Fic: The Oncoming Storm (Slash, AU, Janto 38/40 Act 4/5 Part 1)
Author: d8rkmessngr
Pairing: Jack/OMC, Jack/?, Jack/Ianto eventually, het and slash
Rating: NC-17 (betaed)
Summary: He left Jack on the game station. Abandoned. But then…he came back…different. An AU look on what happens if things happened differently. Doctor Who 'verse with Torchwood later on. Be sure to read the warnings.
Warnings: Please read each chapter's individual warnings. Some parts down the road may briefly mention non-con, abuse, and/or violence. Dark in the beginning. Please note there are some dark thoughts as my boys are broken…for now. Each chapter will be labeled for your convenience.
Author's Notes: I always believe in happy endings. I'm trying something new, in giving our boy some comfort, at the suggestion of mrwubbles. Note that italicized passage is a flashback.
Disclaimer: RTD and BBC owns them. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Warning For This Chapter: strong language, dark, angsty, VIOLENCE
Notes For This Chapter: Note there are events here that was referenced in DW's "The Sound of Drums"
Prologue + Ch , Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18. Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32, Ch 33, Ch 34, Ch 35, Ch 36 Ch 37, Ch 38 Act 1/5, Ch 38 Act 2/5, Ch 38 Act 3/5
Master Fic List: here
Chapter 38 "The Year That Never Was"
Act IV 1/2
Valiant
Two weeks later…
Lucy was sitting in her chair on the bridge when Harry returned, once more looking very frustrated and oddly subdued. He smiled briefly at her, gave the bridge a cursory glance before he stared out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Lucy studied his back, her lips pursed.
It was different from the erratic swings of murderous madness to almost frightening glee which occurred before every time he returned from him.
She wasn't sure she liked the change.
"Come on, Gramps, how about some checkers, hm?"
Harry, bored with staring out the window at what remained of Russia, at the multiple rockets that stood like porcupine hairs on the surface, diverted his attentions to the Doctor sitting inside his tent on the lower floor. Harry was on his knees, peering into the tent. He slapped his palms in that odd tempo he often favored on the floor, whistling as if beckoning a dog.
"No? Pity, I was going to tell you another daily adventure of the Master and his Companion."
Lucy lowered her head. As she watched her husband-no, Harry wanted her to call him Master now-prattle on to the defeated Doctor through the tent opening, Lucy bunched her hands into fists on her lap.
"…endless power, this time vortex. To think you left it untapped. You even ran away from it!" Harry rocked back on his heels and threw his head back in laughter. "I, from the last great war with the Daleks and you, from your very own Companion! I wonder if this was part of our curriculum in the Academy I'd forgotten. 'Instruction on Running Away, Level one'?"
"How do you know about that?"
Lucy smirked to herself when the Doctor broke his self-imposed silence. It was a reed-thin voice that escaped out of the tent. Harry looked so pleased, Lucy didn't chastise the two Jones females when they stopped what they were doing to stare.
Harry winked at her, rose to his feet and dropped into a chair backwards.
"Why, our Captain told me." Harry's hand went up like a puppet and made it mouth his words. "Quite a chatterbox, really. Yap, yap, yap. Couldn’t shut him up the normal way."
Lucy looked away at Harry's smug sneer and swallowed.
"You're lying." The Doctor sounded stunned, his voice unsteady, but it strengthened in the next breath. "He didn't know about that. He wouldn't have told you."
"Oh, sure, now he doesn't know about it." Harry chuckled darkly. "Shame on you, keeping secrets from your companions. I'll have to tell him."
"Leave him alone."
Even weakened with age forced upon him, the Doctor's voice carried a tone that ordered he was not to be ignored. Even Harry paused for a moment, but he recovered with a fury in his eyes that made Lucy cringe even from afar.
"I leave him alone? Like you did?" Harry hissed. "I came back for him when no one else would."
Lucy stared out of the porthole she sat under. She missed the violet tear in the sky and its waterfall of their children falling out of darkness and into the light Harry created for them. The endless unblemished blue sky grated her, like fingernails scratching her skin constantly.
"Why him?"
Yes, Lucy thought as she settled her hand on the porthole glass. It was a very good question.
"He absorbed the time vortex, one of your companions, and contributed to my downfall in your name." Harry stood from his chair. Abruptly, he gave the chair a kick and it loudly collided with the young Jones girl, Pish or something like that. She started, giving a pitiful cry when it struck her in the back of her knees. She buried her face in her mother's shoulder.
"I am here to return the favor,' Harry breathed. His hands smoothed down his suit. "Your downfall, in my name now. A tool in my plan, nothing more."
"Liar."
The word was low as an exhale but sharp as a dagger. Lucy flinched. Everyone around Harry did.
Harry seemed to ignite with a fury Lucy hadn't seen in a long time. She reveled in it, yet feared it at the same time.
"What?" Harry hissed.
"It might have been your original plan, but something's changed, hasn't it? Something even you can't understand."
The Doctor's tone was calm, knowing. It spoke with a certainty that infuriated Harry.
