Chapter 5 - Violated

	I was married when I was fourteen.  It wasn't a choice so much as an obligation.  By that point, my family had begun to fracture.  Mother's patience was near eternal, but even the most devoted woman has their breaking point.  
	Father was almost never home anymore.  He still worked, the same as he ever had.  He never stopped coming to work, never lost that strength I'd so admired, growing up.  Even as he began to age and his body began to break down, he never bowed.  Not physically, anyway.  He was a rock.  But when he wasn't working, mostly, he drank.  By that age, I knew exactly where he went in the city.  I knew why we never had any money remaining at the end of each day.  
	I don't honestly think my mother ever blamed him for his vice.  I don't even think she wanted more from him, from our life.  She was a good woman.  Happy with very little.  She made the most of what we had, no matter how meager we lived.  She worked herself to the bone same as he and lived in threadbare clothing and a small, dirty hut she could only ever dream of keeping clean.  But we had the best-maintained hut on our street, because she tried.
	My mother wasn't perfect though, as much as I struggle now to find flaws with her.  All I saw was the love she gave.  All I remember was a saint.  But her weakness was her timid nature, her acceptance of her position beneath my father.  She wasn't an indentured servant, but she was a possession.  And she never really thought to challenge that.  I'm not really certain if it's because of how she was raised or because of her character, but either way it was a failing.  She had a son to think about, and her passivity hurt us both.
	My wife, the woman that was chosen for me by my father, was not like my mother.  I know he met her before the wedding, if only once, so I can only assume she must have acted demure and agreeable then.  Perhaps to please him.  Perhaps to please her family.  I don't think she wanted the match any more than I did, so there must have been some pressure involved.  Whatever happened in that first meeting, I know my father did not see through to the type of woman she truly was, or he never would have chosen her.  
	Ishaya was born of a different caste of workers.  The Vasja, the laborers with specific skills, like craftsmen.  Most Vasja make something for a living, Ishaya's family had been weavers.  But her family had lost their house and most of their possessions in a fire that had consumed many blocks of homes in Hyronses' Capital City, and she was only one of four daughters.  Her parents couldn't afford the dowry to marry her to another tradesmen, but they also wanted to be rid of some of their daughters while they rebuilt their family's damaged fortune.  Ishaya had been just barely old enough to marry, unlike her two younger sisters, so they'd been willing to give her to an unskilled tradesmen.  A laborer.  Really, anyone who would have had her, but my father insisted I'd been lucky to claim such a wife.  There weren't as many golden jackal families in the Hyronses as there were further north, so he and my mother had long worried it would be difficult . . . and expensive . . . for me to find a wife at all.
	By the time I was fourteen I was nearly as tall as I am now, if less filled out, but still very strong and able-bodied.  I was, as my father insisted, an adult.  Or at least, my body was.  Inside, I didn't feel ready to marry.  It terrified me, but I couldn't tell my father that.
	Marriage meant supporting myself and a wife, and potentially a child very soon after.  It meant I would need to become a provider, like my father.  I'd seen what the demands of providing for a family had done to my father.  He'd told me himself it was why he needed to drink.  The weight he had to carry every day, worrying over me and my mother was heavier than anything he had to carry at the kilns.  I couldn't even fathom what lay ahead of me.  All I knew was that soon, I'd have no choice. 
	I'd seen Ishaya for the first time on the day we were married, when the priest had brought her to the river for the binding ceremony.  I remember thinking she was beautiful and feeling some small amount of relief, because I was young at the time and that had been my first, shallow fear.  If I couldn't desire my wife, we couldn't make children.  And without children, we'd never be able to survive when we grew older.
	But for all her beauty, Ishaya was cold, and it didn't take long for that chill to seep into every corner of our lives.  Thinking back on it, I don't begrudge her the distance she put between us, even if it frustrated and angered me at the time.  She was scared.  We were both young, and much was expected of us.  And we'd had little to no preparation for what was to come next.
	We hardly knew how to speak to one another for the first few months.  I was still living in my family's hut at the time, as was customary.  We couldn't live together until we were fifteen.  And that's when we were supposed to start making pups.  I remember that uncertain year, living under my parents' roof with a wife I could barely understand.  It wasn't just the emotional distance - we literally spoke different dialects, so for a long time we had trouble making any sense of one another.  It couldn't have been a worse match if she'd been a tiger.
	I'd never lived with anyone but my family before, and for all their failings, I knew them and understood them.  So it was terribly disorienting, really.  Waking next to a stranger every day.  Trying to learn her, trying to make sense of her wants and needs while rationing my own.  Ishaya was hard to please, and seemed perpetually ill at ease and sad.  
	I think she was terrified, too.  But not just of being married.  She was terrified of me.
	It frustrated me, which made me no more pleasant to be around, I'm sure.  But I was trying so hard to be a good husband, even if I didn't necessarily know what that meant.  I wanted to make her happy.  I wanted to impress my family.
	I wanted to be better than my family.
