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The front gates of Warriors' Castle Town always stand proud.
Flags and banners billow forth like the structure itself stretches to puff out its chest, and the spire beyond the sturdy walls— uncollapsible and ever-present—lends to the castle a sense of looming, towering, even over what it calls its Hero.
The streets bustle, noisy even beyond the gates where the Captain stands paused for a moment, eyes tracing the carved royal crest boldly crowning the town entrance. There's wagon wheels creaking, brooms sweeping across cobblestone, footfalls clobbering together in a senseless mess of thumps and scrapes. His ears twitch at the lower beats.
There's a tug on his blue scarf, gentle and hesitant. The fabric feels heavier on his shoulders the closer the walls get to his bubble—leagues weightier than his orange one, which he wishes he was wearing instead. Warriors flicks his attention down, blinks at big eyes and blond fluff, gaze silent and questioning. The sailor tilts his head in the way a confused dog would—the others always say he gets it from the Captain himself, and Warriors always denies it with empty words, grinning.
He fixes his own expression, tweaks the downtick of his lips, lifts his shoulders up against the weight of heavy cobalt. He feels the others' gazes sticking to the back of his head like blood.
Warriors makes sure to smile, cheek scar stretching to accommodate for the movement. "C'mon," he nudges, "to the queen."
Familiar scents of steel and stone and hot food and horse manure mingle with the loud murmur that’s ever-present here—parents, children, soldiers, all bustling in the marketplace and in and out of shops. The first step he takes over the cobblestone is strangely hard to perform, but once his shoulders are past the open gates and his signature color is catching the eyes of the crowd, he corrects his posture, forces his eyes forward.
Murmuring floods his ears, sharp tinks of blacksmith tools and shrieks from little kids catching his mind over all the lower notes and taps—his left ear works overtime to decipher the sources while his right only floats in the muffled fuzz. They weave between cliques, step around cargo boxes being unstacked from wagons. Warriors smiles and waves to the awed points and whispers, swallows and keeps his gaze away from the scowls and the mouthed insults.
He prays the others don't catch those tidbits.
The castle innards are always colder, damper, and Warriors welcomes the break from the noon sun with open arms. Nodding to the guards stationed in the halls and by the throne room doors, he's cleared to enter; the Captain pushes them open, follows the ornamental carpet like he's been slotted into a railway, like he's simply cargo.
He hears the footfalls behind him slow and stop, unsure and uneasy, but at the tautness of Warriors' shoulders or the tautness of Athena's, he isn’t sure.
Warriors lets memory sink into muscle, words leaving his mouth he barely registers as he gives a practiced bow. When he finally lifts his gaze from underwater, he idly wonders when the last time he washed this scarf was—her unreadable, deceptively indifferent stare is glacial, and Impa, always next to her, holds her face tight like she does when she wants to blurt something.
A few moments later and they've exchanged intel; black blood, evil forces, suspicious activity, monster counts. They're told of places they might want to investigate, reports that don’t quite match up. Warriors is jotting down mental notes and cooking up a carefully worded goodbye in the back of his head, recipe based entirely off of the tense atmosphere of the room.
His mind seems to let him resurface near the tail-end of the discussion, Twilight’s voice trickling into his head when existence stops being muffled. The blurriness fixes itself, the translucency of reality phasing back to the forefront. His brain catches all the details in a net for him—for that, he's grateful—but the way it lurches him from reality like another war is waging outside has him struggling to hold himself like a good soldier should.
The corners of the room pop back into his periphery, a burst of static in his brain, and then he’s suddenly bidding Athena and Impa a polite farewell, keeping his voice steady, his gaze sharp and kind, but careful not to let the uneasiness bleed into his grin.
He ushers the chain out the door with a motion that’s only patient and slow because of practiced restraint, and then a Link, a word pours through the room and hits Warriors right between the shoulder blades, cold and breath-hitching like river water.
The flinch in his posture is miniscule, but he knows the two women behind him see it. He thinks maybe the chain does too.
“Alone,” the Queen calls.
Something lumpy pushes up his throat, but he forces himself to grin at the chain and give them a one moment gesture with an easy smile, pulling the large doors closed with loud hinges and clicking steel. He wraps his deep breath into his whip-around to disguise the blatancy a bit; moves the muscles on his face to smile in a way he knows gets good results.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” He stops himself from bowing again—the thoughts in his head are uncharacteristically out of order and he quietly berates himself for it.
“You’re nervous,” Impa blurts, finally, and Athena does not chastise her for it. The General all but glares at him, but that’s just how her face is (he thinks).
“What ever would I be nervous about?” he pushes back easily, the line queued up like a second instinct, like a defense mechanism. They don’t buy it and he knows it, doesn’t really know why he tried.
“I assume you know,” Athena alludes, shifting in her throne. Warriors watches the reflections in the gold trim change as a distraction. “The traitors? I surely hope you weren’t informed already—that would mean people outside of this room know about it.”
The last part of her words are drowned in the beating of Warriors’ own heart, and he takes great care to keep his breaths steady. Old scars in his back flare up in dull aches. “Traitors?”
He doesn’t mean the word to sound so shaky. The Captain swallows his heart down, shoos it back to its seat in his chest and tries again. He makes it worse with a stutter. “Traitors… they—they’re back?”
