Banshee woke up dizzy and on the floor.

It took her long enough to simply realise she was awake. Her entire body ached. Each beat of her heart sent a fresh wave of quiet trembles coursing through her, sapping whatever scraps of energy were left. She closed her eyes, her thoughts slipping in the darkness around them, wanting nothing more than to plunge back into the place where she didn't hurt like this.

Footsteps beside her made her surface, just long enough to be curious as someone pressed their hand to her forehead. She heard a string of curses, but the words sounded distant. Some vague part of her recalled Wyvern sounding like that, but it felt like a millenia ago. It didn't feel like she still inhabited the body that had called the corridor of smoke and shadows. It'd been someone else, something greater, yet her all the same.

The hand disappeared from her forehead, and instead, Banshee felt it shaking her shoulder. She heard the voice again, but it still sounded too far. Slowly, she opened her eyes in an effort to bring herself closer to the voice and found the room was dim and blurry. She couldn't remember how to focus her eyes, or how to make sense of the words against her ears. She was struck with the distinct sense that this body was not hers, that she'd yielded it for a greater purpose.

The hand reached for her cheek with firm, sharp taps that she felt above the all-encompassing ache of her existence. When she blinked and frowned, unsure how to make the tapping stop, the hands moved again, one on her shoulder, the other on the back of her neck as they helped her sit up.

"Banshee?" The voice said the word again, but this time, it meant something. It meant her. "Banshee, can you hear me?"

She tried to open her mouth to reply, lips moving as the sound failed to come out. The hands let her go, and as soon as they did, she felt herself sway. Her thoughts were too slow to tell this body to stop as it slumped back towards the ground, stopped only by the hands as they grabbed her again.

"You Other-cursed girl, can't you even sit up by yourself?" grumbled Wyvern, adjusting himself beside her as he held her upright. Her senses slid back into place enough to recognise him, to see him, even in this dim light. "You've had more than a day to sleep it off."

Banshee's frown flickered back onto her face. She swallowed, running her tongue over her dry, cracked lips. She tried to speak again, managing little more than a squeak the first time. Wyvern seemed to understand. He remained silent beside her, one hand supporting the back of her head, the other on her side, and a leg behind her back as he waited.

"Wh... What... Hap...pened?" she managed to croak out.

"You expect me to know about whatever stunt it was you pulled?" said Wyvern with a grunt, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but next to her. "One minute, you have my amulet. The next, I'm holding a knife, you're on top of me, and then you drag me through some Banshee crap, came out here, and fell out of consciousness for the better part of two days! And you expect me to have an explanation?" He huffed. "Why 'here', anyway? We're in some random building in outer Cevinari, as far as I can tell from looking around outside."

Banshee glanced around the room. Nothing looked familiar, but... "I... don't know. I think I was aiming for somewhere else and it just... didn't last long enough."

"I'd be grateful it lasted at all," said Wyvern. "You shouldn't have been able to use your powers at all without the ShadowSong. Surprised the Other-cursed scales off the Serpent when you shadow stepped us out of there, I bet."

Banshee tried lifting her head off Wyvern's hands, having a little more success this time. Now able to keep her head up, she took the next minute to slowly adjust to her body again, figuring out how to sit up alone. Wyvern's hands hovered close by, ready to catch her every time she began to lean, until she was steady enough to remain sitting on her own.

She expected him to move to the other side of the room, but strangely enough, he remained by her side while looking decisively ignorant of the fact that he was.

"Why the ShadowSong?" said Banshee, touching her throat. It was far too raw, like it hadn't touched water in days. "Why would the Serpent care about that?"

Wyvern's jaw set, though in her hazy state, she couldn't work out why. "All I could figure out is that the Serpent was trying to push you to be desperate enough to use the ShadowSong to counteract him. I don't know why, don't bother asking. I was trying to work that out, but when you dragged me out, you destroyed my chances of that."

Banshee reached an arm out behind her for support, drawing a sharp, concerned movement from Wyvern, when her hand touched something soft. She looked behind her to find a pillow, then realised there was a blanket covering her from the waist down. Her arm was freshly bandaged with strips of clean, black fabric, and beneath it, her arm didn't sting as much as before.

"Did you do this?" she asked him. Her mind still felt fuzzy--maybe she was still remembering some part of Wyvern that would have taken care of her instead of simply leaving her to her own devices.

