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The car was silent, Legend glared out the passenger window and occasionally stole glances at the driver. His adoptive older brother, Warriors, had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel and was staring ahead at the road. Rain poured outside, making Legend just a little on edge about the drive. He never did enjoy car rides, especially at night and while raining.
"Why?" Warriors' voice was strained as if he was barely keeping himself from yelling, and Legend had a feeling he was doing just that.
Legend gritted his teeth as he stared out the window. "Why don't you just focus on driving?"
"Legend." He had practically growled.
"I didn't do anything."
"Then why were you in jail?!" He snapped.
"Because the fucking police department won't get their heads out of their asses and—"
"You watch your language," Warriors snapped. "Those men deserve your respect."
"They've arrested me every chance they get since I was nine!" Legend argued. "I haven't ever committed a single crime but just because Aghanim said I kidnapped Fable, at nine years old when she was eleven, they've tried to arrest me ever since!"
"Tch, yeah right," Warriors scoffed.
"Oh my goddesses." Legend groaned, leaning his head against the cold window. While the rain set him on edge in addition to the car, he wished the sound would drown out Warriors' ignorance and stubbornness.
"Stop lying. I know--Good kids don't have half a dozen marks on their school record for bad behavior, or on their file for bad behavior, nor do they get arrested every two months!" He progressively grew louder before he let out an exasperated groan-sigh. "I thought you were better than that ever since Time took you in. You haven't been a problem once, but... I guess old habits die hard."
Legend shut his mouth. He wasn't going to get to him. He wanted him to shut up, to stop talking about things he didn't understand, things that he refused to understand."
"You're almost eighteen now, Legend. If you keep this sort of thing up it's not a couple years in juvie that you're facing. They said you were stalking a girl home!" Legend flinched as Warriors clearly grew angrier and angrier as he lectured.
He curled in on himself. It wasn't true, none of it was. The cops just hated Legend ever since Agahnim accused him of kidnapping Fable when he was nine. He had been a nine-year-old boy, whose cop uncle had raised him since his parents died in a car crash and had just been killed during a shooting. He had been running out of fear after seeing his uncle get shot by another cop, helping a young girl escape the situation too, and then got accused of kidnapping her by the guy who turned out to have started the shooting, been trying to kidnap the girl, and was responsible for both her father's death and his uncle's. As he eventually learned, Agahnim--who was arrested and executed for his crimes--was deep in the pockets of most of the local cops. While most of those cops are now old or retired, the rumors amongst them had spread so wide and thick, that every cop thought the worst of him.
Including Warriors, who was supposed to be his brother.
Warriors was getting more and more heated, his voice angrier and more upset. He was clearly pissed that Legend 'did' what the cops said he did and Legend was tired. He had spent the past decade arguing against these accusations, he had fought so hard to get into his new family's good graces. At first, he had just tried to be silent, be the invisible foster kid that got them more money, but they hadn't let him. They got to know him, they made him feel at home. He got attached and so he tried, he tried not to even get accused of something, get arrested, or be framed for anything, he had tried so hard to be perfect. He tried not to lose the one good thing that had come to him in the last ten years and then they adopted him.
He thought they were safe, that he could trust them, he should've known that even if Warriors was his brother, he was still a cop and would still believe all the things those people said about him.
Legend stared out the window, a yellow road sign faded from view as the headlights ceased to reflect on them. As they came up to the road the sign had alerted them to, a pair of bright lights outside his window was right there and not stopping.
"WATCH OUT!"
CRASH
"WATCH OUT!"
Warriors couldn't even swerve, speed up, or brake before they were hit.
The crunch of metal and then the loud crash rang in Warriors' ears. Glass shattered and he swore he heard a scream. When he came to, disoriented, he had to blink away the haze and re-focus on reality. The pounding rain briefly became boots on the ground before he heard a soft, pained noise.
He looked over, and that's when reality returned. The boots faded as the rain returned.
"Legend? Legend!"
The kid was practically crushed in his seat, the car bent in on him, blood falling down his face and soaking blond hair. His face was contorted, eyes squeezed shut, whimpers barely audible to Warriors' ears.
Warriors pulled at his seat belt a bit frantically as he called for him.
"Legend, kid, hey come on—hold on for me." He had to get them out. He had to get Legend help, and fast. He needed his phone, to call for an ambulance. He pulled his seatbelt out and tried to force his door open.
"Wars?" Legend murmured, and Warriors looked at him quickly.
"Hey, hey kid, hey stay with me," Warriors said, reaching over to cup Legend's face and check his pulse. "Hey kid, can you look at me?"
