Chapter Text
Twilight has been thinking about it.
He is not sure that anyone else has thought about it nearly as much as he has. But then again, none of them have the context that he has either. None of them know what happens to Time, none of them know about the Hero’s Shade, who showed Twilight how to be a hero, even as his armor hung off his skeletal body. Not even Time.
Only Twilight knows.
It is not like he meant to keep it a secret. At least not at first. There is just not a good way to pull someone you just met to the side to break it to them that Twilight had been taught by what their corpse leaves behind, that he recognized the armor from his lessons but not the person who wore it.
And after a while, Twilight could not say anything. Other secrets piled on top of it, buried it under their weight. First there is Wolfie, who garners enough of a negative reaction from Wild that Twilight immediately decides he is not going to disclose the form to anyone else. Then there is Midna, whose loss still feels like a tender bruise each time he thinks about it. Not to even begin mentioning all the small failures that have piled up, the ways Twilight could not protect his home and the people who populated it, Colin and Ilia and the villagers who thought their children were dead or worse. All his secrets, big and small, piled up, one on top of the other, until it felt like in order to pull the old man aside and start the discussion, he would need to reveal a whole host of other secrets first.
It was just easier to keep quiet.
Even after some of his secrets became more common knowledge. Too much time passed, the opportunity to say something slipped him by.
Somewhere deep down, Twilight knows that he is making excuses to himself. That if he were the hero he is supposed to be, he would pull Time aside and talk with him about the Hero’s Shade. He knows that anyone else in their small band of brothers would have done so ten times over by now.
But it is not any of his brothers that holds the knowledge of Time’s end, of what he becomes, inside them, it is Twilight.
He is supposed to be a Hero of Courage, but he is too much a coward to say a few simple words, to force them out into the open. To undeniably shift things for their group forever.
The thoughts have always weighed heavy on his shoulders, even when he manages to push them to the back of his mind, to wrangle other things to the forefront, it is hard to forget that you have met someone’s future in your past. It is hard to forget that they are a tragedy.
And he has been thinking about it more and more recently.
Uli used to tell him stories when he was small and still new to the village, when he did not trust that he could stay. Stories that she said her mother had told her, that her mother had heard from her mother, and who knows how many generations back the stories went about a boy and a mask.
Twilight had nearly half forgotten the stories Uli used to tell him when they started talking masks around the campfire. He had been more focused on the unsettling reminder of Time’s fate, even as Time and Warriors laughed about the way Time had managed to startle the hero.
He thought for a while that the lingering moment of seeing Time’s face underneath a skull is why the memory sticks in his head, like a burr stuck in his side, rubbing him raw and reminding him of its existence at the most inconvenient times, just as he gets comfortable. When it hurts the most.
Perhaps that is the initial reason why he keeps thinking about it. But eventually, Twilight has run it through so often in his head that the edges of it have worn themselves smooth. And other details start to make themselves known.
Twilight is not sure what makes the connection for him, but at some point, he puts enough clues together, draws enough connections between half remembered stories and small discarded details.
Everyone knows that Time has lots of masks. It is part of what started that long ago conversation. Twilight does not know how many of them know that Time has not shared every mask he has with the group.
There is at least one mask he has kept hidden.
Twilight knows about it, although he does not know if Time is aware that Twilight knows. His wolf form has a keen sense of smell, but he did not really need the wolf to smell the magic coming off that thing. It might be the reason why it was easier for the sent to get trapped in the back of his throat and stick there, but even as a Hylian he can smell it.
He wants to believe that the wolf is why Twilight can always pick out its smell in particular, even amongst all the other magic items their group carries with them, even when his nose is filled with other trails to follow. But he cannot help but wonder if there is another reason why Twilight can pick out even the barest hint of it on the wind.
That maybe the reason why Twilight can smell it more clearly than anything else is because he and it are connected.
Tied together through Time.
He cannot help but wonder. Poking at the thought until his lack of action becomes nearly unbearable.
It is not like he goes looking for what he is smelling. It is not like he tries to figure out if his hunches are correct. It is just a thought that worms its way into his brain and does not leave him alone until one day, when he is all alone at camp, he checks. Because if he is wrong, then he has been worrying for nothing, has been turning needless thoughts over in his head like a stone for no reason.
But if he is right…
If Twilight’s suspicions are right, then maybe the reason why he is so aware of the mask that Time is hiding from them is the reason why the Hero’s Shade haunts Twilight’s nightmares, that skeletal face casting judgement, telling him he is not worthy of saving anyone, that he will fail everyone he loves as he has failed everyone he loved before.
The mask looks like Time.
It is the first thing Twilight thinks of when he finds it. And the thought catches somewhere in his throat and sticks there, making it hard to breathe.