"Yeah, well, you looked uncomfortable just on the floor," grumbled Wyvern, looking away. "Didn't want your arm getting infected, transformation or not." He stood up and walked across the room, pulling something out of a box the same colour as the wall. "Here, drink this. You don't need it to live while you're transformed, but it'll make you feel better."

Banshee took the bottle of blue-coloured liquid from him, unscrewing the cap and giving it a sniff before she downed half of it. Even that small action took far more energy than she had to spare, and she ended up simply letting the bottle rest on her lap. "My whole body just feels exhausted. I feel like I could lay down and sleep for a week."

"Not surprised, girl." Wyvern didn't look up at her from the box. "That shadow step you did was big enough that it should have floored you even if you had your powers. With that corrupted fragment on your wrist, how you managed it without the ShadowSong is beyond me."

She pressed her lips together. "The fragment... I didn't imagine that?"

"Nope," said Wyvern. "It's all too real. It's the reason your powers are blocked. As long as you remain in direct contact with it, your Ascended will stay in its defensive shut-down mode."

Banshee lifted her bandaged wrist and felt through the fabric. The Serpent had said it'd reappear even if she lost the hand, but maybe she could dig it out with Joy?

"I tried getting it off earlier when I bandaged your arm," said Wyvern flatly. "It was the only reaction I got out of you the whole time. You began seizing up, until it scared me enough that I stopped."

Banshee just locked her fingers over her wrist, giving it a weak squeeze.

If the Serpent's video was true--if in her hallucinations, she'd been the only one to truly injure herself... had she also been the one to place this fragment on her wrist?

"Did... Did I...?" She trailed off, unable to finish the question.

Wyvern cleared his throat. She felt his gaze lift from her as easily as it might from a wall, hating how it confused her, how it left her drowning. "I'm going to go scout outside again. When I come back, we're moving, so I suggest you start figuring out how to walk. We've been in one place too long, and with that thing on your wrist, I wouldn't be surprised if the Serpent comes looking for us. I doubt he's gonna be happy that you escaped and took me with you." He paused, leaving room for Banshee to reply, but she just didn't have the energy. "I have some, uh, things that we should probably discuss soon, but you still look out of it and I'm not repeating myself."

With that, Wyvern left the room, and a few seconds later, Banshee heard a door close.

She couldn't bring herself to move. She continued to sit there, fingers around her bandaged wrist, her mind hollow and numb. Her body still didn't feel like her own. The things that Wyvern had said didn't seem important now he'd left the room. She managed to make herself take another few sips of the blue drink, but aside from that... what was the point?

Nearly everything had been taken from her. She had so few things left that she was sure about, and even they didn't seem entirely like hers anymore. They felt stolen. Borrowed.

Banshee unsheathed Joy from its scabbard on her lower back and held the dagger in front of her. It seemed to hum in her hands, pulsing with remnants of an energy she didn't understand. Everything was disconnected. Everything was wrong.

She tossed the dagger on the floor beside her and curled her legs up to her chest, burying her sight in her skin.

She was still like that, forehead resting on her knees with arms wrapped around her shins, right up until the sound of the door opening--but not closing--echoed through the walls and panicked footsteps approached her.

"Banshee!" said Wyvern's voice as he grabbed her by the arm, yanking her out of her void. "Banshee, we gotta move, and we gotta move now."

"Why?" she asked quietly, letting him drag her to her feet. "Is it the Serpent?"

"No," said Wyvern, breathless. His eyes fell on the box he'd pulled her drink from before ignoring it in favour of leaning her on him and moving towards the door. "It's Cryo. I think he's frozen, and he's coming straight for you."

*+*+*+*

Cryo had not lost sight of the Skinwalker Banshee for even a second.

"Cryo, stop, please! I'm your partner--what are you doing?"

She continued to call out as she led him across the rooftops of Cevinari with a startling display of skill. Her movements were powerful and precise, but they lacked a certain flair to the way that Banshee moved. Skinwalker dodged every piece of ice and frost that Cryo could muster to throw at her efficiently, not creatively. He could predict her with ease, but she could react faster than his ice could travel.

And so, when her foot slipped off the edge of a roof at the end of a jump and she plummeted to street level, Cryo's suspicions shot straight past the peak.

