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Welcome back readers, readettes, and everyone who favors angst above all else ! This chapter is riddled to the brim with confrontation, and just an overbearing atmosphere of hurt- whoops! It’s all thanks to Crimson and his absolutely terrible sense of first impressions… but boy am I so happy to be here at last !! This chapter was particularly grueling, and I really am unsure as to why. I worked on it between the span of a month and some, and my best guess as to what caused my struggle was my inability to get into a proper word flow. Sprinkle in my awful tendency to procrastinate, and there’s my answer I guess. But I’m so looking forward to starting on the next chapter cause man was it not easy getting into another pov, especially one I’ve never written for before (the Captains to be exact, and since it’s his perspective, he goes by Link). But anyway, I’ll stop blabbing now- thank you for the wait, and happy reading !

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Fresh cloth rolls free in white rivulets, draping from the Champion’s forward hands like flowering moss. Link can hear him muttering, asking, if it is enough, and the Smithy hushes him quiet, his forge-hardened fingers deft in weaving the bandages soft. Traveler sits with his knees tucked within his arms and does not dare incline his head anymore than a shaking tilt. The strangling had burst the vessels in his eyes, and left a brutish, lassoed bruise tightly rung around his throat, as stark red now as the corners of his gaze.

At his side, Smithy urges the furling cloth wet with liquid red, within a bowl of emptied potion that the Sailor holds up in trembling hands, and begins to loop it about Traveler’s neck with turns as measured as calming words. In response the boy cannot manage more than a whistling breath, his dark eyes pulling to a close, and Link watches with loathing, in a steeling of temper.

“He could have died.”

The murmurs at his ears return his focus, and the captain averts from lingering over the hushed scene, his blues shifting to the men standing beside him. They hold their voices low, shy away from whispers, and Link’s brow remains furrowed as he listens, steady against the stern of his own beating intensity. As he speaks, Veteran is eerie, beyond his nature, beyond the ever present scowl of his lips; the inhales of his chest almost seem on the brink of a burst.

“He was turning blue. Bluer than Nayru’s fuckin’ breath.”

“I saw.” Time exhales, and Vet doesn’t allow more, his words a dig into the flesh, his fists flexing and toning the dapples of forming bruises lining his knuckles.

“Did you? This is why he breathes still, tied to a damned tree?”

“And you would propose his death now?” Link interjects, his arms pulling tight where they cross. “Return to rationality.” He turns inward to better hide his words, shouldering the view of the others away with a squaring of his frame. “Your anger is understood. We are all shaken, and it is fair, for none of us held expectations for such an event, but we cannot act further than this.”

“Is that all you can say?” Vet steels against a hiss, his teeth flashing in bitter glints. “We all stood there, like useless sardin’ arseholes, and watched that lumberin’ piece of shite almost strangle the life out of him- and that is honest to the Three all you can say?” It is tensely said, strung together with a tightly gnashed jaw, and Link watches the Vet’s eyes bear into pointed razors, feeling the very same edges begin to catch at his own lashline. As his mouth pressures under the lashing of unspoken words, Time cuts them both silent, his tone a working of a blade that sharpens upon their shuttered breaths.

“There lies no point in arguing the facts. What is done is done, and there will be no consolation. You will simply have to bear it.” Link feels a tensing as the older man passes his gaze first over his own grim bearings, before sliding it to the taught jaw of the Veteran, and on to the heavy brooding of the Rancher, who had yet to break his quiet. With a blink, he persists. “Traveler will be looked after, it is manageable. In the meantime, all we can do is wait, and learn what we can when given the chance.” His expression is fixed, his eye without strain, but at the edge of his voice lies a sharpness that sinks its point through the fog of the heaving air. Link catches it, and lowers his chin, his gripping hands tightening at his arms.

When he’d traded his sword to catch him in his fall, Traveler had already gone still, his lips in a fading fizz of rasped, garbled breath. In his Captain’s arms he had waned from cobalt to pale, his eyes rolled and hidden beneath twitching eyelids, and in that moment, it had been the end. Link had seen it, in his kneeling. Had seen it in the limp of the boy's hand when he’d brought him low, knuckles dragging loosely over the tussled ground.

In molasses, Link had breathed deep, and returned to a wasteland of rolling dust and liquid red.

To wrap him in cloth would not have been to warm him, but only to rest him in tender, within an embrace beyond the thickness of surrounding earth. Arms of linen would shroud his head and drape him down to the curls of his feet, and it would be comfort to none, to neither his frigid frame, nor to his gravediggers, who would know him beyond the swathe of his face. Deep beneath the dirt he would disappear, growing further and further away than missing memory. Traveler’s lips had become purple.

Would he remember them as so?

