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fan_flashworks2025-06-20 08:12 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fan_flashworks2025-06-20 08:12 pm
Entry tags:
Torchwood/Doctor Who: Fanfic: Unyielding
Title: Unyielding
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,519 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 482 - Yield
Summary: Jack will never give the Master what he wants.
Jack felt the thick meaty arms grab him under his armpits, dragging him away from the bridge of the Valiant. His legs went out from under him, still a little bit wobbly from his recent resurrection, but that didn't stop the guards from dragging him down the halls of the vessel and deep into the bowels of it, whether he had his feet under him or not.
There were no places aboard for the detaining of prisoners. The Valiant had never been designed for those purposes. Its mission was the monitoring of Earth's atmosphere and general protection from intergalactic threats, not that it saw much use in that department. Torchwood had pretty much had that covered, though it always gave UNIT the sense that they were still doing something useful, hovering up here and keeping an eye on things. If it made them happy to think that they were playing a valuable, albeit a technically insignificant part, Jack was happy to entertain their delusions. His only beef was that he'd never been invited up to take the fifty pence tour. It was the least they might have done given his position.
Jack managed to get his feet back under him and tried to keep pace with the two burly soldiers. They weren't UNIT, though they were very firmly happy to follow the orders of a madman, which made them dangerous in their own way. This was not the tour he'd wanted to be having; it should have been champagne and platitudes, not heavy-handedness and threats on his life.
Jack could scarcely believe what had just transpired, watching his beloved Doctor reduced to a withering old man. He looked frail and defeated, even if his eyes were still sharp. The look he'd exchanged with Jack in their final moments as Martha had reluctantly teleported from the vessel had been one of uncertainty. If the Doctor had a plan, he was unsure it would work. Both he and Jack were going to be in for rough times ahead, Jack knew that much from reading between the lines. It made for discomforting news.
Jack winced as his shoulder was nearly yanked right out of its socket. 'Easy!' he complained, even though he knew it was falling of deaf ears. He was still entitled to feel indignant at their manhandling of him, and made sure to voice it. This wasn't how things were meant to happen. Nothing and no one could keep the Doctor down, but here they were, both now prisoners of the Master, with only Martha able to escape back to Earth, though what and how she might be able to help them was unclear. As far as Jack was concerned, it was a relief to have her out of harm's way for now. If the Doctor couldn't stop the Master then what chance did any of them have? He prayed that Martha found somewhere safe to hole up until things settled down. He also prayed that things would settle down. He couldn't bear the thought of millions of those Toclofane zipping around killing indiscriminately. It was the kind of thing that he’d taken personal responsibility for making sure didn’t happen. The Doctor couldn’t always be around to protect the planet and so Jack had stepped into the breach, making sure the world remained on an even keel.
It wasn't long until Jack was so far inside the Valiant's engines that he began to wonder where they were taking him, and if they weren't perhaps planning on ejecting him out through some hatch in the base of the ship. He'd die, of course, and the fall would be long and terrifying before he hit the ground, shattering every last bone in his body and possibly rupturing him like a water balloon, but he'd at least come back from it. Thank Rose for small mercies.
Instead he was disappointed to find there was no hatch, no escape, and no way out. They bundled him down to a metal gangway and cuffed him to the railings, both hands and feet. He gave the cuffs an experimental tug, finding them biting hard into his wrists. No amount of dislocating his wrist was going to get him out of that. It wouldn't have been the first time he’d used that trick. The heat from the engines made his face instantly prickle with sweat, feeling a river of it begin to dribble down the middle of his back, pooling against his shirt and belt as it reached a point where it could go no further, seeping into the fabric instead. The heat he could handle. He'd lived on a hot desert world for years, facing far worse temperatures than this. He'd be okay for now.
Then came something he hadn't expected. Questions. Lots of them. Where was the entrance to the Torchwood Three hub located? What were the security codes that would allow them entry? What credentials would they need to hack Torchwood's global network of servers and redundancies? What kind of technologies were being stored there? How many other locations were they operating? Were weapons being cached, and if so, how powerful were they? What satellite surveillance were they running and did they have any contact with alien species? Did they possess biological advancements that could be weaponised? On and on the questions went, and when Jack refused to answer them, the more and more frustrated his captors became, torturing him for intelligence.
The torture itself was pretty rudimentary. Jack also had plenty of experience in that department, but sometimes, it was the simple things that were the most effective. They had tasers, knives and more buckets of freezing cold water than anyone had a right to endure. Never enough to harm him seriously, or even bring him anywhere close to death. Just enough to make him think twice about what physical sacrifices he was prepared to make to hold his tongue.
