Chapter Text
Whoever said two heads are better than one obviously had no experience with this kind of situation.
“...all I’m saying is that we can construct a simple sledge for the navigation capsule out of Abies labioscarpa refuse and twine…”
“Where are we going to find twine in this Goddess forsaken tundra, bookbreath? Din’s dripping…”
“...and they’re all going to be dead and it's all going to be our fault and...”
In Green’s experience, the relationship between number of heads and their value in any given situation could best be plotted as as a negative quadratic function.”
“Well if you have any actual ideas, I can’t hear them over your profanity. We could also attempt to create a radio array powered by treadmill…”
“Like hell am I getting on another one of your hamster wheels. And would you please quit your blubbering! You’re giving me a headache!”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! It's just that Sky was already not doing so hot, and there was blood and…”
In Green’s current situation, an exponential decline better described the value of additional heads. Because he and the four heads had been arguing (and creating increasingly complicated survival plans and catastrophizing) in the snow for the past twenty minutes, and accomplished exactly nothing. Even his twig fire didn’t light.
“Of course, we could also fabricate a hot air envelope out of our garments and attempt to levitate the capsule in a jury rigged zeppelin, but…”
“If you’re making us strip, then I’ll take the liberty to shove my sock in both of your mouths.”
“I think I probably deserve it.”
Green threw down his cold and damp fire starting sticks on the cold and damp ground.
“ALRIGHT!” He stood up, dusted the snow from his pants in giant chunks, which melted into fat drops which stuck stubbornly to his hands. He flailed around for a second before accepting that he would just be soaked for the foreseeable future. He hated surface tension.
“No-one’s taking off any clothes. No one is stuffing socks in anyone’s mouth. We need to pull ourselves together--hehe--and make a plan to get out of this mess. Any ideas?”
He surveyed his small group of clones. Three faces stared back at him, identical to the casual viewer, but each held a unique expression in his cold-reddened face.
The violet-eyed clone put a hand on his hip. “Obviously, we need to prioritize. Are we going to attempt to return to the Four suit as soon as possible, or are we going to attempt to survive in the wilderness until conditions are more suitable for travel?”
The red-eyed clone sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “We have to get back to the Four suit. We need to help Sky and Four and Legend, and we can’t do it like this.”
“I’m with sniffles,” the blue-eyed clone crossed his arms in a gesture that would have been defiant without the shivering. “We’re vulnerable like this. And its way less satisfying kicking a tree when you’re two centimeters tall.”
“But,” Vio interjected, “We have no idea where the Four suit is. We will waste valuable time and energy looking for it, increasing our odds of succumbing to exposure.”
“So that’s two votes for leaving as soon as possible, and one for trying to survive in the cold. Great.” They always did this to him. Red and Blue picked the fastest course of action, Vio wanted more time to plan, and he had to decide between running off half-ready and wasting time. And they always blamed him when things went tits up. Perks of being the only one of the group with the will-power to take charge.
“Do we know if the navigation capsule still has any functional remote messaging systems?”
“I already checked,” Red wiped his nose again. “I wanted to see if everyone was ok. I turned the emergency beacon on, so hopefully they’ll…”
“The emergency beacon?” Vio raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” Red’s voice was small. He fidgeted with his headband.
“The one that broadcasts an S.O.S. on all channels using a substantial amount of auxiliary power?”
“Yeah. I just thought Sky or Legend might need help so I figured…”
“Dindammit, Red!” Blue’s eyes blazed like a gas flame. “All of Hebra will know where we are! You might as well have lit a bonfire of bourbon whiskey!”
“Personally, I’m less worried about the security risk and more worried that our only temporary shelter is rapidly losing power.” Vio said, tapping his chin with an index finger. “Stellar job, Red.”
Red’s bottom lip started quivering. Green resisted the urge to drag a hand down his face. He hated dealing with Red’s emotions. He never knew what to do or to say. He didn’t want to cry more, but telling him to stop crying never worked very well.
