A/N: I have a stomach ache :(
Yeah, so, cliché. Considering it's Majora's Mask you've probably seen it all before. This particular headcanon for Link I'll be using for a chaptered story that (if I'm lucky) may come out in ten years...this one has been collecting dust for five months, because I hadn't actually started the game.
This is set just after Link acquires Mikau's mask.
And yes, I quoted Hamlet.
Tick tock tick tock, he was just a young boy trapped in a demented world, awaiting its own death.
He didn't know how many times he had repeated the cycle, or if it added up to weeks or years. He didn't even know how old he was. His body didn't age, not in these three days. It was almost like being a Kokiri again. Almost.
He had begun to think of the inhabitants of Termina as no more than clockwork figures living in a clockwork town, with no minds of their own, repeating the same actions each day no matter how much it had changed for him, no matter how far he got. It took the edge off reality.
It had almost broken him the first time. The moment he had seen someone he recognised in this unfamiliar world; the carpenters, the beggar; he had thought he was still in Hyrule. And when he had arrived at Romani Ranch, the sight of Cremia had him convinced he was older, with Master Sword in hand. But no, he hadn't changed, and the arrival of Romani had shocked him. Was he adult or child? Hyrule or Termina? Who was he talking to?
Saria, Zelda, Sheik (but the youth was Zelda, he reminded himself), Darunia, Nabooru, Ruto, Impa, the Deku Tree, Malon, Mido…Saria. He missed Saria. But he would age, she would watch him die, they would no longer be children, but a forest Kokiri and the mistaken fairy boy.
I will always remain…your friend.
But he had saved them all, he fulfilled the prophecy, had restored the Triforce. He was a hero, the Hero of Time. A simple boy in an adult's body.
Now just a boy.
A forgotten hero.
Would he be forgotten in this world too? Would their saviour disappear, to be spoken of in reverent whispers and bitter undertones while the boy that saved them lay unknown in his bed in a different world and time, his dreams haunted by visions of monsters and a yellow-eyed man, a mask with blank eyes, seven special people he'd never talk to again, a sword that sealed a golden realm, a man with narrow eyes and a false grin asking him to sell his masks…
The clock was ticking. He had 36 hours left. He didn't know how he knew, he just did, the doomsday clock inside his head ticking on and on, the minutes this world had left to live counting down. The numbers frightened him, the seconds taunted him, the hours leered and smirked in the knowledge that he would have to put himself through this again and again. The moon grinned down at him, delighted in the fact that it was causing him so much grief as it inevitably doomed both itself and the world it was going to kill. It was strange though, that every time he looked at it that he thought of the salesman…
The salesman was no help. He'd smile, and leer, and inquire after the mask. His goddess-damned mask. It was his own fault that the Skull Kid had stolen it. Maybe he had it stolen on purpose? For what though? To damn a world or to torture a child whose mind was already strained? How did he have possession of such a thing in the first place?
You've met a terrible fate…
He shuddered.
He could still feel the cold clammy hands of the mask salesman around his neck, his feet dangling off the floor as the smiling man strangled him, unable to even scream, the man's grip was iron.
What have you done to me?
"What are you doing to me?" he asked himself.
Tick tock tick tock, here he was, standing in the midst of Termina Field, doing absolutely nothing. He needed to get the salesman's mask back…Majora Majora, where are you…?
Masks. He stared at his hand and the mask he held. The Zora, Mikau. He had watched him die, die, seen the light leave his eyes…he had died before him, and…
Mikau. It had been only tomorrow since he had found the Zora, or had it been hours? Days? Weeks? He didn't know.
He was loath to put the mask on. Staring at it now, he felt the repeat of dozens of cycles in which the Zora would die. Mikau was different. By the time Link had obtained the others, the Deku, Darmani, they had already been dead. The Deku was no more than a lifeless shell that stood within the Catacombs, and the Goron had been a ghost, filled with longing and regret but accepting of the fact that he would leave this world.
He hadn't seen the anguish in their eyes as they realised death was upon them, hadn't seen hope turn to despair, hadn't tried to save their lives only to fail, to hear their last words, their last request, and see their lifeless body fall beside the water that they belonged in, sparkling in sunlight they would never see again.