"You need him to hear the drumming."
Lucy's breath froze in her chest.
"I. Do. Not. Need. Him," the Master snarled. Lucy shrank back in her seat.
"It must have been hard for you, to realize you were the only one who could hear it, the only one who knew what the drumming meant. Here you are, trying to get him to hear it like you can and he can't."
"Oh, he heard it all right," the Master breathed. Lucy watched as he approached the tent. From her perch, she couldn't see the Doctor but the Pish girl cringed, her eyes riveted to them.
"He heard me and stopped you."
Lucy smirked.
"But that was all."
Lucy's smile faded the same time Harry's did.
"And now he's fighting you, isn't he? He's denying you the vortex in him."
"There are other ways to get it," Harry snapped. He looked up, seeking Lucy. His smile, however, was a pale copy of before.
"But you're not using them, are you?"
"Harry?" Lucy called out in a hushed voice. She felt numb all over.
Her Harry said nothing. When he looked away from her, it felt like she was staring into the darkness of Utopia again.
"Let me help you," the Doctor whispered. "What you're doing, what you're feeding on, it's driving you to madness. The drumming won't go away. Not like this. None of this will help. Only if you stop."
Harry stared hard down at the tent. He looked away, his eyes unreadable.
"You're wrong," Harry seethed. He narrowed his eyes, turned back and sneered. "Wasn't that what you told him?"
"I never did," the Doctor protested weakly out of the tent.
Harry stared at the Doctor with what looked like pity. "Ah, but you did. You just don't know it yet."
The Doctor fell silent.
"Nothing more to say?" Harry sniffed. He gestured with two fingers in the air. The older Jones woman brought back the chair for Harry to sit down on. He clasped his hands together and touched his pursed lips.
"Well then, you're a boring conversationalist. Whatever happened to that endless prattle? Shame. I'm always the one to carry the party." Harry threw up his arms. "Ah, well, where were we last time? Ah yes, Malcassairo! Meeting the Malmooth. Very tragic. Such painful memories there. I cut my hand when we were visiting-Ooh, did I mention their race died out because of a genetic mutation? Very sad. Very sad." Harry tapped his chin, deep in thought.
"Where was I? Oh yes. My Captain," Harry chuckled low.
Lucy couldn't hear any more. She got up from her seat, trembling, but took great care to go down the stairs as steadily as possible.
"I'll be in our chambers," Lucy announced, grateful her voice was steady even as her very skin vibrated.
Harry never looked up. He just nodded, his eyes fixed on the dark opening through the ratty tent flap. Lucy could see worn trainers out of the shadows. She could see a quiet gaze, too alert and too knowing for his physical age. Lucy turned away. She stared straight ahead, ignored the maids around her and aimed for the door.
"…he was just sleeping there, couldn't…"
It was fortunate the guards with their blank obedient faces opened the doors otherwise she surely would have flung them open herself. As they shut behind her with a subdued thud, fury bubbled up her throat, her skin shrank around her and it took everything in her power not to run.
"Vanilla."
Jack snorted and pointed at Ianto with his fork from his seat on the sofa. "You? Yeah, right. More like that mocha fudge chocolate chip ripple thing you like."
Ianto sat on Owen's chair with the magazine on his lap. "That's not one of the choices," he chided. Ianto propped his feet up on another chair and took great care to iron out the wrinkles on his trousers and the unbuttoned shirt he wore with his hands.
Jack smiled at Ianto. "Only you can look that good in your bare feet."
"Thank you," Ianto murmured, his cheeks pink as he cast an amused look his way. "And only you can look that comfortable having cake, sitting on the couch." Ianto's brow arched high. "Naked," Ianto drawled. He folded his arms in front of his chest.
"What is it with you? I'm dressed!" Jack spread his arms wide and there it was, a full-blown blush from Mr. Ianto Jones.
"In your coat!"
"You said it was cold and that I should wear my coat!" Jack stared pointedly down at himself.
"I meant along with your clothes, not just!" Not really angry, but his face flushed as if he were, Ianto dropped his gaze to his reading material again.
Jack licked his fork clean of the butter pecan frosting and he stared at Ianto, shirtless, balanced between two seats, and blinking blearily at the magazine on his lap.
"You know," Jack murmured, "You don't have to stay up with me. I told you. I don't sleep much."
"Not if you keep eating cake at three ten in the morning," Ianto scoffed. He yawned behind a fist.
Jack chuckled and thought about how Ianto's hair was still stuck up on the right due to sleeping spooned behind Jack with all the warmth of a blanket.
"You should go back to sleep," Jack told him. He smiled at Ianto. Watching Ianto squinting sleepily at the magazine, it struck Jack how young Ianto really was. How he should be somewhere else. Yet Jack couldn't imagine Ianto anywhere else. God, he was a selfish bastard.
Ianto looked up at Jack. "Are you coming?" He cocked his head to the side and studied Jack. Ianto shook his head. "Then, no, thank you." He made a big show of turning the page. "Just answer the question please. Vanilla or chocolate?"
