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Legend rarely went out for drinks. Especially not in company of the captain of all people. No, Legend very much preferred keeping his head clear and staying home reading to spending all night warding off drunkards with no respect for boundaries.
Tonight, he had made an exception. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to go to the pub, but Warriors had wanted to. Usually, Time or Twilight, or even Sky, would have gone with him, but they were all occupied tonight – a nasty battle earlier the same day had left Wild and Sky incapacitated, and everyone knew no force in Hyrule would be able to tear the goatherd away from their sides anytime soon. Time had been pulled away by Four, who wanted to brief Dot on their progress with the adventure, and Hyrule was tending to the wounded. And, well, Wind was hardly old enough to drink by anyone’s but his own judgment.
So, when Warriors had looked longingly at the pub, Legend had offered to go with him. It wasn’t like he had anything more important to do anyway, since the injured were already being cared for. The captain had sent him one of his rare smiles – a genuine one – and that had been enough for Legend to decide dealing with the drunkards would be worth it.
Legend was rapidly regretting that decision.
It hadn’t been that bad in the beginning. Warriors drank some fancy alcoholic beverage, and Legend kept to the milk. Which wasn’t half bad, though it couldn’t compare to Lon Lon Milk. Warriors told Legend a bunch of exaggerated stories from his adventure with wide, accompanying arm gestures, and Legend told him a few from his adventures in turn. He mostly kept the details of his past private, but spilling a few anecdotes was worth it to see the captain’s face turn beyond incredulous.
As the night progressed, the drunkards got drunker, though. Legend had to move his purse out of reach of a bold but uncoordinated man, who was apparently looking to expand his fortune through the ways of crime.
Then a woman made her way to their table. She was blonde and pale with cheeks flushed red from heat. Legend could smell the notes of alcohol on her breath all the way from across the table.
“What’s a fancy army man like you doing here?” she purred and placed a hand on Warriors’ shoulder. The captain tensed beneath her grasp.
“Go back to your own table,” Legend said.
The woman ignored him and slid onto the chair next to Warriors. She leaned into his personal space, and said, “I know somewhere we could go and have a lot more fun than here.”
“I told you to leave,” Legend repeated icily.
The woman finally acknowledged his presence and sent him a sour look.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“He’s right,” Warriors said. If Legend hadn’t known him as well as he did, he wouldn’t have picked up on the slight tremor in his voice. “You should leave.”
“But, honey,” she put her arms around Warriors’ shoulders, “how can you say that? Wouldn’t you rather have fun?”
“That’s it,” Legend said and pushed his chair back so forcefully that the legs scraped loudly against the floor. He grabbed the woman’s arms and almost flung her away from the captain, who still hadn’t made a move to physically protect himself.
Legend hadn’t consciously activated his power bracelets, but either he’d done so accidentally, or the woman had been drunker than he was aware. She stumbled several meters through the room before crash-landing into a table. A beer poured over the floor, pieces of glass flying everywhere. And right between three very startled patrons, the woman sat crying on the floor, her skirt soaked in beer and her face even redder than before.
The room quieted immediately as everyone tried to get a glimpse of the woman and what had happened.
“He pushed her,” someone whispered.
“No way, he must have hit her,” someone else said. “Look at how far she fell!”
“A defenseless girl –”
“Someone call the guards!”
Legend felt a sliver of panic set in as everyone turned toward him with disdain in their eyes. It didn’t matter that the woman had been harassing Warriors or that Legend had tried to solve the issue diplomatically several times. The crowd had already decided he was guilty. And now they were calling for the guards.
He turned back to Warriors, who was sitting so still he might as well be carved of stone. Legend took in a deep breath to calm his nerves and sat down in front of his friend, trying to ignore the hateful comments still being thrown his way.
“Wars?” he said. “We have to go before the guards get here. Are you okay to leave?”
“We- we should stay,” Warriors said, his voice unusually subdued and quiet. “Sort it out with the guards.”
