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The Torchbearer woke up slowly, his eyes reluctant to open.
His dreams hadn't been particularly good, but least it they been respite from his last few weeks. Months. Whole life, really. Start his day, pack his things, pack away all of the parts of himself that made him him, or what might, if he ever had been given the chance to find out who he was, and search for Clancy.
On the off chance he'd managed to find Clancy, the middle part of the day was spent being Clancy's saint. It wasn't a role the Torchbearer had meant to take on, but one that Clancy had bestowed upon him for better or worse.
It's my great honor, to be a guide for Clancy, the automated response flitted across his consciousness. The answer he always gave to the other Banditos, to Clancy himself, when pressed on the topic. Because no one was actually concerned with what the Torchbearer wanted. And the right response was better than the true response.
Clancy always worried that he was the messy one, that he let his emotions get in the way of what was right. In some ways, this was true. Clancy was impulsive, he boiled over hot and fast, and more often than not was not in control of who he burned when he raged. But he was always sorry when it was over.
The Torchbearer envied him, in that way. He was allowed to be messy, raw, and real. His time was short, he might as well burn hot and fast and go out in a blaze.
As quickly as that thought came, the Torchbearer crushed it. Guilt twisted in his gut. That was exactly the thing, wasn't it. Clancy got to experience everything to it's fullest, but his life was short. The Torchbearer never got to experience the fullness of anything, except for the deep dread he carried in his chest. But at least his life was long.
And that wasn't fair, was it? That Clancy should burn so hot and fast and then die again and again and the Torchbearer should have the audacity to resent him for it. That the Torchbearer should resent him for having to watch him die, again and again.
The Torchbearer rolled over, the ground crunching beneath his torso. He grunted, the shifting in weight landing his ribs squarely on top of a sharp rock.
Instead of getting up, he rolled off the rock and back onto his back. The morning dawn was just beginning to peek over the horizon, but he could still see a few stars dotting the night sky as the biggest star of all came up to wipe them away. He blinked a few times, trying to make out hazy constellations. He did not know what they were, having never been allowed to study the stars in Dema. Looking up was stricktly forbidden.
When Clancy was with him, in their better moments, they would stay up to all hours of the night, staring up into the deep dark abyss. They would tell each other stories of the constellations, of how the stars had appeared in the sky, each quickly becoming more ridiculous than the last as they burst into a fit of giggles. Joy would bubble up in the Torchbearer's chest, and he would look at the boy before him, see the crinkling around his eyes, the laughter escaping from behind his crooked teeth. If that could be their lives, a soft, endless night of laughter and stars, the Torchbearer would never have to wonder what he wanted.
But morning always came. Clancy always ran. And the Torchbearer always followed. It was like they were incapbale of doing anything else. The Torchbearer wondered if Clancy was as tired of running as the Torchbearer was of following.
The Torchbearer wondered if Clancy would chase him endlessly, if the roles were reversed.
Some days he is not confident that Clancy would, and the sadness at the thought, and the subsequent guilt, claim him. He has lost countless days of searching trapped in his own mind, asking what if and playing out hypotheticals no one else can see.
The Torchbearer stared upwards, the rising sunlight began to dimly illuminate his surroundings now. He hadn't really taken stock of where he'd made camp, he had seen a building and knew it would provide some blockage from the wind. He could see more clearly now, a blue and white neon sign, unlit, proudly proclaiming "Kum and Go".
The Torchbearer bit back a snicker. This was no time for laughter, Clancy was still out there, and the Torchbearer had things to do. But there he lay, the laughter coming faster and faster now, erupting out of him so quickly that his chest began to heave, his breaths becoming more shallow.
The laughter soon turned to fear, however. He wasn't getting enough air, he couldn't breath. The tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks turned to tears of terror, the sobs wracking his body.
He was so tired. He was so afraid. He was so alone.
He was the Torchbearer.
Perhaps that was his lot in life. He didn't know if there was anything else. No one had ever asked him. Not his Bishop, not the other Banditos. Not even Clancy.
Clancy had looked at him like he hung the stars, but the Torchbearer often wondered if he did hang the stars just to get that look. It fed him. It propelled him. It was life giving. But it was also life draining. Because the Torchbearer's arms were tired, his soul was exhausted. He would re-hang the stars every night if Clancy asked him to, but the Torchbearer never had gotten around to asking himself if he wanted to.
Want. A word so weighted the Torchbearers arms could not hold it, not even for a second.
The guilt came crashing over the Torchbearer again, so fierce it caused him to turn to the other side, curling in on himself.
If hanging the stars was what Clancy needed, then who was the Torchbearer to tell him no.
Who was the Torchbearer.
