Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Impressive, I know. Very few can achieve a mastery of the sky. Yet I have made an art of creating an updraft that allows me to soar. It's considered to be quite the masterpiece of aerial techniques, even among the Rito. With proper utilization of my superior skills, I see no reason why we couldn't easily dispense with Ganon."

"Now then, my ability to explore the firmament is certainly of note... but let's not—pardon me for being so blunt—let's not forget the fact that I am the most skilled archer of all the Rito."

"Yet despite these truths, it seems that I have been tapped to merely assist you. All because you happen to have that little darkness-sealing sword on your back."

"I mean, it's just... asinine."

"Unless... you think you can prove me wrong? Maybe we should just settle this one on one. But where...? Oh, I know! How about up there?!"

"Oh, you must pardon me! I forgot you have no way of making it up to that Divine Beast on your own!"

"Good luck sealing the darkness!"

Revali really does have much better things to do than to fly out to Hyrule Castle at the drop of a feather. He'd have better things to do even if he hadn't recently passed the trials to become Vah Medoh's pilot with flying colors, for there is always something someone needs his help with in Rito Village, and it fills him with pride to be able to offer it. But he is Vah Medoh's pilot, and he is the most skilled archer and aviator that the Rito have ever seen, and neither of those things will stay true without practice and hard work.

Yet here he is anyway, because Princess Zelda had assured him in her letter that it was truly important.

Maybe it is truly important this time. Still, the princess had also said that this was the sort of thing she would be requesting the presence of all of the Champions for, and so he circles Hyrule Castle until he sees someone he actually recognizes.

The first person he sees—and recognizes—isn't actually the princess. Or at least, not that princess.

It's Princess Mipha, pulling herself out of the river half a mile from Castle Town. She's certainly not terrible company, and so Revali puts on a burst of speed to intercept her. She doesn't look up as he approaches, not until he calls out her name.

Then she looks up, lets out a noise that might be best described as a squeak in surprise, and recovers enough to offer him a shy smile by the time he's landed beside her.

"Revali! Hello," she says, visibly brightening. "How have you been as of late? It feels as if it has been quite some time since last we spoke..."

He waves a wing dismissively. "I'm progressing nicely with Vah Medoh. I even had the opportunity to show off my progress to Princess Zelda recently."

And that irritating knight of hers, not that... Link, wasn't it? Not that he had cared at all. For some unfathomable reason Mipha seems to like that too-quiet warrior, and Revali isn't of the opinion that angering healers is ever a good idea, so his views on Link will always be kept to himself as much as possible—at least around her.

"Oh! That is wonderful, Revali," Mipha says enthusiastically. "What of your Gale? You mentioned that you were refining it—"

"Also coming along fine. Better than fine, even."

After Princess Zelda and Link had departed for warmer, more sympathetic lands such as central Hyrule, he'd tried to replicate what he'd done to show his brother, crashed headfirst into a snowdrift, and been grounded for two unbearable days thanks to a concussion. He's been far more careful since then, but no matter what he tries, he can never seem to get one quite as perfect as either of the ones he'd executed in front of Link.

But he did it once. He can do it again, and he will do it again, and no one needs to know that it isn't yet perfect.

"I... see." There's something in Mipha's tone that seems to indicate she doesn't quite believe him. "Erm. Revali. I do not know if you are entirely aware of this or not, but..."

Revali sighs. "What is it?"

Mipha worries at her lower lip for a while before answering, at last, "You are limping."

"Ah," Revali says. He tries not to look down.

He entirely fails at not looking down within less than a minute. She's right. He is limping—and to consciously not means to put more weight on his right foot than is comfortable. He gives up on that before long, too, and looks back at Mipha to see a hint of amusement dancing across her features.

"Would you like me to..." She trails off, gesturing vaguely at his right foot as he slows and then stops.

"I would not be against that," Revali says tightly. He says nothing more while Mipha kneels beside him, her hands already glowing with her signature blue healing magic. He still says nothing until Mipha has finished her work and he can test his weight upon that foot carefully.

Only then does he mumble, almost quieter than Mipha's speech normally is, "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Mipha beams at him. "You are very welcome! Though if you insist on repaying me somehow as you always do, you can assist me in determining why we have all been summoned to the castle, because Princess Zelda was infuriatingly vague in the letter I received from her and perhaps you were privy to more—or at least different— details than I was."

"Perhaps," Revali allows. He reaches into his bag, producing the letter that he received. "Despite my best attempts at pressing the mail carrier for more information, she is unfortunately very good at her job and did not open any of the letters she was delivering. She did, however, tell me where each one was going."

She hums to herself, opening her own waterproof satchel to look through it. "Rito Village, Zora's Domain, Goron City, Gerudo Town?"

Revali nods. "In order: Goron City, Zora's Domain, Gerudo Town, and Rito Village. She also told me that she had been paid a rather handsome sum by the royal family to deliver these at speed. It wasn't particularly hard to draw the conclusion of why we were needed."

"She told you far more than she told me," Mipha observes.

"I can be quite persuasive when I want to be," Revali says. It certainly didn't hurt that this particular mail carrier is courting his brother. "I'm afraid that my letter itself was frustratingly vague. All it really said was that my presence was requested for a matter of 'utmost importance' at my earliest convenience."

"...Which, of course, truly means as soon as possible," Mipha says wryly.

"Of course, because no one with even the smallest connection to royalty will ever just say what they mean." He pauses. "Present company excluded, I suppose."

She giggles. "You are not wrong. Though in fairness, are you truly one to talk about that particular eccentricity of nobility?"

He opens his mouth. He shuts it again. He sputters indignantly, and at last chokes out, "What did your letter say?"

Mipha still looks a little amused at his expense when she produces her own letter and passes it to him. "As little as yours did, I am afraid. I thought that perhaps I was being the only one summoned, and... wondered if it was something I was doing wrong..."

Revali skims the letter wordlessly, shakes his head, and hands it back to her. "You? Certainly not."

"That is what my father said when I brought my worries to him, though I am certain that he would be biased." Mipha pauses. "What is your family like, Revali? If you do not mind me asking."

"I do," he snaps.

"I apologize, I-I—"

"I have a brother. Nothing else that matters."

"Oh," Mipha says very softly, as if she somehow understands something she never will. "I am very sorry."

"You had nothing to do with it," Revali snaps, and spreads his wings. "I'll meet you at the eastern gate of Castle Town. I... need to be alone."

And, with a burst of his Gale, he takes to the skies again—all too aware of the concern in Mipha's gaze. Misplaced concern, no less, that would be better applied elsewhere.

(Revali's father would be biased, too. In the opposite direction.)

Daruk is waiting for the pair of them when they reach the castle. Urbosa, it seems, hasn't arrived yet—though in her defense, she cannot fly through Hyrule's skies, or swim through Hyrule's rivers, or roll down the slopes of Hyrule's mountains considerably faster than most can travel down steep slopes without risking serious injury. Traveling up them is a different matter entirely, for the Gorons, but when Revali asked about it once Daruk didn't seem overly bothered.

Then again, Daruk doesn't seem overly bothered by... anything, really. Revali couldn't imagine sharing that sentiment himself, though it's possible that he would if his own magic was not his carefully-crafted Gale and was instead Daruk's Protection, shielding him from any harm the world could possibly inflict.

It still would be unlikely. Very, very unlikely. But it would be at least theoretically possible then.

"Good to see you guys!" Daruk says cheerfully, spreading his arms wide. "I'm guessin' that if you're both here—"

"Urbosa was contacted as well, yes," Revali supplies.

"Great! It'll be a regular reunion." Daruk pauses. "Do, uh, either of ya know—?"

"No."

"I am afraid that I do not either," Mipha says apologetically, like her lack of knowledge on a situation they are all equally in the dark about is somehow her fault.

Daruk shrugs. He doesn't seem too bothered. "Guess we'll find out when we find out. Think we should go find the tiny princess? Uh, tinier princess?"

Mipha laughs softly and starts walking herself, as does Daruk. Revali starts to move faster, passing them both. He'd fly through the castle, if he wouldn't risk offending someone or—worse—crashing into a wall and receiving his second concussion this week.

(He really would prefer to keep concussions to a minimum. Ideally zero.)

"That may be wise, though I do not know that she will share anything until Urbosa's arrival—"

Hyrule Castle is, incidentally, absolutely massive. The building itself may be larger than the entirety of Rito Village, though from Revali's understanding very little of it is actually used for any conceivable purpose except to be large and imposing and for the royal family to be able to brag about how they're so much better than everyone else. Still, Revali supposes that growing up here would lend itself to being able to navigate through the maze of interconnected rooms and halls that make him long for the sky if he spends too much time within them.

Consequently, it's not actually that surprising that Zelda suddenly turns a corner into their path, followed closely by none other than Urbosa.

Revali's feathers fluff up anyway. That and the undignified squawk that escapes his beak are decidedly unbecoming of the Rito Champion, but he can't exactly take either of them back at this point. He schools his expression back into neutrality and forces his feathers to lie flat before he does anything else.

He very emphatically ignores Urbosa holding back a chuckle.

"Excellent, we're all here then," he declares, with a respectful nod to the Gerudo Champion. "What did you summon us for, Princess?"

"Er, we are not all here," Mipha says pointedly. "Might I ask where Link is?"

A shadow passes over Zelda's face. "That is—no. This is not a conversation we should have in public. Follow me, all of you."

Revali looks to Urbosa—arguably the most likely to know something, anything, that isn't Zelda—as the group starts walking again. Urbosa meets his gaze with what can only be concern in her eyes, too. She slowly shakes her head.

…Either she doesn’t know either, or she does and that’s part of why she looks concerned. Revali can’t say he likes either option, but he’s also not all that good at figuring out what non-Rito want just from looking at them, so for all he knows he could be completely misreading her.

The eyes, though—they’re always the same. Always.

(Revali is getting so, so tired of concern.)

Link’s absence is very odd, Revali will allow that. But he certainly hadn’t thought anything of it at first. If anything, he was relieved that the knight wasn’t present for once.

This, it seems, is not a relief that anyone else here shares. Not even Princess Zelda, who he had gathered held a similar opinion on Link.

Instead, Zelda gently shuts the door of a reputedly disused storeroom behind her, clasps her hands together, and says very quietly, “I don’t suppose that any of you have… seen Link, recently? Or perhaps spoken to him?”

“Obviously I haven’t,” Revali says. “Not unless you count your recent visit to Rito Village, which I don’t.”

Mipha glances first at him, frowning, then at Zelda. “I have not…”

“I’m afraid that I haven’t seen him since I last spoke with you, little bird,” Urbosa says gently, “which… would have been upon your previous visit to Gerudo Town.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen the little guy either.” Daruk pauses. “He okay?”

“I don’t know,” Zelda says quietly.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Revali asks, raising an eyebrow. “He is your personal knight, isn’t he? Does that mean something different than I was under the impression that it did?”

“No, it doesn’t. It…” Zelda sighs. “You are all aware that, recently, I traveled to each of your homes with Link in order to check on your progress with the Divine Beasts. About a week after our return from Rito Village, he… vanished.”

“He what?”

“Oh dear,” Mipha whispers. “Do you have any idea where he could be?”

Zelda shakes her head. “His father is a knight himself, but he had no more knowledge than the rest of us as to where Link could have gone. The only things he left behind were his tunic, the sword that seals the darkness… and a note.”

Urbosa sucks in a horrified breath. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t know,” Zelda says helplessly, but she produces the note in question from somewhere in her robes. “That possibility didn’t occur to me at all until just now.”

Revali snatches it from her, scanning the paper intently. It’s short, irritatingly so, and the handwriting is far neater than he would have expected Link’s to be.

Find someone else. —L

“If you care for my input,” Revali says loftily, handing Link’s letter over to Mipha, “this does not read like a suicide note. It seems to me that your knight has merely realized just how outclassed he is by the rest of us, and acted accordingly.”

Daruk, who had been peering over Mipha’s shoulder to read it himself, suddenly looks at Revali. “Been meanin’ to ask—what’s the big deal?”

“With what, precisely?”

“With Link. What’s your problem with the little guy? He’s missing, ya realize that?”

“Of course I realize that,” Revali snaps, feathers bristling. "Do you mean to imply that it is somehow my fault that he decided to run off? As far as I'm concerned, good riddance, and he did make his own wishes abundantly clear. He wanted out. How hard can it be to find someone else to wield that sword?"

"It would be quite hard, according to my father,” Zelda says. “Only one person is ever capable of it in a generation, if that. There is no one besides Link.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Revali grumbles. They wouldn’t be having this problem if there was a darkness-sealing bow instead. But no—it had to be a sword, because swords are oh so important to Hylians and their legends.

(Not that he'd use such a legendary bow in the first place, if it existed. His bow would undoubtedly be better than some dusty old relic from ages long gone by.)

“...Daruk does make a good point,” Urbosa says slowly. “Revali, you certainly make no secret of your dislike of Link, but you seem more… irritable than usual. Did something happen?”

“No,” Revali says bitterly. “Nothing happened.”

It’s not even a lie, really. As far as that knight was concerned, nothing of any note did happen. The aerial masterpiece Revali has been working toward for years upon years, ever since he learned to fly, didn’t elicit any sort of reaction.

Link’s face remained stony, through it all.

Revali would have preferred… he’s not sure what he would have preferred, honestly. Acknowledgment, maybe, or at least a little bit of awe at something Link himself would never be capable of. He would have even settled for derision, because that at least would have been something rather than nothing.

(Whatever had caused Link to desert his own duty had to have been something else entirely. Something that had, somehow, caused the characteristically stoic knight to snap. Something Revali wishes he could have witnessed, if only to see something.)

Loath as Revali is to admit it, their grand plan to defeat Calamity Ganon is essentially dead in the air without Link. This is in no small part due to the royal family’s inexplicable refusal to even try to find a new wielder for the sword, so long as there is any hope at all of finding Link.

The thing is—there’s no sign of him, or so Revali’s heard.

Revali isn’t worried. Revali has other things to worry about, such as perfecting his Gale and practicing with Vah Medoh and preparing Rito Village, his home, to weather the Calamity in case the blank-faced knight never returns.

In his absence, Zelda’s father appoints Impa of the Sheikah to serve as her guard. Something akin to disappointment settles into Revali’s feathers the first time Zelda pays Rito Village a visit without her ever-present shadow, and it doesn’t leave when she and Impa do.

It takes a month before Revali is willing to admit to himself, in the near-darkness of the Flight Range before dusk, that he actually misses Link.

It ends up being close to two months when his brother’s soon to be wife, one of the fastest mail carriers among the Rito, comes down with a particularly nasty cold. His brother can’t cover for her, for multiple reasons.

But Revali could do it, theoretically. It wouldn’t be particularly hard. All he’d be losing would be time he could spend training, time which is at a premium given that the person who is supposed to be bearing the darkness-sealing sword completely dropped off the face of Hyrule.

It’s not the sort of thing he normally would volunteer for.

He does so nevertheless. If nothing else, he does need to practice flying greater distances than just from the village to the Flight Range and back.

The first of the letters he is tasked to deliver is meant for one of the shopkeepers at Kara Kara Bazaar. Revali arrives there early enough in the morning that the air isn’t too dizzyingly hot over the desert, and he fully intends to leave before the temperature has a chance to rise to that point.

He’s preparing to take to the air again with a Gale when a voice from behind him calls out, “Sav’otta, Revali! Is that you?”

The winds die down around him. He straightens up in the sand, turning to see Urbosa of all people.

“Ah. Good morning,” Revali says, not wanting to risk butchering Urbosa’s own tongue right in front of her. “I… didn’t expect to see you outside of Gerudo Town.”

“I could say the same about you and Rito Village,” Urbosa says with a wry smile. “What brings you here?”

At a sudden loss for words, Revali instead pats the mail satchel he’s carrying alongside his bow and a full quiver of arrows. It wouldn't do to be caught unprepared even on what would theoretically be a routine journey.

Urbosa raises an eyebrow at the presumably unexpected sight. “I can’t say I expected that. It is, however, quite good to see you.”

“You as well,” Revali mutters, grateful that Urbosa hadn’t asked why he’d briefly taken on the role of a mail Rito. “What of you?”

The Gerudo Chief’s smile falters. “You know, of course, that Link is still missing.”

“...Yes,” Revali says, for lack of anything better to say.

"Knowing Link, I'm sure that he will return when he is needed most. But I intend to prepare the Gerudo for the worst case scenario, even if the King of Hyrule will do no such thing for his own people." Urbosa sighs, shaking her head. "Not even for... never mind that."

Revali does mind that, actually, but he's got other more immediate problems. "What would you consider a worst case scenario?"

"Link doesn't return. Zelda's power doesn't awaken."

"We would still have the Divine Beasts," Revali points out.

Somehow, that doesn't seem to encourage her in the slightest. "We would only have the Divine Beasts."

"That is true," he allows. "It certainly would not hurt to ensure the Rito too are better prepared than we need to be."

"It is a Calamity, after all." Urbosa looks past Revali. "I would rather find that we have overprepared, when the time comes, than find we had not prepared enough when it is too late to do anything about it."

He follows her gaze. Perched atop the nearby cliffs is none other than Urbosa's own Divine Beast, mostly dormant at the moment. Revali prefers Vah Medoh, of course—but he thinks that if he had to choose one beside his own, he very well might pick Vah Naboris.

"As would I," Revali agrees. The words come out quieter than he meant for them to.

He clears his throat and adds, "I should be going."

There are a lot of other deliveries to be made still, taking him all across Hyrule—everywhere from Mabe Village to Castle Town to Kakariko, all sorts of places that Revali would spend little to no time in under normal circumstances. But these aren't normal circumstances. People seem... nervous. And of course they would be, wouldn't they? No one knows, not for sure, when—or where—the Calamity will strike. Just that it will, and that Hyrule's princess has yet to awaken the powers needed to seal it away once and for all.

Link's disappearance isn't supposed to be common knowledge. But people talk.

People especially talk, it seems, in Hateno Village. The delivery is a simple matter, but flying so far in a single day is something that makes his wing muscles ache at the thought of going all the way back home, and he doubts he'd make it home before nightfall. It's only prudent to rent a room for the night at the local inn, before finding something to eat.

Revali is... a decent enough cook, for his own purposes. He doesn't need to do anything special, after all. He just needs something to fuel his continued efforts, and the innkeeper doesn't mind pointing him towards the general store.

