Five minutes. And she would hold him to it. She would probably stand over him with a pocket-watch and snap the case shut when his allotted time ran out. He would either have to talk very quickly, or find just the right words – words that could do the work of a three-volume novel in five minutes. He wished he was Joel.

But would Joel have been able to make her feel the way he had made her feel last night? For the first time in his life, Jack didn't wish he was anyone else, because last night had happened to him. And even if there was no particular merit in it – even if it was sheer, dumb luck – it was his dumb luck. It would have been different for someone else, and he wouldn't have changed an atom of it.

He waited in the Faculty lounge, while Sarah bustled about, opening shutters and lighting fires and setting out the breakfast things. She would normally have done this before anyone was up, but it seemed she had only just got back from her sister's. 

Still, she knew. She knew even before Jack asked, without meeting her eyes, whether she would be so kind as to take up some hot water to the young lady in his bedroom.

"She's not staying, Sarah," he added, when he couldn't bear her triumphant smile any longer.

"Then why do you look so 'appy?" Sarah countered. 

"Because I'm a man?"

She looked a little put-out by this, as though she'd been relying on him to uphold her romantic ideals, and he had let her down. "So you're just going to let 'er go?"

Jack smile disappeared for the first time that day. "I have to."

"You're not even going to fight for 'er?"

He winced. "God, no. No more fighting, for or over this woman. She needs peace now."

He wondered if he would still be saying this when Robin came back. And the pianist – how quickly the pianist had dwindled into insignificance when he had seen Robin standing with her on those steps! They would both be back. But he had something they'd never had, not even Robin. She loved him.

"She saved my life, Sarah," he said quietly. "She's in charge."

Sarah looked mollified, as though she had readjusted her romantic ideals to fit him in. She was a strange one, Sarah. Not in love with him, and probably not in love with Ellini, but in love with the idea of them as a pair. He supposed you learned to be selfless and maternal when you spent your life looking after dreamy academics who could barely tie their shoes.

He found he was ravenous. He ate all the toast Sarah brought up, once she had taken care of the hot water, and then sent her down for some more. But he didn't sit down. He couldn't. There was a counter – almost like a bar – running the length of the Faculty Lounge, and he took up station behind it. He was not afraid of himself anymore – perhaps he never would be again – but he still thought it would be a good idea to put a physical barrier between himself and Ellini. Also, it would conceal his inevitable erection.

He drank too much coffee, and his mind raced, but not in any productive directions. He wondered what Ellini made of his sudden indifference. Could she really believe that, now he'd got what he wanted, he was only too happy to let her go? No, she had been there last night – she'd heard his delirious babbling. She was well-practised at undervaluing herself, but she couldn't go that far, surely? She was staying because she thought he had a plan – some elaborate scheme like the liberation of the prison colonies – and she wanted to see what it was. She wasn't afraid of being caught. She just wanted to marvel at him, one last time. God, this was going to be hard.

His heart leapt and sank at the same time when she came in. She looked beautiful. But her mouth was set with determination, and just a touch of anger, and he knew she was steeling herself to resist all his arguments. It was just as well he didn't intend to argue.

She glanced at him, and then at the clock on the wall. Had his five minutes already started?

"You're angry with yourself," Jack murmured, turning back to the coffee things. "We should talk about that."

"Will there be time? You said five minutes-"

"And I intend to keep to it. But you could help me by saving any scornful objections until the end. That way, it's on your time."

She looked torn between her desire to argue with him and her desire to get away quickly. The latter consideration won, which was a bad sign. "Very well."

"Coffee?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

"Why don't you sit down?"

"Stop stalling." There was a faint smile behind her scowl now.

"I just want you to be comfortable," he protested.

"Well, you're fighting a losing battle there. Please go on. I prefer to stand. You know I do."

"All right," he said, pouring himself another coffee, in spite of the time-limit. "Let's start at the beginning. You saved my life last night."

Ellini hunched her shoulders. "I know. I was there."

"No, mouse. Not then. Afterwards. Anyone can keep a man from throwing himself off a roof, but to keep him from wanting to – that's a very specialized skill. That's the province of angels."

She frowned at him, not quite understanding – or perhaps angered by the comparison. Clearly, she thought she was the polar opposite of an angel this morning. "You're saying I saved your life by sleeping with y-?"

He held up a hand. "Exactly the kind of interruption that could slow us down, mouse. And yes, I am saying that. Please pay attention. I was at my lowest ebb last night. I was so alone – I was in so much pain. And you gave me everything I've ever wanted."

"Jack, I didn't give you anything," she said, unable to restrain herself. "What I did, I – I wanted to-"

"You wanting to is ninety per cent of everything I've ever wanted right there."