	So I made sure not to do the things my father had done that had hurt us, or made mother sad.  I didn't drink.  At all.  I tried to save the coin I earned, and I bought her some things I promised she'd never have to sell.  I even tried not to raise my voice to her, but she made it so difficult sometimes.  No matter what I did that first year, she flinched from me and distanced herself from me, like I had been hurting her.  Like I'd been a bad husband.
	Nothing stings quite so much as being treated like you're the person you want least to be in the world.  
	By the time we were ready to live as a married couple, I was certain things would have to get better, because the idea of them getting worse was just too much to bear.  It seemed impossible.
	Then we started trying for children, and it got worse.
	Father told me the most basic elements before I left the family home, and by that point my body had begun to take its own interest in other bodies.  I didn't have much trouble accomplishing what was necessary to make pups.  At least, not the first few times.  I still found it awkward, strange and not at all as relaxing as the other boys had told me it would be.  The whole of it felt both natural and horridly unnatural, because even if my body seemed to know what to do, it always felt unwelcome.  Ishaya was a beautiful woman, and I wanted her . . . but I don't think she ever wanted me.
	Eventually, I stopped wanting her, as well.  It became something I felt I was forced to do, like work, except it was harder to will my body to be with my wife than it was to carry an entire sack of bricks.  For her part, she never really seemed to respond any different, although eventually I could tell it was at least hurting her less.
	When she finally became with pup after her third heat we'd spent trying, it was honestly a relief.  I left her alone after that, and I worked very hard to care for her while she carried our son.  And finally, somehow, things began to change for the better.  I remember the first night it began to feel right between us.  Not loving, really.  But at last, after so long feeling a stranger in my own house, coming home to her, eating dinner with her, lying beside her at night felt. . . comfortable. 
	I never desired to be with my wife again.  I suppose for some people, sex is just never what it is for others.  There's so much uncertainty and confusion tied up in my memories of being with my wife . . . I can't stomach the thought of taking pleasure in another's body anymore.  But I can't deny that even for us, it eventually brought us the only happiness we'd ever know together.   
	It was Amon who changed everything between us.  Our son brought us together, as our families, the priests and the Gods themselves never had.  

Ahsan's cough is getting worse.  It started some time ago, how many days at this point I'm honestly not certain, but it's progressed from a dry, hacking sort of thing we all have from the dust from the overturned fields into something more wicked-sounding.  Wetter, harsher.  Like he's trying to heave something up.  
	He insists he's fine, and he is still capable of going about his daily work without much obvious change.  And he's not the only man here with the cough, it's starting to make its way around the lodge.  I've seen it pass through a few others already, and none of them were worse for the wear when they got past it.  It's probably not life-threatening.
	But Ahsan is fragile, not used to this harsh way of living.  He still doesn't eat well, and I can't help but feel a pang in my chest when I see him cough.  Some of them wrack his thin figure like a hollow reed in the wind, and damnit, I'm worried.  
	Over the last few months, the hyena's become like an adopted family member to me.  The transformation I've undergone this season at this new plantation seems to have brought my life full circle.  It's closer to what it once was, in a way.  I rise, I do as I'm told, and I retire.  All beside the other indentured workers - which are as close to family as I may ever come again.  The only difference is, now I check my contract every week and I watch my earnings climb, and wait for the day when that coin is mine to do with as I please.  
Ahsan is with me nearly every waking moment, a reminder of why I must accept this reality.  Unintentionally, the boy forced me to swallow my pride, to accept my fate and tow the line.   Now and again I cringe inwardly as a voice from not so long ago - my voice - screams my doubts.  But all I have to do when I begin to reel is glance to my side and see him.  And remember that I'm pulling someone else down with me.  I wish I'd had that foresight long ago.
	I would resent that this has essentially been forced on me . . . but honestly, it's a truth I needed to see.  Because the fact of the matter is, years ago, I still had the chance to save my family.  I still had the chance to find my wife and son.  And because I refused to bend then, that chance has all but disappeared.  I am worlds apart from my them now, separated by force and time.  I could blame it all on the hyenas as I have been for years now, but ultimately I know I'm just as much to blame.  And I've known that all along.
I failed to save my son.  Ahsan isn't my son, but he needs me, and maybe that makes me feel a bit better about myself inside.  I can't entirely name my motives.  
	But I've grown silently desperate on the matter of this cough.  It's been nagging at him for over a week now and it's only gotten worse.  Most of the other men who picked it up passed it faster.  I've asked around about what can be done, but only casually and only a few people I trust, because I don't want to let on how much I'm worried.  The most I've gotten from anyone is that the guards sometimes have medicines they'll trade to the workers here.  Things they're able to purchase at the market district in the city to the south.  Things I'd never have access to from the few merchants who deign to come here and sell to us.  
	Almost invariably, when I begin to ask how one could get any of this medicine from the guards, I get a different answer every time.  Bribery, begging and appealing to their sympathy, trading goods. . . I have little to trade and even less in the way of coin, and I can't simply ask the guards to put the charge on my contract, since the house would never repay them for fetching something for me.  But there is one guard I know of who may actually have sympathy for my situation, or more specifically for Ahsan's.
