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Chapter Text

“Mine,” Legend announces as he lands lightly out of the portal and steps away to clear the space, recognising he’s been here before ‘here’ actually registers “It’s… It’s the fucking Dark World…” Well shit.

That familiar red-purple sky choked with clouds yet empty of rain, dying the landscape in dull browns and muted greens, the grass yellow and brittle, the waters a sickly green. He can smell the swamp before he even turns to see it.

Sky, ahead of him, turns slightly from scanning his surroundings to ask some question, when the barking and yowling starts, and the both of them wheel back to face the portal and the tumble of creatures beneath it.

Wolfie is there, and another wolf, and some kind of wild cat. A deer, a young buck antlers only half grown in, leaps from the fray and sprints away. A wild goat of some sort staggers out from under all of them, then turns and goes right back in to deliver a solid headbutt to the cat (a lynx? A mountain lion? What’s the difference?) hissing at Wolfie. The other wolf (why is it gold? Do they come in gold?) growls, and the whole thing is about to turn bitey when Four and Wind step through the portal, Wind seems to vanish, and Four lands in a tangle on top of them all, and suddenly they’re all growling and hissing at each other and trying to keep each other away from Four.

Four sits on the ground stunned and nauseous, one hand on his sword, half drawn. A flying squirrel emerges from the tangle and leaps up to Four’s shoulder. Four understandably has no idea what’s crawling all over his head and shoulders, and starts yelling and trying to flail it off. Things are about to shift from ‘tense’ to ‘panicked’.

“HEY!” Legend yells, and they ignore him, “GUYS!” it doesn’t help.

Sky lets out a long ear piercing whistle and the group goes silent and freezes, he motions to Legend who takes his cue with a nod of thanks.

“Dark world, the corrupted sacred realm, I was here during my first quest. That,” he waves a hand at the menagerie, “Is what happens here. Stand down. It’s… us, the animals are all us.”

The animals all look at each other. The deer, who thankfully did not continue to sprint off as far as he could cautiously starts to walk towards Legend and Sky. The wolves and, uh, he’s gonna go with mountain lion, take another couple of steps back. The goat trots in a tight circle and looks like it wants to take off and cause mischief immediately, delighted to suddenly find himself a goat. Four’s still reeling from the portal sickness and the little glider, now perched in the middle of his back out of flailing arm distance, crawls back on to his shoulder.

“Alright, sound off. Twi is Wolfie. Time?” Legend calls out, trying to keep control of the situation. The golden wolf lets out a loud “BOOF”.

“Figured.

Hyrule?” He asks, at a guess pointing at the deer, it freezes at the attention then nods and Legend moves on, “Warriors?” the mountain lion yowls agreement.

“That leaves Wild and Wind,” the goat proudly raises its head at Wild’s name which would leave Wind as the flying squirrel.

Time grumbles something at him and Legend just gives him a look of ‘I don’t speak wolf, idiot’, but the other animals turn to him like they do. Four gets to his feet and picks his way out of the middle of all the big predators, Wind still on his shoulder. Even with knowing who they are and the familiarity of Wolfie it’s a bit much to be in the middle of. He’s had enough cats looking to eat him thanks.

“Why are you three fine?” Wind asks and gasps, “Why can I talk?!”

Legend shrugs, “I could. Don’t know why you can and they can’t. You could understand Time right?” Wind nods, and Legend continues, “Yeah, it’s kinda bullshit like that. You can understand animals but if you can talk to people depends on your form.

As to why we’re not like that,” he tilts his head towards Sky, “Master sword, I think” then looks to Four, “You’ve got a Moon Pearl, right?”

It’s a guess, but he knows they’re from, or at least suspected to be from, the era of Light. The single lonely one Legend ever found may have been the last. Four nods.

Legend fishes a pouch out from under his tunic and removes a small silvery pearl to show them, “Moon Pearl.”

Warriors says something to Wind who translates, “Your sword doesn’t work like Sky’s?”

“No, I had it by the time I was here and it didn’t help.”

“What did you turn into?”

“We are not talking about that.”

The chain, excluding Legend, resolves to find a way to talk about it.

❍ ❍

They walk, because that’s what they always do, there’s no point in sitting and waiting to get attacked, they’ve done this enough to recognise the pattern and the way to the next world is somehow through this one. Legend leads them north and east, edging between and swamp and high cliff walls. It’s an unsafe route but the only option to get anywhere. He thinks they’re north of the Swamp Palace, and heads in the general direction of the Pyramid of Power, but mostly he just wants out of the swamp.

“When are we?” Sky asks as they walk, “Is there any way to tell?”

Legend shakes his head, “Somewhere between the imprisoning war and the end of my first quest. That’s centuries of time.” 

“Why am I a squirrelthing? Why is anyone an anything” Wind launches himself from Sky’s head to Legend’s.

“It supposedly reflects your soul,” he grabs Wind off his head, considers for a moment, then throws him straight up in the air as high as he can, Wind laughs delighted and glides back down to land on Sky’s head.

“What are you, Four, and Sky?”

“None of your business,” he tells him yet again. He doesn’t know if it’s the same as it was, but Legend would rather not take the chance. At least they didn’t all turn into wolves or dragons or whatever. Hyrule is a hunted creature too, and doesn’t that just twist him inside to consider.

“I can hand the sword off to Wild so we can eat later,” Sky offers, “So we can find out then.”

Wind tries his next target “Four!”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Boring.”

❍ ❍

Wind yells animal names as they travel, trying to guess Legend’s other form. Unfortunately Wind doesn’t actually know many animals outside of fish and seabirds and has resorted to fairytale creatures that may or may not exist, and just straight out making things up. The others occasionally offer suggestions for him to translate.

Legend doesn’t dignify him with an answer and eventually Wind moves on to pester Four and Sky and climb the sheer cliff face with Wild, leaping off to plummet down to the Hylians and glide at the last moment. Wild for his part, saw a weird plant twenty meters up he wanted to try eating, scaled the almost vertical wall, ate the weird plant, then and decided sprinting up, down, along the cliffs while sampling the local vegetation was his preferred method of travel.

He’s fine. He’s probably totally fine.

Twilight is patrolling and scouting back and forth like normal, the most unfussed over his change in form. Too familiar with it to find the novelty in it like Wild and Wind, or for it to put him on edge. Time and Warriors are a bit more uneasy and mostly prowl around as rear guard. Sky takes point with Four which leaves Legend and Hyrule around the middle, though the group is less spread out than it would often be. They’re coming to the end of the swamp, the cliffs closing in on both sides, into what Legend tells them is the Dark World equivalent of Central Hyrule. He doesn’t tell them his house would be right there, on the flip side of the world. They’re all uneasy.

Legend tries to focus on the present rather than the memories, the familiar sights bringing it all back. He doesn’t need them to see him getting twitchy or worried. He’s not a kid anymore, he survived this place as a pre-teen, as an adult it should be nothing. He’s equipped, he’s experienced, he could do the dungeons without breaking a sweat, he’s already beaten this place once. He has food, he’s slept, he’s uninjured, no one is chasing him, he has people he trusts to watch is back. He’s not a child, he’s not alone.

He’ll need to tell them a little probably, about what this place is and what it does to people, but they don’t need the details. They don’t need to know about his childish rabbit heart, they don’t need to know about wanted posters, his uncle dead in the sewers, the soldiers or hunting dogs or the scars from their teeth, they don’t need to know about the shadows with Four’s face and sword and how he survived the fight by the skin of his teeth (and a couple of fairies). They don’t need to know he killed them. He still doesn’t understand what that was, he’s not sure he wants to.

Hyrule abruptly stops walking beside him, ears twitching, then takes a few skittish steps back. Legend watches and knows that feeling, of not knowing what was wrong but the prey animal senses know it’s something.

“Something’s coming!” he yells to the group and they start falling in together

The fireball comes from the direction of the swamp, which feels unfair. You shouldn’t have to worry about burning to death in swamps, swamps are meant to kill you with drowning. But it is what it is and the intended target, Time, dodges it easily.

“Ku!” Legend yells.

“A what?” Four yells back.

“Big… one eyed frog thing. Shoots fire then goes under,” he calls back, pulling out his bow and nocking an arrow, waiting, one surfaces and he shoots it before it can fire, but then it’s followed by another half a dozen. Legend curses and fires off another shot before needing to dodge away from their fireballs, Four takes his own bow in hand and heads towards Legend to offer back up.

They’ve picked a few of them off with only minor scrapes when there’s a shout from Sky in the other direction and a horde of the local moblins, not as large as many other eras thankfully, come around the corner, attracted by the commotion, and into the path made by the cliffs. Sky steps into their path calmly and confidently but keeps close to one of the cliff walks without a swordsman to cover his back. Time and Twilight pair off to pick off the moblins getting past Sky as Wild with Wind pick their way down the cliff.

Still, it’s all seems like it might go fairly well until Warriors slinks along one of the cliff walls intending to back up Sky, and a rock suddenly tumbles, changing from dull grey to a yellow orange as it comes comes alive and tries to stab him.

Goddess damn it.

Legend and Four both jerk their heads towards the loud yowl as the rock golem catches Wars with its shield and sends him flying. A flock of dactos rise from the cliff at the commotion and launch themselves at Wild and Wind, still halfway up the steep rockface.

“Armos,” Legend yells out of habit, and to himself, “Not meant to fucking be here.”

If things were normal it wouldn’t be a problem, they could split and take care of the threats from the three, no four directions without trouble. They’re all local monsters, probably not infected. But only three of them can draw a bow or a sword, Twilight is the only one used to fighting in a changed form, and that armos definitely isn’t going down to teeth and claws. Sky, with his back to the wall, can keep himself alive if pinned, but someone with a weapon is needed for the ku and armos.

“Keep taking out the ku!” Legend tells Four, and pulls out his fire rod and the dactos descend on the group. At least that’s something most of them can fight so long as it’s in range.

He’s taken down a couple, moving steadily towards Wars and the armos, when there’s a screetch and a yell from Wind and Wild and he sees a big dacto speeding away from Wild with the little glider in its beak. Legend swaps back to his bow and takes aim.

The arrow flies home but the big dacto crashes into the cliff face instead of plummeting. They crash to the earth with a dull thud, and Legend fears the fall has done more damage than the monster’s beak. For something that small the height might not actually be an issue, but the falling weight of the monster might be.

Hyrule and Warriors both rush to over and he sees deer Hyrule try to tug something out of the tangle of the injured fallen moster, fail, and stomp on it heavily with one cloven hoof. It finally dies and vanishes, leaving Wind unmoving on the marshy ground. Warriors gets between him and the armos, but tooth and claw won’t stand for long against armour. Legend sees a line of blood open up across War’s feline collarbone. A group of moblins approach from the other direction, flanking them.

Hyrule can’t heal him, and Wars can’t hold the monsters off for long. They can’t get close enough fast enough to hand over a pearl or protect them. The living armour raises its sword.

They’ll lose Wind, they’ll lose Hyrule, even fucking Wars, he’ll-

“Four!” Legend gasps, pulling a slingshot out of his bag with one hand and the pouch with the Moon Pearl out from under his shirt with the other. Four’s eyes flash green and he reaches for his own bag.

“HYRULE!” Legend screams across the chaos, planting his feet and thumbing the pearl out of the pouch. The deer looks up from its panicked inspection of Wind a moment before Legend loads the pearl in the slingshot, pulls it back as far as he can and shoots it across the battlefield. He has a second to see it hit Hyrule before he’s suddenly too small, the magic of this place twisting and changing him in a moment.

Beside him he hears Four scream for Wars and then the shift of air as he loses his own Moon Pearl and transforms.

It’s the rabbit, it’s the rabbit again, Legend had wondered if it might change with age, if in his heart he was no longer that little prey creature, but one or the other isn’t true. Leaping to stand on his hind legs, he can see Hyrule, Hylian again and gathering up Wind’s small body in one hand as he draws his sword with the other. Warriors stands between them and the armos, sword and shield in hand. Wolfie and the Wolf Time tear past, crashing into the nearby moblins and drawing them away in a cacophony of screams and growls that sets his teeth on edge. Legend lets the breath he didn’t realise he was holding and turns back to the new problem at hand.

Four looks at Legend, Legend looks at Four, each hoping the other has changed to a form capable of fighting, and the two of them, the five of them are in perfect sync as they speak.

“Fuck.”

Four was not sure what he was expecting the Hero of Legend to turn into when he lost the Moon Pearl, a cat maybe, a porcupine, a stoat, a ferret? For all of Wind’s guesses, no one had come to any obvious conclusion. Something bitey or prickly. He was not expecting the pink rabbit, he’s not sure any of them would have made that call. It was a legendary (ha!) animal unknown in most of their Hyrules, but still a cute fairytale creature. No wonder he still carries the Moon Pearl.

‘First quest,’ Vio murmurs in the back of his head, ‘He was here as a kid, maybe it doesn’t change once you’ve got a form.’

‘Or maybe he’s just a fluffy bunny at heart,’ Blue sniggers.

‘I think it’s lovely,’ Red adds as Green brings their attention back to the present and their own situation, ‘Focus.’ And they’re gone again, faded into the whole that is Link-called-Four.

Legend is still staring at him, obviously going through a similar thought process. Really, in hindsight he should have guessed, they both should have guessed. Because Four had been, before anything else, the hero of the Picori. He supposes he’s not one to go judging someone turning into a storybook creature.

Yeah, neither of them are going to be joining this fight.

They leap towards each other, Four scrambles on to Legend’s back and Legend sprints to put some distance between them and the fight.

❍ ❍

Sky only catches Four and Legend’s movements from the corner of his eye but when he sees Warriors engage the armos he knows he’s lost the possibility of at least one of the swords covering him. Even then it’s a relief there’s a sword in play against the armos now. He backs up further towards the cliffs slowly drawing what he can of the horde with him, if there’s no one to cover his flank he’s better with it against the wall. The flock of dactos wheels back around towards Sky.

From somewhere near the opening in the cliff a figure in a red tunic and blue hat dashes past Sky to the centre of the swarm, a red sword in one hand and a medallion in the other. There’s the ear-splitting crack of thunder as lightning rains down and the dacto swarm drops to the earth and moblins screech, he maybe even got the last ku.

