#shadowed

It warms my heart as a writer to see Wind's role as an unreliable narrator draw readers into his perspective and point of view. It means I'm doing my job right.

But I don't want to talk about Wind right now, I want to talk about Warriors. Specifically his actions in chapter 40. Because from the narrator's point of view, Wars is being an complete and utter ass in his treatment of Wind. He stopped Wind from going towards Tetra. He stood between Wind and Four, chose Four, told Wind to leave.

From Warriors perspective, however, that man was having the shittest of shitty days. It's not just Wind he knows from the war, he also fought alongside Tetra. Went through war with her, ate alongside her, had her back and she had his. She was his friend, and despite knowing that she would be ok, that she would survive this, he still had to find his friend half-dead, bleeding out on the ground with her leg amputated. It's like when someone you love goes in for a major surgery. You know they'll probably be just fine but it doesn't mean you aren't affected. That you aren't scared and worried and want to be their for them. Wars saw his friend badly hurt, and still his first instinct was to comfort Wind. Because he knew Wind didn't have the same future knowledge that he did, he knew Tetra and Wind were incredibly close and that this was probably going to traumatise the poor kid, so he pushed his own emotions aside to focus on consoling Wind.

He continues doing that once they are through the portal, and he does his best but the man is shaken. He's looking after a hysterical Wind, he's got questions being thrown at him left right and centre and he's dealing with his own emotions about what just happened.

Sky notices. Sky sees the captain struggling to keep things together and pulls Wind to him instead to take one thing off Wars' back.

Then, while he's trying to get everyone else to calm down, Wind suddenly decides to become homicidal! He injures Legend, he genuinely tries to kill Four, he threatens everyone else. He thinks his best friend is dead and he's hysterical and possibly having a psychotic break, and Warriors is terrified someone else is about to be bleeding out in front of him, so he steps in and tells him to calm down, and when Wind demonstrates that he's not listening, that he's going to make another attempt at Four, he realises they need to be separated. He handled it badly, he should have told Wind to take a walk, come back when he's ready to talk it out. He should have told another Link to take Wind away to calm down. But a lot had happened all at once, emotions everywhere were running high, lives were in danger, things were absolute chaos so what he was trying to say and what he actually said came out completely differently.

But of course this story is from Wind's point of view. He's an unreliable narrator. He's not in Wars' mind, he's not seeing what's going on behind the scenes and therefore neither is the reader.