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adrift-in-thyme · 6 months

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Whumptober Day 30: Lab Rat + Examination

Continuation of Day 11

Read it on Ao3

- Legend & Hyrule

- Summary: Legend finds himself in the clutches of a mad scientist

CW for torture, experimentation, dehumanization, blood and injury, captivity, mentions of death, and a character briefly wishing for death

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Someone is talking.

Legend registers their voice dimly, through a fog he can’t make heads or tails of. It drags heavily at him when he tries to surface, oppressive and thick. Memories drift past – sensations of pain, feelings of fear.

There is danger here, they murmur.

What danger? He asks. But they flit away like fleeting phantoms, leaving his question unanswered.

And so he falls again, drifting on darkness as though it is the waves of the sea, awaiting the moment when everything will come once more into dizzying, blinding focus.

When it does, he almost wishes it hadn’t.

He awakens to the assault of bright lights. They glare down on him from above, glinting off the metal of the table he is strapped to. The rough fabric of the restraints grates at his exposed skin. Something hard and metallic encases his neck, uncomfortably tight when he swallows.

His eyes widen. The memories come rushing back, now, in a torrent of terror and discomfort.

Falling from a portal. Trying and failing to save Hyrule. The men on the boat, inspecting him, touching him, hands and breath hot and clammy. His promise…

“Ah, wonderful. You’re awake at last.”

Legend jolts at the voice and tries to sit up. But the restraints hold fast and he ends up only getting a glimpse of a familiar gray-haired man before collapsing back down. His head swims and he blinks a few times, trying to clear it.

“Oh, great,” he says, drily, voice cracking painfully. “It’s you.”

The man chuckles, the sound almost warm. “Indeed. We’re about to get started on something that could be monumental.”

There is a clattering of metallic objects near his head. Legend swallows hard.

“I do hope you are as excited as I am.”

“Oh, yeah I’m real excited. Can’t wait to get poked and prodded by some sadistic creep,” Legend retorts. Panic is rising fast within him, despite his attempts to suppress it.

“Oh come. Don’t be too quick to judge.” The man moves slightly into his line of sight again, something that looks disturbingly like a knife in his hand. “You are contributing to my research. And that’s a worthwhile thing, I assure you. The information I glean from you can be used for years to come.”

Glean. Legend feels bile rise in his throat at the word. For some unpleasant reason, it brings to mind gutted fish, fit for dissection; dead bugs with their bodies pinned.

“Now, tell me” —The man is facing him now, eagerness in his eyes. Legend fights not to squirm beneath his gaze — “what makes you transform? Is it a curse? A spell? Can you control it?”

Legend glares at him. “If you think I’m just gonna explain everything to you you’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”

“It will help this all go faster if you do.”

Yes, Legend realizes, he is definitely holding a knife. It glints in that cursed painful light. Slowly, he lowers it toward Legend’s legs.

“It will bring us to the important part of this examination. And most importantly it will ensure that your friend keeps his life.”

Legend jolts upward at that, fighting against the straps that pin him down.

“What do you mean?” There is an edge of harsh panic in his voice and all his strength isn’t enough to hide it. “What do you mean it'll keep my friend alive?! You said he would be safe if I came with you! You said you’d leave him on the shore! I saw you do it! I saw—”

He breaks off with a choked gasp. He is shaking, from cold, from adrenaline, from the fear coursing through him in waves. Then, a door he hadn’t seen before slides open and Hyrule stumbles through, bound and gagged and blindfolded, arm held tightly in the clutches of one of the men from the boat. And he is certain he is going to break right then and there.

“Rulie,” he breathes and Hyrule lifts his head.

He gives a muffled cry, struggling to try and break free. But his captor wrenches him back with a growl.

“You saw correctly,” the man says, with a calm that belies everything Legend feels. “I kept my promise to you. I left your friend on the shore as you requested. But somehow, he escaped his bonds and found us here. He brought this upon himself. Though, it never hurts to have a bit more leverage.”

The air feels tighter than ever now. Legend struggles to draw a full breath.

Hyrule, you idiot. Why’d you come here?

He sags back against the table, wincing at the bite of cold metal against his skin. If he wasn’t cornered between a rock and a hard place before, he certainly is now.

“What causes you to turn?” The man asks, leaning forward. Still, he holds the knife, situating it so close it almost presses into Legend’s knee. Legend doesn’t doubt that as soon as he transforms, it will plunge into his tail, searching out the gory mysteries of it. “Tell me or your friend will pay.”

