A/N: This is a post Ocarina of Time, post Majora's Mask, and post Twilight Princess story. It's not finished yet, I'm still trying to figure out how to work this site so, give me a little time
The Hero of Time. No one had expected him to be a mere boy, let alone a boy raised in the forest by the kokiri. He had been thrust into the role headfirst without knowledge of where it would lead or how it would end. He had no way of knowing that he would be put to sleep for seven year, awaken, and be expected to save the kingdom from the horror that was the rein of Ganondorf. He nothing but a boy in the body of a young man, he wasn't ready for this task, he couldn't do it alone. The princess was gone, to him, presumed dead.
When he emerged from the Temple of Time, a strapping young man of the age of seventeen, he was greeted by what he could only describe as the incarnation of a god. Sheik. He was barely nineteen at the time and had been tasked with the duty of acting as the guild for the Hero, as well as host for the princess. Though, the hero would not learn this for a time.
At each temple the Sheikah warrior would meet the Hylian, giving him advice and teaching him each song. Though, over the course of Link's journey, the meeting became longer and more intimate, the partings becoming harder and more painful. It wasn't until after the Water Temple that Link was to learn the "truth". Fierce, needy kisses, desperate caresses. Sheik couldn't tell Link what was about to happen, he could only inform him that they had little time left together, desperately repeating the whispered word of "I love you, I love you, I love you" over and over. Link could never have been prepared for what happened next. His own responses of "I love you" did not fall on deaf ears and to his shock tears ran from Sheik's crimson eyes, and rightly so.
In what felt like Link to be an instant everything he had come to love in the Sheikah warrior was torn away as she older one pulled away, whispering promises of his love and pained farewells. It was sickening how the Sheikah warrior was ripped from the Hero of Time and was replaced by the Princess of Destiny. Though she informed him that he was to go and face Ganondorf and save Hyrule from the evil had taken over the land, Link felt as though to Zelda, Sheik had been nothing but a convenient lie, nothing but a ploy, and in some ways he was. But at this point Link didn't know that Sheik was real person with what the princess had revealed, he wouldn't learn that Sheik was her personal bodyguard and her soul had been placed in him for her own protection, sleeping all the while, and the Sheik that Link had been guided by was the, in fact, real Sheik.
Going into battle against Ganondorf, the hero was crushed and broken, barely keeping it together and making foolish slipups. The Hero of Time was no fool, he was intelligent and sharp, easily strategizing and working through temples with relative ease, but this battle was much different. Wounded and broken by the end, the defeat of Ganondorf was miracle in itself.
When the evil that was Ganondorf had been defeated, Link was wounded and, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally he, himself, was crushed and defeated. For the longest time he had still been a child in the body of a young man, to be sent out and save Hyrule forced him to grow up far too quickly, but somehow through it all he had retained much of his innocence and his idealism, but all that was torn from him in the foul swoop of Zelda revealing herself to be Sheik. Link did not see Sheik again before he was sent back to his childhood by Zelda, for the sake of Hyrule, she had said. So that Hyrule could be saved from the horror at all and that Ganondorf could never be enabled to this to their kingdom and so that Link to regain those seven years he had lost, she had said. Link, quiet and withdrawn had agreed, but wondered why wait for him to grow up over the seven years and defeat Ganondorf, why not just go back and prevent him from ever betraying the kind, why put Link though the pain for falling in love with sheik and discovering that Sheik was nothing but a lie. He never asked these questions aloud and was never to get the answers.
When Link had been sent back to his own time, Sheik's body had been hidden away where Zelda's had been and he came to in desperate and panicked state. To find his way back to the place where Ganondorf had been fought took far too long, and when he did return, Link was already gone. Anger at Zelda from both parties mounted, as did the pain of losing the one they both loved even more dearly that their own lives. Both would suffer greatly from losing the other, but the Hero of Time would suffer the most because he was to live under the impression that Sheik was nothing but lie and that he had never truly existed.
Link awoke in the Temple of Time, a ten year old once again. But now, he was a broken adult in the body of a child. He chose not to return to Zelda this time. He reclaimed Epona and vanished. Broken and not really there, the young hero was not known by the citizens of Hyrule as their hero. Ganondorf's plan was thwarted before it was put into action this time and he was sealed away, but for how long?
In reality, Link did not truly care. He took Epona and traveled into the forest where he accidentally stumbled upon the gate to Termina, a place that lay in a parallel to Hyrule, but didn't seem to touch it, yet was connected to it. In three day, that were stretched out into months using the power of the Ocarina of Time, Link saved Termina from the falling of the moon, the Skull Kid, and Majora's Mask. For these feats, Link was also not recognized as a hero, but he had spent much of his time helping those around Termina, and was viewed as the boy from a far away land and had the heart to help the .downtrodden. Link had found the slight hope that maybe he could grow up in Termina and forget that everything involving Sheik and Zelda had ever happened and that maybe here he could move on, or at least pretend that it was all a bad dream. But even that hope could not be fulfilled and was extinguished, for Link accidentally stumbled, once more, upon the gates connecting Hyrule and Termina.
