Chapter Text
“So this is it.”
Breaking past the barriers of time and space, nine heroes of courage had come together to fight against an encroaching darkness. They allied with each other, but much more came of it than any of them had expected.
They ate together, talking over meals most of them hadn’t thought possible to be cooked over a campfire. They slept together, trusting each other with their backs and falling into a schedule of watches to keep an eye on the night. They fought together, their differing styles complementing and contrasting with each other. When something dragged one of them into memories of the past, whether it involved a mirror or a dying or injured loved one, they were there for each other. They wept together, wringing their hands when one was injured, and they laughed together, giving in to chaotic shenanigans and childish pranks.
One by one, they even shared their closely-guarded secrets. They spoke of dark magic turning a man into a wolf or a rabbit. They marveled at the transformations of painting, fairy, and minish, and they listened quietly to stories of statues and oceans, of moons and sages, of gold and blood.
They called each other their brothers, even when they knew this moment would come.
When Time’s words rang out across the clearing, each of them realized that the inevitable had come. Their nikhedonia faded in favor of cold dread.
“I’m going to miss you guys,” came Sky’s trembling voice, and Legend’s resolve broke.
“Don’t you dare make me cry,” he grumbled, even as tears budded at the corners of his eyes.
The smithy was close behind, and then there was the champion and the rancher, and then Twilight was dragging them all into a group hug. Sky started bawling against Time’s armor. Four was practically drowning in Twilight’s pelt, and Wild looked like he was trying to drown himself in the soft fur. Wind clung to Warriors. Hyrule had hidden his face in Legend’s shoulder, and Legend in turn was angry-crying, his face red as he weakly protested to the show of affection.
“I’m terrible with goodbyes!” he insisted. “Let’s just—”
“We all are,” Warriors laughed wetly.
“Just accept it, you grump,” Wild chuckled, helping pull their veteran back into the group hug.
Legend’s face grew redder, and then he was hiding his face in Warriors’s scarf.
And then, they had parted, eyes red and faces blotchy, and Four almost laughed at the sudden discovery that they were all ugly criers.
Four looked at the portal waiting for him, waiting to take him home. He cast one last look over his shoulder at his brothers, ingraining their faces into his memory, and then he stepped through.
When he opened his eyes, he stood in Hyrule Field. Fresh air filled his lungs, and he realized he had come to associate the smell of his era’s air with home. It was fresher than most other eras, almost in a lighthearted way.
Where Sky’s era had a new sort of freshness and where Wild’s era had a strikingly clean freshness hovering over the dust of ancient ruins, Four’s era was that of a young kingdom. It was fresh in the way that promised new beginnings, the kind of new air untainted by the past and yet still populated by people.
Four started off through the tall grasses toward the forge. He needed to tell his grandfather that his fourth and final adventure was over, and then he needed to inform Zelda about it.
And after that, he had a list of things he needed to do for the brothers that come after him.
Four prided himself on being a master smith, even at the young age of sixteen, and when he traveled with the others, they had picked up on it fairly quickly. He personally oversaw the upkeep of their equipment, intent on making sure they were as safe as possible in the face of the unknown shadow, so he knew every indent, every scratch, every rivet of their shields and swords.
The first thing he did once he told Zelda and his grandfather that he was back was take a nap. It was a rest he desperately needed after that final battle, and when he woke up, his mind was clear.
The second thing he did was draft up plans for the items he had grown so familiar with over the last year. While some of them had been plain old, worn down by time and use, Four could recognize when a blade was well-forged.
Funny, he thought as he started up the furnace, that the others would use his works. He could almost hear Sky saying that it was simply fate, a blessing by Hylia’s hand, that he might protect his brothers even after he was long gone.
Four’s movements paused on the thought. His eyes trailed toward the open window, fixating on the blue skies above, and it struck him suddenly that Sky was long gone. He was aware there were centuries, if not millennia, between each of them, but the full depth hadn’t quite occurred to him until now. He knew he’d be forgotten, as no one else knew about Vaati or the Four Sword, but to actually think about it…
It was daunting.
