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It was weird to see an adult cry.
Babies shrieked and children sobbed, dogs whined and cats gave pitiful mews. Tears leaked or were withheld, but breaths still caught and eyes glassed over, and the look of a screwed up face and trembling lips was well-known to all.
Wind’s little sister, Aryll, cried. His grandmother did not.
Small, soft hands scrunched over mouths, over heads, over shirts.
Large, weathered hands smoothed atop cheeks, atop hair, atop shoulders.
His own hands, an in-between of both, scrunched on some days and smoothed on others. Though finding the balance between had taken some time, especially when going from being an older brother to the youngest of nine, Wind was not ashamed to admit that he cried.
He was far from the only one. Frigid nights where darkness clattered no louder than branches in the wind found Wild whimpering beneath his blankets. Talks by firelight, where the Master Sword warmed in an ethereal glow, had Hyrule looking elsewhere, sorrow glistening in his gaze. Rain-drowned days that hid scurrying mice marks that no others but Four and him could see brought to the older boy down-pulled shoulders, a wistful crack in the smith’s assured expression, and eyes that reminisced with a yearning Wind knew so well. Legend took to solitude and Wind was not stupid enough to miss the downcast shadows of a broken heart whenever talks of love arose.
The teens of their mismatched group cried. The adults did not.
They did not, even when Wind knew they did. A heart could cry just as well as any face without making as big a mess. Wind knew that. Tears amounted to nothing in terms of pain, because dry eyes did not mean a sound mind. Wind knew that. Yet adults did not cry. Not in front of kids. Not when they knew innocent stares caught more than the searching gleam let on. Grandma always shooed Aryll and him away, leaving them in doubt. Sky smiled in the barest of crescent moons and pretended that was enough to turn worry into dismissal. Time’s face remained stony, unchanged, unwavering, just as his body too became a statue; the only hint anything crumbled beneath. Twilight’s instincts rose the hackles of his defences, stopping anything from digging too deep, but the gritted teeth were those of a pained animal.
Warriors, Wind figured, would switch the conversation around. He would smirk and dazzle and marvel and drone on about whatever topics easily left Wind distracted, and soon there would be nothing but laughter and snark between them.
A true captain had the ability to lift morale without anyone even realizing, Sky once remarked.
Deflecting with kindness came naturally to the man, just as pranks did to Wind.
Except, at a certain point, the deflection was bound to look more like an off-balanced block thrown up in one last attempt at self-preservation. All the heroes knew very well what that looked like. That didn’t make it easier for Wind to watch.
Finding a large lake on a hot day was a miracle sent by Hylia Herself. Those types of gifts of tranquility, offered as the day’s weariness began to bleed in crimson across the sky, were a rarity none wished to overlook.
Wind was used to the way the sun beat down incessantly for hours on end; there was little in the ocean that could be used to block its rays. He knew from experience that when muscles burned worse than reddened skin, nothing soothed his joints better than dropping the anchor and relaxing in a peaceful lagoon.
For that reason, the moment Hyrule’s voice carried the sweet, beautiful, perfectly-timed message of water not too far away from their newest camp, the sailor was the first clamouring to his feet.
So long walking on land, he felt like a fish dried to the core. He needed the refreshment, yearned for it, craved it, dreamed about it, would give anything to—
“Hold your horses.” A hand apprehended the back of his tunic, staggering his mad-dash out of camp. Wind tilted his head up and pouted at Twilight’s raised eyebrow. “Don’t think we’ve forgotten whose turn it is to help Wild cook.”
The teen glanced over to the champion, crouched in the centre of the camp with a flint and stone hovering precariously above chopped wood. Wild tilted his head up at the sound of his name, looking hardly more pleased at the situation than Wind felt. He struck the flint and managed to start the smallest of fires all without so much as sparing a glance down.
“I don’t really need any help making stew, you know.”
“See?” Wind ducked out from the hold. “I’ll just get in his way! There’s a saying about poking your nose in where you shouldn’t and I’m not one to do something against someone else’s wishes.”
Legend, from where he sat taking stock of his items on a log, huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”
“You’re literally going against my wishes right now,” Twilight said, crossing his arms.
