A Million Pretty Words - Part 1
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Ten.
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD.
Warnings: Rape of character, NOT by one of the other characters.
Summary: Jack comes back that little bit too late to save Ianto from being kidnapped by aliens.
This has been bumped up to the top of the pile as it is maverick0324's birthday and she requested this one.
First prompt was "I'd give a million pretty words for one touch that is real."
Second prompt was Ianto being kidnapped and sold into an alien brothel.
Third prompt was dark and angsty as I could get it while still clinging to my desire for happy endings!
Hope this works, Mavvy! Second part should be up soon.
In the end, Jack was two weeks too late.
He arrived back at the Hub, with the Doctor in tow. Martha had stopped off in London in order to spend some time with her family while the Doctor brought Jack back to Cardiff and Torchwood.
Jack had bounded out of the TARDIS and dragged a slightly reluctant Doctor down to the Hub, utterly confident of their welcome. The Doctor had been a little more leery but soon realised that Jack had been correct. After the initial surprise, the team had gathered around Jack in excited welcome, hurling insults and demanding answers at the same time. Jack had loved it, the Doctor noted with amusement, seeing the way his eyes lit up and the grin got that little bit more sincere.
Eventually, however, the Doctor realised that while Jack was enjoying the tumult, he was also scanning the Hub for something, an increasingly unsettled look replacing the breezy laughter. The others also seemed to catch his mood and the Doctor’s interest sharpened when he caught the slight edge that started to coat the tones of voice and happy smiles. All three of them flinched when Jack finally shook his head and stopped smiling.
“Where’s Ianto?” he asked.
The Doctor’s ears definitely pricked up at that. Jack had spent quite a lot of time telling him and Martha about Gwen’s humanity, Tosh’s brilliance and Owen’s tactlessness. Ianto, however, had only been mentioned the once.
“He makes the coffee,” Jack had said, looking away, “and keeps things running.”
All his one thousand years of experience had made the Doctor look at him thoughtfully, then, and Jack had not been able to meet his eyes. So there had been endless anecdotes about the rest of the Team, about Cardiff, about the care and feeding of Weevils, but nothing about Ianto. Now Jack was looking around, and the Team had lost that bright edge and were starting to look nervous.
“Where’s Ianto?” Jack repeated.
“He’s… not here,” Gwen finally said.
“I can see that, Gwen. Where is he?”
After a moment, Tosh cleared her throat. “He’s, um, he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” The Doctor wasn’t the only one to jump at the sudden sharp note in Jack’s voice. “Tosh, where’s he gone?”
For a moment, Tosh looked almost frightened. “We don’t know.”
Jack stared at her in startled silence for a long moment. “You don’t know? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Has he gone AWOL?”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” Owen broke in impatiently. “He got snatched by some aliens, okay? We don’t know where he is.”
“He got-“ Jack stared at Owen in disbelief, then looked across at the others to confirm that he had heard correctly. “What the hell? Okay, someone tell me exactly what that’s supposed to mean!”
All three of them lowered their gazes and the Doctor was irresistibly reminded of children caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t. Jack was suddenly different, as well; no longer the easygoing boss but a harder and possibly more dangerous presence. After a moment, Owen made an impatient noise.
“Okay, fine, you want to know what happened. Ianto was in the Hub when some aliens came through. Stupid bastard triggered a lockdown and wound up getting captured and taken with the aliens when they went back to wherever they came from. End of story.”
The Doctor’s eyebrows lifted. It would appear that tales of Owen’s inability to understand tact and diplomacy had not been exaggerated. He genuinely didn’t seem to register that Jack wasn’t exactly happy with his words until Harkness was looming over him, and even then he seemed more disgruntled than alarmed.
“End of story? What the hell kind of report is that? Who came through, why were they here, why did Ianto trigger a lockdown, where the hell were the rest of you and what have you been doing to get him back?”
“Get him back?” Owen snorted. “Give me a break! He got snatched by aliens and got taken who the hell knows where! Best thing we could do was cut our losses and just be thankful it wasn’t any worse.”
The Doctor wasn’t the only one who jumped forward to grab Jack and haul him off Owen. Tosh hung on while Gwen slid between the two men with what looked like a practiced move. Coughing a little, Owen put his hand up to massage his throat and glared at Jack.
“Back off, Harkness! Not my fault your part-time shag got grabbed by aliens. If you were that precious about him you should have stuck around instead of buggering off with the Doctor.”
“Jack, no!” Gwen shouted as Jack started to surge back towards Owen.
“This isn’t solving anything, Jack,” the Doctor pointed out.
Jack nodded tersely and the Doctor sighed with relief. Turning to Toshiko, Jack gave her a small smile of apology and patted her hand. “Did any of you do anything?” he asked.
Twenty minutes later and they were in the committee room and had just finished watching the CCTV footage of the incident. Jack had tensed up again while he watched as a sliver of silver light had appeared in the centre of the Hub before dilating into a red and silver oval through which four large, muscular, obviously nonhuman aliens had stepped. The Hub alarms had already been shrieking when Ianto had appeared at the door leading from the Archives. He’d ducked back out of sight when one of the aliens had lifted what looked like a weapon in his direction and three of them had taken off after him while the fourth had stayed put and started to investigate the Hub.
Five minutes after that and the Hub had gone into lockdown. The remaining alien had been visibly annoyed at losing the computers, destroying one with a heavy fist. Ten minutes after that and the three aliens had returned with a limp Ianto thrown over the shoulder of one. There had been a brief discussion, with the lead alien passing some kind of scanner over Ianto before grinning in a manner that raised the hackles of Jack and the Doctor. They all trooped through the glowing oval, which then collapsed back down to nothing.
“We had to wait out the bleeding lockdown before we could get in,” Owen groused. “By that time the residual energy had dissipated and there was nothing we could use to figure out where or when he had gone. It could have been worse; they could have grabbed us instead.”
Fortunately for the Doctor’s peace of mind, Jack didn’t verbalise the thought that was very obviously running through his head as he shot a dark look in Owen’s direction. Instead he looked away, out into the main Hub, and the expression on his face….
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Could you run the bit where the aliens first come through the portal, Tosh?” Tosh flicked a look in Jack’s direction, who nodded, and complied. The Doctor leaned forward. “Can you freeze that?” The aliens held still on the screen as the Doctor pulled out his glasses and got up to go and peer at them.
“Any ideas, Doc?” Jack’s voice wasn’t quite begging, but it was very close.
“Well I know which species they are: Plescleri. That’s not the problem. That,” he continued, tapping the image of the flowing oval, “is a time portal, as well as a transmat. The trick isn’t going to be figuring out where Ianto is; it’s going to be when. Tosh, could you take one of these frames and enlarge and enhance it so that I could see this more clearly?” He pointed to a badge that was visible on the chest of one of the alien uniforms. Tosh nodded eagerly and her hands flew across the keyboard.
The Doctor looked across at Jack, at the expression of painful hope that was starting to grow on his face. “I can’t guarantee anything, Jack. It might be nothing I can use.”
Jack nodded, but the hope refused to go away. “Anything you can do, Doc. I’d appreciate it.”
“Jack,” Gwen said, managing to look mournful and sympathetic at the same time. “You mustn’t get your hopes up. Ianto could already be dead. He might have been dead when they took him with them.” She quailed at the look that earned her from Jack, but persisted. “We have to be practical.”
“Like you were with Rhys?” Jack asked with a glittering smile.
That must have been more significant than the Doctor realised because Gwen went white and looked away, her lips pressing together in a thin line. The Doctor was distracted by Tosh making a small sound of satisfaction. He scooted over to see what she had done and gave an exclamation of delight at the clear image she had ready for him.
“Oh, that’s marvellous!” he enthused. “Magnificent work, Tosh!”
He leaned forward, oblivious to the way she had gone pink in delight at his praise, concentrating on the emblem that was now clearly visible. His hearts sank as he recognised it. This was going to be a lot more difficult than he’d thought.
“Any ideas, Doc?”
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Oh, yes, but I need to access the TARDIS database before I know for certain. Could you print this off for me, Tosh?” He accepted the printout from her and summoned up all his acting ability. “I’ll probably be a few minutes, Jack. I don’t suppose there’s a chance of some tea and biscuits when I get back?” One look at the smile on Jack’s face had him drooping. “Jack…”
“You already know, don’t you?” Jack said, getting to his feet and ambling over. “You know and you’re going to, what? Take off in the TARDIS and never come back?”
“Not exactly,” the Doctor admitted quietly. “I just think you should stay here while I go and get him.”
Jack threw a casual arm around the Doctor’s shoulders, but there was no real warmth in the eyes that met his. “Tell me.”
“Jack-“
“Tell me.”
The Doctor sighed and gave in. “The badge is the emblem of the House of Sarducco-Morat. I can pin Ianto’s location down to a fifty-year span because of that. I can go to the beginning and just wait for him to turn up and then bring him back.“
“Why would the House of Sarducco-Morat be interested in Ianto?” Jack pressed. “Just what is the House of Sarducco-Morat?”
