For the next four days, Cryo watched as Olivia slowly killed herself.

Every time someone asked her if she'd like a break, she'd vehemently refuse. She'd say she was fine, that she could do this, that she just needed a little more time to pick up on it, that it was probably just an effect of being comatose for so long, and apologise. People would tell her that it was okay, that it was a lot of pressure, that it wasn't fair to expect so much of her. Every time, she had a million and one excuses to deny them and keep pushing forward.

Yet every night, they still expected her to sing, and every night, Olivia completely shut down.

The High Speakers were Manifesting more frequently during daylight as the stress became too much, and once Manifested, they remained so until the auroras brought them back to their civilian selves. The High Speakers who had not Manifested during the day felt the inevitable onset of the corruption a little earlier each day, and though they fought it, would lock themselves away within DragonFae's spelled chambers to contain themselves.

Even that could not contain them for long. Eventually, the Manifested High Speakers would break free, and eventually, Stefan would be forced to Sing.

Everything was falling apart faster than they could hold it together.

From where he now stood in one of the foyers of the inner temple ring of buildings, Cryo looked down the hall, where the violet glow of DragonFae's magic was streaming from within the room.

Stefan was taking longer to wake up each day, and his health was in a rapid decline. When he finally did wake up, even with DragonFae's stabilising magic, he was lethargic and not entirely aware of his surroundings.

Today, it was mid-afternoon, and Stefan still hadn't woken up.

"All I'm saying is that there has to be another way to look at this," Nereid was saying. "If we can find some way to contain them, all the High Speakers have agreed that we can let them remain Manifested until Olivia can figure out how to fix the auroras. Maybe without so much pressure she'd be able to focus, rather than wondering when the next one is going to try and abduct her again."

"What, you think I haven't tried?" said Pegasus, scowling. His wings twitched behind him, and a few of the feathers failing to pull back into place correctly. "I swear, I have no idea how Ariel did what she did. I can't turn my own wings into cloud like that without plucking some feathers, let alone hers."

Cryo stepped closer from his place in the corner. "It's as Golem said. Their corrupted Luminary forms have access to abilities that we do not, as Ella did in her corrupted Hydra Manifestation, though Ariel is proving particularly adept at wielding the power in comparison to the rest."

"See?" said Pegasus, nudging Nereid with a wing. "I don't suck at being Pegasus. Ariel's just cheating."

"Yeah, cheating by being good."

"At least I know I chose the right High Speaker, eh?"

Nereid playfully pushed him away. "Oh yeah, like you had an abundance of Cloudspeakers to choose from, ponyboy. They were just lining up to deal with you."

Pegasus leaned over and used his height to pat his partner on the head. "Quality over quantity, little puddle. Always remember that."

The conversation dwindled as the sound of Golem's stones moving down the hall drew closer to them. Not long after, he appeared, somehow managing to make solid stone look tired.

"Is everything well?" asked Cryo.

Golem pulled the hand away from his face. "Stefan's awake now, if that's what you mean, but it's gonna be a while before he's awake enough to do anything." He drew in a long, whistling breath of air, something that they all seemed to be doing these days just to keep going. "I hate to ask, Cryo, but how is Olivia doing?"

The blank look in her eyes still haunted him. She wouldn't talk to him. She wouldn't talk to anyone. "About the same as before."

"Skypillar," muttered Golem. He straightened, his gaze lost somewhere in the ceiling. "At this rate, Stefan won't last another two nights before the aurorasong kills him."

"Have the Speakers found anything in the archives we can use?" said Nereid. "Have your Ascended said anything else?"

"No," said Golem. "Mine simply said that if Aurora is truly injured, that it would likely mean the end for us all. It said we'd be better off evacuating the City, but the Serpent seems to be active again. We've had reports of people, claiming to be 'chosen by Skypillar' saying that anyone who tries to leave the City will face consequences." He gave Cryo an apologetic look. "Skinwalker has been seen in multiple locations, posing as Banshee. Apparently, she's been responsible for the civilians Manifesting with corrupted fragments in the past few days. From what I've learned, they were trying to leave the City when she intercepted them."

