They'd been hard, those first few weeks here. Given everything else he'd had to adjust to, what'd he lost, living without his mask shouldn't have been the hardest, but it was, and even so, Jason never feels so naked without it as when he's looking at Lux, his every thought, feeling, emotion plain on his face. He reaches, covering her hand with his own.

He can't lose her. He can't lose any of it, not his friends, his life here, not Bucky, but Lux...if he loses her, he really will go crazy. "I shot him," he blurts, shuddering under a sudden wave of terror. The moments when he wonders if he doesn't deserve their hatred come too frequently, and he's not even sure that this terror is his own, if it doesn't belong to Damian, trying to stand down Jason and his gun. "They both said so, in my future, when I was...I don't know what I was. Gone. Too far gone. But I wouldn't." His fingers tighten just enough to hold on, and Jason swallows down a wave of bile, tries to remember that it must be better coming from him than Damian. "I don't want to do that, I don't ever want to do that. You believe me, right? That's the me you know."