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Spring, I
Linebeck yanks the gauze off of the roll, the cylinder growing smaller and smaller each day as Link staggers back to the ship with more and more wounds adorning his body like works of art. Some are small scrapes: bruises like blueberries on his arms or patches of broken skin like smashed strawberries. Occasionally, he'll come back to the ship, head spinning with pain as Linebeck frowns in revulsion at the gash on his leg or chest.
But Link has just returned from the Temple of Fire at the peak of the Isle of Ember relatively unscathed, fortunately, though Linebeck is always equally irritated no matter the severity. There are two burns on his left arm and a scrape on his leg, the latter of which is so negligible they ignore it. The former, however, is a bright, rosy pink, just a shade lighter than the cherry-colored Spirit of Power they had just collected.
Linebeck pours a disinfectant onto a cloth and sighs almost melodramatically. He pats the cloth on Link's burns, and the hero winces, but Linebeck doesn't necessarily cater to his pain. He got himself into this mess; it's his own damn fault.
Ciela hovers over Linebeck's shoulder, wincing just as Link does, as if she feels his pain sympathetically. Not much needs to be done other than the wounds cleaned and wrapped, but in Linebeck's opinion, she acts like every injury puts Link on death’s door. It’s distracting—and worse, annoying—while he’s trying to work.
"Are you even qualified to do this?" Ciela asks, a bite to her voice.
He takes the gauze he's set to the side and begins wrapping it around Link's arm, "Qualified?" He scoffs. "I'm no doctor, if that's what you're asking."
“So you’re just making it up as you go.”
“Definitely not. My father provided ample first aid instruction when he taught me to sail.”
Linebeck watches Link's expression as he begins working on the second burn. He doesn't wince this time when he presses the cloth to the burn.
Ciela sighs. “How sweet. And I’m sure your father learned from his father and he learned from his. And whatever you’re doing here is probably state-of-the-art for a thousand years ago.”
“Wrong,” Linebeck says, inspecting his handiwork. “My father was taught by his mother, so don’t go making assumptions about my family. Plus, they quit bloodletting years ago.”
Ciela laughs, then stops herself, and that’s how Linebeck knows he’s got her.
Still, she doesn’t go down easily. "Well, then shouldn't we take him to a real doctor?"
"Like you always say, Sparkles," Linebeck yanks on the gauze so hard that spool goes tumbling across the cabin. He doesn't bother to pick it up, instead looks at her and puts on his best high-pitched, mocking voice, "We don't have enough time for that."
"If Link gets really hurt then it won't matter how much time we have left, because we'll all be doomed," Ciela counters, flying over to the space between his hand and Link's arm. "So quit half-assing things, okay?"
"Who said I was half-assing things?" He swats at her, but she dodges it and comes nose to nose with him. He recoils slightly, then starts to roughly wrap the gauze around Link's other burn. "Sailors know how to wrap up a wound. It comes from living such a dangerous, risk-taking lifestyle."
"Dangerous, I'm sure," Ciela deadpans.
"Oh yeah?" Linebeck tightens the gauze and wraps it around a second time, "How many times did you have your life threatened, living idly by with the old man, not even remembering your own name?"
"I remembered my name," She insists icily. "But that's not important now. Link goes into temples and fights beasts that would make you run straight into the ocean with fear, while you stay behind and watch your ship. You treat it like it's some kind of person, more important than your own crew."
"Hey! The S.S. Linebeck is important, you insignificant piece of cotton. Without her, you'd be nowhere."
Ciela nearly retaliates when they're interrupted by Link's voice, quiet as always, "Linebeck, the bandage is kind of tight…" Linebeck looks down at the bandaging on the second burn to find he has pulled on the gauze so tightly that Link's skin is bulging out either side of the bandage, purple and swollen. He apologizes under his breath, mumbling obscenities as he unties the gauze and stands up to find the spool he dropped a few moments before.
Linebeck declares the spool missing-in-action, and therefore he'll have to find the other one he's sure is in a crate, somewhere.
He leaves the room and heads to the back to search for Link's gauze, which, admittedly, he probably doesn't need, but Ciela herself is enough to make him want to leave the room.
He finds the pesky spare roll of gauze, tucked in a tin behind two empty bottles of whiskey and a fishing knife. As he’s about to return to the cabin, he overhears Ciela talking to Link. In addition to teaching him to navigate and bandage up a non-leather wound, his father, known affectionately as “Pops,” also instructed his boy to never eavesdrop.
