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Clancy finds the Torchbearer overlooking the fjord, a break on the horizon in the cerulean post-sunset glow. It’s a familiar sight, comforting and sure, but it’s heavier this time.
Torchbearer doesn’t look up when Clancy pulls the reins back and halts, his horse knickering softly as he approaches the edge of the cliff. He tosses his red cloak over his shoulder as he dismounts, walking up behind him and kneeling down in the grass.
“Hey,” Clancy says, but he isn’t Clancy anymore, not really.
Torchbearer looks at him, but doesn’t reply. His expression is the same as when Clancy last saw him– eyes wide and brown, wounded and unsure.
“I don’t want to be your enemy,” Clancy continues, looking out over the cliffside and down at the water. It’s dark down there, misty and cool, but he can still see the current flowing out to the sea, even from so high up.
Torchbearer follows his gaze down. His bandana is pulled up over his mouth, his hat over his ears. Torchbearer has always been the one to stand out from the crowd, pulling others in like a beacon. Clancy has never seen him try and isolate himself before.
“Where are the others?”
“I left–” he starts, before stopping and clearing his throat. He coughs a little bit, and Clancy knows that sound– the echo of strain that comes when you haven’t spoken for a day or two. “A few weeks ago. Right after you…”
Torchbearer has always been a man of few words, and Clancy had gotten pretty good at extrapolating his intent from the beginning of sentences alone.
“Why are you out here? Don’t they need a leader?”
“Looking for Clancy,” Torchbearer replies, looking out over the horizon.
Clancy swallows, looking down. There was a time when he hadn’t accepted that title– he’d been too scared of the weight that came with it. Now, hearing it refer to someone else made him feel hollow.
“So you’ve given up on me.”
Torchbearer doesn’t say anything.
Clancy had always been the one who talked between the two of them. It is easy for him to ramble, voicing whatever thoughts happen to bubble into his mind at any moment, good or bad. He’s impulsive, that’s his problem. He never thinks before he acts.
“I failed you.”
Clancy turns to face Torchbearer, sudden and sharp. “What?”
“I was supposed to guide you,” he says, avoiding Clancy’s eyes. “But all I did was lead you straight to them.”
Clancy shuts his eyes, turning away and sighing. “No, that’s… Torch, I made a decision.”
The sky is dark now, pinpricks of starlight starting to peek through the darkness. Torchbearer looks up at them, and Clancy can’t read his expression beneath his bandana.
“So what now?”
“I’m starting over,” Torchbearer says, firmly. “Next time. Or maybe the time after that.”
Clancy blinks, and finds his vision going misty, a pang in his chest.
“How can you stand it? To fail, over and over again?”
Torchbearer leans back, lying down on the grass and staring up into the sky.
“As long as I keep fighting, I don’t lose,” he says, tugging his bandana down off his face. Clancy looks down at him, sidelong, trying to understand what he means.
“Well, maybe I haven’t given up either,” Clancy replies. “I’m going to change things, Torch. I’m not going to be like Nico. We know now that Vialism isn’t the answer–”
“Sure,” Torchbearer says, his voice soft. “But the power you hold is meaningless without it. All those people…”
Clancy sits back, pulling his knees up to his chest.
“It’s going to be slow, but I’m not going to stop fighting, either,” Clancy says. “It doesn’t have to be Banditos versus Bishops. We can still be on the same side, and dismantle the system from both sides. Us. Like old times.”
Torchbearer folds his arms over his chest, and Clancy can see him take a deep breath in and out. After a moment, he sits back up, turning to face Clancy for the first time.
“As long as the city walls stand, I won’t stop trying to tear them down,” he says. “And as long as you’re a Bishop, you need them intact.”
Clancy takes Torchbearer’s hand, black fingers on his weathered wrist, and slides it into the opening of his cloak, up to his collar.
“There wasn’t any other way.”
There’s still a wound where Nico pierced him. Clancy doesn’t think it will heal. For the past weeks, it hasn’t bled.
Torch is so warm to the touch.
“I know,” Torchbearer says, fingertip on the edge of the hole. “But I can’t.”
He pulls his hand back, and Clancy feels colder than before, suddenly envious of Torchbearer’s knit hat.
“Is this the end, then?” Clancy asks, bringing his knees down and twisting to the side, leaning on one hand. “For us.”
“No,” Torchbearer says, after a moment. “When I find the next Clancy, I’ll see you again.”
Clancy furrows his eyebrows, sniffling a bit and looking up at the sky. There isn’t a moon tonight. “What if next time is the last time?”
“What do you mean?”
Clancy shrugs. “Maybe this next Clancy can end it for good. And then, things can be how they were.”
For the first time since the breach, Torchbearer looks at him and smiles.
“I’d like that.”
Clancy wants to reach out again, to pull him close and hug him goodbye, to reclaim the easy closeness they’d once thoughtlessly shared. The distance between them feels so much greater, though, and he doesn’t know how to close it.
Instead, he reaches underneath his cloak, and pulls out his mask– uneven stitched fabric, red and grey, smeared around the edges.
“Can you hold on to this for me? For the next one.”
Torch looks up at him as he takes it.
“Yeah, I will.”
Clancy pulls himself to his feet, and the wind catches his cloak. Clancy still isn’t used to the weight of it, how visible it makes him.
“I’ll see you then,” Clancy says, holding out one hand.
Torchbearer tucks the mask in the pocket of his sweatshirt, looking at Clancy’s hand before taking it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
Clancy expects him to let go, but he doesn’t, his strong grip clasping their hands together a moment too long. After a second, he feels himself pulled forward into a tight hug, Torch’s free hand patting him once on the back.
Clancy closes his eyes, and he can feel Torchbearer’s forehead against his, the warm breath from his nose against the ink on his lower lip.
“I won’t fail you this time,” he says, his voice soft.
“You never failed me,” Clancy says. “You’re the strong one. You always have been.”
Torchbearer looks at him, and for the first time since he’d seen him in that tower, Clancy feels like Torchbearer sees him as he is.
Clancy pulls away first, his cloak dragging in the underbrush as he walks toward his horse, slinging himself up into the saddle and taking the reins.
“You know where to find me,” he says.
“Sure,” Torchbearer says, nodding. “Wait for me?”
“I will.”