How We Break

The Doctor’s eyes wouldn’t open. They seemed to be glued shut. He tried to lift his hands to his face, pain in his right shoulder sliced through him, and it was all he could do to not cry out. Instead, he let that arm go limp rubbed open his eyes with his left hand. His face felt puffy, and his throat was as if a softball had been shoved down it. He tried to gather his thoughts, tried to think but nothing came. Inches from his head was the bucket. With great effort, he slid his injured arm into his lap and did his best to push himself up. He couldn’t help the grunt and groan that left him as he tried to maneuver his way to stability.

The bucket seemed to be refreshed. There was no tinge of color or crust, and the cloth didn’t look like it had anything it. Reaching in, he curled his fingers around it in the cold water, squeezed and shook it, and pull it up to his mouth where he sucked up as much of the water as he was able. God, he was thirsty. He had no idea how long he’d been there, but it didn’t matter. His body needed water to heal him, to keep him functioning through the blood loss. He dripped the rag again and again, drinking in the cold water that felt amazing on his throat and in his stomach.

When he’d had enough, he went to drop the rag in the water again but decided last minute not to leave it. It was still in his hand as he groaned loudly, lying back on the stone, which was so fouled his body was outlined in it with body fluids and vomit. He twisted the rag in his hand and without consciously deciding to, brought it up and pressed it over one eyelid.

His breath caught with a genuine sob.

Jack.

He needed Jack, so desperately it hurt. How was this so different? Jack had bit him. Jack had fucked him and made him bleed. Could it be that only a week or so ago he had enjoyed such treatment, craved it? Even intentionally hurting him, Jack couldn’t hurt him. Jack who was safe and warm and perhaps constantly a tiny bit high. The Doctor smiled through another sob. This cloth was heaven. The cold felt so good on his face, anything else he felt didn’t matter.

The Doctor folded the cloth and gently rubbed it over his other eye. This asteroid was silent. He missed the comforting hum of the TARDIS’ engines, and even Torchwood had subtle vibration in the air from all the computers, but this place—it was dead. He rolled onto his side the best he could, facing the bars. He tucked his injured arm against his chest and breathed through the throbbing of his body. He’d clean himself after Susan awoke and drank. It was a perfectly fine and rational excuse to not move, even to scrub away Rory’s filth.

No. Rory was sweet. Rory had a heart bigger than anyone’s. He loved and cared. He was the amazing man who waited 2000 years to keep Amy safe. He was the amazing father and husband who crossed the universe with a vengeance, looking for his family. Rory who could always be counted on for kind words and a smile. That was Rory.

The Doctor tucked the cloth under the side of his face and closed his eyes.

~

Susan woke him again, this time by poking his chin repeatedly. Vaguely his sleep-stuck brain, he made the tiniest motion to swat away whatever was one him, but as soon as he tensed his arm, pain radiated form his shoulder out over his collar bone and into his neck. He grunted and stilled himself in hopes it would fade. Gradually in lessened but certainly didn’t leave. The Doctor opened his eyes to see her sitting in front of him, sonic in hand.

“The bucket,” said the Doctor, “It’s clean water. Go drink.”

Setting down the sonic, she needed no further telling. Cupping her hand and dipping it in, she pulled it up and gulped down the water. After a few more, she sat back.

“No, have more.”

She listened. When he was satisfied, he pushed himself up, dragging the rag with him.

“Okay,” he told her, “We don’t have time for me to heal. Should have left before. If…” he swallowed, already breathing heavy with the effort, “If I say run, you need to run. If I tell you to hide, you need to do it, and always stay close to me. I won’t be able to hold your hand. I’ll have to have my sonic. Susan, do you understand?”

She didn’t respond, just watched him.

He closed his eyes in frustration, “Please, Susan, we’ve done this kind of thing so many times before. Just tell me you understand.”

Slowly she nodded.

“Okay, thank you. Thank you.”

Calling it a great effort for him to stand was an enormous understatement. He grunted and moaned but tried to keep himself quiet. Quiet was difficult though. Pressure built in his chest and head, and he could feel his face reddening. On his hands and knees now, he couldn’t decide what would be less painful: putting one leg forward and standing as if on a step or crouching back on his heels and rising from both feet. Remembering the steps in Torchwood made him sore even from Jack, he gathered his feet under himself. With a searing burn, he sat back on his ankles, rocked forward, and pushed himself up. Balance was something else entirely. He stumbled sideways, one foot over the next, managing to stay vertical until his good shoulder slammed into the wall of the cell. Grunting and biting his lip, he stood still and pressed his forehead into the wall, putting dents in his already scraped skin, riding out the pain and dizziness. Warmth trickled down the inside of his legs, one thick drop that ran nearly to his knee, then another and another. The damage was just beginning.

