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Warriors and Four may have taken first watch, but Wild remains awake.
Sleep has done its best to elude him ever since he reunited with the Chain a few months prior. He knows he is worrying Twilight – who cannot conceal the pinched look in his eyes when he wakes to find Wild already preparing breakfast – but nothing he does allows him to sleep more than a few hours at a time. Herbal teas, strenuous exercise, the safety of an inn – short of knocking himself out completely with a club to the head, he cannot rest.
Travelling with the Chain once more has granted him happiness he cannot really describe. After journeying with them for so long, he felt lost when he was ripped away to save Hyrule once more. It was similar to how he was when he left the Shrine of Resurrection for the first time, stumbling across known yet unfamiliar grounds, listening for voices he knows should be there but are missing. Thankfully, that feeling alleviated when a portal snagged his feet and dragged him back to his companions. A lightness fills him when he is cutting at herbs and Wind appears at his elbow to ask what it is, or when he scales a tree for a better view and Hyrule clambers behind him, or when he tries a new sword move and Warriors steps in to give pointers. Their absence was felt keenly in his heart.
He aches at the separation from Zelda and his land, but he is a wanderer at heart, and cannot begrudge the call to traverse a new path when it is put in front of him. Zelda is still trying to understand this part of him. He is ever so different from the man he was before.
Despite the joys of being with the Chain again, a new weight has settled on his shoulders. Every time he looks at his brothers, the Purah Pad starts to burn a hole in his side. It is wrong that they dress the same as they always have when Wild has their clothing stored in a faraway corner of the Pad. Not forgotten, but not looked upon either.
Wind’s cap, worn and encrusted in salt, is neatly rolled up on top of Time’s boots, complete with the ridiculous flap at the top. Twilight’s outer layer, with wolf hair somehow clinging onto the fibres, lies next to the mask that matches the tattoos stretching across Time’s face. Sky’s tunic, shoulders covered in worn holes and jagged rips tracing across the sides, is folded carefully at the bottom of the pile. The first one he found.
His mind cannot rest, not when he has the reminder of his brothers’ mortality by his side each night. The reminder that their companionship and love have an expiry date.
A quiet has settled over camp when Wild finally sits up, accepting that sleep remains a privilege not reserved for him. Bedrolls have been strewn across the ground, and the tell-tale snores paired with the raised moon tell him that it is late. Late enough that it is almost early.
The sound of metal scraping against metal breaks the silence, as Four methodically sharpens Hyrule’s sword. His ears are twitched back to listen to the low mumbling of Warriors beside him, and he hums every so often in response, but his eyes are locked on the forest surrounding them. Every rustling of the leaves makes the two of them freeze, but they are quick to return to their previous states.
Wild stumbles to his feet, raising a hand in greeting to the current watchers. He gets a quiet hello and a silent nod in response. Turning away from them, he takes a look at the other side of camp. Most of the Chain is curled up on their bedrolls, save for the glaring exception of the chosen hero.
Sky is sat with a measured amount of distance between himself and the group – close enough to raise no protests from the watchers, but far enough to give the illusion of solitude. The bright moonlight illuminates his silhouette, sharpening his edges and creating an otherworldly atmosphere. Wild will not be the one to tell him, but in the silence of the night he can finally see the godkiller that Sky is.
He begins making his way over to the chosen hero. He has to sidestep many of his companions’ haphazardly chosen sleeping arrangements en route. They are mostly dead to the world, trying to recover their energy for the upcoming travel in the morning, but he notices that one is not. Legend eyes are half-open, drooping but stubbornly not falling shut. They are locked onto the back of the chosen hero as well, brow furrowed in contemplation, but he makes no move forward. Like Sky is a puzzle he is wary to try and solve. When he catches Wild staring at him, he gives the champion a soft kick to the foot and a nod in the chosen hero’s direction. Wild nods back. The veteran loses some of the tension in his frame, hands unclenching and brow unfurrowing. His eyes remain open.
Wild takes another few paces forward, snapping his fingers together to announce himself. Sky’s ears pin back, registering his presence, but he makes no move to turn around. The champion takes a seat next to him.
They sit in silence for a bit. The grass is damp beneath Wild’s hands as he glides them across the blades. There is a slight chill in the air, and he shivers at the feeling.
“What are you doing up?” Sky asks lightly, after a beat. His tone is hushed so as to not wake anyone else. “I would have thought you’d be fast asleep after everything today.”