It's on his way back, the ingredients for something fast and filling tucked away in his satchel, that he realizes it.

Something's watching him. More accurately, some one is watching him. Normally, he wouldn't mind that—but here? In a village where no one has shown any signs of recognizing him? He doesn't like that at all.

He turns.

Standing near a house on the outskirts of town, openly staring at him, is a Hylian. Yellow hair, blue eyes. His first thought, ridiculously, is Link— but that's impossible. This Hylian's hair is longer, tied back into two long braids, and she's wearing a long dress.

(She does look almost—no. Revali has not met so few Hylians that he will immediately think every single one is related. This particular one has done nothing to earn his anger.)

"What, have you somehow never seen a Rito before?" Revali asks, raising an eyebrow.

Wordlessly, the—girl? Young woman? He does not know how Hylian ages work and has no interest in finding out—sets down her Cucco, shooing it behind her. She approaches, equally silently, and a part of Revali wonders if Link's... stoicism... is more common than he initially thought.

He doesn't wonder that for long. This girl's face is guarded, but it's not expressionless.

"No, I have," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "Just never this specific Rito. You're Revali, aren't you? The Rito Champion? Pilot of Vah Medoh and all that?"

Oh. Oh! Okay, he was starting to get worried, but clearly he hadn't needed to. He hadn't expected to be recognized this far away from home at all—but then again, Hateno Village isn't so far from Zora's Domain, is it? He has spent some amount of time there, on the rare occasion when the skies are not as wet as the rivers.

"I most certainly am," Revali says, his feathers puffing up with pride. "Care for a demonstration?"

"No," the Hylian girl says, her voice suddenly cold and hard as the sharpest arrowheads. It occurs to Revali that he may have perhaps said something he shouldn't have, though he can't for the life of him figure out what that could even be.

Nor does he have an attempt to try. One moment she's glaring at him. The next, her fist connects with his beak.

Revali shrieks, rapidly stumbling backwards. His beak hurts. His head spins. Whoever this girl is, whatever her inexplicable vendetta against him is—she's stronger than he would have expected a random Hylian to be.

"What was—"

"That," she says icily, "was for Link. You don't know me. But I know what you did to him."

Revali blinks. His head hurts... more than it should, actually.

Consequently, the most eloquent thing that can come out of his mouth is a single baffled word: "What?"

The girl laughs, the sound almost as baffled as he feels. "Don't you dare try to tell me that you don't even know. What, was destroying him just a day like any other to you?"

"I didn't..."

He pauses. It's been a while since he'd last seen Link... but he hadn't said anything that strong, had he? Nothing worse than the knight who'd been handed his position like a birthright had deserved, and surely Link couldn't have been that thin-skinned... right?

"Finish that sentence," the girl says. "I dare you."

"I... don't know what you were told about me," Revali says hesitantly—not to mention warily. "But I certainly didn't intend—"

"What? What didn’t you intend?”

Revali hesitates again, for longer this time. He doesn't know anymore. He certainly hadn’t—he didn’t think that he had—had he—?

“Aryll!” calls a voice from somewhere behind the girl. "What are you..."

The voice that trails off is not a voice that Revali recognizes—yet the girl, Aryll presumably, freezes in place. Her eyes suddenly widen, and she turns. Very, very slowly.

Revali follows her gaze.

Suddenly, too suddenly, everything that's seemed odd about this falls into place. Standing there across the bridge, atop the hill, near that house Aryll had come from earlier, is—

The breath he hadn't realized he was holding escapes him, all at once, in a quiet whisper: "Oh."

(Of course he wouldn't recognize Link's voice. He'd never heard it before. He—hadn't realized that the knight could talk, and just never deigned to do so to him.)

(Though Link hardly looks like a knight now. He looks no different than any other Hylian living here in Hateno, with the same Cucco from earlier cradled gently in his arms. He looks... like he belongs here, in a way that he never has before.)

(The biggest difference of all, though, is his expression. There is actually surprise written all over it, for just a moment, before his eyes meet Revali's and his face falls back into the expressionless mask he knows far better.)

(Revali hates it.)

"...Fuck," Link says, out loud, with his mouth. Because that is apparently a thing he can do!

Revali stares openly. This is Link, no doubt about it. But at the same time—Revali genuinely hadn't expected to ever see him again. Nor had he been prepared to see him ever again. Especially not today. Or like this. Or at all.

"You...!" Revali sputters.

Aryll turns on him. "If you tell anyone that Link's here, I'll kill you. Got that?"

Feathers thoroughly ruffled, Revali protests, "You think that you could—"

"Both of you, stop it," Link says. "Please!"

Suddenly, he's far closer than he was when Revali tore his eyes away from him. This, coupled with the fact that Link is actually talking, and saying a good deal more with his physical mouth than he ever had with his hands—or at least, more than he ever had bothered to around Revali—is certainly something. A very strange something, too. Maybe it's that making Revali's words die in his throat. Maybe it's the fact that his head hurts almost too much to think. Maybe it's something else entirely, but he couldn't begin to untangle what.

(Maybe it's the fact that, of all the words he was apparently capable of saying the whole time, Link chose to say please.)

"Link," Aryll says, evenly, with a very wary look in Revali's direction. "Isn't this the guy who—"

"He's not going to tell anyone about me," Link says, which is a very bold assumption to make. And then he shrugs and continues, as offhandedly as if he was discussing the weather, "Besides. He was right."

Revali's beak falls open—and that hurts too, because Link's... sister(?) can throw a punch harder than some people can shoot arrows and beaks are not built for being jostled that firmly.

"...What?" Revali says weakly.

"What?" Aryll blurts. "No, he wasn't!"

Link shrugs, as if that somehow answers one of the many other questions Revali now has for him. "Whatever. We should stop yelling about it outside, or I'll need to start laying even lower for a while."

"Fine," Aryll mutters, trudging to her brother's side—though not without leveling a glare at Revali on the way over.

Struggling to figure out how to even respond, Revali eventually settles on addressing the (slightly) less confusing of the things Link has most recently said. "What makes you think that I won't tell anyone that you're... here? In the middle of nowhere?"

"This is not the middle of nowhere—!"

"Aryll. Please," Link says wearily, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She mutters something inaudible, steals the Cucco he's holding, and trudges back up the hill towards what is presumably their home without a word. And... certainly, Revali could tell someone that Link is here, of all places, though the thought hadn't crossed his mind before Link brought it up.

"You're not going to tell anyone," Link answers at last, looking Revali dead in the eyes, "because no one would ever believe you."

Unfortunately, Link is right. No one would ever believe that Revali, of all people, had stumbled upon the missing knight living with his sister in a tiny village best known for its dye shop.

Knowing the fact that Link is right, however, does not mean he likes that fact. Or is particularly inclined to accept that fact. It isn't even that he's particularly inclined to reveal Link's secret to anyone else, so much as that he's annoyed by the implication that he couldn't even do so. Really, he's more annoyed by the assumption that he would.

Link has made his wishes abundantly clear: he wanted out. He still wants out. He's removed himself from the fight against the Calamity.

Isn't that a good thing?

(Isn't that exactly what Revali wanted?)

The thing is—Princess Zelda's power is no closer to awakening. If anything, she seems more discouraged without Link around, when Revali would have expected her to be at least a little less so.

And Revali doesn't care, really, what happens to the rest of Hyrule. Revali shouldn't care, at any rate. But Urbosa isn't the only one preparing for the worst. Mipha's more subtle about it, but Daruk wouldn't know subtlety if it hit him upside the head with his massive Boulder Breaker. And none of them are particularly optimistic about what might happen without Link.

Revali has his own training to do, of course, and his own preparations to make. His Gale is growing more consistent by the day; he rarely wipes out now, unless he's already exhausted. And his archery... well, that hasn't been in doubt for a very long time and it certainly isn't now.

Still, he should be busy. And he is. Really!

As best as Revali can tell, Aryll leaves the house on the outskirts of Hateno fairly frequently during the day. Link, if he does so at all, only does so during the night when he's least likely to be spotted. It's objectively a very smart thing to do, and it means that the easiest time to talk to Link without his... very aggressive... sister around would be while he is out at night.

Unfortunately, Rito as a rule cannot see particularly well in the dark.

Or at all in the dark.

Revali has managed to get around that particular limitation, to an extent, by painting the targets in the Flight Range with dye from luminous stones. It's an excellent, if not foolproof, way to train himself to be able to shoot when he can't see his bow. Still, he would still need to be able to see the targets—and none of that helps him with flight in unfamiliar territory and the confined space of a forest.

So: talking to Link while he's away from home is out.

Talking to Link while he's at home and his very violent sister is away it is, then, merely by process of elimination. It's not that Revali is intimidated by a Hylian shorter than Link who probably can't even shoot a bow, oh no.

He just... is not particularly inclined to be punched in the beak again. Particularly not since, upon his return to Rito Village, he was informed that he had once again given himself a concussion. He was hardly about to admit that this particular one hadn't resulted from flying into anything this time.

Right now, that doesn't matter. Right now, what matters is not being seen or heard where he's sitting in a nearby tree, waiting for Aryll to leave.

Contrary to popular belief, Revali is perfectly capable of being patient when he must, or when he desires to. Really, that shouldn't even be popular belief—he couldn't have become the best archer among the Rito without some measure of patience in addition to hard work, and he certainly never could have developed his Gale if he hadn't been able to listen.

The quiet focus of waiting for the right moment to loose an arrow, however, is... very, very different from sitting in a tree, practically vibrating in place, and just endlessly waiting for Link's sister to leave. It hadn't exactly been easy to determine when (or if) Aryll would leave at all. And now, for some unfathomable reason, she seems to be taking her sweet time, because of course she is.

Revali doubts she would leave at all if she knew he was here, though. So he waits, and he remains as still and as quiet as he possibly can when the door finally does open and Aryll marches off toward the center of town.

The moment that she's out of sight, the moment that she's disappeared down the path and Revali is certain that she's not coming back, is the moment that he darts down from the tree. He lands harder than intended, far harder than intended, and stumbles. It's fine.

Everything is fine, and he's had much worse landings. If it's a landing he can walk away from, it's a good one. He can walk off any bumps and bruises. He's fine.

He hesitates, before Link's door. He came here, didn't he? He certainly isn't about to back down now. He came here for answers, and he will have them. He didn't come here for anything less. And he, Revali—Champion of the Rito, pilot of Vah Medoh—is most certainly not—

The door opens, which is not something Revali planned for. Of course it's opened by Link. Why wouldn't it be opened by Link?

"Hey, Aryll, are you—" Link freezes, just as suddenly as Revali does.

He had planned, rehearsed extensively, what he was going to say. He was going to be... polite... no matter how much he didn't want to be. He was going to ask what... what was he going to ask? It's completely slipped his mind now, and so all Revali can do is stare, beak falling slightly open.

"Oh," Link says. "What are you doing here?"

The words, unbidden and unwanted, escape him all in a rush. "Was it because of me?"

Link blinks. "Was what because of you?"

Revali takes a deep breath. He makes a valiant, silent attempt at regaining some shreds of his composure.

He says, "Was your abrupt departure because of... did it have anything to do with me? Far be it from my desire to drag you back to a position you have quite emphatically vacated, but I would like to know if I played any role in that."

"...Oh," Link says, his eyes wide. "That's. Um. That's it?"

"Yes?" Is this supposed to be some sort of trick question? "What else would I be asking?"

"I don't know, maybe what I plan to do when the Calamity does hit if the king isn't able to find someone else?" Link pauses. In a smaller voice, he asks, "Has he been able to find anyone else?"

"If what you're referring to is your former position as the Princess's guard, yes, he has," Revali says, his voice clipped and taut as a bowstring ready to fire. "Impa of the Sheikah has filled that particular vacancy, since you were unavailable."

"That isn't what I was asking."

His eyes seem to bore into Revali's very soul. Have his eyes always been that blue?

Revali looks away. "...No. No one else has taken up the sword that seals the darkness."

Link sighs. "That's about what I expected. Do you know if anyone else has tried?"

"How would I know?" Revali says defensively.

Though—he thinks he knows what Link is really asking here.

Have YOU tried?

"Good point." Link laughs a little, though it doesn't sound happy. "How would you know?"

(He hasn't tried. Theoretically, Revali supposes that he could wield a sword if he needed to—it surely can't be that different from the dagger he keeps tucked among his gear for emergencies. He's vaguely aware that Rito swords exist, though not of their specifics. To be perfectly honest, if the scenario were ever to arise where he would require one, it would be a clear opportunity to make use of his Gale, disengage, and continue the fight either from a much safer distance or retreat to retrieve more ammunition.)

(Swords are not his forte. Combat on the ground, out of the air, is even more emphatically not so. Perhaps that had something to do with why he only proposed a duel against Link in a place he knew the knight had no hope of reaching on his own. Perhaps it didn’t.)

(Strangely, the thought of soundly beating the stoic knight in combat doesn’t seem quite so appealing now. Maybe it’s because the Link he’s talking to now hasn’t bothered with the mask at all.)

(He hadn’t even realized, then, it was a mask at all.)

“If you were wondering,” Link says, and Revali’s head snaps back up to look at him.

“I wasn’t,” Revali says on instinct.

Link pauses, staring at him. Revali stares back. He can feel his feathers fluffing up, whether he wants them to or not.

“...If you were wondering,” Link emphasizes at last, “I’m going to go back when the Calamity hits. I’ll deal with Ganon. I’ll do what I have to. But I am not going back to being a knight.”

Slowly, very slowly, Revali nods.

"Good," he says. "Strangely enough, this seems to suit you."

Link is still staring at him. If anything, it seems like the staring has intensified. He doesn't think he said anything warranting that amount of staring. Though he hadn't thought he said anything that would prompt Link to suddenly fly off to the middle of nowhere and leave his destiny behind, either.

"What is it now?" Revali demands.

"Nothing." The odd little Hylian shakes his head. He looks down, and whatever spell he'd somehow put upon Revali is broken. "You asked if you had anything to do with it."

"Yes, I—"

Impossibly, inexplicably, he opens the door wider. "I'd ask if you want to hear the short version of that or the long version, but either version is going to take a while and I don't think you want my sister to realize you're here."

And now it's Revali's turn to stare at him again, somewhat dumbfounded. Maybe more than somewhat dumbfounded.

"Perhaps I had better hear the long one," Revali says faintly.

"Great," Link says. "Are you going to come in or not?"

Revali opens his beak. He shuts it again, without a single word coming out. And, silently, he follows Link inside.

The home is... quaint. It's decidedly different from every other home that Revali has ever set foot in, though he supposes every other home he's set foot in was built by Rito, not Hylians. It's far more enclosed than any Rito's home would be, even those as far as Tabantha Village and the snowfields surrounding it. It's larger, too, despite still being confined to one—or technically two—rooms. There's a lower level, a central room with a table and three chairs, and a single bed tucked away under the stairs leading upward. There's an upper level, too, though it's scarcely a quarter the size of the lower, and provides enough room for another bed and not much else.

Link, following his gaze, says simply, "Dad doesn't come home often anymore. And it's safer if I'm not here when he does. That way, he can truthfully say that he hasn't seen me."

"Oh," Revali says. "That seems wise."

Until recently, he hadn't expected Link to have any family at all. Certainly not real, tangible people that are fully capable of punching him in the beak.

(He thinks that it's probably for the best that Link's father is also not here at the moment, if he's anything like Link's sister. Perhaps he will keep his distance from any tall yellow-haired Hylians he sees in Castle Town in the near future. Though it's... odd... very much so, to consider that Link has a parent—a father, especially—that actually... cares? About his well-being?)

(As if he needed more reasons to be jealous of the knight. Not that he is jealous of him, of course.)

(...Ex-knight. Link has made that clear.)

"Yeah?" Link shrugs, and pulls out a chair to sit at the table. "So. Uh."

"So," Revali emphasizes. He does not sit.

"The short version is... yes?" Link shrugs. "But it wasn't all you. Sorry if you thought it was."

Revali isn't sure if he should be offended or relieved. He's even less sure of whether he is offended or relieved.

"I see," he says, feeling inexplicably like he's flying on a moonless night in unfamiliar territory. It's ridiculous, is what it is—he arrived well before nightfall, and he will depart well before nightfall. And his feet, currently, are on solid ground. Even if he is on decidedly unfamiliar ground, it's clearly there.

Link sighs, and opens his mouth to undoubtedly elaborate.

"Could you talk the whole time?" Revali blurts out, before he can stop himself.

"Yes?" Link says uncertainly. "I thought you wanted to know—"

"Why didn't you?"

Link shrugs. "Nobody would have listened. Nobody did listen. All they've ever cared about is the sword. So I just stopped talking at all around people who just saw some sword's wielder, which... was basically everyone except Aryll, Dad, and Mipha. Though even Mipha, these days... Before I left, she looked at me like I was someone else. Like the hero bearing the darkness-sealing sword and the kid she'd grown up with were two different people, and like they weren't both just me."

He pauses, staring down at the wooden table like he can see some pattern there, and starts to trace the natural lines in it with a finger. Only then, in a smaller voice, does he say, "I know you wouldn't have listened. I know you don't really care, I'm not really sure why you bothered to come back. But I... are we okay, now? I'm not sure..."

"We're... okay, yes," Revali says carefully. "And as I said, I'm hardly about to give up where you've been hiding. The other members of our anti-Calamity strike force are certainly worried about you, Mipha in particular—"

"Mipha definitely knows I'm here," Link interrupts. "Or... she probably does. She knows where I'm from, she's been here before, she could put all the pieces together if she wanted to."

This is new information. Not to mention unexpected information. Though at this point, Revali should really stop expecting things at all where the kni—ex-knight is concerned.

"If she knows you as well as you say she does," Revali says quietly, "I would hazard a guess that she is deliberately not putting the pieces together. Much like your own father in that particular aspect."

"Maybe! I didn't think of that, but... huh, you're probably right." Link hums to himself. "You know, you're not as much of a dick as I thought you were?"

Revali narrows his eyes. "And how, exactly, am I meant to respond to that?"

For better or for worse, Link is interrupted. By a very loud Cucco, of all the damn things, crowing its damn head off outside so loudly that Revali almost flinches.

He most certainly does not flinch when Link stands up, very suddenly, and exclaims, "Shit, Aryll."

