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Determinacy

Summary:

Crossover with Torchwood, post-S1. For every game, there are a finite number of moves. Jack waits for an opening.

Warning: Graphic sex and violence, torture, D/s, references to mpreg. Really dark for most of the story.

Chapter Text

The first year on the Valiant is unpleasant, to put it mildly, but it's bearable. The Doctor has a plan, and Martha is out there, making sure it happens. He even participates in a few escape attempts, but they're not effective enough to do more than distract the Master from what's really going on.

He's tortured and killed rather a lot at first, but it doesn't feel very real. He's had worse. He's done worse, to his eternal regret. Besides, the Master loses interest after a while. As much fun as it is to have a victim who comes back over and over again, without fail, there's also no way for the Master to leave scars. There's no lasting damage, nothing to build his demented ideas on. Jack is a slate constantly being cleaned. Much better to concentrate on building his weapons and herding humanity into smaller and tighter circles. That damage sticks.

The Jones family pass him bits of information when they can. It's difficult because there are cameras everywhere, and they're always being watched. They develop a small language of subtle gestures. He has a vague picture of the world below. It's not pretty.

He wishes that he could talk to the Doctor, see for himself that he's all right, even with the artificial aging, but the Master keeps them separate.

The Master stops by one day to inform him that his team have been killed by the Toclafane, and as much as it saddens him he's glad it's over for them. As long as the Doctor's plan works, they'll be sneaking behind his back again in the work of a moment, and won't remember any of this.

He wouldn't call it a vacation, but apart from the boredom, pain, and horror, captivity is almost restful. He's not in charge of anything, and on the whole is pretty much useless, which means he isn't responsible for anything. After lifetimes of war and the weight of leadership, it's a relief to be nothing more than a prisoner.

When it all goes wrong and humanity dies and Earth burns, he blames himself. He's been a captain for long enough to know the foolishness of depending too much on one plan, and they had no backup, nothing. Martha had done her part, but the Doctor had failed, and now everyone was paying the price. He tries not to be too angry with the Doctor, who is surely suffering far more than him.

He finds out just how much the Doctor is suffering when the Master tells him. It's horrific, and far worse than he thought. The plan didn't just fail, it backfired, and the Doctor's mind is trapped, forced open so the Master can look inside and feed him the screams of humanity. Jack's had enough run-ins with amoral telepaths to shudder at the thought. Worst of all, it means the Doctor can't even help plan an escape anymore, because the Master knows everything he's thinking.

He mourns Martha and her family along with the rest. He's the last human now. He'd expected to be the last human in a hundred trillion years, so this is somewhat ahead of schedule.


A week after Earth dies, the Master moves him to a new room, and locks him in a cell at one end. He brings in a bunch of televisions and some speakers. He's humming to himself as he sets them up, plugs them into the wall. When he turns on the screens, one of them shows a bed, and the Doctor's lying naked on it. To Jack's surprise and relief, he's youthful again. He feels a glimmer of hope.

But the Master has another surprise for him.

"Do you know what I've done?" the Master asks him, rhetorically. "Come on, guess."

Jack had just glares. He prefers never to give the Master the satisfaction of a response. He isn't sure he could stop himself from pouring out all the bile and hatred he feels, if he lets out a single word.

"Not even a little guess? Oh, you're no fun." The Master pouts theatrically, then his face splits into a huge grin. "But since I'm feeling generous today, I'll tell you anyway." He leans close, mere inches from the bars. Jack could probably reach through and snap his neck if he's fast enough, but he needs to know what's happened first. There's no more Jones family to pass him information.

"I've adapted some of that lovely Lazarus technology, and the hand that you so thoughtfully held on to for me, and mixed in a little of myself, and--" He stops himself, a mischievous look on his face. "Are you sure you won't guess? It's just so good."

Jack keeps absolutely still, and waits with increasing worry.

"You see, now that he's let me into his head, I know everything. I know exactly what he wants. Peace in the universe, the blood to wash off his hands, oh, and the Time Lords. He blew them up, and now he feels bad. Poor Doctor." The Master makes a clownish frown. "No more Gallifrey. All gone! It makes him so very sad."

