[ How has he been here half a year? How? An absurd laugh wants to bubble up Asra's throat, high and trilling and half-mad. Because our memories, like our bodies, are manufactured. It's entirely possible we never existed at all. And they can change us on a whim, make us dance like puppets to whatever sick rhyme they've devised. I fought so hard to get back, you know, fought and fought and fought, but now I realize there isn't any 'back'.

Asra sooths the pain away with careful, clever fingers, only to make it hiss forth again. Steady and smooth, like waves rushing up a shore.

When he answers, his voice is measured. ]

I don't blame you. I had... a terrible time, when I first arrived.

Don't think too hard about the lapse in time. You're here, yourself. Pulled into a fantastical other world on the whim of a people who've also decided, offhand, that you should have a slave-status. That shouldn't be possible, either.

I've been here half a year. Long enough to have fought and railed to go home, suffered defeats, gone more quietly. Wonder in circles what's wrong with me that they'd make me a Submissive, when I...

[ He bit the end of that statement off, and gave himself a small shake, and attended to the movements of his hands as if it were as anchoring for him to focus on someone else as it was for Julian to feel. His fingers flowed to the fine bones of the other man's wrists, pressing viciously in a place he knew would make the other man gasp. ]

... Next question.