Content warnings: major character death, grieving, brief but somewhat graphic description of violence, blood.
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At the end of the day, it’s just...bad luck.
Bad luck that Teba’s still unsteady on his horse, and the focus he has to devote to staying upright in the saddle takes away from the careful eye he’d typically have on their surroundings. Bad luck that the skies open up and send down upon them a light mist, urging their little party into a canter in a futile attempt to reach the nearest stable before they’re all soaked through. Bad luck that Revali and Link insist on bantering the whole time, because of course they do. Bad luck that thanks to this precise combination of factors, none of them hear the low thrum of galloping horses, off to the left side of the road, far away but approaching fast.
Bad luck that Link turns to face Teba at exactly the wrong moment, and the arrow that had been about to hit him in the shoulder instead lands square in the middle of his throat.
It’s over in less than a minute. Revali immediately leaps off of his horse, summons an updraft, soars into the air, and in one fluid movement takes his bow off his back, nocks an arrow, and shoots down the bokoblin as it waves its bow in the air in triumph. Teba is half a second behind him, taking a moment to assess the situation— two more bokoblin on horseback, one wielding a club and the other a spear— before springing into action, unslinging his own bow and knocking the club-wielder off its horse with an arrow to the chest. He turns his aim to the other just as Revali dives down upon it, talons digging into its shoulders, pulling it off of its horse and dragging it viciously across the ground until it goes still. Teba lands and does a quick once-over. As soon as he’s certain that they aren’t in any more immediate danger, he sprints back over to the horses, panic building rapidly in his chest.
Link lies sprawled out on the side of the road, eyes closed, and for one long, hysterical, hopeful second, Teba thinks he might sit up and cough and wipe the blood from his tunic and give him that ridiculous little grin he puts on every time Teba frets over one of his wounds. But he doesn’t move, and his face is so white, and there’s a ragged hole straight through the middle of his throat and so much blood and a horrible weight starts to settle itself in Teba’s stomach.
This can’t be his Link. His Link is always moving, fidgeting, full of nervous energy. His Link is rosy cheeks and a smile like the sun and only ever just enough blood to make him worry. His Link is alive, and this limp, pale thing lying in front of him is...not.
Behind him, Revali screams.
Teba knows he should feel...something. Shock. Anger. Grief. Guilt. But they don’t come. All he feels is the weight. In a daze, he stands and walks over to Link’s horse, which is tossing its head and shuffling about, clearly spooked. She quiets as he approaches, and he rifles through her saddlebag until he finds bandages and Link’s cloak.
He starts by dressing the wound, wiping away the blood as best he can and carefully wrapping bandages around Link’s neck. As he works, Revali collapses next to him, laying his head on Link’s chest as he weeps. Once Teba finishes and the ugly gash is hidden but for a small red spot in the front of the bandages, he takes Revali by the shoulders and pulls gently.
“Revali,” he says quietly, and his lover looks up at him, eyes desperate and deeply, impossibly sad. Teba tugs at him again, and this time he comes, wrapping his wings so tightly around Teba’s chest that it nearly knocks the wind out of him and letting out a ragged wail. Teba holds him close, awkwardly patting his back in some vague, wholly inadequate attempt at comfort, and Revali buries his head in the crook of Teba’s neck, breaking off into quiet, choked sobs.
They sit there, on the side of the road. Time passes. The rain passes. Travelers pass, too, but they pay them no mind, and the few that dare to approach wither rapidly under Teba’s glare. Revali clings to him, head tucked underneath Teba’s beak and eyes tightly shut, as if he could fight off the crushing reality simply by refusing to acknowledge it. Teba just stares. He stares for so long that he very nearly convinces himself that he’s used to it. As if he could ever accept this image of Link, pale as death and motionless in a puddle of his own blood.
Eventually, Revali opens his eyes and disentangles himself from Teba. He draws in a deep, rattling breath, leaning into Teba’s side for support.
“We should bury him,” he mutters, and Teba furrows his brow in confusion.
“What?”
Revali gestures toward Link. Towards Link’s body. “We should bury him,” he says again, louder this time, and he sounds as empty as Teba feels. “That’s what...that’s what Hylians do with their—”
He cuts himself off before the last word, and Teba puts a wing around his shoulder. With their dead, he thinks. Link is dead.