His voice still embodies the calm of someone who has this entire situation perfectly controlled. And hell, maybe he does. It certainly seems that way.

Legend hates it.

He swallows. His mouth is terribly dry, panic situated in a hard, little ball in his gut. But he forces the words out anyway.

“It’s a curse. I thought it was just a magically-infused tool at first. But after I used it a few times, it became a part of me.”

His gaze flits from the man’s face to Hyrule, standing rigid, still in his captor’s grip. He is obviously listening — Legend doesn’t know how he wouldn’t be. Of all the ways he had wanted him to find out about his ability, this definitely isn’t one of them.

I’m so sorry, traveler.

“You cannot control it, then?”

“No.”

The man’s eyes are alight with that hunger again, the one that sends shivers crawling up Legend’s spine and makes him feel ill.

“Perhaps, we can do something about that.”

He motions to someone behind Legend. Footsteps sound and then the next thing the veteran knows, water is pouring down on him from above. He gasps at the icy chill of it, fingernails digging into his palms. It pools on the table, held there by its raised edges. And in response to its touch, Legend’s body begins to transform.

It is sheer agony.

Usually, the transformation is at least a little painful. His body is morphing, after all, fitting into a form it was not created to take the shape of. But this, this is like nothing he has ever known. It is like the magic within him is a trickle that wants to be a stream, a wave held back by a steadfast barrier.

The collar. It must be suppressing my magic.

He grits his teeth, seeing white. He wishes he could stop it, this onward march of the curse, but he is helpless. All he can do as his legs seal together and gills and fins grow upon him is try not to scream.

Even that is a losing battle.

It comes out as his tail forms – a strangled, almost inhuman sound. It fills his ears, mingling with the pounding of his head and the sounds of Hyrule fighting to get free. And it only tapers off when breathing becomes immensely difficult.

Though there is enough water to activate the curse, it is not nearly enough for proper airflow. And the collar around his neck covers his gills, restricting it further. Suddenly, Legend is suffocating.

His eyes blow wide and he struggles, gasping vainly for breath.

“Fascinating. Your biology becomes that of a mer.”

The man comes into view, leaning over him. Roughly, he turns his head this way and that, inspecting him.

“Please,” Legend croaks, desperately, “can’t–I can’t…”

“Ah, yes of course. Can’t have you dying, can we?”

More water cascades down upon him. Hands grip the collar, loosening it slightly. Legend goes boneless, dragging in large breaths that make him dizzy.

It’s a bitter mercy, but one nonetheless. At this point, he’ll take what he can get.

“Now, to do something about the uncontrollable nature of this curse.”

Someone is touching his tail now, but Legend doesn’t have the strength to lift his head and see who it is.

“All things can be brought into submission, you see, with a bit of effort. But first, I must study the makeup of this new body. The changes cannot be fully ascertained from the outside.”

Danger, his mind shouts again. Get out before it finds you.

Still, Legend cannot make sense of it. After the onslaught of pain and near-suffocation, everything feels sluggish and distant. He just wants to sleep.

But then, Hyrule screams something that sounds awfully like the word “no,” and his tail explodes with pain. The exhaustion flees, replaced by crippling, terrifying agony. Someone is slicing him open, he realizes as he thrashes, choking on blood. They’re cutting into his tail with all the careful precision of a scientist…and without the merciful use of a sedative. Or death.

Aren’t things that are dissected usually dead?

The thought isn’t comforting. Nor is it enough to distract him from the endless pain. He is buffeted by it, suffocated. Everything is on fire, everything too harsh, too bright. Wordlessly, he begs for the sweet release of oblivion. But it doesn’t come. Instead, blurry forms surround him, holding him down as he continues to fight back, tightening his bonds, digging their nails into his skin.

“Remain still,” comes the man’s voice. “If you’re not careful you will cause me to cut something vital.”

He is moving things around now, from the feel of it. Inspecting his insides, Legend guesses. He doesn’t know for certain. He doesn’t care to. He just wants it all to stop.

“Please,” he tries to beg, “please stop this.”

But blood gurgles in his throat and he chokes on it, every cough sending sharp aches splintering through him.

“Stay still, brat.”

A sharp slap stings the side of his face. Tears burn hot in Legend’s eyes. His head snaps sideways and he can see him now – Hyrule – fighting desperately against his captor’s restraining grip. The blindfold has fallen as a result of his efforts and his eyes meet Legend’s, large and filled with fury and terror.

He yells something incoherent – perhaps a protest, perhaps a promise. Legend can’t tell. All he knows is that his heart is splitting open along with the rest of his body, the ache of it unbearable. Hyrule shouldn't have to see this. He was never even supposed to be here.

