Chapter Text
Revali shoved the kid aside so he could get a better look at the stall. None of the food was particularly exciting, but he was hungry and his grandmother had told him to manage on his own while she settled her business that day. This hylian stuff looked too fat and heavy and he was tempted to look for a rito place instead, but then what would even have been the point of coming there? Not that he chose that, but…
“Hey, I was there first!”
The rito looked away from the greasy food, and at the boy staring up at him. The kid he’d just pushed away was glaring, trying to make himself look intimidating with his hands on his hips and a furious frown. It might have worked if he hadn’t been tiny, with a face still round from childhood, and a mess of blond hair on his head.
“Well you’re second now,” Revali grunted. “You took too long to choose.”
“I was still first. Tell him I was first!” the kid asked to the stall’s owner, only to be met by a shrug. “But that’s not fair!”
It wasn’t, and it did annoy Revali. The kid was there first. Just because he, the great Revali, was an asshole, didn’t mean that others had the same right. He was the greatest rito the world had ever seen, which gave him privileges; what had that hylian man ever done that he should be allowed to mistreat a kid?
Before he could start anything, a noise caught his interest a little further down the market. A group of hylian boys, teasing a young zora who was trying to sell some mother-of-pearl jewelry carefully placed on a small carpet, directly on the ground. The hylians were playing at stomping their feet around the delicate merchandise, laughing at the poor zora’s distress.
Forgetting his hunger Revali stomped ahead, ready to give them a piece of his mind, only to see the blond kid he’d just teased run past him to do the same. It was quite impressive to see that little nothing of a boy plant himself between the taller boys and the zora’s merchandise. Actually impressive. The boy had been somewhat whiny before, but now he exuded the calm confidence of someone who knew he could easily take on some bullies if he needed to.
Didn’t mean he’d have to do it alone.
As one of the taller boys prepared to punch the smaller hylian, Revali sneaked up behind to kick his knees. Another tried to launch himself at him, but the little hylian quickly tackled him. Soon enough the whole lot was out of order and scrambling to their feet to run away.
“Did they break anything?” the little hylian asked the zora. “If they did, I can try to pay for it.”
“No, I’m fine. But I think you two should run. That was the gang of the market master’s son, so you’ll get troubles if they warn the soldiers.”
Revali threw his head backward and sighed. His grandmother was going to get furious if she thought he’d created problems again. Not that he had much time to ponder what to do about that, because a small but surprisingly strong hand grabbed his wrist and started pulling.
“Come with me,” the little hylian ordered. “I know a place they won’t find us!”
And with that the boy started running, pulling poor Revali behind him as if he weighed nothing, dragging him through Castle Town’s market and into sinuous streets until they reached a small park that seemed entirely empty.
“No one ever comes here,” the boy explained. “It’s the gerudo neighborhood so the soldiers prefer to avoid it, but they are okay with kids.”
“Neat,” Revali grumbled, refusing to admire what might have been a smart choice. “I have no idea how I’ll return to my inn now, but neat.”
“I’ll just take you there,” the kid offered, sitting on a beautifully crafted bench. “But we’d better wait until it calms down a bit.”
Looking around, Revali had to admit it wasn’t a bad place to pass time. The park really wasn’t much, but whoever took care of it had planted many flowers. Most he’d never seen before.
“So you’re a city dweller, uh?”
“No, I only arrived last month,” the kid explained. “I’m from Hateno, in the east. Hey, you fight well! I didn’t know rito could fight like that. It was really cool.”
“You’re decent too,” Revali conceded. A month and that kid already knew about a secret gerudo garden inside Castle Town? “What’s your name, kid?”
The boy looked up from the piece of the bench he was inspecting and glared at Revali.
“I’m not a kid. I’m fifteen. Well, soon enough. And I’m a squire in training!”
“Fascinating. Your name?”
“Link. What’s yours?”
“I am the amazing Revali of the rito. It is your honour to meet me, the greatest of rito warriors.”