"Me, I'm sympathetic," he continues. "So I'm going to give him what he wants. A new Gallifrey, built on the ashes of Earth. And I'm going to give him back the Time Lords. In fact, I've already given him the first one. It's growing in him now!" He laughs.

Jack feels sick. "What have you done to him?" he growls, unable to keep quiet any longer.

"I've only gone and knocked him up," says the Master, looking as insane as Jack has always known him to be. "He's got a womb and everything! And the best part is--do you want to know the best part? It's going to kill him. It is."

Jack bares his teeth, too angry for words.

"Well, maybe not. If I'm feeling generous. See, if by some amazing chance he escapes, he'll only live for, oh, maybe five days? A week, if he's lucky. Or unlucky, because after it dies it's going to make him rot from the inside. Wouldn't that be a shame." A smug smile spreads across his face. "If he wants to live, he has to do everything I tell him. Because if he doesn't..." He drew his finger across his neck, making a choking sound.

"Oh, and just in case you were thinking of escaping yourself--not that you have the remotest chance, by the way--if you escape, I'll let him die. And when he's dying, when he's being killed by the dead baby decaying inside him, I'm going to let him know that it's all your fault. His last thought of you will be 'Jack the baby-killer.'"

The Master dances away from the bars and over to the televisions. "But as long as you're here, I'm going to let you watch. All of it." He points to the unconscious Doctor. "He's your in-flight entertainment for the next, oh, thousand years? Probably less. I don't think he'll last." He actually sounds regretful at this, which is sheer audacity. "Enjoy!"

He leaves Jack to stare helplessly at the screen.


If it was just the suite, the Doctor's own cell, it wouldn't be so bad. But it's also the lab.

Jack watches in horror as the Doctor is drugged and passes out, dying right there in front of him. The Master grins into the camera, gives a wave.

"Think I should save him, Jack?" the Master asks him, over the speakers. "Save him, let him die, save him, let him die. I could flip a coin?" He pats his pockets. "Oh, I forgot. No more Earth currency! I guess I'll have to save him."

He injects the Doctor with something, and the monitor shows that his hearts start beating normally again. Jack slumps against the wall, relieved, and waits for the Doctor to wake up.

He doesn't, not for days. The Master keeps him in the lab, injecting him with drug after drug, watching as his body fails and recovers over and over. Jack wishes he had something he could throw to smash the televisions, knock over the speakers. He has nothing.

When the Doctor finally opens his eyes, the Master tells him he had a bad reaction. The Doctor believes him.

"He's killing you!" Jack shouts at the screen, unable to stop himself. "God damn it, Doctor. Wake up!"

But the Doctor can't hear him, and the Master lies so very reasonably. The Doctor begs him to stop, but even that is a disappointment to Jack. The Doctor should be trying to think his way out of this, looking for any angle of escape. Jack resents him for accepting the trap he's caught in.

Later on, he reminds himself about the Archangel link, and that the Doctor is dependent on the Master for survival beyond a handful of days. He finds forgiveness and gives it, even if the Doctor may never know. He's not doing much better on the escape front himself, and the bars of his cage are only on the outside and not the inside.


He's angry all over again when they start being friends. It makes him furious, makes him sick. The Doctor looks at the Master the way Jack wishes the Doctor would look at him. It's so unbelievably wrong, and he can't make them stop.

And every time the Master leaves the room, every single goddamn time, he gives Jack a smug little smile through the camera by the door. Jack wants to scream as loud as he can, scream so loud that the Doctor will hear him and come to his senses and fight, but there's yards of steel between them, and the Master's already told him that he's on the opposite end of the Valiant. The only thing screaming would do would be to give the Master the satisfaction, and there's no way he's doing that.

He went to his death willingly to fight the Daleks, because of the Doctor. He waited a hundred and fifty years for the Doctor to return, to answer his questions. He rebuilt Torchwood in the Doctor's honour. All the Doctor's given him in return are warnings about flirting and violence, and a speech about how he's a fundamental wrong. The Master burns Earth and slaughters the human race, then uses some twisted mad science to make the Doctor pregnant and almost kills him every other week, and the Doctor hangs on every word the Master says and smiles at him like an idiot.

