Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"No."

The paper Link held in Symin's direction was wrinkled and dirty, clearly one he kept on hand for when all he needed was the simple, one-word response. Its softened edges gave it a look like it was due for replacement.

It was late evening, and Symin had practically beaten down the door of the house Link and Zelda shared when he'd learned Link had been back in town.

"Please," Symin said, "I know Princess Zelda told you—" he paused and rephrased when he noticed the subtle pained expression crossing Link's face. "…I know you've… been informed of our current staffing shortage."

Link sighed; that much was true. And then he pushed the same paper back in Symin's direction. "No."

"The children love seeing you when you show up."

Finally, he had to write something. "They can love seeing me show up outside school, then."

Symin smirked at that but continued to push. "You're a good teacher; you've done such a fine job teaching lessons already."

Link looked off to the side and considered his words before writing. "I showed the kids things while you said stuff. You did the teaching."

"But you were an integral part of the lessons! And I do believe you could take on the task of teaching one on your own."

Link squinted. "But I don't talk."

"You could write," Symin said, gesturing to the scrap of paper Link had been scrawling his thoughts onto.

Link bit his lip. "Only useful as long as every kid there already knows how to read forever." In theory, Sefaro would be able to read practically anything Link could write aloud, but that would have been a lot of responsibility to put on a kid, and besides, the kid wouldn't be there forever.

Symin tapped his chin. "Point taken. …Perhaps you could sign? I've heard from—" no way of dancing around her this time, "…from Princess Zelda… that you're knowledgeable in it."

He froze. And then, with a swallow, he gave his simple, wrinkled, dirty, one-word response.

"No."

It took Link a long while after Symin left to go to bed, and even longer to go to sleep.

And when he woke up in the morning, as he cooked breakfast, brought it to the table, and started nibbling on it, his mind was in exactly the place it had been once he'd finally nodded off.

Perhaps you could sign?

Problem one.

Link had not signed with anyone except Zelda in over one hundred years. (Well, no. He'd signed with Sidon. Once.)

His times signing with Zelda, even, were few, because once he'd become comfortable enough to sign with her, he was already comfortable enough to speak.

Problem two.

The only two other settings he'd ever been comfortable enough in to sign without issue were in that nebulous, half-remembered time before the Calamity.

His own home.

And his sign language class.

The first was a foregone conclusion, and that was even before considering the wealth of memories of his home life he'd acquired over the years since his waking in the Shrine: if he didn't have any issue speaking to his family, why would he have trouble signing?

The second was less clear to him; he had only a handful of specific recollections of his classes, little bits of particularly memorable moments, cross-referenced with things he'd only been told (mostly the few things Zelda had heard at the time, from him, after they'd struck tentative speaking terms back in the day), so he could only imagine it had something to do with the idea that everyone else was in the same boat, learning and saying the same things. It was controlled, he supposed, so there was no worrying about thoughtlessly saying the wrong thing.

Problem three.

There was no good way to refute Symin's point, not really.

Perhaps you could sign?

Answer one.

I'm not fluent, Link would probably reply.

Except that he was. He was oh, so fluent. At least in the technical sense. 

He'd passed his classes with flying colors. Earned a full-on commendation from his teacher and everything, according to Zelda. (Credit to his sister for that, probably, insisting they used it as much as possible around the house, voice-off, until they were nearly as comfortable signing as they were speaking.) Only class he hadn't passed had been the last one; he had remembered, a couple of years ago, that it had been canceled indefinitely a month from completion once the Calamity became too present to continue it safely.

Functionally, he was still untested outside the controlled environments where the anxiety over coming across wrong wasn't a factor. (He suspected his sister's obsession with trying to feel comfortable using it was some sort of reaction to the fact that Link… wasn't. It was always the same—he'd think he was about to do it… only to freeze up just like his speech did, only to retreat to a pencil and paper so he didn't have to look someone in the face while they judged the words coming out of him in real time.)

Answer two.

In case you haven't noticed, I have an Upheaval to address, he might say.

That was true, he did.

But Link knew Symin well enough to know he would insist on keeping a slot open for Link, for after everything went back to normal.

And Symin knew Link well enough that he knew it was clear Link was not yet ready to take on the Demon King.

…Even if Link would never divulge that after a particularly nasty trip to the Depths last week Purah had forced him, once he was stabilized and able to take a walk around the Landing, to take a break somewhere, anywhere, that was not experiencing any sort of particularly terrible phenomenon.

And considering the sludge he'd heard was marring Zora's Domain, the marked weather changes out in the desert, and whatever Mubs was on about surrounding the topic of pirates in Lurelin, there weren't a lot of places normal enough to meet that definition.

So Hateno Village it was.

Answer three.

The kids don't know sign language, he'd offer as a final rebuttal.

He already knew what he'd be told, because the answer to this one was the clearest of the bunch.

They could learn, Symin would suggest.

They're so eager to attain more knowledge, he'd declare.

They already think of you as—

"Professor Link!" Symin's familiar voice shouted, carrying across the field and through the closed door of the house.

Link sighed. He'd been pretty transparent last night. He cleared his breakfast dishes he'd let stagnate while he'd fallen into thought and walked reluctantly to the front door, opening it as Symin started another shout, shocking the man quite quickly into a quieter register.

"Profess— …Sir Link! I'm sorry to bother you in the morning like this, I know I bothered you quite far into the evening yesterday—"

Link shook his head. No.

"I'm… not asking again for you to become a teacher. At least not right now. I just need someone to watch an unattended child," Link's eyebrow raised as Symin continued. "Her mother heard about the school and brought her to town, but she refused to enter the building, and her mother could not stay for the time being. She's new to the town, so we believe it better for now that she has supervision, until she's learned her way around a bit more, you see. Seldon volunteered to stand watch and keep an eye on the students inside the school as well as on her, but he can't help all day, and I cannot effectively teach if I'm splitting my attention, either, you understand. I wouldn't normally ask this of you with your desires made clear and the other obligations I'm sure you must attend to, but—"

Link raised a hand to stop the infodump and nodded.

…Even if he couldn't be a real teacher, not really, he could watch a kid for one day.

"Thank you," Symin spoke, relieved.

Link took a moment to put on a more presentable outfit and then headed out.

…Huh. Symin was still there. He would've thought that the man would have taken his leave back to the school; did he not trust Link at his word?

Link started past Symin, who turned to match pace.

"Apologies for hovering, but I just considered that there's one more thing it's probably important that you know." Link slowed to give full attention to whatever Symin was about to reveal to him.

"She's deaf," Symin said matter-of-factly.

Link stopped walking. …Oh.

Perhaps you could sign?

Chapter Text

"…Is that something you have a problem with?"

Link gave his head a quick shake and closed the distance between him and Symin, pulling out a paper and throwing a question onto it.

"From out of town?"

Symin nodded, shifting his gait slightly. "She heard about us some months before the Upheaval, from Parga. Started traveling soon after she heard, but… given recent events, they ran into quite a few delays. Spent a hefty chunk of rupees on stable stays—says without the stables starting that sleepover ticket racket, she probably wouldn't have had the money to continue onward." He cleared his throat. "In my opinion, it's a wonder they got here at all. Roads were dangerous, even more so before news came in that you'd reappeared at Lookout Landing."

Link looked down and considered that, though he didn't think too hard, lest he forget where he was and get too close to the edge of the bridge.

Once across, he wrote, "Where's mom?"

"As in 'where did her mother go?'" Link nodded. "She said she needed to double back to the stable to wrap up some loose ends, but she told me she planned to head to the inn first to try to negotiate a lower nightly rate with the innkeeper to stay for an extended period of time. If she can't haggle it down, I believe she intends to stay at the wayhouse Calip used to maintain, at least until she can secure closer long-term accommodations."

Link frowned. That was near Fort Hateno, which was normally swarming with monsters these days. He had helped the monster control crew clear it out on his way into town, but… he dearly hoped a blood moon was not near.

"Kid staying with her?" He chewed at his chapped lower lip.

"If she manages to nab a spot in the inn, yes," Symin said with a nod. "Otherwise, I assured her we'd find a place for her daughter to stay in town so she could be close to the school. Might ask Medda—pretty sure that Bolson house he's moved into has an extra bed." Link followed his gaze as he glanced in the direction of the house they were passing. "Or at least that he and his daughter have wildly different sleep schedules. Sometimes Aster mentions he's still out farming when she goes to bed." He puffed a sigh out of his mouth. "At any rate, we'll figure something out, even if it means she stays with me on the second floor of the school. …Assuming we can get her to come inside."

"Does she sign?" Link mostly meant the girl, but if he had put some thought into it, he might have realized some part of him also meant her mother, her family.

At that, Symin hesitated. Eventually, he said, "…We can talk more about the 'why' later, but… no, she doesn't. As far as we know, she doesn't have any kind of language."

Link pursed his lips. He knew before the Calamity that a choice not to sign if it might be helpful was uncommon in Hyrule, usually chosen because a kid was "just" hard-of-hearing or because the family was well-to-do and overly concerned with keeping up appearances.

Heck, that was half the reason he and his family had started learning—the idea that it might aid him, particularly given the demands for communication usually expected of a knight of his station.

He wondered if things were the same, a hundred years later.

…That Symin wanted to discuss why did not have him hopeful.

But he didn't push. For now.

"How old?" he wrote, changing the subject.

"…Six."

"Pretty young for Hateno's school." …Pretty old for zero language.

"Yes; the rest of the children are around 9 to 12, I know you're aware. We agreed to try, though, given the circumstances of her travel and given the preparation she'd need in order to have the skills for school once she were to reach the other children's age."

"You don't have enough teachers." As he showed his next sentence to Symin, Link tried to sigh quietly enough that the man beside him wouldn't hear. He heard anyway.

"Indeed," he said, short and matter of fact.

Link's hand hovered over the paper, considering his next sentence's wording carefully, before he settled on, "That why you wanted me to teach so bad?"

Symin stopped walking and turned right to face him. "Link, I can honestly say we received no advance notice she would be arriving until she showed up." Link's skeptical expression was subtle, but Symin still noticed it. "You don't have to teach her anything today. We just didn't want her getting lost, when we don't have the faculty to cover two areas like that."

Symin kept to himself the thought that Link's incessant questioning sure made it seem as if he might change his tune and try out what Symin was already confident he could do.

…Call this kid a lucky chance for a test case.

Link wrote out part of another question but found himself stopping about halfway through, drumming his pencil on the paper before simply deciding a gaggle of question marks at the end would get his point across.

"So you want me to just .. ????"

They started up the hill to the school as Symin rattled off the instructions.

"Keep an eye on her until school lets out, and then I'll be able to take over. I would prefer you stay in and around the schoolyard, though I won't fault you if it's easier to, say, walk around town with her. Just need her accounted for." He tapped each of his fingers in turn as he listed the next prohibitions. "No wilderness, no fighting, no weapons, no leaving town." Spoilsport, Link thought with a smirk. "If she ends up coming inside, you have time for a break, but I'd like it if you stayed close. In case she bolts."

…Link would have been lying if he said that didn't sound like a harder job than teaching.

In fact, he was about to say as much when a kid a little smaller than Narah shot down the path faster than an arrow from the Great Eagle Bow. Link slid into action, his sudden movement to block her stopping her in her tracks, at least for now, as she looked up at him with wide eyes.

Link's next message, held in Symin's direction as he didn't take his eyes off the kid, was short, sweet, and to-the-point. "Name?"

Symin cleared his throat. "Hana."

After her, Seldon barreled a bit more haphazardly, breathing a sigh—of exertion or relief?—once he saw Symin and Link.

"Oh, thank goodness," he said, resting his hands on his knees. "I didn't know how much longer I could hold out; that's the fourth time she's slipped away from me. …I am not the young man I used to be."

Considering there was no way it had been more than twenty minutes, Link did not need to be told he would have his work cut out for him.

Link grabbed Hana firmly by the hand and unceremoniously dragged her to the schoolyard, an act at which she made her displeasure known by the volume of her screams.

He sat her on the rings by the left side of the school and shook his head, a gesture he hoped she had seen enough to understand.

She flashed hateful eyes at her new captor before looking down, as if in deep thought, making a repetitive motion Link didn't recognize with her hand. Then she eyed him again, glanced at the edge of the schoolyard… and bolted.

Link sprinted at her, pulled her back, and sat her back down again.

…Normally, he might have had more patience for a literal child.

And normally, Purah's admonitions were more friendly advice and less veiled doctor's order.

He had run into two sets of gloom spawn at once for the first—and hopefully the last—time, no free moment to react or fight, the clothing he had with him insufficient protection for the volleying they did of his body from one hand to another.

…Why was it always hands?

By the time he stopped being manhandled long enough to warp out of the depths, dropped down at Lookout Landing's tower, and promptly collapsed, he was a quarter-inch, a quarter-heart away from death, near-delirious from the shock. If Karson hadn't been inspecting the tower when he warped in… well…

Recovering from that kind of incident was no joke—Purah had not hidden her surprise at his being able to take a walk a mere five days after the incident. Link had only been cleared to leave, with his break caveat, after he gestured to his right hand and reminded her that he was used to fighting lingering gloom taking hold in him.

But he wasn't even back to his post-Upheaval baseline yet, still shaking off bone-deep exhaustion that his sunny porridges and sunny pizzas and sunny stews and sunny pumpkin pies were taking their sweet time chipping away at, and a pint-sized powerhouse trouncing him in a battle of wills would… not be helping. To put it lightly.

If he was functionally 21, then right now, he felt 100. If he was literally 121, then he felt 200.

After the fifth escape attempt, he pulled a rope from his things, tied it around his waist, and Ultrahanded the other end to the back of her dress. He crossed his arms, nonplussed, as she strained against this new tether and then, begrudgingly accepting she'd been had, she lowered herself to sit on one of the schoolyard's rings.

…And then she started crying. Loudly.

Crap.

Maybe he should have had more patience.

Guilt overtaking him quickly and almost very sure that the little girl would freak out at an attempt at physical comfort like a hug or even a shoulder pat from a stranger like him, he did the only thing he could think to do—grab a stick off the ground.

The picture started simple, a sun and some clouds… and the raindrops Hana was adding from her cries. Oof.

He narrowed his eyes as he tried to concentrate on the drawing and wondered if what he was doing would actually calm her down even if she were looking.

Once he'd finished laying down the rudimentary sky, he made the decision to poke the stick at Hana's hand. Maybe if he could effectively distract her, she'd stop?

Her sobs quieted to loud whimpers as he handed her the stick, and she stopped entirely other than some continued sniffs once she caught sight of the drawings.

And then she started drawing something.

A circle—a face, Link realized—then some straight hair and a smile. She looked over at the exit to the schoolyard again, but she made no moves to bolt, knowing the rope would stop her. She looked back down and added a second, smaller face not dissimilar to her own. She made the gesture Link didn't recognize once more.

…A suspicious epiphany started to come over him, but confirming it would take someone who had been with Hana earlier.

He whistled, hoping that would draw the attention of Symin to show up outside. For a second, he wasn't sure it had worked, but right as he was about to try again, the teacher emerged from the building. He took one look at the rope solution, decided he didn't get paid enough to ask about it, and simply said, "What's going on?"

Link gestured to the drawing she'd made, then leaned over to draw a question mark in the dirt beside it with his finger. Hana glanced up at Symin for only a moment and then turned Link's question mark into a flower.

With a smile, Symin tapped his chin. "Hard to say without color," he started, "but it appears to bear close resemblance to her mother."

He tried to mouth something at Symin, but he found himself simply opening and closing his mouth before he sighed and wrote, "How sure?"

Symin squinted at the face and fiddled with his glasses, and said, "I think I'd put money on it." He looked from the artwork to Hana to Link. "…Is that all?"

Link nodded, and Symin headed back inside.

He let Hana flesh out her drawings as he tested out Hana's gesture to himself.

…He was pretty sure it was a home sign.

They hadn't spent an inordinate amount of time on the topic in his classes, but he knew, though it wasn't like he had a specific memory of learning it, that his teacher had described them as the sorts of signs deaf kids came up with on their own within their family, before they were exposed to HCSL.

