Chapter Text
Clancy had adopted a routine that partnered him each time he embarked on a gathering. He liked it; he believed he liked it; he had come to withstand it. When it called for it, and most weeks it did, he would meet at the East gate at five p.m and grin up at whichever figure was tasked with showing the boy off. Clancy would ask how this figure was doing, if it had any weekend plans, how it was holding up beneath the stress of the job. And the figure would glance at the short boy, take a few precious seconds to soak in his essence, and then raise its head to the Eastern skyline in response. Clancy’s routine always began with that. The name of the escapee would be uttered by the vermillion shadow, and Clancy would have to strain himself to hear it every time, because it was cold at the gate, and an awful static filled his ears when he got cold. He would clutch himself tightly, grin with sharp teeth and creased eyebrows, and say sure. I’ll know them when I see them. And Clancy always did.
The second event in his routine would be checked off by the disappearance of the figure and Clancy’s disappearance, too. The two would evaporate, noticed only by a thin tremor in the air surrounding them; the vermillion shadow would abscond back to its tall cylindrical tower, and Clancy would venture into the forest with simply the windbreaker on his back and the big, black boots on his feet. He would relocate himself within a thirty-metre radius of the escapee, and oftentimes, before seeing the individual, he would instead be able to hear them. He considered the auditory a part of his second step; the escapees enjoyed running, and very often they would not get very far despite this. Clancy would hear their heavy boots scraping the leaves that littered the mud, or he would hear their heavy breathing disguised with the sounds of the forest surrounding them, or perhaps he would hear their windbreakers sliding across their skin as they sprinted from him. They would always see him first, and assume he were a villain. That’s why they ran: a miscommunication.
And while they ran, Clancy chased; though to call it a chase, Clancy often pondered, was putting it poorly. He was not chasing malignantly, but adoringly. As they ran, Clancy would evaporate again— a key element to the third step— and find himself in front of them. He could always catch their terror-stricken expression; their wide eyes, their agape jaw, their rugged breaths. They stood as though they were prepared to hurt him, shoulders hunched and stance wide. He often saw them crying. Most pleaded with him. Some took stabs at him with sticks they had fancied into daggers. Others threw their fists toward him. Some collapsed from exhaustion, or fear, and that made it easier. No one ever submitted, however. Clancy did not like how difficult step three could become.
When Clancy would return to the East gate of the city, the vermillion figure would be there again, awaiting his arrival. By this step, the escapee was always, irrespective of the battle they put up, unconscious and expressionless. He passed the body onto the figure, who took them away to do something Clancy would rather not ponder upon after thanking the boy for his service through a simple nod. The process, in its entirety, would take no longer than half of an hour, and Clancy would be home before dinner time, where they fed him cheeses, breads, and meats and where they supplied him three blankets he could layer atop himself. It was dark in his room, and even darker in the lightless city he had to walk home through. Sometimes, if Clancy was feeling particularly cold and tired that evening, he would sit in the forest beside the unconscious escapee and wait for the warm sun to set over the Trench’s hills. He would squint carefully, because his eyes were unaccustomed to the novelty of seeing the sun, and he would allow the light to bathe his skin for ten minutes before darkness shrouded him again.
///
Clancy’s days were much of the same. He held a perfectly commendable routine, a weekly timetable of sorts that he would comply with at the order of the Bishops, no complaints, no misconduct. Mondays and Wednesdays at eleven a.m he would perform for an hour on the stage outside of the West wing for all inhabitants of the city. He would eat lunch in the hall beneath the nine towers every day at one p.m, and would present a demorality speech each Saturday afternoon at four p.m. Outside of these compulsories, he was authorised to wander the city and visit other inhabitants, and he was allowed to enter the graveyard of his own volition. Sometimes, the Bishops asked him to join them in that great hall beneath their towers where they’d force him unconscious and pin wires to his temple for the better half of a day, but that was rare. He’d wake up with a pounding head and a dangerously dry mouth, however he was happy to comply if it meant maintaining his comfortable arrangement. Not everyone was honoured with the luxuries he was. Cheeses and breads and meats. Three blankets on his bed.
It was a sunless Wednesday when the shadow Nicolas approached Clancy following his performance. He was taller than the other eight vermillion figures that twinned him, had darker eyes and a deeper grimace and made the boy feel as though he were in the presence of a gentleman with great esteem. Clancy admired Nicolas, the shadow, as something of an optimistically paternal figure which Nicolas understood, and chose not to reciprocate.
The inhabitants of the city did not like to applaud, so Nicolas enforced it. Following each musical number, an overzealous ovation would occur in support of Clancy’s demorality program. The inhabitants of the city did not like to smile, so Nicolas enforced it. Clancy would glance downward at five hundred faces and witness them grinning to the music he presented, and he felt adored. The inhabitants of the city did not like to attend their compulsory programs, so Nicolas enforced it. At eleven a.m each Monday and Wednesday, the five hundred would stand from their beds and walk toward the stage at the West wing without a thought of defiance in their collective minds. Clancy liked the attendance rates, he liked the smiles and the applause, and he liked the fact that Nicolas did not tell him how they achieved such spotless results.
