Chapter Text
The Hero of Time never felt quite right in his body. He would easily get frustrated at adults who would treat him like a child, incapable of anything. He hated it when people would dismiss what he was saying because of his small size. At each instance, he would protest that he wasn’t a child, that he was more capable than them, and that he didn’t need to be coddled and protected, but few ever listened.
Zelda had the opposite problem. She, knowing what he had ultimately achieved rather than who he was, held him up on a pedestal, believing him to be incapable of failure. She was not experienced in the world, forced to learn how to survive by the rule of a tyrant. Rather, she was a sheltered princess, knowing little more than what had been taught to her. She could not empathize with him, could not understand what he had been through like she once could.
And so, he had set off to search for the only one who could understand him. Navi had been with him for every step of his journey, and Navi alone knew what he had been through. But his search for his friend would turn up empty-handed, leaving him right where he had started.
His journey had taken him to a forsaken land, filled with sorrow. He was once again thrust into an adventure when that mask, responsible for the sorrows in the land, had given him his share. Over the course of his adventure, he would do what he could to ease the sorrows of those he encountered. He would often receive a mask for his troubles, and by the end, he had amassed a sizable collection. His curse had been turned into a mask as well, thanks to the strange man who had tasked him with retrieving the source, and he had been given three more masks like it. Each use of the mask would only serve to heighten his dysphoria with his body, and yet, he felt wrong when wearing each of the masks as well.
He would return to Hyrule, dissatisfied with his journey, feeling wrong, like he wasn’t who he was supposed to be. He spent an increasing amount of time wearing a different form, as those felt less wrong, but still not right.
He had initially assumed that he felt this way due to his time traveling. However, this feeling would persist throughout the years, even when he became a full grown adult. Even when he was no longer looked down upon by adults, when Zelda had grown wiser, learned who he was as opposed to what he did, and no longer regarded him as infallible, he would still have a lingering feeling of wrong, like his body wasn’t his, and he had taken it from its rightful owner.