a/n: Zelink implied, Miphlink referenced in a respectful way because I love Mipha and think Link would have if he hadn't pulled the sword, but he did, but he doesn't remember anything and needs to have a moment of confusion. Tagged as graphic depictions of violence even though it isn't really violence so much as brief mention of traumatic injuries.
I took some creative liberty with when and how Link's memories come back to him, since memories can be triggered by more than just place.
He wakes to a voice like golden light, so bright and warm it is like liquid pulsing in his veins.
Open your eyes.
He doesn't know the voice, and quickly realizes, he doesn't know anything. Not where he is, not even who he is, and it makes him so dizzy he has to force himself to take deep breaths, some part of his brain reminding him to stop and look for what he does know.
The voice. He may not recognize it, but he thinks he is comforted by it. Or at least, he knows it is nothing to fear, and he trusts it.
The room is dark, lit only with a dim blue glow coming from the dais he lay on, and orange crystals set into the walls. It smells damp, musty. Old, like a cave, or something else underground. The stone floor is cold under his bare feet, sending shivers up the rest of his naked, scared body. Scars? He looks himself over; this body has so many. The skin over his left chest and abdomen is pale and leathery, and his arm has deep red lines that spiderweb all the way from his neck down to his fingers. What happened to him? He flexes his arm. It doesn't hurt. He stretches; he can reach up, down, around. His mobility is good. Was it ever not? Was he in a fire? Why does he remember fire, but not his own name?
The voice again.
Link. Link. His name? Link, it says again, more insistent, and he knows she is talking to him. That is his name. Link.
He follows the voice. Follows her to the strange device set into a stone pedestal that opens the room's only door, and then to the next door, and then to the blinding sunlight of a world he doesn't recognize, all while she is telling him Hyrule has been waiting for him.
Hyrule.
This land?
Now go.
The feeling of golden light leaves him as he walks into the daylight, and if he was cold in the chamber it is nothing compared to the feeling he is left with when it goes.
He is alone. With no memories or knowledge of himself, with nothing more than a feeling that goes down to his bones that he must follow the lead of that voice, that light, and he will have to figure the rest out on the way.
.
Zelda.
Zelda.
The name spoken by the old man who claimed to be the King; by the first person he saw, the only friendly face in those first hours, days, possibly weeks after he woke up to a world he didn't know but was certainly making him fight just to survive.
The name repeated, now, by this sage-like crone who says she knows him, knew him.
He tries to place them, and is met with nothing, except they both speak of a war one hundred years ago, one where he died , and they speak of Zelda, and he knows that is the voice that spoke to him.
He will go to her. Save her. Finish what he started before the Calamity ravished the kingdom. He promises this to Impa with a certainty of voice and nodding of his head that makes her smile. She says she knows he will.
(But…what if he fails again?)
.
His memories come back, fragmented, out of order. A dusty patch of rocks above a mountain pass where he stops for a water break, and when he sits down he can feel her hand on his forehead and hear her telling him to be more careful. A quirky merchant at a stable sells him a frog and asks if he wants to learn how to use them in an elixir, and he can't say yes, can't do anything but walk away without a word and stare at a picture on a screen, his fingers clenched in his hair. Maybe if he pulls hard enough, he will pull out more of this life he lived, drag out the reason this kingdom he was meant to protect has become so sparse and ruined.
He still gets tired, so tired, and every hit he takes makes him wonder if they have the right guy.
And still he goes back for more. He is here, and maybe he shouldn't be but he can't, won't stop until he succeeds at whatever he failed at before, or until he has died again trying.
.
He had friends. Others, like him, bound to the royal family, and to the war that killed them.
Going to them first, feels like a test. They are already dead. He can't fail them anymore than he already has, or so he tells himself. He accepts the gratitude of elders, of descendants, and walks away with more recovered memories, recovered reminders . Maybe if he helps the people they left behind, he can make his amends. Runs their errands, deliver their messages, fight the monsters that threaten the safety of their children. He tries to convince himself it is not just an excuse.
He fails.
She's waiting.
How long will he make her wait? She believes in him, but he doesn't believe in himself. He will crawl around a camp of monsters thrice his size, steal a roughhewn spear from their scaly fingers and stab them between the eyes with it. Leap from a cliffside with nothing but his bow and a sail made of wood and canvas, and fire explosions into a mechanical god. They tell him, he is fearless. That he has the spirit of the hero, just like the Champion who died so long ago.
