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Wild isn’t sure when it all starts. He knows it starts quietly. In his own home one day, when the sun is low and the world is a pale, soft hue that makes painters envious and poets mad. It’s funny to him, in a frustrating way, when he remembers the details of things but can’t quite bring the whole picture into frame. The walls of his Hateno home are rich and dark and clean. The plants Zelda keeps are healthy and getting ready to bloom. Vegetables are being chopped, he’s the one chopping them, with a new knife he had purchased the day before. It’s homey, it’s safe, and a little bit saccharin truth be told. He can’t remember for the life of him what caused Those Thoughts.
Maybe it’s just too small to see, a tiny little domino that collides with another and spills out across the room and back to him and knocks him off his feet. Maybe it’s all too big, the weight of everything in the world has finally crashed down upon his head, and it was all too much to take in all at once. But either way, he can’t tell a soul what caused it. He just looks at the knife in his hand and thinks I could put this right through Zelda’s heart, just like a vegetable. It lingers through his mind just a little too long, long enough that his brain (a traitor and a liar but still the center of his being) shows him what that might look like.
Zelda with red running down her chest from an open wound. Zelda with a pretty steel blade that he loved on sight parting her skin and sinking into her slowly. Zelda looking at him with fear because it was his hand pushing it forward.
The thought fades from him, and takes everything else with it. In it’s place is pure bile. A cold wind fills his heart and spreads out beneath his skin in a twisted current. With a clink almost like bells, he drops the knife and steps back from the cutting board. Suddenly he can’t stand to be near it. Why would I think that? I would never hurt Zelda, I love her. I don’t- you don’t do that to the one’s you love. The part of Wild’s thoughts that sit at the surface say. It’s the part that sounds like him the most, the part that knows reason and good sense.
But some people do hurt people they love, says another part of Wild thought, the part that sits under the surface and waits. It sounds a lot like him too, maybe more than the first one. A lot of people do, and they probably had these thoughts too. You can’t be sure you’re not one of them. Maybe you have been this whole time.
He isn’t sure how long he stands there, but he knows he can never go back to the knife. Doesn’t want to touch it again. Dinner is whatever could be made without a knife, and when Zelda returns home from her work, he can’t look her in the eye, because what would happen if he does? What if he looks at her and got Those Thoughts again and reaches for a knife? Worse, what if she knows from looking at him that he thinks these things and she knows and she would hate him because she knows him? She chats on about her day and he (a selfish rotten partner) sits there and nods when it feels right. Silence isn’t unusual for him, after all. They go to bed and he’s sure to keep a little bit of space between them, scared to touch her. He doesn’t deserve to touch her.
The next day he takes all the kitchen knives in the house and buries them outside. He has to get rid of them because if the knives are in the house then he might think of using the knives and if he uses a knife and he might think about stabbing a person and if he thinks about it he might do it and he doesn’t want to stab people (especially Zelda, though stabbing anyone is probably a bad idea) so the knives have to go. In the anemic hours of morning he finds an old shoe box and gathers as many knives as he can inside it, and digs out a hole in the garden. It took all of an hour to do.
It isn’t until he goes back inside and sits alone with himself he realizes this is ridiculous. He knows it was pure madness to worry about your eating utensils when you carry a full short sword and dozens of deadly weapons on your person. By afternoon the cold wind had settled, he sips on tea and tears off chunks of bread and cheese for lunch. His head is clear. His thoughts come slower, more rational. There is no reason to do what he did, he clearly would never hurt Zelda and as the chosen hero, he’s all but cosmically ordained to be a good person. Whatever this is or was, he needs to get past it. So, when the sun is still high and the air outside warm and gentle, he digs up the knives and brings them inside. He spends a few hours washing and polishing them like little treasures, perhaps to ask their forgiveness for being so cruel earlier.
That was the first incident, or at least the first one Wild can remember. Maybe his past self had these thoughts, though probably not. It would have come up by now if he was prone to fits like this in the past. Regardless, this was the first time Wild has Those Thoughts and he decides it would be the last. As usual, the world, the gods, and his own body don’t really care about what Wild wants.
