A/N: Hello readers. This story is going to contain lots of graphic material so I'm warning you now. I'd call it an excuse for Doctor whump. xD I've read plenty of fics like this and I've always wanted to try my hand at one. So here's my take. The introduction is pretty long, standing at 3600 words. I'd like to know what you all think before I continue, and if the whole plot is relatively plausible and makes sense. So please - the review box doesn't bite. :)

Please enjoy, and yes, read on at your own risk.

And in the end, we all give into our fears.

He'd told them he'd just be a moment. He'd told them he was just going to go for a quick walk to grab some fresh air. Dinner with Martha's family had been quite nice – Francine had fixed up a nice meal with roast chicken, steamed vegetables and baked potatoes. The Doctor had found himself drawing in on old memories about Rose. He'd eaten Christmas dinner with Rose's family after he regenerated, and it was the first time he'd eaten at another person's house. As he slowly ate, surrounded by Martha's family, he couldn't stop thinking about Rose. And so he told them quietly he was going to get some fresh air.

He'd been about five minutes into his walk when he noticed a van pull up on the side of the road. Of course, being the Doctor, a van pulling up wasn't worth a second glance. He had more important things to worry about. But when someone came up from behind him and covered his mouth and nose with a scented handkerchief and his vision began to fade, he knew – oh, he knew – he should have given that van a second glance.

Back at Martha's house, it had been half an hour since the Doctor had moved out of the front door claiming he was going for a quick walk to clear his head. Martha had decided to push him no further than that – he usually got what he wanted, and now was probably not the right place to remind him it was rude to leave in the middle of a meal.

But it Martha was sure, incredibly positively sure, 'quick walks' do not tend to last for half an hour. She hadn't heard the TARDIS leave – by the gods she'd recognise that sound within a million miles – and as a matter of fact, as she went to check, it was still parked on her lawn. She knocked twice, calling his name to see if he was inside. When he didn't answer her calls she scrambled for her TARDIS key, which she kept around her neck, and then went inside. And still, he was nowhere to be found. So where on Earth had the Timelord gotten to? She couldn't even be sure if he was still on Earth…

She'd moved back to the table after that, trying to hide the worry she so much wanted to express on her face. After an hour questions started to rise up – all of them directed at poor Martha Jones – and she didn't know quite how to answer them. Another hour later – which marked two hours since the Doctor had gone for a 'quick walk' – after the table had been cleared and the washing up done, that was when Martha decided to go and check the backyard again to make sure the TARDIS was actually there.

To her uttermost disappointment – since, well, if the TARIDS was gone that meant Doctor would have gone with it, meaning he was safe – the TARDIS still stood idly on the grass. She once again chose to move inside, just to make sure he wasn't playing games with her. The console room showed no signs that the Doctor had been in, since usually he'd throw his trench-coat onto one of the supporting struts around the outside, or he'd been sitting in the captain's chair, tinkering with whatever he could get his hands on.

There was no Doctor. And Martha knew the Doctor never went anywhere without his TARDIS.

The next morning, the phone ringing on Captain Jack Harkness's desk distracted him from reading the rift activity from last night. He'd just sat down with the printouts Gwen had handed him a couple of minutes ago. Sighing to himself and throwing the printouts onto the desk, he picked it up.

"Jack. It's Martha." He got an immediate sentence from the other end of the line.

"Hello my Nightingale, how's things?" Jack greeted her.

He was sitting in his chair at his considerably messy desk with his feet up on the mass of paper and one hand rubbing the back of his head, now.

"Is the Doctor over at the Hub with you?" Martha asked him through the phone.

Martha, on the other hand, was sitting nervously at the kitchen table at her house. She was turning the TARDIS key – the Doctor still hadn't taken it off her – over in her hand, hoping it could give her some answers.

"No – what business does he have over here?" Jack asked. "He knows we can handle rift activity just fine by ourselves." He said with a smug laugh.

"It's not that, Jack." Martha told him. "The Doctor came over to my house for dinner last night." She began to explain.

"He had dinner?" Jack interrupted sharply with another laugh. "Is he ill, or something? The Doctor always hated being domestic." He was still laughing after he'd finished his sentence.

