#so like. yeah :') nobody's awake rn methinks. but send post i need this out of here asap 😭😭 )

[balladetto]

     It's raining up there.

     Link feels it in the new slickness of each rung and the pitter-patter on his face. He's careful to grip tight as he climbs the bars, rust digging into trembling palms, only ever looking at what lies above in heart-pounding fear of what could still lurk below. Navi is a bright guide in the darkness, lighting the way ahead while she fusses over things like where they should go next. She says nothing of how scary the well was, but she sprinkles enough of her fairydust on his fingers that he can tell she's thinking about it too.

     The rain picks up when they finally make it out, as though it's a friend who's happy to see him. When he puts it that way, it's not so overwhelming on his exhaustion, which already pulls on his muscles so hard that he stumbles to his knees. He drags himself a full body length closer to the stairs, then just— stops. Breathes.

     It's near impossible, sometimes, to feel like he can keep doing this.

     "Link," Navi softly calls. She lets him breathe for a few more seconds, before floating to the pouch by his waist. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

     Right. Yeah. The sooner they leave this place, the better. They need to— they need to—

     "To the Temple of Time, remember?"

     Yes. Yeah. Okay. He swallows the thoughts he can't afford to dwell on right now and nods, removing the ocarina entrusted to him from his inventory. As he puts his lips over the mouthpiece and prepares to play the Prelude of Light, Navi flies up towards his hair to wiggle under his hat — as she always does when they do this.

     Link sees a hand folding over the whole of his face, feels a breath sticky with rot on his hair, and recoils with a yelp before those long fingers can again burn invisible imprints into his scalp.

     Navi freezes.

     Link freezes.

     For several uneasy moments, only the rain disturbs the abrupt silence. Shame churns in his gut, agitating the tremor that's returned to his hands and the racing of his heart. His fairy bobs up and down in the spot he left her in.

     "Link," she starts, tentative, "are you okay?"

     He— should be. He should be. Just as hesitantly, he gives another nod. Then, firmer, he does it again. He doesn't know why that happened. He doesn't know why he did that.

     Navi idles a little more, clearly unsure, so he smiles a shaky sorry and beckons her closer. She comes carefully — gradually — like something skittish that needs to be coaxed from the bushes, or the steady warmth of a newly stoked fire, or the creep of a phantom presence crawling towards his back, fingers latching him into place, ripping strands of hair out with how much he struggles, panicked, terrified, too small—

     Link scrambles away, breath caught in the back of his throat.

     Another pause. Another suspended, fraught quiet. Raindrops sting in his eyes, and a distant, ridiculous part of him wonders if they feel the same on her wings.

     "Link," Navi says, voice a bare whisper over drumming rainfall: hurt, pained, and desperate in the way she sometimes gets when she wants to heal him but can't.

     His sternum crumples into his lungs beneath the weight of a sudden, penetrating grief.

     "Nn— Na-vi," he returns, strangled. He reaches for her instinctively, apologetically, a dart of touch that goes forward and flinches back as his fingertips brush against her light. The warmth bites where it would've comforted only a while ago — before the dead, before the well, before the fear he's been trying and failing to smother since he saw towering, stalking hands — spreading across his skin like cold fingers locking in a vice-grip.

     Horror twists in his veins. Thorns of despair sink deeper into his chest. This can't be happening pierces through the static of everything fading away, 'cause Navi — Navi, her touch, her fluttering against his cheeks, all her affection against the world's harshness — is the one thing of the so few things he has left to his name that gives him some form of real peace. Some form of maybe this will be okay. Patching over the hurts in his heart like her little hands can reach there, and now they can't— now he can't—

     He can't do this.

     He can't do this.

     A whimper breaks past his lips, ragged and undisguised, and tears welled up from waters that feel endless spill from blurred eyes. Link is bigger than this. He has to be bigger than this. But he's slept through seven summers and only truly seen nine, and want throbs from his core with a fierce, heavy ache. Something close to a scream leaves him as he raises a trembling arm and throws the Ocarina of Time to the dirt ground. He can't hear anything past his own panting, sobbing breaths.

     He wants Navi. He wants Saria. He wants the Great Deku Tree. He wants to go home; to have a home to go back to; to not be someone so special; to not have to be a hero too young for his own sword. Link feels the rain like it's going straight through him to the insides of his bones as he catches himself on his palms, wanting, and wanting, and wanting, and wanting.

     His fairy slowly drifts into what shelter the curve of his figure makes. She holds his gaze mutely, glow dimmer in shared misery. Ever the best at listening even when he isn't speaking, she catches his tears as if they're stars and doesn't touch him. He hates her for it. He loves her for it.

     He cries harder for it, body heaving, mud clotting under his nails as he curls fingers into wet earth.

     He can't do this.