“Nice one, Ledge! Thanks!” He hasn’t seen that one before, Legend never really goes for lightning items, but of course he’d have one to pull out now.

The figure turns to him and a childish voice says, “Eh?”

Sky stares.

It’s not the vet, It’s a kid. About 11 years old, battered and dirty with a dark bruise over one cheek, scuffed knuckles and scraped knees, wearing red mail and a blue-purple hat similar to, but not exactly the same as Legend. He looks like he could do with a few decent meals and a solid week of sleep but he’s steady on his feet. An athletic kid after the hardships of a few months adventuring rather than the chronic starvation they saw when they first met Hyrule. He’s a Link, they have a certain look, they have a certain feel, they have a certain taste in hats.

He’s the spitting image of Legend.

A few inches shorter, more pink and less blonde in his hair, features softened by childhood, but the focused glare as he fights and sharp violet eyes are intimately familiar. There’s no recognition in them, no cocky smirk at Sky for pulling out some item to turn a battle. Is it the dark world? Did Legend somehow turn into this instead of some creature? Or is it him, the boy on his first quest, of all the centuries they could have come here did they arrive in that brief window of the Veteran’s childhood?

The kid decides to ignore his staring, shoves the medallion into his shirt and pulls a fire rod from his belt in its place which he immediately turns on the surviving dactos. A moment later he’s diving into the fray of the small local moblins while they’re still recovering, a blur of red all speed and movement and close calls.  Sky comes to his senses and joins him, the moblins were on their last legs and it doesn’t take long to tear through them all. Sky is motivated after all.

❍ ❍ ❍

The battlefield falls quiet, the sound of gasping breaths quiet in the wake of clashing swords. They move to regroup, to fall back together so they can look each other over and take care of their wounds. It’s not too bad, had they all been in fighting shape it would have been a quick, easy battle. As it is they’re going to be fine with Hyrule’s healing and maybe a potion or two. Sky moves to help Wild, a nasty gash in his shoulder. Did he charge at something with a spear? His attention is pulled back to Link with a yell.

“Stay back!” Link, not yet the Hero of Legend, swings his fire rod around to point it at Warriors as he approaches, and they all freeze for a tense moment.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” Warriors lowers his sword but doesn’t sheath it, there’s a gash across his collarbone and another two on his sword arm, blood dribbles down his arm and along the blade.

The kid backs up, favouring one leg, trying to simultaneously keep his eyes on Wars and Sky and the Wolves, and not trip over. The tip of his red sword dragging on the ground, almost but not quite too long for him, he’s taller than they would expect given Legend’s height now, almost lanky. Not tall, even for his age, but the height difference between them isn’t as big as might have been expected. Too many healings or rough living during his teenage years perhaps. Sky wonders if there’s any truth the rumour too many red potions can stunt a kid’s growth.

“Kid, Link, we’re not your enemies.”

Link goes pale and fearful at the sound of his name, then his face hardens, the defences they see in Legend already developing, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t kidnap her, I swear. Just, just walk away, and I won’t hurt you, I-” another step back, the motion hurts and his grip tightens on the fire rod.

“Wars,” says a pink rabbit, appearing from a tumble of rocks by the cliff and hopping over, a little mouse-like creature clinging to his fur “Leave him, give Four back his Moon Pearl.”

Warriors doesn’t respond, his eyes fixed on the kid, on Link, on the young Legend. A strange feeling of vertigo, Legend the same age Mask was. The anger on his face looks like fear. He has Legend’s swor- No, it’s the same sword but the blade is red, not the orange-gold of Legend’s now. He doesn’t know the details of Legend’s quest, none of them do. He knows he was 11 though, older than Time and Four had been but younger than the others. He must have a Moon Pearl, is it almost over then? The Moon Pearl… the kid would have been stuck in an animal form, he must have-

“Wars!” the rabbit snaps, now at his feet, a thump of his hind feet for emphasis and the forced patience of someone who is having a real bad day and hasn’t quite reached screaming point yet but is cutting it increasingly fine, “The knights of Hyrule are a threat to him!

Give Four. Back. His. Moon Pearl.”

Warriors looks down and the voice clicks. Legend, the rabbit is Legend. Where is Four? Is Four the mouse-like creature? The rainbow of colour on his feathery tail would suggest so. He didn’t see what happened to them after they shot the Moon Pearls. Warriors hesitates for another brief moment, wanting to help the kid, wanting to stay in a form that can protect them all better, processing what Legend said. What does it mean they’re a threat to him?

“You know what,” Legend tells no one in particular, “Go ahead and set him on fire a little bit kid, it would make my otherwise truly obnoxious day.”

Okay, the rabbit is definitely Legend, and the laugh from the little creature on his back sounds like Four. Wars comes to his decision and drops the pearl towards the two of them, where Four retrieves it and stands, Hylian again. Legend takes a couple of instinctive hops away from the both of them and Warriors mountain lion slinks back a little towards Time and Twilight, away from both Legends who are clearly on edge.

The kid still looks defensive and takes yet another step back, but has lost his obvious target and threat. He probably would have bolted by now if he thought he could get away. The knight is gone and the others can turn on the charm.

Sky, Hyrule, and Four, in their Hylian forms, it’ll do Legend decides. What a mess.

“Do you want yours?” Hyrule offers.

“No.” He really doesn’t want to be a rabbit, he wants even less to have to deal with his 11 year old self. He hates the dark world, he hates this form, he hates that kid with his unguarded rabbit heart, emotions too unmasked and obvious across his face. “Finish healing everyone then keep it for a while.”

Legend weighs his options as Four and Sky delicately approach his younger self, then hops over to the rest of the group instead. Not getting too close, even Hyrule looming over him sets him a little on edge, Wind is the only one the rabbit in him doesn’t scream is a threat. He grabs at the instincts and crushes them down.

“So,” Warriors says, and he can understand him now they’re both animals. Magic makes its own strange kind of sense.

“Don’t even start,” Legend warns, “Goddesses I hate this place.”

“That’s you, right?” Wind asks, seeming fine after his healing. Beside them, Hyrule drops to his haunches to hear the conversation better and start healing Warriors, Legend feels a little better without him looming. Wind quietly interprets for him as Wild joins them so Hyrule can fix him up.

“Yes, that’s me, first adventure,” Legend confirms, sounding both resigned to and deeply disgusted by the whole situation, “No, I don’t remember this. It didn’t happen for me, I never met you all.”

“Is there anyone with him?” Twilight asks.

“No.”

Twilight looks up at the angry sky, it reminds him of Hyrule’s sickly Hyrule, “Is he stuck here?”

“No, probably not for a while now. This is safer in some ways than Hyrule though.” Monsters don’t use dogs to track you and most don’t wear armour.

“This is the first time we’ve run into our own pasts selves,” Time notes, his tone uneasy.

“Doesn’t bode well does it, Old Man? Nobody get too smug about the nervy little kid.”

“Nervy?” Wind asks.

Legend simply lifts a paw as if gesturing to himself, his pink rabbit form. The body that matched that child’s soul.

They all consider that for a moment, their own quests, their own childhood selves, what the Chain stumbling into their quests would mean.

Wild breaks in, “And uh, what was Four?”

“Picori, that’s the Hylian word for it in my day anyway, he calls them something else I think. His first quest had something to do with them. There’s fairytales about it in my time, they’re meant to be what hides rupees in grass and such. Kids can see them, but they grow out of it.” Legend takes a moment to appreciate that they could all see Four, what a nightmare it would be if he were tiny and invisible in that form.

“Minish,” Wind chips in, “He told me they call themselves the Minish so he does too.”

There’s silence for a moment before Hyrule decides to kill the mood and asks, “Ganon?”

“Ready and waiting, I don’t doubt. Not as spectacularly as Wild’s floating miasma castle, he’s holed up in a pyramid where the castle should be in this world.”

They all take a moment to digest that.

Wind fidgets on Hyrule’s shoulder, clearly sensing he’s no longer at the most interesting conversation, “I’m gonna go say hi!” and he abruptly dashes off towards Sky and Four.

“Wind!” But there’s no calling him back, Legend drops his cute bunny head into his cute bunny paws and Hyrule makes an involuntary squeaking noise, Legend points abruptly at him, “Don’t you start either!”

“What did you mean the knights are a threat?” Warriors asks.

Legend scowls at the question, but looks over to Link, now tentatively talking to Sky and Four, and realises the truth is going to get out regardless, he’s probably spilling everything to them as they speak, “They’ve been instructed to hunt him down for kidnapping Princess Zelda. He didn’t of course, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a wizard involved.”

“Hunt him down and what?”

Legend makes a throat cutting motion. Hyrule shudders, now only getting half of the conversation but being able to fill in the blanks. Just fucking great.

“Huh,” says Wars, as if figuring something out, as if a casual ‘huh’ is a perfectly reasonable response to that. The world’s fiercest rabbit glares harder. Warriors ignores it.

“How far along do you think he is?” Time asks, breaking in before the bickering can start.

“Red sword, red mail. Quest’s almost over I think,” Legend eyes his sword, his medallions, his physical state, trying to line up memories almost a decade old with the boy hero, “Probably just Ganon and…” oh. Oh no.

He sees Link tentatively smile at Four.

He’s made a terrible mistake.

Chapter Text

Hyrule finishes healing everyone including Link and they set off, Legend wondering how much ground he can cover in this form before he slows them down. He could ask for a lift but his options are limited unless he pulls someone away from Link or resigns himself to holding his nerve with the wolves or Warriors. Wild maybe? But Wild is going to go straight back to mountaineering as soon as he gets the chance and the Hero of Legend would really rather not die by losing his grip on a goat and falling off a cliff. He can walk for a while.

Fortunately he doesn’t have to go far, Four leaves the Hylian group of Sky, Hyrule and Young-Legend-Link and heads back to join him, “Can I return the favour and offer you a ride?”

Legend looks up at him and sees a sincere smile and a flash of amber in his eyes, “No one ever thinks of the short-legged people,” Four jokes.

“…yeah, thanks.”

Four crouches down beside him and opens his arms and the two of them consider options for a moment before he speaks up again, “How about you get in my hood, then you can see in both directions and I’ll still have my hands free.”

Legend nods, “Okay, we can do that.”

He fits securely in Four’s hood and is able to stand comfortably, front paws on Four’s shoulder so he can see ahead and they can talk. Hyrule glances back at them and appears to make the squeaking noise again, an adoring and jealous expression on his face, Link glances up at him then back to see what he’s looking at, Legend ducks down as Four laughs softly, “Poor Hyrule, torn between little brother Legend and little bunny Legend.”

Legend thumps him in the back with a foot, Four lets out an ‘oof’ and just laughs harder.

❍ ❍ ❍

Link is not stupid. Sky says they’re the Heroes of Courage from across time, and Link is one too, Four says he’s the Hero of Light and the Picori from his childhood stories. Sky has the mark of the Triforce on his hand too, just like Link, and his sword looks like the Master Sword did when he found it, you know, if it hadn’t been left out in the elements for hundreds of years.

…the hilt and crossguard were the same shape, okay?

It’s a ridiculous story, right? They say they’re here for abnormal monsters and Link doesn’t think he’s seen any yet. But given what’s happened these past few months he can’t just immediately discard it. That sword thrums with Holy Light more than anything he’s ever seen. More than his own salvaged repaired sword, more than his Moon Pearl. He doesn’t know if he can trust them, but he wants to be able to so badly. A selfish part of him desperately wants them to be here to help him, to fight Ganon, to save Zelda. He doesn’t dare voice it.

No one will save her if you don’t.

No one will save you but yourself.

It’s not hard to notice the group has a pink rabbit in it either, it’s not hard to notice it’s refusing to meet his gaze, despite the fact he’s pretty sure it’s watching him. (They all are). He can connect the dots, that maybe that’s him. Or at least some relative. How many people with a pink rabbit form can there be? Sky says they’re all from different points in time so then the rabbit is from… when? If it’s him then the future presumably, but how far? How old is he? Why is he avoiding him? Why doesn’t he have a Moon Pearl? He’ll never be without his again.

It takes him a while to work up the nerve, but when he does it’s all at once. He abruptly turns on his heel and marches back to Four and the rabbit laying over his shoulder. Its ears flick down, Four looks friendly and amused. They both wait for him to speak.

“Where’s your Moon Pearl?” he asks before his courage has any chance to falter.

The rabbit pushes itself up from its sprawl, “What makes you think I have one.”

Link doesn’t respond, he knows what he’s really asking, so he just holds his gaze.

And keeps holding it.

It gets awkward.

Link fidgets.

The rabbit senses victory.

Four pokes the rabbit on his shoulder, “Are you going to be like this the whole time?”

“Shut it,” he says, slapping at the hand with an ineffectual paw, but he gives in and focuses back on Link, “Hyrule has it.”

“Hyrule…?” he turns back to the boy in question, patiently waiting for him with Sky and Wind. The pink rabbit had a Moon Pearl. How common could that be?

“Hyrule can heal, I can’t, we needed it so he may as well keep it a while.”

“Oh.”

“I trust them with it.” Another unasked question answered.

And with that the rabbit drops back behind Four’s shoulder and deeper into his hood. Conversation over apparently. Four gives Link a smile he doesn’t really know how to interpret, “Why don’t you go back to Sky and Hyrule.”

It’s a polite but clear dismissal, and Link is glad for it.

❍ ❍ ❍

Sky has to admit that all of them can be quite charming when they put in the effort. A certain level of natural charisma as inherent in them as sword skills and a propensity for pottery destruction. It’s not evenly spread of course, and it doesn’t always manifest in the same way. Wind has the gift of the gab for example, while people tend to immediately see Twilight as reliable, and open up to Sky.

All this is to say, Link never stood a damn chance.

Hyrule and Wind tell him stories as they walk. They tell him about being twelve their first adventures, Hyrule jokes about mysterious old men handing out swords and laments his own encounters with wizards, Wind paints a picture of an endless ocean full of secrets and epic sea battles. He borrows the Moon Pearl from Hyrule briefly to properly introduce himself and confirm he is in fact, taller than Link. Priorities.