Link pouted, on hand on his cheek. “You don’t seem so great. You don’t even have braids or anything. I’ve met rito before, that means you’re not even an adult yet, right?”
It was Revali’s turn to glare.
“A very rude question. I am much older than you. You should show me some respect. And anyway if you’re really a squire, shouldn’t you be in training with all the soldiers instead of at the market?”
Link shrugged. “I got bored. I know how to string a bow. I’ve learned when I was five. So I thought it’d be more interesting to visit. I’ll get scolded later but… I always get scolded anyway, might as well be for something I really did.”
Revali couldn’t help but nod. Now that was a sentiment he could get behind. He’d always felt if he spent too long without getting scolded, it meant he was doing something wrong. Maybe this hylian kid wasn’t so bad. Revali sat next to him, and tried to not take offence when Link shuffled a bit so they wouldn’t be too close.
“You’re not from Castle Town, right?” the boy asked. “What are you here for? Why… oh. Wait, sorry, I ask too many questions, don’t I?”
“I’ll tell you if you get too annoying,” Revali assured him. “I’m here with my grandmother. She needed to talk to one of my fathers about some inheritance stuff and…”
“One of your fathers? You have more than one?”
Oh. That. Revali would have slapped himself.
Don't talk to hylians about your fathers (don't talk about them at all. Forget them. They're not worth your breath) his grandmother had said, because they were backwards and denied their instincts. But the kid didn’t seem angry. If anything he just seemed scared and vaguely excited.
"Is it really forbidden for hylian?" Revali had to ask. "For two men..."
"Oh, yeah," Link said with a firm nod, then laughed. "I remember my dad slapping me when I was little because I'd kissed a neighbour on the cheek, so yeah, it's really forbidden."
"He hit you? Your own father?"
Link shrugged, grinning as if this were some fun childhood story to share with a perfect stranger.
"How else was he supposed to teach me?"
Revali stared at the kid. He was very little, but they were actually nearly the same age. Yet he looked so fragile with his big blue eyes and his mess of blond hair. It'd have been easy to grab him by the neck and bring him back to Rito Village where no one would ever hit him and call it education. Hylians were barbarians.
"Oh, don't make that face!" Link laughed. "What, you never got a slap from your granny? 'Cause I've gotten worse than that, and you seem a lot worse than me."
The very thought of his grandmother hitting him was repulsive. They had arguments nearly daily, but she would never have raised a hand against him. How can Link say that and laugh?
"Is it really so common to hit children here?"
At last Link seemed to notice something was wrong, his big round eyes staring at Revali with something like worry.
"Within reason of course," he explained in a tone that was supposed to be soothing. "I've never been beat up so hard I can't walk. Well, not by my dad anyway. But it's different when it's other kids, or grownups that see you being bad. That just happens when you're..." he hesitated, as if looking for the right word. "When you're odd."
In spite of himself, Revali was nodding. That at least he could understand. Most adults tended to ignore him, but other kids had been ruthless to him until he managed to become strong enough no one would touch him. But Link was tiny and scrawny...
"You know, if you need me to beat someone for you, I'll do it."
"So could I. Even adults I could beat!" Link claimed with a fierce smirk that didn’t last. "I'm just... I'm not supposed to. My father says a true knight of Hyrule wouldn't need to do that. That I need to earn their respect in other ways. That's why I've been sent here really. If I become a true knight, maybe people will leave me alone."
Well that sounded very stupid, but what would Revali know? Everything about hylians sounded stupid to him.
“You did beat up those assholes earlier,” he still pointed out. “With quite some skill too,” he adds, feeling generous.
“Oh, that’s fine. It’s a knight’s duty to protect those who are without strength,” Link recited. “I have to help others. Hey, how long are you staying in town? It’s nice talking with you. If you’d like, I could show you some really neat places that nobody knows!”