Though Linebeck had been a good son, his father, (may he rest in peace) also taught Linebeck to be wary of fake things, like sirens and mermaids, and had failed to warn him of the wily and seductive nature of she-pirates. So: a talented sailor he may have been, Pops was rather lacking in the sociocultural department.
Long story short, Linebeck eavesdropped.
"I don't know why we have to deal with him, Link. He's so… arrogant. Can't we find another sailor to ferry us around? I'm sure they're a lot of other, more capable people."
Linebeck knows Ciela dislikes him enormously. The feeling is passionately mutual. Still, there are few people who derive any joy in overhearing a negative conversation concerning them.
There is a silence, and Linebeck wonders if Link will respond. The boy is reticent with his emotions, divulging little with his expression and even less with his words.
"What?" She asks in response to his quietude. "Don't you think we could do better?"
"That’s not fair,” Link says. “He lets me do what I need to, you know? You're there to worry about me, and that's enough. If both of you were constantly trying to protect me, I'd get nothing done."
A tightness develops in Linebeck’s throat that feels disturbingly like pride or affection and settles on the much safer option of self-righteousness.
Now Ciela is quiet and Linebeck realizes he’s been in the adjacent room for a suspiciously long time. He doesn’t try to pick fights with her, but he can see why she objects to him so much: their personalities clash like the most extreme of opposites. They are literally day and night, right and left, courage and cowardice, humility and ego. You guess who is who.
Linebeck holds his breath and decides to return to the room. “Found it!” He exclaims, holding up the gauze like a trophy. “Nasty thing was stuck in a box I thought I had lost the key for, but I found the key, and—well—“
Whether anyone believes his lie or not is irrelevant, because he abandons it like a bad plate of fish and returns to Link’s arm, bandaging the final injury in a tense silence that indicates he was very much privy to their conversation.
Once Link’s wounds are dealt with, and the kid is more bandage than boy, he gets up and heads to the sea chart, where he begins to plan their trip back to Mercay with Leaf.
Linebeck thinks a glass of whiskey sounds spectacular right about now, and is about to rifle through some crates for one when Ciela pipes up.
“So your father taught you to sail and bandage wounds,” she says.
Linebeck narrows his eyes, trying to figure out her angle. “Yep.”
“What else did he teach you?”
This sounds vaguely like a stubborn apology, if he’s ever heard one. And he would know. He is very good at them; they are not so much created for the purposes of balancing one’s moral checkbook, but instead to keep everyone else on your good side, somewhere Linebeck finds himself infrequently.
And so he tells her every old sea dog adage he can think of because he has her hostage and in the wrong, not because he thinks her interest is anything but feigned.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
Maybe they have more in common than he thought.
Summer, II
One day, when it's too hot to venture outside the boat and they sit inside silently, wallowing in what's left of the cool air of the ship, he asks her a question.
"What's it like to fly?"
She looks up from the book she was reading, sprawled out on its pages like a wilting flower on account of the abrasive heat. She's too exhausted to truly form words, and for a moment, she just lies on her back wordlessly as beads of sweat run down her neck and break into tributaries along her shoulder blades.
"Flying," she ponders, and looks over at Link, who's fast asleep on his bed, a damp cloth laid on his head, matting his hair. Finally, she answers him, "It's nice."
Linebeck watches her over the rim of his mug of ale. Condensation beads on the glass. "Just nice? Sparkles, come on. Man has spent millennia wishing we could go anywhere higher than a few paltry inches off the ground and all you can tell me is it’s ‘nice’?”
"Well, it is," she defends. "It's a lot nicer than walking everywhere, I assume. Especially right now. If I flew up high enough, I would be able to feel the cool wind over the water and... " She trails off, but Linebeck gets the idea anyway, and he’s jealous of the prospect all the same.
"Logical," he admits, sets his half empty ("Half full," Ciela would correct, and he'd scoff.) drink on the table softly and watches her roll onto her stomach and continue reading. He’d given her the book when she'd asked for one, not bothering to look for anything specific on the shelf, and ended up handing her a manual on caring for one's ship. She doesn't seem to mind it though, and has thoroughly read through half the book in the last few hours, studying the diagrams thoughtfully.
She stands up every time she has to turn a page, pulling at the dog-eared corner with all her might and lifting it with enormous resolve and extreme care, lest she accidentally tear the fragile page of a book he inherited from his father.
