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Pit remembers the pain, the fear that paralyzed him, stole his breath away, made his wings seize up and drop him into a beam of fire that tore him up and restitched him back together haphazardly.
He remembers feeling a buzzing in his head, a voice whispering—but it was loud and it forced his body to move against his will (not that he had any). He didn’t know what he did under that haze, while his consciousness was being stuffed into a sack and shoved six feet under cement and brick, putting someone else at the reign.
Again.
He can’t remember breathing for awhile.
All he remembers is waking up, his body aching and his head splitting open, releasing… something and he could breathe again. It was like the hands holding his throat tightly were torn away, freeing him, and he thought he knew that feeling from somewhere else. When he opens his eyes, Kirby is staring him down with softness and worry.
“...Kirby?” His throat feels scratchy and hoarse, and he clears his throat to expel whatever is lodged in there, swallowing to dampen the dryness. He tries again, and a hand from someone else is offered him. He sees it’s Link, and Pit smiles, taking it. Fox pats his shoulder. Everyone’s always careful around his back, especially after…
“Glad to have you back,” Fox greets.
“Are you okay, dear?” Peach steps forward, looking the angel over. Pit lets her, blinking slowly as the confusion fails to wear off. He’s still trying to process what is happening.
He looks the group over. Aside from Kirby, Link, Fox, and Peach, there’s also Lucario, Chrom, and Lucas, all looking at the angel with mixed expressions of worry, joy, and apprehension. He tries to think back, to try and piece things together but all he could think about is a bright light and a sharp pain blocks the rest. Grunting, the brunet presses his hand into his head.
“Pit?” Chrom prompts, stepping closer with his brows furrowed. He hesitates with a hand raised, but his other is extended to block Kirby and Lucas from coming closer. That hurt—but Pit could understand, to an extent. He just wishes he knew what happened, so when the pain finally ebbs away after Peach and Fox guides him to sit on the ground, the angel slowly lifts his gaze.
“...Wh…” he clears his throat again. “Wh-What happened?”
Chrom and Lucario exchange glances, something passing through their expressions that Pit can’t understand before all seven of them gather around.
Fox squeezes Pit’s shoulder gently. “Do you remember the beams of light from that thing in the sky? The falling hands, and the wings? Galeem?”
Pit squints an eye at that, staring at Fox incredulously, as though he grew a second head. Galeem? What kind of name is that? No, he is about to say, but it sounded like something he could ask Lady Palu—
And then he remembered. Suddenly he felt his body lock its place into time and space, emotional whiplash snapping his back and brain in two as the memories slam him into the ground—he’s only vaguely aware of Fox catching him.
His heart froze in his chest, beating halted before it began to beat faster, and faster, and faster— he looked around. He remembered the beam shredding his Goddess, shredding his brother, shredding himself. But that can’t be true, right? Lady Palutena had to be here, right? Right? There is no way his Lady Palutena could have been done in so easily, destroyed so… easily.
His wings started to itch and then burn as he remembered how easily the Chaos Kin’s tail sank into his goddess’ chest with a shhhlrk! How her skin hardened to rock, already threatening to crack.
If it happened once, it could happen again.
“—dear, you have to breathe, come now, with me, okay?” Pit gapes at the soft voice, his heart finding light in the thought of Lady Palutena? He opens his eyes, only to find Peach holding his cheeks gently. She smiles, but it is sad. “There you are, you’re doing great, darling. Just breathe with me, okay? Just like this.” And she inhales deeply, lifting her chest and shoulders to show the angel.
Chrom is next to him too and he finds his head is lying on Fox’s lap. His cheeks start burning with embarrassment, but he can’t find the energy to change his current position, instead trying to copy the breathing of his friends. Chrom gave encouragements too, prodding him along with a soft voice, “That’s right, buddy. You’re doing great. Count in, 1, 2, 3… and out, good, good.”
It takes a while of counting and tapping before Pit finally calms down enough to catch his breath. He can now register that their little group has made a tiny camp in some sort of forest. It’s getting dark.
“I think we ought to let him rest before we tell him what happened,” Fox whispers and Chrom and Lucario both nod.
“Palu…” Pit starts timidly. “Lady… Lady P-Palutena…? P… Pittoo…? Are… are they…” He swallows thickly, not wanting to continue.
They all look at each other, then at Kirby. Pit looks to the pink ball with tired, pleading eyes. Kirby stares back sadly and he approaches Pit without care, Lucas following behind. Chrom moves aside to leave them room and the two young ones sit down beside Pit. Kirby smiles.
Pit doesn’t know what that means. His eyes start to tear up.
Peach brushes her hand against his cheek gently. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “They’re not gone. We were all being used, but Kirby saved us, didn’t you?”
Kirby’s smile grew wider and he nodded. “Poyo!” A chuckle runs around them.
“Galeem is using them all,” Fox explains. “Those beams were…”
“They looked like they just… collected us,” Chrom finishes.
Fox nods and continues, “Link, Peach, and Kirby saved me from whatever that thing did to me. Peach said they have us mind-controlled or… something.”
That didn’t settle well with Pit at all. Suddenly he felt his body begin to tingle, itch uncomfortably and he moves to sit straight to which Peach maneuvers to hold his shoulders up.
