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Link kicked up his feet in Riju’s bedroom and looked over at her where she was reading through her most recent favourite book on a large datapad, one where the pages could change color according to the mood of the scene. The two of them were taking turns reading on their own devices until one or the other burst out laughing, then swapping. It was light and easy fun, a sign of their success: peace had returned.
Riju could be nothing but a teenager again, and Link reveled in it.
Sometimes he felt like he was just a normal teenager here in the Gerudo capital too. He even got stern but fond looks from his favorite fruit stands when he asked for something they deemed inappropriate for his age, made all the funnier by the fact that he barely had an idea of what counted or not. Sometimes he’d ask for the same thing from multiple people, just to see if their reactions matched. He liked their clothes (colorful and light), their technology (cutting-edge even for this era), and their security systems (extremely tight and under the control of people he had grown to trust.)
Buliara entered the breezy room with a brief knock and an absent ‘come in’ from Riju. Link stopped reading and put the datapad down, looking up at her expectantly. It was probably another visitor; perhaps even Zelda had returned from her survey work and wanted him.
It did not turn out to be either.
“I was reviewing some old footage,” Buliara said, and she punched in a code on the wall that turned all the camera lights in the room off. One of the gauzy curtains on the wall pulled back so a larger screen could flicker on, at a scale Riju could more easily see. “And I should speak to you both about this, actually. Link, come here.”
Link kicked his feet off the wall and rose to go stand by the older Gerudo woman, pleased he seemed to have finally gained some height. Zelda hadn’t been sure if he was done growing or not. It was nice to be here as long as they had, so long it felt like home. He wished it could last, but Zelda would want to move on eventually even if they’d been here almost a year.
“I know Riju is aware of what Deities are capable of and that you remember little,” Buliara said, in her characteristically blunt way. “Much of the knowledge from the time you were born is lost. However, there are some of the more… rare traits we have evidence of in the Kingdom Deity. I wasn’t sure if it was just him until I reviewed some of the images we had of you before.”
“Of me?” Link startled.
Buliara pulled up photos on the large screen. The images had a strange shimmer, so he knew that the screen would appear to be black if he moved to look at it from a different angle—more evidence of the comforting Gerudo security, but this screen didn’t normally have that on for Riju’s sake: looking at something from an exact angle was not easy for her. It only turned on if Buliara was that concerned.
Why were photos of him frightening her so much?
The first image looked familiar: it was exactly how he was used to seeing himself in old media and from the first two years in the present, slender and pale. It was from when he’d first met Riju and found himself nearly the same height as a twelve year old girl. They were a slightly odd pair in the candid, dark and light, with Riju’s marks muddied by facepaint and his own invisible on his skin if you didn’t know what the strange shimmer was.
Buliara switched the image to a more recent one and Link’s throat caught.
The difference was much more than he’d expected. He knew about the height – they were the same height now, him and Riju, between her growth spurt and his own. Riju looked like herself, and he liked how he looked too: taller, a body more filled out than he’d been before and fitting the Gerudo clothes he’d taken to wearing well. He wasn’t fully sure what Buliara was showing him: he’d gotten older and darker in the sun, which was about what he’d expected.
But Riju inhaled sharply too. “Your markings,” she said.
Link looked again.
It hadn’t really crossed his mind to notice them, he supposed. He was used to looking in the mirror and seeing the pale ice-blue lines. They were all over his face, and trailed down his shoulders and onto his stomach, although they ended there unlike the images he’d seen of the Kingdom Deity, who had blue on his hands too at minimum. He reached up, slowly enough Buliara could stop him and gestured at the screen to send them back to the previous image.
It was a lot harder to see them before, he noticed, and that was what finally made his stomach fall.
Buliara would care about that. Buliara had cared about Riju not being taken from them by the Kingdom her whole life. She wouldn’t want him to…
“I can do better saying out of the sun,” Link said, but she just sighed.
“You’re not getting darker from just that,” Buliara said. She pulled up another image to let him see himself, next to Zelda: see that he’d started getting even darker than her, despite her long hours studying in the sun. There were other ways the darkness looked different too, although he couldn’t quite pin it down: something in the gradient of colour on his bare arms vs hers. Link stared up at Buliara’s face, confused.
“Forgive me,” Buliara sighed. “This was hard to track down the sources on, because there are so few images of the Kingdom Deity before he was part of the Kingdom itself. He was known very briefly before he vanished for nearly ten years and reappeared as you know him now. I wasn’t sure if it was just something he could do or not until I checked.”
She brought up yet another image, this one a composite, and Link stared at the two images next to each other. The one on the left looked initially like a child versus a grown adult right up until Link processed the tail and strange shape to the body: the smaller Kingdom Deity had adult proportions on a delicate frame, smaller than Riju had been two years ago. The current one – the one Link had had introduced to him as the only known Deity in the Kingdom now – was a towering man of six foot, and obviously human where the other was not.
But also obviously the same Deity: every mark on his skin matched.
The very visible red and blue marks on his pale skin.
Link swallowed and pressed a hand to his own cheek. He and Zelda had learned of the Kingdom Deity very early on, after their emergency landing and subsequent… adventure. Someone contacted them using their old ship’s communications array, a woman who had introduced herself as the Director and filled them in about the hundred-year hiatus they'd unwittingly taken. She'd advised both of them to go into hiding, for different reasons.
For Link himself, the reason had been the bulk of the Director’s explanation of the Kingdom Deity: the last known living Deity (and didn't that make him wince in pain), now a tool that the Kingdom used for good or ill, with little input from the Deity himself. Deities had become a thing of myth. Giving the Kingdom a second one, even a half-Deity like him, would hurt everyone.
He hadn’t really been sure the Director was right versus using them herself until he met Buliara and Riju. Riju, who constantly covered up her own markings and hid her eyes even in private just to stay out of the Kingdom’s grasp.
If Link was shown to have changed physically like the Kingdom Deity had (something in there rang a bell—had he changed at another time? Did he remember one of the champions mentioning it? Would Zelda know?) not to mention his markings becoming much more visible and difficult to explain, then the Kingdom might try to take him and use him, too.
There was a mirror in the room. He went over to it and tried to really see the marks on his face for once, to study himself like something unfamiliar. Outside Gerudo, he’d gotten comments on the ‘pretty shimmer’ before, and sometimes people asking what make-up he wore. Many thought it was a kind of dust or mica powder on his skin. Now…
Now, he could see what was scaring Buliara much better. Looking at Riju’s face closely, he’d been able to see the line where make-up became markings because they weren’t just colour on their skin. Up close, there was a light beneath, a depth… something that, if his skin stayed this dark, would never be mistaken for glitter again.
There was a gap low in his throat and tears burning his eyes as he looked away from the mirror.
He couldn’t do this to them. If Riju had a friend who was a Deity, the Kingdom would look too close. They’d tried so hard to keep her safe. Zelda had tried so hard to keep him safe. How could he throw it away for something so stupid as this, just wasting time with people who made him feel like home?
“I’m sorry,” Riju said, and he could hear the tears in her voice too. “I hadn’t realized you were changing so much.”
“It’s okay,” Link whispered. “I’ll tell Zelda when she gets back. If she can’t cut short her work–”
“She will,” Buliara said. Her hand came down gently on his shoulder as Link pressed his face into his hands, the sob closed behind his throat. “I’m sorry as well. I shouldn’t have let this get this far, either, but you’ll be alright. It’s better this way.”