I failed.

A hiccupped sob tears out of him. Legend shuts his eyes. He is so weak, so helpless.

Curse this stupid power, curse the people who seek to exploit it, curse the shadowy monster who sent them hurtling through that portal…curse himself for being so foolish.

He would tear this place apart if he could. He tries, tries to call his magic to his fingertips. Pain is the only thing he gets, pain and the sound of someone yelling at him, chastising him.

It only adds to everything else. The man comments on how fascinating this form is. Hyrule cries out. Legend screams and screams until his throat is so ruined and hoarse he can’t anymore.

And then, abruptly, there is no sound at all. Finally, darkness swoops up and swallows him. --------------------------

Everything is a blur after that. A blur of pain and fear, a nauseating rush of color and sound and sensation. Nothing changes and yet everything does.

Sometimes he is lying on the table, strapped down and held down and thrashing like a wild animal caught in a cage. Others, he floats in what he thinks is a kind of fish tank, cramped and aching, watching rivulets of crimson dance and twirl on blue waters.

The collar cuts and chokes him. His gills ache from struggling against it. His fins are cut, his scales picked at, some peeled off for examination. His tail hardly even feels like a functional extension of him anymore. It is nothing more than a limp, useless thing made of muscles and nerves, crippled by pain, torn apart by the hungry hands of some mad scientist. He doesn’t even want to know what his legs look like. Not that he could tell anyway. He hasn’t transformed back into a Hylian since the curse took ahold of him here.

They have no use for a Hylian. But apparently, they have every use for a mer.

Legend doesn’t even remember what they wanted with him, or why he is here. He only knows two things now and they are all he really needs to. One, that he can’t escape, no matter how badly he wants to. And two, that being here, enduring all of this, somehow, inexplicably keeps Hyrule alive.

Even if the traveler’s eyes are bright with pain and tears every time Legend finds them, even if he bears marks from resisting his captors, he is alive. That is all Legend can hope for. He doesn’t have the strength to move beyond that.

So, he hangs on for Rulie’s sake. He hangs on even as he loses everything. Because he can’t lose his brother. He would rather be ripped to shreds and discarded, poked and prodded into oblivion, than watch him die.

The man has made it quite clear that that is the only alternative. The few times Legend had resisted after the first, he had described the methods in which he would murder Hyrule in intricate, excruciating detail.

“I will make it painful,” he had said, with that same infuriating calm that made Legend want to rip his head off. “Much more painful than what you’re enduring. And I will make it slow. He will be begging for death by the time I finish.”

Legend had given him a glare that could make Ganondorf quiver. But he hadn’t fought any more after that.

No. His fight is all internal now, a battle to hang on to the shreds of life he still has. He is stubborn to a fault, that’s for certain. But sometimes he wishes he wasn’t. Sometimes he wishes he would simply allow himself to fade away.

In the end, though, he is glad that he doesn’t.

There is nothing to herald an unexpected rescue. Nothing at all. He has been dunked in the tank today, barely holding on to consciousness, drifting in a sea of pain. Hylia only knows how much blood he has lost, or if he is trapped in this form forever, or if his tail will ever work again, his wounds ever heal. It hurts so badly. But he has no tears left to cry.

When a flash of familiar blue streaks through the room, however, he nearly sobs anyway.

The one thing these monsters haven’t tried is making him believe in a false reality. But the sounds of his captors hitting the ground, the sight of Warriors’ face next to the glass, his hand pressed to it as he asks him questions Legend lacks the energy to understand…it all seems like a dream.

Then, someone is lifting him from the water, gently, carefully, and voices are swelling around him. The voices of his brothers. He curls into the arms that embrace him. A vibrant blue scarf is draped over his shoulders and he grasps it, fingers fisting in the soft fabric.

He must have changed back not long after leaving the water, body undoubtedly eager to revert to its natural state. Because for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he can feel air filtering in through his nostrils.

Legend sinks further into Warriors’ embrace, nestling into his scarf. Everything aches and his skin feels raw, almost stretched. But he is safe, secure in the arms of the people he loves. And they will take care of him. They always do.

Sure enough, their voices begin to become clearer, all familiar, all reassuring.

“I’ve got you, vet.”

“You’re safe now. We won’t let those creeps touch you again.”

“We need to get this collar off him…”

“We will. Let’s get these wounds taken care of first.”

“We’re gonna take care of you, Ledge. Just you wait. Hyrule’s spell will work. It always does.”

