CHAPTER 59: HEART ON FIRE
There is a sudden moment of stillness in the room. Nobody dares to move a muscle as Thomas's declaration hovers in the air.
Both John and Jim are staring at the bodyguard, but their faces exhibit two opposite expressions; the doctor gapes bewildered while the criminal grins as a sense of deep satisfaction settles in. His little puppets are outdoing themselves in this round.
Sherlock, on the contrary, instantly gazes at Giulia to study her reaction; upon hearing those three words, she stopped dead in her tracks, shutting her eyes close. Yet he can't read her right now; he isn't capable of interpreting her actions.
She is the first one to budge, breaking the spell of immobility. She turns swiftly on her heels and shakes her head.
"No, you don't. And if you really do, let me tell you you love me the wrong way. I don't want to be loved like this. None of the men that ever said that they loved me truly did; none of you was capable. If you were to really love me, you would have to accept all of me, the whole package. This includes my family (and Luca never agreed to that) but also my trauma and my ghosts from the past – and that's the department in which your proclaimed affection is lacking," she hisses.
Sherlock listens carefully to her and blinks, stunned by the pain in her voice. He doesn't know much about feelings, and he has always regarded sentiment as the ultimate enemy of his rigorously logical mind. Unlike him, though, she knows exactly what she is talking about. She has not only the courage to give her love to others, but she also possesses the maturity to ask for the right kind of love in return. She knows what she wants, and she won't settle for anything else.
Thomas jolts forward, restrained by the chains around his wrists and ankles, and protests, "What do you mean, Giulia? I have always been by your side. I saved your life, for God's sake. I put you in contact with the MI6, and I did everything to protect you. I know all about your past."
"Yet you asked me to put it all behind me to start over with you," she objects angrily. Did he really think that she would let it all go?
When he hears the rage in her answer, he falls back against the backrest of the chair and sighs heavily, his eyes lowered to the ground.
"Was it all that bad, imagining a quiet life for the two of us, far away from all the threats that were still looming over your life?" he murmurs, his voice tainted with sorrow and disappointment. He presented her with the happiest prospect that anyone in her conditions could dream of. Yet she refused it without a second thought. She didn't want peace, and she would never see him as anything more than a mentor, a friend.
His aching tone tugs at her heartstrings and her icy face faintly softens. "It wasn't bad. What you suggested might be a dream of many, but it wasn't mine. I told you: I needed answers; I wanted to chase after the perpetrators of the attack. What you offered wasn't the life I desired."
At that moment, Jim intervenes to torture Thomas even more. He fakes a sympathetic tone, "Women are so fickle. Sometimes, you must wage a war to win them over. And they can be ungrateful, too. You were ready to give her a proper life, treat her like a queen, but she… oh, apparently she preferred someone else over you," he gestures towards the girl standing between her flatmates.
Thomas follows the direction of Jim's finger and grimaces at the scene in front of him.
"And look at you now, Giulia," he rebuts curtly. "You're running on the very edge of life and death."
"And I've never felt more alive," she replies, staring right into his shocked eyes.
"This is the life I want," she affirms and points at Sherlock and John before spreading her arms open. "The excitement, the danger, the adrenaline; that's what I've always been after. You of all people should know that. I was so restless when I was locked up in my gilded cage of the Consulate. You trained me to face all sorts of threats; what did you expect?"
"Look at you, Giulia, suddenly becoming the apple of discord between these two men: a disloyal bodyguard and a sociopathic detective. Frankly, darling, you have a questionable taste in men," Jim smirks.
She ignores his remark and takes one step towards the glass; a sorrowful grimace wrinkles her lips. "Tom, you had already had enough thrill for a lifetime and just wanted some peace with me as your life partner. But those weren't my plans. It hurt me to push you away, but I couldn't force sentiment."
She keeps her gaze fixed on his as her face turns into stone. "But you couldn't accept it, could you?" she shouts. "You couldn't accept that I didn't want you. So, you turned against me. You betrayed me," her voice drips disappointment and fury.
Jim chimes in again, pouting, "Traitors are simply the worst. Even Dante, in his Inferno, placed traitors in the lowest circle of hell: the worst sinners. They are unforgivable, don't you agree?"
She narrows her eyes at her old friend, reserving him a long steely gaze. "There's no need to wait for divine retribution. I'll ensure that human justice will take its course for him."
Moriarty arches a brow at her predictable answer and retorts, "I have something better in mind, actually. You could punish him right here, right now. Are you ready to be a special knight of justice today, Miss Giulia?"
She turns to the monitor and gapes in horror. "Are you asking me to deliberately fail the next round just to get him killed?"
