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currenthyperfixation-ajscico · 3 days ago

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Cell Buddies: A Linked Universe Fic

Summary: Warriors, Four, and Hyrule get captured by the Yiga Clan and have to figure out how to escape.

Word Count: 6460

WARNING for self-harm.

Written for @legendoflinkficfight. Many thanks to @silverne-nonsense, @toyouhellohowareyou, and @starshineandbooks for the prompts, and to @bookdancerfics for betaing.

“—iors. Warriors, can you hear me?”

Ting-ting.

“Yeah, well, I’m out of other ideas!”

Ting-ring.

The last sound goes straight into Warriors’ head and vibrates there, tinging and ringing, till Warriors groans and shifts, trying to cover his ears with his hands. Instead, something yanks at his wrists and pulls them short with a heavy, head-pounding clank.

Warriors stills. The noises are different, but that feeling rocks through him like unsteady footing: A familiar gut-punch, just before the knife to the back.

Opening his eyes slowly, then faster when the area proves dark but for a small, pulsing light, Warriors clenches his jaw, pulse throbbing. Iron manacles hold his ankles and wrists to the floor underneath him, locking him in a sitting position, and—he swallows, meets resistance, leans forward the inch allotted to him—a collar chains his neck to the same wall.

Before him, though, is what sets Warriors’ blood rushing: Four, chained up to mirror him against the far wall, and Hyrule, in his fairy form and trapped in a bottle.

His brothers stare back at him. Four is slumped, clearly exhausted, but his mouth ticks up in a small smile when their eyes meet. Hyrule is too small for Warriors to tell if he’s smiling, but his light—the small, pulsing one Warriors glimpsed before—brightens for a moment before dimming.

“What,” Warriors breathes out, “happened?”

Four sighs. “Those guys Wild is always complaining about. Striga? Yiga? The three of us portalled right into their stronghold.”

Warriors stares, but Four doesn’t continue.

Shit.

Warriors doesn’t remember a recent portal, but judging by the way his head aches, someone knocked him out good. And considering the way portals wreck Four and Hyrule, without Warriors on his feet, the three of them would have been easy pickings.

The captain grits his teeth and looks away, feigning an examination of their surroundings. There’s not much to look at—dirty stone blocks on three walls, thick iron bars on the fourth separating them from an unlit hall—but it’s better than looking his brothers in the eyes knowing he failed them. They were vulnerable, and he let someone take him out. He let someone chain them up like animals for the slaughter.

Hylia, Hyrule is in a bottle. Thick-glassed, so small he can probably touch both sides at once, full of air but for how long—

Hyrule raps on the bottle with a ting, and Warriors’ attention jolts back to his brothers with a sharp, mind-clearing inhale.

“Rulie’s right, Wars,” Four says. His voice is quiet, but it echoes in the cell. “You couldn’t fight them all off. Not forever.”

“I could have tried.”

“Goddess,” Four sighs. “Sometimes I think you’re as hard-headed as Twi, you know that? You did try. You—” his voice breaks “—you stood over us all on your own, and then you were bleeding and I thought you were dead.” Four stops and looks down, shoulders shaking, and doesn’t even react to Hyrule’s ting-ting.

Sometimes, Warriors forgets Four is only eighteen. Old enough to be called a man, but still just a teenager.

“Hey,” he calls. “We’re right here. We’re gonna get out of here.” Even as he says this, he uses the small amount of slack in his chains to reach for the main lock pick in his boot, only to find it missing.

“How?” Four snaps. “None of the others know where we portalled, and no offense, Cap, but you’ve been passed out for awhile.”

The secondary pick, sewed into his scarf, is also gone.

“You think Rulie and I haven’t scoured this entire cell? That I haven’t done my Hylia-damned best to get out of these cuffs to make sure you were okay? That I—”

Four stops abruptly. Warriors is tempted to call out again, worry for his brother coursing through him—Four cursed, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard him do that—but the smithy’s forehead is furrowed in the same way it does when he studies a sword that needs fixing.

Then, Four says, “That crevice. I, uh—heh. This isn’t how I thought I’d be doing this. But needs must, right?”

Warriors has no idea what his brother is talking about.

