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shadow-and-purgatory · 2 years

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Wrong Shade Ch. 3

Read parts 1 and 2 on Tumblr here!

Read it here on ao3!

Wordcount: 3284

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It hasn’t quite been three weeks yet, but Twilight feels like he’s traveled with Time for months.

Not much of note has happened in these past few weeks. They’ve found camp upon camp of monsters. There have been ruined villages and settlements.

In a nice turn of events, Time has recently stopped fighting Twilight about taking a watch, a nightly battle that Twilight thought was particularly stupid (“You can’t expect you’ll be in top form if you’re staying up all night every night!”), though Twilight still has yet to convince Time to take the earlier watch (“I don’t mind being awake later at night, Pup. Besides, it’s the worse shift anyways.”). Oh well. The old man can’t do this forever.

Though, Twilight has to admit, Time does seem to like being awake late at night. He always seems to be already awake when Twilight goes to get him up for second watch. On the handful of occasions that he’s tried to let Time sleep a little bit longer, Time has promptly and silently come up behind him, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and told him in no uncertain terms that it’s time to swap. So for now, Twilight will concede on this point. For now, at least.

Something is odd, though. In the last few weeks, they’ve come across signs of Hylian civilization in the past, but nothing outside of ruins. Not a single person.

The pair have been walking down a dirt road in comfortable silence for a while, when Twilight decides to bring up one of the things that has been bothering him.

“Time?”

“Yes, Pup?”

“Do you think we’re alone here, wherever here is?”

The older hero pauses, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know. Quite possibly.”

Twilight slouches a bit, clearly hoping for a different answer. “Oh. I hope that we’re not. I don’t know. This place is… I don’t know. I’d hate to think that there’s no one else here.”

Time ruffles his hair. “What, is my company not good enough for you?” he asks, an expression of mock hurt on his face.

Twilight chuckles and shakes his head. He brushes a bit of stray hair away from his eyes. “No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he says. “I just meant to say…” he trails off. “It’s strange, that’s all.”

“I would say that it’s not so strange,” Time counters. “This place looks like it’s been through hell. Maybe nobody survived whatever happened here.”

“Maybe. But I’ve been thinking. About that portal. Where… where I come from, the Hero of Time is– I mean, you are– you’re not. Alive, anymore.” He looks down, biting the inside of his cheek and trying to choose his next words carefully. “And you haven’t been for a long while. So for you to be standing here, in the flesh, talking to me, then something’s screwy. If the Goddess brought two heroes together, there has to be a reason. She wouldn’t have pulled us away from our homes, our lives, our– our families,” his voice cracks a bit, “she wouldn’t do that just for us to fight bokoblins and lizalfos.”

“I wish I could say I have your same confidence in her.” Time puts a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “But in my experience, Hylia doesn’t need a reason, and even when she has one, it rarely makes any sense.”

“I know, I know.” The younger hero chews on the inside of his cheek again, hard enough to taste blood this time. He winces. You should be setting a better example, he scolds himself. “For me though, thinking that she does have a reason, it helps. Y’know?” He pulls his fur pelt closer around his shoulders. The familiar weight and warmth of it is a small comfort to the ranch hand.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do know. And I’m sorry, Pup. But hey. Look at me. Look at my eye.” Time puts his hands on either side of Twilight’s face, and he meets Time’s bright red eye. “We’ll figure this out, okay? We will figure this out.”

Twilight nods, feeling just a little bit better. “Right. We will.”

“What’s that?” Twilight squints at the structure rising up over the trees.

“What’s what?”

“Well if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?” Twilight responds, rolling his eyes. “And I’m talking about that.” He points at the unidentified thing.

“My eye isn’t as good as yours are,” Time reminds him.

Twilight sighs. “Hang on.” The hero roots around in his bag for a few minutes before finding and triumphantly holding up the object he was looking for.

Time’s eyebrows go up. “A mask? What does it do?”

Twilight smiles. “It’s called the hawkeye. It lets me see things that are further away really clearly.” He puts it on, taking a moment to refocus the lenses. “Let’s see…” He scans the sea of trees until he once again finds the object of his interest. “It looks sort of like a horse head,” he says. “Like a strange horse head.” He slides the hawkeye off his face, stowing it safely away in his bag. “That ringing any bells?” he asks.

Time shakes his head. “None whatsoever.”

“We should check it out,” Twilight says. “It looks manmade, so maybe someone’s there.” He’s unable to keep the hope from his voice at the prospect of finding someone, anyone else.

“Maybe.” Time squints and his lips are pursed. His thinking face. “I know that look. What’re you thinking, Old Man?”

The older hero hesitates, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.”

Twilight frowns slightly. “No, it’s not nothing. What’s on your mind?”

His mentor sighs. “It could be other people, yes,” he starts. “But it’s not familiar to either of us. There haven’t been any signs of civilization so far. Who knows what we’ll find there? Even if there are other people, how do we know that they’re friendly?” He sees the way Twilight’s face falls, and hurries on. “I’m not saying that it’s definitely dangerous, just that it could be.”

“...that makes sense, but I still want to go,” Twilight says. “It’s worth it to look. We can handle a little danger, I can handle a little danger.”

Time pinches the bridge of his nose. “We can’t just rush in blindly.”

“Then I can scout ahead,” Twilight offers.

“Absolutely not. Not by yourself,” Time says firmly. He sighs. “Okay, how about this? You wait here, and I’ll go and scout ahead. Does that sound like a plan?”

Twilight shakes his head, suddenly feeling offended. “No it doesn’t ‘sound like a plan,’” he argues. “I understand that you don’t want me to get hurt, but I don’t want you throwing yourself into potential danger either! You’re able to get hurt, same as me.” The rancher stares the Hero of Time down until the older man looks away. “Give me say… half an hour, and if I’m not back by then, you can come looking for me. Is that more amenable?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Twenty. That’s the best you’re going to get.”

“Fine. Twenty minutes.”

Time smiles. “I’ll be back soon, don’t you worry.” The hero vanishes into the trees, and Twilight sits down on a nearby rock, waiting. He gets bored of doing nothing pretty quickly.

“I wonder if there’s any horse grass around here,” he muses aloud. He stands up, deciding to pass the time by looking for some. If he did find horse grass, what would he even do with it? Wherever he is, Epona is almost certainly too far away to hear him. He misses her. He looks around, parting the grass to look for the horseshoe shaped plant that’s so abundant back home.

Twilight doesn’t find any horse grass, though he does find a few mushrooms.

As he goes to sit back down, resigning himself to spending the next six and a half minutes doing nothing, a pop of bright blue catches his eye. He goes over to it and sits down to better see. It’s a bright blue and white flower. He’s fairly certain that he’s never seen it before, but a part of him feels like he should know the name of the flower.

It’s so delicate looking, he thinks, though he knows that the little plant is much hardier than it looks.

“What’re you looking at?” Twilight jumps when he hears the grating voice of his mentor.

“You’re back,” he says, feeling relieved. “And I’m just looking at a flower. It’s pretty.”

Time peers over Twilight’s shoulder. He hums in agreement. “Yeah.”

Twilight sits up straighter. “So how did the scouting go?” he asks eagerly. “What did you find?”

“It’s safe,” Time says. “It’s a stable. There’s a handful of Hylians, but none of them looked particularly dangerous.”

Twilight absolutely beams. He stands up, brushing the loose dirt off his tunic. “What are we waiting for?” he asks, already walking in the direction of the stable.

Time grabs his arm. “Listen, they didn’t look dangerous to me, but still be cautious, alright? This is the first group of other people we’ve come across. We still don’t know how things are done here.”

Twilight nods, tugging his arm free. “I understand, I’ll be careful.”

The pair head towards the stable, Twilight barely managing to keep from breaking into a run. On the breeze, he can hear a familiar tune being played on an accordion. He cocks his head, puzzled. “That sounds like the song I play on the horse grass,” he says to Time.

Time’s brow furrows. “Horse grass?” he asks.

“Horse grass. It’s this plant back home, it looks like horseshoes. When you blow into it a certain way, it sounds like music. I trained Epona, my horse, to come when I blew into it.”

“Huh.”

When the stable is in sight, Twilight breathes a sigh of relief.

It’s a building, an intact one. There are people milling around. He sees horses, and goats, and he takes a deep breath in. The air smells like hay and grass and farm animals. It smells like being back home.

He walks toward the open entrance of the stable. Something nudges at the back of his leg. Twilight looks down, and his heart melts on the spot. It’s a dog. He immediately crouches down, petting it with one hand and scratching it between the ears with the other.

“Oh, who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy, yes you are,” he says, smiling wide. The dog lies down and rolls onto his back, content to be given affection. He turns to Time. “Hey Time, you didn’t tell me there was a dog!” he says. “You were holding out on me.”

“I didn’t know,” Time says, holding up his hands defensively.

“Suuure you didn’t.” Twilight rolls his eyes and beckons his mentor over. “C’mere.” Time takes a step towards Twilight and the dog and Twilight feels the dog tense up. He frowns. “Something wrong, boy?” he asks. The dog growls, flipping over. Twilight follows the animal’s fierce gaze to Time. He continues petting the dog in an attempt to placate him, but to no avail.

“What is it, Pup?” Time asks.

“I don’t know, he was being so friendly just a minute ago.” Twilight’s slight frown deepens. “I don’t think he likes you for some reason.”

Time takes another step forward, and the dog springs to his feet, barking at the older hero. The dog moves to stand between the two of them. Twilight recognizes the animal’s posture as a protective, defensive stance that he knows he’s used more than once as a wolf. “Time, I think you should back off,” Twilight says with quiet urgency.

“What?”

“He sees you as a threat right now. So don’t antagonize him further, and without making any sudden movements, back. Off.”

Time nods, taking a step back. The dog growls, though not as aggressively.

“Little more,” Twilight says, slowly reaching over to start petting him again.

Time takes a few more steps back, the dog is almost calm again, and Twilight breathes a sigh.

Crack.

Time looks down at the twig that snapped under his boot, as the dog starts barking with a new fury.

“Medi! Down!” shouts a sharp, shrill voice. The dog, Medi, whimpers as he lies down. A young Hylian woman comes over. “I’m so sorry about him. I swear he’s not usually like that,” she apologizes. She frowns at the animal. “What’s gotten into you?” she scolds.

Time chuckles, and comes over to stand next to the young woman. Medi growls at him, and Time not-so-subtly steps away from the dog. “It’s quite alright. I think I spooked him a bit.”

“Still. He usually has much better manners than that. Neither one of you is hurt, right?”

“Nah, I don’t think this little guy would hurt anyone,” Twilight says, even though he’s nearly positive that the dog was absolutely going to bite Time if no one had intervened. He gives Medi one more fond scritch between the ears and stands up.

The woman laughs. “Well I don’t know about that. But anyways, welcome to the Dueling Peaks Stable. Sorry about the rough welcome.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Time says. “If you don’t mind, we’re a little lost, can you tell me a bit more about where we are?”

“Of course!”

The two of them start chatting. Twilight walks off to go and see who else there is to talk to. There’s a large blue bird man, though he seems very engrossed in playing his accordion, and Twilight doesn’t want to disturb him. There’s a child sleeping under a tree. Then he sees a strange looking man with a massive beetle shaped backpack sitting inside. Twilight walks over to him before realizing that he has no idea how to start a conversation with this man without sounding like he’s never held a conversation in his life.

He tries for a simple greeting. “Hey!”

The man smiles a toothy smile. “Hey yourself! I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance yet! My name is Beedle, but you can call me–” He stops, looking Twilight up and down. “Heeeey, come to think of it, I have made your acquaintance already! Why didn’t you say something when I was introducing myself?”

Twilight blinks. “Um. No, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else, sorry. But it’s nice to meet you, Beedle.”

Beedle laughs. “Don’t be silly, Beedle neeever forgets a customer’s face!”

Twilight laughs, a little bit uncomfortable. “I’m not from around here. Maybe I’ve got some sort of lookalike, and you met him.”

Beedle squints at him. “Hmmmmm… No! I haven’t seen face markings like yours on anybody except for, well. You!”

Twilight has to admit that that’s difficult to argue with. The face markings left by his wolf transformation are rather… distinctive. But it doesn’t make sense. “Are you sure it wasn’t just someone who looked like me?”

“Oh, very sure! You were traveling in a big group with one of Beedle’s favorite customers!”

Twilight squints. What is he talking about? He looks over to Time. “Favorite customer? Do you mean–”

“No, not him, but he was in the group as well! I remember! You all bought arrows from me!” Beedle says.

“That’s not ringing a bell, sorry,” Twilight says, deciding that he would probably have been better off disturbing the bird-man-thing playing the accordion than this strange man with his strange bug shaped backpack. He gets up. “Well, it was nice chatting with you, but I have to go.”

“Byyyye! Please come again sometime!” Beedle waves.

Twilight hurriedly walks away. He walks around to the back of the stable, and deftly hops into the pen with all the goats and sheep. He looks at one of the goats, and sighs. “Some people, I tell ya.” The goat stares at him in response.

He sits down on the ground, his back against a bale of hay, continuing to commiserate with the livestock. “I had some real weirdos back home too though. It takes all sorts, I guess. At least he was friendly. Crazy, but friendly.”

Medi lays down at Twilight’s feet, and he relaxes, shutting his eyes. It’s been a long day, and after a few minutes, he dozes off.

He briefly wakes again several hours later when he feels movement next to him. He cracks open his eyes to see Time settling in alongside him. Twilight makes a face. “Why’re you all wet?” he whispers.

“Shh. I fell into the creek, just go back to sleep,” Time whispers back.

Twilight chuckles, and drifts off again, feeling right at home in the hay.

After talking to the owner of the stable’s daughter for a little while, the older man politely excuses himself from the conversation. He looks around. At first, he doesn’t see Twilight anywhere, but that’s okay. He wouldn’t have left, not without telling Time. He takes a moment to think like the rancher might.

He walks around the stable. He sees the young hero, sound asleep. He doesn’t look much like a hero right now. Just an ordinary farm boy. The armored man smiles. The kid will be out cold for a little while yet. He walks into the woods. He needs a place to unwind, and the stable, with the people and the music and that dog, aren’t going to do it for him.

He walks in the shadows of the trees until he’s gone far enough that he can no longer hear the Rito musician. He relaxes, insofar as he can relax, until he hears a noise. Whoever it is is trying to conceal their presence, but he hears them. He recomposes himself.

“I know you’re there. Show yourself.”

A man wearing white clothes with red trim steps out of the shadows. He wears a cloth over his mouth and noise to muffle his breathing, and his outfit has a stylized eye with a single teardrop, the symbol of the Sheikah. The man is apologetic. “I’m sorry, Master Time, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The one eyed man holds up a hand. “It’s quite alright,” he says. It’s the same tone he used earlier, when the woman apologized for her dog.

The Sheikah squints. “I did not realize that you had already left again. I thought you were still in Kakariko with Lady Impa.”

“What can I say? I like to move quickly.”

“I understand. Any luck finding him, sir?”

He feels a stab of irritation. So this wasn’t a chance encounter. He smiles. “Yes, actually.”

The man’s eyes widen. “Really? That’s– that’s great news! Where is he?”

“Back at a little camp I set up. I’ve been bringing him to Kakariko, but he’s exhausted.” “Well but that’s spectacular! I shall alert Lady Impa and the others at once!” As he turns to return to his village, the Sheikah man feels a hand on his shoulder.

“Actually, since you’re here, I was hoping that you could help. If we work together, we can get him back to the village in half the time.”

The Sheikah feels a growing sense of unease. “Alright. Lead the way.”

A few hours later, the hero returns to the stable. He’s soaked with river water. He finds Twilight in the same place as when he left, although the dog has gone somewhere else. He removes his armor. He goes over to where the rancher lies, and starts to settle in.

Twilight wakes up.

“Why’re you all wet?” he asks in a still half asleep whisper.

He gently shushes the boy. “I fell into the creek, just go back to sleep,” he reassures.

Beside him, Twilight half chuckles. It doesn’t take long for his breathing to even out, and he’s asleep once again.

#this was a meaty chapter #im soooooo happy w it tho #rubbing my little gremlin paws together #ramblimgs #late night ramblimgs #linked universe #lu #fic ramblimgs #lu twilight #lu fic #lu time #wrong shade #florianfics

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hardappleblood · 1 year

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I’ve regained my hyperfixation on the Zelda multiverse so I’d like to present to you a scenario. Wild is showing the other Links (namely the more important ones, Legend, New Hyrule, Twilight, Sky, Time, Winds) and he decides to show them something really cool. This is gonna be long as hell and probably not great, so… bear with me if you dare.

Twilight: oh god, I hate this place.

Time: meh. I’ve seen foggier/dustier areas.

Wild: it’s kind of annoying to traverse, but trust me, you’re gonna be blown away by this.

Wind: I hope so. My feet hurt like hell.

Time: hey! Language, kid.

Wild: ah, here we are! May I present to you: the leviathan of the gerudo desert!

Wind: woah! Awesome!

Twilight: that thing is massive!

New Hyrule: I don’t think I’ve ever seen something so big!

Sky: I’ve seen bigger. I’ve ridden bigger.

Time: Me too… but it’s still kind of weird to see it… dead, you know? Broken down after millennia.

Legend, running up from behind: Sorry! This area is really confusing… Anyway, what was it you wanted to-

Wild: what’s wrong?

Legend: what the fuck, man?

Time: Guys, there is a 12 year old here!

Wind: Time, it’s FINE.

Time: take it from another 12 year old hero: it’s not.

Wind: I’ve lived on pirate ships several times.

