sassy_lion: Saved By Memories [1/3] (Ten/Jack) [R]
Title: Saved By Memories (1/3)
Author: sassy_lion
Challenge: Originally started for September's Amnesia challenge, fianally posted for the Amnesty challenge.
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG (This part at least)
Word count: 3672 / ~8740 total
Spoilers: Journey's End
Summary: The Doctor gets caught by a mastermind, can he rely on an amnesiac man to help him get away?
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta cytherea999. All other mistakes are completely my own. Also, I've been really really busy these last couple of months, haven't been paying attention or writing much....
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
The Doctor's mind floated through the lyrics as his consciousness swam back in to focus. He wasn't sure where or how the lyrics were coming to him, but he could hear the music clearly. The song fit him well as of late, but he wasn't thinking about that. It hurt too much.
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
The Doctor paused. The lyrics in his head didn't match with the ones he was hearing. Whoever was singing was missing the chorus between the verses.
He finally attempted to move and found his arms chained above his head. They'd obviously been that way for a while, as he couldn't feel anything other than a twinge as he tried to move them.
Shaking off the very last of the fogginess in his mind, he finally took in his complete surroundings. Wherever he was -- he was assuming some kind of cell by the looks of the dirt floor and his arms in chains -- it was subterranean. There was a grated hole at the top of the cell; a small sliver of moonlight illuminated the area around his body.
The Doctor knew he was still on Rollatifalla. He had to be by the part of his mind that acknowledged the TARDIS was still somewhere on the planet, but quite far away. Whatever had happened, whatever he'd been given to knock him out had been extremely powerful. His internal clock had been offset as well. His mind was telling him it was currently three in the afternoon. An assumption, which was completely wrong judging by the moonlight. If he had to assume by the moonlight, it was somewhere around midnight, but he couldn't be completely sure. Rollatifalla had a similar orbit as Earth, but not quite the same so he could only assume until he could get an accurate reading of the time somewhere.
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
The Doctor looked around at that. The humming continued past the words. He couldn't see anything further than the lighted area around him. When he'd landed, he'd landed in 2333. The Beatles phenomenon wouldn't reach this planet for another 30 years. He knew because he'd been here in his second life to witness it.
He had a brief moment of panic then. If they knew the Beatles, that means he'd been here 30 years already. 30 years and no memories of the time that had past. He sucked in a deep breath, not allowing his respiratory bypass system kick in.
"You're awake then?" The humming stopped and an extremely familiar voice spoke from the darkness. But it couldn't be Jack Harkness. He would have been able to sense the ripples of time bouncing off his friend. Unless. This was a time before Jack knew the Doctor, before the disastrous incident of Satellite 5.
"Who's there?" The Doctor's voice was scratchy, suggesting he'd actually been here a lot longer than he had hoped he'd been. He was thoroughly convinced, however, that he hadn’t been here for 30 years, and that it had been Jack singing, not some other influence.
"Just me," Jack's voice called out from the darkness. The Doctor could tell that Jack was about twenty feet directly in front of him.
"Who are you?" He asked, despite knowing the answer.
What Jack spoke next shook the Doctor. He really hadn't expected the answer he'd been given. "I don't know. Somebody who's been here awhile."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I don't know myself. I've been here awhile though. I know that." Jack's voice was soft, almost too soft for the Doctor to hear.
"Did they torture you?" It was basic human psychology that if torture got too much, the brain just blocked it out. The Doctor also knew that if there was torture involved, he could handle it better than a human ever could.
Jack was silent for a minute before speaking again. "Experiments."
"Experiments? What for?" It would have possibly been easier to understand Jack being tortured rather than being experimented on.
"Don't know." Jack spoke again. "Can't remember."
"What do you remember?" The Doctor's stomach was turning knots at the thoughts of what Jack might say next. The knots grew tighter as he waited several minutes before Jack spoke again, this time quite cryptically.
"Thoughts that don't belong to me. Memories that might."
"Like?"
"Being on a spaceship the first time. Being on Earth. On a moon. A planet with two purple suns. A planet where the oceans froze in a second and stayed that way for a hundred million years. Being a woman, a man, a child, alien, human, nothing." Jack paused another moment. "The sun. The moon. The stars. Black holes. Supernovas. Life. Death. Somewhere in between.... and Eleanor Rigby."