Just for a while, he wants the Doctor to die. He wants to escape and let the Master kill the Doctor and let it all be done with. He almost gets his wish.

He's staring up at the ceiling when he hears the panic in the Doctor's voice, and he looks up just as the Doctor collapses. Even the Master looks worried, so he immediately knows it's bad. He's on the edge of his seat as the Master brings the Doctor to the lab and actually cuts him open and puts something inside him.

"Don't worry yourself," the Master says into the camera. "This is actually for his own good. You should thank me."

Jack can't believe that, but the Doctor recovers. He feels an extremely reluctant, extremely small amount of gratitude, and hates the Master for making him feel even that much. The thing is, he's not even getting the full force of the Master's manipulative charm. It's little wonder the Doctor is falling for it.


He catches them kissing. The Doctor's starting to show. If the world hadn't already ended, today would be it. He just can't believe this is happening anymore. The whole 'happy couple' nonsense in combination with the Master's unspeakable sadism makes his head spin.

Still, Jack has hope. The Doctor's still alive, despite the Master's earlier eagerness to kill him horribly. Jack has always believed that where there's life, there's hope; how else did he survive this far without going crazy? He takes one day at a time, the way he's done since Rose brought him back from the dead forever.

When the Doctor actually tells the Master that he trusts him, right before the Master gleefully slices into him again, Jack smashes his fist against the wall so hard he cracks bone. At least physical pain is something he knows how to deal with. He can control that kind of hurt.

The paradox machine is so tantalizingly close. He dreams about it night after night. The only problem is, it's beyond anything he ever dealt with as a Time Agent. It would not be helpful if he accidentally destroys the universe when trying to save it. Then there's the problem of the Doctor's condition. He believes the Master about the Doctor needing him to survive. If they could just pop to the future and move the Doctor to a hospital that could actually deal with this kind of thing, it wouldn't matter so much, but the TARDIS is useless to them, and Time Lord biology isn't anyone's specialty in the twenty-first century, even without factoring in the baby.

It's definitely a living thing, now, not just a bunch of cells. He's seen the lab tests, the scans, the operations. More than that, it's the Doctor's baby. It's the Master's too, which is not something he's likely to forget, but he can see how much it means to the Doctor to have this. It's not the short-term survival that Jack worries about now. It's the long-term consequences. It's what will happen if the child survives until the Master cuts it from the Doctor's body.

It will become a hostage, surely.


Because Jack never stays dead, goes the Master's reasoning, there's no reason to give him food or water. Jack isn't a living thing anymore, because living things die. Jack is never not hungry, not thirsty. He dies and comes back, injuries healed, but his stomach is always as empty as before. Whatever energy brings him back lets him last for a few days, and then he dies again, to start the process over. It's painful and monotonous and he'd give his left arm for a meal, but the Master leaves him to rot. The Master is busy alternately doting on the Doctor and licking his blood from his fingers.

The only company Jack has for months is his view of the Doctor. He can't stop watching, no matter how much he wants to turn away.

Then one day, to his astonishment, someone new enters his room. He gapes, thinking with intense gladness that another human has survived after all, that he's not the last, that there's hope. It's then that he hears the Master telling the Doctor about the looms, and realizes. It's a Time Lord, or the Master's version of one. He hopes the Doctor's baby isn't going to grow up like this.

The man brings in another television, the other end of another camera, which means another room the Doctor will be allowed to enter. Jack hopes it's not another lab.

The camera comes on, and there's windows. His jaw drops. Where Earth used to be is a rust-colored world, and after a beat he recognizes it from the Doctor's description. It's Gallifrey. The new Gallifrey the Master promised, all those months ago. Jack sheds a few tears for Earth, then. He can't not.

He finally understands how the Doctor feels about Gallifrey. About not being the only Time Lord left. Even though there's no more hope than before, even though they're both just as trapped, Jack's determination is renewed. He will break the paradox, no matter what it takes. He will restore Earth, bring back the human race. He's never going to die, and that means he can afford to wait. No matter how long it takes, the moment the paradox breaks everything will go back to the way it was. Unless the universe breaks with it.

He wants to save the Doctor. He hopes he still can. But he'll sacrifice him, if it comes to that. Everything is expendable. He would be, too, if his life could ever be expended.