He is the Champion from long ago. And he is nothing like him.
.
Who was he?
The question repeats and repeats, whispered in the wind through the leaves of trees at night, pounding in time with horse hooves, echoed in the massive shrines he seeks out in the hopes the monks within will view him as worthy. In his own voice when he finds monuments to the goddess who allegedly chose him for this task, and asks for the strength to do this time what he could not before.
Sometimes he sleeps, balanced on a thick tree branch where he is safe from wandering monsters. Usually, he does not. He lies in the grass, on the sand, curled on a rock, and looks at the sky. Looks at pictures from the world he lost. Catalogues everything he has seen and experienced since walking into this bright and broken world, and searches for anything that might remind of him of who he was, outside of the legend that follows his name.
When he sleeps, he dreams of heroes, united by a mark burned into the back of their hands, and he sees them as they struggle. He tries to shout to them, to offer his aid, but he is voiceless, only able to watch, and their failures become his own.
.
He kneels beside the stone ruins and dry heaves, chest tight with anxiety and heavy with a rejection he can't entirely fit into everything else he knows.
"And stop following me!"
Her words ring in his ears, and how is it possible it is only a memory, and that she is not here, now? How is it possible he remembers the feeling of her words so strongly they smart like a slap across his face, but he can't remember when?
Her voice, waking him.
Her voice, encouraging him.
Her voice, so sad and small while they waited out the storm.
And now her voice, so full of anger and rebuke that he would wonder if it wasn't just a dream, if the pain and nausea it causes weren't so real.
He sorts and re-sorts everything he carries, busying his hands so he doesn't end up doing something stupid, and sorts and re-sorts the scattered memories he has about the life he lived before.
His hands touch something cool and smooth, and he stares at the blue shirt, the way the textured scales catch the sunlight. Thinks of how it fit like a second skin, and that was enough for the Zora elder to accept him, because it meant something that this armor fit him like it was made for him. Because it was made for him, and that gesture meant more than just something to wear into battle.
How is it, then, the one who made the shirt only comes to him in memories as if he is observing, rather than reliving? Someone he thinks of with fondness, but then, he thinks of all of the other Champions with fondness. Even, it seems, if they did not all feel the same way towards him.
She crafted him a shirt rooted in centuries of tradition and protection and love, and her family presented it to him even now and welcomed him as a son. He could even see it in the eyes of her spirit, this sadness, this unfinished story of...of…
The silver scale flashes.
And ultimately, he thinks, would it make a difference, if he could remember more? She—all the Champions—are gone, and all that is left are the stories of their survivors.
Her spirit looked at him with so much hope and longing, and he only wished her peace.
Zelda's voice, even thick with anger, echoes and pools and flows through him as that golden glow that warms him and terrifies him and he wishes he were more, more than he could ever be, just to be deserving of that light.
He shoves everything into his bag and grabs the bow he's been using for the last few days, his thoughts anything but collected.
.
Palm leaves as big as he is block his path, and he slashes at them with the rotting arm of a stalmoblin, the only means of defending himself he has right now because every single sword or shield he carries is metal, and it's storming, again, and does it ever do anything else in this goddess-damned jungle?
He's forgotten by now why he even came here, so exhausted and filled with futile anger at the rain that seeps all the way to his bones.
Lightning strikes a tree ahead of him, sending a shower of sparks that illuminate yet more broken columns. More evidence that he is not the hero he is remembered as. That everything he did, all of his training, the sword that he still has yet to find, the princess he was appointed to protect—those were the deeds of a boy who never existed. A legend, born from stories of Hyrule's long history because people needed to believe that the hero existed with the Calamity looming in their future.
Another strike of lightning. He hears the distant wail from a camp of bokoblins, and thinks of hunting them down, just to do something with the impotent rage vibrating through every cell of his being.
A thunderclap loud enough to shake the stones around him.
