Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And so, they try again.

The tents in the campsite that they all organized together right in the middle of the forest now looked more like a ghost town. What happened just in the morning felt so old, time passing seamlessly as Torchbearer packed the remains of the Dema maps. His backpack hung limply on his shoulder.

Even though deep down he's always known that someday this moment will come, even though he brought himself to movement and walked out of that tower not feeling the steps underneath the soles of his boots, pulled himself together and put on a brave face for those who stayed, the sight of everything they've built together, abandoned just how they last left it, made him halt in his track.

Clancy was gone.

Many decided to follow him and stay in the city. The ones who traced the Torchbearer's steps, just like him, weren't experiencing this for the first time. And while all the previous tries a person alongside the banditos, leading them, wasn't all that unlikeable, the loss of this Clancy hit different.

Torchbearer dropped his backpack onto the ground and slid into the tent he had shared with Clancy once. The closest place he could call home. The cramped space was dull, covered by the flaps of thick material from the rising sun. It was as if he could still see Clancy sitting there, on their shared bed under the soft light of their shared lamp with a blanket covering his shoulders, a graphite pencil hanging in his mouth, and a journal in his hands.

His shoulders dropped in resignation at the thought.

This time, he felt truly defeated.

He shrugged off his beanie, dropping onto the bed as the heavy weight clung to his body. He just sat there for a long moment, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, palms pressed against his eyes. The familiar shape of the tent pressed in around him like a fading memory, thinning at the edges.

Eventually, he needed to move.

He went through the scattered papers - their plans of how they should handle the final encounter with the bishops. He gathered all of Clancy's clothes. There weren't many. He folded them into the heap and put them on top of the bed.

Later in the day, the remaining banditos sat around the newly ignited fire pit, feeding dry branches to the flames. With the solemn mood, most of the expressions on their faces were grim.

"I really liked this Clancy…" someone said, and Torchbearer had to physically stop himself from burying his face in his hands by biting his tongue.

He went for a walk in the forest, feeling sick of seeing the tents once again. The trees surrounded this place like wards, their shade stretching in the long, sharp shapes. He let his feet lead him.

One moment, he was there in the woods, a lifetime lived of failing, and another, he was a teen again, not knowing the world better. Everything around him reassembled itself with a quiet that felt all too saturated. He knew this place. Knew the taste of its air, the way the distant hum of the wind breathing through the foliage.

Or… on the second thought, it wasn't just wind.

Years of surviving in the middle of god-knows-where taught him to stop.

There was a road in front of him. And a distant noise that seemed more like a hum of a car whirling down the road, marked in the yellow dashes. Torchbearer stood there, silently waiting, watching as the car drove past the trees in the forest. He could get only a glimpse of the 1989 Cadillac Deville and a driver in the front seat.

Tyler?

Torchbearer felt glued to the ground, mind racing so much faster than that fleeting glimpse of a man in the red hood.

No, it couldn't have been him. Just another bishop, with the new religion on the way.

A moment when he stood frozen was broken by a sudden crash. A screech of metal against the asphalt. The tire was left behind, rolling down the road.

Torchbearer took a cautious step to observe the scene that had happened right in front of his eyes.

The car halted in the middle of the road, a wheel, all four doors, and a roof missing.

There was a bishop in the driver's seat. As the flames rose from the front of the trunk and slithered higher, exploding in a furnace, the red robes of the man swooshed in the wind menacingly.

There was someone else, too. There probably won't be a day in Torchbearer's life anymore when he won't recognize this figure in the distance. With his hands stained black and his neck covered in darkness - not like he had seen it just a few hours before this morning, halved on the Clancy's skin - but the blackness that spread down to his chest on the bad nights that he spent hyperventilating in Torchbearer's arms.

Tyler, oh god. He looked so young, tensely staring back at the bishop, ready to take off running.

Nico watched him with an absent expression on his familiar, cracked, halved face. 

He watched it happen once already. His heart ached to watch it all over again. He remembers how he didn't do anything, but he's pretty sure - just a push - was everything it took.

Torchbearer felt his legs pull him forward.

"Hey!" he shouted.

Both of the men's attention was on him immediately. He gritted his teeth, meeting Nico's rapidly yellowing, oil-slick eyes. The eyes of someone who had never once been surprised by anything in their whole, long existence. Until now.

"You old fuck!"

Torchbearer's hand dropped to a strapped folding knife at his leg, but met just the air. He looked to Tyler.

With a slight movement of the red robes in the periphery of his vision, he ran as if his life depended on it.

He should've known better; the distance was way too long, but he felt as if he would physically die if he stopped. 

His boots slipped on the loose gravel as he tore across the space between them, the air burning sharp in his lungs, the world stretching thin and warped around the edges like it was deciding whether to let him reach the moment or snap him back to where he belonged.

Tyler stumbled backward, caught between running and freezing altogether, shoulders locked in that same terrified tension Torchbearer knows far too well.

Torchbearer’s voice cracked again, louder this time, almost hoarse.

"Tyler! Don’t—"

He didn’t even know what the end of that sentence was supposed to be.

Don’t die. Don’t die again. Oh god, please, don't die, don't disappear in that terrifying red, don't go, don’t slip out of reach like there's no end to this beaten story.

Torchbearer saw the bishop’s hand twitch forward, towards Tyler.

“Oh no you don’t—” Torchbearer hissed under his breath, sprinting harder.

The bishop took one deliberate step toward Tyler.

“Who—” Tyler breathed, backing up another step. “Who are you?”

Torchbearer almost laughed - sharp and humorless - because wasn’t that the joke, coming from those familiar lips?

“Get behind me,” he said, breath ragged.

Tyler didn’t move.

The bishop did.

He lunged.

Torchbearer didn’t think. He slammed forward, grabbed a fistful of Tyler’s shirt, and yanked him out of the bishop’s reach so violently they both stumbled. Tyler’s breath punched out of him. The bishop’s hand swiped empty air.

Torchbearer shoved Tyler behind him, his hand gripping his hand like a lifeline.

He didn’t have a knife. He didn’t have a weapon. He barely had a plan.

The bishop tilted his head again, looking straight at him, as if studying something new.

Torchbearer held his ground.

The bishop stepped forward.

For one beat, the world hung suspended - flames crackling, metal collapsing in on itself, Nico watching with that hollow, impossible stare.

Torchbearer braced himself, pushing Tyler towards the forest.

“Run.”

Tyler did.

Chapter Text

He woke up smeared on the side of the road, the forest floor pressed against his cheek. Everything felt blurry; his eyes couldn't focus on anything as he tried to push himself from the ground. Torchbearer spit out a mouthful of grit and blinked hard, closing his eyes until the shapes stopped doubling. The asphalt under his palms was warm. There was soil on his tongue, and dirt smudged all over the left side of his face.

He lifted his head above the ground. It was nighttime already. The stars in the sky were sparkling with their white creamy clusters so close to the ground, and the moonlight was the only guide he had to take in his surroundings.

The car was gone.

The bishop was gone.

Tyler—god, Tyler—

He scrambled upright on numb legs, nearly tipping right back over. His head spun so violently, he had to brace his hands on his knees and breathe until the vertigo passed. His chest felt too tight for his lungs, like he was trapped inside a body that wasn’t quite finished being built.

The forest looked wrong.

His hands looked wrong.

He was wearing a T-shirt. He hadn't worn a t-shirt since the last time Clancy was brought back to Dema, and they had been separated for three years. It was as if the memory overtook him, and the details of what everything looked like, felt like, and smelled like, came back to him with startling clarity.

“No,” he whispered to no one. “No, no, no—”

He recognized the bend in the road. He recognized the angle of the trees. He recognized the way the yellow dashes split the asphalt ahead.

He was back.

Years back, when the trees were greener at the edges, when the sun was warmer, when he had first seen Clancy smeared all those years ago, when he thought - oh, this time would be different, this Clancy is different.

Amidst this haze of realization (realization of what? Of going back in time? He felt like he was going crazy), he did what he knew best.

He stumbled down the road, searching the pockets of his pants. Thankfully, he found what he needed - a lighter he kept at his person for as long as he could call himself a Torchbearer. He trailed the path, stepping toward the east side of the road, in the direction where the camp was first situated. It's been a while since they relocated after the events of the last Clancy's capture. He remembers how banditos lost hope for his return after a long year of no signs of Clancy being alive. There was no more pointer for the escapees to go up. Instead, there was just an all-encompassing radio silence. But Torchbearer always knew that he'd come back.

Giving a lighter a soft flick, it ignited in his hand. He picked up a dry stick, setting its end ablaze.

He turned toward the forest.

The flame at the end of the stick trembled as if unsure it wanted to exist here. The light painted the closest trees in thin orange strokes, and their shadows stretched across the tall grass, bending in directions they shouldn’t bend.

He remembered walking this exact path years ago, bare-armed, clueless, not aware yet of what that boy - Tyler - their new Clancy was supposed to mean to him. His boots pressed into the earth with soft, steady thuds. He trudged so many roads and took so many turns, but here, in this body that still wasn't used to constant movement, he felt so stiff and so bare.

Torchbearer tightened his grip on the flaming stick.

He could smell something cooking. And then, through the break in the branches, he saw the clearing.

Exactly the size he remembered. Exactly the shape. There was a fire pit in the very center. It illuminated the space with the light orange haze.

Torchbearer stopped at the edge, breath snagging in his throat.

The clearing wasn’t empty.

"Torch?" It was one of the banditos. It felt like he had just seen this woman this morning; her shoulders slumped as she sat at the campfire just like this one, looking at him for reassurance he couldn't give.

Torchbearer shortened the distance and carefully put his makeshift torch in the fire.

"Hey." his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.

"Where have you been?" Her concerned gaze searched his face, but then she just shook her head. "No matter. There's an escapee who arrived here this evening; you need to meet him."

His eyes snapped in the direction she was leading him, and he instantly knew.

Someone was sitting on the log, hunched on the far side of the camp near the common tent, half-lit by moonlight, half-hidden by shadow. A blanket covered his form from a slight night chill.

“Tyler?” he whispered, barely a sound.

The figure’s head snapped up.

As he stopped a distance away, he saw that familiar flinch. His eyes were wide.

With the great effort that took him not to break down right then, and right there, with a choked voice, he said:

"…You made it."

Tyler stared at him. Torchbearer felt his hands shaking just at the thought of having this conversation. He probably looked stupid and sounded just as bad, but knew if he stopped talking, his words would get stuck in his throat and he wouldn't be able to say anything at all.

"Um, we met before. I'm Josh, but everybody here calls me Torchbearer."

There was no recognition on Tyler's face.

"Josh," Tyler repeated, barely above a breath. His voice cracked in a way that split Torchbearer clean down the middle. "I… I don’t really… I don’t know what’s going on."

"It’s okay," he lied gently. God, he wasn’t sure if he was lying to Tyler or to himself. "The people here… they know what it’s like."

Tyler’s eyes darted past him, to the shadows of the tents, to the worn packs scattered near the trees, to the quiet shapes of banditos pretending not to listen. The girl who led him here previously didn't even hide her guarded concern.

"I can't believe I…" Tyler’s breath hitched. "I can't believe I escaped."

"It's always scary for the first time."

"First time?"

Shit.

Torchbearer bit his tongue.

"I mean… It's okay to feel this way." He wished he could say that this place was safe for him, but he knew otherwise.

Tyler studied his face for a long moment before lowering his eyes to the ground. He could almost see it: the moment Tyler’s mind began to fold inward, to retreat to whatever corner still felt untouched by fear. That had always been his first instinct. Pull in. Curl smaller. Make yourself quiet so nothing can hurt you.

Torchbearer hated seeing it again.

He crouched in front of him, slow, careful, as if one wrong movement would send Tyler bolting into the trees. Wouldn’t be the first time. It wasn’t even close.

"Hey," he said softly. "Look at me for a sec."

Tyler didn’t. His fingers twisted around the blanket edge instead, knuckles going white.

Torchbearer’s chest clenched.

“Tyler,” he tried again, softer. “You’re okay. You're not in danger here.”

Tyler startled at his words, the frown forming on his face.

“How do you know my name?”

Torchbearer froze.

No explanation would justify what he knew about the person in front of him. What should he say? I watched you escape Dema again and again? And for the last time, when you headed there on your own, I watched you turn to someone we both hated?

"I know it will sound crazy, but hear me out, okay?" he heard himself speak, immediately regretting his words. "Uhh, I kind of knew I'd meet you today."

"What?"

"Well, uh…"

He deflated as he fumbled with his words.

"It was written in our fate?…" The reply sounded more like a question, grating on his own ears. He should have shut up then, but instead just blurted: "I'm somewhat of a fortune teller."

Tyler looked unimpressed and even more suspicious. Eventually, after the most awkward pause, he seemed to drop the topic by ending the conversation. He stood up, clutching the rough material of the blanket closer to himself, his downturned gaze unwavering.

Almost frantically, Torchbearer straightened up too, saying:

"There's a spare tent where you can stay." It was his tent that he was talking about, but it's not like Tyler needed to know that. "You should rest."

He nodded weakly at his words, and Torchbearer shuddered, watching as his figure, clouded in the long muddy brown fabric - resembling the long curtain back in the tower - slowly disappeared among the dim outlines of the tents. 

He exhaled, long and uneven, rubbing a hand over his face. The image of Clancy haunted his vision even when he closed his eyelids. If he kept talking, he was going to say something truly unhinged. If he kept standing here, he was going to run straight into that tent and break down, pathetically begging Tyler not to leave him again.

He needed a second to breathe.

So he stepped away from the clearing, far enough to get some air, but close enough to hear the fire crackle behind him. He had barely rounded the nearest tree when the subsided chatter started.

"Seriously? A fortune teller? Man…"

"If I didn't know you better, Torch, I'd think you're so lame."

Torchbearer turned on the one who spoke.

"Just drop it, fine?" The bandito held his arms up in resignation. Torchbearer just exhaled. "And look after him. Maybe not now, but he'll need some company."

Someone was whispering to another, and there were knowing grins that didn't forebode anything that wasn't a slight mischief, in his time, years in the future. He liked his people, but now that all of them were younger, and he was just a teenager, it was hard not to react. His cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

One of the banditos, with all seriousness, shoot him two thumbs up.

"Yes, sir."

Chapter Text

Torchbearer spent a whole week in a haze.

He changed into a hoodie immediately after getting into his tent. It was rather warm, but the nights were getting colder and colder, so soon the whole camp was wearing something with long sleeves, necks covered with makeshift scarves.

Tyler slowly realized that this place wasn't anything like Dema. It took Torchbearer all of his willpower not to follow him every step, like a lost puppy. Instead, he decidedly busied himself with work. He had so much insight into the future, maps still fresh in his memories, so he started to note down everything he knew. Occasionally, he would take a break by helping other banditos with their common tasks (maybe to catch a glimpse of Tyler, who was warming up to people around). They'd send him knowing looks, and he would brush them off, as the campfire nights lingered for longer and topics for conversations were revisited.

"I was given my name in Dema. It's Clancy." He said to Torchbearer on one of those nights, when he was in the midst of carving out a new bowl from a piece of wood.

He looked up at Tyler, fingers in pine shavings.

"Which one do you want me to call you?"

"I don't care."

"Tyler then."

"Right. Josh."

Tyler faintly smiled at him, and, oh, it was everything he had ever needed.