“Alright. I am going to turn off the emergency beacon. If you have any grand ideas, Vio, please speak up. Otherwise be quiet. Blue? Red? Don’t wander off. Or hurt each other.”
Green trudged back to the navigation capsule. The sleek metal cylinder probably looked like a giant flash-drive or an epinephrine injector to a normal-sized person. To Green and his clones, the capsule was more of an incredibly cramped submarine cockpit. He opened the round door on the far end, and surveyed the four terminals. Grey static filled the monitors, and the neura-links hung limp and unconnected above the empty captain’s chairs like lifeless serpents. The bank of flickering toggles pulsed a jarring orange, rather than the usual four colors. He scooted around Blue’s chair and his own before coming to Red’s station, where he flicked the emergency beacon off. He pulled up the powermeter. The capsule only had 17% power left. Damn. Not enough for a full day outside the Four suit.
As he began running systems diagnostics--to procrastinate on making a decision about what to do. Yes. He was aware--Vio ducked into the capsule. He swivelled his chair a bit so Vio could slip by to his own terminal.
“Any ideas?” Green asked, as he checked the brainstem connector. Nothing damaged, praise the three.
“Yes.” The flickering menus in vio’s terminal through a cold electronic light on his cold-reddened face. “If our navi-computer logged positional data after the Four suit ejected the navigation capsule, then we might be able to triangulate the location of the crash, the Four suit, and the others.”
“Smart.”
“Don’t mention it. It's all I’m good for.”
There was a beat of silence. Green checked the last transmission from the somatic nervous system. Lots of adrenaline, but no traumatic injuries before the capsule was ejected. Again. Thank the three.
“We need to revamp the ejection protocol.” Green knit his fingers behind his head, and looked at the powermeter tick down to 16.9%. “This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t involuntarily eject just because of a little head trauma.”
Vio’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “That is exactly why we left. Do you know what kind of G forces the Four suit can take? Four times what we can. If we had stayed in there, we would have been scrambled like eggs.”
“That’s what the seatbelts are for!”
“Eventually, gravity always wins, Green.” Vio sighed, and put his head in his hands. Green sat up. Vio rarely showed emotions. That was Red’s forte. Ever since their accident, when Link had to split his consciousness into four miniature avatars to survive, he had divided himself unevenly. Vio hadn’t gotten a large helping of emotional intelligence, despite his superior IQ. Unfortunately, neither had Green.
So he sat and watched part of himself have a rare moment of weakness. Ruthlessly rational, Vio refused to doubt that victory would be absolute unless he had exhausted every possible solution. Vio simply didn’t acknowledge defeat as an option, unless it was the only option.
“Vio? What does the positional data read?”
“Look for yourself.”
He scooted around Red’s empty chair to look. Vio played the positional data in reverse, so it looked like the little position marker gallivanted up a slope, leapt into the air, and joined with a Four-suit moving backwards, away from the treeline.
“According to my calculations, the aircraft crashed 300 meters away.”
A walk in the park for a normal sized person. For Green and the clones, topping out at 15 millimeters tall, it was an impossible distance.
“I hate it when I can’t solve puzzles. There should be a solution to this. I know there is one! But I just… can’t see it.” Vio stared blankly at the positional data. The numbers scrolled across his face. “At night, when Four is asleep, sometimes I mess around with differential equations and force vectors. That's why Four sometimes wakes up with design breakthroughs.”
Vio looked at Green, then, and Green could see the slight tension in Vio’s brow, unremarkable in most, but a cry for help from Vio. “Why do I never have good ideas when I need them?”
Green didn’t know what to say to that. He wished he had good ideas, period. Sometimes it felt like he had never had an original thought. Before he could say something (probably something insensitive that would make Vio unbearably caustic for the next week) Red stuck his head into the navigation capsule.
“Uh, guys? Blue heard something. You better come out here.”