The Doctor swallowed. “You need to understand that the Plescleri are a very insular race. Highly xenophobic but at the same time quite fascinated with the alien and unique. They ruled undisputed across an entire globular cluster and got convinced that they were at the top of the evolutionary tree, then they got a nasty shock and turned inwards. Became one of those corrupt and dissolute empires and limped along for another couple of hundred years before everything collapsed and they vanished from history.”
“Doc-“ How could a voice sound so gentle and yet so implacable at the same time? Seeing the look in Jack’s eyes, the Doctor capitulated.
“It was a very high-class brothel.”
Jack’s face went utterly expressionless. Tosh gave a small gasp while Gwen gaped. Owen managed to outdo himself by giving a short bark of laughter.
“Trust the tea-boy to get himself a cushy kidnapping.”
“Jack, if you kill him you don’t come with me!” the Doctor shouted as Jack turned and lunged in one fluid movement. He waited until he was sure that Jack wasn’t going to break Owen’s neck before continuing: “He doesn’t have the imagination to understand, Jack. Leave him and come with me.”
Jack turned and stalked out without a word, although he did spare Tosh a quick hug on the way out. The Doctor heaved a sigh of relief and puffed out his cheeks. He gave Owen a severe look.
“You are a very lucky, if unpleasant, young man,” he told him severely. “I’d be very careful around Jack if he comes back with Ianto. He tends to hold a grudge.”
“So the tea-boy’s having to lie back and get screwed,” Owen said disparagingly. “So what? It’s how he got his way around here before.”
“Oh shut up, Owen,” Tosh snapped. She turned back to give the Doctor a cautious smile. “Would it do any good to offer my help?”
The Doctor smiled back. “Don’t get me wrong, Tosh, but I think this is going to be a very rough trip and-“ He paused and then leaned forward and lowered his voice so only she could hear him. “I think the fewer people who see Ianto when we find him, the easier it will be for him to cope, you know?”
After a moment, she nodded and her eyes filled with tears. Feeling a little awkward, the Doctor patted her on the shoulder and then went after Jack. He didn’t think Jack would actually try and fly the TARDIS without him, but he’d rather not test that possibility if possible.
OOOO
“So he’s been snatched by people from a brothel,” Jack said flatly once they were on their way. “Why?”
The Doctor sighed. “To understand that, I’d have to explain their history. Are you in the mood to listen?”
“Keep it short,” Jack growled.
“Fine, fine, I’ll compress several tens of thousands of years into bullet points to placate your temper,” the Doctor huffed. “The Plescleri evolved on the planet of a rogue star that wandered into a globular cluster that was a lot younger. It gave them an edge on the other species that evolved so that they acquired a dominance that went to their heads. By the time they reached the limits of the cluster and started to explore outside, they were convinced that they were God’s favoured children. They conquered all the other races in the cluster and lorded it over them, so it came as a bit of a shock when the first race they ran into outside the cluster made them look like backward savages.”
“When that kind of thing happens, the race concerned usually self-destructs, grows up or goes away and hides its head in the sand,” Jack commented.
The Doctor nodded. “In this case it was the latter. The Plescleri turned inwards and decided to ignore the rest of the universe. The rest of the universe was happy enough to let that state of affairs go on. Unfortunately, however, the Plescleri went the decadent route and after a while the elite class started to get a little bored with the same old faces and experiences. They’re a long-lived race and after five hundred years you tend to have done quite a lot of things and you start hankering for-“ He paused uncertainly.
“Fresh meat,” Jack said flatly. There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes.
“Amongst other things,” the Doctor agreed after a long moment. “They didn’t want to risk travelling in ships in case they ran into the same people they’d met before, so their scientists came up with what they thought was a matter transporter.” He paused and smiled thinly. “They never worked out that it also travelled in time, fortunately. They started picking worlds at random and grabbing a few individuals at a time. Ianto seems to have scotched that by locking down your base. They couldn’t get out and the portal only stays open for a limited length of time. They ended up taking just him.”
“And that’s bad, isn’t it?” Jack demanded, seeing the way the Doctor was fidgeting.
The Time Lord sighed. “I was there when their empire finally crumbled, Jack, and there were no humans. Ianto will be unique. That will make him….”
“Oh, God,” Jack whispered, closing his eyes. “It’ll kill him. Being made to… it’ll kill him.”
The Doctor sighed, unable to dispute that. Some people saw sex as simple physical gratification. Others saw it as an act inextricably intertwined with some emotion. If Ianto was the latter type, what was facing him at the hands of the Plescleri could shatter him. "The trick is going to be finding him. Fifty years isn't long in the lifespan of the universe, but it's still a decent sized haystack to find one human in."
Jack just gave him a confused look. "We go to the end, look up the records and then go back to when he arrived and grab him. End of story."
The Doctor felt the beginnings of a headache. "It's not that simple, Jack. The Plescleri were heavily into polite internecine warfare. Bloodline against bloodline, city-state against city-state, House against House. All terribly civilised and ruthless. The House of Sarducco-Morat stayed on top for fifty years, but that doesn't mean it didn't get its share of setbacks and a lot of its records got destroyed along the way."
Jack leaned back against the console and gave him a penetrating look. "You seem awfully familiar with this House, Doc. What aren't you telling me?"
The Doctor shrugged and fiddled with one of the controls to avoid looking at him. After a while he sighed. "I was... involved with the downfall of the Empire," he finally admitted. "I'd been on a planet they had just raided and they'd taken the very young daughter of one family and I promised to go after her. She'd been taken by Sarducco-Morat and when I caught up and saw what they were doing...." His eyes went cold. "Let's just say that I lost my temper, and leave it at that."
Jack met his gaze for a moment before nodding and looking away. The Doctor was normally the gentlest of creatures, but he had a temper and he despised cruelty with a passion. He was more than capable of pulling down a corrupt Empire because of what they did to one small child. Jack wanted to do much the same thing for Ianto's sake.
"So how we do this?" he eventually asked. When the Doctor said nothing, he frowned. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
The Doctor sighed. "You know there's a limit to how much I can cross and re-cross my own time stream, don't you? It's why I can't always land at the exact spot and time that would be most convenient. The sensible thing to do would be to land at the very beginning of the House of Sarducco-Morat and simply take the slow road until Ianto arrives and snatch him immediately. The major snag with that is that we'd come to the attention of the Plescleri and I really need for them to be ignorant of me when I turn up in fifty years time."
"We can cut out the time that you were actually there, Doc," Jack reminded him. "You said there were no humans then."
"True," the Doctor nodded. "I was thinking maybe jumps of five years at a time?" He grimaced when he saw the way Jack's head immediately started shaking. "Jack, I need to keep the time flow as clean as possible."
"And if we leave just before Ianto arrives and he has to spend five years in the hands of these bastards?" Jack demanded. "Can't we do year jumps and then go back when we find him?"
"No!" the Doctor said flatly. "No going back along the time stream. I'm going to be causing enough ripples by jumping up along it." He paused and considered his options, but at the back of his mind was the memory of the traumatised 'merchandise' he had found at the House all that time ago. He really wished Jack hadn't insisted on coming along. "One year jumps and that's my final offer. Take it or leave it."
Jack didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit, but he had to accept that the Doctor knew what he was doing so he gave a jerky nod and concentrated on trying to keep calm. He knew Ianto, knew the enchanting mixture of innocence, worldly wisdom, inhibitions and sensuality that made up his character. Take the time to make him relax and trust you, and there was no limit to where he would follow you, but if you tried to overwhelm and browbeat him.... Jack shivered and prayed that they'd land as close to Ianto's arrival in Hell as possible.
His first sight of the House of Sarducco-Morat impressed him despite his rage and fear. Jack had visited more brothels than even he could count and Sarducco shouted class on the top of its discreet lungs. The external building was as plain and utilitarian as any of the others on the street but once inside the sheer opulence and extravagance took a person's breath away.
Not that he and the Doctor wandered in through the front door. Neither humans nor Gallifreyans were known, so just turning up would have probably resulted in their becoming part of the merchandise in nothing flat. The Doctor materialised the TARDIS in the private viewing rooms of the manager during the middle of the night and he and Jack quietly hacked into the brothel's computers and checked for new arrivals. Jack had to struggle to distance himself as they did this again and again and a seemingly endless parade of kidnapped and brutalised beings paraded themselves in front of his eyes. He'd had to play the part of a whore on some missions. He'd even played it for real sometimes, willingly or not, when things had gone wrong. He knew more than enough to kill any illusions that there was anything romantic about it. In fantasies between consenting adults, maybe, but not in grim reality.
Ianto, his Ianto. He'd fight. God, he'd fight. Under that seemingly meek exterior was a steel will and stubborn personality. Ianto might think that he had initially succumbed to Jack out of a mixture of need, lust and practicality, but Jack knew better. Jack had been around a lot longer than Ianto and he'd known that Ianto was in love with him long before it had occurred to the younger man. The idea had scared the life out of Jack, since he had been certain he couldn't measure up to what Ianto needed, and yet somehow it had been working out until Jack had wound up lost on time and the original Jack Harkness, Abaddon and the Doctor turning up had got in the way. Things were in chaos but the one thing Jack knew for certain was that Ianto would fight being 'broken in' and that would bring out the worst in these people.