He doesn’t say that. Instead, he says “we don’t have a shovel,” because maybe focusing on these kinds of petty material concerns will help the both of them turn their minds away from the horrible pit of darkness rapidly opening up beneath their feet. Another thought occurs to him, and he grabs onto it with all the desperation of a drowning man to a rope. “Shouldn’t we bring him to the castle? We’re nearly at Tabantha Bridge, and it’s only a couple days’ travel from the stable there.”
Revali shakes his head, and Teba notes with relief that he seems grateful for the distraction. “He wouldn’t— I don’t think he’d want all the ceremony. I suppose we could bring him back to the village, but…” He trails off, sagging a little, and Teba tightens his grip on his shoulder. “I can’t bear it, Teba, the thought of...of fucking carting him around for a whole day, I just can’t.”
“Yeah.” The telltale sting of tears pricks hard behind Teba’s eyes all of a sudden, but some ridiculous urge to hold himself together, for Revali’s sake if nothing else, has him blinking them back. “I...I could fly over to the stable, see if I can get us a shovel.” He sees Revali’s eyes widen in alarm, and he quickly amends the statement. “Or you could, and I’ll wait here. You’re faster than me anyway.”
“OK.” Revali exhales shakily and bows his head. “OK. OK, I can do that,” he says quietly, and it sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself than anything. Teba squeezes his shoulder once more before letting go, and he reluctantly pulls himself away from Teba’s side and to his feet. He takes in a deep breath, crouches, summons another updraft, and spirals off into the sky.
Teba watches him glide away, until he’s nothing but a small speck on the horizon. Then he turns his attention back to Link. He carefully slides one wing underneath his neck and the other behind his knees, ignoring the sickening feeling of blood soaking into his feathers, and lifts him up, cradling the limp body to his chest. Leaning down, he presses his forehead to Link’s, gently rubbing his beak against Link’s nose as he had used to do every night as they settled into bed. The thought hits him like a ton of bricks. Had used to. He would never say goodnight to Link again.
“I’m sorry, love,” he whispers into Link’s ear, and the last of his composure crumbles. He dissolves into tears, clamping his beak shut and rocking back and forth, trying desperately to swallow his sobs until it’s too much and they burst out in short, painful gasps. The weight in his stomach vanishes, replaced by the awful, vertiginous feeling of free-fall, spiraling down and out and his wings are slick and wet and saturated with red and bile starts to rise in his throat and—
“Oh, Teba,” is all he hears Revali say, before the shovel clatters to the ground and the dead weight in his arms is carefully lifted away and placed gingerly on the ground. He collapses forward, into Revali’s wings, feels his lover rest his head on his shoulder and feels his tears fall softly onto his neck. Revali says something else, inaudible over the blood pounding in Teba’s ears. He just shakes his head, pressing his face into Revali’s chest and wills himself to find his composure again, to ground himself, to save this debilitating grief for nights back home.
They fall into autopilot, eventually. They take turns with the shovel to dig a shallow grave, and Teba wraps Link in his cloak before lowering him into the fresh, damp dirt. He watches numbly as Revali slowly covers him, staring at his face, trying to affix every last detail of it in his mind before it’s covered up as well. Gone forever. No sign left of him but a pathetic little mound of overturned earth.
At Tabantha Bridge Stable, Revali returns the shovel and turns in their horses. They rent a single bed, a good foot and a half too short for Teba, but he spends the night curled around Revali anyway because letting him out of his sight for even a moment is utterly unthinkable.
In the morning, there are no words, just despairing glances and blinked-back tears. They fly back to the village, and by some unspoken agreement land not there but at the Flight Range, which is mercifully empty. It’s saturated with Link’s absence, more than anywhere in the village proper, but it is their sanctuary and nothing, not even this calamitous emptiness, can take that away from them.
Teba cooks dinner. He burns the fish to hell, and neither of them have any appetite anyway, so he just throws it away. They sit and stare at the fire, Revali’s head in Teba’s lap. Link sits across from them, a ghost neither of them thinks the other can see, and his smile is worth all of the words he can no longer say.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Teba says quietly, and Revali sits up. He wraps a single wing around the back of Teba’s neck and pulls him in close, pressing their foreheads together, and gently rubs their beaks together.
