A Question of Honour
(Part B: Irene vs. Mr Jarwar)

Her poised and coolly insolent stance threw Jarwar for a moment, and he stood paralysed, gaping at her. He probably thought that she had given up too easily, and of course Sherlock knew that he was right to be suspicious.

"Okay," he said after three long seconds of standoff, then motioned jerkily at the vehicle with the barrel of the rifle. "N-now get back in with him. In the car. Slowly!"

Irene didn't move, and Jarwar continued to stare, his mind obviously racing to determine her strategy. In the car, Sherlock was doing the same.

Being separated could be a very good thing, tactically, but what was her angle? And what could he do to help facilitate her plan? He scrutinised her carefully to ascertain whether she was giving him any cues through her body language, but all he could read was the same message she was overtly sending to their captor: calm and assured defiance, with just a glimpse of contempt beneath.

"Did you hear me?" Jarwar cried frantically, looking and sounding as if he were close to tears. "I said, get IN!"

Still she remained statue-still, and the man flinched as if the weapon were pointed at him rather than vice-versa. Then, seeming to gather the last remaining resolve he possessed, he straightened, and said in a passably threatening voice, "Get in the car, or I kill your friend. On the count of three."

Sherlock's head swiveled back to Irene as if he were viewing a tennis match, like those in Wimbledon to which Mummy had dragged him until he'd been old enough to refuse. He wasn't particularly concerned with the threat, just curious to see how Irene would respond to it.

And for the first time, she did react to the man, but only to look over at Sherlock with complete detachment and indifference.

"Th-three—" Jarwar started, and droplets of sweat began condensing on his forehead.

"I don't care what you do to him," she interrupted dispassionately, finally speaking, and Sherlock was reminded of the woman on FlyAway Airlines Flight 007. "Besides, if you shoot him, you'll probably use up the last of your bullets, and then you'll have no leverage against me."

The man's jaw dropped and he convulsively looked down at the weapon in shock. Ah, so it had been the former, then, Sherlock thought. He might have previously preferred for Jarwar to carelessly expend the ammunition, but it was certainly preferable to know where they stood. (And it was smart to give the increasingly desperate man an additional reason not to fire, while he was pointing the weapon at Sherlock.)

"I detest him," Irene continued, and Sherlock realised that the look of contempt had been designed for himself, not Jarwar. "So if you think that that threat is going to make me do as you ask, you're wrong."

There was a moment of total silence as her words hung in the air, and Jarwar gaped at her.

"You're—this is a bluff," the driver said after he'd recovered, shaking his head. "He saved your life, he's your friend."

For once, both men were in perfect accord; it was obviously a bluff. Sherlock had tried his hand at talking them out of their situation, and now Irene was taking her turn. Still, she was succeeding in keeping the man somewhat distracted, and so with one ear Sherlock listened to the unfolding conversation, while he diverted the rest of his attention to their surroundings, so that when she needed him to act, he'd be familiar with every possible option.

Irene's face was a mask of incredulity. "Friend?" she repeated, her eyebrows raising in sardonic disbelief. "Mr. Sigerson doesn't have friends, as he would probably admit to you himself." She glanced derisively at him again, then turned her blue eyes back to Jarwar. "He doesn't care about anyone or anything except the thrill of his own accomplishment and the feeding of his ego. He wanted to see if he could do it, nothing more. My survival was only pertinent insofar as it meant he won."

Sherlock had to admit that her words stung—both the words themselves and the total contempt with which she said them. Even if it were part of her strategy, he recalled what he'd said about a lie based in truth being the best kind, and wondered how much of this she really did believe. Some of it at least, he knew, and that realisation ached somehow.

Jarwar still looked unconvinced. "You would be dead already if not for him," he pointed out, surreally taking the role of Sherlock's temporary defender.

The icy resilience seemed to go out of her at that point, and she sagged against the car, causing Sherlock to cast a questioning glance her way. What was her endgame, here? Two immediate possibilities occurred to him, which he reviewed and assessed rapidly.

(1.) She'll play the role of the 'distressed damsel', lulling Jarwar into a false sense of security so that she can get close enough to get the gun away from him. Jarwar will either:
(a.) Be so surprised by the abrupt switch in personas that he'll be unprepared to fight her properly.
(b.) See Irene as such a helpless female figure that he'll be unwilling to properly fight her for it.
(c.) Fight her for it nonetheless (this would be surprising given his nature—albeit not impossible given his current desperation), and she would be able to fire off the remaining rounds off of the gun.