The mere idea makes her shiver in disgust.
Moriarty frowns at her simplistic way of thinking. "Of course not. I know how prideful Sherlock is; he would never let you throw a match with me," he smirks at the detective before continuing, "I'm here to suggest a little twist to this round. Instead of providing you with an incentive to play, I'll give you a reason not to."
"Refusing to play would mean signing Thomas's death warrant," Giulia objects. "How could I ever agree to do that?"
Moriarty flashes her a bright smile. "We have an addition to the game, this time. If you don't get the right solution to the riddle of this round, not only your former bodyguard will lose his life, but I will also trigger the flames in the room."
At that moment, Jim activates an automatic mechanism that makes all the nozzles on the left wall move simultaneously, pointing down with an eerie screech. The three of them hold their breath, waiting for further movements. Only the farthest spout switches on, and a burst of flame blazes at the far end of the room. Even though the flame doesn't last for over three seconds, they all perceive the intense wave of heat brushing against their skin.
"You're going to kill us all," Giulia breathes out, staring horrified at the long string of nozzles lined up on the wall. There's no need for a big stretch of the imagination to conclude that if all of them activated, no human being could survive in that room for over thirty seconds before ending up charred.
"Not exactly," Jim shakes his head. "You see, I would still open the door at the end of the room; yet the only way to reach your freedom would be to walk through the flames, probably getting severe burns. Not to mention that considering Doctor Watson's leg injury, I wonder if he could even make it to the exit," he pretends to ponder that devastating possibility while scratching his chin in a contemplative pose.
Giulia instinctively looks down at John's bandaged leg and bites her lips.
Then she turns again towards the screen to face Moriarty and lifts her head high, affirming, "We would never leave John behind."
He shoots her a condescending look. "There it is, the heroic spirit I was talking about. You'd be willing to sacrifice your life or get yourself badly burnt just to save your friend. Yet, it's the ever-loyal John Watson, so I could try to fathom why. But would you really be willing to put both your flatmates in danger just to save a traitor? Is he worth it?" he points an accusatory finger at Thomas.
"My dear Giulia, think long and hard about it for you have a choice to make. You can choose not to play this round and not to save your old bodyguard. I would obviously kill him, but your lives would be spared. You'd be safe, and I would just let you proceed peacefully to the next room. Here," he opens the door at the end of the room as a gesture of goodwill.
"But…" his voice booms through the speakers as the door automatically slams shut again. "If you choose to play and attempt at solving the enigma of this round anyway… well, I think that I've already made myself clear about the possible implications of a flaming inferno," his eyes glimmer with cruelty.
The girl bows down her head, defeated. She takes some deep breaths before whispering, "You can't ask me to make such a choice."
Jim smirks, "Oh, darling, I just did. And frankly, I think I'm being quite generous; it should be rather easy."
"No choice about human lives is ever easy," she barks through gritted teeth.
"Think of it as a utilitarian calculus, then: one guilty life in exchange for the safety of your innocent friends. On the other hand, Tommy-boy here is not a fairly good man. If you decide to play this round, you will endanger the people that are with you. And I bet you care about Doctor Watson and Mr Holmes, don't you? Besides, this poor sod would only get what he deserves; he betrayed you, spied on you, revealed your deepest secret, and intentionally put you in danger. By killing him, I'd just do you a favour. You wouldn't even have to get your hands dirty."
She closes her eyes as a deep sigh escapes her lips. When she opens them again, she fixes her gaze in Jim's deadpan look as she mumbles, "I can't do that."
"Yes, you could. I certainly wouldn't judge you. And in all fairness, your friends lack the moral grounds to judge you either. In the end, it is just between you and yourself. Thomas Wellington would simply become the victim of the twisted game of a deranged criminal," he shrugs as if he wasn't talking about his own sick actions.
"You're asking me to kill him," she protests.
"No," he patiently corrects her. "I would be the one doing the killing. You just have to stand there and do nothing."
"I would be just as much responsible. I'd have his blood on my hands," she raises her voice to mask the flicker in her tone.
"Technically, I'd be the one wiping the blood off my clothes," he pedantically corrects her, which leads him to straighten subconsciously the lapel of his expensive suit.
"But I suppose that metaphorically you might be right. Who cares, though? I won't say anything to anyone, I promise," he emphatically places a hand on his heart. "Nobody will know."
Giulia turns her gaze to her tied-up bodyguard. He keeps his head down submissively; he doesn't even beg her to save his life.
She whispers, "But I would, forever."
"That's the price of having a conscience, I suppose," Moriarty stifles a yawn. He clearly can't understand moral concepts such as guilt or remorse.
