Disclaimer: The Legend of Zelda and its characters belong to Nintendo. My melancholy-poet moods, for better or worse, belong to me.

Still Haven't Found

I have climbed highest mountain…

I have run through the fields…

Only to be with you - Only to be with you.

I have run, I have crawled…

I have scaled these city walls

Only to be with you…

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for. _ I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2

The world was silver.

The sky was a soft gray - almost a flat white - while the snow gently fell. The landscape would have been a world of diamonds if but a little sun would shine through the clouds, but everything was thick and soft, the afternoon light diffused into an even tone. The mare huffed, sending up clouds of steam from her nostrils as she powered through the drifts. She was just quiet enough for her rider to hear the subtle snikt-snikt of thick snowflakes falling onto the bark of trees as it came down heavier.

Then again, Link had typically long Hylian ears, able to catch small sounds that those with less prodigious ears often missed. He was pretty sure he heard a family of squirrels shivering together in the hollow of an oak and a sparrow hopping about in the branches above. He kept himself warm with a cloak wrapped tight around his body, but his fingers were getting stiff. He knew he was near Lon Lon Ranch and could take a warm room there.

The young man viewed the sky between the trees and sniffed at a flake upon the tip of his nose. Everything was so soft and quiet that he wondered, briefly, if death would be as peaceful. Link had spent most of his short life as a warrior, so he had been close to death a few times and saw it more often in the eyes of monsters he'd brought his various swords through. Death had been anything but peaceful then, but he did wonder about what the actual moment of it was like – if to fade into it forever was like being buried in soft snow, his spirit growing cold. He never quite remembered what it was like to be brought back by a fairy – which happened now and again. He only recalled the pain of wounds and the weird sensation of his heart re-starting. It was like having the breath knocked into him rather than out of him.

Link had been out wandering again. He knew that he wasn't in the Lost Woods because they almost never saw winter. They were so thick and entangled that snow never reached the ground and so enchanted that maybe the whisper of Fall would beckon unwary travelers at their edges to join the season of dying deep and dark within, but otherwise, it was always spring there.

The Hero of Time was largely unknown as such, here in his native land. He had saved this country once, in a distant time and had, by his actions, created an alternate existence. Link was glad of it. The people had not suffered what had happened in that other reality. They were not without the suffering standard to mortal creatures, but the peoples of Hyrule had been spared much pain, and many their lives.

Link did not feel like a hero, however. When he looked back upon the whole mess, he considered himself someone caught up in circumstances beyond his control – a pawn in the games of the gods. He was simply there and that was it. Maybe he had been chosen to journey through that strange destiny simply because he was reckless. He still had a reckless nature. He supposed that when the Goddesses wanted to play games, they needed to find someone stupid enough to take up the call.

When he had been in the mysterious land of Termina, he had worked in the shadows, too. No one there took him to be anything other than some kid wandering about without his parents' permission. Some took pity on him as a lost child, and that's when he'd run. The young couple he'd helped knew him for something more, but he hadn't stuck around to trouble them after getting a good look at their wedding from afar. Of course, how weird that world had been caused him to wonder if it had all been just a dream. Link wasn't sure if the alternate timeline of Hyrule was accurate, either. Oftentimes, he wondered if he was just some madman – though one without the raving, as he kept his secrets to himself. He wondered if he was just some kid abandoned in the woods, left to grow up to the beat of his own imaginings.

He had helped the princess of Hyrule uncover a plot against the king and the man who'd become a nightmare in that reality that Link was not sure had been real had been put away before any damage could be done. Apparently, Ganondorf was a powerful sorcerer of some renown among his people and considered by those that remained of them to have been a cruel king. Link chose not to stay and to live in the palace as a ward, however… He was led to Termina in his search to see if his fairy-companion, Navi, had been real at all. He'd come back every now and again and take some shelter and a little schooling. Learning to read had been a decision most valuable. It had helped him greatly in his subsequent life as a wanderer, since signposts and contracts were done up all in pretty letters, and more reliable than word-of-mouth.

Epona crested a hill and skidded slightly. Link grunted. He'd just had her shoes done. He'd been worried over how they'd handle in this snow. He couldn't afford the hassle of her throwing one again. He wanted her to break a leg even less. No more lost companions – no more. He smelled fireplace smoke and looked down onto the plain to see the warm light from windows making a halo-fuzz in the fine falling flakes. He was almost there. A room for the night or maybe a few days awaited him before he headed out again. Link liked exploring the wide world, seeing everything there was to see within Hyrule Kingdom and visiting places beyond its borders. However, the wanderlust took him primarily because he knew that he was homeless. There was no place for him in the world. He never stayed too long anywhere because he did not wish to overstay his welcome.

Link did not belong in the place where he was raised. He was a forest-child in one way, but he was not an eternal Kokiri. He'd gone back to his old home a few times and none of his childhood friends recognized him anymore. They merely looked up at the strange man that was able to get past the tricks of the forest and they liked asking him a multitude of questions. "What's it like to be so old?" "What's it like to know that you're gonna die?" - Rude questions, the type that undisciplined children ask, because it is precisely what the Kokiri are. Link taught them how to fight some of the destructive wildlife that came in from the edge of the woods from time to time. That enchanted clearing with all of the cute little tree-houses (he had to duck whenever he came through the door of his own abandoned place) was no longer home to him and could be so never again. Whenever he traveled even through the Lost Woods to get to there, the Skull Kids would screech at him and throw things, not recognizing that the forest, itself, knew him.

