Ode To Storms, Part 2

[sinnatious]

Title: Ode To Storms

Summary: Linked Universe, 3 parts. Time is a paradox of Hylia’s own making, and this is how she deals with it. Time-centric.

Author’s Note: This is only the second time loop fic I've done but every time I'm torn between exploring endless possible loops and hurrying to the end.

 

For all the monotony, the times when they gather around the campfire in the moments of peace remain a balm on Time’s increasingly weary soul. They’re best in the middle of their journey, when they’ve all become familiar with each other but the end is not quite in sight, when Time can pretend he’s simply fallen into a comfortable routine with his fellow Links, and that these endless days are a forever he’s chosen rather than one thrust upon him.

He engages in conversation less, as it begins to tread well-worn paths, but he’s yet to tire of their company. Indeed, hearing Wind’s story about the time he fought an octorok the size of an island for the twentieth time is no different to Talon regaling him and Malon with the story of how he bought his first cow for the ranch at least twice a year. It’s one of Talon’s better stories, and the joy he gets in telling it makes it always worth sitting through it.

“What about you, Old Man?” Sky asks. “What’s the best artefact you ever collected?” They’re currently competing over ‘rare items’, and Legend is taking deep pleasure in trouncing everyone’s artefacts with his own version.

“Please let it be something this veteran over here doesn’t already have,” Warriors comments sourly to that end.

Legend gives him a grin that’s all teeth. “Just because you don’t collect anything other than clothes-”

Time’s fingers go to his hand, and Twilight interrupts, “Not your wedding ring again! Choose something else.”

Has he talked about his wedding ring that much this cycle? No matter. Time shrugs. “You’ve already seen my masks. I doubt I have anything else our Veteran doesn’t have a better version of. Or Wild, for that matter.” Wild rubs the back of his neck sheepishly as he carefully puts his pile of dragon scales and lynel horns back into his slate.

“C’mon, you must have something,” Wind needles him. “Something you haven’t shown off before!”

Another time, he’d shown off the Lens of Truth, and in desperation of novelty, Time digs through his bag to find something else. “Aha, here it is.” He holds up the crystal sickle, so it reflects the firelight.

“Pretty,” Hyrule murmurs appreciatively, and Time hands it over to him to inspect closer. “What is it?”

“It’s called the Shard of Agony.”

Hyrule immediately hands it off to Twilight like it burns. Twilight holds it like one would a particularly cranky cucoo, eyes worried.

“What a name,” Legend comments into the following silence. “What’s it do?”

“Warns me when hidden spiders are near, mostly.” Twilight relaxes, and hands the crystal sickle around to the others.

Legend guffaws. “That’s it? What do you need that for?”

“You’d be surprised,” Time replies serenely.

“With an ominous name like that, you had me worried,” Wild remarks, tapping at the crystal curiously before handing it back to him. He drops it on the way, but Time catches it mid-air and returns it to his pouch.

“Well, it’s unique, but I’d say our veteran is still in the lead,” Hyrule admits.

“Thought an antique like you might have some actual good antiques, Old Man,” Warriors ribs him.

“They’re probably brand new to him,” Wind says with a grin. “Cutting edge technology.”

“He has to make them yet, I bet,” Four adds.

“Hey!” Twilight gets offended on his behalf. “Aren’t you from an era before his?”

“Yes, perhaps our smithy should be making me some rare artefacts so I can impress you all,” Time comments dryly.

“I think you’re ancient artefact enough, Old Man,” Four jibes.

The others break into roaring laughter at that, tossing out fresh new outlandish guesses for his age.

“Come clean, Old Man, how old are you, really?” Warriors asks before they can start getting to the quadruple digits.

Time just smiles and says nothing.

………….

He doesn’t plan for Legend.

It’s halfway through a cycle. Legend is on watch, but Time can’t sleep. It’s the night of a new moon in an unknown – thought familiar by now – Hyrule, and the sky is awash with stars. Time is resting on a fallen tree beyond the edge of the camp to see them better, and Legend pauses when he approaches, evidently having had the same idea.

