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Nova flings himself out of bed and onto the hardwood floor of his room, braces on his hands and knees, the world tilting, pulse loud in his ears.
He's come to the realization, over this past year, that Torchbearer is cruel.
This thought that once seemed impossible was now his reality. Nova cannot sleep without Torchbearer projecting into his mind, threading himself through Nova’s dreams with eyes that know every weakness, bringing memories he never asked to keep.
Torchbearer brings tenderness like a blade.
He squeezes his eyes shut, panting, surviving the images that press deep behind his eyelids by the skin of his teeth.
It's Torchbearer in Trench, standing in the middle of a creek, face drenched and gleaming in the sun. It's him looking back at Nova and saying his name so sweet like it was something more than a word. It's him kneeling, cupping Nova's face, easing him down and out of a spiral he tangled himself in.
And the worst, it's Torchbearer, greeting him with a faint touch, and his face is a broken thing as he says, "You know, I always meant to tell you. I'm so sorry I never did." And he looks up at Nova with shining eyes, and he still doesn't say it. He never, ever says it.
Nova's not sure why it's this that always throws him so bad. He drops his forehead onto the floor and breathes in stale air. Curls his arms around himself. He slowly sits back on his heels and takes in the gray concrete wash of his room, save for his red robe draped in the corner.
He has duties. His body remembers them even when his mind does not. It rises, and moves, but some part of him remains on the floor.
Nova skins his body with a rag and a bucket of hot water, because any other way of washing himself allows his mind to drift. He dries himself with a sandpaper towel. Brushes his teeth and hair and puts on his robe. It's the color of rubies and blood. The sleeves fall over his wrists down to the middle of his dark hands.
Nova leaves his room, and is met with a guard standing at attention. He floats past her, and she follows as he goes up the stairs to the top of his tower until the guard pauses at a door. The eight are already inside; he knows this. As usual, he's the last to join.
The door groans as he splits it open and steps inside. The eight Bishops are seated at the oblong gray table, bottom halves of their faces painted black and covered again by a sheer sheet of white.
He sits at the head and listens to their ideas, concerns, thoughts, and torture methods. Their voices are both familiar and alien to him. It's easy to doze off and filter them out. His eyes go from face to face, until slowly, he's staring blankly at the wall.
Ashen brick was used to build this tower. His gaze catches on the slots where the bricks were laid, all the little maze-like patterns they create.
Cutting through the mindless drivel of banning poetry (and what classifies as poetry being a big point of contention between Nova and the others), a Bishop asks him, "When are we going to bring the Banditos back home?"
Nova stares at the pitch of his hands. They ask this so often that it may as well replace 'hello'. As head Bishop, he's supposed to be the one to go out there and get the perimeter escapees, but his stomach clenches in unadulterated agony at the thought of seeing Torchbearer again.
"I'll go out as a vulture tonight. If I see someone, I'll bring them home." Is what he lands on, if nothing else, he knows how to say enough to make people believe him. This is evergreen.
Nova and the Niners leave the tower together. They observe as enforcement rips citizens' journals into ribbons. Pages spill out and dance along the street. Children hover at a safe distance, clutching each other's shirts. They are standing so still that Nova thinks they're holding their breaths. One meets his eye for a split second, and quickly juts their head to the ground. The stillness of the child's body breaks into tremors.
They are afraid, Nova recognizes. He raises his chin. The sky is empty and pale. This is as beautiful as the day gets. On the outer edge of the wall, moss has grown, breaking the serenity of the smooth concrete.
"We need to rake the walls," Nova says. He does not turn to look at his fellow Bishops. "I shouldn't have to remind you to order such trivial things."
A bishop nods solemnly. He doesn't care which one it is. "Apologies, Nova. We've been distracted. It won't happen again."
"Good," he replies. A rock has lodged itself in the groove of his left shoe, and with each step it scrapes loudly against the ground. Nova doesn't move to pick it out. Not outside, not with eyes on him. The action would be too human.
The Nine split up, heading to their respective towers. Nova remains at the foot of his own and watches citizens pass by, a peaceful dullness coating their expressions. Torn paper flutters up in the air and across the vast flattened plains.
There was a time in his life, not too many years ago, when he'd to anything to write his thoughts on paper. To spill his bursting mind out onto the page with shaking fingers. What a frantic, egotistical, destructive way of self-expression.
He understands now, with a clandestine clarity, why Nico removed the option from him. When the sheep become cannibals, what is the Shepard to do but muzzle them? He couldn't blame Nico, not really, not anymore.
His day passes in a series of duties and moments, down to such a routine that Nova can do most everything that is needed of him without thinking. His body and tongue are on autopilot, pointing and demanding and reading out to his people. Thumb caressing the yellowing paper of an old, divine book, and the room is dark, but the projector hitting the wall behind him bounces light onto all the people's faces.
He flicks his eyes up now and then, and sees blank, placid emptiness. They are devoted to this feeling.
The walls, ceiling and floors are perfect right angles. He speaks in a natural monotone. Steadies their worries with passages older than time.
He doesn't tell them that time resets itself every so often. They won't get old enough to know.
"Dismissed," he says. They scatter out like sand in the wind. A few stay behind to tell him things. They keep their eyes rightfully glued to the floor, but their feet are steady on the ground.
"Thank you for reading again, Nova." One says.
"I feel so stable in your services." Another says.
"You make me excited to join the Glorious Gone one day." The third says. He's not sure whether this was a compliment or not.
He nods, accepts their comments. He feels nothing. It's beautiful.
By the time he leaves, the sky is black, and everyone has gone to bed. The moon coats the world in a precious Egyptian blue. All the streets are clear of people.