“Well, you know, if wishes were fishes—”
“Enough with your dumb pirate rhyme,” Legend interjected. “Don’t you still need to serve your punishment for switching everyone’s gear around yesterday?”
Wind had apologized for that stint eventually, when enough time had passed for confusion to wilt into genuine frustration, and accusations about who’d done it turned harsh and targeted. The important thing was that nobody had lost anything. Every other detail else was irrelevant.
He said as much.
“Plus,” he rushed to add, spying the rolling eyes in the distance. “Everyone else is going!”
“We’ve already established that Wild isn’t. Sky also says he’s too tired from walking, so you’ll have two people here to keep you company.”
Wind huffed, opened his mouth to explain the cruelty of keeping a sailor from his water, but a single look from a retreating Time dried the words until they tasted like sand in his mouth. There was a line between humorous complaining and ungrateful whining. Wind did not want the others to start thinking he did the latter; he was not an immature brat.
“Lakes don’t just move,” Wild said, offering some herbs for Wind to add to the pot once he finally settled down. “We’ll get our chance to swim, don’t worry.”
“It’s really hot though.”
With a critical glance, Wild rummaged for his slate and pulled out a glob of ice chuchu jelly, passing it over to Wind. “Hold this against your forehead for a few seconds. Should do the trick, but let me know if you need some more.”
Wild hadn’t been wrong, not about the chu nor about not requiring aid. Wind’s eyes slid shut in blissful content. The only reason he didn’t feel bad about laying down on his back was because there truly was nothing he could do for the stew. It reached the extent that Wild was halfway done before the sailor had even moved an inch, and the boy quickly found himself growing bored.
With the cook’s permission, he wandered over to where Sky rested against a log, book in hand, content as can be. The man glanced up with a welcoming smile—though, most of his smiles were one and the same; warm, small, encouraging. The time the group had been dropped at Skyloft, Wind had seen that very expression fixed on the large birds that were held close to the knight’s heart. Though the idea of being regarded on the same level as animals, Wind knew that the pedestal was high.
“Is that the same book?” He squinted at the title, tracing the foreign letters with his eyes. He was well aware how redundant of a question that was, but Sky didn’t seem to mind.
“There hasn’t been a lot of time to progress in it, I’m afraid,” he answered gently.
Wild let out an agreeing hum as he removed the pot from the heat. “Not much time for anything, really. I mean, we finish our own personal adventures, are finally offered some much needed rest, then get whisked off to chase literal shadows.”
“We are Hylia’s favourite hero.”
“She sure has a funny way of showing it.”
The bitterness was not lost on Wind and he hurried to sweeten the conversation a little.
“Reminds me of an orca.” At the confused frowns sent his way, he retracted the statement. “Not, like, Orca the man you guys met in my world. Orcas, the killer whales.”
Wild and Sky shared a look.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life,” was all that either offered.
Now if that wasn’t the most baffling thing Wind had ever heard—because come on, who didn’t know about orcas!
“They’re, like, only the biggest bullies of the ocean! I personally think it’s an insult to group them with whales, because they’re just so vicious for no reason. They purposely play with their prey by throwing it in the air and batting it back and forth between each other. I’d much rather fight a horde of bokoblins than be stuck anywhere near an orca,” Wind finished with a vigorous nod.
“Well,” Wild said with a grimace, “now I’m kind of glad I haven’t swam too far from shore, if that’s what’s waiting for me in the ocean.”
Sky hummed. “How unfortunate to be named after such a beast.”
Wind leaned forward, then, eyes awash in so much excitement that both older heroes felt compelled to pay great attention. He said, voice an expert hush worthy of a storyteller, “They’re also very caring for their young, though. Me and my crew even had the fortune of seeing—”
Whatever the pirates had managed to spy of the killer whales, Sky and Wild would not know, because in that moment the young teen was interrupted by shouting.
Immediately, the three of them stood, sword and slate raised at the ready.
“Will you stop pulling on my hair?”
“I’m not trying to—fucking shit!”
Wind flinched as the voice cut off with a pained growl, looking at Sky with wide eyes.
“Legend, can you please refrain from commenting right now?” Time was the first to appear through the bushes on the far side of camp, back turned to the three that had stayed behind. “It’s not helping.”
