Chapter Text
The secluded pocket off the canyon trail felt miles away from the rest of Hyrule. Thankfully, the heroes had been granted a few hours’ reprieve after clearing the monsters from this secluded campsite. The others relaxed, drifted, or kept watch; Hyrule and Legend poking through distant debris, Four and Twilight inspecting their gear, Time pretending to sleep while Wind crept up with a feather to balance on his nose.
Sky had picked a comfortable spot to whittle while the center of the camp belonged to two pairs of boots scuffling through the dirt.
Or rather, two fighters testing their limits.
The Captain had decided today was the day their resident Chef would learn some basic hand-to-hand tactics. Wanting to gauge the boy’s skill level, a makeshift sparring match had been proposed.
Warriors moved like a training manual brought to life, Sky noted. Every shift of his weight was calculated, his posture rigidly upright, and his footwork a masterclass in military efficiency. He fought with the polished precision of a captain who had spent decades drilling form into muscle memory.
Wild, by contrast, fought like a cornered animal.
He didn't care about clean lines or standard drill stances. His center of gravity stayed terrifyingly low, his movements loose, unpredictable, and entirely instinctual. When Warriors lunged with a clean, textbook jab, Wild didn't parry by the book; he ducked low, swept a foot through the loose gravel to kick dust into the veteran's eyes, and slipped behind his guard.
For someone who claimed his only training came from survival, Wild was holding his own. But frustration was starting to bleed through Warriors' polished facade. How was Wars supposed to know Wild’s skill level if he hadn’t thrown a real punch in the last twenty minutes? Annoyed by the Champion's evasive and unyielding rhythm, the Captain shifted his weight sharply to redirect, aiming for a swift shoulder check.
His boots slipped on a patch of loose shale. The Hero of the Skies watched as the redirection turned into an awkward, backwards swinging elbow.
That lucky (clearly accidental) hit caught Wild square in the nose.
Crack!
The sound of bone hitting bone echoed sharply off the canyon walls. The sparring stopped instantly. The entire camp looked up.
Sky was moving before the dust from their boots had even settled. Being the closest, he abandoned his whittling block and dagger with a sharp intake of breath, hand already darting out to catch Wild by the shoulder as the younger man staggered backwards. Hands were clamped over his face, blocking his expression from view.
A fraction of a second later, Twilight was there, boots tearing a trench into the dirt as he ran toward Sky to haul Wild back against his chest, a quick, fierce curse rising in his throat.
In the split second between the impact snapping Wild's head back and his weight collapsing entirely into the arms of someone he couldn’t recall, his world blurred.
The shaded sunlight of the gorge vanished, replaced by the blistering, sterile glare of the military training camp.
He isn't seventeen, and he isn't a Champion.
He is eleven years old, smaller than he should be, wearing a too-large tunic soaked in sweat and dirt. An older knight, perhaps a corporal, stands above him. Broad-shouldered, sneering, and tired of losing face to the General's prodigy, he steps into the sparring match without honor. He ends it the same way he began: with a heavy, gloved fist driven straight into Link's nose.
Pain detonates behind Link’s eyes, hot and blinding.
“Watch your place, brat,” a harsh voice hisses down at him from above.
Wild gasped, his eyes flying open as the memory sheared away, leaving him choking on the thin air of the present. Blood dripped warm and fast from his broken nose, falling through his fingers and staining the dirt between his boots. Twilight's rough hands gripped his arms tight enough to bruise.
The Captain stood a few paces ahead, paused in place. He was holding a forgotten rag up near Twilight’s hand, keeping a distance but still eager to help.
"Wild?" Twilight's voice cut through the roaring in his ears, sharp and laced with rising panic. "Hey—! Look at me. You with us?"
Sky hovered just beside them, his eyes wide and hands hovering helplessly, ready to steady him if need be.
Wild swallowed hard, tasting iron, his chest heaving as the phantom sting of a castle courtyard faded back into the stilted, desolate stone of the gorge.
Twilight’s grip tightened.
“Wild. Hey, talk to me.”
The words barely registered. Wild could hear him, somewhere beyond the roaring in his ears, but the hands around his arms were abrasive. Too firm. Too much like—
“Let go!” The shout tore out of him before he could stop it.
