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Chapter Text

Link and Zelda were taking a nice riverside stroll when a portal appeared.

All they could do was stare. Then, ten seconds later: “Number nine!”

Zelda nearly shrieked with laughter.

Link slumped, the entire upper half of his body dramatically facing the ground. Zelda, disbelieving and incredulous laughter doubling her over, held onto his shoulder so as not to do the same.

A ninth adventure — he might have groaned if Zelda’s glee wasn’t so damn endearing. His smile was quickly becoming impossible to suppress. 

“Well, at this point, you might as well shoot for ten,” Zelda joked.

He rolled his eyes but they shone with a hidden anticipation, a secret that Link—who had once spent an entire year called by his hero title—would once have been indisposed to admit. Six adventures, compared to the other heroes’, at maximum, three (and even that was questionable — Four was never very forthcoming about whether his time with the Colors constituted only one or two adventures), left him indignant, isolated, and impious. Seven years on, thanks to them, Link knew himself, why he loved adventuring, and why he loved being the Hero.

And maybe he would return from adventure number nine with a slew of new scars, but they’d make for some bitchin’ stories.

He brought Zelda’s hand to his lips and gave it a long, strong kiss. She felt his smile, just as powerful, through them on her knuckles. He took off running for the portal in the distance.

“Don’t die!” Zelda screamed.

“You know I can’t!” He screamed back. He thrust his finger to the sky. “They won’t let me!”

His words may have been coarse, but Link’s ear-to-ear smile shone brighter than the sun. He laughed, and it wasn’t the contemptuous snicker of his that Zelda grew so terribly familiar with, but a bona fide, downright joyful sound that spoke of his excitement in a way that he could never find words for.

Zelda would (for the ninth time) miss him, but how could she deny him an adventure he seemed so eager to experience?

Link sprinted into the portal.

“No fucking way.”

A group of men stood in a circle at the center of a village.

Link looked at one man’s facial markings, and another’s green-blue-red-violet eyes. A different man’s eyes, big and expressive, belonged to a body much taller than the others; much taller than Link remembered it being; much taller than he had any right to be. The man with the burn scars had short hair. That scarf was still obnoxiously long, and a bare shirt back showed where a sailcloth once covered, and when he saw his successor — well, nowadays, Link would happily admit to the disbelieving guffaw of glee that left his mouth in response.

Link—Legend—shouted “Hyrule! ” to Hyrule himself for the first time in seven years, and just as fast as he ran into the unknown did he run to his favorite person in the world.

The shock faded. The Heroes of Hyrule crowded each other.

Among the others, Twilight looked for Time.

Wind looked for Time.

He found Warriors.

“YOU!”

Wind’s scream startled a conversation or two to a pause, and heads turned as he stomped across the circle.

“YOU KNEW THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME!”

The youngest among them towered above Warriors, glare as hot as the volcano nearby; the Captain felt small, and not just in height.

“Oh, what the fuck,” Warriors muttered.

Wind pointed a finger down at Warriors’ face. “I know you knew it was me! I always wondered what those stupid ass glances of yours meant and you let me have to find out by being dumped into your stupid ass war where my stupid ass brother doesn’t even know it’s me!”

“Sailor—”

“I can’t believe you!” Wind loudly continued. “I can’t believe I looked up to such a dumbass! You knew me for an entire year and never once considered how I would take that in my future? You loved me as a brother before I even met you! How could you not tell me?!”

Warriors, the respectable Captain that he was, held up his hands in defense and said, “He was worried about messing up the timeline—”

“Oh, fuck the timeline! We all know it doesn’t mean shit!”

“Take it up with Mask—”

“With Mask?! ” Wind screeched. “First of all, like I’m going to ever yell at Mask. That kid could bring the damn moon down again and I’d tell him how proud of him I am. No no no, Mask gets off scot-free, and second of all, don’t try to pin the blame on a nine-year-old with time travel trauma, you bastard!”

“I’m not!” Warriors squeaked.

“You absolutely are. I don’t care where the idea came from, because you knew, and you said nothing!”

“What were we supposed to say?! ”

Wind scoffed. “I don’t know, maybe a we’ll meet again when we were saying goodbye? A letter? A hint? Instead you just let me flounder in the War like an idiot who didn’t know his brothers hadn’t met him yet!”

Warriors’ face warred with shock and indignation and relief and then, it won, and it relished in happiness.

“…It was still a good surprise, though, wasn’t it?”

A beat passed. Wind’s scowl slowly morphed into a shit-eating grin. “Oh, yeah. It let me fuck with you two so bad.”

“I am so glad to see you again, Tune,” Warriors said, his own smile eating just as much shit (“Oh, don’t you fucking dare” from Wind). He threw his arm around the sailor’s shoulder. His hold on his younger brother was more akin to being supported than supportive , with how much shorter he was—how did that happen both times, Warriors wondered—but to hold Wind again like he did in the War graced him with a happiness he was fourteen years removed from.

Though unlike the War, there was currently only one boy in his arms. Warriors was missing someone.

Warriors looked for Time.

Permanently pink hair caught his gaze instead, its color as blinding to the eye as his other little brother’s wound.

“Hey asshole!” He shouted happily, just as Wind found another target and called out, “Rulie!”

Said asshole jerked around to face the voice.

Legend was back to blond for a while after his first dye job. Then shit happened, and he got cursed again, and changed back again, and the pink didn’t fade, and everyone gave him shit for it for the remaining two months of their journey.

Legend said, “Yeah, dipshit?” as he strut towards Warriors with a smile.

Nearby, Wild looked for Twilight, and found him.

He skittered up to the older hero, smile titanic it was so close to Twilight’s face.

“You just can’t get rid of me, huh?”

“Oh, not again,” Twilight smiled back.

Today, Twilight has met with Wild four times. In four different years. For four different purposes. Twilight has said goodbye to Wild three times, and surely, he thought, the third time would be the last. Wild had cried. Had hugged his wolf form and been hugged back (as best as the wolf could manage). Mineru and Twilight, two of Wild’s third-journey companions, faded from his reality on the same day.

Wild, once so closed off that he stopped speaking entirely, now openly wore his raw and intense happiness on his face. So intense, in fact, that tears fell from his eyes into a mouth that was open from a watery, hiccupy laugh.

“C’mere,” Twilight said, pulling Wild into his arms in a tight hug.

As they held each other, Hyrule’s loud and thunderous voice was heard over the chaos (“Holy crystals you are so tall.”).

When he pulled back, Wild said to Twilight, “You don’t look that much different! How long has it been for you?”

“Seven years,” Twilight answered. “Three since I was with you on your third journey.”

“The same for me.”

“Really?” Wild nodded. “That’s so weird.” Twilight laughed. He shook his head. “Four times I’ve met up with you, now.”

Wild agreed happily, “Four! ”

“Yeah?” Four inquired across the field.

They looked at him. They smiled, but Twilight wasn’t done with Wild. “So how are you?”

“I’m good! I’m really working hard on restoration efforts — I’ve taken up carpentry! I work with Hudson all the time, and I built a house. I’ve actually permanently moved to Tarrey Town with—”

“Your hair!” called Four, attention since grabbed away from his conversation with Sky and Sky and Four then ran over to Twilight and Wild.

“Yours!” responded Wild. 

Wild had cut his hair the previous year and kept it short, trimming it whenever it grew past his ears. Four, meanwhile — Wild wouldn’t have been surprised to hear if he hadn’t cut his at all in the seven years that have possibly universally passed. Four’s hair touched his waist. “What’s your problem, Mr. Even-I-Have-To-Say-Your-Hair-Is-Too-Long?”

Four laughed.

“You don’t even keep it up?” Wild asked.

“You’re one to talk.” Twilight smacked Wild’s arm. From around, Legend and Warriors came over, the Veteran running to Sky and the Captain smacking Twilight’s own arm in greeting.

“Hey. Almost die again?” Warriors asked him.

“Shut up. You crawl through your second dungeon yet?” Twilight threw back.

“Yes, actually.”

“You’re lying.”

“Fuck you.”

Warriors scoured through his pouch for that second dungeon item of his. Sky had his hand on Legend’s shoulder. Wild was telling a wild story to Wind, gesturing frenetically and waving his arms around in the air.

Warriors noticed it and was the first to ask Wild, “Uh, Champion, what the fuck happened to your arm?”

The Heroes stopped talking to witness the arm. The Champion glanced down at the bizarre gray skin, long nails, serpentine wraps, and the number of rings to rival Legend’s on the length of his right arm.

He laughed. “Oh, funny story! I met Ganondorf.”

“I’m sorry?”

Wild now in conversation with Warriors, Twilight looked for Time.

Sky saw Hyrule. 

“Hyrule!” Sky waved their traveler over. “You look so different! Good, though, it’s a good different — how have you been?”

“Good—”

“Sailor?! ” Legend screamed.

“Oh…my Goddess,” Sky whispered.

“Yeah, that’s fuckin’ right,” the youngest said, staring down (figuratively and literally) at those below him. He was tall. Very tall. He must have been taller than the Old Man. In fact, Sky thought, where’s Time for comparison?

Sky looked for Time.

Twilight looked for Time.

The group at large gathered in a huddle, breathless from laughing and reuniting. Wind, now the head that stood the tallest, made an announcement.

“I got married!”

“What?!” Hyrule said, shocked.

“You’re married!? ” Sky said, happy.

“When?” Legend said, baffled.

“Two years ago!” Wind said. “Tetra! She’s the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known and we’re so happy together. It’s everything Time”—he cast a quick glance aside, Wind looking for Time, then he turned back—“said it was. Wild, are you finally together with Zelda?”

“Um,” Wild said.

“Four?” Wind asked.

“Well—”

Wind’s jaw dropped. “Wait, am I the only one here who’s married? I mean, other than—”

Sky interrupted, “I’m—”

“You don’t count, you were already basically married,” Wind interrupted again. Sky could not refute the claim. Still, Wind grinned and offered his hand to the others, and despite the teasing he appraised the ring on Sky’s finger just as a good pirate should.

Wild scrolled through his redone and extended Hyrule Compendium with Legend.

Four and Warriors were talking about smithing and the Captain said something about taking it up.

Hyrule, ever concerned, lifted Twilight’s tunic to examine the seven-year-old scar from the Iron Knuckle’s attack. 

“Wait—”

The boys stood at attention. Now condensed, Sky searched among their numbers. Sky looked for Time.

“Where’s the Old Man?” he asked.

“He’s not…?” Four spoke quietly. Four looked for Time.

Wind looked for Time. Head high above the others, he counted heads.

Two. Four. Six. Eight.

In the high of seeing seven of their brothers, each of the heroes hadn’t noticed the eighth’s absence.

Eight heroes surveyed the village they’d found themselves in, looking for number nine. A windmill, observation tower, volcano up the nearby mountain. A nagging tingle of familiarity was clawing up Twilight’s throat. The dusty air, the Cuccos, the buildings. Something was screaming at him that he’d been there before even though the village was foreign and the feeling felt like rocks in his stomach.

Once again, Twilight looked for Time.

He found Four and Hyrule and Legend and Sky and Warriors and Wild and Wind. But not Time.

Time was not there.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

Eight heads snapped south at the voice.

Red hair, fierce as fire, wafted around the stock-still image of a woman with her jaw open and her hands on her hips.

“Missus Malon!”

Wind laughed and ran to her. Relieved smiles graced the heroes’ faces as they crowded Time’s wife; the cacophony of voices in a group of eight boys was still familiar to her even after just the one time she met them. They met her here where she stood by the tree.

Her eyes were big and wide and blue. She huffed, in shock and happiness and gratitude.

Wild greeted her, seemingly a ball of eternal sunshine, “I’m so happy you’re here, Malon!”

“As am I! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would see you boys again!” she said. “I’d ask you how you’re here, but I know now nothing makes sense when it comes to y’all.”

“It was a fucking portal again!” Legend loudly announced, melodramatically throwing his hands in the air.

“It came out of nowhere,” Sky said. “I was just having lunch with Zelda when it showed up. I don’t even have the Master Sword with me.”

“Did you come through the portals, too?” Hyrule asked.

She shook her head. “No portals for me. Seems like you’ve found yourselves in my Hyrule.”

“Are you serious?” Legend questioned.

“Yes! I missed you, Malon!” Wind exclaimed.

“So are we close to the ranch?” Wild asked.

At Wild’s question, Malon caught sight of him, and jerked back. “Oh, Goddesses, your hair, Champion!”

“That’s what I said!” said Four.

She studied him. She learned the grooves of his burn scar, much more visible now without his sideburns but much more faded after so much time. She happily decided her stance. “It suits you.”

Wild’s smile was blinding.

“You look wonderful. Happier. Older. You all look so much older!” Malon marveled. “So different, and so true to yourselves. Sailor, you look so grown up, and Traveler, you’re glowing. Twi—”

She paused.

“Twilight,” Malon breathed, catching his eye and approaching her descendant.

His breath, and body, was shaking.

“My boy,” she said to him. She laid her hands on his shoulders, and Twilight wanted to smile, because this was Malon, but he couldn’t; Malon understood his language of silence, and she smiled in his stead. Her eyes were full of tears. Twilight choked on his own.

She held him like that for thirteen precious seconds. When she pulled away, Twilight felt empty.

Malon exhaled and said to the others, “I gotta say, when I came to Kakariko for the milk deliveries today the absolute last thing I was expecting was to see you all again!”

“Your husband always did tell us to expect the unexpected,” Warriors conceded.

“Where is Time?” Hyrule wondered.

“Is he here with you?” Sky asked.

The Chain looked for Time.

Malon opened her mouth. Glanced across the group of heroes. Closed it. Bit her lip. Looked beyond them into the village for just a moment, then caught Twilight’s gaze, and then cupped his scarred cheek in her calloused hand.

She spoke, “Why don’t you boys come with me?”

She led the boys, men dutifully marching in the leader’s stead. While they walked, Four had to comically arch his neck to meet Wind’s eyes and tell him about his grandfather. Next to Twilight, Wild was talking to him again, saying something about Zelda, something or other relating to what they’ve been up to since Wolfie faded, but the rocks in Twilight’s stomach rattled, and that knowing feeling pawed at him, and it whispered a terrible fated promise that he had taken this path before.

Then the boys marched into a cemetery and the chatter died.

Malon stopped before one of the graves.

A slab, unremarkable to its neighbors. Chiseled Old Hylian that Twilight couldn’t read.

“He died four years ago,” Malon said.

Time’s tombstone.

“Heroically, of course. He saved…a lot of lives.”

Time’s tombstone.

“There was trouble in the woods,” she explained, voice but a whisper. “He might not have gone if it was anywhere other than there. He gave his life for his kingdom, as I always knew he would.”

Time’s tombstone, in Kakariko Graveyard, four years after his death.

“I’m sorry, boys.”

The boys, reunited minus one, seven years after their journey together, at Time’s tombstone, in Kakariko Graveyard, four years after his death.

“I’ll be in the village.” Malon’s eyes roamed the crowd, looking at each Hero in turn just as her husband—late husband—was once wont. “You boys take as much time as you need.”

She squeezed Twilight’s shoulder, and walked out of the graveyard.

Eight heroes stood on their ninth’s burial ground.

“Hylia,” Sky breathed. A prayer. A curse.

Twilight’s eyes were locked on Time’s grave.

Awkward movements, and shocked glances. Wild stood as a pillar of support next to Twilight’s stock-still size. Wind sulked. Four swiveled.

Legend laughed, startling the others in their respectful moment of silence.

“Veteran,” Warriors growled, an anger he’d never before aimed at any one of them lacing his words and heating his gaze.

Legend choked. “No!” He coughed away the laughter. “No, you don’t understand. After our journey ended, I studied—I wanted to learn everyone’s—I can read this,” he stressed fervidly. “The Hylian on the tombstone says his name. Link. Under that, Husband. Father. Old Man.”

“Really?” Wild questioned.

“Oh,” Hyrule said miserably.

Eight boys, reunited minus one, seven years after their journey together, at their Old Man’s tombstone, with the words Old Man forever engraved upon it, in Kakariko Graveyard, four years after his death, silent again.

There was nothing else to say.

“I…”

In the silence of the graveyard, fourteen eyes upon Four had him feeling very small.

“I…I’m going to go to Malon,” he announced quietly. He offered no other words.

In the silence of the others, he avoided both the others’ eyes and Time’s tombstone. He slunk away to join the woman outside.

“I am, as well,” Warriors said. Then he left.

Hyrule was third to leave. Sky fourth. Legend. Wind, the tallest, the youngest, the loudest, then left without ever saying a word.

What was left was Wild and Twilight.

“Twilight,” Wild whispered. “Do you want to be alone?”

He couldn’t speak. The feeling from before had made a home in Twilight’s throat, squatting in and stopping his words from being heard. The squatter’s residency hurt him, he was hurting, and all Twilight could focus on was the pain.

“Yeah.”

He had to force the word out. It hurt him to do that too.

Wild nodded. He patted his companion’s back. He turned; he paused to look at the tombstone; he left the graveyard.

Twilight faced Time’s gravestone, alone.

In the seven years that passed from their parting to today’s reunion, Twilight tried to find his teacher’s grave on multiple occasions. Time’s Zelda knew he was the Hero, thanks to his Triforce (and, inherited by Twilight, Twilight’s own Zelda also knew the same truth); Twilight thought it possible that Time’s Zelda had him buried in the Castle Graveyard as a way to honor him. When he looked, he found nothing, and when he asked Zelda if she knew anything, she asked him if by ‘Hero of Time’ he meant either of the two ancient heroes. “Are you talking about the Hero of the Sky or the Hero of the Four Sword?” she had asked. It had stung. Another brutal reminder of his forgotten teacher came when Renado also knew nothing of the Hero before him. Neither graveyard held answers, or Time himself.

He would have given anything to stand at Time’s grave after knowing him. He needed to pay his respects and say thank you—say all the things he could never say to the man alive—and cry. He would finally loose the tears held back every time Time unintentionally foreshadowed the Shade, like with his carefully spoken and powerful words; brushing greenery off a pauldron; existing less one eye.

Now he is here. Now he stands at Time’s grave — four years after he died, hundreds of years before Twilight is born, surrounded by the other Heroes that knew him and respected him and loved him just as Twilight had. The other Heroes gave him the space to be alone with the stone Twilight had looked and looked and looked for.

Now he is here.

All Twilight could do was stare.

Twilight could not read Old Hylian, but he trusted Legend’s translation.

Husband. He widowed his wife.

Father. He has a young child he is not able to raise — he could not pass on the lessons of his life to those who came after.

Old Man. He was not alive to reunite with the Chain.

All Twilight could do was stare.

Chapter Text

Time passed.

Twilight, eventually, left the graveyard and rejoined the group. The boys were in a cluster under the lone cedar, conversations spoken in grim tones and sidelong glances periodically thrown toward Kakariko Graveyard — whether in search of Twilight or in grief for Time no one would admit to.

More formal (dismal) reintroductions were made after Twilight returned. It turned out that seven years had indeed passed for all of them. Yes, Wind and Sky were married now. Four was still a smith. Warriors a captain. Hyrule said he wanted to teach prospective swordsmen like what Wars had been doing, Legend didn’t, Twilight said nothing.

The sun was setting. It was dinnertime. Wild told the others, only seven others, that he’d picked up a lot of new recipes over the years. No one asked him to make one.

No one would speak of Time, and no one was hungry.

The sun set. It was nighttime. Legend asked Malon if they could stay with her at the ranch, and she said of course, but unexpectedly reuniting with them meant that none of the milk bottles got delivered, so it would be a day or two until they could leave. They had to stay the night.

And Malon, it turned out, had been on incredible terms with both Zelda and Impa since Time’s death. The Queen and Royal Handmaiden visit the ranch maybe once a month with her young son, the Prince of Hyrule, in tow. Zelda’s child and Time’s child get along quite well, Malon said. She said Impa, in all her Sheikah wisdom, was a pillar of support in her grieving process.

Malon approached the knight who guarded Impa’s house, told him the eight strangers were ‘her and Link’s boys’, and without another question the Heroes had a place to sleep.

She said, “Impa would be happy to know that her house provided shelter for Link’s boys.”

Link’s boys, even in death.

Later, the Heroes settled down for bed. Wild and Four were asleep, clear as their rhythmic breaths and still frames. Warriors was awake but lost in thought as he stared at the ceiling. Under the loft, Sky and Hyrule were having a hushed conversation; they were quiet enough not to bother the people above them and quiet enough that Wind couldn’t distinguish most of their words, but when they were spoken, Time and Old Man echoed around the house like bolts and Wind felt the recoil as if he was the one holding the metaphorical crossbow.

Twilight wasn’t in the room.

Neither was Legend, but he’d left maybe an hour ago muttering to everyone and no one about ‘fresh air’.

Another Old Man from Sky reverberated in his head.

Wind couldn’t stay in that house any longer.

He stood up gracelessly, drawing the attention and concern of Warriors across the floor. It had been at least fourteen years for the Captain since they fought a war together, but Wind hoped the time passed, along with the low light, did not mask the meaningful connection they’d shared from his memory; he offered a small, reassuring, sad smile. He ignored all the people staring at him as he scurried down the loft, and towards the exit.

Wind walked through the door; the air was cold; he shuddered and stumbled on.

He found him north of the house, leaning against the wooden post of a Cucco pen, carefully watching the gateway of Time’s burial place with his arms crossed.

“Hey,” said Wind. Legend spared him a glance when he approached.

“What are you doing up?” he asked the younger, brows knitted and mouth opened.

Wind countered, “What are you?”

He said nothing. They held each other’s gazes instead.

After the moment passed, Legend asked, “Is everyone else asleep?”

“Wild and Four are asleep. Everyone else is still awake.”

Legend turned away, settling his gaze upon Kakariko Graveyard once again.

“Twilight’s in there,” he told Wind. “I didn’t see him but I know he is. I’ve been out here for like an hour and I haven’t heard anything, and I keep thinking, you know, would I want company if I was grieving my father figure?”

“Is that why you haven’t gone in?” Wind asked.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

Legend sighed. He kept looking away from Wind, pondering the dark pathway ahead.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Legend whispered.

Wind closed his eyes.

He continued, “If we were going to reunite, how could the Goddesses be so cruel as to give us all but one? To leave him out?”

Wind thought of him. How he was the first one he looked for. And the way he couldn’t shut up at their reunion then went completely silent when Malon said he died.

“Of all the ones…” Legend trailed off.

Wind wasn’t a child anymore, nor had he ever held any real opinion of them, but damn the Goddesses, it was unfair. He was denied a reunion with a trusted companion, a loved one even. The elation of linking up with his brothers stopped dead when Malon brought him to his dead friend’s grave. Instead of sharing seven years worth of stories with him in the house, they grieved him in silence. His descendent has refused to speak to any of them since the graveyard, now mourning the man he loved like a father, in isolation, in the cold.

His descendent, their brother, all alone and miserable, and it wasn’t fair and he couldn’t make it right but Wind felt sick out here with Twilight in there.

“We should join him,” Wind said.

Legend murmured dissent. “It’s Time,” he said. “Time is—Time was—Twilight’s…”

His words trailed off again (died).

“I don’t want to disturb him,” he finally finished.

“Time was Twilight’s predecessor, yeah. But we’re—we were—we are his successors,” Wind stated, as a fact that even death could not detract. “All three of us. We should — be with him, right now. With Twilight…” Wind paused, “…with Time.”

“We are, aren’t we,” Legend said.

Wind continued, “Besides, seven years may have passed, we may have changed, but I think we’re all still the same people at heart. And if I know the rancher, he’s been in there stewing since dinner. It’s only right of us to turn the heat off.”

Legend blinked. “I still cannot get over your voice.”

Wind rolled his eyes (he braved puberty with Warriors and Mask as his brothers. No amount of teasing would get to him by this point). He walked forward but, not seeing a companion, stopped in the stone alleyway, looked behind him, and found him still leaning against the same pole.

Legend shifted — his legs, in hesitancy, his shoulders, in timidity, his eyes from Wind to the ground to the graveyard.

“Get the fuck in here,” Wind said, an order spoken with a soft voice and sad smile.

Legend got the fuck in there. 

Legend and Wind walked in procession through the graveyard.

Twilight sensed them as soon as Wind and Legend reached his row of graves, quickly turning their way with a quiet gasp. Just as quickly he turned away, trying to hide the hands scrubbing the tears from his cheeks.

Legend and Wind arrived.

Twilight didn’t greet them.

Legend studied the object of Twilight’s focus, the tombstone only the Veteran could read, under which laid their Old Man. Wind waited. Twilight stayed silent.

Then Twilight inhaled, deeply.

Exhaled shakily. 

Spoke, eventually, quietly, grievously.

“Very early on in my journey, right before I entered my first temple, a wolf was waiting for me.”

Time’s successors listened to his descendant.

“It was a large thing, and it looked ancient, with aged golden fur as bright as the Triforce. I readied to fight it; now, wolves had always been pests in Ordon. They killed our main source of income. Kind of a cruel irony that I would be — anyway, I got out my weapon and prepared to fight it off. It pounced on me then, but instead of knocking me over, it…brought me somewhere.

“It was this…otherworldly plane that seemed to be floating above Hyrule, in the distance, and nowhere at the same time. In front of me was the wolf again, who howled and transformed into a Stalfos wearing a grand suit of armor…

“…and missing an eye.”

Twilight closed his own, too cowardly to witness the others’ reactions.

He never wanted to tell this story. He never wanted to see Time dead in a world where his wife is still alive.

He continued, “It attacked me, knocked me to the ground, then insulted me. It told me my hand was uncourageous and I brought shame to the Hero’s Tunic.”

