Chapter Text
It had been about a week and a half since he had returned from his mission, and in that time, Legs had barely allowed himself a moment to actually think about what had happened to him.
Aside from getting his memories back from Isolde and eventually telling his friends what had happened during the time he had been missing, he had mostly kept his mind pointed anywhere but toward those memories.
In his defense, there had been plenty to keep him occupied.
There was the whole mess involving Pyro and Ambear breaking May, the bandit responsible for her kidnapping, out of jail, only to lock them in the basement of Pyro's winery so they could interrogate them themselves. Then there was the rather complicated matter of the capital executing a fake in May's place, followed by the arrival of even more bandits who had come looking for their prisoner.
And, unfortunately for those bandits, they had been looking in the wrong place.
Legs had been dragged into dealing with them too, which had meant even more running around, fighting, and generally trying not to get himself killed.
As if that weren't enough, he had been trying to put some time into his village whenever he actually had a spare moment. There were always things that needed fixing, people who needed help, and a seemingly endless list of little projects that refused to complete themselves simply because he was busy.
Then there was the crypt.
The newly opened dragon crypt had become another regular destination for him. Osteon had given him a list of items he needed, and Legs had decided that the simplest way to acquire them was to keep returning to the crypt and clearing out whatever monsters had decided to make the place their home.
It was dangerous.
It was exhausting.
It was also wonderfully convenient for avoiding his own thoughts.
Every time something uncomfortable tried to surface, there was something else demanding his attention. A monster lunged at him. A wall needed repairing. Someone needed help. Osteon needed another item. His village needed another building to work on.
There was always something.
And that was precisely how he had managed to go a week and a half without really sitting down and processing what he had learned.
Because the moment he stopped moving, there was a dangerous possibility that his mind would catch up with him.
He knew what had happened now.
He remembered the bandit camp.
He remembered the people who had been there.
He remembered Keira.
He remembered the rope.
He remembered being trapped, hurt, and convinced that he was going to die.
And, perhaps worst of all, he remembered surviving.
Not simply waking up afterward with no explanation, but remembering enough to know that something had happened that he still didn't fully understand.
There had been something else there.
Something that had helped him.
Something whose presence had been buried so deeply within his missing memories that he hadn't even known to look for them.
Isolde had given him those memories back, but getting them back hadn't magically made them easier to carry.
So Legs had done what he was very good at doing.
He had put them down.
Not permanently. He knew better than to believe that.
Just somewhere out of sight.
Somewhere he didn't have to look at them.
For the past week and a half, he had convinced himself that if he stayed busy enough, maybe he wouldn't have to.
Unfortunately, there was only so much running a person could do before eventually finding themselves running headfirst into it.
That happened to Legs when they finally reached the island where the bandits had established their main base.
The island had a name.
Lion Island.
It was an almost laughably fitting name for a place controlled by people who had built their reputation around violence, fear, and the simple understanding that anything smaller than them was prey.
But the moment Legs heard it, the name stopped being funny.
It reached through the fog of his thoughts and caught on something buried deep inside him. For a heartbeat, the present became distant. The island beneath his feet, the salty wind, the distant cries of gulls, even the voices of Pyro, Ambear, Scott and all the others around him seemed to fade beneath another voice.
A woman's voice.
Cruel.
Amused.
“A weak little kitten trying to play with lions.”
His stomach twisted.
Legs froze for half a second.
It wasn't a memory in the way the others were. It wasn't complete enough to become a proper scene. There was no clear image of the woman's face, no room he could place, no sequence of events he could follow from beginning to end.
Just those words.
And the feeling attached to them.
The helplessness.
The certainty that whoever had said they knew exactly how much smaller and weaker they wanted him to feel.
His fingers curled instinctively.
Lion Island.
Of course.
Of all the names this place could have had.
Some small, terrified part of his mind seemed to recognize the cruel coincidence before the rest of him could catch up. His breathing became shallower, his shoulders tightening as his body remembered something his conscious mind desperately wanted to leave buried.
