Archive of Our Own ^beta

The separation came for him in the middle of Twilight telling the group a funny story as they ate lunch. In the middle of everyone laughing, Wild suddenly felt yanked out of the moment, like someone had dumped cold water on his brain and placed an invisible wall between himself and the others.

He felt himself continue laughing like everyone else, but now it felt wrong.

Though he had yet to pinpoint a specific cause since it seemed like it could hit him at any given moment, he had noticed that it seemed especially fond of rearing its eerie head whenever he was having an especially good time.

It was frustrating. Nearly seventeen years of his life had been stolen from his memories, and another one hundred spent in sleep. Were the years he had left doomed to be snatched away by this strange separation that left him feeling like nothing was real?

As usual, no one noticed how distant and forced his laugh became, which made him wonder once more if that was all in his head. But his smile felt fake, and every time Twilight said something funny, his chuckles and huffs of amusement felt empty.

It was always so strange to him that no one else could tell. Or maybe no one ever paid enough attention to him in the first place to notice.

Wild flicked that thought away and let it drift off into the gap of his mind, hoping it wouldn't climb back out at some point when he was more likely to actually dwell on it. 

Lifting his food to his mouth made him feel like he was somehow simultaneously both a puppet and the puppeteer. Like if he tried hard enough, he'd be able to look down upon himself as he moved around like a little doll. 

A small part of him wanted to scream, but a larger, numb part smothered it out. The numbness always unsettled him. It reminded him of the cool air of the Resurrection Shrine, the strange feeling of unreality that clung to his skin with the liquid he had stepped out of. The entire way out of that shrine, each footstep, each movement, each breath felt pulled, controlled, conducted. It was only once he stepped out, the sun burning his eyes and warming his skin, the breeze moving across his body, that the world felt solid again.

The next time he had come to feel all wrong, like his body wasn't his and the world was removed from him - or perhaps as though he was removed from the world - there was nothing the sun or wind could do to fix it, because he had already been outside in it. So he let the invisible strings tug him along, senses a blur, until he nearly got blasted off his feet by a Guardian, and he was suddenly awake again.

The time after that, it was slipping far off a cliff when it started raining and landing at the bottom with pain wracking through him, each breath hurting, that snapped the world back into focus.

And from that, he learned.

Danger was an addictive drink that he was frightened he'd choke on one day, but what else could he do? It was the only thing he knew that fixed things when his body thirsted for something to bring him back to this plane of existence.

Mechanically, he finished eating, put his things away, and a voice that was but also was not his came out of his mouth to tell the others he was going for a climb. His friends somehow looked like imposters as they acknowledged what he said, even though there was nothing he could put his finger on that made them any different than usual. He hated it.

The cliff that stretched near them was nice and tall, with plenty of handholds. Staring up, he could easily spot a path that would take him up in no time. He shuffled over a few feet to the spot that would require him to climb nearly horizontally over the jutting rock. 

He started his way up, moving recklessly, forcing himself into risky leaps from one handhold to the next, burning energy he knew he'd need to get to the top. He could do it. If worse came to worst, he could find a spot to pause and down a stamina elixir.

Through gritted teeth, he dug his toes as deeply into the crevice as he could as he pushed himself out, feeling for a gap in the rock above him. Fingertips curling into the stone, he grunted as he found another foothold, hoisting his body closer to the handhold he had chosen as he worked his way over the jutting rock. The sloped top was probably just flat enough to pause for a breather, but he kept going, hopping up and catching a new handhold as he continued upwards.

After a while, the burning in his muscles was joined by a quivering sensation. His fingers ached and threatened to give out every time he found a new crack in the rock face to grab. His legs were starting to feel like jelly.

I'm not going to make it. I'm going to lose my grip, fall, and die, a small, analytical voice in the back of his mind observed, and the thought didn't bother him as much as he knew it should. 

He didn't pause for an elixir, instead using the last bit of energy his screaming muscles had to shove himself into a jump, fingers scrabbling for purchase atop the cliff. His fingers curled around some grass, and he pulled himself upward, the greenery giving him just enough leverage before they snapped off to get his upper half far enough onto the plateau to drag himself the rest of the way to safety. He lay there, chest heaving, heart pounding, limbs shaking. Grass tickled his face. A sharp pebble bit into his arm.

He shifted his face across the ground as he moved a hand into his vision, flexing it. It was like watching someone else move his own hand, even though he could feel it, even though he knew he was the one doing it.

The climb hadn't been enough.

That was okay. He hadn't necessarily expected it to be. That wasn't why he had climbed the cliff in the first place.

He just needed the height. 

Wild waited only until he knew his arms wouldn't give out the moment he opened his paraglider before getting to his feet, stumbling to the edge of the cliff, and jumping.

For a while, there was no sound but the rush of wind in his ears. It gripped him, pulling at his hair and clothing, cold and demanding. Then there was a shout, almost entirely drowned out by the air passing him by. The increased amount of calls and shouts, however, soon matched the noise of the wind. 

The ground got closer.

And closer.

And closer.

And-

He whipped out his paraglider. It caught the air and jerked his drop to a slower pace, but didn't have much time to truly ease the fall. He hit the ground hard, letting go of his glider as he rolled, letting the momentum of the angle his glider had only just started to move him in carry his body along.

There was a stampede of Links heading his way. He could hear their footsteps, their worried cries as he fought past the feeling of his chest caving in to find oxygen. 

“Wild!”

He rolled over and looked up at the bright blue sky.

“Wild, are you okay?!”

A tiny coughing sound forced itself from his lungs.

The glint of a potion sparkling red in someone's hand, and the coughing sound turned into a laugh.

Everything ached, and tiny scrapes littered his arms, but his blood thrummed and his body felt like his again. The ground felt solid, the worried faces of his brothers looked real, and his laugh sounded like it was actually coming from his throat again.

“Wild! It's not funny, you could have seriously gotten hurt!” Twilight scolded. 

“What were you thinking?!” Warriors demanded, and the anger in his eyes was the scared kind of angry. Wild knew Warriors well enough now to tell the difference. 

“I just wanted to have some fun,” Wild told him.

Because how could he tell his brothers that sometimes his sense of reality went to sleep, trapped in a coma like he had been for a century, and only woke up when he looked death in the eye? That life-risking and sometimes even painful thrills were the only things that kept him from going completely numb and losing all sense of meaning? 

That he was scared of how it sometimes seemed to get harder and harder to find something that would work, and he was terrified one day he'd take it too far, and he'd die in an attempt to feel alive?

He didn't say anything as the lecturing began, just took a breath over the anxious bubbling below his sternum and got to his feet, hands flexing. The box around him that kept him separated from the rest of the world was gone; he was alive, and that was good enough for him right now.