Doctor Who: "Hangman" (1/5)
Title: Hangman
Characters/Pairings: fem!Nine, Jack, Rose, OCs
Rating: Teen
Beta: yamx, who made this fic what it is.
Summary: Who can Jack trust when he can't even trust himself?
Notes: For those who are familiar with the fem!Doctor 'verse, this story is set before section X of "Mad Girl's Love Song." For those unfamiliar, all you need to know is that the Ninth Doctor is female and always has been. Chapters will be posted on a weekly basis.
“Every guilty person is his own hangman.”
- Seneca
Rose was excited.
It was time to buy new parts for the TARDIS, which to Rose meant shopping. And now that they had Jack around, she might have some company while the Doctor sought out what she needed.
"So where are we going?" Rose asked the Doctor. Jack was watching the console as the Doctor started to plot their destination. He always seemed to be doing that. The Doctor used to say it was because he was trying to figure out how best to steal the TARDIS. Rose would reply that he was probably just curious. The Doctor didn't say things like that about Jack anymore. Jack had earned that respect many times over, in Rose's estimation.
"Central Market Plaza, Villa della Costa, Outer Beta Aquarii, 5049," the Doctor said. "Would've preferred the 52nd century, better design, but there's a nasty time storm brewing in that part of the Vortex. Best not risk it."
Rose heard a sharp intake of breath, and turned to see Jack holding himself too still, his eyes locked on a point in the middle distance instead of the console. "What's wrong?" said Rose, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the TARDIS materializing.
Jack didn't meet her eye. "Nothing. I just - thought of something I could've done to make the environmental sensor arrays scan more smoothly. You two can go ahead. I'll stay and patch up what I can."
The Doctor and Rose exchanged a look. Rose wanted to press him for the real reason why he was staying behind, to try to talk him out of it, but that might just make him clam up even more. Maybe they could talk about it afterward, once the Doctor got the parts they needed.
"Right then," the Doctor said, with cheer as false as Jack's calm. "We'll be back in a tick. Let's go, Rose." She took her by the hand and opened the doors. A world of painted glass, chartreuse skies, and a thousand whispering languages awaited them - but all Rose could see was the pain in the corners of Jack's face.
"All right, old girl. It's time to fix you up," Jack said aloud. That was what he wanted to do. He didn't want to key up the external view on the TARDIS' screen. He definitely didn't want to see who might be out there. To see if -
Oh, hells. His fingers were tapping out the commands to key up the screen, without input from the more reasonable parts of his brain. The screen filled with the image of a bustling street fair, a plaza full of tents and flags fluttering in a breeze he could almost feel, surrounded by tall, spindly buildings made all of painted glass. The plaza bustled with shoppers of a dozen different species, many of them holding translation devices to their ears to understand each other. The sky was a luminous yellow-green, the flagstones of the plaza deep red.
Jack hated it.
The year was 5049. Two years ago, the Hive had invaded a backwater region of Inner Beta Aquarii called the Boeshane Peninsula. Jack's people had sent out a cry for help to their wealthier sister planet. Their fellow Beta Aquarians had done nothing to end the slaughter.
He instructed the TARDIS to zoom in on the view he had keyed up on the screen. New details stood out to his eye. Not everyone was striding casually through the marketplace, sampling the wares. Some were sweeping the red flagstones of the plaza. Some lurked in the shadows, watching the fruit vendors' stalls with hungry eyes. Jack knew their look. The traditional tasseled vests were tattered, the women's shoulder tattoos covered in a layer of grime, but he knew them for what they were - refugees from the Boe.
Jack's fists clenched around the edge of the console. How many of the refugees in the plaza had children somewhere, starving? Was there anything available to them but crime and the most menial labor? He couldn't just stand here and see his people reduced to this.
He could get the Doctor and Rose's help. He could even get their help without revealing his connection to the refugees. I was watching the marketplace on the TARDIS' screen and I couldn't help but notice… we've gotta do something, right?
His mind made up, Jack ran to get his World War II RAF coat from the wardrobe room - he wanted to look as unlike a 'Shane as possible - then stepped out into the plaza. The Doctor and Rose weren't in sight, but that wasn't a problem. He started tapping out a command into his wrist strap to scan for a humanoid with two hearts, ducking behind and around the colorful stalls as he went in case someone noticed he had illicit Time Agency gear. The Central Market Plaza was a favorite haunt of Time Agents on their afternoon breaks; if one of them spotted him, Internal Affairs would know about it in short order.
When Jack was halfway across the plaza, he began to notice that he was being followed.
It wasn't anything obvious or specific that gave it away - his pursuers were professionals, Jack could tell. He just had an instinct for it after spending his formative years in the military. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he knew.
Jack weaved through the plaza, using all the tricks to throw off a tail he'd learned over the years, but the pursuers were closing in around him. They were chasing him out of Central Market Plaza, towards a maze of back alleys in a run-down manufacturing district to the south. That would mean trouble for him. In the plaza there were witnesses. Most of the people who might want Jack dead or captured preferred not to have witnesses. He could head straight for the Doctor and Rose, but he didn't want to endanger them for his sake. So he stopped running at the edge of the plaza, turned around, and reached for his sonic blaster.
Before he could draw it out from under his coat, he felt the barrel of another blaster against the back of his head. Jack swore under his breath. How could he not have seen?
“Step back, everyone,” said a voice, steady with the weight of authority. “This man is under arrest.”
Rose had enjoyed the market at first, but by now it was getting on her nerves. The moment she spent money - on a jeweled comb she thought her mum might like - a floating hologram projector started following her around, blasting news headlines, sports updates, and weather reports. Every few minutes it would interrupt the barrage of information to yammer at her to subscribe to the Solar Flare Hologram Service “for only 13 credits a fortnight!” She made her way to the tents where the Doctor was browsing for parts, in the hope that she could use the sonic screwdriver to blast the hologram projector to bits.
"The Seagirders won two tilts against Leeward Bay, placing them in the lead for this season,” the projector chirped, bobbing right next to Rose's ear. “And that's the latest in sport for today. Let's move on to our top headlines!”
Rose waved her arms above her head as soon as she caught a glimpse of the Doctor through the crowd. She was arguing with a vendor, rolling her eyes and waving dismissively at all the merchandise on display. When she caught sight of Rose, she met her eye, then looked at the hologram projector and raised an eyebrow. Rose grimaced at the thing and made her way closer.
"Solar Flare Hologram Service - bringing you the latest from all over the Greater Bell Coast area. The Villa della Costa Enforcer Squad has just brought into custody ex-Time Agent Shaylin Sel-Ahn, once renowned as the first Agent recruited from the Boeshane Peninsula.” A holographic face appeared across Rose's field of vision, heart-stoppingly familiar. “Sel-Ahn has been charged with theft of and intent to use a timeline tracer. He is currently awaiting trial and a possible death sentence for the crime.”