Maybe he'll go to the castle now. Maybe the rage isn't impotent, after all. Maybe he can use it, combine it with the strength he has managed to rebuild, stab it right through that Ganon bastard's eyes and spit on the corpse. His hand tightens around the slick bones of the moblin arm, his breath tight in his chest. Maybe he will. End it, right now, one way or another—
The next bolt of lightning lands almost in front of him, and he jumps back to avoid it, too surprised to quickly gain his footing. The ground is soft and muddy, and he throws his weight to catch his fall—
—and keeps going, sliding, sliding. He drops the stal arm and flings his hands into the darkness, trying to remember anything he has seen about this area before, and how far he has to fall, and—
—he hits the sloped wall of whatever canyon he has fallen into, rolls down a few more feet, and lands hard on his shoulder.
"Fuck," he hisses, and curls in on himself. He lays there, afraid to move his arm, afraid it may be broken, that this journey is just as pointless as his first, and he is—
and I really am just a failure.
Zelda's voice again, and he can feel her this time. Feel her body shake as she sobbed in his arms, blaming herself. Her voice filled not with hope or curiosity or excitement, not even with anger, but the same broken defeat he felt when he leaned his head into hers and blinked back his own tears.
He doesn't know how he could have helped her, only that he should have done more. Should have changed their course that day. Taken her straight to Fort Hateno instead of trying to go to the castle first. Should have stood up to her father for her, because it was his job to protect her, and he could see her breaking under the pressure and still remained silent and dutiful in the face of the King. He should have survived, so after he got her to safety he could have gone back and slain the beast and ended it right then.
It's all my fault, her voice repeats.
No.
"It wasn't your fault." He tries to move. His shoulder screams at him but doesn't feel broken. "It wasn't your fault," he says again, louder. Puts his good hand on the ground and tries to push himself up. He is half sunken into the mud now, one of his topaz earrings sticking and pulling him back down, and then a jolt of pain when he jerks his head, freeing himself, and staggers to his feet.
"IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT!" he bellows. Can his voice make it, all the way to the castle? He opens his mouth to scream it again and is drowned out by thunder. He reaches immediately for his ear and finds the earring ripped out, just as the lighting strike hits the mud, sending ripples of electricity up and down the gorge, tearing through him while he stands there, soaked, filthy, and as desperate as he has ever felt in this life, and probably the one he had before as well.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
He drops back to his knees. His scream turns into wracked sobbing, barely audible over the thunder building not into a violent crash but now a long, low rumble.
"It's my fault," he says, his sobs heavier now, but quieter. He thinks of the other Champions, and how they looked in what pieces of them he can remember. How they looked in the way they came to him as he freed their spirits, one hundred years too late.
He thinks of Zelda, crying into him, the despair she felt then, and how much he feels it now.
And he thinks of Zelda, standing in front of him. The same brilliant light that has followed her voice since he woke up, shining all around her. Her power, awake, and so much greater than even he had imagined it might be.
He knows he watched her, then. Watched her hold out her hand and examine the mark she had sought for so long, watched her until his vision dimmed and his legs gave out under the pain of a blast he had taken earlier, the one he knew was still bleeding, knew was melting the skin from his bones even as he continued to fight.
He knows now how he fell, and how her face was the last thing he saw, just like her voice was the first thing he heard when he awoke.
He clenches his fists, and takes a deep breath.
This time, he is not broken and bleeding. This time, he has a chance. And he has wrestled with his doubt for long enough.
He won't leave her to fight alone.
.
He enters the sanctum to a voice like a golden light. Brilliant and burning and pulsing through his hand; the hand that grips the sword that seals the darkness.
I can't hold him anymore—
But there is no need, no need.
The room fills with her light, as it did when he awoke, but it does not leave him, cold and alone and at the mercy of a world he has forgotten, while she returns to fight the battle he could not.
The Champions are here, great blasts of energy raining into the sanctum as the beast shrieks and recoils in shock.
He holds the sword, his birthright, sent by the Goddess herself for this purpose.
And around the room he feels a barrier of golden light.
It is Ganon, who is at his mercy. And Link will show him none.
This is what happens when I'm working on a post-game Zelda POV fic and realize that I really need to get into Link's head first and figure out some HCs for where he is in terms of what he remembers, and how he has (or hasn't *cough*) adjusted to finding out 100 years ago almost everyone he ever knew or cared about died and the kingdom he was sworn to protect fell into ruin and things are going to get even worse if he doesn't get back to his previous strength like, now. I started off making notes to myself, but then got kind of carried away with wanting to write a scene with him having a complete breakdown. I originally thought Kass was going to show up and help him through it, but nope! I have notes on a separate Kass fic though so maybe that scene will still end up somewhere.