Chapter Text
He woke up to quiet laughter.
“Trying to earn the very esteemed title of sleepyhead, Sailor?”
We didn’t see each other for over two years and the first thing you do is flip me over your shoulder, give me a break - he tried to say, but only thoughts echoed inside his aching head.
“I’m afraid that one’s already taken though.”
A low grumble from the side. “Only Zelda is allowed to call me that, Captain.”
More laughing. “Forgive me, oh Hero chosen by Hylia herself, I forgot you’re not a morning person.”
“Have you considered that six in the morning isn’t morning at all if it’s still dark outside.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Seasonal change in the angle of sunlight, caused by the tilt of the world’s axis, is no excuse to stay in bed.”
“Birdbrain might be onto something though”, yet another voice mingled with the others, “Not everyone can be a ray of sunshine in the morning like you, Cap. Let the kid sleep if he needs to.”
“Not you too, Vet”, Warriors chuckled with fake disappointment, “No discipline ‘round here I see. Back in my day -”
“You liked sleeping in too”, someone a bit farther apart said, the voice deep yet smooth, the smile in it audible, “Called it a rare luxury in a busy life of heroing.”
“Well, it was a rare luxury when I got no sleep at all due to having to wrangle the command over a battalion of soldiers, neverending loads of paperwork and a bunch of troublemakers misplaced in time and space simultaneously.”
“Troublemakers, you say.”
“Yes, old man”, he sighed in a melodramatic way, “troublemakers.”
Link tried so hard to open his eyes and finally see them again. But no matter how much he strained himself, his body didn’t comply.
“Alright then”, Warriors said, “You won. I’ll let him sleep a little while longer.”
He felt a hand brush over his hair.
“I’ll be outside. Call me if you need me.”
Boots crunched and took their owner away from him with quiet footsteps.
“Cap, wait”, Link managed to utter, “I - I need you , I-”
He woke up to quiet giggling.
“I wonder if he has anything good on him.”
He didn’t recognize the voice speaking. Those he knew - those he missed and really wanted to hear again - slowly dissipated in his memory. Faded with the dream of a time long gone.
Something slightly prodded his side.
“Huh? This guy… ah, well, it shouldn’t matter.”
Slowly, Link’s awareness finally returned to him. Something warm was trickling out of his nose and he distantly thought to himself that it probably wasn’t snot. The scents of musty earth and iron mingled with each other in a nauseating way. He was lying in the dirt - quite literally eating it in the position he was in - with his face in the mud and his arms bent back by a rope around his wrists.
No warm bed and no safety in the company of beloved brothers in sight.
He felt dizzy.
Another careful nudge brushed his hip.
“What’s that? A fancy stick?”
“Ohh, what a pretty stick! Lemme see!”
“No! What if you drop it and it breaks?”
He sniffed and shuffled his face slowly sideways to look at whoever was talking.
Instantly, he felt a wave of immense dread wash over him. An abyss he didn’t know was even there was staring at him, a bright-white void closing around him, scrutinizing him - and in the blink of an eye, it was over again. Wood clicked when a mask quickly slipped onto the face of the child crouching before him.
Keaton, the wind whispered into his ear. The first articulated word these winds have said to him. Though he felt like it wasn’t really directed at him, more like a - a remark. An observation. A buzz between grass blades.
Looking at the wooden face of a fox reminded him of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. More important than that anyways was his Wind Waker in the kid’s hand.
“Oy”, he wheezed out, “That’s mine.”
The child flinched away from him, as did the two fairies who had been hovering nearby - one of them blindingly light, the other dark like the dead of night.
“Oh”, the kid said and looked down at the Wind Waker. “We just wanted to look at it because it’s so pretty, we didn’t want to steal it. Cross my heart.”
“And hope to die”, the light fairy added while the dark one just frantically bobbed up and down.
“Sure lad”, Link mumbled. “Pirate’s honor and all, aye?”
The kid seemed to squint behind his mask. “We’re not pirates. Pirates are nasty. They steal.”
“You tell me.”
