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skyward-floored · 1 year ago

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Whumptober Day 8: Outnumbered, (alt) Betrayal

I originally gave up on today’s prompts because they were annoying but after I’d written this whole fic I realized outnumbered kind of works actually so! Regular prompt and an alt were used today ✌️

Read on ao3

Warnings: oh boy. Uh, mildly suggestive, dehumanization sort of..? Kind of human-trafficking vibes, but it doesn’t exactly occur. There’s some alcohol. Also a bit of being drugged. And mistreatment of fairies. ...I think that’s it.

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A faint pink glow guided Hyrule, Warriors, and Time’s steps through a town in the captain’s time, a jingling that Hyrule knew was born out of nervousness accompanying the light.

The fairy led them all through the town, further and further away from the center and towards the unlit stores and quiet docks. The night only seemed to grow darker, and Hyrule found himself keeping closer to the other’s sides, a feeling of apprehension he couldn’t ignore making his stomach clench.

Right as he was about to ask if the fairy really knew where she was leading them, she zipped down a side street, sparkles trailing behind her, and finally bobbed to a stop.

Hyrule looked up, and grimaced.

The fairy had led them to a building with its windows still lit despite the late hour, her dark pink light catching on a crude portrait of a great fairy holding an overflowing flagon of ale. Faint laughter filtered through the cracks in the door, and Hyrule thought he caught a whiff of alcohol.

Oh hooray, a tavern.

Hyrule gave the picture on the sign a look of distaste, but before he could say anything, the door abruptly swung open. Two men walked out, and the three heroes, ducked around a corner so as not to be seen. A hiccuping laugh came from the one man, and the other slapped him on the back as they stumbled away, neither walking straight.

“So this is where you saw the men take Proxi?” Warriors whispered as the revelers disappeared from sight. The fairy jingled an affirmative as she poked her head out from his scarf, practically shaking with fear.

“Mm-hm. Th-they put her in a tiny bag, one way too small!” she squeaked, sounding terrified. “And she’s not the only one, they had lots of other fairies! I followed them here, but I couldn’t find anywhere to get inside without being seen, and... and I didn’t want to get caught as well.”

She sniffled, and Warriors gave her a gentle smile from where she’d perched on his shoulder.

“It’s alright, we’ll get her and the others back,” he assured, but the fairy still seemed nervous, her wings fluttering anxiously.

“You should get somewhere safe, if these people want fairies you’ll be in danger here,” Time warned, and the fairy quivered in fear. “We don’t want anyone else getting caught. Who knows what they’re doing in there.”

He glanced at Hyrule as he spoke, and Hyrule sighed, knowing the older hero was wondering if he should stay back or not. Time and Warriors were both aware he had fairy blood, and Hyrule could see why they would be concerned, but he wasn’t going to stay back just because of that.

“They won’t know I have fairy blood, and I’m not planning on telling them,” Hyrule said quietly, and glared back at the sign. “And I’m not sitting this out.”

Time nodded with a sigh, and Hyrule thought he caught a flicker of worry in his eye before he turned back to the fairy.

“What’s your decision, little one?”

“I-I’ll stay hidden with you,” the fairy replied quickly, and Hyrule could tell she wasn’t keen on leaving the three of them. She obviously felt safer around the heroes, and Hyrule couldn’t blame her.

Fairies being kidnapped was never a sign of anything good.

“All right, well, looks like we’re going in,” Warriors sighed, and Time nodded, straightening.

“Looks like it. We may want to split up though, I believe we’ll attract less attention that way,” Time said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Perhaps I can go in, and you two can follow together?”

Hyrule and Warriors nodded. He didn’t really think it mattered much, but if Time thought that was best, then who was he to argue?

Warriors suddenly raised a hand and began to muss his hair up a bit, making it look more scruffy. Hyrule stared as the captain then kicked some dirt off his boots, running it through his hair and making his blond seem more of a sandy color. Then he tucked his scarf inside his bag, and pulled out a cloak instead, nicely made, but in a dark enough weave so as not to attract attention.