"Couldn't you have brought this bloody Empire crashing down a bit sooner," he asked the Doctor savagely after one visit where he had made himself witness the initial 'vetting' of five slender, silver-furred beings with huge topaz eyes and voices that cried desolation at their cruel fate. This is what they'll do to Ianto, his heart cried out. This is what they'll do to my lover.
The Doctor was at his most impassive, but his eyes were huge and dark with empathy as he looked across at Jack. "They had to have their chance," he said a little hoarsely. "Would you have me judge Humanity on the Nazis and their concentration camps? The USA on its slaves? The Romans on their circuses? Stones and glass houses, Jack. None of us are blameless, not even my own people."
Thirty years in, they found him.
They'd started to take turns in scanning the database, since neither of them were able to take the constant parade of pain and debasement that they were witnessing. The Doctor was starting to get seriously worried about Jack. The man was normally good at maintaining a distance but now that Ianto was involved, that professional mindset was in tatters. He was getting to look more and more haunted with every stop and the Doctor was half-tempted to drug him and let him sleep while he did the searching.
Not that he was much better. He knew so many of the races he saw being brought back on the 'business trips' and he knew the mental and emotional cost that was being paid by the helpless victims. Even the more liberal species had little suspicion of what was ahead of them. The Plescleri were a conflicted people; hating the alien and yet irresistibly drawn to it. The conflict often found release in violent sex, the taboo being made available with no questions asked and no repercussions beyond a demand for payment if the goods were permanently damaged.
The Doctor had insisted that a haggard Jack take some time out to catch his emotional breath. The fact that Jack hadn't put up more than a token argument confirmed how hard this was hitting him. The Doctor could only murmur a prayer of thanks at his timing when the very next jump turned up Ianto's profile in the computer. The Doctor's heart sank when he saw that Ianto had been brought in a scant three weeks after they had last left. That meant he had been in Sarducco-Morat's clutches for nearly a year. He might not even be alive any more.
A quick scan of the database located the current details and the Doctor's hearts sank. Ianto was listed as a top of the line attraction, with an exorbitant price attached to a single hour and an astronomical one tagged to a three-hour session. The promotional teaser that was attached to his posting in the House catalogue had the Doctor's eyes widening and he had the unsettling idea that they might have arrived too late. He bit his lip and then went to key in the recording of Ianto's 'induction'. He knew that Jack would insist on watching it and he needed to know just how much damage control he would have to do afterwards.
OOO
Ianto was pretty certain that his current situation was about as bad as it could get. Not quite as bad as Canary Wharf, but he didn't think anything would ever top that. About his only hope was that his triggering the lockdown would have bought the Team time to come up with a way to stopping these aliens. When Ianto had recovered consciousness, he had found himself dropped on the floor in an unfamiliar room with several of the aliens clustered around a console. Feeling understandably put out, Ianto had grabbed what he'd assumed was a weapon and pointed it at the aliens. They'd scattered in a gratifying manner but before Ianto could capitalise on that, the weapon had gone off in his hands and blown up the console.
He'd been stunned again and when he'd come to it had been in a different room, with a different set of aliens. He studied them carefully. He'd never seen anything like them recorded in the Archives. They were humanoid in the sense that they had two arms and legs and a head in the same place a human had them. They were all uniformly as tall as he was but much heavier, with shorter legs and longer torsos. Their hands had five fingers apiece and the thumb was closer to the wrist. The face was more like that of a carnivore, with a set of fangs that made him twitch nervously but the eyes were sharp and intelligent, even if the words that were being spoken were gibberish to his ears.
Ianto sighed and wished Torchwood had something comparable to the Doctor's translation magic. He tried to say something and was promptly cuffed into silence, his head ringing. There was a great deal of talking going on, with several emphatic gestures in his direction, and he decided that the discretion was the better part of valour. That decision was abandoned almost immediately when he was hauled to his feet and the aliens started to take his clothes off. He struggled furiously but they were much stronger than him and outnumbered him, so he was soon naked and panting furiously.
He knew the psychology behind the ploy, although he was surprised to see that this species seemed to grasp it. Did that mean they had the same weaknesses as humans? Or were they familiar with humans and knew that it worked? Ianto shoved his discomfort to one side and stared the alien he assumed was the leader in the eye. He wasn't quite sure how they intended to interrogate him when they didn't have a language in common, but he was determined not to make it easy for them.
He soon learned that they weren't interested in interrogation.
He dismissed the first intimate gropes and probes as accidental. The lead alien had some kind of scanner and barked out commands as the others manhandled him. When the touches were repeated and started to become a lot more targeted, he started to realise that his original worst-case scenario might have been a lot more short-sighted than it should have been. When one of the aliens leaned forward and deliberately ran a rough tongue over a nipple, Ianto jerked back, his eyes widening as he realised just what kind of position he was in. He really should have expected it, what with Jack's endless anecdotes of alien sex, but there had never been any suggestion that the same kind of situation might one day apply to Ianto. There had never been any kind of suggestion of rape.
In the end he discovered that alien sex can be as brutal, painful and unwanted as human sex. Whatever that scanner was, it told the aliens how he was put together and what possibilities there were in using his body. Three of them got naked and they were very definitely male, despite having different shaped penises that were in a slightly different place than on a human male. They were stronger than he was, and they were skilled enough to counter his attempts to fight back. In the end he was pinned down while one of them thrust a blunt-nailed finger up inside him. He yowled his fury and tried to wrench free, but he was ignored. More excitable barking and then another of the aliens was leaning on him, his penis erect and hotter than a human's. He wasn't lubricated and Ianto screamed in agony as he was penetrated, the coarse-haired alien writhing and grunting above him. It was every dark nightmare rolled into one and it was happening for real.
After the first alien had used him, the others took their turn. They used lubrication after the first time and were obviously experimenting but Ianto no longer cared and prayed instead for oblivion. It didn't come. When he was eventually dragged away and handed over to another alien who took the scanner and looked at it before grunting and licking his lips as he looked Ianto over, there was only pain and sick disgust and the terrifying knowledge that there was going to be neither rescue nor escape for him.
OOO
The Doctor realised that little bit too late that Jack had come up behind him somewhere during the record being played back. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the expression in Jack's eyes and wondered if this mission would result in two broken men rather than one. The initial rape had been brutal enough but the records showed that Ianto had, as Jack insisted he would, put up a considerable fight and it had been six months before he had been considered safe for use. The Doctor made a sound of disgust when he saw the notation that said Ianto had been given to the more 'demanding' clients at first, with fewer safeguards on his safety, as an added incentive for him to learn obedience.
And it seemed that he had. He was now considered one of the more deluxe options and the list of 'extras' he could provide might have been arousing if you didn't realise just how he had learned those skills. Jack was white and shaking as he stared at the screen and the Doctor started to put out a comforting hand but thought better of it when Jack turned his head to give him a hard look.
"We're going back in time to when he came here," he grated.
"We can't, Jack. No, wait, I mean it!" the Doctor said as Jack grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip. "You've felt the vibrations as we move from one time to the other and it's been getting worse. Trying to go back down might start a time-storm and I can't risk that. Not even to save Ianto from what's already happened to him. I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered sincerely as Jack dropped his hand and turned away.
"We're still going to get him out," Jack said flatly.
"I know," the Doctor agreed, "but it will be better for me to make the initial contact.
"He knows me. He'll trust me," Jack objected.
"And you're human," the Doctor pointed out with gentle ruthlessness. "Look at what they're charging for someone to be with him. If they spot you, you'll be in the room right next to him and I'll have to rescue the pair of you!"
So it was that the next day the Doctor found himself in the manager's office, politely declining all manner of stimulants and requesting one particular member of the Sarducco-Morat catalogue. The manager was more interested in finding out what species the Doctor hailed from.
"You would seem to be unique," he said, a large red tongue running across his fleshy lips as he glanced down at the screens in front of him. "You look like the whore you want, but you have two hearts and there are other differences."
The Doctor managed to keep the smile on his face with difficulty. This was the difficult part. "His similarity to my species is what's so appealing," he said smoothly. "I haven't seen his like before. Certainly not during my travels through Meshwennan space," he finished offhandedly.
The Plescleri froze. The Meshwenn had been the race that had traumatised them all those thousands of years ago and they had assumed the mythic status of the bogeyman ever since. "You come from Meshwennan space?" he asked.
The Doctor nodded. "They employ me to go wandering around and see what I can find. They were very annoyed when I radioed to tell them I was here and told me they wanted me to leave immediately, but I think I'm entitled to enjoy a little rest and recreation before I leave, don't you?"
"They know you are here?"
"Oh yes," the Doctor said blithely. He wanted to make sure that he didn't 'disappear' because of his uniqueness, so the idea that the Plescleri's bogeymen knew about him and would come looking for him seemed the safest bet. "Now, about this particular.... whore," he managed to get out.