"Ianto-"
"Vanilla or chocolate?" Ianto insisted.
Jack sighed, giving up because they had had this conversation-not the vanilla/chocolate one-far too many times and he still had yet to catch Ianto napping by his desk.
"Vanilla," Jack decided quickly. "I guess I am a vanilla then."
"Really? That doesn't seem like you."
"Okay, chocolate!"
Ianto pursed his lips. "Nope. At least not just that. Maybe both."
Jack waved his fork at him. "Now who's cheating? That's not a choice there. You can't choose both."
"Why not?" Ianto looked cross.
Jack stared. "Because the quiz says to pick the most appropriate."
"Which were both." Ianto closed the magazine and stared at Jack, his fatigue suddenly gone. "You shouldn't feel like you can only choose one, Jack."
It was strange to be watched with such intensity yet so devoid of disgust. Jack stared at his cake and pushed his fork down on the dessert.
"Those are not the rules, Ianto," Jack muttered. He set the plate aside, his appetite lost.
"Sod the rules."
"Easier said than done," Jack sighed. "You can't have both."
"Well apparently you can have your cake," Ianto gestured towards Jack with the magazine rolled up, "and eat it too." He bared his teeth at Jack. "I see nothing wrong with that."
Jack stared at the cheeky grin. He laughed but a part of him couldn't. "You are a fool."
"Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who follows him?" Ianto quipped.
Jack laughed harder. He reveled in the sensation warm in his chest. "What are you? A fortune cookie?"
Ianto chuckled and he shook his head, smiling. "Never mind. Are you coming back to bed or not?"
"Do I have a choice?"
Ianto suddenly looked very serious. "Always. You always have a choice." Suddenly he smiled, his eyes warm and brighter than any star he knew. "One is your cake, the other is me in your bed."
Jack stuck the fork in his mouth and gave it some thought. He grinned, his brow waggling.
"How about cake, on you, in my bed?"
Ianto never said anything but the red flush on his skin didn't look to be from modesty. He sat there, tracking Jack as Jack drew closer. Ianto took the plate from Jack's hand, took an inch of sleeve and steered for his office and the hatchway.
"By the way…why the hell did Owen have a Cosmopolitan magazine in his desk?"
"I haven't the faintest."
Jack could still taste the sweet and salty tang of butter pecan and Ianto's skin in his mouth when the first cut jerked him out from memory, dream, or whatever it was that could feel so good to be in it, bitter and raw out of it. Jack kept his eyes closed. Somehow, it doesn't hurt as much this way.
Another slice. This time, near the bony ridge of his hip. Fire crawled up his skin.
Aw crap, the Master's Lucy. Great, back for her next session. First the Master comes in here, sitting and talking most of the time after trying to pare off whatever was renewing inside him and now his wife playing sushi chef. What was he, their marriage counselor?
Jack could feel her knees on either side of him. Lucy Saxon straddled him, had yanked his clothes up under his arms, her claws digging into his chest. Her body felt like it was shaking with an odd mix of grief, rage and fear.
It was hard to try to not struggle under Lucy, her hair unraveling and cascading over her face and brushing up against his face like cobwebs.
Jack clenched his teeth at the next cut. He could feel the chains on his wrists grow taut as he pulled, but Lucy Saxon never took notice. She was apparently too determined to carve him out of his skin to perceive anything else.
One cut, closer to a stab, but only deep enough to scorch his nerves but not numb his body, made his eyes fly open. Jack couldn't stop himself from groaning. White light flared when his eyes opened. What greeted him was insanity.
Lucy's normally pale skin was flushed. She looked strangely seductive in the black silk dress she wore, practically glowing under the blinding light, her exposed arms waving wildly as she clutched a six inch dagger with both hands high in the air. She acted like she wasn't sure if she wanted to cut him or herself. Her eyes were wide, brighter in their starkness and unseeing as she thrashed on top of him like in some kind of fit.
Madness, Jack thought as he fought not to react to her shrill screaming, actually suited her.
"…searched forever. I gave up my face, my life for him. Me. And all he could think about is his Companion."
Ouch, Jack thought as he flexed his arms and kept yanking at the chains. He could feel one bolt pop in his right chain. Almost. Damn it, just a little more. He didn't want to get skewered before he finished.
"…was changing the universe, said we would reshape the darkness from returning. But he no longer wants my help, he's hungered for the vortex, he will become the vortex, and he only now wants what I can't give."
His left chain quivered before it became completely slack.
"I fed off the vortex. I saw all of creation, saw what he saw, but I didn't hear the drumming. I couldn't. It wasn't good enough!"
Lucy was still screaming. Jack had a feeling she was like this every time she had been here before.
His right chain shook after he pulled with his shoulder. The chain jerked then loosened as well.
"He says you can hear the drumming," Lucy whispered, her body stilling. Jack didn't like the fact she stopped shaking. She raised her dagger high above her head. "I wonder if you can still hear it if I cut your heart out."
Jack bunched his hands into fists and looked right at her.
"Probably not," Jack quipped.
