Chapter Text
Pain tears at the inside of your throat. Your legs ache and your vision blurs as you run through the field with energy that must come from sheer willpower alone. You can’t hear anything but your own heavy, pained breathing. You can’t feel anything but the ache and the rain slapping against your face. You can’t think anything but the same, desperate mantra repeated over and over again in tune with your heavy footsteps into the mud: you have to find Link.
For a moment you pause to catch your breath, halfway hidden behind a tree as you take in your surroundings. It’s hard to see with the unnatural dark blanket covering the sky and the smoke from the dozens of fires scattered across Central Hyrule. Urbosa is dead. Revali is dead. Daruk is dead. Mipha is dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead. Some of the best Hyrule had to offer, gone without fanfare, their Divine Beasts turned into ruthless killing machines.
You clutch at your side, nausea climbing your throat. You can’t cry. You can’t throw up. You have to keep running, to find Princess Zelda and Link. Knights and civilians alike are on the field fighting bokoblins, lynels and guardians, and here you are hiding. You tell yourself to move, but you find yourself unable to. Something wet and sticky oozes between your fingers at your side. From the distance you can hear screaming to run as a guardian charges up its lethal beam.
You’re frozen. All the years you spent training, honing your body and your mental fortitude for exactly something like this seem to slip through your fingers like sand and you’re left watching helplessly as the guardian aims and shoots right into the ruins of the house a crowd of civilians had run into. There’s screaming. The smell of burnt flesh mingling with the smell of smoke and ashes. Nothing but death and hopelessness. The guardian rotates as if to look around and only when it turns to look directly at you do you run, barely managing to dodge the beam that goes flying into the trees.
You don’t stop running until you find Krile leaned up against a wall–or what’s left of it–with a hand on his abdomen. His face is pale as a sheet of paper, and when you call his name he barely even registers it. He murmurs yours back weakly as you close the distance just in time to catch him as he falls forwards.
“How bad is it?” You ask, because you don’t have time to waste on niceties and vagueness. You’re all going to die. You can only hope that it will have been worth it. Krile grimaces, lifting his hands from his abdomen for a second only for blood to squirt out from a deep, terrible wound in his stomach.
“Pretty bad, it looks like,” Krile says with a wry laugh. Your fingers dig into his shoulders and he squints at you. “You’re hurt, too.”
“Not too badly,” you lie, even as you feel your side slowly going numb. Later. You can think about that later. “I need to find Princess Zelda.” I need to find Link , you think. Krile bobs his head. “Have you seen them?”
“Last I saw they were heading for Fort Hateno,” he murmurs. “Everywhere is overrun with guardians.”
“I know,” you reply as you start half-carrying him into the nearest ruin. “I’ll send someone for you when I get there. There will be medics at Fort Hateno.” He laughs, lifting a hand to press it against your cheek, leaving sticky stains of blood there.
“Go,” he says. And so you do.
You’re halfway through Blatchery Plain when your foot catches on something and you fall into the mud face first. You swear, edges of your vision blurred with exhaustion and try to pull your leg out. Your fingertips tremble, breath uneven and head swimming as you fight to keep yourself awake. You’re so close. They have to be here somewhere. You tug at your leg again, but it’s stuck inside a rotted tree stump.
And then you hear it: the tell tale thunk of a guardian approaching, the loud beep of a beam winding up. A red line pierces the sky and lands on your chest. You wrestle against the rotted tree, pulling and tugging and hitting your fist against the cracks where it engulfs your foot. No, no, no. The beeping noise grows faster, louder, somehow echoing the haphazard speed of your own heart. Not like this. You’re so horribly, tragically close.
The beeping stops.
* * * * *
“Listen,” you mutter, squinting up at the gerudo guard closest to you. She peers back down at you with a mixture of disdain and annoyance, an expression you imagine must be perfectly replicated on your own face. It’s so damn hot, even in your summer tunic and with the absence of chainmail you feel like you’re a smooth breeze away from falling over from dehydration. You just know you’re going to find sand in all your belongings for months. And worst of all, no one wants to cooperate with you. You adjust the strap at your chest, shield and sword dangling at your back.
“I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here.” The gerudo woman’s eyes narrow into thin slits as if to say she doesn’t believe that. You keep your tone neutral and passive, because you always learned not to make any sudden movements when faced with a dangerous predator. “But I imagine you understand why the kingdom would want to investigate this properly.”