That night, Torchbearer went through all of his things as he almost turned his tent upside down in the search for the ukulele he knew he had stored in the box of scraps for forever. He found it, covered in a thick layer of dust. He couldn't find the courage to give it to Clancy, though. So it lay abandoned like a heavy stone in the nook under the pile of his clothes in the corner of the tent.

In the day, he tried to keep his head clear by outlining the Dema pathways and writing down the important events. Eventually, his journal resembled Clancy's in that distant future, just like he remembered it, packed with thoughts that rounded circles in his head. He used to read them when he felt especially miserable, when it seemed like all hope was lost and Clancy would forever be stuck in his cell back in Dema, miles away, tortured and alone.

He wrote:

     1. Clancy escaped Dema early.

     2. The Annual Assemblage of the Glorified is in four months.

     3. Current number of banditos: 25.

He stilled his pencil for a moment.

     4. Nico knows about me.

There was once a time when he was just as clueless, when someone showed him that there's more to Dema than its gray walls and a stolen hijacked religion. Now this man had a halfed blackened face and an attitude of a corrupt bastard.

     5. We need to gather more people.

With the duty of the man, leading the diversion group of rebels came a realization of just how young his current body was. He often caught himself rubbing the knuckles of his left hand, searching for old grooves from deep cuts that no longer existed.

He also caught Clancy watching him with his curious eyes these days. Sometimes, he made an effort to conceal his stares with cordial glances, but today was different.

"What?" Josh asked him, a little uneasy with this amount of attention.

Clancy's expression hadn't changed.

"Are you really a fortune teller?" Despite the absurdity of his question, his face was completely serious.

Josh choked on air.

"What?" he coughed out.

His words that day caught up to bite him in the moment like this.

"You do really act as if you know me."

Josh’s heart did something entirely irresponsible.

"I don’t," he lied. "It was just a joke. I’m just observant."

Clancy raised an eyebrow.

"How do you know my name then?"

He needed to busy his hands with something to keep himself from fidgeting, so he went back to his wood carving, slow and steady, shavings collecting in a soft pile around his boots.

Clancy understood his silence as an end to the conversation and didn't press closer. Josh let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

The next few days moved in a strangely warm rhythm. Banditos came and went between their tasks, and Clancy too, was now drawn into the swirl of their makeshift routines. He picked up all of the skills fast.

One morning, Ivy, one of the hunters, handed him a bow taller than he was and marched him to the edge of the clearing.

"Teach your arms to obey you," she said.

By noon, under her scrutiny, he managed to hit the target once.

By the third day, twice.

Another bandito, old Ramos, taught him how to clean a fish without wasting a single scrap. All of the fish went into the stew, shared by the campfire. Tyler gagged once, getting his stained black hands all bloody with guts, and tried again. By evening, when everybody gathered for a meal, his technique was decent enough to slice neat fillets that the others praised with exaggerated gratitude.

Clancy learned to cook over open flame; it's a slow learning process for everyone in this camp, and if Torchbearer is honest, he himself struggled to keep the food cooking manageable. They took turns. Mark, whose cooking was best at said skill, taught him how to make slow stews, spiced roots, and bitter teas. Then there was a brewed medicine with Lucia: crushed herbs, bark shavings, healing smoke. Torchbearer couldn't help but notice - it stained Clancy's fingertips dark green for hours.

Every time, he watched from a distance. Sometimes Clancy caught him. Their eyes would meet, and Torchbearer would look away first. Sometimes, he felt Clancy watching even when he disappeared in the confinement of his own tent.

The banditos teased them both mercilessly.

“Your friend learns quick,” Debby said, nudging Josh.

“He’s not—” Josh began, then shut his mouth.

It earned him a round of knowing, smirking nods.

Still, something soft unfurled in his ribs each time Clancy smiled.

Something was emerging, something hopeful and childlike, long buried under years of gray walls and failure; it was Clancy - the man he knew, Torchbearer could see him in the tilt of his head, faint smile and a quick quip back to other banditos. Traces of a person who set his mind on a mission. Time passed by, and he felt it every morning. The camp woke slowly, warmed by new laughter. Just like before, banditos accepted him with open arms. He felt it every evening as Clancy sat among them, no longer stiff and suspicious, lips curled as he listened to a story being told.

"—So I dropped to one knee, and I swear, the bear must have thought I was proposing to it, because it sat down—and you should have seen its face—"

"You're just a dumbass," Ivy said, laughing.

"No, no! but I'm being serious! It looked like it was about to cry!"

"You do understand bears can't cry?"

"You're just lucky not to be eaten at this point."

By the end of the week, Josh realized he was excited again. He stacked the Dema maps in chronological order, scratching his head in an effort to remember the smallest details, tracing the round walls with a red marker.

He was, for once, so excited for the future and what it could hold once Banditos' camp grew in numbers again, and all of the familiar faces he once had seen came around again. He was so optimistic about the layout and new tents they had so much space for, and the growing stack of reserves for the colder weather was really reassuring this time around, that he couldn't wait to share his plans with others.

He found himself humming as he wrote in his journal:

     6. Stock up on meat and veggies: done.

     7. Celebrate the good harvest: ?

He didn’t show anyone that entry.

Late in the afternoon, the foraging group returned - three of them - hauling bundles of herbs, mushrooms, and an unlucky rabbit. Josh counted automatically.

Three.

But they left with five.

A cold, crawling feeling seized the back of his neck.

"Where’s Tyler?" he asked, voice loud over the chatter. The others noticed and turned their attention to the group. Their faces were pale, and one of the banditos was crying.

They all looked at each other. No one answered immediately.

Then Rosa spoke, her voice trembling, thick with tears.

"They said they wanted to check the far ridge. Just for a moment. Ivy went with him. They said they’d catch up."

Her hands shook as she untied her pack.

“They… didn’t. Ramos went to look for them but—”

Josh felt his chest clench in a familiar, terrible way that he felt all too well. He rose from his seat at the fire pit, pressure nagging at him, like Dema closing in.

"Why did you split up?" he snapped. He knew it was a stupid question; he knew the answer before it was given to him.

"W-we always do," Rosa said. "Ivy—she said they would be fine."

Josh didn’t wait for more. He turned toward the trees, ready to run.

That’s when Ramos staggered back into camp, his steps heavy with the weight of someone in his arms. He was quickly surrounded by the others, tension feeling electric in the air. They cleared a space for him to lay her down.

Blood matted Ivy's hair. There were all too familiar black markings on her arms and neck, traveling from under her chin to her chest. Her blackened hands were icy cold, and her eyes were glassy with no sign of that fiery personality she had once carried behind that gaze.

She was already dead.

"Bishops." Someone whispered, horrified.

The woods around them seemed suddenly too dark and quiet.

Josh’s blood ran cold. Because some things, apparently, were just left unchanged.

Him being a Torchbearer. People dying for these beliefs that he had to offer. This Clancy being one of the most important people in his life. And Tyler being snatched by bishops.

Chapter Text

Torchbearer felt the world tilt askew.

Here he was so ready for the new beginning and all of the possibilities, when this was the world they were living in. And this is how it ended.

With people busying themselves around in a commotion, a basin with water being passed around, and Rosa silently sobbing, he felt the earth crumble from under his heels.

His breath came too fast, too sharp. He tried to grab onto something - a tent pole in his reach, but he felt stuck to the ground, not able to move. His fingers wouldn’t close properly, and his arms shook.

Someone touched his shoulder, and he flinched violently.

“Torchbearer,” a voice called. Someone needed him, and he couldn't wield his body to move. “Torch, hey—”

Noise swarmed in his ears - the frantic footsteps, the hollow thud as someone dropped a pot.

His heart hammered like it wanted out. And he felt as if he was dying too.

Tyler was gone. Again. He should've known better, but here he was again, standing in the middle of the camp, waiting for the bishops to come and kill them all. One by one, no one here was safe.

He should’ve known, he should have followed—

The world narrowed into a pinpoint. His vision flickered at the edges, black blooming like ink spills. He heard himself make a sound - a strangled thing - and he hated it, hated how weak he felt, how inconsequential and small he actually was in the grand scheme of events he knew would inevitably come.

Someone grabbed him by the arms, steadying him, but their voice sounded far away, like it was underwater.

“Breathe, Torchbearer. Hey—hey—breathe.”

He tried. Again and again, and everything he did was making things even worse.

He couldn’t breathe.

His chest refused to expand. His hands went numb. A prickling swept up his spine, like he was about to pass out. His knees buckled.

The last thing he saw was the campfire, and the last sound tearing through his thoughts was someone shouting his name as the darkness finally swallowed him whole.

He remembers the first time he discovered this strange power of his.

He fell asleep reading Clancy's journal. The bishops took him in a year ago, and there were still no signs that he even lived.

Torchbearer opened his eyes in Dema, looking at Tyler, with his gray jumpsuit and sunken face. His hair was colored pink, and his hands stained black. It was around the time when he was forced to write songs for their propaganda show in the making.

His mouth twisted to speak, but nothing came out. He just stared helplessly at Clancy, who slowly raised his head and realized that he wasn't alone in his cell. His unseeing eyes met Torchbearer's, and resignation was visible in the way his shoulders slumped.

Torchbearer stepped closer, but Clancy flinched away. He opened his mouth again, but he couldn't feel his throat.

The whispered words made his heart break. His voice was so weak and exhausted.

"You're not real. Go away."

But Torchbearer stayed. Late in the night, when Clancy turned away from him to the cold wall, falling into restless sleep, Josh couldn't help but think of camp and how it wasn't fair, how everybody seemed to accept Clancy's death. He didn't dare to come closer and touch his frail hands. Instead, he roamed the woods in this incorporeal form, tears clouding his vision, and then he woke up in the camp two days later with ash on his tongue. There was only one thing on his mind.

"Clancy is alive."

And he won't give up on him.

This time, though, once he realized he was once again using this ability, his ghostly footsteps were unsteady as he couldn't feel his body. There was nothing to be found in the forest, just the traces of Keons, who took Clancy back to the prison walls of Dema.

Torchbearer rounded the road, where he first met Tyler. Around the tall grass, he could see a broken bow. The string was snapped, and the wood was split in two.

He picked up the only evidence of the bishop's presence and decidedly turned to the east side of the woods, retracing the group's footsteps.

His vision went white for a moment, and he realized that he had woken up back in his body. When awareness settled, it came quietly, like dust drifting through sunbeams. He was lying on his cot inside his tent, the canvas ceiling faintly glowing gold with late afternoon light.

He pushed himself up slowly. His limbs felt heavy, sore in places he didn’t remember hitting. Someone had left a cup of water near his bedroll and another small object beside - a single yellow flower, placed carefully on the blanket.

For Ivy.

Torchbearer closed his fingers around it for a moment before carefully setting it down. Then he stepped outside.

The camp was subdued, shadows stretched long. Tables, crates, and tent flaps were dotted with yellow blossoms—tucked into rope knots, balanced on lantern hooks, laid beside bowls of cooling soup.

Two banditos were talking in low voices near the fire pit. They fell silent when they saw him.

"Torch." one said, straightening. "You’re up."

"You gave us a scare," Mark added. Worry softened his voice. "You just… dropped. Hit the ground like a sack of grain."

"I’m fine," Torchbearer said, though his body disagreed in quiet aches. He rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes. "How long was I out?"

"A few hours," the woman said. "We thought you needed the rest. Figured you’d want space."

He nodded once. He understood. Everything felt muted anyway, like the world was speaking from behind glass.

The first bandito hesitated, glancing toward the edge of the woods. “We… we’re sorry about Clancy. We left yellow flowers for Ivy. And for him too. Figured it was the least we could do.”

Torchbearer’s jaw tightened, but his voice stayed steady.

“Clancy isn’t dead.”

They exchanged a look, sad and uncertain. This was a camp full of people who had lost too much to judge someone else’s hope.

"Torch," Debby said gently, "there was blood. And his bow—"

"I know he's not dead," he said. Quiet, but absolute. "Bishops don’t leave bodies when they need someone alive."

The two banditos shifted uneasily.

"You really think they took him?"

"I know they did."

He looked past them, toward the center clearing. People glanced up as their conversation dimmed, hands pausing over tools and cook pots. They all looked tired. Frayed. Held together by grief and routine.

"Hey," he said softly, voice cutting through the dusk. "I think we should have a meeting. Let's gather in the common tent.”

There was no force to his words; all he needed was a little attention, and now that everybody was willing to give it to him, he knew they listened. They set aside bowls, tools, and half-finished chores. One by one, they drifted toward the mentioned tent, forming a loose circle around the fire pit where yellow flowers lay scattered like embers.

Mark looked at him, stopping on his way to the tent entrance.

"You won't go?"

"I need to grab something from my tent first."

Torchbearer returned to his tent, pointedly avoiding everything that wasn't the piles of maps and written notes. He assessed which of his mad-looking scribbles would be safe to be shown to everybody in the camp and wouldn't make him look like a crazy, paranoid coward. He gathered everything he had of importance and closed his journal, putting it back under the cover of his makeshift bed.

He made his way to the common tent where everybody was already waiting for him. The murmurs died down at the sight of him carrying a stack of papers in his hands. Wordlessly, Torchbearer dumped all of the notes he collected onto the table and straightened up at the curious gazes of the banditos.

His hands relaxed at his sides. His breath steadied.

"What happened today is a tragedy," he began, eyes sweeping over the flowers. "Ivy didn't deserve it. And we mourn her."

A ripple of solemn nods passed through the crowd.

"But we do not mourn Tyler."

A hush fell.

"Because he’s alive," Torchbearer said simply.

He unrolled one of his maps onto the nearest crate. His notes followed, pages worn from use. Paths. Patterns. Notes on bishop tactics. Every escape Clancy made, every route Tyler learned while hunting.

"I know he didn’t die out there," Torchbearer said. "The bishops want him alive."

He tapped a point on the map. The Dema tower.

"And he's one of us now, so we can't give up on him."

Chapter Text

They didn't bury Ivy, instead, there was a funeral pyre. It was an unsaid agreement to pick up flowers. One by one, they left the yellow petals for the flames to engulf them. Most dead ended up as glorious gones, filling the ranks of the undead army and becoming soldiers for the Dema's gain.

So they followed through with this ceremony.

Torchbearer used the lighter to set the branch on fire and carefully placed it in the makeshift grave.

A little later, they held a meeting and secured a plan.

There were just a few months before the Annual Assemblage of the Glorified, and although Torchbearer didn't want to wait these two months, he knew better that there was no other chance to infiltrate the Dema's tunnels on any other day.

Now that he also had an advantage of knowledge he wasn't supposed to have, there was no way they would execute the plan anything less than perfectly.

The next two months crawled by.

The mood in the camp was tense for another two weeks. They lost Ivy, their best hunter, and the struggle with food foraging lingered after the recent events. Everything moved like a living wound: slow, tender, raw around its edges. People spoke in murmurs, worked in long stretches of wordless concentration, and kept glancing at the woods as if awaiting something - the worst fear in red or the return of a person who had a power to fill this place with the ability to laugh again.

Food grew scarce. Foraging lines stretched farther into the hills. Still, they learned to survive with their new arrangements with two people fewer in number.