"Aryll?" Revali echoes, stiffening.

"My sister," Link clarifies, confirming what Revali already suspected. "She doesn't like you."

"No, really? I never would have guessed that, actually, thank you so much for telling me something I already knew!"

Link rolls his eyes. Which is also weird and new and something that Revali will be thinking about on his entire flight home, thank you very much, because it isn't as if he has anything better to think about. (Oh, wait. He absolutely does.)

"...How do you know it's her?" Revali asks.

"Our rooster only makes noise if it's someone he recognizes approaching. He thinks he'll be fed." Link pauses. "And it can't be Dad, I'd know if he was coming home. Or Aryll would, anyway, and she'd have told me. She cannot find you here, she really doesn't like you."

"I noticed. I assure you."

"She might actually kill you," Link says unhelpfully, gaze sweeping the room before landing eventually on the second floor. "Hey, you can fit through that window, right?"

"The window that is visible from the front of your house? That window? I am not going through that tiny—"

The front door opens. Revali goes through the window. A burst of his Gale propels him forward and up, and he doesn't dare slow down until he's halfway back to Rito Village.

"Do you know where Link is?" Revali asks Mipha, one morning in Zora's Domain. Or, perhaps more accurately, one morning about two miles north of Zora's Domain, atop a plateau that had formerly been home to a camp of Lizalfos.

He'd convinced his brother's partner to let him carry out a letter or two meant to come this way, claiming once again that it was to practice flying longer distances than he could in Hebra—which, technically, it still is. It's the purpose that he'll point to if anyone questions why he's so far from home, at any rate.

But the last of his letters had been delivered to a wizened old Zora speaking with Mipha, and it hadn't exactly been hard to strike up a conversation with her from there, or to invite himself along on a routine trip to clear out a monster nest. Out of all his fellow champions, Mipha is certainly the easiest to talk to. She's quiet, she's kind in a way that Revali... isn't, and she's quite good at listening.

(Maybe that's why Link likes her better than he'd ever like Revali—and that thought has no right to ruffle his feathers as much as it does.)

Instead of answering his question, Mipha's grip upon her trident tightens. She does not turn to look at him.

She says, in a voice softer than normal, "Do you not think that if I did know, I would not be there with him right now?"

"Actually," Revali says, "I don't."

"What do you mean?" Now Mipha turns to look at him, her eyes wide and innocent.

Her eyes are far too innocent. It's the same look that any fledgling in the village has when they want something they're not supposed to have. Like extra dessert, bomb arrows, or permission to go out flying after dark.

"Mipha. You know exactly what I mean."

"Do I?" She still looks slightly too innocent, even as she puts her trident away, clasps her hands together, and smiles at him. "Revali. I would like you to consider the following: I have spent my entire life growing up in the court of my father as his immediate heir. I am perfectly capable of giving away nothing more than I desire to, and nothing less."

"It's obvious that you're hiding something," Revali points out.

Her smile grows. "What, precisely, makes you think I would share whatever I am hiding with you?"

So much for subtlety. He never liked it much anyway.

"Because I do know where he is," Revali says, slowly and very deliberately. "I want to know if you do too."

"Mipha knows," Revali tells Link, on his next visit. "She doesn't want to risk giving anything away by visiting you, but she knows you're here."

"Oh. That's... um, good." Link pauses. He sounds hopeful when he asks, "Did she... say anything?"

"She went to rather extreme lengths to not say anything, actually," Revali clarifies. "Though she was quite alarmed to find out that I knew where you were..."

Link laughs. It's not a sound Revali ever expected to hear, and yet he's been hearing it more and more often. It's weird. And for some reason, it makes Revali's heart start pounding inside his chest.

"Yeah... I... that may slightly be my fault," Link admits.

Revali sighs. "What did you tell her."

"Nothing that you didn't tell me?"

If, for some unfathomable reason, Revali ever happens to be within close proximity to his past self? Ideally his past self from three or four months ago, at this point? He is going to smack past Revali. Very hard.

"Ah," Revali says at last. "Yes. Well. I suppose it was... warranted, then."

"...Yeah," Link says. "Could you tell her I'm doing alright? And I would like to talk to her, at least, if she has a chance to sneak away."

His feathers fluff up, and he protests, "I am not a mail carrier!"

"If you happen to see her! Which..." Link shrugs. "Also, Aryll heard around town that you were acting as a—"

Revali goes out the window. Again. This time, it isn't even because of the impending risk of Link's sister turning up.

(On his next visit, he'll claim that he's only flying across Hyrule as much as he does because he needs to build his stamina for distance flying somehow, and to help out someone he knows who is a mail Rito. He emphasizes one of these reasons far more than the other. Link, irritatingly enough, latches onto the reason he doesn't emphasize.)

(The worst part of all is that the ex-knight is growing on him. Like a weed, or mold in old floorboards.)

(He... doesn't know how he feels about that.)

Chapter Text

For the record: Revali hates Death Mountain. The Gorons are friendly enough, but that doesn’t even begin to offset the slimy, oily texture of Fireproof Elixir in his feathers. It’s a necessary sacrifice so his feathers don’t catch fire instead, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. In fact, he’s reasonably certain that self-immolation would be less uncomfortable. Still, sacrifices must be made in order to speak with Daruk in a timely manner, and Revali is neither patient enough to wait for the next time Daruk descends Death Mountain nor does he hate himself enough to try his luck with stuffing himself into the armor the Gorons are developing for Hylian tourists.

At least he finds Daruk relatively quickly, after delivering a letter that really should have burned up in the heat by now were it not enclosed in an envelope as fireproof as his feathers. There's an extra delivery fee, apparently, when the actual mail Rito do it, in order to cover fireproofing the mail and the Rito. But Revali is not a mail Rito.

...Even if some of the actual mail Rito apart from his brother's partner are starting to recognize him for things other than his archery, and he’s not sure how he feels about that.

"S'good to see ya, Revali!" Daruk exclaims, and Revali narrowly dodges getting his back broken by a friendly slap.

"Rito have thinner bones, please do not," Revali reminds him. On the one wing it would probably be fine, on the other Revali does not want to be stuck in Eldin any longer than he has to be, thank you very much.

…Do Gorons even have bones? He’s honestly not sure and he’s not about to ask.

"Oh, right. Sorry 'bout that." Daruk shrugs. "Link's always been fine with it, though... maybe not, do ya think that might've been why he left?"

"Maybe," Revali says, very dubiously. See, if he risked having his back broken frequently because he never bothered to voice that it was an issue in the first place, that would definitely be a contributing factor in him flying off to the middle of nowhere with little ceremony and even less intention of every coming back. But he's pretty sure that Link's a nicer person than he is.

Actually, he's completely sure that Link's a nicer person than he is, because for some reason Link still talks to him.

"I sure hope not," Daruk rumbles, scratching the back of his neck. "I know you don't, but I hope the little guy is okay."

Revali could just tell him. And he would, except that he doesn't think Daruk could keep a secret to save his life and also Link made him promise not to tell anyone else. Not Daruk, not Urbosa, and definitely not Princess Zelda. Even telling Mipha was a carefully calculated risk, and something that Revali had indirectly run by Link himself first.

She had said that she didn't think Revali could be subtle if he tried.

Obviously, Revali took—and still takes!—exception to that.

"I'm sure he's doing just fine, wherever he is," Revali says at last. "We shouldn't worry about him."

"Guess so, but..." Daruk looks surprised. "Hey, why the change of heart? Thought you didn't even like him."

It occurs to Revali then, very suddenly, that he shouldn't have changed his opinion of Link if he hadn't seen him. As far as Daruk knows, he has been largely confined to Rito Village, refining his skills and learning better how to pilot Vah Medoh. As far as Daruk needs to know, he should still hate Link.

"Yes, well..." Revali exhales slowly. "It occurred to me that I was being, perhaps... immature, where he was concerned. They do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Something like that, at any rate."

Daruk blinks. "Wait, really? That a Rito saying? I've never heard it before."

"Er. No." He's pretty sure he remembers Link mentioning it, though he can't quite recall the context. "I likely picked it up while training elsewhere, for some reason or another."

"Huh. Probably a Hylian one then." Daruk shrugs. "Most of the ones that make the least sense to me are."

Revali couldn't quite hold back an amused snort if he tried, and he isn't all that inclined to try. "Hylians truly are inscrutable, aren't they?"

"Ha! You can say that again." Daruk pauses. "Maybe don't, but you could. D'ya got some other Hylian friends I don't know about?"

He freezes. Carefully, very carefully, he says, "Not exactly. As of late, I have been working as a mail carrier in order to test my endurance in flying longer distances, and as such I have met some different people than I perhaps would have otherwise. One of said individuals is a Hylian himself."

"Ohhh." Daruk nods. "Hey, it's great that you're makin' friends!"

"I am not—!" Revali pauses. "Well, perhaps... I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, but I doubt he considers me to be a friend, and I'm... not sure that I'd want him to..."

Revali's not sure whether he should be relieved or offended when Daruk nods again. "Ohhhhhhh. Hey, I think I get it! What's he like?"

"Louder than I expected," Revali says at last. "A lot more talkative than I expected. But I don't mind spending time with him, when I can spare it. I don't hate talking to him. To be perfectly honest, I don't like most people, but he's... alright."

"Mmm." Daruk moves to clap him on the back, then stops himself. "Look, Revali, I can't say that I understood any of that, but I support ya, and I think it'll be okay no matter what ya do."

"Thank you.” He pauses. “You support me in... what, exactly?"

Daruk looks at him like it's obvious. "Look, Gorons don't really do romance in general, usually, but I've got a cousin—"

It occurs to Revali precisely what Daruk thinks that he's talking about, as opposed to what he's actually talking about. That Daruk, for some unfathomable reason, had listened to him carefully skirting around the fact that he's been talking to Link and instead come to the ridiculous and wholly inaccurate conclusion that he is interested in anyone romantically.

It's entirely possible that the screech that escapes him, as he processes this, could be heard all the way in Rito Village.

Even the smallest of changes can completely redirect the course of fate, and a certain knight vanishing almost without a trace is hardly a small change from what should have happened. Many other changes will result from that single one, in the end, because of that—but let us turn for a moment to Princess Zelda of Hyrule. With the royal advisor Impa constantly at her side, Zelda certainly found herself in no true danger as she traveled Hyrule, checking up on the Divine Beasts and their pilots and summarily attempting everything she thought might possibly prove the final thing to awaken her powers.

With Link present, bearing the sword that seals the darkness upon his back—a constant reminder of her own shortcomings—Zelda still would have made quite the effort to fulfill her own destiny.

But with Link absent, her own role still unavailable to her, and the sword lying in the castle a constant reminder that the Calamity draws ever-closer by the day... well. Is it any wonder that Zelda pushes herself even harder than she might have otherwise, desperately attempting to unlock her own power before it is too late?

The extra work she puts in does her little good in the end. In fact, it does quite the opposite. On the eve that she is meant to embark on her pilgrimage to the Spring of Wisdom, she falls terribly ill.

Fortunately, the illness is nothing too serious. It is born of exhaustion, of pushing herself so far past her limits that she scarcely is sure where they are any longer. Nevertheless, that illness results in her departure to the spring being postponed several days for her recovery.

No one, after all, wants to lose Hyrule's princess the same way that they lost her mother; not even the father she's never good enough for.

Thus, it comes to pass that, as evening falls upon Princess Zelda's seventeenth birthday, the princess herself—accompanied by three of her four champions and Impa—discreetly departs from Castle Town by the eastern gate.

Revali is not present, though he had briefly flown in to confirm that Zelda was not actively dying before promising to meet them upon their triumphant return from the Spring of Wisdom.

For obvious reasons, Link is not present either.

"How is the princess doing?" Link says, quite suddenly. "It's her birthday today. I think."

Revali doesn't know whether he should be impressed or not that Link remembered the birthday of a girl who, for all intents and purposes, never seemed to like him very much. There's a stab of some strange, foreign emotion near his heart as he wonders, almost idly, if Link even knows his birthday. If he would bother to remember it, if he did learn the date.

"She will be setting off for the Spring of Wisdom right about now," Revali says at last. "She still hasn't awakened her power, if you were wondering. You really would think that the Goddess would have answered her in some way by now, wouldn't you?"

He glances back over at Link, expecting something immediately in return. He gets a nod, though the ex-knight looks almost... contemplative.

"Why would she set out today?" Link asks. "I would have thought she'd want to get to the Spring of Wisdom as soon as she was able to."

"This is true," Revali says.

"It's a week's journey by foot. Half that on horseback."

"A day's, as the Rito flies, or even less if said Rito is particularly motivated," Revali says. "Though I would expect that she is traveling on foot. The other champions are accompanying her there; I intend to meet with them upon their return journey."

Link doesn't question that. "But why—"

"She fell ill," Revali blurts out, not thinking before the words leave his beak.

"She’s sick?" Link's eyes widen. "Is she…”

"I'm not entirely certain why you would care," Revali says stiffly. "She certainly doesn't care about you."

"Well... neither did you," Link points out. "And it isn't as if I didn't get having the weight of responsibility you never asked for being... suffocating."

Revali winces, and falls silent. Eventually, he says, "She's not ill now, though I gathered from Urbosa that she had to be forcibly stopped from trying to depart while still recovering. Likely by Urbosa, that king does not seem the type to know reasonable limits."

Link looks off into the distance and mutters, "No. He isn't. He's still looking for me, isn't he?"

"Less intently than he was, but..." Revali sighs. "To the best of my knowledge, yes, he very much is."

"Great." Link leans forward onto the fence behind his house, staring more intently at the forested area below. "I never liked him, but I don't think I hated him until after I left. He's the main reason why I won't be going back, even after everything is over."

"Quite understandable. I only tolerate him when I must." He pauses, suddenly uncertain. "He's the main reason? Not..."

"Not you?" Link grins. There's mischief in his eyes when he looks over at Revali again. "Not anymore. But you've also turned out to be a lot nicer than I thought you were."

"Slander and lies," Revali scoffs. "I'm not nice. No one in their right mind would ever describe me as nice , you least of all.”

The grin fades. "Is that really what you think of yourself?"

Revali doesn't know how to answer that. Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise, then, that there are footsteps behind them. Footsteps that are slightly too heavy to belong to one of Link's cuccos.

Footsteps that are joined by a voice going, "Hey, Link—"

That voice suddenly stops. And continues, now icy cold, "You."

Revali turns to see Aryll. His feathers most certainly do not fluff up in alarm, or for any other reason.

"Good evening," Revali says warily, wondering if maybe he'd like to join up with the group accompanying Zelda to the Spring of Wisdom after all. If he flew fast enough, he probably could catch them before they stopped for the night, before it became too dark to see.

(He had initially thought that the group leaving at this time of day was ridiculous. Then it was pointed out to him that this way, they would attract much less attention while leaving, and too much of that attention in Zelda's direction has already been negative. With that knowledge, their departure time suddenly seemed significantly more reasonable.)

"Hi, Aryll," Link says, waving like this is a normal situation to be in. "You're home early."

Aryll stares at him for a moment, two. Then her gaze shifts back to Revali.

Revali meets her eyes with his own and holds it. That's what you're supposed to do, when up against an opponent that you can't—or won't—fight back against. They're less likely to attack before you break eye contact, and that might just give you enough time to come up with a plan.

He does not come up with a plan in the time before he blinks.

"Yeah," Aryll says, still staring. "Yeah, I am. What is he doing here?"

"He's—"

"I just happened to be in the area," Revali says tightly. "There's nothing more to it than that."

"I... yeah," Link says, and Revali has no idea why he sounds disappointed. "What he said."

"Right... so you, noted feathery asshole, just so happened to decide to come say hello to my brother," Aryll says flatly. "That's it? Really?"

Oh. She doesn't believe them at all. Either of them—Revali would have expected her to be slightly less skeptical with Link backing him up, but apparently not.

"What reason would I have to lie to you?" Revali tries without much hope.

"Oh, I don't know." Aryll rolls up one sleeve of her shirt, then the other—is that some sort of Hylian-specific threat display? It feels like some sort of Hylian-specific threat display, and it's having exactly the intended effect if it is one. "Maybe because you just couldn't leave him alone even after you bullied him back home, huh? By the time I'm done with you—"

"Aryll, no!" Link says, and Revali isn't sure whether he's more relieved or more baffled when the ex-knight steps in front of him. "He's okay now!"

"Is he," Aryll says suspiciously. "Fine, then. Prove it."

Revali is pretty sure that his feathers are still fluffed up entirely against his will, but she probably doesn't know what that means, it's probably fine.

He clears his throat uncertainly and says, "What would you have me do, then? I somehow doubt that you would accept just anything."

"You're right." Aryll taps a finger to her chin. "Apologize."

"E-Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Apologize. You hurt Link a lot, and maybe I'll consider not hitting you so hard your ancestors will feel it."

Link stiffens, visibly so. He glances back over his shoulder at Revali.

"No, hey, it's fine, really," Link says quickly. "You don't have to—"

"No. She is..." Revali feels his face twitching. "As much as it pains me to say this, your sister is not incorrect."

"That's..."

"A start," Aryll says, raising an eyebrow, "and more than I thought I'd get out of you, but it’s not an apology. Keep going."

Link ducks his head and mutters, "Sure, let's go with that."

A part of Revali wonders what he might have said if Aryll hadn't interrupted him. The rest of him is trying very hard not to care, and not succeeding anywhere near as much as he would like to.

"I was needlessly cruel to you," he says at last. "I regret that, now that I have gotten to know you better."

"I think that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me," Link says wryly.

"That's kind of sad," Aryll says to her brother. "And still not an apology."

Revali scowls and says, "Fine. I apologize. Is that good enough for you? Are you happy now?"

Aryll squints at him. "That's up to my brother."

So it's up to Link, who looks... uncertain, though his eyes seem to gleam in the fading daylight. He bites his lip, looking at Revali. Then he opens his mouth—

The ground starts to shake. It doesn't stop shaking for several seconds, long enough to make all three of them lose their footing. No one falls entirely, though—Link catches his sister by the arm before she can take a spill—and before too long, the shaking stops.

The shaking's stopped, and yet there's something different about the air. Revali's crouching before he can even think about it. He beats his wings once to call upon his Gale, a second time to intensify it—and he soars upwards, gaze scanning Hyrule for anything that might be amiss.

