Self-conscious captain
the next self aware link and this time it's the captain my favourite boy, warriors!
[masterlist]
“Hey [Name], I’ve been going through some of my old games to clear things out. I found my copy of Hyrule Warriors and wanted to know if you’d like it?”
“I thought that was one of your favourites though, what’s come into you to give it away like this? Do you want anything for it, I’d feel bad simply taking from you.”
“Nah I got it as a gift anyway, I beat the game and did everything there is to do. Plus I know you’ve been wanting to play it anyway, so please have it.”
There’s something off about this, between how skitterish they’re acting and the fact they’re so willing - that they’re so desperate for me to take their favourite game from them? I’ve got nothing else to go off of though, and they are right I have been planning to buy it. They wouldn’t be offering if they didn’t want me to have it so what is there to lose?
“If you’re sure then. I can’t wait to play through it myself rather than watching you.”
Is there such a thing as too much relief? Because if there is then that was definitely it, with how their shoulders relaxed; all the tension left their body as they handed me the game. Why does this feel like the start of a creepypasta, am I simply gonna go home then suddenly there’s some new version of Ben drowned for me to deal with? I won’t know until I play I guess, but it might be fun.
There’s no better time than now to learn though, I’ve got the whole afternoon to myself anyway so why not?
Putting the game into my switch; booting it all up it seems fine, so there’s nothing there that should have messed with them. It’s up until the first cutscene for anything to even show up that could be wrong. Link’s eyes seem to be focusing on me far more than they should during it, more than what should be possible, with more of a smile than he usually does during this too.
Then I finally get to the level.
I can’t control Link, the game seems to be frozen, not a single bokoblin moving, Link is still moving, the camera isn’t even focused on him now and he’s moving closer to the screen.
“Honeybee? You’re here! I knew your friend would cave pretty face when I pressed them. It’s so nice to have you here alone with me!”
“...What.”
“Oh it’s all alright dear, I did think you’d be a little shocked at first because, well I mean I know this isn’t something that happens very often. Would you be against getting to know me better though?”
What. The. Hell.
No wonder they were so eager to pawn the game off to me, a living character that seems to be obsessed with me? If the roles were switched then I’d be throwing it at them as quickly as I could, I’m amazed they could even keep calm for long enough to hand it to me without seeming any more suspicious than they did, he threatened them he’s already admitted that stop lying to yourself [name]. Why does he even want me over the person who actually played as him? None of this makes any sense.
“I - No I wouldn’t, actually could I ask you some questions too? Just y’know, try to get my head around all of this.”
“I’d be more concerned if you didn’t ask me any, I mean right now? You’re treating me more like an actual person than anyone else ever has.”
“...”
“Where would you like to start then honeybee? We can take this at your pace, you’re in full control here.”
Where should I start? There are so many different things I want answers to, I could stay here for hours just talking to him to find out everything; now that I think on that, it’s not like I have anything else planned today. I could simply just stay here for a bit and talk, it’s probably the safer option too. If I don’t, do I really want to test the sanity of a sentient game character, no.
“Um, if it’s all up to me then. Can I ask when you first became aware? Of the fact that you’re you know, a character in a game.”
“Oh, that? Well, it was about three months ago now, two or so weeks before you played with them. They really just saw me as a toy, not caring if I got hurt or anything, which is fair they never knew I was anything more than that; but you didn’t know either and you treated me like a person. You always apologised whenever I took any damage, never tried to get me hurt for your own pleasure or replace me as soon as you could. It was only a matter of time until I started to want you, then it was fairly easy to get eyes in your phone.”
“You've got ‘eyes in my phone?’ what do you mean by that.”
He looks so pleased right now like he wanted me to ask that exact question, it’s such a smug look on his face too. There’s something else to it as well, I can’t pinpoint what but there is certainly another look on his face. With how emotive he is it really doesn’t feel like this is some kind of sick joke, he’s too alive.
“That’s one of the things I’m most proud of!! It was pretty easy when you linked your phone to their switch to download a photo, I just made part of that connection a bit more personal and permanent. I promise I didn’t listen in on anything too private, I swear on Nintendo that I’m not like Cia. I promise.”
“Moving on from… that then. Why’s the real reason you wanted to be with me like this, I mean I get the feeling there’s more to it than you’re letting on.”
“You caught me I actually wa-”
The scowl that crossed his face when he was interrupted by the doorbell was unlike the cheery demeanour he’s been using, it’s almost like he’s angry or jealous of me having my attention split from him; it barely lasts a second though. Before his face swaps to one of remorse possibly because he got so irritated over something so trivial, that needs my focus more than he does right now.
“I think you already know, but I should go check that. I’ll only be a couple of minutes, it’s probably nothing after all.”
Not even a word, just a nod and a look of rejection as if he was a cat I’d had to move off of me when I turned to go and answer the door.
True to my word it wasn’t something that going to take long, simply signing for a couple of parcels.