“I’m the local hero, Traveler,” he said at Hyrule’s confounded look, “I don’t exactly blend in.”

“Oh! Right,” Hyrule said sheepishly, feeling foolish for not realizing what the captain was doing. He thought he’d... well, he’d honestly had no clue what he was doing.

Time hid a smile as he left their hiding spot and casually strolled into the tavern. A small burst of sound leaked into the alley with the opening of the door, then was silent again.

“You should be fine,” Warriors directed at Hyrule as he made sure their fairy was tucked safely out of sight in his cloak. “I would be shocked if anyone recognized you or Time... but if you have a cloak you might want to put it on.”

Hyrule nodded as the captain finished off his disguising, and pulled his own cloak tight around himself, looking at the tavern with no small trepidation. It didn’t seem like the sort of place he wanted to hang around, especially based on the drunken laughter that occasionally filtered through the cracks in the door.

He’d had very few good experiences in bars, and had a funny feeling this one would be no different.

They waited a few minutes to distance themselves from Time a bit more, and then Warriors walked over to the door, Hyrule following resignedly.

“Well here we go,” he grumbled, and pushed open the door before Warriors could, the captain following him into the noisy place.

Hyrule tensed, half expecting all sorts of horrible things as they entered, but... nothing seemed out of place. There was a strong smell of alcohol, sweat, and water damage from the nearby docks. The seats were mostly filled despite the late hour, and barely a head turned when Warriors and Hyrule walked in. The large woman manning the bar did glance at them, but then went back to wiping her counter, glaring at a man who spilled a few drops of his drink.

It just seemed like... a normal bar.

“Are we sure this is the place?” Hyrule muttered, and Warriors shrugged, looking around.

“If they’re keeping fairies for some reason, they wouldn’t do it in the open,” he murmured back, then plastered a casual smile on his face. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

They shoved their way to a clear table, Warriors easily blending in with the atmosphere. Hyrule followed suit, and they weren’t bothered as they ordered some drinks and sat down. Hyrule spotted Time across the room from them at a different table, but Hyrule knew better then to stare at him too long and attract attention, and he kept his gaze away.

Instead he studied the atmosphere of the tavern, wincing a little whenever the general noisiness upturned for whatever reason. The place wasn’t as rowdy as some places Hyrule had ended up inside, but it certainly wasn’t quiet, and uneasiness was still churning in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure if it was merely worry over the captured fairies, or something else... but something about this place was making the hair on his neck prickle.

“The men at the table next to you,” their fairy friend suddenly spoke up, just loud enough for Warriors and Hyrule to hear, “they’re the ones who took Proxi, I recognize their faces!”

Warriors nodded, and casually looked around the room while Hyrule flicked his eyes over at the men the fairy had indicated. They were a group of four, with varying appearances, but all of them looked shifty to Hyrule, covered in scars with weapons at their hips.

They were discussing something in low voices, and Hyrule casually leaned over, straining his ears.

“...thing bit me,” one man was saying, looking mad as he rubbed his hand. Hyrule could see bandages peeking from under his sleeve. “And it smarts too, this better have been worth it.”

“It will be, she says the buyer pays extra for the blues. It was lucky we found that one earlier,” a thin man said in a calming voice. “Though even just the pinks we’ve got in the back’ll be enough to set us up for life.”

The others seated at the table grinned, and Hyrule glanced at Warriors, looking to see if he’d heard. By the grave expression on his face, it was clear he had.

“I wonder what the buyer does with them anyway,” the first man said as he sipped at his drink. “Who’d want a bunch of fairies?“

Hyrule felt a flicker of indignation.

“Sells ‘em to doctors or something probably, who cares?” another drawled, taking a large draught of his beverage. “‘S long as we get paid.”

“Ah, but have you ever taken a good look at some of them? If they were a bit bigger, I think I’d want a few,” a man with scars all over his arms said. He smirked. “I saw a Great once, and if the little ones are anything like that... well, sign me up.”

