Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with a sneeze, high-pitched and half-stifled into Legend’s fist. He fights with all he is to make the sound unassuming, let it drown alongside the murmur of endless nature around them to no avail. Warriors jumps a little at the startle of it, having been utterly lost in the breathing world around them himself. An aside glance is cast toward the vet as he’s sharply wiping his face, and Legend shoots Warriors a look that’s dripping with ire. The captain tries it anyways, a smirk pulling at his lips.

“That cannot have been—”

“No. Shut up.” Legend interrupts him with an aggressive sniffle. “Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve already heard it.”

“And what’s once more in my lilting tones?” Warriors says. “Who knew you could be so adorable.”

Four buries a chuckle into his palm, far more amused than antagonistic. “...that was pretty cute.”

The air hanging around is muggy, weighing down on the lot of them and making their collective smattering of scars twitch and ache. It’s green as far as the eye can see, no civilization for miles, and Time lets out another heavy breath, the serenity of its quietude battling with the nervous err in his heart.

“—sounds like the noise the ship rats would make when I’d grab ‘em by the tails!”

“Right? Like a fairy that’s got hiccups!”

“I swear on the Three,” Legend seethes. “No one will ever find your bodies.”

Time clears his throat, only half-paying attention to the banter behind him as they dredge through the forest.

“Forgive me for interrupting this important discussion,” he says. “Has anyone figured out where we are?”

Wild halts a little where he is, pulling the slate off his hip. He taps at it absentmindedly a few times, squinting into its otherworldly blue light.

“Pretty sure we—” he brightens. “Yeah! My Hyrule!”

“It’s... massive,” Twilight notes, spinning in slow reverence on his feet as he keeps on. 

“I was pretty sure we were somewhere near Faron,” Wild says. “But I’ve never seen it so… bright.”

Time narrows his one-eyed gaze, wordlessly questioning the younger hero on what exactly that means. It’s the clouds themselves that answer, churning in the far distance behind the group as thunder rolls across them. A distant boom echoes through the wood, and Legend’s nervous shifting is met with Hyrule sidling up to him, palming the vet’s hand in a silent gesture of comfort.

Legend holds his breath, inconspicuously taking Hyrule’s palm in his own. It was an impulse on a sleepless night when he’d blurted out to Hyrule that he got jumpy in thunderstorms, something about the healer that just invited confession where previously Legend would keep his mouth shut. True to his word, Hyrule hadn’t spoken a word of it, talking instead with quiet comforts and supportive looks. He gives Legend’s hand a gentle squeeze, and Legend squeezes back shortly with a notable warmth radiating off his skin.

“It’s always storming something nasty out here,” Wild says. “Drives me mad to travel in. The footpaths are winding and the cliffs can’t even be scaled most days.”

Creeping behind them, the thunder booms louder, and Legend sucks in another uncertain breath, hidden in its roar. He can feel himself sweating bullets in the heavy air, focusing all he is on not shaking like a leaf in front of his team. The lot of them are busy sharing nervous glances, their collective trying to decipher where to navigate next.

“Anywhere nearby we can take shelter?” Twilight asks.

Wild presses a hand to his hip, looking out across the expanse in an attempt to better gauge their exact location. “Hm… it’s a pretty open province. We could try and find a cave to settle into, though… we’re closer to my house than we are to any stables.”

Wind immediately brightens, practically leaping off the forest floor. “House?! Your place is out here?!”

“Not out here.” Wild grins. “Up in Hateno Village. It’d be a little cramped with all of us, but it’s the safest place in Hyrule, at the very least. We could get some much-needed rest.”

Twilight opens his mouth to say something else but is cut off by Legend stifling another harsh sneeze into his free hand, spitting some curses at Hylia herself the second he catches his breath. He comes back to himself looking at his companions with the same acidic eyes as before, wordlessly hissing at them to shut up before they’ve spoken.

Warriors doesn’t listen. “Well, we’d better pick up the pace before Leggy here catches his death.”

Now it’s Twilight’s turn to eye Legend nervously. “...it sounds like he’s already caught it.”

The veteran hero is spent on snark already, deepening the ire in his narrowed eyes and straightening himself out with purpose. “I’m fine. Hundred rupees says it’s the pollen count in this wide-open hellhole of endless flora.”

“Ha! My ass!” Wind cackles. “If that were the case, Sky would’ve passed out the second we warped in!”

Sky shoots the younger boy a scandalized look, his words dying on his tongue as soon as he realizes he has absolutely no counter to that. Legend’s own retort is lost as another sneeze asserts its presence across his face, and he’s a blur of angry red and rose-gold, wrenching a fit of several more into his knuckles.

“Seriously, I don’t know what you expect, traipsing around wearing so little,” Warriors notes.

“You talk too much,” Legend seethes up at him with a voice that’s wavering and heavy.

Sky shifts a little from the back of the group, peering into Legend’s silhouette. There’s a muted quality to him that’s previously unseen, turning his ever-present fire down to an unsteady simmer, and it makes Sky hum inside-out with empathy pains he can’t articulate. The clouds churn once more, and Hyrule grasps Legend’s hand, and Sky lives vicariously in the action and talks down his worried heart.

“How long on foot, Cub?” Time asks.

Wild crosses his arms in thought. “Mm… a few hours if we book it. At the very least, I think we can make it before nightfall. We could probably find somewhere to stop if need be, but…”

The sun dims as he says it, as though nature itself bends in tandem with his heart. 

“...the storm might catch up to us, is all,” he finishes.

Warriors gives a charismatic flourish of his hands, a second ray of light up against the darkening sky. 

“Well, nothing we can’t handle.”

The storm does, in fact, catch up.

Not for a lack of trying—it’s with a steady pace that the group of nine moves through the wood, the cradle of trees and tangled ferns beneath their feet slowly dissipating into far more familiar grassland. Wild’s sure they’re long out of Faron now, but her thunderous grasp digs its claws into their backs and rakes bleeding scratches down upon them, sheets of rain cascading from the crying skies. As Necluda draws nearer, the muggy heat of the rainforest fades, leaving them drenched and freezing as they power on.

And then, of course, the hinox had been a surprise.

Wild’s cursing under his breath the lack of foresight—he’d been telling himself for months now to do a full survey of any monsters left in Hyrule, marking them on his slate for reference—and here he was, his comrades’ lives in danger because he’d let it fall to the backburner. The grey wrapping itself around the world was the perfect camouflage the beast needed, and they’d wandered right into its nest without even a moment to realize it had heard them despite the clamour of the rain. 

It lets out another ugly roar, black ooze spewing from the wound Wind’s sliced into its forearm, and charges the youngest with the intent to crush him like an ant. Wind’s off to the side with a well-practiced dodge roll, grinning despite the deluge whipping like a hurricane around them. He never seemed perturbed by storms, moving through their weight as though it were nothing.

Finally, Wild feels it, hears it drawing near—the telltale change in the pressure around them, the crawling sensation of static pulling at the hair on his arms. Light roars and shifts in the clouds above, and Wild calls out desperately above the rumbling—

“Drop your weapons!”

He can see the other eight in all manner of eying him, their reactions ranging from what to are you insane? They’ve all seen Wild do and suggest things that sound completely unheard of for the purpose of survival, but fighting an infected boss monster with their bare fists is a new level of—

The skies burst open with a horrific crack, lightning tearing downward and striking the hinox where it stands. The behemoth reels back in agony, a bloodcurdling scream as it falls on its backside, writhing. Around its neck, the steel hanging there sparks and sears, blackened marks crawling snakelike on its deep red skin. 

Legend swallows through the daggers in his throat, desperate to steady his breathing, trying not to think about how easily it could have been any one of them struck, could have been him, could have been him again—

He throws all the metal he owns to the side quicker than anyone has time to register, and while the hinox is down the rest of them follow suit. 

A wringing creeps into Sky’s hands as he’s pulling off his own, and he has to will himself not to become lost in the act of it. I’ll be right here, he tries to send to Fi, I’ll come back—

But Wild notices—the hesitation in his frame, the way he bothers his lip, every second one of utmost importance in the throes of a battle. He thinks fast, intent to pull Sky from his worries.

“Give the Master Sword to me!”

Sky looks toward him, deer in the headlights. “But—”

“Trust me!”

It’s not really a demand. Sky does. Fi does. She hums agreement in his palm, in that warm, wordless way she always does nowadays. It sets Sky’s heart at ease, and he nods with intent as he tosses her sheath Wild’s way. He heaves her onto his back and paws at the Sheikah Slate, holding it up like a cover to keep the water from its face.

The rest of them watch as the unmistakable shade of Sheikah-blue swirls around Wild in rapid bursts, and suddenly he’s wearing some off-black getup that would be laughable if not for the dire straits they’re fighting through. Mental notes are made to make fun of him later, and Wild charges the beast with the Master Sword crackling and spitting against his hand.

There’s precious little time as they get back into formation—Twilight, Time, and Warriors tearing the earth up around them as they ready arrows to fire from bows that have seen better days. Hyrule falls back, his gaze focused upon Wild as more and more voltage gathers at the tip of his sacred blade. Shielding magic sparks to life at Hyrule’s fingertips, and when the clouds shudder and shriek again it’s only Wild’s eerie nonchalance that stops him from casting.

The lightning strikes Wild head-on, and Twilight wavers his shot and cries out in worry, set to abandon his post and run to Wild’s side. Around them, the world fades back to darkness like the light never visited, and Wild cleaves the Master Sword into the hinox’s side without a single scratch to show for it.

“What did he—” Twilight marvels. “How did you—”

“Talk later!” Legend interrupts from across the divide, gesturing wildly at the monster as it falls forward and snaps to, righting itself with a firm hold of one of the many trees surrounding them. It roars through its wound as though the pain’s not there, a black-blooded tenacity they’re familiar with by now. 

“Clear the way!” Four commands suddenly in the direction of the archers, and the lot of them disperse near involuntarily at the rare sound of his voice. He’s holding some sort of cane not one of them has seen before, and the second he gets the shot he takes it—waving it in one strong motion upward, feet planted firmly on the ground. The drab around them goes up in a shower of blinding light once more—this time, a bolt of brilliance from the end of Four’s weapon—and the hinox slips on something, the tree trunk falling from its grasp.

Four doesn’t have time to react to the crack at his flank—a sharp noise that echoes out even over the pouring rain around them. Sky’s baring his teeth as the whip in his hands curls around the tree, and with a fierce cry he snaps the thing like it’s a simple twig, crushing the monster beneath its weight.

“Holy shit,” Wind shouts from behind the deku stick he’s brandishing. “That was awesome!”

“Talk,” Legend repeats. “Later!”

The veteran hero’s insistence seems ill-informed in the moment, with the beast on its back writhing and felled, with Twilight’s legendary marksmanship raining down upon its spewing eye. Wild’s fought more of these things than he can count—running off the beaten path to loot them for weapons at every opportunity—and in any other circumstance he’s sure they should have won by now. Even an infected red hinox is still a red hinox at the end of the day, and when it rises back to its feet again, the champion shudders to think how this could go if it had been any other variant. 

The hinox bellows out another otherworldly noise, bone-rattling and ominous, like its barely even gotten started. It pounds at the ground below them as it lumbers onward, the earthquakes across the plain the only indication as the sound of it is lost beneath another clap of thunder. Legend grits his chattering teeth, trying to focus through the obsessive need to count down to the next one. 

The rain sounds like static, white noise that crawls into his brain and swims, buzzes, itches in a way that makes him feel like his head is going to burst. Most days, it’s not this bad—the thunder strikes a cold fear and he pushes through, stalwart—but today it seeps into his flesh and chills him to the bone, today he feels waves lapping at his ankles and razor winds throwing him like a ragdoll across the frozen seas. 

Another peal lights the sky, and Legend’s lungs are full of seawater, he’s choking on it, unable to come up for air. Ropeburn scarring his wrists as he holds white-knuckle, the current of electric, frozen agony running down through his veins and straight to his core—

Fuck this, he seethes defiantly at the visions that dance beneath his eyelids, desperate to focus on the here and now, clinging to what little grasp on reality that’s left. He looks to his team, forcing their presence into his right mind.

It’s a coward’s move, he knows, but maybe there’s valor in admitting he’s useless as he is. Legend makes a shaky sprint to the freshly-made stump that Sky’s quick thinking produced, bringing himself to the top of it with still-trembling legs. He can’t hold the Rod of Seasons straight as he draws it skyward, and he’s not even sure it’ll work in Hyrule, let alone someone else’s iteration of it. Still, he holds as tight as he’s able, pushing the storm from his mind and dreaming of clear skies, the burning sun, the eternal summer that he never quite reaches at the hurricane’s end. Legend wills the clouds above to drain and dry, to abandon their grey and garb themselves in heavenly white. 

He’s so lost in the daydream of it, of the waves in the distance and the sound of her song, warmth on his skin—he only notices it’s worked when the rest of the boys start to look around in awe, their eyes cast toward the horizon as it clears, as the summer sun starts pulling the rain from their clothes. Legend lets out a ragged breath, dropping his arm back to his side as though it’s entirely limp, eight sets of curious eyes falling from the skies back to him. 

“Don’t make me say it a third time,” he says, digging into his bomb bag with a sour look spread across his face.

The rest of them snap back to it, nodding and grabbing their own discarded weapons. With the sun beating down on them, with the way in front of them clear, it only takes a few more cuts across the hinox’s girth before the beast is frayed and heaving, its furs dyed an ugly black. Legend takes a running jump toward it, lobbing an excessive amount of bombs at the thing’s feet with a nonchalance that says he’s done so a thousand times.

“Shields up,” he rasps to his team, and they follow suit in one final coordinated hurrah as the behemoth finally, finally erupts into a cloud of darkened smoke.

It dissipates, and with it goes the clamour of battle, replaced by the slow fade back into serenity. The contrast of Wild’s Hyrule is amazing, birdsong and gentle gales picking up as though their ambiance had never left. The group releases a collective breath, taking a moment to drink in the sound of it. It’s Warriors who finally breaks the silence, eyeing his team.

“Well, that certainly was a detour,” he notes. “How are we, boys?”

Everyone seems to be in surprisingly good shape, which is something that Warriors narrows his eyes at in well-deserved suspicion. Upon further examination, it does look like most of them are well enough to continue. A little bruised, of course—Hyrule shuffles over to Four and casts some low-level healing on him after he notices the other hero wincing through his steps—but good enough to carry on, intent to make it to Hateno as the sun draws closer to the treetops.

Alarm bells are going off in Sky’s head, though, pangs of anxiety he’s been feeling all day that refuse to relent as they gather up their things and trek onward. At the head of the group, Twilight and Wild are having a lukewarm argument about the latter’s stunt in the lightning storm, and the rest of the team is piling on in a cloud of snark and laughter, teasing Wild for his unorthodox thinking and his ridiculous rubber outfit, teasing Twilight for being such a worried parent… everyone’s cackling and ribbing and talking...  

Everyone except Legend.

The veteran hero is at the back of the group, staring at the ground in front of him with eyes unfocused and cloudy, as though he’s concentrating all he is on staying upright. Sky can see him breathing heavier than he should be at their leisurely pace, and it’s a little disconcerting when Legend doesn’t even notice him staring. They’d bonded over it, before, on the stubbornness of their bodies to just get with the program and work correctly, Legend and his rigid muscles, Sky and his lofty lungs. Legend coughs a pitiful cough into his fist, drowned in the sound of the rest of them and their banter, and Sky falls back with a worried glance.

“Hey, you don’t look so good,” he near whispers, and Legend shuts his eyes, his hand weakly waving Sky’s concerns away like some kind of pest.

“I’m just worn out,” Legend says. “Worry about yourself.”

The bite in his voice is comforting to hear, and Sky greets it warmly, like the friend he knows it is.

“There’s really no benefit to hiding it, you know,” he says. “If it’s something small, then it’s no big deal. And if it’s not, I don’t think you’re doing anyone any favours by trying to power through.”

“I’m fine, featherhead,” Legend snaps again, and it’s punctuated with his palm pressed hard against one eye as he winces. Standing closer, now, Sky can hear the laborious sound of his breathing, and he reaches an arm out, desperate to do… something to steady it.

“Ledge, you’re trembling,” Sky says. “We can take a break. I can pretend it’s for me.”

“You’re such a goddess-damned—” Legend falters on his feet, stumbling. “N-Nuisance—”

Sky paws at the air again, a hand hovering in Legend’s blurry peripheral as he wordlessly asks the consent to comfort. Legend can’t see the soft profile of the chosen hero past the veil of it—rainwater and choppy waves smudging his vision at the corners despite the burning sun all around. Legend wobbles, and shudders, and can’t hold back another dragging cough that paints everything white-hot in unmeasured bursts. His head pulses in time with it, and he can feel the storm around him fading to that white, and white seems so preferable to the unrelenting ocean and the boom of thunder and Sky’s incessant nagging—

There’s a drop in Sky’s heart as he watches Legend fall forward, and instinct kicks in as he clumsily lunges to catch his teammate before he hits the ground. Legend’s eyes are shut tight, his breath still unsteady and ragged, and Sky swallows hard, steeling himself.

“Guys!” he shouts to the rest of the party. “We need help back here!”

It’s unsettling to them immediately, to hear Sky’s voice in the tones it’s existing in, now—shaking and unsure, an outright cry for help. The conversation slams to a halt and they turn around lightning-fast, and Warriors is at Sky’s side in an instant, angling his head around the scene like a curious serpent taking them in.

“What happened?” he frets. “Is he injured?”

“I don’t know,” Sky mutters, examining Legend with careful intent. “He just collapsed, I—”

An errant brush of Sky’s fingertips to the vet’s skin tips him off, and he follows the impulse to sweep the faded rose-tint of his bangs away and press his palm to Legend’s forehead.

“Oh—Oh no—” Sky says. “He’s on fire, he’s way too hot—”

He can feel the heat radiating off Legend even through the chill the storm should’ve left behind, and Sky realizes he can’t even tell the lingering rainwater from the sweat pouring off his teammate. Legend’s shuddering up against him beneath the burning sun, a line of heat pressed into Sky’s grip.

“That absolute fool,”  Warriors runs his hand through his hair, the sting in his words burying something softer. “He’s been ill since morning, of course he has—”

“Cub.” Twilight turns to Wild, their argument long faded. “How long?”

“H-Home stretch,” Wild stutters, tearing his eyes from Legend and Sky. “It’s up the hill at the end of this forest, we can get him into bed and tend to him as soon as possible.”

Twilight nods with intent, trudging over to Sky and wrapping his pelt around Legend as he trembles in quiet agony. The two of them share a look of silent understanding, and Sky nods wordlessly and hands the veteran hero over to Twilight, who heaves him upon his back with little effort. 

Legend whimpers like a child as he settles into the contact, pressing his fevered cheek weakly into Twilight’s shoulder.

The beach.

It’s nostalgic. Legend can hear it outside the window, the distant sound of waves lapping at impossibly soft sands. The dreams so rarely make it this far, anymore—fading to black as lightning touches down, he can’t remember the last time he woke back up in any bed besides his own. Open your eyes, he wills himself, but he can’t bring himself to check his bedside for her smile, too fearful of the act of falling in love all over again. He breathes in, instead, and his head is too clogged with seawater to smell it, but Legend knows it’s there—hibiscus flowers and animal fur, a swirling combination that makes his nose prickle and his head swim in all the best ways.

There’s voices, barely within earshot. Not Marin, not Tarin—so how’d they get here? Are they dreaming, too? He rolls over with a quiet moan, tries to fall back asleep as his friends talk somewhere else. His head hurts.

“...it seems like it hit him fast,” Hyrule says, eyeing Legend as he sleeps fitfully on the second floor. “We should... definitely keep an eye on that fever, at the very least. It could take a turn, easily.”

The words fall upon the room, and more than a few of them have their arms crossed, brows knit in quiet contemplation and worry. Though they’d all been traveling together for quite some time now, it was the first time any of them had come down sick. Injuries were something they’d grown fairly adept at treating—but while Hyrule knew his way around medic duty, even he seemed unsure that magic and potions could do much against illness.

Wild suddenly snaps back to himself, pulling his weight off Twilight’s shoulder with a sharp exhale. He’d faded from the present the moment they got Legend into bed, and for a split second everyone was fearful that he’d been hit with the same thing. They noticed the far-off look in his eye, though—pulled away and let Twilight work his magic while they sat and considered the situation. The champion returns with a typical jolt, a moment’s glance at his surroundings while he takes them in and pulls himself back together.

“Welcome back.” Four waves. “We worried you were down for the count, too.”

Wild brushes him off with a nervous breath, shaking his head a little as if trying to regain hold on himself. He’s silent for a moment, his past self’s stuck tongue stubbornly holding on, and when he finally talks it’s blunter than they’re used to from him, stalwart and efficient.

“Before Legend did… whatever he did with that magic wand, we were far into the rainy season,” he explains. “Around this time there’s—there used to be a flu that would absolutely rip through the barracks at the castle every year—”

He angles his head up in an attempt to get another look at Legend, barely present against the horizon of the second floor.

“I, uh,” Wild says. “I saw him and was reminded. Of the last time I had it.”

Warriors shudders a little as the champion says it, a silent action that screams familiarity. 

“If it’s anything like the one in my Hyrule, we’d best be cautious,” he confirms. “The lot of us could easily be down with the same for weeks.”

Weeks sounds like a long time, even though there’s… no particular destination they’re trying for as they’re dropped at random and traveling place to place. Time turns his eye to Hyrule, gauging his levels—

“How are you feeling about that?”

Hyrule shrugs, far less bothered than the rest of them. “I have a good amount of experience tending to the sick. It’s nothing untread.”

Time nods at that, impressed but unsurprised at his conviction. “We’ll need one more to keep an eye on him whenever you’re resting. Any takers?”

He turns to the group, feeling like he already knows it’s going to be Twilight, but much to his surprise, Sky’s hand shoots up before anyone else has a moment to register the question. His eagerness seems to perplex everyone else just as much, and Sky’s face goes a little red when he notices everyone looking at him.

“Sky…?” Twilight asks, tilting his head.

“I… want to,” Sky sputters out. “I’ll get… antsy if I leave him while he’s hurting like this.”

It is, in all honesty, a very Sky answer. There’s something about the chosen hero that seems to invite comfort, silent and subtle but there nonetheless. Again, Time nods, in that sagely way he does, and everyone seems to be fine with this turn of events. Wind snickers, leaning back on folded arms.

“‘Kay, so who’s taking care of their sorry asses when they get sick too?”

“We’ll figure it out if it comes to that,” Twilight says. “For now, we play it safe and hope it doesn’t.”

He’s not finished speaking when Wild stands up, throwing open the window at his back and crawling up the stairs to do the same to the one up there. There’s quiet, careful intent in his movements as he addresses them, keeping his voice at a comfortable level so as to not wake Legend.

“Hope can only get us so far,” Wild says. “Here, keep the windows open as long as you’re able. I’m gonna head out and forage for medicine.”

Hyrule considers the summer breeze as it wafts in, eyeing the open window. “Is that… gonna help?”

Wild nods with unfaltering confidence. “My Zelda’s a scientist. She told me all about how she studied these outbreaks up close. I can’t remember all the big words she used but—I remember the part about constant airflow being important.”

He starts to gather his things, strapping a wooden sword to his back and gearing back up in every thunderproof piece of clothing he owns, groaning a little at the idea of having to spend time out in the Ridge. 

“Do you want me to come with?” Twilight offers, a question that actually means do you need my tracking expertise, and Wild shakes his head, smiling to offset the negative.

“It’ll definitely be raining out there still, best you, uh, stay dry,” Wild shudders. “I’ll be back before sunrise, promise.”

With that, he’s headed toward the door, and Wind grins brightly as he goes, waving in that playful way he always seems to carry himself.

“Call me if you need anything, sweetheart!” he teases. “...or if you don’t! Hey, call me if you see a cool bug!”

Wild stifles a laugh into his palm, waving as he leaves. 

“Sure thing.”

Sunlight bleeds into the ocean, wavering and shimmering orange dye that turns everything it touches the same shades of golden. With the fading of the day comes a chill that’s comfortable and soothing, a sharpening of the air that makes every one of Legend’s senses go alight. He swears, staring into the hearth of the sunset, that he can pick out colours he’s never seen before. That the taste of salty air on his tongue makes him breathe easier than he ever has before, that there’s fireworks buzzing beneath his skin when Marin pulls him close. He tries not to shudder, but it crawls through him anyways—pleasant, and new, in a way that tinges his cheeks red like the twilight hanging all around them.

She sings. Marin’s pressed into his side, an arm around Legend’s waist, and he tries not to become lost in the notes he’s heard a thousand times and wants to hear a million more. His head swirls with the scent of her this close—fresh cut flowers, bonfires on the beach, she smells like summer and young love and memory, and she holds him, and he melts into her shoulder and her wild red hair, unable to fight the impulse any longer. Legend brings a shaking hand toward her, pawing at a courage that comes so easily everywhere else, and Marin meets him halfway, lacing the fingers of her free hand with his own. Her skin is so impossibly soft, the strength in how she holds him so apparent regardless. Legend’s heart flutters and lurches and he’s red-faced and wordless—not a man who’s stared down evil and death and carnage with blade in hand, but a boy on the beach, too dumb and lovestruck to tell the girl of his dreams how he feels. Still, he tries.

“I missed you,” he says, but it makes no sense. They’ve only just met, but he swears, swears he’s known her forever. He feels like he’s talking nonsense, but somehow she understands. She always does.

“It’s been quiet without you here,” she smiles sadly, squeezing his hand. “I wish you could stay.”

The gulls sing above them, discordant and beautiful, and the sun’s nearly gone, now. Legend wonders why he has so much trouble, bringing himself to say the words, and they tumble out of him with little form, clumsily—

“I want to,” he says. “I want to—with you, I—”

His tongue never unties itself around her, it’s a marvel she sees value in his company at all. Marin giggles her seabird’s laugh, cards her fingers through his hair. The ocean breeze and her ginger touch send another shiver down his spine.

“Don’t be silly, Link,” she says. “They need you back home! There's a lotta people besides just me who miss you.”

The sun is gone, like its brilliance was never there. In the newborn starlight, with the moon casting its rays across Koholint’s waters, Marin is but a fiery outline in the darkness. Legend tries not to focus on it—how she seems like she’s fading to an imprint, now. She’s still warm, pressed against him, the flowers in her hair swaying in the wind.

“Please,” Legend whispers to her, too tired to hold back his tears and knowing she’s the only soul in this world he feels worthy to look upon them.

“I don’t want to leave,” he weeps, staring into her low-lit silhouette.

Marin’s silent for a moment, tilting her head with another smile. Legend can’t bear to meditate on the emotion wavering in her eyes, the way she’s always looked at him—she’s seen nothing of his past, of his victories, of his achievements, knows nothing of who he is upon Hyrulean soil. She looks to him, and sees only what he is in moments like this—a young man from humble beginnings, tenaciously holding onto what he has, what he loves. She looks to him, and it feels like the first time anyone’s seen him for who he is, not what he represents.

“Marin,” he says, crying like a child. “I don’t want to leave.”

She brushes her hand across his cheek, catching a tear and smudging it away. It feels like a prayer, and she infuses the gesture with all the love she can muster.

“I love you, Link,” she whispers to him. 

“Let go.”

“Legend? Legend, c’mon, settle down.”

He fades to the familiar sensation—one set of hands on his face fading into another, a blurry moonlit silhouette shifting and changing to someone else entirely. Legend fights waking with all he is, desperate to turn back time, chasing the dream and all its comforts. It takes great effort for him to crack his eyes back open, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

“...Roolie?”

Hyrule brightens a little, taking his palm from Legend’s face.

“Yeah, it’s me, Ledge.”

“...where’m?”

“...Hyrule,” he says after a moment of pause. “Wild’s house.”

Legend shuts his eyes again, meditating on this information. He gives a weak nod, not feeling up to speaking much more than that. What’s real, what’s not, it’s hard to tell in the moment—when every part of him throbs and aches and screams, when his tendons feel like they’re crawling with flames, the same shrieking agony as every other time he’s found himself back in that thunderstorm. He feels like he’s on fire, being seared alive from the inside out.

Sky leans forward, brushing the veteran hero’s bangs away and changing out the washcloth that’s resting there. It feels heavenly enough for just a moment that Legend feels his bones settle, and he burrows back under the covers with a sniffle so pathetic it almost sounds fake. He drifts with a waver in his breathing, and Sky can’t keep his fingers from running themselves through Legend’s dusty pink mop of hair, a calculated rhythm he counts out in his head, willing it to be soothing.

Legend dreams. He’s thrown back to sea the moment he shuts his eyes, and for hours that’s where he stays. Thunder roars and crashes and pulls at his raft, the waves are razor-sharp as they leap out of the frigid grey ocean. At some point, the cutting chill of the rain numbs his skin entirely—if it’s the bite of it or the shock, he can’t say—he doesn’t notice himself bleeding around the ropes tied to his palm, has to paw for the will to stay standing.

It’s so cold, it’s freezing, he can’t stop shaking, can’t keep a steady hold on anything as he’s tossed around the hurricane. It's a bitter chill until it’s not, when the lightning strikes down—agonizing, blistering heat that snakes rootlike scars across his skin and fades the world to white-hot pain, nothing else existing, merciless sensory deprivation. He’s alone out here, and Hyrule’s shores are too far to hear him begging not to die. Legend writhes, and screams, and cries—

Hyrule stirs to the sound of sobbing, and when he realizes it’s Legend’s voice he feels a pit settle in his stomach that’s heavy and hard. Sky’s holding onto the vet’s shoulders, and Legend’s clawing and sputtering and screaming nonsense up at him, somewhere else entirely. 

“What’s wrong?” Hyrule asks, his voice faded from sleep.

“I don’t know—” Sky says. “I think he’s imagining things—”

“No!” Legend screams at him, looking like some kind of beast with its teeth bared and ready. The rest of the boys blink awake one by one from the lower level, pained looks of empathy flaring up in their eyes at the knowledge that they’re to stay where they are.

“Legend, hey, easy,” Sky tells him, maintaining the contact in an attempt to ground him. “You’re safe! You’re safe. It’s not real, it’s—just a dream.”

“Fuck you!” Legend seethes, his eyes wide and streaming tears—the fire flares up, and crackles and snaps, and fades almost instantly, waterlogged and doused. He goes limp against Sky, who moves in closer beside him. Legend cries, and cries, and cries.

“Talk to me,” Sky whispers, holding him steady against his side. “What’s wrong?”

Legend doesn’t look at him, his fingernails dug into his hair. Tufts of pink breach the gaps, and he tugs and heaves and trembles.

“I can’t—get—home—”

Sky peers into him. “Home where? To... to Hyrule?”

Legend curls in on himself, nodding.

“The storm’s too rough—” Legend whimpers. “I can’t make it! I can’t make it!”

Sky turns his gaze from Legend to Hyrule, and the two of them share the look for a moment, silently contemplating what to do. Every last one of them get nightmares, it’s only natural with everything they’ve seen—but Legend’s seem a different flavour at the moment, the illness no doubt baking his brain without a care for what it touches. Sky shuffles closer, turning to Hyrule and whispering—

“Hang tight,” he says. “I’m gonna try something.”

He leans in to meet Legend where he is, speaking clear and concise as he can—

“Where are you, Ledge?” Sky asks. “Do you have coordinates?”

Legend pauses, processes, shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know! Somewhere west of Hyrule. I can’t see above the waves—Everything’s so—It’s all choppy, and the rain, I can’t see—”

“Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay.” Sky reaches out, brushes another tear off his face. “I see you! It’s gonna be okay.”

“You see… me?”

“Up above! I’m coming down to get you, okay?”

Legend finally looks at him, eyes wide in terror. “You can’t! It’s too dangerous, Sky! There’s no way out, there’s no way—”

“It’s safe above the clouds,” Sky tells him brightly, holding tight to his hand. “We can make it, I promise. Do you see me? Look up, I’m on the back of a big red bird.”

The veteran’s eyes are glassy with fever, one stop short of turning white and unconscious. Sky can feel the waves of heat absolutely rolling off Legend, gripping tighter at his palm. Legend looks to the shuttered heavens, his expression relaxing.

“...Sky?”

“It’s me. It’s okay!” Sky brightens. “I can fly us above the storm. It’s safe up there, and I can take you home.”

“Sky,” Legend cries, quieter now. “Be careful.”

“It’ll be okay,” he says. “I’ve done this before, and I’ve got the best bird around! Just hold on tight, ‘kay?”

Legend nods, and the way he paws at Sky thereafter almost makes the chosen hero’s heart crack open. Sky pulls forward to hug him, and Legend falls into his arms, and before either of them have a second to breathe Legend is sobbing a wet stain against Sky’s tunic. He clings with stuttering hands, muscles weak and waning, and Sky gently pulls knots from Legend’s bed-head as he runs his fingers through it.

“There you go,” Sky whispers. “I’ve got you.”

Fighting through heavy lungs and teary breaths, Legend’s sobbing evens out to something quieter, less heartbreaking. He melts into Sky’s touch, shuts his eyes and lets his grip go slack. Sky holds him like he’s made of glass as he slides a bit of distance in between them, palming the washcloth Legend’s knocked off his forehead and using it to clean sweat and tears and mess from his face. 

“Lay back down, Ledge,” he says. “Leave all the rest to me.”

Legend whimpers wantonly into his palm, a weak nod that’s far more lucid than anything he’s given in hours. Sky lowers him back down onto Wild’s bed, drawing the covers back up in an attempt to chase away the shivers that return to Legend with a vengeance. It’s only a few minutes before his breathing slows to a steady rhythm, and he’s still as the earth in a dreamless sleep. Hyrule and Sky heave a synchronized sigh, and the former turns to the latter with curious eyes—

“That was really smart. How did you know?” Hyrule asks. “To do that, I mean.”

Sky shakes his head. “He… didn’t seem to react well when I told him it wasn’t real. So I just… did the opposite?”

The way Sky’s talking, Hyrule thinks, is like he simply stumbled into the right answer, and the idea that it’s not something he’s practiced a hundred times seems impossible. Hyrule isn’t sure which option is more impressive, so he moves right along and doesn’t think about it too hard.

“Well, good call,” he says, leaning over with palm outstretched to check Legend’s fever. “Yikes, he’s due for that elixir. I should head outside and see if I can get it started.”

He stands up, stretching leftover sleep from his joints for a moment before looking back down at Sky. “You’ll be alright in here? You must be getting tired.”

Sky chuckles. “I’m always tired.”

“Fair enough.” Hyrule grins. “I’ll be quick.”

He’s down the stairs and out the door in a flash, carefully stepping over the bodies of several sleep-deprived warriors as they politely pretend to be far more unconscious than they are. 

When Legend wakes up, it’s with a serenity that almost feels ominous in contrast—no waver in his heart at what he might see there, no swirling razor winds tearing his vision to ribbons. The chill of the nightmares still lingers—he shudders, and coughs an ugly rattle into his blankets—but the fear isn’t there. It’s not quite dawn, what peeks into the cottage is less of a sunrise and more of a veil of deep, rich blue. His head aches like it’s never ached before, and someone gives his shoulder a delicate little jostle.

“—gotta drink this to feel better,” a voice says. “C’mon.”

Legend tries to say something, but it comes out as a barely coherent murmur, and the outlines of his caretakers blur and waver in the seaside heatwaves. He hears the ocean, but it’s oddly soothing, this time.

The voice encourages him again. It’s deep and warm and inviting—soaring and soft, the way he’d feel holding onto webbed feet, carried across the fields of Hyrule with the wind in his hair. In the hazy realm between waking and dreaming, he knows it’s Sky long before he blurs into view—for a moment, though, he looks like someone else, silhouette noncommittal in its shape and presence. Legend blinks roughly, pawing uselessly at the bottle Sky’s offering him. His hand slips and falters around the glass of it as though its made of ice, and he lets out a weak-willed groan through his waning delirium.

“Can’t,” Legend offers, sounding far more angry than embarrassed.

The world’s far too watercolour for Legend to see it—the way Sky and Hyrule share a sympathetic look before the former shifts forward to remedy the situation. 

“That’s alright,” Sky says. “We’re gonna try to sit you up, okay?”

Barely lucid enough to register the words, Legend nods without much protest. Hyrule’s arms are around him, then, shuffling him upward with a strength Legend’s always found a little surprising. His head dips a little against the finished wood of the headboard, and Sky fusses the pillow higher behind him. Sunlight starts to peek in through the open windows, and Legend throws an arm over his eyes, desperate to will its radiance away. 

“It’ll only take a second.” Sky scoots forward and uncorks the elixir, pressing it to Legend’s lips.

“Smells like shit,” the veteran hero bemoans, raising his arm a touch to eye the bottle.

Sky and Hyrule both have to bank their laughter for fear of waking up the others, a little elated to hear their friend still sentient beneath what the illness has taken from him. Pulling away for a moment, Sky infuses warmth into his voice, hoping Legend can hear the smile in it.

“Wild swears by it,” he says. “Said it’ll do way more for that temperature of yours than any red potion ever could.”

“Sucks,” Legend says.

“Probably,” Hyrule echoes. “But you will have to drink it.”

With a resigned sigh, Legend drops his arm back to his side. He makes another attempt to paw at the bottle but finds his muscles weighed down with that stubborn, stewing ache. Sky takes the cue and raises the bottle back up for him to drink it, and this time Legend does so without complaint, eyes shut and spirit too spent to fight the action.

The draining of the vial is punctuated with Sky tracing his fingers lightly against Legend’s sweat-damp bangs, affirmations swelling in his heart that bubble up and spill past his teeth.

“There you go,” he says, crawling closer to Legend so they’re side-by-side and pulling him into a hug. “Go ahead and get some more rest, okay?”

Legend doesn’t know why he feels tears burn the back of his eyes. On any given day he can’t decide—whether he loves or loathes Sky’s saccharine schtick, why it inspires ire in him he doesn’t feel like unpacking. He feels tantalizingly close to figuring it out at this moment, though, as he’s dropping his head to rest on the chosen hero’s shoulders and waiting, helplessly, for the medicine to kick in and wrest him back away into what is hopefully a dreamless sleep. The patience doesn’t feel real, with how stalwart it is in Sky’s heart, and it makes Legend burn with some kind of something—suspicion? Disbelief? Envy?—Sky’s so impulsive in battle, so air-headed in all else. In this and only this, though, he moves like a well-oiled machine—calculated, and comforting, and like it was what he was put in this world to do.

Everyone melts a little around Sky, everyone fights the stubborn spirit Farore’s so graciously planted within them to lay vulnerable at his feet. They talk, they weep, they hurt, and he heals. Legend feels an impulse like no other to fight it even harder, day in and day out, but right now Sky is warm against his frozen form, his bitten down fingernails carding sunbeams through his hair and down into his heart. Legend keeps his eyes closed, and he smells the seabreeze and sees the sunset, and the rockslide in his head trickles down and breaks apart until it’s sand between his toes. And Sky holds him close, and Legend knows its Sky, but just this one dawn when the fever cooks his right mind and the rest of them are asleep and he’s too sick to shield his heart, the words spill out of him—

“Sky?”

Sky doesn’t stop what he’s doing, but Legend feels him shift to peer into him. “Yeah?”

“I-Is this…” 

Legend takes a breath, waterlogged and heavy.

“This is real, right?”

He wearily pulls his eyes back open to look up at Sky, vision too doubled to see the heartbreak pulling at the chosen hero’s face. They’re all so careful with their words, so silent until they’re not, but Sky shows his every thought on his face as he thinks it, journeying with purpose to the right sentence.

“Yes, Ledge. It’s real. You’re safe. We’ve got you.”

Legend’s eyes fall shut again, and he curls into Sky, holding back tears beneath the veil of his hair as shaggy bangs fall over his face and he clings to Sky with a weak, trembling hand. 

“Don’t leave me,” he says. “Please don’t disappear.”

“I won’t,” Sky says. “I’ll stay right here.”

“Promise me, Sky.”

Sky hugs him tighter, leaning their heads together. “I promise.”

For a while, nothing more is said. Legend’s sobbing turns to sniffling turns to quiet, wheezy breaths, and Sky and Hyrule both press themselves into either side of him until the contact is enough for him to drift back off. He fades to the sound of birdsong as light stretches across the room, and the two of them lower him back down while he sleeps a deep sleep and toss the covers lovingly over him. Another brush of Hyrule’s palm across his cheek breeds hope, his skin feeling warm but hardly the boiling hot it’s been for hours now. Sky yawns one of his patently loud yawns, wiping tears from the corner of his eye.

“You have done more than enough,” Hyrule says. “Get some rest, Sky.”

There’s a reluctance to Sky that’s almost unsettling, and he wordlessly regards Legend, worry still flickering in his soaring blues. Hyrule’s never seen him even come close to turning down a nap, let alone a proper sleep after an incredibly draining night.

“Come on,” Hyrule pushes. “Can’t have you getting sick, too.”

Sky’s expression shifts and changes again while he thinks, and Hyrule’s heart settles when he finally nods. He watches as the chosen hero crawls into the bed beside their ailing friend, careful to not wake him as he burrows under the covers. Legend makes a small noise, stirring for a moment as Sky wraps an arm around him and buries his face into Legend’s shoulder.

The two of them settle into one another, and Legend—stuck in the ephemeral plane where dreams and reality blur—exhales a breath he feels like he’s been holding since he was a child, bright-eyed and burdened and unsure of what the future holds for him. For just one moment, it all melts away, and he lets himself drift in the arms of one of many who love him, unconditional as it comes.

Hyrule’s heart threatens to melt at the sight of it—prickly and closed off Legend looking so small and vulnerable in Sky’s arms, not even his hardened heart immune to the chosen hero’s enveloping, healing charm. He doesn’t hear the footsteps coming up the loft, of course, only startling when he hears a familiar shuttering sound from behind the scene.

When he whips his head around, Wild’s angled precariously, hanging off the railing like some kind of animal with a wicked grin upon his face—

In his hand, now more than ever, the Sheikah Slate looks exactly like the weapon it was always meant to be.

Chapter Text

At some point in the day—Twilight doesn’t know when—Four had decided, consciously or not, that the taller hero was better suited to the life of a pillow.

In his defense, it had been kind of a long one. Try as they might, the boys were only able to get meager levels of sleep to the background noise of Legend hacking up a lung, and that particular symptom didn’t seem to relent even as he very slowly made his way back to the world of the living. More than once, Twilight found himself awake and casting envious glances in Sky’s direction, mystified by his ability to sleep through even the end of the world. 

A few days had passed since they’d taken up residence at Wild’s cottage in Hateno, and it very quickly became apparent that there was an entirely different plague working in tandem with the other to fell them: cabin fever. They’d been warned that it would be cramped, but the quarantine on top of it certainly wasn’t helping.

So, with the caveat that they not spend any time around actual civilization, Twilight had appointed himself group chaperone and set out with Four, Wild, and Wind to the woods just outside the village. Wild’s restless heart could never stay in one place for too long—his home being no exception—and when he’d let it slip that there was a beach just a short hike away from town, Wind’s eyes filled with constellations and oh, no one could say no to the song in his voice. A detour was scheduled, and Four and Wind spent the afternoon sparring on the sand and admiring the ridges and curves of every seashell that washed ashore.

Now, the sunset’s flashing its last hurrah across Hyrule in a golden parade of light, and Twilight lets his heart ache its bittersweet ache as he takes it in and buries his fingers in the sand and resists the urge to look toward his growing shadow. Wind and Wild are two blurs of bright blue, foot-racing through the salty waves, the champion desperate to win at something as it very quickly became clear that no living swordsman could best the Hero of Winds in a seaside battle. 

And Four… Four’s out cold, no doubt completely tuckered from attempting all day to try. In all honesty, Twilight has no idea when he fell asleep—the smithy’s so quiet, the absence of his voice isn’t anything that registers quickly—but he’s dead to the world now, clinging to Twilight’s arm with an absolute ferocity as he naps.

It’s pretty adorable, all things considered, and the other boys have a few choice words about it when night falls and Twilight beckons them back to head home. 

“—there’s gotta be a way to make a custom album for the compendium, Zelda would know how to do it—”

“I know I’m not from around here,” Twilight tells Wild. “But I’m almost positive you’re not using that artifact for its intended purpose.”

“I’m cataloguing!” Wild defends, motioning toward the Sheikah Slate with his free hand. “That’s exactly what it’s for!”

“The historical records of this kingdom probably don’t need evidence of every time their chosen heroes decided to cuddle with one another,” Twilight says.

“Well maybe they should, ” Wind butts in. “I’m tired of seein’ statues and paintings of us all courageous and swords out looking like stiff jagoffs! There’s depth to me, y’know! I say let 'im. Hyrule’s history is hugs now.”

“That’s a good point.” Wild nods. “Maybe I should try to snuggle the next ‘blin I see.”

“When he turns that picture box on you—” Twilight points at Wind. “You better not come looking for sympathy from me.”

They go on for a few more moments, laughing and ribbing and fully procrastinating on leaving the lull of the waves, the calming scent of the seabreeze as it wafts its delicate touch across them. Twilight feels it, when Four stirs at his side, but it’s a moment before he registers the action as anything of note. He’d been sleeping a little restlessly—pawing and clinging at the rancher and desperate to hold onto whatever his exhausted grip caught—and Twilight doesn’t realize that now is any different until he sees a pang of concern crawl onto Wind’s face, looking toward his flank.

“You alright there, smithy?”

Twilight’s gaze follows, and he sees Four with his arm hooked around Twilight’s own, the heels of his hands pressed hard against his eyes. It’s hard to see in the lowlight, but Twilight can tell in the way Four curls in on himself like he’s trying to will away the pain—

“Headache?”

Wordlessly, Four nods, face still buried in his palms. He’s about as good as the rest of them at admitting when he’s hurting—that is to say, absolutely dreadful at it—but the headaches are a little hard to hide, with how often they take the wind from Four’s sails. The lightness of the mood snaps back to earth, and the three of them go soft and discard any prior conversation, intent on keeping their voices quiet and unobtrusive.

“We were just about to head back, anyways,” Twilight says as he motions to stand, and Four follows on shaky feet, still holding onto his arm the whole way, and something’s… wrong.

The rancher casts another look at Four, this time far more analytical as he regards him. The only light for miles is the waning moon, reflecting off the waves and just barely illuminating the group, and Twilight wonders if it’s a trick of the light that Four looks so pale. His eyes are cloudy in a way that’s different from usual—they’re bright despite the haze, an artificial luster that’s a far cry from the flecks of impossible technicolour that they typically wear. 

Four can only take it for a few seconds before the moonlight feels like it’s bludgeoning him—no, piercing him—deep down through his bones, an ice-cold spear that makes him shudder and wince. He dives back into the cover of his hands, scrubbing at his eyes like he’s trying to push them from his head. Wild shifts a little at his side, looking at Twilight and lost in nervous thought.

Four looks bad. He looks worse than usual, but no one wants to say it aloud. He looks like he can barely stand, and Twilight almost doesn’t want to ask the silent question, fearful of the answer he knows he might get.

But Four doesn’t seem to want to exist outside the protective veil of his palms, so Twilight tries below them—pressing his bare fingers to the smaller hero’s neck and studying the feeling with careful consideration. Four moans a weak little noise into the touch, and after a long moment Twilight breathes out a shaky sigh.

“Shit,” Wind says in response to the sound of it, and Twilight thinks that single word sums up his feelings quite well, yes.

It’s definitely not as bad as it could be—but it’s a fever coming on, that much Twilight can tell, and that fact alone is worth worrying over. From what he can tell, they’d done everything right—quarantined the sick and kept the airflow constant—and still Four was hissing and cringing against Twilight’s back as he ferried the smithy back to Wild’s house, afflicted despite everything. 

He anticipated Sky and Hyrule falling ill, had already run through the motions of it in his head in preparation for how to handle it. This… was not something he was expecting, and if self-contained Four of all people had gotten hit, it was only a matter of time before the rest of them—

The door swinging open interrupts his racing thoughts, and he realizes he’s spent the entire trek into town lost in his head. The rest of the room moves to welcome him back, stops in their tracks when they notice the grim air hanging off the returning party. Time shoots Twilight a silent look, his jaw set in a way the rancher’s come to know, a wordless language all of them are more than content to speak. Feeling oddly timid, Twilight simply turns to the second floor stairs and lets Four’s exhausted form at his back speak for itself. Wild and Wind hang back, settling onto the rug with worried eyes cast upward.

Sky’s asleep at Legend’s bedside, and the latter is engaged in what looks like a heated debate with Hyrule. They don’t notice Twilight on the outskirts of it—and Sky, in typical fashion, remains blissfully knocked out despite their bickering.

“—at least until you stop showing symptoms, we can’t have you infecting everyone here—”

“I’m not gonna just climb downstairs and breathe on everything for funsies, fuck’s sake, Roolie—”

“—it’s a lot touchier than just that! You need to stay put—”

“I can stay put,” Legend huffs, pausing to cough aggressively into his blanket. “I’m just asking you, oh great warden of bed rest, if I can be allowed freedom from my cushiony prison for ten fucking seconds!”

“Maybe,” Twilight interrupts, and the boys’ heads snap toward his sudden presence. “I mean, unless you want to share.”

Hyrule and Legend both blink a little, and it’s in this moment of silence—of all the moments to choose—that Sky finally pulls himself back awake, adding his disoriented stare to the group’s as though he were never absent. Sighing, Twilight kneels before them, motioning his head to Four who’s still clinging with pained desperation to the fur at Twilight’s back.

It takes a moment for them to register the scene, and Sky’s a mite slower than Hyrule to rush over to the two of them as he paws his way into the waking world. Now that Twilight can see Four in the warm light of the cabin, it’s far more apparent that he’s in rough shape—there’s spots of colour creeping onto his cheeks, but save for their pink touch he’s white as a sheet with his face drawn in agony. He shies away from the brightness of the outside world, burying himself deeper into Twilight’s pelt.

“Oh, goodness…” Hyrule says, hands hovering as he tries to reason out how best to pull the smaller hero from his death-grip on Twilight.

From his side, Sky shuffles a little, fiddling with his gear. The sailcloth he’s so rarely seen without is in his hands, now, and he’s careful and quiet as he drapes it over himself and Four, shielding them from the lamplight that’s become so imposing. He can see the smithy relax a little at the sensation of it, and he works his free hand around Four’s waist, beckoning him into his arms.

“Hey, Twi could use a break, Four,” Sky says warmly. “Need you to try and let go.”

The syllables of what Sky’s saying are fuzzy and loud, but Four’s still present enough to make them out, even if they sound like cannon fire in his ears. He gives a weak nod, pulling himself away from Twilight with all the courage he can muster. The weight of him shuffles into Sky’s arms, and while the chosen hero’s not the strongest of them by a longshot, Four’s small enough that he can hold him aloft without much trouble. Sky peeks out from underneath the sailcloth, looking at Twilight who’s running a hand nervously through his bangs.

“How long has he been like this?”

“No clue,” Twilight sighs. “I don’t even know if he noticed himself.”

“Didn’t,” Four murmurs in Sky’s arms, still fairly lucid despite the fog in his head. “Sorry. Headaches. Normal. I d-didn’t—”

“Easy, there,” Sky whispers to him as Four’s pulling the sailcloth lower, braving the outside world to explain himself. “Nothing to be sorry for. Here—”

It’s with the gentlest of touches that Sky pulls his thumb beneath Four’s headband, tugging it over his perfectly trimmed hair and setting it alongside the rest of their things. Immediately, Four seems to melt at the lack of it, breathing out a little noise in relief. Where it once rested, Sky places the back of his hand, expression dropping as he takes Four’s condition in.

“Poor thing,” he says with a waver in his voice, then turns to Hyrule. “He’s… definitely too warm, I think, could you—”

The team medic is on it before Sky can finish the sentence, shuffling forward and repeating the motion. “Yeah. Low fever, but definitely a fever. How did this—didn’t we—we did everything right—”

Sky shakes his head, holding Four closer to himself. “Only so much we can do. There was still a fifty-percent chance of this happening.”

“Fifty’s a little presumptuous,” Legend comments dryly from behind them. “With all this solitary confinement you have me in I’d drop it to at least a solid thirty-five.”

Four makes a noise in Sky’s arms that demands to be acknowledged, a groan of pain that isn’t entirely involuntary but still snaps their focus back to the task at hand. The smithy can’t keep his eyes open, pulling Sky’s sailcloth back over his head and latching onto his senior as though he were magnetic. Sky can feel Four breathing hard against him, desperate for control over anything his body’s doing.

“He needs to lie down,” Sky says, and Hyrule looks back to Wild’s bed, where Legend is sitting up with his chin resting pleasantly on one hand, waiting to be declared a free man. It’s Four’s voice that shatters the fantasy to pieces, weak and ragged as he angles himself just barely away from Sky to be heard.

“Outside,” he rasps, and the word catches and he coughs and it hurts, goddesses above it hurts. Every breath of it is like a sledgehammer to his temple, he feels like he’s back home in the forge only this time he’s the sword as its tempered—ablaze and beaten, agonizingly rhythmic. Some kind of silly, sick karmic retribution—for what, Four can’t say.

“Outside?” Hyrule echoes, and Four pushes on.

“Fresh air,” he elaborates. “Quiet. Dark. Better.”

“Is that really better?” Sky asks, fussing a little. “What if it gets cold? You need to keep warm if you’re sick.”

“Hmm,” Hyrule says, considering it. “He… might actually have the right idea with that. Hold on—”

And Hyrule crawls to the edge of the overhang to get the attention of the others, completely oblivious to the way Legend draws his pillow to his face and lets loose a scratchy, muffled scream.

There’s a garden of buttercups dotting Wild’s yard, pressed up against a hill with a sheltering oak as its centerpiece, and even in the coming night, the summer air marks it as a perfectly lovely place to set up camp. It feels safe, and comfortable, and Sky starts to come around on the idea of it.

Wild had darted through the slate haphazardly in an attempt to find something suitable to keep Four warm out here, just in case—but his clothes were all far too big for the task, the headpieces out of the question with Four’s current condition. With an exasperated sigh, he pulled out several enchanted swords of some sort—glowing with heat, like they were made of the sun itself—and told Sky to keep them near if it got too chilly. Sky doesn’t really get Wild’s methods a lot of the time, but he makes a note that they work far more often than not.

The fire he’s stoked is more than enough, though—its warmth plus the blankets Four is absolutely swimming in keeping the small hero warm enough to sleep. Hyrule was right to trust his judgment—the second he’d settled into his bedroll, the tension seemed to drop from his frame, and he drifted off without another word. All things considered, he’s doing a lot better than Legend had been around this point.

Until it’s well into the night, and Sky jolts at how suddenly Four practically flies up from his bed. He’s still as can be one moment and trembling the next, eyes shut tight and a hand pressed against his temple while the other digs deep into the grass and cakes dirt beneath his nails. Sky moves without thinking, bringing himself to Four’s side, and for the first time all night the smithy draws away from his touch entirely.

“Hey, it’s me, it’s okay,” Sky says, careful to keep his voice down low. “What’s the matter?”

“I—” Four struggles, breathing hard, measured and deep and slow. “Gonna—be sick—”

He pulls further away from Sky, desperate to keep some semblance of manners even while he fights with the nausea. Four finds himself with just enough strength to crawl over to the pond, and Sky’s lightning-fast behind him and arrives just in time. He sweeps Four’s hair back in one clumsy motion, careful not to hold on too tight as Four’s heaving and shaking and coughing up a whole lot of nothing. Sky’s free hand is on his back, then, gingerly rubbing circles into it while the aftershocks leave Four runny-nosed and shivering. As the bite of it ebbs away, Four all but collapses into Sky, heaving an exhausted sigh.

“There you go,” Sky whispers, leaning into Four as he comes back to himself. “You’re alright.”

A hush falls over the two of them then, and the words are left to linger, and Four soaks in their comfort and holds onto Sky so tight they threaten to become a single being. The chosen hero lets him, more than happy to indulge, tracing shapes into Four’s trembling form while his breathing stutters and wheezes before quieting down, evening out.

“Sorry,” Four chokes out, voice gravelly and spent. “That was gross.”

Sky has to stop himself at the last moment from laughing his big, hearty laugh—he buries it in his throat, leaning his head on Four with his best attempt to keep quieter still.

“You’re sick, silly,” he says. “Don’t apologize.”

And Four considers this, shutting his eyes in resignation at the idea of it. He’d so badly wanted to fight until the very end—when he woke up that morning feeling foggy and run down, he was certain it was just a spell caused by being cooped up, forced himself back into nature with the hopes that it would do anything to assuage the curtain of exhaustion hefted over him. The soreness that crept up his throat that afternoon was foreboding, but he quashed panic and begged the goddesses above that it just be a trick of the dry summer air. He can’t remember when the headache came on, or when he finally gave in and let himself fall asleep—but even then, he held out hope that it was all just an unfortunate coincidence. He’d barely seen Legend since the vet came down ill himself, it had to be something else—

Four’s head throbs again, and he presses a free hand back into his shut eyes, holding back the urge to hiss through his teeth. Okay, thinking too hard is off the menu, he makes a mental note to himself, and he’s not sure if it’s the fever talking or if he hears a chorus of familiar voices chatter back—

Wasn’t planning on it anyways—

Sorry, have we met?

Ah, probably for the best—

Since when do any of you think that hard to begin with?

