Tired.
He was so tired.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been awake at this point. Sixty hours. Fifty. It had definitely been two days, at least. One of the Gossip Stones could tell him how much longer he had, but he wasn't sure if knowing would help anything. If he checked once, he'd be glued to the Stone, and he'd get nothing else done this cycle. It was better not to know.
Seventy-two hours.
When he started this quest, he was optimistic. He had defeated Ganondorf and saved Hyrule; he was the Hero of Time, with the favor the of the Goddesses. He could do this.
That optimisim lasted all the way until the Great Bay. Rescuing Lulu's eggs had taken most of the cycle, and he had been so tired...
He'd meant for it to be a quick nap, but Tatl didn't know what his naps were like.
He didn't wake until dawn, when the roaring of the moon's descent woke him in time to see the red sky, to feel the impact as the moon hit Clock Town.
Then the wall of flame, the wave of destruction that spread across all of Termina, the heat that consumed him.
As he fell to the blackness, he could faintly hear someone speak, saying, "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"
And then he was in front of the clock tower, and the people were going about their business as usual, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, it was too hot and the panic took him.
The one time Tatl tried to talk to him, trying to get him to sleep, he'd told her flatly, that any time he closed his eyes, he could hear the screams.
It was all they said on the matter.
We all know Link is a lazy napper. Majora's Mask would be the worst possible place for that habit to rear its head.