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adrift-in-thyme · 6 months

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Whumptober Day 29: "What happened to me?"

Read it on Ao3

- First

- Summary: Link becomes an uwilling pawn in a dastardy plot

CW for possession, blood and injury, mentions of death, captivity, and torture

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Everything hurts.

Link drags his eyes open, groaning as consciousness alerts him to the agony that tears him apart. The emptiness he had been drifting in had been far preferable to this.

…whatever this is.

He stands in crimson-tinged near-darkness, held up solely by the manacles around his wrists and ankles. The only light source is from the pools of lava that gurgle and bubble on either side of him. The heat that emanates from them seems to claw at him, smothering and searing. Chained as he is, he can’t escape its reach.

Link swallows, wincing as something wet trickles down his forehead and into his eye. He can’t even tell where his wounds begin and where they end.

How had he even gotten them? He wonders, trying to force his dazed, jumbled thoughts into something coherent. And how had he ended up here?

As far as he knows, he has never set foot in this place before. It positively wreaks of dark power though, almost as suffocating as the flaming heat that burns his exposed skin and laps at the tattered remains of his tunic and trousers.

He closes his eyes, attempting to ignore the pain and let the memories he knows are there come forth. But they are stubborn things. He recalls nothing save for the abyss he had floated in, buoyed upon soft, weightless waves of light.

It was painless there. Pleasant, almost. Save for those odd moments when he had sworn he was doing something…speaking, acting, feeling. But those moments had not been his own. Not truly. No, his life, his reality…

Ah.

He blinks his eyes open again, a grim smile on his lips. The flickering of flames upon the obsidian surface of the opposite wall seems to taunt him.

He had been dead. Felled by Demise’s lightning, torn asunder by his claws.

And as he had taken his final breaths, Hylia had sent his people to the sky.

“Link, hurry! Jump into the light! Please!”

He had wanted to. In truth, he would have given anything to take to the skies with them, make a new home, get a second chance at protecting his beloved people. But fate had not willed it so.

Apparently, however, he is not quite off its leash just yet. Otherwise he would not be sitting here would he? In some cruel joke to the gods.

There is no rest for the wicked, he has heard some say. There is no rest for heroes either. Not the ones who failed, at least.

He should feel bitter, he supposes. All he feels is tired. It seeps in through the bloodied cracks in his skin, oozing into his bones and muscles, encompassing his soul. He sags beneath its weight.

Forgive me, Hylia. I do not know if I have the strength to face whatever trial fate has set before me.

“So, even in this place, you dare to pray to your goddess. It will do you no good.”

The voice booms around the space, echoing off of the walls. Footsteps join in its aftermath, loud and heavy, mingling with the scrape of a door sliding open. Link raises his head.

Before him stands an all-too-familiar figure. His hair is like burning flames, his flesh the color of ash. His eyes are ablaze with the fury Link faced so long ago.

“Demise.”

He spits the title with all the animosity he can conjure. There is no shortage of it, to be certain. It boils within him, hotter than the lava that leaps toward him.

“I thought Hylia sealed you away. How are you here now?”

“One could ask you the same thing,” the demon god rumbles. “But you have no right to question me in the first place.”

He stalks toward him and Link tenses.

“You are as much of a pathetic worm as you were back then.”

A clawed hand forces his chin up, nails drawing blood, hold so tight that Link grits his teeth to keep from crying out.

“I am not so pathetic as you think,” he retorts. “I defeated you back then, did I not?”

Demise laughs, actually laughs, and the earth shakes with the sound.

“You did nothing. It was your goddess who sealed me and her sword which saved your people. Your only accomplishment was securing an untimely death for yourself.”

His expression darkens. Link meets it with an answering glare. He refused to bow before this deity back then. He refuses to now.

“However, there are ways in which you can be useful.”

He turns away. A short distance away there sits a large throne, shrouded in shadow, and adorned with carved depictions of people writhing in agony. An enormous claymore rests against it and Demise scoops it up as though holding it is no feat at all. He runs a finger across its ridged edges and Link feels his breath stutter.

“You won’t kill me again so soon,” he says, steady tone belying the terrified turmoil within.

“No, I will not do that.” Demise walks back to him. Lifting the weapon, he presses the tip of it against Link’s neck. “Only humans kill indiscriminately.”

Link swallows, feeling the chill of cold metal on his skin. It is almost unnatural amidst all this heat.

“You may say that. But you certainly killed indiscriminately during the war. What of all the people you slaughtered in your attempt at bringing about a world of darkness?”

“You misunderstand, pitiful human,” he snarls. “I take as many lives as I wish. But I take them with purpose.”

He presses the blade closer. It bites mercilessly into Link’s flesh. Blood bubbles up beneath it.

