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There was so much blood.
Hyrule’s hands were slick and sticky with it. It was on the ground, on his tunic, on Four’s tunic, on Four’s body…spilling from between Four’s lips, running down his chin, gushing from the wound in his torso. There was so much. There was too much. Four’s eyes were closed and he had so many broken bones and his chest was barely moving and he was bleeding so badly and Hyrule was so, so tired.
He kept his glowing hands pressed to Four’s chest, pumping magic into his body and ignoring the familiar ache that came with giving too much.
He was such an idiot. He’d cast Fire during the battle, and then Shield to save himself from a blow that would have broken his arm at worst, and now he didn’t have enough to heal Four. This never would have happened before, back when he was alone and running out of magic could be a death sentence. But he’d grown complacent. He was too used to having people there to watch his back now.
But he and Four had gotten separated from the others during the fight, and now he couldn’t hear them. If there were still monsters nearby, he didn’t want to draw their attention by calling for help.
But he couldn’t do this alone. He was almost out of magic; he’d used so much that by now he’d stopped aching with it. Now he just felt numb and lightheaded. And all he had in his bag were some bandages. Four’s wound had closed, but he had lost too much blood, and he still had several broken ribs. Hyrule needed Wars, with his steady hands and encyclopedic knowledge of first aid. He needed one of Wild’s weird elixirs. He needed Time to summon a fairy with his creepy mask. He needed someone to hold him and tell him it would be all right.
Hyrule squeezed his eyes shut, the world narrowing to him and Four and his dwindling magic, and he prayed. Oh, Nayru, Farore, Din, Hylia, anyone, please, please…
He’d never learned to pray to any goddess. People didn’t really worship them anymore, back in his Hyrule. Or if they did, he’d never seen it. He’d never even heard of them until coming on this journey. But their names fell from his companions’ lips as easy as breathing. Maybe one of them would be willing to listen to him. Some people in his Hyrule did believe in the Savior God instead, and he’d tried praying to Him a couple times after he found the cross that let him see ghosts, but it had never really felt right. He tried it again now, though. Any cave in a storm.
Even as he prayed, he felt the last embers of his magic die, and his hands stopped glowing. He felt so awfully empty, as if someone had taken a spoon to his insides and hollowed him out.
He had given everything he had, and it still hadn’t been enough.
A horrible sob clawed its way out of his chest at the realization. He felt like he had been shredded to pieces.
A failure like this was unbearable, absolutely unbearable. He could not bear it. It could not be borne.
He had to keep trying.
He reached into that place deep inside himself where his magic usually rested, now scraped bare, and he pulled. The world abruptly went dark.
Hyrule didn’t know how much time had passed before he woke to the sound of footsteps hurrying towards him. Before he could become conscious enough to worry, someone gasped and Sky whispered, “Oh no.”
Hyrule pulled himself up, slowly and painfully, from where he had collapsed on top of Four’s body. That must have made his ribs worse, but Hyrule couldn’t really think about that right now. He felt hazy and only half present.
Warriors appeared suddenly in front of him and gripped him by the shoulders. “What happened?” he asked, his bird-of-prey eyes scanning Hyrule. “Are you alright?”
Hyrule nodded, then thought better of it and shook his head. But he didn’t matter right now. He swallowed and said, “Four’s really hurt. He needs help.” The words scratched at his dry throat like shards of glass.
Warriors let him go and knelt to examine Four. There was a long moment of silence.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
“What do you need to heal him?” Sky asked, looking at Hyrule with deep concern before turning his attention to Warriors and Four. Wild was by his side, already flicking through his slate.
Hyrule allowed himself to tune out of the conversation. The others would handle this. He had done what he could, and now he could do no more.
He sat there silently for several minutes as Wars dripped a potion into Four’s mouth and Sky and Wild set a pot of water to boil. There was more noise behind him as the others found them, but no one approached him for a while.
Eventually Legend came to crouch beside him. “Hey, ‘Rule,” he said quietly. “Will you come with me?”
Hyrule swallowed and nodded shakily. He reached out a hand, and Legend helped him to his feet, supporting him as they stumbled away from the others toward a creek a few hundred yards away.
They knelt by the side of the creek together. Legend pushed a magic potion into Hyrule's hand, and he drank it. Then Legend gently guided his hands into the water and began scrubbing at them. The water ran red. Hyrule stared at it, remembering where that blood came from. Remembering Four laying bruised and beaten in the grass.
Hot tears began to run helplessly down his face.
Legend washed off as much of the blood as he could without rubbing Hyrule’s hands raw before turning to look at him. Hyrule stared back at him, still crying silently.
“Oh, ‘Rulie,” Legend sighed, voice gentle in the way Hyrule had come to fear. Legend was brusque and indelicate. He wasn’t often cruel, not truly, but it was almost as rare for him to be so openly soft. When he treated someone so carefully, it meant something was wrong with them.
This was his soothing-nightmares voice, his someone-is-on-the-brink-of-death voice. But Hyrule was not dying. He was not a scared child. He was not a fragile thing; he was an empty one, like one of his dolls after it had been used and all the magic had gone out of it. He was a failure.
Legend let out all his breath in a single sigh and wrapped his arms around Hyrule. “It’s alright,” he said. “We’re alright. Just breathe with me, ‘Rule. Just breathe.”
Hyrule breathed as best he could. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Legend replied, quietly fierce.
Any other day, Hyrule might even have believed it.