Work Text:
"Clancy. Clancy, wake up,” Torchbearer laughs.
His eyes aren’t open, but he can already sense the yellow swarm of the Bandito camp, Torchbearer leaning over him, shaking him awake. Gentle light from the entrance of the tent, Torchbearer's hair still rustled from sleeping at his side.
“C’mon, Clancy. We have to—“
Nova opens his eyes to a gray ceiling. His room isn’t a cell, but it’s one he’s condemned to nonetheless. He is no longer Clancy, but something new. His throat is tight.
There is no Torchbearer. No Banditos. No rebels within Dema. No Clancy.
Nova doesn’t dream. But he sees his old friend all the same. Yellow that they thought once protected them— useless whenever Nova spots him in the corner of his eye in every turn of the gray city. But Nova traveled and traveled. He sailed and pleaded and fought. He met Torchbearer when the other was supposed to be behind him. Torchbearer was never with him, but somehow he never left his side.
Nova stares out the window in his tower. He waits.
But Torchbearer won’t save him. There is nothing to be saved. He took the Banditos and turned them into bishops and put the city into a new reign by commanding Dema and the bishops. The city is enclosed with gravestones under fresh dirt, still overturned from the battle. It doesn’t matter.
Because Torchbearer won’t come back. He’ll find a new Clancy. A cleaner replacement. Someone easier to fix and better to deal with and not susceptible to being forced into entertaining the high and mighty of the Sacred Municipality with pink hair, interviews, and smiles.
He can hear the other Bishops stirring behind him even when he's alone. Nova used to call the Banditos friends. Nova used to call himself Clancy. He let Clancy die. He betrayed the trust of everyone he knew, but he was always the exception.
He is different from the others— he will restore Dema from the ruin Nico put it in. Somehow.
He has been smeared more than enough, watching from outside of his body, all the way to feeling Nico's hands on his neck, dragging him back. The Banditos had to become the new bishops, there was no other way.
That's what Nova tells himself.
But he waits, while the night turns to day and stars blink out of existence behind his eyes. He watches the circular city, the sparse streets, the walls.
He is alone.
In the weeks after Nico and the Niners' deaths, Nova deals with the implications of overthrowing the city's rulers. He thinks of strange attacks from seized creatures, the warning cries of vultures in the sky, and the memories he is already starting to forget.
There is little left to his voice now, and even when he does speak, there is nothing to say. No stories of Voldsøy or the many nights traveling through forests with nothing but a mirage behind him. There really isn't anything to say.
Torchbearer left. Likely with a string of other Banditos. He refused Nova's offering and went back down the spiraling stairs without a word. But, for some reason, Nova waits at the window. He doesn't know what he is waiting for. If he'll finally stop when he sees a signal, a sign, a promise, whatever.
The stars don't spell anything out, the smoke in the distance isn't indicative of a greater threat, and there is no yellow to spot. He wouldn't even be able to see the color anymore, would he? He isn't a rebel of the city anymore; he is Dema.
It's on another of those early mornings that have just turned from darkness to sunrise when something finally breaks and the routine changes. There is a rustle up the stairs and a commotion behind the door, hesitating for a moment before Nova hears the wood crash open.
“Clancy?"
Nova turns around, ready to yell at whatever bishop is trying to disturb him with a name he has no right to anymore.
But it's not a bishop— it's Torchbearer.
His Torchbearer, as corporal as he ever was in Nova's hallucinations.
Nova opens his mouth, but all that he's able to muster up is a shaky laugh, dry of humor. When he tries to speak, the words get caught in his mouth and choke him on their way out.
"Clancy," Torchbearer repeats without a question.
He says it simply, as if it was all that Nova ever was and all that he ever will be, even as he stands behind the other man covered in red with dead eyes. Nova has been waiting so long for something he can no longer name. There is no reason to believe that the Torchbearer in front of him is real. He can't justify making any response.
Torchbearer steps closer. His clothes are torn at the sleeves, tape slightly peeling off the edges with dirt tracked on his boots.
Torchbearer left; Torchbearer is moving closer to Nova every second.
"What are you doing?" Nova asks, taking a terse step backwards and watching Torchbearer's steps falter.
His voice is foreign even to his own ears, something he hasn't heard in a long time. Too cold and distant. Torchbearer must recognize something in it, because his hands fall to his sides and a small corner of his lip disappears into his mouth and under his teeth.
"Clancy, we have to go," Torchbearer insists.
Nova's eyes feel dried out as he looks away from Torchbearer and glances behind the man and at the door. It's wide open, but he has no idea what's behind it.
"Clancy," Torchbearer repeats again.
Nova imagines his hands would be shaking if he could feel anything. He doesn't respond to the image, just taking another strong step away and waiting for it to disappear.
But Torchbearer doesn't disappear.
He shakes his head slowly and keeps talking. "Clancy. You can't stay here any longer; it's going to destroy you."
But that doesn't make sense. Dema is all he's ever known. From childhood to being dragged back into the city, to being forced to perform and entertain. Nova already destroyed the previous era of Dema, and has started something new. Something better.
Torchbearer doesn't falter. "Please, Clancy—"
"That's not my name," Nova says calmly.