Four stretches his hand out as far as the chains will let him, then scrapes his middle finger even further along the wall, until finally—

Four disappears.

Warriors stares. “Four?” he asks. Then, quieter, not knowing if any Yiga are listening, “Four?”

Something squeaks. Hyrule taps against the glass, ting-ting-ting, wings fluttering excitedly.

Warriors squints. There, on the edges of Hyrule’s light, right where Four was reaching, he thinks he sees movement.

The movement belongs to a creature about the size of a mouse scurrying towards Hyrule’s light. The closer the creature gets, the more features Warriors can make out: Fawn-like ears long enough to make any Hylian jealous, a golden-feathered tail to match the hair held back by a thin band—

Warriors blinks rapidly, but the image before him stays the same. A miniature Four is climbing the wood-slatted crate that the fairy bottle sits on.

“Uh. I might have a concussion.”

“You definitely do,” tiny Four squeaks. His glare isn’t diminished at all by his new stature. “But I promise I’m real. Just—“ his cheeks pink “—really, really short.”

“You’re the same size as Rulie,” Warriors agrees, awed.

Four harrumphs, but Warriors’ estimate is proven right in the next moment when Four hoists himself to the top of the crate and stands just a tad shorter than the floating fairy.

Ting-ting! Hyrule raps on the glass and waves. His grin is so big Warriors can make it out from across the room.

Four sighs, but waves back. Then he pauses, regarding the half-crate length between him and the bottle. Warriors jolts forward, realizing the gaps between the wooden slats must be jumping distance for Four now—he chokes, the collar around his neck jerking him back into a coughing fit. He leans forward, trying to get the unrelenting steel off his throat, but he can only go so far before the chain pulls taut again.

“—breathe, Wars.” Slowly, Four’s voice drifts back in. It’s high and squeaky, not low and thoughtful, but it’s his brother’s. Warriors latches on and forces his breath to slow. Does his best to ignore the tickle at the back of his throat and the bruising ache at the front, til he can finally smile wanly at his brothers.

“Careful, okay?” he rasps.

Four scoffs. “You’re telling me.” But he eyes the gap carefully, stretches—and leaps.

For the time Four is in the air, Warriors has complete control of his breathing. That is, he doesn’t breathe at all. Then the smithy lands on the next slat, runs, and jumps again.

Only when Four stands next to the glass bottle, bent over, breathing hard, and eying Hyrule like a problem to solve, does Warriors realize he has no idea how the smithy intends to break Hyrule out. He can’t climb the bottle to the capped opening; it’s too smooth, and what this bottle lacks in width it makes up for in height.

If the smithy had his tools, he could cut the glass open, but the Yiga were good enough to find both of Warriors’ lock-picking sets. He doubts they’ve left Four anything useful.

“Hey,” Four murmurs, but when Warriors looks at him, he realizes Four is addressing Hyrule. “Hey. Keep your eyes on Warriors. You’re gonna be ok, just don’t look away from him. Don’t. Look. Away.”

Hyrule’s face turns from Four to Warriors. The captain can’t see the fairy’s eyes, what he knows are two pinpricks of hazel in a world of blue light, but he assumes Hyrule is doing what Four says.

Warriors stares back, because he doesn’t know what Four has planned, but if Hyrule needs to stare at him, he’ll let him.

Warriors stares so hard at Hyrule, Four is just a blur to the side when he starts running. Then Hyrule wobbles—no, the bottle wobbles, and Warriors scrambles to get his legs under him, sitting on his heels and surging against his chains. He yells in his head because he can’t aloud lest he draw their captors’ attention, and the collar aids him, crushing tight against his windpipe until there is no air to yell with.

He keeps his eyes on Hyrule, and hopes that even as the bottle falls over the edge of the crate, even as the fairy turns end over end, that his brother finds some comfort.

Then the bottle crashes to the ground. It’s a sturdy bottle, spelled to hold fairies, but it’s still only glass, glass that shatters on impact with the hard dirt floor and lets Hyrule spill out and roll till he finally comes to a stop just on the edge of the bottle’s destruction.

“Rulie,” Warriors wheezes. “Rulie, say something.”

But it’s not Hyrule who does. Instead, Four sits up, leans against the crate, and says, “That went well,” before passing out.

