Chapter Text
Link had heard a lot of stories about heroes in his time among Hylians. They loved to talk about heroic deeds and what the heroes of old had been like, and sometimes they said things that felt real.
Usually, though, they got it wrong.
The stories never talked about how scary it was to be a hero. They never talked about getting hurt, or getting lost, or breaking down crying because everything was so big and so much.
But the biggest mistake the stories made was in saying the end.
In the stories, the heroes’ adventures ended. They got to have everything summed up with happily ever after and could leave it behind. But in real life, the adventure ended with the hero holding an ocarina too tight, like it might be able to keep him afloat, and wondering what now?
He'd wandered for a while. Talon had let him sleep in the Lon Lon Ranch barn any time he needed to, and gave him breakfast afterwards if he asked. Malon taught him how to help feed the horses. Zelda couldn't spare a lot of time for him, and he had too many complicated feelings about her to want to spend a lot of time with her anyway, but she still let him stay in the castle a few times when he couldn't make himself bother Talon and Malon again.
But then the ache in his heart had gotten too loud, and he'd gone searching for Navi.
Then he'd fallen into Termina.
When he'd emerged, three days(?) later, holding a mask like he'd held that ocarina, he'd wondered if he would be allowed to have a happily ever after, this time.
No such luck. It was only a matter of months before he was sucked through a portal into the middle of a war.
Link slammed into the ground, letting out a weak cry as the air was forced from his lungs and he felt his ribs crack.
A darknut loomed over him, sword raised.
Link had his sword - he hadn't dropped it during that attack, at least, he'd never hear the end of that from Tune - but it wouldn't do him much good against a darknut's armor, not while he was winded on the ground. He wasn't sure he could deflect that blow, either.
For a split second, Link was nearly overcome with fear. Fear that he was about to die, fear of what the Captain's reaction would be, fear that he was going to die in a far-off future away from where he was supposed to be, and no one would ever know what had happened to him.
Sure, he'd faced worse odds than a darknut before. But that was back when -
When he had -
Link rolled to the side as the darknut’s sword slammed into the dirt beside him.
His ribs screamed, but he ignored them in favor of yanking a mask out of his bag. The mask. The only one that could protect him right now.
He put it on, and a scream tore out of him as the power of a god surged into his body.
Just as it had been back on the moon, the pain was momentary. It forced his body to be bigger, stronger, capable of summoning that massive double helix sword and stopping the darknut's next strike with barely any effort. He felt strong. He felt like no one and nothing could hurt him anymore, not the darknut, not the army of other monsters, not Majora, not the moon. Nothing at all.
With a technique that wasn't really his, Link slashed through the darknut, and it dissolved into dark mist.
More, something in him hummed, turning him toward the other monsters. There were so many more. They had to be defeated just the same.
“Mask!”
He turned, blinking at the Captain, who had run up to him looking confused and panicked. Link was taller than him like this. It was a weird feeling, like he was waking up from a seven year sleep all over again.
The Captain slowed, just outside the range of Link's new sword, and cautiously asked “... Mask? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Link said in a voice that wasn't his. But even as he answered the question, he felt his attention slipping away from the Captain and being directed elsewhere, back toward the monsters surrounding them. “We will talk later.”
“... Right.” The Captain seemed uncertain - a very unusual expression on him - but he raised his sword and turned back to the enemy.
It was so easy now. Link barely had to think about what he was doing; his feet moved confidently in ways he wasn’t used to, and when he swung the sword, it was like an extension of his own body, more precise and deadly than even the Captain’s regimented fighting. Certainly far better than Link's own sword work had ever been. It wasn’t quite as easy as thinking about killing a monster and it would happen, but it was the closest to that he’d ever come in his life.
The monsters’ lines broke. They started to run away, first in ones and twos, and then the whole group of them, shrieking and howling and scattering away from the army.
Something itched in the back of Link’s brain to go after them. They would only be a problem later on, it was better to eliminate the threat now -
“Mask!”
The Captain. Link turned.
He looked wary, still. His sword was still held tightly in one hand. “We can’t spread ourselves too thin chasing them. Better to regroup.”
Better for the common soldiers to regroup, yes. But Link could -
The Captain cautiously stepped forward, one slow step at a time. “Please. Just… just relax. The battle’s over.”
Well. If the battle was over, then Link was safe, wasn’t he? He didn’t need the mask anymore.
Slowly, halfway waiting to be attacked again, Link lifted a hand to his face. It didn’t phase him anymore to dig his fingers into the seam between mask and skin and tear away the face that didn’t belong to him, despite the bloody scratches left behind.