The thought had brought a bracing to Link’s eyes, had smothered his voice to a loss as he’d laid a boy to face the sky. Reaching hands had been ignored, and desperately reared voices had bled his ears dry. He had tilted Traveler’s unmoving head up, freed the vice where it locked his neck still, and roughed his numbing knuckles into an unmoving abdomen, his gaze glued to the white of a pallid face, to the fault of a breathless chest, to the image of a friend in unwaking sleep.

And then, Traveler had flushed pink.

His lips had parted with an aching cough, his eyes desperate to blink awake, and Link had held him through it, stopping his hands in their desperation to claw at his neck. His body had trembled for eternity, and against the peering heads and wilting words of relief, Link had continued to console, a cupping hand cradling a shivering crown.

“We already had a chance.” Vet’s voice brings him back, a shock to where his guard had fallen. “And Traveler almost died for it.”

He says no more and turns away, a slinking fox weighted by a cloak of hunter's arrows. Link dares not watch him go further, if only to glimpse past him and again catch sight of encompassing, entwining cloth; a threat to worsen the already churning nerves swirling roughly within him. It is a burdening relief when Rancher speaks at last, his heady drawl trailing the space the Veteran had left behind.

“He ain’t wrong- this shouldn’t be the choice. Especially after all that, we don’t owe that bastard anythin’.” At the very peek of his visage, Link can see Time’s eye close in mulling. The warring sense of contemplation that crosses the older hylian’s face only further fuels his own flaming sense of apprehension, and he shuts his lips tight. The Rancher’s words are clear to him, and ever more so to the aching blight of grief wearing to his being. It lathes as hotly as fire over his jaw, in despair of prompting similar words of strife from his very tongue, but he holds fast against their embers. With slackening strength, he listens instead to the tensing of a head between ancestor and descendant, and allows it to voice his internal, smoking discord.

“What would you propose? That we cast him aside without another thought? It would only render both our parties remiss to an explanation.”

The Ordonian’s persistence is potent, and the levels of his tone rise in tandem with his hand. “I’m just questionin’ why anything he could say now would hold any meanin’ at all. What excuse can he give? That he was confused? He coulda been askin’ all forms of questions, but he took it upon himself to skip straight to stranglin’!”

“Lower your voice.”

Time’s eye smartens, the night twisting his expression a wicked, ghostly pale. Against his pounding heart, Link flicks him with a full stare, and notes clearly that he is barely contained, his front of calm a mere layer that cannot hope to conceal a rage in its entirety. His next utterance reflects that sentiment the very same. “Do you forget our mission? Why time itself has chosen us, against the very weaves that hold its rules in place?” Rancher tapers off into a squeezed silence, and Time tacks him with an unwavering gaze. “As the moment at hand declares, whether we wish for it or or not, this call has brought him forth in the very same manner in which it beckoned us. And in knowing this, I do not ask for your favor, but only your cooperation in navigating yet another trial that has been thrust upon us, for what more can be done?”

It is not a question asked in kind, and Rancher has long averted his gaze, his jaw flexing as if chewing around the rough of the Old Man’s enmity. Time breathes, and his voice falls quiet.

“I will ask only once more. If you have a proper alternative- please- propose it. Bring it forth. It is clear you have become so very convinced of one, so speak it. I am listening.”

The silence that follows betrays that of the entire clearing. Link can almost hear the vice grinding the Rancher’s hands into tightening clenches, and in turn, he fixes Time with a look. An abundance of grief has been suffered enough tonight. Any more, and surely the Cook will run out of spare bandages. Where his mouth remains closed, the shallowest tilt of the captain's head says enough, and the older hylian sighs, the color filtering back through his face with the breath. Rancher droops his gaze to boot level, and Link lifts a hand to rest it at his shoulder, his own strain reduced to less than a tepid flame.

“Do not fault yourself.” He means to speak as if in promise, his palm heavy in its touch. “There is no shame in defending your allies, but there may be limits, and as fate has so designed, our position here is littered with them.” Rancher lifts his head to weigh him in heavy, and Link feels as if the wildfire burning about his neck is delving into his mouth with every parting of his lips.

“Heed the Old Man; all will work itself out in time.”

It scalds the tongue, and Link ignores it, means to beat down his own warping anger just as much as he means to assure. After a moment, Rancher nods, and Link leaves him a listless pat to the back. With a flickering look that betrays his uncertainty, Rancher trudges away, his steps steeped in their stares, and only until he returns to the fire does Link step forward. A blithering sigh slides from his teeth, and it shadows his speech to a whisper.

“You know he speaks in fairness.”

Time’s own anger has fallen, giving way to a weariness that he tries- in vain- to wipe gone with a hand he runs down his face. “I do, but it matters not just the same. If this man were a no one, perhaps it would be different.”

