Jason was roused from sleep when Olivia's seizure began.

Still half asleep, he went through the usual procedure. He laid her on her side, tilted her head back, and counted the seconds in his head. He was vaguely aware of Ella and Adande across the room, engaged in an animated conversation that Jason was too far and too tired to bother listening to.

When Olivia finally stilled once more, Jason frowned. Her seizures were getting longer, and if he was correct, more frequent. She'd had four since falling asleep and failed to wake for any. Though it was hard to mark the passing of time inside a home carved of rock, Jason had no doubt that they were happening far too often.

Ella walked over, her hand on top of her head and her eyes on Olivia. "We have to get her to a hospital. We can't wait out here any longer. She's getting worse."

"We can't just take her back into the City," said Adande in an exasperated tone. "The Serpent will--"

"What are you, an overprotective parent?" said Ella, jabbing a finger into his chest. "We can't worry about what might happen. Serpent or not, she's gonna die if we leave her out here much longer. She needs more than just a few bandages and salves at this point."

Adande folded his arms. "I did what I could with what I had."

Ella sighed, dragging a hand down her face. "I'm not saying you didn't do a good job--nothing Jason or me could have done would have been any better, but that's the problem. Us three can't do enough for her. We can't even break into a hospital and kidnap a nurse and a bunch of equipment--the starstone won't work out here."

Jason smoothed the hair back off Olivia's face. "I agree. She's told me before that when her seizures are this frequent, she required medical attention."

"Okay," said Ella. "Jason, have you got a way of contacting Cryo once we're back in the City? If the Serpent does show up, seems like a good idea to have backup ready to go."

"After yesterday, I doubt I'd be able to contact him easily," Jason said through a tight throat. "I informed the High Cloudspeaker yesterday of the situation, so it's likely that the other Luminaries are waiting for a signal."

Ella clucked her tongue. "I can probably get in contact with the other Lumi's. I'll head back down the tunnel now, you two follow behind as soon as you can with Olivia." Her gaze flicked to Adande. "And I swear, and funny business with Olivia or Jason, I'll come straight back and stab you."

Adande raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said you'd never use the blade on me of all people?"

"Big difference between self defense and straight up torture," said Ella, waving a hand in his direction and heading for the archway. "You two start moving her. Hurt her, and you're both dead. I'll come back if you haven't appeared and the Lumi's are ready."

Ella left, leaving Adande and Jason to look at each other.

When they were sure she was gone, Adande just shook his head.

"She terrifies me."

*+*+*+*

It took Jason and Adande longer than they'd expected to get Olivia moving.

Still unconscious, she was complete deadweight, and she was so very, very fragile. She was covered in so many cuts and bruises that it was impossible to touch her without coming into contact with one. Then there was the problem of her clothes--Adande had been forced to cut away the majority of them to treat the worst of her injuries. He'd left enough to preserve her modesty, but there was one area that Adande had serious concerns about.

"Her Luminary tattoo," said Adande, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirt to peel off the tape holding the gauze on her sternum. "If she goes to hospital, you have to keep it hidden. I managed to find a few skin-patches roughly in her colour. They're the same kind that the Serpent uses, but I don't know how they'll hold up if they're scrubbed away or whatever else the hospital might do, so you'll have to--"

Adande kept speaking, but Jason didn't hear anything he said after the gauze over Olivia's chest was peeled away, revealing the tattoo beneath.

Banshee's insignia was a stark, vibrant red against Olivia's pale skin. It was perfectly situated on her sternum, the design so clean and simply one with her skin that it was impossible to attribute it to simple ink. Jason had spent enough time looking at his own to be able to know the difference.

The world was silver around him.

His violin was in his hand with a familiar Song, one that he'd heard her hum before.

A girl below him, amber hair, a familiar face, but too far, always too far, if he could just--

"Jason?"

