The gun jammed.

Simon threw the useless pile of metal onto the ground and wept as the truck drove away, the wheels bumping along the rough ground. He had failed. Because of one stupid motherfucking useless round, he had lost the only chance Blair would ever have at peace for the rest of his life.

Because from now on, all Blair would know would be agony and torment, throat torn raw from screaming as they slowly and methodically took him apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing but death. And he would die, Simon knew that. Blair would die without telling them a single thing, somehow he had faith that a gentle, pacifist child forced into this war would endure what had broken even the most hardened fighters without a single secret escaping his lips.

Simon sat down suddenly as blood loss swayed his world. He landed half-on, half off a rock, sliding to the ground, watching detachedly as his life ebbed away in red rivers. Almost absently, his hands came up to clench over the wound, ignoring the pain, welcoming it as punishment for his crime.

Jim lead his little party through the forest. They had gained one more, a thin, sallow faced woman named Cassie. Jim supposed she might have been attractive, once. Might have. But now her hair was matted and snarled, her face and clothing heavy with dirt, eyes a little too bright for sane men. But she was carrying a battered old valise. The kind they dropped to British soldiers. The kind that held a wireless. A working wireless, one that she had repaired. And that made her invaluable.

The Leftenant held up his hand for silence as something teased the edges of his ears. Crashing noises, leaves crackling, branches snapping under someone's weight.

"Someone's coming."

Brown cocked his head, then shook it. "I don't - " then they did, melting away into shelter as the desperate crashing came closer.

Jim frowned in puzzlement as a harsh panting joined the noise, little whimpers and half-babbled prayers. It didn't sound like a nazi. It sounded like someone young and half-crazed with terror, fleeing for his life.

It sounded like...

Jim stepped out of cover and caught the wildly careening figure as it slammed into him, holding it out at arms length, heart tripping and hammering as he barely recognised the wild eyes as belonging to Alec. The young boy struggled briefly against him, panic blinding his eyes to everything, until Jim's soft voice finally broke through and he locked frantic eyes on the tall Leftenant.

"Help them...you've got to...nazis..Blair!" he trembled with fatigue and pure, simple, gut-wrenching terror, body shaking so hard he would have fallen if not for Jim's grip.

"Where?" Jim demanded, hand tightening to painful proportions on the young man's arms. He vaguely registered the pained cry and feeble squirming, but his mind was twisting and turning, stomach knotting with fear "Where?"

"Jim!" hands were tugging at his now, loosening his hold. Alec was clinging to Cassie, weeping. "Jim, you gotta keep it together, man. Just keep it together." Brown was paying no attention to his own advice, his own voice rising, taking on a panicked timbre. "What do we do?" he gave the Leftenant a shake. "What do we do?"

Jim shook off the hands. Took the valise from Cassie. Handed her a gun. "You. Take Alec...away. Find somewhere." Then he turned and stepped through the broken trail the teenager had left behind.

For a long moment, there was dead silence. Then he felt the others behind, their breaths quick and light and so familiar he could have named them in his sleep. Brown. Rafe. Megan. He heard them close in, following him blindly like he was some kind of all seeing hero, superman , not some half-crazed man, so afraid for his friend, a tin shit waving a sword and charging stupidly into the fray.

Fear scrabbling deep inside, a growing sense of dread, he increased the pace, picking the trail up easily through the dark, tight-woven canopy of trees, a broken twig here, scuffled leaves, hearing the others behind him cursing and tripping over the roots and stones he avoided so easily. He gritted his teeth in irritation: they didn't have time for this, no time for the stupid everyday happenings, he had to go, he had to be there, something was happening, something terrible and he moved faster and faster until he was running, the clues flashing by quickly in his eager eyes, left, right, twisting and turning, not even registering the others, not even caring until he burst into a little clearing by the side of a road.

And stopped.

Blair was trapped in a nightmare.

Each jostle and bump of the trucks suspension on the pocked and battle-scarred road tore at his aching ribs, turning his breathing into quick shudders as he clung desperately to the seat. Each time he fell, hard boots pounded his flesh, making him cry out, making him hate himself, hate the weakness he was showing in front of the people who had attempted to murder him, his people, his entire fucking race.

The truck rolled into a compound and stopped. Taking the distraction, Blair made a hopeless lunge for freedom. A laughing soldier stuck the stock of his gun between his ankles, making him trip, sending him staggering into the tailgate and over, landing in the dirt outside. He pushed himself up on his hands and knees, fighting to see past the blood and hair in his eyes and started to crawl forward, determined to die, to make them shoot him in a laughingly insane attempt for escape. Fingers entangled in his hair, hauling him upright, hands slapped at his face, pushed him, bullied him as the soldiers frogmarched him towards a building. His eyes were almost blind, catching brief flashes of the buildings surrounding him, the black uniforms, the dirt again as he tripped and fell.

He was roughly yanked up again, brutal hands uncaring of his injuries, voices shouting conflicting orders, bouncing off the stone walls, always pushing, shoving, until he was through a door and landed on a soft carpet. He closed his eyes and prayed for death.

Two gestapo officers hauled him to his feet again.

"Well, well, well."

Blair's blood ran cold, ice forming in his veins as he recognised the thin, sharp, cruel black-clothed officer, the dark uniform wrapping around him like the web of a malevolent spider.

Keltenbrunner.

Mon dieu. He sent up a prayer to a god he should have stopped believing in but never had, his faith all too often what he had left to cling to. Not him, please! He knew this man. 'Biblically' as they were wont to say. Back in a life he thought he had left far behind, one that had tarred him and marked him and branded him with a shame so deep it could never be erased. Back when he was the mincing, prancing lapdog of a certain nazi general.

