Chapter Text
He’s grateful not to know anything, just for that moment, the second chance to discover how beautiful the Zora are.
Link watches the graceful movement of an arm raised in welcome, drops scattering from the fingertips like tiny diamonds, with an almost dumbfounded awe. It’s the first joyful thing he’s seen since he’d woke on the table, in that barren, empty room. It’s the first thing he’s seen in the river that hasn’t spit a boulder back.
In slow motion, Link sees the Zora's bright smile fade into horror, wide eyes full of fright looking over his shoulder but he’s already moving, dodging to the side even before she can shout to warn him of the hissing lizard with the spear aimed for his spine.
His body knows. His body remembers, from that very first encounter, the dodge and the strike and the splintering branch in his hand, where a sword should have been. The movements all ache, and sleep is often difficult to find, no position where something doesn’t protest. He’s not as fast or as strong as he ought to be, the way he should be, but his body still moves on instincts deeper than memory.
Diving behind a half-broken wall at the last possible moment, as he listens to the fearsome, muted hiss of claws in the grass, nowhere near as loud or as slow as anything so massive ought to be - his heart’s thudding, the rusted sword in his hand barely a joke, listening to that red eye swivel, searching out a target. Link closes his own eyes, jaw clenched, not even breathing. His body remembers. Pain and fire, blood and desperation and the knowledge that it would be his turn to fail, that he would be the last-
The Guardian moves on, and after a long moment, so does he. On to the hills and the Zora, the welcome he wasn’t expecting and everything after.
It’s raining, then and now and what seems like always. He has scrapes on his knuckles, bruises along one side from a sudden squall that started up in the middle of a climb, the rocks gone slippery, a now-fragile hold crumbling under his hand. It’s incessant, as he makes his way along the meandering river, through the hills toward the land of the Zora. The hood he’s wearing somehow neither keeps the rain off his face or the back of his neck, his wet clothes chafing and whenever he does stumble into a bit of shelter, even the tips of his ears are dripping.
It’s a misery, but it has its advantages. The wet ground muffles his footsteps, so the monsters don’t always know to look. The steady discomfort keeps him distracted, keeps him from thinking too much about everything he doesn’t remember. It keeps the wind from blowing silently across the grass and the stone under a too-beautiful sky. Along the shattered remains of buildings and gently waving banners like rows of tombstones, flying above the roads with their crumbling edges. Roads that are terribly wide, for the few people left to creep carefully along them.
His heart aches. His heart remembers - and even the worst of the rain never hides the castle at the center of it all, surrounded by its own tempest of nightmares. He turns to it without thinking, marking where he is by where it remains, and the first moment that Link saw it, he didn’t have to remember to know.
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A girl. A boy. A monster.
A swordsman, ten-thousand years ago, who must have held a princess’ hand and believed that they won, that they’d always claim victory. It had been a golden age.
It will never end. The castle says to him, a flicker of darkness in the distance, between the hills. It will never, ever end until I win.
Maybe not even then. Maybe this just goes on and on, no matter who wins or loses, no matter what battle everyone convinces themselves is the last. Maybe the only difference this time, is that he has something to remember he’s forgotten.
The sketches of rocks in straight lines, the outlines of villages are all that speaks to the horrors that must have been. No graves, with no one to dig them, not when a Guardian’s beam leaves behind only ash. Link fights a pack of Moblins in a ruin so damaged its purpose is now forever lost, distracted by the stolen weapons they all carry, the cairn of swords and shields behind them that could outfit a platoon or more of palace guards.
He needs his memories back, if there’s anything to be found in them that might make a difference, that will help them win. But Link doesn’t really want to know, not the names or the places or how they fell. The stories in Kakariko are enough, even with the details blurred. He doesn’t ask Impa for more.
It takes a while before he’s attacked in earnest by the Yiga, before they greet him as fellow travelers, or appear cackling in midair. Link keeps his distance from the start, though - cooking at the edges of the small waypoints, buying and selling with his hood up and his face down. It feels lonelier being near people than it does by himself, knowing that whatever he does remember is still a world they’ll never know. He wonders what kind of a person he was. A knight. The sworn shield of a holy princess. Which answers most of the important questions, really.