That sounded like a hassle. The kid talked a lot. At the same time, Revali’s only other option for entertainment was… sightseeing, but alone. And in the two days they’d been here, he’d found the market and nothing else. Maybe he could tolerate having a guide, especially since he didn’t know how long they’d be in town. First his grandmother needed to find her former son-in-law, which she hadn’t managed yet, and then there’d be the negotiating… They could be staying weeks.
He regretted agreeing almost instantly, because Link looked at him as if he’d just been given the moon.
“It will be so great!” he promised. “I know so many places, and maybe we can find others! I can’t always get free easily, but when I do I can come meet you here in the afternoon and then we go exploring together! It’ll be fun!”
Revali rolled his eyes and grunted, but he wasn’t entirely annoyed by the kid’s enthusiasm. It’d been a while since he’d hung out with someone who didn’t hate his guts.
When Link managed to come meet him again two days later, he had a black eye. It could just have been from training. It could also not, because Revali remembered their conversation.
"I was clumsy and fell in the stairs," the hylian explained with a laugh.
"Did you really?"
Revali didn’t mean anything by the question, but it must have been the wrong one because Link's smile crumbled.
"I tried to sneak out to see you yesterday but I got caught by another squire. He doesn't like me much. He's a lot older but I keep beating him in training." Link waved his hand dismissively, as if to say it happened to so many people they shouldn’t hold it against him. "But who cares. Do you want to see the best spot in all the town? I found it my first week and I've been wanting to share it since that!"
The kid's excitement was so obvious that Revali managed push away his worry and follow into this little adventure.
Link's spot turned out to be an old, disused guard tower. It was easy for Revali to fly up to its roof, but Link had to climb because the stairs inside were too unsafe. It was somewhat scary to see him going up that way. The tower wasn’t the highest building in Castle Town, but Revali was pretty convinced no hylian could survive that fall. Yet Link never showed any fear, any hesitation. He climbed as if he were born for it, not stopping until he reached the roof, sweaty and grinning.
"Isn't it great here?" he asked Revali, barely out of breath. He was sitting with his legs dangling in the air, his eyes focused on the horizon. "I think those are the Hebra mountains over there! They say no hylian has ever reached the summit because it's so cold your blood will freeze!"
"Hylians are weak," Revali retorted, even though few rito ever venture into those high mountains either. The winds were strong, and so high up it was hard to fly.
"I want to go there someday," Link confessed with a sigh. "I want to go to all the places I shouldn't go. Being a knight is boring, it's just staying in a spot and doing what you're told. I don't want that. I want to see how big the world is!"
Revali couldn’t help but nod, feeling that same pull. It was particularly strong then, as they sat on top of that old tower. Under their feet sat Castle Town, noisy and busy, but all around it there was the vastness of Hyrule, green meadows peppered with square fields and blue lakes as far as the eye could see. Then further away the mountains and past that...
"I'll go beyond that," Revali decided. "There's bad air currents over the great chasm, but I fly better than anyone ever has. It won't be hard for me!"
Link laughed and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you're so modest, eh?"
A shrug was the only adequate answer. Why be modest? The only way to be treated with any decency was to make sure nobody ever forgets just how much better than everyone he was. Modesty was for people who had doubts, and Revali had none. He couldn’t afford to have any. Yet here, high up and alone with this kid who didn’t care about his fathers, perhaps it wouldn't matter if for one minute he stopped being the greatest rito to ever live. Without really thinking about it he leaned to the side to rest his head against Link's. A way to thank him for sharing this view.
Link almost fell down the tower in his haste to escape the touch, scrambling to his feet and looking at Revali in terror. The rito couldn't understand what he'd done, until words from their first meeting came back to him.
His father had slapped him for kissing another boy as a young child, he'd said. Would this too have been worth a punishment? It was a simple gesture of affection between friends though. He was sixteen, an adult really even if actual grown-ups disagreed, while Link, only fifteen, was still just barely a baby of a different specie who Revali could never imagine being attracted to. There was no romance intended. It was just something friendly.
