By the time dawn arrived, the Doctor had read everything that he could find that was in any way related to the assault on Jack, and he was beyond sickened. He had believed in past times that Jack often invited trouble with his openly flirtatious nature, but this...? This was unconscionable.
"It took nearly four days for my body to repair itself," a voice spoke unexpectedly behind him, and he turned to find Jack standing just behind him. The Captain was staring at the monitor with an expression that suggested he desperately wanted to be looking elsewhere, but couldn't drag his gaze away. "That's how bad it was. Owen had to keep sedating me, because the pain was more than I could stand."
"Jack, I..."
"You know I can still feel it? The barbed wire, I mean. I can still feel it around my wrists... my ankles... around my face. I try to sleep, and even when I manage to get to sleep, I can't rest, because my mind keeps reliving it. I thought what the Master did was bad enough, but I survived that, and I learnt how to cope with it so that it didn't affect everyone around me. This...? I can't do that with this, because every waking moment, every time I fall asleep, it's like I'm right back in that room. I can't get past it. I just don't know how."
The Doctor said nothing, knowing instinctively that saying sorry this time was a woefully inadequate response.
"They hurt me, Doctor," Jack whispered, finally tearing his gaze away from the monitor to look at the Time Lord. "In some ways, they hurt me worse than the Master ever did, because the Master never resorted to that. Oh, don't get me wrong. The Master raped my mind, left me screaming for hours until I didn't have a voice left, but he never raped my body. Those men, they never hesitated. They claimed that homosexual sex repulsed them, that it was an affront to their god, but then they did the very thing to me that they said was wrong! I don't understand it, Doctor. If they hated me so much, why didn't they just kill me? Why did they do the very thing that they said they hated?"
"I wish I had an answer for you, Jack," the Doctor replied softly. "I really do, but you know as well as I do that humans are equally capable of monstrous behaviour as they are of great courage. Unfortunately, this time, you found the worst kind."
Jack uttered a slightly hysterical laugh as he sank down onto the pilot's seat.
"I seem to have a knack for that. Suzie... Those lunatics in the Brecon Beacons... John..."
The Doctor was partially tempted to ask who John was, and then thought better of it. Later, perhaps, he told himself sternly. Much, much later. Jack went on miserably, oblivious to the Doctor's musings.
"You know, I was actually looking forward to Christmas this year? I thought it was going to be nice. I should've known better. I don't think I'm meant to have a happy Christmas."
"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," the Doctor growled. "This was one year, Jack. What about last year? Disregarding the Valiant, of course..."
"Spent it watching a friend gas himself to death in Ianto's car, because he couldn't cope with life anymore."
The Doctor blinked, not quite sure how to respond to that.
"Oh..."
"Year before that, I was trapped in an apartment with a Yuuraghi warrior who thought the only way to regain his honour was to cut off certain vital parts of my anatomy to take back to his people."
It was with some effort that the Doctor didn't laugh. He could just imagine what Jack might have done to get himself into that situation to begin with.
"You should take a refresher course on alien customs, Jack. I would have thought you'd know that the Yuuraghi consider anything even remotely related to sex unclean."
Jack didn't crack a smile.
"You automatically assume I flirted with it? I'm not an idiot, Doctor. I know the Yuuraghi consider themselves a pure race. I would never have done anything that reckless."
The Doctor stared at Jack for long seconds before shaking his head decisively.
"No. I don't want to know."
Jack sighed, then, and rolled his eyes.
"Okay, so I might have had a slight lapse of memory, and mistaken the signals he was giving out. But seriously, one little kiss? That was not worth what he wanted to take."
The Doctor did laugh, then, but there was nothing disparaging in it.
"Only you, Jack."
Again, Jack didn't return the smile.
"Oh, and then there was the Christmas and New Year of Two-Thousand, when Alex killed everyone in the Hub, and then shot himself..."
"Okay, okay!" the Doctor cut him off abruptly. "I get the picture."
Jack had the grace to look mildly embarrassed by his outburst.