Wind frowned. “That’s not—”

“No, I needed that,” Twilight defended. “I would have been in for a very rough awakening had it not roughed me up itself. This was almost immediately after restoring light to Faron Woods, and I had just been named the Chosen Hero, and it humbled me before I hurt myself.

“So it knocked me down…but then it helped me up. It offered to teach me the Hidden Skills it knows. It taught me what it called the Finishing Blow; the same move Sky used to finish the Shadow, actually. I used the Finishing Blow to kill Ganondorf. I wouldn’t have been able to kill him without it, and the stalfos—the Hero’s Shade—taught it to me.”

Sky finished the Shadow with a Blow from the Master Sword, which was tossed to him by Time who had wielded it for the entirety of the final battle up to that point. Twilight remembered wondering if after fighting with that massive claymore for so long, not to mention his lifelong distaste for it, if a longsword like the Master Sword would feel unbalanced in his hand, but Time handled it with the same grace—the same practiced, skillful movement—that the Shade displayed in his lessons. As if he had never denounced the Master Sword or been apart from it at all. It had seemed like Time made some sort of peace with the Sword at the end… if not peace then a begrudging respect or acceptable compromise.

Or so he thought. He still had enough regrets to decay into the Shade after all.

(“I don’t understand,” Sky mused. “We’re not raising her against each other. All of us are healthy and strong enough to wield her. Why would she refuse everyone?”

“Not everyone,” Legend said.

Everyone looked at him. Then everyone looked at where he was looking.

He continued, “Not everyone has tried yet.”

“No, I—” 

Twilight immediately started stammering, eyes flying to and from his ancestor’s face. His ancestor meanwhile did nothing.

Twilight’s struggle continued. “We’re not making—there’s no way she—this has to be some kind of joke.”

“Fi eventually smiled, and knew happiness, but she never joked,” Sky told him.

“We’ll wrap it. That’s what I did when Mid—when I had to transform with it still with me,” Twilight explained, searching for and producing fabric from his pack. He reached for the Master Sword to wind it. “This way, we can carry it without it — AH!”

A puff of smoke went up from the site of impact: Twilight’s hand brushing against the Master Sword’s hilt.

(Rejected.)

Twilight’s face contorted in pain and he cradled his burned hand carefully.

Eight boys and men, each who had already proved their worth to the Master Sword, then turned to watch their unmoving eldest with their own burned hands and weighted expectations.

Legend said, “Well?”)

(And after Twilight drew the Master Sword, a weapon much longer and weightier than the Ordon Sword and which at least for the first lesson after he pulled it changed the way they sparred, the Shade had no comments.)

“He said that he had six additional skills to teach me, if I would grow and become a hero alongside my journey. Take sword in hand and find me, he said to me, when I called upon the Golden Wolf through the stones he left me to learn more. So I became the true hero like he told me to, and he passed his seven skills on to me, and at the end, he…he moved on.

“He…he called me his child. Go and do not falter, my child… His last words to me. I eased his regrets, and put his spirit to rest. And I haven’t stopped thinking about him since.”

“Regrets,” Wind said. “What regrets?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said.

“A wolf,” Legend noted. “Like you?”

“Bigger than me.”

“His Dark World form?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“A stalfos. If that was always his spirit—”

“No…no, I—” Twilight stuttered. He caught sight of, and promptly looked away from, Wind’s despondent expression. “I was always able to — to hit him. He made me knock him to the ground with every new skill he taught me. He was a physical thing, which—you know, when he obviously was not alive—”

Twilight shrugged, his shoulders trembling.

“I don’t know.”

He looked to the grave.

“I’ve never known. Even after my journey ended, and Ganondorf was dead, the Shade always perplexed me. I was grateful for his lessons and respected him as a warrior, but he never told me anything about himself. Not even a name. He was a living skeleton whom I referred to as Shade, to Midna. I literally was just calling him ghost. I described him to Zelda, displayed his techniques to her, but she had no ideas.

“And then the portal came.”

Twilight looked to two of his brothers. A profound grief clouded his vision, broke his voice, and deepened his frown.

“I knew from the day I met him.”

He swallowed hard to ease the lump. It didn’t help. “It made sense, you know? My teacher was strict, he made me display my previous Skill to him perfectly before teaching me his next, and wouldn’t let me leave until I had correctly performed the new one. That first day we were together, my first impression of him was of an experienced and serious warrior. I mean, the tallest of all of us? Half-blind with an impressive facial scar? He certainly looked just as intimidating as the Shade.

“And my teacher… he was strict, but he also… I didn’t understand it, how or why, at the time, but he understood what it was like to be the Hero. He… encouraged me. Told me, though not in explicit words, that I had the strength to defeat my foes. Although I accepted life as the hero, I could not convey the lessons of that life to those who came after. And Midna meant…” he swallowed again, “...a lot to me, and she witnessed all of my hardships firsthand, but to know and be taught by someone who experienced the sting of a blade—who knew exactly how it felt to give all of yourself to your kingdom with nothing back—helped me move forward.

“The first night—none of us were sleeping—he took first watch, because, you know, of course, and I looked over at him and it just clicked.

“The Hero’s Shade wore that armor. He only had one eye. His voice…the way he spoke…every word had weight — every word he said to me as the Shade was deliberate. He had to teach me, and there was no room to misspeak. He waited for centuries just to teach me. The way Time took charge of the group that first day, got us all to focus and work together…

“That was my teacher’s voice. The same voice that taught me everything I know and forged me into the hero I am today, who thanked me for easing his regrets and letting him move on, was standing ahead of the group, alive, keeping order.” Twilight’s own voice felt like sword slashes on his throat. He croaked, “Alive.

“Every time he spoke, especially when we spoke in private, I had to focus so hard to stay in that present moment and not imagine myself back in that ether. I could never distance myself from it because it was every time he spoke. I thought about his fate as the Shade every single day.

“It was easier to deal with, in the beginning. Then he started caring about us. And because of that I worried every day that that day was going to be Time’s last.”

Twilight buried his face in his hands. He cried. Tears slipped from his eyes, gathering in his palms, hidden momentarily from Legend and Wind.

“How can I be this upset over something I knew was going to happen?” he asked, his voice small and rough, grated from tears.

“I knew he was going to die from the day I met him! I thought I accepted this! And yet all I’ve been doing all night is crying because right now, right now, the Old Man is somewhere, with so many regrets, withering away into the Shade. Wandering Hyrule in a physical manifestation of those regrets.

“And I can’t deny that truth. Malon’s a mom. Time’s dead. The timeline hasn’t folded over on itself, so everything I know about this Hyrule’s future is still going to happen.

“So why…why show me this? Just to remind me that Time died so unhappy? I knew it was going to happen, and the future hasn’t changed, so why make me see this? I look at this, and all I see is the Shade. See, the problem is that he’s not resting. He’s not in a better place. He’s still here. He taught me his skills and moved on, but in this Hyrule, I don’t exist yet. This Old Hylian on the tombstone? In my era, this language has not been widely used in at least three hundred years, if not more. Time died four years ago, Malon said. No one knows Time’s language, no one knows Time’s accomplishments… no one knows Time himself.”

His breath stuttered. His misery clogged up his throat. The horrible truth, that Twilight kept secret for seven years, that pained him more than the cut of an Iron Knuckle’s axe, was plunged. But it didn’t save Time from his suffering.

“He saved Hyrule,” Twilight said, “and the kingdom itself has forgotten him.”

“No.”

Twilight’s eyes shot to Legend.

“No, that’s bullshit, Twi.”

“Legend,” Wind warned, voice low, eyes soft.

“Listen to me,” Legend ordered. “Listen. My world forsook him. The Goddesses, some higher power, Fi, Demise, I don’t know who — they ripped a child from his home and put the responsibility of a kingdom itself on his tiny ass shoulders. He was nine, and they called him the Hero of Time. He was nine, and underprepared, and Ganon was merciless. And he was nine.”

“Are you trying to make me feel worse?” Twilight growled.

“I told you to listen,” Legend said. “Do you remember when Traveler and I told everyone the story of the Fallen Hero?”

“Yes,” Twilight said.

“Ganon killed him, and he didn’t care that the hero was a child; age doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t want a fair fight. He hates us. He keeps coming back because he hates us. Us and Zelda. When the kid here—”

“I’m twenty-one years old, Legend,” Wind said.

“We spoke once about Ganon planning his strike when the Hero is young and inexperienced. Just look at the Sailor. The kid was twelve—”

“Oh, come on —”

“—and Wild was twelve too when he got the Master Sword. Four and Hyrule were ten when they set out.

“Time was nine.”

Twilight shook his head, downcast.

“…But,” Legend said, “that’s not what I’m trying to say.

“Time was nine. And dare I say that a nine-year-old had more courage than all of us now as adults? Just think about how scared he must have been. Ganondorf was what…triple his size, the Master Sword was taller than he was, he grew up completely isolated from Hyrule in a forest — and was courageous enough to go up against an evil as great as Ganon. He didn’t have the strength to defeat him. Because he was nine. But that — that brave little kid…”

He sighed.

“…Okay. Look. My Hyrule is not perfect. There are terrible, ruined places, if you know where to look. The tale of the Fallen Hero is a legend that’s endured over the ages, a parable of sorts that warns children of running off alone — naughty children that leave home are found by the Demon King and lose like the Fallen Hero. Even my uncle would say that to me. But I never blamed the hero. It was always Ganon.

“I don’t blame the Old Man. In fact I am very thankful for him. Even if he didn’t win, he bought us time…” Legend chuckled, “…as Time does. I wouldn’t have a Hyrule to save if not for his heroism. So, in that Hyrule, he is not forgotten…”

He declared, “…because I am him.”

Twilight looked up. He tilted his head.

“Time was the Hero before me,” Legend said. “He was that nine-year-old. I’ve known this for… well, seven years, and I guess I’ve never really and truly stopped to realize that truth.”

Yes, no happy ending. The Hero is cut, and burned, and torn apart at the edges and the seams and the soul, and for everything he has given for his kingdom (his home, his happiness, his life), his goddesses and his people and his teammates forget him.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to visualize the man I trusted and cared about as the dead hero from the stories. Even now I”—he choked—“I wish he was alive. I loved him, Twi, I loved him just as I loved the rest of you guys, and it kills me that I have to face his death. Two times over.

“But listen…the Hero died. He died. He had to reincarnate.”

Legend framed his body with his hands, highlighting the reincarnation, ending the show with a flourish.

“Me. I am the Hero of Time reincarnated. I am him.”

Twilight inspected Legend’s claim, eyes searching the figure he showed, looking for the Hero (Twilight looked for Time).

“You know,” Legend said, “we established early on that it wasn’t exactly reincarnation that was happening with the nine of us. The traveler was nothing like the Old Man. I’d have first killed myself before claiming I shared a soul with the Captain. Back then, we all prided ourselves on that fact, that we were different people. Now…

“We are not the same…but yet we also are?” Legend spoke.

“By the second time my hair went pink, and by the way, thanks for that, Twi, I started to see myself in different, separate ways in every single one of you. Including Time, of course.

“I wasn’t mad.” Legend’s voice was soft. “When I saw myself in him. I was a little mad when I started to see myself in the Captain, but that’s besides the point — I saw myself in Time, and his experience. Maybe in terms of win-versus-lose, he failed, but I don’t think…

“We promised the Champion over and over that he didn’t fail his kingdom,” he pointed out. “I wish I could tell the Old Man the same. I don’t ever want to place that blame on him. Even in death.

“I wish I could tell him. And I wish I could thank him. I know we bitched about it—well, I bitched—but I love this kingdom. Time loved this kingdom, and I saw myself in that, too. I will always fight for its people. I wouldn’t have that if Time had never challenged Ganon.

“...So I’m proud.”

He held his head high.

“I’m proud to carry the spirit of a nine-year-old ballsy enough to challenge the King of Evil with a sword bigger than he was. I’m proud to be the man that risked his very humanity to the Fierce Deity to save our lives. I am him. I’m proud to be him.” He waited for Twilight to meet his eyes. “I’m proud to be Time.”

“As am I,” Twilight said, defensive. “That’s what makes me so upset. I would not be the hero I am today — Ganondorf would not be dead today if Time was not my teacher. And yet no one knew he existed."

“So how many people have you told about him then?”

Silence.

“Oh, Twilight,” Legend admonished.

“It’s been so busy—”

“I don’t want to hear any excuses,” he argued. “You’ve had seven years to find time to tell his story. Time meant enough to you that you’ll cry in front of his grave but you won’t tell Ilia about him? You’ll stand here and lament to us about his tragic fate and how he’s forgotten and how you couldn’t have saved Hyrule without his Skills but you won’t give him his credit to the role he played in your Resistance?

Silence.

“This will be my ninth adventure, yet I’ve still found time to talk about the Hero before me.”

“Ninth?” Wind pondered. “But our adventure was your seventh.”

Legend looked at him. “Uh-huh.”

It clicked. “No.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re joking."

“I’m not!” Legend bemoaned. “And I’ve been thinkin’ about what Zelda said, I have to go for ten now! I can’t end on nine!”

“You are still so dramatic,” Wind laughed.

He casually offered him his middle finger in response.

“I don’t know,” Twilight whispered. “I don’t know why.”

Legend cocked an eyebrow.

(He always did know when Twilight was full of shit.)

“I’m so stupid,” Twilight said. “I said that I needed Time to knock me down, and I did, but he… on our journey together, he told me he was proud of me. After he died, he told me I was unworthy. He finally saw that I was nothing without his Skills.”

“Oh, sweet Goddesses. Twilight…” Legend sighed. “I believe how much he helped you, and I understand just how important those skills were, but don’t sell yourself short. Goddesses know he”—he nodded to the grave—“wouldn’t want you to."

Twilight pursed his lips. A rebuttal cut short. He shook his head.

“You just said he called you his child,” Legend argued back. “Wait, no, no, no, no, let’s backtrack here. He met you for the first time on our journey together. He immediately took to you, and consider how late into our journey it was the first time he called Hyrule Rulie . We’d been calling him that for months.”

(In a moment after Legend and Hyrule spent the afternoon talking with Time, Legend said, “I never considered how beautiful that doorframe really is.”

Legend got up and started for the door. Hyrule realized what he was doing. No. “No.”

Legend turned around and walked backwards. “It’s lookin’ pretty nice.”

“LEG.”

Legend got there. “Okay here I go.”

“Don’t you—”

Legend side-stepped and vanished.

Hyrule was alone with Time, what he’d been avoiding for seven days. Time’s eyebrow was raised at the Legend-less door before turning it on the anxiety-full Hyrule, but it lowered and furrowed in concern when the eye saw him trembling.

Before Time could say anything, Hyrule blurted, “I am so sorry.”

“Traveler—"

“I am so sorry, I — I never wanted to hurt you like that, and because I hurt you I didn’t have enough magic for my Life Spell to heal you and I—”

“Rulie.”

Rulie shut up.

Time went on to say how grateful he was for Hyrule’s invaluable skill and role in defeating the Deity; Hyrule was not able to rebuke and call Time a dumbass for thanking his companion for trying to kill him, though, because he called Hyrule Rulie. Because he’d never called him Rulie before. Because Rulie was the affectionate nickname his brothers gave him, and Time had never called him that before, and he’d always worried that Time didn’t like him, and Time was sitting up and smiling at him after they tried to kill him and he called him Rulie.)

“It says something, just how quickly he trusted you.”

Legend continued, after a second, “He didn’t play favorites.”

A beat.

“But you were his favorite.”

A beat.

“And you knew it.”

Twilight knew it.

“Uh, excuse me?”

Twilight startled and Legend affronted at Wind’s interruption, they looked up at him.

“He literally said out loud who his favorite was?” Wind pointed at himself.

(“I’d be jealous too if I wasn’t my father figure’s favorite son,” Warriors said sarcastically.

Twilight scoffed. “The Old Man doesn’t have a favorite—”

“No, I do,” Time deadpanned.

The Old Man had a favorite, apparently. The boys went quiet.

“The Sailor,” he said.

The Sailor gasped. “I FUCKING KNEW IT!”)

“Okay, first, fuck you for being so tall,” Legend said. “Second, I’m trying to make a point.”

“Facts don’t care about your point.”

“…Second favorite."

“Thank you.”

“Anyway,” Legend said. “Time knew it was you the entire time he was teaching you.”

“He did,” Twilight breathed, soft like he was only just realizing.

“He knew how strong you’d become. He knew how good of a man you’d become.”

“But my strength is not my own,” Twilight said.

“I don’t think he would’ve ever thought that,” Legend rebuked. “I just told you how much it should mean to you, the rate at which he trusted you and the amount of it he placed. And I know you don’t have memory issues. You remember his Hidden Skills pretty fucking well.”

“Like I could forget.”

“He knew how strong you’d become,” he repeated, “but he wouldn’t have taught you those Skills if you weren’t strong enough to learn them. He saw your courage—”

“That pure determined courage.”

“What?” Legend shook his head. “Anyway, he saw your courage, even at the outset of your journey. You said he found you right before your first temple. Even then, he knew your strength, and he was right to trust you to inherit his Skills; like I said, you remember his Hidden Skills pretty fucking well. You shoulder them with pride.”

Twilight shrugged. “They’re what he left me.”

There was a moment of silence, of which Wind broke when he asked, “Did you ever tell Wild about the Hero’s Shade?”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone. You would’ve been upset, wouldn’t you have, Sailor?”

“Well…yeah,” Wind said.

“See? I couldn’t tell anyone,” Twilight languished. “Wild told me he wanted what the Old Man had. A normal life. How could I tell him that that Old Man ended up a restless spirit, just like his Champions?”

“But—"

“It’s like some curse where he can never be known.” Twilight laughed bitterly. “I wasn’t going to burden anyone else with knowing the Old Man’s tragic fate.”

“I understand why you felt like that,” Wind said softly. “But this…this has been eating at you for seven years. An entire month of our journey was spent in a lesson about the toll of keeping secrets — why wouldn’t you have eased your own regrets and spoken about Time, who meant that much to you?”

Silence.

Wind suddenly understood. “You haven’t spoken about any of us.”

“Not really, no.”

“Why?"

“I don’t know,” Twilight said again.

“Did we not mean anything to you?”

“Y’all meant everything to me,” Twilight fought. “Ever since our journey ended, I’ve been traveling across Hyrule looking for things to connect me to you boys’ pasts. I have stacks of items that remind me of you, like relics from Skyloft; Zelda gave me ancient royal weapons that were forged by Four himself; and Time, I…I looked, but I…

“I could never find his grave,” Twilight whispered, a guilt-ridden secret.

Wind considered Time’s grave below them.

“I looked everywhere,” Twilight said. “Zelda had never even heard of the Hero of Time, and she was the only one who might have known something. Even in death, he—”

“Twilight,” Wind interrupted, decidedly, done with the grave. “What Legend was saying before, about his Hyrule not truly forgetting him — he’s not forgotten in my Hyrule, either, Rancher. It’s not true. He’s regarded as a legendary hero, and children on Outset Island dress in green tunics on their twelfth birthday to honor him. His story has been passed down through hundreds of years—though some stories have been changed over time, such as him starting at twelve and not nine—and he’s the example that parents want their children to follow. His deeds are remembered. And beyond that…I think about him almost every day. Not about the legends. I met him. Sometimes, I’ll be telling Grandma a story from our quest together, and she’ll cut me off and say, ‘you remember that there were seven other people with you, right?’ because I got caught up in telling her about something he and I did, or something he showed me, or something we talked about. I know he meant a lot to you. But he meant a lot to me, too.”

Twilight opened his mouth to speak but Wind wasn’t done.

“Do you know what Ganondorf called me, once? He said I was surely the Hero of Time reborn. I don’t have the Hero’s Spirit—or, at least, the one that the rest of you have—but I am also him.”

Wind glanced at his left hand. He held it to his chest. “I don’t know how to explain it. But I know that I am,” the wielder of the Triforce of Courage said. “And he agreed. He said he was proud to have me as a successor.”

“He told me that, too,” Legend added softly.

(“Damn,” Legend said. “How did you get so good at field medicine?”

“Experience,” Time said, knotting the tourniquet.

“Damn,” Legend said again. “I’d’ve never been able to make this as well or as quickly as you did just now, and I’ve been through at least forty dungeons.” He lifted a brow. “How many dungeons have you been through, by the way?”

Time shrugged. “At least two.”

“Old Man.”

“It was at least two.”

Legend’s face was wry. “Right.”

His eye lifted to catch his expression. “I’ve suffered quite a lot of injuries in my time. I did tell you that my eye wasn’t the worst scar I’ve got.”

“So what is?”

Time didn’t respond to that. He inspected his makeshift tourniquet in what Legend knew, after months of traveling together, was him avoiding the question. Instead he said, “Make a new bet about it. If you don’t have one already.”

“No, that would be a new one. Don’t make me go broke, Old Man, I already have a thousand on you being seventy.”

Time chuckled. “Don’t sell yourself short about this. My experience is just a different kind. I may not have the questing proficiency that you do, but I’ve been fighting for a very long time.”

(Since he was nine years old and through three different timelines.)

(On a lighter note, he hoped that that ‘long time’ meant seventy years. Warriors put like five grand into the betting pool on forty and Legend wants that money.)

“It never ends, does it?” he asked.

“No. But you choose to keep fighting, for the people you love.”

Damn, Legend thought.

Damn the Old Man for always being right.

When he washed up on Koholint, he charged ahead without a thought through monsters to find his sword and a way back to Zelda. He fought for Zelda, but Marin, Marin was…wonderful. He fought through a facsimile of his first adventure for Marin. He’s fighting through a time-rending journey with his brothers for Marin. Even if he’ll never see her again.

“The fighting certainly brings you to unexpected places though,” Time said. “After all, I now have the privilege of calling three of you boys my successor.”

Time finished the tourniquet. Legend thanked him for his help, and started for camp.

“Veteran.”

The Veteran stopped. He turned around.

Time told him, “I am proud that you’re one of them.”)

(Legend had turned away again, without saying thank you, before he could do something stupid like cry.)

“And you? I mean, just the way that he looked at you, Twilight. I may have been his favorite,” Wind said, pointedly, “but every one of us could see just how much he cared about you.”

“It didn’t end that way,” Twilight reminded them sadly.

“Because you were a hick who hardly knew how to swing a sword and he was a child soldier who didn’t want his loved one to fight the same evil he did unprepared like he was, you fucking idiot.”

Legend’s sudden words bit at him. He flinched.

But Twilight still argued, “That doesn’t matter when the world he saved doesn’t know he existed.”

“But I don’t think that’s true,” Wind said. “Legend’s him. I’m him.”

“You have his fucking blood!” Legend yelled at him. “You’re his great-great-great-whatever the fuck grandson!

“The world he saved hasn’t forgotten him as long as you literally exist! He saved all of our worlds, by helping us defeat the Shadow, and guess what, the other six — the other five in Impa’s house all remember him. The other five loved him too. Farore’s sake, the Sailor had the worst case of hero worship I’ve ever seen—”

Wind made a very guttural noise of argument.

Legend scowled. “You’re really gonna deny it now ?”

Wind softened, likely thinking of Time.

“We’re grieving him,” Legend said to Twilight. “We’re grieving him because we loved him.”

Twilight was quiet, thinking.

“I loved him, Twilight,” Legend said. “Don’t think that just because you had an extra-special relationship with him it meant that the others didn’t care. Don’t ever think that.”

“And he loved us too,” Wind added. “He wouldn’t have sacrificed himself to the Mask if he didn’t.”

Legend said, “It’s true. Rancher, do you remember when the Fierce Deity—”

“Yes, I remember.”

Of course he remembered. He’s had nightmares about those three days.

Specifically about the conversation the eight of them had on the second in which they discussed the possibility of needing to kill him.

(“We need to discuss what to do if we need to kill him.”

Voices of complaint, saying, “No!” and “Excuse me?” and “WHAT?” sounded through the campsite. Another, smaller, from the Veteran, said, “Kill?”

Sky just shook his head and got up and left.

“Sky!” Warriors scolded. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m not sitting here and making a plan about how to kill the Old Man, Captain,” he said tightly.

“You think I want to be having this conversation right now?” Warriors bellowed. “Time is my—”

He cut himself off. He huffed and turned his head aside, avoiding the gazes of the boys he was leading.

“If we can’t get that mask off…” Warriors felt his eyes water and blinked away the tears. It was not right to break down when seven others faced a very real threat of death by their eldest’s hands and looked to him as the only other with experience fighting him. It was not the time to cry over a lost brother. “If Time is too powerful for us to hold back on, we have to do what needs to be done to stop the attack. I am heartbroken that this is what it’s come to. But I cannot lose any of the rest of you.”

Twilight was as white as a shade.)

(It didn’t come to kill . It came to burns from a Fire Rod and lashes from a Whip and stab wounds from eight different swords to disarm and debilitate the Fierce Deity, and when Hyrule and Warriors wrested the mask from the supine war god’s face, Time was only but a man suffering from such grievous wounds.)

“Well, this all finally perfectly explains just why you were such a fucking mess after the Fierce Deity fiasco,” Legend said. “It was all you could think about, wasn’t it? His life was in the balance, and you were remembering his fate as the Hero’s Shade.”

(On the third night, Warriors tried to get Twilight to leave the room.

“He didn’t leave me,” Twilight rasped.

“That was one night. And I still worried about him the entire time.”

Twilight guffawed. He asked incredulously, “But not about the dying kid on the bed?”

Warriors smiled, a little careful, a little mischievous. He said, “This is night three for you. You’ve barely slept, Rancher. If your roles were reversed I’d have dragged his sorry ass to a bed yesterday.”

