Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.
Jack lowered his gun as he stepped into the room. He didn't feel quite safe enough to put it away entirely, but he didn't want to frighten the poor man any more than he already was.
The man, from what he could see under the metal contraption over his face, was young. His battered form testified that his captors had been none too gentle and if the blood leaking out from under his bonds was any indication, he'd often struggled and failed to get free.
Jack gestured for his team to stay back in the doorway as he approached the captive - who had yet to realize there was anyone else in the room. "Rory Williams?"
Startled blue-grey eyes flew open. A stream of panicked words flew out of his mouth, "Go away. Didn't I give you what you wanted? Why won't you leave me alone? I don't have anything else. I can't answer any more of your stupid questions, just leave me alone."
The rest of his words were lost in a slurred mumble as the man fought to stay conscious. Jack slowly lowered his gun to the floor and kicked it behind him to his team. "It's alright, Mr. Williams, we're the good guys. We're here to rescue you. Look. See? No weapons."
The captive man blinked lethargically at him, as if he had a hard time concentrating on anything.
"I'm going to see if I can get these restraints off, okay?" Jack moved slowly so that Rory would be able to track every moment. It hardly helped though, when the captain realized he'd have to stand behind the man to release him from the head restraint.
Rory's breathing hitched as Jack began to mess with the buttons on the back of his chair. Fortunately, there weren't many choices to pick from and after selecting a couple of buttons that did absolutely nothing, Jack hit one that caused the metal mask to detach itself from the chair. He came back around to the front again. "I'm going to pull the mask off now, okay?"
Rory didn't make a sound, but his eyes clearly said that he did not trust him.
Jack gently pried the slender parts of the contraption off of Rory's jaw first and worked his way up from there. A couple of times, the delicate metal simply snapped beneath his fingers, causing the captive to flinch, but eventually he got the whole contraption off.
Shaggy blond hair flopped over Rory's forehead now that it was no longer held back by metal. The prongs left small red impressions on his skin, but they were already starting to fade.
"No permanent damage," Jack grinned. "And I'm pretty sure your evil brother didn't put you in here, so we're good there too."
Faint confusion flickered through those wary, cloudy blue eyes.
"Man in the Iron Mask? No?"
"Jack," Gwen hissed from the doorway.
"Right. Let's get you out of here." Jack examined the restraints, wincing at the blood that clotted around the man's wrists. The first thing he dealt with was the woman's hand that Rory still clutched. It took some coaxing, but he finally let go and Jack was able to drag the woman a safe distance away. A quick search around the chair and room revealed no way to release the restraints. He paused in front of the captive again. "I don't suppose you know how to get those off?"
Rory blinked at him. He looked as if he had a hard time focusing on his surroundings, but any sudden movements had him flinching.
"Jack!" Mickey called.
He turned and caught the small laser penknife the man tossed at him. "Perfect. Alright, Mr. Williams. Hold still and we'll have you out of there in no time."
As he bent to start on the ankle restraints, he caught a glimpse of the ugly burn, bullet, and stab wounds. He had been so focused on getting Rory out of the contraption he hadn't even noticed the other man was injured. "Mickey, we're going to need that med kit. Can you start prepping some antiseptic and bandages?"
"Yes sir."
He got the ankle and thigh restraints off without any difficulty. As he moved to the wrist and elbow restraints though, he could see that Rory watched him closely. It unnerved him that the man hadn't spoken since their initial encounter. The sudden intense focus had Jack on edge now - injured and frightened people could often be more dangerous than an armed soldier. He started talking again, hoping that his words would get through to the man. "We're almost done, almost out of here. We're going to get you medical attention, you'll go back to your wife...what's her name?"
The last question was hissed back to his crew. Mickey responded, a little too sharply, "Amy."
"Ah yes, Amy." He turned back to undo the last restraint and saw that this had been the exact wrong thing to say.
Rory's expression - so blank before - now filled with a devastating mixture of sorrow, anger, and pain. "What do you want with her? Why can't you leave her alone? She never did anything to you."
"We haven't hurt her. She's safe. She's waiting for you." At that moment, the last band popped off.
With more strength and speed than Jack expected from an injured, half-starved man, Rory lurched upright, punched him in the face, and darted over to the corner despite his terrible limp.