A distant echo of a different boy, a smaller boy, with dreams and desires, was buried deep inside the Torchbearer. The Torchbearer often wondered what that boy would think of the Torchbearer. Would he admire him? Would he resent him? Would he respect him? Would he love him?
The Torchbearer did not know, and the Torchbearer knew far better than to go looking for things he did not know. It was better to keep searching for Clancy, to break the cycle once and for all. That was his purpose, at least it felt like it.
The Torchbearer blinked his eyes open, having closed them in an attempt to stop the tears from running out. He stared at the Kum and Go (still ridiculous) before him. It was rare to find a building so untouched out in Trench. He should scavange. He should clean up.
So he does, because he should.
He rolled up his bedroll, putting it back into his backpack before cautiously approaching the building. Overgrowth had done it's best to consume the gray brick walls. It almost reminded him of Dema - the grayness. But something about the spirit of the building told him it wasn't the work of the Bishops. Perhaps Banditos of long ago had built it, or it existed in the time before the Bishops, and Trench. The Torchbearer couldn't fathom such a time, but it wasn't expected of him to. So he had never tried.
He pushed his way inside, the sunlight beginning to illuminate the shelves that adorned the room. Most were cleaned out, either scavenged by people or animals, it was hard to be certain. The Torchbearer was only a tracker of one beast, and that was Clancy, the Prodigal Son of Dema. The Torchbearer knew his tracks well.
It did not appear that Clancy had been brought to this location. The Torchbearer saw no telltale signs of him, no symobols arranged in garbage or literal scuff marks on the ground. Clancy always found a way to help to Torchbearer find him. And the Torchbearer always did.
He wondered what would happen if Clancy stopped leaving tracks. He wondered who the Torchbearer would be if he stopped following them.
The Torchbearer halted, nearly knocking over a display in the process. He could just stop. No one would know that he hadn't just merely failed to find Clancy, that he'd simply decided he couldn't look anymore. No one had to know about these thoughts - he could be a failure in task but not in spirit. He could desert Clancy, and no one but the Torchbearer would be any the wiser. After all, perhaps that was the answer. Maybe if the Torchbearer stopped playing the Bishops games, everyone else could too.
But was that what the Torchbearer wanted either? To stop? He pressed his hands to his eyes, the tears threatening to leak out again. Why was it so difficult to discern duty from desire.
The tears pressed hot into his palms. The Torchbearer just wanted to be right, to be correct, to be good. To be all the things that Clancy saw him to be. He wanted to see Clancy's smile, he wanted to be the reason for it.
At the end of the day, maybe that was all he wanted. He wanted a life where the smiles and the sadness were balanced, if one could not be completely banished. He wanted a life where he didn't have be guilty about his long, miserable existence and Clancy's short, equally miserable one.
The Torchbearer brought his palms away from his eyes. His gaze drifted up, catching on a large mirror that hung from the ceiling, presumably to be able to surveil the rest of the room. He wondered what kind of place this was, full of aisles and shelves and surveillance. His reflection looked back at him, distant and blurry. His eyes were puffy, and his hair terribly rumpled from the night of sleep. He ran his hands through it, thinking of nights in Trench, under the stars, where Clancy had done the same, laughing at all the angles he could cause it to stick up at.
The Torchbearer did something next he could not explain. It was not what he should do, but he did it anyways.
He picked up a can from next to him on a shelf, some long-forgotten beans that no one else wanted. He threw them with all his might, the can making a dent right in the middle of his reflection. The can fell to the ground, beans exploding in every direction, dirtying the floor. The Torchbearer exploded along with it. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed again. He wanted to rip his heart out of his chest, to eat it and then throw it back up just to stomp on it. He wanted to stop being, to stop searching, to be allowed a moment of rest. Had he not been good enough for that? Had he not been enough?
He pounded his fist on the metal shelf, hissing as he already felt the sharp bruise begin to form.
He panted as he stared at the distorted Torchbearer before him, trying to envision Clancy standing next to him. He tried to hear what Clancy would say if he saw the Torchbearer give such an outburst. It was impossible, really, because the Torchbearer would never allow Clancy to see such a thing.
The Torchbearer supposed that was all that he really wanted, wasn't it.
The Torchbearer wanted to be seen. He wanted to be more than a guiding light, or a tracker left behind in the dark. He wanted to giggle about Kum and Go and the beans on the floor and the stars in the sky. He wanted.
He wanted to be brave enough to try. He wanted one more opportunity to try.
The Torchbearer adjusted his jacket, leaving out the door he had come in. He did not clean up the beans on the floor, even though he should. Maybe the one true act of rebellion he's ever done. He's not sure.
He knew what he wanted, but he knew he was also tired of chasing it.