…He couldn't say that didn't track—they hadn't seen much use, but when he started going more and more quiet outside the house, he'd devised a couple idiosyncratic signals intended for quickly communicating to his dad when they crossed paths in public, around the castle. Today's been good; today's been bad; do you want to eat lunch together; that kind of thing.

Maybe the sign Hana had used was a sign she'd coined to represent her mother? As good a guess as any, and it fit in context.

He lightly shook the rope until it detached from her dress, hoping she would take it as a peace offering and not as a license to leave.

She perked up and gave a sidelong glance toward the entrance to the schoolyard.

Link placed his hand on her shoulder as if to remind her: yes, I'm not afraid to stop you again. He hoped he'd managed to rest the hand softly enough that maybe she understood that he could see where she was coming from now.

She turned to look at him, and he pointed at the stick, then held his open hand out.

Nothing.

Gently, he wrapped his fingers around the stick, though he didn't pull.

Hana did, however, eyes mischievous.

—At least it wasn't the teary-eyed heartbreak or worry-tinged escapist rage they'd held before.

He rolled his eyes with a snort. When she got to the point of joining in with things the other kids were doing, he imagined she'd fit right in with the energy Nebb and Narah gave off some days.

She giggled and let go of the stick, and Link went to work, starting to draw a woman… only to realize…

—He had no idea what his mother looked like.

The Calamity was probably only partially to blame for this; his mother had died years before Ganon broke free, almost before he'd pulled the Master Sword from its place in the Lost Woods. He'd gotten back plenty of memories about her, just none of her—even the ones she was present in seemed to conveniently omit her face.

So he tried to come up with something he could say was his mother, putting down a face about the size of Hana's mother's and adding curly hair on a whim—it just felt right.

Hana lowered herself off the ring she'd been sitting on and knelt on the ground to look more closely at Link's handiwork.

He added what he hoped was a reasonable facsimile of himself next to his made-up mother's face. 

Hana looked from the image of Link to the real thing, as if studying its accuracy, and that was when Link decided to try.

He raised his hands in front of him…

…and froze.

Oh, come on, she's six!

Still a person.

A child person. Not like she's gonna leave you a one-star talking review in the Lucky Clover Gazette!

…What if she does?

—She doesn't even know any words. She literally can't take what you tell her the wrong way if she doesn't know what you said.

…She doesn't know any words yet. She'll know them eventually.

……Wait. She has at least one home sign.

…………Why not work with that?

Link blinked, grabbing the stick and pointing at Hana's drawing of her mother.

He used the sign she'd used, and she lit up, standing ready to bolt across the schoolyard, but Link pulled her wrist and motioned for her to sit down. To his relief, she listened.

He pointed at her drawing and used her sign again, and then pointed at his own drawing and signed, "mother".

"Mother," he pointed and signed again.

She looked from one picture to the other, and then she pursed her lips, trying out this new sign of Link's experimentally.

"Mother," she said, and then she followed it up with the sign she used for her own mother.

When she looked up at Link, eyes inquisitive, he added three letters in the dirt under each image.

M-O-M. Mom.

Hana's brow furrowed as she compared the two, and then she looked over at Link, clearly a bit confused.

He pointed with the stick to her drawing again, though the connection between his thoughts and his hands hit a speed bump, causing him to hesitate before he said the phrase. "Your… mom." He did it again, pointing the stick at Hana—"Your"—then the word on the ground, first letter-by-letter—"M-O-M", he fingerspelled—and then the word—"Mom"—and then the picture. "Your mom." He followed the phrase up with the sign Hana used for her mother.

He did the same with his image, but when it came to naming his mother, he realized the gap in his memories extended to her name. On the fly, he found himself fingerspelling, "Sonia."

…From the dragon tears he'd found so far, he imagined the first queen of Hyrule wouldn't mind standing in for the sake of demonstration.

Even as she looked from the drawings to the words and tested out the HCSL sign against her own, Link wasn't entirely sure she really understood what he'd been trying to impart, but he was at least content that he'd tried his best.

—She was staring down the path again.

He tapped her shoulder, and reluctantly, she turned to look at him.

"Your mom," he said, following it up with her sign and then repeating himself, "Your mom, she left to go toward Dueling Peaks, but—she will come back, and she will hug you."

Link didn't know if Hana's mother was a hugger, and his sentence overall—while just as spatial as he might have otherwise conveyed it—was a little more mime and traced her mother's path much more closely than he might have with someone more fluent. But considering he was trying to tell a little girl who had never learned a language before that her mother was not gone forever, the concessions felt worth it.

Her shoulders seemed to relax, and so Link was satisfied that even if she hadn't gotten the full picture, she got the core sentiment: your parent will come back, and they still love you.

She pointed in the direction of the peaks, did her sign for her mother, and looked at Link.

He nodded.

She grabbed the stick and went back to drawing.

She stopped running from the schoolyard after that. Not that Link didn't watch anxiously the first time she jumped up again before he could make contact with her arm.

She'd been busy at work drawing pictures that looked like her and her mother doing all sorts of things, occasionally experimenting with copying Link's written "Mom" in her newly minted, scribble-class penmanship, and she'd looked up just in time to watch Nebb and Narah run into the schoolyard for the third loop of their daily rounds.

At first, she seemed content simply to watch them from a distance, but as they retreated from the schoolyard, she stood up and ran after them, all the way to the sign signifying the entrance to the school, Link tensing and ready to stand and run, if he had to…

…And she stopped, eyes tracking the two as they ran down the path and around a corner. And then she walked back toward her drawing spot by Link, stopping by the pull-up bars and swinging from the shortest one to burn off some pent-up energy. And finally, she went back to drawing.

Link found himself relaxing after that, drawing alongside her, letting her run around the schoolyard on her own, even giving her a small portion of the sunny rice balls he cooked for his lunch.

He was about to check the Purah Pad for the time when students started filing out of the school door, ready for afternoon heroism, helping in the fields, or waiting for their long-lost teacher outside the house she once shared with the hero of Hyrule.

He looked back down for only a moment when a voice above him startled him upright once more. "Looks like you got a lot done today," Symin said, eyeing Link and Hana's handiwork in the dirt.

He stood up as Symin continued, "Do you want me to take over?"

Link shook his head and looked down toward the art, though more an excuse to look anywhere but at the other man as he managed to shakily sign, "Wanna… teach." His hands tensed, his newly pointed finger refusing to move into the next sign and let him finish his thought. "O—…Only her," he finished jerkily.

Maybe he could take on other students, in some far-off future, but for now, what he knew he could handle was this one single kid.

Response given, he cautioned a look at Symin's face as he responded with an understanding smile, "I think I can make that happen."

Chapter Text

Hana's mother—who he learned was named Raura, a sort of rare name he supposed he now could reasonably guess the historical meaning of—did eventually return, sometime around five. Noticing the scrawl on the ground, questions and excitement and praise poured out of her mouth at what felt like lightning speed.

Or, at least, it felt like lightning speed to Link, who promptly froze up and imagined that perhaps this woman's rapid-fire rattle was an example of what it might be like to perform a flurry rush on a conversation.

Focus. Side hop. Backflip.

ATTACK!

Symin ended up having to take over for him, explaining that he'd run to retrieve Link just to keep eyes on Hana, thinking she wouldn't have the opportunity to study much with her refusal to enter the school, and yet Link was ever the quick thinker, constantly able to think on his feet with little more than what lay around him.

He was being showered with more compliments than he really deserved, but he couldn't force himself to do anything more than the odd head shake, nod, the occasional shrug.

…He wondered, if King Rhoam had been alive, if he would have even had the presence of mind to go through the motions of bowing to the man.

The entire exchange between the three in the schoolyard was a blur—he thinks there was a "thank you" and a handshake in there?—the audible exhale he released once it was all over the sole thing bringing him back into focus, as the woman walked hand in hand with her daughter through the gate and down the hill.

Symin turned to Link. "She's a bit much, but she means well."

He cleared his throat before Link could figure out how to respond to that and said, "I know you must have things you need to get done, but I think we should find the opportunity to get together and discuss what it will mean for you to come on to the school staff, to work with Hana."

Link nodded thoughtfully and dug a piece of paper out. After a moment, he figured out what he wanted to write on it.

"Got any books? Teaching? Deafness?"

Symin glanced up in thought. "I brought every teaching-specific text to my room upstairs once the school was finished, but virtually every book that survived the Calamity other than that is up in the tech lab."

Link's brow furrowed, "Castle library still has books."

Symin hummed a low tone. "I mean every book we can verify was not damaged beyond hope of preservation, Link." He tapped his chin. "Hmm. Maybe when this is all over, we should figure out what we can salvage from the castle, though. …Do you want to check what's upstairs, maybe discuss the terms of your… employment?"

Link looked up at the school's bell, considering the proposed plan. He bit gently at his chapped lower lip, and then sucked on it when he realized he'd accidentally drawn a little blood. Finally, he shook his head and showed Symin his counteroffer.

"Meet me at tech lab. 7:30. Wanna eat dinner first."

When Symin entered the tech lab promptly at 7:30, he was surprised to find Link already there, a sprawling set of dishes that still had a fair bit of meal on them covering part of the table, piece of nut cake in hand as he pored over a book, a stack of unread ones next to him.

Robbie was the first one to say anything to the new arrival.

"Just came in here with a cooking pot a good hour and a half ago and cooked a three-course meal. Without even asking!"

Link, still looking down at the book, rolled his eyes and took a bite of cake. Robbie was always a bit much; Link was just matching the energy.

"Seriously, the man could deep fry an ostrich in thirty seconds." He leaned in and added, as if Link couldn't hear his extremely normal volume, "Between you and me, this is better than a hundred years ago. He used to eat rocks!"

Link knocked on the table, and when the men's heads turned, he held up a paper with the single, foreboding message, "I STILL EAT ROCKS." He put the paper back on the table, raising it again once he had added, "Goron dishes with Eldin felsite—a delicacy. Have to fight to get them to give me any nowadays, though." He laid the paper down and gestured to the dishes as if to say, "Help yourself."

Symin approached, eyeing the meaty entree Link had cooked up. "…None of these have felsite, Link, correct?" Link shook his head with an expression that seemed to say "do these look like rock-hard food?", glancing down to finish the first chapter of the book he was reading, then looking back up to meet Symin's eyes.

Robbie interjected from his spot behind Symin, "They are all sunny, though. Keep that in mind. …Found out when he offered some to me."

Symin squinted at the dishes, then lowered himself to sit, taking a slice of bread and a bit of butter, if only to be polite.

He took a bite—yes, the sundelion's essence was clear—and tried not to be conspicuous as he took a look at Link's book from across the table.

The heading at the top of the page read, The History of Deaf Peoples and Sign Languages in the Land of Hyrule, 3rd ed.

He'd reordered the shelves for Purah a number of times; though he'd never had the time to look inside the book, he remembered it as one of the few that had a listed publish date on it—about a year before the Calamity hit. He'd been told, once, that it, or rather about half the books in the tech lab, had been rescued from Central Hyrule—the castle or the tech lab there, Purah didn't remember in the onslaught—brought out here on a cart alongside the Guidance Stone.

The chapter was entitled, "A Closer Look at Regional Differences in Sign Languages and Deaf Communities", but Symin didn't dare try to read the dense text of the chapter's body—from his perspective, tiny and upside down—lest he strain his eyes and give himself a headache.

"So…" he said, clearly not on the up-and-up of starting non-work-related conversations, "Book any good?"

Link looked at Symin, expression blank—or, at the very least, unreadable to the Sheikah man.

—The younger Sheikah man, anyway, because Robbie seemed to read it loud and clear, shouting over Symin's shoulder, "Of course it ain't good, books about history pale in comparison to the real thing!"

…Well. That wasn't how Link would have put it, but.

He reached down and pulled a crumpled piece of paper—one of the ones he kept to reuse its message—from his quiver. It read "OK."

The book was about a hundred years out of date, Link knew, but so far, it had mostly been a good refresher for the sorts of things he had already learned in his classes.

Link pushed the book a little away and looked expectantly at Symin.

Then he clasped his hands, and the silence got awkward.

Symin broke it by stating the obvious. "I guess we should perhaps start in on what we came here to discuss."

Link nodded.

"…Would you like to write or sign? …Or speak, I suppose?"

Link took a slow, level breath through his nose.

Sometimes, he could answer aloud, if someone asked him a direct question. He used to be pretty good at that with Purah, actually, until he'd gotten comfortable enough with her to speak more spontaneously. He'd been told that prior to the Calamity, when he'd been growing increasingly silent with practically everyone outside his family, he had still been able to answer to his commanding officer, at least before he'd been deemed a Champion and promoted to Zelda's personal bodyguard.

…After the failed exchange with Hana's mom, he wasn't sure today counted as "sometimes".

Sometimes, he could coax himself into talking—if you could call a volume scarcely louder than a whisper talking—if there was someone there he was completely comfortable with, someone who could coax him to put the smallest sliver of the toenail on his pinky toe outside his comfort zone.

But Zelda was… missing. Maybe in the past, but he really didn't want to consider the implications of what that would mean for her not being here. And Sidon was… oh. Oh, he hadn't seen Sidon since before the Upheaval. He had been meaning to go to Zora's Domain next to help with what was going on, at least before the incident and Purah's rest prescription. But instead, here he was, closer than you'd think to the Domain but far too far away and too tired to make the trip.

So talking was out, and given his track record with signing in the past, he imagined signing wouldn't be much better, as much as he wanted that to not be the case, and as much as he'd managed to strike a rapport with Hana.

—The courageous, celebrated hero of Hyrule, the high-ranking, brave knight who regularly bested immensely powerful enemies at least twice his size, could not get through a simple conversation without retreating in terror, and it might have been funny if it wasn't so embarrassing.

He swallowed, pressing his tongue a bit too firmly against the roof of his mouth.

"Want to sign but," Link finally offered up a slip of paper, his sentence left unfinished.

"You don't think you can?" Symin guessed. Link closed his eyes with a sigh and nodded.

Symin frowned, continuing, "Is there anything we can do, to make it easier, perhaps?"

He looked down and busied his eyes with the wood grain of the table, his toes squirming in his shoes, as he considered the question.

"…New—…brain," he finally signed flatly, not letting himself look up until a couple seconds after he'd finished the utterance.

Robbie snorted. "Don't think we have one of those lying around, Link."

He put his pencil down to a fresh sheet of paper… but he found himself drawing a blank, no great way to respond to that.

Robbie took note of the action, though.

"I've been wondering: What is it that lets you write?" he said, sauntering over to take a seat with Symin across the table.

Now, there was something Link could respond to. "I can revise it before you actually see me say it." He slid the paper in Robbie's direction.

His goggles hid his eyes, but Link could just tell Robbie was raising a brow as he read Link's words. "Sure, but you usually don't end up doing that."

…Fine. A secondary reason, then. "I don't have to look you in the eyes while I write it."

"Then don't look at us while you sign," Robbie said with a shrug.

Link's hand curled around the pencil, squeezing it tightly and looking as if he had forgotten what it was for. Every answer he was giving was wrong. He was doing things wrong, and Robbie was rightly judging him for it.

It took him a full minute to regain some sort of composure and scratch out a response. He held it out with a shudder.

"It's different. I don't know why."

Robbie looked like he wanted to say something else, but he seemed to be holding his tongue.

—Which left Symin enough of an opening to try to shift the topic a bit.

"Why not return to the matter at hand, instead? Hana?"

Good, Link thought. The topic was never supposed to be me to begin with.

"Can write," he wrote where Symin could see it. "If I figure some way to stop freezing up while I sign, I might switch. But not looking good."

Symin met Link's eyes, which made Link just the slightest bit uncomfortable, and took the opportunity to raise the thought on his mind. "If I may… I think it will be best to start by imparting more language on her, giving her a base to take in other knowledge. You taught her one word already, correct?"

Link nodded, then took his sweet time getting himself to formulate his next sentence, "Little worried she doesn't know any HCSL yet."

Symin pursed his lips. "…About that."

Ah. Yes. Probably the "why" Symin had wanted to discuss this morning.

Symin looked down, twiddling his thumbs, and then looked Link in the face again as he finally said, "What do you know? About how parents… react? When they find out their child is deaf? How they choose to communicate with the child?"

Link sorted through the disorganized box of half-recollected memories that was his brain before he wrote, "Lots of people signed, at least before. Deya Village had a pretty successful PR campaign."

