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He woke up to a strange, familiar feeling of despair and duty. It was an emotion that overcame him for a moment, seeming to thrash within his heart and rip his insides to shreds. Something, something very important, had been lost.
Then it faded, and he stood, still dripping a bit with whatever he’d been laying in, and he realized he had no idea who or where he was.
He ventured from the building, taking the weird rectangle-thing with him, and recoiled a bit at the brightness of the sun. How did he know what the sun was? He had no memory of learning, but he supposed he must have, because there the information was. He noted that he also knew what trees were, and the grass that waved gently in the breeze. Facts about the world around him, very basic things, it seemed, were there, though he had no recollection of why he knew any of it.
There was a creature of some sort, a red thing that walked on two legs and advanced toward him with a threatening gait.
Bokoblin . He didn’t know where the word had come from, but it must have been the name of the monster.
He instinctively picked up a stick and it became a weapon in his hands.
Sword , his mind supplied, giving no further context. He thought he knew what a sword was, but he had no idea how he’d gained skill in combat. Still, he dodged and attacked, his motions fluid and precise, becoming truly deadly when the creature whacked him in the ribs.
He didn’t quite know how he felt about killing something, or the fact that wielding a weapon felt so familiar, but he decided it was better to survive first and ask questions later.
—
He’d been told his name was Link. It was his job to save Zelda, and being informed of this brought back some sort of complicated feeling that his mind couldn’t quite untangle.
At least this explained why he looked at the castle and a cavern carved by grief and guilt seemed to open inside his stomach.
He looked into a pool of water in Kakariko village and wondered whether the Link who he had supposedly been in the past would recognize him now. His reflection wobbled, and for a moment he thought he saw the boy Impa had described, in a uniform that looked heavy and stifling, wearing an expression that seemed to weigh even more. He felt a bit haunted by the memories he was supposed to have.
He wondered whether he’d wanted to wield the Master Sword, or be appointed as the princess’s knight. How had he gotten the sword? Had he been resistant to the job, or had he accepted it? How had his family felt about it? Did he even have a family?
He prayed at the statue and the goddess gave him life. She said nothing of restoring his mind. He didn’t ask.
It was selfish of him, he thought, but he found some small relief in the fact that most people have no idea who he was. He was just a traveler, a strange boy who resembled the hero of legend and staggered into town seeming to know nothing of the world around him.
Everyone who would know him was dead, and this hurt, but in a slightly removed and distant way, as though he was hearing a story that had happened to someone else. He didn’t remember his friends well enough to truly miss them, or perhaps his emotions had been locked away too, truly leaving him a husk. An empty shell of a person.
Part of him thought of Link as a separate entity, and he wasn’t sure if that made it easier or harder to deal with all of this.
If he finished finding the memories like he was supposed to, would that fix him? Patch the crack in the pottery and fill it back up? He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted that. The boy in the vision hadn’t looked happy.
Then again, he thought, absentmindedly chewing on a piece of grass while watching his campfire, he wasn’t sure happiness was meant for him. He’d slept for a century while everyone he loved died due to his mistakes, and that didn’t seem like the start to a whimsical fairytale where everything would turn out alright.
Whatever. There were more pressing matters to deal with, like how it had just started raining and put out his fire.
It seemed instant. One moment the stars were twinkling above, the next, water was pouring down.
It battered the leaves of the tree he’d been leaning against and splashed onto the fire, putting it out as the flames sizzled in protest. He groaned, checking his map to see where the nearest place to rest was that would keep him out of the rain. Already his clothes and hair were sticking to him, and he knew the rest of the day would be uncomfortably damp. He wouldn’t have minded too much except for the fact that the last time he’d been caught in the rain, none of his supplies had dried for days.
It seemed like he was closest to Hateno, so he quickly gathered his belongings before warping to the shrine there.
He briefly considered just resting inside the shrine as he materialized and lightning flashed, but after a moment he ran out to the house he’d bought.
He wasn’t sure exactly how long ago that had been. He wasn’t very good at measuring time. A side effect of his memory loss, perhaps, or maybe a leftover relic from who he’d been before.
Either way, he thought it was about a week and a half ago.
He’d seen it on the edge of town, this old, abandoned structure, and felt a strange sort of sympathy. It was out of place, and lonely, and something about it seemed terribly recognizable. Maybe he’d been there before.