What did phase him was the exhaustion.
Link felt like he’d been run over by an entire herd of horses, then dropped off a cliff for good measure. His vision blurred, and he staggered, nearly dropping the mask as he did. Everything hurt. Why did everything hurt?
“Easy, easy,” the Captain murmured, and there were suddenly hands supporting him. “Where are you injured?”
Link blinked hazily at him, trying to force the fuzzy image of his concerned face back into focus. He was so tired. “... Dunno.”
“Okay. I’ve got you, kid, just hang on.”
Link wasn’t a kid anymore, but he couldn’t tell the Captain that; he was too busy trying to keep track of where he was in relation to the ground as the Captain scooped him up.
Everything sort of… blurred, after that. Link remembered being carried, and the medic tent, and snippets of people talking - Tune and the Captain, and some others he was too out of it to recognize. He kept drifting in and out of awareness.
Under it all, though, was the mask. It was warm in his hands. He felt better, safer, holding it.
Someone tried to take it away at some point. Link was pretty sure he’d tried to bite them, or snarl at them, or something. They backed off and didn’t try to take it again, and he was able to doze off with the comforting warmth still there.
When he woke again, he was curled around the mask like he was trying to guard it, and Tune and the Captain were sitting next to his cot.
“Mask,” Tune said with a big sigh of relief. “You’re awake!”
The Captain jolted from where he’d been dozing off, then gave Link a soft sort of smile he didn’t make very often. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
Sore. Link could feel tightly wrapped bandages in several places - had the monsters hit him during the battle? Even when he’d been that big and strong? He hadn’t felt them hit him. With a wince, he tried to push himself up.
The Captain stopped him with a careful hand on his shoulder. “No, stay down. You’re still hurt. The medics gave you a bit of red potion for your ribs, but they couldn’t spare enough to fix you all the way up.”
That seemed about right. They’d been rationing red potion pretty strictly for the past few weeks. And his chest did hurt, still, so Link reluctantly settled again.
Tune came over to sit on the edge of Link’s cot, and his expression was serious. “What happened? We heard you scream, and then…” He gestured to the mask.
Link looked down at it, absently tracing the lines on the mask’s face. “... It always hurts.”
“The mask?” the Captain asked, frowning.
Link nodded. “It’s too big for me. It always hurts for a second. But then I’m big, and I can handle whatever’s happening.” He hesitated for a moment before quietly admitting “I wasn’t sure it still worked.”
“I’d say it works,” Tune snorted. “You were badass, all big and glowy with a massive sword -”
The Captain gave him a Look, and he shut up.
Link had been badass. He knew he had. He wasn’t sure exactly what he looked like when he was like that, but he knew the deity body he borrowed was covered in armor and magical markings, and he would be something to see on a battlefield.
But… he hadn't been sure the magic would still work. He'd barely been sure what happened on the moon was real. He'd held the mask several times since Termina, examining the markings, wondering if he should try it on, just to see. But he'd never done it. Maybe he'd been afraid the god in the mask would be gone, and he'd be alone again.
He wasn't alone. The mask was still warm.
Link hugged it to his chest, and wondered.
The god became a fixture on the battlefield after that.
The Fierce Deity, the soldiers whispered, and Link had never had a name for the god before, but something about that title felt right, in a way, so he didn’t argue. He maybe even leaned into it, once or twice - or, fine, maybe more than that. It just felt good being so fast and so strong and so good at this, at defeating monsters that Link would never be allowed to face on his own.
It wasn’t him that was good at it, he knew that, but it also felt sort of like protection. Like with the mask to keep him safe, he’d never be hurt again.
Of course, that wasn’t exactly true, but Link never let that slow him down.
“You need to be more careful!” the Captain chided a few months in. “That bokoblin almost put an arrow through you.”
“It didn’t, though!” Link argued. Tune would have backed him up, he was sure, but the pirate was in the medical tent getting a sprained ankle splinted.
The Captain sighed, shaking his head the way he always did when he thought Link was being immature. “Mask…”
“It didn’t!”
The Captain gave Link’s thoroughly bandaged arm a very pointed look.
… Well, fine, maybe it had shot his arm, but only after he’d gotten the mask on! It had been fine! It hadn’t even hurt until afterward!
“Just -” the Captain cut himself off, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “Mask, sprite, carrying a god around won’t always save you.”
“Yes it will,” Link corrected him. Some little piece of his heart insisted that it would, in fact, always save him. Always make everything okay again, no matter how scary things were.
The Captain gave him a long look that was hard to pick apart. Finally, he sat on the edge of Link’s cot and laid a gentle hand on his leg. “Mask. The Deity can’t be hurt, but you can. I just… I worry that one of these days, you’re going to push yourself too far.”