Warriors’ breaths come in harsh pants. Between the coughing fit and tugging against the collar, he’s probably ruined his throat, but he can barely process that as other thoughts whirl through his mind.

Four rammed the bottle. That’s the only thing that could explain what happened. Four rammed the bottle, Hyrule inside, and sent them both over the edge to the hard ground.

Now, Hyrule is unconscious, Four is unconscious, and they’re both so tiny that the boots he can hear running towards them could crush them. Not even on purpose, just on accident, one literal mis-step and his brothers will be—

Warriors forces his breathing to slow. He has to think. Impa always told him to think ’tactical first, practical second, emotional when it’s all done.’

His primary mission is to keep his brothers safe. How can he do that? He’s chained to the wall on the opposite side of the cell; he can’t reach them with his feet, let alone his hands.

What tools does he have? His scarf would just draw attention if he tossed it over them. He has no sword, no knife, no lock picks. The only things he does have are himself and the chains around him.

In the moment light flickers in the tunnel, Warriors realizes that the Yiga have done nothing to harm them after the initial capture.

As the light moves into the cell, he watches as Four and Hyrule remain in darkness; tucked behind the crate, they’re instead cast in a deep shadow with only the slight light of an unconscious fairy to give them away.

When the cell door clangs open, Warriors watches Four’s eyes flicker open and Hyrule’s arms shift to brace himself, and he bets that the Yiga want them alive.

Warriors lunges towards the door, yanking against the chains binding him. He barely notices his breath cutting off for the third time; instead, he bares his teeth and snaps his jaw and rattles his chains. He glares at the masked figure that enters and rages at them.

Look at me, he seethes. Don’t look around. Look at me!

Their captor freezes in the doorway, then leans out and hollers down the hall. When they enter again, as far as Warriors can tell past the mask, their gaze is fixed on him. Not the missing fairy bottle. Not Four’s empty chains. Not the two tiny figures struggling to their feet in the crate’s shadow. Just. Him.

Then Warriors’ vision flickers and he falters. Sags in his chains. When another captor enters, their masked face turns immediately to the empty wall across from him.

Almost, Warriors thinks, dizzy, and with the last, breathless energy in him, he throws himself forward again and gags, jaw dropping open but taking nothing in. The two Yiga rush toward him. Warriors throws a punch at one, then head butts the other. Neither attempt has much strength to it—his punch doesn’t even connect, chains pulling it up short—but they’re enough to make life difficult for the Yiga.

“Get his back against the wall!” the second one barks.

“We need the keys!”

“They’re coming!”

Warriors would laugh if he could. All he needed to get out of the chains was to strangle himself, huh? Too bad he won’t be awake to take advantage of the opportunity.

But they will, he thinks fuzzily. Blearily, gazing past the captors shoving their shoulders into his and pushing him back against the wall, taking in shaky breaths, he sees two tiny, blurry figures by a crevice in the stone. Light floods the room. Warriors thinks they have their arms around one another.

Go, he thinks at them. I’ll be okay. Don’t sacrifice yourselves for me. Get—

He’s unconscious before he can finish the thought.

Get out of here.

It doesn’t take long for Warriors to come back to himself. He knows this because he wakes spluttering and gasping under an upturned bucket of cold water and who he thinks are the same two captors—it’s hard to tell through the oxygen deprivation, the wet hair plastered to his forehead, and the uniform outfits.

Shivering, Warriors chatters, “M-maybe next time we d-don’t use water to wake t-the person unconscious f-from lack of a-air?”

The Yiga share a glance, and one of them shrugs.

The other backhands Warriors hard enough that his lip splits.

Shrugger says, “Maybe next time we don’t choke ourselves out.”

Yeah, okay. Maybe Warriors deserved that. Still, even though it burns, he can’t help the cocky smile stretching across his face when he replies, “What m-matters is that it worked. R-right?”

Backhander raises their hand again, but Shrugger catches it. “He’s the only one left. We need him in one piece,” they warn.

Warriors’ grin widens, spilling the thick copper taste of blood across his tongue. So he was right. Three heroes was probably more than they needed, which was why they were careless with the head wound earlier. But now? Now they only have one bargaining chip left to draw Wild in.