He half expects the veteran to go elsewhere, but Legend is stubborn enough that he simply sits a polite distance away. Far enough to discourage conversation, but not enough to prohibit it. The two of them have never been close, in any cycle. Twilight, Warriors, and Wind are the three who most often seek him out. Time gets to know Wild through Twilight usually. His relationships with Four and Sky and Hyrule wax and wane over the cycles based entirely on how much effort he puts into them. Legend, however, remains an enigma wrapped in snark and jabs and pointed jokes, who is none the less overwhelmingly reliable when it matters.

He thus expects they will sit there in companionable silence until Legend’s watch ends, but his fellow hero surprises him by breaking the silence first. “Can’t sleep?”

Time glances over at him, but Legend is simply looking up at the stars, nonchalant. “Not tonight, I think. I can take watch in your place, if you’d like.”

“Nah. I’m not really tired yet.” He pauses, then asks, far too casually, “Something on your mind?”

Time winces internally. The past few days have been rough – Twilight’s sent him more than a few worried glances – but he hadn’t realised he’d slipped enough that Legend felt the need to inquire after his well-being. Or perhaps it’s because it’s Legend – because they have never been close, Time doesn’t try as hard to pretend everything is okay around him, comfortable in the knowledge that the other hero won’t pay him any attention. Until now.

It’s a whim, and a self-indulgent moment of weakness. Time answers, “I’m trapped in a temporal loop.”

“Hah?” Legend looks over at him. “Did you just say-”

“It’s been at least a dozen times I’ve gone on this journey with all of you now.” It’s technically true, at least.

Legend stares at him, wide-eyed and confused.

“We win, every time.” He keeps his tone conversational. “No one dies, despite numerous close calls. We do everything expected, and then everyone goes home. Except for me. I return to the beginning, and do it all again.”

A scowl breaks over Legend’s face. “Haha, good one, Old Man. You nearly had me going there for a second.” Time lets the silence sit, and grow. Legend shifts uncomfortably, and finally cracks. “…You’re not serious, are you?”

Time waits a moment more, then forces a grin on his face. “Of course not. You should have seen your face, though.” He stands up, and stretches. “I might go for a walk around camp. Perhaps that will tire me out enough. Do let me know if you change your mind about watch, though.” He retreats before Legend can throw something at him.

………….

One week later, Time is the one on watch, and Legend corners him.

“It wasn’t a joke, was it?” he demands.

It has been an exceptionally long time since Time has been genuinely startled, to the point where he doesn’t have a response.

Legend doesn’t need one. He barrels on with, “I’ve been watching. You know things, things you can’t possibly know. You asked that crazy cook to make those wild fried greens for Traveller when he was having a bad day, and now they’re his favourite food. But the cook had never made those before – how did you know he could, never mind that Traveller would like it so much? None of us have had it. And that battle yesterday? When we took that stupid long route instead of the obvious path, the one that would have led us directly into the middle of that moblin camp? Or what about the day before, when we needed shelter from the rain, and you led us straight to that cave? None of us have been in this Hyrule before!” He stops, chest heaving, out of breath from his rant.

“That’s an outlandish conclusion to make from a series of coincidences,” Time replies, voice measured, but before he can continue Legend cuts him off again.

“Don’t give me that. The smithy’s noticed too, he just thinks you’re observant. But you’re careful around him. And around the farm boy, too. We’ve all thought you were just enjoying being aloof and mysterious but that’s not it, is it? You’re worried about giving away that you know more than you should, because you’ve done it all before.” He folds his arms. “I know I’m right. Once I started thinking about it, all sorts of oddities began lining up. From all the way back to when we first met. So just tell me the truth already.”

Time sighs. This is the price he pays for indulging in a moment of self-pity. He’s seen before what Legend is like when he thinks he’s found a secret – such as all the times he’s found out about Wolfie, or anything at all about Hyrule. “You’ve caught me,” he admits, hands up in surrender. “Now what?”

“Now- what do you mean, ‘now what?’ Explain it to me!” Legend demands.

“I already have, I thought.”