Legend: I just- shit, man.

New Hyrule: Legend, what’s going on?

Legend: that’s the, uh… the thing. Oh Hylia. I think I’m gonna throw up.

Wild: wait, what? You recognize it?

Legend: yeah, uh. Remember how I told you about that island? The dream one?

Wind: no…

Legend: really? Huh. It was this massive island that I woke up on without any stuff. I went through… a lot there. Turned out it was all the dream of some massively powerful being. The wind fish. That.

Wild: why does that sound… familiar?

Sky: Wait, wait, hold up. Wild. Are there… more of these?

Wild: uh… yeah, two of them. Should we go see those?

New Hyrule: Yes!! If this is a wind fish, what if those are things we would recognize as well?

Link: Alright. Things are gonna get hot, so if you have heat resistance, equip it. If not… just try not to equip wooden weapons. Grab on, everyone!

Wind: I don’t see why we have to warp. Can’t we just-

Everyone else, in unison: we can’t sail there, wind.

-warp-

Wild: And we’re here! Now it’s just a short walk.

New Hyrule: ah! Lava?

Time: Wow. Crazy how some things change so much… and some things stay exactly the same. Death mountain looks so… familiar, after thousands of years.

Twilight: it’s almost… reassuring.

Sky, squinting: wait, is that…?

Legend: that’s definitely not a wind fish.

Sky: oh come on, Levius? Really? Aw, man. I loved that fishy boy.

Wind: fishy boy? Really?

Twilight: I have heard you refer to Jabun as a fishy boy on several occasions.

Wind: point taken.

Sky: and after I went through all that trouble getting the tree of life and planting it in the sealed temple…

Wild: ok, that sounds REALLY familiar too, what is with this?!

Wind: what if we like. Went on a tour of all the stuff we think each other might recognize.

New Hyrule: I like your attitude, wind!

-Eventide Isle-

Legend: *crying on the ground, curled up into a fetal position*

Twilight, kneeling next to legend: *glares at Wild*

Wild: what did I do?!

New Hyrule, poking a hinox: big lizard

-Kah Yah shrine-

Twilight: oh shit. Do you think it would still work if we had all the pieces?

Wild: I mean, I know where the pieces are… we could try.

*an hour later*

Twilight: well, it doesn’t work, but it looks cool.

Wild: kinda reminds me of this helmet I found… *equips the twilight helm*

Twilight Portal: *starts glowing*

Twilight: where in hylia did you find that?!

-some random plain-

New Hyrule: oh! There’s some bokoblins over there.

Legend: Yes! I could use a good fight.

Wild: nah, I’m too tired. Lemme just… *equips Majora’s Mask* there we go!

Time: what on HyLiA’s GrEeN eArTh

-great plateau-

Wind: why are we here again?

Twilight: I’m hungry. This place has good meat.

Wild: Hold up… I think there’s a chest down there. Mind if I go look?

Time: Sure, I’ll come with. This place feels… nostalgiac, in a way.

Twilight: screw that, I’m getting some meat. *wolf*

New Hyrule: !! Puppy!!

Twilight: *barks for NH to get on*

Wild: alright time, grab on. *glides down to the temple.*

Idk how to put the rest of this into words but… the temple of time in BotW is the same as the one from OoT, and a large portion of the plateau (most of it being that area) is the ruins of castle town from OoT. So Time is surprised by that I guess.

-Lurelin Village-

Wind: Outset? Why is it on land?

Wild: maybe because it’s been tens of thousands of years?

Wind: fair. Wait… what are you wearing?

Wild: oh, it’s this really comfy shirt I found at some waterfall. Why do you ask?

Wind: those are my pajamas.

Wild: oh.

-Arbiter’s Grounds-

Molduga: biting at all the links

Time, shouting over the molduga battle theme: what did you say this place was called again?!

Wild: the arbiters grounds!

Twilight: WHAT

-Ranch Ruins-

Time: *curled up in a fetal position, crying*

Twilight, kneeling by his side: Seriously?

Wild: Oh, come on!

-Gordon City-

Twilight: woah, who are those Gordon’s? In the mountain.

Wild: oh, well the one on the right is my old friend, Daruk. The other two… I’m not sure.

Time: what kind of reality altering shenanigans are going on here?

-Korok Forest-

Time, sitting on the ground, korok’s swarming him, crying tears of joy: my friends… I missed you so much…

Wild: what in the hell?

Twilight: don’t ask.

-Spring of Courage-

Sky: huh. Neat.

#the legend of zelda #Zelda multiverse #link #links #breath of the wild

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anadorablekiwi · 2 years

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‘Ello y’all, i come bearing a short introduction fic to my newest OC 💜💖

Princess of Courage (and Recklessness)

Word count: 1833

Contents: humor, canon-typical violence (she gets hurt and a fight happens but it’s not descriptive at all)

Zelda pulled her white face mask up over her nose and tied the top part of her long blonde hair back. Word had been spreading of a mysterious dark magic portal-looking thing out in the woods, and despite everyone’s best efforts, that word had made its way to her ears. She dug out one of the notes she had written up and laid it on her bed for the maids to find, the envelope addressed “To Queen Zelda.”

Quietly as she could, she slipped out of her room, stopping by the library on her way out. Another envelope, this one addressed “To Link <3.” was placed on one of the tables. With that done, Zelda slipped out the library window and made her way to the woods.

•=|=====>

As the walked through the woods in the reported direction of the weird thing, a little hummingbird flew up to her and began hovering around her head.

Zelda giggled. “Hello there, Zippy. I’m investigating some dark magic thing. Care to join me?”

The hummingbird chirped scoldingly.

“Oh hush, I’ll be fine. I already know what Link would say.” She straightened her posture and did her best Link impression. “No Zelda, that’s dangerous. We need to thoroughly research it before diving straight in. You’ll get hurt, or worse. I won't let you have any fun.”

Zippy let out another scolding chirp.

“Okay fine, maybe that last bit isn’t true, but you know he’d just try to stop me. It’ll be Fine! Besides, so long as you’re with me I’m not alone! Isn’t that right, Zippy?” she held out a finger, allowing the hummingbird to land on it. Zelda brought her other hand up and gently stroked the tiny bird’s head. Zippy chirped happily, then flew up and settled on her head, chirping as she walked.

Finally, they reached the object in question. Zelda walked up to it, careful to not get too close. Yet.

“Hm, that definitely looks like a dark magic portal to me. Hey Zippy, where do you think it leads? Someplace fun, I bet.”

A concerned chirp, then Zippy started flying around the portal, finally stopping to hover right in front of Zelda’s face.

“You know fully well I’m gonna walk into it, Zippy. I don’t think even Link could stop me. I don’t want anything bad happening to you though for following me… hmm…” She thought for a moment, then brightened. “Oh! Why don’t you chill in my bag while I go through? I’ll let you out once we’re on the other side.”

The little bird chirped in affirmation and flew straight into her bag as soon as she opened it. With that settled, she squared her shoulders and walked through the portal.

•=|=====>

As she exited the portal, Zelda took in her new surroundings. All in all, not too much had changed. She was still in a forest, although she could tell it was not the one she was familiar with. Not seeing any immediate threats, she opened her bag to let her little friend out.

The small hummingbird flew out and circled her head a couple times before settling on top again. Zelda chuckled. “Hey there, Zippy. Looks like things are okay! And look, I didn’t even get hurt! Now, let’s see if we can figure out where we are, yeah?”

•=|=====>

Zelda growled at the monsters surrounding her and clutched her sword tightly, ignoring the pain in her left arm. “Zippy, these guys are a lot stronger than I thought they would be. See if you could find some help. And don’t worry about me, I can hold out just fine.''

She dodged out of the way of a Moblin’s attack, using the momentum to swing her sword into its side. The moblin bellowed in pain and swung again, missing by a few inches. Zippy flew off, and Zelda rolled out of the way of a bokoblin club. Ugh, there are too many of them. If they were just normal strength, I’d be fine…

The next few minutes were spent entirely dodging the various attacks aimed at her. Fortunately, the archers were normal and she had been able to take them all out already. She managed to down another bokoblin, scowling at its black blood. I’ve never seen monsters quite like this, much less ones this strong. A bokoblin swung a red stick in her direction and she rolled to the side to avoid the fire that came flying out.

Distantly, she heard footsteps. Fast ones, it sounds like. Hopefully that’s help Zippy found and not backup for the ‘blins. She dodged a bokoblin with a sword, but had gotten distracted and failed to notice where the Moblin was. With rising dread, she whipped around and tried dodging to the side again.

Unfortunately, the Moblin she had inevitably dodged into was not planning a downward strike. Its club hit her side and flung her across the clearing, hitting the dirt hard. Zelda’s vision went blurry and she groaned, fighting to stay awake and get up before another thing hit her.

She fought for her eyes to just focus again, and managed to make out the silhouette of a bokoblin bearing down on her. Unable to move in time, she closed her eyes and braced for the impact.

Only to hear a ‘Hyah!,’ numerous footsteps, and the familiar buzzing of hummingbird wings. “Good boy, Zippy,” she groaned, opening her eyes again to spot the little bird hovering worriedly in front of her.

An unfamiliar and authoritative voice called out. “Hyrule, do your thing and help her. Sky, Time, guard them. Everyone else, take a monster.”

Around her, she could hear sounds of fighting, but the shapes were still blurry.

A new face appeared at her side, and she could make out brown curly locks. Hands extended out to her side hesitantly before a distant voice called out.

“Don’t you dare Hyrule, we have plenty of potions!”

The face next to her huffed. “Whatever.” he fished something out of his bag (one such potion, presumably) and she heard the pop of a cork.

“Here, drink.” a gentle voice accompanied gentle hands, easing the bitter liquid into her mouth. Her vision began to clear up finally, the pain slowly subsiding. She took the bottle from the hands of the boy kneeling next to her and chugged the rest of the potion, then shot a grateful smile at the boy.

“Thank you.” She handed the bottle back to him and sat up.

Around her, the battle was wrapping up. She saw a tall man take out the Moblin with one fell swing, then looked around. Seeming satisfied with something, he turned and started heading towards her and the boy. (Hyrule, was it? What a strange name.)

As the man turned around, Zelda let out a soft gasp. Is that- no, it can’t be, what are you thinking? But- maybe it's just a costume. Worn by someone who looks exactly like him. Definitely probable.

Hyrule turned back to her and tilted his head. “What’s wrong?”

The tall man walked up and knelt down beside her. “Hey, you alright?”

This close up, she could see his face much more clearly. Okay that’s it, I’m either dead or dreaming. He looks exactly like the portrait in the library.

Said person in question knit his eyebrows in concern. “Miss?”

“I-I’m fine now, thank you.”

The rest of her rescuers gathered around, nine of them in total. She turned to the hummingbird perched on her right knee and reached out to stroke its feathers. “Heh, you certainly did a good job getting help, Zippy.” the hummingbird chirped happily.

The tall man glanced at her right hand and gasped. Oh, oops. Looks like I forgot my gloves.

He cleared his throat and smiled. “May I ask your name, miss?”

She went to stand, only for Hyrule to stop her. “Hold on a second, I still need to clean the wounds.”

She settled for sitting and smiled at the group nervously. “May I, uh, ask your names first?”

Looks were exchanged, and a couple of them shrugged. The only one among the men and boys wearing full plate armor nodded. “Go ahead, Warriors.

The man next to her spoke. “Would you believe us if I said we’re all named Link?”

She looked around at the group in shock, only finding serious faces. “Th- then that means-” she said in a hushed voice, eyes settling on Warriors. Or, she supposed, the Hero of Warriors. Her mouth dropped open slightly and her thoughts turned to a jumbled mess.

“Um… is she okay? Why’s she looking at you like that?” a young sounding voice asked.

She shook off the astonishment and averted her gaze, cheeks tinted pink. “S-sorry. My name is Zelda, and I’m guessing that portal I went through had something to do with time travel?”

•=|=====>

After more shock all around, the oldest one who goes by Time insisted they set up camp nearby, and save questions for after. Zelda busied herself with helping to set up camp, grateful she thought to pack some overnight necessities such as a bedroll. She seemed to be avoiding Warriors, but he tried to not be hurt by it. Time simply chuckled and insisted answers would come later, with that frustrating knowing glint in her eye. How does he know more already?? She hasn’t even spoken since telling her name!

Soon enough, camp was set up and dinner stewing over the fire. Warriors sat down first, surprised to find Zelda sit down next to him, cheeks tinted pink again. Once everyone was settled, Wind piped up.

“So, if your name is Zelda, how do you have the mark of the triforce of courage? Do you have a Link? Does he have wisdom? How does that work?”

Zelda chuckled and smiled fondly. “I don’t know why or how exactly, but yes. Link possessed the triforce of wisdom on our adventure, and I the triforce of courage.”

Twilight tilted his head in curiosity. “You know, you kind of resemble Warriors.”

Time smiled knowingly again, and all eyes turned to examine the similarity.

“Hey, you do! You’ve even got a scarf like him!”

Zelda stared at the fire and flushed a slightly deeper shade. Things began clicking in Warriors’ mind.

She cleared her throat and spoke. “Ah, yeah. That’s, uh, probably because I’m his… successor. Yeah, successor.”

Warriors spoke, voice soft. “I’m guessing that you’re the princess of your time?”

She nodded.

The final pieces connected in his mind, and a realization hit. “Wait, if you’re a princess, and my descendant, that means- I- ” his face flushed red.

Legend smirked. “Looks like Pretty Boy won’t be so hopeless at romance forever, after all.”

Twilight grinned mischievously. “So, think you’ll have the guts to ask Artemis out on a date now next time we’re in your time?”

Warriors’ face turned a deeper shade of red and he glared at Twilight.

Time chuckled. “Welcome to fatherhood, Captain.”

•=|=====>

#the kiwi bird writes #kiwis ocs #zelda princess of courage #Time figured out the resemblance and reason pretty quickly because hes smart like that #he also noticed how her outfit seemed to be a combination of Wars’ and Arty’s

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legendofmarshie · 2 years

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Now, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but I’ve been keeping my ears open, and it seems like everyone, everywhere, is furious, outraged, and sick with anger about everything all the time. I try to stay a little optimistic, even though I will admit: things are getting pretty sticky! Here’s how I try to look at it, and this is just me...

This guy being the hero; it’s like there’s a Groose loose on the surface. It’s like there’s a Groose loose on the surface. I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next! And neither do any of you! And neither do your parents— because there’s a Groose, loose on the surface! It’s never happened before! No one knows what the Groose is going to do next, least of all the Groose! He’s never been on the surface before! He’s as confused as you are!

There’s no experts! They try to find experts on the news, they’re like: “We’re joined now by a Bokoblin that once saw a bird in Faron Woods!” It’s like, get outta here with that shit! We’ve all seen a bird in Faron Woods. This is a Groose loose on the surface!

When a Groose is loose on the surface you gotta stay updated. So all day long, you walk around, “Oh, what’d the Groose do, what’d the Groose do...” And the updates, they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd. They’re like, “The Groose built a Groosenator?”

...I didn’t know he knew how to do that.

The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the Groose at all... You’re down in the Sealed Grounds like, “Hey, has anyone uh... Has anyone heard—“ *Groose’s theme*

Those are those quiet days when your minions are like, “It looks like the Groose has finally calmed down!” And then ten seconds later the Groose is like, “I’m gonna launch the sky child at the Imprisoned, and bomb ‘em with my cannon, I got nice hair and a long cannon, I’m a Groose!” And it’s like aw, that’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking Groose!

And then, then, then you go to brunch with people, and they’re like, “There shouldn’t be a human trying to stop you from resurrecting the demon king!” And it’s like: we’re well past that.

And then other people are like, “Well if there’s gonna be a Groose on the surface, I’m gonna flood Faron Woods!” And it’s like: those don’t match up at all.

And then for a second it seems like maybe we could survive the Groose, and then five hundred miles away, a Sheikah was like, “I have a nuclear bomb! And I’m gonna blow up the Gate of Time!” And before we could say anything, the sky child was like, “If you even fucking look at the Gate of Time, I will slash you to death with my sword. I dare you to do it, I want- I want you to do it, I want you to do it so I can slash you with my sword, I’m so fuckin’ crazy!”

She’s like, “You think you’re fuckin’ crazy? I’m a fuckin’ Sheikah. I live in a fuckin’ ancient temple. I’m fuckin’ crazy!” And all of us are like, okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Like poor Lanayru at those god damn reunions: okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay.

And then for a second we were like, “Maybe the demon king will kill the Groose.” And then the sky child is like, “I have killed the demon king.” He can do that?! That shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the hero is! I don’t remember that in the manga...

#ghirahim #groose #skyward sword #text #sorry it kinda fell apart near the end I was trying to keep my shitpost canon-compliant #long post

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bokettochild · 3 years

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Legendary Cousins

So... I promised @peachy-scars that I would write them this a while back when they posted this, and after consulting y’all (I think it was @attllhak and several anons who helped the most) I finally had enough to just go ham and write this beautiful piece of garbage.

Hope you like it, Peaches!

They had landed in a new Hyrule, and Legend’s instant reaction was to blink and stare about with a conflicted expression on his face while the others had stared in confusion at their surroundings.

“Why’s this look so weird?” Wind demanded eloquently as he pulled himself out from beneath a giggling Hyrule, who always laughed nervously when they landed in a new Hyrule and seemed particularly giddy today.

“Wind, manners.” Time chided softly, pulling himself back up and working with Wild to pull his protégé back up, Twilight looking around dizzily as he leaned on his mentor for balance. “You don’t know whose home this might be.”