The mask that held Mikau's soul trembled in his hand. He couldn't put it on, he'd defile he existence, soil the image and memory of the deceased.
What would it be like, to put on a mask of one just passed?
His hand quaked. He didn't even need to put it on. But the temptation…the pain…
"Uh, Link? Hello?" Tatl asked.
He ground his teeth. Tatl. She was nothing like Navi, with her arrogant tone, and assumption that he knew everything already. Well, he did, but reminders helped…
Where was Navi? Where did she go?
Why did she leave?
"Link?"
He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and quickly pressed the mask against his face.
His skin burned as the mask molded to it, and his nose and mouth were sealed. Unable to breathe, he choked, then screamed as the bones in his face shattered.
He screamed, his throat raw, his jaw and vocal cords convoluted, as his muscles were torn apart and his bones remolded to a Zora's design, shrieking as scales forced their way through his skin, as fins appeared on his arms, as his entire body was stretched upwards, enveloped in a blanket of pain that was almost comforting.
That illusion disappeared.
His identity was pushed aside by someone else.
"WHHHYYYY?!" he shrieked, his voice not his own. "WHY DID I HAVE TO DIE?! TELL ME!" Mikau's hold on his mind threatened to crush him, and he screamed again, if only the souls inside accepted that they were dead, if only they accepted that he was to use them, not force their sorrow as well as the form their bodies took on him, in a last desperate attempt to feel alive.
The transformation was done, Mikau was gone, and he doubled over, panting. The pain had vanished, so had most of his clothing. It was from a somewhat familiar height that he looked down at the world.
A simple boy in a Zora's body.
What would they do, if he returned to Hyrule in this form? The Kokiri would stare, Saria maybe would recognise him, the Hylians would wonder what on earth was such a creature doing wandering Castle Town, Ruto would wonder where her fiancé had disappeared to and why was the strange Zora man staring at her so oddly? She'd be still young, and wouldn't recognise him. Whether that would be a good thing or not he still hadn't decided.
Tick tock tick tock.
How many lives had he lived? First the Kokiri, then as an adult, as the Hero of Time. Now he was the saviour – if he did manage to save them – of this world, the Hero of Termina, the foreign boy who appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye. After…? What was he? Hyrule had forgotten him, and Termina he would leave. Would he have to prove himself again, put himself through the horrors he had already faced to gain recognition in the eyes of people he had already met? What did he have to do, just to be remembered? Was that selfish? No, he had already done things that had proved his worth, they should remember, why didn't they remember?!
An eye for an eye. Sounds good. I'll be taking that.
His right eye burned with imagined pain, and he gasped as he put his hands to his face. There was no memory to go with that, unless he counted landing face first into a pool of acid, at the bottom of a royal crypt. So why did it feel like his eye was being torn out? No, stabbed.
"Link?"
Tick tock tick tock. Our hero's failing. Our hero's falling.
"Stop it!" he yelled, at the sky, at the moon, even though nobody would listen. "Stop it, stop it, please, goddesses damn you!"
"Link, what are you-"
"Shut up, Navi!" he snapped.
"Navi? Who's Navi? I'm Tatl, you doofus."
"Shut up!"
He lunged at her, but she flew up, high above his flailing hands.
"Calm down!"
His knees buckled and he fell onto the grass, staring at his hands and the scales that covered them. "I just…I just want some rest, Tatl. I want to sleep."
He didn't mean sleep. He wanted something else. Would she figure it out or was she as stupid as he thought she was?
"But…if you sleep….you'll dream," she said, fluttering down so she was level with his face. So she had figured it out.
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come…
What if he did manage to die here, if the salesman allowed it? What would happen? Would the salesman come along, smiling, as if he was just passing by, kneel by his cold body and prise the ocarina from his lifeless hands? Would he play that melody he had so come to hate, and trap his soul inside another mask, just to be used for the next hero that came along?
This mask belonged to a person who could have saved the world, but he failed. Try not to make his mistake.
Tick tock tick tock here he was in another nightmare. Powerless. A simple boy…in another nightmare.
Tick tock tick tock, our hero's dying.