A Cure for What Ails You
Summary: You heal Link's wounds after a battle with a lynel
Pairing: botw!Link x healer!reader (gn)
Words: 1,127
Warnings: brief mentions of injuries, barely edited (I'm just vibing and waiting for midnight)
A/N: This is just a fun little oneshot I wrote up tonight because man oh man am I jazzed for TOK.
“You really didn’t have to do that, you know.”
Your voice cuts the silence between the two of you as you mend the deep scratches across his forearm. The bleeding has slowed, but you still wear the concern on your face.
Link watches you, unblinking. When you first met, you would have said his expression never changes. Now you know better. His bright eyes have a little flicker of indignation. You quirk an eyebrow up at him, a small smirk flashing across your face.
"I appreciate it, though," you continue, turning your eyes to the wound on his arm. If he's in pain, he'd never tell, but his back is stiffer than it's been around you as of late, and his silence feels more pressing.
Today hadn't marked your first life threatening experience since you began your journeys with the Princess and her knight, but you believed it to be your closest to grave harm. Link had stepped in just as you were about to be a lynel's prize.
You'd stumbled into the beast's territory foraging ingredients for tonight's dinner. Luckily, you'd found enough ingredients to whip up some healing potions and a salve as well. Your thankful that Zelda had stayed at the stable, unaware of the whole ordeal.
Link's guarded gaze is still fixed on you, like he's trying to tell you something that you can't quite make out. Though you've learned his little tells, there's still so much of himself he hides when he chooses to. You wonder what he's hiding around you.
"It would have killed you," Link says finally. His voice doesn't convey the seriousness of the sentiment.
You laugh quietly though that's not quite appropriate for the situation either. "It could have killed you, too."
"Probably not."
His bluntness catches you off guard, and you can't help but laugh. Link's expression softens just a smidge, like your laughter is the medicine he's needed for his wounds all along.
"I guess you're right," you say, a hint of startled laughter still in your voice.
Once your pleased with how clean his scrapes are, you wrap them up as you begin to get to work on the salve. He sits still, and though your back is to him, you can feel him observing, always so alert to everything going on around him.
"How did you know to come?" you ask after a moment of quiet. The question weighed on your mind. You'd gone off all on your own. When the lynel made its first yell, you were certain that you'd seen him and the Princess for the last time. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Link was there, just before you, fighting off the lynel before it even had the chance to touch you.
You hesitate before turning to face him, a sudden creeping awareness of him. Your duties were elsewhere on your travels, but within your company, you couldn't help but have...noticed Link was handsome.
It started out innocently enough, admiring the way his light caught his hair, the way their nightly campfires lit his face, how extraordinarily kind he was to his horse. Your not sure when the change happened, but the casual admiration morphed into something less easy to shake off.
You and Link spent very little time alone because he was often fulfilling his duties of protecting Zelda. It'd been easier to keep the feelings at bay then. But Zelda's absence was incredibly noted. Now it was just the two of you, his eyes following you as you prepared a salve for him.
When you finally find the courage, you turn to face him, your hands over a small slimy mixture in a small glass. He sat on a stump, one leg straight out, the elbow of his injured arm resting upon the knee of his bent leg.
Sure enough, he's watching you.
"Thought there might be monsters," he replies.
You breathe a laugh, though the breath is hard to find quite suddenly. You bend down and remove the cloth wrapped around his forearm, your fingers barely grazing his skin as you apply the salve. You tell yourself its so you won't hurt him, but you know perfectly well that as soon as the salve is on, the pain will disappear entirely.
You fall back into silence as you make quick work of healing him. One hand lightly grips his forearm to keep him steady, the other coating his wounds. His skin is warm underneath your fingertips. You try to push the thought back with all your might, though you find it hard to resist.
Link ever so softly sighs in relief. You feel the tension in his muscles ease as the pain fades away and smile gently.
"Is that better?" you ask. Your grip on his arm lingers.
He nods. For a moment, you think he'll pull his arm away, but he doesn't. His bright eyes are on you, and you can't look away. You're caught in his gaze, stuck on the spot.
"We..." Your voice is thin. You clear your throat and finally tear your eyes from his. "We should get back. We don't want the Princess to worry."
You rise to your feet, beginning to walk away, but something holds you back. A glance down shows Link's hand wrapped gently around your wrist.
"Wait," he says. And for the first time, you can so clearly read everything he's trying to tell you without saying more than a single word. His eyes are so open, as if he's giving you permission to understand him, know what goes on in his mind.
Your breath catches in your throat. There's longing, fear, concern all swimming in his eyes. He's letting you see it.
Link rises to his feet, only a few inches from where you stand. He smells like leather and warm days, fresh breeze and soil.
"It could have killed you," Link says again. This time, his voice is heavy, thick with everything he's feeling. Everything he's showing to you openly, or at least as openly as he can.
You nod, temporarily at a loss for words until you're able to choke out, "Yes."
"I did have to do that," he says firmly. For a moment, it takes a moment for you to understand what he's trying to say. When you do, your lips part to speak, but he frees your wrist and pulls his sleeve down over his healed wound. "We should get back."
The sky has turned vibrant orange. Night soon follows, and you know just as well as Link what you could meet in the night.
"Right," you say softly, and note that for once, he's the one with much more to say. If you weren't still so stunned, you'd think it was funny.
As you walk back to the stable, Link walks behind you, just like he does with Zelda.