Rose shoved the projector out of her sight. She ran to the Doctor, elbowing the crowd aside. She knew instantly from her face that she'd heard and seen everything she just had. “Doctor, we've got to do something!” she cried, seizing the lapels of her jacket. “Where've they taken him?”
The Doctor looked distant, troubled. She was facing Rose, but wasn't really seeing her. “He'll be under maximum security. A timeline tracer is dangerous contraband. To say the Time Agency'll take it seriously doesn't do it justice.”
"What's a timeline tracer?”
"Walk. I'll explain.” The Doctor took her by the hand and guided them out of Central Market Plaza, down a boulevard lined with fragrant shrubs and glittering panes of glass. “Suppose I'm an ape with an overinflated ego who wants to muck about with time,” she began. Rose, indignant, drew breath to tell the Doctor exactly what she thought of her ego, but she cut Rose off. “Not all humans with temporal technology. Some of you are perfectly capable of using it without bringing on Armageddon. But there are plenty of Time Agents who think that just because they're clever enough to invent time machines, they must be clever enough to use them properly.”
"Now suppose I want to change time so that this shrub is a meter taller,” the Doctor said, gesturing to a sweet-smelling shrub with purple stems. “Simple enough. I use my Time Agency wrist strap to lock on to its temporal signature. I can speed up its timeline so it grows faster, or I can travel to an early point in its development and dump a load of fertilizer on it. But if I decide I want to go back and change time to make you ginger instead of blonde - that's more complicated.”
“There's no way you could make me a ginger. I'd look dreadful as a ginger.”
"Might be, but I'm a Time Agent, so of course I know how to do it. I think, why don't I go back to when Rose first dyed her hair and talk her into going ginger instead? But your timeline's much harder to get a fix on than that shrub's - and not just because you're a time traveler. Sentient beings are complex, whether they've traveled in time or not. They've got a lot more potential futures than a shrub. You make choices, and that affects your timestream. How do I find the exact moment in your timeline when you made the decision that led to you being blonde? The Time Agency invented the timeline tracer to do just that: lock on to the temporal signature of a sentient being.”
"But that's - wrong. The Time Agency shouldn't have the power to change my life like that. It was my choice to dye my hair whatever color I wanted to. They shouldn't take that away from me, or from anyone else.”
"There are only three or four timeline tracers in existence, and the Time Agency keeps them locked tight, for just that reason. That's why stealing one carries the death sentence.”
"You don't think Jack would do something like that.” Rose searched the Doctor's face. “Do you?”
"No,” she said. “I don't.”
"Then let's go.”
A timeline tracer.
Jack was in max-security solitary confinement. His cell was clean and the cot large enough for him to stretch out fully, if not comfortably. It was an improvement over some of the cells he'd been in with the Doctor and Rose, except that there was only just enough light to avoid tripping into objects, and escape far more difficult. The Time Agency didn't take chances with its prisoners.
I've stolen a timeline tracer. He couldn't remember doing it, but that didn't mean anything. Before his two missing years, he'd been a lieutenant. If he'd gotten promoted to captain during those two years, that would have given him enough security clearance to pull off the heist. Jack grimaced at the irony. He'd chosen the name “Captain Jack Harkness” as a badge of honor. The real Captain Jack Harkness had died in combat, and con man though he had been, he'd respected that. He kept it after coming aboard the TARDIS as a reminder of the kind of man he wanted to be. Now it seemed that he'd not only achieved the rank of captain already, but abused it for his own gain.
He wondered what would happen at the trial. With two years missing from his memory, he couldn't exactly be brought to the witness stand. His memories were probably in storage somewhere; they'd examine them directly as evidence, probably without even giving them back first. If he had money for an advocate, he could fight for access to the evidence, maybe get a fairer trial, but none of his money was legitimately earned. His accounts would all be frozen by now. He'd burned all his bridges at the Agency - after losing his memories, he'd made a point of cutting everyone off before he quit.
The Doctor and Rose weren't coming for him, of that he was certain. Anyone who stole tech that dangerous deserved the full force of the law. The Doctor knew that.
No money. No connections. No hope.
A pinprick of light sparked on the wall of Jack's cell. It was tiny, but overwhelmingly bright in contrast to the dimness of the cell. There was a distant murmur, like the rhythmic sigh of waves against the shore that lulled Jack to sleep every night back on the Boe. The murmur resolved into a voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling. “Convict Sel-Ahn,” the voice said. “You have a visitor.” It had the crisp tones of an artificial intelligence. One of the robo-wardens, then.
That didn't track. Who on O.B.A. cared enough about him to bother visiting? “Who is it?” he asked.
“I am authorized to permit visitation only from immediate family members and legal counsel,” the AI said. “The visitor matches your genetic profile. She has been allowed access.”
Another voice came through the speaker. It was low and even, with a burr to the consonants peculiar to the very tip of the Boeshane Peninsula. “I'll give you a minute or two to adjust before I open the visual input to your cell. We've got a lot to discuss, Nazaire.”
At first he thought it had to be a trick, a tactic the prosecution was using to get him to confess. A voice was easy enough to fake. But then he heard the voice say his name, the name he was born with, the one he cast off for good when he enlisted in the I.B.A. military. That was when he knew he had to be dreaming.
It was only when he was dreaming that he ever heard his madrina's voice.
"This isn't going to be easy,” the Doctor said grimly. She scowled to herself and adjusted a few dials on the TARDIS console.
“I thought the Time Agency was just 'a great lot of overinflated twits',” said Rose, mimicking the Doctor's accent.
“A great lot of overinflated twits with a paranoid streak,” the Doctor amended. “I've got Jack's temporal signature and biometrics stored in the TARDIS' memory banks, but the Agency'll mask those. Their prisons are the most secure in the galaxy, maybe the entire galactic cluster.”
“So what do we do?”
The Doctor stared at the Time Rotor, her brow furrowed in thought. “Someone must have set him up,” she said. “Jack quit the Agency when they took his memories. The first agent ever to come from the Boeshane Peninsula, and he resigned. It must have been a scandal. If you've stolen a timeline tracer, why not let a disgraced ex-agent take the blame?”
“Whoever did it has got to be around here somewhere, if they're helping to set up the trial. Can't you scan for the tracer somehow and find out who stole it?”
The Doctor shook her head. “I can't detect it unless I know when and where it's been used. Then I can trace the temporal disturbance back to its source.”
Rose chewed on her lip. “What exactly can you do with a timeline tracer? Well, not you. A Time Agent. You said it isn't easy. If someone were just learning how to use it…”
“Changing the course of a timestream is tricky business,” the Doctor confirmed. “It's easy to damage it, delete parts of it, but rewriting it entirely is beyond what most Time Agents are capable of.”
