It wasn't that Princess Zelda couldn't find any words. She found words -coherent, thought-quenching words- floated around in her head, but whenever she tried to focus on one, it seemed to dissolve into an unreachable part of her wise, scrutinizing mind. Vio, sensing that the princess probably wouldn't like the gory details about his blue clone's reaction to the injury, quickly dressing Red's wound in gauze, immersing the arm in ice water (originally, they had plenty to keep themselves hydrated and cool during training), and carrying Red's unconscious –but still breathing- form to the hospital, finished the story by relaying only the most important facts about those events to her.
Blue, sensing that he would be recalled into the foyer soon, began composing himself. Green, who had no idea how to comfort a lamenting version of himself, let alone Blue, in this situation, allowed Blue to calm down on his own. The hotheaded hero appreciated this. He hates pity when it is directed at him.
The doctor took one last look at the patient before entering the foyer. The figure of the red-clad boy with his eyes closed and hair tousled in a secret technique known only to the hat, looked very peaceful, not at all like he had been in a battle only moments before, as his identical quadruplets had explained. The doctor took a deep breath, and entered the foyer of the Sage's hospital.
The doctor didn't get a chance to introduce himself to the two bodies, a boy identical to his patient (the only difference being the purple garb that the boy wore) and the princess, before a third person, another identical boy dressed in a different color than the patient or the violet boy, skidded inside and barraged the poor doctor with questions.
"What's going on with Red?" The boy with clothes that matched his eyes asked, "Can I see him? Will he be all right? Is he awake? Are you making sure that he's comfortable?" A fourth boy, this time in green garb, ran in after the blue boy and quickly restrained his clone.
"Sorry," the boy in green quickly apologized, "we're very worried about our friend." The doctor, naturally, understood the boy in blue's concern. He had seen it in many families, including his own. The doctor gave Blue an empathetic smile and motioned for everyone to sit down. It didn't take long for the Links to catch on, but the princess, understandably given her Triforce, was a little tired of being patient to receive information.
"Well, don't keep us waiting." Zelda said as she stood up and put both hands on her hips. The doctor, acknowledging the princess with a quick bow, responded a little more-than-casually.
"I'd never dream of it, milady. But…" here, the doctor paused and bit his lip contemplating the best way to go about this. "Would you like the bad or the good news first?"
Bad move.
The boy in blue practically leaped out of the wooden seat he had chosen and tackled the poor doctor.
"What bad news? Isn't everything all right with Red? Is he sick? Is he breathing? Did you let him-" Blue snarled at the doctor, but was cut off when Vio stepped between Blue and the doctor, and the doctor regained his personal space back in the same procedure as when he first walked into the room (only with Vio leading the way instead of Green and with the smart Link telling the bluer one to shut up, calm down, and sit).
Blue, for the third time that day, regained his composure and forced himself to step away from the doctor, while mumbling a half-hearted apology. Vio then turned to the doctor, nodded, and returned to his seat. The doctor, catching his cue to continue, cleared his throat to start doing just that.
"Well, the good news is," he began, "your brother has finally stabilized." The relief in the room was pungent. The boy left exhausted through his sudden attack grew about 3 inches, the leader relaxed (which caused him to lose about three inches), Vio stood there stoically (which was his way of showing relief), and Zelda sat down again. "However…" here, the man in scrubs needed, as he does all too often, to address the hardest part of his career path; administering bad news in a way that was both quick, and as painless as possible. "We're going to need to bring in some more… advanced doctors." Vio raised his eyebrow at the doctor suspiciously from his chair while the other three friends hadn't fully registered the words from the physician through their relief.
"What kind of advanced doctors?" Vio asked. The man in scrubs shifted from his left foot to his right foot and cleared his throat to make sure that everyone could hear him.