Jack sat up and rubbed his chin with one hand while he held out the other one to keep his crew from coming into the room. "It's alright, I've had worse. Who knows what they've been twisting his mind to believe about his wife?"
He got up slowly.
Rory crouched in the corner, trembling hands covering his face, his bad leg stretched out in front of him. Though the man had been captive for only five days, the lack of nutrition showed in his skin that stretched tight over his ribs.
"Mr. Williams."
The form went absolutely rigid.
"Rory," Jack said, softer.
The trembling eased a bit.
"We're here to help you, but you have to let us, okay?"
Reality, if it was reality, looked blurred around the edges. Too bright and sharp in the center, but indistinct everywhere else. Rory could barely understand what the man was saying to him. All he understood was that the man was helping him out of the chair, talking kindly to him, mentioning Amy - it must be another dream. This time painted to look like the real world so that he could hope he was rescued when he really wasn't.
The pain felt real enough. Even now he regretted moving as much as he did, the sharp pangs that gripped his chest and leg were enough to steal his breath away. Still, dream or not, it was better than sitting in that chair. If he could only stop shaking.
His mind felt fractured. He could remember everything and nothing. His thoughts and memories pulsed and surged like the tide. Hundreds of events he'd been a part of pushed to the forefront of his mind and then faded away until he forgot where he was or even who he was. Then it'd repeat in a vicious cycle that made him want to rip his hair out.
His fingers dug into his scalp as if he could dig far enough inside to reach the brain that tormented him with relentless fervor.
"Hey." The voice sounded sharp, gave him something to focus on.
The man with the bright eyes was still there, just looking at him. "Can you put your hands down for me?"
A part of Rory was deeply amused that he was being treated like a child. The other part, the much larger part, terrified of what would happen if he should let down his guard. He kept his hands clamped to his face, his fingers spread apart just far enough so that he could see what happened around him.
"Rory." The sound of his name warmed him. None of the people here called him Rory - in fact, even in his dreams, only Amy did that. Perhaps they decided to be kind to him. "You're going into shock - you're moving too quickly for your body to keep up with you. Let us help you. We've got a whole staff of nurses and doctors."
He couldn't help the flinch he gave when he heard the word "doctor." Though he knew that none of this was technically the Doctor's fault, he was a convenient target to blame.
Regret filled him for thinking of the Doctor as the mere consideration of the alien brought another wave of memories with it. He could see whole civilizations rising and falling, friends that he had briefly met growing old and dying before his eyes. Or, worse yet, dying young when there was nothing he could do about it. He saw moments when he thought the Pandorica was taken - lost from him forever - and felt the pain of losing Amy and being stuck forever as an automaton fester in his heart. And then Amy was dying in front of him again - her face old and their child wailing in her arms.
He thought he heard shouting, but he couldn't distinguish whether they were real or fiction. When darkness finally came, he did not fight it.
When Martha's face broke into a bright smile after she answered her phone, Amy felt herself relax for the first time in several days. The Doctor offered her a small smile and a pat on the shoulder, as if he had known all along that this would be the outcome.
Martha hung up and turned to them. "They have him. He's still alive, but seems to be showing signs of shock."
"Is he alright?" Amy asked.
Martha's smile dimmed a bit. "I'm afraid they were not kind to him - he has some injuries that need immediate medical attention. But don't worry, we have some of the most advance medical equipment on earth, he'll be well looked after."
Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Her legs felt shaky from the leftover adrenaline. "Okay...I think I'm...going to get some fresh air. You'll let me know when he gets here, right?"
"Of course." Martha watched her go.
The Doctor studied her expression carefully. "There's something else that you're not telling her."
She turned to face him, eyes grim. "Jack couldn't get Rory to respond to him. He seems to be trapped in some sort of trancelike state. He has moments of lucidity, but they're getting more infrequent. Jack ended up sedating him when he started screaming."
The Doctor's expression grew darker with every word Martha spoke. When she'd finished, he pressed his lips into a thin line. "This is not going to be an easy recovery. It sounds like they were able to wreck more havoc with Rory's mind than I first thought. I've been able to help victims of empathetic attacks before, but none of them had 2,000 years worth of memories locked inside their heads."
"Can you help him?" Martha asked.
"I hope so, but I honestly don't know."