Chapter Text
Not everything could be healed with potions or fairy magic. Link knew this better than most.
The first time Link died, it took the full might of the Shrine of Resurrection and a hundred years’ time to repair the damage — and even then, his skin was marked forever with latticed scars that would never fade, a permanent reminder of the extensive internal damage that had slain him. Since waking in the Shrine, he had walked a narrow gulf between life and death, relying ever more heavily on the magic of fairies and his dear departed Mipha as his adventure dragged on. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to tip over that precipice permanently, to fall and not get back up again. What would happen, he wondered, if he had no fairies left to pick him up when his tired body missed a crucial block? What would happen if Mipha wasn’t there to save him from his own mistakes? Would it be a relief?
At one time, he thought it might be. But now there were eight other souls bound to his own, Heroes like him; and his heart had never felt so full nor so vulnerable as the moment he realized how much these strangers meant to him. He would do anything, give anything, to ensure their safety.
And in the end, he gave everything.
Link didn’t expect to get another chance. When fairies and potions seemed to only be delaying the inevitable, ever-speeding decline of his body — when the cascading failures of his internal systems became unbearable — when the darkness reached out with iron claws and dragged his consciousness down into the depths — Link was ready for the end.
But his companions had different ideas.
Somehow, Mipha brought him back; one final miracle before she left his world forever. Somehow, his soulbound brothers — with the intercession of the goddess Hylia herself — managed to carry him safely to a place of sanctuary and heal his body and spirit. Somehow, Link was granted the opportunity to recover, to rest, to heal.
He would not be granted such a miracle a third time, he knew this.
So Link (now called Wild by the rest of the Chain), grudgingly, was willing to give his body the time it needed to recover from his ordeal — though the slow pace of his healing frustrated him, though his own weakness terrified him, and though the overbearing concern from his brothers sometimes chafed. All Wild wanted was to get back to normal, but as he discovered, there was no hurrying some things.
Through the power of Hylia’s portals, the Chain traveled through the kingdom of Hyrule’s past and present, hunting down black-blooded monsters strengthened by Malice. Though they were still in the early stages of their journey together, Wild sometimes felt like his time with his brothers was already running out. Even if they all survived this new adventure — and there had been some close calls — when they finally found the source of this new evil and defeated it, they would all, presumably, go home — scattered once more across history.
Wild knew the others also thought about the end of their journey together. The feeling of the soulbonds nestled in his mind could bring him comfort, but could not ease the cold, lonely emotion he felt some nights, when he looked up and saw a sky full of stars so different from the ones he knew.
So Wild did his best to ignore the knowledge that his time with his brothers was limited. He did his best to protect them in battle, to care for them, and to love them with all his heart. He committed himself to their journey, this new mission laid down by the goddess Herself, this new foe that threatened the land and people he loved so much.
He ignored the creeping sensation of time slipping through his fingers, knowing that this was his last life.