For a few moments, he just keeps staring in the mirror--at John, more than himself now. It's easier to look at John; easier to be sure of who he is, what he is.

The words don't mean much, not at first. All words sound wrong in his head, not the right language but he doesn't remember what the right one is. Close, but not close enough. But the longer he stays like that--watching John's face, feeling his hands--the more pieces start to fall back into place. It's not all at once, not in the right order--

(He remembers a woman with outrageous hair and clicking heels. Listen to my voice. Take my hand. We'll get you to safety.)

But he can at least feel them now, the pieces of who he is, who he's made himself. He can't look at his own face, not quite, but he can see the dog tags hanging around his neck. John's dog tags.

Something about them. The day John had given them to him. The same day he'd revealed so many of the people he'd loved, the men he'd been, but not all of them by far, not the ones…

A wordless sob escapes him, and without realizing he's moved at all Jack finds that he's turned to press his face into John's shoulder.