Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stupid old man.

Ugh.

He shouldn’t be this worked up about it. After all, he’s just some elderly resident and Linebeck is young (ah, relatively speaking) and the old man is probably senile anyway, so he shouldn’t take his words to heart, shouldn’t let them get under his skin like this, shouldn’t—

Linebeck trips over an exposed root from a nearby tree which sends him teeth-first into the dirt. He recovers quickly, leaping to his feet and brushing off his coat and pride as best he can. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be around to see his brief plummet. Picking up the pace, he continues striding across the western half of Mercay Island. Where was he?

Oh, yeah.

Stupid old man and his the temple is cursed and his don’t be a fool, you wreck, don’t risk your life, there is nothing in there for you. And the little bastard sparkly fairy hovering in the corner, listening so intensely she was practically vibrating, who had said, when staying silent had become an impossibility: Listen to Grandpa. It's dangerous. You really shouldn’t go into the temple alone.

You should not go into the temple at all, corrected the old man quickly.

But Linebeck doesn’t care. He’s a treasure-hunter, by god! A captain, an explorer, and the words of some ancient islander and his pet cotton ball aren’t nearly enough to dissuade him from delving into the Temple of the Ocean King in search of its famed riches.

Here’s the thing: Linebeck knows he's not actually up to the task, but he has enough of an imagination to try. He is also - his father once told him - somehow both a stubborn bastard and a terribly lazy one, which is one hell of a combination. It also happens to be a very ineffectual one. You'll never accomplish much, his old man had said.

He'd inherited his coat, but not his legacy. 

As it is, Linebeck will go into the Temple knowing full well there will be a point at which he inevitably turns around and flees. But those are the sorts of games with which he  entertains himself, inventing a dangerous and daring narrative for himself so that when he does turn around, he won’t be as disappointed.

He reaches the bridge that connects the western and eastern halves of the island and the blasted fairy is waiting for him.

Before he can ignore her, she blocks his path (which isn’t very effective; she is more or less the size of an underripe lemon, though half as sweet and not as yellow).

“You’re still going to the Temple, aren’t you?” She asks. Though Linebeck can tell from every uninflected word that she isn’t asking for want of knowledge.

“I am,” he answers coolly. He waits a moment, in the silence of the crumbling stone bridge (someone should really fix this thing; it looks unsound), thinking the fairy might also try to persuade him from reaching his destination. Though something tells Linebeck she’s smart enough to know her efforts will fail.

The quiet gets weird, though. Finally, he says: “What, are you going to try to stop me?”

She flies closer to him, and her wings falter in hesitation. Fairy body language. “No,” she begins, sounding miles less confident than she had at the old man’s place. “I… wanted to go with you.”

Linebeck only considers this for as long as it takes the words to make it from her mouth to his ears. It’s sort of hard, he figures, to talk himself in and out of delving into the crypt with an annoying fairy buzzing in his ear. It would ruin the drama of it all. The style.

“I wouldn’t be in the way,” she insists. And Linebeck hasn’t met many fairies in his days of travelling, but he knows from stereotypes (stereotypes based in fact and nature, mind you) that this isn’t a promise she can keep.

What could someone like her possibly want with the Temple of the Ocean King? After all, it was her guardian and caretaker who had stressed the dangers of venturing into the reviled dungeon. She must have snuck out without the old man’s permission.

So an annoying, snarky fairy with no ability to follow directions wants to join him on his expedition. That sounds just about as much fun as trying to pet a wild ocktorok.

“Sorry, hon,” he says as suavely as he can muster once his internal monologue has come to a close. “No can do. This here is a solo mission.”

She snorts. “Is that what you tell all the ladies you bring back to your ship, too?”

Linebeck’s eyes blow wide and his eyebrows shoot up half an inch on his forehead. Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that. Was she a frequenter of the Milk Bar, too? That’s the only place in the quiet peace of Mercay that an islander, fairy or otherwise, could learn to hurl insults with a sailor’s quip and vulgarity.

“Listen here, Sparkles,” he says through the thread-thin gaps of his clenched teeth.

“I have a name…”

“I’m a world-renowned, expert treasure hunter. Okay?” Linebeck points an affronted finger at her. “My romantic life is none of your business, and even if it were, I’d be happy to tell you that I am extremely popular and very—” he pauses, just long enough for it to be awkward: “—virile among the local women.” In spite of himself, he feels his face heat up. All of that had sounded much less crass in his head.

