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Clancy had known, somewhere deep and hidden within him, that something wasn’t right with the Torchbearer.
It wasn’t a thought he ever payed any mind to. He couldn’t afford it. Maybe he was going crazy, locked up with nothing but grey walls and grey sky and grey thoughts, but it was better than being alone.
The Torchbearer never spoke, in Dema. His touches were ephemeral, cool and fleeting as the breeze on a hot summer’s day. The Bishops never acknowledged his presence, and the few citizens Clancy had contact with looked at him with something akin to pity in their eyes whenever he spoke to him.
Clancy had pushed the doubts away, locked them up and threw away the key, because the Torchbearer was there, and he didn’t think he could bear it all alone.
Now, though, the Torchbearer strides ahead, torch raised high against the darkness, and Clancy follows because that’s all he knows how to do.
Some part of him wonders if he isn’t still in Dema, lost in a dream he so desperately wants to believe is true. Or worse, perhaps; trapped in an illusion designed by the Bishops to break him even further.
If he is, he thinks it might work.
They’ve been walking in darkness for longer than Clancy can recall, and he half expects the lights on the horizon to be a mirage before they materialise into the distantly recognisable shapes of tents.
The Bandito camp.
Home.
There’s a quiet burst of voices as they enter the camp, calls kept low in deference of the hour but excited and congratulatory. Clancy flinches a bit at the sound, unused to the noise of people after the months with the Torchbearer—alone?—on Voldsoy. He feels eyes on him like a burning brand.
The returning party splits off into stragglers, some headed to tents and beds but most gathering at the bonfire at the centre of the camp. Clancy follows with eyes downturned, still caught up in his own head.
Around him, the Banditos offer soft greetings and hails. He can’t remember any names, as tangled as his mind is, but he recognises the unique patterns of tape in bright rebel yellow as if they’re his own two hands. He knows these people, even after all this time.
The heat of the fire is a welcome change from the biting cold that’s made its home in his bones, and Clancy finds himself unconsciously shifting closer, hunching his shoulders against the chill in his memory.
The Banditos pass around food, volume at a low murmur, and Clancy declines with a shake of his head. He knows he shouldn’t, knows he’s lost weight over the years. They had fed him adequately in Dema, as bland and uninspiring as the food was, to keep their favourite puppet performance ready. More often than not, he simply couldn’t conjure the energy to eat. The Torchbearer had always—
He looks up on instinct, and finds the Torchbearer watching him from across the fire. The look he receives—worry coloured bright with compassion—is so familiar that it pierces through him as well as any dagger.
The Torchbearer had always looked at him exactly like that whenever he refused to eat in Dema.
He stumbles to his feet, waving away questions with vague reassurances and affirmations.
He doesn’t venture too far from the main camp, echoes of the last time he’d made that mistake screaming at him from the corners of his vision. Red cloaks, and black hands, and golden-eyed glares.
Settling slightly too close to the cliff’s edge, he watches the landscape of Trench spill before him in monochrome inkblots, moonlit and wild. The grass is cool and slightly damp beneath his palms. He brushes his fingers back and forth, the blades tickling his skin.
Without looking up, he knows the Torchbearer has followed him. It’s the natural state of things—moths to a flame, sunflowers towards the sun, inexorable—for Clancy and the Torchbearer to be at each other’s side.
The Torchbearer sits beside him wordlessly, and this too is a familiar scene. The Torchbearer has been his faithful companion throughout everything Dema had put him through.
The days where he was silent, numb with horror at his voice used as a weapon to coax the dreamless populace into further submission. The days where he’d talk for hours, scream a hopeless refrain at the walls until his throat ached and his words came out raspy and cracked. The Bishops didn’t like that one. Every performance, every sleepless night, every dead-eyed smile projected onto screens for everyone to see.
The Torchbearer had watched it all with pain pooling in his dark eyes, done his best to comfort Clancy with his insubstantial touches. Unwavering, and voiceless, and—
“Clancy?”
His breath catches his throat. He hasn’t heard Torch’s voice in six years.
The disbelief shatters like ringing crystal, and Clancy is struck speechless with the realisation that he’s really here, that this is real.
He doesn’t realise he’s crying until Torch reaches towards him and he jerks backwards with an inarticulate noise of fear, tears hot against his cheeks. Bishops and their shadow-stained fingers fill his head with static, but Torch is steady and familiar as he holds out a hand, and Clancy lets him brush the tears from his skin.
He feels warm and solid and real the way his phantom never had.
Clancy falls forwards without hesitation, and Torch catches him as he finally voices the thought that has been echoing in his head ever since he’d seen his familiar colours across that field.
“I’m so glad you weren’t there.” He gasps into warm fabric, hands twisting tight in the back of his hoodie. Torch makes a soft noise, somewhere between upset and soothing, his arms hauling him in with just as much fervour. Finally, Clancy’s spinning, hurting mind is anchored in his own body, held together by the one person who’s always understood him. He had called the Bandito camp home, but truthfully his home has always been a person.
“The only thing worse than what they did to me would be if they’d done it to you too.” Clancy trembles, overcome with the need to speak but devoid of words. “I—they—”
Torch hushes him gently, hand bracing at the back of his neck. “I know,” he says, soft and solemn.
“I can’t control what he does, the guide. But I see it, in my dreams. I see—” His voice comes out all twisted and choked, and Clancy hates to be the reason for the sound. “Every night I went to sleep, and I saw you. I saw what they made you do, I saw what they did to you.”
“And it was killing me.”
Clancy feels the helpless shudder that runs through him, feels Torch tuck him a little closer, and breathes in safety.
“I don’t know exactly how it works. I just knew that you needed me. Clancy,” he says, and no one has ever said his name sweeter. “I’m so sorry for leaving you there alone.”
The words tear out of him with a sense of quiet devastation. Clancy pulls back slightly, an ache blooming in his chest. Torch clings, just for a moment, before allowing him to draw away with resignation writ bare on his face.
For a moment, he considers being upset. The flash of emotion when he’d first seen Torch, seen the projection next to him disappear, confusion-fear-betrayal-realisation in rapid succession, rears it’s head. He left you there, he lied, you trusted him and he betrayed you. But he’s too tired to be anything other than relieved to be home.
“Torch, listen to me.” Clancy lets his heart pool on his face, as broken and fragile as it is. He knows it’s safe with Torch. “There was nothing you could have done.”
Torch’s expression breaks open, his own tears spilling over with a quiet sob. Clancy lets him pull him back in, burying his face in that spot between Torch’s shoulder and throat where the world fades away and everything is safe.
Clancy can feel their shared responsibilities looming over their heads with bared teeth and glowing eyes. But here and now, he doesn’t think about any of it. The psychokinesis, the antlers hooked to his belt, the red in place of familiar yellow.
He ignores it all in favour of the man next to him, warm and alive.
“Do you want to go back to your tent?”
Clancy hums a negative, eyes resolutely open even as his head comes to rest on Torch’s shoulder. “Let’s just stay here a little longer.” He slumps a little further into Torch’s side, feels his arm secure against his back and basks in the touch intended to comfort not hurt.
“Torch,” Clancy says, exhaustion dragging his voice into a slur. “Stay with me?”
Torch presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Always,” he says, threaded with silvery veins of promise like steel.
Tomorrow, they will scrape themselves back together. Tomorrow, they will be Clancy and the Torchbearer, and they will lead their people to victory or die trying.
But tonight, they are together, and in this moment that’s all that matters.