(2.) Same damsel in distress pretense, except this time she'd depend on his meek/weak nature to compromise for her own release, which would enable her to:
(a.) Contact Mazari somehow for back-up. (Does she have his contact information? Perhaps I can tap out his mobile number, though that will take ages, and will only work if she's listening for it from the outset. . .)
(b.) Get a vehicle herself and drive it directly at Jarwar to draw his fire. (But could result in too many adverse outcomes; too risky for her as the driver).
(c.) Get a weapon herself. (Highly improbable, unless she can access my luggage in the hotel's checked baggage room—no time for that, assuming she'd even make it back to the hotel).
(d.) Conclusion: This plan has insurmountable flaws due to the difficulty/impossibility of certain resources and the constraints on our time. Preferable that she takes 1a, b or c, or another alternative that I haven't anticipated.

The entire inventory took less than seven seconds, and when he refocused on Irene, she was just starting to speak again, her voice heartbreakingly and extremely convincingly shattered. Actually, the bluff was developing quite nicely in her competent hands, Sherlock thought.

"If not for him, I would've never gone through that hell at all," she murmured softly. "He betrayed me and almost got me killed, just for his own fleeting satisfaction of victory." She gave Sherlock a look of the deepest scorn. "Please, let me go. You can have him. It's him you want, really."

Sherlock frowned slightly; besides the continued criticism of his character, which was more unpleasant than he cared to admit despite its ultimately constructive purpose, he hoped that this was a temporary diversion, rather than her ultimate goal. Option #2 had seemed quite untenable.

Jarwar appeared momentarily confused, then shook his head with his eyes lightly closed. "No. No, I can't..." Sweat was streaming down his face in rivulets now, Sherlock saw, and he knew that Irene was doing a far better job at challenging his integrity than Sherlock ever had. The man was utterly torn. Trusting Irene to continue capably, Sherlock reverted his attentions to their surroundings again, analysing how he could use any impending distractions to their advantage.

Meanwhile, Irene's voice became even softer, and higher. "Please Zairaan," she murmured. "Did you know that I have a family? I have a son. I can see family means everything to you—it means everything to me, too. I would do anything to see him again."

Sherlock's chin jerked up from his assessment and he glanced sharply at Jarwar. This was a wholly unexpected digression, but it was evidently a direct hit.

The man gaped at her in horror, and then momentarily squeezed his eyes shut in anguish. "You-you do?"

Tears had sprung into Irene's eyes now, and Sherlock was duly impressed with her performance. "Yes, but that didn't stop this man from putting his mother in danger. But I'm a good woman, Mr. Jarwar, I don't deserve this."

Even Sherlock, who absolutely knew better, almost believed in that moment that she really was a good woman—not in Sherlock's sense of the term (he didn't have one), but Jarwar's.

"I heard you were a whore!" he said in a desperate outburst that was an obvious and clumsy attempt to hold on to his previous narrative, one in which he fully understood how to act and what to do. "That's what they all said," he added more softly a moment later, as if embarrassed.

"I swear on my life, I have only ever known one man," Irene avowed with perfect earnest sincerity, and Sherlock's lips quirked in wry amusement at the multiple layers and types of irony in the statement.

Jarwar peered at her suspiciously, then his brow smoothed; he believed her. And why wouldn't he? It was the truth, in a way. But besides the lie of the child, what else was sincere? Sherlock wondered. She was so utterly convincing; too convincing for comfort. Her words struck him like blows, and resonated with a dreadful ring of plausibility.

"But... you would just leave him here? You could accept that?" He seemed sceptical that a supposedly 'good woman' could do such a thing, but Irene had the perfect response ready.

"I didn't want it to come to this, no," she said hoarsely, looking pained. "Of course I want for us both to escape, but you're obviously too good for that. So now I need to put my family first. You understand that, don't you Zairaan? Or else you'd never be here now. Sometimes you have to do what must be done to protect your family."

It was a potent combination of flattery, fostering empathy with Jarwar through shared values, and appealing to his sense of honour, and Sherlock could tell that her words were having a significant effect on him. His posture was relaxing, the muscles in his face were slackening, and the gun was slightly drooping in his arms.