His breath hitched and the Doctor could hear the gasps and sobs coming from Jack's direction. He could tell his friend was going insane, and he'd have to save the man who would soon enough save Rose and himself in 1945.
Someone had been testing implanting and removing memories, and they'd been testing it on poor Jack.
Before the Doctor could say anything else, the door opened and bright yellow light flooded in.
He could see Jack clearly now, his friend in awful shape. He was a lot thinner than he would be when they'd meet in 1945, his face long and drawn. His eyes told the story better than his face or his dirty torn Time Agency uniform. He was going insane.
The all too-bright eyes darted around the room as if looking for both enemies and shelter in the same moment. The Doctor could see Jack's wrists were chained as well except instead of over his head as the Doctor's were, they were chained up and outward leaving his body in a vague Y shape.
Jack tensed once he caught sight of the guards and relaxed just a bit when he realized they hadn't come from him.
The Doctor warily watched the two men. They were humanoid in shape with medium purple skin with four eyes -- two on top of the others -- and extremely long tails that looked feline in shape, but reptilian in looks.
He could see the syringe in the one guards hand. "If..." the Doctor started, causing both guards pause. "If I come willingly, will you not drug me with that needle?"
The guards looked at each other, snickered softly and the closer one plunged the needle into his neck, depressing the plunger.
The Doctor had been right. It was a powerful chemical. He felt himself being dragged into the murky depths of unconsciousness. The last thing he realized was that his arms were being loosened from their chains and his body pulled up between the two guards.
*~*
The next time the Doctor woke, it was day. Late afternoon by the looks of the shadow of the sun on the ground. Jack was not in the cell. The Doctor didn't feel any different than he had when they'd drugged him earlier, but that didn't mean anything yet. He wasn't sure what was going on here.
The Doctor took a look at his surroundings. The floor was not dirt, as he had thought, but was in fact clay. There were five other areas where the clay was significantly more packed. In each of the spots, there were three sets of rings in the wall. One set was the ones his arms were currently set in, directly above his head. Another were set in the position Jack's arms had been in. There was a third set lower than the other two, approximately where a person's hips would be. Sets of manacles were also driven into the floor.
The walls were clay as well, the room carved out to be about fifteen feet across and eight feet wide. Just enough space for six prisoners, and not much more. The door on the far north wall was metal and looked to be extremely heavy. The Doctor doubted he'd be able to get it open by himself, it looked heavy enough. Rollatifallans were well known for being strong without looking as if they should be.
The grate in the ceiling was the same heavy looking metal. There were five bars across the two foot wide area, allowing just enough sunlight in to keep sunlight dependent life forms alive.
Whoever had built this had taken extreme measures into making sure no species could escape. There were giant spikes across the top half of the ceiling, allowing any of those species that could do things such as alter their center of gravity, no hopes of escape.
It was approximately four hours after the Doctor had regained consciousness that Jack was thrown back into their shared cell. He was dazed from whatever had been done to him. The guard who'd brought him back had a hard time chaining Jack's arm to the wall with only two hands. It was obviously a two person job to place Jack back in the manacles. The Doctor had been amused for a moment watching the guard try to make Jack's arm defy gravity to keep it in the shackle above his head. His thin wrist kept sliding out. The guard gave up after a moment and simply chained Jack's feet in the shackles and securing them tightly, leaving him puddled on the floor.
“You're awake, aren't you?” The Doctor asked a few minutes later, realizing that the man was just a bit too still to be unconscious.
Jack's eyes opened quickly, shooting a glaring look at the Doctor. “So what if I am? Were you put in here to spy on me? Keep me from trying to go anywhere, as if I actually could? Maybe you were put in here to let the guards know when I'd woken up so they can come back and put me through that machine again? Is that what you were put in here for?” Jack's voice rose from one question to the next. By the time he was done, he was near screaming.
The Doctor opened his hands, trying to show he was defenseless. Not an easy thing to do when one was chained to a wall. Whatever they'd done to Jack today had made him paranoid, quick to question the motives of anyone.
“I'm not saying anything to the guards, and I'm not here to spy on you. I'm in this, same as you. You remember we talked when I was thrown in here?”
