Work Text:
…il-
W-ld-
“Wild?”
Falling out of a memory is never the same twice. Sometimes it’s a gentle fade- back to the present, back to his body. Sometimes it’s disorienting- like a fever-dream, shattering into a clarity so sharp he’s left reeling from it.
Sometimes, it’s violent.
As so this one is.
Like being thrown through an iced-over lake- the glass-shard surface exploding beneath his back, the world churning and foaming around him, overwhelming, incomprehensible, a wild smearing tumble of colors and sounds blurring and smashing together around him. It burns along his skin and he pants searing ice into screaming lungs, but though he flails and grasps so desperately for the surface he cannot tell which way is up, how he has to swim, where even is his body-
Everything cuts, sharp and sudden, like a knife through a frayed rope held taut. The world snaps into rock-stillness, clear and bright and sharp around the edges, from a wild spin to a complete halt in the span of a heartbeat.
His head, dizzily, still lurches along with the movement it so insists he should be caught in the grips of. His eyes try to protest against the sight of the world before him.
It’s too much for his body, which elects to leave the argument entirely via cutting support from the crucial balancing mechanism that is his knees.
“Whoa, okay-”
Warm arms catch around his chest, fumble for a grip under his arms and against his side, tipping his body back to meet something solid and breathing from behind. The lurching, giddy spin as a head he can’t stop from limply lolling back to meet a firm support is validating to his mind, confusing to his eyes, and infuriating to his body- he tries to close his eyes, to block it out, but they just flicker, out of his control.
He hates this.
He swallows, caught on the edge of the thought- swallows hard, again, when the muscles of his throat and jaw feel odd from the action, not so much his own, disconnected and odd.
His head still spins, caught in the insistent opinion that he should be in movement, still- he does not remember the end of that fight, the one that bloomed before his eyes and caught up his body, and told him that he had been throwing himself out of the way of a pike’s flashing stab, catching the shaft on the side of his shield, and so there is a part of his head that still insists- well, he must still be moving, then, yes? He doesn’t remember stopping. His shoulders should be aching. There was a fight- should not his shield arm have a bruise pressing right where the strap digs in?
There isn’t. There’s not.
His arm is numb. Half his body is numb.
That’s… yes, that’s right. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it is, now.
He was…
“Wild?”
The wind through the leaves. The distant sound of birdsong. The trickle of a creek, the barest trickle over rocks.
The press of another person up against him- chainmail, under layered, thick cloth, solid arms, a soft, gentle fragrance mingling with the scent of the outdoors, a touch of sweat and weapon oil, the faint clinging of campfire smoke.
Flickering before his eyes- dark-light-dark-light, like a guttering candle, before steadying out.
Sky’s face comes into view, eyebrows drawn together close, eyes flickering from point to point on Wild’s face.
“... Wild?” Sky ventures, again, when his eyes land back on Wild’s own. “Hey, Wild, are you with me?” There’s no mistaking the blend of worry and hope in his voice.
Wild-
-realizes, fully, with all the sudden violence of being thrown out of a memory all over again, what just happened, and what is happening, and-
-oh no.
His groan is a weak thing, but it’s soul-deep, all the same.
“Hey, it’s good, it’s okay,” Sky tries to soothe, but Wild- no, no, it’s bad enough, already, that he actually fell, he’s not going to let himself be soothed down like an unruly horse. It’s through force and willpower and nothing else that he manages to push himself up and off from where he was draped against Sky like a fainting maiden, arms heavy as stones, protest in his whole body from the effort-
Sky lurches up with him, hands hovering, barely grazing against his back, face a mask of worry. And Wild-
-forgot a little something about what happens when he gets a memory that puts him on his ass like this. Namely, the sole and only reason he doesn’t normally get right back up afterwards.
The headrush hits like a battering ram, and with the remnants of the memory still clinging to his bones, muddling with his head-
-this time, when Wild goes down, it’s to blackness overwhelming his sight.
The last thing he hears is Sky’s panicked yelp.
Wild opens his eyes to the smooth gray stone of the overhang they set up camp in, and groans, throwing an arm over his eyes as his temples pound.
“Hey,” comes a voice from beside him, and when Wild peeks to the side, he’s met with Twilight, smiling wryly, cross-legged with his thigh up against Wild’s shoulder. “You gave Sky quite the scare, I’ve heard..”
“Shiiiit,” Wild groans, sleep-thick, dry mouth not helping with the monumental task of speaking understandable words. “I gotta- fffff-”
Twilight claps him on the back as Wild levers himself upright, letting his hand linger once it makes contact, just long enough for Wild to find his balance. “‘S all good.” He pauses. “Well. Maybe you should talk to Sky about it. He’s had… well, he’s had a day.”
“Ugh,” says Wild, then “Apology fruitcake or apology honey candies?”
Twilight hums. “Might want to do both.”
Aw, hell. “That bad?”
Wordless hum of confirmation.
Yikes. Okay.
“Uh?” Sky says blankly, staring down at his hands, which are currently occupied with both a bag of honey candies and an entire fruitcake.
“Sorry for making you think I was maybe dying earlier I’m fine now,” Wild chants out as fast as he can, pretending very hard he can’t feel his ears burning at the reminder. Stop that, being mortified that someone found him all messed up from a memory is old hat at this point. This is new ground for Sky.
“Um??” Sky says again, fumbling the second bag of honey candies Wild dumps into his arms. “I- what? No, Wild, I’m sorry, I had no idea how to help or anything-”
Wild’s already edging backwards to start his retreat. “It’s fine, you’re fine, Twilight’s already said he’ll handle this part of the conversation, have fun with that-”
“Huh?” Sky turns to stare at Twilight, who has been leaning up against a rock, clearly entertained.
Twilight raises a hand and waves at him.
“Thanks for getting me back to camp bye,” Wild says very quickly, and throws himself in the bushes to try and get as far away as fast as possible.
Bad enough to have passed out in Sky’s arms. Bad enough to have been seen at all during one of the worst reactions to a memory he’s had yet.
It would be worse to be in earshot as Twilight regals Sky with all the stupid ways he’s almost died thanks to badly-timed memories- also known as the reason why Twilight sticks to his side like glue whenever one happens.
Which- fair enough.
But STILL.
Wild trusts Twilight to do many things. To be a strong companion in battle. To be a brother at his side. To be strong and trustworthy and determined in the face of evil.
To not tease the ever-loving hell out of him for all the stupid situations Wild’s ended up in for the sake of setting a companion at ease?
Yeah, no. It’s gonna happen, Wild doesn’t even mind- he even told Twi a few more to pass on, for the Goddess’s sake- but he doesn’t have to stand there while it’s happening.
It might be for a worthy cause, but Wild can spend his time in much, much better ways than that, thank you very much.