Jason snapped back into the present with Adande shaking his shoulder. Olivia's Banshee tattoo was gone, covered under a layer of false skin that was just slightly lighter than the rest of her. If he hadn't known, he wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. It was so easy to forget what he'd seen there, to slip back into the knowledge that there was no way--

"Jason!" said Adande again, smacking Jason on the forehead. "Did you hear any of that?"

"My apologies," said Jason. "I was distracted. Could you repeat it?"

As Adande described the limitations of the skin patch a second time, Jason tried to drag his complete attention to the conversation and failed. His thoughts were at war. One side offered up countless pieces of evidence that he couldn't reasonable deny, and the other, completely illogical side that held nothing but his belief hostage, utterly devoted to the idea that Olivia was not Banshee.

She disappeared so many times when Banshee was needed with no excuse.

Olivia is not Banshee.

Everything makes sense--Adande's claim, Olivia's disappearance, her injury in the early days of the temple!

Olivia is NOT Banshee.

The tattoo on her chest, it's a Luminary tattoo. No ink could replicate that look, there's no way that--

OLIVIA IS NOT BANSHEE.

It was excruciatingly painful to process. If he accepted the belief, he denied the logic. If he denied the belief, he was left with a gaping, uncomfortable sense of wrongness that he didn't know how to release. One of them was wrong, and with his near-perfect memory, the only solution that Jason could come up with to satisfy both sides of his mind terrified him.

Someone--or something--had altered his mental state.

He didn't know if it was his mind, his memory, or just some sheer core of belief built into his personality, but some instinct knew that whatever those flashes had been when he'd looked upon Olivia's tattoo--the silver mist, his violin, the girl--if he could figure them out, they held the answer he needed to settle his mind, one way or the other.

Jason forced himself to focus on Olivia.

But first, he had a job to do.

*+*+*+*

They wrapped Olivia in Adande's jacket and secured her to Jason's back with a harness made of blankets. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best they had. Adande held the lantern and went ahead of Jason in the tunnel. They stopped twice to adjust the blankets. By some miracle, Olivia didn't have a seizure, but the entire time, dread sat in the pit of Jason's stomach that she might.

Ella had left the other end of the tunnel uncovered. Adande had a few colourful sentences to describe that decision, but Jason was grateful for the rose-coloured daylight filtering in from the streets above. Being surrounded by starstone again was a comfort. He felt the moment his bond with Sae was humming through him once more, like a flower blooming from the winter that banished the prickling cold from his being.

Ella herself wasn't far away, and within a minute of them emerging from the tunnel, she was running towards them, one hand holding her Liaiser to her ear and the other raised in greeting.

"Luminaries are on their way!" she called, lowering her Liaiser. "Adande, take us street side!"

When Adande inclined his head and started walking, motioning for them to follow, Ella stopped, waiting for Jason to catch up while side-eyeing Olivia on his back.

"Did he do anything stab-worthy?" Ella asked in a low voice.

"The opposite, in fact," said Jason. "He covered her tattoo with a skin patch. He believes it'll hide it well enough from the medical staff."

Ella tapped a hand over her own sternum. "That's actually not a bad solution. You wouldn't believe how hard it got to hide that thing sometimes."

"Does that mean Adande escapes punishment?"

"Nah," said Ella with a smirk. "He made you carry her, that's at least punch-worthy."

With that, she strode ahead, caught up to Adande, and punched him in the arm. He gave her a rather offended look and complained about something Jason couldn't quite make out, but there was something different about his expression--almost like he was in awe of her, even as she did nothing else but stick her hands in her pockets and keep walking.

Adande took them to a different exit than he'd brought them in at, much to Ella's annoyance.

"The Lumi's will be waiting at the other one," she said, exasperated. "You're gonna make Jason walk even further with Liv?"

"He'll be fine," said Adande with a shrug, pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes. "But I don't care to be thrown back in some temple prison cell to wait around for the Serpent to send Skinwalker in to kill me."