Legend just sorta tilted his head, face contorting slightly but not opening his eyes yet.
"Hey, hey, here you are," Warriors tried to keep the tremble from his voice. Legend's pulse was slow, waning. "You took a pretty bad hit there, huh, kid?"
"It 'urts, Wars," he whimpered and Warriors felt his heart break. "I thin' I broke m' leg."
Warriors looked down and inhaled sharply. Legend had a glass shard stabbing into his left leg while his right one was practically crushed by the car, both of the vehicles.
"It's going to be okay," Warriors promised. "We're gonna be okay, you hear me? I-I—I told Time I'd bring you home. You're coming home, okay? Just hold on for me, okay kid?"
Legend pried his eyes open, and Warriors had felt his hopes that nothing could get worse get crushed.
Blood filled one of Legend's violet eyes, the whites of one eye were stained red while the other hadn't opened at all. "Wars—Wars, I can't— 'm scared, Wars."
"It's okay," Warriors insisted. "It's going to be okay, just don't fall asleep. Everything going to be just fine."
He had to get him out. He had to get him help as soon as possible.
"Come on, I'm going to unbuckle you and we're going to get out through my door," Warriors said as he finally got the door open.
"Wars, I don' thin' I can move," Legend whimpered, voice slurring.
"No, no kiddo, stay with me," Warriors panicked. "Hold on, you're going to be okay."
He managed to unbuckle his kid brother from his seat and forced his broken arm to act as some kind of support as his non-broken one pulled him from the seat. Legend cried out in pain.
Warriors shushed him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's gonna be okay. Just hold on, Ledge."
Limping out on one leg, Warriors pulled Legend with him from the car and staggered back at least three steps before the slick ground made him slip.
Legend screamed a sound that would be imprinted in Warriors' mind forever.
He could hear sirens.
"They're alive!" Someone screamed. "Over here!"
"Hey, kid, Ledge are you with me?" Warriors pleaded, pushing himself closer to him. His leg was bent at an awkward angle and Warriors only just noticed the blood seeping from somewhere on his chest. He could see the blood soaking his favorite red hoodie and the way the rain tried to dilute it. "Kid? Kid — Legend!"
"Oh gods," someone appeared by them. "We called an ambulance, they'll be here soon. Sir—"
Warriors fumbled and pulled out his dog tags and shoved them toward the person. "His name is Link Knight, he's seventeen, b-blood type O+," Warriors was struggling to remember the information he had memorized for all his brothers, "and C-Catholic. M-My info's on my tags. He was in the passenger seat."
"Okay—Okay, I'll tell the ambulance that. Everything's going to be okay."
Warriors ignored them, he looked back over at Legend, who was fading. "No — Ledge, kid no, look at me. Listen to my voice. Please — I haven't even finished lecturing you about what happened."
"Didn' do it anyway," Legend slurred. "Don't gotta listen..."
Warriors wondered if Legend was so stubborn that he'd stick by his lie in this situation or if Warriors was so stupid as to believe records and not the kid he knew.
"Why? Explain it to me again. Why do they — Legend! Kid, please, stay with me!"
Legend's head dropped against the wet ground. Warriors could almost hear gunshots and war cries, the pounding of rain tried to return to being boots on the ground, and the rolling thunder was becoming mines exploding or mortars being shot off.
Warriors saw the flashing red and he kept trying to get Legend back with him. He fell quiet when they were loaded onto separate gurneys.
Warriors sat back in the hospital bed, trimmed nails digging into the sheets. He reran everything that happened, but he couldn't determine it all exactly. His dash cam wouldn't be viable, but he knew what happened. He was driving, drilling into Legend for getting arrested, but it was pouring rain so his lecture was a bit distracted as he was focused on the rain and driving safely. But then there was a light and Legend screamed and then they were off the road and his kid brother was dying.
Now he was sitting in a hospital, in far better condition than Legend. His right arm was broken and he had a lot of bruising and cuts, but he was on the far side of the impact.
Legend was in surgery from what a doctor told him. And had been so for at least an hour.
The door opened. "Mr. Taylor, your brothers are here."
Warriors looked up and it was Twilight and Sky, both near tripping over themselves to get inside.
"Wars!" Sky rushed to his side. "What happened? Are you okay? Time's on his way! What happened?"
"I'm fine," Warriors said. "Just a broken arm really, bruised and cut too but that'll be healed in a week or two."
"And Legend?" Twilight asked, moving to his other side.