But then he looks a little closer and he notices the subtle differences. The ways in which the mask does not call back to the older hero. The ways in which it could be any of them.
He puts the mask away before Time can come back and find him with it, before any of them come back to the camp and find him with it and wonder where he got it or why he was snooping. Before the tingling in his fingers where he is touching the mask spreads any further up his arm.
Nobody seems to notice that Twilight poked through Time’s things. He gets some funny looks from Wild and Warriors makes a few snide comments about Twilight having some fleas with how twitchy he seemed, but that was it.
The memory of the mask stays though, it does not let him rest.
It tumbles about with all his other memories. It is not the most persistent unpleasant thought, but it stays, and it lingers.
BecauseTwilight has been thinking about it more and more. About the mask that he knows Time keeps on his person even as he keeps it hidden, about the Heroes Shade and the unknown fate Time faces at some point in the future.
He thinks about it late at night, when the stars wink down at him from the night sky. He thinks about it on long treks, when the sway of Epona beneath him lulls him into a near stupor. He thinks about it after fights, when he is bruised and bloody and his brothers are all nursing their own wounds.
Twilight spends more time than he cares to admit thinking about it. Picking it up and examining it from all sides. Considering his options.
Or at least that is what he tells himself he is doing. Deep down he knows that there was never really an option for him. If there is a chance that he can save Time, if he can help the Hero’s Shade, if there is even the slightest bit possibility that he can make a difference, move the needle even the smallest bit, then Twilight was always going to grab that opportunity with both hands.
So he is not really considering his options as much as he is biding his time.
Twilight is a rancher, he is used to spending long days on the field doing nothing but watching goats. He is a wolf, he is used to slowly stalking prey through the forest. He is good at watching and waiting, identifying the perfect moment to strike.
He does not hesitate when his opportunity comes. He does not even consider hesitating. His mind has long since been made up and so all that is left for him is action.
Twilight takes the mask.
He takes the mask and he gets himself lost in the forest, as best as he can. He is pretty sure that he has enough time to do what he needs to do, but in the event that he has miscalculated, he wants to buy himself as much additional time as possible, so he moves until he is fairly confident that only Wild might be able to find him on purpose without Wolfie by his side.
The woods even seem to understand what he wants because his wandering feel lead him directly to a small glade that is perfect for what Twilight wants out of this situation. There is even a tree stump standing all alone in the glade, cast in sunlight.
It is like it was put there specifically for Twilight to use. Like it is implicit approval from any gods who might be watching, confirming that he is on the right path.
Twilight places the mask on the tree stump, and then he lifts the Ordon Sword in his hands.
There is a certain kind of justice, Twilight thinks, in destroying the mask with a move Time taught him as the Shade. He brings it down with all his might, determined to cleave the thing in two. Remove the possibility of the mask ever hurting Time.
As soon as the edge of his blade touches the mask, a blinding while light floods his vision.
When he has finished blinking the spots from his eyes and can see again, he finds that he is still standing in the glade, but there is a darkness at the treeline that was not there before. The glade is also brighter than it was before, the light no longer quite the same natural shade.
The contrast between the light and the dark has been made stark, and Twilight feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he realizes he is no longer in the forest glade, he is somewhere else, somewhere that echoes the place where he was just standing.
“O hero, chosen by the gods,” a voice says. It sounds like windchimes clinking softly in the distance, like the fall of a hammer on an anvil, like a wolf’s howl at the moon, the rushing of waves, the wind through the trees, the clang of a sword striking another, like the unique harmony of bags full of gear and the soft gurgle of a ladle being pulled through stew over the fireplace. It sounds like distant music drifting upwards. It sounds like a crowd of voices all speaking as one.
It is a discordant melody that should not weave together as much as it does.
But mostly it sounds, a little, like Time.
Which makes sense as soon as a figure steps forward, separating itself from the treeline.
Because it looks like Time as well, a younger version of him, but Twilight recognizes him. Even despite the white hair and the blank white eyes. Even despite the fact that it bears colorful marks across both sides of its face, rather than just one.
“You’re being rude,” the facsimile of Time says, a sardonic smile tugging at the corner of one side of its face.
“Who are you?” Twilight demands. Because he knows that as much as this looks like Time, it is not.
“I’m hurt,” the fake says, the smile dropping from their face, “I thought My Hero would have mentioned me by now. But I suppose if I must, I will introduce myself to you, Hero of Twilight.” Twilight does not like the fact that this thing knows his title, seems so familiar with him, seems so familiar with Time. “I am the power you have attempted to rob from My Hero, I am the Mask you just now tried to destroy, I am the Fierce Deity.”