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Nova disliked Trench. It always made the fracturing worse. But Nico needed them to track a rebel. And Nico could do things worse to Nova than the fracturing. So Nova fought against it and tried to stay focused. But it was hard when their head threatened to split in two every other step. Nova’s hands clenched inside their gloves as they dropped to their knees, gritting their teeth against the groan that threatened to slip from their lips. They bowed their head, clasping it with both hands. They could feel it touching them. Whatever it was. Their skin crawled, like someone else’s skin was lying on top of theirs. They ripped their gloves off, hands shaking, and pushed up their sleeves roughly. Then they started scratching. Flesh stained black accumulated beneath their fingernails. Red lines bloomed across their forearms, joining the legions already there. Some of the lines were fresh enough that they tore open, blood beading. The ruby droplets were grounding. They slowly began to trickle down Nova’s wrists, and they watched them trace the faultlines along which their sanity fractured.
Quickly they put their gloves back on. Without them, they had no protection and no power--the gloves were Nico’s blessing. But they had to scratch. It stopped the images. They were confusing, an onslaught so rapid Nova rarely could pick any one of them out concretely. But it left them dizzy, made their ears ring, and their head ached enough that it felt like it was going to explode. They rested their forehead on the ground, eyes squeezed shut.
Please, Father, let it end soon and I will resume my journey, they prayed. Against the backdrop of their eyelids, a flower bloomed, wilted, burst into black tongues of flame. The screaming in their head grew to a crescendo. Just when it became unbearable, the flames winked out and the pain stopped. Nova opened their eyes, dazed. The images had ceased. The fracturing had passed.
Shaking slightly, Nova stood. Their antlers dangled at their sides from the straps of their backpack. The weight was reassuring. Nova reached back and touched them, but with their gloves on, the antlers remained dead. Nothing more than the solidity of their structure, a talisman. It reminded them of their mission: find the Banditos, find the Torchbearer, and kill him.
Nico wanted his blood. And Nico had sent Nova, his most trusted bishop, to spill it. So Nico would get it.
Nova studied the horizon, the leftover pain dulling to a beating in time with their heart, barely noticed. In the distance they saw the rock outcroppings and the small valley that lay below. They knew that the Banditos had camped there once. Unbidden, the flower they had seen, consumed by black flame, flashed in their head. They frowned. They had never been able to pick out an image among the onslaught before.
Shaking their head, Nova started forward again, eyes locked on the valley, already bracing for the next fracture.
Nova found the old encampment by a fetid stream between two rock faces. An old tent sagged, the canvas torn. The front flap hung half open, fluttering in the breeze. Up above, a vulture circled. Likely Nico, checking on Nova’s progress. Making sure they were safe. There was no other movement in this landscape. Though it was green, a color absent in Dema, it looked barren. Empty. At least in Dema there were people. Buildings. Structure. Out here there was nothing.
The sky was gray and flat overhead. The vulture circled one more time before angling its great wings, heading back to Dema. Nova looked back at the tent. A ring of stones for a fire had been assembled carefully in front of the tent. A makeshift spit had been set up over the ring, and there were still ashes inside, though there was no telling how long ago they had been flame. A tin cup lay on its side in the pit.
It was odd. Why had the Torchbearer left so much behind?
Nova didn’t think anyone else was hunting the Torchbearer except them.
They crouched by the flap of the tent, drawing it aside and peering in. A bedroll lay in disarray, fetched up against the wall of the tent. A lantern lay on the ground. The glass had been shattered, like it had been kicked over. Nova stooped to walk inside the tent and the glass crunched beneath their feet. Even hunched over, the tent was too small to stand up in. So Nova crouched, inspecting the lantern. The wick was burned all the way down. The lantern’s frame was battered and dented, as if it had been kicked over many times before. Clearly the Torchbearer had carried this lantern for a long time.
Something in the air of the tent felt like a held breath. Nova had tried to hunt down the Torchbearer before, but they had never gotten close. He was always a step ahead, and Nova was always just a step behind, a day too late. And the vultures would always come and bring them back to Dema. Nico kept a short leash on his favorite pet. One that also doubled as a lash. Nova never questioned why Nico never let them stay in Trench longer, even when they seemed to be close on the Torchbearer’s trail. Nico had his reasons, and Nova had their orders: to obey. And Trench was not a place where one lingered.
