Dragon Age: Torchwood
The Unforgiven
CONTENT:
Rating: Mature
Flavor: Drama/Angst
Era: between DA:TW season 2 and 'Children of Earth'
SPOILERS: DA:TW season 2
Language: bad
Violence: yes
Nudity: partial (m)
Sex: referenced
Other: includes torture (mostly off-screen), questionable morality
Author's Notes:
This is NOT CANON. This is an Alternate Universe story of an Alternate Universe (Dragon Age: Torchwood). If you haven't read any DA:TW, Bannon and Zevran are elves working for Torchwood. Bannon worked undercover for the Master during the Year That Never Was.
Premise: The Master is resurrected between Dragon Age: Torchwood Season 2 and Children of Earth. What if Jack and Bannon find him before the Doctor does?
Warning: the theme of this work may be considered amoral. Relationships may become irreparably damaged. Remember it is only AU.
Props to all the old-school Metallica fans! \../,
I: The Master
===#===
Jack roamed the darkened halls of the lower Hub after hours. He was restless for some reason. Lucy Saxon was dead, the women's prison where she'd been held inexplicably destroyed. He saw it on the news and wondered guiltily if he should have made an effort to see her when she'd sent him messages. But what could he have possibly said to her?
His wrist strap blipped a warning, and he checked the readout. The weapons locker! He sprinted for the stairs.
He was hardly surprised to find Bannon and Zevran raiding the locker for guns. "Hold it! What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Zevran looked unapologetically neutral, but Bannon was in a simmering rage. "It's him," the elf growled, not pausing in his loading of a semi-automatic. His hands were shaking. "I saw him. The-" He bit his lip, fighting the conditioning even after all this time. "Saxon!"
Jack felt a wave of fear wash over him at that name. "No. He's dead!" Very dead and very un-regenerated. He calmed himself. "You must've seen someone similar. Just an ordinary human. You can't-"
The elf whirled on him. "Every day!" he snapped, lips drawn back in a snarl. "Every fucking day! The first thing every fucking morning- 'shall I draw your bath, Master?' The last thing every fucking night- 'shall I turn down your bed, Master?' Every fucking day, all fucking day! Don't tell me I don't know his face when I see it!" Bannon trembled in barely leashed fury, and all he'd ever had to do was smile and serve the Master. Always pretending to be his loyal follower, living in perpetual fear of being found out. The Master never knew, until it was too late.
Jack, on the other hand... The Master knew him as the Doctor's companion from the start. And tried to encourage the Doctor's surrender with Jack's execution. Only to discover that didn't work as planned. Oh, but a new plan took its place: endless rounds of torture. Jack felt his body shake in reaction.
If the elf were right- and face it, this was a Time Lord they were talking about, one who'd cheated death before...
"We can't just kill him," Jack said, trying to retain a shred of control. "Not until we make absolutely sure."
"I don't think you should kill him at all," Zevran said.
Jack stared at the assassin, baffled. Sure, Zevran had not been imprisoned or enslaved by the Master during that year, but he was never one to balk at killing. For any reason.
"Zevran's right," Bannon said. His dark eyes met Jack's. "I've been in this situation before. Death is too... quick." Jack began to get an inkling of what he was talking about. Something in the dark shadows of his memory agreed wholeheartedly.
"We can capture him. Bring him here," Jack found himself saying. He closed the weapons locker- though he let the elves keep the sidearms they'd commandeered- and opened the cabinet full of stunners, tranq guns, and other capture gear.
===#===
They started out where Bannon had sighted th- Saxon. Jack checked his vortex manipulator for anomalous temporal readings, and the trail blazed like a comet. Grey early morning light seeped into the city by the time the Torchwood SUV rolled into a construction site, abandoned in the recent economic downturn.
Their target was close. Jack, Zevran, and Bannon got out of the SUV. They passed a food service truck.
"Still think it is not him?" Zevran commented low to the captain.
Jack shook his head. Whatever or whoever this was, it left smoldering human corpses behind. "Be careful," he said. "Spread out."
===#===
"I'm so hungry," the Master said, wolfing down the paltry food. It burned inside him like a fever, devouring him unless he devoured... His eyes alit on the two hapless homeless wanderers who sat across the fire from him.
Suddenly, they looked past him, and a shadow hovered over his seat. He looked up and blinked in utter shock. He recognized that face! And it wasn't the Doctor's! That, the lone Time Lord in the universe, he would have expected. But one insignificant little human? Here? On a planet full of them? "Y-you?"
"Hello, motherfucker," Bannon said with a feral grin. He smashed the butt of his rifle into the Master's face.