Torchbearer used the quiet of the camp to make more notes. His memory started to haze over, so he felt the need to write more than ever. There was no time to waste. He feared his memories thinning at the edges, feared waking one day with nothing but faint shadows and no details left. So he filled pages. He mapped every trail twice.

Sometimes he fell asleep just like that, hunched over his notes as he sat at the fire pit, ash still on his tongue.

Sometimes Mark shook him awake.

"You’ll crack your neck sleeping like that," Mark muttered one night, easing a blanket over Torch’s shoulders. "You sure we can pull this off?"

Torchbearer rubbed the sleep from his face.

"I wouldn’t plan it if we couldn’t."

Mark snorted, his face solemn.

"Torch, this plan is half suicide."

"It's our only chance."

Ever since that first day in Trench, every bandito knew that there were bound to be casualties. Torchbearer wished it hadn't had to be this way, but he, too, was powerless.

Mark looked at him then with that steady gaze, almost as if he was proud.

"You’ve changed."

"I know."

"Not sure if it’s good."

Torchbearer’s mouth twitched.

"Me neither."

Debby found him the next afternoon, sorting through sketches of tunnel layouts.

"Will the bishops really not see them?" she asked, lowering her voice. "The flowers?"

"No," Torchbearer said. "They don’t understand colors that symbolize anything other than what their religion stands for. Yellow is invisible to them."

Debby exhaled shakily. She fidgeted with the mug in he hands.

"I just want them back. Clancy and the others."

"So do I," he said softly. "That’s why we’ll do it right."

She nodded, biting her lip.

"Two months."

"Two months," Torchbearer echoed. It's going to be different this time around.

And so the days bled into one another. A new map. A new watch rotation. A new yellow flower was placed each dawn beside Ivy’s pyre stone, until the ground around it was a quiet sea of petals.

Then, at last, the day of Assemblage approached.

The bishops prepared their ritual rooms with the vials in the center. People in Dema looked more tired and soulless than ever. The fluorescent light of the bent symbol left cool, shining rays on the surface of the ragged floor.

Torchbearer’s venturing party consisted only of six banditos, who made their way under the cliff sides with the warm glow of burning torches in their hands. With their hoods low, they slipped into the cave tunnel.

The tunnels smelled of stone dust and cold metal. The hum of distant machinery vibrated through the ground. Torchbearer felt it in his ribs, he remembered this old fear, old helplessness, as he was making his way through this exact place for the first time. Now, everything he cared about was to keep the people around as safe as possible and free the person on the other side of these walls. He kept walking.

Inside the cells, prisoners hunched on cots. Some stared blankly. Some hummed to themselves, ignoring the world. All of them had their yellow flowers tucked in the pockets of the jumpsuits, hidden from bishops' eyes. The blossoms marked them - banditos, incarcerated for their beliefs.

Still alive.

Mark squeezed Torch’s arm.

"North corridor," he whispered.

Torchbearer nodded.

Debby slipped ahead, leaving a bright yellow sunflower near the drainage grate.

Getting a signal, a sad-looking petal landed on the floor from above, drifting down as if it had fallen from nowhere.

Clancy was alive, awake, and watching.

They waited only a moment before a shadow slipped out from the far bend of the tunnel.

Clancy.

He was wearing Dema’s gray uniform, his short hair grown longer. There was a small scar on his nose that hadn't been there before, on his face. His blackened hands trembled, but he held something carefully between his fingers - a crushed yellow bloom. 

He stepped forward slowly, eyes scanning over Mark and Debby, the tunnels, the cracks in the wall. Then he raised his wandering gaze, and their eyes met.

Torchbearer stood still as stone.

Something in Clancy’s expression cracked open, his lips stretched weakly in a trembling smile.

"You came," Clancy whispered. "For me?"

Torchbearer’s voice was soft.

"You are already one of us."

Clancy’s smile grew.

"Then let’s go home."

Torchbearer took one step toward him.

Clancy took the other.

Torchbearer brought a green hoodie he had been wearing back in the camp, and Mark pulled out the yellow tape. Clancy shrugged off his gray jacket and put on the hoodie.

They turned together. Other banditos were leaving their cells, Debby and Mark plastering their jumpsuits in yellow dashes.

Their footsteps - more people than previously - now echoed down the tunnel, and moved in sync, heading toward the rapidly darkening outside, leaving the trail of yellow petals, toward the exit, toward the waiting banditos who held their breath in wonder.

They made their way through the cliffs, just like how they got to Dema in the first place. Just over the visible distance, there was a forest, carefully guarding the bandito's camp. All they needed to do was to get there, and the safety of the dense foliage would cover their tracks.

But then, they could hear the hooves clacking against the rocky ground.

"Bishop!" someone yelled.

Torchbearer didn't think when he grabbed Clancy by his hand in an iron grip.

There was Nico, riding on top of the white stallion.

Nico raised his head and looked at them from the bottom of the cliffside. His eyes stopped at Clancy.

Torchbearer stuck his hand in his pocket, retrieving a handful of yellow petals, and everybody followed his lead. There was a full bag of yellow confetti, which they spilled for the wind to pick up.

Torchbearer let the petals fall from his hand.

Nico halted, disoriented as they continued their escape. And very soon, the forest swallowed them all.

They made it out in one piece.

Chapter Text

That night, bandito camp came back to life with the cheers and laughter that hadn't been heard for a long time. Escapees reunited with those whom they thought were dead - the effect of the vialism taking toll not only on their bodies but on their minds as well.

It was a night spent in constant movement. Lucia, responsible for the medical tent, gathered those who arrived on the cots and tended to them one by one. The whole camp was there to help. Although some wounds were invisible, the exhausting path back to the camp reopened them anew.

Clancy sat on one of the cots, watching the commotion with a distant gaze.

"You should lie down." Torchbearer told him, carrying the basin of water to the bandito nearby.

"I can help too."

"I saw your bruises," cut in Lucia, rushing past them, clearly overhearing the conversation. "You'll fold if you pick anything up in this state."

Clancy grimaced at her words.

"Well, I'm not bleeding."

She turned to face him fully, her gaze stern.

"Lay down and rest."

Clancy looked at Torchbearer with a pleading expression. Torchbearer just shook his head.

"Doctor's order."

He couldn't say that he wasn't relieved just by the presence of that woman to back him up in this situation. He was forever grateful for Lucia and her assertiveness.

The rest of the night came and went like a blur. They finished bandaging the last person when the moon was high above the ground. By that time, everybody had already claimed their tent and started preparing for sleep.

Assessing the results of their retreat, Torchbearer sat at the log outside and wrote in his journal:

     1. Current number of banditos: 36.

     2. We need new tents.

There were distant footsteps, and then Clancy emerged from the canopy of the thick material of the medical. His tent in the far corner of the camp was already occupied. He looked up at his tired face, and the decision was made then. 

They stood in front of Torchbearer's tent, awkwardly stuck to the patch of the ground at the entrance.

"Um, you can take the bed." Clancy blurted out, startling them both.

"What? Why?"

"It's your tent."

"Well, it's yours now, too."

Suddenly, there was a loud snoring heard, sounding suspiciously like Mark's. It cracked the silence of the night like a sudden storm.

Torchbearer couldn't contain his weary smile at the sound, and when their gazes met again, he could see that Clancy was now smiling too. Torchbearer took it as perfect timing to move. He held up the flap of the tent for him to enter. Clancy accepted the invitation, disappearing into the dimly lit space.

The sight of the Clancy in his tent, once again, woke up the feeling he thought he had buried in his chest. There was no time to grieve the sheer domestic-ness of what he had with the other Clancy, back in the future. And here he was, watching the familiar sight that slowly started to haze over in his memories.

The silence inside the tent was heavier than the air outside, charged with a strange, suffocating intimacy. Torchbearer watched Clancy settle onto the edge of the cot, his fingers nervous, tracing the rough fabric of the blanket.

It was maddening. It was everything he wanted, and yet, it was a ghost story played out in reverse.

Torchbearer looked at the curve of Clancy’s spine and felt a phantom ache in his own hands. A distant memory of touch that hadn't happened yet for the man sitting in front of him. In that other timeline, in the future that now existed only in Torchbearer's head, there was no hesitation. There were nights spent tangled together, the warmth of Tyler’s skin against his, the easy weight of a hand on a knee, the soft press of a forehead against a shoulder when the nightmares got too loud.

He missed that intimacy with a violence that nearly knocked the wind out of him. He missed the way his Tyler knew him, the way they moved around each other like two planets in a fixed orbit. This Clancy was jagged edges and raw nerves, a stranger wearing the face of the love of his life.

Torchbearer turned away. He slid his journal in the designated place under the bed, pretending to busy himself with organizing his pack, trying to hide the grief that surely showed in his eyes.

A soft thud behind him broke the silence.

Torchbearer froze. He turned slowly.

Clancy was crouching in the corner, pulling the dusty case from beneath the pile of clothes where Torchbearer had buried it. He had already undone the latch. The ukulele lay there, small and wooden, looking out of place among the survival gear and maps.

"You have one," Clancy said. It wasn't a question. His voice was breathless, bordering on disbelief.

"Oh," Torchbearer said, his voice jumping an octave. Heat crept up his neck, hot and embarrassing. "That’s... yeah."

He couldn't tell him. He couldn't say, I found it and kept it because I know you play. I know that the songs you write are your only passion, and I know that someday these melodies will save lives.

Clancy didn't put it back. He lifted the instrument with a reverence that made Torchbearer’s chest tight. He ran a blackened fingertip over the wood, his hands shifting instinctively into a position that looked far too natural.

"Oh man, I haven't held one of these in years," Clancy mused. He stared at the four strings like they were a lifeline he thought had been cut. "I used to pretend... back in my cell. I’d tap my fingers on the edge of the cot, trying to remember how the chords felt."

He sat down fully on the bedding, crossing his legs, cradling the instrument close to his chest. He brushed his thumb against the strings.

A soft, slightly out-of-tune strum filled the small space.

"It needs tuning," Torchbearer offered weakly, abandoning his task to sit on the cot opposite him.

"I know," Clancy murmured. His hands were shaking slightly, but his fingers moved with muscle memory, finding the pegs. "In Dema... they hate this. I missed the sound of it so much it physically hurt."

He plucked a string, twisted a peg, and plucked again. The sound sharpened, becoming clearer.

"Why did you leave?" Torchbearer asked.

The question slipped out before he could think better of it. Clancy’s hands stilled on the fretboard. The silence stretched, thin and fragile.

He tried to explain what he meant.

"That first time, before the bishop tried to take you back in that car, why did you decide to leave?"

"I didn't think I would," Clancy admitted, his voice low. He didn't look up from the wood grain. "For a long time, I thought the bishops were right. They tell you that self-loathing is noble. That self-destruction is the only way to truly leave a mark." He let out a shaky breath. "I tried to believe it. I really did. But... I kept having these thoughts."

"What thoughts?"

"That I wanted to see tomorrow," Clancy said, looking up, his eyes glassy in the dim lantern light. "I’d look at the walls of the city, and instead of glory, I just felt... fear. And then I felt guilty for the fear. I thought I was broken. Born wrong. Like there was a defect in my wiring that made me selfish enough to want to breathe for one more day."

He strummed a minor chord, the sound melancholic and sweet.

"I still don't know if I'm right," he whispered. "Maybe I am just a coward who ran away from his purpose. Maybe I'm just defective, Josh."

"You're not defective," Torchbearer said fiercely. The feeling of unfairness and suffocating rage towards Nico and all of his other eight bastards was boiling under his skin.

Clancy flinched at the volume, but he didn't pull away.

"You're not wrong, and you're not broken," Torchbearer continued, softer this time, leaning forward. He had to physically restrain himself by clenching his hand into fists from extending his arm to caress Clancy's face. "Wanting to live isn't a defect, Tyler. It's the only sane reaction to a place like that. Everything that Dema stands for is a lie."

Torchbearer’s heart ached. He mourned the Tyler he couldn't save in the other timeline, the one who stayed too long, and he mourned this Tyler, sitting right here, consumed by guilt for the crime of survival.

"One day, it's going to change." Torchbearer promised. "Bishops won't be able to preach the hijacked religion for much longer."

Clancy studied him for a long moment, searching for a lie in Torchbearer’s face. He didn't find one. Slowly, the tension drained from his shoulders. He played a few more notes, a fragmented melody that Torchbearer recognized from a song that hadn't been written yet.

"Okay," Clancy breathed. "I hope to see it one day."

They talked for hours after that. The conversation drifted from the heaviness of Dema to lighter things. Clancy kept the ukulele in his lap the whole time, his fingers dancing over the frets as he spoke, reclaiming a part of himself he had been forced to hide.

Eventually, the adrenaline of the escape faded, leaving them both heavy-lidded and slow. The lantern sputtered and died, leaving them in the gray quiet of the pre-dawn.

"We should sleep," Torchbearer murmured, though he didn't want the night to end.

The cot was narrow, barely wide enough for one person, let alone two grown men.

"Sorry," Torchbearer muttered, shifting as close to the canvas wall as he could. "It's tight."

"It's fine," Clancy whispered.

They lay down. There was an awkward moment of hesitation - he hesitated to let himself melt into the bedding, with a stiffness in the air, but eventually exhaustion took over. 

Clancy turned on his side, facing away from the tent wall, and Torchbearer, instinctively, shifted to mirror him. 

It happened without thought. In the dark, with the defenses down, Torchbearer’s body remembered a history this timeline hadn't written yet. He settled in, and Clancy, seeking warmth, drifted backward.

They slotted perfectly together. 

Clancy’s back pressed against Torchbearer’s chest, a puzzle piece finding its home. Torchbearer could feel the steady rhythm of Clancy’s breathing, the warmth radiating through his hoodie. In the other life that could've been, an invitation. He would have pressed his lips against the darkened skin of his nape, and Clancy would turn to face him and check on what had him feeling so down. Now, though, Torchbearer had to squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden burn of tears.

Clancy didn't pull away. Instead, he let out a long, content sigh, his tension finally melting into the mattress, grounding himself in the solid presence behind him.

For the first time in a week, the haze lifted. In the quiet dark of the tent, holding the person who was his past, present, and future, Torchbearer finally fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Torchbearer woke up later in the day, right side of the narrow cot empty and cold. The weather outside was mild at best, and chilly at worst. So, he bundled up in a few layers - a hoodie over a turtleneck and a bandana to serve as a scarf. He was worried Clancy would freeze in this weather - this type of cold always had been the worst for him, but when he stepped outside and saw Clancy's wild-swept hair amidst the gathering of banditos around the fire pit, his worries were gone.

There he was, wrapped in a blanket, talking to a bandito with a smile on his face.

Torchbearer just stood, right outside his tent, and took in the scene.

The days that followed settled into a familiar rhythm. The camp, usually buzzing with the tension of survival, seemed to take a collective breath. The sun filtered through the canopy in dappled patches, warming the earth and drying the mud from the recent rains.

It was in this quiet lull that Clancy made his decision.

Torchbearer found him sitting on a crate near the supply tent, a towel draped over his shoulders. Two banditos were circling him, one wielding a pair of shears and a straight razor.

"You sure about this?" the bandito asked, holding a lock of Clancy's hair.

"I'm sure," Clancy said. His voice was steady. "It feels... heavy. I want it gone."

Torchbearer leaned against a nearby tree, arms crossed, watching as the first lock fell to the ground. It was a shedding of skin, a rejection of the gray uniform and the person Dema had tried to mold him into. Slowly, the longer strands were cut away, leaving the bandito to work the razor carefully over the scalp.