Lucy's eyes widened when she realized Jack's eyes were focused on her with clarity. She hissed, her face contorted with rage. With a shriek, her dagger sailed downwards towards him.
Jack yanked his arms forward. Bolts exploded out of the wall behind him just as his hands caught the dagger right at the hilt, his metal manacles catching the tip a hair's breath from his chest.
"Guards! Gu-"
A short cuff snapped her head back. Lucy dropped over his body without another word.
Jack's chest heaved. He winced as Lucy rolled off him, landing prone on the other side of the bed.
Jack felt behind him and the crystal Tosh had pried out weeks before fell easily into his hand. Jack pulled it around to stare at it. The thin wire Tosh said it was connected to was gone, but the crystal no longer sparkled due to the blood caked around it. He made a face and crushed the square glass between two fingers. He clapped his hands together to wipe the disgusting debris off. He looked at Lucy, slumped senseless on the bed. Jack grimaced. He shook his fists. The chains still connected to his cuffs rattled lightly.
"Doesn't matter what century," Jack muttered as he made a face at Lucy, "that was just so wrong."
It was all Jack could spare for Lucy. There was too much at stake hinging on his escape to worry about common decency. He grabbed the blood tipped dagger from her limp hands and began working on getting his thick bindings off.
Clive hoped the time was getting close and looked for a sign from Toshiko Sato when she came down to help him in the engines every morning. He looked forward to her visits to help him sort out the multitude of controls and gauges. Even though they weren't allowed to talk to each other, she was still welcome company.
This morning, Toshiko touched the side of her nose. Three times.
Clive nodded to her before Saxon's guards took her to her next task. His gut tightened when he realized this was it. All those nights promising his family that this will end soon. To know it was close enough to taste made his hands shake as he mopped the floor, swishing greasy water around on the grimy floor. His fists nearly snapped the mop he held when he thought about the chance to wrap his hands around Saxon's scrawny neck.
Under the guards' watch, he casually toed a bucket of soap water closer to himself and moved deeper into the labyrinth of steaming pipes. Clive positioned himself by the pipe he'd been slowly scrapping the rusty housing off with a spoon.
And waited.
Francine watched from her corner as Talan, or Tayla, whoever the poor girl was, stood over the Master to massage his shoulders. He was still talking, occasionally murmuring his approval, still prattling on about what he did to poor Jack Harkness in the Doctor's stolen ship.
Francine shuddered as words drifted over to where she wiped the chair closest to her.
The Doctor never uttered a sound. He was forced to sit in his wheelchair, parked in front of the Master after the Master was sick of him staying inside his tent. There was no expression on that spotted and lined face but Francine could see his gnarled hands curling around the armrests during certain recounts.
But then, the Doctor glanced over to her and his right hand counted out three fingers on the armrest.
Francine, under the pretense of wiping the table, nodded.
And waited.
Toshiko hesitated in front of the doorway where the processors were, just below the bridge. They were all aligned with Saxon's reign: his satellites, his communication lines to the world below, everything to rule a planet, high above, ticking away in heartless bytes.
The keypad by the door taunted her. It was different from the others, possibly harder to hack. And out of reach. Three guards watched the hallway and there was no guarantee the room was empty. Toshiko hoped it was. She'd observed it each time she was here, but it wasn't a precise conclusion. So much could go wrong.
It was an odd task. Toshiko still wasn't sure why the Doctor wanted her to do what it was he wanted her to do. But Jack said it must be important.
So she took her time cleaning the lavatory across from the room.
And waited.
Jack grimaced at the sight of the dais and the all too familiar tubing that lined the room. He recognized the containers, like the ones in Canary Wharf: portable power cells. Harkness power shake special. Two were cracked open, glass everywhere and the rest huddled empty up against a wall. He wasn't sure why the Master never connected him up to the dais, stopped feeding off him that way. Jack wasn't going to complain either. It hurt the last time he was hooked up to those things, even with PV-35 pumping endlessly in his veins. It almost made the alternative better.
Not by much though.
The greatcoat was nowhere to be found and it was with a little regret that Jack gave up looking for it and just settled for his boots. He ran over in his mind the verbal schematics of what Tosh had told him about where everything was. Guards around the right corner, the bridge three levels directly up from there.
Jack hefted Lucy's dagger in his hand, testing its weight. It was an impressive blade. It looked like a lightning bolt, with enough corners and edges to make it hurt more going out than going in. He could feel his own wounds finally sealing, drying, and only pulling whenever he reached for anything. He checked behind him and decided the torn sheets and ripped tubing should hold Lucy Saxon, keep her quiet for now, give him enough time to do what he needed.
Guards around the corner to his right. No guards to the left.
But the bridge was to the right. To the left, it would mean crawlways and too many turns to reach the Master.
Jack set his jaw. He thought about bright eyes and promises in the dark. He thought about gentle touches that chased away nightmares and soothed away raw pain with faith, with hope, with lo-
Right, it is.
Act IV 2/2
Additional Notes: Many thanks to soullessminion for betaing this chapter. And trtmx for her magic trick that saved my sanity! LOL.