Following the sunless Wednesday’s performance, when Clancy had said a final goodbye to his audience, he was met with the head figure at the conclusion of the backstage’s stairwell. Clancy had to strain his neck to meet the eyes of the shadow that was slinked into the corner of the room as though an omen of great disaster; an unlucky tealeaf, a skinny black cat, a stain of death cast upon the edge of the wall. One had to squint to catch the features of his face through the blackened ink he drew over them; aside from his eyes. His bright, burgundy eyes. Clancy smiled.
“Did you enjoy the show, Nicolas?” he queried as he kneaded his dark palms, careful not to scratch at his fingernails or tear at the nail beds like he always did around the shadow. Nicolas didn’t like it when he did that. “I performed the Good Day song like you advised me to. I think they’re beginning to understand it; like, the lyrics are truly—”
“Performer,” stated the shadow in a mutter. “An escapee has been reported.” Nicolas held no perceivable reaction to the news, though Clancy’s cheeks broke out in a grin. He clenched his palms and mustered all of his strength to suppress a jubilant jerk of the neck.
“Will I see you at the gate tonight?” he always asked Nicolas, because usually Nicolas said yes to the query, and he could spend all afternoon in hopeful anticipation of sharing another conversation with the sovereign.
But the sovereign shook his cloaked head. “I’d like you to find him now.” The boy allowed his hands to fall to his sides.
“But I’ll miss lunch if I go now.”
“You’ll eat afterward.” A bolt of thunder, a pattering of the first rain of the season upon the short, tin roof. Clancy nodded, blinking thrice as he averted the shadow’s gaze. “The escapee was a highly trained Bandito—” an involuntary and angry spasm coursed through the boy at the phrase— “and frequented the Dema forests before his inhabitation. He is nineteen. He is five feet and eight inches. He has been outside of our perimetres for one hour. I do not want to make it any longer.” Clancy nodded once more, his initial grin maintaining its difficult position atop his cheeks. He knew that Nicolas liked him more when he smiled.
“Will you accompany me to the gate?” His voice shook; Nicolas bore toward him with a characteristic distaste.
“I will meet you once your job is complete,” the vermillion shadow murmured before evaporating, noted only by a faint tremor of the air surrounding him. Clancy allowed his expression to fall.
///
Despite the angle of the sun in the midday sky, the city’s surrounding forest was discovered with the very atmosphere Clancy would expect when entering it at the break of nightfall: downcast and dripping, frigid and howling with rain. His beloved sun had no chance of meeting the dappled floor that his big black boots trudged through, and the prospect made him oddly morose. He hadn’t yet begun step two of his three-step plan— perhaps he was mourning the loss of his favoured step one— and he clenched his fists and teeth as his pale hair slicked to his forehead. Nicolas could have joined him. The gate was far from inaccessible for him. The two could have dissipated together and reanimated at the East gate with such simplicity. Nicolas could have placed his palm on the performer’s shoulder and uttered something or other about prosperity. Nicolas could have done a lot of things, and the performer would have appreciated any of them.
“I doubt you’re running through his weather,” Clancy muttered as he winced at the skyline sheltered by the pines. “Where are you headed?” With an onset of vague vertigo to accompany him, Clancy evaporated and reemerged within a denser location, cornered by two sharp-pronged trees. The stumps here were larger than Clancy had ever seen. It was entirely unfamiliar. Clancy licked his lips, brushing a palm through his watershed hair. “North,” he noted lightly, pivoting in a fruitless attempt at spotting the escapee through the thickness of the trees. A faint rustling— a movement of the windbreaker, a cracking of a twig underfoot, a sharp and short inhale— occurred somewhere to the left of Clancy, who moved with the agility of a trained predator, and held the eyes of one, too.
He was a tall boy with a deep green jacket clinging to his sodden skin, and he was enclosed by the perimeter of a treeline. Clancy thought, for a moment, that the escapee had not seen him; however the abject terror bleeding from him in strokes of heat, despite the downpour, pleaded the opposite.
“Why are you going North?” called Clancy over the slippery weather from between the barrier of trees. “I’ve never seen anyone go North.” If the boy was not so shrunken from fear, hunched and primitive like he thought of nothing but attack, he would be just as tall as Clancy. He held that expression that was common to every citizen, the expression that was unique to step two. He did not cry. He did not plead. He stood, very still and very simply, in front of the backdrop of trees and rain; and he stared at Clancy with a fear so deep one might have guessed he had witnessed God. In response to Clancy, he cracked his lips, water bleeding from them, then closed them again as his eyelids flickered. He had deep, horrible eye bags. The performer noted them from afar, how prominent they were on his face. As though he were an unhappy inhabitant— but that was oxymoronic . “Every failed perimeter escapee travels through the forest East. Even those who run for five hours with the intention of getting to the Trench find themselves East.” The boy trapped by trees finally allowed himself a breath. His shoulders dropped, and then rose, and then dropped again.
“I know the forest very well,” he said through a hoarse voice which sounded like days of neglect.
