Part 3 - Friday, Feb. 14 / Saturday, Feb. 15 / Sunday, Feb. 16

The tiles in the hotel bathroom were so cool against my skin. I meant to only rest there but I fell asleep. It's just that they felt so good in their coolness while I was feeling bad enough that anything good was a comfort.

Back in our hotel room, all alone, all done in. I was making myself sick, I thought, and when had nerves ever affected me so?

When Jack got there ...

My eyes flashed open at that thought and I took in my surroundings. Got up and brushed my teeth. Looked in the mirror and saw dark smudges of blue circles under my eyes. Green eyes flirting from red-rimmed and swollen lids.

He was coming back. Wasn't he?

My body kind of sunk back down to the tile floor. It was easier to just stay there.

When Jack came back ...

If he came back ...

He had to come back to me.

Didn't he?

I fell asleep again with that thought in my mind.

In my dream, I called out to him but my voice wasn't working. I tried so hard to see him, to imagine him clear enough that I could be with him. But he seemed out of reach, indistinct beyond mists of gauze that started as interfering layers between us and then grew to fill the spaces until their weight was too hard to battle.

I dreamed of warm hands touching me sometime late into that night.

"Come, my little dear. Let me get you to bed," he said soft into my ear and I didn't understand the way my dreaming had shifted. That somehow the layers between us had parted.

But when I felt him lift me into his arms, I let myself believe it was really him and that I was awake. I snuggled into his neck, smelling him and then tasting him. He seemed so much more normal and I was at once both saddened and relieved that his taste and scent no longer overwhelmed my every sense.

"Jack, you've come back to me?" I murmured right into his ear, kissing his neck just behind his earlobe.

"You should never have doubted me. Could I ever have done any less, amorata? It has now been put to proper order and I am yours for as long as you will have me."

"I was so scared that you'd stay. Back there. In your past. That you'd never want me again ..."

"Hush, my love. My present is here. With you and the others in our group. It is a present that will bring me the best of futures, sweetheart. I would wish for nothing else."

As he lowered me to the bed's mattress, I felt him pull a crisp sheet around me and I started shivering. Teeth chattering and moaning for him to keep me warm. Before long, I felt him slide in next to me and his body surrounded me. His warmth was all that seemed to make the night's chill leave me. He held me close and I held him closer still.

By the morning, I realized I was sick - really sick and not just sick at heart. I had a fever bad enough to be wracking my body.

Jack came with me in the taxi as we went to the clinic the hotel recommended. After the doctor told me she would run blood and urine tests to determine exactly what kind of infection was attacking me, I mentioned that the infection might be a bit exotic since I'd been on a trip to an undeveloped country not too long ago. Just before she left the room, I asked her to run a pregnancy test at the same time. Just in case, right, Diary? I mean, not that I really thought anything would show up that soon. Still ...

I left with antibiotics, something for the nausea and plenty of ibuprofen for the fever's aches. Jack put me back to bed so I could sleep. I turned from him and cried. Not sure at all if I was crying because I was glad or sad that I wasn't pregnant after all.

All that worry, all that fighting, all those harsh words. Didn't really seem worth it, eh, Diary?

Jack and I had never fought before. I didn't want to ever do it again but somehow, as odd as it sounds, it was like it had only been possible to get that upset because what we had together had become important enough to really matter that strongly.

The fight came because he did something he thought I wanted him to do for me. That he'd been entitled to simply make a decision for me that I should have accepted without question. But the more bitter part of the fight only happened because we still didn't really know the other ... and perhaps because we had liked it better that way.

But, how he could have ever misinterpreted my repeated statements that we were only spending one night on the Surprise as it rested safe in the harbor of Gibraltar and then returning to my time ... I mean, come on, Diary. What is it with some men that they think they know what's right for you and they simply make a unilateral decision? And then they expect you to be appreciative and, of course, to never ever make a scene in front of other men when they do it?

Imagine what it was like to wake into a blue haze of a morning, stretch alone in his cot on the Surprise and wonder why things felt so different? Diary, I was still flat on my back and realized the boat was rocking more than it had been the night before. There was a strange noise that I couldn't figure out and just as I was dismissing it as one of those "who knows?" kind of sounds, I suddenly heard the pounding of hundreds of bare feet running up ladders and across the deck.

Sitting straight up in the bed. Afraid I might have known what was up. Strange feeling in my gut. It took too long for me to get the will to find a way to get on my feet. When I finally did, I tossed on the closest piece of clothing I found near the bed so I could go out in Jack's main cabin to find out what was going on.