He twisted violently, driving his shoulder into Twilight’s chest. Twilight stumbled back in surprise, his hands falling away at once. Wild scrambled several paces clear, boots skidding over loose stone, one hand still pressed to his bloodied face and the other raised defensively between them.
For one awful moment, nobody moved. Twilight just stared, his expression stricken and hands shaking subtly.
“Wild,” he said again, quieter this time. His hands returned to his sides. “I’m not going to grab you.”
Wild’s eyes darted between them.
The gorge. The campsite. The scattered bedrolls and abandoned packs. The half-finished piece of wood lying beside Sky’s dagger.
Not the barracks.
Not the training yard.
He swallowed, and pain shot through his nose. A wet, metallic taste flooded his mouth.
“Oh shit,” he hissed through his teeth.
His knees felt unreliable. He removed the heel of his hand from his nose, wincing as the movement sent another sharp pulse of pain through his face. Crimson dripped through his fingers into the displaced dirt at his boots.
“Okay,” Sky said gently. “You’re okay, you’re here. You’re with us.”
Wild locked eyes with him.
Sky hadn’t moved closer. He stood where he’d stopped, hands replayed placatingly in front of him, expression concerned, but not startled.
“It’s just us,” Sky continued. “You’re in Kakariko Gorge. It was a day’s hike from Death Mountain. We’re at camp.”
Wild knew that. Of course he knew that.
He knew the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck, the faint rustle of pebbles tumbling from above. He knew Sky’s voice and the worried crease between Twilight’s eyebrows.
He knew all of it. So why couldn’t he stop shaking?
“I’m fine.” The words came out muffled from between his teeth.
Nobody responded. Wild looked away first; they had every reason to do so.
Warriors was still standing where he’d stopped, the forgotten rag hanging limply from his fingers. His face had gone pale beneath the tan, his usual confidence replaced by something uncertain and deeply uncomfortable.
“Wild,” he began. “I’m so sorry. I slipped. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.”
“I broke your nose.”
“Yeah, well, don’t put it on your résumé.” The joke came automatically, sharp-edged and familiar. It landed with a dull thud in the silence.
Wild wished, immediately, that he’d said anything else.
Twilight’s expression hadn’t changed. Sky still looked worried. Warriors looked as though Wild had struck him instead.
“Right,” Wild muttered. “Great. Everyone’s making this weird.”
Time began to stand along with Wind across camp, asking muttered questions pointed towards them.
Sighing, Wild took a step toward his pack, knowing he had a spare elixir somewhere. The ground shifted beneath his feet, momentarily stumbling like a baby deer. A hand reached towards him from the corner of his vision, and he recoiled before he could think better of it.
Warriors froze. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his hand.
Wild blinked hard, and the world obligingly settled back into place. Mostly.
“Sit down,” Warriors said.
Wild turned his head. “What?”
“Sit. Down.”
“Awfully bossy for a guy who just tried to rearrange my face.” His lopsided grin was stained red as he tilted his head back, attempting to stem the flow of blood.
“Wild.” There was something different in the Captain’s voice now. It wasn’t anger, nor the familiar exasperation that came with dealing with a particularly stubborn member of the chain.
Warriors had seen men take blows to the head and walk away laughing, only to collapse minutes later. He’d seen soldiers grow confused, lose their balance, or insist they were perfectly well when they could barely remember their own names.
He’d also seen men return from battle with their bodies intact and their minds somewhere else entirely. He didn’t know what he’d just witnessed, and that was the problem.
Wild had gone still at the impact. Not merely stunned, but eerily still. His eyes had been open, but there had been a terrible emptiness to them, as though he’d looked straight through Twilight without seeing him at all.
And then he came back swinging.
A concussion, perhaps? The blow had been hard enough, and Wild had nearly gone down. A brief loss of awareness wasn’t impossible, though the memory of those fixed, distant eyes made Warriors’ stomach tighten. He’d heard of seizures that left people confused afterward. He wasn’t knowledgeable enough to say whether that was what he’d seen, and he wasn’t about to start diagnosing a man in the middle of a campsite.
But there was another possibility. One he’d hoped never to see in someone he called a brother.
