Work Text:
The wind flays the color-drained skin of the Manhandla into thousands of papery strips that swirl around Spirit. The fluttering sound of his own, unmitigated success assaults his ears in time with the overpowering chorus of the collateral damage.
“The world doesn’t hold any shades of gray for you,” Warriors said, back turned to Spirit. “There’s only black and white. Problems and solutions.”
Spirit’s world is full of gray now. Ashy ribbons catch and stick to the perspiration that coats his skin.
“You don’t see the rest of us.” Warriors hovered protectively over Mask, shaking with anger. The child sat next to the corpse, motionless and exhausted from battle, hugging his knees to his chest.
Spirits frantically brushes the scratchy remnants of the piranha plant off his clothes and arms. He can’t stand the texture, an abrasive reminder of his carelessness. He needs the ashy strips gone. But the wind encircles him with worm-like strips of lifeless shame faster than he can disentangle himself. From the ground gray eyes stare up at him.
“I - I didn’t know,” Spirit said timidly. As true as his words were, the excuse rang hollow even to his own ears.
“You should have thought about it,” Warriors snapped back.
“Maybe,” Spirit said, voice growing more bold with each word, “If you would have looked around for once, before throwing all those bombs, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Not so long ago, those same grey eyes shone with all the brilliance of the evening sky.
“How dare you.” In a flash, Warriors slammed him against a rotting tree. The unstable elm swayed with the sudden impact. Spirit’s skin was pressed against bark coated with the substance he had spent weeks processing and perfecting. The acid was eating the tree alive, and yet, his skin was fine.
Now those eyes are voids in the center of that infernal mask.
“ You’re the one who did this!” Warriors roared at him. “And you didn’t even begin to think about how it would affect our allies”.
And the body of one of Lost Wood’s eternal children had wilted into the wind.
Skullkid’s corpse was so tiny. Smaller than the Manhandla and the surrounding trees. Mask watched without sound or tears as ashes began to gently lift off of Skullkid’s body and swirl through the sky like autumn leaves.
Spirit had thought of their allies. Warriors deployed the bomb in the middle of the fight. Surrounded by Mask, Wind, and a troop of soldiers, all of whom were unharmed. The magic-infused compound targeted only plant matter and it had worked.
The wood behind him creaked and groaned, as Warriors held him there a moment longer. The tree hadn’t toppled yet, but it wouldn’t stand much longer due to Spirit’s own handiwork. Warriors stared darkly at him before releasing him to turn back towards Mask. Spirit couldn’t help but scramble away from the decaying tree as it sagged and tilted ever lower to the ground.
No one had realized Skullkid had been following them. Except Mask. Mask wasn’t told about the bomb. That information was need-to-know only.
Warriors scooped up the still-living child. The normally peevish Mask offered little resistance. He wrapped his arms around his older brother’s neck and buried his head in his dirt-covered blue scarf.
Now he was gone, along with all of the other plant life in a hundred-meter radius. Where the ashes landed, more flowers wilted.
“We have to finish this fight, don’t interfere.” Warriors said before he calmly carried Mask in his arms towards the sound of the explosions in the distance.
Battlefields do not fall silent, even when the fighting fades. They are filled with the howls of the dying and the pleading of some who might yet still cling to life. There’s the breathless panic of the vanquished attempting to escape the slaughter and the resigned drudgery of those taken prisoner. Then there’s the victors, who mourn and celebrate in equal measure.
Amid the cacophony, Impa approaches him amidst his lonely circle of devastation.
Spirit can’t find the energy to muster a salute.
“Still here?” she asks, joining him in his observation of the disintegrating Manhandla.
Spirit lets silence be his answer.
She waits.
Flurries of fresh decay burst into the air as the trees topple and unearth their crumbling roots. She stands shock-still through all of it, watching him as he stands vigil over the devastation he engineered.
The sun begins to set as the last fragments of the giant carnivorous bloom float away in the breeze.
“Are we done here?” Impa asks. She’s been standing there, blade resting against the ground for hours.
“What do you want?” Spirit asks more caustically than intended.
“I want my most brilliant engineer to be alive and in my camp, but unfortunately he seems to be more interested in becoming dinner for fleeing Lizalfos.”
“So our most decorated General decided to assign herself to guard duty?”
“Would you rather I order you to return to camp?” she asks.
“Warriors doesn’t want me there,” Spirit says.
“He’ll forgive you.” The General softens at the bitterness in his voice. “Let him cool off for a few days.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We’re at war. You’re the one who makes the blade, and he’s the one who swings it. He needs you.”
With that, she starts walking towards the fortification they would call their home for the night. The order to follow is unspoken.
Spirit picks up the death mask from where it lays on the now bare dirt and follows her into the falling darkness.