The next question was posed quite delicately. "Do you remember, then? What happened to Deya Village?"

Link stiffened.

Though there were lingering gaps, he had recalled a large portion of his memories of the Calamity over a three-month span, about six months after he had defeated Calamity Ganon.

At first, it had been just one memory, but that one lent itself to another one, and that to another, and then… it became an avalanche.

There was a specific kind of awful in experiencing something so horrible, then forgetting it, only to remember it again all at once. He was reticent, unsure if he wanted to call it the worst three months of his life, considering, you know, his hundred years in stasis, but…

It came close.

Deya had been a particular sticking point, considering what he'd remembered of its pre-Calamity days until that point had been the fact his sign language teacher (in a bit of hometown pride, Link suspected) had strongly recommended visiting it. It had the largest population of deaf people in all of Hyrule—every person hearing or deaf in the secluded fishing village signed, and they were as well known for their thriving school as they were for their fish exports and their—in Link's opinion—delicious hot pot dishes.

…None of that had mattered when the Calamity hit, their seclusion working to their disadvantage. The high hills meant the danger hadn't made itself clear until it was already upon them.

—He and Zelda had been running through the woods somewhere north of there, his sole directive to keep Zelda safe, to get her as far from the epicenter as possible, as the Guardians had razed the village almost entirely to the ground.

They'd slowed, then stopped, in horror on their way to Dueling Peaks as they noticed the Sheikah warriors swarming the newly charred Hills of Baumer, the dim glow of flames coming from the valley in which Deya sat.

The first few Sheikah who had arrived, ones who'd foolishly thought they might have been close enough to help, gave Link and Zelda a chilling estimate: given the time from the first Guardian they saw to the moment the whole corrupted army started heading eastward toward Fort Hateno, they believed the village hadn't lasted even an hour.

The only Deya residents who might have had even a minute chance at surviving would have been the kind to be out of town at the time. Them and—

…

Link did not consider Symin's concerned expression, seemed not to notice he or Robbie was still there at all, as he looked through the table, through the ground, speaking low and quiet to no one in particular.

"There was a baby."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his fingers curling into the fabric of his pants. Just before they had left to see what Link could do for Fort Hateno, someone tasked with combing the village for survivors had run up the hill, a child in their arms, rescued from a mostly-collapsed home near the center of town. It had been found in a bassinet hastily shrouded in blankets, hiding its form and muffling its cries. The Guardians hadn't detected it.

…Its parents had not been so lucky.

A throat clearing beside him took him out of his thoughts. As if remembering he wasn't alone in the room, Link's dewy eyes glanced over to see Symin had moved to his side of the table. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no more words came.

"I know about the Deya baby," Symin said slowly, gently.

Tight-lipped and forcing down a swallow, Link's head fully turned in Symin's direction.

The man spoke reverently, as if he was speaking of nobility. "It was a well-known incident, at least among the Sheikah. I was born years after that, but it was a story my parents passed down, one my friends knew. Her survival was considered one of the only bright spots about that day. An indication that the Calamity didn't have to win. That it wouldn't win."

Link bit his lip and fiddled with his fingers, then raised his hands as if about to respond—he'd used his voice in front of them, so it seemed as if he was hoping that would have opened the floodgates for signing, at least in the moment—only to drop them and remove a slip of paper from his supplies, scribbling what his mouth, his hands wouldn't say.

"What happened to her?"

At this, Robbie jumped back into the conversation, uncharacteristically calm. "Purah cared for her for a bit." Link's eyes widened. Purah—that Purah—being trusted to care for a baby? The two Sheikah looked at each other with a smirk at Link's strong reaction. "Just for a little while—there was a bit where the only real passable route was to Hateno Village, after Zelda's powers awakened at Fort Hateno."

After I was put in the Shrine, he thought.

"They wanted to, tried to, find a Deya Village native to take her in, but the Calamity made that kind of thing hard, especially in the early days. After the roads between Hateno and Kakariko were deemed safe enough to transport her, Purah brought her to Kakariko Village. Whole village had a part in raising her. Don't know much more than that, being stuck up in Akkala at the time and all."

Symin added, "From the stories I heard, she decided to become a traveling merchant, but that's as far as the stories talk of her, sorry."

Link nodded in thanks and chewed on this new information.

She had lived. People had cared for her. It hadn't ended with her being pulled from the demolished remains of a town wiped off the map.

…He wondered, though, if she had eventually left Kakariko because she'd been searching for what the Sheikah who took her in had tried and failed to find—her community, her people, the last shreds of that decimated village.

After a long, long moment, he took a sharp inhale into his nose and breathed it out forcefully.

"How do they do it now? After the Calamity?" he said, his quickly written words luckily still clear enough to read.

Symin started, "When Purah started coding the Purah Pad—" Robbie cleared his throat, "—alongside Robbie, the…" he sighed, "…true… mastermind of the project…" he rolled his eyes as Robbie's expression took on a smug, self-satisfied quality, "she told me I should feel free to take time for myself. You were around; I trust you remember? About a year before Bolson did groundbreaking on the school?" Link nodded.

"I decided to use the opportunity to travel, see all of Hyrule's various regions, to get a better snapshot of its people, you see. It was still so soon after the Calamity was finally over, so I wanted to record how people had been affected, how they were getting on."

Link sucked on his bottom lip. He and Zelda had done something similar, right after beating Calamity Ganon—they were on the road anyway, and Zelda had been so desperate to understand the extent of Hyrule's change over the past hundred years, so it had really been more of a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of situation.

…If Zelda had been the one across from Symin, she'd have probably suggested they make it a longitudinal study or something.

…But she wasn't the one across from Symin. Link was.

Symin continued. "It wasn't my intent to log how deaf children and adults get on nowadays, but I met a number of Hylian deaf people on my journey so I did take some records. Some were born that way; plenty of others went deaf from illness, freak accidents…" He cleared his throat. "Guardians."

Link's brow furrowed. How do you go deaf from a—

"—Trauma. From the lasers, Link," he answered the question that hadn't been asked.

Link's expression shifted, and he looked as if one of the dishes in front of him had just spoiled.

Symin clearly did not want to dwell on this fact, if his tone when he continued speaking was any indication. "…Anyway, most children's parents could hear, and… without the heavy travel more people used to do… with so little known about anyone who survived… Deya… a lot of them, their child is the only deaf person they know. There's not the level of education surrounding it that there might have been a century ago."

…Link guessed that made sense; the days of people traveling from Deya to spread the word must have been long gone with no Deya to spread the word from.

"In regards to their children learning language, a lot of them just… don't know what to do. A number of people who went deaf later tried getting on by speaking and watching others' lips, insofar as they were able. A lot of them operated like you—writing, I mean—for anything complex."

Link's teeth clenched as he cringed internally. The kind of long form writing a complex situation took, or even just the extended back and forth of a deep conversation, was a slog. It probably would not have been inaccurate to say he hated it, in fact. It took so long to lay his thoughts on paper, and for very little reward. He let out a small huff as he realized that was probably the reason whenever he found himself in those kinds of conversations, he eventually dissolved into the handful of gestures he knew would come out reliably, any absolutely required written response growing as short as he could muster.

Link apparently had not reacted outwardly enough for Symin to notice as the man continued. "For the children who had lost their hearing early, on the other hand, some parents tried teaching the children to speak, with varying results. Some of the children came up with signs of their own; some of the parents used them with the children but didn't seem to know what more they could do."

Link pointed to a line in the book, turning it slightly so Symin could see—he drew attention to the words "home signs" under a bullet point about sign language in the Gerudo region.

Symin squinted at the words and tried to get context from the surrounding text, then nodded when he realized Link was trying to communicate a shorthand for the phenomenon Symin had just described.

"Yes, the few who had more than these… home signs, who were using Hyrule's sign languages, generally had the good fortune to know a deaf person who had known sign language themselves—either their parents were deaf, or there were deaf people nearby. One child in Lurelin had gone deafblind at an early age, and her neighbors were a deaf family going all the way back prior to the destruction of Deya—they took her under their wing, and she was thriving."

Link grimaced, wondering how she might be doing now that Lurelin was apparently pirate-infested. He knew several residents had left town—Mubs and Garini came to mind—so he could only hope she and everyone else in Lurelin was okay.

…Did it make sense for him to be taking this break? Was it really worth it to stay and focus on helping the school for a while, or was he letting the rest of Hyrule down by taking time to focus on one little kid—

"Anyhow, I'm sure Hana's lack of language has to do with Miss Raura not living near deaf people and having no reason to travel before she decided to trek here with her daughter. But now that she's around people who do know the language, she has the time to pick it up."

—Focus on the topic at hand, Link. He nodded at Symin's summation of the situation and glanced down at the book.

"And like I said," Symin continued, "I think giving her more language to work with is the place to start." Another nod from Link. "Perhaps once she has a base, we could meet again to work on more structured curriculum. Otherwise, I don't know that there is much else we can specifically plan tonight, I suppose. Especially with the hour. Maybe just give me a debrief on what she learns each day."

He nodded again and then closed the book and looked expectantly at Robbie.

"You can take it. Just bring it back in one piece—don't feed it to a Bokoblin or something."

Link gave a small hum of acknowledgment and started to delicately wrap the meals and place them in his bag. When he was done, he stood and headed to the door. Looking down, he began to lean in, ready to push it open, but not before Symin spoke up.

"One more thing, and I know this isn't what we came here to discuss, but if you don't mind my asking… why are all these meals sundelion-infused, Link?"

He turned to see both Symin and Robbie's eyes on him, searching for the answer.

…He walked out of the lab.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2:
A Closer Look at Regional Differences in Sign Languages and Deaf Communities

Now that you have read a primer on the main points of deaf history within Hyrule, the authors of this book feel it will be useful for readers to understand the major differences between the regional sign languages used within this country in order to have a base on which to build knowledge of the cultural differences which are discussed in later chapters of this text.

Readers will come away from this chapter knowing:

• The main sign languages used in the various regions of Hyrule
• How these languages are similar to and different from the Common Sign Language
• Precipitating factors leading to the formation of these languages
• The rudiments of the history and culture relating to each language (these will be discussed in depth in later chapters)

Hyrule's Regional Sign Languages

Five major non-oral languages—four of them signed—are used in modern Hyrule. A handful of now-extinct sign languages are also known to have existed in the past.

The main points of each one are summarized below.

Hyrule Common Sign Language

• HCSL is the most established sign language for communication between regions of the country.
• It is believed to have originated in majority-Hylian deaf communities in what has become Deya Village.
• Usage nationwide is high even among deaf children born to hearing parents, generally attributed to travelers from Deya spreading its knowledge and utility to other communities and towns in the country.
• Most Sheikah become fluent in HCSL very young so that they can communicate silently in situations requiring stealth, even if they do not eventually go into a profession requiring this.

Hyrule Zora Sign Language

• Sign languages used among Zora are developed for efficient underwater communication.
• Because sign languages within a Zora's Domain are acquired in parallel with spoken languages among the Zora, deaf Zora are extremely well integrated into Domain life and society.
• The language has gained some loanwords pulled from HCSL but is largely separate owing to differences in origin and reasons for use; many loanwords may have been introduced to the language by deaf Zora who have had reason to use sign language outside the Domain and when not underwater.
• Deaf Zora who travel to other areas of Hyrule frequently learn HCSL to communicate with other regions.
• Sign languages vary from one Zora's Domain to another; a Zora from the local Domain may not fully understand the sign language used in another Domain.

Hyrule Gerudo Sign Language

• HGSL has high mutual intelligibility with HCSL, generally attributed to deaf Gerudo who spent their early years in Deya Village or around other deaf people bringing HCSL to Gerudo Town with them.
• Deaf Gerudo born elsewhere who had not yet learned HCSL brought home signs with them when traveling to Gerudo Town; many of these children's signs were incorporated into the general parlance and helped the dialect to grow different enough to be considered a separate language. This is aided by the relative isolation of Gerudo Town and thus the lower likelihood of a deaf Gerudo attending an outside school, such as the large deaf school in Deya Village, past her early years.
• Given the "it takes a village" child-rearing style of Gerudo Town, many Gerudo learn at least the rudiments of sign language in order to communicate with any child who is brought to live there. However, only some adult Gerudo become fluent in either HCSL or HGSL.

Hyrule Rito Gestural-Spatial Language

• Given anatomical differences between Hylian hands and Rito wings, the development of sign language among the Rito is highly divergent from any other sign language in Hyrule.
• The language's slightly different name is based in how the language describes itself.
• The Rito sign language, HRGSL, uses a greater number of gross motor movements rather than the finer handshapes found in HCSL and incorporates flight and dance as integral parts of the language. Many sign language translations of traditional Rito songs are produced entirely using flight and dance signs.
• HRGSL has incorporated few to no loanwords from HCSL; many times, when a concept with no existing sign in HRGSL comes up in conversation, the signer will most often employ circumlocution to describe the concept using existing vocabulary rather than coining a sign or borrowing one from another sign language.
• Deaf Rito may learn HCSL to communicate with other regions and generally produce HCSL that is intelligible to skilled signers, although Rito may be more difficult for beginner and intermediate Hylian signers to understand; it is merely the genesis of their own local sign language that strongly diverges from the histories of other sign languages in use in the country.

Notes on communication among deaf Gorons

• Gorons in the Eldin region do not have a regional sign language and most nonverbal communication takes the form of intricate rock carvings, metal smithed into specific shapes, and complex rock arrangements with idiosyncratic meanings generally not understood by others who have not learned the complexities of this rock arrangement language.
• Enough research has been conducted that it is clear these rock arrangements are truly a language and not simply a communication system. However, due to barriers related to harsh environments and terrain on Death Mountain, Hylian research on Goron rock arrangement language is still in its infancy and thus not within the scope of this edition of this book. It is hoped that we may know more about this unique language by the time we may publish a fourth edition!
• Gorons who also learn sign language generally learn and use HCSL.

Extinct sign languages and their histories

There exist several writings describing a sign language used among Sheikah, but no Sheikah today know it. It is theorized that it may have perhaps been lost many, many years ago during the periods in which the Sheikah hid most aspects of their culture due to pressure from Hyrule's crown family. Although there are reports of Yiga using a sign language unintelligible to other sign language users in Hyrule, it is unclear how much this unresearched Yiga sign may relate to writings about Sheikah Sign Language.

… … … …

Chapter Text

It turned out Hana was a much more eager student when she wasn't crying obsessed with her missing mother.

Her second day proved this, as she showed up eager and started asking, incessantly, what to call each item.

Well. No.

What she would actually do was walk up to something, point to it, sometimes make a sign Link assumed was her home sign for the thing in question, then sign, "Mom?" and look expectantly at Link as if he must know the answer to everything.

Which… he did, here. The words she was asking for—school, building, grass, flower, sit, shoe, and such—would have been fairly basic even if he hadn't been fluent.

…Granted, for the first few, he'd needed to coax himself back into the mindset that maybe talking to this one kid wasn't so scary, but then he found himself settling into a rhythm, seeing her ask, taking note of her own word for the item, and giving her the HCSL sign for it.

Once she'd asked for her tenth word, he pushed himself to take the initiative to try to teach her a better way.

"Mom?" she asked, pointing to one of the trees shading the school.

Link sighed, repeating her own question back to her, then waving his hands and shaking his head, then pointing at the tree and saying, "What's that?" with a nod.

Don't ask "Mom?" Ask "what's that?"

She stared at him for a few moments.

And then she asked, "What's Mom?" and pointed at the tree.

Link pressed his palm to his face with a sigh.

"What's that? Tree. It's a tree."

It went on like that for another three days until—suddenly—

"What's that?" she said, kneeling to squint at the grass.

Link was about to answer when he realized what she'd asked.

She used the real question! He sat awestruck, frozen in his seat as he pondered the implication that he—him. Link. not a proper teacher like Zelda or Symin—taught a kid something other than what he could directly show them.

He came closer, unsure what she was looking at… until he got close enough to scare the cricket away.

She stood and ran after it before he could tell her what it was, though he knew she'd ask again, either after she was done chasing it or the next time she unearthed one in the grass.

He'd just have to be quiet next time.