“Unfortunately.” Athena watches him for a moment. “Was that not the reason for your… fretful state?”
She gestures to him with a pen in her hand, something in her eyes detached, indifferent. Warriors even spots her wrinkle up her nose, just a little, as she points at his person and he rushes to fix himself, shame coiling between the tendons in his neck.
“I was unaware, ma’am,” Warriors says, a little victory pop from a fire rod in his mind when he doesn’t teeter his sentence. “But I suppose I did feel something was off.”
He hadn’t even considered it to be traitors, really. He’d thought it was the general dread that always accompanied having to put that blue scarf back on. Warriors hadn’t thought to denote it as anything more than a bad day—one of his jumpy ones, one of the days where his anxiety is at a peak for no particular reason.
The effort it had taken to push his shoulders past the gates makes sense now. His sweaty hands, the flaring scars, the instincts whispering in his eardrums. He supposed he had sensed something off in the air at the very beginning.
“At least we know your instincts are still sharp,” she replies easily—to others it might feel like a lighthearted quip, but to Warriors it feels strangely hurtful. Strangely uncaring. He doesn’t know why.
He chalks it up to the paranoia.
“I trust you have it under control,” the Queen says, and when Warriors looks up at her she lifts her chin, a challenge. A dare to put it on her instead. “We don’t have any leads. Do whatever is necessary when they attack; just try not to make it known to the public.”
The Captain swallows. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
He’s dismissed, and Warriors finds himself opening the doors before he’s even aware he has turned around and walked back down the carpet.
Warriors can’t help but latch onto the fact that she’d said when they attack, not if.
The chain is waiting there and the Captain doesn’t think to lift his face when he greets them; he regrets that when their expressions fall and match his knitted brows, the tight line of his lips.
Some of their mouths open to question and to mother, always concerned when their Captain isn’t as sunny as he usually is. Warriors shakes his head, gestures for them to follow. Not in front of the guards.
They trail after him, tense and quiet—their footfalls bounce off stone walls and carved statues, golden accents and polished wood. He guides them back out into the main hall, past the grand archway until the noon sun hits them again and warms their faces.
The distant murmur of the townspeople flood his ears, metal tinks and ringing bells hitting his scarf as he pauses and turns. They stop on the bridge between the castle and the rest of town, the slosh and rapids of the moat down below droning in their ears.
No guards or townsfolk within earshot, Warriors makes to speak. The chain huddles around him, sensing the need for secrecy.
“Zel—Athena informed me there are still traitors aiming for my head,” he relays, feels the zip in the air around them like all of their hearts pick up a beat or two, “Keep your eyes sharp. If you see anything suspicious, you let me know. Or… knock em’ out, whichever comes first.”
Twilight is the first one to blink and break the silence. “Woah—hold on; are there not… guards? That’re assigned t’ protect you, in these situations? Shouldn’t you be… oh, I dunno… in the castle where there’s less opportunities for em’?”
Warriors blinks back at him. “... No? We’ve never done that,” he answers, wonders why the ranchhand says it like it’s obvious. Being in the castle wouldn’t help anyway—half of the time, the traitor is a castle staff member or a guard themselves.
It’s the chain’s turn to blink at him, seemingly speechless.
“You mean they’ve never protected you from traitors?” Legend grits out, has that bright flash in his eyes that means he’s taking himself through the logic and getting more pissed at every detail. “They just… let you go off into the streets where you’re currently being hunted down?”
It sounds bad when he puts it like that. “Well… yes? That’s the easiest way to lure them out,” he says, decides not to include a particular line from Athena from a year or two back— “Heroes shouldn’t need protecting.”
“Aren’t they concerned for your wellbeing?” Time speaks, always the one to ask the simplest and yet the most eye-opening questions.
Warriors looks up at him, the old man’s hardened stare housing something oddly protective. The terrible thing is—the Captain almost wants to laugh at the question, all bitterness and no warmth. Instead, he scrambles to conjure up some half-baked defense for the Queen.
“She said she trusts me,” he echoes, and distantly he knows that’s latching onto words that only have meaning in his own head. He knows he’s reaching, pawing—he feels he’s been doing that for the last six years.
His family falls silent, and there is an exchange between them that Warriors doesn’t understand. There is a conversation there, in their wide gazes and their vaguely horrified expressions, and the Captain can see it very clearly, and yet it’s like they’re speaking a different tongue. Something heavy swirls in his chest—he doesn’t like the looks he’s getting, whatever they mean.
Wind is the one to break it up; he steps forward, cuts the conversations in half with a nod that reminds Warriors of a much younger version of himself. “We’ll look out for you. If we see anything Twi’ll maul em’ to death.”
Twilight glares down at him, but there’s warmth there that’s always present in everybody when they look at the sailor. “Maulin’ is a last resort and you know it.”
Warriors smiles, and somewhere in his chest is something cottony and comfortable and fluttery in a way that makes his face a bit warm and his ears a bit red. He hadn’t said, “We’ll look out for them.” He’d said, “We’ll look out for you.” Somehow, one word means a world of difference.
He nods. “Thank you,” he breathes out. He means it more than they'll ever know.
“Stick with us,” Legend says, and even though he’s very much denied a role of leadership, there’s a certain leading quality to his voice when he speaks there. It’s an order to their Captain on the outskirts—it’s a plea to his best friend in the middle. “They won’t attack unless you’re alone. If they’re not stupid.”