He finds it quickly, eyes widening in horror as he does. It's rather hard to mistake the swirling magenta thundercloud of pure malice for anything but the Calamity, after all. Especially not when a similar cloud rises from the ground around Hyrule Castle, and something... else rises out of the Castle itself. A dark serpent, pig-headed with luminous yellow eyes, that circles once about the castle among magenta lightning—and roars.

(Revali can't tell if it sees him or not, when it looks in this direction. Selfishly, he hopes that it doesn't. Selfishly, he's glad that those precious few individuals he can tolerate the company of are not within Hyrule Castle—and that the Hylian king presumably is.)

Enough of that. He tucks his wings in and dives, touching down between Aryll and Link, and if he does so a little faster than is strictly necessary, a little sloppier than is strictly necessary, that's no one's business but his own.

"It's here," Revali says grimly.

Link's eyes widen. "The Calamity?"

Revali can only nod. He needs to get to Vah Medoh. Sooner, rather than later. But first...

"You need to get somewhere safe," he says to Aryll.

Aryll hesitates. "But—"

Without any warning, without any hesitation, Link pulls her into a hug. He whispers something that Revali can't quite make out. She chokes out a sob, nods, and hugs him back.

At last, she pulls back. She looks at Revali, and she says, "If anything happens to him—"

"With all due respect, if anything happens to him, we are all dead," Revali replies curtly.

"Point." Her gaze shifts quickly between the two of them. "Don't die. Either of you."

Revali snorts. If it weren't for the Calamity, he might snark back. But the Calamity is no longer a thing of the near future. The Calamity is here, and there's... there's no time left for anything. So instead of saying a word, he nods, and watches Aryll go rushing after the nearest Cucco.

"Right," Revali says, quietly—desperately—hoping that the preparations Rito Village made will be enough. "You need to get to Hyrule Castle. I need to get to Vah Medoh."

Link nods. "I'll... see you when all this is over?"

He considers this. Then he shakes his head. "Under normal circumstances, I would never offer anything of this sort. However, given that it is at least partially due to my own actions that you are not there right now..."

In the end, working as a mail carrier did do him some tangible good. He certainly hadn't expected to be this far away from his Divine Beast when Calamity struck, but he'll be able to get there rapidly enough. Much faster, he suspects, than the other Champions would—and hadn't he heard, over and over, how important it was to have all four Divine Beasts as support for the darkness-sealing hero?

"Um," Link says, as he turns his back, crouches, and spreads his wings.

"Get on," Revali mutters. "Before I change my mind."

Link gets on. Once he's certain that Link won't fall off, and that he'll still be able to fly like this, he spreads his wings and calls upon his Gale once more. He doesn't get as high as he normally would, due in no small part to the rather significant extra weight—though at least Link isn’t quite as heavy as he’d expected.

The moment they both leave the ground, Link lets out an awestruck little gasp, and Revali finds that he doesn't mind a passenger as much as he expected to.

"Right," Revali mumbles to himself. "One no-longer-knight delivered to Hyrule Castle, coming right up—"

"Um," Link says, "it might work better if you deliver me to the barracks, actually? I... don't have my sword."

Revali scowls. "You couldn't possibly have taken it with you when you left?"

"Wanted to. Too recognizable." Link suddenly pauses. "Wait, is that—down there! Near the river!"

Revali looks. He sees what Link undoubtedly wanted him to see, which is a particularly short Zora, a particularly tall Gerudo, a particularly big Goron, a particularly mysterious Sheikah, and a particular princess in a white dress. It's impossible to tell what they're up to down there, from this distance, but if Revali were to hazard a guess, they're probably trying to come up with a plan of attack when they're notably lacking in a certain important component.

"I see them," Revali says.

"Aren't you... going to...?"

He does not shift his flight path. "Do you want me to?"

Link hesitates. He continues to hesitate, for long enough that Revali is close to assuming his answer is a no and adjusting his flight path to not be seen by the group accordingly.

"Yes," Link says, and if he nearly falls to his death from the abrupt change in course, well, maybe he should have figured out what he wanted sooner.

"Revali! Thank the Goddess you're—" Zelda stops, abruptly, as she realizes just who hopped off his back at a higher altitude than he should have and nevertheless stuck the landing. Her eyes widen. She says nothing else.

Daruk has no such qualms. "Link! Little guy! Am I glad to see you, we've been lookin' everywhere for ya!"

Link smiles thinly and says, out loud, with his voice, "Not everywhere."

Zelda remains silent, though her eyes are even wider now. Daruk falls silent, staring himself. Neither Urbosa nor Impa nor Mipha say a word, though Mipha looks… somewhat less surprised than everyone else present. Only somewhat, though.

“Yeah, he does that now,” Revali says, waving a wing dismissively. “Moving on. We have a Calamity to vanquish, don’t we?”

“Y-Yes! We do!” Impa stutters. She nudges Zelda. “Isn’t that right, Princess?”

“My powers,” Zelda whispers. “They still are not—”

"That's fine," Link interrupts.

"...No? It is very much not fine?"

"No, really, it is. I just need my sword back." Link pauses. "I'm not going back to being a knight, by the way. But I'd be stupid to not help save Hyrule. I still live here. And I heard that no one's had any luck replacing me, so..."

"Did a... particular bird happen to tell you that?" Urbosa says, with a pointed look at Revali, because clearly nothing can get past her for long.

"I don't know what you're implying, but I don't appreciate it," Revali says quickly, "and I would like to point out that we do not have time for any of this. Given the Calamity actively happening?"

"You're right," Daruk says, though he looks a little baffled still. "Little guy, good to see ya, but you need to get to Hyrule Castle. The four of us need to get to our Divine Beasts."

"And I need to get you somewhere safe," Impa says firmly. "Princess—"

"No," Zelda says.

"Little bird," Urbosa says gently, placing a hand on Zelda's shoulder. "I understand the desire to do something, but you will be able to help no one if you fall before your powers awaken. Please, do keep yourself safe, and have faith in us."

"No, I know there is nothing I myself can do, but..." She bites her lip, turning to Link. "My father... did not wish to make it easy or even particularly possible for you to reclaim your sword should you not return of your own volition..."

"...And go back to being a knight," Link grumbles. "Like I said, I'm not, but we're all dead if I can't get that sword back. Where is it?"

Zelda sighs. "In a safe within my father’s quarters... that only my father has the key to."

"You cannot be serious," Revali squawks. "Does he want us all to perish?"

"He may be willing to give it to me?” She pauses, wincing. "If he is still..."

At this point, Revali thinks that it would be a lot less trouble for everyone involved if that king wasn't still alive. He also thinks that there is a rather small chance of him being still alive, and that chance grows smaller by the moment—but the chance of the Calamity spreading to places and people he does care about also grows larger by the moment.

"Sounds like you need to go with Link, then. Who doesn't have a sword."

"I always carry a spare kodachi," Impa offers, and in a moment is holding it out to him. "It's hardly what you're used to, but until we are able to retrieve the sword that seals the darkness..."

Link takes it gratefully. "Thanks. You're coming with us?"

Impa raises an eyebrow, her features carefully neutral. "Someone has to protect the princess."

Daruk clears his throat. "Sounds like we're all settled, then! Champions, to your Divine Beasts!"

"We will... see each other again after this is over," Mipha says, sounding uncertain. "Will we not?"

Urbosa and Daruk exchange uneasy looks.

"Of course we will," Revali scoffs, because with all of them fighting as one, that outcome is in no doubt whatsoever. "If your powers still haven't awoken, that just means the rest of us will have to beat Ganon into a malicious little stain on the ground a little harder. I for one am more than capable of that, and I know that I am not the only one.”

"Yeah," Link says, looking to Zelda with a smile that makes Revali's heart hurt. "We've got this."

"And you," Revali continues, suddenly grateful that he's so much taller as he approaches Link and jabs a single feathered finger into his chest. "Don't you dare get yourself killed in some fantastically stupid manner, Link. You and I have unfinished business."

He's in the air before Link can ask what that unfinished business is—which is good, because Revali couldn't have given him an answer.

Link's fairly desensitized to death, all things considered. He became a knight at an age probably younger than was wise, thanks to drawing the sword that seals the darkness at an age definitely younger than was wise, and being a knight led to becoming intimately acquainted with death at an age significantly younger than was wise.

He still has to stop and stare at the sight of the first body, lying in a burned-out house, surrounded by gleeful bokoblins. He doesn't stare for long, because with a ferocious yell Impa's leaped into the fray in front of him.

Link makes sure that Zelda's hiding out of the way, first. Then he joins her, and he tries not to think about the fact that his father is... possibly was... stationed near here.

He's fairly desensitized to death, as a rule—but not when it's the death of someone he cares about.

(At least Aryll is safe with her Cuccos at home.)

Part of why Revali had departed to go bother Link when he did, part of why he had decided to meet with Zelda and the others upon their return from the Spring of Wisdom, was because his own bow had needed serious repairs. He almost flies for Vah Medoh without bothering to stop in Rito Village first, but—his home needs to know what's coming, if they haven't figured it out already, and maybe his Great Eagle Bow will be ready for him to use once again.

He doesn't expect to need it once he's boarded his Divine Beast, of course. No monster can fly that high, and the intruder defenses truly are impressive. But he would rather not have to use an unfamiliar bow on his way to Medoh, and he'd feel better having his bow with him anyway.

Perhaps, if events had happened a little differently, Revali would have brought in his bow for repairs later, and it would not have been ready for him upon the eve of the Calamity. Perhaps he would have flown off to Vah Medoh with a subpar bow, feeling secure that nothing would be able to attack him there.

But his Great Eagle Bow was brought in for repairs earlier than it would have otherwise. A full day earlier, even. As a direct consequence of this, when he briefly returns home for his weapon, it is ready for him, and so he departs for Medoh fully equipped.

There are at least some survivors in Castle Town, survivors that Link and Impa strongly encourage to keep sheltering in place until the Calamity is over.

There are no survivors in the castle proper. And, for better or for worse, Zelda can't find her father anywhere. Link would definitely think it's for the better if it wasn't for the fact that King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule is the only person who can get him the Master Sword back.

But at last, Zelda gives up on finding him.

(Link hasn't found his dad, either—alive or otherwise.)

At last, she says, shoulders slumping, "Let's just... I know where my father was keeping the sword. It's... possible that we could simply break in?"

"You don't sound particularly optimistic, Princess," Impa notes, creeping to peer around a dilapidated corridor.

"How... how can I be? I have utterly failed in my own duty—"

"Quiet!"

"But I have," Zelda protests, before Link catches Impa's meaning and claps a hand over her mouth, shoving both of them flat against the wall. Impa darts into the shadows on the opposite side as a Guardian passes them all by, a Guardian glowing with unmistakable magenta lighting.

"Our ancestors really couldn't bother to tell us that when Ganon returned, he would be turning our own technology against us?" Impa grumbles, once the danger has passed for the moment. "Purah's not going to be happy."

Zelda pushes Link's hand away from her face. "Purah... oh, you don't think...!"

"She's the scrappiest person I know. My sister will be fine." Impa pauses. "And to be perfectly honest, the best thing I can do to help her right now is to help you."

Slowly, Zelda nods. "Then... the sword."

"The sword," Link agrees. "Then Ganon."

It's hard to speak within the castle walls, but so long as both Zelda and Impa understand that he is never coming back here once all this is over, he can manage. He has to.

Vah Medoh is already soaring when Revali touches down upon the deck of his own Divine Beast. Something seems... different, almost, about her—but he can't quite place what seems different, and he doesn't have time to worry about that. The Calamity is here, and the malice-filled stormclouds are spreading outward with every moment that passes.

Link should be in position soon, with any luck, and Revali supposes he'll know when to fire based upon when the massive smoky creature that can only be Calamity Ganon stops circling the castle as if hunting for something. It hasn't yet. He has time enough to prepare, time enough to wait for the rest of the Champions to get into position.

He places a single wing upon the terminal—and Medoh screams.

(That scream is the only warning he gets, before something emerging from the main terminal tries to blast him into blue-feathered smithereens and comes perilously close to succeeding, and he suddenly has a much more immediate problem than assaulting the Calamity.)

"Here we are," Zelda whispers, softly pushing the door open—because there are Guardians about, and she knows that as well as Link does. "These are my father's quarters. It's possible that he will be here, so you should—"

She stops, quite suddenly.

Impa peers around her and blurts, "Who are you?"

...Well, clearly not the king in here then, but also clearly not an active threat to anyone's continued well-being. Link peers around Impa, sees who both of them have seen, and finds that he could cry from the sheer relief of seeing who he does, clad in plate armor and looking more exhausted than he’s ever seen him.

"Dad!" Link breathes.

His own dad smiles, though it's not a very happy one. "Hey there, kiddo. I was beginning to worry you weren't coming. Here."

He holds out a key; a particularly ornate one. Link risks a look at Zelda and finds her eyes are even wider than they'd been when he'd turned up out of the blue with Revali, or when he'd started talking in front of her.

"My father," Zelda says uncertainly. "Is he...?"

"I'm sorry, Princess," Link's dad says, impossibly gently. "He's gone."

"Oh," Zelda whispers. "I thought... perhaps..."

Link does not have time for mourning a man who forced him into a mold he never wanted to be his. He takes the key without a word.

Zelda looks at him, sighs, and says, "Your sword should be somewhere over here..."

It is possible that Revali may be in trouble.

Perhaps he should have expected Ganon to fight dirty. It isn't that he didn't expect Ganon to fight dirty, exactly, so much as that he didn't expect Ganon to fight this dirty. Perhaps he remembered the Divine Beasts from the last great battle against him. Had Medoh's pilot ten thousand years ago had to face this Blight?

Whatever the circumstances millennia ago, they don't matter now, because this... this thing is much bigger than Revali and much faster than Revali, and neither of those things contribute to odds he particularly likes having. Additionally, the sun has nearly set completely by now, only compounding the unnatural darkness brought on by the Calamity; Medoh's surface is lit if poorly so, and so is his foe, but he's nearly flown into a pillar on at least three separate occasions now and he knows far too well that if he does crash into anything, he's as good as dead.

He can't do much with Medoh, not while he's being actively attacked. But he can swoop towards the console and send out a signal to warn the others. Ganon wouldn't have just gone after him; he's not so arrogant as to think that Ganon would only consider the pilot of one Divine Beast to be a significant threat.

One of the Windblight's blasts passes so close to him that it singes his feathers, forcing him away from the terminal. Still, Revali's close enough to it to hear the unmistakable sound of a distress signal from one of the other Divine Beasts. He can't know, not for sure, who it is—but he's not naive enough to think that they won't all be fighting for their lives soon enough.

Link’s scarcely gotten his sword out of the safe where the dead king had been keeping it, scarcely closed his fingers around the hilt, when things start to go very, very wrong.

More wrong than they have already, that is.

As it turns out, Link should have been paying more attention to what was happening outside the king’s quarters, because neither he nor anyone else receives any warning before the roof falls in. The smart thing to do, in the precious few seconds that he and everyone else have, would be to rush for the edges of the room and to yell for the others to do the same.

It's the smart thing to do, and yet the words catch in his throat at the worst possible time. He can't yell. So he moves, tackling the nearest person—Zelda—off of her feet and as close to the wall as he can manage.

Something hits his head before he can tell how successful he's been—if at all—and then he knows nothing.

Some legendary swordsman he is, if even now he can't shake off the king's conditioning. Though, with the last of his consciousness, he finds that he can't regret trying to protect a friend.

Revali can hear no less than three distress signals now from Vah Medoh's main terminal. They don't sync up, so instead of the clear signal of three short, three long, three short there is nothing but cacophony. Mipha, Urbosa, Daruk—they're all in trouble too, and there's not a damn thing that Revali can do about it except try to survive and hope they can do the same.

He does manage to beat back Windblight enough to send off his own signal, for all the good it does. He's not even sure why he bothers. The only people who could hear it can't come to his aid any more than he can come to theirs.

"I'm sorry," he whispers anyway, blinking hard.

His Gale fills his wings, lifting him up and away from Windblight before it can take advantage of his pause—but it doesn't do anything. It watches him as he rises away from the terminal with its single, malice-filled eye. It watches him, silent, as he nocks another set of arrows to his bow.

It isn't quite courteous enough to stay in one place long enough to let him hit it, of course. It whizzes away in an invulnerable ball of Sheikah blue the moment that he lets the arrows fly. Because of course it can do that, too! Of course that’s a thing that it can do!

He is definitely in trouble.

Link returns to consciousness with a ringing in his ears and a fuzziness in his head. He doesn't return to consciousness all at once, either. There's someone shaking him, increasingly frantically. His name being shouted far away. His head aching. A musical trill he knows deep in his soul. Beeping that's horribly familiar, and yet he can't quite place it.

"...cess, we need to—"

"NO!"

There's a flash of golden light, bright enough that Link can see it even behind his too-heavy eyelids, and the beeping abruptly stops.

"I... I think I..."

"...but Link's still..."

Strong arms cradle him, and he finds he's thinking of home.

"...Link? Link, if you can hear me..."

He forces his eyes open. Impa's the furthest away, standing guard by what used to be the door but certainly isn't anymore. His dad's holding him, and relief crosses his features immediately as he sees Link looking at him. He's hurt too, bleeding from a gash on his forehead.

"Oh, thank Hylia," his dad says as if Hylia had anything at all to do with it. "Good to have you back. I've only got one elixir left, so... make it count."

Link doesn't want to drink.

Link drinks. It helps. He's only halfway done with it when he's recovered enough presence of mind to notice Zelda. Or, more specifically, to notice what's different about Zelda: her eyes are glowing brilliantly gold, and so is the Triforce on the back of her hand.

He thinks choking on the rest of the elixir is fully warranted at that point.

Things have gone from bad to worse. Revali has landed a handful of hits upon the Windblight, but any damage he does do comes at the cost of getting blasted himself. The only reasons that he isn't dead yet are the armor that has never in its—or his—life been in worse condition, and the fact that he's managed to keep from being hit dead-on by that cannon. If he does get hit by it—well, he's dead, no sense flying around it.

Link's counting on him. Zelda's counting on him. Everyone is counting on him.

(He doesn't want to die. But who does?)