Link is cautious and jumpy and sombre, but not especially shy. He loosens up around Hyrule, who Legend has always been fond of, and Wind, who gets along with everyone but younger kids in particular. He asks questions and files way the answers, he pays attention not only to the two boys he’s speaking to, but to what all the others are up to as well. And while he’s young, Sky can see he’s clever.

He’s not angry, that’s what stands out to Sky most starkly. Legend always has a simmering, defensive anger that isn’t present in Link, his fear is easier to see just below the surface. Legend’s steady self-confidence is not there either and while Link tries to hide it, he’s dreadfully afraid. It’s that kind of long, drawn-out, unceasing fear Sky felt during his own quest; alone, far from home, fighting for his and Zelda’s lives, and with everything riding on him. They all faced something like it, but they are the Hero of Courage, and they are brave in the face of it, they persist. It doesn’t make it any easier to see a child still in the depths of it.

“Can I see your sword?” Link breaks Sky from his musings. The boy’s expression is serious, like he knows he’s asking an important adult question. Wind, on Hyrule’s shoulder beside the boy, looks delighted Link asked as he might finally get to see Sky transformed.

Sky glances around, double checking for threats and confirming the others aren’t too far off, then draws the Master Sword and holds it out to Link.

Link takes it carefully and Sky promptly turns into some kind of bird he doesn’t recognise, all reds and golds with a long tail. Big, but like an eagle not massive like a loftwing. Hyrule looks like he doesn’t recognise it either, Wind bounces around on his shoulder, “You can fly!? So cool!”

But Sky’s attention is on Link as he inspects and weighs the sword, then holds it up, glowing a soft white blue in the dim world. There is not the slightest hint of disapproval or hesitation from Fi. The others all watch him. For a moment Sky feels like he’s seeing into a different time and place, like if things had been different somehow this would have been Legend’s true birthright, the boy in red illuminating the dull world with the light of the pure undamaged Master Sword. But they know the ‘what ifs’, and in the worlds with no Fallen Hero there is no Hero of Legend.

The boy looks at the sword with bright eyes and a soft smile, his own sword glowing a soft red on his back in resonance. Then the moment is over, he lays it down next to Sky with a soft, “Thanks.”

❍ ❍ ❍

“Hey, hey,” Four says quietly, bouncing his step to get Legend’s attention “Twi is making his move.”

Legend, resting in his hood and watching the road behind them, pops up and turns to rest his front paws on Four’s shoulders to see Wolfie is indeed approaching Sky, Link, and Hyrule.

“Oh this is going to be painful. I can’t watch,” says Legend. Watching.

Wolfie drifts towards the group and Link notices, his stride changing slightly, a little more forced and unnatural. Wolfie trots up towards Hyrule, Link slips from the middle of the trio to beside Sky, putting both the older boys between himself and the wolf, drawing his arms somewhat awkwardly against his chest, clutching his sword arm with the other. Wolfie swaps sides, so does Link. Wolfie trots out in front of the group and drops to the ground, wagging his tail and giving the best puppy dog eyes he can manage.

Hyrule says something to Link, who only shakes his head quickly in reply. They walk past Twilight, Legend’s younger self looking to be putting a lot of effort into acting natural. It’s not working.

Twilight accepts defeat and walks off dejected.

“No new puppy for Twilight today,” Four comments, “You don’t like dogs?”

“You don’t like cats,” Legend dodges the question. It’s something he’s noticed anyway, but not brought up. Four always avoids the cats Twilight collects.

“They tried to eat me,” Four says with a wry half smile.

“Yeah well, same.”

❍ ❍ ❍

Twilight flops down next to them later when they stop to rest briefly, Legend out of Four’s hood to stretch his legs and give Four a break from carrying his weight.

He pats Twilight’s head in a consolatory manner and says with malicious glee, “You will never adopt me as one of your strays.”

❍ ❍ ❍

They make camp earlier than they normally would, but this place gets too dark too early for it to be safe to continue. The kid needs the rest anyway. Not that he says anything, not that he lets it slow them, but they’re all watching him and can see him getting quieter, his steps dragging. Time and Wars approach Legend and Four and together they make the call.

Sky hands off the Master Sword to Wild who introduces himself to Link, then promptly gives him the job of building the fire with wood from his slate. Sky meanwhile decides to give flying a go, and at Wind’s insistence takes him along.

Link accepts the job without complaint and stares with unguarded fascination as Wild pulls items from his slate. Wild grins at him and shows him how to use it, flicking through the screens. He supposes Legend’s fascination with magic items is nothing new then,

“Touch the picture of the apple,” Wild instructs and watches the boy lights up as an apple appears in his hands.

“That’s amazing!” Link says, with genuine wonder and a huge smile.

Wild grins back, “Why don’t you snack on that while I get everything else sorted?”

Link nods and Wild watches as the child takes a bite and makes a considered face.

“Good?”

Link nods while still looking like he’d deep in thought.

Wild laughs, “What’s that expression?”

The kid blinks and blushes, “We um, we have an orchard. An apple orchard.”

Wild grins, “So you were considering it as a professional.”

Link gives him a shrug, a little embarrassed.

“You could keep the seeds and plant it if you like it.”

 “It doesn’t work like that,” Link replies, biting deep to reveal the seeds, “If you plant an apple seed and grow a tree, the apples won’t taste the same as the one you planted. You have to graft it if you want to keep getting the same apple.”

“What, really?”

Link nods, “It takes a lot of work if you want to grow a bunch of the same apple. But if you’re just making cider it doesn’t matter so much.”

“Tell me how grafting works,” Wild says, as he gets back to making dinner, seeing that the kid has found a topic he seems knowledgeable on that hopefully isn’t too fraught.

Link talks about apples and the orchard for a while he eats, then asks if he can help once he’s finished. Wild sets him to chopping vegetables, then then the boy sits feeding wood into the fire as Wild cooks.

Finally Wild hands him a plate of stew, some kind he’s never had before, and a bread roll from the slate, still warm and fresh.

It’s delicious, so delicious! Link hasn’t had anything this good in… in a long time. He rubs his eyes, they’re all watching him, he needs to be a Hero of Courage, he needs to be strong and brave. He sniffs and hopes it just looks like the hot stew is making his nose run. Wild pretends not to notice and fusses around with the food and the fire instead.

“I’ll give you some food to take with you, it’s hard to keep yourself fed while adventuring sometimes.”

Link nods, hoping there’s no catch in his voice “You don’t have to but… thank you.”

“You helped out after all. This place doesn’t seem very hospitable.”

Link shakes his head, “Normally I got back to Hyrule to get supplies, but I…”

“The knights are looking for you I heard.”

He gives a little nod, no longer trusting his voice.

“You’ve done really well to get so far.”

The boy’s hands tighten on the bowl, he feels wetness on his cheeks and frantically scrubs at his face. “Um! The others must be hungry so um, I’ll-”

Wild gives him a soft smile, “I’m going to go give the others something to eat okay? Yell out if you need me.”

Link nods without looking at him and Wild leaves him to compose himself, if he’s not comfortable getting upset around virtual strangers he’s not going to make it harder. Link curls up, gripping his arms tight and telling himself to breathe, breathe, breathe.

By the time Hyrule and Four come over to get their own food he thinks he can be normal again, and when Hyrule puts an arm around him it seems okay to lean in to him. It feels… nice. He doesn’t let himself chase the feeling. He’s so close, so near the end, he just needs to be strong for a few days longer and then he can stop. He can’t fall apart until Zelda is safe.

❍ ❍ ❍

“Lend me your pearl for a moment.”

Four looks up from the book he’s reading by lantern light, raises an eyebrow, then hands the Moon Pearl over to Legend, the rabbit changing back to Hylian, and Four Minish size again. It’s almost comfortingly nostalgic in a weird way, though actually being Minish is a novelty. Legend rummages around in his bag, pulls out his bedroll and after a moment’s thought, his fire rod as well. He hands the pearl back to Four, their forms swap again and Four looks at him with a questioning expression.

“Give it to the kid to use,” Legend says, kicking the bedroll with a big rabbit foot “He’s nodding off, Sky and Hyrule are going to get insufferable when they realise he doesn’t have a bedroll.”

“What’s he using?” Four asks, picking up the item in question.

“Stolen blanket and spare tunics,” Legend yawns, “I survived.” He picks up the fire rod between his paws and starts positioning it propped up between two rocks.

Four wonders how much of his casual demeanour he’s forcing and a little voice that sounds like Red sing-songs ‘So much~’ inside of him, ‘But you know Legend, gotta be angry or non-plussed.’ If he met his past self, ten years old forging the Four Sword with the Minish he’s not sure how he’d deal with it. He’s not sure he’d choose the ‘just avoid them completely’ option though. With any luck he’ll never have to find out.

Legend finishes positioning the fire rod and presses his front paws to it, a little frown of concentration and a fireball shoot out, landing harmless on the ground some distance away. “Huh, I guess that’s something at least.”

Four nods and leaves him, taking the bedroll over to Link and the others.

When he gets there Link is pulling off his red mail and replacing it with a green tunic to sleep in. Four hands him the bedroll as he looks up to keep him from noticing the stares he’s getting from everyone. Seeing a kid in that green tunic again bringing up memories for half the group or more. The bad scarring they’ve all glimpsed at one point or another on Legend’s left forearm is already there.

At lease most of them don’t actually have human faces to be making weird expressions at the moment. Come on guys, a little subtlety.  Four sees Time get up from his rest and prowl off to patrol again.

Link looks over the bedroll in confusion.

“I heard you don’t have one,” Four comments.

“I can’t take yours!” Link insists and Four shakes his head then tilts it back behind him in the direction of Legend.

“Not mine.”

“Oh.” He looks at it with more consideration, unbuckling it carefully and laying it out, looking at it like he’s trying to pick apart something about the person who owns it. There’s not much to tell aside from it seems to be well worn and good quality.

Four rubs Link’s hair as he goes to leave, “Sleep well.”

“Um!” Link stops him, “Thank you. And tell him thank you too.”

❍ ❍ ❍

Legend sits and watches the fire, turning over what to do in his mind. He can’t let the kid fight Four’s shadows, they almost killed him the first time, it was so fucking close. What if by having met Four he hesitates and gets himself killed? The fallout from that would be… Catastrophic. It’s not just himself at stake. The timeline has already split, and he knows the magnitude of the splits Time caused. He’s not sure if anyone else has noticed, but he knows this didn’t happen to him. There’s no guarantee of his younger self’s survival.

He owes Four, he doesn’t want him to see himself, to see the Colours, like that. He doesn’t want to tell the group about the shadows or that he killed them years ago. What part of Four, of Green, Red, Blue, and Vio did he kill here? This secret is better his alone.

He’s centuries after Four at a minimum, probably over a thousand years even, and something of him was still here. He doesn’t want him to see that fate and wonder what went wrong for the rest of his life. He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand what they are and he hates that.

They’ll move on once they track down the black blooded monsters though, and he can’t control that. How much time do they have? Does he have? Even if he had his pearl it’s not safe to keep travelling here at night.

Wild approaches from around the fire and sets down a bowl in front of him. Legend looks at it confused, Wild already gave him some herbs and carrot earlier, he can’t eat this as a rabbit.

Wild sets the Master Sword on the ground, crouching to keep one hand on it, “Bring it back when you’re done okay? I’m on first watch.”

He lifts his hand, transforms, and trots off without another word.

Legend looks in the bowl and… oh.

It’s his cream vegetable stew, Legend’s favourite. Wild… he must have made it for Link, picking something he knew Legend liked. Then he saved him some too, and waited until Link was asleep to bring it to him. That… ahh, he really is kind sometimes, huh?

Legend stands up and confirms Link seems to be asleep before putting a paw on the Master Sword and transforming back to a Hylian again. He sits the sword on his lap as he eats. It really is good, the best he’s made, he must have used the good butter or something. Fuck.

He focuses on the fire again until he gets his emotions back under control. Wild does nice shit all the time, don’t get stupid and weird over it.

He finishes it as Hyrule comes over to sit beside him. They share a companionable silence for a while before Hyrule asks, “So if we’re going to each other’s histories now where would you want to go?”

Legend frowns and realises he’s never considered it, he’s been thinking too much about his current situation to properly consider the implications for the others.

“…yours,” he says finally, still obviously thinking it though.

“Why mine?”

“Because… because I want to see Ganon’s face if I show up again after hundreds of years and kill him for the forth time,” he grins viciously, “Imagine Hyrule, imagine, it’s not some new kid that shows up, it’s the same fucking guy as last time.”

Hyrule laughs until he’s wheezing and it sets off Legend.

“Oh, I want to see that so bad!” Hyrule says between breaths.

“It’d be the first time I looked forward to seeing that pig again,” Legend comments when he can get the words out again.

“And keep doing it! Time can fight Wind’s and Twilight’s!”

“No way, I’ll be the Ganon killing champion. Every damn one, mine! The same guy!”

“Please Legend, you complain about doing it three times, you’ll be completely insufferable if you get them all.”

“I am the collector Rulie, I must get them all.”

Hyrule dissolves into giggles.

“Alright, What about you then?” Legend asks.

“Mmm, well if we’re already fighting Ganons, I guess maybe I’d help the fallen hero.”

“We wouldn’t exist if he had lived. Or at least we wouldn’t be us.”

“I know, I’d still want to save the kid, you know?” Hyrule smiles a little sadly.

They don’t look at Time, they keep them separate in their heads, the little boy who died and the man they follow.

“Yeah,” Legend agrees softly.

“How’re you doing with all this?”

“I hate it.”

“Yeah. I know,” Hyrule rests his head of Legend’s shoulder.

“He’s a good kid. But I guess that’s the problem, huh?”

Legend just grunts. They sit in silence for a while longer, in the end it’s Legend who breaks it.

“This didn’t happen, Hyrule. All this didn’t happen. I remember it I think, kind of, making my way to the pyramid. I definitely would have remembered it if I’d met other Hylians.”

“You said that. But we’re bouncing around time a lot right, so does it really matter?”

“Hyrule… if this didn’t happen to me then the timeline has already split.”

