Deep into the darkness that night, Jafar blundered up into his laboratory, behind the secret passage. He was dressed chaotically and his expression was dragged into a grimace of shock. He found Iago sitting on his mystic hourglass, eating grapes. "Good..." Iago glanced at the hourglass, "morning Jay. You look like you've had an exciting night."

Jafar should have taken this moment to remind himself that Iago knew nothing about his and Suzuki's dangerous liaison. Instead he burst out bluntly, "I'm going to be a father, Iago."

Iago laughed and tossed another grape into his beak. "At your age? A father? Hahahahaha! Hahaha... haha... ha...ha..." He fell silent, awed. "Wait... you're actually going to be a father?"

"Yes."

"As in, you fathered a child?"

"Yes."

"As in, you've been-"

"Yes!"

Iago stared at him, quite openly aghast. A half-chewed grape fell out of his maw. "How old are you?" he demanded. "Actually, don't answer that, there's a more important question. Who's the mother!"

"Suzuki," Jafar said simply. Iago groaned.

"I knew it," was what he groaned. "I knew it. Animal instinct, I told her. Tension, I told her. But even the Great Iago Mood Barometer is a little too refined to notice when honourable master and secretary are going at it like a pair of heat-crazed rabbits." He stared at Jafar, who climbed lethargically up the stone steps to the hourglass, then gave up and sat on one, leaning heavily on his staff. "Allah, just look at you," he said, fluttering down with the grapes clasped in his feet. "You walk in and the tone of conversation is lowered instantly."

"I'm going to be a father," Jafar repeated, quietly. He moodily picked up his staff and started to hypnotise a nearby moth.

"At least Suzuki is still young," Iago pointed out, relentlessly. "And, well, you've still got a black beard... Maybe it won't be too hard on the poor kid."

"When Princess Jasmine is twenty eight, my child will be the age she is now," Jafar said in wonder. Inexorably, he danced the moth closer to a flame underneath some noxious, poisonous experiment of his. The possessed moth fluttered delicately into a fiery suicide. "When I am an old, decrepit man, my child will be young, strong and in need of a father." His eyes flashed suddenly and three more moths were rushed to their burning doom. "I must get hold of that lamp!"

The wasir and the parrot sat together. Iago pushed a grape into Jafar's hand and he ate it absentmindedly.

They talked the sun up together in low, friendly voices. They spoke of old times and moments now gone and opportunities lost. They talked about Suzuki in Japan, Suzuki in Agrabah, Suzuki as she would be with a baby at her breast. They laughed at old, sick jokes and experimented with evil cackles. When the dawn was completely stained, Iago said, "You know, Jay, I'm impressed there's enough human in you left to care."

Jafar smiled sadly. Iago suddenly felt quite anxious and reached for another grape, but they'd eaten them up when the sky was still black. "One day I shall become completely inhuman, Iago," he told Iago kindly, "and when that day comes, you will betray me. I pray I am weak and human for long enough."