"Skinwalker can't just--"

"How do you think the Serpent freed my sisters and me the first time?" said Adande. "That was Skinwalker's first test. She walked straight in as Cryo and once the guards got suspicious, she possessed them. Unlike the Serpent, Skinwalker's power doesn't have an aura."

"She can possess people?" said Jason quietly.

"Eye contact," said Adande, tapping his sunglasses. "She can influence them, no idea how many or what limitations she has. I don't know if Lumi's would be susceptible to the full thing, but I imagine Skinwalker could probably make them more likely to do certain things. It's stronger if she's in her base form. She tried on me once, but I think the sunglasses blocked it. Make of that what you will. We're here."

Adande stepped onto the starstone brick that marked the passages between the streets and began helping Jason untie Olivia from his back.

Ella wasn't having it though. "Adande, you need to come back with us! All this information you have on the Serpent, on Skinwalker--do you have any idea how much it'd help? If you wanna protect Olivia, then come back with us. Help us."

"No," said Adande bluntly. "I've done enough."

"You could do more, idiot. You could--"

"I'm leaving the City after tonight," said Adande. "You won't see me again."

Ella went silent, disbelief etched into her snap-frozen posture.

"There's other places outside that mountain ring," Adande continued. "Places where the Serpent's power doesn't reach, even with this on my wrist." He held up his wrist bound with the corrupted fragment for a split second before dropping it again, all without looking away from his fingers working the blanket harness. "There's a reason I had supplies already stocked in the mountain house when I brought Olivia there. I did what I could. Now I'm leaving, and I'm not coming back."

Ella's silence stretched on, long enough that they had Olivia untied from Jason's back. It took both Adande and Jason to keep her upright and in position for the trip to the streets above, but by then, Ella's frozen arms had been melted by the fury in her eyes, curling her fingers into fists by her sides.

"You're running away?" she said. "Again?"

This time, Adande looked at her, but only gave her a wry smile. "Sorry to disappoint you yet again, Spirit. Now, are you coming up, or are you going to wait down here for me to return so you can leave my dead body in the understreets for all eternity?"

Ella's lips pulled back, showing enough teeth that even Jason took a step back.

"I've told you before," she said in a low whisper. She stepped onto the starstone block, her eyes perfectly level with Adande's for a moment before she turned her back on him and fixing her gaze on Olivia. "You aren't worth it."

"Glad we cleared that up," muttered Adande. "Going up."

As soon as they were on the surface streets once more, Ella stormed off, muttering something about the Luminary meeting point.

Jason scooped Olivia up in his arms, pulling on just a little of Sae's strength to keep him steady, and looked at Adande.

"Are you set on leaving the City?" asked Jason.

"There's nothing left for me here anymore," said Adande. "Not with this fragment on my wrist."

"Ella's still here," said Jason quietly. "She cares about you, I think."

"Even more reason for me to leave," said Adande, pulling his hood up over his head. "If you've got any sense, you should leave, too. Get Olivia out. With that fragment on her wrist, this City will tear her apart."

"She'd only come straight back."

"I know," said Adande with a sigh, stepping back into the centre of the starstone block. "Still worth saying."

"Before you go," said Jason quickly. "I want to say thank you, for what you did to help Olivia. You could have left her, but you didn't. You weren't a coward, Adande. You were a--"

"Don't say it," said Adande. "I had a week to help her, I didn't do anything until she saved herself. Take a page out of Ella's book. Hate me and move on."

"No one is perfect," said Jason. He managed a small smile--the kind that Banshee could always find for every Manifested, no matter how far into the fight they'd come. "It could be argued that you simply had a healthy dose of common sense."

Adande just looked at Jason, and for a moment, Jason thought he'd reply.

Instead, Adande just shook his head, and with a flash, he was gone.

Jason adjusted his grip on Olivia before he started walking. "At least I gave it a shot, Liv. I think, under it all, there's something there. I think you saw it before he did."