	I've kept my distance from Lochan since the talk we had at the guardhouse some weeks ago, and strangely, so has Ahsan.  He hasn't even been going there at night to fetch dinner for us (which unfortunately means we haven't been eating as well, but it isn't my place to say he should go).  It's not as though I think I did anything wrong, but for some strange reason I feel guilty and awkward about the whole mess.  I was offended and angry when I thought the Aardwolf was taking advantage of the boy, but honestly, the more I think on it, the less I'm able to hate the man.  His claims of throwing coin at the hyena and wanting to see his health improve aside, there was something in his spirit that was just too aching and familiar to me.  Nothing hurts more than discovering someone you care for won't ever feel the same about you.
	And aside from that, Ahsan never treated him with any fear.  Ahsan might not be entirely right in the head, but he's not so placid that he'd take abuse time and again without showing fear for the man inflicting it.  I saw him flinch from and attempt to escape the hyena in the gardens.  He never acted that way with Lochan.  Besides which, knowing what little I know about the Guardmaster now, it's hard to imagine anyone who's lived the life of an Indentured Servant would be willing to visit the same tortures upon others that they themself endured.
But then again, he is a guard.
	That's the stumbling block I keep hitting, and why I haven't gone to speak to Lochan since the last talk we had.  For all his empathy for our situation, he's still made a career out of helping the hyenas keep us under their thumb.  An indentured servant assisting the hyenas in keeping other servants under control.  It rubs me wrong no matter how I justify it.  Maybe things are better here because he manages the pay.  Maybe he's harsh to keep us from doing stupid shit that could get us killed, like revolting.  Maybe he thinks what he's doing is for the best.
But he's still a guard.  It could just be a power trip.  The subjugated becomes the subjugator.  He even admitted he used his position of power over Ahsan, and the things he could give him, to get close to him.
	. . . although sometimes I wonder about that.  Ahsan is smart.  At this point, I've come to accept that he's far smarter than I am, and not even just in what you'd call 'book smarts'.  The hyena is clever.  I've caught him playing pathetic, tucking his ears and tail, even shivering, when I try to take the occasional night to sleep alone.  I always inevitably fold, and come to wonder afterwards if he was toying with me to get his place back on the mat.  
	I sometimes wonder how much of his demeanor is intentionally geared to get him pity, or things he wants.  He doesn't seem to care much about his severed connection with the Aardwolf, and that tells me he never did.  But he reaped the rewards while they were together.  Up until I showed up, anyway.
	If my suspicions are correct, I can't exactly blame the boy.  This is a horrible lot in life, and we all do what we have to to get by.  Ahsan has little to work with except his charm and his body.  I use my body to intimidate and beat on people who get in my way.  I can't really judge him for using his in whatever way he saw fit.  But it makes it harder to dislike Lochan.
	And that's why this whole things complicated, and why I've been avoiding the Aardwolf.
Today though, I've made up my mind.   My pride isn't worth watching Ahsan suffer any more.  Even if it's a disease he'll live through.  It could get worse.   I don't feel like playing the odds.  Maybe it's all misplaced protection for a family I can't ever reclaim, but maybe . . . just maybe . . . I honestly care for the boy.  I don't know.  I'm re-learning myself in this place.
	I'm staring at the guard lodging house, the sun growing low in the sky.  The red of the poppies surrounds us, following the slight swells of the land, like folds in a crimson blanket.  This place has never felt more ominous to me than it does now, and I'm not sure why.  I have a prickling at the back of my neck, my fur rigid, and I'm not sure why.  Sometimes I have these instincts.  But they've been wrong before, and I already told myself I would do this.  I've fought myself enough on it.
	I've never asked a favor of a guard before, (except for the various occasions when I asked them to go fuck themselves).  And I'd almost rather owe a favor to some of the guards I've attacked in the past than owe anything to Lochan.
I sigh, pausing at the door for longer than is really necessary, before steeling my nerve and lifting my fist to knock.  If I wait much longer, it'll be dark, and Lochan will chastise me for being out after curfew.
	My knuckles are closing in on the wood when the door creaks open, and I'm staring down the muzzle of a dark-furred lion, not the Aardwolf I'd expected.  The man is roughly the same height as me, but leaner, his mane unkempt, clumping in places, and dirty.  Most of him is dirty, honestly.  His leather armor smells old, worn and vaguely coppery, and it mixes with his distinct feline musk in a powerfully unsettling way.  
	I remember Lochan referred to him once as Vikram, and I've seen him in passing around the plantation.  He's always given me a creeping sensation down my spine, and that feeling is even worse now that I'm inches away from him, unexpectedly.  Lions, specifically male lions, always have this predatory air about them.  Near the Hyronses, where the hyenas have the strongest foothold in the country, their religion and their Prides aren't even permitted to exist, but I'd still see them in the city.  I worked with some of them, in fact.  There are a lot of lone male lions out in the world without a Pride.  I've never had good dealings with them.  They're the hyenas' natural enemies, something we'd share in common nowadays, but they're arrogant, specist pricks who tend to see all other predators as beneath them.  And jackals aren't all that high up amongst predators as it is, not in a city full of hyenas and big cats.
