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He doesn't really remember much about the journey from the Divine Beast. The sand. The wind whipping around him, tangling his hair. There’s heat, but it’s not the sun, it’s his skin, warm to the touch, something burning–
He rubs sand out of his eyes. There’s a shimmering red ripple on the horizon, like a dash of blood on golden sand, wavering like a fluttering bird. He loses sight of it in the glare of the sun and the swimming of his own thoughts, preoccupied with the monumental task of putting one foot in front of the other.
Link swallows a dry breath and stumbles in the sand. He braces himself with a hand, but the movement pulls uncomfortably at his shoulder, a sensation sharp enough that his knees give out beneath him. His consciousness blurs out, and when he comes to again, he’s sprawled out in the sand. The crimson ripple is much closer, close enough that Link can make out the shape of a figure rushing towards him, but he can’t summon the strength to get back up. Any danger he may be in slips out of his mind, lost in the weariness that’s closing in on him.
He comes to without realizing he’d slipped into unconsciousness, jolting weakly into awareness and attempting to fight off the hands that grip his shoulders.
“Link! Link, thank the Goddesses, it’s me, it’s Sheik! Hold still, here–”
Something presses against his lip, and Link parts his mouth. A gentle trickle of water wets his cracked lips, but despite the relief it brings, he sputters and chokes. “Sheik,” he croaks out. His throat aches, raw from the dry air and from coughing. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Wastelands,” Sheik says, his voice dropping to a whisper and he shifts Link’s weight, helping him sit up. “You tamed the Divine Beast, and I’ve been watching the deserts for three days, waiting for you to come back. I can’t believe I found you–”
Link groans when he sits up fully, Sheik’s hands a warm comfort against the fever-feeling of his own skin.
“I was afraid–” Sheik murmurs, and Link just barely hears it; in all likelihood, Sheik hadn’t meant for him to hear it, but he did, and it lances a thorn of guilt through him.
“Sorry,” he says. From the corner of his eye he catches the movement of Sheik shaking his head. Link turns his head a little, enough that he can peer at Sheik. The veil is gone, his golden hair unraveling from its braid. His clothes are dusty and dull, but whole, unlike Link’s–
“Your– Link.”
Sheik presses his fingertips to Link’s chest, where the shredded tatters of his shirt gape with holes, and he looks down at the pain that leaps up from the touch like fire licking through a dry forest. There are pink, shiny scars running down his chest like lightning bolts, like lightning–
He remembers. His shield slipping, sword flying from his hand, the sensation of the air being sucked from his lungs. The smell of his own flesh burning. Vomiting immediately after the blight was defeated.
He whimpers, and Sheik removes his hand quickly, but he can’t quite tamp down the open look of horror that paints over his features. “Link,” he says, “what happened?”
“The blight has been defeated,” he answers quietly. He leans forward and steels himself to stand up once again, but his head swims still. Sheik catches him about the shoulders.
“I’ll help you,” he says, “we’ll make for those rocks, and rest for the night. We aren’t too far from the town, but it’s too dangerous out here during the night.”
With Sheik’s help, standing comes a little easier, but Link still slumps near boneless against Sheik’s side. He grunts the first time Link stumbles, but eases a hand around his waist and hoists him up again, moving them both slowly, but steadily forward. The sun is setting, and Link understands Sheik’s urgency to get them to a somewhat safe spot for the night; he’d gotten lucky, incredibly so, that in all his blind wandering, the only trial he’d had to face was the heat and his own exhaustion. His pack is lost in the Divine Beast, his weapons gone, but his desperation to leave the Beast had been so great that he left without even a thought spared for his own safety.
But now his foolishness weighs upon him, and with it comes a mix of regret for his own stupidity, and an hysterical relief that he’s still alive. He’s weary right down to his bones, and he wants nothing more than to lie down and rest, to allow the sun to sink right over him, but he can’t. That little spark of life still in him is stubborn, and Sheik–
He can’t leave. He can’t leave Sheik. He can’t leave Sheik, or Hyrule, or the princess, so this pain, he must overcome it. He must hurdle over it like the heroes of old, and embrace his destiny like they had so nobly embraced their own.
“Not too much further,” Sheik murmurs in his ear, and oh, his voice is like a balm on Link’s aches. It is soft, a sigh like the wind, a cool breeze on his flushed skin, support where Link has none left. He lolls his head to the side, and from this close, he can’t see much. Bits and pieces, really; the gold embroidery over the top of Sheik’s shirt, strands of his pale hair, the soft curve of his mouth. The sun’s heavy light turns his tan skin to burnished copper, his eyes to magnificent ruby, and oh–
Oh, he thinks. Oh.
For the first time since they journeyed to the desert, Link feels something like peace settle over him.