And unfortunately, that little flicker of panic was exactly what their plan needed.
Pyro had been playing the part of a bandit.
Ambear and Scott were doing the same.
Their entire purpose was to convince the bandits that they had captured Legs and the rest of the students with them and were bringing them back as prisoners, allowing the group to infiltrate the island without immediately raising suspicion.
Legs knew that.
He knew every part of the plan.
He knew Pyro wasn't actually going to hurt him.
He knew Ambear and Scott were allies.
He knew they were supposed to look frightened and hostile, that they were supposed to behave like criminals dragging people back to their den.
He knew all of it.
But his brain had apparently decided that knowing something and believing were two entirely different things.
His eyes darted toward Pyro.
For just a moment, Pyro's expression was different.
Concern flickered across his face.
Then it vanished beneath the hardened mask of the bandit they were pretending him to be.
That helped.
A little.
Legs swallowed and forced himself to breathe.
One breath.
Then another.
You're safe.
He repeated the thought silently.
This is a plan.
His heart didn't seem particularly interested in listening.
The panic made him look convincing, though.
Too convincing.
His shoulders hunched. His eyes remained fixed on the ground. Every so often, his gaze flickered toward the trees and the distant structures of the bandit camp as though he were searching for an escape route he already knew didn't exist.
When one of the guards approached them, Legs instinctively stepped backward.
The reaction was genuine.
The guard grinned.
“Got yourself a skittish one?”
Pyro gave a rough laugh.
“More trouble than he's worth.”
Legs lowered his head further, allowing his hair to fall across his face.
Inside, his thoughts were racing.
Don't react.
Don't react.
Don't react.
But then the guard grabbed his arm.
Legs flinched.
Hard.
His entire body tensed before he could stop it.
The guard chuckled.
“Definitely a kitten.”
The words sent another chill through him.
Kitten.
For a moment, he wasn't standing on Lion Island anymore.
He was somewhere else.
Hanging.
Hurting.
Listening to a woman tell him exactly what he was.
A little kitten.
Playing with lions.
His breath caught.
Pyro noticed.
Of course he noticed.
But he couldn't break character.
Not yet.
So instead, he simply shoved Legs forward with enough force to maintain the illusion without actually hurting him.
“Keep moving.”
Legs stumbled.
Then deliberately let himself remain unsteady.
The guards bought it.
They saw a frightened prisoner.
They saw a man who had every reason to be terrified.
They didn't see the carefully constructed infiltration happening underneath it all.
And perhaps that was the strangest part.
For once, Legs didn't have to pretend to be afraid.
His fear was real.
All he had to do was make sure nobody realized exactly why.
He did a good job of that for the most part. He kept his attention on the path ahead, on the others, on the mission. He made himself focus on anything except the uncomfortable awareness of how deep they were going and how much farther they still had to descend.
That worked until they reached the rope.
The final meeting place was below them, tucked somewhere beneath the ledge, and the only way down was to climb.
Pyro went first.
He watched the others begin their descent, forcing himself to breathe normally as he stepped toward the edge. The rope was thick enough to support his weight. Safe. Secure. Nothing like—
His hand closed around it.
He didn't fully register the panic attack at first.
It was only a tremor.
A tiny, almost imperceptible shake in his fingers.
Then he looked down.
His hand was trembling violently.
His stomach dropped.
The air seemed to vanish from his lungs all at once. His chest tightened, muscles locking as though something invisible had wrapped itself around his ribs and begun pulling. He tried to take a breath, but it caught somewhere halfway down, leaving him with a shallow, ragged gasp.
And then came the sensation.
Fibers.
Rough fibers pressing against his palm.
Against his wrist.
Against his neck.
His mind didn't care that he was standing safely at the edge of a cliff. It didn't care that the rope in his hands was meant to help him descend.
For one terrible split second, he wasn't there anymore.
He was back at the camp.
Back beneath the tree.
The rope was around his neck again.
The bark dug into his back. His wrists burned against their bindings. The air was thin and impossible to swallow. Every breath scraped past the phantom pressure tightening around his throat.