But this tent, with its well-used lantern and its rucked-up bedroll, as if the owner were going to return at any moment, was proof that someone had lingered. The Banditos. Nova’s hands itched. They scratched absentmindedly with the fingertips of their gloves. But the longer they stayed in the tent, the worse the itch got. Again it felt like someone else’s skin was laying on top of theirs, heavy and suffocating and wrong. Dead skin. Nova ripped the gloves off and started to scratch frantically, trying to claw the feeling off their flesh.
It did nothing. Nova could feel it. This other skin, this other person’s skin. It was growing on top of theirs, trying to choke them out. It was Trench. Trying to consume them. It was like Nova was being buried alive. They dug their nails with fresh fervor into their arms, tearing deep gouges in their skin. Blood flowed out but no relief came.
Then Nova’s head split in two. Blinding pain filled their mind. It was worse than anything they had felt before. Worse than the other fractures, worse than the punishments they faced when they failed Nico. They dropped to their knees and curled their legs to their chest. Their mouth was open in a scream, but they fought to keep sound from coming out. Nova closed their eyes and tried to breathe, but it felt like their body was being ripped apart. They wrapped their arms around their legs, trying to stay intact. But they could feel it. They could feel the flesh being torn from their body, the limbs being ripped from their sockets.
And they saw things. They saw the color red. They saw a solitary flame. They saw their room in Dema. They saw that the Torchbearer’s eyes were brown, though they had never gotten that close to him before. And they saw blood. More fire. A mask. Over and over again, they saw a mask. And the inside of their chest was being scraped out. They felt a hole punch through their sternum from inside. They felt their lungs being ripped from their throat. Their heart from their chest. Then their chest slowly started to expand. Their ribs creaked like the plates in the earth moving. Something was bending them apart.
Nova realized that they were mentally begging for death. A yammering plea, chanted against the ivory of their skull. The creaking stopped. Nova gasped for breath, though each violent exhale ached. Each inhale burned like fire. Their head was reeling. Images staggered drunkenly in their mind, senseless. The afterimages faded. Only traces of blood red and orange fire remained.
The gloves. Nova needed the gloves. Nova opened their eyes. Their arms and legs were intact. There was no hole in their chest. Just blood covering their body from where their arms had gripped their legs. Beside them the gloves lay on the bedroll. Nova grabbed them with hands shaking so badly they could barely get them on. They panted with pain. Their stomach rolled. But with the gloves on, the images began to fade. Nova’s mind stopped splitting into tiny pieces. Trembling all over, they slowly sat up. Nausea surged for a brief moment then receded.
This was why they needed the gloves. They protected them against Trench. Against the evil things that happened to one’s mind in this forsaken land. But Nova knew Nico didn’t give them the gloves as a kindness or even a pity. Nico gave them the gloves to keep them alive so they could serve Nico’s purpose. He had sent Nova into Trench to hunt the Torchbearer before. He believed that Nova had a gift for finding people. And each time they failed, Nico grew more incensed. Nova had done well inside Dema. Nova had spilled much sympathizer blood within those walls. They had watered the concrete. Painted murals with Bandito red. They wore their yellow but they still bled the bishops’ color.
And Nico wanted to train Nova. Nico wanted Nova to be their right-hand man. Their reaper and their fury. Nova knew nothing before Nico. Nico had made them. The wounds Nico had inflicted and the powers he had bestowed shaped the whorls of Nova’s fingerprints and built the structure of their DNA. And Nova was strong. But Trench was evil. Trench wanted to split Nova apart.
They had to find the Torchbearer and kill him. Put an end to this rebellion. Prevent Trench from taking more innocent citizens and destroying them. Lock Trench outside the walls forever. Nova would eradicate the color yellow and all it stood for. Their head felt empty and hollowed out in the absence of the images. Already they could not remember what had bombarded them during the fracturing. Just the colors. Red and orange. And--a warm brown.