He’d fixed it up a little. Added a table, a tiny pot with a white and blue flower on top of it.
The house wasn’t very big, but it still felt terribly empty.
He dragged a chair over to the door and opened it, letting a slight breeze in. The air seemed to hum with electricity and he shivered a bit as lightning flashed again. Thunder crashed, and suddenly he was sitting in the rain beneath a tree, with Zelda, and she was talking.
He wanted to respond, to offer a word of comfort or advice, but he felt the familiar feeling of his position strangling him and he could only nod, his ever-stoic expression seeming both a shield to protect him, and a barrier.
Another bout of thunder, and he was back in the chair. He shuddered.
He kept mixing up past and present. It was starting to be a bit of an annoyance, though so far it had been contained enough to not happen during any life-threatening situations.
He stared at the rain outside, inhaling slowly and taking in the petrichor scent. It was calming, but he still felt unease settling in his chest.
The memories he’d seen so far had been from the perspective of a knight: caring, but there was a bit of professional distance. There must have been something he was missing, though, because the rare flashes of emotion that crashed into him seemed to suggest more than a business-like relationship with the princess.
They’d grown to be friends, he was almost sure, but he didn’t know if there was anything else to it. Perhaps not. Link didn’t seem the type to discuss his feelings with ease.
He knew turning the problem over in his mind probably wouldn’t help him uncover the answer, but he still felt the need to continue examining it. This was another thing he’d noticed, which seemed to be a trait of his past self. Once he picked up an issue, he couldn’t put it down. He didn’t seem to be capable of giving up and shelving it for another time.
This was probably what had made him such a good and dedicated bodyguard, but it also led to a great deal more overthinking than was helpful.
He sat there, thinking until morning, when the clouds cleared away and he refocused on his next task.
—
He’d gained more memories, but something still felt fractured. There was a disconnect, where the person he’d been and the person he was now didn’t quite line up.
Am I making you proud , he wanted to ask, but there was no way he could get a response. Do you like who we’ve become?
He’d gone to Zora’s Domain, where most of them remembered him, and while it was partly a relief to get further clarity, the whole experience only reminded him that he was an imitation of the real Link, passable at best.
It was a bit like he’d stolen his own body.
Mipha was the first spirit he’d freed, so he hadn’t known how much agony it would bring to meet someone who had held so much importance to him, only for them to vanish in such a short time.
Was this what drowning was like?
It only hurt more because everyone had been so kind, so understanding, so willing to say that it wasn’t his fault. It was almost refreshing to meet one of the few Zora to blame him.
Don’t you get it , he wanted to say. They’re all dead because of me, because I couldn’t stop him. Your champion’s blood is on my hands. Don’t give me the hero’s welcome.
Luckily, none of the other peoples he visited lived long enough for anyone to remember him, so there was less friendliness to grate on his nerves.
He knew, logically, that it couldn’t be entirely his fault. Nobody could have known that the Calamity would strike with such destruction so quickly, but he was the only one to survive and he felt entirely inadequate to the task.
Why did it have to be me , a tiny voice whispered.
He ignored it and went on.
He was a bit more prepared for freeing the others, but it still hurt.
He nearly cried when he saw Revali, despite the fact that he’d barely done so since he woke up, and as far as he knew, rivals was the nicest way to describe their past relationship.
He was so afraid he’d fail them all. Their deaths weighed him down, and with each spirit he freed, his lungs felt a bit heavier. He kept finding ruins, where people used to live and work, and their deaths weighed him down too.
He climbed to the roof of the Temple of Time, leaning against the tower at one end, and stared at the castle in the distance. He wasn’t sure how much time Zelda had left.
He’d found all the shrines hidden throughout Hyrule, and the goddess had restored everything she could. It was up to him to finish preparing.
He supposed there was only one thing left to do, which was to find the sword. The one that would seal the darkness. The one that might be enough to stop the Calamity.
He stood, and turned his gaze slightly to the forest behind the castle. From the rumors he’d heard, that was where the sword would lie.
—
As he approached the pedestal, he shook slightly. What if it wouldn’t accept him? What if he was no longer the chosen hero, if Link was truly dead and gone?