Jack looked confused for a moment, but the look fell from his face quickly enough. “You could be lying. Just saying whatever you can to get me to trust you. Find out what I know.”
“I haven't called the guards, have I?” The Doctor pointed out.
“You haven't, but it doesn't mean you won't.”
“You think I'd really have let myself be chained to a wall just to get information from you?” The Doctor realized he was getting nowhere with Jack. The man was just too paranoid at the moment to allow the Doctor to glean information on what was happening outside of this cell.
“I've seen people do worse.” Jack replied automatically.
The statement surprised the Doctor. Logically, he knew Jack had been in some tight spots while with the Time Agency. He'd admitted once, somewhat off-handed while they'd been doing repairs to the TARDIS, that he'd been court-martial for one of his partners betraying him. It had been said so casually that the Doctor had had to wonder exactly how many times Jack had sacrificed part of himself just to keep surviving. He'd forgotten that particular conversation, until now when it punched him in the stomach with guilt. He now completely understood the anger Jack was trying to hide when they'd been at the end of the universe. The Doctor was the one person he'd trusted more than himself, and then even he had betrayed him by leaving him alone on Satellite 5.
“Like what?” The Doctor spoke softly,
Jack looked at him, fear warring with confusion in his eyes. “I don't remember.”
There wasn't much more to say. Jack had gone quiet after that, his mind slipping gratefully into unconsciousness. The Doctor needed to get to the bottom of whatever was happening on Rollatifalla, sooner rather than later.
A female guard showed up just before dark, holding a white paper bag. She was a light purple skin and four eyes, but she slid gracefully into the room with two tails and long dark purple hair that was pulled to the sides of her face, weaving nicely down her back.
Without a word, she unlocked the Doctor's right hand, thrusting the paper-like bag into his lap. He fished around in the bag and found a large piece of bread, with large white crystals spread across the top. He placed the bread across the tip of his tongue. Salt and sugar. He bit into the bread, finding some kind of filling. It tasted a bit like sour lemons mixed with overly sweetened apples. He finished the bread quickly, not having realized how hungry he'd actually been. It'd probably been three days since he'd last eaten anything.
The guard leaned over and took the bag, placing it carefully into the pocket of her pants before carefully locking the Doctor's arm above his head once again. The Doctor watched as the female guard poked Jack in the shoulder - shaking him from his uneasy sleep - and threw a bag at him as well. He ate the bread with much more gusto than the Doctor had. After he finished the bread, she pocketed the paper from his meal as well and left without so much as a word to either of them.
*~*
It was almost two weeks later before the Doctor had any inkling of what was going on. He'd seen Jack in plenty of moods since the paranoid one. Anger, curiosity, doubt, surprise, contempt, shame, frustration, rage, pity, loneliness, worry and shyness. The Doctor would have laughed to see Jack Harkness shy, if it hadn't been such a dire situation.
He wasn't sure Jack's mood today, so he asked the question he'd asked thirteen times before.
“You're awake, aren't you?”
“I'm always awake after that.” Jack's voice sounded calm. He couldn't hear any of the emotions that Jack normally put in his voice. “They put too much in my head for me to sleep.” Jack shifted in the early morning light. They'd locked him once again by his arms, this time above his head as the Doctor's usually were. “If I pretend to be unconscious, the guards leave me alone, most of the time.” Jack's voice was soft, clear and still calm
The Doctor paused and began to piece together what they'd been doing to Jack, or at least what he thought they'd been doing to Jack. “Is that what they're doing? Filling your head?” He needed to know that he was on the right track, and since Jack was a bit more talkative today then he had been on previous days, the Doctor knew he needed to use his time wisely today.
“The Lord,” Jack spoke, his voice filled with sarcasm, mocking the title. The Doctor would have smiled at Jack showing emotion, but knew it wasn't the time. “Needs a filter.”
“A filter?” The Doctor was confused. A filter for what?
“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “The only person who can apparently be the filter for the Lord is me. I don't know why, but I got the job.” Jack was still calmly explaining. After all the emotions he'd seen Jack go through, this was the most frightening one. Complete utter calmness, almost numbness as if he'd accepted his fate as a human guinea pig.