"All hands to wear ship."

I heard the bellowing words but never for one moment believed them. Until I heard the almost instant lessening of the noise of running feet and some part of me knew it was because many of the owners of those feet were even then racing up the shrouds toward the sails.

Wavering like a drunk as the ship slunk with the tide and the wind caught the sails; and I knew Jack was doing the one thing I'd kill him for. Finding myself heaving across the slight slope of the wood beneath my feet as the frigate leapt into the wind under sail. Hearing distinct piping followed by bunches of men's feet descending the ladders from the main deck.

Reaching Jack's main cabin, I saw Killick puttering. Didn't even register his words but knew it was about breakfast and coffee and Jack would be coming back straight away. Should have taken more notice of the way Killick was trying hard not to be staring at me. It might have made me realize that I was only wearing one of Jack's frilly shirts.

But, no. Instead, I went striding out of Jack's cabin and headed for where I knew I'd find the Captain. Almost to the quarterdeck and I caught sight of his blond hair as he paced at the far railing. Beyond him, the port of Gibraltar was fading into the distance and it was really true. Jack had set sail, going against everything he'd agreed to with me, and even then the Surprise was leaning into the wind and gaining speed.

"Jack Aubrey! What the hell is going on? I want off this ship. Now." The words were sharp and loud out of my mouth as I made it to his level. Every set of eyes swiveled to find me and I stumbled by the blast of dizziness that caused me. But I resolutely met Jack's eyes. They narrowed almost instantly with coldness after an initial flash of utter shock had turned them round.

"Mr. Bonden," he gritted out, looking beyond me. "Be so good as to escort my guest below. My compliments to the doctor and if he would attend to the quarterdeck."

I felt a determined hand at my elbow and turned to find Bonden looking anxiously at his captain. "Come with me, miss," he whispered earnestly to me. "This is no safe place for you just now."

"And, Mr. Bonden ...," Jack's stern voice continued, seeming loud enough to me that it could be heard clearly in the fore rigging, "... perhaps one of the officers would be so kind as to cover the lady from the ravages of the wind."

Five men near Jack's rigid form began quickly trying to get their coats off but before any could do much more than take a few strides toward me, Bonden was slipping his uniform jacket onto my shoulders. It made me look down at myself and the impact of realizing how I was dressed made my cheeks blaze in warmth.

"Oh, God," I moaned softly. "What have I done?"

Looking up to find Jack's cold gaze and understanding just how much I'd embarrassed him before his men. My own anger replaced with the empty realization that I had never belonged here. With him.

Maybe I had never belonged with him anywhere.

He pivoted on his heel and began that methodical pacing for which he was so known. I let Bonden lead me back to Jack's cabin. With as much dignity as I could muster, I handed his jacket back to him, marched across the outer office and back into the sleeping-cabin. Sinking into his cot, feeling alone and intolerably miserable.

Stephen found me there, huddling in the one place I thought I could hide out. I need to be alone, I told him. Come join me for breakfast, he responded. I want to go home, I said and fought to stay in control. Jack will get over this, he assured me. When I started crying, he left me to my misery.

Time seemed a new enemy to me. It went by so slowly as I waited to face Jack. Enough time went by that I began to not know if I was upset more about having so obviously infuriated him by acting like a shrew or if I indeed was justified in my own righteous anger at him for taking what seemed to be a deliberate action to prevent us from going back through the portal.

How dare he, I thought in a flash of heat. How dare he think he can get away with this? And then, a rush: why did I have to react to his actions with such an inappropriate action of my own? Why had I allowed anger to make me forget where and when I was? This wasn't like me - I wasn't this person who reacted with no thought to consequences or propriety; when had I ever not taken measured steps in a crisis or when facing a threat in unfamiliar territory?

At some point, I heard him come into the outer cabin. Muted voices I knew had to be his, Stephen's and Killick's. Clicking dishes and I realized they were eating breakfast.

Did Jack plan to simply go on with his routine aboard his ship and ignore my presence? Conflicting emotions flared: irritation and rejection.

A tap at the chamber's door and I didn't say a word. Killick's voice came to me through the closed panel, rasping in uncharacteristically subdued tones: "Captain's compliments, ma'am, and would you be coming in to join him for the meal?"

"I would beg to be dismissed, with apologies," I responded, trying to sound composed.

