I am (among other things) a canoe trip guide, and during staff training at the camp I worked at last summer we shared a lot of (sometimes cheesy) quotes about courage. It made me wonder if Link, as an avatar of courage, might take those sorts of things personally.
Spoilers for Twilight Princess, in the third part.
01. "From caring comes courage" Lao Tzu
The morning Link is to depart for the Surface, he feels nothing like a hero - his head is still swimming from strange dreams of the woman who lives in his sword, and his jaw aches from clenching his teeth together, and he wants nothing more than to see Zelda's face again, even just for a moment. He counts the seconds before disaster, enjoys the last few moments of quiet and calm before Gaepora knocks on his door. Three knocks: one for each Goddess.
The Headmaster enters, carrying a bundle of olive green. "Artemisia grew in abundance this year," he says, as if he is apologizing for the colour of the knight uniform. Link takes the clothes and dresses slowly. He's stalling, but all he wants to do is hide - and Gaepora must be able to tell. He offers some kind words about duty and danger, while Link sets his jaw and replaces cowardice with acceptance.
"It is okay to be afraid," Gaepora says, softly, as Link straps on his sword. Link looks up, surprised; he did not expect to hear that, but the Headmaster is smiling. "It is natural to be fearful of the unknown. The Goddesses gave you a sturdy and caring heart - believe in your love of others. From caring comes courage."
(Yes, Link finds himself thinking, weeks and weeks and weeks later as he slips into the Silent Realm, Gaepora was right all along. It was not replacing cowardice with acceptance that kept him moving forward, but rather learning to care about the world, and realizing his deep and personal stake in it all. If the Goddesses wanted him to bare his soul so they could scrub it clean with silence, that was fine. All they would need to leave was his sword arm and his heart.)
02. "Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyways" John Wayne
There is a part of Link that is still Kokiri, a nine-year-old who has grown up in the shelter of the woods, the boy who learned to live without a fairy. That part of him is still a coward; it is a pale green space in his heart that wants to go back to his old bed in his own home in his own time and put the whole horrific story of monsters and magic behind him.
Kakariko Village still smells of ash when Link retires to Impa's bed, heartsore and underfed, promising himself that he will enter the Shadow Temple to look for her after he takes a short rest. It rains for hours, disturbing his sleep, and Link thinks of the dream of the rain and the terrible things that had happened since then - the wild open space of Hyrule Field, the journey up and down Death Mountain, the dark, moist corners in the bowels of Jabu Jabu - that had all led him to the graveyard in Kakariko Village, seven years hence.
Eventually, he gives up on sleep and drifts into the barn, where he grooms Epona. Something shifts almost imperceptably above him, but he has grown used to odd disturbances in the night, and Navi lazily drifts upwards as he waits for it to speak. If it matters to hear, you're very brave, he hears Sheik whisper from the rafters, the dusky voice mingling with the rain. Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyways.
(But Link is a man now, at least in body, and being an adult means being choosing between being scared and brave or just being scared. He knows that he will never be so courageous that he will never be afraid; death is real, every day, and he had never known as a child how much it reeks. And still, he rides on; Hyrule needs someone, and that someone just happened to be him.)
03. "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow." Mary Anne Radchester
Stories of heroes make the difficult seem easy. Yes, the battle is hard, but victory is inevitable. Link hardly feels heroic as he drags himself, bleeding and broken, out of Hyrule Castle, having been left for dead by Moblins. He feels cowardly and pathetic. He hadn't even made it to the top floor, where a man named Ganondorf is waiting for a battle Link never asked for.
Exhaustion carries his feet to Telma's, where - before he's fully aware of what he's doing - he's sitting at the bar, ordering Ordon pumpkin soup, and a wheel of goat cheese with hardtack. Telma says nothing as she gathers the meal together, and places a mug of warm ale (on the house) beside it, just collects the rupees and places them in a fold of her apron.
