#she.. idk i really don't expect anything from others n ppl have their own ways of showing love

[noxtivagus]

:<<

[hyuuukais]

.・゜-: ✧ :- FICTIONAL REALITY .・゜-: ✧ :-

pairing • bang chan x fem reader

synopsis • fiction or reality? y/n preferred the former, escaping into another world, escaping her problems. so what happens when reality takes that away from her; wiping her own story-in-progress off both her laptop and beloved usb? and what happens when she opens the door in the middle of a crisis to none other then the love interest of her novel... and he's holding her usb?

warnings • general, talk abt yn's past abusive relationship, idk exactly how to tag this but um like wires going into ppl

MASTERLIST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

CHAPTER TEN • INTO THE DARK (1.8k)

Minho helps you feed the stray cat. It runs up to him, rubbing against his leg affectionately, ignoring you completely. Placing the dish down, you look around at the surrounding woods. You had to go a bit deeper into them than usual to find the cat, which tends to reside near the tree line. It was getting colder, and the lack of light in the woods wasn't helping.

"Here, take this." Minho takes his sweater off and hands it to you, leaving him in just a t-shirt. Goosebumps immediately grew over his arms. "You're shivering."

Shaking your head, you pick up the now empty food dish. "No, you're cold too. We'll be back soon anyway."

He stares at you, hand outstretched, but eventually gives up. "Suit yourself."

-

Back at the house, you turn the heat up before settling in the living room. Minho had gone to shower, leaving you alone in your thoughts.

Did the universe expect you to go back to your old apartment, or was Yeonjun supposed to be coming here? There was no way for either of you to contact each other and even if there was, you didn't know if you could. You'd been forcing yourself to feel okay about potentially seeing him again and everything that's been leading up to it, but honestly, you were far from okay. The visions had scared you. The feeling of his hands on you again, the look in his eyes, his words...

"You okay?" The sound of someone else speaking breaks you out of your trance, and you turn your head toward Minho. He's leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and head tilted forward with raised eyebrows covered slightly by his still wet hair.

...he looks really good.

"Yeah, just... thinking," you fake a small smile. "Have you had any of these visions? Or dreams?"

"No," he shakes his head.

"Oh."

Thinking about Chan and Jeongin, you wonder about this. Of course, Jeongin had only gotten anything because you asked him for it, but then he also already knew about Chan. What else was he not telling you? Maybe you should try to contact him, the warning about Mrs. Yang had frightened you.

Pushing off the wall, Minho takes a seat next to you, placing a hand on your knee. "You know you can talk to me."

"Can I?" Your voice breaks, embarrassing you. "A year can change so much. What if- what if we can't be what we used to be? I used to rely on you so much, but now I can barely look at your face without being reminded of everything that went down."

Taking in your words, Minho moves his hand off your knee and into your palm, interlocking your fingers. "Then we become something new. May I remind you I still don't know exactly what went down? That was all Yeji."

"She... never told you?"

"Nope," he sighs heavily. "Never thought I'd admit this, but I practically begged her to tell me what happened to you and where you were. All I knew was that Yeonjun was furious, although he didn't show it outright. He stuck to playing the part of the worried-sick-fiance." Minho scowls, using a mocking tone. "'My poor Y/n, wherever could she be! By the way, this totally wasn't my fault, I couldn't even hurt a fly much less my beautiful soon-to-be wife!'"

You giggle a bit at his impression and he smiles, watching your face light up. Making you laugh felt like a reward.

"He was so full of shit. I don't get why you stayed with him."

Just like that, your laughter stops.

"Haven't we been over this?" You steal your hand back, using it to rub your forehead.

"I just don't understand-"

"Yeah, and you probably never fucking will!" You sit up, legs swinging off the couch out of frustration. "If I broke up with him, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If I broke up with him, you wouldn't have been attending my wedding, you would have attended my funeral."

The words linger in between you, stinging Minho like a slap to the face. Of course he knew the relationship was toxic, but never did he think it would have come to that. If he did, he'd be behind bars right now. Fuck the USB, fuck Chan, fuck the universe. He's never letting you anywhere near Yeonjun again. As long as you're safe, who cares what it costs? The world could be burning to an ash and all Minho would want to do was get you off planet Earth, even if he couldn't come with.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know," he says finally, slowly, carefully.

