Chapter Text
Tyler shivers in the crisp evening air, the faint light of the setting sun not quite enough to chase away the chill that comes with the dusk. He begrudgingly makes his way across the courtyard, numb fingers holding himself tightly as he draws in on Nico’s tower.
Today is a Monday, which means he has an evening session with the Bishop. Just as he does every other day.
Nico’s tower stands impending in the distance, a giant monolith of grey stone, its ugliness somewhat hidden by the low light. While it may seem like a dull, lonely structure to someone else, it has become like a second home for Tyler. A place where he spends countless hours with Nico and only occasionally the other Bishops, a place where he can learn and pray and become a better citizen of the city.
Dema, his only home, home to hundreds of others, yet his place in particular seems to stand out to the Bishops. Since he was a child, he has been given extra opportunities to learn and uphold Vialism, a privilege he has always been thankful for.
His mother had been one of Vialism’s greatest supporters, especially garnering the attention of Nico, the Bishop to her district. She had been an elite, attending private sermons only held for the best of the best. The Bishops adored her, Nico in particular feeling a certain praise towards having such a successful subject.
So, it was no surprise, when his mother joined the Glorious Gone only a few years after Tyler’s birth, that Nico took him in and made him into a protégé. A little star citizen.
He was raised to perfection, something Tyler is extremely proud of. He likes the attention of the Bishops, likes that he’s their favourite, even if some of the lessons they put him through make him hurt. He tries not to think about how his circumstance is situational, how he's just lucky to have been born into this position, and instead clings to the idea that he is special in some way. That the Bishops chose him for a reason.
And in some ways, he definitely is special. His sessions with Nico are unlike that of any citizens in his district, he knows. His treatment has always been different, been more intense. As a child, the Bishops had perfected a cocktail of neon from the vials mixed with a sample of Nico’s blood, which was fed to him regularly.
It tasted like salted flames, rubbed his tongue like ash, and made his mouth burn like the sun. He always refused to drink it, much to the dismay of the Bishops. Whenever he sulked like that, Nico would have his back whipped until he cooperated. Suffice to say, it didn’t take long for Tyler to learn to just suck it up and drink when he was told.
He is still made to drink it most days, though significantly less than when he was younger. Tyler likes to tell himself it’s because he doesn’t need it anymore, because he’s gotten better, become a better citizen, though his rationality whispers that the drink simply has no effect on him anymore. It doesn’t run fire through his veins, and the once-occasional feeling of Nico’s presence has now become a constant. He can always feel when Nico is nearby. Nowadays, the feeling is more like a numb, lulling feeling that drags him down, down down. The senselessness is calming, really, though the searing headache it brings is not. It scared him at first, when the side effects of the drink began to shift away from their norm, though the constant migraine and numbing sensation had soon grown on Tyler; it became his new norm.
(Sometimes, he even finds himself craving the drink.)
With the reduction of his elixir, though, the Bishops found other ways to continue to mould Tyler into their perfect vessel. When drinking it wasn’t enough, Nico had taken to simply injecting the neon straight into his veins. The thought alone makes Tyler shudder involuntarily.
Even now, he has to be strapped down, the vials making him thrash and kick and scream, desperately trying to escape from the fire that burns through his veins, scorching all his nerves as if he’s been dumped into pure lava. Later, the drag of the neon would pollute his brain, making him nauseous and at times deathly ill.
It’s shameful, really, that he hasn’t been able to control himself yet. A good vessel wouldn’t cry and flail while the Bishops are helping, and Tyler is starting to become a bad example. Part of him hopes the torture of the injections would fade like his elixir did, though he fears the Bishops would just find another way to induce the feeling, as they did last time. He fears, if he worsens further, Nico might retaliate and find a new, worse punishment to keep him in line.
He doesn’t want anything else to be taken from him. Nico has already taken so much, but ultimately Tyler understands it’s for his own good.
When he was younger, he would journal his thoughts, spin them into little poems and let his imagination run wild. Nico did not like this, did not want his protégé to learn freedom or expression, and when Tyler continued to write against his demands to stop, Nico painted his hands in a murky, black ash that Tyler knows will never come off. He cried endlessly about it at the time, but the Bishop had called it a lesson to be learnt. Do not write, or you will be punished. Those marks are proof and a reminder, Nico had told him.