A little lighter, Twilight looked again at the bed, resuming his guard dog role. A dutiful, stubborn guard dog.

Warriors laid a hand on his shoulder. “Get some rest. I’ve got him. If he wakes, you’ll be the first person to know.”)

(On the fourth day, Time woke up. 

Sky gasped.

“Good morning. Er, afternoon.”

Time’s eye found Sky’s.

“We’re at an inn,” Sky said, answering the questions he knew he would’ve asked. “The others are safe. No one is hurt. You were…badly injured, though, so don’t even think about getting up right now, because Twilight will bite your head off if you do.”

Time frowned, brow knitted in what Sky assumed was a broken man’s Face of Disapproval. He croaked, “Hypocrite.”

Sky laughed. Loudly.

The Face moved to him.

“Sorry. I am so sorry. I just didn’t think your first word after waking up would be calling Twilight a hypocrite—”

He laughed again, covering his mouth with his hand.

“I’m sorry.” Sky snorted. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Whew. Anyway. It’s been a couple of days since you were hurt. How are you feeling?”

Time shifted, noticing the empty room. “Where…?”

“Everyone’s having lunch right now. I volunteered to watch over you while they all ate. We were never sure when you were going to wake up, so we always kept something here for you, but…” He grabbed the plate from beside him. “…this is definitely cold by now. Wild will be up here any minute with new food, though.”

Someone knocked on the door. “Sky?” someone asked.

Wild, holding two bowls of soup. “Thanks for holding down the fort here. I made your favorite.”

Sky took a serving of pumpkin soup. He thanked him, to which Wild asked, “How’s he doing?”

To which Wild found him awake. He gasped. “Old Man—hi—how are you—how’s the pain—is there pain? We’ve been watching over you very closely — I made soup. You need to eat.” He carried the soup over. “Oh!” he remembered. “I need to grab Twilight!”

Wild went for the door, realized the soup was still in his hand, ran it back over to the bedside table, then skittered out of the room to grab Twilight.)

(And, even once healed and back in charge, the only thing he ever had to say about the whole endeavor was that he was proud of them.)

“I had a nightmare one night that week. It was my first lesson with the Shade, but with his face, not as a Stalfos. I was already avoiding him, but if I had gone in that damned inn room that day I think I would have completely broken down.”

“You weren’t doing much better otherwise, anyway,” Legend said, a hint of playfulness in his voice.

Twilight exhaled. His grief, his exhaustion — expressed all in one heavy sound. “Veteran,” he said, “you said — you said that you’ve talked about him?”

“I have. Ravio, Gully, Sahasrahla — I’ve told so many people about how I met my predecessor, how he was a good man. Zelda, especially, knows how much he meant to me.”

Wind chimed in, “Tetra, too. Aryll and Grandma know about Time because I won’t shut up about him but Tetra always asks me for stories. She knows everything about the Old Man now.”

Twilight was quiet and thinking again.

Eventually, he seemed to come to a conclusion. He nodded to himself. He said, “I know he meant a lot to you, too, Sailor. I’m sorry — I’m sorry for telling you this. I’m sorry that you know that your hero was so tortured. I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

“Don’t apologize, Twilight. If anything, I’m sorry you’ve had to keep this in for so long,” Wind said.

“I’m not the one who died,” Twilight mentioned.

“No. But you’re the one who’s had to live with the grief.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Legend whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Time’s grave sat quietly on that ground. His three successors, Heroes talked out, stood in a comfortable silence.

“So…” Legend eventually mused, “…the Old Man’s a wolf too, huh?”

Twilight nodded. “The Golden Wolf.”

“You told me once that someone’s form says something about their person. I guess I should’ve figured. You two were more similar than you’d ever thought,” Legend said. His signature snarky smile was grave. “I’d be willing to bet it’s what he’d become if he transformed with your crystal.”

“Probably.” Twilight wiped his eyes. “It’s something I’ve wondered about, myself.”

“By the way, I would be a seagull,” Wind commented. “If I transformed using your crystal. I’ve sorta become one before.”

“What?”

“It’s complicated”—Wind waved a hand around—“and also I think Wild would be a dragon.”

“It’s like three in the fucking morning, I am not getting into a debate about what everyone’s Dark World forms are,” Legend said. “…But I can see Wild being a dragon.”

“Please,” Wind scoffed. “Place your bets now on whether Four would be a mouse or a hummingbird.

Twilight chuckled. Legend noticed his sagged shoulders, his level face, and his eyes and head turned to look at the way back to Impa’s house.

“Are we ready to go?” Legend asked.

“No,” Twilight said. “The Old Man won’t be with us.”

“Not to be cheesy, but again, that’s not true, Twilight,” Legend promised. “He lives on in all three of us.”

Chapter Text

(“That’s Nabooru’s Hand,” Tetra taught Link, lying beside him on the blanket they’d laid upon the wooden planks of the ship mast.

Link had returned from his third journey the previous afternoon. The portal apparated on the ship deck and Tetra definitely did not drop the telescope she was holding and any or all responsibilities to wait for him to walk through — and wait she did, because it was probably close to an hour later that Link finally came back. She greeted him with a normal amount of relief at his safety and gratitude at his return. The other pirates, similarly happy, participated in his hero’s welcome and he accepted it with grace until the adrenaline she supposed ran its course and ran Link to the ground. Tetra caught him before he further bruised his knees, helping him into his cabin and onto his bed, where he promptly passed out. Tetra did no such thing as staying in his room and keeping watch over him as he rested in what might have been the first time in multiple days.

He woke in the morning and Tetra got some breakfast in him before he was out again.

By noon, twenty-four hours after coming back, Link woke back up and was fully cognizant, if still a little drowsy. Sluggishness couldn’t dull his smile, though, when he told her about the eight other Heroes that he traveled and saved Hyrule with, nor the emotion in his throat when he spoke of the bond that forged between them (and so what if Tetra’s heart swelled when he admitted how much he missed her?). She’d stayed by his side all day (because, fine, she missed him like crazy too); by dusk, when he finally asked for a private moment together, Tetra made a nest of pillows and blankets perfect for stargazing.

“That one is Darunia’s Mettle, and over there Ruto’s Touch,” Tetra said. She pointed to another. “That one is Eponine the Mare.”

“Epona.” Link smiled gently. “Not Eponine. Her name was Epona.”

“They told you about her?”

“I met her! And her descendant was traveling with us the entire time!”

“I don’t know…” Tetra smirked. “…My mom was pretty damn confident when she told me it was Eponine .”

“Your mom was also Princess Zelda. You’re misremembering.”

“Am not.”

“Do you want me to tell you about Epona or not?”

“Tomorrow.” Tetra shoved his shoulder playfully and they both laughed. “I still have dozens of constellations to teach you about.”

“But is it teaching if you’re feeding me wrong information?”

“Shut the fuck up. That one over there is Rauru’s Light.”

Rauru’s Light was, indeed, very bright, though there was another clump of stars that shone brighter than the whole sky.

“But now Saria,” Tetra eventually said, pointing to that clump, “she guides us southeast. You follow her, you find the Forest Haven. She leads you to the safety of her father, the Deku Tree.

“And in the southeastern sky, you can find The Hero,” Tetra said. “The Hero is hidden, most days. You can’t see him until the night of the full moon. Some say that on the day Ganon first broke the seal, it was a new moon, so The Hero was asleep at his furthest from Hyrule. Most of the pirates I grew up with detested this hero, but my mother saw the far side of the moon, a hidden fact, and always said that the hero could not be blamed for Hyrule’s flooding. How was he at fault when he could not see it?”

Wind was quiet.

Tetra rolled over to see him, elbow on the blanket and hand on her cheek.

“You went on an adventure with eight other incarnations of the Hero,” Tetra stated the truth of his journey. “Which one was he? Our Hero?”)

It was a new moon.

Wind lay upon Impa’s roof. 

When the three of them came back, Twilight, dog-tired from the crying and the talking had collapsed and quickly fell asleep beside Wild, and Legend, with vulnerability and bloodshot eyes on display found a corner to think in. Warriors, still awake, gestured for Wind to sit next to him. Wind just stood there.

Wind had said his words. Wind had held back his tears. Wind had braved the turmoil of a gravesite conversation and now the dead man’s brother was looking at him.

Wind had said his words, and he didn’t want to talk about it. Not to mention he was still pissed off at Warriors for neglecting to tell him they’d meet again.

He pulled a Twilight and just left.

He walked through the door; the air was even colder than before; he took what he learned from Wild seven years ago and swiftly scaled the wall of Impa’s home.

And so Wind lay upon Impa’s roof. The hard tiles at his back were reminiscent of a wooden boat from which he once respected the same stars he was currently gazing at. Each constellation he noticed was brighter than usual, Darunia’s Mettle especially so, so close to Death Mountain as they were. Or maybe it was always this bright, in the past.

A noise, barely a breath, grabbed his attention.

He sat up and turned around.

Behind him, a wolf stood, golden in color and large in stature.

Then Wind realized what he was looking at.

“Hylia,” Wind breathed.

(A prayer. A curse.)

The wolf padded along the rooftop tiles. Its paws upon it made not a sound, as silent as a ghost.

Unblinkingly, Wind watched the animal approach.

“Am I the only one who can see you?”

The Golden Wolf circled the spot next to Wind one, two, three times, settling the best bed it could make on concrete tiles and laying on it.

“No, Twilight said he was able to—”

Twilight said the Golden Wolf—Time—Time, the Golden Wolf, who Wind was currently staring at bewilderingly—was a tangible thing that glowed like the light of the Triforce. Twilight said the wolf waited for him for centuries, and created stones as a conduit through which to call for him.

Twilight said the Golden Wolf was a physical manifestation of Time’s regrets — a fact that Wind couldn’t stop thinking about.

Because the Golden Wolf was lying down next to Wind and peacefully watching over Kakariko Village.

“I think about you all the time,” Wind blurted. “I remember the songs you taught me and all of your stupid jokes. I remember the combat pointers you gave me, and I think about you every time I execute them. I even taught Orca, the man who taught me swordplay on Outset, what you taught me, and he said skills like that were so advanced, so exceptional, so difficult that only a master swordsman—like myself—are worthy of them. You made a difference in my life and I wouldn’t be the adult I am today without you.”

The Sailor’s words faded on the wind’s breath.

The wolf did not move on. The wolf’s regrets were not eased.

(Two hundred and ninety-six years did not pass.) (Even if Wind had a means to make them pass, he wouldn’t know how to because he just nodded and smiled the day the Old Man explained how the Ocarina worked.)

Wind breathed. The dead man continued to watch over Kakariko Village.

“You made a difference,” he whispered. Like repeating it might do something. “We — we found new land. It’s gonna take decades to develop, but the King of Red Lions drowned with Old Hyrule to give us a new one, and besides if Sky can settle the entire Surface then I can settle some random island.”

The wolf moved its eye to Wind’s side.

“I have a future. Because of the King. Because of you.”

Because of Time, who was still staring at Wind’s side.

Then the wolf nudged Wind’s left hand.

He sniffled. “Tetra,” he said. He twirled his wedding ring around his finger — a habit he’d picked up five years in advance. “We started dating two years after we all parted. She asked me to marry her two years after that. Now I’ve been her husband for two years. Marriage is…it’s everything you said it was. By the way, I’m the only one of us excluding Sky who’s gotten married since then, can you believe that? I mean, fuck—”

The wolf huffed.

Wind blinked.

Then he laughed. 

He laughed like he laughed when Legend’s hair went pink again and stayed pink. It was just as hard to breathe as the time the group lost it over one of Time’s practical jokes, ones so rarely performed that it blindsided everyone and only Time’s resounding laughter broke the moment open. Wind laughed and laughed and laughed, and he remembered the moment about five minutes after the Heroes defeated the Shadow, when the nine of them, surrounded by dropped monster weapons and covered in blood, released the stress of a final fight in a fit of laughter, and they all laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Anyway, ah…” Wind wiped his eyes. “I was going to say that Wild was so obviously in love with Zelda even though he wouldn’t admit it. But I guess he still struggles with words. I think all of us still do, even after all this time.

“I always knew how I felt about Tetra, and I wasn’t embarrassed so much as confused. I had no problems ever talking to you guys about anything, really, and I always trusted everyone with my life, but I guess when you’re thirteen and you have a crush on your pirate ship’s captain, it feels like a cat’s got your tongue.

“I know we’re young, but… she’s Tetra. How could I not? Is that how you felt? Did you know right away?”

Wind’s hand hovered near the wolf.

The wolf pushed itself up, sat next to Wind. Eyeing the village again like a perfect guard dog. The wolf, who couldn’t tell Wind of his love story. The wolf, formed of regrets so fierce they wouldn’t let the Hero of Time rest.

Wind took Twilight’s grief and choked on it.

“You weren’t forgotten,” Wind promised. He carded his fingers through the wolf’s fur, biting back any further tears at its coarseness and how it felt exactly like the bangs Wind brushed aside to lay a cooling rag on a forehead slick with sweat, overtaken by fever after three days lost within the Fierce Deity Mask. “Th-the Deku Tree thought I was you the first time he saw me. He remembered you, his… his son. I told Orca that the man who taught me those exceptional skills was the Hero of Time, and he said he was honored to know swordplay from the legendary hero himself. Aryll grew up with stories about the Hero of Time too, just like I did, and after our journey ended, she wouldn’t stop asking about you. My sister and grandmother know all about you and Missus Malon and your adventure that you told me about and how much I looked up to you.”

The boy exhaled. “Because I did. Look up to you.”

The wolf looked up at Wind.

The wolf, a one-eyed beast, considered the twenty-one-year-old youngest with a gentle gaze in a stark opposite to the strict glare of his famous Face of Disapproval.

Wind was hardly ever the victim of Time’s Disapproval Face (a perk of being his favorite, probably). Except for that one time when Grandma wrote him that Aryll was ill and Four, fucking Four, thought he couldn’t handle a little blood (or, a lot of blood, really) after a monster fight and put his hands on Wind’s shoulders to steer him away and Wind was tired and worried and stressed and he let out a string of curses so intense that even Legend jumped and he pulled the hands off of his shoulders so hard and fast that he pulled one of its muscles and Four yelped. Time glared at him and growled, “Sailor. Forest. Now.” Sky said later that he’d never seen the Disapproval Face supplied with that much heat before (well, there’s a first time for everything).

(Even though even that was quickly dethroned the day Legend deviated from the others; the Veteran was the first Hero to walk away, dividing the group into ninths, igniting the month of infighting—both verbal and physical fights—in which the Shadow weaponized their secrets.)

(Also the first time Time had raised his voice at any of them.)

“I was the youngest. I’m still the youngest,” he complained. “I would have died before admitting it, back then, because I wanted everyone to take me seriously so I never let them see how much I admired you. But I guess I didn’t do a very good job because fucking Legend saw it.”

Legend, who stayed with him and Twilight in the graveyard to talk about how much Time meant to him, too.

“You didn’t leave any of our Hyrules in ruin,” he told the wolf, remembering the tale  Legend told last night about Time as the Fallen Hero; remembering the first timeline talk he’d shared with Time. “You said that Zelda sent you away after Ganondorf was sealed. No one could have known that the seal would break, and you’re not to blame for his hatred. From how you talked about it, I don’t think going back to your childhood was really your choice, anyway. 

“Legend said last night that even though you weren’t there in either timeline, you still saved both of our Hyrules. Ganondorf could never have broken the seal if the seal wasn’t there in the first place. He could never have taken the Triforce when he broke it because you shattered Courage, and by the way when I reassembled that it felt like the forest and I could never understand why.

“I always said I didn’t give a — I didn’t care about not having the Hero’s Spirit, and I didn’t, for the most part. But sometimes I worried that you guys didn’t think I belonged with you. You, most of all. Not to sound like Twilight here but I always wanted your approval. I was your successor. I was…I was you.”

(He didn’t know how to explain it.)

“Ganondorf called me the Hero of Time reborn, remember? I wanted to make you proud. I wanted to be equal to Twilight, in the way that you saw him as your successor, so truly that you came back for him.

“But I…I wish you didn’t come back for him,” he said miserably. “I wish you were resting in peace. After everything you went through—saving Hyrule. Saving us—you didn’t deserve this hellish half-life! Why — why does it have to…why do the Goddesses—”

The wolf huffed, but it wasn’t a chiding, displeased noise like the one before. The breath of air from the ghost’s lungs sounded sad.

The Golden Wolf tousled Wind’s hair with his snout, like a proud father, and then he moved to touch Wind’s back with his snout, like a pat and Time’s favorite way of showing affection. Tears fell down the Sailor’s cheeks and Time touched Wind’s face with his snout like he was drying them.

Wind’s chest heaved with the weight of his grief. He struggled for breath, wheezing hard and loud, deadening the sound of the wolf’s comfort.

“You should be here,” Wind wailed. “I don’t want to do this without you. You’re our friend, our brother!”

In many ways, the Shadow would have brought about every Hero’s downfall. Left to fester, every hero’s worst traits and worst fears consolidated into one nasty little Lizalfos, forcing every incarnation of the Hero’s Spirit to link, forging a rift within themselves and between each other (not to mention time itself, with the portals).

In many ways, the Old Man was the glue that kept the group together. The Shadow forged a war, but that forge birthed a connection between nine men and boys so strong that that love persevered across millennia — indelibly scarred upon their skin, in reminders of the wounds they’d suffered in fighting together but also the relationship they’d had. The Old Man, with twenty-something years of experience in comparison to Wind’s thirteen or Hyrule’s eighteen years of age , with inner demons once fought and conquered, chose to lead those still fighting theirs (ignoring the fact the Shadow woke up those sleeping demons, of course). They had complained, occasionally, about his nagging, but he kept them focused and alive when they goofed off at the wrong time; they had complained, but their eldest was a good man. 

(A good man whose favorite was Wind.)

(Time was Wind’s favorite too. Not many could say they got the Hero of Time to respect them both as a child and an adult. (Warriors could, but man, fuck that guy.))

(Mask laid dying.

“No.”

Impa’s eyes darkened. “Captain…”

“He’s hurt, and he is a child. I can’t risk letting him wake up alone.”

“This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Captain. Getting this attached to a fellow soldier,” she said. “I know you care for him, but you’re letting that distract you from your duties, on and off the battlefield. You got that nasty cut on your abdomen when taking an attack for him the other day, and if Lana hadn’t been so close you very well may have bled out. That is unacceptable. You are the Hero. You are indispensable.”

The Captain laid a protective hand on Mask’s chest. “But he’s not?”

“It is his job to lay down his life like the rest of us—”

“Job?”

“He’s not the Hero — ”

“Yes he is.”

“He’s not the one destined to defeat Ganondorf—”

“He was. He already did.”

“Captain—”

“If anything he’s a more experienced Hero than I am and should be the one calling the shots.”

“This is irrelevant,” Impa snapped, waving a hand. “I’ll let this slide today, Captain, but remember where you stand and what your failure means for Hyrule.”

Impa walked out. Link and Wind sat there. Mask shivered.

Immediately Link tucked the blankets around Mask in tighter. It was cold out there after all. “Dispensable…” Link scoffed. He said to Wind, “…When you’re sitting right there? Dispensable, well, Mask might not even live through this. A nine-year-old might die, and all she cares about is whether I come to Battle Brief. A child, he’s just a child, he’s dying of infection, and Impa…”

Thinks he’s cannon fodder.

“Warriors,” Wind said softly. “Do you trust me?”

Warriors met the eyes of his brother, and in him Wind hoped he saw a boy who knew him intimately; Wind knew him better than he could have ever thought, because the Sailor knew secrets of the Captain’s that he was roughly six years away from feeling comfortable enough to tell.

Warriors breathed. He said, “Yes, I do.”

“He’s gonna live,” Wind promised. “He’s gonna grow up. And he’s gonna be a great man.”

“How do you know this?” Warriors whispered, brow tight.

“Mask grows up, and he gets married, and he has a kid, and he gets through it all because of how we, us two, helped him. He becomes a great hero. He becomes a great leader. I know this.”

Warriors watched Wind with a look of (Wind knew this too) disguised hope. He said shakily, “You’re not the one with time powers though.”

Wind smirked. “Aren’t I?” )

“I miss you,” Wind whispered.

The Golden Wolf, unable to do more, gently laid his head on Wind’s lap.

Tears fell from Wind’s eyes. “I miss you and I wish you hadn’t been a hero and sacrificed your life for Hyrule. I miss you. And I wish you were at peace.”

Time stayed with him, patiently letting Wind pet him and cry out his grief.

“I loved you, Old Man. I was honored to be your successor.”

Wind was honored to have known and loved the Hero of Time.

Time didn’t move until Wind withdrew his fingers from within the wolf’s wiry fur. He lifted his head, and Wind missed the warmth. Then he softly put his head on top of Wind’s, pulled back, looked him over, and, satisfied, turned away and stood at the roof’s edge and prepared to jump.

Wind gasped. Wait!

“Mask!” Wind yelled for the wolf (his father figure, his little brother, his predecessor).

Mask stopped. He turned his head.

His voice was hoarse and his cheeks were wet. But he cleared his throat, and he wiped his tears, and he said, “I told the Captain during the War of Eras that you were gonna grow up and be a great man. You did. You were one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. But when you were nine, you were such a fucking gremlin.”

The one-eyed wolf found Wind’s two watery eyes and he held eye contact with Time for a meaningful moment. The Sailor smiled, weak and sorrowful yet grateful and courageous, and a wolf cannot emote but the fluffy golden tail wagged once, twice, three times, and the Old Man’s jaw jerked in what he thought might be a smile of his own. Then he leapt from the rooftop. Wind crawled to the edge, hoping to watch him run, but the phantom had vanished before hitting the ground.

Chapter Text

The Hyrule that Legend called home and saved not once, not twice, but three times was not home to Gorons.

He’d known Zora, but never as anything but monsters until he’d slain Ganon the first time—does that really count as slain, then?—and whatever curse laid upon their people lifted and they became actual beings with souls again. Gorons, a race who lived on volcanoes and existed for as long as the kingdom had stood, were wiped from history in the wake of Ganon’s hatred.

Death Mountain was usurped, and in the Dark World equivalent its colonizer built his palace. The only writings he’d been able to find about the Goron race were buried deep and dark within the archives of Hyrule Castle, reeking of the distinct odor only untouched tomes had.

In those, and in Zelda’s education, Legend learned more about a race he’d never known existed before his adventure with the other Heroes.

The morning after his poignant graveyard chat with Twilight and Wind, Legend stood at the gate of Death Mountain, crossing his arms and craning his neck to look at and think about the healthy volcano above him. And about Gorons. And about time. And about Time.

Time. How easily it (he) slips through a person’s grasp.

And public knowledge, apparently.

Twilight cried last night, bitching and moaning about how much Time meant to him and how tragic his fate as the Hero’s Shade was and how nobody knew about the Hero of Time (all that bitching and all that moaning and nothing about change). Just like Legend’s Gorons, their Old Man’s legacy was erased.

Though, Wild knew of three heroes before him. One skyward bound, another adrift in time, and a third steeped in the glowing embers of twilight. He’d found remnants of other heroes, hats and swords and even Wind’s pajama shirt that he once claimed were ‘gifts from the sky’ and never elaborated if he meant Sky himself from beyond the grave or the goddesses above or whatever he mentioned offhand last night — Wild had woken up when they came back and he talked a little about his third adventure and though Legend’s head was too full from Twilight’s own story just hours before to pay much attention, he’d heard dragons and depths and ruins and skies.

Twilight and Wind were uncharacteristically quiet at Wild’s words because of their gravesite visit. So was Legend, to be fair; he hardly got any sleep, and as soon as the sun started to rise, he left to take a walk around Kakariko Village and on that walk he found the gate to Death Mountain and he stopped and he crossed his arms and he thought about Gorons and time and Time.

Anyway…Wild knew about the Hero of Time.

So at the very least Twilight will eventually get his shit together and tell Time’s story.

Just then, a pressure from below him pushed his elbow up.

Legend startled, swiveling around to stare at the surprise guest.

A wolf.

A golden wolf.

A golden wolf with just one eye.

Holy fires of Din. It looked just as Twilight described it.

“Hi,” Legend said.

The Golden Wolf, expressionless like its spirit often was when assessing the danger of a situation or the safety of his boys in its aftermath, assessed the Hero in front of it.

Time was assessing him.

And what the fuck does he say to him?

“Um, hi.”

Time continued to assess him.

Legend has never needed anyone’s approval. He’d been a Hero for fourteen years. He’s done things, unethical things, damaging things, in the interest of surviving and saving lives. He didn’t care if people condemned him because he knew who he was. Zelda is the only one who has ever understood.

Well, Zelda and his brothers, who up until twelve hours ago he’d accepted that he would never see again.

Yet, today, Legend so deeply wanted Time’s approval.

Under the eye—singular—of Twilight’s mentor; Wars’ little brother; Legend’s own weird sort-of father figure that he would have died before acknowledging, he did not feel judged. In fact he felt understood.

The eye moved from Legend’s face to Legend’s pouch.

The wolf shoved its snout forward and nosed at it.

“Hey, what—”

He stood there baffled feeling the force of the wolf’s pushing against his leg. The invasion of privacy was unrelenting until he stepped back, separating the wolf’s nose from the pouch.

The pouch’s front pocket.

The pouch’s front left pocket.

Legend blinked. No fucking way.

The wolf looked at the front left pocket. Then back at Legend.

“You want…me, to—” Legend pointed at the front left pocket. Then back at himself.

The Golden Wolf chuffed.

Oh, that impatient little bastard.

Legend guffawed. “Sheesh. You’d think a ghost would know how to wait it out.”

The wolf’s eye narrowed. Its nose and forehead wrinkled.