Thankfully, Link is able to persuade his dad to lay low and stay alive, because personally Link would really rather not lose the few family members he has left. Aryll is (hopefully) safe enough back home, in the basement, with her Cuccos. With some help from Zelda, who is technically his dad's boss now that the king is dead, Link manages to extract a promise that he'll head home if he can get out of the city, lay low if he can't, and most of all that he'll be careful and not die.

Impa offers to go with him. Link appreciates the offer, but—she's a good fighter, and Zelda... isn't, though what she's started doing with the Sheikah Slate certainly can't hurt. Against Calamity Ganon, Link will take any help that he can get.

Especially since nothing is coming from the Divine Beasts. Ganon itself—himself?—leers down at them. Three people, standing alone against the darkness.

The other Champions must be in trouble. There's no other explanation for why they wouldn't help, any of them. It's with that in mind that Link grips his sword tighter and launches himself at the Calamity incarnate. The blade is glowing, now. A different color, but almost as bright as Zelda's eyes, which Link doesn't get but will happily unpack later. Later, when the Calamity is a thing of the past, and he has time to.

Now is the time to fight.

The sky only darkens further as the fight continues, a thoroughly unfair combination of both the sun setting and the Calamity blotting out the night sky. With only the malice-tinted lights of his own Divine Beast and his own memory of the main deck to guide his flight, Revali finds that it's hard enough just to avoid flying into anything. The prudent thing to do, perhaps, would be to retreat. He could, after all; there is nothing keeping him here save the fact that turning his back on the fight would only make him an easier target.

He could, but he won't. Vah Medoh is his Divine Beast. He refuses to let this thing take her, even as he becomes increasingly sure that he can't outright win. Maybe he could, if he could actually see. If he'd known that he'd be fighting for his life up here...

But he didn't. Revali knows that he's lost when he nearly flies into one of the many stone columns upon Medoh's main deck, when his rapid roll to one side carries him directly into the path of one of Windblight's blasts. The force slams him down into the deck, sends his bow skittering just a few feet out of his reach. His feathers smolder, hot and painful, from the heat of the blast. He doesn't even have the strength to try and put them out, never mind to get up and get back in the air.

This is it.

His life flashes before his eyes as Windblight circles around him, leveling its cannon arm at his face. He doesn't blink. He doesn't move—not that he's sure that he could. Something's broken, and he would hope that it isn't either of his wings but it hardly matters what's broken now.

"Get on with it, then," Revali snaps. "But I'll have you know that this will not work out for you the way you think it will. That knight—though I suppose he's not a knight anymore, is he—will stop you. And he won't even need my aid to do it!"

Windblight... pauses. Somehow, that's scarier that anything else it could have done.

"Princess!"

Impa's voice rings out through the room that Ganon has made its home in. Link leaps out of the way of a strike, and—oh, fuck, Link maybe should have considered that Zelda's footwear wasn't anything approaching appropriate for combat, because now it looks like she's twisted her ankle.

"I'm alright, I promise!" Zelda calls out. "Please, keep Ganon occupied for a moment!"

Impa looks dubious, but leaps back into the fray herself. Link feels dubious, and so he keeps one eye on Zelda. Consequently, he sees her undo and yank one golden sandal off of her foot. The second one follows. And then she throws them both at Ganon.

Points for audacity, at least. Even Ganon seems almost impressed by that.

...Or maybe not, because it dissolves suddenly into a sphere of Sheikah blue, one that all of their attacks glance off of harmlessly.

"What are you doing now," Link mutters. "Zelda, Impa—back up!"

Windblight does not kill him. Instead, it moves its cannon to point a few feet to the front of him. It fires.

"No!" Revali shrieks, finding that he has the energy to throw himself forward after all—but it's too late. His Great Eagle Bow, his masterpiece, is nothing but shards and splinters and a single scrap of blue cloth.

He wouldn't have been able to do anything against the Windblight now, not without his bow—but the Blight doesn't give him the opportunity. It returns to that sphere of Sheikah blue, and then it has the audacity to vanish.

Revali stares at the spot where it has vanished, for a few long seconds, his heart pounding. He's not sure what happened. Did it really decide that he wasn't even worth killing? Because that's just insulting, if it did, but it had quite vehemently been trying to kill him earlier.

What changed?

...That doesn't matter, actually. He's not sure that he could keep himself in the air, not with how heavy his body feels, but he can do something. He can snatch up that scrap of blue cloth from the shattered remnants of his bow, a reminder of what and who he's fighting for. He can drag himself slowly, painfully, across Medoh's main deck. He can slam a wing down on the main terminal, hard enough that his own head spins, and he can call out a beam of Vah Medoh's strongest attack, pointed directly for the castle.

“Link, you had better… make this… count…”

He can also collapse against the terminal the moment that he's done so, utterly spent and hoping against hope that Medoh can handle the rest. It doesn't hurt anymore, once he's fallen into unconsciousness.

Something else emerges from the blue sphere, light coalescing into something entirely different. Something with no legs, balancing midair on what seems to be a malice-filled tornado. Something with a cannon for an arm, something that reminds him of one of the Guardians.

It's a damn good thing that he'd picked up a pot lid on the way here, specifically because of the Guardians lurking about outside. He pulls it off his back, shifting the Master Sword to a one-handed grip.

He calls out, "I've got it!"

Impa takes the opportunity to vanish... somewhere, taking Zelda with her. That's good, because it means that this thing—the name Windblight comes to mind, as he grips his sword tighter, and he's not sure why—only has one target.

Several reflected blasts and sword strikes later, the Windblight is looking a lot more worse for wear. It lets out a shriek, summoning several blue glowing darts to wreath about its head—

And then the biggest beam of blue that Link has ever seen comes crashing into Windblight, taking the windows of this chamber and a lot of the wall with it. Link's not sure what direction that was from, but it sends Windblight staggering backwards, leaving it open for Link to bury his sword nearly hilt-deep in its chest and make it dissipate into nothingness.

Impa rematerializes from the shadows beside him without a word, but with a good deal of red and white cards fluttering to the ground around her. She sets Zelda back down on her feet.

"Thank you, Impa," Zelda says. "What was... that has to have been one of the Divine Beasts, right? But which—"

"Northwest," Impa says, eyeing the devastated wall.

"Medoh," Link whispers. "Revali's still alive."

"We can only hope that they all are." Impa eyes the renewed sphere of Sheikah blue as it materializes into something not dissimilar from the Windblight, if Windblight had two relatively normal arms and the biggest Sheikah-style spear Link has ever seen clutched in the bigger of them. "I don't know what this is any more than you do, but I would tentatively guess that Ganon is growing desperate."

"Do you think?" Zelda asks, hopeful.

"Don't have much time to, at the moment." Impa narrows her eyes. "I really don't like the look of that spear. Let's split up!"

Link doesn't have to be told twice. He takes off towards the left, as Impa makes for the middle and Zelda skirts around the right, carefully avoiding the broken glass from the windows that Revali's attack shattered. His sword glows. He knows this one is called Waterblight Ganon, somehow, and he has no idea how.

Windblight, Waterblight... he hopes Mipha is okay. Or at least alive. He'll settle for alive, at this point.

As if in answer to his thoughts, another blast of blue-white light comes crashing through the walls, from nearly the exact opposite direction that Revali's had. Waterblight shrieks in pain and in fury. Link doesn't hesitate; he leaps at it again, driving his sword into one of the malice-filled veins extending across its body.

"Southeast," Impa says, once she's dealt the finishing blow. "That would be—"

"Mipha!" Zelda exclaims. "I'm not certain why they are not firing all at once, but..."

"I have an idea," Link says, and he doesn't like it. He likes the fact that the next one promptly spreads its arms wide in a horrible bastardization of Daruk's Protection even less. Within moments of it putting up that shield, another beam of light comes crashing through the walls, not doing much in the way of actual damage but nevertheless forcing Fireblight Ganon from one side of the room to the other.

Fortunately, it can't maintain that shield, not after an assault from someone who could be Daruk or could be Urbosa but Link would bet a sizable amount of rupees is, in fact, a very pissed off Daruk. Without that shield, taking down Fireblight Ganon is a lot simpler. It does manage to bring it back up briefly, but it's then that Zelda discovers that she can produce remotely activated bombs from the Sheikah Slate.

"Daruk?" Zelda asks in the brief reprieve that they have, looking at Impa.

"Northeast. So..." Impa nods. "Daruk, almost certainly, unless Vah Naboris has developed an ability to teleport. Link? You said you had an idea?"

Link breathes out slowly. He's still not used to people expecting him to talk back to them, especially not either of these people, but it's way better than the alternative.

"I think Ganon's trying to kill our friends, too," he says. "I don't know how I know, but each of the three we've seen already—they would be perfect counters to Revali, Mipha, and Daruk's fighting styles."

"Oh," Zelda whispers, eyes suddenly wide. "I thought... I don't know why I thought this but I thought that they were only preventing them from firing..."

"Killing our friends would prevent them from firing," Impa observes as a fourth Blight phases into being, its sword and shield visibly crackling with electricity and its long hair hanging low. "We can only hope that Urbosa too—"

A fourth beam comes crashing through the walls, to the point where Link is beginning to seriously worry about this room's structural integrity. It—

It misses?

"That thing is fast," Impa observes with only the most grudging of admiration in her words. She places her hands together in a sign Link has never seen before. "As good a time as any to try... yes!"

Several Sheikah-blue copies of Impa, down to the hat she's wearing on her back and the kodachi she now unsheathes, shimmer into being around her. Each one mirrors her movements, with only a slight delay.

"You can do that?!" Zelda blurts out, incredulous. "How long have you been able to do that?"

"Theoretically since I became your bodyguard, Princess," Impa says with a wry smile. She says the word Princess not like it's a fact of her being, but something to be honored. Something to be cherished. "In practice... I've never successfully pulled it off in combat before, so I am rather glad that it worked now!"

Thunderblight is fast.

Fortunately, so is Link.

Zelda stands forward as Calamity Ganon finally collapses, the Triforce on the back of her hand and her eyes glowing a brighter gold than Link has ever seen them glow before even today. A wave of light expands outward from her outstretched hand, passing over all three of them. Over Calamity Ganon, who screams. Outside, visible through the four really big holes in the walls of this... uh, Link's actually not clear on what this building was or why Ganon had decided to set himself up in here, but he somehow doubts it's going to stay standing for much longer, and he wouldn't have needed to know what it was in the future even if it wasn't probably close to collapsing.

The Calamity's over. Ganon's sealed away, for... hopefully, another ten thousand years at least. (Link wonders—is that why he somehow knew the name of the Blights?)

"We..." Zelda lowers her hand, swaying uncertainly on her feet. "We did it... after all."

"We did," Impa agrees, and Link isn't entirely sure how she moves that fast when Zelda collapses but he’ll chalk it up to ‘something something Sheikah bullshit’ like most of what Impa does. “How are you feeling, Princess?”

“Utterly… exhausted,” comes the answer.

“Same,” Link comments, almost surprised to find that he can still speak without the words catching in his throat and twisting it up. He’s not running on adrenaline anymore.

…Maybe he’s still somewhat running on adrenaline. He isn’t sure what he had been expecting out of Calamity Ganon, but he sure wasn’t expecting that.

“As am I, if I am to be perfectly honest,” Impa murmurs. "There is... no reason not to be."

Link nods in vague agreement.

"What now?" Zelda asks, leaning rather heavily on Impa. Link's pretty sure that she's asking about what in general to do, since her father is dead—Link, personally, will lose no sleep over that—but Link doesn't have thoughts on that any more than she does. Maybe Impa has something to offer.

He doesn't want for her to offer it.

"Before anything else," Link says, eyeing the roof, "we should get outside. Before another roof collapses on top of us. I don't know about you, but that's not an experience I really want to repeat."

"That... yes. Good idea."

"What then?" Impa asks, once the three of them have safely exited the building.

"I don't know," Zelda murmurs. "But I know what not to do... Link?"

He's not going back. Yet he snaps to attention instinctively when she says his name, and he hates that.

"You have made your wishes abundantly clear," she continues. "And I would respect them even if you had not just helped to save the world. You're... I hope you have a good life, Link. You truly deserve that and more."

...Oh. He wasn't expecting that. The princess that he'd been assigned to guard had quite often verbally taken her frustrations on having a guard out on him, but Zelda isn't that princess anymore. She wasn't even that princess when the Calamity began, as the sun was inching towards the horizon last night. Hours ago. Long, long hours ago.

Now, the sun rises on a changed Hyrule. Zelda isn't the same person that she was when the sun was setting, either. She has inexplicable Goddess powers now, which leaves Link the only member of their current party who doesn't have some sort of strange bullshit magic going on. He's honestly fine with that.

He had been fine with disappearing again once the Calamity was sealed away, too. He really had been.

"No sense in rushing things," Link says. "I'll leave when I feel like it. And... I'll be closer than you think, if you ever feel like saying hello. I wouldn't mind being friends."

Zelda looks startled, at first. And then she smiles. "I... I think I wouldn't mind that, either."

"Am I correct in assuming that if we do ever want to get in touch with you for any reason after you've left, we should check with Revali first?" Impa says, with a hint of... something in her words that Link isn't going to touch with a ten-foot pole right now.

"He was working as a mail Rito to get practice with flying longer distances, practice that definitely paid off," Link explains, since Revali is still off somewhere to the northwest, presumably dealing with Calamity cleanup in his area of Hyrule. "Honestly, I think he ran into me again completely by accident."

"Did he now?"

"Yeah?"

Link wonders if that something in Impa's voice might be amusement at his expense. Honestly, if it is, that's entirely fair—and he's sure that Impa would be even more amused if he relayed more details about how that happened, but he did just save the world; Revali can get a pass from having the story shared of how his sister immediately chose violence against him for now. He isn't even here to be embarrassed about it.

Zelda clears her throat uncertainly. She looks between the two of them.

She says, "I'm... not entirely certain as to where we can even begin to clean up after the Calamity, but I believe that locating some of the survivors we crossed paths with earlier may be a good start. I... don't know. I really don't. I'm sorry."

"Locating Link's own father may be prudent," Impa offers gently, and Zelda looks at her like she's offered her the world on a silver platter.

Of course Princess Zelda doesn't know the first thing about running a country, because her father had thought that forcing her into a mold that she wasn't meant for—and doing the same with Link—was more important than anything else. Link certainly doesn't begrudge his dad for having to deal with the king after he disappeared. He begrudges the king for a whole lot more.

He's not going to outright say this around Zelda—less because of any actual inhibitions and more because that would just be cruel—but he's glad that her father is dead.

(He suspects, from some of the looks he gets from Impa later on, that he's not exactly alone in those feelings or in keeping them to himself for the time being.)

Chapter Text

Daruk arrives first, rolling into the temporary camp they've set up for survivors around midday. It seems that, while the Calamity was bad everywhere, it was significantly less bad the farther one got from the epicenter that was Hyrule Castle, and as far as Goron City went, it was a pretty defensible position.

Link always liked Goron City, though he'd never been before drawing the sword. Or since he left the sword behind and sneaked home in the middle of the night without so much as a word to anyone. He's got the sword back now, though—he missed the sword, just not the weight of doing things in specific ways everyone impressed on him because of it.

He always liked Daruk, too—the big guy practically embodied everything he liked about the Gorons. But he couldn't risk paying him a visit when all of Hyrule was looking for him. Even if Daruk had understood why he'd left and agreed to keep his secret, Link... didn't, and still doesn't, have much faith in Daruk's secret-keeping ability.

This does not stop Link from practically launching himself at the Goron when he turns up with a few new scars, looking a little singed—he hadn't known Gorons could get scars or be singed—but still very much alive. Daruk laughs, hugging him back with a strength that could break bones. It doesn't, because Daruk knows his own strength—sometimes. Most of the time.

If nothing else, he's probably just as tired as Link is.

"Daruk!" Zelda shrieks, throwing herself into the hug as well. Impa stands slightly back, uncertain but smiling.

"Hey there, tiny princess!" Daruk chuckles, gaze passing over both of their heads to look directly at Impa. "Y'know, my arms are more than big enough for one more."

"I did see the results of what you did at the ceremony to appoint you all," Impa comments—oh, Link remembers that, and so does his back.

This does not stop Impa from hesitantly joining the group hug as well. The smile on Zelda's face, wider than Link has ever seen it before even as she approaches, more than makes up for Impa's hesitance.

"You're practically a Champion yourself at this point," Daruk exclaims, patting Impa on the back slightly harder than he probably should.

"Sheikah Champion," Link supplies, though he feels a little guilty about the circumstances of how Impa did become so involved with this group.

"Sheikah Champion!" Zelda echoes, seemingly more than happy to keep leaning on Impa even though she really shouldn't need to at this point.

"Sheikah Champion," Daruk agrees, nodding. "Gonna be honest, little guy, it's still... real weird to hear you talkin' with your voice and not your hands."

"I mean, I still can do this," Link signs. Out loud, he adds, "But it’s nice to not feel like I have to.”

"I hardly think that I qualify as..." Impa trails off, studying the faces of the other three present. "Well, I suppose. If you say so."

"You did as much to stop the Calamity as any of us did! More than some of us did," Zelda says firmly, and Link knows from the way she tugs anxiously at the too-large sleeve of the borrowed shirt she'd changed into an hour ago that she's referring exclusively to herself.

"Nonsense, Princess," Impa replies. "No one worked harder than you. We wouldn't all be here if it wasn't for you!"

Daruk nods, his gleeful enthusiasm quickly giving way to worry. "For sure. Wait, am I really the first to get here?"

"...Er. Yes?" Zelda looks uncertain. "I did mean to ask, what happened with the Divine Beasts...?"

Worry gives way now to something darker. "Ganon played dirty, s'what happened. I got to Rudania and this ugly pain in the crag jumped me!"

"One of Ganon's Blights," Link mutters. He's once again unsure where the name knowledge came from, but if he had to guess he'd bet it was something to with the sword that seals the darkness. That, and all this happening before, ten thousand years ago.

...If he had to guess, the one attacking Daruk was Fireblight. He'd put a pretty sizable amount of rupees on that one, if he had any. Somehow he doesn't think rupees are anyone's priority during the apocalypse or immediately in its aftermath, and Link sure isn't the exception to that.

Daruk nods. "Yeah, sounds 'bout right—he didn't waste time introducin' himself, just came at me with a sword that makes my Boulder Breaker look like yours and a whole lotta fire. Still went okay until he copied my Protection."