Green and vio switched the monitors into power-save mode, and scrambled back into the snowy wilderness. The great rolling cliffs of pine root, and the walls of snow blocked their vision, and the howl of wind deafened most sound, but they did not obscure everything.
Green watched as Blue, taught as a whipcord, pointed on the other side of the capsule. Red hung onto Blue’s arm.
He felt the tremors then, rhythmic and steady.
Footsteps.
His eyes adjusted, and there. Passing behind a tree.
A giant.
A familiar giant.
He turned to Vio. “Do you have a plan now?”
Vio showed all his teeth. “Affirmative.”
***
Objective: firewood.
Dry firewood.
Better for a fire, to warm Sky and Four.
The fireplace roared, large enough to park a Humvee, reflecting off the wine glasses on the gilt sideboard, the delicate gilt chains on his wrists, the gilt rings on her hands.
Link gasped. He had put one foot in a drift, sinking up passed his knee. He stood for a moment, motionless, and focused on the bite of the cold on his exposed face and neck. His hands ached fiercely, his feet almost as bad. He still felt sweat trickling down the back of his neck.
Impulsively, he grabbed two fistfuls of snow and rubbed them on the back of his neck. Focused on the gritty cold on his knuckles and the skin behind his ears.
Cold. Bitter cold.
No comfort. No luxury.
He shuddered.
Right.
Objective: Firewood.
He actually attempted to surveile his surroundings (and wouldn't Impa tan his hide for his inattention). The boles of the fir trees marched away, row upon row, like
Columns over white marble. A veritable forest of architecture, flanking the corridor. A door cracked at the end, and marmalade light spilled across the flagstones as her voice lilted down the corridor, beckoning him. He hated that he answered.
A branch whacked him in the face. The cold somehow made his cheek more sensitive to the sharp switch. He touched it with one stiff finger, and marvelled at the ruby red blood dotting his nails.
Blood on her nails, then her tongue, then her lip, then her perfect teeth as she smiled that smile that meant she enjoyed his suffering.
Hard cold on his knees. Fire in his side.
Link blinked down in confusion. He must have fallen. He didn't remember doing that. He attempted to run his fingers through his hair, but either the snow had matted his locks or his fingers had finally given up the last of their dexterity.
Firewood. He needed to get firewood.
He looked out at the blank swirling snow, a gently sifting oblivion. He watched the shapeless mass shift and swirl, hugging his frayed coat to against the dull ache in his side that no longer warmed his hands, and tried not to think of her .
***
“I don't think he’s doing to hot,” said Red, peaking over a pinecone.
“No shit, sniffles, it's literally freezing and he's wearing a soaked through dress uniform.” Blue crouched next to Red, holding a broken pine needle as a bat to buffet away the giant flakes falling into them.
“And the jacket isn't even closed properly. I wonder why he doesn't button it.” Vio knelt on Blue’s other side, scrutinizing the captain without blinking.
“No… I mean yes… I mean, he's cold but also I think he's, well, somewhere else?” Red pulled himself a little higher, and Blue grumbled about having the only sense of self-preservation. Green thought the comment was a bit ironic. “He hasn't really taken more than a few steps before stopping for a long while,” continued Red, “and I think he probably shouldn't just be standing stock still in a blizzard?”
Vio nodded. “And he doesn't have the scarf.”
Green put his hand under the back of his head to crane his neck back further. The Captain's fancy dress shoes sank into the mud a little way from them. Leaves and mud and scuffs ruined the once perfect patent leather, and crawled up his sodden pants. Green could just barely make out the Captain's arms, wrapped tight around his torso. He couldn't see his face; anything above his arms disappeared into the distance.
It's a funny thing, being small. To Green, it seemed like time worked a little differently, though Vio would argue that merely their perception of time had changed.
Regardless, when the captain began swaying, Green almost didn't notice. But then the blue wool of the trousers began crumpling, the knees bent, the heels unstuck from the mud with a wet squelch, and before green knew what was happening, Blue was hauling him and Red by their collars sprinting away from the toppling soldier shouting about being crushed.