Sherlock marveled at how perfectly she had understood the driver, and how she really could grasp the nature of a man, and use that knowledge to manipulate him to get exactly what she wanted. When they had first met he hadn't anticipated her level of skill (to his detriment), and so he hadn't been entirely cognisant of her process. But now that he was aware of it, it was utterly fascinating to watch her in action.

Fascinating, yet also slightly disturbing—she was so utterly persuasive.

Suddenly an unbidden and unwelcome thought flashed into his mind. How can I be sure that she isn't manipulating me now, still? That she never stopped? He frowned—where had that suspicion come from? What could possibly motivate her to do such a thing?

Isn't it obvious? the thought elaborated, a small but persistent voice whispering in the back of his mind. Protection, resources for a new life so that she's not constantly on the run. What greater motive could there be than ensuring one's survival?

Sherlock suppressed the voice; this doubt was just a byproduct of how truly convincing she was, which was a good thing. Her progress was evident: Jarwar was now nodding, his eyes still slightly insane, but starting to focus on Irene's face.

"Besides, he's not a good man," Irene was pointing out in her soft, 'good woman' voice. "First he put me in danger just for his own thrill, and now it's his fault Mohsin is dead, and he doesn't even care. You heard him, he won't even accept any responsibility for it." At this point Jarwar nodded even more vigorously.

"He has no idea what family means, Zairaan, and he never will," she continued. "He has none, except for a brother whom he loathes. He could never understand the sacrifice that you're making for your brother-in-law." Her voice became even gentler, and somewhat alluring. "But I understand how hard this is for you, how much you don't really want to hurt me."

Smart, actually, Sherlock mused, to ally herself with Jarwar. The two 'principled', 'family-orientated' individuals mutually teamed up against Sherlock Holmes, the unfeeling, uncaring sociopath. But then, once she'd gained Jarwar's trust. . .

As she's gained mine? the voice representing his more cynical side asked pointedly, and he bit the inside of his lower lip and narrowed his eyes. He normally delved into every thought and intellectual impulse he had, but this he was determined to ignore. It wasn't useful or constructive, and would only needlessly distract him.

"He is horrible," the driver said, seizing gratefully on some sort of justification. "I've been taking him around all week and I see how he is, so cold, so demanding."

"Yes," Irene said in an almost seductive voice, and her eyes seemed to caress Zairaan Jarwar, looking at him like there was no other man on the planet. Sherlock was uncomfortably reminded of the context in which he had recently received that gaze himself, and he felt himself flush as yet another tendril of doubt crept into his mind.

He shoved it away in fury. She'd had no way of knowing he would choose to come rescue her, and set all of this in motion. The idea was absurd.

But somehow she did, his cynical self contradicted a moment later. She ultimately saw through my performance in front of Mycroft and grasped how I felt before even I did, and that's why she left me all those breadcrumbs, how she was able to orchestrate her own rescue, using me. She anticipated my actions because she knows my nature and how to manipulate it, just as she's doing to Jarwar now.

Sherlock had already realised that she had played a long game, and had won it. But what if her objective actually had nothing to do with any sentiment, but was about ensuring her own protection? What had Mycroft said she'd done before, to manipulate him into getting her what she wanted? "The promise of love, the pain of loss, the joy of redemption. Give him a puzzle and watch him dance."

Had Sherlock made an identical error in judgment again? Had she first manipulated him into thinking that she was interested in him and planted seeds to make him actually develop feelings of his own, then disappeared to face unknown but inevitable danger, and then left him the puzzle of where she was, leaving just enough clues to keep him intrigued? And then, how he had danced... He blanched and his heart started to pound.

No. No, he refused to believe it. He hadn't ruled out the possibility that she had feelings for him—far from it in fact—so there was no reason to suspect her motives until it was the absolute last resort.

(But by then it might be too late.)

A sense of deep apprehension began to rise in his chest, both at his lack of involvement in or control over the situation and his fledgling uncertainties regarding Irene Adler.

"He doesn't consider how his actions will affect others; he's only ever concerned with himself, and because of that, no one will miss him," she was continuing in the ringing, commanding tones of a pastor presiding over a congregation, emphatic with conviction. "No one cares about him. But I have a child."