"You're being ridiculous-"

"At the end, mouse," he said, raising his hand again. "You'll get your five minutes. I might even give you ten, I think I owe you that much. Listen. You took me from the depths of despair to the peak of happiness so quickly that I should have suffered some kind of emotional whiplash. I was lost, and you – you listened to me, you made me like myself again."

She still looked angry – more so, actually – but there was confusion to it now. She hadn't expected this. She had expected him to bargain with her, maybe even beg her. She had expected him to talk with boyish hopefulness about the future, as though it could all be put away – as though you could lose your pain at the back of a cupboard, and be mildly surprised, the next time you were spring-cleaning, to find you had ever owned it at all.

Jack would never forget the pain, which was exactly why he would never forget the happiness. It wasn't often you encountered something which could counterbalance in fifteen minutes a whole seven months of misery.

"Do you understand how incomprehensible it is to me that you're angry with yourself?" he went on, his voice shaky with suppressed enthusiasm. "What you saved me from was worse than death. It doesn't really matter if you understand it, but a big part of it was knowing what had been done to you, and what I wanted to do to you, and wondering if I was just like them. I never could have put it into words, and without saying a word, you answered me-"

He closed his eyes and tried to re-group. "So this is what I want," he said. "This is all I want. Leave whenever you like. You don't have to tell me where you're going. But if you need me – if you're ever in trouble – or if someone you love is in trouble, I don't even care if it's Robin – promise you'll come to me. I need to be useful to you, just once. And if it would be most useful to you to never see me again, you can have that too. I am in love with you, do you understand? All I want is to help."

He was glaring at her now, not angry but just – intent. He needed her to understand. He wanted to pronounce each word very slowly and carefully in case she missed anything. He wanted to blindfold her to prevent anything else from catching her attention. He wanted to lift her chin and stop her from wasting that gorgeous, ink-black gaze on her feet.

Please god, he thought, let her listen. She doesn't have to sympathize, just listen. She doesn't have to understand it all now, as long as it gets through to her eventually.

She wasn't angry anymore, at least. He wished he could remember exactly when she had dropped her gaze to her feet – what he had said that had finally killed her exasperation. She was so tantalisingly close to the surface now. There was a blush under her powdered cheeks, and an extra layer of moisture to her eyes.

She looked up, as if she'd only just realized he had finished speaking, and started to frame a word. It was more than Jack could bear.

"Don't you dare," he growled. "Don't you dare thank me. Tell me you'll do as I ask."

"I'll try," she said, in a husky voice. "But will you promise me something in return?"

"Well, I'd like to point out that you haven't promised anything, but go ahead."

"Don't wait for me. If you fall in love with someone else, or if you suddenly realize you'd be happier in America – or India – or New South Wales – don't let the thought of me stop you. If I need your help, I'll find you, I just – I don't want to find you waiting."

"It's a deal," said Jack. He could have said many other things. He could have said that he was not the masochist in this relationship. But he didn't want an argument. And besides, calling it a deal implied that she had agreed to her half of it, when in fact she had not. But she didn't point this out. She raised her eyes from her feet, and gave him that intensely aware, intensely present look. Jack poured himself another cup of coffee, simply because it gave him an excuse to avoid her gaze.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she said. "That you were the boy in the church?"

The coffee-pot wobbled in his hands, causing him to spill a little puddle across the counter. Of all the things in the world he had been expecting, it had not been this.

"How long have you known?"

"I only saw it last night," she said. "You looked exactly like him – like that poor boy."

"That's funny. You looked exactly like the girl who saved me."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she repeated.

He shrugged uncomfortably. He didn't know. He had never known. And he had never wanted to talk about this with her – he had never wanted to be 'that poor boy' in her eyes. But he owed her so much. And while she was giving him a wobbly-eyed, pitying stare, at least she wasn't leaving, or timing his speeches.

"I don't know," he said. "I suppose I was afraid you'd forgotten. The idea that something so important to me was insignificant to you..." He trailed off, and shrugged again. "I know that's unreasonable. You saw a man getting his brains blown out and a child being orphaned. It would have been the most sensible thing in the world to block it out. And you thought it was your fault. And it was the latest in a long line of horrible things you'd seen that month. I never wanted to make you relive it."

He stopped, because she was wincing. This was not going well.

"I do remember you," she said, her eyes back on her shoes. "You had a black eye..."

Jack laughed. It was a pained, disconsolate laugh. She remembered him, but what she remembered most had been the black eye. Well, what had he been expecting? What had he been back then but a bruised, shivering bag of bones? Had he wanted her to say, 'I always knew, even then, that you were going to be somebody; I knew you were going to save me back'?

He licked his lips and muttered, "You know everything else about me. Can you fit that in with what you already know and understand how it might have affected me?"

