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Link is done with adventuring. Despite this, it feels like the task before him is the most daunting he’s ever faced off.
He has hung up his weapons (though he keeps one sword in the bedroom just in case) and he stores all of his masks in a box in the attic. On more than one occasion, he has been moved to burn them. Bury them in the Lost Woods where no one can find them. But he never does and he never will. They are too precious to him and such an act seems disrespectful.
No, instead Link spends his time on the farm. He goes to the market on the weekends and he finds himself sorely missing eight pairs of helping hands. At least one would be helpful now, he thinks as he struggles to put Malon’s old crib back together. They’d found it in the attic, deconstructed to save space and he’s been struggling with it for nearly an hour. You would think that he’d be able to do it without help given his penchant for solving puzzles.
The nursery has been coming together nicely in the past few months but Link will be the first to admit he’s been putting this task off. Before, the room had simply been a calming place with a rocking chair. An old dresser. A box of assorted toys from Malon’s childhood. That room could be for anything, but now there is a (half-constructed) crib in it. That gives the room a specific purpose.
Of course, they’ve been planning and discussing the situation for months. Of course, Link is happily reminded of the circumstances every time he sees his glowing wife in the morning. But something about this seems so tangible to him. In only two months, there will be a baby in this crib.
Link avoids thinking about his specific baby and how worried he is concerning being a good father by thinking of babies in general. That way, he can at least be prepared. He’s never been around a baby for a long-term period before. Sure, he’s seen them and even held some over the years, but he had been the youngest in the Lost Woods while growing up. He’d never had a younger sibling to look after. For one of the first times in his life, he feels that his experiences have left him underprepared.
Babies are small. He stares at the crib’s basket and ponders this.
He’d barely had a childhood, let alone a conventional one. He struggles with authority figures because his only real parent had been a tree. He’d only been nine when the Goddess forced him to do her bidding. Too young. Too small.
His mind, of course, wanders to The Chain. Naturally, he thinks of little Wind who had been the youngest of them all. An adept fighter, sure, but where was his childhood? Legend had been a similar age when he’d started too, and he’d accomplished more in six years than Link had in an equal amount of some time loops. Some of those boys had been luckier than others in the terms of their holy lottery, but about half of them had been far too young. They were too serious sometimes. They goofed off, sure, but they were too damn serious.
Link will never forget Warriors telling him what they did with the traitors in the army. Legend recounting all of the innocent blood of brainwashed knights he had on his hands. Wind describing finding all of those little blonde girls in Ganondorf’s dungeon. Hyrule and his cursed blood that put a bounty on his head. The horror of how the Four Sword permanently changes a person. Wild, who had been too broken by the cycle to even remember the details of how he’d been poached by the royal family. They were all still boys, then. Still were when they’d confided in him about their horrible experiences.
He thinks that Sky and Twilight had it the best. It wasn’t easy for any of them, but they at least had the chance to enjoy a peaceful life for seventeen years.
The thought of Twilight gives him pause. The true nature of their relation had not been revealed to him until near the end of their quest together, though Link had suspicions about it from early on. In all honesty, Link had not considered having children until he met all of them. He hadn’t felt safe bringing a child into the world, not only because of Hyrule’s notoriously rocky political situation but because of the nature of his curse. Logically, he has always known that the Triforce would not be passed on to his offspring. That’s not how any of this works, but he’d seen some concerning patterns appear while with the others.
There was the fact that Twilight was Link’s direct descendant, yes, but also the matter of Legend and Sky. It had never been discussed as far as he knows, and he doesn’t even know if Sky ever figured it out, but he suspects that Legend had pieced it together. There are thousands of years between them, but as long as the royal family’s bloodline never broke in that time, that means that they were related too. Does this mean that Hylia prefers to keep Courage in the family? Does this mean that his son will be cursed as well? Is he only bringing more pain into this world by allowing the crib to be built?
Could he save Twilight if the thing had never been brought down from the attic?
No. The Hero of Time knows better than that. What was cannot be changed and what will always persists.
He’s still so worried that the baby will come and he will force himself to find some of Twilight’s features on his face. The baby is not Twilight—he is his own beautiful person—but… Sometimes it doesn’t feel like this is his firstborn child. It doesn’t feel like he is a new father. He’s had the practice already.
There is a disturbance down the hall and it is not long until his radiantly pregnant Malon appears in the doorway. She observes him, slumped on the floor with the crib basket in his lap, and she laughs at him. The sound is more magical than any blessed song he’s ever had the honor or obligation to play.
“You’ve not made much progress,” she says as she makes her way over to the rocking chair. She awkwardly lowers herself into it and sighs once she’s off her feet.
“I’ve been stuck in my head again,” Link says. She knows how he is—how he feels. The declaration isn’t some burden that she has to bear. Having her makes him hope that his boys have a person of their own one day to share their troubles with.
“You are going to do amazing,” she says earnestly. “I’d come over there and give you a kiss but-” she gestures to her stomach- “I just sat down.”
Link chuckles and hoists himself off of the ground so that he can stand beside his wife. He presses a kiss to her head, “This boy will be spoiled, surely.”
Malon scoffs, “This boy. We don’t know yet.”
He stands behind her chair and applies a light pressure to her shoulders, “I have a good feeling about it.”
She hums in response, “You miss your boys. I do, too. I miss having to pull up extra chairs to the dining table.”
“He’ll need a friend,” Link ponders, though it is much too soon to be thinking of that.
“Do not wish twins upon me, Sir,” Malon laughs. “We’ll get to that when the time is right.”
Yes, when the time is right. Link knows a thing or two about that. He is reminded of the end of his quest with the others—they’d been whisked away to the Sacred Realm and Hylia Herself was revealed to them. She offered each of them a wish for all of their trouble—the standard reward for ending a mission with the touch of the Triforce.
He had wanted to abstain. Link is tired of those games, and had let all of the others go ahead of them. Some shared their wishes, some did not. But Link—Time—had thought it over while he waited and, ever the diplomatic, he decided he would take this opportunity to share his grievances.
“Stop taking them so young,” he’d demanded. “Let them be boys first.”
And Hylia had accepted this, though he doubts that She can control such a thing. All he asks is that She enact a little divine intervention to put off the end of the world for a few years longer. Let them play in the dirt first. Let them have their first kiss. Let them experience the good before they are exposed to evil. Let boys be boys, not soldiers. Not pawns. Not cogs in a machine.
Link tries not to wonder if the cycle will ever be broken. He tries not to wonder if Hylia will uphold her end of the bargain. If he’ll ever see his boys again and if Twilight will live a long, happy life.
He knows the answer. Some of them will make awfully good bedtime stories—fantasies about a boy who could turn into a wolf and songs that could change the weather and the immortal children of the forest. Because that’s all they will be: stories. His child will be mundane and he’ll have to have faith if he wants to believe in it.
But Link knows what’s out there, so he’ll continue to polish the sword hanging over the fireplace.