Four’s head swims, and he almost wants to shake himself back to form but knows all it’ll do is stir his stomach up again. He peeks an eye out from under his palm, checking and double-checking that he’s still in one piece, but the fire’s bright despite the comfort in its warmth, and he ducks back into hiding with a sound that’s weak and longing and makes Sky hold him closer.

“I doubt that was pleasant,” Sky carries on after a beat. “Do you feel better, at least?”

Four crosses his arms and curls up tight, flatting his fingers as he pushes them to his underarms. His chest feels full and tight, like he’s not quite done, but there is a stirring of relief that’s settled into his gut now, pounding in his head notwithstanding. 

“A little,” he says with a messy sniffle, and he sounds so unbelievably young it breaks Sky’s heart. Worry flutters through his nerves, buzzing beneath his fingertips, urging him to move, do something, do anything. Sky tries not to fidget, running scenarios in his head.

“How’s tea sound?” Sky asks. “The kind Wild always makes you. I can see if he’s still up.”

Four considers it, conflict swirling inside of him in a myriad of pitches. The back of his eyelids shine iridescent, a whirl of colour that nauseates him all over again—

No way! I like that stuff!

...yeah? So why not then?

Green, I really like it! If we puke it right back up it’ll be ruined forever!

You’re so dramatic. There isn’t a thing on earth that can spoil the champion’s cooking.

You wanna bet, pretty boy?

C’moooon, stop shouting. I want this icky taste out of my mouth!

Water’s fine for that! I’m not risking the damned ambrosia!

A moment’s pause, a shuddering breath, another hand pressed to his head. 

“Shut up, Blue,” Four mutters under his breath, realizing after a moment he’s spoken aloud. Sky peers into him, his expression shifting curiously as he tries to puzzle the statement together.

“Sorry, y-yes,” Four covers, pulling his hand from his eyes to wave away the sound of it. “Tea sounds divine.”

There’s a part that exists within all of Hylia’s chosen heroes—nosey and curious, ears pricked and listening—that tells Sky to meditate on the statement, make it his business when it’s clearly not. It’s less a need to pry and more a want to know, because to know is to understand, to understand is to comfort. He shakes away the impulse, leaving it where it is. There’s plenty he can do, knowing only what he knows.

“Hang tight,” he says instead. “I’ll be back faster than you can blink.”

He speaks it like the promise it is, noting the way it seems like Four can’t bear to let go of him. The smithy nods, a whimper at the lack of contact betraying the motion entirely as Sky slowly, reluctantly pulls himself away. He grabs the pillow off Four’s bedroll, easing the smaller hero down onto it before giving his hair a doting stroke and heading back toward the house.

“Right back,” he re-affirms, and Four swallows, and nods again, and curls up like a pillbug, trying to keep steady as he lays there in wait.

He’s himself—he knows he’s himself, saw his own ghostly reflection as he pulled back from the pond, catching his breath. It feels like he’s—like they’re—more, though, quadruple vision and voices in his head. He can’t make sense of it all, there’s simply no guide for things like this—but it’s been so long since they’ve split, so long since they’ve talked, he wonders if maybe that has something to do with it.

You’re thinking again, Vio notes, and Red—Blue—Green—Four pinches his eyes shut tight, not having it in himself or his multitudes to paw for a defense. He leaves it, stops trying to pry it apart even though he knows Vio’s egging hides tones far more inquisitive than his own. He wants to count it as a blessing—an internal conversation, sharing their misery as they share everything else—but mostly, the ghostly imprint of their presence just makes him feel lonelier.

Four hugs his sides, curling up tighter and willing himself not to shiver despite the fire’s hymn beside him. He can hear Sky and Wild at the cookpot around the corner, laughing in foggy syllables about something he’s not privy to. It ices his heart a little, and Four tries to focus instead on the cricketsong as it dopples in and out, the tinkling of the running stream that frames Wild’s house. 

He doesn’t notice when the chatter stops, lulled by nature to a moment teetering right on the precipice of sleep. Sky is unassuming as ever as he makes his way back, brushing long golden locks from Four’s glistening skin. The contact lingers, for a moment, and Four’s mostly awake—mostly—but there’s something about being touched so gingerly that makes him want to stay still for just a few seconds longer. With his eyes shut, he can’t see the way Sky’s brow furrows—creased with worry as he keeps the back of his fingers pressed to the smithy’s forehead—but he hears the way his exhale catches and hums, a nervous tone in the sharp mountain air.

“Still with me?” Sky says, finally, and Four nods sheepishly after a beat, funneling what little strength he feels he has left into the monumental action of sitting back up.

“Hey, take it easy,” he hears, and Sky’s arm is around him again, nudging him up as delicately as he can. Four has the mind to open his eyes, then, and the world is bleary but not quite the blinding vice grip it’s been. He heaves a relieved sigh at this, slumping back into Sky as the chosen hero draws him close, and there are inexplicable tears at the back of Four’s throat that he swallows back and buries deep.

“Think you can drink it on your own?” Sky asks, gesturing a steaming mug toward Four. 

“Mmhm,” he mumbles back, taking it from Sky’s hands with extra care to hold it steady.

Blue’s right in his dramatics, it’s a divine thing—Four doesn’t know how Wild does it, always ready to improvise these effective remedies from nothing when he hardly seems the scholarly type. The smithy can’t truly taste it through his stuffy nose and burning throat, but the phantom flavour is there from a hundred glorious cups consumed already—the spicy-sweet notes that settle the storm in his head and ignite him from the inside out. The warmth in his hands is the most soothing of all—like holding close what’s dear to him, like a hearth on a freezing night.

Sky can feel Four relax a touch, relaxes himself alongside it. Four drinks for only a moment before setting the tea aside, nestled in the loam, and heat flowers on Sky’s shoulder as Four presses his feverish cheek into it, exhausted.

“It’s... probably not so easy right now,” Sky says. “But the others said it’s important you drink a lot, okay?”

“I know,” Four says, shutting his eyes again. “I will. I just…”

What am I doing? He wonders, foggy head providing no answers and chatty headmates seemingly back to their rare quiet. The tea is good, and it’s not hard to drink at all, actually, and he has no problem complying and getting better from this wretched thing as soon as possible, but—

Sky is so warm. Sky is so good to hug. Even without the plush of the multiple layers he’s always swimming in, he’s just so soft, especially for a hardened warrior. Everything feels so overwhelmingly lonely, there’s an ache in Four’s heart he doesn’t understand that tightens his jaw and waters his eyes and he holds it steady, keeps it locked away. But he wraps his arms around Sky’s waist, and leans his pounding head to Sky’s inviting heart as it beats steady and rhythmic—and it flutters and soothes like a sunshower, easing his wavering form.

“...I just want to hold onto you, for a little bit.”

Sky tilts his head, a twinge of something creeping over his own. Four always seems so… serene, by himself. It’s a mark of Hylia’s chosen to be quiet and drawn in, even the more extroverted of them enjoy the language of silence, their voices more pulled from within to balance, than anything. Four takes it a step beyond, though, smiling contentedly in the absence of words, in his corner simply enjoying the company of himself. It’s less that he has the air of a lone wolf, and more that he seems utterly at peace, on his own. 

He’s the exact opposite now, and that’s what claws at Sky’s heart—it looks painful for Four to not be touching him, the smaller hero absolutely holding on for dear life every time he draws near. He combs through his memory since meeting with the others—trying to think of a time when he’s seen Four particularly drawn to anyone like this—but comes up entirely blank. 

The smithy’s mug rests on the ground beside them, the idea of holding onto Sky with only one trembling arm far too much to bear. Overflowing with the weight of his own compassion, Sky draws himself closer to Four, carding his fingers through his long hair and knitting their heads together.

A moment passes like that in silence, with the two of them pressed side-by-side, enjoying each other’s warmth. Sky’s nails are short and tattered from the anxious biting he’d never been entirely able to break, he’s not even sure if it’ll do much as he works his fingers through wispy tangles. Zelda always knew exactly how to run her own digits through Sky’s mess of hair when the nightmares would leave him with his head pounding, he tries with all he is to emulate her ways, to be half the balm to Four that she’s always been to him.

The idea of pulling away from Four as he rests there seems cruel, but Sky has an idea and the tea’s getting cold, so he drops his voice to the softest tone he knows as he’s shuffling behind Four—

“Here, let me—”

And Four resists the urge to whimper when Sky pulls away, because he knows it’s not fair to shackle him, but he doesn’t want to be conscious without being held. He feels so unbelievably weak, the sensation of it like a wet blanket wearing him down, and he’s so caught up in the feeling of absence at his side that he doesn’t notice Sky’s behind him, now, resting his strong hands in the dip of Four’s shoulders, until—

Sky presses his grip in and moves, an unsure—but welcomed—massage. Four forgets entirely the need to hold tight, lets his pawing hands instead go limp at his sides, easing into the contact Sky gives him and letting it become his world. 

“How’s this?” Sky asks, sounding a little insecure.

“More,” Four slurs, putty in his hands.

Sky chuckles a little at that, his nerves settling a little. “Drink, please.”

Four nods, looking like he’s half-awake, and goes back to sipping his tea. Satisfied with this exchange, Sky pushes a little harder, delighting in the smile he catches on Four’s face as he settles. The moon is hung high, now, every light is shuttered across Hateno, and Sky takes a moment to appreciate the quiet of it all—examining the serenity of the little village as it dreams. It’s more curiosity than anything, when he breaks the silence to ask—

“Have you always gotten headaches like this?”

Four tries to shake his head in the negative, but his muscles are slowly transforming themselves to jelly and it comes across as a tilted action, wide and sweeping as he loses balance. He clears his throat, trying not to wince at the scraping sensation of it, and Sky moves to his neck at the sound, pressing gentle circles into it.

“It was a side-effect from one of my journeys,” Four says, and Sky shifts a little in understanding.

“I know how that is,” Sky admits. “It’s hard with... the scars that don’t exactly show on the outside.”

Four makes a little humming noise around the lip of the mug as he drinks, and Sky can hear the smile in his voice when he talks, patient despite how he’s feeling—

“You’re sweet, Sky,” he says. “But it’s hardly a scar. What did this to me is… well, more of a blessing than a curse, I think.”

He pauses to cough, scrunching his eyes shut before adding—

“I’m sorry if you can’t say the same about your own, though.”

Without stopping his ministrations, Sky goes quiet to think on it. He ponders the lowest points of all he’s seen, the bounding highs alongside them, a bittersweet smile like a light at the end of the tunnel, the everlasting company of a songbird’s voice in ancient code. His kingdom back home, and all it took to build it, towering and watchful and warm.

“Hm… I think I get that, actually.”

As he says it, Sky tugs at Four’s shoulders a little, motioning him to lie back. The smaller hero follows, leaning his head against Sky’s chest, and Sky kneads into his collarbones, methodical and soothing.

“Some days I’ll be on the Surface just… struggling to get air in my lungs. It’s bad enough, dealing with all the vastness and… culture shock, not being able to breathe right even after all these years feels kind of like salt in the wound.”

He keeps on, tilting Four forward and moving back to his neck, his scalp—gentle little circles, pushing the pain away.

“It’ll cloud everything in the moment, and I sometimes just think about how badly I want to go back—”

Home isn’t the right word, he thinks, its connotation casting scorn on the life he’s made long since Skyloft, the life he’s made with her.

“...up. Above the clouds, where things were a little easier,” he settles on. “But she—my Zelda, I mean—she used to dream about the Surface, it was all she’d talk about when we were kids. No matter how much I felt like I didn’t belong there, when I’d see the way she smiled at every inch of that world I couldn’t help but think there was no place I’d rather be.”

Sky thanks the darkness quietly that Four can’t see how red his face is—two decades beside her and still, the mention of Zelda turns him back into a blushing child. Four wants to find the words to tell him—just how much he never realized the two of them have in common—but his head feels hazy despite the divine way Sky’s blessed fingers heal his woes, and the words come out clipped and strung together with the thinnest line.

“The toughest burdens seem so worth it, when you love what comes of them,” he blurts, and then pivots. “Still, though, you have my sympathy. When I went above the clouds I barely survived the air up there, and it was only one small part of my own journey. It makes sense it’d be the opposite for you, and… I can’t imagine doing a whole pilgrimage like that.”

And Sky’s hands stutter a little, and stop, and Four feels him tense a little, something unidentifiable creeping into his voice—

“You…” Sky marvels. “...you’ve been... above?”

A million thoughts dam up the chosen hero’s throat, then, threatening to tumble out at once, ruin the whisper he’s so carefully rested at to spare Four’s aching head. What did you see? Was civilization still present? The culture of Skyloft, the people who stayed, what carried on after my lifetime was done with? Were there loftwings still, how did people get around if there weren’t, was it safe up there, with the cloud barrier gone like it was?!

No test of strength feels like it compares in that moment, when Sky swallows every last question and instead elects to exhale a homesick breath. There will be plenty of time to ask later, when Four isn’t miserably sick and barely a person.

Four nods. “It was beautiful up there, Sky. I think I’d miss it, too.”

There’s a soaring in Sky’s heart, and suddenly that’s all he needs, the curiosities and questions that run circles all around his head put lovingly away without another thought. He feels a little silly, then—somehow, it feels like their roles have switched, and now Four’s the one soothing him.  

Well. That won’t do.

Sky finishes off the impromptu massage by giving the smaller hero’s shoulder one last squeeze, then patting his arm gently to punctuate as he crawls back around to Four’s side. Four wastes no time leaning back into him, and Sky wraps his arm back around him and pulls him close.

In front of the pair, the fire crackles and sings still, embers floating up off it and mixing with the starlight above. The warmth dancing on his face, the flickering light washing over Four as he sits, tea in hand—it’s so familiar, so grounding. He thinks about the light of the forge on a snowy morning, the safety and the warmth inside, the quiet of the winter outside, some of his most peaceful moments spent just like that. If he closes his eyes—focuses on only the sensation of it—he’s right back there, home and happy and safe.

And then his breath stutters an interruption, and he dips to the side and sneezes a raspy sneeze, and the memory shifts and changes to something else entirely—the four of them huddled and shivering together in bed, arguing about who’s turn it is to get up and make more tea, each insisting they’re more indisposed than the last. The bite in Blue’s voice betraying how he holds Red close, Vio pulling Green’s sleeve back at the last minute and whispering don’t be a hero. I’ll go.

“Bless,” Sky hums dotingly, pulling him back to where he is. “Here, lay back down. You’re exhausted.”

Four wants to object to that, the ache creeping back up into his heart the second he’s ordered back to his bedroll—but Sky reads his mind, somehow, and it’s not there he gestures, but directly to his lap. He pats at it a little, inviting and warm, and Four catches his eyes in the light of the fire and wants to crumble in gratitude. He doesn’t understand how Sky always does this—how the chosen hero knows, more than any of them, exactly what it is that’ll chase away each and every one of their woes. Nothing about sleepy, ditzy, daydreaming Sky rings particularly observant on the surface, but still he always knows, always does his best to make it happen.

So Four settles down, sets his empty mug aside and crawls onto Sky, resting his head there and relishing in the feeling of it. And then, like clockwork, Sky’s fingers are running through Four’s hair again, rhythmic and gentle as they barely crest his scalp, and there’s a rush of calm that radiates from every touch that swims through him near instantly—more potent than any potion, more healing than any magic. Nothing compares to the instant relief of it, and Four melts where he lays into Sky’s embrace.

He’s sweating from the fever, but Sky’s hands are nice and cool, and he can’t tell where he is on the spectrum of waking and dreaming when he speaks again. Four wants to say… a lot of things, thank yous and explanations and a voice to his feelings, the illness pressing his words out where they normally remain within. The sentiments that come are mumbled and slurred, and he wills them to be coherent despite the fog in his head.

“I don’t think I—handle stuff like this well, on my own,” Four says, quietly. “It’s… good to have you here, Sky.”

“Really?” Sky asks, slowing his hands a little. “I mean, you just… seem so… I don’t know, independent? I’ve always kinda wondered how you do it.”

Four laughs a tiny laugh, more of an exhale than a chuckle. “Maybe once upon a time. Nowadays, though, I really just miss spending time with my…”

A pause. A swallow. A moment of contemplation as he reels the feverish ramblings back in, tying his tongue.

“...with my brothers.”

Sky lights up. “You have kin?”

Four smiles, angling his head to observe the joy on the chosen hero’s face. “Something like that. In any case, I got so used to their company when I was sick and injured, before. It was… something I took for granted.”

Something about that sticks in Sky’s heart, an observation he finds it hard to push past. He lets it rest there in the air, meditating on the idea of it—and he thinks maybe he has, too. He drifts away, wondering when he started—the dreamy haze of his childhood, warm and safe, where his dad whittled beside his sickbed and showed him with such care and patience how to hold the gouge steady. Zelda bringing homework to his stuffy dorm years later, punctuating his loud sneezes with a thousand that was attractive’s, shoving herself in bed beside him with snacks smuggled from the kitchen and reading him to sleep. And Fi, with her sharp gaze that misses nothing, so respectfully insisting with a heel pressed firm against his chest that he not move forward without a day’s rest, probabilities and statistics on her tongue like weapons should he try to argue otherwise.

He misses them, in all their various and different ways of being absent, now. Sky lets the emotion soak back in, taking extra care to learn from its mark upon him. 

“I think I know the feeling,” he breathes, simply. Another pause, and he stumbles a little through the next sentence—

“Is that why you…” Graceful, Link, graceful. “Um, well, you’ve been really... cuddly since yesterday.”

Another silent laugh from Four. He keeps it in the back of his throat, and it half turns into a cough that makes Sky worriedly snake a hand around to rub his back. He shakes the fit off, smiling despite it.

“Yeah. We’re... a tight-knit bunch.”

Four leaves it at that, and Sky fills in the blanks of all he doesn’t say—so of course, I try to find them, especially where they aren't. Sky can’t help but circle back around to it, marveling still at all he wouldn’t have guessed—Four is always so quiet, so content inside his own head, so calm in the face of everything, and Sky admires it so much . He wonders how Four keeps it together when he loves just as fiercely, misses home just as much.

Always, Four’s had that way about him—I’m fine on my own—and suddenly, Sky feels himself unkind for accepting the assumption for what it is. 

How lonely has it really been for him? He bothers his lip, not wanting to think too hard on it, his anxious brain disregarding what he wants entirely. Sky itches—to make up for lost time, to soothe like he’s never soothed before, to pledge hugs and company with the smithy always and forever, now, in sickness and in health.

He wants to do more, to be more—but it’s a feeling that isn’t new, one he knows he can’t rush, having lived in this loving, searing fire as long as he’s known breath. Instead, Sky decides right now he'll just keep Four close—hands in his hair, pressed up against him, a balm for the lonely twinge in his heart as much as he can feasibly be. 

“Well, I... know it’s not the same,” Sky says. “But you’ve… got eight brothers here, too. I can’t speak for all of us, but as far as hugs go, I’m on call whenever.”

Four shifts a little, curling in on himself once more. It’s different, this time, though—where before it was protective, as though the action of it would chase away the pain… this time, Four balls up with a grateful smile, letting his hair fall over his face like a curtain. Sky doesn’t know how he can tell—hiding in golden tresses the way he is—that he’s beaming. It seems to radiate off him like starlight, a dim glow in the night that rivals the hearth beside them. 

When Four speaks again, his voice wavers a little—with what, neither of them can say.

“Can we… stay like this a little longer, then?”

And Sky bites back another laugh, hanging his head to the side with a grin. Some day, perhaps, he’ll have the words to tell Four—to tell all of them—how it’s an honour and a privilege, something that comes as easily and as warmly to him as a long nap on a sunlit hill. Today, though—here and now—he elects instead to tuck a lock of hair behind Four’s ear, saying it the only way he knows how.

“‘Course,” Sky tells him.

“As long as you need.” 

Chapter Text

“You’re really just looking for the consistency of it to even out, that’s all,” Wild explains, stirring the cookpot methodically. “With some elixirs there’s a colour change, I guess? But I really don’t think I have the eyes for it.”

Sky stares into the swirling liquid, his heart swelling a little at how Wild’s still using the ladle the chosen hero whittled for him months ago, stained and well-loved. The twilit sky is wonderfully clear in Hateno, tonight, and the aroma of woodsmoke hangs a summery perfume around them. Restless crickets hum and croon, adding their song to the chatter of voices on balconies and patios, the crackle of the hearth as it bubbles and burns.

“And different monster parts can have more potent effects?”

“Think so,” Wild says, clearing his throat. “I always thought it was random, but Zelda’s sure there’s some kind of equation she can solve to figure it out. I’m pants at elixirs compared to her, so I’m inclined to believe her.”

Sky nods at that, eyes fixated firmly on the motion of the champion’s hand, willing his brain to memorize its intricacies. Wild shoots him an aside glance, pulling the ladle from the pot with a shake to get the excess off. From the Sheikah Slate he materializes a few bottles, handing one to Sky with a nudge to drain the pot. 

“Can’t say I took you for the alchemist,” Wild notes, and Sky waves him off as he works.

“Hardly,” he says. “I just… it can’t always just be you and Hyrule, y’know?”

Wild blinks. “Can’t it?”

“I… suppose it can, but—” he corks the bottle in his hands, swirling the liquid around and observing its shimmer. “What I’m saying is I want to be… better. At providing for the people I care about, I guess.”

And Wild lets out a laugh at that, a little incredulous at the idea. “Are you hearing yourself? You’ve been working yourself to the bone doing just that these last few days.”

“I can always work harder,” Sky smiles. “Hugs can only do so much. I want to be more… practical. More efficient in my care.”

“Efficient,” Wild mimes lovingly, changing his accent to match Sky’s own. “You sound like the princess.”

“Well, what would you tell her, then?”

Wild presses a finger to his cheek. “‘The pleasure of saving this kingdom was all mine, dear Zelda. All I can ask in return is that your first order as queen be to reinstate the castle dining hall’s all-you-can-eat buffet, and—’”

“Alright, alright!” Sky claps him on the back, bursting out in laughter. “Forget I asked!”

Wild takes the hit with a shit-eating grin, a half-cackle half-hacking as Sky’s strong arm heaves him forward and he nearly drops the elixir in his hand. He comes back up for air with his smile far softer, looking directly into the chosen hero’s heart with that molten blue gaze he wears on nights like this—when the others are off to their own devices, when he’s away from pricked ears and prying eyes. With only the heavens as their witness, a cauldron of bleeding red above.

“I’d tell her—I’d tell you—I don’t think any of us truly have the foggiest idea of what we’re doing,” Wild says. “I definitely don’t.”

Sky tilts his head a little, listening with careful intent.

“Try not to get so hung up on all the things you’re not,” he continues. “It takes time, to shape yourself like that. But you’ll get there.”

The words settle there in the quiet air, flutter down into Sky’s heart where they simmer and glow. 

“You wanna try the next one yourself?” Wild says, and Sky nods with purpose, hovering over the slate.

Another short hour passes like that, with the champion’s patient instruction guiding Sky through the motions of it—not only the measured chemistry of the brewing itself, but also the functions of the Sheikah Slate, something Sky finds strangely intuitive. There’s such an ease to swiping through the menus, and despite not knowing a lick of Sheikah (let alone Wild’s version of it) he manages to memorize fairly instinctively what buttons do what. Sky’s always thought himself bad at technology, and he starts to wonder in that moment if it’s only because he’s used to the clunky programming of Lanayru mechanisms, floundering in the ancient past.

“Maybe, just, don’t play around with the runes,” Wild notes, swiping over to them. “...or the map. I can show you those ones later.”

Wild’s a surprisingly good teacher, a flawless balance of guidance and space, like he’s done this a thousand times before. Sky sees flashes of Horwell’s everlasting smile in Wild as the champion encourages him, and he lets the feeling creep into his heart, brushing away the fleeting homesickness that hangs like thunderclouds above it. By the time Wild pries himself from the lesson to get dinner going, Sky’s confident—or at the very least, more confident than he was this morning—that he’s more than capable of taking some of the burdens of caretaker duty off the rest of them. 

Dinner passes in relative quiet, and Sky sits atop the loft-turned-sickbay, nudging Four awake to bring the bleary-eyed smithy his share. Legend and Hyrule sit a ways off, the former of the two practically inhaling his waterskin as he sniffles indignantly.

“Steel yourself, smithy,” Legend drones once he’s finished drowning himself. “Champ went apeshit with the peppers again.”

“I think it’s tasty,” Hyrule counters, pleasantly.

“What a charmed life it must be for you then, Roolie,” the vet says. “Maybe tomorrow night you can have my fire rod for dinner instead.”

Hyrule rolls his eyes, leaning back against the wall and intent to go back to sleep. “I’m open to the idea.”

Legend has absolutely no counter to that, so he lets out a noise of general frustration that turns into a coughing fit that turns into him chugging what’s left of his water. Sky lets himself smile at Legend’s dramatics, finding he’s more grateful for them the more they return. Four nibbles a little fearfully at the meat skewer Sky hands him, pushing past the haze in an attempt to get anything in his stomach. In lieu of words, the smithy pauses for a moment and directs a thumbs up in Sky’s direction, and Legend turns with a huff, pressing his drippy nose back into his book.

Sky can see where he’s coming from—Wild’s got such a taste for spice, the chosen hero wonders if maybe it’s burnt his taste buds clean off in the passing years. He’s admitted he lowballs, even, when he’s cooking for others, and Sky wonders what the food he makes for himself is like, if this is what he considers going easy on it. Still, Sky finds he likes it—the way it warms him from the inside out, makes his head feel clear and his senses feel alert. It’s something very distinctly Wild, something that Sky can easily see his companion in.

From the second floor, the chosen hero directs a loving gaze down at the champion. Wild’s sitting up with eyes drooping, and it’s only when he nods off and tumbles forward that Twilight notices, catching him a few inches before he faceplants into the dying fire. An exasperated sigh leaves Twilight’s lips—a clipped comment about Wild’s deranged sleep schedule—and he eases the champion over to his bedroll. He doesn’t stir an inch as the covers are drawn over him, as the rancher brushes his long hair away from his face, as the group settles down around him.

At the altitude he’s at, Sky doesn’t notice—Wild’s own spicy meat skewer with only a bite or two missing—left nearly untouched on its plate.

Sunlight pulls at Sky’s eyelids, and he turns with a discontented noise and pulls the covers over himself. It’s too early, he bemoans inside his head, a refrain that’s become repeated every morning for the last two decades, give or take. It will never not be too early, but the catharsis of complaining about it soothes, regardless. The sweltering summer air drives him from beneath the blankets almost immediately, and he cringes again at the brightness of the sun leering in through the windows, rinse and repeat.

The usual hour of this passes before Sky heaves himself up with a boisterous yawn, eyes still shut as he wipes sleep off his face and runs tangles from his bedhead. He wakes slowly, as he always does, but today something in the air drags him from repose with a jolt. Something uneasy, something… incorrect.

Twilight drawls him a mornin’ from the first floor, the lightness still present in his voice for a moment before the statement seems to register. Sky watches half-awake as the rancher pauses, blinks, and looks directly at the chosen hero. Anxiety crawls into his gaze, and he points halfheartedly at Sky.

“You’re awake,” Twilight says.

Sky tilts his head, drowsily humming in curiosity. Allegedly, he wants to quip, but his voice isn’t quite up itself, yet. 

Slowly, Twilight drags his eyes over to the corner where Wild’s bedroll lives. At the tone of his voice, the rest of the room follows, several pairs of eyes snapping to his line of sight—settling on Wild, still out like a light in the coming noon.

“Sky’s awake before Wild,” Wind marvels, a voice to all their worries.

“Oh dear,” Time follows up, averting his gaze as Twilight tears over to the champion.

The softness with which the rancher holds Wild betrays entirely the way he practically teleports to his protege’s side. He draws the covers back and cradles Wild’s face in his hands, worry spiking at his heart the second he makes contact. The champion breathes heavy, face flushed and drawn in agony, and Twilight heaves a sigh—not his usual resignation, far more tragic in its tones, like he’s heartbroken at the battle lost, unsure what to do.

“He’s burning up,” Twilight says, and Wild shifts a little in his arms, mumbling something unheard.

He alerts them more out of courtesy than anything, the confirmation of it coming long before. Wild was always the first one up, he rose with the dawn and spent his mornings relaxing in the dewy grass and wildflowers, starting on breakfast long before any of them so much as stirred. Conversely, Sky had to be shaken awake most days, his sense refusing to come to him until the sun was already high in the skies above. No one could put their finger on it, when they awoke to still air rather than the aroma of food, but all of them felt something was off.

The gears in Time’s mind turn, from breakfast to food to—

“Well,” he says, calm tones betraying his words. “We certainly did let him cook for us all, last night.”

The uneasiness hanging over them deepens, and Warriors pales a few shades in its wake. At once, the realization strikes all of them that they’re in it for the long-haul, that every last one of them is going to suffer the same fate eventually, their goddess-given mission put agonizingly on hold.

Warriors stands with purpose, throwing his arms out as if to keep his balance. 

“Well, gentlemen, that’s it from me,” he says firmly. “This plague is coming for all of us if we stay holed up in close quarters like this, so I do believe I’ll be taking my leave, now.”

Wind can’t help but snicker at his audacity, the uncharacteristic nature of it all—the brave and valiant captain abandoning his men at their lowest hour, it’s laughable how different he’d be in any other situation. Twilight’s on the same page, exasperatedly questioning him with a half-conscious Wild still at his side.

“Taking your leave where?” he asks. “I don’t care how brave you are, you’re not camping alone out there.”

“Our champion has a lovely shed out back,” Warriors notes. “Stable me like a horse for all I care. This illness looks dreadful and I will not be participating.”

Wind rolls his eyes, still grinning. “You won’t need to if you’re just gonna catch your death out there.”

“It’s summer,” Warriors says.

Time crosses his arms nonchalantly. “In the mountains.”

“It’s… summer,” the captain states a second time, as if the room hadn’t heard him.

“Not if I can help it,” Legend grins wickedly from the upper level, nonplussed entirely by the severity of the situation.

“Don’t you dare,” comes the warning from Warriors, pointing a finger firm at the vet, and Legend flinches away, more playful than fearful as he bites back. Warriors elects to be the bigger man, this time, turning on his feet to exit the cottage with a whoosh of his scarf. 

“I’m gonna have to fix it eventually!” Legend yells after him, banking a cough or seven against his palm, and Warriors pays him nothing more than a huff as he takes his leave. Sky wants so badly to go after him and talk him out of it—of all of them, the captain fares the worst in the cold, he at least wishes he could bother Wild for some warmer clothes—but a multitude of things keep him firm where he is, then, panic spiking in his heart as Twilight’s rearranging Wild in his arms.

“Bring him up, Twi,” Sky says through a yawn, his voice still scratchy from sleep. Twilight tries his best to remain gentle as he pulls Wild from his bedroll, acting as a crutch and practically dragging the champion over to the stairs. 

Wild stumbles beside him, his eyes lolling without rhythm in his head and his posture dizzy and half-lucid. He’s quiet—quieter than they’ve ever seen him, words evading his foggy state entirely—communicating only in ragged breaths and pained little noises, sounding far more like a child than a warrior. Sky asks him something but he doesn’t register the words, too busy focusing on trying to will the pain away. Wild paws and rubs at his aching throat, clumsy hands slipping against sweat-soaked skin, and everything blurs around him, colours bleeding into each other and voices speaking a language he’s not privy to.

He doesn’t see Twilight hand him off to Sky, turn back around to gather up his bedroll and move it to the loft. The sensation of transferring hands barely registers around him, he has no time to meditate on it before a cough crawls like flames up his throat and he tumbles into Sky with the force of it. He’s so, so tired, he begs the world to go away.

Twilight’s sugar-sweet baritone fades in and out of Wild’s ears like a comforting siren passing by, the fierce shuffling that accompanies it a testament to his nerves. He sounds disappointed, and Wild tries to push past the veil and apologize with no success. He mumbles something out he’s not sure any of them hear, and Twilight keeps on, wrangling the champion’s things.

“—should’ve known, I saw him skip dinner and didn’t even think about it, I—”

And Wild’s breath catches, a tickle in his brain, his heart—a wave of something familiar and nostalgic coming over him and despite how he’s feeling he knows what’s coming, but he begs it to wait, shaking his head in the hopes that it’ll slow itself, crawl out of his psyche, wait in the corner until he’s in control of himself—

Wild gasps, and shudders, and curls in on himself in Sky’s arms—

In Sky’s arms—

In—

—the castle infirmary, the lavishness of the private room feeling far more prison-like than the barracks ever did. Wild writhes against the four-poster, sweat pouring off him in waves and soaking the bedding below. He sends a silent sorry out to the nurses, wherever they are—it’s not even been an hour since the sheets were changed and already he’s ruined them again.

He turns back onto his side, rubbing at his nose in an attempt to ease the pressure that fills his stuffy head. It backfires, naturally, and he shudders forward into curled fingers with a hefty sneeze that makes every inch of him hurt ten times more.

Wild groans, collapsing in on himself. He hates this. He might as well be shackled to the bed, it’s clear the rest isn’t helping. There’s no way for him to feel better inside the castle’s sheltered walls, he needs the fresh air, aches to hold his sword in his hands. Everything is itchy and hot and the candlelight feels like needles on his skin, he needs the sun, he needs to move, he feels voiceless now more than ever—wishes he could articulate it all, argue his case proper to the medics that come in and out to check on him.

He eyes the Master Sword as her sheath leans against the wall opposite, considering just taking her and running. He’s got some semblance of where in the castle he is, and he struggles in his head against the feverish haze to navigate the fastest, quietest path out before he’s lost to a painful coughing fit and the roadmap vanishes like a fog in the sunlight. He doesn’t hear the door opening as he’s in the throes of it, the fire it sends scraping down his throat too painful for anything else to exist alongside it.

“Goodness,” says a voice beside him, suddenly present, and when he registers it Wild practically shoots up in bed, beside himself.

His form is lacking, he panics—gathering up the strength he has to sit up and weakly salute the princess—both of her. Three of her? His vision wavers and his head swims and the castle walls spin and blur in the heatwaves, and His Majesty is going to have Wild’s head if he doesn’t pull himself together, and—

Zelda’s about ready to throw her arms up in exasperation the second he moves, and Wild can’t really blame her with how unprofessional he probably looks right now. He’s expecting to be scolded about it, but her grievances come out different than that, the bite in her voice hiding something else—

“At ease, soldier—really, Link, I can’t believe you’re concerned with formalities right now, for Hylia’s sake, this is just like you—”

She looks ready to rant for another hour at his audacity, but stops herself short in the middle of the sentence, sighing her disbelief away. Wild follows her command, relaxing and dropping his hand from his head. Zelda blurs clearer into his focus, a sign that she is, in fact, real and in his room, and he looks at her quizzically, wondering what she’s doing here while he’s so out of shape.

“Are you that surprised to see me?” Zelda asks. “Come, now, I wouldn’t just let my appointed knight suffer alone in pestilence, you know.”

And Wild looks kind of nervous at that, wondering why not. If his uncouth appearance right now doesn’t land him in bad graces with the monarchy, he’s absolutely certain getting his germs all over the princess will. He suddenly wrenches himself away from her, shaking his head as he faces the wall.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Zelda says with a roll of her eyes. “If I’m to take ill it’s already determined. In our close proximity we’re far past the incubation period, what with your stubborn insistence you were fine—”

She stops herself when she notices Wild curl in further, like he’s been struck, and she curses her blunt tongue for always betraying her feelings this way. Zelda’s frustrated with him—she lives in that emotion, more often than not—but she didn’t come by with any intent to shame him for it. Wretchedly, she reminds herself—you’ve been mean enough to the boy thus far. Change your tune, Zelda.

The princess reels back. Softens herself.

“I’m sorry, truly, it’s my fault,” she says, and Wild turns to face her like he wants to argue. “No, it is. We’ve been together for quite some time, now, I could stand to be more attentive to your tells.”

Wild tilts his head, turning to face her completely as he does so. Tells?

“Don’t think I only listen with my ears, Link,” says Zelda. “I saw you skip dinner the other night.”

Heat rises on his cheeks, to the tips of his ears, a different shade than the flush the fever’s painted. Conflict tangles inside him at how exposed he feels, with how hard he tried not to make it her problem. Zelda’s eyes remain on him, in metaphor and in truth, but he doesn’t feel seen in the way he usually does—the way that makes his tongue freeze, his hands shake. Something warm blooms in Wild’s chest.

Zelda reaches out to make contact with him, the same delicate touch she uses out in the wild, palming flower petals in reverence, adoringly watching bugs crawl through the gaps in her fingers. She brushes shaggy bangs from his forehead, drags her hand from there to his cheek to his neck, a swirl of emotion in her verdant eyes. She looks at him like she looks at every inch of her kingdom, with protective light glowing beneath her skin.

“Goddesses, you must be feeling miserable if it’s stolen that appetite of yours,” she says, softer than he’s ever heard her. “Next time I’ll take better care to notice when you’re unwell. For now I’m afraid all I can do is apologize for over-working you.”

“Don’t—” Wild rasps out, and Zelda startles a little at the sound of his voice. “Don’t apologize. Please.”

And Zelda… wants to apologize to that, but she knows the way his eyes waver and darken and how his jaw clenches whenever she does, so she bites her tongue and swallows the impulse and takes to the box on her lap, instead, pulling the cloth covering from it with royal grace.

“How about this, then,” Zelda asks, placing it on Wild’s bedside, and he eyes it curiously, wordlessly asking permission. She nods.

As soon as he pulls the top off, the aroma of goron spice wafts up enticingly, prickling at his nose, and the voracious hunger Zelda’s far more used to flares up in her knight’s eyes for only a second—before he pitches to the side with another rough-sounding sneeze. He stays facing the wall away from her for a moment, clumsily signing an ‘ excuse me’ in her direction. Zelda giggles a little impolitely, waving him off.

“Bless you, Sir Knight,” she half-teases, and Wild comes back up from the cover of his fist and eyes the meal again. It’s a bundle of meat skewers—still steaming and glazed, their skin practically dyed scarlet with a thick layer of potent spice—and suddenly his stolen appetite is back in full force. He steels himself, remembering his place—and drags his eyes to meet Zelda’s, wondering if she meant to share.

“Don’t be silly, Link, you know I can’t stomach your preference for heat,” she waves him off, leaning back in her chair with arms crossed. He looks at her with an emotion in his eyes she can’t entirely identify, and she flashes a smile, loving and bright.

“Please, eat.”

And he does.

It’s positively divine, the way it chases away his chills and clears his stuffy head, even if he’s a watery, sniffling mess by the time he’s downed the second skewer. More than that, though, it warms his heart. Wild didn’t expect her to remember—an unremarkable fact he’d thrown into their initial conversation about food—when she’d asked him what he considered comfort foods, what kind of things he liked to eat when he wasn’t feeling well.

She’d laughed at his answer, and he didn’t blame her—as far as sick foods went, it was rather atypical. Perhaps that’s why she had remembered, but the love in her eyes might have suggested otherwise.

Zelda sits at his bedside while he finishes every last one of them off, and he melts into the relief as it washes over him and tries to bite back the conflict that swirls around in his heart. He’s sitting in front of his charge, the Princess of Hyrule, a sweaty, disheveled mess with his nose running and his hair sticking up and he knows, he knows, he knows he should be making more of an effort to maintain his knightly dignity in her presence, but something about Zelda just invites his walls to come tumbling down, invites him to be human, invites him to forget all he is and all he’s destined to do.

People cast their eyes upon him and his soul screams don’t look at me, don’t let me be your avatar, put your gaze somewhere else, anywhere but on me. It snatches his voice and stiffens his back and darkens his eyes and keeps his jaw steady and set—so why is she so different? Her analytical mind and searing green eyes studying him from afar, quietly taking notes for later. By all means, her scrutiny is the most terrifying of all… and she uses it to memorize instead what the worry lines on his face mean, not just that he finds joy in food, but the exact food he likes when he’s sick. 

Scholarly in friendship, as she is in all else, Wild can’t help but adore her. A million strangers around him, so intimidating, so stifling. And Zelda, logically the most intimidating of all—the single greatest comfort he’s ever known.

“Get some rest, Link,” she whispers as she’s easing him back down, the touch of her hand on his cheek once more, and he tries not to think too hard about the way it lingers there, far longer than it needs to.

A smile like sunlight over her shoulder as she gets up to take her leave, its mark the promise that she’ll be back as soon as she’s able.

“That’s an order.”

Wild lurches back to the present with a gasp that catches in his throat, and he fights the air with hacking breaths, too lost in the event of it to properly check himself back into reality. He feels the pain in his throat before he registers where he is—he swallows and winces, shutting his eyes tight. There’s light at their borders, and Wild swats away the white noise that always seems to drone around him on the tail end of a memory, tries to ignore the swollen, tight agony with every breath he takes. An arm snakes around him, similar to the one he’s used to, but not quite the same. 

“Hey,” says a voice, and Wild weakly opens his eyes with herculean effort.

The world lights itself back into view, and Wild discovers he’s in his house in Hateno, leaning against the wall. From the bottom floor Twilight makes his best attempt to inconspicuously peer up at him, head lowered but eyes lingering. Sky’s arm is rubbing little circles into his side, a gesture that’s more for the chosen hero’s nerves than Wild’s own comfort. The champion takes a deep breath, careful to hold it steady as it goes.

“You with me, champ?”

Sky’s voice—right. He’d blinked out in Sky’s arms, where he’d remained ever since. Wild shuts his eyes again, this time slowly and with the intent to rest, and nods against Sky’s chest.

“How are you feeling?”

Golden Three, what a question. Wild opens his mouth to answer it and is barely able to push a pronoun through his lips before he seizes and winces hard—one eye shut tight, hand gripping his throat, giving up entirely. His voice cracks and breaks and he tries not to focus on the way its crumpled imprint makes a few of the boys on the lower levels cringe and absentmindedly touch at their necks. 

Stop looking, Wild shakes his head, taken by a nostalgia he doesn’t understand. Please, just—

He stiffens a little when he feels something cool brush his own neck, blinks back his vision to Sky’s worried face. The chosen hero’s fingertips lay gently against it, as if he’s checking Wild’s pulse, albeit at a lower rest. The soothing softness with which Sky traces his thumb across him—examining with careful intent—makes Wild want to go limp entirely, and he lets out a wheezy, exhausted breath.

Sky answers his own question, taking the champion in. He can feel the agonizing swell of Wild’s throat, the sickly heat that accompanies it, and it twists his heart and shows on his face and he swallows nervously, desperately trying to calculate a reprieve. 

“Your throat’s really bothering you, huh?”

Understatement of the century, Wild wants to say. Every breath scrapes an agonizing path in, it’s as though no other sensation exists alongside its sharpened ache. He’s no stranger to pain—he’s known it intimately, a reluctant friend—yet somehow the discomfort breaches even Wild’s steely core, crawling into his spirit and scratching at his windpipe.

He leans harder into Sky, choosing defeat and begging some distant version of himself he’s heard about in legends of old to guide him on this wordless voyage. 

Sky’s making that face, again—the shifting, endearing one that tangles his brow and angles his lips, the one he makes when he’s running scenarios and ideas through his head like some kind of goofy computer. He settles after a minute, and pulls himself just barely away from Wild with a cautious smile finding its way to him. 

“Um, this might be a long-shot, but…”

Wild peers on blearily, focusing on Sky’s hands as they start to move.

“What about this?” Sky signs, and the world comes to a halt around them. Wild brightens, and his hands move on their own, shaking a little in their excitement.

“You sign?” Wild asks, and Sky looks like he’s glowing.

“Of course!” Sky grins, a happy flourish in his fingers, and when Wild angles his head in curiosity, he keeps on. 

“Oh, it was a required class at the academy I attended,” Sky says. “My people spend a lot of time on birdback, and it’s too windy up in the sky there to really hear proper, so…”

Which makes sense, but Wild remains in awe still at how consistent the language has remained over what seems like millennia, the lack of discrepancy despite the centuries between them. Something wavers in the champion’s heart as they go on talking like that, lingering on the idea that not even the wear of history can destroy what’s necessary, what’s loved.

“Do you want to talk about what you remembered?” Sky asks after a while, and Wild shudders and coughs and cringes, pulling his arms up to his shoulders, defensively balling up. He takes what he hopes is a discreet look around—everyone on the upper level is napping besides the two of them, and he doubts the boys downstairs can see the intricacies of how their hands move. He draws his gaze back to Sky, hands wavering a little as they move.

“It was the same memory I had when the vet first went down, but it… kept going, this time,” Wild signs. 

“The last time you were sick?”

“Yeah,” he continues. “I’ve been spared the inconvenience of it since waking up, but I guess it had to happen eventually.”

“Lucky your body held out until you met us,” Sky smiles. “You were alone on your journey, right?”

“More or less,” Wild says.

“Something tells me it happened now for that reason,” the chosen hero keeps on. “It’s no fun to be alone when you don’t feel good.”

“You’re probably right, yeah,” says Wild after a moment of thought, and Sky eyes him with a knowing look, a wordless question. Wild smiles, looking a little shy in the veil of his messy hair.

“Zelda saw right through me,” he continues. “She’d get so fed up with me, she—she used the word ‘incorrigible’ a lot.”

Sky presses a laugh to his palm before responding, banking his amusement in a bid to not wake up his friends. “Oh, I think we can all relate to that. Let me guess… you were stubborn and tried to hide it, but she saw every little thing that was off about you and called you out?”

Wild doesn’t answer, but the bashful way he directs his grin to his feet is enough of a confirmation. That thought crops up again—the act of being known and seen—the way it would turn him cold and unmoving before the Calamity wiped his psyche clean. Sky talks about it with such adoration in his voice, not a single trace of fear or shame, and Wild wonders if he’s always felt that way or if it was something he had to work toward. If it was something his own Zelda had to draw out of him, bit by bit.

The champion knows so much, by the grace of whatever force has brought them together, about his past lives. All they lack in common, all they share, he’s barely had the time to consider the spirit that ties their Goddesses together, as well. The sight of Zelda is back in Wild’s mind, then—that look she so often wears, brow drawn half-way between exasperation and utmost love—and he wonders how often Sky’s known it, too.

“Sounds like you miss her.”

Wild’s so lost in thought he almost doesn’t register the motion as Sky signs it, but the words travel down into his core and he reddens a little. He swallows, and makes a face at the pain that comes with, and swivels into a clumsy nod, moving his hands with rigid purpose.

“I do. I want to see her,” Wild signs. “Before we leave. I keep remembering more and more as time goes on how… good she was to me.”

And Sky doesn’t have much else to say to that, so he nods warmly back and shuffles himself a little closer to Wild in a gesture of understanding and comfort. He can relate to that, too, it’s really a refrain he finds himself repeating ad nauseum since he’d started traveling with the others. It’s comforting, the way some things seem to change so little between lifetimes, even when the world changes so much. 

For a moment, they sit like that in stillness, enjoying that cosmic understanding as it passes between them. Sunlight wavers in through the open windows as the shade of the tree outside shifts it like a kaleidoscope, and Wild hears the murmur of Hateno outside. Hooves on the dirt trails as travelers return home, children being called inside for—

“Dinner!” Wild jolts forward, the startle of his sudden voice making Sky flinch. “Oh, no, no one in this house can eat if I’m sick—”

He doesn’t last long before he’s coughing again, hunched forward and lost in it with his face pressed weakly against his elbow. Each lurch of his body sounds more painful than the last, and Sky’s intent to keep the nervous tremble from his palm as he soothes firm circles into Wild’s heaving back.

“Hey, easy there,” Sky says softly. “We’ll get it sorted.”

“But—”

“We’ll get it sorted,” Sky repeats, curling down to meet his eyes, this time. “We can handle a few days of mediocre food while you take a rest.”

Wild pinches his eyes shut, trying his damnedest to steady his breathing before he starts absentmindedly pawing around for something.

“At least take the slate,” he says, voice heavy. “I’ve got rations for months in there, we don’t need to spend the rupees—”

The last word is wrenched out, a broken-sounding thing, and Wild grips at his neck again, pressing another painful swallow against the ball of his hand. Sky pulls the Sheikah Slate from his free hand, and Wild’s running on fumes just with the effort of sitting up. The slow crawl of his lungs claws at Sky’s heart, the way his eyes fall shut and his mouth parts, and suddenly he’s tumbling forward and the chosen hero has to scramble to catch him before he hits the ground.

Wild makes a little noise of discontent in Sky’s arms, long hair tickling his bare wrist, and the champion buries a few more weak coughs behind his teeth. His voice is muffled and scratchy as he’s slumped there against Sky, barely audible at all.

“Sweet Hylia, put me back in the shrine.”

Sky can’t help but smile at that, grateful, at least, that his sense of humour is still intact. 

“No more talking, c’mon,” Sky says, easing him over to the corner of the loft where his bedroll lies in wait. “You’re at your limit for today.”

A mindless groan passes Wild’s lips as Sky lowers him down onto the pillow, and the sweltering ache in every last one of his bones feels like absolute, divine punishment for snapping creep-shots of his friends while they were this weak and vulnerable. He can only pray, drifting off and with the slate in Sky’s hands, that the karmic retribution stops there.

Only when he’s certain that Wild’s asleep does Sky let himself take the champion in—free of the unconscious way Wild shys away, makes himself smaller, fights the eyes on him. It’s a curious thing about Wild, for sure—how he seems like such an open book, more than any of the rest of them—lapsing into these moments where he clams up entirely, hiding himself from the world. Sky wants to march downstairs and ask Twilight if that’s normal, how he does it, when to push a little, if it’s even okay to. There’s a kind of magic the rancher works on Wild that seems a force of its own, something Sky wants to learn like he learns elixir making, like he learns to heal.

The thought draws a sigh out of him—and he tries not to meditate on the idea that his little potions lesson with Wild has done more harm than good. Absentmindedly, he eyes the Master Sword as she’s resting across the room. 

I kept leaving the loft to spend time with him, is he sick because of me? Sky wants to ask, wants to hear the statistics, wants to drown in the numbers whether they help or not. But Fi’s quiet—as she always is, now—and wisely so. These questions aren’t productive, Sky knows she’d say. Guilt is far less so.

She’s never been wrong about anything, so he listens to her hypothetical advice and tries to exhale the idea of it away. Wallowing won’t help Wild feel any less wretched, so instead Sky presses his knuckles delicately to the champion’s jaw, teeth gnawing at his lip at how much warmer it feels. Caught somewhere between asleep and awake, Wild swallows again with a heartbreaking grimace, sweat beading down his temple. His neck is swollen and hot to the touch still, feeling even worse than before beneath Sky’s careful inspection, and it makes the chosen hero feel like his guts are rocks with how worried he is and how powerless he feels.

The sun dips lower outside, and Sky’s snapped out of the void in an instant when he realizes he needs to make dinner happen and that Wild still hasn’t eaten anything. He tries to plot out how to do it with respect to their soft-quarantine, cooking for the healthy half of them is definitely out of the question, but at the very least he can work the slate now, maybe pulling what they need from it and ducking back to relative isolation is his best bet—

He’s absentmindedly swiping through the artifact when a flash of something bright and familiar catches his eye. Sky scrambles to get back to the screen he saw it on, lights up in a flash when he realizes what he’s looking at. The idea crawls into his head, and suddenly nothing else in the world exists besides him and it, and he tumbles down the stairs with purpose, the hopeless look wiped off his face entirely.

Wild wakes up in hell. He’s pretty sure that’s where he is, at least. He thinks he definitely smells burning—charred flesh, unmistakably—probably his own, with how horrendously hot everything is. It’s faint, a stain of a scent he feels on his tongue with his nose blocked off and leaking, lingering on the thick air that tears a hot path down into his lungs. He reluctantly opens his eyes and wipes snot off his lip, and oh. Wait, no, this is his house. This is his house, and he’s here with his brothers, and—

For the second time that evening, Wild bolts upright, croaking out a single word. “Dinner—”

His chest meets resistance as he swings up—a hand gilded with metal, pushing a rattling cough out of him on impact. Legend side-eyes him as he pushes Wild back down into bed, only barely taking his gaze off his book.

“Settle down, wild child,” Legend says. “It’s taken care of.”

Wild blinks blearily, fever-dazed and out of it. “Is it?”

“It is.” Legend turns a page, his eyes back to reading. “The old man made something. I think it was supposed to be steak.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Allegedly.”

The both of them leave it at that, and Wild stays balanced on his forearms, taking in the state of things with a little extra height. Hyrule’s asleep at Four’s bedside, their fingers laced together while the smithy sleeps fitfully. Legend’s scooted away from his own bedroll, closer to where Wild is.

“...were you keeping me company?”

“Sky asked me to keep an eye on you and pintsized,” Legend tells him, nudging his head in Four’s direction. “Might as well make use of myself while I’m stuck with you sickos.”

Wild nods, still not entirely there, but following to the best of his ability. He clears his throat with a wince, oblivious to the way it only makes him sound more miserable.

“Where is Sky?”

“Sweet Farore of Divine Courage, you need to stop fucking talking,” Legend curses, held hostage by empathy as he’s rubbing at his throat. “Anyways, he’s—”

He’s cut short by Sky practically bounding up the stairs, looking brighter than he has in quite some time. 

“You’re awake!”

“—an angel on high,” Legend finishes. “I’m going back to bed.”

With that, the vet inches back over to his own bedroll without another word, slumping down dramatically and leaving his book behind. 

Things are happening too fast around Wild’s dizzy head for him to fully register, and Sky’s voice kind of sounds like it’s coming from underwater when it reaches the champion’s ears. Wild mumbles out something incoherent, half-shaped like a request for Sky to repeat it.

“How are you feeling?” Sky tries again, dropping to a crisscross and facing him.

Wild takes a moment to consider this before raising his hands to answer. “I feel… like the stairs… shouldn’t be moving. And I don’t—remember. Swallowing all this sand.”

He shudders, then, trembling hands drawn across his arms, forcing him to speak. 

“Goddesses above, it’s cold—”

“Oh, gosh, hold on—” Sky leans forward, that heartsick frown creeping back onto his face as he palms Wild’s burning cheek. “You’re definitely going to need an elixir soon—”

“—nooo—”

“—but food first,” Sky says.

Wild pulls his covers over his shoulders and buries himself within their veil, half-lidded eyes and unproductive sniffles.

“Not hungry,” he croaks. “Especially not for whatever Time made.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Sky says, a hair away from pouting. “You think I’d subject you to that while you’re ill? I’m hurt.”

Wild peeks out a little from behind his protective fortress, curious.

“It’s pretty much the only thing I can cook,” Sky says without explanation, fiddling with the Sheikah Slate while the champion peers up at him. “And there’s—no way I made it even half as good as anyone back home does, but—”

He gives a few more cursory taps, and glowing blue coalesces for a moment in his hand before the ribbons of light knit together and solidify into a steaming bowl. Sky gestures it toward Wild, beaming like he’s made of sunlight.

“Here. A bit of good, old-fashioned Skyloftian comfort.”

Wild looks down at the bowl with some hesitation, taking in the swirling mixture of vibrant orange, dotted with spices and chunks of fruit. The heat of it bellows up into his face, and his eyes are back on Sky in an instant, questioning.

“I can’t smell this,” he says weakly. “What is it?”

“Pumpkin soup!” Sky grins brightly. “It’s, um... it’s better than it sounds, I promise!”

The champion eyes the meal again, brawling against the outright hesitance he has at the thought of eating. The idea of hurting Sky’s feelings is almost too much to bear, but Wild’s certain he won’t be able to taste it to begin with, and his throat hurts so bad that nothing sounds worse than introducing another sensation to it. He heaves a sigh—accompanied by a wince as it grates through his airway—and shakes his head, defeated.

Sky’s hand is back on his cheek, then, thumbing tenderly beneath Wild’s fever-bright eyes. He shies away from meeting the chosen hero’s own, worried he might see something dejected there—but Sky is bubbly as ever, tilting his head almost innocently and with a sincerity in his voice that is patient and kind.

“C’mon, Wild, this isn’t you, this is the fever,” he says. 

Something in Wild’s heart spills over when he finally catches the warmth in Sky’s gaze. It’s familiar in how it makes his shoulders prickle and his fingers fidget, a nervousness that’s strangely welcome. His insides tangle a little, two versions of himself dancing around one another with twin swords brandished and clanking expertly together. And Sky says—

“Eat, please.”

Eat, please.

And Wild doesn’t have the will to argue with how lightheaded and hazy he feels right now, so he presses the bowl to his lips and takes a reluctant little sip, and oh.

It only takes a single taste of Sky’s miracle soup for his body to realize it’s starving, and his regular self kicks into high gear behind where the illness has imprisoned it and disregards the spoon entirely. He scarfs it down without a care for how it burns his tongue, doesn’t hear Sky let out a hearty chuckle as he witnesses the spectacle of it. 

Wild thinks that if this is what Sky considers a low-quality imitation of his homeland’s signature dish, it’s his life’s mission now to taste it in full and genuine. There’s something about it that’s unlike any soup Wild’s ever had—and he’s had a lot—something he can’t entirely put words to. It’s sweet and savoury all at once, the flavours waking up his dulled sense of taste and hitting twice as hard, and the way it coats his throat and warms him from the bones is something positively divine.  

“You like it?” Sky lights up, and Wild sets the bowl on his lap and grabs the chosen hero by the shoulders, eyes like saucers.

“I didn’t know you could cook!”

“No, no! I told you, it’s… just this one thing,” Sky says with a hand running nervously through his hair, blushing in the lowlight and dropping his gaze to the side. “Pumpkin soup is all I ever want when I’m feeling poorly, and I know how happy food makes you, so I figured maybe—”

A watery sniffle draws his eyes back upward, and he freezes, suddenly panicking from where he’s shyly positioned. Wild’s crying.