Nova picks out the rock from the bottom of his shoe. Rolls it down the length of his index before releasing it. Sharp and high click-clack as it hits the ground.
He walks past the nine towers until he hits the edge of the enclosing wall. There's a section here, somewhere. He taps his foot on the concrete at random until the dull hit of it shifts into a metallic and hollow sound. Kneels on the ground, certainly dirtying his robe around the knees, and aimlessly wipes around until his fingers catch on little grooves in the pavement.
He presses in deep and pulls, and it unlatches from the ground like a manhole cover.
The ladder is still there. He shuffles himself inside and slides the cover back over his head. He is swallowed by darkness. It doesn't matter; Nova remembers the layout of this place. The routine of it.
He crawls down the ladder, counting each bar. Hits the floor at thirteen. He drags his palm until it hits a gas lantern adorned to the wall. Twists the dial, and fire sprouts to life, licking the dull air softly. The string of other lanterns flicker on in response all across the long dark tunnel. Nova steps back, his hand hovering near the flame for a second, just to feel it.
He follows the dancing light down the empty hall. Though it's been abandoned, it is frozen in time. No cobwebs or dust. Completely empty, as it was a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago.
He walks as a Bishop, rather than a prisoner, down the tunnels. He's reminding himself of this fact as he pauses at a familiar closed door.
The gap at the bottom is torn to shreds, with streaks that stain deep into the porous concrete. Steps a bit closer to it. Blood. This is familiar to him, too.
The blood is his own, darkened with age to a deep brownish-black.
If he opened the door, he knew he would see a twin-sized mattress on the floor, a toilet and sink, and nothing else. No windows. No blankets. No mirrors.
It gets cold at night, especially underground. He knew he would see lines scraped into the wall, trying to tally the days, but giving up somewhere after thirty-five when counting via meals proved to be an untrustworthy basis. He remembers counting the hours until, yes; it had been two days since he had last eaten. Then comes his scraping at the bottom of the door like an animal, because starvation turns people into primal creatures.
Nova wouldn't do that to anyone, he thinks, but the longer he thinks about it, the less sure he is.
A year as a Bishop and his shell has already hardened significantly. How long was Nico a Bishop? How long until Nova becomes as strong as he was, as undeniable?
He rips his gaze from the door when looking at it turns his stomach so bad that he can feel acidic bile rising in his throat. This isn't what he was here for.
He moves down the hall and doesn't allow himself to look in the corners, doesn't allow himself to wonder. He can't afford to.
The smell of the room hits him first. A horrible sweetness in the air. Death emits a scent that is impossible to forget.
The vulture is splayed out on a circular marble table, covered by a glass dome to prevent decomposition. Black pools for eyes, bared head. Wings spread wide, feathers dripping over the marble, catching the flickering light like oil.
Nova lifts the glass dome, sets it aside, and takes the bird's lolled head into his open palm. The head is smooth and leathery, coated in fine, soft fuzz. Its skin matched the walls of this place, gray with black cracks like dried mud.
He strokes down along its neck. Feathers sturdy and slightly coarse on the outside, but when he presses deeper, there is a soft downy fluff at the base.
Nova pets the dead bird and finds it beautiful. He closes his eyes and brings it back to life, if only for a moment, if only for tonight.
He opens his eyes, twists his neck, and views himself outside himself. He is the vulture, coaxing electricity through its body, manually throbbing blood in and out of the tiny heart in the midline of its chest, newfound warmth flooding to its extremities.
Nova bends the wings, raises them, and twitches the body up on its anisodactyl feet. He stretches blunt talons built for walking and tearing rather than killing.
Nova moves his human body to the side of the room, where two stairs led to a small slot in the ceiling that opened up to Dema.
He pushes it open and stills, switching back to the vulture body and raising the bird up into the air and out the slot.
A soft, stale wind blows through the bird's feathers, and he shifts his glide higher and further until he blows past the walls of Dema and into Trench.
The forest of Trench stretches out wide, grass and trees turned to silhouettes of darkness in the pitch of night. Nova flies the corpse over riverbeds, over the lichens coating trees, over engraved footprints in mud. He follows a line to a cloud that seems to touch the ground. Follows it until it reveals itself to be smoke billowing from fire.
He slows the bird to perch on the peak of a tree. Tops of heads weave past each other in a low quietness. Within this quietness are soft whispers and the crackling of the flame. They coat themselves in shades of green and streaks of tape that reflect too sharp to see, almost appearing translucent or mirror-like.
Yellow. It is yellow, but he can't see it. His knee-jerk reaction is to turn away, and he knows he should, he'd told the Nine that if he found them, he would leave the walls and bring the escapees home where they belong. He should keep his promise.
Some promises rot before they’re even made.
He maneuvers the vulture down the tree slowly, so as not to make too much noise. The closer he is to the ground, the more faces become defined.
Five people huddle around the fire, warming their feet and hands. Hushed, intimate words pass over flame. A smile spreads across a woman's face. She cuffs her sleeve and wipes her nose with it. Another plays with the button holding his jacket pocket closed, and another is feeding the fire with sticks and dried tufts of grass.
Here are the Banditos in all their sad glory, dirty and spreading their lives out, stealing time for themselves. He should feel satisfaction; he has found them. Instead, something in him feels unfinished. Incomplete. Because he is not here.
He lowers the vulture down further. The earth tenderly parts for the talons. Quiet, so quiet, he presses forward, out of view to the side of a pitched tent.