"He's gone, Jack." Martha stated heavily. "He went outside to grab some fresh air, and then didn't return."

"What do you mean he's gone?" Jack took his feet off the desk abruptly and sat up straighter. "He wouldn't just dematerialize in the middle of a meal – he has standards." Jack stated.

"The TARDIS is still in my backyard." Martha corrected him. "He went for a walk to clear his head and never came back." She repeated herself, and this time, Jack seemed to understand where she was coming from.

"How long has it been since he went?" Jack asked.

"We had dinner last night, and now it's the morning after." Martha told him. "So about twelve or thirteen hours ago." She realized that may have been a long stretch to leave the Doctor missing.

"Why didn't you inform me sooner?" Jack exclaimed irritably. "He could be anywhere by now!" Jack stopped when he realized he'd been almost shouting. "Sorry, Martha – didn't mean to shout." He apologized quietly to the would-be doctor.

"It's okay." Martha responded, her voice just as quiet. "I understand you're worried about him." She paused to steady her voice. "I'm equally worried something's happened to him." She said lightly.

"I'm coming down to your house." Jack told Martha suddenly. "If the roads are clear it'll take me an hour or two at most." The line went dead.

Jack wrote a quick note on the back of one of the many pieces of paper on his desk and stuck it to the computer screen. He waved a quick goodbye to the hub's occupants as he made his way upstairs. Martha, back at her house, put the phone down on the table and moved outside to check the TARDIS for the seventh time this morning.

Miles away, it was incredibly dark. But that didn't stop him from knowing where he was. He was in a van – probably the same van from outside Martha's house – and could tell by the engines as it drove along. Then judging by the vibrations of the metal around him, they were going quite fast. But where were they going? What did they need with him? He was also most annoyed that they'd resorted to restraining him. His arms were cuffed behind his back and he was pretty sure he was blindfolded – he couldn't tell if the darkness in the van was causing the dark, or the fact he was now visually impaired was.

He was getting thrown around quite a bit, too. The people who had put him in here hadn't taken to tying him down, so every time a corner was turned, he was thrown from side to side. He couldn't feel the presence of the sonic screwdriver in his suit pocket either. Even if he did have the sonic to open the doors, there was no way he could reach it while he was cuffed like this, anyway. Another thing that bothered him was the fact the TARDIS wasn't nearby. He could still feel her comforting existence in the back of his mind, but it was distant and slowly diminishing as the van sped along.

Hours later – his internal clock told him it had been seven hours, thirteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds – the van came to a stop. That meant he'd been in the back of the van for exactly twelve hours, twenty-seven minutes and fifty-eight seconds. That was an alarming amount of time.

The doors opened suddenly, and the Doctor had to close his eyes from the fierceness of the light outside. He had confirmed he wasn't blindfolded, at least. Two pairs of hands grabbed him around the shoulders and pulled him outside. His feet hit the ground and he stumbled, not used to being upright. He still kept his eyes closed, afraid of damaging his vision from the change of brightness, as he was walked – more like pushed – by two people.

Eventually, he dared to peek his eyes open a little to see where he was. It would have been the smart thing to do. If you've been kidnapped, it would be an advantage to know where you'd been kidnapped to, just in case you happen to escape and need picking up by someone.

In front of him was a fairly abandoned-looking warehouse. They were in the middle of nowhere, which made it even better. The drive had been to a very unattractive downtown of some British city he'd never heard the name of. But why here? There are plenty of abandoned warehouses in downtown London to kidnap him to.

Throughout the brief walk the Doctor kept his eyes on the ground. His vision was still adjusting to the brightness of outside from the darkness of the van. He wasn't spoken to either. If he slowed down just in the slightest he'd be jabbed in the side with something that felt horribly familiar to a handheld pistol. If he turned his head to see the appearance of his captors, he'd be jabbed in the back with something that again felt like to a handheld pistol.

Inside was considerably cooler to outside – it also smelt far better, outside smelt like diesel engines – but it was considerably brighter. He was lead down many flights of stairs, until he was thrown into a room, un-cuffed, and left alone. He took this opportunity to gather himself. He could now see properly and could stand without stumbling, but this room was ever so boring to look at. It was a white room with a white door – the white door had a small, rectangular window fitted in the top.