Pegasus glanced at each of them. "So... our only choice is Olivia."

"We're asking too much of her," said Golem quietly. "She's traumatised, and I can't blame her. The Serpent had her for a week, at minimum. We've seen what it can do in a few days, what it can turn people into, the monsters it can make out of the best of us. Gwen is still struggling from her experience months later, and now, we're expecting a seventeen year old to recover in a matter of days."

"She doesn't have to recover," said Nereid. The other three looked at her. Her fins flattened, then gradually came out again as she spoke. "It sounds harsh, I know, but she doesn't have to get over it. All she has to do is sing, right? We know what the song sounds like--there's a million recordings of it floating around the City. If we play them, perhaps get someone to accompany her--that Frostsong guy on his violin, he's played it before--maybe it'd help?"

As Cryo was mentally phrasing his answer from a non-Jason point of view, Golem did it for him.

"We attempted something similar with Stefan the other night," said Golem. "We thought that perhaps if they could sing together, it might trigger a response, but it's as if Olivia can't hear us sometimes. Fae believes she's triggered by certain things, but if Olivia isn't willing to talk to anyone, we can't begin to help her."

A strange feeling crept into Cryo's tattoo. He wasn't quite sure where it'd come from, or what it meant, but there was something about it that made him... uneasy wasn't quite the right word. It was a disconnect, a thick, opaque coagulation of something that had him turning to leave.

"Cryo?" Pegasus called after him. "Where you goin'?"

"To see Olivia," said Cryo. "I'll inform her that Stefan's awake."

He didn't bother waiting for their approval, tucking his crystal wings in tight and heading down the hall.

The Pillarguards outside Olivia's room inclined their heads towards him as he approached. If they were still here and the door was still closed, it meant Olivia hadn't left the room--and yet when Cryo pushed open the door and stepped inside, he wasn't surprised to find her gone. The window was open, the drapes shifting about in the breeze that had stirred the papers off the table and onto the floor.

Panic was his first response. Panic that they'd missed a Manifested, that Skinwalker had come and snatched Olivia away, panic that she was back in the Serpent's clutches, but after a moment, he found his claws reaching up for his tattoo, his eyes drawn out the window, out towards Cevinari.

Following something that was deeper than logic, Cryo stepped up onto the window ledge and jumped out into the air.

When he saw the hospital, his mind caught up to his instincts, and he knew where he'd find her.

After making a short stop elsewhere, Cryo landed quickly among the gardens outside the hospital, ensured he was alone, and dimmed.

Sae poofed into existence, giving a few, confused flaps before he landed on Jason's waiting hand. "Why are we here?"

"Because we need to be."

"Fantastic," said Sae, flapping up to hug Jason's ear. "Cryptic Jason answers, my favourite."

Sae shifted himself into the usual ear cuff and fell silent after that, leaving Jason to the muted sounds of the City by the tall, leafy hedges around him. He went to take a moment to ready himself, to ensure he was prepared, to figure out what he was going to say. Nothing that seemed up to the magnitude of the task crossed his mind. How did you comfort someone who'd been tortured? What words could ever be enough?

Doubt crept in, but Jason shoved it aside.

One action from Banshee in a lonely corridor, with his back to the wall and his mother's nails around his wrist had changed everything for him. It hadn't been the specifics of it, it hadn't been exactly what she'd said or what she'd done--it was the fact that she'd done it at all. That he had been enough for her to intervene and say enough.

He walked over with his heart in his mouth to the small, hidden gap in the hedges that led to the hidden garden.

There, sitting at the edge of the fish pond, was Olivia.