They took their pack off and dug out bandages, wrapping their arms to stop the bleeding. They gritted their teeth as they applied pressure to the wounds. Then they noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the bedroll. It was torn and water-damaged, creased in several places like it had been folded many times. But Nova saw it was addressed to someone named Clancy. Something stirred in Nova’s chest, a pinching sensation that cut off all breath. A dull spike of pain struck them behind their right eye.
CLANCY,
NEVER FORGET THE CRIES OF YOUR PEOPLE.
NEVER FORGET THE RAW FEAR THAT FUELED YOU, OR THE REBELS THAT
MADE YOU WHO YOU ARE TODAY.
WE ARE ALL ONE.
WE DESTROYED THEM SO THAT WE DIDN’T BECOME THEM.
WE MUST DO BETTER, CLANCY.
WE MUST DO BETTER.
TB
Nova’s hands began to shake again. The Torchbearer. But who was Clancy? Why did the name sound familiar? This Clancy had to be another Bandito. Maybe he had been a target before. Nova’s eyes kept drawing back to the phrase “raw fear.” Each time their eyes traced the words, another pulse, ghostly, hammered deep in the corridors of their mind. The longer Nova stared at the paper, the more pressure built up inside their head. Then they noticed shadowy markings beneath the words. They flipped over the paper. On the back was a map. It was crude, but it showed Dema and Trench. And places were marked within Trench. The stream Nova’s tent was beside. The ridge they had seen in the distance. A whole area just labeled “Plains.” And there were X’s. There was one by the stream, presumably marking the tent. There was another just on the other side of the ridge. Concerningly, or perhaps foolishly, there was one near Dema’s walls.
For all their efforts to escape and survive in Trench, it seemed that the Banditos still didn’t know much about it. The map was pitiful. Nova didn’t even know if it was detailed enough to be helpful. But clearly it was supposed to be. Maybe this Clancy knew more about Trench. The letter had been left to him, after all. The air in the tent began to feel thin. The pounding in Nova’s head gave way to dizziness. Their mind was trying to unmoor itself again. It made their body feel like it was losing its outlines.
Whoever Clancy was didn’t matter. They needed to leave this tent. It seemed to amplify Trench’s effects. The map at least gave Nova somewhere to start. It was limp in their hands and folded easily along its creases. Nova tucked it into their cloak and ducked out of the tent. Their mind seemed to slot back in place like a stone sinking down to the riverbed. In the distance, the ridge rose stark against the whitegray sky. Nova reached back and touched their antlers. And they began to walk.
Nova did not know how how long they had walked when the vulture alighted before them. It was a hulking creature, almost as tall as Nova. Its greasy black feathers ruffled as it folded its wings. A stink like death rolled over Nova. Nico’s cruelty glinted in the bird’s golden eyes. Its great beak curved like a scythe. Old blood and desiccated meat clung to it. It looked at Nova expectantly, an oracle of destruction awaiting Nova’s own prophecy of death.
“I’m not ready to go back yet,” Nova said. “I found an old camp of the Torchbearer’s and what I believe is a map he drew. There are marked spots on the map. I’m journeying to one now. I believe I can find him this time.”
For a long moment, the vulture regarded Nova. It stood perfectly still, unnatural in the landscape. Like a monument left behind by a people who had been destroyed. Then its eyes flared and its head twitched. It let out a hissing noise that scraped Nova’s skin raw and spread its wings violently. Again the smell of death assaulted Nova’s senses. Before it took flight, it looked at Nova one last time. The young bishop saw the warning written there. But they were not deterred. They had permission to go on.
Nova couldn’t remember the last time they had spent so much time outside of Dema’s walls. But even with the gloves, Trench was still eating them alive. They had stopped to eat and drink, but as the light leeched from the gray sky and the cloud cover grew darker, their grip on reality began to fall away. Sure footsteps had become a drunken stagger. The map became a beacon rather than a guide. The ridge was closer but it still seemed so far away.
And Nova could’ve sworn that they had seen figures once or twice. Shadowy beings in their periphery. Every time Nova turned their head, they vanished. But the feeling of eyes on them lingered. The weight of these unseen eyes was unbearable, no doubt more of Trench’s efforts to entomb Nova. But they kept moving forward, each step dragging. They stopped reacting to the shadowy figures. They kept their eyes trained on the ridge, but as each footfall became more laborious, their gaze changed from hunter’s determination to madman’s obsession. They just had to find the Torchbearer. Find the Torchbearer and use their antlers to summon the vultures. Or kill him instantly if need be. But they knew Nico wanted to make the Torchbearer suffer within the walls of Dema. And as the Torchbearer suffered, Nova would become whole again.
