[And perhaps it is funny because, stiffly, Julian laughs. Walking in circles, he knows something about that he supposes, having fled Vesuvia believing himself guilty of murder only for the uncertainty and his own weighted guilt to drag him all the way back again, looking for answers. Looking to die for his crimes. And now here he is in this room with Asra, a long way from home perhaps but strangely close to it all the same. He should do more to protest it, maybe. Shouldn't give in to his own bone-deep compulsions quite so readily, considering where it has got him time and time again before.

Instead though, he closes his eye.]

Can you blame me? This is all a bit...much.

[He says it even as he does as he's been instructed, not without a little trepidation and reluctance, but he does it nonetheless. Tries to will his broad shoulders to fractionally loosen, for the tight-wound tension in him to come undone. At first he feels nothing in particular besides a flustered uncertainty at having Asra's hands on him after all this time, but when soft sensation turns to firm pressure and slides from gentleness into pain he lets out a breath, soft and low, and his hard-held shoulders begin to drop.

Ask questions, the magician says. He certainly has plenty of those.]

How could you have been here for half a year? It's not an easy thing to believe, you know, when I've seen you far more recently than that.