Chapter Text
Twilight stands in front of the lightless swirling portal, waiting, the feeling of wrongness radiating out from his stomach into his appendages.
Thirty seconds.
A minute.
Two minutes.
There’s only one thing he can think to do as the typical thin lines of light start to stretch from the edges of the portal. He feels someone barely miss his arm as he springs forward.
Crack.
He slams into a surface as cool and solid as marble, miraculously keeping his feet as he bounces backward.
He ignores the flaring pain to watch bright cracks spiderweb out from the fresh indent where his body collides with the unyielding darkness.
The world stops as the new cracks merge with the veins of light reaching from the portal’s borders. The tears bleed larger, silently pulsing brighter and brighter until with a flash the surface shatters. Shards of darkness hang in the air for a heartbeat before a vortex forming in the center of the former gateway swallows the shards and collapses in on itself.
Not again.
Reality rushes into existence all at once. The shouting, the pain, the pounding of his heart, his lungs screaming for air, the scent of blood overwhelming every other sense as he inhales.
Blood, blood, blood. It’s ok, it’s my blood. It’s my blood.
All he can do is stare at the memory of the doorway that Wild should have walked through. The doorway Wild didn’t walk through.
Someone’s shaking his shoulders, someone else is screaming. None of these things matter.
Why didn’t Wild come through?
Did the portal reject him just as it had rejected Twilight’s own return attempt? Did he get distracted by something as they were walking through and didn’t follow in time? Was he attacked? Was he — No.
Someone grabs his face and resets his nose.
Fueled by instinct alone he shoves them away as he releases a scream he can’t contain.
Warriors curses under his breath as he stumbles backward. He holds up his hands in a mollifying gesture.
“Trust me, you’ll want it to heal straight.”
“Wild’s missing and that’s what you’re worried about?” Twilight growls.
“I don’t know but our best shot at finding him is going to be your pretty little nose, so maybe sit down and take a swig of a health potion while we try to figure out our next steps.” The Captain snaps back, the sudden vitriol in his tone incongruous with his smile.
It’s almost painful that Warriors is right, but Twilight pushes down the impulse to ignore him, swiping the potion Legend offers him.
Twilight fumbles with the cork for an instant before managing to rip it from the glass. He can barely taste the familiar bitterness as he downs a quarter of the bottle.
“Did Twilight just break the portal?” Four asks, eyes violet in the golden light.
“We can figure that out later, right now the focus is on finding Wild,” Time thankfully shuts down that line of questioning.
“Who was next to Wild when we came through the portal?” asks the Captain.
“I was in front of him…” offers Hyrule, “And, um, I don’t think there was anyone behind us.” Hyrule flicks his eyes up to meet Twilight’s for a moment and then nervously looks towards Legend just as quickly.
“So he could still be stuck there…” Legend finishes for him.
“Or he could have been attacked by something,” Wind conjects.
“In which case, he should have followed us through the portal so we could handle the threat as a team,” Warriors counters.
“It’s also possible that the portal dropped him in a different location physically, or temporally.” Four jumps back into the conversation
“You’re saying he could be around here, somewhere?” Twilight asks, voice catching in his throat.
“Or another era, or his own time, but yeah, here is a possibility.”
“The best path forward would be to split into search parties.” Warriors says.
Time nods his approval at Warriors. “Twilight, you’re with me.”
---
The throbbing sensation from the middle of his face fades to a dull ache as Twilight follows Time through the undergrowth and sips at the healing potion. He focuses on the acidic taste of the potion, rather than the scent of dried blood clinging to his clothes.
It’s his own blood. It’s not Wild’s blood. Wild’s a hero, a survivor, he’ll pick a direction and start walking. He’s a force of nature with a bow, and a force of the divine with a sword-
Breathe.
Twilight inhales. He smells blood.
He forces himself to exhale through gritted teeth.
Wild is probably fine.
But Wild could be alone in some unfamiliar Hyrule, and Twilight’s well acquainted with what kind of trouble that kid finds when he’s off on his own.
Breathe.
He tries to ignore the smell, tries to pick out hints of anything else, the mud, the decaying leaves, the bitterness of the potion. He’s somewhat successful.
How many monsters could Wild take down on his own? Did he have any potions on his person when they got separated? Any fairies? Wild can make his own elixirs, but what would happen if he drank an elixir cooked with guts from a tainted monster?
Breathe.
Twilight looks up as something in the back of his mind registers that he no longer can hear Time’s soft footfalls.
“Go,” Time says, still facing towards the fading light.
They both pause, letting the weight of that statement settle.
“I know it's what you want, you should go. You’re faster in your other form,” Time continues.
The grief and rage and unfairness of it all chooses that moment to grab Twilight by the throat. The words he was going to say vanish, and Twilight finds he has no desire to go searching for them.
So he just lets the silence stretch between them.