“I do.” Legend hissed softly, hooded eyes staring towards a nearby path while a slight smile touched his lips. “New Hero everyone.”

Glances were exchanged before shooting to the vet in confusion. “How...”

“You knew there were more heroes?” Warriors sputtered, staring at the vet in surprise while the hero in question pulled himself to his feet and shook out his limbs, knuckles crackling painfully and making the others wince.

“Time travel mixed with world hopping and the occasional visit to other countries.” Legend answered in a low voice, stretching towards the sky and standing on the tips of his toes (eyes turned away as the vet’s already short tunic rode higher). “I’ve met plenty of other heroes. Five- maybe six? Not sure.” He shrugged, arms falling back to his sides as he moved further into the forest. “Come along, if we want to check up on things we’d best get headed to the castle. Monsters out here are brutal, even if they are bloody crazy.”

Glances were exchanged again, Wind’s wide eyes growing wider as he mouthed the words ‘six other heroes’ to his brothers.

“Who met Legend before all this went down?” The captain hissed, pulling Four up onto his back. “Because it sure as heck wasn’t me.”

No one answered, and they didn’t have much of a chance to as the Vet’s voice broke through the forest, a harsh hiss for them to hurry. “You stay there all day the ‘blins’ll eat you!”

Eight heroes pulled themselves along, following after as Legend trailed silently through the forest.

Each stumble or loud noise earned a glare from the vet, and if it didn’t come from them, it made him freeze, steps stopping immediately as his ears would prick towards the sound. More than once, Twilight or Sky had to muffle a laugh in their respective wraps as the image of a bunny starting to alert entered their minds.

Maybe it’s the laughter. Maybe it’s just their dang Hero of Courage luck, or maybe it’s just because Hylia thinks it funny, but even with all Legend’s glaring and stopping and sneaking, they are attacked just as they reach the edge of the forest.

The monsters are... horrifying. Nothing most of them have ever even seen, and the only thing they can do as they fight is to take the vet’s advice. “Aim for the eyes! And if you can’t reach them, the ankles!” The vet shouts as he kicks into a spin attack. The other heroes follow suit, ripping into the beasts as Wild pulls back from the group, setting off volleys of arrows as best he can do by himself, and successfully blinding a few of the monsters.

They’re thick into the song of battle when an unknown voice rings out. “Good golly! Hang on there, sirs!”

It’s hard to see past the swarms of monsters (seriously, they’ve never been this thick!) but blonde hair and a swinging sword assure them that whomever it is, is likely the hero Legend had told them about. Enemies fall as bombs explode and various weapons pierce through hearts and heads.

Once the dust has cleared, they take careful stock of their injuries and weapons (Wild’s shattered another sword and Four is sighing wearily) before turning their attention to their unexpected help.

Legend and the other hero stand over a dead bokoblin, shaking hands in a friendly manner while the one chatters to the other, the vet smiling thinly but genuinely as he listens.

“Vet, who’s this?”

“Ah! You have friends!” A bright smile is turned their way as the swordsman releases Legend’s hand. “Greetings! I’m Link.”

“The Hero of Koridai.” Legend adds on, rolling his eyes.

“Aw, come on, Other-Link!” The newcomer grins, jabbing Legend playfully in the side and effectively stealing his breath. “I’m just Link is all.”

“That’s all of their names too.” Legend wheezes, glaring up at the other.

The chain of heroes takes in the newcomer, who, much to the captain’s dismay, seems to share Legend’s opinion of pants, as well as a preference for pegasus boots. Bright brown eyes stare back at them, a dopey grin on the hero’s face, but beneath the welcoming grin there's a glint of something sharp and dangerous that has Warriors shuffling back warily.

“What adventure is this? Finish meeting up with your lovely cousins?”

The vet huffs a breath, clearing his throat as he straightens up again. “Thereabouts, this’ll be adventure seven.”

“Ooh, seven. Ouch.” Bright brown turn towards the vet with a sympathetic wince. “Sorry about that.”

“You had your own quests.” Legend dismisses, as if his words don’t confuse the others. “How’s Zelly by the way? We haven’t heard from her.”

Link, for lack of a better current name, smiles cheerily. “Half a minute yet there.” Turning to the others he offers yet another impossibly wide smile, it’s very nearly uncomfortable to look at, and Legend is the only one who seems unaffected by doing so (he has seen far, far worse from this world). “We should skedaddle over to the castle.” A halting motion is made towards the castle just in front of them as the newest hero laughs nervously. “As long as you’re there, you won’t be attacked.”

And for lack of anything else to do, they agree, following after as Legend and the new Link chat in the front, Legend with an amount of patience that has never in their memory presented itself and the new Link with an almost irritating amount of pep and cheer. “Zelly’s doing great, and we’re hoping to visit all of you soon too! Or, we were, but the monsters started getting real bad an’ Zel figured we’d better stay behind to make sure they didn’t cause too much trouble.”

“How bad?” The vet’s brows quirk with concern and Warriors nearly stumbles at the gentle expression on Legend’s face.

“Just a bit stronger.” The new Link shrugs, but smiles brightly up at Legend. “It’s not as bad as last time though, so don’t worry your pink head about it.”

And Legend... Legend actually laughs, reaching up to tug the cap of the other Link as they cross into the shadow of Hyrule Castle’s walls.

“What the-” Warriors is cut off with a blaring ‘Beep!’ from Wind, who looks up at him cheekily when the captain looks down at him.

“Censoring.” Wind chirrups.

”Soooo...” Twilight drawls, a smile pulling at his features as he looks between the duo, the heroes all relaxing as they enter the castle gates. “How do you two know each other?”

“We’re cousins!” Link chirrups happily, shooting another smile over his shoulder that’s just a bit too wide and a bit too sharp.”

“Third Cousins or...” Legend waves his hand vaguely. “Somethin’. Their father is my second cousin or some sort of thing, it’s unclear honestly, all we know is that Zelda is my cousin somewhere down the line and with those two dating-” The other Link flushes at the statement, face as dopey as Sky’s gets. “He’s bound to be thrown in there somewhere too.”

“Wait!” Four looks from one of the cousins to the other (there is a bit of resemblance, uncannily enough, even though Link smiles far more than Legend). “Whose time is this?”

The two share a look, nodding firmly before turning to the others and speaking together. “Both.”

“Two heroes? In one time?” Time cocks a brow.

Legend throws his hands up. “You can talk to Hylia about that!”

“Oh!” Link’s grin widens further as he bounces in place. “And how is Aunt Hylia? Golly, I haven’t seen her in ages!”

“Aunt Hylia...” Sky blinks slowly.

The vet huffs. “Fine. She’s letting Fable back into the fighting ring this weekend, figured since the Master didn’t mess things up that it’d be okay to let Hylians head back out there. Hide the evidence if they send me an invite, yeah?”

“Will do!” Comes the chipper reply, but the other heroes aren’t done.

“Wait, wait, wait, how many heroes are there in this time?” Warriors looks from one to the other with panic building in his gaze.

Link frowns in what seems an over-the-top expression of thought. “Do the colors count?”

Four chokes.

Legend flushes. “They count.” His voice is strained and nearly wheezing as swirling hazel stares a hole in his head.

“And then there’s the Hytopian wannabe, who might very well actually be one.” Link continues. “And the two of us. Does Great-Grandfather Raven count?”

“Not in this time, he just traveled here briefly when Nayru became corrupted.” Legend drawls with a head tilt, as if talking about meeting your ancestors and de-corrupting a goddess was normal for this world, and with the way Link just nods along, they are all beginning to worry that that is the norm here.

“Right, so five heroes.” Link nods slowly. “And then we have great-gramps Raven, and whoever- wait.” The new Link’s eyes fly wide open as he motions to Time. “Isn’t that Great-Gramps?”

Legend and Time both splutter as the vet hurries to correct the other hero. “No! He’s...” Legend looks from the startled Time to his cousin. “That’s the Hero of Time.” He whispers gravely, and Link’s eyes blow even wider as he looks to Time, who winces. They’ve all heard of what happened to the Hero of Time in this world.

“Oh!” Link breathes, before another smile stretches over his face. “Great-Great-Gramma Lon’s husband!”

Legend just facepalms while Time stands with his mouth flapping and fingers twitching, the old man now trying to calculate exactly how many children are now officially his while Warriors proceeded to have all the color drain out of his face.

“How are there two heroes of Courage here!!!!” The Captain hisses, and Link and Legend both look at each other. “And for the love of Hylia! Stop looking at each other all the time, what, can you read minds?!?!”

And both stare at the captain with the deadest of dead expressions, which actually makes Link all the more unnerving and Legend all the more intimidating. “Yes.”

It takes a while, but once they meet Zelda, she takes the time to explain.

“Our fathers are cousins.” She says, smiling at the heroes as they all sit and have lunch in the courtyard, motioning to Legend as she speaks. The vet is currently pulling his hat back off of his face after having it tugged down in vengeance for earlier. “Once both had married into the royal family, there was contention in the kingdom so Auntie Hylia sent Mapa and Papa out here to take care of this part of the kingdom while she handled things in central Hyrule.

“Most folks call Papa a king because they forget that it’s one country, but what with the high borders and all, it may as well be its own country.” She shrugs as she pops another piece of food in her mouth. “And there aren’t two Courage Wielders, technically. I mean, there are, but Link isn’t one of them.” She smiles in a sly sort of way, too wide, too knowing, too creepy for many of the heroes to be comfortable. “He just happens to care a lot and does what he can.”

“Oh yeah,” Hyrule nods knowingly, chewing slowly on his own meal. “My brother is like that too.”

The others, even Legend and Link, turn to Hyrule in shock. “Your what???”

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ymiwritesstuff · 3 years

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The Limits of a Hero

Hello hello, I’m here to bring you something rather special. A quick fun fact: When I started writing years ago, Link was actually the first character I ever wrote for, so this piece is sort of going back to my roots as a writer. That, and I’ve been in a HUGE Twilight Princess mood lately, (I recently bought a few volumes of the manga and I am very much enjoying it) so I thought I’d write this quick thing for my favorite incarnation of Link. I hope those of you who also like him will enjoy this.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Link x Reader

Summary: During a seemingly ordinary night out in the woods you decide to give the hero a much needed chance to rest.

Notes: Fluff, some light angst

The tree trunk felt rough against your back, but it provided a much-needed opportunity to finally rest and recollect your energy after yet another day of fighting against the twilight and its corrupt ruler. Yet you found a strange calm when surrounded by the night, the warm flames of the campfire swaying in the cool wind.

The wood crackled, the breeze howled and your eyelids grew heavy. You wouldn’t close them, however. Not yet. Instead, you kept your (E/C) eyes on the glowing fire, occasionally throwing in a stick or two to make sure your source of heat wouldn’t disappear.

Your thoughts wandered, as they often did ever since you were thrown into this dangerous adventure. How did everything change so fast? You could still hear the water trickling down the waterwheel in Ordon as if it was yesterday. Everything had gone wrong so fast, and now you were trying to save the entire kingdom from something you didn’t fully understand.

You knew it was the same for Link. But unlike you, he was much better at suppressing his confusion and doubts. You had noticed a change in him, no doubt caused by the sudden responsibility laid upon his broad shoulders. In addition to the more obvious changes in his attire, his cerulean eyes lost some of their glow, he somehow grew even more silent and he didn’t smile as often. All because he felt that his role as the hero chosen by the Gods demanded it.

It must have been tiring, you thought, yet he pressed on, never once letting even a single mention of how much it all weighed down on him slip from his lips. But you could see it. Whether it was in the way his shoulders fell with a sigh whenever he finished slaughtering a group of Bokoblins or how he yawned and stretched his arms almost every time he hopped off Epona. His body was fatigued, but his eyes held nothing but determination.

The rustling of leaves that came from behind snapped you back to reality, and your eyes fell on the bush where the grey animal soon emerged from, carrying something in his mouth the edges of which and a part of his lower body was seemingly damp. You watched as he walked with heavy steps towards the fire before dropping the thing you recognized to be a Hyrule Bass on the ground.

The fish flopped on the dirt and you found yourself raising a confused eyebrow at him, before locating his fishing rod not too far away from the fire, indicating that he had forgotten to take it with him. You looked at the fish again.

“Are we this desperate?” You managed to ask him as his beastly form quickly reverted to his original form you were familiar with. He sat on the ground and gave you a slight nod.

“We’re running low on food,” he said, taking a sip from his bottle of water. Most of his equipment was laying on the ground, though he was still fully clad in his green tunic, chainmail and all.

You noticed him taking out a small knife, no doubt intending to use it to prepare the freshly caught fish. He would not dare use his sacred sword for such a task. The bass was fairly big, enough for both of you, you surmised.

“I can take care of it,” you offered, noticing the tired look in his eyes as they turned to you. He shook his head lightly.

“It’s fine, (Name),” he assured and began cutting into the flesh, but you persisted.

“You haven’t slept properly in days.” It had been an exhausting few days, filled to the brim with battles against Shadow Beasts and other enemies. It took its toll on both of you yet he showed no outward signs of fatigue. Not that it was necessary, for right now, anyone could see the dark circles and bags under his otherwise gorgeous eyes.

He glanced at you, clearly pondering over your words while continuing to cut the fish. You were right, as you often were. He was exhausted, but the selflessness in him didn’t want you to lose any of the sleep you needed.

“Someone has to keep watch,” he began, but you quickly shut him down.

“Which I can do.”

You scooted over to him, noticing him making the final cuts to the scaly flesh of the fish. Placing a hand on top of his, you kept your eyes on him, trying to convince him.

“You need to rest, Link. Please.”

Upon hearing your voice that left your lips as a quiet plea he finally gave in, letting out a sigh that carried all his exhaustion into the air and letting go of the knife. He finally turned to you, his drained eyes glowing in silent relief.

“Will you be alright? You know you can wake me up any time if-”

“I’ll be fine. The only thing you need to worry about is getting some sleep.”

Your hand reached up to slowly remove his cap, exposing his dirty blond hair that bathed in the glowing embers of the campfire. You offered him a smile equally warm as the flames which he thankfully returned.

Planting the tiniest kiss on his cheek, you retreated from him, once again leaning against a lone tree. With your hand you lightly patted your lap, wanting the hero in front of you to have the best possible chance at getting a good night’s rest.

He laid his weary head on your lap and almost immediately, he let out a long yawn that indicated just how much he needed this, despite his stubborn protests. Your fingers found their way into his hair, running through his locks in a soothing manner.

Silence fell around you, though it was a refreshing change from the usual noises of battle and struggles. You stared at the fire once again, its welcoming warmth enveloping both of you.

“You’ve changed,” you admitted, thinking back to the simpler times, during which Link would have been more than compliant to sleep when he needed it. He let out a soft sigh, his eyes glued to the starlit sky above.

“I guess I have,” he agreed. You wondered if he meant it to the same degree as you did. Even now, you noticed the solemn expression on his face you had never seen back home.

Home. You thought about it a lot. Maybe a little too much at times. Ordon meant a lot to you, even more to Link you assumed. Perhaps that’s why he had gotten so stoic and serious. He was merely trying to protect what he held dear.

It was admirable, he was, by all accounts, a hero. Courageous, selfless, strong, yet still a mere Hylian. A capable Hylian indeed, but still a Hylian. A Hylian who the entire kingdom needed to save them. Everyone expected so much of him, it seemed as if he himself forgot his limits.

“You’re not all-powerful, Link.”

Your eyes fell on him, and his own looked up at you. Someone needed to be his voice of reason, and you were more than willing to take that role if it meant ensuring his safety when he sometimes couldn’t.

“Maybe I should be.”

Your eyebrows frowned at that. You knew he felt a certain sense of guilt about what happened to the children of the village. They were safe now, but there was a stinging sensation of shame embedded in him that made him feel responsible for all of it.

“Don’t say that. You did all you could. Pushing yourself to the point where you can’t stay up anymore won’t solve anything.”

He knew you were right. You almost always were. Link had always secretly wondered if it was a blessing that it was you who had accidentally stumbled across the same wall of Twilight that had transformed him into a beast. In all honesty, he was thankful.

“I’m just... Worried about you,” you confessed, feeling a small sense of dread in the core of your being. Just thinking about what could happen to him if he didn’t take care of himself made your stomach churn.

A troubled look fell on his face, as if he was feeling guilty about making your eyes fill with concern. You inhaled deeply and pressed your lips on his forehead, not wanting your own uneasiness make him anxious.

“Rest now. I’ll keep watch.”

With a small nod, he allowed his heavy eyelids to close and it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, soft snores escaping his mouth that was partially agape.

For the first time in days, he looked truly peaceful. His body relaxed, rid of any signs of stress or tension, the only movement being that of his chest, moving up and down due to his steady breathing. With a smile you continued running your digits through his hair, hoping to comfort him even in his dreams you could only hope were as tranquil as your current surroundings.

“Goodnight, Link.”

#loz #zelda #the legend of zelda #loz x reader #the legend of zelda x reader #legend of zelda #tloz #Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess #loz tp #twilight princess #twilight princess link #link x reader #tp link x reader #twilight princess x reader #twilight princess link x reader #zelda imagines #link imagines #loz imagines

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minty-mumbles · 3 years

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I propose:

The chain did not come together one by one. That would be chaos. Imagine a high strung hero, used to people and monsters trying to kill them, being approached by a random group of people claiming to share your soul. They would run for the hill. Or think it's a cult.