Right in front of him, the veteran scoffed, one hand tugging an arm over his shoulder. Despite his harshness, he frowned ahead with a pinched expression that Wind knew was concern. “I’m the one being used as a crutch, but I guess that doesn’t count as helping, does it?”
Instead of responding, Time slowed, arms outstretched to—Wind realized with horror—a pale-faced Warriors who stood suspended between Legend and Twilight. Behind them trailed an anxious Hyrule and Four. Each looked in varying states of dampness. Of the group who’d gone to the lake, only the captain’s hair remained completely dry.
“Careful,” Time muttered and maneuvered himself expertly into the clearing. “There’s a log right here.”
With great caution, they helped lift Warriors just enough for one of his feet to get up and over the fallen tree. The other hovered just off the ground.
“Can one of you”—already moving, Wild managed to bring out Warriors’s bedroll before Time could even finish asking—“thanks.”
Wind neared. Just like with the cooking, however, all he could do was hover as they lowered the injured man down and hold back a grimace when he grunted. Sky handed over a bundled blanket to be placed under his left knee.
‘That’s how you help someone,’ Wind noted, fingers twisting the edge of his shirt. ‘You’re not doing anything by just standing around like you’re on a plank.’
“What happened?”
“He jumped from a tree. Must have landed wrong,” Four answered.
Warriors gritted his teeth, fingers digging into his shin. “There was a fucking root,” he spat out between one rapid breath and another.
“Easy there.” Time brought a hand to his shoulder. He kneeled behind the man and Wind worried there was a deeper meaning behind why he positioned himself there. Surely, Warriors was not about to pass out.
“What in Hylia’s name were you doing up a tree?”
“Is it broken?”
The ankle certainly looked crooked. Neither question was answered.
Hyrule bustled past, snatching up his satchel and laying out an array of bandages and scissors on a square of cloth.
“Can’t tell with his boot on. Gonna have to remove it,” he explained, fingers already working to undo the topmost latches.
Wind peered over his shoulder. “What’re the scissors for?”
“I’d rather not have to do it, since there doesn’t seem to be any clothing shops around these parts, but if the boot can’t come off, I’m gonna need to cut it.”
Warriors glared at him. “No, you aren’t.”
“Might not have a choice there, buddy,” Legend remarked.
Whether his snark was intended to or not, it drew Warriors attention effortlessly.
“Can you shut up for one Goddess damned second?” Hyrule used the distraction to give a cautionary tug on the heel of the boot. Warriors doubled over immediately. “Ow, stop, stop!”
The traveller, wincing greatly, began to apologize long enough for Warriors to regain some breath and wave it away.
“Didn’t mean…mean to snap. Just hurts a lot,” he said.
Hyrule offered for a moment of respite and tested the limits of the buckles to see whether he could loosen the boot any further.
“Didn’t take you for the screaming maiden type,” Four remarked. There was nothing malicious behind his statement; the words were a mere observation more than anything else.
“Never…broke a bone before…usually…usually I only deal with stab wounds and concussions.”
Perhaps the orca revelation wasn’t the most shocking thing to be heard. Wind piped up, “I’ve broken a bone four times!”
“Yeah?” Legend smirked. “Well you’re quite the reckless kid.”
He was about to rebuke that: one, he was not a ‘kid’ and two, he was hardly more reckless than any other person who embarked on an adventure, but Warriors made another choked sound of distress.
His puffed out cheeks deflated at the sight of his bowed head and the way Time’s hand now circled against the small of his back. He’d only ever seen parents do that to their children or grandparents to their grandchildren.
“Okay,” Hyrule said slowly, though he sounded very much like he wished he didn’t have to. “I can’t get it off like this.”
“Want one of us to try?”
He shook his head at Twilight’s offer. “If we force it, we could damage the ankle. I’m sorry Warriors, but it’s going to need to be cut off.”
The captain took in a deep breath and let go of his leg in favour of scrubbing at his face.
“Fine,” he muttered hoarsely. “Fine, just don’t throw it away.”