His body remembered before his mind could stop it.
His fingers clenched around the rope.
His vision blurred.
The ground beneath him seemed to tilt.
“Hey.”
Nothing.
“Hey, you need to get down here?”
Still nothing.
“Legs!”
Pyro's voice finally broke through.
He blinked.
The tree was gone.
The camp was gone.
There was no rope around his neck.
Only the rope in his hands.
His breathing remained uneven, his heart pounding hard enough to hurt, but Pyro was looking back up at him from several feet below. Concern had replaced whatever teasing remark he had been about to make.
“You good?”
He wanted to say yes.
He wanted to explain.
Instead, he swallowed hard and nodded.
“Yeah.”
The word barely sounded like his own.
Pyro hesitated for another second before continuing down.
He followed.
Not because the panic had stopped, but because his body seemed to know what to do even when his mind didn't.
One hand moved.
Then the other.
His boots found the next foothold.
Then the next.
Down.
Down.
Down.
He descended on autopilot, eyes fixed somewhere ahead but seeing very little. Every shift of the rope against his palms sent another faint echo of that old memory through him, but he forced himself to keep moving.
He couldn't let himself stop.
Stopping meant thinking.
Thinking meant remembering.
So he climbed.
One hand after another.
One breath after another.
Until, eventually, his feet touched solid ground.
Only then did he realize just how badly he was shaking.
He pushed the feelings down again, forcing them beneath the surface where they couldn't interfere. The shaking was useful, anyway. He could let it continue, let his shoulders tremble and his breathing come out unevenly. It helped sell the act.
He was a captive.
Weak. Frightened. Helpless.
Exactly what they expected him to be.
And if they believed that, they would underestimate him.
That was the important part.
Once the other groups had finally been brought down, they were made to wait while the bandit leader launched into a long, self-congratulatory speech. Apparently, their price had been lowered considerably now that they had acquired "the big-value one" among their captives.
Legs honestly used the opportunity to zone out.
He let his eyes drift unfocused while the woman's voice became little more than meaningless noise. He was tired, sore, and still fighting to keep his thoughts from wandering somewhere he absolutely did not want them to go. Focusing on the bandit's rambling wasn't worth the effort.
Then Ambear spoke.
Except she wasn't using the fake accent she'd adopted for her character anymore.
Legs's attention snapped back immediately.
The change was subtle to anyone who didn't know her, but to him it was unmistakable.
"Well, shit."
Ambear had dropped the act.
Everything went to hell.
The moment the disguise fell apart, the fight erupted.
Legs moved.
There was no hesitation this time. No wasted motion. He simply fell into the rhythm his body already knew.
One.
The first bandit went down.
Two.
Another.
Three.
His breathing steadied.
Four.
The world narrowed.
Five.
The shouting became distant.
Six.
His thoughts were getting quieter.
He started counting.
It wasn't just for the stupid little bet he'd made with Ambear. Though, admittedly, that was part of it. There was something deeply satisfying about imagining her reaction when she realized he'd managed to rack up another ridiculous number.
But mostly, the counting gave his mind something simple to hold onto.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The numbers were predictable.
The numbers didn't ask questions.
The numbers didn't remind him of ropes, blood, hands, or the terrible certainty that had settled into his bones while he'd been pretending to be helpless.
So he counted.
Methodically.
Deliberately.
Every enemy that fell became another number.
By the time the fighting finally began to slow, he'd reached thirty.
Thirty.
That brought his total for the bet with Amber to forty-eight.
A ridiculous number.
He'd probably have to listen to her complain about it later.
The thought almost made him smile.
Almost.
It took another minute before they managed to reach Ros and free her from where she'd been held. Those few precious moments were enough for Pyro and Ambear to break away from the others.
They went after the bandit leader.
Legs watched them disappear after the fleeing figure, already knowing what they intended to do.
They weren't going to let the leader escape.
Not this time.
And judging by the sounds coming from farther down the path, they were making absolutely certain of it.