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Published:
2024-02-06
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2,735
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1/1
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silent song

Summary:

(totk) Link finds Kass standing next to Lover's Pond, playing his accordion just like he used to.

“You can tell me anything, friend. This conversation stays between you and me.”

Link shakes his head, because he can shoot a Gleeok thrice in the eye but he can’t ever find the right words. Luckily, he’s in the company of a poet.

“You miss her.”

Notes:

warning for ambiguous character death (a.k.a. it's up to your interpretation)

** major spoilers for totk **

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Link is confronted, as always, with words he doesn’t know how to say. Kass’ children run circles around him, wingtips stretched up to embrace the sun that has recently returned to Rito village. Amali cooks salmon meunière, smiling as she meets his gaze over the pot.

“Care to join us, Link? There’s plenty to share.” 

He steps closer to the cooking pot, letting the steam get in his eyes. There’s a hole in his chest, but food won’t fill it.

Where’s your husband, he wants to ask. Is he okay? Is he alive? Where is he? How can I find him? 

“Is something wrong?” Molli stops and tilts her head, hoop earrings swinging. “You look sad.” 

Where is your father? Link wants to ask but doesn’t, because he knows how horrible it feels when people ask him about Zelda. 

At first, they assume that if he’s here then she must be close behind, because they know that he would never let her die before he does. They know that he’d never leave her side.

His chest fills with pride, quickly followed by guilt, and it must show on his face because the people’s smiles always turn a little too encouraging, a little too hopeful. Fake. 

“You’ll find her, I’m sure of it.”

Link never knows what to say then, because he has found her. He knows exactly where she is. What he doesn’t know is how to explain what’s happened, or if anyone will believe him. What if they don’t believe him? What if they laugh at him, yell at him…his throat is so tight he can barely swallow. His ears turn red when he’s about to cry, and he feels like crying when his ears turn red, and he just can’t stand to be there another moment longer. He always mumbles a quick apology and retreats to the house in Hateno, slams the door and slumps against the cold wood. 

He breathes deep in the solitude, closing his eyes and letting his arms fall to the side. But once he’s alone, he can never cry. In fact, he can’t feel anything at all. He claws at his chest, scrapes the sides of his ribcage but all he digs up is nothing. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. His heart is bottomless pit and he can’t even jump in. He can’t even cry. He can’t do anything. 

To be a hero is to be helpless, he thinks as he presses his forehead against Zelda’s, suspended ten thousand feet in the air. I’m so helpless. 

The Light Dragon, of course, does not say anything. 

“I’m sorry,” he manages to whisper, because the shape of the words have become so familiar that they take no effort to repeat. He runs cautious hands through her fur, checking the wound where the sword had been. It is healing, but much slower than he would like. He knows it was her choice, and he tries to respect that, but sometimes he can’t help but wish that he could have been the one to take the blade through his skull. Sometimes, looking at the wound, he feels like he did. He kisses the scar, and then kisses it again because nothing he does ever feels like enough.

He wonders if she feels anything in this form, or if by giving up her humanity she’s become just like him. The ancient islands that have appeared in the sky only remind him how lonely it is up here. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, because it feels better than ‘goodbye’ as he spreads his arms and lets the wind take them their separate ways. 

The brief comfort these moments bring is never enough to justify the agony of the emptiness that rushes to greet him once he hits the ground. Still, he can’t stop himself from returning to her. 

Once, he managed to catch a star fragment as it fell through the sky. He had dived alongside it, dipping his hands into its trail of light, only to realize that it didn’t matter once he reached the ground. The star was just as useless as the others in his swollen pack, rarities that he collected just because he could. All these stars in the palm of his hand; enough food to feed an army at his fingertips. All these items that he doesn't really need, but that he holds onto anyway because it feels good to hold on to something. Something tactile, something besides the terrible, stomach-churning, life-changing secret that isn’t really a secret at all, except for the fact that he decided it should be.  

He knows can’t ever tell anyone. He doesn’t know how. He lost his voice in the gap between his hand and Zelda’s. When the Gloom Spawn reach for him, they never cover his mouth. They know he won’t scream.

To be a hero is to be helpless. Others have said that guilt feels like drowning but to Link, guilt feels like someone is holding his head above the surface, craning his neck back and forcing him to take breath after desperate breath.

King Rauru had warned him that the gloom would linger in his lungs until he found a way to dispel it, but it only took a few light orbs to prove what Link already knew. The gloom has never been the reason his chest hurts. No matter how many light orbs he collects, breathing is still painful. Speaking is worse. 