A crowd milled about down here, not as thick as those that had been directly outside the temple to witness her first deception, but enough that it would be noticed and recorded. Liaisers were already out as the Banshee slowly picked herself up off the floor in a display of dramatics, clutching her head while protecting a small golden pouch under her arm.

Cryo landed, so his body was placed between the Banshee and the crowd. There were a few among the crowd that ran at the sight, but most lingered with a morbid curiosity, gathering their belongings close to flee if necessary. "Surrender, Manifested. Shed the skin of my partner and allow me to cleanse you of the Other's taint."

"Skypillar, Cryo," muttered Banshee, staggering to her feet. There was another crack across her visor now. She didn't run--not with an audience this accessible--but she did retreat a few steps. As if she were afraid, as if the confusion and betrayal in her face was real. "I'm not Manifested. You have to believe me. I'm only trying to help this City! This ritual is dangerous!"

Cryo had already fired off another blast of frost at her legs before the final words were out of her mouth, which she dodged with ease and continued to take off at a run down the street. Cryo pushed back into the air, using his speed to gain on her. He couldn't give her a chance to stop. She wanted an audience, which made it his duty to prevent her from maintaining one. He couldn't stop her from speaking, not entirely, but he could implement damage control until DragonFae or Golem or someone caught up to help him catch her.

"The ritual is dangerous, Cryo!" she screamed, a desperate note in her voice. "You'll doom the whole City if you complete it! You can't!"

Cryo closed his ears to it. He let the cold creep over his heart, just enough so that her cries would not rip open every doubt and fear he had.

The Banshee continued down the street, heedless of the people and gleamerbikes in her path. It made it considerably harder for Cryo to attempt to pin her down with frost--he couldn't risk hitting civilians, but Skinwalker had no such regards. She barged past anyone who remained in her way, constantly throwing terrified backwards glances towards Cryo.

Cryo saw the faces of the crowds. He saw the Liaisers in their hands as the news spread that Cryo was chasing Banshee down the streets of Cevinari, pushing her closer and closer to the outer region. More and more people milled about on the edges of the streets with no other reason to be there than this spectacle. He saw the judgement in their eyes, the disappointment as they realised the news was true.

It killed Cryo. It absolutely killed him that no matter what he said, he couldn't convince every single person that he would never harm his partner. That he'd trust her to the ends of the world and back if he needed to, that he would do anything just to bring her back safe, but he couldn't. He could only try to shove this stabbing guilt in his chest aside long enough to catch Skinwalker and pray it gave him a lead.

The Banshee rounded a corner, swinging herself into one of the smaller streets of outer Cevinari and charging through a large crowd of people to do it. Cryo stayed close enough to keep his eyes on her as she stumbled, her chest rapidly rising and falling as her movements became far sloppier than before. She made it another street before her feet began tripping over each other.

Skinwalker was tiring. Cryo hadn't been aware that a Skinwalker could copy abilities as well as appearances, but for physical ones, like Cryo's flight or Banshee's agility, he'd reasoned that it made sense. Ella had shown far greater, unrestricted power when she'd Manifested as Hydra than in her time as a legitimate Luminary. It only made sense that a Manifested Skinwalker would operate under the same rules.

Still, he was suspicious. He wasn't sure what Skinwalker's end game was, how this chase ended. His mind continued to scream trap. Luring him alone, away from the other Luminaries, already distracted and fighting against himself to ignore this Banshee's pleas.

"Move away!" Cryo called to the civilians ahead of Banshee. He needed a clear shot to freeze her. He couldn't risk hitting anyone else, but the civilians didn't move. They continued to stand around, to stare, struck into an eerie silence by the sound of Banshee's cries.

Because she was. Because this Banshee looked like she could barely hold herself up anymore. There were bandages on her arm now, stained with blood from the inside. Her visor had two cracks running across its surface. Her garments were torn, Grief was missing, Joy's bloody hilt sheathed on her back. Her face was dirty, her hands were shaking, and she was holding herself upright only with the wall as she continued to try and move along it, leaving a small trail of crimson blood on the starstone wall.

Not her. It's not her.

"Cryo," she gasped, her voice barely more than a croak. If there'd been any other noise on the street, he wouldn't have been able to hear her. "Cryo, please. Please, don't do this. I'm your partner, Cryo, it's me."