It was nearly four days after that, about two days after they ran out of objects to learn the words for around the school, and about a day after Hana seemed to have cemented herself as quite proficient in several of the 20 or 30 or so words she'd been practicing over the past week, when Link realized two things. Or rather, he realized one thing, and he started to have a slight inkling of the other.

For one: There were not enough different things around the school for Hana to learn the words of. She'd have to go inside or venture from the grounds to learn more.

And Link only needed three guesses to know which one Hana would go for. And the first two didn't count.

Paper in one hand, Hana's hand in the other, he stepped through the precipice of the school… only to be pulled back by a surprisingly strong six year old.

…Shoulda known.

Midway through his sentence to the class, Symin's eyes met Link's, questioning as he finished his explanation to the children.

Link pulled his hand from Hana's, taking a deep breath… and stopping.

Symin, to his credit, continued speaking to the children, though clearly at this point he was just doing that so that none of the children would get distracted, look to the door, and put more eyes on Link.

He looked back toward Hana, and though he knew she wouldn't run now, he wasn't yet ready to leave her behind and risk that.

So no walking over to hand him the note.

He took another breath, steeling himself yet still shaking, looking down and swallowing as he signed, "Store."

Symin waited until Link looked back up, gave a silent nod, and launched into his next statement to the children.

"Now, children, we will be having a surprise test—"

"—Another one?!"

The East Wind's clientele was about as nonexistent at this hour as the gusts outside that gave it its namesake.

The plan was simple. Talk about the store's inventory, have Hana practice her newfound words by telling him which she'd rather put in a lunch, head back to the school and give her some practical cooking education. Or at least have her watch him make a meal.

Nothing could throw a sledgehammer into this plan.

Or… well…

…Sigh. Pruce doesn't know sign language. He's not going to get on your case if you use it!

…

There are not that many things in here. Just talk to her about all the stuff, discuss lunch, and get out, then.

Exactly. There aren't that many things. He'll be able to figure it out.

And… do what, exactly? Look down on you for talking to a child about—what? Butter?

…

Pruce had been standing behind the counter, watching his sole patron out of the corner of his eye, frozen in front of the milk, for about two minutes.

Link and Zelda had lived in town long enough that he could figure out what was going on even if he'd never seen it happen in the store.

Stretching and clearing his throat, he made a point of being loud and conspicuous as he announced, "Ah, running low on swift carrots. I'll have to go out to the field and see if they've got more ready for harvest."

—He was not low on swift carrots.

He turned to Link and Hana as he added, "Don't want to run out before midday rush. I can trust you not to shoplift, then?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'll let Ivee know to throw the book at ya if you try to. Be back in about 10 minutes."

And then Pruce hopped the counter and left the store.

He. Left the store. With Link inside.

Pruce. The man who had a history of admonishing Link if he examined a bottle of milk and then sat it back down "wrong".

There were a few things Link probably could have done next. Left the store. Tried to scribble down something for Pruce and run after him to ask why. Poked his head out to see if Ivee really had been told to watch for shoplifting.

Instead, he eyed the clock on the back wall.

…Ten minutes, huh?

He was about to start cooking lunch—some small meat-stuffed pumpkins, as Hana had requested he buy pumpkin—when the inkling of the second thing turned into a full-on second thing.

For two: Kids didn't learn language like this, not really. He'd never actually had a kid, of course, and he'd only caught the occasional glance of Hudson and Rhondson raising Mattison—huh, were they doing okay? he hadn't had the chance to stop by Tarrey Town since the Upheaval started—but they didn't just say a bunch of names of things at her.

They talked to her, like a person.

But would that work? Hana wasn't a baby.

…Would the heavy miming he was doing be any more effective at helping her learn HCSL than just… using HCSL with her?

—Not like it'd be harmful, he supposed.

He started describing what he was doing, explaining in as basic a way as he knew how, as he cut the top off the pumpkin, hollowed it out, as he diced the meat.

He opted not to explain the grated sundelion he'd covertly added to his own.

…She looked… confused, honestly. But she kept her eyes on him, as if analyzing his words, trying to figure out what the ones she didn't yet know meant in the context of the ones she did know, of the things he was doing.

She tried a few of the new words experimentally, as if it might give her more insight, but understandably, she didn't seem to understand them from the single bit of context of him using them to explain the recipe.

He surreptitiously eyed her continued testing of the new signs as he went quiet, the more hands-on part of the recipe having arrived, and soon enough he was finished.

With the meat-stuffed pumpkin finally sat in front of her, and another in front of him, he settled down to eat the filling lunch.

Or, well, he did until he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to face his student.

"Cricket?" she said, pointing at her meal.

There was not a cricket visible marring the dish. He cocked a brow. …Was she asking what would happen if he added one?

…No way to know for sure with the amount of language she had thus far, but given the way she was looking at the food, the same sort of experimental look she'd given his signs, it felt like a reasonable guess.

Well. He did have one more pumpkin. And several more portable cooking pots. Might as well warn her of the dangers of dubious food now.

Chapter Text

…If you'd have asked any random Hateno passerby whether the man skipping through the town center, sniffing the flowers, reaching out to touch the mushroom sculptures, was Link, they'd have told you no.

Link, the hero of Hyrule, Zelda's chosen protector, just did. not. act. like. that.

Not when he frequented the town before he defeated the Calamity, not when he and Zelda lived in the house across the bridge together, and most certainly not with the way he'd apparently been dragging himself around town—namely between his house and the school—the past few weeks as if he'd never been more exhausted.

If you'd have asked Link whether he cared what the people of Hateno thought of his recent behavior, he'd have told you no.

Who were they to judge? He'd woken up this morning feeling the distinct lack of need for the flower he'd been incorporating into all his meals, thank you very much.

Granted, this meant he'd need to go back to a nightly warding meal as had become his routine in the past few months, but one single maintenance meal a day was so much better than the constant drip of the shorter-acting-but-stronger sunny meals that had become his usual for the past few weeks. It meant he could maybe keep less of a focus on how many sundelions and sun pumpkins he had on him and spend more time focusing on actually useful things.

And that was why he was traipsing through town, smile plastered practically ear to ear, gazing up at the sky, at the clouds and the sea-blue above them as if they were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

The students had the day off today, but he was off to see Symin for a meeting to update him on Hana's schooling and come up with next steps for working with her.

Link already had some ideas he thought were worth talking about… and from the look on Symin's face the other day, so did he.

He skipped up the path to the school, wondering to himself if the spring in his step might last forever.

Nothing could bring him down!

"Good afternoon," Link signed as he walked into the school.

He'd been gradually testing the waters with Symin, pushing himself to try the most minuscule of steps past his comfort zone each time he spoke with the man.

Things were more efficient when he didn't have to walk up to him with a piece of paper every time he wanted to say something.

At this point, he found he still stumbled enough to be self-conscious, a feeling that threatened to shut him up entirely, but he could usually get whatever he needed to say out. Eventually.

Which was… useful, at least, he supposed, even if he still leaned toward writing in order to get his thoughts out with the least hesitation.

Symin, for his part, had learned not to express surprise, to draw attention, the times that Link talked to him with ease—it only served to make Link overthink it and shrink further back into his cave of quiet.

So he hid the raised brow he could feel coming on at Link's zero hesitation greeting—even though Link was not facing him, having gone to stow the few things he'd carried in by the corner desk—and spoke back. "Good afternoon." When Link finished and turned to face him, he continued. "I trust we'll have a lot to talk about, then?"

Link nodded, still wearing the relaxed excitement that had carried him through the village.

They had so much to talk about.

It was very weird to be feeling so on top of the world and still stuck in the shell he seemed to retreat into around nearly everyone that wasn't Sidon or Zelda.

Still, it was to be expected, he supposed—making progress wasn't the same as instant success.

Link had relayed how Hana was doing, mostly in writing:

She was still far from where a six-year-old should be, but she was picking up words fast, starting to experiment with sentences and word order—throwing together signs she knew in whatever sequence suited her, just to see how it felt to say—off the handful of new non-nouns she was picking up off Link's constant running commentary with her.

…It was nice, having that commentary, talking like that with someone new. Though it wasn't absent the occasional bump in the communication road, it was… freeing.

He'd opted to switch it up in the last week or so, adding in games he thought would help her practice the words she knew already and pick up new ones, so they were doing something other than just wandering around the schoolyard and occasionally the town.

The past few days, the topic had been words for feelings. Link had first brought the game of playing out a feeling to the table with her a bit self-consciously, but then he'd slowly inched into acting out more dramatic things so as to have more interesting scenarios he could explain the feelings of.

Narah had joined in one day, even, when she'd passed by them on her spy loop with her brother. Nebb, on the other hand, had been content to keep running through town.

The addition of an extra person to their game had been enough to bring two things to light, ones he was intent on trying to put forth in this meeting.

—But then Symin relayed something, himself:

Raura had expressed to Symin that she was growing less and less sure with each passing week that she could keep up with her daughter's exploding language faculties.

Link had cocked his brow but offered no response, written, signed, or spoken.

Raura's avoidance of him was nothing personal, he knew. She'd recognized her speed-buffed conversation style seemed to freak Link out, so she had started relaying her thoughts through Symin instead, lest she try Link again and accidentally send the conversation into a stalemate, neither party wanting to worry the other one into a quick exit.

Still, he couldn't fight the nagging feeling that perhaps he intimidated her.

Symin didn't seem to catch the slight dip in Link's expression… though that may have been because, outwardly, Link still looked happy as a clam.

Whether he was masking or genuinely still happy for the most part was no one's business but his own.

"Do you think, perhaps, that some sort of tutor—or class, maybe—for Hana's mother, could be useful?"

Link was quick to make an affirmative noise. Just the in he needed to raise his own idea! He leaned in to sign, his words hesitant, thoughtful, but the small, restrained movements he used betrayed he was concerned about how his suggestion would be taken.

"I think… that Hana needs other people around who can sign, too. Not just me. Not her mom, either, if she catches up. Needs people talking around her, not just to her."

Symin caught on to Link's reservations and tempered his tone accordingly. "What, like… people in town learning HCSL as well?"

Link relaxed again and made a so-so motion with his hand. It wasn't like that wouldn't help, and he remembered Narah had been so interested in learning, or at least in having a way to communicate with Hana.

"…Someone fluent, then?"

He nodded.

Symin tapped his chin. "I could do it."

What happened next was a clear sign he really had made progress with Symin.

"What's that face?"

Link wasn't some emotionless guardian, but if he wasn't comfortable enough with someone, most of his emotions didn't reach his face, trapped in the same queue as his words, waiting for permission to come out that they'd never get.

And in full view of Symin, he was wearing an expression that looked as if he'd smelled something odd. Not disgusting. Just odd.

But still.

—Might as well test explaining to the man what was up, then.

"No offense… but…"

"…But what?"

…His fingers danced, unable to find the words he was looking for. There was the familiar tripping-up he was well acquainted with. "You… know… words… but."

"…But."

Link took a deep breath—a sigh, it sounded like to Symin, clearly trying to get himself to cooperate—and signed something Symin couldn't wrap his head around, words he knew but in an order that seemed wrong, and faster than he was used to Link signing, nearly too fast for him to understand.

Link's eyes didn't meet Symin's as he explained himself. "…That's. That's how I talk to Hana. You… You know how to talk to people. You could talk to Hana. But…"

Symin clasped his hands, nodding in understanding. "I don't sign well enough to lead a class, or to be a good model for Hana."

"…Yeah." Hana didn't have a strong hold on grammar and word order when she talked, but perhaps that was the issue—Symin's signing, closer to the spoken languages he knew, might do little more than confuse her… or it could throw off what she'd been learning so far.

"And you probably couldn't manage to lead a full class yet, then?"

Link shook his head. Something in him was very sure he might never be in a room full of kids and have a full command of words; he'd made his peace with that.

Well. Mostly. Was a little embarrassing that he'd been quieter with Narah than he was with Symin these days, when she'd shown interest in his and Hana's game.

"Did you have an idea of what to do, then?"

He hesitated for a moment before jotting his thoughts down—then scratching them out—then jotting again. "Maybe. Searching around for a second teacher. Someone who could show Hana what it's like when two people talk, also has time to teach HCSL to people who'd like to learn."

Symin eyed the paper, and it was obvious to Link what the man was going to say next from the way his fingers rubbed the paper in his hands before he handed it back to Link for any potential additions. 

"And someone you can get yourself to converse with, so you're actually modeling two-way conversation for Hana."

…Yeah. It'd have to be someone he found himself completely comfortable with, or this would never work. Just one person signing would be no more helpful than Link simply sticking around alone.

If only Zelda was here.

…Nothing needs to bring me down, he thought to himself.

"I suppose I should send a courier out with a bulletin to as many of the other settlements as I can."

Link cleared his throat nervously.

Symin quieted but didn't say anything.

"…I. I can go," Link whispered shakily, barely audible.

Symin seemed to want to say something but apparently decided instead to leave the floor open for Link to say more.

He sucked on his lip and switched into signing. "Next week. The spring plant. The older kids won't be at school. Helping their parents plant and stock and stuff. Hana could handle a week off school, too. I'll go then."

And definitely find someone I can talk to. Me.

And I won't fail horribly at all, surely.

"Are you sure?"

No.

Link nodded.

"I suppose that's a plan, then. A week to find another teacher. I can send out a bulletin if you don't arrive back with one, I suppose."

Another nod.

Symin tapped his chin as if to hide that he'd noticed Link's ambivalence about what he'd just volunteered to do and changed the subject.

"Hey. What say we enjoy the rest of our day off? You seemed to be, when I saw you before lunch."

Color flashed onto Link's cheeks—Symin had seen him?

Well. Everyone in town had seen him, and he hadn't cared about what they'd thought.

Symin was someone in town…

He looked up and nodded a third time.

"Between you and me, Robbie was reading an old book and found something about some sort of frozen cream treat recipe. Thought about bringing it into the school's cooking classes, but he suggested I run it by you first. Think you'd want to go get the ingredients with me and try it out?"

Link's eyes widened, glittering with the thought of trying a new food. He'd tried his hand at pizza for the first time in years, but methods to create cheese, recipes for pizza… those had existed when he was young and had only been lost in the Calamity. A frozen treat, on the other hand… that was new.

He stood up and grabbed his stuff, looking back at Symin.

A clear "let's do it" if the man had ever seen one.

Nothing had to bring him down.

Link placed his things on the counter with a thunk, relaxed as he dug through his bag for the cool clumps he'd need for the first warding meal he'd be eating to ease back into his normal treatment routine.

The icy cream, as they'd decided to call it, had been a cap on a mostly great day, all things considered, and Link wondered if a warding version was possible without affecting the ice crystal structure Robbie had said was crucial to the treat's texture…

…But he noted he should probably be a responsible adult and maybe eat a healthy dinner for once.

Cakes and creams for dinner could be some other day. His birthday, maybe.

The day he ended the Upheaval. The day he found Zelda. Brought her back.

—He didn't need to think about that today.

Finding the dark clumps, he pulled them from the depths of his stash, out where he could see them and take an inventory of what he had.

One. Two. Three…

He absently thought of what he might eat as his hand slid each individual clump over as he counted. Stew was an option. Curry. Rice balls. He didn't have the stuff for pizza today… He could make meat and rice, a pilaf, maybe. Paella. Risotto.

—His hand hit empty counter.

He looked down in confusion at the place the now-fully-counted pile of clumps had been, and then his eyes roamed over to where they were now.

He scanned frantically over what he'd already counted once, hoping his eyes came to a different conclusion than his hands had.

They did not, and he wasn't sure whether the sudden slack of his mouth was from realization or from fear.

He didn't have as many dark clumps as he thought.

Chapter Text

Link was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

Hana could tell, you see, because when he came to the school, he got there after her and his hair was a mess, like he forgot to wake up and his mom hadn't had time to brush it, and he looked real tired, like how Mom looked that one time she just kept riding down the road all night instead of stopping at the stables they kept passing. Hana didn't sleep much either that night, because of the bump-bump-bumps of the road, and afterward she had had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, so that meant she could tell Link was probably having one, too.

He dragged his feet as he came to their spot, and he plopped down, and he unwrapped a gross-looking piece of bread and frowned when he ate it. He never ate breakfast in front of Hana, and his mom must have messed the breakfast up for it to look like that, so she could tell Link was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

He looked a little better after he ate it, but Hana was still worried, so she stood in front of him. He looked up at her, half smiling, and then he said, "Good morning. How are you?"

