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For Nick, the choice to leave was difficult and drawn-out. As hostile as the Angelic Movement was to nearly every part of himself, it was the only life that he knew. He knew that he was being hurt here, but without a clear idea of where to go and what he could do, he couldn't even think through the steps it would take to break away.
As he pondered, he outwardly stayed as devoted and obedient as possible. He never did master eye contact to his parents' standards, and he never managed to fit in with the other boys, but he was able to convince his teachers that his awkwardness was actually studiousness and maturity.
His estrangement from the other boys ended up being a blessing. It made it easier to hide the feelings that were starting to develop.
Compliance eventually earned him a coveted spot on the death squad. Here, the rules were simpler: Obey your superiors. Don't think about your orders. Accept the deference from the rest of the Movement. Kill anyone who doesn't belong.
Nick fought long and hard with himself before he could convince himself to leave. He still couldn't clearly picture himself living outside, but he no longer needed to. With every new order, he could tell that either his squad would turn on him or he would kill himself trying to be one of them.
If he was going to die anyway, he wanted to do it outside of the compound. To have one attempt at truly being himself before he died.
With a clear goal in mind, he could set the rest of the parameters for his escape. He wanted to get as far away from the Angelic Movement as possible. He would take his gun—besides defense, it would be a quicker way than dehydration or heat stroke to end things if (or when) he ran out of options.
The best place to start his journey would be Acheson. The Angelic Movement did not have many maps available to lower-ranking death squad members like him. Once in Acheson, he could plan a route. There may be provisions there. And if Acheson had already been stripped bare by other people, then he already carried his escape clause with him.
The best time to start his journey was during a patrol. He would need to wait for the right moment, when he was paired with the right set of squadmates. He knew that he was more physically capable than most of them, and with the element of surprise, he should be able to take them out.
Nick had played out the actual moment of his escape so many times in his mind that the reality ended up being anticlimatic. He shot, stabbed, kicked, and hit almost every member of his patrol until they died. Death was the only way to prevent a squad member from completing a mission—in this case, returning home to summon a search for Nick.
The surprise was that he needed to kill almostevery member. One squadmate raised his hands in surrender instead of attacking.
Nick knew who Theo Clairborne was. Everyone in the Angelic Movement knew who Theo was. His father was the highest-ranking member of the entire militia. He was pledged in marriage to the Reverend Mother Woodside's daughter. He was held up as the perfect model of this generation of Angels, ready to usher in Armageddon at Seraph's side.
"Please… go," Theo gasped. "Whatever you want that much, just go."
A general's son refusing to fight. Maybe Theo was another person who didn't fit in.
Nick took a chance. He reached out and grabbed one of Theo's hands to pull him up.
For Theo, the decision to leave was abrupt and unexpected.
Theo had always struggled with crises of faith. He had watched his father and known of the promised union between the Reverend Mother's daughter and him, and he had always dreaded it. He knew that he wanted a boy in the same way that he was supposed to want a girl, and he knew the punishment if anyone had found out.
Recent events had made these crises even more confusing. Benji coming out to him was one of the best nights of Theo's life. He left that meeting feeling as if God had validated his every struggle with his sexuality.
And then, the next morning, Theo heard his father demean one of his men as a fucking weak-armed faggot, and reality had set back in.
Theo was never going to be accepted unless he and Benji came out together. And, from what Benji had told him last night, Benji had already come out to his mother and she had rejected him entirely.
Benji had made Thoe swear to never tell anyone else about him, and Theo had agreed. But Benji hadn't told Theo that he couldn't talk about himself.
The next time Theo met Benji's mother, at a chaperoned date, Theo almost decided to out himself. Perhaps, with the dual proofs of his and Benji's natures, the Reverend Mother Woodside would see God's plan as clearly as Theo could.
And then Mother Woodside had brought Benji out in the most feminine dress that Theo had ever seen in the movement. The Reverend Mother had smiled in such a false way and talked about how grateful she was that her daughter had such a wonderful strong man to help her.
So, no, she definitely wasn't going to help the two of them. The best Theo could salvage from that meeting was to make it as short as possible to minimize Benji's torture.
Theo had been accepted to the death squad shortly after his engagement with Benji was made official. The Death Squad gave him the chance to leave the compound occasionally, but the tight-knit nature of the squad made the rampant homophobia even more difficult to handle.
He coped as best as he could. He kept to himself. He wouldn't attack someone else for being or acting gay—he still remembered Benji's eyes during that meeting with his mother. But he could take the survival and combat techniques he learned in the death squad and wait for an opportunity to help himself and Benji.
Unfortunately, when the opportunity came, Benji was nowhere nearby.
A soldier that Theo didn't know very well—Nick, maybe?—suddenly turned on the squad. Between his skill and the element of surprise, he was quickly able to kill everyone else.
Theo hadn't even bothered trying to fight. He'd been through some combat training, but this was his first actual fight. He was scared. This was making him more nauseous than kissing the Grace in the church.
Instead, he begged. He wasn't proud of it, but he begged.
And then the soldier picked him up and offered him a hand.
He didn't say anything, but the choice was clear—stay, or go?
"I can't, my—" he almost said boyfriend, and then caught himself. But the soldier didn't wait for him to come up with another word. He dropped Theo's hand and started running the other way.
