Rain's Writing Archive

remembering

Originally posted to Ao3 on 3/23/2024.

A/N: had this idea living in my head for a week, enjoy!

Link's memory is practically nonexistent.

He recognizes the voice that woke him up and talked to him on top of the tower. The Old Man that told him to collect treasure from the Shrines is familiar. But he can't put a finger on who they are or how he knows them.

It's frustrating, because they both know who he is, somehow, and he must've known them at some point, but the answers to who they are lie just out of his reach.

He does his best to ignore his frustrations in favor of getting his hands on the Old Man's paraglider. He was tasked with getting the treasure from all four Shrines on the Great Plateau in exchange, and he's managed to get three so far. The only one left is the one in what the Sheikah Slate calls the Eastern Abbey. The walls and broken mechanical things surrounding the Shrine had deterred him before, but it was the last one left, and he wasn't about to give up.

Link approaches the Abbey from the front, having climbed down from the Stasis Shrine around an hour before and rested at the Old Man's hut for a while. He hasn't seen or heard any bokoblins around, and the area seems safe enough. He lets his guard down.

All of the mechanical things all lie dormant, having long been either deactivated or destroyed by time and the elements. Each and every one is covered in a layer of moss and vines, just like everything else on the Plateau.

Then, inexplicably, one starts moving.

It's body is half-buried, but the top two sections spin freely. It's eye blinks to life, glowing an unnatural blue.

It catches sight of Link, and his heart stutters in his chest.

Flashes of malice red and Sheikah blue go through his mind. There's searing hot pain, mechanical beeping, the smell of melting flesh and blood, a determination to keep going to protect her, gold light and then nothing.

His breaths speed up, growing quicker and shallower as a thin red beam of light – a laser – locks onto him.

Link's mind screams at him to move, to run, to fight, but his feet are rooted to the spot.

He can't move.

He's shaking, not from cold, but from fear.

These things are why he can't remember. He remembers now that there's something to remember in the first place.

These things are why he's here.

It's beeping.

The beeping is bad. This is something Link remembers. Beeping is bad because what comes after is worse.

The beeping gets faster. Link's feet may as well have turned to stone for as much as he can move them.

He's going to die here.

The red laser disappears with a final beep, and his body moves before he tells it to, barely dodging the white-hot beam of energy that follows.

The beam passes right through the spot he was just standing. It hits a wall, shattering a hole in the stone and leaving a scorched black mark behind.

Link lands roughly on the ground. Something makes a crunching noise that is anything but good, and his right wrist is suddenly in a lot more pain than it was before.

The machine doesn't seem content with missing its shot. It targets Link again.

He won't survive if he stays where he is.

Link bites his tongue and pushes through the pain. He stands and, purely on instinct, raises his shield.

He may not have a working sword hand, but he won't go down without a fight.

The machine beeps faster, and it fires a beam.

Time slows down as the beam hits the shield. The shield is in bad condition, stolen from a bokoblin and already used to deflect enemy attacks many times before. Link can feel the heat of the beam, can imagine – or maybe remember – it rending and melting his flesh.

But as time slows, he is unfaltering.

He parries the beam with his half-broken shield, and the beam bounces off and hits the machine directly in the eye.

The machine explodes, cracking the outer casing and spewing out some of its parts.

The center of the shield crumbles into ashes, and Link lets it slide off his arm.

As it falls to the ground, so does he.

He died.

Those machines – the Guardians – had killed him.

He woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection.

It had taken one-hundred years for him to wake up.

All his memories were gone because he died.

He's pretty sure memories don't persist after death.

Link's heart is racing in his chest, his breaths aren't getting him any air, and he's vaguely aware of the tears welling up in his eyes.

He's panicking.

He can't stop.

All over again, he can feel his body being ripped apart by those beams, he can hear the woman's voice, calling his name, he sees the golden light.

There's nothing that comes after.

He knows why now.

Link shudders.

His face is wet, and not just from tears.

Rain is pouring down from the heavens, drenching everything in sight. Link's clothes are soaked through, and so is his hair. The remnant of the Guardian, too, is soaked. It looks almost pitiful, destroyed by its own beam and drenched in rainwater.

Link squeezes his eyes shut tight, and shakes his head to clear it.

He stands, holding his possibly-broken wrist to keep it still, and heads for the Shrine.

He can't stop now.

He won't.

A/N: thanks for reading! comments and kudos are always appreciated, but no pressure!