“Oh Farore the Face of Disapproval translates through an animal.” Legend threw his hands up, turning away to hide the makings of a smile.

He supposed the Face of Disapproval there made sense. Jokes and pranks had their place and time; Time knew when to let the boys laugh at each other, and seven years on Legend could accept the partial blame for the Face at the Like-Like Incident. He could be strict, even close to nagging at times, and it frustrated him because damn the Goddesses he knew how to be a hero but after about six months he tolerated it (even, somehow, appreciated it) because by then he knew how much Time cared. How gravely he prioritized the lives of the others, so much so that he’d lose himself in the Fierce Deity Mask for three days before losing one of his boys.

Legend turned back to the wolf. “And don’t even give me it, you know I’m going to do it!”

The wolf sat like a dog.

Waiting.

So he did it. Legend reached into the designated pocket. There was no need to riffle through various tools and knickknacks, for this was a dedicated space. His crystal pocket.

Wind had given him a roll of his sailing rope, that Twilight had carefully weaved around a second condensed version of the curse that Zant placed on him (it wasn’t Zant that cursed Legend into his Dark World form for the second time on their journey, but the Shadow himself. The final two months of their adventure got weird). He never used it much, for his Dark World form being a rabbit compared to Twilight’s wolf is forever unfair and what use does a rabbit even have for a Hero fuck the Goddesses, but he does have respect for it, and by extension himself, now. He wouldn’t have any of those things if not for his brothers.

Legend holds the crystal up by the string, thinking of said brothers. Thinking of the man behind the wolf in front of him.

I’m sorry I never told you but you really did help me, a lot, Legend then thought what he could have said just minutes before. Maybe, I hope Twilight’s peace comes for you soon, because you deserve to rest after all you’ve been through. Even just thank you, a damn thank you would’ve sufficed, but the only word he said was hi.

Take sword in hand and find me, Twilight said were the Golden Wolf’s words to him, words Twilight heard and understood in his   Dark World form.

Ah.

“Conversation with a dead man. Weird start to a Hero’s Journey,” Legend mused. “Well, I guess Wild had something similar, and I can’t let him do something I haven’t, hm?”

He swung the crystal into his palm and held it to his chest.

The transformation was never painful for him. The crystal’s dark magic molded his body, shrinking and growing fur, but a jolt like being shaken awake by his companions to fight a monster horde was the extent of any felt discomfort. Twilight said that it took years for him to get used to the feeling of his transformation; Time said, on the seventh of their nine-day convalescent, that donning the Fierce Deity Mask after so long without was a torture unlike any he’d endured, an agonizing wringing of his limbs as the Deity reshaped his body to house a god and a burn in his throat as the Deity stole his voice and an interminable migraine as the Deity, parasite that it was, infested his consciousness with the wish to fight, kill, consume.

There Legend was with a single heart palpitation between Hylian and rabbit.

The Golden Wolf was a large animal, sizably bigger than Wolfie as Twilight did say, and Legend was small for a twenty-something, but at least he stood taller than a wolf.

The rabbit had to crane its neck to see his fellow animal.

Haloed by the gentle morning sun, the Golden Wolf eyed the rabbit, huffing a noise that sounded suspiciously like a hum of approval.

“You know, Old Man…” The rabbit lowered itself to the ground, like a bow. “I never properly thanked you.”

Chapter Text

“No thanks necessary.”

The rabbit jerked back, watching the wolf with wide eyes.

The wolf, a spirit. The wolf that saved his words, for all that time, for Twilight. The wolf, speaking to Legend. The wolf’s voice, their eldest’s voice, Twilight’s teacher’s voice, Time’s voice.

Time’s voice spoke again.

“Meeting and knowing you all was a blessing.”

…

“And you rot for centuries. Hundreds of years.”

The wolf looked away.

“Twilight wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Impa’s house had two chairs. When the dawn of a new day arrived, Four and Wind had gone around Kakariko Village asking villagers to borrow the other needed seven, lugging them all back inside.

Legend, who was already out of the house when early riser Wild woke before sunrise, came back on the heels of Wind and Four and said only, “out” when asked of his six a.m. whereabouts. He was inscrutably quiet as he helped sort through Wild’s ingredients, wearing a weird expression, but no one asked; the others were still asleep and it wasn’t as if Legend could easily explain his wolf-to-rabbit conversation.

Sky had woken just after Wild. Twilight had a ‘long night’, Legend and Wind claimed, so he and Warriors, who was still awake when Legend and Wind and Twilight returned last night, were the ones sleeping in. Hyrule was the last asleep. Even in the face of such changes, they fell easily back into standard procedure as if more than half a decade had not passed since their parting.

There was a kitchen in the corner which Wild had quickly taken to. As breakfast was prepared, the men took stock of their gear, for the portals had come for them at points of thoroughly inconvenient times, and chunks of their arsenals were missing. They discussed planning, and thoughts of their reunion, and Wild asked Hyrule if he would scout with him after eating, and Hyrule said, “YES.”

Wild eventually called for mealtime. Eight men each took one of the gathered chairs. The various conversations paused, as the gazes then fell upon the ninth chair that was sat beside Twilight.

They’d grabbed nine chairs without thinking.

They were a group of eight now.

The chair was empty.

Breakfast was quiet after that.

“Mm!” Sky exclaimed at one point, when the weak conversation attempts came to grief. “Champion, this is delicious. Fluffy, sweet, and strong. I forgot how much I loved your cooking.”

“Oh, same,” Wind said, “but the way you made this is incredible. How is it possible that you’re better than you were at your best?”

“I don’t remember anything you made tasting quite like this,” Hyrule commented. “What did you do differently?”

“My Hyrule rediscovered cheese,” Wild said.

A moment of silence.

Then Four blinked. “What do you mean rediscovered?”

“I mean that no one in Hyrule knew what cheese was until the farmer in Hateno Village found an ancient scroll that detailed the process of aging milk into cheese.”

“You’re telling us that not one dish you cooked on our journey together had any cheese in it.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know what it was until like three years ago.”

“What?” Twilight questioned. “I know I’ve talked about Ordon Goat Cheese to you before.”

“Yeah. But did you ever show it to me?”

“No?”

“Yeah.”

“Mornin’, boys.”

Eight chairs scratched the floor, said boys looking south at the voice.

“Malon!” Wild exclaimed.

Malon stood before them in Impa’s doorway. The boys joined Wild in greeting, and she gave them a warm smile.

The cook gestured to his food on the table. “I—I made cheese omelets. Please have some.”

“Well how can I resist your cooking?” Malon said, approaching the table. She examined Wild’s offerings. “You know, I always had competition in the kitchen from you. Even years after your journey ended my late husband would ask if we could try to recreate a dish of yours.”

Malon’s comment silenced the group again as effectively as her late husband’s Face of Disapproval.

“Complimented my cooking ‘til the end of time, but I could never get it exact.” Malon waited, then sighed, glancing around the table of grieving boys. “I had just wanted to pop in this mornin’ and see how y’all were holdin’ up. I know yesterday was a shock, reunitin’, only for that joy to fade when you learned your Old Man was gone… I only wish I didn’t have to be the one to hurt you with the news.”

“We’re okay,” Four said.

“Sad,” Wild admitted.

“Shocked,” Hyrule added.

“I’m sure,” Malon said. “I’m sorry you boys showed up now, of all times to come back. I’m sorry you don’t have him. But please trust when I say my husband would’ve been over the moon to see you lot again; you all meant just as much to him as I’m sure he did to you.”

Wind said, “We’re glad you’re here.”

Wild asked, “Would you have breakfast with us?”

Malon responded, “Absolutely.”

She took the empty ninth chair, and a serving of cheese omelet.

Malon made breakfast better. She praised Wild’s use of cheese and conversation erupted at the table.

“Golly, Malon,” Wind avowed at one point, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you. You were always so kind to us—letting us in your home—and you’re so honest. Unlike someone.”

Wind snapped his neck to glare at Warriors.

(If looks could kill—)

Warriors reeled. “You smiled at me last night!”

“Boys,” Malon said, sounding for all the world like Time.

Then Sky finally got to show off his wedding ring, and Malon and he talked about married life.

And then Malon had a hand on Warriors’ shoulder to her right. She was whispering, hushed words meant only for the Captain, and the Captain was responding in a voice just as quiet.

They ate breakfast and talked. Twilight pushed omelet around a plate with a fork.

Twilight didn’t hear why Wind was mad at Warriors, or what Warriors was telling Malon, or whatever other number of conversations were happening at this table without Time.

Because he was dead.

It had started.

It’s been four years.

It will be three hundred.

He died upset.

He died unfulfilled.

He died with regrets.

Knowing them wasn’t enough.

Twilight wasn’t enough.

It didn’t matter what Legend and Wind said last night.

They didn’t understand.

He died and wasn’t proud of him.

He died.

In a fog like the Shade’s ether, Twilight lost himself.

“Twilight.”

Twilight jumped.

Malon was standing at the other end of the table.

“Come take a walk with me.”

Twilight blinked.

The Shade’s widow waited.

“Uh…” Twilight said, “...yeah.”

Twilight stumbled out of his seat. Warriors steadied him. He met Malon by the door, who smiled, and as they walked out, Wild announced to the group, “Oh, by the way, another thing that was discovered — I’m lactose intolerant!”

They shut the door on that.

Crates of Lon Lon Milk were stacked outside, perfectly preserved in glass bottles as was the ranch’s invention.

Malon lifted one. “Still got some of that farmer’s strength?”

Twilight nodded, smile wan. “Only gotten stronger.”

“Well, you wouldn’t mind helping me with the milk deliveries, then,” she tested, smirking, as if just yesterday morning Twilight wouldn’t have given up absolutely everything to be right here with Malon.

Twilight lifted one too. They set off on a very important adventure around Kakariko Village to hand off milk door-to-door.

“How did you sleep last night?” she asked as they walked.

He bit his tongue.

It is a Hero’s instinct to deflect pain. It’s what keeps him alive in the face of death; the gaping wound in his chest cannot distract him from the monster horde lest he be killed and fail his journey, his kingdom, his princess. The chronic pain and the chronic nightmares and the chronic paranoia that arise from defeating his ultimate enemy cannot display for anyone to see — his job is to protect, and he is protecting his loved ones by ignoring his issues and keeping them ignorant to how he has suffered and how he is suffering.

It does not help him. It does not help those he loves.

But in the face of Malon, who had nearly thirty years experience breaking down a Hero’s walls and beating some sense into his dumbass brain, Twilight knew it was no place for lies.

He sighed. “I didn’t get much.”

“I figured. I had a feeling Link’s death would hit you hardest.”

(Because every one of them could see just how much Time cared about him.)

“It was quite a shock,” he said. “He was my favorite, I guess you could say, even if I wasn’t his.”

“Well hold on now—”

“No, at one point he did admit that Wind was his favorite.”

Malon hummed. “He did love the Sailor,” she admitted.

In all honesty, Twilight wasn’t upset about that. Every one of them had been fond of Wind.

“I was in the graveyard for a while last night, with the sailor and the vet. We’re all…all three of us are his successors,” Twilight told her.

Malon smiled and responded, “And he was damn proud about it too.”

He had to bite his tongue again, to stop any tears from coming.

“We talked about him for a while,” he said.

(There was no way on Ordona’s fertile fields he was telling Time’s wife about his fate as the Hero’s Shade.)

“He meant something different to all three of us — all eight of us, really. Time was…very important to me. He helped me more than he ever knew.” He swallowed. “I was up late, because I just couldn’t sleep thinking about how he was gone.”

“I understand.”

“Oh, spirits.” Twilight’s stomach dropped. “Of course, I—I’m so stupid—”

“Link, honey, dear, it’s okay. Don’t say that.”

They made a delivery. They kept moving.

“I understand your grief,” Malon clarified. “I know how much he meant to you, and like I said at Impa’s house, I’m so sorry you can’t reunite with him too.”

Twilight said, “Well, like the Sailor said, I’m very grateful you’re here with me.”

“I’ve always been with you,” she said simply. She handed milk bottles to a thankful customer, and Twilight trailed behind her.

“So…how are you?” he asked.

“Well, today I’m mighty fine. I had a damn delicious omelet for breakfast and now I get to run my errands with my descendant.”

They made another delivery. Malon stopped before moving along.

“But that’s not what you’re askin’.”

She gave a sad smile.

“I’m okay, Link. I promise. I have a ranch, and a family, and I’ve found a way to be happy. I miss him every day, of course I do, but I’m okay.

“And you, Link?” she asked. “How are you?”

“There’s been a lot goin’ on,” he said. “I haven’t been home lately.”

“No?”

“A lot of traveling. If you don’t include my journey with the others, I actually recently left Hyrule for the first time.” He wasn’t even in it when the portal came for him yesterday. “I’d never even been out of Ordon before I became the Hero. It’s a weird feeling not being home.”

Weird. But weirder to be home with people who just don’t know him anymore.

“Have you been traveling alone?” Malon asked, concerned.

“No. I’ve got Epona with me.”

That got her to give him a big smile. “Then I know that you were safe.”

Safe. But not happy.

Malon continued, “How’s she doing with all that traveling?”

“Good. I think she likes the exercise and all the new environments. How’s your Epona?”

She said, after a pause, “Epona died not long after Link did. She was an old old girl, but her health declined very quickly when Link died. Unsurprisingly. It didn’t hurt so bad, though, because I knew they were together, somewhere.”

(There was absolutely no way on Ordona’s fertile fields he was telling Time’s wife about his fate as the Hero’s Shade.)

“I’m so sorry,” Twilight said.

Malon waved a dismissive hand. “I still have her offspring, and those little troublemakers give me so much grief — I can only imagine how much mischief your beloved mare causes after so many generations.”

Twilight chuckled. “I would never tattle on my good girl.”

“Yeah, you’re just like him, aren’t you?” Her eyes narrowed playfully. “Laugh and all. Well at least you didn’t die and leave me a whole ass ranch to take care of by myself.”

“The ranch…” he said thoughtfully. “Is — is the ranch doing okay?”

Malon exhaled. “The ranch is fine.”

Twilight exhaled.

Malon exhaled. Again. “It’s still standing. Link died, but the ranch didn’t go anywhere. I was grieving but still had to plow the fields every day. The cows and Cuccos still needed feedin’. My father, the lazy man, stepped up again when I needed him after I had my daughter.”

Daughter.

“Daughter,” Twilight echoed.

“Daughter,” Malon confirmed.

Daughter. Time had a girl.

And he didn’t want to know, but he asked anyway, “How old is she?”

Malon smiled. “Aria is three years old. She’s an adventurous little one, just like her papa.”

“Wait…” he said. “In the graveyard, you said he died four years ago.”

“That’s right.”

Oh.

Time never met his child.

Of course. Of course!

The hero is cut and burned and torn apart at the edges and the seams and the soul and still he and for everything he has given for his kingdom (his home his happiness his life) his goddesses and his people and his teammates forget him.

(“I could not convey the lessons of that life to those who came after.”)

(Or, he died before his daughter was born.)

“I was very angry, in the beginning,” Malon said softly. “At the kingdom. At him.

“Maybe it wasn’t fair to be mad at him, but I loved him so fuckin’ much—”

Twilight recoiled at the swear word (Time never cursed…except for the final night of their adventure when the Shadow had eight of their necks on his metaphorical knife and though he was losing consciousness he very clearly heard his ancestor call the enemy a motherfucker before all hell broke loose).

“—and I didn’t want to live in a world without him. How could he?” Malon asked rhetorically. “I told him I was pregnant only a month beforehand. How could he leave me when he knew I needed him? He said he loved me then went and got himself killed.

“But…people would have died if he didn’t go. I knew that. I knew he had to go.”

She gave a rueful smile. “It just took a while for that anger to fade.”

Twilight didn’t know what to say. This was so much. So he didn’t say anything.

“You know, he told me once that you boys said, jokingly, probably, that you thought he was invincible. Full plate, and all that. He was powerful, and you boys knew it, he knew it, I knew it,” she said. “It stands to wonder just how someone like that was defeated. When and why and for how long did the great Hero of Hyrule stand vulnerable enough to suffer the wound that killed him? Well, I think…that knowing there was more than the kingdom’s safety on the line, that his coming child’s future was threatened, distracted him. Suddenly there was more to protect than just his family.

“But I will never know,” Malon said quietly. “There’s a part of me that always knew this was going to happen. Maybe not at the absolute worst time possible, being three months pregnant and all, but I knew he would die in battle.”

Twilight swallowed. It still pained him. “You said…you said it was the forest, that took him.”

“Yes. The Lost Woods.”

Of course he never met his child, of course it was the Lost Woods. Saria’s Song, a very special song which connected him to his childhood friend that he played for them one night, was the song that whistled on the fickle breeze as Twilight followed a Skull Kid through the Sacred Grove.

Before he met Time, Twilight spent days of his life looking for an answer as to who his mysterious teacher was. When he knew who his teacher was, he gave even more days in trying to find records of his existence. Twilight ached for answers no matter the time and beside him stood a wellspring of information; no person in the world knew Time better than his wife. His wife would know what killed him.

But, within them, the people that meant the most to each Hero (Marin, Ilia, Malon) resonated deeply. The idea of upsetting Malon further made Twilight feel crushingly ill. And though Twilight’s morbid curiosities wished to know what could kill the Hero of Time, his skilled teacher and a proficient hero, the knowledge of what killed Link, Time, a man who meant more to him than the words teacher or hero could ever pass on, would haunt him like a shade. No matter the time spent by Time’s grave, it would never heal the blow of knowing it. He couldn’t ask.

Twilight coughed. He choked. He cried.

Malon gathered her descendant in her arms. He tried to breathe. He tried to stop the tears, but Time was dead. His teacher was dead. His ancestor, who by all laws and truths of their universe he should have never met—never knew existed—died lost in the woods, and transformed into a Stalfos, and lived in a purgatory for hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of years.

Time was dead.

And his wife was rubbing circles on his back as he cried.

“I’m sorry I’m so upset,” he said, voice wobbly. “You lost your husband and I’m here sobbin’ because someone I only knew for a year is gone. I’m sorry, I—I shouldn’t be—”

Malon was unimpressed. “Link, I’ve had four years to grieve my loss. You’ve had fifteen hours.”

Twilight blinked. She coaxed a weak laugh out of him. “Fair enough.”

She pulled away, and he was sure he’d feel the chill of her absence if his body hadn’t heated up so much from all of the crying.

She tenderly brushed some tears away. “Please don’t upset yourself. You meant so much to him.”

“I…I did?”

“You were all our boys, of course, but… you were Twilight.” Malon held his chin in between two delicate fingers. “You were his pup.”

Twilight gasped, breath shaky and wet.

“He talked about me?” he asked.

“Oh, all the time. He constantly talked about making things right for you. About letting you know you weren’t alone when the time came for your journey.”

He stopped walking.

“I wasn’t,” he said.

Malon turned around.

He said, “I wasn’t alone.”

(Ordona’s fertile fields and all that, but suddenly, nothing is more important in the world than Malon knowing this.)

“When I needed him, he found me. When I called for him, he answered. I wasn’t alone.”

When he knows many of the others had no companion, he feels hot with guilt and sick with sympathy. It wasn’t fair that Hyrule was running for his life without a friend or that Legend was bouncing from one adventure to the next hearing goodbye after goodbye — yet still, Twilight was never alone. He had someone in his corner in every corner of Hyrule. Humans, Hylians, Twili, Yeti, even a Hero of Hyrule from beyond the grave rallied their support for the Hero. There was no place he could go without feeling safe.

(Yet he leaves Ordon time and again, methodically running when it feels too much like home.)

(Just like his ancestor.)

(That he’s never spoken of.)

“No,” Malon said. “No, I knew he would never let that happen.”

Twilight stood still, lost in thought.

“…Was he happy?”

Malon sighed. Long. Slow.

A stupid question. Twilight was not immune to the dumbassery of the Hero Brain.

He choked. But Malon got to him before he could cry.

“Oh, my boy,” she soothed him. “I knew who I married. He claimed he was retired, and I have never doubted what our family meant to him, but I knew that he would always fight for Hyrule. He was the Hero. That doesn’t change. Besides, he gave me my daughter… he gave me you.”

Malon sighed again, but more quickly and thoughtful. “Link wasn’t…unhappy. I’ll never forget the joy on his face when I told him I was pregnant. I’m sure you know all too well the grief that goes hand-in-hand with a Hero’s Journey, and the strength it takes to move on. My husband was no exception to that. He fought to recover, fought to love life on the ranch with me. He fought very similar demons to the ones the rest of you contend with. You even saw him fight a literal one of his on your journey together.”

“So you know,” Twilight said and then immediately felt stupid for thinking she wouldn’t (hero dumbassery at work).

“You boys left a burn scar to rival the Champion’s, of course I knew — and don’t you apologize about that.” She lifted a finger to correctly stop the forthcoming words. “I told you in the graveyard that he died a hero. He saved lives. That couldn’t have happened if you hadn’t done what you did.”

“But—”

“What did I tell you.”

“I still wish he never put it on in the first place, or that I had stopped him. I never wanted to hurt him,” he whimpered.

“Shhh,” Malon said. “We know you didn’t. We never blamed you, Link. We never blamed any of you.”

“But—”

“Link.”

He looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That week… I’ve had a lot of rough weeks in my life. That one was one of the worst.”

“As was for him. He never wanted to put it on again. I never wanted to see it again, even just the aftermath — another thing I got mad at him about.” She rolled her eyes. “Yet, another thing he would always do. It was always about protecting you all.”

“I wish he would’ve protected himself too.”

“That’s exactly what I got mad at him for!” Malon agreed passionately. “All that protection in his armor and yet he constantly exposes his weak spot. And you’d be pissed, too, if you only knew how hard that weak spot was to find back in the day.”

She huffed, but then asked, “Did he ever end up telling you…about his eye, and the markings?”

“Yes. After that week, I…” (Ordona’s fertile fields.) “…He could tell how upset I was by all of it. One day he cornered me and told me the story of what happened to him. So I told him about the markings of my own. I think I may have been the only one who knew about his.”

Malon shook her head. “The Captain knew, but I’m assuming you know their history.”

He did, but he had kind of hoped that—

“The Traveler, as well,” she added. “And the Champion. And the Veteran—”

“Oh — well…”

Malon laughed.

Malon didn’t raise Twilight, but her sweet, melodic, motherly laugh warmed him, like a mother’s touch on a bitter wound (she may as well have been his).

“If it makes you feel any better, you were the first one he told.”

He sniffled. “It does, actually.”

She snorted.

Twilight may have lost Time, but he is so grateful he found Malon again.

She said, “By the end, Link trusted all of you with his life and his secrets.”

(As did Twilight. So much so that eventually everyone knew about Midna, and how she irrevocably shattered the link between worlds — and his heart.)

“Oh, the rest of you… He was so sad to see you all go, and he fought to have those memories as good ones.” She smiled, wistfully. “He couldn’t stop thinking of you boys.”

“Really?”

Malon scoffed. “You boys were all he talked about for months!

“On the day he came home, of course he asked of me, told me to tell him everything I never wrote in my letters. As for him, I didn’t ask anything of his journey; any time he left the ranch on a mission, he came back and couldn’t speak about it at first, but he had twenty years of progress under his belt and would eventually talk. I never worried there. I knew he’d tell me about your journey in a few days when the residual pain and adrenaline wore off. He always did. Normally. Immediately he launched into an explanation of the final fight. And the Master Sword. And the Veteran’s hair. He had all sorts of stories about your time together, and Goddesses forbid if he waited another day to tell them. Months, Link, for months all he thought about were you boys. Wishing he could do something now to help in the future. Wanting to do what he could to remember you. He sketched out what y’all looked like and looked at them, all the time. His weapons had never been in better shape and he finally found a use for all that spare firewood. Bless him, he really did try to recreate the Champion’s meals. Miserable in the kitchen, that man, but oh he tried. And you, well, I already told you that he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about you.”

(Still weird.)

“I…” What does one say after being touched so deeply? “I couldn’t stop thinking about everyone either. Him especially.” And how does one tell his widow of just how deeply he touched Twilight’s soul? “Him thinking about me…means more to me than you’ll ever know.” One must imagine the Hero’s Shade happy.

“I know,” she said. She patted his cheek. “Let’s finish these deliveries before the milk figures out how to go bad, hm?”

And so they finished the deliveries. Malon told him about Kakariko Village, and Twilight told her about the Kakariko Village of his own. She was captivated by stories of her kingdom’s future, delighted by the tight-knit village her humble ranch would in time transform into. She asked him to tell her about Ordon, more so than he had time to talk about it the first time they met, and his heart ached for Rusl and Uli and Colin and especially Ilia. He was…

“You boys have another adventure to go on, don’t you?” Malon asked later as they put the empty milk crates back in her carriage.

He grimaced. “Probably.”

“That can wait a couple days,” Malon swiftly and insistently decided. “I’m dragging you lot down to the ranch tomorrow. Don’t think you can visit ‘my Hyrule’, as you kids would call it, without a trip to Lon Lon Ranch.”

“I—Malon, I would love that, but I—if this is an adventure, and there’s another enemy—”

“Oh, none of those excuses, don’t be like him.” Malon waved a hand. “Lon Lon hasn’t had a single threat since you boys’ journey ended. Link worked very hard to make sure of that. Plus I think a group of eight heroes with even more experience than last time can defend a ranch if need be.” She looked for, and found, Twilight’s eyes. “Besides, I want so badly for you to meet Aria.”

“M—me?”

“Well, of course the other boys, too, but I’ll find a way to get her a moment alone with you.”

Twilight was hesitant.

