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Josh finds him on the edge of camp, nestled in between a stack of crates and the side of a tent, curled in on himself with his eyes shut tight, and singing softly under his breath.
He knows the words -- sahlo folina -- as the soft cry of a pain so deep it’s tangible, impossible to speak in any other tongue, whispered more often than anything else in the camp because after Dema, most of them still find it hard to ask or reach for each other.
There’s a learning curve. Even he struggles.
For a moment he hesitates, unsure. And then he steps a little closer, careful to make sure his steps aren’t silent, before he crouches down puts a hand on the back of Tyler’s head, and presses their foreheads together.
“Sahlo,” he whispers back, a gentle echo into the space where they share breath. “Sahlo folina.”
# # #
He’s aware that this is a cycle.
Tyler told him once, a long time ago. Not this time, because Tyler isn’t here yet, but Josh can remember the firelight, the worried expression on Tyler’s face when he started, haltingly, to try and put the right words in the right order to make him believe.
It’s hard to explain, and maybe impossible to understand. He tried once, sitting up alone late one night with a lantern, a pen, and a piece of paper, writing everything down all of his memories in order. He remembers how the panic set in almost immediately, how events seemed to weave through one another, or contradict, or when causes happened after their effects.
The car, for instance, is impossible.
The other Banditos swarmed it immediately, climbing on and around it, curious about how anyone could have lugged something like that up onto the ridge while they debated how they could make use of it.
Josh stayed away, watching them in silence.
He remembers the car.
He doesn’t know how.
He remembers it was on fire. Sometimes it still is.
# # #
“Are we dead?”
They’re in Josh’s tent, sharing a pallet in a pair of zipped-up sleeping bags for warmth. The weather has been brutal for a week, leaving them pinned down. It’s dangerous, because the longer they stay in one place, the quicker the Bishops will find them, and the cycle will begin again.
“I don’t know. I don’t--” Tyler shakes his head, doesn’t look up. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay.” He digs into the bag next to them for his canteen, takes a drink, then passes it to Tyler, who does the same before giving it back. “Do you think we’re real?”
Tyler’s head falls back a little, his eyes leaving the empty space near their feet in favor of some spot near the roof of the tent. “I don’t think it matters if we’re real. I think it just matters what we do with what we’ve got.”
Josh starts to ask why -- if they’re not real, how can anything matter? -- but the storm outside picks up hard enough that they have to scramble out of their warm cocoon to support their tent, to keep it from collapsing or blowing away.
Outside, he hears a crash and a shout, not of surprise, but of pain.
“You got this?” he asks Tyler, who nods, wide-eyed.
He grits his teeth. He doesn't want to leave Tyler on his own, but these are his people.
“Okay,” he says, grabbing his boots, the blanket off of their pallet, and a first aid kit before pulling the yellow bandanna up over his face and securing his hood. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He has to shield his eyes as he scans the camp, but he spots the problem right away: a couple of water barrels down, one of the younger campmates -- Trick, who’s maybe 80 lbs soaking wet -- trying to dislodge it from where it’s toppled and crushed part of a lean-to, pinning Minus’ legs against the jagged wood.
Anger flares in him for the briefest moment as he dashes forward, wondering who left the barrels stacked despite the storm, but he pushes it down. Blame is a problem for later. Right now, he’s it's time to share his strength.
Josh puts a hand on Minus’ shoulder to calm him, then grabs a post from the broken lean-to. He levers the barrel while Trick pulls him out of the debris. She gives Josh a grateful look as they move to secure the rogue barrel.
“Can you move?” he asks Minus when they finish.
“I think so,” he says, a little sheepish. He's already bandaged the gash on his leg, and is already repacking the kit. More pride busted than bones, then.
“Good,” he says, extending a hand to help him up. “Come with me. You can stay in m--” His eyes lock on the spot his and Tyler’s tent should be, and panic fills his mouth at the sight of flattened green canvas flapping, their bags and blankets strewn across the scrubby, rocky ground.
Josh breaks into a dead run, past the tent and toward the path that's the only way down from where they’ve built their current home. He barely catches a flash of red and white in the distance as it vanishes from view.
