Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Abandon
aban·​don / ə-ˈban-dən
Verb:
1.  to give up to the control or influence
2. to give (oneself) over unrestrainedly
3. to cease intending or attempting to perform
Noun:
1. a thorough yielding to natural impulses

“It’ll be a slaughter,” muffled words murmur in the background. One of his brothers, one of the precious beating hearts in the dark.

Which one of the pieces of his heart is speaking—attempting to force reason here where madness lies—Legend does not know. He knows nothing else but one thing.

One true, blessed, terrible thing.

“I won’t let you die,” Hyrule speaks the word's sitting on Legend's heavy tongue. "Not alone. Not in the dark.”

“Not how you did, you mean,” Legend breathes, words coming back to him with his resolve.

It is strange, Legend thinks, he has been here before. Not here as in this place, but here as in in this mindset, this moment. Before him lies some unknown horror, certain pain and possible death. Fear wraps like poison around his heart, quickening his breath, making his rings feel tight.

A double image flickers in his mind. In front of him are two things, both horribly true. He inhales, a small, scared little boy before a fight beyond his skills, a door swinging open that should have remained locked. He knows that he was the one that opened it, because he had to. He has to save his family, and this is the only way to do it. He is the only one who can do this.

He exhales, and he is the Hero of Legend, standing squared shoulder and defiant. Before him stands Hyrule, fragile and precious beyond words. Courage, Legend knows, is the only way.

He wants to run. He wants to cry. He wants to use every trick in his book to find a secret passage out of this trap they stand inside of, his brother and him.

He steps forward, and takes his brother by the hands.

The are warm, and clean, no sign of the boy's own bloody death only moments prior. Legend's own sticky fingers smear red on Rulie's knuckles, a kiss of iron in the only form that doesn't seem to burn the fae.

No matter, the feeling of it, the sight of it, hurts Legend enough for them both.

He holds Hyrule’s hands—not clean, not now, stained and marked, but cleaner than Legend's own—with the confidence that he wishes to grip his sword, tugging them up, and settles them on either side of his face. 

“You’ll save us?” he asks, a tone coloring his voice he does not want to name.

(Fear, his mind whispers without his consent. Pleading. Surrender, grief, despair, loss. Yes, loss, because that is all you have left, boy. Ashes and woe.)

“I—” Hyrule's voice dies with it's lack of air.

“What’s happening?” Warriors asks, sharp. “What did you say?”

“I thought Ganon was gone,” Sky says. His voice cracks halfway through the name.

Legend loves them, oh how he loves them. Here, at the end of it all, he wants to run to them, to cling to what makes him want to live in the time he has left. But he does not, cannot. When the Dungeon boss stalks into the room, taking your eyes off it is suicide.

Legend does not take his eyes off Hyrule. His breaths are shallow, but slow. “We’re going to die down here,” he says, calm.

Hyrule shakes his head wordlessly.

“It’s okay,” Legend says again. He squeezes Hyrule’s wrists, a subtle reassurance that seems to settle easier than his words. “I don’t mind." He didn't once. The ironic thing is that Legend thinks he might, now. Strange, the timing in which these revelations come. "I think you do, though. Everything comes back to you." The Triforce of Powers hums in his brother's hand, resonating against the Courage in Legend's own like a tuning fork. He wonders which one of them has been deemed wise.

None of them, he thinks, bitter. Wisdom would have kept us all far, far away from this place.

Legend forces a smile, managing not to let it crack against the feeling of the drying blood pull at his lips. "So do what you need to, whatever you must—”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Hyrule responds breathlessly. “You shouldn’t trust me, I’m losing it—”

“It’s okay,” Legend cuts him off, swallowing a laugh. It is too late for him, his heart already rent asunder, his hope already bled dry, for all that it stands before him breathing. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I—I love—” Hyrule sobs. “You know I—”

“Yeah,” Legend murmurs, he does know. He knows it with a certainty he has rarely felt before him—before them, for all the good that fact will do him now. It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters but the eight hearts breaking around him. Nothing matters but the solution to the puzzle, so painfully simple when it is seen.

There is no hope, but for Hyrule. Whether they make it out alive is up to the strongest person that Legend has ever known. It is out of his hands.

“Ssh. It’s okay.” There is a shout and a grunt, reality breaking through their mental isolation and casting Legend's mind back into the world around him with a wash of torchlight. The light washes over the side of his face—his voice breaks, always the weakest part of him— “They’re here. You’ll save us, right? You’ll save us. You’ll fix this.”

Legend is asking for help. It is the hardest thing he's ever done.

And Hyrule is the strongest person he has ever known.

“Yes,” he promises, as monsters pour into the chamber. “I’ll fix it.”

Ganon’s army arrives like a flood. Monsters pour into the chamber with a rolling roar of foot and hoof and claw pounding against stone. Torchlight fills the cave, at first scattered light, points of brightness spread through the dark like the starlight of a moonless night, but building, rising as every blazing frond joins the choir, until they are all cast in the light of a setting sun. It casts up the cave walls, sliding up the stone face and fading back to darkness the higher he looks, the ceiling of the cavern beyond reach of warmth of the flames.

Legend wishes he could appreciate that warmth himself. But all he feels is red hot fear, iron branded terror, as the sight of the rock-hewn amphitheater becomes clear. Him and his brothers stand on a raise alcove, a stage on which to perform.

The Chain rallies with a mix of cries—confidence, grief, terror—falling into a defense position with months of practiced ease. The gap in their ranks where Hyrule and Legend ought to stand draws his eye like a gaping wound. The gap closes, as discipline and tactical thinking overriding muscle memory.