I nestled down into the cot, the place we'd spent a night unlike any I could remember. It had been so warm and now it was so cold. It had been ours and now it was his. It had been so right and now it felt like such a mistake.

"Some Valentine's Day," I muttered into a room as empty as I felt.

The door opened and I sat up in the cot and saw Jack standing in the opening. Wide-legged stance, arms locked behind his rigid body, defiant thrust to his chin. Framed by the warm wood and wearing a cold look. Who was this man? This feeling of irrational heat fueled me.

"I want to go home," I told him, my voice firm but my chest was shaking.

"I would never have believed you would have had it within you to have acted with such ..." his strong voice trembled with the depth of his anger. "I am the captain of His Majesty's ship. I am not accustomed to nor will I allow anyone to challenge me in my command or to treat my office with such disrespect. What you have done is ..."

"You may very well be the captain of this ship but that does not give you the right to simply violate our agreement. How could you have been so irresponsible, Jack? And you're a fool if you think I'd ever sit still and keep quiet while you ..."

"You will keep quiet when it comes to my decisions aboard this frigate," his voice almost a roar.

"I am not Sophie." It was like a slap; he almost stumbled back. I saw its impact and charged on with my assault. "I do not stay quiet. Not when it comes to something like this. We had an agreement, Jack. One night aboard. Then you were taking me home. Do you realize the risks you've exposed me to?"

"You said you trusted me to protect you, Ann." His voice seemed to hold a latent threat. And then his stance shifted. He moved closer to me, his eyes dropped from mine, his voice got softer if more intense. "But then you have told me many things, have you not? Perhaps you forget these things you tell me; perhaps they become confused with the things you tell other men. But I do not forget them."

"I have a good memory, Jack, and I know we agreed to one night. That's really the issue here, not other men."

Shock of light eyes in his tanned face and the way it felt to be in their hold as he stared into me. His cold voice: "You wanted more, my dear. You told me. Do you not remember how you said that the only part of my world you wished to experience was the Surprise at sea? To have the chance to understand what it was for me to be in command here, in my true element? Tell me you do not remember telling me this."

My mouth dropped open as the memory of another night flooded over me. The night when he'd first asked me to consider going through his portal with him. How I had said just this very thing. I had forgotten - but the truth was as Jack saw it. It was what I'd really wanted to experience - but some things had changed in the interim.

"But Jack, that was before we knew anything about the portals," I whispered to him. "We had an agreement."

"This is what you wanted and I chose to give it to you. After last night and this morning, how could I have not wanted to make this dream come true for you?"

"You should have asked me."

"Why would I have needed to? I am simply giving you what you desired most and it was within my power to grant it."

A coldness crept into me at that. This was a Jack I no longer trusted to watch out for my best interests. I was on my own and it was a frightening feeling. "It wasn't your decision to make for me, Jack. Don't you see the risks? You promised to keep me safe and how can you do that when the Surprise could at any moment come under attack? And what if the portal closes while we're gone? You're risking my future for a momentary thrill."

"Your future is with me. That is all that matters."

Laughing at him in frustration but feeling a fear growing inside that angered me because I blamed him for creating it. "My future is with you? Perhaps - but it's not here. My God, Jack, think. If we get stuck back in this time, what would become of me? You'll be fine - you'll go home to Sophie and your kids. And what of me? I become your mistress? Wait patiently to see you once every few years in between your sea trips and your allegiance to your family? I cannot believe you'd be so cavalier about me. That you'd not have thought about what it would be like for me, a stranger in this time with no one but you and you having so many other obligations."

"Stop bringing Sophie into this discussion. I forbid you to mention her to me again. Can you not see how inappropriate it is to her memory?"

"That's just it, Jack. She isn't a memory in this time for you. She's your reality."

"Not to me, Ann. To me, you are my reality. You are my present and my future. I am no longer the man of this time."

My eyes misted over as I tried to keep looking at him. Wobbling unsteadily in the emotions he was dredging up in me. Wondering in abject uncertainty what was in his mind and in his heart because he seemed less and less to be someone I knew as well as I thought I did. And again that feeling I had had in the night - the realization that something irrational was happening, something that was making us act oddly.

"We were wrong to come back here. Something's happening to us, Jack. Don't you feel it?"

