Chapter Text
Tetra’s dear friend and his younger sister settle together in Tetra’s bed for the duration of their venture home. The hero utterly ravaged his meal at supper, bruised and scarred by his sister’s rescue with little nourishment in between.
He’s changed a lot since that first time she met him on Outset’s summit. He is thinner, paler, less rosy, with dark bags under his eyes. Still, he radiates just as much warm sweetness and purity.
She envies that. Even after everything, he’s still… cleaner than she is. There’s still unmistakable light and life in his eyes.
Meanwhile, Gonzo spent the greater part of the evening reminding her that she had no such light.
You look worn, Miss Tetra.
You don’t look yourself, Miss Tetra.
You should eat, Miss Tetra.
Before Mum passed on, Gonzo was like a brother of sorts. He’d play tricks on her, she’d try to wrestle him (he always won, with his staple move: snatching her up under the arms and hanging her over the side of the ship while she screamed and clung to his wrists, him laughing until Tetra inevitably started crying – it’s a fond memory now).
Then, when she was eight and Gonzo sixteen–
After that, she addressed him like a colleague, though not even a superior. He didn’t question it… tried to ask about Mum once or twice, how she was feeling and all. She made sure, even when she was as small as Aryll, that he knew never to ask her again. Otherwise, he played along with her charade of being as tough as Mum, until it just… stuck. And everyone treated her as though she were her mother’s age and had her mother’s maritime expertise.
Mum didn’t ever cry much. Not even on that last day, with Tetra curled into her side with her brand new treasure around her neck.
If Mum didn’t cry on the brink of death, why should Tetra cry over some… repugnant, hideous creature doing whatever repugnant, hideous creatures do?
It’s not as though she’s a very moral person either. She’s threatened and attacked others for information and for valuables. She’s dealt her own deal of harm and fear upon others. Such is the nature of pirates. And rape is just the nature of repugnant, hideous creatures.
The moment the word appears in her mind, harsh and grotesque, she shoots up from the sleeping cot on her floor and races for the outside, for the cool night air, to face the freezing black abyss underneath the ship.
She hunches over the side and empties her stomach.
She sputters, and only straightens when the urge leaves her.
The world is black and endless from where she stands. The sea whispers and breathes around her, gentle and familiar.
She wishes to absorb just a small bit of it into her mind, to silence the sounds of his voice and to evade the feelings of being crushed and torn to bits from the inside. To liken what he did to just another tiny insignificant thing that is laughable in comparison to the size and the behavior of the sea.
It’s nothing. He’s nothing. But she still feels him. Bruises are not just bruises – the ghosts of his hands stay firm on her, and it makes her want to scream, to hurt, to destroy.
Once again, her only option is to cry.
Her crew sleeps like the dead. Well, except for Senza. But he can’t hear her all the way out here.
Mum never cried over trivial things like this. Nonetheless, Tetra longs for her. She wouldn’t be cross or displeased if she saw Tetra like this. She’d simply help her pull herself together and go back to sleep. Brush the tips of her long nails over the bridge of Tetra’s nose and sing, and her voice and her touch would ward off the voice and the touch of any other.
At the very least, she can pretend. She can try to go back to her cot with a fuzzy little fantasy, even act it out and brush her own nose, whispering the words to that lullaby–
She jolts and glances over her shoulder at the quiet pair of steps that have settled behind her.
Her dear friend is watching her, his ever-earnest eyes showing worry.
“What?” she snaps. “You should be asleep.”
He gives her a funny look, like a cross between a grimace and smile. A silent retort of you should be asleep, too. He doesn’t talk much. Only when he’s in dire need to explain something with exact words and in great detail. He talks most to his sister. He makes her laugh, doubled over and loud. It’s sweet. It reminds her of Gonzo, before Mum…
“You need the rest,” she tells him.
He settles in beside her, much to her exasperation. However, between suffering a spell of insomnia in the comfort of the night or in her tiny, temporarily crowded room– well, his presence is tolerable, for now.
She attempts to wipe away a tear discreetly, which is a dumb idea. It isn’t as though he can see her tears in the dark.
Lo and behold, in a snap, he’s turned his head to look at her.
She doesn’t reciprocate the glance. Maybe he’ll second-guess himself, and he’ll see the stone cold pirate he’s always known her to be, and he’ll grow bored and go back to bed.
He touches her arm. She’s ripped it away before she even realizes what he did. He recoils just as abruptly as her, and he stares in alarm and in apology.
His hands are smaller, much smaller. The hand he touched her with, his dominant hand, the left, is calloused by his sword, but not like his hands, not even close. Not rough or cold or… unlike a person’s.
Still, it’s enough to remind her.
And enough to make her shiver, and make her unable to contain every miserable feeling she’s been trying to eviscerate inside of herself for the past several hours.
The past several hours.
It’s only been a matter of hours. The sun rose this morning while she was still whole and untouched. It happened within the sliver of a single day.
She blinks her tears away, shakes her head, rocks back and forth with her hands upon the railing. Her friend watches, appearing more guilty and more pitiful by the second. Though not as pitiful as she does.
He doesn’t touch her that time. He sets his hand close to hers though, like telling her I’m here.
She doesn’t want him here, she wants him far away from her. Now that he’s seen her like this, out of control of her emotions and her body, all because of some stupid, hideous word.
It’s a sick word, a twisted word.
She should make up a new one. One that doesn’t feel so sharp and so naked and so potent.
With her dear friend standing there, someone she can’t imagine ever having an unkind thought in his entire, peaceful little life, she wonders if saying it aloud will ease its grip on her. Ease his grip on her. If, at the very least, his image and his hands will stop being so clear if she draws the word out of herself in this small way.
And who’s a better person to utter it to but the boy she won’t see ever again? This quiet little boy she can avoid easily after he’s gone back to his precious little island?
She doesn’t look straight at him. She keeps her eyes on the railing. Even his hand feels like too much to be looking at.
“When… back there, when I was… with…” Her breath stalls in her chest. She takes a moment, composes herself, and continues, “with… with Gan—“
The nausea comes in one big gust, and she slaps her hand over her mouth, as if that’ll do anything. She doesn’t retch this time, but while the nausea steadily dissipates, the pressure stays.
“H— he…he…”
Her dear friend invades her peripherals. His worry comes off of him in waves. It’s too much. She turns her head further from him, and she feels him inch close enough that he can hear her.
“He…”
The word grins at her, wide and white and downright sinister like his smile, like the moment he figured out her connection to Hyrule, and the moment he decided what he wanted to do with her.
She covers her eyes and props her elbows onto the railing, like that’ll help.
It makes her stop seeing her dear friend, if that counts for anything. Truthfully, it does.
“He—” She says it quietly, riding the thought that she never has to look at this boy again after telling him, “he had his— his way with me.”
Her ears ring, louder than the waves but not louder than her pounding heart. Her dear friend’s presence is bigger, more foreboding. She can’t bear to look at him.
Though, she can’t bear to stay looking this pathetic and helpless either.
She uncovers her eyes, and catches a glimpse of him, hopeful that he’s oblivious and naive, has no idea what in the world she means.
He looks dumbstruck. Devastated. He looks as though he may cry now.
That’s the last thing she wanted. Though, truthfully, she wanted no reaction at all to begin with, which was unrealistic.
Now she’s stuck with, maybe even more traumatic, the face of this poor sweet boy silently bearing his soul to her, aching on her behalf.
She doesn’t know which will give her more and worse nightmares.
She steps away from the railing, the cool air now soiled like old milk and the sea breeze now dry like cracked desert landscape.
“Your sister will be worried if she wakes up and sees you’re gone,” she calls out to him.