“Aw,” Warriors coos. “Y-you don’t want to have some f-fun with little ol’ me?”

Shrugger sends him a withering stare. “Did you kill your brain with that stunt, or are you just stupid?”

Warriors would like to think it’s the former, but considering he can’t help waving at them as they make their way out and clang the cell door shut, it might be the latter. That, or he’s spending too much time with Legend.

Whichever way it is, though, he waits till his captors have carried the light back up the hall and left him enrobed in darkness before he rolls his neck with a groan, thankful they didn’t remember to chain the collar back on him before they left. His hands and feet, on the other hand… Warriors jangles the chains with a sigh. He wasn’t that lucky.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Warriors jumps. Suddenly, the darkness that was comforting seems more sinister, his heart rabbiting in his chest. He looks around wildly, but the only thing he can make out is the gleam of the broken glass. Even the iron bars have faded into the endlessness of the hallway.

For a moment, Warriors is alone with his fear. Then the voice gentles and says, “Hey. It’s just me. Four.”

Warriors slumps against the wall. “D-didn’t recognize you with the—” He waves his hand rather than tell Four his voice squeaks now, then realizes his brother probably can’t see him any better than he can see his brother. “Your voice changed. With your new stature.”

“So did yours,” Four notes. “With the water. Your stuttering is getting better, though. Are you warming up?”

Warriors hums. “Not sure if it’s the good warming up or the bad one.”

The cell is silent for a minute. Then Four warns, “I’m right next to you. Going to climb up using your clothes, okay?”

“‘K.”

Small hands tug at Warriors’ pants, hooking onto his belt and using his pocket as a footrest. His pants shift against his skin, cold and wet, and he jolts back into himself.

“Told you to get out.”

“You did no such thing.”

“I thought it.”

Four laughs, and the displaced air brushes Warriors’ arm like soft, barely there kisses. His voice is soft, too, when he continues.

“Rulie’s getting out. He can fly; he’ll find the others faster than I could.”

Warriors frowns. There’s something off about that. Something off about all of this, actually.

Four’s hands pull at Warriors’ shirt, tugging the fabric forward and against the back of his neck.

“Why didn’t you transform back?” If one of you was going to stay, Warriors doesn’t say, why was it you and not the one who can heal?

Four brushes against the skin at Warriors’ neck and tsks. “I can’t even see you, and I can feel your throat swelling up,” he mutters. “Um. We’re outta magic. So. Either we find green potions, or we’re stuck like this for awhile.”

Tiny fingers probe at bruises. Warriors jolts back, hissing, then mumbles apologies while Four stumbles to find his footing again.

Only when Four has steadied, scarf shifting around the captain’s neck like Proxi has hitched a ride, does Warriors parrot, “Out of magic? Fairies are magic. What did Hyrule do that exhausted him?”

Four sighs. “You really haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

For a moment, Warriors stays silent, but then his mind fills with images of his brothers lying amidst the broken glass. He thought they were just unconscious, but—

“They almost killed you, when they captured us. You heard them earlier, they only need one of us. They had three. And then they broke your skull open—” Four’s voice cracks “—and you collapsed. You stood over us for so long, trying to fight them off, and Rulie transformed to fly and get help, but then you were down and bleeding and Rulie had to heal you instead, he had to, because what were we supposed to do? Hope they spared a red potion? No.”

Four’s hair brushes Warriors’ chin, and then there’s a steady weight there. Warriors can picture his brother, feet on his scarf and forehead on his chin, trying to hide his breakdown even when there’s no one to see it through the darkness.

“So Rulie transformed, and he healed you, and he tried to get away still but they had a fairy bottle and then I had to push him off the crate—”

Four’s voice cracks again, but Warriors can hear the sob this time. He leans forward the best he can while chained to the wall, wishing his hands were free so he could cup his brother to his heart. Part of him is cold, imagining his near death and Hyrule choosing to heal him instead of flee, but the rest of him just wants to comfort Four.

“It worked.” He murmurs the same words he told their captors, the same words he repeats in a mantra to himself after every battle. “What matters is that it worked. Rulie is out there now, free, and he’ll be back with the others soon. While we wait, we’ll keep each other alive. Okay?”

Four nods against Warriors’ chin.