"I will always take care of you, sweetheart. That is what I feel. But why can you not trust in me?" His voice. I concentrated on it as much as the words and felt the way he felt about me - his uncertainty of my feelings for him, his need to test me to see where he stood with me. "If you were here with Thorne, you would trust him to keep you safe. You have always trusted in his abilities but you refuse to see me as anything but a bumbling fool you have to shelter. When will you really see me? I had hoped here, in my time, in the one place I am most at home, that you would see me as others who know me are able to - they never doubt me. Why is it you alone do?"

Such a hard edge there. A place I couldn't touch? A word I couldn't hear? A heart I couldn't see? A soul I could never taste? A danger I'd not scented?

Swallowing deeply and searching his eyes, finding them dark and turning colder. 

"Jack ..." Stuttering in the face of his edge. "Is this why? You wanted me to see you and I haven't yet? Have I failed you so badly back in my world that you feel the need to demonstrate to me that you are capable of more than I would let you show me? And do you now need to keep me here until I become the woman you want me to be, the woman I never was?"

My eyes dropped from the look that swept over him. As if he were seeing me for the first time and that it disappointed him. And perhaps that was it, after all, Diary. From the moment we had met, we had stayed in this blissful womb of 'love at first sight' and never cared whether we were actually in love with a dream or reality. And now ... were we finding out we'd blindly fallen for people who didn't really exist?

If I wasn't the woman he thought, and he wasn't the man I believed, who were we to each other?

Strangers still. Sharing intimacies we should never have because when were we ever intimate enough with each other to risk being genuinely open about our true selves?

My eyes came to rest on a low shelf; orange light from overhead glinted against blue there. Panic. "Oh my God. I forgot to drink Stephen's potion," I whispered.

Walked to the shelf and went to grasp the blue stoppered bottle that held the Queen's Anne Lace seeds in liquor that Steven had instructed me to drink that morning to prevent pregnancy. In all that had happened, it had never crossed my mind.

But Jack's bigger hand clasped over the bottle and took it out of my reach. "Is this what Stephen gave you?" he asked me quietly. Sounding so calm now. "To rid your body of what I would give you?"

Too calm.

"Yes, Jack. I was supposed to drink it after ... I should have taken it hours ago. Let me have it."

Not looking at me. Looking hard at the bottle in his hand.

"Any other woman would have wanted my child. If she loved me." Eyes at me that were too still and clear. "But not you, Ann. Why is that? Is it that you only love me for the part of me that will keep your bed warm when another isn't? But am I not good enough for you to give me this?"

He was within my grasp. So close and yet ... yet further than we'd ever been from the other.

"Jack, listen ..." whispering to him and he turned his back on me. "Please, Jack. This decision ... I honestly don't want to get pregnant. Not now. But it has nothing to do with you."

"It has everything to do with me." Growling out at me and clenching his fist tight over the bottle. "It would be my child. It could be my child growing within you even now. It would be the one gift I could give you that the others could not."

"This isn't about you."

Turning to peer at me over his shoulder. "It is about us. It is about what is important to us."

"Let me have the bottle," I said, my voice quiet, my hand out to him.

Half turning to me, never taking his eyes from me ... very slowly, very deliberately, taking the cork stopper from the bottle and pouring the special fluid onto the wood deck of his cabin.

"You won't need this here. Not with me. Not if you love me."

"What have you done?" My voice of shock. And then seeing a strange light in his eyes that called up the one part of me he'd never like in this world of his - the woman who would never be dominated by any man. "Fine. Be this way, Jack. It doesn't matter. I'll get more from Stephen. And when I'm home, if I'm unlucky enough to be pregnant anyway, I have other means of being sure I don't bear your child."

His chin down; I should have read his body language better; I was too wrapped up in trying to hurt him. And why was that, Diary? When had I ever wanted to hurt Jack?

"You would choose an abortion? This is how much you love me?"

Never. Not considering how I was raised and my own personal beliefs. Such cold words for him, chosen to wound: "I wouldn't lose a minute."

He was on me in a second; furious at the hurt I'd just purposely inflicted on his heart. I cowered from him in such a spontaneous reaction. But he never hit me; he never even raised a hand to me. He just hovered there, looming over me, his entire body clenched tightly, coiled together to keep mayhem at bay. I felt myself shrinking into the corner and there was nowhere to go, no safe haven.

I felt a hand on my neck, wrapping slowly around me. Looked up into his eyes and he must have seen something in mine that shook him hard. His hand stopped moving; he whispered to me that he wouldn't hurt me, showing me that he remembered secrets that haunted me to that day. And then, his pained, confused voice: "What is happening to us, amorata?"

