Work Text:
Memory is a hard thing to grasp. It is what makes the little bug wake up each day and scurry about in search for food. It is what makes the sparrow search each morning in the same place for a bug to eat. It is what makes a man wake up each morning and look out his window at the birds in the tree, and it is what makes that man know why his children love him.
Without it, we are purposeless. If a man is born, and told not how to live, what is he? Is he a little bug, whose only duty is to be gobbled up by the hungry sparrow? No, for even the little bug knows how to live. When a man is born into the world grown, but still a child, what is he? Is he a sparrow, who lives only for the hunt and for the next day, the next morsel to devour and the next predator to flee? No, for even the sparrow knows when to search and where to search, he knows because he remembers how well it went the day before. So if a man lives, but has no identity, what is he? He is not a little bug, nor a sparrow. He is a hunter like the sparrow, but not a hunter of morsels to eat. He is a forager like the bug, but not a forager of food to devour. He is a hunter of dreams and a gatherer of memories, the young creature trying to remember what it is, and slowly finding what it once was.
Memory is a hard thing to grasp. Because if a man loses who he is, in his search to find it again, he becomes a new man. Or so you might think. But just as courage need not be remembered, for it is never forgotten, nor do I need to remember what it is to be who I am.
I stand in a grassy field, mountains rising up around me in all directions. Rain pours down my back, cascading over the blade of my sword and over the crest in my shield, dripping from the ends of my garment, its leather straps and soft, red fabric becoming heavy with water. I pull back my hood, allowing the rain to pour onto my hair, and as I stand slowly I become completely covered, at peace with the torrent and unaware of the rain. As I open my eyes, I look around again, this time from a newer, quieter point of view. All around me lay husks of ancient enemies I fought long ago. Perhaps now I will know what happened to me. I was told to come here. I look down at the slate, the image still fresh from my taking a picture of the framed photograph. I look between my surroundings and the picture, back and forth, back and forth.
And then I see it.
A sudden rush of remembrance, of standing, cut, bruised broken, of staggering, the strange blue tunic my only defense against beam after beam of terrible white hot fire. I remember picking myself up again, of trying to do my duty, and of being saved. I know her from my previous revelations as the princess. As a woman who I defended, who hated me, who did her best to make me think her awful.
But something that I’ve realized is that that is not who she was. I look at my memories over and over in my mind. She is not the princess to me, to the me who cries out and tears at the wall of his prison somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind. I can hear him sometimes.
He calls her Zelda.
And so do I. I call her by name, and when the man in my mind sees this final memory, he shouts again, and I hear him as loudly as possible, speaking into my mind.
“I’m so sorry,” he says as he watches me- no, himself- fall to the ground over and over again. “I’m so sorry. I really did,” I hear him say, “I really did try my hardest but I failed. Bu please, you cursed cell, let me have myself again!”
A sharp ring reaches my mind’s ears just as he slams his fist into the wall of his chamber. I think, for a moment. I have tried before, to let him out. Tried so many ways. I’ve tried to relive moments he lived, to entice him to come out, but when he tries to escape is never when I am ready to let him free.
I grimace as I pull at the straps again, absentmindedly. I’m lying to myself, I know. I am no different than the man in the cell. He is me, and I him. We aren’t individual. We are the same.
Zelda. The name rings in my mind, bouncing around like a white hot ember. I try to remember, I try so hard. I grip the sword I know was his- no, mine- so long ago, I think of what I have remembered, I try. And eventually, I do.
The first thing I notice is the smell. It’s earthy, rich, warm, almost humid. It smells like the woodland after a rain in Midsummer, like a night where earthworms crawl above the ground and little beasts scurry to and fro to avoid the rain. Then comes the feelings, soft clothing and hands on bark, rough, thick bark like chunks of pumice stones, but a bit dirty and weak in the rain. I’m lying on the ground, and I feel the prickle of sticks and soil beneath my side. Finally, I open my eyes. I’m lying on the dirt, as I said, my head against a stone. My hand grips a chunk of wood, the base of a tree, holding onto the base tightly. I hear my own breathing, heavy, almost scared. I realize that I must be hiding, and soon enough I hear the gallop of horses coming. I know, somehow, that I am here to stop them, to kill their riders, to put an end to something evil. I know not what it is.
I feel for my blade, and find it lying next to me in the dirt, gleaming. Peeking over the top of the stone I am behind, I see a tall man on a black horse riding my way. I’m about a yard off the path, the large rock giving me cover. I roll over and take my sword in my hand as I go, tensing to spring. It is not wise to attack a running horse, but in a dream, what consequence can there be? I lean back so that I am resting with my knee in the dirt, sitting on the heel of my boot. The galloping nears. I leap.
My blade collides with the man, and his horse bucks and kicks. I catch a hoof in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me, but I was trained well. If I’m not dead or unconscious, I’m standing and crawling. I stagger to my feet and look down at the man bleeding in the road as the horse flees. Fallen in the road behind him is a body with a bag over its head, wrapped in a dark cloth to make it unidentifiable. The man himself is hooded and cloaked, but I can see the only thing I need to. There’s an upside down eye on a charm on his cloak.
Shunk.
It doesn’t pay to align yourself with the Clan. I walk over to the other body, unconscious or dead. I prod it with the tip of my sword, not hard enough to cut. It doesn’t react. I find the bands holding the cloths wrapping it up and cut them free, but they don’t unfold. They’re a messy tangle, and in the muddy road, I don’t want to drop a body that might be alive. I pick the mess of cloth up and carry it to my drier ground, where I lay it against a rock. I reach my hand under the neck of the bag, and pull it off of the head.
