The real Jason's eyes locked on Olivia's for a single, fleeting heartbeat before they glanced at the window, then back to the imposter who stood between them.

The imposter looked back over their shoulder at Jason. "I don't need to tell you that nothing you do, Jason Frostsong, will be faster than something I can do, especially with the auroras out." They lifted an arm, flicking their fingers towards the door. "Close that and move away from the door. Don't try to contact anyone outside, or reach for your Liaiser."

With a glance at Olivia, Jason did as the imposter asked.

"Well," said the imposter, placing a hand on their hip in a very un-Jason-like fashion. "This could have been far easier if you hadn't decided to question me, Olivia. I was only under orders to take you, but now, anything that happens to him is entirely your fault."

"Then take me," said Olivia, gritting her teeth. She didn't dare look at Jason. "It's not like he could do anything to stop you."

"Not for another ten minutes, at least," said the imposter with a smirk. "Taking you would be the easy part. The original plan was to impersonate you once you were safely tucked away elsewhere, but clearly, with him around," they nodded towards Jason, "that becomes impossible."

Ten minutes. Ten minutes until the auroras faded. That was how long they had to stall, unless Jason had a plan--but looking at his face, Olivia was starting to think he'd been caught just as off guard as she had.

This had to be Skinwalker. What did she know about Skinwalker?

"Why take me now?" said Olivia, throwing out the first thing that came to mind. "Didn't get the chance in the last few days?"

"You were useless to us until you learned how to Sing," said the imposter. "We let you out so you could figure it out, and now that you have, we're taking you back. Though, I will admit, it was fun, watching you realise just how meaningless everything in this world truly is."

Olivia sucked in a breath. "It's not meaningless."

The imposters eyes followed her gaze over to Jason.

"Ah, yes," said the imposter, lifting a finger to tap their lips. "Which brings me back to the problem, what to do with him?"

They stepped closer to Jason, barely an arms length away.

"I'm forbidden from killing you or maiming you in any permanent way," they said, tapping his arm. Jason shook them off. They laughed. "I can't simply leave you here, either, because you're too heroic for your own good, and once the auroras are gone..." The imposter rubbed their jaw. "I suppose that really only leaves one option then, doesn't it?"

Olivia's breath caught. "If you touch him, I'll--"

Before she could finish the sentence, the imposter shifted.

If she'd blinked, she would have missed it. Jason's black hair shortened into shaggy, grey fur that covered the majority of a body which was growing, both in height and width until it towered over them both. His shoulders hunched, dragged down by long, spindly arms with black claws. The bones of his legs seemed to break and warp into thick, beast-like legs with talons that punctured the carpet below.

Bloodstained antlers of bone pushed out of Skinwalker's head as Jason's stolen face vanished beneath the black void of its mask, and in the same heartbeat it'd shifted, Skinwalker reached up and gripped the real Jason's head in its claws.

Jason didn't struggle. He didn't try to pull away. He simply stood there, caught in Skinwalker's empty gaze as it brought Jason's face a breath from its mask and growled, "Sleep."

Jason's eyes fluttered closed, and when Skinwalker released his head, he neatly sank to the floor, legs folded beneath him and chin drooping on his chest.

Olivia stepped back.

"Now," growled Skinwalker, turning the black void of its attention to Olivia. "What were you about to say about, 'if I touch him'?"

The dying embers within Olivia flared. "Then you'll regret it."

Skinwalker gave a rasping chuckle. "Oh, will I?" It stepped forward, the shaggy fur of its legs changing to sleek boots that reached its mid-thigh in a far slower shift than before. "Because the way I see it, Banshee, you're weak." Its midsection narrowed into a crimson, form-fitting tunic that flared behind its legs, and a waistband with twin daggers sheathed at the back. "You're helpless." Banshee's visor stretched down over an all too familiar face as Skinwalker shook its now long, amber hair loose over its shoulders. It leaned in close to Olivia, a thin, wide smile stretched across its face. "You're useless."

Olivia clenched her fingers into a fist to stop them from shaking. "No. I'm not useless."

"Really?" said Skinwalker, reaching back to stroke a hand over Jason's bowed head. "If you aren't useless, then you'll stop me from taking him. You'll stop me from coming back later, in the middle of the night while everyone is asleep, and taking you, no matter where you hide."

Skinwalker looked at Olivia and gave her a cold smile as her fingers looped around Jason's ponytail, sliding over the gathered hair.

Inside Olivia, the flaring embers caught into a blaze.

"You couldn't stop the crimson siblings and an old man with a bat last time, Banshee," continued Skinwalker, drawing a dagger and taking a casual step over towards her. "Even with your transformation, we put you in that box. Even with your transformation, you were trapped by your own mind. The box was never physically locked." Skinwalker's gaze flicked down to Olivia's hands. "And you think that now, when you're still shaking and half-dead from the experience, with no transformation, a corrupted fragment bound to your very being, and facing a true Luminary, that this will be any different to last time?"

