He sighs, rolling his sleeves back from where he'd pulled them down to cover his hands. It had helped with the cold at first, but became less and less effective as the day wore on. Legend's fingers had gone partially numb long before the Links had reached this makeshift campsite, and are now tingling in a way that almost burns. Resting his hands palms-up on his thighs, Legend examines them critically.

As he expects, the normal pinkish tone of his skin stops abruptly just below his middle knuckle, giving away to a sickly, green-tinged white. His fingers are bloodless almost all the way to the very tips, where they turned a darker reddish-purple color.

They had been surprisingly well-behaved for the past few weeks, only turning a splotchy red-and-white that was fairly easy to warm up again compared to their current state. That was more likely due to the fair weather--combined with keeping his fire rod close--than anything else, but Legend was enjoying having good blood flow for once, dammit!

Is it weird to think about his hands as if they are separate entities with their own wills? Probably. But if they're going to be little snots about maintaining proper circulation, Legend is going to treat them with the derision they deserve.

He sighs again, readying himself for a good half-hour of working the blood back into his hands before he can regain enough dexterity to properly help with camp. Using numb fingers to try and de-numb other fingers isn't all the effective, shockingly.

The sound of boots on damp leaves makes him look up. Warriors is standing there, holding a bundle of fabric.

"You know you're supposed to grab your own stuff off Epona, right?" Legend says, squinting up at him. "That sure looks an awful lot like my bedroll."

"You know you're supposed to grab your own stuff as soon as we stop, so that the rancher can take care of his horse, right?" Warriors parrots back at him. "A simple 'thank you' would do just fine."

Legend opens his mouth to make a retort, but the captain is already slinging the bundle off his shoulder and into Legend's lap. Legend instinctively reaches out to catch it, and winces as the impact jolts his tingling fingers.

"Veteran, what's wrong with your hands?"

Legend swallows down a curse; of course the captain had noticed.

"Nothing," he says. He steadies the bedroll in his lap with one hand, curling the other against his chest. As if that would be enough to warm it up in the slightest. "I'm dealing with it."

That does absolutely nothing to ease the captain's concern expression. Warriors crosses the distance between them in a few steps, kneeling down next to Legend. He takes the bedroll back, setting it to the side.

"What--hey!" Legend makes a grab for it too late, his numbed hands fumbling the retreating fabric miserably. He glares at the captain, irritated. "What did I just say about only grabbing your own stuff, huh?"

Warriors ignores him. He stares at Legend's hands, brows furrowed. "Your fingers are white."

"Wow," Legend snaps, patience thinning. He's tired and achy and so very cold. He does not have the capacity to deal with nosy assholes. "Look at you go, Captain Obvious."

His jab only makes the captain's eyebrows pinch further together. Legend wanted to clench his hands into fists and tell the knight to beat it, but the motion would just make his joints ache. Warriors makes no move to touch Legend, he continues his scrutiny.

"It's not cold enough out for frostbite to be a problem," he murmurs, sounding confused. Looking up, he asks, "Hoarder, are you wearing so many rings that it cut off your circulation or something?"

Legend huffs in annoyance. "My rings have nothing to with this."

Warriors just keeps looking at him, as if waiting for more. Maybe if Legend answers him he'll leave him alone. Legend resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"Seriously, they don't do anything. I tried not wearing them once. The only thing it accomplished was making me more likely to kick to the bucket." Legend uncurls his hands, staring down at his unhealthily pale fingers. "This just... happens, sometimes."

More like all the time.

He sighs. He'd been doing that a lot lately, he noted absently. "Like I said, I'm dealing with it."

Warriors raises an eyebrow. "And what does that entail?"

Legend closes his eyes, thunking his head back against the tree trunk. He should've known a half-baked answer wouldn't be enough to satisfy Warriors's inherent, Link-exclusive mega-nosiness.

"What do you think it entails?" Legend grouses, eyes still closed. "There's no blood in my fingers. I put the blood back in my fingers. Simple."

"So what, you're just gonna sit here and rub your frozen hands together until they can feel stuff again?" Legend can hear the frown in his voice, but he keeps his eyes closed.

"Yep."

"That seems... painful. And time-consuming."

"Yep."

Warriors doesn't say anything else. Legend's hands burn.