Pale skin, like someone who’s been drowned. Closed eyes, clearly unconscious. A dark blotch under one eye, like someone who’s been hit too hard. A dribble of blood, pouring down one end of the mouth, which hangs open slightly. Matted hair, a spot of blood on the back of the head mixing with the rain water disgustingly. She’s in terrible shape, but I know who she is.
And even as I check her frantically for vitals, and panic about how to heal her, I am slowly losing my grip on this reality. I’m slipping away. The body I’m in continues to work, but I lose control, my vision blurs at the edges, and I’m pulled into blackness as the image is swallowed away from my sight.
Zelda. The name rings in my mind, bouncing around like a white hot ember. I don’t know why I was there, why I hadn’t been able to protect her before, but I knew the name. I knew that I had to save her. These thoughts are interrupted by a voice, repeating that same word.
“Zelda.”
I turn, and see a dark shape about my height standing in the blackness, surrounded by light, as though its darkness is so dark that it makes the blackness around it shine. It slowly takes on a definite shape, and I can see that it is me, a dark version of myself. It blinks, and two white eyes show up on its face.
“We saved her, you know,” it says. “You and I. The two of us saved her.”
“What are you?”
“I’m you.”
The shape cracks a dark laugh at my confusion. I can’t look away from it, even if I want to, because it is the only light, even though it is dark.
“But,” it continues, “You may call me Shade, for that is what I am.”
“A shade of what?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“As I said. You. I am your past. I am the little man, as you call me.” The Shade contorts its face into what is perhaps supposed to be a grin. “I,” it says, cracking its neck unnaturally far to the side, “am what you once were, left to age beyond what is normal. I am the old man inside of you, and locked away in me somewhere is what you once knew.” It smiles grotesquely. “The Link your precious Zelda knew is dead. I am all that is left of him, and now I am going to take back what is mine.”
It flings its arms up into the air, and dark smoke begins to fly out of it, slowly illuminating the room. I can see now, there is a floor, made of gargantuan flagstones. I look on in horror as its chest ruptures, and out of it crawl more limbs, its hands extending into claws reminiscent of eagle talons, dripping black ichor, which splashes on the floor. It grows to a hulking size, and its taunting become strangled gurgles as all of its humanity is ripped away by whatever beast has grown within me over one hundred years. It lunges at me, and I leap out of the way just in time, my sword flashing from its sheath. I bring it up into the Shade’s belly, and I slowly realize what it means. It is going to kill me, and take back my body for itself.
I stop at this, if only for a brief moment. Perhaps that is for the best. I am, after all, not the original owner of this body. It, or whatever it used to be, was. And so for a moment I consider surrender, but then I think of its words. The Link your precious Zelda knew is dead. I realize that the beast I am fighting cares not for Hyrule. And as I think this I am caught in the chest by a flying blow from one of its too many limbs, the same wound I suffered from the horse. But in the same way, I stagger again to my feet. Because I may not remember what I have done, but this thing is not what I am. I remember who I am. I always have.
Shlerf.
My sword tears through the melty, gooey substance the Shade is composed of, and it turns to face me, anger burning in its solid white eyes. I don’t hesitate though, and my blade carves off another hunk of black ichor.
It swings, I parry. I swing, I hit. It lunges, I dodge. I stab, it recoils. The glow of the Sword that Seals the Darkness burns bright, and I realize now that the name does not refer only to the ancient evil reborn. I remember what I was told, over and over again, training for the coming Calamity, the words Impa spoke to me every time I would fail. To truly understand the blade, and for the blade to understand you, you must be at peace. The blade seeks to destroy darkness. Remove such a thing from yourself, and it will not fight you. That is the only way for the blade to truly work with you.
Thwang. Thwang. Thwang.
The blade, now glowing, melts enormous chunks off of the Shade’s body. It takes on a spiderlike form, and I remove its legs from it gracefully, as I have done to so many corrupted guardians before it. I am a guardian, after all, and this is my corruption. Why not destroy it the same way?
It screams out in pain, but I am not cowed. Halfway through its roar, it is silenced by a blade in its neck. The Shade is slowly sucked into the blade, its illusory light replaced by the pure, clean light of the glowing sword. I drop to a knee. The fight was short, but draining. I was only hit once, but truly exhaustion comes from the act of avoiding being hit.
I hear a voice, coming from the only thing that remains of the shade, lying on the ground. It’s a mask, glowing white behind it. “I am you. You cannot escape-“
My sword cracks the mask, and the light disappears. But as I turn, I see behind me where I had been facing when I left my memory, lying on the ground, is the unconscious form of Zelda.
She coughs and sputters awake in my arms hours later, after careful application of fairy tonics to her wounds and many prayers to the goddesses. I take her pulse again, and prop her up a bit more, sitting alone with her on one of the enormous flagstones. Over the past few hours, my memories have been returning like a flood, and slowly I am realizing why I have felt so drawn to saving her, so tied to my quest. Weakly, she raises her arm to her mouth and coughs again, and then opens her eyes. She looks up at me, her green eyes bright and shining even though the rest of her looks like she died and came back.
“Link?”
I look down at her. Am I Link? Am I the Link she knew? I think to myself about who I remember him to be, and finally, I speak.
“Yes, Zelda?”