“Delete parts of it?” Rose said. “Like two years, maybe?”
The Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree. “Of course! Fantastic, Rose! I ought to have checked his timestream for signs of damage ages ago.”
“Yeah,” said Rose, a hint of accusation in her voice. “Why didn't you?”
The Doctor sighed. “Because I thought it must've been something he did to himself. Losing memories is a common side effect of messing about with time in ways you shouldn't.”
Rose touched the Doctor's arm. “We'll talk about this later,” she said firmly. There was no way the Doctor was going to weasel her way out of a stern talking-to, but they needed to focus. “Is there anything we can do for him now?”
“Plenty. I've scanned him in the medbay a time or three. I should have the artron energy readings I need to reconstruct the damage to his timestream from the tracer.” She tapped a few keys on the console and drew up some squiggly lines and numbers that made Rose's eyes cross. The Doctor spent a few minutes inspecting a figure that looked like a giant knot made from glowing thread. “Have a look at this, Rose,” the Doctor said, zooming in on a portion of the knot. The glowing thread at this part of the knot looked tattered and frayed, almost to the point of being broken entirely. “These are the two years that got taken away. They're not undone - whatever he did during those years still happened - but they've been scrubbed from his personal timestream. It's not the kind of damage you see from self-inflicted paradox; you'd get more fraying up- and downstream from that.”
“So it wasn't his fault,” Rose said.
“No. In fact, now that I think about it,” the Doctor said, “it can't've just been any Time Agent who did this to him. All agents' personal timestreams are protected from tampering. I know - I've had to sort out some of the Agency's mistakes a time or two.” At a typed command, a translucent blue envelope appeared around the image representing Jack's timestream. A message flashed on the screen: SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. The Doctor's fingers flew across the keyboard, calling up more figures beyond Rose's comprehension. She frowned at the screen. “Looks like the only people in the Agency who'd be able to unlock his timestream would be himself, his superior officer, and his partner. Security measure, in case he or someone else needs to go in and repair his timestream in the immediate aftermath of a paradox.”
“Someone he was supposed to be able to trust,” Rose said. “Oh, Jack.”
Rose could have sworn that for a moment, the Doctor looked almost ashamed.
The light began as a pinprick. Now it was the first light of dawn peeking through a frosted window. The window expanded from the size of Jack's palm to the size of his entire face. Then the light brightened, and shapes began to reveal themselves like long-awaited secrets: white edges, brown peaks, dark curves.
Jack's madrina's face appeared to him then: pointed chin, tanned skin, solemn blue eyes huge between dark eyelashes. She looked older, her face pinched with pain, than he remembered. There were flecks of silver in her short black hair.
“Madrina,” Jack said. A note of longing crept into his voice. If only he could reach out, hold her hand, anything. “Ive, what are you doing here?” Why am I dreaming about you? asked the part of his mind that still wasn't convinced that this was real.
Her face tightened into anger. “Because you were caught, you fool. What did you think I was going to do?”
Jack closed his eyes. His madrina was mixed up in this. Ivory, who when last he'd seen her would never have come near a Time Agency prison. The war had changed that, along with everything else. “This isn't your fault,” he said quietly. “You shouldn't even be - just leave, Ive, please.”
Ivory's eyes narrowed. “Don't try that with me. I'm not leaving until you tell me where it is. You've got the right to message your family, even from here. Send me the coordinates on an encrypted channel, now.”
“What are you -”
“I need it, Nazaire!” she hissed. “When I married your father and your mother, I promised to protect them and any offspring of ours! You cast off the protection of those vows when you pledged yourself to the military, but they still apply to our younger child! Gray doesn't have to die. Not if you tell me where it is.”
Jack just stared at her for a moment. Had she lost her mind? How could she possibly think the timeline tracer would be able to save Gray? Even if it did work, the temporal disturbance caused by a person being alive who shouldn't be could have terrible consequences. He had learned from the Doctor that you couldn't treat the fabric of time that way. But of course - he hadn't known that before he met the Doctor. Sure, he'd had lessons in temporal mechanics in training for the Agency, but he hadn't truly understood it until much later. During those missing two years, he might have thought it possible. He might have seen his mother and madrina again, given them false hope, then gone and done something incredibly stupid.
Stupid, but with good intentions. That seemed to be the story of his life.
“I don't know where it is,” Jack said. “Even if I did know, you couldn't use it. You wouldn't know how.”
“Surely someone could help us,” said Ivory, almost pleading now. “You could put us in contact with someone who knows. You've got to have some connections.”
Jack shook his head. “I do know a few people who know how to work that kind of tech, but I promise you, Ive - I don't know where it is. There's nothing I can do.”
“How did you get caught?” she demanded. “What did you do wrong this time?”
What he did wrong was to agree to steal the timeline tracer in the first place. Of course, he couldn't say that to his madrina. She wouldn't understand. “People have been trying to steal timeline tracers from the Agency ever since they were invented. No one's ever gotten away clean. It was a long shot. You must have known that.”
“Where have you been, Naz? Two more timeline tracers have gone missing in the past two years, and you're the only one who's been arrested for it! You promised me you'd do everything in your power to get Gray back. How could you have let this happen?” Ivory's face crumpled, and Jack could see clearly every worry line she'd accumulated since he'd seen her last. “I thought I could be proud of you again. That you could redeem yourself. I shouldn't have placed my trust in you.”
Ivory couldn't have hurt Jack worse if she'd smashed into his cell and grabbed him by the throat. Still, he thought, it was better this way. Better that she lose hope, if it would make her give up and never come near the Time Agency again. “No,” he said, after a shuddering breath. “You shouldn't have. Just go home. Forget you ever had sons. You'll be safer that way.”
His madrina switched off the vid feed without another word. It was as if she had forgotten him already.
Rose went through the motions of making a sandwich, though her mind wasn't in it. She felt useless just sitting here in the TARDIS while Jack was locked up in some Time Agency dungeon. Are they feeding him properly? she wondered as she took a bite of the sandwich. What if they're torturing him? I wouldn't put it past them.
The Doctor walked into the kitchen holding a sheaf of printouts. She set two stacks of them on the table and began, without preamble, “Files on Jack's former partner and superior officer.” Another set of printouts joined the first two. “Memos from the Internal Affairs department on recent security concerns. Apparently three timeline tracers have gone missing. Some officers think Jack's responsible for all three of them, but there's a lot of disagreement.”
Rose inspected the file on Jack's former partner, taking care not to let any crumbs from her sandwich fall on the paper.
The picture on it was of a human, or near enough. He had brown hair, intensely blue eyes, cheekbones cut like diamonds, a confident smile, and a physique fit enough to rival Jack's. In fact, he reminded her a lot of Jack, except that he looked more dangerous somehow. His name, according to the file, was Makarios Thibadeaux.