“A ‘no one…’ He is far worse than that. This damage is irreversible.”

“I know it is… but it is lost to me, the way in which to distill this anger,” Time pauses, his mouth wavering, before he huffs, “no more from them than from you, Captain.”

At that, Link feels his loathing flare, and he bites a bit at his teeth, silent where he works his thoughts through his head. Is he truly so obvious? It is more demeaning than he’d hoped to care for. He withholds another sigh, surely more blithering than the last, and brings his hands to dig restlessly at his belt.

“I can retain my head as well as any, and I will do so in kind. You needn’t beg for my favor.” The scathing of his tongue soaks more into the words than he means, and the Old Man’s lips fall into a look of dulled despondence.

“I doubt you least of all.”

The captain wanes against the fire that has surely melted now to his bones, and could almost shudder against the dousing of Time’s assertion over his burns. He nods, a quick jerk of the head, and regains himself, pushing further with a sudden vigor for the older hylian’s confidence.

“Allow me this watch. The Skyloftian should tend to his own wounds yet.”

And no matter his claim of a level head, Link knows the Old Man can perceive his true desire. That he sees the small, improvident piece of him wishing for nothing but to stoke the nature of his hatred, and allow it to borne into a fuming blaze in the face of his enemy. When his hesitation confirms it as so, Link turns his smarting eyes aside to the edges of the surrounding wood, and to its layering of trees lining their encampment. Their bodies bear forward with frames that impose, aligned in a jaggedly splayed formation that does not quite round the glade, but Link is not in search of symmetry. He narrows over a form that lies far in the dark, over the battered lay of a knight crumpled and bared beneath a looming oak, and breathes.

“Entrust him to me.”

He asks again, for a charge beyond one in saying alone, and Time stares at him in a hush. Even as the stillness lasts, Link holds a quiet faith, his exhales as steady as if he were asleep. Is he as undoubted as the Old Man claims? He would not fault him if he chose denial, but surely the next time they’d speak, he would be long consumed in flame. The air seethes with a tension everlasting, and Link wears at his belt with digging fingers, hoping it is merely the older hylian’s turn to speak with face and nothing more. And he does, tilting his head the very same, but chasing the motion with words Link does not expect to follow.

“Do as you wish.”

The pressure clears like fog beneath a torrent, and Link frees his digits from the leather at his waist. He turns to brush Time by, a final spewing escaping his lips as he takes up a stride.

“I will call to you when he wakes.”

The copse before him shivers alive beneath the wind, reflecting the long casting shadows of the fire Link faces now with his back. He trails the length of a particularly looming shade, and follows it to a figure that stands too pushed and straightened. With arms bunched in a wrap around his unmoving frame, Sky turns his head, and Link’s eyes helplessly dart to a flaring of red rimming the man’s brow. Sky purses his lips, and his ashen expression filters thickly into his tone.

“You need of me?”

Link slows to a stop, and raises a hand to smooth where the breeze had unsettled his cape. Sky’s disheartenment is as infectious as a yawn, and Link tuts him with a wave. “At ease, man. I come to claim your watch.” It lacks the geniality he wishes to convey, and Sky appears beyond crestfallen, the welts on his face making it no less a task to comfort him for them. His brows knit in a furrowing strain, and Link stills as he responds.

“Did you not take your vigil the night just before, Captain? I do not mind remaining here tonight.” His arms part from around his chest, and Link tries hard not to stare at a cut to his lip as it frays with every tug of his moving mouth.

“I do not mind it.” He says, and it is in truth. Sleep would surely evade him were he to try, and it is not the avoidance of a restless slumber that fronts his mind, anyway. “More so, it is you who should rest, not I.”

Sky opens his teeth, no doubt to protest, and instead forces a quick hand to his chin with a huff, his lip beginning to bleed in its split. Link appreciates the point proven as the Skyloftian winces, even if the sight summons another burble of ire from within his chest. Despite his ruffled feathers, the onset of softness to his voice does well not to betray it.

“Go. It would do you well.”

Sky shakes his head, pressing a knuckle to the bow of his maw. “I will not die of a bleeding lip.” He grumbles, and muffled as they are, the words still drip with an acute displeasure, reminding Link of his own thinning patience. Still, he supersedes it with the little composure still remaining within him.

“Perhaps not,” he concedes, “and, perhaps you’ve yet to reconcile with the Veteran.” He hates to mislead, and feels no less justified when Sky’s sturdy brow falters to that of a worrying twinge. Yet with chin held high, Link carries on. “It appears he knows little of how to proceed.”