"Nobody did," you look away from him, down at the floor. There are miles and miles between you then and you now, the person he knew and what she was willing to say. "Except Yeji."

Yeji.

"Min, I wanna try something. Get off the couch." You start stretching out before he can respond, reaching over to grab your long forgotten headphones off the coffee table.

"What's your idea?" He takes a seat in the chair beside you.

"So when Jeongin went into that little psychic trance of his, he closed his eyes I'm guessing to help him envision his surroundings and focus better-" You adjust yourself better, sitting the headphones above your ears. "-obviously I'm not him and don't have the same abilities, but what if I try to remember the place it took me to? The headphones aren't necessary, but they're noise cancelling so I thought it might help."

Minho looks like he wants to protest, but holds back any thoughts.

"If I get into enough of a relaxed state," you continue when he says nothing. "Maybe I'll find it. It might be the only way to save Chan." You take a deep breath. "And Yeji."

"You really think Yeji is a part of this too?"

"Well it had her there and could mimic her voice, so yeah." You roll your eyes.

Leaning back in the chair, Minho rolls his eyes even more dramatically at you. "It could just be able to do that."

"There's only one way to find out."

And with that, you put on the headphones.

Immediately the world around you is muffled, no longer able to hear Minho shifting in the chair or the wind whistling through the old bones of the house. Outside, the sun has already begun to come down, soon it will be dark. With your eyes closed and hearing limited, your other senses come in stronger. You can smell your shampoo wafting off Minho, feel the bumps form on your skin as the chill sets in.

Still too early to turn on the heat, you think.

Trying to clear your mind, you focus on your breathing. In, out. In, out. In, out. Breaths become deeper, heartrate slowing. At one point, your mind wanders to thoughts of Chan. What's he doing right now? Is he alright? Why hasn't he texted you? When will you get the opportunity to correct your missed kiss-

Hey brain, you think, focus on the mission, you already know you're not emotionally available enough for someone like him, so stop it.

Back to your breathing.

Enough time passes to have you considering this isn't going to work. Why did you think it would in the first place? You said it yourself, you don't have 'abilities' like Jeongin does. Never have, never will. And besides, even if it did work, what would you do? You can't force this thing to give you information; it has the upper hand and knows it does.

"Okay, screw this," you open your eyes, but all you see is black.

It worked. But now what?

"Hello?" You call out, voice echoing. "Um, anyone home?"

Not that this place felt very... homey.

You begin to walk, eyes adjusting. Looking down, you realize you're walking in water just like Jeongin mentioned, but it just barely covers your toes. Reaching to the right, your hand finds a wall close to you. The left side is the same; you're in some kind of corridor. Walking further, your left hand grazes a dip in the wall; no, a door. You squint, noticing a few more doors on either side further down before they're consumed again by the darkness.

Wrapping your cold fingers around the knob, you push. The door is stiff and hard to open, taking a few full-body pushes before you can squeeze inside. Air races past, through your hair and the door. Inside, the walls curve to a circle, a very dim white light coming up from the edges of the water. In the middle, you spot what looks like a dentist's chair turned away from you. The top of someone's head pokes out the top, wires hanging down from the ceiling- or lack thereof, when you look up, it never seems to end- and down to their body.

Slowly, you approach the chair, gasping when you see who it is.

"Oh, Chan," you whisper, tears brimming. There are deep circles under his eyes, and the wires appear to go into his neck harshly, all red and swollen around where they enter. His lips are chapped, skin nearing translucent.

Touching his skin, it's colder than your fingers and a bit rough. His mouth is parted ever so slightly, breathing shallowly. He's dressed in all white; a t-shirt tucked into smooth pants. It's weird seeing him like this.

But you know you can't stay. This isn't why you're here.

Moving on from Chan's room, you open each door as you go, starting with the one directly across from his. You barely recognize the girl in the chair as you've only met on a few occasions; Lily.