Zelda visibly winces. "Surely... you of all people would know how best to counter that?"

"You'd think," Daruk grumbles, which sounds suspiciously like a hard no. "I won't lie, it was lookin' bad before you lot made Ganon call him back to fight ya. If you'd taken any longer..."

"You would have fallen," Impa whispers, voicing the truth that no one else wants to.

"But ya didn't!" Daruk's grin returns, though lessened slightly. Link finds himself wondering, not for the first time, just how much Daruk has kept him or anyone else from worrying about with his usual easy grin. "The others... d'ya know anything about...?"

"As far as we know, they're alright," Zelda says, slipping briefly back into what Link decides to call her authority figure voice. "It will, however, take time for anyone else to get here..."

"I would have expected Revali to arrive first, admittedly, though for all we know, Rito Village could have been hit harder than any of us expected, in which case I would fully expect him to stay behind and help." Impa makes a vague motion that could, charitably, be interpreted as a shrug. "That being said. We do know for certain that Mipha, Urbosa, and Revali are at least alive; no one else could have given the order to fire on the Calamity except them or those attacking them, and I hardly think that Ganon's underlings would attack him."

"True!" Zelda brightens. "In the meantime—we could certainly use your help here, Daruk, if you aren't needed more at home."

Daruk shakes his head. "We got pretty lucky. I would've sent someone else if they still needed me."

"We're glad you're here," Link says, and he means it—both in general, and because he's really, really glad that Daruk isn't dead.

(That the others aren't, too.)

Urbosa arrives next, a couple of hours later, with a horse she'd borrowed from Gerudo Canyon Stable and no small amount of worry written all over her face, worry that both lessens and increases somewhat when she catches sight of Zelda—alive, somewhat well, and eyes still faintly glowing gold. 

Maybe that'll lessen with time. Maybe it won't.

Personally, Link thinks it would be very cool if her eyes just never stopped glowing, but given how little she enjoys the attention she has to have in order to help people start piecing their lives back together... maybe it's better for Zelda if that change isn't permanent. Honestly, Link would jokingly ask to trade, but it's probably better for him not to have inexplicably glowing eyes either.

He's gotten his fair share of awestruck looks from various people he's never met before today already. He's had enough for a lifetime, really; he's itching to head back to Hateno and check on Aryll. But she'll be fine. There are enough supplies stashed in the cellar to support three people and twice the amount of Cuccos that Aryll currently has for a week, and there are still likely to be a lot more monsters than average out and about.

For all that Revali is weirdly intimidated by his sister, Aryll isn't a fighter, not unless you've put her in a corner and threatened her family or her birds. All that considered, Link is really not sure what Revali did to piss her off that much, but... at least she'd seemed somewhat less murderous when they'd left to go save the world. Which is good, because smuggling someone who's become a weird sort of friend into and out of his own house was getting kind of old.

He hopes Revali will get here soon. He knows, logically, that he and Mipha both have to be okay—Impa made a very good point that they couldn't have possibly fired upon Ganon if they weren't.

Even so. Even though he's pretty sure he would immediately lose any ground he's gained with Revali if he openly doubted him. He's... still worried. He hadn't exactly been counting the seconds, but it sure had seemed like Vah Medoh had fired... much, much later, compared to when Windblight had shown up, as opposed to every other Divine Beast.

The Link of a few months ago probably would have assumed that Revali did that on purpose, specifically to spite him. Now, he knows better. Even if Revali did still hate him—and he doesn't think he does, not anymore—he knows that he wouldn't have held back on his account.

Still. He's probably fine. He probably just... took a little longer to wind up for his attack than anyone else did.

Mipha arrives closer to dusk, visibly exhausted as she nevertheless throws herself into healing those she can, scarcely sparing a smile and a few relieved words for her friends. By the time that she has any time to talk in more depth, the sun has fully set, and the amount anyone can do after dark is rather... limited.

"Have you slept at all?" is the first thing out of Urbosa's mouth as she approaches the campfire.

"There was no time to," Mipha says, after a slightly too long pause, "though I suppose there is now. I wonder..."

"We should all get some sleep," Link says, more for the others' benefit than his own. "I'll keep watch. Just in case."

"It's true that merely because we have not seen much of the Calamity's remnants does not mean that they do not exist," Impa says thoughtfully. "And I for one have no intention of letting you pass the night without any rest. That being said, the last time any of us were able to sleep would have been..."

"Before the Calamity," Zelda murmurs, and Link realizes that she's leaning heavily on Impa again. Her eyes are looking more blue than gold now, even in the relative darkness, but Link's too tired to point that out to her until the morning.

"Precisely," Mipha says. She surveys the assembled people—five in total, where there should be six—and frowns. "Has Revali not...?"

"Not yet." Daruk looks in the direction of Rito Village, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Doubt he's gonna turn up in the middle of the night, though. He never seems to like flyin' late."

"Rito can't see in the dark," Link says.

“...Huh. Really?”

Link nods. He’s suddenly very aware of the fact that he is being stared at by… basically everyone, actually, out of the people who had very wearily retreated to this particular campfire. Which is to say, the Champions. Zelda. Impa, whether she actually counts as a Champion herself or not, but given how much of Link’s slack she had picked up she absolutely should count even if she’s not wearing anything in that particular shade of blue.

He isn’t wearing it either, after all. He hasn’t worn it since he left.

“I don’t suppose that Revali told you that, did he?” Urbosa says after a long moment. “The two of you seem to be getting along much better than you used to, given that you arrived together when the rest of us had no idea where you were.”

Link very deliberately does not look at Mipha when he says, "Ran into each other by accident. Sorted our shit out. We're... friends now?"

There, he's said it. He doesn’t think that Revali would hate him for saying it, so maybe they really are friends now.

“Friends,” Mipha repeats, in a tone that he’s pretty sure means that she won’t say a word about knowing where he was if she doesn’t.

"Friends," Link agrees. "Is that really so hard to believe?"

"Kinda," Daruk says awkwardly. "Still happy for ya both!"

He'll take what he can get.

To say that Vah Medoh is worried about her pilot is the sort of thing that said pilot would consider to be a massive understatement, if he was currently capable of considering anything at all. Medoh isn't sure that he is currently capable of considering anything at all, given that he had collapsed against her central control panel eighteen hours, fifteen minutes, and seven seconds ago and has not so much as twitched since.

He's still breathing, Medoh is sure of that. Her sensors would tell her if her pilot was dead.

Unfortunately, Medoh is becoming progressively less and less sure that he will stay that way without help. Which is a problem, because she doesn't think that anyone is capable of making it up here to help him. If he can't make it down, back to the village that she has been circling above for hours...

Vah Medoh cries out, the shriek ear-piercing to those in possession of them and reminiscent of a particularly large and significantly less mechanical bird of prey. This wouldn't be the first time that Revali had collapsed up here, though every other time was from something more akin to exhaustion. Medoh would let him sleep, here where the rest of the world couldn't reach him, and if he hadn't stirred on his own after twelve hours had passed Medoh would wake him up then.

He isn't waking up now, no matter how loud Medoh shrieks, and she would rather not lose her pilot now that the Calamity has ended. Not like this. Somehow, she needs to get him help, since he is incapable of getting help for himself, but she is not capable of the precise maneuvers needed to properly land without a pilot in control. She can't get close enough to the ground for any of the other Rito to make it up here.

Is there... truly nothing she can do?

No. She remembers something, suddenly. Revali flying up here in a huff, pacing the deck while silently fuming for nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds, before ranting for precisely fifty-seven minutes and nine seconds about how the knight with the darkness-sealing sword wouldn't dignify his superior skills with so much as an acknowledgment. About how he was sure that the knight would never be able to make it up to this Divine Beast on his own, and obviously Revali wasn't about to help him.

On future visits, Revali's opinion of the knight improved. Drastically. He even referred to him by name once or twice.

He hadn't said anything more about Link's capabilities since then, but... it's possible that he could actually make it here. He'd have a better chance of at least realizing that something was deeply, deeply wrong, given some of the things Revali has shared with Medoh.

And without a pilot, Medoh's options are incredibly limited. Her options are to attempt a landing that will almost certainly become a crash landing with no pilot, to attempt to get the attention of someone, anyone who might be able to help... or to keep waiting.

Medoh's viable options are, then, down to one. A crash landing will do more harm than good, and perhaps it is her new pilot's influence but she is not much inclined to wait for said pilot to die.

With one final shriek, she changes her flight pattern, arcing away from Rito Village and towards the center of Hyrule. Medoh is careful, as she does so, not to tilt her main deck too much. Or at all.

Given that the apocalypse ended yesterday, Link thinks it’s a perfectly reasonable decision to be immediately up on his feet with his sword drawn upon hearing a very loud and largely unfamiliar sound in the middle of the night. He's heard that sound before, somewhere. He can't quite place where, not at first. Though it's vaguely reassuring to find that he's not the only one immediately awake and alert when it comes to strange sounds in the night—Urbosa's on her feet too, electricity crackling along the length of her scimitar. Daruk's got his crusher at the ready, Zelda's summoned the bow made of light to her hands, and Mipha has her trident held a little too tightly. And Impa—

Wait. Where is Impa?

"Oh dear," Impa murmurs, suddenly materializing from the shadows in that way that would be more unsettling if Link hadn't taken down the physical manifestation of malice incarnate alongside her yesterday.

"What is it?" Zelda barely suppresses a yawn—understandable, honestly.

Impa doesn't respond verbally, though she does sheath her kodachi. She looks around the group, her face set into a grim line, and points upward.

Link follows her gaze. There are lights up above them, clear Sheikah blue that seems familiar—

The reason there are bright blue lights above the campsite cries out even louder, even more urgently, more desperately.

It hits him. That's Vah Medoh, flying far above—though less far above than it normally would, unless he's mistaken. It's hard for him to make out much, in the darkness.

(But he knows this: it's even harder for Rito to see in the dark. Something is deeply, deeply wrong.)

"Revali?!" Zelda exclaims. "That... why would he bring Medoh here?"

"I'm not entirely sure that he did," Urbosa says warily, though she puts away her own weapons. "Little bird—I can't help but recall you mentioning some time ago that our Divine Beasts are capable of a few things even without a pilot actively controlling them?"

"That's right! They're really quite marvelous. Each of them can move autonomously, though not as fast as they would with a pilot's direction. They can defend themselves against intruders, to a limited extent... though in retrospect, we should have put much more effort into that functionality..."

"None of us bear you any ill will for not predicting the future, Princess," Impa says gently. "But—"

"What if he is too badly hurt to come down on his own?" Mipha's gaze does not leave Vah Medoh. "What if he is..."

"He can't be dead," Link snaps. "He fired on Calamity Ganon. Somehow I think he would need to be alive to do that."

Silence hangs in the air between them all. No one dares to voice the obvious response: that Revali had to have been alive then, but it has been nearly a day since then. Link should have known something was wrong when Revali wasn't the first to turn up after the dust settled and the Calamity was defeated. Really, he should have known that something was wrong when Revali didn't turn up during the fight, because he certainly could have.

He looks up again. Vah Medoh is still circling far above them all, but... not as high up as it could be, Link's pretty sure. Maybe this is the lowest Medoh can get without a pilot's input. Without Revali's input.

I forgot that you have no way of making it up to that Divine Beast on your own echoes in his head for the first time in months. The last time Link had thought of that, he'd had to sneak out in the middle of the night with a rusty sword and a pot lid to kill monsters in the woods until he stopped wanting to stab someone he'd just seen for the first time in months.

He hadn't really remembered that at all, not consciously, since Revali's second visit. Definitely not since his fourth. He hadn't really needed to, because for some weird reason Revali kept coming back. Just... to talk. And to be slightly less antagonistic than before. Was he really that fascinated by how different Link was when he wasn't repressing everything he was for the king's (ex-king's!) sensibilities?

Link had never asked. It never was the right time.

He won't get a chance to ask if Revali dies up there.

He'd really rather that Revali didn't die up there. It's horribly ironic that what's stopping anyone from reaching him now is the same thing that Revali had taunted him over so many months ago.

"Time to make it up to that Divine Beast on my own," Link whispers under his breath, because the alternative is unthinkable. He doesn't mean for anyone to hear him. And yet Zelda, standing closest, looks at him strangely.

"Sorry, what?" she asks.

"Revali told me that I couldn't make it up there by myself a long time ago," Link explains. Revali had also told him a lot of other things besides, but at this point that's entirely water under the metaphorical bridge. "I need to prove him wrong."

Zelda blinks. "Perhaps with the Slate's powers—"

Link shakes his head. He's trying to think—what he needs is an updraft. What causes updrafts? Revali’s own Gale, a lot of other things that he doesn't understand all that well, and... fire.

He also needs some way to catch this theoretical updraft, which is a slightly bigger and more pressing problem. His gaze shifts to his own bedroll. He can make this work. The others might think he's utterly insane in the aftermath, but that's never stopped him before. He rushes over, unsheathes the Master Sword to split it into one big square of fabric, then puts it away to test the ends, because he needs to be able to hold this.

"Little guy? What're ya doing?" That's Daruk, the worry written all over his face marred now by clear confusion.

"I'm getting up there," Link says, determined more now than he's ever been before. He bundles up the former bedroll under one arm, marches over to the nearest campfire, and grabs a stick from it to serve as a makeshift torch.

Then, and only then, does he rush out into the grassy fieldlands where Medoh is circling, prompting an even louder and more desperate cry from the Divine Beast in question.

There's no time to waste. He throws the torch out into a particularly large and dry clump of grass, setting it ablaze. He holds his breath, begs nothing in particular for this to work—

An updraft follows. Hot air rises—he vividly remembers Revali mentioning that at some point, but he he can't waste time thinking about the specifics of when or why now. He's wasted enough time already. He throws open the mutilated bedroll above the updraft, hoping desperately that it will somehow be enough to catch the wind—

He's rising. His feet aren't on the ground anymore. He's not rising anywhere near as quickly as he'd like, he needs to get higher much faster than he is, but he'll take what little he can get. This works out.

This works out, at least, until he looks up to see how far he has left to go and discovers that the former bedroll has, apparently, caught fire itself. Then he starts to panic. He has no way down, but he's far closer to Medoh than he is to the ground, so maybe...

Medoh cries out again, though it sounds a little different than the cries it had been making. The automaton turns, slowly, in midair. There's an entry point upon what would be its tail if it was an actual bird, low enough that Link can make it there before the bedroll burns apart in his hands. It's a near thing. He nearly misses the platform entirely—but he doesn't. He hauls himself up onto the platform with all the strength he has in him. He rolls over onto his back. He stares up at the sky, which doesn't look all that different despite the fact that he's so much closer to it than he normally would be.

He's on Vah Medoh. He made it here on his own after all, just like Revali never believed he could.

Link would probably be able to appreciate that fact far more if worry wasn't gnawing endlessly at his gut. He doesn't have time to waste, time to spare—he needs to move, and fast. So he does. He sprints up through the Divine Beast's mechanical insides, pushing himself to his limits and past them in the vain, desperate hope that it isn't too late. There must be a main terminal here, somewhere that he's never seen—he has a vague idea of what it looks like, if only from briefly visiting each of the other Divine Beasts, and that's a good place to start. Link's pretty sure that Revali would have had to at least be near it to fire Medoh's laser at the Calamity.

(Revali was still alive this time yesterday, when Link was actively trying to stab Calamity Ganon. That little he can be certain of. That little he can hold on to.)

He finds the main terminal on Vah Medoh's back, surrounded by frequent scorch marks and the occasional broken arrow. Windblight Ganon was here, to be sure—but every scorch mark on Vah Medoh's surfaces means a blast of that cannon that didn't hit the champion it was intended to kill. Revali's here, too, though Link almost doesn't notice him at first. The crumpled heap of blue-black feathers collapsed against the base of the main terminal, one wing outstretched across the controls and the other clamped around something to small to see, is a far cry from the proud Rito Champion that Link had said goodbye to.

Link's breath hitches in his throat as he rushes forward, as he drops roughly to his knees besides Revali—unmoving, except for where the wind almost makes it look like he is. His feathers are matted with dried blood in several places, visibly singed in others, but he's breathing. Shallowly, in a way that just sounds like it would be painful if he was awake—but he is. He's still alive.

That's the important part. That's what matters. He's not dead yet, and if Link has any say in the matter he won't be dying today or tomorrow.

"Revali?" Link whispers, reaching out to where his wing still rests atop Medoh's controls. "Are you... can you hear me?"

If he can, he doesn't stir. Link's gaze shifts between Revali and the console.

"You were going to do your part against the Calamity even if it was the last thing you did," Link realizes. "You... you could have at least taken care of yourself first! You had no way of knowing that I would find some way up here to check on you. That anyone could get up here to help you, actually—what was it you said? Quite the masterpiece of aerial techniques, even among the Rito?"

Revali doesn't answer. Why did Link think he would answer?

"You're an idiot," Link mutters. "But I guess that makes two of us, because I got up here on my own, and I don't have a way back down."

He blinks hard. Slowly, he sinks down to sit against the console alongside Revali. He reaches out once more, silently, to pull Revali away from the console. He meets with almost no resistance. Revali's wing comes away from the console, which Link is prepared for. He's not prepared for Revali to collapse against him, with nothing else left to hold him up.

If Revali was conscious, Link is pretty sure that he would have opinions about this. Very loud, very strong opinions about this. But he isn't. He isn't, and unless Link can think of some way to get him back down to Mipha safely, he's still terrifyingly close to losing him. So Link holds him instead.

He holds him, as tightly as he dares, and he says, "You have to wake up, Revali. I need your help, or you'll—you'll die up here, and there's nothing I'll be able to do to stop it. I didn't beat the shit out of Ganon for you to die on me now! So please... please..."

Revali doesn't stir, and it's all that Link can do not to start crying.

Revali doesn't stir, but Medoh lets out a particularly loud cry, and Link realizes—the lights in the floor are glowing, blinking, in a strange pattern. Does Medoh want him to follow them?

...He doesn't want to leave Revali alone even for a moment. But he doesn't seem to be actively bleeding out, even if he isn't waking up. Link has had enough basic first aid drilled into his head by Mipha over the years to know that, sometimes, moving people before you have to is really, really bad. This could be one of those times. So he doesn't move Revali. He's careful, possibly more careful than he's ever been before in his life, not to jostle him as he pulls away.