“Know this. I threaten with purpose, as well. I have use for you and you will fulfill it.”

“No. I won’t.”

The blade bites harder. Link clenches his hands into fists. The pain within him is an unending rhythm. The heat smothers him. But he won’t back down. He won’t surrender. Whatever this demon god wants, he refuses to give it to him.

“No is not an answer you give to a god, fool.”

Suddenly, his body lights up with agony. Link arches back, a strangled scream breaking free. Flames sear through his very bones, fire courses through his veins. All he can see is red.

And then, just as quickly, it’s over. He sags against his chains, gasping for breath.

“There are nine heroes. Nine men and boys like yourself.”

He blinks, dazedly trying to comprehend Demise’s words.

“N-nine?” Link raises his head, hardly registering the absence of the blade. “There should…should only be one. Me.”

Again, Demise’s laughter fills the cavernous space.

“The failure you and your goddess share has haunted many, boy. These nine possess your spirit. I wish for them to be wiped from history itself.”

He hefts the weapon in his hand, regarding it calmly. Link stares dimly at it. Thoughts tumble through his mind in a panicked race to be heard.

Nine heroes with his spirit. A failure that doomed them all. Demise standing before him now.

The seal broke. It must have. And he hadn’t been there to recreate it.

…neither had Hylia.

No.

Link’s eyes widen.

He remembers bits and pieces of his last moments. Words spoken in soft tones. Broken messages that hadn’t seemed important in the face of death.

“I…shed divinity…simple human.”

He chokes on a cry.

Hylia, what did you do?

“My servants attempted to do the deed,” Demise is saying now, as though his previous words are not fit to destroy Link completely. “But they failed. Every one of them.”

Flaming irises skewer him. He is like a fairy trapped in the bottle of an unsavory person – helpless, terrified.

“You will not.”

Link bares his teeth in a snarl. A mixture of terror and guilt and hopelessness, he has found, quickly becomes rage in the heart of a warrior. It fills him now, blinding him to the pain, to the sorrow, dragging him from the depths like a wild animal struggling against the walls of its cage.

“What…what makes you assume I will do your bidding? You may have dragged me back from the land of the dead, but I have no goodwill in my heart towards you for it.”

He cocks his head, a harsh grin splitting his lips. Every word tastes like ash and blood in his mouth, an outpouring of the fires of battle roaring in his soul.

“Or perhaps you think you can intimidate me because my goddess is gone and my people with her? I assure you, I am well accustomed to facing terrors alone. Your idle threats don’t frighten me.”

“You dare speak to a god in such a manner, insolent human?” Demise practically looms over him, all flaming power and dark magic. He steps closer and his meaty fist closes around Link’s neck. He chokes, gasping as agony streaks up his throat and a skull-crushing rush fills his ears. “You will find that my threats are anything but idle. You will do my bidding.”

He leans in, heedless of Link’s thrashing and clawing.

“You will do it because I will make you. Open your mind, little human, and let me in.”

Link’s eyes blow wide with panic. His attempts to break free grow impossibly more desperate as the reality of what Demise is about to do strikes home.

He can’t possibly resist a god’s attempts to make him an unwilling, unthinking pawn. He isn’t strong enough. Especially not now, after everything.

I could not even slay him the first time. By the gods, I failed so completely that I burdened nine with the task that was meant only for me.

How on earth can I hold him back now?

He lifts his eyes to the heavens, tears of pain and desperation burning in them.

If you hear me, Hylia, help me! Give me the strength to…

His thoughts shatter. It comes at him in a rush of roaring power, thundering into his mind like an oncoming tsunami. And at the same time his body ignites again with searing agony. His world dissolves into a hellish haze of inescapable pain.

He thinks he screams. At least, that must be the terrible sound that echoes in his ears and tears at his throat. But he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of anything really. Suddenly, everything is upside down and sideways and a swirl of hazy, nauseating confusion.

“You are strong,” someone sneers and he hardly understands the words. “It sickens me. Fall before me, Chosen Hero of the Goddess. Become my puppet.”

Everything intensifies. Colors explode before his eyes, memories rush by at incomprehensible speeds – his own and those he has never seen before, that don’t even belong in his mind. Desires snake into his heart, his limbs grow heavy, his body unnaturally cold.

He screams again, but this time it is more pitiful, more weak – a last ditch attempt to protest what distantly, he knows is coming.

“Yes.” Demise’s face is inches from his. Abruptly, he can make it out with striking clarity. “You are mine.”

Link chokes on a sob.

I’m sorry.

He doesn’t even remember who he is apologizing to anymore. Or what he was doing here. Or why everything hurts so badly.

But he doesn’t need to. Not really. Because in the next moment, everything falls away.

Between one strangled, gasping, desperate breath and the next, he loses himself.