Two guards came in then, brandishing another syringe as they had twelve times before. The Doctor closed his eyes, not even attempting to contrive an excuse of why they shouldn't inject him. He felt the needle a moment later and felt himself be tugged into unconsciousness once again, albeit a lot slower than the first time they'd given him that compound. He'd been working his body chemistry into separating the components, making the compound less effective as time wore on. Soon, he'd be able to shut down all the effects, but not just yet.
*~*
He woke again several hours later, as they were placing him back into the cell. He could tell one of the guards was holding his wrist up as the other snapped the manacle in place. A few more times and the Doctor was sure he could negate the entire solution within his body. He only had to have patience.
Jack was groaning. He could hear the two guards move to the opposite side of the room and unlock his manacles. Jack's feet dragged across the floor, fighting where he was going with every step they were forcing him to take.
The Doctor tugged on the chains, feeling beyond helpless at his current situation. It had been a long time since he'd been in such a predicament that he couldn't see a way out. The people who ran this operation were extremely thorough in making sure their captives had no way of escape. He was drugged before he was unchained, the drugs were extremely potent -- making sure he wasn't anywhere near conscious until well after he'd been placed back in the cell. When Jack was taken, there were two guards at all times. When he was brought back, he was already heavily drugged making him unwilling to resist, even against the one guard that was assigned to bring him back.
When they were fed, it was one at a time. The guard that brought the food was always a female, she always made sure that only one hand at a time was uncuffed and he and Jack were watched carefully. Jack had tried once to resist when one of his hands had been unchained and the guard had swiftly pushed her foot into his groin, stifling any protests Jack might have had.
There was a sudden loud racket coming from down the hall. It was loud enough that the Doctor could hear it through the door. He couldn't identify the voice, but the door opened a minute later and the voice was identified as Jack's.
The Doctor estimated that it had been less than two hours since Jack had left the cell, nowhere near the amount of time he was usually gone.
Over the last two weeks, he'd become extremely familiar with the pattern. The Doctor would be sedated and taken away. He'd estimated unconsciousness being four to five hours at a time. When he was brought back, most of the time Jack was taken within the hour. Jack would be gone anywhere from four to eight hours. Twelve to sixteen hours later, the process was repeated.
The Doctor tried to decipher exactly what Jack was screaming about, but it was too unintelligible.
The two guards forced Jack back to his area of the cell, Jack fighting the entire way by digging his heels into the clay and forcing all of his weight down. It took all their strength to get him across the room. When they managed, he fought more by shifting his hands and forcing them away as they tried to chain him. After they cuffed one of his hands (which took all four of theirs), Jack swung out with the other when the guard made the mistake of easing the pressure off his wrist just a fraction. The arm swung out and Jack's fist managed to catch the guard who'd let him go right in the rib cage. He went down wheezing and holding the area.
The Doctor watched as the other guard turned a dark purple color and lashed out against Jack with his tail. The tail wrapped around Jack's throat, squeezing enough for Jack to lose consciousness in a matter of seconds. He slumped over quietly.
The guard placed Jack's now non-resisting hand back into the shackle, tightening it quickly. The other guard had recovered enough to continue the job and chained both of Jack's feet to the floor. The door slammed loudly as the two guards left, frustration evident on their faces.
Long minutes passed. The Doctor logically knew that Jack was still alive, but the lack of any real movement on Jack's part made the Doctor worry. A sharp inhale followed by a deep cough five minutes later made the Doctor sigh with relief.
Jack tested his chains hesitantly before looking up and noticing the Doctor. He laughed humorlessly. "I broke that damn machine," he replied, his voice soft but overtly smug.
The Doctor saw his opportunity to escape at that moment. "Jack," the Doctor spoke softly.
Jack looked up, his eyes showing his confusion. "Jack?" he repeated.
The Doctor would have shrugged if he could. "Jack sounded good for someone who couldn't remember his own name." The Doctor realized he'd never actually called Jack by the name he'd known him by for so long in all the weeks they'd been in this hellhole.
Jack nodded. "It's a good name."
"Now," the Doctor smiled brightly, hopeful for the first time in weeks. "I've got a plan to get us out..."
*~*
"Guards!" Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. The Doctor cringed slightly at how loud Jack could actually yell. "Guards!"
