If. [ For a moment, the sheer amount of indignation laden in that word—if—makes Asura sound like more of himself. Like the man who always found novelty in the gall of others (regardless of whether or not they were the person who'd saved him, because Asura? he's an indiscriminate son of a gun), especially those who foolishly sought to challenge him in feats of strength and will. Even now, when he's little better than an invalid, he still doesn't know how to lose. How to be vulnerable. How to do any of this, much less how to contain his frustration when every step he takes forward, toward the chair which Sokie's set in the basin of the tub, sees him weebling, wobbling, but not falling down. ]

Is that a challenge I hear, Sokie Undertown? You know I can't resist a contest, much less one where the prize benefits the both of us. Though...

[ Stopping just sort of the tub, Asura inhales (shaky), exhales (steady), and centers himself so that no, he won't lose his balance while shirking off his own pants. He didn't fall on Sokie, so his balls are safe (for now!), and he hasn't got the slightest intention of dealing with the wet fabric when transitioning from hair-washing to the hot soak of a bath, and so: off the pajama bottoms go, divested from his person and left for the wolves. His own weakened constitution is hindrance enough.

Good thing that he can still carry on, chattering away with no impediment but a rattling, chest-borne wheeze; a distinct shortness of breath: ]

After the trial is hard to pin down. Too many variables, too many moving parts. And so long as there's the potential for justice going unmet, then— [ He, as the hammer of Summer's justice, will have to be prepared to mete it out instead. There is no other path which awaits for him. ] —that's something we shouldn't talk about. Not yet.

[ Because that argument can sit and brew upon the horizon. Asura, he doesn't have the energy for it, and Sokie, she doesn't deserve to have it foisted upon her now. Not when they've yet to recover, embrace one another, and acknowledge in full what had happened to them both.

Taking his seat upon the chair (were it anyone else aiding him, it'd be a humiliation, accepting this level of help; this amount of care), he reaches forward to start the water, setting the temperature to scalding (and somehow yet, he still shivers). ]

Right now I just want to feel without falling. [ —he confesses as the water rains down, and blood (his own) colors the runoff, rinsing free of his hair. The water is blistering, and it isn't enough (and it won't ever be, not to replace the heat missing from his chest; the parts of him which had been cut out), but Asura knows what will be, intoning the answer to his salvation with the soft-spoken reverence of a prayer: ] Your hands, your voice, and the water. Need that. Need you.

[ And she is benevolent enough to grace him with close proximity, the water overhead cut off and pulsed on again in the rhythmic lull of repetition as she washes his hair, rinses, and begins the process anew until—

(All he can feel is Sokie, Sokie, Sokie, her hands which told the story of her emotions guiding him through the shower and ensuing bath, but not without a shove (her) and a blind grope (him) or two.)

—he is clean, dressed in fresh sleeping clothes, and settled atop their bed rather than his own. And maybe, he's pathetically close to passing the hell out right there, atop the sheets which are full of Sokie's scent, but he hasn't given in. Sleep hasn't claimed him just yet. He's still going to win...! ]

[ A Sokie Undertown who does not employ the use of magic when it is to her benefit to do so is c e r t a i n l y no Sokie Undertown who Asura knows, and that's why...!

His arms encircle her middle when she leans in close to nudge him down, against the pillows, his hands clasping together at the small of her back to ensure that, when he falls down against the mattress in full, she'll follow suit. And with a creak of bedsprings, they flop! across the bed-linens, and though Asura is left a bit breathless for the move, he is no worse for it. Yes, fatigue weighs heavy on his brow, and his green eyes are set to half-mast with the encroachment of sleep well and truly upon him, but his body (what hadn't been taken from him) remains sturdy, and is anchor enough to see Sokie's restlessness docked in the safe-harbor of Asura's arms for the remainder of the day. Focus on yourself, she'd said before she'd helped him to wash clean of the abasement of being butchered and chained, but... there's just no damn way that he can.

Not when she hadn't answered his question ("tell me what it was like?"), not when she'd spent herself on his well-being for the past three days and nights. Laying side by side, Asura's hands still threaded together where they rest at Sokie's back, the King... smiles, and it's goofy looking. Dumb as hell. The expression made every bit as bleary as Asura's vision by the siren-song of sleep, but it's genuine and it's present, not only because he'd succeeded in dragging Sokie to bed with him, but— ]

It'll help you, too, if you sleep with me. [ —look at them, they both can be adults and mind themselves. As Asura can use the word 'sleep' without any wayward connotations.]

Do you know, Sokie...? [ Know what? Well, there's a brief pause, if only because a yawn interrupts Asura's sleep-muzzled drawl. ] Your hands express what you don't. When you're tense, they find your face, and when you're afraid, they shake. And when... you're patient and you're tender, helping me to be new again, they're like nothing else in the whole damn universe.

[ Lips? Pressed to the temple of Sokie's forehead in a kiss, lingering and sweet, which they'd been denied in the washroom. ]

But they need rest, no different than you. So... [ Asura, he's almost irritated with how thick his voice sounds. How exhausted he'd become after being awake for no longer than a handful of hours (if that at all). ] ...don't you leave me, Sokie Undertown.

[ He needs her, just like he'd said. And he wonders if she might need him, too. ]

[ She's never been this gentle with him, this deliberate in allowing him to seek the creature comforts of resting his heavy head against her chest so that he might be eased back, into the realm of sleep, by her warmth and the slow draws of her breath. No, she is not the Queen of Spring, and it does not occur to Asura to draw comparison between them: Sokie is Sokie, and she is how he knows that he is safe; that when he closes his eyes again he will not return to a lonely mountain or pit of stone. And even if the drone of his once-Keeper's voice should come to him in dreams, he is strong enough to separate himself from it, but...

Maybe Sokie doesn't know it, how resilient he is. And perhaps that's why, for all that she's embraced him (cared for him, given her magic to him), she has put distance (vulnerable, she'd called him, dismissing his words) between them too. Were he not so drained (from a simple shower and bath, from cleaning away grime, blood, and dirt), his temper might have flared at the realization, but as it is, he only seeks out more of her. To be closer still. It is after he threads one of his legs between his own that he finally seems satisfied with the proximity they share, steadied by the intimacy of being so intertwined with another.

("You know I can't leave you.") ]

...wouldn't call it just shaking. [ —he huffs, eyes falling closed despite himself. And yet, he still stubbornly speaks, clinging to consciousness: ] More like the anger turns your hands to weapons. The shaking is your restraint.

[ He'd tasted as much, when he'd devoured her wrath; noticed it, in the moments before she'd asked him to deplete her of the volatile emotion. ]

And you... you're my gravity. [ Hmm? Gravity? Does Asura really know what he's saying? Turns out that he does: ] Felt the pull of your magic, when I was asleep all those days. Helped me to wake up. To know what was real, and what wasn't.