When it was done, Clancy ran a hand over his head. The buzzcut was severe, exposing the sharp angles of his face and the vulnerability of his neck, but when he looked up, his eyes seemed brighter. Clearer.

Torchbearer felt a pang of loss for the soft hair he used to run his fingers through in a future that no longer existed. But then Clancy grinned, a shy, crooked thing, and the breath caught in Torchbearer’s throat.

The buzzcut suited him. Torchbearer realized with a jolt that the urge to reach out and touch hadn't gone away at all; if anything, his fingers now itched to feel the rough velvet of the short stubble, to cup the back of that exposed neck. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets to keep them from doing something stupid.

The camp was healing in other ways, too. The medical tent slowly emptied as the escapees recovered. Most bounced back with the resilience of those used to hardship, their cuts scabbing over and bruises going away - their strength returning with regular meals.

But not everyone was so lucky.

There was one bandito who didn't seem to get better - Elias. He wasn't bleeding, and his fever had broken days ago, yet he moved as if gravity pulled on him twice as hard as it did on anyone else.

"His body is fighting a war we can't see," Lucia had told Torchbearer quietly one evening, sorting through the medicinal herbs he had brought her. "It's an illness deep in the nerves, in the joints. It flares and settles, but it won't ever really leave."

Torchbearer watched him sometimes. The man tried hard to appear tough. Elias showed up to every evening fire, sitting on the logs with a rigid posture, masking the way his hands trembled when he reached for a bowl of stew. He never complained. But when he thought no one was looking, his face would go slack with exhaustion, a deep, bone-weary pain etched into the lines around his eyes.

The others understood without needing to be told. They left the seat closest to the fire open for him - the warmest spot. They didn't ask him to haul wood or carry water, simply filling his bowl and including him in the jokes, accepting that for him, just existing in this space was an act of rebellion.

One evening, as the twilight deepened into a bruised purple, Clancy found Torchbearer inside their shared tent.

Torchbearer was organizing the map archives, distracted, until he felt Clancy’s presence.

"Josh?"

He looked up. Clancy was standing there, his hands fidgeting at his sides. He looked nervous again, that familiar uncertainty creeping back in.

"Can I..." Clancy started, then stopped. He gestured vaguely toward the corner where the instrument case lay. "Is it okay if I keep the ukulele? I mean, really keep it? I don't want to just... borrow it."

Torchbearer stared at him. It felt like a loop closing, a jagged edge of time smoothing out.

"You don't need to borrow it," Torchbearer said softly. "It was never really mine."

Clancy’s shoulders dropped, relief washing over him. He picked up the case like it contained gold.

"Thanks, Josh."

That night, the mood at the fire pit was subdued until Clancy brought the ukulele out.

He sat on his usual log, the firelight dancing over his shaved head and the black paint on his neck. He strummed a chord and then another, and the sound cut through the crackle of the flames, bright and unexpected.

The conversations died down. Heads turned.

Clancy hesitated, his thumb hovering over the frayed strings. The fire crackled, popping loudly in the silence.

"Well," Mark drawled from across the pit, a half-eaten roasted root in his hand. "I hope you play better than you shoot, Clancy. Otherwise, we’re all going to need earplugs."

A ripple of chuckles went through the circle.

Clancy didn’t flinch. He looked up, a spark of challenge in his eyes that hadn't been there a week ago. "If I played as bad as you cook, Mark, the bishops wouldn't need to capture us. We'd just surrender to make it stop."

The camp erupted in laughter. Mark feigned deep offense, clutching his chest. "Low blow, man. Low blow."

"Just play," Debby urged, leaning forward, chin in her hand.

Clancy took a breath, adjusted his grip on the fretboard, and struck the first chord.

It wasn't the hesitant plinking they might have expected. It was a rhythmic, percussive strum - a jagged, reggae-inspired bounce that immediately cut through the ambient noise of the forest. The playfulness on Mark’s face vanished, replaced by genuine surprise.

Clancy didn't look at them. He looked at his fingers, finding the rhythm. He started to hum, a low, vibration that grew into words.

"I could take the high road..."

Torchbearer, sitting across the fire with a mug of tea in his hands, felt a shiver race down his spine. He knew this song. He knew it before it was written.

"But I know that I'm going low..."

Clancy’s voice was gaining strength, finding a melody that seemed to rise from the smoke itself. He looked up, locking eyes with the banditos around him.

"I'm a bandito."

The banditos began to stomp their boots. Thump. Thump. A heartbeat for the song.

Clancy smiled, feeding off the energy. He shifted the tempo, his fingers flying faster now, the strumming becoming more percussive. He picked up the pace of the lyrics, and there was an excited hum coming from all around.

"East is up! I'm fearless when I hear this on the low..."

Torchbearer found his lips moving around the words before Clancy even sang them.

"I'm careless when I wear my rebel clothes..."

Torchbearer stared at the fire, the phantom kick-drum of the song thumping in his chest boom-bap, boom-bap. He mouthed the words silently, an echo in the dark.

Soon, the whole camp was singing. They didn't know the verses yet, but they caught the choruses instantly, their voices rising in a rough, defiant choir that echoed into the dark trees. Elias was tapping his foot, a genuine smile breaking through his pain. Even Lucia was clapping along.

For the first time since the escape, the air didn't taste like fear. It tasted like victory.

Torchbearer looked at Clancy, at the way his eyes shone, alive and burning with creation, and felt a fierce surge of pride. This was it. This was the spark they needed.

As the song faded into laughter, the night grew louder with cheers.

Later, when the banditos slowly started to disperse into the quiet of their tent, excitement still humming in the air, Torchbearer walked over to the supply tent, where he found Ramos, busy with organizing crates in the shadows. The older man looked up as Torchbearer approached.

"Ramos," Torchbearer said, his voice low.

"Reserve counts look tight, if that's what you're asking," Ramos rumbled, wiping his hands on a rag.

"Not that." Torchbearer jerked his chin toward the back of the tent, where he knew Ramos kept the things that weren't strictly necessary for survival, but necessary for sanity. "The fermentation barrels. The root wine."

Ramos paused. He looked over Torchbearer’s shoulder at the fire, where the group was still buzzing with the residual energy of the music. He looked back at Torchbearer, a knowing glint in his eye.

"The six-month batch?" Ramos asked softly. "It's got a kick like a mule."

Torchbearer didn't say anything. He just nodded once, planning a perfect opportunity.

"That Clancy gave quite a show today," he suddenly spoke.

Torchbearer looked at him.

Ramos grinned knowingly, turning to head back to his tent.

"He's a good kid."

Torchbearer looked back at the fire, where Clancy managed to grin with that real, genuine smile. He watched the flames dance in the reflection of Clancy’s eyes across the clearing. The younger man was carefully placing the ukulele back into its case, treating it with a reverence that spoke louder than any song.

"Yeah," Torchbearer whispered to the cooling air, answering Ramos. "He is."

He turned and walked back toward the fire pit. The adrenaline of the performance was fading into a comfortable, sleepy hum among the remaining banditos. Mark was kicking dirt over the embers, while Debby was helping Elias up, offering him a steady arm, which he accepted with a grateful nod.

Clancy looked up as Torchbearer approached. The manic energy of the performance had settled into a soft, weary contentment.

"They liked it," Clancy said, sounding almost surprised. He hugged the instrument case to his chest.

"They needed it," Torchbearer corrected gently. He nodded toward the dark tree line where the echoes of the song had disappeared. "We all did."

Clancy smiled, a small, private thing that didn't feel the need to hide behind a joke.

"I think... I think I can write more. I have ideas."

"Good." Torchbearer refrained himself from putting an arm around his shoulders. He just hovered awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his hands. "But for now, you need to sleep. You've got a busy schedule of doing absolutely nothing tomorrow."

Clancy chuckled, the sound warm and easy.

"Yes mom."

They made their way back to the tent in comfortable silence. The air was biting cold now, the kind of chill that seeped into bones, but inside the canvas walls, it felt safe.

Torchbearer watched as Clancy settled onto the cot, sliding the ukulele under the frame before pulling the blanket up to his chin. The buzzcut made him look younger in the dim light, stripping away the years of hardening Dema had tried to force upon him.

Torchbearer sat on the edge of the bed, pulling off his boots. His mind drifted back to the barrels behind the supply tent.

Not yet, he decided, listening to Clancy’s breathing even out as sleep overtook him.

He got his journal from under his bed and started writing.

     List:

     1. Make Mark cook that giant rabbit.

     2. Open Ramos's barrel with the root wine.

Chapter Text

They built new tents. And even though now it wasn't so cramped in the camp and they probably didn't need to share a tent anymore, it became a comfortable habit - to come back to the warmth of the light as one of them was busy with writing. And Torchbearer couldn't lie; he felt safer this way.

Also, after that show at the fire pit, Clancy started his journal - the one Torchbearer used to reread all the time for those long three years - song lyrics taking shape in his head.

It's almost like seeing a ghost. He sat on their shared bed, with the blanket lying heavy on his shoulders, fidgeting with the graphite pencil.

Torchbearer counted the days since he opened his eyes in the past and realized that it had been almost half a year. The realization made him remember all the time he had spent in reverie, getting to know Tyler for the first time. He will never experience that feeling of wonder ever again, but it doesn't mean Clancy wouldn't like to get to know Torchbearer better, now that they are literally closer than ever, sharing everything up to bed.

Eventually, this conversation was bound to happen.

"I don't understand." They were foraging in the woods, closer to the camp - only two of them - despite the new rule of groups consisting a minimum number of three people.

Torchbearer looked up at him from examining the grass for the herbs they were looking for.

"What are you talking about?"

"You." Clancy took a step closer, forcing Torchbearer to stop moving. "You know how I like my tea. You know I grind my teeth when I'm thinking. You know things about me that I haven't told anyone." He paused, his voice dropping lower. "But you act like… I'm contagious."

Torchbearer stiffened.

"I don't."

"You do. I see you with Mark. You slap his back, you wrestle, you lean on him. With the others, you're... present. But with me?" Tyler shook his head, frustration etching lines into his forehead. "You hover. You look at me like you want to say something, but the moment I get close, you pull away. Am I... do I smell like Dema to you? Is that it?"

"No," Torchbearer said, the word tearing out of him. "God, no, Tyler."

"Then what is it?"

Torchbearer opened his mouth, but the truth was a heavy, impossible thing lodged in his throat. I can’t touch you casually because I don’t know how to stop.

Clancy sighed, stepping into Torchbearer’s personal space. He reached out, his hand hovering for a second before his fingers brushed against Torchbearer’s cheek. It was a soft, tentative caress, the rough skin of his blackened fingers catching against Josh's jawline.

Torchbearer flinched. It was instinctive, a physical recoil from the sheer voltage of the contact. He grabbed Clancy’s wrist to stop the motion, his grip tight.

He wanted to pull him closer. The urge was so violent it made his vision swim. He wanted to pin him to the forest floor, to press his lips against every inch of that confused face, to devour him whole and prove Dema wrong. He wanted to take everything he had to offer. He wanted to claim and shout with that love that was spilling over in his chest, and confess everything that was now eating him from the inside.

But he couldn't. If he started, he wouldn't stop.

He dropped Clancy’s wrist and took a hesitant step back, putting distance between them.

"I can't," Torchbearer rasped, his voice sounding wrecked. "We need to get back. The others are waiting."

He turned to walk away, leaving Clancy standing in the dappled sunlight, looking at his own hand with a hurt expression.

Maybe it was for the best, he thought, as he moved one foot in front of the other. He had let himself get way too comfortable for their own good, and despite how much he craved the touch, maybe, just maybe, he should have drawn that line so much earlier.

The unsaid truths lingered, heavy in the air. But really, by the time they reached the clearing, the mood had shifted entirely. The word spread across the camp so quickly, and now everybody was buzzing with the electric anticipation.

The secret was out.

Torchbearer sighed and decided to visit Ramos, who was already at the supply tent, a grin splitting his bearded face.

"What?" he asked at the unimpressed look on Torchbearer's face. "It's no fun when there's no good food cooking."

Torchbearer just shook his head.

"Just get the wine already."

Ramos happily obliged and disappeared inside. After a while he emerged with the barrel rolling at his feet.

"Reserves are open!" someone shouted, and the cheer that went up could have scared the birds from the trees for miles.

Obviously, having gotten the tip about the forthcoming celebration, Mark had already gotten to cooking, and this time he truly outdone himself. That huge rabbit they caught and a stockpile of cured meats were roasting over the fire, the scent of fat and rosemary making everyone salivate. Today it wasn't just a meal; they knew they were about to feast.

Torchbearer wasn't crazy about alcohol; he actually hated the burn, the loss of control, but as later that night, the first round of cups was passed around, the distinctive smell of the root wine added to the air, he couldn't help but let his shoulders drop.

"If anyone complains about the seasoning," Mark announced, swaying dangerously on a crate with a ladle in one hand and a brimming mug in the other, "I will personally feed you to the vultures!"

"You're the only vulture here, picking at the bones!" Debby yelled back, her face flushed with wine and laughter.

They all dug in, and the food was delicious. The meat was tender, falling off the bone, the rosemary crisp and fragrant, masking the usual metallic tang of their rations.

As the barrel rapidly emptied, and the mead was gone, the dignity of the Banditos evaporated. The root wine was deceptive; it tasted like dirt and syrup, but it hit like a sledgehammer. Soon, the clearing was filled with chatter. They played stupid games suited for teenagers who had never seen a war, desperate to reclaim a youth they had traded for survival.

"Watch this," Elias slurred, looking surprisingly spry. He spun, stumbled, and tackled an unsuspecting bush. "I meant to do that. Tactical concealment."

"Tactical, my ass!" Ramos slapped his knee in pure delight, nearly falling off his crate.

The camp exploded with laughter. Even the stoic ones were doubled over, wiping tears from their eyes.

"My turn!" Mark yelled. "Truth or Dare, but if you choose dare, you have to drink the sludge from the bottom of Ramos's barrel."

"That's poison, Mark!"

"Come on, it's going to be fun!"

"It will kill me!"

"Not like literally, so you'll be fine… I think."

The stories became wilder, louder, and less coherent.

And then there was Clancy in the very center of the drunken banditos. They begged him to play one more song. Clancy didn't need to be asked twice. He scrambled to his tent and returned moments later, the battered instrument clutched in his hand.

He sat on the log, the firelight catching the curve of his eyelashes, and strummed. 

"If I keep moving, they won't know."

He wrote a new song.

"I'll morph to someone else."

The banditos picked up the chorus with the excited shouts.

"What they throw at me's too slow."

The chords cut through the heavy, humid air of the forest, and the Banditos, fueled by the potent root wine, roared their approval.

The night dissolved into a blur of joy. Someone started drumming on an empty water canister, matching Clancy’s beat. Voices rose in a chaotic, beautiful chorus, singing lyrics that were half-remembered and half-invented on the spot.

"If I get captured again," Mark slurred, waving a turkey leg like a baton, "I'm gonna tell the bishops that their robes are tacky. Just... absolutely no class, so ugly."

"Now that I think about it, they look like shower curtains," thoughtfully uttered Debby.

"You'll get us all killed, you idiot!" Rosa laughed, shoving Mark playfully.