Their audience is generous, if not kind. Dairia howl, Lynels stamp their hooves. Lizalfos his in a shushed tenor to the roars of the moblins. He looses details after that. Keese and dodongos and bokoblins and fucking chuchus blur and whirl together blow them into one ambiguous mass of roaring crowd.

There is a single, soft moment, where what Legend feels can only be called relief. Defeat is inevitable, and death is, among other things, an ending.

Motion in the corner of his eye, Legend catches Wind fidgeting, shifting his stance as the anticipation of the fight boils over past the boy's ability to restrain. Wind cannot end. Wind stands still at the beginning of his life, and that life is worth fighting for.

The moment passes.

The next few seconds are a lesson in brutal cold reality. Sensory information floods in in a strange disjointed pile of data. One of Hyrule's hands part from his face, a slight tug lingers as a reminder of the contact, congealing blood bridging the space between them until the distance outclasses its suspension. The other presses harder to his check, sliding up by inches so that his brother's finger's brush against his hair. Legend's eyes snap back to Rulie, tries to drink in the sight of him through his blurry eyes.

This is it. Unless Hyrule delivers a miracle, this is it.

A few of the creatures storm their stage, ripping away sword and shield and bag after a brief—and painfully futile—struggle.

He knows what must come next, the cutting and the tearing, and the rending of flesh from flesh. He cannot bring himself to watch. To witness as Wild and Four are torn apart, as the light leaves Time's eye, as—

Someone screams, and he cannot look away.

The Captain is not dead, no he is very much alive; lunging against the monsters holding him back, eyes fixed on Wind, who is sprawled on the ground under a foot, blood painting his hair, the monstrous knight on top of him laughing a strange chitter of clacking bone and bearing down, pressing more and more weight into the foot on the kid’s ribs.

“You’re going to KILL HIM!” Warriors shrieks, insensate. “STOP! STOP!”

“Yes,” hisses the creature, word long and slow like it was tugged from a snake’s mouth. He pulls out a long, thin dagger, lips curling wickedly. “That is the idea…”

“This one next,” another monster suggests, shoving Wild (still alive, still alive) forward with a sick sort of eagerness. “He scratched me. I want to peel his skin off…”

The first one laughs. “Only if you let me watch. Good for entertainment…”

The moment pauses, hangs heavy in the air. Legend's mind races even as his breath catches, potential cause and inevitable effect spinning before his mind like the steps of a well-known dance. Every imagined curtain falling on his brother's defiled corpses.

He tries to find some comfort in the knowledge that they—every last one of them—would prefer to go down fighting. Legend braces to do what must be done, to gently cradle that last delicate drop of faith in the impossible deep within himself.

In the end, Hyrule reacts faster.

The hand in his hair tightens, twists, a caress transforms into a punishing grip. The traveler strides forward, not in frantic fear, but with the measured power of a predator, the confidence of a storm. Legend is dragged forward, feet stumbling to catch up as he is hauled across the stage.

Hyrule rips the dagger from the creature's hand with a surety Legend envies. “That’s enough of that,” he snaps, an echo of Warrior's best commanding shout. “Are you fools? They are mine."

They are. Their lives in his hands, Legend's prayers beneath his feet.

"I will break them one by one.”

A hush falls, roars and caterwauls dropping off one by one. Their audience is rapt. They are listening.

“You forget yourselves,” Hyrule bites out derisively.

“We forget ourselves?” the monster snarls into his face, towering over them like a giant. A lesser man would falter here, would stumble and fall. Legend knows  his own cowardly tongue would retreat, would leave him here.

Hyrule's Hero is brave. “Did I not tell you to expect your king to have gained an unfamiliar shape? You answer to me.”

For the first time in his life, Legend's faith is not misplaced.

The monster's eyes are wide, startled. It tucks its teeth into its lips, snuffling like a dog.

“You may not kill any of them,” Rulie continues, chin jutting out in sharp defiance. “I have waited too long, festering over their successes at my expense, to give that privilege to any mere land-crawler.”

He steps forward, and the monster steps backwards. It's foot rises off of Wind’s chest, and the boy heaves a haggard breath.

The monster halts its backwards cantor, eyes narrowing again. The silence around them begins to feel like a living thing.

It seems expectant.

“Not that one. Not yet,” a small hitch to his voice, the first chink in Rulie's armor. The hand fisted in Legend's hair tightens, becomes something truly painful, and he cannot help but lean into it; whether that is to offer Hyrule comfort or himself relief, he is not sure.

“I will start with the one who has given me the most trouble,” he hisses, and for a heartbeat Legend worries that the pride dripping from Rulie's voice will be their downfall.

Turns out, he needn't worry. Going by the reaction of his brothers, he is the the only one who hears it.

The Chain recoils. Twilight tears one of his arms free of his captor's grip, and nearly makes it to his feet. A darknut grabs him by the scruff his neck, demanding his obedience like a misbehaving dog. Legend keeps his eyes fixed on that—on the contact of steel to his brother's skin, to steel encircling a fragile neck. Hyrule's hands shift, both of them now upon his face as Hyrule spreads his clean hands further across Legend’s bloody face and pushes until he yields, crumpling in grateful subjugation to his knees.

“What the fuck!” Twilight roars. The rancher has never sworn in front of them before. “Let him go!”

“I thought he said it worked!” Warriors cries, taking advantage of the beasts' momentary distraction to push forward and collect his sword from the floor in one smooth movement. The tip of the blade points at Hyrule's chest, resolute. Legend watches, strangely transfixed, as the blood smeared across the steel drips in a disjointed staccato to the stone on which he kneels.

Hyrule’s blood.

The traveler himself is frozen in place. Legend flicks his eyes upwards in surreptitious investigation, taking in the slight sheer of sweat on his brow, the shallow quickening if his breath. He can practically smell the fear, rolling off his brother in waves.