Sky falls his hand, and red dribbles over his lower lip. “Is this his thought?” He asks with utmost care, and Link follows the blood, cursing how he’d allowed such violence to last so long. He’d been doubled over the Traveler, breathless, and all else had escaped his sight. Sky’s plight had been entirely lost to him. He tears his eyes away, and prays to Hylia a handkerchief could, at that very moment, be hopelessly bestowed upon him.

“As I say, it is how it appears.”

Between them, the air stifles with the sound of chirping insects and the distant, crackling fire. Sky is as deflated as an emptied water skin. “I do not fault him.” He murmurs, almost shallower than the composing of the crickets beyond their ears. He holds a hand to his chest to shudder against a sigh, and Link wonders of the forming contusions beneath his tunic. The Veteran’s rings are undoubtedly sharper in the form of a punch.

“Go.” Link hums, placating to his greatest ability. “Rest.”

Sky holds his gaze, and all fight leaves from his face. With a lathe of his tongue over his lip, he offers the smallest inclination of his chin, and mutters his same, parting phrase.

“Goddess be with you.”

Unlike the Rancher, his steps are hollow and guilt bound. Link straightens against the somber cloud he leaves behind, and with a burning turn of his head cleaves through the mist of it with a crackling fury.

As quiet as the dead, the knight had bore witness to the exchange in its entirety, though it seemed he had done so without a wakefulness to match. The blood his nose had poured at the Vet’s knuckled blows remains caked over his lips and chin, a swell already visible in its rise over his right eye, and arching the ridge of the brandished scar sat in a tear from his brow to his cheek. The sight of the gash is uncanny, and despite the flexing of his clenching teeth, Link can almost scoff. To look so similar to a man so honorable is no small insult, and at the thought, he can feel the threads that bind the honor of his vows pulling taught. He holds a quiet observance, far from ready to plant himself into a seat, and darts his eyes over the form below him.

Now that he is still, and holds not a treasured companion by the neck, Link can see him fully. The knight’s locks are as light as the buckskin of the rope tied thickly about his waist, in blend with the bark of the tree it wraps him tightly to. Down to his chest his hair falls in ragged tussles, no doubt mussed by the scrambling effort of forcing him upright, and as untamed as the swirls of thick scruff that line his upper lip and mar his jaw. Link pictures him a wanderer, a knight in distance of forsaken oaths and forever beneath an expanse of endless canopy. Even unconscious the brace in his brow holds tight, a testament to his violence, and Link curses him a counsel with the Goddesses.

From wherever he hails has forsaken him in more than just in name, such a fact made clear not only from his tarnished armor, but from the mindless sense he had shown in his speech. More battered than a bear ensnared in an iron trap, madness had ripped from his teeth in no manner beyond fear. What were the swears he’d proclaimed so viciously against? That he would be no prisoner, no head upon spike? Could it be that before him, in bruising tatters, lies now a traitor to the Crown? Link sucks a breath cleanly through his teeth, and locks a rigidly raised hand to the grip of the blade at his back. He feels a sudden strike of envy towards Veteran, who had taken liberty loosing his anger in the form of ruthless fists; by Farore’s green fields how the bands on his fingers had littered the knight scarred.

The very same as they had for Sky as he tried to stop him.

The remembrance flickers the envy into shame, and Link’s fingers mellow against his hold. Veteran had been relentless, unled by any binding oaths of tribute. How dare he wish for the same? He thanks Hylia for her ignorance of his prayer, for if she had stood to it, Sky would have returned to him a handkerchief stained with the price he’d paid for chivalry- chivalry he’d meant to cast aside for the sake of bile. Link exhales, and with a laxing clutch draws free his iron without a sound, as gently as he had held Traveler back to breath. With refusal to face the scourge of a knight head on, he lowers himself to the trodden ground a turn away, and lays his blade flatly over his lap. His eyes draw once more to the man, gaze flickering down to his slouching figure, and zeroing in on the hand pulled tightly to the left side of his form. The angled lines etched into his knuckles catch what little light there is, and Link blinks.

Yes, this damage was irreversible.

In the silence of the dark, the captain crosses his legs over the other, and begins his watch for the night.

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Hey, you made it ! Lots of yapping and exchanges in this one, but I did my utmost to transition into each interaction smoothly. Sometimes, I feel like my writing can be a bit like ‘he did this, and then he turned, and did that,’ so I hope that is not the case here… but thank you for reading ! I hope I can come up with chapter four a lot sooner than I came up with this one- I already have a bit of an intro! Though I have to write Crimson waking up for the third time in a row… well, no one said it would be easy ! Also, ‘sard’ is another word for the f-word. I thought it’d be neat if I used more older words and language, and am a strong believer Sky’s version of goodbye is always just ‘Goddess be with you.’