Chapter Text
Moonless dark devours the forest. The rustle of leaves displaced by unseen creatures and the elegiac hoots of a hidden owl unnerve. Sky squirms. It’s fruitless.
He can’t move. Chest constricted, he can’t take a deep breath, either. The many loops of rope that bind him to a tree pinch and chafe and firmly pin his arms to his sides. His rod-straight spine aches where it’s compressed against uneven bark.
Ropes around his thighs and shins prevent him from fidgeting, much less sitting, and his overstrained legs waver between concentrated pain and concerning numbness.
Familiar restless shuffles from the other side of the tree grab his attention. Twisting around, he squints, unable to glimpse the corner of blue scarf peeking around the trunk that he’s stolen glances at throughout the day to remind him he’s not alone.
“Y’okay?” Sky calls out, hoarse. Neither of them have spoken in hours, and his voice sounds loud and unnatural among the forest’s ambient midnight noises.
Warriors doesn’t answer. The shuffling continues.
“What’re you doing?” Sky rasps.
“Getting out,” Warriors asserts through gritted teeth. His voice, too, is scratchy. “I need to get out.”
Sky sighs and blearily looks back into indecipherable darkness. They’ve been stranded here since yesterday afternoon—maybe, at this point, for twelve hours.
That’s twelve hours tied to this tree, give or take. Twelve hours of discomfort and pain. Twelve hours of hunger, thirst, and fatigue.
Twelve hours of powerlessness.
Sky listens to Warriors’ desperate writhing with a futile empathy. He gets it. They’ve both phased through a gamut of reactions to this predicament. Level-headed resolve and tactical ingenuity in escape planning gave way to frustrated failure. Determined attempts to break free by sheer will and strength grew frantic. Peaceful resignation occurred around the first instances of losing consciousness thanks to inhibited blood circulation.
Hope that the others will find them, and despair that they won’t, have recklessly ebbed and flowed throughout the ordeal.
And now, it seems, Warriors has cycled back to a claustrophobic, madcap fight for freedom.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Sky says to the forest. The statement does not assuage Warriors’ fears. It doesn’t assuage Sky’s, either.
“It’ll be okay when I’m lying in my bedroll,” Warriors snaps.
“Fair.” Sky sighs again, wistful. “Doesn’t a bedroll sound like—like the pinnacle of luxury right now?”
“Yeah. Goddesses. What I wouldn’t give even for the fraying, sweaty, garbage bedroll I had during the war.”
Sky doesn’t know if that’s meant to be funny, but it strikes him as such. He snickers. “Forget that. I want my bed back in Skyloft.”
Warriors snorts. His struggles dwindle. “Guess that one comes with other perks, though, huh?”
“Meaning?”
“Maybe you’re not alone in that bed, is all I’m saying.”
Sky makes a noise that’s half-surprised laughter and half-disgusted scoff. “You would think of that.”
“I notice you’re not denying it, though.”
With no subtlety, Sky switches subjects. “Y'know what I want right now? Something to eat. Even the most meager of morsels.”
“And water,” Warriors adds. “I’d kill for a single drop of water.”
Their wasted wishes only emphasize the hollowness in Sky’s stomach and the dehydrated ache of his head, so he drops the conversation. A dizzy spell sends a cascade of black speckles across Sky’s already dulled vision, and he must pass out, because suddenly he’s jerking back to consciousness by Warriors’ increasingly worried calls.
“Sky? Did you hear me? Sky?”
“Huh? Wha?” Sky stammers.
Relief shines through Warriors’ exhaustion. “I said I’m glad it’s you.”
“Glad…that what’s me…?”
“That it’s you here with me and not…you know, one of the others. I mean, it’d be better if—if it was just me out here—“
“Don’t say that,” interrupts Sky. Mental fog makes him stumble through his words. “You—you’d go nuts out here alone. I-I’d rather be stuck with you than have that happen.”