"Do we have a say in this life-and-death choice?" John intervenes furiously, limping forward with an expression of pure hatred in his eyes.
"I'm afraid not, Doctor Watson. I specifically designed this choice so that Giulia will bear all the responsibility. This round is all about her," he smiles at the girl. "And now, Giulia, I have a question for you. I know you rejected Thomas, but I can't help but wonder: deep down, do you love this man so much as to put yourself and the people you care about the most in mortal danger just to save him?"
His words echo in Giulia's mind; she considers that question for a second as her eyes are tempted to look over her shoulders at the two people anxiously waiting for her decision. She wishes she could meet Sherlock's and John's gaze, but she doesn't dare to face them.
Unbeknownst to her, Sherlock's eyes are fixed on the nape of her neck as if he hoped his gaze could pierce her skull and read whatever is going on in her head. Is she actually undecided?
His eyes dart to the chained bodyguard for an instant, and he feels his muscles tense and his heart rate increase while Jim's question resounds in his brain. And when he sees her slowly shaking her head, his breath gets caught up in his throat as he prepares himself for the verdict.
While shaking her head, Giulia closes her eyes for a fleeting moment. She won't let Jim get under her skin with his mind tricks. She already knows what she is going to choose; she has always known.
She straightens her shoulders and takes one step forward. "I choose to play this round."
Moriarty leers at her and nods, "Then I guess I found my answer."
Sherlock clenches his jaw imperceptibly and lets Jim's comment sink in before letting out a sigh. At that moment, he realises something that he could have never expected from himself: no matter Giulia's answer, no matter the underlying reasons for her choice… right now he would do anything for her.
That realisation is precisely what triggers him into his poker-face-detective mode.
He takes a step forward and quickly scans the bodyguard from head to toe, saying nonchalantly, "Alright, let's think: what would be the appropriate capital punishment for a traitor?"
Before either John or Giulia could reply, he lists in a disinterested tone, "Given that we have the statue of the Muse of epic poetry, we could take a cue from the ancient civilisations that created epic masterpieces, such as the Romans and Greeks. I would exclude the first, though, since the Romans used to hurl traitors off the Tarpeian Rock, which was a steep cliff in Rome used precisely to carry out executions," he flaunts his boundless general knowledge.
No matter the gravity of the situation, he can never resist showing off. It's just the inherent arrogance of his character, he convinces himself. He wouldn't have any ulterior motive to strut about at this very moment, would he?
He interrupts the disturbing chain of his thoughts and gives a sarcastic nod at the immobilized bodyguard. "I assume that such an option would be impractical, right now. Maybe we should stick to the Ancient Greeks and some more classical death penalties, like stoning or beheadings. Do you see anything that makes you think that Mr Wellington could be killed by a boulder or an axe?" he turns towards his friends who stare at him with their mouths open.
Giulia is the first to react and frowns at him, "Sherlock, what are you even talking about? What are you doing?"
"Since you've decided to play, I am just playing the game," he shrugs, but a cutting note seeps out of his voice.
"As always, I'm starting off by considering the possible threat against this man," he taps a finger on the glass with the same jeering attitude of children at the zoo.
Giulia scrutinises him for a few instants. She knows he is doing the most rational thing now, but she didn't miss his clenched jaw and hard gaze. Is he offended by her choice to save Thomas?
She bites the inside of her cheek. After all, he would have every right to be furious at her for putting both him and John in danger.
Watson reads the room and intervenes, providing a timely reality check, "We could discuss old killing methods for hours… Or we could take advantage of the fact that we can now interact with the hostages and just ask him," he sensibly suggests, turning towards the chained prisoner. "Mr Wellington..."
"Just Thomas, please," he interrupts him. "This is no time for formality."
The doctor nods, "Right, Thomas, I'm John Watson. Do you see any imminent threat against your life?"
The bodyguard opens his palms to them, showing his restraints. "Given the fact that I'm tied to this chair, I'd say that pretty much anything could happen to me without me being able to react and defend myself."
"No, not anything," Sherlock scoffs, and his patience wears thin. He mentally facepalms: What does Giulia see in such a dim-witted man?
"Look attentively around the room," he orders him without bothering to introduce himself.
Thomas trails his gaze around, squinting in all directions. He lifts his head up, only to be blinded by the solitary light shining in his room.
He shuts his eyes and groans, "I can't see directly above my head, unfortunately. In any case, I can't distinguish anything vaguely threatening around me. This room looks empty."
"There must be something, though; there always is," John protests, then turns towards his friends and concedes, "Okay, back to your initial method: what treacherous character of epic poems royally screwed up?"