“Hey,” he said to Susan in what he hoped was a light voice.

His body shook violently.

“H—Hey, can I have that now?”

She glanced at where his finger pointed and picked it up. Her tiny fingers barely closed around its middle. Her dirty bare feet took one hesitant step to him and then another, it held out before her like a scepter. He leaned against the wall, the back of his shoulder blades appreciating the cold. Reaching out with his good hand, he grasped the sonic. It felt good; it felt right in his fingers.

“Right, okay. Remember everything I told you? Nod, Susan, good. Okay.”

The Doctor pushed himself away from the wall and stumbled through steps that took him only inches. Not thinking about how long it took him to get to the bars of the cell, he lifted the sonic, leveled it with the lock of the door, and a high pitched sound resonated throughout the tiny room. Relief flooded him, not because the door clicked open easily as the green light shadowed it but because it was such a familiar noise, one that he relied on, had gotten him out of so much trouble. The wheezing of the TARDIS made people run to him; it gave them hope, he'd been told, but the ringing pulse of the sonic--his sonic screwdriver--that was his hope.

He curled his fingers around one of the bars and carefully pulled the door back. It clicked and echoed far more than he would have liked. When the gap was large enough for him to work his way through, he stopped and slid out. His bare feet touched the floor outside his cell, and a thrill shot through him.

"C'mon," he whispered down at Susan.

She noiselessly followed. As quickly as the pain between his legs would allow, they scuttled down the hall. It would have helped if he knew at all where he was going, and she had been on the surface, so Susan didn't know either. As far as plans went, he was simply going to continue until he heard the sound of water in pipes or some sort of vibration of machinery. From there he could get them out. Climbing the ladder back up was a thought that made him cringe.

Footsteps were easy to hear as they approached, but all the halls were simply carved tunnels with no nooks to hide in. They quickened their pace. On the left came a door. The Doctor risked the noise of the sonic, opened it, and threw himself inside, yanking Susan with so hard her feet came off the ground.

He whispered with a finger to his lips so softly his breath was louder than his words, “Shhhh, no noise.”

The footsteps passed them without incident. He let out a shuddered breath and looked around them but could see nothing in the pitch dark. He held out his sonic again and pushed the button. He gasped, nearly lost his grip on it, and let go half a second later.

The image of the man chewing the chunk of shoulder played in his mind’s eye, slowly, with painful detail. The Doctor’s breath was ragged. He started to stumble but nearly fell into Susan. Her presence, her need for him to save her stabilized him. He closed his eyes.

Think, he told himself, think!

Perhaps there was another door somewhere in this… butchery that would allow them a quicker escape.

“Susan,” he said, resting his hand on the back of her head, “Susan, I need you to close your eyes. Do that for me? Close your eyes and do not open them, no matter what. Just keep your hand on my leg, like this, right here and stay close. Can you do all of that?”

He felt her nod.

Swallowing down nausea, he tried to breathe even. Holding his hand out again, he pressed the button on the sonic and slowly moved forward between the tables. Luckily the dark stain on the floor was dried, so while he felt it below his feet, it did not squeeze up between his toes. The tables around were metal, tinged green with his shaking light as he walked by, crusted and smeared. So consumed by the knives and tongs on them, he nearly hobbled his way into a see-through plastic bag hanging from the ceiling. At first he thought it was a bag of blood, then he realized the blood was draining from the arm inside. No hand or fingers or shoulder, just the arm. He turned his head and closed his eyes.

A group of men, no idea how many, living on an asteroid with only lured ships to live off of, how else would they survive if they didn’t eat their dead, eat the passengers from the ships. The Doctor swallowed as he thought, eat them after they had sexually used them to death. Or during.

He pushed forward, now waving his sonic up and down to make sure he didn’t run into anything. The room was longer than he thought it would be, but when he approached the other end, avoiding a few more bags, he saw what he had hoped to see—a door. Eyes fixed on it, he wasn’t paying enough attention. He stepped on something tough and compressionable. In an attempt to get off, he stepped too quickly, lost his balance, and rammed his shoulder into the wall beside the door.

“Susan--!” he started in alarm as her hand lost contact with his leg, but his words were cut off as a gag threatened to overtake him.

No, no, no, no, he couldn’t puke here. It would just prove that they had gone this way, but despite trying to calm himself and scraping his foot repeatedly on the floor to banish the echoing feeling of whatever he stepped on, he couldn’t quite manage it entirely, so he swallowed and swallowed until it was gone. A light pressure touched his side. Setting his sonic in his near worthless arm, he dropped his good one and felt a small hand flattened beside his belly button. She was reaching all the way up on her toes. He squeezed her hand and set it back on his leg. He limped over to the crack in the door and listened but heard nothing. He kept listening, just to be sure, and used the sonic to open it.