"It hurt so badly. I've felt nothing like it. Like I had this pressure inside of me." The woman says, and Nova remembers her name but doesn't allow himself to call her it. Her face is rounder, fuller since he last saw her. The sight makes a strange, fuzzy thing bloom in his chest.
She continues, digging her boots into the grass so deep that the toe glistens with mud. "I was so scared, and then this naked creature was suddenly in my arms, and I just fell in love. Tangled up in a mess of my own gore, and he was so beautiful that I couldn't stop crying," she laughs, apple cheeks shoving her eyes shut.
"Then he started crying," a different Bandito says, "and it seems he hasn't ever stopped."
A knowing chuckle passes across the small group. Nova feels sick.
"True," the woman says with a point of her finger. She sobers after a beat. "I'm so out of my depth, but I survived, so I think I can do pretty much anything after that. I wish I knew another mom, though. I wish I knew my mom."
"Me too," a Bandito replies softly. "But think— if Roscoe ever has a kid of his own, you'll be able to teach him."
Her eyes shine. "God, don't start. I can't wait to teach him everything. I'm so… wow. So happy to be alive."
Nova collapses the corpse there and re-enters his body. He's tired of seizing. It takes too much energy.
He closes the slit to the sky, sealing it away as if that might close the feeling too. It doesn’t. He hurries out of the room and down the tunnel. Passes the door scarred by his fingernails without a glance. Flicks the lanterns off and crawls up the ladder.
A guard waits at the door of his tower. Her eyes flick to the dirt coating the bottom half of his robe. He glares at her and blows past. She follows behind.
"Leave me alone," he tells her. "I need to think."
She bows. "Yes, my Bishop."
He leaves her, closes and locks his bedroom door, changes his clothes, and slithers into bed.
Leave me alone, he says in his mind, as though Torchbearer would somehow hear it. Leave me alone.
He closes his eyes, and after a long time of staring at the inside of his eyelids, he falls asleep.
Torchbearer is squatting down to a child with a leaf resting open in his palm. He briefly looks at Nova over his shoulder and grins.
Nova was not his name when this happened.
This is a memory and a dream, a truth and a dazed falsehood. Gold paints the side of Torchbearer's face. His smile is like staring at the sun.
Nova is cutting the main artery of a fish and letting it bleed out into a bucket of water. He knows every step without looking.
Torchbearer turns back to the child, and his hair is damp from sweat at the base of his neck, curled and slick black like oil.
The child leans forward, and wraps her hand around two of his dirt-smudged fingers. A month ago, her mother went back to Dema and Andre glorified her. Yesterday, she turned seven years old.
Nova firmly grips the fish by the tail and slides the back of his blade against the scales, quick strokes towards the head.
Torchbearer points at the leaf in his hand, stretches it flat with his thumb and index. "Look at the venation pattern," he says, tracing straight from the leaf to the line of his palm, "and look at the wrinkles in my hand."
"It matches!" She says, bright-eyed. She flips her hand to compare. "Mine does too!"
"It does," Torchbearer says, voice soft enough to bruise. He struggles to stay squatted and falls onto his knees. Dewy grass soaks through his pants. He stays there anyway.
"Do you know what a weed looks like when you pull it out of the ground?" He asks.
"Yeah, I do it all the time."
He tugs his sleeve down to his elbow. Bares his forearm to the child, who is enraptured by him. Of course she is. Everyone is. How could you not be?
His fingers trace down his palm to his wrist, and he points to where pale skin goes a little translucent, displaying blue veins that trail all up the inside of his arm. "Isn't that like a weed?"
"Hmm, a little. But the other side is like tree roots."
Nova smiles. He takes the fish, now scaled, and pries open the gill flaps. He doesn't need to see it to know she's right; he can imagine every ridge of Torchbearer's arms with true precision. With his fingers, he pulls out the reddish, U-shaped gill cartilage. Periodically dipping his hands into the bucket to wash away any guts. The sun warms his face.
"Oh, wow! I never noticed that, good job." Torchbearer replies, tracing the veins along his hands and arms. "It goes all the way up to my shoulders."
"How come we have roots if we're not plants?" She asks.
He hums, mulling this over for a moment. Torch takes children's questions seriously, always has. He pulls his sleeve back down. Places his hands on his dampened knees as he speaks to her.
"I think it's because we come from the same place. Like how you can tell who's written a letter from the handwriting, even when it's a brand new sentence. Like the Earth wrote us and the weeds."
The girl smiles, awe-struck. "Is that true?"
"I don't know; it might be. What do you think?"
"I think…" She bites the inside of her cheek and looks up at the sky. "It's magic."
Torchbearer chuckles. The sound settles somewhere in Nova’s chest and refuses to leave. He glances up to catch it, but all he sees is the curve of his shoulders and his boot heels pressing into his ass. "Magic works. I'm down with some magic."
"But is it really? I wanna know the truth."
"Maybe there is an answer," Torchbearer begins, tilting his head to the side, "but for now we kind of have to guess, and yours is as good as mine. Just because I'm older doesn't mean I'm always right. Time doesn't make anyone omniscient."
"I don't know what omniscient means."
"It means all-knowing, unquestionable. Nothing should ever be unquestionable, no matter how old it is."
Nova makes a shallow cut from the fish's vent and drags it over the belly to the head. He rests the fish on his knee, spreads the belly open, and begins scooping out all the innards with his index and middle fingers. "Why this memory?" He asks.
Everything freezes. The scent of sweat and rotting seaweed, the soft and distant ocean breeze brushing the tall fescue, Torchbearer and the child. Paused like a video.
Torchbearer sighs, deep and weary. The back of his head drops. "I wanted something nice tonight."
"Turn around." Nova says, and the knife and fish and child are gone.