"It's the portal, Jack. It has to be. I'm scared of this. Keep me safe. Please." And in his eyes, I saw my Jack flicker back to life. I snugged my body in against his and held on to the one person I needed in that moment. "You said you'd protect me. Hold me, Jack."

His arms hugged me in against him. I could feel their warmth through the thin material of the shirt I was wearing. Enveloped again within all that was him, I closed my eyes and wished for another chance.

"I have always wanted you, beloved. I knew you before you came to me and it was always your contradictions that made me adore you." Whispering to him, feeling his body relaxing under my hands. "But I haven't been fair with you since you came to our world. I should never have become your Number One because I've never really seen you in your entire truth, have I? I've just seen you as I wanted and not given you the ability to be just you when you're with me. When we go back, choose another as your Number One. Just promise me that we'll still see each other from time to time."

His arms gathered me closer still and I felt him lean his head against mine. It felt so safe, so inviolate, so intimate. As if I'd been able to confess a transgression and it didn't even matter if I was forgiven. The confession itself was enough; a sacrifice that could cleanse me.

"No, I want no other as my Number One, sweetheart. All that I need from you is for you to see the man I truly am, as I've been created. It starts here, in this place that defines me. It was the only reason I wanted you to return through the portal with me," he told me. I heard within his voice the Jack I'd glimpsed but not fully accepted yet.

His fingers light under my chin, tipping my face up from where I had been hiding in his chest. And then I was stepping back from him so that I could see into him ... a vision, a reality, an understanding ... Jack in full. A gift from him ... this ability to see and be seen.

Have you ever really loved someone, Diary? Yet doubted it still? And then something happens that makes you see that the doubt is there because you cannot believe it can happen to you? Why you, you have to wonder, don't you? Why would you be that lucky?

"I never saw the stars," I said, feeling luck might be on my side after all and suddenly open to him in a new way.

"What stars?" he asked me, his face drawn into a perplexed frown.

"You promised me that you could show me stars unlike any I'd seen. Remember? You said you wanted to stand with me at night upon your quarterdeck and show me the stars, teach me about constellations."

A sad grin at my whimsy. "You would have loved them, amorata. I would have loved to show them to you and to have seen your face as you understood the beauty I can find out here."

"I want to see them, Jack." In a flash of true inspiration, seeing what I could give him in this moment of realization of his love for me. Leaning into him, letting our bodies find the way as harbingers of a new, more realistic relationship between us. "And I want to see Captain Aubrey in command of this ship. I want to see you, beloved. All of you."

Breathing into me, "You would do this for me, amorata? You would trust in me enough?"

"Absolutely. But, Jack? We have to promise each other to fight the portal's effects on our emotions. Now that we understand them better, we can do that, don't you think?"

His answer was a kiss. As I tasted his kiss and felt its power, I flashed on the fact that Jack had always said he could learn everything about my feelings in my kiss. This was when I first understood what he meant by that. Diary, could we agree that someday you and I will find a way to catalogue and explain the kisses of men? And will you teach me to be a poet so that after I finish my ode to men's necks I may begin a collection of haiku pieces extolling the virtues of the various lips that have driven me to various heights of ecstasy? My first must certainly be inspired by this kiss.

By the time he released me, we were both panting from the experience. I was so accepting of the way his essence surrounded me in this world, that I looked for it ... was grateful for it when it caressed me and tugged at me. Let myself move hard into him and I smiled to feel his body respond eagerly.

"Do you have an idea of how I wished there had been no others on deck when I saw you this morning?" he asked me, his voice a harsh, grasping tone reflecting his ramped up state of want. He groaned softly at me, his hands dropping to my buttocks, grabbing me in tighter against him. "You stood there, looking like the most fiery wench I've ever seen. Gods, my love, the way you looked. Your hair all ahoo, your eyes flashing at me. In nothing but my shirt. I wanted to rip it off you and have you naked before me."

Oh my Lord. The images that called up in me.

"Did it make you want me so badly, Jack? Would you have taken me right there had there been no witnesses? Would you have been rough with me?" Feeling the tension of our angry confrontation pivot to a sexual tension we could use to bring us together rather than drive us apart. "Do it, Jack. Show me what you wanted to do then."

He needed no other invitation. His hands gripped at the shirt's front and in one strong, quick flick, he pulled it apart. Buttons flew, fabric ripped and the shirt was no longer shielding my flesh from him. This weird image of Killick's reaction to mending another of Jack's shirts flashed before my mind's eye.