“She’s your ancestor too, is she not?”

“I suppose she is.”

Malon studied him. “Would you rather not have that time alone with her?” she asked.

“No!” Twilight exclaimed. “No, I mean — I want to, I want to meet her, of course I want—”

“Link,” she shushed him. “It’s okay. You’ve had a stressful night.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t — I don’t know…”

“I know,” she said. “You’re scared.”

Twilight opened his mouth. To deny, to protect. Twilight closed his mouth.

She said, “It’s not shameful, dear. I told you how happy Link was when I said I was pregnant, and he was, but he was scared, too.

“He was scared about being a good father. He was scared for me, and my safety, and the baby’s safety, and the ranch’s safety… even though like I said the ranch had been safe for years.” Malon fondly rolled her eyes. “Despite all the courage you heroes carry, I can tell you’re nervous about the idea of meeting her. She’s his daughter, and he was the unofficial leader—he was scared about that, too, by the way. He was a good decision maker, but when it came to calling the shots for the group of boys he cared for so deeply? Terrified—anyway, you’re scared because she’s his, and you had a special relationship with him, and now he’s gone. Maybe you’re scared because Aria is an extension of him, and she’ll be a beautiful little reminder of what you lost. Maybe you’re scared because you’re related to him — you’re related to Aria, and you’ve always been insecure, and suddenly the only thing that matters in life is whether the three-year-old in front of you likes you or not.”

Silence.

Malon read him like a—and he doesn’t say this lightly—fucking book.

“You truly know how the Hero thinks, huh?” Twilight said.

“Well, someone has to.”

Twilight laughed again, stronger this time.

She angled her head, eyeing him carefully. Looking over him for the wounds he hides. Reading his eyes for the unspoken words he can’t verbalize.

“I see him in you,” she told him.

Twilight rubbed the back of his neck.

And that made Malon smile. She said, “I see a little of him in all of you. And I don’t think it’s the Hero’s Spirit. The sailor doesn’t have it, does he?” At Twilight’s head shake, she continued, “No, it’s not that, because I see him in the sailor too. I see him in your veteran, and in your traveler — those two are more like him than they know. And I know.

“I know about that,” she said. “His death there.”

The night that discovery was made was the first time he saw Time truly shaken; not even the grueling aftermath of the Fierce Deity Mask usage affected him as deeply as the night he learned that, in one reality, Ganondorf murdered him and laid ruin to the kingdom he was supposed to save. Legend and Hyrule tried to talk to him, because this was after the group reformed from their secession and were shamelessly sharing their secrets, verbalizing their promises that it was not his fault nor would they ever blame him, but still that night was one of the few times Twilight saw the weight of regrets on Time’s shoulders that would one day wither him down to the Hero’s Shade.

(Another night Twilight got no sleep. Time found out he died and condemned two children to a life as the Hero, and Twilight couldn’t sleep because Time’s consternated face spurred him into a Hero’s Shade Spiral. If those served anything, they were at least a failsafe to stay awake during watch.)

“He wished it could have ended differently.” (No—) “He regretted every day that, unintentional or not, he made things harder for some of you.” (NO—) “He said he would’ve done anything if only to fix his mistake.” (NO NO NO—)

(Why?—)

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I know that. You boys know that, and I know you tried to tell him that. But the thing is, and I know this because as you pointed out I know how this Hero’s Spirit thing works, the Hero will always self-sacrifice. I know you do it, when you haven’t been home in how long.” (No, he was…) “The Hero will always help others before he helps himself — will run himself dry to do it, if he can’t. He failed, and his failure caused two of you to suffer, and he tore himself apart in guilt.”

Twilight’s voice was brittle, from blow after blow. “He died with regrets.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I think it was inevitable for someone like him.”

Fuck, Twilight thought and had to bite his tongue from saying it out loud and bow his head so she didn’t see the tear falling down his face.

Malon wasn’t finished. “Someone who cared for y’all as deeply as he did.”

Oh, Twilight thought.

“You boys are all so different,” she began. “In his first few letters home, after your journey together began, he wrote a lot about your differences. He said he was nervous about how the nine of you were expected to work together when everyone came from such different backgrounds.

“I got to know y’all as he did, through his letters. I read along about ‘the boys’. Read when he learned that Four could split, that Hyrule could turn into a fairy, that Twilight was Wolfie. Read when you two discovered that you were related. Soon enough, in his letters, he wasn’t writing about the boys anymore. He was writing ‘my boys’. Those differences he was once afraid would tear the group apart made you stronger, let you learn from each other and how to work together seamlessly.

“It bothered him, you boys thinking he was invulnerable. He claimed it was because that meant you boys might abandon a comrade thinking they can’t get hurt. But his own power was another thing that scared him, and so was losing one of his boys because he wasn’t the impenetrable leader y’all thought he was.”

“I never thought that,” Twilight meekly provided (how could he?).

“When that power of his incapacitated him for nine days, he wrote to me about how his boys nursed him back to health. He told me how lucky he was to have every single one of them. How courageous they were to fight the Fierce Deity.”

Twilight took a shaky, deep breath. “You should — should tell the others that, too. I think Wil—Wild would really appreciate you talking to him.”

“I’ll make my rounds, don’t you worry,” Malon said. “Those letters gave me so many questions that need answerin’.”

“Like why he eats cheese omelets when he’s apparently lactose intolerant.”

Malon’s laughter rang in his ears. “That boy…” she said, “…well, I guess he isn’t much of a boy anymore if seven years have passed. It makes sense, but it’s still wild to me how much more mature all of you look, and I wish Link was here to see that too. Goddesses, I wish he could see you. He would’ve been so fucking proud of you.”

Twilight watched her. Speechless.

Malon watched him too.

“He loved you,” Malon told him.

(—Because he loved them.)

“And, Link, I love you, too. That husband of mine played games with me, the first time you came to the ranch, made me question which one of you boys was our descendant.” She paused. “But I knew. I saw you, and I knew. You have his eyes.”

Twilight thought of Legend in the graveyard last night, framing the body he promised was Time reborn. He saw Time then — not in Legend’s still-thin frame but in his bright, stalwart, courageous blue eyes. His eyes carried Time’s soul, always had, and now Twilight brought to mind their past adventure as he thumbed through memories of Legend’s face. Baby’s First Face of Disapproval, Twilight realized Legend’s famous scowl was. And a face molded Wind, with his rounded cheeks and wide, youthful, stormy gray eyes into the Hero of Winds that Wind molded himself. He promised that he was Time, too. Twilight saw it. In his sense of humor. In his love for his family. And in those distinctive eyes of his was the glint of truth. They were not their predecessor but yet they also were, to use Legend’s words. Twilight, well. Again to quote the Veteran, he had Time’s fucking blood.

Malon held her descendant’s face, gently sandwiched in her hands.

“Just as you were his, you are mine. And though our time together is fleeting, though this may be the last time I ever see you, I have never left you.”

Twilight was shaking.

“Time has never left you.”

Twilight was crying.

Twilight was sobbing.

Twilight held on to Malon, crying, crying, crying, drowning in his sorrow, and Malon held on too.

Chapter Text

“Where are the fuckin’…”

Wild’s third adventure was no help in clearing out his pack. After retrieving his dropped bag beneath Hyrule Castle, he’d long since breached a stock of one thousand apples (with about two hundred golden ones to boot); Zelda had begged him for months to discard his duplicate armor sets but he’d refused in defense of their differing defense statistics and benefits; and damnit he needed that specialized pocket of nothing but bundles upon bundles of Brightbloom Seeds!

He scrounged and pushed things aside (his pack was big but unlike the others’, it was not bottomless, and if he wasn’t bitter about that). (Maybe he was seeing Zelda’s point. It was getting a bit bad.)

“Ha!”

Victorious, he held the bottle of mixed Silent Princess and Sundelion seeds skyward. 

The sun glinted against the glass bottle, reflecting a painful ray of light into his eyes, and Wild winced and turned away and landed his gaze upon Time’s grave.

Wild sighed. He held the bottle close, elation forgotten in the face of their eldest’s tombstone.

After the assault of compliments for his cheese-based breakfast and watching the others dress in familiar tunics, Sky announced that he was going to the graveyard to pay his respects, and say goodbye. He took his time and when he returned, Four followed in his footsteps and had his turn, and a little while later Wind, once boundlessly energetic, walked funereally through the arch for his own. Wind forced Legend through after that.

And then it was Wild’s turn.

Wild was familiar with standing and grieving by tombstones. When Zelda was freed (the first time) and after Wild’s adventure (the second one), she took upon herself a project very important to her, in memorializing the people lost one hundred years prior. She laid monuments in places of mass casualties (garrisons, Hyrule Castle Town, Fort Hateno). The guilt of what came to pass (and what didn’t) was eating her alive, and though she took peace in knowing that the souls lost in the Calamity were remembered, it took both of them a number of years to take to heart the truth of their innocence.

(Wild’s brothers helped.)

But then he and Zelda were called to fight against evil again, and gloom burned all the nerve endings in his sword arm, and he met that Ganondorf person some of the others had talked about.

He didn’t want to think about Ganondorf—not because it frightened him or brought up bad memories—because, frankly, it just gave him a headache trying to reason out how the man he fought and the man Twilight and Time and Wind and Warriors fought were the same person. Rauru and Sonia were the first king and queen of Hyrule, and Ganondorf had been there and been sealed. In the Era of the Hero of Time, Princess Zelda—not the daughter of Rauru and Sonia—carried the blood of Sky’s wife, her divine birthright, into an age maybe a thousand years after the Surface was settled; Ganondorf was a man from the Desert corrupt with greed, and to any of the other eight Heroes’ knowledge that was the first time he existed in Hyrule’s history. He laid ruin to it. After Time defeated him, Princess Zelda sent him back to relive his childhood and prevent him from destroying Hyrule in the first place, of which he did — for three hundred years, until Ganondorf was powerful enough to escape the Twilight Realm where he was banished to and challenge Twilight to a losing battle.

Impa had told him the story of the Calamity of ten thousand years before him. When Wild had told the boys the same story, they all took it to mean that Wild existed ten thousand years ahead of whichever Hero preceded him, so far into the future it was a wonder the stories of Sky and Time and Twilight remained largely intact.

During one of their many “timeline talks”, they agreed that Twilight must have been Wild’s predecessor from the tapestry. Twilight was last in line of the three Heroes he knew; Twilight showed up as Wolfie. Wild happily accepted that. It made sense.

Until Zelda vanished. And harnessed her power (not her Goddess powers, the ones she inherited from Sky’s wife) to help defeat Ganondorf (not Time’s Ganondorf, who wouldn’t exist for about a thousand years post-founding); Ganondorf, the Demon King — Ganondorf, the Calamity. And swallowed a stone to become a dragon to get the healed Master Sword to Wild in the future (ten thousand years in the future).

Calamity was a term unfamiliar to the other eight. In the beginning of their partnership, it made Wild feel isolated, disconnected from the other Heroes that also vanquished a great evil. The way he fought monsters and went about his journey was completely different. 

Then time passed, and their bond deepened, and he thought of them as brothers.

Wild cried, when they slew the Shadow and said their goodbyes. He was going home to a time ten thousand years separate from them all, and though Zelda was waiting for him, he couldn’t stomach the thought of returning to a Hyrule without them.

It wasn’t long before he realized his brothers were everywhere. Three of the four Divine Beasts (the Four Giants) were named for Time’s sages, and one for one of Wind’s. The Bridge of Hylia that was Twilight’s favorite spot to ride with Epona was the same bridge on which Wild fought a three-headed dragon that Hyrule had fought, funnily enough, three times. Koroks were once Sky’s Kikwis. Four’s Minish left Wild treasures in the grass. Legend met hundreds of people on his six journeys and hundreds of places Wild traveled carried the names of those people. Warriors may not have any locations named after people native to his era, but as Wild recalled more and more of his past, he knew then that the ways his Captain taught his squires was derived from the Chain’s Captain’s leadership — Wild may have bested accomplished soldiers by the age of four, but he still learned some things from his time in knighthood training, and as such it means he learned those things from Warriors.

All that evidence of the kingdom remembering the Heroes before him, and yet still no answers of how Time fought Ganondorf when Ganondorf was mummified beneath the castle.

It was a paradox — a fucking headache, really.

He didn’t want to think about it.

Even when with the others, even when Wild knew not of a man named Ganondorf, the existence of their timeline drove them crazy trying to write it. It only made sense with a concept the boys once affectionately referred to as Time Travel Fuckery.

No wonder Time never went into detail about it.

Time, who was dead. Time, who was buried in the dirt beneath Wild’s feet.

Twilight never told him the truth, but Wild spent enough time around him to see the grief in his eyes when he looked at a living man (a ghost. He looked at Time like he was already a ghost. Wild would know. Wild had his own). Twilight knew Time in some way other than just as his ancestor.

Wild felt a twinge of that disgustingly familiar soul-eating pain, the one that steals his voice, climb up his throat. Time didn’t get to experience the blissful craziness of their reunion. Time couldn’t react to Wind’s height, or Four’s hair, or Wild’s arm. Time would never be able to taste one of Wild’s cheesy buns or hear the batshit story of his third adventure that he was planning to regale the group with that night.

But that batshit third adventure of his, after all the breakdowns on the Light Dragon’s back, taught him to move on.

His ghosts, Rhoam and Mipha and Revali and Urbosa and Daruk and Rauru and Mineru, all found peace. So he could too.

He chopped all of his hair off. He let memories rest.

He took a deep breath.

Then he kneeled, and began digging holes. He scooped up the dirt and it got beneath his fingernails, but it was hardly the first time he’d done this; nor was a little soil the worst thing he’d ever had to wash out of them. He had hundreds of seeds, so he’d dig hundreds of holes.

Wild planted a mix of Silent Princess and Sundelion seeds around the grave with care.

They were seeds from flowers that Zelda’s beautiful, scientific brain bred to thrive in the wild. They would grow on their eldest’s burial site easily. Time may be everywhere in the Hyrule Wild calls home but Wild can be with him where he rests.

He flattened the ground where the seeds laid in wait (a secret to everybody).

Wild rose from his knees, cleaning his hands of the dirt from planting on his trousers, and let his eyes linger on the tombstone one final time.

He smiled. He walked away. He let Time rest.

In Kakariko Village, Hyrule and Warriors were talking by the well.

As he approached, Wild heard Warriors say to Hyrule, “No one’s in there right now. If you wanted a moment alone.”

“I do,” Hyrule said, his voice markedly strong.

Hyrule strode toward the cemetery. He put his hand on Wild’s shoulder as they passed, and Wild smiled, and Hyrule smiled too, and their humble traveler took his turn to say goodbye to Time.

Wild took Hyrule’s place beside Warriors.

“Went okay in there?” the Captain asked.

Wild nodded.

“Any luck with Twilight?” the Champion asked.

“No. Stubborn dog won’t budge.”

They didn’t say anything, but after Wild’s years of pre-Calamity selective mutism, he prided himself on his observational skills, and it was obvious Twilight and Legend and Wind had gone to the cemetery the previous night. Though it didn’t take an ace, in Twilight’s case — he slept until ten. Was miserable during breakfast. Malon took him outside to chat privately. He’s avoided the others, said nothing, and spared morose glances at Kakariko Graveyard since then.

He glances to Legend and Wind, too. Knowing glances, like keeping a terrible secret. Legend and Wind were mainly the ones telling Twilight to get his ass into the graveyard, with Warriors and Wild mildly contributing too, but Twilight wouldn’t go.

“I’ll give him the rest of the day,” Warriors said. “If he’s still refusing to go in by nightfall then I’ll get the rest of us to bully him into doing it.”

“I see you’re ready to take charge of the group,” Wild said.

“Hardly,” Warriors scoffed. “Honestly, I’m kind of hoping I won’t have to. I’m under the assumption that since everyone here is now an adult that we can handle ourselves.”

“I don’t know about that. I still like to dabble in arson from time to time.”

His arms were crossed, but Warriors’ eyes were hardly angry. “How old are you now? Twenty-five?”

“A hundred and twenty-five.”

Warriors huffed, the sound part of a breathy laugh. “Wow. It really has been seven years.” He threw an aimless glance over his shoulder at the village. “Wind’s in his fucking twenties now, can you believe that?”

“It was hard to miss his post-puberty voice insulting you yesterday,” Wild said in between laughs.

“Yeah, that’s gonna take some getting used to.”

(“YOU!”) “He had some choice things to say about you in that voice yesterday, too,” Wild noted. “You knew Wind before all of us met?”

Now he smiled. Now he said, “Oh yes I did. He was older then, probably around fifteen, and his voice was in the middle of changing. It cracked every time he spoke. It was kind of hilarious.” Wild followed the sentimentality in Warriors’ eyes. “It was never awkward with him back then. He acted like we were brothers from the day I met him, which, even if I didn’t know it, I guess we already were.”

“So then why did you and Time keep that secret the entire year we were together?”

Warriors snorted. “The asshole said that time travel was unfamiliar to this Wind, Time had done enough of it already to know and, ‘besides, won’t it be a nice surprise for him when he meets us again after we say goodbye?’”

“Why did he think that?”

“I don’t know, I stopped trying to understand Mask’s logic a long time ago.”

Mask . 

(“You scared me, Mask.”)

(“Just because you can walk again doesn’t mean I’m okay with you going off alone after all that. Don’t make me get the rancher involved. No, Mask.”)

“That’s right; you knew Time when he was a kid, yeah?” Wild asked.

“…Yeah.”

In the aftermath of the Fierce Deity, the nine heroes needed nine days to stitch the group back together. The first night, after the damage was wrought by and against the war god, they had brought its victim to the inn (the inn that was very nearly destroyed in the First Day’s attack) and brutal reminders of Twilight’s own near-death experience lingered like a shade; this time, if the Hero died, it would be by his companions’ hands and not his enemy. Then he made it through the first night, and then the second, and the third, truly waking up on the fourth day. Warriors as the unofficial second-in-command commanded well. He helped keep the group grounded in an air thick with loss and indecision. But in the quiet moments, when the boys were behaving — Wild could feel the Captain’s anxiety that he successfully repressed wafting from his body in waves.

It was one challenge after another: a body plunged in shock, a fever, an unrelenting nightmare. It was three days of not knowing if they’d lose him after just having saved him (it was three days of paralyzing terror that the wounds they’d inflicted to save him would kill him).

Twilight was a mess. He refused to talk and refused to leave the room. The worrying grief eternally in his eyes for his living ancestor grew as if preparing for his death.

And now he’s dead.

Next to him, his companion went quiet. Time’s brother was lost in thought. Warriors looked at nothing.

“Wars,” Wild called.

Wars looked at Wild.

“It’s okay to be upset. I am,” Wild said. “There’s no shame in grieving for him. We all loved him. Don’t take the moniker of leader and ignore injuries, pass up meals, pretend nothing ever bothered him for us like he did. He hated that stupid word, anyway.”

(“I mean, you’re the leader—”

“Don’t call me that,” Time interrupted. He turned back to what he was doing. “Rancher, you’re on perimeter duty. Sailor, Smithy, you go to town. We need supplies, and fast…”)

The Captain sighed. “I’m fine, Champion. Really.”

“Hm.” Wild watched the alley through which Hyrule was taking his sweet, rightful time. “You told me to go in, you told Traveler to go in, you told Twi to get his ass in there and say goodbye to his ancestor even though he’s not listening. You deserve to go in, too.”

He shrugged. “I will.”

Wild raised his eyebrows.

“You better,” he said. “And you better not isolate yourself to hide this pain. I know Mask wouldn’t want that.”

Warriors closed his eyes tightly.

Out of the woods but not fully healed, Time, who was banned from watch for the next forever (“Your back is still paining you, Mask, don’t think I don’t see that, if you take watch so help me Goddesses I will take it away.”) (it lasted all of a week), was still called upon by the others when traveling again; Wild demanding he take seconds, Four asking how he was feeling, Hyrule sitting him down for a wellness check.

And Warriors, well, any time Warriors addressed him, for at least a week after Time was on his feet again, he called him ‘Mask’. Not ‘Time’, not ‘Old Man’, not any variation of affectionate nickname given to their eldest; Warriors chose to call him ‘Mask’ in the brutal aftermath of the three-day horror show that the Fierce Deity Mask’s usage wreaked. A bit morbid, Wild remembered thinking, thinking it before they knew that they knew each other in Warriors’ war. Officially, none of the others knew of the truth behind Warriors and Time’s relationship because neither man admitted to it but it wasn’t difficult to deduce even with the two trying to keep the secret — honestly, they tried, but straight to his face that week, Warriors called Time “my little brother”.

(Twilight was still hardly speaking to Time that week.) (And then Time confronted Twilight and he cried in his aching ancestor’s arms.)

“You know, before the Calamity, people always told me that actually talking about my problems would help,” Wild began. “I never believed them. After I woke up, I did talk more, and I was open with you guys about most things, but it wasn’t until Zelda and I went through all…this…”—He raised his right arm—“…that I actually talked. I actually told her everything, from my nightmares to my survivor’s guilt to how close all nine of us were and how much I missed every single one of you. She listened. And I felt like myself again. For the first time since before I ever drew the Master Sword.

“I started to get more memories back, too. I remembered my father, and my sister.” Wild smiled. “Her name was Aryll, by the way.”

Warriors laughed. “No shit?”

“None. I should’ve known, and maybe I should’ve been more concerned with finally remembering her when it first happened, but my only thought for like a straight minute was that I wished I could tell Wind.”

“That might really cheer him up. Tell him before dinner.”

“Oh, I will. Just like you’re gonna go to the graveyard too.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“But anyway, Captain, if you want to talk about it…losing him…well, it helped me, and I have experience with losing a loved one.”

Warriors caught Wild’s eyes. Held on. Held on.

Let go.

Warriors glanced morosely at the graveyard.

“I appreciate that, thank you Wild,” he said quietly.

Wild smiled.

But Warriors didn’t listen to Wild. Like an immortal dragon, he stood the same as the conversation started, with crossed arms and eyes at the graveyard. Thinking, You have a nine-year-old little brother, six years after that he’s pushing forty, give it another seven years and he’s dead and you’re only thirty-three.

Warriors leveled Wild with an appraising glance.

“So did you really meet Ganondorf?”

Chapter Text

“You know, this grave may say Old Man but I never thought of you as anything but Sprite.”

Warriors listened to Wild.

The goddesses, Hylia, whoever brought them together the first time gave them two nights to get to know and grow accustomed to the other Heroes around them, their traveling companions for what would be a year-long journey. How different was this, giving them two nights to grieve one of their own?

Two nights to grieve the man who helped them the most.

“Turns out it’s been seven years for all of us. Sky is glowing with happiness, Hyrule is sure of himself. Legend still has a bit of an attitude but he’s smiling so much more.”

On their third day in Kakariko Village, the Heroes waited for Malon to pack up and ready the horse cart for their trip to Lon Lon Ranch.

“Wild seems…well-adjusted. Well, as well-adjusted as any Hero of Hyrule can be.”

The other seven had taken turns in the graveyard yesterday to say goodbye. They’d urged Twilight all day to go in, the rancher throwing bullshit excuse after pathetic refusal around, only relenting when the twilight did. The Kakariko Village sky was alight with countless stars on the night of the new moon.

“He had another adventure. He dumped it all on us last night and, by Hylia, that kid is stronger than I am. He said having the memory of our relationship helped him as he fought again. He said he fought for Zelda, and his kingdom, but also for his brothers that he knew were with him the entire time. He cut his hair, too. It looks good on him. Oh, and he fought Ganondorf.

“It wasn’t our Ganondorf…at least I don’t think so. He tried to explain, but I don’t think he knew what the fuck he was talking about and he lost me when he said the word Zonai anyway.”

(“I beat Ganondorf in combat. We’ve all done it. Then he whines like a bitch about losing to me and swallows his Secret Stone to—”

“Champion, you are still the worst at telling stories,” Four cut him off. “What the fuck is a Secret Stone?”

“Oh, right!” Wild said. “Secret Stones are these things from the ancient past that ‘amplify’ your power. So, like, Traveler, if you had one, your Spells would be ten times more powerful, and Veteran, your Medallions would do ten times more damage. The Sages—my Sages—which were Tulin, Yunobo, Sidon, and Riju—all received a Secret Stone when they awakened as a Sage, given to them by their ancestors that fought Ganondorf in the Imprisoning War. Ganondorf had one but he got it when he murdered Sonia.”

“Sonia?” Legend questioned.

“Murdered,” Wind repeated.

“So casual,” Hyrule commented.

Wild waved a hand. “It was like ten thousand years ago.”

Sky frowned at the earlier information. “Why is it called a Secret Stone if—”

“I don’t fucking know,” Wild supplied. “Why were they called the Divine Beasts? Actually, I know that, that’s not a good example.” His eyes flickered to the Divine Beast. “Also, there was no Hero back then, by the way. Just thought that was weird. Though I guess depending on how you look at it, Rauru could have been the Hero…”

He frowned. He shook his head.

“But whatever. So Zelda Dragon—”

“Excuse me?” Warriors interrupted.

“Oh yeah, so, turns out, a Secret Stone can whisk you ten thousand years in the past, but coincidentally can’t send you back! Funny how that works! So because the Master Sword was basically destroyed, and I wasn’t dead, I couldn’t just leave it in Korok Forest for a hundred years to heal. I put it through this…portal…thing…and it took it back to Zelda where she was in the past. Another fun fact about Secret Stones: if you eat one, you turn into a dragon!”

Legend blanched. “A dragon? A fucking dragon?”

“I was just talking about that!” Wind exclaimed.

“So anyway, Zelda Dragon showed up—”)

Warriors, the one directing the turns, was the only Hero without one of his own.

