Jack ran through the message again, feeling ill. The worst thing about it was, he could do it. Pilot the Citadel into the heart of the TIME Agency embassy, open her up for the lab boys, and get covered in glory for accomplishing the impossible. The Agency had sent countless field agents and seven ambassadors, and failed. He could have his pick of jobs after this, become one of the biggest players in the Agency.

All he had to do was to betray the Citadel. Betray Ispeth.

"I couldn't do it," Jack said, "So I took the coward's way out: I hid. Only Ispeth and Clytie knew I was living in the Citadel. All my correspondence were sent and delivered to the Parliament Building."

He looked into the fire, hands still turning the crystal.

"I spent days fixing the Citadel. She had puppets to do most of the work, but they were clumsy and slow. And some jobs…" a smile came and went on his face, "needed the right touch."

"After these alignments, we should be able to jump to within fifty feet of our targeted destination, rather than fifty miles," Jack said from under the console.

"That would be good."

A glass mannequin stood next to the console, bent almost double to watch him work. It spoke in a stilted manner, but her voice was like the chime of a bell or a wet finger run over the rim of a wineglass.

"Good? That would be great!" Jack said, pushing himself out from under the console to look at her, "No other ship can even come close to what you can do."

The mannequin looked seriously at Jack; although, there was no other expression it could have. Above them, the Heart began to pulsate, growing slightly brighter with each beat.

"Do you…love me, Jack Harkness?" the mannequin suddenly asked.

Jack's first instinct was to joke and banter, but the memory of the Agency's ultimatum sobered him.

"Yes, I do," he answered honestly.

The mannequin knelt down next to him.

"Do you love Ispeth?"

Jack became more somber. He had spent the past few months trying to avoid that question.

"I don't know," he finally replied.

The mannequin tried to smile.

"You know," she said.

"What about it?" Jack exploded, "She's the Empress of an entire galaxy, and I'm just a damned TIME Agent who's too afraid to go back and tell his boss that he can't finish the job because he's fallen in love! I'm a coward, Citadel. That's…that's all I am."

The Citadel reached out with crystal hands, cold and stiff, and cradled Jack's pain-filled face.

"You are not a coward, Jack Harkness," she whispered, "You only wish you were."

"Did you and Ispeth get married?" Rose asked, bringing Jack back from his reminiscences.

He nodded.

"We skirted around the issue weeks after that, but finally, with some help from the Citadel, we came clean with each other," Jack explained, "I proposed, but not for the reasons you might think."

Jack took a deep breath, and expelled it in a sigh.

"There's a clause in the TIME Agent's contract, that he cannot be made to divulge information in connection with his blood relations, or his spouse, if he does not wish to. With Ispeth as my wife, I wouldn't have to tell them anything."

"I imagine that the Premier wasn't happy about that," the Doctor said, his first words since they entered the library.

"Clytie was horrified," Jack affirmed, "I was all right as a brief fling, especially since I knew how to be discreet. But as an Imperial Consort? She thought that Ispeth might as well just hand over the Citadel and the Empire over the TIME Agency right then."

"But we did get married. It was pretty much in secret, a simple ceremony, and a few of the other Arachnids showed up as witnesses."

Jack's face became all edges and planes, tense and unpleasant in the orange firelight.

"Five days later, my boss contacted me," he went on, "Congratulated me. Told me – indirectly, of course – that he knew why I had married Ispeth. And he said the least I should do was to resign in person, do a report for form's sake, give a few handshakes. I was stupid enough to agree."

"That's when they took your memories?" the Doctor asked.

"Not at first. They tried to draw it out of me, but I was trained to resist any method of extraction, short of prolonged physical torture. They knew if they pushed me too hard, I had ways of killing myself. So they blocked off my memory of Ispeth, of the Citadel, and dumped me in an Agency hostel. Tried to pretend nothing happened."

Rose could not bear to look at the anguish on Jack's face, and leaned closer to the Doctor, burying her face into his shoulder.

"But I knew." She heard Jack continue, "I knew I was missing those two years. There was a hole there, and it was important."

For a while there was only the sound of the fire crackling in the hearth.

"You know the rest," Jack whispered, "I became a conman, a swindler. Scum. Just a criminal, looking for his next meal. And I always tried to make my marks TIME Agents. I figured that they owed me the backpay anyway."

"What about Aranea?" Rose asked, "How'd she get born if you were taken away? Was Ispeth already pregnant then?"

Jack shook his head.

"Ispeth told me before that we weren't compatible," he replied, "But somehow she did it. Aranea's not exactly my daughter, more of an amalgam of cloned parts of me, and Ispeth's body."

He looked at the crystal glinting in his hand.

"And now she's gone."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0oo00o0o0

It was Jack now who carried the burden of guilt, who spent nights fixing the TARDIS; who sat for hours brooding alone in his room. The Doctor assured Rose that this as normal. Jack had just survived a horrific experience and lost someone dear to him. This was his way of coping.

But Rose was not sure if Jack really was coping.

Time passed, in an approximate fashion, within the TARDIS. Gradually, Jack became more like his old self, enough that the Doctor and Rose stopped worrying so much.

The crystal remained on his desk, a constant reminder of time lost. And time regained.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0