But Jack dropping to his knees before me drove everything from my mind except the reality of this fantasy coming true. His mouth roughly suckled first one breast and then the other; his hands kneaded my skin as they memorized the route down my back, across my belly, back to my rump, along and between my thighs. And then he slowed his assault, his movements becoming more tender yet more insistent. I had my fingers in his hair, loosing it from its bindings; struggling to untie his neck cloth and reach his buttons ... but I lost the advantage when he sunk low on his haunches and grabbed me into him. His lips kissed along the most sensitive skin inside my thighs, teasing my response and my legs spread of their own volition to grant him better access.

Oh, Jack.

How had we reached this point with the other? Still so hopelessly lost inside the physicality of what we had, and yet we had found the way forward to a deeper understanding of the other. Would the bloom of infatuation give way to the flower of devotion?

"Beloved," I moaned as I felt myself giving way to what he gave me.

His tongue, his mouth, his hands ... His mind, his passions, his past. Perhaps it had been written in the stars. How fitting that I was to find myself bound to a man with as many contradictions as I possessed.

He rose from his knees, grasping me to him as he gained his feet, carrying me to his cot, crawling in over me, the weight of his body a welcome delight.

"This is what I wanted to do to you," he grated out to me as I felt his hands fumbling at his breeches.

Losing my breath completely as he spread my legs wide and drove into me. In my ear, whispering harsh words about making me come loud enough to be heard at the capstan and that if I didn't scream loudly enough, he'd have me bound there against its unforgiving surface and flogged as punishment.

Even knowing it was all a game, all a fantasy ... it felt freeing, after everything, to be within his control and power. I've thought of this since and wondered how it was so, Diary. Perhaps it was because in handing him that control and power, I made a choice that was mine to make and not his to assume.

The very harshness of his threat - and in the moment, I saw Jack unbridled in his passion and it made me see myself as he saw me. In his eyes: a woman strong enough to cherish him, tender enough to need him and giving enough to care for his needs.

God, but the revelation in his eyes as he took me with such utter authority. I warned him ... heated words to him ... he was driving me and I would break to his will ... he could never stop me. His conquering smile and I was coming for him just as he wished. His hand covered my scream.

He held me after, and we found a way back from the brink. Somehow in this time, we were able to whisper the words we both needed to hear - tiny band-aids for our wounded hearts. But, still, I held back from Jack this part of me that worried ... just how much of the fight between us had been caused by the portal's affects on our ability to control our emotions and how much reflected real issues we hadn't yet resolved?

We did spend another night aboard the Surprise before Jack turned the frigate and raced back to Gibraltar. And though it was a battle, we did find our ability improved in dealing with the portal's dogged attempts to mess up our minds and spirits.

It was, we agreed, only possible once we acknowledged that the portal not only heightened our senses but also pushed our emotional responses to each other to extreme ranges. It wasn't so much that the portal changed us into other people as that it seemed to increase our susceptibility to be stimulated by conflict and passion. And fear.

I longed to know if what Jack and I were going through was markedly different from the others who'd gone through portals together. Well, Diary, of course I would learn soon enough that the portals seemed to impact all who traveled back together. Perhaps the exact way the impact was felt was as unique as the pair of travelers.

Still, it wasn't all bad, was it, Diary? If it was, truly, would the portals hold such an attraction to the seeking spirits that so many of our group seems to share? Because, I can honestly say that in spite of all that we went through, there were so many things I saw and experienced that were like magic to my imagination and curiosity: another time, a situation long gone, another culture, a life that exists in no other reality. And Jack in his rightful place.

I did get to see the stars that final night. Standing with Jack at the aft deck, my eyes sweeping up from the phosphorescent wake of his ship to the mysteries of the heavens around us. He let me hold onto his arm while he pointed out constellations with his other hand. I could have stood forever there and listened to him explain the mythology behind the names these patterns of stars were given. My romantic Jack. How I loved being with him.

And I got to see Captain Aubrey in command of his beloved frigate upon the seas. Stephen took me walking on the deck the next morning, after the holystones were quiet and the majority of the crew had been piped below for breakfast. We were standing near the main mast and I looked back to find Jack in full golden splendor.

