She takes two hours to get ready every morning. Shower, hair, makeup, dress, jewelry, shoes, coordinating everything to make herself look flawless. She only needs an hour and a half at the very most, but she likes to take her time, studying herself, the pores, an errant hair on her left eyebrow, the wrinkles that are starting to show around the corners of her mouth.

Morning indulgences are all she has to call her own, and only after sufficient pampering will her husband even look at her, let alone touch her. Only then is she ready to stand at his side. Trying not to flinch.

Playing dress up, every tiny flaw hidden away, is all done so that Master Saxon has something pretty to look at when he's not busy with The Doctor or his other pets; so that after a long, hard day at work, he can come home to a loving, beautiful wife. It's all very 50's suburbia, except they're on a spaceship and the earth has been overrun by aliens.

Not that she's deferring blame. Lucy Saxon is just as responsible as her husband. She was an integral part of his plan to take over the world; except now that the world's been taken over, there isn't much left for her to do.

She reads. She primps. She sits with her hands under her thighs to keep from biting her nails from the sheer anxiety of careening out of control, blindfolded and bound, senseless and helpless. She would keep a diary, if she wasn't so terrified that Harry would find it and read it. She stands at his side and waits for his command, for his leave, for the hand that strokes her to clamp down.

It's about midday, and Harry is leaning over the conference table, scrutinizing a piece of paper. She comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his middle and kissing the soft skin behind his ear. When he doesn't respond, she comes around his side and drags her tongue along his jaw line.

"Busy now, love," he says distractedly, twisting out of her grasp. "Leave a message after the beep."

He ends up crumpling the paper in his effort to pick it up off the slippery table, so he gives up, sprinting across the room and jumping into a chair that sends him rolling halfway across the room, like a fucking child. She takes her leave and doesn't realize that Harry's changed his mind until the door she's just closed behind her slams open and he leaps at her, hands on her shoulders, steering her into the nearest wall.

The impact is painful, and by the time her instincts release a surprised cry from her lips, Harry is already bunching up the skirt of her dress in one hand and pulling down her underwear with the other. Lucy notices that he doesn't need a free hand to unzip his fly; it must have been open all day.

"Surprise!" His voice quivering with excitement, and so is the rest of him, as he shoves his cock inside her without any further warning.

She gasps, shuddering, and then recovers. "Harry loves his surprises."

"Mmm, he does," he says, and starts thrusting.

She rakes her fingers across his scalp, but the hair's too short for her to pull. Wrapping an arm around his neck is all she can do to keep from falling over; he's hooked his left leg around the back of her knees, and the whole thing is throwing her dangerously off balance.

When he comes, his scream becomes a laugh, and he pulls out as soon as he's through. As soon as he's through. She's left leaning against the wall, dizzy and aching, so close to release that she snakes her own hand between her legs as she watches her husband sprint back into the conference room.

He comes and goes as he pleases, her husband.

--

Jack notices the stain on her dress and leans towards her, as far as his chains will let him. "All the torture he puts me through, and yours is, by far, the hardest to take."

"Yes, but you don't have much of a choice, do you?" Lucy says, unsympathetic. Keeping her distance, she folds her hands politely over the stain, scratches at it with her thumbnail to confirm that it has dried. She is constantly needing to remind herself that Jack is chained up, because the hungry way he eyes her, licking his lips, makes her heart race.

"Tell me about it," he begs, all his weight leaning forward, held up by his shackles alone.

He's so desperate, and Lucy considers that he just might need her as much as he lets on. Harry's always needed her, but his was a need fueled by opportunism and conquest, that whole world domination thing. Jack doesn't have anything else; there's just Lucy, and Lucy likes to feel needed.

She does not move an inch. "Say please."

If only she could have unchained him... it would have been so perfect to watch him fall to his knees and beg from there, because she knows he would.

--

Try as she might, she can't quite remember the last time she and Harry actually had a conversation. Lately, their words are all just whispers and orders and teases and little snatches of what she knows he wants to hear.

He calls her over to watch him kill the man chained up in the engine room. Up until the first time Harry makes her watch, Lucy always thought it just a fluke for "the freak" to survive Harry's laser, back when her life still made some sense. Back before the world went completely ridiculous.

But then Harry ducks under the chains and deftly snaps the man's neck.

"Keep time for me, dear Lucy," Harry says, but Lucy's mind is still trying to process the sickening pop that she's just heard, the way the prisoner's head had dropped to his chest, how his body went slack, and the way the chains still held him up. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

"Count! I said count," comes her husband's order, along with a snap of his fingers, and Lucy winces, out of her thoughts and into obedience.

"One, two, three..."

Sixty seconds go by, and Lucy is looking up at Harry, waiting to be relieved of her duty, when the prisoner suddenly draws in a long, ragged breath, stumbles to regain his footing and, with a bit of twisting around, pops his neck back into place.

Lucy lets out a yelp and then claps her hands over her mouth. Still standing behind the prisoner, Harry just chuckles to himself. "Oh, that is very good."

She can't imagine what Harry could have possibly done to bring the man back to life, but she feels like an idiot for letting such a trifle spook her after all the other things she's seen.

With a groan, the prisoner stands up a little straighter, cocking his head at Lucy. "Captain Jack Harkness," he says, panting, eyes slightly mad. "At your service."

"Get ready, Lucy!" Harry announces, taking Jack's head in his hands again. "I'm going to try it in the other direction now."

--

Nothing can hold Harry's attention for long. He gets bored so easily, and only kills Jack Harkness four more times that day before he goes off to seek fun elsewhere. Lucy is left with the prisoner, who has yet to come back to life. She steels herself for the gasp; the longer she waits for it, the more she notices that she actually is waiting, with breath that is practically bated, not even sure if he will wake up this time (that last time Harry killed seemed much more forceful than the previous times).

Even though Harry's relieved her, even though he's not even there anymore, she's still counting, silently taking note of every second the man spends dead.

Jack gasps, screams and then shudders a bit before he straightens himself out. He's rolling his head from one shoulder to another, arching his back as far as it will stretch, when he notices Lucy watching him.

"Is he still standing behind me?"

A shake of her head, and he laughs, sounding relieved and oddly triumphant, which really does not make any sense, considering the chains, and how the only reason for Harry's leaving was his infantile attention span.

"It seems that our introductions were interrupted," he says when he finally stops laughing. "Terribly rude of me, dying and all. Where are my manners,"

"What are you?" she says abruptly, cutting off his words. He chews his lip thoughtfully and considers the question.

"I'm a dead man. Captain Jack Harkness."

"You already told me your name," she warns.

He smiles. "Beautiful and bitchy. Take me now!"

It's been so long since she's been given any warning before she'd be thrown onto the nearest surface and fucked, and even longer since she's been asked. While Lucy doesn't think she's ever going to be asked again, it still makes her heart flutter when she is warned. Even though Jack being chained in place and unable to even touch her should be no consolation, Lucy's thinking hypothetically.

Jack is just staring, mesmerized by her stillness, and the fruits of her morning ministrations.

There's dirt and engine oil on his face. His clothes are dirty, stained with blood. Lucy has the sudden urge to shoot him with a water hose, drown him if she has to, anything to clean him up a bit. The contrast between the two of them is so strong, it's like there's a third person in the room with them, doing nothing but screaming, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Lucy can't stand the screaming. "Shut up," she says quietly, and walks out quickly.