Chapter Text
Link prods at the fire in front of him, sending up a shower of sparks around the sides of the cookpot. As he sits and waits for the metal to heat, he glances around to make sure no one is paying him any mind before pulling his slate out of the worn bag at his side. He needn’t have worried, though - it's late enough that hardly anyone is up and milling about, and the folks at the East Akkala Stable are so used to seeing him that he’s practically invisible when he’s there anyway.
He starts going through his inventory, trying to pick out what to make for dinner. Well, dinner for the next week or so, at least. He tends to make a large batch and eat off it a little at a time thanks to his slate storing the food in more or less the same condition as it went in. He's in the middle of deciding whether he should make meat skewers or just stew for the hundredth time when his slate stops responding to his touch.
His brow furrows as he taps it again, but the screen is still frozen. He is just about ready to whack it on the leg of the stool he's sitting on to try to jostle it back into action when the screen suddenly changes to display his map. With a soft ping! a waypoint appears, flickering into existence right on the path through the Breach of Demise. Link frowns fully now, tapping the new icon to see if it will give him any information whatsoever. Nothing happens, it just pulses insistently every few seconds.
Link takes a deep breath. These points have appeared before, of course. They denote important locations that he needs to travel to in order to fulfill his duties. He’s been all over Hyrule chasing the little dots across his map, often rushing from one to the next in fear that if he didn’t hurry he might be too late. He thinks it's a fair fear – after all, he's already one hundred years late as it is, he can’t afford to waste any more time and he can’t stand the thought of any more lives on his hands.
But there haven’t been any objectives on his map since he and Zelda had defeated the Calamity. Which, to be fair, had only been three days ago, but Link had thought that was the end. He’d done what had been asked of him – he’d done everything everyone had asked of him, for that matter – and he’d kind of hoped that his part was finally done.
Maybe he is done, and the slate is wrong. It had glitched, after all, and to Link’s knowledge there isn’t anything terribly interesting at the Breach of Demise anyway – just a small smattering of monsters that occasionally cause trouble on the roads for travelers. Now that Hyrule is free from the grip of Malice, he's reasonably sure that whatever monsters still linger out there won’t come back again once slain.
That is a reassuring thought, at least until it occurs to him that if he really wants to keep Hyrule safe, he should take the time to clear out the rest of them. The Guardians haven’t been active since Calamity Ganon had been defeated, for which he is fervently thankful. No matter how many times he fights them, his blood turns to ice in his veins and his ears ring and often, he just runs. Hides. When he had the presence of mind to grab for his slate in those moments, he would even just warp himself away to a shrine and curl himself into the covered entrance until he could calm his racing heart and get the feeling back in his fingertips. He isn’t proud of it, but he also knows that if he’d tried to fight every Guardian he came across, he would not have made it to the end of his quest – after all, even when he ran, Mipha sometimes had to step in to save his hide from a beam he wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid. He is more than aware that this makes him weak, but it's hardly news that he's a poor excuse for a hero. The few remaining people of Hyrule need and deserve better than him, but with no one else to take the job, he had been better than nothing.
Link shakes himself from his thoughts, shoving away the shame and guilt into the back of his mind so that it can eat him alive later. Right now, he has to do something with that damn waypoint that had appeared. It's moving now, slowly advancing down the path toward Carok Bridge. The last time he’d seen one of these move, it had been tracking Vah Naboris’s path through the desert, and that thought sends him to his feet immediately. He douses his long-forgotten cookfire, slips around to the back of the stable, and warps to Ridgeland Tower.
So much for a break, he thinks bitterly to himself before his body is whisked away into the air in a wash of blue lights.
Link arrives on the top of the tower and immediately stumbles forward a few steps. He nearly drops his slate as renewed pain flares up in his side, burning and aching in equal measure. Belatedly, he remembers that the warping process tends to remind his body of any still-healing injuries he might have. He’s gotten so good at putting pain into that same dark corner of his mind where all the guilt and shame goes, and he’d forgotten that just a few days ago he’d gotten the entire right side of his ribcage smashed in.