Oh, yes! Link had been teaching her feeling words this week. She had been learning a lot, which was why she could tell it was not a good morning and that he was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

She stamped her foot, and she said, "Tired." And then Link replied, "You don't look tired. You look," and then he said a word Hana didn't remember learning and also she didn't care, because, "No! You're tired!" She stamped her foot again with an angry grunt.

His face looked real empty after she said it, like he looked sometimes when it looked like he was going to talk to her but then he just sat there instead. She growled, and he looked a little sad after that, but at least he looked like he was gonna talk again.

"I'm… not tired," he said, "I'm…" he looked toward the road like he had to think real hard about what to say, "I'm okay."

"Okay" was a word Hana had learned when she fell off the pull-up bar and skinned her knee a while ago, and Link had helped her up and calmed her down and he'd said, "You're okay." And then he taught her the word for "strong" and told her if she kept practicing the bars, she'd get strong.

Because she knew what "okay" meant, she knew that Link was definitely not okay. He was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, but he wouldn't admit it!

He picked up a stick like he wanted to write something, but she stomped away before he could.

It was a travesty of enormous proportions! She wouldn't stand for it! If Link couldn't say that he was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, then she was going to find someone who would!

She stomped all the way to the door of the school, but she didn't go in. She didn't go in because there were big kids in there. Big kids were pretty scary, and the mean ones she had seen at stables were even scarier, so there was no way she was going inside, because she didn't want to also be having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

She stood there and looked over at Link, and he looked confused and then worried and then a little scared. Then he pinched his nose and closed his eyes. He didn't look up at her again for a while after that.

She looked back into the door, and the guy with the white hair was coming over to see her.

"Are you okay?" he said, except he didn't say it like Link would say it, and that confused her. She decided to grab his hand and drag him over to Link, because surely if he saw, he would agree with her.

Link was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day!

Hana watched the guy's face once Link looked up at him, and he looked real worried and did that thing with his mouth that she didn't understand why everyone around her except Link seemed to do.

"I'm okay," Link said, except that Hana could see his hands were shaking this time.

The guy did that thing again, and Link squirmed in his seat like Hana did sometimes when she knew someone wanted her to sit still.

He looked at her and then he looked at the guy, and then the guy did it again. Link looked down. His hands made fists and Hana could see his eyes get angry, and he sat like that for a minute, but then he nodded his head and stood up.

Then he walked away from the school, like Hana did when she was going to the inn with Mom.

The guy said something to her she didn't understand, so she decided to think he had said that Link had finally decided to admit that he was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

He tried to make her go inside, but she wouldn't do it, so eventually, he let her go off with the kids who came up to the school and ran around town every day.

Maybe tomorrow Link would be better. Some days were just like that.

Chapter Text

…If you'd have asked any random Hateno passerby whether the man dragging his feet through the dirt on the town's main path, never straying from some invisible line down its center, avoiding meeting the eyes of anyone who caught sight of him, was Link, they'd have told you yes.

Unfortunately.

Link, their longtime neighbor, valued Hateno resident, Miss Zelda's closest confidante, had been acting like that distressingly often these days.

Sure, he'd kept to himself around here before he defeated the Calamity. Afterward, he faded into the background whenever he and Zelda were out together, ceding any recognition of his own to her recognition as princess. Even their house was usually recognized as Zelda's, and he was fine with that.

They'd noticed the change in him when he'd appeared back in town a second time after the start of the Upheaval, the way he'd arrived looking so devoid of energy.

Hateno was so far removed from most sources of gloom they scarcely knew what exposure to it looked like. But they'd heard things, from merchants and travelers who'd made their way from elsewhere. And given what they'd heard, it wasn't hard, even without proof, to think things about Link's current state of disarray.

…But he'd looked like he had been getting so much better! Just yesterday, in fact!

If you'd have asked Link whether he cared what the people of Hateno thought of his current state, he'd have told you no.

He'd have been lying.

He'd put off that warding meal he'd meant to eat last night. He'd hoped the half dose would be more manageable if he ate it in the morning; maybe the effects closer to when he took it would be stronger and they'd at least have carried him through the school day, instead of him taking it at night and sleeping through the first hours after the dose.

…But that meant the gloom had time to take hold of him in his sleep, in what should have been his chance to refill his energy stores.

He'd gotten out of bed at 6.

—Which might not have seemed too late, to some people in town… but he had first cracked his eyes open at 4:45.

…It was like he was stuck to the mattress, like he'd gone and used Ultrahand on his own body to glue himself to the sheets and he just couldn't manage to shake himself apart, to separate himself from the rest of the build.

Once he'd finally stumbled, still trying and failing to shake off sleep, into the kitchen, it was 6:20, and it was obvious that he didn't have enough time to make the bread he'd preferred to have made, even if he discounted the fact that he'd not gotten it started last night, and he didn't have the energy to muster for the prep it required anyway.

He managed to mix a quick muffin batter instead. Badly.

It took three times as long as it should have just to make the batter, and by the time the muffins were ready, he knew he wouldn't have the time to eat what he needed if he wanted to make it to the school before Hana.

He shoved one of the unrisen, clearly undermixed muffins into his mouth, frowning at the dense, gummy mouthfeel as he wrapped up what was left and opened the door.

—Why did he live so far away from the school? Why couldn't he live inside it, like Symin?

…It took so long to get there that, like he'd worried, Hana had arrived first.

Hana never arrived first, and he hadn't finished his breakfast. Usually, he never even ate breakfast at the school in the first place.

…And then he realized mid-muffin-mouthful that he hadn't brushed his hair, either.

It was a wonder he wasn't at the school in his pajamas, frankly. Or more (less?), just his underwear.

Hana had seen right through his attempts to shove all that to the background. She practically entered the school's precipice over it.

Bested by a six-year-old.

He'd hoped Symin would be easier to convince.

—And then he hadn't managed to get more than two words out—partially his tendency to lock up rearing its head, partially Symin's concern making him harder to sway anyway—before he'd been asked to leave for the day.

"Take a day off," Symin had said.

Link begrudgingly accepted the ultimatum and left.

Probably for the best. That post-meal stronger anti-gloom boost he'd hoped for either didn't exist or was intangible at the lowered dose, because it never came.

…Maybe it had at least given him enough energy to make it to dinner and maybe right the ship a bit.

But that would have required him to figure out how to distract himself from the idea of returning to the bed and nap his body seemed to so desperately be calling out for.

It was 8:45.

Link was aware of the two gossiping next to him before he properly caught on to what they were saying.

—But he slowed to a stop when he realized who it was about.

He must have been pretty conspicuous about it, because the two stopped talking and turned to look at him.

He sighed. Reaching into his bag, he made no secret of pulling out the hat Cece had bequeathed him for helping with the town's election.

Amira held up her hand. "Put that up, Master Link. No point in acting like it's gossip when the person we're talking about is right in front of us. Might as well let you in on it."

Cautiously, he lowered the hat back into the bag.

Nikki, a bit more reserved, said, "We've heard about that new charge of yours, up there at the school. Hear you've been doin' some good work."

He looked down and clasped his hands with a smile he tried not to let them see, in a way he only did when he got a genuine, personal compliment. Yunobo, complimenting his seasoning when he'd tried his hand at cooking a rock roast after they'd finished the fire temple a couple of months ago. Sidon, excitedly sparring with him, about a month before… everything. Vilia, telling him what a pretty girl he was, a few years ago.

He hoped they were all okay. (Well. Yunobo was okay, as much as he could be, last he'd checked. But the others…)

Amira and Nikki shared a glance while Link's gaze was off them, because he wasn't hiding his bashful appreciation very well.

"Azu says her name's Hana, is it? I think I've seen her and her mother around town, near the inn," Amira said, trying to restart the conversation.

…Link didn't know where Azu had heard her name said aloud, but he looked up and nodded nonetheless.

Nikki shifted the basket she was carrying. "Narah said she joined in a game with you two. Felt sad she didn't know how to talk with Hana, though. She said you've been teaching that… ah… what was it called…"

He pulled out a paper and wrote his response. "Sign language."

"Right. She said she wished she could take class with you and Hana, since she says Hana's younger than her, but she thinks you're too advanced."

Link let the very corner of his mouth upturn—he wasn't sure Hana's 75, 150 or so words counted as "advanced"—and wrote, "Maybe she can learn."

"What, you gonna teach her?" Nikki said with a chuckle.

She didn't mean it as anything more than a humored acknowledgement of his tendency to silence, but he still found himself biting his lip self-consciously as he shook his head.

"Well, whoever she learns from, I hope they're as good a teacher as it seems you've been, getting that kid so advanced in under a month. Keep up the good work. Heck, I might take a lesson or two, too. Even if that's partly so Narah don't run off."

Amira nodded. "I know Azu would be interested. He talks like he doesn't like school, but I think he's just self-conscious about his reading."

—That checked out. Symin had made the assumption Azu's rift with Sefaro was simply a case of Sayge's business picking up with the fashion boom, leaving Sefaro with no time to join Azu on spy patrols, but Zelda had privately let on to Link that she thought it may have had more to do with Azu needing more help to get off the ground in reading while his once-best-friend soared forward, conquering the primers, the alphabet books and basal readers, fairy tales and novels, until there wasn't a book left in town he couldn't read.

Link thought for a second and jotted down another response. "Looking for another teacher. Outside town."

"Really? Heading out to look during the spring plant, then?" Amira said.

He nodded. Was it that obvious?

"Kids'll all be out of school and busy as it is. Seemed the most sensible time," she continued. Link had heard Azu was going to be tasked with inventorying farming tools the store only carried in large numbers the weeks of the big plants. He was sure the other kids had work sowing the fields with their parents; Zelda had once said Sayge used the unique colors of the off-season cover crops to make limited-time-offer dye colors, so for all he knew, Sefaro might help with that.

"Well, good luck to ya, then," she finished. "And between all that teaching and traveling of yours, make sure you're getting enough rest, huh?"

He tried not to think of what would have made her say that as he nodded and turned toward the shop door. 

…The conversation had killed a few minutes. Maybe detours like this could keep him up…

The two women turned back to each other, and though they mumbled, he could still make out what they said before he passed through the shop's doorway.

"He looks worse than he did a month ago, 'Mir."

"—Mister Link?"

Link cracked his eyes open and found himself face to face with Nebb.

"I never saw someone sleep in a store! Were you on a… um… what's it called—oh! A stakeout?"

Link didn't react, mentally turning over the thought in his mind that he didn't remember what had made him go through with sitting down on the staircase to the East Wind's second floor and that he certainly didn't remember falling asleep here.

Maybe the detours can't keep me up…

Nebb went on as if Link's (lack of) response wasn't unusual in the least. "Me and Narah are watching out for stealers. We gotta make sure no one does… A-Zoom called it something. Shop…? Shopliving?"

"Mister Link, um," Narah added. "Don't you gotta be at the school? You gotta… like…" She clenched and unclenched her hands. "Like that! I wish I could do that!"

Link looked from Narah to Nebb… and then up to Pruce, who'd come out from behind the counter to look the kids in the face. The shopkeeper cleared his throat, and Nebb whipped around with a stored energy Link very much envied right now.

"Hi, Mister Pruce! We're making sure no bad guys take all your stuff without paying for it!"

"…Right." Pruce rolled his eyes. "You know loss prevention is my son's mission, not yours. So. Uh. Stand down. Or whatever."

Nebb crossed his arms with a hubris Link did not envy one bit. "We only take orders from A-Zoom."

Pruce, no longer playing, placed his hands on his hips sternly. "You'll take orders from me or I'll go outside and let your mother know."

"…He's onto us, Narah! Retreat!"

The two ran out the door, leaving the store empty but for Pruce and Link.

Pruce turned and said with a sigh, "Link. I'm not one to judge you—"

A grimace must've reached his face, because Pruce revised his statement.

"—Fine, I might be one to judge you—but…" he crossed his arms, "way you're looking, you might have a better time at home, hm?"

Link sighed and dug a slip of paper out. He must have spent a minute writing and rewriting before he was satisfied (or as satisfied as he could get, anyway) with what he handed to Pruce.

"If I go home, I'll go to sleep."

"So? Maybe you need the sleep, then. Better than sleeping in my shop."

…It wasn't Pruce's fault.

He didn't know that sleeping in a bed, in a house, was almost useless against the clawing, oozing exhaustion the gloom smothered him in.

Even a nap in the sun wouldn't be terribly helpful on its own.

…Maybe it might not be completely useless, though; last time he'd tried it was before he'd ever happened on the dark clumps strategy. …Maybe it was worth a try now; if anything, it wouldn't hurt alongside the half-effective breakfast he'd had.

—At any rate, he couldn't stick around the store like this; he was clearly annoying Pruce and doing nothing but getting in the way.

He nodded tersely and stood to head toward the door. Pruce's brow furrowed, and he glanced off to the side for a moment before speaking up.

"—Hey, before you go…" Link turned at Pruce's words, "You mind taking these sun pumpkins off my hands? On the house! They're about to turn."

Link reached into his pocket and handed Pruce money for the pumpkins.

Full price.

His eyes blinked open, and he took an inventory of the situation.

…He didn't feel good, exactly.

—But he didn't feel awful, either.

He knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He sat up and made the mental note to grab his discarded shirt off the fence when he next stood.

"…Professor Link? What are you doing here?"

Link looked over and noticed Karin had fully crossed the bridge from her normal spot on the hill across the river and was eyeing where he sat in the tall grass.

…It was sometime after school let out, then.

He looked over to the house and back to Karin.

She was so smart. Had she really not put two and two together?

He pointed to the house, then to himself, then to the house.

"…You wanna see Miss Zelda, too?"

Thinking on that for a moment, he made a so-so motion with his hand.

"You… Hmm…"

He sighed, pulled himself up off the ground, and retrieved his shirt; then, he motioned for Karin to follow him inside.

She frowned, but she did as asked.

He opened the door, walked over to the table, where he'd discarded his bag and the Purah Pad, and pulled out an apple, snacking on it as he waited for her to make the connection.

She stay stayed quiet. Until…

"You live here, too!?"

His back to her, he let a smirk cross his face. It was gone by the time he turned around, when he nodded to confirm her suspicions.

"I'm sorry if this sounds like I don't believe you, but… Miss Zelda let us all spend time in the house, but I've never seen you in here, Professor Link."

Zelda's daily extracurricular time with the kids had started not too long after the school had officially entered session for the first time. At first it had been just one kid showing up on a whim—Karin herself, actually. Then it'd been Karin and a friend. Then, more often than not, it had been the entire student body.

Which was all of four kids, but their inquisitive nature, paired with Zelda's zest for research and academia, meant sometimes it got… chaotic.

The message he ultimately wrote to Karin to communicate as much said only, "You guys are loud. I go somewhere secret."

Usually, he just holed himself up in the bedroom with a book or something and waited it out. If that wasn't enough, he went out, climbed some trees. Maybe went down to the forest to shoot some game to cook for dinner or sell to Pruce.

He made a point not to sneak into Zelda's well—it was her "secret" even if she knew he knew about it—but he did sometimes slip down there, on days the weather was particularly bad up top.

"We could have been quieter," Karin said as he took methodical bites of the apple. "Then you wouldn't have had to go."

He shrugged. It wasn't so much the noise as the people that was the true issue. Some days he was up for it, but that many? In his house?

"…Still," she said, more apologetic than she really needed to be.

Link didn't answer as he put the apple core on the counter.

"Do you think Miss Zelda will be happy to see me again, when she comes back?"

Something in him caught at the mention of Zelda, but he was still quick to nod. If—when, it had to be when, Zelda was smart enough—she came back, he knew one of the things she'd be over the moon about, more than anything, would be seeing the students again.

"What do you think… she'll… um—" She stopped in her tracks and seemed to change thoughts. "Where is she?"

His lips pressed together and he pushed his breaths to stay steady.

He knew where she was, and he suspected she wasn't back.

No matter what the Yiga Clan wanted him to believe.

…That answer would crush Karin.

There was no way he could tell her.

He fiddled with a fingernail on his sound hand as he tried to figure out how to answer, but then…

"It's okay. You don't have to. I know it's hard."