The cycle is ending. The cycle’s beginning again. That doesn’t make it any easier.
# # #
There was a first time. Several first times, honestly, to hear Tyler tell it, but it starts with waking up in a stream, freezing and lost. How he fell --
(Into Dema. Neon. Bishops.)
-- and how he woke up again, bruised, but himself again. How he didn’t really understand what he was seeing, every time it happened. The strangers above him in green and yellow frightened him so much he hadn’t recognized Josh at first.
“But the Bishop,” he’d said, poking at the smoldering remains of a campfire. “I knew him. I felt him in my throat and my hands. I remembered having his face. Or him having mine.”
Josh remembers the echoes of the pain and anger he’d felt when Tyler bared his throat to the Bishop, even though he can’t remember exactly when it happened, or how many times it’s happened.
“And then you saved me. You broke into Dema and found me.”
It doesn’t feel real, but the absolute conviction with which he says it is enough for Josh, at least for now. “How many times?”
“Three?” Tyler frowns. “No. Five. I think.”
“And you think it’ll happen again?”
“I know it will.”
Josh swallows, thinking about his campmates. His people. The ones he’s been protecting. “And the others?”
Tyler is quiet. He fidgets with his fingers. “They’re in their own stories, I think.”
# # #
When you’ve broken into a city this many times, you learn a few things.
One, you know what’s forbidden, and how to get it there. You understand the slow courtship of bringing someone up out of the haze of the Bishops’ smear, how to help them see yellow and wake them up.
This world doesn’t need to be real or make sense to matter. Tyler told him that once. And so every time he realizes he’s in a new cycle -- usually it’s when he sees the car -- he writes down what he remembers. Tries to figure out where they are in the cycle, what’s different this time, and where to start looking.
It’s a good thing he does, because the story has gotten more elaborate, and the loops are getting longer. They don't end right away when the Bishops arrive anymore. Everything is getting complicated, and all Josh can do is work through it until whatever it is that snaps them back to the beginning kicks in.
Tyler’s been in Dema again for four months this time. Tonight they’re going to break him out, and they're going to do it with style.
A dozen false starts ago, Josh started trying to build a resistance. It’s dangerous -- he’s honestly not sure what might happen if the Bishops catch him, or if they even want to -- but he's learned how to cultivate assets, get the right people in the right places, work the timing. The Convocation? It’s perfect.
They’re going to get a lot of people out tonight.
(Haven’t they already done this? He tries to remember Tyler in the ravine, whether that happened this time or not. Whether they chased after him right away. How many daisies he's had smuggled into the city.)
“I still don’t get why we’re bringing these,” Cord gripes, a bundle of drum hardware slung over their shoulder. “We’re not going to be able to pack this back up.”
“I know. We’re leaving it all behind.”
Cord gives him a worried look. They lean in after a moment, keeping their voice low. “Josh, if this is a suicide mission--”
“We don’t do those.”
“I’m just saying.”
“And I’m saying it’s not,” he says, leading his chosen eight up through the tunnel. He can make out the door, exactly where he remembers it. “If we want all nine Bishops, we have to do something big. This is big.”
“You’re putting a lot of trust in a guy who lasted a week in camp before he got taken.”
Josh pauses at the door, looking his crew in the eyes, wondering why they never remember leaving the drums behind, or why they don’t question it every time they find them back in camp afterward. He’s beginning to think they’re a part of him, and not just objects. He doesn’t even remember where he found them anymore.
“I’m not asking you to trust him. I’m asking you to trust me.”
# # #
“So wait," Tyler says, pointing to the taped yellow armband on his jacket. "This was on my right arm last time?”
Josh nods, a fond smile creeping over his face at Tyler's complete bemusement. “Yeah. Maybe the last two times.”
“How do you remember all this?”
He shrugs. “Same way you do, I guess. Come on, let me walk you through the camp.”
“I don’t get why this changes every time.”
“Everything changes.”
“Not everything,” Tyler says, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder. He draws in, like he's cold suddenly. “I always go back.”
“I know.” He wraps his arm around Tyler's shoulders before drawing him into a fierce hug. “And I’m always going to bring you home.”