(He winces as he recalls his own pitiful scream and the feeling of blood bubbling up in the back of his throat before Mipha once again saved him from a killing blow. It was far from his only injury, but it was certainly the worst and there was only so much any magic or elixir could heal at any given time. After the fight, he drank hearty elixirs until he threw up red in his efforts to make the pain go away – in a way, it had worked, but only because he passed out not too long after from a bone-deep kind of exhaustion that he hadn’t felt since he’d climbed out of the Shrine of Resurrection. But he still woke up with his head pounding and his side aching and his whole body shaking and tingling like the time he’d been struck by lightning.)
Once he gets his bearings again, he spends the duration of several deep breaths tucking that pain right back where it belongs. He knows it will still sting until he has a distraction to really keep his mind away from it, so he quickly changes into his Hylian armor. It's a bit worse for wear these days, the colors faded and the leather worn from almost a year of near-constant use. It's still plenty sturdy thanks to enchantments from the Great Fairies, and that’s what matters to Link.
He straps a light bow on his back before he braces himself and leaps from the top of the tower, glider snapping out above him as he does. He just barely manages to keep a hold of it when another sharp jab of pain hits him – he’d shattered his left shoulder too, and it isn’t done giving him grief either it seems – but when the dark spots clear from his vision, he is blessedly still holding onto his glider with both hands and going the right direction.
It's not long before he can see the spot where the waypoint first appeared. As he drifts closer, he squints down at the ground, apprehension growing by the second when nothing immediately stands out to him. He keeps gliding down the length of the Breach until finally he spots something. But it's just a group of travelers making their way down the road, though he can’t tell exactly how many from this high.
The Breach of Demise isn’t the most dangerous area in the kingdom, certainly, but it is home to some keese and bokoblins. He is pretty sure there are only two black bokos among their number, but those can pose a real problem for unprepared travelers, particularly if they attract too much attention at once. Even if they aren’t his main objective, he at least wants to make sure they get through safely.
Link’s feet touch down on top of one of the huge limestone shelves that criss-cross the valley below, some of the deep pockmarks still home to shallow puddles from recent rainfall. From up here he's able to get a much closer view (and give his shoulder a much needed break). The group is larger than any he’d seen traveling the roads before. He counts eight, and all look to be armed, some heavily. Link realizes with yet another frown pulling at his lips that he doesn’t recognize any of them. It has been ages since he’d met a new person, and had in fact been pretty sure up until now that he’d met every last person still living in Hyrule.
So, did Link somehow miss them, or did they come from outside Hyrule? It would be an awful hassle, he thinks, for someone to come here. On a few of his darkest days he had taken himself to the edge of the kingdom and tried to find a way to anywhere else, maybe somewhere where ten thousand duties weren’t constantly hanging over his head like knives. And while he was…mostly sure that he wouldn’t have actually left even if he found it, he never found it. Just an endless expanse of water, or a seemingly bottomless abyss, or a perpetual sandstorm that would always magically route him back to where he started.
More important, he wonders, is why would someone want to come here? Hyrule is an empty husk, and a dangerous one at that.
At the very least, they seem to know how to defend themselves, if the litter trail of dead bokoblins and keese are anything to go by. They clearly don’t need his assistance. Link checks the slate again, and he almost convinces himself that there actually had been some kind of glitch and he doesn’t really have any duty to fulfill here.
Until, that is, the group in the valley stops. They seem to be discussing something, though he still isn’t close enough to hear anything but distant sounds with the vague shape of words. The icon has stopped moving on Link’s screen, too, and then begins moving again the moment the group resumes their trek. The movement is unmistakably tied to the group, and he sighs as he realized there is no way around it – he's going to have to go down there and try to talk to them.
Emphasis on try, considering he can’t speak. He can already feel himself getting frustrated. It's hard enough to come up with anything to say given that he has quite literally no information whatsoever, and it's harder still that he will have to try to communicate it with only his hands and face to convey the words.
As Link is wracking his brain for anything he can possibly say to the group of travelers, something…terribly unfortunate happens. He feels a tingle in his nose, and a sneeze sneaks up on him before he can stop it. He doesn't even have time to worry about giving away his position because his heel hits wet stone at the same time and his legs fly out from under him before he can get his eyes open again to prevent it.
He goes down hard.
Instinct and far too many falls while climbing has him caging his arms around his head and curling into as much of a ball as he can, but it can only do so much to protect him. His bow turns to splinters the first time his back hits the ground, and he can hear his own wet wheeze when his already angry right side takes the same beating. He manages not to bash his skull open on the rocks – until he bounces harder than he’d anticipated right as he reaches the bottom.