I think it would make much more sense for them to come together in small groups first, and then meet up later. So here's how I think would that might go down:

Wind and Warriors meet up on Outset island. Warriors has experience with time travel/dimension hopping/whatever it is they're doing, from the war of ages. So he would be less likely to freak out about suddenly being somewhere else. And his charm is what allows him to convince Wind's grandma to let Warriors spirit her grandson through this strange portal.

Twilight and Time, of course, meet each other first. Just, come on, who else? Twilight shows up at the ranch one day while Malon and her father are in town. Time finds Twilight introducing his Epona to Time's. They kind of just stare at each other for a moment. Twilight recognizes Time as the Hero's Shade, and Time can feel something about this boy is just so familiar. After a few minutes of Twilight apologizing for just walking in, and not introducing himself first But, you know, he kind of got dropped here unexpectedly, and got distracted by the horses. They sort everything out and are gone by the time Malon gets back. (Don't worry Time wrote a note. Malon won't worry about him. No, not at all, totally not.)

Hyrule and Wild meet up. They don't even sort out the whole "We're both heroes" thing for a while. Hyrule is just bumming around Wild's Hyrule, and besides the astonishing variety of flora and fauna, just thinks he's found a new area of his own Hyrule. The two meet up a few times, and eventually start to stay together longer and longer every time they meet, until Wild invites Hyrule back to his house. It just feels like they can trust each other for some reason. Weird. Oh well, let's go blow up that bokoblin camp together. When Wild shows Hyrule his house, Hyrule finally figures out something isn't quite right, because even if he's never been here before, he should have at least heard of such a bustling town as this, Right?

Four and Sky end up in Legend's Hyrule. They find their way to Ravio, and are chatting with him. Four is talking about the fact that he also runs a small business, Four Sword Smithing, perhaps you've heard of it? No? Strange. Not to brag, but he thought it was rather well known. Oh well.

And Sky is looking to buy some bombs. And then, here comes Legend, who takes one looks at these well kitted-out adventuring types that feel strangely familiar, and just goes 'Oh, not this again.' and drag them away. Sky never did get to buy those bombs.

Then Time and Twilight meet Wild and Hyrule, and after a tense moment of staring, it's just that spiderman meme of them all pointing at each other. Then Wind and Warriors join the party, and finally Sky, Legend, and Four.

#Just to be clear #I don't think this is ACTULLY how they all came together #It's just funny to think about #linked universe #lu #lu wind #lu warriors #lu wild #lu time #lu twilight #lu four #lu sky #lu hyrule #lu legend #my headcanons

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blue-knightshade · 2 years

Text

Limits Pt 2

TW: Heavy injury, blood

Part 1 here Part 3 here

“Just stay here,” was all that came out of his lips as he cautiously started to make his way over to the corpses littered on the ground. He passed two Lizalfos, one of them without a head. There was a pool of black blood around the creatures. It stunk like hell. Next he passed a Bokoblin, which had an arrow through its torso.

Someone had been here. Twilight just hoped it was one of the others.

”Twilight? Do you think the others are okay?”

The Ranch-Hand looked down at a nervous Wind walking next to him. Aside from Sky and Hyrule, they hadn’t found anyone else yet.

“Of course, kid. They can handle themselves,” he responded. He was reminding himself just as much as he was reminding Wind, though, and he knew it. He sighed. He was worried about them. It was getting dark now, though, so there wasn’t much time left to find them.

”We should probably set up camp,” Said Hyrule from behind them. “I know you’re worried about them, but we can’t go on much longer in the da-“

”No,” Twilight growled. “We‘re going to keep searching until we can’t see our hands in front of our faces. We’re going to find someone else before we settle in.”

Hyrule took a deep breath. There was no arguing with Twilight when he was in this kind of mood. It usually ends up in that silence where you can feel the tension in the air. That was the last thing they needed right now. He looked up at the ever-growing darkness. They were going to be here all night.

Wind glanced at Twilight. This certainly didn’t make him feel any better.

The Ranch-Hand stopped. There was a scent on the wind and his wolf instincts were kicking in. The smell…it was the smell of blood.

None of the others seemed to notice, and were asking him what it was. But he wasn’t listening. He could smell blood. He could smell blood and didn’t like where this was going.

He began jogging towards the scent, slowly picking up speed as the smell got stronger. The other ran after him, still trying to get his attention.

”Hey, Twilight! What are you do-“ Sky started, but then he could start to smell it too. “Wh-whats that smell??” He held his sailcloth to his nose, clearly disgusted by the stench.

Hyrule knew exactly what the smell was, and caught on with what Twilight was doing.

“You don’t think that—“

Twilight stopped. There was blood on the ground. A lot of blood. And it was red, not black. Winds eyes went wide. Sky was only beginning to understand.

Twilight‘s heart skipped a beat as he saw the copious amount all over the forest floor. He looked up and saw that they were at the edge of a clearing. It was very dark now, but he could make out the figures of dead creatures. He swallowed hard.

“What is it, Twi?” Wind asked urgently.

Twilight didn’t say anything for a moment.

Someone had been here. Twilight just hoped it was one of the others.

The next one was much larger. It looked like a Moblin. It had a sword stuck in its neck, and it was covered in blood. The sword looked familiar. He couldn’t see it very well in the darkness. He came to look at it closer, and his stomach turned upside-down.

That was Warriors’s sword. Twilights eyes widened. If his sword was still here, that must mean he’s close…or something happened to him.

He quickly went to go look at the last figure on the ground. He saw a boot…and a blue scarf he knew all too well.

Shit.

He scrambled over to the body and got out his lantern. Once he lit it, the sight he was faced with was certainly not a pretty one.

Warriors‘s leg was drenched in blood, and his shoulder looked dislocated. Not to mention there was an arrow sticking out of his back, and his face was stained with the red stuff.

Twilight‘s breathing was rapid, and his hands were shaking.

“N-no…” He started, raising his palm to his forehead. At some point, the others came over, and were surrounding Warriors.

Hyrule said something, but he couldn’t hear it. The others were trying to comfort him, but he couldn’t care less at the moment.

I failed him. I failed him and now he’s dead, he kept telling himself. His eyes were locked on to Warriors’s body, and he couldn’t bring them away. It was torture. He wanted to kill himself for letting this happen. He wanted to punish himself for letting one of his brothers get hurt. He wanted to-

“He has a pulse.”

Twilight looked up at Hyrule, who had already removed the arrow. He felt ashamed. He just sat there while the others were helping their friend. He really was unreliable.

He swallowed and didn’t say anything. He always thought Hyrule was so strong for being able to do this kind of work. Twilight was fine with mauling things to death with his own fangs, but when it was someone he was close to? He can never stand to see his friends hurt.

Sky started to comfort him as Wind and Hyrule started fixing Warriors up. Twilight wasn’t used to being this vulnerable. It made him feel weak. It was the most he could do to not start tearing up as Sky started rubbing his back.

Hyrule and Wind were done healing Warriors and had him leaned up against a tree when he came around. He groaned and bit his lip as he woke up, then noticed the bandages. He blinked and looked at everyone around him.

“Oh, hey guys…” he said weakly, smiling at the people around him.

Twilight jumped when he heard his voice and looked up at him.

”Captain! How are you feeling?” He asked, scrambling to get up and check on his wounds with Hyrule.

”Could be better,” Warriors chuckled, “but it’s good you’re here, I guess.”

”You guess??” Wind asked, smiling and coming over to talk to him.

”You three took long enough! Did you see the size of that thing?” He asked.

“You’re right, we’re very sorry. If only we came sooner and-“ Sky started.

”Hey, hey, I was just teasing!” Warriors said with a cheeky smile. “I’m glad you guys are unharmed.”

”Well, how selfless of you.” Twilight joked, standing up. “I’m going to go chop some wood for a fire, I’ll be right back.“

“Alright, be careful,“ Sky called behind him as he walked towards the woods. It was very late at this point, and everyone was exhausted. The sun would start peeking over the horizon soon.

As Twilight chopped wood, he let his mind unravel what just happened. Just an hour ago, Warriors was bleeding to death on the ground, alone, and might as well been dead. He was recovering very quickly.

He sighed as he finished and stretched his back, satisfied with his work. He tied up the wood into a bundle, and began to haul it back to camp. He just made into the clearing again when he heard a yell.

Twilight dropped the wood immediately and ran back to camp, wondering what it could be now…

Sky ran towards him with teary eyes, holding him back.

“What? What is it?” Twilight asked urgently. His mind was travelling to places he never wanted to go. He grabbed Sky’s wrist. “WHAT HAPPENED!?” He demanded.

”Calm, down, I-He-he’s fine- it’s just-“ Sky stuttered, trying to keep him contained. But Twilight forced his way past him, and ran over to the others. Hyrule was covering his face with his hands, and Wind was desperately prodding Warriors‘s face.

Hyrule looked up at Twilight, who noticed his blood-shot eyes. Twilight’s heart was pounding and he dropped down to the ground next to Warriors, checking his pulse.

Or rather, his lack of one.

Twilight’s hands shook violently.

This can’t be happening. THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING, he thought.

His face went blank and he just got up and walked away.

He really was unreliable.

#You know what? Fuck it *kills your warriors*#Mwahaha #linkeduniverse #linked universe #warriors angst because there isn’t enough out there #Lu #lu fic #lu warriors #lu twilight #lu sky #lu wind #lu hyrule #linkle’s literature

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jinmukangwrites · 3 years

Note

"That was embarrassing" for Legend please?

The second Legend's body hits the water, all common sense flies out the window.

How could he fuck up this badly?! It wasn't even that bad of a fight. Nothing more than a few bokoblins with a few rusty swords.

But the lip of the river was slippery with roots and fallen leaves... when he stepped back to dodge he didn't even have enough time to call out when his gravity shifted unexpectedly with the sound of a boot squelching in mud.

The water is freezing. So freezing that it burns and makes his skull feel too tight for his brain. They're not sure who's world they're in, or whose time-line they're closest to, but one things for sure; the water definitely feels fresh from snow runoff. Early spring. Just Legend's Hylia-Damned-Luck.

It takes seconds or years for Legend to remember how to move his arms. He already can't feel his fingers, and it's almost like the water itself has grown limbs to latch onto his clothes and toss him whatever way it wants. He quickly loses sense of what's up and what's down in the murky water. Soon enough, his lungs begin to burn and his legs begin to weaken. He has no idea what to do... he's so cold and he needs to breathe and he doesn't want to die here and he loathes the water and the cold and the helplessness and he's never been the best swimmer and-

Something other than water grasps onto him. A pressure snaking around his middle and wrapping around his arm. Before Legend knows it, the agonizing beautiful sensation of air rushes over his face, causing him to splitter and choke and gasp and blink tears from his eyes. It's all he can do to try and grab onto whatever brought him up while his throat rebels barrel-full amounts of liquid from his lungs.

Everything is so loud. And so cold. Every time he coughs out water, more seems to flow in with the rushing raves of the rivers surface. When he tries to open his eyes against the white, rushing splashes, all he can see is a blur of confusing colors that for some reason he can't comprehend.

Everything seems to go black then. He can’t find where his body is, but he can feel the pressure of everything squeezing against his brain like it will explode.

Then… it all bursts back into light as he coughs water onto the ground below him. He curls up on his side, hacking and wheezing as he tries to make everything hurt less. He’s vaguely aware of a hand on his back, slamming near his spine over and over again as multiple echoes that almost sound like his name reach his ears. Eventually, he’s able to suck in a gasp of air for what feels like the first in forever. He blinks droplets that must be a mixture of water and tears from his lashes, hoping his vision clears soon.

Next thing he knows, hands are grasping against his arms and hefting him up so he’s sitting up. He feels boneless, but luckily there's a warm body right next to him; perfect for him to lean against and finally catch his breath.

He recognizes the smell of damp pine and campfire smoke that always seems to cling to Hyrule’s tunic. He almost goes limp with relief at the proof that after almost drowning in raging waters, this is all still real.

“Are you okay?” Hyrule asks as Legend begins to feel his body finally calm down. He looks ahead of him to see none other than Wild standing a few feet back with sopping wet clothes and his long hair dripping over his eyes. Wild must have been the one to rescue Legend from his watery fate; which makes sense as Wild is one of the best swimmers they have.

Behind Wild are shouting voices of the others all, perhaps, running one-by-one to make sure their local pessimist is still alive.

And Hyrule... bless his best friend. He must have used every trick he knows in his head to sprint in the forest to keep up and be here.

“Yeah,” Legend breaths. He brings his hands to his face to wipe away the lingering water. “I’m… fine.”

“Take all the time you need,” Hyrule says softly, shooting a look up at Wild.

Legend doesn’t know what is silently exchanged between the two of them with that look, but whatever it is he’s deciding now that he doesn’t like it. Sure, he’s just almost died in one of the ways he fears most, but he can’t have these two—let alone the rest of the group—start thinking he can’t take care of himself. He clears his throat.

“Thanks for the help, but I’m fine now. Really.”

Wild gives him an unimpressed look. “You almost died, dumbass.”

“We’re just glad that didn’t happen,” Hyrule shoots in quickly before Legend can argue back. Another look is exchanged between the two, which makes Legend feel entirely too left out.

He takes a deep breath and shoves himself away from Hyrule. Hyrule makes a startled sound, but stays where he is while Legend struggles to his feet. The world spins along with his stomach, but Legend would much rather be standing than leaning against someone for much longer. “I’m sure the others are looking for us,” he says.

He takes a step forward and immediately feels his knees go pitifully weak below him. Before he can hit the ground, however, strong arms wrapped in soaked cloth catch him. Legend steadies himself against Wild with a sigh.

“That was embarrassing,” he says, more to himself. Wild, however, only laughs as Legend lets him wrap Legend’s arm around his neck.

“Suck it up, collector,” Hyrule says, running forward and grabbing Legend’s other arm. “Let us take care of you.”

When the others all finally burst through the trees with various amounts of visible worry, Legend supposes it’s too late now to argue much.

As each of them, one buy one, begin to drill him on his health and offer blankets for him to get warm in… he decides that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to let them worry about his stupid mistake for a little while. Especially as no one makes fun of him or try to lecture him on how he could have avoided it all. They all clearly… care for him… which isn’t something Legend is used to. He hasn’t let himself get close to someone in a long time, not since he’s learned that most of his loved-ones betray him or… leave him.

Their worry seems genuine tonight. And it feels… good.

Yeah… yeah tonight he’ll let his shell shed ever so slightly. Just this once.

#linked universe #hero of legend #jin writes #drabble fic #drowning tw #injury tw #fanfic

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minart-was-taken · 4 years

Text

Sort of continuation of this, but it also does stand on it’s own!

Title: A small problem Characters: Ravio, Wind, Minish and Legend Includes threats of violence “Tags:” First meetings - No-one is sure what they’re doing but that’s ok - Zelda shows up!

Enjoy!

Ravio was speechless, a little scared, but most powerfully: mesmerized. Two kids, clearly younger than him and both with bright blond locks that rivaled the sun, were engaged in combat.

Although fists were flying, neither had landed a single hit. When the older one, who he had dubbed Mr. Sailor, threw a hit, the younger one, Mr. Small, would live up to his nickname and shrink to a very small size.

He’d then unshrink, throw a hit himself, and miss as the other pulled quite the leap to get away.

Ravio was simply waiting for one of them to land a hit, and for the situation to escalate badly, as he was too afraid to intervene.

Another crack followed then, they were starting to give Ravio a headache.

From it appeared a pink haired boy, tallest of the people present. He blinked in surprise, glancing around.

His appearance seemed to distract the coat wearing boy, who ended up getting decked in the face and fell over shouting “SHIT!” very loudly.

“Oh my.” Signed the newest arrival, looking at the situation before him with wide eyes. “Am I interrupting something?”

“I’m glad you are.” Ravio responded, walking over to the seemingly sane one, although staying from stabbing range just in case. “I’ve been trying to get these two to stop fighting for ages!”

“No you haven’t!” Grumbled the kid slowly getting himself back from the ground, while the smaller one stood smugly nearby.

“Do I look like someone who could stop a fist fight with force?” Ravio pointed out. “Neither of you listened to reason, so I simply was waiting for an opening.”

“An opening for what?”

He hadn’t had a proper plan. “Why would I tell that? You might fight again and I don’t want you to know what to expect.” However they did not have to know about that.

“Why were they fighting?” the pink one asked.

“He started it.” Coat boy complained.

“Ah. Uhm.” Ravio scratched the back of his head: “From what I could tell, I was simply talking to Mr. Sailor here, then the small one appeared from the bushes and kicked him in the back of the knee.”

“But why?”

“I’m not quite sure.” Ravio confessed.

The stranger tilted his head, confused, before turning to look at the small smug one. “Could you tell us now?”

The very small one scoffed, but signaled for them to follow.

They were in the yard of a small house, and near the window was a little patch of what looked more like weeds than anything else. The kid pointed at one of the weeds that had been very slightly stood upon.

The pink haired one understood, his fist meeting his palm in understanding. “It’s not nice to trample on other people’s plants, Mr. Sailor.”

Coat boy crossed his arms. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I just appeared right there! I would’ve moved if I knew I was standing on a plant.”

“It’s just a big misunderstanding then.” The pink one nodded, kneeling down to be the smallest one’s height. “Next time try to tell him to move before kicking him, okay?”

Mr. Small looked unimpressed, but nodded.

Ravio was just confused as to why anyone would care about such an useless patch of plants. The only valuable thing lost here was a possible alliance between the two small ones.

Kids, oh so dumb. Ravio smiled to himself.

“When you said you appeared-” the Pink one spoke again, standing up and turning to the sailor. “Was it like how I did?”