That’s when he noticed another kid behind the one with the fox mask. They wore a mask too, something that looked like the skull of a horned monster, and they were staring at him with amber eyes glowing in the darkness of empty eye sockets and shadowy trees.
As soon as they caught him peering back at them, they started hissing. The dark fairy made an alarmed jingling sound and flitted under the wide brim of the skull mask’s hat.
“You’re such a wuss, Tael”, the light fairy snickered.
“Don’t be mean, sis!”, the dark fairy, Tael, retorted. “That was scary!”
‘Sis’ chimed mockingly like her brother; “That was scaaary ” and shoved him off his safe little perch.
“Tatl”, fox mask sighed.
The light fairy - Tatl - just groaned. “He’ll never learn if he doesn’t pull himself together and tries to be a little more courageous!”
“Courage isn’t the most important thing in the world.”
Link only listened to their argument on the side. Warm liquid - blood, he knew by now - was running down his lips and chin, dripping into the mud below. Probably a side effect of blowing his head one too many times. Or catching himself on a stone wall with his nose. Or getting flung like some rotten old barrel from a catapult.
But more than the pain in his skull he noticed his heart was aching again, for some reason. He thought he’d gotten over that by now.
He tried to shift his body so he could subtly reach his boots with his tied hands. His ribs creaked and he grunted quietly. Despite claiming that they didn’t steal the Wind Waker, fox mask didn’t seem very eager to give it back. Instead, he made little dirt drawings with it.
“Did the witch send you?”
Link paused his efforts and looked up at fox mask. He narrowed his eyes at the fairy’s bright shine fluttering next to him. “I don’t know any witches.”
“I told you!”, Tael chimed in, “He doesn’t look like one of Cia’s goons!”
“Just because he doesn’t look like an average bad guy doesn’t mean he isn’t one”, fox mask mumbled.
Skull mask hissed again.
“He’s right”, Link told Tael, and tried hard to put up a neutral face. Wasn’t easy when you had naturally expressive features. “I could be a bad guy, despite my heroic face.”
Skull mask abruptly stopped hissing. Fox mask and the fairies stared at him.
“I wouldn’t call it heroic”, Tatl eventually said. “Where’d you get that scar?”
Link carefully wiped the blood from his nose and touched said scar on his cheek with his newly unbound hand. “A guy twice as big as me tried to cleave me in two. My face was all he got.”
Everyone nodded.
And then started screeching.
“HEY!”
“WHAT THE-”
“Why are you free?!”
Link tossed the cut ropes on the ground with one hand and lazily twirled a dagger with the other. “You didn’t check me for knives.” Evidently, their experience in dealing with the scourge of the seas couldn’t be that great when they didn’t even check his boots for some spare weapons. Rookie mistake when dealing with pirates.
Not that he didn’t have more hidden in other places.
He casually spun his dagger around to point at the kid with its tip. “Now, will you give me back what’s mine.”
Fox mask stiffened up and shoved the Wind Waker behind his back, swiveling around like he was trying to find a way to escape. A distance apart, Skull Mask started to move, getting on all fours and arching their back like a cat ready to pounce.
What the fuck.
“Why did you attack the Captain?”, the brat in front of him dared to ask while taking a step back.
For a brief moment, Link couldn’t hold his quietly bubbling anger back any longer and it painfully boiled over. “I didn’t attack anyone, he’s my friend!”
He flinched and wrapped an arm around his sore torso.
The kid took another step back. “That didn’t look like friendship.”
It took a lot out of him to hold back a swear even less suited for a child’s ears. The kid was on the verge of scramming while the eerie amber glow of his friend’s eyes seemed to intensify. Link was in no shape to run after anyone or deal with a feral imp.
“Listen laddie”, he said while trying to keep the low snarl out of his voice, “You used the Wind Waker like a fucking crayon, so you clearly don’t know how to handle a sacred instrument.” He held out his hand in clear expectation. “Are you a thief or not?”
The kid drew up his shoulders again. “I’m not!”, he squeaked. “But who says that you aren’t a thief? You said you’re a pirate!”
“Give. it. back. now.”