He watches the Doctor spiral down, suffocated by depression. There's still nothing he can do. He wonders if maybe it would be better if the Doctor simply dies. The Master would probably turn on him, take out his rage on Jack's endless lives, but ultimately that wouldn't matter. There's a hard centre to Jack that's withstood so much that even the Master at his worst couldn't shatter it.

The Doctor isn't as strong, and by the second week things are looking bleak. That's the funny thing about the Doctor; Jack looked up to him so much at first, seeing only the force of will the man had, the sheer determination for there to be goodness and life in the universe. But even then Jack had seen glimpses of the pain underneath, the fragile hearts beneath the tough exterior. Yet there was strength under that, too. The Doctor is a contradiction, strength over weakness over strength, and so on, down too many layers for Jack to see what it's all built on.

Jack is a simple man. Life is harsh and you take what you need. Except the Doctor showed him that there can be goodness, there can be hope, and both have to be fought for or they're lost; life isn't worth living if they are. Fighting for them is what keeps him going, and no matter what happens he's eternally in the Doctor's debt for that lesson.

This regeneration of the Doctor is both weaker and stronger than the last. Unfortunately, Jack suspects he's weak in all the ways the Master loves, and strong in all the ways that can't help them out of this nightmare. He's proven right when the Doctor recovers, and immediately makes things worse by granting the Master access directly into his mind.

Fuck.

Jack really hadn't thought things could get much worse, but somehow the Doctor found a way. He has to write him off, now. It's too late. Jack is on his own.


When the Master actually puts a remote control into the Doctor's spine, Jack throws up his hands in despair. The Doctor has completely stopped resisting now, has gone beyond acceptance and started welcoming the Master's sadism. He covers his eyes as the Doctor immediately proceeds to suck the Master's cock, and groans in frustration.

He has to hand it to the Master. When he wins, he damn well wins.

It's his own personal nightmare of a porn film. The Master makes sure the cameras see every angle, every position. Jack seethes with jealousy, and despite the perpetual starvation and everything else he's feeling, he can't not get hard. He can't not stroke his cock as the Doctor's fingers work the Master's cock, can't not imagine the Doctor's lips are around him instead, can't not ache to be fucking the Doctor over and over again.

When he comes, it's dry. His body has nothing to work with. The pain just makes it better. His heart's already broken.


The Doctor is changing before his eyes. The Master often places his hand on the Doctor's face and closes his eyes, and whatever he's doing it's unquestionably evil. Jack's not sure he wants to know, but at the same time he has to know. Someone has to know what's been done, so when they get out of here the Doctor can be put back together again. If he can be put back together again. Jack has his doubts.

He's not sure which is worse: the fucking or the surgeries. Jack has been sick more than once, watching the Master slice the Doctor open, put his hand into him, and ease out a living, extremely necessary part of him. The Master holds it up and runs a scalpel lightly over the surface, pretends to be about to yank it roughly out. Every time, Jack is unable to breathe until it's over.

The Master doesn't talk to him as much these days, because the visuals really speak for themselves. But he does like to gloat about the implants. It's stunningly cruel.

"Look here, Jack," the Master tells him, making the camera zoom in on the Doctor's bloody, glistening guts. "Two on each side. One set to keep him alive, and one set to kill him!" The camera zooms back. He grins, delighted with himself. "Oh, I wouldn't hurt him too badly. Not when he's being so deliciously cooperative. His head, Jack, oh, his head," he croons, closing his eyes, his face a picture of ecstasy. "The way he welcomes me in. I've made him love it so much he begs me to rape his mind."

Jack's heart breaks all over again. He hadn't known what they were doing, what that meant. Oh, his poor Doctor. There'll be nothing left of him, when the Master's done.

"The implants are timed, Jack," the Master continues, once he's finished reminiscing. "One makes him better, one makes him worse. Arranged on a schedule for maximum effect, of course." He's so proud. "I think I'll leave them in for a few years. I do so love the way he needs."

"You sick, sick bastard," Jack hisses. He's starting to see a picture of the Doctor's future, and it's not at all pretty. Jack just hopes he can find a way to pry the Doctor from the Master's clutches when the time comes, because he's not sure the Doctor will go willingly. Not anymore.