Jarwar looked stricken. "But what would I do with you?" he asked huskily, his voice almost a whisper. The dynamic had fully reversed, and now she had him practically begging—something at which she was all too good, Sherlock thought, his throat dry. His eyes darted once more around the interior of the vehicle but even all the pieces of broken window would be useless; the shards were small and harmless dull squares of tempered glass.

"Just tell them I was in the other car," Irene suggested, asserting the firm but gentle authority he obviously desperately needed.

"I already told them I have you!" the other man lamented, pathetically remorseful, as if the act had been a deep and personal betrayal.

But this Irene was a kind and tolerant mistress, Sherlock observed; she was feeding Jarwar exactly what he needed to hear, in the exactly correct dosages, and at the exactly appropriate time. It was so deftly efficient that it was chilling.

She was chilling, and he was conflicted. Should he continue to go along with her unknown plan, trusting that his misgivings were just a result of how very skilled she was in her current manipulations? Or should he be proactive just in case she really was only looking after herself—but then run the risk of sabotaging her tactic and damning them both? He flashed back to several minutes before, when she had squeezed his wrist and asked him to trust her. He wanted to trust her and somehow he felt that he should, but his head was in total dispute with his heart—a dilemma he'd never previously experienced (because his heart had never before played any role at all).

"Then just let me go, and you can say that I ran while you struggled to hold onto the real killer," she said with an understanding and beatific smile. "Maybe they will find me, but it won't be on your hands. You know you tried to help a mother get home to her son."

A flicker of a smile touched his lips, but rather than soften his expression it made him look manic, with his unruly hair and sweat-drenched face. "What is his name?" he asked.

Without hesitating she answered, "Hamish."

Hamish. The name evoked the memory immediately: "It's Hamish. John Hamish Watson. Just. . .if you were looking for baby names."

At once, Sherlock felt immense reassurance from that covert verbal wink, which came just as he'd resolved to draught a contingency plan of his own, in the event of her betrayal... Just as he'd realised that Option #2 was only untenable if it included parts a, b, or c (or in other words, any of the eventualities for his escape).

But no, The Woman was just that brilliant, it seemed, and he was flooded with relief that didn't entirely pertain to his increased chances of survival.

He had never relinquished control of a situation in his life, and despite the fact that he had actually consented to trust Irene, he still had residual concerns that something could go wrong (the custom of being directly in control was deeply ingrained in him). But conversely and counter-intuitively (to him), it appeared that ceding that control—and trusting in Irene—would actually save his life.

He had used reason to try to talk Jarwar into releasing them, but the other man hadn't been motivated or moved by reason, he had been motivated by emotion, and that's where Irene excelled (and he faltered).

Jarwar smiled gently, his eyes shining with that precise emotion; his surrender to Irene's will was now a foregone conclusion. "Hamish is a fine name."

"He's a fine child," she said with sharp pride, and though it came across as maternal, Sherlock saw that it was because she knew she'd prevailed. A small smile touched her face as she went in for the kill: "Because of Mr. Sigerson, I thought I'd never see him again, but you can help me get home."

"Yes," Jarwar said, nodding as if in a dream—or a trance, but not moving.

"I'll do anything," she said, obviously prompting him.

It worked, and suddenly his gaze sharpened, and Sherlock considered that that didn't necessarily bode well. "Anything?" he asked, his eyes calculating.

"Yes," Irene agreed, and Sherlock thought he saw only a trace of trepidation behind her outward certainty, but he couldn't be sure.

"All right, I will let you go. If you do one thing for me."

"Yes?"

Can he be stupid enough to ask her to kill me? Sherlock hoped. But surely he wouldn't just hand Irene his only leverage over them, as much as he appeared to want to please her.

The Woman was good, yes, very good, but surely not even she was that good.

It was Jarwar's turn to look at Sherlock with contempt. "Tie up Sigerson," he snarled with a curled lip. "Tie him up like the pig he is."

Sherlock blinked evenly at these words, relieved in a sense that that was all that he would ask, and untroubled by the man's disdain since it was obviously by (manipulated, artificially generated) proxy. And actually this is quite helpful, he thought. It would finally allow them to get close physically, and Irene could then relate her strategy to him somehow.

Without a word—just pursed lips showing her acknowledgement—she made her way through the broken glass and slid into the back seat to grasp the rope. Sherlock tried to catch her eye, but her gaze remained focused on the coil in her hands.