He takes a deep breath that he doesn't have time for, and he follows the lights deeper into Vah Medoh. They lead, eventually, to an old chest tucked away in a corner. Link raises an eyebrow. He opens it anyway, to— fabric?

Wood and fabric, as it turns out. Wood and fabric made into a very deliberate contraption that Link thinks he could catch the wind with, probably far better than he could by utterly mutilating a bedroll. The fabric portion is painted with a familiar symbol, he realizes, as he opens it.

That's Revali's symbol, isn't it?

Link looks up. Vah Medoh's massive blue eye is staring directly at him.

"Did he... make this?" Link asks quietly.

Vah Medoh cries out in the affirmative. Link looks at it. He realizes, slowly, too slowly: he has a way down after all.

There's just one big problem still. From the looks of it, this... parachute glider thing requires two hands to use. He's also going to need two hands free in order to carry Revali down with him. This adds up to four hands in total, which is twice the amount of hands that he actually has at any given time.

He returns to the main terminal anyway, because the situation is at least a little more hopeful now. Revali is still breathing, but that's little comfort with no ability to keep him that way.

"Did you make this for me?" Link asks him. He's not expecting an answer. He doesn't get an answer, and that's... fine. Worrying, but fine, except that it really and truly isn't.

He refuses to let Revali die here, no matter what it takes. He has the glider, which looks difficult to work even with two free hands—so he somehow needs to carry Revali down without using either of his hands. And without having either of them die on the way down from things like hitting the ground way too hard.

What does he have? He has to have something he can use.

He has the sword that seals the darkness. More importantly, there's the belt holding its scabbard to his back. He unbuckles that belt, eyes it appraisingly, then separates the scabbard from the belt and sets it aside with a silent apology.

"I'll come back for you, I promise," he tells the sword.

The sword doesn't respond, either. because of course it doesn't. He doesn't know why he thought, for a moment, that it (she) would.

Right now, the sword doesn't matter. Last he checked, swords aren't capable of bleeding out. Stupidly stubborn Rito very much are.

"Sorry about this," he tells Revali. "This is going to be really embarrassing for both of us, so if you want to wake up now and save us both a lot of trouble..."

He trails off hopefully. He shouldn't have bothered. Revali doesn't wake up.

Link is completely certain that Revali would be very unimpressed if he were to witness the remarkably terrible landing he makes. Somewhere off in the distance, Zelda, Daruk, and Urbosa are attempting to launch the massive Goron up to Vah Medoh with the combined powers of the Sheikah Slate, Daruk's Protection, and Urbosa's upper body strength. Link would be amused if he wasn't worried, if he can scarcely hear Revali's breathing over the wind.

(He's sure that Revali would be amused, too, if he could be. He’ll have to tell him about it later.)

"Mipha!" Link yells, and her head snaps up. Her eyes widen. She rushes over.

"How did you..." She shakes her head, as she pulls Revali off of Link's back. "Never mind that. Help me set him down."

Link does so, without a word. He's entirely certain that Mipha will have a lot of words about how reckless he was later, about how reckless both of them were. And that's—that's fine. It's fine, so long as there is a later to be had.

Mipha turns him over, sets a hand upon the worst of his wounds—and freezes. "Link, he is not breathing..."

Never mind! It's not fine at all. Not in the slightest.

At least Mipha's hands are glowing with the clear blue of her healing magic. So there has to be some hope, at least. There has to be something she can do.

"Please—" His voice breaks. "Please tell me that he's not already..."

"He is not gone yet," Mipha says resolutely. The blue glow from her hands intensifies with her words. "I must know everything that you can tell me about what happened, in order to keep him that way.”

Revali wakes up.

He hadn't been expecting that, to be perfectly honest. The fact that he is quite obviously no longer aboard Vah Medoh is even stranger. But there is what feels like a bedroll of Hylian make underneath him, and the sky above him is... clear, mostly. There are a handful of clouds, white and puffy, but the important thing is that there's not a trace of Malice; not a sign of the Calamity.

From the looks of it, they won. Link and Zelda actually pulled it off. The princess must have unlocked her powers after all, when it came down to it.

He's glad of that, immensely so—but that doesn't explain how he got here. Or where here is.

(He already has an explanation for why everything aches when he tries to get up: the monstrosity that intended to kill him, and came terrifyingly close to success in its doom-driven mission.)

"Oh! Revali!" There is a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down, and he looks to see none other than Mipha. "Truly, I am glad to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

"Adequate," Revali mutters. "Mipha, I trust you to speak to me plainly."

Mipha seems... uncertain, but nods. "Of what, precisely?"

"Did we win?"

"Yes—"

"Or did we all fail and die in terrible, terrible ways, and this is merely whatever passes for an afterlife?"

"...I believe that I would know if I had died," Mipha says gently. "It was a very near thing, and I suspect I would not have made it off dear Ruta myself if it were not for my own healing powers... but I promise you, Revali, we have all survived."

He squints at her suspiciously. "We all have?"

She pauses. "Well, I suppose... not everyone has. There were a number of... casualties..."

"The Rito," Revali demands, and largely means his village.

"When we realized that you were still aboard Vah Medoh, Impa traveled out to check on them," Mipha says. "Your village suffered several minor injuries, but no deaths; you prepared them well."

"That is... a relief. Then who..." He stops. "Am I correct in assuming that you would be significantly more emotionally compromised if Link was one of those casualties?"

Mipha's eyes widen. "Link is fine! He is... he has done some remarkably foolish things recently, but he is not... the only individual personally relevant to you is Zelda's father."

"...The king of Hyrule. That father," Revali asks, just to confirm, and receives a nod. "Here I was thinking this was someone I would be sad about."

She stares at him, for a long moment, and Revali wonders too late if he's crossed a line.

"Zelda is sad about his death," Mipha says at last, "but I cannot say that I am particularly so myself, and I do not believe that is a sentiment that many share with her."

"It's almost like he was a terrible father and then some," Revali grumbles. "Oh. Wait."

"Revali—"

"I'll have you know, Mipha, that I know a terrible father when I see one. Please do not ask why."

"...I will not," Mipha says, in a tone that seems to indicate she very much wants to ask why. He trusts Mipha with his life, but—not with that. It's nothing against her, or anyone, so much as it is simply something Revali would prefer to never think of again.

"Thank you." Revali still has... questions... but he recognizes that Mipha may not be the best person to ask them. "Where is Link, anyway? I would have thought he'd remain present for at least a little while longer."

She gives him a long, sad look, one that Revali can't decipher and isn't sure whether he wants to. "He did, until I was certain that you would not perish. He left with his father, to check on his sister. I am under the impression that you have met Aryll?"

"You could say that," he grumbles. "She was far less happy to meet me than I was to meet her, given what she had heard of me from Link. I'm sure that she is perfectly fine."

"What did she hear of you from Link?" Mipha asks innocently.

Revali sighs. "Nothing... inaccurate, I suppose. She provided me with some much needed perspective, though I would have preferred that she had done so in a way that did not involve physically assaulting me."

Is he completely losing it, or is Mipha hiding a smile?

"That certainly does sound like her."

He's not losing it. Or, if he is—which is very possible, honestly!—it's entirely unrelated to this. Mipha is barely suppressing a smile that is almost certainly at his expense.

"Does it," Revali mutters sourly.

"Oh! That does remind me." Mipha's smile grows. “There was something that Link wanted me to tell you, once you awoke.”

Revali’s heart very resolutely does not skip a beat or several in his chest. “...Oh?”

Link is outside with his sister, a Hylian man with a bandaged head injury, and several Cuccos, all of whom look up when Revali quite deliberately lands with as much wind and bluster as possible, stalks over to Link, and says, jabbing a wing into his chest, “You are a terrible person and I hate you.”

The man who must be his father looks concerned, Aryll looks ready to fight him herself, but Link—the bastard—just laughs. “No, you don’t.”

Revali sighs deeply and grumbles, “No, I don’t. And I suppose that I deserved that, but—really?”

“What did you do?” Aryll asks. She looks positively delighted at his expense, because of course she does.

“One of the first things Revali ever said to me was that I could never make it up to his Divine Beast on my own,” Link says. “Had to make sure he knew I finally proved him wrong.”

“Yes,” Revali says, “well—”

He would be dead if Link hadn’t proved him wrong. If Medoh hadn’t gone against his direct orders and flown off in search of someone who could help, or if Link hadn’t found the paraglider he was making and used that to get them down safely… if any number of things hadn’t gone right, he would have bled out sometime after the Calamity was sealed away, and isn’t that funny? Isn’t that ironic?

If his initial judgment of Link had been at all correct, if he’d been right about him not caring—when, Revali’s discovered, if anything he cares too much—he wouldn’t be here now.

(He thinks he might have the nerve to say as much, to say a lot more than just that, if it wasn’t for the fact that Link’s family is here too. The Cuccos alone are bad enough.)

“Your performance was… adequate, I’m told,” Revali says instead, looking away. “Though I was hardly able to bear witness to much—or any—of it myself.”

Link shrugs. “Could have gone better. Could have gone a lot worse.”

“That it could have.” Revali clears his throat, turns his back, and spreads his wings. “I… appreciate what you did. Take care of yourself, Link.”

“You too,” Link says, and it sounds like there’s something else he wants to say but when Revali glances over his shoulder to see if he’ll say it, he’s staring at his boots.

“...Champion Revali, isn’t it?” says Link’s father, glancing between the two of them. “It’s fairly late, and I don’t know how far you’ve flown but there’s always room for one more under my roof.”

Aryll stiffens. “Dad—”

“Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“I… think that your daughter might object to me doing so rather strongly,” Revali says carefully. “But I appreciate the offer nevertheless. I’d better be going now—”

“You don’t have to,” Link says, and Revali realizes all at once that he’s staring at him. “Aryll can deal.”

“Aryll is right here,” Aryll protests. “...But if for some reason, both of you want him to stick around… wait.”

Revali raises a wordless eyebrow, as her eyes slowly widen. As she turns to Link, and exclaims, “Hylia, you have a—”

Link elbows her in the side. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His sister, undeterred, grins at Revali—it still feels like a threat display—and declares, “Actually, you should stay for dinner. At least. You could spend the night and share with Link~!”

“Aryll—”

Revali has the strangest feeling that he’s missing… something, here. Whatever it is, he still probably should turn down the family’s offer… but his stomach rumbles, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t actually eaten anything since this morning.

“I’ll stay for dinner,” Revali decides. “I make no promises about anything beyond that.”

Revali hadn’t been at all sure of what to expect from Link’s father—he’d been vaguely aware that the man was a knight himself, or somehow otherwise involved with the Hyrulean military, specifically because that had been one of several things he’d been determined to hold against Link originally. He certainly isn’t expecting the man to be as welcoming as he is, because surely he has to have heard of how Revali treated his son—if not from Link himself, than from his daughter.

He spends most of dinner waiting for the other arrow to fly. That doesn’t happen before he finds an opening to excuse himself, to slip outside. The sun is dangerously close to the horizon already, but Revali is certain he can make it to Medoh at least before nightfall. He’s spent the night on his Divine Beast before, he can certainly do so again… though the thought of doing so now, for some reason, gives him pause.

He remembers all too well—Sheikah blue becoming the sickly magenta of the Calamity’s thrall, as his own Divine Beast was stolen from beneath him. That magenta coalescing into something meant to kill him, meant to kill him specifically, and he would have been flattered if he hadn’t been terrified.

“...You okay, kid?”

His head snaps up. He hadn’t expected Link’s father to follow him outside. He’s expecting the concern that crosses his face, despite the notable lack of Link nearby, even less.

“Obviously,” Revali snaps, and immediately feels bad. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Link’s father raises a curious eyebrow. “Link hasn’t told me the details, but I’ve gathered that you and your fellow Champions were all fighting for your lives.”

“...And what about it? I survived.”

(Only because of Link, but he doesn’t want to admit that. Not here. Not now.)

"As did I," Link's father says—slowly, carefully, and Revali does not want to be patronized. "We all were lucky to."

"Speak for yourself..." Revali trails off. "You clearly know my name. I don't know yours, and I don't particularly desire to only refer to you in relation to your son."

"Name's Dalen," Link's father says with an easy shrug. "Used to be the captain of the Royal Guard. Got demoted when Link left, and I refused to give him up—but my old unit still listened to me when the Calamity hit, and that's something that saved lives, so I'd like to think I count for something."

Revali pauses. "You were demoted because you refused to give him up? I was under the impression that no one knew for sure where he was."

The next shrug from Dalen comes much less easily. "No one did know, for sure. The king sure suspected I knew something— it would've been pretty hard for him to get out unnoticed otherwise. Wasn't about to admit to anything."

He opens his beak, and shuts it again without saying a word, because—what could he even say? Dalen clearly cares about his kids, both of them, which is... it's one thing to know, nebulously, that Mipha's father is decent enough, when he's scarcely exchanged a full sentence with King Dorephan under any circumstances and was quite careful to avoid ever being alone with him. It's another thing entirely to be faced with this right in front of him—or more accurately, leaning on the fence next to him.

At last, Revali manages to say, "You're a good father. Better than the late king, to be certain."

Better than mine, he thinks and will never, ever say.

"Eh, I try to be," Dalen says. "There's a lot I could do better in, but there's a lot I could do worse in, too. One thing for sure, I never should have let it get to the point that it did. Now that the old king is dead... would you like to know what happened, the night that he disappeared?"

Revali isn't sure that he does, actually.

Dalen doesn't seem to be waiting for an answer either way, because he looks over at Revali and he continues, "I hadn't spoken with my own son in months, before that night. Not since he'd been appointed as the princess's personal guard. But that night, when I returned to my quarters late, he was there waiting for me. He... I couldn't get a word out of him as to what had happened, what had gone wrong, but something clearly had. He told me that he was leaving Hyrule, that he was leaving the sword behind to pick someone else. That it—and the king—needed to pick someone else, because he was done."

"But he didn't leave Hyrule," Revali says uncertainly, guilt twisting uncomfortably in his chest.

"He didn't," Dalen agrees. "He never would have survived. The only ways out of Hyrule are across a ravine too deep and wide to pass without flying, across an ocean when he gets seasick very easily, or across the Gerudo Desert without supplies, preparation, or even a map."

...Link gets seasick? Link? Revali knows this is far from the strangest revelation he's had tonight, and yet his mind latches onto it like it's a good deal more significant than it is, because he can scarcely imagine Link being reduced to nausea by something so simple as maritime transportation.

Evidently taking Revali's silence as grounds to continue, Dalen does just that.

"I knew the roads out of Hyrule, especially, would be watched. As would the road home to Hateno, a ride that would be difficult to complete in a single day and his absence would be noticed come morning; but it would be considerably less difficult for him to ride off-road as far as he could, sleep in Kakariko, and travel cross-country to make it home the next day. Aryll's even younger than him, but she certainly bears no love for... authority in general, really, she's at that age... and was more than happy to help once Link got there."

"You... planned this," Revali says slowly. "Quite extensively."

Link's disappearance had been planned more extensively than Revali had assumed, at any rate; though he'd also assumed that Link didn't have help. That he'd just vanished in the middle of the night, that he'd somehow slipped out of Castle Town by virtue of no one recognizing him without the sword that seals the darkness. Revali had scoffed at the thought then. He was certain he'd know Link anywhere, sword or no sword.

...He was right about that, at least, though he wouldn't know it for a while yet.

"As much as I could on very short notice." Dalen shrugs. "Always been good at that, which I guess is why the king decided to put me in charge. Until he didn't, anyway. He chose being a king over being a father; I chose being a father over being a knight, and I don’t regret it."

(Revali's father had never chosen being a father over anything else, least of all his own bloated ego.)

"Do you plan on going back to that?" Revali asks. "Being a knight, that is. I know Link isn't. I wouldn't want him to."

"Me neither, after what he's been through. As for me... dunno. We'll see. Not particularly inclined to."

"I doubt that I would be either." Revali sighs. "Though I also... regrettably... may have contributed to his abrupt departure in the first place."

"Did you?" Dalen doesn't sound surprised. "Seems like you two get along well enough now."

"Now, yes, I— severely misjudged him originally," Revali admits. "I don't mind his company now. I don't believe that he minds mine, either, though I doubt Aryll has forgiven me for my role in... that."

"Then why in Hylia's name are you telling me this?" Dalen raises an eyebrow. "Both of them got their stubbornness from me, I can tell you that much."

He believes it. Something about the way that Link's father is looking at him forces the truth out of his beak. "I don't know."

"Do you want me to hate you or something?" Dalen jokes—or at least it's meant as a joke, but something must show on Revali's face, because the next thing out of his mouth is, "Look. As far as I'm concerned, you're both adults, you can sort out whatever's going on there yourselves, and it seems like you have. I'm not gonna hate you for something that Link doesn't. Aryll will come around."

"...Will she?"

Dalen claps him on the shoulder, and he tries—not entirely effectively—to keep from flinching away. "She will, if you put in the effort. I doubt the hero of the Rito's any stranger to that."

No one's ever called him that before. He's not sure he's worthy of that title, given his recent social missteps and the fact that he barely even survived the Calamity with help, but—he doesn't mind it. Quite the opposite, actually. Maybe he should update his diary to have that as the subtitle instead.

"That said," Dalen says just as cheerfully, "you hurt Link again... well, let's put it this way. There won't be any witnesses to what happens to you, and no one will never find a body."

"I see that being extremely intimidating also runs in the family," Revali manages, doing his best to ignore his gut instinct which is to immediately flee and never look back. "It's rather bold of you to assume that you could kill me. That said, I have no intention of doing anything worth warranting that ever again to someone I... suppose I consider to be a friend?"

"Friends, huh?"

"Yes?" Revali has the strangest sort of feeling that Link's father is implying something, but unfortunately whatever that something is has gone flying over his head with a speed comparable to that of Vah Medoh. "What else would we be?"

"Eh, I'm sure you'll figure it out sooner or later," Dalen says, which isn't encouraging. "I'm going to bed."

"...The sun hasn't even set?"

"I'm tired. That's one of the great things of getting old, you can go to bed whenever you want and sometimes you're just gonna want to go to bed early." He yawns, stretches, and makes for the back door. He pauses, though, on the threshold of it. Just to look back at Revali, and to say, "For what it's worth, you're as welcome here as any other Champion would be."

