Hero

by FrodoBaggins87

Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which this story is set after. Nintendo does. Lucky them.

NOTE! This chapter is revised to include more background on those seven years, where he was, etc. Not much added, but important to the rest of the story.

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Amidst a brown chamber carved from the living rock in which it rested he ran. Turning corners, sprinting down passages, searching for something he didn’t know. And then, upon rounding a right corner he came to a long, tall hallway, and the Master was waiting for him.

Instantly electricity rushed to his brain and he whipped into a fighting stance, waiting for the onslaught sure to come, waiting for the strength to flow into his limbs. But it never did.

Instead of the usual pulsing river of power, a gray looming fog began creeping into the corners of his mind at an alarming rate. Startled at the change, he glanced at the backs of his hands, expecting to find the Triforce of Courage burning brightly on their surface. His hands were blank.

Fear froze his limbs and rooted him to the spot, while the monster laughed and raised itself high above his head, gloating over its helpless victim.

‘Move, move,’ he commanded his legs, and with a sweaty palm reached over his shoulder and fumbled with the handle of his sword. His fingers closed upon the hilt, but his fear drained him of the strength to lift it.

Panic. A whirling mass of white. The Triforce was gone. It had left him. He was nothing, meant nothing, could do nothing. The Triforce was gone.

And the monster roared, and rushed down upon its prey.

The burning, crushing weight of the monster drove him deep into the ground, crushed his bones, and the last thought he had in this world, was why.

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Link bolted upright in bed, eyes wide, staring into the darkness. His breath came in harsh gasps as he fought to control the fear the nightmare had left him wallowed in.

“Navi…” His voice choked and a sob escaped his throat. He had to make sure, he had to know.

A golden glow appeared outside the curtains hung in place of a door, and with a twinkling of crystal stars, the tiny fairy whipped to his side.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, hovering close beside his fear-lined face.

He did not answer, but brought the backs of his hands into her light, searching for the tiny silver lines only visible in a fairies’ glow.

They were there.

Relief swept aside all fears and doubts, and he felt the familiar warm throbbing an examination usually left with him begin to pulsate up his arms from the Triforce embedded in his skin.

“Did you have the nightmare again?”

Link nodded, and smiled sheepishly.

“Despite how many times I’ve had it, it always awakens in me a fear as fresh as the first.”

“Perhaps it means something?”

“That is what I fear,” he said, and shuddered, not daring to voice the suggestion nagging at the back of his mind. He threw aside the covers and stretched his legs, knowing too well no last snatches of sleep remained. He rose and peeked behind the curtain shading his glassless window and saw the gray horizon announcing the very first touches of day.

He sighed and pulled on a simple brown tunic, fastened his belt and stepped into his boots, throwing a dark brown cloak about his shoulders.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said over his shoulder to his tiny companion as he closed the rough wooden door behind him.

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The sharp fragrance of early morning met his senses in a rush of slumbering cold life. Link took a deep breath, inhaling the growing scent of the forest he had chosen as his home, and felt the tense lines in his forehead slowly melt away.

A low bluish fog blanketed the ground, and from it rose the slender trunks of pine trees: straight and tall as countless sentinels beneath an overhang of dark boughs. As he stepped into the enchanted world, he felt himself once again lost amid the beauty of nature, his footsteps making no sound as they trod on the tender carpet beneath.

It was on these mornings, surrounded by the enticing silence, that he did his best and worst thinking. He remembered the glorious rush of victory, and pondered the unknown which lay before him. How, he often wondered, had he become involved in the beginning? Why had he stepped out into an unthinkable task, and how had he come to be where he was now?

So often had he answered his own questions as he wandered the world beneath the pine trees, yet somehow he never found satisfaction. He had become involved because he was called to. He had been thrust into the situation, yet why him? Because he was destined to. Who decided my destiny? I did not, who, then? He was never satisfied.

Eight years. Seven ‘given back.’ But how could he be given the years back, knowing what he did? How could he go back to the Kokiri forest to live amongst children, when in his heart he was an adult? Where could he go? He couldn’t bear to watch Hyrule fall apart, knowing his duty was to be ‘sleeping in the Sacred Realm.’ Resigning himself to the shadows, he had lived alone in the forest: growing older, training, and waiting. Waiting for the call to action- the ‘awakening’ in the Sacred Realm, his unveiling as a proper hero.

The thought sickened him. To be kept at a distance until he looked right, until those who held the authority decided he was fit to be their hero. But long ago he had decided it did no use to infuriate himself by the actions of those who claimed to be his friends. They were all-powerful sages, after all, and they had authority over him. He was their fighting pawn, to be called upon in need and forgotten in times of peace. He must mean nothing to them besides usefulness. What excuse did he have to dare ask for more?

Thus after the fall of Ganondorf one year ago he had resigned the invitation of residence at the castle where he would feel awkward and bothersome, instead choosing a return to solitude in the depths of the forest.

Unanimity. Hiding, from what? From life, from people, from himself.

Questions, questions, and never answers.

He was lonely, he always had been. Navi was his only companion, but she was after all, only a fairy, and he had never even seen her face. He felt she knew, too, and it hurt to secretly long for a more tangible, more real friend.

But that was enough thinking. He knew what dangerous paths his mind often wandered down, and how close he walked the line. A chill wind stirred about him, and he knew he was near the cliff. A few more steps and he was out of the forest, the land of Hyrule spread out over an unending horizon. His Hyrule, yet not.

‘Stranger,’ the wind whispered, and he wrapped his cloak about him. ‘Stranger, hero.’

The wind laughed at his tears, for it was true. Once a hero, always a stranger. Once a savior, never a home. The land he had saved rejected him. Was this the fate of all heroes, he wondered? Did every hero search for a peace that was denied them?

Yet he found a simple, bitter happiness in seeing the contentment of those he had saved, whether by his own hand or another’s initiation. Their ignorance, their bliss. They could enjoy life, live and prosper while the heroes stood in the shadows, awaiting their duty to arise and save, then sink into the dusty books of history.

He thought too much. Although he trained and kept with the daily routines of life, he still found himself wondering when, and where, this destiny he lived would take him, and what would happen to him in the end.

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Continued...->