The table burst into laughter, and anger rose in Hyrule’s chest as they began arguing about what the most attractive feature they’d seen on a fairy was, growing more and more descriptive— and crude— as they went.

One of them said something particularly lewd, and they roared with drunken laughter, Hyrule’s face growing hot with fury.

He was about to leap to his feet, but Warriors put a hand on his arm, keeping him from getting up. Hyrule nearly threw him off as he heard another one of them laugh again, feeling himself begin to shake with rage.

How dare they?

“Traveler, fighting these men won’t help us figure out what’s going on,” Warriors said in a low voice, and pulled Hyrule back down. “We need to be patient.”

“I’m not going to sit here and let them talk about fairies like— like that,” Hyrule hissed, but Warriors didn’t move. “Captain let me up, don’t you care—”

“It won’t change anything to confront them. They obviously don’t have the fairies with them, and fighting them might wreck any chance we have of getting them back,” Warriors said firmly, something sharp in his voice.

Hyrule finally looked at Warriors’ face, and realized the captain was just as angry as he was, blue eyes cold with rage. Somehow knowing that Warriors was equally outraged by the discussion made his own anger cool a bit, and he stopped trying to pull out of his hold, slumping in his seat.

“Fine. Then what’s the plan?” he asked, hunching his shoulders when the men at the table next to them laughed again.

“I’ll try and get some more information from our... friends, here, while you see if you can get in there,” Warriors explained quietly, tilting his head towards a curtained off doorway. “They said they had the fairies in the back, I’d assume that’s where they meant.”

“I saw them through the window earlier, they definitely went back there,” their fairy peeped from Warriors’ cloak, sounding even more scared.

“Fine. Good luck,” Hyrule murmured, and slipped into the crowd before Warriors could reply.

He made his way over to a shadowy spot next to the door, jostled and bumped nearly the entire way. Squeezing past a particularly large man, Hyrule tucked himself in the corner and waited patiently for an opportunity to slip through the door. He glanced over at Time while he waited, and saw that he was chatting rather amiably with the woman at the bar, an easy-going smile on his face.

Well hopefully he’s doing something useful, Hyrule thought to himself, still angry at the conversation he’d overheard. He knew Warriors was right about not fighting yet, but listening to them discuss fairies like that had lit a rage in him that wouldn’t be going away any time soon.

It’s no wonder fairies tend to hide from Hylians.

A barmaid finally walked past him into the back room, and Hyrule silently followed her past the curtain, finding himself in a dark storage room.

It appeared to be mostly kitchen items, extra food and barrels of what Hyrule assumed was alcohol of some kind. There were no fairies in sight, and Hyrule frowned as the barmaid left, looking around the room. It seemed like every other storage-type room he’d seen of this kind; messy, somewhat dirty, and no sign of anything illegal.

Well... not obvious ones anyway.

Hyrule began combing the room, his heart thudding in his chest. The bad feeling he had was even more intense now, and it made it difficult to focus on finding anything out of the ordinary. He kept having to hide when the barmaid returned multiple times, but he continued to look, aware that the longer he was back here, the more likely it was he’d be caught.

He was nearly on the verge of leaving and seeing if Warriors had had better luck, when suddenly he realized the crates in the corner were stacked oddly, like nobody ever actually wanted what was inside them.

Hyrule quickly went over to the stack, and noticed the faint outline of a door behind the crates, so similar to the wall it was nearly impossible to see unless you knew it was there.

Ah-hah.

Hyrule pushed the crates aside as quietly as possible, wincing at the creaking they made, then carefully turned the knob and slipped inside.

And nearly fell to his knees.

The room had no windows, but it didn’t need them, the inside lit by the countless jars lining the walls, all crammed to the brim with fairies. Several of them had at least three in one jar, a few filled tight with even more, and Hyrule couldn’t do anything but stare at them all in horror for a moment.

