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Sky wakes up.
Ghirahim's voice curls around his ears, entirely too familiar, and its residual echo is so visceral that Sky can almost feel hands drifting across his shoulders. He shudders, gripping the fabric under him - it's not real. Ghirahim is gone.
The soft bed is unfamiliar, and the fists his hands have made in it don't help much at all. He shifts, uncomfortable and wary of his surroundings, and feeling for a soft mattress under him and -
"Gah!"
A warm body pressed against him.
He's on the ground in an instant, so quick that Sky doesn't even comprehend the change in surroundings, and he ends up in an awkward sprawl halfway between the bed and the cold stone floor. His legs are tangled in the blanket, and he kicks it off almost feverishly, desperate to be free of the feeling of being confined. His cheek presses against the cool stone, grounding in the stark change of temperature.
Breathe, he reminds himself, rolling fully off the bed. The place he's in is pitch black, no flickering campfire nor dim lantern; just his own heavy breathing and the sound of blood rushing through his ears. And -
"Wha… Sky?”
The voice is thicker with sleep but still high pitched, childlike, and it takes Sky a moment of blinking owlishly and a head of bleach-blonde hair, visible even through the darkness, peering at him over the bed to comprehend that it's Wind - and it had been Wind, in fact, pressed up against him like an affectionate Remlit. Shame courses through him like a wave, as does recollection of the night before - they're at an inn, of course. They're sharing two rooms. Wind had been paired with him. Of course. How had he forgotten? More importantly, how had he interrupted Wind's sleep, the poor kid didn't get enough as is -
"Sky?"
He blinks again. "Wind," he rasps out, voice noncompliant.
"You okay?"
Not trusting his voice any further, he nods, wondering if Wind can see the action. A moment passes.
"Nightmare?"
Eh. "Don't worry about it, sailor."
"Do you want a hug?"
If you touch me right now I will hurt you. "Maybe later."
Wind stays right where he is, hair dangling down the side of the bed, and Sky can feel the concern radiating from the kid. It makes sense. Sky is the touchy one of the group - the first to offer a hug, the first to lean in to touch shoulders, first to fall asleep on another - it was rare, even unheard of, for Sky to deny an opportunity for physical contact.
Horribly, Sky's too rattled to care.
He rolls over once again, savoring the cool feeling of stone against his skin. It shocks him out of his stupor a bit, makes him more aware; he's not sixteen anymore, he's twenty. Ghirahim has been gone for three years; there's no chance of him coming back. Ever.
Somehow, these facts make the helplessness worse. So much time has passed, and yet he's still so…
"It's okay," he repeats. "I'm just gonna…"
He gestures to the floor vaguely, dropping his head back down and drawing his sailcloth around himself further, like a protective cocoon. There's a moment of pure silence where he knows Wind is staring at him, assessing him - and despite it, he just curls up and turns away.
He's so tired. There's a presence looming over him, a long dead one, and it just won't go away.
-
Come morning, he's about as cranky as it gets.
The others don't really notice, but that's more because Sky's crankiest is most people's vaguely off. He'd gotten far better, over the years, at making bad days outwardly less bad; otherwise he'd spend half his life being miserable and making others miserable. It wasn't something he was particularly fond of doing.
It wasn't his usual kind of bad day, either. Usually those were brought on via bouts of chronic pain or fatigue, and none of those had particularly flared up in the last few weeks (Thank Hylia). Sure, half his irritation was due to exhaustion, but he'd just been unable to sleep. It wasn't fatigue.
That did leave the other half of his irritation. It could be attributed only to one thing, really, or rather one person. Maybe. Sky had never really been sure what Ghirahim counted as.
…
God, he hates that guy.
He's knocked out of his reverie by a shoulder bumping into his own, and he just barely manages to clamp down on the instinctive, frightened reflex to fight. It takes his brain a moment to recognize the act as friendly, and for that moment he closes his eyes and breathes in - and out.
Twilight's sitting next to him, and is now looking at him with a curious quirk of the head, reminiscent of a confused animal. Sky meets his eye for a moment, if only to mentally confirm that it was Twilight, Twilight was the one who had touched him, and then he looks away.
The last of the Chain are entering the room. Four's leaning against Time, bleary-eyed, and Wild is bright and horrifically awake and has brought with him skewered mushrooms. Wind's eying him, which isn't good, and he looks away; Warriors and Hyrule finally settle down into their strange little circle, and Time clears his throat.
"Okay," Time says. "We're in a time between all of our own, again. This town is a prime target for black-blooded monsters - it's a hub, it's unprotected, and, more importantly, we're here."
Sky bites back a yawn. The suppressed yawn makes him want to cry, vaguely; days without sleep were awful. He'd just be tired throughout the whole day, now. The others would probably think he was lazy. They'd be more or less right, but that wasn't why he was yawning.
"…Wild, Twilight, Hyrule, you're with me, we're scouting the surrounding area and figuring out a good defensive in case this place is attacked."