Pairing: Jack/OMC, Jack/?, Jack/Ianto eventually, het and slash
Rating: NC-17 (betaed)
Summary: He left Jack on the game station. Abandoned. But then…he came back…different. An AU look on what happens if things happened differently. Doctor Who 'verse with Torchwood later on. Be sure to read the warnings.
Warnings: Please read each chapter's individual warnings. Some parts down the road may briefly mention non-con, abuse, and/or violence. Dark in the beginning. Please note there are some dark thoughts as my boys are broken…for now. Each chapter will be labeled for your convenience.
Author's Notes: I always believe in happy endings. I'm trying something new, in giving our boy some comfort, at the suggestion of mrwubbles. Note that italicized passage is a flashback.
Disclaimer: RTD and BBC owns them. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Warning For This Chapter: strong language, dark, angsty, VIOLENCE
Notes For This Chapter: Note there are events here that was referenced in DW's "The Sound of Drums"
Prologue + Ch , Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18. Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32, Ch 33, Ch 34, Ch 35, Ch 36 Ch 37, Ch 38 Act 1/5, Ch 38 Act 2/5, Ch 38 Act 3/5
Master Fic List: here
Chapter 38 "The Year That Never Was"
Act IV 1/2
Valiant
Two weeks later…
Lucy was sitting in her chair on the bridge when Harry returned, once more looking very frustrated and oddly subdued. He smiled briefly at her, gave the bridge a cursory glance before he stared out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Lucy studied his back, her lips pursed.
It was different from the erratic swings of murderous madness to almost frightening glee which occurred before every time he returned from him.
She wasn't sure she liked the change.
"Come on, Gramps, how about some checkers, hm?"
Harry, bored with staring out the window at what remained of Russia, at the multiple rockets that stood like porcupine hairs on the surface, diverted his attentions to the Doctor sitting inside his tent on the lower floor. Harry was on his knees, peering into the tent. He slapped his palms in that odd tempo he often favored on the floor, whistling as if beckoning a dog.
"No? Pity, I was going to tell you another daily adventure of the Master and his Companion."
Lucy lowered her head. As she watched her husband-no, Harry wanted her to call him Master now-prattle on to the defeated Doctor through the tent opening, Lucy bunched her hands into fists on her lap.
"…endless power, this time vortex. To think you left it untapped. You even ran away from it!" Harry rocked back on his heels and threw his head back in laughter. "I, from the last great war with the Daleks and you, from your very own Companion! I wonder if this was part of our curriculum in the Academy I'd forgotten. 'Instruction on Running Away, Level one'?"
"How do you know about that?"
Lucy smirked to herself when the Doctor broke his self-imposed silence. It was a reed-thin voice that escaped out of the tent. Harry looked so pleased, Lucy didn't chastise the two Jones females when they stopped what they were doing to stare.
Harry winked at her, rose to his feet and dropped into a chair backwards.
"Why, our Captain told me." Harry's hand went up like a puppet and made it mouth his words. "Quite a chatterbox, really. Yap, yap, yap. Couldn’t shut him up the normal way."
Lucy looked away at Harry's smug sneer and swallowed.
"You're lying." The Doctor sounded stunned, his voice unsteady, but it strengthened in the next breath. "He didn't know about that. He wouldn't have told you."
"Oh, sure, now he doesn't know about it." Harry chuckled darkly. "Shame on you, keeping secrets from your companions. I'll have to tell him."
"Leave him alone."
Even weakened with age forced upon him, the Doctor's voice carried a tone that ordered he was not to be ignored. Even Harry paused for a moment, but he recovered with a fury in his eyes that made Lucy cringe even from afar.
"I leave him alone? Like you did?" Harry hissed. "I came back for him when no one else would."
Lucy stared out of the porthole she sat under. She missed the violet tear in the sky and its waterfall of their children falling out of darkness and into the light Harry created for them. The endless unblemished blue sky grated her, like fingernails scratching her skin constantly.
"Why him?"
Yes, Lucy thought as she settled her hand on the porthole glass. It was a very good question.
"He absorbed the time vortex, one of your companions, and contributed to my downfall in your name." Harry stood from his chair. Abruptly, he gave the chair a kick and it loudly collided with the young Jones girl, Pish or something like that. She started, giving a pitiful cry when it struck her in the back of her knees. She buried her face in her mother's shoulder.
"I am here to return the favor,' Harry breathed. His hands smoothed down his suit. "Your downfall, in my name now. A tool in my plan, nothing more."
"Liar."
The word was low as an exhale but sharp as a dagger. Lucy flinched. Everyone around Harry did.
Harry seemed to ignite with a fury Lucy hadn't seen in a long time. She reveled in it, yet feared it at the same time.
"What?" Harry hissed.
"It might have been your original plan, but something's changed, hasn't it? Something even you can't understand."
The Doctor's tone was calm, knowing. It spoke with a certainty that infuriated Harry.
"You need him to hear the drumming."
Lucy's breath froze in her chest.