Hyrule…

Legend drags open his eyes, peeking out from his cocoon of warmth.

“R-rule…where…”

“I’m right here, Ledge. Don’t worry.”

Hazel eyes meet his own. A calloused hand cups his cheek. There is so much guilt in Hyrule’s expression, so much pain that Legend’s heart aches from it.

It’s not your fault. None of it is, he wants to say, but all that comes out is a groan as magic begins to flow into his body. It is equal parts pain and relief. His eyes flutter closed again as it seeks his wounds, mending them little by little.

“I’ll heal everything I can,” Hyrule continues. “You’ll have scars and…and I can’t promise your mer form will be the same it used to be. But…I’ll do my best.”

Legend hums, only distantly aware of the sound rumbling in his throat. Hyule’s magic grows stronger, more determined, rushing like waves through him, and he loses himself in it. It wraps around him, envelops him in warmth and safety and a fire that is all Rulie’s own. He is safe in it, wounds soothed, agony growing dimmer.

Then, abruptly, it stops.

Legend gasps at the suddenness of its retraction, eyes shooting open, panic lighting up within him.

“What…”

He doesn’t have to find the strength to finish the question. He can see him through the forms of his brothers situated protectively around him – the man who had torn him apart. He stands a short distance away, eyes snapping with anger, a strange, little device in his hands.

Legend has a nagging feeling that he has seen it before, somewhere in those memories that are little more than a horrifying haze of agony. But he can’t recall what it is used for…or if he has ever even seen it in action. If it caused him pain, it was likely lumped in with everything else. Too much pain, he has learned, quickly becomes one, single, incomprehensible blur.

“Give him back!” he demands, sounding angrier and more fearful than Legend has ever heard before. “Give my research back or I'll use this!”

“He is not your research and we will not return him to you,” Time growls, his voice a thunderclap. “Stand back or we will make you.”

He levels his claymore at him, but the man doesn’t budge.

“You haven’t been able to get that collar off yet, have you? Well, with just one push of a button” – He holds up the device, fingering one of the many, small buttons upon it – “it will cut off his magic completely. I don’t know if you know this, given that you are not experts like myself, but he is so intricately linked with his magic now that he needs it to survive. It can be twisted and turned if one can find out how. But it cannot be ripped from him, or torn away.”

Legend’s grip of Warriors’ scarf tightens. He exhales a shuddering breath.

He doesn’t doubt what the man says. To be deprived of his magic…well, he doesn’t even know what that feels like. He doesn’t want to know.

“You won’t kill him,” the captain says, eerily calm. “You need him. You can’t work with someone who is already dead.”

“I can make do,” the man replies. “A dead subject is better than none at all.”

He lifts the device a little higher, finger almost pressing the button. “Now, give him to me or I’ll do it.”

Legend tenses. But then he feels Warriors hand, traveling upward as though to cup his head. His fingers swiftly change direction, playing along the collar instead, searching out a way to remove it. After a moment, they catch on a small latch. He pulls and with a streak of relief, Legend feels the collar loosen.

Hyrule glances back at him from where he had risen, a human barrier between Legend and the scientist. Something unspoken passes between them and suddenly, Hyrule’s fingertips crackle with energy.

Time steps forward. “We would never give our brother to a monster.”

The man scowls. “So be it.”

He presses the button. Warriors pushes down on the latch, hard, and the collar slips from Legend’s neck. It clatters to the ground, reverberating with an unsettling energy. Wind kicks it away.

At the same time, Hyrule leaps forward, arm outstretched. Magic courses through him, hitting the man with such force he flies back and into the wall. He collides with it with a sharp crack and slides down, limp and almost lifeless.

“Well done, traveler,” Time says, already stalking toward the figure. “I’ll make sure he is secured.”

“Then we can get out of this place,” Wild says. “I’ll bet our vet is more than ready to get back to camp.”

Legend nods, choking out the breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding. He curls into Warriors, trembling slightly, and the captain tightens his grip on him in return.

“They’re all gone,” he assures him, softly. He cards a hand through his hair and Legend shudders, slightly, eyes going half-lidded. It has been so long since he was touched in this way, since the hands that held him were gentle and trustworthy and kind rather than rough, vengeful, and agonizing.

“That scientist was the last one.”

Thank the gods.

Hyrule kneels before him again, fire in his gaze, emerald magic glowing in the palms of his hands.

“We’ll be out of here soon, vet. But for now, let me heal you properly. It’s the least I can do.”

The magic comes again like the wind on a warm, summer day. Legend closes his eyes and lets it envelop him.