Sky, his sleepy brother with a heart so big it might burst, with the speed and resolve to slay a god, with fear of leading and controlling… was gone, nothing but dust and bones deep under the dirt. Four had checked the records once during their adventure. Sky was the first king of Hyrule.
He wondered if his brother was buried in the royal graveyard.
Four sighed and shook his head, returning his attention to the building flames. He had work to do, and he could always pay tribute to the others later.
“Ezlo!” Four greeted cheerfully as he jogged into Minish Village.
“Link!” Ezlo chuckled, his voice low and rough from age but looking no different than when he had first said goodbye. He wrapped his arms around Four in a hug that was quick but no less comforting. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “What brings you here? Are you back from your journey? Festari told me what you said about your friends.”
“Yeah, it’s over,” Four nodded. “They’ve all gone home, but that’s kind of why I’m here… in a roundabout way.”
“What do you mean?” Ezlo asked.
“I have a gift that I need you and Festari and any of your successors to watch over,” Four said, trying to convey his seriousness. “I left it back at the portal since I need to keep it full-sized.”
“I see,” Ezlo hummed, placing a gentle hand on Four’s back. He began to walk, and Four went alongside him. “Tell me over tea.”
Four waited as expected, shifting in his seat until Ezlo placed the tea and berries down on the table, and as soon as Ezlo sat down, the words burst from Four’s mouth like floodwaters from a broken dam.
“One day, there will be forest spirits who look like hylian children, and they will be called the Kokiri,” Four explained. He remembered what Time had told them about his childhood home, and Four wished he could have seen it. “When that time comes, I need you or your successors—whoever will be around—to give the blade I made to them.”
“Slow down,” Ezlo said slowly, his brow pinching in confusion, though Four knew the old sage would never admit to it. “What are you talking about? How do you know this?”
“I…” Four trailed off. He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. Right, one thing at a time. “My last adventure involved time travel.”
Ezlo’s eyebrows rose to his hairline.
“Lots of time travel,” Four insisted. “I saw the founding of Hyrule and personally knew the first king and queen. I saw the distant futures. A great ocean covered a forsaken Hyrule, as well as cities of great prosperity even in the face of war.” He looked pleadingly at Ezlo. “My companions share a spirit with me, Ezlo. They’re my brothers, just as much as the colors are to each other, and I… I need to make sure they have the means to protect themselves when their eras come to pass.”
Ezlo gave a soft sigh. He got up and moved around the table, and he pulled Four into a hug. His sleeves blanketed Four with warmth, and the tiny hero slowly brought his arms up to hold Ezlo back.
“You are too kind,” Ezlo muttered into Four’s hair.
When the sage pulled back, he met Four’s eyes.
“Very well,” he said. “I will look after this blade you speak of, and so will every elder who comes after me until these… Kokiri appear. You have my word.”
“Thank you, Ezlo,” Four said, and he hoped his words sounded genuine enough. “This means a lot to me.”
Ezlo inclined his head, and Four mentally checked the Kokiri Blade off his list.
Four was seventeen years old when he ventured up to Mount Crenel, a bundle of parchment tucked under his arm.
“Hey! Biggoron!” Four called out.
His voice echoed off the stones of Mount Crenel, and he dearly hoped the big guy hadn’t moved. Crenel eventually went dormant, if Wild’s map was to be believed, so if he had left to find Death Mountain, Four had quite the trek ahead of him.
Luckily, giant yellow fingers curled around the edge of the pathway, and Four backed up in order to see the face that rose from the depths of the canyon.
“Ah, little hero!” Biggoron greeted, his voice rumbling through the land and reverberating through Four’s very bones. “What brings you to me?”
“From one blacksmith to another,” Four called up, well aware that his regular speaking voice wouldn’t carry from how loud he’d had to shout as a kid, “would you like to know how to make an unbreakable weapon?”
“That’s impossible,” Biggoron said, though he leaned in closer in intrigue, and Four smirked.