“Okay, Smithy?”

“Okay, Cap,” Four whispers.

Time passes. No Yiga come to visit, so it’s just him and Four, quiet in the dark. Warriors sags against the cold stone behind him, shoulders aching where they’re twisted back and legs going numb from sitting on them. His breaths come small and ragged through his swollen throat, and he’s thankful for the lack of light; his head hurts enough already.

Despite his wish that Four was safe, Warriors is thankful, too, for the company. His brother’s body presses against his, a small point of warmth in the crook where Warriors’ neck and shoulder meet. Even in his exhaustion, the captain is careful not to let his head slip too far to the right, lest he squish the smithy.

Warriors doesn’t know how long he exists in this in-between state, half-vigilant and half-dead, but it feels like an eternity has passed when Four stiffens and whispers, “I have an idea.”

Warriors shifts. Wets his tongue the best he can in a mouth long gone dry of anything that isn’t blood. “What is it?”

“I gotta test something first.” Then Four moves, footsteps pressing lightly across Warriors’ shoulder and then down his back. Warriors’ scarf tightens infinitesimally; he imagines the smithy using it to repel down, his small body weight barely agitating the captain’s throat, and crooks a smile.

He once saw Four drop down on a lizalfos and hang on with just his legs, thighs strong from sword fighting wrapped tight around the monster’s throat, until he drew a hunting knife, stabbed it through the eye, and rode the body down as it fell. He walked off perfectly fine, the entire chain staring at him, and defended that he “learned the move from Wild.” They all laughed until their stomachs hurt, Wild most of all.

Warriors sighs. That was a good day.

“Captain?” Four squeaks. “You okay up there?”

“Fine, Smithy. What’s your idea?”

“Move your hands.”

Warriors can hear the grin in Four’s voice. Did he—?

Warriors shifts, and the only things holding his hands behind his back are his own body weight and his sore shoulders. Groaning, he brings them around, then up to rub at his joints. Freed after being pinned for so long, the blood rushes through his arms and down to his fingers, the sensation like small fireworks bursting inside his skin. He grimaces, but tries to focus past it. It’s not hard: He’s felt worse, and he’s eager to escape the cell and get back to their brothers.

“How’d you do that?” he rasps.

“My hands are small enough they can fit in the locks. Move off your ankles.”

Warriors does, glad to comply.

The weight lifting from his calves eases the blood flow there, too, and he has to bite his tongue, the urge to yell is so strong. He should have moved off his legs earlier, but he wasn’t thinking.

It’s hard to think through the full-bodied, ever-growing pain.

“There!” Four says, the triumph in his voice almost drowned out by the clanking of shackles falling to the ground.

Warriors moves to stand, then stops. He lays a hand out flat by his ankles.

“Climb on,” he orders. “I don’t want to step on you by accident.”

“Hardy-har,” Four says dryly, but it’s only a moment before tiny hands lift a tiny weight onto Warriors’ palm, and he’s holding his brother in one hand.

The thought makes Warriors’ already troubled breathing catch in his throat. He’s held small bodies before. Wind and Proxi are the usual culprits, snoring into his neck after a long day of walking or stealing the ends of his scarf for a blanket.

But there’s something different about this instance. Wind is small, but he’s still a fourteen-year old hero. Proxi is tiny, but she could kill him by lifting her pinky. Four… Four is so small, Warriors could crush him. Forget stepping on him, all it would take is squeezing him too tightly, and Warriors could break bones.

All it would take is the very hand Four just stepped onto without hesitation. Without worry. Weaponless. Not even a needle to stab Warriors’ thumb with if it starts to close.

Warriors swallows, then gently curls the tips of his fingers up around his brother. “Hold on,” he whispers, and laying his free hand on the wall, he begins to trace their path to the cell door.

But they can’t go further than that. There’s what feels like an iron slab holding the door shut, locked in place by mechanisms too far for Warriors to reach and too heavy for Four to maneuver.

The captain curls his fingers around the bars and rests his forehead on the door. The iron is cold, soothing his headache and bracing him against the urge to sink to his knees. If he did, he would never stand again. Warriors know that, just as he knows the fear making a home in his chest—the fear that he and Four won’t make it home alive. He could ask the smithy to go on alone, to meet up with the others, but he knows his brother won’t go.

