Work Text:
At first Tune didn’t know what was going on.
He and Mask (a tiny Time, could you believe it? He couldn't, not at first, but then some of the man’s comments made sense) had been escorted to the medic’s tent by the Captain. They weren’t actually that bad off, although the battle had been exhausting. Things had seemed to be winding down, though, so they had let the others take the front lines and had fallen back. All of them bore light wounds and the occasional more serious wound, but nothing that had kept them from fighting.
“The captain should come get his own wounds taken care of,” Mask frowned, letting a healer wrap a bandage around the few cuts on his arm. They weren’t enough to warrant a potion on their own, and he’d already had one for the gash on his leg. Potions were a limited resource and nobody wanted to use more than needed, even if sometimes a few of the others had tried to insist that the kids take them instead of some of the older men. Tune and Mask both generally refused; life on the battlefield was nothing new for them, neither were the wounds that accompanied battle. This was Tune’s fifth adventure after all.
Briefly, he wondered how the others were doing, after their adventures. Did Sky ever get married, like he and Sun had planned? He wasn’t even entirely sure about Legend and Ravio - the merchant was surprisingly cagey about the subject, which made sense. It was hard to figure out the timeline when apparently the goddesses liked to bend it back on itself so often.
Time may have been a cryptic son of a bitch, but adventuring together had led to more than a few secrets being discovered. Personally, Wind still didn’t quite get all of it, but that was okay. The others had, and Legend had pulled the man aside after that discussion. They had both come back both a bit more unsettled but also seemingly a bit better off. All Wind had gotten out of the conversation (probably because at some point they had gotten way off track and the kid had dozed off) was that Time really had fought the moon. With a mask. Or something.
A commotion outside snapped Tune back to the present and he locked gazes with Mask, who immediately pushed the healer away so they could both race outside. The fight was just starting - how had they gotten though?
No time to worry about that now.
Tune drew his hammer again and dove into the fray, his brother by his side as they dove into the fray.
It didn’t take long to find Warriors, although they had to work their way through the fight to get to him. Mask had donned his blast mask, tossing bombs out with his shield ready, Tune keeping everything at a distance. The two worked in sync, almost without needing to say anything, and it was out of the corner of his eye that he saw it.
A spear-wielder, rushing in for War’s undefended back.
“Wars!” The name had wrenched itself from his lips without a thought, Mask turning to look a moment later. Wind couldn’t tell what his expression was, but it probably wasn’t far off from his own.
The spear punctured the captain’s armor easily, diving in with a spray of blood that Wind knew was fatal.
Wind could almost hear the pained sounds, the gasps the captain had to be taking.
Hyrule wasn’t here.
Lana wasn’t either.
The medic tent was right there, but Wind knew they would already be too late by the time they got organized and someone out.
The battlefield had somehow fallen silent, and Link watched as his brother collapsed to his knees, arms raising to his chest.
The world went white, Wind sucked in a breath, and suddenly the sound of the medics tent filtered back in, all gentle murmuring and care. He was back in the tent, Mask at his side with a healer inspecting the kid’s arm.
Said kid looked up, frowning, when Tune shook his head to clear it.
“You okay?” He asked, almost curtly (and didn’t that remind Wind of Legend) but Tune knew how to read Mask somewhat by now and the concern was obvious.
Tune shook his head again to clear it, tucking his hands away behind his back to hide the sudden trembling. What was that? Hadn’t they just been on the battlefield?
Hadn’t Warriors - the Captain, he wasn’t quite Warriors yet - just -
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Tune told the kid when he was sure his voice was going to be steady enough to be believable. “Just had a thought.”
Legend had told them once, his voice low and haunted, over dinner on one of the days where his memories wouldn’t leave him alone, about how one of his adventures had been something like a trick. How he’d been gone for months, maybe even a year, but somehow that time hadn’t passed when he’d gotten back.
Legend had never called this the ‘real world’.
The veteran hadn’t given the details of the adventure, but Wind knew very well what it was like when an adventure was very real, even if the world they were in wasn’t aware of it. That had been the entirety of his second one, after all. He’d dealt with the same thing, tucking it all away when the other had started to whisper behind his back. Tetra had offered to set them right, but there hadn’t been any point to that. They wouldn’t believe him regardless. The veteran had said then, that time was a fickle thing, and everybody bent to her will.
Link suddenly had a sinking feeling, just in time for a commotion to start outside the tent.
He locked gazes with Mask, and the two took off.
There were soldiers outside, locked in combat with a group who had somehow gotten through, and Warriors was among them, sword at the ready across the battlefield. Mask shoved at him to move, yelling something, and then suddenly something warm was splattered across his face. He turned to see what had happened, his gaze flitting over a suddenly even more pale Mask, who gasped in pain.
A sword had sliced through the kid’s arm, severing a vein or something.
Tune pulled his hammer out and went to leap, before suddenly the world once again went white.
Tune gasped, lurching in an aborted stumble, and found himself in the medic’s tent, a suspicious Mask watching him with a furrowed brow.
Not again.