In the next few rooms, you find a mix of people you do and don't recognize, Jeongin and Yeji being some of them. Resisting the urge to stay by their sides is difficult, you need to keep going, find the thing keeping them all here. Finally, you reach the end, the last door.

The door stretches its way into the never-ending ceiling, the knob particularly stubborn. This room is bigger than the others have been, and you spot two chairs facing each other in the dim lighting. Inside are you and your ex, Yeonjun.

"What the actual fuck," you breathe, trying to control the rising panic in your throat.

Just like the others, you both have wires connecting into your necks and look physically unwell. The only difference is that you're together, and there's another line stuck into your forearms, connecting you.

You start to have the feeling you need to leave. Now.

And that's when you hear it; distant whispering growing louder and louder, chanting the same sentence over and over again.

"You're not supposed to be in here."

●

notes • i honestly didn't think i'd get this done today but had a sudden burst of writing energy!! things are getting funky for sure hehehehe

taglist • @yongbbokkie @chaeryred @tenebrisirae @toplinelix @chansdoll @amaranth-writing @3rachachoo @linosjureumi @thebrownemo @tfshouldidohere @channie-143 @frogieeheart @kangaracharacha @skzswife

TAGLIST CLOSED ^^^blue means i can't tag you

[nyanggk]

thank you for your response, but i do not appreciate the shameless gaslighting throughout your entire reply lmfao. i completely understand not replying right away but don't use the "i'm tired" excuse to justify an immature response because you could've just waited until you were clear-headed. maybe you should get some more rest because it's obvious you did not understand what i pointed out as proven by your childish answers.

i'll start with what you mentioned about dark humor because i want to emphasize that misogyny is NOT dark humor in any circumstance. you told me to go look up the definition of misogyny but the point i was making was that y/n was treating the girls way worse and it dragged on for the entirety of the fic. the guy's antics, like jake cheating, was passed off as a joke in the beginning, but the girls were treated ruthlessly which i found pretty misogynistic. i'm not sure how you can overlook that when multiple people have said the same thing in your comments/reblogs as well.

if you want dark humor to deliver then you need to know your audience. i'm sure you didn't actually think a (mostly) female audience would appreciate misogyny passed off as "dark humor"?? plus you said in your author's note that you didn't intend for it to be misogynistic, so why are you switching up now and saying it was supposed to be dark humor?

there is a line between what's considered dark humor and what's considered flat-out offensive. making fun of weight and dragging down other girls is not dark humor, it's just plain bullying. "dark humor" is supposed to be funny and i didn't laugh one time because the whole portrayal was just uncomfortable. y/n is not the bad bitch you intended to write, she's just an asshole. i get you want to make "flawed" characters but throughout the story you are promoting a "romantic" development between y/n and jay without any sort of character development or growth.

the issue is your clear romanticization of topic behaviors in this fic. i know you didn't intend to do so because this sudden switch up from your author's note is confusing, so idk why it's so hard for you to admit that your fic is romanticizing a toxic relationship. not just that but brushing off misogyny as "badass."

i also don't appreciate how you brushed off the fatphobia towards liz by saying "idrk anything abt that nor do i care abt it" like? you have the audacity to say you don't care about the fatphobia she faces but you bias her too? and turning it on me and saying it's my mindset is just awful and wrong. if you don't care enough to look up what people say about liz then that's fine, but don't turn this on me because i called you out on how inappropriate the fatphobic comments were in your fic.

good for you and your boyfriend, but this really isn't about your actual relationship. you wrote this fic without any warnings about dubcon and misogyny and expect people to be "wiser" about the content of your fic? it's not a matter of fiction vs reality. you think that just because it's fiction it can't harm anyone, but it unconsciously teaches people things that shouldn't be taught. i mean, it's pretty obvious it affects you too since you called yourself a vengeful person much like you said y/n is. so is it safe for me to assume that y/n is based off of you? you said it in a recent comment on the fic too: "oof wait who did i describe as pale 💀 if it was yn then i was just probably thinking of myself/my own appearance so yuh" (this is verbatim by the way)

thank you for choosing to answer instead of deleting my previous ask lmfao idk if you expected me to thank you or something but addressing controversy is the bare minimum.

