In a stolen moment between disasters, Jack Harkness found himself alone in his office. He shrugged off his long coat with a sigh and hung it on the back of his chair. He sat down behind his desk and swung his feet up onto it. The Hub was silent; the team working feverishly elsewhere, leaving him alone with himself.
Reluctantly Jack reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a card. The tarot reader he'd gone to for advice on the Resurrection Gauntlet had turned four cards for him. The first was the knight of swords who bore his image, an oddity he still could not fathom. The second had been his clue in finding the gauntlet. The third she'd turned as he left, masking it so he could not see. From the look in her eyes, he didn't want to.
The fourth had mysteriously made its way into Jack's pocket. He'd discovered this fact at a most inopportune moment: while his coat was being taken away at the jail after Owen turned on him at the bar. He'd spent the time since then torn between needing to look and not wanting to know what card she'd sent to him. Now it was inevitable. Taking a deep breath, Jack Harkness turned over the card.
He shuddered in revulsion and flung the card away. It skidded to a stop face down on the desk. The Devil card.
Captain Jack didn't fear much. In too many lifetimes of living he'd seen and done almost everything. Nothing was left for him to make him afraid. But having faced down and fought a creature who bore an uncanny resemblance to the figure on the card, Jack figured he was entitled to at least a little shiver.
He tamped down his instinctive fear and loathing and reached out for the card again. His eyes avoided the horned thing dominating the center and studied the rest of the card. Flames, a pentagram, and a pair of humans chained to the base of the beast's throne. It was these two people that caught Jack's interest.
He studied them closely. The chains were thick and heavy, looping into collars hanging around the necks of the man and the woman. Chains they could easily slip off. Yet they chose to stay, made themselves keep company with the beast. Unconsciously Jack rubbed his neck as if he were the one in chains. No collar on his neck, but his chest felt heavy all the same. Guilt weighed heavy on his soul and made it hard for him to breathe.
Owen Harper was alive. Owen Harper was dead. And there was only one person to blame. He'd tried to make things right, but everything had gone so, so wrong.
"Do you know what you've done?" Owen had screamed at him in the bar, eyes wild with fear and anger. "You don't care about me!" That was a lie, they both knew that, and yet...
And yet there was awful truth in the accusation.
When Owen had been shot and died that night, all Jack could think was not again, please God, not again, don't take another one away from me. Jack loved his job, but at times he hated it. He hated it for taking away everyone he'd ever loved. Owen Harper was one loss too many, something that could have been avoided. And selfishly, childishly, Jack Harkness had decided no more. This was not going to happen again, he was not going to sit through another funeral for a dead friend, not when he could do something about it.
He'd brought the second gauntlet back from the church and brought Owen back from the dead. But what did that accomplish? Nothing, Jack thought bitterly. A big fat nothing, because now Owen was worse than dead. Alive while dead, living without feeling. Jack thought that having Owen back again would make Jack's world feel all right again. But all he felt was guilt when Owen pinned him with a look that screamed how could you do this to me?
Yes, selfish Jack Harkness had done it again. Owen's predicament was only the latest in a string of mistakes Jack had made at Torchwood and bad as it was, it was far from the worst. He tried to do the right thing, but it always seemed to end up wrong.
Jack didn't believe in the traditional figure of the devil. He tended toward the belief that each person was their own devil, making their world a personal hell. Like the people depicted on the tarot card, each person wore chains of their own making.
Jack forced himself to stare into the eyes of the devil painted on the card. Into eyes that strangely mirrored his own. He had no one to blame for his problems but himself. He had no one to blame for his guilt except himself. These were the chains he chose to wear.