“Agent Thibadeaux is quite the troublemaker, looks like,” the Doctor said, pointing to different subsections on the printout as she explained. “He's got at least five official warnings from higher-ups, see? They can't discharge him, though, Thibadeaux's too big a name. His great-aunt works for the enforcement arm of the Shadow Proclamation. Always partnered with higher-ranking agents, including one Lieutenant - later promoted to Captain - Shaylin Sel-Ahn. Together for five years linear, including the two years missing from Jack's memory.”
“So he really is a captain after all,” Rose said. “Whoever's above him must be really high up in the Agency.”
“Major A. E. Sunflash,” the Doctor said, pointing to another file. It had a picture of what looked like some kind of bird, or perhaps a griffin from a fantasy book. It had a magnificent crest of golden feathers and a fierce three-eyed stare. “Spotless record, not to mention an underling who was left in a time loop by her partner and almost got trapped for good. Sunflash took the incident seriously and strung the partner out to dry. I'm willing to bet Jack's superior officer wouldn't have any part in a betrayal like this.”
Rose nodded, then skimmed the internal memos from the Agency. It seemed that most of the agents were convinced of Jack's guilt, but there were a few who insisted that he was a good man who wouldn't abuse his power like that. One thing was for sure: Internal Affairs was under a lot of pressure to find out who stole the timeline tracers. Jack must be a convenient scapegoat, Rose thought bitterly. They can hang him out to dry and cover their own arses. She polished off the last of her crusts and looked up at the Doctor. “We'd better find these people before Jack gets hurt.”
“Oh, we'll find them,” the Doctor said grimly. “Whatever it takes.”
The moment played over and over behind Jack's eyelids, just like it had when he was younger. Every time he shut his eyes, he could feel Gray's hand in his, small and warm and slick with fear-sweat. A gritty wind blew hot against his face, carrying the sound of distant screams. He saw Gray's eyes, spilling over with tears from the force of the wind or maybe from sheer terror.
He was used to guilt, the way it burned in his throat like bile. For a week after his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance, he couldn't even look at the Doctor without feeling it. But this guilt, the oldest of all, felt different somehow. Did it hurt less, now, than it once had? Adolescence and the confusion of war had made the guilt so ragged and sharp back then, like broken glass lodged in his chest.
A pinprick of light, expanding. The sigh of a distant ocean. Another visitor? Was there anyone left on this planet who cared enough? “Convict Sel-Ahn.” The voice of the robo-warden was harsh in his ears, now accustomed to the silence of the cell. “You have a visitor. Genetic profile match has been confirmed.”
Gray, thought Jack for a wild moment. Gray's alive. He's come to forgive me, to set me free. A view-screen faded slowly into being, the roundness of a feminine face. Not Gray. Ivory wasn't coming back. Must be -
“Nazaire,” said a voice, kindly. That accent again, so familiar, but softer and huskier than Ivory's. “It's your mother. Are you all right?”
“I thought I was getting the presidential suite, but here I am,” Jack rasped, joking out of pure reflex. “I ought to lodge a complaint."
Collette laughed, low and quiet and tinged with sadness. “Always the joker. You got that from your father, I think." Her dark hair, now threaded with silver, curled around her face like smoke.
"Yeah." Jack wanted to look away, but he couldn't. He hadn't seen his mother in years, and he might never see her again. "Look, mum, you shouldn't be here. I don't - "
"I know," she said. "Ive told me everything. I wanted to see you. That's all."
He wanted to believe it, but some part of him doubted that she would go through the hellish Time Agency security protocols just so she could say hello. “Fine. You've seen me. Now go.” If the Agency wanted information from him and didn't care too much about how they got it, there would be no better way to get him to talk than to threaten his mother. They could be listening right now, assessing whether he cared enough about Collette for her capture to break him. Not everyone in the Agency was that corrupt, but he didn't know who was in power anymore. He had always worried that the worst elements in the Agency were gathering more influence all the time. He couldn't let his mother take that risk.
“Nazaire. Please don't be like this. I just - I know Ivory said some harsh things to you. I didn't want you to be locked up here thinking we don't love you. You tried, Naz. You did everything you could to save Gray. Not for your own gain, but for our family. It means the world to me.”
Jack couldn't speak. His mother was thanking him for something wished with all his heart he'd never done. She thought he was a martyr, putting his freedom and possibly his life on the line for the noblest of causes. He knew that he was being rightfully punished for a foolish, misguided decision. But he couldn't tell her that. It would hurt her too much. Instead, he just stared at her, his throat working to hold back tears.
“I know someone who can help,” Collette said quietly. “Ekozma - I don't know if you remember him - is an advocate now. One of the few 'Shanes with any clout at all, these days. We don't have any way to pay him, but he says he'll take your case.”
“If?” There was always an if.
“If you tell him how you did it,” she said. “Everything. With documentation.”
The tatters of her hope shone through in her grey eyes. It was more than Jack could bear. He couldn't remember how he'd done it. But even if he could, he wouldn't tell, not even to save his own skin. There could be no doubt that Ekozma wasn't asking out of professional curiosity. Jack must have come up with some elaborate scheme to steal the timeline tracer. Ekozma could sell the information of how he did it to the highest bidder, and there'd be yet another piece of dangerous temporal technology in the hands of a criminal. Collette wouldn't understand all of that, of course. She couldn't know the consequences. All she would know was that her son was giving up his only chance at freedom. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can't. The Time Agency took away two years of my memories. I have no idea how it happened.”
“Is that why you quit?”
“Yeah,” Jack said grimly.
Collette's hands tightened in her lap. “I don't believe it. I just can't. You're up to something, Naz. You'd never let yourself get cornered like this. You have some other way out, and you're not telling me.”
It would have been true, once upon a time. Shaylin Sel-Ahn knew people who could bribe and intimidate Internal Affairs into letting him walk. But he'd sworn to himself never to turn to those people again, after waking up with a hole in his memory that no one would explain. Collette looked so disapproving, the corners of her mouth turned in a tight frown - imagining all the dirty tricks he had up his sleeve, probably. He wanted to plead with his mother to believe that he wasn't that kind of man anymore, that she was his only hope, but that would give away his heart to any Time Agents who might be listening. Besides, the longer she stayed here, the more tempting of a target she might become for those in the Agency who cared more about ends than means.
“Maybe I do,” Jack said, forcing harshness into his tone. “Maybe I don't. Either way, you're not going to find out from me. Just walk away.”
He didn't really want her to leave. Deep down, the child who'd been forced to grow up too fast was pleading Collette not to listen to him, to stay with him and chant old poems in her steady voice like she did every evening for the children of their longhouse.