Fear cannot save them now. This path that Hyrule has led them down has no room for fear. It demands that they be resolute.

“Lord Ganon?” a… thing answers in a rasp. Talons curl over Warriors’ shoulders, long and tapered, coming to rest on the dip of his sternum beneath his tunic. Warriors’ eyes are blazing, gaze not flinching from Hyrule and Legend, from the tableau that they have made of themselves: Hyrule’s hands on Legend’s face, holding him in a kneeling position. In a perfect mimicry of the way Ganon had caged the veteran in upon waking, Rulie holds him in an embrace now.

Legend keeps his own left hand tucked under his thigh and out of sight. He finds himself disjointedly envious of Wars' stupid gloves.

Speaking of the captain… Warriors can do arithmetic better than most of them can. Intimately familiar with the calculus of death, the balance of the scales. He must know. There are too many monsters to fight.

He has to see it, like Legend does. Like Hyrule does.

"Yes,” Rulie lies. The word breaks in his mouth and comes out half-strangled, like a hiss.

The Chain are silent.

“…Shall I kill this hero?” the monster continues hopefully. It circles Warriors. Knocks his sword from his hand like a cat chasing a toy. “For his… insolence?”

It takes everything Legend had not to react to that, not to surge upwards and pay the foul beast back for that disrespect.

There are too many monsters to fight. They are laughing and growling in equal turns, tossing the Chain’s weapons between themselves.

Legend keeps carefully, painfully still.

“Watch yourselves,” Hyrule snaps. His hands tremble where they rest on Legend’s face. Still clean. Mostly. For now. “You may play with the heroes after I finish breaking them,” he says, with a casualness that is so convincing Legend nearly buts it himself. Nearly. “I am sure you will be able to think of many… fun games.”

“Lord Ganon is kind,” a spattering of the monsters hiss.

“I am King of Hyrule now,” he says, and grins, sweeping his eyes over the Chain as they are held back by the hoard. “I can afford kindness…” He leans closer to Legend. “…And cruelty. I have won.”

The monsters cheer for him.

Legend's heart sings. It's working. It is actually working. Hyrule will get the others out. This will work. It will it will it will.

The Chain begin to scream. 

“GET AWAY FROM THE VETERAN, YOU PIG,” Warriors roars, pulling against his captured arms. “I SWEAR TO THE GODS, IF YOU HURT HIM AGAIN—HE LOVES YOU—”

“Why didn’t it work?” Sky is crying. “It was the Triforce, he wished, why didn’t it work?”

“I stole it from him before the wish took effect,” Hyrule lies, still staring into Legend’s eyes. It is calm there, held at the point of his brother's attention. Still. “I used it to heal this body. It’s mine now.”

It takes conscious effort for Legend to hide his flinch. That is not how the Triforce works. Someone like Ganon could not make a wish and keep even a fraction of its power in the after. Hyrule, by trying to sell a lie, has just given them away entire. Or so Legend thought.

No one calls his bluff. No one cries out in disbelief, no understanding of the reality of the situation flashes through his brothers' eyes. There is only Legend, alone in the center of the storm, knowing that the fall into the drowning deep is as inevitable as the coming of the dawn.

Whether or not he will be there to see it.

Hyrule lifts his thumbs, brushing the dried gore from Legend’s cheeks. It is the closest thing to comfort that he could expect to get in this moment, so he leans into it, pressing back into the contact. Taking the encouragement, Rulie slides one hand up into Legend’s hair, and uses his grip on the strands to tilt the veteran’s face up to him.

To tender, too soft. The fondness is palpable and therefore inexcusable.

Legend flinches as he moves, and Hyrule almost lets go. A pain of regret flashes through his heart, but Legend knows, he must not falter. He must make himself stone. He meets his brother's eyes and does something he has not done in a long, long time.

He prays.

Hyrule stares, fascinated. “Like this one,” he continues in a hushed reverence. “This one is mine, too.”

And you are mine, Legend tries to answer silently, with nothing but his eyes.

The noises that the Chain are making are beyond description. Grief bites in every syllable. Hyrule grins at him, victorious and possessive.

The corners of Legend’s mouth flicker up for just a moment.

He knows.

“What’s special about that one, Lord Ganon?” a monster ventures, and Hyrule turns sharply, pulling Legend with him. 

“YOU DARE QUESTION ME?” he roars, and he can tell even before the sentence leaves his mouth that it was the right thing to say. The monsters have skeptical expressions—he might have made quite the sight in the dark, earlier, with the gaping wound in his chest and blood all down his front, but now? His hands are clean. The only indication he could be the monsters’ master has been his verbal acknowledgment. “DO NOT TELL ME THE CORPSE I WEAR HAS MADE YOUR KING UNRECOGNIZABLE.”

“You promised us the heroes would be broken,” the monster says, malice dripping from it's jaws. “You promised us pain upon them!”

The crowd cheers.

“Oh, did I?” Hyrule asks. He looks back to Legend and, eyes pleading the veteran to understand, licks his lips as slowly and unsettlingly as he can.

Hyrule does not need to beg. Legend has already said yes. Yes to anything, anything that would spare the others.

Anything that would spare him another person to mourn.

But if this is going to work, then Legend is going to have to play the part. He has never been a good liar. But he knows how to act, how to perform. Din taught him well. He shivers silently, then blinks, letting that hunted animal inside of him spread from his chest into his limbs, his eyes. Do what you need to, whatever you must—

“Up onto the altar we go, little rabbit,” Hyrule says, and Legend knows he has been understood. He finds by the orange torchlight a set of inbuilt steps around the side that they hadn’t been able to see earlier, and Rulie drags Legend with him up onto the tall stone platform. He makes a show of struggling. Not hard enough to make Hyrule actually work for it, but enough to make it look like he is.