“What? That’s a terrible idea. Come on, we have to –”
Legend’s words were cut off by a drunk man, who’d apparently decided to take matters into his own hands. They rolled across the floor, and the man ended on top of Legend’s chest. The veteran kicked out, but the man was much heavier than him, and Legend cursed himself for being so careless.
The next second the man was gone, kicked off by Warriors. Another man and a woman took that as their cue to join the fray, but Legend was back on his feet, and the two heroes drew the swords from their backs as one.
“We’re going to leave now,” Legend claimed, “and you’re going to let us go.”
It was risky to draw weapons into the conflict, of course – the only thing more dangerous than an angry, drunk mob was an angry, drunk mob equipped with sharp things – but luckily it seemed that most of the other customers had left their weapons at home. They eyed the heroes’ swords with wary looks on their faces, but no one dared prevent them from leaving. The door to the pub shut behind them.
Legend’s knees shook slightly. That had been much too close. To think he and Warriors had been minding their own business until just ten minutes ago.
“Hey, you!”
Legend whipped around to face the newcomers, and suddenly the shaking of his knees got much worse. Two guards had just turned the corner of the street, a civilian Legend recognized from the bar cowering behind them.
“Wars, we have to go,” Legend said, a panicked undertone sneaking into his voice.
“No, I meant what I said before,” Warriors insisted. “We should explain what happened!”
“Right. And then immediately afterward thirty witnesses tell them that I kicked an innocent, defenseless girl across the room unprovoked. How do you think that’ll work out for us?”
Warriors shot a conflicted look between the quickly approaching guards and Legend.
“…Fine. Let’s get out of here,” he decided.
Legend turned around to run, and together the two of them barreled down the empty streets. For a while, Legend could hear the pattering of the guards’ footsteps behind him, and the sound drove terror into his heart and urged him to go faster. A shadow of his past washed over him, and Legend almost forgot he wasn’t eleven years old and completely alone in the world anymore.
But as they ran, the sound faded, and only the sound of Warriors’ steps behind him continued. The clanking of the captain’s shoulder guard finally became too much for Legend’s already frayed nerves, and he stopped in a small alley. Warriors stopped beside him, panting from their sprint.
They stood for a moment, while Legend tried to calm his racing heart. It was just a stupid bar brawl, he reminded himself. Perhaps a night or two in jail if the guards found them. Not worth getting so upset about.
Legend’s heart continued its rapid beating, undeterred by his reasoning. He felt … small. Vulnerable. Like a defenseless rabbit in the world of men. Legend had learnt to carry himself with confidence long ago. He had yet to learn how to deal with his past.
“What a night, huh?”
The captain leaned against the wall behind him. At some point during their careless flight, he’d regained his composure, and Legend would never have known how rattled the captain had been earlier the same night if he hadn’t seen it himself.
“Listen, Vet …” Warriors began. “I still think we should go back and explain it. They’re guards. If they’re anything like the guards in my era, they’ve been called to deal with bar brawls often enough that they know not to take the words of drunken witnesses too seriously.”
Legend scoffed.
“There are thirty witnesses waiting to tell them about how I assaulted an innocent woman before we threatened all of them with our swords. And then we ran from the authorities. I think the guards are going to consider their statements, drunk or not.”
The two stared at each other, neither willing to back down. When Warriors finally did, he sighed.
“So, what’s the plan, then? Never showing ourselves at the castle again? Staying out in this alley all night?”
“The plan is to keep us safe!” Legend snapped and sunk down to sit against the wall, suddenly feeling very tired.
Warriors sat down beside him.
“…What do you mean?”
“You’re in the army, so of course you have a positive view of the guards,” Legend said. “But did you ever consider that not every era is like yours? That not all of us were so fortunate?”
Warriors frowned.
“How so?”
Legend shook his head.
“Forget it.”
Silence fell upon the alley, and Legend tried to refrain from thinking about anything at all. Least of all the guards in his own era.
Warriors sighed.
“The knights in my era are not all good either,” he admitted.
The veteran looked up and frowned. Warriors’ face had dropped the usual smile, and Legend got the odd feeling that he was looking at something private. His brother’s face was lined and tired, bags beneath his eyes.
