Chapter Text
Nocturne realized quickly this was not one of his siblings' dreams. He pushed himself up from the dirt floor uneasily, aware the soil felt wrong—but so, too, did the air around him and the towering dirt walls. There was something painted there, dark like blood, and no obvious way out.
There was something painted on the floor as well, but the design kept twisting like fabric gripped in someone’s restless hands.
None of this felt good; none of it felt natural. Every breath felt uneasy, like something was crawling down his throat and he swallowed and prayed nothing brought that memory closer to the surface in this wretched place.
Then he turned once again and faced a demon.
He did not know this one, at least not on sight. It was small for a demon, about Nocturne’s own height and slender in pale white clothes and skin. It's skin glittered, like something metallic or broken glass and when it noticed Nocturne’s attention it smiled with broad, white, human-like teeth and came over, walking with a dancer’s grace.
The demon spread its hands and grinned. “Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting company, nevermind someone so prestigious as one of the Three’s own Protectors. How did you come to wander into my humble dream alone?”
“I did not,” Nocturne said and straightened. He felt for his own sword and had a sudden lurching feeling of horror when he could not feel it. He didn’t feel his armour, either: he was wearing the clothes he last remembered having on, a simple shirt and pants to sleep in…
When had he fallen asleep? He couldn’t remember. He should have; that was how his kind dreamed.
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He hadn’t struggled with memory in months; he'd settled that nearly a year ago. He’d thought himself recovered from the aeons he spent as a mask, but—
The strange demon grinned and plucked from thin air a perfect copy of the mask in which Majora had trapped him for so many years. “Looking for this?” it purred.
Nocturne’s heart skipped a beat. He looked at the demon, lips tightly shut and breath carefully controlled. This was some kind of dream, he knew that. But this was not how Protectors like him normally dreamed, and his heart raced in his chest as he tried to figure out what this was. It felt like what he knew of human nightmares: a dream not built of unpleasant memories, but one in which everything was wrong.
The demon vanished from before him in a splinter of black light. Nocturne clenched his hands on open air, only to freeze as a hand closed in his hair and jerked his head back. Moments later, something flicked over his ear, cold and sharp, cutting skin and flicking across his cheek as teeth grazed the outside shell.
Nocturne roared and spun, sinking his fist into the chest of that damn demon. He slammed the creature back, but his fingers ached like he’d struck Hebra’s shield dead on rather than flesh. The demon looked briefly enraged but just as quickly it struck back, dart-like daggers appearing before him and shooting into his flesh. Nocturne darted back, injured—injured moderately badly—but the blades hadn’t gone very deep. He pressed a hand to the worst and fought to master his racing heart.
He could still feel the sting of blood dripping down his ear.
“Oh, how fascinating you are,” the demon said, its voice caressing the words like a purr. “A God fallen prey to such wild emotion. You hated that. What a sweet treat… for me.”
Well, that reaction from a demon was familiar at least. Many of them were insane; more were simply sadistic above all else. He swallowed, trying to think rationally. He just needed to keep this fucking thing away from his head…
A statement easier said than done, as it splintered into black light a second time. Nocturne took two quick steps back and—what? Tried to anticipate it? He didn’t know this demon; didn’t know how it fought or what its tactics were, besides that it liked scaring him.
It was magic, not even sound that cued him. Nocturne felt the air move, the flash of power and dodged clear of the next set of daggers. He snatched one out of midair and spun to plunge it into the chest of the demon as it appeared behind his back.
The demon shrieked in rage. It backhanded him across the face and snarled curses in dead languages. Nocturne hit the ground and needed a second to get back to his feet, dazed from the impact on the side of his face: the demon hit hard, and something about this place was draining him the longer he was there; he'd been drained even before he lay down to sleep. He didn't feel as much resilience to damage. He wasn't healing as fast, still bleeding when he should have stopped.
“You wounded me!” the demon snarled. “How dare you, you presumptuous little moonbeam! I will skin you alive before I let you go, for your audacity to land a blow—”
Nocturne rolled to his feet before the demon could lunge, this time wielding a long, black steel sword. It turned and pointed it at him as he rose, the blackened crack where Nocturne had turned its own weapons against it glaring against the white clothes and white skin.
“Majora nearly died sealing me,” Nocturne retorted. “What makes you think you can do better?”