Old stage directions whisper through his mind. Move big, you want to be seen. Move obviously, you want to give your partner time to react. So Legend hisses and jerks, scrabbles (quite gently) at the hand in his hair, and is lead one not-quite-fought-for step at a time to the dais. Up above everyone’s heads they become the center of attention. Rulie shoves Legend forward and tugs his hands together against his back, trapping him, pinning him face down on the already blood soaked altar. The angle of the stone bites sharply into his hips and Legend exhales a low hiss into the muck. Hyrule twists Legend's hands in his grip, wrenching his shoulders into an unnatural angle and he cannot help the small whimper. His right shoulder has given him trouble since his fourth Dungeon. Rulie knows this.

Legend finds himself suddenly, painfully aware of how well his brother knows him. Keeper of his secrets, guarder of his heart, there is no person in all of history who has a better claim to him than this man. The next several minutes—possibly the last several minutes—of his life become crystal clear, though the details will admittedly be a surprise. Hyrule will play him like a fiddle, and Legend will sing for him, in perfect key.

“Give me your knife,” he hears Rulie snap, ordering around one of 'his' minions. “That dagger isn’t sharp enough.”

Down below, the Chain keen. The urge to rise to that is beyond measure, beyond words. But this is a performance now, and anything short of perfection will damn them all.

Legend is very, very still.

“Good,” croons his costar, responding to action beyond Legend's line of sight. Pressure as Rulie uses his twisted arms as leverage, and Legend follows the cue, bearing down further into the stone. He feels the presence of his brother bending over him, the gentle press of his forehead to the space between Legend's shoulder blades. 

A gentle tug on his clothing, a snag of something catching. His brother had asked for a knife.

“You may leave now,” Hyrule croaks, none of his usual confidence shining through.

They crowd roars its displeasure.

“I would rather break this hero alone,” comes the broken rasping plea.

No, Rulie, Legend wants to scream. There is no more room for kindness, here, at the end of all things.

“My King…” a monstrous voice spits, distinctly excited, “wouldn’t it be more fun if we watched…?”

Hyrule coughs. “Oh, did you want to watch? My mistake.”

It is. It is an understandable mistake, a human mistake. That need to spare Legend this public humiliation even if he cannot save his life. It is what any of them would do.

Legend knows that of all of them, only Hyrule is strong enough for cruelty. He just has to hope his brother can see it, too.

“Of course we want to watch a hero broken at last,” comes the answer. As if Legend was not already broken enough. As though there was something in him still whole. “There is nothing we have looked forward to more…”

“Right,” says Hyrule, shaky. He doesn’t move.

“Unless…” one of the bigger monsters rasps. “Unless the hero still lives in your body.”

It takes a step forward. Their opening begins to close.

The crowd is quickly unraveling. Filled with new hope, the Chain jostles against the monsters holding them back. The cave begins to flicker with strange shadows. Enraged spit flies towards the altar alongside screams of challenge. The knife between them, tip touching the small of Legend’s back, balances upon it the life of everyone in the room. 

The life of everyone Legend has left. 

“Keep their attention,” Legend manages to make his voice cooperate. “Don’t let them realize—”

“I am not a hero,” Hyrule spits loudly. “Would a hero do this?”

He slices. Legend falls back into the safety of silence.

The pain he was bracing for doesn't come, not yet. A tugging on his clothes that carries up to the creases, pulls at the bunched fabric around his wrenched shoulders. the cold air of the cavern kisses a section of his back, as a section of his tunic and tabard are torn away. Legend feels an irrational fury blow through him—that is his good tunic, his nice tunic—this will be difficult to repair in a way he finds satisfactory.

He nearly laughs at the absurdity. He is laid out upon butcher block to slaughter, and he is worried about the mending.

Priorities, Legend.

Hyrule's touch pulls him back from the brink of hysteria, splaying his hand flat across the shivering skin of Legend’s back, fingers running over the bumps and ridges of his spine. The touch is familiar, comforting, safe. Calloused. Nimble. Thin. Hyrule.

Legend would know his touch anywhere. In the dark, in madness, and in grief. At the end of all sense, he would recognize that touch.

The monsters don’t back down. They won't, he knows this. Light-headed, blood pounding in his ears, Legend braces for the inevitable. A cold contrast to his brother's hands lines up with the notch where Legend’s spine meets his rib.

He breathes in.

Pressure, harsh and unyielding, and his body gives way to it. Legend cannot help but let out a small sound, cheek pressed against the stone, as the knife point drives in.

He must be careful. Hyrule's hand is steady, and Legend must not make it slip. Must not make this precise knife-work turn into a messy hacksaw butchery. Should he survive this, Legend would like to walk away from this with minimal nerve damage.

One burning line by line, his back is flayed. The knife digs by inches, each pass exposing one layer of muscle after another. His blood is hot, spreading over one of the few places where he had been clean, up around the knife and onto the intact skin of his back.

He can take it. The memory of a lifetime of ending up on the wrong end of a blade, normally an uncomfortable reality, is now a balm. If he could take that—the knight's sword slashes across his chest, the moblin's tusk rams through his stomach, Ganon's trident pins him to the floor—he can take this.

He knows that he can.

And the Rulie sticks his finger in the wound.

Legend jerks. He cannot help it. The sudden motion makes the hand inside him shift, slide through muscle and sinew and it burns, it burns.

“I’m sorry,” his brother gasps, and fear blooms fresh. That is the wrong thing to say. Those are not their lines. Luckily, he does not forget their roles for long, “—did that hurt? That’s too bad. We’re only just getting started.”