He watches Torchbearer stand up. When he turns, his knees are dry. Nova knows this isn't real. He doesn't know why it unsettles him so much.
"Well? Here you go. Are you going to look at my face?" He asks.
But he can't. He's locked on that spot where it's wrong. There's no knife, girl, or fish, and that's fine, but Torchbearer was supposed to have knelt in the wet grass and stained his knees.
Torchbearer sighs again at his prolonged silence. "Okay," he says.
"Why do you do this to me?"
"Do what?" Torchbearer asks. Crosses his arms over his chest.
Nova doesn't look at his face. "Get in my head like this. Give me these memories."
"I miss you." He says with a shrug.
Nova scoffs. "And what, you think reminding me that you exist is going to make me miss you, too?"
Torchbearer turns his body sideways. Stares out to the horizon and steadies his breathing. "Okay,"
"You don't miss me. You're haunted by me," Nova says.
"Are those not synonyms?"
"No," Nova shuts his eyes when Torchbearer looks at him. "They're not."
"Do I haunt you too, then?"
He laughs dryly. "You stalk me."
"Of course, that's how you perceive this," Torchbearer says. "I can't just miss my closest… person."
"Person," Nova echoes.
"I was going to say friend, but that term was never right for us, was it?" Torchbearer asks, frowning. He runs a hand down his face. "Partner, counterpart, confidant—"
"—Consigliere," Nova butts in.
"Oh please, Clancy. If anything, I was your guard dog."
The name unfurls him. "Nova."
"Right. No-va." Torchbearer drags it out like he was deliberating its existence. Taps a little rhythm on his arm. "It stands to reason that I have trouble remembering. Especially here, with you in that."
Nova looks over himself. This memory dresses him in a white tee and baggy black pants, cuffed at the ankles to expose chunky combat boots. A carabiner holding a red string, a closed switchblade, and a small lighter is clipped to his belt loop.
"You're the one who put me in this. Change it if it bothers you."
"No, I want you like this." Torchbearer says this quietly, as though it would change how hard it was to hear, as though Nova would not feel the echo of the words in his chest when he wakes up.
The wind and sounds unlock, blowing softly over his hair, smelling of saltwater. Nova is still staring at Torchbearer's legs and boots. The little strip of yellow tape over his knee. Two layers of material over skin and ink, an act of protection.
Something presses outward inside Nova’s ribs, painful and slow, growing like a tumor. "Why are you doing this to me?"
Torchbearer drops his arms. "Am I such an affliction to you?"
"Yes."
He makes a small noise like a whine. "Why? I only miss you."
"Stop," Nova orders, pained.
"I can't. Can't help it. I'm sorry—"
"—Please stop," Nova is begging now, shaking his head hard enough that his temples throb. "Please don't start with the apologies."
"Can't you just look at me?" Torchbearer asks, and they are begging each other for opposite things.
Nova looks at him, and he remembers the pain of dying, the deep stab wounds under his collarbones, but somehow this is worse.
His windswept hair, the shadow along his jaw, the curve of his nose and under eyes. The memory of his face in the summer sunlight, shifted into something real and wounding.
Torchbearer is both here and in the past, both a projection and a dream. His brown eyes are big and glistening, and Nova doesn't know how it's possible for a human being to look how a warm bed feels. The thing Nova lost and never survived losing.
Torchbearer says, "I wait for you all the time," and Nova is skinned alive.
His throat contracts and his eyes burn. It's the salt in the wind and Torchbearer's hair knotted with golden sun. The feeling has no release. It grows inwards.
"You're already a scar on my soul, Torch. You don't have to keep cutting."
Torchbearer's face breaks.
Nova wakes up.
His body trembles out of bed, bone-deep tired. Iron heavy limbs, shaking like electricity spitting out of a frayed wire. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and rocks back and forth.
He doesn't cry. He doesn't know whether he's capable of that kind of thing anymore.
Torchbearer is so, so cruel.
Nova eats alone at the head of a dining table, spinning his spoon around his bowl of bone broth. His stomach still hasn't completely recovered from the prolonged years of starvation. It can only handle so much before he feels nauseated. He eats slow.
His eyes stare out to the cold edges of the room, unfocused and endless in their search for nothing in particular. A beautiful, serene void surrounds him. Emptiness is the holiest of emotions. Anything else is deviant.
This divine void is broken as the Bishop Ateles sits next to him, setting a steaming plate down. "Any progress?"
Already with the duties. He stifles a sigh. What else would there be to discuss?
"Some. I found footprints that led to the Strait, but lost track." Nova lies. "They know I'm looking, so they're being very careful. You remember."
Ateles hums, shaking their head. "Remember what?"
"Hiding. Before we were Bishops," Nova says. It's the first time he's ever brought up their shared past, but the question was strange, regardless. It should be obvious.
Ateles' neutral expression shifts to a frown. "I don't recall anything from before. You do?"
"I…" Nova trails off, confused. "Yes. Some things," he says. Everything, he keeps to himself.
"Ah. I guess one of us has to. It makes sense that it would be you."
Nova's spoon clanks against the side of the bowl. He stops spinning. "Are you saying none of the other Bishops remember being Banditos?"
"We were all Banditos?" They say, incredulous. "No wonder you're against Glorifying them on reclaim."
He raises a stained palm in disbelief. "Ateles, what do you remember from before?"
"Nothing." Ateles replies, furrowing their brow. "Nobody does. This is a gift with becoming a Bishop. You're a clean slate."
Dread floods through his body. He grinds his teeth, and brute forces his hands and feet to be still.
Keep it together. Don't let them see it.