You don’t want to bring treaties and responsibilities and ahem –past experiences into this, but you’re running out of roundabout, polite ways to say ‘remember the last time you guys hid a male gerudo and the world almost ended’ and the guard seems not especially charmed by your diplomacy.
“Yes,” the woman replies, her voice deep and naturally intimidating. “I imagine the kingdom is very invested, considering the princess is sending her personal guard all the way from the castle to deal with it.”
“Right,” you mutter, not especially entertained by the mocking tone in her voice. It seems that even now, centuries into the treaty between Gerudo and Hyrule, there’s still this natural disinclination to trust the other. They might let you into their town, but they won't reply to your questions more than absolutely necessary, despite your official letter with the royal insignia. You're not really surprised. You’d been frustrated yourself with Princess Zelda’s decision to send you alone on the long trek to the desert even after her explanation that sending you would show a certain kind of respect.
Frankly you’re not too keen on it, for multiple reasons, but here you are; sand in your shoes, sun in your eyes, legendary sword hot and heavy against your back. Another insistence from Princess Zelda, one you’re not sure you really understand. It’s true that the Triforce of Power has favored the gerudo men for eons, but if you’re honest you don’t put much stock in the rumors. And even then the chances that the sword would react to a hypothetical gerudo male when not even the princess has awakened to the Triforce of Wisdom—and this is basically a given, all things considered—you highly doubt some random, snotty gerudo kid could trigger the sword to wake from its slumber.
The guard stares at you. You stare back. There’s a crowd that’s gathered at the square to watch, frustratingly similar to that one time in Castle Town when you had to get into a public dispute with a trader for selling unauthorized hallucinogenic mushrooms. The audience whispers—is that the Master Sword?, is she really Princess Zelda’s personal guard?, who is she looking for?—and a tingle of annoyance creeps down your spine.
The gerudo guard is the first one to fold. Small victories.
“You’ll have to talk to Lady Urbosa,” she says, as if that wasn’t what you’ve been saying this whole time. You bite back the remark that tickles at the back of your throat, bowing your head respectfully instead as the woman turns to lead you further into Gerudo Town and up the stairs to the throne room.
* * * * *
The gerudo are intimidating people in general—tall, beautiful, eyes sharp enough to kill—but somehow they all pale in comparison to their leader; an impossibly tall, impossibly muscular woman named Urbosa. She looks down at you from her throne, golden circlet and shimmering gemstones jangling against each other like a haphazard melody as she moves her leg and crosses her arms. With one spear wielding guard on either side and gerudo soldiers lined up like statues scattered around the room, you feel very much like a hare in a den of wolves. The Princess’ personal protector or not, there’s not a lot you could do should they decide they’ve had enough of your snooping.
Urbosa’s voice is like a clap of thunder as she greets you by name, an unexpected honor. She was in Hyrule for Princess Zelda’s coming of age celebration, but you had not expected her to remember you.
“Lady Urbosa,” you return with a cordial bow, more second nature than a conscious gesture—these kinds of platitudes mean little here, but you’re too used to them not to do them. “I hope you’ve been well.”
She ignores the small talk, thank god, and moves right onto the topic at hand. “The Hylians must be getting restless,” she says. “Looking for enemies under specks of sand.”
You make a mental note that no one has straight out said ‘there’s no male gerudo here’ yet, which is worrying to say the least. You had hoped that at least someone as serious and important as Lady Urbosa herself would have alleviated your worries without unnecessary preamble.
“Indeed,” you tell her, making your voice lighthearted and playful. A learned skill, not one that comes to you naturally. According to the princess, you have a tendency to come off dismissive. You haven’t had the heart to tell her that’s because you don’t care, so faux joviality it is. “It’s been too long since we had any significant intrigue. What could be more exciting than a hidden gerudo heir?”
Urbosa’s mouth twitches at the jab. Perhaps it’s best to keep to your droll neutrality for now.
“With all due respect,” you clear your throat. Hopefully you haven’t mucked it up too bad just yet. “All I need is confirmation that the rumors are untrue. Or, should they not be, for the hypocritical gerudo boy to join me to see the King and make a declaration.”
“I’m aware of the details of the treaty,” Urbosa replies sharply. “As I’m sure you remember, it was the gerudo who drafted it, not the hylians.”
That might be the case, you think, biting the inside of your mouth. But you’re the one refusing to tell it straight right now. You think she’s trying to bait you into saying something, and so you make sure that you don’t. Instead you just look at her, knowing full well that your lack of social decorum is a weapon on its own; the ability not to get uncomfortable in long stretches of silence and unblinking eye contact saving you from more than one unbearable conversation.