He relaxed, but only slightly, before she kept going.

"I know it's not the same as for you, but… sometimes… I worry about talking to people, too. …Miss Zelda made me feel… confident, I guess. Like she listened to kids. …Like she listened to me."

His lips parted into an almost-smile.

…Yeah. She had a penchant for coaxing people into comfort.

…When she didn't hold a grudge against someone, anyway.

"…Do you know when she's coming back?"

—His lips snapped shut again, and his widened eyes scanned the room like he was looking for a fast retreat.

From his own house.

Karin looked down and fidgeted with her hands.

"Aster says Miss Zelda's probably not gonna come back at all."

Link's brows knitted, a scowl crossed his lips, and his hands formed fists—or the left one did, anyhow; even now, so used to how Rauru's old arm controlled, he didn't always trust it was moving as he imagined it unless he looked down at it to confirm.

At most, Karin had only seen his fists and not his face, but whatever he was giving off must have made her want to walk what she'd said back a bit. "…I don't think she meant it like that. I think she means… um… that Miss Zelda went on an adventure, like she said she would, but she wanted to spend longer there." She looked up to meet his eyes. "Since she told us she was going with you, Professor Link."

The "but you're back and she's not" didn't even need to be spoken.

He closed his eyes and sighed and managed to let some of the anger dissipate.

…And then things got quiet.

Finally, Karin said, "I think maybe I should go home, Professor Link."

Link thought about letting her know she wasn't imposing… but then he gave the Purah Pad a tap to see it was nearly 7:00 pm.

"I'll still probably watch your house, I think. But maybe you can tell me first, before anyone else, if she comes back while I'm not around?" she said with a small smile.

"Mm," he managed.

…Gladly, she took it as the yes it was supposed to be.

He grabbed the apple core and followed her outside so he could throw it out to decompose.

Karin walked to the bridge and then faced him once more.

She said, turning around with a sense of finality and starting to walk away before he could provide any sort of answer, perhaps with an idea of what his answer would be, "I still think she'll come back."

He turned and headed back into the house, trying to come up with the least tiring thing to make for dinner.

…So did he.

Chapter Text

Link was in the middle of nocking an arrow, trying to figure out if there were any good targets he could aim for from the top of the short lookout tower he'd—for some god-awful reason—decided it was a good use of his time and energy to climb after defeating the monsters at its base, when he wondered if he should take an inventory of the choices that had brought him here to the coast.

Step one on leaving Hateno was to head to Zora's Domain, just north. Maybe their issue would be minor enough he could pull someone away; HZSL was almost nothing like HCSL, but Sidon had remarked that having a good Zora Sign base had made learning some Common Sign easier, the one time Link had signed with him, and he knew one or two Zora who were particularly interested in languages had probably given the language a shot. Maybe one of them could help.

Maybe if their muck problem he'd heard about was… manageable, he could send someone Hateno's way, just while he spent the time to solve it.

—He'd needed only to get close enough to see the sludge pouring from the sky for himself before that plan was axed. He'd just finished watching the ancient sages vow to aid Rauru and had simply looked up.

…Maybe he could pretend the guilt coursing through his veins over leaving them even longer was gloom instead.

Then he'd have had an excuse.

(Honestly, it wasn't too far from the truth, anyway. He hadn't found a shrine all day, despite his sensor alerting to one it insisted was nearby, it was getting dark, and his normal dinner warding dose was approaching. And even that dose wouldn't quite cut it, just like it hadn't yesterday or the day before that…)

…

Not yet.

He just… needed a little longer. To beat this.

Yeah.

He'd be able to help soon. After he somehow figured out how to stop rationing. After he'd gotten Hana settled. After more people knew how to sign.

Soon.

A few weeks or something. Maybe a month.

Probably.

He looked down at where the tear had once been.

…Hm.

He cocked his head and decided now was as good a time as any to set up camp.

The Gorons didn't have anyone who could help, but he'd remembered to ask Yunobo about the rock arrangement thing he'd read about in that book he'd borrowed from Robbie.

The language was still alive, though Yunobo said a few other Gorons knew it better than he did.

…Maybe some other time.

There was a geoglyph he'd put off for later when he'd last been here.

No.

No. No.

No. No. No. No.

She was smarter than that, she had to be smarter than that!

…There—

—There…

…

…There had to be another way.

—Right?

Yeah… Yeah!

He'd find another tear, a later one, that let him know Zelda hadn't made the asinine—to borrow Revali's favorite word, though he knew the Rito warrior would hate he was doing it—decision to… to…

—to…

…to—

He couldn't focus.

Not on the reason he was out here.

Not on his surroundings.

Not on the… deceptively calm vision he'd had this time.

Once he'd seen Sonia, he knew it hadn't come after, and he needed one that came after.

She needed one that came after.

It didn't matter that she'd spoken so warmly of him that it was like a mini warding meal, right in the middle of the day, as if her light powers had transcended time.

It didn't matter that she had been learning more about her time powers, not when her decision not to use them came after.

It didn't matter.

Nothing mattered unless it was about getting her home.

Really home. Not as… as a…

…He took one look at the desert from up on the snowy mountain after watching Ganondorf swear his fealty and knew he wasn't ready for that yet. Not with the way monsters now were stronger than they'd been when he woke up on the Great Sky Island those months ago.

…It'd be okay.

The Gerudo had been through shrouds and storms before, with Vah Naboris. Plenty of capable warriors lived right in Gerudo Town. They could hold their own. Until he got over this.

Right?

…What if another 1, 10, 100 years passed, and he never shook this off?

What if this was his forever?

—What if the day he was ready never came and the entirety of Hyrule collapsed again and it was all his fault?

…

…Nobody at this stable would be able to help Hana.

On to the next place.

He headed due east and hoped for no storms.

Proving Grounds shrines were always pretty difficult, and they were even more so when fog was threatening to encroach on his brain like he'd made a wrong turn in the Lost Woods—he needed to go figure out what was going on there sometime—when his muscles (his bones?) were protesting at the end of a long under-treated day.

Luckily, the trick to the shrine had been easy once he, you know, realized what the trick was.

And in the end, Sifumim had been a breath of fresh air. Afterward he'd felt almost—

Well.

Normal was subjective.

He'd felt… good, on a post-Upheaval scale. Fantastic, even!

(On a pre-Upheaval scale, this would've been the kind of day Zelda would have pushed him to take a break and get back to stuff tomorrow but not the kind of day she'd have forced him to take one.

…

…Zelda wasn't here right now.)

He'd taken the sign from the universe and set his eyes on clearing Lurelin. He might not have been up for the Domain yet, might have backed slowly away from the shrouded desert, but, especially with the shrine, he knew he could handle a swarm of basic monsters.

Even if these ones were stronger than he'd seen in years.

Besides, there was a geoglyph here, and… frankly, he wasn't holding out hope, but still, it was the last one and he was already here and he might as well, but there was no way he was getting there without clearing out the pirate infestation.

He'd killed the one in the well first, used its horn as the most powerful weapon he'd gotten his hands on thus far.

He'd had to sneak up on the ones at the base of the lookout tower. Took the lizalfos out with a couple (dozen) well-aimed arrows to the face, ducking behind the peak of the thatched house roof before it could lay eyes on him and retaliate.

From there, disposing of the bokos was as easy as building a guster and sending them to a watery grave.

…He paused halfway up the ladder when he heard grunting below him.

A blue boko he hadn't seen, probably keeping watch nearby.

He dropped a hammer he'd built forever ago, so close to breaking, and let it smash against the thing's head.

He couldn't even see anything up here, or at least not anything he could do anything about. The camps on the other side of the bay were too far for his arrows to reach, and the giant skull on the boat was conveniently blocking even the slightest glimpse of its occupants.

Putting away his bow and arrow, he knelt and let his head come down to meet the wood, sweeping his untied hair off the nape of his neck and pulling at his shirt in the hopes it'd ride up and maybe expose the small of his back to the sun. Maybe at least sort of prolong the feeling from the shrine that he'd noticed had only just started to dip.

(…The sun was bright in Lurelin today, but it wasn't that bright.)

…What was he doing?

—No. Really. What was he doing?

Underneath the temporary tourniquet that was the shrine, his half-effective dinner, the probably-more-useless-than-not sunshine, he could still feel the aches and pains in every bit of his body, the way it felt to push through the molasses that was gloom sickness.

The scars he'd gotten before, during, and after the Calamity had made for some off days, sometimes, but those were usually fine.

…This was every day.

It never ended.

Even when it got better, it didn't get better, really, so much as go off to wait in the wings for its next big moment in the joke of a play that was Link's life.

He turned over to splay himself out on the platform and look up into the sky—blue, perfect, happy, because of course it was, and thought to himself.

He'd pushed himself for the last three or four hours, maybe more, to kill… what? Five monsters?

Five monsters. The him from before all this would have scoffed at his own incompetence. (Except he wouldn't have, really, because he knew what it meant to feel less competent than you were.)

Three or four hours. A lot of that could have been attributed to opting for a stealthier approach, but…

He'd been doing this too long.

He'd traveled a circle around most all of Hyrule for the better part of a week and hadn't found a single teacher fit to be a second model for Hana. He hadn't met a deaf person who was both fluent in sign and relatively unintimidating who was willing to drop their entire life to move cross-country—reasonable—and the hearing people he'd run into who signed were… bad at it. And that was before he even thought of broaching the question to them.

All he'd managed to do was tire out his whole body just in time to need to start heading back to Hateno, where Symin would surely be judging him for coming up empty, where he'd let Hana down, where no one would be able to take that imagined class and make things better for her and any other person who came through Hateno and signed.

Make things better for himself, if he'd just get out of his shell the most minuscule amount.

He'd been doing this too long.

He was a hundred-and-twenty-odd years old. Almost everyone he'd once loved had died. He'd nearly died, and he'd forgotten them—luckily not permanently—in the process of coming back.

It'd been a hundred-odd years without them.

It'd probably be however many years left in his life without Zelda, the only person besides him who knew—had once known, anyway—this feeling. (Not even Purah or Impa or Robbie—they'd at least had each other, at least spent the century awake and in a corporeal form.)

…He'd been doing this too long.

The bonfire on the ship was good cover; he'd gotten a few choice shots on the bokoblin on the higher deck without being spotted, and he'd landed a good fire fruit shot on one of the bomb barrels on the main deck at just the right time to send a few more to a watery doom.

He rolled his sore shoulders and pressed his hands against his eyes, trying to will the dull headache that seemed centered in his forehead to maybe stop in its tracks.

…

—Crap.

…The high of the shrine was starting to wear off.

Like, really wear off.

He had an hour. Maybe.

It was now or never.

He hadn't found a teacher, probably wouldn't the way things were looking, and if he didn't at least get this done, then he'd have nothing to show for his time away. Not for Hana. Not for Hyrule. Not for Zelda.

Not for anyone.

He had one bomb flower—the rest of his inventory of it burned through during his incident in the depths—but maybe it'd be enough. If he ambushed the boss and landed a bomb arrow just right, he could knock it into the water and avoid engaging at all. Then, he could take out the last remaining monster on the boat, a black lizalfos, and then…

…He could cross the bridge that was the monsters on the shore when he came to it.

—It'd been a blur.

Now that he'd done it, he wasn't quite sure, couldn't clearly remember, what he'd done, or in what order.

He was just sure of two things as the villagers ran up, the moon high in the sky.

One: His plan had worked.

Two: He'd taken longer than he wanted to do it.

Unfortunately, number two was taking priority over number one right now.

Somebody said something. He didn't quite hear what.

…He started to wonder if he looked as unsteady on his feet as he felt.

Wouldn't be long before he had his answer.

He raised his hands and hoped he'd be able to communicate something, anything that would get him help before…

Thump.

Chapter Text

His eyes shot—well, scooted at a leisurely pace, more like—open.

What time is—

He squeezed them shut again and tried not to let his breath hitch at the fact that he didn't remember how he'd gotten here and what he'd glimpsed of what was above him was bright and blue.

He was not in the Shrine of Resurrection again. It had not been 100 years. The air around him was humid, hot. The Shrine's had been dry, and its heating had been… adequate, if with a persistent draft it never quite overcame. He was on a warm, soft bed. Not a hard slab that felt cold under him even in those first moments of awareness when he was still surrounded by warm water.

Speaking of awareness… though his eyes were still shut, his body shoved its feelings to the fore quite readily the second his train of thought relaxed off his momentary shrine panic.

The first thing that put itself front and center was the pounding headache and now-oppressive fatigue that had frustratingly not receded since… uh—right, he was in Lurelin, he'd dismantled its pirate infestation—and they'd invited shivering chills over for daifugō, unfortunately, which perhaps was a more uncomfortable sensation than it would have been on its own given the to-be-expected humidity and heat of the surrounding air.

Lovely.

Not as bad as when I first woke up on the Great Sky Island, not as bad, not as bad—

The second thing he was aware of was the erratic churning in his stomach. He knew he'd skipped his dinner dose in the fray, but he didn't know how long he'd been out, and he was afraid to find out.

—Maybe as bad. Maybe worse.

…Not as bad as when I woke up in Lookout Landing a month and change ago.

Fantastic consolation prize, that, he thought sarcastically to himself.

He cracked an eye open enough to notice the total lack of roof above him. …That was where the bright and blue had come from, then.

…At least up in the sky, the sun was more intense. Or something. Worked more. Or something.

…This is better than nothing.

He noticed movement and willed himself to focus on it before he let his eye close again.

"Are you okay?" the person said—signed.

…

—Oh. Shoot. Someone who could sign.

Huh.

…Was he okay? He felt like death, knew he likely didn't smell much better, and the blanket of exhaustion over him made even the idea of raising his hand to answer—assuming he could get an answer out—feel like an insurmountable task.

"You do understand HCSL, right?" she continued. "I'm not just talking to a wall? Bolson came and got me out at the stable, told me he saw you say something I recognize as pretty close to 'help', before… well… he said you fell flat on your face out on the boardwalk, but…"

Link summoned what little energy his body had managed to store in however long, however fitfully, he'd been unconscious and nodded.

Wrong choice. The jostling of his head and all its contents sent the current of disorientation and nausea into high gear.

He closed his eyes. He could focus on the conversation later, after the vertigo passed.

…

…

Or now. He could do it now, before he inconvenienced whoever this was even further.

His eyes shot open as put everything he had into making sure he signed the word with the same urgency his superiors probably gave him instructions on the battlefield, back when.

And to her credit, she rushed to meet the moment.

She'd left with the bucket—to wash it, he presumed—when a man he'd never met—and despite the holes in his pre-Calamity memory, he was pretty good at matching names to faces, so that was quite a feat considering he'd been all over—came in with a wet cloth that smelled vaguely—no, strongly—of sea water.

He made good use of it and considered trying to force out some sort of thanks, but the man was gone before he'd even finished cleaning himself up.

…Maybe it was for the better. Moving—even just to try to talk, to sign—felt like torture for now, and Link wasn't sure how much of that was the gloom creeping around in him and how much of it was a body one month removed from its usual fighting routine having been thrust back into it. With gloom creeping around in it.

She came back in sometime later with a cup filled with warm water that was definitely not from the ocean.

"Steeped some Hyrule Herb in it. Better than nothing for rebuilding your strength, I think. Old family herb combo that should help with nausea, too."

She'd have been wrong, but she didn't know that.

…Of course, fixing it himself would've required hoisting his heavy bag off the ground and rummaging through it, which was not happening at this point, so he jabbed a thumb—well. shakingly meandered a thumb.—in its direction.

She turned to pick it up… and then gave up.

"What do you have in this, a hinox?"

He stopped to consider that—he probably had quite a few hinox parts in there, so… maybe?

She asked another question before he could answer, though.

"What do you need from this? Because I ain't lifting it without at least a year of strength training."

If he'd maybe had a rapport with her, he might have let himself laugh at that. Instead, he simply flatly took to figuring out how to answer the question.

He decided not to chance that she wouldn't know the word "sundelion" if he spelled it out, new as they were, so he settled for, "Yellow flower."

(Absently, he noted the lack of much hesitation, the lack of shaking in his hands as he said it. That was a conundrum for a later him.)

Thankfully, she retrieved the correct flower, and she didn't seem to need it explained that he wanted it added to the tea she'd made.