It only took me a few minutes to collect it and then start heading back to my room, I’ll be able to open them while I talk to Link after all. Really it would be cruel to make him wait after everything else he’s been through, even if he’s been monitoring… most of my movements, is it bad that I still feel bad after knowing that?
A shrill yelp followed by a shattering sound right when I was about to go back in wasn’t the best sign, the worst thing is that this time there wasn’t a digital overlay. Did someone break in - or break out?
Only one way to find out.
“Honeybee? I - I’m sorry I - I really was trying to keep it in one piece.”
He’s out of the game.
Link is in my room bawling his eyes out because he accidentally broke my LED screen, the hero of hyrule is standing in my bedroom crying his eyes out because he broke a piece of glass. Earlier there was always a feeling of him trying to come off as likeable to me, to the point where it was manipulative, he wouldn’t even consider the idea of me not liking him. Now it’s like he’s having a panic attack at the possibility that I won’t like him because he broke my monitor.
“I - I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Please - just - I - I didn’t mean to break it.”
“Link -”
“My clothes would probably be worth a fortune to someone right? I - I mean it’s an actual set of armour from the Hyrulian forces - it’s real chainmail. If you sell it - it’ll more than make up the cost, right? You won’t hate me if I did that, right?”
“Link. I don’t hate you, it was an accident and even if it wasn’t I would forgive you.”
That seemed to snap him out of it, if only a little; he’s still crying but now he’s not rambling about ways to make it up to me. He clearly seems to want me, even if I still don’t entirely get why so maybe I could; opening my arms proves the fact that he really does just want some affection.
Waiting wasn’t even on the cards as he practically dove into my arms barely seconds after looking at me for permission.
“You really don’t hate me then? Really? Even though I’m not as good as the other games?”
“I don’t hate you for wanting to get out of what was essentially your prison or - you being as good as the other games? Your game is different but it’s just as good”
“But - you and your friend both said it. I - I’m not canon. You still treated me well that‘s why I fell for you, but I’m still - I’m still less than the other games. So I just, I really wanted to prove to you that I can be the only one for you [name]”
Stroking his hair seems to be calming him down now, the tears are slowing and his breathing is evening out the longer I stay here with him; only a few more moments until I should be able to get some answers from him. Adjusting to having a roommate might be a little strange, he really does seem nice though, nicer than anyone else I’ve ever met.
Wait no I’ve only really just met him, why am I already thinking about that? It’s something to consider for certain - oh come on, just admit to yourself that you love this. He cares so why not see where it all goes?
“Canon just describes the story, it doesn’t change anything about you and I’m sorry if it’s ever seemed like that link. Come on, I'll clean the glass up, then you can finish explaining things okay?”
“No wait, it’s my fault, let me clean it up for you. If nothing else, please honey.”
“You don’t have to, it’s not a bother.”
So he already knows his teary puppy face can get me to agree to anything, he’s been here for less than a few hours and it already feels like we’re in a relationship as he knows me inside out…
Which makes sense given that he has been watching me through my phone. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad if I stopped fighting against what he’s offering.
The gloves he’s wearing make picking up shards less painful than it would be otherwise, doesn’t take him that long either.
Long enough for something to flicker on my switch, but that can wait.
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Stuck in the middle of a forest made of
Flesh and bones and they're all scared of
A lost little boy who has lost his heart
Fear's not enough, they have to
Tear him apart
—-------
There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well:
He’s adopted.
He can’t remember anything else before that.
‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents.
What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill.
When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.
(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.)
The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.
It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one.
The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself.
His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.
(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.)
(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.)
They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.
(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)
Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe.
He turned back around and went inside.
—-------
Where do we go
When the river's running slow
Where do we run
When the cats kill one by one
—------
One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.
He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal.
It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking.
He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter.
Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind.
(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)
After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous.
He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.
—------
Hazel beneath our claws
While we wait for cerulean to cry
Unsettled ticks run through time
Enough for the hunt to go awry
—-----
There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own.
He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t.
Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward.
(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”)
(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)
He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell.
A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his.
He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it.
His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.
Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.
—-------
Harpy hare
Where have you buried all your children?
Tell me so I say
—-------
When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now.
Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.
He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.
Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own.
(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)
(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)
(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)
—--------------
It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders
And they will never
Hear me here listen to croons and a calling
I'll tell them all the
Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow
Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare
—-------
More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother.
Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten.
His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands.
They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely.
It is a fast dream.
His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.
His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods.
The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him.
The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal.
His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train.
(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.)
—---
She can't keep them all safe
They will die and be afraid
Mother, tell me so I say
(Mother, tell me so I say)
—-------
When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again.
The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person.
(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.)
(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)
Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird.
(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)
—------
Seeker, do you ever come to wonder
If what you're looking for is within where you hold
Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path
You'll soon forget
Home
—---------
When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is.
When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.
‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off.
He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.
He ends up calling himself Phantom.
(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.)
----------
Home is where we are
Home is where you are
Home is where I am
-----------------
Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.
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