the fork in the road
Feb. 29th, 2024 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jupiter2932Title: the fork in the road
Author:jupiter2932
Fandom: Torchwood, Doctor Who (Tennant)
Rating: M (just barely, for some slightly gross imagery. No smut).
Word Count: 843
Characters: Jack, the Master, (Jack/Ianto implied)
Notes: Written for Febuwhump, day 28, "No...not like this."
Content Notes: torture, pain
Summary: His three hundred and twenty-fourth day aboard the Valiant, the Master comes to him.
His three hundred and twenty-fourth day aboard the Valiant, the Master comes to him.
It's not the first time this week. Jack's nearly healed since the last, a split lip and several greening bruises all that remain of the visit, but he thought Saxon would be too busy to return so soon.
Massacring billions of innocent people, it turns out, keeps you too busy to indulge in one-on-one torture with your personal prisoners on a regular basis. Who knew.
The Master doesn't come alone this time.
He waltzes in by himself, with a, "Well, hello, Jack," and a wide smile, but a couple of minutes later, when he's cupping Jack's cheek and whispering, "Oh, Jack, have I got such plans for you," in Jack's ear, two crewmen wheel in a large piece of equipment covered by an opaque gray sheet.
He prances around a bit—gives a speech Jack mostly tunes out about how much smarter he is than the Doctor, how much better he is, how clever and wily and capable at everything he is compared to the only other living Time Lord.
He wraps it up eventually, though, when he realizes he's lost Jack, gives Jack a backhanded slap to get his attention and sweeps the sheet off the device.
It's not much to look at, for the most part. A nearly solid block of metal, about six feet tall, with a thin slit maybe six inches long running up and down the middle of it, and two straight rods sticking out the top.
But just visible through the slit in the center of the pillar is a bright, golden glow—a glow Jack recognizes.
It's the same light as the heart of the Tardis.
"What," he says, staring at it and seeing the light twitch. "Did you do?"
"He told you he couldn't fix you," the Master says, and there's an answering light in his eyes that makes a pit open up in Jack's stomach. "Didn't he? Said you were stuck like this forever? He wasn't wrong, of course. Your dear, beloved Doctor wouldn't ever conceive of a treatment that requires killing a Tardis, even if he had a Tardis or two to spare."
He moves to the device, flicks a button on its side, and warm gold at its center spills out. Overflows. Starts to spin in mid-air, growing thicker as it turns.
"But I'd think of it," the Master says, and the gold light stops and hangs and shoots out and stabs Jack in the chest, between one breath and the next.
He screams.
He thinks he screams, anyway; there's screaming in the room, though he later wonders if it wasn't the Master—because he's not sure he had enough breath to manage it.
But it hurts so much.
He's never felt so much pain in his life; and at this point he's had a lot of opportunity to compare. He's been tortured before, even before the Master, several times, and some of his deaths have taken long, excruciating hours. But none of them—not all of them put together—can measure up to this.
The light is molten metal where it stabs him, rending, ripping, tearing, and then it spreads over his body and rips.
He's dying, he thinks. He must be dying. It's flayed his skin off, burned him, boiled his blood and fried his tongue and gutted him from the inside out. This is it, this is all, his chest is frozen between breaths and he'll never draw another, and he wishes he could have seen his team safe—could have seen Ianto and told him—and he's sorry, he's sorry, he'll never have a chance to find out what happened to Gray and tell him how sorry he's been his whole life—
"There," the Master says, and the bright light around him dims, and softens, and just like that shoots back to the device.
Jack sags, dangling from the cuffs around his wrists. His feet touch the floor, but his legs are jelly and he can't hold any weight on them. He heaves, tries to breathe, doesn't have anything to throw up because they haven't fed him in two days but can't keep himself from heaving again, muscles in his stomach aching.
"I think I'll take you to see him soon," the Master says. He sets his hand on Jack's shoulder and it burns, Jack's skin so sensitive that when the Master leans in and huffs out a breath on his neck it feels like sandpaper scrubbing across it. "We'll show him how I've done it, the one thing he couldn't, and I'll tell him how I did it, and he'll never be able to look at you again. And then I'll bring you back down here and we'll see just how much a mortal human body can take."
"But first," he whispers, and he grips Jack's loose, lank hair in his fingers and gives Jack's head a shake. "Get some rest. You're going to need it."
He leaves Jack hanging, gasping for breath.
Author:
jupiter2932Fandom: Torchwood, Doctor Who (Tennant)
Rating: M (just barely, for some slightly gross imagery. No smut).