“More than that! How many times?”

“Around a dozen,” Time lies.

Legend narrows his eyes at him. “And it’s only you? No one else remembers?”

“Unless you’re all fantastic actors and liars.”

Legend snorts. “I’d say you have us all beat, Old Man, just on this alone. What I want to know is why you haven’t told anyone. I would have thought you’d confide in goat cheese brains, at least.”

Time raises an eyebrow. “How do you think he would react?”

Legend chews on that for a second, and concedes, “Okay, I wouldn’t tell him either, in your shoes.”

“Besides, the problem is magical in nature. I think it would simply frustrate him, being unable to help.”

Live a good life, without any regrets, Twilight says to him, every time without fail, even in the cycles where he doesn’t confirm their blood relation, where they’re not quite as close. He’s not sure he wants to face a scenario where those words won’t come, and what his protégé might say instead.

Legend leans forward. Being presented with a problem to solve has caught the veteran’s interest even more than the prospect of a secret. “Magical in nature, huh. Then why didn’t you bring it to one of us? You’re powerful, Old Man, but I don’t get the impression that magic is something you’ve studied. You’re like our traveller, you just use it without thinking about it. Which is an enormous waste of talent, by the way.”

“I have told others before, you know, even if I haven’t this time,” Time explains. “I’ve consulted with the Captain, and with Zelda.” He considers the Hero of Legend thoughtfully. “Although, since you know now, I suppose it won’t hurt to get your perspective on things. Since, as you say, you likely know the most about magic of any of us.” Even if he’s not on the same level of Zelda, he is here in the thick of things.

He thinks Zelda has the right of it, but that doesn’t mean Time isn’t still going to try to find a way to escape.

Legend nods, and Time is certain he wouldn’t have accepted any other outcome. “Tell me everything you can,” he demands. “Everything you’ve learned so far.”

Time lays out the pertinent details. It’s only the third time he’s done so to anyone other than Malon, but the words still want to stick to the roof of his mouth, still tighten his throat, still curdle on his tongue. It’s all too similar to the times he’s tried to tell people of his first quest, of a Hyrule seven years under Ganon’s rule, of explaining to old friends the things they’d done in another timeline only to be met with wariness and scepticism.

The fear is baseless, of course, in his present company. Legend has come to him wanting to believe it, and listens with nothing more than academic interest.

They sit in silence for a short while once Time is finished, staring at the crescent moon rising above the horizon. Then, abruptly, Legend says, “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Time turns back to him. “Pardon?”

“It’s you. Something’s gone wrong with your continuity, so this is, I don’t know what you’d call it. Containment?”

Time’s heart sinks. Legend’s smart, he knows that, but the fact that he so quickly reached the same conclusion Zelda did lends the theory even more weight. “Zelda thought the same.”

Legend scowls. “It’s stupid, though. Why bring you on this quest in the first place if you’re just going to wind up trapped in it?” He grumbles to himself a while, then announces, “The way I see it then, there’s only two ways out. Either we find what it is about you that’s changed enough that you’re a risk to the timeline, and fix it, or we find a way to break you out of it by force.”

“Even at the risk of another timeline?”

The younger hero turns his face away. “It’s not right. It’s not right that any one of us gets pulled into this quest, when we all thought we might finally be done. And it’s even worse if there’s one of us who can’t go home. What’s even the point then? Screw the Goddess’s will. You didn’t volunteer for this.”

He’s lucky, he thinks, that he messed up with Legend out of everyone. He doesn’t think he could handle any of them giving the Goddess the benefit of the doubt. More to the point, Legend doesn’t do pity. He’s results-oriented, maybe even more than Warriors.

“Your help will be appreciated,” is all Time says in response.

He doesn’t expect anything to come of it, but hope isn’t an emotion easily quashed in one possessing the Hero’s Spirit.

……………

The nice thing about Legend knowing is that he doesn’t even suggest that Time tell everyone else – the concept of not keeping it a secret doesn’t even occur to him, even as he scolds his elder for doing the same.