If they found the Torchbearer, they would be saved. They would return to Dema and regain the pieces shattering in their mind. This tortured fracturing would end. Every few hundred feet, an image spliced their brain. It always disappeared in the half-second of blinding white pain it produced. Nova clutched the left side of their face where the pain seemed to concentrate, covering their eye. They kept their right eye locked on the ridge. If they looked away, they would succumb. The ridge, imposing and dark and jutting against the now-charcoal sky, drew them onward. It reminded them why they were out here, though with each fracture, it grew harder to remember.
Eventually Nova realized that a tiny spark of orange had appeared on the ridge.
It was him. It had to be.
Nova’s skin erupted in fire. They instantly fell to their knees. Every nerve ending in their body screamed out.
And they saw the Torchbearer. He was looking at them. He knew. He knew they were approaching. Nova gasped as a fresh wave of pain wracked their limbs. The image of the Torchbearer dissolved. The dark landscape of Trench swam before them. Their hands shook violently. Before they could get up, another image split their mind in two: a great, shimmering body of water. It disappeared in another flash. The pressure in Nova’s head was so intense they felt their eyes bulging. They wished they would pop. They wished that they would pop and release the pressure in a spray of blood and jelly. They wished that they would die.
They pressed their hands to their eyes instead, afraid of the darkness of their eyelids but more afraid of the feeling that they were going to burst into a thousand pieces. The soft leather of the gloves, more familiar than the backs of their own hands, grounded them somewhat among the screaming afterimages ricocheting in their battered skull. Nova tried to breathe. They tried to remember their mission. They tried to remember that when they found the Torchbearer, all this pain would end. Hatred began to burn in their chest. It was because of the Torchbearer that they were suffering. They removed their hands from their face and refocused on the tiny light burning on the ridge. It seemed to flare brighter in response to the seething that twisted Nova’s lips, unconsciously, into a snarl.
They pushed themselves to their hands and knees and paused, swaying with a wave of dizziness. But before they could get up, their body gave out and they collapsed. They fell into the dirt, face twisting to the side. Above them, the stars of Trench began to come out, one by one, until the black sky was filled with thousands of tiny cold pinpricks that stared down mercilessly from the impervious heavens.
They fought not to lose consciousness, but the world pulsed in and out of darkness. They began to lose their tenuous hold on reality, their sanity driven away as their mind attempted to double itself, to break out of the burial shroud that was their skin wrapped too tightly around their frame. With their last shreds of coherency, Nova thought then that maybe Nico knew that they would fail. And he had not given them permission to go on but instead had sentenced them to die.
The stars wheeled above Nova. It seemed like they were laughing. As they started to lose the battle to their fluttering eyelids, they recalled their last fractured image of the Torchbearer. Something was off about it. It had been a memory, though whose they did not know: the sky behind the Torchbearer had been a bright blue Nova had never seen before. And the Torchbearer had been smiling.
The Torchbearer had been smiling at him.
Nova’s eyes slipped shut and they hurtled down a pitch black precipice, tumbling away into a deep abyss. But just before they lost consciousness, something else in them seemed to stir. To wake.
When Nova woke up, the stars were moving. They heard a dry scraping sound, and their body seemed to vibrate with pain. They tried to move, but it took so much effort, like their brain was barely connected to their body. Like their brain thought they had two bodies and could not make both of them function. Their eyes slipped out of focus, duplicating the stars above them in one dizzying, swinging motion. They blinked, but their eyes would not refocus.
Then they realized the dry scraping was a dragging sound. And it wasn’t the stars moving, but them. They were laying on a piece of canvas, which was being dragged over the ground, the uneven surface and each bump and rock jostling them. With sluggish movements, Nova finally managed to raise their head. In front of them was the Torchbearer, pulling this makeshift stretcher. Their blurring eyes made it look like there were two Torchbearers, half-merged. His back was to Nova. He wore a pack that was not Nova’s. His torch was in his hand. Two flames floated in the air. Nova could kill him right now. They struggled to get upright on the stretcher, but they were weak. The constant jerking movement prevented them from getting their balance. And everything was still doubled. They could hardly tell what they were looking at. The world had become a drunken jumble.