It had taken far too much work, but he did eventually smith a blade that never broke on Wild. The blade served him well, boasting a strong base, a sharp edge, and a preservation enchantment, courtesy of Hyrule and Legend. Just for safety’s sake, the champion was banned from using it for mining, but even Wild said it was shockingly sturdy, his eyes gleaming with joy. Four also made a point of teaching Wild how to care for his weapons, just in case, because there was no way on Farore’s green earth he would go through that tedious process again.
However, for Biggoron, who made a mirror shield by eating a regular one, Four figured it wouldn’t be as mindnumbingly frustrating.
“Wanna bet?” Four shot back.
His smirk widened as he successfully snagged Biggoron’s attention.
Four’s eighteenth birthday rolled around, and he cut his hair. Zelda helped him, but it still ended up choppy and shorter than they anticipated. They laughed at how similar it looked to how he wore his hair a decade ago, when he started off on his first adventure, and Four helped sneak her out of the palace for a day. The two of them ran around Hyrule Town, hiding from the guards and giggling to each other like they were children again.
The end of the day, however, was reserved for a very special person.
Four’s boots padded softly against cobblestone trails, and the world around him was quiet, only the soft rustle of the wind through the foliage and the distant sound of birdsong breaking the silence.
He stopped under a maple tree. The leaves were long gone in the face of winter, and Four watched as the first snowflakes of the season drifted down and briefly settled on smooth stone before melting, leaving only dots of water to darken the gravestone.
Four knelt on the ground and placed the wildflowers he had picked on top of the dirt.
“Hello, Sky,” he said softly, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “It’s been a while.”
A small red bird landed on the branches of the maple tree and silently watched Four below, tilting its head to better see him through its beady, black eyes.
“Things are peaceful here,” he continued. “I’m, uh, I’m eighteen now, so I can legally drink alcohol—at least, in your era. I’m still not sure why my era has the lowest drinking age, but… I don’t intend to get a habit. I’m not Wind.”
He huffed a breathy laugh into the cold air, watching the clouds of mist wisp their way out of his mouth.
“I’m not entirely sure what to do from here,” he admitted. “I’ve set things in motion for Time, and I keep getting the feeling that it’s not the right time to pass on my shield for Wind, yet, but I have no idea what to do for Legend. I—I want to help him, somehow, but I’ve got nothing. None of his starting equipment is old enough to have been from me, and… I don’t know.”
He sighed slowly, gathering his thoughts.
“I just want to help him if I can,” Four muttered, bringing his knees up to his chest and burying his face in his arms. “Is it silly of me? To be thinking so far ahead when I know they all turn out alright in the end?”
He lifted his eyes to trace over the name written in faded ancient Hylian, an alphabet he couldn’t read but still knew was a name that matched his own.
“Did you think about us, too?” Four asked, his voice barely above a whisper. He snorted. “That was a stupid question. I bet you never stopped thinking about us.” His mouth curved into a fond smile. “I wish I could’ve been there for your wedding. I know you wanted to invite us. I hope the rings I made for you were good enough.
“I wish we could’ve met Time and Malon’s child. I bet it was the cutest baby ever. I hope it got Malon’s nose, because no one deserves to be cursed with the old man’s giant honker. You remember how he snored, right? And gods above, his sneezes! The first time I heard it, I thought Wild had detonated a bomb or something.”
Four continued rambling to the gravestone as the sun sank down to the horizon, painting the world in red and gold. He spoke of everything that came to mind. He talked about the minish, how Zelda could no longer see them and how happy he was when he realized that the magic of the minish clung to him and let him continue to see and speak with them. He talked about how Hyrule was expanding, welcoming the Gorons and Zora in their borders even while the nobles regarded the Gerudo with caution and fear and distaste. He told the gravestone about how work was going, how his forge was growing in fame even as his grandfather grew weaker by the day.
“It’s getting late,” he observed aloud. He looked back to the gravestone, placing a hand on it as he stood up. “I should get going.”
He smiled.
“See you later, Sky.”
Four was nineteen when a quick, loud knock sounded on his door.