She read the inscription in the inside cover aloud, much to his chagrin. For my dear boy, it read, the tail on the letter y in “boy” blotted with thirty five-year-old ink that seeped through the paper onto the following page where it partially obscured the word “starboard”.
“Your father… had very nice handwriting,” Ciela had said, touching the ink as if through the lettering she might get some indication of the late mariner.
“He did,” Linebeck had agreed.
Anyway, long-gone fathers notwithstanding, Linebeck watches while Ciela exhausts herself turning the page, stretching it to its midpoint over the spine of the book, letting gravity take over like felled timber. Which, in a way, it is. It's fascinating, watching her small frame submit something to her will.
The book he planned on reading lies open to the first page, untouched, unread.
"I'm surprised you're enjoying that," Linebeck comments, and this time, Ciela doesn't bother getting up from the book to answe his query.
"Well, I've read a lot in my life, Linebeck. Mostly about history, religion, classic fiction that would probably bore you to death. But no one's ever taught me about mechanics or…" She squints at the top of the page, "... how to remove barnacles from the hull."
"Good.” He leans back in his chair, smirk playing at his lips. "Maybe you can help me out sometime."
"Yeah, right," she deadpans, stands up and flips the page again, but doesn't lie back down on the pages, and instead sits on the edge of the book. An invitation for conversation.
Just as she did earlier, Linebeck stares at Link for a brief moment, a habit, just to check if he's everything’s okay. He worries, despite his best efforts not to, that Link will work himself to the bone. They haven't been traveling longer than a few months, but in that time, Link's gone above and beyond in proving his abilities, and yet he's still human, and therefore, still vulnerable. But of course, Link is fine. His chest rises and falls with consistency, a pattern in sync with the rocking boat.
Returning his attention to Ciela, he says, "I guess human tasks are too good for you.”
"Not too good, just too big," Ciela elaborates, wiping the sweat off her brow with her forearms. "Though I'd never wish to be human."
Just like always, she is baiting him with conversation. "Really?" He asks, surprised. "Why not?"
"Because then I'd have the potential to end up like you."
Linebeck laughs once, loud and sharp. In retaliation, he flicks the condensation from the ale mug at her, droplets dotting her wings and the book behind her.
"Hey!" She shouts, standing up in an outrage, "You know those droplets are a lot bigger from my perspective! Ugh, my wings are drenched, I'll have to let them dry before I can fly…"
"Oh, please," Linebeck grins, because it's easy to get her in a fuss like that. He looks down at the book laid down before him, glaring back at him, daring him to read. What was it called again? A History of Goron Culture. Boring as hell, just like Ciela tells him he'd find history.
Sometimes, like right now as she's standing before him with a smug smile playing on her lips despite herself, Ciela looks very innocent. She can be as rude, as domineering, as witty as himself, but there are times, like now, when he fails to find a single fault with her.
"Why did you ask what it's like to fly?" She asks softly, and somehow, Linebeck can't bear to meet her gaze.
"Just wanted to know," Linebeck says offhandedly, pretends to read the pages before him. From his peripheral vision he watches Ciela wander close to his hands, then sits cross-legged on the pages that he's not really reading.
"Hey," he protests, retracts his hand as if to push her off the book, but doesn't touch her. "I was reading that."
She rolls her eyes and gives his thumb a playful kick. "No, you weren't. You've been staring at this page for hours." Ciela tugs at the edge of the paper and tries to turn it.
"Quit it," He scolds, pressing his hand on the page so it won't budge. She collapses on the pages once more, laughter erupting in delightful waves. It's hard for him to resist laughing. It’s not particularly funny, and he has a nagging feeling she's trying to get him to let loose. His expression hardens and he sneers. "Seriously, knock it off. Are you really so bored that you need to hang around and bug me?”
What he expects from her is what he always expects: some kind of snide remark, a jab at his easily-ruffled and frequently-preened feathers, the cold shoulder. But she doesn’t do any of those things. Her temper stays remarkably cool despite the volcanic weather.
"Oh, Linebeck. It's not that I'm bored. It’s that you're far more interesting than the book."
Autumn, III
"You're absolutely insufferable!"
"Why are you making a big deal out of this? There's nothing I can do about it!"
"Oh, but you can, if only you would!"
"For the last damn time, it's not my problem!"
Link knows they'll calm down soon. He's mapped out their arguments carefully over the past few months, and he's able to predict when they start, when the worst, most explosive parts are, and when they go their separate ways. Neither of them ever give in or apologize, but they have a sense for when it's gone too far, and it's then that they stop talking for a good day. Or two.
