"No. But on some levels, it wouldn't make a difference," Sabine admitted after a moment. "Two years ago, I'd been captured a couple of times and really needed to learn to fight. Scott had recently been through a harrowing experience that left him unwilling to trust himself in a fight. He was trying to get himself back together, when we met in the gym one night. After a while, I asked him if maybe getting back to sparring with someone who was absolutely no threat to him physically might be a way of regaining his footing. That's how he ended up teaching me to fight. And because he was my teacher, and I was his completely non-threatening therapy partner, we ended up very close--at a time when he and his wife were being very distant with each other emotionally."

She took the bottle from Will, took a sip to wet her mouth and regroup, then said, "Before you lose all faith in me, nothing ever happened. I drunkenly confessed to loving him one night two years ago, and then I went and got engaged to my then-lover. His father kidnapped me and sold me to our enemies--" Her expression turned bitterly wry. "I only wish I was kidding. I'm not. But anyway, Scott came to rescue me. At the same time, Shola was rescued and we were getting to know each other again." She decided to pause and see if Will had questions, since it was a beast of a story and... well, the next part was the hard part.