Summary: AU: Jack has been taken into UNIT custody accused of crimes against humanity while working for the Master on the Valiant. A dark fic. The sequel to Hidden Behind Our Appearances.
Warnings: Violence, mentions of previous rape. Some dub-con.
AN: This is a sequel to my story Hidden Behind Our Appearances. You need to read that one first. Too Long A Sacrifice is Part 2 of the trilogy. In Part 3 Torchwood will find out the truth and be reunited with Jack.
Too Long A Sacrifice
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
William Butler Yeats
Chapter 1
The Torchwood team watched as Jack was escorted to a helicopter by UNIT soldiers. He looked wrecked, emotionally, and physically, from the beating the rebels had given him.. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Jack saw them standing near the helicopter and struggled against his captors, trying to get over to them. As the UNIT soldiers started to drag Jack away, he shouted to his team. "I wasn't really working for the Master. I did it for you, for all of you. Ask Tish!" He was practically sobbing now. "I was trying to help. I did help the resistance."
The team just watched impassively, unwilling to listen to anything he said.
"Remember, Ianto, please remember," Jack called.
Ianto, who didn't have a clue what Jack was asking him to remember, just did his best to ignore him.
Jack wouldn't give up though. "I would never have betrayed you Ianto. I love you."
"Don't Jack," shouted Ianto," at the end of his tether. "You did betray me, you betrayed all of us. There's nothing you can say now to make it any better or to wriggle out of this. You got in bed with the wrong side Jack, literally, and now you have to live with the consequences."
Although Jack understood their attitude, it was still devastating that even Ianto couldn't see through the facade he had been forced to put on. He looked directly at Ianto and, remembering their time together in the Master's secret room, said huskily, "I know you love me, Ianto."
But Ianto just looked at him coldly and said, "no Jack, at first I was seducing you to protect Lisa, then it was just better than nothing, and now I never want anything more to do with you."
The hurt spiked through Jack as a physical pain. All the fight went out of him, at Ianto's statement. He was heartbroken, and nothing else seemed to matter. He went meekly as the UNIT soldiers got him aboard the helicopter, that was to take him from the Valiant down to the UNIT holding facility. There they were keeping those who were to go on trial as collaborators for crimes against humanity.
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Tosh looked at the others with agitation. "We can't just let UNIT take him," she argued. "No matter what he has done. No one deserves to be handed over to them."
"Oh, don't be such a bleeding heart Tosh," snapped Owen. "It won't be that bad."
Tosh had never told the others about her incarceration at UNIT, or about Jack saving her from that hell. "Can't we keep him at Torchwood," she pleaded. "He'd still be locked up, but we'd be in charge of him and not UNIT."
"No way," Ianto replied angrily. "I'm not babysitting a long term prisoner, and definitely not Jack. If I never see him again it'll be too soon. And anyway, he knows Torchwood security inside out. We wouldn't be able to hold him."
Gwen was adamantly in agreement with Owen and Ianto, so Tosh had to reluctantly accept that Jack would go to the UNIT prison. She shuddered. She just prayed that they would treat him better than they had treated her.
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The helicopter journey took an hour. Jack sat in stony silence the whole way. The UNIT guards ignored him until they landed. When the rotors stopped moving, two of them manhandled Jack out of the door onto the helipad. They marched him across to the main building to be processed. Jack did not recognise the facility. It was not one that he had visited before.
He was stripped, and searched very thoroughly, including internally. They made no concessions to the fact that he was injured, and offered no medical treatment. When they had finished they gave him back the clothes he had been wearing; the black ones the Master had had him wear. Jack was extremely surprised by this, as he had expected to be given UNIT's standard prison jumpsuit.
He was then escorted to a cell. Compared to other UNIT cells he had seen, it was palatial. There was a bench for a bed, a window and a basic loo.
The soldier in charge turned to Jack and announced, "This is a temporary holding facility. You will be kept here until the outcome of your hearing. At that time you will be transferred elsewhere." He turned away muttering under his breath, "a proper UNIT prison where scum like you damn well should be."
Jack heard him and flinched. This is what everyone would think of him, unless he could clear his name. He had to hope that they would listen, and that the fact that he acted under duress would count for something. With the Master dead he only had three witnesses. Tish, Stevens and Modine. And the two guards would never willingly help him by telling the truth.
The guard locked Jack's cell and left.
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A couple of hours later, there was a ruckus as two more prisoners were brought into the cell block. They were dragged past Jack's cell and his heart lurched as he recognised Stevens and Modine. They saw him too. When the guards escorting them had left, Modine called down the corridor to him.
"Are you there Freak? I bet you didn't expect to get lumped in with us did you? But it gives us a chance to reminisce about old times."
Jack trembled violently. Stevens and Modine had frequently tortured him under the Master's direction. His body remembered and reacted.
"You must be missing his cock," Stevens continued,. "and all those special times you had together."
Though the Master had rarely let them see him rape Jack, Stevens and Modine knew that it was happening frequently, and violently. Once, as a reward for performing a particularly nasty torture session, the Master had let them stay. Already turned on by the violence they'd been allowed to use on Jack, it had not taken long for them both to come just from watching.
Jack curled into a ball in his cell, and tried to stop the tremors by holding himself really tight. It did no good, the shaking increased as their taunts brought the memories crashing back down on him.
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For the next three weeks, Jack, Stevens and Modine were basically ignored. Jack's injuries healed, despite the lack of medical attention. They received food and water three times a day, and were not interrogated in any way. Jack held on to the hope that, since UNIT hadn't immediately put him in their worst prison, they were going to listen to the outcome of his trial. He wished that he knew when that would take place.
With nothing to do but brood, Jack was tormented by his own thoughts. Memories of pain and blood assailed him all the time, including in his dreams. He was aware that he was still in shock. The world was going by in a dreamlike, slow motion, and he spent many hours sleeping, despite the nightmares. For someone who, before the Valiant, had slept only two or three hours a night it was a massive change.
In his waking hours there was too much time to think. On bad days, thoughts swirled around in his head. Time had reset. The team would have been alive and unharmed, no matter what had happened to them on the Valiant. This meant that all that he did was for nothing. He had sold his body and soul to the Master, for nothing. He was damned, for nothing.
On good days, he could just about convince himself that it wasn't for nothing. They would have been tortured to death slowly, and he would have been forced to watch. He saved them. He did.