	His thick jowls slide up into a smirk and his pale yellow eyes sweep over me, giving me the distinct impression that I may as well be hanging on a hook.  "Evening, jackal," he rumbles.  "You're the new boy they brought in a few weeks back, right?  I've seen you around."  His eyes flick down my body.  "Haven't had cause to discipline you yet, though. . .  Come to give me some?"
	I swallow, not taking the bait.  "I'm here to speak to Master Lochan," I say instead, not wanting to start trouble with any of the guards right now, most especially him.
"The Aardwolf's not here," the lion says, licking over a long, stained fang.  He leans against the doorway almost lazily.  "But I'm assuming you didn't come up here for his company.  You want something?"
"Not here?" I parrot back like a fool, instantly hating myself for it.  "Wh . . . then where is he?"
"Visiting with his kin," the lion replies, snorting.  "Sister, I think.  Dodging work, more like.  He won't be back for a few weeks."
	"Weeks," I repeat, too struck by the sudden blow to care that I'm parroting again.  Lochan left?  Since I'd come here, he'd been such a constant, I hadn't even considered that he might not always be around.  And Ahsan is sick now.  I need medicine now.  
What the hell am I going to do?
	Vikram is starting to look annoyed, and with a snuff, he pushes himself from the doorframe, swinging his tail as he turns.  "You're wasting my time, jackal.  Unless there's something else-"
	"Wait," I say before I can stop myself.  
	And he does, slowly turning to regard me.  That smirk returns, and he lifts a paw towards me.  I brace myself, but all he does is gesture inside.
“Come in,” he offers.  “And let’s talk about what you came here for.”
“I need medicine,” I say, preferring to get right to the point.  And stay outside.
His ears perk at that, and then he gives a rough laugh.  “For the ragged cough?”
	I’m briefly startled.  “How did you-“
“It’s been making the rounds,” he waves, idly.  “But you’re not sick,” he notes, then smiles again.  “Who’s it for?”
	“It’s preventative,” I lie.  “I have weak lungs.”
	He doesn’t entirely look like he believes me, but he also doesn’t really seem to care.  He just snorts, then reaches forward and closes his thick, calloused fingers around my arm, the claws extending and digging in just enough to hurt.  His eyes measure my reaction, and I make sure to give him none.  
	Bravery isn’t a real thing.  It’s just that some of us are better than others at lying about not being frightened.
	“Come.  Inside,” he repeats, no room for argument in his tone.  In a few moments I know he’ll be hooking those claws around my collar if I don’t budge, so I do as I’m told.
	I’ve gotten better at that lately.  Especially when it’s for Ahsan.
	The guardhouse feels altogether darker than it ever has before when I step inside.  Maybe it’s the angle of the setting sun outside, just barely not making it through the windows anymore.  Maybe it’s the stale quality in the air, like the place hasn’t been cleaned or aired out in awhile.  I can vaguely smell moldering food somewhere.  Lochan kept this place clean and orderly, if not inviting.  That’s all I can think about as I follow the lion down the hallway, towards the sitting room.  The Aardwolf’s going to tan the lions when he gets back.
	I can hear another guard in the sitting room, which is sublimely comforting.  When we turn the corner, I see the big lioness, finishing up a meal at the table.  She looks like she was expecting us, her round ears are up, but she doesn’t follow with her eyes.  Her demeanor is different than it was the occasions I saw her with Lochan.  More subdued.  I think she looks at me, but then her eyes go straight back down to her bowl.
	“Get out, woman,” the lion commands, his tone cold and disinterested.  
	This was the fierce guard I saw sparring with Lochan, putting her bulk into the Aardwolf’s blows and nearly bulling him on to his back several times.  I expect some resistance, but there is none.  The woman stands, keeping her eyes down as she moves to the counter and deposits her bowl, then adjusts her belt over her wide hips and moves past us, going out of her way to do so on the other side of the table.  
	As she passes, and Vikram moves towards one of the cabinets, I catch her pausing in mid-step just out of the corner of my eye.  I twist an ear and partially turn my muzzle, and I swear, for a moment I seem to see her shake her head at me.  Her brown eyes catch on mine, and then I’m certain.  But a second later, she turns the corner and is gone.
	“Here we have it,” the lion’s gravelly voice breaks through the silence, and I look up to see him dangling something before my eyes, encased in a wax paper packet.  “Medicine,” he supplies.  “An herbal mixture they make in the cities, for the ragged cough.  We keep some on hand so we don’t catch your filthy ailments.”
	I again say nothing.  Even when I was looking to get in trouble, I wouldn’t respond to the sort of immature mockery the lion seems so fond of.
	“I can brew some here for you right now,” he offers, a knowing look on his muzzle.  
	“I’m not planning on drinking it now,” I say, still unwilling to part with who the medicine is actually for.  The last thing Ahsan needs is for this man to take an interest in him.  For any reason.  I can handle him, the hyena can’t.
	I reach out for the packet, but he only withdraws it and chuckles.  “It’s all we have left,” he says.  “It’ll be a lot of trouble for me to replace it before the boss gets back.  He’ll notice it’s missing.”