The guards never appeared.
"Well, that was a bust."
*~*
Part 2
Author: sassy_lion
Challenge: Originally started for September's Amnesia challenge, fianally posted for the Amnesty challenge.
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG (This part at least)
Word count: 3672 / ~8740 total
Spoilers: Journey's End
Summary: The Doctor gets caught by a mastermind, can he rely on an amnesiac man to help him get away?
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta cytherea999. All other mistakes are completely my own. Also, I've been really really busy these last couple of months, haven't been paying attention or writing much....
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
The Doctor's mind floated through the lyrics as his consciousness swam back in to focus. He wasn't sure where or how the lyrics were coming to him, but he could hear the music clearly. The song fit him well as of late, but he wasn't thinking about that. It hurt too much.
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
The Doctor paused. The lyrics in his head didn't match with the ones he was hearing. Whoever was singing was missing the chorus between the verses.
He finally attempted to move and found his arms chained above his head. They'd obviously been that way for a while, as he couldn't feel anything other than a twinge as he tried to move them.
Shaking off the very last of the fogginess in his mind, he finally took in his complete surroundings. Wherever he was -- he was assuming some kind of cell by the looks of the dirt floor and his arms in chains -- it was subterranean. There was a grated hole at the top of the cell; a small sliver of moonlight illuminated the area around his body.
The Doctor knew he was still on Rollatifalla. He had to be by the part of his mind that acknowledged the TARDIS was still somewhere on the planet, but quite far away. Whatever had happened, whatever he'd been given to knock him out had been extremely powerful. His internal clock had been offset as well. His mind was telling him it was currently three in the afternoon. An assumption, which was completely wrong judging by the moonlight. If he had to assume by the moonlight, it was somewhere around midnight, but he couldn't be completely sure. Rollatifalla had a similar orbit as Earth, but not quite the same so he could only assume until he could get an accurate reading of the time somewhere.
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
The Doctor looked around at that. The humming continued past the words. He couldn't see anything further than the lighted area around him. When he'd landed, he'd landed in 2333. The Beatles phenomenon wouldn't reach this planet for another 30 years. He knew because he'd been here in his second life to witness it.
He had a brief moment of panic then. If they knew the Beatles, that means he'd been here 30 years already. 30 years and no memories of the time that had past. He sucked in a deep breath, not allowing his respiratory bypass system kick in.
"You're awake then?" The humming stopped and an extremely familiar voice spoke from the darkness. But it couldn't be Jack Harkness. He would have been able to sense the ripples of time bouncing off his friend. Unless. This was a time before Jack knew the Doctor, before the disastrous incident of Satellite 5.
"Who's there?" The Doctor's voice was scratchy, suggesting he'd actually been here a lot longer than he had hoped he'd been. He was thoroughly convinced, however, that he hadn’t been here for 30 years, and that it had been Jack singing, not some other influence.
"Just me," Jack's voice called out from the darkness. The Doctor could tell that Jack was about twenty feet directly in front of him.
"Who are you?" He asked, despite knowing the answer.
What Jack spoke next shook the Doctor. He really hadn't expected the answer he'd been given. "I don't know. Somebody who's been here awhile."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I don't know myself. I've been here awhile though. I know that." Jack's voice was soft, almost too soft for the Doctor to hear.
"Did they torture you?" It was basic human psychology that if torture got too much, the brain just blocked it out. The Doctor also knew that if there was torture involved, he could handle it better than a human ever could.
Jack was silent for a minute before speaking again. "Experiments."
"Experiments? What for?" It would have possibly been easier to understand Jack being tortured rather than being experimented on.
"Don't know." Jack spoke again. "Can't remember."
"What do you remember?" The Doctor's stomach was turning knots at the thoughts of what Jack might say next. The knots grew tighter as he waited several minutes before Jack spoke again, this time quite cryptically.
"Thoughts that don't belong to me. Memories that might."
"Like?"
"Being on a spaceship the first time. Being on Earth. On a moon. A planet with two purple suns. A planet where the oceans froze in a second and stayed that way for a hundred million years. Being a woman, a man, a child, alien, human, nothing." Jack paused another moment. "The sun. The moon. The stars. Black holes. Supernovas. Life. Death. Somewhere in between.... and Eleanor Rigby."