“O-Oh no,” Sky frets. “Are you okay?”

And Wild crudely wipes his wrist at his running nose and nods, smiling through the tears. He can’t remember the last time he cried, and it’s a catharsis like no other when the dam breaks and he shudders and weeps and pulls Sky into a messy hug, snaking his arms below the chosen hero’s own and holding him tight while he sobs—quietly, and delicately, and without regret.

Sky hugs him back, petting at his long hair with a tenderness Wild’s so rarely known. So rarely let himself know, he corrects, and collapses in on himself all over again.

There’s so much he’s still missing, so much life he’s yet to remember, pawing at scraps of who he was before. Pictures the princess left him, and scrawlings on yellowed paper burnt with malice and hidden in the castle walls, with so much at stake, and so many eyes upon him, he feels it necessary to stay strong, to silently bear every burden. Anything can send him tumbling back to that mysterious Before—the scent of fruitcake baking, the croak of a hot-footed frog, the right notes on Time’s ocarina, the velvety petals of a silent princess in his hand. 

Wild fades from the present and wears the face of a ghost, a boy with lead on his tongue and a sacred blade in his hands, floating feet above his body, mechanical and afraid. A darkened crowd of silhouettes around him, their eyes blood-red and piercing and always present, and they chant an ugly chorus—we depend on you.

And he shakes and trembles and he’s so, so afraid—but they don’t deserve to be afraid, too, just because he’s a coward. And so he bites it back and keeps his jaw steady and holds his sword tight and keeps his head high and repeats it like a mantra—breathe. Breathe and be okay. You have to be okay.

In his memories, glowing in the candlelight, Zelda visits him late into the night. And he remembers her calloused hands tucking golden locks behind his ear, and how her eyes felt far less like shackles, far more like wings.

And she brings him his favourite foods, and she reads from his favourite books, and she mirrors his dreadful jokes, and she sees him in the good way. 

Back in the present, Sky holds him close, and Wild does everything in his power to make sure that he never, ever forgets this feeling again—to be known by someone you hold dear, someone of your choosing. It settles in his heart like sunlight, like a song, and he reluctantly pulls himself away from Sky with tears in his eyes and a childish sniffle.

And Sky smiles, and tilts his head in that loving way he does, and points cheerfully toward the slate, and asks—

“Seconds?”

And Wild shoves his empty bowl over with a fervor unmatched, smiling through the mess of tears on his face.

Known, and memorized, and seen—

In the good way.

Chapter Text

With Wild out of commission, Wind finds himself among the first few to wake up the following morning. There’s a stillness in the room he isn’t used to just yet, the intoxicating aroma of breakfast replaced with woodsmoke and crisp air, the only sound for miles birdsong and cows mooing. Twilight’s the only one awake aside from Wind himself, poking at the simmering fireplace in an attempt to keep it flickering until the sun comes out properly.

Wind throws an arm over his eyes, less of a dramatic gesture and more an attempt to wake at a slower pace. He’s never been good at doing it all at once, but the air today feels especially heavy, the world outside too bright and imposing. He turns to his side, pretending to be asleep still in the wake of Twilight’s distracted silence. 

The first time he feels it, that day, it’s hardly anything of note—less of a physical sensation, more of a premonition than anything. He wrinkles his nose and buries himself in the covers and the phantom itch is gone in a flash. 

Twilight cooks breakfast, and it’s serviceable enough—but Wind’s got a craving for sugar mere hours later, and so he finds himself with legs sprawled across a high branch in the apple trees overlooking Wild’s home. Far in the distance, past the grassy cliffs and tilled soil, the distant sound of waves rolls across his ears, and he bites another chunk from the fruit in his hand, blissed out.

The second time, it’s a little irritating—a cloud shifts away from the sun, and its rays burst through the leafy covering above Wind’s head and straight to his eyelids. Its brightness tugs at his sinuses, making them buzz in a curious way, and he’s suddenly aware of the sensation from before, making itself far harder to ignore. Scrunching up his face does little to assuage it, this time, so he knuckles at his nose with an annoyed ferocity, chasing the tickle away. 

With a sigh, he begins to regret giving Sky so much shit about how sensitive he is to the very air they breathe. Wild’s Hyrule seems intent on making him eat those words.

The day goes by in relative quiet—he lazes around, he enjoys the outdoors, he helps Time and Twilight with lunch and dinner, he and Warriors tell stories to each other through the wooden door of the captain’s ridiculous quarantine shed. Despite being the second to wake, he finds himself the last to fall asleep that night, shuffling in his bedroll with his cheek pressed indignantly against his pillow.

It’s just so uncomfortable. Wind scrubs at his nose again and again, but the feeling always comes back with a vengeance mere moments after it’s left. He sniffs emphatically and shuts his eyes tight but it’s turning to an ache, now, crawling and itching and rioting for his attention. He fights it with all he is, palm at his face, and for a moment the burn of it recedes, leaving him a second of solace to sit in his denial.

Why did he have to be the fourth to fall? He was so close to the more-than-halfway point, he thinks bitterly. Fifth would have been nice, sixth or seventh or anything beyond it, divine. Fourth feels so custom-tailored to prod at his complexes, it makes him want to scream.

No one’s seemed to notice, at the very least, but the second they do he knows how the story will go. He’ll be ordered to bedrest and babied harder than they’ve ever babied him before, and Sky will see him as the new project and flutter by his side like a clingy hummingbird until his attention is pulled elsewhere.

His thoughts are halted when the sting prickles back through his face again, down into his throat and crawling behind his skin. Wind pushes himself into steepled hands, ducking under the covers and pressing against his sinuses until they’re throbbing sore. If he sneezes he’ll wake the whole damn room, he knows this from experience, and when his eyes water and his breath catches he’s still stubborn enough to fight the inevitability of it. He shudders forward into the blankets, a desperate attempt to muffle the sound—and sneezes once, twice, three times, four—his senses too dulled by the fog as it settles in his head to make sense of the silence that follows. Every breath feels like thunder in the quiet, and he reluctantly peeks his eyes over his covers with nervous anticipation weighing down his heart. Not a soul stirs around Wind, his companions all still sound asleep. Amazed at his luck, he breathes an exhausted sigh of relief.

“Wow. Bless you.”

Shit.

Sky was on the upper level, out of view in the darkness, completely off Wind’s radar. He looks down at the sailor so nonchalantly it stings, pointing at his bedroll and bags.

“Do you need help moving your stuff up here?”

The casual attitude with which the chosen hero says it is almost laughable, betraying entirely the doting mother Wind knows him to be. He gives a snort of laughter when the implication of the question sets in, pulls himself up in bed in an attempt to prove his good health.

“I’m good down here.”

And Sky blinks a little at that, unsure if he’s hearing correctly. Even in the darkness, Wind already looks the very picture of ill—bags under weepy eyes and nose an angry red, head lolling to the side as he struggles to stay awake and argue.

“Are you... really doing the denial thing?” Sky marvels. “C’mon, you saw how well that worked with Ledge. If we get an elixir in you now it’ll be a lot easier when the rest of it hits.”

Through heavy eyes Wind peers up at Sky, desperate to make his case, but he’s suddenly exhausted and every bone in his body feels like it’s slowly transforming into chu jelly and his bed is so warm and Sky looks about as fuzzy as his words currently sound. Slurring, Wind repeats himself.

“I feel ffffine,” he insists, slinking back beneath the covers and passing out the second his head hits the pillow.

He’s won the argument by technicality—leaving Sky unable to get the last word in—so the older hero elects instead to shuffle down to the first floor and scoop Wind up into his arms. With a resigned sigh he carries the sailor up to the sickbay, silent apologies sticking on his tongue.

Sky wakes up to an empty bedroll and the sound of Hyrule shouting outside.

It’s not necessarily an alarming tenor, the shouting. The danger receptors don’t go off in Sky’s brain, flaring on all sides and telling him to move. Still, Hyrule’s really not one to raise his voice, so Sky uses all the strength he possesses to pull himself from the warmth of sleep and take in his surroundings.

Wild and Legend are to his side, passed out and still snoring against one another. On the lower level, Time and Twilight look surprisingly unperturbed at the ruckus outside, snippets of casual conversation falling in and out of Sky’s earshot. Four’s the only one who pays the chosen hero any mind as he awakens, reading the confusion on Sky’s face with amusement.

“Our traveler might have turned his back on the patient.”

Oh, Hylia—

Sky stumbles upward when the words sink in, still disheveled and lagging from sleep but desperate to be of use. He’d fallen asleep with his sailcloth wrapped around him—a usual comfort, on lonelier nights—and barely has the mind to straighten it out as he’s rushing down the stairs and out the door, instinctively grabbing his pack and following the sound of his teammates’ voices.

He doesn’t have to go far to find the source of all the noise—a little ways up the high cliffs that frame Wild’s house, Wind is dangling from a tree by his legs, nonchalant as ever. He looks deaf entirely to Hyrule’s protests as he runs his baton along the breeze, toying with it aimlessly in the way he so often did. 

“And you—!” Hyrule continues ranting, pointing a finger at Warriors as he sits in the grass, polishing his favourite blade. “Did you even try to stop him at all?!”

“The sailor and I have spent plenty of mornings together with nary a complaint from you,” Warriors defends, raising an eyebrow. 

“He’s ill!” Hyrule throws up his arms. “He should be in bed, not scaling cliffs and summoning hurricanes!”

“I resent that, Roolie,” Wind cracks an eye open and ceases his movements. “In case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t summoned shit—”

A pause, and he swings himself back upright, leaning against the base of the tree with the Wind Waker pressed thoughtfully against his cheek.

“...yet.”

“Oh, wait, now I see what’s going on here,” Warriors interrupts. “We’ve reached the containment breach stage of things, then?”

“You self-serving—” Hyrule starts, too frustrated to finish the thought as Warriors is turning on his heel back into his bunker. “Get back here and help us!”

“As I’ve told you once before, I will not be participating,” says Warriors. “Best of luck, men.”

From higher up, Wind snorts out a raspy laugh, one that catches in his throat and turns into a cough, budding in its nastiness. He reigns it in with a sniffle that’s almost boisterous, carrying himself with a confidence that dares any soldier—man or microbe—to try and fell him. Warriors always takes his side, when were they going to learn?

And Hyrule’s temper seems to flare out, then, replaced with a resigned sigh as he goes through the next stage of it all. Sky fills in for the traveler as he hangs back, taking a softer approach and strolling over to the cliffside.

“Sailor,” Sky tries. “What are you doing up there?”

“Same thing I do every morning,” Wind is balanced back on folded arms, cracking open a single eye to look down at him. “Enjoying the fresh mountain air.”

A flick of Wind's wrist runs a breeze across his cheek, pulling at his bed-head and drifting toward the sun. The action’s supposed to be soothing, but his body betrays him in the middle of it, and he suppresses a shiver as it leaves, barely detectable to the untrained eye. Sky catches it, though—he always does, somehow—and Wind makes sure to avoid his gaze, to look away from the worried knit on his brow. The chosen hero swallows.

“...and how long did you plan on staying out?”

It boils Wind’s guts, the way Sky says it—skirting around stating anything directly, with that sweet, concerned tenor in his voice. The sailor doesn’t know why he’s strung so tight, why his temper’s so short today, just that the words tumble out of him before he has the control in his fuzzy mind to bank them.

“As long as I feel like, will you get off my ass?!”

Sky bites his cheek, placatingly throwing out his arms. “Wind… please just get down from there and back inside. If you let us treat you, you’ll feel better a lot quicker, and—”

“I can handle it myself!” Wind shouts. “Why don’t you go back inside?!”

The statement is punctuated with a sharp wave of his arm—trembling slightly, but powerful intent still there. Sky barely has time to register the sound of gales whistling through the trees before an impressive burst of air creeps up behind him, resolute in its mission of knocking him clean over. The chosen hero stumbles and digs his boots into the earth, holding his own, only for his sailcloth to catch on the wind and throw itself over his head and across his eyes. 

The breeze grazes Hyrule, and he and Sky both stumble a little in its wake, catching their balance to the tune of Wind laugh-scoffing a sharp syllable from his perch. Sky wants to think of a metaphor, then—something poetic, something flowery, about a mighty loftwing struggling to fly against a daunting headwind. It’s still too early for his brain to stitch the words together eloquently, though, so he tucks them away for later and finds his resolve instead.

Wind plays dirty, he knows this, of course. He’s seen the way the boy fights—heaving up dust and dirt, striking below the belt, the sunset at his back, blinding his opponents. He takes it out of battle and into camp at night, stealing glances at Warriors’ hand while they play cards, hero’s honour be damned. And while Sky isn’t crazy about the idea of matching that energy when his friend is feeling less than stellar, he knows it’s a sacrifice he has to make. Under the veil of his sailcloth, hidden from the world, Wind doesn’t see Sky slipping the item onto his wrist.

With a less-than-perfect flourish, Sky throws his sailcloth back over his shoulder, aiming the Beetle square at Wind and firing with intent.

“Shit!” the sailor spits, fumbling with his baton in a bid to whoosh it away—a messy attempt to conduct falls from his jittery fingers, but the songs all blur together in his mind and the instinct he usually works on fails him entirely, because what the hell did Sky just shoot at him, shitshitshit—

The artifact zeroes in before he can finish his thought, and on any other day, Wind would have a better counter, he’s sure—a blast from his deku leaf, an arrow lodged in its backside, what’s some measly little airship to the boy who conjures storms?! —but it’s far too late to employ a single attack, and the object latches its dull pincers around the sailor’s waist with a pivot to the side. 

Before he can register it, Wind’s being carried from his perch and down toward Sky, kicking and screaming all the way while the chosen hero steers the tiny little ship with concentration painted conspicuously on his face. If Sky weren’t so genuinely exasperated at the situation, he thinks he might laugh—Wind looks like a remlit past sundown, scratching and spitting and biting at the metal as it wraps around his torso.

The sailor is deposited into Sky’s hands, and he and Hyrule both can see the way his flailing arms slow little by little and the fight comes less and less. Sky’s expecting him to start clawing at extremities but he’s down to fumes by the time the chosen hero pulls him up, draping the smaller hero over his shoulder. Wind writhes against his neck, pounding his fists against Sky’s back with quickly-weakening resolve.

“Avast, motherfucker!”

He says it through another coughing fit, and Sky can hear Wind’s lungs growing heavier with each breath. He’s gotta admit the kid’s grit is pretty impressive—that he’s still fighting at all when the others were mostly unconscious at this point is quite the testament. Despite the shaky blows pounding at his shoulders and the hectic air of the morning, Sky can’t keep the pangs of love and worry from his chest. Heading back toward the cottage door, the chosen hero kneads quiet relief into Wind’s shuddering back, and the sailor goes stiller and stiller in his arms.

“Try a different tack, swabbie,” Sky tells him.

“Die,” Wind wrenches out, limp and exhausted in his watchful grip.

The rest of the day is much the same. With the quarantined outnumbering the rest of them, the group had agreed to switch places in the cabin. Time and Twilight took up residence on the second floor with the sickbay now sprawled across the living room, after much debate and a threat or two from a deliriously feverish Wild who was absolutely promising to haul his bed down the stairs lest he lose its feathery embrace. He’d fallen asleep mid-sentence instead, something that had Time especially questioning his religious choices or lack thereof.

Wind never sleeps for more than a few hours at a time, drifting in and out and making a beeline for the nearest window every time eyes are off him, even for a second. All attempts at placating his fiery spirit are met with utmost resistance—he turns up his nose at Wild’s silent offerings of honey candy, smacks Hyrule’s hand away with surprising vitality when the traveler attempts to check his temperature, has to be wrestled back into bed more often than not.

Goddesses above, Sky wishes he had Warriors in his corner—their captain has a way with Wind that no one else can quite grasp hold of, a way he knows would be in their favour right now if only he weren’t so worried about taking ill himself. There’s no way he’d set foot near the sailor in his current state—as the day drags on he only looks worse and worse, ghostly pale except the red across his nose and cheeks, shaking like a leaf even while curses tumble from his mouth. Every sentence is punctuated with a sneeze or three, turning his voice to a creaky shadow of what it usually is. 

It’s only when Four wraps himself around Wind’s torso that their newest patient slows himself for a moment, staring down at the smithy with bloodshot eyes half-lidded and wandering.

“Four?”

“Shh,” he whispers, cuddling closer to Wind. “You’re warm.”

“Yeah, no shit, we all are,” Wind tells him, grinning despite the edge in his voice. “Get off. I’m gonna sneeze on you.”

“Won’t be the worst thing I’ve seen you do,” Four says, and promptly falls asleep. 

And oh, Wind’s felt this before. Sunlight on his face pulling him from sleep, one of the ship cats snoozing, a cozy weight on his chest—so peaceful, so serene, so comfortable, what kind of cruel villain would he be to move ? He sighs, remembering his conscience, closing his eyes as he strokes trembling fingers through the smithy’s tangled hair. It feels… balanced. Symbiotic. Wind’s heart settles as he falls away from the waking world.

Sky watches out of the corner of his eye as Wind finally, miraculously drifts into repose, and makes a mental note to thank Four later. A cough leaves Wind’s throat, and it’s such a tiny thing in the solitude of the night that Sky can’t help but let his heart crack a little. He draws himself closer to Wind’s bedside, the lightest touch of fingertips to the sailor’s clammy cheek, once Sky’s certain he’s asleep. His breathing is whistling and slow in the silence, his skin absolutely burning to the touch, and Sky finds himself simmering and frustrated and crumbling in on himself at the way his stomach sinks over the thought of it.

As exasperated as he is with the way Wind fights his care, he can’t bring himself to turn his temper on the younger hero. He wants to pull Wind aside in the dark of the night where no prying ears lie and tell him that he gets it, he gets it! Sky wants to tell him of an adolescence spent with folks breathing down his neck always, that line where love and condescension blur. He wants to speak of Zelda at his bedside every morning, tearing his covers off with a comment or ten about what would you even do without me? Of instructors and authority figures whispering words like wasted potential and needs to learn to focus when they think his back is turned. Sky thinks of how easily he could have been a simple puppet upon the surface—no thoughts in his head, no strife in his heart—with Fi’s voice at his backside, left foot, right foot, turn here, dodge left, shield bash, parry— 

Most of all, Sky thinks of the day after Pipit’s Wing Ceremony. He thinks of the broken wail of his mother’s loftwing against the thundering winds that whipped and tore around Skyloft, he thinks of the scraps of his father’s best tunic hanging from the bird’s bleeding talons. He thinks of his fingernails dug into the dirt while he sobs, and sobs, and sobs, and he thinks of the pity he never stopped seeing thereafter in the eyes of everyone who looked his way.

Of the pity bed at the academy, why don’t you stay the summer in your dorm. Of the pity buffet Zelda brought him to a few days after, all his favourite foods lined up in the empty academy kitchen. Of the pity party his life became in the whole year following, a sudden and suspicious charisma that drew people to him, people who had never noticed the silent boy before.

Pity grades. Pity letter. Pity win. Pity sailcloth. Pity date. Pity sword. Pity destiny.  

In his youth, Sky wanted to turn to the world and scream, I know. I know I’m slow, I know I’m a ditz, I know I struggle to keep up, I know I’m never on time! I know I have chronic ‘baby me’ syndrome, I know because you all keep trying—

He wanted to shout, can’t you let me make my own mistakes?

And time passed, as it does. And the universe says back to him, very well. It’s only you now, hero. Save the world in this solitude, as you’ve always wished.

And Sky whispers back—in the darkness of the night, with his best friend gone, on the anniversary of his parents’ death—

I’m… not a hero.

Of course not. For who ever let him think otherwise?

...well, everyone, it turns out. So much later he would understand, in the way Zelda’s eyes sparkled whenever she looked at him, you always seemed made for so much more. I couldn’t just let you throw it away.

I couldn’t just let you sleep it through—

I couldn’t just let you flunk out—

I couldn’t just sit by while you locked yourself in your room and tuned out the world—

I couldn’t just watch.

No one could. The ones who loved him most of all.

A pained moan pulls Sky back out of his head, and Wind shuffles at his flank and holds tighter onto Four. The feeling in his chest spills over, glowing and hot, and he tries to think of what combination of words he would have said to his younger self to make the boy understand why everyone around him seemed to hold on with kid gloves. Sky’s not sure the sentence exists, really—he just knows he felt it that night, from the other end, staring the headmaster down with determined eyes as he was ordered to, for once, stay in bed.

I can’t just watch.

There has to be some magic to meeting Wind half-way. There has to be—some way Sky can keep watch over him, soothe him, ease him into a path of recovery. Some way that’s hands-off, that lets the sailor know he’s loved, and respected, and equal, and that the worry doesn’t come from the thought he can’t hold his own. Of course he can. Of course he can.

But… Sky sighs, leaning his cheek against the wall in defeat. This is all I know.

Beside him, leaning on the wall, the Master Sword quietly sings. Sky thinks she’s always singing, maybe, but that he only has ears for it when he needs the comfort. It doesn’t sound the same—her voice, her words—it’s more of a hum in his soul than a melody through the air. For the millionth time that week, he finds himself thinking, I wish you were here. You’d know what to do.

The chosen hero pulls her from her rest, placing her against his chest and hugging her scabbard like the world’s most comically-shaped body pillow. She’s warm, like always, and Sky can feel his eyes grow heavy as he holds her close.

This care is all he knows—touchy and ferocious, like an overflowing goblet that shudders and spills and shows on his face. He’s desperate for it to work, heartsick and worried, desperate to find the weaving way into Wind’s heart. Where the younger hero feels independent and cared for and free all the same.

Right now, though, both of them are tired—so Sky lets himself doze to the tune of Fi’s pseudo-lullaby, chanting please feel better and Hylia hold you in her golden hands like silent little mantras dancing in his head. 

Something jolts Sky awake, his eyes snapping open with a breathless gasp. He thinks maybe he’s had a nightmare when the hush of the room greets him—it’s quiet, quieter than he’s heard in days, and he wonders for a moment if maybe the absence of sound itself is what had woken him as he registers the threatless landscape. He takes in his surroundings, squinting in the darkness—Legend has his back turned, still as ever as he sleeps beside Hyrule, their pinky fingers hooked barely together at the tips. Four is holding tight onto Wild, and the champion reciprocates the embrace with a small percentage of the smithy’s ferocity. And Wind—

Sky’s heart drops and he stumbles to his feet, nearly hitting his head on the second floor overlook as he comes up. No, no, no, he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, just to rest his eyes for a moment, how many years was he going to have to be alive before he realized that line of thinking was a trap—

“Sky?”

And then Twilight and Time are on the upper levels, rubbing sleep from their faces, and Sky’s seventeen again caught dozing in class, cold fear crawling up his veins. Points connect in Time’s icy gaze as he stares down at the empty bed, and Sky can’t help but take note in that moment alone that he’s more of a wild card than anyone gives him credit for. For a brief second, Sky has no idea if he’s going to grin or glare.

The former wins out, and their eldest keeps a laugh behind his ever-subtle smile, intent to diffuse the wide-eyed anxiety painted on Sky's face. Twilight looks at him with a mixture of confusion and panic, letting his knit brow do all the talking.

“Slippery one, isn’t he?” Time says.

It’s marked with a playful aside glance—first in Twilight’s direction, then to Sky. The tempo of their level-headed leader’s voice is steady as ever—a metronome, a ticking clock—and Sky finds his heartbeat evening out alongside it. He breathes a sigh, running fingers through his bedhead.

“I’ll go looking for him,” Sky says.

“Sky, let me,” Twilight interrupts. “You’re exhausted, and I can find him faster.”

And the chosen hero bites his lip at that, because while it’s true Twilight’s tracking is somehow unparalleled, a greater force within Sky is screaming that it has to be himself. That Wind will come more easily the less it feels like everyone is biting their nails over him. Sky shakes his head.

“I think I should go,” he says with a quiet fire blazing in his eyes, hoping his tone alone will be good enough to convince Twilight. “Besides, it’s not like we don’t know where he ran off to.”

Twilight tilts his head a moment before snapping to. “Oh!”

And then a pause. And then an ungodly mutation of a whisper and a scream as the rancher battles to keep his voice down.

“He wouldn’t have wandered that far out of town, would he?!”

Time shoots Twilight another look, wordlessly conveying I think you know the answer to that one, pup.

“Heavenly Three,” Twilight frets with his fingers pressed messily against his forehead. “Sky, I’m not intent to push, but out of the two of us I actually know the way, and—”

“I don’t need to know it,” Sky interrupts, waving a hand in an attempt to settle his friend’s heart. “Please, just, trust me.”

With that, he quietly unsheathes the Master Sword while Twilight looks on in silent wonder, while Time averts his eye. The delicate way that Sky holds the blade outside of battle has always been something Twilight finds utterly enchanting to observe, and he’s never seen it more so than now, as Sky gently touches the tip of her to Wind’s empty bedroll. The sword hums quietly, as if it's listening to a melody it’s yet to memorize, clumsily stumbling along. Sky shuts his eyes, concentrating on something.

Then the sword pulses—a faint, purple glow—not quite the searing gleam the rest of them know, but something far softer. Less grand, more… conversational. Sky angles the holy blade closer to the door—pointing at it, almost—and smiles down at the Master Sword as its shining heartbeat glows warm in his hands. He pulls his pack off the ground and clumsily buckles it on, flashing a smile that betrays the waver in his frame.

“I’ll be back soon, get some more rest,” Sky says, something a little bittersweet creeping into his expression. 

“Let me handle worrywart duty.”

It only takes an hour of walking before Sky starts to quietly panic, and a little after that when he starts to very un-quietly seethe. Shortly after that comes the denial, where it doesn’t seem possible that Wind—sick as he is, in a world that’s not even his own, littered with monsters—could make it this far. Wordlessly, Sky begins to question Fi’s dowsing, staring at the sword incredulously and wondering if maybe, just this once, she miscalculated—and though she’s sleeping like always, he sees the phantom of her in the back of his mind, tilting her head in a gesture that says Master, you and I both know the answer to that inquiry.

And he loops back into panic, breathing unsteady and heart hammering in his ears before he crests the hill and sees it—the sandy shores of the bay, sheltered by trees with wide, thickened leaves—the same kind from the jungle they dropped in. Waves crash against the cliffside and lap at the shore, and there in the center of the sandbar below—barely visible behind a column of rock—is a tiny blue speck, crowned with a mop of blonde hair.

Sky’s mind sits this one out and his body takes over—with a running leap, he unhooks his sailcloth and tears off the cliff, letting the salty tailwinds carry him down toward the sands as he drifts like a dandelion seed at their behest.

His feet don’t even hit the ground before Wind startles, and even at his current distance, Sky can see the way the boy’s shoulders stick up. Wind shuffles a little, not looking back, and Sky recognizes the action immediately, banking all the words in his head in an attempt to diffuse.

“It’s me, Wind,” he says, and then notices the sailor’s sitting beside something—something moving, breathing.  

Finally, Wind looks over his shoulder, the tension not entirely dropping from his frame. Sky can’t read his expression from the angle, and it’s a bit of a chilling thing, with how openly the sailor wore his every thought on his face.

“...hi, Sky.”

His voice sounds spent, but there’s a calm in it that wasn’t there before. The mound next to him shifts and snuffles, its black dusting of fur a mere outline in the starlight. Sky peers into it curiously, watching carefully as Wind strokes the longer tufts at its temple.

“Hi,” Sky says back, his temper suddenly gone. “Um… can I sit with you?”

For a moment, Wind halts his movements, his back still facing the chosen hero where he stands, his fingers on the animal resting at his side. He lets go of a breath, envisions it smokelike, disappearing into the sea spray. Wind’s heart settles. He pats the ground beside him, another half-look in Sky’s direction.

“Quietly,” Wind says. “She’s sleeping.”

He catches the mystified look on Sky’s face as the chosen hero shuffles over, his eyes locked onto the subject of that statement. Wind grins a little mischievously, tilting his head.

“No pigs up in cloud city?”

Fascinated, Sky shakes his head. “Pigs? Is that what they’re called?”

“Cute little bastards, huh?” Wind gives her another scritch on the head. “Never seen a wild one before. Thought she was gonna trample me when I came stumbling onto her shore, but…”

He cuts himself off to cough, finesse failing him with his face pressed up against his sleeve. The pig snorts again, sounding almost offended at the action, and Sky instinctively has his hand on Wind’s back before he can think. The sailor comes back up for air, shaking his head as if to will the ailment away. He finishes the thought.

“...always been good with ‘em,” Wind says. “Shit don’t always change.”

And he looks to the waves, smiling despite everything, and Sky can’t help but take it in with a warmth in his chest. He’s never seen the younger hero so completely at ease—Sky can feel the tension dropping from Wind’s shoulders with every tumble and splash of the rhythmic waves. Two impulses fight within Sky, in that moment—his anxious headspace begging to give the sailor a piece of its mind for wandering off so far in his condition, and a far more patient part of him that understands, suddenly, why the risk was worth it.

Wind closes his eyes, leaning forward on the palms of his hands, folded over one another. He breathes in through his mouth, careful to temper it so it doesn’t catch again. The salt in the ocean-drenched air fills his lungs, and he settles for the first time in what feels like months. Sky watches, deciding.

“I remember the first time I saw the ocean,” he says, conversationally. “I kinda felt like I was going to pass out. I couldn’t believe that so much water could be in one place.”

Wind eyes his olive branch, searching the statement for something ulterior. Sky looks pleasant as ever as he stares out at the darkened sea, though, a sparkle in his tired eyes that simply can’t be faked.

“I took it for granted,” Wind admits. “If ya asked me a year ago I woulda told you I’d be content to never see open water again. Man, am I eating those words now.”

A sniffle, and the sailor pulls his knees to his chest, leaning back against the stone.

“All I ever want now is to be near the waves.”

Sky hums. “They’re soothing. I like ‘em.”

He pauses, listening alongside Wind. Owls hoot far in the distance behind them, tearing through the sleeping forest. One of Wild’s strange temples glows blue on the horizon, an otherworldly painting as its light reflects on the water’s surface. Sky fights drowsiness, head lolling as he feels the bliss of it roll across his heart.

“We can stay here for a while,” he says, sleepily, and Wind looks at him, something soft pushing past the haze of his fever-bright eyes.

“We can?”

“We can,” Sky affirms, angling his head down to face the shorter boy. “...but we gotta talk about our feelings while we do it.”

“Ugh,” Wind says, making a stink face. “Gross.”

Sky laughs, then—genuinely, with a tilt of his head. “If you want, I can start.”

And Wind averts his eyes, drawing his legs closer to his chin, a non-committal hand wave that signals Sky to go on ahead. There’s a moment of silence while his thoughts gather at the edge of his tongue, words never coming so easily. He leans back, his soaring eyes drawn instinctively skyward.

“I feel… really incompetent, kinda all the time,” Sky says, smiling to offset the heaviness of the statement. “It's always seemed… that I needed my hand held for a lot of stuff, and for a while when I was adventuring, that feeling went away, but ever since I met you and the others, it’s… visited me again, from time to time.”

Wind folds his arms over his bent knees and sinks quietly into them, listening. Sky’s voice shakes a little, dipping and twisting as he tries to make sense.

“I’m, uh, still kind of finding my wings when it comes to… being there, for other people,” he says, a spot of pink on his cheeks. “I don’t wanna make it about myself, but—just—”

His eyes are off the horizon, then, peering down somberly at Wind instead.

“I’m sorry.”

Wind shuffles out of the cover of his arms, then, having not expected the sentence to end like that. He looks back to Sky, careful to face him head on as he speaks.

“Sky, no, c’mon—”

“It’s a genuine apology,” Sky says before he can finish. “I know you need space, and I’m… not doing my best at giving it to you. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, it’s just… hard. To sit by and do nothing while you’re hurting.”

His throat tightens, and he swallows it, concentrating on the sound of the waves and the breath in his lungs. The kid’s going through enough, he doesn’t need Sky’s unintentional guilt-tripping on top of everything else.

“I’m sorry. Really.”

Wind wants to find kinder words than what instinctually comes to him. He knows Sky’s just the world’s biggest sweetheart, he knows it has nothing to do with how the chosen hero sees him. He knows because Sky’s done it for everyone else, regardless of the respect to their name, the experiences under their belt. Wind knows it’s not about him, but still, his heart fights, as if it’s working entirely on autopilot. He wants to phrase his understanding delicately, but the world is fuzzy and his head is full of fog and he hopes instead that Sky will simply forgive him for the roughness of his tongue.

“You oaf,” Wind says. “You act like any of us are good at that. Isn’t that meddlesome spirit, like… I dunno, isn’t that what makes us heroes?”

Sky blinks. “Is it? Not the… boundless tenacity and recklessly stupid courage?”

“Can’t do anything with that if you don’t know what to use it on,” Wind notes back, and Sky makes a face that shouts reluctant agreement. Wind is wise, Sky has to remind himself, far beyond his years in all he knows. Another spike of guilt crawls through the chosen hero as he meditates upon it, and Wind seems to read his mind as he balls back up, chin resting on his arms.

“Look, it’s just frustrating, being the youngest.”

And Sky listens, making a mental note to take every word to heart.

“It ain’t like it’s my first rodeo!” Wind says, throwing an arm out to the sea for effect. His voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, spent and fading. “My big brother complex already got shot down a peg or two when I hitched a ride with the pirates. I wasn’t even the youngest there, but that ain’t how seafolk operate. Might as well have been with how quick they turned me into their chore boy.”

Sky shuffles a little. “Wasn’t that frustrating?”

With a shake of his head, Wind looks back to the waves, eyes half-lidded and fond despite their wear. “I was the lowest of the low, so they didn’t cut me any breaks. No kid gloves. No special treatment. It was… well, it felt good.”

He brightens, raising his head back up from where it’s resting. His hand finds its way back to the twitchy ears of the sleeping pig at his side, and he wordlessly calms her while she dreams wild dreams. 

“They didn’t worry about being soft with me,” Wind says. “Knew I could take any shit they flung. And they were right!”

The words begin to sink in, and Sky finds an answer in them he feels downright silly for not considering. That a rough edge can carry just as much love within it as a soft one, he knows this, of course, and yet he feels like he’s only just learned. 

“Of course,” Sky whispers, then raises his voice a little over the clamour of the sea. “Um, did you… well, did you ever have to rely on others when you were out saving your world? Don’t tell me you managed all on your own?”

“Nah, ‘course not,” Wind tells him, bothering his itchy nose with a knuckle. “I was exhausted a lot. I felt hopeless more often than not. Constantly running on fumes, and I crashed hard pretty much as soon as we set out to find New Hyrule. I was out sick for a week and Tetra insisted on looking after me.”

“Your Zelda, yeah?”

“Technically?” Wind says, face twisting. “She’d let you have it if you called her that, though.”

The idea of that alone is confirmation enough. Sky tries not to laugh, somehow understanding completely, as he takes the information in. So their youngest isn’t against the idea of being cared for, there’s just certain people or certain ways that are more acceptable than others. He pries.

“Well, what…” Sky begins, then corrects himself. “How was she?”

“She suplexed me into bed and threatened to keelhaul me,” Wind grins, too exhausted to bother fighting the lovesick song creeping into his withering voice. “And then she sat on me for fifteen minutes, give or take. ‘Til she was sure I was asleep.”

And Sky’s somewhere else, then. 

The swirling sea melts away into something far greener, roots and fallen leaves snaking up withered cracks in the concrete of the Sealed Grounds. Fi’s pedestal is blurry in front of him as he’s talking to her—she stands stalwart as ever, listening to his week as he vents and gushes and tells her what she’s missed since she’s gone to rest. And then she’s gone and he doesn’t remember falling asleep himself, but the forest is a watercolour blur around him and he can hear the steady thump of someone else’s feet on the earth below. He’s weightless, pressed up against their chest, and he drifts back into consciousness for long enough to hear Groose’s voice calling him an idiot for worrying Zelda and every dagger in his voice is laced with love despite itself.

Yeah, Sky gets it. Different care in different ways. How Zelda and Fi’s helicoptering feels no more or no less lovely than Groose’s frustrated throttling. How he needed all of it in good measure, just the same. 

“Love needs balance,” Sky says suddenly, like he’s realizing it himself. “And we’re, just... pouring too much of one kind into you at once.”

Wind agrees, and feels like a damned bilge rat for the simple fact of it. He wishes he had the words to say he’s grateful to be thought of, but his traitorous feelings simply won’t have it. He acts before thinking, an old habit he knows is no good—throwing himself off cliffs, rushing without thought into the lair of the enemy, always with Tetra pulling at his back like he’s a cat she has to scruff. He coughs wretchedly into a closed fist, pulling it back as soon as he stops to timidly ruffle his hair. 

“I’m sorry, Sky. It’s so stupid that I’m being such a hypocrite about this.”

Sky snaps out of his spiraling thoughts, raising an eyebrow at the boy. “Hypocrite?”

“Yeah! I mean, if it was my little sister I’d do the same,” Wind says. “Man, if anything even so much as made Aryll frown I’d be sticking it in the gut one second and at her side the next. I’d be hoisting her onto my shoulders and carrying her to the lookout. I’d be just as aggravatingly helpful as any of you guys are.”

He breathes a rustling sigh, fixating on the sleeping gulls that perch atop the crest of the shrine in the distance. The smallest of the bunch shifts a little, burying its face into the feathers of another. 

“I understand. It’s fuckin’ dumb I’m being such a prick about it when I get it with such ease.”

Sky doesn’t know how, but pieces begin to connect in his head. Paths wind and intersect, calculations crop up despite how lost he feels. For the second time that day, he tries to think about all the ways he felt when he was in Wind’s shoes.

“I don’t think you’re being a prick,” Sky leads, face scrunched up in thought as he comes to the words following. “We… haven’t exactly given you the opportunity to prove yourself to us much. It makes sense that in your heart you’d… see this as a test, maybe.”

Wind scoffs pitifully. God, he’s right on the mark, how does Sky always do that? A test. To hold out the longest, to fight his own body, to last on his feet where the others all fell like dominoes. 

“Yeah,” the sailor breathes, pushing his eyes back against folded arms. It feels like his brain is pulsing against his head, and he blames the sensation on far too much self-reflection for one day. It’s beautiful out here, but the starlight’s beginning to hurt his eyes, the shrineglow giving him a headache, the heady seaspray making his irritated nose sting and run. 

You overdid it again, idiot, he knows Tetra would say, but Tetra’s not here and Wind finds himself feeling unbelievably lonely as it sinks in exactly how bad he feels on all accounts. Even with his eyes away from the world, he knows Sky is shuffling nervously at his side, trying to find a way to thread that overflowing spool of comfort he always has on hand into him, so delicately embroidered.

Wind sucks in a breath. Pulling his gaze back up to the sea, he wordlessly lays an open palm on the sand. It rests in the minimal space between him and Sky’s bodies, beckoning quietly.

Sky looks down at it, then back to the sailor’s face, as if he’s unsure it’s really happening. Wind nudges his head shyly away, in a gesture that almost begs Sky to take the chance before he reconsiders. Feeling like his veins are full of sunlight, Sky bites back grateful tears and—gently, he reminds himself—twines his fingers with Wind’s own.

The contact does something to the smaller hero’s insides, glittering under his skin in such a way that he doesn’t know if he’s to laugh or cry. It bubbles beneath the surface, and he blames it on the fever he’s sure is spiking.

“...what’s Aryll like?”

Sky’s voice comes suddenly, after a long bout of quiet. Wind tenses a little at the question—he wasn’t really expecting it, content to leave it where they had. Answers tumble out of him, too warm as they pass to be stalled by the ache in this throat.

“Bright,” Wind says, utterly beside himself with pride. “Bright like the sun itself. There’s nothing in the world that can keep her down for long. She could be in a thunderstorm with waves raging and trees toppling around her and the first thing she’d do is throw up her hands and start laughing and dancing in the rain. Aryll makes her own happiness. She finds beauty everywhere.”

He squeezes Sky’s hand, then. A small thing, as his eyes find the birds nesting across the water once more. They cuddle close to one another, dreaming of clear skies. 

“I found her in a cell in Ganon’s lair,” Wind says, still smiling despite the weight of those words. “It was cold and dark and hopeless, far across the sea from home.”
A pause. His shoulders shake a little, and Sky’s heart sinks, but the grin doesn’t fade from Wind’s face. He lets the tears come freely, unafraid of their mark upon his face.

“She was crouched into the corner, playing with the gulls. She was smiling like it was any other day,” he sniffles crudely, swiping his free arm across his face. “Aryll’s brave. Braver than I’ll ever be. Wiser, too. She’s my hero.”

“Sounds like she doesn’t need protecting,” Sky smiles, himself. “Yeah?”

“Not a chance,” Wind agrees. “It’s an honour she lets me anyway, though.”

Sky allows a pause, peering into Wind’s shifting expression and tightening his grip upon the boy’s hand, just barely.

“There you go,” Sky says. “Listen, there’s... not a single part of me that doubts who you are or what you can do. I’ve seen you fight. I’ve seen you... persist . Honestly, sailor, I think you have the most raw grit of any of us.”

Wind blushes at that. He doesn’t know why he’s blushing. Testing the waters, Sky pulls their fingers apart, puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and faces him. Wind reluctantly meets his eyes, something blooming in his heart when he catches the glimmer in Sky’s heavenly blues.

“You don’t need me fussing at your bedside every hour like you’ll break if I take my eyes off you,” Sky says, then looks down, eyes on white sands. “But… if at any point you’d be willing to let me, like you said… it would be an honour.”

Wind thinks about it again, lingers on that it’s an honour. He ponders on how he’d feel if Aryll went cold on him one day, pushed him away when he tried to come to her aid. Tries to picture her eyes downcast and far-off, the door to her room shut tight, speeding away to be anywhere but with him. The mere thought of it hurts like a knife in his gut, and is this what he’s been doing to Sky?

Some heavy feeling boils over him, choppy waters in the dead of night. He claws and sputters as he drowns beneath the storm, desperate to conduct the hurricane far far away.

He curls in on himself, mutters another apology.

“Sink me, Sky. I’m sorry. This is so ridiculous.”

Sky’s insides twist at the look on Wind’s face, and he panics a little at the thought that he’s made the boy feel even worse. He reels it back, wrapping his arm around Wind’s shoulder and pulling him in close. Wind doesn’t move away, this time—he leans into Sky instead, knees back at his chest.

“Hey, c’mon, no need to apologize,” he says. “I just mean, if you want me to give you some space, if that’s really what’ll help you feel better, I… I can. Whatever you think is best, I trust you.”

Wind takes it in, a knot still trembling somewhere in his throat. He can tell it’s not what Sky wants to do, but there’s a conviction in the older hero’s voice that speaks volumes. It’s a devotion different from what Sky usually wears, a love that transcends his own feelings, and Wind can’t make sense of why that fact makes him feel so completely overwhelmed in some beautiful, beautiful way. Sky seems like someone who was put on this earth to take care of others, but for Wind’s comfort alone he offers to defy it.

A great way to prove yourself to the people you love, Wind thinks, is to match the energy they bring you. With a shaky sigh, the boy finds his resolve. And if Sky can move past his obsessive mother henning, Wind can get over his reservations with being babied.

All at once, he clings to Sky. One sweeping motion—underhanded like he’s readying an attack—and he grabs onto Sky’s torso and holds tight with his face pressed into his senior’s chest. Sky freezes a little, unsure what he’s allowed to do, his hands balanced awkwardly at his sides. Wind’s eyes exhume themselves from where they’re buried against him, then, looking up at Sky in a gesture that says just hug me back, okay?!

So he does, pulling an arm around the younger hero and lovingly nuzzling his cheek against his fluffy mess of hair.

“Sky?”

“Yeah?”

Wind blushes, pushing his face into Sky’s chest. “I feel like shit.”

It’s an intimate admission, and one Sky feels grateful to hear despite what it carries within. As if to punctuate, Wind pulls off to the side for a moment, and his breath jumps and hitches and he wrenches a heavy sneeze into his arm, chasing it with an equally thick sniffle and maddeningly scrubbing at his face.

“Bless. You’ve definitely seen better seas, matey,” the chosen hero grins, his smile dropping a little when Wind goes in for another—rubbing at his red and chafing nose with a ferocity that makes Sky wince. “Hey, hey—be gentle—”

Wind stops him, focusing instead on the other thing. “Okay, no, where the hell did you learn my mothertongue?”

“Uh, r-robots? It’s a long story,” Sky says, balanced on one arm like he’s about to get up. “Why don't I tell you on the way back?”

Wind tugs at his sleeve, then, looking uncharacteristically young. Sky halts his movements, curious.

“Wait, can…”

The sailor looks up at his companion, clearing the rasp from his throat in one final attempt at a façade of proper health. Sky sees the last ditch effort, zeroes in on the longing in Wind’s voice.

“Can we stay here just a little longer?” he asks. “It’s just, if—if I close my eyes—”

And he does, and Sky goes along with him. The gulls rest, the sea ebbs, the wind rushes through their hair, kissing their faces. Wind swears he hears a song on the breeze, one his fingers itch to direct, to see off, to memorize. He exhales, and the last of the tension falls off onto the quiet gales, drifting far away.

“...the waves sound the same.”

It’s beautiful and haunting and wonderful and sad and a million other things, Sky realizes, how traveled and far-reaching Wind’s voice sounds in that moment. Without another word, Sky throws his sailcloth over the boy’s shoulders, sinking down closer to his level and holding on for dear life. Wind shivers despite the warmth, and chooses not to unpack how the cyclone raging through his heart settles the moment he leans into Sky rather than away.

Off in the impossible distance, the sky and sea meet—a steady, shining line of golden light.

Chapter Text

Hyrule realizes all at once one day how many comforts of home he sees in Wild’s own homeland. It’s not something he finds himself able to articulate—the poisonous desolation of the traveler’s kingdom up against the sprawling greenery that now swims around him like a vast cauldron. Still, there’s a quiet in the champion’s wilds that nestles in Hyrule’s heart, breezes through the willow that sing of simmering hope.

“—with me, Roolie?”

Hyrule blinks hard, shaking himself out of the foggy daze at the sound of Legend’s voice. Even in the shade of the forest, the sun gleams down through the cracks and beats upon his heavy limbs, and he finds his mind wandering in cycles to ignore the feeling of it. He brings his attention back to Legend, nodding.

“Yeah, sorry,” Hyrule says, voice quiet, and Legend narrows his eyes, a wordless question that goes unanswered. “What are we looking for again? I spaced out.”

“Stump,” Legend says, succinctly.

“Any… in particular?”

The vet shakes his head. “Nah. Whichever. I don’t think the heavens give much of a shit.”

And Hyrule meditates on that, still not following entirely. His thoughts stumble, again, buzzing behind his eyes.

That was the other thing. The magic in Wild’s era is loud. He can feel it all around, in every corner, most often when he’s near the champion himself. Blazing blue silhouettes living in his peripheral, but when he turns to look at Wild, they’re gone in a flash. When they dropped into the jungle, the wave of divine thunder that danced across the humid air struck a nostalgic fear somewhere deep into his heart. In Hateno, it’s the same kind of heavenly magic, icy azure that crawls through the mountains, whistling through the frozen winds, doppling in and out.

It’s always loud. Today it’s heavy, it itches somewhere beneath Hyrule’s skin. Everything else seems to fade into an aimless grey, the pounding noise of that magic pulling the traveler from his body and onto autopilot.

“—seriously, are you okay? Please don’t tell me...” That edge of buried love creeps into Legend’s voice, and Hyrule doesn’t have time to register the feeling of the vet’s palm at his forehead. He shies from the touch, static crawling in his veins.

“I’m just tired,” he offers a weak smile. “And… a little on edge, I think.”

Legend crosses his arms, tucking the Rod of Seasons halfway beneath one. “Well, you don’t feel warm... guess you’re off the hook for now.”

He punctuates it with a swivel on his feet, unsheathing the sword on his back and scanning the horizon. Hyrule zeroes in on him, past the bleary heatwaves hanging around them, pulls his voice back out with a marked effort.

“What’s…” he struggles. “What’s out there?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing,” Legend waves him off. “I’m just gonna knock one of these twigs over. It’s hot as a dragon’s gut out here and I’m at my fucking limit.”

“W-with your sword?”

“Why not?” Legend grins. “Champ does it all the time.”

“He also breaks every weapon he touches."

“Yeah, well, once can’t hurt, greater good and all that,” the vet says. “I’m sure the people of this kingdom are getting sick of this random autumn heatwave as I am.”

He sucks in a breath as he readies the swing, both hands on his sword to infuse it with more power. Hyrule backs up instinctively, out of the path of destruction as Legend bears down on the innocent tree he’s chosen to be his victim—once, twice, three times. The fourth comes alongside a frustrated half-shout, one that cracks and dies in his throat to a broken whisper as it leaves. The tree stands half-severed, and Legend gives it a frustrated kick.

“Take it easy,” Hyrule says when he pulls back with a wheeze. “You’re still recovering.”

“Thanks for reminding me, mom,” a roll of his eyes, and Legend kicks the tree again, harder this time. “Fall, you wooden asshole!”

That does the trick, and the oak tumbles over with a resounding thud. It shouldn’t startle Hyrule, but it does—the sound is like thunder upon his ears, and he jolts back before he has time to think, hitting his elbow against the tree he’s backed up against. It’s not hard, it shouldn’t hurt, but he hisses back a cry as waves of pain shoot through him, shuts his eyes tight as the feeling ebbs away. Magic buzzes in the air, a sheet of thick ice draped over his shoulders.

“Jackpot,” Legend is saying from somewhere beyond the sorcerous blizzard. “Alright, you ready, ‘Rule?”

Hyrule watches the veteran hero step up onto the stump, clicking his sword back into place at his back and giving the rod in his hands an almost affectionate little pat on its head. “For?”

“It’s gonna get cold, I reckon,” he says. “Steel yourself.”

The traveler feels an endeared smile spread across his face. There’s this cocky air that settles over Legend—boisterous and proud, but lacking his usual edge—and it’s ever-present when the two of them are alone. Hyrule hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it in the time the veteran had been ill, and now it shines off Legend like sunlight, more than making up for the summer he’s about to snuff out.

Hyrule nods, pulling on his cloak as Legend points the rod toward the heavens.

Instantly, the traveler feels the change in the air pressure. The heat falls from the atmosphere, and magic swirls around Legend in powerful waves, enchantments so strong Hyrule feels his thighs shake and tremble and threaten collapse. It feels like a hurricane with Legend at the eye, bitter winds and freezing rains and the mildewy stench of leaf-rot and aged moss swirling with petrichor and stinging his nose. The overcast crawls over the sun, the forest darkens, and Hyrule swears he can feel the earth moving a hundred miles a second around him—endless days and nights passing, time a messy autumn spiderweb weaving and shifting in his peripheral. It’s so loud, the magic burns as he sucks in a frigid breath through his lungs, he’s—

It stops all at once, then—the world agonizingly quiet and still, ominous in the way everything seems to stay suspended in time. Legend speaks, finally, lowering his arm back down to his side.

“Oh, fuck.”

The words barely escape him before rain falls down in a clean sheet, the downpour showering the two of them without a moment’s notice. He jumps off the stump with a hand in front of his eyes, boots making an ugly squelch as they hit the sopping earth below. The veteran grabs Hyrule’s hand, booking it back towards town and dragging his comrade behind him.

Hyrule resigns himself to this, still feeling far too out of sorts to find his survivalist’s wit. His worrisome heart stays present, though, and he shouts above the howling winds as he takes Legend in, raindrops pelting the vet’s bare legs.

“Where’s your cloak?”

“Didn’t bring one!” he yells back. “Move!”

Hyrule gapes at him for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief. “You drive me crazy sometimes!”

The traveler unfastens his own, making a messy attempt to hook it around Legend’s neck as they run back to town. Immediately the chill creeps under his bones, but it’s nothing he hasn’t known time and time again—he can take it. On even his worst day, this is nothing.

“Easy!” Legend snaps. “You’re gonna choke me, Roolie!”

“I am if you don’t just take it!” Hyrule bites right back. “C’mon, you’re barely over being sick—”

“Okay, okay, you absolute doting fool!” he gives in. “Just move!”

The groggy feeling lingers, and Hyrule falls back into that hovering third person as he runs. He feels like a fairy floating over his own shoulder—watching his body move like it’s in a movie, mechanical and instinct-driven. His feet hit the ground in jarring bursts as they tear up the hill back toward the house, and he holds tight to Legend’s hand as rain smears his vision and the world whirls by in a blur of frigid magic and dampened green.

It’s the dead of night, and Hyrule settles against the wall with a dull ache throbbing at his skull. The moonlight filtering in through the window, so unassuming in its shine, is blinding when it hits the traveler’s eyes, heavy and burning and aching for sleep. He’s covered in goosebumps, shivering and pulling his sleeves down tight, but the scratch of the fabric on his skin stings and hurts and he’s so cold, and—

A whimper at his side draws him out of his discomfort, and he bites his lip when he locks onto the source of it. Wind had taken a turn as the sun set that night, his temperature spiking far above anything the group had seen thus far. Hyrule had all but forced their strongest chilly elixir on the boy an hour or two ago, and his heart drops at how little it seems to have done, now. The sailor shakes and whimpers beneath heavy blankets, teeth grit in agony and coughing ragged coughs, sheets drenched in sweat as he fights with the same salt he always has.

Hyrule tries not to let his mind wander, but it does—Wind blurs and wavers in the lowlight of the cabin, his eyes shut tight, and Hyrule thinks wake up, wake up, wake up—mindlessly, without making rhyme or reason of the thoughts. Wind sleeps, and he fights, and he looks like someone else, and Hyrule shakes and trembles as he centers himself beside the boy, readying his hands.

The traveler is running on embers, he knows—and he promised his team to take it easy on the healing spells, knowing how quickly they drain him. Already he’s weak, though, haunted by a certainty he can’t unravel that if he doesn’t act now, Wind’s eyes might stay shut forever.

Hyrule’s hands hover across the boy’s shuddering body, moving as though they’re moulding, shaping something unseen. A pink-red glow shifts and wavers and lights up the darkness, uneven like static as Hyrule trembles himself. It feels more like an exchange than any spell he’s ever cast—the colour returning to Wind’s cheeks as it fades from his own, the sailor’s breath steady like the tide as Hyrule’s goes sideways, the way he feels the strength pulled deep from his bones, pouring into Wind and raising him higher. There’s a voice on the fringes but all Hyrule hears is noise. The room is spinning with Wind at its center, and the traveler can’t bear to pull his eyes away. He breathes deep despite himself, pouring soothing magic into Wind’s ailing form.

Wind stops shivering. Hyrule watches him relax through quickly blurring vision, his racing heart settling as the boy unclenches his face, his expression slack and far more peaceful. Hyrule makes the move to reach out, then—to lay his trembling fingers against Wind’s cheek in a gesture of care—but the motion refuses to travel from his brain to his limbs, and darkness crawls at the edge of his eyes.

“Hyrule…?”

The voice again. He could look toward it, but it seems to come from all around him, half-whispered worries refusing to coalesce into proper sound. An attempt to turn his head results in him wavering, dipping forward and nearly tumbling to the wood floors below, and he hears his faceless protector rumble a little in surprise. There’s an arm on his shoulder steadying him, then, its grip light but precise in all it seeks to do. The contact itches still, but he’s too exhausted to pull himself away when another hand cups his face, slowly tilting his drooping eyes upward.

Sky looks like an impressionist painting, far off and composed of shifting daubs of colour. It’s a good look on him, Hyrule thinks pointlessly through his haze, and the thought distracts him from the all-encompassing need to jolt away. The world’s too fuzzy for him to see the crease in Sky’s brow, the telltale one he gets whenever he’s overcome with anything less than bliss.

“Hey, what’s the matter...?” Sky warbles, his thumb resting gingerly on Hyrule’s chin. Hyrule can’t explain why, but he feels the need to laugh despite the way he’s feeling.

“Th-think I might’ve—” he croaks and shudders. “—overdone it.”

And that’s all he can rasp out before the colour fades from the world and his eyes slip shut, with his last thought being that he’s grateful he postponed passing out until someone trustworthy was there to catch him.

“Oh, Hyrule, you...” Sky says anxiously, more for himself than anyone.

The traveler is shaking like a leaf in his arms, a wheeze in his breath that’s come seemingly out of nowhere, looking paler than a corpse. Sky’s temper fights with his worried heart as he’s taking in the burning heat of Hyrule’s skin, a whisper in the darkness an exhalation of the bundle of nerves inside him.

“How long have…” Sky trails off, knowing Hyrule can’t give him an answer wherever he is. He sits there for a moment, the world around him silent except for the uneven breathing of all his sick friends, and feels then that he’s in the eye of some great hurricane, treading air currents on birdback as grey and woven clouds swirl mindlessly around him. He enjoys it, for one still beat, the serenity the feeling provides, knowing it’s only a matter of time before a slip of the wing sends him back into the calamitous storm.

Alone is the thought that does it. In the whirlwind’s center, Sky feels alone.

He shifts Hyrule’s weight to one arm to nervously run his fingers through his own sandy bedhead, willing his brain to calculate scenarios and probabilities, brainstorming he never found himself quite adept at. Okay, he settles on. Okay. This is maybe bad.

