Chapter Text
Dema is almost beautiful in the winter, with all the harsh edges of the architecture smoothed over by snow. How the distant glow of the sun bleeding through the clouds turns the sky a pale pink in the late afternoons. Silence blankets the streets that summer would otherwise transform into a stifling stone oven, so that instead frost feathers over window panes and metal street lamps. Sometimes, when steam curls from a passing cup of hot coffee or the lips of a stranger, Clancy imagines they are angels. Ethereal and impatient to depart.
The neon that glows from shop windows and street corners takes on a softer tone. Like its voice too is dampened by the cold. The otherworldly chill clings to everything. To the benches in the park, to the reddened noses and cheeks of worshipers ducking into church buildings, to Clancy’s outer layer of clothes. He feels the cold radiating up through the rubber soles of his shoes. He should really buy thicker socks, he thinks. But it’s always a fleeting fancy.
He has no time to hesitate now. He has somewhere to be.
“The self is a terrible master,” Keons teaches from his pulpit to the gathered crowd all dressed in their warmest clothes.
The more devout might find comfort in the self-denial of these additional layers, but as the months wear on into the deepest parts of the frigid end of year, even the most fervent devotees find they cannot sustain the sacrifice for long. Clancy gets by with an additional jacket and sometimes a scarf, wrapped tight enough to fend off the cold but not too tight as to set his mind wandering. He would perhaps benefit from a pair of gloves.
These days his hands are always a chapped shade of red, but there are worse colors they could be.
“The self refuses to relinquish to other masters no matter how much we try to deny its cravings and desires.” Keons’ gentle voice is soothing against the fever pitch of Clancy’s mind.
With winter comes the longer nights, and some days, it’s like the sun never comes out at all. The world remains locked in the eerie gloaming hours, giving Clancy a sense of careful unreality. He only wishes to see his shadow cast stark upon the ground again, a reassurance of his own existence.
He wonders how they fare in the wilderness of Trench, but it's a wicked thing to even consider within these sacred walls.
“Self demands that we attend to its needs at the expense of others. It demands that we attend to its needs at the expense of our very souls.” Keons presses his hands to his chest, that place where the soul is said to reside.
Clancy always feels his deepest soul aches further down in his guts, and he wonders that some link the heart to things like love and grief. For him, it’s always a blow to the stomach when his emotions overtake him. But maybe he too closely equates his appetite with the ability to feel these days. Like if he can starve the craving long enough, it will go away. But there's always the drag path in his mind, the moment Nico seized him in the camp, and the broken heart he feels he left behind there somewhere in the yellow grass.
“The practice of self-denial teaches us to put this old master of our souls to death,” Keons teaches, and though the words are frightening, there is a comfort to the idea.
“Sometimes we must take up arms against the self. To ensure the survival of our soul.”
Clancy would like to silence the voice in his head that is always in need of some new fix. The day before a fellow worshiper brushed Clancy’s shoulder to convey their silent passing behind his back, and his mind went blank from the warmth of the touch. As simple as that. But the pair of guiding hands were never far from him in Trench, and now his appetite has grown.
Or when, on his first night free from the tower, he was crossing the street alone beneath the fluorescent glow of street lamps, and his feet began to slip. How his mind flashed to images of his head cracking against pavement, blood spilling out into snow. The rush that it afforded was not unwelcome. Even as his own excitement frightened him. The old thrill of emotions he grew so used to beyond the walls.
“I cannot always tell you, my children, how best to silence these insidious longings within your own minds. Sometimes even I struggle.” What a kind admission, they all must think, surely. Clancy does. To have their Bishop admit to his own faults, it is why Keons often inspires such devotion. “Sometimes, I find that the only way is to become empty. Empty yourselves and become the expectant vessel.”
Here he turns to the softly glowing furnace, the one source of warmth in the room aside from the bodies gathered on the austere pews. But they are careful not to linger too close to one another, in fear of inspiring any kind of unnecessary solace. To need is to already admit defeat.
“Draw strength from the knowledge that all things pass away.” And Keons passes the blackened tongs into the furnace and draws out the vial, shining in its holy unlight.
“For the fleeting breadth of life is what gives death such peculiar meaning.”
Then Keons takes the glass into his bare hands, as though it could not possibly burn him, and begins to shape it. They all know the significance of the heatless fire, and Clancy tries. He longs desperately to see the beauty in it that he once did. But his faith has been broken for some time, struck down by his own incessant desires.
By his foiled attempts at escape.
“No craving will ever remain satisfied,” the Bishop reminds them. “If you drink a cup of water, will you never again thirst? If you eat a meal, will you never again hunger? If you seek out the comfort of another, will you never again know loneliness?”