“You are going to find him,” Time reaches up to squeeze Twilight’s shoulder. “If it’s in this time, or the next, or a thousand years from now, you are going to find your cub.”
I have to.
In response, Twilight grabs the chain around his neck and slides his hand down until he feels the bite of the twili magic. He lets it consume him and emerges from it once more, finally free from the scent of blood. He nods at Time before running into the darkness
---
“When I said go look for your cub, that wasn’t a license to not check in for three days. Three days , Twilight.”
Twilight continues scrubbing the dirt off his boots. Mud, sand, clay, soil. Maybe he could bring himself to care if Wild wasn’t still missing. If he wasn’t so tired.
“74 hours, what possessed you to not come back for 74 hours?”
Muscles he was previously unaware of light up in a flare of pain with every stroke of the leather. He could swear he could still feel the phantom ache of muscles he didn’t even have while human. He ran and he ran and he ran and he ran. All to find nothing. And to return to find that everyone else had found nothing as well.
“I thought I wouldn’t have to explain something like this to you. That I wouldn’t have to specify that the expectation was still that we rendezvous at the same time, in the same place, with the rest of the group.”
Twilight spared a quick glance at the Captain. He was still sitting across the fire, silently staring daggers into him. Watching him endure Time’s public tirade. Could Warriors tell that Twilight didn’t give a lick what about anything Time had to say at the moment?
Besides the Captain and his quiet rage, Sky just looked relieved that he was back. Everyone else was just trying to pretend that Twilight wasn’t being verbally eviscerated. Well, everyone except Legend. Legend’s gray eyes were unguarded for once, staring straight through him with pain and understanding.
Twilight's hands began to tremble as he tried to keep his scrubbing even.
Twilight flinched back as Time crouched down to his level and softly put his hands on Twilight’s shoulders.
“Pup, look at me,” Time said bringing his volume level down from a nine to a two. Twilight squeezed his eyes shut to force back the tears unwillingly forming and then looked up to meet Time’s gaze.
The concern riven in Time’s face finally stirred up an ounce of guilt in Twilight.
Time sighed in defeat and stood up.
“Get some sleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
And he was sorry, but he had no intentions of stopping.
---
“The Old Man won’t say anything to you for some reason, so I will,” Warriors half marches, half drags him away from the fire after Time leaves to wash the night’s dishes in the nearby river. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“And what is it, exactly, that you think I’m doing?” Warriors stumbles as Twilight plants his feet in the ground and refuses to let himself be dragged any further.
“Look me in the eye and tell me that come Hyrule’s watch, you weren’t going to sneak off. Again.”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Twilight sneers.
“Did you even notice that Four saved your life today?”
What?
“That Wizrobe you were fighting maneuvered you so that you had your back to the main fight. A Lizalfos was within a yard of skewering you before Four decapitated it. Did you even notice?”
“No,” Twilight admits glancing towards the smithy.
Maybe I should have let him drag me a bit further.
“That’s what I thought,” Warriors retorts.
Twilight can feel a headache starting to develop - or maybe he just feels like he should be developing a headache. Hard to tell.
“You’re sleep-deprived. You’re sloppy. And you’re going to get yourself or someone else injured or killed. That’s my problem because you are a part of a team. You may have forgotten that but the rest of us haven’t.”
Head high, back straight, scarf flowing with an annoying degree of majesticness after a day of trekking and fighting, Warriors stands there like he’s expecting some sort of apology.
“I’m not the one who’s forgotten we’re a part of a team,” Twilight growls.
“That’s not-”
“No, teams don’t leave each other behind.”
“You need to face the facts, he’s gone.”
“He’s not gone.”
“Ok, then where is he?” Warriors says in a sickly sweet tone Twilight’s seen him use on petty lords subtly infecting his voice.
“I don’t know but I’ll find him, even if the rest of you won’t help me!” Twilight realizes he was shouting after noticing everyone else not even pretending not to stare anymore.
“Twilight-”, Warriors grabs his arm.
“Take your hands off of me.”
“Ok. Ok.” Warriors says, lowering his volume substantially. Warriors releases him, taking a step back and brushing a hand through his hair to the back of his head.
“Twilight, I know this hard, I do. But we have to keep our priorities straight. And you need to know when to stop looking.”
“Oh, I know when I’ll stop looking, When I’ve found him.”
---
Twilight’s not sure he could outrun Hyrule on a good day. And today has not been a good day. He’s been avoiding most fights but he got surprised by some sort of ReDead.
“Twilight, you’re bleeding, just let me help you,” Hyrule shouts, from closer behind than Twilight would have hoped.
And Twilight’s not quite sure why exactly he started running from Hyrule other than the fact that Hyrule started sprinting towards him after recovering from his portal nausea and Twilight bolted on instinct.