“You and I both.” He was a fairly interesting figure to look at; quite the opposite of perhaps what he expected. Nicolas had described him as highly trained in the artistry of escape, however he was a small being with trembling hands and a washed out face, appearing days unslept and fuelled only by fear. He was not strong, but skinny. He was not something to be fearful of; he was something of a contradiction, an anomaly. “Have you ever considered becoming a demorality pilot?” Clancy queried as he took a sharp step forward, entering the perimeter of trees in which the boy was enclosed. “I think you’d be good at it. We’re the same age, and you know your directions.” The escapee did not step backward, and maintained the eye contact of the performer. Rain hammered the ground and filled both their shoes.
“What do you think demorality means?” Clancy cocked his head at the boy ahead of him. The escapee thought of a wolf, fangs dripping and head turned in hungry curiosity.
“It means that I get to have fun and make the inhabitants of the city feel happy,” Clancy replied with an air of tenacity, as though the question was one he frequented. The escapee raised his eyebrows, averting his gaze as it landed instead on Clancy’s rapidly dampening shoes. The performer felt his head heat. He felt the muscles in his neck tighten. “Everyone claps when I perform.”
“Because we’re forced to.”
“I think it’s funny that you believe that… and I’m sorry that the fantasy of your people is coming to an end.” Another step forward, and Clancy was three metres away from the defiant boy. “Do you want to submit, or should I show you what being forced to do something actually feels like?”
In an err, the boy swiftly turned from Clancy with the ferocity of the sun that hid beneath its blanket of clouds. He was fast, and the blinding treeline helped shelter his presence, but Clancy was faster. Clancy chased like a bloodhound, like one of his superiors, like the rain desperate to meet the forest floor. It was a short race, a race that Clancy would have liked to be longer, should the situation not be so dire. He appeared before him, shattered the air in front of the escapee as he sprinted, huffing like a desperate animal while understanding his own demise like one, too.
“Let’s go home,” said Clancy as he took hold of the boy’s shoulders, grinning at him through a rain-coloured palette. He did not cry, he did not beg; but he looked awfully close to such. His face had contorted, and rather than simple, primitive fear, he exuded anger; a combination Clancy seldom witnessed. His brows were creased and his shoulders hunched, like a small child on the verge of tantrum.
“No—” he panted, teeth clenched and eyes locked with the boy ahead of him. “Clancy, I’m not going with you.”
Clancy the performer jolted, muscles spasming and bones splitting at the phrase that was spat at him. Eyes tightly squeezed, lips peeled back, he jolted from the escapee and collapsed inward for a moment. It was like no spasm of the muscles, no involuntary tremor he had experienced before, this jolt that overcame him upon hearing his name from another person's lips. His name was alive, and it was breathing steadily within the forest. It had been birthed, and was resting tenderly beneath the downpour. Clancy shook his head violently, and when he opened his eyes he found that the escapee was not ahead of him anymore. “W—… Wait…” He breathed, fists clenched to quiet his trembling. His name had been spoken. Clancy shook his head, and evaporated.
The escapee ran still. When Clancy appeared before him, trembling and agape, he came to a stop with an irritated exhaustion that spoke of an unfair game of cat-and-mouse.
“How do you know that name?” Clancy hissed at the boy, adopting the terror that once coursed through the opposite figure. “No one but me knows that name.” Again, he remained silent. “Not even Keons calls me by that name.”
“What does he call you?”
“Performer!” Clancy screeched, alerting the birds that hid in trees. “He calls me the performer, like all the other inhabitants!”
“ Prisoners,” the escapee corrected through a muttered breath. Clancy’s fingers itched to tear his precious hair from his scalp at the mere sight of the runaway, the defiant, disobedient, angry runaway. The flaw. The scab. His teeth were clenched and his entire figure was trembling with an instability it had never met before. He felt, for the first time, like he would throw up if the boy ahead of him were to venture a word more. And the escapee cracked his lips, tender and full of rain. “Let me run, Clancy.”
///
When the performer returned to the respite of the East gate, it was not Nicolas who greeted him, but Keons the vermillion shadow. He allowed the heavy body to fall, a billow of dust as the boy landed with a dull thud. His eyes were closed. His lips were open. Clancy could not stomach his appearance, and so he lay face-down and drooling.
“Did he put up a fight?” questioned Keons in a flat tone. Clancy glared at the vermillion, in fear that if he looked anywhere else he may regurgitate the lunch he’d skipped. He blinked thrice, before rubbing his face frustratedly with both hands.
“He ran three times.”
“Why did you let him?”
Clancy didn’t know. After the third attempt at escape, Clancy had forced him unconscious without any further attempt at grasping a confession from him. The boy had lain in the rain for ten minutes before he was delivered to the East gate, had lain so still and so silently as the water ran over him. Clancy watched him the entire time, did not raise his sight from the boy for ten jarring minutes, because there must be an explanation for his behaviour. Clancy’s name was sacred; it was unknown and unfathomable. It was ineffable and it was formidable to him, and true, nobody knew of it but its owner. He glared at Keons, and Keons nodded, lifting the body from its broken position on the concrete.
“Thank you for your service,” the shadow murmured before disappearing. Clancy did not like thinking about where the failed escapees went after their gathering, but today he pondered on it.