AN: I would like to thank evalentine99 for her encouragement and for discussions about various aspects of this story. She gave me a lot to think about when writing it. And thanks to everyone who has left a comment. I really appreciate them.

AN2: Sorry about the punctuation in the early version of Chapter 1. I shouldn't do my proofreading in a hurry at midnight.

Chapter 2

Ianto looked at the date on the DVD box. "This is the day after the Master killed President Winters," he stated, pressing the play button on the remote.

The DVD started.

Tosh and Gwen gasped.

It showed Jack, chained, standing between two pillars. He was dressed in his usual clothes. The field of view showed most of the room. He was alone. Nothing was happening.

After a few minutes of this, Ianto changed to fast forward mode. As nothing continued to happen, he started to skip sections. By the time they reached the end of the DVD, hours had passed on screen. Jack was looking tired, and was moving as best he could to try to ease his arms and shoulders. He looked to be in pain.

"I guess the Master kept him prisoner for a while, before Jack agreed to work for him," commented Ianto.

"And standing with your arms up like that for hours, has got to hurt," added Owen.

"Shall we call it a day, and carry on tomorrow?" asked Ianto, "I have to man the Hub tonight, but the rest of you could go home."

"No," argued Tosh, "that soldier clearly thought these were important, I think we should look at a couple more. We can skip through them again. If there's still nothing happening, then we can stop and carry on tomorrow."

They were halfway through the third DVD, when the Master appeared. They had missed his entrance, and had to backtrack to the point where he came in. They watched as he circled Jack and gave him water.

With dawning horror, the team listened as the Master explained his secret room to Jack, while rubbing up against him.

When the Master took out the cricket bat and methodically broke Jack's arms and legs, Tosh couldn't help but scream "no" at the screen. Gwen covered her eyes in horror.

On the DVD, Jack, again alone, dangled helplessly in his chains.

Taking the remote control from Ianto, who seemed to be in a state of shock, Owen zoomed through the rest of the DVD. Jack was still alone, moaning pitifully when the DVD ended. It was the same through the next one, but in the fifth the Master reappeared and killed him with the cricket bat.

It got worse after that. DVD after DVD showed the Master indulging his creative side, with Jack as his canvas.

Owen was the most dispassionate observer. Though sickened, he watched the DVDs with a clinical detachment.

Gwen was aghast, watching in disbelief.

Tosh sat, head down, hands clamped over her ears, trying to block out the screams. She had been sobbing for hours. On the screen Jack was slowly dying, again, this time pleading for the Doctor to help him.

Ianto was gripping the arms of his chair so tight that his hands had practically frozen in place. He could barely contain his horror at seeing the Master reduce Jack to a sobbing, pleading mess, begging for death, over and over. It was different, intellectually knowing that Jack could survive such things, and seeing it graphically in front of him. He finally understood why Jack might agree to work for the Master.

Jack, alone, could not say, 'I would rather die than work for you.' Could he, himself, an all honesty, have done any different in those circumstances?

It had never truly sunk in with any of them, exactly how much suffering an immortal could be put through. Even for Ianto, who had worried so much about Jack in their early days on the Valiant. They had all seen Jack die, but this systematic destruction had been inconceivable. It had been brought starkly home to them now. There was no limit to the physical damage that could be inflicted, or the number of times it could be done.

"Perhaps we were a bit harsh to condemn him for trying to avoid this," Gwen suggested shakily.

"A bit harsh?" yelled Tosh, through her sobs. "What we did was bloody unforgivable! We knew he couldn't die, we should have known what that meant."

"I knew," admitted Ianto, his voice laden with guilt. "I worried about what the Master might do, but Jack gave no sign, so I thought he'd given up with barely a fight."

An alarm echoed through the Hub.

Owen brought them back to the present abruptly. "It's 8am, and that was the cog door alarm," he hissed. "It's Mark or Joanne." Showing an unusual sensitivity, he added "Jack wouldn't want strangers to see any of this, so we need to pack it away for now."

"He wouldn't want us to see it either," interjected Ianto.

They fell silent suddenly, as Joanne entered the boardroom. She was their backup medic. With Jack's departure, the team had been undermanned and finding it difficult to cope. They had encountered her working at Cardiff A&E, when a weevil had rampaged through it. They had been impressed by the way she had accepted the alien encounter, and helped them. So, instead of retconning her, they had hired her. A second medic was something they should have had years before, in case it was ever Owen who was injured.

Detecting the unusual atmosphere in the room, Joanne looked from one person to another in confusion. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No, no, everything is fine," Owen assured her.

Joanne looked pointedly at Tosh, who was trying to dry her eyes, and swept her eyes over the others. Every one of them looked shell shocked. But she did not argue. "OK then, Mark will be in soon, but first I just need to liaise with Ianto for the handover."

"Oh right, yes of course," stuttered Ianto, who had completely forgotten that he had been officially in charge of the Hub that night. "I'll see you downstairs in a minute."