The fairy seems surprisingly unperturbed. “I’m serious. If you go in there alone, you might not come back out. If I was with you, I could at least go get help if something bad happened.”

“Oh, yeah?” He folds his arms at his chest. “And what’s in it for you?”

She confesses without missing a beat: “I’m restless. I don’t even have any memories to keep me occupied. You don’t have to like me, but at least let me come with you. Please?”

Linebeck finds himself almost, somewhat persuaded.

Almost, that is, until he remembers something. “Does the old man know you’re doing this?”

“Of course not. You heard for yourself how he feels about the temple.”

“Then I’m not bringing you along,” Linebeck decides, finding this is an acceptable excuse. “I don’t want him bashing me on the head with that stupid stick of his if you get hurt." 

“I wouldn’t—” she seethes in frustration. “Fine. You go on ahead without me. But it’s your funeral.”

“I’m sure you’ll give me a lovely eulogy, sweetheart.”

“I’ll start writing it now.”

She flies to the side in surrender and Linebeck finishes crossing the bridge into town. When he’s sure they’ve both gone far enough that a sizable distance separates them, he looks back and sees her fluttering down by the shore of the beach.

What a weird fairy. He wonders if old man Oshus knows just how much spunk she has. Stubborn, brass, and to top it all off, she’s just plain old rude.

And when, several hours later, trapped behind a wall of spikes and feigning a sprained ankle (he twisted it, so it’s not a lie, but not the full truth) he meets Link for the first time and is reminded several times over of the fairy’s name (“It’s Ciela, I have a name, it’s Ciela.”). He does his best to pretend their earlier conversation never happened.

To his confused delight, so does she. Ciela, whom he would come to call many diminutives over the course of their travels, mostly "Sparkles," makes no mention of what transpired, not even an I told you so. Linebeck begins to worry maybe she'd - in her amnesiatic affliction - forgotten their conversation.  

It isn’t until their third night on the ship, all three of them together, that Linebeck finally confronts her. It’s an hour after Link has gone to bed, tossing and turning in the small hammock Linebeck had strung up for him. He pours over a sea chart, a tankard of ale safely in his left hand. The ship is chugging through the placid waters towards Ember Island and Linebeck thinks fondly of the smell of windy saltwater that had so marked his youth. It's the sort of smell to which he has disappointingly become desensitized. There are no more novel waves.

The sublime ceases to exist.

Ciela lands on the table where he’s working. He can’t see her eyes, per se, but he is absolutely sure she’s watching him.

“So.” He doesn’t look at her. “Did you end up writing that eulogy for me?”

“I started to. But it seemed such a shame to write it without knowing anything about you. Any of the good things, anyway.” Linebeck raises an eyebrow. Ciela continues: “All I had was ‘arrogant local self-proclaimed womanizer dies quick painful death after being warned about certain danger multiple times.’”

“More of a headline than a eulogy.”

“Exactly. I’ll keep updating it as we go.”

There’s a silence, just as there always is, because Linebeck and Ciela are just as much a composition of their words as their lack of them. “You think you’ll find good things to write about?”

“Maybe. I think that depends on you, though.”

He downs the rest of his drink in one fell swig. He’s not drunk, but the temptation to get there is growing stronger with each passing minute. “I’ll save you some time, Sparkles. You’re not going to find anything.”

“Well.” She huffs, and in a moment she is airborne. “That doesn’t sound like you. Maybe you’re over-confident and irresponsible and kind of weird-looking, but you sure know how to sail a ship. Or steam it. Whatever.”

He thinks maybe that’s all he’ll ever be afforded. He takes it.

Arrogant local captain successfully sails steams ship head-on into rocks and sustains some damage. The only thing irreplaceable is his pride, which took heavy losses in the collision. Send flowers and condolences to the S.S. Linebeck.

They are headed into the Northwestern Sea in search of the Ghost Ship, now equipped with the somewhat less-than-fantastic power of the three spirits. There are several hours, however, that still need to transpire before they arrive at said oceanic quadrant.