"Well, we've currently got your friend in a healing shroud. Do you understand what that is?" The physician began. Everyone nodded. It was a basic principle in their biology class. When doctors' patients have injuries resulting from sharp, solid objects, the doctor uses level-1 magic to create a clear, magical, and ethereal bubble. This bubble shrouds the patient and filters all air entering it, to keep airborne bacteria from reaching the open wound, while still giving the patient the normal mixture of air needed to live. "Good, glad to hear that the school system still works. Now, just because it's called a 'healing shroud' doesn't mean that it can fix every-" The doctor began to explain but was cut off by Blue.
"We just said that we understand what a frickin' healing shroud is, so would you just hurry and tell us why you need special doctors to heal Red?" Blue asked, irritated at the patronizing tone the member of the medical staff was using and worried about why he was using it.
"Yes, of course, sorry." The interrupted man quickly apologized, followed by an eye-roll by Blue. After hearing that Red was stable, Blue apparently gained some, but not all, of his spirit back. "Well, you see," the doctor attempted to continue, but paused rather often in an attempt to gather the correct words, "your quadruplet's arm… it… I don't know if it can be… well… reattached…" Blue's head and eyes snapped towards the doctor. His grief snapped back to him.
"Are you saying… Red might only have one arm for the rest of his life?" Green asked, eyes wide with fear. The doctor nodded.
"I'm going to bring in a professional from my home town of Kakariko Village. She's the best in the business, and if she can't reattach, I think you said it was Red, Red's arm, then… there's nothing I can do." The empathizing, scrubbed man informed the heroes and princess. The room allowed the people a minute of silence to soak in the news and imagine. For Vio, this minute was spent thinking about how he would break the news to his roommate and the types of books he should pick up on the subject of medicine. Green pictured teaching Red how to fight with only one arm. It would be a challenge, for sure, Green admitted, but I'm not one to back down from a challenge. Zelda determined how she would go about treating Hyrule's future medical guest (the more preferable path than to see her childhood friend crippled) and also all the medical experience the Hyrulean doctors could learn from the professional. Blue could only think about when Red woke up. Knowing Red, he'd probably do something strange. He'd probably say something about being a pirate and ask Blue for an eye patch, a stuffed parrot, and a fake hook for his... right side. What would the arm-less space be called? A nub? A shoulder? The arm-less space? Zelda stood up after a minute of tense silence.
"Thank you for explaining, sir. Now, I understand that patients of combat wounds aren't allowed visitors for one day and we surely won't be able to visit him while he is being treated, but Kakariko is a two-day trip from here, so we'll be back tomorrow to visit Red. We'll take our leave now. Goodbye, Doctor, and thank you for your patience." Zelda curtsied, then spun on her heels and exited the Sages' Hospital, quickly followed by three identical boys and their rushed goodbyes. The four friends climbed into Zelda's waiting carriage, and began the ride to the house that the heroes shared outside of Hyrule.
The Links' house could be classified as a medium between modest and luxurious, thanks to donations from Zelda's "Houses for Heroes" foundation, which gave funds to heroes to build houses outside of places where they'd be harassed by fans and neighborhood enemies. When the carriage arrived, Blue noticed how pretty the house was due to Reds' influence. The flower garden (which was ordered by colors so that it looked like a rainbow of flowers on either side of the door, with purple lavender closest to the door, and red zinnias furthest from it), the smooth white paint, (chosen because, according to Vio, white basically contains all of the colors inside it, which to Red showed unity when painted onto the house), and the huge slide from the playground in the backyard, which Red begged for weeks, and worked as a landscaper for just as long, to obtain. The clones stepped out of the carriage, thanked Zelda for giving them a ride, and walked into the one-story, white house, but not before a certain purple hero noticed that the Zinnias looked a little withered.
Immediately entering the house is a foyer of sorts. Where there are three doors, the right of which leads to the guest room and the closest door to the backyard from the front door, the left door leads to the main residents' bedrooms, and the one on the wall directly opposite the front door leads to the kitchen and other living areas. Vio excused himself from the group and entered the central door to grab a bite to eat from the kitchen before checking on his roommate, Blue entered the left doorway, mumbling about needing to get something, and Green wanted to go play on the swing set in the backyard, so he entered the right door.