His head slams forward, pain blooms across his forehead, and Link’s vision goes dark.
Time gets a headache the instant he steps through the portal. Not because of the portal itself, but before their ragged band of so-called heroes had come through, he’d been listening to Legend and Warriors bicker back and forth at each other for about half an hour. He’d finally snapped behind himself at both of them to please shut up already, which worked on one of them but not the other. Legend had trotted his way up to ask Time who he thought he was, to which Time didn’t have a satisfactory answer because right then he was just a guy with a damn headache.
Any prior arguments are put on pause as they all begin to survey the landscape around them, trying to determine where exactly they’d landed. Time certainly isn’t familiar with the strange valley they seemed to be in, with its giant shelves of stone hanging above their heads for as far in either direction as he can see. “Not mine,” he calls out, hearing the same confirmation in seven other voices.
It's dark already, but with the moonlight reflecting off the pale rock all around them, there is still plenty of light to see by. Time can’t see any way to climb up from their current position, the cliff faces too steep and irregular to safely find purchase, so trying to get a look around from up high is temporarily on hold. At least they’d landed conveniently on what could generously be called a road but is more just a well-worn footpath. From one direction, he can hear the sounds that usually mean a monster encampment is nearby, and the other way is a strange monument of black stone with glowing swirls of blue light decorating its surface.
Without much discussion at all, Warriors and Hyrule and Four are already walking off to investigate the monument while Twilight and Legend go the other way to get a count on any potential enemies. Time is getting a little sick of not being trusted enough to go off in smaller groups like most of the others are asked to do, but he says nothing about it because he is decently sure they all think he's crazy – and he can't even blame them. He's had a couple of interactions with them now that hadn't gone as well as they could have. Now they all seem to walk on eggshells with him. Of course he wants to be liked by or at least useful to his travel companions, but he's worried that ship has already sailed and it's easier to just let them give him the space.
“It’s been a while since we ended up somewhere new,” Sky says as he slowly surveys their new location. As always, the oldest has been left behind to watch the troublemakers (and Time tries not to let himself be too bitter that this group is just himself and Wind, who is quite literally fifteen). “Do you think this means we’ll meet another hero?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Time scuffs his boot against the dusty ground with a sour look on his face. “But it's been months so I don't think so. Maybe we would know if we had any idea what we're even supposed to be doing on this damn quest.” The last part comes out in an irritated grumble that has Sky shooting him a look.
“Ten is a nice even number, and we'd only have to add two more to get there. Maybe if we collect the full set we'll finally reach some kind of equilibrium.” Sky is clearly trying to lighten the mood, but the pettier part of Time's mind immediately latches onto the statement and twists it.
He's a problem, his impulsiveness and strong emotions are causing issues for the group, they aren’t able to handle him and it is easier to bring in an unknown third party to throw at him in hopes that it will…what, somehow fix him? Time knows there are a lot of things wrong with him and he doesn't pretend otherwise, but he's not sure any of those things can be fixed by involving yet another stranger in his business.
The older hero seems to realize from the lack of response that what he'd said upset Time, so he just purses his lips before trying another topic. “...I've been trying to figure out what we’re meant to do, too. It’s been a while since my original quest so I keep thinking I’m just out of practice and missing something important, but we can’t possibly have all missed something like that.”
Wind has been quiet for a while (and Time quite frankly is not in the mood for the back-and-forth), so Time leans over just enough to nudge the sailor with his elbow and nod at Sky when Wind looks up with a small start. “Oh! Uhh… Yeah, I think we’ll definitely find another Link in this era, sure.”
Time snorts and sits back with crossed arms. “Tuned out for a minute, huh? That’s not what we were talking about anymore, kid.” Normally that kind of thing would have Wind fuming and telling Time all about how he was an accomplished hero in his own right or whatever, but tonight Wind just blinks several times before going back to staring off into the distance with a mumbled apology.
Sky watches the exchange with his lips pulling into a frown, stepping forward so he can rest his hand gently on Wind’s shoulder. “Hey, Wind. You doing okay? You seem off.”