They skidded to a stop under an oak leaf. Blue had to physically restrain Red from running back to the captain: even Green had to admit that the man didn't look great. He could see his face now, pick out the tendon taut in his jaw, the knuckles white on his jacket, the red rim of his eyes that could be from the cold, but could be from something else.
“Please please please we need to go back--he really needs us”
“And you will be squished like an ant!” Blue hauled Red back by his collar like a kitten, but Red began clambering over Blue (honestly, also like a kitten).
Typical.
“Vio?” Green turned to his mostly sane counterpart. “What's the plan?”
Vio cracked his neck. “I'll run back to the navigation capsule. One of us will need to pilot the Four suit if this works, and I don't trust those two. Can you wrangle them, as well as convince the Captain to take us back, or do I need to take them with me?”
As Green weighed his options, Red eeled out of Blue’s grasp, only for Blue to tackle him around the waste into the muck.
“They should go with you but realistically? They're coming with me.”
“As I anticipated.”
“Of course you did.”
“I let you make the final decision, to retain the illusion of choice and free will.”
“Thank you for that, Vio.” Green needed a vacation. He missed the nice, warm nook in his bookshelf where he would occasionally hide from his counterparts and practice calligraphy while they alternately showered Dot with gifts, built flight capable model rockets, and demolished buildings with said flight capable model rockets. Sometimes he thought that his counterparts only listened to him when he was cleaning up there messes.
Vio nodded, and began running back to the capsule.
“Right.” Green cracked his knuckles. “Hope you guys remember our mountaineering lessons. Blue?”
“What?” Blue had finally put Red in a half Nelson.
“Release him.”
Red took off for warriors like a mouse for cheese, Blue and Green following him.
***
“Link!”
His mind shunted back to the present.
The cold slammed into him like a physical mass, so heavy in his chest that his breath stuttered.
“Woah there!”
“Dindammit, be careful Warriors!”
“Blue! Don't be mean!”
Link blinked heavily. Ice brushed his cheeks, ice he could just see in his peripheral vision. He rubbed his eyes on a sleeve, ignoring the throbbing cold in his fingers, the deep ache in his side when he released pressure there.
“Please be careful, Green!”
“I swear if you leave me with these keese-headed boko-fu..”
“Blue!”
Link frowned. The flashbacks were old hat. The voices were new. He glanced left, then right. Just empty pine woods, swirling ice, and bits of wreckage from the plane half buried in snow, soft and pillowy as eider down..
“...duvet just for you. And. Well. For me too. Are you ready to try them?”
“Captain Link!”
Link jerked back into the present as at the authoritative voice shouting in his ear.
“Soldier! Your unit needs you to find a cylindrical piece of equipment 20 centimeters long and take it back to base camp. This is mission critical! Do you copy?”
Link looked around confused. It sounded like he had an earpiece in, but he could have sworn he hadn't put anything in, and the voice didn't sound anything like Private Proxi. He reached an arm up to investigate.
“Soldier! This is an undercover mission! Do not interfere with the communications equipment!”
He stopped his hand. Of course. Undercover. Why did he not remember the briefing?
“Soldier!” barked the earpiece. “This mission is time sensitive. Do you copy!”
“You can do it, Link,” another voice in his other ear said. “Just focus on standing up first.”
“Do you copy!”
“Just stand up, Link. I believe in you.”
Link planted a foot on the ground and stood.
Too quickly.
Through the pain in his side where he held his arm tight (not tight enough, din dammit) he vaguely registered that black motes swarmed into his field of vision. The world tilted, and the voices in the ear piece screamed very unique profanity until his frozen fingers found the rough bark of a tree.
“Are you ok Link?”
He smothered a laugh and whispered, “Worse things have happened to better people.”
“Oh Link…”
“Cry me a river! We’re on the clock, asswipe!”
“You can do it, Link. One step at a time.”