Warriors used his one moveable hand to hold his head. "Surgery."
The following silence was painful.
"Surgery?" Sky repeated. "What—Do you know how bad?"
"We were t-boned, passenger side, he..." Warriors trailed off weakly. "Gods, I'd be surprised if he had a single intact bone. He had a huge glass shard in his leg and-and his eye, gods above, his eye was bleeding."
"Oh goddess," Sky murmured.
"Was he —"
"He wasn't dead on impact," Warriors cut Twilight off and Twilight visibly relaxed. "He talked to me... gods, he sounded like a kid. I heard him scream and... He had a concussion, I'm certain, I... I can't... I was mad at him, practically yelling about him getting arrested and even on... on death's door, barely lucid and blind, he stuck by his claim and... what if he wasn't lying? What if I was just stupid enough to believe that he, Legend, was actually as troubled as those stupid papers said?"
"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it," Twilight chided. "He's going to pull through and... for what it's worth, I believe him. The person that kid is is completely different from the person his files make him out to be."
"I know that. I knew that and I was still yelling at him and now he's somewhere in this hospital possibly dying!"
What if the last words Warriors told his kid brother were filled with anger and disappointment? What if he'd spent their last moments together disregarding Legend trying to tell him the truth?
He knew the importance of making the most of every moment you had with someone, he served multiple campaigns as a soldier and saw dozens die, men and women he knew personally. He knew this.
So why did he screw up so badly with Legend? With a kid?
Twilight and Sky both tried to argue it but he wouldn't listen.
Legend wasn't expecting to wake up. Not while he had been lying down on the ground, feeling only pain and the prickling of frigid rain. He remembered Warriors talking, begging him to stay awake, but not being able to listen.
Then he was waking up, and hearing came in gradually, a soft consistent beeping as well as soft talking.
"—isn't your fault. You saved his life."
"I put it in danger in the first place."
"No. You didn't. That other driver did when they didn't stop. It wasn't your fault, or Legend's, or anyone but the other driver's."
"Time..."
"No. Listen: It. Was. Not. Your. Fault. Legend was not hurt because of you and you were not at fault for that crash, am I clear?"
Legend blinked —more so winked, one of his eyes wouldn't open— slowly. His hand was in someone else's, Sky's he realized. Across the room, Time was sitting beside another hospital bed with Warriors on it.
"You better say yes," Legend said, more like murmured. "S'not... your fault."
Time and Warriors looked over at him quickly as Sky's head snapped up.
"Legend!" Sky gasped softly. "Oh goddesses, hey—how are you feeling? Do I need to go grab the nurse? How's your eye?"
"Fine, no, and assuming you mean my right one, not working the way it's supposed to."
Time and Warriors came over, Warriors' arm was in a sling and he was clearly still holding guilt.
"Yeah, the bone by your right eye broke. It'll heal and you should get most of your vision back, but it's up in the air," Sky told him, voice softening.
Legend looked up at the ceiling, his head hurt, and leaning back helped offset the pain just a bit. "Sucks... but I'd kinda match the old man."
"Legend, I—"
"If you apologize I'm going to kick you."
"You have a broken leg and the other isn't in much better condition," Warriors deadpanned.
Legend lifted his head a bit to look down at himself. "Huh, no wonder it hurts too... I'll throw that annoying beeping thing at you or make Sky do it for me."
His arm was also in a cast and he just overall looked like he'd been run over by a truck.
"Hey, was the other car a truck and did it hit us hard enough for me to say that I got run over by a truck?"
"Kid, what the heck?" Warriors demanded.
"I'm just asking." Legend winced as he leaned back. "Can you get the nurses to up the painkillers because I might actually scream if this gets any worse?"
"Right!" Sky said quickly and he nearly ran out of the room.
Legend tilted his head enough to see Warriors' face, and he frowned. "Wars did you get a head injury?"
"Yeah," Warriors confirmed. "A concussion. Why?"
"Okay... where are you not hurt?"
"Uhh, most of myself I guess. Just not this arm really."
"Okay, great. Time can you hit him where he's not injured?"
Time raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because he's making that stupid face he makes when he's blaming himself for something he wasn't at fault for and I can't carry out my threat right now."
Warriors made a protesting noise. "I don't have a face for that!"
Time flicked his uninjured shoulder. "Sorry, cap'n, yeah you do."
Warriors pouted.
Sky returned with a nurse and Legend had to answer a bunch of questions before she upped the morphine a bit.
He passed out not long after that, but at least he knew he was alive this time.