A Time Lord brings in another television, and Jack dreads what he's about to see. Nothing the Master has shown him has ever been a good thing, and these days each new victory over the Doctor seems more horrible than the last.

The television stays blank for a few days, until he hears the Doctor begging to be allowed to help the Master's evil plans. Jack has a terrible sinking sensation.

The camera turns on as the Master guides the Doctor from his suite. It's the inside of the TARDIS, all red light and paradox machine.

"Oh, please," Jack begs, prays. "Please no. Doctor, please."

The Doctor enters. There's no sound on this one. The Master leaves, leaves the Doctor alone with the very thing that will put everything back. The very thing that Jack has dreamed about for two years, since this all began. Jack shouts at the television, shouts for the Doctor to break it, break the damn thing, BREAK IT GODDAMMIT!

The Doctor drops to the floor, and he's the one that's broken. He crawls away, staggers out the door.

Jack snaps. He screams, he rages, he slams himself against the steel bars over and over again, damages himself and doesn't care, because every cell of his body is one hundred percent furious with the Doctor for giving in, for giving up and letting the Master turn him into a twisted fucking monster. Jack snarls the Doctor's name, teeth bared like an animal, and doesn't stop raging until his body gives out. He lies on the floor, bruised and broken inside and out, and sobs with dry eyes because his body can't make tears.

He waits for death to wipe him clean again.


The Doctor is at the Master's side, now, slowly helping him conquer the universe. Jack has stopped caring. He exhausted himself in his rage, and how he's numb, drained. Not broken, never broken, because he's still as determined as ever to seize his moment and break the paradox, but his moment is so far away, and the waiting is so hard.

He wills the cameras off, but they never stop. One image after another, an unending, intimate show of the Doctor's slow corruption into the Master's twisted plaything. It inspires neither horror nor arousal. He closes his eyes, turns his back to them. He just wants to rest, to sleep until it's all over.

When he hears the Doctor's voice calling his name, he thinks he must be dreaming, but he's not. He turns over, and freezes in shock as the Doctor blithely strolls right into his room. He has to work to find his voice, after so long.

"Hello, Doctor," he rasps.

The Doctor apologizes. He actually has the gall to apologize. Jack's fury surges back.

"Do you know what he's done to you?" he spits. Is this just the shell of the Doctor he's seeing, or is there some spark of the man left in there? He doesn't know.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know what the Master has done to you?"

The Doctor steps back, as if he's afraid. Afraid of Jack! It's so absurd he wants to laugh.

"The baby," the Doctor says. "Our daughter. Of course I know."

"Your mind, Doctor. Is there even enough of you left to care? Earth? The universe? Any of that ring a bell?"

But the Doctor just shakes his head, keeps backing away. The sheer weakness of it just makes Jack even more furious.

"He's made me watch all of it," he says, wanting this shell of the Doctor to know every sordid detail. "Every goddamn second. There's cameras and microphones all over your suite, the lab. He made me watch as he cut you open, took out parts of you--" He chokes, unable to finish. "Twisted your mind. Fucked you. He's turned you into a monster, just like him."

"How can you say that?!" the Doctor says, backing away until he hits the wall. "He's not a monster. He's her father. He loves us."

And that's too much for Jack. It's too much on so many levels, so deeply wrong. There is nothing left of the Doctor, nothing that can be saved, and the only thing Jack wants to do is punish the shell that remains.

"You could have stopped all of this," he accuses. "And you walked away. There's cameras everywhere, even in the TARDIS."

Somehow this sinks in, and a look of such horror comes over the Doctor's face that Jack immediately regrets what he's done. He's been so frustrated, so angry, that he lashed out when lashing out was the worst thing to do. He knows exactly how fragile the Doctor has become, and made it worse when he should have tried to coax him into letting him free.

Jack calls for the Doctor to come back, calls out a belated apology, but the Doctor is already stumbling out of the room, and too late Jack realizes he really has made things worse. He sees the Doctor falls to his knees in the hall, collapsing, so suddenly ill, and the regret is bitterly sour in his mouth.

The Master's arrival is swift, and so is his punishment. This time Jack is only too glad to die.