#vaguely related but this is why travelling (after he comes to terms with na.vi) is as much a crutch as it is a wanderlust thing for him

[balladetto]

i don't know how popular the idea is now, but it was almost like. a general assumption back when i was first writing link — that he's essentially a teen or adult trapped in a much younger body when zelda sends him back to childhood in the new timeline — so i may as well say my piece on how i write him regarding his age to avoid confusion? ( ofc nothing wrong with the mentioned headcanon, it's just never vibed with me. )

age has been a very nebulous thing for him since pulling the master sword from its pedestal! in that he actively tries not to think about it and feels, at the same time, stuck at nine-years-old and completely adrift in some murky, timeless half-space. it was the worst immediately post-oot, where he had to adjust to not needing to compensate for being physically older at all, but sort of settled by the time he left hyrule for mm.

note that it's not literally "stuck at nine-years-old" — he can definitely act older than he is and blatantly seem so, it's more that he feels he hasn't pushed past that point? like. leaving home was life-changing and severely traumatising, so much so that he can't stop living in that "state" of being nine-years-old in that specific time period where he was, actively, the hero of time. he can't seriously contemplate a future, the way someone well-adjusted might be able to when asked something like where do you see yourself in five years.

but he also knows he can't go back to. actually being nine, even if he was sent back to that time, even when he feels like he hasn't moved on from it. murky half-space where he's nine and not; he turns ten, and he can never go back to being nine, yet sometimes he's. still there. nine. not "boy without a fairy" nine — "the hero of time" nine. it's really, really hard to explain but this will make sense to people who have the same or a similar trauma response i swear it's me. i'm people slfkjdjd

( mm did not help matters with that adrift, half-space feeling but who was really expecting it to when it's. the same three days, over and over, time passing but also not moving at all. aging feels completely surreal and irrelevant now lsfkjd )

all that to say: link's trauma affects him the way trauma might affect any child ( i.e. YEAH he's a kid who had to grow up too fucking fast ), but it does not literally age him or make him feel like he's aged to the point of being completely unfamiliar, genuinely dissociative ( generally. really bad days are a different matter, but that'd be because he feels like no body is his or "correct" then ), or even resentful of his actual-age body!