He paced to and fro at the windward rail as the officers on the quarterdeck stayed to the other side to give the captain his customary space. When he stopped, his face seemed to pause as if he was feeling the wind's mysteries... and instantly his eyes flew up to the sails, his hand touched the mainstay line, swirling ocean winds attacked his bound locks. I was not surprised to hear his loud voice booming out a command to let go the lower studdingsails and with this the ship seemed to almost jump forward even while its lean into the wind increased and the deck sloped more ... it was too touching to finally witness. The Surprise in his sure hands, racing with the wind. My Lucky Jack. How I loved discovering his depths.

By the time we made it back to the safety of the port, I had reached a level of acceptance and understanding of Jack and his world that surprised me. Reading about another world, however it prepares you, is not the same as living in it, I had discovered, Diary. It was not the world for me, but it was ever the world for Jack.

"How I will miss this old ship," he said fondly as we prepared to leave his cabin and return to shore. He had told me that morning when we woke that he'd dreamed something that had frightened him and that he'd wasn't sure that he would ever want to risk returning to this world of his past through the portal.

I touched his face and wished I could give him whatever it would take to always be happy to have given this up and come to my world. Because the reality, as I'd come to understand it in this time with him, was that the choice to leave and come back with me was entirely his this time.

Bonden again commanded the large rowboat that took us back to shore. Jack maintained a stoic face as he bid his men goodbye, knowing that the next Jack they saw would not be this one. Stephen walked with us as we headed to the alley that held the portal entrance back to my world.

Along the way, a messenger intercepted us and Jack's face changed from distant melancholy to outright horror as he read the words in the paper he unfolded.

"That whoreson ... how is this even possible?" he roared. Stephen and I stared in alarm. "It is Sir Francis. He has sent word from the blockade off Toulon. I am ordered to wait here to stand court-martial for the loss of the Polux. And the Surprise is to leave immediately for England under command of Pullings to be sold out of service."

"Oh, God, Jack. This simply can't be," I said, my voice shaking. "That's not how history is supposed to happen. Sir Francis is supposed to come here to Gibraltar in another week and dispatch the Surprise for the far side of the world."

We looked at each other and then at Stephen. "You've changed our history, brother," he said quietly. "You were never meant to take the Surprise out of Gibraltar until Sir Francis arrived. It was a risk you said you were willing to take. So now, my dear, how will you face this? By leaving your other self to deal with all the infinite variations that could ensue from your rash, volatile actions that led directly to this new reality?"

"But he can't put history back now. Not the way it was and if he leaves it alone, Stephen, then he may never come to me in my world. It would change everything not just here, but also there because we won't have the founding book without the events unfolding as they do there and ... without the book, we won't have the film." I swallowed hard and looked at Jack. "And we won't have you without it."

"I shall need to correct time, then. Stephen, joy, help me understand what I must do," Jack said, his hand touching Stephen's elbow, a look of determination on his face.

Stephen paused, his hand to his chin. His eyes closed for a second as he considered. "There seems only one choice, brother. Go back through the portal, then return alone to this world at the time you first came through with us. Then relive a bit of that time in the way it was supposed to be lived, at least until you know you have restored the natural progression of moments as they should have been before you played with them."

It was agreed then. Jack would take me back, then return alone to set things right to make sure history unfolded the way it should have.

Stephen left us and returned to the ship. One last look at the harbor, I begged Jack, one last glimpse to absorb this time. But Jack insisted with his characteristic entreaty that "there is not a moment to be lost."

As we walked to the alley, he told me he wondered if it was the returning to set things right in his world that was exactly what his dream had been warning him against doing. It made me shake to hear his concern, but I told him I trusted that he was the one man capable of pulling this off.

Back in my world, I was strong only for Jack. I hugged him before he went through the portal again, told him I loved him, made him swear to come back to me. But as he disappeared, I was worried about what I'd read in his last kiss for me.

What if it was my last moment with him? I stared as the shimmering air that had absorbed Jack stilled - it was as if the portal had never existed there. And a certainty swept over me that Jack, alone in his real world, would at some point reflect on what he'd given up versus what he'd gained. Wouldn't he so regret leaving that life behind that he would choose this time to stay there? He might have loved the people in our group, and I believed he did, but was it enough?

He had been happy in that life. He had meaning there. If he could now freely choose, wasn't it that world he'd prefer? Again and again, I thought of Maximus and wondered how he'd reconciled his new life with the old.

Back in the hotel, I paced and waited, becoming more and more convinced that Jack would not come back. I began to plan the number of days I'd wait for him and what I'd do when I finally was forced to admit the truth.