Nova nods his head with controlled ease. "Oh. I didn't realize only I had the ability to recall the past. Most of it is gone, just… flashes. I assumed it was the same for you as well."
He hopes he sounds convincing. That the small waver in his voice isn't too obvious.
"No, nothing like that." They reply, raising a fork to their mouth and sinking pearly teeth into a steak. They swallow before speaking again, clearly attempting to find a rationale. "This is why you're our leader. You possess a wisdom we cannot access."
Nova quickly agrees with their immediate justification. "I suppose you're right."
Ateles continues eating their meal wordlessly.
How good it is to be beyond doubt.
He keeps thinking he sees him.
In the middle of the day, when he's gathered in the center of a crowd, when he's mid-lecture, when he's eating or dispersing his thoughts.
A figure with a hood up, just a shadow, just for a moment. There for a second and then gone again, but Nova knows. As though ruining his nights wasn't enough, Torchbearer needed to take his days, too.
Nova flies out to the bruised purple sky as a vulture again, blinking rapidly to the ceiling as he travels along bush and high trees. Wind glides underneath his wings, working through its rigor mortis.
He is not looking for the Torchbearer. He's not.
Nova's mission is a simple one: look for the Banditos and make sure they aren't planning on restarting the endless war. This mission is his own, of course. The other Bishops think he's searching to return them.
It's strategy. His duty. The lie sits comfortably in his mind because it has been rehearsed.
He climbs up a tree, clipping cedar branches with his talons. Rabbits and fawns scurry through the woods, and he enters their fragile world of prey-hood. He can smell through the pine where the lingering scent of people remains. Flowers and something a little dank, that natural odor of labored skin.
They've not lit a fire this afternoon despite the low chill that rings in the air. They must know he's been looking.
He shouldn't have left the dead bird at their campsite last time. He needs to be more strategic with this.
Nova slides down the bark, wings open to slow his fall. He's guided by a small imprint in the ground. Footprints. Not obvious, but enough that the grass is flattened in certain areas, and the shape of it shows the direction they were heading.
Further in the woods, deeper, and he hears a cry. It's unmistakable. A baby. He lifts himself from the earth and into the wind, soaring towards the sound.
He's not looking for him when he reaches the edge of the camp. Nova swivels the head around and takes in the sight of Banditos working and lounging around. They cover their shoulders with thick blankets, huddling around the crying baby and doing everything in their power to make him laugh. Distracted.
He's not looking, but where the hell is he? Nova circles the camp. He spots a familiar tent. A tear at the entrance, sewn back together with white thread. A bag rests near the front.
There's an antler attached to the side of the bag, broken and stained red at the top.
Nova's breath catches in his throat. Back in Dema, his hand reflexively presses on his collar. Rests his fingertips on the scarred pits near his shoulders.
The tent is open, only a tiny sliver at the bottom. If he could angle the bird in the right way, he might be able to peer inside. He crouches the vulture low to the ground. He's ought to try to use a smaller animal next time. Perhaps he could carry a dead mouse in the beak and switch to the rodents body once he arrives near their base.
Slowly, he pads close to the tent. Twists his head low. The corner of Torchbearer's bed comes to view. Fluffy striped blankets that cascade onto the tarp floor.
The sight of it, doubled with the snapped antler mere inches from his face, is proving itself to be too overwhelming. His heart pounds in his chest, and even in the vultures too. Feels the blood rush through both bodies. Alive and undead. In the gap, he sees sturdy pink knuckles reaching down and tugging boots over feet, and backs away from the tent.
He shouldn’t feel this much. It’s grotesque, unbecoming. Bishops are not meant to want. It should be impossible for a man in Nova's position to feel something so intense that it rattles him from the inside out. Upon merely seeing him put on boots. Pathetic.
He flies up into a tree. Breathes through two sets of lungs, and yet it doesn't feel like enough. No amount of air could save him from drowning. The dead bird begins to stiffen, life energy weakened by Nova's lack of concentration.
Torchbearer opens his tent and kneels down to his bag. He unzips it and rummages around. Nova focuses on gripping the talons to the branch. Ignores his heart hammering. Blinks four times, through four eyes, and focuses.
Torchbearer's back is to him, and he is perpetually thankful that he cannot see the man's face. Only the sight of the back of him is enough to cause Nova's stomach to clench. A sunburn flushes the base of his neck, a sharp pale line flashing below his collar as his shoulder blades shift beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt. It stretches across the muscles of his shoulders as he digs inside his bag. The sight sends something vicious through Nova's body.
He's packing for something. Nova creeps across the branch, hoping to see inside.
His foot steps on a weak point of the branch, and it snaps under the bird's weight. Nova flings the bird into the air and flies away.
For a second, Torchbearer's head flicks up. For a second, he knows Torchbearer saw him.
Nova flies back to Dema and drops dead.
He kneels on the concrete floor. Hard and cold against his knees. Presses his weight deeper and deeper into the floor, as if the concrete might absorb him.
He wonders if Torchbearer is at all affected by his distant presence, if he feels anything similar to what Nova experiences.
He digs his thumbs into his scars. Feels nothing. The nerves there are dead.
He presses his knees down harder. They throb, pain blooming bright and grounding, and he sighs a deep breath of relief. Feels the ache of his bones, skin taught.
It's welcome. It's a distraction.
Nova's in the tunnels underneath Dema again.
He's begun working on a rough draft to covering up the entrance points he and the Banditos used to get in with. The idea was, originally, to map out the place. Get an idea for what materials we're needed, how many men. The excuse holds well enough that he almost believes it.
This is his third day wandering without marking a single wall.