Sky knows he’s not useless here, but he can’t help but feel it in the moment, a thousand things he doesn’t know overshadowing what little he does. Hyrule is a healer at his core, an experienced alchemist and a damn good sorcerer, and Sky is an airhead with too big a heart who somehow stumbled his way into being a caretaker, who learned how to brew two potions, tops mere days ago. The medic is down, and Sky’s all that’s left, and he can’t bring himself to bother the others for help when it’s his fault they’re all so—

His breath catches. He jolts back to himself. From her rest against the wall, Sky swears he hears the Master Sword hum.

Right, he centers himself, noting his hands shaking just as bad as Hyrule’s own. Minimize.

Sky breathes deep—in through his nose, holding, out through his mouth—eyes closed in concentration. He definitely hears her humming, yes, a doppel of a metronome that guides the motion of it. The storm bears down on him, but its chilling winds fly over and around crimson feathers, passing through them as though it were nothing. Sky opens his eyes, brushing messy curls from Hyrule’s face.

This isn’t the time to get lost in all he can’t do. From the moment the first of them fell ill, Hyrule worked nonstop to make sure the process was as quick and painless as possible. All things considered, it’s a miracle he didn’t go down sooner, and Sky reminds himself that he was prepared for this. That the voices in his head screaming doom haven’t been correct in years.

Short-term solutions, he starts with, hefting Hyrule up off the ground and crawling on his knees to tuck the traveler in. There’s not another soul awake right now, and he can deal with breaking the news to everyone and coming up with a plan when they start to stir. In this moment, he just needs to make sure Hyrule gets some rest.

The smaller hero’s bedroll is situated beneath the stairs, a little alcove Wild’s found no good use for that mostly exists to collect dust. One that Hyrule had made a beeline toward the first night they were there, nestling himself within its frankly claustrophobic walls. Sky can’t say he understands it, but he makes a mental note to try, given that he’s about to be spending a lot more time crammed into it.

Sky values his wide open space—freefalling through clouds with reckless abandon, a smile on his face—but there is something that can be inviting about the shelter of cavecover in a raging storm. He meets Hyrule there, lowering the traveler down to his bedroll.

It’s only when Sky pulls the covers over Hyrule that he realizes the latter’s pathetic excuse for a blanket. It’s more of a rag than anything, with holes festooning the scratchy outer layer and patches sewn with messy, self-taught stitches not meant to last. With a twist in his heart, he bothers his bottom lip through a wavering sigh and draws the dilapidated thing over Hyrule’s shoulder. Another project for later, perhaps.

The chosen hero slumps against the wall, tangling his fingers in his bangs again. He shuts his eyes, feeling himself falling into more distracted thought, before Hyrule pulls his attention back down with a shaky whisper.

“...’ky…”

And Sky freezes a little before leaning down, angling his ear toward the boy as if it’ll draw more words from him. Hyrule remains still except for the shivers holding him prisoner, and Sky can’t tell by looking at him if he’s lucid or not. His words are barely there, slurred things with consonants unsure of where they’re supposed to be.

“...m’sorry…”

Hyrule says it with his feverish cheek slumping into the pillow, a flutter in his eyelids that tells Sky he’s trying to open his eyes, but can’t muster the strength to. There’s no hope of standing up to the pang of overflowing affection in Sky’s twisting heart, and so the chosen hero leans down and softly traces his thumb across Hyrule’s cheek.

“Settle down now,” Sky whispers, unsure if Hyrule can even comprehend him. “You’ve worked so hard, Roolie. You’re overdue for a break.”

To that Hyrule can only supply a defeated moan into his pillow. Everything hurts, his heart most of all—it aches in agonizing waves for his team, for their pain, for Sky, on his own. The refrain repeats in Hyrule’s head again—this is not the worst you’ve seen!—but despite all the fight left in his soul, his body refuses to cooperate, too weak to carry on. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, what happened to the sleep-deprived boy trudging stalwart through a poisoned kingdom with spears and blades at his heels. Back when he only had himself to disappoint but still didn’t dare take time to rest—now that he’s got a team to let down, that’s when it all catches up to him?

Sky should be furious, or at the very least discontented. But in the blurry glance Hyrule’s able to steal at him, there’s not even pity in his eyes, just the same warmth as ever, flickering like candlelight. He’s all alone, he must be scared. Still, he looks lovingly at the traveler as he’s buried beneath the covers, one last doting caress of his fingers on Hyrule’s cheek before he motions to stand up.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” Sky says, and Hyrule’s eyes are closed now, but he hears the bittersweet smile in the chosen hero’s voice.

And Hyrule wants to reach out—to paw after Sky like a stray animal, to stop him in his tracks and take care of himself, to lessen the burden like he meant to do from the start. The strength doesn’t come, his head pounding, his body feeling like it’s covered in a blanket of lead, and Hyrule bites back tears. They stop up his throat, seizing any words he might have, and though he doesn’t stir, Sky’s somehow hears his tune, regardless.

“Get some rest, okay?” Sky whispers.

“I’ll take it from here.”

The sun rises and falls again, and true to his nature even as he’s ill, Hyrule stays still and quiet, subconsciously doing all he can to make himself smaller. It’s like Legend senses some kind of change in the air pressure the moment he stirs that morning, and Sky is only a little shocked to see him nervously crawl over to Hyrule’s bedside, too early in the dawn to put up his walls. Time and Twilight don’t have a second to volunteer themselves before Legend swoops in to fill the void, and Sky feels he might wake up sheltered in starkissed crystals with how grateful he is as he finally drifts off.

But that was then, and this is now, and Sky finds himself utterly useless as the last of them fall asleep and he’s left alone, ping-ponging back and forth between shivering, sweating, miserable shadows of his team. It’s not seconds after he’s calmed down Wild’s tossing and turning that Wind’s breathing turns ugly, and he’s on the tail end of that when Hyrule starts coughing wretchedly from around the corner. Sky inhales deep, a clumsy half-sprint to Wild’s sink to refill the basin in his hands.

One thing at a time, he hears a wiser voice in his head butt in, and he elects to ignore it as he stumbles back to Hyrule’s side, feeling heavy and incompetent and small in the wake of everything.

He barely needs to look at Hyrule to take in how much worse he’s gotten already—forehead damp with messy bedhead that looks black in the night, lips pale and cracking, breathing heavy and broken and stuttering. The way his lashes flutter makes Sky wonder of the nightmares behind them, unable to tell if the wetness at his eyes is tears or sweat or some tragic combination of both. The chosen hero’s heart spills over again, and he bites back the pang in his chest and reaches down to assess. Hyrule jolts from Sky’s hand as soon as it touches his cheek, his brow knit in discomfort as he pulls away.

“C’mon, ‘Rule…” Sky whispers, exhausted. “I need to check on your fever.”

Hyrule shakes his head, eyes still shut tight, voice a high whimper.

“Hurts,” he cries. “Don’t—Please—”

Sky’s heart breaks. “I know. Bravely, now.”

He says it intent to inspire, reaching for the vibrant Hyrule that he knows is muddled beneath the illness. In all Sky’s own exhaustion, in the darkness of the cabin this late into the night, in the subtlety of movement the traveler always seems to work with—muted, living in the background—Sky doesn’t notice the way his skin prickles at the sentence, doesn’t see his eyes glue themselves shut even tighter. The chosen hero pulls closer again to take his friend in, and the moment he makes contact, Hyrule falls apart.

A sharp, terrified breath falls from the traveler, the only thing stopping him from crying out the tear in his aching throat. Hyrule falls backward out of his bedroll, flinching away from Sky’s touch like a cornered animal, back against the wall, his teeth pressed tight enough against themselves to splinter apart.

“Hyrule…?”

He’s unresponsive to the sound of it, and Sky watches helplessly as he desperately tries to push himself further away, tangled in his fraying blanket in a bid to become one with the wall. He’s shaking his head as though it’ll wash the outside world away, trembling like he might collapse again if he keeps on, and so Sky tries once more—

“...Link?”

Hyrule’s eyes shoot open, locked on Sky. Wide and terrified and staring, as if waiting for something unspoken. Panic squeezes at Sky’s chest.

The traveler keeps his gaze locked on Sky for only a moment before reluctantly—like he can’t bear to—pulling them away, frantic as he surveys the ground. Sky peers into him wordlessly, observing, afraid to say any more as the nature of the action sinks in.

My sword, my weapons, where—

Hyrule can’t breathe. The room wavers like it’s caught in a perpetual heatwave, and true to form he feels it bearing down on him in all its airless oppression. Its so dark in the palace, the only light for miles the flashbang of lightning as it creeps in through stained glass, illuminating the figure as it bores its molten gold gaze into him. His sword is missing and he tries, he tries—sparks at his fingertips, popping and fizzling and trying with all they are to break free, but he feels so weak and he can’t move and—

The beast barks something at him, formless at his ears in his terrified haze, and lunges. Hyrule breathes hard through his teeth, watching its feathers puff and fray and frame its wicked face before they melt into darkness. The world blurs again, and the lightning grows dim, and then it’s the shadow who presses closer to him, black as the night and wearing his face, and again it says Link.

“Do you know who I am?” it demands, and Hyrule coughs pathetically, feeling his legs give out. He’s defenseless, he’s useless, can’t it see?

“You’re me.” He looks away, shaking his head still. “And I have to fight but I—I can’t anymore, please, I—”

The shadow makes more noise, half-shaped like a sentence, but Hyrule doesn’t hear it as he’s busy collapsing. The fight leaves him as soon as it had come, and he sinks into a jellied heap on the floor, biting back tears. He’s not supposed to be here, it was never supposed to be him, the dumb luck that carried him through the kingdom is finally running out. It’s written in the way there’s no light in his magic to illuminate this darkness, in the way his wicked doppelganger moves still to unsheathe his weapon. The traveler tries again to cry out as the sound of it falls upon him, but his words die in his searing throat, raking a hot path as they fizzle out. His shadow advances, blade in hand, but something’s—

The silhouette stops in its tracks, something unseen hanging on its expression. Mercy? Hyrule can only hope as he watches the shadow turn over the sword it's holding. It lays flat against outstretched palms, digits that no longer look like soot-marked claws as they sleep beneath it. It’s not his sword, he realizes, but it’s familiar all the same—warm, and beckoning, and glowing with a light that whispers and pulls and falls over his shoulders like a blanket, featherlight and heavenly blue. Hyrule forgets the shadow, forgets the storm, forgets his name and his fears and everything he isn’t. A memory of a memory of a memory of a voice chimes ancient Hylian in his ears, incomprehensible song. It sounds like one he knows, triumphant and grand.

“That’s it,” Sky whispers, worry lines fading from his face. “Just focus on the sword.”

Sky is here—when did Sky get here?—and he’s holding the shadow’s sword, but it’s not the shadow’s sword, it’s the Master Sword, glowing holy firelight in the darkness. The cedar of the cabin walls wobbles and blurs and Hyrule blinks blearily, concentrating on the colour.

“...Roolie?” Sky tries one more time.

He snaps to at the nickname for the nickname, and Sky watches as his pupils dart across the room, searching for something unseen. When he finds nothing, the traveler seems to deflate—from relief or confusion, Sky can’t say. He presses on, keeping his voice low.

“You’re with friends,” he says, and Hyrule reaches a hand out, reverently tracing it along the blade of the Master Sword as he tries, with desperation, to stop breathing so hard and heavy.

“You’re safe,” Sky tells him, smiling a warm, exhausted smile. Something about it shoots to Hyrule’s heart like an arrow, its sharpened head jagged and precise. His face numb with fever, he doesn’t feel the tears until they spill over, and he shudders forward and curls in on himself with a sob.

Sky moves faster than he can think, his insides knotting up at the traveler’s first broken wail. It’s more of a stumble than anything as he falls toward his friend, but grace-be-damned, his arms find their way around Hyrule and hold on tight. He stills in Sky’s arms, breathing no less uneven, and the chosen hero doesn’t realize he’s rocking Hyrule like a newborn until he’s far into the act of it. It’s all he can do to soothe the fear away, too spent with worry to know much else. He keeps the traveler close, resting his chin on Hyrule’s auburn curls and murmuring sentiments of reassurance.

“It’s alright. It’s okay, now.” Sky shifts, leaning his cheek against him. “Hey, I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

Hyrule’s... quiet. Quiet in a way that becomes less and less typical with each passing second. Quieter than he normally is, always observing and listening—quieter than he should be even when he’s this ill. The only sound on Sky’s ears is the whistle of his breath, mixed in with the chorus around them. Something about it is unsettling, and Sky pulls away hesitantly.

And then Hyrule’s looking up at him, doe-eyed and meek, muted in a way that transcends his character. His gaze moves downcast, and he’s hiding in the veil of his hair, but Sky can see the flush at the tips of his ears, a different shade from what the fever’s painted across his cheeks. It tugs deep in the chosen hero’s chest, and he’s impossibly gentle as he places his hand on Hyrule's shoulder, peering into him.

Hyrule jolts again, stock still.

Ah.

“Does this…” Sky tries, angling his body around his friend like a curious dragonfly. “...am I helping?”

Hyrule curls in further, where Sky can’t see the pitiful look on his face. He wants to talk, why are words so hard? Why is everything so heavy? His eyes are itching and hot and he feels like he’s drowning in the heatwaves, shivering despite it and nerves too frayed to move. His throat crawls and prickles and stings and all he can rasp out is an apology, feeling guilty and wretched and difficult, so difficult, why can’t he just be more like them, why can’t he just keep up—

Sky can’t see Hyrule’s face, but he knows so well the look upon it. It laces the single word his sick friend is able to force out, its presence on every letter even in the darkness, even as Hyrule tries to make himself microscopic, less of a target. The fullness of it tips side to side and spills inside Sky, anxious and aching to stop his heart’s unsteady sway. He picks at his cuticles, desperate to fidget out an answer.

“You’re with me, yeah?” Sky asks, after a beat. “You just can’t talk?”

Hyrule looks up at him, finally, and nods. Though his eyes are glazed and framed in red, Sky can still see the traveler’s sunny soul buried somewhere beneath. The earlier fear is gone entirely.

“That’s okay,” Sky says, puzzling it all out. “Um… I didn’t say anything wrong, did I?”

Hyrule shakes his head in the negative, grateful for the simplicity of the question, but frustrated still at his inability to comment. He’s not an eloquent man, no, but if only his head would clear and his throat would settle and the room would stop spinning kaleidoscopic around him, he’s certain he could at least tell Sky the jist of things. They wouldn’t have to sit here playing guessing games, and maybe it would still sound ridiculous, but he could just outright tell Sky that even ages after everything’s settled down he still can’t bring himself to readily accept—

“Me touching you, then?”

Oh.

That was easy.

Hyrule can feel the tears welling back up in his eyes, and he doesn’t know why he feels so wretched about it. He chalks it up to everything else—the pulsing behind his eyes, the dizzy aura that’s currently throttling him, the fact that he’s such dead weight despite all his best efforts to be anything but. That he made Sky bear the brunt of it, the sweetest and most patient of them all.

“I’m sorry,” Hyrule says again, words catching and making him cough. There’s something in the lines of concentration on Sky’s face that the traveler is too hazy to parse, and so his eyes find their way back down to the floorboards where he thinks they’ll stay. Sky shuffles a little from where he’s sitting, folding his hands over his lap.

“I understand.”

The sound of Sky’s voice pulls Hyrule back out of the abyss. There’s a laugh buried under it, sleepy and earnest, so impossibly casual that the traveler almost doesn’t register the statement as real. It dismisses any stigma, waves off the admission like it’s nothing. Hyrule has to steal a look at his friend, has to understand why—and Sky’s just smiling benignly as ever, no trace of heartbreak in his ever-loving blues.

“You do?” Hyrule finally finds his voice.

Sky nods, scooting forward to sit beside him. There’s careful distance in between them, millimeters of air that contain invisible, impossible consideration hiding within their space. Something about those precious few layers sends a tremble to his lip, different from before.

“I’ve seen you touch the others outside of treating them, though,” Sky inquires, angling his head down. “So… it’s fine as long as you start it, yeah?”

And Hyrule blinks at that.

What?

Again, there’s just some kind of something in the way Sky says it. Like he’s said it a thousand times, like it’s not as strange as Hyrule knows it is, like he’s not even mad. The traveler casts another shy glance at Sky’s face, just to make sure—in the lowlight he glows the same as ever, looking like a hearth more than he does a man. He says I understand, and it sounds less like a sentiment and so much more like a promise. Hyrule believes him, and he can’t explain why or how he suddenly feels so much lighter.

“Y… yes,” he tells Sky. “Exactly.”

Another nod, another smile, and Sky leans back, shutting his eyes. “I’m the same.”

“You…?”

“Are you surprised?” he laughs again, deep and rich and warm. “I know, I’m a cuddler. Z’s always gotten on my case about it, that I can’t go anywhere without hanging onto her. I used to be alright with all of it, but, y’know…”

Even with the distance between them, Hyrule can feel him inhale—the fabric of his nightclothes scratching against the wood wall, a small thing. Sky lets it go, keeping on.

“...traveling changes some things,” he says. “For better or worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Hyrule says a third time. It’s all he can say.

Sky waves a hand, dismissing the sentiment. “Can’t be helped. It comes and goes, for me. Some days I don’t mind at all, and others I just… well, I probably don’t have to tell you.”

A tangle of words and moods and ideas flowers in Hyrule’s chest, but they writhe and fight and turn to static and his ability to speak them fizzles out before it’s given much of a chance, again. He tries to think back to a time before—before, before, before, where maybe he felt differently, where maybe a hand on his shoulder didn’t make his blood run cold with fear. As far back as his memory goes, this is all he knows.

“I think I’ve always been like this,” Hyrule says, finally. “Back home, if someone had their hands... on me, th-they probably wanted me—”

His throat seizes again, from illness or trauma, he can’t entirely say. Sky knows it’s more the second than the first, sees it in the way the traveler’s shoulders bunch up at his ears, how he can’t spend a moment in the sentence without dipping back down into whatever dark place he was when he shot into the corner, pawing for his sword and pulling magic from reserves he didn’t have.

Sky feels just as incompetent as ever, and Sky feels more confident than he has since they set up camp here. The contradicting song inside him fumbles in its attempt to harmonize, but it crops back up with every missed note, every off-key slip. The first time he flinched away from Zelda’s hand on his shoulder, he dreamt of burying himself alive to cope with the guilt that nested heavy in his headspace. Living in those worst case scenarios, he dreaded to think what might have happened if the shroud of the temple had been darker, if he had been less aware of where he was, if he had turned to meet her eyes and not seen her there.

Without a trace of blame, she’d just laughed out a whoops and smiled her sunlit smile instead. Like Sky hadn’t ruined anything, like it was just another day. That night, instead of running her fingers through his hair while he drifted, she hummed his favourite song and embroidered that shirt he’d worn threadbare, and he fell asleep to the beautiful sound of it, as warm as any hug.

Realistically, Sky knew he could never be quite as wonderful as her. Still, he tried, grasping for even half of the soothing power with which she worked.

“You don’t need to tell me the reason,” Sky assures. “Unless you want to…?”

Hyrule doesn’t need to think about that. “Not really.”

“Sounds good,” another warm smile, and he passes over his waterskin. “Here, drink this and lay back down. I’m gonna grab some of my things, and then I’ll sit with you while you rest.”

Thankful for the understanding, Hyrule offers him a sleepy smile and gently presses the waterskin to his lips, realizing all at once how thirsty he is. He’s about to remind himself of the importance of temperance when the flavour hits him, and he can practically feel his pupils dilate like a wild beast in response. Sky catches the still euphoria on his face when he wanders back into frame, grinning almost devilishly.

“Sky.”

“Traveler?” he says, innocently.

“This... is sugar water.”

“Is that, um,” Sky stutters. “A problem?”

His confidence falters quickly, and Hyrule supplies a tearlogged shake of his head in response, feeling full to bursting. Sugar was such a rare thing back home, a delicacy to be savoured and put away for his rainiest days, he was astounded when Wild had pulled mounds of it out of his mysterious little slab with little more than a shrug. He could’ve sworn his voice was at a whisper when he so childishly asked the champion to boil some water for him, a little embarrassed at the request, but…

“How did…”

“I listen,” Sky answers, simply, and in that moment the sunkissed, blue-skied aura that always seems to swim around their chosen hero makes a little more sense.

“...you can make more of this, right?” Hyrule asks, his smile looking uncharacteristically shy.

“Easily.”

Temperance is an important virtue, but that’s a truth reserved for the healthy and right-minded, and currently Hyrule feels like a herd of lynels have used his body as a doormat. He chugs the rest of the sugary liquid with a messy sniffle, and Sky tries his best to keep his laugh at a kind volume as he sits down and gets to work whittling.

It’s a simple enough shape that he doesn’t have to map it out, really—easy to visualize, without a lot of fine details—and so he turns off his brain and enjoys the feeling mindlessly moving his hands brings. Tasks like that were the ones he enjoyed most, instinctive and repetitive and compelling nonetheless.

From beside him, Hyrule settles back down beneath the covers and heaves a relieved sigh, unbothered by the wheeze that accompanies it. Sky’s forgone his fancier tools for a simple carving knife, the scratch of it against the wood rhythmic and metered, an unorthodox lullaby. Hyrule finds himself focused on it, the way the soundwaves seem to sway like a metronome in his head—beautiful white noise akin to the patter of rain, the crackling of a fire, the warble of birdsong.

He’s asleep in the blink of an eye, dreaming of the magic back home.

The dew-drenched pull of an autumn dawn tugs at Hyrule’s eyelids hours later, and he coughs himself awake on the tail end of an unsteady inhale. The fog hanging outside seems to have crept under his skin, its misty chill bringing gooseflesh to his bones, and he grabs at his arms in a bid to warm up. Movement in his peripheral stops where it is, and Sky’s voice replaces the absence of sound as the chosen hero’s working hands go still.

“Hey there,” Sky says. “How’re you holding up down there?”

Hyrule shivers, ducking down into himself. “Cold.”

Sky clicks his tongue a little, and Hyrule’s eyes are shut, but he knows the sound well enough to envision what comes with it—a cursory glance across the landscape as he takes their surroundings in.

“Do you want to move closer to the fire? There’s enough room to squeeze you in.”

It’s a lovely request, and the chill that seizes Hyrule in that moment seems to want to answer for him, grabbing at his ankles and pulling him further down. He fights it, stubbornly shaking his head, and again he doesn’t have to open his eyes to know the bothered wrinkle creasing Sky’s expression. He hears his friend shift, tone caught halfway between stern and curious.

“A little strange of you to be stubborn this far into things,” Sky says after a moment’s thought, an observation hiding a question within it. In response Hyrule weakly clears his throat, testing his ability for conversation.

“I like it here,” he says, simply, pausing afterward to think. “It’s quiet, and dark, and… cozy.”

Without prying, Sky can’t be entirely sure, but he recognizes the cadence that lies within the traveler’s voice. It’s the same one he’s sure creeps into his own on days when the clouds hang tremendously fluffy overhead, when the birdsong rises to just the right pitch, when the hill rolls over to fir trees or pumpkin patches and the sun shines at just the right angle. He dares not to disturb it, so he moves on and recalculates, turning over the wood in his hands.

“Alright,” he concedes. “But Ledge’ll destroy me if you freeze on my watch, so here, trade me—”

And he unhooks his sailcloth, trying not to shiver himself at the rush of cold that falls over him as soon as he does so. The practiced care in how he does it doesn’t go unnoticed—Hyrule’s certain that were it anyone else, Sky would insist upon draping it across their shoulders entirely on his own. Here, he holds it out and wordlessly asks consent, angling his gaze toward Hyrule’s tattered blanket. The traveler hands it to him and takes the sailcloth, peering curiously.

“How long have you had this?” Sky says to his questioning look.

Hyrule scrunches his face in thought, looking in some far-off direction. “Um… I think I might have been born in that thing.”

Sky presses a laugh to cupped fingers, before lowering his hands to trace the holes that cover the blanket front to back. “It is very well loved. Would you mind if I mended it for you?”

It’s a beautiful question, Hyrule thinks—beautiful that it’s a question to begin with. “Not at all.”

“Fantastic,” Sky chirps. “I’m just about done, here…”

His gaze falls to the object he’s holding, a tiny thing in comparison to the misshapen chunk of white pine he started with. In the late darkness of the morning Hyrule has to squint, and so Sky brings it closer to him, cupping it impossibly delicately, as though it’s a baby bird. There in his palm is a little carved fairy, just barely smaller than the real thing. Hyrule’s silence brings a nervousness to Sky’s demeanour, and so more words fall from him—

“U-Uh, sometimes when I wasn’t—feeling great, Z would stay at my bedside and sew, or knit, or just do anything with her hands—” he says. “It was always soothing to listen to, and I thought maybe it would be extra special if I—made you something?”

The traveler startles a little, then, in a way that says he’d never even considered that idea. For him? Angling himself toward Sky, he takes it from the chosen hero’s hands, marveling at the finer details now that he can see it up close. The otherworldly light that makes the little sprites too hard to perceive within—Sky’s stylized it into a perfectly smooth round shape with wings outstretched. The wings themselves are gorgeous, the crossveins on each of them carved intricate and unique, realistically asymmetrical. Hyrule can’t stop staring at this thing Sky made from nothing, the flutter he feels across his senses while he traces the ridges of it.

“You did this from memory…?” Hyrule whispers.

Some of the flustered colour leaves Sky’s face, and he replaces it with a small smile. “I tried my best. Is it ok?”

“Sky, it’s beautiful,” Hyrule says, unable to take his eyes off it. “Thank you.”

With that Sky’s heart settles a bit, and he’s awash with a relief he realizes he’s been chasing—for how long now, he can’t really say. Hyrule’s nearly trance-like as he rotates the carving in his calloused fingers, examining and re-examining and memorizing every mark of Sky’s knife upon it. Self-deprecation stuck on the chosen hero’s tongue vanishes sugar-like as he observes his friend quietly—it’s not his best work by a long shot, but it’s already gone above and beyond in serving its purpose. Hyrule stops himself for a moment to give in to another shudder, a sharp inhale catching and turning into another nasty cough that leaves him buried in his arm. Sky snaps to, getting the traveler’s attention.

“Lay back down, I’ll sew this up for you,” he says, holding Hyrule’s blanket to his chest, eyes crackling with warm conviction. “In the meantime... well, sleeping in my sailcloth always makes me feel better.”

Sleepily, Hyrule nods, sliding back down into his bedroll. His arms feel like lead, he realizes all at once, and the small amount of talking has already depleted what little energy he had. Sky’s right—the sailcloth is soft despite how loved it is, and it smells sweet and heady and intoxicating and enveloping. Briefly, he wonders if it’s been enchanted, feeling protected and warm and light.

The little wooden fairy is placed at his bedside, sitting on the cottage floor, and Hyrule presses his cheek to the pillow and stares lovingly onward, braving the chill on his forearm to keep touching it. Sky watches in peripheral as his machinations grow softer and quieter, until he’s too tired to keep on and elects to rest with his hand upon it instead, like he can’t bear to stop touching it.

“Hey, Sky?”

He keeps his hands moving, stitch by methodical stitch. Hyrule’s voice is sleepy and slurred, muted by the heavy congestion in his voice and the way his cheek presses up against his teeth, barely on the precipice of being awake. In response Sky makes a little hum of attention, and Hyrule’s able to open his drooping eyes a sliver of an inch, giving his prize one more affectionate stroke.

“Why a fairy…?”

There’s another murmur of a sound in Sky’s throat while he thinks, eyes angled off to some corner of the ceiling. Why indeed. Being honest with himself, he just carved the first thing that came to mind, and he tries to puzzle out why it happened to be that. Something about Hyrule’s presence just drew it out of him, he settles on—the mischievous glimmer in the traveler’s eye, the blessed way he looked at Wild’s bubbling pot of sugar water, how he always positioned his bedroll next to Time’s, every night, without fail, the way he fluttered nervously around injured teammates, pouring healing magic into their weary souls.

Sky couldn’t say he’d ever befriended faefolk, not long enough to know the starstuff they were made of. But they shared Hyrule’s essence, pink and glowing warm and safe. Of course that’s where his hands went, working with a mind of their own.

In the time it takes him to come to the answer, Hyrule’s long since drifted—the lull of Sky’s shuffling hands, the cover of the sailcloth, the warmth creeping back into his aching bones—he was a goner the second it all aligned. He’s still as the fog outside, now, breathing noisily through barely parted lips, looking as sick as he is but at peace despite it. Sky’s back in the storm again, perched beneath some kind-hearted awning, asleep against his bird and serene in the rainfall’s song. Leaning back, the chosen hero hums another doting laugh, deep and warm behind his chest.

“It reminded me of you.”

Chapter Text

It’s well past noon when Legend shakes Sky awake, mumbling something about breakfast freezing to the table through his chattering teeth. Someone makes a comment—Sky can’t tell who—about the vet’s attire, and he responds in kind with his own about that one getting old. Legend’s right, though, it is frigid, the fire probably needs to be stoked, but Sky can’t bring himself to leave the comfortable nest of blankets he’s living in. He was having a wonderful dream—flying, Zelda, pumpkin cider? It’s fading fast, he wants it back—and he heaves out an annoyed groan and chases it where it lives, scratched on the backside of his eyelids.

Concentrate, he tells himself, willing the visions back. Right, the Moonrise Festival, lanterns hung from every line in Skyloft—she’s wearing an orange dress and she looks like a sunset with the way it casts her golden hair alight, and they’ve flown to some far-off corner of the sky where no one can find them, sharing sips of spicy-sweet liquid and falling over each other. The sunlight is fading and they should really get back home soon, before it dips entirely and their loftwings can’t fly it, but Sky can never bring himself to do the responsible thing when it comes to her and just this once neither can she. Instead her hand is trailing quietly onto his and her face is dipping into his own, their noses a hair away from touching and their cheeks clumsily pressed against one another, and she’s so beautiful in the twilight and she smells like pumpkin cider and—

“Wake up!”

Sky’s tossed like a ragdoll as Legend yanks his blanket cocoon out from under him, shouting with a voice still scratchy from the lingering touch of illness. An undignified noise falls from the chosen hero’s mouth as he’s rolled over, and he keeps his eyes shut tight more out of spite than anything. There’s a silence that follows the outburst, and Sky knows it’s wordless body language he’s not privy to—someone is looking at someone with a grin, or a grimace, or something else entirely—but he’s too disinclined to come back to the waking world and find out who.

“Don’t give me that look.”

“A seasoned warrior like yourself should know to pick his battles wisely.”

That’d be… well, most definitely Time. Except that doesn’t make sense, because the unmistakable, steel-forged cadence of their leader is supposed to float down from the upper levels, and it sounds awfully close right now.

“Well, I’m pissed off and I’m picking all of them. He needs to eat before he ends up like the rest of you.”

The rest of… huh?

“I don’t think Sky can get sick,” Wind says, half-lucid and half-way to incredulity but too tired to finish the trip.

“Bargaining with some deity—” Wild mumbles.

“—banging one more like—”

“Alright, that’s enough from you,” Time shuffles, and Legend squawks, and Four hisses a laugh into his palm, and Sky finally pulls his arm from his eyes and winces at the sunlight that bursts through the absence of it. What’s going on?

“Nnn,” Sky says, very clearly asking what’s going on. With every ounce of strength he can muster, he opens his eyes in an attempt to take in his surroundings, blinking blearily a few times for effect.

Wild is pawing at the kettle, mumbling let mes and I’ll helps while he moves with the dexterity of a drunken chuchu. Time is barely moving in contrast, deflecting every flourish of the champion’s hands like they’re blows in fierce combat. It’s with careful intent that he slowly pushes Wild back into his bedroll, tone even and steady despite the deeper octave it’s living in.

“No. Benched.” He sips at his tea. “You’re welcome to drown me once you’ve recovered.”

“M’fine—”

“I’ve seen gibdos that look more lively than you.” Legend grabs a fistful of hair and tugs Wild downward, throwing the blankets back over him as soon as his head hits the pillow. “Go back to sleep.”

Sky blinks again, but isn’t able to get any words out before a yawn seizes him. Legend turns his gaze on the chosen hero, pulling him to earth.

“Afternoon, birdbrain,” he says, crossing his arms. “Nice of you to join us. For the love of your precious goddess on high, please eat something and relieve me of babysitting duty.”

That’s too many words for this time of day. It’s too early for that many words to be happening, Sky thinks, except it’s not early at all—Sky can’t actually tell what time it is with the overcast hanging outside but he knows that it matters little with how exhausted he’s been. In lieu of words he makes his own attempt to finally take in his team in full.

He can’t see Wild’s face but it’s clear the champion is lazily pouting beneath the covers he’s confined to, restless after many days locked inside. Wind’s awake but trying desperately not to be—Sky can tell by the arm thrown over his eyes, the way he burrows into it like it’s his only solace from the world outside. Legend’s nervously hovering at the sailor’s bedside, Four’s propped up against the wall mending some stitching in his favourite tunic, and Time is—

Downstairs.

With the rest of them.

Sipping his tea like it’s any other day.

And that gets Sky’s brain to wake up faster than any shouting or manhandling can. There’s a thousand worried thoughts he wants to stutter out, then, but in his slow rise back to sentience they all dam up in his throat, stuck on their way out. Instead he stays with his expression fixed on their leader, who thankfully reads his mind quite easily. With a slight smile, Time shrugs.

“I was due,” he says.

The words set in fully, and Sky’s instincts take over. He tumbles forward a little as he crawls over to the eldest, an attempt at proper examination while his body gets the memo that it’s time to wake up right now. Time looks okay, all things considered—the colour in his cheeks is lively, yet to take on the nasty flush Sky’s used to. Even as he is now, sitting pleasantly with his legs crossed on the floor, he’s steady and even-toned, the only indicator that anything’s off is the way his voice weighs a little heavier, deep and languid.

Drowsily Sky presses the back of his hand to Time’s cheek, his jaw, his neck—he’s warm, but not in the way that makes the chosen hero’s heart sink, not the gut-pull he’s been experiencing and re-experiencing for what feels like ages, now. Something’s definitely up, but there’s an eeriness in how benign it is right now, a feeling Sky can’t put words to. It makes him anxious, and he can’t help thinking that it’s the precursor to something terrible.

“Not you too—” he chokes out finally. “You should lay back down, here, I’ll—”

“Settle,” Time eases, utterly unbothered as he’s fussed over. “I’ll get another nap in once I’m finished with my tea. Besides, I can’t move right now—”

And he gestures to his lap, where Hyrule’s curled around his waist like an affectionate serpent, dreaming more peacefully than Sky’s seen in days. He stirs a little when Time rests a hand in his wild hair, melting into the movement and drifting off just as quick.

Again, Sky makes a note of how the situation feels far less… explosive than he would’ve otherwise anticipated. The nonchalance with which the rest of the room holds themselves just adds to his inexplicable nerves, a pang of simmering worry that he silences with questions.

“Have you been down here long?” He reaches out again, as if to re-assess, but the action dissipates in midair, arm drifting back to his side. “You seem like you’re doing alright so far…”

“It’s coming,” Time tells him, an air of darkness creeping into his voice no matter how he tries to keep it light. Sky’s expression doesn’t change—brow knit, eyes searching—and so Time adds:

“I would hope you would trust me to know myself, Sky.”

“I-I do! You’re just, uh… you’re being really…”

An attempt is made to pick his words carefully. He tilts his head with the upturn of them, unsure of if he’s found the right ones.

“...responsible? About this?”

That gets a hearty laugh out of Time, and it’s there, again—the mischievous glimmer that comes to life in his eye when they’re away from battle, safe off the road. A sly smile.

“Compared to?”

He dares to utter the words, and Sky averts his eyes from his team in an attempt to not meet the feverish glares that pop up from under the smattering of blankets. They tauntingly beckon him to answer Time’s question, and he wisely elects to say nothing. The look Four shoots him is far kinder, a narrowing of his iridescent eyes that whispers correct. Pretending he’s not enjoying the show, the smithy goes back to sewing.

“I’m feeling okay, as things are,” Time breaks the silence. “Focus on the worse for wear, for the time being.”

Sky’s so used to those words being a farce—hissed stubbornly through the teeth, out of the mouths of warriors who can’t admit they’ve lost a battle. He doesn’t know what he expected—perhaps that their leader would be the worst patient of all, stubborn down to his core and fighting all the way. It feels a little silly, taking in the situation now—of course Time would be all the wiser in the act of rest and recovery, reliable and precise in his follow-through.

The chosen hero exhales the feeling, politely requesting that it not return. Even when their leader’s not feeling his best, he manages to keep a level-head, commanding and delegating and keeping to form. It’s admirable, Sky thinks with relief settling into his heart. Time’s right—he almost always is—this is a perfect stretch to prepare for what’s to come and funnel his energy into caring for the rest of them before it hits.

And that’s what he does, for the next few hours—the tea that Time brews is passed around the group, some divinely medicinal, outright sedative blend that seems to knock even the most steely of them out. Their leader himself is still barely awake as the last of them drift off, and by that time he’s bothering his nose in an attempt to keep the settling irritation at bay. Sky hears him sniffling unproductively, sees the way he fingers firm circles at his cheeks, and when the chosen hero goes to check his temperature again Time’s too lost in the attempts to self-soothe to take much note of it. He closes his eyes as Sky palms his face, leaning into the coolness of his touch, calloused and gentle.

“Lay down,” Sky says, a little firmer this time. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

Time has a clipped comment on his tongue for that, one he elects not to say because his throat feels like it’s attacking itself. He knows with complete certainty that he’s going to feel much worse when he wakes up, and it’s for that reason he’s subconsciously putting off sleeping like he promised, legendary courage failing him entirely. Sky’s right in the grand scheme of things, though—the sooner he gets it over with, the better—so he nods drowsily and pulls himself under the covers. A premonitory shiver runs through him when Sky brushes his bangs aside to place a wet rag on his steadily heating forehead, and his will to stay awake and speaking leaves him in full the second his head is on the pillow. Time wills the gratitude to radiate off him, instead, hoping for it to reach Sky where he is.

Time doesn’t know how long he’s been watching the shadows on the walls of Sheik’s house—the way the firelight shifts and changes, casting silhouettes that waver and blur alongside his foggy head. He can’t be certain, but he feels there’s something more within the dark of Kakariko—a presence, however small, living and breathing within its blackened shapes. It might just be the fever, but he swears he noticed it before, once upon a time, nearly a decade ago. Like he’s being watched, by a force he can’t determine, equal parts wicked and benevolent.

He coughs, and it’s a rough, pitiful sound—deep in his lungs where it shouldn’t be. Sheik heaves out a sigh as Time curls in on himself, utterly pathetic, shivering and sweating and holding the sounds of agony in behind his teeth. The harpstrings stutter, and Navi’s tiny hands are at Time’s neck, then, weaving meticulous braids into sunkissed hair.

“It puzzles the mind,” Sheik says, stopping the melody he’s playing to look the boy over. “That one as devoted as you would be so reckless with your own life.”

He’s heard it before, he wants to shout that he’s heard it before, a million times, but even once would be too many. It wasn’t like he’d wandered into the freezing waters of Zora’s Domain with the intent to get himself this sick, it’s not like he’s having a lovely time being holed up for a week while the world burns to cinders around him. Even if he had… well.

“Do you really—” he coughs, croaking out the words. “—think it matters? With Hyrule the way it is? Do you honestly think me staying alive to fight will make any difference?”

The words don’t come from his head—existing in a far more primal place, far down in his chest, unfiltered as they leave. How does he spell it out for the world any harder? He failed. It’s his fault the kingdom fell, it’s his fault that people lost their homes, their families, their lives. What can he do now? There’s no way for him to undo Ganondorf’s reign, no way for him to wash away all the pain and trauma of the last seven years. He wants to scream that it doesn’t matter if the hero lives or dies, that his fire-forged spirit refuses to relent despite everything. He can keep fighting all he wants, but what does it matter, this late into ruin?

“I do,” Sheik says, after a moment’s thought. There’s little room to read the expression on his face—he gives the world one piercing ruby eye, unmoving in its guiding stare. “And I think deep down, you do as well. Your tenacity is not mindless. There is a reason you fight still.”

What else is there to do? Time wants to say, but can’t force the words to gather into coherence. If he’s going to go down with Hyrule, he may as well go down fighting.

“...However,” Sheik continues. “Even if this were an era of peace… even if the world did not cry out in need of your boundless courage… your life still has meaning.”

And he wants to scoff at that, at how saccharine it sounds being said out loud. Even in Sheik’s raspy, dulcet tones, it’s just too much.

“There are people who would weep at the loss of your presence, and you owe it to them to be more careful with yourself. To not see your life as so little that it is worth throwing away.”

Time draws the covers further around his head, willing himself to become one with the bed. Sheik’s his age—he knows that, why does he know that?—but he’s always felt like an overbearing older brother, drowning him in worldly wisdom that’s condescending, pretentious and—worst of all—usually correct.

“...are there really?”

His voice is smaller than he wants it to be when it finally comes out, but he’s too tired to care. His throat hurts, his chest aches, he feels like he’s swimming in the fires of Death Mountain, bubbling magma dragging him down into oblivion. At some point, Sheik had started playing his harp again, simple scales upon the strings that Time tries to breathe in sync with as he talks.

“...every day it seems like I lose one more person,” Time says. “What… what happens when there’s no one left?”

The notes he’s playing wander, they drift—not losing their melody, but thinking aloud as they run along Time’s ears. Navi’s uncharacteristically quiet as she floats along his hairline, glowing comfortable warmth that soothes the ache behind his skin. She braids.

“To love is human, Hero of Time,” Sheik says, his stringwork snapping back to form. “To lose, just as well. But wherever one road ends, I think you’ll often find that another begins.”

“Are you just stuck this way, Sheik?” Time fires back, exasperated and too ill to find his manners. “Forever cursed to speak only in pretentious riddles?”

He laughs at that, and Time doesn’t think he deserves Sheik’s laughter. It’s a quiet thing—muffled behind his mask, soft as it billows up. It’s a sound that understands, and it keeps the hero grounded.

“As your guide, it seems to be what’s customary,” Sheik says. “But as your friend, Link, I can be more direct.”

The word friend travels right to Time’s core, piercing him somewhere otherwise untouched.

“You will never find yourself truly alone,” says Sheik. “Even the most wicked of us have friends. The world is simply full of too much opportunity for a soul as golden as yours to remain without.”

Time meditates on the words in a bid to soothe the tear in his heart. He wishes he could be like Sheik, like Navi, like Saria, like Malon, like Zelda—always taking the bigger picture in, letting the shape of it keep them steady. As hard as he tries, he can’t stop living in the moment—stuck in his emotions, exactly where they are, no promise of the future able to balm his wounds. It just… hurts. His heart hurts. It feels like a burning hole against his ribcage, yelling for attention, and the only thing that makes it stop is charging forward, blade in hand.

He hates being sick. Too much time to sit still and think. If he were in a dungeon fighting for his life somewhere, at least he could focus his thoughts on staying alive. Here, there’s nothing to do but marinate in the thoughts he tries so desperately to keep at bay everywhere else.

“...that’s good to hear, but what about now?”

He means it, genuinely—seeking the comfort instead of seething in the negative emotions that lap at his ankles and threaten to pull him under. Anything to keep his weary soul at bay, to keep the promise of some kinder life close.

The Hero of Time does not believe there exists a happy ending, for him. He wants to, though—so badly, he wants to. Sheik shifts his key.

“For now, perhaps, look to the gifts you’ve been given by those who love you,” he says. “The pieces of their hearts they’ve inevitably left with you.”

With a flourish of his fingers, Sheik starts to play a song he shouldn’t know. One that Time plays on hopeless nights, a rose-coloured melody that reminds him of the princess in her garden, taking his hand in her own and vowing to not let him go it alone. Reminds him of her royal gaze upon him—a complete nobody, hair dirtied with pine needles and knees scraped up and scabbing—beaming with faith and relief. Sheik plays her lullaby, and Navi falls asleep in Time’s shirt collar, and he bites back tears.

“Music has always helped me when I feel my lowest,” Sheik says. He shouldn’t know that song. Time didn’t teach him that song—did Impa? He decides he’s too feverish to care. A few tears slip out, despite himself.

“The songs your fingers wander to play when you ache to feel more mindless,” his guide continues. “The bed you’re recovering in now, every thread of its warmth. If I may say so, those braids in your hair look quite lovely, as well.”

Pulling his hands back, Time fingers them, careful not to wake Navi. She’s exhausted herself with how worried she’s been about him, a guilt he’s been running from just like anything else. It was her who practically dragged him by the ear to Kakariko in search of help, her who fluttered around his skull like an angry wasp until he agreed to take a break, her who just short of cried herself to sleep these last few nights trying to look after him with how awful he’s felt. The braids were done and undone and done back up again, a nervous habit she’d picked up that he hadn’t minded one bit. It felt a little ridiculous for her to still be babying him the way she always did, but this far into things, he realized he was just happy she was still around.

“For now, hold onto these things, Link,” Sheik says—careful to use his name and not his title, careful to infuse it with all the inspiring intent he can.

“Hold onto them, and count those who love you.”

Time wakes up slowly, feeling like a pile of boulders has settled on his chest. What hits him hardest is how uncomfortably full his face is, like someone’s shoved every airway he has full of mud. It pulses its insufferable heartbeat against the back of his sight, his cheeks, his teeth, carving a headache deep into his skull that feels dull and unrelenting and like he’s breathing in swampwater and miasma.

His team is asleep around him, wheezing and sniffling and tossing and turning, and he tries not to groan at the way every little sound they chorus drives another spike into his head. Focus feels impossible, but he tries to hone his, despite it—Sky’s in the center of it all, noodling out a song on his harp that sounds too much like one he learned in Termina.

Is he still dreaming? He’s sure he’s awake, but he’s been very wrong before. Again he has the thought, you shouldn’t know that song, but its healing notes wash across him regardless, just short of melting his headache entirely. He’s been traveling with Sky for gods know how long, but it’s really only then that he notices the golden luster of the chosen hero’s harp, glinting in the moonlight as it pours in through the window—it doesn’t look like the queen’s harp, it simply is. It is the royal family’s sacred instrument, a million times brighter in its brilliance, not a single sign of age upon its finish.

Curious.

The prickle of an oncoming sneeze halts his thoughts, and Time tries to little avail to keep it behind his palm where it won’t wake the dead. Instead it’s wrenching and rough and exhausting on the ears in how unmistakably ill it sounds—like it’s desperately being forced out of him, like he needs a longer nap and a hotter drink, like everyone in the room needs to wash their hands. Sky slips on the note he’s playing, plucking a startled tune out, and he’s at their leader’s side faster than either of them can blink.

“Oh, that sounded like it hurt...” his harp is set down beside his things as he’s inching his way over to Time, who stays bent in half, curled on his side and not feeling much like moving. Sky’s spot-on, Time thinks as he’s raising shaking fingers to his temple and massaging with what little strength he has—the exertion of it pounds the aches deeper into his bones, his head throbbing harder and harder with every errant, noisy breath around them.

To his surprise, Sky just short of grabs Time’s hand as it’s moving—gently palming it aside and replacing it with his own. Purposeful circles pushing at his hairline, his forehead, down to his sinuses—it alleviates some of the pressure, and Time huffs out a noise of general relief.

“How do you feel?” Sky asks as he’s working, a completely rhetorical question at this point.

Like he’s been eating nothing but rocks for the last two days, really. His face is so sore, when he moves to suck in a much-needed breath he can’t tell what pains him more—the scrape of sharp air across his throat or the herculean effort it takes to move his jaw. It makes him want to give up on breathing entirely, and for a moment he seriously considers it right there.

From beside him, Hyrule caves in on himself and coughs a miserable round of coughs. The world suddenly feels too heavy, a pit in Time’s stomach that screams at him you’re drowning. It crawls upward from his core, hot and stifling and impossible to wade through, and Time slowly manages to pull himself up to a sit.

“I need—” and then he coughs himself, a small thing, not yet quite the monster attacking the other boys. “—I could use some air.”

He says it in the voice he uses when commanding—firm and unmoving without room for debate—but the declaration of it is utterly lost in how hoarse and stuffy he sounds. If it weren’t for the pang of sympathy twisting at Sky’s insides, he’s sure he’d be inclined to laugh. The chosen hero doesn’t realize how bad he’s biting and pulling at his lip until a faltering slip draws blood, and he laps at the wound and considers the proposal.

The idea of it still worries him—he’d had it drilled into his head growing up that the last thing you wanted to do when you were sick was spend time out in the elements. But Hyrule had told him it was actually a good thing in small doses, that staying cooped up inside breathing contaminated air could slow the process just as much. It seemed to help Four, when he was in the worst of it, and Time’s judgment is something he tries his best to trust—he hasn’t been particularly foolhardy thus far.

That’s how the two of them end up outside, huddled around the fire in Wild’s front yard. Sky’s got Time pinned under his gaze as they sit, a few inches short of shoving him directly into the flames should he so much as shiver. He’s in multiple layers with their thickest blanket wrapped around him, but in the foothills of the mountains creeping closer into winter, Sky can’t bring himself to be satisfied with just that.

This nervous energy is channeled into more fussing, naturally—he adjusts and re-adjusts the cover as it rests on Time’s shoulders, tucking it closer to his neck. He’s swiping through Wild’s slate with reckless abandon, then, trying to find where the champion keeps those enchanted weapons that worked so well before, but his fingers keep stuttering and his thoughts tumble forward without his consent—too much, is this too much? He’ll tell me if he’s hurting, he’s made it this far in life without me—

He doesn’t realize he’s frozen until Time breaks him out of it, leaning in close so that the two of them are shoulder-to-shoulder. The gesture doesn’t seem like it’s purposeful warmth-seeking, there’s something else hanging wordlessly in the point where their arms touch. Time draws close to him, childishly dropping his head to a rest on Sky’s shoulder.

“Relax,” he tells Sky, and Sky hates himself when he does this—lets it show that he’s scattered, unintentionally beckoning his friends to comfort him. He’s not the one hurting most, it’s Time that needs attending, but again he finds himself with their roles reversed.

“Sorry,” is all he can say, so he does. Time gives a lazy wave of his hand that dismisses the sentiment, pulling his gaze up slightly and peering further into Sky.

“I’m going to be just fine, you know,” he punctuates it with a warm smile to offset how awful he sounds, and Sky sighs, unsure how to articulate his thoughts.

“I do,” he says back. “That’s the problem, I think.”

“Oh?”

The spirit of the hero invites conversation—all of them know this, though none of them could tell you why, exactly. There’s something about Time that takes it a step further, though—not quite Sky’s own inviting warmth, but a promise of protection and care with one’s secrets. Despite the things they very passionately disagree on, Sky feels his words are safe with their leader, and it’s an energy he’s desperate to emulate, bursting with devotion to learn and understand and care.

“I... never thought it would be a challenge to play the role of caretaker,” he finally says, trying to piece together the words as he goes. “Y’know, before I met you guys it came as naturally to me as anything.”

“I’d be inclined to agree,” Time says, exhausted but listening intently. “It seems like your divine birthright to mother hen the way you do.”

Sky’s not entirely sure why he’s blushing at that—he’s not ashamed of any of it, but still he feels exposed, the colour of it creeping up his neck and staining his ears red.

“You’re right, that part’s so easy,” he says, meditating on it. “It’s just… there’s so many different ways I have to… we’re not exactly—”

“The most emotionally mature gang?” Time finishes for him, something wry sneaking into his voice.

“Yes!” Sky lays a palm flat in the open air, a less-dramatic gesture of exasperation than outright throwing his hands up. “Every last one of them is like a dungeon puzzle I have to diffuse just to admit they need help, let alone accept it!”

Time chuckles, opening his eye a sliver and gazing deep into the fire. “Pity our so-called courage tends to shy away from interpersonal trial, eh?”

Sky nods. “It’s been a challenge. I keep expecting you to get overwhelmed and push me away. Which would be fine! I’m just not used to... “

He takes a deep breath. Time’s cheek is pressed against his shoulder, a point of heat that’s oddly comforting, despite what it foretells. Grateful for the sensation of it, Sky wraps an arm around his friend.

“...this.”

It makes sense, Time ponders, that this perhaps isn’t what the chosen hero bargained for when he initially signed up to look after them. But there isn’t a trace of regret in his voice—only the twinge of frustration that comes with not understanding something one feels they should.

“Well, you make it look strangely effortless,” Time says, finally. “There’s certainly something to be said for how adept you’ve been at meeting them all halfway.”

There’s a tone in his voice that shoots straight to Sky’s chest, warmth pooling and blossoming and sunlit inside him.

“Of course, they do have to meet you, too.”

It’s something Sky hadn’t realized he needed to hear, a conversation he’s equally grateful will never leave this budding night. None of them deserve to feel like a burden when it’s clear the idea is already so deep down in their bones—it’s not true, and Sky doesn’t think it of them, either. More than anything in the world, he just wishes he weren’t so awkward and stumbling at drowning his friends in the love they’re so painfully overdue for. It flows from inside him like an endless fountain, but his legs shake and stutter as he carries the goblet to their cracking lips.

He doesn’t know when he unhooked his arm and started playing harp again, ten or so notes into what might be a second or third loop of The Ballad of the Goddess. Time clears his throat with a bit of a wince, barely detectable, but Sky sees it. A few leaves fall from the tree they’re resting under, and Time burrows further into the cover around his shoulders, breathing deep through the headache as it ebbs at his skull.

“I’m not picky, though,” Time says, finally. “You’re a soothing person, Sky. Love me however you see fit.”

The chosen hero feels tears press at his throat, and he swallows them back wordlessly in an attempt to keep the mood light. It’s so nice to hear that, and again he feels guilty—who is he to even imply that the others are difficult, especially when they’re feeling so horrid and nowhere near their best? It’s not about him or his feelings or his utter ineptitude in everything he’s ever tried his hand at. He just needs to be better, but for just this moment he’s grateful he doesn’t have to.

It falls from his fingers, again—the song his dad used to hum whenever he had a nightmare, or a broken bone, or felt too sick to leave his bed. A magic song, he’d said, one that makes pain and fear and all other ills melt away. Time stiffens for a second, catching his breath—and then, true to form, he settles, easing back into Sky.

“I rather like this song,” says Time, eyes on the autumn moon above, far away and golden-white.

“Me too,” Sky smiles, intent to shake his worries off along the melody. “It’s... healing.”

Time laughs, for some reason. “That it is.”

For a while, time passes in silence as the two of them sit beneath the stars. It’s an oddly warm night—thank the goddesses—and despite the permission Sky’s been given to dote, he mostly sits there stoking the fire and aimlessly playing music. Time doesn’t know when he drifted off, only that he couldn’t have been asleep for that long—he wakes himself up coughing roughly, and Sky’s strong hands are rubbing long, practiced motions into his back before he even has the mind to fall back down to his body. He focuses on the sensation of it, grounding and purposeful.

His bedroll’s been relocated, he realizes as he blinks back into reality upon it, half-covered by the blanket he’d been curled up in before. The fire’s died down a little, and Sky looks a touch winded, but before Time has the mind to think on it the chosen hero is pushing a warm cup of something into his hands.

“I didn’t mean to doze,” Time says, trying not to cringe at the way his voice sounds upon his own ears, scratchy with sleep and sickness all at once.

“This was easier than carrying you back inside,” Sky smiles. “Worry less. Drink more.”

The statement is punctuated with him tapping the backside of Time’s hands, as if to nudge him more, and Time can’t argue against that so he sits up a little straighter and drinks. It’s another blend of tea, and though he can’t place the flavour—something earthy, something spicy?—he’s grateful for it as it goes to work against the pain crawling at his throat. The contrast feels sharp around him—the chilly air, the warm drink—and something about it clears his foggy head almost instantly, swatting away the haze that’s been living on the corner of his eye.

“I went to check on the others for a moment,” Sky says, catching his breath. “The smithy was up and already at the kettle, so I figured I’d wake you with tea, but it looks like you beat me to it.”

Lowering the cup from his mouth, Time eyes the clouds as they break away from the moon—no, it hadn’t been long at all, good. If Four was awake he’d probably have offered to keep watch over the still-ailing, and Sky probably would have let him since he’s been pretty consistently on the mend. It bodes well, as Time really doesn’t want to take his headache back into the sickden of loud, sniffling swordsmen.

Sky notices Time’s finished his tea long before he does, shifting the mug out of his hands with a precision that’s honestly a little admirable. Feeling a little bit like a puppet on strings, Time regards his friend with an off-white light shining somewhere in their shared soul.

“We can stay out here a bit, if you’d like,” Sky interrupts before he can think too hard. “I understand it can be… overwhelming, inside.”

In lieu of an answer, Time just nods—strongly, sagely, an action that speaks for itself. The tea’s mended his throat just enough that a breath of frigid air no longer hurts terribly, so he focuses on the sensation and inhales long and steady through his mouth, feeling like he hasn’t had air in his lungs for ages. He wants it to be a subtle gesture, but again, Sky notices—he always notices.

...how does he always notice, is the thought that gets stuck in Time’s head. Sky’s attention is so fickle, inconsistent in how it latches, and it’s something that has mystified Time since the day they all met. He runs it through his more analytical mind, tries to find a pattern, comes up short every time. In new eras, Sky’s eyesight wanders—he’s taken by every tree, every flower, every living creature as it runs across the plain, never focusing on one for too long. In battle, Sky’s a terrifying improvisor, the lightning-quick swings of his sword angled and paradoxically precise. At camp, he’s in a constant state of daydreaming, pink speckling his cheeks and sunny blues lazily resting on the clouds above, privy to nothing but the birdsong around him.