Mr. Sailor nodded. “Yeah. One moment I was just hammering some nails and suddenly I’m here. Being kicked in the back of my knee. By the smallest bokoblin I’ve ever seen.”

The small one raised a fist, but the pink one grabbed it mid air, and held it still. The small one seemed shocked that someone could- Or more likely- Would try and stop him.

“Oh sorry, I meant rat.” Said the sailor, sticking his tongue out.

“Please stop antagonizing the small child with a sword.” Ravio said in a hushed voice.

The small one was too entranced by having been stopped to care, simply staring at the pink one with wide eyes.

“Huh. What a strange situation.” The pink one continued, ignoring the general chaos. “Well, I suppose if we’re all in it, we should get to know one another. My name is Link. Spelt L-I-N-K”

The smallest one pointed at himself, all the while Mr. Sailor gasped: “Wait- That’s my name too.”

Ravio felt himself tense up a bit, what he had been suspecting was indeed going on, wasn’t it?

The house that looked eerily like the one Link lived in, then there was the clear fact he was in Hyrule, and that there were people who looked eerily like Link but weren’t him…

Oh great goddess of lorule, take him back home please. This is not ideal.

“Hm…” The pink one pondered. “This seems like it’d mean something significant.”

You think? Ravio raised a brow, before shaking off the questioning look to smile politely like a good salesman. “Link isn’t the most common name, so I have to agree.”

He walked closer to the pink one, mostly certain he wouldn’t stab him. With a hand on his back, he continued. “The only Link I know of is the legendary hero of hyrule! It’d be ridiculous for him to be here, though, wouldn’t it?”

“I am he.” Mr. Sailor said.

The tall one blinked at that. “But.. So am I?”

The smallest one dug through his pockets, and pulled out a small note, handing it to Ravio.

Ravio read it out loud to everyone: “Link is the hero of Hyrule, and is allowed to do what he sees fit in order to keep the country safe. Signed, Princess Zelda.”

“...We can’t all be heroes of Hyrule.” Mr. Sailor complained. “And I know for one that I’m not lying, so.”

“There isn’t just one, though.” Ravio spoke up. “Legends speak of a hero in green who appeared centuries ago, perhaps he too had someone before him, and there was someone after.”

“Centuries, though.” Mr. Sailor pointed out, “Do I look a hundred years old to you?”

The smallest one nodded, but Ravio shook his head.

“I’ve heard of stranger things than time travel, in these lands.” Ravio stated.

“I suppose it is a plausible theory.” The pink one pondered, hand on chin. “I know I’m not lying either.”

“And the small one has a letter from the princess.”

“It could be forged.” The sailor pointed out.

Ravio wanted to point out he could tell a forgery from the real thing pretty easily, and had seen enough of Hilda’s writing to know how the royal family conducts it’s deeds. However, that’d make him seem kind of suspicious. “We could go and find out?” Ravio decided to ask instead.

“How?”

“This is clearly the small one’s home, if these are his plants. So this is his Hyrule.” Ravio explained. “Let’s go to the castle, and if the kid is allowed in, it means it’s not forged.”

“I suppose that’s a fair plan.” The pink replied. “And since neither of us are apparently lying, if the letter is real, then- Er, what’s your name?”

“I’m Ravio.” He responded, “The greatest merchant around.”

“Okay- It’s nice to meet you.” The pink one smiled. “Then if all of us are Link like we claim, Ravio’s theory was right.”

“Or some form of it.” Ravio specified.

The pink one nodded. “Very well, little one, could you take us to the castle?”

The smallest one pouted, but began leading the way.

“Holy fuck!” The sailor gasped, looking at the castle once it appeared in the horizon, standing tall yet- A little smaller than Ravio had expected.

The smallest one grinned smugly, walking at a pace more akin to jogging to stay in front of the taller people.

“It’s quite small.” The pink one commented.

“I do agree.” Ravio nodded. “The one I’ve seen is certainly larger.”

“It looks funny.” The pink one smiled, maybe even a little smug.

Ravio took note of it, but did not comment on it.

“So.” The pink one continued. “Your name is Ravio?”

“Like I said, yes.” He nodded. “Are you interested in my wares? I don’t have much on me due to the sudden departure but-”

“Not Link.” He stopped Ravio. “Yet you look a tad like us.”

Ravio blinked, breathing hitched. He missed his hood, but he had been in lorule- He doesn’t need that in Lorule! In Lorule he’s one of a kind!

“I suppose destiny can have a bit of a slip up here and there?” Ravio suggested. Sorry Link, he’d have to steal your identity for a bit here. “I assure you, however, just because I cannot wield a blade does not make me completely useless.”

The pink one simply kept smiling. “Very well, then.”

He hadn’t bought it, had he? Ravio yelled internally, but tried to keep the relaxed facade up.

The castle town was very cute, the sailor looking around with wide eyes, looking like he was taking many internal notes.

What caught Ravio’s eye however, happened a bit later. The smallest showed the letter to a guard by the castle gates, the guard simply sighed, said: “Follow me,” and started walking further into the castle grounds.

“That’s a lot to process.” The pink one spoke again. Ravio had to agree.

They were led to a room to wait- A waiting room, you could say- For the princess to get ready for guests. It matched all the Hyrule castles Ravio had seen, that being one. Stone brick all about, a polished but a little cold interior, with the triforce ever present in all decor.

There were paintings present as well. They seemed to capture the curiosity of all visitors, much to the delight of the smallest one’s ego.

Ravio focused at first on one depicting the princess, she looked similar to the Zelda of the Hyrule he knew, but clearly another person entirely.

He then chose to take a look at the others in their impromptu party, and found the pink one standing under a portrait of what was likely another hero of courage, this one standing tall with a flowing white cape, and a small red bird on his shoulder.

The sight awakened a memory in Ravio, and he found himself suddenly plunged into a mystery.

There was a mural in his Link’s hyrule castle, one depicting the hero prior to him. Zelda had joked to him and Hilda about how she had read the hero actually had pink hair, but the artists took creative liberties and made it dark blond instead.

This couldn’t be the man who sealed Ganon away, was it? Certainly there had been more than one pink haired Link.

Then again, they seemed to be in a situation which included traveling through space and time. Guess that might as well be a detail.

A guard soon showed up, expressing that the princess was ready.

They headed to the throne room. It was bold, large and voices echoed within it. The large windows made it feel slightly less like a scary space, but it did still make him grow a bit uneasy.

In Front of the aforementioned throne, stood the princess, with a bright but curious smile.

“Link, I didn’t know you had made friends!”

The small one tried to hide in his cape, but was unsuccessful.

“It’s very nice to meet you all.” Zelda smiled brightly, as the boys bowed. Ravio hadn’t been sure if that was to be expected, but the smallest one did have a blade and seemed to be satisfied with them bowing, so perhaps it was a good choice.

The pink one took charge soon after, explaining the predicament they found themselves in. Or at least, theorized they did.

“Oh my.” Zelda gasped. “The hero’s spirit will reincarnate this much?! That’s quite saddening.”

“Has the legend of the hero not existed for long here?” The pink one asked.

“We only know of one before Link here.” Zelda explained. “The hero who arrived from the skies to seal away the great evil, so that humanity could return to the lands below.” She said, clearly quoting something.

“...I guess the seal didn’t last.” Zelda added sadly.

The small one rushed over to her, and offered his hand to her. She took hold of it, and smiled with thankfulness in her eyes at the kid.

“Well, if any of you are like Link here, Hyrule is in good hands.” She smiled again. “I wish I could help more though. I’m not sure at all what could be going on, or what to do about it.”

“Do you have time travel items, or something? Getting home would be nice.” The sailor asked.

“I can ask for research on the topic to be conducted.” Zelda nodded. “Until then, you may stay at the castle, if you’d like.”

“Thank you very much, your highness.” The pink- Okay, he needed a nickname, Ravio decided. Whether he was the legendary hero or not, calling him Mr. Legend should help butter the guy up for possible sales, anyway.

With that, they were led to a guest room. Ravio was both deeply glad they hadn’t been paired up, as every pairing seemed like a bad idea, but was also absolutely terrified of sharing a room with three swordsmen he barely knew. They were also given instructions on how to get to both the castle library and the town’s library. Information which Ravio decided to make use of the next day.

It was fine really, and the beds were very comfortable! It seemed the spirit of the hero made them all sleepy as hell, as well. So getting stabbed seemed unlikely. However one thing still kept Ravio up that night.

“Bunnies, dark hair…” Mr. Legend had signed to him, when it was just the two of them, the sun having started to settle for the night “It reminds me of a place.”

“Oh, heh. A place, huh?” Ravio chuckled nervously. He didn’t like being put on the spot without a plan.

“It was a dreadful place.” Mr. Legend stated. “I hope you’re not related to it in some way.”

“I sure hope so too?” Ravio stumbled to find the words:“It sounds much worse than Hyrule. Love this place, the grass is very green. Smells great.”

“I hope so too.” Mr. Legend smiled, a strange dead look in his eyes. “I don’t want to take another life.”

Then he just started talking about how he liked apples.

So, it would’ve been stranger if Ravio wasn’t having trouble sleeping!

Oh, goddesses above, help him.

#The Legend of Zelda #Loz #Ravio #Legend #Minish #Wind #Minish Cap #Zelda #Linkverse

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corpsentry · 3 years

Photo

ao3 mirror

fandom: botw rating: t  pairing: zelda/link  notes: post-canon, getting together, mild descriptions of injury. cooking. dancing. crying. and so on. “Let’s say you’ve been asleep for a hundred years and when you wake up you’ve lost all your memories, but you defeat the big bad monster like you’ve been told to, because a girl told you to, and because you were in love with her. And after defeating the big bad monster she comes back, only she’s not the person she was a hundred years ago. And you’re not the person you were a hundred years ago. And yet every time you look at her, your chest hurts so bad you think you might be dying.” He looks up from his breadstick. “Am I dying?” “No,” Beedle says. “I think you’re stupid.”

All roads lead to hateno.

“I ate the frog.” Is the first thing he says to her in a hundred years, because he can’t stop staring at her hands, and his head isn’t working properly because he can’t stop staring at her hands, and he doesn’t remember what he had been planning on saying before he walked into the castle and killed two versions of evil incarnate in a room with a domed ceiling and a field with a domed sky, but he’s pretty sure. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t this. “I’m sorry,” Zelda says. “You what?” “I, uh.” He takes a step back, and then a step forward. Hyrule castle looms like a corpse behind her, hulking and majestic and dead. It distracts him, though not as much as Zelda herself, pale as winter and glowing behind a halo of sun. “There was a frog you wanted me to eat.” A hundred years ago. “You said it would be for an experiment.” A hundred years ago you told me to eat a frog and that’s all that I remember. That’s what’s kept me going all this time. When things got hard, when the weight of the curse you had given me grew too great, I cooked a frog in a pot over a fire. She stares at him for a moment, her expression unreadable. “You’re more talkative than I remember.” He panics. “Should I stop talking?” “Oh no! No, just— how do I put it—” This probably isn’t what she had in mind for their reunion. He feels the sudden need to apologize. He should have tried harder to hold onto himself while he was sleeping off the blood on his back and the world retreated into a corner to lick at its wounds, but it was hard. He didn’t know what he was doing. He doesn’t remember, actually. He doesn’t remember going to sleep, and he doesn’t remember what he dreamed of. That’s two question marks in one head, and only one answer to go around. There were two shadows on the wall, though they belonged to the same boy. Zelda twists her hands together, almost as if in prayer. Her white dress billows heavily in the wind, covered in wounds from another century. “I’m sorry,” she says to his feet. “Please keep talking.” He nods, though she isn’t looking. After a moment, they make their way across the trampled, dead-looking field to his horse, who’s had half of her mane seared off and looks like she desperately wants a carrot. He hauls himself onto the saddle, then holds out a hand to Zelda, who stares at it like he’s just offered her the rest of his lifespan. Then she takes it, letting him pull her up behind him, and her hand is so warm, and the sky is so blue, and everything is so strange, he almost lets go. Of the girl. Of the reins. Of his grip on reality, this new, unexplored reality, the carcass of the castle slowly growing smaller in the distance. When he walked into the sanctum with a plan to kill Ganon he had been thinking about how the stalhorses on Tabantha Snowfield run faster than the horses near Kakariko, how a bokoblin will choose a freshly roasted chicken over the skin of your teeth, how stables are a metaphor for family. Now all he can think of is angels. She asks him where they’re going a little while later, and it’s only then that he realizes he doesn’t know. It’s a cool, starless night. No moon, no blood. His horse snickers at a boar by the side of the road, and Zelda tightens her grip on his waist. God, what have they been doing for the last hundred years? “Home,” he answers. “We’re going home.”

 The house in Hateno is a small and modest affair. This is probably the only reason Bolson and his construction company were willing to sell it to him at an equally modest price, with modest display stands for his modest weapons, and a modest bed beside which he hung a framed photograph of him and his dead friends. He’s fine with it, though. The only thing that really matters to him is the photograph, though there are now two living people in it instead of one and a half, and if Bolson had not graciously included a bedframe and mattress in his modest homemaker’s package, then Link would have slept on the floor. He says as much to Zelda, who blinks at him sleepily and throws a pillow at his face. “Please don’t do that,” he says. “Sleep in your own bed,” she replies. He peels the pillow off the floor and pats the dust away before replacing it carefully on the bed. “I promised your father I would take care of you.” And Daruk. And Mipha. And Urbosa, who would kill me if she found out I let the princess sleep on the carpet. Like a dog, she would probably say, her voice low, her eyes slanted. How could you treat her like a stray dog? This is the princess we’re talking about. She deserves better. He opens his mouth to say as much, but Zelda gets there first. “My father is dead,” she says, her voice unexpectedly raw. She seems surprised at herself despite her best efforts, and clears her throat in an attempt to hide it. He finds himself overwhelmed with the sudden urge to hug her or blast a hole through the roof with his sword, but can’t decide on one, and ends up wringing his hands together behind his back while Zelda sits on the side of the modest bed in the modest house in Hateno, and presses the folds of her dress into a clump. There should be more he can do for her. What is it? If only Urbosa were here to tell him what it means when Zelda takes your hand like a promise, when Zelda pinches the side of your waist, when Zelda announces that her father is dead, has been dead for a hundred years, died a long time ago. But Urbosa is dead too. The old world is gone, though its survivors have finally emerged from the twilit field. What now? Zelda rubs her eyes. He picks at a cuticle and holds his breath. Despite her best protests, she agrees to the bed-floor arrangement. Zelda will sleep on the bed, because he didn’t think that far when he walked into the castle and defeated evil incarnate, and she doesn’t seem to care. Meanwhile, he will sleep on the floor. Which floor? The first floor, he decides, but when he tries to go downstairs he almost throws up. His heart’s uneasy, of course, but he had underestimated the side-effects of meeting an angel. Over the past few months, he had gotten used to getting mauled by things to the point where it had become part of his daily routine: get up, have a minor crisis about the fact that everyone you know is dead, have a minor crisis about the beautiful voice in your head, get mauled by a bear. Get mauled by a bokoblin who stole your spear. Get mauled by Mount Lanayru, which has a thing for spitting giant snowballs at him when he’s trying to talk to the Koroks in the region, pleading with them through chattering teeth to stop giving him more tiny golden shits and start letting him talk about his feelings. Zelda is not daily routine. Zelda was the girl in the dream, then a face in a photograph, and now Zelda is sleeping in the house in Hateno with her hands pressed up to her cheek, breathing softly. He’s overcome with emotion, though if you asked him to tell it to you, he wouldn’t know how. And as for the matter of her hands, were they always this lovely? Impa didn’t tell him what to do after he saved the girl, though he knows she’ll want to hear about it from him and not the Sheikah warriors she has spread out throughout the kingdom, keeping an eye on their dying gods. Impa wanted him to look forward, which meant knives and teeth and forests full of bodies. She didn’t tell him what he could or couldn’t do in the presence of the sun, and he, having spent his whole life sitting in a dark room, didn’t think to ask. In retrospect, he should have. In retrospect, he should have asked Bolson to build two beds. But the thought didn’t occur to him, just as it didn’t occur to him that his heart might not be the dead thing the world told him it was, and so he never did.

 “I had a dream.” He flips the eggs. “About what?” “About a world where I made it in time.” Zelda peers over his shoulder. “Are they done yet?” “Almost, if you could please—” “—Ah, excuse me—” She dances out of the way of the big cast-iron pan, which he holds in one hand while he reaches for the plates with the other. In her haste to create space she walks into the counter and winces, bending over to touch the side of her foot. “Oh. I stubbed my toe.” She sighs. After breakfast he goes to look for Uma. He finds her sitting under the same old tree beside the bridge, cradling a cup of tea and humming along with the cicadas. Uma is the only person in Hateno who remembers the Calamity as a name with a face, and not a dream. She also had a daughter once, whom she lost in the years after the Calamity, when the rice fields had not yet begun to flourish, and the winters were long and cruel. He asks her quietly about the weather, which she tells him is her favorite kind. Spring’s never felt quite so lovely, she informs him, as she pries open an old dresser and leans forward to peer inside. He holds her cup of tea with both hands, the mellow sweetness of chrysanthemum tickling his nose and making him sneeze. After a moment, she returns with a set of clothes in the signature Hateno blend of oranges, blues, and warm, earthy browns. She places them carefully on his head and then retrieves her tea before he has the chance to drop the cup. “I hope your friend is taking well to Hateno,” she says warmly. I hope I have a friend, he thinks with his heart stuck halfway up his throat. He’s barely keeping himself together, in pretty much every sense of the word, but he thanks her all the same, and means it.

