Archive of Our Own ^beta

Teba glances up at the sound of a light knock to find Harth hovering just outside his roost, looking worriedly at the kid dozing in Teba’s wings.

“How is he?” Harth asks, aiming for casual. But Teba knows him far too well for that.

“Sleeping now,” Teba mutters, reaching to swipe at the dried tear tracks staining Link’s face. “Must have been one hell of a beast he had to fight up there,” he adds and pointedly doesn’t look at the bandages. “Kid was a wreck when he got back.”

“Yeah,” Harth mutters awkwardly and Teba scowls.

“Out with it,” he growls. When Harth gives him a look of surprise, Teba clicks his beak impatiently. “You’ve obviously got something to say. It’s as plain as the beak on your face. What’s wrong?”

Harth sighs and unfurls his wings. It takes Teba a moment to realise what Harth is showing him.

“Isn’t that…” he begins, eyes drifting down to Link’s left hip which is unexpectedly empty. He scowls at the bandages and tries not to tense up so much that Link wakes up.

“Kaneli says it’s a Sheikah slate. I thought they were all lost in the Calamity but…” Harth shrugs. “It’s a pretty neat piece of technology, honestly. Carries loads of weapons and some cool runes and…”

“Harth,” Teba interrupts, summoning patience from deep within. He’s rarely seen Harth so...unsettled. “What’s going on?”

Harth runs a wing over his face, looking thoroughly exhausted. Teba waits.

“Link dropped it when he was coming to see you,” Harth says at last. “Didn’t even let Kaneli finish his sentence. He just heard your name and took off.”

Teba things back to being completely bowled over a few hours ago when a little blond cannonball barrelled into his chest, choking on sobs and clinging tight. The wave of relief he’d felt upon seeing Link alive several days after Medoh’s taming had been short-lived once he’d seen the state of him. And, y’know, all but destroyed when he’d discovered that gaping wound in his side. 

Despite his best efforts, Teba finds his eyes drawn back to those bandages as he remembers what’s underneath. He remembers that heartbreaking sound Link had made when the healer had tried to pry him away and is reminded unpleasantly of Tulin. 

(In the years to come, Teba will eventually trace his paternal instincts towards Link back to that exact sound.)

“It’s got this function,” Harth continues, startling Teba back to the present. “It shows where it’s been with this green line.”

Harth turns the screen of the slate towards him and Teba’s heart jumps violently in his chest because, by the looks of things, Link’s been all over fucking Hebra. 

“What the fuck was he thinking? Why didn’t he just come back here?” Teba scowls.

Harth looks torn. “We think - we think he was looking for you.”

Teba’s brain misfires. “What?”

Harth sits down heavily, looking just as tired as Teba feels. “When you got hit, did he know how bad it was? You didn’t go down?”

“No,” Teba mutters, trying to replay that moment in his head but all he recalls is cold and pain and quite a bit of anger. It was the moment he realised he wouldn’t be able to see this through and he was pretty damn pissed about it. He vaguely remembers muttering something bitter about… “Oh fuck.”

Harth makes a curious noise but Teba barely hears him.

I just hope I can make it back.

“Stupid,” he mutters furiously, guilt and fury welling up inside him. “Stupid, stupid. I did this to him.”

“You didn’t hurt him,” Harth says firmly but Teba is already on a roll.

“He’s been out there for days looking for me with a fucking hole in his side because I made some stupid comment about not being able to get back to the Flight Range,” Teba fumes. He feels sick. “I didn’t...I wasn’t even talking to him. I was angry, I- Hylia, what if he’d died?”

Teba can’t help but picture Link shiving at the peak of Mount Hebra, squinting through the blizzards with his arms curled around himself to keep the cold out and the blood in.  He pictures him collapsing in a snowdrift, cold and exhausted, and never finding the energy to get back up. He pictures him clinging to that treacherous piece of wood and fabric with his cheeks red and his eyes stinging, slowly losing his grip as his fingers lose feeling and plummeting down and down and down and…

“Teba!” Harth clicks his beak loudly and Teba jumps, jostling Link sharply. Thankfully, the kid sleeps on. “He’s alive. He saved the village and he made it back. There’s no use thinking about what might have been.”

By all accounts, this is a perfectly reasonable argument but Teba is on a self-hating roll and really wants Harth to stop trying to make him feel better. Though, he supposes, if he gets upset then Link is probably going to wake up and Teba really doesn’t want the kid to think he’s upset with him. That’s probably the last thing he needs. So, despite being quite content to stew in his own shortcomings, he takes a deep breath and does his best to steer his thoughts away from Link freezing to death on a mountainside. 

Calming down seems to be out of the question though because Harth won’t stop looking at him like that. 

“There’s something else you’re not telling me,” he accuses, sounding much calmer than he feels.

This time, Harth doesn’t bother trying to stumble his way through an explanation and just holds out the slate with that same grim look on his face. It doesn’t take long for Teba to see why he looks that way.

There’s a note showing on the screen. The handwriting is haphazard and spidery, almost illegible in places and regimentally neat in others. But it’s the words themselves that are utterly crushing.