Wild lets out a cheerful chirp, having been clearly displeased with their surroundings when they'd been deposited right into a busy town. Hyrule is clearly similarly pleased.
"Wind, Four, you two are stocking up on supplies. I think Legend had the list."
A neatly binded notebook is thrown across the room. Four catches it smoothly, settling down to look through the pages as Time continue to talk. "Warriors, Sky, Legend, you three are first scanning the town, then gathering information on this era."
Sky blinks at his name, straightening up a bit. He'd slowly started tilting over without even realizing it. Legend snickers at him.
"Figure out what monsters there are, where bigger camps may be located - if this town hasn't been attacked by the time we've gathered resources and gotten a bearing of our surroundings, we need to leave immediately." Time's voice is severe and commanding, and all of them stiffen a little bit under his glower. This time, at least, Legend shuts up. "We can't be sitting ducks in a civilization this large and unprepared."
"There's not much military presence here at all," Four notes.
"It's weird, right?" Legend muses. "Zero protection at the borders either. It's like they don't worry about monsters."
"Well, they clearly have them," Warriors says. "There's bounties for all kinds of monsters plastered around the place."
"Bounty hunters would be good for information." Time notes.
Legend snorts derisively. "We'll check bars then. Every bounty hunter is just an alcoholic ex-military man."
"Didn't know the Captain was a bounty hunter."
"I'm actively on duty, thank you very much, Sailor. And my wage is fantastic."
"He didn't deny the alcoholic!"
"Boys," Time warns, and Sky snaps back up from where he'd been actively falling asleep. He fumbles a moment, gripping the bedside table for stability, and he can feel eyes on him." "Save this for later. You've been told what to do; if you have a problem with the plan, bring it up now."
Silence. Sky rubs at his eyes blearily, mentally dragging himself out of mental bed. God, no, this means he has to socialize. Usually, he's okay with it; but today he just feels… really off-kilter.
It's fine. He'll deal with it. Sky straightens a bit further as the others get up to leave; he has a job to do, even if it's miserable and he feels horrible and if anything bad happens he'll explode. He's got this.
-
He doesn't like bars much.
Skyloft is a small place; their civilization on the Surface is slowly growing, but at a predictably slow pace. And Sky can say with full assurance that he sees more people in a handful of bars than he ever did in the first two decades of his life.
They're crowded. It's evening, by now, not even late; they'd split up looking around town a bit, looking for good vantage points at the edges, and then had come the long and tedious task of searching for information. Throughout the morning, almost all the people they'd interacted with were oblivious civilians, which is both nice - nothing like peace! - and infuriating, because that meant information was few and far in-between.
Now, they seemed to be getting somewhere, though. Roughed-up men had begun returning to the town by early evening in a steady stream. It didn't take much to figure out who was bounty hunting - and they were, and most of them weren't in the mood to talk.
I hate bars, he thinks to himself, looking across the newest one. Warriors is somewhere nearby; they'd crossed paths, momentarily, before setting out on their separate ways. How it was already crowded this early in the day he didn't know - it was probably just a cruel joke to spite them specifically. I wish I was asleep right now.
There's eyes on him, have been since he walked in. Confoundingly, it's just - it's just women, a group of younger ones by the dining area tittering and giggling in his direction, a few older ones by the bar. And it's fine, usually - he's well aware that he's at least a little attractive, they all were, because they'd been informed of the fact a million times during their travels. And that was fine. But right now…
He looks away, hackles raised. It's just… unsettling. He's in a weird mood already, and being watched really, really isn't helping.
"Excuse me," he mutters, sliding past a group of people and heading for the general direction of the bar. His skin prickles as someone physically brushes past him, even with the padding of multiple layers of skin; physical touch isn't great right now. Not at all.
Ah. There's guys with massive, well-used swords at the bar. That's fine. Man, he wishes Warriors was here instead - he was the smooth-talker. Sky just talked, and sometimes it worked out. Other times he ended up on probation. Today was turning out to be a probation kind of day.
He steels himself. Makes sure Fi is sheathed properly, gets ready for a long, drawn out conversation. Gathering information was easily the most boring job in any civilization.
And then there's a hand on his shoulder, small and gentle. Someone asks for him, not by name, but a polite greeting to an attractive stranger -
A hand on his shoulder, cold and dead - a presence by his ear -
The world stutters. Blood rushes through Sky's ears, roaring and drowning out his surroundings, and he can barely feel his body move, but it does as though possessed, out of control.
Heavy breathing. His limbs feel like lead, despite the swift, precise way they'd moved moments earlier. A presence by his ear, heavy and looming - a hand on his shoulder, but he knows it's not real this time - it's a residual, heavy feeling.
It's not real. It wasn't Ghirahim. Ghirahim was dead, he was dead, he was dead, he was dead-!
Another hand on him, but this time it's entirely too real. Sky struggles against it, trying to buck off the unwelcome presence, but then another joins and then an arm and a whole body and he's pinned, there's a body against his back, the floor to his face - a wall to his spine, the Skyview Temple's ancient brickwork, a sword spirit cramming him back, sixteen again and so afraid -
"Sky!"