"I. Do. Not. Need. Him," the Master snarled. Lucy shrank back in her seat.
"It must have been hard for you, to realize you were the only one who could hear it, the only one who knew what the drumming meant. Here you are, trying to get him to hear it like you can and he can't."
"Oh, he heard it all right," the Master breathed. Lucy watched as he approached the tent. From her perch, she couldn't see the Doctor but the Pish girl cringed, her eyes riveted to them.
"He heard me and stopped you."
Lucy smirked.
"But that was all."
Lucy's smile faded the same time Harry's did.
"And now he's fighting you, isn't he? He's denying you the vortex in him."
"There are other ways to get it," Harry snapped. He looked up, seeking Lucy. His smile, however, was a pale copy of before.
"But you're not using them, are you?"
"Harry?" Lucy called out in a hushed voice. She felt numb all over.
Her Harry said nothing. When he looked away from her, it felt like she was staring into the darkness of Utopia again.
"Let me help you," the Doctor whispered. "What you're doing, what you're feeding on, it's driving you to madness. The drumming won't go away. Not like this. None of this will help. Only if you stop."
Harry stared hard down at the tent. He looked away, his eyes unreadable.
"You're wrong," Harry seethed. He narrowed his eyes, turned back and sneered. "Wasn't that what you told him?"
"I never did," the Doctor protested weakly out of the tent.
Harry stared at the Doctor with what looked like pity. "Ah, but you did. You just don't know it yet."
The Doctor fell silent.
"Nothing more to say?" Harry sniffed. He gestured with two fingers in the air. The older Jones woman brought back the chair for Harry to sit down on. He clasped his hands together and touched his pursed lips.
"Well then, you're a boring conversationalist. Whatever happened to that endless prattle? Shame. I'm always the one to carry the party." Harry threw up his arms. "Ah, well, where were we last time? Ah yes, Malcassairo! Meeting the Malmooth. Very tragic. Such painful memories there. I cut my hand when we were visiting-Ooh, did I mention their race died out because of a genetic mutation? Very sad. Very sad." Harry tapped his chin, deep in thought.
"Where was I? Oh yes. My Captain," Harry chuckled low.
Lucy couldn't hear any more. She got up from her seat, trembling, but took great care to go down the stairs as steadily as possible.
"I'll be in our chambers," Lucy announced, grateful her voice was steady even as her very skin vibrated.
Harry never looked up. He just nodded, his eyes fixed on the dark opening through the ratty tent flap. Lucy could see worn trainers out of the shadows. She could see a quiet gaze, too alert and too knowing for his physical age. Lucy turned away. She stared straight ahead, ignored the maids around her and aimed for the door.
"…he was just sleeping there, couldn't…"
It was fortunate the guards with their blank obedient faces opened the doors otherwise she surely would have flung them open herself. As they shut behind her with a subdued thud, fury bubbled up her throat, her skin shrank around her and it took everything in her power not to run.
"Vanilla."
Jack snorted and pointed at Ianto with his fork from his seat on the sofa. "You? Yeah, right. More like that mocha fudge chocolate chip ripple thing you like."
Ianto sat on Owen's chair with the magazine on his lap. "That's not one of the choices," he chided. Ianto propped his feet up on another chair and took great care to iron out the wrinkles on his trousers and the unbuttoned shirt he wore with his hands.
Jack smiled at Ianto. "Only you can look that good in your bare feet."
"Thank you," Ianto murmured, his cheeks pink as he cast an amused look his way. "And only you can look that comfortable having cake, sitting on the couch." Ianto's brow arched high. "Naked," Ianto drawled. He folded his arms in front of his chest.
"What is it with you? I'm dressed!" Jack spread his arms wide and there it was, a full-blown blush from Mr. Ianto Jones.
"In your coat!"
"You said it was cold and that I should wear my coat!" Jack stared pointedly down at himself.
"I meant along with your clothes, not just!" Not really angry, but his face flushed as if he were, Ianto dropped his gaze to his reading material again.
Jack licked his fork clean of the butter pecan frosting and he stared at Ianto, shirtless, balanced between two seats, and blinking blearily at the magazine on his lap.
"You know," Jack murmured, "You don't have to stay up with me. I told you. I don't sleep much."
"Not if you keep eating cake at three ten in the morning," Ianto scoffed. He yawned behind a fist.
Jack chuckled and thought about how Ianto's hair was still stuck up on the right due to sleeping spooned behind Jack with all the warmth of a blanket.
"You should go back to sleep," Jack told him. He smiled at Ianto. Watching Ianto squinting sleepily at the magazine, it struck Jack how young Ianto really was. How he should be somewhere else. Yet Jack couldn't imagine Ianto anywhere else. God, he was a selfish bastard.
Ianto looked up at Jack. "Are you coming?" He cocked his head to the side and studied Jack. Ianto shook his head. "Then, no, thank you." He made a big show of turning the page. "Just answer the question please. Vanilla or chocolate?"
"Ianto-"
"Vanilla or chocolate?" Ianto insisted.
