Divine Favor ~ Repentance

The water lapped lightly at the young man clinging to a plank of wood. He groaned in discomfort and his eyes opened to barely a slit in a vain attempt to block out the sun's glaring light. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it, like the ocean, seemed to stretch on forever.

His eyes suddenly widened in confusion and he looked around, frantic. Only a single thought ran through his head: "Where am I? What the hell is going on?"

However, no matter how he looked, all he was met with was sea and sky and scattered driftwood. It provided no answers yet felt familiar in a deeply disturbing way. The only other time he had crashed was in a-

-a dream.

Now he understood. Now he remembered.

The island; the Wind Fish; Marin.

Everything he had sought to protect from harm was a dream—the Wind Fish's dream—that he had been cast into. Those people who had been his friends, that beautiful island aflush with nature and wildlife of all sorts. He had been sent there for one purpose: to protect the Wind Fish from the Nightmare. Something he hadn't known until the very end, when it was far too late to stop the Wind Fish from waking and destroying the dream world.

So his efforts had ultimately gone to saving something he could scarcely understand. And his reward?

Nothing at all; he was left to drift in the middle of a vast and seemingly boundless ocean, parched and tired, and filled with regrets.

The only thing he knew for certain was that he loathed the goddesses that had driven him to this. The goddesses whose "chosen hero" amounted to little more than a tool to be used when they couldn't be bothered to intervene.

But above all, he hated himself the most.

For daring to hope that they would provide for him. For having faith despite everything. After all the scars and the pain; after being left to die so many times. Even after all that, in the back of his head he still prayed. Still hoped, when he should have just given up and spared himself the pain of their indifference.

The ocean, uncaring of his emotional turmoil, continued to rock against him, threatening to separate him from his meager lifeline. He clutched at the plank of wood ever harder. It won't be much longer. Soon, he would lose his strength and slip from the driftwood, leaving him to sink beneath the waves.

And then he would drown.

That thought didn't fill him with any emotions anymore, when the thought of death alone would once give him the courage he needed to survive impossible odds.

Now?

Now he was just too tired; he just wanted to close his eyes and rest.

He couldn't bring himself to care anymore. There was no way to survive like this, and nor was there reason to want to.

"I want to die." The words scraped out painfully. It was a horrible realization; an awful realization. And yet it was the truth all the same. Something he had tried to bottle inside and deny for so, so long. Tried to bury beneath a sense of duty and divine justice.

But he didn't care anymore, and let himself slip away into blissful unconsciousness and unknowing.

However, fate had other plans for the young man in green.

Far beneath the waves in the depths of the ocean, and far above the waves in the cloudless sky, something began to happen.

Lights, sized from little more than pinpricks to spotlights, looked upon the limp body of the once-hero of Hyrule. They gazed at him dispassionately, endless in number and color.

And they began to dance, swirling in hypnotic patterns around Link and the driftwood. They grew greater and greater numbers until they rivalled the stars in the night sky; grew swifter and swifter, forcibly raising the young man from the water.

He rose into the the lights as they danced and danced, pulling him ever further from the surface of the water. In the chaos, a tear formed.

In another time, another place.

Water….

It surrounded him all sides and deafened him to the world….

A great mirror stretched above him, the barrier between sea and sky; unreachable, it taunted him with a glimpse of freedom and safety. He couldn't feel anger nor despair, for his mind could no longer grasp such things.

"Is this the end?" He thought, barely comprehending the words as they formed. After what seemed like eternity, he came to understand his own thoughts, and yet felt at ease.

He would not be left to rest, however. Warm hands grabbed at him from unknown, and pulled him gently into strong yet feminine arms.

And then they were moving, but he did not know where. Upwards, perhaps? It would make sense, though his mind was far to disjointed to be sensible.

This situation was familiar to him; it nagged at his barely conscious self.

"Marin?" He concluded in his thoughts. This reminded him of the girl who had saved him—no, the illusion that had made him sympathetic to the plight of the Wind Fish. She wasn't real; she never had been.

Still, he couldn't help but find parallels in her rescue with what was happening now, as his rescuer dragged him through the water.

"She's… strong." It was incredible, really. How whomever it was was capable of moving so quickly, even when weighed down by him and his equipment.

Link's awareness began to slip as the mirror broke and water gave way to air. The primal joy was brief, as he slammed into the shore shortly afterward; he suddenly knew how much his body hurt, aching in places he didn't even remember having.

He gasped inadvertently, and began to cough. It started out as nothing more than a slight wheeze for air, but steadily built up until he was hacking and choking up water he had swallowed at some point in the depths.

As he lay there, convulsing in pain and coughing, a hand began to awkwardly rub his back, as if trying to comfort him. Despite all odds, it did bring some measure of peace to his wildly panicking mind.

His coughing eventually calmed, and then resided. The hand ceased the ponderous circling pattern it had taken and lifted from his back. A crunching in the gravelly shore signalled that its owner had moved, perhaps standing up now that he seemed to be stable. Link almost missed that feeling, despite the one responsible clearly having no idea what they were to be doing.

Then, someone spoke.

"Um… Wakasagi? Why'd you drag this guy up with you?" A young woman said sounding both aloof and nervous. An unfamiliar word is the first thing spoken, and Link wondered if it was a name.

"I couldn't've just let 'im drown, yeah? Reimu'd kill me!" Another young lady responded, sounding much more confident than her conversation partner.

"But, he's an outsider! He's fair game, you know." The first girl quickly fired back, spouting unfamiliar terms that left Link confused.

"Ya know I don't got an appetite fer that! If I don't have'ta, I won't! And look at 'is ears, will ya?" The second girl—Wakasagi is her name, Link believed—grumbled. Link wondered what his ears had to do with anything.

"He's a youkai, huh? Still, I don't know why you'd save him."

"Doesn't matter what 'e is: 'is remains'd look human. Just let 'im lay 'ere a bit; keep an eye on 'im too."

"Why do you need me? You're more than enough to fight the ferals 'round here!"

"You see 'ow much 'e's carryin'? I'm all tuckered out!"

"... Fine. I'll watch him 'til he wakes. Whatever happens after that isn't my problem."

"That's fine wit' me! It's only a problem if 'e dies on my turf! It's the burden o' the only sapient around."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Thanks, Kagerou! I'll catch you a nice 'n juicy fish later!"

"No prob'."

After "Kagerou" and "Wakasagi" finished speaking, a splash rang out along the shore of the lake. Link wished for a moment that his eyes would cooperate with him and open, if only to see what had just happened. And to get a glimpse of whoever those two were.

He'd speak, but his throat seemed about as ready to work as his eyes had been. That is to say that they weren't at all.

Footsteps crunched along the shore as one of his saviors—they were, even if the reasons were clearly selfish—walked away. They stopped shortly, so it was probably Kagerou, tasked as she was with keeping an eye on Link.

Link strained his ears to listen further for any sort of clue as to where he was, but found it failing. He could barely think anymore, his wakefulness seemingly spent.

Blankness threatened to overwhelm what remained of his awareness. He struggled futilely to stay awake for even a second longer, but it was unrelenting, and Link no longer knew himself nor anything at all.

He lay on the shore, unconscious. The sun glared down at him from above, and many eyes watched from strange places.

A/N:

Apologies to those of you who have read this, but this isn't a new update. I've decided to begin revising the very few chapters made so far; in third person this time around. It's much easier for me to write this way, so I should write at a quicker pace than before.