They’re all making their way down the bridge then, the buzz of the moat falling behind the cacophony of everything else in town. Warriors hears bagpipes underneath the murmur, drums beating in between tinks of a blacksmith’s hammer; the fanfare is lively today, as are the animals that are pulled along the streets—he watches Sky stare at a rather loud pig like it’s utterly fascinating and the Captain finds himself grinning.
They do have a list of supplies to get, and Warriors assures the chain that it’d be better if they split up and get it all quickly and get out, rather than prolong their visit. His family seems reluctant at the prospect and Legend and Twilight stick to his sides stubbornly—the Captain can’t help but feel the cotton in his chest again when they surround either side of him, hell-bent on scanning the crowd.
The others split off to gather supplies quickly, duties more divided than usual under the time constraint. Warriors almost feels as if he should apologize—some of these traitors may be his own men, and that puts his competence as a Captain in rather dismal light. An embarrassment, really. Not to mention a danger to his family now.
“Don’t even think about it,” Legend blurts over the noise, weaving between the crowd with a watchful eye on him to make sure he follows. Warriors hadn’t even realized he’d opened his mouth until he has to clamp it shut again. “I know that look. Stop feeling guilty, you’re pissin’ me off.”
Warriors smiles easily at his attitude, distant drum beating in sync with their footfalls. He takes the advice, or tries to anyway—the ugly weight is nudged to the back of his head and he lets the clunks and tinks of town bury it there.
Twilight, in front of them and quite easily parting the crowd due to his larger size and rather intimidating silhouette, slows to sync with them and fall in line with their steps.
“They wouldn’t do it in broad daylight, would they?” he murmurs, keeping it vague for any eavesdroppers that manage to hear his lowered voice. Warriors reads his lips when his ears fail him. “Seems a bit foolish.”
Warriors scans the crowd, glances behind him for heads that move too fast, or hands sliding into pockets. “It’s happened in the past,” he answers distractedly, attention spread around the street, eyeing the weapon stalls and the bakers that knead dough next to kitchen knives.
Twilight and Legend are both on edge, Warriors can sense, and the guttural weight and tug in his chest seems to grow with every second they spend out in the open. He hates playing bait. He hates being hunted.
“Let’s just… hurry,” is said over the triumphant music down the street. His friends recognize the small plea in his undertone and quicken their paces.
They walk for a while—weaving and pathfinding around shoulders and elbows, moving carts and curious horse muzzles. Most of their time is spent dodging children running around ankles and trying to see stalls over a sea of heads; even with the ranchhand’s and the Captain’s height, it’s a bit hard to pick out which stalls are which from a distance.
Warriors keeps his eyes on the people, on the faces that scowl at him, send him rude gestures, mock him with mouthed, exaggerated impressions of what they think the Hero is like. Really, on top of returning traitors, their empty threats don’t mean much to him at the moment, unlike most times. Compared to avoiding assassination, a few people trying to put cracks in his self-esteem seems… almost laughable.
His friends don’t seem to hold them at such a low priority though—they’ve evidently seen the looks, much to Warriors’ dismay and slight mortification. He’s very surprised to see Twilight catch a particular one’s eye and lunge forward, snapping and baring human teeth that seem like they’ll turn wolf any moment.
The cluster reels back, eyes wide and appalled. Warriors hops forward and presses a hand between the boy’s shoulder blades, giving the crowd a tight, apologetic smile. His nervous laugh is mostly overwhelmed by chatter and bells, and even when Warriors is nudging Twilight farther down the street, the kid is still glaring back at them, cinnamon eyes turned to frozen over soil.
Warriors glances at the veteran, who has a hand on his sword hilt and a death glare pointed to the townsfolk. The Captain makes a mental note to remind them later that attacking people in public can get you arrested.
They make it to the brewery after trudging through hordes and avoiding elbows in their sides, and Warriors is relieved to finally check something off their list. Potions down, arrows and new material for a broken hookshot to go.
The Captain stands under the shade of a stall, eyes scanning the bottles nestled in blanketed crates and positioned on shelves. Blindly reaching for his rupee pouch, he hears Twilight’s voice stray somewhere to the right, something about scrap metal on sale a stall or two down.
He presses himself flush against the stall counter when a horse pulls a carriage close to his backside—Warriors’ ears flick back at all the noise, feeling more vulnerable than ever about the lackluster hearing in his right.
The Captain looks up, cranes his neck back to see Legend being beckoned over by Twilight, asking for his expertise. The Captain points behind the clerk at the shelves as he leans forward again, eyes on the red bubbles and colorful leaves inside pitchers.
A sharp crackle makes his ears flick, and he whips his head up, eyes landing on a person clad in an apron crouching down to collect broken pottery. Warriors lets his gaze soften and his heart calm, watching soil spill from the crumbled pot.
He sends an apologetic glance to the clerk in front of him as he steps away for a moment, slipping between bodies. Warriors is crouching down and helping them pick up the shards of clay within a moment, smiling at their surprised oh—Captain, thank you!
He checks their hands for cuts, places his shards on their nearby cart, and waves off their thank you s and you didn’t have to s with an easy smile.
It drops when theirs does, eyes going wide and their body flinching back. “LOOK OUT!”