“Now see, that’s what—why I’m glad if someone had to be here too, it’s you.” Warriors clears his throat, which is undoubtedly as parched as Sky’s. “Can you—can you imagine how Vet would’ve responded to that? To me? ‘Yeah, Cap, it would be better if it was jus’ you. Now shut up so I can have some damn peace and quiet for once.’”
The impression is too impeccable, and Sky struggles to stifle his giggles.
Encouraged, Warriors goes on in his mock-Legend voice. “‘Captain, if you could stop—stop being a drama queen for five frickin’ minutes, I could—could figure out how to get us out of here, okay? I know I have an item for this. I definitely have an item for this.’”
Sky laughs. The floaty sensation in his head, along with his declining grip on rationality, remind him of the single time he was properly drunk. He’s not worried about it, though
“He wou—he would say that!” Sky sputters.
Warriors can’t contain his escalating laughter either. “I know! I know! And if it was you and him, he’d say, ‘Come on, Birdbrain! Get yer—get yer head out of the clouds an’—and figure out how we can get outta here!’”
“No, but he would! Do you know what—?” Sky chokes on his laughter, words further muddled by confused exhaustion. “Do you know what—what—what he said to me one time? He said, ‘Birdbrain, you don’t apply —you don’t apply yerself.’”
“What?!” Warriors snorts as he cackles. “Him, of all people, sayin’ that? ‘You don’t apply yourself’? What does it mean, even?”
Their hysterical laughter echoes through the trees. Sky is in tears, stomach aching from his giggle fit instead of from gnawing hunger. Other than the severe light-headedness and horrific pain in his knees, he feels pretty all right.
Once he regains some measure of composure, Sky says, “Gosh. ‘M glad it’s you, too, Captain.”
“What?”
“Out here. With me. I think you’re the only one who…who could make me laugh in…you know, out here, like this.”
“I dunno. Old Man can be funny when he wants.”
“Y’mean after a couple pints?”
“Not wrong there.”
The rest of the night passes in relative quiet, broken up occasionally by Warriors throwing out a new impression of Legend. Sky feels a little guilty that this evening’s entertainment comes at the expense of his friend, but he thinks, given the circumstances, the behavior may be justified.
As the hours trudge along, Warriors and Sky grow feebler and eventually can’t muster the energy for conversation or even stray comments. They share silence that’s sometimes fraught with anxiety—especially in the night, as Sky continually nods off and then startles awake from a hooting owl or a rustle in the underbrush—and other times oddly tranquil, almost ascetic or enlightened.
Once dawn arrives, Sky continually searches for the birds that twitter in the branchy canopy, watching them fly with self-pitying envy.
In total, a miserable, draining, and deranged twenty-four hours ticks away before the other heroes track them down.
At first, Sky believes he’s hallucinating Twilight and Wild and Four crowding in front of him, spouting out fear-laced reassurances—but when the cut ropes fall away, gravity confirms this is no illusion. Sky collapses. Three pairs of earnest arms cradle him. Boneless, numb, and dizzy, he feels his circulation stutter as it tries to reestablish balance. His feet and legs, tender and swollen, ail.
Sky gladly empties the waterskin thrust into his hands before smacking his chapped lips and croaking, “Is Captain okay?”
“As okay as you are,” Wild says.
“He just asked after you, too,” adds Four.
“Sky!” Warriors hoarsely yells from the other side of the tree, still out of sight. “When I c’n move again, ’m gonna hug th'utter fuck outta you.”
Surprised laughter bubbles out of Sky. He relaxes into his friends’ arms, thoughts zeroing in solely on cherished, airy relief.
“Okay,” Sky sighs. “Remember t’—t’apply yourself.”
Warriors laughs. Sky hears a confused Time gently shush him. Twilight whispers something about delirium to Wild and Four, but Sky doesn’t catch it as he closes his eyes.
He thinks he hears the others calling his name, too, but he decides to ignore them. In these circumstances, he thinks, the behavior is justified. Some sleep is well-deserved.