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shirley-99 · 26 days

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@uncleskyrule happy belated birthday!!! Thank you so much for your patience while I wrote this! I hope it's worth the wait!

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Four knows what sleep deprivation looks like.

He’s seen it spelled out on his grandfather’s face when long days turn his usual joviality to melancholy exhaustion and draws the shadows of half moons beneath his eyes.

He’s seen it painted across Dot’s beautiful features after an arduous night when the memories resurface, memories of a leering crimson eye, of claims to possession hanging heavy over her, of cages and darkness and smothering magic.

He’s seen it shadowed across his own face too, when the battles within and without grow to be too much, darkening his features, drawing them thin, sucking the youthful fat from his cheeks, the light from his eyes.

And he’s seen it…on the faces of his brothers.

On Time’s when the moon is full. On Twilight’s when a quiet twilight falls and skeletal trees whisper in tongues known only to some. On Wild’s when the amnesia recedes, Warriors’ when phantom lips press across his cheek, Wind’s after he awakens screaming his sister’s name. On Hyrule’s when he gives too much, Legend’s when the adventures he never speaks of tell their tale in his petrified cries at night…

And now on, Sky’s.

Some may find it strange for a man who can drift off practically anywhere to suffer from fatigue. Add to that uncanny ability, Sky’s penchant for seeming one of the most mature of their little group, the most…put together.

But Four is well acquainted with the deceptions someone can tell through demeanor alone. He himself has been dubbed mature, put together, responsible. And while, yes, those labels are true (Four would certainly be cross if people decided to start dubbing him childish or, Hylia forbid, a disaster as they call some more unruly children in his Hyrule), the lie rests in the assumptions they bring about.

Beliefs of invincibility and impervious spirit. Beliefs that there is no need to be gentle or kind, no need to offer respite or lighten the load.

It is the same fate their leader suffers so often, the same Warriors and Twilight sometimes crumble beneath. Suffering silently, yet always strong. So strong.

And Sky…

Sky hides it better than anyone.

Four is uncertain whether or not he is the only one who notices his distress. Perhaps, he is.

It doesn’t matter though. In fact, if he is the only one who has taken note of it then it is all the more important that he do something before Sky’s inevitable collapse.

But life never makes things simple. And in the end, he’s too late.

It has happened too many times now — a portal that separates the heroes into mismatched groups. Four thinks that perhaps, after his near defeat at the combined hands of the champion and the rancher the Shadow is attempting to be more careful.

More conniving. More vicious.

Attack first and you won’t be defeated. Such is the attitude of wild animals and beasts. More than likely, the Shadow shares it too.

This would explain why in addition to splitting the heroes up, this portal also dumps them right onto a battlefield.

Or at least, it does for Sky, Legend, and himself. Four can’t be sure what the others are facing. But he can only pray it isn’t a sand-drenched dungeon packed with redeads and stalfos.

The unearthly screeches of the emaciated corpses fill his ears as he fights, teeth gritted, heart pounding. It’s all the three heroes can do to stay out of reach of their paralyzing cries.

Back up to escape one beast and you nearly collide with the mad swing of a stalfos’ claymore.

Four winces as the very tip of a blade slices across his left arm and leaves an angry gash in its wake.

That’s going to need a bit of potion to remedy.

Beside him, Legend growls what sounds like a curse as he plunges his hand into his pouch and retrieves a fire rod. He brings it in a sweeping horizontal arc. In a blaze of blistering heat, a group of the monsters fall.

“Well done,” Four says with a breathless smirk. He plunges his sword into the gaping chest cavity of one of the stalfos still struggling for survival on the darkened floorboards. With a raspy exhale, it dissolves into ash. “I think you just turned the battle in our favor.”

“I’d better have,” Legend huffs. “The sooner we get rid of these things, the sooner we can get out of here.” He screws up his face in a grimace. More monsters crumple beneath his skilled hands. “It smells like death.”

It does, indeed, Four thinks as, finally, the last of the monsters fall. The stench of it hangs heavy, permeating the thick darkness that surrounds them, wafting from the thin threads of light carrying from faltering torches.

But now that the battle is over they can focus on escape. Hopefully, to a place where it proves easier to breathe.

He sheathes his sword, glances around. The gash on his arm throbs and the various bruises and smaller cuts he earned join in its stomach-churning beat. Still, it could have gone far worse.

“We all okay?” Legend asks, bangs falling into his face as he replaces his fire rod.

“Yes,” Four says. “How about you…Sky?”

His voice pitches an octave higher as he catches sight of the Skyloftian, turning the question almost into an exclamation.

The knight lies crumpled where he had stood mere moments before. The Master Sword lies fallen beside him, his cape flows over him like a blanket of snow. His breath comes in shuddering gasps that grate upon Four’s ears as he races to his side.