“I’ve killed more of your siblings than any other,” the demon boasted and Nocturne let his skepticism show on his face. The demon saw it and smiled, baring its teeth. “You don’t believe me? I had the divine pleasure of more than a dozen of you screaming under my blade. Perhaps you remember my name: the demon lord Ghirahim?”
Nocturne raised both eyebrows. The metal body he’d felt—that made more sense, now. “You may have dealt the killing blow to my siblings, but it was not your hands at play.” He knew the name of the sword spirit of the Bringer of Demise, but that was all it ever was. “You call yourself a demon lord, now? I’m sure that amused many of the real ones in your time. Has the void fallen so far as to set you loose in place of a real demon?”
The black knives appeared again, spun and lunged for his face. Nocturne dodged clear and once again grabbed one from mid-air—but this time Ghirahim appeared before him and plunged its sword through his gut.
It mattered little. Nocturne raked the black knife across the side of the demon’s throat before the blade vanished from his grip with stinging magic that bit into his palm. The demon seized his hair and jerked it back, keeping him pinned on its blade as it pulled him close against its chest.
“I will make you regret every word you say demeaning me,” Ghirahim purred. “There is no way out. You can’t escape me here, so you're my toy until I see fit to release you.”
He’d been trying not to think about it. He dug nails into the sword spirit’s shoulder, but—true to its nature—there was no give, no soft spots on its skin. He tried to push, to struggle despite the gaping agony (he’d been wounded far worse before; he could not die of mortal injuries in a dream) and Ghirahim snaked its long, sharp tongue out to rake a cut across his throat.
It came nowhere near his ear, but still it stung as if the cuts were fresh; cuts that should have already closed were his healing intact. He clamped down on his breathing before it could give the sword spirit the satisfaction of seeing his breath race. Nocturne wasn’t sure how much good it would do, however, when the spirit was pressed so close it could likely feel his heartbeat.
“Let. Me. Go.” Nocturne growled, and hummed in his throat a song to call down stars even without his sword to aid him. He felt the vibration in his throat…
...and nothing else.
There was no power to his voice, no call. Like his missing sword, there was something between him and the world, the dreams he knew and his stomach dropped and kept dropping in fear. He hadn’t been unable to use power like this since—
He pushed hard to get free of Ghirahim’s grasp. Its steel hand twisted again in his hair and the sword spirit laughed before leaning into his chest to bite his earlobe instead. Sharp teeth cut his skin with ease; the spike of pain there, of all places, made him gag.
“Tell me why you hate this so much, Protector?” Ghirahim purred. “Was it part of the fun Majora had when it got the chance to play with you?”
Nocturne drew back his arm and punched Ghirahim’s shoulder as hard as he could in the space he had. The sword spirit hissed; his knuckles stung, but the impact had bought him a moment’s reprieve, enough he could think.
“Did Majora never tell you?” Nocturne said, struggling to keep himself from shaking. He could feel his blood running so far down his body it had reached his knee and wondered again at what this even was.
This was a dream, but not one with his siblings. He tried to reach for them and couldn’t, anymore than reaching for songs of power or his sword had worked. What had worked was pissing Ghirahim off: the sword spirit vanished its sword from his gut, letting a gush of blood soak his shirt and forced him down to his knees with the hand in his hair.
“Majora told us exactly what it felt like telling us at any given time. It said it thought it could capture you; obviously it did. We all heard what happened to Ikana and knew you were gone which was a fair trade. But,” Ghirahim spun, hand still in his hair and jerked him back until his shoulder rammed into its stomach. “Majora had some sense. None of the rest of us ever knew what that magic it used was. Do you want to show me? Let me see what fun it had with you before you died? How much of your body did it get to play with—is that why your pretty, long ears are so…”
The sword spirit grasped his not-bleeding ear with one hand and twisted. Nocturne swore and his breath went out with a panicked snarl. One sharp nail pressed roughly into his ear canal, but stopped short of causing him to bleed.
He couldn’t stop panting. He bit his tongue rather than curse his name; the Bringer of Demise had hated any signs of weakness, and Nocturne didn’t doubt his sword felt it was equally pathetic. Cursing or, worse, begging would only make this worse.
Where Majora had been truly insane and unpredictable, the Bringer of Demise had been known to have a brutally efficient but sadistic streak. This… The fast breaths behind him (did it even need to breathe?) and press of that body to his back suggested he was, unfortunately, right that the sword matched its wielder. That finger twisted in place, then just as suddenly punched through his eardrum like a knife to his head.