Clancy burns with shame, as though his beloved Bishop speaks directly to him. He has clung too closely in these last weeks, since his return from the treacherous beyond. Always at Keons’ side like a speck of dust caught on the hem of his robes. What a nuisance he must be.
“To truly know peace, you must learn to deny these things. Are you not exhausted by them, little children? The unending rush to fulfill what can never satisfy? Does it not drain you?”
Several heads nod around the room, a few voices even lift in guiltful cries. Clancy leans forward in his pew with his hands clasped above his knees in unspoken prayer. In moments like these, surrounded by the affirmations of his fellow citizens, he believes he would do anything to silence his mind. He wishes the fervor would carry him for more than just a few hours after he leaves this place, but he knows that it will fade too soon.
Because in the quiet of his own apartment, he is not as brave. He is not as devout as he would like to believe. And when the siren song of self-destruction calls to him in the night hours, the ugly hand of Self holds him locked in fear.
“Empty yourself, free yourself,” Keons pleads with his congregation, “and find rest.” He presents the shape of the neon gravestone to them, for their consideration. Unlit as yet because there is no grave for it to stand beside as sentinel, but there could be. If any of them would be brave enough to take that step.
Clancy returns to his apartment with the sermon still hanging like a haze before his eyes. Snowflakes cling to his shoulders, to the toes of his shoes. He dusts even more from his hair, which has grown long since his return. Outside the window at the end of the hall, the winter world has begun to turn a shade of bitter blue. One that he can feel inside his bones.
He puts his hand to the doorknob but hears music within. His heart stutters in wonder, and for a moment, he wonders if someone has come to collect him. One of the banditos, perhaps. Someone who has infiltrated the city countless times before.
But it’s a fleeting fancy.
No one would be so bold as to play that music here. No one in their right mind, anyway.
He opens the door instead to find his old shadow waiting.
“Nico.”
Vulture wings flash black across the foggy window pane. The Bishop turns, his face obscured by a smoky veil. The screen that feeds images into Clancy’s apartment from Dema’s own transmission towers now shows blurry footage of an impromptu concert lit by the glow of many torches. Nico has paused the image so that the streaks of yellow obscure in a blur of brilliant movement.
The neon shining from the center of the room casts the Bishop’s afterimage upon the wall, larger than life and growing still as he approaches.
“Hello, Clancy.”
He puts a hand to Clancy's cheek and presses an icy kiss to the side of his head. The greeting is a new imposition, because he knows that Clancy can neither return the gesture or refuse it. It is a practice in denial. Because every time it happens, Clancy wants to turn and vomit. So he keeps his stomach empty instead.
Nico holds out a hand towards a nearby chair, allowing for the illusion of invitation. But Clancy knows it is truthfully a command, and he does not hesitate to obey. It’s easier that way. The Bishop turns back to the small, grainy screen and allows more of the footage to play.
“Such bravery,” the Bishop whispers, “such spirit!” His voice echoes through the darkened room, thunder on the mountain heights Clancy knew however briefly. The video pauses again on an image of his own face.
Nico turns to consider him with a knowing smile. “Such… contempt.”
“To what,” Clancy swallows bile, swallows his heart which has leapt into his throat, “do I owe this great honor?”
He keeps his eyes downcast out of deference.
“My dear Clancy.”
He hears the sweep of robes along the concrete floor, like the brush of a canvas tent flap. His stomach pangs with silent longing. His heart a dead thing inside him.
“I think we will both benefit from this conversation all the more if we agree not to lie to one another.”
Standing over him now, Nico takes his chin and forces it up so that their eyes meet, so that Clancy is forced to reckon with the reality of the nightmare before him. “Don’t you?”
Clancy swallows, feels the press of fingertips claw into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. “I agree, it would save time.”
And through the veil, Clancy sees that Nico smiles with a kind of condescending pride. Clancy might be able to fool Keons with his plays at devotion. He may even sometimes be able to deceive himself, to fall back into old habits of belief and self-hatred. But he cannot lie to the man who knows his own soul better than any other.
Nico has cut Clancy open and spread out the gray matter of his mind, sifted him like sand through an hourglass. He’s studied him and known him. Broken him and reshaped him again. Whatever he is now, he is a thing of Nico's own creation.
“I have a problem, child,” Nico says and releases Clancy’s chin. He pulls up a second chair so that the two men sit across from one another, the neon vials flickering between them. “A problem that began the moment your precious Torchbearer stole your devotion from the righteous path of vialism and turned you to this-”
He gestures vaguely at the screen, disgust in his tone as he spits, “Maudlin act of rebellion.”
With another flick of his hand, the screen fades to black so that Clancy instead observes a reflection of his own face. The fiery light and excitement from those electric moments before his escape has faded into the grim despair he sees before him. He forces himself to look. A sick sensation of pleasure in his own fall from grace.
