Chapter Text
Link flopped down onto his creaky bunk hard.
His skin rubbed against the scratchy sheets of his very ramshackle and old mattress as he shuffled to get comfortable. The pillow beneath his head was threadbare and was hardly considered soft, but as a low-ranked knight, he took what he could get. It was better than sleeping on the cold hard floor of Castle Town again, after all. As uncomfortable and exhausted as he was while training to be a knight, anything was better than being homeless.
The young boy wore a simple tunic for sleep and some scraggly pants that he was given as pajamas. He didn’t have much control over his wardrobe, as he mainly wore what the captain gave him. His usual daily wear consisted of his training uniform, which consisted of heavy chainmail and a dingy hand-me-down tabard that was a size too big, and his usual underclothes.
He tossed and turned, aching for sleep to sweep him away, but he could not get comfortable. The day was long and had been filled with training and chores that left him exhausted; despite that, he lay wide awake staring at the dingy wood above him. The main reason being the tight bandages under his light tunic. As a knight who was living in the barracks, he had little to no privacy. The showers were communal, the dining area was small with tightly packed tables, and the sleeping chambers were worse. Link slept on the bottom bunk, as he was in no mood to argue with a rather large and sweaty trainee on his first day, and there was almost no room to sit upright. The chamber was small, with two even smaller windows showcasing the outside world. The knight’s beds had two tiers and were packed so closely together that if Link were to outstretch his hand to the right, he would be touching another bed.
When he had the privilege of a few minutes of privacy, that is when he would take off the tight, restricting bandages. Those opportunities were hard to come by. The other trainees knew Link was strange, different, and not like them. They knew that he was not born a male like them, that he was smaller and weaker than them. The other knights drove it home to him every time that they could.
When walking through the castle corridors, he would overhear murmurs of, “That one? Oh, she’s just confused” or crude, horrible things.
When it was his turn to spar, the other knights would watch him like a hawk. Waiting for him to mess up so that they could ridicule him. They would scoff and laugh as he gripped the worn hilt of his sword and crouched into a defensive stance. Even when he won, it was never enough. He would never fully gain the respect of his fellow trainees.
Link tried not to let it bother him. He was confident in his own skin and knew who he was. Despite his higher-pitched voice, his smaller hands, and his softer skin, he was confident in who he was. He knew he was a boy, not quite yet a man at 13. He tried to walk with confidence and not let the snide remarks get beneath his skin. He liked to think that his armor made the insults clatter to the ground, much like a sword. Each syllable would create a metallic sound as it ricocheted off of his chainmail. The words would try to slice at him, but through the thick leather of his bracers, they would only leave a scratch.
Despite the confidence he seemed to portray, it felt like the stiff bandages that encompassed his chest would squeeze it right out of him. During the day he was quiet; he didn't speak much, as he would get relentlessly teased. At night, his brain would race with thousands of thoughts.
The boy shifted his gaze from the worn wood of the bunk above his head and slid his eyes down to his hands. His hands were small and slightly bloodied. With the constant training and sparring that would take all of his breath away and leave him drenched in sweat, his new calluses would reopen constantly. Sometimes, he nervously picked at the scabs as well. Tired eyes inspected the newest scar he gained that day. The deep line ran from his wrist and slid up to his thumb. He thought of not only how he had gotten it but also the words that accompanied it. The words stung almost more than the memory of a dull blade slicing through his skin.
The grown man with whom he was sparring lunged at him with a sour look in his eyes. His gaze did not seem concentrated; it seemed to be full of hatred. Rather than trying to train, it felt as if the man was trying to attack Link. He had the young, lanky boy cornered in the small brick-lined practice room.
“You just think? You can waltz in here? And be in the ranks of all of us?” The large man growled in between his strikes. Link huffed as he narrowly avoided a solid jab to the thigh.
The burly man sent another strike flying towards Link’s head, which the teenager had deflected with a loud grunt and his shield. “I am sick and tired of having to fight a confused little girl! Hurgh—I should be sparring against someone strong and who actually has a future of knighthood! Not someone who pretends to be a boy!”
“Why can’t you just go back home and focus on being a wife! Or a daughter! You have no purpose being in this castle and when it comes time to fight an enemy—augh—you’ll be useless!” The man roars as he blocks a few of Link’s swats and sends his own back.
Link’s eyes widened just a fraction as he processed the words being screamed at him, and in his momentary weakness, his attacker got a lucky strike. The boy didn’t move fast enough to dodge the sword that had collided with his arm, which proceeded to slice through his bracer and right through his doublet.
Link crashed backwards and sank into the wall with a yelp of pain. His knuckles blanched as he gripped his arm, which steadily dripped blood onto the cracked paved ground beneath him. He raggedly panted and gritted his teeth, leveling the man that loomed over him a vicious look. The boy shook and curled his knees impossibly tighter to his aching chest.
“This is exactly what I mean. You can't even handle someone coming at you with a sword. What are you going to do when an armed bokoblin comes racing towards you? Run away like the damsel in distress that you are?? Cower like a sissy?? “ The man gave Link one more look over and scoffed with a smile, “Pathetic,” he said, then walked away.
The memories of the day cause Link’s breaths to pick up in speed. The tight bandages seemed to squeeze his chest even tighter. His short, panicked breaths began to echo off of the dingy room’s brick walls and echo back into his head. His shaky scarred hand tried to pry the restricturing bandages off of his chest for even a second, just for one big gulp of air, but the bandages which dug into skin, refused to budge.
He stared back up at the top of his bunk with panicked eyes. Tears began to well in them as he started to fully hyperventilate. Each breath brought more spikes of pain and the lack of oxygen was making sparks of panic jolt his head. He couldn't remove the bloody bandages; everyone would know of the horrid body that was squished under them. Sweat ran down his forehead and matted his golden bangs to his face.
By the Goddesses, am I going to die?? Link’s mind slurred out in a panic. Was he going to die in a tunic that was torn to shreds, in a dirty bed, by his own insecurities?? He thought to himself.
All I want is to be like the men who surround me and I can't even do that. Why do they get to be tall? Why do they get to have deep voices that rumble through their chests? Why do they get to be called a “charming young man” and a “strong soldier” while I’m looked at like a pile of shit??
The world around him started to turn fuzzy and grainy, as if a layer of static was being laid over his eyes. Perhaps it was Hylia herself. Perhaps she was holding his head and saying that his time has come. Was this because he didn’t try hard enough? When will he be enough? He prays just as much as the other knights? When will his efforts ever be enough?
His vision was swimming like a tidal wave. The sleeping soldiers near him became swirls in the deep black ocean that was his vision. His body rocked along the waves and drifted him elsewhere. The sounds of snores became wind howling in his ears. Then suddenly, there was nothing. He was nowhere. He was nothing.