	“Then I’ll talk to him then,” I insist.  “We can settle up-“
	“You’ll settle up with me,” the lion sneers.  “I’m the one holding your precious medicine, here and now, when you need it.”  He shakes the packet, looking downright jolly, if it weren’t for the yellowed fangs.  “And you do need it now, don’t you?”
	I resist the urge to show him my fangs, if only barely.  Instead, I growl out a “Yes, sir.”
	“Ha!”  He exclaims, giving a wheezing cough.  “And here the boss said you’d be a troublemaker!  You’re docile as a lamb, aren’t you?”  His chuckles simmer down slowly, into his favored smirk.  “Or is it just my aura, jackal?  A bitch knows its place around a powerful man, after all.”
	I feel my temper rising up inside me, the fur along my spine growing jagged.  But he’s still holding that wax packet just out of reach, and if I jump him for it, I’m very likely to lose, and absolutely likely to lose the medicine.  
	“You haven’t got money, I take it?”  The lion asks.
	“I wouldn’t be here if I did,” I state.
	“You might,” he shrugs.  “The merchants that come here don’t sell it all that often.  Might be our stash is the only game in town.”
	“Just tell me what you want,” I press, wanting to finish this as soon as possible.  It’s getting dark and Ahsan’s going to start worrying, and I’m afraid the smell of the lion is starting to sink in to my fur.
	“If you have no coin, you’ll have to work it off,” he says, in perhaps the most reasonable statement I’ve gotten from him all night.
	“All right,” I agree hesitantly.  That’s what I do here, anyway.  Work off my debt.  I’m not sure how I could fit more work in to a day, but maybe he means to have me work after hours.  I suppose even if it means I get less sleep, I’ll manage.
	He’s silent for a bit, clearly deciding on something.  What I can’t say, but I have a few suspicions about what he might plan to ask for, and I know what I’ll agree to and what I won’t.  If we can’t reach an agreement, I’ll find this medicine another way.  If he attacks me, I’ll defend myself.  This is no worse a situation than I’ve been in in the past.  He’s not even bigger than me, and even though he is armed, he’d be a fool to mortally wound the Matron’s property.
	“First thing’s first,” he says at length, and begins opening up the wax paper envelope.  “You’ve got me concerned.  I don’t care if you aren’t sick, you drink some of this with me.  I’m gonna have you clean up this place, but I don’t want that rotten cough.”
	“I’m not-“
	“I don’t care, you clearly know someone else who is,” he says as he begins to boil water.  “Drink the damned medicine.  There’s enough here for a dozen doses, so a few less won’t matter.”
	He makes up two cups for us, and I take mine without further argument.  The idea of cleaning up the lions’ filth isn’t appealing, but it’s better than what I imagined.  And as much as it galls me to admit it, he has a point.  Ahsan could have gotten me sick by now.  It’s not a terrible idea.
	The medicine tastes awful and strange, but then all medicine does.  The lion seems to have no issue finishing his cup, so I push my way through my own, quickly.  Ahsan will have to drink this eventually, and at least I’ll be able to tell him I managed when he complains about the awful taste.
	The lion pushes his empty cup across the table at me, then gestures to a mountain of dishes on the nearby counter.  Likely where that moldering food smell is coming from.  There’s a wash basin nearby, so I’m fairly certain I can deduce what my first task will be.
	“There’s a well out back,” he instructs, standing and moving across the room towards the door.  “And the bucket’s in that corner.  Place is gonna take at least a few nights, the condition it’s in.  Floors, too.  Don’t forget the floors.”
	It’s getting dark by the time I’ve gathered the bucket and made my way outside, seeking the well.  I exhale into the evening air, sucking the smell of poppies through my nose.  The cloying scent is oddly intoxicating at times.  Even surrounded by it all day as I am in the fields, it can still get to me.  Perhaps especially tonight, it makes me feel lighter.  
	The soles of my paws are especially sensitive as I walk across the rocky earth towards the distant silhouette of the well.  I feel as though each and every grain is pressing into them, leaving an indent.  But that light feeling persists, so I’m certain I can’t be walking as heavily as it feels like I am.
	This was the best possible outcome for tonight.  That feeling of dread has entirely lifted, and is being replaced by a warm swelling in my chest.  I may not sleep tonight, but I’m accomplishing what I came here to do, and Ahsan will be well again.  I’m so content in that knowledge, it’s almost unreal.  I can’t remember ever feeling this light of spirits.
	Am I still walking?  At some point the stars began to come out, and the well hasn’t gotten any closer.  My feet are too light to touch the ground anymore, so it’s hard to tell if I’m still moving.  I dropped the bucket some time ago.
	I’m staring at the stars.  I should be working, but I can’t stop staring at them.  I’ve never really taken the time to just . . . look at them, in the past.  They’re rather like the poppy fields.  Endless and colorful.  Forming random patterns.  Is the whole world like this?  It can’t be that there’s no order to anything, that everything is chaotic like this.  But the poppies are like that.  The stars are like that.  Maybe we’re like that.  Maybe the world can’t be directed or changed.  It’s just random, pointless chaos.