“If I were not a shepherd of lost souls, I would have destroyed you and your entire camp of pathetic insurrectionists.” It's a meaningless turn of phrase, "shepherd." Nico will not proselytize to Clancy, who knows better than to believe that Nico cares for the lives under his care.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
“But here you are.” Nico folds his hands together in his lap, poised like a patient teacher with a particularly dimwitted student. “Ask me why that is. Ask me why you are still alive.”
Clancy fights to catch his breath, which has left him far behind in its efforts to flee this present place as he wishes that he could. “Why am I still alive?”
“Because I’ve realized something,” Nico leans forward, almost conspiratorially. “Watching your little display, I realized what it is that Keons has seen in you for years. And when I brought you home, I was indeed very impressed with your return to devotion. Your agonized pleas for forgiveness, your re-committal of your soul to the way. You were very good. I myself was nearly moved to tears.”
Clancy is not unaware of the amusement in Nico’s tone. The shame that burns inside his skin is nearly unbearable.
“You certainly convinced Keons,” Nico continues with a slight chuckle, and Clancy feels the words like a blade sliding into his gut. His beloved mentor, Clancy cannot bring himself to hate him even now. “But unfortunately not all of our citizens are so convinced of the reality of your repentance. Many of them were… inspired by your act of defiance.”
Clancy licks his chapped and bloodied lips. He cannot deny that this had once been his hope, but now to hear these words, it feels only like a cord tightening around his throat.
“And if you, Clancy, can defy the Bishops and escape into the night without consequence,” Nico holds out his hands to Clancy, as if to encompass the pathetic image of him now, the wretched captive that he is, “then what is to prevent them from doing the same? What is to prevent our entire city, our way of life, from collapsing?”
Emboldened either by his own self-loathing or his growing sense of cynicism, Clancy says, “It must be a fragile system if it can be brought down by a single song.”
Nico stands, and Clancy cannot stop himself from flinching. He spoke out when he shouldn’t have. He should know better than this. But the thrill of fear is the first thing he’s truly felt in so long. It’s almost a relief to know he’s still capable of it.
Nico approaches him and sets a hand on Clancy’s shoulder. “Yes, it is fragile, but not in the way that you imagine.”
Clancy keeps his eyes forward, his hands resting still on his knees as he prepares himself for the pain. “And how should I imagine?”
With a gentle touch, Nico reaches down to take one of Clancy’s hand in his own. He spreads out the narrow, nimble fingers along his tepid palm, considering them with carrion-bird interest.
“You should imagine every rebel in those camps dead, hanging like banners from our city walls. Your beloved Torchbearer dragged through the city streets as an example to all those who believe they can stand against our way of life.”
He snaps one of Clancy’s fingers like a twig.
Shoving his other fist into his mouth to stifle the scream, Clancy doubles over in his chair with unwanted tears already wet on his cheeks.
“I would take great pleasure in demonstrating your hero’s mortality to our citizens. Your little song urged our people to rebel against our control, but would you like to find yourself in a real war, Clancy?”
“No,” Clancy gasps, but his word is cut off by another snap of bone. Now he’s on his knees, his mutilated hand still in the Bishop’s grasp.
“Do not lie to me!”
“I don’t want to be the reason that innocent people die!” Clancy cries out through the sobs. He grits his teeth, ears ringing, as he fights to regain control of himself.
“You think these banditos are innocent? They poisoned your mind and turned you into a weapon!” Nico wraps his hand around Clancy’s fingers and squeezes until the man on the floor screams.
When Nico finally releases him, Clancy wilts, his forehead resting on the ground.
“Forgive me, Father. I don’t deserve your correction.”
Nico scoffs. “If only the Torchbearer could see how easily you are swayed from his cause. Tell me, does he realize the extent of your cowardice? That such a little pain can reduce you to this blubbering?”
Clancy knows better than to answer aloud. He accepts the humiliation.
“I do not wish to hurt you, Clancy. I want us to work together, for the benefit of all Dema.”
Rocking himself, Clancy dares to ask, “What must I do?”
Nico takes the collar of Clancy’s jumpsuit and lifts him from his stooped position. “You are going to do what you do best. You are going to sing. But now, you are going to smile, and you are going to tell the world that you are happy and content here in the city. You are going to become a bright beacon of all we hold dear. Do you think you can manage that? Being happy?”
Clancy swallows as he clings to his broken hand. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
He bows his head. “I’ll convince them.”
But Nico shakes him until Clancy peers up again through hazy, pain-streaked tears. “No, dear boy,” the Bishop coos and strokes the supplicant’s cheek, “convince me.”