"No." Cryo landed among the crowd with a burst of chilled air, only a few metres from Banshee. Every sense he possessed was on high alert, watching for the glint of a blade or the tell-tale gleam of a Lightblaster among the crowd around him. "It's not you. You aren't my Banshee."

Banshee pressed her back to the wall as she saw him approach. Her eyes went wide with terror as she pushed herself off the wall in a last-ditch effort to escape him, heading for an archway leading into some kind of shopping mall.

Cryo strode after her, heart cold with the frost ready in his hand for the moment he got a clear shot. Though the crowd parted ahead of him, they didn't do so fast enough to keep his pace steady, and he couldn't barge past like she did. He was all too aware of the sharp edged ice of his wings and his claws that instantly froze the starstone they touched. His aura was barely reined in.

With the crowd slowing him, Banshee made it inside the archway before Cryo was close enough to keep his eyes on her. He cursed the Other as she slipped inside, leaving only her bloody fingerprints and a dumbstruck crowd behind her.

"Give me room!" called Cryo, flaring his wings to startle the crowd into action.

Skypillar, it hurt to see the suspicion on their faces and know he couldn't stay to make it right, but at least it made them move. They stumbled back over each other rapidly at the spread of his wings, and Cryo finally had room to launch himself forward.

As suspected, the archway did indeed lead to an empty, wide passage that went straight through the block above him. It was empty with the exception of the Banshee, who, after one frantic, backwards look at Cryo, disappeared into a narrow tunnel veering to the left.

Cryo followed her, not liking the look of the tunnel. It'd be far too small for his wings to fit, but she'd be limited in evasion options. He could freeze her easily and be done with this.

"Surrender, Skinwalker," he called as he unfroze his wings from his arms.

"...Cryo?" came Banshee's voice from the other side of the wall. It sounded half-dead. "Cryo, is that you? I... I knew you'd come, knew you wouldn't leave me..."

Cryo allowed himself one, single breath to hesitate as he rounded the corner. "Surrender, and I'll--"

A bandaged arm shot out from waist-height and grabbed Cryo's tunic, pulling him off balance and into the tunnel with a terrifying strength. He froze a small pillar of ice from the ground-up and dug his claws on top of it to catch himself. His wings flared from habit to steady himself but only succeeded in grinding against the walls, carving chunks from the crystals.

The Banshee was on her back on the ground in front of him, staring up at him with wide, innocent eyes, like she hadn't just attacked him. "Cryo? That is you, isn't it?"

"Stop it," he growled. The ice shattered under his grip and he stepped towards her. "Stop it."

She didn't smile, or smirk, or do anything else except for scramble backwards, away from him, like she was the one who feared him. "Cryo, you're scaring me."

Skypillar, he couldn't do this. He just couldn't do this, but he had to. He had to. If Skinwalker was going to impersonate his partner and get into this head, then he'd just have to be harder. Stronger.

Colder.

Cryo pulled back his arm for a frost blast that'd leave her with nowhere to dodge as just for a moment, a brief, single moment, Skinwalker's Banshee persona cracked and she released a short, barking laugh.

"Surrender!" she mimicked. "Stop it! You just keep giving your position away every time you open your mouth, idiot, and making it easier for me to do this."

She started to stand up, reaching for something.

Cryo didn't give her the chance, unleashing the building frost with a primal roar. The merciless wall of white erupted from his body, gripping every edge and corner of the tunnel, but his hesitation had consequence, and it was still a moment too late. Banshee threw herself against the door to her left, knocking it straight off its hinges, tumbling inside and narrowly escaping his frost.

Cryo launched himself after her, claws digging into the starstone of the doorframe as he swung himself into the room. It was dark, the back room of some shop, and held no sign of Skinwalker. There was a dim light coming from the other side room to his right, and another closed door directly in front of him, likely leading to the shop.

It was the dimly lit room that Cryo strode towards, opening his mouth to call out before he stopped himself. He wouldn't give her a clear warning or let her know he was hesitating. Not again.

He was in the room's doorway within seconds of entering the building. There wasn't much inside. A pillow, a blanket, a small bottle with half-drunk blue liquid, and her, standing just to the right of the doorway, like she'd been trying to hide behind the doorway, readying to attack him.