“Oh… that- … then what-?” he lifts his head off Legend’s shoulder and looks over at the boy, “It’s different, but it’s still you so…”

Legend shakes his head, “We’ve changed things, he’s met us and…”

Hyrule is silent, giving Legend a long moment to pull his thoughts together before, “Tell me? This isn’t some vague worry right, there’s something specific?”

“The last dungeon, there was…. A shadow.”

“That looked like you? And you fought it?” He fought one at the end of his own adventure after all, the shadow of himself guarding the princess.

Legend laughs bitterly, “No, that’s the thing Rulie, it wasn’t my shadow.”

“It… who then?”

Legend just shakes his head.

“One of us? A predecessor? Sky. Or Four. Or… or the fallen hero. And Link spend the day with Sky, he saw you with Four all day.” If Legend’s worried it’s most likely one of those two.

“It was so close Hyrule. It was so close and I didn’t know them. The timeline is split, he can die, and everything I did won’t come to pass.

I think I have to do something.”

“Like what?”

“…I’m going to handle it. I need you to take care of the kid and everyone else while I do, okay?”

“You should tell the others.”

He shakes his head again, “What I saw in there isn’t my secret to share. I’ve got it covered.”

“You don’t have any fairies.”

“Neither does anyone else. I’ve got potions, I’ll get it done, Hyrule. Just… now someone else knows, okay? If anything happens. So don’t let him die.”

❍ ❍ ❍

Wild tosses a pebble at Time to wake him for second watch.

It’s not the first time Time has woken up to find himself trapped in the form of some other creature, nor is it the worst time, but he’s also certain this is the sort of thing a man should not normalise. Another little stone bounces off his snout and Time opens his eyes.

“I took pictures,” Wild says, crouched before him and grinning, his slate softly glowing in his hands.

Time snorts, stands, and shakes himself off. The two of them padding back over to the fire. Wild sits and lays the Master Sword across his thighs, patting the ground beside him. Time sits and they try sharing the sword. This close together they manage it and the two of them remain Hylian with the one sword.

“Anything to report?” Time asks and Wild shakes his head, fiddling with the slate and bringing up his pictures.

“Some noises, but nothing came close. It’s quieter than… pretty much everywhere we go. Like Rulie’s, almost no animal noises.” Wild grins as he holds up his slate to display a pictograph of Time sleeping in a puppy pile with Twilight and Wars, another of the little squirrel Wind nestled into Sky’s feathers, another of bunny Legend and Four tucked in to Four’s bedroll together, then Hyrule and Link curled together, the boy’s expression soft and still, pink hair flared over his cheek a little smile on Hyrule’s face.

Wild looks immensely pleased with himself and Time snorts, but it’s a fond sort of sound. “Go get some sleep.”

“G’night,” Wild slides out from next to Time, leaving him the Master Sword and trotting off to join Sky and Wind.

Time gives him some time to fall asleep then patrols the camp, checking on everyone. Link still sleeps curled up in Hyrule’s arms, pressed close, his head against Hyrule’s chest and hands clutching his tunic. Hyrule’s posture is more relaxed, his arm thrown over the child. Both boys seem to be comfortable and sleeping soundly. This is a group that has a lot of nightmares and insomnia, but for Link at least, this might be the safest most restful sleep he’s had in weeks, if not longer. He must be exhausted, he probably hasn’t had anyone to keep watch while he slept this whole time. He’s dead to the world by virtue of fatigue if nothing else.

On the other side of the camp Four sleeps on his side, and close beside him, head pressed up under his chin is the little pink loaf that is Legend. One ear sits snugly along his back, while the other hangs out a little to the side, literally keeping an ear out for trouble. It twitches as Time approaches but he doesn’t wake.

All things considered it could be worse. Legend doesn’t seem to know what to do with his younger self, doesn’t know how to be around him. But he’s being more avoidant about it than hostile. Four’s stepped in to keep an eye on him while Hyrule’s with Link. He’s glad for that. Legend and Four have a lot in common, however the fact that they’re both so independent and competent means neither are especially quick to rely on others.

It’s painful to see the boy and consider how he became the kind of man Legend is. And really, that’s likely Legend’s concern. That they’ll look at him, see how he was, and know that boy must have been broken. That earnest, helpful kid will turn jaded and cynical. They can see it already, in the kid’s guarded gaze and suppressed tears, in their shared stubbornness. The boy has years of adventuring to come and there’s nothing any of them can do about it. Legend doesn’t want their pity, it’s insulting to offer it.

Much like Wild’s shift, the hours pass uneventfully for Time. Once or twice one of the boys wakes up from some nightmare or far off sound, but they all fall back into sleep (or pretend to) quickly. A fairly standard night.

Time wakes Twilight for third watch, and like with Wild they sit by the fire, sharing the Master Sword for a moment as they handover the watch.

Twilight stretches out with a sigh.

“How’re you doing?”

“Can’t say I love not bein’ able to turn back again,” Twilight rumbles quietly, “Been a long time.”

“Sky will loan you the Master Sword if you ask I’m sure.”

“Nah, ‘not that bad. ‘n if Ledge is handling it I can hardly complain.”

They glance over to Four and Legend, both seeming to still be soundly asleep, as much as anyone in this group ever is.

“How’re you?”

Time waves him off, “It’s a hindrance, but it will be fine.”

“Anything to report?”

“Quiet night, Wild said so too.”

Twilight nods, “How’s the kid been?”

“Sleeping soundly with Hyrule.”

“Good, good.

He’s scared of us.”

“You, me, and Warriors, especially” Time agrees, “It’s to be expected if even in Hyrule he was being hunted, and I doubt he’s forgotten Wars is a knight. A rabbit is bound to be uneasy around wolves and cats.”

“Legend’s been okay with Wolfie,” Twilight notes, “Since we met, though I s’pose he was more cautious than most of the others.”

“Legend’s a lot further removed from all of this.”

“Wonder if he’ll tell how he got that Moon Pearl,” Twilight muses, “Sure would’ve been helpful to have more.”

“Catch him in a good mood and ask.”

Twilight snorts, “Go sleep, old man.”

❍ ❍ ❍

Dawns were always weak, anaemic affairs in the Dark World, and like everything in the Dark World, Legend hated them. They could have been the most spectacular sunrises he’d ever seen and he’d still hate them on principle, but as it was they were pale watery things.

He wakes fairly early and crawls out of the blankets, hopping over to join Twilight by the fire. They sit in companionable silence for a while before Wild wakes, takes the Master Sword to make breakfast, and Twilight leaves to patrol.

The early morning passes with a somewhat modified version of the standard routine, Wild handing out things from his slate to everyone stuck as an animal for breakfast and cooking porridge for the Hylians. The Master Sword goes back to Sky as they break camp.

Legend looks them all over, then approaches his younger self as he’s pulling out his mail to put on for the day and rearranging his necklaces and amulets. The child looks confused, then even more so as Legend leaps to his chest. Link catches him and holds him steady, of course he does, such a conscientious, helpful child.

“What?” the boy asks.

Legend’s rabbit teeth snip through the leather cord at Link’s neck and he leaps away, taking the pouch with the Moon Pearl with him. The kid yells, and Legend hits the ground and transforms still with the leather cord between his teeth, scoops up the little rabbit and tosses it into a shocked looking Hyrule’s arms.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Link screeches.

“Good news kid, I’m going to clear the last dungeon for you,” he ties the broken cord back together with some complex knot and slips it over his head, tucking the Moon Pearl inside his shirt

“What!? No! Take your own! I can do it, give it back!” he kicks at Hyrule and tries to scramble out of his arms.

“Hyrule and the others will watch out for you.”

“Legend,” breaks in a shocked Sky.

“I’m going to need you all to trust me on this,” Legend faces Sky as he says it, but the words are for the whole group. The kid yelling has certainly drawn their attention.

“Give it back!”

“Nope. Hyrule, give him mine if a portal shows up.”

“Give it back! Give it back! Give it back! It’s mine! I can do it! This is-” he tries to sink his teeth into Hyrule’s hand but gets only the leather of his bracers.

“Of course you can, you already did, and it almost killed you. Things have changed, so I’m doing it.”

“What do you mean changed?!”

“We were here. You met us. And now I have to keep the timeline from fucking up even more than it already has.”

“Legend, what is it you’re doing?” Sky interrupts.

He receives short, “A dungeon,” as an answer.

“Palace of the Four Sword,” Link answers in Legend’s place in defiance, glaring daggers at the man from Hyrule’s arms. If the thief doesn’t what them to know, then Link does.

Everyone goes still.

Ahh shit. Legend doesn’t remember when he learned the name of that place, but apparently it was ‘already’.

Eyes shift from Legend and Link to Four.

“Legend,” Four says, his eyes a deep indigo, Legend hates that combination, “What’s in there?”

Legend’s face goes hard, walling himself up as he weighs up the possible lies, but Four is smart and he’s sure as hell not going to let something called ‘Palace of the Four Sword’ go, he sighs heavily, “Shadows. And your sword.”

Four’s face does something complicated that Legend can’t parse, the colours swimming in his grey eyes.

“Shadows? Plural?”

A nod, “You can probably guess how many.”

His face is still that complicated expression, his eyes showing far more violet than Legend would have expeced, “Right, I’m doing this one then.”

“What? No.”

“The Four Sword is my responsibility,” Four presses.

“I know what I’m doing!” Legend retorts, “This is my era, my past!”

“I’m not going to let you tell me all that and then not go!”

“Stay here and protect the group!”

“And if you run into a group with black blood?!”

“We can all go-” Sky begins to suggest, only to be met with a resounding “NO!” from both Four and Legend.

“Fine. We’ll both go,” Legend concedes at the risk of this turning into a big group thing. If Four wants to come along and fuck himself up then fine, but the rest of them don’t need to be involved.

Four nods and they take a few steps towards the palace before Time steps forward and starts grumbling an objection for Wind to translate. Ugh, everyone is making this harder than it needs to be, damn kid making this complicated.

Four looks even more impatient than Legend which is a rare occurrence, he catches the older boy’s eye again and glances down at Legend’s feet, then his own. Legend raises an eyebrow, Four raises both eyebrows.

“Alright,” Wind begins, “Time reckons-”

“Boof” interrupts Twilight, catching on to Legend and Four’s unspoken conversation. Before anything can be done, the two of them activate their Pegasus boots and sprint in opposite directions, and circling around behind the group to meet up and run at full speed towards the dungeon together.

Time huffs a sigh, as he tries to think of options and only comes up with bad ones. Damn dramatic kids. He thinks he’s pieced together what’s going on; Four has a Dark Link, a Shadow here, or the Colours do. Legend must have fought them as a child and now he’s decided to keep his child self from doing it again by stealing the kid’s damned Moon Pearl and running off to do it himself. Would it have killed him to discuss this plan?! He knows this place and the presence of that kid has been unnerving Legend, has he actually thought this through clearly?

“Should we got after them?” Twilight asks.

Time lets out a growling grumble and shakes his head, “That would just be splitting the group in three instead of two.”

The two of them are capable, and Legend knows the details of what they’re facing, he needs to trust them. He hopes they’re just going to clear the dungeon, any interference with Ganon is definitely a group decision. They can discuss what the hell they thought they were doing splitting the group and running off to do a dungeon later.

Meanwhile, the little pink rabbit squirms and shakes in Hyrule’s arms, upset, his breathing too heavy and hard, and Hyrule comes to a decision. He crouches down and places Link on the ground, fishing around in his pouch. The kid doesn’t run, he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and when Hyrule holds out Legend’s Moon Pearl to him he grabs it desperately.

The kid, now a kid again, holds it tightly against his chest and gives a single desperate sob as he pulls himself together, the shakes wracking him quietening. Maybe he should have kept the Moon Pearl, or given it to one of the better fighters, but that noise from Link convinces Hyrule he made the right decision. Forcing the boy to stay in that form for convenience, after he’d gone through so much to free himself from it in the first place would be cruel.

Link doesn’t cry, he’s already learned to keep that to himself, but the relief of being Hylian again is palpable. Hyrule watches him crush all the terror and desperation down and mask it with determination in a way that’s so Legend. His breathing deep and steady and deliberate, the shield of anger isn’t there yet, just determination. Hyrule’s heart aches.

Link stands, jaw clenched and head held high and begins the march after Four and Legend. Sky and the deer Hyrule fall in beside him and the others spread in a loosely protective formation, escorting the young Hero of Legend towards his first ‘final’ challenge.

Chapter Text

Four and Legend can’t actually sprint all the way to the Pyramid of Power and the Palace contained within. Pegasus boots just aren’t made for long distance travel, they’re too much of a magic sink, and soon enough they’re sipping stamina potions and jogging. Time and Twilight could catch them for sure if they wanted to, but Legend doubts they’ll try.

“So, why aren’t you leaving it to the kid?” Four asks as they finally approach the pyramid after a couple of hours of travel, a sandstone ziggurat dominating the surrounding landscape, water surrounding it on three sides “Like you said, you got through it. It’s not like you to demand to take this sort of thing yourself.”

“I didn’t know you. The kid does, he’d go in there and find he has to fight something with your face. The Hero of Light. I fucked up, I should have told Wars to give the Moon Pearl to someone else, anyone else” Legend shakes out his leg and massages at one knee, grumbling about it, “That place almost killed me as it was, he doesn’t need to go in there and see you. It could be the difference between surviving it and not,”

Four snorts, “Not for you?”

“I’m an adult,” Legend replies, stretching his leg back out and finding it acceptable enough as he shifts he weight back on to it, “I’ve done this once before and a hell of a lot more since.”

“So are you going to tell me properly what’s in there?”

Legend hesitates then sighs, giving his attention properly to Four, “There’s four mini-bosses, each one you beat you get one of the swords. Need them all to get into the boss chamber and in there is… you. I guess. Not you, the Colours. The four of them. Each took one of the swords and attacked one-by-one. Green-Red-Blue-Vio. But they’re… shadows, or darks or I don’t know. Four dark things that looked like you when you’re split. At… at the end of it the swords combined again. The four of them… whatever that was caused me more grief than fucking Ganon.”

“Huh. Well, nice to know they’ve still got it as thousand year old evil sword ghosts.”

“I needed one fairy for Ganon,” Legend hisses, “I needed two for FUCKING BLUE!”

