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The ghosts tell him that the nature of things is that they stop being fine after a while.
They start fine. The shadow is content, if quiet, as it settles in itself, surrounded by a group hesitant to prod it too much. Despite the situation, they eye it with poorly disguised intrigue and only the barest remnants of suspicion. The shadow feels grateful to find that their questions have been saved for another, more restful time.
The most confusing thing it has to deal with is when the scarred one--Wild, it's quietly told by the quietest ghost--asks it what it wants to eat. Not "if," because "nothing" is apparently an unacceptable response. The shadow tries to piece together something that is, and its answer, after much deliberating with the ghosts, is fry bread.
The shadow gnaws on the treat as it walks, licking at the honey that spills off the edges and sticks to its fingers. It eats with sloppy, uncoordinated motions that gets more of the treat on its face than in its mouth. On one side of it, and with an unrestrained intensity, Hyrule does the same. On the other side of it, the capped hero laughs at them both.
Slowly, the air around the group shifts in time with the landscape. They breach the edge of the wilds and what remains of the heavy tension blows away with the wind as they enter a small and lively place. Voices call out in greetings, tiny feet rushing close but skipping past it to latch onto the others.
The shadow doesn't recognize the town that the ghosts tell him is Twilight's home, nor is it thrilled with the change in settings at first. Even so, after some wordless internal encouragement, it unsticks itself from Hyrule's figurative shadow and sets out on its own.
It's surprised the group lets it leave. They seem hurried, for some reason, and Twilight just tells him that the town is safe. The shadow figured that much out on its own, though having a ghost and Twilight both confirm it definitely helps. It can hear them speaking in rushed, hushed tones as it splits away from them and tries not to worry about it as it explores the town.
It…quickly decides that it likes it here.
Orodon is a peaceful town, full of goats and people who have no preconceived ideas about how the shadow should act or speak. The town seems like it was built around leaving secrets well enough alone, much like Twilight himself. When it says something odd, the townspeople seem entirely unbothered, and when it walks with an unusual gait, no one bats an eye. When it offhandedly mentions that it is a creature of evil borne from a world of shadows, the worst it gets is a perplexingly exasperated, "Another one?"
It's near-effortless, even for something like the shadow, to relax in a place like Orodon. Despite the ghosts' insistence otherwise, it knows even as it does so that it is a mistake. Nonetheless, it is an easy one to make.
---
Things quickly stop being fine. In truth, the shadow isn't sure they ever were.
It had felt comfortably invisible, surrounded by people who did not care and separated from the ones that did. It had felt settled, almost, in this safe little town. It had felt, briefly, like it was allowed to be there.
It should have known better.
Now, all it feels is chaos. Its skin is too small for its bones, its heart too fast and its thoughts too muddled. There is no circle of heroes to cage it in as it unsettles, not when the group left it behind. It barely even remembers what they went to do, why they went without it. All it knows is that the silence inside the house inside the tree is dragging against its skin like rough stone.
It's hard to think like this.
"I'm not supposed to be here," the shadow admits in a breath, eyes wide. The smooth planks of the wooden floors creak beneath its weight. A thick sheet of fabric hangs between it and its body, and sensations feel even further away than they did before. The garbled whispers of the distant ghosts are slow-coming, the sounds drowned out by its uncertainty.
"Twilight literally invited us in."
"No," the shadow says, spinning around to face the hero.
Pink hair covered by a blue hat, eyebrows raised judgmentally, a distinct lack of pants: this is definitely Legend. It doesn't know how it knows this, but it does. It's Legend, the same Legend who wandered beside it on their way to Orodon, though the shadow's never actually spoken to him before. No one bothers to speak to a shadow.
"No?" Legend scoffs, but the annoyance feels prodding, searching, "You were there when he said we could stay here."
"That's not what I mean," the shadow says. It doesn't know what it means, but it knows it's nothing good. Something sharp and hungry claws at its chest. Its words are caught between a rasp and a snarl. "I'm not supposed to be here. Four said. It's not--I'm not allowed."
"Four said you're not allowed?" Legend frowns. He seems dubious, and the shadow is reminded of his easy acceptance of Hyrule's interpretation. Still, his hand twitches toward his sword. He narrows his eyes a bit and scoffs, "What, then? You're some kind of demon?"