hey again, so firstly no I'm not expecting you to thank me nor do I care if u do bcs I legitimately don't. I'm saying that I could've legit deleted your ask and went on with my day while you rant to your own blog abt how some author refused to give light abt an issue/an ask u sent bcs you ppl are like that (if you are like that) hiding behind your anonymous asks bcs you're scared your moots might see u in a different light or that I might come at you (which I won't bcs like I said, I don't care abt you)

so to actually start off, I'm not trying to justify what I said as "Oh im tired. it's too early for this. lemme just reply to this now to get it over with." I actually meant all of that. and also, whether you admit it or not, the longer I take to answer this ask affects your view on me— whether you think of me as trying to run away from the "issue" or just me plainly ignoring you, I know you're just getting antsy for a response. which by the way, you could've sent in my dms but obv no, you can't do that because it'll expose your identity right? im not gaslighting you, I'm flatly telling you what I mean. if you call the humour or the "lol"s that I put in there gaslighting, then that's just me not taking you seriously bcs once again, I don't care.

misogyny is funny to me in the way I wrote it (even thought it wasn't just discrimination towards women) and how can u say that it isn't when people have actually laughed at the shit I wrote? and yes I have proof, it was from the people who actually bothered to read everything and send in a commentary, telling me what they think of every line / scene. and maybe yn hated the girls a lot more bcs there was a bitch tormenting her???? the hate she had for the female population at the start was just there (same as for the boys) because thats how she viewed them and she disliked them. the only reason it dragged on til the end (for the girls' part) was bcs of yujin. did yn mention any other girl she hated besides her and her little "minions" who were just mentioned once? no. she hated them but like what was written there, she mostly wouldn't care abt what yujin would say except for when liz gets angry, that's when she would cheer her on or when she went too far. now, can u name any other girl yn said she hated? no bcs there was only yujin. the part where Jay went into the art room and was basically crowded by other people, yn said she was angry or getting jealous bcs they were touching him, right?

her hate wasn't just some baseless grudge towards a (1) gender bcs why would she be jealous of guys crowding jay when he's straight (in this fic im not saying irl). yes, she was immature in feeling that bcs once again, him and yn weren't a thing and both that angered her, mixed with the denial she feels towards Jay. was there a reason for me to put the other boys there? no bcs yn already has this "rival" figure so why would I bother adding a guy.

yes I brushed it off because I simply don't care what other people think of her. "if that's what u think I don't care" is me generalising all of you (possibly also u idk) who think that's she's fat. I told u I don't care bcs I like how she looks and have no care in what other people say bcs once again, I don't care abt their opinions bcs what matters to me is my own unbiased opinion.

I'm not switching it up to dark humour bcs it alrdy was???? i said it wasn't meant to be misogynistic bcs it wasn't??? wdym "You said it wasn't misogynistic so you're switching it do dark humour" it wasn't misogynistic in the first place. it's meant to fuck with both genders. a (gay) guy have also sent me feedback abt this fic and did he call me out for calling guys manwhores??? no, bcs he probably didn't care and knew it was just for laughs and wished for me to make a mxm spin off.

I'm "unconsciously teaching people what shouldn't be taught" aren't you adults? have u not been taught from a young age what's right and what's wrong? shouldn't you alrdy know this??? if you know its wrong then why would u do it??? I'm not teaching anyone nor am I shaming anyone for doing stupid decisions in life. no matter how old u are, I get that ppl can still make mistakes but to blindly follow the mc of a smutty enhypen fanfiction posted on tumblr????? are u insane or do u just not have anyone guiding you in life.

and can I ask u how u thought yn was based off of me (both physically and personality wise) when I said that i literally have a healthy relationship with my boyfriend? didn't I tell u alrdy that I know how to differentiate fiction and reality. didn't I tell u that no dubcon or whatever that is, happens to us? (I have no idea what dubcon was before this) just bcs she's vengeful and pale doesn't mean I'd do the same thing as she did in this ff bcs like I've said multiple times, yn is a fictional character and I'm an adult who knows what's right or wrong. and who else would I base yn off of? my sister? my mother? other ppl? an oc? ofc I'd use the word pale bcs I am and vengeful bcs I'm vengeful. that's doesn't mean I'm the same as her.