It was a rainy night, thunder booming in the distance as lightning sparked across the sky. He was in the process of cleaning up and blowing out the candles, a quiet and peaceful process now that he lived alone, and the knock startled him.
Grabbing the nearest blade, he made a mental quip to himself about how the captain’s caution and paranoia had rubbed off on him, affecting him even now, and he cracked open the door, peering outside into the night. The sight before him drew a soft gasp out of him, and he yanked the door open, setting the dagger down on the closest table.
Outside was a woman, drenched from the rain, but even the darkness of soaked clothing couldn’t hide the dark red that slowly spread from her side. Sea green eyes looked up at him pleadingly as she stumbled, and he carefully caught her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice hardening as green courage and blue confidence filled his chest. Red compassion bloomed in his heart, and violet analyses ran through his head
He wrapped an arm around her back and helped her stumble inside, guiding her to the closest chair. He kicked the door closed behind himself, and when the woman’s head jerked up from where it had drifted down to her chest, he moved in front of her and gently held her face with one hand while the other pulled her eyelids up. Her pupils looked fine, but that meant her grogginess was from blood loss.
“Stay here,” he said. “I have some potions.”
He darted into his room to grab one of the red potions he had stored away for emergencies—four adventures taught him to always be prepared—and came back to the woman as quickly as he could. He popped open the bottle and carefully held it to her mouth, letting her take the bottle. Four’s eyebrows rose as she drank the potion like a champ. She didn’t even gag at the taste. Four couldn’t say the same for himself. He remembered vividly how he had almost puked the first time he drank a potion.
“What happened?” he asked gently, taking back the empty bottle and setting it on the coffee table behind him. “Bandits? Monsters?”
“Monsters,” the woman confirmed. “Moblins, a whole group of them. I came to Hyrule Town to visit my grandmother, but those bastards attacked me on the way, and I had to run.”
Four almost choked at the language. The woman was petite, a little taller than himself, and he hadn’t quite expected her to curse so suddenly. It was like the first time Wind had cussed in front of all of them only to tell them he was a pirate, so they’d better get used to it.
“What?” the woman sniffed. “You got a problem with cussing?”
“Not at all,” Four laughed, shaking his head. “You just reminded me of an old friend of mine. That's all.”
He ran a hand through his hair. It had grown longer and could now be tied back into a ponytail when he worked in the forge. It wasn’t long enough for him to pull his old headband back out, though.
“You should stay here for the night,” Four told her. She opened her mouth to argue, and he held up a hand. Her mouth snapped shut with a click, but the fire in her eyes kept burning. “It’s dark and storming outside. It’s dangerous, even without monster attacks. You can always continue on your way in the morning. Hyrule Town is only about fifteen minutes away from here, so there’s plenty of time. There's no need to rush.”
“Oh yeah?” the woman scoffed, and the way her sharp eyes challenged him reminded Four of Legend, his brother who was jaded by the world and slow to trust. “And why should I stay with a mysterious man through the night, so far from town? Surely the monsters will still be there tomorrow.”
Four crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow.
“If you were so worried about strangers, why did you knock on my door in the first place?” he asked, and when the woman flushed, he smirked. “And I can tell you that you don’t need to worry about the monsters. I’ll deal with them in the morning.”
He picked himself up, took the empty bottle, and went toward the hallway.
“You?” the woman asked, leveling him with a disbelieving stare. “Who even are you, to be so confident?”
Four snorted and paused in the doorway.
“Link,” he answered with a dramatic bow, “Hero of the Four Sword, at your service.”
The next morning, he took his old shield and pressed it into her arms as they parted ways, with her headed north toward Hyrule Town and him headed east toward the woods.
“Take care of this,” he told her. “It’s protected me for many years, and it will serve you well.”
“... Thank you,” she murmured, her cheeks gaining a pink tint.
Four hefted his mirror shield onto his back and bid her safe travels.
He smiled to himself. That was Wind’s shield taken care of.
Four was twenty, and the woman became a regular traveler, stopping by his place whenever she passed by.