The argument is about to reach that point, and Link is playing out the outcomes in his head. To be honest, he hardly remembers the reason for their quarrel, and he doubts Linebeck and Ciela do, either. They might be arguing about him, which has happened a few times.
Linbeck slams his fist on a table. "Jolene is crazy. She's going to chase us down from time to time, and we're going to have to deal with it, okay?"
Ah, so that's what they're talking about. To be honest, Link doesn't mind dueling with Jolene when she manages to stalk down the S.S. Linebeck. Sure, it's an inconvenience, but it's nice to spar with someone so capable when most of the time, Link's enemies provide battles he deems child's play.
From the opposite side of the room, Link can almost hear Ciela's voice boil with fury. “Can't you just talk to her? You knew her once, I'm sure she wouldn't kill you if you had something worthwhile to say."
"Nope, she's a maniac.” Linebeck raises his arms in defense. "She's a woman, I don't understand women, especially not Jolene or you."
"Like men make any more sense, with your so-called mysterious pasts.” Ciela sneers. "If you're not going to deal with her, you might as well just leave because she's getting in the way of defeating Bellum."
"This is my ship, mind you," Linebeck huffs and crosses his arms. "It's my ship, and I'll be damned if you think you can just order a captain around his own vessel, powder puff."
Link imagines both are seeing bright, hot red at the moment, and here is the moment he's been idly waiting for, which will be hopefully enough to shut them both up and allow for Link and the other two fairies to get some much-needed sleep.
"Fine," Ciela hisses, her voice very nearly spouting acid. "We can have torpedoes rammed into the side of your beloved ship so that your ex-girlfriend can terrorize us everytime we set off to a new island." With that, Ciela claims her own victory, even if she hasn't really won, and floats over to her spot on the pillow and plops down on it, exhausted from debating. Link knows she won't sleep for a while, she'll be creating new counter-points for their banters in her head until she's furious at Linebeck again, but with no one to shout at.
"She wasn't my girlfriend," Linebeck says pathetically, more to himself than Ciela, and that's just as good as admitting he was ready to walk down the aisle with Jolene.
From her spot on the pillow, Ciela shoots a response at him, "I don't really care about your love life, Linebeck. I just want to stop Bellum as soon as possible."
"Good," he says matter-of-factly. Link's eyes follow him as he hangs up his coat and slides out of his boots. Not bothering to change out of his clothes, he climbs into his bed on the opposite side of the room after putting out the lantern and says snarkily, "Because it's none of your damn business."
Link does not expect Ciela to respond, to let him have the final word that did, admittedly, ring some truth, but she does: “It is my damn business if you talking to her will get her to stop preying on us."
"Why don't you talk to her, huh, Sparkles? You seem to be pretty good at chatting someone's ear off."
"That may be so, but she's not my former lover, so there's nothing I could say to assuage her."
"She's not my former lover, either, nor do I have anything to say to her. Can we just leave it at that?" Linebeck sounds like he's pleading. He knows he's lost the argument, but Link silently wishes that they'll continue because suddenly he has no urge to sleep, only to listen.
"Nope."
"Dammit, I'm tired. Why not?"
"I want to know what went on between you two. If you're not going to stop her, then I at least deserve to know."
"You don't deserve anything."
"Fine. Well, I just got a lot of brand new memories; would you like to hear them? There're quite a few. It could take…" she pauses to yawn despite herself, “…all night."
"Oh, please spare me!" Linebeck exclaims melodramatically.
"I’ll spare you if you tell me about Jolene.”
“Threatening your captain? Wait till the Mercay Maritime Board of Ethics hears about this.”
“No such organization exists, you dork.”
“Ooh, then I’ll tell the old man. How about that ?”
Ciela actually falters at this. “I’m calling your bluff.”
“Oh really? Try me, puff ball.”
A new voice interjects, "Shut up, you two. I want to sleep." It's Leaf, his red glow highlighting Link's hair pink.
Link has no idea when or how their heated argument became little more than affectionate banter, but he is both astonished and glad.
Ciela jumps up from her spot and flutters over to Linebeck, perching on his bedpost. Linebeck doesn't react, pretends he doesn't see her.
"Come on," Ciela implores. Begs. "Tell me."
It's around then that Link falls asleep. His final conscious thoughts are sleepy wonders. Linebeck might swat at her, tell her to go back to sleep, but Link suspects that they talk into the dead hours of night, long after the rest sleep.