Wind startles again and finally seems to gather himself a bit more as he flashes a hesitant smile up at Sky. “Yeah, I’m…fine. This place just feels weird, I think. I’m just…” He waves his hands a little in the air as he tries to come up with the right word. “Uneasy? It’s like. When I was tailing the Ghost Ship, there was just this feeling that I would get. And it’s like that but not like that. Something’s just weird. I think…we should probably get moving soon.”
The monster recon party returns then, and Time barely tamps down a grin at the severe height difference between Twilight and Legend. Legend levels a brief squint at Time as if he can tell he's being internally disparaged. Twilight whistles just loudly enough to get the attention of the other party, and in a few moments they're all gathered around to debrief.
"I’ll start,” begins Legend. “There’s a handful of bokoblins, six or so. Most of them are red, but a couple are black with weird markings on them, so we’ll have to be careful with those ones. I’d be willing to bet they’re stronger. I couldn’t see any keese, but Twilight said he heard a few so keep an eye out.” Heads nod all around, but they are all experienced heroes and no one looks particularly worried about the news of a small number of enemies. If anything a few of them seem to be itching for a fight, Time included.
“We weren’t able to learn much of anything about the glowing stone thing,” Hyrule jumps in, his voice definitely the softest of their entire group. He is the only one that Time doesn’t really have any issues with right now. Hyrule is kind and tends to mind his business, except for those times when he sees Time eating alone and silently joins him without the same air of judgement and pity he sometimes feels from the others. Still, Hyrule isn’t very talkative and Time doesn’t know much about him, so he doesn’t exactly consider them close. “The best we’ve got is that the symbol on the top looks like the crest of the Sheikah, but you seem to need a specific item in order to open the door.”
After a brief pause to plan their next step, they split off into two groups and go after the bokoblin encampments. It's easy work, even when the sound tempts five keese out of a weird skull shaped cave and they join the fray as well. Time is grateful for the familiarity of a battle, his mind settling into a rhythm that feels like second nature as he swings his sword and removes a red bokoblin’s head with a single clean strike. It immediately crumples to the ground, and Time whirls around to intercept two keese that are headed for Hyrule as he is engaged with one of the stranger looking black bokoblins. It certainly puts up more of a fight than the red, but Hyrule makes quick work of it anyway.
It is over in under two minutes, and they once again regroup. “Anyone injured?” Warriors asks, and moves on quickly once everyone confirms they're alright. “Okay, it looks like the valley ends not much further down this road. We might be able to get a better look around if we head that way–”
“Hey!” Wind calls out, having slipped away from the group to climb on top of one of the skull caves. “I think I can see Hyrule Castle from here!” So they make their way in that direction when no better options present themselves, eight pairs of boots trudging tiredly down the road.
Then Four clears his throat, and Time turns around to watch as his sharp eyes scan the ridge above them incessantly. “I’m pretty sure someone is up there watching us.” Everyone turns to look at him, and Four snorts at them all incredulously. “So absolutely no one else noticed our company? We’re going to have to work on our situational awareness. As far as I can tell, there’s someone up there. I didn’t get a great look since they’re so far up and trying to stay hidden, but they didn’t seem to be heavily armed at least. Probably not a threat, but we should still be cautious anyway.”
Time rests his hand back on the hilt of his sword as they keep moving, the back of his neck prickling with unease at the thought of being watched.
As they approach the end of the valley, Hyrule Castle comes fully into view in the distance, standing dark and imposing before them even though it's likely at least a day’s journey away still if Time had to venture a guess. Warriors turns around to address the group, mouth opening to say something, but instead his eyes go a little wider and he quickly points up above the nearest ridge where the shadow of someone’s head is visible for a moment before disappearing again almost immediately.
And then someone sneezes, quiet but unmistakable in the dead silence, followed by the sound of scrambling feet - and then the person is falling. It happens fast, a blur of dark fabric tumbling down the nearly sheer cliff face, taking a boulder to the side with a sickening crunch that Time can hear even from so far away. By the time any of them have the chance to actually react and start moving, the figure reaches the bottom with one final thud of their skull hitting rock.
Time isn’t sure what possesses him to dash over and help – he isn’t gifted with healing abilities like Hyrule, or skilled with stabilizing dangerous injuries like Legend, or cool in a crisis like Warriors. He just feels like he shouldn’t be standing there watching and acts on it. When he reaches the crumpled figure on the ground, Time is taken aback by the sheer amount of blood already staining the rocks beneath them.
