Chapter Text
“So, that is the forest Link was said to have headed to?” Princess Zelda asked, peering anxiously at the mass of trees that grew steadily closer.
“That it is, Princess,” Impa replied as she brought the horse they were riding to a halt. “He informed Lord Osun, leader of the knight order we just passed, that he was searching for a friend….”
The princess’ expression grew worried, her Sheikah guard carefully studying her small form, most notably the dark circles that lay under her eyes.
Her young charge had barely slept a wink, ever since a prophecy had come to her days ago, warning of the impending doom of her young friend, the boy known in another time as the Hero of Time.
This, coupled with other disturbing events, had finally culminated in their traveling to Link’s last known location, in hopes of finding the truth of the events… as well as the fate of the brave young lad.
To say she worried for young Zelda as well would be an understatement, for Impa truly feared the reaction her princess would have, should they find either no clues pertaining to Link’s disappearance… or something far worse.
Thankfully, neither option presented itself… Instead, Impa allowed herself a small sigh of relief alongside Zelda’s cry of joy as a young red filly trotted cheerily out of the forest, a boy wearing clothes matching the color of the leaves, riding on her back.
“LINK!!!”
The boy startles at the call, as does something else, the Sheikah warrior immediately looping a protective arm around her princess while her other hand whips out her naginata.
Impa braces herself as an armored warrior bearing warpaint and a powerful aura of darkness appears next to Link, then materializes right in front of Impa and Zelda.
The Sheikah immediately lashes out in defense of her princess, naginata aimed for the adversary’s throat, but the ‘man’ easily catches the blade between two of his fingers.
Impa tries to wrench her weapon free, mind scrambling as she fights against her mounting panic, wondering if she dared abandon the blade for a Deku Nut or if the flash of the nut would give even one second to attempt an escape—
“Sheikah? Hylia?”
Impa freezes at the unexpected naming of her people, her eyes widening with confusion when the terrifying being, who she was certain was a dark deity bent on destruction and death… stares at her and the young princess with the face of an excited child, not too dissimilar to the one who brought them to this forest.
Speaking of that child, this being bears an eerie resemblance to the hero’s adult form, now that she is looking beyond the dangerous aura and weaponry the other bears.
He wears a similar hat and outer tunic, albeit in a more blue/gray coloring, the undertunic a midnight blue. Silver and blue armor sit atop both with a crescent moon and triangle of gold on the breastplate. The gauntlets he wears are also of a midnight blue coloring and the sword on his back is a massive double helix blade of silver and blue.
His hair is a silvery white instead of golden wheat, there is most definitely war paint covering his face and his eyes are glowing white orbs.
Orbs that are currently crinkled by a smile that fits the boy this being mimics far better than the entity before them… yet there is no mistaking the fact the being seems overjoyed with Impa and Zelda’s appearance.
He’s begun babbling in a language Impa cannot understand, arms waving excitedly, though they fly above his head when the horse finally loses its nerve, Impa squeezing her legs around the animal and the arm around the princess tightly.
“Whoa, whoa, easy!” Link’s voice calls as he and Epona finally draw alongside, the notes of Epona’s Song quick to follow, aiding Impa in calming the spooked horse.
He then whips towards his strange, older ‘twin’ with an angry glare, arms waving as he begins scolding the manifested deity.
“... and you can’t just appear in front of people, especially when they’re on a horse, horses are sensitive creatures!”
Impa tenses, gaze shifting from the irate boy to the unknown deity, still gripping her naginata in the event things turn… unpleasant.
But, to her complete and utter shock… the deity’s head bows low, inhuman features tilting in a way that seems… regretful, almost like a child that has learned they have done something wrong.
“Link,” Zelda’s voice suddenly calls out, Impa unable to stop herself from shooting an alarmed expression at the young girl sitting before her, “who is your… friend?”
“I… don’t actually know,” Link replies, causing Impa’s alarm to surge to even higher levels, “he was a mask that a different, demon mask gave me to ‘play tag’ inside the moon….”
“The moon that was going to crush you?”
“Oh, you know about that?”
“Had a dream about it, followed by nightmares,” Zelda replies in a far too casual manner (perhaps the sleepless nights and surreal situation were getting to her?), “think I saw you and this... 'individual' in the last one, though….”
At Zelda’s sudden gesture towards him the apparently former mask lights up, arms waving energetically as he speaks rapidly in that unknown language.
There are some Hylian words that slip in, mostly when the being is pointing towards Link, who makes an odd expression when he is called ‘son’, the expected ‘Sheikah’ when he points to Impa, and ‘Hylia’, when he points at the princess.