He’d seen that distant look before, years ago, in men who’d survived things they couldn’t leave behind. A sound or a blow, the wrong movement at the wrong moment, and suddenly they weren’t standing in the present anymore.
They were somewhere back there. Shell shock, some called it.
Warriors had never liked the term. It made something terrible sound like a simple injury, something you could bandage and send back to the barracks. He looked at Wild, who was now glaring at him with an almost impressive amount of indignation for someone bleeding all over his shirt.
Please be a concussion, Warriors thought miserably. At least that would be something he could understand.
“I’m sitting,” Wild announced, lowering himself onto a nearby rock with all the dignity of a king accepting a throne. “See? Sitting. Happy?”
“Thrilled.”
“Wonderful. Can I go now?”
“No.”
“I’d classify this as cruel and unusual punishment.” His voice was almost too nasal to hear the sarcasm.
Wind, who’d been hovering several feet away, finally seemed to recover from his shock. “Okay, but seriously,” he said, peering around Sky’s shoulder. “That was kind of awesome.”
Four’s head snapped toward him. “Wind.”
“What? Not the nose part!” Wind hurried to clarify. “Obviously, that part was bad. But did you see how Wars went flying? Wild barely even moved!”
“I slipped,” Warriors said flatly.
“Sure you did.”
“I did.”
“Uh-huh.”
Wild snorted, then immediately regretted it. Pain sparked through his face, and he clapped his hand over his nose again, with a quiet fuck.
Wind’s expression softened. “Hey, you okay?”
“Just peachy.”
“Can you teach me to do that spinning thing where you kick dirt into someone’s eyes? That was sick.”
“Step one: find dirt. Step two: kick it. Step three: try not to get your nose broken.”
Warriors protested indignantly.
Wind grinned. “So you are teaching me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Pleeeeease?”
“Wind, I will personally introduce you to every cactus between here and Gerudo Desert if you don’t shut up.”
Wind beamed. “There he is!”
And just like that, the tension shifted. Nobody who had been watching Wild closely could mistake the change in atmosphere for genuine relief. But Wind, apparently satisfied that he had returned to his usual self, bounced back onto his heels with a grin.
Wild rolled his eyes. “Someone take this kid back to the Great Sea.”
“You’d miss me too much.”
“I’d throw a goddamn party.”
“You’d cry.”
“I’d pay someone a million rupees to throw you into the ocean.”
“I’d do it for zero rupees.” Legend responded, stepping out from around the corner after their long walk, Hyrule hot on his tail.
“Ditto,” Four replied.
Wind dissolved into insulted laughter.
For the first time since the accident, Sky felt some of the tightness in his chest ease. Wild was talking, joking, and looking at them. Truly looking at them rather than staring at something nobody else could see.
It had to be a good sign, didn’t it?
“Wild,” Warriors said lowly, ignoring the background bickering of the smithy and the sailor. “I need you to tell me if you’re dizzy. Or nauseated. Or having trouble seeing.”
Wild stared at him.
“I’m having trouble seeing how this is any of your business.”
“Your nose is my business. I broke it.”
“Technically, your elbow broke it.”
“My–?”
“Wars, I am begging you to stop talking.”
Legend, who’d been watching the entire exchange with an increasingly bewildered expression, finally stepped forward.
“Can someone explain what in the name of Hylia just happened?”
“Wars hit Wild!” Wind supplied cheerfully.
“Yes, Wind. I picked up that much.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Legend closed his eyes. “Why does everyone look like Wild put Chu jelly in their stew?” Hyrule edged around him, peering at Wild with open concern.
Sky quietly spoke. “Are you sure you’re okay? You went all strange for a moment.”
Wild’s smile faltered, but only for a fraction of a second. Then he shrugged.
“Got my shit rocked. Happens.”
“People don’t usually look like they’ve seen a ghost when they get hit,” Time muttered.
“Maybe you should stop looking at me, then. It’s bad for your complexion.”
The Captain looked like he had enough. “Your face is literally bleeding.”
“It’s a fashion statement.”
“It’s a medical emergency!”
“It’s a nosebleed, princess.”
Hyrule glanced between them, thoroughly lost. “Is he always like this after getting injured?”
“Yes,” Wind said immediately.
“No,” Twilight answered at the same time.
The two looked at each other.
Wind frowned. “What do you mean, no?”
