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Something’s wrong.
Revali realizes it the moment he arrives at Vah Medoh. The Divine Beast isn’t responding to him. Frustrated, he yanks at the levers on the control panel but still to no avail. That’s when he hears the sound.
It’s something like gurgling, like the lava boiling inside Death Mountain, but this sounds…unnatural.
A spark flies past his face. Is something on fire? He blinks, but sees no blaze, even as more sparks start to rise from the floor. He curses under his breath and tries to reset the Divine Beast. Turn it off and back on again, he remembers Zelda saying to him. Except he can’t even do that, if nothing’s fucking working.
“Link, you son of a Bokoblin, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
~
Dying is strange. Maybe it’s because it happened so quickly, in less than the time it took to blink.
Huh. Revali expected it to hurt more. All he knows is that one moment, he’s soaring high above the Windblight monstrosity that had taken up residence inside his Divine Beast, shooting it with bomb arrows, and the next he’s crashing to the ground and this his vision goes black.
When he comes to, he’s lying on the upper deck of Vah Medoh in front of the main terminal. Blinking slowly, he stands up, stretching out his wings.
He doesn’t feel any different, really. A little sore, sure, probably from landing on his wing the wrong way, but nothing else seems out of the ordinary. The deck is quiet, no trace of the Windblight, save for the persistent sickening gurgling sound. He’s got to find out what that is.
He struts inside the beast, and that’s when he sees it.
Ganon’s Malice coats nearly every surface; dripping off the walls, congealing in corners, and bubbling menacingly on the floor. He reels back to avoid stepping in it, turning away, only to come face-to-face with a gigantic yellow eye nearly he size of his head.
“Ugh,” he hisses to himself, making a face at the eye. It blinks at him once, then turns away, like it can’t even see him. Revali’s never felt so invisible.
~
There’s not a lot to do when you’re dead, a fact Revali finds out very quickly. All he can do is wander the innards of Vah Medoh, avoid the Malice, and watch Rito Village carry on far below him. The bulk of his entertainment is watching the new generations of Rito chicks train at the Flight Range. Oh, none of them come even close to the records he set, but it makes him feel good to know it’s least it’s still being used.
He invents little games and starts making bets with himself to keep from losing his mind up here. How many targets is this Rito going to hit? Will the next one beat her, and by how many? It’s asinine, really, because isn’t this what he wanted for so long? To be alone, not tied down to anybody, content in his solitude. Except…this isn’t how he wanted it. There’s no one to brag to, no arrows to practice his archery with, no one to tell him to pick himself up off his tail and do something.
But there’s only so much he can do to keep his mind off the one thing—person—he wants so desperately not to haunt him.
Link.
And before long, those thoughts start creeping into the back of Revali’s mind, infecting his daily thoughts the way the Malice blankets the surfaces of Vah Medoh.
It’s the big things, at first. One morning, he spots a bit of a commotion on Revali’s Landing—his landing, he thinks with a smug little smirk. Curious, he stalks to the very edge of the deck and peers down.
A pink-feathered Rito female perches on the landing, while a white-feathered male struts around her. He’s preening, spreading his wings and hopping around her. When she doesn’t respond, he jumps onto the railing, soaring into the air, and then diving down at an alarming speed, hurtling toward the water below like a falling star. And then at the last second, he tilts upward once again, shooting back up to the landing, wings spread.
The female warbles noncommittally, then takes off, flying away and leaving the male sitting dejectedly on the railing.
Is she not interested or does she just not realize he’s trying to attract her? Every Rito knows that such acrobatics are a sign of interest. The whole scene is painfully reminiscent the first time he’d met Link alone. How Link had shown absolutely no signs of being impressed at his aerial feats, hadn’t even risen to the challenges Revali was clearly trying to issue. Hadn’t even said a single word. In fact, the entire time he had the blankest look on his face. The nicer way to say it would probably be to call it a “stoic expression,” but really, sometimes the guy looked like he had nothing going on upstairs.
But damn, was he pretty. Pretty and frustrating to absolutely no end. Revali had decided in that moment that he’d get Link to appreciate him and his talents or die trying.