His breath hitched and the Doctor could hear the gasps and sobs coming from Jack's direction. He could tell his friend was going insane, and he'd have to save the man who would soon enough save Rose and himself in 1945.
Someone had been testing implanting and removing memories, and they'd been testing it on poor Jack.
Before the Doctor could say anything else, the door opened and bright yellow light flooded in.
He could see Jack clearly now, his friend in awful shape. He was a lot thinner than he would be when they'd meet in 1945, his face long and drawn. His eyes told the story better than his face or his dirty torn Time Agency uniform. He was going insane.
The all too-bright eyes darted around the room as if looking for both enemies and shelter in the same moment. The Doctor could see Jack's wrists were chained as well except instead of over his head as the Doctor's were, they were chained up and outward leaving his body in a vague Y shape.
Jack tensed once he caught sight of the guards and relaxed just a bit when he realized they hadn't come from him.
The Doctor warily watched the two men. They were humanoid in shape with medium purple skin with four eyes -- two on top of the others -- and extremely long tails that looked feline in shape, but reptilian in looks.
He could see the syringe in the one guards hand. "If..." the Doctor started, causing both guards pause. "If I come willingly, will you not drug me with that needle?"
The guards looked at each other, snickered softly and the closer one plunged the needle into his neck, depressing the plunger.
The Doctor had been right. It was a powerful chemical. He felt himself being dragged into the murky depths of unconsciousness. The last thing he realized was that his arms were being loosened from their chains and his body pulled up between the two guards.
*~*
The next time the Doctor woke, it was day. Late afternoon by the looks of the shadow of the sun on the ground. Jack was not in the cell. The Doctor didn't feel any different than he had when they'd drugged him earlier, but that didn't mean anything yet. He wasn't sure what was going on here.
The Doctor took a look at his surroundings. The floor was not dirt, as he had thought, but was in fact clay. There were five other areas where the clay was significantly more packed. In each of the spots, there were three sets of rings in the wall. One set was the ones his arms were currently set in, directly above his head. Another were set in the position Jack's arms had been in. There was a third set lower than the other two, approximately where a person's hips would be. Sets of manacles were also driven into the floor.
The walls were clay as well, the room carved out to be about fifteen feet across and eight feet wide. Just enough space for six prisoners, and not much more. The door on the far north wall was metal and looked to be extremely heavy. The Doctor doubted he'd be able to get it open by himself, it looked heavy enough. Rollatifallans were well known for being strong without looking as if they should be.
The grate in the ceiling was the same heavy looking metal. There were five bars across the two foot wide area, allowing just enough sunlight in to keep sunlight dependent life forms alive.
Whoever had built this had taken extreme measures into making sure no species could escape. There were giant spikes across the top half of the ceiling, allowing any of those species that could do things such as alter their center of gravity, no hopes of escape.
It was approximately four hours after the Doctor had regained consciousness that Jack was thrown back into their shared cell. He was dazed from whatever had been done to him. The guard who'd brought him back had a hard time chaining Jack's arm to the wall with only two hands. It was obviously a two person job to place Jack back in the manacles. The Doctor had been amused for a moment watching the guard try to make Jack's arm defy gravity to keep it in the shackle above his head. His thin wrist kept sliding out. The guard gave up after a moment and simply chained Jack's feet in the shackles and securing them tightly, leaving him puddled on the floor.
“You're awake, aren't you?” The Doctor asked a few minutes later, realizing that the man was just a bit too still to be unconscious.
Jack's eyes opened quickly, shooting a glaring look at the Doctor. “So what if I am? Were you put in here to spy on me? Keep me from trying to go anywhere, as if I actually could? Maybe you were put in here to let the guards know when I'd woken up so they can come back and put me through that machine again? Is that what you were put in here for?” Jack's voice rose from one question to the next. By the time he was done, he was near screaming.
The Doctor opened his hands, trying to show he was defenseless. Not an easy thing to do when one was chained to a wall. Whatever they'd done to Jack today had made him paranoid, quick to question the motives of anyone.
“I'm not saying anything to the guards, and I'm not here to spy on you. I'm in this, same as you. You remember we talked when I was thrown in here?”
