Chapter Text
It's familiar, all too familiar—the blinding sunlight after so much time in the darkness. The feeling that something significant has either just started or just come to an end.
The rebirth.
It shouldn't be possible to feel even more changed, not when so much has happened since the first time he walked out of the cave.
But this time, he doesn't walk out in confusion and solitude with nothing more than a familiar voice to assure him he isn't dead.
This time his name feels like his, and the sword that rests against his back whispers memories of a life they spent together.
This time, the word Champion feels so much less lonely.
And he owes it to the familiar silhouette standing nearby.
Every other time he has found Kass, Link heard him well before he saw him. Now, he approaches the same outcrop he stepped onto months ago to the sounds of birdsong, and the wind in the trees, and his own footsteps pressing into the wet grass.
"Ah," Kass says, without a trace of surprise in his voice. "It's you."
Link steps forward. Months ago he looked out from this very spot without a memory to his name, awed in equal parts by the beauty and by the uncertainty of the land in front of him.
The beauty hasn't changed, but there are few places he hasn't passed through by now. Each mountain and road and valley holds a memory. Of pain. Of loneliness. Of pride.
Of one hundred years ago.
"I get the feeling you're even more accomplished than you were the last time we met," Kass says, in that way that always makes Link feel like Kass knows more than he lets on.
Link raises an eyebrow at him and shrugs. "You could say that," he says.
Kass gives him a wry grin, and Link considers pulling out the Sheikah Slate right now so he can show Kas the…the Master Cycle, he thinks is what the slated called it. The answer to the riddles hidden in Kass' most recent songs, the missing piece in the ancient story they set out to recreate a century ago.
But he has come to recognize the look that Kass gets when there's a story he wants to tell, so Link waits. And sure enough, it only takes a few seconds of silence before Kass puffs his feathers out and begins to speak again.
"I've finished it," he says softly. "My teacher's unfinished song. I've finally completed the key verse!"
Pride bubbles up inside of Link, as if he can share in Kass' feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishment. The Rito's music came to him in some of his darkest moments while out in the wild, and in the last few weeks in particular—as he chased the memories of his fellow Champions, he hasn't felt alone the way he did for so long. Kass was there to talk to, but the Champions—his friends—were with him too, in a way that fills him with grief, and with joy. With an ache to see them all again, and a reminder that everything that has happened to him since the first time he walked out of this shrine, he owes to the sacrifices made by the Champions—and to the unwavering strength of the Princess who waits for him in the distance.
"If you would," Kass says, "Please listen to this special song. To the Champions' Ballad."
The Champions’ Ballad. The title brings a smile to his face and Link replies, "I would be honored.”
The first notes bring tears to Link’s eyes. Every memory he has of the time Before, whether triggered by a place, or smell, or familiar phrase, has come with a wave of emotions strong enough to haunt him for days. But this time…
This time, the Great Plateau fades away, and the last months of traveling through Hyrule, of having to relearn who he is, blend together. Kass' song carries him back to a time he was truly seventeen, when he stood with the people Kass sings of, staring towards the Calamity with no way of knowing what was to come. No way of knowing the fear or the joy, the laughter or the anger, and especially not the love that waited for him with this small group of people brought together to save the world.
He closes his eyes. And as Kass plays, he doesn't just remember.
He relives.