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unproduciblesmackdown · 9 months

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also more odds & ends orville info & more not Not orville/phil info as well:

"In Steinkellner’s version of Summer Stock, Jane Falbury (Danielle Wade) and “Pop,” her father (Stephen Lee Anderson), are struggling to hang on to the family farm. Their farm is one of the few in the Connecticut River Valley that hasn’t been absorbed by the Wingates, whose holdings completely surround theirs.

The widow Margaret Wingate (Veanne Cox), whom son Orville (Will Roland) aptly describes as having eyes “as cold as death itself,” plans to absorb the Falbury farm by the simple expedient of having Orville marry Jane. After all the two kids had decided they were engaged in first grade!

Enter the prodigal younger sister Gloria (Arianna Rosario) who has been seduced by the lure of the Great White Way. She returns to the farm bringing along Joe Ross (Corbin Bleu in the Gene Kelly role), the director of the show that will make her a star, its composer Phil Filmore (Gilbert L. Bailey II), and the entire company. She has generously offered the company, which can’t afford rehearsal space in New York, the use of the family farm’s barn. Sister Jane reluctantly agrees to the intrusion with the proviso that the thespians will double as farm hands.

As rehearsals progress, Phil discovers that Orville, a bit of a doormat who has been raised with the understanding that he will never have to work, is a musical wunderkind. He is enlisted to work his magic on the show’s score and begins to blossom.

Widow Wingate takes umbrage with all this and vows to shut the enterprise down. Fortunately, the cold embers in her soul are stirred to renewed life by her encounter with Montgomery Leach (J. Anthony Crane), the has-been ham enlisted to give Ross’s show some cachet, so all might not be lost.

[...]

They make this Summer Stock a veritable feast of nostalgia. I was especially taken by the amusing way Steinkellner used Jackie Gleason’s theme song “Always” to further widow Wingate’s plot to get Jane and Orville hitched.

[...]

Orville, who has found personal liberation in show biz, is accorded a moment that reminded me of a similar scene in the musical version of The Producers. In a triumphant declaration of his emergence from under his mother’s thumb he exults, “I’m in the theatre! And I love it!” The audience loved it, too.

[...]

As director, Feore has elicited some wonderful performances, especially from subsidiary characters. Veanne Cox is splendid as Margaret Wingate as is J. Anthony Crane as Montgomery Leach, the faded matinee idol. Will Roland (Orville) and Gilbert L. Bailey II (Phil) both have wonderful moments and their intense professional friendship is one of the show’s highlights."

INTENSE PROFESSIONAL FRIENDSHIP you say....and also ofc everything about orville and wanting to be a musician and being in the theatre and he loves it sounds so good. i love it

#summer stock #orville wingate #will roland #also i guess they Are ambiently together / ''engaged'' already then lol #very cute really ''decided they were engaged in first grade''...and illustrative of both just kinda having been stuck in life the whole tim #mention of how the gene kelly epic solo tap sequence that i can muse on context for but Does just kinda happen #now does have more context and like. a part in an arc lol. which also gene/joe just doesn't have much of at all in the film; so (an arc)#needless bit at the end as the reviewer is skeptical this show could be on broadway basically b/c it's not ''edgy'' enough #which is then bafflingly & exhaustingly explained w/juxtaposing ''disclaimers'' abt the content in Other shows on broadway #which is bad; irrelevant; bigoted; and also unfair not just to those shows but summer stock lol. and like everything. and everyone.#get tf outta here....talking about like well gee i guess an ontario reviewer like me might enjoy it but in New York....#like it's an nyt critics pick okay cool it. have Only read glowing reviews save the one critic who Didn't like the warm feelgood deal.#which is sure a thing that's possible to experience (though i don't think it makes for a Well Executed; Useful Review to hinge it on that)#but (a) warm feelgood material isn't like. riskier than what you deem Not ''unfashionably'' ''old-fashioned'' there #& (b) like many reviews point out that the feelgoodness Could've fallen flat or short or been too much but it was balanced / well executed #like don't come in here insulting the show with your supposed compliments lmao....Bizarre brushstroke of [ugh you know bway] shows....#which it then gestures broadly at as shows with a ''message''....just tiresome & useless little tangent at the end smhhh #anyways really do love this for orville. was already wondering if he plays that piano we see them dancing with...their adorable meetcute?#i would like to see it....makes it seem even more likely. or who knows if it's orville just reading some music left At that piano #and singing but also composing? arranging? in doing so....harmonizing....etc #i bet it's a delight. he Does get to work on the show....he's truly getting I Don't Dance'd brought into the show/theatre ft. bisexuality #taking votes for whether he's chad or ryan in that situation. the one not already in theatre but also the one attached to the antagonist

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