But instead, she murmured farewell and turned away, leaving him alone in the dark.
Characters/Pairings: fem!Nine, Jack, Rose, OCs
Rating: Teen
Beta: yamx, who made this fic what it is.
Summary: Who can Jack trust when he can't even trust himself?
Notes: For those who are familiar with the fem!Doctor 'verse, this story is set before section X of "Mad Girl's Love Song." For those unfamiliar, all you need to know is that the Ninth Doctor is female and always has been. Chapters will be posted on a weekly basis.
“Every guilty person is his own hangman.”
- Seneca
Rose was excited.
It was time to buy new parts for the TARDIS, which to Rose meant shopping. And now that they had Jack around, she might have some company while the Doctor sought out what she needed.
"So where are we going?" Rose asked the Doctor. Jack was watching the console as the Doctor started to plot their destination. He always seemed to be doing that. The Doctor used to say it was because he was trying to figure out how best to steal the TARDIS. Rose would reply that he was probably just curious. The Doctor didn't say things like that about Jack anymore. Jack had earned that respect many times over, in Rose's estimation.
"Central Market Plaza, Villa della Costa, Outer Beta Aquarii, 5049," the Doctor said. "Would've preferred the 52nd century, better design, but there's a nasty time storm brewing in that part of the Vortex. Best not risk it."
Rose heard a sharp intake of breath, and turned to see Jack holding himself too still, his eyes locked on a point in the middle distance instead of the console. "What's wrong?" said Rose, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the TARDIS materializing.
Jack didn't meet her eye. "Nothing. I just - thought of something I could've done to make the environmental sensor arrays scan more smoothly. You two can go ahead. I'll stay and patch up what I can."
The Doctor and Rose exchanged a look. Rose wanted to press him for the real reason why he was staying behind, to try to talk him out of it, but that might just make him clam up even more. Maybe they could talk about it afterward, once the Doctor got the parts they needed.
"Right then," the Doctor said, with cheer as false as Jack's calm. "We'll be back in a tick. Let's go, Rose." She took her by the hand and opened the doors. A world of painted glass, chartreuse skies, and a thousand whispering languages awaited them - but all Rose could see was the pain in the corners of Jack's face.
"All right, old girl. It's time to fix you up," Jack said aloud. That was what he wanted to do. He didn't want to key up the external view on the TARDIS' screen. He definitely didn't want to see who might be out there. To see if -
Oh, hells. His fingers were tapping out the commands to key up the screen, without input from the more reasonable parts of his brain. The screen filled with the image of a bustling street fair, a plaza full of tents and flags fluttering in a breeze he could almost feel, surrounded by tall, spindly buildings made all of painted glass. The plaza bustled with shoppers of a dozen different species, many of them holding translation devices to their ears to understand each other. The sky was a luminous yellow-green, the flagstones of the plaza deep red.
Jack hated it.
The year was 5049. Two years ago, the Hive had invaded a backwater region of Inner Beta Aquarii called the Boeshane Peninsula. Jack's people had sent out a cry for help to their wealthier sister planet. Their fellow Beta Aquarians had done nothing to end the slaughter.
He instructed the TARDIS to zoom in on the view he had keyed up on the screen. New details stood out to his eye. Not everyone was striding casually through the marketplace, sampling the wares. Some were sweeping the red flagstones of the plaza. Some lurked in the shadows, watching the fruit vendors' stalls with hungry eyes. Jack knew their look. The traditional tasseled vests were tattered, the women's shoulder tattoos covered in a layer of grime, but he knew them for what they were - refugees from the Boe.
Jack's fists clenched around the edge of the console. How many of the refugees in the plaza had children somewhere, starving? Was there anything available to them but crime and the most menial labor? He couldn't just stand here and see his people reduced to this.
He could get the Doctor and Rose's help. He could even get their help without revealing his connection to the refugees. I was watching the marketplace on the TARDIS' screen and I couldn't help but notice… we've gotta do something, right?
His mind made up, Jack ran to get his World War II RAF coat from the wardrobe room - he wanted to look as unlike a 'Shane as possible - then stepped out into the plaza. The Doctor and Rose weren't in sight, but that wasn't a problem. He started tapping out a command into his wrist strap to scan for a humanoid with two hearts, ducking behind and around the colorful stalls as he went in case someone noticed he had illicit Time Agency gear. The Central Market Plaza was a favorite haunt of Time Agents on their afternoon breaks; if one of them spotted him, Internal Affairs would know about it in short order.
When Jack was halfway across the plaza, he began to notice that he was being followed.
It wasn't anything obvious or specific that gave it away - his pursuers were professionals, Jack could tell. He just had an instinct for it after spending his formative years in the military. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he knew.
Jack weaved through the plaza, using all the tricks to throw off a tail he'd learned over the years, but the pursuers were closing in around him. They were chasing him out of Central Market Plaza, towards a maze of back alleys in a run-down manufacturing district to the south. That would mean trouble for him. In the plaza there were witnesses. Most of the people who might want Jack dead or captured preferred not to have witnesses. He could head straight for the Doctor and Rose, but he didn't want to endanger them for his sake. So he stopped running at the edge of the plaza, turned around, and reached for his sonic blaster.
Before he could draw it out from under his coat, he felt the barrel of another blaster against the back of his head. Jack swore under his breath. How could he not have seen?
“Step back, everyone,” said a voice, steady with the weight of authority. “This man is under arrest.”
Rose had enjoyed the market at first, but by now it was getting on her nerves. The moment she spent money - on a jeweled comb she thought her mum might like - a floating hologram projector started following her around, blasting news headlines, sports updates, and weather reports. Every few minutes it would interrupt the barrage of information to yammer at her to subscribe to the Solar Flare Hologram Service “for only 13 credits a fortnight!” She made her way to the tents where the Doctor was browsing for parts, in the hope that she could use the sonic screwdriver to blast the hologram projector to bits.
"The Seagirders won two tilts against Leeward Bay, placing them in the lead for this season,” the projector chirped, bobbing right next to Rose's ear. “And that's the latest in sport for today. Let's move on to our top headlines!”
Rose waved her arms above her head as soon as she caught a glimpse of the Doctor through the crowd. She was arguing with a vendor, rolling her eyes and waving dismissively at all the merchandise on display. When she caught sight of Rose, she met her eye, then looked at the hologram projector and raised an eyebrow. Rose grimaced at the thing and made her way closer.
"Solar Flare Hologram Service - bringing you the latest from all over the Greater Bell Coast area. The Villa della Costa Enforcer Squad has just brought into custody ex-Time Agent Shaylin Sel-Ahn, once renowned as the first Agent recruited from the Boeshane Peninsula.” A holographic face appeared across Rose's field of vision, heart-stoppingly familiar. “Sel-Ahn has been charged with theft of and intent to use a timeline tracer. He is currently awaiting trial and a possible death sentence for the crime.”