For a brief moment, the tension was palpable. The kid brought out the Wind Waker from behind his back, suddenly holding it with much more care. As if the mention of it being a sacred instrument had actually fazed him.
Finally, the kid relented and handed the baton over, much to the chagrin of his companions, one of whom loudly complained about their ‘righteously earned spoils’ being taken away and the other mewled out a stream of incomprehensible words that distinctly felt like cussing.
Link didn’t care. He huffed and put the baton back into its pouch, where it belonged.
“Good. Now that that’s handled - you don’t know a damn thing about me n’ Wars’ relationship, aye? So don’t assume we aren’t close. I don’t know what his fucking problem is but I’m sure we can talk it over -”
“Who’s Wars?”
“The Captain! Shit, lad, don’t try to fool me. He’s -“
Then it hit him.
The ruins should’ve been way older. The wind spoke to him like he was a stranger.
Warriors looked at him like he’d never seen him before.
Like they were never brothers who had shared a journey with each other that would shape the rest of their lives.
Like they were never brothers at all.
He stopped and the dagger fell out of his hand. It dropped into the mud with a wet splat.
“Fuck.”
He brought a hand to his forehead.
“Fuck. Fucking - fuck.”
“You sure say that a lot”, Fox mask muttered.
“We should wash out his dirty mouth with soap!”, Tatl chimed.
“I don’t think you’re in the position to suggest that, Tatl.”
The fairy sniffed. “Ah, fuck that.”
Meanwhile, Link had cowered down, head in his hands, as he somehow tried to come to terms with his situation.
Of course he’d been time traveling again.
Of course it wasn’t straight forward.
Of course -
All those weird little glances -
All those strange remarks that slipped out but weren’t supposed to mean anything -
All those times he’d felt like the butt of an inside joke -
It made sense.
It made so much fucking sense and it made him so fucking angry.
“He never told me”, he sobbed, “‘See you later’, he said. Fucking - ASSHOLE.”
So that weird dream he had - he’d almost forgotten it by now - it really had been just that. A stupid dream. Maybe it had happened at some point in the past. Maybe not. Sometimes his memory wasn’t all that clear. That was normal after two years, right? He’d spent months, perhaps even a year or more with them - who could say exactly, with all the time traveling they’d done - but his memory was much like an hourglass. The more time went by, the more of it slipped away.
But he did remember Warrior’s last words to him.
And he remembered his stupid fucking sad smile.
Thick tears spilled over his cheeks like little rivulets turning into rapid currents. It happened too fast to be able to hold it back, swallow it down and think up something deflective to say. He punched the ground where his tears had wet the earth and it hurt every bone in his body, cracked or not.
“Hey, uh…”
Through teary eyes, Link looked up at the masked kid. He stood still like he was staring at him - at his hand. The one with the old, faded mark.
“Are you… another hero?”
Link sniffed and swiped an arm over his face, smearing tears and blood all over. “I guess”, he said.
After a short pause, it dawned on him. The green tunic, made out of worn cloth and leaves. The floppy hat. The sword on his back. “... You too?”
The kid nodded.
Ah, damn. Despite his mind being an utter mess currently, he couldn’t help but feel some weird sort of protective instinct, almost like it was his little sister talking to him right now. But that was stupid because this was just some random kid, hero or not, and not Aryll - Aryll was safe at home with Gran. At least that was something he could be sure of, no matter where he went.
Was this how the others had felt everytime they got reminded that he’d been thirteen back when they all met?
Fuck. He didn’t want to think about them right now.
“How old are you?”, he asked.
The kid didn’t answer at first. Instead, he looked down at his fingers and started to silently count. It took a while. He seemed to start over multiple times.
Eventually he held both his hands up and then closed the right one to a fist and held up the left with three fingers raised. The yellow fairy nudged the middle finger, and he curled that one in too.
“Twelve”, he said.
Link couldn’t suppress a snort. “Did ye have to check?”
“Shut up. S’not like you look much older than me.” The pout in fox mask’s voice did nothing to diminish his youthful charm.
Suddenly back in his element, Link sputtered in mock offence. “Did you listen to me and - and, uh, the fairy over there? My face, it’s - it’s very heroic, okay? Have you seen my jawline?”
