Chapter Text
For the first two years of his sentence, Torch didn’t believe that Clancy existed. It was just a rumor, tall tales that his cellmate liked to ramble on about during the night, whispers in the courtyard. Everyone said this name with a certain reverence, and the stories painted him as a hero of the rebellion against the Bishops. Eventually he thought Clancy was the personification of their struggles.
And then he came out of solitary.
It was a cloudy day, which made it perfect for sports because Versa didn’t like to get the sun in her eyes while she ran. Most of them were outside, either playing, watching the game, or staying on the side to trade cigarettes. Those were the ones who saw him first, and they yelled out his name immediately. The commotion quickly got to the rest of the prison population.
Torch put his bat down when he saw that his friend was not gonna throw the ball. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s leaving the hole.”
“It’s Clancy!” Anton said before taking off and running to the fence.
Torch made a confused face, thinking back to what he’d heard on that name. “Clancy? The guy that escaped Dema more times than we all can count?”
“The very same, Versa said. Come on!”
She grabbed his arm and led him to the fence next to the solitary front door. Half of the courtyard was already there, shaking the grid and whistling excitedly.
“Shut up out here!” yelled out an agent of the Bishops.
Torch stayed in the back of the crowd, not wanting to get a baton swung at him. The quiet afternoon had turned into the event of the week, and he could hear gossips running wild around him.
“They say he is immune to smearing now.”
“I heard he can seize things just as well as Nico can!”
“One man can do all of that?” Torch asked, still incredulous.
Versa gave a firm shake of the head. “They keep him in solitary most of the time cause they’re scared he’s gonna make us want to break out.”
“I don’t think you guys need a role model for that.”
Finally, the front door opened. Not wanting to miss that show, Torch advised a nearby picnic table and climbed on top. From there, he had the first view of Clancy, right before he stepped into the light.
He didn’t expect him to be so… small. Clancy must not have been much shorter than Torch, but he kept his arms brought close around him, like he tried to get as small as he could. His hair was outgrown, unkempt, and his eyes were tired. He didn’t look like a hero. He was a man who’d spent two years in solitary confinement.
And then Clancy saw the other prisoners and something changed. He straightened up and some light returned to his pupils. Torch wondered if it was an act, or if the years of isolation tried to snuff out something in him.
The crowd was chanting his name. The agent that accompanied Clancy struck his baton on the fence and told them to quit it. They backed off only by a little. Their idol had a small smile and waved to some people.
“How long’s he been in there?” Torch asked Danny, his cellmate, who ended up next to him.
“I think it was right before you arrived… He had left Dema and gone farther east than any of us. Almost killed a Bishop when they caught him, too. They were furious.”
“And he hasn’t seen anyone since?”
“No, Nico and Keons come in twice a month to talk to him. Probably try to get information about the Banditos, or lecture him, or do evil shit.”
Torch bet it was the evil shit.
The agent led Clancy to the main dormitory. Now that he was gone, the noise quieted down.
“Is anything gonna change around here?” he asked his friends.
“Well, everyone will want to spend as much time with him as possible, before he’s sent back in there for a stupid reason.”
“That’s how it works around here for him?”
Danny just nodded.
Despite the popularity of this rebel hero, Clancy was sitting alone in the cafeteria the next day. Torch nudged Versa with his elbow and gestured towards him. “Hasn’t he had enough of the solitude?”
“We’re not allowed to sit with him. Or interact with him, in general. Order of the Bishops. In the yard it’s fine because we aren’t watched too closely, but here…”
Her hands were full, so she made a sign of the head towards the different agents posted on the side of the room. Torch hummed a low note.
When he looked closer at his comrades, he saw they kept stealing glances at Clancy, but no one dared to come too close. He was on the end of a table for eight, and the group of four that had made the mistake to stay in his vicinity were on edge, expecting to get lectured or struck at any moment.
Torch didn’t like that.
He balanced his tray in one hand and with the other grabbed his nearest friend – who turned out to be Anton. “Come with us.”
“Sure, it’s not like I wanna talk to other people or anything,” said the teen as he and Versa followed Torch’s lead.
They noticeably slowed down when they realized where they were heading. “Hey, you shouldn’t do that, dude…”
“Don’t worry, it’s fine.”
