#link being present seriously tipped things in linebecks favor. if he was alone he wouldve still survived. it wouldve fucking sucked tho

[waywardsalt]

im thinking about possession aftereffects that linebeck experiences immediately after the events of phantom hourglass, so here are bullet points i have down for my own ideas

he’s out cold for roughly five days after the fight. he’s conscious for a bit after being freed, but it doesn’t take long for him to collapse once he’s transported back to the great sea. link finds him when he reaches his ship to see him again (he takes a lifeboat or w/e from tetras ship its a whole thing and not the point) and ends up having to take care of him for those five-ish days.

while he’s out cold, he develops a bad fever, and has a good few physical injures from being possessed; all of his wounds from being possessed manifest as burns, the worst wounds bring cauterized and mostly closed, while smaller ones are still open wounds. the largest wound is a large burn covering most of his back, which is cauterized by the time he passes out, and then there are smaller, still open burns on his upper arms and legs. (the smaller wounds are manageable by link when he follows some medical instructions, [there are some medical books on the ship] the larger one is also manageable, but takes a lot longer to properly heal).

(link asks tetra and her crew to stick around for a while to keep linebeck stabilized while he’s unconscious. when linebeck wakes up, tetra and her crew are good to leave because then linebeck can better report what’s going on, and knows how to handle injuries).

linebeck’s fever persists after he wakes up, and he experiences… pretty much every fever symptom, with especially bad chills and full-body aches. the aches are really bad for the first few days after he wakes up, he’s extremely physically weak and shaky for a while, too. that weakness and shakiness get better with time, but he doesnt go entirely back to normal without actually moving around and doing things to build that strength back up.

he’s delirious and struggles to stay awake for those first few conscious days, too, which makes that weakness and shakiness worse; he struggles to eat and drink water, and struggles to string together thoughts or words to talk to link, and both of them figure out pretty quickly that they’ll have to wait a bit longer before so much as an attempt to coax him out of bed can be made.

beyond existing problems with food, linebeck struggles to keep anything down while he recovers, and becomes ill pretty much every time after he eats anything, so a bucket is kept near his bed. with water, he obviously needs to drink a lot of it considering that he’s feverish, injured, and vomiting frequently, but while he’s sick he has a bit of an irrational fear of water (along with an irrational fear of air and the wind, which makes him hesitant to go outside while he’s sick).

he’s generally pretty irritable, which isn’t particularly new, but it makes him prone to refusing help with certain things. he’s less irritable when tired and just resting. he’s also especially nervous, and despite the overall fatigue, he struggles to sleep for very long while he’s sick, and as said before, is often delirious and even confused when things are bad.

along with the other difficulties eating, linebeck has a hard time swallowing for a bit, and salivates a lot more than normal while he’s sick. he is soooo fucking dehydrated the whole time and that really doesn’t help.

while the weakness and shakiness stays for the entire time he’s sick and even a bit afterwards, for the first few days after he wakes up he’s stiff and also experiences some muscle spasms and numbness in his limbs, and has a hard time keeping his balance the first few times he gets out of bed.

once the sickness clears up fully, linebeck has to still be careful with the scar on his back; it’s sensitive to touch for a while and hurts when exposed to the sun or air for too long and when he stretches his back too far, but eventually just reaches the point where it’s a bit sensitive but is otherwise just a large scar.

obviously he’s also going through the wringer in an emotional and mental illness sense too but those would require a whole new bullet point list.