Rose shoved the projector out of her sight. She ran to the Doctor, elbowing the crowd aside. She knew instantly from her face that she'd heard and seen everything she just had. “Doctor, we've got to do something!” she cried, seizing the lapels of her jacket. “Where've they taken him?”
The Doctor looked distant, troubled. She was facing Rose, but wasn't really seeing her. “He'll be under maximum security. A timeline tracer is dangerous contraband. To say the Time Agency'll take it seriously doesn't do it justice.”
"What's a timeline tracer?”
"Walk. I'll explain.” The Doctor took her by the hand and guided them out of Central Market Plaza, down a boulevard lined with fragrant shrubs and glittering panes of glass. “Suppose I'm an ape with an overinflated ego who wants to muck about with time,” she began. Rose, indignant, drew breath to tell the Doctor exactly what she thought of her ego, but she cut Rose off. “Not all humans with temporal technology. Some of you are perfectly capable of using it without bringing on Armageddon. But there are plenty of Time Agents who think that just because they're clever enough to invent time machines, they must be clever enough to use them properly.”
"Now suppose I want to change time so that this shrub is a meter taller,” the Doctor said, gesturing to a sweet-smelling shrub with purple stems. “Simple enough. I use my Time Agency wrist strap to lock on to its temporal signature. I can speed up its timeline so it grows faster, or I can travel to an early point in its development and dump a load of fertilizer on it. But if I decide I want to go back and change time to make you ginger instead of blonde - that's more complicated.”
“There's no way you could make me a ginger. I'd look dreadful as a ginger.”
"Might be, but I'm a Time Agent, so of course I know how to do it. I think, why don't I go back to when Rose first dyed her hair and talk her into going ginger instead? But your timeline's much harder to get a fix on than that shrub's - and not just because you're a time traveler. Sentient beings are complex, whether they've traveled in time or not. They've got a lot more potential futures than a shrub. You make choices, and that affects your timestream. How do I find the exact moment in your timeline when you made the decision that led to you being blonde? The Time Agency invented the timeline tracer to do just that: lock on to the temporal signature of a sentient being.”
"But that's - wrong. The Time Agency shouldn't have the power to change my life like that. It was my choice to dye my hair whatever color I wanted to. They shouldn't take that away from me, or from anyone else.”
"There are only three or four timeline tracers in existence, and the Time Agency keeps them locked tight, for just that reason. That's why stealing one carries the death sentence.”
"You don't think Jack would do something like that.” Rose searched the Doctor's face. “Do you?”
"No,” she said. “I don't.”
"Then let's go.”
A timeline tracer.
Jack was in max-security solitary confinement. His cell was clean and the cot large enough for him to stretch out fully, if not comfortably. It was an improvement over some of the cells he'd been in with the Doctor and Rose, except that there was only just enough light to avoid tripping into objects, and escape far more difficult. The Time Agency didn't take chances with its prisoners.
I've stolen a timeline tracer. He couldn't remember doing it, but that didn't mean anything. Before his two missing years, he'd been a lieutenant. If he'd gotten promoted to captain during those two years, that would have given him enough security clearance to pull off the heist. Jack grimaced at the irony. He'd chosen the name “Captain Jack Harkness” as a badge of honor. The real Captain Jack Harkness had died in combat, and con man though he had been, he'd respected that. He kept it after coming aboard the TARDIS as a reminder of the kind of man he wanted to be. Now it seemed that he'd not only achieved the rank of captain already, but abused it for his own gain.
He wondered what would happen at the trial. With two years missing from his memory, he couldn't exactly be brought to the witness stand. His memories were probably in storage somewhere; they'd examine them directly as evidence, probably without even giving them back first. If he had money for an advocate, he could fight for access to the evidence, maybe get a fairer trial, but none of his money was legitimately earned. His accounts would all be frozen by now. He'd burned all his bridges at the Agency - after losing his memories, he'd made a point of cutting everyone off before he quit.
The Doctor and Rose weren't coming for him, of that he was certain. Anyone who stole tech that dangerous deserved the full force of the law. The Doctor knew that.
No money. No connections. No hope.
A pinprick of light sparked on the wall of Jack's cell. It was tiny, but overwhelmingly bright in contrast to the dimness of the cell. There was a distant murmur, like the rhythmic sigh of waves against the shore that lulled Jack to sleep every night back on the Boe. The murmur resolved into a voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling. “Convict Sel-Ahn,” the voice said. “You have a visitor.” It had the crisp tones of an artificial intelligence. One of the robo-wardens, then.
That didn't track. Who on O.B.A. cared enough about him to bother visiting? “Who is it?” he asked.
“I am authorized to permit visitation only from immediate family members and legal counsel,” the AI said. “The visitor matches your genetic profile. She has been allowed access.”
Another voice came through the speaker. It was low and even, with a burr to the consonants peculiar to the very tip of the Boeshane Peninsula. “I'll give you a minute or two to adjust before I open the visual input to your cell. We've got a lot to discuss, Nazaire.”
At first he thought it had to be a trick, a tactic the prosecution was using to get him to confess. A voice was easy enough to fake. But then he heard the voice say his name, the name he was born with, the one he cast off for good when he enlisted in the I.B.A. military. That was when he knew he had to be dreaming.
It was only when he was dreaming that he ever heard his madrina's voice.
"This isn't going to be easy,” the Doctor said grimly. She scowled to herself and adjusted a few dials on the TARDIS console.
“I thought the Time Agency was just 'a great lot of overinflated twits',” said Rose, mimicking the Doctor's accent.
“A great lot of overinflated twits with a paranoid streak,” the Doctor amended. “I've got Jack's temporal signature and biometrics stored in the TARDIS' memory banks, but the Agency'll mask those. Their prisons are the most secure in the galaxy, maybe the entire galactic cluster.”
“So what do we do?”
The Doctor stared at the Time Rotor, her brow furrowed in thought. “Someone must have set him up,” she said. “Jack quit the Agency when they took his memories. The first agent ever to come from the Boeshane Peninsula, and he resigned. It must have been a scandal. If you've stolen a timeline tracer, why not let a disgraced ex-agent take the blame?”
“Whoever did it has got to be around here somewhere, if they're helping to set up the trial. Can't you scan for the tracer somehow and find out who stole it?”
The Doctor shook her head. “I can't detect it unless I know when and where it's been used. Then I can trace the temporal disturbance back to its source.”
Rose chewed on her lip. “What exactly can you do with a timeline tracer? Well, not you. A Time Agent. You said it isn't easy. If someone were just learning how to use it…”
“Changing the course of a timestream is tricky business,” the Doctor confirmed. “It's easy to damage it, delete parts of it, but rewriting it entirely is beyond what most Time Agents are capable of.”