Two months later he reunites with the other heroes. It is a joyous occasion. He hasn’t seen them in three years, and they were looking for him for a week. Time (the abstract concept) shenanigans explain the gap between them. Time (, Hero Of ) pulls him into a hug. He nearly forgot what it was like to be surrounded by people who are basically his brothers. Things aren’t exactly normal but it isn’t awkward or overwrought and he’s glad for that. Lately he hasn’t had much emotional bandwidth and everything makes him tired. He isn’t getting a whole lot of sleep.
He didn’t sleep a lot before, on his adventures against calamities and ancient evils and hidden worlds, but it wasn’t hard. It’s six months since he got Zelda back, things have been peaceful, and yet sleeping is harder than ever. He can’t make his brain stop thinking. Whatever peace is supposed to come to him when he laid down and closed his eyes simply did not exist. Instead, it’s a full dressing down of his whole day and every mistake he ever made, and then Those Thoughts get stronger and he has to think of something to overpower them. It’s not always easy.
The past few months have been like running through the woods in pitch black night. He’s going in circles and treading the same path so often he knows how it feels to go down it. But he can’t stop going down that path. He can’t find any way out of it no matter what he tries.
At first, he had thought of sword play and the different forms and stances, something he lives and breathes. It was okay at first. When he slept next to Zelda and when Those Thoughts came he thought of the sword that seals the darkness. Then the thought of that turned into the thought of killing a monster, then the thought of killing a monster with a butcher’s knife, then killing Zel- no. No he couldn’t think the final thought either. No swords. So he tried planning meals before bed, something he enjoyed and that Zelda liked (If he did this then she would never know about Those Thought, he told himself). He sat at the table in their loft and told her he wasn’t tired. She would sleep and he would write down recipes late at night. It would go on for hours. Then he ran out of recipes that required no use of knives and thinking about chopping carrots and cutting meat? One guess where that lead too. So far, he has managed to go to bed by thinking of Wolfie, or rather, Twilight. His companion was a source of comfort, even far apart from him.
So. Current day, middle of summer and he is back with his friends, including Twilight. The group had gone to his home near Hateno, and his annoying, deeply missed friends took over like beloved parasites. He especially missed Twilight, who had not left his side since they reunited. They might be the same age now but Twi was forever the big brother, and more importantly he wanted to hear all about Wild’s new adventure. Their relationship was just like that; one part concern for your well being, and one part comparing the cool parts of their near death experiences.
The two of them occupy the kitchen while the others patter around town or go out back to pet the horses. Wild makes a risotto, Twilight volunteers to help chop the meat, which Wild will never say no too. It’s almost enough to make you think things haven’t changed. Twilight hadn’t changed much, which was to be expected. Wild feels like a different person. He has gotten a little taller, and is only a few inches shorter than Twilight now. He keeps his hair a bit shorter, but nicer and free. He has less energy, and he feels more stiff. Aging. It’s nice that he could talk to someone about how different it all is.
“So do you think we’ll be visiting these… underground depths?” Twilight says as he does his work. “They sound terrifying, I’m sure the captain and the traveler can’t wait to dive in.”
“They wouldn’t survive the fall if they did.” Wild replies, careful to keep his eyes on his own station and not Twilight’s. “But I would avoid them if possible. Nothing but monsters and gloom down there as far as the eyes can see.”
“Gloom?”
“Yeah its this weird substance caused by the great upheaval.” He begins, and the pot of rice hisses and bubbles with each word, “It started appearing right before. We thought it was malice but this stuff is different. It weakens everything about you. If you touch it even clothed it saps your life away and makes you too ill to fight.”
“Nasty stuff.” Twilight murmurs, “Best to keep to the land and avoid it then.”
“Oh, its still up here.” Wild says as he turns the heat low and places a pot lid on the it. “It seeps up into pools, like rain in reverse. Sometimes its even a little alive.”