The everything in question would be Wind and Wild’s attempts to break the awkward atmosphere that had settled across the group that day. Time had been in a mood – not necessarily a bad one, but something about him was slightly off. His words were few and his footsteps heavy, a deep frown etched into his face when he thought no one was looking. Every high-pitched noise caused him to flinch, and he maintained a sizeable gap between himself and Warriors. It had been incredibly disconcerting for everyone else, unsure of how to deal with Time’s mood and desperately trying to dodge the ticking time bomb that was a conversation between two of their members.
Halfway through the day, Wind had darted up to Wild’s side and quietly suggested they do something to lighten things up. Wild had been quick to agree. Hopefully, the antics Wind promised would distract Time whilst also alleviating the anxiety that had been creeping into his mind from the prolonged silence.
Together, they had enacted a wide array of practical jokes and word play for the rest of their travels for the day – items of clothing had gone missing, insane competitions were sparked and the puns were endless. Warriors had gotten into a competition with Legend about who could do the most consecutive cartwheels across the field. The two do not normally engage in physical competition while travelling, preferring to keep themselves open in case they have to enter combat. However, Warriors had leapt onto the suggestion with fervent agreement, and managed fourteen cartwheels before Twilight grabbed his legs and physically stopped him.
Wild and Wind’s efforts had not gone to waste, and everyone had seemed much lighter by the time they had set up camp, but it was exhausting. Wind had been the first to crash. He had nearly faceplanted into the broth Legend had made but had been saved by Hyrule catching him by the shoulder and dragging him to the side. Wild had been expected to crash next, but he remained awake, as was the new norm.
Wild waits until Sky’s head finally turns his way, and he signs, “I thought so too.”
Sky hums, head tilting to the side. His face looks a bit too pale. It could be the moonlight exaggerating the colour, but the thin press of his lips and the tightness to his eyes suggest otherwise.
“What troubles you?” Sky asks. “You’re not one to let your sleepless nights be known.”
Wild blinks a little in surprise – he honestly had not thought that Sky noticed. It is no secret that the chosen hero can sleep at the drop of a hat. With that unique talent, the champion had not considered that he had been awake to notice Wild was too.
“Neither are you,” Wild replies. Sky’s sleepless nights were news to him too. The chosen hero sighs, and pokes Wild in the shoulder. It does little to faze him.
Silence permeates their conversation for a minute. One glance at Sky’s face tells him that he is figuring out the words he wants to say, with closed eyes and a scrunched nose. Wild waits for him to speak.
“You’ve been… different, since you got back,” Sky whispers tentatively, opening his eyes once more. There is nothing judgemental in that gaze, but it exposes him fully. His tone is too soft for how the words open a pit inside of Wild’s stomach. “I mean, of course you would be, you’ve been away for a year. But I feel like there’s something else.”
Wild doesn’t move. No one has confronted him yet on his behaviour. The worried looks from Twilight are endless, and Time had quietly pulled him aside to offer an ear should he need it, but he had not been directly asked about what happened.
He wonders if Sky will be the first.
“Did you lose someone?”
That causes him to flinch back. It is a blunt question, open and honest, and Sky asks it with wide eyes and a gentle voice. Everyone has been on tenterhooks around him, sidestepping his absence like it is a crack in the ground rather than a cavernous ravine separating them. No one wants to bring it up.
Sky has had enough, apparently. Wild had not been expecting such directness from his friend, but he has to admit it is relieving in its own way.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Sky continues hastily, waving his hand in front of him like he could physically dispel the question from the air. “I just… You stare at us sometimes like we aren’t there. Like something is missing everywhere you look.”
He can barely bring himself to breathe. The shock of the question has not fully settled.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The question revitalises the burning hole in his side, where the worn fabric of ancient tunics rest inside the Purah Pad. A reminder of his brothers’ mortality. A reminder of his own mortality.
He does not know how to put it into words.
Wild is no stranger to grief. He has mourned his fellow champions, dying before their time in a fruitless battle against a never-ending calamity. He has mourned Hyrule’s people, battle-scarred and armed to the teeth to defend what is theirs, who lost their freedom along the way. He has mourned a family blurred at the edges, vaguely suggesting an unconditional love and care that he lost to the kingdom and his destiny.
He has mourned Zelda, otherworldly in her draconification and carrying the weight of a millennia of lifetimes he could never hope to comprehend. She has mentioned mourning him in turn, losing the stoic soldier who never left her side and gaining a man carefree and full of wonder. She says she is mourning the child who grew up too quickly in her service.
