It's confirmation. A flicker of recognition passes through Laertes--a ghost of foreknowledge; the feeling of a rapier parting flesh. He's been wounded before in dueling, but only lightly. The scars are faint. He does not know what a mortal wound feels like. He imagines it as a rush of fear and heat, then cold that spools out to eternity.

"It is," he says at last. "Dost thou think ... dost thou think we could be spirited back to our own stories as suddenly as we came here? Left to play out some unchangeable fate, knowing that another life was possible?"