Curious, the Doctor – still with sore wrists; he was rubbing them to calm the irritation of the handcuffs – moved over to the door. He could just peer out the window by being on his toes. He cursed the fact his previous incarnation was taller and could have seen out the window with much less difficulty. Outside was dimly lit, but the Doctor could just make a few things. There was a bench lined with many medical machines you'd only find in a human hospital. There were various other doors outside as well, but what interested the Timelord most was the trolley closest to the door. It had ten to twenty syringes all lined up. Each syringe contained a different colour sedative – maybe they weren't even sedatives – and the needle on each looked threating sharp. The whole setup reminded him of the hospital he'd met Martha in.

The Doctor realized he'd disappeared in the middle of the Jones' family meal. He cursed himself again for not being so attentive to the van on his walk. He'd just wanted to grab some fresh air, since the domestic dinner was reminding him too much of Rose. He'd agreed to have Christmas dinner with the Tyler's and Rose's ex-boyfriend Mickey. He hadn't eaten in a house before that, and he told himself sternly that it would be the last time. But yet he'd let himself succumb to Martha's pleading and gone to her house for a 'thank-you-for-bringing-my-daughter-home' roast by Francine.

Now Martha was probably panicking. It had been thirteen hours or so now since he'd been in London, just outside her house. Hopefully she'd contact UNIT or Jack and Torchwood – they'd be able to find him here. He felt bad for leaving her in the middle of the meal Francine had so nicely prepared. He also reminded himself he was hungry by thinking about the meal from last night he didn't get to finish.

His mind then wandered to why he was here. He wouldn't be transported for thirteen hours just to sit in a room and watch the small corridor outside through the window he struggled to reach. The needles outside still got him wondering if he was a test subject in a secret government hospital. It was a far-fetched assumption, but still, all things considered it was entirely reasonable. The other rooms could easily hold other people or aliens and they were being tested. Yet the Doctor would happily consent to some simple testing for people on Earth, so why kidnap him somewhere so remote to test?

The Doctor moved away from the window and decided to sit himself down. He couldn't escape without the sonic. There was nothing he could tinker with to get the door open, which meant he was stuck here until Martha, UNIT or Torchwood found him. It was a depressing thought – being stuck in an apparent hospital with no one to talk to. He decided to close his eyes for a little while to pass the time. There was nothing else to do.

Four months later …

Crack.

"S-seventeen."

Crack.

"Eighteen."

Crack.

"Ugh… N-nineteen."

Crack.

"Twenty…"

His body struck the floor with a heavy thump. He struggled to keep his eyes open. He knew if he passed out it would only mean more pain. He pressed his palms to the ground again to pick himself up. His arms gave way from underneath him halfway up and he fell to the ground once more.

"That's enough." The professor said. "I have seen what I need to know for today."

The cuffs were reattached and the three men left the room – two of the men were the ones that did the torturing and the other man – the professor – always took notes. They would whip him, electrocute him, cut him, bruise him, beat him, break him, and kick him – the list goes on.

The different forms of torture went over the course of two days. The first day, the professor would choose one type of torture and get the two men to inflict it on him. Once the man had seen enough, he would order the men to stop and the Doctor would be left alone to recover from whatever had been imposed on him. The second day, he would be injected with a type of medication and have the exact same torture done to him again.

Today they'd whipped him with the medication. The whip had opened up the scabs from yesterday, which meant he was bleeding twice as much. Timelords healed faster than humans, but lately, even that fact had been challenged. The Doctor was certain the professor was trying to slow down his healing processes to human. He had no idea why the professor was trying to slow his remedial progress, and he liked to find the sedative the professor was mixing wouldn't be used against him later on. He could also use it on humans. It could completely shut down their healing to zero, which would be absolutely fatal.

But why test it on him? Why kidnap him from the safety of London to the downtown of a remote city just to torture him? If these people wanted him dead, they could have easily gunned him down on the street that night. He'd always assumed they were testing it on him just because he had accelerated healing. If they would have tested it on a human, it would have killed them since they would have no healing. That's what he'd always thought. He was probably right. He was usually right about these things.