	Powerful hands grip me beneath my armpits, and the last thing I remember is being grateful for them, because I’m certain my knees had struck the earth.  Not so long ago, I fell right here, in this dirt, because Lochan had shoved me over.  But these hands caught me.  

	My arms are aching when I wake, stretched high over my head.  Something is cutting in to my wrists, cold and unyielding, and my back hurts viciously.  There’s another pain, too.  Jarring and terrible and unfamiliar, and it’s what woke me.
	My mind is mired in a fog that feels like one I’ve traversed before, but so much denser than I remember.  That strange, confounding feeling of warmth and well-being is persisting, even as my mind begins to regain some clarity and the horror of what’s happening to my body pushes through into my consciousness.  The two make no sense in the same moment together, and that makes it all the more disorienting.
	I can smell that familiar, sickening musk, heightened by the lion’s current state of arousal.  The rhythmic grunting as his hips jerk into mine is unmistakable even if I can’t entirely sort through the physical pain of being violated, at least at first.  After a few moments my mind begins to truly return to me, and every second I become more aware is worse.  
	All I can think to groan out is a stuttered, breathless, “. . . the med. . . icine. . . .”
	The lion laughs, and there’s a sharp slap on my rear, my mind beginning to pick out that one of the many pains afflicting me is caused by his iron grip on my tail, held up at a painful angle, clearing the way for him to assault me.  I have never experienced a pain like what lies beneath that, in the whole of my life.  I feel like I’m being torn apart inside.
	“Got a strong constitution, don’t you?”  Vikram chuckles.  “I gave you enough to put most men out for an hour at least.”
	“You-d. . . drank it. . . too. . . .”  I weakly insist.
	“I take the Divine every day,” he says with a satisfied, guttural growl as he slows his pace some.  “Higher tolerance.”  He smacks me again, but it’s so secondary to the rest of my pain, I barely notice.  “You slaves are all stupid as donkey shit.  Haven’t met a one of you I can’t dose and fuck, one way or another.”
	I give a gurgling groan that was meant to be a scream, and try to put my all into breaking away from whatever’s got my wrists held above my head.  What I ultimately manage is to shake the chains, and scrape my knees against the stone floor.  My body is unbelievably weak.
	I’m in the cell I was in when I arrived here, I realize.  Back where I began.  Under the influence of the Divine.  Again.
	My emotions are at a fever pitch, and I can’t be sure of how much of it is coming from me and how much of it is the drug, but I can’t stop the sob that breaks out of my muzzle through my teeth.  The lion heightens his pace, and the pain intensifies.
	“Normally I like you filthy pissants asleep,” he growls contently.  “So much more pliant when you’re limp as a corpse.  But I’m liking this struggling, jackal.  Tightens you up.  So you keep at it.”
He pushes his free hand into the small of my back at that, forcing me to arch my spine in the same way that I’d woken in, and the ache returns with it.  I put up a weak resistance for only a few moments longer, before I realize through the flower’s haze that I have no chance of fighting him off.  He saw to that.
And I fell in to his trap like the stupid creature he thinks I am.  The realization sinks in to me like a knife.  He’s right.  I’m every bit as foolish and worthless as he said.  I couldn’t see through a guard’s shallow treachery, didn’t even think to, and now I’m suffering for my mistake.
Everything in my life seems to have led to this new low.  Lochan was wrong.  There is no bottom beneath this.  This is my whole worth as a person, symbolized in one heinous act.
It’s my fault I’m here, it’s my fault this is happening to me, and the only thing worse than knowing this suffering is the fear that somewhere in the world, this could be happening to my family, as well.  And it’s my fault.  It’s all my fault.   
I know when he’s done, because he pulls from me, which I take as a small mercy, but then I feel the wet streaks across my back, crawling down through my fur, and all I can do is squeeze my eyes and try not to be aware of it.  Which is impossible.
Some time, I’m barely aware how much, passes after that.  He’s been quiet, but I know he’s gotten to his feet and is standing above me.  I have no desire to turn my head to see him, I have no desire to even be alive in that moment.  And then, almost unbelievably, it gets worse.
I’m hit with a wet heat on my back, more of it than before and the scent is unmistakable.  He’s relieving himself on me, and I’m so sickened by the defilement it gives rise to the first real energy inside me.  I thrash against the chains, roaring like an animal, unable to form any intelligible words except to scream my outrage against the stone wall I’m bound to.
	He laughs at me, and the more I fight, the more he laughs.  

	The sand tossed about by the wind sticks to my fur as I limp my way back to the lodging house, barely able to keep both eyes open.  I’m numb like a man who’s been hit in the head, and the only thing keeping me upright is the knowledge that if I pass out now, here on the road, the other workers will find me in this condition tomorrow.  The distant, flickering lantern light outside the lodging house door is my beacon, and I follow it, trying to think of nothing else in the world.
	Clutched in my palm is a wax paper packet.  A different one, which the lion tossed out the door on top of me after he dragged me out of the guardhouse.  He said this one had the medicine in it, and that if I ever wanted anything again, he’d be more than willing to make another trade.