Jack looked confused for a moment, but the look fell from his face quickly enough. “You could be lying. Just saying whatever you can to get me to trust you. Find out what I know.”
“I haven't called the guards, have I?” The Doctor pointed out.
“You haven't, but it doesn't mean you won't.”
“You think I'd really have let myself be chained to a wall just to get information from you?” The Doctor realized he was getting nowhere with Jack. The man was just too paranoid at the moment to allow the Doctor to glean information on what was happening outside of this cell.
“I've seen people do worse.” Jack replied automatically.
The statement surprised the Doctor. Logically, he knew Jack had been in some tight spots while with the Time Agency. He'd admitted once, somewhat off-handed while they'd been doing repairs to the TARDIS, that he'd been court-martial for one of his partners betraying him. It had been said so casually that the Doctor had had to wonder exactly how many times Jack had sacrificed part of himself just to keep surviving. He'd forgotten that particular conversation, until now when it punched him in the stomach with guilt. He now completely understood the anger Jack was trying to hide when they'd been at the end of the universe. The Doctor was the one person he'd trusted more than himself, and then even he had betrayed him by leaving him alone on Satellite 5.
“Like what?” The Doctor spoke softly,
Jack looked at him, fear warring with confusion in his eyes. “I don't remember.”
There wasn't much more to say. Jack had gone quiet after that, his mind slipping gratefully into unconsciousness. The Doctor needed to get to the bottom of whatever was happening on Rollatifalla, sooner rather than later.
A female guard showed up just before dark, holding a white paper bag. She was a light purple skin and four eyes, but she slid gracefully into the room with two tails and long dark purple hair that was pulled to the sides of her face, weaving nicely down her back.
Without a word, she unlocked the Doctor's right hand, thrusting the paper-like bag into his lap. He fished around in the bag and found a large piece of bread, with large white crystals spread across the top. He placed the bread across the tip of his tongue. Salt and sugar. He bit into the bread, finding some kind of filling. It tasted a bit like sour lemons mixed with overly sweetened apples. He finished the bread quickly, not having realized how hungry he'd actually been. It'd probably been three days since he'd last eaten anything.
The guard leaned over and took the bag, placing it carefully into the pocket of her pants before carefully locking the Doctor's arm above his head once again. The Doctor watched as the female guard poked Jack in the shoulder - shaking him from his uneasy sleep - and threw a bag at him as well. He ate the bread with much more gusto than the Doctor had. After he finished the bread, she pocketed the paper from his meal as well and left without so much as a word to either of them.
*~*
It was almost two weeks later before the Doctor had any inkling of what was going on. He'd seen Jack in plenty of moods since the paranoid one. Anger, curiosity, doubt, surprise, contempt, shame, frustration, rage, pity, loneliness, worry and shyness. The Doctor would have laughed to see Jack Harkness shy, if it hadn't been such a dire situation.
He wasn't sure Jack's mood today, so he asked the question he'd asked thirteen times before.
“You're awake, aren't you?”
“I'm always awake after that.” Jack's voice sounded calm. He couldn't hear any of the emotions that Jack normally put in his voice. “They put too much in my head for me to sleep.” Jack shifted in the early morning light. They'd locked him once again by his arms, this time above his head as the Doctor's usually were. “If I pretend to be unconscious, the guards leave me alone, most of the time.” Jack's voice was soft, clear and still calm
The Doctor paused and began to piece together what they'd been doing to Jack, or at least what he thought they'd been doing to Jack. “Is that what they're doing? Filling your head?” He needed to know that he was on the right track, and since Jack was a bit more talkative today then he had been on previous days, the Doctor knew he needed to use his time wisely today.
“The Lord,” Jack spoke, his voice filled with sarcasm, mocking the title. The Doctor would have smiled at Jack showing emotion, but knew it wasn't the time. “Needs a filter.”
“A filter?” The Doctor was confused. A filter for what?
“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “The only person who can apparently be the filter for the Lord is me. I don't know why, but I got the job.” Jack was still calmly explaining. After all the emotions he'd seen Jack go through, this was the most frightening one. Complete utter calmness, almost numbness as if he'd accepted his fate as a human guinea pig.