Jack sighed, giving up because they had had this conversation-not the vanilla/chocolate one-far too many times and he still had yet to catch Ianto napping by his desk.
"Vanilla," Jack decided quickly. "I guess I am a vanilla then."
"Really? That doesn't seem like you."
"Okay, chocolate!"
Ianto pursed his lips. "Nope. At least not just that. Maybe both."
Jack waved his fork at him. "Now who's cheating? That's not a choice there. You can't choose both."
"Why not?" Ianto looked cross.
Jack stared. "Because the quiz says to pick the most appropriate."
"Which were both." Ianto closed the magazine and stared at Jack, his fatigue suddenly gone. "You shouldn't feel like you can only choose one, Jack."
It was strange to be watched with such intensity yet so devoid of disgust. Jack stared at his cake and pushed his fork down on the dessert.
"Those are not the rules, Ianto," Jack muttered. He set the plate aside, his appetite lost.
"Sod the rules."
"Easier said than done," Jack sighed. "You can't have both."
"Well apparently you can have your cake," Ianto gestured towards Jack with the magazine rolled up, "and eat it too." He bared his teeth at Jack. "I see nothing wrong with that."
Jack stared at the cheeky grin. He laughed but a part of him couldn't. "You are a fool."
"Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who follows him?" Ianto quipped.
Jack laughed harder. He reveled in the sensation warm in his chest. "What are you? A fortune cookie?"
Ianto chuckled and he shook his head, smiling. "Never mind. Are you coming back to bed or not?"
"Do I have a choice?"
Ianto suddenly looked very serious. "Always. You always have a choice." Suddenly he smiled, his eyes warm and brighter than any star he knew. "One is your cake, the other is me in your bed."
Jack stuck the fork in his mouth and gave it some thought. He grinned, his brow waggling.
"How about cake, on you, in my bed?"
Ianto never said anything but the red flush on his skin didn't look to be from modesty. He sat there, tracking Jack as Jack drew closer. Ianto took the plate from Jack's hand, took an inch of sleeve and steered for his office and the hatchway.
"By the way…why the hell did Owen have a Cosmopolitan magazine in his desk?"
"I haven't the faintest."
Jack could still taste the sweet and salty tang of butter pecan and Ianto's skin in his mouth when the first cut jerked him out from memory, dream, or whatever it was that could feel so good to be in it, bitter and raw out of it. Jack kept his eyes closed. Somehow, it doesn't hurt as much this way.
Another slice. This time, near the bony ridge of his hip. Fire crawled up his skin.
Aw crap, the Master's Lucy. Great, back for her next session. First the Master comes in here, sitting and talking most of the time after trying to pare off whatever was renewing inside him and now his wife playing sushi chef. What was he, their marriage counselor?
Jack could feel her knees on either side of him. Lucy Saxon straddled him, had yanked his clothes up under his arms, her claws digging into his chest. Her body felt like it was shaking with an odd mix of grief, rage and fear.
It was hard to try to not struggle under Lucy, her hair unraveling and cascading over her face and brushing up against his face like cobwebs.
Jack clenched his teeth at the next cut. He could feel the chains on his wrists grow taut as he pulled, but Lucy Saxon never took notice. She was apparently too determined to carve him out of his skin to perceive anything else.
One cut, closer to a stab, but only deep enough to scorch his nerves but not numb his body, made his eyes fly open. Jack couldn't stop himself from groaning. White light flared when his eyes opened. What greeted him was insanity.
Lucy's normally pale skin was flushed. She looked strangely seductive in the black silk dress she wore, practically glowing under the blinding light, her exposed arms waving wildly as she clutched a six inch dagger with both hands high in the air. She acted like she wasn't sure if she wanted to cut him or herself. Her eyes were wide, brighter in their starkness and unseeing as she thrashed on top of him like in some kind of fit.
Madness, Jack thought as he fought not to react to her shrill screaming, actually suited her.
"…searched forever. I gave up my face, my life for him. Me. And all he could think about is his Companion."
Ouch, Jack thought as he flexed his arms and kept yanking at the chains. He could feel one bolt pop in his right chain. Almost. Damn it, just a little more. He didn't want to get skewered before he finished.
"…was changing the universe, said we would reshape the darkness from returning. But he no longer wants my help, he's hungered for the vortex, he will become the vortex, and he only now wants what I can't give."
His left chain quivered before it became completely slack.
"I fed off the vortex. I saw all of creation, saw what he saw, but I didn't hear the drumming. I couldn't. It wasn't good enough!"
Lucy was still screaming. Jack had a feeling she was like this every time she had been here before.
His right chain shook after he pulled with his shoulder. The chain jerked then loosened as well.
"He says you can hear the drumming," Lucy whispered, her body stilling. Jack didn't like the fact she stopped shaking. She raised her dagger high above her head. "I wonder if you can still hear it if I cut your heart out."
Jack bunched his hands into fists and looked right at her.
"Probably not," Jack quipped.