"No, no, just listen!" he insisted, nearly toppling off his crate. "I'll say, 'Nico, red is not your color. Maybe you should try... uhh… pastel pink?'"

The laughter was deafening. It was a release of pressure that had been building for years. They danced too, when the energy bubbled outside, stumbling, uncoordinated, arm-in-arm around the fire pit. They played games that made no sense, daring each other to jump over the flames (which Torchbearer quickly put a stop to) or seeing who could hold a note the longest until they passed out from lack of oxygen.

But as the hours wore on and the barrel ran dry, the energy began to wane. The adrenaline crashed, leaving behind a heavy, narcotic sleepiness.

One by one, the Banditos dropped where they stood. Mark was passed out, using a sack of potatoes as a pillow, snoring loud enough to rival a generator. Debby was curled up near the warmth of the stones, her head resting on her pack. The clearing became a landscape of tangled limbs and peaceful breaths.

Torchbearer sat back on a log, nursing his cup, his head spinning pleasantly. He looked around at the vulnerable, sleeping forms of his people. Maybe this wasn't a good idea, he thought, a flicker of his usual paranoia cutting through the haze. We're too exposed.

But then Clancy slid onto the log beside him, his shoulder pressing warmly against Josh’s. They were the last booze survivors, tipsy sentinels under the open sky.

"Look at that," Clancy murmured, pointing upward with a shaky finger.

The canopy had opened up directly above the pit, revealing a sky spilled with diamonds. The Milky Way was a bruise of light across the darkness.

"I missed this," Clancy whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "In Dema... I used to think the sky ended at the ceiling. That there was nothing above the neon." He turned his head, his eyes glassy and wide, reflecting the starlight. "It goes on forever, Josh."

Torchbearer didn't look at the stars. He looked at Clancy.

The moonlight washed out the colors, turning him into a monochrome photograph, beautiful and tragic. The alcohol weakened the dam Josh had built around his heart. The walls crumbled, brick by agonizing brick. He felt smacked in the head with all the feelings, crawling to the outside. He looked at the face he had mourned, the face he had saved, the face that had split in half right in front of his eyes, black covering his lips, up to his nose.

"I'm sorry," Torchbearer whispered. The words fell out before he could stop them.

Clancy turned fully toward him, confusion knitting his brow.

"For what?"

"For today. For pulling away. For... everything." He felt tears prick his eyes, hot and sudden. This place, with its openness and rawness, made him feel lightheaded, like the world around him was spinning. The words tumbled out of his mouth, and he couldn't stop them. "I can't do it anymore. I can't pretend."

"Josh, it's okay—"

"It's not." The sob ripped out of him, ragged and wet. "Oh fuck it, it's not okay."

He turned on the log, grabbing Clancy’s hands. His grip was desperate, trembling. He took a breath.

"I'm not a fortune teller. I swear I'm not crazy. I've been here before, I know how this will end," he pointedly avoided looking into his face. It took everything in him to look Clancy in the eyes as he finally dug a grave for himself with his next words. "I'm from the future, Tyler. That's how I know."

Clancy stared at him, mouth slightly open, blinking slowly as if trying to process the words through the fog of the wine. But Josh plowed on, the confession spilling out like blood from a wound.

"I know everything about you because I love you. I love you so, so much. I've loved you for years. I've watched you… go. Again and again. Those bastards, I'm—" He clutched Clancy’s hands to his chest, bowing his head over them, praying to a universe he had defied. "And I'm so terrified. Please, just... don't leave me again. I beg you. I can't lose you again."

The silence that followed was louder than the crackling fire. Josh squeezed his eyes shut, wallowing in the awaited rejection, waiting to be called insane.

Instead, he felt a sudden pressure. A hand sliding from his grip to cup the back of his neck, firm and grounding.

Clancy kissed him.

Clancy pressed into him, like a collision, the fierce force of it nearly knocking them backward. His lips moved desperately against Josh's, unpolished and hungry, tasting of the bitter root wine and the salt of Josh’s own tears. Josh made a noise in the back of his throat, a wet, broken sound of pure relief, and surged forward. The restraint he had built up over months, over years, snapped like a dry twig under a boot.

He buried his hands in the short fuzz of Clancy’s buzzcut, the texture bristling against his sensitive palms, sending shivers down his spine. He dragged him closer, greedy and starving, until there was no air between them, until he couldn't tell whose chest was heaving with whose breath.

Gravity took them then. They tumbled off the log onto the grass, limbs tangling in a frantic mess of elbows and knees, but neither broke the contact. It felt heavenly. The damp earth seeped into Josh's jeans, the smell of crushed grass mixing with the woodsmoke and the scent of Tyler, alive and warm and real.

Josh dug his fingers into the fabric of the green hoodie - his hoodie, on Tyler's back - and then deeper, finding the skin beneath, grounding himself in the reality of here and now. He traced the line of his spine, the tension in his shoulders, needing to map him out, needing to verify that this wasn't another cruel hallucination conjured by grief. He kissed him like he was breathing him in, terrified that if he stopped, if he pulled away for even a second, the timeline would correct itself and steal him away.

Clancy pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against Josh’s, their noses brushing. His eyes were wide, dark, and searching in the starlight, stripped of all defenses.

"I'm here," Clancy murmured against his mouth, breathless, voice rough with emotion. "I'm right here, Josh. I'm not going anywhere."

They didn't make it to the tent. They didn't even try. The walk seemed too far, the separation required to stand up too unbearable. They shifted until they were comfortable in the grass, surrounded by the sleeping camp. Josh pulled Clancy against his chest, wrapping his arms around him like a shield, burying his face in the crook of his neck where the black paint met warm skin.

Clancy let out a long, shuddering sigh and settled, his hand finding Josh’s in the dark and interlacing their fingers. They fell asleep right there, tangled together in a knot under a sky that went on forever.

"Josh."

"Josh wake up!"

He cracked open his eyes to Clancy shaking him awake. Instead of a warm embrace, he was met with the choking smell of something burning. It wasn't the comforting scent of a campfire, but the acrid, choking stench of scorching canvas and hair.

"Fire! FIRE!"

The scream shattered the peace. Torchbearer jerked awake, his head pounding from the wine, disorientation washing over him. The world was orange. The supply tent was a wall of flame, the heat searing his skin even from a distance.

"Get up! Get up!"

Banditos were scrambling, shouting, throwing dirt and water on the flames.

Torchbearer scrambled to his feet, shielding his eyes from the glare.

"Tyler?" He turned to look at Clancy and assess the damage, but where he had stood just a moment ago was only an empty spot and a sign of struggle. "Tyler!"

Torchbearer spun around. The smoke was thick, stinging his eyes, obscuring the edges of the camp. He saw Mark hauling crates away from the fire. He saw Ramos beating the flames with a blanket.

But amidst the panic, nobody looked at the perimeter. Nobody looked at the darkness beyond the light.

Josh scanned the tree line. Through the haze of smoke, he saw it. A shadow deeper than the night. A horse, white as bone, and a figure in red robes dragging a struggling form into the darkness.

"No," Josh breathed. The blood drained from his face, leaving him cold despite the fire.

He saw the Bishop’s face for a split second - that old wrinkly calmness, almost gentle in its cruelty. Keons. He knew for sure.

"Guard the perimeter!" Torchbearer roared at the others, his voice raw.

He didn't wait for them to listen. He grabbed a knife he kept strapped at his leg - a habit born of paranoia - and sprinted toward the trees.

"Keons!" he screamed.

The woods swallowed them. Josh ran. He ran blindly into the undergrowth, branches whipping his face, tearing at his clothes. He ran until his lungs burned, until the sound of the fire faded into the humming distance.

"Tyler!"

Silence answered him.

He ran until the sun began to bleed over the horizon, painting the world in mocking shades of pink and gold. He ran until his legs gave out.

He collapsed in the middle of a dense thicket, falling to his knees.

The panic hit him like a physical blow.

His chest seized. It felt like a giant hand was crushing his ribs, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He clawed at his throat, gasping, wheezing, but no oxygen would come. The trees were spinning, elongating, closing in on him like the gray walls of the tower he had tried so hard to escape.

I lost him. I had him in my arms and I lost him.

"Please," he wheezed, shaking violently. The knife slipped from his numb fingers. The ground beneath him seemed to be splitting in half.

He hyperventilated, the edges of his vision going black, screaming a silent plea to a universe that refused to listen. Just like the last time.

This time he too, couldn't find him.

Chapter Text

Ash covered the ground where once the greenery had grown.

He knew what would happen next oh so well: there would be no east anymore, they would relocate and wait, depleted, for the sign of Clancy being alive - and there would be none. And in two years, from the confines of the city walls, the morning show would be aired.

Good day, Dema.

And Clancy would be their star, draped in the long fur trench coat, with his hair grown longer, bleached, and dyed pink; dancing with a vacant expression to the meaningless lyrics.

Torchbearer walked past the banditos, who were still dizzy from the smog, tired from the efforts put into putting out the fire, perched up on burned logs with a punching hangover.

There wasn't any fire the previous time. They relocated because they needed to move on. But now, he knew, that he had changed the future.

What else did he change?

He didn't feel the ground underneath his boots as he trudged on to his tent. It had shifted, leaning to the side - tilted off-kilter, carcass half broken.

Torchbearer retrieved his maps, thankfully intact in their designated case, and got his journal out from under his bed. He carefully patted it free from the dust and opened the first page.

With a startling realization, he didn't see his own handwriting. Instead, there were neatly written characters in a graphite pencil. It was Clancy's journal. He traced his fingers over the written-out words and held his breath in reverie.

The silence that followed the fire was heavier than the smoke. Torchbearer moved through the motions of leadership, but he felt like a hollow shell, wind whistling through ribs that no longer protected a heart. He organized the salvage efforts and mapped out the route for relocation, but he did it all without a word of reassurance. He had none left to give.

The Banditos were quick to realize the grim aftermath of the attack. Everyone was coughing, soot-stained, and shaken, but they were all accounted for. Everyone except one.

"They just wanted him," a young bandito whispered near the water supply, voice trembling. "All that fire... it was just a distraction to grab Clancy."

"At least the rest of us are safe," another murmured, wringing out a wet cloth.

Dema’s obsession was a terrifying, suffocating weight.

Later that afternoon, as they packed the few crates that hadn't turned to ash, a weary voice cut through the quiet.

"It would be easier," a man muttered, hoisting a pack onto his shoulder, "if we just found another Clancy. Maybe then they'd stop hunting us like dogs."

Torchbearer stopped dead. The map case in his hand crunched under the sudden pressure of his grip. He turned slowly, eyes burning with a cold, terrifying fire that had nothing to do with the night before.

"Easier?" he hissed. The word hung in the air, sharp as a blade.

"Torch, I just meant…" The bandito paled, taking a step back.

"Really?" Torchbearer snapped, his voice cracking with the strain of holding an angry curse he would regret. "He's gone, and there will be no 'another' Clancy."

He didn't wait for a response. He turned his back on the rest of the lost-looking banditos. The conversation was over, and the bridge burned. He didn't speak to anyone in the camp for the rest of the day.

They moved at first light. Torchbearer silently led them away from the charred remains of their hope, heading toward the more remote, unforgiving side of the forest where the cliffs sheared off into the violent waters of the Paladin Strait. It was a harder place to live, wind-battered and damp, but it was hidden.

As soon as the new tents were pitched, fighting the biting wind, he retreated. He zipped the flap of his tent, feeling so much bigger now with no company to come back to, and collapsed onto his bedroll. He locked himself away for hours, then days, emerging only for the barest necessities.

He stared at the maps until the lines blurred into gray static. He contemplated the impossible. He plotted routes into the city, suicide missions, and frontal assaults. He traced the perimeter of the walls with a trembling finger, looking for a weakness he knew didn't exist.

He wrote some more. Crossed-out, circled, and underlined words weren't holding much meaning.

     ?? The next Annual Assemblage of the Glorified ???

     Good day Dema launch in two years

     Two years?

But eventually, exhaustion won. And when he slept, he couldn't rest.

The pull started in his chest, a hook behind his sternum dragging him upward and outward. Longing so heavy, a desire so violent it refused to be stuffed in his body.

He opened his eyes and was met by the gray walls of the cell.

A vulture sat on the narrow windowsill, its black feathers sleek, beady eyes tracking the slightest movement inside.

And there was Clancy.

He was huddled on the cot, knees pulled to his chest. He looked so small and battered. Dark bruises bloomed across his arms and face like wilting flowers. He was cradling his left hand against his chest. Not thinking of it better, Torchbearer stepped forward, taking a closer look in the dim light at the person in front of him: two of Clancy's fingers were bent at sickening angles, dislocated and swollen.

They had broken his hands, so he couldn't play. So he couldn't write.

Clancy flinched, sensing the shift in the air, and looked up. His eyes were dull and heavy-lidded until they landed on Torchbearer. The recognition was instant. He scrambled off the cot, wincing as his injuries flared, and stumbled toward the figure standing in the center of his cell.

"Josh?" Clancy breathed, the sound barely a whisper.

He just stood there and stared at him in disbelief.

"You're here," Clancy choked out. "How did you— how did you get here?"

Torchbearer opened his mouth to choke out the answer, but only silence followed.

Almost as if he was afraid he would disappear, Clancy reached out to put his hand on Torchbearer's cheek and wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of his neck, shaking with sobs he tried to suppress.

"I knew you would come for me," He whispered against the fabric of his shirt. "I knew it."

He stood frozen, the phantom weight of Clancy in his arms both a balm and a knife wound. He brought his hands up slowly, hesitantly, to return the embrace, feeling the jut of Clancy’s spine, the trembling of his frame. To Clancy, Torchbearer looked as real as the stone walls around them - the dirt on his jacket, the scruff on his jaw, the terrified look in his eyes.

"How... how did you get past the guards and vultures? Did anyone see you?" Clancy pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes, his gaze intense and feverish, scanning for injuries. "Are you okay?"

Torchbearer opened his mouth, desperation clawing at his throat as he tried to speak, to explain that what he was seeing might as well be all his imagination, but his voice was locked in his physical throat miles away. He could only shake his head, his expression crumpling.

"It's okay," Clancy soothed, misunderstanding the silence. He cupped Torchbearer’s face with his good hand, his thumb brushing over his cheekbone. "You don't have to talk. We just have to go. My hands..." He glanced down at his broken fingers, a flash of pain crossing his face. "I can't climb. But I can run. I can run if you help me."

Clancy leaned in then, his intent clear. He needed to bridge the gap with a kiss, wanting the same desperate comfort they had shared under the stars before the world burned down. He closed his eyes, tilting his head, seeking the only safe harbor he had left.

But Torchbearer froze.

A wave of nausea crashed over him.

This felt wrong.

In the last timeline, he had done this - he had let Clancy believe he was really there, physically present, risking his life within the walls. And when the truth came out, when Clancy realized he had been hugging a ghost and this Torchbearer wasn't real, staying safe in the forest, the betrayal had shattered them. They hadn't spoken for months.

Or, well… not until that final, doomed attack where Clancy’s face split in half with black paint.

He couldn't do it again. He couldn't lie to him, not like this.

Torchbearer carefully pulled back, breaking the contact just before their lips touched.

Clancy looked at him, hurt and confusion fracturing his expression.

"Josh?"

He stepped back, putting distance between them in the cramped cell.