Returning to Hyrule, though unwillingly, the Hero of Time was back in the land where he belonged at that would need him again. Shortly after his arrival, Link was met unsuspecting with an attack by moblins and bublins. Horribly outnumbered and with no other option, Link urged a panicked Epona on, spurring her along through the rough forest wilderness with the monsters on their tail. Link was shot several times in the back with four arrows sticking out where is shield hadn't been secured and one arrow sticking out of his right shoulder on his chest, two sticking out of his right thigh, and another out of his left bicep, it was a miracle, with Faron's protection, that he even survived. Epona had more than one arrow sticking out of her haunches, careened through the forest, eventually losing their pursuers, and into the tiny town of Ordon.
While galloping out of control into the village of Ordon, Link was thrown from Epona's back, already unconscious. It was Rusl and his wife Uli who volunteered to take the wounded boy in. No one knew anything about the boy or had seen him before, so it was on tentative terms that he was taken in, but no one ever came for the boy and Uli was the only one with enough medical knowledge to take care of him. At this time Link was eleven years old.
Link didn't regain consciousness for well over five days and when he did, he barely uttered a word. But even more stunning than the fact that the boy with straw colored hair never spoke and his blue eyes were haunted, was that he had no memories. He knew his name, the name of his horse, and that he had no family. Rarely speaking and with nowhere else to go, Uli and Rusl took Link in, their own son, Colin, was four years old.
Teaching Link to hunt easily and to fish, the young hero of Time didn't remember anything from before coming to the village and caught onto Rusl's sword training with shocking ease, as though he had been fighting with a sword for years.
Even though Link didn't use his voice often, his eyes were shockingly expressive. He was very mature for a young teenager, polite, helpful, and responsible. The haunted look was dashed from his eyes and he was almost always warm and friendly to the Ordon villages, with a smile on his face and his eyes glittering. He became the admired role model of all the kids in the village and was interested in the mayor's daughter, a girl named Ilia, who liked him in return, tough, sometimes it seemed like she preferred his horse to him.
Link lived in a relatively large house just outside the village where all the kids gathered to play. He spent his days herding the goats of Ordon village and made a best friend of the ranch owner, Fado, who was about his own age, perhaps a little older. He was overall happy with his life and it looked like everything would turn out well for him. He would marry Ilia, become the next mayor of Ordon, and spend the rest of his days herding goats and raising a family, but it was not to be. Everything changed on the day when the children were captured and he was dragged into the Twilight in an effort to save them. Though Link had no memories of it, he was still the Hero of Time and the Hero Chosen by the Gods.
When he was sucked into the Twilight he was transformed into a Blue Eyed Beast. He was fated to meet the princess of the Twilight herself, Midna; though, he did not know she was the Twilight Princess. He embarked on a quest to rid Hyrule of the darkness and save the Twilight Realm as well. He engaged in combat with Ganondorf for a second time, but this time Ganondorf was killed, not just sealed away. Zelda was returned to her rightful thrown and Link became the Hero that everyone knew. However, he had fallen in love with Midna, the Twilight Princess, and was fated to have his heart broken again. Once she returned to her true form, he went with her to the Gerudo Desert where the Mirror of Twilight resided. He had used it to travel to the Twilight Realm and save her people from Zant, Ganondorf's henchman. It was there, before the Mirror of Twilight, that Midna and Link confessed their love to each other and, as with Sheik, they were not meant to be together. They made love and the next day, Midna ascended the steps to the portal where she stood, said her farewells, and destroyed the mirror with her tear before being drawn into the Twilight Realm through the portal.
As with Sheik, link was devastated. With the horrors of his journey sneaking up on him in his sleep in the form of nightmares and the waking world feeling little better, the Hero of Time was to face the unforgiving, unrelenting world alone for a time.
He acted as though he was alright and acted as though nothing was wrong. Broken and defeated, he returned the children to Ordon from Kakariko village, returned to goat herding and the odd call for his aid and battle skills. He taught the village boys how to use a sword alongside Rusl, but his heart wasn't in it and his eyes began to look vacant as they had when he had first arrived in the village of Ordon, wounded and alone. Nightmares plagued Link and he became restless. Ilia stopped trying to win him over when she saw he had lost the innocence she still possessed and he began frequently leaving the villages. The hero returned less often and for shorter periods of time. He was growing distant and disturbed. Strange, fractured memories began creeping into his dreams. Following closely on the heels of the nightmares came a sickening fever that rushed upon him and a relentless illness struck, leaving him weak and willing for the end.
Memories mostly in the forms of foggy fever dreams and emotions struck the young hero, leaving him weak and helpless. In his state of sickness, Link lost touch with reality and was drawn into the fevered dreams of his memories where things were distorted, but very real. It was in this time when Zelda sent for him out of necessity. The ones sent to collect him were her nursemaid/bodyguard Impa and her bodyguard, Impa's apprentice, Sheik.
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