This was it. Go, with this stranger, or stay and face the movement? Staying meant that he could remain and try to protect Benji, but it would also mean facing punishment for not dying with his squadmates. Could he survive that?
And what was out there, anyway? Could he do something to help Benji from outside the walls of the movement? Find a place where the two of them could survive
"Wait!" he shouted. The soldier stopped, but didn't turn around. "I'll go with you." He finally remembered a word that he could use for Benji—accurate, but would sound identical to the gendered term that this soldier was expecting. "As long as we come back sometime. I need to get my fiancé out of there."
The soldier paused, then shrugged.
Theo realized that was the best that he was going to get. He needed to choose.
I'll be back, Benji, he promised. And then he ran to meet up with the soldier.
For Benji, the choice to leave was barely a choice at all. He had to leave. The question was whether he would be able to.
Coming out to Theo had gone better than he had ever hoped it would. He was so thankful that Theo was understanding and still wanted him. Meeting with Theo, even when chaperoned, gave Benji more hope than he'd had in a while. It was as having someone nearby who knew him gave him space to breathe.
Even if his mother rejected him—even if he couldn't come out to anyone else at the compound—he had Theo.
Until, one day, he didn't.
General Clairborne had come to Benji's house to deliver the news personally. Theo, and his entire squad, had died while on patrol outside the compound.
It was all so abrupt. Benji struggled to hold himself together. If the General couldn't visibly mourn his own son, the Benji certainly wasn't going to publically do otherwise.
But losing Theo also meant losing the one thing that meant staying at the Angelic compound worthwhile.
Benji didn't dare visibly mourn Theo's loss, but he certainly became less sociable. His mother brushed his hair and said that God worked in mysterious ways. It wasn't long after that when she began introducing other boys Theo's age to the house.
Benji could tell what she was doing. She had thought that Theo had fixed him. With Theo gone, she needed another boy to squash Benji's ideas of being anything else than the Angelic Movement's perfect sacrificial girl.
The situation was suffocating. His engagement to Theo was only tolerable because the two of them loved each other, and because Theo knew and accepted who Benji really was. To be forced into another engagement with someone who expected him to be a dutiful wife?
Impossible. Intolerable.
But, this time, Benji knew the consequences of publically disagreeing with his mother's plans. He kept to himself. He stayed quiet and did his best to smile at the boys that his mother brought over.
After the third date with the same boy, he realized that his mother was serious. He needed to leave now if he wanted any hope surviving.
He didn't dare tell his father about his plans. His father wasn't truly a part of the Angel movement, and he had noticed his father doing his best not to refer to Benji as his daughter. But Benji's father also hadn't noticably stepped in when the Reverend Mother Woodside tried to turn her son into a bride.
Maybe Benji's father didn't truly understand. Maybe he didn't have enough power to act against the Reverent Mother. Whatever the case, he wouldn't be able to assist Benji right now.
Desperation forced Benji to try and escape that night. He would've felt lucky that it was a new moon, except that this whole situation was the complete opposite thing from lucky. He was grateful for the lack of light, though.
Benji had been slowly picking apart his engagement dress as a form of stress relief. As long as he left enough stitches to keep the dress together, his mother wouldn't notice anything. Tonight, he finished the process with mixed feelings. He hated the dress, but he had loved what it meant for his union with Theo.
No. Better to destroy it now before his mother forced him to wear it for the latest suitor.
Once taken apart, there were enough fabric scraps to make a rope that reached from his window to a couple of feet above the ground. Benji got out and dragged the rope down afterwards to hide it.
From there, Benji took a rambling route to the stream where his mother had baptized him when he arrived. He needed a way out. The bridge would be too full of soldiers, and the walls would be the sane. But, if he could get to the river, then he could follow it to the underside of the bridge and try to leave by crawling under it.
It would be close. He would have to be careful once he left the bridge's shelter. But luck had been with him so far, and he knew that he couldn't stay.
Eventually, he was pressed against the underside of the outer edge of the bridge. He had hoped that the soldiers would be asleep, but unfortunately, he could hear two of them talking.
He needed to escape as soon as possible. If he stayed here until the morning, his mother would notice he was missing and alert the compound.
Just when he thought he would have to risk running anyway, Benji heard the soldiers shout and get up. There was a gunshot, and then a thud on the bridge. The second one fell soon after.
Benji waited, heart hammering, to hear what would happen next. No futher steps were thudding across the bridge, but he knew that the death squads would send reinforcements soon.
He had to take this chance. Whoever was out there shooting at the compound, they weren't Angels. A chance at survival was better than the horrors that awaited him if he stayed.
He crawled out from under the bridge and put his hands up. Hopefully whoever was shooting would recognize that peace signal. It must have worked, because he wasn't shot as he moved away from the bridge. He ran faster as he realized that they weren't going to shoot at him. He started laughing—he was free! He'd made it out!
He was so caught up in the excitement, and the night was still so dark, that he missed one of the shooters tackling him. Benji went down hard on the soft ground.
"Benji?I" a voice whispered incredulously. It was a voice that Benji knew instantly.
"Theo?!"
The two of them embraced and wept with relief. Eventually, Benji was able to talk again. "How? They told me that you died."
"It was all thanks to him," Theo said. He turned his head and Benji saw another boy nearby. This one had silently hung back.
"Meet Nick," Theo said. "He's the reason I'm still alive, and he's how I found a place where we can be free. Come on—let's go."