And yet still, when anyone in the group is injured, or tired, or acting strange… Sky is the first one to notice, every time, without fail, and the first one to hold them aloft—stubbornly insisting upon feeding them, or cuddling up to them, or listening intently as they spill their every woe.

It transcends their immortal spirit, goes a step beyond the itch in their hearts that drove them all to become heroes. It’s not that energetic fire in their soul, it’s distinctly Sky, and on top of all the aforementioned it’s a force to be reckoned with.

“Tell me,” Time says after a moment’s silence. “Have you always been the caretaker type?”

There’s a touch of panic that tends to creep into Sky’s eyes when Time asks him questions, where the lion that lives inside his soul turns into a deer in the headlights, a child who’s been caught doing something they shouldn’t. It’s not there this time, though—the lack of hesitation almost shocks the elder hero.

“Oh, goddess no,” Sky says. “No, exactly the opposite. All my life it’s been other people taking care of me.”

Time raises an eyebrow, leaning back a little where he’s sitting. “That’s surprising.”

“Is it?”

He nods. “I meant it when I said you make it look effortless. Well-practiced, one could say.”

“I’m flattered,” Sky pats at the back of his neck, a bashful gesture that’s uniquely him. “But I really have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then…” Time picks his words carefully. “...how did you get here?”

There’s the panic—Time recognizes it from the last time they spoke alone like this, a conversation about love and identity while the rest of the boys were off to their own devices. Without words, he gets the answer on the surface—Sky’s never thought about it before, simply done what felt right and elected to not question it.

After a moment, the wild look in Sky’s eye settles, and he gazes at the fire, poking at it aimlessly with the iron pick in his hands.

“Zel was always looking out for me,” he starts. “Making sure I woke up on time, or did my homework, or remembered to eat. As far back as I can remember, she just always had a mind for the things I was mindless about. I looked up to her so much, I… I still do.”

The firelight amplifies the colour on Sky’s face, and Time takes a moment to appreciate the tender tones of young, inexperienced, foolish love. Every time the chosen hero talks about her is exactly like the last, he never seems to tire of flustering at the mere thought. Time remembers feeling that way, too—before it cocooned itself within the passing years and transformed into something entirely new, just as beautiful. It’s nice to see Sky there now, all the good he doesn’t know to come, still on the horizon.

“When she disappeared,” he continues. “I was… I was falling apart. She was the last rock I had and she was gone, and I didn’t think anything short of breaking the clouds at my feet apart to find her could… fix me.”

Sky races to the end of the sentence, sounding out of breath as he recalls it, like the memory itself is too much for him. The words fall out of him, and for a moment, he sticks on them—a steady breath in as he recollects himself, remembers where he is now. Time’s inclined to ask him if the topic’s too much, but there’s a determined flame flickering in the chosen hero’s eyes that says he’s not done yet, and so instead Time asks—

“...and then?”

The chosen hero breathes in again. With his whole chest filling up, like the action alone is bringing him back to life. It’s metered, strong, deliberate, powerful alongside the way his eyes flutter closed, focused. He’s back on that night again—the worst of his life—with nothing left but his memories, his feelings, his hopes, his pain. It’s so dark—dark in the academy, dark across the sky outside, darkest of all in his heart where the absence of her screams and wails like an animal in a cage. And again the headmaster says stay in bed, and outside his door, Sky hears the most beautiful voice he’s ever known call his name.

“And then,” he opens his eyes, and there’s starlight glinting in their depths. “I met Fi.”

Time’s… heard that name before—heard Sky whispering it to his back when he thinks no one is listening, or when he’s off in a corner talking with the captain, questions racing from his stupefied mouth. Inexplicably, the thought of it tastes bittersweet on his tongue, but he finds himself transfixed, wanting to know more, so he asks—“Fi?”

“My traveling companion,” Sky says, beaming. “My guide on my quest, and my partner in battle, and… my most loyal friend.”

There’s something in Sky’s voice. It’s the same beautiful something Time hears in his own, on quiet nights when he’s feeling sentimental and has the courage to remember his guardian fairy. A ghost of small hands traces ciphers upon his neck, and he tries not to become lost in the sensation as his friend speaks.

“She was there for me in my darkest hour,” Sky says. “And every thereafter. She always knew… what to do and where to go, when I was scared and frustrated she always knew exactly what to say and how to make me believe it.”

That was certainly interesting. A soul that could break past the stubborn attitude inherent to the hero’s spirit? A rarity, to be certain.

“In what way?” Time asks, curious.

“Fi… couldn’t lie,” Sky puzzles out the words. “She couldn’t sugarcoat, either. It just… wasn’t her. There were no empty sentiments about how things would be okay!, or whatever. Just… numbers. Percentages, and statistics, and cold hard data. Variables… projections… just facts.”

Unable to keep the dawning realization off his face, Time’s eye opens a little, and he fights back a smile. “That’s where you get it from.”

Sky blinks. “Huh?”

“You’re always talking like some kind of automaton,” he does grin, now—he can’t help it. “Thirty-percent chance this, low probability that—I always found it rather charming. You don’t at all strike me as the mathematically inclined type.”

“Oh,” Sky looks at his feet, blushing again, clearly being told this for the first time. “Oh.”

“No one’s ever noticed before?” Time asks. “It’s such a distinct trait of yours, I figured someone would have…”

Sky runs a hand through his hair, putting pieces together slowly. “No, I don’t know if anyone—Z-Zelda definitely noticed, she was probably, just… protecting my feelings.”

Protecting your feelings, Time considers, and he wonders on that thought if it’s the nature of traveling companions to leave one’s side when the journey ends. He doesn’t have to ask Sky to know that Fi’s gone—the ache in his voice says it for him—but there’s something oddly serene that comes alongside the implication, this overwhelming aura that radiates off Sky and says he’s made some semblance of peace with the idea. It’s tantalizing, Time realizes, he wants to take a spoonful of the feeling and swallow it whole, let it melt on his tongue and put to rest the one broken heart he never got true closure on.

The Master Sword rests at Sky’s side. In time, the group had learned a few things—first, he never left the room without his sailcloth, and second, he rarely left the room without the sacred blade. Regardless of danger or lack thereof, Sky always kept the sword at his back, at his hip, by his feet. Sometimes he fell asleep beside it, his arms wrapped around the scabbard and his face pressed into its hilt, and Time had to use every ounce of his strength not to be utterly wretched about it.

He was familiar with the thrall, of course—most of them were. When first encountering the Master Sword, something about its light just drew one in. When Time saw the blade it was as though his hand itched to hold it, as though the world melted away and nothing existed besides himself and the sword. His life, his memories, his name, his feelings—they vanished entirely the second he took in its luster, the star-dappled blue across its mighty crossguard. Pulling it felt like floating and being electrocuted all at once, light in every vein in his body that shifted and changed from searing cold to lowlit warm, and when he felt the blade come loose from the pedestal it was as if all the sound in the world outside ceased to exist. It was simply him and the sword, and the feeling of something ephemeral draped across his shoulders—like a hug, like a blanket, like someone uttering welcome home and rest now in the same whispering breath. And without words it quietly lied you are safe here, and Time believed and shut his eyes because he was small and scared and so, so tired.

On the outside it seems like Sky lives in that thrall, like the draw of it is everlasting in him. More than anything, Time is concerned about it, stuck wondering if being in that state is Sky’s own choice or some wicked spell the thing has placed upon him. But when the chosen hero picks the sword up off the ground—taking it off the sheet he had so carefully placed to keep it from touching the earth below—cogs turn in Time’s stuttering head, and he suddenly feels he has his answer.

He watches Sky delicately place the Master Sword in his lap, running his fingers over the gold in the scabbard in a bid to self-soothe, and of course, how on earth did Time forget Fi?

Granted, he’d only met her once or twice—long ago (or long into the future) in the captain’s era, duh, he knew her too—but she’d made quite the impression on everyone. He’d thought she was some kind of fairy but never got the opportunity to question her, constantly stuck in the throes of battle without a lot of time to get to know anyone.

She was pleasant, though, her voice bathed in the same thick, ancient accent that Sky spoke with, shifting and changing in this ethereal chime that felt like whispers all around him, that felt… like the thrall of the Master Sword. Time found himself staring rather often when she fought—a pirouette or three, a bounding leap, and then she’d shimmer into pure light and a blade would take her place, it’s flawless finish a muted silver-white, like it had yet to grow into itself, like it had more shine to come. And Time hears the champion’s voice in his head, then, asking Sky—you tempered that sword, right? Can you hear the voice?

And Sky smiles back, with the same love in his eyes that’s shining through them now—precise, cold, elegant, beautiful, and without question, loyal.

The sensation all of them described when pulling the sword—like a sheet embracing their shoulders, incorporeal but present—ethereal the way Fi’s winglike arms were, not alike, but the same.

And maybe it’s because he’s ill, maybe it’s just his twisted sense of humour, his sideways outlook on the world that comes along with traversing the ages like a simple footpath—but in lieu of this world-shaking, groundbreaking, uneasy revelation, all Time can really think is damn. I really liked her.

Out loud, however, he’s far less dry.

“The sword...” he notes, and Sky freezes a little, unsure if he meant to reveal that much. He gazes where she’s resting, the doe-eyed look on his face shifting into a warm smile, and nods. Picking at his cuticles, Sky carries on. “The last thing she said to me before she went to sleep in the sword forever was… well, I don’t actually think it was for me,” Sky says. “I think it was actually… a prayer to Hylia? But Fi said she wanted us… to meet again some day. Me and her, in another life.”

The air’s grown colder since the two of them started talking, and Time feels it touch down like daggers across the back of his hands, up against his face, on his aching throat most of all. He’s dizzy—he doesn’t know when he got dizzy again—feeling like there’s thick, roaring waves sloshing around inside his head. Groggy and faded, like he’s woken up from a very, very long nap.

So, naturally, what he says is—

“Glad that was pleasant for somebody.”

He actually doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud—muttered and raspy under his breath—until he feels Sky stiffen at his side. For a moment, he tries to hookshot his right mind back to his head—grappling at the de-escalation skill before it leaves him for good, but the whirlwind of emotion in Sky’s shifting blues stops him. Tender-hearted as ever, his expressions spell it out—hurt, anger, indecisiveness, resignation. The chosen hero sighs deep, exhaling all the bitterness in one single, metered breath. Time meets him there, pressing a hand to his head in an act of surrender.

“Sorry. That was uncalled for.” He pulls his palm away from his face, drawing the blankets tighter around himself. “My thoughts are running a bit unfiltered at the moment.”

“I know,” says Sky, but still he looks crestfallen, desperate to understand. “At the end of the day I can’t be upset. There’s no arguing… the way you feel.”

It’s an incredibly mature statement, one that tells, in few words, the thinking Sky’s done on the matter. For the first time all night, despite being so dreadfully indisposed, it’s only now that Time sees the two of them with roles entirely reversed.

He’s about to say more—to commend Sky for his attempt to understand despite his very personal feelings on the matter, to let the chosen hero know of his pride, how he wishes he too could put aside all he feels and regard his friend’s own experience without bias. Most of all, he wants to ask how all this ties in to Sky’s motherly tendencies, where he meant to go when this conversation started. He’s nosey, he’s always been, and maybe he could draw it out of Sky if he weren’t so unwell, but…

Gods, his head hurts. His fingers are back at his temple in an instant, but it only numbs the pain for as long as he keeps them there. Raising his arms hurts just as much, they feel like sacks of gravel sewed onto his body, and he doesn’t even notice that—

“You’re shaking,” Sky tells him, dropping the weight from his voice entirely, as though the conversation had never turned so dire. The back of his hand rests at the corner of Time’s forehead, and a small noise of worry escapes Sky’s throat as he draws it back in surprise.

“It’s... about to get a lot worse,” he then warns, and Time can offer nothing in acknowledgement but a slow, silent nod of his head, all his energy focused now on staying upright. It’s like the brunt of the illness slams into him all at once, wreaking havoc on his body in the blink of an eye.

“What’s bothering you most?” Sky asks, and Time somehow manages a weak chuckle despite himself.

“Everything,” is all he can choke out, nonspecific and unhelpful, and Sky makes a general noise of exasperation, not sure if Time is the best patient of all of them or the absolute worst.

“Just… aches,” he follows up, trying to be slightly more articulate, with a general gesture that says everything is hardly an exaggeration. Sky’s brow pinches with worry, and he feels Time’s forehead again, now with deeper concentration on his face and probabilities and scenarios trailing through his mind.

“I’m going back inside to grab a few things,” he finally says. “Rest until I’m back, okay?”

Time nods, fever-foggy and sluggish, his good eye half-lidded and glazed. He struggles to rearrange himself back into bed, and so Sky’s there with a hand at his back as they work together to lower him down. The chill’s starting to get to him, and he throws dignity to the wind as he burrows under the covers and curls up tight. Sky brushes the fringe from his friend’s face, voice as rich and patient as ever.

“Keep fighting,” he encourages. “I’ll be quick.”

And he is. There isn’t much that can go through Time’s head while he lies there ill, for once, a welcome contrast to a time long before where being this sick meant being stuck inside his head for days. Whatever this plague he’s caught is, it leaves no room for focusing on anything other than the chaos it tears through him, all his attention spent on getting through the pain.

But Sky’s obsessively punctual—almost anxiously so—and it’s thankfully not long before Time hears floaty footfalls and quickened breaths across the leaflitter that envelops him. He utters something that Time is too feverish to hear, but it seems he doesn’t need to—Sky slips his hands beneath Time’s shoulders, nudging him back up to sit, and Time lets him do it, a simple marionette as the world turns around him. It’s nostalgic in a way he doesn’t feel like meditating on.

“Elixir first,” Sky says, shifting ice-cold glass into his hands.

Time makes a noise of acknowledgment and clumsily grabs it, throwing it back with a mechanical sort of grace that proves he could probably do it in his sleep. Impressed, Sky breathes out a laugh, keeping the mood light.

“Perfect, now let me just…”

He waddles on his knees to Time’s back, brushing shaggy blonde locks away from the older hero’s neck. Time shudders at the sensation, holding it in his teeth so as not to offend—it’s nice, really, he’s cursing his lack of control.

“Lean forward a bit?”

Time does, head bowed and shoulders high, and as soon as he moves something impossibly warm and soft presses against his neck. It’s so alleviating he hasn’t the mind to notice the satisfied sound that leaves him, too caught up in how it works at the aches like a healing light, warms him from the neck down even in the autumn night. It’s nostalgic, in a way he might feel like meditating on.

“What—” he coughs, a little sharper than before. “—is that?”

“Something Wild showed me,” Sky explains, rubbing at Time’s shoulders as he talks. “He said if you heat up rice, you can use it as a compress to soothe pain? I just... tucked some into a sock, is it working…?”

“Like magic,” he whispers back under his breath, trying not to melt into stardust beneath the heat and the lulling press of Sky’s thumbs across his aching joints.

“Glad to hear.” A smile in the chosen hero’s voice.

For a moment they stay like that—no sound for miles but the whistle of wind in the trees, pulling leaves from weakened branches and painting shifting waves across the grass. Sky lets himself become lost in the quiet of it as he works knots out of Time’s strong shoulders, wanting to ask about every twist across his muscles, every scar beneath the worn cloth as his hands trace patterns into it.

So badly, Sky wants to know his companions. He wants to hear all their stories, memorize all their fears, house within him every last weakness and agony so he can be there when the pain rears its ugly head. No one of them eludes him more than Time, though—tight-lipped and unreadable, his true nature locked away.

A walking contradiction, their leader seems so at peace—married and happy, with a home to return to and people who love him. Still, there’s a darkness in his voice that tells of harder times, and the ire dripping from his words says they’re not behind him yet. More than anything, Sky wants to know—what made him hate Hylia so much, what made him hate the Master Sword so much, what impossible circumstances could have led him to turn on such generous, loyal, soft-hearted protectors.

It’s a heartache Sky feels—not only that Time loathes two of his greatest joys, but that he doesn’t get his own joy in knowing them, loving them. Everyone deserves the love of the Goddess, everyone should know the guidance of the sword.

Fi sings beside him. Her quiet hum, traipsing across Sky’s heart. It whispers something to him as his mind wanders, and he swears, it’s almost like he does hear her voice, this time—but it comes foggy and syllabic, like the two of them are underwater with an invisible wall between their words. She’s trying to advise him, an impulse itching at his fingers, and Sky doesn’t entirely know why, but he asks—

“How’s your head?”

Time shifts a little, pressing at it, as if to check. “Been better.”

He sounds so congested the words are almost impossible to make out, it’s no wonder Sky kept catching him with steepled fingers, trying to will the pressure away. Re-focusing, he drags his hands up to the mess of Time’s hair and starts working his digits through the tangles, as delicately and slowly as his shaking hands can muster. In response he feels Time freeze up just a little, something unspoken on his tongue when he settles with a trembling breath. Sky stops for a moment, curling around his side to ask—

“Is this okay?”

Tears crawl up Time’s chest, into his throat, and he steels his jaw in an attempt to keep them buried. Metronome in his head, he tries to breathe steady through parted lips, it’s the damned fever, stop thinking so hard. His neck is warm, and there’s hands in his hair, and his head does feel better, and that’s what he tells Sky.

“That feels lovely,” he says, quieter than usual. “Please… continue.”

And so he does, inch by golden inch, unwinding every strand from root to tip while Time relaxes into his touch. Sky’s bitten-down nails and abused cuticles catch from time to time but the older hero doesn’t seem to notice, breathing deep and deliberate and just as much of a rock facing illness as he is in any other battle.

Still, Sky feels there’s something unsaid. An ache in his heart that might not be his own.

“I shouldn’t keep bringing it up,” Sky says after a beat. “But… for what it’s worth…”

Fi sings. It doesn’t sound like any song she’s sung before, a heartsick lament. Wordless, voiceless, formless—she must feel so weak in there, unable to articulate who she is and how she feels. Sky hurts for her, the burden of it one he’d gladly carry for the rest of his natural life.

“...I know she’s sorry.”

Time’s tone is far less malicious this time, but still he sounds disbelieving, unable. “Did she tell you that?”

“No, she didn’t,” Sky admits, pulling a stray lock of hair behind his friend’s ear. “But I… can feel her there, Time. She’s... hurting. She’s remorseful. I think… I think, i-if she could—”

His voice shakes, and he tries not to become overwhelmed with how much he misses Fi, how unfair it is that she has no way to say this herself. It should be her here, with the two of them, explaining every calculation and micro-analysis, every simulation she ran in her expeditive, ever-knowing mind. Every variable she considered, and why she wound up on whichever one soured Time so completely. Sky didn’t care about divine purpose, or inorganic discrepancies, or how she came to be—Fi was as human as anyone else, and though she was never wrong, even she could make mistakes.

“...she’d tell you herself,” Sky finally says. “How badly she wishes things had been different.”

And Time doesn’t want to unpack—even if he were healthy—how even the kindest sentiments like this make him want to act like a child. An exaggerated gag, a sarcastic eye-roll, another rude comment murmured beneath his tongue. It’s not the first time he’s felt like a little kid trapped in a body that’s too big, and he has it—her?—that sword to thank for that, so perhaps the blade should just accept his sickening, stubborn immaturity on the matter for what it is.

...that’s what he wants to say, what he wants to live in, what he wants to leave it on for the rest of his life. The powers that be have put all of his boys through so much, the same as they did him, they’re allowed their hurt, allowed their complaints, allowed their anger most of all. It’s what he’s been telling himself for years, long after the searing pain of it all has more or less washed away. Long after that otherwise unremarkable morning, where he woke up next to the love of his life, plodded outside to the stable in his pyjamas, snuck Epona an overripe apple, and sat there in the crisp morning air as it rolled across the ranch and whispered, welcome to the future, where you are alive.

Why the resistance? Why is he so reluctant to say goodbye to the last lingering scraps of his more bitter self, to make peace with the idea that his greatest trauma might have just been some unfortunate, misguided accident? Why does it make his blood boil to think it, when every other resolution feels so much more like relief, like fairy dust spilling into his cuts and bruises?

Sky is trying so hard to meet him halfway, and Time feels a wicked hypocrite, the way his own words echo in his feverish head. Whatever his feelings on the sword settle into, he knows one greater thing for certain—he loves Sky. He loves Sky as his own, and no great divide between them can change that love, everlasting and cosmic and spanning however many thousand lives their soul is cursed to live.

And so, what he says instead is, “I wish so, too.”

Softly, so as not to abrade. Honestly, without the venom that so usually coats those truths. And Sky lets out a heavy, relieved breath, like he had been expecting so much worse—and Time isn’t a man who finds guilt productive anymore, but for a moment it grips him, pulling him down.

True to fashion, it’s somehow Sky who apologizes instead.

“I’m sorry for how I get so defensive,” he says. “I just… I miss her… more than I knew I could miss someone. That much, maybe… you can understand.”

Tonight, Fi is restless, warbling energy glowing off her blade in quiet bursts, refusing to calm. Sky isn’t sure if it’s because she knows they’re talking about her and wants to be present as she’s able, or if it’s something more conciliatory, a way to put the lot of them at ease. It feels more like the second, Sky ponders, and it drifts along his head again—this vibration in his veins, like her wings on his hands. Like she’s touching him delicately, moving him into position. Not an order, never an order—always a guiding light, a tilt of her head to act as his compass, a two-digit numerical with a percentage trailing behind it like a comet’s tail. Even now—with the contradiction of her lilting monotone silent—she suggests, advises, encourages.

And Sky trusts her, so he listens.

Finally, his fingers weaving through Time’s hair without a single mussed-up objection, he braids.

Imperfect braids, of course—Zelda taught him in a single day, long ago when they were kids, and she’s so adept at doing her own, he rarely gets to practice. But it’s something to do to assuage his sick friend’s headache when the act of just entwining loses its appeal, and so Sky braids, feeling in that moment that there’s a one-hundred percent probability of it being the best thing to do.

So lost in that thought, Sky doesn’t notice the way Time’s breath stutters. The warmth at his neck, healing and soft, clumsy hands knitting comforting ties into his hair, harp strings decorating the inside of his head. Just for tonight, it’s nostalgic in a way he can no longer fight meditating on.

And Time shudders forward and weeps.

It spills out of him suddenly, that first heaving sob, and he messily presses his palm against his quivering mouth, desperate to make less noise. The feeling seizes him—Sky’s words, Sky’s touch—an overwhelming heartache that’s bittersweet and icy-hot and all-over, all-encompassing. And again, and again, and again, and again, Time feels he will never truly escape it—he’s so much smaller on the inside, so much bigger on the inside, he’s ten and he’s seventeen and he’s twenty-five and he’s seven, right now—crying a seven year old’s tears over a seven year old’s woes, forevermore the boy without a fairy.

Over-irritated throat producing hoarse, cracking wails—an ugly sound that pulls Sky back down to earth, and immediately the chosen hero pulls around to face him, a hand firm and grounding on Time’s shaking shoulder.

“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” he says, soft and inviting as ever. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

Pitifully, Time shakes his head with little hesitation, trying to force his words out through dithering hiccups, small and hidden behind his shaking hand. There’s no way for him to unload everything dwelling inside him, squeezing these tears out of his heart where they’ve been locked away for so many years. No, Sky’s not hurting him—he hurts, but those wounds existed long before this moment, and his friend’s fingertips meandering across his aching head stretches him far back, to a time where this (and only this) stung so much less.

“Please... keep doing that,” he finally rasps out, palming at the wetness of his ocean-blue eyes.

“Are you sure?” And then Sky’s gingerly patting mess off Time’s face with the spare washcloth, that fickle precision of his shining bright as ever. “You look miserable.”

Of course he does, with tear-tracks down fever-flushed cheeks, the exertion of it saturating the red already rimming his eyes. There’s no such thing as a graceful cry when one’s ill—the way it clogs his head back up and makes his nose run unmanageably—but still, there’s some kind of relief in the action, the same weightlessness that comes with taking his armour off after a long, arduous day on foot.

“I’m sure, I—”

Catching his breath, he shivers again, trailing it with a tedious swallow he begs to appear more controlled, purposeful. Soundless, Sky hands him the towel-turned-handkerchief, and Time presses it to his agitated nose, holding it there like a makeshift veil to save himself some dignity. He exhales through his mouth, onerous and rough.

“I do,” Time says, voice a mere impression. “I do… I understand.”

Even if he could bring himself to look at Sky, his head is far too heavy to move from where he is, bent forward and frozen like a statue in how airless the world around him bears down. Stuck hunched over like that, Time doesn’t see his friend’s expression traipse backward to the last thing he said before this feverish breakdown, doesn’t have eyes for the realization as it dawns across Sky’s face.

This time, when the chosen hero’s hands find their way back to Time’s feathery blond tresses, he’s sure to lean into the gesture, emphatic in his promise to accept that brand of love. Sky re-works the half-finished braids, impossibly delicate as he folds and intertwines, and Time’s lost in a sunshower in some wide-open field, warm with his arms thrown out as the drizzle washes dirt and blood and world-weary hurt off his tired heart.

I understand, he had said, and Sky’s grateful for the compromise, though he wishes Time didn’t. He’s debating whether or not he should say much more, and is about to settle on you’ve done enough damage for tonight when the older hero pipes back up, fever-addled and disarranged and too exhausted to remember his walls—

“...Navi liked to braid my hair.”

Something in Sky’s gut sinks low, his fingers stuttering for a moment before finding their rhythm once more. Meticulously, carefully, he strings the words together like he’s hanging them upon a line, mindful of Time’s usual inhibitions, wherever they might be.

“You were saying that name a lot… while you were asleep,” he says, as gently as he can muster. “Navi.”

Caught in some divine, liminal space between resting and waking, Time can’t say if he’s blushing beneath the sickly red stretching across his face. Maybe he’s embarrassed, maybe he’s not, maybe it humbles him for a moment before he remembers how little there is to be ashamed of. He wants Sky to know, and he doesn’t want Sky to know, and he’s ten and he’s seventeen and he’s eleven, right now, tearing off into the forest on horseback, chasing an invisible trail of fairy dust off into some hazy dream.

“I’m sure,” Time murmurs into the darkness. “She was my best friend.”

So much is held within that was, three little letters that carry the entire bulk of the statement. It’s one thing to lose someone, and another entirely to acknowledge that loss as done and over with. Though Sky can’t bring himself to give anyone he’s lost the was treatment, he knows what it feels like to lose your best friend.

There’s nothing to be said.

There’s nothing to be said, nothing spoken that can heal that kind of broken heart. Nothing that can soothe the absence of something—of someone—who always felt inevitable. A turn to the side to regard their expression, the gut-pull when they’re not there. Waking up alone and walking through the afternoon bustle, wondering when you’re going to see their silhouette in the crowds, before your blood goes cold and you remember. Painted in the orange of the sunset, reaching for their absent hand, wanting to scream and cry and howl to the waking stars that they should be here, they should be watching this with me. Unfair. It’s unfair to lose someone who was always meant to be there.

Asleep in Zelda’s bed, the Sky from his memories buries his face deep into the silken pillowcase and inhales. He’s dozed in her bed too many times to count, at every age as long as his memory stretches back, always stirred to her nudging, wake up sleepyhead, before I feed you to my remlit. He’d swat her away and she’d wrestle him to the floor, and he’d moan his annoyance at the idea of moving, all the while taking for granted how her voice was ever-present. These lingering sensations are all he has now, and he holds them close and refuses to let go. Her bed is the same as she left it, her heady scent lingering in every thread of the sheets, and he cries into her pillow and curls up tight and weeps is, is, is. Zelda is my best friend, and she’s out there and once all this is over I’m never going to go another day without her.

Time is stronger than him, easily. But there’s no words that can assuage that is, and there’s definitely none that can balm a was.

Instead, he braids. Carefully entwining, willing his loops and folds to be precise in their comfort where they lack in their form.

Time’s shoulders droop slowly, his ragged breathing quiets down. The older hero doesn’t dare speak a word more, but he hardly needs to, blissmaker that Sky is. Despite every hurdle, their skyborn soother figures something out, a second set of ears for every word that goes unsaid.

Sky braids, and every stumbling touch of his fingers to Time’s scalp tingles down through his spine and straight into his ailing heart. His eye slips shut unconsciously, and his headache melts away with little fight, and he dips forward and breathes steady and drifts somewhere beautiful where all that hurts can’t find him.

Fall mornings are Time’s favourite, normally—they take him back to rare pleasantries on his first journey, the chill of the air, the puff of his breath rising up like steam, mixing with Epona’s as her hoofbeats echo thunderously alongside twittering birdcall. There’s something freeing about the bite of the world as it whistles by his ears, in-between in its identity, yet to grow into its winter wings.

This morning, he shudders quietly, not nearly as fond of the damp pull on his skin. Time isn’t sure where the sweat soaking him begins and the first light’s dew ends, and he feels a little bit like he’s been thrown in a lake with how his breath struggles into his lungs. He huddles closer to the fire, trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep to the sound of Sky, still playing harp.

The notes are different right now, discordant and stuttering for a moment, aimless thinking aloud written in every vibration of the strings. For a while, they stay like that—Sky hits a note, a higher note, a higher note—then backtracks, satisfied, playing the whole thing again. The melody blends into something more cohesive, something more pleasant, something more… familiar.

You shouldn’t know that song.

Time finds his voice, rough and deep. “What’s that tune?”

Sky startles with a small noise (as small as he can get, at least) and falters on the instrument, dipping the song into silence. He blinks himself back to reality, looking torn between answering the question and wanting to question how long Time’s been awake. The former wins out, and he blushes, inexplicably.

“O-oh, good morning!” he stutters. “Um, it’s… an original composition. It’s not, uh, done… just yet.”

That gets Time’s attention.

“Is it, now?”

Sky is really blushing now, pink creeping down his neck as if it’s mission is to overtake him completely. And even though Time feels too shivery and bogged down to move, the mischievous glint that so often crops up like fireworks in his sky blue eyes remains. It draws more words from the chosen hero, beckoning him to say more.

“There’s this song my people sing, carried down from the Era of the Goddess,” Sky explains. “It’s a ballad she wrote for… well, for me…? But it’s always been a piece we play in her honour, in her name.”

Time doesn’t scoff or roll his eye or make a comment. It almost worries Sky, is he feeling that poorly? It can’t have been the conversation they’d had last night, he had a feeling one single heart-to-heart couldn’t have dug out and put to rest the disdain that clutched at his friend’s heart. He was listening intently, sluggishly propping himself up on his folded arm.

“Z has… complicated feelings on it, so I wanted to try to… take its components and—make her something,” Sky says. “Something that… belongs to her and this brand new understanding she has of herself. Something that doesn’t make her think about all the rough stuff I went through for her.”

Sky doesn’t say it outright, but there’s an implication there. Time had heard the drivel that the women of the royal family were descended from Hylia herself, that the light magic and sealing power each princess wielded was evidence of that. It wasn’t like any other magic in the kingdom—searing in its holiness and glowing like a sun upon the earth.

Only Hylia would dirty her divine blood by mingling with mortals.

“So I’m trying to… play the notes… backwards?” Sky continued. “But it’s a slow process. I… don’t really know anything about writing music, I’ve always just played by ear.”

Time holds a sigh firm behind his teeth, keeping it exactly where it is lest he draw any questions. By the Deku Tree’s heavenly roots, he should not be doing this. He’s still reeling from the first time he followed the impulse—forget everything that followed the storm as it tore around the windmill—the perpetual headache he’d received trying to understand how it happened was a million times more traumatic than the horrors that slept in that goddess-forsaken well. He should not be doing this, he should not even be thinking the thought he is thinking right now.

“Fetch me my pouch,” he says anyways, and Sky blinks a little before ducking behind the tree and doing exactly that.

With tremendous effort, Time pulls himself up to lean against the tree, and Sky deposits the little leather thing beside him, curious. Time’s head protests with an uncomfortable dizzying sensation as he sits, and he stays pressed still to the bark for a beat in an attempt to shoo it away. When it’s subsided enough, he palms his ocarina—Zelda’s, of course, for sentimentality’s sake—and cradles his hands around it, fingers finding their rest.

“Play it for me,” Time says. “Forward, first.”

“...are you sure you’re good to?” Sky asks, that worried ruffle of his feathers showing on his face.

“Of course not. This’ll sound about as lousy as it gets,” Time says, dry as ever. “Play it anyways.”

That, obviously, does nothing to ease Sky’s anxious heart—but his friend’s voice is so commanding, even when he’s down for the count. He nods without thinking, hands positioned across the golden instrument, and his brain goes quiet as he begins to strum.

Oh, Time knows this one too. Sky plays it constantly, most of all when he’s feeling low, or staring off into the distance like a lovesick dog. When it’s not trailing across camp from his harp, he’s whistling it with a precision that’s almost sharp on the ears, or humming it under his breath as he whittles. To his memory, Time’s never known someone to live in a song like Sky lives in this ballad. He feels a little rotten, pretending to pay attention to the notes themselves, and even moreso like a fiend when he keeps the act going.

“Right, of course it’s that one,” he offers a half of a smile, nudging Sky with a slow upturn of his head. “Now, what have you got so far?”

Seeming a little flustered again, Sky looks to his hands, far less mindless this time, like a child performing in front of an audience for the very first time. Tongue stuck out in concentration—did he even know he did that?—he plucks out the tune haltingly, as if trying to remember the shape of the melody.

Half-there and cooking with fever, Time wonders again if this is really something he’s supposed to do, allowed to do. It feels… stable enough, the two of them sitting there composing Her Majesty’s lullaby. It feels like something that Sky—devoted as he is—would have the mind to figure out on his own eventually.

“Alright,” Time says, once the chosen hero stops playing. “So, that’d be something like...”

Raising the ocarina to his lips, he breathes as deep as he’s able in preparation, like he’s breaching the water’s surface after a long time spent beneath. It’s ridiculous how a simple number he could play in his sleep makes him feel light-headed now, but he carries on regardless, sculpting the bridge where Sky’s seemed to struggle, quickening the pace of the smattering of notes as they come in two nonidentical bursts. Time pauses to catch his breath—holding the ocarina from below with his other hand poised to indicate he’s not done—and then dives right back in, trailing the melody off with a high note that lacks its usual power.

“Not my best.” He pulls to the side to cough into his shoulder, still holding the instrument like it’s a baby bird. “But I’m certain you get the picture.”

“That’s…” Sky marvels, eyes full of stars. “I could—hold on—”

And he plays it back to the best of his ability, stumbling a little on the asymmetry in the center. He falls back, trying again, something beautifully enchanted creeping into his smile when his heart and his ears connect, when he feels how right it sounds.

“It’s—” his fingers wander back to position, playing the first few notes again. Backtracking, playing the last few. Forward, continuing down the tune.

“It loops perfectly into itself if you end it there, I—” Elated, he plays it again, like the sound of it is utterly addicting, like he can’t bear to stop. “This is incredible, do you compose often?”

Time’s hearty chuckle is just as hoarse as his voice, but behind that veil it’s warm all the same. “I can’t read a lick of music. Any fool with fingers and lungs can play the ocarina.”

“That excludes me, then,” Sky jokes pleasantly, looking off in some direction at nothing in particular.

“Your stringwork is far better-suited,” Time says, and means it. “I think I can go again. Here, follow along—”

He dives in for a second round, severing the melody every so often to come up for air. Sky’s patient in that as he is in all else, his gaze glowing and warm with gratitude as they serenade one another, and Time lets the nostalgia of it settle his heart. It’s been so long since that golden harp has sung alongside him, he hadn’t realized—cloaked in all the misery that a journey or two through the end of the world will bring—how much he had missed it. Stealing a glance at Sky’s soaring blues, he realizes that the chosen hero has Zelda’s eyes.

Or… rather… Zelda has Sky’s eyes.

Eventually, the sun crawls fully over the horizon, spilling its golden greetings across the village. The mules bray their own hellos back, the cows moo their thanks to the light, and the cuccos announce their authority as they wake every soul who missed the memo.

And Sky, impossibly, is playing Epona’s Song.

Time shouldn’t be impressed, given everything so far. There’s a tug in his chest as he takes it in, nonetheless—the early morning rise of the breathing world around him, in progress but not quite there just yet. It’s blissful to be awake before the world, and he hears it, feels it—the steady clop of hooves as he’s jostled up and down, bridle-less and strong. Epona goes where he wants, infallibly, and he is ten and seventeen and scared and confused but for just this moment, he’s alive and free.

And the scene skips, and shifts, and it’s many years later. He’s as ill then as he is right now, sweating bullets into the bedsheets and coughing a barking cough, and none of this is relevant to him in the slightest, because Malon looks like an angel in the candlelight and she’s singing ten times as beautifully as one with her strong calluses trailing forest paths through his matting hair.

He bites.

“Now how do you know this one?”

Sky stops playing, and for a moment Time almost regrets asking. “Oh! Haha, Twilight taught me this song, actually.”

Another few notes of it are plucked out, just as beautiful as the first time he heard them. Closing his eye and leaning back against the oak, Time zeroes in on the chatter of livestock, the muted sound of crop being reaped. Sleep seems all the more enticing, and Sky carries on.

“I’ve always liked this one,” Sky says, closing his own eyes as he plays. “For some reason it… reminds me of home? I couldn’t tell you why.”

Time smiles at that. He doesn’t have the energy to laugh, dozing as he drowns in the autumn cauldron, snowdrifts of fallen leaves metaphorically blanketing him with their colourful arms. He’d have a talk with Twilight later, about the dangers of time paradoxes—less so on their effect on the ages, moreso on the mental health of those who dare to cause them.

Later, when he’s feeling better. For now, he simply rolls his head into his shoulder and says “Me too.”

A yawn, one that stretches deep into his bones, popping his ears and lessening some of the pressure still swollen and throbbing behind his eyes. Lost in the sensation, he has the errant thought that something—he doesn’t know what—feels just a little lighter, alongside it.

“...play it again.”

Chapter Text

Teeth ground together and eyes burning with a lack of sleep, Warriors awakens to the same chorus of violent hacking he’s grown well-acquainted with.

Acquainted with, but hardly accustomed to, he’s sure no future exists where that much is the case. Every breath of it is agonizing, it crawls under his skin like a million tiny parasites, makes him want to rip his hair from the roots with how loud it sounds through the muffled walls. The captain doesn’t consider himself a man who often chooses violence, but something about the unmistakable sound of plague as it ravages makes him want to beat the sturdy wood around him until the shed is splintered and crumbling.

A violent shudder grounds him, and Warriors pulls his arms to his shoulders in a bid to combat it. The meager warmth died as the sun did, and he can’t remember the last time he got more than a few hours of sleep, between the sudden cold snap and the incessant noise of his men in the cabin, festering and suffering and wheezing their final breaths—

Another shiver—like a heartbeat in its inevitability—and for just today he’s grateful for his low tolerance to the cold. This time, he’s sure to take in his surroundings before he becomes lost in bitter memories—dry straw littering the ground, empty buckets pushed up against the walls, garden tools with dirt still caked on their rusted finish. It’s dusty and cold but it’s far from war-torn and desolate, and he lets out a held breath, coming back to earth.

The safest place in Hyrule, Wild had said, and Warriors believes him, even if his faulty psyche doesn’t.

Forcing himself to press forward, the captain rolls out of bed and stands, stretching and pulling at his joints as he greets the hidden sunrise. His notebook is where he left it—resting beside ink and quill on some miscellaneous wooden container—and he picks it up with utensil in hand, jumping into his usual routine.

Warriors breathes deep, studying the shape of it as it fills his lungs. It goes down easy, albeit with a little bit of a sting from the chill in the air. He’s tired, of course, but not in a way that sets off any alarms. There’s no gritty premonition stuck in his throat, no twin of the sensation scratching at his nose, no telltale ache of a fever resting on his back. Satisfied, he scribbles these notes down with purpose, and they join the days worth of near-identical words resting directly above.

Sunlight spills through the small, too-high window, and even without looking Warriors can tell it’s one of those deceptively sunny autumn days. Blue-skied and dotted with big, fluffy clouds, the only sign of the coming winter living in the shade. The captain’s deciding upon if he should dare to enjoy it when there’s a knock on the shed door—strong and succinct despite how early in the morning it is. Waltzing to the entrance, Warriors clears his throat.

“Morning,” he says through the wood.

“Open the door, captain.” Twilight—right, that makes sense.

“Absolutely not,” Warriors says. “To what do I owe this visit?”

It’s barely detectable, but he hears the rancher sigh.

“I can barely hear you,” Twilight argues.

“Apologies,” Warriors says back, and then raises his voice an octave. “I’ll project.”

There’s a beat of silence, and though Warriors can’t see Twilight’s face, he fills it in easily with a ridiculously exaggerated eye-roll. Today, the rancher is graceful in defeat, at least, and so he drops the topic and carries on.

“I need someone to come along with me foraging,” he says. “We’re running low on supplies for elixirs.”

“What?” the captain questions, and then adds—“Why me?”

Why him, the one who made it abundantly clear he’d be in hard quarantine until every last molecule of contamination was eradicated? Why him, who’s been as far away as possible from the situation since it started?

“Sky needs to hang back to look after the others,” Twilight says, plain as day. “And the recovering still aren’t well enough to wander far.”

That doesn’t sound right. “Who of you are still healthy?”

“Me and Sky.”

“You and Sky,” Warriors echoes. “And?”

“That’s it,” says Twilight, sounding a little confused.

“What do you mean that’s it?”

“I mean everyone else is either sick or barely on the mend,” Twilight keeps on. “Why do you think I’m bothering you?”

That’s—Warriors is shocked, but he doesn’t know why. It’s barely been any time at all and more than half of them are already ill, and he prepared himself for this but still the reality of it sends an overwhelming chill through his veins. Two sides of him hiss and spit at one another somewhere deep in his heart—one grateful he took to isolation, the other shouting that he could have done more.

“My cub gave me coordinates for some spots to hit,” Twilight continues. “But they’re out of the way, and it’s dangerous to go alone.”

You can do more right now, his conscience screams, and Warriors buries his face in his palms and lets out a world-weary sigh. Twilight hears it—through the door he was complaining about being soundproof, moments ago—and keeps on.

“I’m healthy—”

“I don’t trust you for a second to admit to being unwell,” Warriors says, pointedly. It’s a valid assessment—few of them are particularly upfront about their injuries or ailments, and Twilight is easily the worst of the worst. Sweet Three, even the vet is easier to crack than him.

“If it’s my pain alone, maybe,” Twilight relents. “But right now it’s the team who’s hurting, I ain’t got room for pride.”

A much louder sigh. Warriors draws it out until it sounds like a groan, agonized in its cadence because he knows Twilight is right. He droops forward against the shed door, his face making contact with the wood.

And then… silence. Twilight blinks. The handle creaks. And—miraculously—the door falls open.

A single hand peeks out, beckoning the rancher with a ‘come here’ gesture.

“Forehead,” Warriors orders.

“Do we really have to—”

“Forehead, farmboy.”

Fed up but not wanting to drag this out any longer, Twilight gives another exasperated roll of his eyes and eases his face into the captain’s outstretched palm. Warriors holds the contact for a moment, analyzing Twilight with careful precision before withdrawing and stepping out of his cave and into the light.

“No fever, that’s good,” he notes, eyes squinted with intent and scarf pulled up over his nose, a makeshift veil. “How’s your throat? Sore at all?”

“I keep telling you I’m fine.” The captain’s doing that thing he always does—scrutinizing, while he curls his standing position around whomever, looking like a garden snake periscoping the area for threats. It would be endearing if it weren’t such a specific form of nagging, and Twilight weakly shoves an arm at his friend, shooing him off. Despite everything, Warriors doesn’t seem convinced.

“I’ve barely spoken to anyone in the house,” Twilight assures him.

“And that includes Sir Chosen?” Warriors pries, pulling his scarf up further for effect. “Some sort of carrier, that one, absolute divine miracle he’s still in the pink—”

“He keeps to himself and to the sick,” Twilight insists. “I’m fine, captain.”

Warriors gives him one last once-over—a useless gesture that claims itself bold enough to spot the potential virus like it were anything else—and slowly, carefully lowers the royal blue fabric from its rest beneath his eyes.

“It seems I’ve no choice, then,” he says, relaxing a little. “I expect full transparency from you, and we head back at the first sign of you feeling off. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yeah, yeah, you doting bastard.”

With the way this morning’s been going, Twilight’s honestly shocked his eyes haven’t rolled out completely out of his skull.

Warriors was slowly beginning to come to the conclusion that, when in Wild’s era, one never truly knew what it was they were signing up for.

It stayed bright and beautiful out as they made their way down the footpaths and into the forests framing Hateno, and once he got moving, Warriors had forgotten entirely the bite in the air. It was gorgeous out here in autumn, overgrown vines dyed like a sunset as they twisted up thick tree trunks and into sheltering leaves that shone just as golden. The skies were so clear of their usual overcast that when rainclouds rolled in, he felt he could outrun them, conspicuous against the wide open heavens.

“Eerie,” Twilight says after a silence, regarding them.

“Hm?”

“Cub said it’d rain in this exact location at this exact time,” the rancher continues, eying the sun before it’s snuffed out. “He’s been dead on ever since we landed in his Hyrule. You don’t think it’s a little unsettling how he always knows?”

“Of course not,” Warriors says. “We’re all unsettling about something.”

“We’re really not—”

“Don’t kid yourself, rancher,” grins the captain, swerving to avoid a few rocks that dot the path. “Four and Hyrule are impossibly adept at finding hidden entrances to things. Sky sleep-talks about things days before they happen. Legend somehow figured out how to tame seabirds of all things. Time does that thing with the fairies—”

“He’s cheating. After the last time, I’m pretty sure they can just smell that goofy mask of his,” Twilight says with a smile of his own, and Warriors throws his head back and laughs a booming laugh.

“Don’t be so sure!” he counters. “If that were the case he wouldn’t have had to wear it, now, would he?”

“You make a fine point,” says Twilight. “I’d avoid donning that horrible thing at all costs.”

“Hear hear,” Warriors agrees, and Twilight throws a flat palm over his brow, squinting out at the darkened clouds as they draw closer.

They’re far enough from the threshold to see it—the very shape of the rain as it falls, looking like a wavering sheet fluttering along the hilly plain that sprawls out in front of them. It’s less around them and more of a distant landmark, the same as any other mountain or tree or crumbling ruin peacefully existing within this quiet era. For now, it’s lovely to look at, a ways off where it can’t hurt them.

“Race you.”

Warriors snaps his head to face Twilight, unsure if he’s heard correctly. Race? To where? He can’t possibly mean—

“Keep up!”

And the rancher tears off toward the cloudy horizon, without a second thought. Warriors sputters a little at the sight of it, feeling Twilight’s maybe gone a bit mad, he should probably check him for fever again. But the competitive part of him is far louder than the rational part—out here in the wild with no young impressionables looking to his guidance—and so the captain throws the tail of his cloak over his shoulder and bolts right after him, catching up in no time at all.

He’s content to give Twilight the underhanded head-start. You don’t beat the Hero of Warriors in a foot race.

Pacing alongside his friend, Warriors calls over the howl of the wind against their ears—

“What in Farore’s verdant name are we doing?!”

“Cold darners!” Twilight shouts back, already winded. “They only come around for rain and snow!”

Of course. Of course it would be some godsforsaken nonsense like this. Warriors should have questioned Twilight insisting that he bring a cloak, should have pried for more knowledge on how, exactly, they were going to go about tracking down the insects with little lay of the land. It seemed so simple when he ran the simulations through his head, a couple swipes of their treasure trove of empty bottles and they’d be there and back home in no time at all.

The two of them break across the border where the storm meets the sleeping world, and while the downpour’s not torrential by any means, it does an excellent job of reminding the both of them that it is, in fact, autumn. A shudder runs through Warriors and he fights it by leaning forward and running faster, rain pelting at his cheeks and clinging to his lashes.

“This is certainly a new side of you, rancher!”

“We’re in the champion’s era!” Twilight fires back. “We gotta think like him!”

“Oh, perish the thought,” Warriors says, skidding to a halt and pulling a container from his pack.

Hours pass like that, with the storm showing absolutely no signs of letting up and the two of them growing increasingly more frustrated. Twilight likes to think himself fairly adept at bug-catching, but the insects in Wild’s era are slippery, it absolutely astounds him how the champion is able to pluck them out of the air while he’s barely paying attention. Even with the generous aid of Sky’s ridiculously massive bug net, Warriors has more or less resorted to wildly swinging in every direction in the hopes that it’ll yield results. By the time they’ve enough to head back home, the sun is setting over Hyrule and the temperature has dipped, leaving the both of them drenched and freezing.

Of course, Twilight is handling it better—karmic balance for losing the earlier race, perhaps—looking mostly nonplussed as he huddles close into the fur at his neck. Warriors, on the other hand, traverses back up the path looking like a drowned rat, arms at his sides as he sniffles and shakes.

“You’re soaked through,” Twilight’s fussing. “Here, take my pelt—”

“Don’t be such a hero—”

“You need it more than me!”

“It’s been in the plague den! I’m not that desperate!”

Twilight, at this point, thinks he deserves some kind of award for most consecutive eye-rolls in one day. “Suit yourself.”

Warriors draws his cloak tighter as though it’ll do anything—it’s sopping after hours chasing damselflies through the prairie, the same as everything else on his person. The open fields had turned marshy fast, slick grass and yielding mud that was perfect for making respectable swordsmen look like newborn foals as they struggled to keep ground. Right now it feels like there’s a lake’s worth of water pooling in Warriors’ boots, drenching his socks, rivulets falling from his soggy golden locks.

And Twilight feels bad for him—really, he does—but his stubborn, overly-cautious commitment to avoiding falling ill is starting to sound an awful lot like a convenient excuse to keep his ego up in the clouds where it lives.

The captain relents for one single moment back at the cottage, when Wild pulls a few weapons—enchanted with fire magic—out of the Sheikah Slate, at Sky’s insistence. Still, Warriors pries his gloves off immediately after propping the items against the wall his bedroll faces, throwing the contaminated articles into some untouched corner to be washed or perhaps burnt later.

He strips out of his sodden clothes, pulling on his well-loved silk pyjamas and going to work toweling off his hair. The flameblades, he’s been told, work wonders for heating one up in the absence of a proper fire, and he can feel a slight change in the frigid air, but it hardly does much against the fierce cold seeping in from outside. Pulling a thick blanket up over his shoulders, Warriors curses the shiver that runs like a jolt up his spine, professing to no one but himself that he absolutely hates this season.

It’ll pass, at least, he reminds himself as he’s bundled up, a common refrain in hard and mundane times alike. The rain seeped straight into his bones, out there, it makes sense that he’s still trembling a touch even with all he’s doing to combat it. It’s drafty in here, and an early bedtime is seeming awfully tempting with its warm embrace, so he curls up tighter—away from any windows or doors, folding the ends of his cover inwards to lock in the heat. He ducks into its protection, scooting closer to the flameblades.

It’ll pass, at least.

It does not pass.

Minutes tick away, hours slowly go by—and Warriors doesn’t find himself growing any warmer. He’s under the covers completely now, as close to the enchanted weapons as he can be without burning something, and he can feel the moisture in his breath puffing up against the thick fabric, but still he’s shaking—he’s shaking worse than he was even a minute ago, feeling like he’s sunk to the bottom of a freezing lake, weights tied to his legs, no hope of breaching the surface. He barely has the coordination to draw the blanket closer—let alone the mind to consider if it can even get any more so—and he knows he’s sensitive to the cold, but this is different, this is wrong, this isn’t like anything he—

His breath catches. The first wrenching sneeze happens when the night’s still young, scraping at his throat with little warning as it leaves him. It seems to draw forth everything else sleeping under the surface, a spidering sensation crawling up into the back of his nose and making his face ache as it claws at him. A second sneeze rips through him—this one stifled against his fist, a far cry still from his usual dramatics. Holding it there nearly winds him, and he can’t keep at bay the barely-there cough that trails along after it. Cold dread grips every inch of him, a thousand times more icy than the blustery afternoon.

There, in the darkness of the shed, the only light the glow of the flameblades resting beside him, Warriors pulls the blankets from his face and stares directly at the wall, every thought in his head disappearing and leaving in their wake only one single sentiment.

What.

The.

Fuck?

And he buries his face into his covers and fights back the urge to scream.

This makes no sense. This is some kind of nightmare, there’s no way he’s awake right now. He can’t be sick. Stubborn denial aside, he literally cannot be sick. Logistically. Scientifically. What’s going on?

The captain bolts upright in bed, ignoring with a bullheaded ferocity the way his head swims at the change in altitude, fighting the shiver that tries him the second the covers fall from his shoulders. Incredulous, he raises a palm to his forehead—as if it’ll tell of anything—and makes an attempt to read himself, but another biting shudder interrupts the gesture and his arms fall back to their rest, furiously trying to rub warmth into themselves. He needs to find his notebook, re-study his notes of the past few days, add to them and try to make sense of this, but the second he goes to stand it hits him how weak his knees feel—from a day of running around in the rain or the budding fever, he can’t say.

Stationary, room spinning, Warriors sits and settles his restless head onto bent elbows and spread fingertips, desperate to analyze. He’s had no recent contact with the sick, save for one single solitary moment where he accepted the weapons from Wild. But it couldn’t be that, these things take at least half a day to show up and it’s only been hours. He cooks his own meals, and when Twilight brings him rations he’s careful to cook them with scalded tools in the pot outside, far away from any potential exposure.

Twilight—was Twilight ill? Asymptomatic? It’s not unheard of, he’s seen it before. Or did he catch something else? Did any of the others have tremors this bad?

The thought of it snaps him back into how awful he feels now, and he pulls the blanket back up around himself, pressing his teeth together in a bid to keep them from clacking against themselves. He wants to make his way back to the cabin and ask, anything to make sense of this—but it’s a selfish man’s move, with Sky and Twilight still seemingly unburdened, and Warriors thinks that he’s been selfish enough since they landed in this era.

Nothing to do about this now but keep doing what he’s been doing—keep himself isolated, avoid hurting anyone else.

Isolation is so mind-numbingly hard. There was always someone, before. His sister in the bed adjacent, his soldiers resting on every side of him, his fairy fluttering against his chest. He can’t help but linger on that last thought—Proxi is always such an impressively attuned empath to him and him alone, he wonders if she’s back home right now, inexplicably itchy with similar chills. It doesn’t do anything for the ache in his heart, realizing how much of a difference it would make if she were only here. Warriors knows the others enjoy their solitude, but with no insult meant to them, he can’t stand it.

The lonely quiet has been so ruinous, but he reminds himself through the heartbreak that it’s a small price to pay for the greater good of minimizing infection. The less exposure he has, the less exposure they have, one less vessel for this virus to do its wicked work.

Warriors goes to bed alone, shaking so hard it hurts.

Sky’s outside at the cookpot finishing up his last elixir when he hears someone sneeze.

On paper, it’s an otherwise unremarkable sound. He’s got six sick friends still ailing in the house, and it’s probably the three-hundredth sneeze he’s heard in the last two weeks. Anyone else would probably ignore it and press on with their work, admiring the newborn night as it rolls across the hills of Hateno. Sky, however, isn’t anyone else. His ear twitches, and he stills his ladle where it is.

Who was that?

That doesn’t sound like any of them, is the thing. It’s not Hyrule’s sleepy-sounding rasp, or Wind’s near comedic half-scream. It’s not Time’s scrapey, metallic tenor, not Four’s breathy stifling, definitely not Wild’s loud orchestration. It’s not Legend, sounding like a remlit kit.

And his heart sinks for a moment as he nears the end of that list, but it can’t be Twilight either, because Twilight does that weird thing where it sounds like he’s just coughing, leaving Sky with a bless you hanging at the edge of his tongue, completely unsure if the situation calls for him to say it. He hates that. It’s not that.

That only leaves…

No. How?

But wait, that doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t sound like Warriors, either. He’s a drama queen when he sneezes, all waving hands and fluttering lashes, looking like an absolute damsel while Legend makes comments about him practicing it in the mirror. Sky can’t even envision the idea of the captain attempting to make himself smaller, but… it really does sound like it came from the shed.

His eyes fall back to the simmering chilly elixir he’s babysitting, slowly coming into itself beneath his watch. Biting at his bottom lip, Sky douses the fire and gets to work messily ladling it into every empty bottle they have on hand.

It’s probably nothing, he tells himself as he’s working at it, the anxious pull he knows so well buzzing around his insides. It’s best to check just to make sure, though—Warriors will probably be fine and wave him away, turning back to his solitude, and Sky will feel a little more at ease and be able to refocus his energy on the others.

He hopes.

It’s so dark.

The moon is new that night, a black-on-black void, and the starlight does nothing against the shadowy overcast as it envelops the world. What little light Warriors can see is crimson red against the fires raging across the kingdom, the distant sound of swords clashing a horrible scrape in his ears. He closes his eyes in a desperate attempt to will the noise away, but they’re drawn back open the second he hears the equally terrible coughing below.

Toonie and Mask—Wind and Time—? Link and Link? The world is blurring—but they remain at his folded knees, hacking breaths that sound painful and unproductive, like a never-ending chorus of misery. For every breath Time takes he wheezes out two more, and Wind’s curled on his side clutching at his chest, looking like he’s ready to reach beneath his skin and rip his lungs from within his ribcage.

He reaches down to make contact with them—to soothe them, he doesn’t know how, he just knows he has to touch them so they know they’re still alive—but the image of them drifts and disappears, the red of the universe shifting into rust beneath his feet. Wooden walls—the barracks? His bedroom back home? Where is he? It’s so dusty in here, so devoid of light, he hears his apprentices coughing still, only now he can’t find them and bring them somewhere better.