As calmly as he can manage, that is. Clancy hasn't been his name since he tore the curtains down and became the Nova Bishop.
"Clancy—"
"It's Nova," he corrects mindlessly.
"Not Nico?" Torchbearer spits angrily, throwing his hands in the air and gesturing weakly at Nova.
Nova nods, refusing to let anything get to him. He isn't Nico. He can't be.
"You can't be here," Nova pivots.
"You gonna seize more of your citizens? Kick me out? C'mon, Clancy, we have to—"
"There is no where to go!" Nova shouts.
Dema is all there is. Even after he's seen the continent of Trench and the shores of Voldsøy and the water of the Paladin Strait, he tells all of the citizens that there is nothing beyond the city. Just like the bishops before him.
"There is no escape from this! I destroyed them, but now I am them. And since I am, I must be better than what was."
Nova is power. He is hope. The example and the exception. He is alive.
He isn't trapped if it's where he wants to be. And he was the one who killed the bishops and commanded the Banditos and the rebels and pulled the robes over his own shoulders.
"There is escape," Torchbearer emphasizes. "You just have to come with me. You have to trust me."
"Trust you?" Nova repeats. "How am I supposed to trust you?"
"But—"
"You left. I've heard the rumors. You wanted to find a new 'Clancy'. A nice replacement for me. To start again. Were you going to project into their dreams, too? Hold them at night and show them the stars after nightmares?"
It comes out in a few rushed breaths, labored and painful. Sometimes, he can still feel the brush of Torchbearer's fingertips on the rare amount of skin he showed. Can still see the look in Torchbearer's eyes when Nova had reached up and pulled down the bandana covering his face.
Did Torchbearer do that with the previous versions of him, too? How is Nova supposed to believe he was special because of shared food rations and laughter at night when the entire Bandito camp waited for sunrise to attack.
"No, Clan—" Torchbearer swallows a breath.
"Nova," Torchbearer corrects, sounding like the word is causing him pain. "I would never. You're the only—"
"You left," Nova repeats simply.
Torchbearer laughs dryly. "You're a bishop! The thing we fought against for years. The thing that traumatized you since you were born. The thing that forced you into a cell and shoved you on TV. You've become what you hated. I don't know what you wanted me to do."
Stay, Nova thinks, thought unbidden. He wanted Torchbearer to take the robes, to join the other Banditos in becoming bishops and changing Dema. But Nova has been ruling Dema for however long it's been, and he can't explain the changes he's made. Not enough. Too many.
"You were always the exception. You were different. You were always something special."
Were, were, were.
Because Nova isn't what he was before. He doesn't need Torchbearer to remind him of that.
"So, we can leave. We can still fight. This doesn't have to be the end," Torchbearer says.
"The end of what?" Nova asks.
Torchbearer takes a step forward; Nova doesn't move. "You believing in yourself. You've been giving up on yourself since we've met. I'm trying to get you to realize that I'm still here for you."
"What?" Nova laughs. "You believe in me, and we'll go and frolic through the grass and we'll all be happy?"
"No. But we have to do something. If we leave now, something can actually change. Just because you're a bishop doesn't mean it's over."
Another step. Then two.
Nova can't move. Torchbearer is barely a breath away from him and he knows that the other can see the smear splitting his head in two, marking him for what he is.
Torchbearer waits for something that Nova is never going to say, then he sighs.
"Oh, Clancy."
Nova doesn't even argue about the name, he collapses forward the same way he used to all those years ago. Torchbearer's arms open reflectively as if no time had passed.
Nova's hands reach desperately for Torchbearer's back, clawing and dragging him closer in some sort of sad movement. He can hear his own breaths. Can feel the tell-tale pinprick in his eyes.
"It's okay," Torchbearer whispers, even though it isn't. "It'll be alright."
"Torchbearer," he rasps.
It's the first time he's said the man's name in ages. Even in letters it was just TB. Torchbearer's arms tighten around him and he laughs.
"You're here."
"Where else would I be?" Torchbearer asks.
"You're real," Nova continues.
Torchbearer is silent for another moment before nodding against Nova's shoulder. "Yeah."
"Don't leave."
Torchbearer's head tilts until he softly kisses Nova's shoulder. "I won't leave."
He kisses Nova's shoulder again, then his cheek, then his temple. "I'm here."
Nova can barely breathe anymore. Maybe he does have to leave the city. Maybe there's something else for him besides this.
Torchbearer presses another kiss to the side of his temple. "Clancy."
"I'm not—"
"Clancy, Clancy, Clancy," Torchbearer whispers until Clancy, too, starts to believe it.
They are wrapped around each other, each word worming it's way into Clancy's head until it's all he can hear.
When Torchbearer unfastens Clancy's robes, it's as if nothing changed from all that time ago. The robes fall to the cold floor and Clancy suppresses a shudder from inside of Torchbearer's arms. Clancy carefully extracts himself, some weight inside his chest shifting over and readjusting.
"C'mon," Torchbearer says.
His voice is loud, clear, and stead-fast. There is no doubt in his words and no shake when he offers out a hand in the short distance between them.
"Let's go."