In a split second that Warriors barely even registers until it’s over, he’s pulling out his sword, whispering it against metal, and feeling a jolt up his arm when it connects with something that shouldn’t be there.
He whips his head around, a hachette two feet from his face. Holding it is a figure dressed in dull browns and off-whites, typical civilian clothing covering lean muscle, wooden mask covering an identity.
Warriors distantly hears Legend bark his name out in a yell, sword unsheathing. The figure seems to realize their mistake, and bolts.
Coward, Warriors sneers, and is instantly careening after them.
People shout and stumble while he darts around bodies, curses and yells riling up the street as his boots pound against cobblestone. The figure ducks and jumps and pivots around tables and Warriors follows, cutting corners, throwing himself against carts to keep the traitor in his line of sight.
Scrambling to dodge a vase being thrown back at him, he hops over a table and lands in another aisle, pushing against wood and cloth to keep momentum. He sees a silhouette in his periphery, running through the crowd; the body type doesn’t match Twilight or Legend’s, and he curses.
Shit, he thinks, trusting his teammates are just paces behind him, there are never just two.
“Ledge, get that one!” he barks out, immediately hearing the pattering of pegasus boots rerouting their course.
A familiar otherworldly hum and garble sounds behind him and he glances to a blur of grey fur and snarling teeth darting ahead, after another figure he hadn't even spotted. Warriors mentally thanks Twilight and curses himself— be more alert.
The browns and off-whites are just paces ahead of him and the Captain finally pounces, gloved hand hooked around tattered fabric.
They fall, Warriors smacks his chin against their shoulder blade, the hachette and their mask scrape across stone, and then they're fighting for advantage. They roll and grab and claw, nails against dirt and skin, and his enemy spits at his face, teeth and hatred bared in harsh words and a heavy accent.
"Some fucking Hero you are, with that goddamn sixty-thousand death count on your hands! Useless! Fucking worthless—"
"—piece of shit." Silver against moonlight, an axe-shaped glare in his vision. The stone under his backside reflects it too, shiny and sticky and red.
Warriors pins them, grip on their neck tight in one hand, the other ripping open his bag. Rope, rope—why didn’t I fucking have the rope out before?!
Movement in front of him, sticking out from all the hurried civilian scrambling; Warriors ducks on instinct, the whoosh of a boot sweeping right over his head cutting out his heartbeat for a moment, and then he’s rolling. His sword is out and darting at them before they can recover—the tip of it leaves a red rip, shallow but deep enough to ooze.
They dodge, he stabs, and when he's reeling back he's grabbed by a third, bulkier and taller and just at the right height to get a thick arm around his neck.
They squeeze. Warriors' sword clatters to the stone as he flails, and they both stumble backward until they hit the side of a carriage, wood rocking. He elbows, kicks at the tendons behind knees, but he never quite reaches and panic rises in his chest when his previous target gets closer in his shaky vision.
The Captain paws at the carriage, lungs fighting for air—wood hits his palm, wagon wheel, trim—
The arms shift around his throat, Warriors' heart leaping when he remembers the leverage needed to snap a neck. They move their hands against his jaw, against his chin, he scrambles and claws at the opening of the carriage—
Glass. Warriors grabs it, whatever it is, and throws it right over his shoulder and straight at their head.
The pressure lets go while shattered pieces tumble off his shoulders and Warriors has an astounding zero seconds to recover, the traitor in front of him charging forward with long strides. He sucks in a breath, eyes darting down to their concealed hands. He doesn’t chance it.
He keeps an arm in front of them, pushes at their chest, pins their hand that reveals a blade to their thigh; their limbs push and their bodies twist, resisting shoves and pulls.
The dagger is his own within seconds, and Warriors darts his hand out to pull their head down, cracking their face against his knee. They slump—somebody else rises.
Warriors acts on instinct, obediently follows the scattered mind that's keeping him alive; he whips his arm back, the one holding the knife, slides it through the air in a clean half-circle until it hits something solid.
Warmth and stickiness sprays against one side of his hand, and he winces as he glances back, dagger embedded in their ear.
He yanks it out and lets them fall to the ground. He hadn’t wanted to kill any of them.
People are still shouting, scrambling away from the fight, running around crates and abandoning carts to get away from the blood and the death. He breathes, flicks his ears this way and that and strains to pick sounds out from under the street-wide panic. So much for keeping it away from public eyes.
Warriors thinks he spots two figures in the corner of his attention, darting around wagons and in between aisles, but he doesn’t get much of a chance to do anything about it when movement flickers to his right, and pain promptly explodes in his temples.
The sound of wood splintering apart pries the world out from under him.
A hand drags a body across castle floors, triforce shimmering, flashing against dimly lit walls. The thundering and banging that bends the wooden door makes his head swim—a loud crack, pieces of wood flying away from a longsword swung right in the center—
Ringing ears, pops of color inking into his vision, and he’s blinking at cobblestone ground and wood splinters sprinkled along the street.
And then there’s a weight on top of him and a punch to his head resets everything in motion.
The world bursts at his senses, light and noise searing his skull and cooking the inner walls—another gale of yelling and pressure is aimed at his face, knuckles sawing at his skin with another punch, another.