Twilight’s ears lowered slightly.
“I mean…” He stopped. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence without oversharing.
I mean, I’ve seen Wild take a beating before. I’ve seen him laugh through broken ribs and stitch his own wounds without so much as a grimace. But I’ve never seen him look at me like I was going to hurt him.
Wild slid off the rock.
“Okay! That’s enough group therapy for one afternoon. I’m going to fix my face, and then I’m making lunch. Anyone who wants to stand around staring at me can do it while peeling potatoes.”
“You shouldn’t be cooking if you’re dizzy,” Warriors said.
“Then it’s lucky I’m not dizzy.”
“Wild—”
“Wars.”
The single word was delivered with a smile so bright it might as well have been a threat.
Warriors stopped.
Wild turned toward his pack, rummaged through it, and emerged with a small fairy tonic. He uncorked it, tilted his head back, and downed it.
A few moments later, the worst of the throbbing eased. The swelling began to subside, and the blood dried against his upper lip. He wiped it away with his sleeve, grimaced at the stain, and tucked the bottle back into his pack.
“There. Magic. Problem solved.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have a concussion,” Warriors said.
“Do you have a medical degree hidden under that scarf? Then I’m afraid I’ll have to disregard your professional opinion.”
They stared at each other. Finally, Warriors exhaled through his nose.
“Fine. But if you develop a headache, start feeling sick, or have any trouble seeing, you tell someone. Immediately.”
Wild gave him a lazy salute. “Yes, Captain.”
“And no more sparring today.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“And you are not cooking over an open fire until we’re sure you’re steady on your feet.”
Wild’s smile became positively angelic. “Of course.”
Warriors narrowed his eyes. He knew that look. It was the look of a man who’d already decided to do exactly what he’d been told not to do.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Would I lie to you?”
“Yes,” said nearly everyone present.
Wild put a hand over his heart.
“I’m wounded.”
“You were wounded,” Legend corrected. “In the face.”
“You’re simply obsessed with me.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, champ.”
“Love you too.”
Before anyone could stop him, Wild was walking toward the cooking supplies, Wind scrambling after him.
“Wait! Can I help?”
“Sure. You can peel potatoes.”
“Can I use a knife?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Behind them, Warriors watched Wild pick up the cooking pot as though nothing had happened. He heard him tease Wind about his peeling technique, Wind protest that potatoes didn’t need to be peeled with military precision, and Wild laugh.
It was all so normal. That was what made it unsettling. Twilight came to stand beside him.
“He’s not okay.”
Warriors didn’t look away from the fire.
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t think he is.”
Across the camp, Sky had begun gathering his abandoned whittling tools. He was moving slowly, distracted, his gaze repeatedly drifting toward Wild.
Four stood with his arms folded, his brow furrowed in thought.
Time had long since stopped pretending to sleep.
And Hyrule and Legend were still arguing about whether a broken nose could, in fact, be considered a fashion statement.
Wind, meanwhile, was attempting to steal a second knife.
Wild caught him without looking. Chuckling, he said, “Nice try, sailor.”
Wind laughed, and Wild ruffled his hair with his free hand.
For Wind, that was the end of it. His big brother was back to normal. He was making lunch, cracking jokes, and threatening to throw people into the ocean. Whatever had happened had clearly been nothing serious.
Wild wouldn’t let it be serious.
He couldn’t.
Not here. Not with all of them watching.
So he cooked. And he joked. And he made Wind laugh until the boy was practically doubled over, and he complained loudly when Legend stole a piece of bread before the meal was ready. He did everything he was supposed to do.
And every so often, when the others weren’t looking, his hand drifted toward his nose.
Every so often, his eyes flicked toward Warriors.
And every so often, the sound of a fist striking bone echoed in the back of his mind, followed by a voice he hadn’t heard in years.
Watch your place, brat.
Wild stirred the pot.
“Lunch’ll be ready in five,” he announced brightly.
Nobody asked him what he was thinking about. No one asked why his hands had started shaking again, clasping his ladle like his life depended on it.
But across the fire, Time watched him with eyes that had seen too many soldiers come home from wars they could never truly leave behind.
And for the first time that afternoon, he wondered just how much of Wild’s past the boy had managed to bury.