“Do you think he means ‘Hylian?’” Zelda asks, that familiar gleam of curiosity beginning to shine in her eyes, despite her weariness, as she gazes upon the strange being.
“I dunno,” Link replies with a shrug, “haven’t had a clue what this guy’s been saying most of the time, except when he was nagging at me to take a nap or eat….”
“Sleep, eat, yes!” the deity suddenly exclaimed, finger pointing towards Link then Zelda respectively, slipping back into mostly gibberish, which Link seems to take as a scolding when the being turns more fully in his direction.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but the magic from your mask is still making my body all tingly and wired, and I didn’t get a chance to eat that nice apple I found since you–, oh no….”
The unexpected banter between the children and the deity had left Impa rather confused and, surprisingly, had eased a bit of her defenses.
Now, those defenses were coming right back up as the deity’s body grew rigid and Link began eyeing him with growing annoyance of all things.
“Link?” Impa called as calmly as she could.
“Don’t you dare!” Link snarled at the same time, focus completely on the deity, “don’t you dare start ag—”
“EEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!”
Even with all her years of training and experience, Impa can’t stop herself from clapping her hands to her ears at the deity’s sudden roar, her legs clamping tightly around the horse beneath her while the rest of her body tries to curl around the princess.
She’s really not even sure how she manages to keep them both on the horse when the deity suddenly launches himself into the air, the ground shaking beneath them as wind whips ferociously around them.
“Oh come on!” Link groans loudly, the boy looking even more tired and incredibly annoyed as he stares up into the sky, “not again! Does he have to keep doing that?!”
“Doing what?!” Impa repeats, alarm growing when all she finds in the sky above is only a light smattering of clouds, “what just happened?! Who or what was that, where did he go–?!”
“Breathe Impa,” Princess Zelda’s still too calm voice cuts in, her small hand patting Impa’s arm gently, “give Link a moment to answer before asking a new question.”
“Thank you, Zelda,” Link sighs, still in that tired tone of voice, weary eyes meeting Impa’s alarmed gaze at last.
“Okay, I already mentioned the guy came from a mask, right?”
“A mask you’d apparently gotten from a demon mask,” Zelda nods.
“Right, right, pretty stupid mistake on that mask’s part,” Link hums, “soon as I put the thing on and transformed into the deity—”
“You put on a mask given to you by a demon mask?” Impa can’t help but interrupt.
“What? The thing was still trying to crush everyone with the moon and knocked Skull Kid around before trying to destroy him. And that was after it tricked him into doing a whole bunch of other bad stuff when all Skull Kid had wanted was a friend… or an explanation for why the Giants left? Something like that….”
“Ah, I see….”
Impa didn’t, though she wasn’t certain if this was because she wasn’t a child, she possessed no touch of foresight like the children did… or because she’d received training to deal with sleep-deprivation while these two had not.
“So, yeah, I put on the mask, turned into the deity, smacked the mask around like it deserved until the demon part was destroyed and chased off the Moblin scat mask salesman that pretty much set the whole crazy thing in motion.”
“Language,” Impa scolds lightly.
“But Sheik’s the one who taught me that….”
“No repeating any curses learned in the alternate timeline until you are at least the age you were then, BOTH of you… and even then, in moderation….”
“Okaaayyyy,” the children reply, which unbelievably turns into a synchronized yawn, even as an explosion goes off in the distance.
“What was that?!”
“Hm? Oh, that would be the deity,” Link hummed, pulling out a mask bearing the same appearance as the deity’s face, “looks like he found some monsters to destroy… well, at least it's not a human this time….”
“Excuse me, what?”
“Oh it was just Sakon, a thieving creep that kind of had it coming, though of course that didn’t mean he should’ve been killed….”
Another explosion sounds in the distance, Impa’s nervousness growing as her eyes dart from the direction the explosion came from to the glowing mask in Link’s hands.
“Link, please tell me there's a way you can put that deity back into the mask?”
“Not that I know of,” is Link’s unhelpful response, head tilting as he examines said mask, eyes squinting, “plus the guy’s been in there for, like… mil-, something?”
“Millenia?” Zelda supplies.
“Yeah, I think that was the word he used,” Link nods, “which is, like, a really long time, right? Wouldn’t be fair to just… shove him back in… not that I even know how….”
Thunder crashes and rolls alongside a booming and, what Impa would call, crazed laugh, the mask suddenly shining brightly before fading, Link humming contemplatively after.