Legend hums, quietly. Too small of a noise to be heard by anyone but Hyrule. His torture might be on display, but he keeps his face turned away from the Chain and most of the monsters, exactly where Hyrule placed it. That too, was kindness. Legend does not know if he has the strength to get through this if he has to look Time in the eye. He is reminded once more how well he is known. How deeply he is loved.

His body is tense but still. Hyrule runs a finger down one of his ribs and he shivers, but not from the cold.

It is the fear, the helplessness, the utter futility of all of his painfully won skills, carefully collected tools. There is nothing that Legend can do, but this. But lie here, as helpless as a rabbit in a snare.

Hyrule moves the finger still inside the wound, and for the first time an audible sound is ripped from Legend’s throat.

He does it again. 

“Give me your knife, now,” Hyrule instructs another moblin. He guides it inside the hole next to Legend’s spine and begins to wiggle it, to saw.

Legend is a rabbit in a predators jaws, his worst nightmare come to life. But if it is Hyrule—for Hyrule, he will gladly throw himself on its jaws.

He breathes through the pain, tries to let his mind wander. The cacophony around them filters back in, a welcome distraction.

Shouts. Joy. The monsters.

…maybe not that welcome, he decides.

“Keep still,” Hyrule mumbles. “I—I’m—”

Legend makes a soft noise. It is all he can manage, all he can trust himself to give without shattering completely.

“I’m going to KILL YOU!” Sky is screaming distantly. “If you lay another hand on him—! Get away! Get away!”

“You understand,” Hyrule says suddenly. “It’s for your own good…” And it is. It is, it is, it is. Better him than Wind. Better this slow death than another funeral, another jagged hole in his heart. He lays his hand flat covering the wound, and there is a moment where Legend is fully convinced that a rush if healing magic is about to follow.

It doesn't. Of course it doesn't. The line between care and cruelty wobbles uncomfortably between them.

“I have to,” Hyrule says to him, and then remembers their audience. His next statement is a snarl, a jeer. “How could I resist? You know that stupid boy whose body I took used to worship you? His adoration… it disgusts me. I have watched you. I have wondered what power allowed you to defeat me, time after time…”

For the first time, the words cut like the knife.

“So many times… countless agony you have brought me. I can’t remember how many,” he says a little hysterically.

“Five,” Legend whispers, a soft confession. He is sorry, so sorry, that it wasn't enough. That he could not spare Rulie this calling, this cruel destiny.

“Five times,” Hyrule corrects. “Pesky thing. You have strayed too far.” Cherished fingers tug on serrated flesh. “It is your turn to scream for me, little rabbit.”

The blade inside him jolts, begins the saw in earnest. His brothers' screams begin to sound very, very far away?

Where are they going?

Legend whimpers, coughs, and begins a hoarse scream. His voice cracks immediately, fighting futility against his choked throat, larynx spasmodic with pain.

“Stop!” Orders the captain.

“You can’t do this!” denies Four.

“Why didn’t the Triforce wish work?" It did, Wind, it did. "Why didn’t it work—”

“Take me instead!” Wild pleads.

“Please! Stop hurting him!” That can't happen, Twi. Not if they want to have an snowball's chance on Death Mountain.

“I’ll do it! I’ll let you torture me instead." No, Time. It has to be them. No one else can pull this off. Heroes though they all may be, it is only them, Legend and Hyrule, who have practiced this. This deliberate self-martyrdom for the safety of others. "Just let him go—"

Hyrule’s knife digs a little deeper and Legend’s scream breaks into a choked gasp; the first involuntary sound he has made. The first honest expression of fear he has surrendered since this began.

It will not be the last. He knows this.

He presses into the wound—the pain spikes higher and then recedes—healing under the guise of harming. Legend would never admit this, but there was still that fear, that deep anxiety, that he was being played a fool.

The fairy magic pours into his shredded back, and his faith solidifies. A delicate hope curls through his chest.

Will he survive this after all? It had seemed impossible. But perhaps… Perhaps.

Legend sighs in relief. His brother is here, within and without him. No matter what happens, it will not be at the hands of something cruel.

If this is the end, then Legend will die loved.

The monsters roar their approval, transfixed.

“This knife isn’t sharp enough!” Hyrule shouts suddenly, and the steel draws away. “Bring me another!”

A moment is stolen, Hyrule crowding back over him, lips brushing the tip of his ear. "It’ll hurt,” he warns.

“Nothing—nothing you could do could be as bad as what they’ll do if they realize you’re not Ganon,” Legend breathes back.

A small tremor passes through Rulie's frame, he cants his hips forward, driving Legend's further into the biting edge of the stone. Their pose is a cruel mockery of a hold, of the way that they have taken to sleeping, back to chest and bound as tightly as disparate boughs of the same tree.

Legend is grateful, suddenly, that this is the role he must play. If their positions were reversed—if the knife was in his hands—they would falter, they would shake. He would not be able to do what needs to be done. Would be incapable of inflicting this level of pain on someone that he loves. Certainly not to Hyrule. Never, never to Hyrule.

It's the weakness in him. That knobby-kneed kid that died that first stormy night a sword was thrust in his hands, but never went away. That lingers, haunts his conscious.

Softens his convictions.

Hyrule has never known softness. Lucky him.

Their embrace ends, the cold sharpness pierces Legend's chest once more. He thought he was ready. He thought he was prepared.

What a fool he was.

Hyrule presses forwards, down heavy on the small of his back, and with his other hand he pulls. Something deep within Legend's chest splinters, cracks.

Logic flees. Reason abandons him. His vision whites out, lightning in his veins, and he is no longer a partner in a show. He is just a bleeding animal, and all he can want is away.

Away away away away—

“Ssh, little rabbit,” Hyrule. Hyrule's voice, Hyrule's hands. Hyrule's hips framing his as his brother now sits straddling his back.

Legend must have a actually tried to run. He's laying properly prone on the altar now, no longer bent over it.