The scissor blades were thin and sharp, precise as a needle in Hyrule’s expert hand, and the leather was efficiently cut through right down the side. Sharp intakes of sympathy rang around the group when the material was pealed back. Below, Warriors’s ankle was a disjointed mess of swollen flesh.
Sky stepped away, unease evident in his face. Wind’s stomach sank at the sight.
“Well,” Wild said, leaning around where Twilight crouched. “That’s definitely dislocated.”
The group shifted around with bubbling anxiety. No one had yet to have an injury of this complexity before. Time turned to Four, expression grave.
“Are we close enough to any villages that you know of?”
“A few hours trek North, give or take.”
Twilight cut in. “That’s too long, his ankle’ll heal all wonky.”
The fabric of Wind’s shirt was twisted further and he found himself rocking on the balls of his feet.
“Okay,” Time clapped his hands together. “Here’s what we’re going to do. There’s no need for all eight of us to be hovering like this, so those who are neither comfortable looking at or capable of setting a dislocated ankle can go for a brief perimeter patrol together. Twilight.”
The man looked over just as Time nodded towards the forest with his head. “Go with them, please. Make sure everything’s quiet.”
Sky apologetically left with Twilight and Four—the latter shrugging and stating that he only knew how to mend weapons—though, none of who Warriors truly noticed step away. The soldier had his eyes squeezed shut, sweat beaded across his forehead, frown tight against the pain.
Slowly, Hyrule lifted his leg with a hand on his calf, sliding the remains of the boot away for better view.
“Have you popped a bone back in before?”
He glanced up at the question, face set with conviction. “Only on myself, never on anything more than fingers.”
Warriors bit his lip when the traveller’s hands rested around the swollen joint.
“Wait.” He swallowed thickly, taking a deep breath that quivered harshly. “It won’t…won’t just pop back in, not like fingers. You need to pull and twist until it aligns, then splint it immediately.”
Wild volunteered to wrap the bandages. Now, with three of them crouched by Warriors side, the only ones who remained doing nothing were Wind and Legend.
The sailor glanced at him, uncertain where he should go. He’d missed his chance to leave with the patrol and now he wasn’t so sure he was ready to see how to fix a dislocation. His fingers worked wrinkles into the front of his shirt, but Wind wasn’t very aware of the motion the moment Hyrule began to realign the ankle.
In seconds, Warriors tensed, a bow fit to snap. What little flush remained on his cheeks faded away, hidden further when he pressed a shaking palm to his mouth.
Something nagged deep in Wind’s chest and he diverted his eyes. He shouldn’t have been seeing this, his mind supplied. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing Warriors in this state.
The choked scream that rose to the heavens seconds later was enough to spur the teen into movement, one numb foot in front of the other until he was turned around and crouching by the pot of abandoned stew. Try as he might to ignore the agonizing realignment happening mere paces away, Wind found his gaze being drawn back.
Legend hovered with crossed arms, mouth set in a grimace. At his feet, Wild hurriedly wrapped bandages down below the heel, while Hyrule kept the limb as rigid as possible.
None of them looked quite as freaked out as Wind felt, even though no one ought ever make a sound like that in their life. He’d seen his companions take hits before, watched as they laid prone or bleeding or writhing, but even when seized by blinding pain, they all knew how to hold the sounds back. One never knew what lurked at the edges of agony.
He gave up on hiding by the stew and neared once more, vigorously twisting the hem of his clothing.
“There,” Hyrule breathed, hands raised and expression shaken. “All done for now, Captain. If you give me a moment to eat something, I can see how much of it I can heal.”
When Warriors’s head remained bowed, hand a muzzle against his mouth, Time offered the traveller a gentle smile in his stead. “You don’t need to exert your magic; we have plenty of red potions he can take if needed.”
“Plus, we aren’t even in any rush,” Legend added. Then, he pointed accusingly at Warriors. “You hear that? Don’t go getting all upset about setting us back a few days because you’re injured. Nobody here gives a shit if we have to make camp a little longer.”
Wild gave the man a tap on his knee as he went to lead Hyrule to their supper. Under the pretence of declutterring the area, Legend snatched the ruined boot, and hurried to where he’d been sorting his artifacts before.
“Don’t throw it out,” Wind huffed, folding his arms to still them.