“In what way?” Twilight has that nervous smile of his. Is that Wilds fault?
“Well, I’ve run into this monster. Its different than the others. It’s made of gloom and looks like a bunch of hands with eyes in the center.” He leans against the counter, arms crossed. Cold fills his belly. “They turn the sky red when they appear. And they almost scream despite having no mouth. The only thing they want is to catch you, grab you, and pull you apart.”
“Did they try to do that to you?”
Wild nods slowly. The first time he saw the Gloom Hands it had been not long after Zelda disappeared, and he was just outside the twin peaks. If it hadn’t been in the middle of the day he would have thought a blood moon had risen, with the red sky overhead. They had risen from pools of gloom, writhing and screaming and bloodthirsty. He ran, because he had no idea what was happening. Two had grabbed his right leg and dragged him, while a third had clawed at his chest. In a panic he threw a fire fruit at them. As it turns out, his inclination towards setting things on fire worked. He had wandered around, weak and barely able to heal himself for hours.
They always seem to appear wherever you go. What if they follow you?, says the thought that sits below the surface. They could find you and all your friends and tear them apart. It could tear Twilight apart. It would all be because of you. You shouldn’t have talked about it, now it could happen!
He takes a deep breath and glances at Twilight, who is fine by all accounts. There’s no danger, Hateno is a safe village and monsters rarely attack. They’re all fine, he tells himself.
It doesn’t stop the images in his mind coming unbidden. The Gloom Hands turning the sky blood red and tearing his friends limb from limb. The way their bodies would fall apart because they couldn’t heal as the claws tore through them. Twilight dying like he almost had years ago from a wound that would not close. They would blame him, they would know he brought the gloom and opened up all the wounds and killed them.
His own scars feel all too noticeable on his body. Could the Gloom have seeped into him during his quest? Did they live under his scars and that was how they knew how to find him so often? There’s something in him like venom, and it’s waiting to come out and poison everything.
The gloom is in you, it’s always been you, and you might be waiting until you can skin your wolf friend alive.
He can’t. He would never. No matter what he has to keep this thing inside his head and inside his veins a secret. He leaves without telling Twilight and goes to the loft where he sleeps and looks for a mirror Zelda bought. It’s on her dresser and in a snap he has it in his hand pulls up his shirt. He looks for signs of Gloom under the surface of his skin, is it under his scars, are his bruises too red or too purple. He picks and pokes at the scar tissue and feels nothing but that still doesn't feel like enough. So he digs his nails into it until there are marks on his skin, tempting the gloom to pop out. Nothing happens, just a little bit of pain but he’s had so much worse than poking at his own scars.
“Wild?” Twilight calls after him. He stands halfway up the stairs to the bedroom, and looks at Wild with concern. He sets the mirror down and pulls down his shirt, and feels like more of a freak than usual.
Don’t say anything. You’ll ruin it. What if the gloom is still in you?
He thinks of opening his mouth to try to explain and tell Twilight what whispers fill his head, but only gloom comes out. What if the gloom poured out of his mouth like smoke only thicker and meaner and one of Ganon’s eyes peers out from his mouth and it crawls out of him (just like he wants to crawl out of his own skin sometimes) and it hurts Twilight?
“Wild is everything okay?”
A quiet little nod is all he can offer. He doesn’t want to speak, or even open his mouth. If he keeps talking something bad will happen. He holds his hands in clear view so Twilight can see him sign, and tells him
‘Feeling a little ill. Throat hurts.’
Twilight doesn’t buy it. Wild can see that clear on his face. But he doesn’t push it and he doesn’t ask questions. Their eyes meet and Twilight offers a painfully understanding smile.
“I’ll finish up dinner, you get some rest.”
He goes back down the stairs and Wild sits on the bed and watches him go. The loft feels so far away from everyone else and yet he can hear the others coming in. He can hear them worry for him, and it makes the dark path in his mind spiral deeper downward.