Pain spiderwebs itself along an eye socket and he brings his hands up, blocks the next fist, and sees a blur of the first enemy above him, the one he’d chased. He’s spitting something at him, words Warriors doesn’t hear, teeth bared that he doesn’t pay attention to.
The Captain twists their arms out, a cry barking above him while he rises up, lifts himself with the leverage of their trunk and elbows at limbs. They twist and gain and lose advantage, Warriors’ mind darting to the rope he’d dropped, his sword that might’ve been kicked away somewhere under a table.
Distantly, he can sense those two figures getting closer, zipping to and fro. He needs to go, now.
I’m sorry. Warriors shoves the traitor’s head underneath him into the cobblestone, fumbles to unsheathe his dagger. He makes it quick, choosing to look up at the street as he makes the cut. He mistakenly glances down when he stumbles off of their suddenly lifeless form, cursing at the sight of a neck split open and gushing wine.
There’s blood along his hair, something stinging one side of his face, and when he puts a hand to it he realizes it’s wood splinters digging into his scalp. He hears a grunt from himself, distantly, as he scrambles to stand, breathy and pained.
He gives himself a single second of reprieve, and then he’s bolting down the aisle, remaining civilians shouting and jumping out of the way as the two figures finally give chase right behind him.
He scrambles around tents and ducks under table cloths, boots sliding across sun-warmed stone, the skin of his fingers rasping against the roughness of it. Warriors breaks through the crowd, nearly losing his footing as he reroutes to not trample a little kid being dragged away from a parent.
Warriors shouts out a sorry! to a vendor as he plucks something from their cart’s tray—he doesn’t even get a look at what it is but he thinks it was a glass blown figurine judging by the way it shatters when he throws it back at his pursuers.
He hears them shout and curse, spit out ugly threats and point blame; the adrenaline makes it laughably easy to ignore and he pulls out everything he can get his hands on and shoves it in their path.
He thrusts a cart into the middle of the street, yanks racks of clothing onto their side and lets them fall into the middle walkway. Somewhere along the way he gets tangled in hanging lantern decorations, the strings sticking to his clothes and trailing behind them until he tears them off—hopefully that slows them down too.
He aims to get them away from the crowd; no innocent civilians are dying from their collateral damage today, that’s a promise to the people.
The Captain passes a few food tables, steam rolling up from pots and plates as shouts spark from the crowd, and then there’s several people pouncing in front of him and he skids to a stop, scrambling back.
His two pursuers meet his face when he turns, and he’s suddenly surrounded. The townsfolk clamber to flee from the drama, leaving them flanked by only dinner tables lined to be a buffet, and Warriors desperately hopes they don’t attack until the street is evacuated.
Two in the back, four in the front. Warriors heaves, blood dripping over an eye as his attention darts and zips—weapons, weights, physiques, he files it all in his head and reorders the info, matches it to techniques drilled into his muscles.
The lighting traces their figures, darkens the raindrops spilling over the tent above them. A headcount gives him a grand total of seven silhouettes, knives glinting when the sky ignites. The hatred is sharper than their weapons will ever be.
Warriors twirls his beloved dagger in his hands, sucking in breaths. Several of them lunge at him at once.
He side-steps two of them, lets them crash into each other, and yanks a third down to crack their nose against a kneecap. Another is coming at him from behind and he splits their wooden mask with his elbow, but a fourth grabs at his arm holding the dagger and he’s forced to slice up, gash across his offender’s face that slices into an eye.
The scream rings out as they stumble and fall, and then somebody fucking bodies him. They both slam into a table, glass shattering, silverware clattering, ceramic breaking apart on the cobblestone. Agony shoots up his lower back from the impact, but there’s a hand aiming for his neck and he’s too busy battling it away to pay attention to it.
Knees and steel-toed boots kick at his legs and he clenches his teeth and squirms under their hold—this particular one is bigger than him too, more muscle and more mass that lets them nearly pick him up and throw him onto the table.
Ceramic breaks and he’s pretty sure he just landed on a pie. There’s cheers and shouts as his enemy clambers over the table and holds him against oak wood, kill him s and pop his fucking eyes out s snarled in his ears and ringing against wine glass rims.
The want to stab at an abdomen raids his mind but the dagger is no longer in his hands and more fists are coming for his face, clocking him one, two, three, four times before Warriors manages to gain purchase on their arm.
He twists out with as much force as he’s able, bone cracking, his offender’s body hitching up at the pain. Warriors reels back at the window and throws a fist of his own out and apparently it’s a punch hard enough to snap a lower jaw and knock his opponent off the table.
They tumble and scream, hands to their mouth, and Warriors grits his teeth at the pain in his own knuckles. He scrabbles to lift himself but there’s movement to his right, yells and snarls covering everything else, and then his own dagger is rushing straight at his face.
He jerks to the side and feels the thunk of it hit wood, feels a sting right in the middle of his shoulder, and then he’s fleeing across the table and rumpling up the cloth as he attempts to stand.
Something sweeps his legs out underneath him and his back hits wood again, table swaying and wobbling from the weight. The Captain’s heart leaps into his throat when he hears a shout, heavy accent overlaying the words— go for it!
Warriors throws his shoulder to the side, the rest of his body flowing with the movement. He tumbles off the table a precious second before his own dagger comes down again and sinks into the oak where his head used to be.