“Find the equipment! 2 O'CLOCK! Five paces! Aaaaand march!”
Link took a step.
***
Green gripped the Captain's hair like his life depended on it. Because it did. He could barely see the ground below them, though he could feel the gentle thump of the Captain's footfalls.
Green was incredibly grateful that the Captain's pomade had washed out, but the faint smell of bluebells still remained. He had to convince his counterparts to start using it. Honestly, Vio could shower more.
Blue had beat Green to the Captain's ear, and refused to let Green navigate. Green found his doubts surprisingly allayed when Blue began impersonating a drill Sergeant (profanity and all, much to Red’s horror). The combination of Red’s encouragement and Blue’s terse orders had pulled the captain out of whatever reverie had held him on the forest floor.
It had been smooth sailing since then.
Well, the captain still occasionally lurched unevenly on occasion, gripping trees for balance and swaying, and Green wanted to chalk his instability up to the poor footing, but he wasn't sure. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed Vio's observation skills to confirm his hunch that the captain was Unwell.
He wasn't an expert, but listening and obeying to random voices without question probably wasn't an indicator of peak psychological wellbeing.
And they were relying on this guy to get them back to the Four suit and ( blessedly ) warmth.
Hylia help them.
***
Legend was not one to worry about the wellbeing of people he just met.
Quite the opposite, actually.
He was not sadistic. He didn't immediately wish someone would faceplant into a dekubaba. He withheld judgement for at least thirty seconds, at a minimum.
So no. Legend was not worried that the captain had been wandering in a blizzard for half the night. He wasn't worried at all.
He was irritated. Peeved. Nettled.
Ah yes. His default emotion.
Why was he miffed? Why was he irked?
Well he did have to go back into the thrice-blasted blizzard to actually gather fuel for the fire, since the captain had failed the job. Which meant he had to put his wet pegasus on, since they hadn't dried out yet. Which was unpleasant.
And now, since Warriors was MIA, and Sky had finally passed out, and Four was quite literally comatose, it was up to Legend to keep the fire alive (and with it, himself and his companions) the whole night long.
The whole.
Night.
Long.
He wasn't waking Sky up to keep watch. Not because of altruism. Altruism was a virtue of the naive that Legend had long since lost. He simply didn't trust the guy to stay awake.
So Legend stared at the tiny flame, his front side sweating and his backside freezing, while Sky sawed logs and Four was (possibly) dead to the world, and the captain was doing Hylia knows what in Hylia knows where, and it was only the beginning of winter and he didn't have the first clue about wilderness survival.
Or cell service.
So no! He was not worried.
Not worried one bit.
Just a bit pissed.
He plunked another damp twig on their tiny fire that coughed up more smoke than warmth.
A thread of wind crept down into their snow fort through the vent, whistling like a badly tuned pipe and toying with the smoke as a cat toys with a feather on a string.
It sounded like desolation.
Legend considered how he could include such a melody in a composition. Perhaps a possessed piccolo? No, most piccolos were possessed anyways.
A crunch of snow interrupted his musical reverie.
A crunch and scrape. Right at the door to their little dugout.
Legend silently flicked out his knife. He couldn't risk using the handgun in their shelter. The concussion from firing the weapon might collapse the snow fort on top of them. Legend was no doctor, but he suspected that burying invalids would be bad for their health.
The scraping continued, rhythmic and methodical. And closer.
Legend imagined large shaggy animals with short ears, long snouts, and bone white teeth curving from rust red gums.
And claws. Always claws.
The scraping stopped.
The wind howled through the new opening, blowing in snow, the stench of sweat, and the soft scent of floral cologne.
Cologne?
Din, Faror and Nayru.
“Is that you, Captain?” Legend called softly, not putting down the knife.
A shaped became visible in the entrance tunnel, resolving into a very wet, very pale captain. The man’s lips were blue, his face whiter than cream, and his hair and long eyelashes stiff with frost. His hands were an unhealthy yellow, his nails an odd purple.