 He did, in fact, eat a frog. Several times. Once on the Great Plateau, after the spirit of the old king had left him to fend for himself with a pickaxe and half an apple, and again while he was in the Hebra mountain range, because it was too cold out to hunt and one had hopped into his pack while he wasn’t looking and died there. Then there was another time, at one of the stables up north, where he met a traveling salesman who offered him a stamina-boosting trick for ten rupees. The first time he obediently closed his eyes, and could only describe the texture in his mouth as ‘soft, with hints of viscosity’. He returned several weeks later, ran away on his horse immediately after making payment, and was mildly alarmed to discover that he had not in fact been presented with a breadstick, but rather a leg. A very long leg. With joints. And skin. And a big, webbed foot. Once, while sitting on a raft headed out to sea, he considered hurling himself into the water. It had been raining for several days by this point, which itself wasn’t a problem as he had come to quite like the sound of rain bashing on the outside of his tent with bloody fists, but this rain was relentless. Like a ghost which tries to kill you and fails, and, in a fit of bitter resentment, resolves to throw rocks at your window each night for the rest of your life, the water got into his boots and it got into his eyes and then it got into his pack, which spoiled all of his carefully-preserved meat and caused the stopper in his bottle of milk to rot. Under the present circumstances, all the game had either gone off to find shelter or been washed away by the floodwaters. There was nothing for him to hunt, and nothing for him to eat. His stomach growled faithlessly. While stumbling along some beach or another, he bumped into Kass, who told him about some treasure further out at sea. He looked blandly in the direction that the parrot pointed out for him, and found his eyes drawn to the island that lay beyond it. “I’m going to go there,” he said. “I hope you find good treasure,” said Kass. “Yeah,” he said. So he hauled himself onto a raft (he was too shy to ask the people in Lurelin for help, and too proud to talk about his circumstances) at the crack of dawn and began to blast a Korok leaf at the sail. And then he got tired. He sat down. He leaned over the edge of the raft. His reflection in the water was gray, because the sky was gray, and the sky was gray because it was raining. He had begun to shiver again, but he had spent most of the week shivering anyway and so didn’t pay it any attention. His hair was matted to his forehead, and there were bags under his eyes. One of his piercings was smarting; it must have gotten infected. “What if I just stopped trying,” he suggested to the sea, which ignored him. What was the point of it all, anyway? All of his friends were dead and the girl in the photograph was stuck in a castle in the sky. He didn’t remember a single thing about the first seventeen years of his life. Only the things that happened in the last three months, only the things that were deemed important, and even those he remembered in fragments. Like what if he had a sister. What if his father had been kind to him, or doting, or an alcoholic. What if he had been in love with someone, and what if he had had a heart, and what if he had cared. It was hard to discern the world’s sympathies for him when he spent most of his time alone. Sometimes, at night, he drew a face on the rock-wall and gave it a name. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry, and I feel more dead than alive, even though I’m the only one still breathing.” But the sea continued to ignore him. The wind continued to ignore him. The rain continued to ignore him, pelting at his wet shoulders with wet hands and wet teeth, clawing at the skin on the back of his neck, telling him to go to sleep and stay there. Eventually the raft drifted of its own accord to the shore of the island he had spied in the distance, and then some thousand-year-old mummy stripped him of all his belongings anyway, so it no longer mattered that he had nothing in his pack or his head or his heart, as long as he was able to replace it with something new.

 A few weeks later she’s standing in the kitchen and staring at the vegetables in the pot, humming to herself, while Link rearranges the condiments on the table. She’s swaying from side to side, holding up the ladle like a sword. She seems happy. He leans back in his chair until he can just about see the top of her head. “What song is that?” he asks, casual as a house on fire. A pause. Something clatters to the floor. Picture two figures in a forest full of thorns and teeth. Picture the knight carving a path through the trees, the princess stumbling behind him, his clammy hand tight around her wrist, their feet bruised and dirty. It’s raining, of course, because it’s always raining in the dream. They’re being chased by mechanical monsters with knives for eyes. And they’re tired, both of them, so tired they could hurl themselves into a pond and drown there, but instead she walks into a tree. The bark scrapes the length of her forearm like a kiss, tearing at her skin and pouring blood down the back of her hand. Something clatters to the floor. Something breaks. Picture the old dream, the one he knows like a memory, the reason he’s less afraid of bears than people. He whirls the chair around to the sight of Zelda’s hand in the fire, her posture rigid, her face hidden by a curtain of hair. “I’m sorry,” she says, crestfallen. “It’s just—” He’s on his feet and halfway across the room before she can finish her sentence, pulling her away from the counter, reaching for the faucet with his other hand. “—It’s the first time you’ve asked me a question since you found me,” she says quietly. The skin on the back of her hand is bright red. If Urbosa were here, she would tie his arms and legs to four horses and then ask them to run in four different directions, and he would die in such a memorable way, it would eclipse even the deaths of all his old dead friends, who were trapped in machines with voices for a hundred years while their bodies turned into dust. If Urbosa were here then he likely wouldn’t be, would be in the next room, his ear pressed to the door, his heart pressed to the roof of his mouth. It’s a good thing, then, that she isn’t.

 It’s spring, so the water from the faucet is cold enough to cut yourself on. The water from the faucet is cold, so it should sting on skin as red as this, but Zelda doesn’t say anything as he holds her hand under the stream of water, his thumbs resting on the curve of her wrist, his eyes searching her blank expression for. A sign? A reason? Why the ladle on the floor; why the hand in the fire? “It’s fine,” she finally says, brushing her hair behind her ear with her unhurt hand. “No,” he says before he can stop himself, bristling a little, feeling slightly outrageous. “It’s not.” Zelda looks somber for a moment. Then she hiccups a laugh. “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?” Yeah, I remember when you [the path that leads to Hateno is wet and winding] and I [your hand on the back of my head was cold and dying], he wants to say. But he would be lying if he did, because he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember anything except the sixteen stories she left him, sixteen shards of a seventeen-year-old life. If she’s referring to something funny, then he’s missed an opportunity to make her laugh. If she’s referring to something important, then it’s no wonder he can’t seem to bridge the gap between the frog and the girl, no wonder his head hurts like someone stabbed it with a pitchfork and forgot to take it out, no wonder Hyrule still feels so far away, even as he milks the chickens and he chases the cows and he collects the eggs from the bears. He turns this thought over in his head as he goes for the medicine cabinet, which he had not asked for and Bolson had installed as a courtesy. Despite his best efforts, the blood on his back never quite washed away. She’s gone by the time he closes the cabinet, and he begins to feel that telltale sickness in his stomach, the sudden urge to throw up. He walks briskly out of the house in Hateno, salve and bandages tied to his wrist, his heartbeat ringing in his ears. The moon is a crescent tonight. Hateno rises and falls with each breath, pressing flowers into the palm of his hand. He folds each one unevenly in half. Zelda’s halfway up the ladder when he finds her. He waits for her to get onto the roof before he starts heading up, and is surprised all the same when he reaches the top of the ladder, and finds her face inches away from his. “I didn’t know you had a ladder,” she says pleasantly. “Why did you follow me up here?” She smells like Goron spice and sun. He is three seconds away from plummeting to his death. This is nothing he is used to, and a part of him thinks that if he knows what’s good for him then he will never get used to any of it. Not the silent, dead castle, not the long black shadow of the future, not the girl. She leans back after a moment. He breathes out. Half an inch of space will not keep either of them safe. Zelda watches him retie his ponytail expectantly. “So?” The ladder is from the Great Plateau. He found it at the back of the Temple of Time days after the old king asked him to climb to the top of the ruined structure and revealed to him that he was, yeah, the old king, and that all of his friends were dead, and that he would have to get the girl out of the castle before she could even think to save him, and by association, the rest of the world. At that point he was still naive enough to think defeating Ganon would take a stick and an apple and a really fast horse. He had also not yet learned of the myriad ways in which he had failed everyone he had ever cared for, and so spent his days wandering from place to place, pointing at bugs in the leaves and laughing. The ladder pissed him off. Who put it there? Why didn’t the old king tell him about its existence? What was the point of leaving a ladder behind the statue of Hylia when you could’ve put it in front, so stupid soulless people like him could use it to reach the end of the story faster? He returned to it much later, after he had purchased the house in Hateno, and yanked the whole thing down. Hacking it into four sections with a pickaxe he stole from a bokoblin (it had probably belonged to him first anyway), he piled all of them on his horse and then walked through Hyrule field, past Fort Hateno, all the way back to Bolson, who stared at him like he’d just asked him to kill a man. What do you mean you want me to fix this ladder, he asked. I mean I want you to fix this ladder, he replied. So Bolson did. Zelda laughs so hard she almost falls off the roof. She gets right up to the edge of it, leaning over the side with her face in her hands while he scrambles to keep her from toppling over. She only let him wrap up her arm because he was talking, because according to Zelda he never did much talking, but maybe he’s said too much. He’s embarrassed. Defeated, he lies down. There’s a star, just above the crown of trees at the other end of the village. He reaches out idly, trying to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger, but his fingers brush against skin instead of sky. Zelda, half-goddess, half-miracle, turns her face into the palm of his hand for the briefest of moments, like a butterfly alighting on the surface of a pond. The cicadas sing ballads. His breath stops in his lungs and dies there. “I like the ladder.” “Oh.” “Please keep it.” “Oh.” “You know,” she says, still leaning over him, close enough that if he gave her hand a tug, she might fall right out of heaven. Her head is tilted, her hair falling into her eyes, splaying across the tiles on the roof like a satiny strip of sun. “What?” he asks hoarsely. She smiles at him like a secret. “I—”

 He used to be in love with her. As each piece of his sixteen-part past was returned to him and the last day of his life emerged slowly into the light, it dawned on him like a horse falling out of the sky that he had been very lucky to be her knight, that he would have willingly given his life for her, and that he did. Only his final, heroic act of sacrifice failed to accomplish anything meaningful in spite of his best efforts. He had died with her hand cradling the back of his head, his tunic wet with blood and tears, believing that the ending could be salvaged still. Maybe this is what it takes to reach happiness, he thought dizzily. Maybe you have to be pushed to the end of the line, before you can start walking back towards the center. But when he opened his eyes, it was to a world which had not moved an inch from the precipice. His back was covered in scars, water streaming down his skin like blood, and his head was so light, he worried for a moment that if he stood up too fast it would float right off of his shoulders. The only thing that remained was old skin, the thin aftertaste of fear, and a bone-deep anxiety that wouldn’t come off no matter how many times he threw himself into the river. The only thing that remained was a voice in his head, calling his name through the dream, reminding him that there was still something that could be salvaged from the fire. He used to be in love with her, though it took him a while to admit it, because being in love with her meant admitting that he had failed not only on a prophetic level, but on a personal level that cut to the wound at the center of his chest. It was a matter of survival in those first few months. Him, or a kingdom. His selfish and worthless pride, or the world. Naturally, he chose the world.

 “Let’s say you’ve been asleep for a hundred years and when you wake up you’ve lost all your memories, but you chase after fairies and you dig up shrines and you defeat the big bad monster like you’ve been told to, because a girl told you to, and because you were in love with her. And after defeating the big bad monster she comes back, and you take her back to your house, and you fry eggs for her. But she’s not the person she was a hundred years ago, because she spent a hundred years in a dream. And you’re not the person you were a hundred years ago, because you forgot everything you could possibly forget, and then you got mauled by a bear. And yet when you look at her, every time you look at her, your chest hurts so bad you think you might be dying.” He looks up from his breadstick. “Am I dying?” “No,” Beedle says very seriously. “I think you’re stupid.” Beedle retrieves a string of petrified armored beetles from one of the pockets on his back, and holds it abruptly in his face. “You can fall in love with someone twice, you know.” Link wrinkles his nose. “How do you know?” Beedle sticks the lower half of a beetle in his mouth. “I’m five hundred years old.” He bites down. “I know things.” Chews thoughtfully. “I’ve eaten things, too. Things you’ve never even dreamed of. “Point is, Link, you’re being stupid. Get it together. The world’s not ending anymore.” “Oh,” says Link. He watches Beedle eat the rest of the beetles. There are five in total. He doesn’t have to chew very hard, which is weird. He turns Beedle’s words over in his head. Beedle has a point. The world isn’t ending anymore. The world isn’t hanging on by a thread, waiting for the boy in the story to haul it back up the side of the cliff. They hauled it back up, him and Zelda and their old dead friends. They hauled it out of the well. And now look at the flowers.

 Once, while sitting on a raft headed out to sea, he considered hurling himself into the water, but here’s the other half of the story. He had recently been into the castle again, up to the princess’ room, where he found, among other things, a moblin, a bow, and a single Silent Princess, growing at the end of the hallway. He also found a diary, which he really shouldn’t have read. He shouldn’t have read the diary. It’s common courtesy. It’s the mark of human decency, respect of personal privacy, respect for the dead, et cetera. But he did. So he hauled himself up to that tower in the sky, and he mistimed several guardian laser parries before finally getting one right and yelling in triumph and getting a beam to his ass for his efforts, and then he cried, standing over that tattered old book while a cold wind blew in through the man-sized hole in the wall. He had spent so long working towards the abstract idea of salvation, he had forgotten that salvation was also, inextricably, a person. A girl with the hands of Hylia, praying in a castle in the sky, stuck in a hundred year cycle from hell. She had thrown away everything so he would float back out of the water with his face to the sky, and he couldn’t even remember how to shoot a bear without getting his face clawed off. What had he ever done to deserve this? What had he done for her? The answer was he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything. The conversation they had about skin-deep secrets, the day it was raining and she told him about the hypothetical nature of failure, the morning of her seventeenth birthday, as she slid the gold cuffs onto her wrists and strode grimly out of the castle, her shadow clinging to the wall like it could keep her from leaving if it did. Did he even say happy birthday? Did anyone bring her candles? Did she make a wish, and if so, for what? He felt suddenly angry, and disappointed, and lonely. The fireplace was full of rubble and the table was covered in dust. The bed frame had collapsed, probably at the very beginning of this whole mess, and the mattress was sunken in like a face with no flesh, the sheets torn, the gold trim reduced to tatters. This place used to be a sanctuary. Now it wanted him dead. He wiped his eyes furiously, though there was no one there to point at him and laugh. He wiped his eyes with the back of his clumsy, scarred hand, pulled the diary shut, and walked back out, into heaven’s line of fire.

 He takes her to the Kochi dye shop on her request, but Sayge gives them a name and an address and herds them out of his store, and so they find themselves in Tarrey Town again, exchanging nods with the people he tricked into leaving their old lives behind while Zelda describes her old outfit to Rhondson, who takes notes on her husband’s arm in erasable ink. Several days later, a new set of clothes arrives in Hateno by donkey. He helps her do her hair, by which he means he holds a mirror behind her back and she does her hair, occasionally instructing him to tilt it several degrees in one direction or another, but it’s the most useful he’s felt in weeks, and when she’s pulled on her gloves and done up the buckles on her boots, she stands up and does a little twirl. It’s a perfect replica. She’s glowing. Rhondson is god. “I feel like I could defeat Ganon,” Zelda tells him. I already did that, he thinks. He nods. “You probably could.”

 “So, are you going to do something?” Beedle retrieves a string of soft-shell crabs from his pack. “Do I have to?” Beedle waggles his finger at him disapprovingly. “The question is, do you want to?”

 He has a dream where she falls from Shatterback Point. He runs as fast as he can down the side of the mountain, cutting his palms on coral and bruising his knees on the wet rocky path, but when he gets to the bottom, no one’s there. You were too late, Muzu tells him, stroking his beard somberly. You tried to reach her, but you let go, and then you were too late. The water in the lake is bright as blood. The sky crackles silently above Muzu’s vacant eyes. A voice emerges from the lake. You let me die, the voice says. I saved the world for you, and you let me die. He wakes up sweating. He curls up on his side, bracing for the cold, hard floor against his cheek, but Zelda’s slipped one of her pillows under his head while he was sleeping. She’s murmuring in her sleep, something about fruit halves and grams of sugar, her hand dangling over the side of the bed clenching and unclenching itself earnestly, kneading imaginary dough, cutting imaginary apples. “Zelda?” Too soft. He won’t call again. He refuses to. In a moment of weakness, he reaches for the side of the bed, but stops just shy of her hand. Beedle’s bright, angular nose appears before him, carrying with it the wisdom of his ancestors. What do you want to do, Link, Beedle’s Nose asks him. What do you want? I want to pull her out of the burning house, he thinks. Is that too much to ask for? Moonlight trickles down her throat and vanishes under the collar of her tunic. His chest implodes and his heart bursts into a thousand tiny pieces, as he wonders how it is that planets were made before people. Beedle’s Nose is indifferent. What burning house, it asks. Where’s the smoke coming from? Look around you, Link. There’s smoke, and fire, and windows with broken glass. But who’s still inside?