“Sky!”

He shakes him, slightly, and hazy blue orbs flutter open. Sky groans.

“What happened?” Legend drops down beside him, panic in his voice and a half-empty potion bottle in his hand. “Did a monster get him?”

Four shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” A quick inspection provides no sign of blood or other injury. But Sky’s face is ashen and he shudders as though in the throes of fever. “Sky, are you hurt?”

“N-not hurt.” Sky curls his fingers into a fist, as though attempting to gather strength. “J-just…just…” He swallows, tries to drag himself up, and nearly collapses again. It’s only Four and Legend’s quick movement that keeps him upright. “‘M fine.”

“Like hell you are!” Legend’s eyes are blazing with emotion now. “Sky, what happened?”

Sky shudders again. He glances down at the trembling hands he has folded into one, white-knuckled fist. There is a certain helplessness in the look.

“I dunno,” he croaks. “Was fighting and the room start-started swirling.” He curls in on himself further, and Four wonders if the next shaky exhale brings tears with it. His voice is very small. “I just-just fell.”

“And you didn’t have the strength to get back up,” Four says, solemnly. An idea is already forming in his head, a confirmation of what he has witnessed these past few hellish weeks.

I should’ve acted sooner.

But there had been fights both in and out of the group, and injuries and secrets unveiled. There had been discussions long overdue, restorations to be made in the face of pain and sorrow. And he, he had been in the midst of it all.

Between explaining the Four Sword and its powers and making up with Wild, he just hadn’t found the time…

“You haven’t been sleeping, Sky…have you?”

Now, Sky raises his head, glazed eyes focusing unsteadily on Four. Slowly, he shakes his head.

Legend blows out a sigh. He sits down beside Four and brings a dusty hand over his sweaty brow.

“Sleep deprivation? Yeah, that’ll do it. How long haven’t you been sleeping?”

Sky swallows. A beat passes, then another. The oppressive feel of death begins to crowd in on Four again. He struggles to breathe beneath it.

Then, “Since Twilight,” Sky whispers, and Four’s heart plummets to the depths of his stomach.

Legend’s hand falls to his lap with more viciousness than defeat. His face screws up in an expression that toes the line between sorrowful and intensely irritated. “I knew something was up! I knew it! should’ve — ”

“Couldn’t have done anything,” Sky croaks, leaning further into Four’s touch. A small smile quirks his lips. “Was me that should-should’ve d-done something in the…in the first place.”

Legend’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

Sky looks back down at his hands.

Another theory is beginning to form in Four’s mind now, joining with the previous one, enlarging it, and embellishing it until things start to make sense. A theory born out of something Sky has said before, a snippet he had overheard and tossed aside in favor of giving his full attention to fighting the Yiga that had taken Wild captive.

“I’m sorry, champion,” the Skyloftian had said as he had helped Warriors tend to the boy’s wounds. “I was late…again. I’m sorry.”

“You blame yourself.” Four measures the words carefully, speaking each one with intricate precision. Lest he step in the wrong place and cause them all to plummet. “You blame yourself for what happened to Twilight.”

Sky lifts his bloodshot eyes. A tear wells in one of them then spills over to slither gracefully down his cheek.

“Why would you blame yourself?” Legend asks, even as comprehension burns in his violet irises. “It’s not your fault the rancher got hit. You weren’t even near him when it happened!”

“I was near enough.” Sky’s voice is quieter than ever now, more like a whisper than anything else. “I know the skyward strike. I could’ve hit that…that thing if I’d been…b-been faster.” His breath hitches. But to Four it sounds defeated more than panicked. “I was late and he paid for it. I’m a-always…”

He curls in on himself, weighed down by exhaustion, shuddering with pain and sorrow. Legend looks at Four and Four looks at Legend. Then, slowly, together they reach out and draw Sky into their arms.

It’s strange. Four hadn’t taken Legend for someone willing to show physical affection freely. But he embraces the Skyloftian as though it is no price to pay. As though he has done so before.

Long nights. A shuddering sob. Soft feet dressed in boots with wings adorning their sides. Whispers in the dark that exhaustion muddles before Four can make them out. Amethyst eyes staring from over a hazy cloud of silken white. Sliding shut as a larger form huddles deeper into an embrace.

Sky shivers again and Legend holds him tighter.

“It’s not your fault,” Four murmurs, pouring every ounce of confidence he possesses into those words and praying that it is enough. “It’s not your fault, Sky. You did everything you could do for him. There’s nothing else you could have done.”

Sky doesn’t reply.

They hold him, whispering assurances, as his tears wet their tunics and his fatigued body quakes beneath the burden he forces it to carry. They hold him until, at last, in the murky darkness, surrounded by carcasses of monsters and piles of resting sand, he drifts off.

In the arms of his brothers.

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