closed starter. | @libertytm
smoke hangs heavy in the air, clinging to his clothes, his skin, his lungs, but jason breathes it as easily as oxygen, exhaling bursts of sparks. fire - his fire - licks in wisps across his form, fiery lines drawn & shimmering through the air draping off his limbs in feathered outlines; traces of the winged creature at his core bleeding through his mortal mask. and just beside him, steve - his guardian, his shield, his friend - fighting with every inch, every fiber to take back ground.
but they’re exhausted. they’ve been fighting for days on end, and even as powerful as they are beside one another, even they can only go for so long. jason can feel himself beginning to flag, and he knows without looking that steve is the same. endlessly they have battled side by side, but still it never seems enough. it’s draining as fuck and he just wishes it would stop for just a second ——
something whizzes through the air at top speed, a high - pitched whistling its only signifier, and jason reacts just that bit faster, in the only way he knows how ( there’s no time to do otherwise ). “ steve!! ” fingers dig into his shoulder and throw — tossing the griffon as far from him as he can just as the projectile finds its mark.
he doesn’t get to see if he’s pushed steve far enough away in time. the explosion doesn’t damage him. it can’t. but it is what the fire conceals that does, piercing jason through and through with a sickening squelch of ripped flesh and cracked bone. he chokes on his own scream as his sternum shatters and his lungs flood with his own sanguine ichor. ragdoll body tumbles without resistance down the edge of the hill, colliding with the ground below hard enough to force air & blood from his throat despite how little it has left to give.
things slow to a muffled crawl then, the only sounds the ringing in his ears and the wet asphyxiation of a fool’s attempts to cling to life. he only has seconds now, seconds to burn, but he wants .... he has to know .....
jason’s body erupts into flames, a fraction before his final breath can expel, ashes dispersing through the air. and — just that short distance away — the metallic shing of phoenixian steel reasserting itself within steve’s hand. the blade has returned.