The stretcher hit a large rock and Nova grunted, flailing as their body thudded into the ground. They tried to brace themselves with their hands, but they wouldn’t cooperate.
Although they saw four of them, they saw that it was because their hands were tied at the wrists. And they were missing their gloves. The orange torchlight flickered over the black paint on their hands. Although they had worn the paint their whole life, enough that it permanently stained their skin, it was alarmingly faded. Where were their gloves?
The Torchbearer must have taken them. That was when Nova realized that they were without their backpack. Wearing Bandito clothing instead of their cloak. Without their antlers. They couldn’t summon the vultures without the antlers. And they couldn’t kill the Torchbearer without a weapon. Unless they used their bare hands. Nova felt naked, suddenly, aware of just how disastrously their plan had gone. Just how helpless they were. In their current state, they were completely at the mercy of the Torchbearer.
Nico, Nova thought, closing their eyes, please find me. They laced their fingers together, begging. Even though they knew that if Nico found them, it would mean the lash. It would mean punishment. But it would also mean that they would be able to escape Trench. Shake this awful feeling that they were splitting apart but trapped inside one body. Leave this hell behind.
The stretcher stopped moving. The flame swung in a glorious arc, burning its afterimage onto the fabric of the sky. And the Torchbearer turned around.
The moment his eyes landed on Nova’s, they tore in half. The image they had seen of the Torchbearer with the blue sky behind him exploded like a flash bomb, burning itself onto the retina of their left eye, but their right eye still saw the dark night, the stars above, the Torchbearer and his light in front of him. Screaming filled their head as the Torchbearer’s gaze ripped open a chasm in the center of their body, all their organs falling into it, into a void filling with blood. The image of the Torchbearer, the one that was not real, smiled at them. And Nova realized that somehow the memory had come from inside them, but it was not their memory. It was someone else’s. And the smile winked out and the blue sky faded and Nova felt something in the pit inside of them start clawing its way out. It sunk its nails into Nova’s insides, pulling itself up.
It felt like Nova was turning inside out. It felt like dying. They could feel hands inside of them, clasping their ribs, pulling up an impossible weight. There was not enough room inside Nova’s body for whatever was trying to escape. They would burst apart. In pure panic and fear, their gaze landed on the Torchbearer, begging, imploring. If not to be saved at least to be killed before whatever demon was inside of them shed them like dead skin.
The Torchbearer knelt, shoving his torch into the ground. Surely he would kill Nova. Please. Now he would do it. Nova stared at him, agony twisting their face. But the Torchbearer did not look at Nova like an executioner. The Torchbearer looked at Nova like he was looking at someone else.
And he opened his mouth and he spoke, “Clancy,” to someone else. The word seemed to land not in Nova’s ears but in the back of their head, in a deep recess of their mind. The clawing, fighting thing inside them stopped. And when Nova looked at the Torchbearer, it also looked at the Torchbearer.
“Clancy,” the Torchbearer said again. His voice was low, urgent, and his eyes were so piercing, so intent, that they seared Nova. They wanted to beg him to stop looking, to stop pulling them apart. It hurt, so much, the weight of that gaze. The Torchbearer looked through them and saw something that Nova did not know was there.
“I know you’re in there.”
And the other Torchbearer, the one who was not real, smiled deep inside of Nova’s mind, and the sky turned blue behind him.
And Nova’s mouth opened, and someone else’s voice said, “I remember you--” and Nova said, “--but I don’t know you.”
And the Torchbearer leaned forward, his flame glinting in his eyes, and grabbed Nova’s hands with his free one, his warm rough calluses rubbing against Nova’s cold, stained skin.
