Chapter Text
The Torchbearer stayed an extra day in Dema after Nico’s return to power. He always did.
He wasn’t really sure why, but it had become something of a ritual for him; he’d descend the Tower of Silence and pack up his things, but he wouldn’t leave the walls. Instead, he’d walk the periphery of the town until he’d find a run-down apartment and make his own place there. Maybe it was some way of mourning. It was always hard to accept that Clancy, his Clancy, over and over again, wouldn’t be able to be saved. He would often question himself on those quiet nights, staring at the flickering firelight he’d set up in the window.
It was always Nico’s return that made him doubt his own position as the Torchbearer. Maybe he wasn’t able to save him. Maybe he never would be.
But it wouldn’t stop him from trying, not once. He’d set a rusted cresset in the window of the apartment and set it ablaze, right where the windows of the Tower overlooked the city. On some occasions, Torchbearer would swear he’d seen a shadow staring down at the light, admiring from afar. Their face would be obscured, but what was visible would always be black as pitch. Nico, without a doubt.
Torchbearer once again opened the door to the apartment he stayed in, the dusted walls plastered in old maps and plans from the past attempts at salvation. It used to be drab and dreary, little more than grey walls and fresh linens, before Torchbearer began pinning up his work. Maps of Dema, growing more elaborate with each trip. List upon list of ideas on how to keep Clancy with him—some ideas crossed out, some circled or underlined, with scribbled notes of desperation in the margins. The very few that worked would be highlighted with bright yellow ink.
It was that same monotony that Torchbearer anticipated returning to. Instead, he was met with the room torn apart, bedsheets scattered and maps scribbled and marked. He cursed and ran into the room, dropping his bag. Had Nico finally decided enough was enough? Did he send Bishops in to ruin his work?
“No, no, please, fuck…”
He rushes to the wall of ideas, scribbled haplessly with a bright red pen. Torchbearer groans in some sort of pain he can’t describe. It was indiscriminate, covering the highlights and the cross-outs and the circles alike. He looks at the wall of maps next, seeing bright red spirals drawn around the city and through buildings, like creating frantic paths. As he approaches, he tries to make sense of it all. There’s no use in doing so. Circled paths lead through impenetrable walls, looping in on themselves endlessly—it’s not a real plan, it’s just sabotage in its rawest form.
Torchbearer whimpers. This was… years upon years of hard work. At some point, Torchbearer had discovered he was stuck in some sickening time loop, where some things remained in permanence while others would age on their own. He and Clancy didn’t seem to age here. The Banditos could age, but by the time the loop would reset, it would become irrelevant. This room was an ever-changing tapestry, something Torchbearer could leave his marks in. Each map, each line, displayed a year of dedication. Now it was…
He reaches up to the corner of the wall, preparing to rip each page from its shelter, before he notices something. Something so miniscule he’d never have seen it from across the room.
A perfect, trembling line around the edges of Dema. The same path Torchbearer would walk after exiting the tower.
Puzzled, he looks to the next map. That same line. The next map had the same line. Every single map, beyond its indistinguishable scrawlings, marked Torchbearer’s route around the city before he would leave, even showing the little detours he would take before reaching the apartments. It should’ve frightened him, but it didn’t. Something about it made him look back to the other end of the room where his notes used to be. The old wood floor creaks under him as he snags the most recent page from the wall, the corner ripping away.
- Clancy discovered a cache of energy drinks. Coordinates logged for future expeditions.
Beneath it, trembling letters. Torchbearer had to squint to make them out at all.
th e redb ull
The Redbull?
It occurs to him, then. A few weeks before returning to Dema, while shaving Clancy’s hair, Torchbearer asked him a question about which energy drink he would have first when they would finally make it home, when they could have everything they wanted. Clancy couldn’t answer it then. It felt so rare to even have them that neither of them could compare the tastes on their tongues from memory.
The Redbull.
It had to be Clancy that wrote this.
He traces his way across the room, squinting between the red scribbles like it held a secret code. Most of it seemed manic and desperate in nature, as if trying to relay a message only the creator knew, but some small facets were written with such intention that Torchbearer became even more assured with each passing moment that it had to have been Clancy who wrote these things. But when would he have made it here? Was it before or after fighting Nico? Before or after becoming Nico?
Torchbearer only pulls himself away from the pages to light the cresset by the window. The sun had finally set enough that the glow would be visible from the Tower, and he needed the extra light regardless. As soon as the fire is burning, he reaches for the most recent of the maps on the wall, trying to make sense of the marks in the margins.
They were words. What words, he honestly couldn’t tell yet—the handwriting was so shaky and smudged that it was borderline illegible—but he could tell they were words. It was too organized to be anything else. After some examination, though, a few pop out at him.
Destination… 3:00… hurry… chance.
He glances at the location of the words on the map. They’re right beside the entrance of the tunnels below Dema, which is circled and crossed out in that same red ink.
The Banditos always left the city at 3 o’clock through the tunnels. If this was Clancy’s handwriting, he knew they’d be there, and at what time. Clancy—no, Nico, even—was never lucid enough to know this. The discussions always came long after Nico’s return to power, but for some reason, the scrawlings didn’t scare Torchbearer. In fact, it had the opposite effect entirely.
Hurry. Chance.
Clancy might be waiting for him there.
Without extinguishing the fire, Torchbearer runs to the door of the apartment. He swings his bag over his shoulder and rushes down the staircase, desperate to get to the tunnels. It was hours before they were supposed to leave, but he didn’t want to risk it—if Clancy had been here all this time, waiting for him, why would he even dream of delaying it? What if there was always a window of lucidity that Torchbearer never noticed?
For the first time in a long time, Torchbearer smiles as he runs to the exit of Dema.