Only occasionally did the Master himself show up, and then only to torture Jack, not for information, but merely for fun. The Master didn’t mind killing Jack, because he knew Jack would always come back. He found the process entertaining, treating Jack like a plaything that he could discard when he got bored. He liked to tell Jack how his team had been lured deep into the Himalayan mountains on a wild goose chase and that they hadn't been heard from since. There was even the suggestion that if Jack cooperated and told them what they wanted to know, they might send a rescue team to find his friends and bring them back here as leverage.
Jack hated them all the more for threatening his team and trying to use them against him. Better that they stay lost, or perhaps already dead, than to let the Master have them and toy with them the way he liked to toy with Jack. Death would be a mercy for them, even though it made him weep to think about what they might have already suffered. The Master didn't need Torchwood, its technology or its databanks. The Master had the Valiant and the Toclofane. Torchwood's assets would simply have been the cherry on top and Jack wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. For the sake of his team and the sacrifices they'd made, Jack refused to yield to any of the questioning put to him, no matter how much they tortured him for it. The Master wanted ultimate power glory and he didn't care how many lives it cost to do it. Jack owed it to the Doctor to keep on fighting, even if all hope seemed like it was lost.
Even in those darkest moments when he found the pain unbearable and the agony more than he could deal with he thought back to his team. If any of them were here in his shoes he knew they'd never have given up a single one of Torchwood’s secrets – not out of loyalty to Jack, but because that was just the kind of people they were. Knowing that they would have held out despite the pain and the eventual promise of death kept him going. If they wouldn't yield, he wouldn't either.
Where is the Torchwood Cardiff entrance located? What are the access codes to gain entry? What weapons capabilities do you have? What technologies does Torchwood possess? Jack clenched his jaw tight and said nothing, not so much as a defiant response or a threat that they'd never get anything from him. He could play this game as long as they could. Killing him wouldn't change things, it would only make him more determined to hold firm. He owed it to the Doctor and Martha, to Owen and Tosh, and Gwen and Ianto, and every single human living on planet Earth. If there was any chance at all that they could somehow defeat the Master, Jack would make sure he played his part. He'd been a master of torture himself once upon a time. Now he'd become a master of being tortured, because if there was one thing the Master would never have, it was Torchwood.
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,519 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 482 - Yield
Summary: Jack will never give the Master what he wants.
Jack felt the thick meaty arms grab him under his armpits, dragging him away from the bridge of the Valiant. His legs went out from under him, still a little bit wobbly from his recent resurrection, but that didn't stop the guards from dragging him down the halls of the vessel and deep into the bowels of it, whether he had his feet under him or not.
There were no places aboard for the detaining of prisoners. The Valiant had never been designed for those purposes. Its mission was the monitoring of Earth's atmosphere and general protection from intergalactic threats, not that it saw much use in that department. Torchwood had pretty much had that covered, though it always gave UNIT the sense that they were still doing something useful, hovering up here and keeping an eye on things. If it made them happy to think that they were playing a valuable, albeit a technically insignificant part, Jack was happy to entertain their delusions. His only beef was that he'd never been invited up to take the fifty pence tour. It was the least they might have done given his position.
Jack managed to get his feet back under him and tried to keep pace with the two burly soldiers. They weren't UNIT, though they were very firmly happy to follow the orders of a madman, which made them dangerous in their own way. This was not the tour he'd wanted to be having; it should have been champagne and platitudes, not heavy-handedness and threats on his life.
Jack could scarcely believe what had just transpired, watching his beloved Doctor reduced to a withering old man. He looked frail and defeated, even if his eyes were still sharp. The look he'd exchanged with Jack in their final moments as Martha had reluctantly teleported from the vessel had been one of uncertainty. If the Doctor had a plan, he was unsure it would work. Both he and Jack were going to be in for rough times ahead, Jack knew that much from reading between the lines. It made for discomforting news.
Jack winced as his shoulder was nearly yanked right out of its socket. 'Easy!' he complained, even though he knew it was falling of deaf ears. He was still entitled to feel indignant at their manhandling of him, and made sure to voice it. This wasn't how things were meant to happen. Nothing and no one could keep the Doctor down, but here they were, both now prisoners of the Master, with only Martha able to escape back to Earth, though what and how she might be able to help them was unclear. As far as Jack was concerned, it was a relief to have her out of harm's way for now. If the Doctor couldn't stop the Master then what chance did any of them have? He prayed that Martha found somewhere safe to hole up until things settled down. He also prayed that things would settle down. He couldn't bear the thought of millions of those Toclofane zipping around killing indiscriminately. It was the kind of thing that he’d taken personal responsibility for making sure didn’t happen. The Doctor couldn’t always be around to protect the planet and so Jack had stepped into the breach, making sure the world remained on an even keel.