Olivia heard Skinwalker's words. She saw the mirrored cracks, the scars, the bruises that she hadn't been able to stop, even as Banshee. She re-lived flashes of the hallucinations they'd tried to drown her in. She felt the lack of control all over again as right now, standing in front of her, Skinwalker leaned over her and grinned.

And yet, despite it all, Olivia did not freeze.

The inferno inside burned straight through the creeping haze that threatened to smother her, and in its absence, there was another sound in her ears other than the dull, ringing silence.

In the corners of the room, lurking within the shadows that always surrounded her, there was a Song.

"Nothing to say any more?" asked Skinwalker.

A Shadowsong.

"You aren't taking him," said Olivia, right before she filled her lungs to capacity and released the words that still lay in within the shredded depths of her soul.

"Ascend, Shadow of Skypillar!"

This time, she heard something more than just her voice within the words, and from the corners of the room, the shadows came.

They embraced her, closer than they ever had before, staining her skin grey and sinking deep into the fabric. The pale oranges on her transformation gave way to black. The crimsons of her tunic were gone, scattered to the highlights of her armour and the underside of the overskirt that hung low behind her legs. The ambers of her hair bleached to a pure white, with the exception of a single remaining streak that ran through her fringe.

As the familiar weight of Grief and Joy materialised in her hands, on the updraft of the flames inside, Banshee opened her eyes and launched herself straight at a wide-eyed Skinwalker.

Skinwalker recovered from her shock in time to lean away from the downward slashes aimed at her upper arms. She cracked a wide, feral grin and pushed straight back, swinging a wild undercut towards Banshee with her own copied daggers. Unable to think fast enough to get her daggers up in time to deflect, Banshee retreated, yielding those precious few steps away from Jason's unconscious body.

Skinwalker laughed, straightening up and twirling her daggers. "Oh, this is going to be far more interesting than the Serpent promised."

Skinwalker attacked again.

Banshee couldn't keep up.

Grief and Joy didn't feel right in her hands. Her entire transformation felt different. It didn't fit her like it once had, and in the flood of doubt that drowned her, the flames inside were dying.

She second guessed every movement she made. She kept mentally glancing back over her shoulder, desperately trying to use them as motivation to keep meeting Skinwalker's daggers while dreading them all the same.

I'm better than this! Banshee attempted a counter-attack and almost had Joy knocked from her hands in response. Fear shot through her, and Skinwalker's next three strikes wouldn't have missed if Skinwalker hadn't been playing with her. Why can't I do this? What is wrong with me?

A few more flustered attempts at a defense, and Banshee's heels hit the wall.

The flames weren't enough. They were suffocating in their own smoke, leaking out through every shredded inch of her to leave her with a terrifying realisation.

I can't do this.

"How does it feel, being completely outclassed in your own transformation?" asked Skinwalker.

Skinwalker swung a lazy dagger towards Banshee. Banshee deflected it, only to completely miss the second dagger as it came up from the side and pressed flat against her throat.

Skinwalker leaned in, until their visors were pressed together.

"I don't even have your full transformation, and this is far too easy, even for me. Even in her crippled state, DragonFae would pose more of a challenge than you."

Skinwalker stepped to the side, keeping her dagger pressed to Banshee's throat as she pointed the other one towards Jason.

"I should wake him up," Skinwalker mused. "Just so he can see how misplaced his faith in you is." She chuckled. "Don't get me wrong, it wasn't entirely misplaced once, but now? You're broken. You're useless, as both Olivia and Banshee."

Banshee's fingers tightened around Grief and Joy, desperately trying to fight through the haze, but all she could do was realise that she'd failed him again, that she'd failed herself, that--that--

Starlight, what was she doing?

When Skinwalker's eyes slid over to Jason, Banshee sucked in a deep breath that grazed her chin against Skinwalker's dagger, lifted Grief, and drove it straight into Skinwalker's forearm.

Like slow motion, Skinwalker roared in pain. Banshee contained hers to a choking gasp as a line of pain swept under her chin. Skinwalker staggered away, attempting to pull Grief out of the blackened, bloodied mess of her arm. Banshee touched her grey-skinned fingers under her chin. A thin stripe of hot, crimson blood came away on their tips.

She didn't know what, if anything, stirred that fire back to life in the moment she found herself staring at her own blood.

A million things rushed back to her--her arm, skin-stripped by the Manifested before the Serpent took her, the hundreds of cuts they'd inflicted on her, the torture, the mind games. Her first instinct was to resist them, to push them away, to drag herself back to the present and throw herself at Skinwalker to focus on what was going on now, but something Jason had said earlier gave her pause.