"I'm getting some mixed messages here, but I suppose... thank you?"

"You should talk to him, though," Dalen adds. "Before you fly on home. If not tonight, then tomorrow morning."

Revali blinks. "Talk to Link? I wasn't exactly planning to fly off without a word."

Dalen looks skeptical enough that Revali's slightly offended. "He's always been an early riser. If he's not here, check the forest."

He goes inside, then. Revali would go inside himself, and he still fully intends to, but he spends several minutes longer than he necessarily wants to staring at the shut door, trying and failing to make sense of whatever that was, and wondering how different his life might have been if he'd had a father who gave a damn about him and not just what his achievements could do for him, if he'd had a father that was willing to threaten violence to protect his kids instead of... well, what he got.

(He hasn't seen his own father in years. He rarely misses him.)

By the time Revali trudges back inside, shortly after sundown, Link's father has long since gone to bed. Link's sister is reading a book at the table by candlelight, and for a moment Revali considers taking his chances with flying home in the dark anyway.

Then she turns a page and says, without looking up, "Link's got an extra bedroll upstairs. If you go in my room, I'll kill you."

“This is reasonable,” Revali responds, and makes for the stairwell slightly faster than he otherwise would. The stairs creak irritatingly loudly, but maybe that's by design, because as he's working up the nerve to knock on the closed door it opens, and everything he's planning to say completely slips out of his mind as his eyes meet Link's.

"...Hi," Link says, after a pause, and turns to wave him inside. The sword that seals the darkness is on his back still, sitting innocently in its sheath, and it looks right for him, it really does. "I actually have no idea if Rito use bedrolls, now that I think about it, I... haven't really spent a lot of time in Rito Village and you're the only Rito I talk to on a regular basis. That’s never really come up."

"It's not ideal," Revali responds once he's closed the door behind him, "but given that if we're really desperate we can sleep standing up, I'm not particularly picky."

Link's head whips around. "You can sleep standing up?"

"...In a manner of speaking?" He waves a wing dismissively. "I would need a tree, and more faith in my balance while asleep than most Rito generally have... but, theoretically, yes. I've done so before."

"That," Link says, "is incredible. And probably really useful, but also just... incredible."

...Why does it feel so hot in here all of a sudden? It's likely something to do with the home being built Hylian-style, with more confined walls than the one he's gotten used to, and being in a considerably warmer climate than the one he typically calls home. Still, he's surprised he didn't notice it sooner.

Thinking about it, he really should have noticed it much sooner. If he recalls the evening in his mind, nothing truly stands out except for when Link smiled at him during dinner. The heat had been nearly unbearable after that, to the point where he simply had to make an escape sooner rather than later to clear his head and cool off.

He can scarcely see outside now, though, so unless he fancies a tumble down the hill behind Link's house in the dark—which, personally, he doesn't—he really should just stay inside, even if it's uncomfortable. And he should consider bringing a Chilly Elixir with him the next time he pays Link a visit. Assuming, of course, that Link will want him to visit again, which... he certainly hopes so.

"It's truly nothing special," Revali says after a pause that most would probably consider to be slightly too long, if they subscribed to narrow-minded assumptions regarding how social interactions should go. "Any Rito is theoretically capable of that. What's incredible is—"

"A lot of things about you," Link says, and Revali suddenly finds himself at a complete loss for words. "But you were going to bring up your Gale. Weren't you?"

Revali looks away. "Forgive me for wanting others to recognize me for the things I worked hardest to achieve."

"No, I... I get that. You want people to recognize you for things you actually did. Not things that just happened to you."

By the time that Revali finds it in him to look at Link again, Link's not looking at him, anymore. He's looking out the window. What could possibly be so fascinating out there? Revali doesn't have any hope of seeing whatever it is, not in the dark, and the thought irks him.

"I get it. Kind of. Probably more than you think I would, but... very few people ever saw me for anything but the sword I carried," he continues, and sighs. "Made it easier to leave, when no one actually recognized me without her, and I feel like a lot of people still wouldn't recognize me without the Master Sword."

"Well, they're missing out," Revali comments. "You're considerably more than that sword you wield."

"That means a lot, especially coming from you. Thank you."

He's being thanked, yet he can't help but feel guilty. He used to think that Link was nothing without the sword, or at least nothing special. When, in reality, Link is quite possibly one of the most driven individuals he's ever had the pleasure to meet—next to Revali himself, of course. He is something special. Not just anyone could have taken on Ganon. Not just anyone would have actively gone into the single most dangerous place in Hyrule during the Calamity on the off chance that he might be able to save the people he cared about.

Revali can't say he doesn't understand Zelda's frustration with the powers that stubbornly eluded her until it was nearly too late. He would have been well beyond frustrated, in her position. But he also likely would have been long since excommunicated from the Hylian royal family if he had to live with Zelda's father, and that isn't the point.

The point is: Link is considerably more than his sword. He always has been, despite the efforts of various people to mold him into nothing more than that, and Revali contributed to that far too much. Any amount would have been too much, and yet—

"...Revali?"

"I'm sorry," Revali whispers.

"For... what, exactly?"

"Don't play dumb; we both know you're smarter than that." He crosses his wings. "I planned that speech, you know. I rehearsed it extensively until I thought it was perfect, that it would have to get your attention or at least a reaction of some kind, if my Gale on its own proved insufficient."

"Wait—" Link's hand is on his wing and the sudden touch is more than enough for his heart to leap into his throat. "You rehearsed that?"

The sound that comes out of his mouth, in response, might be charitably classified as a squeak. It definitely isn't an answer in the affirmative like he had meant for it to be, which may be for the best because that had probably been one of those pesky rhetorical questions.

"...Before I start laughing," Link says, "will you hate me again if I do?"

Revali sighs dramatically, even as a part of him is immensely relieved that they've returned to familiar skies. Or, at least, more familiar skies than whatever strange, new things have been between them since the Calamity's end.

"You," Revali says, "are a terrible, terrible person. I don't know how you keep fooling people into thinking you aren't. It's utterly asinine."

"I'm starting to think that you like that word."

"Do you even know what it means?"

The pause from Link is quite telling. "Well, I'm assuming nothing good..."

"Extremely foolish," Revali clarifies. "Silly to an extreme. Not necessarily a bad thing, but in the context of stopping the Calamity, hardly ideal."

"Huh." Link considers this. "I like that, actually."

"Of course you do. Only you could take something that I certainly meant at the time as an insult and make it into a compliment, somehow." Revali shakes his head. "I hate you sometimes."

"No, you don't," Link says without even a moment's hesitation. And he's right, he is, and Revali can't help but feel like he should be affronted nonetheless at just how easily he'd said that. Link is, in many ways, everything that Revali isn't. He's good with people, or at least the people he cares enough about to try with. He's good in close quarters, and likely passable at range, while Revali fighting in close quarters will rarely if ever end well for him.

(It hadn't with the Windblight.)

He'd started to like Link, if a little grudgingly, after their paths had unexpectedly crossed away from everything that had been forced upon him. He certainly hadn't minded spending time with him by the time that the Calamity struck. He had been... working on something. A gift for a friend, something that hadn't meant anything much except that it had, and he'd realized as he stared down at the completed paraglider that he wouldn't mind Link making it up to his Divine Beast on his own after all. Not anymore.

Now... where do they stand? He doesn't know, anymore, and he can't just ask. But he thinks—he would miss Link, quite extensively, if he disappeared again. He already knows that he'll miss him when he returns to Rito Village; his people need him, after all, and whatever his feelings regarding Link are or aren't, he's already been away too long.

He knows this: the thought of spending the night in the same room as Link terrifies him, for some reason, and Link is the one person in this house who hasn't threatened his continued physical well-being. Actually, from what Mipha had told him, Link had gone to rather extreme lengths to ensure his survival.

But Revali did not become the Champion of the Rito by backing down when something scared him, not even when that something was incredibly dangerous and very likely to kill him. This is neither of those things.

"No, I don't," Revali admits at long last. "You mentioned that you had a spare bedroll?"

Link nods vaguely at what must be it. "You can have the bed if you want, I don't mind—"

"The bedroll is fine," Revali says, slightly strained, because he's reasonably certain that he will combust on the spot if he entertains the thought of sleeping in Link's bed for more than a second. "Though I appreciate the offer, nevertheless."

His brother had called his remarkable ability to fall asleep very quickly a sign of sleep deprivation. And he was probably right, he is probably right, but right now he's never been more grateful for how damn exhausted he is, because it means he's not thinking about Link for any longer.

Someone's shaking Link awake. It's Zelda. Zelda, still in her ceremonial garb, her face streaked with tears through the mud. Zelda, who is clearly still crying as she offers him a trembling hand up.

"Are you alright?" Zelda asks, and the words catch in his throat like they always do, and he can't answer her. He forces a nod instead, taking her hand and letting her pull him up to his feet. He can barely stand—he's exhausted—he has to stand, he has to fight.

He picks up the Master Sword from where it fell in the mud, just as Zelda lets out a horrified gasp. He follows her gaze.

...It's Vah Medoh. It's Vah Medoh, lights flickering wildly between Sheikah blue and Ganon's magenta. As he watches, the blue lights flash brighter than before. Medoh lets out a piercing, anguished cry, audible across half of Hyrule, audible even to Link. Maybe audible only to Link.

They do not go blue again. And Link knows, he knows, he knows what must have just happened. The sword that seals the darkness slips from his fingers again, even as a malice-possessed Guardian approaches on spindly legs, even as Zelda cries out in alarm and tugs at his arm, begging him to run.

"No," Link whispers.

Revali is a light sleeper. Consequently, when someone close by whimpers, his eyes snap open to the darkness of... Link's room.

Link. Right. He can scarcely make a thing, even with the moonlight streaming in through the window, but he can hear just fine.

As a consequence, he can hear Link mumble something in a tone that is utterly heartbroken. Something that sounds weirdly, suspiciously, like his own name.

Link's not sure how he made it onto Vah Medoh. He's not sure where Zelda is, or where Impa is, or where that Guardian is. But he's here, and—maybe, just maybe, he's not too late. He sprints up through the belly of the Divine Beast, heart pounding, the Master Sword held tightly in his hands.

He bursts out onto the main deck. Revali's there, crumpled against the main terminal, and not moving. He's fine. He has to be fine, he has to be okay—

He's not fine. He's not breathing. He's not... he's...

Link isn't sure if he screams louder when he realizes that he's already gone, or when Windblight Ganon appears from the terminal with a horrifying shriek and a blast of air, knocking both Link and Revali's body backwards with the sheer force of it. They may very well have been the exact same scream.

It takes Revali an embarrassingly long time to find his way over to Link's side of the room in the dark, and he's only grown more sure as to what is going on the closer he gets. Link's eyes are shut tight, but he's shaking and sobbing in his sleep, and Revali—well, he definitely knows his own name when he hears it.

(He's no stranger to nightmares himself.)

"Link," Revali says urgently, as loud as he dares—Link's father may be significantly better than Revali's own, his family in general may be more supportive, but Revali had never wanted to bother his brother with that and he somehow has the feeling that Link would rather not do so either.

Fast asleep still, Link's only response is to choke back a sob. Revali doesn't think that a knight, even a reluctant one, would be a heavy sleeper—so his next course of action is to reach out with both wings and bodily shake him.

That seems to work, if the quiet gasp that escapes Link is any indication. Revali can barely see, but he can—very, very faintly—make out Link's eyes shining in the darkness. They're as blue as the clear sky above the clouds, and a part of Revali he doesn't know how to process is reasonably certain that he's seen less beautiful gemstones.

"Revali...?" Link whispers.

...It occurs to Revali, quite suddenly, that the position they are in is somewhat compromising. He sits back quickly, and attempts to regain his composure, though for some reason—he's going to blame Link regardless of what the actual reason may be—it's harder than normal.

"I'd apologize for waking you," Revali says quietly, "but given that I'm reasonably certain you were having a nightmare..."

Link blinks hard, and wordlessly nods.

"...I'm typically not on this end of matters," he confesses. "I don't often sleep around others for that reason. Would you like to... talk about it? Is that a thing that would help at all?"

He shakes his head, and then he does something entirely unexpected. Namely, he wraps his arms around Revali, burying his face in his chest feathers, and cries.

Even more unexpected is the fact that, after an initial squawk of surprise that is far too loud for this hour of the night, Revali lets him. After a minute or so of this, he even wraps his wings around Link as well, and pats him awkwardly on the back.

"Whatever it was," Revali murmurs, "it wasn't real."

"I know. But it felt real," Link mumbles. He looks up, still blinking hard. "You were dead."

"...Well, clearly it wasn't real, in that case! I'm right here."

"I know. But you were dead... Zelda and I failed, we were running, and I don't have any idea where Impa was but I'm assuming nowhere good, a-and..." He hiccups, hard. "Sorry. I don't... you must think I'm even more pathetic now."

"If I'm being completely honest," Revali says, "I'm flattered that you care enough about me that my death would be a nightmare scenario for you."

"It would be," Link says, so earnestly that it hurts. "Don't die."

His chest tightens, inexplicably. He nods. "Believe me, I have no intention of doing so."

"I thought that I was too late, when I made it up to Vah Medoh," Link continues. "I don't think I had ever been more afraid in my life, or more relieved when I realized that you were still alive. And I realized... I care about you, okay? I care about you a whole lot."

Revali's beak feels dry. "Likewise."

Link shakes his head. "No, you don't get it—and this is a terrible time, it really is, but I'm going to lose my nerve otherwise so here we go. I love you."

"You what?" Revali blinks several times. "I have been incredibly cruel to you. Why in—"

"Because I've forgiven you for that," Link snaps. "I forgave you for that months ago. And I know you don't feel the same, that's fine, I guess I know how Mipha feels now but if she can move on from me, I can definitely move on from you, so—that doesn't matter. But we're friends, I think."

"Friends," Revali repeats, not sure why the single word feels so wrong. "Of course."

"You... don't feel the same," Link says cautiously. "Do you?"

...The thing is, Revali isn't sure if he'd recognize romance or anything related to it if it hit him over the head with Daruk's massive Boulder Breaker—unless or until it's explicitly pointed out to him. He thought that his brother and his wife were just really good friends until the latter sat him down and asked for his permission to court his brother, and Revali felt rather like he had been bodily thrown into Lake Totori at its coldest. He didn’t notice Mipha's rather obvious feelings for Link until Urbosa sat both him and Daruk down and quietly explained what was going on, and why Mipha was quieter than normal—and perhaps that was part of why Revali decided to leave such an impression on Link when he and Zelda paid Rito Village a visit.

Speaking of Daruk, though—he'd really thought that Revali was interested in Link. Romantically, that is.

Or he'd thought that Revali was interested in the friend that he was being very careful not to name, which was Link—but that's functionally the same thing.

He thinks about this. He's... not sure, actually.

(But for some reason he feels disappointed at the thought of himself not getting to spend more time with Link, which is... strange.)

"It is possible that I do," Revali says uncertainly. It must be close to dawn, because he can see Link better than he could before. As a direct consequence, he can see Link break into a massive grin. It's blinding, and it makes his heart do acrobatics in his chest, and—maybe Daruk, of all people, was onto something.

He can’t believe that Daruk of all people might have been onto something. By Daruk’s own admission, Gorons don’t even do romance!

…And yet.

Daruk, the next time that Revali's path crosses with his several weeks after the Calamity's end, has no real answers for him. Urbosa, on the other wing, just laughs.

"I don't appreciate the implication that this situation is amusing," Revali mutters.

"Oh, it is, don't get me wrong," Urbosa says. "But I had a feeling something was going on between you two from the beginning. By the way, Daruk?"

Daruk, hefting his Boulder Breaker, groans. "I know, I'll make sure those gems get to ya."

"...You were betting on me?" Revali shrieks. "On us?"

"Maybe," Urbosa says, which is yes. "Genuinely, though: I'm proud of the two of you for getting it together. I'm proud of you especially, given just how one-sided that rivalry of yours really was."

Revali had a snarky retort planned, he really did. But the words I'm proud of you, coming from one of the few people he actually respects...

The only thing that can come out of his beak is a very strangled, "You are?"

"Of course I am. You've come a long way, and it's been quite the pleasure to witness your growth as a warrior since our first meeting." Urbosa pauses. "Are you... crying?"

"I am not," Revali says. Unfortunately, it's at that precise moment that the others return; Mipha working her magic to heal an already-closing cut on Link's arm, Zelda and Impa holding hands and giggling about something on Zelda's Sheikah Slate.

"...Is everything alright?" Mipha asks, looking rather alarmed as she pulls away from Link.

"Urbosa told Revali that she was proud of him and he started cryin'," Daruk says immediately, which Revali does not appreciate. He also does not appreciate the understanding look that passes between both Link and Mipha.

"To be fair," Zelda offers, looking up, "I would too."

Urbosa's head snaps over towards her. "Clearly I need to tell both of you that more often, then. I am proud of you. All of you. Understand?"

Revali doesn't trust his voice at the moment, so he just nods. He feels rather than sees Link pressing up against his side, leaning into him with a little smile of his own, reaching for his wing with his hand.

"Hi," Link says quietly. "Are you okay?"

"...Apart from the revelation that both Urbosa and Daruk were apparently betting on my love life, as well as the fact that I seem to be... disproportionately affected by any sort of praise from people that I do respect," Revali manages, wiping his eyes as he does, "I believe that I'm doing alright."

"That's good to hear," Link says. "Hey—the four of us circled back because we ran into some monsters that were too high up to get at easily. Do you think it would help to—"

"Absolutely," Revali says.

Life is confusing. Emotions are confusing. The fact that all of them somehow managed to make it through the Calamity alive? Really confusing.

Still, Revali knows a few things for certain. He's the best archer among the Rito in recorded history. His Gale is unparalleled—though there are a few particularly ambitious chicks trying to follow his flight path, and he fervently hopes that at least one of them will succeed.

And he, for some unfathomable reason, has fallen in love with the stubborn, silly man known to a lot of people as the knight with the darkness-sealing sword. He's not a knight anymore, of course; he hasn't been for a long time, and few people recognize him without the sword in hand, and these days that's just the way he likes it.

To the people that matter, though—and to Revali himself—he's known best as just Link. Nothing more, and nothing less.

(Looking at him now, looking at how far they've come, Revali finds he's never been happier that Link made it up to that Divine Beast on his own after all.)