The Plescleri smiled, showing far too many sharp yellowing teeth. "He is much sought after. Unique to the Empire. No other House has his like. He was wild and untrained when we acquired him but he has become highly skilled under our tutelage. Many of his clients come back and want to savour him again."
"I have to admit that he looks very tempting, although there were a couple of others..." the Doctor said, flipping through the catalogue at random. He didn't want to appear too eager for fear of raising suspicions.
"His flesh is sweet and his blood hot and rich," the manager said in satisfaction. "He is responsive to a wide range of stimulants and we have trained him to respond to certain prompts. We have even had several visits from certain members of the Royal Lines! It may be that one of the Palaces will offer to buy him soon, so I would take your pleasure before it is lost to you for ever."
"You have a point," the Doctor said, forcing a smile. "Very well, I'll try an hour first and if I enjoy myself I might come back for one of the deluxe packages."
"If you can afford it, you will," the manager said complacently.
Fifteen minutes later and the Doctor was being ushered into a sumptuously appointed bedroom. He'd been thoroughly frisked beforehand, with an apologetic manager explaining that the other Houses often tried to kidnap the more successful whores for their own use. The Doctor had waved the apology aside, knowing that he had nothing on him that could be construed as a weapon. He explained away the sonic screwdriver as a sex aid, which surprised a laugh out of the manager but since he had it on its most innocuous setting, it was given back to him when he was allowed inside.
He should have been prepared, he told himself. He really, really should have been prepared.
Ianto Jones rose up from where he had been lying on the enormous bed. He was completely naked apart from the intricate jewellery he wore. Nothing sharp, of course, that he might use as a weapon. All the stones were polished cabochons, the settings soft rounded silver, the chains fragile and slender. Sapphires the same blue as his eyes and deep rich amethysts lay across his shoulders and down his chest and back. More gems glinted at wrists and ankles, although the Doctor was quick to note that there were no rings on his fingers. More blue glinted at his ears, flickering through the heavy mane of his hair, which was also bound up with ropes of gems and silver. The Plescleri had let his hair grow much longer - almost midway down his back - but were fastidious about keeping him clean-shaven. A bearded race themselves, they seemed to have a kink about keeping Ianto shaved.
"Hello," the Doctor said brightly.
Ianto came off the bed in a movement so languidly graceful that it had to have been practised. His eyes were hooded, the Doctor noted and when he got close enough, the Doctor also noticed that the pupils were slightly dilated. Drugged, he thought sadly. Still, he seemed alert enough as he reached up to touch the Doctor's face wonderingly.
"Are you human?" he asked.
"No, sorry," the Doctor said quietly.
Ianto hands had drifted down to rest on the Doctor's chest and he frowned in quick bewilderment before bending down to place a ear against the chest wall. "Two hearts," he said after a moment. "No, not human." A shadow passed over his face before it was banished and a slow seductive smile replaced it. "What is the customer's pleasure?"
"Um, well, I thought we'd talk a bit first," the Doctor said a little breathlessly, sliding away to one side and going over to sit on the bed. He patted the bed beside him and tried to look as asexual as possible. "Tell me about yourself."
Ianto was staring at him in bewilderment. After a moment, he seemed to shake himself and came over, but instead of sitting down beside the Doctor he knelt down in front of him and reached for the zip of his trousers.
"No!" the Doctor yelped, batting him away.
Ianto immediately jerked back as if he had been burned, his calm replaced by shaking fear. "I mean no disrespect!" he said hastily, shooting a nervous look up towards the far ceiling. "I simply desire to please. What is the customer's pleasure?"
The Doctor tensed and motioned him forward. When Ianto was close enough, he bent his head to whisper in his ear. "Are we being monitored? Answer yes or no."
There was a moment's pause. "Yes."
"Damn," the Doctor muttered. "That's going to complicate things. All right, we'll just have to work with what we've got. Come and sit beside me."
Still frowning, Ianto did as he was told and half-turned on the bed to study the Doctor. The Doctor, on the other hand, was startled to discover that he was very conscious of the fact that he had a naked young man sitting beside him. A gorgeous naked young man. Somehow Jack had never mentioned that, and the catalogue had simply not done him justice. Feeling thoroughly discomfited, the Doctor cleared his throat again.
"I've come to rescue you," he whispered to Ianto.
The blue eyes widened, but to the Doctor's surprise, there was no sign of relief, or excitement or any kind of emotion other than a weary amusement. "I'm very grateful to you," Ianto eventually said. He lifted his hands to finger the Doctor's lapels and then slipped his hands under the coat and pushed it off the Doctor's shoulders. "Shall I show you how grateful I am?"
The Doctor yelped for a second time and tried to get his coat back on, but Ianto seemed to have perfected the art of getting people out of their clothes and it wasn't long before the Doctor was flat on his back on the bed, his coat and tie discarded and his shirt pulled out and unbuttoned. Ianto was kissing and licking his way up and down the length of the Doctor's torso while skilled hands were undoing his trousers. The Doctor groaned and tried to grab Ianto's head to push him away but somehow that translated into him dragging him up to kiss him. Ianto groaned and whimpered a little as the Doctor's tongue curled around his own.
"I'd forgotten," he said shakily, tears in his eyes. "I'd forgotten what it's like."
That acted like a dash of cold water in the Doctor's face and he pulled away with a gasp. "Bloody hell, I should have listened to Jack and let him come instead," he muttered.
Ianto froze and for the first time something that looked like genuine emotion claimed his face. "Jack?"
"Jack," the Doctor repeated, realising that he had the key he needed to get inside Ianto's defences. "I was telling you the truth, Ianto. I'm here to rescue you."
The otherworldly reserve shattered and the Doctor was abruptly face to face with a man, rather than a decorated sex-toy. "No," he gasped, pulling away a little. "No, this is a dream, a fantasy. I've overdosed again."
"No, don't," the Doctor said sharply, pulling Ianto back down. "We don't want to make the sadists in charge of this place suspicious. "This isn't a dream, Ianto, I swear it isn't. Look, I'll pinch you." The Doctor suited actions to words and felt Ianto flinch against the sharp nip he gave the tender skin at the inside of the elbow. "I just need to be careful and not go off half-cocked."
Ianto had been holding still against him. "Two hearts. You're the Doctor." When the Doctor nodded, he sighed and shook his head. "So you just happened to come along and find me and decide to mount a rescue bid?"
"Something like that," the Doctor agreed.
Ianto laughed but the sound was bitter. "Such a shame you came too late then, isn't it?" His eyes gleamed as he looked down at the Doctor. "Ianto Jones is dead, Doctor. He died quite a while ago. Your timing is a little off."
"Look, I know this has been a terrible time for you-"
"Terrible?" Ianto gave him a look of bitter derision. "I am a valuable commodity, Doctor. If I'm broken, they take great pains in putting me back together. I can have any stimulant or drug or aphrodisiac they have for the asking. I'm fed and watered and every physical need is satisfied. And all I have to do is gratify the desires of the people who pay my masters for my time. What's so terrible about that?" he asked with a glittering smile, but his eyes opened out on Hell.
"Ianto-"
"I don't have a name any more," Ianto interrupted. "Names are for the customers, not for the likes of me. Which reminds me that I am being remiss in my duties." The eyes were veiled and the seductive mask was firmly back in place and Ianto resumed his relentless assault on the Doctor's body.
"This is going to be a lot more difficult that I'd originally assumed," the Doctor said through gritted teeth.
Fortunately - or unfortunately, he wasn't sure which - they were interrupted by the door opening and one of the brothel attendants came in. For a moment the Doctor thought he'd been discovered and he tensed, but the attendant made no effort to pounce on him but bowed instead and looked apologetic.
"The House of Sarducco-Morat extends its apologies but must ask that you curtail your time with this whore and come back another time."
"What? Er, why would that be?" the Doctor demanded, conscious of a faint relief as Ianto let him go and slipped off the bed to kneel on the floor.
"A most esteemed client has insisted that he be given the entire afternoon to savour the delights of this whore and since he is of one of the Royal Lines..." The attendant made the same kind of shrug a human would have to illustrate the fact that the rich often got their way and the less affluent just had to put up with it.
"Well, that's all very well," the Doctor huffed, "but I paid for my time and we were just getting started here."
"The manager has authorised me to refund you your fee and to guarantee a three-hour period at a more convenient time. I afraid we really must insist," the attendant said apologetically.
"Oh, very well," the Doctor said, making a point of sounding annoyed but gracious. He got to his feet and dragged at Ianto to get up as well. The younger man did so reluctantly, with one eye kept warily on the attendant. He focused a bit more on the Doctor when the Time Lord kissed him gently but thoroughly. "I'll be back," he whispered in his ear, "and next time I'll prove this isn't a dream."
Leaving a wide-eyed Ianto staring after him, the Doctor breezed out of the room and brushed past the massively muscled and richly dressed Plescleri waiting outside, trying not to see the way the being was having to lick the drool off his lips as he waited for his turn to go in. Yet another thing he would be careful not to tell Jack about.