"Sorry. It's just, I don't really remember a time when I last had a happy Christmas. I never seemed to be in the right place to be involved in a real Christmas celebration. I really thought that was going to change this year. More fool me, I guess."
That time, the Doctor said nothing about melodramatics on Jack's part. He could see clearly that the Captain was not trying to over-dramatise the situation; he was merely stating the facts of a situation that clearly hurt him a lot, and the Doctor suspected that he knew why.
It all stemmed back to the few months that Jack had spent with him and Rose on the TARDIS. Those few months, short though they'd been, had given Jack a taste of truly belonging somewhere and the celebration of Christmas on Earth was the ultimate in belonging. Clearly, Jack hadn't felt as though he belonged anywhere since being left behind on Satellite Five. Although, he had Ianto, didn't he...?
"Dare I ask why you were visiting a pub on your own on Christmas Eve, and not with that young man of yours?" the Doctor asked.
At that, Jack suddenly went quiet, and the Doctor felt his curiosity pique.
"I get the feeling that there's a rather long and awkward story there."
"I need coffee," Jack mumbled, deliberately avoiding meeting the Doctor's gaze. The Doctor watched in surprise and concern as Jack all but bolted from the control room.
"Well," he said finally, "that was... unexpected."
Curiosity overcame all else, and he decided to go in search of Ianto, to see if he could possibly find out what it was that Jack had so obviously baulked at telling him.
Ianto emerged from the ensuite of Jack's room to find the Doctor ensconced in a chair in the far corner of the room, watching him with bright interest. Grateful that he had opted to dress in the ensuite, Ianto greeted the Doctor with a polite incline of his head.
"Good morning, Doctor. Was there something I can do for you?"
To Ianto's quiet irritation, a grin spread across the Doctor's face.
"You really don't like me, do you, Ianto Jones?"
Ianto frowned.
"That's inconsequential, sir."
"So you think. Go on, tell me. What is it about me that you don't like?"
Ianto clenched his jaw and turned away, his ingrained sense of propriety keeping him from voicing those very thoughts. The Doctor leaned forward in his chair, grinning widely.
"Oh, come on. You can say it. Go on, get it off your chest."
"May I remind you, sir, that this is your ship?"
"Oh, she won't mind, either. She quite likes you, you know. She likes how well you've taken care of our Jack."
Pain clenched Ianto's heart, his stoic expression crumbled and he sank down onto the bed.
"Yes. I took such wonderful care of him that instead of coming home with me on Christmas Eve to get ready for spending Christmas Day with my family, he went to a pub where he was targeted for being gay, kidnapped, tortured and pack-raped. I as good as told Jack that I didn't want him around at Christmas, Doctor. It's my fault that he was attacked!" He paused to take a long breath before speaking in a shaky voice. "I've done a wonderful job of looking after him, haven't I?"
By then, the Doctor's smile had faded entirely.
"I'd tell you not to be so hard on yourself, but I don't think you're going to listen to me, are you?"
Ianto stared at him with a bitter gaze, and when he spoke it was in a dull but deliberate tone.
"It's my fault."
"Inconsequential, Ianto Jones. Ooh, I quite like that word. Inconsequential. Inconsequential. Rolls nicely off the tongue, don't you think? Anyway, I can't exactly talk. It's my fault that he was left behind on a derelict satellite, and I daresay that of our individual indiscretions, mine was probably the worse betrayal."
Ianto diverted his gaze to the floor. All of a sudden, he found his mind flooded with images of seeing Jack in that hospital bed, and he couldn't help but voice his scepticism.
"I'm not so sure about that."
"Yes, well, perhaps we should both remember what's most important here."
"And what's that?"
Try as he might, Ianto couldn't keep himself from snapping at the Doctor. If the Time Lord noticed, though, he didn't let it show.
"That he forgives us both."
Ianto buried his face in his hands, sickened by the guilt that he just couldn't seem to shake.
"And what if I can't forgive myself? I hurt him so badly, Doctor."