Lucy's eyes widened when she realized Jack's eyes were focused on her with clarity. She hissed, her face contorted with rage. With a shriek, her dagger sailed downwards towards him.
Jack yanked his arms forward. Bolts exploded out of the wall behind him just as his hands caught the dagger right at the hilt, his metal manacles catching the tip a hair's breath from his chest.
"Guards! Gu-"
A short cuff snapped her head back. Lucy dropped over his body without another word.
Jack's chest heaved. He winced as Lucy rolled off him, landing prone on the other side of the bed.
Jack felt behind him and the crystal Tosh had pried out weeks before fell easily into his hand. Jack pulled it around to stare at it. The thin wire Tosh said it was connected to was gone, but the crystal no longer sparkled due to the blood caked around it. He made a face and crushed the square glass between two fingers. He clapped his hands together to wipe the disgusting debris off. He looked at Lucy, slumped senseless on the bed. Jack grimaced. He shook his fists. The chains still connected to his cuffs rattled lightly.
"Doesn't matter what century," Jack muttered as he made a face at Lucy, "that was just so wrong."
It was all Jack could spare for Lucy. There was too much at stake hinging on his escape to worry about common decency. He grabbed the blood tipped dagger from her limp hands and began working on getting his thick bindings off.
Clive hoped the time was getting close and looked for a sign from Toshiko Sato when she came down to help him in the engines every morning. He looked forward to her visits to help him sort out the multitude of controls and gauges. Even though they weren't allowed to talk to each other, she was still welcome company.
This morning, Toshiko touched the side of her nose. Three times.
Clive nodded to her before Saxon's guards took her to her next task. His gut tightened when he realized this was it. All those nights promising his family that this will end soon. To know it was close enough to taste made his hands shake as he mopped the floor, swishing greasy water around on the grimy floor. His fists nearly snapped the mop he held when he thought about the chance to wrap his hands around Saxon's scrawny neck.
Under the guards' watch, he casually toed a bucket of soap water closer to himself and moved deeper into the labyrinth of steaming pipes. Clive positioned himself by the pipe he'd been slowly scrapping the rusty housing off with a spoon.
And waited.
Francine watched from her corner as Talan, or Tayla, whoever the poor girl was, stood over the Master to massage his shoulders. He was still talking, occasionally murmuring his approval, still prattling on about what he did to poor Jack Harkness in the Doctor's stolen ship.
Francine shuddered as words drifted over to where she wiped the chair closest to her.
The Doctor never uttered a sound. He was forced to sit in his wheelchair, parked in front of the Master after the Master was sick of him staying inside his tent. There was no expression on that spotted and lined face but Francine could see his gnarled hands curling around the armrests during certain recounts.
But then, the Doctor glanced over to her and his right hand counted out three fingers on the armrest.
Francine, under the pretense of wiping the table, nodded.
And waited.
Toshiko hesitated in front of the doorway where the processors were, just below the bridge. They were all aligned with Saxon's reign: his satellites, his communication lines to the world below, everything to rule a planet, high above, ticking away in heartless bytes.
The keypad by the door taunted her. It was different from the others, possibly harder to hack. And out of reach. Three guards watched the hallway and there was no guarantee the room was empty. Toshiko hoped it was. She'd observed it each time she was here, but it wasn't a precise conclusion. So much could go wrong.
It was an odd task. Toshiko still wasn't sure why the Doctor wanted her to do what it was he wanted her to do. But Jack said it must be important.
So she took her time cleaning the lavatory across from the room.
And waited.
Jack grimaced at the sight of the dais and the all too familiar tubing that lined the room. He recognized the containers, like the ones in Canary Wharf: portable power cells. Harkness power shake special. Two were cracked open, glass everywhere and the rest huddled empty up against a wall. He wasn't sure why the Master never connected him up to the dais, stopped feeding off him that way. Jack wasn't going to complain either. It hurt the last time he was hooked up to those things, even with PV-35 pumping endlessly in his veins. It almost made the alternative better.
Not by much though.
The greatcoat was nowhere to be found and it was with a little regret that Jack gave up looking for it and just settled for his boots. He ran over in his mind the verbal schematics of what Tosh had told him about where everything was. Guards around the right corner, the bridge three levels directly up from there.
Jack hefted Lucy's dagger in his hand, testing its weight. It was an impressive blade. It looked like a lightning bolt, with enough corners and edges to make it hurt more going out than going in. He could feel his own wounds finally sealing, drying, and only pulling whenever he reached for anything. He checked behind him and decided the torn sheets and ripped tubing should hold Lucy Saxon, keep her quiet for now, give him enough time to do what he needed.
Guards around the corner to his right. No guards to the left.
But the bridge was to the right. To the left, it would mean crawlways and too many turns to reach the Master.
Jack set his jaw. He thought about bright eyes and promises in the dark. He thought about gentle touches that chased away nightmares and soothed away raw pain with faith, with hope, with lo-
Right, it is.
Act IV 2/2
Additional Notes: Many thanks to soullessminion for betaing this chapter. And trtmx for her magic trick that saved my sanity! LOL.