And to come this far, to have helped Hyrule escape and gotten out of their own bonds only to be foiled by something as simple as a door… It burns.

But they’re not done yet. Warriors refuses. He forces himself to take a deep breath, one that scrapes down his throat like sword on bone, that makes his lungs inflate and his chest rise, and then he breathes it out.

“I’m going to move,” he warns Four. “Ready?”

Four squeezes his thumb. “Ready.”

Together, they make their way back into the cell. The captain keeps his left hand on the stone wall, tracking their progress against his memory of the lit cell, and the smithy keeps up a steady litany of encouragement.

Warriors wishes he could tell Four to be quiet, but he can’t. As much as it pains him to not be the infallible hero, in this moment, without his brother’s words to cut away the dark, he would be lost. Four’s descriptions of the Minish, his thoughts on what dinner Wild will make them, they all lessen the ache of each shuffling step and convince Warriors to take yet another scraping breath until finally, his foot bumps wood and he stops.

“We’re here,” Warriors rasps. “D’you want down, or—?”

Four shakes his head, his hair brushing against Warriors’ fingers. Instead of being soft and fluffy like usual, the strands are damp with blood and sweat.

But Four’s voice is strong when he says, “Put me in your scarf.”

Warriors lifts the smithy up, taking his hand from the wall to fumble with his scarf till he finds a small pocket in the fabric. He tips his brother in, and the small, warm weight over his heart is familiar. Proxi used to rest there when she grew tired on long campaign trails or when the battle was too dangerous for her to fly around him.

He’s missed her on this journey. It seems only right that now, when he’s most fearful, a part of her finds him again.

“Don’t fall out,” he says.

“You be careful,” Four fires back. Warriors snorts.

Then he crouches and leans over, carefully feeling along the dirt floor. At times, his fingertips hit slivers of glass. He hisses, but keeps moving. He can’t pull back, not in the dark, or he’ll have to start again.

It takes a minute, but Warriors finally feels a thicker glass shard slice into the side of his searching right hand. He groans, trying to breathe through the sting. Tries to tell himself it’s just one more painful spot on a body of painful spots.

In a way, that works: It turns his attention to all the other places on his body that hurt, his swollen throat and aching joints and throbbing head. They outweigh the new sting, and it’s easy for Warriors to ghost his hand over and grasp the glass.

Rising is harder. His muscles scream; they’ve condensed while he squatted, settling into their new position, and Warriors has to find the gaps between the wall’s stones, dig his fingers in, and leverage himself up again.

Zelda would hate the sight of him, he thinks wryly. She’d order Tune to escort him to the healing tents, demanding all the while to know what he did to himself and why he kept going. Tune would laugh, but that’d be a cover for his sad eyes, and Mask would clutch at his hand but refuse to say a word. The three of them would fuss all over him, like they didn’t also overreach and push themselves in the name of Hylia and Hyrule.

Warriors will see two of them soon. He knows it. And for now, he has Four, who tightens his hold on the scarf and says, “Don’t move too fast. Did you cut yourself? How bad is it? Here, bring your hand up, let me feel—”

“One thing at a time,” Warriors rasps. But he does take the glass with his left hand, the one he fights with, and holds up his injured right like Four demanded. “It’s not bad.”

Four’s fingers skim his hand. “It’s hard to tell under all the blood. But everything is bigger like this, so maybe it just feels like a lot of blood.”

Warriors opens his mouth—

Then light hits the floor ahead of him, and he turns, catching himself on the wall with his injured hand and tightening his hold on the glass. He raises it ahead of himself and ignores how it shakes.

This is their chance. The Yiga think he’s alone in the cell, half-dead. They won’t expect him to be out of his chains. He can take the first captor through the door, slit their throat. Move Four to his shoulder or a pocket, somewhere that frees Warriors’ scarf so he has both a longer reach and the glass shard—

“Warriors?” a familiar voice calls. “Four? Are you down there?”

Warriors nearly collapses. His feet stagger under him, making Four exclaim in alarm, but he steadies himself against the wall and refuses to let his guard down. This could be a trick. He can’t risk it. Not with Four.

“Who’s there?” he calls back.