Most of the fairies were fluttering around in the jars, some swirling in more panicked circles, but some were lying worryingly still at the bottoms, their glows faint. The distressed magic from all of them was enough to make Hyrule’s head spin, chimes ringing in his ears, and he nearly tripped when he finally stepped forward.

How could someone do this?

“Traveler?”

He turned around at the whisper, and saw Warriors slip inside behind him, looking grim.

“Those men didn’t have anything to say to me, they must have thought I just wanted in on the money. I don’t think... oh. Farore preserve us,” he whispered as he looked around, and Hyrule swallowed.

He felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden, and barely noticed as Warriors stepped fully into the room, looking around in horror. The fairies noticed their presences then, and the chiming in the room grew even louder, frantic and hopeful as they realized who they were.

”Is that Link?”

“No, it’s his friend! Brother!”

“It’s Link and his friend!”

“Brother! Fairy kin!”

“Are you here to get us out?!”

“Brother please save us!”

“Brother!”

“Link!”

“Everybody quiet! Are you trying to bring the enemy in here?!”

At the bossy chime, the other fairies quieted down, and Hyrule looked around for the familiar voice that had spoken. One of the few blue glows in the room caught his eye, and Warriors perked up.

“Proxi!”

“Link!” she said with a happy jingle, and Hyrule smiled as Warriors reached up to gently take the bottle she was trapped in. “You’re here to save us?”

“We are,” Warriors assured, cradling the bottle. Hyrule swallowed back his nausea and joined his side, frowning at the sight. Three other fairies were pressed inside of the bottle with Proxi, and she herself was near the bottom, her blue glow dim.

“...Are you okay?” Hyrule asked in concern, and Proxi hesitated.

“She got hurt when they captured us,” another fairy said quietly.

“You’re hurt?” Warriors said sharply, and Proxi let out a dismissive jingle.

“Oh I’m fine, can you get us out?” Proxi asked a little impatiently, and Warriors sighed, then nodded, tugging at the cork.

It didn’t budge though, and no matter what Warriors did it refused to come out. Hyrule tried then, but he didn’t have any luck either, and they looked at each other in dismay.

They didn’t want to hurt the fairies, so they couldn’t try breaking the glass. Melting it or using anything heavy was out of the question as well, as were most methods Hyrule could think of, but how were they going to free all of the fairies if they couldn’t even open the jars?

“I think they must be magically sealed,” Hyrule said morosely after they’d tried everything they could think of. “There’s no way this cork is this strong without some help.”

“I don’t like what that means for this whole operation,” Warriors murmured, still carefully holding the bottle. “If they have enough resources to get so many magically sealed jars... this might be bigger than we thought.”

Hyrule swallowed, his stomach still unsettled.

“So what do we do?”

“Fetch Time, I suppose,” Warriors sighed. “See if he has any ideas. We need to tell him we found the fairies anyway, and I don’t see us figuring anything out any time soon.”

“He probably has an item or something that just opens bottles,” Hyrule said with a faint smile. “Or a mask.”

Warriors almost smiled back. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Someone’s coming!” a fairy by the door suddenly squealed, her voice shrill with alarm. Warriors carefully set the jar containing Proxi and the other fairies back on the shelf, then dove behind a discarded crate with Hyrule, the both of them ducking down as much as possible as the door slid open.

“...saw someone by the storage room, and those guards were in earlier. We better start shipping out tonight,” a voice said, and footsteps tromped into the room. “...Ugh, this place always makes my head hurt when we’re full.”

Hyrule pressed tighter against Warriors’ side as the voice drew near, trying to make himself smaller. The crate really wasn’t a good hiding spot, but there was nothing else in the room big enough to shelter behind.

Multiple sets of footsteps moved over to their side of the room, right next to the crate they were behind, and Hyrule nearly stopped breathing, forcing himself to stay still. Warriors swallowed, and Hyrule could feel his heart thudding where his head had ended up on his chest.