He lands on cobblestone and his feet are instantly moving to lift himself, blood pumping, face bleeding into his tunic from the splinters gouging him and the fists busting open skin. He sucks in breaths where he can, a single, meek little table defending him from four remaining enemies.
He distantly wonders how Twilight and Legend are doing, and if the others have been involved. He wonders if they’re dealing with more than he thinks they are.
The one with his dagger picks up a plate, throws it toward his face. Warriors ducks, darts to reach for the rumpled up tablecloth, and he yanks, watches all their potential weapons come to his side and crash to the ground.
Broken glass and spilled food pooling into the fabric, he reels it in farther, heart pounding as he watches his enemy jump over the table.
They lunge at him, he side-steps, and he pulls the cloth over their head in their turnaround, enemy boots catching on stone. Warriors pulls tight, something animalistic in him relishing in the pained choke they let loose, and he puts all his grip strength into cutting circulation and pushing glass shards into flesh.
They flail in his headlock, the Captain stumbling to keep their balance, and then an odd pressure shoots into his thigh.
Even if he doesn’t feel the pain of it immediately, his eyes flick down and there’s steel in his leg, a familiar dagger grip sticking out from the scarlet.
The pain hits him a beat later. The blood is bright and not the darker hue he’s used to. It hit an artery.
He feels himself shove his enemy away, and then he’s stumbling back, scream half-stifled in his throat as he wraps his hands around his dagger embedded into his thigh. His vision shakes—or maybe that’s just his hands. It rights itself. It’s both.
He grunts, a little cry crackling in his throat as he yanks it out, vision doubling for a moment as he watches blood pour from the hole like a champagne bottle. He can’t move with a goddamn knife in his leg. He chooses the time constraint of blood loss over the inability to defend himself.
The one with the tablecloth around their head is stumbling to get up, grappling with the fabric and flailing to untangle it. One hand pressed into his thigh, he throws the dagger at them; his aim is a bit off and it misses their heart, but it still knocks them to the ground where they choke.
Warriors watches them still after a second or two.
He’s so tired.
His wide, crazed gaze flicks to the remaining traitors as he huffs, the group still cowered behind the table that separates them. The one he’d punched off the oak stumbles to grip the side of it, one hand to their jutted jaw, another wrapped around the handle of a steak knife.
It’s quiet, the distant yells of civilians down the street syncing with their heartbeats. The bagpipes and the drums left with them. His enemies seem scared now.
Good.
Warriors limps forward, steeling his bloodied, slightly swollen face as he lets the garnet gush from his wound, lets the agony spasm his breaths.
His hands come up to unloop one of the belts from his waist, blood covering shiny gold trim—
And before the one with the broken jaw can even move, he lashes his belt out at them, loops the golden metal tip around their neck like a lasso and pulls.
The snap of bone echoes down the evacuated street, bounces off the market stalls, and the sound of a body slumping to the cobblestone finishes off the chord, like a conductor lowering their baton when the last note rings.
He eyes the three remaining traitors and one of their hands twitch, like they want to run away, like they suddenly just now understand that they are attacking the wrong man.
Warriors stumbles forward, stab wound gushing. One of the more stupid ones rushes in.
He swears he hears somebody yell Wars! distant and quiet, but he’s too caught up in the adrenaline to stray his mind from the fight.
Warriors snaps his belt forward, gold tip cutting through air and connecting with the side of their head, right along the bones of their ear. They fall, scream, and he doesn’t wait for the next one to lunge at him.
He lashes out first, wraps the belt around their arm and brings the fight to him. He yanks, they’re pulled forward, and then their head is snapped back as his knuckles connect with a now dented-in nose.
He sees the first one lift themselves, but he takes a single step forward before arms from behind are wrapping around his neck and trapping his head in. They aren’t nearly as big as the one who’d choked him, but Warriors feels like they know that—they shout to their buddy, “Kill him, quick!” voice unsteady.
He flails and kicks, scream bubbling in his throat as the wound in his leg balls his nerves into a knot. His gaze flies up when their buddy picks up another steak knife from a table.
They draw their hand back, Warriors’ stomach snakes up his esophagus, and he jerks down.
Something grazes his head. He hears a squelch much too close to his ear, and then the grip is released and Warriors is pretty sure the knife had chopped off a chunk of his hair.
He doesn’t dwell on the brush with death as the one behind him falls, their head smacking against a table on the way down. Dinnerware shrieks, a pot of stew splashes from its pot. Warriors sees the knife firmly embedded in the corner of their eye.
Dots fly up in his vision as he whips around, the last traitor hurrying for something else on the table. The Captain ignores that, instead careening behind him, reaching for the boiling pot.
Fingers wrap around warm handles, he hears shattered ceramic scraping. There’s a footstep—he prays he’s fast enough and lifts the container—
Warriors lugs the pot, whips around and lets go of the handles. It sails, the lid tips off.
Near-boiling stew hits his target, the heavy pot simply guaranteeing a knockdown. Steam rolls up and with it comes the scream.
His mind blinks out for most of it, but he knows it’s loud and it echoes down buildings on entirely different streets. He wheezes, mind stuttering and flickering, perhaps attempting to block the ugly writhing they do, the sight of skin bubbling, the smell of cooking flesh.