"What would you say, then? Five minutes to steep?"

…He only needed to make it a handful of hours to dinner.

"…Four."

…He was better, after the tea.

Or at least he would have been, if she hadn't been eyeing him closely.

"So, it's gloom illness, then," she eventually said.

In return, Link said nothing.

She sighed. "No one in this town that ain't directly related to me tells me anything unless I ask—so that's what I do. Ask. My great-grandpa said when I was little that it used to be different, before the Calamity happened."

She wasn't wrong, in Deya especially… but even elsewhere, as long as you weren't in some bustling city like Castle Town where most were unlikely to give anyone the time of day if they had somewhere to be, people were more likely to give communicating with you a try, it felt like, than people did now.

Back then, while it probably helped that more people knew what the Hero was supposed to look like, it felt like—at least from the handful of memories he had—it was more often that people gave him the time to at least answer somehow, even if he… didn't.

…These days? Sometimes people—especially people he'd never met, which was maybe why he made a point to meet people, now that he thought about it—walked away if he so much as took the time to pull out a pen and paper.

—The potential for that kind of response when he hadn't even said anything off-putting yet was part of why, when they were together, he was so content to let Zelda do the interacting to such an extent that he often became nothing more than set dressing behind her.

…He was glad having to listen distracted him from the thought that it was looking like she'd never be around for him to hide behind again.

"My brother—guy who brought you the wet cloth? remember him?—name's Juni, he's a merchant, he's half the reason I know stuff from outside this town or in it. Probably helps that he's hearing—more people to eavesdrop on, I suppose. Asked him about the sundelions,"—so she did know what they were—"when I noticed his stock changed a bit after the rocks started falling from the sky and all that."

"Upheaval," he spelled out quickly. His hands nearly tripped over each other as he added, "That's what they call it."

She blinked. "…I can't believe not a single person at the stable ever used that word with me. Do they think I don't know big words just because I'm deaf or something?"

He held back a curl of his lip, a deadpan sort of camaraderie crossing his face—people sometimes seemed to think the same of him, deciding he couldn't understand more academic disciplines just because he wouldn't talk—as he moved to sit up. Keeping his attention on her in case she might have said something more, he noticed she suppressed a worried wince.

…He wondered if he was worse off than he felt when he woke up—perhaps he was just getting used to feeling bad, as terrifying as the prospect sounded—or if she'd just not been terribly familiar with even a more acute case of this.

At any rate, she didn't remark on it, simply continuing with a, "Speaking of what they call things… My name's Anja."

He let her name and name sign settle well into the folds of his brain before he let his hesitant hands respond with his own name, with his century-old name sign, one his teacher had given him to use in the class so that he didn't have to feel strange, as a public figure, as the hero, for having a name sign people across the country already knew.

In class, he wasn't the wielder of the sword that seals the darkness, wasn't the hero. He was just…

"…Link."

A "huh" escaped her lips as she said, "Like the hero. Wonder what he's doing right now."

…He nearly let himself chuckle at the fact no one ever seemed to recognize him.

Still, the smallest something that Zelda—no, not Zelda, not anymore, Sidon maybe—would probably recognize as a smirk crossed his face as he said with more ease than he'd managed to talk to anyone this whole trip, "This."

She blinked like a bokoblin that'd been hit with a muddle bud. "Wait. Seriously?" Before he could answer, a warm laugh fell out of her mouth. "That's hilarious."

He let a small smile worm its way onto his face.

"So…" she said unassumingly. "What brings you to Lurelin Village, then? Can't imagine it's the gambling or the food or even the inn—we thought it might be better to board you there, actually, but Bolson's still rebuilding it. This is one of the only houses that survived, and you were already laid up when I got here, so…"

…

…

He raised his hands to answer.

…And then he dropped them again.

—So.

He'd managed more words with her than he managed with anyone else new, save Hana.

Interesting.

…But it didn't have to mean anything, because he could see the edge of the cliff he was teetering on.

It was fine now.

He was talking to her now.

…But that could all change in an instant.

He'll phrase the question wrong.

Or she'll think it's offensive to ask.

But you didn't have trouble asking some of the people at the stables…

But the people at the stables hadn't been brought into town specifically to nurse him back to what passed for health.

What if he asked her and that was when she decided he'd wasted enough of her day?

About an hour later, he tried to stand up.

She almost didn't let him.

But the tea… it was a good start, he felt… good… all things considered, but he craved the sun, and its position had changed just enough that the hut's interior was now in the shade.

"Just going out to the steps. Promise I won't run off like some kid," he said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes.

…Some part of him did want to run off like some kid. Abandon the search, avoid stressing over this when there were more pressing things to stress over.

Stay in Hateno longer getting Hana settled. Ignore the Upheaval.

Let the world end.

—He didn't want to let the world end. That was a lie.

But the rest…

He pulled himself out of his own head as she sighed and gestured him out the door.

He was letting himself take in as much of the sun as he could with the half-destroyed eaves still providing some cover over his resting place, hoping at least the little bit he was getting might help the sundelion along, when a familiar lilt rang out above him.

"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

Link looked up to lock gaze with Bolson.

He wanted to say something, but…

He nodded.

"I have to say, we really could have used you gathering all the lumber to start patching the town up; I know you're good at that kind of thing." He smirked, no doubt remembering all the wood Link had gathered to buy the house back in Hateno, as he placed a hand on his hip. "Nevertheless, you were in no state last night and besides, many hands make light work!~"

Link sucked on his bottom lip and… nodded again. He could see behind Bolson that a few buildings were in various early states of rebuild. Bolson must've been taking a break and come this way. Maybe to check on him?

"You do seem to be looking a mite better." …Definitely to check on him, then. "I'm glad that gal in there could be of help to you; we thought she might be your best option considering how deliberate that gesture you made looked before you crashed down like that."

…Another nod.

He trained his eyes on the sand and bits of dune grass under his feet.

"…Hey."

He glanced back up just to let Bolson know he was listening and looked back down again.

"…She's a good lady. Helps in town wherever she can, sharp sense of humor when she can get people to listen, she even helped teach a neighbor of hers how to communicate, this little girl who'd lost her hearing and sight from some sort of illness."

One child in Lurelin had gone deafblind at an early age, and her neighbors were a deaf family going all the way back prior to the destruction of Deya—they took her under their wing, and she was thriving.

…Huh.

Link fidgeted and cleared his throat but said nothing.

"Anywho… the rest of the village is taking a break to have an afternoon snack." Bolson stretched his arms high over his head and bent to his side, seeming as if he sorely needed to tease out tired muscles from his latest building project. "You might ought to do something like that yourself. You'll need to look a fair bit more lively if you want to be able to do the Bolson dance when we celebrate rebuilding this place!~"

Link blinked. He'd never done the dance but once, so Zelda could see, because Zelda had asked what Aster had meant by bringing it up on one of the first days of school, and he couldn't point her to Bolson himself for answers because he'd already left town.

…Needless to say, Zelda's… reaction was one that had convinced Link he was not going to be giving an encore performance to a whole village.

"—Um." Link focused on Bolson's shoes and tried to will at least a few words to come.

"Hey, no need to say anything; I know your…" he gestured vaguely as Link crossed his arms, "…thing. Just focus on getting yourself up and at 'em by when the party rolls around, hmm?"

He closed his eyes. Might as well make it another nod.

"Okey-doo, see you then!" he said, turning around with a wave.

Link furrowed his brow as Bolson walked away.

He was eating his dinner when Juni walked up.

He tried to ignore the man eyeing his plate with curiosity, the way it put him ever so slightly on edge, just in case it wasn't the plate the man was looking over with such analytical eyes.

Finally, Juni mumbled to himself, "Whaddya gotta do to get your curry to look like that?"

Link finished savoring the bite in his mouth, sat down his bowl and dug a clump out of his bag.

A spark of recognition lit up Juni's face. "…You don't say. They do anything in the food? Or just look pretty?"

Link suppressed a sigh, putting the clump back in the bag and digging a pen and paper out.

"Gloom protection," he wrote.

Juni squinted and replied, simply, "…There's no gloom around here."

He sucked on his lower lip and replied, "Hard to explain."

Juni said, easygoing, "…I'll take your word for it. Say, though, in that case, I got an offer for you."

Link let the paper in his hand rest on his lap as Juni turned and dug his hand into his own bag, explaining as he did, "Think you can take these off my hands? I'd found 'em lying around a few times, didn't know what they were for—couldn't ever find myself a buyer. Didn't wanna throw 'em away in case someone needed 'em. Maybe you're someone?"

With that, he pulled about 10 dark clumps from his bag.

Link froze and then quickly picked his bowl up to eat a few bites of curry as if it might help mask the look he was sure his face was wearing.

It wasn't very many, sure—the man must've happened on only about four or five places someone had managed to outrun the gloom spawn—but it didn't particularly matter, because even 10 was a good week or so's extra supply, presuming he kept rationing instead of doubling back up. Even if he doubled those up, used 'em as the buffer for when he needed to start heading back out, it'd at least buy him five days.

He took another bite of curry.

—He fished 300 rupees out of his bag.

Juni's eyes shot wide, and his hands flew up, waving away such a prospect. "—Whoa. No need to pay. I'm just happy for someone to take them who might use 'em."

Link shoved the gold rupee back toward the man.

"O-Okay, then. I'll… I'll take your payment."

Link turned back to his paper.

"You're a merchant."

"Yep, usually over near Gerudo Canyon these days, but I hightailed it over here the minute this white Rito guy—I think he works for the newspaper? he was askin' for interviews—touched down to spread the word that the pirates cleared out. Last thing I expected was my sister waving me over to the beach and shoving a wet towel into my hand and then practically ordering me into Malva and Alcea's house without much explanation."

Of course. Penn. Made sense.

…He was probably wondering where Link was; he'd left him all alone right in the middle of investigating strange happenings at the stables…

"I presume Anja's been taking good care of you?" Link made a mental note of Anja's name's pronunciation, because he'd thought it was pronounced the other way, and nodded.

"Good. She's a little hardheaded. Was worried she might have half a mind to kick you out."

He bit his lip, writing, "I'm worried she MIGHT kick me out."

"Really. What'd you do to her?" Juni chuckled.

He fidgeted as he responded, "Not what I did do. What I might do."

"No offense, but you don't look like you're capable of doing something worth being kicked out over. 'Least not if she hasn't done it yet."

"Want to ask her something."

Juni gave him a look as if he was considering cracking a joke but then thought better of it.

"What could you possibly want to ask that's so bad she kicks you out?"

Link looked down and scratched at the side of his face.

"…Great Farore. You're not planning a marriage proposal, are you? You've only known her one day," Juni said, tone ribbing.

The shock hit Link so hard that it knocked away the metal shield his mind had put between him and Juni, that it knocked a near-silent chuckle out of him.

And so he took his pen… hesitated… and then wrote.

"…Well. That certainly is a big question."

The nervousness that had returned to Link's face by the time he'd handed the paper to Juni came full force to the forefront.

Juni scratched his chin as if in thought and then finally supplanted his statement with, "But… I don't think she'll kick you out over it. If our grandma were back in town, she might disapprove if Anja says yes… but that wouldn't be your fault."

With his paper still securely in Juni's hands, he thought maybe he could push himself to sign, but all that sputtered off his fingers was a stilted, "I… My…"

He cleared his throat and gestured for the paper; Juni gave it back readily.

"Might be okay if I get kicked out. Need to go back anyway."

"Well, there you go. No consequences to the decision, then, right?"

Try as he might to rationalize it like Juni, he simply couldn't put all the reasons his brain invented for why it was a Very Consequential Thing aside.

…He shifted gears.

"Why would your grandma disapprove?"

"She's just… not a fan of us leaving Lurelin. Didn't talk to me for a good three months after I decided to go into merchantry. I wasn't here when the pirates landed, but I'm sure she was dragged from the village kicking and screaming by our parents."

When Link's brow furrowed, Juni simply added, "It's old history. Negative experiences around it. Way early in the Calamity. She doesn't like to talk about it. Our great uncle was a little more open about stuff like that, kept her in check—probably the reason she started talking to me again, honestly—but he died a few years back. Maybe just after that Bolson guy moved to town?"

"So she'll rip me a new one if I ask and Anja says yes."

"Hey," Juni said, quite forcefully, "Anja is her own person. If Gran's gonna get all up in arms with someone over it, it'll be between her and Anja. Not you."

When Link wrote nothing more and simply looked down, Juni filled the dead air between them one more time.

"Don't let it put you off asking. I think she'd like to consider the question. Seriously."

Lurelin sure knew how to throw a party.

Which was why, of course, Link was over at the fringes, feeling both more himself and less himself than he'd felt over the past day or so.

…Didn't help that the bone-deep gloom exhaustion was still only halfway working itself out of his system each day.

He was a couple of feet from the throng of townspeople—more than were here right after he'd woken, but still not the whole town; they'd probably throw another party after everyone had come back, but they'd wanted to celebrate before their "Hero" needed to leave.

…Some hero he was.

He didn't deserve the free stuff, didn't deserve the help from Anja after he'd passed out. He hadn't been doing anything to really help them, to solve the Upheaval.

Impa would probably tell him to look at all of it as a gift from Hylia herself. Then she'd joke it'd be blasphemy to question it.

If… Zelda… were here, she'd probably then joke that he committed blasphemy daily.

—Both of them were joking, really; both of them knew he said prayers on a regular basis and that they were more often than not answered.

Only one of them knew he wasn't praying to Hylia.

Only one of them knew he was begging Farore for the courage his station as the chosen hero was supposed to represent.

And it wasn't Impa.

His eyes scanned the sky and landed on a dragon—he couldn't tell which because of how inexplicably high the dragon was flying.

…Maybe it wasn't Zelda anymore, either.

…Maybe he was too apostate to have gotten a gift from any of the goddesses.

—He was at a party, dang it. He should at least be trying not to be such a downer. At least for a few hours.

He looked over the townspeople and landed on Juni and Anja. They were mocking each other about something—he was trying his best not to eavesdrop on what specifically—the play-bicker enough to draw a memory to the front of his mind, his sister and himself doing something not dissimilar during one of their stretches of voice-off signing at home.

(Fruitless stretches, but they were looking for something, anything, that'd let him communicate. Plus, his sister insisted.

…He wished he could remember her name.)

She'd hidden the Master Sword's sheath and promised it was in the house somewhere but wouldn't tell him where. He'd been more than a little angry, but her cunning goading had chilled it enough that he could hurl a few teases her way until she gave him an actually-useful hint.

…He was lucky he'd remembered this one before. He didn't need to cry at a new-to-him memory in front of half the town.

—When he next felt himself blink, the two of them were in front of him, so they must've noticed him looking their direction…

"Told her you had a question," was all Juni signed.

—Cool. Cool.

…Now he had to say something.

Couldn't just back out and leave town and pretend this week didn't happen.

He let the blank look on his face do the talking as he fidgeted until Juni added, "I… think I'm gonna mingle. Or something. Yeah."

…And now he was alone with Anja.

After a few more moments of silence, she squinted her eyes and looked him up and down.

…He was pretty sure she didn't know the effect that'd have on him.

Finally, she said, "Okay. I've got questions. If that's okay."

He bit his lip and then nodded.

"First: You wanted to ask me a question."

He nodded again.

"Good. I was using that one as a test. You pass."

Some tension sloughed off him at that.

But not enough.

She made an idle sort of noise and continued, "Next. You're afraid to ask the question."

Another nod.

"You think whatever you're asking is gonna… scare me?" He shook his head. "Make me angry?"

…That gave him pause. Would it make her angry? …He settled on shaking his head again.

"…Inconvenience me?"

He froze… very nearly nodded… and then, shakingly, said, "I don't know."

"You're afraid I'll react negatively."

…He looked over his shoulder and then gestured for her to follow him to the steps of one of the only houses not quite rebuilt yet, foundation strengthened but gaps still in its roof and walls.

Once they were both settled on the steps, out of eyeshot of the festivities, she turned to him and said, "Do you really think I'd react worse to whatever you want to ask than I did to what you did to my bucket?"

"I don't—…No."

"Then… I'm not gonna push you to ask. But the worst that I think could happen is I don't know the answer, frankly."

He looked down at his hands.

