Work Text:
Lullaby was the name she chose for herself: a childhood dream come true in a sense, to mark that she finally belonged to herself rather than her father. At the moment, it was a private mark: she was a Brigadier in the Kingdom army instead, a face she'd stolen two years back when she dragged the man off her childhood best friend and dumped his body out the airlock.
It was the only kindness she could offer Link for now: to ensure they didn't give him to anyone else before they could figure out how to break him out of the strict command structure long enough to give him back his sense (to get him off the sedatives he'd been trained on) and his freedom.
It had already taken far too long.
Now, at least, they were en route from the Great Sea Cluster capital city to New Hyrule on the Kingdom Fleet command ship. The mission had been an unmitigated disaster: the rebels were dead, along with four thousand civilians because the Commander had had the brilliant idea to send the Kingdom Deity into a populated building in one of the biggest cities of the cluster. He'd brought down the whole Sahasrahla Complex, two of the three segments collapsed; of course he'd brought it down. Link could shear through reinforced concrete and steel without even thinking about it; he could break into a shuttle with his bare hands.
Now, the day after the disaster, he was off in his own quarters and had seemed alright if exhausted the night before. She could only give him time. It bothered her not to see him, but he'd didn't need her hovering all the way back to New Hyrule. What else was there to even say? Time enough to debrief—to talk it out then, when they had real privacy.
It was while she was collecting dinner the second night on the ship that one of the cooks stopped her and offered her a sealed bowl of other food.
"Can you take that to the Kingdom Deity? Nobody's seen him since we set out."
Lullaby frowned. "Has he not been getting food delivered?"
"No. I asked—there's been no requests for it, at least. I thought you were taking it to him, but nobody said you'd taken extra yesterday…?"
"Of course," Lullaby sighed at that and smiled as reassuringly as she could. "Thank you, I'll make sure it gets to him."
If Link was going to sulk in his room the whole time, she supposed that was fair but he did still need to eat. She balanced the bowl on her own tray and went from the mess hall to his rooms instead, not far away, and knocked.
There was no answer; she hadn't really expected one. She set the tray down and knocked again, louder this time and called out. "Link! Let me in, its your agent!"
She avoided the dead man's name as much as she could; hated reminding him. She knocked once more, then put in the Brigadier's code on the control panel. It worked as a bypass for any lock keyed to Link, due to the man's position (a fact he'd abused with impunity in the past.) The door unlocked and hissed open at her command.
Lullaby stepped in on silence, ready to pick another fight, only to be greeted with… nothing.
The room was dark and still. At first she wasn't sure if he was even there at all. She hesitated to turn on the lights: if Link was ill or still deeply upset she didn't need to antagonize him more, so she simply walked up to the huddle of blankets on the bed and called out again.
"Link?" she said, and touched his shoulder a second later.
Link gave no response at all.
Lullaby immediately checked his pulse and for a heart stopping second nearly didn't find it. His skin was still warm but it felt dry and thin under her hands like it never had before. She snapped her fingers to trigger the lights and turned him over to see his lips were dry and his medical bracelet still on his wrist—
She ran her own handheld over it and checked the read out. The bracelet flashed red.
Electrolyte imbalance, she read first—the critical result, one that was sending an alert to the medbay already by default once the information was in the central system not trapped on his own data. Link's bracelet was considered private, due to the sedatives he was on.
The sedatives he was taking too much of right now and was set to stay at his highest dose for the next six days. It was the dose he normally took to force himself to sleep. The dose the dead man had used to rape him repeatedly for ten years, so he didn't care about anything at all.
Anything, like becoming so dehydrated he was at risk of seizures… and death.
Lullaby changed shape then: she gave herself back her own face, shed the Brigadier's coat for the corner and decided that game was over. Link was too ill; they were done playing around. She kept him on his back on the bed and cupped his face, waiting for the medical personnel to arrive.
Waiting for them to have their little panic attack at the Kingdom Deity being ill, to answer the questions.
What happened. How did this happen? What do we do?
Bring him back, she begged. I can handle him. It's okay.
IV fluids started to revive him quickly, but with the return of his awareness came the rest of his reason and none of that was good. He went for the IV, and Lullaby knelt over his waist and pinned his wrists with all her weight.
"No," she growled. "We're going to fix this. Stay down, soldier."