They live in his mind’s eye, for now—shuddering, sweating, suffering, and they’re so small, they’re just kids, they belong in warm beds being sung lullabies, not burning with fever in the wreckage of war, freezing outside the too-full med tent. They belong in the arms of guardians who know how to love them, not with their fate in the hands of some damned fool of a captain who’s proven himself to be an utter curse on everyone he’s ever known.

Idiot. Such an idiot.

He didn’t think much of the tickle in his throat when it came upon him a few weeks prior, pressed on with his plans even when it became apparent that he was falling ill. So stubborn, always so stubborn, rushing into battle even when the fever set in, insisting to himself it was just an incredibly persistent cold, right up until it had knocked half his men out.

Divine tenacity, the legends had said of the jade-green fire that lived within his immortal soul, but they spoke no words of the reckless pride it bred, some headstrong patient zero who had doomed everything he loved most.

Someone’s knocking at the door, and he turns his head away from it, begging the sound to go away as he shakes and buries his face in his hands. No one deserves the burden of knowing him, they’re so much better off turning back the way they came. They keep knocking, though—shouting, and Warriors buries his face in his hands, pretending—hoping he’ll simply cease to exist.

“Captain?”

A false title for a false hero, he thinks, and he can feel his nails digging hard into his scalp, threatening to pull his hair out from the roots.

Footsteps. Slow at first, then hurried as they grow louder. He feels a presence hovering at his side, asking questions he has no ears for in a voice that’s deep and honey-rich. He hears coughing in the distance, the single point that refuses to fade away as the world hangs like heat waves in the corner of his eye. A hand at his temple, trying to pull his fingers from where they’re piercing his skin.

Warriors goes without a fight, falling into the exhausted cradle of his palms as he hunches forward and bites back the urge to sob.

“My fault—” he chokes out again—mantra-like, repetitive, compulsive. “My fault—”

His company carries on—there’s something cold on his neck, a hand?—it’s resting there, impossibly delicate, tracing the thinnest of patterns into the space where his hair falls across it. Something about it pulls him back to earth, inch by quiet inch.

“What’s your fault?” he makes out, and Warriors curls further in on himself, refusing to leave the veil of his hands.

“My fault they’re sick,” he croaks. “My fault they—they’re going to—”

“Hey,” says his watcher. “Wars, hey. Everyone’s going to be just fine.”

Two voices, pitches intermingled, unsure where one ends and the other begins. The field medic? Warriors shifts a fingertip, tilting his head to the side to peek out at the world, gathering his courage. It’s the dead of night, but the flaming red glow of the battlefield shifting and pulsing around him is so bright in all it represents. He winces, begging it to leave him be.

“Captain,” the voice says again. “Wars. No one’s in danger. They’re safe.”

Safe? Safe…

“You’re safe.”

That doesn’t sound right, but this unthinkable presence speaks with such gentle conviction, Warriors would feel himself wretched to dare doubt it. He breathes in, feeling like he hasn’t in eons.

“Do you think you can look at me?”

He’s still shaking so bad. But he does his best, pulling himself out of his palms and into the lowlit night.

Everlasting bedhead. Eyes like the heavens he was born upon. Strong lips a trembling line, that eternal pinch in his angled brow. Sky was here—how did Sky get here, he was just…

“You with me, buddy?”

Warriors blinks hard, ignoring the sting in his eyes when he does so. His golden lashes flutter and twitch as he slowly comes back into the present day. Sky smiles at the sight of it, looking unbothered as ever.

“Do you wanna talk about—”

Only then Warriors is wrenching himself away from Sky, curling with purpose out of his gaze. He practically flies toward the wall, for a brief moment the feverish thought crosses his mind that he should pocket Legend’s bracelet and merge into the structure entirely. He understands, now, the practical use an absurd tool like that might have.

Instead, he pulls his covers back on, as far away from Sky as he can get with the way the chosen hero loves to hover, desperate to put as much space and protection in between them as possible.

“No, no, no,” Warriors panics, shaking his head with a ferocity that makes it feel like his brain is ricocheting inside his skull. “You need to leave right now, you weren’t supposed to find me, please just get away—”

“Wars, come on—” Sky tries, and Warriors can’t see him, but it’s easy enough in his mind’s eyes to picture the falling look on his face. “Please don’t make this difficult—”

“You are making it difficult—”

“—the sooner you let—bless you—the sooner you let me tend to you the sooner you’ll feel better—”

“—there will be no tending!”

Sky slows himself for a moment, taking the sight in. With every word Warriors seems to get farther and farther away from him, as if being repelled by some kind of magical forcefield. This isn’t like him, not at all, and maybe that can be explained by the warmth Sky felt radiating off his skin when he made contact, but it’s still a little much. Backing off a bit, he tries a less smothering approach—pulling away from Warriors and dropping to a sit a few feet away.

“You’re always lecturing us about being upfront when we’re injured or not feeling our best,” Sky says. “Every time you remind us it’s what’s best for the team, and you know you’re right.”

The captain cringes away, not desiring for a second to meet Sky’s eyes while his own words are used like a weapon against him.

“So why won’t you just admit you’re ill?”

That is not the issue here, Warriors screams internally, but when he’s feeling this dreadful his snark comes long before his articulation can.

“Was it not—” he sneezes. “—obvious?!”

The last word sees him turning to stare Sky dead-on, and it might be a trick of the light, but there’s something in his friend’s expression that Warriors hasn’t seen before. It’s muted, subtle, bubbling beneath the surface like magma that’s yet to breach—the thought seems impossible, but it’s almost as if Sky’s famous patience is running out.

“Of course it’s obvious! You’re shaking like a kikwi that’s just noticed its shadow!” Sky fires back, exhausted. “You’re usually more mature about this—”

“—and you usually exhibit more self-preservation!” Warriors says, the punch of his words softened by the way he’s shivering. “I’m not going to have another of my men cooking alive in his skin just because I got a little lonely!”

Oh.

Oh, that makes more sense, yeah.

All the ‘my fault’ stuff, that all makes more sense, now. Sky feels kind of silly for how drastically he misread the situation, and he makes up for it by dropping his tone back into the softness it normally lives in, inching forward just enough to comfort.

“Captain, hear me out,” he offers, and Warriors meets him almost shyly, eyes drooping in exertion. “I promise to be careful.”

“Careful only does so much,” Warriors counters. “You said so yourself.”

He did, didn’t he? And he meant it, that much is true—he’d paid enough attention in field medicine classes to understand basic sanitation, but a good amount of it was always going to come down to simple luck.

If Sky was one thing, though, it was lucky.

“I’ve made it this far,” he says with a grin tugging the corner of his mouth. “Even if I do get sick I promise I’ll be okay.”

To that Warriors is quiet, seemingly contemplative as he breaks his gaze away from Sky and stares off toward the ground, sinking deep into his blanket. He looks exhausted, and Sky can’t fight the urge he has to reach out for his friend’s hand, peeking out from beneath the covers. The captain doesn’t flinch away this time, shakily twining his fingers with Sky’s own.

“Legend and Four are doing much better, you know. Wild’s getting there, too,” Sky keeps on, infusing his voice with warmth and care. “They’re all recovering. And if I fall ill I will as well.”

Warriors holds tighter, giving Sky’s hand a tiny squeeze that seeks comfort. Sky squeezes back, firm and generous.

“...you said you promise?” The captain’s voice is a whispery rasp, nearly lost against the chorusing of frogs crooning in the pond outside.

And Sky’s heart spills over, filling his veins with gold.

Got him.

“I promise.”

Sky’s gotten rather used to his nocturnal state of being—it was something he inched into often back home, waking up the second the sun set no matter how tired he’d been all day. It was easier to pull all nighters than it was to wake up before noon, and he wonders now if his teenage self would be proud of him, adhered to an actual schedule that left him feeling more alert despite how unorthodox it was.

If only the circumstances of it were less dire. He’d stumbled into it by accident, purely because his friends kept tanking in the middle of the night. He didn’t know what caused it—the cold, the stillness, something unseen he wasn’t scientifically-minded enough to know—but they all seemed to get worse as soon as the sky went dark.

Warriors hasn’t stopped shivering. Not since midday, not since coming back home, not since the freshly-made elixir’s had a chance to kick in, not since forever. It’s been so long it hurts, his muscles are on fire from the constant shaking, screaming at the rest of his body to spare them even a moment. Sleeping is out of the question like this, while his teeth are chattering so hard he feels like they might splinter.

Instead, Sky’s pulled him to sit on one of the stray boxes—propping a pillow on top of it to ensure the utmost comfort. There’s a heated bucket of water at his feet and a hot waterskin to match falling off his head, and he’d look the very picture of ill, if not for the way he’s been feverishly preening his sweat-soaked bedhead while he stares blearily into his favourite hand-mirror.

Warriors dabs at his face with an abused handkerchief, impressive embroidery hidden in its sodden folds. He’s at least slightly more lucid, now, Sky tries to note with an optimism floating in his chest. Aware enough to fuss over his appearance, at least.

“How do I fix this,” the captain says, scowling at his own reflection, studying every shade of red that bruises his eyelids, colours his running nose.

...okay, maybe not that lucid, Sky reassesses as he watches his friend’s fingers slip and falter around buttercup-yellow tresses. He’s not really doing much besides moving his hair around, any attempt at de-tangling or rearranging it dissolving mid-gesture as he struggles through teary sniffs. It’s too much for him to watch, at this point, so instead Sky shuffles over and palms Warriors’ hands away from his face, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear like a breathless apology.

“You don’t, right now,” Sky tells him. “Stop trying so hard, you’re wearing yourself out.”

The captain can only supply a groan to that—in the back of his throat, scraping a gravelly path out—any other day Sky would describe it in his head as theatrical, but tonight he suspects it’s appropriate enough for Warriors’ current state.

“If you take it easy you’ll feel better sooner,” continues Sky.

And Warriors buries his face in his hands again—shoulders slumped, elbows resting on trembling knees—and mumbles his response out, indignant like a child.

“I’ll never feel better if I look as miserable as I feel.”

To that, Sky wants to say something—it’s an absurd statement on the surface, of course—but he finds his thoughts stuttering where they are, intent to pry it apart instead.

Warriors… values his appearance a lot. This isn’t a revolutionary thought, but it feels newer now, as Sky watches him fight through the nastiest fever to regain some semblance of dignity. It doesn’t really make any sense, given what he knows of the captain’s era—every story tells of raging battles for a beautiful kingdom, days lost in the trenches with barely any time to eat and sleep, let alone groom.

But he’s always the first to clean himself after a brawl, hours spent on fluffing himself up every morning, even on the road where they’re sure to get disheveled in battle sooner or later. Sky’s not someone who really neglects his own appearance, but he can’t fathom the point of taking the time and effort to beautify on a journey like theirs.

Whatever the reason, it’s important to Warriors. Something about it must be soothing, and at that thought he softens. A sick friend should never be forced to soothe themself.

“Hey, I just got an idea,” Sky says, a hand gingerly placed upon Warriors’ shoulder, trailing down to rub a circle or two in his aching back. “Hang tight?”

Warriors, falling more and more beyond words as his strength ebbs and wavers, grips a trembling hand at the front of Sky’s tunic like an infant, sore eyes weepy and pitiful as he stares pleadingly at his dutiful knight. It’s a little bit precious—how badly he wanted Sky gone before, up against the way he clings to him now.

“I know, Wars,” Sky says, concern pinching at his gaze. “I’ll be right back.”

Unhooking his sailcloth as he speaks, he’s sure to paint his words with a conviction Warriors can live in long enough to tide him over. The fabric is draped across the captain’s shoulders, a second layer he’s long overdue for, and Sky gives Warriors’ arm a quick little rub that feels more like a prayer than anything.

Maybe it’s all in his head, but Sky swears he can see the shivering subside.

Warriors awakens with an achy groan, completely unaware of when he fell asleep, let alone how he managed it sitting up. The waterskin’s drooped off his head and long since fallen to the floor, and the basin at his feet is tepid at best. His body is stiffer than it’s ever felt in his life, every inch of him on fire from the non-stop shaking, which, by the way, still hasn’t gone away completely, despite how much more clear-headed he’s feeling.

That was probably it. All the energy he has right now is going into trembling like a child, it’s really no wonder it knocked him the hell out.

His forehead is cold. He doesn’t want to open his eyes, but Sky’s voice is a dopple inviting him back into the world, and he remembers missing Sky, not wanting Sky to leave, so he forces himself back into sentient thought and stares at the chosen hero through sleepy, fever-lit eyes. It’s his hand on Warriors’ face—that makes more sense—and he’s got that expression he’s been wearing all day, a sister to the one he wears in battle, determined and enduring.

“Evening, captain,” he offers a smile, as if Warriors wasn’t meant to see the worry. “Hey, do you think you can walk?”

Warriors’ eyes fall shut again while he considers the question. “I can try. Why?”

And then Sky says the most blessed words of all, living proof that Goddess Hylia Herself plucked him from his perch aloft the heavens and sent him to the world below to spread divine fortune upon everyone he meets.

“I ran you a bath.”

Warriors blinks, staring at Sky like he hung the stars above their heads. He might have, soaring through the endless night on birdback like he does. Warriors doesn’t have any other ideas about how the stars got there.

“A warm one,” Sky clarifies, pulling him from the aimless thoughts. “Does that sound good…?”

Does it sound good, Warriors marvels in a half-delirious haze. It sounds euphoric, why didn’t he think of that? Perhaps because his brain is frying in his skull like a cucco egg, perhaps because he barely has the dexterity to stand let alone bathe himself.

The look on the captain’s face tells Sky all he needs to know, and for a few more moments the two of them speak wordlessly, as all nine of them so often did. A messy falter when Warriors tries to stand draws Sky around him, the chosen hero holding him up with an arm slung across his friend’s waist. Warriors tries not to think on how pathetically insensitive it feels to Sky, as he’s ferried out the door by one of his own.

Sky likes helping, Warriors reminds himself. Whether the captain’s man enough to admit it or not, all that’s happening here is beautiful symbiosis.

“You’re really not feeling well, are you?” Sky says, completely rhetorically as he’s guiding the indisposed captain to the bathhouse. “Here, let’s get you fixed up.”

It’s sweet, how he does that—under the pretense of a genuine question, the way he validates without pity. It’s something so distinctly Sky, his own brand of softness—one of many he wears more perfectly than anyone else.

Warriors is dragged more than he’s lead out around back, fighting with all he is against the piercing chill of the night. All his focus is spent on leaning in closer to Sky—warm like the sunlight living beyond the cloudcover. His eyes are barely open, but he can tell they’ve changed setting the second the bathhouse door opens, throwing heat and steam across the captain’s face, a blanket of protection he feels content to melt into until he’s nothing more than slime.

A private bathhouse. The novelty of it is still absurd to him—he was certain the champion was hiding something, even though Wild was hardly the type. There was no way a knight—even a royal guardsman—was able to afford lodgings like that, but here it was in front of him, small but just as luxurious as any other. Warriors had been itching to bury himself within its walls the second they got here, but his attention was pulled in every which way and before he knew it the threat of exposure had gripped too much of the house to allow him much room in the communal spaces.

Looking at it now, he’s almost glad he waited.

Humidity billows off the well-worn tub, enveloping him long before he’s touched its miraculous waters. Sky’s gone all out on this, he realizes with something blossoming in his chest. There’s florals decorating the water, and through his stuffy nose he can smell something strong, akin to mint—but just barely different—and completely tantalizing. Warriors’ body practically moves on its own, a hand out toward the healing waters like they’re something he can caress.

“Do you need me to…”

It's as though the mere sight of things revitalizes the captain entirely, and he stands up straighter with a wave of his hand, the Warriors that Sky knows breaching the fever's surface.

"I'm not such an invalid that I need you to undress me," he says.

Sky blinks, dumbly, then flashes that smile he wears so well—the one that looks a little sad against the natural upswing of his eyebrows.

"Well, you could've fooled me."

The water is scalding—Warriors stifles an undignified squeak as he toes his way in—and he braves the sting of it with wonder pulsing beneath his skin. A private bathhouse. Owned—owned!—by a simple knight. With some magic string of mechanisms that allows it to maintain such an alluring level of heat. It makes no sense, Warriors circles back along the thought as its touch washes over him, every inch like rose-stained magic deep within exhausted tendons.

As soon as he’s shoulder-deep in the water it’s as though all the tension falls from his frame. Warriors heaves a sigh that sounds so relieved Sky can’t help but melt himself in empathy. It’s a beautiful sound, the hurt leaving the body of someone he loves. It might be his favourite sound of all.

In what seems like no time at all, he watches the captain stop shivering entirely. Soaked in the cover of heat, he droops in a half-trance, completely blissed out.

“I know you’re particular about your hair,” Sky says. “Would you mind… if I washed it, for you?”

The sound of Sky’s voice rockets him back down to earth, and he straightens a little in the basin, registering the words. He’d prefer to do it himself, yes—but pulling even a single finger out of the delectable sea of warmth he’s currently living in sounds like a fate worse than death. Sky’s a very delicate person, Warriors considers… if anyone can be trusted with that monumental amount of power, it’s probably him.

“...no, I don’t think I would,” he says sleepily, and he swears he can feel Sky brighten from behind him.

He hears the shuffling of leather against itself—of course Sky planned every second of this, of course the chosen hero grabbed his things—and then Sky’s voice cuts in, a bit unsure, “Which, um… which bar?”

Warriors chuckles, falling into himself. “The green one.”

Sky palms it, running over the thing in his hands. Once upon a time it looks like it was engraved, the intricacies of the design washing off with age and love. And he didn’t know they came in different colours, do they do different things? His eyes fall on the Master Sword, propped against the sandy wall, can you please tell me a comprehensive history of soap since I’ve been gone, his unfiltered mind wanders. He shakes the impulse away and snaps back to it, rolling up his sleeves and focusing on the task at hand.

“Alright,” Sky says, all quiet nerves. “Just... let me know if I do something wrong.”

From beside Warriors, the water ripples a little as Sky wets the soap, a delicate little sound. He can smell the familiar scent of it, he realizes right then, not a moment sooner—the steam and whatever medicinal godsend Sky had concocted in drawing the bath had shaken away most of the agonizing congestion. He sniffs wetly, breaking loose the last of it, and the fresh breath that comes after that is almost biting in how new it feels. It smells divine in here, like he’s surrounded. By warmth, by comfort, by love.

Sky runs the soap across his hair in one long, drawn-out motion, and Warriors bites back a childish noise of contentment, releasing a steady breath through his nose instead.

“You said you were lonely?”

His face burns when Sky says it—is the fever worsening again?—and Warriors thinks yes, he sure did say quite a few things in his less-than-present state. On quiet nights with prying eyes away, everything The Hero of the Skies says takes the shape of a beckoning olive branch, and the captain would have to be an absolute monster to not regard it with equal adoration.

“...I did, didn’t I?”

He pauses, and Sky’s nails touch his scalp, a sensation that has him naturally tilting his head back, like a stray cat receiving a head-scratch or ten.

“I didn’t realize how much I preferred a crowd, until… well, now I guess.”

Suds rest above his ears like tiny rainclouds, and Sky palms them down flat, smoothed out over golden hair. “Here I thought you just wanted an excuse to get away from us.”

Warriors brightens, and laughs—a hoarse little thing, barely there. “Hardly. Back home I was always surrounded, you know. My soldiers, or my friends, or my fairies…”

And Sky laughs back, an endearing rumble. “Am I the only one of us who hasn’t been kidnapped by the fae?”

“What, Fi’s not a fairy?” Warriors grins his lopsided grin, eyes relaxed shut.

“No!” Sky chuckles again. “I mean, I don’t think so? Fi, blink twice if you’re a fairy.”

He angles the words toward the sleeping blade with a swivel of his head, dirty-blond locks bouncing. She gives him the silent treatment—not even a hum!—and Sky translates it easily in the absence of her voice, it is not within my parameters as your friend to dignify that with a response, Master Link.

“...I’m gonna say no,” Sky says, amused.

He pulls his hands from Warriors’ head to cup at the swirling waters, gentle and unobtrusive as ever while he’s rinsing soap out of his sick friend’s hair. He loves that Warriors loves Fi, he loves that he knows her at all. With every fiber of his being, Sky hopes and prays that her memory will never vanish from history. He wants everyone who ever learns of the blade to know of the crooning voice within it, swears he’ll find a way to put words to her presence so he can tell his kin and their kin and their kin’s kin until his dying breath.

“You really are the first of us, aren’t you?”

Warriors' question catches him off guard a little, oddly on topic with the thoughts running through his head. Before he can think, he’s already muttered out a small noise of confusion, and the captain continues.

“The fairy thing,” he clarifies, and that doesn’t really tell Sky much of anything, so he tilts his head and asks, “What do you mean?”

“It’s old legend,” says Warriors. “That fairies tend to favour the spirit of Hylia’s chosen.”

“It... is?” Sky blinks, not having heard that one for obvious reasons.

Warriors makes a soft hum of affirmation, carrying on while Sky cards his fingers through the captain’s hair.

“They say one of our earliest was brought up within their realm,” Warriors explains. “Each young soul who resided there was given a guardian fairy to keep them safe, but he remained without. The rest of the faefolk cast him away—christened him The Boy Without a Fairy.”

“That, uh,” Sky says. “Doesn’t sound like favouring to me.”

“Not at all,” Warriors says. “But, as if to balm the wound of it upon our soul, many a fairy thereafter seemed drawn to Hyrule’s great heroes. It’s the reason they’re so quick to heal us when we’re on our last legs, and the reason we so often end up partners with their ilk. Or so the legends say.”

Warriors is a lovely storyteller, Sky thinks with a flowering in his heart. He knew that already, but he can’t help but admire the sound of it at a time like this—he no doubt still feels awful, but the impulse to spin a tale shines through despite everything.

It’s a good one, too, and it makes sense with what he knows of the others. That pulls another question to the forefront of his mind, though, and he tries to keep the devious tones away from his voice while he considers it aloud—

“So who do you think it is?”

“Mm?” Warriors says.

“The Boy Without a Fairy,” Sky clarifies. “It’s one of us, right?”

“Oh, pardon me for burying the lede,” Warriors says, a flourish of his head pulling his eyes back toward Sky. “I know who it is.”

And Sky holds his half-gaze for a moment, before the words register and the chosen hero can’t help splashing the gremlin with the shit-faced grin in front of him.

“Captain!”

“A story for another day!” Warriors says, hunching his shoulders up as he flinches away. “And not mine to tell, either!”

“It’s the traveler, right?” Sky prods, shaking off his hands. “It’s gotta be him—”

“Oh, I’m so dreadfully ill,” Warriors embellishes, falling backward with a delicate grace and throwing a hand across his brow. “My brain is turning molten with this fever’s deadly kiss, suddenly I can’t remember anything—”

“You’re the worst,” says Sky, pulling to the side to grab at the towels. “Ok, but wait, you said fairies. Was it not just the one?”

The captain drops the theatrics, pulling his arm down back into the still-warm waters. “Proxi’s a cut above the rest, naturally—”

Sky knows that voice. That’s the traveling companion voice. He regards it with a fondness, noting the lack of bitterness in the sweet of Warriors’ tone.

“—but I had a veritable army of the spritely variety at my side. They stood strong beside me in battle, of course,” Warriors says. “But I much more enjoyed the time we spent relaxing.”

“You are soft under all that pomp and grandeur,” Sky notes, gingerly patting and squeezing water from the captain’s hair as they talk.

“I’m a man who enjoys life’s pleasures, dear heaven-sent,” Warriors says. “And communal living is one of them.”

Sky lets the towel fall flat across Warriors’ head, a playful action meant to soften the words that come after. “So… you’re ready to go back inside?”

A silence follows. Warriors sighs, a heavy breath as he sinks a little into the fragrant waters surrounding him. An unsure hum from beneath the veil of the cloth draped across his temple.

“Twilight will be fine,” Sky assures. “He’s hardy.”

“It’s not that,” Warriors says, sounding far-away. “I…”

The captain doesn’t know how to say it, really. How do you put words to feelings like these? Forget the way his throat closes up at the mere thought, the way he shakes and sweats trying to articulate it while the memories hang over him. It’s its own kind of sickness, one that lives in his brain—he rarely knows how to speak of it, let alone if it’s normal or just another example of his failure.

“I—I need a night or two to prepare myself,” Warriors settles on. “Wartime sickness has left me… i-it’s hard to see my men li—like—”

He doesn’t realize he’s treading back into hyperventilating territory until his breath catches on the way in and he coughs, diving into the cover of his fist and struggling to regain his metaphorical footing. With Warriors’ back resting under the water, Sky elects instead to thumb circles into the crook of his shoulder, fussing quiet little sentences into his ear.

“Say no more,” the chosen hero says after Warriors' breathing settles. “I get it.”

The captain is silent to that, unsure of what to say—does he? He certainly hopes not. No one should have to understand pain like this, the kind of darkness that lives in one’s peripheral even when the sun’s long since come up.

“It puts you in a different place, yeah?” Sky keeps on, sounding a little melancholy. “I’m sure we all have things like that. Remember when Legend called me that harmless pet name and I was basically catatonic for like, half a day?”

Warriors did recall that. It had nearly cost Sky his life, so slow-to-react in battle he could have been cleaved in two pieces, if not for Four’s quick footwork. It was ages before Sky had the guts to admit what had set him off, some condescending alteration the vet had conjured up to point out the chosen hero’s tendency to remain soft and young-at-heart, sky child.

Sky had spent the next week flinching anytime anyone used his usual nickname, clearly terrified they wouldn’t stop where they were meant to. No one had asked, no one had forced him to explain, everyone just accepted that something about the phrasing was a hard no.

Unanimously, they understood. Perhaps it isn’t so strange, Warriors realizes all at once.

“You’re right,” he says, finally. “I hate that all of us understand those feelings… but I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank you for the reminder.”

“Of course,” Sky tells him, tracing his fingertips across the water’s surface as he waves off the praise. “Water’s getting cold. Let’s get you bundled and back to your luxurious private lodgings.”

Warriors stifles a laugh as he’s handed the towel, and no test of courage feels like it stacks up to the one he faces as he tries to gather up the strength to step away from the lukewarm basin.

The second he’s back in his sleep-clothes Sky throws his sailcloth over Warriors’ shoulders once more, pressed into his friend’s side again as they walk back to the shed. To Sky’s delight, the captain only shivers a little on his way back to bed, and almost as soon as his head hits the pillow he’s out like a light, snoring quietly.

Sky regards him, aimlessly trailing a hand through the captain’s hair as he kneels at his bedside. It’s no wonder he got so sick out here—it’s dirty and drafty and dark and lonely, his heart aches to think about all the nights alone Warriors has spent within these walls. Fi told him once—when he’d fallen ill on his own journey across the surface—that worrying too much can literally make you sick, he kicks himself for not checking on Warriors more, even just talking to him through the door to keep him company.

How brave he is, staying out here the way he has, despite how much it must hurt to do so. Sky hopes he knows, thinks it like a prayer in the hopes that Warriors will dream himself into internalizing the words that go unspoken.

He must be so exhausted. With a pang tugging at his chest, Sky tucks the covers in around the captain, moving the flameblades as close as he safely can to his friend. He wishes he could build a proper fire in here, but this’ll have to do for now. With one final sweeping motion of his fingertips across Warriors’ forehead, he nods to himself and stands to take his leave.

Wild and him are sharing the slate, still, and Sky’s palms it from the hook its hanging on by the shed door, swiping through the menus with a now-practiced ease. There’s another idea brewing in his head, and it’s impossibly far-fetched, but Sky’s nothing if not one hell of an improviser, even in the lowest of stakes.

Quietly, quickly, making sure to shut the door behind him with only the gentlest of motions, he inches his way back into the house.

It’s late into the night, and most of them are out cold—save for Time, who’s stubbornly half-awake and huddled by the fire. Rest hasn’t been coming easily to him at all, and Sky’s insides twist with concern to see him on another sleepless night. He drops to a sit beside their leader, fussing with the blanket that's slipping off his shoulder.

Time’s eye slips back open, and he turns to face Sky with a small, croaky noise—some sickly little trill, akin to a remlit waking from a nap. As soon as he registers the chosen hero there he softens, leaning onto Sky’s shoulder and curling closer into himself.

“How’re you holding up?” Sky asks.

“I’m alive,” Time says. It’s all he can say. He stifles a crackly cough behind his teeth, and Sky leans his cheek on the old man’s head in a gesture of comfort.

“We've lost the captain, haven’t we?”

Sky’s not entirely shocked at how quick he figured it out. He supposes the clues were there, what with him disappearing for so long so suddenly. “Yeah. Though I still don’t know how.”

“The cruel irony of fate, I’m sure,” Time says, half-joking. “How is he doing?”

“Well, he seems alright for now, better than he was when I found him, at least,” says Sky. “But he doesn’t want to re-group just yet, so I’m letting him spend another night out there.”

Time thinks on that, silent for a moment.

“I’m sure it’s much appreciated,” a sly-eyed grin. “The vet’s going to have a field day with him.”

“Without a doubt,” Sky smiles back for a moment, before his expression morphs into something a little softer, more unsure. “Hey, um, I have kind of a weird favour to ask.”

“Try me.”

He bites at the inside of his cheek, unsure how to begin. It’s not as though the nine of them hadn’t shared their various tools and artifacts before, but it still felt like such an intimate gesture to pocket another man’s treasure, regardless of the cause. Time especially has such an air of mystery and buried heaviness sleeping beneath his skin, Sky can’t tell in the moment if he’s about to ask for a bite of his friend’s food or the keys to his kingdom’s castle.

“Uh… do you remember a while back, when we were all in rough shape after a fight, and had run out of potions—” Sky starts.

“—and you… used that magic mask?”

It’s nearly sunrise when Sky returns, opening the shed door placidly and without making a sound.

Warriors is sleeping fitfully when he enters, his face twisted up and his breathing sounding strenuous and rough. Sky doesn’t have to check to know his fever’s come back with a vengeance, but he does anyway out of sheer respect to the routine, unconsciously clicking his tongue when he finds the captain hot to the touch.

He’s shivering again, though not as bad as he was before, and Sky gazes down past the mesh of the mask’s vibrant eyes, staring at the Sheikah Slate in his hands. Taking a deep breath, he taps a couple frantic taps at its smooth facing, watching in wonder as the room begins to light itself in rosy pink.

A dozen fairies—maybe more, he lost count—float around the room, curiosity hanging on every errant flutter of their crystalline wings. One cozies up to the polished wood of Time’s mask, and Sky can’t help but feel a touch embarrassed with them so close to his face. He’s seen the others chat with fairies, but he doesn’t know how—what are the social rules, here? What manner of speech should he use? Reverence is what comes naturally to the mystique of the little sprites, but they’re so playfully affectionate, checking him and re-checking him for wounds to heal.

“Oh, thank you, but I was actually wondering if maybe you could help my friend?” Sky whispers to the fairy closest, hoping maybe the others will hear too. They begin to warble in intrigue, another language entirely, but one Sky inexplicably understands.

“He’s not injured,” Sky clarifies. “He’s ill, but that’s not something you guys can fix, right?”

A couple of them chirp an affirmative, and he nods along with them—a fun little factoid he knows about healing magic only because he was stupid enough to try it himself without the foresight to ask his sword about it.

“He just needs company,” Sky tells them. “Would you guys mind terribly?”

Really, he probably didn’t have to ask. As soon as Sky had said it was Warriors who needed help, a handful of them started crowding around the captain, hovering in circles like little pink storm clouds. The rest soon follow suit, and legends echo in Sky’s ever-seeking mind as he marvels at how excited they look simply to be here with the two of them. It’s no wonder the history books claim the hero’s affinity, looking at the magnificent sight.

As more of them start to flutter around Warriors, Sky watches him stir from his unpleasant dreams, weakly cracking an eye open to observe the world he’s missed. Cloudy eyes dart around the room, pupils wide-blown in loving awe as the sprites cling to him like a cover of starstuff, a thousand times more magical. Their light is warm—Sky knows this, of course—but he’s reminded of it as he watches the captain’s tremors halt and disappear entirely, a look painted on his face that tells of a special sort of calm. Like he can't believe what he's seeing, like he's seeing them for the very first time. 

Warriors’ eyes lock on Sky, then, squinting in the darkness. The gentle confusion in his fever-bright eyes turns a different shade, his expression twisting as he attempts to register the scene in front of him. It’s only then that Sky remembers he’s still wearing the mask.

A long silence follows—Sky sitting there in an enchanted children’s play mask, debating whether or not he should untie it and explain. Warriors, face scrunched up, utterly disoriented in the wake of this scene, trying to parse exactly how bad his fever is, right now.

When he speaks, his voice is scratchy and small, hardly the booming thing Sky’s used to.

“Am I in heaven or hell?”

And the chosen hero can’t help it—he nearly doubles over laughing, messily unhooking the ribbons that tangle with the backside of his shaggy locks, shuddering with giggles the entire time he does it. Warriors keeps squinting, clearly not having made any progress on his mission to comprehend the current universe existing around him.

Sky wipes a tear from his eye, holding the mask ever-so-delicately in his free hand.

“You’re delirious,” he says through the fit.

“Go back to sleep, Wars.”

Chapter Text

To Twilight’s delight, he enters the room to little fanfare. Legend’s taken to bed already, and the rancher is grateful for this fact as hypothetical comments echo in his head—wet dog smell this, did you fucking drown out there that. The silence is more than welcome, given how little patience he finds himself with tonight.

Warriors is a lovely distraction as well—Sky leaps on the shivering captain like a cat upon a mouse, and Warriors cringes away all the same, pulling his soaking scarf up over his face in a bid to ward off potential infection. It’s really quite impressive to watch Sky work—by some miracle he convinces Warriors in no more than five minutes to accept a few of the enchanted weapons from Wild’s slate. Twilight can’t tell if it’s the chosen hero’s special brand of magic or the captain’s complete desperation to leave the threshold immediately.

Regardless, almost no eyes are on Twilight in the resulting commotion, and he thanks his lucky stars for it as he hands the darners off to Sky and makes his way up the stairs, holding back the urge to fall into bed. Sky thanks him—bright as ever—and leaves to make use of them, and Twilight breathes a sigh of relief and fights his way out of his wet clothes. The second he’s changed, his head hits the pillow, and immediately the relief washes over him like spring waters, chasing some of the pain away.

The captain is going to kill him.

He’d meant what he said—really, he had. He felt fine that morning, and the budding headache that came later in the afternoon hardly seemed like anything of note. He got them all the time, and they told of absolutely nothing, and so he said nothing, and carried on.

Lightly as he can muster, Twilight clears his throat, wincing a little at the twinge of pain that comes alongside it. He swears he can feel it pulsing alongside the ache in his skull, an agonizing sort of metronome. His head feels like it’s in a vice, and his muscles are starting to go sore, and—he clears his throat again, a little rougher this time—that, ugh.

The captain is going to fucking kill him. The captain is going to gut him alive when he finds out Twilight’s sick.

Thoughts stuttering, Twilight slows his racing mind, correcting his course.

If he finds out.

He rolls over in bed, and gods his throat really is starting to tickle in a way that’s becoming harder and harder to ignore. He keeps the growing impulse to cough behind his teeth, shutting his eyes tight like it’ll do anything to help. So far, no one’s noticed anything off about him, even Warriors in all his dedication to spotting it, so maybe Twilight has a chance of flying under the radar. The loft belongs to him, at this point—the sick stay below, and so does Sky.

Ugh. Sky, though. Sky’s definitely going to whip himself up into an anxious frenzy if Twilight cracks, and the chosen hero has enough on his plate right now. Warriors was right to call it a miracle that Sky wasn’t ill himself, if not from exposure, then from worrying himself sick.

It's a little later in the night when the sound of a whimper on his sharp ears pulls Twilight’s eyes open, and without even looking he can tell it’s Wild. The champion just can’t seem to shake this thing—Twilight knows, listening from the upper levels with a twist in his heart while he sits there feeling powerless. Every time his cub seems to be bouncing back he dips again, his fever spiking and knocking him right back out, like he’s drowning and can’t find it in his aching muscles to break free of the waves as they ferociously lap.

It’s been agony to sit up there and just listen, and so Twilight’s done his best to live vicariously in every tender touch Sky’s placed upon their friends. He trusts Sky, of course—with his life—but sitting around when he could be helping feels like angry buzzing beneath his skin, he’s never been good at it, he’d hazard a guess that none of them truly are.

On that thought he realizes nothing’s really stopping him now. He’s definitely ill himself, and the only true risk is blowing his cover about it. This far into things, it probably doesn’t matter, and Twilight has a sneaking suspicion that Sky’s too exhausted to put up much of a fight if he sees it.

His chest aches a bit, meditating on that once more. Sky’s always been a sleepyhead, but it’s taken on a different flavour as of late. The charming, dreamy aura that always seems to hang around him like tiny clouds has turned into something rawer, more grit-teeth and dug-in heels. It’s like he hasn’t slept in weeks, and Twilight knows that’s not the case, but still—it’s clear how much energy this whole situation is taking from him, and between that and the sounds of his friends tossing and turning on the bottom floor, the rancher is finding it increasingly more difficult to stand still and watch.

He can’t sleep, he decides. If his body is tired, his heart has refused to get the memo. Typical, is all he can think of this, holding back a sigh while he pulls himself out of bed and makes his way down to Wild.

The champion’s warm beneath Twilight’s touch, his face knit tight in that way that tells of nightmares behind his eyes. Twilight wishes he didn’t know that look so intimately, it’s not fair that it's a reoccurring look to begin with. Wild curls in on himself and coughs dryly, and Twilight brushes mussed-up hair from his cub’s forehead with a pang in his chest.

To his surprise, Wild stirs, weakly turning to face the rancher. He blinks a couple times, like he’s trying to lock-on, bring himself back to reality. When Twilight doesn’t waver and blur away, Wild squints, a little lost.

“...Twi?”

His voice is rough, but better than it’s been, and Twilight counts his blessings there. “It’s me, Cub.”

“...you okay?”

The question twists at him, but he’d expect nothing less from the champion, heroic and devoted as he is.

“I’m okay,” he says, and it’s not a lie—he’s coming down sick, sure, but he’s not not okay. “You were having a nightmare.”

Was he? He doesn’t remember. And Wild doesn’t say that out loud, but Twilight reads it in his features, a wordless language the two of them have poured hours into teaching one another. Wild hums a little in acknowledgement, an imprint of his usual lilt, and then Twilight’s undoing his waterskin and pressing it close to the champion’s parched lips.

“Here. Drink, Cub.”

Not feeling up to arguing, Wild closes his eyes and nods, pulling his own shaking hands around the receptacle and resisting the urge to wolf every sip of it down. Up against the fever, the tepid liquid is blissfully cool, and Wild breathes the relief of it through his nose, body losing form. He empties the waterskin entirely and all but falls back into his bedroll, and Twilight gives his face another cursory brush, reading his temperature.

It could be a lot worse, which is a refrain Twilight finds himself repeating far more often since meeting his brothers. His knees are beginning to ache from staying crouched for so long—his endurance running thin already—and so he stands and clumsily makes his way over to the sink, doing his best not to step on all his sick friends while they rest.

He winces a little once he’s there, the building thrum in his muscles demanding he acknowledge it. His head is starting to go a little foggy, and his more instinct-driven mind wants to turn to the sensation with fangs bared, snapping and barking at it to back off. I don’t know who you think you are, Twilight thinks loudly to the virus as it tries him, but I’ve shed the blood of monsters far tougher than you.

The threat lives at the forefront of his mind while he gets to work soothing more nightmares, checking temperatures, changing out washcloths. Sky’s taking his sweet time out by the cookpot, and he undoubtedly has his reasons—but Twilight is here right now, with two hands and a heart that refuses to stop loving at the ferocity that it does, and so he pushes past the pounding in his head and the fire in his bones and the rawness in his throat and gets to work doing exactly what he does best.

And that’s what he keeps doing, until the exhaustion seeps back into his core and his bed seems awfully tempting. It’s late into the night, though, and Sky still isn’t back, and while Twilight’s certain he’s probably just fallen asleep against the tree outside, he’s not doing a great job fighting against his nerves.

Sleep is probably a good idea, but it’s also a horrible idea, because Twilight feels pretty awful right now, which means he’s going to feel miserable when he wakes up, and he’d slip himself an elixir except Sky’s presumably got all of them, so—

Wait, his thoughts halt, remembering—and he trudges his way back up the stairs with purpose, keeping his footsteps as light as he’s able so as not to wake his team.

Right, right, how did he forget? They’d been off the road for so long, there was plenty of stock still dwelling in his inventory—the second all this had gone down, Wild took it upon himself to make use of the swath of resources both in the slate and in his Hyrule. It left the rest of them with an excess of supplies, and somehow it had slipped Twilight’s mind that he still had a generous amount of red potion on him.

He wiggles the cork out of the bottle more than he yanks it, desperate to make as little noise as possible. The sight would be downright suspicious, and while everyone’s asleep, he doesn’t intend to take his chances with this, slow and methodical. Twilight pulls it to his mouth and drinks—breathing steady as he does so, mindful of the catch in his lungs—and the relief is almost instant despite the oversaturated taste.

The rancher has enough alchemical knowledge in his head to know healing potions aren’t a cure for illness—they’re barely a solution, but they work enough to assuage the worst of the pain and keep his symptoms on the down-low. And he’s got enough of them to tide him over, for the time being—he just has to make sure he steals swigs out of sight, away from prying eyes.

It isn’t until he feels the ache in his throat subside that he realizes just how much it had been bothering him—he swallows to test it, and tries not to breathe a sigh of relief at how easy it is, for now. This works—he can do this, he tells himself. He just has to hold out until the illness passes, not make too much noise, and help out as much as he can.

This works, he repeats in his head, and for a while, it does.

When Twilight wakes the next morning, it’s to a splitting headache that feels worse than any he’s ever had in his life. There’s something about crisp autumn mornings that just seems brighter, and he can’t find it in his disoriented psyche to appreciate it like he normally would. Compared to the warmer months, this light is cold and searing, and right now it’s driving into his head like a rusty halberd, inch by horrid inch. It’s accompanied by all the rest, of course. His nose itches terribly—why couldn’t we skip that symptom, he thinks in a huff—and the prickling in his throat is rioting for attention, now, and even turning his neck to face the wall is an action on par with trudging up Death Mountain in his iron boots. He manages, curling away from the voices of his friends as they talk—is everyone up already?—and rubs at his face, trying to press the aches out of the places they hurt most.

Potion, he thinks. People… somewhere else. Private. Bath? Yeah.

Sweet Ordona, his head hurts. He hands his human brain over to his beast brain, running purely on instinct and brute force as he shuffles awake and down the stairs.

Twilight steals a glance—a couple of them are still napping, and those who aren’t look a way, like they’ve something on their mind when they see him stumble down with his pack in hand. It doesn’t last long, though, and he’s grateful for it as he bids them good morning and tries to keep the pitch of his voice where it belongs. He just woke up, it’s natural for him to sound a little raspy and slow, it’s normal. That’s what he’ll tell them if they say anything—but no one does, his team offer him sleepy hellos and return to their various states of convalescence, and Twilight shuts the bathhouse door behind him and chugs his next potion like his life depends on it.

When Warriors joins them sometime around noon—too feverish to stand and sneezing more than he is breathing—it becomes immediately evident to Twilight that it does.

The effects are dull, this time around—they bring the discomfort living in every inch of him down from rolling thunder to buzzy static. The fog in his head clears well enough, no one takes note of how he’s a little slow to respond, blinking himself back into his body. He doesn’t sound half as bad as he feels, and for the most part the day passes like any other—he’s paid no mind as he exists on the upper levels, his nose pressed into a book about animal husbandry.

By sunset, his armour’s tarnishing and falling, and it sends a wave of cold dread across every nerve he has. He’s read this sentence what feels like twenty times and it refuses to cement itself as cohesive in his head—he feels like he’s underwater, a pinch at his eyes as he squints through his headache and fruitlessly tries to comprehend what’s in front of him. The itch has crawled deep into his sinuses and it won’t let him focus on anything, blossoming and subsiding with no rhythm to its dance and leaving him desperate to sniff back the hazardous skip in his breath. He keeps the wavering inhales muffled against his curled fingers, index pressed against his septum like he’s wrestling the urge to sneeze away.

It’s during one of these moments that it happens—he feels it coming on and blinks his watery eyes shut tight, willing himself in control with his tongue pressed hard against his teeth. And it gets the job done for what he wants it to do—he definitely doesn’t sneeze, which is good.

Except it’s not perfectly soundless—no, the air catches in his throat on the way back out, and he doesn’t have the mind nor the stamina to stop it from what it’s intent to do. He coughs instead—barely there, barely audible, stifled as masterfully as one can stifle it against his cupped palm. It’s hardly noise at all, the way Twilight keeps it buried, and this is what he tells the nervous flush on his face, determined to keep the world around him ignorant.

And down on the lower levels, Sky goes still.

Fuck.

How are his ears that sharp? Twilight’s got reasons for his own heightened senses, what the hell is Sky’s deal?

Twilight can feel the panic rising in his chest, a freezing cold geyser that begs him to shiver, but he chokes back the impulse and doubles down hard. Maybe he’s a coward, but he can’t bear to look at Sky right now, he presses his face further into his book and pretends as though nothing happened—and Sky says nothing to Twilight as the night rolls in, but Twilight can feel the chosen hero’s eyes on his back, at his side, burning molten blue holes into his silhouette. Tipped-off, honed, observing.

If Twilight is canine, then Sky is feline—he’s always thought this, but he feels it now more than ever. Narrow-eyed, precise, quiet as he pries apart the tall grass with his claws and watches. Sky lies in wait, haunches raised, waiting for his moment, and Twilight knows it’s only a matter of time before this wildcat pounces.

The wolf and the lion, what a concept.

And in a showdown, he thinks, it’s anyone’s match.

Twilight sleeps in two mornings in a row.

The first time Sky sees it, he’s inclined to smile—and so he does, sunny blue eyes angled up. Usually, Sky goes to sleep with the dawn, and Twilight’s rising is what tells him it’s bed time. They greet one another like ships in the night, like knights on patrol with routes rubbing elbows, and it’s something Sky looks forward to, bidding good morning and good night. Twilight works so hard, Sky’s happy to see him sleeping in for once—sleeping in is a lovely thing, and most days Sky wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The second morning he can’t help but worry, a little. His warm smile falls into a nervous frown after a moment’s thought—once was out of character, but twice makes him wonder if something’s going on.

He hadn’t noticed anything off about Twilight, but he also hadn’t been given much space to pull himself away from the time-consuming task of caring for seven people. And Twilight’s the responsible sort—he’d probably own up to it if he was feeling ill, so maybe it’s nothing, maybe he is just exhausted himself. If Sky knows Twilight, he’s up there wringing his hands over the fact that he can’t help more, probably using all his energy up worrying over his friends while they’re hurting. A twinge of sympathy settles in Sky’s heart—after all, he’d be doing the exact same.

The chosen hero fidgets, Master Sword in his lap, thumb sliding compulsively across the golden crystal embedded in its crossguard. He traces the precise geometry of its shape, still immaculate after millennia away from his touch, and lets the feeling of it soothe him enough to lay down and drift. He’ll ask Twilight tomorrow—later today, rather—as soon as Sky can catch him, and the best way to make later happen quicker is to sleep it through, Sky knows from experience.

And it does—it’s much, much later when he wakes—naturally, which is always a delight. Sky’s so used to being jostled, and prodded, and pecked, it’s always a little unsettling when he’s allowed to rise on his own. He stays on the floor for a moment, warm in his bedroll and not feeling much like leaving. The room’s quiet—he’d expected the addition of Warriors to make it louder, but in fact it’s done the exact opposite. Wind has been painfully silent by his side ever since he wandered in, and all the captain’s attempts to lighten the young one’s mood have fizzled out in the wake of his unsteady heart. Legend isn’t even trying to antagonize Warriors, and Wind isn’t even pulling the energy to feel condescended to by this, and all of it is a testament to how rough everyone’s still feeling.

Sky rolls over and pulls himself up in one awkward motion, blinking the burn of sleep from his eyes. He shuffles his way over to the captain, who’s shaking and coughing as he lay half-conscious in his bedroll. Wind remains cross-legged beside him, dabbing sweat off Warriors’ face with a lukewarm washcloth in need of a change. Sky can’t help the way his hands move on their own—when can he ever?—he reaches out and places his hand gingerly upon the sailor’s messy hair. Wind stares up at him through shaggy bangs, flattened over his eyes by Sky’s palm.

“Morning, Sky,” Wind says, looking about as watery as his era does—if he’s weepy from stress or sickness, no one can really say.

“Evening, sailor,” Sky offers him a smile, intent to calm. “How’s he doing?”

Wind curls his knees to his chest, a protective gesture Sky’s grown used to. “His fever’s down, but it doesn’t seem like he’s feeling any better.”

Sky nods, assessing the captain for himself. He’s about as sporadic as their champion is, dipping and weaving like his body can’t decide if it wants to fight or not. Wind’s correct, Sky can tell as he presses the back of his hand to Warriors’ skin—he’s only a little warm right now despite the way he’s shivering and wheezing.

“Thanks for taking such good care of him while I was asleep,” Sky tells Wind, and he watches the boy brighten a little. “Sometimes things sound a lot worse as they get better.”

“That’s good, but…” his sentence trails off, moving his gaze back down to his friend. Sky knows where the words were going, though—he’s felt their sentiment every day they’ve been laid up here, and so many times before. Powerlessness, the tinge of despair, the need to soothe, the way it feels to most like falling through the air and scrambling to find footing.

Sky is very good at falling through the air.

“Why don’t you stay here and keep him company,” Sky says. “And I’ll go out to the cookpot and whip something up for dinner.”

Warriors had stirred soundlessly in the middle of his sentence, and Sky might not have noticed, if not for the way the captain reached a shaking arm out of his blanket, deliriously pawing for Sky’s folded knee. He places it there—to grab attention without stressing out his throat—and Sky pulls his head down and around to face him, sleepy eyes curious. “What’s up, Wars?”

“Soup,” he pleads, and Sky keeps a laugh behind his teeth, desperate to remain polite.

“I can make exactly one kind of soup,” he informs.

Warriors tightens his grip, gaze burning. “Sweet ambrosia of the heavens... the likes of which I have not tasted since the War of Eras. Please tell me it’s your people’s recipe. Please tell me you know it.”

Legend finally feels the mood light enough to try it, peeking over the enchanted rod he’s polishing with a single eyebrow raised. “Thought you said he was getting better.”

“Uncultured,” is all Warriors can rasp out, arms going limp again as he pulls back and coughs into his elbow. Wind smiles—a bittersweet thing—and pulls the covers back up over him.

“Alright,” Sky says, angling his words toward the room itself now. “I’m overdue for cooking duty, anyways.”

Wild’s napping, so Sky takes the slate without another word, aimlessly tapping through menus to make sure he’s got everything he needs. Satisfied, he gives the room one last once-over to make sure everyone’s holding up okay, nods and takes his leave.

It isn’t until he’s outside and he hears sounds from the bathhouse that he remembers—Twilight.

Right, eyes open, ears pricked—he needs to keep an eye on Twilight. There’s a multitude of ambient noise resonating from behind the cottage—water running, shuffling around, and Sky’s ears aren’t honed enough to tell who it is this time, but he swears he hears coughing, at a register he doesn’t entirely recognize. He bothers his bottom lip, hands working on their own as he starts dicing pumpkin to toss into the simmering stock.

It... might be his mind playing tricks on him. Generalized anxiety, post-traumatic stress, disordered thought, those were the words Fi had used, on a sleepless night where he’d curled up beneath a starless sky, head in hands, whispering what is wrong with me. It was hard to tell where the divine-willed prophetic visions ended and the worry-born hallucinations began, they were barely a shade off from one another in his buzzing head, and neither of them let up entirely when his original journey was over and done.

He knows, this late in life, that his nerves tend to fray when there’s often little wrong. He knows, and he’s good at remedying it, most days—doing something with his hands, humming his favourite song, drawing closer to someone he holds dear. Distractions keep him occupied long enough that the pressure scratching beneath his skin eases, by the time he’s remembered those anxieties, they’ve all but disappeared.

Yes, Sky’s prone to hearing things in his worry, and yes, it might be absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things… but he swears he heard it the other night, too—an incredibly light sound, barely audible above the cacophony of chatter—the smallest of coughs, sounding an awful lot like their ranch hand.

It’s the same sound he swears he can hear now, above the bubble of the orange swirl at his fingertips, the crackle of the fire and the rhythm of the bugs as they purr in the thicket. Again, he has the thought that brought him to Warriors the other night—that sounds a little too different for comfort.

Move. Hands. Soup. Sky talks himself out of overthinking, reminding himself that he’s already formulated a plan for this worry and doesn’t need to keep dwelling on it. Right now he needs to make the best pumpkin soup of his life, because he’s only just remembered the captain’s been to Skyloft and is going to have impossibly high standards the likes of which Sky is stubbornly determined to stand up to and meet.

But ugh, it’s missing something, he doesn’t know what. Salt is good, heat is good—Wild’s penchant for spice might be rubbing off on him—sweet enough, savoury enough, but still not quite home. Fi didn’t even know, he’d begged her to analyze every molecule of the soup back when she could manifest, and he’d hung on her every word, furiously committing the components to memory. Something about how Pumm prepared it, though, something the two of them with heads together couldn’t pull apart. It must’ve been enchanted, blessed by the gods themselves, there must have been some kind of fae magic woven into its perfect, velvety texture.

“S’good with fish.”

Sky’s pulled from his thoughts by Twilight’s voice, immediately back on the Surface. The rancher’s standing at his flank with a knowing grin on his face, and when Sky blinks dumbly a couple times he keeps on, gesturing toward the sunset-coloured cauldron with a strong wave of his hand.

“Cheese too,” Twilight says. “Damn shame half’a you can’t stomach it.”

“Fish…” Sky marvels, staring back at the soup, and it isn’t the answer to his problem—no one back home made it that way—but it does sound tempting, an experiment he tucks away for the future.

All thoughts of perfect Skyloftian cuisine are pushed to the side for the moment, though, as Sky tries—as subtly as possible—to size Twilight up. He looks… well, he looks the same as ever, but he is moving a little slowly. Sky’s going to open his mouth to ask, but Twilight steals the question right out of him, uttering it first.

“You sleep alright?”

And Sky nods a little reluctantly, now studying his friend’s voice for a rasp, a waver, any out-of-key slip living in oversoft consonants as they hit the air. “How about you? You look... tired.”

Twilight’s expression flickers a little—barely visible, but Sky sees it. He clears his throat.

“I, uh…” he sounds embarrassed, caught, and Sky’s on tenterhooks, waiting for him to finish, dreading how the sentence might end. “I’ve been helping out downstairs. While you’ve been asleep.”

Oh.

Huh.

That would definitely explain why he’s been so tired, tired enough that Sky’s noticed. Now it’s the chosen hero’s turn to look a little embarrassed, what was he thinking, being suspicious of Twilight? He’s somehow everyone’s big brother, constantly getting on their cases about hiding injuries, he’s almost worse than Warriors about it, of course he wouldn’t hide himself away like that. An unpleasant cloud of guilt settles somewhere inside Sky, and he breathes a sigh—of relief? He can’t entirely tell.

“Are you... sure that’s a good idea?” he asks Twilight, brow furrowed.

Twilight shrugs, like he knew the question was coming. “You’re one to talk! Do all skyfolk have immunity like steel, or is that just you?”

Sky rolls his eyes, in that playful way he always did, mouth a half-grinning line. “Mine’s notoriously bad, actually.”

Twilight snorts out a laugh, giving Sky an expectant look, and his expression falls a little when the chosen hero says nothing more. “Wait, you’re being serious?”

“When I go down I go down,” Sky says with a wave of his hand, then refuses to elaborate further. “Not the point—be careful, okay?”

“I’ll be alright, Red,” Twilight smiles, shoving at Sky's chest in that heavy way he always does. In the passing years Twilight’s learned his own strength, but still Sky stumbles a little in the wake of it, never fully able to hold himself steady against it. “Anyways, smelled pumpkin soup and high-tailed it to you. How much longer?”

A particularly devious bubble in the cookpot chooses that moment to pop in Sky’s general direction, and he makes a little noise of discontent at the soup as it demands to be acknowledged. He blows on what he has pooling in his ladle and gives it a sip, studying the flavour with utmost concentration painted conspicuously across his face. Twilight has to stifle a laugh at the sight—he’s not sure he’s ever seen Sky this absorbed in anything in his entire time knowing the man.

The chosen hero breathes a sigh. “Either five minutes or five hours, depending on how stubborn I’m feeling.”

That does it, and Twilight laughs openly, a hearty thing in the golden sunset. Sky can’t help it, he zeroes in on the sound of it—there’s a bit of give in the cadence of it as it leaves him, a rasp that’s less obvious, nigh undetectable. Like the noise loses a few letters as it hits the air, not quite strong enough to keep its form as it leaves Twilight’s throat. His ears burn, and he stirs the soup with purpose, telling his brain to sit this one out, please.