It was an all-day affair between the men rightfully taking their time and Twilight’s childish refusals, and he supposes, between all his commanding, none of the others realized that he himself had never gone in (except for Wild and his self-proclaimed expert observational skills). He had to think of Time, when he took charge, and wonder just how often he put himself last without the others noticing. When rations were low, how many times did he forgo a meal to make extra for the young ones? Just how many nights did he ‘forget’ to wake up the next scheduled watchman so everyone slept a full night? How often did Time, the eldest, the one who shouldered one hundred times the responsibility asked of him, seek another burden to carry and struggle to keep his balance?

“The sailor’s married. So is Sky, but we knew that was going to happen. Wind was asking if they were the only ones to get married, and I didn’t say anything, but…I am too.”

He doesn’t wear his ring on the battlefield, and the portal had come to him in the middle of a minor skirmish. His wife, fighting beside him as one, promised him she could handle the remaining Boko pests and with a passionate kiss goodbye Link ran through it and into an impromptu reunion and suddenly he was Warriors again.

“Zelda, of course. I love her, down to my soul, and I would chase her to the ends of the earth as I always have, but…even before I asked her on our first date, we were locked into a marriage. She is the Princess and I am the Hero, and they have fallen in love every time before, and even the White Sorceress was corrupted when she learned I was bound to another. It’s the great love story of Hyrule. Goddesses know what would happen if Zelda and Link didn’t marry.”

Warriors eyed Time’s grave.

“Well…”

Warriors knew his little brother had the utmost respect for Zelda. For her wisdom, and kindness, and friendship. Warriors knew his little brother and Zelda had a good relationship.

Every Hero’s relationship with the Princess was good. Unique, to be sure, and complicated, maybe, but beyond the Hero’s Spirit laid their deep connection to Zelda. Warriors’ little brother took no exception. During the war, Mask’s comments about Sheik—before her identity reveal—were too on the nose to be educated guesses and too cryptic—even for his future self’s standards—to be anything but experienced observations. Mask never elaborated on his words, but Warriors always had his own suspicions about Sheik—probably that pesky connection at work—and was met with concern when his only reaction to Zelda’s sudden return mid-war was a smirk (oh, but no one said anything when the nine-year-old did the exact same thing).

Romantically or not, Link and Zelda are inextricably linked across time. Without the other, Hyrule cannot be saved.

“You never spoke much about your relationship with Zelda.”

He wondered if Time ever felt the inborn tug to the Princess like many of their group did. He wondered if Time and the Princess ever had anything more than respect, gratitude, concern for the other. He wondered, if they did, if they ever allowed that pull to lead them into one another’s arms.

He wondered if it was Malon. Only Malon. Always only Malon.

He supposed then he’d never know.

“I guess you never spoke much about a lot of things. Both on our journey together and in the War of Eras.

“After I found out you were Mask, I felt like our relationship changed. In a good way. You always trusted me with the boys but afterwards you trusted me to help you, and that was an honor previously reserved for the Rancher.”

(The eye. Time didn’t talk about it. Warriors wanted to know.

He picked at his fingernail, avoiding his asking the question like a true courageous hero of legend.

“Do you trust me?” Warriors finally asked.

“Of course I do,” Time said.

“That’s good. I trust you too.”

Time could see right through him — though not as if that was particularly difficult at that moment. “What is this about?”

Time looked at Warriors. Warriors looked at Time. His heart beat, beat, beat. “Tell me how you lost your eye.”

A beat.

Time continued to look at Warriors. His heart beat under the scrutiny of their eldest, until Time raised the brow of the eye he still had. “And let you take home all the winnings of that betting pool you boys have about it?”

With the tension lifted, Warriors easily shrugged. “I already guessed a wolfos attack.”

“You’ll change your answer.”

“I’ll rescind.”

Time—Mask, actually, with that hidden mischief now showing itself—smirked. “Give it to me.”

“Deal.”

So he told him how he lost his eye.)

(He’d do anything for his little brother.)

(And the truth, because visualizing his little brother in the pain of whatever blinded him was keeping him up at night. And also he needed his beauty sleep.)

“I know you always trusted me, no matter the time period.

“Still, I wish you had also always trusted me with your heart. I know I didn’t know it was you at the time but it kills me that you only trusted Twi to know you were married.” He sighed sadly. But then he tried for a laugh. “I guess I should keep that marriage secret of mine if I step up in your place. Someone’s gotta be the cryptic one now, right?”

Looking at it now, the topic of a Hero’s family was always a wound for another day. 

What came of their families after seven years, he wondered? Four’s grandfather, Wind’s sister. Twi’s village; he adored them all as kin, but hardly ever spoke of them. Goddess knows how tight-lipped he’d be this time around and Warriors wouldn’t try because you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

He was alone but still needed a change in subject. He remembered another topic he wanted to talk about.

“Wind remembers us now. After the War, I mean. He’s fucking furious with me,” Warriors laughed, “as I’m sure he’d be with you, if…”

He doesn’t mince words. He never has. He can’t, as an army captain who often relays news of a fellow soldier’s death to their troops and their loved ones.

These ones are the hardest he’s ever had to get out.

“If you were alive.”

There was Warriors, an army captain who was never afforded the luxury of grief in combat, wiping his tears and talking to a tombstone as if a dead man could hear him.

“Then again…”

He sniffled.

“Wind said that you get off scot-free but I’m not talking the whole fuckin’ blame for something that wasn’t even my idea!”

He laughed. Kind of pathetically, but he laughed.

“You should see him. He kinda hates me right now but this past day, he’s been a comforting and supportive presence to the others. He’s a good boy,” he said. He corrected, “Man.”

He knew Wind at fifteen, and then thirteen (into fourteen, he’d remind you), and then twenty-one. He was married. He was probably having a child soon.

“I can tell he grew up into a good man.”

He would be an amazing father.

“They all…they all grew up well. You would’ve been so fucking proud of all of them. I know that.

“You were, too. A good man. I don’t know if I ever told you that.”

A good man’s grave.

“I’m proud of who you became.”

(He was proud of Wind too, but Warriors was kind of scared of him at that moment in time.)

“I’m sorry if I never said it. I should have reminded you every day how much you meant to me.”

Warriors had to believe Time knew it.

“I wish I got to see you grow up.”

Because if his troubled little brother died thinking anything different, he would suffocate in his regrets.

“I wish… now that he remembers, I wish…”

He couldn’t finish. 

He wished a lot of things.

Impossible things.

“We’re gonna meet your daughter,” he began again. “And I think it’s so fucking unfair that we’re going to meet your daughter when you never could, it’s so fucking unfair, but maybe… maybe through us, she can…see you. When she meets the other holders of the Hero’s Spirit, maybe she can feel you, and your bravery, and your kindness, and your love for your family.

“I just…hope you were happy. You were so depressed, during the War, and you certainly had the reasons. You seemed happy, with Malon, and when I tell you the relief I felt at seeing you had a home, you had a support system — it was everything I ever wanted for you.”

In the trauma of a war, Warriors had tried to give Mask that support system he so desperately needed. But it was a war. And he was a child soldier. That was lied to about the goings-on. Because it was a war. And he was a child. It was never going to last.

(“You never told me. No one told me, I—I thought she was only a minion of Ganon’s, I—”

“Well, she was, but—”

It didn’t matter. Not now.

“I tried to protect both of you from her.” Still was trying, to a Hero with more than twenty years of experience. Warriors sighed.  “But Wind was Wind, and he very loudly proclaimed himself as another Hero to Cia’s face.”

Back then, he got mad at Wind for putting himself in danger and got madder when Wind was proud of himself for putting himself in danger. Nowadays, he feels weird about how that Wind surely knew who and what Cia was and feels weirder having been protected by him. “At that point, who knows if Cia connected the dots about the Hero’s Tunic and surmised you as one too, but she never went for you. She hardly even went for Wind. But if she had…Old Man, I know she never touched you, but just the thought of Cia hurting you still makes my blood boil.” He put his head in his hand. “I had talked to Wind about it at the time and we agreed that we shouldn’t tell you what was going on.”

“I was a Hero too,” the older Hero pointed out.

“You were also nine,” Warriors reminded him.

“I wasn’t,” the older Hero responded.

He wasn’t, and Warriors knew it. “Well, you looked it.”)

“I wish you had it longer.”

He couldn’t have been fifty.

“I wish you were here with us.”

So he could tease him about almost being fifty.

So Time could tease him back.

So he could live.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Warriors told him.

He closed his eyes.

“I’m gonna be okay,” Warriors promised.

He had to be.

“Even if the boys haven’t grown up and I need to take up a complete leadership position, I’ll be okay. I know how we all work by now, after all — even after all these years. If I have to, I’ll lead them well.”

He was the “leader type” according to the others, after all. One of three.

“And Twilight,” he said of another leader type, “well, Twilight was Twilight. He had his issues with self-worth. He was good at getting us all together. Like herding goats, that dog. The emotional heart of the group.”

The heart, now attacked with melancholy. The group had had a night to digest Time’s death—and of course they are still grieving today, they will grieve forever for their lost brother—and though there were moments of levity after the sun rose in which a joke was cracked or a back was rubbed, Twilight was still distressed. And it was distressing the others. The heart, despairing those around it like a cloud.

“Twilight… I know he’ll step up if needed. I know he’s still just as dependable as he was last time. But I also know there’s more to his grief than just losing his father figure. Can’t tell you what it is, but he’s distraught. Quieter than he ever was in the year we knew each other. I think he’s said two sentences to me in the last two days.”

Warriors needed to address that.

“Though I guess we’ve all been quiet.”

He didn’t bully Twilight like he said he would. Twilight went in again, both the afternoon before and this morning, thanks to Wild and his weird, impressive, enviable peace of mind.

“This wasn’t exactly the happy reunion we’d all dreamed of after all.”

He didn’t bully Twilight like he said he would, because Warriors was hurting too.

“I’m happy to be back with everyone else, of course, but — traveling together won’t feel right. There’s going to be a hole in the group where you should be, and we’re going to look to you for things you won’t be there for, and…”

He was hurting too, and the only person he wanted to talk to about it was Time, and Time was dead.

“It’s always going to feel like something’s missing. Which, to be fair, it is.”

Time was dead.

(When he walked in, Wind and Four were sat facing a sat Time on the bed, conversing about swords or something. Warriors didn’t care. “Boys, can I have the room, please?” he asked.

They acquiesced easily enough, Four telling Time they’d be back soon and Wind telling Time not to forget what they were talking about. Warriors had the room.

And also Time’s eye. He sat the supplies he brought to the table, pausing, gathering his courage. He turned around after a minute of organizing. “How’s the pain?”

Time shifted, rolling the shoulder that the Chain had dislocated, touching the hidden bandages on his chest. “It’s been manageable the past day and a half.”

“Hm,” Warriors said. "Did you know your lying face is the same as it was when you were nine?”

Time’s Lying Face transformed into his Disapproval Face. “I do not have a lying face.”

“Yes you do. You should also know that your disapproval face stopped working on me the day I figured out you were Mask.”

“The day?”

“The day. Oi, lie down, now.”

Caught. Halted with both feet on the floor. Warriors’ eyes were strict, concerned; Time sighed, relented, and laid back down. “For someone so unafraid of my disapproval face you certainly took a long time to tell me you knew it was me.”

“It was only like a week.” A week and an additional sleepless night after he truly saw Mask in Time for the first time: his brother. The boy in the war. The child who grew up. “Besides, when I did go up to you, I called you Sprite and you didn’t even fucking register it! I said it three times before you realized! You hadn’t heard that nickname in what? Almost thirty years?”

Time laughed, and Warriors smiled at his joy, until he violently winced and coughed and held a hand against the ribs that the Chain had broken, and Warriors rushed over a potion from the table of supplies that Time swatted away until he collapsed against the pillow in exhaustion and finally accepted it, and Warriors lifted his shirt to check if any of his chest wounds had reopened.

‘Manageable’.

None of the bandages had bled through. He fixed and pulled the blanket up a bit around his brother. Warriors then took up Wind’s spot.

“One more thing that hasn’t changed is how much you using the Fierce Deity Mask terrifies me.”

Time sighed, heavily, maybe due to his ribs, maybe due to the subject.

“The boys figured out pretty quickly that I had dealt with the Deity before. I tried to be strong, as a leader and as a Hero, but in reality it terrified me. I was scared. I was confused. You told me that you lost your eye because of the Fierce Deity. You swore off using it."

Time shook his head. “No. I swore it off as a last resort. And we would have lost.”

“And we thought we killed you.”

Warriors waited, but Time could not respond.

“It was a fight to the death,” Warriors said. “I looked at your body after the fight and I thought you were dead.”

When he looked at Time now, he saw the fight of a man in recovery, but in the shadows he could still see the pallid and bloodied face of his brother that was left under the mask when he and Hyrule pried it off.

“The first night after was fucking brutal because we had no potions, and we couldn’t buy any because the Fierce Deity destroyed the town’s Potion Shop. I sent Hyrule and Wild out to scout for fairies or elixir ingredients—we had had a couple of fairies on hand, but they were used in the fight with—ah, anyway, ‘Rule had used all his magic in the fight and couldn’t even try to heal you, even if he wanted to. I would’ve sent Twi out, because he was spiraling and needed a breather, but he was fucking useless. Wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t stop crying.

“The second day was when the fever came. You weren’t at risk of bleeding out anymore but now we were afraid the sickness was gonna kill you, and we didn’t even know where it came from.

(“Champion!” Four stopped Wild, coming back from his material run. “Did you find what we needed?”

“No, not yet. I came back because I was worried about the Old Man. How is he doing?”

“We stopped the bleeding, but…he’s sick.”)

“By the third day Wild had found a fairy, made a tonic, and it was helping. You were in and out of consciousness all fucking day.

(“Hey. Hey. I need you to stay with me right now, okay?”

Warriors’ gaze shot to Sky’s and, hands occupied, he mouthed Water.

“I know you’re tired. You can sleep in just a moment.”

Time grumbled something. Sky handed him the glass. Warriors pat his cheek.

“Hey. You can sleep after you drink this, alright?”)

“You woke up on the fourth day after we fought you.”

Warriors was done. Time said nothing.

Warriors said nothing. Time still said nothing.

Until he just said, “I don’t regret putting it on.”

“You don’t regret these injuries?” Warriors asked.

“Captain. I put it on knowing I would lose myself. I was prepared to die. I regret…that I put you boys through that. But you can’t—“ He winced. “—You can’t make me feel bad for saving your lives. I will never regret that.”

Nor retire the Mask for good.

Warriors stood up. Below him, Time laid (dying, previously) drained. His energy spent on defending himself, he panted and huffed, threw his head back against the pillow. Warriors brushed the hair covering Time’s good eye aside. Threading his fingers through it, he delicately felt for and inspected the head wound the Chain had inflicted. Clammy. Bruised. It was still healing.

Time was still healing.

Warriors carded the fingers still in Time’s hair, hoping to soothe him, a gentle apology for the violence they had wreaked upon his body.

“I know you’d rather your wife’s hands be in your hair right now,” Warriors said softly, “but unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with us, and unfortunately for your self-sacrificing ways, we care very deeply about you."

He had a fill of words to say; their conversation before wasn’t even a fraction of what he needed to scold his brother about.

His brother. Time, his brother.

Time, his brother, with the relaxed face from Warriors’ reassuring touch.

(He’ll save his words for another day. He has time.)

“Rest, Sprite. This is not a request.”)

(“Can we come back in?” Four asked, knocking on and peeking around the door.

They didn’t wait for an answer. They came back in.

Warriors was watching Time sleep on the bed and only heard Four as his footsteps stuttered behind him and asked, “What?”

“He’s asleep?” Wind wondered. “He was so alert when we left.”

“Ah — well…” Warriors spoke up. Then shut his mouth. He considered lying, but then, again, he shut it down. The Heroes spent a month of their lives attacking each other because of the lies they told about themselves. Had Warriors learned nothing from that month? “I was talking about the Fierce Deity and we got worked up and it just completely drained him.”

“What?” Four asked again. “Captain, was bringing up the Deity really a good idea? Only six days after he almost died because of it?”

(“HE’S ALIVE!” Hyrule screamed.

Legend froze and Sky shot to his feet. Four snapped back to reality and Wind stopped crying. Wild ran to help.

The rest followed in his lead, except for Twilight, who stood uselessly to the side, silently crying, watching as the others crowded Hyrule and Warriors who were trying to save the life of his companion, his teacher, his father.)

“Something terrible happened,” Warriors said. “People got hurt. But he’s not a child, Smithy.” The big brother sighed. “No matter what I remember him as.”

Time never wanted to talk about it, and Warriors didn’t want to talk about it either.

“He needs all the rest he can get, anyway. You boys relax. I’ll keep watch over him tonight,” Warriors said.

“No, I’ve — I’ve got it tonight,” Wind said. “Let me.”

Four said, “Captain, that conversation couldn’t have been easy—”

“It wasn’t.” He turned away to watch the bed. “Which is why I want to stay here.”)

“If there was some being, some deity behind the portals being sent, both the first time and now, I don’t know why they had to wait until you — until you were dead,” Warriors shook his head. “Did they not see what we meant to each other? Giving us Wind before he knew us was one thing, but why did they — why can’t I have you both? Why did you die?”

What could kill the Hero of Time?

Warriors knew the answer. The little boy who pushed him away because of his deeply-rooted fear of abandonment, planted by the forest and the fairy that rejected him, told him what.

“I miss you, Mask. I missed you when the War ended; I thought about you every day, wondering about where you went and worrying about what happened to you. Then we met again, and we parted again, and I was less worried because I knew you were living a good life. But now this…”

Warriors saw Twilight’s face at the gravesite. Warriors knew the depth of Twilight and Time’s relationship. The horror he wore was born of something worse than death, and Warriors always felt like Twilight knew something terrible about Time that he never told — not to Time, not to Wild, not to anyone.

What could kill the Hero of Time?

Well, something tragic enough to haunt Twilight across a seven-year divide.

“I still miss you.

“I respected you in the War,” Warriors told him. “I respected you as our leader, and I respect you now. You set a good example. When I have to lead, your wisdom will be guiding my steps.

“Before we left, last time, when we were saying our goodbyes, you pulled me aside and made sure I knew just how much I helped you as a child. I told you that you helped me too.

“You meant so much to me. You always did. You still do. And I could never have had the time, that moment we were leaving, to tell you just how fucking much you meant to me, but I still never told you.”

He could.

Right now.

Instead.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mask.”

And what for?

For being a coward?

“I’m so sorry you can’t be here with us, but we won’t forget about you.”

As fucking if.

“I promise.”

He glanced over his shoulder, looking to the entrance, looking for the gaggle of men that have spent three days mourning his little brother.

“And I…will try…”

He had words he never said that were once tethered by tension and time. A nonstop expedition through their kingdom’s history; daily monster battles; the Hero’s inerasable inability to speak what he means — all understandable explanations. All true reasons, all excuses for his cowardice. He had a lifetime’s fill of words he could say right now, right at this grave.

He also had a troop just outside Kakariko Graveyard waiting for him.

And it was the third day, and time was running out.

“I have to go.”

He could stay a bit longer. Very obviously the others would understand.

“I have to go, but I know you’ll always be with us.”

He closed his eyes tightly.

Warriors offered his final goodbye to his brother’s grave.

His brother. The Husband. The Father. The Old Man.

“Rest easy, Sprite.”

Chapter Text

His daughter was sleeping.

They met Talon, when they got to the ranch. He was everything that Time said he was (and those things were said a few nights after Twilight met Malon when Time laughed at the realization that Talon was another of Twilight’s ancestors). Talon greeted them warmly, said it was an honor to finally meet Link’s boys but he just got Aria down for a nap and Farore be damned if he wakes her up now.

Wild forwent making breakfast when they woke up in Kakariko, because Malon requested his help in the kitchen for a grand lunch together, and so they sat at the same dining table in the same kitchen as they did seven years ago, and there was still an empty chair beside Twilight — one with a booster seat reserved for the unconscious three-year-old in the next room.

Malon protested that she heard him when he said he was lactose intolerant yesterday, when Wild said he wanted to make this thing called pizza, but then he said it had dough and cheese and sauce and everyone in his era loved it and she just had to try it. Wind, whose New Hyrule still had yet to discover cows and as such was now equally enamored with the existence of cheese, advocated beside Wild for the pizza lunch, and maybe Wind was Malon’s favorite too because she relented after that but only if a side salad was made. 

Wild made the side salad and taught Malon how to make pizza, and lunch was served to the ten Hylians at the table.

And yeah, it was kind of incredible.

When only five slices of the three pizzas made remained, Warriors asked, “What happened to his armor?”

“Oh,” Malon said around a swallow. “He was buried in it.”

Twilight choked on a Hylian Tomato.

“He never specifically requested it,” Malon continued, oblivious to Twilight’s near-death experience, “but Zelda needed burial clothes for him, and we thought, just as it did here, it would be a way to…protect him. In whatever afterlife there may be.”

“I’m glad,” Warriors said. “He died a hero. He was buried in the armor he saved Hyrule in.” He waved to the others, the group of eight that saved Hyrule from the Shadow seven years ago, including Twilight who was gently guiding the tomato down his throat.

“Are you okay?” Sky fussed next to him, hand on Twilight’s back.

He lied with a nod.

He still had half a salad left, but Twilight couldn’t stomach another bite. The food tasted like metal.

They met his daughter.

(“Aria,” Malon said, pointing to her guests, “these are Papa’s boys.”

Aria’s eyes studied Warriors. She wondered, “Brother?”

Twilight, on Warriors’ immediate left, heard the nearly inaudible hitch to the Captain’s breath, and saw him harshly blink away a tear.

“Two of ‘em, actually,” Wind announced proudly.)

Three-year-old Aria had resplendent red hair and deeply blue eyes. Most importantly, Malon joked to Twilight, she did not have her father’s nose.

She loved animals. She loved music. She loved helping people (to the best of her toddler-aged ability).

(Legend elbowed him.

“Looks like we have a fourth person to add to that list,” he said.)

He got that alone time with his ancestor that Malon threatened him with on the second day at the ranch, and he hated himself for ever hesitating. He couldn’t have imagined the wondrous and beautiful child that was his, as Legend would say, great-great-great-whatever the fuck grandmother in any better light.

Their time together had to end eventually. Malon and Aria sent the Heroes off the evening after that. 

“We love you, Link,” Malon told him.

“I love you too,” he said to Malon, and Aria, and the Hero in the young girl’s eyes.

And so the Heroes of Courage headed out on a big, new adventure. As their first effort, they set camp together for the hundredth time — and the first time in seven years.

Sky helped Wild prepare a dish from Malon’s recipe book that she’d gifted the cook. The cook’s sword, gifted to him by the smithy, was as unbreakable as promised, and was being pored over by Four and Legend. Hyrule, comfortable, was relaxing near Wind; Wind, responsible, had asked to and finished setting the bedrolls of the heroes who trusted him enough to scour through their bags. Twilight was lost in the fire.

Warriors stood and whistled for their attention.

(A familiar feeling, all eyes on him, though not any less wrong.)

“So,” Warriors started. “Time is dead.”

(Time should be the one speaking up.)

“I am devastated that we lost him. Devastated. I wish he could’ve experienced our reunion, and I will miss him every day that we’re together.

“I also wish that this wasn’t most likely another adventure for us. I wish our lives were peaceful enough that this was just a happy way to catch up, but I have a feeling that it isn’t, and we need to work together again to save Hyrule.

“Last time, the Shadow nearly tore us apart by weaponizing our secrets and wielding them against us.”

Warriors caught the eye of each Hero in turn, just like Malon, just like Time.

“We are all adults now. I can’t force any of you to divulge your secrets, but I think it’s imperative that we be as open and honest with each other as possible. I can’t have another month like the month when the Shadow divided us. Because, as hard as I’ve tried over the past seven years, I am still not as intimidating as the Old Man.”

The wound, while still fresh, was balmed some by their stay at the ranch. The mention of their eldest saddened them but they did not turn away from the reality of his death.

“Time would not want us to be divided. He would hate it. He hardly ever wanted us to split up in the first place, even in that cramped ass dungeon we crawled through. He always told us to stay together. He would roll over in that grave if we are not united as one and I know he’d be looking down on us with that damn Disapproval Face. And like I told you, I can’t replicate that.”

(He tried to though. For all that Time raised his voice at the renegade Heroes, he wasn’t the last to leave; it was him and Warriors as the last two standing, and when he deserted, Warriors fixed him with a mirror of Time’s face at the others’ exodus. Perhaps Warriors’ hurt and betrayal and fear bled through and made it less of a face of disapproval than a pathetic companionless visage — Time certainly didn’t waver at it as he was bolting.)

“Communication has never been the Hero’s strong suit. I recognize that. It was on full display that month.” He felt it, then, forcing the words out. “So. In the interest of facilitating honesty…” Warriors took a deep breath. “…We, as Time’s boys… I, as one of Time’s boys…”

(They shared their secrets, after that month, but only the adventure-essential and non-hurtful.)

“…Will share a story with all of you.”

(Deities help him when he gets to Twilight here.)

“As you know, the war I fought in was called the War of Eras. So called so because many people from many different time periods were dragged into it to fight with me. Many of these people, some of us know well.

“Sky, I also knew Fi,” he said, facing the forger of the Master Sword. “She guided me just as she did you, and I could feel her warmth in the Master Sword from the moment I pulled it.”

Sky smiled.

“And she was not afraid to call me a dumbass when my pride almost cost me my life.”

Sky frowned.

Warriors turned to Twilight.

(Deities…)

“Twilight, I met Agitha.”