"From what I've seen so far, you're doing a good job of trying to repair the damage. Give it time, Ianto Jones. Believe me, that's one thing that Jack has plenty of."
Slowly, Ianto raised his eyes to meet the Doctor's.
"What about you? Are you staying, or are you going?"
The Doctor smiled sincerely in reply.
"Staying, for now."
In all honesty, Ianto couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. He decided that, for Jack's sake, it was probably a good thing.
"Where is he?" Ianto wondered, suddenly feeling a fresh pang of guilt and worry for leaving Jack alone.
"In the kitchen," the Doctor replied. He paused, as thought listening to someone else, before frowning a little. "And apparently eating all of my triple chocolate ripple biscuits!"
Ianto couldn't hide a weary smile as the Time Lord strode from the room.
"That's my Jack," he murmured before hurrying to catch up.
Jack was just biting into the last remaining biscuit when the Doctor walked in, looking distinctly unimpressed.
"Enjoying those, Captain?" he asked tersely. Jack didn't hesitate to jam the rest of the biscuit into his already full mouth.
"S'good."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him in bemusement. He was fairly certain that he knew what Jack had just said, but what had actually come out had sounded more like 'mffsggud'. It didn't help that he sprayed biscuit crumbs across the table in the process.
"Charming, as ever," the Doctor said dryly. Jack paused to wash the rather excessive mouthful down with the coffee he'd made for himself, and then flashed a grin at the Doctor. A grin, the Time Lord mused, that was definitely missing its usual trademark spark.
"Sorry."
"Liar."
Jack shrugged.
"I'll buy you more. I'll buy you a whole cupboard full, if you want."
Rolling his eyes in mock exasperation, the Doctor sat down opposite Jack. Ianto, who had followed him in, chose to sit beside Jack.
"All right," the Doctor said quietly. "It's morning, and you're both free to leave, if that's what you want to do."
"But...?" Jack queried.
"But, I'd like to know just what is happening as far as the men who attacked you go. Please tell me you aren't just pretending it didn't happen?"
The smile that graced Jack's face was truly a bitter one.
"Doctor, do I look like I'm doing that?"
"No," the Doctor conceded, looking abashed. "Sorry?"
Ianto, however, spoke up.
"He did to begin with."
Jack glowered at Ianto, who shrugged a slight apology.
"Sorry, Cariad, but you were."
"Cariad?" the Doctor echoed in surprise. "That's fairly intimate. How long have you two been together?"
"Properly?" Jack asked. "Since about a month or so after you brought me home."
"Ah. So, before then...?"
"It was undefined," Ianto stated diplomatically. Jack chuckled mirthlessly.
"Right. That's one way of putting it."
"And now it's... defined?" the Doctor asked. Ianto reached out to close his hand over Jack's, and their fingers automatically laced together.
"We're working on it," Ianto said gently, and Jack nodded in wordless agreement.
"All right, then," the Doctor said with a quiet, inexplicable feeling of relief. "Now, though. You didn't answer my question. What's being done about the men who hurt you?"
"We're working with the police detective who was assigned to the case," Ianto answered, all the while keeping an eye on Jack to watch his reaction. His own unease in the Doctor's presence was rapidly disappearing in light of Jack's open displays of affection to him in front of the Time Lord. "Once we've located the men responsible, then we'll deal with them."
A cloud quickly gathered over the Doctor's face on hearing that.
"You'll deal with them? And what, exactly, do you mean by that?"
"What he means," Jack growled with a sudden, fresh vehemence, "is that when we find them, we're going to retcon the sons of bitches and wipe their memories all the way back to their fucking childhoods."
"Jack..." the Doctor started to protest, but Jack cut him off with an explosive shout.
"No!" he snapped, glaring openly at the Doctor. "No, don't you say we can't do it. Don't you dare. Just be glad that's all I'm going to do to them, because believe me, there's a hell of a lot more that I want to do. A hell of a lot more."
The Doctor stared across the table at Jack with a gaze that was laced with disappointment.