Hyrule, whose hands are already awash with pink light and hovering over the stranger’s caved-in ribcage, glances up to see who had joined them. When he sees the look on Time’s face, he speaks up quickly. “It’s not as bad as it looks, head wounds just bleed a lot.” And Time knows that, but even with his untrained eye he still gets the feeling that Hyrule is just downplaying things to keep him from panicking.
Time is used to battle wounds, even grievous and ugly ones from which it is impossible to fully recover. It's different having watched someone simply fall down a cliff and get ripped to shreds by the landscape itself – an accident, something that can really happen to anyone if they're unfortunate enough to end up in a similar circumstance. It's unsettling to say the least.
“Are you helping or not?” Legend snaps, and Time nods and moves quickly to be where he is told. Legend puts Time’s hands in the right place and shows him how hard to press down to stem the flow of blood coming from a large forehead gash. Only once his hands are occupied with his task does he really have the time to notice how small the person is. Taller than Four, sure, and maybe Hyrule, but they seem young.
With nothing else to do since he can’t move away from his task, Time studies the stranger before him. They have long, straight hair that was probably in the range of blonde when clean, but it's hard to tell now between blood and caked-on dirt. Their cheeks have the slight roundness of someone who hasn’t quite reached adulthood or at least hasn’t been there for very long. Their ears are clearly Hylian, though one of them is missing its pointed tip. But, most notable to Time and visible even through all the grime and gore, are the old, long-healed scars covering half of their face and neck.
The scars aren’t like any others he’s seen before, except for a woman he’d run into on his travels once. She’d told him that her dress had caught on fire as a young child, and it had taken too long to get help. Most of her body had suffered severe burns, and in the worst spots it looked like her skin had melted. A miracle, she’d told him, that she even survived, and that because of it she made sure to pray to the goddess daily in thanks for her life. Time can’t be certain that anything similar had happened to the person in front of him now, but there are clear similarities between their scar patterns.
He tries to see if there are more on their body where Hyrule had yanked up their tunic to have room for his healing, but there's far too much blood for him to tell.
“I’ve done as much as I can with this for now,” Hyrule says grimly as he eventually pulls his hands away from the kid’s midsection, looking more than a little gray in the face. “Wars, I need you to hold them steady while I set that arm. This is–” he grimaces and then starts over. “We don’t have a ton of supplies left and I know they’re not one of ours but–”
“Just do what you have to do,” Warriors says, voice steady and sure. “It’s not like any of us could sit here and just watch someone bleed out and die when we could’ve done something.” He moves into position where Hyrule needs him, and Time is grateful when the body beneath them stays still and quiet as the misshapen bone in their right arm is yanked back into place with a sound Time would be happy to never hear again.
Time’s ears twitch at the sound of swords being drawn only moments later, and he looks up to see the remaining members of their party forming a wall between them and what looked like skeletal versions of the bokoblins they’d fought earlier. And, even more strangely, Time notices that there are irregular flecks of black and pink floating through the air everywhere he can see. He catches Legend looking around them with a frown as well, but neither of them are really in a position to even begin to parse out what exactly is going on with it.
He turns to focus back on the kid in front of him, where Hyrule is releasing a fairy. She seems more distressed than they usually do, her little tinkling sounds coming out with a distinctly worried tone as she showers fairy dust over the worst hurts. At Hyrule’s urging, Time gently pulls back the piece of cloth he’d been holding over the head wound, and watches as skin knits itself back together before his eyes.
He's relieved for a moment, glad that the worst seems to be over for now, but then Hyrule starts using his loud voice to direct them into action again and Time knows they aren’t actually through the bad part yet. “They’re probably gonna wake up here in a second and it’s not going to be pretty, if anyone thinks they can’t handle it they need to go trade off with someone who can, now.” Hyrule looks at all three of the heroes assisting him, hesitating a bit longer on Time, and Time doesn’t even have the presence of mind to bother bristling at being second guessed in the moment. He needs to help. “Okay then. Wars, I need you to hold their legs down. Legend, help me sit them up a little…”
Time isn’t sure what he's supposed to be doing until Hyrule beckons him forward so that he is sitting with the stranger slotted against his front. “Wrap your arms around, down by the elbows– Yes, like that.” He must see the confusion on Time’s face because he explains while he digs through his bag for a red potion. “I don’t have anything to give them for the pain and they’re going to be out of it when they come to. It'll ruin a lot of our progress if they move too much, so I need you to hold tight, but only as tight as you absolutely have to. Understood?”