It wasn't long until Jack was so far inside the Valiant's engines that he began to wonder where they were taking him, and if they weren't perhaps planning on ejecting him out through some hatch in the base of the ship. He'd die, of course, and the fall would be long and terrifying before he hit the ground, shattering every last bone in his body and possibly rupturing him like a water balloon, but he'd at least come back from it. Thank Rose for small mercies.
Instead he was disappointed to find there was no hatch, no escape, and no way out. They bundled him down to a metal gangway and cuffed him to the railings, both hands and feet. He gave the cuffs an experimental tug, finding them biting hard into his wrists. No amount of dislocating his wrist was going to get him out of that. It wouldn't have been the first time he’d used that trick. The heat from the engines made his face instantly prickle with sweat, feeling a river of it begin to dribble down the middle of his back, pooling against his shirt and belt as it reached a point where it could go no further, seeping into the fabric instead. The heat he could handle. He'd lived on a hot desert world for years, facing far worse temperatures than this. He'd be okay for now.
Then came something he hadn't expected. Questions. Lots of them. Where was the entrance to the Torchwood Three hub located? What were the security codes that would allow them entry? What credentials would they need to hack Torchwood's global network of servers and redundancies? What kind of technologies were being stored there? How many other locations were they operating? Were weapons being cached, and if so, how powerful were they? What satellite surveillance were they running and did they have any contact with alien species? Did they possess biological advancements that could be weaponised? On and on the questions went, and when Jack refused to answer them, the more and more frustrated his captors became, torturing him for intelligence.
The torture itself was pretty rudimentary. Jack also had plenty of experience in that department, but sometimes, it was the simple things that were the most effective. They had tasers, knives and more buckets of freezing cold water than anyone had a right to endure. Never enough to harm him seriously, or even bring him anywhere close to death. Just enough to make him think twice about what physical sacrifices he was prepared to make to hold his tongue.
Only occasionally did the Master himself show up, and then only to torture Jack, not for information, but merely for fun. The Master didn’t mind killing Jack, because he knew Jack would always come back. He found the process entertaining, treating Jack like a plaything that he could discard when he got bored. He liked to tell Jack how his team had been lured deep into the Himalayan mountains on a wild goose chase and that they hadn't been heard from since. There was even the suggestion that if Jack cooperated and told them what they wanted to know, they might send a rescue team to find his friends and bring them back here as leverage.
Jack hated them all the more for threatening his team and trying to use them against him. Better that they stay lost, or perhaps already dead, than to let the Master have them and toy with them the way he liked to toy with Jack. Death would be a mercy for them, even though it made him weep to think about what they might have already suffered. The Master didn't need Torchwood, its technology or its databanks. The Master had the Valiant and the Toclofane. Torchwood's assets would simply have been the cherry on top and Jack wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. For the sake of his team and the sacrifices they'd made, Jack refused to yield to any of the questioning put to him, no matter how much they tortured him for it. The Master wanted ultimate power glory and he didn't care how many lives it cost to do it. Jack owed it to the Doctor to keep on fighting, even if all hope seemed like it was lost.
Even in those darkest moments when he found the pain unbearable and the agony more than he could deal with he thought back to his team. If any of them were here in his shoes he knew they'd never have given up a single one of Torchwood’s secrets – not out of loyalty to Jack, but because that was just the kind of people they were. Knowing that they would have held out despite the pain and the eventual promise of death kept him going. If they wouldn't yield, he wouldn't either.
Where is the Torchwood Cardiff entrance located? What are the access codes to gain entry? What weapons capabilities do you have? What technologies does Torchwood possess? Jack clenched his jaw tight and said nothing, not so much as a defiant response or a threat that they'd never get anything from him. He could play this game as long as they could. Killing him wouldn't change things, it would only make him more determined to hold firm. He owed it to the Doctor and Martha, to Owen and Tosh, and Gwen and Ianto, and every single human living on planet Earth. If there was any chance at all that they could somehow defeat the Master, Jack would make sure he played his part. He'd been a master of torture himself once upon a time. Now he'd become a master of being tortured, because if there was one thing the Master would never have, it was Torchwood.