I started replaying Ocarina of Time, and have this to say: in terms of difficulty, Ocarina is the superior. However, Twilight Princess-Link is a lot more sturdy. OoT-Link loses six hearts if he gets a splinter. So this fic was born out of my frustration of that difference.
Seven years
Seven years. Seven years.
A Skulltula flies down from the ceiling, its bone-mask demented and hideous; Navi's wail is the only warning Link has, and he is flung back three yards, landing flat on his face. He snarls and drags himself up to pierce the Skulltula's forehead with his Hookshot. As the monster falls to the ground and bursts into flames, Link can feel blood trickling down his lips.
"I think it's broken," Navi says tentatively, her blue glow barely an inch from Link's nose.
Seven years.
"You just shut the hell up Navi," Link replies, tilting his head back and reminding himself that he absolutely adores her.
--
Fighting when he was a kid had always been a pain, because the Deku Shield quite frankly sucked, and burned, and his legs and his arms were just too short to give him a decent advantage, and he wasn't tall enough to make for a good swordsman anyway and really, how crazy was the Great Deku Tree to be sending a ten-year old to do a man's job?
He had always thought that being tall would be a lot better (in a quiet, wistful sort of way, because he was a Kokiri, and the Kokiri never ever grow up) but then he took the Master Sword (seven years) and then he went to sleep (seven years) and then he woke up which was an awful experience in of itself because of the terrible feeling that something was hideously wrong with the world. And then once he woke up, he realized that he was big, that he was an adult, and not a Kokiri at all.
This really was so many kinds of sad.
--
Link was beginning to discover that being tall didn't really make any difference. At all.
He supposed that it was because he simply hadn't had time to get used to his arms and legs; he had gone to sleep as a child, and then woken up with a full-grown body. There had been no room for him to grow into his own limbs. If he'd had a few weeks to himself, then it probably wouldn't have been as much of a problem, but as it was, he had no idea what his arms and legs were doing, which resulted in him being injured even more often than usual.
He finally crumpled in a small abandoned corner of the main hall, having dealt with the last of the Poe Sisters, and gaining a nasty burn on his stomach in the process. He pulled out a bottle, and let the fairy out, its pink glow casting strange shadows on his burn.
As the tiny little nymph healed his wounds, Navi flew under his hat. He could feel her shaking, the tiny trembles making his bangs flutter; he also had the terrible feeling that she was crying.
"It'll be alright, Navi," he said, his own voice sounding strange to him. Puberty had come and gone, taking its exacting toll on his body.
"No," she said in between her sobs. "It's...not...at all alright!"