"What good am I?" he snarled. "I'm just a weapon—"
"You're more than a weapon."
"I'm your drugged toy, the same as you're playacting your father's pet yourself."
"You're hallucinating," she said, for the sake of the medics. Unkindly, in his state: unkind to say to someone in the ravages of a body half-broken and still half-drugged, because there had never been time or space to let him recover.
Her unwillingness to simply pull him out of this mess had come back to haunt them both, now.
Link screamed worse things at her. He screamed about the dead, about the Kingdom, about her mothers and her own crimes (real and imagined, hers and his handler's both.)
Lullaby held her ground. "I will not see you dead for another's crimes."
She said it over and over until eventually the exhaustion of just how close he'd come to death caught up with him and he passed out instead. Still, she could not rest. There were no other restraints that could hold him, not on this ship; not on any ship. He could break any cuffs but one style that they did not have (and she would not use); he could take the ship out of the sky if he tried, the same way he'd destroyed the Sahasrahla complex before. The same way he'd destroyed Termina station, and the first Kingdom ship that tried to retrieve him.
(Add another thousand deaths to his toll, over and over and over...)
Everyone on the ship knew it, and Lullaby had to snarl at the medics to close the whole hallway so people did not bother them.
It made for a long night, and a longer day as he roused once more. Another IV; fluids and nutrients as well this time, to replace three days without food once his water intake was closer to normal. The same drugs: they could not risk withdrawal compounding the rest. Link hated everyone who came in the room. He hissed and spat at them, and at her—but he would not hurt her. She knew that, and knew it well. She'd done it to him before after all, and that time had led them here.
Led them to Link being the beaten war dog of the Kingdom military, unable to even make his own choices about the wars he fought.
This time would be different.
This time, she escorted him from the ship onto the surface of New Hyrule and into a cab she told to take them to a hotel at the edge of the city, whatever one they knew best. Whatever the cost.
She didn't need a hotel. She had an apartment here, a private one even but it was in the middle of the city center and Link did not need to go back there. He had subsided once more into dull-eyed obedience, and—when Lullaby hadn't stopped him—upped the sedatives as high as he could while remaining conscious, so the trip was spent with him nearly insensate to the world.
She let him; he deserved what little freedom she could give him even if it meant the freedom to stop thinking for a few more hours. They could discuss what happened next once they were away from the ship, away from the military. Away from everything.
She'd already spoken to the medics; she had two who would come see her later. The trip was largely spent in silence until it had lasted long enough for the dose to begin to wane and Link stirred. He still didn't speak until they stopped and got out to confirm a room was free and went there.
"…where are we?" he asked.
"A hotel," Lullaby explained. "I got us a few days. I know there's cabins further out that can be rented too; I need to find one that I can secure for longer before we leave, but the one I contacted hasn't replied yet." She dropped her bags by the door and looked at him warily, but he didn't even look at the stuff.
Fine by her. This would be easier if he was cooperating again. She swallowed hard, the pain of seeing him so still and quiet cutting into her throat. She'd been afraid when she turned him over it was already too late.
"I'm not going to ask why you did that to yourself," she said. "I know why. I think we both have waited far too long to fix this, but I suppose it helped in a way. I told High Command you needed to recuperate. I also told them the Brigadier died too. Do you understand?"
He didn't answer, which was answer enough right now. He just stared dully at the floor.
"We've put off getting you off the sedatives too long," she repeated, unsure if he'd be angry or not. "You're off-duty until that's complete. I have the medics on call to come see us while we do it, but the first step they already showed me how to do. This isn't just because you tried to kill yourself: they obviously make it harder for you to refuse orders. That stops now. Alright?"
"I'm… off-duty?" Link said, as if he didn't believe it. Pale eyes lifted to stare, confused at her face. "Why?"
Lullaby swallowed hard, and gentled her tone. "Normal soldiers take breaks, Link. Especially after tragedies."
He tucked his arms right around his chest, looking small in a way a man his height should not. Looking small, like the boy she used to know. "Just until I can stop lashing out again?" he muttered. "Stop feeling the pain?"
"No, Link," she closed her eyes, and bit down years of rage at everyone who had driven him to this point. "Until you don't want to lash out again. I want you to feel more than just pain. I want you to feel like yourself."