Her hair was frazzled, her hair tie half slipped out of her ponytail like she'd been running. She was still in the same clothes from yesterday. The tips of her boots hung out over the edge of the pond, her knees curled tight up under her chin and her arms wrapped around them like it was the only thing holding herself together. She shivered in the breeze, every part of her shaking like a leaf.

Jason sat down beside her, placing the small, paper bag he'd purchased on the way over on the opposite side from her, and made a mission of opening it.

She didn't say anything at first, and neither did he. He just kept his eyes on the bag, crinkling the paper with his fingers like he was having trouble opening it.

"I'm fine, Jason," she said eventually. "You didn't have to come looking for me."

"Hm?" said Jason, glancing up for the first time, like he'd only just noticed she was here. "Oh, I wasn't looking for you. Your company is a happy coincidence. I just came to feed the fish." He lifted up his bag, showing her the small package of snow cookies. "They do still like crumbs, correct?"

"Sure."

Jason 'finally' got the bag open and peered inside. "Would you care for one? They appear to have given me an extra."

"No thanks. They're all yours."

Jason reached inside and pulled one out. "Well, I seem to remember someone in the past telling me that if the cookies do indeed belong to them, they can do what they like with them." He held one out to her, and when she didn't move to take it, he slotted it between her knees and chin. "It'd be rude of me to expect you to watch as I stuffed my face, Shadowheart."

Olivia's eyes slid over to him. "'Stuffed my face'?"

Jason just shrugged and took a small bite of his snow cookie. "Your words, not mine. I couldn't improve on such a masterpiece in charisma."

"What are you trying to do?"

"Well, I was intending to succeed at feeding the fish."

"No, I mean what are you doing here?" said Olivia, a little louder. She let go of her legs, and the cookie fell to the ground beside her. She didn't even look at it. "I came here just to get away from everyone for five minutes, Jason, and then you just decide you're going to come and check up on me like everyone else? Because I can't be left alone for five damn minutes? Am I that incapable to all of you?"

Olivia brought her fist down on the ground--right on top of the snow cookie, smashing it into a pile of crumbs.

She just stared at it, clenching her fist so hard that her knuckles turned white.

"Who am I kidding?" she muttered. "I am that incapable. Look at me, yelling at you like it's your fault that I can't figure out this stupid song. Yes, Olivia, fantastic job you're doing here, congratulations. Ruin the cookie while you're busy destroying everything else."

Olivia scraped some of the cookie crumbs into her hand and threw them into the pond so hard they almost reached the other side. The water turned into a frenzy of orange, white, and black as the fish swarmed it.

"The fish don't think it's ruined," said Jason.

"Yeah, I'm a real hero to the fish."

Jason didn't reply. He simply picked up a few more crumbs and tossed them into the pond, luring the fish a little closer.

"I'm sorry if I worried you," said Olivia. She pulled her legs back up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "I should have told someone but I just... I just had to get out of that room. I needed to just be alone for a bit. And I'm sorry for yelling at you."

"You were yelling, though I don't think you were yelling at me," said Jason. He paused, then decided to take a risk. "If you wish to be alone for a while, I can come back to feed the fish later."

She was quiet for a moment. "Well, I guess you may as well stay and feed the fish now, given that we seem to have an excess of floor cookie on our hands. Wouldn't wanna ruin everything for the fish too."

Jason threw a few more crumbs. "Implying you've ruined something else recently?"

She sighed. "Look, I know you've been away from the temple for a few days, but if you somehow didn't hear, I've been single handedly disappointing everyone with my incredible feats of failure."

"All I've heard is that you've been persistent in learning and attempting a rather difficult and pressuring task."

"That's a nice way of putting it." Olivia pulled her glasses off her face and then placed her eyes against her knees. Her voice was muffled by her arms when she spoke. "I just can't do it. I can't find this stupid song. When I get out there, there's nothing but this empty ringing sound in my head and everything just goes quiet and I can't find it, and I'm failing everyone because I can't sing the song that I've been humming for years and got myself into trouble with at first because I couldn't stop myself from singing it, and now, when I need to actually sing it, I'm going to get everyone in this City killed because I can't." She drew in a long, loud breath. "Does that sound ruined enough for you?"