“There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to go ever again, really. No need to worry. Just sit back and relax. This’ll be the last adventure you’ll ever have to go on.”

Be careful what you wish for, comes an unbidden thought. Legend lets out a choked laugh in response to the inappropriateness of it. His vision is blurry, cheeks wet; tears are flooding his eyes, catching on the dried blood still matted into his face.

When did he start crying? When did he lose control? Hyrule reaches out, stroking lightly down his cheek. Legend cringes away automatically, and cries harder—harder and harder until he starts to hyperventilate in truth.

“It’s okay,” Hyrule promises. “Nobody will ever hurt you again.”

It's a promise. It's a threat. All Legend can do is sob beneath the weight of it.

Rulie removes his hand from the wound and something comes with him. Legend jolts, and screams. He cannot recognize his own voice in the sound he makes, cannot see past the blinding pain, cannot think, cannot…

He blinks back into his own body, shocky and lost. Wanting something he cannot name.

No, he can. 

“H—Hyr—Rule,” Legend cries, insensate. “Ah—ah—”

“Ssh,” Hyrule soothes. He picks idly at the gore on Legend’s cheek. Legend struggles against it. He cannot handle any more kindness. He teeters in the edge of some precipice, softens will surely push him off the edge. He has to tip the scales back, out them into equal footing before he is lost.

Before he can think it through with any more surety, he snaps half upright and twists his head, teeth clamping down on his brother's arm.

"No,” Rulie scolds, as if to a disobedient pet, “no!”

Legend sobs into his skin. The tang of iron fills his mouth with the sickly slick of blood. Hyrule slams him back to the stone, and, head rattling, Legend has his teeth pried free of the traveler's arm.

“Don’t do that,” he says firmly.

“Please,” Legend begs, for what he does not know. Hyrule pokes at the place where his tunic is torn at the back, where the carved-out flesh of him yawns, and he flinches away, mouth still disobediently dripping words along with his brother's blood.

“Don’t do that,” Hyrule says again. “Look at me.”

He turns too slowly, tentative and afraid. Too slowly, possibly, for Hyrule takes the motion over: picks up his chin in one hand and moves it.

“There,” Hyrule says sickly sweet. “Now I can see you. Much better, don’t you think?”

Is it better? To look death in the eyes? Legend thought that it would be, once. He is not so sure anymore.

All the world is still and quiet, except for the altar, upon which turns the world entire. Hyrule above him is the only thing that is real, the only thing that matters.

He watches as his brother opens his mouth. Raises something red and dripping—bone. His bone. A rib, torn from Legend's chest and pressed gently to his lips like a kiss.

Legend watches is a dull horror as his brother grins bloody. As he ducks his head forward and runs his tongue longways up the bone as though it was not blood clinging to it but honey.

Legend does not think. He does not feel. He is sinking, falling, gone, gone, gone.

“Mine,” the word pulls him back to earth, a hand cradling the arch of Legend’s cheekbone. He writhes in discomforted terror, twists and bucks until he finds himself flat in his back, still caged in by Hyrule's hips. Rulie mutters soothing words all the while. Holds him tighter, until he stops trying to get away. His brother's voice—normally so bright, so lively—comes hoarse and loud and wheezing. He’s rocking back and forth lightly, shaking in their shared agony.

The monsters roar with him and right, they have an audience, don’t they? He bends over, movement slurred, like he is the one wounded, like it is Hyrule who is laid bare and open. He dips his head around to Legend's side, laving an open mouthed kiss upon the wound.

“Please,” Legend whispers. He thinks that might be the only word he has left.

Hyrule takes the rib in one fist, fingers clamped around the smooth end, like a dagger, like a rod, and uses it to trace a line down the side of Legend’s face and the back of his neck. Another line of blood rises, hot and heavy on his skin.

Above him, Hyrule shivers. For fear or ecstasy, he cannot tell.

“You’re no f-fun. You’re no fun, l—little rabbit! No fun at all! Where is the screaming?”

Yes, that's right. Legend can scream. He opens his mouth to start, but Hyrule presses his jaw closed.

“After all that trouble I went to." He picks up Legend’s hand and twirls the splintered edge of the rib around the edges of the knuckles.

There is no thought, no reason. Only the desire to hold and be held. To offer what comfort that he can. Legend twists their hands together, pinching at Hyrule’s wrist. Hyrule squeezes back, and for a single glimmering moment, Legend is whole.

Hyrule pulls his hand away. Their skin slips against each other unnaturally. Wet with blood.

“Fight!” he roars. “Where is the screaming! FIGHT THIS! FIGHT ME!”

Legend’s spine rolls, writhes. Finally, a demand that makes sense. A stage direction in line with his own needs. His legs kick. Hyrule holds him down and wails loud enough for both of them.

“WHERE IS YOUR FIRE?” Rulie shouts—goading, pleading. “WHERE IS THE SCREAMING, LITTLE RABBIT? LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIR! YOU ARE UNDONE. YOU RELINQUISH YOUR FIGHT. YOU SURRENDER!”

“I surrender,” Legend agrees.

At that is it. He is finished. The Hero is defeated.

He has nothing more to give.

“FIGHT,” Hyrule screams.

The fight is gone from him like it was never there.

“Mine,” Hyrule whispers. Then louder, “PATHETIC! You’re no fun, little rabbit. Completely boring. I want fun!

“Fun,” he echoes. “This one’s no fun. I want fun.”

His lips curl into a smirk, a taunt for someone else. Someone who is still while enough to break.

“Don’t…” Wars calls.

Hyrule laughs. “Pathetic,” he says again; a little longer. He rubs the message into Legend’s skin.  

It is received. Openly, gladly, Legend takes the word and wraps his splintered sense of self around it.