Maybe if he just acts like the captain isn't there than he'll leave him alone.

Swallowing down his nerves--Legend had never shown the sorry state of his hands to anybody but his sister--he opens his eyes, and lets himself fall into the familiar rhythm of routine.

His hands are quite fond of constricting his blood flow in response to the cold, stress, both, or nothing in particular. On one memorably annoying occasion, he'd been cocooned in blankets and sipping hot cider on the cozy couch in his living room, and a few of his fingers had still decided they weren't warm enough. He'd had to abandon his bubble of comfort to pace around the room, massaging his hands until his blood was flowing properly again.

Legend has had to do this more times than he cares to count.

He decides to start with his left hand. He pulls of his rings, piling them carefully in his lap. Flicking his wrist vigorously a few times to try and encourage his blood to flow towards his fingertips, Legend begins the slow process of squeezing the patchy red from his palm up to the base of his fingers, and then towards the tips.

Progress is by no means linear.

As he works, Legend constantly has to redo the same spots on his fingers, the pressure of forcing his circulation to function in ones section of his finger turning another section white once again. The fingers of his right hand remain numb and bloodless even as his left hand slowly regains feeling.

It's like trying to run uphill though sand, he thinks, not for the first time.

Legend bears it all with a patience born from tiredness, used to the slow, backward slide of his efforts and the resulting frown that settles on his face. The task takes up enough of his concentration that he startles when Warriors speaks.

"Let me try."

Legend blinks, eyes focusing on the captain. "What?"

Warriors gestures at Legend's hands. In the past few minutes, Legend has managed to work the feeling completely back into the pinky and ring fingers of his left hand, but not much else.

"Warming up your hands," Warriors replies. "Mine are plenty toasty, so it might speed up the process." He wiggles his perfectly healthy, well-circulated fingers in the air.

Legend is miserable enough that he actually considers it for a moment. He shakes his head.

"C'mon," Warriors wheedles. "It'll be faster! I'm supposed to be scouting the area right now, you know."

"Yeah, well, I don't recall asking you to stick around and bother me," Legend retorts. He turns back to his hands, and deflates.

During his brief pause, his blood had once again receded from the tips of most of his fingers. Not all the way, thankfully, but any amount was too much. He'd almost finished with his middle finger, too.

"You're also on patrol duty." Warriors's voice breaks through his thoughts again. "That's part of why I came over here in the first place."

Oh, right. That was a thing, wasn't it? Legend vaguely remembers Time dishing out the tasks shortly before they stopped for camp, but at that point he'd been so focused on his frozen hands that he'd barely heard the man.

"...Fine," he acquiesces. It’s not like Warriors could do any more damage than what had already been done to his circulation, anyway.

Legend takes off the rest of his rings, adding them to the pile in his lap, while Warriors peels off his own fingerless gloves. Legend shifts to face the captain, holding his hands out in front of him, awkwardly. He’d never had someone help him with this before, so wasn't sure how effective it would be, but he was too tired to care at the moment.

Warriors reaches out to take one of Legend's hands, and they both hiss.

"You're freezing!" Warriors exclaims, quickly enveloping the hand with both of his own. His skin feels hot enough to burn.

"Captain Obvious strikes again," Legend says through gritted teeth. Warriors doesn't reply, fully focusing on the task of forcing Legend's hands to regain proper circulation.

The tension slowly drains from Legend as the captain works. He's afraid at first that someone else warming up his fingers will hurt, but any clumsiness Warriors shows isn't any worse than what Legend's own numbed hands could manage. The captain is careful to mimic Legend's earlier actions, working blood carefully up from his palm and towards his fingertips.

The redness under Legend's skin steadily creeps to overtake the greenish-white patches of his hands. The tingling in his fingers shifts from a painful, burning chill to an almost feverish warmth that only he can feel as his nerves adjust to the suddenly being able to feel things again.

Legend closes his eyes, leaning his shoulder against the smooth bark of the tree as Warriors works. It feels too awkward to just stare at his frozen hands for the next few minutes, and he'd rather not catch one of the others' eyes by accident by looking elsewhere--they'd probably take it as an invitation to come over and bug him too.

He's almost dosed off when he feels Warriors release his hands, sitting back on his heels.

"All done, I think," Warriors says. "How do they feel?"