The strangest side effect is that this is the closest he and Legend have ever been. All it took was a shared secret, a problem to solve, and the barriers between them melt away. Now Legend is the one who drops himself next to him by the fire, whispering conspiracies or ideas to him at every juncture, dragging him away to perform experiments whenever they have opportunity.

They’re rarely anything Time hasn’t already attempted or considered, but he goes along with them anyhow. It costs him nothing, and he’ll never know when Legend might learn something from the attempt.

Legend hums, inspecting one of the static portals that Time has put off telling the others about just yet, to buy the two of them some time to experiment with it. “The amount of magic it requires is staggering. It’s why time travel is best done with an artefact – I used the Harp of Ages, I’d guess you use that fancy ocarina of yours.” Time tilts his head in acknowledgement. “The artefact amplifies your magic far beyond normal, but it still falls well short of one of these. So that’s a bust.”

“If we were to pool resources, though?” Time suggests. Their current strategy is to find some way to take control of or disrupt one of the portals themselves, since they act as blockers, points he can’t time travel past using his usual methods.

Legend shakes his head. “You lose efficiency, mixing magic. Maybe we’d suffer it less than most, given our situation, but the gains won’t be great enough to make a significant difference. Especially since you’ve already got the strongest magic among us, Old Man, much as I hate to say it.”

“Our traveller does some fairly impressive magic,” Time points out. More than just healing, some of the elemental spells Hyrule pulls out of thin air are equal to feats he’s only seen the likes of the Sages perform.

Legend scowls. “Yeah, he’ll be stronger than you at your age, whatever that is, but he’s gonna need another ten years to give you a run for your rupees in that department.” He points a finger at him. “You should know better than anyone that magic gets stronger with age, even if you never seem to make use of it. Could you do much of anything as kid, even with a Great Fairy’s boon? I certainly couldn’t. Even the strongest of Sages and Wisemen couldn’t do much more than run a magic lantern as children, most of them don’t get any notoriety until they’re middle aged at best. Even Zelda usually doesn’t get a proper hold of her powers until she’s a teenager.”

All facts Time is painfully aware of. “Regardless, that means we’re still short of enough magic to override the power of the portals.”

Legend screws up his face, and admits, “Yeah. Another dead end. It’s… maybe Ganon would have enough, or Zelda – maybe Traveller’s Zelda, the one who slept a hundred years or whatever? But we can’t exactly bring either of them into this.”

“It was worth exploring.” After so many failures in so many other cycles, Time takes the disappointment in stride.

Something about his tone of voice must give him away, though, as Legend gives him a hard look.

“I’ve been meaning to ask… It’s been far more than a dozen times, hasn’t it?”

Time doesn’t reply.

They stand there in silence, staring at the portal. It sits out of place among the trees of the forest, unreal in the way the fluttering shadows of leaves don’t show on it, how the wisps of purple mist dancing around the edges don’t react to the gentle breeze.

“You’ve been humouring me, then.”

“No,” Time corrects immediately. “You’ve provided a fresh perspective. Even if we haven’t found a solution, we’ve eliminated more possibilities than I’d thought of before. Confirmed some theories. You’ve helped.”

“But at the end of it, you’re still staring down another loop, aren’t you?” Time has no response to that. “We probably need to abandon the portal angle, then. I can’t think of anything else to try on that front. We’d be better off looking for the cause of why you’re stuck in this situation in the first place.”

Time suspects that approach is futile – after all, what could Legend learn in the few weeks left that Time wouldn’t already be aware of? – but he simply nods his assent. “Let’s fetch the others and move on, then.”

……………….

They are victorious. Nine portals bloom into existence around them.

“Portals?” Sky asks. “Now?”

“I guess this is the Goddess’s way of saying it’s time to go home?” Hyrule suggests. His voice quivers on the last word.

Wind stares at them, his previous jubilation drained. “Is this… goodbye?”

Four slaps him on the back. “Don’t treat it like a sad thing! We get to see our homes and loved ones again. All adventures end someday, and I’m going to remember this one fondly.”

“He’s right,” Warriors agrees. “It means we did our duty. It’s been an honour fighting with all of you, and I’ll never forget it.”