Owen took charge again. "Right, we all need to get some sleep, but we can't leave Joanne and Mark to do the day shift alone. So I will stay on duty. Ianto you're off duty anyway. Go home." He turned to the others. "Tosh, Gwen, you were supposed to be on the day shift. Go home, but I'll call you if there's anything that we can't handle."

Tosh started to object. "But we need to talk about this," she argued, waving her hand at the DVDs.

"None of us are in a fit state to do that right now," said Owen gently, knowing how upset Tosh was. "We've all been up for more than 24 hours, we'll discuss it when we're not about to drop with exhaustion."

Knowing that he was right, and that she at least wasn't capable of thinking straight, Tosh gave in. She went to gather her things and head home. Gwen and Ianto joined her on the way out. They each kept their thoughts to themselves.

b_b_b_b_b

When Tosh arrived home, she went straight to bed. Curled up alone, images that she had just seen flashed before her eyes. Jack, chained naked, with open wounds, burns, and so much blood. He had been so brave, defying the Master verbally between deaths. But, as the torture continued, she could see that his defiance was waning. And they had only watched the first two weeks of the Master's reign on the Valiant. It had been a month before the team were captured, and two more weeks before Jack had announced to them that he was working for the Master. Tosh prayed that Jack had capitulated long before the team arrived on the Valiant. She couldn't bear to think that he had been tortured for all that time.

Guilt washed over her, and she started to sob again. Jack had not willingly worked for the Master. No one could have resisted that. And how had the team reacted? They had treated him like dirt, Owen and Ianto especially, taunting and insulting him endlessly. He must have been so hurt. He had even asked them if they could imagine what the Master could do to him, if he refused to work for him. But they had ignored him. Not taking Jack seriously, even knowing that the Master tortured prisoners, they hadn't even considered what the Master could do to an immortal.

Tosh eventually cried herself to sleep.

b_b_b_b_b

When Gwen arrived home she found a distraught Rhys. Seeing her, he became furious.

"Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to be home yesterday evening. Do you know what I've been thinking? I thought you must be dead!" He paused for breath, before continuing to yell. "Would it be too much to expect a phone call, if you are going to be out all night?"

Gwen winced, she had been so caught up in the DVDs that she had totally forgotten that Rhys was expecting her home for dinner. "I'm so sorry love, something important came up at work."

"So important that you couldn't spare a minute for a phone call?"

Not wanting to admit that she had forgotten about him, Gwen just nodded. "You could have phoned me," she added.

"Have you checked your phone recently?" Rhys asked sarcastically.

Gwen dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. There were 28 missed messages. "God, I'm so sorry Rhys, I had it on vibrate when we were on a mission, and I left it in my jacket near my desk when we got back."

"It's nice to know your husband is important to you," snapped Rhys, before grabbing his coat and heading out of the door. "I'm going to work, I don't know what time I'll be home."

Wearily, Gwen went into the bedroom to prepare for bed. The confrontation with Rhys had temporarily pushed Jack out of her mind, but now the events of the night rushed back full force. Gwen was torn, on the one hand thinking that Jack had had no choice, and regretting her attitude towards him on the Valiant. No one could have stood up to the abuse that Jack had suffered. On the other hand, she still believed that he had gone too far, torturing prisoners and becoming the Master's lover. He may have started out being coerced, but by the end he was willing, and she could not forgive that.

Crawling into bed, Gwen's exhaustion took hold and she slept.

b_b_b_b_b

When Ianto arrived home at the flat he shared with his girlfriend Ellie, he found that she had already gone to work. As he had been scheduled for the night shift, she would not have expected him home before she left. He was relieved about that. He was in a strange state of shock, and did not want to have to explain to her what was wrong. How could he explain that he had spent the night watching a man he had once loved, tortured to death, not once, but again and again. And yes, he admitted to himself, he had loved Jack before he deserted them.

The events on the Valiant had turned that love to hate. After weeks of waiting, in vain, for a sign from Jack that all was not as it seemed, he had taken Jack's apparent betrayal much more personally than the rest of the team. Jack's relationship with the Master had been the final straw.

Ianto was totally confused. He now understood why Jack agreed to work for the Master, and he wished with all his heart that he had been more sympathetic to him on the Valiant. He had known what could happen to Jack. How had he lost sight of that when Jack had appeared to change sides? But Jack had never given any indication that he had been tortured into compliance. And somehow, within a few weeks, he had fallen into line with Owen and Gwen in thinking the worst of Jack. Tosh had lost faith in Jack by then also.

What he could not get his head round, now, was how Jack ended up treating the Master like a lover. Was it a sort of Stockholm syndrome, where the captive fell in love with their jailer? And when did Jack go from unwilling pawn to willing assistant and lover?

There was only one way to find out. Though the thought horrified him, he would have to watch more of the DVDs.