and the "it's pretty obvious it affects you too" phrase, idk what u mean by that.

safe to say that I don't intend to teach any adult smth they should morally alrdy know. I'll add that dubcon thing u said to the warnings if that makes u happy aslo bcs I don't want other people to misunderstand. I had no idea what dubcon was before this so that's why it wasn't there. besides that, I have nothing else for ya. if this came off as blunt to u then thats bcs it probably is. like I said, u never stated anything good from me or the fic, hence why I'm sour. if u came here to provide constructive critiscm, make sure to not just put the bad things.

[musashi]

sending u this ask as an opportunity for u to talk to me abt fi!! i love ur thoughts n words on things nd i don't send asks as much bc i don't have. good words to talk to u abt stuff but i rlly enjoy just. ur Passion nd stuff. autistic people r the best at talking abt stuff i stand by that we r just Epic. anyways if u wanna, i'd love to hear more about just... how fi sorta. changes, over the game? like the Little Things that show her starting 2 care abt link more, or becoming more "human"!

i love this whole ask. you’re right autistic folks r sexy as hell idk how the divine powers that be fit so much passion into my tiny body but i’m glad they made the attempt. 

ANYWAYS FI. i don’t think i’ve ever actually laid this out because for the most part it is incredibly subtle and requires a lot of filling in gaps yourself, and i think that someone who cares less abt her can probably come away from it with an entirely different interpretation. fi’s development of actual feelings are a very sudden a mysterious thing, and i have a LOT of thoughts about them going in a lot of different directions so forgive me if this answer isn’t particularly linear or coherent. i’m not just gonna talk about her slow burn into feeling things, i’m also gonna talk about... why i think it happens.

we don’t get to learn a lot about sword spirits and how they come into being, other than it takes great power to enchant a sword with a spirit/temper a sword with one inside it. hylia obviously created fi and, presumably, demise created ghirahim, and they are pretty much as opposite as two people can be with their only real characteristic in common being precision, intelligence & otherworldly loyalty to their respective masters. 

we thus don’t get to learn how much control the creator of a sword spirit has over what kind of spirit comes of it, if their personalities are organic to their experiences or crafted from the moment they awaken. what i mean by this is like... ghirahim could have been a cold, calculating AI like fi when he was first tempered and gained his dramatics over time, we have no idea how long he’s been alive in comparison to her, if his personality is so much more extroverted because he was allowed a life outside his blade whereas fi was isolated in hers for millennia. or if he just came into creation immediately ready to scream and stick his tongue in ppl’s ears.

i swear to god i’m going somewhere with this. ok. anyways.

fi in the beginning of skyward sword is, i think, how most people remember her--data-interested, icy, and detached. there is a reverence in how she addresses link from the start, even before he formally becomes her wielder, but beyond that she is calculating and precise and rarely wastes words. all of this kinda paints a picture of hylia creating fi, to me--breathing life into the spirit and willing her to be effective, be efficient, be loyal, and be sharp. when you have that image in your head, a lot of how fi operates makes sense--she wasn’t created to have emotions, because emotions get in the way of what her purpose is. hylia made a weapon and a servant, not a friend. it sucks to think about, but that is fi’s purpose.

the game is very careful, however, to show you it’s not that simple from the beginning. because hidden in Ice Queen Fi’s introduction is... a surprising amount of personality.

like this shit, where she straightup just dunks gaepora in the trash because his #Lore is out of date. it’s hysterical because you really do not know if she’s just a) an AI who doesn’t understand when she’s being kinda Rude or b) being snarky On Purpose. and that ambiguity in itself crafts this beautiful air of mystery where you, from the get go, don’t entirely know what to expect of fi all the time.