He considered it. "It sounds like a dilemma, but it seems far from ruined."

"I'd love to hear how you justify that."

Jason watched the water ripple as the fish continued to search the surface. "Do you remember that day in the temple, where Regan 'forgot' to inform me of the list of pieces my mother wanted prepared until an hour before? I admit, the sudden pressure and the consequences of failure got to me. I thought for certain that I'd ruined it, that my own lacking ability would earn me a lecture, if not worse. But I got through it, I pulled back from disaster, and it was all because you stayed, and you sang them with me."

"That was completely different," said Olivia, lifting her head. "You had the talent to do it, you just needed to believe in yourself and do the thing without worrying about your monster of a mother for two minutes."

"I'm not seeing the difference," said Jason. "We have evidence that you're capable of doing it. You've done it before, and you still have the potential now."

"Maybe I used to," muttered Olivia. She flicked a crumb off her hand. "I don't anymore, not after what the Serpent did to me."

"Like what?"

"What do you mean, like what?" Olivia pulled back her sleeve and shoved her bandaged wrist towards him. "Like this. He put this fragment on my wrist, and he ruined me. I can't sing without Manifesting the High Speakers. I can't be left alone because they'll come after me, I can't transfo--" She cut herself off, pressing her lips together until her shoulders began to shake and her eyes glazed over with tears and she whispered, "Starlight, it doesn't even matter anymore, does it? It doesn't even matter if I tell anyone."

"If you tell anyone what?"

"That I'm Banshee." A tear streaked down her face, quickly wiped away. "Or at least, I was. I don't think I am anymore." For the first time, she looked up at him, a small, sad smile on her mouth. "Y'no all those times I disappeared from the temple duties and couldn't give you a reason?" She shrugged. "Well... yeah. Now you have your reason."

The silence stretched on.

Olivia swallowed, palms on her forehead. "Please say something."

"I..." Jason brushed a piece of his fringe off his face. The tips of his fingers brushed against Sae's icy cuff on his ear, and every part of him felt like it'd frozen. "I know. When Adande brought us to you, his story didn't add up, and Ella figured it out. I've been looking after your Ascended, and when I gave it to you the other night, I was hoping..."

"So was I," whispered Olivia.

Jason's heart was leaping in his chest, speeding up his breaths despite his best attempts as he slid his hand into the pocket of his coat.

His fingers closed around a smooth, round piece of starstone as Olivia continued.

"I was hoping that transforming might fix this... this hole in my chest," she said, half-heartedly throwing a few crumbs into the pond. "Being Banshee... it was the one thing that made me feel like I had control, the one thing that I could do, and they took me while I was transformed and used it to show me just how helpless I was, just how little control I really had. I couldn't save anyone, I couldn't even save myself."

"There were others captive with you?"

She shrugged. "Not that I saw, except for Wyvern, I suppose. The Serpent showed me hallucinations, one after the other. People I cared about, strangers. Sometimes they'd attack each other, sometimes they were being attacked, sometimes they were attacking me. Sometimes they weren't doing anything at all, it'd just be like, Ariel and Ericka sitting in a room, talking like it was a regular afternoon. I was trapped, gawked at like a sideshow. It never stopped, even when I was back in the box I think he kept me in."

Jason just remained quiet, watching as the creases in Olivia's face grew deeper.

"Even in that box, I don't know if anything I saw was real. I thought I saw Aya, Wyvern, the Serpent himself, I heard my own reflection talking to me, I thought I'd escaped it more than once, only to blink and find myself back. I thought the cuts on my skin were put there by others, but then he showed me a video where I was doing it to myself with Joy. No one else could have used that dagger unless I wanted them to. So that means, that while I thought I was surviving, pushing through one moment after the next and defying the Serpent, that I actually wanted someone to hurt me, or that I was so completely disconnected from my body that I did it to myself."