"I remember you..." that voice, like the purr of a giant cat, those eyes, two chillingly set unyielding emeralds. "My little plaything. I was very pleased General Von Kessel shared you." He reached out with a leather clad hand, smoothing his palm over Blair's cheek, his touch an obscene parody of a lover's caress. "He was a fool to let you go. But then Von Kessel always was a fool, even for a General. Throwing away a pretty piece like you because of a little flaw..." He stroked the tips of his gloved fingers across Blair's scar, and the Maquisard had to resist the urge to bite down hard on the thumb resting on his lip.

Then he got his priorities in order, and realised in a brilliant flash of clarity that he was no-ones whore any more, he had no one to protect, nothing held over him, nothing to lose except his life, which was forfeit anyway - and he lunged forward and chomped on the offending digit.

Instead of the expected yowl of pain and blows, Keltenbrunner threw his head back, an exquisite hiss oozing over the thin lips. "Aaah...." he brought his other hand up to tangle in Blair's dark curls as he unhurriedly reclaimed his hand. "Little plaything still has fight, I see. Tell me, little one, what did you do after Von Kessel threw you away?"

"I fought. " Blair returned, voice rock steady as he looked death in the eye and embraced it. "I fought you murderers. You laches. I fought and I killed." Only on the last word did his voice break, eyes lowering and his soul weeping as he remembered that lone, injured soldier on the road to Vassieux.

A gloved hand clenched at his jaw, wrenching his head back up, fingers digging in cruelly, leaving white, blood-starved imprints on his flesh that quickly filled to livid red bruises. "A Jew, to a whore, to a fighter." Keltenbrunner compartmentalised his life, cheapened it in eight short words. "Big steps, little plaything. And do you know what you are now?" he whispered in Blair's ear, a voice like honey. "Nothing. Your friends aren't here, little plaything, they won't come. To them, you are dead already. They know they can't save you, so you are nothing to them now. A dead corpse." He circled the smaller man as he spoke, and Blair recognised the fear tactic, refused to give in to it, staring straight ahead at the wall, noticing odd little cracks in the mortar, as if the screams of a thousand prisoners had finally made their way into the unforgiving stone...

The sharp pain in his thigh was at once expected, and unexpected. He crumpled under the initial invasion, feeling his muscles twitch and twist oddly around the thing invading them, hampering them, and a pain-filled gasp escaped his lips despite himself, before he recovered long enough to delve into the pain, not absorbing it, becoming it, learning to relish it, knowing it was only a small taste of what was to come.

A cramping, burning agony tore its way through his entire leg in an aftershock and he staggered under the force of it, would have fallen if not for the two gestapo guards holding him upright.

Keltenbrunner stepped in front of Blair, holding up a needle, as if for inspection, its gleaming metal tip stained with his blood and dripping a little yellow fluid from the tip. "Do you like my little present?" he asked, turning the expended syringe one way then the other, stroking his fingers over the smooth glass surface. "I have so many more toys to play with, my little plaything, and I promise you, that you will get to know them all before I am done."

The pain faded, and Blair worked up enough saliva in his mouth to spit it at the German, his broken mouth grinning a little in satisfaction as it dribbled down his nice, shiny uniform. "I am not your plaything. " He said it low and soft, every ounce of his soul in the words. "I am never yours. I never was."

The German's face finally cracked, twisting in fury. "You will be, little plaything. " He clenched a thin shoulder in his hand, fingers digging in, seeking out sensitive nerve bundles and crushing them. "You will beg and scream to be mine. "

no-one's. Blair held onto that thought as his body howled in pain, panting a little, tears running down his face as the agony eased. He was no-ones toy. No matter who they were, what they did, they couldn't take that away from him. The nazis had taken his family. The fat bald monocled General, looking so ridiculous he was almost a caricature of himself, had taken his virginity, plunged into him, torn his aching hole open, made him bleed and scream and beg, forced him to run and hide, live in the shadows, but only one man had brought him out and let him into the light.

James Ellison.

He took comfort in that fact, retreating into himself as the iron grip on his arm trailed down his body, becoming possessive, opening his pants and roughly fondling his penis in an obscene caress. Others could touch, stroke, take. But they would never touch him.

Because he was better than this. They were nothing, crawling, shrieking daemons that would flay at his flesh but never touch his soul again.

Jim He let his friends face fill his mind's eye one more time, trying with all his soul to send a mental call, a shout, all his love and joy from his heart to the other man, knowing he couldn't hear it, finding comfort in even that small fact because it meant Jim was somewhere far away and safe.

The hand on his testicles abruptly drew away, realising it could never have what it sought. Blair's head rocked to one side with the cold snap of a blow, and he closed his eyes, surrendering to the inevitable as the guards took him by the arms and dragged him away, shackling him to a cold, impersonal metal bench, tilted like an operating table, the bright lights above him hurting his eyes, burning into his brain as they tore away his clothing.

I'm sorry Jim, he whispered it in his mind only, shuddering a little as his legs were roughly parted, cold metal holding his ankles as they chained him into birthing stirrups, his back arched, hips tilted, arms spread cruciform like a sacrificial offering. I love you, my friend...

He dimly saw dark shapes moving beyond his circle of light, heard the squeak and clatter of implements on trays being wheeled closer, felt someone between his legs, at his side, behind the table, holding his head. The form at his groin began to move, something sharp pierced his side, just below his ribs, and then he could only scream as the pain began, rising higher and higher, managing one last coherent thought before it set his whole body on fire and he plunged headlong into the madness.

My life for yours