Tyler took his message to heart, and never wrote again. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t express himself in other ways.
If Tyler couldn’t write his thoughts, he would simply say them. Sing them. Come up with melodies and weave his thoughts together into gracious songs that comforted him within the cold, grey walls of Nico’s tower. It was his favourite thing, singing. It made him feel better than writing ever had.
And maybe that’s why Nico took his voice away, as well.
Black marks wrapped around his neck and over his throat, a signal to not sing. A signal to suppress, to hide, and obey the Bishops, who knew what was best for him. They know Vialism best, after all, and Tyler is still only an amateur. They know Tyler more than he knows himself.
He does still speak, for the most part, as his sentence only prevents him from singing. Over the years though, it shifted from normal conversations to brief answers to minute moments of communication, then to none at all. He still speaks to the Bishops, of course, but he can guarantee the neighbours of his new apartment room have yet to hear his voice.
It’s a strange concept to him, living on his own. While he still has his evening sessions in Nico’s tower, he now lives and sleeps in his own room, his own place. Up until a few years ago, he had been living in Nico’s tower all his life, until the Bishops decided he would benefit from living like a standard citizen and assigned him to a room. He gets to work as well, helping facilitate the laundry services of his district and washing citizens’ clothes.
For the most part, he is a normal citizen. He is normal, until he goes to meet Nico every evening.
Tyler pulls himself away from his thoughts, directing his gaze up from the cold cement as he arrives at the base of Nico’s tower. He shivers, the night chill starting to really set in, and enters through the door.
Climbing the steps up to where Nico awaits him, Tyler listens to the echoey sound of his steps against the pristine stone steps. Faintly, he can imagine a soft melody to accompany the lonely rhythm, then quickly shakes his head to rid himself of such thoughts. They are not for him.
Arriving at his destination, Tyler pauses at the ornate door before giving it a gentle knock.
“Come in,” comes Nico’s gravelly voice. Tyler does so, closing it behind him and turning back to face his leader. “Clancy,” the Bishop calls soothingly, and Tyler cringes in the back of his mind.
Tyler will never understand, he thinks, why Nico made such an effort to rename him after his mother’s death. ‘Tyler’ had been his birth name, it was what she wanted for him, and it was going to remain as his name. Nico believed otherwise, and had attempted to rewrite Tyler’s identity. The other Bishops had followed suit, not wanting to disagree with their accomplice, and soon Tyler had become ‘Clancy’ to the world of Dema.
He’s disappointed in Nico for the name change, he really is, but he also despises himself for not being able to accept it. But why? It’s just his name. The only advocate for his original name was gone and there is no reason for him to care this much over such a trivial topic. It makes him angry, that he can’t heed to the Bishops’ ways for him and continues to spite them to this day. So angry at himself, he feels, for having sentiments over a word that doesn’t matter. Even if he may be Clancy to everyone else, he’s still Tyler in his own way, and that is enough for him. It has to be.
“Nico, my Bishop. I’m thankful to see you.” Tyler bows his head in respect, his ritual greeting. Nico stands, handing him a small chalice.
“Likewise, my son. Now here, drink your elixir. There is much to be done tonight.” The Bishop steps back slightly as Tyler takes the drink into his stained hands. He downs it, the pale, pure substance giving off a slightly reddish glow. Tyler hands Nico back the chalice, gasping in a breath of air as he feels the familiar fog start to haze over his mind. He can feel a headache coming on.
He’s led to another room, one much less fancy and more-so worn down. Grey walls are littered with dark stains, and the floor is decorated with splotches of dark, dried red. The familiar table laced with leather straps awaits him, sitting slightly off to one side of the relatively small room.
Without waiting to be told, Tyler sits down on the table and watches as Nico seemingly pulls a small vial out of nowhere. The pure white substance glows brightly against Nico’s sooty hands. Even without making contact, Tyler can already feel the burn and sway of the neon in his mind. Nico looks up at him with empty eyes.
“Come, Clancy. We’ll see how long you manage to hold it this time. Understand that it is not hurting you, rather it is you who pushes the feeling to be that way. Instead of fighting, embrace it. Embrace, and you will hurt no more.” Nico holds out the vial for him to take.