“Long time no see, Captain. What in Hyrule were you doing for so long? The bobsled?”
The captain looked at him with glassy eyes and blinked owlishly.
“Well?”
The captain’s cobalt gaze slipped away from Legend, sluggishly rolling over to the pile of his own heavy weather gear and his scarf, piled on top of Four and Sky.
“They're fine. Answer me. Where have you been?”
The captain shuffled mechanically toward the pallet on his knees. He held his jacket closed with one hand, and reached into a pocket with the other. Legend tensed, but relaxed when the captain carefully withdrawing a long thin cylinder of white metal.
Legend watched, perplexed, as the captain moved with singular focus towards Four. Peeled back the scarf. Then the bandage around the hole in the kid's forehead.
Legend stiffened.
“What are you doing, captain?”
The captain smoothed the hair out of Four’s slack face with yellow, purple fingered hand, and with the other carefully aligned the metal cylinder with the wound.
Legend froze.
He wouldn't dare.
He wouldn’t.
“What the..”
He did dare.
The captain plunged the metal rod into the kid’s skull with a wet squelch, right before Legend tackled him.
***
Chaos.
Utter chaos.
Giants were wrestling over him, Red and Blue had been flung somewhere. The scarf he landed in smelled like blood and bluebonnets. People were shouting. Some of them were his people. Most of the noise was the pink-haired agent putting the captain in a choke hold.
Suddenly he was engulfed in warm blackness. His stomach swooped with an abrupt change in elevation. When he opened his eyes, he was face to face with the master copy of his face, one thousand times larger than his own. The Four suit’s hand lifted him up to the navigation capsule imbedded in his forehead, and Green leapt across the gap.
His terminal flickered green. Vio threw him a smile from his terminal. Red and Blue tumbled in after him, closing the hatch.
They scrambled into their chairs, snapped the belts to with a satisfying snap.
All systems were go.
Green ripped off his own bandana, seized the neuralink, and jammed the link into the socket in his own forehead.
***
This time, it was Legend who pinned the captain in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
The Captain's frozen hands scrabbled uselessly against Legend’s arm. The man's dress shoes shook feebly and more feebly.
It was barbaric, but the man was a murderer.
Legend had seen people die, monsters die, animals die, but he didn't think he would ever unsee a hypothermic officer take out a kid by flashdrive through the skull .
“Legend! Stop! You're going to kill him.”
What.
Legend looked up from watching the Captain's feet tapdance. He was hearing things.
Four sat up, looking back at him. A thin trickle of blood wept from the round hole in his forehead, between his eyes and down the side of his nose. Between his open and alert eyes.
“What.”
“Stop! You're going to hurt him!”
Legend let the captain go. He rolled onto his side, gasping like a drowned man.
Legend realized his mouth was open and shut it. Then he opened it again. Shut it again.
Four raised an eyebrow.
“...how?”
Four’s face cracked into a huge shit-eating grin. He made jazz hands.
“Ta-da!”
Legend’s brain shifted from reverse to fifth gear, belched smoke, then began screaming.
Instead of yelling, he put his finger directly between Four’s eyes, moved it closer until the kid was cross-eyed, and growled, “Mister Link Forough Coone? You have some explaining to do.”
Four shrugged, still with the shit eating grin. “what can I say? I'm four raccoons in a suit.”
***
Deep in remote Hebra, a pack of mutant wolfos lifted their heads simultaneously.
They had just heard an ear piercing scream of primal rage, echoing from within their hunting grounds. They exchanged looks, and collectively did the mutant wolfos equivalent of a shrug.
As one, they put their noses back to the ground. Their prey had been here. Recently. The shoe and knee prints in the mud still warm. The blood, black in the dark against the pale snow, smelled of fear and desperation.
As one, the lifted their heads. Sniffed the air, the trail.
The trail that led down toward the hollow, toward the scream of rage, and toward warm flesh.
As one, they howled.