He looked a little like Legend.
“Most of them were good soldiers,” Warriors said, “and many of them died in defense of Hyrule. But I wasn’t exactly well-liked among them.”
Legend’s frown deepened. He didn’t like where this was going.
“I was promoted very quickly, and a lot of them envied that,” Warriors explained with a humorless smile. “But it didn’t become a problem until it was revealed why Cia started the war.”
A chunk of ice settled in Legend’s stomach. Warriors had told him a while ago about that. Cia had been obsessed with Warriors, desperate for him to love her. So much so that she had started a war to get him. Legend didn’t know the details of it, but he could put two and two together. He knew it was the primary reason Warriors was so uncomfortable with strangers flirting with him.
“A lot of them suddenly blamed me for the war and their lost friends and family,” Warriors explained. “Most soldiers just yelled things after me when I walked by.”
Warriors said this nonchalantly like it didn’t even matter.
“But some of them were a little more extreme than that, going as far as thinking that if there were no hero, there wouldn’t be a war.”
Legend’s eyes widened at the implication, and the captain nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve lived through a few assassination attempts.”
“Holy Hylia, Wars. That’s awful.”
Legend chewed on his lip. He had already shared a few anecdotes tonight, but none of them as heavy as the one he was considering now. Normally, he would never have thought to say something like that to Warriors of all people, who was a guard himself. But it seemed there was more to the captain’s relationship with the guards than he’d previously thought.
“I was eleven years old when I began my first adventure,” Legend admitted.
Warriors made a face at the mention of his age, but Legend brushed it off. As far as he knew he had been the youngest of them, except for Time, so most of the others made that exact face when he told them about it. Legend didn’t want their pity.
“It happened overnight. Zelda was kidnapped, my uncle and guardian was dead, and all the guards in the castle had turned against me. Someone called Agahnim had brainwashed them, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that the soldiers I had trusted my whole childhood suddenly tried to kill me. So, fun times all around.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, it was a long time ago,” Legend said with a dismissive gesture. “But it taught me an important lesson: don’t trust anyone. You have to do the job yourself.”
“I learnt a similar lesson from the assassination attempts,” Warriors sighed. “And it has been ruining my life ever since.”
He looked Legend directly in the eye.
“I’ve been trying to teach myself that there are people I can trust. Zelda. Impa. Proxi. And the eight of you.”
He smiled.
“For what it’s worth, Vet, I know you can trust the Chain. I know you can trust me. And none of us would let the guards – or anyone else, for that matter – hurt you.”
Legend looked away from Warriors’ gaze, unable to take the earnest expression on his face. The captain had hit the nail right on its head, speaking directly into Legend’s deepest, darkest fears, the fears he’d been trying so badly to keep secret.
Legend knew he wasn’t the most likeable person to be around. He was snarky and reserved and often hurt others unintentionally with his words. Sometimes, it was difficult to believe the others in the Chain really wanted him on the team, given all the troubles that he caused.
Warriors was everything Legend wasn’t – nice, funny, charismatic.
It was odd to think that beneath both Warriors’ and his own façade, maybe they weren’t so different after all.
“Thanks,” Legend mumbled. “I appreciate it.”
The captain put a hand on his shoulder.
“Any time, Vet.”
He sent Legend another smile.
“Now, how would you feel about finding Four and getting him to straighten this mess out for us? I’m not particularly keen on sitting in this alley all night.”
Legend scoffed, but mostly just for the dramatic effect of it. “I thought you army types were used to staying in harsh environments.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to like it,” Warriors protested and heaved himself onto his feet. He offered Legend a hand, which he happily accepted. “It ruins my hair.”
Legend barked a laugh, and he saw the captain make a satisfied smile, apparently quite pleased with himself that he’d managed to lift the mood.
“Well then, pretty boy,” Legend said. “We can’t all have naturally gorgeous hair like mine. Let’s hurry to find Four before yours get any worse than it already is.”
The two of them set off towards the inn, trading banter back and forth all the while.
And when they finally did face the guards, Warriors had Legend’s back, just like he’d promised.