And in that long evening into night, I began to feel ill. At first, I chided myself for being so weak as to let my emotions make me sick. Then, as nausea overwhelmed me, I wondered if my body could already be trying to tell me I was pregnant. Eventually, I simply gave in to both the mental and physical misery and laid down on the bathroom's tile floor. Feverish dreams of Jack, knowing he was gone from me and so certain he would choose not to return, haunted me whenever I dropped off to sleep.

I remember clearly lying face down on the tiles at one point and feeling his spirit leave me. I remember how empty I was without it. How it felt in that moment to not have his strength or courage; how it felt to realize that his strength and courage were now the first things I thought of when I thought of Jack.

And in the moment of realization that he was back with me, how easy it was to rely on him to take care of me when I was at my weakest. He didn't disappoint me.

We left San Diego the next day. It was another day before I stumbled out of bed and went online to check in with Uma, to find out what had been happening while I was gone.

After, I crawled back into bed. Jack found me wrapped deep under a comforter and still just a bit chilled. He smiled into my eyes when I asked him to come be my human blanket.

He's such a good cuddler, have I ever thought to mention that, Diary? If not, perhaps it's because there's just so many things I've never thought important to point out about Jack. Like the way he can smile in the face of things that scare him. Like the way he can look like a little boy when he first glimpses the open waters of Lake Pontchartrain or the Gulf. Like the way he knows exactly when the weather will change. Like the way his big hands fly when he's showing me how to tie a nautical knot. Like how I've never seen him cry from pain but I've seen him weep when his heart is touched. Like how ruthless he is when he plays chess with me. Like the absorbed expression his face takes on when he plays his violin for me, sitting nude in our bed and moving in languid time to the music he makes. Like the fierce set to his eyes and jaw whenever he feels something or someone might threaten me.

I sighed so deep when he cuddled me to him in this moment; he rested his cheek on mine and I felt encased in him. We talked about what had been happening with the others in our group. And, in doing so, we found a way to talk about what had happened between us.

Was it all worth it, he mused finally. Everything is worth it if you learn and grow, I replied. Even if you make mistakes along the way, he asked softly. I turned to kiss his jaw and told him I was often embarrassed that I seemed to have to make mistakes in order to learn.

Whispering to him, "Jack, I'm so very sorry for any mistake I made that hurt you."

"Ah, my little dear, I too have regrets. I acted like a scrub and yet I had wanted it to be the most wonderful time for you." I felt his arms wrap tighter around me; wetness from his eyes falling on my cheek made me cry with him. Neither of us could speak for long moments. He cleared his voice finally and said, "Though, I tell you one thing clearly. I can never regret that in that time we found a better understanding. I believe that my love for you has only been strengthened. And, amorata, I am not above admitting that I prefer the way you look at me now."

So, bottom line, what did we really learn from our time through the portal, I asked him. We learned to be more open with each other, more honest, he told me.

"Then be honest with me, beloved, about one thing that still troubles me," I begged him. "Just how much did you wish it had been possible to give me a child? Was most of that the portal's influence or was it really how you felt?"

"In return, amorata, will you be honest and tell me if you would have really minded having my child? If things could be different for us, if it were possible here, what would be your choice?"

I turned in his arms and we looked in each other's eyes.

Oh, dearest Diary, you know me well enough to know that I'm unlikely to share that particular secret with you, don't you? It might simplify us both, to share the words we spoke to each other in this intimate moment.

And, truthfully, it so little matters what we said. What matters so much more is that we were carefully honest with each other. We didn't mince words; that had ceased to be necessary between us. But Jack and I, we were never people who would want to be anything less than careful in such fragile moments with someone we loved.

You know, Diary, I think it's so appropriate that one of the most important things I feel I learned from the mysteries of the portal is this: love is both blind as a bat and as sharp-eyed as an eagle.

That's not really the contradiction it appears, but more reflective of love's complexities. Isn't it just as true that your love for another makes you blind to his faults as it is true that you can't really say you love someone until you love him not in spite of his shortcomings but because you can clearly see they are part of his wonders? It seems so appropriate to have learned a lesson about love for Valentine's Day, after all.

There are so many things I still don't know about Jack because no matter how well I can see through him, I keep discovering new layers. Ah, yes, that's certainly another truth that seems a contradiction.

Then again, isn't my appreciation of contradictions one of the things you love most about me, Diary?