A/N: You're all gonna hate me for this one, I'm sure. I could have left the last few hundred words out butbutbut-
I'll put the link to the inspirational artwork on tumblr (one day).
Contains violence, blood, character death (spoiler?)
She would watch him die.
Saria sat on a fallen log, cradling her ocarina in her arms. Above her, the fairy fluttered, spilling her pale rosy light down on the Kokiri. Trees surrounded her, tall, dark, covered in moss and damp. Not like the ones from home.
She remembered the day Link had left. It was just after the Deku Tree died. She had given him an ocarina as a parting gift, staring at the fairy he had recently acquired. Mido had labelled him a traitor, a killer, spat his name like a slander. She knew he couldn't stay, he was…different. How different she was afraid to even think of.
Then, just as soon, he came back, changed, older almost, but not. His brilliant blue eyes had fear in them.
When she asked what he was scared of, he replied that he feared being forgotten, of being wiped from people's memories. She didn't understand. "I'll always remember you," she had said, but he shook his head. "You don't remember what I was," he had said. "You don't remember who you are."
And then he had said goodbye, had said he was going to look for someone special. It was only then that she noticed he kept glancing at the space above his head, as if expecting shining wings to fly into view. It was only then that she noticed Navi was gone.
He had been gone for months, and Mido's mood soured even more. Something was happening to the Kokiri. The life was fading from them, and even the Deku Sprout did not know what was happening.
Then he had come running through the entrance, tangled hair flying, tears streaming from his wild eyes, eyes so full of fear she was beginning to feel scared herself. He had flung himself at her, at Mido, grasped the hands of everyone else. "Don't ever forget me!" he had screamed, his hands tight on her shoulders as he shook her. "Don't you ever forget me!"
He had broken down in a sobbing heap, his body trembling. Mido had helped her carry him to the treehouse that had once been his. He talked in his sleep, something about princesses and thieves and masks and moons. Sometimes he yelled, flinging his left hand out as though his empty fingers still grasped the hilt of a blade. When awake he would not move, staring into space. No fairy floated above his head.
"Hylian," he said once. "I'm Hylian."
She didn't speak, and Mido had stalked out of the room, flinging the curtain behind him. Link had flinched like he had slammed a door.
He had plans to leave. Saria had tried to persuade him to stay, but she could see it now – he was growing taller, his face more defined. The haunted look would never leave his eyes.
So he left once again, and she wasn't sure if he would come back. She had cried afterwards, for weeks, and remained in her sanctuary, in the meadow, holding her ocarina. Once she heard footsteps, and looked up to see Mido sitting beside her. Tears flowed silently down his cheeks.
Years had passed. Life still faded, and then…and then everyone left.
The forest was not a good place. Not anymore. What was once their home was now their hell. So they ventured into the world. The weight lifted off their shoulders, but something else had settled there.
Mortality.
The forest had housed their immortality, and now they would age and die. Slowly, much more slowly than a Hylian, but death was inevitable. Except for her.
Time hadn't touched her was what they said. She was blessed, but she was their curse, a reminder of what they had left behind. Mido had pleaded with them to understand that she didn't want it that way, but they spat at him too and cast him away like they did her. For a while they remained together, but one day she woke up and he had disappeared.
She was alone now.
She had spent at least a decade wandering around, searching for answers in nothing. Even though the sight of forests pained her, she remained in them, only feeling safe when trees towered above her. Time did have its touch on her, but it was faint, imperceptible.
So here she was, in an alien forest, trapped by her own mind.
Her fairy – did she have a name? She must have forgotten. The fairy wandered to a tree, listening, and then flew back to Saria.
"Can you hear that?" she asked.
Saria put her ocarina down and strained her ears. Wolfos howls, the clank of armour…a human voice.
She jumped down from the log and began to run, her thin legs pounding the ground. Behind her the fairy raced through the air, shouting that she wasn't safe. Saria ignored her, and kept running towards the sounds of battle, small twigs leaving tiny scratches on her arms.
A yell stopped her. It was loud, very close, and she crept towards the source. A clearing appeared ahead of her, filled with dark green light.
A soldier clad in armour was encircled by four wolfos, their eyes glowing with malice, and further on an Iron Knuckle approached, its heavy axe cutting a deep groove into the earth.