The others are nodding in agreement, and dissolve into a by now familiar rabble.

Legend grabs his arm in the fuss. “Old Man,” he hisses under his breath. “Is this-?”

Time gently disengages from his grip. “Yes. I’ll stay a while after. But don’t you want to say goodbye to everyone else properly, first?”

“But what if we need them to-”

“Then we’ll do it next time.” Time is already resigned to a next time. It’s been selfish enough to bring Legend in on it this time – he won’t subject the others to such a bittersweet victory. After all, for them, it’s the end of a successful adventure.

For a moment, he’s worried that Legend will rip that choice away from him, but then Hyrule is there, and Time watches him hesitate, then wrap the other boy in a hug. He understands, then – he no more wants to send Hyrule onward with a heavy heart than Time does. Time turns his attention to Wind, and Four, and goes through the familiar process of well wishes and farewells and last-minute pictographs by rote.

All too quickly, they’re at the final moments. Things have changed enough that Legend doesn’t pass his usual snarky commentary, instead watching Time with dark eyes as Twilight hugs him fiercely, demanding, “Live a good life, without any regrets. Promise me.”

“I expect the same of you,” Time says, and pats him on the back as they part. “I couldn’t be more proud.”

His descendent blinks back tears and gives him a smile like the sun. Legend has switched to staring at Twilight, stricken.

“Who goes where?” Four asks, eyeing the portals.

Legend normally chimes in here, but he seems shaken by something, so Time replies, “I don’t believe it matters, or there would be some sort of sign.”

“All together, then?” Sky suggests.

Everyone nods, spreading out, a portal each. Hyrule pauses by Legend, prodding him gently, finally jolting the veteran out of his daze. He shakes himself, gives a watery grin to his friend, and moves to the portal next to Time.

“I’ll miss you all!” Wind cries out.

The other seven step through, and their portals vanish. Then it’s only Legend and Time left.

Legend seems frozen, staring at the portal in front of him. Longing, Time thinks. “You can go,” he offers, gently. “You don’t have to stay on my account.”

Legend takes a deep, shuddering breath, hunches his shoulders, and turns back to him. “You don’t deserve this.”

Time glances at his portal. He could avoid this conversation, he knows, but he feels a grim responsibility to never be careless with his fellow hero’s feelings, to treat every cycle as though it could be the last. There had been moments, dark moments, in Termina where he had been cold and careless, some despondent part of him deciding that since he would rewind it anyway, what he said or did didn’t matter. Sometimes it had been necessary, but the guilt of his words and actions afterwards would crush him alive, and make him feel the monster the skull kid had tried to taunt him into becoming.

“It’s not about deserving or undeserving,” Time says. “It’s simply what is.”

“I don’t want to believe that you have to-” Legend cuts himself off. For only the second time, Time regrets telling Legend about the loop. He’s far more distressed than Warriors had been, and he knows too much – Time can’t trick him into believing it will be okay.

Legend is silent for a long time. Finally, he says, “Old Man… ignore what Zelda said, about it being you. That’s… that’s bullshit, okay. You escape this, and get a happy ending, and live a good life afterwards, one that will make your descendants proud.” He rolls up his sleeves, and starts looking around the chamber. “Let’s make the most of this, then, and get you out. You’ve said before that you’re not able to leave this chamber?”

Time shakes his head. “I have Farore’s Wind, but it never responds in the vicinity of a portal.”

Legend nods. “Right, it wouldn’t. These things have a sort of magic dampening field around them. Or maybe it’s that they use so much magic that anything but the strongest magics just get snuffed out near them.”

A point they’ve already gone over, so Time doesn’t comment. Legend turns his attention to the door and walls. “You’ve tried bombs, of course.”

“Of course.”

Legend tears into his arsenal like a man possessed, searching for ways to breach the room. Time goes along with it, perturbed by his sudden fervour. Is it because they’ve become closer over this cycle? Or is it simply because the other hero has never before been faced with a problem he couldn’t solve?