“Who’s—your savior, that’s who,” the voice snaps. “Honestly. Rulie’s been worried sick about you both, barely got him to drink a green potion, and then we had to hold him back from—whoa.”

Legend meets Warriors’ eyes through the cell bars and surges forward, dropping his torch. It hits the dirt with a shower of sparks, but doesn’t go out. The light dances across Legend’s face, highlighting his narrowed indigo eyes.

“What in Hylia happened?” Legend demands. “You look like a Hinox sat on you.”

Warriors shakes his head and grimaces. “I might’ve preferred that,” he rasps. Keeping the glass shard in hand, but lowering it to his side, he shuffles to the cell door. “Where’re the others?”

“They’re tying up loose ends. Where’s Four?” Legend fires back. There’s movement against Warriors’ chest, and indigo eyes blink down. “Hey, Four. Rulie wasn’t kidding, was he?”

“Nope,” Four squeaks. “Got any more green potion? I’d like to be big enough to bash some Yiga skulls on the way out.”

Legend smirks. “I came prepared, what can I say?” He reaches into his bag, pulls out a corked bottle, then actually looks apologetic for once. “I didn’t think about the size. Sorry.”

Four shrugs, tiny shoulders meeting his floppy ears, and lets Legend tip the bottle through the cell bars so that he can take tiny sips. Only Warriors’ stomach seems to clench, anxious thoughts of poison and false faces battling for control, and he forces them away.

It’s not easy to poison green potion; the deadly effects outbalance the health aspects in a way that’s noticeable to the drinker’s magic, and if you fake the entire green potion, you also have to fake the magical output of the drink itself. As someone who has been poisoned both ways, he should know.

“Feel alright?” Warriors asks.

“Yeah. Put me on the bar, would you? I’m ready to grow!”

Warriors does, and it’s not long before he and Legend are watching Four slide down the bar, run across the dirt floor, and dart back into the Minish doorway.

Warriors doesn’t miss that Four asked to be put down right away, instead of making Warriors carry him over to the doorway or crouch to put him on the floor. He wasn’t trying to conceal his injuries—it’d be hard to anyway, considering Four watched them all happen—but it would have been nice if the smithy hadn’t noticed quite how much they were affecting him.

One moment, Warriors is staring at a stone wall, and the next, Four is there, as short as usual and no smaller.

“Right!” Four declares, rubbing his hands together. “Legend, you better have a spare sword, because there are some Yiga who need to be taught a lesson.”

Their escape doesn’t go quite how Warriors thinks Four thought it would. Legend does lend them each a sword, grimacing at the bloody glass shard when Warriors drops it in favor of the blade’s hilt. The vet even lets the smithy take point, bullying his own shoulder under the captain’s with so much force that Warriors balks and tries to shove him away, Legend’s sharp teenage bones having dug into Warriors’ side.

The vet just pulls the captain back in, and the smithy’s over-the-shoulder glare puts an end to any more arguing.

But that’s all the fighting they do on their way out. Warriors walks along, trying to pretend each step doesn’t take twice the effort it normally does; Legend supports him, complaining that the captain should let him carry more of his weight, even though Warriors is practically being carried already; and Four keeps his sword at the ready, even when the hall starts to be lit more by the keep’s open front door than by the wall sconces.

Then they step outside, Warriors squinting against the deep throb behind his eyes, and they discover what Legend meant by the others ‘tying up loose ends.’

“Oh, come on,” Warriors sighs, gesturing half-heartedly. “That’s the oldest joke in the book.”

The other Links all look up from where Twilight is testing the restraints on one Yiga member in a pile of groaning Yiga members.

“Warriors!” Wind calls, his delight trampling over the sulky ring of Four sheathing his sword.

“What am I, monster guts?” Four mutters.

Warriors nudges him with a shoulder. “You’re my cell buddy,” he teases.

Four scoffs, but he’s smiling. “Uh-huh. Never again though, okay?”

“Agreed.”

Any other words they might have shared are stopped by two bodies slamming into them. Legend curses and Warriors groans, squinting past the new stars in his eyes to try and see which brothers thought that was a good idea. He’s just made out two splotches of blue when they’re pulled away by a block of steel.