===#===
The two other blokes fled. Bannon kept hitting the Ma- Saxon- in the fucking head, never mind shooting him.
The Time Lord curled up defensively and tried to crawl away. Bannon finally reversed the weapon and shot the bastard at point-blank range. The airgun barked, and the dart thumped soundly into Saxon's flesh. He collapsed in a limp heap.
Only he didn't stay still. His body twitched spasmodically. In a few moments, the tranquilizer wore off, and he scrambled to his hands and knees. His face met Zevran's boot traveling at speed, and with another crunch, he went down in the dust, blood pooling under his face.
Jack arrived a few seconds after Zevran. He shoved Saxon's body onto its back to get a look at his face. It was bloodied and broken, but there was no mistaking it, or the gut reaction of fear and hatred Jack's body had to it.
Bannon fired another dart into Saxon's chest. He collapsed back and twitched as if he were on a live wire. His flesh briefly flashed with energy, making his skeleton partially visible.
"His metabolism is going haywire," Jack said. "He's burning through the tranqs." He brought his own rifle to bear and fired. He jacked the slide and started pumping darts into Saxon's writhing body. "Get him tied up."
Zevran pulled out several restraints, and the three descended on the former Master. Not concerned with his comfort, or indeed his very survival, they managed to truss him up securely and get him in the SUV.
Down in the bowels of Torchwood Three was an unused wing of the Vault. It had once housed a cyberwoman, but no longer. However, the equipment left over was perfectly suited to both restrain and maintain a Time Lord prisoner.
===#===
Awareness returned to the Master all at once. His state was feverish, but not quite ravenous; his energy low; his body restrained. He opened his eyes and swiftly catalogued the dark stone walls, the lighted computer banks, the machinery. He didn't know what to make of it all, but no matter. He was a Master of Time and Space, after all. And his mouth was dry. Odd, that.
"Hello, Harry!" a cheerful voice sang. And out of the shadows, what to his wondering eyes did appear, but Captain Jack Harkness, smiling cheerily. The Master's hearts skipped a beat.
"I... My name is Joe," he said. "Joe Mason."
The captain's grin didn't waver, only turned more towards a sneer. He whipped out a printed medical screen that clearly showed two hearts in the Master's ribcage and shoved it at his face. "Nice try."
"Where's the Doctor?" the Master asked levelly. The 'last' Time Lord was always interfering. He had to be here somewhere, holding his precious dog's leash.
"Not a clue." Jack shrugged out of his greatcoat and moved to hang it up. As he turned back, rolling up his sleeves, those two young men came out of the shadows. That dark-haired one, that traitor! And the blond with the tattoo. They did not look as cheerful as Captain Jack. They looked quite serious.
"Wh..." The Master had to lick his dry lips. "What are you going to do to me?"
===#===
Jack had to smile. He really did. It warmed his heart to see that bastard strapped helplessly in that chair. All the times that bastard had him on the floor, writhing in agony. All the times that bastard made him scream, made him cry, made him beg. All those times that bastard made him wish he could die and just stay dead, forever. All the nightmares that bastard had given him- the shakes, the flashbacks, the PTSD. The walls that had grown up between Jack and his teammates, the defenses, the screens to hide his weakness.
The elves were right. If they'd just killed him when they'd found him- shot him dead and buried the body under the construction site- nothing would have changed. He'd have returned to Torchwood, gone back to work; it would barely have been a blip in his life. But this? Oh, this was good; sinfully good. The little motherfucking bastard was going to pay for everything.
Jack leaned over the cyber-conversion unit. "What was it you said to me? Hmm..." He pretended to think back. "When faced with an enemy who cannot die, you just have to... experiment."
The Master's throat bobbed as he swallowed audibly. "You can't do that."
"No?" Jack's mouth twitched in amusement. "Why not? Because I'm a good guy?" He chuckled. "I have news for you, Harry. I'm only human. We're never perfectly one thing or another. We have flaws."
"Speak for yourself," Zevran said.
"Oh yes, and my friends here want to make it perfectly clear: they're not human at all. They're elves." Jack paused a moment. "They're not nice elves. They're...?" He looked to them.
"City elves," Zevran said.
"You can call us badass motherfuckers," Bannon clarified. The two grinned.
"Yeah." Jack nodded. "I've seen them in action." Bannon produced a little box of pins. "What are you doing?"
"I'm just going to poke him a little." The elf smirked. "It won't kill him, I promise."
Jack shrugged and waved for him to carry on. It wasn't as if he had a monopoly on the bastard. His lips twitched again as he watched the Master's expression of disbelief. He thought they were bluffing? Trying to scare him? Oh, he was in for a big surprise.