or this, which she says directly after link hesitates to accept the blade:

this scene, which people who have edgier takes on fi constantly use to paint her as intentionally manipulative, where all i see is... her using emotional validation to calm link down enough for him to take in what’s happening. a really important thing about fi is that she’s paradoxically an empath? she can read auras and detect emotion with extreme precision even if she’s incapable of feeling it herself in the beginning. so she knows everything link is experiencing here, understands that it’s holding him back, and takes care to deconstruct the whirlwind of emotion he’s collapsing under and explain to him why he can and should trust her words.

again this is all in her introductory scene. they write her very specifically to be a seemingly flat character with this... rumbling of something more going on under the surface. so much so that the first time you get to a sacred spring and fi, completely randomly, just starts skating across the water’s surface and speaking ancient poeticisms to you, you don’t question it. you’re not like hey, why is sword alexa doing a little dance? you just accept it as something fi is doing, because fi always feels like she’s at her job, and you don’t know how she acts outside of work, but you kinda feel like maybe you want to.

fi’s affinity for music is another way they insert humanity into an AI without making you think too hard about it. singing and dancing are inherently human, artforms are something we associate with the heart and soul. even teaching a robot to paint is, in itself, an art project crafted by a human hand. but you don’t really... consciously think about that, when you watch her do these things. you just kind of accept that she is this otherworldly thing guiding you. you don’t think about the contrast of this programmed assistant performing music alongside you in a sacred ritual. you’re just kind of like, yeah? i can’t JUST play nayru’s wisdom on my harp, i need someone who can sing and god put a vocaloid in my sword???

throughout the game, fi’s dialogue chains when you summon her don’t change in any meaningful way (besides based on what you’re carrying, where you are, etc) but as you near the end, there are a couple things of note. one that sticks out to me is what she says about one of the mid-game minibosses, who is also an artificial intelligence--

a lot of people laugh abt this line and make jokes about fi being hot for the tall handsome robot pirate and they’re valid. but the thing is, like, from the beginning of her mission, fi knew she’d essentially be dying once the world was saved. and early game fi has no hesitations about her part in things regardless, because, as we know, she wasn’t created to feel things like that. she wasn’t created to fear death, to grow attached to life or anyone in it, or to experience sorrow at the idea of saying goodbye. but this is mid-game fi, who still... never says anything she doesn’t deem entirely necessary, but she says this. for no discernible reason, she says this. it’s an unskippable dialogue option, one they WANT you to see and one that is different when you know where she ends up. admiration is already something you wouldn’t really expect of her, but it’s more than that--she’s longing for her own story to mirror it. by the sand sea, fi has started to realize she doesn’t want to go to sleep.

it’s another one of those moments where you’re kinda like, ‘haha, what, fi?' and then move on. another one of those moments where she kinda does something a little unexpected, but not so unexpected you question it too hard. fi excels at those.

before you go off to fight demise, fi stops you to warn you that it is the final battle, and you cannot return. and when you tell her you’re ready, she says this:

as i’ve said, fi doesn’t waste words. almost always, everything she says is for the purpose of efficiency, and rarely does she offer thoughts without fixed probabilities and ultimate endgoals in mind.

this is a sentiment.

it serves no purpose. it is purely an expression of devotion.

and because of EVERYTHING i’ve mentioned thus far, this line both hits you HARD as significant and foreboding in how suddenly tender it is, AND manages to read as in-character for her to say. because the way they write fi’s humanity is so beneath the surface, so easily missable, so hard for me to even lay out with concrete evidence despite the fact that i’m a person who reads a text dump of all her dialogue before bed every night.

but to me, what lays out fi’s inner workings best is actually her actual goodbye, and... not the moment most people would think, tbh? it’s not her tender farewell that speaks her emotions loudest to me, but the moment right before:

these lines, which would read as perfectly in character if it were early game fi, cut you. her complete and utter flippancy, the way she talks about all you’ve been through together as though it were nothing to her, the absolute coldness here after everything. you as a player feel kind of pathetic when she says this, like you were misguided in growing attached to her and thinking of her as a friend. and you KNOW thats the intended effect, because this is what link looks like:

he takes a moment in that last shot to like. swallow sadness and turn away from her, but even as he’s turning his head, he doesn’t take his eyes off her until the last possible moment. she hurts his feelings! why.

