Work Text:
Even from afar you can tell; everything is cold.
The walls, the earth, the hearts.
Everything is dead, and the people aren’t far behind. Hanging from a thread and gnawing on it, crazed, and enjoying the mundanity of self-destruction.
Decay and despair are the order of the city. Clancy knows this, just as he knows the stale, heavy air he breathes. Familiar and toxic.
He spends the days locked away in his cage, a slave to gray, imposing walls. But the doors aren’t locked, neither are the windows. Clancy is blind and subservient to the wills of the bishops; they have faith in their control.
It’s mockery, scorn. They take him and do what they will with his body, expose him, belittle him; he’s made an example for those who want to rebel. But Clancy doesn't mind. He’s made for this, to endure this.
It doesn’t feel like mistreatment, he doesn’t feel tyrannized. If anything, it feels ordinary.
In the oppressive silence of his cold room, at night, Clancy might even admit that, sometimes, it even feels good; it feels right. The steadiness, the certainty of what’s to come.
Humans will adapt to anything.
They write songs and make him sing, and Clancy sings, he poses, and everything around him is artificially colorful, bright like poisonous frogs. It looks otherworldly, blinding, and hollow.
The colors are just as cold as the outside.
At least he’s not alone; the Torchbearer is there with him, for him.
It still feels cold for some reason, but Clancy is grateful. Something feels terribly amiss, but Clancy is grateful. His world is glitching, falling apart, but Clancy is grateful.
He’s not alone.
He’s one.
The studio lights burn his retinas, and he feels close to being warm.
They taunt, he sings, he sells.
Dema lives.
At night, Clancy holds an ache. It overflows out of his hands, it grows, and it floods.
There are no stars outside, no insects; there’s only silence, the low, resounding silence. It rumbles in Clancy’s chest, it rings in his ears, it tortures him, like voices from beyond—neon graves, talking to him.
There’s no sleep within these frigid walls.
Clancy turns. The door is closed, and so are the windows. He’s covered, and he’s cold. Dead. Nothing flows, nothing lives, nothing loves. His head hurts, he grits his teeth, and he grabs his chest. It’s unbearable.
There’s no light—until there is.
In the corner of his eye, a warm apparition.
The Torchbearer is there like he’s always been; he smiles at Clancy.
Warm hands and lips, Clancy remembers; he can conjure it up. Warm hands and lips, burning like the sun. The Torchbearer is here and not here at all, and it’s okay, because Clancy isn’t here either.
He’s spread across open fields, over the soft, true hues of Trench. He’s screaming, singing in the wind. Flying across the canyons on broken wings. He’s in a tent somewhere, sharing sweat and saliva with his favorite ghost. He’s experiencing the salty taste of true love.
But he’s not. He’s boxed in by gray walls, dead, looking into love’s eyes with cold, cold hands.
“Tell me something,” Clancy begs. “so I can go to sleep.”
The Torchbearer’s smile is empty; he doesn't say a word.
Decay and despair are the order of the city.
Clancy sleeps. The world stops spinning.