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Out of all the chores, Sky supposed laundry wasn’t that horrible. He could be stuck with dish duty . Gently, he hummed a song to himself, settling into the motions of dunk, wash, scrub, and rinse, enjoying the pleasantly warm air.
He had shucked his tunic off a while ago, his sleeves never seemed to stay rolled up and were now soaked, but the feeling of the sun on his back was enjoyable. It reminded him of days back on Skyloft, during the simple times where he was just Link, unaware of his destiny as Hylia’s Chosen Hero.
That thought had soured his mood slightly, his humming had taken on a melancholy shift, slowing down and sliding into the lower registers. Sky stood up, letting his humming fade as he hoisted the bucket of wet clothes into arms, bringing it over to the makeshift clothesline.
Maybe the laundry chore was horrible, for the memories it brought to the front- painfully domestic ones of young teenagers in love, blind to the future ahead of them. Sighing, Sky shook his head, hoping to dislodge the memories, continuing to hang the clothes.
Sky startled at the gasp behind him, fumbling the wet tunic in his grasp, letting it fall back into the bucket. He turned, revealing to his sight a paler than usual Warriors, whose eyes were blown wide. Truthfully, Sky was a little confused as to why , until it clicked a few seconds later- he had no tunic on.
The skyward knight opened his mouth to poke fun at the captain, but quickly clicked it shut, realizing that the emotion on Warriors’ face was horror. He didn’t have any wounds, which knocked out the potential for an arrow or weapon to be sticking out of him, leaving him with two options; he took the one that felt the most correct.
“Do my scars bother you?” The question snapped Warriors out of trance, disbelief creeping onto his face as he shook his head. Sky lifted up an eyebrow, now entirely confused- what was wrong?
Quicker than Sky expected, Warriors had crossed the gap between them, now holding the Skyloftian by his shoulders, “I didn’t know Skyloft had corporal punishment.” What now? Sky blinked rapidly at the captain, unsure of how to respond- he didn’t even know what that was
“Who did this to you?” Sky was really tempted to blurt out the truth, but he wasn’t sure how well ‘a god and his sword spirit hellbent on bringing destruction to the world’ would be received.
“What?” Very eloquent response. He mentally patted himself on the back. Warriors just stared at him like he had grown wings, “I don’t even know what corporal punishment is, Wars.” The mentioned hero continued to stare, before jolting, seemingly back in reality, fixing him with a questioning look.
“Corporal punishment? You know, when you’re punished for misbehaving or being out of line? You’ve got the whip scars on your back.” That was a lot to unpack, but Sky’s brain fixated on ‘whip scars’ because he most certainly did not, and was almost tempted to find a mirror shield to double check. Sure, his back was criss-crossed with scars. None of them were caused by a whip, though.
“Wars, captain… I don’t have any whip scars.” The taller hero huffed, fixing Sky with a ‘really?’ look.
“I think I would know what they look like. After all, I have my fair share of them.” Sky swore he heard his neck crack with how fast he turned his head towards Warriors, horror plastered onto his face. The Skyloftian had a whip, he knew it hurt because he’d used it on monsters before, but on a person?
“ Why would anyone ever do that?”
“I misbehaved a fair amount as a trainee, they would use it to get me back in line.” He honestly felt a little sick to his stomach; whipping someone because of a little misbehavior? The Hyrulian Army was a big deal- he had seen so on a visit to Warriors’ Hyrule- but that had to be too far. It was.
Before he could register what he was doing, Sky yanked Warriors into a hug, squeezing the captain as tight as he dared. He could feel the captain sink into the embrace, face buried in his shoulder.
“They shouldn’t have done that. It was a cruel power trip.” Apparently, his words flipped a switch in Warriors’ brain, as he felt tears falling onto his bare shoulder. Sky gently rocked them both, letting the captain cry it out. A few words couldn’t fix what were likely years of trauma- he still couldn’t believe it, whipping someone- but he could be a literal shoulder to cry on, and hope he could heal from it in the future.