He prefers this mindless wandering to his other duties, and isolation is always justified and praised within Dema. Lantern light throws long shadows across the concrete, stretching and warping his own silhouette until he barely recognizes it. Here, at least, he does not have to perform authority. Here, he can be hollow.
He turns a corner and finds a cement room, and that's when it happens. The shift, the shadow. The air itself shifts at the sight.
Torchbearer projects himself near a pillar, half-lit, ten feet away. Real enough that the space between them feels crowded.
Nova stops breathing. Stares him down. He won't let him fade from his sight this time, not like before.
His projection is less clean than usual. This version of him is closer to how he appears in his dreams or memories; with the light scruff dusting his face and the scattering of ash across his chest. He does not move.
"Hello." Nova says, controlled, steady. "I was wondering when you'd show up."
Torchbearer swallows. His hand grips the strap of his pack too tightly. Tape across his chest that hurts to look at.
"We're you waiting for me?" He asks. His eyes are almost black in the low light. Shadows cling to his cheekbones and arched nose.
Nova shakes his head. "No, but let's not act like you being here is surprising."
Torch looks down at his feet, and a dark curl falls over his forehead, halting above his brow. Nova takes a step towards him. Slow, quiet. It's not outside of the realm of possibility for him disappear into nothingness the second he looks away.
"Always in the corner of my eye," Nova mutters.
Torchbearer's eyebrows draw together. "Are you enjoying it? Your newfound body?" he asks, gaze flicking over Nova, lingering around his shoulders, betraying him.
Enjoyment isn't something he's supposed to feel. Nova rolls his shoulders. He knows what Torchbearer is doing, and hates that it works. Nova tilts his head at him, inspecting.
Torchbearer stifles a flinch. "You're staring, Nico."
Nova takes a sharp intake, then scoffs so loud it echoes down the long empty tunnels. Cruel. So fucking cruel. "My name is Nova."
"Oh, that's what you're calling yourself now, huh? What's Nova mean, new, right?"
"What are you," — Nova waves a hand. He's messing with him, as usual, — "Yes. It means new."
"Real original." Torchbearer replies, acid on his tongue. He meets his eye and finds fire and something else, something like fear. "So what are you going to do about me, then?"
What the hell was he playing at? Nova composed himself, straightening his posture. "What I always do. Ignore you until you go away."
"Ignore me." Torchbearer repeats, deadpan. He jolts up. "Wait, ignore me?" He raises a palm and shuts his eyes. "You've seen me the other times?"
"Yes, Torch."
He flinches in full then, like he's been struck. "Fuck you," he hisses. Shakes his head and mutters a sharp string of curses under his breath.
"You're not subtle. You've never been subtle. Even back when you would come get me. Bursting down these halls with your damn fire and breaking me out. Ridiculous."
"What?" Torchbearer breathes, eyes widening.
Its a strange thing, speaking their history, when he's locked it in a cage for so long. History is something to be rejected, abandoned for the present, but Nova can't stop the tugging of memories that spill from his lips.
"And on Voldsøy, when you'd pretend to be cold only after you noticed that I was shivering. I don't know how I didn't catch on earlier. You're an obvious man."
Torchbearer's jaw slams shut, then open with a gasp. Realization across his face. "You— You're… You're not Nico."
Nova's chest gives a laugh in bewilderment.
"Clancy." Torchbearer breathes the name like it was a holy thing, like he was praying to it. He steps closer, hand outstretched. "Oh my god, Clancy."
He steps back, avoiding his touch. Glares at the man like he's lost his mind. "What—"
Torchbearer's hands hover over his mouth, eyes wide and glistening. "You're still him," he whispers, "God, you're still you."
Nova huffs dismal air. Curls his shaking hands into fists. When they started shaking, he did not know.
"I, but, you—" Torchbearer tries forming a sentence several times to no avail. He's usually so succinct, so good with words. He lands on a pitiful sound and a "Why?"
"Why what?" Nova asks skeptically. His angle is so strange this time around.
"You aren't like them, Clancy. You're not a Bishop."
This, this is familiar. This he can handle. Torchbearer must've thought he could disarm him with confusion, and then strike him with the same old pleading.
"Not Clancy, not anymore. My name is Nova."
"You're not," Torchbearer says. "I know you. I know you, and you can't."
Before Torchbearer can attempt to touch him again, Nova shuffles back. His shoes scuff against the concrete. He moves to the wall. Pats down his red robe.
"Look at me, Torch. I am."
Torchbearer's gaze slides down his body. Whatever fear he held in his eyes is replaced. Something naked flashes across his face. Want, raw and unmistakable. "You want me to think you're like Nico? After everything he did to you?"
"He did what he had to," Nova says, forcing the words past the knot in his throat. "He was a powerful leader."
"He destroyed you. He ripped you apart. You don't remember?"
Nova sighs. He remembers everything all the time. It seems all he can do is remember. "I'm not Clancy, Torchbearer. You need to listen to me."
"You haven't changed. You still hold history within you. Memories of childhood, of Trench." Then, after a pause, "Of me."
"What difference does it make? Why are you acting as though this is new information?"
Torchbearer steps closer, and closer still until Nova's arms ache to push him away. He's staring at Nova like he's see-through. "It is new, and it makes all the difference. It means you're still in there. You're still one of us."
Nova's chest tightens. "Nothing you're saying is making sense right now," he says, voice sharp. "I’m nothing like you."
"Do you really think that, Tyl—?"
Nova moves before Torchbearer could finish saying the name, fist hits the man's nose with a loud crack. He cannot steady his rage as he yells. "How dare you! How fucking dare you call me that!"