Nocturne screamed. The sound rang off the pit in which they lay, robbed of any power: it was just noise, even as Ghirahim dragged him back to his feet against its chest and pressed its mouth to that same ear. Nocturne tried to fight, to throw off its balance: to take them both to the ground, because the world was spinning unpleasantly and he was still at least somewhat aware of gravity—
Then there was hard, bright pain and that horrible sensation of losing touch with his body came back.
Ghirahim was humming. Nocturne could feel it against his jaw, feel its tongue flex in his ear and its arm as it held up his weight because his legs had stopped working. There was a long, unpleasant slide of that hard tongue inside his head, before it pulled away and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground.
He couldn’t even catch himself. Couldn’t stop his head ringing off the cursed soil beneath him, or the feeling of fluid dripping along the shell of his ear. He… he tried to heal himself, tried to reach for enough power to fucking try and—and he couldn’t. The world spun and his terror sent it around faster and faster as his heartbeat raced in his chest.
“Well, what a pleasant surprise.” Ghirahim purred. It kicked him over onto his back, Nocturne closed his eyes rather than stare at whatever expression was on its face. He felt the boot press down on his sternum all the same. “You really do hate this in particular? I suppose Majora paid enough attention to realize just how fragile your bodies are. At least you have some resilience—I could never have done that to either of your sisters' dear Chosen.”
Nocturne opened his eyes then. He looked at Ghirahim, his breath cooling a little as he latched onto something besides his own helplessness. He hated having so little control: eyes and only parts of his mouth, but not his neck or jaw, not arms… Ghirahim knelt over him and licked its lips pointedly as it reached out and grabbed his dripping ear to force his head to turn.
He wished he couldn’t feel, but demons were as skilled as any Protector at knowing the body. He felt it just fine as Ghirahim licked the edge of his ear and closed its mouth over the tip, sucking like it was a some kind of candy in its mouth.
And one hand had pulled up his tunic and slid under the top edge of his pants.
Nocturne was not pleased he’d since remembered Majora doing that; it was no better from another demon. He felt the rage in the base of his throat and choked on it, grinding his teeth even as Ghirahim hummed something against his skin and let go with its mouth as its cold hand closed over his cock.
It took a few seconds—a few strokes of the sword spirit’s hand—before he opened his eyes again. When he did, he found Ghirahim was staring at his face like it meant to devour him alive, like his expression was everything it wanted in that moment. Its fingers were smooth, its grip careful of the fact its strength easily could have hurt him…
...but the spirit did not want to hurt him that way. Nocturne swallowed and forced his eyes closed, his face even. If he could deny it nothing else, he could rob it of his pain.
One idle, sharp finger trailed a fold of foreskin under the crown of his cock, a pain too sharp to suppress. He just wasn’t used to such touch and it was slowly driving him insane—
“So reactive,” Ghirahim purred. “Do you rise so easily to your own touch? I wish I could have had another in my hands like this—perhaps your sister, or her Chosen—”
He wanted his sword with a brief, violent need that swamped him like a wave. He snarled; choked on the sound and his hand came back into his awareness like a clap of thunder. He sat up in his bed, his sword heavy in his palm and he stared into the darkness with utter bewilderment.
What had woken him? His heart was beating violently in his chest; his whole body rang with energy like he’d been racing wildly across Hyrule Field, not laying in bed. There was, at the back of his mind, the exhaustion that had taken him to his bed in the first place still unabated and a memory of vertigo, but…
There was nothing else in the house. No sound; no companions. Saria had stepped out to visit the Deku Tree; Aevum was wherever Aevum took herself. Link was away with Hebra, Oceanis, and Enma as planned—they'd left two days ago.
His sword was still in his hand.
Nocturne stared at his palm in incomprehension. He should dismiss it; there was no threat, no reason to keep it close. He still felt strangely dizzy, even if focusing brought him back to earth. But he felt uneasy letting it go, as if something might sneak up behind him. He didn’t want that. Didn’t dare. He…
He didn’t like just how alone he felt right now, is what he supposed it was. But that was a pointless thought to have. His son was with his siblings; they had their own business, their own concerns. This had been planned. He wouldn’t bother them.
Deities didn’t have nightmares; only he was so unlucky to have a memory so fractured it felt like one.
This was no different.