It feels like a lot of responsibility. But Time can feel the kid’s too-hot body against his own, their head resting limp on his chest, and he knows in a fraction of a second that he will regret not seeing this through. So he nods firmly, and Hyrule nods back before turning to Legend.
“Put some gloves on, I don’t want you getting your fingers bitten off.” Legend doesn’t seem to need any further instruction about his role in the process as he produces a pair of leather gloves from his bag and quickly slips them on.
Time feels the weight in his arms shift just slightly and braces himself, making sure his grip is solid right before shit starts to really hit the fan. This person is much stronger than Time had anticipated, especially considering their generally slight frame and how much blood they’ve lost to their numerous injuries. He damn near loses his grip on the first thrash, and has to quickly shift to lock his own hands together, forced to pin their arms to their sides by wrapping himself entirely around their midsection.
“Watch the ribs,” Hyrule snaps, and Time quickly shifts most of his efforts to the broken left arm so that he could keep the bad one immobilized and take the weight off their damaged ribs. If the good arm got away from him it wouldn’t be such a big deal, he's pretty sure. He is so focused on his task that he barely registers Warriors having a similarly difficult time keeping the legs pinned down. From under his chin, Time hears a labored wheeze, then another, and then the coughing starts. Hyrule has Time maintain his grip while carefully angling himself and bringing their charge with him so that they can cough up mouthful after mouthful of dark blood onto the ground.
Finally, they're done, and Time shifts back so that their head is laying on his chest again, the fight now drained right out of them. He can’t see them well at all from his angle, but what he can see are the trails of tears through the blood on their face. He can see more than feel the shuddering breaths they're taking, and he can also feel the way their body is held completely stiff and unmoving other than the quick movement of their chest.
Legend slides in quickly, using his gloved hands to try to open their mouth, intending to get the red potion into them while they are conscious enough to swallow it without choking. It's a good thing he has the gloves on too, because the very first thing the kid does is try to snap their teeth down on the veteran’s fingers and renew their struggle to get away. Legend manages to yank his hand away before their patient can take a chunk off, but when he tries again he gets even more resistance and can’t even get their jaw open this time for how hard they're clenching it shut.
And Time… Time doesn’t like the direction this is going. He understands the necessity, sure, but he can’t help but think about what he would feel like, waking up disoriented and in terrible pain to a group of absolute strangers holding him against his will and trying to force the contents of a bottle down his throat. The idea makes his stomach twist, and without a second thought he shouts, “Stop!” And they all do, looking at Time like perhaps he’s finally lost his mind for good. He wants to shrink away from their eyes the second it comes out of him, but some instinct that runs deeper than his own insecurities with the group force him to stand his ground. “Just…stop for a minute. This isn’t working.” The form against him goes still again, but remains tense and trembling and breathing quickly.
“I don’t have any better ideas of what to do, do you?” Legend bites out, and Hyrule places a hand on his arm.
“They’ve stopped fighting us for the moment, we can afford to let them rest a second. But Time, we have to get this potion in them soon, we don’t have unlimited time here.” Hyrule’s voice is soft but serious.
Time nods and takes a deep breath, and…notices that the kid seems to copy it, albeit much shallower and shakier. It gives him an idea, and he ignores the frustrated noise that Hyrule makes when he releases their uninjured arm. For a moment, their arm flounders in the air, trying to grab onto something, but Time ignores it and moves his own now free hand to gently rest over the center of the kid’s chest.
“It’s okay,” he whispers into the stranger’s ear, cheeks flaring red at the baffled looks from his teammates. “We’re not trying to hurt you more, we’re trying to help. You got injured pretty badly.” The kid’s arm rests back down for a moment, clearly hesitating, and then slowly moves to feel the now unbroken but still bloody skin on their side. Time feels more than hears the tiny noise of what he thinks might be an acknowledgement, and he decides to run with it. “For right now just take some breaths with me, okay? I can feel your heart going a mile a minute.” He keeps his voice soft, hopefully so soft that no one but the stranger against his chest can hear, but he can’t be sure and he's kind of starting to not care anyway.