“Arrogant local captain dies of shock when worst fairy he knows is somehow actually the Spirit of Courage, emblazoned with divine powers and surrounded by a very pretty yellow glow. When asked, the Spirit of Courage said she’d miss his ugly mug, but in time she’d learn to get over her grief.”

“You keep calling me the arrogant one, but I gotta tell you, Sparkles,” Linebeck quips without looking away from the pile of coal he is shoveling into the ship’s furnace. “That one sounded surprisingly self-confident.”

“Oh, come on,” Ciela says, flying down from her perch on the rafters to land on his shoulder. “Am I not allowed to be even a little excited? How would you react if you found out you were a divine being with potentially limitless powers, wouldn’t you be just about over the moon?”

“What you’re forgetting, Sparkles,” he drolls, “is that I already think of myself that way.”

“Aha, there you go! You beat me to it, Linebeck.”

He sets down the shovel of coal and pushes her off his shoulder with a backhanded swat. “Come on, we need to focus. To prepare… for all the treasure we’re going to find on the Ghost Ship. I was thinking about emptying out a few crates of rations to make room for all the rupees and gems we’re going to find.”

“I remember everything,” she swoons, ignoring him. “Well, just about everything. Some of it is fuzzy. It’s like a fire in my mind, but instead of destruction, each flame brings new information. Small things, too. Like all the books I’ve read and the way huge waves look during a thunderstorm.”

Linebeck looks away from Ciela, who’s floating around the ship as if on a cloud. Link is standing on his toes, staring out through the porthole. He’s not just admiring the view, though. His gaze is intense and his brow is furrowed.

“See something, Kid?”

Link beckons Linebeck towards him and together they examine the view from the porthole. He points to a speck on the horizon and, as Linebeck squints, it seems to grow larger. The object’s outline increases in clarity, until there is absolutely no doubt about what it is. Link and Linebeck look at each other in shared realization.

“Man the cannon, Kid. We’ve got a She-Pirate to outrun.”

“Arrogant, worldly Captain dies at the blade of his ex-girlfriend. Tragic, sad, horrible, yada yada. Unfortunately, his body was so mangled and disfigured that a memorial service will not be possible. Please send rupees to Link and Ciela in order to help them buy a new captain.”

"Mangled and disfigured," Linebeck echoes, dabbing a disinfectant-dowed cottonball onto a thin, red line of a scrape on his high, bony cheek. Jolene had found his hiding spot. The confrontation had been terribly awkward - and a little painful. 

He doesn't want to get into it, but Ciela isn't one to read the room. 

"Are you surprised she didn't kill you? She really looked like she wanted to kill you."

"You know, Sparkles," he replies tersely. "If I die, do everyone a favor and skip the casket. Very landlubber, if you understand me. I'd want... I'd want a proper sailor's burial."

This concept seems very novel to Ciela. She's sitting still for once, hypnotized by his first aid routine. "What, do we sing shanties over your grave? I can start rehearsing now."

The wound now clean, Linebeck searches his kit for a bandage. "Something you don't know? Color me surprised." 

"You'll have to remind me." 

"Here's what you do," he says, looking back at his reflection in the sheet of scrap metal he uses as a mirror. "You dress up the corpse in his - or her - Sunday best. You don't want  to be unappetizing to the sharks; it's bad manners. Then, wrap your sailor in his hammock and tie it up with a cannonball at his feet - that's so he sinks. Then - well. You say goodbye."

Linebeck watches Ciela's reflection in the metal sheet. She doesn't say anything, and backs away in what looks suspiciously like shame. So he finishes bandaging the injury in silence. He realizes, with a little irritation, that the kid, Leaf, and Neri have been listening in. Creepy, all of them. 

Maybe his explanation had been a little dark. As recompense, he offers humor: "You can sing shanties, if you want. When you toss the body - never mind."

“This is getting really morbid,” chimes in Neri, always a party killer. “You both do realize we could actually die when we board the Ghost Ship in just a few hours?”

Professional ignorance-is-bliss advocate Captain Linebeck chooses to seek an ally. “Leaf,” he says, piquing the red fairy’s attention. Leaf is even more high energy than Ciela, an incredible feat itself. “You’re not scared of the Ghost Ship, are you?”

“Maybe I’m being superstitious,  but it seems sort of wrong to joke about dying right before we board the Ghost Ship.”