He has also mourned himself. The person who served the crown as a royal knight, putting everything he had into saving Hyrule, only to fall at the final hurdle. The person who is lost to time and lives on only in Zelda’s mind.
Wild finds that he is skilled at grieving for strangers.
This is something new, though. This is no stranger. Sky sits before him, his comrade-in-arms, his defender against that which threatens to drag him down. His tunic is whole and hale, threads not yet frayed enough to loosen the jagged rips marring the sides.
How can he convey that he does not know how to lose someone so close to his heart?
Wild remains silent, and Sky takes that for the answer that it is. “I have lost people as well,” he says, like the question was never asked in the first place. Wild is thankful. He does not think he has the words to share his thoughts. “I lost my best friend.”
Wild raises an eyebrow. Sky notices and waves him off. “Not Zelda,” he clarifies. “Someone else. Fi.”
He has heard that name before. On quiet nights, as he is cooking dinner, he sometimes sees Sky nearby, with his back pressed against a tree. The Master Sword would be lying across his lap, flickering a soft blue light to join the campfire. Sky whispers that name reverently to his weapon. Wild has named weapons before, when the isolation of his journey became too much, and he knows some of the others have done the same. But the way Sky says it means something different. Like there is something inside to be cherished.
“She was my companion throughout my adventure,” Sky says. His hands twitch to the sides, and it is only then that Wild notices the Master Sword, lying unsheathed on the grass to Sky’s left. “She sacrificed herself for my aid at the end of my adventure.”
He stops to take a breath there, and it does not escape Wild’s notice how shaky it is. He raises his hands to interrupt, but Sky powers on, either not seeing or not caring.
“It was inevitable,” he says firmly. “There was nothing I could do about it. But a part of me went with her.”
Wild thinks he can understand that. He lost a part of himself too, albeit in a different way. He lost his first life, where he was the knight who only had to protect the princess. He may mourn that man, in an abstract way, but he has accepted his absence. Who he was could never have defeated the calamity. It was never his task to fulfil, in the first place, but even if he had tried to single-handedly crush the evil terrorising their country, he would not have succeeded. No training, determination or lack of self-preservation could have stacked the odds in his favour.
He might not fully understand how, but his death was what he needed to save the kingdom.
Sometimes he catches himself wishing that he had the strength the first time, to pick up where others could not and push for success. That things had gone differently, and he did not have to lose those he might have held dear. That he did not have to lose who he was.
He has talked to Zelda about that. With his own patchy memories, and her input where he fails, he has mostly accepted his first failure. Had he succeeded the first time, he would have destroyed himself searching for a purpose that no longer existed. Who he was would not be able to live in a world without the calamity. Zelda had confirmed that, with a grimace tugging at her lips and tears in her eyes. She has not given herself the space to grieve the events of the past.
In that sense, they agreed, dying also saved his life.
But while he may have had the time to come to terms with his loss of self, he has not given himself the chance to consider the loss of his brothers. This situation is different. A part of him lies with the Chain, both lost to time within his Purah Pad and constantly surrounding him when he opens his eyes.
“How do you deal with it?” Wild asks. His hands move in small enough gestures that they could be ignored, and if it were anyone else maybe they would be. Sky’s eyes narrow in on the movement, and his ear twitches as he thinks up a response.
He does not think Sky will have the answer for his question. As mature and considering the chosen hero, Wild thinks he would be hard pressed to get him to understand missing someone who is right in front of you.
“I don’t think you ever fully deal with it,” he answers eventually. Wild’s hands drop to wrap around his knees. He knew Sky would not have an answer. “It’s not like you ever stop missing them. It will follow you for as long as you remember them.” He looks up to meet Wild’s eyes, amending his words. “Maybe even after.”
Wild takes in a breath. “I thought you were good at comforting people, Sky,” he jokes, but he cannot conceal the shaking of his hands that threaten to make the signs unreadable.
“I don’t tell lies,” is the reply, and before Wild can point out what an absolute crock of shit that is he continues. “And I don’t think lies would bring you any comfort.”
He has to concede to the chosen hero there. Meaningless platitudes would do nothing to help. He has heard it all – it was not your fault, you did all you could, you are fine now – from people who do not truly understand what happened. The words come from a place of care, undeniably, but they fall flat with his knowledge that they could not comprehend what he means.
Sky has more understanding than them, even if Wild has not explained what he lost, and the truth behind his words are worth more than any surface-level consolation.
