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One week.
Just one.
Wild misses them.
It is stupid, she knew it was coming.
They all would have to go home eventually.
They had lives to live and adventures to go on.
She had never thought she’d feel lonely.
Even being around the people in her world no longer felt right.
After returning from her time traveling, she was eventually, finally, they’d say, cornered by the sheika.
While Flora understood that a hundred years and lost memories would change a person, Impa believed that she should still be Link, Flora’s personal knight.
The ceremony was long, boring, and confusing. By the end of it, she was stuck following Flora like a lost puppy.
Somehow it made her feel more lonely.
She hated the way Flora looked at her. Like she was someone to be pitied. Like she didn’t have a choice in this matter.
But she did have a choice, she could run away and Impa and the sheika would never find her. She knows every hiding spot in Hyrule, every place they won't even think to look.
The problem was she’d be leaving behind not just Flora, but every friend she’d made in her pursuit to defeat the calamity. Though she’s sure Teba, Sidon, and Riju would all offer to hide her in their homes.
Yunobo would too, but Yunobo was Yunobo, not good at keeping secrets when confronted and more gullible than a baby, and she should know, she’d accidentally used that to her advantage.
More importantly, a part of her hoped that being around Flora would allow her to remember more of who she used to be. Even if she has to be her knight to do it.
That part of her hoped that following Flora would one day feel like traveling with the chain. Fun, carefree, and fulfilling.
After the weird re-knighting ceremony, Flora decided to head out to Hateno.
She wanted to put her head together with Purah and copy the slate for her own use since it refused to allow her to access certain functions like weapons and teleporting.
Once inside the village, Flora had given her free range to do what she wanted but there wasn't much she could do without the slate.
She had a royal broadsword and half-used zora shield she’d borrowed from the domain but neither would last her very long if she wanted to go clear out monsters.
She’d already cleared out the general store but didn’t want to start cooking till she could store the food in the slate.
She’d go exploring but she knew every inch around Hateno already and couldn’t zip off to Hebra to finish finding the koroks over there without, you guessed it, her slate.
This left her with nothing to do in her house and thinking about how, just one week ago, Hyrule and Wind would have dragged her off into a nearby forest to blow things up.
Or Sky would invite her to play his harp, maybe Twi would have shifted into Wolfie and they’d wrestle.
Legend and Wars would be arguing about knights, food, or Wars’ hair.
Echo and Cal would be plotting Rhoam’s downfall and how to hide the body. Maybe even trying to figure out how to replace him with one of Cal’s Zelda’s older brothers.
Time would be sitting by the fire with his head in his hands and sigh, having given up praying to Hylia to help him by the end of the first month.
Then there’d be Four.
They’d float around the group, randomly jumping into groups and always managing to fit in with every brand of weirdness they managed to possess in their ragtag group of heroes.
There’d always been something about the smith that tingles in the back of her head. The same way Twi had triggered something in her head before he revealed himself as Wolife.
Like she should know them, should remember meeting a short ankle bitter full of mischief.
While they were time traveling she hadn’t had much time to think about it. Like Twi, she pushed it to the back of her mind waiting for them to come forward and tell her how she knew them.
They never did, and now with nothing else to do or think about she was left with the mystery.
She hadn't met any ghosts other than the champions and Rhoam.
The reincarnation of the hero in this era was accounted for and not in any way leaning towards acting like the smith. She was more like Sky or Time.
They couldn’t be a person she’d meet because even if they didn’t say something during the quest everyone had agreed to meet up immediately if someone started messing with time again and she felt like that should apply to having been living in someone else's era for years.
It was honestly giving her a headache.
She needed to get out of the house.
She got up from her spot on the floor and grabbed her cloak from the hook by the door.
She started walking thinking about where she should go. She could go back into town but her social battery wasn’t high enough for the constant chatter and calls across the street from everyone.
The forest would be quieter and she could try finding some good sticks to beat bokoblins with, that way she wouldn’t break another one of her swords.
Four would be so proud!
Or annoyed, given the three she’d already broken on the way here from Kakariko.
But the fact that she was thinking of ways not to break her swords had to be worth something.
Hyrule would back her up, he always-
“Here to trade life again?”
“I am well-versed in trading lives, I've had to choose between people too many times.”
She stopped at the familiar voice.
She’d been so far in her own head that she hadn’t realized she’d chosen to take the back route to the forest to avoid the men standing guard at the entrance to the village.
This path took her right by him-
The Horned Statue.
She doesn’t like that name-
She always called him 'The Bargainer Statue'.
Someone with a very familiar voice.
She turned slowly to face him- Them?
It couldn’t be that easy.
“Say that again.”
“I feel like you should know the drill by now but sure- You here to sell and buy your vessels again?”
She simply stared at the statue.
This could explain why Four hadn’t come to her, and the Bargainer mentioned being a spirit trading lives trapped because Hylia hadn’t appreciated what he- they did?
It could also be that they had no way of knowing she’d gone on the quest yet, after all, he- they couldn’t move.
“Earth to Hero!”
She blinked and shook her head.
“Forget I asked, you're being weird and I don't feel like getting drawn into a long emotional talk about your problems.”
No, it can’t be them.
Four wouldn’t say something like that.
Four always listened to everyone's problems, they loved being able to lend an ear to everyone, as little as they opened up themselves.
But then why-
“You sound like them.”
Ok that sounded weird and she probably should have started with something else, but her brain was slowly turning to chu chu jelly and it just came out.