Four blinks at him, then suddenly he’s all Blue, “What? Really!” he cackles and throws an arm over Legend’s shoulder, weighing him down and making him stumble a little, “Wait is that why you never want to spar with me?”

“Get off,” Legend grumbles ineffectively.

“Awww Leggy, I’m sorry I traumatised baby you.”

“I’m not sorry I killed you,” Legend deadpans.

Four-mostly-Blue cackles again, “I’m gonna kick my own ass to avenge the poor little bunny.”

Legend manages to duck free from his hold as Blue sinks back in and Four asks, “So how long did you know then? From when you met us?”

“No, I didn’t realise until you split. You and the sword were just… familiar, but there were explanations for that.”

“And you didn’t tell us?”

Legend shrugs, “Tell you what? That when I was a kid something that looked like you tried to kill me and I…

I didn’t want it to be… I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s… I wouldn’t want to know.”

“The Four Sword would have been placed there when it still was the divine realm, right? A place to keep it safe. Before Ganon was sealed there and the corruption. It might just be our… imprint on the sword.”

Legend shrugs again, “Whatever it was it wasn’t… pleasant. You don’t have to do this, Four.”

“I really do.” 

Legend looks up at the pyramid where Ganon waits, where the shadows of the Colours wait, “Let’s get this done then.”

❍

Link is angry, Link is frustrated, Link wants to scream and cry and fight something and curl up and hide in the stupid borrowed bedroll all at once. He tries to keep it all off his face, but he’s not sure how good a job of it he’s doing. He puts a little distance between himself and the others, as much as they’ll let him get away with, not sure if he’s mad at them too.

He doesn’t know how to feel so somehow he just feels everything. Betrayal and fear and guilt and relief. He feels sick. He can’t afford this, he can’t afford this, he needs to keep it together. He needs to fight Ganon, he needs to not fail like the hero before him all those years ago, he needs to save Zelda.

His hair hangs in his eyes (his older self has a shorter style) and it’s that stupid bunny pink again (so was his) and after all those weeks of fading it’s back to where it started and it’s the MOST STUPID THING IN THE WORLD to be upset over with everything else that’s happening but he really had wanted something to just be back to normal and-

“You okay?” a voice asks and Link startles out of his thoughts, he looks down to see big black eyes looking up at him. Wind, bounding along beside him on his little flying squirrel feet, even smaller than Link himself when he’s the rabbit, “Dick move by Legend.”

“I’m fine,” Link mumbles.

“Pfft.”

“I’ll be fine then,” he snaps then stumbles over the words, “‘Cause he’s… he’s me right? In a few years. And if he’s me, and he’s an adult then…”

“You beat Ganon, and you save the Princess, and then you go off and have other adventures,” Wind supplies cheerfully, unbothered by Link’s sour mood, “You should see his house! He’s got so much STUFF, from everywhere he’s seen and gone.”

“But he… he’s not…”

“He’s a grouch, and snarky and prickly and hates looking weak and he hates it here. But he’s not a bad guy. And you don’t have to grow up to be him.”

“Do you think he hates me?” Link asks. Because he’s weak, because he’s slow, because he’s scared and they can tell and he’s making him look bad in front of the others.

“Nah. I think he’s trying to protect you but doing a shit job of it. We’ve never come across our own pasts before, you know?

They’re bad enough with me and you’re even younger. If we come across more enemies I bet they won’t even let you near them.

They’re stupid like that. Like, if one of the oldest asked Sky for the Master Sword right now he’d swap out but he won’t want to give it to me just because, ‘oooh what if something happens’. Even though I’m just as capable.

Legend thinks he’s better than that but he’s not. He could have just gotten his pearl back off Hyrule, but instead he was a dick about it.”

“Who is the least useful person right now?” Link guesses at Legend’s thinking as he presses a hand to his chest, pressing the little bag with the pearl hard against his chest through his tunic.

“Who needs to be kept safe? Be protected not protecting.
Legend is real good at getting things done and real bad at remembering he’s on a team now, and that the rest of us are heroes too. He could have told us, even if he kept some parts secret, but he was going to run off and do it alone.”

“What’s the Palace of the Four Sword?” Link asks, not understanding why everyone reacted like they did.

“I don’t know, but the Four Sword is… Four’s Sword. And Four is earlier than most of us in history. Maybe it’s here he left it. Whatever’s in there, I guess he doesn’t want you to deal with it.

I think all of us probably have things like that. That if we could go back now and do it again, or do it older, or not have to have done it at all, we would want to. He’s the only one who’s had the chance.”

“And he chose theft,” Link grouches, and it’s funny how much of Legend Wind can see in that expression.

“I know, I didn’t know he had it in him. I’m a little proud.”

“Proud!?”

Wind grins up at him, “I’ll give him hell for it forever, okay?”

“You better,” grumbles Link, fidgeting and rearranging the pearl and his medallions under his tunic once again before taking a breath and reaching a hand down towards Wind. The little squirrel scrambles up and onto his shoulder. Together they eye off the pyramid, still some distance away.

“You’re gonna do great,” Wind reassures him, “You’re gonna kick ass.”

❍ ❍

Legend leads Four part way up the pyramid then around one of the flat tiers to a hole in the side of the structure, they step inside to find a fox like creature guarding the entrance, barring the way.

It speaks “Hey! I’ll tell you a profitable story if you pay me 20 rupees.”

Four looks to Legend who shrugs he expected this but he doesn’t understand it either, and when he pulls out his money pouch Four follows suit and they each contribute 10 rupees.  The creature takes it, not pushing for 20 rupees each. It looks between the two of them inspecting Legend closely, then Four, its expression inscrutable, then cheerfully says “This palace is here precisely for heroes like you.” And it vanishes, leaving the path inside open.

Weird.

“Was it this creepy before the realm was corrupted?” Four asks as they enter the palace main hall and takes in the decor.

“No idea.”

“Because I feel like I wouldn’t have requested the big skeleton motifs around the doors or the giant creepy statues in my sword-temple-possible-tomb. And Zelda has better taste than that.”

“They match with the stals,” Legend notes, as a skeleton creature notices their entrance through the main door and begins towards them.

“Ah yes, consistency in dungeon aesthetics takes priority.”

Legend snorts and moves in to take out the stal with a few quick slashes. There’s a couple of others in the hall, but they’re not bothering with the heroes yet.

“This way,” Legend says, leading them left into another room. A long flooded passage lies before them, Legend lights a torch with his fire rod and the path down to it opens. Four looks out along the passage to devices shooting heavy iron balls between the walls and a moving spinning spike log over the water. Obviously they’re meant to swim and dodge. It’s not even a puzzle, just a Din damned obstacle course.

“Honestly, who designs these?” Four wonders aloud.

Legend just shrugs, “Wanna cheat?” He has no desire to see how the mermaid curse interacts with the rabbit curse.

“Yes.”

Legend moves to the wall and holds out a hand for Four, “Don’t let go.”

Four nods and takes it.

The sensation that comes is… bizarre, like suddenly reality folds and collapses and the world is only a slice of the whole. He looks at their joined hands and sees what looks like paint on stone. Legend moves and Four follows, vaguely aware of traversing the room, the two of them moving along the wall. Then suddenly the world reinflates and they’re standing near a different door, presumably at the other end of the room.

Four needs a moment. He drops to his haunches and takes deep breaths and does a very good job at not throwing up into the pool. Legend waits until Four stops heaving and is standing ready, then hits a switch to open the door, “First mini boss is an Arrghus. Lots of little jellyfish things, bari, floating around a big jellyfish thing. Hookshot ‘em off and stab ‘em. Watch out for electric shocks. Once the little ones are down the big one will start jumping around to crush us. Dodge and stab.”

“You reel them in and I’ll kill them?” Four suggests.

Legend nods, “Let’s do it.”

They head through, even without the forewarning Four knows a mini boss room when he sees one. The Arrghus drops from the ceiling and it’s just like Legend said.

It’s a fairly straightforward fight fortunately. It lends itself to them fighting as a team and so long as they keep moving but stay together they’re able to quickly strip off and destroy the protective layer of bari. After that it’s simply a matter of keeping out from under it as it tries to crush them. The two of them move apart so they’re not tripping over each other and a few attacks later Four finishes it off.

It vanishes and the door on the other side of the chamber opens. One down.

In the chamber beyond rests Green’s sword. Sitting in pride of place in a pedestal in the centre of the room. Legend doesn’t say anything as Four moves to collect it. It feels… Odd, in his hand. A kind of swirling undercurrent of discontent and darkness. He feels Green stir within him, uneasy. He hooks the sword into his belt and joins Legend, waiting by a warp tile.

They give each other a nod, step on to it, and are taken back to the main room.

❍ ❍

Legend actually bothers to do the puzzle leading to the second mini boss room. A standard ‘switches and a falling floor’ configuration. Both of them have a Roc’s cape and are able to traverse it without too much difficulty. They’ve both done a lot of dungeons and are making good time without getting too tired. Also nothing is on fire, or frozen, the floor isn’t lava, nothing has tried to electrocute them, so neither of them complain about a couple of bottomless voids and keese. Even if Four silently judges the ‘Palace’ with his sword’s name on it.

The second boss is a Helmasaur King and once again Legend explains before they enter. Big lizard creature with a scorpion tail, bomb its mask off, stab it a bunch, don’t get hit by that tail, when the big eye opens, shoot it. He loves big shootable eyes.

This time there’s less running and more trying to not kill each other with bombs as they dodge the tail and each other. It goes… acceptably. They’re a little more in each other’s way this time, and bombs always make for trouble but once they settle into covering one side of the room each things move along smoother and the Helmasaur King falls without causing major damage. Legend having a mouthful of healing potion to fix a jarred shoulder from a tail strike to his shield, and Four the same for some burns from a mistimed bomb.

They go through the door and Four picks up the Red Sword. There’s a spike of Red anxiety through him and he closes his eyes. Somewhere inside him, the others soothe it away. He follows Legend out.

❍ ❍

Getting to the third boss is much like the second, though through the basement this time. Another switch puzzle, and both of them utilising their Roc’s capes again to jump over the voids.

“Big moth,” Legend explains, inspecting his fire rod by the door before they enter, “Makes fake duplicates, they turn into bees if you kill the fakes. Shoots energy ring things. Honestly, this is a run around, dodge and hit it type.”

Four nods, and in they go.

The fight is more of a hassle than the previous two. They do a good job keeping out from each other’s feet, but it’s difficult to get close and Legend doesn’t want to blow all his magic in this fight. It’s a pain, Four gets a face full of bees and Legend messes up his hand on one of the energy rings before it falls to Four’s blade. In the end they’re both sipping potions. Legend has a far off expression as he waits for his hand to heal.

Four collects the Blue Sword, and the feeling in him is all agitation. He wants to get this over with, he wants to fight them, he wants to stop messing about with mini bosses. He goes cold as he thinks about fighting his brothers. The warp tile takes them back to the main floor.

❍ ❍

The basement they travel through is dark this time, both of them pulling a lantern out of their bags to light the way and help in skirting around Like Likes. Legend looks at his own lantern for a long moment then comments, “He already has this you know. I took it from home the night Zelda called for help,” and he sets off before Four has a chance to comment.

Four watches as Legend summons and shuffles blocks around the room with a kind of focus that the puzzle, frankly, doesn’t warrant.

“There’s something else, isn’t there? Aside from the kid,” Four asks.

Legend grunts, “Hyrule.”

“The person or the place?”

“Yes.”

Four rolls his eyes and Legend continues, “The hero before me, between you and I, he died, failed, and I wondered sometimes… if that’s why I had to fight as many times as much as I did.”

“You blame him?” Four asks.

Legend shakes his head, “No. I blame Ganon. But in the timeline where Time made it so Ganon never rose, never corrupted the Sacred Realm, there was one Ganon, one hero and one quest, Twilight’s. At least until whatever the hell happened with the Time War,” he puts his shoulder against a block and it slides across the floor, ”After the fallen hero there was me, then Hyrule. Two boy heroes starting as soon as they were tall enough for the sword, with eight quests and four Ganon encounters between us. Even then you saw the state of Hyrule’s world, that’s after we clawed back as much as we could, that’s after we won.”

Legend stops his work on the puzzle to properly face Four, “So tell me Smithy, what would Hyrule face after two fallen heroes?”

“Ahh.”

The question doesn’t need an answer, and Four doesn’t give one. He thinks he understands a bit better why Legend and Hyrule have always gravitated so strongly together despite the differences in their personality and age. The two of them born into an already devastated kingdom to pull it back from total collapse. The unwavering kinship Legend never truly offered to anyone else.

Four doesn’t know if there’s divine interference with the birth circumstances of the hero, but Hyrule has his healing and fairy connection, and Legend and looks enough like his Zelda for Four to suspect a blood relation, it’s enough to wonder if the Goddesses tried to stack the deck with the two of them after the loss of their predecessor.

He wonders if anything he did lasted long enough to make a difference, or if children’s tales and shadows in a temple are all that remains of his legacy.

“No more dead kids,” Legend says, “No more broken timelines.”

He shoves the final block into place and they once again leap across the void to the mini boss door where Legend stops, looking uneasy, recalling what comes next.

“This one is… different,” he warns Four, hesitantly.

“Different how?”

“It’s called Blind. It was… Long story. It looks like a demon-phantom thing, hit it and it’ll drop that and turn into a couple of like floating ball creatures,” he makes the shape of them and indicates the size with his hands.

“That sounds like pretty standard dungeon fare…” Four notes.

Legend watches the door, chewing his lip.

“Ledge, what does it do?”

“My uncle… he died at the start of this quest. And when I went in there it… it looked like him. Said what he said that night,” he shrugs, and Four can see him trying to look unphased, trying to find an expression that looks natural “So it might look like him, or someone else I lost, or someone to you… I don’t know.

But it’s not them.”

“Face stealer,” Four says and Legend nods grimly.

They both take a moment, and Four thinks of that uneasy, determined kid outside. He lost someone, possibly his only real parent, and he hasn’t been able to stop since, rushing after Zelda and Ganon with hunters on his heels. He lost them, had his life torn to pieces, and then had to face them as an enemy here.