They care about you so much and you think about hurting them. You’re a threat to them.
He doesn’t talk to anyone for the night. The next day he thinks it through with more food in his belly and sleep in his eyes and realizes how distinctly not normal he is. There’s no way monsters would spawn out of thin air because he talked about it. And they certainly do not literally live in his body. It’s all his imagination run amok and he needs to control it, to stop acting like a crazy person. Except the fear is real. That really does live under his skin, and maybe he should get used to being afraid and crazy.
They leave his world not long after that incident, and for a while things are normal. Wild’s life wasn’t constant fear and terror and weird behavior, there are moments of joy and levity where he feels like himself. He can laugh when they sit around a fire telling jokes, he and Hyrule still go off map and get into the bets kind of trouble. In a fight, he’s still their best archer and nothing beats the rush of fighting by Twilight’s side. He can still pretend he’s the same as he ever was and nothing is wrong with him. But the dark woods in his mind never leave, and he feels like he’s running through it more and more.
Hiding it is all he knows how to do. He thinks of chopping off Legend’s fingers one night and avoids him all day, and doesn’t want to cook. When he thinks of hurting Twilight he goes silent and can’t look anyone in the eye. Sometimes when Those Thoughts come to him while they’re walking or hiking he takes to hitting his fist into his thigh, or pulling on his hair lightly. In a few weeks, he’s amassed a list of rules he follows to keep his brain on track, and a set of steps to get the thoughts to settle down. Avoid the things that cause the thoughts is the most important one, but so is avoiding words that might will it into existence, staying silent in case the evil in him spills out, hitting his thigh or pulling at hair if he absolutely can’t get away. He repeats again and again in his head how he would never want to hurt them, almost begging the Goddess herself to listen and tell him its true. It’s not normal, he hides and lies and sneaks away to do things he knows are fucking insane. But being insane is better than the thing inside him telling him he wants to hurt people being right. There’s a night when it all comes crashing down.
The stars over Ordon at night had a queen’s grip of the night sky, no trace of it seemed bare. He has the first watch of the night and he finds looking up more interesting than looking out, and easier than looking in. He tries to look for the constellations that Zelda would point out on long nights on the road when neither of them felt safe enough to sleep. More and more that feeling has become default. He shuffles about the camp, silently and is careful to touch no one. These days, he is a shadow on the wall around camp. A step removed and a step sideways from everyone else, and that’s probably for the best. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself while he slowly disintegrates inside.
They must really hate me, he thinks as he avoids getting to close to Wind, and wanders towards Time. I don’t contribute like I used to. My voice is so riddled with panic I probably sound annoying and hysterical. I asked Warriors if he had seen my ice arrows and he looked at me weird, what if he thinks I’m being too panicky and weak? I’m supposed to be a hero of courage but I’m failing at that, what if the gods made a mistake with me?
The longer this has gone on the more he is sure of it. They all had problems, they all saw dangers on their adventures, but he’s the only one falling apart. Maybe he isn’t cosmically ordained for anything and these evil thoughts are just who he is. Would they hate him if they knew? Chase him away with swords and stones? He crouches against a tree, and pulls himself into a ball, one hand lightly hitting his thigh. He’s further away from everyone except Time, who sleeps on his back and snores softly.
I don’t even have it that bad, I don’t deserve to be acting like this.
Time has been through far more than he has and he’s still strong. Most of them did everything younger than him, and better. None of them are crazy or do the things he does, and he takes that little fact and digs into himself with it at night. Life is supposed to get better when you grow up, that’s why it’s called growing UP. You’re supposed to have figured everything out and overcome it when you’re young and be better. But he faced the trials and went on the journey and all he’s grown is worse. What if this is the version of him he was always going to find at the end of the line, the transformation is complete from child to man and this is what he is. It’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not right, why is he the only one who changed for the worse?
Time rolls in his sleep with a groan and startles him. His face is visible, along with all the scars. Those Thoughts are strong and he thinks of taking out Time’s other eye, just reaching in an pulling it out. He steps a little closer to him and thinks he really is a monster. Time is so kind and good and the best of all of them. All Wild thinks of is hurting him.