Her name was Maryll, and Four had to pretend he wasn’t struck by the name. He knew there was a Malon at Lon Lon Ranch in his era, and he remembered Wind’s adorable little sister, understanding innately why Wind adored her so, so he hadn’t quite expected her name.
Zelda adored Maryll. The pair’s friendship scared Four sometimes, because he was pretty sure the two of them together were an unstoppable force. Goddesses help anyone who crossed them. He certainly didn’t want to piss off the both of them.
Maryll was a spitfire, and she had somehow convinced Four to teach her how to fight. She was a quick student, especially with her attitude, and while her stubbornness reminded Four of a surge of focused blue rage, she was adaptable and willing to take a hit in order to learn. Hand-to-hand combat, though… Four was fine with helping her defend herself against monsters on the road, but goddesses above, she had a mean right hook.
He was pressing an ice pack to his jaw one afternoon, sitting on the steps in front of his door, when Maryll pressed a kiss to his cheek, and he froze, eyes wide. She blushed bright red and made a quick escape, and as she retreated, fleeing to Hyrule Town, Four stared after her, marveling at the way his heartbeat raced through his ears.
Four turned twenty-one, and he didn’t want to hear anymore teasing from Zelda. It was just embarrassing at this point.
So what if he had a crush?
It’s not like he was Wind’s ancestor, right? Nothing would come out of it, he was pretty sure, even if the thought made his chest constrict.
Is this what Twilight felt, when he spoke of his companion? Four had thought it to be heartbreak, but… no. Heartache, he discovered, was different.
He spent that year reassembling the last of the dark mirror. Nothing happened, his shadow remaining dormant, and he asked Zelda to entrust the mirror to the sheikah. When Twilight’s time came, he knew the mirror would bring his brother grief, but it would also be the reason they even became brothers in the first place.
Fate was fate, and no one could fight it.
Four’s twenty-second birthday was the day before he received word from the castle of a surge of monster sightings to the south. They had been causing problems, and many guards had been injured in the monsters’ wake, so they called on the only person they could to handle such danger.
Something nagged at him as he packed up his items, and before he could grab the sword sitting on the wall, he gave in to his intuition and went to the Four Sword Sanctuary.
“Hello, old friend,” he said softly, placing his hand on the pommel of the Four Sword.
He gazed up at the stone carvings depicting four boys taking down a giant flying eyeball monster, and Four gave a bittersweet smile. The last time he had split, he had been with eight others, and even now, he thought of them every day.
Their faces had faded in his memory, but he remembered them as people clear as day. He could imagine Sky writing unsendable wedding invitations, reserving seats during the ceremony that would never be filled. He wondered what Time and Malon’s child looked like, if they had any more, how they would fare once Time inevitably disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again by another living soul, save for Twilight, who undoubtedly went home to Ordon to settle down. Maybe he realized his feelings for his friend Ilia. Wind, according to Warriors, went on to found New Hyrule with Tetra, starting a grand migration from the Great Sea to the new continent, and Four knows in his heart that Wind was phenomenal. He hoped that Legend finally found his peace and got to live the peaceful life he so desperately pursued, and he hoped that Hyrule was able to relax in the safety of the castle and watch his era’s kingdom flourish and grow and recover from the ruinous rule of Ganon. Warriors would continue to serve his kingdom for years after, Four knew, but he wondered if the captain ever found security in someone, providing him with enough safety to sit down and grow old. And Wild, his dear nature-blessed brother, probably printed out those pictographs he had taken of all of them. Four remembered that old photo of Wild’s champions hanging in the loft, and he often wondered where Wild put up the pictographs of them.
Hylia, he missed them so much.
With a bracing inhale, he grabbed the hilt of the Four Sword and pulled, and an unbidden smile stretched across his face at the familiar weight and magic.
“We’re back in business.”
Four was twenty-two, and he was dying.