It was another dark hallway, but this time he heard something machine based down the right end. He ran the backs of his fingers over Susan’s hand and started forward. Ten feet, maybe fifteen, and they came not to a door but an arch way, and this room had dim lighting. He walked cautiously in, toting Susan, listen for any sign of anyone, but nothing reached his ears except the hum of large white bins on the edges of the room. He stepped to the side a few times and reached one. Bracing himself, he dug his fingers into the lid and pried it up.

Freezers, that’s what they were. Frozen in plastic bags were strips of muscle, some wrenchingly small, and at least one fully intact limb. He stared. Closed it. Count, he told himself, count in Gallifreyan. He got to seven when a thought hit him. Freezers, lights—power. He leaned around the freezer and saw the thick black cord. His breath hitched in hope as he followed the cords down to a hole in the wall beside a door. He opened it in a green flash and pushed through, going around the door, and looked at the cords behind it. This room was nearly black again, except just inside the doorway. The Doctor put his sonic towards the ground and followed the cords. He swung it up and back down and up, trying to see where it led. There, wooden planks nailed to the wall disappearing up into the dark. His hearts skipped, and he moved forward.

A hand reached up from behind him and yanked the sonic from his grip.

“This is an impressive device.”

The Doctor stumbled back, shoving Susan behind him. His brain jammed, chest froze, mouth noiselessly moving. The man pushed the button on the sonic, and green lit up his face from bellow.

The man smiled, and said with clear joy, “You left a trail of blood, not much but enough. One smeared drop here and there. The idiots lost your trail when you entered the slaughterhouse. They failed to notice the color difference between fresh blood and dried. I figured you’d go for the nearest hatch.” He stepped closer, and the Doctor stepped back. “Your ship is proving difficult to gain entry to, though it doesn’t look like much. You did say it was much bigger than it seemed, so I haven’t given up entirely…. Do you know what’s funny?”

The man’s voice took a dark turn. His eyes moved up from the sonic to look at him.

“I was just thinking as much fun as you are, a little girl really sounded good right now.”

Clenching his hand around Susan’s shoulder, the Doctor pulled her back.

“What’s my name?”

The Doctor said nothing. There was no way he could get up the hatch in time. A fight was the only thing he could think of. The man smirked and drew a gun from the back of his pants.

“I’ve seen enough people fight for their lives to not underestimate them…. After you.”

The man stepped aside and gestured for the Doctor to walk. Thinking he had until the other end of the slaughterhouse to come up with something, he pulled Susan beside him, keeping his body between them. Three hobbled steps later, the man moved suddenly, and a blow landed on the back of the Doctor’s head, taking him face first to the floor. He felt as if he were floating, drifting and disconnecting.

“What’s my name?”

~

The Doctor gasped, fighting his drowning instinct as water poured into his mouth. He choked and turned his head, coughing up water from his lungs. Susan was much better at waking him up. He looked around himself, trying to get his bearings. He had been tossed into the corner contorted and hunched. Susan was curled up in her own corner, and the man stood before him. The Doctor opened his mouth. Even with the water bath, his mouth felt gummy and tasted familiar.

It was a flavor he only associated with Jack. That would explain the ache in his jaw.

He shuddered but was thankful he hadn’t been awake for it.

The man grabbed his swollen ankle and drug him away from the wall into the middle of the cell and flipped him over. The Doctor didn’t know what to do, if he should fight or take it again, but the man’s chest pressed against back and pinned him down. An arm reached over the Doctor’s shoulder and encircled his neck, using him as leverage to pull himself forward over the Doctor’s body and yet again bury his cock in him. A hand scrubbed through his hair and gripped it, pulling his head back as far it would go. That and the arm around his neck restricted his breathing and vocal noises, but if anything it hurt more than ever. The man grunted with every thrust, and the Doctor simply waited for it to be over.

~

“What’s my name?”

It was a question that repeated in sleep. In his mind, he never got a chance to answer, but tried. He screamed it.

“Rory.”

This had to end. It did. Everything ends. No more hunger or cold or stone. No more waking to taste in his mouth or stickiness on his chest. No more pain and being used for pleasure or food. Everything ended.

He had a bite missing now from the inside of each thigh. No matter how hard he screamed or thrashed or behaved during violation, it seemed to be Rory’s favorite part. The bites had come one right after another, and the blood loss had been spectacular.

“I need you, little rag,” Rory had whispered in his ear, “Food is rationed, and I’m so hungry.”

Pleadings had tumbled form the Doctor’s mouth faster than he could make sense of them himself, but it didn’t matter. Fighting was futile, and with every passing minute he was weaker.