The hands on him are pulled off, one by one, the body pried off like a scab, and Sky stays right there and shivers unseeingly. The stone is cold under his cheek once more, and he leans into the change in temperature, trying desperately to shock himself into remembering his surroundings.
Deep, shuddering breath in, slow exhale out. There's blood leaking from his forehead from where he'd impacted the stone. Another shuddering breath. His stomach rolls. Exhale.
Murmuring around him, raised voices - he's in the bar. On the floor. He hadn't been on the floor a minute ago.
"…don't touch him, you'll make it worse."
"He just attacked that woman!"
"It's battlesickness. He's a soldier. It's a goddamn trauma response, so don't touch him."
There's a crowd around him. He opens his eyes, and it takes a minute to blink the fog and blood out of them, and seemingly another for his surroundings to set in even slightly. There's a blur of familiar blue a distance away. A body to his right, slowly being helped up by blob-shaped people.
"Sky," the familiar blue blob repeats. It crouches closer, and Sky cringes back the slightest bit. "It's me, Warriors. You're in a pub in Rabia Town. Are you with me?"
He nods thinly. Inhale. Exhale.
"Can I touch you?"
What? No, Goddess, not right now -
Warriors's patient silence is somehow audible through the murmurs. Slowly, he manages to shake his head, still shivering pathetically. He - he just needs to get his bearings. He just needs to get his Goddess-damned head screwed on straight -
"That's fine." Low, soothing voice, as though he's talking to a spooked animal. Sky finds, foggily, that it's an accurate descriptor. Then, another tone, more commanding but still familiar; it doesn't make Sky want to curl in on himself. "Show's over, folks. Let him be."
Slowly, Sky feels the crowd around him dissipate under Warriors's reproachful gaze. Unlike the girls from earlier, Warriors's is more comforting than anything; the weight of his eyes is heavy and protective, like a warm blanket that he doesn't actually have to touch. It helps that he knows it's Warriors, that the man remains in his line of sight like a monolith, steady and unmoving.
It's like he knows what's going on in Sky's head, in an uncanny way. He doesn't touch Sky, or hover, but moves a bit closer in general. Stays within sight, beckoning anyone who wants to talk with him closer for it - he discusses something with the woman Sky had - had hurt, and he has to look down even through the haziness in his head. Shoos away people who've come to gawk at the - the - utter mess of twenty-year-old occupying a corner of a pub.
He's never been so glad that people don't recognize him as a Hero.
“Do you think you can walk?”
Warriors is looking at him again. He shakes out his head a little, newly bloodied palms pressing into the stone below him. It’s not very cool anymore; the grounding effect is gone. “Um. Yeah.” Maybe. His legs feel like Chu-chu jelly, but he can't sit around on the floor of a pub forever. Usually, he knows the alternative is being carried, and - yet again - if anyone touches him he’ll almost certainly break down again. He's still on the brink of the last one; nervous energy thrums beneath his skin, paralyzing in its magnitude. Like a deer frozen in the lantern-light of a hunter.
"Okay," Warriors says. He stands, one smooth, graceful movement. "Need help?" Despite his offer, he doesn’t move.
"Please don't," Sky responds, voice raspy and uncomfortably desperate. Warriors nods, moving back to allow Sky to stand himself.
The older man ends up acting as something of a shield between Sky and the outside world; they make contact a few times, but it's necessary to leave and Sky's made fully aware of it via Warriors's careful, practiced movements. It makes him feel… pathetic, maybe, the way Warriors is treating him gently, as though he's fragile; but at the same time he is, right now. That nightmare had thrown him entirely off-balance. He'd need a day or two to recover from it alone, and from this…
"Here, we'll take the longer route," Warriors says, and directs them into a dark, emptier street. It's quiet save for the distant drone of voices and the sound of crickets in the overgrown back alleyways, and the wind is cool and real on Sky's face. He savors it. It makes him feel present.
There's no pressure to say anything. Sky knows what pressure feels like, even silent; Time was a master of quietly, and effectively, forcing people to talk about issues with just his presence. Warriors could do it too, but often chose not to - and he was choosing not to here. Even with how tilted Sky felt, he could tell.
"Nothing really happened," he says, abruptly, into the cool night air. His voice is raw. "It was just - I had a dream. Some guy during my adventure. Ghirahim. He was, uh, weird."
Warriors hums, acknowledging. Sky inhales, a little shallowly. "He showed up behind me a lot. He'd stick his tongue next to my ear, push me back against walls. Like I was… some kind of toy." Exhales. "Y'know?"
"I understand," Warriors says, voice almost inaudible. Sky bites his lip, dipping his head as they walk. He draws the Sailcloth a bit tighter around himself.
"It was okay, back then," he says. "I was sixteen. Thought it was normal, uh, evil things. And I had more important things to worry about."
"But it gets worse the more you think about it."
"Yeah."
The silence between them is one of mutual understanding.