"What's wrong? Why won't you... Why are you looking at me like that?" Clancy’s voice cracked, and all he could do was just silently plead.

Josh couldn't breathe. He couldn't exist here a second longer without shattering.

So he ran away. He willed himself out, severing the connection.

Torchbearer woke up in his tent with a gasp, air rushing into his lungs as if he’d been drowning. He hated the burn - that look that Clancy gave him, left on his skin. He hated how he could hear his own sobs here, and nothing could come out from his lips on the other side of the city walls. He hated doing this to Clancy, too.

But he couldn't stop.

Night after night, he went back. He had to know that he was alive. He had to bear witness to the torture, to the slow dismantling of the Clancy he once knew. He watched as the bruises yellowed and faded, only to be replaced by new ones.

And in the waking world, Torchbearer felt like dying.

The weeks dragged into months. The world behind the flaps of his tent became so surreal that once he emerged on the outside, bone-chilling coldness and the layer of white struck him, blinding in its brightness.

He saw no point in doing this again. So he spent his days inside and stopped eating. The skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, his eyes sinking into dark, bruised hollows. He was spiraling, consumed by the spectral wanderings and the crushing weight of a future he was terrified he had already doomed.

One evening, the tent flap opened on its own. A gust of freezing wind blew in, carrying a few snowflakes, followed by Debby.

She carried a bowl of broth, steam rising from it. She set it down on the crate near his bed, then sat on the edge of the cot. She didn't leave when he ignored her. She didn't leave when he turned his face to the canvas wall, huddling deeper into his pathetic pile of blankets.

"Hey," she said. Her voice was quiet, steady, lacking the accusation he expected.

He never really showed up at the fire pit anymore. He has barely even seen anyone these days.

"What was said that day..." she continued, her gaze distant, as she looked at her hands, trying to busy herself with anything but looking at the pitiful sight that he was. "It was unfair to you. Saying that we should find another Clancy. I know they didn't mean it; no one here does. And we're all sorry."

Torchbearer's shoulders tensed at the mention of the name.

Debby waited, letting the apology hang in the frozen air of the tent. When he still didn't speak, she sighed, the sound weary and heavy.

"And," she added, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I also wanted to tell you something. I'm— I'm not sure I can hold it in any longer."

She took a deep breath, clearly wrestling with her own thoughts. And then she was speaking again.

"That night, before the fire, I overheard your conversation with Clancy."

He froze.

"I swear I wasn't eavesdropping! I just woke up and the moment was—"

Torchbearer stiffened, his spine snapping straight as if he’d been struck. A cold, defensive wall slammed down behind his eyes.

"You didn't hear anything," he rasped, his voice rough and unused. "You were asleep. We were all drunk. I was drunk. It was just nonsense."

"Torch—"

"Stop it, Debby," he snapped, turning on her with a sudden, vicious energy that startled them both. "You're crazy if you think that was real. You're losing it."

She didn't flinch, but the insult hung bitter in the air, ugly and sharp.

Regret flooded him instantly. He saw the hurt flash in her eyes, but it didn't stay. It was replaced almost immediately by a steady, unwavering pity. She just looked at him, at the hollowed-out shell of a man that once stood tall, guarding their beliefs.

"I'm not crazy," she said softly. "And neither are you. I know you don't mean that."

Torchbearer slumped, the fight draining out of him as quickly as it had come. He buried his face in his hands, his breath hitching.

"I'm sorry..."

"It's okay," Debby said, moving a little closer but not touching him.

She waited a beat, letting the silence settle around them like the snow outside.

"I haven't told anyone. Nobody knows but me. But I need to know," she whispered. "I need to understand why you're doing this to yourself."

Slowly, painfully, Torchbearer turned over fully to face her. His eyes were dull and red-rimmed, magnified by the dark circles that looked like bruises in the dim light. He looked like a man already halfway to the grave.

"It's because of Clancy," She leaned forward, guessing. "He won't make it, will he?"

Torchbearer looked at her - really looked at her - and the dam finally broke. The truth, she had so plainly spoken, had been a poison in his veins for too long.

"I was too late," he whispered. "In the future... the first time around... I waited too long. We fought our way into the tower. We got to the top. We thought we had won." He took a shuddering breath, the image searing his mind, fresh as the day it happened. "But when I found him... he wasn't Clancy anymore."

She let him speak.

"He was one of them," Torchbearer choked out. "He became a Bishop. Nico... Nico got to him. He broke him down until there was nothing left of Clancy. He stood there, Debby, and he looked at me like I was a stranger. He destroyed him. And I let it happen."

Debby let out a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a moment as the horror of it settled.

"Okay. Okay." She opened her eyes again. "We have to stop it then."

"How?" he laughed weakly, feeling more like a wreck than ever. "I've thought of everything, I've tried everything. Every path leads back to that tower. Every Clancy's escape ends in capture. I changed the timeline, I saved him early, I brought him home, and still they came for him. The fire... the fire wasn't supposed to happen. I made it worse. Everything I do just tightens the noose."

"Stop it, Torch," Debby bristled, her voice rising. "You talk like everything is lost, but we still have the whole camp. These people will do anything for you."

"Don't you get it?" He looked at the map on the floor, at the circular layout of Dema. "The only way Clancy ever leaves that city is if they let him leave. Or if he becomes one of them."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

He thought of Clancy in that cell, two years of isolation and one more of mocking. As if dressing up and making him preach something he didn't believe in, and then locking him up again to do more of god-knows-what to his broken body wasn't enough. In the end, he could only see those betrayed eyes, a mask covering his face, and then red - the curtain around his shoulders and paint - the Bishop he became.

The only way he leaves is if they let him.

The thought struck him like a physical blow. It wasn't a new thought, but in the context of his failure, it took on a different shape. There was one variable he hadn't changed. One piece on the board, he hadn't sacrificed because he had been too afraid to let go of the reins.

"There's only one way," Torchbearer said softly.

Debby waited for him to continue, but he didn't think speaking it out loud was a good idea yet.

It only cemented his resolve.

"What? What is it?" Debby stared at him, horror dawning on her face.

A fair trade.

Chapter Text

Before Josh had been a Torchbearer, he, too, was a Dema citizen. All of the banditos that now lived outside the city walls were at some point present in that gray space filled with concrete.

And before Tyler was Clancy, there was another Clancy.

He was an old man, wearing the same gray jumpsuit, always carrying a book in the crook of his arm, desperate for knowledge. He was the first bandito, the spark before the fire. He was the one who gathered the evidence, piecing together the fragmented truths hidden in the city's archives. He discovered that Dema wasn't a sanctuary, but a prison operating on a hijacked religion, ruled by eight bishops who fed on the hopeless.

Back then, he had found young Josh, who was just a restless kid with too much anger and nowhere to direct it. He gave him a reason to fight. It was a two-way truce of sorts because they both wanted the same thing. But it didn't last. The weight of the city was heavy, and power was a seductive drug.

The old man, the first Clancy, faltered. When the choice came between the city and the revolution, he chose the city. He chose power. He exiled Josh and the others, casting them out into the wilderness to die.

Later, that man would be known as Nico.

There had been other Clancys since then. Brave souls who escaped, who took up the name and the mantle, wanting to oppose the bishops. But one by one, their motivation was smothered by the oppressive weight of Vialism, or they were turned into Glorious Gones, their bodies used as vessels for the bishops they tried to fight.

But then there was Tyler. And Josh was so right, thinking this way all those years ago, this time it was different.

Torchbearer held a meeting at dawn.

The banditos gathered in the center of the new camp, huddled into their coats against the biting wind that whipped off the Paladin Strait. They looked groggy, their breath puffing out in white clouds of steam, but the look on Josh’s face woke them up faster than the cold.

He stood by the dying embers of the watch fire, his eyes were clear. For the first time in months, the haunted, frantic glaze was gone, replaced by a calm, terrifying resolve.

"I'm going back to Dema," he said.

The sentence hung heavy in the air.

"What?" Mark stepped forward, rubbing sleep from his eyes, sure he had misheard what had just been said. "Torch, we're not ready. We don't have the numbers for a raid. We haven't even finished mapping the—"

"Not a raid," Torchbearer cut him off. His voice was quiet, but it carried over the wind. "I'm going alone."

A ripple of unease went through the group. Ramos frowned, crossing his massive arms.

"Alone? That's suicide. You walk up to those gates, and they'll mount your head on a spike before you can knock."

"They won't," Josh said. "Not if I'm walking in to surrender."

"Surrender? Torch, have you lost your mind?"

"I have a plan to get Clancy out."

The plan was simple: a life for a life. The only one that should work.

He looked at Debby. She stood a little apart from the others, her face pale, lips pressed into a thin, white line. She didn't say a word. She just nodded, a microscopic jerk of her chin. Go.

Torchbearer turned back to address the group. He needed them to understand the stakes.

"If the bishops turn on us," his voice was steady despite the slight tremor in his hands. "If they try to take more than just me... if they don't honor the trade... you'll have to burn the city down."

"Burn it?" Mark whispered.

"Mm," Torchbearer hummed. "Set fire to the perimeter. Use the fuel reserves if you have to."

He didn't wait for them to argue. He couldn't afford to hesitate.

He adjusted the strap of his empty pack - a prop, really - and turned his back on the only family he had left.

"Guard the camp," he said.

And then he walked.

He walked out of the tree line and onto the open plain of the Trench. The wind tore at his clothes, trying to push him back, but he leaned into it. The gray walls of Dema loomed in the distance, a monolith of concrete and neon against the sunrise. It looked like a tombstone.

He didn't look back. He knew if he turned around, if he saw them watching him - if he saw their disappointed expressions, he would solidify the fact that he left them behind. So he kept his eyes on the tower, putting one foot in front of the other, steadily heading toward his end so that Tyler could have a beginning.

The lone vulture flew over his head, his beady eye following his movements.

Torchbearer stopped and raised his hands at the bird. It blinked, circling him in the air, and then turned to return to the skyline.

At the very border of the city walls, the guards were waiting.

He was escorted through the silent, empty streets, past the buildings that resembled perfect blocks, until he was brought to the tower. The irony of the place and the situation hit him harder than that heavy door.

And before he knew it, he was at the very top, standing before the council. Nico was there, waiting in the center of the room, his red robes vivid against the gray stone.

"I offer a trade," Josh said, his voice echoing in the vast chamber.

Nico watched him, his expression unreadable.

"And what do you have that we could want, Torchbearer?"

"Me," Josh said simply. "You want to break the rebellion? You want to end the hope? Take the leader. Take the Torchbearer. In exchange... I ask you to release Clancy. Expel him from this city."

Silence stretched. For a fleeting second, the old man who used to carry books, the mentor who had taught Josh how to fight, seemed to shimmer beneath the bishop’s mask. But the moment passed, swallowed by the cold indifference of Dema.

"Such a noble gesture," Nico said smoothly. "So reckless."

Josh stared silently at the bishop.

"I'll give you a chance. Join us," Nico offered, gesturing to the empty space beside him. A sunrise crawling up the horizon reminded him of that day, when a similar offer was given to him by a familiar face. "There is always room for a tenth."

Josh nearly laughed in his face. A humorless smile stretched on his lips.

"Just lock me up like you usually do."

Nico’s hand lowered as he turned to look away.

"As you wish."

As he descended the spiral staircase, he passed a window overlooking the outer wall. Josh stopped, pressing a hand to the cold glass.

Below, a small figure in a gray jumpsuit stumbled out into the wasteland. Clancy. He looked bewildered, shielding his eyes against the sudden brightness.

Two figures emerged from the tree line to meet him - Mark and Debby. They grabbed him, pulling him toward safety. Josh watched as realization dawned on Clancy. He saw the way Clancy stopped, turning back toward the city, struggling against Mark’s grip. He saw the shouting, though he couldn't hear the words. Clancy was refusing to go. He knew.

With a little grace, later that day, Josh was given a gray jumpsuit and was made to give up his hoodie covered in yellow dashes. The cell was just as small as Clancy's - one ceiling and four walls. That night, he was brought into the room with fluorescent lights. It ate all of the hope he had gotten from that fleeting glance at Tyler, safe on the outside.

They gave him a book, and the preaching began.

"The Tenth Cycle," the bishop intoned from the shadows. "Recite."

Josh couldn't. He didn't know the words, and he refused to learn them.

The lesson that followed was etched into him. The bishop sighed, disappointed by Josh’s "failure to understand," and signaled the guard.

The rest of the night dissolved into a blur of blinding white light and sharp, sickening spikes of pain. They started with his arm, then moved to his hands - the hands that used to drum, the hands that had held the rebellion together - breaking them with a terrifying, clinical efficiency.

"You still do not understand," the bishop’s voice droned over the ringing in Josh’s ears. "You cling to the shell. We must break it to free you."

Josh slumped in the restraints, sweat stinging his eyes, his body screaming in a language he couldn't translate. He tried to focus on the book, on the bishop, on anything other than the ruin of his own limbs, but the agony was an anchor, dragging him down into the dark.

"Let's try again. From the beginning."

In the fractures, when his vision faded at the edges, and the lights were gone, he found escape.

The pull in his chest yanked him out of his broken body and into the forest. He materialized in the new camp, near the cliff's edge.

Clancy was there. He was sitting on a rock, head in his hands, looking utterly devastated and lost. He was the leader now, and he had no idea what to do.

Clancy sensed him immediately. His head snapped up, eyes wide and bloodshot.

"Josh!"

Josh stood there, stumbling slightly in the wind.

"Why would you do that?" Clancy screamed, scrambling to his feet. He examined him from top to bottom, his hands gripping his shoulders. "You traded yourself? Are you insane? What's wrong with you?"

Josh couldn't speak. Instead, he wrapped his hand around Clancy’s wrist with a firm grip and pulled him toward the tent.

Clancy stumbled after him, still shouting.

"Hey, answer me! You can't just... leave and then show up like nothing happened, like this!"

Josh dragged him into the tent and went straight for his own journal, left behind on the crate. He grabbed a pencil, his frozen fingers struggling for a moment before steadying enough to write.

"Why won't you talk to me, Josh?"

Tyler, he scrawled frantically. There is an island called Voldsoy not far from here. You need to go there. You need to find a creature called a Ned. Get its antlers. They will give you the power of seizing. This is the only way to defeat the bishops. You——

Clancy grabbed Josh’s hand, forcing the pencil to stop. He looked at the words, then up at Josh, his eyes filled with a terrible, betrayed understanding. His grip unconsciously tightened on Josh's skin as he realized how unearthly fragile it was.

"Oh God… you're still in Dema." Clancy whispered. It wasn't a question. "They are torturing you."

Josh didn't reply, his lips twitching and not making a sound.

"This was a really stupid decision, Josh," Clancy said, his voice cracking. "You exchanged your freedom for mine, and now what? It's all the same. We're just... we're just on opposite sides of the wall again."

Josh shook his head violently. He tried to pull his hand away to write more, to explain Voldsoy, the antlers, the seizing, but Clancy held on tight.

"I'm not going to Voldsoy," Clancy argued, tears spilling over. "I'm coming back for you. We're burning that place down."

Josh slammed his free hand against the table, a dull thud that shouldn't have been possible. He pointed at the journal, at the word Voldsoy, his eyes pleading. Go. Go and save us.

"No!" Clancy shouted. "No!"