"Yes," the shadow hisses, as relieved as it is horrified. It can barely breathe, its chest rising and falling rapidly. The no-longer-gentle ghosts' frantic, scrambling pleas are drowned out by its rasping breaths.
Legend's eyes narrow, just a bit. The shadow can feel it when he does something to the air, aggressively wrapping around Four's magic and the shadow both. Legend isn't gentle and inviting like Hyrule was. There is no soft inspection, or gentle prodding. Instead, the force tightens in a painful, whiteknuckle grip around it.
The shadow sucks in a gasping breath. The magic worms forcefully under his skin, tight, tight, tighter. The shadow is weak to its instincts, and when the ghosts get close enough to snap at it to just run, it tries to. It makes to spin around, to sprint with all the force it has, but its body--Four's body--is so, so far away. Its fingers barely twitch.
Legend watches its hands with sharp eyes, and the magic under its skin starts to thrum. Nausea curls in its gut like a beckoning hand. It feels dizzy and weak, and if it were responsible for keeping itself upright it would surely be sprawled on the floor by now.
What is he doing? echoes out, and this ghost feels so close that the shadow can almost touch them.
Before it can try, the magic pulses brightly, a blinding and fascinating light that spreads around it and inside it. The edges of light and heat flare, but they stop just short of burning off the layers of the shadow's skin.
Legend's face relaxes and the magic retreats, leaving it to stand on its own.
The shadow stumbles.
"Four, what the hell?" the hero demands, "The fuck did you say that for?"
"I am," the shadow says, all it can say. The words choke on their way out its throat.
Legend just snorts, unamused and unimpressed, "No, you're not."
The shadow wants to scream. It takes a moment before it remembers that it can now. There is no sound in the shadow world. In the spaces it usually occupies, the best it can do is flail and writhe in the nothing and hope that it is understood. It never is.
The shadow lets its hand wrap around the nearest object-- a mug, one of the ghosts helpfully tells it--and promptly hurls it at the hero with a mangled cry.
Legend ducks out of the way quickly and instinctively.
"Hey!" Legend snaps. His scowl has an edge the shadow cannot place. He grows the distance between him and the shadow. "What the fuck, Four!?"
"I'm. Not. Four," the shadow grits.
If it had claws while wearing these bones, it would be flexing them at the hero as it bares its teeth. As it is, it curls Four's lips into a snarl and settles into a fighting stance. Its heart pounds beneath its ribs like a war drum.
"Well you're sure as fuck not a demon!"
"I am," the shadow snarls. Catching a stroke of inspiration with a quick and unsuspecting strike like how Vio catches fireflies, an ambush predator crouched low in the brush, the shadow taunts, "How does it feel to know your friend is gone? I have him trapped and you'll-" The raging reign of its heart catches up to it, and it gasps so hard it nearly crumples with the force. "--you'll never get him back!"
The shadow gasps and takes a stumbling swipe at the hero before it with soft, clawless hands.
"Stop," Legend demands, easily stepping out of its way. Gentle is an odd look on him, the shadow thinks.
Then, it lunges for his throat and doesn't think of anything at all.
---
"- don't ---- ----- -----!"
"--- ---- -- stop, ----!"
"No, no, no, ---- ---- --------, please, ----."
"----, I'm sorry, ----. ------- ----."
---
The shadow wakes up with a blanket around its shoulders.
The material is soft and light, like fleece if fleece didn't catch on the cracks in its fingers. The rest of the dreaming slips away from it and life returns, sounds that are loud and vivid and bright. The pages of a book flip every so often, and a fire cracks in steady, almost rhythmic patterns. Something breathes tiredly from somewhere that is both close and very, very far away from it.
Its skin is slow to resettle around it, but as it does, it becomes aware of a pain in the front of its head, nestled behind one eye. The sensation thrums, pulsing in time with its heart. The shadow groans.
A book snap s closed and thunk s lightly as it's set down on a small, wooden table. The shadow can only see a blur of blue settled atop the woodgrain, and the gold symbols scribbled on it are too small and twisting for it to even try to make them out. The shadow groans again.
"You finally waking up?"
The shadow makes a noise that isn't quite a word, but is hopefully enough of an affirmative. It manages to lift its head and focus its eyes enough to make out a person settled next to it on the floor in front of the fire.