"I think so, yes."

"And-" he went on, half against his better judgement "I'm not looking for forgiveness, you understand, but if you wanted to consider that, in forgetting you, I forgot that moment, and all the consequences of that moment, and I was just my father's son, and I had nothing to remember but beatings-"

"Yes." She was closer now. Somehow, she had approached the counter without him noticing, and was using her gloved fingers to trace out patterns in the puddle of spilled coffee. "I saw it all last night. Sergei said something had happened to you at the age of eight, and you were afraid that, if you forgot it, you wouldn't be you anymore. I didn't know what he meant at the time, but it all made sense last night. I saw you as an eight year-old."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "You saw me as an eight-year-old and then you wanted to sleep with me?"

She gave a spluttering laugh. "It does sound rather odd when you put it like that! I didn't see you as an eight-year-old the whole time."

"I'm happy to hear it."

"And it wasn't that I felt sorry for you. You are listening when I tell you that I wanted to, aren't you?"

"Of course," said Jack. "I just don't think you would have allowed yourself to do what you wanted if there hadn't been an element of mercy in it."

She wasn't listening, which seemed pretty rich considering she had just been exhorting him to pay attention. She was staring at the counter-top – at the patterns she had drawn in the spilled coffee.

"Some of the things you said last night made me realize how much I hurt you..."

Jack closed his eyes. He had been afraid of this. "I was delirious, yes?"

"You don't remember?"

"Oh, I remember everything, I just-" He shrugged awkwardly. "I don't remember what I said out loud."

"Oh."

He groaned. "I said everything out loud, didn't I?"

"I don't know," she said reasonably. "I don't know what was in your mind. You said 'thank you' afterwards."

He took a deep breath and tried to smile. "Well, it's good to know I remembered my manners."

"But what really made me realize how much I'd hurt you was when you said, 'Please let this be real' or 'please don't take this away from me'."

"Please and thank you. What a polite lover I was."

"I enjoyed your politeness," she said, looking straight at him. "Just like I enjoyed the rest of it."

Jack breathed out slowly. Parts of him were beginning to tingle. He held her gaze – that uncharacteristically direct gaze – until she looked away. Then he turned back to his coffee, trying to be casual. "It was a shock," he said. "Last night, I mean."

"In what way?"

He hesitated, wondering if this was a conversation he really wanted to have with her. But that frank, steady gaze was so beguiling.

"Well, I don't know how it was for you – and if it was different, I think I'd rather you didn't tell me – but, after you left it was... not the same... with other women. It was sort of – muted. Underwhelming. It was like the difference between a sketch and a finished painting. The kind of painting that takes up an entire wall, and has texture and depth and perspective and colours you hadn't even heard of, and takes your breath away in a way the real world never managed to do."

He poured another coffee. It must have been the fourth or fifth. "In fact, I think a sketch is a good analogy because I had the rough outline of pleasure. It just wasn't – fleshed-out. Filled in. If that makes sense. Anyway, as the years went by, the muted, underwhelming version became normal to me, and I forgot about... And then, last night, when I hadn't had a woman of any kind for almost a year, and hadn't had you for almost six years, the oil-painting was unveiled again, and – it was a shock."

Ellini looked torn between annoyance and – something softer. He didn't know what exactly. 

"Not muted?" she asked. 

Jack shook his head. "So unmuted that I thought I was going to die. And I didn't care."

She gave him a small smile. "It was the same for me."

"I really don't think it was."

"No? It was the first time I'd been with a man in six years." She saw his automatic, triumphant smile, and went on, in a harder voice, "unless you count the gargoyles. I thought it would hurt. I thought I'd panic halfway through and run out into the hall to be sick. But it was just as though we'd never been apart. Beyond a certain point, it didn't cross my mind to be apprehensive. It seems I'm absolutely shameless with you."

That last sentence had a bitter edge that he couldn't help noticing, even while he was desperately trying to memorize this speech.

"When you have nothing to be ashamed of," he said slowly, "what's wrong with being shameless?"

She waved this away, as he had known she would. Oh well. He knew a way of getting her attention, at least. He just wasn't sure it was a good idea.

"Danvers tells me the serum I took to forget you was a magic potion. He says there's a whole society of women, up and down the country, who administer this potion to young lovers as a kind of test. Your love is true love if you can share a kiss while one of you is under the spell, that kind of thing. Myrrha's in charge of it, he says. Do you know he went to see her? When I was... He was trying to save me. He even got a counter-spell from her, but he ended up throwing it in the fire."

He didn't say 'when I kissed Alice Darwin', but she probably heard exactly what he was not saying, because an extra layer of distance settled on her like dust. Her soul had tiptoed right to the forefront of her eyes before, and now it was backing away so fast he was surprised it didn't burst out the back of her head. Oh, she would never forgive him. But that didn't matter as long as she eventually – one day – forgave herself.