He shoved the journal away, sending it skidding across the crate.

"Look at you!" Clancy demanded, his voice breaking. He grabbed Josh’s shoulders again, his fingers digging into the fabric of the hoodie. "You're shaking. You're... If I go to this island - if we waste time hunting for fairy tales and antlers - you’ll be dead before we get back. Is that the plan? You die a martyr so I can learn a magic trick?"

Josh stared at him, frustration radiating off him in waves. He grabbed Clancy’s shirt, pulling him close, their foreheads almost touching. He needed Tyler to understand.

It doesn't matter, Josh mouthed, the silence of his scream deafening. It doesn't matter what happens to me.

"It matters to me!" Clancy roared, shoving him back. "And it matters to them!" He gestured wildly toward the flap of the tent, to the camp outside. "You left them, Josh! You left Debby. You left Mark. You left them with me? I’m not their leader. You knew that, and you still traded the only hope they actually had just to get me out."

Clancy paced the small space, running his hands over his shaved head, manic and terrified.

"You think you saved the rebellion? You killed it. Without you, they're just refugees waiting to starve or get picked off by the vultures. I can't protect them. I can barely protect myself. And now you want me to abandon them again to go on a boat trip?"

Josh grabbed the pencil again, his hand trembling violently - a mirror of the agony his physical body was enduring miles away. He dragged the paper back.

Nico cannot be killed by fire, he carved into the page, the lead snapping under the pressure. We need a weapon. We need the power. I saw it. In the future, you-

"Stop talking about the future!" Clancy slammed his hand down on the page, covering the words. "We are here, right now! And right now, you are being tortured because of me. I don't care about the timeline, Josh. I don't care about seizing or bishops or antlers. I care about getting you out."

He grabbed Josh’s face, forcing him to look up. Clancy’s eyes were swimming with tears.

"We have the element of surprise. We can go back tonight. Mark and I... we can get you out. Just tell me where they're keeping you. Tell me the layout."

Josh squeezed his eyes shut. He shook his head. No. If they came back, they would die. All of them. It will end with the slaughter at the edge of the city and them turning into glorious gones.

He opened his eyes and looked at Tyler with a desperate intensity. He pointed to the West on the map. To Voldsoy. This is the way. The only way.

"I won't do it," Clancy sobbed, his resolve crumbling into pure fear. "I can't. Don't ask me to do that."

Josh reached out, his hand gently hovering over the scar on Clancy’s nose. He wanted to comfort him. He wanted to lie and say it would be okay. But the edges of his vision were starting to blur. The tent was dissolving into static.

The pain in the tower was spiking. A rib cracking. A finger twisting.

Josh gasped, his form fading in and out of the vision as he clutched a hand to his chest.

"Josh?" Clancy’s anger vanished instantly, replaced by panic. He tried to catch him, but his hands passed through Josh’s shoulder like smoke. "Josh, what's happening?"

Josh looked at him one last time, mouthing a single word he hoped Tyler could read.

Go.

Then the world ripped apart.

Josh snapped back into his body with a violent, wet jolt.

The gray walls of the torture chamber swam into view, blindingly bright after the dim lantern light of the tent. He was strapped to a chair, his body a map of agony. Every breath was a jagged shard of glass in his lungs.

Josh’s head lolled forward. He tasted copper and bile. Warm liquid dripped steadily from his nose onto his lip, splashing onto the gray jumpsuit.

His thoughts were fuzzy, he realized dimly, his vision tunneling. Was it because he was using his power to talk to Clancy for way too long?

Oh well, he thought, a grim, bloody smile touching his lips as the darkness crept back in. It's not like Tyler will know.

He slipped away again, slamming back into the space between worlds, determined to make Clancy listen before it was too late.

Chapter Text

The camp was quiet, a stark contrast to the uproar of the previous night.

Torchbearer stood there, in the middle of the clearing by the fire pit, just a phantom observing his people move in their wake. Banditos moved past him, their shoulders slumped and voices hushed.

Clancy had taken his tent.

Inside, it was a mess. Maps were torn from their cases and spread across the floor, pinned down by rocks and knives. Josh’s journal, the one filled with frantic scribbles, lay open on the cot next to Clancy’s own notebook - the one he had discovered neatly hidden under the pillow.

Clancy shoved it all into his backpack with a violence that made Josh flinch. He stood up, slinging the bag over one shoulder, and emerged from the tent.

He was wearing all black. He moved like a shadow, sharp and dangerous, past the banditos who turned to stare.

He turned and looked directly across the campsite, at the empty space by the fire. To anyone else looking, he was staring at nothing. But Josh saw the flash of recognition, the flicker of anger and pain in those brown eyes.

Mark was watching him too, his face a mask of worry. He had been the first to run to the tent last night when the screaming started, only to find Clancy arguing with empty air, tears streaming down his face, clutching at nothing.

As it turned out, nobody could see Torchbearer in his incorporeal form. Except Clancy, who was now pointedly ignoring him.

Stepping out into the clearing, Clancy addressed the gathering crowd. He didn't have Josh’s natural command, that quiet gravity that pulled people in, but he had a desperate, vibrating energy that made people turn their heads.

"I have to go," Clancy said, hunching on the immediate attention. "There is... something I need to get. Something that will help us bring him back."

He turned to Mark, handing him a rolled-up bundle of papers - Josh's maps of the perimeter. "You know the drills. Keep the watches tight. Don't let the people die."

Mark took the maps - paper heavy in his hand, looking like he wanted to argue, but he just nodded solemnly.

Then Clancy turned to Debby. She was watching him with a fierce, sad intensity. Their eyes met, and in that silent exchange, the truth passed between them. She knew what Josh had done. She knew exactly why Clancy was still here, and Josh wasn't.

"Watch over them," Clancy murmured to her.

"Bring him home," Debby replied, her voice thick.

The banditos formed a loose circle, murmuring wishes of safe travel, touching his shoulder as he passed. Clancy accepted it all with a stoic nod, then turned toward the tree line.

Josh fell into step beside him.

They moved through the plains in silence. The wind flattened the tall grass in waves, light snow grazing by, rippling through the dark grays and browns like a pale ocean. Josh took the lead, carefully guiding Clancy away from the narrow fissures, pointing out ravines and trails that were hidden under the blanket of white. Clancy followed his lead without a word, teeth grinding in deep thought.

It wasn't until they reached the edge of the water that he felt another pull in his chest, a sickening lurch that made him stop.

He vanished from Clancy’s sight, ripped back into his physical body. He woke up gagging, coughing up blood onto his jumpsuit, the copper taste overwhelming. His cell was empty. Just a vulture sitting perched on the windowsill, on the other side of his window. He heaved ragged breath and wiped the blood from his mouth.

There wasn't much time left in the day, so he turned to the cold stone wall and decidedly closed his eyes, trying to go back to sleep, searching for the connection, reaching back to the wild west winds.

When he returned, the sun was setting. Clancy was already in a small wooden skiff, rowing toward the dark shape of an island.

Voldsoy.

The silence on the water was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic splash of the oars cutting through the dark, glassy surface of the strait. The mist clung low to the water, obscuring the horizon, making the world feel small and contained.

Clancy stopped rowing when Josh flickered into existence at the bow of the boat.

"You're back," Clancy whispered, his voice hoarse.

Josh stared at him, sweat dripping down Clancy's face. He moved to sit on the bench opposite Clancy, careful not to rock the boat, though he had no real weight here.

"How does it work?" He asked softly. "This... guiding power. Is it like the seizing?"

Josh shook his head. He reached out, his ghostly hand hovering over Clancy’s knee before he hesitantly reached for Clancy’s hand, the one resting on the oar handle.

Clancy turned his palm up, allowing the contact. Josh’s touch felt so real, firm on his skin as he traced letters against the lines of Clancy’s palm with his index finger.

W-I-L-L.

"Will?" Clancy repeated, watching Josh’s finger intently. "You just... will yourself to be here?"

Josh nodded.

Clancy searched his face, his eyes dropping to Josh's chest, then back up to his eyes. He seemed to be looking for cracks in the projection, signs of the damage he knew was happening miles away, but his searches came up short. Josh's form remained as solid as his real body. Still, his voice sounded small when he spoke next.

"Does it hurt?"

Josh was taken aback by the question. His jaw set tight as he thought of the breaking bones, the blinding lights, the metallic taste of blood that was currently filling his physical mouth.

He looked Clancy in the eye and shook his head. No.

Clancy’s expression hardened, and he pulled his hand back an inch, breaking their touch.

"Please don't lie to me," he said, his voice cracking. "I can see you fading in and out, Josh. I could see the way you hold yourself."

Josh let out a silent sigh. He reached for Clancy’s hand again, insistent. Clancy let him take it.

I-T D-O-E-S-N-T, Josh traced slowly. N-O-T H-E-R-E.

Clancy stared at the letters long after Josh had stopped moving his finger. The weight of unsaid words hung heavy in the air between them. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Okay," Clancy whispered, his voice trembling. "Okay."

He picked up the oars again, longing to grab onto something real and solid, rowing with a renewed, desperate strength. The boat cut through the fog.

"Hey," Clancy said after a while, not looking up from the water. "I've been meaning to ask you before, but…" he sighed, in search of the right words. "In the future... the one you came from. Did we...?" He trailed off, cheeks flushing slightly despite the cold. "That night at the celebration. Was that the first time?"

Josh let his thoughts trail back to the time that hadn't happened here yet. He and Clancy, they didn't talk about what they had in that future; it was an unspoken constant from the very beginning. All banditos knew that they came as a one-piece deal, always in pair. They shared everything just like that tent. Between the captures and those moments of domesticity, for Torchbearer, Clancy had always been more than just a casual camp companion.

He reached out and tapped Clancy’s hand to get his attention, then wrote.

N-O.

"No?" Clancy let out a breathy, sad laugh. "How long did it last?"

It never really ended. At least not on their own will. It lasted exactly as long as Clancy existed.

Y-E-A-R-S.

Clancy stared at his own hand, his eyes widening as the implication settled in.

"Years," he whispered. He looked up at Josh, searching for something on the face of the man he thought he knew. "We were... we were together for years?"

Josh nodded weakly.

As the realization settled in, he looked more lost than ever. But then he shook his head and switched the topic entirely.

"How did it happen? How did you travel back in time?"

Josh could've expected this question, but now that he really thought about the circumstances, he himself didn't have a clear answer.

I D-O-N-T K-N-O-W.

"So you just appeared here one day?"

Pretty much, he shrugged with a silent, humorless hum.

"That's so fucked up."

You tell me, Josh smiled helplessly at his words.

"Did you succeed?" Clancy watched as this smile slowly slipped from his face. "Earlier, you told me that one day we'll see a world where there will be no bishops preaching their hijacked religion. Did we see it?"

Josh stared at the man he loved, seeing the dual image of the determined escapee slowly morphing into a battle-hardened leader from his memories. He reached for Clancy’s hand again.

A-L-M-O-S-T, Josh traced.

Clancy watched the letters form, his brow slightly furrowed.

"I see," he said softly. "Where did we go wrong?"

Tip-toeing over the edge of the topic, Josh just squeezed his hand, shaking his head.

It won't happen this time, he thought, not with his knowledge and with Clancy regaining his freedom.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," as if sensing the grimness of his thoughts, Clancy spoke up next. "I'm still mad at you for what you did, but we should've talked it out, and I shouldn't have screamed at you."

He wished he could speak, wished he could tell him that the yelling didn't matter, that fear made people say terrible things. Instead, he just traced a simple line across Clancy’s knuckles, the softest touch he could master as a gesture of telling - I can't blame you, it's okay. He turned his hand over, interlacing their fingers in a loose grip that, for a moment, anchored them both.

Voldsoy loomed out of the mist like a lone tree on top of the bare hill.

It was a bleak, desolate rock, smelling of sulfur and decay. They beached the skiff on the shingle, the stones clattering loudly in the quiet.

Josh led the way. Hand in hand, they climbed slippery basalt rocks, Clancy breathing hard, his boots scrambling for purchase on the moss-slicked stone.

They found the cave halfway up the ridge.

"That's it?"

Josh nodded. He gestured for Clancy to move forward.

Neds.

Inside the cave, there was a warm glow. It enveloped the stone sides of the walls with the warmth coming from the fire in the center of the damp space.

The creatures - two legs, small horns growing out of their bobbing heads, and huge black eyes that all turned to look at Clancy, stuck to the ground at the entrance.

There was one Ned in particular, whose horns were bigger than any others.

It tilted its head, rounding the fire on its short legs and stepping out of the cave at the other side.

Clancy and Josh exchanged glances, and then they stepped forward.

The creature was waiting outside, horns gone from its head, holding antlers in its hands.

Josh watched as Clancy made his way and came closer to the Ned. It reached on its tiptoes to hold up the antlers. Josh let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Relief crashed over him so violently that his vision swam. One moment, he was watching the scene from the canopy of the cave, and another - stony walls around him dissolved.

He slammed back into his body.

Pain exploded in his shoulder. A heavy boot kicked him, flipping his chair backward. He was in the confession room, his unconscious body dragged to be seated in front of the neon light.

"He drifts," someone observed calmly. "Break the other hand."

Josh barely had time to register the crunch before he shoved himself out, fleeing the agony, willing himself back to the island, back to the only thing that mattered.

He materialized on the rocks outside the cave, stumbling at the phantom force of the punch that followed with him.

The mist had cleared slightly. Clancy was standing near the edge of the cliff, overlooking the water. He was holding the antlers in both hands, but he wasn't looking at them. He was staring out toward Dema.

Tyler?

Clancy didn't react to his presence.

Josh stopped dead.

Clancy’s eyes were no longer brown. They were a glowing, piercing yellow. The color of sulfur. The color of the bishops' power.

It was a terrifying sight - he didn't look like Tyler at all, but like a vessel for something much older and much crueler. Somewhere there, miles away, he was seizing. He was reaching out with his mind, grabbing to hold on to something distant - a vulture, maybe, or an actual, real, dead human body.

Then Clancy blinked, and the gold vanished, leaving his eyes a dark, muddy brown. He slumped forward, gasping for air, bracing his hands on his knees.

Josh moved toward him, concern flaring.

Clancy straightened up. He looked at Josh, and for a second, Josh felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.

There was a hardness in Clancy’s face that hadn't been there an hour ago. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, detached calculation.

Josh reached for his hand, needing to ask.

W-R-O-N-G? he traced quickly.

"It's nothing," Clancy said, too quickly. He looked at his hands, at the bone weapons. his jaws set tight before he spoke. "There's nothing wrong, Josh."

Josh pulled back, a cold knot forming in his stomach.

It was always a known fact in the future - the seizing took a toll. He knew that. But this felt different. It felt like the power had looked back at Tyler and liked what it saw.

Clancy didn't offer his hand again. He turned back to the boat.

"We have to go back. I think I know what to do now."

Josh followed him, their roles now switched. He moved, tracing Clancy's steps, faulting at the rocks. Clancy didn't even turn to look as he faded out of the vision.

He coughed up more blood than all those previous times and alarming thoughts appeared in his head - he was losing way too much of it as coughing hadn't subsided after a long fit. If anything, it got so much worse.

Oh, he thought. This doesn't look good.

When he clawed his way back to the surface, the setting had changed. The smell of pine and woodsmoke filled his nose. He was back at the camp.