“But you do,” the Torchbearer said. “I am the Torchbearer. And you are Clancy. And I will not give up on you.” He squeezed Nova’s hands so hard their bones ground together and something inside of them jolted and gasped and opened its eyes and Nova cried out as they were pushed out of their own body like being pushed from the top of a tower and the sudden weightlessness was too awful to bear, so heavy and so all-consuming, this nothingness that was suddenly everywhere and it choked off their scream and--
Clancy could finally breathe. But the sweet oxygen rushing into his caved lungs sputtered out as Torch tightened his grip. Clancy screamed, his pain cracking the night. He tried to pull his hands out of Torch’s grip, but he couldn’t. Torch kept squeezing tighter, until Clancy thought his bones would turn to dust.
“Please stop,” he sobbed. “Torch, please.” And even through the agony, the name was sweet in his mouth.
Torch let go. Clancy snatched his hands towards his body, hunching his shoulders as he cradled them.
“I’m sorry,” Torch said. And he was. Clancy could hear it in the anguish in his voice, and when he looked up, he could see it in deep wells in his eyes. “I had to make sure you stayed awake this time.”
Clancy’s mind churned slowly. “This time?” He asked. He didn’t understand. He had only escaped Dema once, but Nico had found him and brought him back. And Nico had punished him, smearing him and making him into the Nova bishop. So much of Clancy’s mind was dark from when he had been imprisoned as the Nova bishop. His mind felt like a tampered photograph, overexposed, again and again, altered so heavily the images had faded. His hands itched beneath the black paint, throbbing with pain.
“I haven’t woken up before. This is the only time I’ve woken up,” Clancy said, but his voice was panicked, rising at the end like a question. He looked at Torch desperately, like he was the answer.
Torch’s voice was quiet. “You woke up every time.”
Then Clancy remembered. He remembered the awful things he had been made to do as the Nova bishop. He remembered the blood on Nova’s hands. He remembered the faces of the old friends Nova had killed. He remembered Nico punishing Nova when they failed a mission. He remembered how Nova got stronger, became Nico’s assassin. He remembered Nova traveling through Trench. Hunting the Torchbearer. Again and again. Always failing.
Clancy remembered all the times he had escaped, all the times he had followed the Torchbearer’s flame back home, all the times he had managed to break through Nico’s spell. All the love and sunny days that always waited for him in Trench, no matter how long it took for him to come back. No matter how much danger he brought back, no matter how many times he came back as Nova and not Clancy.
And Clancy’s heart broke as he remembered all the times he had betrayed his love. All the times he had led Nico straight to Torch, forcing him and the Banditos to go on the run again. He remembered how Torch tried to save him every time despite it all. Despite how many times he failed. Despite how many times it had almost killed him. How many times Clancy had almost killed him. Because no matter how well Torch hid him, the vultures always came for him. And they always brought him back to Dema. And he was always smeared anew, he always forgot his name and how to see the color yellow. He was always scrubbed out of his own mind. He always put Nova’s cloak and gloves back on.
Clancy’s blood turned to ice. It struck him, then, that he had died countless times. And he had been brought back countless times, his skin a live burial, his body a grave that never stopped filling with dirt, his soul choking on his own death over and over again.
“Why do you keep trying?” Clancy whispered. Torch’s eyes were full of anguish.
“Because I’m not giving up on you. I will never give up on you,” Torch said fiercely, his voice low.
“You should kill me,” Clancy said suddenly. Torch flinched like Clancy had struck him. “Every time I find you I put you in danger. Every time I wake up I fall back asleep.”
“Clancy--”
“No, it’s time to end this. I won’t keep doing this to you. You know Nico wants me to kill you, right?”
Torch’s eyes met Clancy’s steadily, but the word came out broken and quiet: “Yes.”
“Someday I will succeed.” Clancy laughed bitterly. “Even if I’m not the one to kill you, I’ll still lead them to you, and someday they’ll catch you without your yellow tape and they will bring you back to Dema and they will make your death an example.” Clancy couldn’t bring himself to say: and it will be a terrible death, and it will make you hate me. It was too selfish, how much that thought hurt, after all he had done to Torch.
“No,” Torch said. His eyes burned. Clancy wondered just how long this cycle had gone on. Just how many times they had had this conversation, and how many times he had broken Torch’s heart. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t need to know. He could see it in Torch’s eyes: too many. “No. Someday I will succeed.”