Bannon grasped the first finger of Saxon's right hand and jabbed the pin into it. The Time Lord shrieked in surprise and pain. He kept screaming as Bannon shoved the pin all the way in. Saxon's eyes bulged at Jack as he tried to thrash against the restraints.
Jack glanced at the elf. "Try putting it under the nail. Nail beds are very sensitive." Saxon's eyes bulged further. The elf followed Jack's advice, producing a more shrill shriek from their victim. Jack and Zevran watched impassively. Bannon continued on to each finger in turn. Tiny drops of blood flicked from the Time Lord's fingertips as his hand spasmed.
"You-you can't do-do this!" Saxon panted. "When- AIGH!- the Doctor finds out... what-what would he think?"
Jack folded his arms. "Oh, I don't think he needs to know."
Saxon ground his teeth and thrashed in the restraints, but he couldn't escape the pain. "You do know," he panted between cries; "Time Lords are empathic. When under... duress... Others... they know. Me... and the Doctor... being the only two left... in the universe... He'll know. He'll come!"
Jack mulled it over. He knew Time Lords had some empathic and telepathic powers, but wasn't sure of their extent. He looked over at the two elves. Bannon paused, waiting for Jack's verdict. He looked back at the captive Time Lord. Jack looked into his eyes. He saw fear. "Bullshit."
"No!"
Bannon selected a hat pin last. He buried it in the webbing between Saxon's fingers.
"You...," Saxon growled, his voice hoarse from screaming, "can't keep me here."
"No, actually we can," Jack told him. "This rig? Cyberman technology. It's capable of holding an activated cyborg. That ought to do nicely for containing even a Time Lord's strength. Oh, you think someone will find you?" He gestured at the sub-basement room. "We're outside of Torchwood's surveillance system, off the main power grid. One of my employees actually managed to hide a partially-converted Cyberman here for a couple of years without me finding out about it." He shook his head.
"I'm burning up. Metabolism. Won't last long without food. Energy."
"No, the conversion unit will keep you supplied with nutrients. Just enough- we don't want you causing any power surges, now."
Saxon twisted in the infernal contraption. "I won't regenerate! You can't force me to!"
"Fair enough," Jack conceded. "This rig is designed to keep a body alive while its brain is forcibly removed, all its limbs and organs replaced by machinery. We can keep you alive through quite a lot." He bent over the Time Lord, fixing the man's gaze. "When we're done with you, we'll kill you. Just keep in mind that this time, your little 'cult of personality' won't be around to resurrect your carcass." Saxon's eyes flicked in panic. "Oh yes, I know all about your little trick, there. Lucy sent me letters from prison." If only he'd opened them before she'd died. But ironically, preventing the Master's resurrection wouldn't have been as satisfying as this, looking into his eyes as he realized you were going to stop him once and for all.
Jack felt that smile creeping across his face again. The Master just looked so stunned. His power neutered. His situation helpless. His plans foiled. His evil thwarted.
And now, payback for his past crimes was going to be a bitch.
Jack grabbed Saxon by the throat. The Time Lord choked. "Now check this out," the captain said to his partners. "Time Lords have a respiratory bypass system. If you try to choke them until they pass out and die, they won't." Saxon's eyes rolled back in his head, but Jack didn't stop squeezing.
The elves gathered closer to the head of the bio-bed. "So... what?" Zevran asked. "He's breathing out his ass?" His cohorts snorted in juvenile laughter.
Bannon said, "So if you stick his head entirely under water, but leave the rest of him out, he won't drown?"
Jack released Saxon. The Time Lord flopped limply back in the restraints. Jack lightly slapped his cheeks to bring his attention back around. "You hear that? Now there's an interesting 'experiment.' Do you remember experimenting on me, to see how long it would take me to drown?"
"Won't...," Saxon croaked. He coughed, but his voice remained gravelly after Jack's treatment of his windpipe. "Won't regenerate." He shook his head.
Jack stroked his chin in thought. He turned to the elves. "Now here's a modern invention, so you medieval-type folks probably don't have this on your world: water boarding."
Zevran knitted his brows in thought. "Is that where you ride on a board in the water?"
"No," said Jack patiently. He went to the control panel and hit the button to lower the upper part of the conversion unit into a fully horizontal position. "It's an interrogation technique of drowning someone without a lot of water. As Torchwood agents, I should teach it to you. Never know when it might come in handy. First," he said, ignoring Saxon's faint protests, "you strap the victim to a board." After the unit leveled out, Jack proceeded to tip the head end down. "It works best if you tilt them this way. Now all we need is a towel and a couple bottles of water..."
===X===