OOO
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD.
Warnings: Rape of character, NOT by one of the other characters.
Summary: Jack comes back that little bit too late to save Ianto from being kidnapped by aliens.
This has been bumped up to the top of the pile as it is maverick0324's birthday and she requested this one.
First prompt was "I'd give a million pretty words for one touch that is real."
Second prompt was Ianto being kidnapped and sold into an alien brothel.
Third prompt was dark and angsty as I could get it while still clinging to my desire for happy endings!
Hope this works, Mavvy! Second part should be up soon.
In the end, Jack was two weeks too late.
He arrived back at the Hub, with the Doctor in tow. Martha had stopped off in London in order to spend some time with her family while the Doctor brought Jack back to Cardiff and Torchwood.
Jack had bounded out of the TARDIS and dragged a slightly reluctant Doctor down to the Hub, utterly confident of their welcome. The Doctor had been a little more leery but soon realised that Jack had been correct. After the initial surprise, the team had gathered around Jack in excited welcome, hurling insults and demanding answers at the same time. Jack had loved it, the Doctor noted with amusement, seeing the way his eyes lit up and the grin got that little bit more sincere.
Eventually, however, the Doctor realised that while Jack was enjoying the tumult, he was also scanning the Hub for something, an increasingly unsettled look replacing the breezy laughter. The others also seemed to catch his mood and the Doctor’s interest sharpened when he caught the slight edge that started to coat the tones of voice and happy smiles. All three of them flinched when Jack finally shook his head and stopped smiling.
“Where’s Ianto?” he asked.
The Doctor’s ears definitely pricked up at that. Jack had spent quite a lot of time telling him and Martha about Gwen’s humanity, Tosh’s brilliance and Owen’s tactlessness. Ianto, however, had only been mentioned the once.
“He makes the coffee,” Jack had said, looking away, “and keeps things running.”
All his one thousand years of experience had made the Doctor look at him thoughtfully, then, and Jack had not been able to meet his eyes. So there had been endless anecdotes about the rest of the Team, about Cardiff, about the care and feeding of Weevils, but nothing about Ianto. Now Jack was looking around, and the Team had lost that bright edge and were starting to look nervous.
“Where’s Ianto?” Jack repeated.
“He’s… not here,” Gwen finally said.
“I can see that, Gwen. Where is he?”
After a moment, Tosh cleared her throat. “He’s, um, he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” The Doctor wasn’t the only one to jump at the sudden sharp note in Jack’s voice. “Tosh, where’s he gone?”
For a moment, Tosh looked almost frightened. “We don’t know.”
Jack stared at her in startled silence for a long moment. “You don’t know? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Has he gone AWOL?”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” Owen broke in impatiently. “He got snatched by some aliens, okay? We don’t know where he is.”
“He got-“ Jack stared at Owen in disbelief, then looked across at the others to confirm that he had heard correctly. “What the hell? Okay, someone tell me exactly what that’s supposed to mean!”
All three of them lowered their gazes and the Doctor was irresistibly reminded of children caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t. Jack was suddenly different, as well; no longer the easygoing boss but a harder and possibly more dangerous presence. After a moment, Owen made an impatient noise.
“Okay, fine, you want to know what happened. Ianto was in the Hub when some aliens came through. Stupid bastard triggered a lockdown and wound up getting captured and taken with the aliens when they went back to wherever they came from. End of story.”
The Doctor’s eyebrows lifted. It would appear that tales of Owen’s inability to understand tact and diplomacy had not been exaggerated. He genuinely didn’t seem to register that Jack wasn’t exactly happy with his words until Harkness was looming over him, and even then he seemed more disgruntled than alarmed.
“End of story? What the hell kind of report is that? Who came through, why were they here, why did Ianto trigger a lockdown, where the hell were the rest of you and what have you been doing to get him back?”
“Get him back?” Owen snorted. “Give me a break! He got snatched by aliens and got taken who the hell knows where! Best thing we could do was cut our losses and just be thankful it wasn’t any worse.”
The Doctor wasn’t the only one who jumped forward to grab Jack and haul him off Owen. Tosh hung on while Gwen slid between the two men with what looked like a practiced move. Coughing a little, Owen put his hand up to massage his throat and glared at Jack.
“Back off, Harkness! Not my fault your part-time shag got grabbed by aliens. If you were that precious about him you should have stuck around instead of buggering off with the Doctor.”
“Jack, no!” Gwen shouted as Jack started to surge back towards Owen.
“This isn’t solving anything, Jack,” the Doctor pointed out.
Jack nodded tersely and the Doctor sighed with relief. Turning to Toshiko, Jack gave her a small smile of apology and patted her hand. “Did any of you do anything?” he asked.
Twenty minutes later and they were in the committee room and had just finished watching the CCTV footage of the incident. Jack had tensed up again while he watched as a sliver of silver light had appeared in the centre of the Hub before dilating into a red and silver oval through which four large, muscular, obviously nonhuman aliens had stepped. The Hub alarms had already been shrieking when Ianto had appeared at the door leading from the Archives. He’d ducked back out of sight when one of the aliens had lifted what looked like a weapon in his direction and three of them had taken off after him while the fourth had stayed put and started to investigate the Hub.
Five minutes after that and the Hub had gone into lockdown. The remaining alien had been visibly annoyed at losing the computers, destroying one with a heavy fist. Ten minutes after that and the three aliens had returned with a limp Ianto thrown over the shoulder of one. There had been a brief discussion, with the lead alien passing some kind of scanner over Ianto before grinning in a manner that raised the hackles of Jack and the Doctor. They all trooped through the glowing oval, which then collapsed back down to nothing.
“We had to wait out the bleeding lockdown before we could get in,” Owen groused. “By that time the residual energy had dissipated and there was nothing we could use to figure out where or when he had gone. It could have been worse; they could have grabbed us instead.”
Fortunately for the Doctor’s peace of mind, Jack didn’t verbalise the thought that was very obviously running through his head as he shot a dark look in Owen’s direction. Instead he looked away, out into the main Hub, and the expression on his face….
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Could you run the bit where the aliens first come through the portal, Tosh?” Tosh flicked a look in Jack’s direction, who nodded, and complied. The Doctor leaned forward. “Can you freeze that?” The aliens held still on the screen as the Doctor pulled out his glasses and got up to go and peer at them.
“Any ideas, Doc?” Jack’s voice wasn’t quite begging, but it was very close.
“Well I know which species they are: Plescleri. That’s not the problem. That,” he continued, tapping the image of the flowing oval, “is a time portal, as well as a transmat. The trick isn’t going to be figuring out where Ianto is; it’s going to be when. Tosh, could you take one of these frames and enlarge and enhance it so that I could see this more clearly?” He pointed to a badge that was visible on the chest of one of the alien uniforms. Tosh nodded eagerly and her hands flew across the keyboard.
The Doctor looked across at Jack, at the expression of painful hope that was starting to grow on his face. “I can’t guarantee anything, Jack. It might be nothing I can use.”
Jack nodded, but the hope refused to go away. “Anything you can do, Doc. I’d appreciate it.”
“Jack,” Gwen said, managing to look mournful and sympathetic at the same time. “You mustn’t get your hopes up. Ianto could already be dead. He might have been dead when they took him with them.” She quailed at the look that earned her from Jack, but persisted. “We have to be practical.”
“Like you were with Rhys?” Jack asked with a glittering smile.
That must have been more significant than the Doctor realised because Gwen went white and looked away, her lips pressing together in a thin line. The Doctor was distracted by Tosh making a small sound of satisfaction. He scooted over to see what she had done and gave an exclamation of delight at the clear image she had ready for him.
“Oh, that’s marvellous!” he enthused. “Magnificent work, Tosh!”
He leaned forward, oblivious to the way she had gone pink in delight at his praise, concentrating on the emblem that was now clearly visible. His hearts sank as he recognised it. This was going to be a lot more difficult than he’d thought.
“Any ideas, Doc?”
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Oh, yes, but I need to access the TARDIS database before I know for certain. Could you print this off for me, Tosh?” He accepted the printout from her and summoned up all his acting ability. “I’ll probably be a few minutes, Jack. I don’t suppose there’s a chance of some tea and biscuits when I get back?” One look at the smile on Jack’s face had him drooping. “Jack…”
“You already know, don’t you?” Jack said, getting to his feet and ambling over. “You know and you’re going to, what? Take off in the TARDIS and never come back?”
“Not exactly,” the Doctor admitted quietly. “I just think you should stay here while I go and get him.”
Jack threw a casual arm around the Doctor’s shoulders, but there was no real warmth in the eyes that met his. “Tell me.”
“Jack-“
“Tell me.”
The Doctor sighed and gave in. “The badge is the emblem of the House of Sarducco-Morat. I can pin Ianto’s location down to a fifty-year span because of that. I can go to the beginning and just wait for him to turn up and then bring him back.“
“Why would the House of Sarducco-Morat be interested in Ianto?” Jack pressed. “Just what is the House of Sarducco-Morat?”