The gerudo chief scrunches up her nose at you, as if she finds your presence particularly unpleasant. You hope she does, maybe she’ll relent and let you leave sooner. Then she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose as she leans against the golden backrest of her throne.
“Uvite will take you to a guest room,” she says, nodding in the direction of a younger looking gerudo–more an apprentice than a warrior. You’re not sure if this is an insult or a token of trust. Or maybe you’re just over analyzing it and it means nothing at all. The girl in question grimaces, and at least you know what that means. You can’t say you blame her. “You’ll wait there until you’re collected.”
And if you had to pinpoint a moment in time when you realized that you were not, as you’d hoped, going to be reassured and sent back home; there it was. The guards look at each other, at their chief, with carefully neutral expressions and fingers tight around their weapons. There’s an oppressive sort of quiet over the room as they all await your response.
You really wish she’d sent someone else.
* * * * *
The Goddess herself seems to take pity upon you in the end. Or maybe she just has a twisted sense of humor. Whatever the case, everything sort of resolves-slash-gets-ten-times-more-complicated as you’re walking from the throne room and into an alley supposedly leading towards the inn where you’re supposed to stay while the chief deliberates with her advisers. Uvite, who despite her age is pretty much your height, walks with deliberately long steps in order to keep a distance lest she be roped into one of your awkward attempts at small talk, and you find yourself lagging behind to take in the scenery.
It’s getting darker, and therefore colder; the desert is an ever-temperamental place when it comes to temperature. Part of you can’t wait to get into a room and under a blanket–you haven’t slept in a bed since you left Hyrule to go on this fruitless journey. The gerudo might not be known for their hospitality, but they are known for their soft fabrics and pretty silks and frankly anything beats the scratchy blanket you’ve got rolled up in your bag at this point.
But– just as you imagine yourself sinking into a bed and falling asleep without the worry that you’re going to wake up with a keese attached to your ass cheek, there’s a tug at your back. From the corner of your eye you see a soft, blue glow and you almost fall backwards trying to get a better glimpse of it before you realize it’s coming from the Master Sword. There’s just no way. What kind of godly intuition does Princess Zelda have?! You flip around just in time to see a figure disappear around a corner and without thinking about it you bound after it before Uvite even has the time to register that you stopped following her.
The figure is fast, already rounding another corner when you slide across the sand, almost slipping as you charge after it. This person, whoever it is, might be fast, but you’ve trained under the hylian militia since you were sixteen; what you lack in speed you make up for in agility. You jump onto a wall and climb onto the roof to get a better view. You spot the figure running and turning left into a slim, dark alley and scale the flat rooftops to follow, hoping to catch them by surprise. They look back, slowing down when they seem to think they’ve lost you. The Master Sword pulsates, eager to be reunited with a Triforce bearer now that it's been woken from its slumber. You jump down, unsheathing your own sword more as an intimidation tactic than a real threat.
“Don’t move!” You command, taking in the stranger.
And what do you know–the gerudo were hiding a boy after all. For quite a while, too, it seems by the look of him: he’s tall, broad shouldered and well defined. From the outset, he sports the same dark skin, red hair, and toned musculature. On top of that, he's wearing traditional gerudo pants and a top that covers one of his arms and not much else. There’s no question that the person in front of you is 1) a gerudo and 2) undoubtedly a man.
The strangest thing, though, is not the details of his anatomy–unusual as it might be. For as long as you’ve read in recorded history there’s a certain pattern with things, most of all with the Triforce wielders. An implication that no matter what, some things will stay the same through any and all reincarnations. The Triforce of Power goes to the king of the gerudo; Ganon, Ganondorf, Dragmire or whatever else he calls himself in that timeline. The Triforce of Wisdom belongs to Princess Zelda, a direct descendant of the Goddess Hylia herself. And the Triforce of Courage; the hero himself, the one destined to save Hyrule from whatever tragedy is happening in that era. The hero is a variable where the princess and the evil king have never been. Sometimes he’s a farm boy. Sometimes he’s a knight. But he always steps up and he always defeats the evil king in the end.
Apparently, you think with a numb sort of bemusement as you look down at the back of his hand, fate has decided to try something new this time around.
And so, as you stand in an alley in Gerudo Town with a glowing Master Sword and a strange man in front of you, you know one thing with absolute certainty:
The gerudo standing in front of you, looking like he wants nothing more than to run away, is the Legendary Hero reborn.