Twilight’s contemplating whether he should stop running or not when a root catches his foot and he goes sprawling forward. Before he can manage to spit out the dirt in his mouth, Hyrule’s on top of him, grabbing his injured leg.
“Gotcha!”
The physical pain recedes suddenly as Hyrule casts a familiar healing spell.
“Time, I caught him!” Hyrule shouts into the forest, releasing Twilight’s newly healed leg
The absolute tumbleweed of a kid.
Suddenly remembering why he previously ran, Twilight posts his hands and feet under him and bucks his hips to throw Rulie off. He climbs to his feet but as he moves to start running, Hyrule throws himself at Twilight. Twilight barely remains standing but once he regains his balance, Hyrule has wrapped himself around one of Twilight’s legs. Noticeably the previously uninjured one. No stranger to this maneuver, Twilight keeps walking, dragging Hyrule with him.
But Hyrule’s strategy has the desired effect and the lecture Twilight’s been trying to avoid catches up with him.
“You can let him go now, Hyrule,” Time has the audacity to chuckle as he approaches.
This feels like an ambush.
Hyrule reluctantly unwraps his arms and legs from around Twilight’s limb.
“I miss you, please stay,” Hyrule whispers, sadly staring up at him with those big brown puppy dog eyes and ears drooping downwards.
That note plucks a string somewhere in Twilight's heart. He offers a hand to Hyrule to help him up.
“I can’t… you know I can’t yet.”
Hyrule’s expression transforms from sadness to genuine hurt. He ignores Twilight’s outstretched hand, gets up without looking at him, and walks back towards the others without another word.
Twilight looks up from the ground towards Time.
“I- I forgot to thank him, can you pass that message along for me?”
“The healing you ran from?” Time asks.
Twilight gives a small nod.
“You should do that yourself.”
“Legend will bite my head off if I go back over there.”
“Doesn’t make what I said any less true.”
Twilight sighs and attempts to will the gathering tension out of his muscles.
“I’ll be brief,” Time continued. “We need to have longer conversation at some point, but it seems like we’re in my Hyrule. From her letters, Malon’s concerned about you.”
“I’ll tr-”
“The rest of us need to check something near Kakariko, so I would appreciate it if you could stop in, tell her we’re here, and let her know that we’ll be by in a couple of days.”
“What’s in Kakariko, if there’s a lead to where…” Twilight swallows the rest of his words as Time lifts his chin slightly, lone eye staring down at him.
“ Rancher, all I’m asking you is to stop by the Lon Lon and talk to Malon. Can you just do this without arguing for once ? If not for my sake, then for Malon’s.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you after the next portal,” Time says turning, massive suit of metallic armor eerily silent as always.
“And Pup, stay safe.”
---
“I thought that was you skulking up here. Where are the others?” Malon asks leaning against the wooden railing of her porch.
“They’re taking a look at something out in Kakariko,” Twilight responds.
“And you came out here alone because…”
Despite her teasing tone, Malon’s eyes and mouth tug downward. Twilight can’t help but notice the pitchfork leaning casually on the wall beside her.
“Time, asked me to stop by.”
“Ah, I see,” Malon says, corners of her mouth tugging downward.
“Have you had any trouble around here lately?” Twilight asks, noticing the pitchfork leaning casually on the wall beside her.
“Nothing in particular, but why dontcha come inside and I’ll make you some breakfast.”
And well, he wants to. The longing for company eats at him, along with the guilt of being rude. Not to mention his stomach, protesting the recent neglect it’s received. But he has to stay focused.
“I wish I could, but I’ve got to keep looking for Wild.”
“Isn’t Wild a legendary hero or something?” Twilight is walking into a trap, he can sense it but he can’t fight through the exhaustion well enough to find the words he needs to escape it.
“Is Wild really going to find a big enough hornet's nest to poke in the next two hours that he’ll need you to save him?” Malon continues.
“It’s Wild .”
“Regardless he’ll just have to find his own way out of any messes he finds himself in. You have gotten skinnier since I last saw you. Have you been eating?”
“Yes.” Twilight states without mumbling, intentionally maintaining eye contact.
“Twilight, you’re rotten at lying, I suggest you don’t make any further attempts.”
He gives in to the urge to look away, the blood rising to his cheeks betraying him.
Knowing she’s won this round, Malon holds open the door for him.
“Sorry.” He mutters as he follows her inside.
---
As they prepare breakfast, the knots in Twilight’s stomach grow larger. Malon asks about Ordon primarily: his home, his adoptive family, and Epona, but pointedly avoids bringing up the other Links. She laughs up a storm but sends glances of concern his way when she thinks he isn’t looking.
The weight of unasked questions builds upon his shoulders. Twilight can tell this is all leading toward some sort of intervention and fortunately or unfortunately eggs cook quickly.
When they finally sit down, Malon lets him retreat to silence as they both eat.