“You won’t.”
“I will.”
But Clancy could see that it had become more of a mantra than a conviction. He could see that Torch was starting to give up, to crumble under the weight of so much failure. And it terrified him. Suddenly and blindly, it terrified him. He thought of Nico and Dema and the vultures and looked at his mangled, stained hands. He thought of becoming trapped inside of Nova again, shut up in a body that was no longer his, trapped in a mind that would again eclipse his. Winking out. Again. Only to wake up in the same hell.
“Torch,” he pleaded, his voice desperate and raw. “Please don’t give up on me.”
He saw Torch’s expression. He saw the guilt flash across his face, the way his eyes flicked away from Clancy’s. He saw the beginning of their defeat growing in the way Torch flinched backwards ever so slightly. And he felt his mind begin to break again.
“No,” he whispered, desperation surging in his throat like bile. “Please.” His chest twisted so tightly he could barely breathe, but he still forced out his pleas, all but sobbing these broken words, begging to be saved by someone he would only ever doom to fail.
“You have to stay awake,” Torch said. He reached out, cradling Clancy’s face so gently that Clancy hardly felt his touch.
“How? I never do.” Clancy’s voice was too broken to even sound bitter. He said it like he had already given up. Torch’s hand dropped. He grimaced.
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “When I found you, and you were unconscious, I got rid of Nova’s cloak and gloves. But we still have to keep moving.”
Clancy noticed for the first time that he was wearing one of Torch’s sweatshirts. Thick yellow tape crisscrossed his chest, matching Torch’s. The tape would buy them some time, but it was already slipping away, filling the bottom of the hourglass.
“It’s the paint,” Clancy said. “Hurting my hands isn’t enough. Breaking them wouldn’t even be enough. I need to get rid of it entirely.”
“Are you strong enough to walk?” Torch asked. Ignoring what Clancy was saying.
“Torch.” Clancy’s voice was quiet but commanding. Guiltily, Torch met his gaze. “When has staying on the move ever saved us?” Hurt flashed across Torch’s face.
“I don’t know how else to save you.” Torch had to force the words out, the taste of admitting failure bitter on his tongue. Clancy hated to make him feel like a failure. He hated to make Torch feel how he felt. Because even though he may forget again and again, he always carried Nova’s failures deep in his tissues, his organs, he always felt the old, dull aches. And his own failure, his own shame, choked him, too. He had no right to stand here in front of Torch and imply that Torch had never saved him.
Because he had. Over and over. But maybe, for Clancy, being saved could never be absolute. And even though he was always made to forget the sun-filled freedom and the smile Torch saved for him and him alone, maybe those brief moments were all he would ever get. Maybe this was it.
No. He could resign himself to scraps of salvation, he could allow himself to fall through the holes, but he couldn’t do that Torch.
“I know how,” Clancy said. He held out his hands. Torch flinched, shaking his head immediately.
“No,” he said. “There has to be another way.”
“Cut them off.” I deserve it. I deserve the pain. He wanted it.
“No,” Torch said fiercely. He grabbed Clancy’s hands and held them gently, not like he had before. They ached like small broken creatures in Torch’s hands. He raised Clancy’s hands to his face and pressed his lips to the stained skin. Clancy flinched, but before he could pull away, Torch bowed his head and rested his forehead on their joined hands.
Clancy hated how close the paint was to Torch’s skin. He knew that he was tainted. He knew that even though he wouldn’t smear Torch, he was still condemning him just by touching him. He was a pawn, and he would put the executioner’s robes back on when he was ordered to. And he would carry out the command without ever knowing that it was his own lover in front of him, waiting for the blow.
And Torch knew it, too. Clancy stared at the crown of his head, at the torchlight catching and dancing in his curls. He could see where it turned soft and downy against the exposed nape of his neck. The spot that Nova would aim for when they came back, so naked to him now. No protection. Just his fragile, untainted skin. Torch knew it, too, and yet here he was, bowing his head over their hands like a prayer. Then Torch lifted his head, his eyes searching Clancy’s.