Then the eye opens and looks at him, and Wild falls back, startled.
“Wild? Everything okay?” And that breaks him. He doesn’t deserve the concern and the care and he just has to go, put distance between Time and everyone and him and run.
“Wild!”
You do not deserve them. You can’t be trusted with yourself.
Wild runs and runs through the woods at night.
He stops when he comes to a pond with a waterfall feeding into it. It’s pretty and peaceful and feels hidden. He looks at himself in the water and can see the toll its taken on him. With shaking hands he scoops up some water and splashes himself in the face. Pain has settled under his eyes and smolders like a little fire. Something hard fills the back of his throat and sits on his words, squashing them down. He decides that in light of his untrustworthy nature, he needs to watch himself all night. If he rested too long or slept the evil in his thoughts could slip out. He sits at the edge of the water and pulls out a knife, keeps it to his neck in case. He sits there for hours, and watches himself while the stars fade above him.
This is exhausting. The surface part of him thinks, and he feels it and sees it’s truth. I can’t keep doing this. I’m going insane. I feel like I’m dying. What if I’m dying?
Isn’t that what you want anyway?
“Wild?!” Time’s voice startled him away form his position. The oldest hero stands in the clearing with his hands out stretched and his eyes wide, full of fear.
He knows what I wanted to do to him.
“Wild, please put down the knife, please.”
And he does. He throws it in the water and holds up his own hands as if to say ‘I am not a threat, I removed the bad thing.’, but Time does not look less scared.
“I’m sorry. I really- I didn’t want to earlier. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Time says gently, “Is it okay if I come closer?”
Wild can’t imagine why he has to ask but he nods. Time steps forward like he thinks Wild is a ghost, something to step lightly around and be wary of.
“I’m sorry Time.” He whispers, mostly because he doesn't have the energy for much else.
“You don’t have to be sorry for anything, I just want to make sure you’re safe.” He sits close to Wild, but not too close. It’s probably for the best. They sit awkwardly in silence and Wild still keeps an eye on his reflection. Time still looks at him like he doesn’t know what he even is anymore. That makes two of them then.
“Wild, are you okay?” Time says, “I noticed you’ve been off lately. If you have anything that you need to talk about, absolutely anything, you can tell me.”
Wild shakes his head.
“I can’t talk about it Time. Trust me I…” He shakes his head almost lost for words. “I’m not right.”
Time looked at him, not with fear or anger like he expected, but with acceptance. Recognition. He shifts a little closer to Wild and offers him a soft smile, the kind he usually only gives when he doesn’t want them to know he’s afraid.
“I had multiple adventures too. My second in particular changed me in a lot of ways. We always talk about the battles we fight with swords, but not much about the private ones when we come home. Would you like to hear a story about how I was when I went home?”
Wild isn’t sure what he means. But Time is here with him and he feels a little less afraid when he doesn’t have to think about himself and who he is. He gives Time a nod and shifts to make room for him to sit comfortably.
“When I came back from my second journey as a hero I thought I came out unscathed. Had all my limbs and no major breaks. I went back to Hyrule and stayed with Malon, and everything was normal. Except for me. I walked around with all this anger in me and I didn’t know what to do with it. I tried to keep it down but eventually it just became another weapon to use. I started fights over nothing. I yelled at people because they cared about me to much. I broke things because… I don’t even remember why. And I knew I was being horrible to people who did nothing to me but it felt like that was all I could do. And I used that anger on myself.”
Time’s voice is soft, even serene, as he explains. Wild reaches for his hand, it feels like the thing to do when someone is brave enough to show you their scars. Time accepts it and offers him a little squeeze in return. There is something that still burns with pain at the edges but he never looses grip of keeping it there.
“Did Malon help take the anger a way?”
Time snorts and shakes his head.
