SAHLO FOLINA < tyler joseph x reader >

< 4 >

We brought Clancy back to camp, and Graham had a private meeting with him, Dina, and Amanda. They gave him a jacket - all the badges were already on it, as per usual - a map, and a yellow bandana. The rest of us were left to wait by the fire.

Most of the other Banditos were asleep, but by the time they woke up for breakfast, Clancy's meeting with the leaders was over.

The leaders had a camp meeting over breakfast and let Clancy explain the situation.

"I escaped from Dema five days ago," he'd said. "I lived under Keons. I found one of your tunnels after finding some clues you'd left on the inside. I think they were meant for somebody else..."

He paused then, and looked down. He looked as if he were about to cry, but then he took a deep breath and continued. "After I escaped, I got lost in Trench for a few days, trying to find you. Then, I saw the other escapee.

"I saw Nico, and I saw what happened - the petals, the horse, all of it. And after that, I searched for a way up the mountain... and I found it."

That was all he had to say to the group as a whole. Once the meeting was finished, Graham went over and started talking to Dina and Amanda. Max wasn't back yet.

After the meeting ended, I went over to talk to Clancy.

"Clancy." He turned and it seemed as though he recognized me, though I wasn't sure if was from Dema or the path just a few hours before. "Do you remember me?"

"You lived under Keons, didn't you?" he replied after a pause.

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm Y/N Dun. My brother, Josh, is here, too."

Clancy smiled a little as it all clicked together. "Yeah, I remember you now. I haven't seen you since we were kids. You look so different..."

Josh and I escaped Dema when he was eighteen and I was thirteen. Our parents tried to escape before us, to go find the Banditos. They failed, and soon after they died in Dema. We were sure it was murder, but we could never prove it. The Bishops did nothing about it - not even Keons. They just buried them and moved on as normal.

That was the last straw for us, and we escaped with the Banditos help soon after. We'd been in Trench ever since.

We were friends with Clancy before - not best friends, but still. He was Josh's age, but I was closer with him than Josh was. Josh didn't even know it was Clancy until I told him.

"So, what happened?" I asked. "How did you find the clues? Did you know who they were meant for?" Clancy looked down again, and I realized I'd hit a nerve. "Sorry; I didn't mean-"

"Do you remember Echo?" he asked, interrupting me.

I vaguely did. She lived under Keons with us. She was two years older than me, and I think I remembered her mostly because of her name; it was so unique and strange in our monotonous world. I nodded. "Sort of, yeah."

"After you escaped," Clancy explained, "Echo and I started theorizing about where you went. I thought you were dead, but she said that the Banditos helped you get out.

"They-You were just a legend back then, so I didn't believe her. I thought she was crazy. But that put the idea in her head, and after that, she was dead set on escaping. I wanted to stay; Keons wasn't that bad, and everyone else seemed happy. But she wasn't. Not after that.

"We... We ended up together, eventually. We were dating for a while, and then she contacted you and told you she wanted to escape, but you never got back to her. She waited for weeks.

"Then, I found out about it, and we... we had a fight. She ran out, and I let her go. I didn't hear from her the next day, and that night... they found her dead in her room. She... She had-"

I could tell this part was particularly difficult for him to talk about, and I was pretty sure I knew how she died based on context, so I cut him off. "You don't have to go into detail; I think I know what happened to her."

He nodded, wiped away the tears that were starting to fall, and continued. "Anyway, after that, I was completely broken. I started to hate you guys; I thought you abandoned her, and that's why she was dead. I thought it was my fault, too, but I didn't want to admit it.

"And then one day I found something - a clue, hidden somewhere near her room. It was obviously from you.

"I kept searching for more, and I found them; they were hidden in places where only she would've seem them."

"But she didn't," I said.

He shook his head. "She never found them. But after she died... I realized what she was talking about - why she wanted to escape. So, I took the clues, and I left. I wrote some letters, too - to send back at some point. Wake someone else up to the oppression of Dema."

"Where are they now?" I asked. He pulled them out of the bag he was carrying and handed them to me. I skimmed them. "These will definitely inspire some new escapees; you should show them to Graham."

Clancy took them back and nodded. "Alright. I'll go talk to him. I'm... I'm glad you're alive."

I smiled at him. "I'm glad you are, too."

He left, and as he went, I managed to dig up a memory of Echo. I was around six, which would make her eight. We were laughing at something. I couldn't remember what.

"Echo!" her mother suddenly yelled. "We have to go!"

We were on a tight schedule in Dema; they controlled our every move. But Echo wanted to play. "But me and Y/N-"

"Echo!"

She left with a huff, then Josh came for me. After that, we didn't see each other much.

We did what they told us - the Bishops - and we did it without question.

Except for Echo.

Maybe Clancy was wrong about her only wanting to escape after we did.

Maybe she always knew she didn't belong in Dema.

••••
•I DON'T MIND AT ALL LEAN ON MY PRIDE I'M A LION•
-Jay