Past the shrieks that die down rather quickly—Warriors knows from experience a burn like that will take your mind somewhere else—it’s finally, truly quiet. And he stands there, legs shaking underneath him, blood dripping from his clothes and soaking one pant-leg a bright red.
He huffs and wheezes and gasps, wisps of black crawling along his peripherals as the tables in front of him double, triple. He’s so tired.
Movement makes his eyes flicker up; the one he’d punched is trying to reach a glass shard within the mess of knocked off silverware and ceramic, tablecloths and ruined food twisted around each other and braided along the stone.
He stumbles forward, ignores the nasty taste in his mouth atop the copper as he simply gives their head a strong kick. They stop moving. Warriors feels ill.
He hears it again, louder. Warriors! He turns his head, the pain coming back to him in the increments where his core doesn’t shake from adrenaline.
There’s three figures sprinting down the street, red and green and black and silver—the colors swirl in his head, the ground tilting, the sky moving like it’s a gyroscope. He stares, a bit braindead perhaps. Energy spent, body giving up.
Warriors looks down at himself, at the paleness of his skin that’s shown through the fingerless gloves, at the maroon that drenches him, wound in his leg wide and big and deep and—and nauseating.
He looks back up at them, at the red and green and black and silver.
He feels his legs give out underneath him as one of them screams.
+
The void is merciful.
The hands on him tear him away from that.
The first little puff of noise in the back of his head lights some of his brain up, fuzzy and frothy as the abyss clings to the edges.
And then there is a weighted swath of panic seizing his chest, his soul, at the pressure of palms and fingers on his skin. His ears ring, his lungs shrivel, and he bucks away from looming silhouettes and featureless faces, yelling, thrashing, arching his back from the agony.
There’s shouts and barks somewhere beyond the barrier, beyond the thick stained glass that films over his eyes. He smells copper and dirt and sweat, something oddly sterile behind it that makes his head spin, makes his memory hitch—
“Pin him!” The shout is from Impa, barked over the clenched groans leaking from his throat. There’s hands on him, harsh and efficient and their clothes smell of the infirmary and herbs. He thrashes harder when the red-hot glow of a piece of steel sways over his vision.
It’s pressed against his gaping hip. He screams until his throat is raw.
A big hand is pressed to his chest, his ankles are being held down to something soft —soft?— and there’s too many silhouettes hovering over him. There’s no exits, there’s no escape routes, no gaps in defenses, and Warriors feels his heart ram into his ribcage like a bull, angry and cornered.
“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!” is screamed from his throat, rasped out in awful notes and singed confidence, and the shouts simply multiply, simply double in volume.
He thrashes and flails against their holds, against the silhouettes that house oddly familiar colors. Something comes from one of them —“Wars it’s okay, it’s us!”— but the part of his brain that lights up at the name is overridden with fear when the biggest figure looms over him, reaches for his face.
He flails against their hold, squirms like an injured animal meeting fate. The rain trickles the blood from his skin, but their hands never lose their grip even in the wetness.
Somebody holds his head down, palm flat against his forehead, pushing his skull into the pavement with their whole body. “Make it slow, Lucy,” they order to their friend, and he hears metal whisper to metal.
Warriors screams at the shadow closing in and he writhes until there’s a hand free from any grip. The shouts turn panicked as he throws a fist out, knuckles connecting with something solid.
The shadow falls away, a yell and a groan seeping through his muffled awareness. There’s more hands on him after that, another set, and then another.
And then two palms that glow a familiar seafoam blue press against his head, flood his brain with magic that pops and bubbles between cells.
“Sleep. Rest,” they whisper.
His mind attempts to fight it. It doesn’t get very far.
+
The void washes away slowly this time, gentle and swaying.
Warriors floats in it for a while, froth lapping at his mind, foaming at his muscles. The cobwebs between his bones slowly fall away, eventually replaced with an aching sort of pulse.
It’s there as an annoyance at first, poking and prodding at him while his groggy mind swats it away, but soon it turns to more of a throb, stiffening muscles that are already fatigued. There's something soft under his head, against his cheek, and the want to shove his face in it like a child becomes the only thought his tired mind can hold.
At some point, he rises to the surface of the abyss and the barrier between the world and him is thin and fragile. His ear flicks when he hears whispered syllables in the quiet. There's movement above him—a hand in his hair—raking and carding and smoothing.
"—has she even vis—et? You'd think she'd at lea—" Twilight, he thinks, coming from farther away, down the length of the bed he lies in. "—n't they his friends?"
"—sidering he's never prote—orta doubt they care," his partner, ringed fingers squeezing one of his hands, brushing back his bangs. " I don't much care for them, frankly."
Warriors inwardly grins, mind not entirely latching onto the topic, but appreciating his very Legend answer nonetheless.
"—onder how many times he's done this," is whispered by their ranchhand, something soft being pulled higher and closer to Warriors' figure. "How many times he's just… been forced to play bait."
"Whatever the number is, it's too many."
There's malice in his words, but his touch is the opposite, softens when he grits out the syllables. A pinky runs over the shell of his ear, traces the edges of the bandages snaked around his head, all gentle and kind.
With effort, Warriors works to pry his eyes open.
The air in the room hitches, hand in his hair changing positions and boots shuffling from the foot of the bed as he flutters them and blinks the blur away. The colors morph and blob together, sharpen into silhouettes and shapes, details and faces.