“Sounds like he’s having fun.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” the princess hums in turn.
“Shouldn’t we be concerned about a deity running loose and causing rampant destruction?” Impa asked, her own concern reaching a fever pitch.
“Well he’s not exactly loose, loose,” Link yawns, left hand rubbing wearily at his eyes, “he can’t stray very far away from the mask and the humans that were being harassed by the monsters he’s hunting already ran away….”
“And you know this because…?”
“Hm? Oh! Uh, we kind of formed a… mental bond?... after I put the mask on, which is also why he still looks like me… maybe?”
“Oh, that’s why, I remember him looking different before…”
“Princess, you’ve seen this deity before?”
“Hhhmmm?” Zelda hums before yawning and rubbing at her own eyes, “...no? I don’t… think so?”
“And as long as I’m still holding his mask, I can kind of see and feel what’s going on with him, ah!” Link began to continue before stiffening with an alarmed gasp, “that baby bird’s about to fall-, oh, no, he caught it, we’re good….”
“Oh, that was nice of him,” Zelda hummed with a smile.
This situation is becoming far too absurd and surreal, Impa sighed internally, the children before her obviously reaching their physical limits, both drooping and yawning in clear signs of exhaustion.
She needed to get them somewhere safe in order to recover and was just reaching for a yawning Link, intending to pull him onto her own horse next to Zelda and hoping Epona would follow her away from here…
And then the next thing she knows, the deity had Link tucked into the crook of one his arms, a newly hunted and rather large buck in the other.
The deity himself peers at Link with an expression Impa believes is concern or perhaps curiosity, she’s not really sure which.
The being is speaking in his unknown tongue again, the arm with Link (who’s been wearing a look of mild confusion since getting picked up) lifting briefly, then the arm with the buck, his gaze fixed on Impa.
“...if you’re saying you’ve caught dinner and we should make camp… I suppose I agree?”
The deity flashes a smile at that, fangs glinting in the rays of the newly setting sun.
Impa’s still trying to decide if she’d truly made a wise decision even as she aids in finding a good campsite and setting it up.
But… the deity moves in a way that shows he is taking the utmost care in whatever he does, be that carrying Link or preparing the meat for cooking… something she didn’t expect the being to have the slightest inkling of knowing.
“Well, it did kind of feel like he was in my head when I was wearing his mask,” is Link’s still rather concerning answer when Impa carefully brings up this topic, “maybe he picked up those skills while he was in there?”
“You are speaking in far too relaxed a tone for that sentence,” Impa sighed wearily.
A good part of her was still highly suspicious of this being that had seemingly followed Link back from whatever land he had wandered off to, the sheer power rolling off him and intensity of his white eyes making it nearly impossible to even consider relaxing her guard in the slightest.
…and yet… the actions of the deity are amazingly gentle, especially in anything regarding the children.
He gently nudges Link back awake when the boy begins to doze, his voice a quiet rumble in response to Link’s whine as he presses a bowl of the stew Impa had made from the meat the deity had brought into tiny hands.
Once the boy is eating properly the deity gives a quick nod before suddenly disappearing, Impa’s guard coming back up when he reappears seconds later… with flowers?
He then sits between the two children and, after setting most of the flowers in his lap… he begins braiding the flowers into first Zelda’s and then Link’s hair….
He’s chattering in the unknown language as he does, though still in that low rumble and most of it directed in Zelda’s direction, the tired princess mostly humming soft replies as she, too, is struggling to keep from nodding off into her food.
By the time the children have finished eating they’re both sporting numerous tiny, flowery braids, the deity rumbling in pleasure at the small noises of approval and cheer from the little ones.
Impa finds she’s quite impressed herself… of all the things she’d been expecting from the powerful looking figure when he’d first appeared with Link, delicate braidwork with flowers was most certainly not one of them.
But it seems this being is set and determined to surprise her, for once the last bite of food is eaten he begins to sing, his voice still like thunder, but of a softer variety, that of a distant storm or one which will merely grumble as it releases a gentle rain upon the land.
In fact, that is the exact image that comes to Impa’s mind as the deity sings, a smile unable to stop itself from forming as the children are lulled to sleep, the princess curling up with her head pillowed on Impa’s thigh.
Link does the same upon the deity’s, the being’s armor disappearing the instant the young boy shows a sign of discomfort.
His rumbling lullaby peters out as the children’s breathing evens out into that of deep slumber and thus he and Impa are left alone with nothing but the crackling of the fire and soft murmurings of the nightlife around them.