The Doctor swallowed. “You need to understand that the Plescleri are a very insular race. Highly xenophobic but at the same time quite fascinated with the alien and unique. They ruled undisputed across an entire globular cluster and got convinced that they were at the top of the evolutionary tree, then they got a nasty shock and turned inwards. Became one of those corrupt and dissolute empires and limped along for another couple of hundred years before everything collapsed and they vanished from history.”
“Doc-“ How could a voice sound so gentle and yet so implacable at the same time? Seeing the look in Jack’s eyes, the Doctor capitulated.
“It was a very high-class brothel.”
Jack’s face went utterly expressionless. Tosh gave a small gasp while Gwen gaped. Owen managed to outdo himself by giving a short bark of laughter.
“Trust the tea-boy to get himself a cushy kidnapping.”
“Jack, if you kill him you don’t come with me!” the Doctor shouted as Jack turned and lunged in one fluid movement. He waited until he was sure that Jack wasn’t going to break Owen’s neck before continuing: “He doesn’t have the imagination to understand, Jack. Leave him and come with me.”
Jack turned and stalked out without a word, although he did spare Tosh a quick hug on the way out. The Doctor heaved a sigh of relief and puffed out his cheeks. He gave Owen a severe look.
“You are a very lucky, if unpleasant, young man,” he told him severely. “I’d be very careful around Jack if he comes back with Ianto. He tends to hold a grudge.”
“So the tea-boy’s having to lie back and get screwed,” Owen said disparagingly. “So what? It’s how he got his way around here before.”
“Oh shut up, Owen,” Tosh snapped. She turned back to give the Doctor a cautious smile. “Would it do any good to offer my help?”
The Doctor smiled back. “Don’t get me wrong, Tosh, but I think this is going to be a very rough trip and-“ He paused and then leaned forward and lowered his voice so only she could hear him. “I think the fewer people who see Ianto when we find him, the easier it will be for him to cope, you know?”
After a moment, she nodded and her eyes filled with tears. Feeling a little awkward, the Doctor patted her on the shoulder and then went after Jack. He didn’t think Jack would actually try and fly the TARDIS without him, but he’d rather not test that possibility if possible.
OOOO
“So he’s been snatched by people from a brothel,” Jack said flatly once they were on their way. “Why?”
The Doctor sighed. “To understand that, I’d have to explain their history. Are you in the mood to listen?”
“Keep it short,” Jack growled.
“Fine, fine, I’ll compress several tens of thousands of years into bullet points to placate your temper,” the Doctor huffed. “The Plescleri evolved on the planet of a rogue star that wandered into a globular cluster that was a lot younger. It gave them an edge on the other species that evolved so that they acquired a dominance that went to their heads. By the time they reached the limits of the cluster and started to explore outside, they were convinced that they were God’s favoured children. They conquered all the other races in the cluster and lorded it over them, so it came as a bit of a shock when the first race they ran into outside the cluster made them look like backward savages.”
“When that kind of thing happens, the race concerned usually self-destructs, grows up or goes away and hides its head in the sand,” Jack commented.
The Doctor nodded. “In this case it was the latter. The Plescleri turned inwards and decided to ignore the rest of the universe. The rest of the universe was happy enough to let that state of affairs go on. Unfortunately, however, the Plescleri went the decadent route and after a while the elite class started to get a little bored with the same old faces and experiences. They’re a long-lived race and after five hundred years you tend to have done quite a lot of things and you start hankering for-“ He paused uncertainly.
“Fresh meat,” Jack said flatly. There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes.
“Amongst other things,” the Doctor agreed after a long moment. “They didn’t want to risk travelling in ships in case they ran into the same people they’d met before, so their scientists came up with what they thought was a matter transporter.” He paused and smiled thinly. “They never worked out that it also travelled in time, fortunately. They started picking worlds at random and grabbing a few individuals at a time. Ianto seems to have scotched that by locking down your base. They couldn’t get out and the portal only stays open for a limited length of time. They ended up taking just him.”
“And that’s bad, isn’t it?” Jack demanded, seeing the way the Doctor was fidgeting.
The Time Lord sighed. “I was there when their empire finally crumbled, Jack, and there were no humans. Ianto will be unique. That will make him….”
“Oh, God,” Jack whispered, closing his eyes. “It’ll kill him. Being made to… it’ll kill him.”
The Doctor sighed, unable to dispute that. Some people saw sex as simple physical gratification. Others saw it as an act inextricably intertwined with some emotion. If Ianto was the latter type, what was facing him at the hands of the Plescleri could shatter him. "The trick is going to be finding him. Fifty years isn't long in the lifespan of the universe, but it's still a decent sized haystack to find one human in."
Jack just gave him a confused look. "We go to the end, look up the records and then go back to when he arrived and grab him. End of story."
The Doctor felt the beginnings of a headache. "It's not that simple, Jack. The Plescleri were heavily into polite internecine warfare. Bloodline against bloodline, city-state against city-state, House against House. All terribly civilised and ruthless. The House of Sarducco-Morat stayed on top for fifty years, but that doesn't mean it didn't get its share of setbacks and a lot of its records got destroyed along the way."
Jack leaned back against the console and gave him a penetrating look. "You seem awfully familiar with this House, Doc. What aren't you telling me?"
The Doctor shrugged and fiddled with one of the controls to avoid looking at him. After a while he sighed. "I was... involved with the downfall of the Empire," he finally admitted. "I'd been on a planet they had just raided and they'd taken the very young daughter of one family and I promised to go after her. She'd been taken by Sarducco-Morat and when I caught up and saw what they were doing...." His eyes went cold. "Let's just say that I lost my temper, and leave it at that."
Jack met his gaze for a moment before nodding and looking away. The Doctor was normally the gentlest of creatures, but he had a temper and he despised cruelty with a passion. He was more than capable of pulling down a corrupt Empire because of what they did to one small child. Jack wanted to do much the same thing for Ianto's sake.
"So how we do this?" he eventually asked. When the Doctor said nothing, he frowned. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
The Doctor sighed. "You know there's a limit to how much I can cross and re-cross my own time stream, don't you? It's why I can't always land at the exact spot and time that would be most convenient. The sensible thing to do would be to land at the very beginning of the House of Sarducco-Morat and simply take the slow road until Ianto arrives and snatch him immediately. The major snag with that is that we'd come to the attention of the Plescleri and I really need for them to be ignorant of me when I turn up in fifty years time."
"We can cut out the time that you were actually there, Doc," Jack reminded him. "You said there were no humans then."
"True," the Doctor nodded. "I was thinking maybe jumps of five years at a time?" He grimaced when he saw the way Jack's head immediately started shaking. "Jack, I need to keep the time flow as clean as possible."
"And if we leave just before Ianto arrives and he has to spend five years in the hands of these bastards?" Jack demanded. "Can't we do year jumps and then go back when we find him?"
"No!" the Doctor said flatly. "No going back along the time stream. I'm going to be causing enough ripples by jumping up along it." He paused and considered his options, but at the back of his mind was the memory of the traumatised 'merchandise' he had found at the House all that time ago. He really wished Jack hadn't insisted on coming along. "One year jumps and that's my final offer. Take it or leave it."
Jack didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit, but he had to accept that the Doctor knew what he was doing so he gave a jerky nod and concentrated on trying to keep calm. He knew Ianto, knew the enchanting mixture of innocence, worldly wisdom, inhibitions and sensuality that made up his character. Take the time to make him relax and trust you, and there was no limit to where he would follow you, but if you tried to overwhelm and browbeat him.... Jack shivered and prayed that they'd land as close to Ianto's arrival in Hell as possible.
His first sight of the House of Sarducco-Morat impressed him despite his rage and fear. Jack had visited more brothels than even he could count and Sarducco shouted class on the top of its discreet lungs. The external building was as plain and utilitarian as any of the others on the street but once inside the sheer opulence and extravagance took a person's breath away.
Not that he and the Doctor wandered in through the front door. Neither humans nor Gallifreyans were known, so just turning up would have probably resulted in their becoming part of the merchandise in nothing flat. The Doctor materialised the TARDIS in the private viewing rooms of the manager during the middle of the night and he and Jack quietly hacked into the brothel's computers and checked for new arrivals. Jack had to struggle to distance himself as they did this again and again and a seemingly endless parade of kidnapped and brutalised beings paraded themselves in front of his eyes. He'd had to play the part of a whore on some missions. He'd even played it for real sometimes, willingly or not, when things had gone wrong. He knew more than enough to kill any illusions that there was anything romantic about it. In fantasies between consenting adults, maybe, but not in grim reality.
Ianto, his Ianto. He'd fight. God, he'd fight. Under that seemingly meek exterior was a steel will and stubborn personality. Ianto might think that he had initially succumbed to Jack out of a mixture of need, lust and practicality, but Jack knew better. Jack had been around a lot longer than Ianto and he'd known that Ianto was in love with him long before it had occurred to the younger man. The idea had scared the life out of Jack, since he had been certain he couldn't measure up to what Ianto needed, and yet somehow it had been working out until Jack had wound up lost on time and the original Jack Harkness, Abaddon and the Doctor turning up had got in the way. Things were in chaos but the one thing Jack knew for certain was that Ianto would fight being 'broken in' and that would bring out the worst in these people.