“Sssh, little rabbit,” Rulie croons, running the sharp end of the bone along the red tunic, until it cleaves to his touch, embroidery sliced, cloth falling away. Legend doesn’t fight it. Just lies there. His tears have given way to silence.

“Are you going to surrender, like this one?” he asks Warriors. “I hope not. I hope we have fun together.”

“He’s—” Warriors starts hotly.

“No need to defend his honor,” Hyrule laughs. “He’s too far gone. Didn’t you see? He gave up.”

“He would never!”

He has.

Hyrule knows him better than anyone else ever has. “Watch.”

The rib-tip makes its way down Legend’s sternum. Underneath, somewhere, Legend’s heart is beating. Pounding. Not yet with the program.

“Ssh,” Hyrule coos. “Yes. Good little rabbit.”

Legend hums. A response seems warranted. Living death though he might be, his brother should not have to finish this alone. “Almost over?”

“NO!” Warriors shouts. “No, no—no! STOP!”

“Almost over,” Hyrule promises.

Wind screams—defiance? Denial? It does not matter.

“Okay,” Legend yields.

Hyrule pushes the rib until it punctures the skin. A moment of pressure—Legend makes a disgruntled sound, not able to dredge up anything stronger, anything more convincing—hazy from blood loss and drifting, floating, gone.

Hyrule leans closer, holds tighter. Feels the muscles shredding as he goes. His touch all that hold Legend's soul within his own body.

He bends his neck and with one hand reaches around to heave Legend upright, to hold him close, to wrap an arm in embrace under the armpit. A pulse of magic soothes the fire in his back.

He pushes up and in with the rib and the blood flows down the ivory—ivory? No, Legend realizes. That's not right. It is him. His body, his blood, his bone. Hyrule tucks his face into Legend’s neck, as though he is seeking comfort.

Legend has none left to give.

He feels the groan more than hears it. A death rattle coming of its own volition.

“Alm—almost?” Legend gets out into Hyrule’s ear.

“Now,” Hyrule says, just as Legend’s body begins to slacken under its own weight.

He lets go.

He sees no more. Feels no more.

He can only manage one last, incongruous thought: he is glad it was Hyrule. So grateful to have been held.

To have been loved, up until the bloody end.

Chapter Text

Sound comes back first, as it usually does. Howls of some great beast, a faint echo to the chamber. A rumble through the stone, audible as a near constant hum.

He would know that song beyond any other madness, would be able to identify this aria even if all other thought was gone from his mind.

The warm brush of fairy magic flows through his veins—permeating his aching body in waves, ripples radiating out from his chest. It's more familiar to him than the wind is to his face. (It's been so long since Link felt the wind, the sun, fresh clean outside air, free of the stench of despair that permeates all places such as this.)

Dungeon's smell like fear. Like death, that particular combination of rot and dust. It is a scent that he would be able to find under any perfume.

Light, dim and flickering, dances across his clouded vision. Link cannot see, not really, but he can see that he can see. It's a familiar aura, one that he can see behind his eyelids when he blinks, every time, no matter how long it's been since Link has actually seen it.

Link knows where he is, and what has happened, before any other thought can coalesce in his rattled mind. He is at the bottom of a Dungeon, facing off against something greatly outside of his weight class. Whatever evil that lives here, it has killed him, rent him raw and beat him bloody. He breathes now only through the benevolence of a fairy, the power of a contract.

The kindness of a being far more powerful than he.

He knows what is expected of him: he must get up, dust himself off, and get right back to it. He has no time to take a breath, to reassure himself that he's still breathing (breathing again?). There is a monster before him, and he is the only one who can bring it to heel. He is the only one that can stop this…thing…from destroying everything he loves.

The only problem is, Link doesn't want to. He doesn't want to fight anymore. He doesn't want to try again. He knows that he should, but he just… can't find a reason to.

(Was there ever a reason to fight? Or has he always just been doing what he was told?)

“Legend,” comes the call, the voice, a break in the melody of the losing battle.

“Legend." His name, gasped like a prayer.

"Quick." That isn't just some voice, it is the voice. It is the voice of the promise of a future. It's the voice of hope.

Hyrule.

"We have to go.”

Go? Go where? Away from what? If he's hurt—if he's being taken off the field—then this is bad. Bad enough that whatever foul beast what fell him managed to get through his brothers, bad enough that even with all nine of them, he was hit bad enough to need a fairy. Where—

Memory comes rushing back, a shiver running though him as he blinks the monster into view. Rulie is still whole, still hale, but no longer clean. His brother is painted in red that glistens in the torchlight, hypnotic flashes of moving color. The malice—the glee—is absent now from his brother's face, leaving behind naught but anxious fear.

The show has ended, the curtain fallen.

“It’s over?” Legend asks, quiet. It is all he can manage—the sole thought in his mind, the only words he can fit out of his stiff jaw.

Hyrule's hands (no longer violent) cup his cheek, run briefly through his sweat-slicked hair. Legend blinks back at him, waiting for his vision to clear. It doesn't, not even when Rulie shakes him a little. Legend wants to go back: back into that soft surrender, back to the stage, back to the moment he found his brother in this tomb; back to the world before this fucked-up circle of death and life that they chase each other in, like the sun and moon through the sky.

Hyrule shifts his grip from caress to hold, and Legend goes where he is led, nothing left in him to fight. Not against this one. (Never this one.) Rulie shoves at him, pushes him upright. Something inside of Legend shifts, moves, and a spike of pain rides out with the waves of fae blessing. He whimpers mindlessly, too weak to do anything else against it.

“No, none of this,” Hyrule hisses. “No resting. It’s not done. We have to go, now.”

“It’s not done?” Legend echoes. All the while something inside him splintering, shattering, spiraling in like a pit.