"Hurry," Jarwar cautioned, looking anxiously towards the motorway. "They'll be here soon, even sooner now that they know something happened that caused me to end the conversation like that."

She ignored Jarwar as she fed even lengths of rope across her palms, and as Sherlock continued to try making eye contact, she ignored him as well.

He felt a wave of impatience rise up in him, primarily because it was so foreign and intolerable to be so in the dark despite how well she was doing, but secondarily because he would have used Jarwar's momentary distraction to try and communicate with Sherlock in some way, if he were her. Instead her eyes were impenetrable and her face was arranged into a coldly neutral expression as she moved towards him on the seat, the rope draped across her hands.

As she neared, a flash of doubt seared through Sherlock again, sending bolts of adrenaline through his body, and even though he knew cognitively that he should appear to resist because that's what their captor would expect, it didn't feel like much of an act as he backed into the corner and braced his arms behind him, looking into her face challengingly.

"Let her," Jarwar said menacingly and raised the rifle without hesitation, apparently finding new fortitude in his "alliance" with Irene.

Sherlock gritted his teeth and glared at his former driver in annoyance, then looked questioningly at Irene again. But he found no answers in her expression, no indication that she was going to communicate anything to him at all, and the fact that he could not read her had never been so damnably maddening—or perilous.

But then he recalled the name she had given her fictitious son and her previous plea for trust, and decided that his interpretation of the data must be skewed due to the heightened stimulation of his nervous system. It was unreasonable to think that she would simply abandon him to the LeT after he had saved her life from that exact group, and after. . . everything else. Surely the name was a codeword meant to tell him to trust her, what else could it be?

Clenching his jaw, he brought his wrists forward and put them together, aware with every protesting neuron in his brain that he was placing his fate in Irene's actual hands, and if he were mislaying his trust, it would be catastrophic.

Then, as she began to wrap the cord around his wrists firmly and securely and with practiced dexterity, another, somewhat paranoid, thought occurred to him. Perhaps she had used the name to lull Sherlock into a false sense of security, so that he would trust that her plan included both of them, and not interfere with hers by devising his own.

"Irene," he appealed reflexively, unconsciously, as if stating her name would bring back the woman with whom he'd spent the past 24 hours, or melt her glacial façade, but she acted as if she hadn't heard him. Instinctively he began to struggle in earnest, sweat condensing at his temples and brow.

But it was no use; the rope didn't even flex, let alone slacken. When a dominatrix bound a person, she knew what she was doing.

This was not good, very not good, he admitted to himself in alarm. He had thought that she would make a dummy loop or at least a slipped knot and tuck the spare end under the coils, so that upon inspection it would appear that he was tightly secure, while in fact he could easily escape if he yanked his wrists apart. But these were intricate and robust double constrictor knots—nearly impossible to untie once they had been tightened.

"His ankles too," Jarwar said when Irene finished, and Sherlock was aware that he was openly staring at her, his eyes burning blue-hot into her cold, unresponsive ones, demanding some sort of sign or explanation.

Nothing came—no subtle wink or slow blink, no moment's pressure of her hand, no significant eye contact, nothing. Disbelief and distress abruptly and completely flooded his mind, and he felt so overwhelmed by the concept that she could possibly betray him, that he found himself unable to think clearly about any potential escape plan of his own. Instead, he just kept returning to the time they had spent alone, and he found it impossible to reconcile that woman—the Irene who'd seemed to finally show him the person behind mask—with the automaton in front of him.

But then he would flash to the contrast between how she had acted towards him back in London, in front of the fireplace in Baker Street, and how she had behaved only an hour later on the grounded aeroplane. Though this was a far more extreme situation on either end—their intimacy and her treachery—the parallels could not be denied, and he felt as if he had swallowed ice.

This time he did not, could not, so placidly submit to her bindings, and even though Jarwar shouted and jabbed the gun at him, he struggled against her, kicking out in the confined space in front of the seats.

"Irene," he said, a bit louder, a little more desperately, not caring that Jarwar could hear. After all, wouldn't this be his reaction if everything she said really were true?

If it were really true? that damnable voice scoffed scathingly.