He'd learned not to chat back as well. At first he'd gotten cheeky with them, but it would only earn him a backhand across the face. These men never spoke to him. In his three months here he'd never been looked at, spoken to, touched… He was completely isolated. No one had come for him. He knew not to lose faith in the people who cared about him – he knew it deep down – but the pain of solitude was slowly creeping in and driving all the care out. Sometimes he felt angry at his friends for reasons he couldn't explain and he felt guilty immediately afterwards.

It wasn't until five months into his captivity that he finally shattered. Today was supposed to be a needle day. Only one man had come in that morning – and it wasn't the professor – which was most unusual. He had no needles with him either, which meant he possibly wasn't getting attacked today.

"Your friends haven't come for you." The first sentence came out like a rehearsed speech.

Those were the first words which had been spoken to the Doctor unswervingly. He didn't respond – he knew talking earned him a backhand across the face.

"Martha Jones obviously doesn't care about you." The man kneeled so he was level with the Doctor.

The Doctor was in the corner of his room, propped up against the walls. He couldn't sit up by himself any more. He could barely stand as it was. He was frail now – he was barely given any food or water.

"You were plucked off the street in plain view of so many people. Why didn't anyone see? You disappeared in the middle of a family dinner. Why didn't anybody notice?"

The Doctor was certain Martha would have noticed he was gone. She would. But she wasn't here… She would have found him by now if she knew.

"No." The Doctor told himself aloud, and then clamped his eyes shut, realizing his mistake of speaking – especially since it seemed in defiance to the man in front of him.

"Oh… you can deny it all you want." He continued to taunt without backhanding him. "They never cared about you. They always travelled with you to see the stars. They never travelled to be with you. They used you." The Doctor could feel the man's breath on his face, and he kept his eyes shut.

But was he right? Was Martha travelling with him because she was tired of being on Earth? Did she even care about him? Would she care if he left? Would she care if he died?

"We've torn you to pieces here, Doctor." The man continued. "Where has Martha been? She isn't here for you. No one is ever here for you. No one cares about you. No one ever has." The man started to laugh in the middle of his well-practiced speech.

That was when the gunshot rang out. A thump from outside announced that someone had been shot dead. The man sprung to his feet and turned to face the door, gun raised, leaving the Doctor to ponder what was going on.

Maybe it was the professor testing his sedative on humans. And he was using a gun to inflict the death blow.

Another gun shot and a yell of pain from outside.

Maybe the other man and the professor had had a dispute and were fighting it out with bullets. Maybe…

A body hit the wall and slid down outside.

Maybe Martha had found him. But she'd abandoned him… She left him here to be tortured by these three men. She hadn't found him… He'd been in this bloodstained room for five months and she hadn't found him…

The man in front of the Doctor fired his gun and the Doctor covered his ears. Someone returned the shot and the man fell against the wall, clutching his shoulder. The gun of the shot down man fell at the Doctor's feet.

"Doctor…?"

The Doctor peeled his eyes away from the gun and looked up at the doorway. And there she was. The woman who had abandoned him. Martha Jones. She was looking at the walls, stained with red and brown. The Doctor felt himself reach for the gun at his feet.

"We were so worried about you…" She began to move closer to the exhausted Timelord.

The Doctor gripped the gun between his fingers, and then with all his strength, raised it at Martha. It took a lot of energy to hold it steady, but he managed. The would-be-doctor froze on the spot.

"Doctor…" She said comfortingly. "It's me – Martha." She pointed at herself to show it was her. "Me and Jack are here to rescue you." She still continued to approach. "We don't want to hurt you…"

"Y-you abandoned m-me." The Doctor struggled to keep the gun aimed at her, and this time, he wasn't afraid of being backhanded.

"Whatever lies they've twisted you to believe, Doctor, I can tell you – "

"I w-was here the whole t-t-time." He was trying to stop himself from stuttering. "Y-you never found me."

"We were searching the whole time…"

"N-no."

"No?"

"No."

"What do you mean 'no'?"

"No."

The Doctor cocked the gun at Martha's chest and pulled the trigger.