“By the three, no. She was just a kid herself. I got my ass thrown out because I- I took that anger out on her too. Yelled at her when she didn’t deserve it, said things I knew would hurt her, didn’t talk to her because of the guilt. She forgave me when I got myself help and apologized, but I needed to give her space. I spent years looking for trouble because that was all I felt good for. I hated myself for a while. I finally found my lowest point at a festival. A bard playing an Ocarina played a song that I had heard across both quest and I started to shake. It was years later but I felt ten years old again, and the moon was crashing down on me. I ran to an ally and threw up on the street, sat there and cried for hours. I think that woke me up. The Queen, Zelda, she said I had the soldier’s sickness. That the battle wasn’t done with me yet, and that made me feel worse because I was so tired of fighting.”
It wasn’t how Wild felt, or how he would describe his behavior, but something about what Time says seeps into his skin. He hurt for no reason too, even if their hurts were different. And somehow that made him feel less horrible about himself. Time changed for the worse once, maybe Wild can change again.
“How did you make it go away?”
The smile that hides fear returned as Time spoke.
“It’s still there. I still have days where I feel like I swallowed a storm. But I learned how to seek help, how to let others help me. I manage it.”
“What if it can’t be managed?” Wild whispers to himself, “What if it’s not like soldier’s sickness? What if I really am going insane?”
Time reaches out a hand tentatively, and Wild lets him settle on his shoulder. It’s warm and heavy and Wild realizes one of his rules was not touching others. He hasn’t felt another person’s skin in weeks, and only now does he feel real and solid.
“I ran from you because I- I think about hurting you. And Twilight. And Zelda. Everyone. There’s something bad in me and no matter what I do I can’t get it out. But I don’t want to hurt people Time, I don’t, but I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like I can’t trust myself.” His voice breaks and the back of his throat burns. The edges of cracks are winding their way through him, like glass before the shatter. He blinks and looks to Time as his eyes sting. “And I hate all of it, I don’t know what is wrong with me but it’s eating me alive. I don’t know what to do.”
Time pulls him into his chest. It’s the kind of hug you give someone when you ask them not to leave. Wild wraps his arms around Time, and lets his voice crack and break with the rest of him. He cries, for all the nights and days he will never get back, stolen by the thing in his head. For the people he didn’t hug enough, for the times he made himself miserable for no reason, for the parts of himself he cut off because he thought they might rot. He thought it was better to be skim through the shallowest part of life than feel the depth of it and drown for so long. So long.
“Wild, I want you to listen to me.” Time says, “You are not your worst thoughts.”
“But what if they become more than thoughts?”
“Have you ever actually acted on them?” Time asks so softly, Wild doesn’t know what to say at first. Like it’s easy to ask someone if they have hurt people.
“No.”
“Then I have nothing to fear of you, and you have done nothing wrong.” He pulls Wild up to look him in the eye. “I don’t know what’s hurting you, but I know what it is like to think you’re crazy. And I know how painful it is to keep it all to yourself. I can’t fix it, but I will tell you we all care about you more than you can ever know, and none of us want you to hurt. If you let us, we can help you.”
Wild doesn’t say anything. He just rests his forehead against Time’s shoulders and lets someone hold him for a long while. Time holds him close and rubs soothing circles into his back, and lets the peace wash over him. For months he tore his mind apart with this secret, convinced that if people knew him, really, really knew him, they would hate him. For the first time in months he has proof Those Thoughts are wrong.
He does know how it will end, or rather, how it won’t ever really end. In the weeks and months that follow, Wild feels the fear and the disgust with himself is as present as ever. He still gets lost on dark winding roads in his mind, riddled with bramble and thorns. But he doesn’t have to walk it alone. He talks to Time when he feels too trapped in his own head. He takes Twilight’s had when walking that road feels exhausting and he just needs to feel someone to be anchored. Zelda teaches him a new ritual where when he has a bad thought, he writes down the good things about himself. It’s little things that build up and paint a picture of a whole person, not a broken one. Slowly, he’s starting to see himself in that picture.