Rory pulled out of him, and the Doctor’s haze of incomprehensible thoughts was scattered. He felt himself rolled over onto his back. Rory walked on his knees around the Doctor to the top of his head and knelt on his forearms with more weight than necessary. The Doctor half opened his mouth in expectation. Rory flattened his hands on the Doctor’s chest and smoothed them down to his hips. Susan had cleaned him well this time. There was almost no crusted blood.

“When you got here,” Rory growled low in his throat, running his hands over the skin again, “You had stomach muscles that made my mouth water. You’re atrophying now, and I see that I should had done this right away. You’re a lot less valuable without so much meat on you.”

Rory opened his mouth and leaned down.

The Doctor shrieked and screamed.

“Nonono don’t, please! Please don’t! I’ll do anything, no, no, no, NO!”

He thrashed and twisted, but Rory held his hips down. Teeth touched his skin halfway between his belly button and ribcage, and dug in. The Doctor screamed harder as the bite popped and frayed under pressure and ripped the rest of the way out of him with a small shake of Rory’s head. Gasping, the Doctor trembled head to foot and curled up as best he could.

“No, no, no,” he sobbed quietly, pressing his face, eyes closed, into his uninjured upper arm, “No, no.”

He cried and held himself as tight as he could, not even caring when Rory resumed fucking him.

~

“Doctor, oh, Doctor.”

He opened his eyes. Briefly he registered that he had slept longer than usual and was thankful for it. He did, even by a small margin, feel better for it, but in truth he knew that just meant he’d fight harder and things would hurt more. He’d feel it all more. For the first time, heavy manacles held his arms together, but they didn’t anchor him to anything. Rory stood in front of him, the cell door closed of course, hands behind him, and the beginnings of a smile on his face. He started to pace form left to right before his prisoner, something glinting from his clasped hands. The Doctor pushed himself as upright as he could and rubbed his eyes to clear his vision. He waited as Rory continued to pace.

Finally, the man stopped, and said, “Oh, Doctor, my little rag, we had a deal, remember? Your cooperation for her safety.”

Rory paused and gestured to the little girl in the corner behind him. The Doctor stiffened.

“I know, I’m sorry,” the Doctor spoke quickly, holding his hands out as best he could, “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t her fault. Whatever you want from me, I’ll do it. Anything.”

“That’s not the point,” Rory continued, shaking his head with a smile as though teaching a child a lesson, “We had a deal. And you went back on it.”

“Please—“

“I’ve been enjoying you so very much, but I think it’s time we got to the punishment.”

He turned and started towards her.

“Don’t! She’s innocent! She doesn’t deserve any of this.”

Rory reached down and grabbed a handful of her hair, yanking her to her feet.

“You have me! She can’t do anything for you. I can! Susan!”

The Doctor did his best to struggle to his feet as the man dragged her forward.

“Please don’t hurt her.”

Rory stopped short and held her up again the wall perpendicular to the Doctor. In his other hand was a knife. He pushed a button on it, and a long, thin silver blade snapped out. Rory set the tip to her forehead and lightly drug it down her nose. Her eyes ignored it, intent on the naked man who made her so many promises. She tried to pull away and reached out for him. The Doctor struggled towards her, twisting at the metal on his wrists. Rory slapped the top of her hand with the flat of the blade hard enough to leave a dripping red line. She snatched it back and held it to her chest. Rory pulled her hair, scraping the top of her head on the wall. The torture, the scarring, the disfigurement the Doctor pictured as he begged would kill him. Every time he looked at her, guilt would consume him. She’d suffer the rest of her life because of his poor judgement.

“No, no, no,” said the Doctor, feeling every bit as desperate as ever, still attempting to stand, tears smearing the blood on his face, “No, please, she was always such a good girl. Please, it was my fault, my fault! She just wanted to be free, to learn, so I took her. Please…. Susan….”

Rory gave him a disgusted frown, and said, “Then consider this even more your fault.”

Rory’s knife hand moved towards her face again. The muscles in his arm tensed, and he pushed the long blade into her eye. And through it. And further until the tip clinked on the stone behind her. Her arms dropped and her face fell, one line of blood running down her cheek.

The Doctor didn’t scream, didn’t fight. He slumped against his wall and stared, lips parted. He just stared. No sound got to him, no movement registered, not even pain touched him. All he knew was the single still image of Susan, his Susan, limp with a knife in her brain. At some point he was probably beaten or it might have been that he was given water. Maybe he was cleaned. He didn’t see when Rory picked her up off the ground, didn’t hear when a comment was made about a man who liked them cold, before Rory took her away, but there was one thing he always heard, one thing he always said.

“What’s my name?”

“Rory.”