He sees Legend subtly steeling himself out of the corner of his eye, bracing for whoever he thinks he’ll see.

“I’ll go first,” Four decides.

Legend just looks at him.

“I’ll go first,” he says again.

Legend looks away, swallows and nods.

Four runs through the possibilities in his head, takes a deep breath, tells himself he’s ready, and steps through.

A black shape coalesces in the centre of the room, curling into existence. Bright teeth glint and suddenly the darkness is a boy. It grins at him, Four feels the malestorm in him might just tear him apart, his calm and balance cracking. No matter how much he could tell himself he was ready, the Colours could not be.

Shadow

“Hi Link, how’re ya? How’s the boys?” Shadow asks.

It’s that moment that Legend steps out from behind Four to see… another fucking Four.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” You can always count on the Hero of Legend to kill a moment, “I swear on the Triforce, Four, if I end this day having killed you NINE FUCKING TIMES I might just make it ten!”

Legend is having A Day.

“Who’s this guy?” Shadow asks.

“Shut up Blind!” Legend rages and marches into the room, then catches sight of Four, frozen, and his exasperation and rage melts away.

“Four,” he says, “It’s not-”

“I waited aaaaaages, it was super boring. The dark yous aren’t so lively you know?” Shadow cuts in.

“Shadow… you’re dead, you’re not here, you can’t be here. It’s a trick.” They’re roiling inside of him, he can feel himself fracturing. He needs to split but he can’t, he can’t, they only have the one Moon Pearl. It’s a trick, he knows it’s a trick and yet there’s a desperate sobbing hope, a ‘but what if?’

“Um. You’re here. You’re not even meant to be here, you’re here like two times. Five times? It’s far less weird that I’m here. I’ve waited soooo long. Link. Vio.”

“It’s not you,” Four says with a quiet desperation.

“This is where I come from isn’t it? Surprise!”

Legend draws his sword and steps forward. Forget that thing about his rage going, fuck this thing.

“Could you not interrupt our touching reunion?” Shadow asks, “Hey Link, care to split for a bit so we can catch up properly?”

“Stop it!” Legend snaps, “Drop the bullshit, it didn’t work then it won’t work now. They’re dead.”

“Was I really though? If there’s anywhere you would find us it would be here. Palace of the Four Sword,” he spins in place, arms out to show off the bland stone chamber “In the Dark World. That’s why you wanted to come so bad, isn’t it?”

“Legend…” Four says, his voice small in a way Legend has never heard before.

“It’s not him, it’s not him, whoever it is you lost. Your Shadow. Four, Link, it’s not him.”

Legend lunges and Four yells, Shadow jerks back and the darkness moved to engulf Legend. But the power is an illusion, and Legend has the tempered Master Sword, made to cut through the darkness, the blackness parts around it.

Shadow screams, the tip of the sword just nicking him.

The illusion collapses, and in Shadow’s place stands an orange demon like creature in a white robe. Legend moves to attack it again when Four comes in like a hurricane. The resulting fight is short and vicious, Legend backs out of it completely in the wake of Four’s fury and heartbreak.

When it’s over Four stands where Blind fell, the Four Sword loose in his hands, gaze blank.

“Four…” Legend moves closer, it’s not until he’s by his side Four turns to him, tears silently running from kaleidoscope eyes.

“Oh…” Legend says softly, uselessly, and pulls him into a hug, arms wrapped around the smaller boy’s back and head, “Sorry,” he says simply.

Four gives a little hiccup and drops the sword, a loud clattering in the silent room, he wraps his arms around Legend in return and weeps an old broken hurt. Deep and hopeless and long accepted. Legend knows those tears, that feeling, when they’ve long since stopped being screaming and raging and struggling to breathe and it’s just… weeping. The old wounds, when the only feelings left are sorrow and loss. He rubs the back of Four’s head and when he glances down he catches sight of one eye. Settled back to grey. They’re united in this. Four turns to rest his forehead against him, screws his eyes shut and breathes deeply until he runs out of tears.

“Sorry,” Four mumbles, “I should have warned you it might be a shadow…”

“Sorry for threatening to murder you when I saw it.” He was kind of a dick.

Four chokes on a laugh, “He would have appreciated the drama.”

“Who was he?”

“He was one of us.”

Legend holds him tighter as Four composes himself then gently pushes him away.

He picks up the Vio sword, it feels like heartbreak, “Let’s finish this.”

❍ ❍

“Let’s stop here for a minute,” Legend says, in the final room before the barrier to the boss room. They all know the signs now, and Four’s eyes have been shifting and spinning wildly since Shadow, “Do you need to split?”

Four shakes his head, “I can’t, there’s only one Moon Pearl.”

“Two,” Legend corrects, taking a seat against the wall and pulling out water and a pouch of trail mix. Important to be hydrated before your death match with a friend’s shadow monster.

“Two,” Four says softly, appreciating the offer, “No, it’ll be a mess, and what if we can’t recombine until we’re all back to normal?” he sits as well, leaning his head back against the wall and sighs.

“Are you okay to do this?” Legend asks, “You don’t have to, I can go in there alone and finish this again.”

Four shakes his head, “It shouldn’t be on you.”

“It shouldn’t be on you either. You’ve got history with your shadow, and can you really hurt each other?”

“They’re not me. They’re not them. And if they are it’s even more reason for me to put an end to it. It should never have fallen to you.”

Legend offers him the pouch, Four waves it off but Legend just nudges it at him until he takes a little handful of fruit and nuts to pick at, “But it did, and I dealt with it. I can do it again.”

“How bad was it for that kid when he came in here, Legend? You’re more worried about this than you are for Ganon. And you want to go in there to relive it alone? Fuck that.”

“I’m not that kid.”

“Yeah, but you were. You were and I was your predecessor and I left this thing here to mess them up. I’m not leaving you to deal with it alone again.”

Legend just takes another swig of water and mouthful of food.

“I’ll take Blue,” Four says. Legend looks at him and raises an eyebrow so Four continues, “That was the worst for you right?”

He can see Legend go to argue, then make a face and accept it. He doesn’t actually want that rematch.

“I’ll take Red then,” the one the others all love the most. Four just nods.

Legend finishes his handful of food, Four swallows a mouthful of water and puts the canteen away. Legend waits until he figures they’re both as composed as they’re going to get before getting up.

They approach the barrier to the boss room and stand side by side at the line of electricity and fire across the doorway.

“Okay, together then?”

“Together.”

The Tempered Master Sword and the Four Sword swing down as one, the barrier vanishes.

As they step into the room the four swords they collected float from their place strapped to Four’s back and belt and scatter to four corners of the room before shooting into the darkness of the ceiling.

“Here we go!” yells Legend and shifts to focus on the back left corner of the room.

A figure drops down, not darkness the same way Shadow was, but a young man in green with empty eyes and shifting mottled skin and darkness shifting and cloaking him like a miasma. It reminds Legend of a corpse, it reminds Legend of this first time he was here. Eleven years old, expecting some beast and seeing a dead eyed person dressed so like him. He hates this place, he hates it so much.

The figure makes no sound as it turns to them, the dead expression shifting to determined even as the eyes remain empty and it doesn’t say a word, doesn’t make a sound. It lunges at Legend, the closer of the two, and he parries and shoves with his shield to push it back. Legend had been prepared to take the fight by himself, not knowing how Four would deal with the sight but the other young man comes in from the other side, with a serious expression and textbook form, forcing the Green shadow on the defensive as it’s forced to block the two of them together.

The shadow is not Green at his best, not Four at his best. Legend doesn’t know why, maybe it’s just been here too long. But he was able to defeat it as a child, abet with a potion or two and a frantic application of his fire rod. He had later regretted using so much magic on the first fight.

They fight well together, both of them determined not to be shaken and let the other down. Legend facing down his past and Four facing his future. Legend catches a minor gash across his left bicep, but aside from that they manage to stave off injury.

It’s Four who catches the shadow off guard and plunges the Four Sword deep into it its side. It staggers and bleeds smoke and darkness, it falls and mercifully vanishes back into dark magic like a monster instead of like a corpse. 

The Red shadow drops and Legend is already sprinting before Four can collect himself, moving to intercept. The Green shadow fought like Green, a balanced style still with the signs of his early knight training. Red is all lightness and dancing and quick jabs.

Though they don’t spar much, Legend knows it, and he’s always been better than Red.

Legend’s sword sinks into the Red shadow, gouging through its chest. There’s a look of agony, a silent scream, and then it vanishes, the Red Four Sword clattering to the stone.

Legend draws a sharp breath, focus, focus, focus. He shoves Red from his mind, Four’s heart and kindness and love. It’s good, it’s good it was him and not Four, that he, they, didn’t have to kill Red. He shoves his feelings down to deal with never. It’s not Four, it’s not Red, he’s right here. It was nothing but a shadow, an illusion.

Focus, focus, next was the worst of them.

He remembers that sword deep in his chest scraping ribs as it slid through, screaming and choking on blood, he remembers his thigh cut down to the bone and the sword slipping into his knee joint, he remembers losing another fairy and knowing the next time would be the last, he remembers-

The Blue shadow drops from the ceiling and this time Four dashes in before Legend can get the chance. He catches a flash of blue in his eyes and huh, maybe Blue is taking this ‘kicking his own ass thing’ seriously. He doesn’t have full control the way he would had they split, but Legend can definitely see his influence.

Once it gets started he doesn’t think he could insert himself if he tried, Four’s competitive streak coming in in full. Blue was, is, the worst of them to fight, but the others know his style and tells and weaknesses. Four catches a slash across his side, and another on his shoulder before he draws a horrific gash across the shadow’s face and presses his advantage, catching it against the wall as it staggers and slipping the Four Sword into its heart with a strong, neat blow. Three down.

The Vio shadow drops from the ceiling and lunges at Legend, faster and stronger than the others. Noticeably so, unexpectedly so. He catches the blade on his shield, deflects it, and slips in to counter. The shadow deflects and vanishes and reappears behind Legend, swinging again, he deflects but the angle is awkward and the blade gouges at his mail, slashing his arm and bruising but not penetrating his chest. Legend swings his shield in to try to put the shadow off balance as Four comes in from the side. It dodges around their blades and it’s only through needing to block Four that it avoids plunging its blade into Legend’s thigh.

It’s too fast, it’s too strong, it’s wrong. Legend could not have beaten this at eleven. He pulls out his fire rod and shoots a wall of flames at the shadow to try to get them a little space. The shadow vanishes again, but Four catches it as it reappears, the Four Sword nicks its cheek as it whirls out of range. A line of dark blood trickles down the blade.

Wait.

None of the others bled. Shadows don’t bleed

Four runs a finger along the blade, smearing the blood.

It’s black.

“Legend! We have a problem!”

“I noticed, Four!” Legend yells back, terse, blocking a blow with his shield and dancing back a couple of steps to trying to get some breathing room in the small space.

“Black blood!”

“WHAT!?”

The Vio shadow doesn’t close the gap, doesn’t lunge back to attack, instead it vanishes and reappears on the path opened up between the two of them and sprints out the door, into the palace hall and out of sight.

“Did it just-?” Legend asks, dumbfounded.

“New problem,” notes Four scooping up the fallen swords, and the two of them sprint out after the shadow just in time to see it leave the Palace.

Chapter Text

Legend doesn’t waste his breath on swearing, but he feels the ‘fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck’ deep in his soul as he scrambles out of the pyramid after the Vio shadow, pulling Roc’s cape out of his bag again as he does, Four hot on his heels.

They see a last hint of the shadow as it leaps off the edge and Legend mentally runs over the lay of the land. The only open area is directly in front of the step pyramid, it and the other three sides, surrounded by water. If they haven’t been delayed the others will probably be there or somewhere on the structure now.

“Go!” Four yells to Legend, who sprints ahead full speed with Pegasus boots and takes a flying leap off the edge.

“SKYYYYYYY!” he roars all the way down, clearing the lower tiers and dropping several stories to the base of the pyramid. At the last moment he uses the second jump from the cape to avoid breaking his ankles on landing (ask him how he knows about that), dropping into a roll instead and sprinting after the shadow.

Four stops on the edge, grabs a bomb from his bag and kicks it to the ledge below, watching for the others to look up at the sound of the explosion. He catches sight of Sky and Link separate but both in the open area, but the others seem to be scattered around. He signs with big, deliberate motions ‘BLACK BLOOD’ and points at the shadow to give everyone a direction, then leaps after Legend.

The shadow goes right for the kid because of course it fucking does, also probably because he was the most visible from where they were. This place is a nightmare, has he mentioned how much he hates the fucking dar- he has. He’s definitely been over this.

Legend isn’t fast enough to catch it, but Link sees it before he needs to say anything and there’s a ring of steel and magic when the shadow reaches him. That sound is familiar, and Legend sends up a wordless prayer of thanks for whoever Byrna was and the blue cane bearing their name which has now saved him more times than he could count, its silver and gold light around the boy catching and deflecting the shadow’s attack.

It gets in a second blow to no effect before Legend crashes into it with his shield, sending the both of them tumbling over each other, and leaps back to his feet with a hint of magic to the cape. The shadow is back up in a flicker of teleportation. It lunges at him and Legend counters fast, quickly realising he doesn’t want to be a sword fight with this thing alone. It’s quicker than him and stronger than him, it’s only experience and some knowledge of Vio’s style that saves him from getting immediately skewered, as it is it doesn’t save him from half a dozen less serious slashes. The protective magic in his tunic is earning its keep today.

He hops back again, grabbing his fire rod in his shield hand and sending a wave of flame at the shadow. A ball of purple fire crashes through his one and Legend leaps and rolls to dodge. Oh right, it had teleporting and fireballs, didn’t it? Honestly he’d been pretty frantic by this point last time.

The shadow rushes him and Sky finally, blissfully appears to provide back up, followed shortly by Four from the other direction. The two of them engage and Legend has a brief second to grab a breath and check on the situation.

The kid is backing away without turning his back on them, Cane of Byrna and sword out, good. He briefly registers that the sword isn’t red anymore, it’s the same orange-gold as his own. He must have gotten the final upgrade while he and Four were in the Palace. He needs to go faster.

“This one’s ours! GO!” Legend yells at him. Link, thankfully, seems to realise this is above his level and he speeds up.

