Captain Jack Harkness

Had Jack Harkness ever been asked if he would freely work with the Master the question would have been met with a laugh, and would he have been told that he himself would have freed him from captivity and kept him from the authorities he'd have expected the person he was talking to were mad.

Yet here he was. He'd freed him, kept him, and he was attempting to work with him. It wasn't conventional of course, not by any definition of the word. But it was all Jack could do. If the universe had lost the Doctor then he had to be found, and given all avenues had been exhausted, the Master might be the only man that could find him.

And so there was searching. Searching on Earth that proved fruitful for nothing but death. Disjointed bits of information dug up by them both and processed through the mind of a crazy man. Events that seemed to be punctuated only by the fact Jack would get frequently killed.

He wondered if it would ever stop. If it would ever change or get better.

But then it did change. Something in the sky and something out of sight. A trace. And in a snap the vortex manipulator that sat on Jack's wrist was repaired and they were no longer on Earth but somewhere else. Somewhere in the sky. A ship of sorts, a great metal monstrosity with old and flickering lights. Heavy walls and heavy doors and corridors that looked long and foreboding (not that much could be much more foreboding than the man that stood at Jack's side).

He glanced ahead down a corridor and took a long and laboured breath.

"Right," he said, looking at the man beside him. "Want to explain where the hell we are?"

It had been ten months.

Ten months almost to the day that a year and a nightmare ended; returned to a world unscathed from it. The world continuing none the wiser to events that shook and tore it apart at the seams.

It left no scars but those on the few who could remember.

They had no choice but to move on.

In ten months Jack had done his best not to think about the man they carried away in handcuffs. The Time Lord, shot and injured but not killed. They had taken him to a prison at first, and Jack could clearly remember the day he saw a newspaper headline that read 'Harold Saxon Kills Again'. Three inmates dead because they didn't know how to deal with him. But then how could they know how to deal with him? They had no idea what he was capable of.

He tried not to think about him. Though he was a constant memory at the back of his mind. All he'd done. The death and destruction. The pain he caused that would never really go away. That no lies could really cover up.

After the incident in the prison 'Harold Saxon' had been transferred elsewhere. A medical facility. But even that hadn't been enough to house him. The incident when he killed the nurse had been well covered. Kept from the press and the prying eyes of the public. But Jack knew. Jack found out.

So as time went on they'd adapted and changed. Built a facility around him. They tried to offer him 'rehabilitation'. To send fleets of doctors to work out just what was wrong with him. But they never would. They could never tap into that mind. Jack knew that too.

Knowing he was securely locked away, Jack could almost ignore his presence entirely. Almost. He could continue his daily life, such as it was.

But things never lasted like that.

So ten months, almost to the day, he found himself with little other option.

Pulling strings had been easy enough. Being Captain Jack Harkness came with certain connections, and when called for these connections could be used.

The facility was clinical. White and unfeeling corridors furnished with nothing. It could be a dream, or a nightmare. But it was real.

They told him it was pointless. He doesn't talk, they said, He won't talk to you.

Jack had ignored them. He'd ignored when they told him he was dangerous. He'd almost laughed. He knew that more than they ever could.

And there he was, ten months almost to the day, standing on one side of a two way mirror, looking into the padded room opposite. In the middle of the room was a table, bolted down to the floor. A chair bolted either side. One chair waited empty for him and in the other he sat. Harold Saxon. The Master. Looking ragged and raw, chained down to the table like a feral beast.

They'd tried to stop Jack from going in, but he wouldn't listen, and he passed through the double locked doors and into the room in silence.

He stood there for a moment, not moving at all. Just looking. And then he stepped over and sat. And stared.

"Nice place you've got here."

It was cold when Jack woke up. There was no blood on his chest, no wound other than a deep pain in his chest. That Lazer screwdriver had been the weapon, and it was a sharp pain, second only to that of the Dalek's extermination. The death had faded but the sting remained.

It had taken him a while to reorientate himself, to recognise the room around him as a section of the underside of the Valiant. He felt the metal around his wrists before he saw it, so cold it seemed damp against his skin. The corners of the shackles were sharp and bit harshly into his skin. But then, he didn't suppose they were built to be comfortable.

He tugged on the chains a little, to test their strength, but they were secured fast to the wall. He'd been put here to stay.

It was amusing at this stage. He didn't intend to be kept. Not when the Doctor might need his help. If he ever had motivation then that was it. He wouldn't let him down, not now.

He had expected that someone would come, that they might try and get information out of him (information that he of course wouldn't give), but nobody did. Nobody came that day and nobody came the day after. The only way he knew night or day was an LCD clock in the corner of the room. No light reached him, everything seemed to fade into one.

It became his focus though, that clock. Because someone would come, that much he knew, and when they did, he'd have something to say.