"Couldn't you have brought this bloody Empire crashing down a bit sooner," he asked the Doctor savagely after one visit where he had made himself witness the initial 'vetting' of five slender, silver-furred beings with huge topaz eyes and voices that cried desolation at their cruel fate. This is what they'll do to Ianto, his heart cried out. This is what they'll do to my lover.
The Doctor was at his most impassive, but his eyes were huge and dark with empathy as he looked across at Jack. "They had to have their chance," he said a little hoarsely. "Would you have me judge Humanity on the Nazis and their concentration camps? The USA on its slaves? The Romans on their circuses? Stones and glass houses, Jack. None of us are blameless, not even my own people."
Thirty years in, they found him.
They'd started to take turns in scanning the database, since neither of them were able to take the constant parade of pain and debasement that they were witnessing. The Doctor was starting to get seriously worried about Jack. The man was normally good at maintaining a distance but now that Ianto was involved, that professional mindset was in tatters. He was getting to look more and more haunted with every stop and the Doctor was half-tempted to drug him and let him sleep while he did the searching.
Not that he was much better. He knew so many of the races he saw being brought back on the 'business trips' and he knew the mental and emotional cost that was being paid by the helpless victims. Even the more liberal species had little suspicion of what was ahead of them. The Plescleri were a conflicted people; hating the alien and yet irresistibly drawn to it. The conflict often found release in violent sex, the taboo being made available with no questions asked and no repercussions beyond a demand for payment if the goods were permanently damaged.
The Doctor had insisted that a haggard Jack take some time out to catch his emotional breath. The fact that Jack hadn't put up more than a token argument confirmed how hard this was hitting him. The Doctor could only murmur a prayer of thanks at his timing when the very next jump turned up Ianto's profile in the computer. The Doctor's heart sank when he saw that Ianto had been brought in a scant three weeks after they had last left. That meant he had been in Sarducco-Morat's clutches for nearly a year. He might not even be alive any more.
A quick scan of the database located the current details and the Doctor's hearts sank. Ianto was listed as a top of the line attraction, with an exorbitant price attached to a single hour and an astronomical one tagged to a three-hour session. The promotional teaser that was attached to his posting in the House catalogue had the Doctor's eyes widening and he had the unsettling idea that they might have arrived too late. He bit his lip and then went to key in the recording of Ianto's 'induction'. He knew that Jack would insist on watching it and he needed to know just how much damage control he would have to do afterwards.
OOO
Ianto was pretty certain that his current situation was about as bad as it could get. Not quite as bad as Canary Wharf, but he didn't think anything would ever top that. About his only hope was that his triggering the lockdown would have bought the Team time to come up with a way to stopping these aliens. When Ianto had recovered consciousness, he had found himself dropped on the floor in an unfamiliar room with several of the aliens clustered around a console. Feeling understandably put out, Ianto had grabbed what he'd assumed was a weapon and pointed it at the aliens. They'd scattered in a gratifying manner but before Ianto could capitalise on that, the weapon had gone off in his hands and blown up the console.
He'd been stunned again and when he'd come to it had been in a different room, with a different set of aliens. He studied them carefully. He'd never seen anything like them recorded in the Archives. They were humanoid in the sense that they had two arms and legs and a head in the same place a human had them. They were all uniformly as tall as he was but much heavier, with shorter legs and longer torsos. Their hands had five fingers apiece and the thumb was closer to the wrist. The face was more like that of a carnivore, with a set of fangs that made him twitch nervously but the eyes were sharp and intelligent, even if the words that were being spoken were gibberish to his ears.
Ianto sighed and wished Torchwood had something comparable to the Doctor's translation magic. He tried to say something and was promptly cuffed into silence, his head ringing. There was a great deal of talking going on, with several emphatic gestures in his direction, and he decided that the discretion was the better part of valour. That decision was abandoned almost immediately when he was hauled to his feet and the aliens started to take his clothes off. He struggled furiously but they were much stronger than him and outnumbered him, so he was soon naked and panting furiously.
He knew the psychology behind the ploy, although he was surprised to see that this species seemed to grasp it. Did that mean they had the same weaknesses as humans? Or were they familiar with humans and knew that it worked? Ianto shoved his discomfort to one side and stared the alien he assumed was the leader in the eye. He wasn't quite sure how they intended to interrogate him when they didn't have a language in common, but he was determined not to make it easy for them.
He soon learned that they weren't interested in interrogation.
He dismissed the first intimate gropes and probes as accidental. The lead alien had some kind of scanner and barked out commands as the others manhandled him. When the touches were repeated and started to become a lot more targeted, he started to realise that his original worst-case scenario might have been a lot more short-sighted than it should have been. When one of the aliens leaned forward and deliberately ran a rough tongue over a nipple, Ianto jerked back, his eyes widening as he realised just what kind of position he was in. He really should have expected it, what with Jack's endless anecdotes of alien sex, but there had never been any suggestion that the same kind of situation might one day apply to Ianto. There had never been any kind of suggestion of rape.
In the end he discovered that alien sex can be as brutal, painful and unwanted as human sex. Whatever that scanner was, it told the aliens how he was put together and what possibilities there were in using his body. Three of them got naked and they were very definitely male, despite having different shaped penises that were in a slightly different place than on a human male. They were stronger than he was, and they were skilled enough to counter his attempts to fight back. In the end he was pinned down while one of them thrust a blunt-nailed finger up inside him. He yowled his fury and tried to wrench free, but he was ignored. More excitable barking and then another of the aliens was leaning on him, his penis erect and hotter than a human's. He wasn't lubricated and Ianto screamed in agony as he was penetrated, the coarse-haired alien writhing and grunting above him. It was every dark nightmare rolled into one and it was happening for real.
After the first alien had used him, the others took their turn. They used lubrication after the first time and were obviously experimenting but Ianto no longer cared and prayed instead for oblivion. It didn't come. When he was eventually dragged away and handed over to another alien who took the scanner and looked at it before grunting and licking his lips as he looked Ianto over, there was only pain and sick disgust and the terrifying knowledge that there was going to be neither rescue nor escape for him.
OOO
The Doctor realised that little bit too late that Jack had come up behind him somewhere during the record being played back. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the expression in Jack's eyes and wondered if this mission would result in two broken men rather than one. The initial rape had been brutal enough but the records showed that Ianto had, as Jack insisted he would, put up a considerable fight and it had been six months before he had been considered safe for use. The Doctor made a sound of disgust when he saw the notation that said Ianto had been given to the more 'demanding' clients at first, with fewer safeguards on his safety, as an added incentive for him to learn obedience.
And it seemed that he had. He was now considered one of the more deluxe options and the list of 'extras' he could provide might have been arousing if you didn't realise just how he had learned those skills. Jack was white and shaking as he stared at the screen and the Doctor started to put out a comforting hand but thought better of it when Jack turned his head to give him a hard look.
"We're going back in time to when he came here," he grated.
"We can't, Jack. No, wait, I mean it!" the Doctor said as Jack grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip. "You've felt the vibrations as we move from one time to the other and it's been getting worse. Trying to go back down might start a time-storm and I can't risk that. Not even to save Ianto from what's already happened to him. I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered sincerely as Jack dropped his hand and turned away.
"We're still going to get him out," Jack said flatly.
"I know," the Doctor agreed, "but it will be better for me to make the initial contact.
"He knows me. He'll trust me," Jack objected.
"And you're human," the Doctor pointed out with gentle ruthlessness. "Look at what they're charging for someone to be with him. If they spot you, you'll be in the room right next to him and I'll have to rescue the pair of you!"
So it was that the next day the Doctor found himself in the manager's office, politely declining all manner of stimulants and requesting one particular member of the Sarducco-Morat catalogue. The manager was more interested in finding out what species the Doctor hailed from.
"You would seem to be unique," he said, a large red tongue running across his fleshy lips as he glanced down at the screens in front of him. "You look like the whore you want, but you have two hearts and there are other differences."
The Doctor managed to keep the smile on his face with difficulty. This was the difficult part. "His similarity to my species is what's so appealing," he said smoothly. "I haven't seen his like before. Certainly not during my travels through Meshwennan space," he finished offhandedly.
The Plescleri froze. The Meshwenn had been the race that had traumatised them all those thousands of years ago and they had assumed the mythic status of the bogeyman ever since. "You come from Meshwennan space?" he asked.
The Doctor nodded. "They employ me to go wandering around and see what I can find. They were very annoyed when I radioed to tell them I was here and told me they wanted me to leave immediately, but I think I'm entitled to enjoy a little rest and recreation before I leave, don't you?"
"They know you are here?"
"Oh yes," the Doctor said blithely. He wanted to make sure that he didn't 'disappear' because of his uniqueness, so the idea that the Plescleri's bogeymen knew about him and would come looking for him seemed the safest bet. "Now, about this particular.... whore," he managed to get out.