Saria hid behind a tree and watched as the soldier took a swing at one of the wolfos. Caught off guard, the wolfos shrieked as the tip of the sword sliced through its neck, and it collapsed, its body dissolving into green smoke.
The soldier darted forward and felled another wolfos, but it ripped the gauntlet off his hand along with a strip of skin. Blood began to drip from the wound, and the soldier grunted. He turned to the remaining two monsters and shrieked at them, a high pitched, bestial sound. The wolfos cowered and slunk away, ears laid flat.
Saria held her breath as the solder faced the Iron Knuckle and tightened the grip on his sword. He waited until the monster was almost upon him and leapt out of the way as the axe came crushing down on the spot where he had been.
Saria covered her mouth as she watched, and the fairy – her name – hid behind her head. The man thrust his sword into the Iron Knuckle's back. The creature jerked, and turned, its movements speeding up. The man leapt back from the enraged suit of armour and waited, leaping away again, his left hand trembling with the weight of the sword.
She hid her face, not bearing to watch, as the clash of steel on steel rang out through the forest, along with the heavyset grunts from the Iron Knuckle and cries of pain – she squeezed her eyes shut – from the soldier. The battle seemed to last forever. She thought that against a soldier who knew what they were doing, an Iron Knuckle would not last long. Perhaps he was deliberately drawing out the battle?
There was a long, reverberating tone, like the toll of a bell, and the fairy tugged at her hair.
"Saria! Look!"
She glanced up from her hiding place, and saw the soldier kneeling, blood dripping from the gaps in his heavy armour, his left hand raised and the sword it held embedded in the chest of the monster. From beneath the soldier's helmet golden hair gleamed, but the one eye she could see was sealed shut by an old scar.
He flinched suddenly, and glanced her way. His left eye gleamed blue, and it widened in shock at the sight of her. His mouth opened –
Saria shrieked as the Iron Knuckle used the last of its strength to bring its axe down, knocking the soldier away and flinging the helmet off his head. He slammed into a tree trunk with a horrible crack and the gaping wound the axe had opened in his chest poured blood.
The Iron Knuckle collapsed into a pile of metal and melted away as Saria stayed, frozen, half-hidden, staring at the face of the soldier. The one blue eye had locked her gaze, chilling her to the bone. His bloodstained hair – rubies set in gold – framed a face she knew all too well.
She crept out into the open, trembling, the air heavy in her lungs as she approached the prostrate form. He stared up at her, handsome, in his forties, a haunted sapphire eye searching her face.
"Saria," he rasped, running a blood-coated tongue over his lips. "Saria…"
Tears welled in her eyes and she fell to her knees, stroking his face. "Link…" She swallowed. "How…How could you?" Her voice cracked and she began to sob, tears spilling down her face. Her shaking hands were covered in blood now, and she grasped his, trying to believe that somehow the wound in his chest wasn't as deep as it appeared.
"I didn't want…" he coughed, splattering her with scarlet drops. Tears glistened in his eye.
"Shh," she breathed. No this isn't right, this isn't meant to happen. "You joined the army."
He managed a strained smile. "Wh…What use is a warrior…in times of peace?"
She frowned, tightening her grip on his hands. "Warrior?"
"You don't remember."
She glanced up at him. The fear in his eye had deepened, deepened so far down it had bored a hole into his spirit. His face was haggard, drawn, lines of pain etched into his skin, blood speckling his cheeks. With a tremendous effort he pulled a hand free and grasped her arm. His eye burned into her, the home of a thousand ghosts.
"Tell me you remember." His fingers completely encircled her arm. "Tell me."
Saria shook her head. Her quaking hands fell limply to the ground.
His grip tightened and he pulled her closer. "Tell me." His breath smelled of blood and steel.
"I don't-"
A light exploding in her head, blinding her, sending images whirling across her field of vision. Memories, of him leaving, of waiting. Of knowing she was someone important and so was he but not knowing what to do. Of time whirling by, and then…the temple…temples…people she'd never met…six others…a thief…a princess.
More tears fell from her eyes as the memories filled her head. Thank you…Saria… she thought, to that other version of herself that would never see him again, yet live with the memory that he had saved them all.
"I…I remember…the Hero..." Her voice broke and so did she, weeping a flood of tears as her best friend lay dying beside her. "I remember."
His grip slackened but he did not let go, and he watched the forest child with whom he had spent the first years of his life with, watched her weep for him. Her fairy was on her shoulder, distressed, confused as she was.