Legend pushes away from the tree to sit fully upright, careful of the pile of rings in his lap. He flexes his fingers, watching to see if any spots of white pop up again as he straightens them. Nothing.

His hands are still frigid--he tests this by pressing his fingers against his wrist, the skin of his inner arm seeming almost too hot to the touch--but his circulation is back to whatever qualifies as normal for him.

Warriors remains next to him, expectant. Legend doesn't respond to his question, instead busying himself with replacing his rings on their respective fingers.

As much as he appreciates the captain's unexpectedly considerate and jibe-free help, Legend is unused to getting help from others regarding his personal issues. It makes him feel uncomfortably exposed, like he's handing someone an ugly little piece of his soul and hoping they won't laugh at it.

He doesn't like it, and the only way to deal with something that makes him feel emotional is to create a distraction for himself.

A sudden, mischievous urge bubbles up within Legend, and he has to suppress a grin as he drops his hands into his lap. Turning to face his companion, Legend adopts an appropriately apprehensive expression for his next words.

"Hey." He trails off, as if hesitating before steeling himself for action. Which is what he's doing, but whatever.

He reaches over, wraps his arms around Warriors's shoulders, and pulls him into a hug. Emotional vulnerability isn't really Legend's style, but this is the only way he'll be able to get in close enough without the captain suspecting something nefarious.

... Though, to be fair, a hug from Legend, of all people, is probably strange enough to seem nefarious in and of itself.

Legend feels Warriors stiffen, probably shocked by his sudden and never-before-seen display of prolonged physical affection. He must get over it quickly, though, because he slowly wraps his arms around Legend and returns the hug.

Legend is kind of surprised the captain doesn't just push him away, but all the better for his plan.

"Thanks for this," Legend mumbles, sinking his cold fingers into the folds of the captain's ridiculous blue scarf.

Huh, he thinks. This hug is actually kinda nice. He blinks the thought away. Focusing back on his self-imposed mission, he begins creeping his hands slowly upwards.

"Of course," Warriors replies, quietly. Good. He's taking this seriously.

Closing his eyes, Legend relaxes into the hug for a moment more. It really is warm. His hands stop moving, chilly fingers hooking lightly over the back of the captain's tunic collar.

Legend takes a deep breath in, exhales, and plunges his icy hands down the back of Warriors's neck.

Warriors screeches, practically hurling Legend away from him as he flails. Legend falls backwards, making no effort to catch himself as he roars with laughter.

Warriors splutters, recovering from his shock enough to look outraged. "Why you little--"

He cuts himself off, and Legend is too busy cackling to care what names the captain was going to call him. Some kind of internal war plays out on the captain's face as he stares down at Legend, expressions ranging from angrily dumbfounded to reluctantly amused.

Amusement wins out. Slowly, Warriors sinks back into a seated position next to Legend, a begrudging smile pulling at his lips. Then, with a snort that sounds more like a horse than like the shining knight he's supposed to be, the captain breaks down laughing as well.

It takes a minute or two for them both to calm down.

"Did you seriously hug me just so you could shove your frigid hands down my back?" Warriors complains, once Legend is back upright and they're both no longer laughing hard enough that the heavens themselves had probably heard the ruckus.

"Surely I don't need to explain the importance of strategy to a captain of the royal guard," Legend snipes back, readjusting his hat. It had been pulled out of place when he'd fallen over. Warriors scoffs.

"See if I ever do anything for you again," he mutters under his breath.

Strangely enough, Legend is completely certain that he doesn't mean a word of it.

The captain stands, dusting off his miraculously wrinkle-free tunic. He offers a hand to Legend.

"Come on," he says. He nods his head towards where the others are still faithfully setting up camp despite the nosy looks Legend sees a few of them shooting in their direction. "We'd better pull our weight with patrol, or else the champion might revoke our dessert privileges."

Legend takes the captain's warm hand, and is pulled to his feet. Ugh, his aching feet, that sitting down had not helped at all with in the long run. He grimaces. Patrol is going to be awful.

Releasing Legend's hand, Warriors instead reaches over to thoroughly ruffle his hair.

"Don't look so excited now," he teases. Legend scowls at him, hands flying up to fix his hat, which had been knocked askew. Again.

Warriors starts off towards the others before he can offer a retort, and Legend hurries after him, grumbling insults he barely means.