Winter, IV
Cold, bitter raindrops that pelt the ground like drops of steel have begun to descend quickly from the turbulent skies. They fall harshly, with destination in mind as they form little dark dots on Linebeck's coat. He looks up, squinting at the sky, as if perturbed by the idea of rain. They fall on his forehead and nose, the cold air turning the tips of his ears and nose a shade of pink, and as the drops quicken, he is forced to look down at the ground once more.
The entire world seems gray, the heavens a slab of slate and the grass a dull charcoal. Gray, or more accurately, glum, also happens to be how Linebeck feels their prospects are right now. Of course the kid will do well. There is no doubt he'll kick Bellum into next week with Ciela by his side, using rash courage and magic Linebeck has a hard time believing with his own eyes.
Life isn't magical. Just because an old man and a few fairies can use supernatural forces doesn't make life any more magical for the remainder, who have to work hard in the run-of-the-mill world. Like Linebeck himself. Mariner’s son with no son of his own.
That's why he's out here, thinking. He's north of town, looking over the cliff out to sea as the raindrops turn into sheets of water, coming down in sharp angles over the bay. It makes it hard to see very far. These are the sort of storms his father often warned him about, where anvil-headed thunderheads hid discretely above a layer of dreary, rainy-day stratus clouds. They appear benign, but are deceptively destructive and worryingly violent.
It’s difficult to think, standing by his ship, and so he comes out here to ponder over everything that's happened since that fateful day the kid and his fairy stormed into the temple and met him. Almost everything has changed, he'll admit. Not only has he traveled farther than before, seen huge beasts that will probably haunt him forever, but he feels different. Different in a way he can't identify.
Linebeck almost misses the kid when he dashes past him, a swarm of green and three bright lights as they hurtle over the rocks and grass. But they don't miss him, and suddenly they're having a rather terse conversation, where Linebeck tries to explain exactly why he's out here.
As usual, Ciela tosses an insult at him, something about mopping the deck, but somehow, it settles into his skin differently, goes deeper than the other ones he carries with him, and—given the circumstances—it hurts so bad that he can't possibly wish the same upon her.
And then he calls her by her name, and the look on her face drives whatever feeling he's feeling deeper into him, and he has to turn away. He leaves, knowing that with her abilities and his own, Link will be fine as he descends into the depths of the Temple.
But it doesn't stop him from thinking about how although he's known Ciela for almost a year now, they are still in the same position as they were before. She still finds reasons to throw insults at him like darts in hopes that one will pop his inflated ego, and he still returns them like it's nothing. Ciela might be squeaky and annoying, a fly buzzing around his head that he can't seem to swat, but honestly, he doesn't regret knowing her; rather, he regrets not knowing her enough.
"Linebeck!"
It's as if she's read his thoughts, because she's speeding towards him at a hundred miles per hour, and she stops right before she'd seemingly collide with him at the dock. He expects her to say something, some kind of grand apology unbecoming of someone like her, but he has a feeling that, for once, Ciela is speechless.
However, she does find her words somewhere within her. "Linebeck," she pants, out of breath. "I didn't mean that. What I said back there."
It's the implication that this could possibly be the last time he ever sees her, that if Link makes one wrong move, it's all over, that gives Linebeck a foreign feeling in his gut. Granted, he could very well be seeing the last few hours the world will ever know if Link fails. Somehow, in some convoluted way, her personal fear means more to him than any strong feeling he has about the end of the world.
"I know," he says. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. "But I meant what I said: take care of Link."
Ciela nods vigorously. "I will, I promise."
For a couple, very long seconds, they are silent. What they have is nothing that can be wrapped up easily in a few words. Ciela begins to turn around. They're waiting for her outside the temple and the world is on their shoulders, not his.
Ciela is floating halfway down the dock when he stops her, "Wait-"
As if she was expecting this, she turns around.
"You… you take care of yourself, too, Ciela."
"I'll be fine, as always,” she says, uncharacteristically nonchalant. “But the same to you, Linebeck."
It's a strange feeling that plagues him as she turns around and leaves. His throat is dry and pinhole-tight, because now all he can do is wait for her, for them, to return victorious.
It's only then that he realizes that Ciela herself has given him courage. Ironically, thankfully, wonderfully, beautifully, it's her courage within him that knows she'll be alright and allows him to watch her go and admit to the implication that—yes—he cares about and loves her. Her, Link, all of them.
Not the kind of family he’d known growing up, but the kind he’d never leave behind.