This time, Cryo did not hesitate.

He extended a palm towards the Banshee standing in the corner and unleashed his frost, not as a single, icy blast but instead the heart of a raging winter storm.

The sheer force of it shoved her backwards, slamming her head against the wall behind her with a crack and a cry of pain. Her hands went up to protect her face as the rest of her thrashed and screamed against the pelting sheet of frost, moving too fast and too frantically for his ice to set and hold her down, but he'd learned. Directly freezing her in place wasn't his goal. Skinwalker had broken through his ice before by shifting, but if he spread it enough and created a thick layer of heavy, wet snow with room to give, she wouldn't be able to escape by shifting. The snow would trap her.

"Cryo! Cryo, it's me!" Her words choked off as her movements faltered for the briefest moment. "Starlight--Starlight please not him too, please--"

Cryo shut his ears to Skinwalker's words and focused on piling more and more snow around her until it reached her waist, until her agitated movements were greatly restricted. Another ten seconds, and she wouldn't be able to--

Something slammed into Cryo's wings from behind. His wing crystals shrieked as they scraped against each other, a discordant, piercing noise that sent a shudder through his entire being. With the snow thick enough on the Banshee to hold her for now, Cryo spun around to face this new attacker, barely fast enough to stop the next swing of the box aimed for his face.

But of all people, Cryo had not been expecting to see Wyvern holding the box.

"Get away from her, you moronic pigeon!" screeched Wyvern. He wrenched the box from Cryo's shocked grip and drew it back for a third hit. "That's your partner! You're about to kill her! Doesn't that mean anything to you anymore? Banshee, go! If he's frozen over, you can't reach him anymore! Get away from him!"

Cryo swung an arm up towards Wyvern, following the instincts rising from where they'd been lodged, deep in his brain. He didn't give himself a chance to hesitate or think otherwise and grabbed Wyvern's wrist and froze it to the wall. When Wyvern reached up to free himself, Cryo froze that down too, ignoring Wyvern's following gasp of pain.

Then, Cryo turned back to Banshee.

Wyvern was still shouting. "Other curse you, you stupid girl! Leave!"

Banshee wasn't leaving. She was still up to her thighs in Cryo's snow, not making any effort to break herself free. Cryo could feel her staring at him, though he didn't know why. He would not meet her gaze, would not fall victim to whatever expression Skinwalker had chosen to wear. His mother had done this to him so many times. She'd manufacture a situation, allow it to play out, and then twist it so he were the enemy. She'd make him question himself, his memory, even his sanity.

"Cryo," she was saying. "Cryo, it's me. It's me."

Cryo made the mistake of meeting her eyes.

There was something different in these eyes from the ones before. The disbelief, mostly, but also detachment. Detachment, like she felt the need to convince him, to speak these words, but she couldn't quite bring herself to believe them. Banshee--the real Banshee--had never said anything she didn't mean. She could have convinced him the sky was purple had she tried, with her words that were so full of a million things he couldn't begin to describe.

The words he was hearing now... there was nothing behind them. They were hollow, empty, and Cryo had fallen for words like that too many times.

He took a breath to steady himself.

"No. It's not you," he said, and froze her.

*+*+*+*

A/N - It hurts me to write these chapters. IT HURTS DAMMIT. Pls don't hate me 

Ignore the part below if you don't want the chapter mood ruined <3

*+*+*+*

And because it's a milestone, I'm including this here:

*ahem*

I dunno how to start this but a few of you wonderful little cupcakes wandered out to a meetup outside Supanova on the weekend that was organised on the Discord server. It was the first time I've ever met anyone who found my writing stuff through Wattpad, and tbh I'm still all warm and fuzzy about it. blucheetah made some freakin' awesome art and did me the absolute honour of asking me to sign it, aaand I'd be lying if I said I didn't die a little on the inside from the sheer force of disbelief/happy. There were many sushi rolls. It was fantastic. 

I don't know if you guys know how much it meant that you all showed up, (aaaand I know that most of the reason was because you wanted to meet each other) but it's something incredibly special to sorta be able to realise that the people who read your stuff are actually people. That makes about zero sense to anyone but me, but hey ;D

Many <3. All the <3.

NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED STORY!  (...next wednesday ;D)