Chapter Text
The first time Josh ever fell in love was when he was seven years old.
Music was always banned in Dema.
However, when Josh was looking for a ball that had rolled under his Fathers bed, he found something unexpected.
A drum kit.
Josh never thought his Dad would hide something like this — something that could cause so much trouble.
Josh always wanted to play music. Lisden, his Bishop, didn’t like that. Josh would hum, tap, sing, anything — Lisden would call the Glorious Gones — victims of Vialism. They were seized corpses. Mere hollow, possessed impressions of what once was, bent to the evil bidding of the Bishops.
They would drag Josh away. He would always remember the big silver needle being pushed to his temple.
“Music is putrid, Joshua. It is blatant disobedience.” They chanted.
The Glorious Gones would be ordered to pull Josh back to the white room, as Josh called it to experiment with him. They drew blood. Injected. Asked too many questions. Got too close.
“This is for the greater good, Joshua. You will help lots of people who are sick.”
Josh kicked away, trying to escape from their grasp. Lisden called anyone who wasn’t a Gone ‘sickly’.
The needles made his head spin.
Josh would then forget everything. His name, where he was, his family. But most important of all, music.
It would all come back to him, leaking like cracks in the concrete towers of the land he resided. The inky memories pool in the back of his head.
A reminder.
Then the cycle would continue.
And so, Josh never mentioned the drums to his Father, or anyone. For years, he kept silent. Silence was needed to survive in Dema, after all.
Both of his parents succumbed to vialism the year Josh turned 14. His father took his secret to his neon grave.
For 7 years, he never spoke a word.Not to anyone. Like a cog in the machine, his silence only fueled the Bishops’ power.
That was until he met Tyler.
Josh was roaming the other districts during his designated period for socialization. Josh wandered looking anywhere else but down, needing an escape. He wandered into Nico’s district — the ruler Bishop.
‘Nico and the Niners’, Josh remembers their infamous title.
He looks up at the towers and wonders.
‘If I leapt from Nico’s tower, how far would I fall?’
He thinks too hard until he slams into an unknown force, knocking himself and whatever — no, whomever, he collided with to the ground. This forced away the thought.
Josh rubs his eyes and scrambles off of the rough concrete. His eyes meet another pair.
Brown — yet so, so green.
“I-I’m so sorry,“ the boy apologizes, tripping over his words.
Josh notices the hesitation in the others voice, like he is waiting for the worst to happen. Which, in Dema, everyone is.
His hesitation was different.
“No, that’s my fault, I wasn’t looking.” Josh replies, looking down at his feet. He tended to do that a lot.
‘Lisden doesn’t like that,’ Josh thought.
He forced himself to look upward towards the other.
“I’m Tyler, under rule of Nico,” he said.
Tyler.
Under rule of Nico.
Josh swore he would never forget it.
Could never forget it.
“I’m Josh, under rule of Lisden. It’s nice to meet you.” Josh doesn’t actually know if it was nice to meet Tyler, — simply a formality.
“Lisden? That’s six towers away going West!” Tyler exclaimed in shock. West is the route every citizen took.
A clockwise rotation. Parts of the machine.
“Only two when going East. I like a shortcut.” Josh states, proudly.
Josh had always liked the East.
“Well, Josh, why don’t you stick around for a little while?” Tyler asks, but it’s more of a statement. Like he knows the words that will spill from Josh’s lips before he even opens them to breathe.
They talked for hours, about Dema, their Bishops, Vialism, everything.
Josh finds himself pouring out to Tyler. He tells him about his parents, Lisden’s experiments and punishments, and the drums. Tears fall from his eyes.
The words from his mouth seem to fall faster.
Tyler hugs him and dries Josh’s eyes. The pair soon returns to silence.
Josh usually hated silence. But this silence was not viscous.
He could fill his lungs.
Josh falls in love for a second time.