It wasn’t enough. The darkness whispers, in tiny, crystaline flickers that rise up and vanish. Embers in a black fire beneath a moon flayed raw. Whatever you were, it wasn’t enough.
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Link thinks the person he was before would have liked Sidon more than he can. Knowing now that bravery and hope - courage, wisdom - won't always win the day. He still smiles back, because that grin is impossible to ignore, all good cheer and brash certainty, far more a thing out of time than Link himself.
“I believe in you!”
Why?
The domain of the Zora is beautiful, tucked safe among the mountains, all waterfalls and soaring arches that glow gently in the dark. It’s clear they’ve endured their trials, but it’s nothing compared to the damage of the plains. The Hylians had been the ones to feel the full brunt of Ganon’s opening assault. Maybe that had been the goal all along, and someday they’d just be out of Hylians, and princesses, and knights. Ganon’s blight like a tide, slow and inevitable, erasing the shore.
The Zora are an emotional people. Sidon is free with his praise, but nothing any of them feel is small. Many of the others don’t like him, don’t forgive him, and given all Link’s seen, the wreckage of the past strewn across the land, it seems only fair. He isn’t doing this for praise, or understanding, or even absolution. It has to be done, and that’s all.
“I thought our armor would look good on you.” Sidon says, surprising Link as he stocks up on arrows - shockingly quiet, for as tall as he is, broad enough to cover Link in shadow. The shopkeeper seems familiar with the prince’s presence, children paying little heed as they dash in and then out of the shop in the last rays of the sun. Link has the sudden sense that it isn’t always like this, that he might remember more solemn processions through villages, all heads bowed in the presence of a girl with hair so bright, the crown was little more than an afterthought.
“Have you tried it out yet?” He’s jolted back into the present by Sidon tipping his head toward the walkway, the open air and the deep lake beneath.
Link isn’t sure, exactly, where it starts, but he thinks it might be here. Diving from that breathless height. Sliding through the water with ease, the reflections of stars and luminescent pillars rippling all around them, and then Sidon jumps up the waterfall and Link follows.
It is all in service of another fight, a chance to put things right that will not bring back any of what’s been lost - but for a moment the world is nothing but rushing water and spray and then Link crests the top of the falls, leaps like a fish and he’s laughing in pure delight, looks down to see Sidon keeping pace with the rushing water, nodding his approval and when he thinks of the Prince later this is what he remembers. What it was like to leap so high, to steady his aim against Sidon’s back as they dove and dodged and skimmed the surface of the water like a skipping stone, as the Divine Beast rumbled and bellowed in their wake.
Link is just a piece in an endless game, his purpose known and his destiny ordained both forward and back, eternally - but when he thinks about the Prince of the Zora, he feels free.
————--
Food first, Link. Food first, and then make the elixirs. Ugh.
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Link sits in the shelter of the shrine’s archway, as far back as he can go, watching the thunderstorm roll through, the lightning almost petulant as it strikes, and unerringly vicious. The horse he’d rescued an hour or so ago from its monstrous rider whickers, shifting nervously from foot to foot, but calms when he pats it. He’ll leave it at the stables, although there are very few places Link feels safe enough to ride for any distance, even the life of a horse more than he wants on his conscience.
He tries to fire off warning shots for the wolves when he can, and has yet to shoot at any of the cranes he’s startled into the sky. They’re beautiful, and Link does not want to take one more beautiful thing out of this world.
He fights. He climbs and runs, sneaking past the sleeping Hinox and the Lynel that seemingly never does, clinging to walls and cliffs until he loses all the feeling in his fingers. In a labyrinth so cold it aches to breathe, he missteps on a landing and trips back into a pool of malice. The barest touch, but even through his boot Link feels his leg go numb to the knee, and then the sharp bite of pain. His hair stands on end, a sick weight in his gut and a deep and powerful laughter, echoing from the dark. The memory, again, of his own blood running down his hands, the certain knowledge of the end.
It has killed him before. It can wait.
He means to buy fresh boots from the next merchant he comes across - but the Yiga find him first, and the assassin is young and foolish and just about his size.
Link sits on the top of a tower, overlooking dry desolation all the way to the sea, and listens to a Rito musician serenade the stars. He still knows so little, and it already feels like more than he can bear.