	I’ll drink it first, before I let Ahsan drink it.  But I believe Vikram.  He’s just the sort of man who’d expect someone he raped might be desperate enough to come back to him for another favor.  And there are probably some here who have.  
	I can hear the sounds of the other men sleeping inside as I approach the door, but as desperately as I want to go inside and lay my head down, curl up on my straw mat and sleep, I walk past the doorway and the dim lantern that had been my goal.  I make my way for the baths.
	The water’s freezing and I haven’t the time or energy to heat it up, but the shock as it hits my back is welcome, awakening.  I shakily grab for one of the discarded coarse bristle brushes, my wrist panging with a deep pain that tells me I’ll be bruised beneath my fur there.  The manacles he had me bound in weren’t tight, but struggling against them and the time I spent with my entire weight resting on them did some damage.
	I rake the brush through my fur, as hard as I can, again and again.  When my bucket is empty I go for another one, and then another.  I try to pull him, and the memory of him, from my body, but it’s sunk into me.  Into my fur, into . . . inside me.  I can’t get his smell out of my nose, and I’m certain I still reek of him everywhere else, as well.  
	I scrub until my body feels raw and there are wet clumps of my fur on the ground all around me.  I can still smell him.  I’ve gone through five buckets, and I don’t know how long I’ve been at it, but nothing seems enough.
	Eventually I give up, not because I want to but because I’m starting to lose my balance.  My body is aching and unbelievably tired, the Divine still battling with my senses.  I worked all day today as well, and that’s normally enough that I’m tired by now, but this is . . . too much.  I’m a strong man, but my strength is failing.  I have to get back to the lodge or I’ll collapse here.
	I head back towards the lantern, the cold air hitting my soaking cold fur, and seeping into my bones.  No one bathes at night.  The nights here are cold, colder even than near the Hyronses, and there’s no sun to dry off in.  Thankfully I’m so tired, I don’t think it’ll stop me from getting some sleep.
	When I open the door in to the lodge, only a few eyes flicker up to look at me, and most quickly turn back down and go back to sleep.  Only one pair, glowing green in the dim sliver of light from the doorway, remain on me until I make my way towards my sleeping mat.  
	“Kadar,” Ahsan says with relief evident in his tone, sitting up on his knees on our mat and making as though to get up entirely, but I wave my hand at him, and he stills.  I step over the rat who sleeps near us, and it takes everything I have to kneel down slowly on the mat without outright collapsing.  Ahsan’s eyes follow me the whole way, and I’m suddenly hyper-sensitive of my smell, now that I’m close to him.  Surely the scent is just trapped in my own nostrils.  He can’t know.
	But, when I finally turn and slide my legs out on my side of the mat, and I look him in the eyes, I know he knows.  He’s quiet, but his big dark eyes are wider than usual, and he’s never looked at me this way before.  He opens his muzzle as if to say something, but doesn’t seem able to complete the thought.  And I can’t bear to see him looking at me like that anymore, so I turn my back to him when I lie down.
	“Kadar . . . .” he whispers desperately, his hands slipping up over my shoulders, hesitantly.  
	I shove them off of me, roughly, expecting he’ll probably recoil and leave the mat for the night.  I’m wet and cold and angry, and in pain, and the last thing I want now is to sleep alone, but I want his pity even less.
	He surprises me by insistently putting his hands on my shoulders again, his elbows wrapping over my side.  And when I try to shove him off this time, I find him far harder to shake.  Frustrated, I reach up and grab for his fingers, prying them off of me and kicking back at him when he stubbornly clings right back on to me a moment later.  In response, he only wraps his arms around me completely, and I feel his muzzle against the back of my neck.
	I growl out one warning, and when that doesn’t work, I wrench around and shove him off of me with all the strength I have.  He fights me – he never fights me like this – and I’m growing desperate now.  Why is he fighting me now, when he’s always done as I wanted in the past?  Why tonight?!
	I’m still stronger than him, even in my current state, so it isn’t very difficult to roll him on to his back.  I slam him down harder than is probably necessary, and I hear the wind leave his lungs with the impact.  
	And then he coughs, and I’m undone.
	“I’m . . .” I go weak over him, my arms shaking as they try in vain to hold me up.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry . . . .”  I feel my head dropping, the weight of my exhaustion crushing down on me.  I drop to my elbows over him, this horrible, desperate feeling welling up inside me.  It’s like everything that happened back at the guardhouse just became far more real to me.  Maybe the drug is starting to wear off.  All I know is that I haven’t felt more like sobbing in my entire life.
	I don’t.  But I’m shaking, now.  It’s not just the cold.  It’s like a visceral reaction I can’t control.  I feel like I’ve got to burn something off inside me, and this is the only way.
	Ahsan stares up at me, his dark eyes seeming endlessly deep without any light to reflect in them.  I can’t look in to them for long, so I just bend my muzzle to rest against his collarbone, and let him put his arms around me again.  I can feel his heartbeat against my chest and it’s so . . . calm.  I focus on it, and only it, and slowly, it’s like it bleeds in to me.  My own breathing evens, the shaking begins to subside in small measures, and my body slowly loses its rigidity.