And he’d succeeded, in the end. Something changed between them, something that dissolved the bitterness of the rivalry and made it something more. Something deeper. Link still didn’t say a word to him, but now Revali knew that it wasn’t because Link was being standoffish. He learned to understand the silence, to read the subtleties in Link’s expressions.
Day by day, the triggers get smaller. It goes from a spectacle of a mating display, to a chick hitting the same number of targets that Link had in a practice run, to something as tiny as spotting someone cooking salmon meunière. Link used to make him that all the time.
The triggers get smaller, but the twinge in his chest every time he thinks of his Hylian only grows with every passing day.
~
A hundred years crawl by, and not a single one of them goes by without a thought of Link. It’s a weird form of reverse grief, really, considering he’s dead and missing someone who’s alive (presumably).
They do get a little easier, at least. Watching the village he used to call home rebuild and carry on makes him smile. His people are resilient ones, that’s for certain.
But he can’t help but wonder when Link is going to wake up.
~
All the wondering in the universe, though, can’t prepare Revali for what happens when Link actually does wake up. He’s noticed, in the last couple of weeks, that Vah Medoh has been more disruptive than usual, her force fields repelling one Rito who keeps trying to approach her. Revali doesn’t know his name, and he also can’t figure out if this guy is brave or just stupid.
Just like Link.
He sees this Rito at least once every two weeks, trying his hardest to penetrate the force fields and take out the laser cannons on the tips of her wings. But it’s all for naught: every time, the unknown warrior retreats to his nest to nurse his injuries and prepare for another vain attempt.
But then, an entire month goes by without a sighting. Revali wonders what happened to him.
~
The next time Revali sees him is also the first time Revali sees Link in 100 years.
He’s got to blink and rub his eyes a few times, just in case he’s got feathers in his face and can’t see clearly. But no, that’s the brave Rito, back again, and this time he’s got Link on his back. And this time, they’ve got a new strategy. Link glides around with his paraglider, shooting out the cannons with his bomb arrows while the brave Rito draws their fire. It’s a good plan, Revali has to grudgingly admit, and it works. Link is dropped off at the entrance to Vah Medoh, and Revali sends a quick prayer to whatever goddess hears him that Link doesn’t meet the same fate he did.
~
Link picks his way through the Divine Beast with an alarming ease, and defeats Windblight Ganon like it’s nothing to him, emerging from the battle just a little winded and with a handful of scrapes and bruises. Revali is mostly impressed, but a little irritated anyway.
With his spirit freed, he’s able to reveal himself to Link. Part of him doesn’t want to, knowing that coming face-to-face with him for the first time in a century might stir up inconvenient emotions, but the rest of him…the rest of him knows he won’t rest if he doesn’t.
So he shimmers into view next to the main control unit, folding his wings in front of him as he takes in the sight of Link, alive and in the flesh, just five feet in front of him. The Hylian’s cheeks are pink from the cold, breaths coming out in puffs of air in front of his mouth, but his eyes are as bright and determined as Revali remembers them. He’s got feathers braided into his flaxen hair in an imitation of Rito headdresses, no doubt the villagers’ doing.
He looks too good and Revali can’t cope.
For a long few moments, they just stare at each other, and then Revali remembers he’s got to do the talking here. Right. He reluctantly praises Link’s skill and gifts him with his Gale—it’s not like he’s be needing it once his spirit is freed from this world, anyway. And once he’s exhausted all he wants to say, still Link says nothing, his expression barely even changing.
Revali sighs. It’s like talking to a wall, really. Then again, talking to Link was always a bit like talking to a wall. The lack of response isn’t new. It’s the lack of a memory at all, the total erasure of their entire past. He can’t even try to guess what Link is thinking, because Link might not be thinking anything at all. Might not be thinking of him at all.
“Just go.” He turns away, fixing his gaze on a snowy peak in the distance. He’s afraid that if he looks at Link any longer he’ll do or say something really stupid.
The silence stretches on between them interminably. He hears a tentative step, then a quiet gasp. Revali can only guess Link is being transported back to Rito Village.
He supposes he feels a little bad that he didn’t say goodbye, but…well, this wouldn’t be the first time.