They stopped in front of Clancy, who looked up from his plate, quite surprised.
“Hi?”
Torch sent a look his friends’ way and then sat down in front of Clancy. “Hey. You up for a game this afternoon?”
Versa and Anton both grumbled something about keeping them out of this, before sitting down with him and Clancy.
“Why not. What’s your name?”
“Torch.”
“Torch, you might want to find another spot to eat. I don’t think the agents would appreciate you guys being here with me.”
Torch waved off his concern with a hand gesture and started to eat.
The move didn’t go unnoticed. The onlookers started conversing and soon enough, an agent walked up to their table.
“The three of you, get out of there. You don’t have any business with him.”
“There’s no more room for three people,” Torch replied.
All discussions stopped as the prisoners listened to that guy crazy enough to talk back. The agent scanned the room. There were indeed only one or two empty chairs left, scattered around the cafeteria.
He turned back. “I don’t care. Split up and get the hell out of there.”
“But I want to talk to my friends, I haven’t seen them today.”
“Get out! I’m gonna find you some place.”
The agent turned back to the room, but the prisoners not yet seated scrambled to occupy the nearest chairs. Suddenly all seats were taken.
“What the… Is this a joke?”
“I’m just trying to eat, sir.”
The agent saw red. He flung Torch’s lunch tray to the ground. The glass and plate broke and all his food ended up on the floor. He then did the same to Clancy’s tray.
Whatever semblance of rebellion Torch was feeling got snuffed out instantly.
“I think I found a new spot for you. Get on your knees and eat your food.”
Torch didn’t move quick enough to his liking, so he pulled out his baton and struck him on the back of the head. Torch fell down, landing chin-first on the concrete floor.
“Eat!” The agent said. He then pointed Clancy with his weapon. “You too. No cutlery.”
The room was dead silent. Torch did not dare look up, he could practically feel the gloating air on the agent’s face anyway.
“Anyone got something to say about seating arrangements?!”
All turned away. Anton and Versa tried not to breathe too loud.
“That’s what I thought.”
Torch fished out his slab of meat from the mess of porcelain shards. He glanced at Clancy, taking handfuls of mashed potatoes off the dirty floor, and bit the inside of his mouth in guilt until it hurt as much as his chin.
They both got one week in solitary. It was Torch’s first punishment of this scale, and for a moment he did believe that the great hero Clancy pushed people to commit acts of rebellion. But maybe Torch was just cocky and had been stupid all by himself.
The first ten minutes lasted three hours, and the next three hours lasted ten minutes. In the closet-sized cell he was kept in, there was nothing but brick walls, an iron door, and a stinky hole in a corner. He ran out of self-pitying considerations quickly and was about to start reciting poetry when a brick moved.
It shut him up. He crawled to the wall, watching the joint move around and crumble. Eventually, the brick tilted on his side, and he grabbed it as it fell, silencing any suspicious noise. When he looked up, Clancy was staring at him from his cell.
“Hey, Torch.”
His name was said in a gentle tone, like the man weighed it out before using it carefully. Torch felt another pang of guilt at getting him back in this place. He was so gentle, and nothing like the stories made him out to be, and he had to endure another week of torture for nothing.
“Hi.” A pause. “Listen, I’m sorry they sent you here again because of me. I didn’t want you to be alone, I thought I was being really smart but clearly I wasn’t, and now you’re locked up…”
“It worked, though. I’m not alone now.”
Clancy smiled again, this small stretching of the lips, the max amount of joy you could express after so many years there.
“When you see it like that, I guess…”
Torch sat against the wall and turned his head so he could still see his fellow sufferer.
“I assume you’re not getting out of this place anytime soon.”
“No… Nico got frustrated of having to smear me so often. Truth is, I don’t hate Dema. It’s comforting, this routine. But I want to live.”
Clancy looked at him. “What do you think?”
“Well, I wasn’t against it at first, but after a while in this place you start to hate everything that has to do with the Bishops. And all my friends are heathens anyway.”
This time he got a full-on chuckle from the other side of the wall. Torch elected there and then that he would make Clancy as happy as possible. Anything to hear that crystalline laugh, feel the warmth of his smile.
When they came out of solitary seven days later, no one could separate them.