Linebeck rolls his eyes. No help from the peanut gallery, his fun is spoiled, and the dour look of concentration on Link’s face suggests that even the bravest soul on this ship is taking the prospect quite seriously.

Stupid asshole idiot greedy coward dies because Spirit of Courage wishes she could push him off the ship and drown him. The arrogant jerk made it extremely clear that he was only willing to continue the quest with his “friends” if he was given a wish from an ocean god for shutting up and participating. Sure, he made it clear many, many times that he was only helping out in order to find treasure, but stupid me, I started to think it was just a gag, a joke between all of us. I thought he was in it for the long haul.

Anyway, lousy-excuse-for-a-captain is still letting us use his ship but APPARENTLY not out of the goodness of his heart or any loyalty towards us. I am pissed. I’m also giving him the cold shoulder. Hope he gets frostbite, but we’re on another volcanic island (go figure).

But yeah, if you want to contribute to this dick’s funeral fund, plant a tree or something, because I will not be holding any formal service for him.

(Link forgave him pretty quickly, too. Nobody holds a grudge as long as I do. Ugh.)

Linebeck has seen and done a lot of bizarre things since the outset of their quest. The magical, whimsical parts are all sort of beyond a simple captain like himself, but it’s easiest, he finds, if he simply accepts things as they come to him.

But by far one of the strangest things, perhaps, was the encounter with the mermaid on Bannan Island. As Link and Ciela explained later, the supposedly aquatic woman mistook him for the Old Wayfarer who lived on the island and spent his days in search of the elusive creature. Linebeck isn’t sure if he should be flattered or embarrassed, but he thinks longer on it than he maybe should. He is getting older. He won’t say how old, but he’s not the spring chicken he used to be. He starts thinking of Ciela’s eulogies, and though they are obviously only meant to tease, he feels suddenly overwhelmed at the implications they bring.

Lying in bed, hollowed and weathered like a log of driftwood, he watches the ships lanterns swing back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back

and forth.

Who will eulogize him when he’s gone? The ship cannot speak for him; it creaks and groans in conversation with the voiceless, noisy waves against the battered hull. Link is a boy of so few words, a speech would be beyond him.

Whatever. There’s no point in thinking about his funeral, or who will speak or what they will say, whenever that may be.

Because he’ll be gone. A corpse beneath the waves or a skeleton in the dirt, wherever he happens to be when he kicks the bucket. And it really won’t matter what they say, if anything at all, because he won’t be there to correct them.

He turns over in his bed, aching for dreams, but not tired. 

And since he can’t sleep, Linebeck goes upstairs to sit on the deck and enjoy the chilly breeze of the northern seas. These might be his last days, after all.

Apparently Ciela had the same idea, because on one of the rail posts she sits perched. The full moon over the water makes her look very tiny and dim by comparison.

Things have been difficult between them. The difficulty prompts him to turn around and make for the stairs again, but Ciela notices him because nothing gets past her. She says, “You know who that was, don’t you?”

He takes the bait: “Who was who?”

“The mermaid.”

“Uh, no. I don’t.”

“It was Jolene’s sister.”

Linebeck joins her at the railing. “I’m pretty sure I’d know if Jolene’s family was part mermaid.”

“Linebeck, really?"

“What?”

“She wasn’t actually a mermaid, you idiot. She was in a costume.”

He huffs. Straightens his coat. “I knew that. I was in on the joke.”

“Whatever,” Ciela continues gravely. She doesn’t even laugh. He can’t hear a smile in her voice. “Listen. After all this, I think you should talk to Jolene.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve seen her. She’s crazy.”

“Look. I don’t know what exactly happened between you two, but it’s never going to get better until you talk to her about it.” Then, after a pause, she takes flight above the deck so that she hovers at about his height. "You can tell me what happened, you know."

"There's nothing to tell."

"Right," Ciela says, her voice venomous. "Mysterious Captain Linebeck; what secrets does he hold?"

"More than you do, sugar plum," he sneers.

“And he's so miserable, with this great, secret past he keeps guarded like a vault. But we all know there's nothing much really in there."

Linebeck runs the words over and over again in his head. They come back the same every time. "What the hell's gotten into you?"

"I'm just saying what I've always wanted to since we first met." 