Rusl takes a seat next to him, and it's a strange pastiche of the conversation they had at twilight, ages ago. Link regards him, wearily.
"Gonna let me patch you up, or are you gonna bleed on the bar all night?"
Link, who hasn't spoken a word in ages, tiredly holds his left arm out. Rusl inspects the damage and calls for a healer, who rushes in with bandages, and Link is moved to a bed as soon as he is finished eating. They scrub him clean, dress his wounds with clean bandages, and feed him spoonfuls of red potion. The pain returns in rolling waves. Link heaves once, twice, loses his dinner into a bucket held by the bed, vomits until he is spitting bloody bile that mingles with his own tears and he wishes, wishes, wishes he was home again, just a goatherd in Ordon Village, destined to marry the mayor's daughter and live a life of happy mediocrity.
Midna has nothing to say. As Link drifts off towards nightmares, Rusl holds his left hand and inspects the mark there.
"We believe in you," Rusl says, finally. "All of us, we believe in you. And remember, courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is that little voice at the end of the day that says -"
("- I'll try again tomorrow," Midna whispers, as Link reenters the castle, his jaw set, his destination clear. He had never thought of himself as especially courageous, but tenacity he has in spades - that rough-hewn, country-boy sort of grit that is bred on the farm and tempered on the battlefield. Link still isn't sure if he can carry the day. At the very least, though, he is no longer afraid.)
04. "A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage."
Barely a month after Link's return to Ordon, the captain of the guard makes a weary report to Zelda: what is a soldier in a dirty green tunic doing, thinking he can walk in at twilight with a sword and without an invitation?
This is no soldier, she knows. This is not someone who needs an invitation. She rushes out to find him, ignoring the hushed whispers of scandalized councilmen and women. She curses her callousness. He's still mourning, and she took his wooden sword and sent him back to Ordon with the knowledge that he would never have a home again. A goatherd with a sword arm has no place in the world.
She finds him near the entrance to the East Garden, still smouldering from the wreckage built by moblins and their beasts. His eyes raise to meet hers as she approaches. There is a fierce, hot, undying flame that burns in there, and she regrets everything he had to drag himself through.
"You can follow me, if you'd like," he whispers, as she catches her breath and gathers her skirts. Link's accent is provincial; his manner suggests a peasant's upbringing. This threadbare man stands before her, months separated from clean laundry and a good night's sleep, aching from a pain too deep to put in words.
"Perhaps I can help," she answers. He motions with his shoulder towards the garden. She follows, and the green suits him, she thinks. For a reason far beyond her, she finds herself wondering why the Goddesses were so cruel as to send a goatherd to a fool's death.
"Behind the garden there is a grave, where a swordsman was buried," he says, not looking at her.
Better a goatherd than a child, she thinks.
In the back of the garden a hole has been bombed through the wall. She does not bother to ask him why he has desecrated her castle, merely follows him into the graveyard behind; does not say that her father brought her there when she was a little girl, and had warned her that someday - if not in her lifetime than in someone else's - that cursed swordman's regrets would come to pass, and Hyrule would be covered in darkness once again.
"Twilight is the only time when we can feel the lingering regret of spirits who have left our world," Link says, as the approach the tree where his bones had been left to moulder. He pulls a hammer and chisel from his bag. "He waited for me, and when I first saw him, I didn't know what to do - I couldn't even figure out what he was. And then he said to me, a sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage."
(Surely this was always a bigger story than the three of us trying to liberate a castle, Zelda thinks, as she watches him carve a headstone for a man named Link. She understands all of their regrets. When Midna pushed Ganondorf from her corpse they had both left bits and pieces of themselves behind, little shadowy paw-prints all over the darkest places in Zelda's soul. A queen of the scions of sorcerers, and a king who had committed no crime - a horrible thing the Goddesses have done, she thinks, to make us all suffer for the sake of the land. And she remembers something she was once told, about wisdom, long ago...)
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." Confucius