 Uma’s hundred-and-ninth birthday arrives on the coattails of fall. On her insistence, they keep the decorations sparse and the cake disarmingly large. Streamers are put up and butterflies corralled into glass menageries. A traveling band with a bit of a reputation further west is invited. There are three musicians with ocarinas and one with a cowbell, and all of them are wearing pink overalls and big yellow sun hats which hurt to look at for too long, unless you work for a construction company, in which case you want to look at them forever. After Bolson has finished taking down all of their contact information on his forearm (they prefer to be called for via messenger pigeon, but if you don’t have one then a snail is fine as well), Zelda drifts across the grass to stand in his place. She’s wearing a white dress, borrowed from Uma, who said it would complement her eyes. Uma was right. The dress is made from a thin, glittery fabric that billows around her ankles and makes her look like she’s floating. Like a fairy in a forest clearing. Like a cat perched at the top of a clocktower. Their conversation lasts for several minutes. She says something, and the others laugh. The guy with the cowbell pretends to look embarrassed. Everyone else at the party is dancing, including Uma, who is holding hands with a small child in a green frog-suit and swaying like a palm tree in the wind. While Zelda keeps the ocarina ensemble preoccupied, one of the adults in the village has gone and retrieved a guitar. He begins to play a warm, meandering tune that reminds Link, distantly, of grassy fields and white skies. “Are you not going to dance?” He looks down. Nebb tugs at the edge of his tunic with one hand, pulling him in the direction of the crowd. He squats down. “I don’t have anyone to dance with.” “You can dance with me. Duh.” “I don’t know how to dance.” Nebb looks at him like he’s stupid. “Then learn.” “What if I don’t want to?” “What if you meet someone who does, and you like them too much to say no?” He squints suspiciously at Nebb. Nebb’s atrocious bowl cut hasn’t grown any less atrocious with time, though it does have the effect of making him look far less menacing than he would be if he were bald or sporting a mohawk. The boy knows too much for someone so small. This cannot do. If this goes on, he will reveal a secret to the gods, and then they will kill him for his hubris. “Shhh,” Link says to him, holding a finger up to his lips. He digs around in his pockets until he finds a piece of honey candy, wrapped in a palm leaf and tied together with twine. “Take this, and go dance with someone else.” Nebb gives him the Stare of Judgment, but takes the candy. “You’re terrible, Link.” He sticks out his tongue. “Bye.” Then it’s back to demolishing the cake, which he’s still not convinced Uma didn’t order expressly so that he would have something to do with himself during the course of the evening, as the dancing progresses from cheerful to insane and a small group of guests begins to construct a spaceship out of empty wine glasses. No one else has gone for thirds, though a handful have gone for seconds. There’s a big fondant chicken perched on the highest layer. He sucks on his fork thoughtfully. He wants it. Last week they went up north, in search of forgiveness. Despite their best efforts and the gift of crabs and crocuses they brought along, their reception in Zora’s domain was cold and gray. It reminded him of the way they had received him when he first stepped out of the rain and into the blue glow of the domain’s hallways, armed with only the knowledge that he had been sent to prevent a tragedy that had already happened. He didn’t yet know that Mipha was dead. He thought he could still save her. They called him failure and fool and living reminder of Hyrule’s downfall, laughing at him in a language called mourning. He had thought they had forgiven the Hylians and their king for letting their Champion die, especially after he walked out of Vah Ruta with a black eye and a bloody nose to show for it, especially now that the evil had been defeated. Apparently the knight by himself was tolerable. The knight and the princess, together, made things too raw. Too immediate. “Mipha’s dead,” they said. It was a Tuesday. “I’m sorry,” Zelda replied. Tomorrow they’re headed for Goron City. He closes his eyes and wills away the taste of sweet cream and berries, tries to picture the winding path up Death Mountain, the grooves hammered into the ground, the rubies in their metal caskets. Flame-resistant armor is a given, so it’s a good thing he bought two sets on accident last winter. He wants to trap a few fire lizards in a bottle and bring them back for a friend. As for what he will say to Zelda before he hands her off to the city’s protectors, their hands half an inch apart but not touching, never touching, there isn’t much. Goron City will be better, he thinks. He licks the cream off his fork. It’s sweet. “What are you thinking?” He opens his eyes. Zelda looks at his plate, then the cake, then his plate again. She points at the chicken. He shrugs. “I was thinking that I hope Uma lives forever.” Someone has invited the dog onto the dance floor. He isn’t trying very hard to keep to the beat of the guitarist, who has been joined by two of the ocarina players with brown hair and blue eyes, but he doesn’t have to. Spinning very fast in a circle is actually the smartest dance move of them all. There’s no beginning, so there’s no end. Zelda plucks a berry from his plate. “It’s not very fun, to be honest,” she says, chewing thoughtfully. “Living for that long.” He watches the dog chase its own tail and she watches him watch the dog, though neither is aware this is happening. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I was asleep.” The dog is easily the best dancer in the crowd. He experiences neither shame nor hubris, and is thus freed from the stresses and seasonal anxieties of being known by others who might fear him or like him. He also runs very fast. Zelda punches his shoulder weakly, her hand lingering, her eyes soft. “That’s a terrible joke, Link.” He pinches the inside of his wrist. “I’m trying my best.” “So am I.” After a beat, the dog who has been invited to the party to spin in tight circles on the dance floor and be a nuisance to the other guests goes careening into the rotisserie chicken. In a wondrous, gravity-defying moment, the chicken sails not away from the dog, but towards him, flying in a swooping arc over his head at a height of several hundred feet above the ground. The plate clatters to the floor before the chicken can find its bearings and, awoken by its war cry, people scramble into action, evacuating themselves to the other side of the buffet table or under the veranda with their legs between their tails, until Uma is standing alone on the grass, still swaying to a song only she can hear, still smiling. The chicken reaches the highest point in the sky, pauses for a heartbeat, then pitches downwards. She catches it. The crowd goes wild. And then Zelda is tugging on his sleeve, like Negg, but not like Negg, because Zelda walked out of the mouth of the monster, because Zelda left her hand in the fire, because Zelda looked at the miserable, vulnerable world that he had yelled at until his voice was hoarse and dying and even the pigeons were something fiercer than him, that he had tended to with clumsy, scarred hands in spite of all the dead things on the ground, and decided to stay. “God,” she says, her eyes bright. “Link, look. In the sky.”

 Picture two figures in a forest full of night. Picture the princess carving a path through the trees, the knight stumbling after her, her hand tight around his wrist, their feet fast and flying. The sky is clear, of course, because someone pulled the mourning veil off its head and threw it in the river. They’re chasing after a column of light, poured by the hand of Hylia from the heavens. And they’re tired, both of them, so tired they could hurl themselves into bed and lie there, half an inch apart, watching each other in the dark with waiting on their tongues, but instead he trips on a branch and goes down, face-first, into the dirt. She doesn’t realize he’s let go until he lets go, but when she turns around he’s already pushed himself off the ground. Hands and knees and boots digging into the grass. The woods outside of Hateno are still teething. The princess gives him her hand, and he stares at it for a moment like she’s just offered him the rest of her lifespan, and then takes it. He’s fine; of course he is. It would take much more than this to kill him. It would take another hundred year cycle of pain. She points at the column of light. It’s still there. Still glowing. So they keep going, picking their way through the undergrowth, climbing over branches and pushing boulders out of harm’s way, doing what ghost children like them do best, which is pointing at something in the distance, and then chasing it. Chasing hope. Following it back to the center. And when they reach the place where the sky has spat out the blood in its mouth, the knight gets punched in the face with nostalgia. He caught a falling star once, when he was all alone and the world was grim and unknowable. Then he gave it to a fairy, in exchange for less blood on his tunic, in exchange for stronger teeth. He approached heaven from afar once, a solitary figure burning darkly against the pale yellow water, but there was no way for him to go home when all was said and done, so he pinched the inside of his wrist and kept walking.

 The thing is you can’t go from swinging a sword around and dreaming about dead people to waking up and frying eggs and searching for ways to heal the cracked earth beneath your feet. Not that fast. Not that goddamn fast. You can’t just flip a switch and not be scared anymore, not wake up sweating anymore, not wake up wanting to hold her hand. Fear is a country and you’ve lived in it all your life. There’s a reason kingdoms keep such a close eye on their borders. You’re either in, or you’re out. Make up your mind. Pick up your sword. Save yourself.

 The star fragment is stuck in a tree. Zelda wants to climb it and he wants her to stop; naturally, she wins. She hauls herself up the trunk while he circles the bottom like a hawk with an anxiety problem, waiting to catch the star, or the girl, or both. But neither comes pitching out of the sky. The dream stays just out of sight. “So that’s what star fragments look like,” she says later, her voice muffled by the sound of crickets. She turns it over in her hands, running her fingers along each point and indent. “They’re warm.” Smells it curiously, then wrinkles her nose. “No smell.” Tries to break off one especially thin-looking point with little success. “Sturdy.” She spends ten minutes staring at the star. He spends ten minutes staring at her. She gets bored, puts the fragment on the ground, and looks up. He looks away. “The party’s probably over now, huh.” He nods to his left. A sigh, very small, very lovely. Like a firefly under a bridge. “I didn’t get the chance to dance with anyone.” Beedle’s Nose is staring at him from a gap in the trees like the red eye of the devil. It’s singing a nursery rhyme he doesn’t remember learning. What do you want/what do you want/what do you want. Link! Link! Open your eyes! He has to break every bone in his body just to turn his head three inches to the right, but for the first time in this life, this new life, this second chance at everything, he gets it right. Zelda’s knees are drawn to her chest, her head pillowed on her arms, her gaze heavy on his face. He sucks in a breath. “Do you still want to?”

 Dancing without music sounds reasonable in theory, but generally requires one party to be exceptionally good at keeping count while the other has to be in possession of at least a rudimentary grasp of the steps. This is, of course, assuming that there are redeemable qualities to both parties. For example, if one is the knight from the fairy tale who has spent his whole life swinging sharp objects at people, and the other is the princess from the fairytale who has spent her whole life praying sharp objects find their way to the right people, then there may not in fact be anything redeemable between them. Her counting is off, his hands are clammy. Her voice is wavering, his feet are too slow. It’s disaster after disaster after disaster, first the champions in their divine beasts, then the castle, then the king on the Great Plateau, a knife through the heart, et cetera. Dancing without music sounds reasonable in theory unless you’ve spent the last three months of your life chasing angry moose down mountains, so it’s a good thing no one’s here to laugh at them. It’s a good thing they’re alone, surrounded by starlight, half an hour by foot from Hateno, village of lights and wonder. Spring has come and gone without them. The night is young and the air is cool and the forest is sweetly indifferent to his tendency to crash into inanimate objects. This would be embarrassing if he left himself think about it, but more importantly it’s unfair, how neither of them knows what they’re doing but Zelda can smile her way out of a clumsy turn, how he has to keep his hand on her waist but hers is doing an elaborate dance on his shoulder, how every time she leans in and her hair parts down her back, a sliver of neck peeks out and steals the lungs right out of his chest. He is going to die trying to keep his hands to himself or they are going to fall off the edge of the forest and into a ravine with no bottom. There is no option to walk away. “You’re a terrible dancer,” she says, smiling up at him from under her lashes. He chews on his lip. “I’m sorry.” “That’s fine.” He twirls her and her dress floats up past her ankles like a cloud of tiny stars. “I like you anyway.” He walks into a tree. Decides that’s not enough. Slaps himself generously across the face, hard enough to leave a mark. Decides that’s not enough. Kneels on the grass, letting go of her hand, to look for a stick that might help him end things faster. “Link?” It is too much and too little all at once, and therefore unbearable. He is going to fall off the edge of the forest right now. He tries to stand up just as she begins to bend down, reaching for his shoulder. They fall off the edge of the forest together. Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh no. They’ve fallen off the edge of the universe together. Her face is in the crook of his neck and her hair is stuck to his clothes. His skin is on fire and his butt is sore and he’s dying. Hylia, can you hear him? There’s a name for the place children go after they leave this world. He’d like to know what it’s called now. “Hey,” comes the small, muffled voice. Her arms are on either side of his waist, and they’re trembling. “Can you say something?” He looks up. Always up, always forward, towards knives and teeth and forests full of bodies. Always past the blurry face in the dream, to the nightmare that follows after. Someone will tell you when to breathe. Someone will tell you when to swing your sword. Someone will tell you when it’s all right to stop being scared of everything, and start looking for angels. Like right now. Like right-right-now. Your heartbeat fluttering in your throat. Your throat an ocean of knives. Eight weeks and three days after he walks into the castle and defeats two incarnations of evil, first in a room with a domed ceiling, then in a field with a domed sky, he steps out of the burning house, and finds himself face to face with the sun. He presses his cheek against her hair. “Do you want me to?” “Yes,” she sighs. “Yes, I do.”

 He tells her about the way the world looks from atop the back of a bear and the gray of the ocean from a raft and the conversation he had with her dead father about how cooked apples taste sweeter. He tells her about the first time he shot an arrow at a bomb barrel and the second time he shield-surfed down a hill and how Urbosa made him promise to take care of her, even in death, even after it. He tells her about being so lonely it hurt to breathe and being so bad at breathing he passed out in a river, and being so hurt he had to be saved by a stranger on the road, tied to the back of their donkey like a piece of merchandise and carried to the nearest stable to be burnt back to life. He tells her how no one believed he was the boy in the story, even when he pulled out the sword, even when he showed them the blood on his back. He tells her about how the stalhorses on Tabantha Snowfield run faster than the horses near Kakariko, how a bokoblin will choose a freshly roasted chicken over the skin of your teeth, how a sword is a metaphor for forgiveness. He tells her how a hundred years ago she told him to eat a frog, and he never forgot about it. Not once, not ever. Walking through the Breach of Demise, looking for Koroks in Fort Hateno, praying for her heart at the Spring of Wisdom, he never stopped thinking about the damn frog, and by extension, the girl. The first thing she says is why didn’t you tell me all of this earlier? The second thing she says is why the hell didn’t I ask? She presses a hand to his forehead, pushing his bangs out of his eyes and glaring at him. The third thing she says is that she really wants to see a stalhorse, and the fourth thing he says is he’ll take her there one day, and the fifth thing she does is cry. Big, heaving sobs. Arms tight around his shoulders, tears smearing the front of his shirt, while he pretends he isn’t half as insane, gives up, and resolves to hide his face in her hair forever. And it’s dramatic as hell, it’s an ancient tapestry on a wall in Kakariko, but hasn’t it always been that way? Haven’t they been through enough shit to justify the heartfelt reunion, the face full of tears? If the conversation they had in the field outside the castle was a blueprint for what it looks like to meet someone you wanted a hundred years ago, then this is the aftermath of that war. Do you remember me? Of course I do. Do you love me? Of course I do. Ask me a question, any question. Crack my chest open. “To make things very, very clear,” Zelda says, wiping her eyes furiously. She’s pushed him flat onto his back and the light’s not hitting her face so he can’t make out her expression, but he can imagine the pinched brow, the bitten lip. “I didn’t fall in love with you because you were conveniently there, like, I don’t know, an armchair when you’re tired, or a glass of water when you’re thirsty.” Her hands on his chest are very beautiful, even in the moon-lit dark. “I didn’t take one look at the prophecy and think to myself, well, if I’m going to tie my happiness to someone then it might as well be him.” Now he’s the one who’s embarrassed. He brings a hand up to cover his face but she tugs it away. Takes a deep breath. Counts to ten, probably, maybe fifteen, maybe a hundred. “I fell in love with you,” she says, softly, each word falling from her lips like a star, each star plucked from the highest point in the heavens. “I don’t even know why I fell in love with you.” She fists her hands loosely in his shirt. “It just happens, you know? One day you look at the boy with the stupid pretty hair, and you think to yourself, oh no.” His head is spinning so fast he feels like the dog at the party. Maybe he is the dog. Maybe he finished eating the cake and shoved the fondant chicken in his mouth and then he passed out, and had to be carried back to his house, and had to be laid gently on the unmade covers. He gathers his thoughts. “I’m not a very good person,” he says quietly. “But if you would have me, I would gladly give you my life.” “You’ve already done that once, Link,” Zelda says, laughing with the sun in her mouth. “Do something else.” What do you want, Link? Open your eyes. Save yourself. “Okay, then. Can I kiss you?”

 His name is Link, and he died once when he was seventeen. It was pretty traumatizing. He got slashed several times across the back with some very sharp weapons, and then he got mauled by a forest full of screaming metal, and then he collapsed, right in front of the person he was supposed to protect, who ended up protecting his dead body by the skin of her teeth. Because he died. Somewhere between the laser on his chest and her hand pressed against the seal of the sky, his body made one last stand against the stark inequalities of the world, and he died. The only reason he knew his name was Link when he woke up was because it was the first word she said to him. “Link,” she said. “Wake up.” He concluded through logical reasoning that “he” must be “Link” and that “Link” had to “wake up”. So he did. He went traipsing around Hyrule with a ladle and a pot lid, seeking out places from a photograph and trying to find ways to bring every four-legged animal in the land to a stable, but he never really felt like “Link”. He felt like a corpse that had received a very shiny, very thick coat of paint. Half-here, half-there. Half-me, half-something-else. What else? A bird, maybe. A horse. One day Link got bored and decided that he was going to defeat all the forces of evil. He fought his way into the castle, where the guardians shot lasers at his earrings, and he fought his way past the lynels, who hissed fire and called him rude words, and he fought his way into the sanctum, where he met the asshole who had put him through all this shit in the first place. And he kicked his ass. And he kicked his other ass. And the asshole died. His name was Ganon. Ganon dying brought Zelda back to life, because the law of equivalent exchange governs half of the children in this world, while the devil gets the rest. The devil got to him: his life will always carry the weight of hundreds of thousands, he will always feel like lead for the first three seconds after he wakes up. But it didn’t get to Zelda. Zelda got the other bargain, the one where your dead father dies but you get your knight back. One or the other, left or right. In the end, you always have to choose. And he’s still pretty traumatized. And dying at the age of seventeen with a sword still stuck in your hand is pretty traumatizing. And the Zora are still mourning and the Gorons are still eating rocks and the Gerudo still think he’s just a really short girl, which he can live with, which he doesn’t particularly mind, but the trauma has a place on the shelf now. And the shelf is in his house. And the house is a modest one, with modest display stands for his modest weapons, and a modest bed beside which he’s hung a framed photograph of his friends. But some things are different, even if the foundations stay the same. No more rafts on gray seas. No more sleeping on the floor. No more standing in the burning building, and wondering why the shadows aren’t moving. No more shrines full of dead monks. No more monsters full of dead bodies. No more waiting for someone to tell you when to breathe, when to stop, when to get mauled by a bear. Pick up your sword, boy. Now put it down. Now pick it up. Now put it down. You’re going to be doing this until the day that you die. Are you all right with that? Are you all right with your god? [Thank you for helping my sister.][They say the leviathans died thousands of years ago.][Get me a horse. A big, strong horse. Any horse.][BROTHER. THE ROCKS ARE READY.][Find me someone whose name ends with ‘-son’.][I’ll sell you rushrooms for diamonds. Fifty-five for one.][Have you heard of the story of the bird on the mountain?][Do you already have someone special in your heart?][They say if two people visit this pond, they’ll be together forever.][Do you believe in miracles?][Do you believe in magic?][Do you believe in me?] [I believed I would see you again.]