"If I recall correctly," Linebeck bites, "when we first met, you wanted nothing more than to follow me into that cursed temple to fulfil some kind of - courage fantasy. To prove how damn brave you are."

"I was trying to protect you. You could've been killed."

"You were infatuated." 

"You wish."

"You begged to go with me."

“Listen to me," she says earnestly. "That's all beside the point. We've all put our lives on the line for the greater good and all you can think about is treasure. Doesn’t that keep you up at night?”

He turns to leave again. “I don’t need to listen to this.”

“Don’t you care about us?”

The three seconds of deliberation last an eternity. “Of course I do. I just… if we all have—I dunno—a week left to live, do you really want to be so serious about it?”

“We’re different, Linebeck.”

“So? Everyone’s different. It doesn’t mean that how I want to face this is wrong.”

“Are you scared?”

A question like this is usually, in Linebeck’s experience, goading. But she’s not. She says it in earnest. Or at least, that's what he assumes. 

But he can’t let his guard down. Not now. Not when the end is so close. “Are you?” He asks the Spirit of Courage.

“I’m not scared to face Bellum,” she says. “I just don’t feel ready.”

Linebeck recognizes that rhetoric immediately. It’s the style of language, the trick of tongue, that he uses more than any other tool in his possession. Ciela is doing the exact same thing, and she isn’t half as good at hiding it. She’s called him arrogant like it’s his God-given name, but it’s an overwhelming relief to know she’s in just as deep as he is.

Arrogant fairy, better known as the Spirit of Courage, he thinks to himself because it would be awfully disastrous to say out loud, was killed in action by Bellum while trying to defend the seas. She would love to know that we have gathered here today to commemorate her life and death, but it would probably piss her the hell off if I told you all that she died afraid. Just like everyone else. She wasn’t special.

He watches her. Wants to hate her for her arrogance. Her lies. Her self-reverence.

Try to hate her. Try so hard.

You can’t.

Wonderful, stupid, reckless Captain perishes because he tried to save his friends. What else can I say? He’ll die a hero’s death. I almost wish now that he'd been cowardly, run away when he still could have... left us after the Ghost Ship, declined the wish. Because this is one hell of a reward for courage. Talk about irony.

But who am I kidding? He was brave before, he was wonderful and odd, and I was just too stubborn and blind to notice it. And now I’m paying the biggest price of them all: regret.

Linebeck isn’t Linebeck anymore. Bellum has taken hold of him, possessed him, infected his spirit and mind and body with its horrible violence. It is grotesque and I am held captive by one of the beast’s awful tentacles.

The point is: Link knows what he must do. And I know what he must do. And if Linebeck were able to speak, well—

I know that he knows what Link must do.

I don’t think Linebeck ever imagined himself dying in such a dramatic way. But I think he’d like the flair. There's style in it. Maybe, somewhere, there's even meaning in it. I'm just having trouble finding it right now. 

I know better than to have selfish thoughts, okay? If I were in love, or otherwise had a rotten head on my shoulders, maybe there would be a part of me that intentionally causes Link to fail, leaving the world in desolation and ruin, and all of us dead, instead of the far less bleak option we are facing now.

But that’s not what I’m going to do. Link needs my help and the other option isn’t reasonable for anyone. Not even Linebeck.

It’s possible he’ll live. But unlikely, I think. With Bellum’s very veins and cells and neurons and blood transforming him into nothing more than a thrall, I can’t think of any reason why he’d live. It’s just facts.

Time to face the facts, Ciela. He’s going to die.

I wish you hadn’t gotten mixed up in all this.

By some miracle, maybe the divine hands of gods or just the sheer resilience of biology, Linebeck lives. And he lives another forty years and dies a rich, happy man, surrounded by family.

Lots of people give him eulogies. His son, his wife, and even Link, easing into middle age, are there with other members of New Hyrule. His young grandson, Linebeck III, is there, too, all of fifteen years old. It’s uneventful, and not a sailor's burial. There are no sharks or cannonballs involved.

And soon, people stop grieving, they go on with their lives, they forget. Grass grows on the newly filled cavity in the earth.

In centuries, the words inscribed on the headstone are eroded away. In millennia, the ocean recedes and all that’s left are the sand dunes of a vast desert.

Ciela learns early in her divinity that she is immortal. Which means that no one will ever eulogize her.

And courage loses its meaning.