If he really thought about it, the problem was twofold.

She was treating him normally. Not like the hero. Not like she had expectations.

There were so few people who did that, once they knew who he was. Even his interactions with Symin had the man giving off an air of reverence that never fully left even in familiarity. The circle was small. Purah, Robbie, Sidon, Yunobo, Riju… Zelda.

…Maybe he didn't want to knock a person—another person—off that list.

He was talking to her normally. …Right now notwithstanding.

There were so few people he could do that with. Purah, Sidon. Hana. Yunobo, Riju, or Symin on a good day.

…Zelda. Always.

—Maybe not anymore.

He didn't want to knock another person off that list.

…Then again… there was so little in his life that was about what he wanted.

Especially now.

"You… I need…"

He put his hands down. This was never going to work.

She gazed on him, but she didn't say anything. Her eyes were patient.

He tried again.

"There's a girl. In Hateno."

Chapter Text

He lay face up, staring into the cloudless sky.

He felt good.

Not on a post-Upheaval scale, either. If not for some very particular specifics about his current situation, he could close his eyes and pretend the Upheaval never happened.

He felt normal. Normal normal.

…Which, on a post-Upheaval scale, might as well have been superhuman.

—But he wasn't happy.

He cocked his head to the left and let the golden pillow beneath him tickle his cheek for a moment before he finally said, "You're so impulsive, you know?"

No response, but for the wind whipping across the top of his head.

"I mean, I know people say I'm impulsive, and I kind of am, but, ah… mmm." His stomach growled. The irony. "I do at least think before I eat a rock, Zel."

Truthfully, he knew she had thought about it. She thought about everything she ever did, mulled it over, gamed it out for as long as she needed before she committed to a decision.

…If she came to a decision seemingly quickly it always meant she'd either been thinking about it for weeks or she just happened to be able to run through her thoughts on the matter that fast, the solution that obvious.

But it was easier if she'd made the decision in the heat of the moment. For him. It was easier.

It would mean that he could direct this… this—he wasn't sure what the emotion was, actually—somewhere else. That once the final tear had faded and confirmed his—suspicions? worries? fears?—he could direct his… whatever… somewhere other than himself. Than his failure… to… to…

To convince her to rethink going under the castle without a more concrete plan than just trying to figure out what was down there. To keep from losing his arm, from shattering the Master Sword.

To catch her.

To protect everyone.

He looked back up at the sky.

Perfect. Clear.

No knowledge of what was going on below it.

If not for who he was lying on, he could be happy up here, he thinks.

…But he wasn't happy.

"Y'know." He cleared his throat and sat up, running a hand through her… mane? fur? …Hair. Running a hand through her hair. "I was surprised she said yes. Anja."

"Yeah. I could do that."

He was such a fool to think that he'd find anyone, such a fool to think that Anja would agree, such—

…Wait.

"—True biz?" Eyes wide, he found the words tumbling off his hands like a particularly awed whisper might tumble off someone's lips as all the tension of being afraid to be received wrong dropped away.

She snorted.

"Wow, and to think I thought something was 'off' about your signing, maybe you were bluffing your fluency," she chuckled as she signed.

"I'd convinced myself she'd say no. That there was no way she'd be okay with a question like that, you know?" He pressed his lips tightly shut. "I suppose that's something I've been… worse with, without you there to… to… reframe it. I guess."

He frowned.

How was he ever supposed to get better with it, if she might be…

She wasn't gone. She was right here. He was with her.

But that didn't change what it felt like.

…He needed to change the subject.

"She said she'd take the long way around." He cautioned a look over Zelda's side; the sea was pretty far away now that she'd moved steadily west for a bit after showing up over Rist, but he was sure he'd spotted her near Hateno before. …Hopefully she'd come past it in a timely manner… "I suppose that means she might've gone by land, but maybe she just meant the trip by sea would have a detour. …Think she'll get there before us?"

"Symin's filling in as a teacher inside the school building. He's a Sheikah researcher, used to work with Purah—" he wondered in the back of his mind if she had a name sign— "up at the ancient lab."

She crinkled her nose. "Sheikah I've met usually aren't too good at signing. Serviceable. Maybe. But usually only just."

He looked down for a moment, trying to determine how delicate he should be with his response.

"Yeah. That's why I went off looking for someone to help. She needs two people and Symin's signing…" He bit his lip. "Look, I don't wanna say it sucks, that's a little rude, but—"

"Sounds like it sucks."

He acquiesced. "…Yeah. It sucks."

She paused for a thoughtful moment. "Any reason she's not inside with the others? If she can't have a whole school filled with other deaf kids around her, it might be best not to separate her."

Hesitantly, gently, he said, "Well, for one, the other kids are like 3 years older than her… but also… I think she's scared."

Anja cocked a brow.

"I've tried to get her to go in, just so I can try to ask Symin a question, but she won't go past the doorjamb. …Sometimes she even screams, for good measure. I didn't push it because there's so much… stuff outside. I think being out there kinda helped."

"I… I don't know how things are gonna… go, when we—I… when I… get back."

The lowest of rumbles beneath him. If not for the clear skies, he'd have assumed distant thunder.

"I mean, like… once Anja and I are both there, I gotta stick around so Hana has two people… but then… I mean… I… I do have to… to get back to…"

He sighed and glanced westward toward the castle.

"I was going to wait until more people knew how to sign and then go, but…"

But can I even take all this on?

But what's the point?

But why? Why when I can't even save you?

He didn't finish the sentence.

It was the first thing she said as she joined Link by the fire, the festivities of the revival celebration mostly having died down. "Well. Juni decided he's gonna stay back, wait for Gran."

Link raised his hands to apologize, but Anja stopped him before he could.

"Hey, he warned me you'd try that. It's something he wants to do. He might head out again if Gran doesn't completely blow her entire top… but he also promised me he wouldn't completely skip town unless he caught wind of where Alcea and Malva were."

"…Who—"

"Kid me and my dad used to teach. And her mom." He hadn't moved, hadn't thought he'd changed expression, but she must have sensed something off him because she added, "And before you try to apologize for that, she's got a good head on her shoulders. Plus, Dad can handle her alone these days; she only used to be a handful."

"…Still. Your brother—"

"Don't worry about Juni. He wants the break. Said… someone's…" she cocked a brow, "generous payment for one of his goods helped him settle on doing it."

"I mean, what if Hana decides she doesn't like Anja?"

He rested his folded arms on his knees.

Who was he kidding? Hana would probably love Anja.

It only seemed to be older kids she had the problem with.

She wasn't even really put off by Symin.

He rested his head on his arms.

No, if Zelda could see him, respond to him, she wouldn't even need him to say his real concern.

—He did it anyway. For her benefit.

"…What if she sees Anja and… she decides she doesn't like… me?"

"—I figured out why your signing's been so off, to me."

Link, washing a borrowed dish from Kiana he'd used to cook breakfast, went still, trying to figure out if he should be worried, was still still as she continued, rolling over the possibilities in his head. Maybe she'd caught onto the lingering hesitation. Maybe he'd been too forward. Maybe—

"You sign like my great-grandfather."

Her answer wholly unexpected, he found he relaxed slightly as he tried to figure out how he was supposed to respond to that.

"Who taught you?" Anja asked.

He was quick to respond. "You wouldn't know him."

She squinted. "Try me."

…Link was grateful that, though he didn't remember many of the classes themselves, he at least remembered the answer Anja was looking for.

He sighed. "…His name was Nimaaji. …He's been dead for more than a hundred years." He dropped his gaze and his hands to his lap, though only for a moment before he looked back up.

She searched his expression for any hint of a joke and, when she didn't find one, furrowed her brow.

Finally, she said, "…I thought all those things about the hero being put in a long sleep were just stories."

He blinked; now it was his turn to furrow his own brow.

"…You heard a story about the world falling to ruin and staying that way while monsters and guardians," Anja's brow furrowed as he continued, "took over for a century because the hero got shot too many times and you thought it was a story? When you could see the ruins and monsters and guardians with your own two eyes?"

Flatly, she said, "In my defense, I was not a very observant child."

A smile and a chuckle found its way out of his lips.

She batted his shoulder and he shook the urge to laugh again off as she continued, "No, but honestly, I knew the falling to ruin bit was real. I just thought the hero being asleep for so long was just a story we told each other so we felt less bad about it, so it seemed like someone was coming to end it. Eventually. …And then you did, I guess."

She didn't say anything, and neither did he for a moment, the reality of the years since the Calamity coming to settle between them.

"…Do I really sign like an old man?"

"Well, I mean… yeah? It's not like I can't understand you, but… it's a little more prim, but I thought maybe that might just be a dialect thing. You also use a few compound words I only remember people who were already old when I was born using, people who are mostly dead now. Plus I don't know what 'metal protector' is supposed to mean, even though you said I've probably seen one."

A pained look crossed his face. "It was never a good sign anyway. Made more sense before they all got taken over by Ganon, but it's for—" he switched to fingerspelling— "guardians."

If Anja had been drinking something, he would have been wearing it, the way her entire face bugged out. She fingerspelled it back, just to be sure. "Guardians?!"

"In my defense, they didn't have a sign; we originally fingerspelled it. Then my teacher started using the sign and it spread in… in Deya… then… I don't actually remember what happened next, but I guess it ended up more common or it probably wouldn't have been my first choice for how to sign it." He squinted as if hoping he could will a new memory loose. "Why? What's the sign you know for guardian?"

She hesitated for a moment and then, deadpan, signed something he could only describe as akin to "laser spider".

He replied with a gasp, "—That is such a better sign for them."

"I wonder if she'd think you'd sign like an old person, too. …I know we didn't do it much, but your signing was always more… I dunno… stuffy? fancy? Posh, I guess. I suppose your father would have had someone brought in to tutor you, huh? Maybe you signed fancy because you learned from someone with the kind of money that would've impressed the king."

A jitter underneath him. Not quite a buck, but—

…He knew her dad was a complicated subject.

—Maybe shouldn't have brought him up when she couldn't respond the way she'd probably want to.

Another jitter.

"Okay, okay. I get it. Changing the subject, Zel," he muttered.

He reached down through her hair to rub her… scalp? back? "…I guess you are an old person. Older than me now, anyway."

The day they'd trekked to the Spring of Wisdom, Zelda had been exactly 17 years old.

Link had been 17 years and 3 weeks old.

Zelda had not known this tidbit about how close their birthdays were until she was 16 years and 364 days old.

Link, 121 years and who knew how many days old, still had not remembered this tidbit for himself. He'd just had to take Zelda's word for it. It would have been all the same to him if his birthday was the day he had come out of the Shrine of Resurrection.

…Sometimes he joked those three weeks gave him seniority over her in a world where the crown no longer existed.

…Most of the time she let him have that seniority. Because it made her laugh.

"Great," he said with a yawn, "now I don't have a bargaining chip in our arguments."

"Link."

He grimaced but kept his eyes closed.

"Link."

He squirmed on the soft, scratchy surface beneath him.

"Open your eyes."

Just a little longer…

"Wake up, Link."

He cracked his eyes open.

He sat up and ran his hands over the plush, dewy grass of the front yard.

—His hands.

He stared at the right one—not Rauru's but a sound, calloused, Hylian hand—for a long while.

Wrong. This is wrong.

A throat cleared next to him.

Her.

Wrong. This is wrong.

Her voice was laced with a confused concern she was trying to keep hidden. "I thought you came out here to tack the horses so we could get them over to Dueling Peaks Stable before we warped to the base for the Castle Town rebuilds."

Oh. It's that day…

"They're… they're… um… tacked. Already," he muttered.

She looked him dead in the eyes for a long, uncomfortable second and then asked, "Link, are you feeling alright? Oh, you haven't found some gloom and touched it, have you?"

He smirked to himself.

"…No. Not yet," he said quietly.

"—Link, that isn't funny."

"Not trying to be, Zelda."

"Well, I'm simply worried. I find you out here napping mere minutes after you came out, and you look far too tired to have only been awake an hour."

"I always look tired, Zel. Aren't you always the one tellin' me to get more sleep?"

She frowned.

"…You look more tired than usual is all, Link."

He pursed his lips, leaned back on his hands, and looked to the sky.

Cloudless. Perfect. Clear.

No knowledge of what was about to happen.

He could be happy here.

"What if… we don't go down there? …Gotta be another way."

Her eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. "Link. Going down there was your idea."

Don't remind me. Don't remind me that it was my choice to lose the Master Sword, lose my arm…

…Lose you.

"Are you really that tired, Link? Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can really put it off anymore at this point, though. I do wish… But…" She put her fingers to her chin.

…He could be happy here.

—But it wouldn't be real.

…

…Now, Link had a mixed track record with lucid dreaming. So what he did next was a calculated risk.

Really more a leap of faith that dream Zelda would not choke him out for destroying this shared reality of theirs.

Faith in Zelda.

Some sort of misguided hope that maybe it was the real her and he was wrong.

"—This isn't real," he whispered.

No response, but for the wind whipping through the bridge and the small canyon below it.

…And then…

"You're right," she spoke quietly.

He whipped his head up to look her in the eye and added, for good measure, "It's a dream."

"…Yes."

Even in my dreams, she always has the right answers.

A cringe crossed his face. "Why am I here?"

"Because you're asleep, I imagine."

He snorted. "You know what I mean. Why am I dreaming this?"

"Who knows why anyone dreams anything, Link?"

"Heh." He sighed. "Maybe I regret it."

"Perhaps. No way to change the past, though."

"Oh, come on. Not even a little?" he said with a half-smile.

She looked down. "Not without changing the future, I'm afraid."

He sighed again.

"Link, look at it this way. You regret the Calamity. I know you've dreamt about things going differently there as well."

He let out an embarrassed grunt.

"But would you actually changing the past give you what you want?"

"…What do you think?"

She looked him in the eye. "Link. This is your dream. I only know as much as you do."

He sighed and stared at the ground and didn't look back up as he answered.

"…A lot of people would live. But then. We'd live. And then we'd be old for real when the gloom came around. Or—" He didn't let himself finish.

"Or dead," she said.

"…Yeah."

A low rumble in the distance. Thunder, maybe.

"Link."

He looked up.

"Things are happening as they were always meant to happen."

"But… I want…"

"…I know what you want," she said sadly.

He gave a long look her way, a long look to his right arm, a long look vaguely northwest, the direction of the Lost Woods. He looked down at himself.

A humorless chuckle escaped him. "I just wish for once I'd get what it was I wanted."

She gave him a conspiratorial look. "Maybe for your next birthday, then. We'll wish on the Triforce, hm?"

He snorted. "Sure."

"Link, you need to know, and I know you do know: I am simply taking the long way back."

"But…"

She nodded. "I know."

A jitter. "Forever?" He tried not to let the jitter make it into his voice.

He failed.

She placed her hand on his left arm. "I have faith in you to make the decisions that must be made."

"…Wish I had faith in me," he said with a shrug.

"You'll get there," she assured him.

Wake up, Link.

He opened his eyes to find the midmorning sun to his right.

—He'd forgotten what it felt like to be groggy only from sleep and not from something trying to kill you from the inside out.

He went to sit up, only to find himself tangled in Zelda's hair. Probably for the best, considering his two modes of sleep, he'd been told, were "still as a rock" and "reenacting fighting Thunderblight". He wondered which one last night was.

…Even now, she was as interested in ensuring his safety as he was hers.

He said nothing as he untangled himself from her golden locks.

But when he was done… he finally let himself cry.

He sat across from her.

First words he'd said to someone other than Zelda for probably a good 24 hours now.

"I'm sorry."

She was silent.

"I… I feel… Today's…a good day… but… I know I'm not strong enough yet. Not strong enough again."

…Nothing.

"I'll come back for you." The late morning sun hit her just right. "For both of you."

The Master Sword let out a single chime.

Weak. Quiet. Still healing.

But still so clear even over the sound of the wind.

He stood on the end of her snout, looking down at the slowly-approaching Hateno.

He felt good.

Not on a post-Upheaval scale. If not for who he was standing on, if not for what was behind him, he could close his eyes and pretend the Upheaval never happened.

He felt normal.

Normal normal. But also anything but.

…He wasn't happy, but he also didn't want to leave. To try to figure out if there was even a way to fix… this.

Link! Protect them all—!

—He jumped.