These little quirks Sky can’t help but notice, details that brood his feathers as they crawl upon his back, they’re not always indicative of the things he worries himself with. Incredibly effective when they’re right, yes, but right now Twilight is smiling and laughing and by all means himself, and Sky reminds his thoughts that this ailment raging through his friends is not a slow burn, that Twilight would already be feverish and indisposed by now, that Twilight would tell him, and that he trusts Twilight. That last note, he stands twice as firm on, coaching his anxious mind with shoulders strong and sword in hand. You need to have faith in your friend. You know, deep down, that he would be honest with you.

It’s that refrain—that mantra—that keeps Sky steady through the night, as he finds himself listening a little too intently, distracted eyes wandering back to the rancher. He tries to talk his racing heart down, honest—but Twilight barely touches the soup he was so enthusiastic about mere moments before, and it makes Sky wring his fingers in a way that grows harder and harder to ignore. And when Twilight goes to sleep way earlier than normal, something in Sky snaps all over again, refusing to stay settled.

A more direct confrontation. Questions, that’s what he needs to do. Just ask Twilight outright, not skirt around the subject. The conversation moved too fast before, and he couldn’t bring himself to pry—the mere thought of it felt like a disservice, like he was doubting Twilight’s word, he can spin it better this time, more gracefully—it doesn’t have to offend, it’s worry, it’s love. What’s there to resent?

For the next few hours, Sky does what he does every night—he keeps watch over whoever’s feeling worst, makes sure everyone’s woken up periodically for water and medicine, wills away feverish night terrors with every stroke of his fingertips through one or two mops of golden hair. And he’s not proud of it, he’ll admit—but when Twilight starts shuffling himself awake on the top floor, Sky slides down into the covers of his own bedroll and pretends to be just a little more asleep than he is.

The good news is the rancher’s not sleeping in, today, and the less good news is that Twilight wakes with a groan and there’s a whistle in his breath that Sky cannot bring himself to even think of ignoring. The chosen hero listens in carefully as Twilight stumbles—stumbles?—down the stairs, steps a little heavier than he’d expect, but still careful not to wake the ill around them. Sky keeps his eyes shut as the rancher’s footsteps get closer, lacking their usual rhythm, and then…

Silence.

Twilight stops, and Sky can tell—from the creak of the floorboard closest, from the way the presence lingers at his side—Twilight’s standing over him as he lays there, looking over Sky with careful intent.

Sky couldn’t say why, but his blood runs cold. It’s just Twilight, why am I nervous? But he’s frozen all the same, feeling Twilight’s eyes on him—studying his breathing, peering into his harmless little ruse, and Sky can’t help but think that maybe he deserves it for the way he’s done the same all day. Whatever Twilight sees, though, satisfies him—with a few more messy shuffles, he heads out the door.

A deep breath, and Sky counts to thirty in his head. Don’t be weird about it, he reminds himself, just ask. Bolting after Twilight would definitely give everything away, so instead he pulls himself up, only a little hurried as he watches Twilight’s silhouette pass the glassy windowpane, no symmetry to the dip of it as he moves. Shambling, he’s shambling, he looks like a cursed bokoblin, the way he’s walking—to the bathhouse again? Sky squints at the sight, as though that’ll make the answer clearer to him. It takes everything he has in him not to dart up and out the door right there and then.

Deep breaths. Instead, he rises quietly to his feet—as anxious as he’s feeling, he keeps his steps featherlight as ever as he follows. It’s loud and clear, this time—Twilight’s in the bathhouse, coughing up a lung, and Sky’s heart sinks clear down into his feet. He can picture it before he gets there—his friend trudging out of bed, trying to force the congestion and feverish half-awake feeling off his person, praying to the steam like a deity as he runs the hottest waters he can stand. And he’s been doing this for days, Sky finds him coming back from the bathhouse more times than he can count, he’d thought Twilight was just taking advantage of the fine lodgings, but—

Sky’s at the threshold, now, and the bathhouse door is open. Barely a crack, but Twilight neglected to shut it—why, the chosen hero can’t say, less noise?—and Sky can see right inside. Twilight’s hearing is so attuned, his instincts so keen, it’s scary how he hears every leaf that falls to the forest floor above the clamour of rustling swords and armour. He’s utterly unaware right now—no note made of Sky as the latter watches—and it does something to Sky’s insides he wishes he could chase away.

Eyesight and body half-curled around the edge of the door, Sky watches with a lump in his throat as Twilight chokes down half a red potion. When he stops himself from downing the whole thing, it’s written in every inch of him how hard the temperance is—it’s clear he wants to, needs to, rather. It fights him on the way in, and Twilight pulls into the crook of his arm and coughs hard, sounding an absolute mess. Sky winces just hearing it, let alone watching his friend brace himself there, one hand on the tub as he struggles to remain upright through gasping breaths. So caught up in the ordeal of getting oxygen into his lungs, even his unmatched senses don’t pick up on Sky, standing in the doorway with a shifting look upon his face.

It isn’t until Twilight regains himself and turns to leave that his eyes meet the chosen hero’s own. He pulls himself up from the cover of his arm, swivels back to a proper stance, and raises his head—

Right into Sky’s outstretched palm.

Like a trap lying in wait, perfectly positioned. How long had Sky been watching?

“Uh,” Twilight says, then clears his throat with absolute purpose, eyeing the hand on his forehead. “Hi, Sky.”

“Hi,” Sky says back, something unknown burning in his blue eyes. “When were you going to tell me about the fever?”

Twilight blinks. “What fever?”

The something unknown morphs, crackles, spits. Sky’s sunny gaze is searing, now, the same flare so many monsters have seen before they’re sliced clean in half.

“The one you’ve been running since—let’s see—” He fakes concentrated thought, pulling his hand to rest firm on his hip. “—two days ago?”

Busted.

Twilight heaves a sigh, relenting with as much grace as he can allow himself. Golden Three on high, nothing of this caliber ever got past Sky.

“I’m fine, Sky,” he says, waving his hand as if to prove his fitness. “I’m staying on top of it.”

“This is on top of it?” Sky chides, gesturing to the lovely little pile of empty bottles Twilight’s accumulated in the bathhouse corner, their glass still stained pink. “We have chilly elixirs in spades right now, why are you wasting your potions?”

Because you weren’t supposed to find out, Twilight keeps behind his lips. “The others need those more right now. I feel fine.”

Sky’s face scrunches up in a million different ways, clearly not convinced. That pinch he can’t keep from the center of his forehead on proud display, a clear sign his patience is running thin.

“Okay,” Sky says, eyes narrowing. “And why are you sneaking around?”

Twilight rubs at his elbow, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“...if the captain finds out I got him sick I won’t live to see another day.”

“You won’t live to see another day anyways, the way you’re pushing yourself!” the chosen hero huffs, throwing an arm out to his side, exasperated. “How does that plan make any sense? Everyone was going to figure out eventually.”

Twilight scoffs a little, pushes past the raw feeling it scrapes across his throat—is the potion wearing off already?

“Doubt it,” he says. “They’re too caught up in their own ailing. No wonder you were the first.”

That’s ridiculous, Sky seethes, teeth grit and fists balling. You slept in two mornings in a row, your voice has sounded off-pitch all day, I kept hearing you clearing your throat, you had two spoonfuls of soup and passed out without saying goodnight. It's as plain as the nose on your face!

It’s coincidental, Sky wants to say, that he was the first one to realize something was wrong with Twilight. He’s not hiding anything well, Sky just wanted to believe—so badly—that his racing heart was wrong. That he could trust the voices in his head to be incorrect fifty-percent of the time, that he could trust Twilight to not be so—

He can’t think about that right now. He can’t think about the way his chest aches, the anger and hurt bubbling and subsiding like Eldin’s crater about to blanket the clear skies in ash, the sands in liquid fire. Sky shoves it aside, reminding himself of more important matters at hand—Twilight. Twilight needs to be treated, be mad at him later.

“You should take something stronger,” Sky says instead, moving forward, hand precariously raised to check his vitals again. “Let me—”

“I’m on top of it,” Twilight repeats, backing away from Sky’s touch before he can make contact. “You focus on the others, I’ll deal with myself.”

Sky tries to keep his tone light, but the noise of general doubt that leaves him sounds a lot more abrasive than he’d like. His brow pinches tighter, he chews on his lip. “Can’t I—”

“Red.”

Twilight’s voice is darker, in a way that can’t be explained by the fact that he’s ill. Sky meets his eyes, deer in the headlights, and there’s something in Twilight’s icy blues that leaves no room for argument. He sets his jaw, unmoving.

“Leave it.”

The words pierce Sky like an arrow lit aflame.

He wants to say more, of course he does—gods, Twilight looks so tired. The red potion’s done nothing against the dark circles lining his eyes, the sluggish way he moves as he’s pushing past—intent to get out of the room and far away from Sky, lest he be absolutely smothered. The rancher leaves without another acknowledgement, and Sky’s sentiments stay stuck on his tongue, and he stays there alone while Twilight shuffles back into the house.

And Sky sits there with an unpleasant feeling rising in his throat, watering his eyes, pawing for the courage to follow and head back in. Gales whip through the trees, casting a chill across his arms, and it’s been cold for a while now, but it’s only then that the chosen hero truly feels the bite of it dancing across his skin. He shivers, curling in on himself, staring once more at the congregation of glass in the bathhouse corner, rose-tinted and in need of a wash.

Move. Hands. Go.

Cradling the bottles in his arms carefully, he makes his way out and over to the stream, all the while humming a song he thinks he’ll name Zelda’s Lullaby.

Twilight falls back on the grass with a satisfied exhale, smiling through the lip of his waterskin as he drinks. Four’s Hyrule might be the coziest place on earth, he thinks, eyeing the greenery as it turns golden-orange in the dusky light—every corner seems lined with hospitality, connection, the people here are so bright, it truly does remind him of home.

Adjusting to the team has been… well, a learning experience, is the nicest way the rancher can think to put it. He’d been content to settle back into the role of big brother—came naturally to him as breathing—but the eyes looking up at him were a touch different this time, harder to read. Friends back in Ordon hide nothing from Twilight—their every dream and woe and love, he feels he knows by heart. This crew is far less so, every last one of them fortresses with too many secrets to count. Finding ways to keep them steady without cracking them open by force has been… difficult.

Sky sighs his own breath of relief beside him, and oh, Sky. Sky’s been such a lovely exception—he can’t keep a single thought off his face, every quiet flutter of emotion so proudly on display. Sky’s open, and honest, and the only thing he loves to do more than gush is listen himself. On every level imaginable, Sky’s a breath of fresh air.

And a damn good swordsman, Twilight thinks, nursing the aches as they settle in. He rubs at his forearm, wincing a little, less at the ebb of pain that’s there now, more at the soreness he knows is coming tomorrow.

“I didn’t get you too bad, did I?” Sky asks when he notices, those strong eyebrows of his now incredibly soft.

“Nah, my own fault, really,” Twilight gives him a grin. “I constantly forget how adept you are. I got cocky.”

Sky turns to the side, the blade of grass closest to his nose suddenly looking a lot more interesting. Bashfully, he pats at his neck, unsure what exactly to say, so instead he just thanks Twilight in a voice that’s small and humbled but grateful all the same.

“Really, Sky, it’s a wonder,” Twilight keeps on, eyes on the skies above. “Every time we spar you kick me clean on my ass. It’s invigorating as all get-out. Makes me wanna get you back, reckon it makes me better.”

Yeah, Sky’s really enjoying the bugs, right now. A newfound interest in whatever the dirt is doing. He blushes, balling up a little. “Is it really any wonder? I’m well practiced as any of you.”

Twilight sits back up, shaking his head. “It’s a personality thing, I think. Y’know, you’re just… how do I put this…”

Sky writhes. Inferior? Ditzy? An airhead? He’s heard it all before, he’s not sure he’s ready to hear it from the mouth of someone he’s spent so many golden days beside. Dread crawls up his throat, and he tries to quiet his racing heart while Twilight picks his words.

“You’re soft, Sky,” he settles on. “You’re the heart of us, I think. Gentle as a lamb. I’d peg you as a million things before I landed on ‘warrior.’ A healer, a shaman, something like that.”

From beside him, Twilight feels Sky’s body lose tension. The rancher can’t see his face, but his ears are flushing pink. After a moment, he turns back around, eyes pointed skyward like they so often were.

“This feels more…” Sky stops to think. “...solid, you know? It’s… active. Being a knight feels like movement.”

Healing takes time, healing takes patience, I can’t put my whole body into it, feel the relief of the threat disappearing into ebony tendrils before my eyes, is what he wants to say, but even that sentiment seems wrong somehow, still not to the heart of the matter.

“I don’t like fighting,” he says after a beat. “But I like… protecting.”

Twilight side-eyes him, feeling those words like a tattoo across his heart. He wants them engraved, he thinks—how did Sky say it so perfectly, so casually, so effortlessly?

And he wants to hear more, so he brightens his smile and says, “Yeah?”

Sky stares into the sunset, a watercolour spill of darkening oranges. He’s still not used to how sunsets look on the Surface—there’s something about the way they dip into the horizon that utterly blindsides him, no matter what time or place he’s in, down here. He loves Skyloft, but the sunset never looked like this back home—the sky is colours he didn’t know it could be, in the twilight he sees magic long hidden away, like the world knew he wasn’t ready for its depth, its beauty.

Sky sits up, leaning into his friend so that their shoulders touch. The both of them are warm from exertion, and the feeling of Twilight beside him is lulling—he looks like he has good shoulders for falling asleep on, strong and festooned in impossibly soft fur.

“Sometimes I feel like there’s this well inside me,” Sky muses. “And with every new person I meet it just… fills itself with—with love, and it’s heavy, but it’s not a bad heavy—it’s good, it’s just… a lot.”

Twilight flips the script on him, and leans on Sky’s shoulder with a contented sigh. It feels significant, but Sky couldn’t tell anyone why. He leans in, too, his ear pressed up against Twilight’s dusky hair.

“Most days,” continues Sky. “I just draw the water from it in little bucketfuls. But other days, those people I hold dear—storms draw around them, and they draw around me, too, and it rains and overflows and I never feel like I can move fast enough—”

He gestures as he’s talking, hands positioned at his chest, out toward the vast expanse of open fields before them. Twilight leans into the rhythm of it, there on Sky’s shoulder, and makes note of the way he always uses his hands like that, not quite embellishing. Like he’s trying to grab and hold onto the right words for the right job, convinced they exist in particles he can pull from the air itself.

“When it gets like that, I feel so restless standing still or staying put,” Sky says. “It’s this… physical ache. I need to act. I need to move. I need to do—something—to make sure they’re okay.”

Twilight takes this in, living in the gold-dappled horizon as it stretches out before his eyes. The wildflowers shake in the spring breeze, pulling petals across the breathing world.

“That’s very evocative,” Twilight says, his gaze not leaving the sunset. “And damn resonant.”

Sky smiles, bringing a hand to rest on the rancher’s head. He scrunches his fingers through it, nails pressed softly to Twilight’s scalp, and the rancher fights the growl that instinctively crawls up his throat and instead lets the scritches happen. It’s Sky, he reminds himself. Sky doesn’t have a condescending bone in his body.

“You get it, yeah?” says Sky. “As much as I’m capable of, I want to do. When I can’t help someone I… maybe this is dramatic, but I kinda feel like I’m being stabbed.”

“I do get it,” Twilight says, and good goddesses, the head-scratches really do feel nice, when no one’s watching and it’s just him and someone he trusts entirely. He reminds himself he’s on two legs right now and resists the urge to thump his foot against the grass.

“That is what it comes down to, isn’t it?” Twilight says. “Courage, I mean. It’s really just…”

“Love, yeah,” Sky finishes for him. “You’re right about me being soft. I think I was just born to love.”

“You’re good at it,” Twilight says, meditating on the fingers in his hair—bitten down, but soothing regardless of the wear they’ve seen. “Yeah, who knows if I’d be brave without the people I’ve sworn to keep safe. If I’d be much of anything, really.”

Sky wants to object to that on some level—but on another, he understands entirely. “I’m glad you get me, Twi. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.”

The voices of their team back at camp bubble up alongside the stirring crickets performing beneath their boots, and the smell of Wild’s cooking is wafting through the air. It’s time to go back, but it’s never easy—leaving the sun while it sets over Hyrule. Twilight can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from it until its run the gamut of every colour its capable of, until the stars have taken its place in the heavens. The sliver that’s left peeks over the horizon, and he stands as it dips, like he’s trying to draw himself closer to what lies on the other side. Maybe he is, he thinks a little darkly, and discards the idea, not intent to dwell upon it. His growing shadow is heartache enough—he faces forward, refusing to look back at it.

The sky is crimson.

“Nearly sundown,” Twilight says, dusk glinting across his gaze, a scarlet gleam over the sky in his eyes. “We oughta get back to camp, Red.”

He turns to Sky with palm outstretched, offering to pull him off the verdant floor. Sky stares up at him, haloed by his namesake, eyes open wide, and tilts his head in excited curiosity.

“Did the Hero of the Twilight Era just…” Sky’s mouth curls into a smile. “...give me one of his world-famous nicknames?”

The rancher makes a sound of general amusement—it comes out sounding a little bashful, like he wasn’t aware of the reputation to begin with. “Everyone’ll get one eventually. Yours just came to me now, is all.”

Sky takes his hand, expression sweet and softened as he regards his friend. “Did it?”

“It’s just you, y’know?” Twilight looks back to where the sun’s practically gone, the single point from where the world is drenched in brilliant light. “Red’s the colour of passion… love and anger and everything that exists in-between. Your steed is red, right? And you always wear those red earrings, and…”

Sky looks so bright, right now, and Twilight almost loses his nerve at the sight of him. He looks like he’s never been given a compliment in his life, he looks like he’s just gotten a hug for the first time, the way he looks puts the sun and its lightshow to shame, Twilight’s sure it starts fading a smidge faster in his wake.

“...and?”

Twilight sets his face, regarding the crimson, fire-lit glow that silhouettes Sky—a beautiful, burning outline.

“...it’s the best part of the sunset,” says the rancher, and he gestures grandly to the light all around them. “When all the other colours fade, the world is just red. And… if the sky were a person, it feels like something they’d do on purpose, yeah? Save the most striking colour for their last hurrah.”

The chosen hero blushes, and the irony of the very act is not lost on him—red as the heavens he was named for, a perfect mirror of the world above.

If the sky were a person. What a lovely thought.

“...it’s my favourite colour,” Sky says sheepishly, and Twilight belts out a laugh, throwing his whole body back in delight.

“There it is!” he howls, sending a lively play-punch against Sky’s forearm. “The heavens are yours, the dusk is mine, it just seems correct.”

And Twilight softens his stance a little, noting the way Sky looks so unbelievably shy, right now. He’s pink in the cheeks and his eyes look a bit watery, and Twilight almost worries for a moment that he’s gotten away from himself with poeticisms he’s hardly equipped to spout.

“...I hope,” he follows up, peering closer into Sky, who meets his eyes with a smile as bittersweet as the sunset itself.

The chosen hero holds the tears in his throat, not quite ready to get misty around anyone. All his life, it’s been so much of the same—the same adjectives, the same epithets, the same consensus. Walk around Skyloft and ask—“Who is Link?”—and sure, there’d be some notable variety. A good many would tell you—the boy with wild bedhead and the even wilder red bird, the daydreamer with his head in the clouds, the one Zelda’s always had eyes for, hanging on his arm. A momentary pause, a careful choice of words, and then maybe a follow up would come, as well—the one Her Grace gave to us, the one who united earth and sky, the one who brought us home.

And Zelda would say, the boy who loves eternally, without condition, without end. And Groose would say, the scrappy little runt who refuses to stop fighting. And Fi would say, a soul so bright and boundless, its depth can’t help but spill over into others, wake up what’s meant to sleep forever.

And for so long, Sky had accepted—that few would see what the three of them saw, that few would peer past the sleepy boy they knew, or the hero they’d heard talk of, and see what truly made him who he was. Until this moment, it felt like he’d never meet anyone more who saw him, really saw him.

Twilight’s looking at him. The sky is red. Sky’s voice comes out shaking, barely a whisper.

“It’s perfect.”

Stubbornly, Twilight stays awake.

Every second of it feels like agony to Sky—what’s he doing? Is this some display of resilience to prove his words, or is he just having trouble sleeping? Neither option seems particularly favourable, especially when he looks like he might pass out at any moment, and Sky feels like his insides are crawling as the two of them sit in complete silence—not a single word between them, Twilight won’t even look at him.

Some kind of forcefield exists in the space that lies betwixt, as they sit on the lower levels with one another and look after whoever needs it. Sky can see Twilight, but Twilight can’t—or rather, he refuses to—see Sky. And maybe Sky is being overdramatic, but he thinks, perhaps, this is one of the worst feelings he’s ever experienced.

The chosen hero’s been stabbed, bludgeoned, burned, scarred, concussed, thrown, struck by lightning. All of it pales to the itchy feeling crawling like a million insects beneath his skin. It feels like a swarm of keese all biting down, no rhythm to the way their teeth pierce his body. The thought is erratic, driven entirely by the throbbing pain in his chest, but he thinks he’d easily take a beating over death by a thousand cuts.

Hands. Move. He wakes Warriors from a nightmare, rattling off the date and time, where they are, what he’s been doing. The captain’s in rough shape still, and Sky holds him with a touch that’s impossibly delicate, pressing another elixir to his lips. He tries to funnel the feeling of sharp static flowing through his veins into looking after the others—but his thoughts refuse to wander far from Twilight, the rancher’s presence like a dark cloud in the back of the room as he messily weaves threads together.

Twilight also liked to busy his hands—one more thing he and Sky had bonded over. An equally restless energy flowed through all of them, but Twilight and Sky had more or less made an experience out of the ways in which they settled it down. Twilight was a master when it came to accessories—leatherwork was his main passion, but he’d often craft smaller things, too, like the bracelet Sky was watching him attempt to shape, now.

It’s what Twilight falls back into when the room settles—he’s been circling the sick like a starving wolf, eyes searching for any discomfort he can jump on and fix, and Sky’s system is still too shocked from before to find the words to stop him, tell him to settle down and take it easy. When Twilight’s not measuring out medicine or making sure everyone stays hydrated, he’s fidgeting with the strands of earthy-coloured rope at his post, desperate to make something of himself.

He just doesn’t stop.

Sky wants to wrestle him into bed. Sky wants to grab him by the shoulders and manhandle him to the floor, all the while spitting every mean name he can think of. The mania gripping the chosen hero has long since transformed from hurt to confusion to white-hot anger, and he feels he’s been here before but at the same time it’s so different, now.

This wasn’t like with Wind. Wind’s reservations with care made sense, and even if they didn’t, Sky was a million times more willing to give him the space to be petulant—teenagers, more than anyone in the world, are allowed. His empathy was boundless, his patience came so easily—it was frustrating, and it felt helpless, but it was so easy to understand. So easy to breathe deep, consider, and re-assess.

Twilight’s an absolute enigma, Sky can’t fathom why he’s acting like this. It can’t feel good—the rancher looks downright wretched, whatever that potion did for him is long gone now. The fever flush on his face looks like it’s angry with him, which is probably an apt metaphor, given the way he’s been ignoring it. No, he’s definitely not doing this for his own benefit.

Sky fiddles with his carving knife, focusing on the way it feels in his hand. Polished oak, engraved with his name, a short and fat little tip that reminds him of a chirri’s beak. There’s no shape in his head as he traces knots in the wood, the idea of whittling a last-ditch effort to keep his mind off the situation at hand. Nothing is enough. Nothing is stopping the white noise screaming in his head to just do something.

Do what? He wants to scream right back. He can’t do anything until he figures out why Twilight’s acting like a child. It’s not because it feels good. It’s not because of any complex about remaining strong for the others—everyone is sick, there’s no pride left in any of them. It’s not because of the thing with Warriors—the captain’s too out of it to notice much of anything, let alone connect those dots. It can’t be about proving himself, Twilight’s… just not the type.

What is he doing?

Sky slices deep into the wood, pulling the body of it towards himself. It’s a little more violent of a gesture than he wants it to be, but he can’t drop the tension living in every corner of him, right down to his fingertips as he struggles to keep them steady. He doesn’t know what he’s carving. He just watches the shavings curl toward the ceiling, trying to read their shape like tea leaves for an answer.

The chosen hero steals another aside glance, sizing Twilight up. He’s pale in the moonlight that spills into the room, a murky glint settled over his eyes as they squint erratically—concentration on the bracelet he’s attempting? A worsening headache? A stubborn prickling in his sinuses? His nose scrunches for only a second before he’s pressing his wrist against it in defiance, and Sky figures yeah, it’s probably that.

He whittles. Focusing on the muted scrape of steel against pine. Rhythmic as he can make it, with his frayed state of mind. Focus on the sound of art shaping itself. Do not focus on Twilight’s muffled coughs and how they sound deeper in his lungs each time, how badly you want to wrap him in a blanket and hug him until he passes out.

Don’t focus on the way his breath hitches and skips and then goes utterly silent—expert stifles? False starts?—Hylia above, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can do, why won’t you drop it?

Sky’s whittling. Sky’s whittling, and occasionally, he’s dipping forward to help those of them who do accept his care. Mostly, though, he’s whittling. Not looking. Not dwelling. Not fussing. Not smothering. He’s not thinking about it. He reminds himself that he’s not thinking about it.

Not thinking. Not interested. Not concerned. Not holding how are you feelings hard behind his tongue, squeezing at his throat with how badly they want to escape. Not focusing on the swell of worry, boring a hole straight through his heart.

None of that. Except that he is, in fact, doing all of those things, and there’s no amount of moving his hands can do that can take his mind off of the way his insides feel whenever he can’t stop himself from looking over at Twilight—the utter definition of misery as he fights the way his eyes glaze over with fluttering breaths. Eventually, the rancher does crumble—ducking forward with a shuddery exhale, an impressively near-silent sneeze.

And Sky can’t help it, because he never can. “Bless you.”

It’s the first thing he’s said to Twilight in what feels like hours, and Sky only sees in his peripheral the way his friend bristles at the sentiment, like it’s some kind of curse. Even two words is apparently too much, because Twilight stands with a certain sharpness, then, sniffing indignantly in an attempt to hide the sway in his stance.

He says nothing to Sky as he fastens his baldric and heads toward the door, fooling absolutely no one with the false swagger he forces into every step. Exhausted, all the chosen hero can do is sigh and ask, “Hey, what’s... what's up?”

“Need some fresh air,” Twilight supplies as he’s pulling on his boots, and his voice sounds horrible, like he’s shouted it raw. Sky really doesn’t like the sound of any of that.

“I’ll come along,” he says, willing his voice to be firm—but Twilight’s far firmer, even as sick as he is, his blue eyes acrid and glowing like fuzzy starlight.

“Absolutely not.”

Goddesses, it hurts.

“It’s cold out there…” Sky tries, weak-willed, pleading.

“I’ve got my pelt.” Twilight gives it two strong pats—succinct, precise. “I’ll be back soon, I’m just getting restless.”

His tone is urgent, like he has to leave now. Like it’s of utmost importance that he be anywhere but here. And Sky hangs so anxiously on every letter of those words, the curdling in his stomach feeling worse than it has all day, desperate to find some answers in what little Twilight says to him. The waters remain black and murky, giving him nothing, and he falls back into old habits, too tired to come up with anything new.

“What if—”

“Sky.”

The chosen hero jolts, startled by the venom Twilight can’t keep from his voice. His title sounds like a bark the way it falls from his friend’s mouth, one single angry syllable that pulls him back inside his own head. And Twilight doesn’t say it, this time, but Sky hears the rest of the sentence loud and clear, once more—leave it.

He deflates, simmers, looks like he wants to say so much more. But Twilight doesn’t see that, out the door before Sky can raise any additional protest, shutting it with a silence that betrays entirely the tone of his fading voice.

And Sky slumps back to the cold cabin floor, picking up the would-be bracelet that Twilight orphaned and placing it delicately upon the rest of his things.

Twilight’s a generous ways away from the house when he all but yanks the crystal from his neck, falling into the transformation far more than he’d like to admit.

He’s running out of solutions.

Maybe Sky was right in that this wasn’t thought through, but his head is swimming too much to dwell upon that now, all that he knows now is he’s got to figure something out. He’s all out of red potion and he’s shit at brewing himself, a blind-spot in his otherwise encyclopedic knowledge he’s kicking himself for now. He’s dug his grave too far down to ask Sky for an elixir, and a more rational voice in his head says that Sky’s the one person who would supply it with zero judgment, beat down immediately by a second voice that reminds him if you admit how bad you’re feeling Sky will not rest until you’re better.

Twilight shakes his fur out, thoughts going fuzzy. Just gotta ride it out, he’s good at riding things out—transform and huddle up somewhere safe, no prying eyes burning at his back, just a wolf and the wilderness.

Except he can’t even have that, he finds out soon after he’s on all fours—his dark fur is itchy and bristling against feverish skin, a thousand tiny needles that seem to do nothing against the frigid air. He drifts in a wobbly circle, attempting to examine himself, wondering if maybe his winter coat hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s to grow in—but he finds it thick as ever and he’s freezing all the same. His ears are hot and uncomfortable, and he tries to shake the burn of them away, panting.

The intent was to follow scents until he found a cave, it was something he felt he could do in his sleep—caves were distinct, reeking of moss and stone and a lingering human touch, dust and keese and safety. Everything feels muddled, though, senses impossibly dulled, it’s like he’s still in human form, the way he can’t smell or hear anything. He tries a few more steps forward but finds four legs far harder to control than two, an impossible distinction—there never was a difference before.

Twilight doesn’t want to know what he looks like, right now—a pathetic, diseased beast. He trudges forward in a blind haze, not even able to smell the rain before it comes.

Desperately, he runs to shelter—anywhere, he thinks—if it’s monster-infested he’ll take them all out, he might be ill but he can still fight. The rain falls across his eyes and lingers in his fur, he can feel the mud caked beneath his claws and he persists, fighting through the ache in his muscles. Every ounce of him hurts from muzzle to tail, and he pushes through it and runs.

The first cave he finds is empty, and he trudges in wearily, sniffing the ground out of habit more than anything. There’s nothing there for him, and he heaves out a breath through his teeth, a lupine sort of sigh. Wearily, he shakes moisture off his fur, the action lacking any of its usual vitality. Twilight paces in a slow circle, trying to keep his pawsteps steady—one after the other, one at a time—and sinks to the floor, not even bothering to dig the fallen pine needles away.

His whole head snaps to the side when he sneezes—two rapid-fire, ticklish things that leave him feeling worse. He paws at his nose, desperate to chase the itch away to absolutely no avail. His bones feel like they’re breaking, like the first time he’d transformed, that horrible feeling of every nerve snapping and re-threading and rearranging, only this time it might feel just a little bit worse.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been shivering, panting noisily and desperate to cool down—warm up?—he doesn’t know anymore. He drops his face to his paws with a whimper, a noise he can’t hold in when he’s like this, driven entirely by instinct with prying eyes away.

The storm kicks up outside, and though he can’t smell the ozone hanging in the air, he knows the lightning storm is coming, feels it like a rumble beneath his paws.

He can’t go back home. He can picture it so easily, even in the feverish slurry his head is being thrown around, right now—he shows up on the doorstep soaking and looking half-dead, and Sky looks at him like he’s been stabbed or something, the very picture of an anxious flurry. He cannot do that to him.

Another wheezy whimper resonates from his throat. It hurts to vocalize, it hurts to not vocalize, his head swims when he shuts his eyes, like the world is tilting and tipping around him. Safe in here, and with his normally sensitive ears clogged up and useless, the boom of the crying skies lacks its terrifying roar and is actually a little comforting. He tries to focus on the calm of it as he drifts, curled up in a tight circle and trembling in the cold, dark cave. Tomorrow’s problems, he thinks, can be tomorrow’s problems.

It’s been hours.

It’s been hours since Twilight all but ran out the door—hours since Sky forced him out the door—and the man in question still hasn’t come back.

Sky feels like a whole colony of deku hornets have burrowed their stingers into his chest and made an ugly nest in the gore left behind. He’s given up on carving—all that’ll come of it is a waste of perfectly fine wood—and has elected to simply sit in his discomfort and let it pass through him. He’s out of solutions, all he can do now is persist.

Fi, he needs to hold onto Fi—he grabs her blade from where it’s nestled with his mess, placing her gently on his lap. He does nothing more than that—too exhausted to fidget with the hilt, too pulled thin to ask her for the exact time Twilight’s been gone down to the second, too cowardly to handle it if she does decide to speak to him after millennia asleep and, Goddess forbid, give him the answer. He knows she probably wouldn’t even if she could—unproductive questions, unproductive answers, Fi had learned over time that her capability to tell him these things didn’t always mean it was the most efficient thing to do. And Sky was grateful for that—for her foresight, for her rare tendency to defy her own programming, however little those rebellions were.

He’s grateful for it now, even in the hypothetical. He has no mind to do much else besides stare, and that’s how Legend finds him when he pulls himself awake—gazing glassy-eyed at the Master Sword, looking like he’s in a trance.

The vet’s up a little suddenly, looking around to see if anyone else is too, reading the room. He rubs sleep from his eyes, not particularly enthralled about being up in the middle of the night, but the ache in his joints gives him his answer as to why, and he feels the words bubble up without much filter.

“Ugh, it’s storming,” Legend says. Hyrule stirs a little from beside him, instinctively curling around his torso, and Legend presses his fingers into the traveler’s hair, grounding himself through the first boom of thunder.

The wind howls, shaking the windows. Sky stays in Legend’s peripheral, blinking erratically down at his sword.

“What’s got you?” Legend asks, brow knit in a way that’s rarely seen, uncharacteristic softness in his voice.

“Twilight’s out there,” Sky says, a low whisper. “He’s still not back.”

For a moment, there’s no sound besides the violent rainfall, pelting the windows with thick, heavy drops. Sky’s face shows no emotion, his eyes in another realm, and it’s absolutely chilling to see. Hyrule snuggles his head into Legend’s side, croaky-voiced still but pleasant as ever.

“Ranch hand can probably take a storm alright,” he murmurs, quietly. “He’ll be okay, Sky.”

It’s a lovely answer, but it doesn’t satisfy Sky. He’s of the same mind—no doubt Twilight could easily handle making his way home, to safety, anywhere and in any weather at his best. His best is long since thrown out the window, though, and all Sky can see in his mind’s eye is Twilight, cooking with fever and stumbling through the rain, lost and alone and sick and scared—

“Any of us can take it in theory,” Legend waves a hand. “But luck’s got different plans sometimes.”

Hyrule gives him a glare from the floor, but there’s an endeared look buried somewhere beneath it. “You’re such a pessimist.”

“Sunshine and cheer have their place. They aren’t what everyone needs,” the vet says, eyeing Sky’s blank expression. Sky finally meets his eyes, and it’s subtle, but there’s golden gratitude blooming in his own.

“If you’re looking for permission, this is it,” Legend tells Sky. “Go on. I’ll hold down the fort for you.”

Sky didn’t realize it, but he was, and he casts a glance toward Legend, so relieved it looks like he might cry. He blinks hard—as if he’s forcing himself back down into his body, and the next thunderclap sends him straight to his feet and toward his things without another moment’s hesitation.

Too many auras in here, interference, it won’t work unless he isolates it—right, Wild’s bed. Wild’s bed where Twilight had been sleeping for days now, he’s all over it, surely. Sky scrambles up to the top floor, begging Fi to take him to his friend. As if alive and breathing, she doesn’t waste any time pulling every remnant she can find of the rancher deep within her blade’s walls.

The chosen hero’s out the door like a keese out of hell, giving chase past the weariness spreading to every corner of his soul. He tears through the trees with sword in hand, cloak whipping all around him and hood refusing to stay where it belongs. Eventually, gives up on that entirely, letting the rain pelt his face, freeze his cheeks. The sensation numbs entirely as the minutes tick down, nothing left in Sky’s heart but the everlasting need to find his friend—he tries not to think about how nostalgic it is, tries not to think about how close the stormclouds look to the ones he saw at sixteen (and a half), at seventeen (and a half)—he forces the thoughts from his mind. Move! Nothing else exists right now, besides him, and Fi’s warm purple glow, and Twilight’s aura, far in the distance, too far, too far for comfort.

He reaches a formation of stone and the Master Sword goes wild along its surface, pulsing frantically along with his heartbeat. Sky takes a moment to wheeze in a breath with his hand on the slick wall of rock, lungs refusing to read the room, protesting. Twilight’s got to be on the other side of it, and Sky starts circling the stone, calling out his friend’s name in desperation over the shuddering song of the gales.

It isn’t until his throat is nearly raw that he hears it—shuffling, then something he can’t identify. A sound that’s otherworldly, like a melody being played in reverse, like an enchanted breath in, like the dithering lilt always present in Fi’s voice. He’s never heard this before, though—it’s entirely new, and for that reason he can’t explain why he knows, somehow, that it doesn’t tell of danger. Sky trudges closer toward it, desperate for answers.

Coughing. Horrible, horrible coughing, that’s what he hears next—hacking breaths, sounding like they’re coming from someone who’s just narrowly escaped drowning. Sky bounds closer toward it, ignoring the way his own breath is barely there. He’s close, he can hear Twilight, his soul isn’t made to give up.

Finally, it’s there—the mouth of the cave, dark and inviting, and Sky nearly falls to his knees when he sees Twilight standing there, feverishly leaning against the structure’s wall, eyes foggy and dull as he stares up at Sky.

And Sky falls forward and onto him, all pretense of wanting to respect his stubborn attitude lost.

“Twilight, what happened? Why—why are you—”

He leans forward—desperate to touch him at all, to make sure he’s real and alive and okay, but Twilight shies away, pulling back as if Sky’s trying to hurt him. He waves a hand at the chosen hero like he’s some sort of pest, pulling to the side to continue hacking up a lung, tears cropping up in his eyes from the heat it scrapes down his throat.

“Storm rolled in, didn’t think it was smart to walk home in it—” he breathes heavy, shaking his head as if it’ll snap him back to form. “—thought I’d wait it out. Sorry if I worried you.”

Immediately, tension drops from Sky’s body. “That was smart, but… why did you wander this far?”

“I—I don’t—” Twilight squints at the empty air, trying to remember the answer to that question. “I don’t know.”

Words trailing off into a broken rasp, the rancher falls forward, staggering into the arms of a very worried Sky. This time, Twilight isn’t fast or aware or proud or whatever enough to move when the chosen hero feels his face, blazing hot in the icy night. Sky feels like he might collapse as well, with how the feel of it sinks like rocks in his guts—the world feels like it’s spinning around him, and he’s terrified.

“H-Hey,” Sky says, voice shaking. “Let’s head back.”

Twilight isn’t protesting, and Sky doesn’t understand how this is so much worse. Why was he fighting turns into why isn’t he fighting, and with that thought the chosen hero wonders if satisfying the screaming wail of his anxious heart is just some kind of impossible game, heads I win and tails you lose. He hopes with all he is that this is just Twilight finally relenting—realizing this isn’t a battle he can fight how he is, teeth bared and sword ready. Sky breathes as steady as he’s able, correcting course as well as he can.

He knows how to do this. He’s good at this.

They’re a few steps out of the cave mouth, and Twilight’s walking slow and messy with his whole weight pressed onto Sky. He holds Twilight close, an arm around his waist, the rancher’s own arm thrown across his shoulders. Careful as they wade through the pouring rain, into the everlasting azure of the sunrise, Sky settles back into himself, feeling now more than ever like he knows the way.

“Just keep holding on, Twi,” the words slip out, without thought. “I’ll get you all fixed up.”

It’s as though something snaps in Twilight the moment he says it, jolting him right back to where he was before. He tears his whole body away from Sky, careening as he goes nowhere in particular, and when Sky follows and tries to pick him back up he’s met with the rancher’s hands, shoving him away a fervor he shouldn’t have in tact. His voice is more of a growl than anything, warding his friend to stay back.

“I’m fine,” Twilight says, sounding absolutely not fine in the slightest. “I can walk back myself.”

“Are… are you joking?” Sky says, eyebrows raised high, utterly incredulous. “You’re hot as a volcano and you can’t even walk a straight line—”

He tries it again, moving closer to Twilight—who wrenches himself away from the potential touch, his blue gaze acid-drenched and searing. Sky matches his energy, temper utterly failing him, and finally the question falls from his lips—he’s too exhausted under the weight of all this birdshit to phrase it eloquently, to make it sound polite.

“Why are you fucking acting like this?!”

“We have bigger fish to fry, Red!” it comes out sounding half-strangled, raw and slurring. “The others are back at the house in pain and you’re here fussing over me—”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you’re sick too—”

“Who cares about me?!” Twilight screams, the shine in his eyes dissipating with every letter that falls upon the air. “I can take care of myself, I can take care of them, I handled both just fine for years, they need us, they need me—”

Sky steps closer to him, throwing out an arm, nose scrunched and brow pinched tight. “Of course you can take care of yourself! But thankfully you don’t have to! I’m right here, Twilight, just take a damn load-off—”

Another step forward, and Twilight’s hands move. When Sky registers where they are, it almost feels like a dream—the world’s gone silent, the rain falls in slow motion. The sun crests the horizon, and Sky can’t really believe what he’s seeing, right now.

Twilight’s hand is on his sword. Sky’s blood goes cold.

“What…”

Staring up at him through fever-lit eyes, Twilight grips the hilt of his blade tighter. Sky’s face twists a million ways, then—pain, confusion, seething, boundless anger.

“What’s your problem?!”

“There is no time to take a load off, Red,” Twilight says, and the nickname feels like poison as he stands his ground. “My work is never done.”

He draws his sword—the stance is horrid, he’s slumping to the side, all his weight in the wrong places, hands trembling around the hilt. Sky can’t tell what this is—where the delirium ends and Twilight begins—and he finds himself beyond the point of caring to unpack it, patience run dry, empathy somewhere else. He feels like he’s burning alive with the way he wants to throttle Twilight, it’s white-hot and doppling, back and forth between scalding rage and complete numbness.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Sky says, dropping his hands limply to his sides. “You’re acting like a stubborn bastard, can’t you see you’re no good to anyone in this condition?!”

That was, evidently, the wrong thing to say.

Twilight belts out a broken battle cry from reserves he doesn’t have, charging Sky with blade brandished. Every part of the chosen hero runs on instinct, then—his hand is at his back and his own sword is bared, and she’s not happy with him but he has no other choice. Right at the start, it’s clear Twilight isn’t fighting to injure, but he’s just as fierce as he is in any spar, swinging strong and heavy where he lacks in precision. Sky’s forced to block the first slice, and his palm is searing, violet flames crackling at the point where he meets her. He pushes through the pain, but he can almost hear Fi’s voice in his head—crying out in an agony of her own, what are you doing stop that don’t hurt him please don’t hurt him PLEASE—

I’m sorry, his heart cries back to her. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

The skies above bellow and boom, awash in pulsing, incandescent light. Twilight keeps coming at him, his movements erratic in his feverish haze—

“You think I don’t know?!” he roars above the rain, the wind, the scrape of their swords. “You think I can’t see that I’m useless like this?!”

He swings harder—a low strike facing upward—and Sky blocks with his hand boiling, holding a cry between his teeth.

“I’m trying to fix it! I’m trying to stay on top of it!” Twilight screams, lost within his own body. “I’m trying to solve the problem myself!”

Sky feels a surge of emotion bubbling up his chest, from pain external or internal, he can’t say which. He presses his weight against the Master Sword, forcing Twilight’s heels into the yielding earth.

“You’re not a problem that needs to be solved!”

Twilight pulls back with a feint—but Sky’s quick to see through it, his movements impossibly fast, a world away from wherever Twilight is now. The rancher comes at him—swinging sloppily, madly, like there’s not a single thought in his head but to move.

“Don’t pretend like that’s what you believe!” he says through the onslaught. “All you’ve done since we got here is try to fix us—”

“You—pragmatic asshole—” Sky blocks. “That’s not what this is!”

“Then what—are you—” his grip is slackening, every hit weaker than the last. “—doing?! Why won’t you leave it?!”

“Why won’t you?!” Sky fires back, lips pulled back like he’s a snarling wildcat. “You keep resisting! You keep fighting! You keep trying to look after them even though you’re falling apart—”

“Because I have to!”

Tears spill over Twilight’s hazy eyes, mixing with the slowly-dwindling rain as it soaks them. Sky takes a moment to size him up—his legs are shaking, his hold on the blade is loose, he can’t take much more of this, no matter how much he’s convinced himself otherwise.

“I can’t just lie around while th-they suffer,” Twilight’s fingers fall loose, his sword clattering to the ground. “I can’t just give in because I’m hurting too, I can’t—I can’t, I can’t—”

The second the blade hits the floor, Sky lets go of his own, stabbing her into the mud with a silent apology—for the disrespect of the gesture, for putting her through what he just did, for everything. He only has a moment to wince at the pain registering across his hand before Twilight’s falling forward, unable to keep himself standing any longer. It’s imperfect, the way Sky catches him—messy and clumsy as they both sink down to the littered forest floor. Sky holds onto Twilight, lowering the both of them to their knees. Twilight lets him, shaking with sobs.

“I can’t decide—” Twilight cries. “—to need you, Red.”

Sky pulls him close—when did he start crying as well? The tears are hot as they slip down his cheeks, a sharp note against the cold tearing through the trees around them. Twilight’s warm, too.

“Of course not,” Sky whispers into sandy golden locks. “I just wish you’d decide to want me.”

Slowly, the rain quiets down—from a roaring deluge to a near-silent drizzle. The sun has long since moved past the mountain peaks, a slow crawl to light and awaken the world. Its blue is fading—to purple, pink, gold, lining every lingering cloud as they disappear, one by one.

“I’m not trying to fix,” Sky says, hands trailing up to trace shapes in Twilight’s hair. “I don’t—I don’t listen just because I want the glory of being the person who comes along and solves it. My hope is just… to soothe.”

Twilight pulls away from his body to breathe, looking an utter mess with tears and snot coating his whole face. Like he hasn’t even noticed, Sky brings his fingers to the rancher’s forehead to push waterlogged bangs out of his eyes—and it’s then that Twilight registers the blisters bubbled up on Sky’s bare palm, angry red and swollen. His chin hits his chest hard, and he can’t stop himself from crying harder.

“Gods, I’m sorry,” he trembles as he regards the burns. “Sky, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, hey,” Sky holds him close. “It’s alright.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Twilight curls into himself, into Sky. “I don’t know what to do if I can’t help, I’m trying so hard to—to lead—to make everyone proud, to make him proud—but I can’t—some of the problems the others have, I don’t know how to help them, and it’s—hard—I’m—”

Every word is stuttered out, floating along wheezing, directionless breaths—and Sky understands. It’s beautiful coincidence, how the clouds part just then, the way the rain is almost gone, now. What an idiot Sky’s been, wandering around in a tizzy, worrying himself sick trying to wrap his head around Twilight’s feelings—he’s known all along they were made of the same stardust, their shared soul glowing the same vibrant green.

What kind of fool would allow it? Everything they have in common, driving them apart instead of weaving their hearts closer together?

Sky’s vision seems to clear, crystallizing around the once-foggy edges. He takes Twilight’s hand in his shaking own, pressing the rancher’s palm to his chest.

“Breathe, Twilight,” Sky instructs. “Breathe with me.”

Sky inhales deep, shutting his eyes, and he doesn’t know why he’s surprised when Twilight follows suit. As best as Twilight can through the protest of his overused lungs, he breathes deep and heavy, matching Sky in tandem, desperate to align. Around them, the earth is stirring—birdcall in their ears, leaves falling to the dirt, waking livestock in the distance. It seems to unfurl in their silence—they breathe, and the world breathes with them.

The sun is rising.

Twilight inhales long, exhales with a warble riding in its sound. He pulls his hand from Sky’s chest, and the chosen hero draws his eyes back open, looking deep into his friend, aglow in the sunrise.

“If I just… work harder,” Twilight says, looking down, to beneath his crossed legs. “I know I can figure it out. And I can’t—I can’t step down now, I can’t lose momentum, I have to keep going to be someone they can count on—”

He’s staring at his hands like they’ve done something wrong, palms open and flat in front of him. They lie beneath his scrutinizing gaze as though they’ve let him down in their limits, in all they cannot do. They’re shaking. He breathes.

“It used to be so easy,” he rasps. “Being the big brother. It—it used to be so easy to look after the youngsters back home, it was like breathing, Red, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t—”

Twilight balls his hands into fists—weak and wavering, lacking in their conviction.

“I thought if I killed it at that, I could kill it at this, but I’m not killing it at all, I’m not doing enough—and what I am doing, I’m not doing right, and—so I just—I—I wake up the next day and I try harder and I hope one day I can be who they need, but I just—”

“Easy,” Sky aches. “You’re getting worked up again.”

He thumbs Twilight’s hairline, pushing a few fallen locks back into place. Twilight leans into the touch, and the act of it makes Sky feel a way he hopes he’ll have words for on some lovely, far-off tomorrow.

“I can’t be anything else,” whispers Twilight. “What am I if I can’t help?”

“Hey—H-Hey, look at me, Twilight—listen to me, okay?”

Sky’s eyes are wet again, every ounce of him spilling over, he knows he can’t keep the dither from his voice but he tries with all he is to make up for it in conviction, the words on his tongue a declaration, a truth. Twilight meets his eyes, and in the space between them, Sky laces their fingers together and swallows hard.

“You are Link of Ordon, Hero of the Twilight Era, friend to every creature with a heartbeat, big brother to all lost souls that wander into your arms.”

Sky watches Twilight’s face start to crumble, cracked lips trembling and eyebrows tilting up.

“But more than any of that, you are my friend, Twi,” Sky grips his hand tight, infusing the words with promise. “You are whatever you want to be.”

It’s been so long since Sky cried like this—openly and unattractively, without a care for who sees. The pair of them can’t look much worse, out here—Twilight, sick as a dog and shaking like a leaf. Sky, burns crisscrossed upon his hand as he sobs wet, heavy sobs. The both of them there, covered in mud and sweat and rain and mess, looking like one hell of a duo.

Sky’s free hand finds Twilight’s cheek, and he smiles through the tears.

“You’re amazing at what you do,” Sky says. “I look up to you, every day I do. But you—you need to—”

The feelings spill back over. He cries. He feels like he can’t stop crying, now that he’s started, after keeping it all locked away for so very long. Silent, then, a questionably lucid Twilight smears one of the rivulets away as it falls—and Sky sobs harder, incredulous, near-hysterical laughs bubbling up beyond the tears. “Stop helping.”

"I can't," Twilight says back with a bittersweet smile. "Don't you understand?"

"Of course I understand," Sky keeps crying. "Of course I do."

He tumbles closer again, holding onto his friend. The sun is rising.

“You’re wonderful, Twi,” Sky says. “You are amazing at being there for others. You’re… always gold, to me.”

Still a little uneasy in form—from fever or nerves, it’s impossible to say—Twilight brings his arms around the chosen hero, pulling himself as close to Sky as he can get. Sky softens to mush—one hand tangled in Twilight’s hair, the other rubbing circles into his aching shoulders, wound with years worth of knots.

“Please,” Sky begs, now. “You know how good it feels to be that, to do for others.”

“Of course,” Twilight says softly, muffled in Sky’s arms. “It’s the greatest honour of all.”

That is what it comes down to, isn’t it?

Courage, I mean. It’s really just…

Love, yeah.

“Would you like to do that for me, right now?” Sky says.

Twilight pulls away from Sky to hold his sunny gaze, blue as the world he flew down here from. He’s not sure where the chosen hero’s going with this—what exactly Twilight can do for him, powerless as he feels right now. Still, he trusts Sky. He nods, peering in.

“Then let me do it for you.”

And something clicks.

Twilight can’t say why it’s only hitting him now, but he understands, and he feels so—so wretched, yes, but he feels a lot of other ways, too. What Sky and him are fighting over is the very thing that draws them closer, heart-to-heart. A mirrored image, light and shadow, connected at the core and made of all the same. Twilight rubs hard at his face, palming tear stains away.

“I… of course,” Twilight says, voice fading. “Just… one last selfish impulse?”

Sky blinks, a little shocked—concerned?—at how quickly the storm raging between the both of them—so violent and tenacious—seems to have ceased, nothing but feathery clouds hanging above. He tilts his head to the side, eyebrow raised.

“That depends entirely on what you’re gonna say.”

Twilight gives him another smile. He’s careful to move slowly as he’s reaching around toward his pouch—to not worry Sky further, with everything that’s happened, tonight. Gauze in hand, he gathers a generous amount and tears, bringing Sky’s blistered hand to his own and getting to work wrapping it.

Sky gazes down at the gesture with eyes open and mouth parted in wonder, poeticisms painted across his heart as he takes it in. Twilight winds the bandage around the chosen hero’s scorched palm, this simultaneous, physical manifestation of the hurt they’ve caused each other. He pulls the healing cover across and over it, mending with all he is. Their hands touch, they brush—gentle as can be—this single point, where the two of them meet one another half-way. Some wonderful, impossible, never-ending cycle of making each other feel better.

And Twilight traces his hands across the burn once it’s bandaged, trying to keep the pain from his eyes.

“...I really am sorry, Red,” Twilight says after a moment’s quiet. “For all of this. I just… you’ve been working so hard, and look at you, you’re so exhausted.”

The rancher brushes the back of his knuckles against Sky’s cheekbone, the bags under his eyes that refuse to fade no matter how much rest he chases. Twilight wants so badly to smudge them away as though they’re just dirt, something he can wish to be gone—but they only grow darker and heavier with each passing day, twisting his heart into ropes.

“I... didn’t want to be one more burden for you to carry,” Twilight admits. “I didn’t want to stress you out.”

“That’s… a very loving reason,” Sky says, looking a little sad. “But… this isn’t stress, Twi, you know that, right? Not being able to reach you, that was stress. Watching you just—hurt, and feeling powerless to help.”

“I know,” he balls back up, shoulders at his ears. “I know.”

Sky believes him, without a shadow of a doubt. Twilight looks utterly small, right now—embarrassed and guilty and not at all feeling well, and Sky decides he’s been firm enough, tonight. Whatever wavelengths they existed on before, they’re riding the same one now, hand in hand, and that’s all that matters.

There’s a bandaged hand on Twilight’s shoulder, warm and inviting and far too forgiving, he thinks. The rancher drags his gaze toward it, feeling more than a little lethargic.

“I’m pretty good at carrying,” Sky lightens the mood. “My record is fifteen pumpkins.”

It’s like all the lingering static just clears from the air. There’s not a single cloud left up above.

“Fifteen?” Twilight says, grinning. “Hogwash.”

“I’ll show you!” Sky beams, balling his fists excitedly by his face. “We could make it a competition, once everyone’s better.”

“Oh you’re on, Red,” Twilight says, and the enthusiasm in his words crumbles mid-sentence as he keels over and coughs into the mud. Sky’s hand is on his forehead, then, and Twilight can’t help but think that it feels really nice, resting there—like that’s where it’s meant to be. He leans in again, instead of away, and with his eyes slipping shut he feels more than sees Sky brighten at the fact.

“How bad, doc?” Twilight says.

“Bad,” Sky replies, voice erring, nervous. “Next time I’m gonna need you to not go chasing thunderstorms with a fever this high.”

“Seems reasonable enough,” Twilight says, eyes still shut—and he’s kind of—sort of—falling asleep on Sky’s hand. “I’ll try my best.”

A pause, then. A deep, laboured breath, ragged and wheezy. Twilight opens his eyes, squints at the ground.

“Um, I think I’m gonna—”

In the blink of an eye, Twilight goes limp—dipping forward toward the ground and right into Sky’s arms. And yes, Sky’s worried, and hurting, and feeling for Twilight as he gathers his very unconscious friend up and props him onto piggyback—but a much louder part of him feels at ease, finally able to live beside him in his pain. Reveling in the thought of this secondhand misery, heart so enjoyably light.

It’s delightfully amusing, how the weight on his back makes him feel weightless. Sky smiles at the sun, painting the universe in shimmering yellow light.

They’re nearly home when Twilight finds himself back among the living, groaning a little into Sky’s shoulder. Fifteen pumpkins seems more believable now, he thinks—Sky’s a little wheezy, but he’s always a little wheezy, and despite this fact he holds Twilight aloft like it was what he was put on this earth to do.

“Sun’s rising,” Twilight sleepily rumbles, a feverish observation with no intended meaning, but Sky can’t help but stop and look for one, regardless. They’re atop one of the hills cradling Hateno, and with the sun new on the horizon, every inch of Hyrule looks Goddess-touched, gilded. Waves of amber light spill across the open plains, glisten on the sparkling ocean, cast the treetops in a resplendent glow that makes them hearthlike, warm and beckoning. Sky’s breath stays stuck in his chest, his heart skips a beat—and Twilight feels him still and can’t help but pull his eyes from their rest, gazing out alongside him at the astonishing sight.

Sky doesn’t have the words for it, just yet, but he knows he’ll find them some day—write them down for safe keeping, this beautiful moment he’s wandered upon, this breathtaking sentiment his soul has stumbled into.

Twilight nuzzles into his back, breathing a relieved sigh, and Sky looks upon the ornate horizon, etching the truth of it into his heart—

The sun sets red, and it rises golden.

Chapter Text

“Open wider, those fangs take up half your mouth—”

Twilight complies with a muted huff, resisting the growing urge to bite Hyrule as the traveler pokes and prods at him. In theory, yes, he understands why this is necessary—but the way his team are hovering around, gawking at the sight with laughter held upon their tongues is making it awfully hard to take it seriously himself.

“Hm,” Hyrule says after a moment. “Looks a lot less angry. Maybe you were telling the truth about feeling fine.”