In the end though, even Legend’s stubbornness is defeated by the immovable doors and walls and ceiling. Two portals remain, waiting, even after two days of the chamber being battered by bombs, fire, ice, and everything else they could think of in increasingly eccentric combinations.

Time’s waterskin is empty, and he’s out of rations, and knows that Legend is too.

“It’s time to go.” He keeps the words soft, but Legend still flinches at them. “Don’t you want to go home?”

“I won’t really be going home, though, will I?” Legend responds tiredly, flat on his back on the floor, eyes closed. “It won’t actually happen.”

“Who can say? The Goddess has created this cycle without warning, and may end it just as suddenly.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Time tells so many lies, and this is perhaps one of the few he tells himself. “I have to.”

Legend sighs. “You really do, huh?” He sits up, and gathers his things. He looks haunted. “You’ll tell me again, right? We can skip a lot of experiments – I’ll believe you, if you tell me we’ve tried them before. We’ll get you out of this.”

“Of course,” Time says, guiding Legend to his portal. He clasps him on the shoulder, squeezes it. “Thank you,” he says, injecting all the sincerity he can muster into his voice. “I wound up putting a terrible burden on you, and all I can offer in response is gratitude.”

Legend musters a weak smile. “I don’t know, Old Man. I also accept rupees.”

Time fishes out his sack of rupees and hands it over with a smile. “By all means. I’ll get it back in a few moments.” His sense of humour has taken a turn for the macabre, and Legend has had no small hand in that over the cycles.

Legend barks out a laugh like broken glass. “Is that why we were all splurging on inn rooms last week? There’s barely any left in here.”

“There has to be some advantages to foreknowledge. Knowing how to spend rupees is one of them.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Legend pockets the sack anyway. “See you again soon, I guess,” he laments, and steps through the portal.

Time watches him go, heart heavy.

………….

A few weeks into the next cycle, Legend approaches him while he’s on watch. “Can’t sleep?” he asks gruffly. “Something on your mind?”

Time glances at him. The Hero of Legend’s shoulders are hunched, his body turned away. They’re still little more than strangers, after all.

The words rest on his lips, but then the memory of Legend’s face, twisted with defeat, flashes before his eyes.

“No,” Time says instead. “Just admiring the stars.”

………….

“You’re happier than I imagined,” Twilight blurts out a few days after their usual visit to the ranch.

Time pauses his stride. He and Twilight are walking patrol together, but the forest is quiet and warm, the birds are twittering and there are deer about, so it’s really been more of a pleasant stroll. Time already knows they won’t find trouble, after all, so he’s able to lose himself in nature. “Pardon?”

Twilight fidgets. “Um, just, seeing you with Malon, and everything… it was a completely different side of you!” He grins. “I’m glad.”

Time is simply confused. “What were you imagining, then?”

“Oh, uh, there’s just…” Twilight fumbles. “Nothing, really! There’s not much information on you that’s survived until my era. But I guess, you know, that I wondered a lot about… about the hero who came before me.”

Baffling, but Twilight is a kind sort, if occasionally clumsy about it. He and Wild are a pair that way. It’s just like him to spare a thought for other heroes long before he had the chance to meet any. “I see.”

“You never, ah, encountered anything from the hero who came before you? That was our smithy, right?” Twilight ventures.

This is an uncharted conversation for Time, but then, he’s spent more time with Twilight this cycle than usual. In an effort to avoid Legend and any further slip ups, if he’s being honest with himself. “I can’t say I did. Beyond the Master Sword itself, of course.”

“I… see. I guess it’s not likely the two of you are related. You’re almost opposite ends of the spectrum.”

Time chuckles. “You don’t think I could be descended from someone that short, is what you’re saying.”

Twilight laughs. “Can you picture it?” He threads his hands behind his head, stretching as he stares up at the sky, sunlight filtering through the leaves. It really is a pleasant day. “I know you said you grew up in the forest, so how did you, you know, learn to be a hero? How did you learn to fight with a sword?”

