Archive of Our Own ^beta

Link didn’t like to sleep. He had slept for far too long- for far too much of his life- for it to ever hold any appeal ever again. He remembered the long dark of his resurrection as both a blink of the eye and an eternity of nothing. Much of his memory was still a fog, and often it was either before or after his slumber that felt clear, but never really both, not nowadays. He felt almost as though much of his life had been a dream that, once awake, was forgotten, with only the impression of a person left behind.

He remembered now, his life before; a knight, a champion of the royal family, sworn to keep a princess safe forever. The stuff of fairytales. He remembered duty and honor and devotion above all else. He remembered a boy, not yet even a man, who was silent, and stoic, and brave. He remembered that boy dying.

What does it mean to have lived two lives?

Link stared up at the wooden ceiling of his house in Hateno Village. He liked the quiet of the early morning, when everything seemed still and blue. So much of his time was spent moving; always running, racing through fields or galloping into the forest to fight some new enemy. The soft time between night and day was the only time he really felt at peace, and it gave him the space to think, to think or just to stare out at a version of the world that wasn’t moving, wasn’t racing, wasn’t in danger. His bed was almost too soft underneath him; he remembered just a few months ago, knowing nothing but the solid feeling of grass against his back. Most of the time, he preferred that. Sometimes sinking into a bed made him feel like he was back in the castle, dreaming of her. Other times, it felt so unfamiliar that he shifted and turned for half the night, itching for the open sky and a warm fire. (Either way, it left him missing something undefinable).

As a soldier, every moment of his life was dictated- he knew when to sleep, when to eat, how to stand, how many paces to walk behind his charge, and essentially everything else he needed to be able to live his life. There was a certain comfort in that knowing, in always being sure of your place in the world. He had found another place, he thought, in the wild. There was no expectation of when to wake up when you were roaming the forest with only the weight of what you could carry and the knowledge of little more than your own name. So, he had wandered. He slept when he was tired, woke when he wanted, ate damn near everything he got his hands on, and he learned how to be a person again. Maybe he had learned wrong this time, Link thought now; the Koroks loved watching him dive and climb mountains and explore the forests for days on end, but many of the villagers he had met were less keen on a young man who barely spoke and stole all their apples. They hadn’t figured out that it was him taking all the spare farming equipment, thankfully, but they still eyed him with suspicion nonetheless. If there was anything he was grateful to Bolson for, it was selling him a house away from the village.

He sighed, dragging his hand over his face and turning again in his bed, shifting his pillow so that he could cradle it between his arms. He was being too contemplative again, he thought. Purah would say that he needed to get out of his own head, write it all down and then do a cartwheel or something. Then again, she also said that he used to be very contemplative all the time, except for when he was trying to fight something, so maybe all this thinking was a good thing, and he was going back to normal. Whatever that meant for him, anyway. That was another thing about having lived two lives: he didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing to have people who had known him in both. With Impa, it sometimes felt like she stared at him, waiting for him to return to the knight he once was. She was the one who had urged him to regain his memories, after all, and it seemed like she in turn pitied him and wanted to get the whole ordeal over with, wanted her old friend back. At first, before he remembered anything, that pity felt unnecessary and uncomfortable; he was just Link, who maybe didn’t always have his head on straight on account of not remembering his early life (which happened over 100 years ago, by the way, so it didn’t always seem all that relevant), but was still his own man with a pretty nice life and a decent sword arm. He understood it a bit more now, if not on a personal level then at least on a “saving the world from evil” one; he really had been a great warrior. Purah was a whole different situation. She was way too loud and made him slightly uncomfortable 90% of the time, but at least she didn’t mind who he was now. Maybe it helped to be a child, but she really didn’t seem to care as much as her sister did, too caught up in the present to worry about the future or linger on the past.

Most other people seemed to fall on the “Impa” side of the spectrum when it came to dealing with him. King Dorephan had been baffled, seemed baffled still, confronted with the idea that Link didn’t remember Mipha, didn’t remember her love or her devotion or fighting by her side. The idea that he wasn’t the same stoic, serious royal guard. And the Champions, now spirits, spoke to Link like he was the same old friend that they remembered. He didn’t mind that so much, he thought, especially when he felt like a spirit sometimes too, brought back to complete his mission, stuck in between life and the deep, dreamless slumber of his death. It helped that he had remembered enough of them, more than just an empty space in the outline of friends he should’ve known, to recall the feeling of smiling at their jokes and sharing their campfire (and watching, ever stoic, as they died).

But, on the other hand, there were people he had met who had never known him before. And they liked him. So that was encouraging. Sidon in particular hadn’t remembered anything but his name, and now he said they were best friends. He still said it whenever Link visited, even though he knew now that his sister had loved Link and had joined the Champions in part to help him. He liked this Link, the Link who hadn’t died a century ago.

So, that was that. People liked Link now, but a lot of them would’ve preferred if he had remained unchanged, memories intact, which was fair enough since that Link probably would’ve defeated Ganon by now and not have tried to shoot a bomb arrow on Death Mountain or jump into mud on Eventide Island. A lot more people thought Link was a bit strange, which was fine since Link didn’t really care about them or their opinions, now that he thought about it.

As for Link himself… well, maybe that was too much thinking for right now. Maybe he was two people, and that was okay; part of him would always be a knight and a guard, steadfast against evil and devoted to upholding the good in this world. And some part of him would always yearn for the wild lands, to ride his horse into the desert and roast lizards over his fire and never come back. To be wild himself. Maybe he would always be just the impression of a person, a receptacle for all the things he’d learned and then learned again, all the things he’s seen change in the span of over 100 years and all the roles he’s played in the 17 he was awake for. Maybe he wouldn’t know until he stopped being a ghost, until he finished what he came here to do.

The sun was rising. Link got up. He had a demon to kill.