“Delete parts of it?” Rose said. “Like two years, maybe?”
The Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree. “Of course! Fantastic, Rose! I ought to have checked his timestream for signs of damage ages ago.”
“Yeah,” said Rose, a hint of accusation in her voice. “Why didn't you?”
The Doctor sighed. “Because I thought it must've been something he did to himself. Losing memories is a common side effect of messing about with time in ways you shouldn't.”
Rose touched the Doctor's arm. “We'll talk about this later,” she said firmly. There was no way the Doctor was going to weasel her way out of a stern talking-to, but they needed to focus. “Is there anything we can do for him now?”
“Plenty. I've scanned him in the medbay a time or three. I should have the artron energy readings I need to reconstruct the damage to his timestream from the tracer.” She tapped a few keys on the console and drew up some squiggly lines and numbers that made Rose's eyes cross. The Doctor spent a few minutes inspecting a figure that looked like a giant knot made from glowing thread. “Have a look at this, Rose,” the Doctor said, zooming in on a portion of the knot. The glowing thread at this part of the knot looked tattered and frayed, almost to the point of being broken entirely. “These are the two years that got taken away. They're not undone - whatever he did during those years still happened - but they've been scrubbed from his personal timestream. It's not the kind of damage you see from self-inflicted paradox; you'd get more fraying up- and downstream from that.”
“So it wasn't his fault,” Rose said.
“No. In fact, now that I think about it,” the Doctor said, “it can't've just been any Time Agent who did this to him. All agents' personal timestreams are protected from tampering. I know - I've had to sort out some of the Agency's mistakes a time or two.” At a typed command, a translucent blue envelope appeared around the image representing Jack's timestream. A message flashed on the screen: SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. The Doctor's fingers flew across the keyboard, calling up more figures beyond Rose's comprehension. She frowned at the screen. “Looks like the only people in the Agency who'd be able to unlock his timestream would be himself, his superior officer, and his partner. Security measure, in case he or someone else needs to go in and repair his timestream in the immediate aftermath of a paradox.”
“Someone he was supposed to be able to trust,” Rose said. “Oh, Jack.”
Rose could have sworn that for a moment, the Doctor looked almost ashamed.
The light began as a pinprick. Now it was the first light of dawn peeking through a frosted window. The window expanded from the size of Jack's palm to the size of his entire face. Then the light brightened, and shapes began to reveal themselves like long-awaited secrets: white edges, brown peaks, dark curves.
Jack's madrina's face appeared to him then: pointed chin, tanned skin, solemn blue eyes huge between dark eyelashes. She looked older, her face pinched with pain, than he remembered. There were flecks of silver in her short black hair.
“Madrina,” Jack said. A note of longing crept into his voice. If only he could reach out, hold her hand, anything. “Ive, what are you doing here?” Why am I dreaming about you? asked the part of his mind that still wasn't convinced that this was real.
Her face tightened into anger. “Because you were caught, you fool. What did you think I was going to do?”
Jack closed his eyes. His madrina was mixed up in this. Ivory, who when last he'd seen her would never have come near a Time Agency prison. The war had changed that, along with everything else. “This isn't your fault,” he said quietly. “You shouldn't even be - just leave, Ive, please.”
Ivory's eyes narrowed. “Don't try that with me. I'm not leaving until you tell me where it is. You've got the right to message your family, even from here. Send me the coordinates on an encrypted channel, now.”
“What are you -”
“I need it, Nazaire!” she hissed. “When I married your father and your mother, I promised to protect them and any offspring of ours! You cast off the protection of those vows when you pledged yourself to the military, but they still apply to our younger child! Gray doesn't have to die. Not if you tell me where it is.”
Jack just stared at her for a moment. Had she lost her mind? How could she possibly think the timeline tracer would be able to save Gray? Even if it did work, the temporal disturbance caused by a person being alive who shouldn't be could have terrible consequences. He had learned from the Doctor that you couldn't treat the fabric of time that way. But of course - he hadn't known that before he met the Doctor. Sure, he'd had lessons in temporal mechanics in training for the Agency, but he hadn't truly understood it until much later. During those missing two years, he might have thought it possible. He might have seen his mother and madrina again, given them false hope, then gone and done something incredibly stupid.
Stupid, but with good intentions. That seemed to be the story of his life.
“I don't know where it is,” Jack said. “Even if I did know, you couldn't use it. You wouldn't know how.”
“Surely someone could help us,” said Ivory, almost pleading now. “You could put us in contact with someone who knows. You've got to have some connections.”
Jack shook his head. “I do know a few people who know how to work that kind of tech, but I promise you, Ive - I don't know where it is. There's nothing I can do.”
“How did you get caught?” she demanded. “What did you do wrong this time?”
What he did wrong was to agree to steal the timeline tracer in the first place. Of course, he couldn't say that to his madrina. She wouldn't understand. “People have been trying to steal timeline tracers from the Agency ever since they were invented. No one's ever gotten away clean. It was a long shot. You must have known that.”
“Where have you been, Naz? Two more timeline tracers have gone missing in the past two years, and you're the only one who's been arrested for it! You promised me you'd do everything in your power to get Gray back. How could you have let this happen?” Ivory's face crumpled, and Jack could see clearly every worry line she'd accumulated since he'd seen her last. “I thought I could be proud of you again. That you could redeem yourself. I shouldn't have placed my trust in you.”
Ivory couldn't have hurt Jack worse if she'd smashed into his cell and grabbed him by the throat. Still, he thought, it was better this way. Better that she lose hope, if it would make her give up and never come near the Time Agency again. “No,” he said, after a shuddering breath. “You shouldn't have. Just go home. Forget you ever had sons. You'll be safer that way.”
His madrina switched off the vid feed without another word. It was as if she had forgotten him already.
Rose went through the motions of making a sandwich, though her mind wasn't in it. She felt useless just sitting here in the TARDIS while Jack was locked up in some Time Agency dungeon. Are they feeding him properly? she wondered as she took a bite of the sandwich. What if they're torturing him? I wouldn't put it past them.
The Doctor walked into the kitchen holding a sheaf of printouts. She set two stacks of them on the table and began, without preamble, “Files on Jack's former partner and superior officer.” Another set of printouts joined the first two. “Memos from the Internal Affairs department on recent security concerns. Apparently three timeline tracers have gone missing. Some officers think Jack's responsible for all three of them, but there's a lot of disagreement.”
Rose inspected the file on Jack's former partner, taking care not to let any crumbs from her sandwich fall on the paper.
The picture on it was of a human, or near enough. He had brown hair, intensely blue eyes, cheekbones cut like diamonds, a confident smile, and a physique fit enough to rival Jack's. In fact, he reminded her a lot of Jack, except that he looked more dangerous somehow. His name, according to the file, was Makarios Thibadeaux.