Nervously, Tyler reaches his hands and tentatively hovers his hands around the glass. It’s like there is an aura surrounding it, a force field that prevents him from getting any closer without singeing his hands. The neon is actually heatless, he knows, but it doesn’t stop his hands from feeling like they are melting as he takes the small vial from Nico’s hold.
It's like holding a burning coal in his hands, the pain searing at his nerves as he grits his teeth. Nausea floods his mind, mixing with the elixir from earlier and making his vision swim dangerously. He steels his eyes shut in an attempt to ignore the feeling, though the dread and anguish only pools in his stomach. He feels as if he is going to vomit, and instead brings his attention back to the agony in his hands.
Bad move, he realises, and the pain mixes with his nausea mixes with his headache mixes with his stomach and suddenly he can’t take it anymore, dropping the vial and gasping out in pain as the precious glass shatters against the rough floor.
Tyler can’t see Nico’s face from the way he’s curled in on himself, clutching his hands to his chest and stomach, but he can tell the Bishop has begun to scowl. “No improvement, I see,” he speaks softly, though Tyler can hear the disappointment underneath. “We’ll just keep practicing until you can do it. We can take all night if we have to.”
Tyler almost wants to gape his mouth and protest, not wanting to be around the sickly air of the vials any longer, but he just closes his eyes and nods.
He feels a certain sinking in his woozy stomach as Nico pulls out another vial.
-–—–-
It must be well into the early hours of morning by the time Tyler makes it back to his apartment. His vision flips with every step and he feels as if he’s going to pass out any moment. He has to brace one hand against the wall as he walks to avoid stumbling, his breath quick and heavy. The freezing night no longer has any effect on him, his whole body numbed by pain and the icy air.
By the end of the session, the floor was a destroyed mass of broken glass and glowing white splatters, and with each dropped vial Tyler could feel himself getting worse. He was holding them for shorter and shorter periods, the nerves in his hands fried and his composure threatening to fall with every second. He could tell he was going to be there all night at that rate, especially with Nico’s patience thinning.
He isn’t quite sure how he did it, but he managed to pull through and hold a vial long enough to appease Nico. He’s fairly certain he blacked out for a moment as Nico reclaimed it from his trembling grip, because the Bishop reluctantly sent him home afterwards, despite clearly wanting to continue now that he had made some progress.
Finally, he’s approaching his apartment block. He has yet to go up the stairs and onto the second floor, where his room lies, but Tyler’s happy to focus on that issue when he makes it inside.
Looking up from his dazed stupor, he sets his eyes on the familiar building. It in no way resembles a home, with its dreary grey walls and unimaginative design, a twin to every other building in the city. Yet, despite its subpar appearance, Tyler finds a strange comfort in its emptiness.
The common home for a Dema citizen, a normalcy in his otherwise privileged life. It’s nice to know that even if he’s special in the Bishops’ eyes, he’s still allowed to live like anyone else.
Tyler’s breath fogs in front of him, bringing him back to awareness again. He looks over the building one last time before continuing his exhausted journey.
…There's a lone vulture sitting on his rooftop, peering down at him with beady, yellow eyes.
They lock eyes, the bird’s gleaming gaze boring into him, and Tyler has to tear his face away before the creature can make him feel any more uncomfortable.
Shaking, unsure whether it’s from the cold, the pain, or the strange vulture, Tyler hastily crosses the rest of the way into his apartment building. He reaches his room at last, quietly closing the door behind him as to not further disturb his poor neighbours. The bathroom is his first stop, where he finally throws up today’s meals. The acid pours out his throat, and Tyler swears he can see specks of glowing white in the bowl.
Pulling away, he cleans himself up and starts getting ready for bed. He can still barely feel his hands, making changing into his nightwear rather challenging. After taking an admittedly embarrassingly long time to change clothes, he dumps the day gear into his laundry basket before drowsily drifting over to his bed.
He passes by the window, as he does every night, but a flash of colour makes him stop dead in his tracks. He whips his head to the side, looking out the glass.
A man, dressed in dark olive greens and yellow stripes, a yellow bandana pulled up over the lower half of his face, is standing on the ground outside and holding a flaming torch, looking directly up at him.