“…Huh,” the Rancher said.

“And Midna.”

“…Oh,” the Rancher said.

(…Oh, indeed. He imagined a worse reaction.)

(But he wasn’t done yet.)

“Legend, stay with me here, I knew three people of yours.”

“Oh?” Legend’s brow raised.

“I met Yuga—”

“Yuga?”

“Yeah—”

“How?”

“Time Travel Fuckery, what have I been talking about the past three minutes?”

“And he helped you?”

“In some ways.”

“What the fuck.”

“I also met Ravio.”

“Ravio?”

“Yes.”

“That was the ‘battle’ he helped fight after running through that fucking portal?”

“He actually helped less than Yuga did.”

Legend considered that. “That checks out.”

“The third person of yours was — was Marin.”

“…Marin?” the Veteran whispered.

“Yes,” the Captain whispered back. “I don’t know how. But I knew her, and she was…wonderful, and kind, and she kept all the rats away from camp. She loved all kinds of animals. She wasn’t much of a fighter—she detested the violence—but she stayed because she so desperately wanted to help us, because she cared about us. I cared about her, too. Very deeply.”

“What—how—why did you never tell me?”

“After you told us about Koholint, and how you were handling the trauma of such a dark secret, I finally properly saw the melancholy you carried. It saddened me to see it with such clarity. I recognized it in myself—” The sentence stopped short. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure it would be a bright idea to tell you when that subject still hurt you so badly.”

“Marin meant everything to me.”

“Then I’m sorry for not telling you.”

 Legend was wavering.

“Did she make it home safely, from the War?” he asked, nakedly.

“Yes. Before she went home, she said how grateful she was to know all of us. She was smiling when she went through the portal.”

Legend looked away, perhaps thinking of Koholint; the world she returned to, and the world that haunted him in every definition of the word. His brothers gave him time. Eventually, Legend said, “Thank you, Captain.”

The Captain nodded, acknowledging Legend kindly and carefully. Again to the group, he said, “I met all of those people from across time, across realities. Companions, enemies… heroes.” He averted his eyes. “Two of them, actually.

“I met two Heroes. Two of us.” Warriors brought his gaze back up to face the group. “Um. The three of us, the three Heroes, were very close. I thought of them as brothers. As for who they were, one of them was a creature sent from hell to torture me—”

“It’s me. I was the creature.” Wind beamed.

“Ohhhh,” Four said.

“You knew each other on our journey together?” Hyrule asked.

“Not exactly,” Warriors said.

“The Sailor was older when you met him in the war so he didn’t know who you were when the nine of us all came together,” Four said.

“How the fuck did you know that?” Warriors asked.

Four shrugged. “You gave him these glances.”

“That’s what I told him!” Wind agreed.

Warriors, nonplussed, continued.

“—and the other was—was a nine-year-old boy with—with an extensive mask collection.”

(“But YOU have a huge collection, right?”)

“It took me a while to figure it out. Something always felt familiar with him, but I could never place it, and I figured that since I met Ruto and Darunia from the Era of the Hero of Time and he was the Hero of Time, it was their… magic, or something, I don’t know, that was triggering the familiarity. He never said anything to me and I was surrounded by seven other near-strangers at the time so I thought I might have imagined it.

“When I finally connected the dots, I didn’t approach him at first. How do you go about telling the older man in charge that you finally realized he’s your little brother?”

“But…” Hyrule pondered, “…Time had to have known it was you, no?”

“He did. But he wasn’t ready to tell me. And that was okay. Besides, as understandable as it was why I didn’t recognize him, I still felt stupid. This was my little brother, and I didn’t immediately feel that connection?”

(“You’re the fucking Hero of Hyrule,” Warriors scoffed at himself. “You fought Ganondorf and you can’t tell your little fucking brother you remember him?”

No, because his little fucking brother was now ten years his senior, and if the Chain actually had a proper chain of command, his little fucking brother was above him.

But — this was his little fucking brother. His little brother, who Warriors risked everything to protect, his little brother, who Warriors loved. He finally remembered his little brother. He finally realized Time was his little brother.

How he realized? It was his smile. It was his laugh. It was the Mask of Truth, and the Keaton Mask, and the Bomb Mask (he’d tried to confiscate that one back then), masks Warriors never knew Time had until Wind brought them up (Time had a soft spot for their youngest). It was that weird feeling he got around Time, and only Time, and yes he’s an idiot, that he assumed was the connection of a Hero’s soul and not of a brother. Yes. He’s an idiot. How did he not see this? He spent so much time missing Mask that he was blind to the idea of Mask possibly looking different like Wind did (yes, he’s an idiot). Mask, on the other side of this door. Warriors hesitated. Zelda (and Warriors is sure if she was here she’d’ve had it figured out the first day and would send him Mask-esque smirks until Warriors caught on on his own), who also felt a somewhat similar connection to the younger hero — he could hear her voice in his head and it screamed, “IF YOU DON’T GO AND GET YOUR BROTHER BACK RIGHT NOW…”

He was getting his brother back, right now.

He rapped two knuckles on the doorframe. Heroes of Hyrule are not easy to startle, but when traveling with a group of eight other traumatized warriors, they give the courtesy of announcing their presence when possible. Time was the least jumpy among them thanks most likely to his heavy armor and decades of experience but he was not exempt from receiving the favor.

“Captain.”

He was also getting startlingly good at identifying the Hero by gait alone.

“Indeed,” Warriors said, controlling the shaking of his voice and body.

He found his way to Time’s side, even after each step felt like climbing his way through the Temple of Souls. The man was studying a map of the desert they’d bought from the oasis town they’d found themselves in.

He was scared, but it was time. Warriors took a deep, deep breath. He said, “Trying to plan our next move, Sprite?”

“Yes,” Time said. “This language does not belong to any of you boys. Nor does it seem reminiscent of any Gerudo language. I’m familiar with deserts myself, as I know most of you are, but we have the chance to prepare ourselves while we’re in town today. I’d like to minimize the chance of something going wrong, if possible.”

Oh.

A response of nothing wasn’t one he’d prepared for.

It was possible he hadn’t even heard the word, Warriors tried to reason out. He was focused on the map and knew the Captain would be asking about battle strategies.

He’ll try again, then.

“Ah. Employing the ol’ stare-at-it-‘til-it-tells-you-everything technique, aren’t you, Sprite?”

“Yes,” he said again.

Oh. What the fuck.

Whatever.

Warriors rolled his eyes.

“Sprite.”

And there was the both-eyes-open shocked face he was going for.)

“I mean,” Wind spoke up, “I knew the first day.”

“You saw the mask,” Warriors said, defensive and accusatory.

“He had the markings,” Wind argued.

Legend barked out a laugh. “I don’t know what you didn’t notice, but you don’t have an excuse here, buddy. You’re a captain. You’re supposed to be observant.”

“In battle,” the Captain snapped, pointing a finger and scowling at the Veteran.

And then, finally, Sky asked, “You’re talking about the Fierce Deity Mask?”

The camp quieted. The darkness gathered. The moon glowed.

Twilight wasn’t the only one with bad memories of those three days.

“Yes,” Warriors said.

“He had it even back then?”

“Yes,” Wind said.

“He used the mask a lot?”

Warriors said, “Every battle.”

Wind said, “Sometimes multiple times a battle.”

“The Fierce Deity was a terrifying force of nature. A spirit with dark powers being piloted by a nine-year-old boy,” Warriors began.

“It would cleave through enemy hordes faster than the Captain could even dream of,” Wind continued. “For such a large thing, it was as quick as lightning. As powerful as thunder. It itself was a storm. It was power-hungry and bloodthirsty and commanded attention better than the Captain did — I swear more of the soldiers would listen to Deity than Cap if it actually spoke.

“I was afraid of it,” he said. “I’d already seen the worst it could do, what it did to the Old Man, but even in the beginning of the War when the mask hardly fazed him it still scared the shit out of me.

(“Talking is not going to work!” Warriors yelled after their second run-in (see: loss) with the Deity.

“Well then how the fuck did you tame the Fierce Deity last time?” Legend shot back.

“I—” Warriors choked. “He never wanted to talk about it.”)

“But then it did start to faze him. It left him very shaky, towards the end. There was hardly any downtime in between battles, and I know there were like two or three nights when he didn’t get to sleep at all — the mask was on and off, on and off. Popping it like candy.”

“We begged him not to use it in the final battle,” Warriors recalled. “He was already a magnificent fighter, and had only gotten better in the war; we’d manage fine without the Fierce Deity.

He frowned, shrugged. “He used it anyway, of course. I think he’d…grown attached. Not drunk on power, exactly, but like becoming the Fierce Deity was as much a part of him as the Hero was a part of him. We very well may have spent more time fighting alongside the Fierce Deity than with Mask himself.”

“You called him Mask?” Four reproached him.

Warriors looked away. He said, “It wasn’t as dark as it sounds.”

“You calling him Mask, when putting on that mask almost killed him when we were together?”

“It wasn’t that bad, back then,” Warriors said. “He never attacked us. We never even thought about confiscating the mask because up until the last few battles the Fierce Deity wasn’t anything but a boon to our forces.

“He was a magnificent fighter,” Warriors repeated himself, “but the Fierce Deity was the best. And he knew this, because Impa told him, and I’ll never forgive myself for letting her manipulate him like that. The mask usage was already out of control and she knew he’d hurt himself with it just to be of more help—it was Mask, he—”

“He was the best damn kid I’d ever known and it takes a lot to dethrone my sister.”

Wind’s words were solemn, but sincere, and accidentally commanded the attention of all seven others.

And Wind would happily talk about the best damn kid he’d ever known. “Kid was extraordinary, in so many ways. Everyone here’s seen Time in combat; he was a wonder. He had that claymore, even back then in the War, and I — I’m better now, but I still struggle with two-handed swords. That asshole had it down at nine. He was smart…brilliant, really. He was kind. He loved helping people; he taught me pointers. Both times. He cared about me and Wars so much; too much. He loved fairies; he stole Proxi’s heart. She was Wars’s fairy but I still sometimes think she liked Mask more.”

(Wars had no objections.)

“Still, this isn’t to say that it was always great. There were times that Mask lashed out. One time he called me fuckface and Wars got so mad he subjected him to being babysat for a week but honestly I deserved a lot worse than just fuckface. I was being an asshole that day.”

“God, the mouth on that boy,” Warriors laughed, thinking of Mask — and thinking of Mask, Warriors got teary-eyed, and he looked up at the night sky and the stars and the moon that Mask was so afraid of.

“You wouldn’t think he loved all of those things with the attitude he had,” Wind said.

“Was it more or less intense than the attitude Leg had last time?” Four asked.

“Had?” Legend questioned, offended.

“Well, you seem a lot happier,” Four said, defensive.

“I wouldn’t be myself without the attitude.”

“That’s not true,” Hyrule chimed in chidingly.

“You know, Leg,” Warriors addressed him, “Mask loved Marin. He loved animals just as much as she did. He rarely ever smiled when not with me and Wind, but Marin got it once or twice. He took to her closely.” (That thing about resonating deeply with the others’ beloved, Twilight thought.)

“And he had some abandonment issues,” Wind said facetiously.

“Which was why saying goodbye to him the first time was so hard,” Warriors said. “After Impa said those things to him, he was convinced we didn’t want him, only the Fierce Deity. And as the final fight got closer, all those things we loved about him were forgotten in favor of a baneful war god.”

Warriors closed his eyes. Sighed. Shook his head. Said. “It killed me to watch that.” And nothing else.

“He was very upset the day the portals came to take us home. He didn’t want Wars to know because he was fresh off the heels of Ganon’s hooves and Mask couldn’t bear to cause him any more stress.” Across the group, Wars stiffened. Wind breathed. “I took Wars’ role as big brother that day. I promised him we’d meet again but until then, he had to take care of himself. And also start working part-time at Lon Lon Ranch.”

Wind laughed tearfully at his own joke. “I might be responsible for Twi.” (“Oh, merciful Ordona,” Twi said in the background.) Then Wind’s tearful laughs changed to just tears. “I loved Mask. I would’ve drowned the damn world for that kid.”

Warriors, big brother to Wind too, came over and sat down and put his arm around the Sailor’s shoulders and pulled him closer. He let him. “Don’t think this means I’m not still mad at you,” he croaked, blinking hard.

Legend blinked too. “So, wait, you called him Mask, and you didn’t know that Mask and the Hero of Time were one and the same.”

“Well—” Warriors said.

“You’re telling me you called him Mask because he had an extensive mask collection.”

“Well—”

“You’re telling me you didn’t know it was him on the night he was holding show-and-tell with his masks.”

“That was the day I figured it out,” Warriors admitted, sheepish yet defensive (it was his smile, it was his laugh).

“But wait,” Four said, “how long into our journey was that?”

Warriors shifted uncomfortably. “…Like a month.”

The group howled with laughter.

“There was a lot going on!”

The boys laughed at Warriors until Warriors cracked, and though his next explanation was solemn, it wasn’t as woeful as the topic of his brother usually tended to be.

“Listen, okay,” he said, “I didn’t think…Mask was…Mask was an enigma. Claimed he was older than me and had the scars to ‘prove it’! When I actually saw those scars, phew, I wanted to steal that ocarina of his and go and hurt any person who had touched a kid that young—but anyway—I almost didn’t think he could grow up. He certainly didn’t think so.” His lip quirked up and down. “But also kinda did.”

“Yeah, that sounds like the Old Man,” Hyrule said, with an itty bitty laugh and just a touch of despair.

“So when we all first met, I looked for Mask and Wind, and I found Wind, but…no Mask. A couple days in and he still didn’t show up, and I had this horrible, sick feeling in my chest at his absence, but still I tried to reason it out. Oh, that Mask, that trickster fox, he saw me and hid and any day now he’ll jump out and scare me. But it never happened. I started to believe that the reason he wasn’t with us was because he was dead.”

“Mask was strong, Captain,” Wind fiercely interjected.

“He was also hurting,” Warriors softly responded.

“You’re not saying…”

“No. After knowing Time, what Mask grew up to be, I don’t believe now that he ever would’ve. But I still worried. Because Mask…Mask was…

(Mask was a lot of things.)

“Mask was a child and an adult at the same time. He was more mature than almost all of my footsoldiers yet threw a tantrum once when he didn’t get what he wanted, which was fighting alongside Wind and I at the Temple of Souls. He fought anyway, of course, even when we reminded him he was running on two hours of sleep and one loaf of hardtack. He collapsed after the battle and cried like a baby when I was tending to him—”

His voice broke.

He cleared it.

He continued.

“He cried himself to sleep and woke up and pretended nothing had happened. He left and waltzed into the mess hall and asked the cook what he could do to help out. He always only wanted to help. Everybody had failed him—”

“You didn’t,” said Wind.

“That’s debatable,” said Warriors.

Warriors didn’t let Wind reprove. “Anyway, he’d been failed, and all he ever wanted to do was help. So I see it now. He wouldn’t have given up.”

The others murmured their thoughts of agreement. But not Sky. “Captain,” Sky spoke up, “you said that you met Fi. So if Time also fought with you, then…did he…”

“Yes, he…” Warriors said, “...did.”

Sky didn’t respond.

Warriors was quick to continue. “You have to understand, in some regards, our Old Man was still that hurt little kid.”

(“Master—”

“Don’t fucking call me that!”)

“Even back then, he felt that way about the Sword?” Wild asked.

“I think so. There was one point in the War when Mask, Wind, and I found ourselves in Skyloft—”

“Skyloft!?” Sky cried.

“I’ll tell you more later. The three of us fought in Skyloft, and Fi appeared from the Goddess Sword, and Mask was…he looked haunted.”

“Meeting Fi,” Wind breathed a sudden realization. “It wasn’t until we met Fi that Mask started getting all testy.”

“You’re right. He was completely out of it the rest of that battle,” Warriors remembered. “He was distracted. I saved his ass like twice and chewed him out because of it.”

“And after you pulled the Master Sword, that’s when the mask usage got out of control.”

“That’s when he started using it more and for longer periods of time. That’s when the insomnia kicked in.”

“When his eating habits changed.”

“No wonder he was so mad at me when I fought the Dark Links.”

“Well I wouldn’t say he was mad at you—”

“Dark Links!?” Sky cried out again. “You fought the Shadow before our journey together and didn’t tell us!?”

“What?” Warriors was puzzled. “I thought most of us had. Time fought him too.”

“I didn’t,” Wild piped up.

(He did in those weird dreams he was having, though.)

Four said, “Captain, you started this conversation by saying how open we need to be with each other—”

“And I was getting there!” Warriors exclaimed, hands in the air, tired of the quibbling. His arms then lowered, then crossed, then he huffed and glowered at Wind. “You know, you also called me an asshole that day.”

“Because you were.”

“You just started to say that Mask wasn’t actually mad at me—”

“He was mad at the Sword.” Somewhere among the crowd, Sky made a low sound. “I already knew that your pompous ass almost got you killed and you learned from it, but it doesn’t mean you weren’t an asshole.” Meanwhile, Warriors made a disgruntled sound. “Mask said to me, ‘Wind, can you also call the Captain an asshole’ so I did.”

“You still went by Wind, when you were in the War?” Hyrule asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Wind said. “Three’s a lot less than nine but it still got confusing. They suggested the name Tune for some reason but I shot that down real quick.”

Warriors’ laugh was a puff of air. “Now that I think about it, I remember you slipped up a couple of times, called him Time and not Mask—”

Legend balked. “So Wind called Mask Time and you still didn’t know—”

“I thought he was asking him the actual time,” the Captain muttered.

“As my first word to him?” Wind questioned incredulously.

Warriors exhaled. He looked down. “Besides, Mask — I didn’t even call him that half the time. I called him—”

His voice broke. He couldn’t continue.

Wind finished for him. “The Captain called him Sprite.”

“I remember you calling Time that, too,” Wild commented.

“Yeah,” Warriors said. Still looking down.

Hyrule asked Wind, “Did you call him Sprite too?”

“It was hard enough switching from Time to Mask. You heard him about me slipping up the kid’s name.” Wind waved a hand. “Nah. Sprite was more Wars’ thing.”

“Yeah,” Warriors said again. Still looking down. Voice rough, until he cleared it. “He was my little forest sprite.”

“I still think your original two names were better,” Wind said.

“Oh no,” Warriors muttered.

Someone (Wild) asked the question, exactly what Wind wanted and Warriors dreaded. “Original two names?”

“Time was Young Link,” Wind said. “Wars was Old Link.”

“Old Link—” Legend wheezed.

“Kind of ironic that our eldest was once called Young Link,” Four commented.

Warriors rolled his still-misty eyes. “Zelda still hasn’t given that up, by the way. She calls me Old Link when she’s mad at me. And I do stupid things a lot.”

“Tetra calls you that, too,” Wind said.

“What,” Warriors said.

“When you come up in conversation. She doesn’t refer to you as anything other than Old Link.”

“Why.”

“Because it’s funny.”

“Tetra was with you in the War as well?” Four asked.

“Oh yeah,” Wind said.

“How did that even happen?” Hyrule asked.

Wind clapped his hands. “So! Portal showed up on Tetra’s ship. I considered myself an expert on portals by that point, thanks to our journey together, so when I didn’t feel any kind of dark magic from it, I dragged Tetra through it with me. I was going to enter it regardless, but anyway. We were thrust into the Din-forsaken armpit of battle in the Eldin Caves, and the first thing I saw was the Fierce Deity rampaging.

“Obviously right away I knew that that was Time,” Wind said. “Suddenly I was very scared of the battle in front of us, because after everything he went through after using the Mask on our journey, he used it again after he promised us he wouldn’t.

“If we thought the Fierce Deity was strong when we saw him, that terror was nothing compared to the destruction he was causing at that moment; he was brutalizing those monsters, and I would know that it would only be moments until he turned against us. I was starting to think of ideas about how I would get it off all by myself when he took it off. And he was a nine-year-old boy.

“So, confused out of my fucking mind, I said, Time? because of course it was him, and I had no way of knowing I’d just landed in Warriors’ past. But the boy looked at me like I was a stranger. I was. The boy had never fought beside me before.” Warriors squeezed Wind’s shoulder in comfort.

“It was so weird, meeting someone that I’d looked up to like a mentor”—Twilight flinched—“when he was so young. I mean, I was fuckin’ older than him. Me.

“It was so weird,” Wind said again. “At first. Like I said, I loved that damn kid, and I know he warmed up to me too…well, eventually. I think I scared him off in the beginning. It was usually the Hero of Time himself who knew people who didn’t know him. It also didn’t help that I was making the Captain’s life miserable every single day.”

“Pint-sized little asshole,” Warriors grumbled.

Legend furrowed his brow, first at Warriors, second at Wind. “How old were you when you fought in the War?”

“Fifteen.”

“And you were still that short?”

“Yes! I hit my fucking growth spurt like right after I went home from the War!”

“Now you’re taller than the Old Man was,” Warriors pointed out.

“Oh, I know,” Wind said gleefully.

Legend spoke up, finally off the high of ragging Warriors. “I wish I could’ve seen his face when he saw how tall you are. I wish I could’ve seen his face when I told him I went on another journey.”

“No fucking way,” Warriors said to that.

“Another?!” Hyrule said, aghast.

“Yep,” Legend said.

“But, what — what happened this time?!”

“Oh, you know the drill, Ganon got resurrected again.” Legend was so nonchalant he might as well have been talking about the weather. “It’s happened before. It will happen again. And again. As evidenced by Rulie here.

“Journey was hard, but…I knew who I was. The Shadow was a reflection of ourselves after all, and I think we all learned or remembered something about ourselves on our journey.

“It’s funny…I never really had a companion on any of my journeys—unless you count those animals I called on from Holodrum and Labrynna—and I was definitely one who struggled with our teamwork at first—but when I went on that eighth journey and I was alone it felt wrong. Settled down for the night and was thoroughly disappointed that I didn’t have Champion’s cooking. Craved it like crazy. Ran into something fuckin’ ludicrous and kept looking over my shoulder to see everyone else’s reactions to that shit. I missed you guys.”

Legend smiled. He looked around at the brothers he’d found, lost, then reunited with. His buddies.

“Anyway, because of you guys, I knew who I was, and I knew what I was fighting for. The Old Man was very helpful with that. Remember why we’re here, and other sentences of that ilk. We had this whole conversation once about loving and fighting for Hyrule—”

“Me too!” Wild jumped in.

“…Me too, did he do that with every one of us or something?” Four asked.

“Probably,” Legend said. “Loved the kingdom enough he died for it after all.”

(Even though they probably all will.)

Twilight flinched again.

Legend thought.

“You know, I always knew it was only Ganon’s fault why the kingdom falls to darkness”—his eyes flitted to Twilight for a second—“and I still believe that, but Hyrule, when I tell you the blame I placed almost changed because of how much I cared about you…when I tell you the guilt I felt when I learned I only existed because Time was the Fallen Hero…

“Well, that was the good thing about having such an old man on the team with us. Talked us out of blaming ourselves as a living example of finding happiness after hardship.”

“Got us to spill our secrets, too,” Warriors pointed out.

“Oh, yeah. Time knew about my splitting, like, the first week,” Four then told the group.

“WHAT?”

Wild almost sounded insulted.

Four shook his head. “Unfortunately you were not the first to know, Champion.”

“He never even corrected me when I bragged about it,” Wild mumbled.

“Was it really the first week?” Warriors asked.

Four shrugged. “Maybe the second.”

“Still so early on, though,” Wind commented. “I doubt you would’ve told him that early. Did he oversee you or follow you or spy on you while splitting by yourself or something?”

“No. He was just really damn observant,” Four said. “…Unlike the army captain here.”

“Hey!”

“He saw Hyrule starting to spiral about his self-worth (“Then you are indeed a great hero of Hyrule.”). He caught Twi’s patrol lies and figured out he was Wolfie like right away—”

“How do you know that?”

“I knew about Wolfie pretty early on, remember? (“Looks like we both have a little secret.”) Only other people who knew were Time and Wild. Time told me. Pretty smugly.”

“Is that how he found out about your ability?”

Recalling a memory, Four smiled. “Okay, so, the first week or so after we met was a mess, right? We knew nothing about each other. We were constantly stepping on each others’ toes because half of us had absolutely no experience in working as a team. We were suddenly thrust together in a group of nine, and I was used to teamwork, but when I split the Colors were still four quarters of my whole; I was stuck with eight complete strangers for the foreseeable future. I was overwhelmed. The migraines were coming back. I slipped away a lot the first week, and considering, it was understandable why everyone didn’t notice. Everyone except the Old Man.

“Makes sense, I guess, though. The whole thing you mentioned earlier, Captain, about Time always insisting we stick together; of course he noticed me ditching the group.

(When he ditched the group again amidst that month of secrets, Time had some words for the teamwork-preaching teenager. As an adult, he was rankled that he had thought desertion was right. As their friend, he was vexed at the thought of ever leaving his group of guys again.)

“Time wasn’t quiet that first week. He got our asses in line when we couldn’t act like adults — well, like responsible Heroes, at least. He asked us a lot of questions, getting to know us as his coworkers and as his equals, like any good authority figure should. He wasn’t quiet, but he was reserved. I…looked up to him, I think.”

“You looked up to everybody because of—”

 Four cut Legend off. “How old are you?”

“…Twenty-seven…”

Four continued as if Legend had never spoken. “All that observation led to such…accurate and reverent conclusions about us. He barely knew me but I knew immediately that he respected me.

“So on a day that I had slipped away and was followed by the Old Man, I felt safe showing him and letting him keep my secret.”

“You hung around him a lot,” Wind remembered. “You walked by him, ran things by him. Not to mention how incredibly and surprisingly well you two fought together.”