She shook her head, a shudder running through her body.

"I don't know if I can even trust myself anymore. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that eventually, it'd end. That eventually, Cryo would find me, or I'd escape, or I'd be dead. But now that I'm out, I can't even tell if this is real." She waved a hand over the pond. "I'm just sitting here, waiting for it all to disappear, to find myself back in that room with the Serpent watching me and waiting for me to finally crack, to give up."

Olivia squeezed her head between her arms. "The Serpent said something, that the only thing needed to make something real is for our mind to believe it, but I just can't. I can't believe in the ground beneath me, let alone trust myself enough to do anything else." She pulled her the hair caught in her fingers taut. "I don't know. It all just sounds insane. I'm insane. Maybe I did crack. I thought if I could get out, that it'd be back to usual, back to the fight, but it's not."

Jason ran a thumb over the starstone amulet in his pocket. "I know what it's like to question your own sanity. My mother gaslights me, too, even if not quite to the extent of the Serpent's ability."

"Gaslights?" asked Olivia.

"Gaslighting is when someone tries to manipulate you into questioning your own reality," said Jason. "They'll tell you that you did or didn't do something. I'd tell my mother I'd be late home on a call as she requested, and when I arrived home late, she'd demand to know where I was, saying that I hadn't told her I'd be late. Something would break or spill in the house, and she'd tell me that I did it. She'd reprimand me about things I did the week before that I couldn't recall. She'd..." He took a breath. "She'd hit me, then later told me that I'd attacked her first, or that she hadn't hit me at all. I still had the marks, but even when things don't add up, they're so insistent that they're right that you start to doubt yourself. You start believing that you're going crazy, that maybe you're just oversensitive, that you're a burden and everything you do is wrong."

Olivia's foot shifted against the ground. Her fingers dug into her knees. "How did you figure out what she was doing?"

Sae. It'd all been Sae. In the first few months they were together, his Ascended had made a mission of correcting every little thing that Aurelia tried to twist. Words, actions, events, meetings--before they went to sleep every night, Sae would set the record straight. "I have someone who I trust implicitly. Whenever I'm uncertain or questioning myself, I rely on them to set it straight. Eventually, you start to trust yourself again when the pieces don't fit together. They're my touchstone for reality, the thing that grounds me when I can't ground myself."

She was quiet for a moment, opening her mouth multiple times like she intended to say something else before sighing and resigning herself to a smaller question. "So they're how you got through it?"

"I wouldn't quite say I'm through it," said Jason. "At least not yet. I feel like I've made significant progress, particularly since meeting you, but it's still an ongoing process. The biggest thing for me was realising that what happened to me was wrong, that it wasn't my fault, that there isn't anything wrong with me. That I'm not crazy, and that it's okay for me to not be okay with it, but still accepting that it happened."

"Just... accept that something like that happened to you?" said Olivia. "How do you accept that your own mother is a giant piece of trash that deserves to be kicked off Skypillar's peak head-first?"

"The way I look at it, denying that bad things happened to you doesn't make them disappear," said Jason. "They did happen, no matter how much you wish they hadn't, whether you deserved them or not. They affected you, they changed you, and maybe at times, they broke you."

Olivia dropped her gaze.

Jason moved a little closer.

"It's not until I accepted that these things happened that I could face them at all," he said softly. "It wasn't until you made me confront them that they started to lose their power over me. And I'm not saying they don't affect me still. But now that I've accepted them, I can also turn around and look them in the eye and tell them that, despite their best attempts, I am still enough. I am still worthy of living, and friends, and my violin, and accepting a cookie from a friend with no other reason except that we're friends."

His fingers were frozen on the starstone amulet in his pocket, his muscles rigid as stone.