Word Count: 843
Characters: Jack, the Master, (Jack/Ianto implied)
Notes: Written for Febuwhump, day 28, "No...not like this."
Content Notes: torture, pain
Summary: His three hundred and twenty-fourth day aboard the Valiant, the Master comes to him.
His three hundred and twenty-fourth day aboard the Valiant, the Master comes to him.
It's not the first time this week. Jack's nearly healed since the last, a split lip and several greening bruises all that remain of the visit, but he thought Saxon would be too busy to return so soon.
Massacring billions of innocent people, it turns out, keeps you too busy to indulge in one-on-one torture with your personal prisoners on a regular basis. Who knew.
The Master doesn't come alone this time.
He waltzes in by himself, with a, "Well, hello, Jack," and a wide smile, but a couple of minutes later, when he's cupping Jack's cheek and whispering, "Oh, Jack, have I got such plans for you," in Jack's ear, two crewmen wheel in a large piece of equipment covered by an opaque gray sheet.
He prances around a bit—gives a speech Jack mostly tunes out about how much smarter he is than the Doctor, how much better he is, how clever and wily and capable at everything he is compared to the only other living Time Lord.
He wraps it up eventually, though, when he realizes he's lost Jack, gives Jack a backhanded slap to get his attention and sweeps the sheet off the device.
It's not much to look at, for the most part. A nearly solid block of metal, about six feet tall, with a thin slit maybe six inches long running up and down the middle of it, and two straight rods sticking out the top.
But just visible through the slit in the center of the pillar is a bright, golden glow—a glow Jack recognizes.
It's the same light as the heart of the Tardis.
"What," he says, staring at it and seeing the light twitch. "Did you do?"
"He told you he couldn't fix you," the Master says, and there's an answering light in his eyes that makes a pit open up in Jack's stomach. "Didn't he? Said you were stuck like this forever? He wasn't wrong, of course. Your dear, beloved Doctor wouldn't ever conceive of a treatment that requires killing a Tardis, even if he had a Tardis or two to spare."
He moves to the device, flicks a button on its side, and warm gold at its center spills out. Overflows. Starts to spin in mid-air, growing thicker as it turns.
"But I'd think of it," the Master says, and the gold light stops and hangs and shoots out and stabs Jack in the chest, between one breath and the next.
He screams.
He thinks he screams, anyway; there's screaming in the room, though he later wonders if it wasn't the Master—because he's not sure he had enough breath to manage it.
But it hurts so much.
He's never felt so much pain in his life; and at this point he's had a lot of opportunity to compare. He's been tortured before, even before the Master, several times, and some of his deaths have taken long, excruciating hours. But none of them—not all of them put together—can measure up to this.
The light is molten metal where it stabs him, rending, ripping, tearing, and then it spreads over his body and rips.
He's dying, he thinks. He must be dying. It's flayed his skin off, burned him, boiled his blood and fried his tongue and gutted him from the inside out. This is it, this is all, his chest is frozen between breaths and he'll never draw another, and he wishes he could have seen his team safe—could have seen Ianto and told him—and he's sorry, he's sorry, he'll never have a chance to find out what happened to Gray and tell him how sorry he's been his whole life—
"There," the Master says, and the bright light around him dims, and softens, and just like that shoots back to the device.
Jack sags, dangling from the cuffs around his wrists. His feet touch the floor, but his legs are jelly and he can't hold any weight on them. He heaves, tries to breathe, doesn't have anything to throw up because they haven't fed him in two days but can't keep himself from heaving again, muscles in his stomach aching.
"I think I'll take you to see him soon," the Master says. He sets his hand on Jack's shoulder and it burns, Jack's skin so sensitive that when the Master leans in and huffs out a breath on his neck it feels like sandpaper scrubbing across it. "We'll show him how I've done it, the one thing he couldn't, and I'll tell him how I did it, and he'll never be able to look at you again. And then I'll bring you back down here and we'll see just how much a mortal human body can take."
"But first," he whispers, and he grips Jack's loose, lank hair in his fingers and gives Jack's head a shake. "Get some rest. You're going to need it."
He leaves Jack hanging, gasping for breath.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-01 09:03 pm (UTC)Not the TARDIS, and not a mortal Jack being tortured...
(I shall believe Jack is just having a nightmare. Yes. Nightmare, that's all).
no subject
Date: 2024-03-04 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-04 09:29 pm (UTC)