“Agent Thibadeaux is quite the troublemaker, looks like,” the Doctor said, pointing to different subsections on the printout as she explained. “He's got at least five official warnings from higher-ups, see? They can't discharge him, though, Thibadeaux's too big a name. His great-aunt works for the enforcement arm of the Shadow Proclamation. Always partnered with higher-ranking agents, including one Lieutenant - later promoted to Captain - Shaylin Sel-Ahn. Together for five years linear, including the two years missing from Jack's memory.”
“So he really is a captain after all,” Rose said. “Whoever's above him must be really high up in the Agency.”
“Major A. E. Sunflash,” the Doctor said, pointing to another file. It had a picture of what looked like some kind of bird, or perhaps a griffin from a fantasy book. It had a magnificent crest of golden feathers and a fierce three-eyed stare. “Spotless record, not to mention an underling who was left in a time loop by her partner and almost got trapped for good. Sunflash took the incident seriously and strung the partner out to dry. I'm willing to bet Jack's superior officer wouldn't have any part in a betrayal like this.”
Rose nodded, then skimmed the internal memos from the Agency. It seemed that most of the agents were convinced of Jack's guilt, but there were a few who insisted that he was a good man who wouldn't abuse his power like that. One thing was for sure: Internal Affairs was under a lot of pressure to find out who stole the timeline tracers. Jack must be a convenient scapegoat, Rose thought bitterly. They can hang him out to dry and cover their own arses. She polished off the last of her crusts and looked up at the Doctor. “We'd better find these people before Jack gets hurt.”
“Oh, we'll find them,” the Doctor said grimly. “Whatever it takes.”
The moment played over and over behind Jack's eyelids, just like it had when he was younger. Every time he shut his eyes, he could feel Gray's hand in his, small and warm and slick with fear-sweat. A gritty wind blew hot against his face, carrying the sound of distant screams. He saw Gray's eyes, spilling over with tears from the force of the wind or maybe from sheer terror.
He was used to guilt, the way it burned in his throat like bile. For a week after his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance, he couldn't even look at the Doctor without feeling it. But this guilt, the oldest of all, felt different somehow. Did it hurt less, now, than it once had? Adolescence and the confusion of war had made the guilt so ragged and sharp back then, like broken glass lodged in his chest.
A pinprick of light, expanding. The sigh of a distant ocean. Another visitor? Was there anyone left on this planet who cared enough? “Convict Sel-Ahn.” The voice of the robo-warden was harsh in his ears, now accustomed to the silence of the cell. “You have a visitor. Genetic profile match has been confirmed.”
Gray, thought Jack for a wild moment. Gray's alive. He's come to forgive me, to set me free. A view-screen faded slowly into being, the roundness of a feminine face. Not Gray. Ivory wasn't coming back. Must be -
“Nazaire,” said a voice, kindly. That accent again, so familiar, but softer and huskier than Ivory's. “It's your mother. Are you all right?”
“I thought I was getting the presidential suite, but here I am,” Jack rasped, joking out of pure reflex. “I ought to lodge a complaint."
Collette laughed, low and quiet and tinged with sadness. “Always the joker. You got that from your father, I think." Her dark hair, now threaded with silver, curled around her face like smoke.
"Yeah." Jack wanted to look away, but he couldn't. He hadn't seen his mother in years, and he might never see her again. "Look, mum, you shouldn't be here. I don't - "
"I know," she said. "Ive told me everything. I wanted to see you. That's all."
He wanted to believe it, but some part of him doubted that she would go through the hellish Time Agency security protocols just so she could say hello. “Fine. You've seen me. Now go.” If the Agency wanted information from him and didn't care too much about how they got it, there would be no better way to get him to talk than to threaten his mother. They could be listening right now, assessing whether he cared enough about Collette for her capture to break him. Not everyone in the Agency was that corrupt, but he didn't know who was in power anymore. He had always worried that the worst elements in the Agency were gathering more influence all the time. He couldn't let his mother take that risk.
“Nazaire. Please don't be like this. I just - I know Ivory said some harsh things to you. I didn't want you to be locked up here thinking we don't love you. You tried, Naz. You did everything you could to save Gray. Not for your own gain, but for our family. It means the world to me.”
Jack couldn't speak. His mother was thanking him for something wished with all his heart he'd never done. She thought he was a martyr, putting his freedom and possibly his life on the line for the noblest of causes. He knew that he was being rightfully punished for a foolish, misguided decision. But he couldn't tell her that. It would hurt her too much. Instead, he just stared at her, his throat working to hold back tears.
“I know someone who can help,” Collette said quietly. “Ekozma - I don't know if you remember him - is an advocate now. One of the few 'Shanes with any clout at all, these days. We don't have any way to pay him, but he says he'll take your case.”
“If?” There was always an if.
“If you tell him how you did it,” she said. “Everything. With documentation.”
The tatters of her hope shone through in her grey eyes. It was more than Jack could bear. He couldn't remember how he'd done it. But even if he could, he wouldn't tell, not even to save his own skin. There could be no doubt that Ekozma wasn't asking out of professional curiosity. Jack must have come up with some elaborate scheme to steal the timeline tracer. Ekozma could sell the information of how he did it to the highest bidder, and there'd be yet another piece of dangerous temporal technology in the hands of a criminal. Collette wouldn't understand all of that, of course. She couldn't know the consequences. All she would know was that her son was giving up his only chance at freedom. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can't. The Time Agency took away two years of my memories. I have no idea how it happened.”
“Is that why you quit?”
“Yeah,” Jack said grimly.
Collette's hands tightened in her lap. “I don't believe it. I just can't. You're up to something, Naz. You'd never let yourself get cornered like this. You have some other way out, and you're not telling me.”
It would have been true, once upon a time. Shaylin Sel-Ahn knew people who could bribe and intimidate Internal Affairs into letting him walk. But he'd sworn to himself never to turn to those people again, after waking up with a hole in his memory that no one would explain. Collette looked so disapproving, the corners of her mouth turned in a tight frown - imagining all the dirty tricks he had up his sleeve, probably. He wanted to plead with his mother to believe that he wasn't that kind of man anymore, that she was his only hope, but that would give away his heart to any Time Agents who might be listening. Besides, the longer she stayed here, the more tempting of a target she might become for those in the Agency who cared more about ends than means.
“Maybe I do,” Jack said, forcing harshness into his tone. “Maybe I don't. Either way, you're not going to find out from me. Just walk away.”
He didn't really want her to leave. Deep down, the child who'd been forced to grow up too fast was pleading Collette not to listen to him, to stay with him and chant old poems in her steady voice like she did every evening for the children of their longhouse.
But instead, she murmured farewell and turned away, leaving him alone in the dark.