It’s a cruel, unforgiving world. People die and don’t come back. But you did. Now get up. Someone’s waiting for you.

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loruleanheart · 3 years

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Desired Fate, Chapter 18

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I wanted to post this tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Here it is! Warning, this chapter is coming at you with razor blades and lemon juice. You were warned.

Revali drew back the string of the Great Eagle Bow, preparing to deliver the killing strike to Windblight Ganon as it had grown more and more languid in its movement, and while it was still distracted by Sooga.

“This is it!” Revali called victoriously, letting the bomb arrows fly.

Sooga dodged the incoming explosives and they collided with Windblight in a grand explosion. The creature’s resounding bestial shriek was like a reward for a battle well fought.

Lowering his bow, Revali watched, savoring the moment as the blight hemorrhaged malice. He had faced the most grueling battle he’d ever experienced, and he would live to regale his fellow Rito of his triumph.

He turned his attention to the Yiga, still at a loss for their motivations. What had possessed them to turn against Calamity Ganon?

Well, whatever… Revali thought. At least it wasn’t the vexingly silent knight wielding the sacred blade who came to save the day. He’d never live it down if it had been him…

Revali alighted before the two, holding back any outward sign of exhaustion or weakness. He regarded the Yiga with a hard look of suspicion.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I must thank you for coming to my aid. But just as a warning, if you do anything to make me question this...alliance, I won’t hesitate to -”

“Your threats won’t be necessary,” Sooga said simply, resheathing his dual blades.

Sooga’s words were clear despite the mask he wore, yet Revali paused, contemplating his words, not fully believing the situation. Revali braced himself for a surprise attack that never came as the moments passed.

He stared into the inverted crimson eye painted on Sooga’s horned mask and the long crack that ran across it, slightly unnerved that he could not see the man’s eyes or facial expressions. He’d have to rely on the man’s body language and tone of voice for assurance that he was not a threat.

Kohga approached, having remained a safe distance away during the fight. “Well done, Sooga! That was quite the display of Yiga bravado.”

Revali opened his beak to say something more, but before he could form the words, their attentions were drawn to the thunderous and deliberate footsteps of a Divine Beast.

He lifted off the surface of Vah Medoh to see which of the other Champions had come to his aid. Kohga and Sooga likewise rushed across the mossy stone that stretched the wingspan of Vah Medoh to look out into the distance.

“This should be interesting…” Revali remarked as he watched Vah Naboris approach.

“Urbosa’s coming….?! ...That’s our cue to leave!” Kohga blurted before retreating into a cloud of smoke and falling talismans.

Sooga turned to Revali and shook his head. “Master Kohga can be a bit of a coward when it comes to the Gerudo Chief. “Uh… Don’t tell him I told you that!” And with that Sooga followed after Kohga, leaving Revali alone.

----------------

The was a sterile, stillness that belied the Champion’s victory over the blights as Hyrule Field was cast in a dreary grey. There would be no breathtaking sunset to behold, nor the comfort the moon’s brilliant glow could bring, only the world darkening as night crept in.

The four that had seized the bokoblin camp for a moment of rest could sense the encroaching storm from the dark clouds above, but none spoke of it aloud.

Robbie cleared his throat. There was no longer a levity in his voice. “Where are you headed next?”

Astor didn’t meet Robbie’s eyes as he smoothed Zelda’s long golden hair with his gloved hand. It took a moment for him to respond, too focused on her downcast gaze.

“Fort Hateno... That’s where she is fated to awaken her inner power.”

“Then I wish you both luck.” Robbie offered, humbly.

Zelda hung her head and Astor squeezed her hand in comfort. The bleak refrain of Zelda’s court came to mind.

Heir to a throne of nothing…

She said nothing in response, and he wondered if she was thinking the same. She seemed to have retreated inward, having cried herself out.

Purah leaned forward to address Zelda. “Princess, I have faith in you, I do. You are not alone and we’re not going to give up trying to turn back the Calamity. I think we could all benefit if we set up camp here and call it a day. And if any monsters come by, we’ll beat them with our flails.”

“No… I must go to Fort Hateno right away.” Zelda replied shakily.

“I hate to be blunt, Princess, but you aren’t in any condition to operate the Master Cycle.”

“I’ll be fine, Purah.”

She didn’t sound fine.

Zelda quivered in his arms, and Astor’s chest tightened with unfamiliar apprehension.

Purah’s earlier antics would have made Kohga proud. Just like Kohga, she was perceptive, yet Astor was relieved to see a more serious side to her - as the situation demanded. He just hoped Zelda would heed Purah’s warning.

“A rest wouldn’t disturb fate, Zelda. And you do need the rest,” said Astor.

Purah and Robbie observed the couple pensively, and Astor felt like an oddity under their analytical gaze - as if they were trying to ascertain what Zelda had done to tame the Prophet of Doom himself - something Astor was in awe of as well.

“I won’t rest until I awaken my inner power,” Zelda said with as much determination as she could muster looking up at him with reddened, weary eyes. “We don’t have a moment to waste. Let us be on our way.”

Astor followed Zelda. Despite his fatigue, despite his trepidation about getting back on the Master Cycle, he couldn’t fathom not going with her.

“Astor!” Robbie called after him.

“Hm?”

“Take care of her.”

-----------

Their journey to Fort Hateno proved to be miserable and treacherous as it had begun to rain not long after they departed. As they neared the West Necluda region, the moisture laden clouds above spilled their cold tears on the Goddess’s descendant and her elect. The rain slicked the grass and turned the packed earth roads to mud. The Master Cycle was at times buffeted by strong winds that made it difficult to maneuver. Visibility was low. Bridges became slippery.

Astor’s grip on Zelda’s waist tightened. Dread and guilt crept in as she began to second-guess her decision.

Why are we doing this? All my previous attempts to awaken my power have failed. What is it about Fort Hateno that will suddenly change everything? Ugh, I can’t allow myself to think like this.

The Master Cycle traversed through Dueling Peaks, and Zelda felt as though those towering cliffs were pressing in on them. The cliffs gave way to a vast plain, and the mountains in the distance were barely an outline in the night sky.

Zelda took care as they crossed the Big Twin Bridge, breathing out in relief when she had made it to the other side.

Almost there…

Even as Blatchery Plain stretched out before them, Zelda felt no closer to awakening the power within herself, and she didn’t know what recourse she had if this too did not work. These thoughts lingered as she pressed onward.

Blatchery Plain lay in ruin, desolate, and devoid of life - or so it seemed. A figure appeared in the immediate dim horizon, and Zelda’s heart froze as she swerved to avoid colliding with it. The Master cycle dipped a little too far for comfort to one side. Her heart thumped rapidly as she struggled to keep it upright. The tires squelched through the mud as they veered off the path and then returned.

“It keeps finding us…” Zelda said worriedly.

“Ganon always knows where we are…” Astor replied, trying not to let fear enter his voice.

Zelda looked back over her shoulder, a pit opening in her stomach when she realized the Harbinger wasn’t as far back as she expected. No, it was following them at a speed unlike other Guardians.

“Astor, whatever you do, hold on tight…” her voice was nearly muffled by the rumble of the engine.

A chill ran down Astor’s spine as he perceived the words of Calamity Ganon. It was a voice he knew all too well from prophetic dreams, the one that had urged him so fervently to kill the princess.

You are nothing, my wayward prophet without a prayer.

“Leave me alone!” Astor screamed, tearing his circlet that bore the eye of malice from his forehead. He turned and pitched it at the charging Harbinger. The red and yellow stone was crushed under its rampaging claw the next moment.

Do you think you can rid yourself of me that easily? That was merely an outward symbol of your devotion to me. Nothing more. You’ll never be able to wash the taint of malice away. Everyone is going to know who you are and what you did. You belong to me!

With the Harbinger closing in on them, Zelda pushed the Master Cycle to its limit. The engine chugged. Her stomach soured as the cycle struggled to gain speed.

There was a dreamlike sensation of slow-motion despite her rapid heartbeat, beating in time with Astor’s against her back. She felt as though -

The Harbinger’s laser is trained on them and after what feels like a silent eternity it fires. The high-powered beam of ancient energy tears through his back and exits her chest. They are enveloped in a blinding blue light as that final scream of failure is ripped from her.

She snapped herself out of that grim vision, still awash in panic. It had been easy to outrun the Harbinger in the Lost Woods, but there was nothing to slow its chase out in the open plain.

Her panic-fueled delirium reached a fever pitch. She didn’t dare look again, but she could hear the gurgle of malice and the mechanical whirring of the automaton itself.

Goddess Hylia... It’s right on us...How is it so fast? It’s somehow running at full tilt on three mechanical legs just to get at us. The effort alone should cause it to break down. It wasn’t designed to go at that speed.

Zelda despaired, thinking of how something her mother made so long ago with loving care had been corrupted by Calamity Ganon.

This was her final thought as the Harbinger swung its distended bladed arm, colliding with the vehicle’s back tire. The Master Cycle wavered pathetically from the force of the automaton’s slap, and then went down, skidding through the mud.

The sky and ground spun as she felt herself hit the ground, narrowly missing becoming pinned under the fallen Master Cycle.

The falling rain on her skin brought Zelda back to a vague awareness. Groaning, she opened her eyes. She barely registered that they were lying in a crumpled heap, but when she did, she reached for Astor as he stirred slightly. Her hands moved over him as she fought to regain her bearings.

“Astor… Please say something...” She could only mumble as her fingers stroked the braids that draped the side of his face.

Astor sucked in a breath, wincing. “I... think I’m still in one piece…”

There was mud all over her dress and numerous scrapes on her exposed shoulders and arms. The rain stung her open wounds, but that was only the beginning of her pain.

Lifting her head weakly, she saw that the Master Cycle was a complete loss - and the Harbinger loomed over them, its corrupted red display ebbing outward hypnotically as it regarded them.

“Zelda, run....” Astor urged her, helplessly.

She took in the glowing blue of the Harbinger’s many blades. It was toying with them, taking its time as a predator with prey.

“I can’t outrun it any more than you can. I won’t leave you.” Zelda gripped his hand, her voice resigned and weak.

The Harbinger began to emit a discordant tune.

To Zelda, it sounded so familiar in her mental haze but deeply wrong. However, Astor knew it all too well.

There were times when the Harbinger used to play a strange song. Even Kohga and Sooga had heard it ‘sing’ at odd intervals. They didn’t know what to think at first. Then, Astor learned the origins of the Harbinger and he realized its significance. The tune was little more than a malfunction - simply the machinery morbidly regurgitating a lullaby meant for the princess out of key. Kohga and Sooga’s howls of laughter carried through the Yiga Hideout on the day they came to the same realization, much to Astor’s annoyance. The toy Zelda had once cherished was now possessed by the most malignant spirit in the realm and Astor was hanging on its every instruction.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Terrako…” Zelda said numbly.

And then Astor heard her make a seizing sound. The alarm and pain in her voice turned his stomach to rot.

Zelda stared at her feet in horror. They were as black as a decomposing corpse. She held them out as if paralyzed with pain. The same concerning blackness had appeared on her cheek, and others were appearing elsewhere, spreading.

“No, not her!” Astor screamed, taking hold of her in his arms.

Malice licked and traveled her body like a flame. It had started at her feet, blackening her skin and sandals, and traveled up. The malice infected her body, consuming her dress, her hair, and finally blooming in the whites of her eyes.

He cradled her in his arms, her darkened eyes staring back at him in wide open agony, and he wished the malice would consume him as well. She opened her mouth to say something, but the only sound that came forth was a terrible gasping sound.

“No… No…”

He pressed his face into the exposed skin of her shoulder, feeling the blighted flesh against his own. Her body gave no warmth, just a husk of her former beauty.

The anguish crashing down on him was unbearable as his raging thoughts took over - Hylia’s words turning over and over again in his mind, and all the things he wished he’d told Zelda.

I was supposed to die that way. Not her… I can’t let her die believing she’s a failure.

Hyrule’s future lay in ruin along with his own. What was fate if even the prophecy of the Goddess could be undone?

The Harbinger watched the prophet grieve, viewing the scene in the red tones of its censor. Certain the princess who bore the goddess’s blood would soon pass away, it turned to retreat.

Astor raised his head, hearing himself utter words he never thought possible.

“I love her… Know this, Calamity Ganon...I love her!” His voice shuddered in horrible defeat and desolation. “And I always will...”

Zelda grit her teeth as she shakily held her wasted right hand high.

The Harbinger had stopped in its tracks. It had ignored its former prophet’s confession, but now sensed a holy power brewing within the nearly lifeless girl.

A golden light had manifested in the palm of her hand, and in the next instant intensified into a brilliant and blinding dome that eclipsed the field.

Astor lifted his arm to shield his eyes, still embracing her with the other.

The dome of light faded out. Astor opened and closed his eyes, his vision coming back into focus.

“That light… It's…”

She held her arm out still, rigidly. Astor could only stare in awe at the unmistakable triangular mark on the back of her hand, and when her extended arm began to falter, he clasped her hand before it could fall limply to her side.

Zelda serenely closed her eyes. Astor thought he heard her exhale softly as she sank back into his arms, going limp. The black malice receded slowly, beginning at the sacred mark on her hand. The skin beneath had an otherworldly immaculate quality to it. And though the malice departed from her body and hair, it was plain to see that her clothing and jewelry would remain corroded and black.

The Harbinger was gone. Astor could only imagine it had retreated. There was nothing but the calming sound of rain falling as it began to taper off, and the dark clouds began to break, leaving nothing but the starry night sky and the moon. Astor’s gaze rested on the soft rise and fall of her chest.

There was the clanging of armor and Astor turned his head to see two Hyrulian soldiers approach.

“What was that light?” The soldier let his gaze fall on the girl in Astor’s arms and then the wrecked vehicle, going silent.

“Who are you? What did you do to the princess!?” the other barked.

“I... I’m her seer. I helped her awaken her sacred power.” Astor gave them a tired, elated smile, too thankful to Hylia that Zelda was alive to demand respect from these two lowly Hyrulean Soldiers.

The soldiers glanced at one another skeptically, not sure whether to take the strange, suspicious man at his word, but there was no denying the light shining dully from Zelda’s hand.

“Should we believe him? I know of no royal seer in attendance to the princess. Where is her appointed knight?”

“He certainly doesn’t look the least bit royal to me… Anyways, we need to get Her Highness to safety. Alright, Sir, you’re going to carry Her Highness to Fort Hateno, and you’re going to mind your hands while you do.”

Astor bit back a scathing insult and gathered the princess in his arms, following the soldiers in the direction of their destination. It wasn’t long before his arms ached terribly, and he didn’t think he would be able to carry her any longer, especially in his condition.

“Just a little further,” the first soldier said, not unkindly.

Astor adjusted his aching arms, Zelda still not stirring, and he pressed on.

They passed by countless broken-down Guardians.

“That light… It seems to have disabled the Guardians in the vicinity.” The soft-spoken soldier remarked.

They passed through the raised iron gate and the stone-faced soldier directed Astor to a tent.

“She can rest here. You rest over there,” the soldier ordered testily, pointing to another tent some distance away.

“You must be joking... We haven’t been apart during the entirety of the Calamity.” Astor felt the words leave his mouth helplessly.

“I care not! And I’m going to be keeping an eye on these tents to make sure nothing untoward happens until she can be reunited with her rightful appointed knight or advisor.”

Astor’s chest tightened, furious and in disbelief at the soldier’s callousness. “Just what are you accusing me of? We were attacked! Listen to me, you presumptive scab, there’s a very dangerous Guardian still out there and it's not done with us. I can’t leave her side. She’s incapacitated and defenseless.”

The soldier drew his sword. “Which is exactly why I won’t let you stay by her side,” he spat. “I’m not going to let you take advantage of the Calamity and sully her reputation, whoever you are. You expect me to believe your tall tales? I’ve yet to see a Guardian I couldn’t handle. Now, do as I say. I’m already granting you far more accommodation than you deserve!”

Astor shut his eyes in surrender and hugged the girl in his arms, knowing he could not afford to escalate the situation any further. He laid her in the tent and then turned to tiredly lurch toward the other, grumbling under his breath about how he was going to be sleeping with one eye open.

In his dreams, they stand under the Blood Moon hand in hand. The sky and land are awash in a scarlet glow. As her right hand clasps his left, he can sense her power resonating. Zelda stares up at the beast circling her home, undaunted, and smiles.

#Astor #Age of Calamity #HW:AoC #Zelast #fanfiction

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