“You, him, and I were the happiest group in that stupid dungeon,” Four said.

Four and Wind smiled. Time’s dungeon excursion with the littles was something the two remembered fondly.

“I don’t know,” Four continued, “it was just…so easy to trust him. I mean, you know, yeah he was the oldest but it always felt deeper than that. There was just no question. He spoke, and you knew his words were important. Yeah, I looked up to him. We all looked up to him, even if some of us are too stubborn to admit it.”

Warriors scoffed. “I wish I didn’t. My little forest sprite was suddenly ten years my senior and in some ways a better leader than I was.”

“You’re so right,” Wild remarked (while still sulking). “Other than Twilight, he knew about Mipha before anyone else here. I showed him a picture of her statue.” (“She’s very beautiful.”)

(Wild had a nightmare.

(A bear shits in the woods.)

Time was on watch.

(Fork found in kitchen.)

He went to him. He wanted to talk. Wild told Time about what haunted him that night; he said he was sick of the constant nightmares. Time told Wild that they get better though they never go away.

“When was the last time you had one?” Wild asked.

“Yesterday night,” Time said easily.

Wild blinked. Widened his eyes. Said, “I was on watch last night—I didn’t see—”

“Champion,” the eldest hero soothed, “I woke up quietly. I am very used to this; there was a period of time in my life when I would wake up screaming, every single night. More nights of the week than not."

“How did it get better?”

“A support system. Time passing. This was a long time ago.”

“…Thirty-seven years ago?”

“Ninety-eight.”

Wild laughed. Time smiled.

“I’m sorry you’re suffering so deeply,” he said. “I’d take away your pain if I could. But it’s like you told Malon: it comes with the job. And it’s a grueling job. It leaves you scarred. Yet at the end of the day would you not bear any wound to protect our kingdom?”

He thought about Hyrule. He considered the kingdom he woke up to, a wasteland with thriving monster life that had been fighting for one hundred years to stay alive. He pondered the people he met living amongst the ruins yet hopeful for the future, souls he loved so dearly that not helping them never once crossed his mind. He reflected on the places he’d been, the kingdom a stranger, of whom he’d come to cherish so soon even without a memory to his name. Zelda, the embodiment of Hyrule herself, loving him, trusting him, waking him up. And Wild did right back.

“Yes,” Wild said. “I absolutely would.”)

“He was the first person I told that Zelda had kissed me,” Hyrule said. “…A second time. And how I was so conflicted about how I felt, how I should act, so he sat with me and talked about his history with Malon. At that time in our quest, I never thought I’d ever relate to him. I respected him—”

“You teased him more than Wars did,” Wild pointed out.

Hyrule shot back, “Just because I made fun of him because he took a hundred fucking years to put his armor on does not mean I didn’t respect him.”

Wild blinked.

Hyrule huffed. “Anyway. I respected him. He had more years of experience than I had years alive, after all. We were very different people…or so I thought.

“Like Four said, it was easy to trust him. I’d always worried that Time didn’t like me—”

“What?” Warriors blurted. “‘Rule, he was blown away by your fighting skills. He put you as the second best fighter among us. He—”

“Second best? What, did you have a list?” Legend asked.

Warriors shut his mouth.

“You had a list!” Legend realized.

“We were bored one night,” the army captain muttered.

(“Hey Old Man.”

“Hm.”

“Sky’s the best swordsman of us, of course, but I’m wondering — who’s second best?”

“Hyrule.”

Warriors blinked. “That was quick.”

Time shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

Quickly, too, Warriors saw the truth of that. “Yeah, okay, I can see Traveler as number two. Number three, though, that’s where we need to consider—”

“You.”

Warriors blinked again. “Have you made this list before?”

Time shrugged again. “Have I?”

“You’re useless.”

Time only offered the shittiest, eatiest grin.

(Warriors wouldn’t have it any other way.)

“Tell me the rest of this list, then.”

“You. Twi. Four. Wild. Me—”

“Oh, I know that you’re joking.”

“What?”

“You? Seventh place?”

Time snorted. “Ironic how these things happen.”)

“It wasn’t an official, carefully decided list. It was like two in the morning and we were gossiping like schoolgirls.”

“So tell us the fucking list,” Legend said.

Warriors started counting on his fingers. “Sky first, obviously. Then Hyrule. Me third, thank you very much. Twilight. Four in the middle, ‘cause he was good when joined, but terrifying when split. Wild next. Time—”

“Time shouldn’t be below me,” Twilight muttered.

“What was that?” Wild asked.

Twilight waved it away.

Warriors continued, unbothered. “Wind in eighth, Legend in ninth.”

“Last?” the Veteran sputtered.

“Okay, listen—”

“The thirteen-year-old was above me?”

Wind shot back, “Fuck you, I was fourteen by the time they made that list. And also, I was super fucking quick and super fucking stealthy.”

“Listen!” Warriors said. “It’s not that you weren’t a skilled fighter — you were. You were good. But what you excelled at were puzzles, magic, items.”

Legend thought about that. He shrugged. “True.”

“He really thought I was the second best fighter?” Hyrule asked, timidly.

“You could never tell he held such a high opinion of you?” Warriors returned.

“I wasn’t his successor like the Rancher or the Sailor. I wasn’t older and smarter like the Captain. I wasn’t experienced like the Veteran, I didn’t have seniority like the knight of—”

“You were the Traveler. And he respected you just as much as you respected him.”

Hyrule blinked, and blinked, and blinked, blinking back his blush, or his blues. “Back then,” he said, a bit overcome, “at least at first, I didn’t feel like a proper hero compared to you guys. Especially not to Time. This was before he truly started to open up to us, and I was scared of him, I think. Sure I teased him, but honestly I think part of that was me deflecting the fear. I feared that he thought I was incompetent. I thought that he only let me come along because he had to.”

“Hyrule—”

“It was just how I felt at the time. At the time, I barely knew him. The only trait he’d really shown was leader. But…that day he sat down with me…suddenly we weren’t so different.”

Hyrule smiled wistfully.

Then he scowled.

“You know, he never admitted it, but he had this stupid-ass smirk on his face when I told everyone about my Fairy Spell and I think he’d figured it out months beforehand and just never told me.”

Wild snorted. “To be fair, I think he figured out Twilight was Wolfie the day he met Wolfie.”

Twilight said nothing.

Wind did. He said, “Time was the only one of us who never babied me. Not once. He always treated me like the Hero I was.”

“The only one?” Four repeated, bewildered. “When did I baby you?”

“Oh ho ho ho ho,” Wind said, smirking and pointing and shaking his finger. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Wind ignored the completely flummoxed Four for the Captain.

“Captain.”

Although right next to him, Warriors found Wind’s gaze.

“You babied Mask.”

Warriors sighed. “Sailor—”

“No, Captain,” Wind interrupted. “Listen. Mask bitched to me all the time about how he was more experienced than you and he’d had two adventures and he should be the one babying you. Now, as a big brother myself, seeing someone Aryll’s age fighting in a war made me wanna throw up. Seeing our eldest so young made me wanna throw up. I saw how you treated him, and it made me wanna do that too, at first — but he was a hero, Wars.”

“I know that. I loved him like a brother.”

“So did I. Like I said, he dethroned my sister. And a part of me did want to shelter him, want to save him from the horrors of war—”

“He dethroned your sister but you didn’t do anything to even try to stop him from fighting?”

“I didn’t want him to fight. I wanted him to do the things he loved, like riding horses or playing music. But that’s not who we were.

“No matter his age, Time was always going to fight evil and protect the people and places he loved. That’s who he was. It was just…bad luck that got him that young. You were younger in the War than when I first met you, but I knew you. I know you. I know what your intentions were. I know you only wanted to keep him safe. I know, but how do you think it felt to Time — to nine-year-old Time?”

Warriors sighed again, though sadder and more regretful.

“After meeting Time in the War, I understood why he never babied me. Us two, me on our journey together and him in the War, we were young, but we were both experienced heroes. But he didn’t baby me only because he also started young. A big part of it yeah but also because he respected me.”

(Something something about the generous respect he bestowed upon them all.)

“I respected you, too,” Warriors fought.

“As a hero, though?”

Softly, but contemplatively reminiscent: “Of course.”

Wind hummed. That wound was for another day, for the one of their eldest’s absence was only barely healing. He spoke, “I feel like I understand Time in a much deeper way now.”

“I felt that way after Fierce Deity,” Wild said.

“Okay but did you fight with him in a war when he was nine and only like a few weeks outta Termina because—”

Warriors smacked his arm. “Sailor.”

“I remember how much he respected you,” Four told Wind. “He respected all of us, for who we were.”

Sky looked astray.

“And he trusted us,” Wild said.

He still looked astray.

“Would’ve died for us,” Hyrule said.

He still looked astray.

“Almost did,” Legend said.

Twilight, gaze also astray, looking, weirdly, back at the group.

There was a silence.

Which, curiously, Twilight then broke. “Sailor, did—” he coughed, catching his mistake and clearing his rough throat. “—When did Time tell you how he lost his eye?”

“I don’t know, a month or two before our journey ended I guess.”

Twilight slumped, pouting.

“Remember the first time we saw him without the armor?” Four asked the group.

“I think he fuckin’ slept in it the first few nights,” Legend said.

“In the beginning, because of that armor, sometimes I think I almost didn’t see him as a person, just as…a statue,” Wind recalled quietly, like he was ashamed. “Some icon of a perfect hero.”

Warriors defended Wind from himself. “But he wasn’t a perfect hero, and after you realized that, you respected him more because of it.”

“He wasn’t perfect, but the Hero of Time was really damn something,” Legend said. “Remember when we rejoined after the secession, and he was stern when he said nothing like that could ever happen again but he was just so happy to have his boys back?”

“We were all sharing our secrets that day,” Wild pondered, “but he didn’t tell us about the Mask.”

“Well, we found out about it like a month later anyway,” Four shrugged. Shrugged, like the three-day fight against the Fierce Deity wasn’t arguably harder than the final fight against the Shadow.

“I think it’s how it was supposed to happen,” Sky said.

“We were supposed to beat and flay him?” Warriors immediately, protectively, and hostilely questioned. “Give him that pain?”

“Well, like Legend said, the Shadow was a reflection of ourselves,” Sky said gently. “Our soul, across time — all of our dark sides. There was a reason a singular Hero could not defeat him and it had to be all nine of us. There was a reason we split up and why we spent a month confronting our secrets.”

“You’d think that ‘reason’ would want us to face our secrets together, though,” Four said.

Sky shrugged. Shrugged like he was sure of his answer. “We came back stronger.”

Morbid, but desperate for anything, Twilight suddenly asked Wind again, “Did he ever tell you about the things he fought in the Bottom of the Well and that worst scar he talked about?”

“What?”

Okay you know what Twilight could accept that.

“Speaking of scars!” Four said. He showed a gruesome battle wound he’d endured while fighting to protect Zelda (finally something to show for all his stories). He talked about what he’d been up to since their journey ended, and so did Hyrule, and so did Legend as he launched into a Wild-esque retelling of his eighth adventure.

“Oh, smithy,” Legend called for Four’s attention, in the middle of his story. “Remember when you drew that eye in the dirt and asked if anyone had seen it before?”

“Yeah?”

“I recognize it now.”

Four licked his lips. “What are you implying right now?”

Legend smiled.

After Legend spoke of defeating Ganon for the technical fourth time, Warriors spoke up.

“You say this journey of yours was just a year or two ago. I’m wondering, now, if any of that was an omen of sorts for our reunion.”

Legend scoffed, “A bad one then. We don’t have everyone.”

“We don’t,” Warriors agreed. But moved on quickly. Before the sadness hit. “But, what’s on my mind is that on our flimsy timeline, I’m in some sort of reunified line. I knew every Hero.”

Legend shot Twilight a look. Twilight didn’t notice.

“So is Champion,” Four commented.

“Well,” Wild said, “remember what I was talking about, Cap, the whole thing with—”

“I do but I’m not dealing with that shit right now Champ.”

“Understandable.”

“After our journey ended,” Warriors continued, undeterred, “I started…having weird visions?”

“Oh, not you too,” Sky muttered under his breath.

“Maybe not visions visions. There were just…weird connections that never existed before.”

“Could it just be stuff you never noticed before all of the time travel on our journey?” Four asked.

“I mean, maybe. But there were weird threats I was made aware of after we parted that never came to light, so perhaps they’ll show themselves, here, with us now.”

“Hm,” Hyrule said. “I had something similar. Odd monster activity.”

“I’ve had weird dreams, lately,” Wild added, “mostly before my third adventure but I’ll still get one every once in a while; dreams of a prophet trying to resurrect Ganon, the Champions and I fighting him. And also this weird egg-like mini-Guardian was helping us. They were just dreams, but it felt…very real.”

Four asked, “Do you think the Old Man had these kinds of dreams too, before he died?”

Legend said, “Probably. He was one of the few of us to have prophetic dreams. At least before the rest of us were apparently afflicted too.”

“His Old Man wisdom’s gotta be made up for somehow, then,” Wild suggested. He turned to him and offered, “Captain?”

Four laughed. “You want wisdom when he didn’t recognize Time as Mask?”

Legend laughed too. “You want wisdom when he chose Wild to be his partner in the dungeon?”

“Champion and I were the two most efficient in that dungeon and everybody here knows it!”

A campfire chat to discuss their beloved eldest, a comedy routine to roast the Captain; Hylian Tomayto, Hylian Tomahto.

(Everybody there did know that. In some divine prank of the Golden Goddesses, Wild and Warriors crawled through their designated corridor masterfully for two people with no dungeon experience and no map. They brought back the Boss Key, even.)

Wind asked, when the giggles died down, “So, then, with all of that in mind, are we thinking that the Shadow is back?”

“I don’t think so,” Legend said. “Of the people here who had a second journey, they were always more personal, not involving the original enemy—”

“Um, I fought Ganondorf—”

“Champion.”

Wild sighed.

“Anyway, it’s normally a different enemy. Didn’t we say something about the portals coming at weird times this time around?”

“I was just chopping wood when it showed up,” Wild contributed. “I wanted to run back to the house to get my gear but it started disappearing as I walked away, and I obviously had to go through it.”

Four snorted. “I was shopping.”

“Do we even have half the arsenal we had last time?” Warriors wondered.

“Sky doesn’t even have the Master Sword!” Wind exclaimed.

“On those second journeys we didn’t have the Master Sword either,” Legend pointed out.

Wild kept his mouth shut.

“Seven years is a long time between journeys, though,” Wind said.

Four snorted again. “Old Man had, like, twenty.”

“And I had six after the War,” Warriors said. “It’s now been a total of fourteen years since the War ended, for me. We sealed Ganon and that was that, no personal second journey for me at all. But I found the portal this time, meeting with you all again because me and my wife — oh, fuck.”

“I’m sorry, wife?” Legend said.

“You didn’t say anything when I asked if anyone else was married!” Wind reprimanded him.

“Someone wanted to marry you?” Legend spoke again.

“I was trying to be funny!” Warriors said.

Warriors tried to defend himself among the raucous laughter, but conversations picked up and he jumped into one about weapons.

Twilight didn’t. He waited.

He waited, while Wind speculated on their next enemy. He waited, while Wild said something about dragons. He waited, while Legend was smiling and Hyrule was vociferating and Four was laughing.

He waited. Then when it was time…

“I knew Time,” Twilight spoke up.

The chatter died. Everyone waited for him to continue.

He gestured to their group of eight. “Before we met.”

He took a shaky breath.

“I met Time’s ghost.”

Wind’s eyes were wide. Why he seemed surprised was a mystery to Twilight, as just three nights ago he and Legend were given a deeper and more vulnerable version of the story, a secret shared between only Time’s successors. Maybe hearing about the tragic fate of the fabled hero he looked up to just as much as Twilight did was hard to listen to again. It sure as hell hurt to tell a second time.

“He appeared to me…when I was just a pup,” Twilight said. “Before my first temple. He waited for me in the form of a wolf.”

He described the wolf to them, and then the Shade, and tried to ignore the fallen faces — if he even glanced at Wild’s sullenness for a moment after days of his enthusiasm, he would curl into himself like a dog for a nap. He thought of ways to wrap his story up quickly if not only to cheer up the others but avoid upsetting himself again.

He faced Warriors. “Time shouldn’t be below me, because he taught me those skills. He invented them.”

“He also shouldn’t be in seventh fucking place,” Legend commented.

Four said to Twilight, “So you knew he was this ‘Hero’s Shade’ the entire time.”

“Yes. If you ever saw me glance forlornly in his direction, which I’m sure I did a lot, I was thinking about his fate as the Shade.”

(“I did that.”

“We all did that. We had to.”

“I killed him.”

“No, Twilight,” Four insisted.

It was muffled by his hands and slightly crazed when Twilight said, “I killed him! I’ve spent months of my life agonizing thinking about how he died. It was always gonna happen while we were together and I just knew it! He stuck around all that time, for me, and I was the one that killed him!”)

“I knew from the first day, and I never told anyone, ‘cause…how do I tell…well, his boys…that the man they looked up to is undoubtedly doomed to become this shade of himself for hundreds of years?”

“So Time didn’t know about the Hero’s Shade either?”

“No,” Twilight said. It took him a minute to gather the courage of the Triforce he was born with to speak again. “I thought he was going to die with us. I really did.

“I saw him perform a Mortal Draw one day and I — I knew. The Skills. The eye, the armor. I knew he was going to die on our journey. I knew it. I was wrong, he didn’t, obviously, but I was convinced.” He swallowed. “And I was going to change it.

“I was offered an opportunity, and I was determined to see the best outcome. I could help him. I could change his fate.”

“That’s a dangerous way of thinking,” Warriors told him. “Messing with time like that—”

“You wouldn’t do it for him? If you knew?”

Warriors exhaled.

Twilight exhaled, contemptuously. “It doesn’t even matter because it didn’t work anyway. Nothing changed. He still died with regrets, he still rotted as an unfulfilled ghost for three hundred years. Everything I had done up until we parted…it was all for nothing.”

“Twilight…” Sky said, “…did you never think he might have stuck around so long because he wanted to?”

“…What?”

“What if he wanted to teach you?” Sky asked. He held a fierce and grave eye contact with Twilight. “What if he wanted to protect you?”

Twilight said nothing.

Sky said, “What if, at least in part, he stayed because he wanted to?”

“Merciful…”

Twilight stopped himself.

The seven others stopped all else, waiting for him to speak.

“In Ordon,” he eventually continued, “there was this folktale that had been passed on forever about a guardian spirit — a creature, or thing, that kept the crops and Cuccoos safe. There was no consistent description of it because no one had ever gotten a good look at it, but Rusl told me — he told me…” His breathing sped up. “…that this story has been told for…for three hundred years. The closest thing we ever had to an account was a golden wisp on the air that vanished after fighting off a predator. It had to have been him.

“He was there for me,” he murmured, a soft, an easing realization, “before I even realized.”

“Holy shit,” Legend breathed.

Everyone waited for Legend to speak.

“On my first adventure, I led Zelda through this sewer passageway to bring her to Sanctuary. It was one of the very first things I did as the Hero,” Legend said. “I left her with the Loyal Sage to stay hidden from Agahnim — from Ganon. He told me to claim the Master Sword, and I left, and in the graveyard outside I saw a golden wolf. I didn’t go to it. I just looked at it. And it was looking at me.

“Eventually it left, and I went to Kakariko Village, but—”

Legend met Twilight’s tired eyes with a look that both of them knew.

“The grave it was in front of, when I found a way inside, contained my Magic Cape. But now I’m wondering if—if that graveyard right outside of Kakariko could’ve been where Time was once—”

“Wait.”

Everyone turned to Hyrule.

“Saria!”

“The sage?” Legend asked.

“The town!” Hyrule exclaimed. “The town names in my Hyrule come from Time’s sages. In the Water Town of Saria, there was a woman who had lost her mirror, and I was scouring the entire town looking for it for her. Then in front of one of the houses I saw a wolf just sitting there by the door. It looked at me, for a good couple seconds, and then it ran off. It was that house where I found the woman’s mirror. The Wise Man that woman led me to afterward taught me my Life Spell.”

Four laughed. “The one that saved Twilight’s life.”

“Saria,” Wild noted. “Aria. His daughter!”

“Holy shit!” Hyrule agreed with Legend.

Sky gasped.

“Oh, Goddess, Faron Woods. The forest. His home.”

Sky told the group about the day he left Skyloft, when he opened a nondescript door in the Sealed Temple to begin his journey as the Hero. He defeated a group of Bokoblins and saw an unfamiliar creature seem to pass judgment on the amateur hero’s first real fight. The creature, a golden four-legged animal, approved of what he saw and bounded into the woods, opening Sky’s very first trial.

Wind then remembered a similar golden four-legged animal that he’d seen in his own set of woods on Outset as a child. 

Four said he saw a wolf wander into Minish Woods, and vanish through the underbrush after following it to Ezlo’s vulnerable form. Warriors said he caught a flicker of this golden wolf on Hyrule Field during his first battle, as it tore a Moblin into the trees from whence it came away from the keep where the monster was headed — the keep where he would first meet Mask. Wild said that Wolfie helped him navigate the Lost Woods on his first journey and the divine beast’s even trot skidded to a halt when what seemed like a specter of something that looked like a Golden Wolfie crossed their path and faded not moments after.

(Twilight remembered that. He remembered thinking it was a trick of the forest, for the Golden Wolf had been at peace for thousands of years in Wild’s Hyrule. He shook the shock away like water off his pelt and resumed leading Wild to what once was Time’s home.)

The Chain’s Old Man led them safely through the fight against the Shadow, and before that, guided each of his boys to a point on their journeys and then disappeared.

Not Twilight though. Time followed him. Time taught him.

Forgotten ways that do not leave our bloodline. Did Time mean that literally? Did he want Twilight, and only Twilight, to inherit his ultimate skills?

Time may not have trailed the other Heroes, may not have taught them himself, but as much as Twilight knew he meant to Time, Time did say that Wind was his favorite. He was an idiot for putting himself in seventh place yet that meant he saw and wholly respected each of their talents. He trusted every one of them, but Twilight most of all.

He trusted Twilight the most, and Twilight trusted every hero here with his life. 

(“How many people have you told about him?”)

(Silence.)

Could he really…

(Do this?)

(Let him be known?)

Twilight cannot die like Time did, flooded like the Great Sea with regrets, allowing his teacher’s wisdom to die alongside him.

(“Do you feel ready to earn your next skill?”)

(“I do.”)

Twilight was ready.

(“Let teachings of old pass to you.”)

“He passed his sword techniques to me,” Twilight said. “He trusted me to inherit them, to protect our kingdom with them.”

Just as much as the Skills are Time’s, they are Twilight’s.

“And now I want to pass them to you. All of you.”

They are Twilight’s, to do with as he pleases. And he wants to teach the others, like Time taught him. And he didn’t worry about what Time would’ve thought, because Time trusted Twilight most of all.

“I…I believe he would be honored for all eight of his boys to know his Hidden Skills.”

Like any good student, they asked the teacher questions before starting. Are these skills difficult? (Yes.) What do they require of us? (The same strength they were endowed with as the ‘one’ true hero.) Would Time want us to know these skills? (Yes, because Time trusted Twilight most of all.)

The eight Links in the Chain properly armed themselves after that, up and in conversation. Shields and swords at the ready to learn from Twilight. Twilight, the teacher. Twilight, the teacher of Time’s Skills.

Twilight noticed Sky then. Their Chosen Hero had been exceptionally quiet during their fireside chat, and when he did talk, his words were meek; the Fierce Deity Mask, Time meeting Fi, the Golden Wolf in Faron Woods. Twilight was similarly withdrawn until finding his courage to talk about the Hero’s Shade because of how deep and meaningful his relationship with Time was. Sky’s relationship with Time, while mutually respectful, was perpetually, religiously strained. Maybe that was why now he stood several paces behind the others.

So Twilight went to him.

“I never got a chance to tell you, back then,” Twilight began, when Sky saw him. His throat was still tight, voice rough from his upset. “I wanted you to know that two nights after Time picked up the Master Sword, I asked him if he wanted me to, um, relieve him of the burden.”

Sky, like all of the others, remembered the final week of their first journey — the week Time was forced to wield the Master Sword.

(Time looked at his boys, eye jumping from Legend, to Sky, and Warriors, and Four, Hyrule, Wild, Wind, Twilight, then the sword that united them all. The Master Sword sat, smoking from the hands of its masters it burned, on a stump in the middle of a forest.

He slowly wrapped his hand around the hilt.

It did not burn him.

He lifted it — his hands were shaking. He examined it — his stoic facade was faltering. He sheathed it — his shoulders now bore the burden he always said it was.

“I need some fresh air,” he said.

He stalked off. They were still in the middle of a forest.)

“He said no.” 

Sky blinked, vulnerable in the face of their eldest and the Master Sword.

“He said there was… a lot of catching up to do.”

Sky blinked again. Twilight watched him process.

Then when he understood, he nodded his head to the beat of his deep breaths. His expression eased. His shoulders loosened, with the weight of regrets lifted. “Thank you,” Sky said.

Twilight smiled and turned around.

And there Wild was waiting for him.

Wild, similar to his princess, had a smile like the sun. He shone upon Twilight’s fear. “He was always so proud of you,” he said. “And, with what we know now — he’s still proud of you.”

(“…I’m so proud.”)

(“Go and do not falter, my child!”)

Twilight was his pup — his pup. His son.

“I know.”

Wild squeezed his shoulder. He went back to the others, who were standing at the ready to learn Time’s Skills.

And Twilight was ready to teach them.

“Okay,” Twilight said. He moved into position. “Stance like this.”