Let me address a few things first. This is a side project I've been working on, while I try to finish my ultimate mark on the fanfiction world, as I like to call it. At least I hope. I just recently completed Breath of the Wild with the true ending, and I really wanted to expand Revali's character. The game made him look like a pompous jerk and nothing else. When I watched the memory with him and Link, I immediately wanted to put him in a situation where he would be uncomfortable or unsure of what to do. On the other hand, I figured Mipha would be perfect for this, as it seemed to me if anyone would get through to Revali, it would be her. All of these stories take place before the the return of Calamity Ganon.
Without further ado, enjoy the story.
"I can't believe the princess actually trusts that whelp with her life," Revali muttered.
"Oh, can it already, Revali," Urbosa snapped, waving her hand. "There's nothing we can do."
The Rito ruffled his feathers in outrage. They were sitting in a stable, of all places. The Dueling Peaks stable, to be exact. They had walked up to one of the stablemasters, who took one look at them and gave them a small table, some chairs, and a promise of food if they asked for it. They were making what Daruk called a 'victory tour' of every major location in Hyrule, so now they were on their way to Kakariko. Zelda and her… chosen hero were, as far as Revali knew, praying at sacred springs.
"Have you met Link yet?" Mipha asked. She looked very out of place in the cramped stable, where the thick smell of smoke and horses choked the air. She kept glancing out the open door at the rain falling gently outside, clearly wishing she was somewhere else.
"Of course I have," Revali growled in reply. "He's only the most important person in all of Hyrule and I should be ashamed of myself if I hadn't."
Mipha said nothing.
"I don't know why you're getting so worked up about this," Daruk interrupted in his deep, loud voice that filled the room as suddenly as an earthquake. "I consider it an honor to be one of the princess's Champions. We get giant robots! What could possibly be wrong with that?"
"We're all saying basically the same thing," Mipha said quietly. "Link is the hero, not any of us, and we should try to accept that."
"Easy for you to say!" Revali nearly shouted at Mipha. "You loved him from the start! I know that your jealous of him and the princess, but you hide it to keep up your stupid purity and innocence shtick!"
He regretted the words even as he spoke them. The Zora looked up at him with wide, misty eyes for a moment, then hid her face and fled out into the rain.
As he was watching her, he felt his arm being slammed into the table. Urbosa was pinning him down with one hand, even as he struggled against her, and was reaching for her sword with the other. He got a good look at the dangerous glint in her eerily golden eyes as she crushed his wing beneath her palm.
"WHOA! WHOA!" Daruk cried. He tore Urbosa off of Revali and grabbed her arm before she could leap at him. "Hey! Calm down. Look, I agree he shouldn't have gone there, but how are we going to fight Calamity Ganon if we keep fighting each other?"
Urbosa snatched her arm away and walked out the door with her usual poise and confidence, without so much as a glance back at the two other champions. Daruk leaned back in his chair with a heavy, exasperated sigh. He looked at Revali, opened his mouth, and closed it again, shaking his head sadly. "Not cool, brother. Not cool."
Then the Goron, too, got up and lumbered off, not before stopping at the desk and placing a blue rupee on it.
Revali was left to ponder alone. He was used to prying at people's weaknesses and using them to his advantage. Urbosa did it too. Mipha was apposing him, so naturally he had to give a counterargument. Right? That's all it was. A counterargument.
Not that I care about what the Zora thinks, he told himself. She doesn't matter to me any more than anyone else does. But even so, he found himself taking to the air as soon as he was out in the open. Behind the stable was a large, open field with a river running along one of the edges. If Mipha was anywhere, she would be in there. The rain had receded to a light drizzle, and he could fly, for the most part, but his wing stung from where Urbosa had pinned it. Speaking of Urbosa, he could see her and Daruk, standing near each other, seemingly talking. Daruk glanced up and saw Revali, but Urbosa put a hand out, stopping him. She gave Revali a look that, even from a distance, conveyed too many things for him to comprehend.
With that, he flew off, following the river. He had to fly very close to it in order to actually see anything below the surface. He traced it back to its origin, a waterfall pouring out of a cliff with a decently-sized stone outcropping around it. Sitting on the outcropping was a small raspberry-colored shape. As he got closer, he could see that she had her face in her hands and was shaking slightly. As he realized this, he felt a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach that he had only felt one other time, on the day his mother was killed.
He hesitated about six feet away from the platform for a moment, before alighting a foot away from Mipha. He stood there, not sure what to do, then settled on sitting down beside her, his feet dangling over the dizzying drop below them. Mipha didn't respond to him at all.
How much had he hurt her? He knew Mipha was sensitive, of course she was, she was a healer. But maybe the subject of Link had been a little more sore than he first thought. Or maybe… maybe he hit a little too close to home.
"Daruk and Urbosa are looking for you," he said flatly. How else was he supposed to start the conversation? Somehow the words "I'm sorry" seemed meaningless.
"I know," she said quietly, without taking her face out of her hands.
"I, uh…" apologizing was not Revali's specialty. Usually he just got away with whatever he said. This was new to him, actually having consequences for his words and not his actions. Perhaps the line between the two was not as thick as he had thought.
"You've come to apologize, haven't you?" her voice had become suddenly monotone.
"I- yes. But it's not as much of an apology… as it is a confession."
She looked up at him. Unlike Hylians or Gerudo, when a Zora or Rito cries, the only evidence of it is whatever tear-stains are left. With humans, their faces got all puffy and disgusting. Mipha's face showed no signs of it, but the look in her eyes said enough.
Revali sighed and trained his eyes on a horse in the field down below, refusing to look at her. "Don't expect me to say this often, but… I was wrong. I made a mistake. I can say it in as many ways as you want, but it won't change what I did. And… well… I'm sorry."
She didn't say anything, and for those few seconds he could hear his heart pounding in his throat. "Words are a strange thing, are they not?" she mused. "They're almost like monsters. Twenty can attack you head-on, but as long as you're skilled, you can kill them all easily. But just one strong, or clever, or cruel monster is enough to break anyone."
"I was that one monster," Revali replied.
"Monsters don't last forever," she said. Both of them were fixated on the field, but neither of them were thinking about it. "Some last longer than others. The evilest ones tend to last the longest. Lynels, Hinoxes. But monster is a subjective term. The Sheikah did some horrible things. But the difference between them and the Yiga Clan is that the Sheikah tried to fix them, and the Yiga blamed their mistakes on others. If we want to be the Champions, we'll have to be the Sheikah. We'll make mistakes, we'll fight, but what matters is we pull through in the end."
"So…" he frowned. "You do accept my apology, correct?"
She reached out and put a hand on his arm. "Yes."
"Excellent! Now to make Urbosa pay for what she did to my pristine feathers! Onward, Mipha!" He used his signature updraft and twirled dramatically into the sky, before turning to face her. "Actually, I'll be the only one punishing her, because I'll be the first one there!"
"Ha! If you win, I'll eat a whole snail!" Even Mipha's challenge was gentle, but then she gracefully dived off the platform and hit the water with no splash whatsoever. She took off down the river, a pink shape darting off into the distance.
Revali could practically hear Urbosa's voice in his head. "So you aren't a complete pile of sandseal dung after all."