"That's why he blames himself for your death," Jack added. "He says he can't be sure he didn't do it for selfish reasons. In fact, I think he's actually responsible for your still being alive – he and Sergei – but I'll tell you about that later. What really interests me is this test of Myrrha's – the true love test. What happens if you pass it?"

"What?" said Ellini, narrowing her eyes. "How can you ask that? It's a trick – you're not supposed to pass it."

"But what happens if you do?"

She waved a hand irritably. "Well, you get your memories back. Just like you did."

"Nothing else?"

"What did you expect, another knighthood?"

She was angry now. This game of Myrrha's was important to her. Jack wondered briefly why it wasn't important to him. After all, that spell had taken his mind and his memories – it had made him do things that still caused him to ball up his fists and dig his fingernails into his palms when he remembered them. 

But when he thought of Myrrha – and of magic – all he felt was fear. He didn't know how to fight her. From miles away, she had orchestrated the worst thing that had ever happened to him. She had made it seem as though she wasn't involved, as though it would have happened just the same without her. She had given Danvers that counter-spell, knowing he wouldn't use it, just to mock him with the prospect of salvation when it was too late. How could you fight that kind of effortless cruelty? 

He blinked. Ellini had just said something to him. "I'm sorry?"

"I said what in the world made you think you would get something?"

Jack poured another coffee and tried to recapture his bravado. "I'll tell you why I asked. There's probably some other explanation – although I can't think of one at the moment – but our scars are gone this morning."

She looked down at her chest as though she thought the scar between her breasts was on show right now. Jack felt a guilty jolt, as if he'd been caught staring. "I noticed while we were in bed," he said quickly. "I mean, I couldn't help noticing, you were half-uncovered. I didn't-"

But she was unbuttoning the bodice of her dress now, all proprieties forgotten. "It's not possible," she breathed.

"It's true," said Jack, trying to avert his eyes. "Here, mine are easier to see-" He loosened his neck-tie, unbuttoned his collar, and showed her the smooth skin – not even raised or reddened – where the slash-wounds had been. 

She left her dress unbuttoned and touched him, fascinated, tracing out the cracks that were no longer there. Jack's heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear his own voice, but he went on talking anyway.

"What bothers me is what happened to the cord Sergei used to stitch me up with," he said, trying to smile. "Is it under my skin? Did it fall out? If it's still in my body, could it get tangled up on something?"

She didn't say anything. She was too astonished. But her fingertips went on idly brushing his chest, as if of their own accord, just like in the old days. Incy wincy spider.

"It's almost a shame," she said at last. "I quite liked your scars last night."

On a sudden, stupid, passionate impulse, Jack snatched up her hand and kissed it. He couldn't think of any other way to express himself. It was the very least of the things he wanted to do, but it was still reckless, and he was not surprised when she carefully extracted her hand and stepped away from him.

"Are you still worried about giving me false hope?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Are you still angry with me?"

"No." Ellini gave another defensive shrug. "Yes. I don't know. I'm annoyed."

"Why?"

"Because you hurt me so much, and I gave myself to you so easily."

"Easily," said Jack, in a flat, quiet voice. He didn't mean to be derisive or bitter – he just wanted to taste the word, try it out on his tongue, find a new angle from which to view it. "I can see your point in as much as I didn't try to persuade you. But I still wouldn't have called it easy."

"Well, exactly," she said, coming back to the counter, and resting her chin on her upturned palm. "Whenever I think I've remembered how to hate you, you say something like that, and I remember what you suffered. And then I hate myself. It's very difficult."

"I can sympathize."

"Don't you hate me at all?" she demanded. 

He squinted at her, trying to find a new angle from which to view her too. "I don't think I do. Sorry."

"How can you just-?"

"It's not just – there's no way I'm going to let you dismiss last night with a word like 'just'!"

"All right, but how can you forgive-?"

"Because I can understand it," he said, picking up his cup with a shrugging smile. It was so funny – once again, so funny – that she didn't understand how right she had made things. "Because everything's so clear to me this morning. Even you going away now. Of course you would go away now. You're in love with your freedom and afraid of being hurt again. You never will be – not by me – but only time can teach you that, and time's the very least I owe you. So go away – do what you need to do. I'll be here, or somewhere else, not waiting for you, just like I promised."

He had been watching her as he said all this. He saw her exasperation pass into amusement, and then into something else. He wasn't sure what it was, but it reddened her cheeks, and made her smile disappear. She took a few, torturous steps towards the door, and then came back again. She said, "Do you want to do it again before I go?"

Jack dropped the cup.