because it’s an act, is why. of COURSE fi loves him. of course she’s grown attached to him, of course she’s happy to have known him, of COURSE they’re friends. but fi was NEVER supposed to feel that way, she was never supposed to have the capability to love, and there’s no calculation she can run to set the uncertainties of that at ease within herself. so those lines up above is her trying her best to reset herself to who she was in the beginning, to snap herself back into the role of an emotionless servant to the goddess, to convince herself--not link--that saying goodbye won’t hurt. she’s trying to cope with something she has no idea was in the cards for her, and that’s why she’s seemingly so cruel for a moment.

all of this becomes apparent when she calls him back moments later and tells him how she really feels. there’s major whiplash because fi herself is Going Thru It. but essentially what’s happening in that moment is she thinks she knows what will hurt the least, but she miscalculates and backpedals and realizes even if saying goodbye hurts, it hurts less than pretending she doesn’t want to.

i think a lot of people overlook that line--“the most precious data i have on record.” fi, who contains multitudes within her. who contains knowledge immeasurable, the thoughts and feelings and stories of thousands. of civilizations, of gods, of countless ages passed. everything she holds within her is dwarfed entirely by what she feels for link, beside link. nothing in her encyclopedic knowledge can even compare to her friendship with him in the significance it has to her. like all things, fi has her own way of communicating her meanings, and this is her way of saying she really, truly loves him. 

in addition, she very carefully does this after he abandons the sword, so it’s clear that it’s of her own will, not a part of her purpose as his servant. for this whole cutscene, up until she end, she drops the honourific and calls him just Link. 

and while i see a lot of people debate if she truly does ‘feel,’ anything, like... she says it right here, she does. whether or not she was able to feel from the beginning or not, she can feel now. she has trouble putting words to those feelings, or explaining to herself and others where on earth they came from... but she feels now. that cannot be disputed.

happiness that she was able to know him. loyalty she wants to transcend lifetimes. sorrow at the idea of them having to part. gratitude that he took the chance, and did so beside her.

let’s talk about gratitude.

in skyward sword, gratitude is a tangible source of magic. it opposes malice, which as of botw is a reoccurring thing in zelda lore. skyward sword has two items--evil crystals and gratitude crystals--that represent malice and gratitude respectively. while the first isn’t entirely relevant, the second is something you’re actively encouraged to more or less harvest by helping people and basking in their thanks toward you. these feelings of gratitude are so canonically powerful in the zelda universe that they can turn monsters into humans entirely, and the outpouring of energy that event causes makes every monster & hostile creature within all of skyloft turn docile at once. 

according to batreaux, the monster in question, this is well-established legend, the idea of gratitude granting humanity to the nonhuman. skyward sword literally said the power of love was canon.

the song that plays over the goodbye, of course, is called fi’s gratitude.

this is just one theory i have on the matter, but... whether hylia intended or foresaw fi to be capable of feeling human emotion or not, i do believe it was gratitude that woke her heart up. whether she was meant to love or not, link’s spirit contained within it enough love for the both of them, enough to touch her soul and rouse her from her cold and emotionless state. as always, through everything, they work in perfect tandem--his passionate heart touches hers as it sleeps, her wisdom holds him steady and level-headed. 

when fi says “may we meet again in another life,” she says it like a prayer, because it is one--she knows hylia, knows that hylia loved link’s spirit just as she did, and knows that hylia of all people understands what the sword spirit is going through. and fi also knows that hylia immortalizes those she loves with cycles, with reincarnation, eternal life without the pain of never dying. fi doesn’t have a soul that hylia can bring back from death nor a physical body to revive, but she works with what she can--and so long as link’s spirit breathes anew, he finds fi. in a sunlit grove, with light bearing down on her, safe and warm and always loyal, even as the world rages on outside. fidelis, she was named for--“faithful.”

the fandom doesn’t really talk abt it, but fi is an angel. she’s an angel god sent to watch over one human, and when god said your mission is complete fi faced god and walked backwards into hell. her divine mission is long passed, but it stopped being about what she was fated to do long ago.

fi began to watch over link because he was her master. and fi resolved to stay forever because he was link.