It was night. The fire pit was roaring, casting long, dancing shadows against the trees. The banditos were gathered in a tight circle, an air of expectant silence hanging over them.

Clancy sat on the log as he had once sat with a ukulele in his hands. But there was no music tonight.

He was hunched over, the firelight catching the sharp angles of his buzzcut. In his hands, he held one of the antlers. In the other, he held the folding knife - Josh’s knife, the one he had left behind.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

The sound was rhythmic and grating. Clancy was sharpening the tip of the antler, whittling the bone down to a lethal point.

Josh stepped into the circle. No one really saw him except one person.

Clancy looked up, sensing him. He didn't smile. He just slowly set the knife down.

"He's here," Clancy announced to the group.

Debby, Mark, and the others straightened up, looking around blindly.

"He can't speak," Clancy continued, his voice steady and commanding. "But he's watching."

Clancy stood up. He walked to the center of the circle, carrying the sharpened antlers like a scepter. He pulled a map from his pocket - one of the maps Josh had drawn - and slammed it down on a crate near the fire.

"We are going to finish what was started," Clancy said. His voice had a chilling clarity. "We are done waiting for them to pick us off one by one."

He pointed to the supply list scribbled in the margins.

"First," Clancy said, "we take everything we can carry. Get all of the stocks we had gathered. We are going to need the energy."

"And then?" Mark asked, his voice tentative.

"Then," Clancy’s finger traced a line through the woods, away from the camp, through the plains. "We fight or die."

A murmur of unease rippled through the crowd. Up until this moment, everything this camp ever was - a retreat place for exiled people. And now Clancy traced his finger against the city walls engraved on the paper, egging the idea of the real battle.

"I have a plan. There are banditos on the inside of Dema. Once everyone gets a sign, we are going to create a complete diversion. And once we have the numbers," Clancy turned to face the people, his eyes reflecting the fire, making them look warm and golden again. "We unleash everything and attack. I will use these," he hefted the antlers, "to turn their own guards against them."

Josh stared in horror.

With a sudden jolt, he realized - it was the same plan.

He covered the map with his hands to get Clancy's attention.

No! He mouthed, frantic. No, Tyler! This is wrong! This is how we lose!

Clancy paused. He looked at Josh with the cold determination in his gaze - decision made.

"I know you're scared," Clancy whispered, soft enough to be reassuring in different circumstances. "But you passed your torch to me, Josh."

Clancy stepped past Josh’s incorporeal form as if he were nothing but smoke. He turned back to the map, his face illuminated by the flames of war he was stoking.

"So I'm doing your job," he mouthed to the empty air.

Josh stumbled back, the bad feeling in his gut twisting into a knot of pure dread.

He changed the timeline, but it seemed that in doing so, he hadn't actually saved Tyler. He had just created a different kind of monster.

Chapter Text

All that Josh could do was watch.

Going through the motions of the buzzing camp. It was the same old dance that led up to where he was standing now.

He roamed past the banditos, busy with their tasks. There was more yellow tape than ever, as they plastered it onto each other's clothes.

Clancy was in the middle of it.

That night, the quiet returned, but it wasn't peaceful. The banditos gathered around the fire pit, just like in the old times, but the air was thick with the scent of sharpened steel and dread. It was their last night in the camp.

"I don't like it," Ramos grumbled, staring into the flames. He ran a whetstone along his machete, the shhhk-shhhk sound cutting through the silence. "We're walking into the lion's mouth, expecting it not to bite."

"We've hit depots before," Debby argued, though her voice lacked its usual confidence. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest, looking small. "We know the perimeter."

"Not like this," Mark countered, shaking his head. He looked exhausted, dirt smudged under his eyes. "We're not just hitting a depot. We're breaching the wall. We're relying on citizens who might be too terrified to move, and we're relying on..." He glanced toward Clancy’s tent, lowering his voice. "We're relying on magic antlers."

"It's not magic," Elias objected, adjusting the yellow band on his arm. "It's a weapon. And if it works..."

"If," Ramos spat. "And what if it doesn't? We're all just kindling for the neon gravestones."

Josh sat on the log across from them, invisible and silent. Listen to him, he pleaded. Turn back.

The tent flap opened, and Clancy emerged. He looked haggard, the buzzing energy from before replaced by a brittle, trembling tension. He stepped into the firelight, the antlers strapped to his black clothes like a sharpened sword.

"We don't have a choice," Clancy said, his voice cutting through the murmurs.

"There's always a choice, Clancy," Mark said softly. "We could wait. We could build our numbers. We could find another way in."

"No, Mark." Clancy hunched on the log. Josh could see that it took all of the effort in his frail shoulders not to bury his face in his hands. "There is no other way. We don't have much time."

He looked around the circle, his eyes dark and desperate.

"You think I want to do this? You think I want to risk all of you?" Clancy’s voice broke. "But we have to go now. Tonight."

"Why?" Lucia asked. "What's changed?"

Clancy looked down at his blackened hands. He looked up, and his gaze went straight to the empty log across the fire where Josh was sitting.

"Because he's dying," Clancy whispered. The confession hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. "Josh is running out of time. If we don't get to him tonight, there won't be anything left to save."

Josh flinched.

It was involuntary - a phantom spasm of pain that rippled through his incorporeal form as his physical body, miles away, seized in agony.

Clancy saw it. His eyes widened, locking onto the empty space, confirming his worst fear.

"He's hurting. Right now." Clancy breathed.

The banditos looked at the empty log, seeing nothing but feeling the sudden drop in temperature. A grim resolve settled over them. If it were for the Torchbearer, they would march into hell.

"Then we go," Ramos said, sheathing his blade. "For Torch."

Josh wanted to weep. Don't do it for me, he begged. Not like this.

But the pull in his chest jerked him backward. The campfire blurred. The faces of his companions stretched and warped.

He was yanked back into his body with the force of a car crash.

Josh woke up on the cold floor of his cell, gasping for air that tasted like iron. He tried to sit up, to reach for the connection, to go back and warn them one last time, but there was nothing.

He couldn't materialize back at the camp anymore.

His mind raced, circling the drain of his own guilt. He used to watch Clancy seizing the dead in the future timeline. He watched him use the bodies of the glorious gones as puppets. He should have guessed that channeling that kind of energy, reaching into the void of the deceased, left a mark. Something rotting could have hitched a ride back with him.

Is that power why we failed the last time? he wondered. Did it corrupt the plan from the start?

But he quickly hushed the thought away. No. That was an excuse. The last time, they failed because he hesitated. It was Josh’s plan to go for the attack. He had to be cautious, to wait for the signal, and it was his fault he didn't see Clancy slip away in the confusion to confront the tower alone. He had been too late.

He lay there, counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours. He counted until numbers lost their meaning. He watched the lazy sunrise crawling over the walls of his room.

And then, it started. A rumble, low and distant at first, then growing into a roar. The sound of shouting. The invasion.

With a dread, choking him at the throat, Josh dragged himself to the door of his cell.

Minutes later, the corridor erupted into chaos. Guards were running, only to be met by a wave of sheer desperate force. With the yellow flowers hidden in the pockets of their stolen Dema jumpsuits, banditos were like flashes of color in the monochrome gray violence.

"Torchbearer!" someone shouted.

A young bandito saw him through the bars. He fumbled with a key ring stolen from a downed guard. The lock clicked, and the door swung open.

"We have to go!"

Josh stumbled out, clutching his broken arm to his chest. "Where is he? Where is Clancy?"

"He's leading the charge from the outside! Come on!"

They ran into the fray. It was a slaughter. The element of surprise had been wasted on the sheer scale of the attack.

In the chaos, Josh was separated from his rescuer. A guard raised a baton to strike him, but suddenly, the he stopped. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.

Standing behind the fallen guard was a girl. Her hair was mussed with damp soil, her gray clothes torn and stained with grave dirt. But her eyes... her eyes were glowing golden yellow. A glorious gone.

She looked exactly at Josh.

He recognized the stare immediately. It was Clancy, using the dead as the vessel to clear a path for him from miles away.

The vessel didn't speak. She just grabbed Josh’s good hand with a grip that was unnaturally cold and strong and yanked him forward, leading him away from the main skirmish.

"Wait!" Josh rasped, trying to pull back.

He looked over his shoulder. He saw them falling. One by one, the gray was splashed with colors of red. The gruesomeness of the banditos being overpowered by the superior force of the city was unbearable.

We're losing, Josh thought, horror rising in his chest. Just like before.

The girl grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her. Her yellow eyes bore into his, pleading and commanding all at once. Go.

She pushed him toward the maintenance tunnels, towards the escape route. Josh stumbled into the dark opening.

The moment he was safe in the shadows, the girl stopped in her tracks. The yellow light in her eyes snuffed out instantly. Her body went limp, all the tension vanishing, and she fell to the concrete, silent and unmoving, just like the dead are supposed to be.

Clancy had severed the connection.

Josh stood over the body, breathing hard. Why did he let go? Unless...

Unless he wasn't at the gate anymore.

He wasn't retreating. He was pushing forward.

Clancy, he realized, was on his way to Dema's tower.

"No," Josh whispered. "No, you idiot."

Not thinking about his broken hand, not thinking about the pain in his ribs or the exhaustion in his bones, Torchbearer ran. He ran with a speed he didn't know he possessed, fueled by sheer, panic-stricken adrenaline.

He made his way toward the central spiral, bypassing the fighting, climbing the steps he had once descended back in the other timeline, carrying the heavy weight of defeat on his shoulders.

He reached the heavy steel doors of the ill-fated room. They were locked.

"Tyler!" Josh screamed, slamming his shoulder into the metal. "Tyler, open the door!"

From the other side, he heard a voice - that old bastard's - Nico’s voice, low and rumbling like an earthquake.

The door didn't give.

The memories of the failure haunted him, overlaying the present. He saw the red robes. He saw the fall.

Suddenly, a blinding light flashed on the other side of the door - so much colder than the warm yellow of the torches - it was a harsh, violent explosion of neon.

The door burst open at the hinges.

The impact threw Josh backward. He hit the opposite wall hard, his head cracking against the stone. Darkness swarmed his vision, and he almost passed out.

On the other side, there was a constant.

His head spun with double vision. Scrambling to his feet, swaying, Josh stumbled into the chamber. The room was empty except for two figures in the middle of it.

Nico stood tall, towering over the crumpled body at his feet on the floor. The antlers were broken, shattered into pieces, shards of bone scattered around him like confetti. His chest was heaving with wet, ragged breaths.

When Nico looked up at Torchbearer, there was a gentle smile splitting his halved face. He laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. There was a deep gash on his back.

"Freedom comes by death." his eyes were fading.

Josh ignored him, dropping to his knees beside Clancy.

"Tyler? Tyler, look at me."

Clancy’s eyes fluttered open. They weren't yellow anymore. There was a cruel resignation on his face. Blood bubbled past his lips. With a terrible wound in his chest, blood was pooling rapidly on the gray stone.

Bishop took a step forward.

"You know what to do, Torchbearer," and then he collapsed into a pile of black dust and empty robes.

"Josh," Clancy whispered.

"I've got you," Josh stammered, panic seizing him. "I've got you. Stay with me."

He looked around frantically for something to stop the bleeding. His eyes landed on the heavy red curtain that hung from the open window.

He lunged for it, ripping a massive strip of the velvet fabric down. He bunched it up, pressing the red cloth against Clancy’s ribs, trying to stem the tide.

"He's dead," Josh gasped, pressing harder on the wound. "He's dead, Tyler. We won. You just... you have to stay."

Josh interlaced his blackened fingers with Clancy's, holding on tight.

Clancy gazed up at him. The light was fading from his eyes. He lifted a trembling hand, grabbing a loose part of the red curtain Josh was using as a bandage.

"Josh," Clancy wheezed.

He pulled the heavy red cloth upward. His strength was failing, his hands shaking violently, but he was insistent. He tried to push the fabric toward Josh’s chest. He tried to drape it over Josh’s shoulders.

Josh froze.

He realized what Clancy was offering him.

For a terrifying second, Josh was back in that room, in the different timeline. He saw the red engulfing Tyler’s shoulders. He saw the black paint reaching his nose. He saw the cold, dead eyes of the bishop Clancy had become. He remembered the disgust that had seized his body, the grief etched on his face. It's all Nico's fault. Clancy wasn't this.

And the room was spinning all over again. The boy he hadn't managed to save lay on the floor, blood pooling from his chest, with the only option left to choose from.

Take it, Clancy’s eyes seemed to plead. You know what I want and what you need to do.

Josh looked at the dying face of the man he loved. He looked at the red fabric in his blackened hand.

He couldn't breathe, feeling the walls closing in.

I'm sorry, he prayed, I'm so sorry I let you down.

His hand reached out to touch a rapidly cooling skin on Tyler's hand.

With a final movement, he pulled the heavy, blood-red fabric over his own shoulders.

Chapter Text

Torchbearer used to think that changes come with a visible consequence. If there is no mark left on the thing they were working so hard on, maybe they were stagnant all along. Maybe it's best to leave it alone and try again with a new tactic.

But he was wrong.

It wasn't enough just to spin the wheel and run in circles - however different it hadn't been.

When he was ten, he hated sitting still for long periods of time; restlessness made him move in ways that weren't acceptable inside the Dema walls. He was yelled at and then punished to continue the task for longer than before he had rebelled.

But now he finally understood.

The effort put into enduring the silence, of sitting with the heavy thoughts without letting them consume you was more than that. It was the quiet, grueling work of waking up every day, putting on the heavy robe, taped in yellow dashes, and saying, Not today.

"You coming?" Tyler called from the hallway.

Josh blinked, pulling himself out of the memory of his ten-year-old self. He looked at the man waiting for him. Tyler looked impatient, shifting his weight from foot to foot, so unlike that frantic, terrified energy of a man running for his life.

He just looked like a guy who was hungry.

"Yeah," Josh said, a smile appearing on his lips. "I'm coming."

He walked toward the door. The heavy train of the bishop’s robe dragged against the stone floor - shhh, shhh - whispering of the burden he had chosen. But as he stepped into the light of the hallway, the yellow tape on his cuffs caught the sun, flashing bright and defiant.

They descended the spiral stairs, leaving the cold heights of the circled room behind. With every step down, the air grew warmer. The smell of ozone faded, replaced by the scent of woodsmoke and roasted root vegetables. The mechanical hum of the neon was drowned out by the sound of laughter echoing up the stairwell.

When they emerged into the square, the noise washed over them.

The table in the middle was lopsided.

Mark was arguing with Ramos about the salt content of the stew. Debby was trying to teach a former citizen how to tie a knot, her hands moving with patient grace.

It was the most beautiful thing Josh had ever seen.

He felt Tyler relax beside him, the tension finally leaving his shoulders. Tyler's gaze didn't linger at the high walls surrounding them; instead, he just walked straight toward the table, grabbed a bowl, and sat down between Elias and Rosa.

Josh hung back for a second, watching.

He adjusted the heavy red fabric on his shoulders, feeling the weight of it, the permanent reminder of the darkness that lived at the edges. It would always be heavy. The work would never really be done.

But as Mark waved a ladle at him, shouting something about getting a serving before it was gone, Josh melted. He stepped forward, the red robe swirling around his ankles, and sat down at the table.

He took his place in the circle. And for the first time, he didn't feel the need to run.