Warriors is moving to put himself between him and the fight, closer to the kid than the fight. Which, Legend doesn’t know what he’ll actually be able to do but he doesn’t have the time to think about it. He catches a glimpse of Wild high up the pyramid, then stops looking for the others, joining the fight without a sword or any protective clothing would be borderline suicide, he hopes they stay out of the way.

He lunges back into the fight, giving Four, still injured from the fight with the Blue shadow, a chance to step out and take a gulp of red potion.

❍ ❍ ❍

Link backs up further and further away from the fight, keeping his focus on it and clutching the Cane of Byrna and his sword. He doesn’t like running away but he can see he’s majorly outclassed by everyone involved. It’s frustrating to feel like he’s come so far and yet still have so far to go. He’s so useless here.

Something’s wrong he figures. There’s no way his other self fought and beat that thing when he was younger. When he was Link? The words for all this are confusing. Regardless, that thing would definitely kill Link as he is now. Maybe it matches its opponent or something? Or maybe this is another thing that has changed compared to Legend’s time here.

It’s taking two of them at once to match it, the third person swapping in and out. He figures it must be too crowded with three, either way when they try three at once it doesn’t seem to help much. They’re going to tire, he knows it, he thinks Legend and Four are already tired after the dungeon.

Will that thing tire? It looks like Four. The dark, shadowy creature looks like Four’s corpse got all twisted up with dark magic and came for revenge like some kind of ghost story. Something twists inside of him to look at it, deep and visceral, it’s terrifying. Is this what Legend was keeping him from? Was keeping them all from?

There are a couple of big trees and some statues he can use for cover, plus long grass that is of little use to him, so he makes his way towards a statue. The big cat like creature, the knight, moves to put himself between Link and the battle. A ‘just in case’ protection, though the monster hasn’t really paid any attention to anyone without a sword or far away so far.

Link clutches his Moon Pearl through his clothes as he nears the statue he planned to use for cover. Useless, useless. Be brave, be brave, be brave. He can’t help like this. He drops the cane to the ground, just in case it’ll still be of use.

“Knight!” he yells.

The mountain lion turns to look at him. Link pulls the Moon Pearl in its bag out from under his tunic and before he can second guess himself, before he can let the fear creep back in, he throws it to the big cat.

The knight pounces on it, then suddenly the man in armour and a long blue scarf is back. He nods at Link, now the stupid little bunny again, hangs the pearl around his neck, and races towards the other swordsmen to join the fight. Link gathers up the cane of Byrna and finishes the final sprint to hide behind the statue, peeking out watching, heart racing. He tries activating the cane and it works, okay, magic still works, good. Still pretty useless with no items.

The knight joins the battle, Legend and Sky being the two that drop out. Link sees the gold wolf try to approach, but the shadow directs fireballs at it as soon as it gets within range. The knight is good and fresher than the others, but his sword doesn’t seem to concern or hurt the monster the way the other three’s do. Sky seems to be doing the best.

Legend uses the break to put Roc’s cape away and pull out one that Link doesn’t recognise, almost a solid red with a little gold trim. He puts it on securely, just in time. Four takes a bad hit to one arm, a strip of flesh hanging and pouring blood, and Legend tags in, both Four and the knight pulling back at some instruction.

Legend vanishes.

Suddenly it’s a different battle, one-on-one but no one, including the shadow it seems, can see Legend. The fight starts moving back towards the pyramid, the others following it. There are puffs of dark magic and black blood as Legend (apparently) manages to strike it, but no blows seem to be fatal. It teleports back, and back (there’s a delay he sees, they all see, it can’t go straight away, there’s a range, it can’t go too far), then it sweeps out a wall of flame in front of it. It hits something, the invisible Legend, and while it can locate him it leaps into attack again.

Legend catches a heavy blow and is thrown back, he hits the ground and drops the invisibility. The shadow leaps and stabs but Legend unlatches the cape and rolls away, leaving the sword to pierce the item and nothing else. He leaps to his feet, leaving the cape where it fell and shouts some signal as the others join again.

The shadow Four teleports again and this time catches a lucky blow against Sky as it appears, the pommel of the sword slamming into his head, followed by a long sweep that sinks deep into his side. Sky is down and bleeding, no way to check how badly or what damage that blow to the head did. The monster positions itself a little ahead of Sky, the pyramid behind them, a slight change in tactics. Preventing anyone from getting to Sky and one of the weapons that can hurt it.

❍ ❍ ❍

Four gulps down a potion and hastily secures the gouge to his arm to help the potion heal it correctly. A fairy or Hyrule would be better, but they don’t have the luxury.

He’s doing an excellent job of being Four and not ‘four separate people having a crisis’. He has years of practice with this, he has gotten good at this. It helped they were all in agreement that this was not the time to let the internal screaming about things become external screaming about things. Every time one of the Colours would push too hard and try to take over or distract him, the others would drag them back.

Four was glad, they could process this later, they had a job to do for now. If he’d learned anything about his time scattered incarnations it was that they could push everything aside for the fight and deal with whatever it was (eg. injuries, emotional collapse, world shattering revelations, or all of the above.) later.

So he focuses on the fight against the black blooded, dark magic addled, corpse-like body of his brother, himself, and not the implications and horrors of all that. Not the others dying… dying? Whatever that was in the temple. Not this thing being infected with the black blood and what that could mean for the rest of this journey. Not seeing Shadow. It was NOT Shadow. It was still not Shadow, right? Whatever was happening to the Vio creature, because of course it would be Vio. It was just the black blood on top of what happened to the rest of them, right?

He had to focus and be united after all, or else it would kill him, kill his brothers, kill that baby faced, pink haired brave little kid and deprive a world of its desperately needed hero.

They were in agreement. They needed Four.

Legend was not the only one who could compartmentalise his way through this. Unlike Legend, he would actually unpack all this at this at some point.

He was somewhat amazed Legend had been able to keep all of this to himself and not react badly (or at least openly) when he met the Colours and realised who these things must have been.

That man was either incredibly well adjusted or a master of repression.

…Four had his suspicions as to which it was.

He has a brief window to watch the fight. The problem was the shadow wasn’t tiring at all. Four was tired, and so was Legend, and Wars’ damned sword wasn’t doing damage even when he was managing to score a hit. He could give him one of the split Four Swords from the Palace, but with the dark magic wrapped up in them that could easily go wrong in some phenomenal way. Warriors should have grabbed the sword off the kid, but they didn’t know that at the time and now the kid is a small pink rabbit somewhere.

They need to find a way to tag out. Hyrule’s sword might work even if no one else’s does, but it’s using that fire to chase off the others whenever they approach. Can they risk slingshotting the pearls again? If they lose one they’re screwed.

His arm is still bad, but Legend is flagging again, and he can tell the last of his magic is sputtering out. Four tags back in.

❍ ❍ ❍

Link needs that red cape. Link needs that cape so bad. He even needs it now, not just in general! So he’s going to go get it. The cane is awkward to carry but it’s riskier to leave it. Creeping is too slow, so he dashes forward in bursts, hiding in the dry grass and behind small rocks, heading closer to the battle and his target. He wishes he had the camouflage rabbits were supposed to have. If they actually were all pink he can see why they’re not around.

He’s finally getting kinda close, unnoticed by anyone he thinks, when two things happen; the shadow sends a burst of fire his way, and suddenly he’s in the jaws of something and being carried away. He screeches and panics and after a horrific drawn out moment he’s dropped, back behind another statue. He dropped the cane somewhere in the panic.

“Sorry! Sorry!” it’s the wolf, the mostly normal looking one, not the one that’s that weird gold colour, “Are you alright?”

Link wonders if it’s actually possible to die from a fright induced heart attack, because Goddesses above his heart seems to be putting in the effort. He can’t answer, he’s not sure he can breathe.

“Hey, hey, deep breaths, okay?” the wolf lays down, flattening itself out as it waits for Link to get control and calm down his rabbit everything, it’s humiliating being so shaken. He’s not really a rabbit, he’s not, he’s not. He’s, he’s… he doesn’t know what he is, who he is, it was confusing enough before he met this group. He can’t worry about that, that’s not a priority. There’s something he has to do, focus, focus, everything else can wait.

He sits abruptly, takes a single deep, gasping breath, holds it, then lets it out slowly and deliberately. Then he does it again. And again. 

“Good,” says the wolf, “Better. Now, what were you doing out there?”

It’s so big, so strong, it has claws and teeth and it’s watching him with blue eyes, like a person. It’s a person. (People aren’t any safer). He shoves that thought away, he doesn’t have time.

 “I need the cape!” he blurts out.

“What?”

“The cape! The red one! It made him invisible, I need it!”

The wolf looks out, looks back, looks out again, clearly not understanding how it’s worth the danger.

“I need it and I’ll get it without you if I have to!” the rabbit faces down the wolf, glaring.

It snorts at him and Link’s fur puffs up.

“Stay out of sight, I’ll get it for ya,” the wolf pokes its head out, checking the state of the battle then sprints away. A short time later it’s back, the cloak and his cane in its mouth.

Link takes the cape and after some fumbling, practically crawls into it and holds the collar around his neck. He feeds magic into it and is relieved when it works, he sees the cape vanish with him in it and the wolf twitch. See, easy all he needs to do- oh crap.

He drops the effect abruptly and with a gasp, “That drains magic so quick.”

No wonder Legend didn’t use it for long.

Link once again pokes his head out to survey the field. There’s no way he can get where he needs to go quickly enough or without running out his magic. And what Wind said is true, there’s no way they’re going to let him do anything if they can help it.

“I need to get to the pyramid,” he says urgently.

“Kid, don’t do anything dangerous.”

“I’m not,” he lies, he doesn’t like to lie but this is important, “Please, I need to get back to the fairy who upgraded my sword. I’ll be safer there anyway.”

The wolf hesitates, then caves to that innocent bunny face, “Alright.”

❍ ❍ ❍

Link clings to Twilight’s back as he creeps along the bottom tier of the pyramid, the pair of them keeping low and watching the fight as they make their way around. The knight looks like he’s been burned, and there’s so much blood around Sky.

“Wait,” Link whispers softly and Twilight stops. The rabbit shifts on his back, gathering up the cloak as best as it can in tiny arms, “I’m really sorry.”

And then he activates the magic cape and leaps off Twilight’s back towards the ledge, skittering and tumbling down the side of the pyramid invisible and invulnerable for a brief window.

Twilight spins, looking for him but it’s a useless motion, he’s already gone.

❍ ❍ ❍

Legend looks for options. Could he get to Wild or Twi and give them the pearl and sword? Where is Hyrule? Could he get enough magic from a stamina potion to use the cane or cape again? The eras they can get true magic potions are so limited, it’s the best he’s got. Hell, could he somehow get a Silver Arrow off the kid? If it could hurt Ganon it could hurt this. He hates his options. He needs to just fucking beat it. Stab the beastie with a magic sword like they always do.

Twilight is on the pyramid, agitated and looking for something, a blue cane in his mouth. The shadow catches his movement and shoots a swarm of fireballs at him as he looks like he might descent the side. Twilight sprints away, drawing the fire with him.

Legend catches a flash of red from Sky’s position behind the shadow, he senses from his own magic, faint but steady and dropping from the same direction.

The hero of Legend trusts that he has always gotten it done, he always wins.

“Mine!” he yells and the others back off, Legend moving in to take the flight solo, he and the shadow exchange a couple of blows before Legend abruptly drops his sword and twists. The Shadow’s sword plunges into abdomen below his ribs, straight through his back. Legend grabs its hands over the sword tightly with both of his, keeping it from pulling the blade out, from releasing the sword, from teleporting away.

It buys him a second, two seconds.

It’s enough.

There is a spray of black blood across his face, the Vio’s shadowy head suddenly coming apart from its body in a single clean sweep, a moment later the shadow vanishes in a puff of blood and smoke and miasma.

Link is revealed behind it, his face pale. Flickering into view as he stops feeding magic into Legend’s Magic Cape, askew across his shoulders, the Master Sword clutched in a two handed grip, stained with black blood.

Guess he couldn’t save him that after all.

Legend grins at him and barks a “Ha!”, then falls to his knees before collapsing on his side. He doesn’t fall unconscious, which is a literal and figurative pain and lays there trying to breathe through the agony as the kid gets to work. He really hopes he remembered rightly, that the timing was what he thought.

Because Legend had been fucking prepared when he went to face Ganon.

He hears a bottle open and the sound of a fairy somewhere near Sky and Legend knows he’s got it right. Then the sound of footsteps and Link hurries back to him, Warriors joining from the other direction, the kid looks grim.

“Do it,” Legend says without preamble.

Link tucks the Master Sword into his belt and a fairy bottle under his arm then steps towards Legend before Wars puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder and gently pushes him back. Wars sets a foot to Legend’s shoulder to brace him and both hands on hilt of the Dark Vio Sword. He wrenches it out and this time Legend passes out.

…

For about 12 seconds. Thanks fairy.

He rolls over with a groan, still feeling his guts knitting themselves back together. Fucking ow.

“The other three?” Wars asks, a fair concern.

“Vio was last. The others weren’t infected,” Legend grunts.

“You good, Vet?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Warriors looks around, checking he hasn’t missed anything, that the others don’t require him immediately.

“You knew he had fairies,” he comments, digging out a red potion for himself.

“Wars, he’s me, here to fight fucking Ganon. Of course he has fairies,” Legend waits until the fairy finishes, giving her a nod of thanks, then sits up.

He looks over to Four, now laying on the ground with the heels of his palms pressed against his temples and an empty potion bottle next to him, “You good, Four?”

“Ask me again when the yelling stops, Ledge,” he sounds fine in a ‘brain actively trying to tear itself apart but not gonna bleed out’ kind of way.

Warriors goes to the kid and trades him his Moon Pearl back for the Master Sword, then goes to sit next to Sky, sharing the sword and helping him to sit up and start to drink something for the blood loss. Legend does a quick head count as everyone else emerges from lurking on the edge of the battle or hiding around the grounds. Good news! No one dead!

❍ ❍ ❍

The others make their way back to them, checking them over with varying levels of concern and approval. Something small and furry crashes into the side of Legend’s face from the direction of the pyramid, he glowers and peels off Wind.