“Well you won’t have to deal with it much longer,” a different voice drawled, and Hyrule recognized it as one of the men who’d been at the table. “Once we load these in the hold you’ll be fine.”

It was silent for a minute, and Hyrule found himself holding his breath.

“Besides, we have other business to take care of.”

The crate Warriors and Hyrule were tucked behind suddenly lit up like a flare, a pink so dark it was nearly red flashing above them.

Hyrule was nearly blinded by the light, but when he looked up in shock, he saw the fairy that had guided them to the tavern chiming and flashing a deafening alarm, showing exactly where they were hidden.

Before Hyrule could even reach for his sword, he and Warriors were yanked out from behind the crate and restrained, unable to escape. They both kicked out and struggled, Hyrule even trying to bite the men that had grabbed him, but they were grossly outnumbered, and quickly subdued.

Both were tied up and shoved against the wall, but Hyrule only had eyes for the fairy who had come to them in tears earlier because she’d seen Proxi be kidnapped. She was floating right next to one of the men who they’d overheard at the table earlier, and a sickening feeling rolled through Hyrule.

“How could you?” he asked, anger and disbelief warring inside of him. How could a fairy fall so far to betray her own kind like that?

The fairy’s glow dimmed.

“They said they would hurt my sister,” she whimpered, and Hyrule felt a brief stab of pity.

“If you’d told us the truth, we could have helped you,” Warriors cut in with a grave look, and the fairy turned away.

The other fairies on the walls had been chiming frantically throughout all of this, Proxi’s voice shouting the loudest of them all, and making a truly deafening racket that only grew when Hyrule and Warriors were tied up. The men were obviously growing sick of it, and the one with the scarred arms abruptly drew a knife and pressed it to Hyrule’s neck, then looked around at the fairies.

“Shut up now, or he loses his life.”

The fairies went dead quiet.

The scarred man waited a second, then withdrew his dagger, placing it back into a holder at his waist. “Thank you. I would’ve hated to get blood on the floor.”

“Have you no shame?” Warriors snapped. “What you’re doing here is cruel, you can’t put that many fairies in one bottle without endangering their lives!”

The men laughed, and one looked Warriors up and down.

“Great, a knight with morals. Do we kill him?”

“Nah, look at his face, he’s a handsome one,” someone else spoke up. “Bet we could get good money for him downriver.”

Warriors slightly paled, but his cold expression didn’t change.

“What about the kid?”

“I’m not a kid,” Hyrule said, and didn’t flinch from the scarred man’s gaze when he strode up to him. “And you’re going to regret every single thing you’ve done here today.”

The man chuckled. “The only thing I’m going to regret today is that I didn’t make more money then I’m already going to.”

He leaned right up into Hyrule’s face, and the traveler still glared at him despite how his heart was thumping. His eyes trailed across his face, pausing when they got to his eyes, and he studied them in silence for longer then was normal.

“...Take them both. We can figure out what to do with them after we’re on our way,” he said as he leaned back, a deceptively easy-going smile on his face. “I think there’s more to them then meets the eye.”

He looked directly at Hyrule when he spoke, and the traveler’s blood ran cold.

He knows.

Warriors gave him a wide-eyed look, but then cloths were shoved over both of their noses, a sickly smell coming off of them. Hyrule struggled not to breathe, knowing it would be bad if he did, but he hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath.

Time had better notice we’re gone soon, he thought desperately, watching as Warriors began to slump next to him. Or we’re going to be in serious trouble.

Something struck his chest, and Hyrule gasped in spite of himself, breathing deeply of the sweet smell of the cloth. His head immediately began to swim, and he took in another breath without thinking. A voice said something above him, and Hyrule slumped against Warriors’ side as his senses began to leave him, one last flicker of desperation fighting to keep him awake.

He couldn’t let them do this he... he couldn’t...

Hyrule’s vision swirled into a black void, and he fell limp against Warriors’ shoulder, totally unconscious.

Time was their only hope now.