She wept until there were no more tears left inside her, nothing. She felt hollow.
"You…" his voice was fading. "You still have your ocarina?"
"Of course." Her own voice was weak, frail.
His mouth moved, and for a moment, a moment in which her heart stopped and the air froze in her lungs, she thought he was finally gone. But he was still breathing, and the one word she caught before he spoke was 'healing'.
"Play me your song."
Wordlessly she pulled the instrument from her pocket and put it to her lips, hesitated, then set it down. "Mido missed you."
His eye wandered away from her face, as if avoiding something. "I know."
She frowned, and when he did not say anything further she pressed her lips to the ocarina and played her song.
The clear notes soared into the air, fast and cheerful, inappropriate for what was happening. She closed her eyes and let the music wash over her, but it wasn't enough to conceal his laboured breathing or the sounds of her fairy quietly crying. It wasn't enough to mask the thoughts inside her head, eating away at her soul, or the slow passage of time that trapped her body.
It wasn't enough to drown out his last words.
"Thank you…"
As his last breath rattled out of him the ocarina dropped from her fingers, smashing to pieces against his armour. The shards of clay fell to the ground, and the forest child howled at the ground, screaming until her throat was raw with the force of her grief.
Time passed, she didn't know how long, but his body remained motionless. Numb all over, she stood, and picked up his heavy sword, far too heavy for someone her size, but she managed to stand it up and plant its blade into the soil in the middle of the clearing. She retrieved the helmet from where it had been thrown, and rested it on top of the hilt. Then she started to dig.
She dug with her bare hands, her fingers scraped and bleeding from hidden rocks and stubborn roots, but she persisted, until a rectangular shape with the sword at its head had been excavated, a metre deep.
Hauling herself out with shaking arms, she stood on trembling legs and stumbled to his body. The lifeless eye gazed up at her, but she could not bring herself to close it. Wrapping her hands around his ankles she pulled. The armour was heavy and gouged lines into the earth, and his golden hair was soon caked with dirt.
Panting, almost wishing her lungs were too spent to draw another breath, she carefully lowered him into the grave, taking one last look at his face until she couldn't bear it any longer. She pushed earth into the hole with a vehement strength, covering him up, refusing to look at what she was doing until her fairy told her that it was finished. She looked down at her bloody hands and at the small mound in front of her, the helmet almost seeming as if it was glaring at her. Her legs buckled and she fell to her knees at the foot of his grave.
"Sa…Saria…?"
She ignored the fairy, her eyes fixed on the ground, seeing nothing.
"Saria?"
"Leave me alone!" she shouted, swiping at the fairy with her hand. The tiny body hurtled through the air, hit a tree and fell to the ground, absolutely still.
Saria ground her fists into the dirt and fresh tears trailed down her cheeks at the new loss.
"Saria…" The fairy wasn't dead.
"I'm sorry." The words grated out of her mouth. "I'M SORRY!" she shrieked at the sky.
The fairy waited and then crawled over the ground, her wings crumpled, flightless. Saria cradled her in her hands as she cried. Her mind was empty of everything but the thought that everyone was gone, that she was alone. She couldn't do this.
A low rumble interrupted her and she started, looking around for the source. Around her leaves were falling, disturbed by some unknown force, and then the earth split beneath her.
She scrambled back as the fissure widened over the grave, exposing…
"No…" she gasped, eyes wide with horror. "No…NO!"
But she couldn't stop it from happening. She couldn't stop the hand that appeared from below the ground and grabbed the edge, she couldn't stop as its pale rotten fingers dug in and pulled, drawing up a body from beneath the earth.
The creature wavered on its ethereal legs. Its flesh was transparent, and through it Saria could see the physical body of her friend. But a ghost had risen.
It opened its eye. The iris shone red.
"Saria?" it asked.
"NO!" she screamed, running away, away from the horror that he would never be at peace, that he was still trapped to this earth instead of residing in the realm of the goddesses. Her feet pounded the earth and tears streamed from her eyes as she ran, towards oblivion or salvation she didn't know, but she had to get away from the horror that had risen from the hero's grave, from the knowledge.
In the clearing the apparition watched, head tilted, before a ghostly tear trailed from his eye and hit the ground. Where it landed a flower sprang.
In the end, it was he who watched her die.