Solid conviction, knowing for a fact that his end was close, was scarier than he thought it would be. He slowly stumbled into the Four Sword Sanctuary, leaning against the wall and leaving dark stains behind him as he went. His vision was blurry, and he wasn’t sure if he was crying, but he felt like a child again, wounded and bleeding and curling up in the corner of his first dungeon in terror, Ezlo's words going in one ear and out the other.
But he wasn’t a child, and his job was done. At the very least, the monsters were gone now, nothing left but dissipated dark smoke. He had left a legacy for the others, and it comforted him, however little that comfort was in the face of his demise.
He tripped and smacked his jaw against the edge of the pedestal’s dais. A cry of pain ripped its way out of his chest and past his teeth as something in his face shattered, and his wounds shifted, tearing even further. Four laid there on the ground for a moment, just trying to breathe.
He didn’t want to die, he realized. Not yet. He had so much to do.
He wanted to say goodbye to Ezlo, to Zelda and Maryll. He wanted to see his father's and grandfather's and Sky’s graves one more time. He wanted to make sure Lon Lon Ranch flourished and stayed in business. He wanted to find the Master Sword and say hello to her, to show her to Zelda and start the construction of the Temple of Time. He wanted to see where Time’s ocarina came from. He… He wanted…
He wanted to live the happy life his brothers wanted him to live.
A sob escaped Four’s mouth like a popped bubble.
He forced himself to move, even as agony rippled through his body, but he remembered Hyrule’s adamant healing even when he was exhausted, how Wild never stayed down for long, how Twilight had almost given up when that wound just wouldn’t heal, and Four got to his feet, feeling like the entirety of Mount Crenel was weighing down on his shoulders.
He had to get the Four Sword back to the pedestal. With his experience, he was the only one who could control its power.
He could barely feel his hands anymore. He forced his eyelids open so he could actually see where the pedestal was, and clumsily, he slid the Four Sword into its resting place, wincing at the sound of metal scraping against stone.
The magic within the Four Sword swelled.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
Light erupted from the pedestal, and Four knew no more.
Link’s twenty-third birthday coincided with his funeral.
It was beautiful, in Zelda’s opinion. All of Hyrule Town attended, bidding their hero a goodbye and a peaceful afterlife. Zelda stood at the end of the procession, her eyes blank and despondent. Maryll stood at her side.
It was a rainy day, the heavy folds of dark gray spilling curtains of water onto the earth as if the gods themselves wept in the wake of Link’s death. It was fitting, Zelda thought, not for the grief of the gods, but because Link had always liked the rain. He claimed to find it calming. Unifying.
They didn’t have a body to bury. Zelda had found the blood in the sanctuary, the pool of deep crimson dripping down the side of the dais and bloody handprints wrapped around the hilt of the Four Sword, but there was no corpse in sight. After months of searching, she reluctantly declared her best friend dead and organized the funeral.
She had the empty casket buried next to the gravestone Link had visited so often after his last adventure.
It read, “Here lies Link, Hero of the Four Sword, Minish, and Light. His sacrifice will not be forgotten. May he rest in peace for all eternity and guide those who come after.”
It didn’t encompass all he had done for Hyrule, for Zelda and his loved ones, but there wasn’t room on the stone for a eulogy.
That night, she wept over his grave, the salt water running down her face refusing to stop, and she prayed to the gods for answers. How could such a purehearted person be met with such a cruel, terrible fate?
Only two birds answered, standing atop the older gravestone with the words she couldn't read. One was red, and the other was blue, and they watched her silently with beady, black eyes.
“You were never good at goodbyes,” Zelda whispered wetly, trying and failing to smile. She exhaled shakily. “So I'll say it for you. Goodbye, Link. May you rest in peace.”
The next day, she ordered the sanctuary be turned into a palace.
In one timeline, the Four Sword drowned under miles and miles of salt water. In another timeline, it and its resting place were all but forgotten, sealed away in another realm for the rest of eternity. In a third timeline, a young boy with pink hair and the heart of a rabbit walked into the palace, shifting uncomfortably at the darkness that entrenched the aged grounds.
The boy walked into the final room, and the soul of an ancient hero soaked in corrupting darkness woke up.