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She finds him in a safehouse, an apartment in a condemned building on the edge of the Bowery. It has less than the bare essentials, but the city hasn't cut its water supply yet due to a convenient mistake in the paperwork. He's been here for… a while.
Long enough that he doesn't feel the hunger anymore, though he's been shoving protein bars down his throat on the occasions where he has enough energy to lurch over towards the stash in the corner. He's dragged himself to the bathroom a couple times too, he thinks. Drank water straight from the tap, but it miraculously didn't kill him.
Shame.
Mostly, he's been sleeping, slipping in and out of a haze. Curling up on the yellowed mattress and pretending that he's still small enough to fit. The curtains are drawn, but the flimsy things aren't particularly effective at blocking the light. The angle changes every time he blinks his eyes open.
He doesn't know when she gets there. He just… opens his eyes to a dark room, blinking blearily through the crust on his eyelashes until he eventually processes that the streetlight outside his window should be illuminating more than it is.
He manages to push himself up onto his elbows before he gives up, and she takes pity on him, black smoke parting to reveal her crouched and studying him with glittering black eyes.
"Jason."
He slumps back down. He contemplates returning the greeting for all of a second, but his throat is dry and gross and he still remembers what having it split open felt like. He closes his eyes.
"You look like shit."
He somehow finds the energy to crack an eye back open at that, leveling her with a halfhearted glare. Honestly, he didn't realize she even knew how to swear.
She's leaned closer, her white braids hovering only a couple inches from his face as she peers at him. He kind of forgot how pretty she is, honestly. The combination of pink, green, and blue trailing around her eyes is the most color he's seen in days. There's a familiar, judgmental twist to her mouth.
He turns away with a groan, eye slipping back shut.
"I did not realize it was possible for you to be even more pathetic."
His head is fuzzy. He suspects he should be somewhere between mortified and humiliated, but he's just… not. He's tired. And thirsty, and he needs to piss, but the bathroom is five feet away and his limbs really do not feel like cooperating with him right now, especially with the way he's been laying on his right arm—the entire thing is tingling now, nerves sparking now that his shifting means he isn't cutting off the circulation anymore.
He should… bathroom.
He doesn't move.
Her face reappears above him. "Is this really what you left the All-Caste for?" Her hand sweeps out, gesturing at the general state of disrepair. Yeah, he already knows there's mold on the carpet. Breathing in those spores hasn't managed to kill him, either.
"No," he says finally, some buried, indignant part of him managing to wake at that. Talking sucks just as much as he thought it would. "This is… new. Temporary."
"And he knows how to speak after all."
"Hngh," he manages eloquently as, sheer force of will, he ends up sitting. He can see the bathroom door from here. She steps back, hand on her hip, still visibly judging him. Well, she can eat up the view as much as she likes.
"I need your help," she says eventually.
"Mhm." He's braced himself on the wall, inching up a little further with every passing second. He'll be vertical soon enough. She's right. He is pathetic. He's not even injured anymore and he still doesn't remember how to stand.
"People are dying. Organs missing from their bodies, unrelated to the cause of death, with no incision marks."
He stumbles into the bathroom, bracing himself on the counter. The sink handle squeaks under his grasp, the faucet sputtering for a few seconds before the water finally lurches forward. It looks vaguely gray-brown in the ambient light leaking from the window.
He ducks his head into the sink basin and sucks in a few awkward gulps. The metallic, gritty taste stopped bothering him a long time ago.
Eventually he turns the faucet off, glancing up. She's hovering in the doorframe, arms now crossed. This time, talking feels a little less like he's stripping off slivers of his throat with a fruit peeler. "That can only mean the Untitled."
"Yes."
He studies himself in the mirror. He can't see very well, but it's not pretty. His hair is sweaty and plastered on his forehead, his eyes crusted with dark bags. There's still gunk from the adhesive of his domino mask on his face. He doesn't actually remember when he took it off.
His neck is smooth, unblemished, pale skin, but between his slow blinks he can mentally overlay how the scar should carve through it, fresh and red and angry. He tugs his jacket up over it only for the fabric to slide back down immediately.
"Cool," he says, pressing his lips together. They're chapped, skin peeling. He starts picking at it with his teeth. "S'not my fuckin' business anymore, is it?"
"You were the chosen one."
"I survived the cleansing ritual because I'm a stubborn bastard. Doesn't mean anything." He almost reaches over to flick the bathroom light, but then he remembers that the city did turn off the electricity. "Can you close the door."
She does the little tilt of her head that means she's rolling her eyes at him, but she complies.
He fumbles around, does his business in the dark, and doesn't make a massive fucking mess in the process. See? He's still in control of some part of his sad excuse of a second life. He accidentally hip-checks the counter as he navigates back towards the door and immediately regrets not quietly asphyxiating in the coffin when he had the chance.
He finds the door and pulls it open and leans on the doorframe in a very cool and well collected manner. He does not collapse on it. He's managed to work a piece of dead skin free from his lips, and now it lays frustratingly persistent on his tongue. He doesn't know if he should swallow or spit it out. "So the Untitled violated their truce with the All-Caste. That doesn't concern me. It shouldn't concern you."
Something happens to her face. Her lips draw tight, her shoulders tensing. Then she's reaching out, memory spheres—marbles of encased pale blue smoke—balancing in her palm. He watches them roll, spilling the scenes they contain on the floor of the safehouse.
Between the diaphanous, dream-filtered ripples, he sees the Thousand Acres of All. The Well of the All-Caste, specifically, with its torch-lit gray stones and spiral staircases. In the center, splattered with blood…
"Fuck," he breathes. "That's…"
Ducra.
She inclines her head slightly, a subtle nod of acknowledgment. That's her mom. She's grieving, isn't she? Shit.
"Everyone else…?"
She doesn't answer verbally, simply letting the other memories drop and undulate, a swell of overlapping images, still bodies and dried blood already staining the stone.
He sucks in a sharp breath. He… he'd forgotten, really, about those months he spent with the All-Caste, but they were something like a second family to him. Third. He's stopped counting. "We'll find what did this," he says, shoving off the door. His legs manage to catch him, this time. His helmet… blew up, but he remembers where he keeps his backup gear. He's pretty he still has backups lying around, anyway. "We'll… we'll make them pay."
She pauses, surprised. "You vowed never to return," she says, slow, like she needs to remind him. "You rejected the All-Caste's teachings, in the end."
"And you got banished, but you're still on board to hunt down whoever did this, aren't you?"
He knows vengeance. He can fucking enact vengeance. Ducra might be pissed off that he still hasn't learned, but she's dead now, and he still hasn't figured out how to make that stick for himself.
She nods, careful. "What about your plans? With your murderer and… your father."
He chokes out a laugh that burns a line across his throat. "Do you want my help or not?"
She shrugs, a forced nonchalance that he can see right fucking through. He's her last resort. Of course he is. "I know your plans in this city are important to you." Important enough for him to abandon both the All-Caste and her, she doesn't say. "I don't want to interrupt you for this, if you don't want it, not when… the harm has already been done."
"Nah," Jason says, a little too quickly. "I… there's nothing left here for me, anymore."