Growing up sucked.

Link didn't belong at the palace, either. Court manners and politics were just not for him. When Lady Zelda had done him a favor to tack down missing persons and family records of the royal house from the time of Hyrule's last civil war, he had learned who his probable father had been and was able to visit his grave. If, indeed, the name they'd scrounged up had been his father, Link was of noble blood, of the Hylian Knights' lineage. However, he couldn't stay. Link had stayed long enough to earn his credentials as a knight, but the urge to wander had hit him and Zelda had let him go. Work as a royal guard had not satisfied him, especially in peacetime when Castle Town was as safe as a well-tended (and fenced) garden.

No, Link had an itch. He wasn't the great Hero in Hyrule except in his dreams and nightmares. Termina was a place he'd never been able to find again, and he'd simply be a tourist there since only the dead knew the extent of his deeds. Not that he felt special in either of those places – just a boy caught up in waves of Fate.

He was driven onward, too. Link liked visiting far-flung villages and helping the people there with their problems. He'd slain a few dragons and sealed a few demons. He'd received smiles from people and adoration that made him feel weird. Whenever he'd gotten too much of it, just about when the people of a given town were to uphold him as a hero, that is when he'd pack up his things and leave them a note about having to be elsewhere.

It never sank in that he could ever do enough. Link still felt pulled by fate and as if he was a pawn of the gods. The twitches in his own brain and the emotions welling up in his own heart prevented him from turning his back from anyone who needed his skills. He was simply an exterminator, really – taking care of dangerous creatures and things people had foolishly un-sealed because he happened to know how to and had the sword to do it. Of course, there was a time at an inn when the lady innkeeper screamed at having seen a spider in the kitchen. Link hadn't crushed it like she'd expected him to. The poor little spider wasn't doing anyone any harm, so he cupped a jar over it and took it outside to release in a patch of grass.

After all this time, he couldn't help but feel like he wasn't doing enough. Link lived for those smiles – though the happiness he gleaned from other people was fleeting. He always felt like he could do more. Words echoed in his mind often. "Fairyless" and other epithets of non-belonging from the days of his childhood. He hadn't belonged where he'd grown up – Saria's kindness aside – and didn't belong in this timeline and it didn't seem to him that he could ever stay anywhere for long.

The world wanted him to take care of its "spiders" and move onward. And of course, ever since a once beloved friend and left him, he was fairlyess.

Link worked for others because seeing people smile made him feel alright for a while. The happiness didn't last and there was always more to do. Every relieved person, every child who hugged his knees, every free meal someone gave him chased away the chill of loneliness, but every hearth-fire faded as the persistent thoughts that he was "just around to do a job" crept into his heart.

There were those that he could not save constantly on his mind, as well. When he was among the Hyrule Knights, he'd watched a few men under his charge taken by re-deads, one by a dead-hand and a few by the dangers of Death Mountain. Out in the countryside, he'd arrive too late to a monster attack sometimes, and had seen people lose their homes. There really was so much he could do for the common folk and it was never enough.

All the while, he was still the Boy Without a Fairy inside his mind and heart. He was the odd one, the weirdo, the person who did not belong. Link could find his place by belonging for just a little while, but only for a little while. He knew the looks of those who thought of him as dangerous after seeing him deal with a dodongo or a pack of wolfos, the eyes of those that feared that strength and the blood lining the edge of his sword. He feared the questions about where he'd come from and where his home was even more.

Please don't keep me, I can't stay.

Link was still looking for something, but he didn't know quite what. Maybe he was looking for another time. He felt that maybe, just maybe he could have belonged in the timeline in which he'd grown up too fast. He was known there. It had been a hard world, but it was his.

He knew, in his mind, that he did a lot of good in the world, but in his heart, he could not feel it. He could not get a grasp on it.

Don't call me a hero yet. I haven't done enough.

Epona slogged down the hillside and down onto the snow-covered trail leading into the ranch. The farmer's daughter would probably fret over him and furiously check him over for fresh wounds – after checking over Epona, of course. Malon was sweet, but noble beasts were always her first priority.

Maybe he would sit by a fire and tell a few stories and eat his fill of a farmer's winter-stew and biscuits. Link would see the light in that girl's eyes, and smiles on her father and her uncle. He'd meet a few new farmhands that he could tell his stories to – though they'd probably think they amounted to cow-flop. He'd belong for just a little while and for a few days, perhaps, life would be just okay.

And then his heart would feel the stab it always felt. Until he gave his life in some reckless endeavor, it would never be enough. He had to keep moving on.

END.

I've had it in mind for a while to play with the idea of a depressed Link as something of an extension of the idea of "heroism born from someone not caring about their own life and being desperate to do something to stave off their insecurities" that I've been exploring in some (really dark) original work of mine. The Ocarina of Time / Majora's Mask incarnation of Link always struck me as melancholy. The final spur that got this out of my brain and into type was some thoughts I had on a snowy day, my mind waxing poetic about the look of the sky and the feel of the air.

Shadsie, first completed fanfic of 2015. (Why don't I have my time-traveling flying car yet?)