“Careful now.”
Using them? Using… Pit? Mind-controlling, using his… his body , to do what? Why else is his body banged up and bruised all over… Did… Did he hurt anyone? Did that Galeem-whatever use his body? To hurt people? Again?
“Pit?”
He starts shaking.
“Pit, dear, you need to calm down.”
No, no, he can’t take that chance, he can’t have hurt anyone, not again. He already lost three years, three long- short? Long? How long? Three years, not him though. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t. But he killed people. Humans, mortals. Blood is on his hands, his wings, his sacredness. What did he do now?
Shaking, shaking, whispering, hands—
How long has it been? How long has this Galeem had him? Where is Pittoo and Lady Palutena? Where is everyone else? Are they… Are they dead? What has he done? Now he can see, can see the bruises on his friends. There’s a cut on Lucas’ cheek. Peach is missing a glove, her hand is bruised, she has a chipped nail. Link’s ponytail is gone and there’s a tear in his shirt. Chrom has a black spot under his left eye—a bruise? Kirby looks sad. Fox and Lucario look like they haven’t washed their fur in so long…
He shakes his head, he realizes he’s been crying. He sucks in a shaky breath, exhaling a wail of, “Lady Palutena—I’m sorry—“
Peach wraps her arms around his trembling shoulders, careful of his sensitive back. Fox holds one shoulder and Link holds the other. Lucas curls up against his side and Kirby, in his lap. Chrom’s hand presses against his hair, combing his fingers through brown feathers. Lucario has a solemn paw on his knee. Pit sobs and hugs whoever his arms find, calling out for his Goddess—for his mother, and brother.
Chrom and Peach whisper encouragements of, “we’ll find them. We’ll rescue them, I know we will.”
Lucas and Kirby cry with him. Lucas says he misses Claus and Ness too.
They regather in the morning and finish their explanations when Pit is calm enough to take it. He learns fighting their possessed friends seem to break them out of Galeem’s control, and that hurts more than he wants to admit, and it scares him too. If Palutena is… and Pittoo as well, he doesn’t want to fight her. Not again. Please not again.
It always takes a day to recover after a fight, since it leaves the ex-controlled disoriented, tired, and distraught. They tell him they’ve seen Shulk, Ryu and Marth already in passing, but haven’t been able to save them yet.
Pit finds the Spirits they gather tear him apart inside, especially when he eventually finds Phosphora and Magnus’s Spirits in the rainbow-colored floating orbs. Their bodies were lost. He cries again, absorbing his two friends into his soul in their next fight with Sonic, possessed by Galeem’s light.
Sonic is distressed when he finds neither Pikachu or Pichu in their group.
When they find Palutena, he’s crying the entire fight, screaming with a breaking heart after every hit he’s forced to land on his mother figure. Link is with him, and so is Pittoo and Mega Man, but it’s not enough comfort to stop the pain. He doesn’t want to fight her, he doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t—
They save her when Pittoo shoots an arrow she can’t block and she crumples to the ground, spell breaking and red eyes vanishing back to viridian green, but Pit is too paralyzed to move properly and it’s only at Pittoo’s shout that he finally races to her side, screeching her name and shaking her shoulders.
He ignores the fact that his wing is broken and it burns against him, almost like back then with—
Doctor Mario is beside them now, along with Peach and Zelda. Pittoo pulls him up, holding both his arms as the three look to her injuries. Pit can’t bring himself to comment on his brother’s uncharacteristic softness.
He sits by her as his goddess recovers from the fight. He can’t bring himself to touch her, or even reach out to her. Too afraid she’ll crumble at even a breath on her. The angel tries to distract himself with the pain of his wing, now bandaged and set with a splint by Doctor Mario.
Still, he can’t seem to shove down the guilt of hurting her, hurting his goddess, fast enough before her eyes finally crack open and Pit almost screams—before her soft, forest greens meet his sky blues. He feels frozen to the spot, caught like a deer in headlights. So many things pass through his mind— I’m sorry, I hurt you, I’m so glad you’re okay, are you okay? I thought I’d never see you again, you need to stop scaring the light out of me, are you hurt anywhere? I’m so, so sorry, I should have been stronger for you, I wish this never happened, I’m so sorry—
His lower lip starts to jut out, frown deepening in distress as he fights his growing tears. He is expecting anything to everything—expects to be disowned, cast away, shunned for attacking the one being he’s meant to serve for his whole life, but he also hopes for comfort, for soft words of love. He lowers his head then, unable to see his goddess’ bruised face any longer, missing the gentle smile that graced Palutena’s perfect lips. He feels her hand brush against his chin, then, pushing it up to look at her before they shift to cup his cheek. He sees the tiredness in her eyes first, then the tears that line them and the parting of her dry lips as a tearful laugh escapes her.
Wordlessly, Palutena brings her angel down to her, laughing heartily and joyously in the night as she hugs the daylights out of her dear, sweet little angel. He doesn’t know when it starts, but he’s suddenly sobbing into her chest and soon Pittoo is there too (but he’s not crying, obviously).
She whispers three words in their ears, and for now, even if the world is crumbling under their feet and the evil Light of Galeem still reigns, at least for tonight, everything feels okay.