The older teen rolled his eyes. “Wasn’t planning to, Sailor.”
Well, how was he supposed to know? It wouldn’t be the first time Legend tossed something just for the sake of doing so.
Only Time had yet to leave Warriors’s side. The man moved to be shoulder to shoulder, leaning back on his hands, face turned slightly away from the captain beside him. For a moment, the reason for that evaded Wind.
Then, he felt the returning pang of worry, cuffing his chest until even his throat felt tight. Warriors’s shoulders hitched once. Swiping palms dug into his eyes and cradled the sides of his face. The lowest sniffle in that moment turned to be the loudest noise around, so much so that surely it could be heard over the bubbling of stew.
Warriors was crying.
Warriors, who Wind had never seen fight back anything more than joyous tears, had the very opposite leaking down his cheeks.
The teen leaned from foot to foot, fingers clasped behind his back, uncertain whether this situation called for his in-between hands. He wondered if that was even something adults needed or if comfort was found elsewhere.
His shifting pulled Time’s attention up, and despite Wind’s immediate thought against it, he beckoned him closer.
“Are you…um,” he scuffed a shoe as he sidled up. This felt wrong. This felt so different than dealing with Aryll, or having Grandma deal with him. Regardless, Wind tried. “Are you okay now, Wars?”
The tears were thumbed away in an instant. “Yeah,” Warriors breathed in a wobbly way that suggested he wanted for it to be a laugh. “Yeah, sorry, I’m fine. I don’t even know why I’m still crying—doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.”
Wind understood that feeling, when the relief of letting the faucet run tampered down but the flow had yet to cease, when he tried talking despite the choking tears and only managed to get a few words out before he was sobbing again. He knew the feeling of lips pulling down despite how much he tried to keep them upright, how it turned his face numb and made the corners of his mouth weigh more than stone, how the grimace then carved its way to his jaw. There was nothing that could melt the frozen vice sitting rigid across his face.
Nothing, except one special thing that parents gave children and grandparents gave grandchildren, that older siblings gave little siblings and, perhaps for the first time, a little brother could give to his older brother.
Wind settled his nerves and stepped closer. He forced his voice steady, found it easy to do under the encouraging nod from Time, and asked quietly, “Would you like a hug?”
Warriors looked somewhat surprised by the question and for a moment Wind feared he’d refuse and he’d then have to retreat shameful back to the stew, but the captain opened his arms and pulled Wind close.
His scarf was soft where it caressed the side of Wind’s face, a plush cushion in the fold of Warriors neck, and though the angle was somewhat uncomfortable so to avoid leaning on his injured leg, there was nothing that felt quite so amazing either.
From the centre of camp, coos of adoration rose like the fire’s smoke and suddenly there was the telltale snap of Wild’s slate that had Wind shooting up from the ground and chasing after the older boy in an instant.
“Delete that picture right now!” he screamed, hands digging into the bark of the tree Wild had scurried up.
Good-natured laughs followed after them from Hyrule, Legend and, perhaps the most important, Warriors. Well, Wind supposed he could let Wild’s antics slide this one time.
“You better watch your back tonight,” he made sure to threaten regardless, pounding a fist into his palm, as he walked away.
Just as he passed Legend, Wind was apprehended, but before he could so much as get out a word, the veteran was pressing Warriors’s boot into his chest.
“Give this back to him,” he urged in a hushed whisper, “and don’t say it’s from me.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
Legend scoffed. “Because he won’t question you about it and I don’t feel like having to explain myself for stitching up a boot, that’s why.”
“Maybe he won’t question your intentions if you did stuff like this more often,” Wind teased gently.
“Oh, just shut up and go already!”
When Wind neared Warriors the second time, he was speaking animatedly to Time, eyes red but otherwise normal. He noted that away for later use.
Sure, it was weird to see adults cry—and, if Wind was being completely honest, quite rare indeed—but that didn’t mean they needed any less comfort. He would make sure to keep a close eye on all the adults of their group, because humiliating as it was to break down into tears in public, it hurt a whole lot less than holding them back. They didn’t need to be individually strong all the time; the nine of them were very easily a whole lot stronger together.