"I would have thought that wiping their memories is a method of punishment that you in particular would be loathed to use."
Bitter anger flooded Jack's face, and the Doctor felt quietly disturbed by the ease with which Jack's anger took hold.
"Why? Because the Time Agency stole two years of my own memories?"
Ianto started beside him, astonishment on his face, and the Doctor guessed that was a titbit of information that Jack had never shared.
"That's precisely why, Jack."
"There's a difference, though," Jack pointed out, his tone positively frigid. The Doctor's eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.
"Really? This should be good."
He couldn't quite keep a lid on the sarcasm, and the glare he got from Jack almost made him regret it. Almost.
"I'm not going to wipe a portion of their memories," Jack told him. "I'm going to wipe their whole lives."
For a long moment, the Doctor found himself unable to breathe, even in spite of his respiratory bypass system.
"Jack, you can't..."
"Do not tell me what I can or can't do. Considering what they did to me, they're damned lucky that that's all I plan on doing to them. Because I can't begin to tell you how much I want to kill each and every one of them."
The Doctor was starting to feel light-headed.
"I can't be party to this," he said tensely. Jack launched himself out of his seat so fast that his seat crashed over backwards, and the violent movement caused both the Doctor and Ianto to jump.
"Fine. I never asked you to come anyway. Go the hell back to UNIT, or wherever. Tell them whatever you want."
"Jack..."
"No! I don't care, just leave me alone!"
He stormed out, the very picture of indignant rage.
"Doctor," Ianto said tentatively, even as he started to get up to go after Jack. "You need to understand..."
"What?" the Doctor cut him off angrily. "That he's hell bent on playing God? He is planning to do to those men the very thing that was done to him! There is no justification for that!"
"What would you suggest, then?" Ianto asked. "Because we have very few other options here. They won't be punished by our justice system. We could never explain to a jury how Jack healed so fast."
"He could always try forgiving them, and letting it go," the Doctor suggested, but the moment the words were out of his lips, he knew he'd made a mistake. Ianto stared back at him in wide-eyed disbelief.
"I'm sorry... Did you just say forgive them? You honestly expect Jack to be able to just forgive them? Are you out of your mind? Don't you know what they did to him?"
"Yes, I saw the reports," the Doctor admitted, trying not to wince at the memory of those shocking pictures, and all-too-graphic police reports.
"And you still think he should just... what... get over it? A minute ago, you were telling him you hoped he wasn't trying to just bury it! What sort of hypocrite are you?"
"There's a difference between burying trauma, and moving past it," the Doctor argued. An example occurred to him, and he pounced on it. "He forgave what the Master did to him!"
The words were out before he realised that perhaps Jack hadn't actually told any of his people about the Master and the Valiant. There was no surprise or confusion in Ianto's expression, though, and the Doctor honestly wasn't sure whether to be relieved over that or not.
"Did he?" Ianto asked icily, his expression hardening. "Are you so certain of that?"
The Doctor faltered, suddenly unsure.
"Well... I..."
"Maybe," Ianto said tersely as he moved towards the door, "he's just kept his opinions to himself out of a misguided loyalty to you!"
"Oi, that's a bit uncalled for," the Doctor protested, but Ianto refused to back down.
"What's uncalled for are your expectations on Jack when he's struggling to cope from one day to the next! Everyone seems to so easily forget that it only happened on Christmas Eve, and that was only seven days ago now! Six days since he was found by the police! He's spent nearly two hundred years trying to live up to what he thought were your expectations of him, even after you'd abandoned him! You are in no position to dictate to him, Doctor. And if you can't offer him the support he needs, then perhaps you should just take your time ship, and leave."
Ianto stormed out, not giving the Doctor an opportunity to respond. The Time Lord watched the young man go, his mouth agape with shock.
"Well..." he started to say in astonishment, only to be brought up short by a distinctly unhappy response from the TARDIS, pushing him to go after the two of them. Grimacing, the Doctor reluctantly conceded, and hurried after his one-time former companion.
tbc...