Time shrugs. “Through need, and circumstance, mostly. I don’t think skill with a sword is necessarily the most important part, though it certainly helps.” He pats Twilight on the back. “Our Chosen Hero was first of all of us, after all, and there was no one before him to teach him, was there?”

Twilight slumps. “He’s too good! I don’t get it. I guess I need more training.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re excellent with a blade, likely better than I was at your age,” Time notes, with pride. “I recognise some of those moves, you know. I gather you were taught?”

Twilight ducks his head, embarrassed. “I had a good teacher, yeah.”

It’s comforting to know that his descendent didn’t stumble into his adventure as unprepared as Time had been as a child. He pats Twilight on the back again, and says, “We should keep moving, or the others will wonder if we’ve found trouble.”

Time’s smile falls as they resume walking, though, the pleasant warmth from the conversation fading with every step. Will he ever escape this loop, to get to see the birth of his child? Teach them the skills that they might one day pass down to Twilight?

He wants to believe. But every time he steps through a portal to a horizon that isn’t home, he starts to doubt a little more.

………….

“What’s the song you’re always humming?” Wind asks curiously one evening when they’re sitting outside a stable in Wild’s Hyrule. Aside from the family running the place, there’s only an elderly artist and a pair of treasure hunters, so they have the place mostly to themselves.

Time quirks a smile at the young hero. “Would you like me to play it for you?” He pulls out his ocarina.

“Yes!” Wind’s boundless enthusiasm is infectious.

The pair of them are sitting by the cooking pot, under the shelter of a small roof that should keep them dry enough – and if not, the stable itself is only a few steps away. Twilight, Warriors and Wild are out on the road though, trying to coax one of the stable’s dogs into playing fetch. All the better.

“Watch this,” Time tells Wind, then raises his ocarina to his lips and begins to play.

Thunder rumbles, then a moment later clouds gather, and it begins to rain. Warriors squawks, and the three of them run to shelter while the dog barks at the sky and runs in excited circles.

“No way,” Wind says, eyes wide as he stares up at the sky, then back at Time with a growing grin. “No way.”

Time just smiles.

Wind gives him a mischievous glance. “You know, I have magic that lets me harness the power of storms! Being able to summon one on demand? We can be unstoppable!”

Time ruffles his hair. “You’re already unstoppable. But I can teach it to you, if you like.”

“Yes! Tell me everything!” Wind reaches an arm out of their shelter, as though he can’t believe the rain is real, laughing wildly. “Where did you learn it?”

The smile fades from Time’s face. “…Oh, here and there.”

How to explain a song that has no origin?

It’s a paradox. Just like him. Beautifully contained, going around and around and around forever.

…………………

It starts to be that Time sometimes can’t even bear to sit through the farewells – not when he knows he’ll see them all again in minutes. Those times he simply walks through the portal while everyone is still talking. It’s a breach in his personal philosophy, and the guilt nearly crushes him afterwards, but in the moment he finds his feet moving regardless.

Other times, in the silence of a watch held too many times, he contemplates darker ideas, even as he curses the Goddess, or whichever of her incarnations is responsible for trapping him in this mad cycle. Those nights he hums the Song of Storms under his breath until tears run down his face at the futility of it all.

Even so, Time simply can’t give up. It’s against his very nature. The Hero’s Spirit is known for determination, for endless courage in the face of adversity. For enduring when no others could, for rising up to fight when all others would falter.

Compared to Termina, it’s not even that bad. He has good company, good food, and weeks and days and months where he can sleep regularly, where the only imminent threats he needs to worry about are battles he already knows how to win. It’s not looming overhead, not pressing down on him to the point where every hour, every minute counts. He’s not constantly faced with the despair that no matter what he tries, he can never arrive in time to save Mikau, not faced with the constant fear that a single misstep will not end merely his life but all life. If he falls in this mad cycle the Goddess has trapped him in, he’s comfortably certain that the others will still manage without him. Perhaps with losses, perhaps with struggles, but after endless cycles, he’s taken their measure, and they are all worthy.

They’re his family, as much as Malon and Talon have become, and he loves them all. Enough to endure.

It wears him down, though, as surely as a river smooths a rock over decades.