“There’s an old camp nearby,” he said. “Let’s go. Let’s get some rest.” And he didn’t wait for Clancy’s protests. He stood, yanking his torch out of the ground. Clancy stood, too, stumbling, although he didn’t want to. The dread that he thought he would always carry around with him, no matter who he was, threatened to drown him completely. He didn’t want to get some rest. He didn’t want to waste any time he had with Torch, no matter how much pain screamed in his hands and his body and no matter how many demons made their stakes on his mind. No matter how badly he wanted to rest, no matter how loudly his bones begged him to lay down in the dirt and never get back up.
Torch reached into his pocket and pulled out a small knife. He flicked the blade open and cut through the rope that had bound Nova’s wrists together. It fell away, onto the earth between them.
“Can you walk?” Torch asked again, concern clear on his face.
“I think so,” Clancy answered. His voice sounded dead. Torch grabbed the rope attached to the stretcher anyway. He began to walk. Clancy hesitated for a moment before following him. It felt like he was walking towards his death. It must’ve been how Torch felt every time he tried to save Clancy. He felt like all he was was the deep, awful place he had been forced to go whenever he was smeared anew. Like all he was was dread and suffering walking, a blight that would consume everything around him. He wanted to stop walking. He wanted to die. The torch burned in front of him.
The torch would always burn in front of him.
He realized then, staring at the flame that he had never once seen go out, even during their darkest nights, that Torch chose to keep saving him. He wasn’t forcing Torch to save him. Torch kept saving him, even though he continued to fail, even though his hope grew steadily weaker and weaker, because he loved Clancy enough to try. Because he thought there was something left worth saving.
Clancy didn’t think there was. But he didn’t need to. Torch did.
So he kept walking. And when he grew too weak to keep walking, Torch pulled him on the stretcher. And when they got to the old camp, looking half-forgotten beside a tiny pond, Torch started a small fire in the old ring of stones, even though Clancy could see the exhaustion weighing him down. Torch brushed out the tent and fixed its sagging structures. Inside, he unrolled the bedroll, offering it to Clancy. Clancy was too beaten-down to refuse it, and he laid down, body aching. Torch took off his sweatshirt and balled it up for a pillow. Before he closed his eyes, he looked at Clancy, and he said, “Always.”
And Clancy stayed awake while Torch drifted off to sleep, that word echoing in his mind with all the ghosts of the times it had been said before. His mind just a graveyard of broken promises. He was so tired, had never been so tired before in his life, but he could not fall asleep. He watched as Torch’s face relaxed, listened as his breathing deepened. But even in sleep, there was something tortured about his expression. Like he had worn it enough times that it had etched itself into his face, changing the geography of his features.
Moving slowly, quietly, like a dream, Clancy got up and left the tent. The fire was still burning lowly, though the flames were dying. He walked to the edge of the small pond, crunching over the ring of gravel and rocks surrounding it, and put his blackened hands in the water. It was cold, sending a jolt of clarity through the fog settling into his brain. Good. Maybe it would numb them. He sat by the pond with his hands submerged, so long that he fell into a half-sleep. He wavered on the edge of unreality, a space populated by shadowy figures and golden eyes and yellow flowers and red cloaks. And gradually, the huge, unbroken sky overhead began to lighten.
He swam back to consciousness and pulled his hands from the water. His skin was soggy and wrinkled. He could barely feel his fingers, though he could feel, as though it were far away and outside himself, the cold like points of pain in his bones. With clumsy movements, he dug through the gravel until he found a rough stone, and he closed his eyes, breathing in the fresh, clean air of Trench, and began to scrub.
He scrubbed until the first sliver of the sun appeared on the horizon. He scrubbed until he thought the pain would knock him unconscious. He scrubbed until his skin turned raw. He scrubbed until he wore shining gloves made of the bishop’s colors. And he didn’t stop. Not until it was done.
And that was how Torch found him when the day finally broke. Covered in blood, hunched over his hands, pain etched onto his face and blood spattering the gravel beneath him.
And the sky burned a brilliant blue while Clancy bled beneath the morning sun, letting the poison from his veins like miasma, purging all that had been done to him and all that he had done.
And Torch wrapped his flayed hands with bandages, and when they unwrapped them later, the skin was angry and destroyed and still weeping, but pink showed through the wreckage.
Pink. And not a hint of black.