“It will never stop hurting, but that does not mean it’s a bad thing. It is proof that you loved and were loved in turn.” Sky has a small smile on his face as he talks, brushing a lock of hair behind his ear. He sounds at peace with what he has lost, and Wild wants to grill him and discover how he managed that. How he managed to accept the unthinkable.
“But what if I want it to stop hurting?” Wild asks desperately. “What if I can’t take it anymore?”
“Time is the answer,” Sky says. Unbidden, a pun about Time rises in Wild’s mind but he squashes it fiercely. Sky must have thought it as well, judging by the twitch of his smile, but he does not bring it up.
“I have given it time, though,” Wild interjects. “It has been long enough that I should be over it by now.”
“You can give something time, but it is useless if you ignore the issue,” he replies. The truth in that makes Wild frown. “You need to process what happened, think about how it made you feel and how it has impacted you. Then you need to continue to live your life. The grief will follow you around, and you should not banish it from your mind, but as you grow and experience more of life it will appear smaller. It will stop hurting as much.”
The words sound rehearsed, like Sky is reading a script that was read to him before. They are no less genuine for it.
Wild’s eyes sting. As painful as it is to know he will lose his brothers, he does not know how to not obsess over it. When he looks at them for too long it is the only thing he can think about.
“That’s not fair,” is what Wild eventually signs shakily. “I don’t- that’s not- “
Sky raises a hand, and when Wild nods he places it on his shoulder, only a slight widening of his eyes highlighting his surprise. Wild is not typically one for physical comfort in the same way as others in the Chain. Where Twilight and Wind dive in for hugs, Wild tends to shy away. It is too much all at once.
Now, though, he takes the hand as permission to tip to the side, letting his head rest on Sky’s shoulder. He can feel the muscles of Sky’s arm tense at the contact, but he pays it no mind, pressing his face into his shirt. His hands come up to clench at the fabric at his chest.
The hand that was on his shoulder slowly moves up to his head, resting there more fully when it faces no immediate resistance. Sky leaves his other arm at his side, however, and that brings Wild some relief.
“Destiny tends not to be fair,” Sky whispers, “but we make the most of what we get. I got to meet all of you, didn’t I? That hardly seems fair to anyone else.”
That is the problem, Wild wants to say. I met all of you and I care for you but eventually you will leave because we are not destined to be in each other’s lives forever.
His hands are stuck clutching Sky’s tunic, and he stays quiet.
Another few minutes pass. He remains where he is, shaking but not crying, even when his back starts to ache. Sky is unmoving against him.
“I grieved for you when you were taken from us the first time,” the chosen hero says. His voice is quieter than it was before. “I will grieve for you again when our journey ends. But I will carry that grief willingly because it proves you are real, and I care for you even when we are apart.”
These words also sound practiced. Sky has clearly talked about this before, and Wild absently wonders to who.
He pulls away to raise his hands, and Sky lets him go easily. “When did you become so eloquent?” He asks, a watery smile on his face. It is forced, but it is the closest he can get to a dismissal without directly saying so. He needs to think about it some more. Everything Sky said sounds near impossible to come to terms with, but obviously he can since Sky has. He needs some time.
Thankfully, Sky picks up on his intent. “I’ve always been this eloquent,” he sniffs, and grins when Wild lets out a rasping laugh. “It’s late. You should go to sleep.” He gestures behind him. Wild turns to look and sees Warriors shaking Twilight awake. Four is doing the same for Legend, although the veteran’s stretching and yawning is clearly for show. He did not look prepared to sleep when Wild left him. Warriors and Twilight share a few muttered words before the rancher sighs and heaves himself up. The captain pats him on the shoulder and darts back to his own bedroll, Four quick to copy.
Wild nods and raises to his feet. “You should too,” he signs. He feels more put-together with the distance.
Sky smiles again, but this one feels more forced. “I’ll be right behind you,” he assures, but Wild is not convinced. He does not press, however. He won’t be sleeping either, just lying in his bedroll until the sun graces the sky.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Wild says instead. He gets a nod and a quiet goodnight in reply. It is still a struggle to return to his own bedroll with the haphazardly placed heroes dotting the floor, but he makes it without tripping over anyone. Twilight waves at him, and he waves back. Legend gives him a searching look, relaxing when Wild nods once. They get back to their watch, and Wild crawls into his bedroll.
He turns so he can fix his eyes onto Sky’s back. He has not moved from his seat, though the Master Sword is now slung across his knees. Quiet words come from him but Wild pays them no mind. They’re not for his ears.
At some point, Wild falls asleep to that image. If he dreams about moments with the Chain lasting forever, that is no one’s business but his own.