The kid shrugged. “Not really.”
Curse the stubborn baby fat that still clung to his cheeks. He scrunched his dark eyebrows together in an attempt to look less adorable. And less like he’d just cried. “I turn seventeen in a few months, you little brat.”
Another shrug. “Eh. Been there, done that.”
“What.”
“I mean, it’s not that impressive.”
“Says the sulky lad.”
“Shut up”, fox mask said again, “I think I don’t like you. I should’ve let Skull Kid eat your face after all.”
Skull mask - whose name was Skull Kid? What kinda name was that? And why did that ring a bell somewhere in a dark corner of Link’s addled brain? Skull Kid smacked their lips, still glaring with their eyes glowing menacingly. They moved their mask up a little to reveal a wide, grinning mouth full of twisted, pointy yellow teeth.
Link swallowed hard. That explained - something. He wasn’t sure what though.
“... But, now that we know Lana was right about another hero appearing, I guess we should bring you back to camp.” Fox mask didn’t seem too happy about that. “It was more fun to think you were just some stupid turncoat who tried to attack Captain head on”, he muttered.
“I still want to eat his face”, Skull Kid chittered - the first words Link could actually understand, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“The Princess will scold you if you do that. And me too, because I let you.”
Skull Kid hissed and scampered further into the shadows of the trees.
“Grown ups”, they spat. “No fun!”
“C’mon.” Fox mask nudged Link’s arm. “Let’s go. At least we did what Captain told us to do. We immolated the suspect.”
“Interrogated”, Tatl corrected.
“- We found out what his deal is. We did good! That means we get extra dessert tonight.”
Everyone except Link cheered.
Link was just confused at this point. And when he tried to stand up, his knees instantly buckled and his stomach lurched, threatening to remind him of what he last ate in picture and sound.
Groaning , he tried to get at least on all fours, when he felt something blessedly cool and hard getting pushed against his forehead. He looked up through bleary eyes and saw that Mask held a bottle in his face - filled with about half a portion of red potion.
He snatched it and drank it quickly. It tasted - weird. Watered down maybe. It didn’t heal everything like he wished it would, but it alleviated some of the pain and his ribs seemed to snap back into place. At least, he felt a sharp pain inside his chest, but immediately afterwards the pressure lessened.
“Thanks”, he mumbled and gave the bottle back. After a pause, he asked; “What’s your name?”
Fox mask fumbled with the bottle in his hands. “You know that already.”
Ah. Right. It’s been a while.
Link tried to overplay his blunder by rolling his eyes. “I mean, what should I call you, Link.”
“Mask.”
That checked out.
“What about you?”
“Wi-” Link stopped himself and hesitated. That was what they had called him.
They weren’t here anymore. And even if they were - they were strangers again. He didn’t want to hear that name and be reminded of it over and over again.
He scrutinized the kid for a second and felt stared at in return, from behind that weirdly familiar mask. He’d seen it before. Had he met that child?
But even if he did, the child had only just met him. Not like it mattered much. Or so he told himself.
It was starting to get hard to think, his brain felt fried even though the Lizalfos never got the chance to actually burn him to crisp.
It’s been a long day.
He was silent a tad too long until the fairies started to hum impatiently, their low murmur sounding like bells ringing in the distance.
"Tune", Link blurted out only a little bit too fast, "'Cause I - I like to play little tunes with this." He flicked out his baton and waved it around. "Casting small magicks and stuff."
Mask tilted his head slightly. “You said that’s an instrument, but really it’s just a stick. Where does the music come from?”
Link - Tune - snorted. “Never seen a conductor’s baton before?”
That seemed to strike a note. “Oh, so that’s what Flat and Sharp had! I thought they just wanted to stab my eyes out.” Mask waved that particular, slightly concerning statement aside. “Whatever, Tune works. You know, I thought you’d go for something flashier. Guess I misjudged you.”
Damnit, he missed his chance to name himself something cool like - like maybe Phantom, after his sword, or - or Slayer of Parasitic Squids, or King of Splash Kaboom.
Well. At least, at long last, no more fart jokes.