The rancher wants to roll his eyes, but the gesture fizzles mid-way, leaving him looking into some insignificant corner of the room, sight averted. Time’s been slowly pulling his armour back on piece-by-piece, and the faith that rides in that fact is what Twilight decides to focus on, for now. With their leader, the others followed, gathering stock of their own things and preparing to set back out.

Hyrule checks his forehead again, eyes narrowed slightly in concentration.

“Yeah, I think he’s fit to travel,” he says after a moment, angling his head back, toward the rest of the room. “You really had us worried for a while there.”

“Sneaky one, he is,” Warriors tacks on, fiddling with his pauldron. “We could’ve gotten out of here much quicker had you not pushed it, you know.”

“I know, I know,” Twilight says, for what feels like the eightieth time that week. “Sky’s been sure to let me know plenty.”

“Hey, speaking of…” Wind pivots, an orchestrated swivel of his head pointed to the corner of the room…

Sky’s fast asleep nestled in his bedroll, oblivious to the commotion like he so often was. It had more or less been agreed upon that they’d try to get back on the road today, but not until Twilight’s good health was ensured, given the medic’s full seal of approval. Early morning was always what they hoped for, but the group had learned over time to plan several hours earlier than they intended, chronically distracted by a million different things in the process of getting ready. Generally, Sky was also a factor—even the best of them were slow to rise in the morning, but the chosen hero often needed a dedicated unit to keep him awake.

“Should we, uh,” Wind says. “Let’im know?”

The room is silent for a moment while everyone considers this, looking at the bundle of blankets that cocoons their predecessor within it. Then, unanimously, every head starts shaking in the negative.

“Let him sleep,” Wild says for them, tidying his counter-top. “Hylia knows he deserves it.”

The late morning turns to an early afternoon as they realize just how much of a pigsty the house is. Belongings are strewn about and mixed with one another, the few dishes Wild has are piled and rotting in the sink, someone’s clothes are in the risers—Twilight squints at that, wondering what the healthier of them did while he was busy, unconscious and living in fever dreams. It makes sense, of course—no one was really in any condition to keep things clean.

Surprisingly, though, spirits are high as they wander around the cramped space and do their best to make it sparkle again. Time’s humming that song that Epona likes, Twilight melts into its notes and joins right in as he dries the dishes that the old man’s washing. As lovely as Wild’s home is, they’re sure the champion would hardly be offended when they inform him they’ve seen more than enough of it.

The cleaning, in that regard, feels absolutely divine. Tangible, physical evidence that finally, finally, they can be on the move again. No one has to say it out loud—the spirit of the hero carries with it a wanderlust that is utterly unmatched, the hardship that blankets it almost worth it, for how much of the world it brings one to see. Downtime is hardly anyone’s strong suit.

Even Sky, snoring quietly on the floor and utterly dead to the world, can’t stay cooped up for too long—his downy wings longing for clouds beneath their feathers. The hurricane around him winds down, a bit—bodies move slower, taking the room in. They’re just about done, it seems—the floors could use a sweep, maybe, and Four remembers at the last second they have clothes out on the line, stubbornly refusing to dry in the damp autumn air. Overall, though, things are perfect—the weather is clear and Wild says it’ll stay that way, and by now the group knows to trust him. The house looks better than it did when they got here—lived in, but clean enough, charming scuff-marks on the wood floors.

The champion had always thought something was missing, before, an emptiness he couldn’t entirely place. Now, he thinks he understands.

“—nose goes, or somethin’,” Wind’s saying when Twilight comes back into the conversation.

“That’s rigged in the old man’s favour,” Legend argues, and Time chokes on his own laughter. Despite himself, the vet’s finger flies up.

“Vet should just stay on Sky-waking duty,” Four adds. “He’s the fastest.”

“He’s violent,” Twilight points out.

“That’s the only way to get the damn guy awake!”

“I can do violence,” Wind says, pleasantly.

“Are we doing violence?” Wild peeks his head in the door from outside, one bushy eyebrow raised.

“Often, I worry,” Time says with a smile that betrays his words. He leaves the sentence there with no further elaboration.

Twilight holds in a sigh while they wander off-topic, their focus shot and out of practice with all the time they’ve spent at rest. He’s about to rise to his feet without another word, about to wander over to Sky and take responsibility himself, when he’s interrupted—when something else gets the job done for him. Twilight freezes mid-gesture, elbow half-propped against his tented knee.

From Sky’s bedroll, the sound commands silence, thrown like a heavy blanket across the room—the wheeziest of coughs, struggling and tired.

The conversation is discarded. If collective heart-sink had a noise, Twilight thinks, it would be ringing in his ears, right about now. Maybe that soundless pain is its cadence, the lack of any words loud in its own right. Eight nervous sets of eyes begin to meet, eight furrowed brows knit deep with concern.

And, ever the grounded one, Time laughs a little, untying his hair and sitting back down.

“This is the timeline that Hylia abandoned,” Legend says, following suit.

Twilight’s moving like lightning—the others all try to be the first to Sky’s bedside, but they’re no match for the fierceness with which their rancher seeks to soothe. Instead, they wait on the fringes while he’s gingerly pulling covers back from Sky’s face.

True to himself, Sky keeps his eyes shut—stubborn as ever in waking, he turns to the side with a groan when the fan of sunlight travels across his eyelids. It draws another cough from him—muffled into the blankets he has curled around his fist—and he shivers needily in the absence of warmth.

There’s no denying the truth of it. Sky’s skin is paler than Twilight’s ever seen, its lively sunglow faded save only for the ominous red staining his cheeks while he breathes far too shallow, open-mouthed and whistling. After everything, after they were certain the ordeal was over, after they had accepted and reveled in their freedom to move on—of course it had finally happened. Of course Sky had fallen ill.

It’s only when Twilight’s hand is on his cheek that Sky stirs, eyes pink and weepy while he rises on his forearm and blinks sleepily up at the rancher. It’s as though he snaps back to form the second he registers Twilight, mirroring the gesture in a way that’s so predictably Sky, it makes a few of them laugh as they watch. Sky sits up fully and palms his friend’s face, concentrating intently in an attempt to check him for lingering touches of fever.

“Twilight…?” he croaks—how’d his voice get deeper?—his brow knit with worry. “How are you feeli—i—”

The way he tries to keep talking through it, it’s clear the sneeze sneaks up on Sky—a generous half of the boys see it coming in the way his face crumbles, though, hands covering their ears in a gesture that’s well-practiced. Sky’s loud even when he’s healthy, and the circumstances definitely haven’t helped that fact. He’s ear-splitting as ever, the noise heavy and laced with pain in every corner. It scrapes across his throat and makes him cough more, and Twilight has to pull back a little to avoid their heads knocking together with the way it bends his friend at the waist. Sky blinks again, looking genuinely confused, like he isn’t entirely sure what’s wrong, just that he knows something is.

“Aw, Red,” Twilight says, a bit of a frown forming on his face. “I’m… I’m fine…”

He presses his hand back to Sky’s forehead, trailing it down his sweaty face, his burning cheeks. Sky’s gaze follows, doe-eyed and curious, trying to piece everything together.

“You, on the other hand…”

A couple more slow, crawling blinks, like the chosen hero’s not sure if he’s still dreaming, or not. He swallows experimentally, then touches at his neck with a pinched look on his face.

“What’s—” Sky tries, but the words fight him every step of the way—they snag in his throat and he coughs harder this time, irritated tears in his eyes spilling over. He can hardly make it through his next breath, let alone a sentence, and Twilight’s behind him quicker than he can make note of—

“Touching,” he announces.

Through the betrayal of his lungs, Sky makes an attempt to nod his consent, and Twilight’s hands are on his back at lightning speed, soothing and strong.

The whole group softens, shoulders dropping alongside their slowly-falling expressions. It’s as though the air in the very room changes entirely, and one by one the young heroes start propping their things back up against the wall, wordlessly disrobing out of armour and gloves and bracers and layers.

“You, uh,” Twilight tries to flash a smile, but he knows he probably still looks a bit sad. “You sound a little under the weather, Sky.”

Sky opens his mouth to respond. Every last soul in the room can tell, instinctively, that it’s to argue this point. Instead, his nose twitches and he sneezes again, somehow even louder this time. On the outskirts of it all, Wind grumbles and hands Four what one can only assume is a pouch full of rupees, scowling the entire time.

“You look so surprised,” Hyrule says to Sky, bright as ever as he’s taking stock of their remaining elixir supply. “You had to have known this was coming.”

“But I—” Sky says, struggling to reign in another sneeze. “I held out so long—”

“Yeah, gotta admit it’s kinda freaky how well he did,” Four says, counting the change in his palm.

“Truly admirable, soldier,” Warriors drops to a sit next to him, earnest as he’s ever been. “Indeed, you fought valiantly until the end.”

The captain unfastens his baldric, gets to work pulling off his boots, and Sky can’t help but keep his eyes trained on these actions, concentration pushing through the fog in his head. It occurs to him just then, and a cursory glance across the room confirms it—oh. They were getting ready to head out. The house is spotless, things are packed, they were simply waiting for Sky to wake up, and he slept in, late, and now they’re staying here, late—

The words tumble out of him without much filter.

“I’m s—”

“If you’re a wise man you won’t finish that apology,” Time interrupts—firm, leaving no room for debate. Sky wants to try it anyways, guilt weighing heavy over his aching heart. It’s not fair, they’ve been through so much these past weeks—all of them were so sick he was worried they’d never get better, some nights, and on top of it all they were stuck in one place feeling all cooped up, it was miserable for them, and now instead of freedom or any reward for all their hard work they’re just being forced to hang back even more—

The agony is radiating off Sky in waves. Every soul in the room can feel it, a cloud of despair at the thought of keeping them shackled here. Sky’s always been that way—nervously punctual, wheezing from the back of the group, a million sorries on his tongue, this marked anxiety everyone feels alongside him. More than anything, it seems, he worries about time passing around him, leaving him behind. It’s written all over his face, now—it might just be the illness, but his eyes are watery and sparkling, his jaw set tight.

Naturally, of course, the boys begin to flutter around him like fairies, settling down around his bedside as though he’s fallen headfirst into a sacred spring.

More than a few of them approach with blankets in hand, and it isn’t until he’s being swaddled like a child that Sky realizes he’s shivering. All of them start sitting, re-opening bags, easing back into the domesticity of before—Hyrule inches closer, near Twilight, near the captain. The rancher palms for his waterskin, passing it over to Sky, who he knows has no idea where his own is—a wordless order to imbibe is spelled out in Twilight’s icy blues, and Sky takes it without complaint and shuts his eyes, drinking.

Wind’s voice comes next, light and breezy like the gales at his behest. Sky can’t see him with his eyes shut, but somehow, he knows the boy is leaning back on folded elbows, carefree as ever.

“It’s pretty nice here, Wild,” the sailor says with a relaxed smile in his voice. “I don’t think I mind staying for just a bit longer.”

Some of the older heroes seem to glow with pride. Hyrule gives Wind a smile, Warriors looks like a sun upon the earth. The captain draws himself closer to Sky, and it’s such a contrast to the distance he demanded before. He’s warm.

“I haven’t much gotten to enjoy the interior,” he says. “Seems as good a time as any to play catch up.”

As soon as Sky’s done drinking someone pushes something else into his free hand. He pulls his eyes sluggishly back open—Legend’s scrutinizing gaze is sizing him up, taking him in while he hands over the elixir. He’s silent, but the look on his face speaks volumes—drink and don’t argue with me—and so Sky complies, pressing it to his lips and choking the awful thing down. He makes a sour face when he’s done, going back for the waterskin.

“Told you,” Legend says, trying—everyone can tell—not to grin.

“Ugh,” Sky rasps out, draining Twilight’s water supply with a ferocity unmatched.

“No kidding,” Legend agrees, and takes the empty vial from the chosen hero’s hands. His voice goes up an octave as it falls across the room, “Old man, put the damn kettle on before we lose the patient.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Time says, wandering toward the stovetop, and Sky squints at the room as it moves around him, trying to put his finger on the feeling creeping so lovingly into his racing heart.

No one… no one’s upset.

No one’s disappointed—if they are, they’re hiding it damn well. No one’s complaining, there’s not a single particle of negativity floating across the autumn air. Every last one of them returns right back to how things were, back when only Legend was ill—talking amongst themselves, doing things with their hands, burying their noses in books. Sky doesn’t understand why he’s tearing up—fevers never made him weepy before, but his soul spills over in a way that’s notably distinct from its usual overflow, the waters rich with something he can’t identify.

The hearth kicks back up, crackling itself to life, and Sky sniffles, feeling a little bit like he’s sprung a leak.

Whatever these ribbons draped across his heart tell of, he tries to zero in on them, to memorize their cozy warmth. It doesn’t shoo away how bad he feels for holding everyone back, especially when they’d all done their best to fight hard and recover… but there’s a harmony living on his friends’ faces he feels he’s never seen before, something he wonders if he could identify if only he were feeling a little better.

For now, Sky just curls up tight, rubbing at his stuffy nose and leaning on Warriors’ shoulder. Twilight’s hands are in his hair, the captain’s hands are around his waist. Nails scratch his scalp, and it shudders down over him like a sunbeam, warm and buzzy in all the best ways.

“How’s going back to sleep sound, Red?”

Sky’s way ahead of him, drifting far away. “Divine.”

Legend’s not sure when the sun vanished, exactly—it had stayed clear for hours before the overcast rolled in, sunlight pulling dew from the grass long into the afternoon. Now, the skies are an ugly grey—not telling of anything particularly ominous, just dreary and cold as they mix with the chimney smoke, billowing upward in the hidden sunset.

“Three fives,” Warriors announces, throwing the cards in question down.

“Bullshit,” Wind sneers, coming back to himself. The captain narrows his eyes with a smirk, motioning him forward, and when Wind flips the discards over it looks as though he’s going to try to flip Warriors upside down as well.

“I know you’re cheating, asshole!”

“Pot, kettle—” Warriors counters. “I’m fairly certain you invented cheating.”

“Time came before me, he invented cheating—”

Time pulls the Lens of Truth away from his eye, expression unchanging. “Nonsense.”

They go on bickering, and Legend elects not to participate for once, all the space for antagonism in his body occupied by other measures. This argument breaks out every time they play cards, and still they never reach the conclusion that every last one of them is cheating. It’s one of those hero’s spirit caveats, or whatever—noble courageous heart, absolutely rotten sportsmanship, the point is none of them are free from sin. Legend briefly wonders if he could leave—for the bathroom, obviously—and crawl back as a painting on Wild’s cabin wall, eyeing everyone’s hands for a quicker victory.

Someone shouts so loud their voice cracks, and Sky rolls over from his post in bed, head in his hands and with a low whimper in his throat.

“Can you guys put a damn sock in it?” Legend tries to whisper, but it comes out sounding more like a raspy scream. Seven heads turn to face him, and instead of being met with the angry ruffle of rose-gold they’re expecting, they see the veteran hero looking impossibly soft. The back of his hand meets Sky’s forehead, and Legend looks like he might pull a muscle with how tight-strung his whole body is. The squabble the rest of the boys are having is discarded—they play in almost complete silence, feeling more than a little bad.

Legend’s teeth scrape across his bottom lip, he rocks a little on crossed legs. Sky’s burning up—he’s burning up badly, he feels hotter than Legend remembers the others feeling. He wonders if it’s just his mind playing tricks on him, but the way the chosen hero’s tossing and turning and moaning, he feels like it might be the case.

And Sky’s breathing really loudly, Legend doesn’t like the sound of it at all. He’s so congested that the veteran can see it, feel it when he touches the swell of Sky’s face, it makes his heart drop and twist and hurt and he feels like he kind of wants to punch a wall to make the excess of it leave. Sky breathes fast and depthless through his mouth, and Legend is starting to become really uneasy with the way his airways crackle and snap with every unsteady inhale.

That wasn’t there with the others. They were wheezy but it wasn’t anything like the awful sounds coming from his sick friend, now. Something’s wrong with Sky, and Legend doesn’t know much of anything about medicine or care, but he’s going crazy sitting still. He tries his best—to emulate the chosen hero’s methods, reaching a hand out and trailing it through Sky’s sweat-soggy tangles. Half-awake, Sky rubs at his itchy nose, curling up tighter.

“Never thought you of all people would be the mother hen type.” Legend’s not expecting to hear his friend’s voice, or whatever bad impression of it the illness has twisted it into. He jolts a little before realizing he doesn’t give a fuck, actually, and keeps on with what he’s doing, petting Sky’s head.

“Yeah, well,” Legend looks elsewhere. “I never thought you of all people would be capable of getting yourself this sick.”

Sky’s smiling his same old smile—despite how uncomfortable Legend knows he’s feeling. His optimism is almost infuriating—doesn’t he know he’s allowed to be upset? The chosen hero is about to open his mouth to say something more, but he can barely get near the words before his body goes haywire and he starts coughing, and coughing, and coughing, and once he starts he cannot stop.

Legend’s there on the fringes, hands pulled back, waiting for the fit to subside so he can dive back in, rub Sky’s back, bring him water, do something that isn’t sitting there frozen.

It doesn’t.

Sky stumbles as he’s trying to bring himself to a higher rest—shaking, suffocating, propped up on one wobbling forearm. He’s coughing so hard Legend can feel it in his own throat, every breath in seems like it’s more painful than the last. It isn’t until Sky’s face is going red that Legend’s able to find his words, refusing to give a rat’s ass anymore about how small and scared he sounds.

“Guys,” he yelps out toward the rest of them, completely interrupting whatever irrelevant thing they were talking about. “Help.”

All pretense is lost as the group looks to the scene—Legend looking like a terrified child with hands braced, shaking, and Sky coughing with an ugly rattle behind his breastbone, crumbling to nothing before their eyes. He’s sweating, and trembling, and fighting hard as ever to get a single breath in—but they come shallow and wrong, a third of what they’re supposed to be, refusing to fill his lungs with anything that matters. He gasps and wheezes and falls apart, and he doesn’t stop, and Warriors and Hyrule are on their feet so fast it seems like the two of them might collide with one another like flint and steel.

“Sit him up,” Warriors barks the order on his way there. “Now!”

Hyrule’s presence seems to wash over the veteran like a wave of calm, and that alongside the very clear instruction see him moving without another word. Legend and Hyrule knit their arms beneath Sky’s own—pulling him up carefully, like they’re nervous he might shatter if handled too indelicately. He coughs all the way through it, tears streaming down his face, hands clawing madly at the pin that keeps his sailcloth in place.

Something’s really wrong, the way he’s treating his most prized possession—like he needs as far away from it as possible, like he’s desperate to get it off his person, Sky would never do this if he were well. Warriors pulls the chosen hero’s hands from it with a twist in his heart, conflicted that he has to use such force—but he’s careful to make up for it as he unhooks the item and pulls it from Sky’s neck, draping it across the chosen hero’s lap, instead. This seems to suffice, and Sky curls towards it, holding it tight and bunched up in the gaps in between his fingers, like it’ll save him from whatever has him in its clutches.

Propping him up seemed to be the right idea, because it’s only then that Sky’s able to wheeze out, through impossible breaths, “Bag—Potion—”

The rest of them scramble, trying to identify whoever’s closest to Sky’s things. It ends up being Four, who’s shockingly calm despite everything—he throws open the flap with purpose etched across his face, holding himself together with impressive aplomb. There’s quite a few potions in here—most of them green and glittering, the glow of a single bottled fairy. Four tries to project from where he is across the room—“Which potion?”

Legend grits his teeth, coiling around with his hand on Sky’s cheek. He pats at the chosen hero a little, like he’s trying to wake him from a dream. “Hey, Featherhead—stay with us, damnit—which potion?”

And Sky tries, he really does—but he can’t force the words again, so he aims his quickly fading vision in Wild’s general direction, hand shaking as he curls his thumb in and signs, blue.

“Blue one!” Wild tells Four, and Four’s hand is on it before the champion can finish the word, and at Sky’s side even faster than that. The chosen hero tries to grab it himself, but Four’s yanking the cork on his way over and Warriors won’t risk Sky dropping the thing. The captain holds it firm in his hands, raising the bottle to Sky’s lips.

They can tell from the forced rise and fall of his chest that he’s trying with everything he is to focus his breathing enough to choke the potion down—gradual sips, steady and slow. When the bottle’s half drained Sky paws at Warriors' hand and pulls to the side, and the vet’s practically snarling as Sky ducks toward him—

“Stop being stubborn,” Legend demands. “Finish it, Sky.”

The chosen hero shakes his head, and he’s not coughing much, anymore—small sounds, behind his teeth, settling down. “I only have one of those.”

He pauses, inhaling deep and long—as long as he can manage, the breath shaking as he lets it go.

“I need to conserve it in case that happens again.”

“Wait, was that normal?!” Wind’s pale as a sheet. “You looked like you were drowning!”

Questions make Sky’s head swim. He shuts his eyes, he doesn’t want to talk, his throat feels like it’s been torn to ribbons, he’s hot and he feels weak and there’s something sitting on his chest, it aches like it’s never ached before. He nods, voice struggling against itself.

“It doesn’t happen often, just when I move a little too much or too fast for too long,” he explains. “I always have an air potion on me, just in case. They’re the only cure we’ve found.”

“But…” Wild fusses. “You’re not moving at all.”

Warriors runs his fingers through perfectly-coiffed tresses, eyes on the ground.

“His body’s still working overtime,” he says, turning to Sky. “Does this often happen when you’re ill?”

Sky squints at nothing, trying to remember any incidents from before, but he comes up dry. “I don’t… think so? Never… like that.”

A nervous hush falls over the room. Several of them exchange unsure glances, not at all pleased by that answer or the lack of experience it brings.

At some point Wild had nicked the half-full potion bottle, and now the champion’s eyes are narrowed at its crystal-clear finish as if the action will tell him of its components. An air potion, Sky said? He’s never heard of anything like that.

“I don’t suppose you know the recipe for this one?”

Sky shakes his head, eyes downcast. “Luv brews me those ones for free, but she’s tight-lipped as ever about her process.”

Another silence sinks in, uncomfortable like moisture hanging in the air after rainfall. The lot of them eye the metaphorical wall they’ve hit, cycling through items and weapons at their behest in a bid to climb it, coming up dry despite how well prepared they feel they all should be.

Time crosses his arms, and though its a moment before he says anything, the gesture in itself commands their attention.

“We’ll just have to ensure the situation doesn’t call for it again,” he says, firm as ever. “One more dose is not enough.”

Twilight had wandered to Sky’s side, at some point, crouching down for no reason other than to be closer to his friend. He’s got a freshly-moistened rag in his hand, impossibly gentle as he wipes some of the newborn sweat off Sky’s face. The chosen hero leans into the gesture, shutting his eyes. He’s exhausted.

“What helps, Red?” Twilight says as he’s working. “I bet you know.”

“Sitting up. Sitting up was good,” Sky says, weakly. “Cold. Cold air. Cold drinks. It feels like my insides are on fire when that happens, so…”

“Legend,” Warriors says, and the veteran hero’s already moving toward his pack.

“Way ahead of you.”

He pulls out an ice rod, and Sky’s focus is lost somewhere in the burble of conversation kicking up while everyone puts their heads together to improvise. Wild’s got his ice weapons too, in case they need extra power, that’s the last cohesive thing he hears before he starts drifting in and out of sleep. His eyes are tired. His lungs are tired. Sky is tired.

Someone’s nudging him back down toward his pillow—on a better day he might be able to discern who, today he’s hot and uncomfortable and itchy and everything’s a little unbearable, but the feeling of being cradled and safe as he dozes off is pretty nice. Still, he can’t ignore the squeeze in his heart as it hits him how rotten he feels—gods, they all felt this bad, they must have been in so much pain. Sky wants to leap from bed and hug every last one of them and never let go, no one deserves to feel the way he feels right now. Right now, though, Sky’s not sure he’d be able to lift his arms above his head, much less cuddle them the way they deserve to be cuddled.

Instead, he just thinks it, as loudly as he can—you guys deserve so much better—and buries his face in his sailcloth, sending silent apologies through the aether to Zelda for getting his germs all over its folds.

The night rolls in, and Sky gets worse.

The quiet popping behind his chest refuses to relent—a tiny, otherwise unobtrusive sound, but it screams like cannonfire in its constant recurrence. He coughs like he’s trying to keep it away—mouth closed, deep in his lungs—but he’s not fooling anyone with the way he struggles and heaves, coiling in on himself like a serpent in the snow.

The fever’s stopped climbing, but it’s plateaued somewhere high—Sky shivers and sweats and tosses and turns, every attempt to keep his eyes shut is futile and he snaps back awake in minutes, heart racing and eyes heavy.

Most days, the group of them were certain of one single truth: Sky was good at sleeping. Sky was good at staying asleep. Sky could sleep through the end of the world.

Tonight, he’s wide awake. 

The chosen hero’s been trying to get back to bed for hours—fever dreams throw him from sleep, coughing fits pull him out of the slow drift back, his throat throbs and aches and itches so bad he feels it rootlike in his ears. Every nerve he has feels cut open and bleeding, a slicing pain in every ounce of him that demands to be acknowledged and leaves no room for rest.

Time doesn’t comment on it when Wild grinds up some blue nightshade and sprinkles a generous helping into his tea blend. He supposes that’s fair—in all its power in utterly knocking the drinker out, it probably wasn’t made to fight whatever has Sky under siege right now.

Their skyborn is already propped up when the kettle whistles, half-awake on Twilight’s chest in an attempt to calm down another violent fit of hacking. Time sits down beside the pair, desperate to not let the thrumming ache in his heart show on his face—and when Sky offers him a sleepy, grateful smile and takes the mug from his hands, he thinks he’s probably failed in what it does to his composure.

Does Sky’s patience have no end? His resilience in love is so unmatched, so persevering—Time thinks, in that moment, that he finally understands where their stubborn spirit comes from.

He can tell it’s difficult for Sky to work up the appetite, even for something as easy as tea. But he does—slowly, he gets through it—and for the first time in what feels like ages, he’s out like a light as he lays back down, looking as peaceful as one as sick as him can.

As soon as the kettle itself is drained, Hyrule has it in his hands, and he’s grinding something with mortar and pestle, lip jutting out in concentration. It’s some kind of herb—the smell is pungent, cool and sharp—and a couple of the boys hover in curiosity as he’s tossing the weeping leaves into the water that fills the receptacle. The heat’s left on low, and before long the air is muggy with the weaving scent of mint and woodsmoke.

Legend draws the covers over Sky as he’s changing out the washcloth resting atop his blazing forehead. At this point, he’s done pretending like he isn’t proud of the work he’s doing, here. Sky would do—Sky had done—the same for him.

With the chosen hero mostly settled, Legend waddles himself on knees back over to the rest of the group, who are sitting in a messy circle on Wild’s floor, contemplative. Sky’s quiet, save for the ever-present whine in his stressed lungs, silencing itself a little with the humid, cool-tanged air. Twilight’s the one who breaks the silence, letting a heavy sigh fall from behind his chest, one they’d collectively been sitting on for hours, now. He looks at his socks, poking out from beneath crossed legs—and so does everyone else, feeling much too heavy to even raise their heads.

Sky coughs, softer than he has been.

“It’s not… good enough,” Hyrule finally says, desperate to piece the words together. “We’re treating his symptoms, and it’s working, but it’s just—not—”

“It’s not Sky,” Wind agrees, balling his fists.

The room falls silent again, soaking in those words. The sailor’s exactly right—as effective as they are as a unit, no one has the soothing power that Sky does. Until now it seems it was impossible to put a finger on—but there's a certain emptiness even in all they're doing, a fuzzy silhouette of what they long for that's difficult to crystallize.

Time raises his one-eyed gaze from the floor, arms crossed—he’s been stuck in that stance all day, like letting go of its shape would mean crumbling himself. Pieces fall into place, and so he tries a smile.

“He was there for each of us,” Time says, putting plain words to their anxious thoughts. “It stands to reason we’d all ache to reciprocate proper.”

“Sky’s different, though, he—” Legend hunches his shoulders up. “—he doesn’t just take care of people, like Roolie said, he’s tapped into some… other nonsense that just makes you feel…”

The vet’s sentence trails off into nothing, and the quietude takes its place once more. It’s clear, in that moment, that all of them are lost in fever-hazy memories, trying to fall back into every precious moment shared with Sky and his gilded soul.

There in their memories, the events turn to sensations turn to sentiments, made only of flowering bursts, splashed like watercolour against the canvas of their hearts. Back in Ordon, Twilight’s bandaging Colin’s skinned knee, and the boy’s looking up at him with eyes that sparkle like starlight over the rolling prairie. Warriors falls back, arms spread with laughter booming across the empty battlefield, held aloft mere inches from the ground by a thousand tiny, sunlit hands that cheer captain! in his ears. Those same tiny hands are fewer as they rest at Time’s neck, weaving braids dotted with buttercups and wildflowers as he naps in the kingdom’s wide open fields. Hyrule leans back against the cave wall, relishing in its coolness, the relief of a safe niche to sleep while the rain patters down in lulling rhythm outside. Wind’s toes are buried in hot sand, salt on his tongue and seaspray nipping at his ears. In the castle, the princess of Hyrule steals away to bring dinner to the knight she hates, she can’t stand him, he drives her positively mad, and it’s mere coincidence that the meal is spiced to utter perfection. Pulling closer to the light of the forge, Four falls asleep to a metal lullaby, the glow of art taking shape warming his fingertips as he and him and him and him drink their tea. Legend awakens to a clear sky—not a cloud in sight, not a single choppy wave—and there on the fabled horizon he sees the shores of—

Home.

Softly as anyone’s ever heard him, he says it aloud, eyes glowing a little as the realization hits.

“Sky feels like home.”

There’s a lot of ways to account for how they see that same horizon in perfect tandem—the immortal soul they share, the magic that swirls around their kind, the way the Goddess sews their hearts and minds together. More realistically, though, they’re brothers—it takes no divine touch or otherworldly enchantments to stitch two or three or nine headspaces into a perfect quilt of one.

“That’s it, isn’t it…?” Twilight marvels, blue eyes wide.

Murmurs of wonder and agreement spread throughout them. How did he always know? How was he able to see through to those comforts of home, draw them closer to where they were right now?

“That’s easy, then!” Wind says brightly. “We just have to figure out what he misses from his home, right?”

Easier said than done, Legend thinks. Sky’s home is a fairytale, suspended in the clouds in an era so long ago it’s mere myth to most of them. He’s not exactly tight-lipped about all the goings on he remembers, but they feel difficult to emulate before Legend’s even thought about them.

Wild stands with purpose, pulling the Sheikah Slate off his hip. The expression on his face is the same one he wears in the heat of battle—complete focus, like he’s somewhere else, like time is moving at a snail’s pace around him, nothing existing besides him and all he seeks to accomplish.

“Who wants to help me cook?”

Squinting at the simmering pot, Wild bounces his knee with an increasing ferocity. It’s poetic, he thinks—stirring the orange concoction with the ladle Sky so lovingly crafted him—as he attempts to make sense of this otherwise basic soup that the captain had called heavenly.

He sips it again. It’s good, it’s definitely done by his own tastes—maybe lacking more spice, but the others have no appreciation for spice, and this is for Sky. He makes a little noise of discontent, scrutinizing the food.

“Staring at it isn’t going to make it fix itself,” Legend says, poking at his side with a gilded index finger. “Captain, make yourself useful.”

An acrid look is shot his way, and Warriors pulls the ladle from its rest in the cookpot, sipping it himself. It’s held on his tongue for a moment—to savour, to analyze, and then simply for mere pleasure—and his eyes fall poetically skyward as he’s trying to zero in on what conclusion to come to.

Skyloftians did something to pumpkin soup. By all means, it made no sense—he’d only been there a short while, but he was certain the sky was far less in ingredients, he doesn’t understand how that lent itself to so much more. No dairy, little fruit, was it really all in the spices and aromatics? He just couldn’t put his finger on it. Sky’s cooking was the closest to replicating it that he’d tasted thus far, but Sky couldn’t exactly help with that, right now. Warriors sighs, shaking his head.

“A little more ginger, perhaps,” he suggests. “But this… might be as close as we’re getting.”

“What about coconut milk?” Wind leans over the pot.

“No coconuts in the sky,” Warriors says.

“Apples?” Legend tries.

“No apples in the sky.”

Wild’s about to dunk his head in the soup in an attempt to drown himself. “Beef?”

“Hylia on high, there are no cows in the sky!”

“Okay, so what about protein in general?” the champion fires back. “Sky likes fish—”

“You have tasted his recipe, soldier,” the captain says, two fingers folded, his forehead leaning upon them. “Tell me, was there fish in it?”

Wild can only sigh in response to that, going right back to cutting ginger as finely as he can, periodically tossing scraps of it into the swirling, spice-speckled liquid.

Eventually, he relents, ladling his best impression of Sky’s home dish into several bowls and stowing them away in the slate where they’ll stay piping hot for the foreseeable future. His helpers stay at the pot to get a second batch going, and the champion feels like that’s a simple enough task, but still he makes a mental note to not spend too long in the house and away from their culinary incapability.

Peeking his head in the door, Wild’s met with the sight of the rest of them—looking about as helpless as ever, present on every side of Sky. Twilight, more than anyone, looks terrible—heavy bags under his eyes, face shuttered tight in agony, he almost looks worse than the sick one he’s caring for. They’ve got Sky sat up again, but this time he’s asleep through it, leaning once more on the rancher’s torso with eyebrows drawn together in fever and pain.

“He… doesn’t look great,” Wild says, moving closer. Hyrule’s in the middle of pressing his ear to Sky’s chest as the champion enters, listening carefully to the sounds coming from his friend. He pulls away after a torturous moment, eyes on the floor.

“His lungs just sound really bad, I—I don’t—”

Four’s eyes remain elsewhere while he’s deep in thought. There’s a blue glow on the windowpane they've become well-acquainted with—just barely there, a reflection of a reflection. It’s a distinct blue in this era, he knows—they’d seen it plenty as they trekked back to Wild’s cottage, its sapphire gleam lighting their path. On the river outside, the mirror of the ethereal tower wavers and shifts in the running waters, and Four’s eyes concentrate on it, calculating.

“Hey,” Four says to the room, a little suddenly. “Do you think he’s fit to spend some time outside?”

Time and Twilight share one of their looks, and Hyrule tilts his head side to side, looking a bit like a puppy who’s trying to hone in on a distant sound. The answer refuses to come to him naturally.

“I… I feel like he’d be dead on his feet,” Hyrule says. “Why, though?”

Four’s eyes fall back to the glistening glass of the window, and in that moment Twilight too pieces together what he’s going for.

“Of course,” the rancher says. “Cub, you can teleport to those towers with your strange magic, right?”

“Yeah, but…” Wild looks nervous. “You want me to take Sky with me? Teleporting can be… a little tiring.”

They all look ready to shut the idea down when they hear that, all but Four, who keeps on—

“He’ll have a rougher recovery at this altitude,” the smithy says. “Sky was born and raised above the clouds. He needs thinner air.”

All eyes fall back on Sky as he leans there, wheezing and fighting and barely able to catch a break. Of course, that makes so much sense—the reason he was always so tired, the reason he had trouble keeping up, the reason he struggled to get air in his lungs even when he wasn’t ill like this.

“Is that really it?” Hyrule says, contemplative.

Time angles his head toward a shoulder when he notices the gazes pointed toward him for input. “It’s certainly worth a shot.”

Sky writhes against Twilight, pitching forward to cough more. It sounds a lot worse, fills all of them with an urgency they can’t bear to ignore. The noise crawls wickedly out from deep within him, angry and inflamed and begging for relief. All Twilight can do is knit his digits through Sky’s messy hair, praying to every god he’s known the name of that this nightmare passes soon.

Wait. Wait.

Wild all but leaps forward, resolve burning Sheikah-blue all across his eyes.

“If he needs to be high up,” the champion says. “I might have somewhere even better.”

Sky wakes at dawn, which is never a good sign.

The sun’s just began its slow crawl across the sky, he can tell by the way his teeth chatter, his muscles ache. There’s a pounding in his head that begs him to shut out every light, and so he buries his face into his sailcloth and tries desperately to smell a single molecule of Zelda through the congestion hammering across his face.

It’s so cold. Why is it so cold? He ducks further down into the impossible amount of blankets that’ve been piled atop him, chasing a warmth that always seems five steps ahead.

Something glows warm at his side. Fi, he registers with a smile, and nudges closer to her scabbard. Zelda on one side of him, Fi on the other—it’s pleasant, here. Enveloping. He thinks maybe being sick isn’t so bad.

And then he’s coughing again, and those thoughts are cut short. He’s so cold, but his lungs feel like he’s breathing nothing but flames, every last gasp leaves him with ten more. It runs his throat far too raw, and Sky feels like there’s no relief for miles—there’s a creeping horror that comes along with the realization that he’s never been this ill in his life.

He coughs. His head pulses, his face pulses, his body pulses. Constant, thrumming, without end. He curls closer to the remnants of his dearest friends, begging their leavings to take him somewhere nice.

“Are you awake, Sky?”

A soft voice—raspy, like it rarely saw use. Wild, Sky registers, holding back another fit.

“Yeah,” he confirms, and wants to say more, but his head is too clogged to fit any more thoughts in, so he leaves it at that. More coughs crawl up his windpipe, and he tries with all he is to mute them, turn them small and timid instead of the volume they crave. It works—kind of—but Twilight stirs anyways, wide awake and on Sky faster than he can blink.

“Touching,” he says.

“Mhm,” Sky mumbles, eyes shut.

Twilight’s palms on his face make him shiver, and he scolds his body silently for being so impolite. It’s nice to touch Twilight, he reminds it with a metaphorical hand on his hip. As if to defy, he leans into the rancher’s palm, so wrapped up in the gesture he doesn’t hear the nervous way he clicks his tongue.

“I think it’s time, Cub,” Twilight says.

“Roger,” Wild says. “Wake the others for me, would you?”

Twilight nods—Sky feels the motion travel to his friend’s hands before they leave his face. Finally, he blinks his eyes back open, clearing his throat with a wince.

“What’s happening…?”

“I think we figured out a way to make you feel a lot better,” Wild says. “But we… need to teleport with the slate to make it happen. It’ll feel a mite weird, but I promise it’ll be over quick.”

Sky nods at that, still not feeling much like talking. Twilight’s back at his side with a yawn, then—one that passes through the group as they begin shuffling around, gathering supplies. The rancher is sitting him up, and he lets himself become a ragdoll in Twilight’s arms, leaning his head on his friend’s shoulder. He was right, it is comfy.

On every side of him is movement—the patter of feet light on the floorboards, the shifting of leather and wool and metal lulling Sky back to sleep. We’re leaving, okay, Sky notes as his friends become a quiet flurry on every side of him. Not for long—they leave their armour, most of their weapons, a few swords are strapped on but not much else. Where are we going? Has teleporting always been an option, why’d we walk all the way here from the portal? Sky has a lot of questions, and he can’t really discern whether it’s them or the fever that makes him feel so dizzy. The world moves around him, and he leans on Twilight and lets it.

The chosen hero doesn’t know when he fades—only that when he comes back, it’s to Wild jostling him as gently as he’s able, trying to pull him back to the world. Sky wakes up coughing—what else is new—and blinks himself back with a sore groan. He’s being lifted, again—or rather, nudged upward by the arm beneath his own—and he fights against the protest of his legs to stand, leaning on the champion for support. It feels pretty rotten, being vegetative like this—but Sky reminds himself there’s nothing he can do about it, scoots closer to the image from before of how serene his friends looked at the thought of taking care of him.

It feels good to love, he reminds himself. Don’t you dare be a hypocrite now, Link.

“Alright,” Wild’s voice fades in over the otherworldly beeping of the slate. “We all have to be touching for this to work.”

“Delightful,” Warriors croons. “Join hands, class.”

Snickers of laughter. What a lovely sound, after so long without its chorus. Wild had already been supporting Sky’s weight, someone else grips his shoulder—Time, he can tell, from the wiry imprint his fingers leave.

“—is this gonna hurt?” Wind says, sounding a little anxious.

“Nah, it’s easier than the portals,” Wild assures. “Just, y’know… brace yourself.”

Sky hears their voices coalesce into a cloud of general acknowledgement, and then Wild’s shifting at his side and counting down from five. He keeps his eyes shut, feeling a little shy standing up like this—all the looks probably angled where he’s barely on his feet, the knowledge that this little side mission of theirs hinges entirely on whatever it does for him. Despite being so vulnerable all this time, it’s only now he feels the heat on his cheeks, the errant thought of being exposed.

He doesn't have much time to dwell upon that. The champion hits the final digit, and Sky’s nowhere, and he’s everywhere, and he’s in a million pieces. The wind across the plain, the rush of it through his hair—he feels like he’s free-falling for the first time in ages, the velocity of it whistling past his ears as he throws his chest forward and recklessly dives. He’s buzzing and cold and tingling and a million other sensations he has no words for, it’s just noise, fuzzy noise that yells until it doesn’t, burns until it harmonizes. And it does harmonize, and he’s back in one piece, and his eyes are still shut but he knows with absolute certainty that there’s solidity to him once again.

“Holy shit,” he hears Wind gasp out, and for a moment, he thinks it’s a reaction to whatever that was, until someone says—

“Sky,” Four. “Open your eyes.”

And when he does, he’s certain he’s dreaming.

Blue on every side of him, stretching as far as the eye can see—the horizon is unending, like an ocean of limitless clouds. They hang at his feet—white and fluffy and beneath, oh Hylia, beneath!—and when they break apart the vastness of Hyrule looks so small below, its massive sprawl a single ant as birdcalls ring above it, around him. The sun lights the world so different, up here—touching every heavenly inch of the sky, the sky, the sky.

Sky falls to his knees and bawls.

The rest of the boys make a few noises of general concern, slowing his descent to the mossy stone underfoot with arms spread across the chosen hero’s form. He hits the ground gently—or maybe he doesn’t, he’s too caught up in the glowing gold of the sunlit cloudcover to remember that pain as a sensation exists.

“Great work, champ!” Legend near-guffaws. “You killed him!”

The ache in Sky’s throat had seized his words long before this moment, but now it’s the awe that keeps them from coming, like his body and mind are searching for a million different ways to render him mute. He thinks, after a lifetime of voicelessness, that this is his favourite silence of all. His lungs relax, he breathes—he breathes deep, it’s so easy to breathe all of a sudden, even with tears clogging him up twofold, his best day on the Surface can’t even compare to his worst up in the Sky.

“Red?” Twilight kneels in front of him, brushing his bangs away from his face. His tone is worried, but there’s a smile on his face, woven into the tilt of his eyebrows.

“What…” Sky tries, choked up and croaky. “Where are we?”

Wild stares out at the heavenly expanse before them, his chest puffed up proudly as he curves his body back with a hand on his hip.

“Welcome to Divine Beast Vah Medoh, Sky.”

Legend takes a few steps forward, throwing out a hand for effect as he talks, “Those sure are words.”

The urge to explore has already set in, and Wind and Hyrule tear off across the ancient contraption, intent to see every inch of the thing. Wind’s jumping across platforms with deku leaf in hand when Time gives Wild a look and a bit of a grunt, “You’re certain it’s safe up here, Cub?”

“Positive,” Wild responds. “My mate Teba’s on the upkeep, as long as they don’t mess with the controls we’ll be fine.”

“Controls?” Twilight eyes him.

“I have her running on autopilot right now,” explains the champion. “But Medoh is… well, she’s an airship, I guess.”

Beneath the awning adjacent, Hyrule and Legend are admiring the intricate designs carved into the divine beast’s walls, their conversation far-off and unheard. Four settles down into an alcove of his own, getting to work repairing some equipment he’d been procrastinating on. They find simplicity where they can atop this grand place, making themselves at home within its walls and its wide-open wings all the same. Sky stays where he is, eyes wet and massive.

“Probably best we keep to the upper levels,” Wild says. “But we can definitely stay here until he recovers. I’ve spent a couple nights up here myself, it’s a little chilly but it’s hospitable.”

Twilight’s not sure he trusts anyone here not to touch the control panel, and so he makes a mental note to lightly guilt-trip them away from the idea with only the gentlest of reminders that Sky needs them on their best behaviour. For now, he turns back to the chosen hero in question. Knuckles at the tear-tracks beneath his bright blue eyes, Twilight wipes the moisture away and speaks as gently as he can.

“How’s that sound, Red?” Twilight gives his shoulder a firm pat as if to ground, but Sky’s floating in the blue far up above, impossible to reach.

Entranced, aloft, surrounded in empyrean, pure-white bliss—Sky rises on shaking legs, looking like he’s walking on ice as he takes a few steps forward, stumbling. He’s nowhere near the edge, but still Twilight trails behind him, nervous he might just dive off of it. Sky is slow and staggering as he walks, but he walks with purpose toward the aimless horizon, and the action draws silence from everyone else, too, its sentiment bleeding into all that hover around him.

A gust of wind blows past, ruffling his hair—

Sky’s on birdback, wild and free—up as high as he can go, Skyloft looks like a tiny green dot below Aepon’s talons. He takes his hands from the harness and throws them above his head, fists balled as he whoops, and cheers, and laughs—and his loftwing laughs along, a wheezy-sounding chattering from the back of his beak, powerful and proud.

Drop! Aepon sends Sky excitedly, and the chosen hero’s still cackling as he dismounts and falls, arms at his sides to dive faster, more effectively. His heart’s pounding in his ears as cloudspray whips at his face, he keeps his eyes shut tight from the force and leans into the feeling of all his nerves going alight. He feels more than sees Aepon zeroing in once more, pulling back in his descent with arms angled out—and then his fingernails tangle ungracefully in scarlet feathers, their softness betraying the wild soul who bears them. Aepon caws an ear-splitting caw, pulling into the sharpest turn he can manage without throwing Sky off again, and Sky laughs, and laughs, and laughs—

He falls back to his knees, closer (but not too close) to the edge—and he won’t leap from it today, but heavens, how he longs to. The wind is blowing, the clouds are new, the sun is rising—and Sky throws his arms out, desperate to feel more of its bite across his skin. He’s laughing, he’s crying, he’s sobbing—

He’s home, he’s home, he’s home.

Drawing closer to the fire, Sky tucks his chin into the downy feathers at his neck in a bid to warm up. Wild’s snowquill set definitely helps, but nights up here are just as cold as Sky remembers, it’s no wonder the nine of them wound up cuddled close to the fire, bodies pressed together, any and all pride be damned.

Despite everything, Sky just can’t find it in him to feel much other than bliss. He’s shivering, his nose is running, he can feel it dripping down his itchy, angry throat—and still he smiles through it, every rattling cough and pang in his muscles. Floating away, Sky simply lets it all exist alongside him.

“—I get back to the future and she says that I proposed to her, and I’m like, ma’am I just work here—”

“No, no, shut up actually, hold on—” Warriors interrupts Legend’s story, careful to keep his voice down while Sky drifts on his shoulder. “The tree?”

“No, the flowers,” the vet rolls his eyes. “Yes, the tree! Don’t laugh, ladies man, like your track record’s much better—”

“How was a tree proposing to you—”

“Probably with her mouth, dipshit,” Wind snorts. “You really never met a talking tree before?”

“I’m not that uncultured, just—” Warriors splutters. “Does a tree court? Can a tree… do they breed? How does—”

“I was fathered by a talking tree for approximately a decade,” Time says, flatly.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Four says, grinning. “No one can tell when you’re lying.”

“Who says I’m lying?”

“That! That’s the face you always make!” Legend says, pointing impolitely at the old man as the corner of his mouth curls into a smile. “Every time you say something insane you shoot us that look—”

“That’s hardly an obtuse statement,” Time counters.

“I agree,” Warriors says, nudging him. “Give us another, once more with feeling.”

Time crosses his arms, thinking for a moment. “One time I fought two castle-sized moldorms drunk and won.”

And Warriors throws his head back, a short syllable of clipped laughter. “Started hitting the bottle the second you came of age, eh, old man?”

“I was eleven.”

“Oh, I give up,” Twilight says, rubbing at his temple.

Their banter is cut short when Sky coughs a sleepy cough, half-awake on Warriors’ shoulder and mentally checked out, content to just listen when he can. No one can prove it, of course—but it’s a very interesting coincidence that Sky, space heater that he is right now, chose to cuddle closest to the one of them who seeks warmth most often. Even shackled by illness, he finds a way to comfort, and the captain is very notably not shivering at all right now.

Warriors braves the world outside the blanket he’s got draped around his shoulders, poking out an arm and ruffling Sky’s hair softly. “How’re you feeling, sleepyhead?”

The nickname is warm as it sinks into Sky’s heart, and he broadens his smile, leaning into the touch. “Sick.”

A few of them offer quiet chuckles, impossibly endeared to the grin that pushes past the gravel in his voice. Sky’s a treasure. They rather like Sky.

The wind’s gone quiet, alongside the night—mercy from the gods, perhaps, as the temperature dropped and they huddled together, surrounded by more of Wild’s fire weapons. Beneath Medoh’s wings, Hyrule goes dark—lights blinking off, lanterns being shuttered, stables dimming their glow down. The castle looms like a shadow upon the horizon, scaffolding poised around its walls.

“About dinnertime,” Warriors observes. “Think you can eat, Sky?”

Sky moans a little in response, nuzzling his face into the fluff lining his tunic. A negative.

“Oh, come now,” says the captain. “I bet I could change your mind.”

Sky’s quite comfortable with his eyes closed, and so he keeps them that way, nestled like a loftwing chick in feathers and fur while the world moves around him. He hears shuffling, looks exchanged in silence, the light of Sheikah-blue across his eyelids, a comforting gleam. Then, something warm billows up toward his face, caressing his eyelashes in the freezing night. The smell alone is enough to get him to open his eyes.

He’s still a little stuffy, but the aromatics push far past it, determined to find their way straight to his sentimental soul. As soon as the sight in front of him registers he has no choice but to concede to the captain’s claims—his stomach practically leaps forward with anticipation, intent to devour the soup until there’s absolutely nothing left of it. Steam on his face, warmth in his hands, spices lingering in the back of his throat, home.

Wild starts pulling out rations for the rest of them, comments about how he hopes they aren’t sick of pumpkin soup yet, and in the quiet commotion Sky closes his mouth upon an overflowing spoonful and it feels like his whole body goes elsewhere.

What—

How did they—

Warriors.

The chosen hero needs to lay prostrate before him and beg for the secrets of his process. All pretense of him lacking an appetite is thrown off Vah Medoh’s edge, and Sky starts wolfing it down—the spoon’s turned into more of a paddle to get soup into his mouth faster, and it’s so warm and just spicy enough and sweet and savoury and perfectly smooth, there’s tears in his eyes again but he doesn’t care anymore. Surrounded by suspended stars—constellations he’s memorized by heart, refusing to change—he eats his peoples’ soup and drifts.

Zelda kind of hated pumpkin.

Pumpkin desserts, pumpkin dinners, pumpkin snacks, almost none of them were free from her outright scorn—she’d make an exception for pumpkin cider, but she’d still scowl while she threw it back, making it clear without words she was there for the warm fuzzies, not the taste. A childhood full of nothing but had soured her, she’d defend herself with a huff, and Sky always found it hysterical how the pride and joy of Skyloft had no stomach for their national crop. She hated pumpkin, and it was one of Sky’s favourite things about her, how she’d vehemently refuse to kiss him after dinner, sometimes—how he’d wrap his arms around her and press his lips to her chin while she shrieked dramatically and lightly punched him and called him gross.

Most of all, he loved how every single time he was sick like this—without fail—things would go the same way. Back at the academy, she’d show up at his door with windswept hair and a foggy bottle in hand, all but forcing the soup down his throat to get it out of her hands as quickly as possible.

He loves her.

A particularly noisy crackle of the fire brings him back to present day, and his friends have shifted and moved around while they’re finishing up their own bowls, the newfound warmth of dinner resting in their bellies encouraging them to get up and stretch their legs. At some point Time had started playing ocarina, and Sky didn’t realize until just now how much he missed the sound of it. As if he’s sensing this, Time shifts his key—pulls the instrument from his face, and takes a deep, metered breath before he dives back in to a flawless rendition of the Ballad of the Goddess.

There’s warm bodies on every side of Sky, and pumpkin soup in his hands, and Sky knows how Time feels about Hylia, but still he plays Sky’s favourite song, in Her name, with all the reverence the chosen hero himself would.

Despite everything, it sounds beautiful, its notes swelling with love and power into the quiet of the night. It smells like smoke and pumpkin and cold, cold air, and Sky leans into every inch of this feeling, wishing he could bottle it like a fairy and keep it at his hip forever.

On his way back to the fire, Four perks up a little at the notes as they travel along the singing winds. More of them are drawing back around now, content to remain silent as they melt into the song. 

“Oh, I know this one!” the smithy says, and that pulls Sky’s eyes back down from the stars, their shine now bursting within his foggy blues.

Time laughs, pauses. “Do you, now?”

“Pretty sure,” Four says. “Keep playing, let me see—”

And Time does, and Four’s face focuses for a moment before he nods, and closes his own eyes, and—

Sings.

“Go, brave young one,”

And Sky swallows the feeling that rises in his throat, lights him up like a sunrise in his veins.

“Wise steel, guide you—”

A few of the other boys share awestruck looks—that Four’s voice sounds so lovely, that he’d have the mind to share it at all.

“Ground, lead you—”

Time almost loses the melody himself, utterly enchanted by everything about it. Four breathes the final line of the verse with something beautiful hiding in his tones.

“Raise your sword skyward…”

Lyrics? Time marvels. It has lyrics? Sky’s played a million renditions of this song in the short time they’ve known one another, just sitting on the fact and too shy to sing? Four blushes a little himself, scratching at the back of his head.

“I always forget the second verse,” he admits, and—perhaps a bit deviously—Time takes a deep breath and keeps playing anyways.

In Sky’s lap, Fi pulses and hums, and it’s the happiest he’s felt her to be in so long, the joy practically radiating off her blade in waves. Fi loved to sing, and she sounded so beautiful, her speaking voice was a melody on its own, her singing voice incomparable to any earthly or heavenly thing Sky knew. Under the stars one night he asked her why she sang, and she seemed confused to be asked, unsure of the answer. It ran deep in the ancient code that compiled her, an artful soul that the Goddess so carefully crafted despite the spirit’s cold calculation—so often, Fi reminded Sky that she had but one purpose, no feelings of her own to accent her duty, Hylia made her to do one thing.

A tool wasn’t meant to sing, to dance, to persist, to love—but Fi did all those things. Logic dictates, Sky had said, using her own words like a weapon against her.

Sky remembers the first time he heard Fi sing, there on the tower with sunlight glinting golden off her lustrous skin. She can’t sing now, not the way she did then.

Time plays the ballad she sang him that day, and Sky clears his throat, determined to rectify.

“Twin whirling sails, pointed homeward—”

He wraps a hand around Fi’s hilt. She cheers in his heart, gilded gratitude, billowy blue and violet draped across his soul.

“Sing, songbird—up on Light’s Tower.”

He’s not much of a singer to begin with, and his voice is all but gone, a pretty pitiful imprint of the deep, rich tones everyone’s used to. But Fi wasn’t meant to sing, either, and still she did, with everything she was. So Sky sings for her, and he sings for Zelda, and he sings for himself, and he sings for home.

His brothers are looking at him with earnest, heavy eyes, bursting with a swath of emotions his head is too foggy to pick apart, to be anxious about. Not a single part of him feels anxious, actually, his head isn’t running circles, trying to figure things out. It’s quiet, save for the wind, the owls, the ballad he loves more than he knew he could love a song. He breathes deep, and easy, and snuggles back into Warriors’ shoulder.

“Right, right!” Four breaks the comfortable tension. “What a pretty song.”

Sky beams, eyes shut. “It’s my favourite one of all.”

At some point, another bowl of pumpkin soup is deposited into his hands. Sky did not ask for seconds, but he’s surrounded on all sides by eight people who love him, knowing what he wants long before his feverish mind knows itself. He sips at it, trying to exhibit some temperance, this time—savouring every sip, clouds at his feet, stars around his head, wind in his hair, a song sunk deep into his weary heart.

“Soup's okay then, yeah?” Wild asks from beyond the aether. Sky nods, eyes closed, blissed out.

“It’s about as close to the proper recipe as we could get it, I’m afraid,” Warriors says, and Sky doesn’t know what he’s talking about, acting like it isn’t perfect.

Twilight, then, “I don’t suppose you ever figured out what it was missing, did you, Red?”

Another spoonful, and Sky lets it sit there, sun-flavoured and melting upon his tongue. The Ballad of the Goddess floats through the heavens, down past the clouds at their feet, over the wind, above the whirr of Medoh’s propellers, looking so much like the windmills dotting every corner of Skyloft, bright and constant with the breeze that wafted across its bustling paths.

The warmth of his friends envelops him, stranded on some island in the sky somewhere, asleep and serene in a well-placed sunbeam. Warriors tangles his fingers in Sky’s hair, Aepon nuzzles his beak there, too, its sharp hook impossibly gentle as he preens. His loftwing heaves a loving sigh, and so does Sky—clouds underneath him, sun on his skin, feathers at his fingertips, suspended in dreamless sleep.

“Yeah,” Sky says, voice a contented whisper. “I think I did.”

It's much later when dawn rolls across Hyrule—every eye shut, they curl into one another, and even in the fledgling first light it's impossible to tell where one body ends and the next begins.

Tearing through the open skies, nine birds fly onward in a perfect V.