"What--" Its voice cracks roughly as it tries to speak. Its throat feels raw, the sort of raw that comes from far too much screaming. It hasn't felt this way in a very, very long time, though it struggles to pin exactly when that could have happened before.
The person, who unblurs into a familiar hero, presses a waterskin into its hands.
Harder to shatter, something says. Surprised, the shadow struggles not to drop it. It vaguely remembers something about ghosts. Maybe it's haunted?
Ignoring that, the shadow raises the waterskin to its lips with shaky hands and drinks. The tea is bitter, but the warmth soothes its throat on the way down. It drains the skin in only a few, long gulps that leave it a little breathless. It holds the empty thing in its hands, staring down at it silently. Should it put it on the table?
Sure enough, the hero, Legend, takes the waterskin from it and sets it on the table himself.
"What happened?" the shadow finally rasps.
Legend is quiet for a moment, looking at it searchingly. "What do you remember?"
The shadow doesn't know.
"It--we're in a house," it says, but its thoughts are fleeting and it feels deeply unsure, "You're supposed to hurt me?"
The voices of several ghosts murmur discontentedly and Legend goes stock-still. "Fuck no."
The shadow shrinks back, and the hero's face schools into something a little gentler, though tension bites at the corners of his expression. The hero takes a careful breath, and then another. Inexplicably, the shadow does the same.
"We're at Twilight's house in Orodon. He's in the village," Legend says, laying each piece of information out in front of them both, "The others are taking their sweet fucking time, so we're still waiting for them to get back from the springs. "
"No one is supposed to hurt you," He adds factually, and with a strange conviction. It's so reasonable-sounding that the shadow almost believes him.
Still, it hesitates. Its memories are half-formed and flashing, flickering like a dying lantern in a dark room. It leans back a bit, away from the hero and tries not to look too visibly relieved when the hero leans back a bit too.
"But…you did."
Legend considers it very carefully, something indescribable on his face. "You remember that?"
"Not really," the shadow admits. It barely remembers itself, right now. It knows that something happened. It knows that there are ghosts somewhere. It knows that Legend gave it a waterskin instead of a mug because ceramic shatters. It knows that it was screaming for a very long time. It knows that the floors of Twilight's house taste more bitter than they look.
Legend nods like that's expected. Maybe it is? The shadow doesn't really have a reference for what's supposed to be happening right now.
"I didn't want to hurt you," the hero says seriously, and the shadow actually believes him this time, "We were trying to keep you from hurting yourself."
"Oh," the shadow says. It feels a little surprised, and a lot wrong-footed. "Why--why would I…"
It doesn't want to say it.
Legend thins his lips. "I think Hyrule might have been wrong earlier. I think you might be cursed, Four."
The shadow barely even has time to startle before the hero's rushing to add, "Not Four. Fuck, you're not Four, I know."
The shadow takes a breath in time with the hero before him. Slowly, it's heart steadies and it looks like the hero steadies too.
The shadow wonders, "Can demons even be cursed?"
Legend's face twitches. "Yes."
"...okay," the shadow agrees.
Not for the first time, it feels completely helpless. If it's cursed, what does that mean for the other person? The--the one who tells it things but isn't a ghost. Four, Legend had said, which doesn't sound right but doesn't sound all that wrong either.
The shadow asks, "What do we do?"
Legend sighs, his shoulders stooping. "Right now? We just need to wait for the others to get back. There's nothing else we can do, not if we don't want to run the risk of activating it again."
The shadow stills. It doesn't want to go back to whatever memories it's forgotten. The flashes are enough to tell it that whatever happened was bad. It doesn't want to scream again. It doesn't want to be cursed. How do you fix a curse? You can't purify a demon.
Its voice cracks when it speaks. Hesitantly, it hedges, "Will I be okay?"
Legend's expression gentles again, and the shadow's memories flicker when it thinks about how strange it looks on the hero's face. He reaches forward with slow, projected motions and tugs the blanket back up around the shadow's shoulders from where it had been drooping and smooths the fabric down over its arms.
"You're gonna be fine," Legend says, "Don't even worry about it."
The shadow laughs and it doesn't know why.
"I'm good at worrying," it says honestly and Legend laughs too, a little strained.
"You and me both, kid," he says with a tone the shadow cannot discern, "You and me both."
---