Sometimes, when he feels especially lost, he thinks he hears the sound of an accordion drifting through the wilderness. It’s bittersweet and haunting, the sound of a home he can no longer return to. The forget-me-nots in the vase by the bed he used to share with Zelda wilt in less than a week. He returns every few days to replace them, because even though he can never pick the right words he does know how to pick flowers. He leaves soon after, because the well-kept house is lonelier than any of the ancient ruins he’s wandered through.

He asks Hudson to build him a new house, thinking maybe he’ll be able to rest there, sleep there, maybe even cry there. He can’t. When he throws a fire fruit at a mimic tree it continues to chase him, trunk and leaves ablaze. 

Every time he dives into the depths he’s reminded of how hollow Hyrule is. It’s so empty beneath the surface. It’s lonely. It’s quiet. Link hums to himself while he cooks because he hopes that somewhere, somehow, someone will recognize the tune. Somewhere, somehow, someone will sing along. No one ever does. 

Where is Kass? he doesn’t know how to ask, because he’s afraid of the answer. Silences slows his thoughts and swells his tongue. The gazebo atop Washa’s Bluff is empty. No one speaks Kass’ name. 

Still, in his loneliest moments, he swears he hears the bard’s accordion. The notes are faint and familiar, almost teasing, like something you can find if you just look long enough. He always gives up a few minutes into the search, though. He can’t afford to indulge his lonely mind—who knows what other sorts of tricks it’ll think it can get away with.  

One day, however, he can’t help himself. He pulls himself up Tuft mountain so quickly that he has to cram a mushroom skewer in his mouth twice to keep himself from falling off, and then he nearly falls off again once he reaches the top. 

Kass looks exactly as Link remembers him. He stops playing and waves, smiling as clear and free as the sky before it was crowded with ancient islands.

“Ah, we meet again! What brings you here, young champion? It’s lovely to see you.” 

The tears are down Link’s cheeks before he realizes that he’s crying. He puts a hand over his mouth and wonders why here, why now. Of all the times he had tried to cry and all the times he couldn’t…why now? 

“Oh…oh! Dear, sorry,” Kass mutters, shuffling in a small circle. Link tries to pull himself together for the bard’s sake but he can’t; he’s spilling out all over the place. He doesn’t even realize they’re standing in front of Lover’s Pond until he has to stop himself from falling in. He scrubs his eyes, sighing. He had been trying to avoid this particular location for what he assumes are obvious reasons, but he supposes it’s too late to leave now.

“I hope this isn’t rude to ask, but are you doing alright, friend? You look a little worse for wear, like my poor accordion here.”

He runs a careful wing along keys that are well-worn in a way that makes Link’s heart ache. The old instrument looks exhausted, but well-loved in a way a person could only hope to be. Link starts crying all over again. He still doesn’t really know why.

“You’ve had a long journey, haven’t you? Is there something you’d like to share?” 

Link shakes his head. There's always ssomething he’d like to share, but he can’t tell Kass; he can’t. Not after the bard had already dedicated years of his life searching for ancient songs to bring to him. A bouquet of melodies for a fallen hero. Condolences for a terrible fate. 

“You can tell me anything, friend. This conversation stays between you and me.” 

“I think,” Link says, because it’s the only thing he can think to say. “I missed you.” 

‘I missed you,’ doesn’t describe the way the wind had whistled through the pillars of the empty gazebo, nor how bitter the salmon meunière had tasted. It doesn’t describe the feeling of a grief that doesn’t speak it’s own name, a grief that doesn’t speak at all because silence is most terrifying when there’s nothing to fill it. 

However, Link finds ‘I missed you’ does describe the way he feels now, the way that tears spill over his cheeks so fast that he can’t feel them, the way his breath comes in sharp rasps and the way that his chest clenches around something, something—although far from comforting, is at least more than nothing. It’s something to hold onto. Something to believe in. 

“Yeah,” he repeats. “I missed you.” 

“Me? Oh, well I’m flattered, truly,” Kass dips his head, a proud feather on his chest. “But—and pardon me for saying this—these are a lot of tears. I don’t think they’re all for me. Something else has happened, hasn’t it?”

Link shakes his head, because he can shoot a Gleeok thrice in the eye but he can’t ever find the right words. Luckily, he’s in the company of a poet.

“You miss her.” 

His voice softens on ‘her’ in the same way that Link’s does, in the way that Urbosa used to tease him about, in the way that makes the Hateno school children giggle and whisper in poorly-kept rumors. It softens in a way that shows that even if Kass doesn’t know what happened, he understands. He cares.