There was no fighting these experiences, these feelings. There was no point denying them. There was no motivation strong enough to ignore them. It didn't matter how hard she believed they hadn't happened, because the deep parts of her knew that they had.

It didn't matter that she had access to some incredible godly power, it didn't matter that she was expected to be a hero and to save this City over and over again, because right at this very second, the blood on her fingers was human.

And no matter her power, no matter her strength--she couldn't fight Skinwalker when she was still fighting herself.

She drew in a breath, curled her bloodied fingertips into her palm, and let them in.

From her first seizure to this very second seeing Jason kneeling entranced on the floor, they rushed in. Each of them came with anguish, with pain, with rage and frustration that seeped into every part of who she was--yet they didn't overwhelm her. They filled the numb, hollow places of her being like their spaces were already carved and waiting.

And by the same flames inside her--those beautiful, dancing, wild flames that flared and drove her forward--the gaping holes across her spirit were painfully yet blessedly cauterised.

Banshee lifted her gaze, locking it onto Skinwalker who, unable to wrest Grief out of her arm, had shifted back to its base form of shaggy furs and bloodstained horns.

Olivia had been terrified that accepting them would mean letting them consume her, that the darkness would erase the light, but the grief she felt did not smother the joy. Like her daggers, they were a pair of opposites, not weakened, but strengthened by the existence of the other.

Light and dark, fire and smoke, grief and joy.

It took both to create a Shadow.

In her base form, Skinwalker re-shifted its arm, creating a hole wide enough that Grief dropped and clattered to the floor. Skinwalker rolled its shoulder, arm knitting itself back together as it turned its mask of endless black towards Banshee.

"I was going to be gentle with you," Skinwalker said, its voice grating against the very air itself. "Now, you've annoyed me."

"Annoying people until they give up," said Banshee. Accepting the bad hadn't made them stop hurting, but that was okay. No one expected a broken leg to heal overnight, and to try and keep walking on it without support was just dumb. "That's my speciality."

"I will not give up," hissed Skinwalker, leaning forward onto its long, thin arms. "But you will."

Banshee felt the tug of its will on hers, but it was nothing, nothing compared to the Shadowsong she could still hear in her ears. It was louder than she'd ever heard it, the same melancholy melody that had been born from the stones that she'd suffered and survived, the heartbreak and horrors of the Serpent's hallucinations had wrought upon her soul.

The Shadowsong lived in the scars that covered her every thought, scars that would forevermore gleam when seen under the light. Scars that marked not just the damage, but her defiance--and that included anything Skinwalker wanted to throw at her next.

Skinwalker growled.

Banshee's lips twitched into a smile.

Their mental stand-off came to an end when Jason stirred.

As his hands hit the ground in front of him, shoulders hunched and eyes slowly blinking open, Skinwalker's focus switched. It took one, massive step back towards him and reached out for Jason's head again with its claws.

Not giving herself time to think about it, Banshee sucked in a breath and Screamed.

Skinwalker staggered, drawing its grasp away from Jason to grip its own head, releasing a horrible, keening wail that sent a shiver down Banshee's spine. Banshee pushed through it, darting down to where Jason was shaking his head clear. She grabbed him by the shoulders, lifted him to his feet and dragged him out the door.

She slammed the door shut behind her, and out in the hallway, she tapped her fingers against Jason's cheek.

"Jase?"

He blinked, the slightest frown creasing his features as his eyes flicked from her hair, to her garments. "...Banshee?"

"The one and only," she said with a quick smile. She glanced back over her shoulder as inside the room, something heavy went thud. "I'll keep Skinwalker busy. You go get backup. I don't know if--"

A wall-shaking roar erupted from the room.

Acting on instinct, Banshee grabbed Jason and jumped, shadow-shifting them both straight through the window and into the courtyard outside as inside, the door slammed flat into the ground where they'd been only a heartbeat before.

Banshee pulled her shadows from Jason and gave him an encouraging shove towards the Starlight Hall. "Go!"

Skinwalker, shifted into the Banshee who had protected this City for the past year once more, kicked the window open and stood on the ledge.

The real Banshee--complete with her grey-stained skin and white hair with a single, amber stripe through the fringe--gave Joy an experimental twirl in her fingers before pointing the tip of the dagger at the one still dressed in the past.

"One chance, Skinwalker," Banshee called. "Surrender now, or I'll show you what a terrible impersonation you've been doing."

With a hollow, echoing laugh, Skinwalker raised her daggers and launched herself directly at Banshee.

*+*+*+*

A/N - OUR. GIRL. IS. BACK. AT. IT. 

1 VOTE = 1 STAB