“You’ve gone crazy. Good to know. If you’re not selling then please leave me to my lonely misery.”
She could do that.
She could walk away and forget she ever made a connection that shouldn't be there.
Go into the forest and kill some bokoblins with a stick.
Go back to her own lonely misery-
But now she needed answers.
She sat down.
The statue groaned.
“I had a second quest recently. Just ended a week ago.”
“You're a Hero, I’ve been led to believe that is common these days. Am I about to become your therapist or something?”
She looked at the statue, trying to imagine Four saying something like that.
“All of us need therapy and Wolfie needs a break sometimes. If you need someone to talk to I won’t turn you away.”
They wouldn’t.
“I traveled to- To a lot of different places.”
“This concerns me how?”
She took a deep breath, looking down at her hands in her lap. Playing with the ring that Four had made for her.
They’d made everyone some kind of enchanted jewelry based on what they didn’t have or in Legends’ case a dagger because he had everything else.
She had plenty of earrings and circlets.
Necklaces bothered the scars on her neck.
So they’d made her a ring.
“I traveled through time.”
The Bargainer stayed quiet.
She could feel the blue diamond in the ring pushing magic into the air around her.
Protecting her.
“I met heroes of the past.”
The statue stood silent.
She traced the band carved into uneven but strong and beautiful vines curling around her finger. Leaves protrude slightly on the sides and back.
“Had to make it wild like you.”
“We all became friends.”
While the outside of the band showed leaves and vines the inside was a different story. The wild and seemingly random patterns on the outside made the right amount of room for Four to make simplified carvings of the divine beasts.
Ruta’s elephant head rests under the blue diamond that Four had painstakingly and so carefully taken out of the belt of the zora armour.
“Then they turned into my brothers.”
She’d cried that night, after they’d gotten into the fight in Wind’s world. She’d been wearing her Zora armour to show it off when they’d been ambushed.
She should have changed out of it but she hadn’t. She’d thought it would be fine.
A stupid bokoblin had hit her in the stomach with a spiked club. The armour had ripped and the diamond had chipped.
It hadn’t hit her how bad the damage was until Four and Legend had explained to her the diamond had to be replaced and he armour mended before she could wear it again.
She’d broken down crying, probably scared the shit out of everyone.
It took hours for her to calm down, and even more to get through the whole story about Mipha.
Everyone had looked at her sadly. Everyone except for Four.
“One of them- Well, your voice sounds like theirs.”
Four had been too busy planning to be sad for her.
When they’d been dropped into the domain two shifts later Four hadn’t wasted time with pleasantries.
They’d grabbed Sidon right from the throne room and disappeared.
She’d found them later with Dento, carefully taking the diamond out of the armour, talking about how to file it down back into shape so Four could use it.
They hadn’t told her what they were going to do with it, but Sidon had told her that he approved.
That alone was enough for her because he’d always been protective about who could handle the armour after having seen her panic firsthand after the lynel had knocked a single scale off before she’d calmed Ruta.
She hadn’t known why she was so upset at the time, she still didn’t really remember Mipha, but it had taken her days to stop crying and calm down. Sidon hadn’t left her side once.
She’d cried just as hard and long as that first time when Four finally gave her the ring. They hadn’t gotten rid of the chip, they preserved it when filing the rough edges so it wouldn't snag. It was as much of the original as possible.
A piece of Mipha that she didn’t have to worry about breaking.
She may have never gotten that unbreakable sword Four had talked about, but the ring was worth so much more with the knowledge it wouldn’t break anywhere within her lifetime.
“Rainbow…”
She couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Sure seemed like they were trying to be one.”
“V- They were- Here…”
She nodded.
She could hear the sadness in the voice. This wasn’t Four, but she had no doubt in her mind that Four was just as- If not more important to this spirit than they’d been to her.
“I didn’t realize where I'd heard their voice till I walked past you.”
The silence stretched for a moment.
She fiddled with the ring.
The shadows moved.
She should probably be scared, but Twi had completely ruined her sense of light and dark.
He stayed curled behind the statue, half hidden from her view.
The others would have called him a dark.
Wars and Cal would have drawn their swords and picked a fight.
Twi and Legend would have held back, Legend holding Hyrule with them.
Time would try to talk.
The others would have followed Wars and Cal.
She just wanted to hug him.
She’s sure Four would have too.
His hair was a dark purple with waves when Four’s had been hazel and pin-straight.
“It is not purple, it is Violet.”
Four’s eyes had always been changing colors but the boy in front of him had grey eyes that shifted between just a little red and a little violet.
The tunic was also similar but, like his eyes, it only had red and violet. The other two sections were gray.
He was smaller than Four and his face had more prominent baby cheeks than the Smith she knew.
He’d died when Four was younger…
No wonder the smith got lost staring at his own shadow.
“Are you gonna say something?”
She looked up to meet his eyes-
“Hug?”
He looked her up and down for a moment.
Whatever he saw must have been enough because a second later she had a lap full of a more child-sized smith than she’d ever thought possible.
Tears pricked her eyes and she buried her face into his hair.
She may have lost her brothers, but this piece of one of them.
Smiling shyly at her while asking questions about the ring on her finger.
Talking about how Rainbow used hate smithing and was a great actor.
Maybe she could figure it out.
Maybe she didn’t have to be lonely alone.
The shadow of a friend-
Is still a friend.