“Come on!” Hyrule says. He ducks under Legend’s arm and hoists them both upright. Legend sways, reality and the room tilting in equal measure.

The horde is gone, their brothers, too. Silence rings heavy like the moment after a bomb goes off, a loud sort of quiet. Hyrule's hands feel like iron on his waist, like a brand against his hand.

He loves him, oh how Legend loves him.

The monster grips him tighter, and something deep inside of Legend recoils.

“I can walk,” he says, blinking in an ongoing (and futile) effort to clear his vision.

“In a straight line?”

Point.

“Quick, this way,” his brother tells him with a soft huff of a laugh. Oh, how Legend adores that sweet boy's laugh.

A phantom blade drives through Legend's back, a ghostly memory tears through his chest. “Please."

No answer from the monster, from his Hero. Nothing more than a gentle, firm nudge forward. Yes, forward. The only direction that they have.

With the shocky emptiness and disbelief of unexpected survival (and it is always unexpected, the survival), Legend is led through the tunnels; Hyrule using some method of navigation or another beyond Legend's ability to deduce. Every step tips the balance of fae magic and radiant pain farther and farther to the latter. He finds himself leaning more and more onto his brother, handing over more of the burden to Hyrule one gasping breath at a time. The presence of him—the realness of him—is more of a comfort than the rapidly freshening taste of the air.

Where are the others? Did it work? Was it worth it? So many complicated answers to such simple questions whirl in his mind, twisting and catching on themselves. A score of realities pass through his thoughts at once: Ganon is back, his brothers are all dead, Hyrule had to torture another of them to sell the lie, it worked perfectly and they are all safe, they are safe, but a portal took them all away; all potential truths presented and mourned in brutal silence.

How anticlimactic, in the end. To simply hobble, stubborn, through the cave in secret. So much blood, staining them both. Legend can no longer tell the difference, between his and Rulie's; both him and his brother's blood splattered across his body, staining his tabard a dark wine red.

He is a portrait of brutality, and Hyrule's hands are covered in the drying sticky brown tack of consequence. Legend wonders how long it will take to wash off. He wonders if it ever can wash off, truly.

It is too late now, to go back. They passed the point of no return long ago.

All for this short network of tunnels. All for this glimpse of blue sky, framed like a painting at the end of some great hall, as the miraculous light of day pours into the tunnel ahead of them.

No words are needed, no disparity in their desire here, now. There’s a bit of cloud, in the corner.  It's the most beautiful thing that Legend has ever seen.

They both double their speed at the same time.

“So close,” Hyrule gasps.

“I see it,” Legend says, wondrous, “I see it.”

They come out of the tunnel and into the sun, hands on each other, weeping. Nothing followed them, the ruse was bought. Hyrule spilled too much blood today for the other monsters to doubt.

Too much for their brothers not too.

Legend's mind spins. The others are nowhere to be seen, the light suddenly piercing in its harshness. The sun beats down like a blaze, a heat searing into Legend's skin as he pants, flushed and aching.

Impact, sudden and jarring, and Rulie slams into his side, the careful hold morphing into a hug, a tackle. Legend's legs are too weak, his core trying to brace against the impact causes a white hot flash of blinding pain. Helpless to do anything but be knocked to the ground, breathless vocalizations fall helplessly from his lips.

Hyrule laughs, shaking with it as the boy burrows into Legend's skin, forehead to bloody chest as they lay in the dry, hard-packed dirt. It is the closest thing that Legend has gotten to actual comfort since before their little performance started, and it hurts.

Realization strikes his brother, who visibly recoils from the embrace, eyes wide and fearful. "The rib,” he says, “right. Sorry."

A memory, a flash of sensation. Thin, nimble fingers twist inside Legend's chest, and something inside of him snaps.

"For a moment I—”

“We’re alive." Is that a statement or a question, he isn't sure.

Sweet Rulie hears it, the uncertainty in his voice. So well, he knows him so well. "Everyone,” Hyrule confirms. “All of them.”

The arms around him squeeze tighter, to the point of pain on their own right, the only thing tethering Legend to his body. Alive, alive, they're alive.

“All of them,” Legend sighs. It was worth it, then, the corruption of the one thing in this while world that was truly safe, the way that he now tenses against the other's embrace.

He can get over it, in time. After all—

“You’ve still got something of mine,” Hyrule interrupts the meandering nature of Legend's thoughts.

“Hm? Oh—oh,” says Legend, as Hyrule flicks the end of the rib—his rib!—and it shifts inside him, sending out another lighting-hot bolt of pain.

“We can’t get it out right now,” Hyrule tells him. “No. Back at camp. Where there’s potions, so nothing goes wrong. You can keep it until then, I guess. But I want it back.”

All of that was a blurry mess of sound. He has to focus. “Camp?”

“I told Warriors to meet us on the tallest hill north. It was the best I could do—I didn’t know where we were. Sorry.”

“S’fine,” says Legend, nearly on route. And then the words themselves actually process. “Good. Everyone’s—you’re alive.”

“In the flesh,” Hyrule says. “C’mon, we should go. We can’t stay here.” A shift, a tiny kiss on Legend’s hair. It's not normal, between them, not yet.

But it's a start.

And the Hero of Legend knows how to play his part.

Legend exhales. “My knees hurt,” he complains. “And my arms feel like lead.”

Hyrule hugs him closer, reinforcing the invisible bindings lashing them together. Something inside if Legend's stomach shifts, flips in disquiet. He squirms against it, lips brushing against his brother's arm, catching on a strange divot in the skin.

Lips parting on their own volition, teeth fitting perfectly over the bite mark. That hunted animal in him goes still, quiet.

“Mine,” Legend decides.

“Mine,” Hyrule agrees.