“Hugs later,” Time’s voice stresses, then says, “Wars? Wars, can you hear me?”

Warriors tries to grunt, but that tears at his throat. He gives a thumbs up instead. “Hear you,” he rasps.

“Okay. We’re going to sit you down so Hyrule can work, okay?”

Warriors nods. His vision has mostly cleared, now, and he can see the guilty faces of Wind and Wild behind Time.

“‘M okay,” he manages.

“You’re not,” Time says, his one eye furrowed severely. “But you will be.”

Warriors sighs, but lets Time, Legend, and Four ease him to the ground. That look was effective even when Time was Mask, and has only grown more so as Time himself aged.

Besides, it’s not just the old man hovering like an incensed mother cuccoo: It’s all of the heroes. Four settles on the ground next to him, shoulder to shoulder and as unmovable as a sword in a stone. Legend moves away, pretending to be indifferent, but he’s juggling his fire rod one-handed, grasping first the staff and then the gem, staff, gem, head turned towards the Yiga.

Twilight is the opposite of Legend. He hasn’t left their enemy’s side and he keeps an eye on them, but it’s an unsteady one, always looking to Warriors, except on the few occasions his gaze flicks to Wild. Wild himself stands next to Sky, who’s tucked himself in-between the champion and the sailor. Both boys tilt their heads his way, and though Warriors can’t hear what Sky is saying, he assumes the first knight is murmuring reassurance; even as he watches, Wild’s foot-tapping eases and Wind stops twisting his pendant.

“I’m okay,” Warriors says again. His voice comes out stronger this time, though still raspy, and he continues, “You just took me by surprise.”

“You’re never surprised,” Wind complains at the same time Wild signs, “My fault.”

Warriors’ heart twists. “It’s no one’s fault,” he rebukes. “You—“

“It’s Hylia’s fault,” Legend mutters. “She portalled you all there.”

Warriors thumps his head on top of Four’s. For a second, they watch the ensuing chaos together. Then Hyrule flits between the other heroes like he’s still in his fairy form and squats in front of them, blocking Warriors’ view.

“I swear you were better than this when I left,” the traveler frets.

Warriors grimaces. He glances down, but he can’t see Four’s eyes from this position. He won’t get any help from the smithy.

“I was,” Warriors hedges. His memory of when Hyrule left the cell is fuzzy, but he thinks the fairy’s glow faded into darkness right before he fell unconscious. “I fought the Yiga, remember?” Twice.

As a medic himself, Warriors knows better than to anger healers. Faced with Hyrule’s piercing gaze, he can only blame himself.

“I remember, but I didn’t think you were doing this much damage to yourself.”

“Join the party,” Four says wryly.

“Smithy,” Warriors complains.

“What?” Four’s head shifts under his, and when he looks down, he can see the boy’s blue-tinted hazel eyes looking up. “I thought you were dead. You owe me.”

“I’m tempted to leave you like this,” Hyrule cuts in dryly. “But I’m too worried about your throat. You’re wheezing more than breathing, and I don’t think you’re able to even drink a red potion right now.”

“I’ll do better in the future,” Warriors promises.

“No you won’t,” Four says, but he pats Warriors’ knee while he does.

Then Hyrule gently sets both hands, glowing with healing magic, around the captain’s neck. Warriors closes his eyes and leans into them. They must make an odd facsimile of the circumstances earlier, he thinks: The hands that heal him, circling his neck in the same places where the collar choked and bruised him; himself, trusting in those hands and the warmth they bring instead of fighting the cold steel and the Yiga who placed it there.

Four and Hyrule, at his side both times, first helpless and now a grounding touch.

“There,” Hyrule says. One hand falls from Warriors’ neck, but the other stays, rubbing warm circles over his pulse. “You should take a red potion for the other injuries, but… how d’you feel?”

“Can we hug you yet?” Wind calls.

Warriors opens his eyes and smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Come here.”

And when he’s bowled over by two teenage boys, he barely even flinches.

silverne-nonsense's prompt: “Keep your eyes on me. You’re gonna be ok, just don’t look away. Don’t. Look. Away.”

toyouhellohowareyou's prompt: “What matters is that it worked.”

starshineandbooks's prompt: “Don’t sacrifice yourself for me. Get out of here!”

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