I’m sorry

Teba

I didn’t mean to let

Teba was injured during our attack on Medoh. He fought well valiantly and was incredibly brave. I’ve spent the past two days looking looked for him but I’m afraid sorry to say he’s gone it doesn’t look good. I’m so sorry to let you down. I willingly accept any sentence you see fit. I have no right to make requests but I ask that you permit me to seal Ganon away and free the princess. I can only apologise for dying failing to do my duty 100 years ago but please do not let allow my mistakes to cause the princess and Hyrule any further suffering. I swear to return as soon as my duty is fulfilled to face the consequences. I’m so sorry.

Hylia above.

Teba feels sick with guilt just reading that; he can’t imagine what it must have felt like to write it. It hits him yet again that Link is barely grown, still a child by all reasonable standards. How old is he, really? Sleeping and wounded, he looks barely older than fifteen though Teba thinks he remembers the knight being the same age as the princess. Seventeen, then. The Goddess might consider that the threshold for wisdom but Teba can’t look at Link and see anything beyond a fledgling. What does it say about Hyrule, really, that they left the fate of the world to a handful of children. Teba doesn’t know much about the other champions, but Master Revali was rumoured to still have his fledgling marks the day he was chosen. 

Is it any wonder the Calamity came to pass when they left the fate of the world in the hands of babes?

But, somehow, against all odds, it gets immeasurably worse. Because there are other notes. While the first is obviously Link’s attempt to break the news to the elder, the others are clearly meant for Saki and Harth. And, worst of all, Tulin. 

Your dad loves you so much.

That’s all Teba manages to read before he starts to feel ill. Horribly, he finds part of him is angry with Link for essentially planning to upset Tulin but he tries to shake that off. He tries to put himself in Link’s shoes and wonders what he would have done if he had to break the news of a comrade’s death to their son. Teba shudders. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Link makes a soft sound against Teba’s chest, shifting sporadically in a way that suggests he’s on his way to waking up. 

“Leave the slate,” Teba says quietly. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

Harth looks apprehensive. “Go easy on him.”

“I’m hardly going to chew him out,” Teba retorts, aiming for insulted but it just comes out sounding tired. 

“Go easy on yourself as well,” Harth adds. “He’s only going to feel worse if you start tearing into yourself. He obviously cares about you a lot.”

Enough to search Hebra for three days, neither of them say.

Teba sighs. “I’ll keep the self-flagellation to a minimum,” he says dryly. Harth almost smiles. 

Link’s eyes blink open moments after Harth leaves.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, kiddo,” Teba says lightly, immediately regretting his choice of words. Link, for his part, doesn’t seem bothered. Perhaps he’s not yet awake enough to care. “How’s the pain?”

For a moment, Link looks confused before a shadow crosses his face and he grimaces. “Better,” he says anyway but Teba doesn’t really believe him. “Did I fall asleep on you?” Link asks as a flush creeps up his neck. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Your fierce warrior reputation will remain intact.”

Link’s lips twitch. “Sorry.” His hand moves to sign this word as he speaks as though it’s muscle memory. “You could have woken me.”

Teba doesn’t think now is a good time to tell Link that he’d rather have plucked all his feathers out than move him when he looked so peaceful. Maybe they should spend a bit more time together outside the realm of mortal peril before he goes full overbearing dad on him. So instead he shrugs. 

“I didn’t exactly have a full itinerary.”

“Revali would have liked you,” Link sighs, burrowing back into Teba’s feathers. “He liked people who could match him for snark.”

And as if that little statement doesn’t leave Teba’s mind reeling. He’s unsure if he’s supposed to take it as a compliment but how else is he expected to respond to being told his childhood hero would have liked him?

“From what I hear you two didn’t get on,” Teba says curiously.

“Oh no, we got on just fine,” Link says, eyes twinkling mischievously as he looks up at Teba. “He tried to kill me when we first met and never really stopped. We had a bit of a competition going on murder attempts for a while. I like to think we were almost friends before...:”

Link’s expression shutters. 

“I saw him on Medoh,” he says tonelessly and Teba doesn’t breathe. “His spirit, anyway. Just as much of a pompous peacock as I remember. I think I remember.”

Right now, Link couldn’t look further from the boy who had given Teba a cheeky wink as he stepped off the ledge in the Flight Range into the updrafts and shot down five targets before even bothering to open his glider. That moment, Teba thinks, is the closest Link has come to acting his age since they met and it had been a bit of a shock after the serious warrior who had claimed to be a champion of old capable of boarding Medoh mere moments before.

“You’ll remember when you’re ready,” Teba says, keeping his tone deliberately casual. “Give it time.”

Link laughs but the sound is hollow. It makes Teba shudder. “I’ve given it 100 years. I think that’s enough,” he mutters bitterly.

Subconsciously, Link’s hand drifts to his injured side. Teba wonders if he’s reaching for his wound or the memory of one underneath. 

“You hungry?” Teba asks.

Link seems to consider for a moment. “Peckish.”

Teba glares down at him but his heart isn’t in it - not when Link is trying so hard to be alright.

“What, are you the court jester now?” He mutters, delighting in the sound of Link’s soft laugh. “I’m no master chef but I make a mean fish pie. You in?”

Link nods tiredly.

(He’ll be okay; with time, he’ll be okay.)