[Raine tilts her head a little, taking this in. Yes, she knew much of this.]

I suspected something like that might be the case. Choice? Hm. I wonder.

[It takes her a moment to put together what she wants to say; she shifts to set her fingertips together, eyes a little distant with thought.]

...but so long as he did not change, he was always someone Martel would recognize. Always her younger brother, even though it had been four thousand years.

[Surely there was some element of unconscious desire there.]

Yuan changed, did he not?

[He seemed to have sided with Mithos originally. And yet: he'd been willing to acknowledge Martel's death.]

So did you, in some ways.