Torchbearer stutters back, hunched with a hand over his nose. He groans as he lifts it away, a stream of blood steadily flowing from his nostrils down onto the floor. It drips in a little pattern, thick red liquid seeping into the concrete.
Nova stares at it. Stares as more follow, small globs sporadically across the ground.
That's not right.
Nova comes closer, and Torchbearer steps out of his way as he bends down to touch the blood. It's warm and glossy over his fingers. He spreads it with his thumb.
This isn't how it works. It's not supposed to feel real like this. Surely Torchbearer wasn't…
In a brief stint of insanity, Nova lifts his fingers to his mouth and gasps at the metallic taste that coats his tongue.
"What the hell are you doing?" Torchbearer asks, breathless, pupils blown wide.
Nova looks up slowly. “Are you here?”
"Of course I am. I can't guide Bishops." He scoffs.
No. No, that can't be true.
Nova wildly shakes his head. Throughout the entire year, Torchbearer has plagued him.
"But… my dreams," Nova says. Panic claws up his spine. "You project into my dreams every night."
Torchbearer makes a wounded noise. "No, I don't." He says, and doesn't wipe the blood coating his mouth and chin as he stands straight. It's distracting in a way that Nova is uncomfortable with. A slow turning deep in his stomach.
He waves the thought away. "It doesn't matter. What are you doing here? Certainly not for this riveting conversation."
Torch's eyes are latched on him, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. "We needed supplies," he says, heavier, "every night?"
"Don't." Nova raises a finger. "Don't deny it."
He shakes his head. "I'm sorry. Whatever you've seen, it was of your own doing."
"You're lying." Nova says, but the heat is gone. The disbelief is fading. It wouldn’t be the first time he'd seen Torchbearer in places he wasn't.
Torchbearer reaches out again, his palm tilted up, waiting. "I'm not."
He shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't, but Nova places his hand into Torchbearer's.
This is the worst part, that he really can't stop himself. He was a picture of control, every movement precise, and yet, here he was, failing miserably at what mattered most. Torchbearer steals reason from his mind. Over and over and over again.
The hardened pad of his hand, calloused and rough, curls around Nova's delicately. Torch steps closer and runs his thumb over stained knuckles. The difference in color is shocking, like this. Ivory and pink clasping deep blacks and grays.
The blood on his face is glistening, shining on his lips and chin. They're both breathing so hard, lungs and hearts working overtime, that silence has no space to truly settle between them. The sight of Torchbearer’s blood-slicked mouth is unbearable.
Nova turns his line of sight to the plain wall when looking at their intertwined hands burns his eyes like the sun. And like the sun, with every blink, the vision remains behind his eyelids. He listens to the sound of Torchbearer breathing, of him opening and closing his mouth as he tries to think of something to say.
"I'm losing my mind." Nova says. His eyebrows pinch together. Torchbearer squeezes his hand. "I've lost my damn mind."
"Why are you doing this?" Torchbearer asks.
"That's my line," Nova replies. "I guess you don't know that though, because you weren't really there. You were never really fucking there." Another pitiful laugh. "Again. Again."
Torchbearer must be following Nova into his madness, because he brings Nova's hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles.
"I would have come for you had I known."
"You moved on, didn't you?" Nova says. He sounds pathetic, and he knows it. He's burning a hole through the concrete wall.
Torchbearer says nothing. Cold air stings Nova's skin as he rips his hand from his grasp.
"I'm such a damn fool." There's blood on his knuckles where Torchbearer pressed his mouth to it. He wipes it on his robe. "I can't believe I thought you might have missed me."
"I missed you more than anything in the world," he says. "Can you please look at me?"
His teeth grind together as a guttural growl rises from the back of his throat. "If I look at you, I'm going to hit you."
"Hit me, I don't care. I want to see your eyes."
"There's something wrong with you on a deep psychological level." Nova says. He's one to talk.
"Yes, I know," Torchbearer says through a little huff of laughter. "Please."
Weak, Nova is so damn weak, he obliges.
Torchbearer's searching eyes meet his, eyelashes wet in the corners where they caught prickling tears. His face is always such an open thing; emotion bleeds through his expression easy and plain. He's pleading through the sharp rise and fall of his chest, easing from the spike of adrenaline that Nova's sharp violence provided, and threatens to provide again.
It's not fair; even if Nova hits him again, he knows Torchbearer's look hurts more than any physical repercussions.
"Every night?" Torchbearer repeats.
Nova nods, draws his lower lip into his mouth and worries it between his teeth.
Torchbearer's eyes flick to the movement, where the corners of his mouth split his head in two tones, and remains there for a second too long to be anything other than unabashed.
"Are you going to hit me?"
Nova laughs in his face. "Beg for it, why don't you?"
Torchbearer's face turns a shade redder. He wipes the blood from his chin before it drips down his throat, the fabric around his wrist soaking the liquid in long streaks. "I have missed you. I've never not missed you; it's a pillar of who I am. Every emotion I experience is a mere branch off of my missing you."
"You're not normal." Nova says, and he's fighting off this pull in his chest that likes and relates to it. They are both such twisted individuals, made worse by the other's presence, that of course the draw to each other is endless.
"The other Banditos noticed it. Had a few, uh, interventions about it. Told them once the new Clancy comes, I'd be okay. Truth is, I don't want another Clancy. Not if it's not you."
Nova chews on the inside of his cheek. "I can't."
"You can," replies Torchbearer without delay. "You can free everyone."
The daze that Nova was trapped in, abruptly and suddenly, snapped.
"Oh, fucking hell." Nova steps back. "You don't care about me at all, do you? All you want is for me to step out of power."