Time takes another deep breath and feels the chest under his hand rise in time, hitching a little bit unevenly before letting it out again. They repeat this together until Time can feel that they are no longer braced so tightly against him and the steady thump of their heart is closer to what it should be. “I’m gonna let you go in a second, but I need you to promise me you won’t move around and freak out on us, yeah? You’re a little fragile right now and we don’t want you to hurt yourself anymore.”
“Time!” Warriors hisses in warning, “This isn’t a good–” But he's silenced by Hyrule’s gentle hand on his arm just like Legend had been.
The stranger’s free hand comes to rest on Time’s knee since it's all they can really reach, fisting into the fabric of his trousers. Then the grip relaxes and Time feels the kid’s blood-matted hair rub against his shoulder as they nod the tiniest bit, even that much movement making their breath catch slightly.
True to his word, Time carefully starts to loosen his grip, only barely registering that Hyrule nudges Warriors to do the same. He can’t move away entirely since he's supporting most of the other’s weight, and is surprised to feel the way the kid goes entirely boneless against him. At first he's worried that he’d fucked up and they're unconscious again with no way to give them the potion they still desperately need - but when he cranes his neck uncomfortably to get a look, he finds that the stranger is looking at him, too. Time is met with the brightest blue eyes he’s ever seen, almost luminescent in the dim light and much more clear and present than he could have anticipated.
Hyrule is at his side then, gently touching their shoulder. The kid startles and tries to lean away from the touch, and Time makes sure not to let them get too far. He brings his hand up, telegraphing his movements before carefully brushing bloody and sweat damp hair off the kid’s forehead. “It’s okay,” he assures, and something in the pit of his stomach twists with a feeling he can only describe as complicated when they almost immediately settle back, still clearly apprehensive but for some reason seeming to take Time of all people at his word.
“This is my friend, he’s got a potion for you to drink,” he explains as Hyrule comes closer once again, this time avoiding touching their patient at all. Time watches their face as a frown overtakes their expression and they mouth Potion? up at him. “It’ll help heal you up the rest of the way. Well…” Time catches Hyrule’s look and amends his statement, “Maybe not the whole rest of the way, but it’ll help.”
They seem to accept that explanation and start trying to sit up. Time moves with them as they do, even when they pat his knee in what feels like a dismissal, but he isn’t going to be backing off in any way until that potion is down. They only hesitate a moment before they take the uncorked potion from Hyrule, fighting a tremor in their hand to keep a grip on it. A sniff and a small sip later, they clearly decide that they have not been given a vial of poison and knock the entire thing back in one go.
There is a collective sigh of relief – basically everyone has gathered around at this point, the others having long taken care of those weird skeletons – as it becomes apparent that their strange little shadow is going to be okay.
It takes a few minutes for the potion to do all the work it's going to, and most of the group politely acts like they aren’t watching when the kid starts testing to see if their body still works. They move their once-bad arm around carefully, press at their right side, touch the thin line of fresh scar on their forehead. Then they start moving to stand, and Time can’t really see any reason to stop them at this point (though some protective corner of his mind seems to disagree without providing him with any good reason). They ignore an offered hand from Hyrule, who is actively trying to convince them to sit back down, and stand up. Unsteady and covered in their own blood, they survey the scene around them with an expression so blank that it makes Time’s own chest feel hollow somehow.
Time had gotten a bit of tunnel vision during the whole thing, so he hadn’t noticed that what had previously been a light dusting of colored flecks in the air has since gotten much more intense. Lines of black smoke are pouring from the ground now, so thick and cloying that it's hard to breathe even though it is clearly magic of some kind and not actual smoke.
The kid they’d scraped off the pavement mere minutes ago makes a quiet but terribly distressed noise in the back of their throat and takes a few wobbly steps past their group, dodging any hands that try to stop them and turning to stare up at the sky. The look of abject horror and defeat that appears on their face is so obvious that Time feels compelled to go comfort them, and he gets halfway there before his good sense takes over and he instead turns to look at the sky as well to see what had triggered the reaction.
It's the moon, stained blood red and hanging directly above Hyrule Castle.