The Plescleri smiled, showing far too many sharp yellowing teeth. "He is much sought after. Unique to the Empire. No other House has his like. He was wild and untrained when we acquired him but he has become highly skilled under our tutelage. Many of his clients come back and want to savour him again."
"I have to admit that he looks very tempting, although there were a couple of others..." the Doctor said, flipping through the catalogue at random. He didn't want to appear too eager for fear of raising suspicions.
"His flesh is sweet and his blood hot and rich," the manager said in satisfaction. "He is responsive to a wide range of stimulants and we have trained him to respond to certain prompts. We have even had several visits from certain members of the Royal Lines! It may be that one of the Palaces will offer to buy him soon, so I would take your pleasure before it is lost to you for ever."
"You have a point," the Doctor said, forcing a smile. "Very well, I'll try an hour first and if I enjoy myself I might come back for one of the deluxe packages."
"If you can afford it, you will," the manager said complacently.
Fifteen minutes later and the Doctor was being ushered into a sumptuously appointed bedroom. He'd been thoroughly frisked beforehand, with an apologetic manager explaining that the other Houses often tried to kidnap the more successful whores for their own use. The Doctor had waved the apology aside, knowing that he had nothing on him that could be construed as a weapon. He explained away the sonic screwdriver as a sex aid, which surprised a laugh out of the manager but since he had it on its most innocuous setting, it was given back to him when he was allowed inside.
He should have been prepared, he told himself. He really, really should have been prepared.
Ianto Jones rose up from where he had been lying on the enormous bed. He was completely naked apart from the intricate jewellery he wore. Nothing sharp, of course, that he might use as a weapon. All the stones were polished cabochons, the settings soft rounded silver, the chains fragile and slender. Sapphires the same blue as his eyes and deep rich amethysts lay across his shoulders and down his chest and back. More gems glinted at wrists and ankles, although the Doctor was quick to note that there were no rings on his fingers. More blue glinted at his ears, flickering through the heavy mane of his hair, which was also bound up with ropes of gems and silver. The Plescleri had let his hair grow much longer - almost midway down his back - but were fastidious about keeping him clean-shaven. A bearded race themselves, they seemed to have a kink about keeping Ianto shaved.
"Hello," the Doctor said brightly.
Ianto came off the bed in a movement so languidly graceful that it had to have been practised. His eyes were hooded, the Doctor noted and when he got close enough, the Doctor also noticed that the pupils were slightly dilated. Drugged, he thought sadly. Still, he seemed alert enough as he reached up to touch the Doctor's face wonderingly.
"Are you human?" he asked.
"No, sorry," the Doctor said quietly.
Ianto hands had drifted down to rest on the Doctor's chest and he frowned in quick bewilderment before bending down to place a ear against the chest wall. "Two hearts," he said after a moment. "No, not human." A shadow passed over his face before it was banished and a slow seductive smile replaced it. "What is the customer's pleasure?"
"Um, well, I thought we'd talk a bit first," the Doctor said a little breathlessly, sliding away to one side and going over to sit on the bed. He patted the bed beside him and tried to look as asexual as possible. "Tell me about yourself."
Ianto was staring at him in bewilderment. After a moment, he seemed to shake himself and came over, but instead of sitting down beside the Doctor he knelt down in front of him and reached for the zip of his trousers.
"No!" the Doctor yelped, batting him away.
Ianto immediately jerked back as if he had been burned, his calm replaced by shaking fear. "I mean no disrespect!" he said hastily, shooting a nervous look up towards the far ceiling. "I simply desire to please. What is the customer's pleasure?"
The Doctor tensed and motioned him forward. When Ianto was close enough, he bent his head to whisper in his ear. "Are we being monitored? Answer yes or no."
There was a moment's pause. "Yes."
"Damn," the Doctor muttered. "That's going to complicate things. All right, we'll just have to work with what we've got. Come and sit beside me."
Still frowning, Ianto did as he was told and half-turned on the bed to study the Doctor. The Doctor, on the other hand, was startled to discover that he was very conscious of the fact that he had a naked young man sitting beside him. A gorgeous naked young man. Somehow Jack had never mentioned that, and the catalogue had simply not done him justice. Feeling thoroughly discomfited, the Doctor cleared his throat again.
"I've come to rescue you," he whispered to Ianto.
The blue eyes widened, but to the Doctor's surprise, there was no sign of relief, or excitement or any kind of emotion other than a weary amusement. "I'm very grateful to you," Ianto eventually said. He lifted his hands to finger the Doctor's lapels and then slipped his hands under the coat and pushed it off the Doctor's shoulders. "Shall I show you how grateful I am?"
The Doctor yelped for a second time and tried to get his coat back on, but Ianto seemed to have perfected the art of getting people out of their clothes and it wasn't long before the Doctor was flat on his back on the bed, his coat and tie discarded and his shirt pulled out and unbuttoned. Ianto was kissing and licking his way up and down the length of the Doctor's torso while skilled hands were undoing his trousers. The Doctor groaned and tried to grab Ianto's head to push him away but somehow that translated into him dragging him up to kiss him. Ianto groaned and whimpered a little as the Doctor's tongue curled around his own.
"I'd forgotten," he said shakily, tears in his eyes. "I'd forgotten what it's like."
That acted like a dash of cold water in the Doctor's face and he pulled away with a gasp. "Bloody hell, I should have listened to Jack and let him come instead," he muttered.
Ianto froze and for the first time something that looked like genuine emotion claimed his face. "Jack?"
"Jack," the Doctor repeated, realising that he had the key he needed to get inside Ianto's defences. "I was telling you the truth, Ianto. I'm here to rescue you."
The otherworldly reserve shattered and the Doctor was abruptly face to face with a man, rather than a decorated sex-toy. "No," he gasped, pulling away a little. "No, this is a dream, a fantasy. I've overdosed again."
"No, don't," the Doctor said sharply, pulling Ianto back down. "We don't want to make the sadists in charge of this place suspicious. "This isn't a dream, Ianto, I swear it isn't. Look, I'll pinch you." The Doctor suited actions to words and felt Ianto flinch against the sharp nip he gave the tender skin at the inside of the elbow. "I just need to be careful and not go off half-cocked."
Ianto had been holding still against him. "Two hearts. You're the Doctor." When the Doctor nodded, he sighed and shook his head. "So you just happened to come along and find me and decide to mount a rescue bid?"
"Something like that," the Doctor agreed.
Ianto laughed but the sound was bitter. "Such a shame you came too late then, isn't it?" His eyes gleamed as he looked down at the Doctor. "Ianto Jones is dead, Doctor. He died quite a while ago. Your timing is a little off."
"Look, I know this has been a terrible time for you-"
"Terrible?" Ianto gave him a look of bitter derision. "I am a valuable commodity, Doctor. If I'm broken, they take great pains in putting me back together. I can have any stimulant or drug or aphrodisiac they have for the asking. I'm fed and watered and every physical need is satisfied. And all I have to do is gratify the desires of the people who pay my masters for my time. What's so terrible about that?" he asked with a glittering smile, but his eyes opened out on Hell.
"Ianto-"
"I don't have a name any more," Ianto interrupted. "Names are for the customers, not for the likes of me. Which reminds me that I am being remiss in my duties." The eyes were veiled and the seductive mask was firmly back in place and Ianto resumed his relentless assault on the Doctor's body.
"This is going to be a lot more difficult that I'd originally assumed," the Doctor said through gritted teeth.
Fortunately - or unfortunately, he wasn't sure which - they were interrupted by the door opening and one of the brothel attendants came in. For a moment the Doctor thought he'd been discovered and he tensed, but the attendant made no effort to pounce on him but bowed instead and looked apologetic.
"The House of Sarducco-Morat extends its apologies but must ask that you curtail your time with this whore and come back another time."
"What? Er, why would that be?" the Doctor demanded, conscious of a faint relief as Ianto let him go and slipped off the bed to kneel on the floor.
"A most esteemed client has insisted that he be given the entire afternoon to savour the delights of this whore and since he is of one of the Royal Lines..." The attendant made the same kind of shrug a human would have to illustrate the fact that the rich often got their way and the less affluent just had to put up with it.
"Well, that's all very well," the Doctor huffed, "but I paid for my time and we were just getting started here."
"The manager has authorised me to refund you your fee and to guarantee a three-hour period at a more convenient time. I afraid we really must insist," the attendant said apologetically.
"Oh, very well," the Doctor said, making a point of sounding annoyed but gracious. He got to his feet and dragged at Ianto to get up as well. The younger man did so reluctantly, with one eye kept warily on the attendant. He focused a bit more on the Doctor when the Time Lord kissed him gently but thoroughly. "I'll be back," he whispered in his ear, "and next time I'll prove this isn't a dream."
Leaving a wide-eyed Ianto staring after him, the Doctor breezed out of the room and brushed past the massively muscled and richly dressed Plescleri waiting outside, trying not to see the way the being was having to lick the drool off his lips as he waited for his turn to go in. Yet another thing he would be careful not to tell Jack about.
OOO