And consistent with the detestable voice, she continued to ignore him, seeming totally unfazed. Moreover, she turned her back to him, sat on his thighs and folded her legs tightly around his knees and calves so that she could loop a measure of rope over his feet. She was strong, and try as he might, he couldn't get any leverage against her, not the way he was positioned. He thought that perhaps some of her clients enjoyed resisting being bound so she'd had plenty of practice, because she seemed all too proficient and expert at this. Like the binds around his wrists, the knots around his ankles did not have any give at all.

Her pose in his lap strongly reminded him of the night before and he seethed over the perverse contrast of those moments and this one. Perhaps nothing they had shared had been true at all—it had all been a means to her end. And maybe she had never intended for things to come to this, but now that they had, she wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice him for herself, especially since he had completed his purpose. He was disposable.

And yet still. . . His mind, which among many, many other things could recite the complete works of George Enescu note by note, and quote every published article by Linus Pauling, could not actually reconcile itself to that idea. Even if this apparent turn of events was perhaps unsurprising to the more cynical and detached part of his nature, it was still too profoundly devastating—for so many reasons—to actually accept. It had been one thing to be concerned with this as a potential possibility (he was always aware of the worst-case scenarios in any given dangerous situation), but it was altogether another thing to actually experience it.

This could still easily be part of her plan, he reassured himself, albeit with increasingly weak conviction, as he watched her back gracefully back out of the car without a glance behind.

As he continued to stare at her through the broken car window, his eyes ablaze and his heart pounding in the closest approximation to mortal panic he'd ever experienced, he continued to shift and twist his hands one way or another, but the knots were mercilessly secure. He was idly aware of Jarwar circling the car and unlocking the rear door upon which Sherlock leaned, but Sherlock's eyes didn't wander from what he could see of Irene's figure.

His captor leaned in to inspect the knots, and finally Sherlock averted his gaze from The Woman to eye Jarwar appraisingly. If the man moved forward just a bit closer, and angled his face slightly more towards Sherlock, he might be able to deliver a solid head-butt. If he managed to knock Jarwar out, surely then Irene would confiscate the weapon and unbind him. After all, she didn't want him dead, did she? She just wasn't above trading his life for her own self-preservation, it seemed. . .

Just 'seemed', he insisted, but his assertions were starting to feel ever more hollow and unconvincing.

And then, to his immense frustration, the man never provided the necessary angle, and soon he moved out of range to examine the strength of the knots around Sherlock's ankles.

He glanced away in disgust, already knowing what Jarwar would find, and he saw that Irene's position had changed somewhat, and that she was now looking at him directly for the first time since this had all begun.

With Jarwar preoccupied, he took the opportunity to mouth, "Care to share with the rest of the class?"

She looked back at him impassively, then said in a normal volume, "It's obvious, isn't it?"

He stared, the blood roaring in his ears. He hadn't expected that response, and though he tried to discern what could be obvious, only one thing occurred to him: the very possibility he was trying to deny.

"What...?" He shook his head numbly, overcome by the mere thought of her possible (likely) betrayal. Since he could count the number of people to whom he'd given his trust on one hand, he had never been burnt by mislaid confidence, let alone to such calamitous effect. She had to be bluffing; he could never have been so utterly and thoroughly deceived, for such a sustained period of time and through such intimacy.

"No... not obvious..." His voice sounded flat and weak even to his own ears, the alien confusion overwhelming him.

And then Jarwar was finished with his scrutiny of Sherlock's binds, and apparently greatly satisfied, he slammed the door against Sherlock and circled around the car to stand by Irene's side. She spared a moment to smile at him, then fixed Sherlock with one last, lingering gaze.

"Sorry about dinner," she said, an ironic smirk on her lips but a deadly serious glint in her eyes, and although Jarwar wasn't in on the 'joke', he cast a look of gleeful spite towards Sherlock as well.

Sherlock stared blankly at her for a moment as the words failed to sink in, an almost inquisitive look on his face. And then, abruptly, they crashed down around him, and he was filled with profound horror over his cataclysmic error in judgment. Every muscle in his body seemed to turn to stone and immobilise him on the spot, and all he could sense in his fog of shock were his own words, which resounded back to him with cruel finality:

"Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side... This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head... I've always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage, thank you for the final proof."

He never could have fathomed that those words would apply to him, but now they sounded like a death sentence. One that he masochistically almost believed he deserved: the price to pay for his indescribable folly.