It was less than a minute before the other four Luminaries arrived, led by Ella.

DragonFae approached Olivia and ran a glowing hand over her forehead as Golem remained behind her, his stones focused and compact as they were when he was on high alert, feeling the vibrations around him.

"I can't heal her," said DragonFae as she pulled her hand away. "The corrupted fragment on her wrist permeates her body and affects my magic. To risk a healing would be dangerous, both to myself and her."

Golem's stones relaxed for a moment as he reached up to DragonFae's back. "We assumed as much. The hospital will be waiting for her arrival."

Pegasus and Nereid stood close to each other a little ways back, watching the exchange. They both wore solemn expressions, and though they were silent, Pegasus's protective wing around Nereid, and Nereid's own quiet, reassuring smile to Pegasus said more than any words could.

But Ella remained behind them all, casting one, final glance around the area, before she folded her arms and turned back to speak to the driver on the Gleamerbike behind them.

*+*+*+*

It was a short trip to the hospital, and warned ahead of time, a swarm of nurses were quick to descend upon Olivia once they arrived.

Though the space around her quickly became crowded with staff and equipment as they moved her to a room, Jason did not leave her side. Ella remained outside with the Luminaries, briefing them on the finer details of the situation and fielding the majority of the questions the hospital staff had. Even so, more than one disbelieving doctor looked to Jason for a second opinion about how Olivia had come to be in such a poor condition. He told them all the same thing: the Serpent had held her captive, and Banshee had rescued her.

Not all of them accepted that, and one even went as far as to mention that to Olivia's parents when they arrived. Jason braced himself to reason against their doubt, to stand against their scorn, but her parents simply looked at the doctor and asked him if he'd been there.

"We consider Jason family," said Lydia, and in her words, Jason discovered where Olivia had learned her strength. He heard the pain within them, but despite it, she was brave. "We would appreciate it if you could do the same."

Not long after that, a different doctor returned and explained Olivia's condition. Malnourished. Dehydrated. Exhaustion. Blood loss. Severe friction burns, lacerations, and contusions. Her parents held each other up, their faces tight as the explanation continued into treatments and a projected recovery timeline, and after it was over, Lydia turned to Jason and grabbed his hand.

She didn't say anything, she just looked at him, squeezed her eyes shut and pulled him into a hug.

*+*+*+*

Sunset approached quickly.

When the sun was beginning to dip into the horizon, Jason was sitting in a chair in the corner of Olivia's room, still silent and watching her. Her father had departed some hours ago, and her mother had stepped out of the room to refill her water bottle, leaving Jason alone with the beeps and tubes of the equipment.

He was grateful for the constant, steady beeps, both because it meant Olivia was stable, and because it gave him something else to focus on. His thoughts kept wandering. He constantly imagined Olivia with a visor, and long, amber hair that faded to white at the ends. His mind drew Banshee's tattoos on her skin as he pictured her ears pointed and wondered how he'd react if her eyes flickered open to those crimson irises he'd admired so many times, if she pulled back the blankets to reveal familiar garments of red, grey and orange instead of the hospital gown.

Adande's voice kept echoing through his head as he watched her.

Olivia is Banshee.

But his own mind kept screaming back at him.

She can't be.

When Lydia returned, Jason had come to a decision.

He stood up from the chair, inclining his head towards Lydia. "Would you mind if I were to step outside for a while?"

"Of course not," she said with a small smile. "If you want to go home for the night, I'll be sure to update you if anything changes. The doctors said she wouldn't likely wake up for a while yet, given how much time her body needs to recover. You're welcome to stay or visit any time though, if that's what you wish."

"Thank you," said Jason, inclining his head a second time. "I'm unsure how long I may be, but I will do what I can to keep you informed."

With one, final look at Olivia, with her auburn hair and tattoo-free skin, Jason exited the room and headed down the hall.

Could Olivia be Banshee?

It was time to find an answer.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Sorry that it's a little late <3