	His calm becomes my calm, eventually.  It takes time.  But it’s so welcome as it washes over me, it becomes easier the more I accept it.  It’s like he’s giving it to me.
	Miraculously, he doesn’t ask me what happened.  He must have somehow known that would be the worst thing he could have done in that moment.  He only moves his hands down my back to wrap more loosely around my waist, and urges me to turn on to my side.  I do so, and then he settles back in against me.  This time I couldn’t want him there more, and I make that clear by wrapping my thicker arms around him.  He returns the gesture, and reaches over to pull the thin fabric we use as a blanket over us.
	“I always thought you were weak,” I croak out, my voice sounding unrecognizable even to my own ears.  I swallow, but the hoarseness is from screaming, not a lack of water.  “I’m sorry,” I say at length.  “I was wrong.”
	Ahsan’s ears perk slightly and he turns his muzzle up against my fur to look up at me.  “How were you wrong?” he asks.
	“The things you’ve done,” I manage, not wanting to put a name to them right now.  “The work you did up at the Manor.”
	He frowns marginally, but the sympathy I see in his eyes isn’t for himself.
	“I thought you were weak, for letting it happen to you,” I say, my jaw shuddering.  “I pitied you,” I admit, with a painfully self-aware guilt growing in me.  “I thought a stronger man wouldn’t – couldn’t let them turn him into what they did.”
	He continues to look at me evenly.  There should be some anger, or some sense of betrayal at my words, but I see none.
	“A weak man couldn’t live with this, for as long as you did,” I say, swallowing around a lump in my throat.  “I’m the weak one.  For . . . judging you . . . for not trying to understand-“
	“Kadar, stop,” the hyena insists, tugging my muzzle down to his, and holding me closer as I shake my head and rock against him.
	“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to do.  “I’m sorry . . . .”
	He sighs softly, and runs a paw up my neck scruff, his slim fingers moving down beneath my collar and rubbing gently at the abused and furless skin there.  “People are many different ways,” he says.  The statement doesn’t make much sense on its own, so I wait for him to complete it.
	“I mean,” he clarifies at length, “that you can’t say someone is weak or strong.  I could never carry you.  I could never do the work you do in the fields.  I have trouble saying no to the people around me.  I follow orders because I’m afraid not to.  People like you are strong enough to risk things, in the hopes that you’ll do better by doing what you think is right.  If people like you weren’t strong like that, the Clans would own the entire world, and nothing could stop them.”
	“For all the rotting good it’s done me!” I snap, unintentionally.  He doesn’t flinch away, though.  Not tonight.  “Lochan is right.  You’ve had the right idea all along.  We need to stop saying no.  We need to stop fighting this, or we’ll never escape it.”
	Ahsan lifts his head to look me in the eyes.  “Kadar,” he says quietly, “if I hadn’t said no, the one time it mattered the most, I’d still be at the Manor.  Or I’d have allowed myself to be sold to that man.”  He moves his paw up to cup my cheek, running his thumb along my cold fur.  “Sometimes,” he whispers, “you have to say no.  Even when it hurts really badly.” 
	“I’ve spent so long telling myself they couldn’t do this to me,” I breathe, closing my eyes.  “And they keep proving me wrong.  And it’s my fault –“
	“You can’t ever tell yourself that,” he insists.
	“You don’t know me,” I grit out between my teeth.  “You don’t really know me.  You don’t know the life I’ve lived, Ahsan.  The mistakes I’ve made.”
	“It doesn’t matter,” he says stoically.  “No one has the right.”
	“How did you stomach taking up with Lochan?”  I ask, the question coming so suddenly it surprises even me, in addition to Ahsan.  “After everything that happened to you,” I continue, desperately.  “How could you choose to let it happen again, even after you escaped that place?”  I don’t know why I’m asking the question, I just know I need it answered.
	The hyena’s eyes are wide and confused for a few moments, and then he seems to understand, and answers back as though it’s obvious, “The evil isn’t in what happens, Kadar.  It’s in the person.”
	It sounds simple, but trying to wrap my head around it is hard.  Ahsan often speaks like that.  In small words, short statements, but there’s always more beneath them than seems to be at the surface.  It’s part of why I’ve begun to accept that he’s ‘clever’, not just smart.  He understands things more deeply than I do, sometimes.
	“A lot of things can hurt you,” he says softly.  “It’s the person that uses them that’s causing it, though.  Lochan wasn’t like that.  I could tell right from when I met him that he wasn’t like that.”  He gives a slight smile.  “Just like with you.”
	“I’m not as good a man as you think I am,” I murmur.
	He wraps his arms around me again, and nuzzles his nose into my neck, his breath warm against my chilled fur.  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he promises.  
	It’s almost surreal, how calm he is about all of this.  My mind is still reeling and I want to make him understand.  So many things.  But his heartbeat, his comfort, is starting to seep into my mind again, dragging me down with him into the well of exhaustion I’ve been ignoring up until now.
	The last thing I remember thinking is that I was supposed to protect him.  How am I supposed to do that now, when things are so reversed between us?