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rough beast ganondorf design + sketches + notes
design combines the typical boar form (dark beast + cloud form from botw), the oni one (demon king gan) hint at the draconic one to come but keep part of his humanity with his clothing being mostly intact
as the battle with Demon King Ganondorf comes to an end, the sages previously knocked out start to wake up again, he is cornered and hurt and as fear of being imprisoned, tortured and exploited overwhelms him he transforms into the Beast form, breaking the arena you were fighting him in and him going for Zelda as she is the biggest threat (he remembers her destroying dark beast gan and she reminds him of sonia, who is the one you sealed his human body back in the day)
you and zelda flee through the cracks of the earth as more earthquakes happen with a beast at your heels thats now truly only out to kill as fast as possible as he burrows after you (first sketch)
the path takes you both just below the surface and as you are trapped in a dead end zelda shields herself and link with her light shield ability, which protects you both from immediate damage but cant soften the impact from gan charging at you, the impact of which breaks you all three to the surface and the battle takes place in the same spot as botws dark beast fight-
fight is very challenging as gan is smaller than the dark best version, jumping and charging at you while still able to cast spells, now truly throwing everything he can at you in the hopes of ending you both
fight ends with you shooting an arrow at zelda, her deflecting it at the right angle and it shooting off the enigma stone on gans forehead; he falls seemingly defeated and as zelda runs to take the stone away gan through sheer panic lunges for the stone triggering his dragon transformation and making way for the final fight
(summary of the end: in the final fight gan snatches up both link and zelda once he transformed into the black dragon and takes flight toward the sky, zelda falls from between his teeth and knowing that she cant get to link and help him in any way from the ground she, while falling, takes out the enigma stone she has kept in a save container in her backpack all this time and swallows it for her own transformation, in her white dragon form she takes active action and charges at gans head so link is freed, then supports him in the fight itself;
at the end link plunges into dragon-gans mouth to reach the stone on the inside where he makes use of the 'medicine' previously made using the moonbloom taked from kogas secret lab, link and the stone are spit out and as gan reverses into a human and falls link is caught by zelda and he uses the second charge of it on her to bring her back as well;
as all three fall from the skies as the sages have made their way through the tunnel that beast gan made earlier, they help link and zelda getting to the ground safely while the yiga do the same for gan - final end end isnt determined yet but this is waht i got so far and even if i have written this once before i felt it was fitting to do it again and no you cant tell me this is too much of a wishfulfillment thing bc it literally is just that as i cant actualyl change whats in the game, so even if im trying to make it all fit well together i can still do what i want nhakjdbgshdbhsjka)
(totk rewritten project)
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The four Sages were called back into the past by Terrako and they remember it happening
Tulin got to meet his hero, Revali, and decided to be just like him, adopting his idol’s brash personality and drive. He practises Revali’s Gale and eventually comes up with his own way to show off his mastery of wind, and when trouble hits his home he rushes to fix it on his own to prove how strong he has become and because, like Revali, he can’t stand idly by while he knows there’s still things he can do.
For Yunobo, when he goes back and meets his ancestor Daruk, he is a very timid and reactive Goron. He needs a push from others to come up with ideas and carry plans through, and when bad things happen to him his first instinct is to use his fire magic as a shield, to wait until the threat has passed by or somebody else has come to save him. But when he is sent back in time to Divine Beast vah Rudania, for the first time he has to be the one doing the saving. Daruk encourages Yunobo and is proud of him from the moment they meet, and it’s this support that gives Yunobo the confidence to help fight against Calamity Ganon, and to start YunoboCo when he gets home.
For Sidon, meeting his family from 100 years ago is bittersweet. He is proud that he was able to protect his sister, and it’s a comfort to know there is a version of him who will grow up alongside Mipha because of his bravery and fighting prowess. But as much joy as he got from seeing her, hugging her, and hearing her voice again, it just reminds him of how unfair her death was, of just how young she was when she died and how he is now older even though he’s the younger sibling. And at the end of the war, when he’s returned to their original time, he has to readjust to her absence all over again, and in light of that is it really a shock he’d have her statue moved further away from his home? And it also explains why he’s so desperate to protect Yona from the sludge.
Riju in AoC still a new ruler to her people, despite her accomplishments in BotW, she still feels guilty over the temporary loss of the Thunder Helm and isn’t sure if she can lead the Gerudo. She has a lot of confidence but is quick to falter when things go wrong. Urbosa treats Riju as a capable fighter despite her young age, and teaches her that she should never give up, to keep trying even when her resolve falters. There is always something you can do, even when it’s just stalling for time until help can arrive. Urbosa guides her in mastering the Thunderhelm, and possibly begins teaching her to summon lightning herself after Kohga attempts to steal it, and at the end of their time together Urbosa tells Riju she’s certain she’ll lead the Gerudo well. Riju treasured her time being mentored by Urbosa so much that she considers what Urbosa would do during the Upheaval in her diary in TotK.
I think the entire reason Tulin was added to the DLC was because the TotK team had already decided that Tulin was going to be the Sage of Wind, and that since the other sages were going to meet their Champions Tulin had to as well.
At some point in the years between Botw and TotK Teba, Tulin, Sidon, Yunobo, Riju and Patricia were summoned back in time by Terrako to aid the Champions during the Calamity, and even though those events took place in a parallel timeline and had no bearing on the world they returned to, the Sages’ personalities at the beginning of TotK are because of their experiences during the Calamity and the bonds they made with the Champions.
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