Giulia considers his words for a second, and a sudden intuition sets her brain into motion. "Royally screwed…" she repeats and beams at the doctor. "John, you might have just pointed us in the right direction."
He frowns at her, "Did I?"
"What if the epic poems we should focus on weren't those produced in Ancient Greece or Rome? What if the connection to the threat against Thomas's life was a reference to the Arthurian legends, instead?" she theorises.
Sherlock stares at her for a moment; it takes him two seconds to get on board with her line of reasoning. "You mean the fact that according to the legend, King Arthur's wife, Guinevere, cheated on him with one of his most loyal knights of the Fellowship of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot?"
She nods at him, and he can't suppress a chuckle as he finally understands her source of inspiration from John's words.
"Well, it doesn't get more 'royally screwed' than that," he chortles.
John's eyes dart from one person to the other. "How do you two know all this stuff?"
Then he shakes his head. "Never mind. You might be onto something; this Knight Lancelot seems quite the epic traitor to me. How did he die in those poems?"
"Of old age," Sherlock and Giulia reply in unison and exchange an impressed look. No one expected the other to know the answer.
She remembers studying epic poems with her private tutors, but she wonders how Sherlock could know all of that. Was he secretly into the medieval idea of valiant knights and damsels in distress when he was a schoolboy?
"I'm pretty sure that we can rule out that potential cause of death," John sighs, discouraged, nodding at the hostage. "By the way, thank you for the confidence, folks, but you shouldn't pay attention to my words. Moriarty is the one who plays the mind games," he reminds them.
"Which is why Giulia made that instant connection to King Arthur's story: Jim did mention the word 'knight' earlier," Sherlock recalls, addressing the girl. "He asked you if you were ready to be a special knight of justice today; that's how that reference got stuck in your head," he realises, helping her retrace the steps of her subconscious way of reasoning that she wasn't even aware of having followed.
"This is promising. Did Moriarty say anything a bit more directly related to treason?" Watson chimes in.
"He did," Sherlock suddenly remembers. "He mentioned Dante's choice to place traitors in the lowest circle of hell, and he kept mentioning the inferno."
"Yeah, I heard him, but I thought he was just taunting Thomas with the prospect of punishment in the afterlife," John massages his forehead, surrendering to the idea that they are at the mercy of Jim's educated madness.
"I guess that asking for a link between the Divine Comedy and the Arthurian legends would be too much of a stretch, wouldn't it?" he asks in an overtly ironic tone. The last thing he would expect is for Giulia to take him seriously.
"Mordred," she murmurs, staring off into space while her mind connects the dots and reaches a dreadful conclusion.
Her head jerks up towards the glass while she brings her hand over her mouth, "Oh God."
Sherlock grimaces upon hearing that name. "What does one of the vilest knights of the epic have to do with Dante's Inferno?"
"What on earth are you talking about? Guys, an explanation, please," John begs as his eyes dart between Sherlock and Giulia. It's surprising how much their brains are in sync; one finishes the thought of the other.
The detective shoots a preoccupied glance at the girl who is frozen in shock, her gaze fixed just above Thomas's head.
He frowns at the scene and diverts his attention to John's plea, explaining extensively, "Mordred was indeed one of the greatest traitors in the series of Arthurian romances; he was another knight of the Round Table, and he was the main architect of King Arthur's downfall since he exposed Guinevere's and Lancelot's affair. He exploited the ensuing war to crown himself as king of Britain and eventually died in a duel against Arthur himself, but only after mortally wounding the famous king. His mere name is synonymous with treason in all epic poems. However, I did not know that Dante put him in hell."
Giulia casts a misty-eyed glance at him and nods. "In Canto XXXII of the Inferno, Dante added a specific reference to Mordred by describing that knight as "him who, at one blow, had chest and shadow / shattered by Arthur's hand"," she quotes by heart. The Divine Comedy is one of her all-time favourite classical masterpieces.
John furrows a brow, echoing her words, "Chest and shadow shattered at one blow… Shattered how?"
She doesn't suppress a shiver as she morosely pronounces, "By being savagely skewered by Arthur on his legendary sword Excalibur."
"Excellent intuition, Giulia," Moriarty's voice booms through the speakers, startling them.
He pushes a button to open a panel directly over Thomas's head; one second later, a shining sword is lowered by a robotic mechanism and left balancing above him.
Author's note: I personally adore when shows or books provide for challenging ethical choices, but I was wondering if you felt the same. So, I'm curious about what you would choose if you were in Giulia's position: would you put yourself, your closest friend, and your love interest at risk just to save another human life – the one of a traitor, no less?