It took a lot for the Captain to admit to that, Link knew. He also knew that there were a lot of words underneath those that the Captain wouldn’t say - that he was scared, maybe, or that he really did care about Link. He wasn’t sure which of those possibilities worried him more.
“And it hurts you,” the Captain added very quietly.
Link hesitated for five seconds. Then he slowly reached out and covered the Captain’s hand with his. “Not much.”
“Not much is too much, sprite.”
He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought he was doing anything wrong, but… the Captain sounded so sad. “... I can use it less. If you want.”
The Captain gave his leg a tiny squeeze. “Thank you, Link. Please use it if you need to, it’s a useful ability, but… don’t use it more than necessary.”
“I won’t.”
Beside him, its edges crusted with flecks of Link’s blood, the mask was still warm.
Link woke up to stars.
He was used to stars, of course - sometimes, on very clear nights, he had climbed up to the very top of the trees near the Kokiri village to look at them, and then in Termina, there had been the professor’s telescope to look through. The stars had always been pretty to him.
But these weren’t normal stars. These were big and colorful and sparkling like rupees in the sunlight, scattered across the whole sky like someone had dropped their wallet, in patterns he had never seen before.
And sitting near him, face tilted up toward them, was a person.
Link tilted his head at the figure. “Who are you?”
“I could ask you the same, child.”
“I’m not a child,” Link corrected with a glare. He was so sick of the entire army treating him like a baby who didn’t know anything.
“You are, though you are not so young as you appear.”
… How did this person know that?
Link felt off-balance, suddenly, in a weird sort of way. “Well, even if I am, I asked you first.”
“You did.” The figure turned to look at him, eyes full of moonlight. “Do you not know?”
He did. He should. “... I think so.”
“You grow stronger with each victory. We shall meet again like this, if you stay your path.”
What did that even mean? Link huffed with frustration, flopping down into the - grass? He was pretty sure it was grass. “I don’t know what my path is.”
“That is untrue.”
“It’s not my path!” Link argued. “Some crazy witch brought me here! And a portal brought me to Termina! And my -” he hated how his voice always, always caught on the word, he hated it - “my father sent me to save everybody before that! I don’t get to pick if I stay it, whatever that means!”
The figure was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: “Do you wish to change it?”
Link stared up at the glittering stars. He wondered if they would swallow him up if he stayed here long enough. “I don't know. It's never mattered.”
“It matters, child. I can help you change your path, should you wish, but the Golden Ones do not bestow their blessings lightly. They have found you worthy, in deeds and in heart.”
It had never been a question before. Link frowned, trying to think. “... I don't know if I want to change it or not. I want to pick, but… I like helping people.”
“Must that helping be dictated by others?”
“... I guess not,” Link said slowly. “I’d need to wait until the war is over, at any rate. Being told what to do is sort of a big thing with an army, from what the Captain says.”
The person hummed in agreement. “A fine leader, the Captain.”
“He's okay, I guess. Pretty bossy though.”
“Yes. Many leaders are.”
Link made a face and sat up. “Have you known a lot of leaders?”
The figure nodded. Moonlight eyes glowed in the starlight. “I have been a leader, child. The role has not changed much over the course of my life.”
“Huh.” Link’s head was starting to feel funny, and his vision was starting to go a little blurry. He blinked a few times to clear it, but that just made the blurring worse.
“It is time for you to go.” The person didn’t sound very surprised. “You have a strong will, to remain for so long.”
“That’s what the Captain says,” Link agreed a little absently, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t wanna go yet.”
“You must.”
Link frowned. “Says who?”
The figure didn’t have a chance to reply. Link’s head spun, the stars whirling overhead, and between one moment and the next, he fell through the ground like it wasn’t even there. For a moment his stomach lurched as he remembered falling into Termina, and a spike of fear shot through him, and he took in a breath to scream -
… And he was sitting in his cot, chest heaving, staring at a worried Tune.
“... You okay?” Tune asked.
Link hesitated, then nodded, glancing around the tent to make sure everything was the way it was supposed to be. Nothing out of place, no one there that shouldn't be.
The dream was already starting to fade, just a little.
Tune made a sympathetic face. “Nightmare?”
Link took another breath in and pictured the brilliant, colorful stars. Oddly, it helped him feel better. “... Not exactly? I don't know, it was… weird.”
Tune nodded in understanding, and for a moment, Link was incredibly glad to have people around who understood what this could be like.
He hoped he would get to go back to that space with the stars. It had been nice there.