Usually, when he’s this nervous he loses his appetite and ends up pushing whatever he’s supposed to be eating around his plate but Malon’s omelets are a delicacy compared to Warrior’s hardtack and the occasional rabbit eaten raw. So instead, he practically inhales them.
“Twilight, honey, you’ve been wound tighter than an eight-day clock.” Malon says, finally breaking the silence. “But I’m glad you can still eat.”
“I’m sorry.” Twilight freezes mid-mouthful to mutter.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Malon laughs, before returning to a touch of seriousness. “I’ve just heard from my husband’s letters that you’ve been traveling alone. He’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine, I promise.”
“I don’t doubt you’re very capable,” Malon sighs. Worry riven into her features. “But from what I’ve heard from Time, the others only see you after you all get dropped out of a portal. And then you run off alone… ”
“Our priorities haven’t lined up.”
“Hon, are you sure all y’all’s goals are that different?”
“They’ve written Wild off!”
Twilight stops when he realizes he’s now standing and shouting, leaning over the table. He releases the wood and sinks back into his seat. Malon is still seated across the table patient and unshaken.
Twilight fixes his eyes on the remains of his omelet and takes a deep breath before continuing.
“They're just so focused on finding the purpose of this endless, baffling quest. Finding clues, killing monsters - they don’t even have anything to show for it. No-one’s any closer to figuring this out than they were a month ago.
I just… I want to find Wild…
I can’t stop until I find Wild”
“You know, in some ways, you’re just like my Link,” Malon says, lines of concern fading into a hint of a smile.
“Yeah, well, not similar enough that he’ll help me look for Wild”, Twilight says instantly regretting the touch of bitterness he let creep into his voice.
“Has he said anything to stop you?”
“Well, no,” Twilight begrudgingly admits.
“I thought not”, Malon hums. “There’s something I want to show you.
Unless you want another omelet first,” Malon says as gets up and walks towards the kitchen.
“Please.”
---
Twilight follows Malon into the midmorning summer breeze that playfully ruffles his hair. Malon’s carrying a pitcher full of sugar water that he watched her mix as he scarfs down his third round of seconds. Malon turns away from the smell of hay and manure and starts walking towards the stream that marks the border between ranch and forest.
“Once, when I was a child, I met a fairy boy.”
“Ain’t that just your pet name for Time?” Twilight asks.
“Oh, hush now, I’m trying to tell a story and you know it.”
She let the sound of crunching dirt and the rustling grass stretch between them for a moment.
“Though Hylian, he was raised by the Kokiri, and every Koriri has a fairy companion.
But the Hylian child did not, until the day came to send him beyond the borders of the Kokiri forest.
His fairy companion was steadfast throughout his entire adventure, staying with him through tasks serious and trivial alike.
She waited as-” Malon stops suddenly. “Well, I should leave Link some stories to tell.
Look at you though, eager-eyes. You're hungry for all of his secrets.” She playfully elbows him.
He felt the rush of blood towards his cheeks at her teasing. “I, well… I mean. He’s the Hero of Time and-”
“Anyways, trials, tribulations, so on and so forth. The fairy boy and his fairy. Until one day it was all over and she left.”
“What do you mean she left?” Twilight asked, the urgency in his tone even surprising himself.
“Just one day she was gone. No warning, no explanations, nothing.
The only one who was with him throughout everything he went through. Gone.”
They step into the shade of the trees utilizing some well-placed stepping stones to cross the stream.
“The now fairyless boy searched far and wide for his missing friend. Stumbling into a fair bit of trouble along the way. But for all his traveling, he never found her.”
Twilight stops in his tracks and stares at her as she keeps walking towards a stone basin. She circles to the opposite side of it and turns to face him.
“Until, one day, he stopped his adventuring and came home.”
She adds the water in the pitcher to the puddle in the almost shrine-like basin and beckons him closer.
“He stopped looking?” Twilight’s voice cracks as he whispers
“No, I want you to close your eyes and listen.”
They wait with the sound of the water finding its way through the rocks of the streambed, with the sound of the wind pushing its way through the canopy above, with the sound of their own breathing; Malon’s steady, Twilight’s uneven. They wait through their quiet eternity until Twilight hears it.
The approach of soft chimes. Twilight keeps his eyes squeezed shut and focuses on filling his lungs, and letting them fall.
When he’s ready, he opens his eyes to see a dozen tiny balls of light.
Fairies at the lip of the pool, clinging to Malon’s hair, floating placidly through the air around them
“He never stopped looking,”
Twilight looks down to see crooked letters spelling NAVI inscribed into the basin.
“And I don’t think he expects or wants you to either.”
Malon’s voice is gentle and soft, but as she looks into Twilight’s soul, her eyes are determined and set.
“But those boys need you, my husband needs you. So you need to find a way to do both.”