He wrapped his hands around the handle, and the material felt comfortable. Like home.
He inhaled slightly and drew the sword. He felt a bit more certain as he gave it an experimental swing.
That’s a little more like it , he thought, allowing himself the slightest smile.
Maybe once this was all over he could stop carrying weapons all the time, but for now, it was good to have something so familiar.
When he left the forest and said goodbye to the Koroks, he allowed himself one last visit to Hateno to put everything in order before the battle.
He warped to the stable to the west, to check in on his horses for what might be the last time, and on his way to the path leading through the old fort, he spotted it. The place of the last shard that was supposed to make him whole.
Impa had revealed its location once he’d found the others, but he hadn’t gone out to find it right away. He wasn’t sure why. Nervousness, perhaps. What if it didn’t work? What if he was cracked and broken forever? Or, maybe worse, what if it did? What if he remembered everything and it was worse than knowing nothing?
But he was here anyway, and he might die in battle against the Calamity before the next sunrise, so he found himself at the spot.
The now-familiar feeling of leaving the present crept up his spine as shouting gradually started to get louder around him.
Then he was Link again, and injured, but stubbornly doing his job anyway because what else would he do? Fire consumed the grassy field, and ashes rose in the air, the smoke so thick he was nearly choking on it.
Zelda told him to run, but he almost didn’t hear her through the crackling of the blaze and his blood rushing the way it did in training before he passed out.
He dragged himself off the ground and stumbled back, but one of the corrupted guardians saw and locked its beam on.
A flash of light blinded him for a brief moment, but by the time it faded he was already on the ground.
He said a silent apology and prayed for the goddess’s forgiveness as Zelda rushed over and said something. It sounded like they were underwater, though, and he couldn’t quite make out the words as his eyes closed.
He viewed the rest of the scene from up above. Was his spirit already drifting away? He wasn’t ready to die yet. There was still so much to do, and his job wasn’t finished. He was so tired , though, so much more worn and weary than he should have been at his age. He was a bit tempted by the thought of rest, he would admit to himself, but he wanted to live more.
He watched as they carried him to the shrine and Zelda took the sword in her hands to return it to the forest.
The edges of his sight began to blur, and in a moment, he was standing again, this time in a mostly untouched field, besides the long-dead guardians scattered around.
He inhaled shakily and leaned against a rock, sliding into a sitting position and shaking his head gently to get rid of the last wisps of the past that seemed to cling to his vision.
So that was how he’d been put in the shrine. How he’d lost almost everything that made him who he’d been.
The last piece of the pot had been carefully glued in, and he cautiously scanned the interior of his mind. There certainly seemed to be a bit more there, but quite a bit had slipped through the cracks, leaking through the seams where he’d been reformed.
He’d lived in Hateno as a child, but he couldn’t remember any of his friends’ names, if he’d had any. He thought he’d had a mother, and a father too, but there were no faces or voices to accompany that knowledge. They were blobs of people, viewed through a thick dreaminess.
He did remember Zelda more, though. He remembered how the pressure that kept him silent loosened slightly when she, and to a lesser extent, the other champions, were around. He remembered midday horseback rides and frustrated pilgrimages and how she’d struggled her way through a Hylian sign language book to understand him better when his worries got to be too much to speak.
He thought of the castle and decided to warp straight to Hateno rather than taking the extra time to walk.
He ran to his house, the one he now knew he’d lived in before, and carefully placed each of the champions’ old weapons in display cases. He didn’t want to risk their destruction. Whether he did or didn’t come back from this, they’d be safer here.
He took a last look at the house before closing the door behind him and walking away.
—
The Calamity was sealed away, and Link (he supposed he should start claiming that name as his own) stood in the field shakily. They’d done it.
He almost felt like collapsing right there, but he took a breath and steadied himself.
“I’ve been keeping watch over you all this time,” Zelda said softly. “I’ve witnessed your struggles to return to us as well as your trials in battle. I always thought---no, I always believed---that you would find a way to defeat Ganon. I never lost faith in you over these many years.”
She turned to face him.
“Thank you, Link...the hero of Hyrule. May I ask, do you really remember me?”
She looked a bit nervous, or maybe that was him projecting.
He paused for a moment before he nodded, clearing his throat slightly.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”