“Hey Ledge!”

“Hi.”

“Did this go better or worse than last time?” Wind asks.

“Oh, better. Definitely better.”

“That was better?” asks Sky weakly.

Legend picks at his tunic, peeling off where it’s starting to stick to him as the blood dries. He must look an absolute mess even if the wounds themselves are healed, “Only mortally wounded once, finished the dungeon in a day, didn’t pick up a chronic injury. Better. Room for improvement remains.”

Sky looks at the kid, then looks at Legend and he’s, oh for fuck’s sake.

“Hey, hey! Stop doing sympathy face, Sky! Look how alive I am! You’ve seen me worse yourself! And he’s Not. Even. Stabbed!”

“See what I have to put up with?” Wind asks.

“Kid,” Legend gets Link’s attention and points to the ground near him, “Sit.”

The boy does, Legend takes the cape back off him and hands him a stamina potion, then picks up the dark Vio sword and sets about cleaning his blood off it while everyone else does… whatever. He doesn’t fucking care. He needs a fucking nap.

Twilight sits nearby and glowers at the kid, who shifts closer to Legend. The wolf grumbles something at Wind now sitting on Legend’s hat.

“Uh uh, I’m not delivering your lecture,” says Wind.

“What’s he grumbling about?”

“Link lying with his cute bunny face then running off on him and getting involved in the fight.”

“Yeah, no, he’s not getting a lecture for that, it worked. Good job kid,” Legend approves.

“Twi, that’s literally what Legend did this morning,” Four chips in without looking up, or opening his eyes, or in fact moving at all “Just because he talks politely doesn’t mean he’s not Legend.”

Link looks horrified and lets out a quiet, “Oh no.” They all look at him, Wars snickers.

Legend blinks, then starts laughing. Because it fucking was? Did he just pull the same damn trick twice? He clutches his side where his wound was, body still looking for that phantom pain and laughs until he can barely breathe.

Wars and Four and Sky and even Link join in, that semi hysterical laughter that comes from when you’re exhausted and have faced The Horrors and almost died and the stress is still bleeding out now the danger is gone.

❍ ❍ ❍

Once Legend’s done cleaning the sword and Four’s stopped trying to crush his brain with his knuckles he gets up and heads over, Four cracks open an eye (grey, good) and Legend offers him a hand up then hands him the last sword and steps back.

The dark Vio’s sword shimmers and vibrates, the other three on his back rise and the four of them float to a square shape with Four at the centre for a brief moment, then come together and combine above his head. A perfect, unsullied copy of the Four Sword on his back floats above him then drops down into his hands.

He doesn’t know what to think of it, all this time travel stuff is bizarre. Four draws his thumb along it, looking it over.

He turns to Legend, holding the sword, “So back where we found it or…?”

Legend shakes his head and points at Link, who stands up.

“…Legend,” says Four calmly “Have you had my sword this entire time?”

“…well, not on me.”

“Have you had my sword in your rat’s nest of a hoarder’s house this entire time!?” The audacity.

“It was awkward to bring up. What with the… circumstances of its acquisition.”

Four rubs his face with both hands, “I can’t believe you. I can’t honestly- Did you ever use it or has it just been gathering dust?”

“Hey, it gathered more dust before I had it! And no, it honestly seemed cursed as fuck and I already had a sword that didn’t stab me a bunch.”

Four just sighs heavily and hands the sword over to Link, “Here, start your collection,” he pauses, and concedes, “Don’t use it.”

Link takes it with uncertainty, meeting Four’s eyes “S-sorry, for…”

Four puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder, “Hey, you did good. Don’t apologise okay? I’m sorry for whatever made that. I don’t understand, but I should have prevented it somehow. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I never wanted to leave anything that would hurt my successors. I’m glad you stopped it, please, please don’t apologise. Thank you for helping me and my friends.”

The boy sniffles and looks away, blinking rapidly. Four steps forward and pulls him into a hug, Link is stiff, slightly trembling in his arms, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re doing great. You did so good. Thank you, thank you.”

The boy gives a sob and wraps his arms around Four, sinking his face into his shoulder, his tears starting with little hiccups and getting stronger and stronger until he can hardly breathe. The two of them sink to their knees, Four rubbing his back and head as Link cries out the fear and guilt and pain and loss, the months of hard living and uncertainty. The weight of the world and the princess and his own life resting on him. As he finally has someone to hold him and understand as he does so.

Legend turns away and makes half-hearted shooing motions at everyone, but Hyrule head-butts him (a dangerous proposition with antlers) towards Sky who drags him down to sit and wraps an arm around him, Hyrule settling down and leaning his deer weight against him on his other side. He grumbles about it, but doesn’t force them off.

❍ ❍ ❍

They begin to discuss setting up camp.

“Hey,” Wind says, “Do you wanna fight Ganon? We can have four of us after all. I’m game.”

Legend goes to say no on reflex, then stops and looks like he’s actually considering it. Forth time’s the charm right? In for a green rupee in for a gold.

A portal appears.

There is a collective groan of relief and exasperation.

❍ ❍ ❍

Link looks towards the top of the pyramid as the heroes get ready to leave. He can’t go tonight he supposes, he needs to be fresh. Rested (how is he supposed to sleep?) and with all his magic renewed, and should he go get some more fairies? He’s only got one now.

He’ll fight Ganon, he’ll save Zelda. He’ll fight Ganon, he’ll save Zelda.

He’ll walk up there alone, he’ll fight the monster, he’ll save Hyrule.

He’s so damn scared.

He feels eyes on him, nothing new, but he turns to find it’s the Hero of Legend. He wonders if he can see it in him, all those feelings twisting his stomach and mind in knots. If he remembers. Legend comes to a decision, steps over and sighs, then meets his eyes.

“You’ve got this.

Sometimes it’ll be great and sometimes it’s going to absolutely suck. But you’ve got this every single fucking time, and in hundreds of years they’re telling stories about how much the Hero of Legend got shit done.

He found it in himself, always.

Sometimes it’s a fucking nightmare, it’ll hurt so damned much, but it’s worth it. Sometimes you wouldn’t trade it for the world. Sometimes you’ll do everything right and it still ends badly. But it needed to be done. And you always got it done.

Do your best and you’ll make it. Zelda’s waiting for you, this world waited hundreds of years for you, and you were, are, absolutely enough.”

And Link looks up to see the man he’ll become; short and wiry, hard and tired and angry but so sure. Someone who knows exactly who he is and what he can do. Someone bitter and prickly and quietly kind, who let him know he could trust them, and gave him his bedroll, and ran off to do a whole damn dungeon to save Link the trial and risk and pain of killing a friend, someone he knows far less well than Legend himself.

It’s Link who crosses the distance and pulls him into a hug. Legend freezes then wraps his arms around the boy and curls into him, dropping his face into his hair, holding tight.

“I’m sorry. I’d take it from you if I could,” he whispers, “But there’s so much good too. You can get through this.”

Link just nods and holds him tight. He can feel the man, the teenager? shaking slightly. He holds him for a long time until Legend lets go, wipes his eyes and tweaks Link’s ear, “Don’t get reckless just ‘cause I told you that.”

And he steps away.

Four joins him putting an arm around his shoulders, he grouches something at him but Four laughs softly and looks over his shoulder back at Link, he gives the boy a smile and waves goodbye with his free hand. Legend glances back at the last second, but there’s no parting words to share. Hyrule joins the pair, bumping against Legend as they go.

They step through the portal.

The others nod their goodbyes and follow them through.

❍ ❍

They step out into a new world, doing the habitual scan for danger, and almost immediately Four lets Legend go and steps away, there’s a flash of bright light.

“LEGEND!” a voice wails, “WE’RE SO SORRY!”

Red hits him like a cannonball and latches on, bawling his eyes out. Legend pats his head, “Hi Red. It’s okay.”

“VIO! WHAT THE FUCK!?” Blue starts the screaming (screeching) match with Vio.

“IF I KNEW THAT YOU WOULD TOO, BLUE!”

“WHAT EVEN WERE THOSE THINGS!?”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

“WELL CAN WE STOP IT?!”

“I DON’T KNOW! SHUT UP AND LET ME THINK!”

Green just has his face in his hands, attempting to find some zen, to hang on to any of Four’s poise and calm and project the illusion any of them, aside from Four himself, has their shit together. Blue kicks a rock and gets a good distance on it, he looks like he feels a bit better, that works better than whatever Green is doing.

Legend rests his chin on top of Red’s head and hugs him a bit tighter, watching them all full of life. He remembers that silent corpse-like dark creature and its face as it died, the look of pain but no recognition. He doesn’t want to think of them like that, he had gotten so good at not remembering that place when he looked at them.

The rest of the group have spread out, all Hylian again thank fuck, either figuring out where they are, blatantly watching the Colours, pretending to figure out where they are while more subtly watching the Colours.

The portal closes and Time steps over to Legend and Red.

Legend gently turns Red around to face Time.

“Time!” sobs Red, “We’re sorry! We didn’t mean to cause so much trouble!”

“We’re so sorry,” adds Legend, remorseless.

“Legend, are you attempting to weaponise Red against me?”

“Would I do that?”

“Yes!” call at least six other voices. Traitors.

He absolutely should not have phrased that as a question.

Legend turns to Green, who was the nearest voice, “You three, of all people, do not have the right to call me out on that.” Green just lifts his head and grins at him.

He pulls Red back around and against him, once again resting his chin on the shorter boy’s head and glowers at Time, anticipating the lecture.

Time just sighs, “I won’t say you were wrong to go, obviously it turned out to be the right decision. However in the future please talk to us, let us know what’s going on and include us in the planning.”

“Would you have let me go? Trusted me? Or would you have wanted to drag the whole group along?”

“We’ll never know. But going forward we can make sure we do. You had your reasons for not telling us, you were trying to protect Four, but it could have gone badly, especially if you were alone.

It wasn’t wrong to go, but it wasn’t wrong to take Four with you either, was it?”

He thinks of Four’s offer to walk in first against the face stealer when he had been readying himself to kill Marin (again), of his insistence he not have to do it all, relive that horrific fight alone, of having back up when Vio’s shadow was more than it seemed.

“I can try,” he grudgingly concedes.

“You succeed at most things you try, Legend, so please do.”

Legend scowls at him and Time turns away with a pleased smile, “Now when and where are we?”

“I think this is ours…” Green says slowly.

“Hey! I think there’s a festival or something setting up at the castle!” calls Wind, spyglass pointed at it.

“A fest-" begins Vio, then freezes, Blue and Green take a moment to realise why then they all look at each other with varying levels of dread before they practically tackle Wind to squabble over the spyglass. Green comes out victorious and lifts it to his eye to look at the castle.

“It’s… it’s probably nothing. Unrelated. There’s festivals all the time,” he laughs nervously.

“I vote this is Four’s problem,” says Blue.

“We just split,” Vio grouches at him, “and Four’s problems are our problems!”

Red gasps softly and pulls out of Legend’s hug, eyes huge and sparkling with delight, “We might see Ezlo again!”

❍ ❍

Night falls quickly, too quickly to get to Castle Town that evening, and Legend sits on a log by the fire, repairing his tunic by fire and lantern light when Four joins him and starts on his own mending, the others start setting up to sleep. It’s not unusual for Four to be back overnight unless they’re somewhere the Colours can all sleep seperately comfortably. The repairs are really a never ending job.

Neither of them are in a hurry to broach the subject of…. Everything. So they sit and stitch and overthink for a while instead.

It’s Wars’s approach that breaks the silence, “You two aren’t taking a watch, you ran a dungeon in half a day. Go to bed.”

“I can take watch, it’s not like I’m going to be able to sleep. I may as well be useful about it,” Four points out.

“Then lay down and close your eyes and pretend.”

“Also Legend doesn’t have a bedroll.”

“I- What? What are-… SHIT! I left it with the kid!” he clutches at his (gloriously pink) hair. Four makes a little noise of amusement at him not having noticed.

Wars rolls his eyes, “We’ll pull together the spare blankets.”

“Wars-” Four starts but is cut off.

“You won’t be able to focus, and it’s better if you have some rest for whatever comes tomorrow.”

“Fine, I’ll pack up soon,” Four says, mostly to get Warriors off his back.

“You too, bunny.”

“Fuck off, pussy cat,” Legend knows he’s exhausted and he knows Wars can tell, but he still doesn’t need someone telling him to go to bed.

Warriors leaves them again. Legend sighs and curls over, resting his head on his knees

“Sorry,” Four says “About everything. About that place and whatever they were. About facing it twice over.”

“It’s not your fault,” Legend says without lifting his head.

“You don’t know that.”

He turns his face to Four, “I don’t blame the fallen hero for dying, I don’t blame you for that realm being corrupted and it seeping into your sword or whatever the fuck happened. But if you need it okay, fine. You are forgiven then, absolved,” a sigh, “Sorry for… Should I have told you about it?”

“I don’t know, is there ever a good time for something like that? What’s done was done for you already, and we didn’t know if anything could change. I don’t know how I would have taken it.”

“It’s fucked up right? Everything in there, that whole…” he doesn’t know how to articulate it. Four apparently already having a history with his shadow and Blind turning into it. Those dead eyed corpse like versions of the colours shrouded in dark magic, the one that looked like Vio being infected.

“Hell of a first quest,” says Four, smiling softly rueful, and Legend realises after all that he’s thinking about the kid, Link now and Legend then, facing it, not himself.

“What was yours like? First quest.”

“Much more fun. I was scared of course, and worried about Zelda, but I loved the adventure and the Minish.

If that is now, and we do meet him, you know as a bunch of adults meddling in his business, you should probably expect less like me and more like… Blue.”

“That is the worst possible thing you could have said.”

Four just smiles wider, it does not alleviate Legend’s concerns.

Legend huffs and looks back to the fire, “Thanks… for everything today.”

“You too.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to figure it out. That kid didn’t experience what you did, we can change things.

We’ll save ourselves, and there will be timeline without a Palace of the Four Sword.”

❍

In another world, another place, a thousand years later, and barely a day later, Ganon lies defeated.

Link reaches for the Triforce, Zelda at his side.