The sudden rush of tears come closer to strangling Link than any monster ever has. They force him to his knees, his forehead barely hovering over the surface of Lover’s Pond. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, voice so thin it tears his throat. “I lost her.” 

Spoken to everyone else thus far, the words had been an explanation. Spoken to Kass, they feel like a confession. Link had learned to keep his guilt private, locked in a box with all his other emotions that only one girl held the key to because…well, because she was really pretty, first of all, but more importantly because he trusted her with his life. She had trusted him with her life, too, but then he had lost her and the key to the box along with her. And now that Kass’ accordion has wrenched the box open, Link doesn’t have a means of locking it again.
 
Kass’ smile is kind. “No one’s ever truly lost. We’re only ever found. Like you found me, standing here and practicing my little song.” 

He plays a few notes, a tune so happy that it turns sad in the sunset light. When viewed upside down, the heart-shaped shores of Lover’s Pond look like the point of an arrow. 

“I thought you were dead,” Link blurts out before he even realizes that the thought was in his head to begin with. At first he's horrified, and then humiliated, but the bard's smile never once loses its kindness.

“Dead? No. And even if I was, I wouldn’t be. There are still people who remember me, you see. People like you.” 

The sunset eats at the edges of Kass' silhouette, and Link wonders if anyone who has seen ghosts would be able to describe what they look like. He wonders if a lonely person would be able to tell the difference. He peers into Lover’s Pond and sees Zelda.

At first he gasps, and then against his better judgement he looks up. The Light Dragon’s claws tear the clouds as she flies, pulling herself through the sky and pulling her reflection into the frame of the pool. Kass stops playing and turns, following Link’s gaze through the clouds. 

“She’s beautiful,” he murmurs. “A truly divine spirit. I’ve always thought she looks a bit lonely, though.”

Link grimaces, putting all his energy into dragging himself back from the line he said he’d never cross. Much to his dismay, Kass interprets his strained expression as something else. His gaze drops back to his accordion. 

“Ah, maybe that’s just my homesickness. We poets do like to project.”

“No,” Link says, because he feels like he needs to. “She looks lonely to me, too.”

When Kass looks at him, his eyes widen barely enough to notice, like he’s trying to hide the fact that they did. For the first time in his life, Link wonders if he’s said too much. But Kass only smiles and returns to his song. 

“Well,” he says, swaying. “I hope, someday, we all find what we’re looking for.”

Suddenly, Link shoots to his feet, feeling desperate in a way he hasn’t since he was seventeen. 

“Will I ever see you again?” 

“What kind of question is that?” Kass chuckles. “You can come to see me any time you like.”

It’s not the answer Link wants. It’s never the answer Link wants. He feels like a crumpled up cloth, a tapestry embroidered with the story of a hero and a princess that everyone forgot.

Where is Kass? Link doesn’t know, but there’s an empty gazebo in Washa’s Bluff and a lingering melody in his head. The flowers by their bedside are wilting. Nolstagia is the name of a home you can no longer return to. Time is an illusion until one day, it’s so real that it takes your breath away.

Kass stops playing. 

“Did I ever tell you why I wanted to become a bard?”

Link shakes his head. 

“A song committed to memory can live on forever. A memory committed to song can last for thousands and thousands of years, until it reaches just the right person. The person who’s been waiting to hear it.”

Link closes his eyes and listens for something as improbable as the notes of an accordion in the wilderness. He reaches into his chest and clings tight to that something he’s found, something as rare as star plucked from midair. He grabs it and holds it tight, because maybe it doesn’t matter that he can hold a galaxy in the palm of his hand as long as Zelda is still stuck in the sky, and maybe no one will believe that this happened once he hits the ground, but that doesn’t change the fact that he will remember that it did. When you find something precious, you hold it close to your chest and you never let go. Miracles are often disguised as opportunities, and opportunities are often disguised as memories. The boy who came back from the dead should know. 

“You said this conversation stays between you and me, right?”

Kass turns to him and smiles, just like he used to when Link discovered the correct answer to one of his riddles. Like he was impressed. Like he was proud.  

“I won’t tell a soul. Keeping any secret of yours would be an honor.”

“Alright, then. Can I tell you something?” 

 

 

Notes:

i wrote this because, frankly, i needed it. i hope it finds the right people <3

⋆˚ ✧.

thank you so much for reading, truly, it means more than i have words for. and as always, i hope you have a lovely rest of your day/night <33