Two guards came in then, brandishing another syringe as they had twelve times before. The Doctor closed his eyes, not even attempting to contrive an excuse of why they shouldn't inject him. He felt the needle a moment later and felt himself be tugged into unconsciousness once again, albeit a lot slower than the first time they'd given him that compound. He'd been working his body chemistry into separating the components, making the compound less effective as time wore on. Soon, he'd be able to shut down all the effects, but not just yet.
*~*
He woke again several hours later, as they were placing him back into the cell. He could tell one of the guards was holding his wrist up as the other snapped the manacle in place. A few more times and the Doctor was sure he could negate the entire solution within his body. He only had to have patience.
Jack was groaning. He could hear the two guards move to the opposite side of the room and unlock his manacles. Jack's feet dragged across the floor, fighting where he was going with every step they were forcing him to take.
The Doctor tugged on the chains, feeling beyond helpless at his current situation. It had been a long time since he'd been in such a predicament that he couldn't see a way out. The people who ran this operation were extremely thorough in making sure their captives had no way of escape. He was drugged before he was unchained, the drugs were extremely potent -- making sure he wasn't anywhere near conscious until well after he'd been placed back in the cell. When Jack was taken, there were two guards at all times. When he was brought back, he was already heavily drugged making him unwilling to resist, even against the one guard that was assigned to bring him back.
When they were fed, it was one at a time. The guard that brought the food was always a female, she always made sure that only one hand at a time was uncuffed and he and Jack were watched carefully. Jack had tried once to resist when one of his hands had been unchained and the guard had swiftly pushed her foot into his groin, stifling any protests Jack might have had.
There was a sudden loud racket coming from down the hall. It was loud enough that the Doctor could hear it through the door. He couldn't identify the voice, but the door opened a minute later and the voice was identified as Jack's.
The Doctor estimated that it had been less than two hours since Jack had left the cell, nowhere near the amount of time he was usually gone.
Over the last two weeks, he'd become extremely familiar with the pattern. The Doctor would be sedated and taken away. He'd estimated unconsciousness being four to five hours at a time. When he was brought back, most of the time Jack was taken within the hour. Jack would be gone anywhere from four to eight hours. Twelve to sixteen hours later, the process was repeated.
The Doctor tried to decipher exactly what Jack was screaming about, but it was too unintelligible.
The two guards forced Jack back to his area of the cell, Jack fighting the entire way by digging his heels into the clay and forcing all of his weight down. It took all their strength to get him across the room. When they managed, he fought more by shifting his hands and forcing them away as they tried to chain him. After they cuffed one of his hands (which took all four of theirs), Jack swung out with the other when the guard made the mistake of easing the pressure off his wrist just a fraction. The arm swung out and Jack's fist managed to catch the guard who'd let him go right in the rib cage. He went down wheezing and holding the area.
The Doctor watched as the other guard turned a dark purple color and lashed out against Jack with his tail. The tail wrapped around Jack's throat, squeezing enough for Jack to lose consciousness in a matter of seconds. He slumped over quietly.
The guard placed Jack's now non-resisting hand back into the shackle, tightening it quickly. The other guard had recovered enough to continue the job and chained both of Jack's feet to the floor. The door slammed loudly as the two guards left, frustration evident on their faces.
Long minutes passed. The Doctor logically knew that Jack was still alive, but the lack of any real movement on Jack's part made the Doctor worry. A sharp inhale followed by a deep cough five minutes later made the Doctor sigh with relief.
Jack tested his chains hesitantly before looking up and noticing the Doctor. He laughed humorlessly. "I broke that damn machine," he replied, his voice soft but overtly smug.
The Doctor saw his opportunity to escape at that moment. "Jack," the Doctor spoke softly.
Jack looked up, his eyes showing his confusion. "Jack?" he repeated.
The Doctor would have shrugged if he could. "Jack sounded good for someone who couldn't remember his own name." The Doctor realized he'd never actually called Jack by the name he'd known him by for so long in all the weeks they'd been in this hellhole.
Jack nodded. "It's a good name."
"Now," the Doctor smiled brightly, hopeful for the first time in weeks. "I've got a plan to get us out..."
*~*
"Guards!" Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. The Doctor cringed slightly at how loud Jack could actually yell. "Guards!"
The guards never appeared.
"Well, that was a bust."
*~*
Part 2