"It's just a rito thing," he tried to explain. "Don't panic, I won't jump you. You're way too ugly for that."
The insult got a half grin out of Link.
"So what, hylians friends don't ever touch, or you're so unpopular you've never even had a friend before me?"
Revali patted the spot next to him, inviting the kid to come closer again. Link did and, tentatively, dropped his head against the rito's shoulder.
"A bit of both. Do rito do that a lot?"
"Yeah, I guess. Never had any friends though so I haven't done that much. I'm way too good for everyone else, it scares them."
He could feel Link nod, as though the feeling is familiar.
"But we're friends then? You just said we were."
"I guess, if you want to be, I can tolerate that."
From the corner of his eye he could see Link's grin. It made him roll his eyes, but at the same time it was nice to have a friend.
They met again a few times in the following days. Sometimes Link had a new bruise. If he’d gotten it in training, he’d display it proudly. Other times he was silent about it and Revali understood it was better not to push for explanations. He was also grateful that Link seemed to quickly get that he did not want to talk about his fathers, and that he respected it.
With these simple rules in place, they did have more fun than Revali had expected. Link hadn’t lied when he’d said he knew all the best place in town, although perhaps the Castle Town tourism committee might have disagreed. Most people probably didn’t go visit the abandoned sewers of the city, nor did they explore all the coffee houses of the gerudo neighbourhood. Their loss. Coffee was disgusting and bitter, but the biscuits were always delicious and the gerudo were very amused by Revali’s tales of adventures. So was Link, who only seemed to keep quiet when the rito explained how high he was training himself to fly higher than anyone, and how good his aim was.
It was good fun.
So it was quite the disappointment when one evening Revali met his grandmother at the inn, and she announced they were leaving the next morning. She’d managed to find her former son-in-law at last, and he hadn’t fought over anything he was given by his late husband.
He also hadn’t asked to meet Revali, even after she’d let it escape that she’d brought him along. But that might have been a lie. Revali knew well his grandmother didn’t want him to see his father with his new wife, and that he’d only come in case things went sour and she needed to use him as a trump card. Or maybe it was true. Maybe his father really didn’t want anything to do with him. He didn’t care either way.
What he did care about was the idea of leaving Castle Town without saying goodbye to Link. It wouldn’t be right. Not after all the fun they’d had two past two weeks. It took some negotiating, and his grandmother was on the verge of starting An Argument, but once she understood her only grandchild had finally made a friend she stopped protesting. They’d leave only after he’d had a chance to say goodbye, she promised.
Luckily, Link had managed to escape his training the following afternoon, and they met again at their secret gerudo garden. The hylian kid started suggesting a billion places they could go that day, then went very quiet when Revali broke out the news to him.
“Will you ever come back?” he asked in a low voice.
“Doubt it. There’s nothing for me in this stupid city.”
“Well, there’s me?”
Link was fighting tears and dear Goddess above, he looked like a puppy who had just been kicked by its owner.
Worse still, it was affecting Revali who could feel himself get sad over this. Which was preposterous. He was the great Revali of the rito. He was never sad about anything. Sadness was for people who had time to waste. And yet, looking at that kid with big blue eyes tugged at his heart. So Revali decided to give himself one short moment of emotion, and he pulled Link into a hug. The hylian tensed and nearly panicked at first, as he always did at any casual form of affection, but he soon relaxed into it and hugged back.
“You can always come to Rito Village,” Revali suggested. “Then it’ll be my turn to show you all the best spots.”
“I’ll be stuck in Castle Town for years,” Link protested, pulling back with a frown. “It’s at least five years to becoming a knight, and you’re not even allowed to go home unless someone dies...”
Revali shrugged. “I’ll see you in five years then. Just prepare yourself to be amazed at how much more awesome I’ll have become. You will be blinded by my magnificence. I will have learned to fly so high I’ll touch the clouds!”
Link grinned, as if he fully believed Revali could do that and much more.
Goddess, he really was going to miss that kid a bit.