They're staring at him, eyes big and hopeful, leaning over the bed close to him and searching for clarity in his gaze.
"Th't fuckin' sucked."
Relieved chuckles fill the space, perhaps a bit high-pitched and nervous, but they both smile wide and genuine. A chair creaks from the corner of the room.
"How are ya feelin', man?" Twilight grins, ticking his brows up in that worried smile he does. One of his big hands rubs his shoulder and Warriors oddly finds the familiar shape of it comforting—right middle finger long-since chopped off at the first joint.
He wants to groan. Instead, he attempts to sit up. "'m f'ne—"
Four hands immediately shoot up to stop him, a fifth and sixth belonging to Time seemingly materializing into thin air. They fuss as he screws his face up and hisses through his teeth, thigh shrieking and pulsing until he relaxes and lets them lay him down back.
"You are not getting out of this bed until you're healed, young man," Time growls out as he sits on the edge of the bed, soft but scolding in that unique parent way he tends to get sometimes. His voice sounds oddly nasally.
Vowing for revenge when he spots the vet mouth to Twilight young man, Warriors looks up at Time and hitches his breath.
Time's nose sports a bandage strapped across it, white blaring against the dark red beginning to blotch his skin. It carries to his eyes a little, darkening the bags already there, and Warriors' ears tip down.
His vision sways, definitely doped up on whatever pain-relief method the infirmary uses now. "Wh't happened t' your face?" he worries, the urge to sit up again and inspect it growing.
There's a pause in the flow of conversation, a tight beat where nobody says anything. Warriors looks between them, wonders why they're exchanging wincing glances, what he's being left out on, and then Time speaks.
"Don't worry about it, son," he soothes, smiles warmly, but there’s something else there that Warriors can’t identify—something pained, and he has a feeling it's not from the broken nose. "I'm much more worried about you."
"Yeah, you should see your face," Legend works to lighten the mood and Warriors swivels his head to half-heartedly glare at him, as threatening as he can be with one eye nearly swollen shut. Legend squeezes his hand though, has had a firm grip on it since he woke, and he squeezes back.
"D'd we get em' all?" he asks, not sure what he's going to do if he hears anything other than a yes.
"We got em' all, Cap'n," Time fondly assures, and Warriors feels his entire inner core melt, one of his last worries sifted away, "None of the boys said any escaped or ran off. You're safe."
Warriors has never felt safe after an attack before. This time, he thinks maybe he might.
Still… There's still a thing or two.
"'m sorry."
Twilight frowns, fixing his blankets again. "If you're about to apologize for being hunted…"
A beat of silence makes his answer clear, but he swallows down the soreness in his throat as he fidgets with bandages peppering his face; Legend gently swats his hands from them.
"They coulda h'rt you."
Time slumps his shoulders, and the blankets rustle as he scoots forward to run a hand through bloody blond. "Oh, Wars, don’t be sorry. I'm sorry we couldn’t get to you to help. I'm glad we were at least there at the end, I—"
He swallows, pauses his fingers along his temples. The look Time gives him is one of such devastation at the possibilities that Warriors feels his whole chest clench. "I could've lost one of my boys."
Warriors can’t help but lean into the touch, warm and calloused skin against the few unscathed spots on his face. He's beginning to feel the fatigue; the constant sting of gashes, the throbbing of the stab wound and his swollen face, the ache in his muscles, it all makes sleep sound very appealing.
His eyes droop, and he hears Time let loose one of those little fond breaths, amused and loving. "Rest, son. You're safe now, we'll all make sure of it."
He trusts them. He sees his sword and his dagger on a table nearby, collected and seemingly polished just for him, and he trusts them. He sees the shadow of two feet under the door of the infirmary, somebody carefully guarding him, and he trusts them.
He sees his orange scarf bundled among his blankets, laid out in bed for him and tucked against his side for warmth and comfort, and he loves them.
Legend's hand is in his hair again and he plops his head down into his palm and the pillow, leans into the warmth of it. The vet smiles, strained and small, and the Captain blinks at him tiredly.
"You scared the shit out of me," Legend signs while Time and Twilight give them a moment, talking about medicines and bandage changes instead. The gaze he gives is remarkably like Time's; worried and a little panicked, relieved out of his mind, and absolutely fucking terrified all the same.
The Captain swallows. "I'm sorry," he signs back, hands sloppy and groggy. He wishes he could properly convey it, because a simple I'm sorry does not do it justice.
Legend smiles, then, still small but real this time. "Recover and maybe I'll forgive you." It's coy, signs quick and tightened, and the sly smile that accompanies it makes Warriors feel so oddly at home.
He grins back, eyes drooping and falling shut. "Deal," he croaks, and he feels a thumb run right under his cheekbone where he's been spared from swelling.
His mind slows, the void laps back at his limbs, and Time and Twilight's quiet background murmurs get spread between the colors. His breathing slows, Legend's gentle touches blending in with the fuzziness of his nerves.
It's the first time he's ever felt safe after a traitor attack. It's the first time he's ever been cared for—beyond required medical procedures—and comforted after a fight with them. It's the first time somebody has ever promised him he is safe.
He feels safe. He is safe, for once. And he drifts off quite easily, his family's chatter carrying along the promise into his dreams.