31_days | [9-Oct-2021] [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild] Courage Need Not Be Remembered

Title: Courage Need Not Be Remembered
Day/Prompt: 9. A sliver of invisibility
Fandom: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Character/Pairing: Link, Gen
Rating/Warning(s): Implied PTSD
Word Count:1192
Summary: There are some things that create scars too deep to ever truly forget them.

Cross-posted to my account.

Courage Need Not Be Remembered

A gong sounds and Link's heart stops.

His hands are shaking and the muscles in his legs suddenly feel all of the hard miles he's traveled over the past week -- two weeks? He's not sure. A trickle of sweat slides down his back, his mind irrationally telling him that it's the feeling of the guardian's targeting laser zeroing in on the spot that its attack beam will do the most damage. It's a ridiculous thought informed only by fear -- he knows this, has encountered the guardians before on the Great Plateau, and confirms it when he finally (how long has it been? Moments? Minutes?) looks down to see the red circle jittering over his arm. He knows where the guardian is now, he just doesn't know where the fear came from.

Link looks to his right and sees a row of crumbled buildings along the dirt road he was crossing and makes a run for it without even thinking about risking a glance back to see if the guardian is following him -- if it even can follow him. He saw the tapestry at Impa's, saw the army of guardians like a giant school of squids or spiders with their tall bodies and long, gangly legs. But the only guardians he'd encountered before now that still had any life left in them had long-since lost their legs, stuck in the ground and only able to swivel their heads to try and track him, but nothing more.

Link hopes that that's the case with this one. Hopes that, when he ducks into one of the crumbled homes of a long-dead Hylian who may have curled up in the same corner he does, praying not to be found, the guardian will lose track of him and swivel its head around and he can just sneak around the other way and get the hell out of here.

No such luck.

Link can hear the sound of hard and heavy but quick footsteps approach on the road, sounding just off enough from a cantering horse to be eerie. As they reach the ruins of the house, Link risks a glance out the window, shifting as quietly as he can (can they hear?) to crane his neck and see. It's so close. The targeting laser is off, but it's head swivels from side to side, looking for him. Link ducks back down, but keeps an eye on the window, watching as the guardian moves on down the road, its head bobbing in an oddly smooth motion that gives the strangest impression that it's floating through choppy water on a raft. At least until it travels down the road far enough that Link can see those spidery legs stamping over the dirt.

He watches the guardian stop, scan the road, and then swivel its head around to come back the way it came, still searching for him but not finding him. Reassured that he's well and truly hidden for now, Link ducks back into his corner to try and assess the situation.

He's not even entirely sure what happened. He was warned -- by multiple people even -- to avoid the northern half of Hyrule Field. The closer you get to the castle, they told him, the more guardians there are stalking around. Link knows he needs to make his way to the castle eventually, but there's so much to do to prepare before he can even think of that. So he'd kept his distance.

Or at least he thought he had.

He'd done what the old man's ghost had suggested, he'd climbed up to the top of a tall hill to get the lay of the land, to orient himself with his view blocked on one side by the Plateau, and on the other by the hill he'd climbed, the ruins of some sort of tall arena carved into its side, covered in Ganon's malice and now a den for his monsters. From there, Link could see straight to the castle and the menacing aura of power around it. But closer than that -- not much farther down the road running beside the arena -- was a shrine he hadn't seen before. And beyond that was a tower. The tower that would unlock the part of his map that would show him Hyrule Field, that would help him avoid getting too close to the castle before he's ready.

But the tower must be closer to the castle than he thought if there's a working guardian stalking around this close to it.

He's not sure what to do.

He could make a run for it, wait for the guardian to turn its back on him and sprint for the tower. Hope that the guardian doesn't turn around quickly enough to see him again before he reaches it and can duck into one of the balconies running up the side of the tower. But going closer to the tower means going closer to the castle. Even if it's only a matter of yards, Link knows that the guardians have an impossibly long range. They don't have to be stuck to the base of the tower to lock onto him.

Link is shaking and sweating again just thinking about it and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes to try and ground himself.

It's not that he thinks he shouldn't be afraid of them. They're large, seemingly indestructible, and deadly. There's a reason that no one lives on or near Hyrule Field anymore. It's obvious that having a healthy fear of the guardians is one of the most important things to have to stay alive in this post-Calamity world. It's the panic that bothers Link. The terror that seems to shoot out from his very bones, that screams at him to run away as fast as he can, that pleads in his mind, "Not again!"

Link shudders as the guardian stalks past him again, curling up tighter in his corner, even though he knows that it can't see him.

He wishes that he was at Impa's. Wishes he could ask her why. But he knows, instinctively, that she won't tell him. She'd charged Link with rediscovering his own past. No one else can remember it for him.

And to do that? He needs to reclaim the lands of Hyrule that Ganon took from them one hundred years ago.

Link peers around the edge of his shelter, watching the guardian's head swivel this way and that before turning around and making another pass down his road. He uncurls from his corner and carefully slips around the other side of the lone standing wall as the guardian passes him going the other direction. He stays crouched and quiet as he makes his way down to the road, then, with the guardian's back to to him, Link sprints across and runs for the tower, scrambling around the ruins of more houses on the other side.

The gong sounds and he runs.

Through trees and more ruins, finally over a fallen guard tower and into a plaza, nothing between him and the tower anymore but flat, open ground.

He hears two more gongs, and Link runs.

-end