Green swung contentedly in the backyard. The hypnotizing, rhythmic motion of the swings had been his favorite place to calm down since they had been built. Red had been kind enough to paint the framework of the swing set emerald green after learning about the leader's preference. As the swing's arc grew wider and higher, Green let his thoughts wander to the past days' events. He still felt like it was his fault, but refused to allow regret to intermingle with guilt any longer. Red is stable, and what's done is done. Besides, if Red finds out that I'm thinking such sad thoughts, he'll kill me. Red doesn't like when I criticize myself, especially on the swing set. Green thought, making sure to carefully avoid using past tense language. As Green's thoughts danced and marched through his head, the swing continued its arc, unhindered by heavy emotions or deep thoughts.
Blue walked into Red's room and, after turning on the lights, felt a pang of sadness. Red had mentioned to his hot-headed clone while getting ready for training that he had bought a surprise, and there it was, sitting on the venetian red, fabric-velvet sheets; a blue gift bag with gradation from sapphire blue in the lower right corner to robin's egg blue in the upper left corner, and turquoise-colored tissue paper. Blue smiled and shook his head as he approached the small gift. Leave it to Red to find the best gift bag in all of Hyrule, Blue thought as he sat down on the bed, facing the door, next to his gift. Not wanting to open the gift just yet, the spirited hero moved the gift bag onto his lap and turned it around. That's when he first noticed the gift tag. It wasn't spectacular, just a plain, white tag attached to the blue handles of the gift by a lighter blue ribbon. In black lettering, the tag read, "I know I stress you out, so here's something to help! –Red", which only twisted the boy's guilt into an agonizing, left corkscrew. Blue slowly opened the gift, careful not to tear any of the tissue paper, and retrieved his present. Inside the bag was a sky blue stress ball with the words "My Blue hero" printed onto it. Blue didn't quite understand when tears flooded his eyes; a smile grew on his face, and his stomach knotted in anger. That little creep… Blue thought as he lay back and imagined what he'd do if the aforementioned creep had handed him the present in person.
While Green was entering the backyard, Vio was sitting in the kitchen with an apple in his right hand and the other arm resting on the table, reminding himself of the entirety of the day's events, cringing at the scream and releasing a shuddering sigh at the sharp imagery of the scene that the uninjured team had burst into after the scream. It hadn't been easy to calm Blue down. His emotions had ranged from paralyzed shock when he first saw Red to unadulterated fury after his slow mind fully registered what had happened, finishing with… whatever that show at the hospital featured. Vio's head snapped back to the present, the lack of presence of edible parts of an apple in his hand, and the realization that it was time for Vio's roommate to know what had happened.
While Blue was confused over the effects of the gift he had been given, Vio was standing in the hallway, in front of his violet door (the shade of which Red called True Purple). He wondered how he was going to tell his roommate about Red. It's not like they had been very close –in fact, there is still a slight suspicion in the household that Red is scared of the collected clone's roommate- but it's not like they avoided each other. In fact, Vio recollected, I think he even pitched in with 50 rupees towards getting Red's playground. Now, where he got those rupees, I've got no idea. The two boys were more like friendly acquaintances than anything else. It's not like Vio didn't know how to explain the status of the childish clone, after all he'd spent the entire ride home in his head, planning what he was going to say, but the collected clone had never been very good with empathy. He better have a candle lit in there, Vio thought, in an attempt to stall the inevitable, if I'm nice enough not to install electric lighting in my room (speaking of electric lighting, I really need to ask Princess Zelda about the fundamentals behind her invention) then he should be nice enough to allow me to see my own room. With this thought, Vio opened the purple door quickly, entered and closed it just as quickly behind him.
"Before you say anything," Vio quickly interrupted the silence, "I've got some very bad news to tell you."
Shadow looked up from his laptop at the blond.
"Sure thing, cutie." He said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. This, Vio thought, sighing at today's nickname and the news he was about to reveal, is not going to bode well.