened state. I was across the room and pounding on the door before I could think about it. “Jack!” I called. “Jack, you bastard, let me out!” One pair of boots slowed down and stopped. I waited. I heard the outer door slide back. I scrambled back as the inner door opened.
It wasn’t Jack, but a female soldier, a mid-thirties woman with wide eyes. “You better get out of here,” she said. “All hell’s breaking loose.” She bolted down the corridor without another word, leaving both doors open.
It was a trick, I thought. A test. As soon as I step out of those doors, I’ll be gunned down. I had seen this kind of thing before, in animals. Livestock trained so that even if the gate was left wide open they wouldn’t leave the pen. The apathy I had felt before stirred sluggishly. I didn’t want to be livestock.
I stepped towards the door, and the floor suddenly rocked under me. I slammed into a wall, and it was the shock I needed. I tore out of the cell and ran blindly down the corridor. Soldiers ran past me in both directions. I realized that I was running down the familiar route towards the boardroom. The months of captivity slowed me down, and I was panting as I reached the double doors. I heard voices shouting, and a strange wind had picked up. We’re going down, I thought. I heard voices shouting from inside the room, some nonsense about time reversing. I felt so weak. My legs couldn’t support me and I slid down the doors to the floor.
If we were crashing, I might as well try to find a safe place to hide. I crawled towards a hollow spot in the wall. Ianto probably could have told me the proper architectural name for it, but for me it was shelter. The wind and the shaking increased, and through a porthole, the light was shifting rapidly. Something deeply fucked up was happening, and all I could do was hang on until it was over.
Several ragged breaths later, the shaking lessened. More feet came pounding down the corridor. I looked up to see a band of soldiers round the corner, led by a man who wasn’t wearing a uniform. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and his face was covered in grime and dried blood, but he walked with strength and purpose in my direction. My breath caught as I recognized him. Jack. My captain, my salvation, my bane. He looked none the worse for his captivity, but then, no marks would show anyway. I shuddered as I thought of how Saxon might toy with him, unique as he was.
There were voices shouting from the other side of the boardroom doors, and Jack strode over to them without hesitation. He didn’t glance at me; he probably didn’t even know I was there. I had tucked myself into the smallest space I could find, and deliberately made myself hard to spot. He was already past me when my brain recovered and I tried to call out to him. “Jack.” My voice cracked. It was barely a whisper.
Jack opened the doors, and I caught a glimpse of Saxon coming the other way and nearly running into him. “Whoa, big fella,” Jack said as he gripped him by the shoulders and spun him around. “You don’t want to miss the party. Cuffs,” he said to a soldier.
I swallowed and tried again. “Jack.” A bit steadier, a bit louder. But not enough. Jack was already through the doors with Saxon and the soldiers followed him. One man at the back must have heard me because he turned and looked at me. His eyes held confusion and fear, but no recognition. He blinked, then continued after Jack.
I curled up once more and closed my eyes. I was so weak, and the adrenaline rush from earlier left me drained and exhausted. I wanted to sleep for days but was afraid that I would be sick and choke to death. No one would notice enough to help me.
Instead I listened to the voices on the other side of the doors. They were intense, and desperate, and scared, and a few were unfamiliar. I barely twitched as a gunshot rang out, wondering idly who got the bullet. The screams started after that, and the sobbing. Then everything was quiet. I stopping fighting my exhaustion and fell into blissful unconsciousness.
The sensation of stiff and sore muscles was the first thing to enter my awareness later. My wonderful state of blankness was slowly being cracked and peeled away as I felt a hand on my shoulder. Someone was shaking me. “Sir?” a voice said, but the word didn’t mean anything to me. The feeling of latex appeared at my wrist and throat. “He’s got a pulse, but it’s weak,” the voice said. “His breathing is steady.” A crackle of static in response to the words. The voice was female, professional. The latexed hand gently lifted one of my eyelids and shone a penlight into it. I flinched away from it, and the voice became more insistent. “Sir? Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”
I moaned.
The woman’s hands moved over my body checking for injuries. She asked more questions, testing my responsiveness. I recovered my senses enough to open my eyes on my own and look at her. She was dressed like a paramedic, not like one of Saxon’s grunts. When she saw I was conscious, she asked again for my name.
“Owen,” I said. It felt so distant. My name was something that belonged to the past.
“Okay, Owen,” she said. I noticed for the first time that she had an American accent. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling? Any dizziness or nausea, any pain anywhere?”
I shook my head no, which in turn caused a headache to stab behead my eyes. “No,” I clarified. “Just tired. Headache.”
“You’re very thin,” she said. “You look like you’ve been held in a cave for months. I’d like to get you back to our medical unit, get some fluids in you.” She spoke again into the radio attached to her coat, giving instructions.
There was something very odd about her speech. How else was I supposed to look? “What day is it?” I asked.
She smiled. “I thought I was supposed to ask you that. It’s September 17.”
That was the day of the attack. The Toclafane. Nepal. Ianto, Gwen, Tosh, lost to me for months. No, a full year. “How are you here?” I asked the medic. “Saxon should have his own medical staff.”
“Saxon? The Prime Minister?” She didn’t call him the Master. “Saxon’s dead.”
I froze, then grabbed the medic’s coat, surprising her with my sudden movement. “What happened? How can he be dead?”
The friendliness had gone from her. She reached behind her for her bag, likely looking to sedate me if I turned violent. “He was murdered,” she said. “So was President Winters. Saxon made it look like those Toclafane killed the president, but no one’s really sure yet who killed Saxon. Those aliens seem to have disappeared as well.” She shrugged. “Another hoax, I guess. We’re just clearing out the Valiant, making sure no one else is hurt. What are you doing here?”
I paused and thought about that. “This may be an odd question, but what year is it?”
She eyed me. “2007.”
2007? But I had passed a year imprisoned on this ship. It should be...but the woman was talking as if Winters and Saxon had been killed at the same time. So a year had passed for me, but not for the rest of the world. Or it had been erased, or rewritten. It hurt to think about it too hard, so for the time being I chalked it up to time fuckery. That excuse had helped explain many other situations before. The medic was still staring at me.
“I, uh, I was a person of interest.” Close enough. “I think I’m just a bit disorientated from dehydration. Those fluids you mentioned earlier will help with my cognitive skills.” That snapped her back into medic mode, and she helped me to my feet and led me down the corridor.
Unfortunately, while we walked I was able to catch my reflection in the polished walls. Long shaggy hair, and a pale gaunt face covered by permanent scruff. It was a small blessing that I was unable to grow a full Mountain Man beard; at least I was still slightly recognizable.
As we walked my thoughts turned to the others. I decided that this ship was the source of the time fuckery; the woman beside me clearly had no recollection of the missing year. She didn’t speak of Saxon with hatred, nor of the Toclafane with horror. So what of the team? If they had been held captive like myself, would they also have the same memories? If by some miracle they had remained free, would they have been caught up in the storm of forgetting? If they had been killed, would they return? It was a small hope, one that I tramped down and buried until I could prove otherwise. I had learned to mistrust hope.
“Where are we?” I asked the medic. The worry sprang back into her eyes so I added, “The ship. Where did it land?”
“Iceland,” she said. “Nearest port of call. I just happened to be doing some training at the university when the call came for English speaking medical staff. I jumped at the chance. Just though here,” she said, pointing at an open doorway with a stairway attached. I walked behind her into the bright sunlight, feeling just as helpless as I had during my twelve nonexistent months.
Chapter 7: Epilogue