Torchbearer searches his eyes again. When he finds nothing but contempt, he groans in frustration and fists through his hair, leaving it wild in places. Pacing, he walks back and forth, a thin-lipped frown on his face.
"I hate you," Nova says to this display.
Torchbearer turns, frozen, then lurches forward and kisses him.
It's rough and messy, all teeth and sharp gasps, breath breaking apart between them. Torchbearer's hands clamp on his neck, mouth warm and insistent and tasting of copper.
His blood.
The taste of it makes Nova's breath hitch, and a strangled noise escapes his throat. The feigned rejection he gives is so weak that it's laughable; just a hand lightly pushing against Torchbearer's chest with no actual strength behind it. It shifts quickly. His fingers curl, fist catching fabric, dragging Torchbearer closer with a low whine.
The noise spurs Torchbearer further, crowding him, hungry and uncoordinated.
A simple, stinging realization, delivered by the sharp crack of Nova's skull against the wall, is that neither of them remember how to do this gently.
He grabs Torchbearer by the jaw and bites down on his lip, swallowing the little broken noise he makes, the sharp inhale of breath, and takes it with a true greed. Releases Torchbearer's lip with a grunt and licks inside his open mouth.
Nova fumbles, hand sliding up Torchbearer's side, finding heat and muscle. Every point of contact sears through cloth. He lifts the bottom of Torch's hoodie to spread his palm against the heated skin underneath.
Torchbearer angles back. "My Clancy," he says, eyes fluttered shut, chin still hooked in Nova's hand. His lips are swollen, smeared red.
Clancy. The name reminds Nova of his failure, the shame, the look Torchbearer gave him when he'd offered the robe to him, the complete lack of recognition.
Nova shoves his face away.
Torch stumbles back, eyes grown wide, shocked at the sudden shift.
"Nova. You take me as I am or you don't take me at all." Nova says sharply. "What do you want?"
"You." Torchbearer says. "I want you."
Nova squeezes his eyes shut. His body aches so bad that it threatens to split him apart completely. "I can't be Clancy. Not… not yet."
"Okay," he replies, voice brightened by hope. Nova feels sick. He takes both of Nova's hands into his own, holds them to his chest, where he can feel Torchbearer's heart hammering. "I'll be here until you're ready."
"I might not ever be ready."
"I don't care. I'd wait forever." Torchbearer says, and he means it. If there is a reality where he and Clancy were immortal, Torchbearer would wait to the ends of time itself. "We can come up with an arrangement, okay?"
"An arrangement," Nova mutters, mouth still burning from the taste of Torchbearer's mouth and blood that he drew himself.
"I can convince the Banditos to move our camp closer to this entrance, if you promise you won't come for us. If you don't try to take us back in."
Nova slowly shakes his head. "Torch, I can promise only for myself. The other Bishops don't share my same… tenderness, as it were, to you all. If they find out you're nearby—"
"—How would they find out?" Torchbearer cuts him off, shrugging. "You are their leader. You put yourself as the sole Bishop responsible for us, make us your domain, and they wouldn't know a difference."
"They'd notice if their citizens begin disappearing. We can make a deal, I don't take from you, and you don't take from me."
Torchbearer frowns. Squeezes his hands. "You better than anyone know we don't take anyone, the people who leave this hell are escaping first and joining us second. I can't control what people do or don't do." He sniffs, throbbing pain finally beginning to catch up to him. "You can."
Nova raises and drops his head. "Maybe, but why risk it in the first place?"
"Too see you?" Torch says, bewildered, like its so simple. "So we can meet at night?"
"You want that, even if I can't promise you definite safety?"
"Always." Torchbearer answers so fast that Nova's head spins. "You have more power than you think. This has always been true."
Torch releases his hands with a step back, re-adjusts the backpack straps on his shoulders, looking at him with something heavy in his eyes.
Nova is used to people who look at him for the looming figure he is, knows the gaze of wanting, whether it be for power or guidance or death, but Torchbearer is not looking at him like that.
It strikes Nova, not unlike a train, that Torchbearer is looking at him like he is beautiful.
"I should head back," Nova says, throat thickened with emotion. Where Torchbearer finds the version of him that deserves this kindness, is beyond his understanding.
He wants to kiss him again. Slower, softer, the way Torchbearer deserves to be kissed. He doesn't.
Torchbearer nods, and wipes his nose. The bridge is swollen and red. He ignores the twisted part of him that blooms at the thought of it bruising tomorrow and lying to the Banditos about it. "Same time tomorrow?"
Nova perks up. Embarrassing. He runs a hand through his hair once, twice, three times. "Yeah," he agrees. I'd like that, he bites back.
"Cool," Torchbearer smiles. It burns. "Can you bring some stuff, so I have an excuse for when I head back home? Anything is fine."
"Is baby formula okay?"
His smile only grows wider. "Yeah, that would be perfect."
Nova flattens the front of his robe with his palms. He really doesn't know what to do with himself, all knotted up in a tight ball. He's getting exhausted by trying to come up with an explanation for why he feels so much all the time when he knows it shouldn't be possible. Something about Torchbearer just makes him want to be.
He watches as Torchbearer begins to say goodbye in his wordless way, with the slight kick of his head and a slow turn to the edge of the room.
Torchbearer reaches the opening, deep shadow beginning to swallow him whole, and looks over his shoulder at Nova. He slowly smiles at the devastated expression that crosses his face, all sharp canines, and winks. "See you tomorrow," he says, turning back around and heading down the hall.
Torchbearer comes to the realization, absolutely pleased with himself, that he might be a little bit cruel.