"I guess, what I'm trying to get at is that it's okay to let the bad things shape you," he said. "It's okay to accept that you were hurt, that you were abused, because you're here in spite of them. You survived them, and if they didn't kill you, they made you stronger. They threw stones at you, and you can use them to step up a little bit higher than you were before, no matter the scratches and bruises the stones might have left."

"What if they did more than just scratch and bruise me?" murmured Olivia. "What if they broke my legs instead?"

"Then I'd get into the pit with you and hold you up until they'd healed," said Jason.

"I couldn't ask you to do that, Jase."

"You don't have to."

Olivia shifted into a cross-legged position, grabbing Jason's hand and squeezing it between her own as she rested it on one of her knees. Her eyes were focused, steady on their interlocked fingers.

"I trust you," she said, leaving zero room for doubt in the words. "I don't know if that's asking too much, but... I trust you, Jason. I trust you enough that if you say that facing these things might help, then... then I can try."

I trust you.

Jason's gaze lifted up to hers, steady and sure. "I can't promise that it's easy or even that it'll be a straight path, but I swear on the starlight, Liv, that when you're ready to face them, you aren't going to be alone. I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it that you are not ruined, that you aren't broken. I will fight this with you."

Jason pulled out the starstone amulet in his pocket and held it out to Olivia.

The Cryophoenix insignia gleamed in the sunlight.

"We'll fight this together, just like we always do."

Olivia stared at the amulet. "You're Cryo."

He managed a small smile as his nerves got the best of him. "Hopefully you don't hate me too much after how we met the other day."

Olivia gave a small snort of laughter that sent a fresh set of tears rolling down her face. "Oh, I don't hate you. I just had to make sure you wouldn't do anything you'd regret until I could come back and kick your ass for it later."

Jason lifted the amulet a little higher. "Lay it down?"

Olivia Shadowheart, his partner, his Banshee, looked up and met his eyes before she brought her hand down on top of the amulet.

"And down it's laid, Frostsong."

The amulet gleamed with the pale blue light of a Cryophoenix. A strange, warm feeling washed through Jason's body, surging through his limbs and coalescing in his tattoo, leaving it glowing for a few moments before the light from both his tattoo and the amulet dimmed once more.

Almost immediately, the cuff on Jason's ear sprouted wings and a beak and poofed straight into existence with a rather loud, "WELL THAT TOOK LONG ENOUGH."

"Olivia," said Jason. "Meet Sae."

"Hello, Sae," said Olivia. "I'm--"

"OLIVIA!" said Sae, flapping beak-first into her face and hugging her nose with his wings. "I've been waiting so long to tell you. Featherbutt? Gave me life. And how you handled Aurelia? Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to peck her eyes out? I swear, I woulda, but Frostbutt over here needed me more than I needed revenge. Your solution was a whole lot more elegant I gotta admit."

"What a fantastic first impression at a completely appropriate time, Sae."

"Oh, yeah okay, mister 'stiff collar'," said Sae, rolling his eyes. He detached himself from Olivia's face and landed back on Jason's shoulder. "Can't blame me if I finally get to talk to someone who speaks like a normal person for once."

"It's okay," said Olivia, catching Jason's expression with a smile. A smile. "I think... I think you're right. Getting it out has made me feel a little bit better already." She bit down on her lip and nodded her head. "Okay. Okay. What do we do now?"

Jason considered the options for a moment before settling on the one that felt right. "We go back to the temple and retrieve my violin. I've always found that music comes easier when you're playing with someone else."

He looked to Olivia for confirmation.

There was something new in her eyes. It was battered, bruised, and hurting, but it was fierce and it was determined. There was everything that had made Olivia Olivia, and now, there was something new. Something a little darker than the pure, optimistic force she charged through life with, yet Olivia all the same.

"And once we're warmed up," she said. "We'll see how the aurorasong feels about a duet."

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A/N - THE THINGGGGG HAPPENEDDDDDDDDDDD 
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