Oh my god the Marink you were a dream fic sounds so interesting and brilliaNT. So much tasty food…
*in a very very excited voice, while cracking my knuckles*: well if you insist... I guess I have to give you my whole fic outline now!
In a nutshell: sort-of role reversal, Legend gets to haunt the narrative instead!
Be prepared for extreme yappiness like, unholy amounts of it:
It's actually inspired by an older fic by @bokettochild called the Blood Between Us (she is currently rewriting it and i love it to bits) (i swear this fic changed my brain chemistry when I first stumbled upon it years ago, it introduced so many novel ways to look at the boys!)
Specifically the bit where the chain end up in Termina and Legend finds out that the residents of Koholint island were actually real people and everyone on the island thought that Legend was a dream construct that sacrificed himself to free them.
And I thought it was such a great idea (and I always really really loved unreality and dreams) that it continued to rot in my brain for the following years until I wrote down a outline for myself last year because i wanted to see it explored more thoroughly so badly and you know what they say about being the change you want to see in the world!
So the fic has three chapters, all exploring stages of grief that Marin rapidly cyles through.
In the first chapter (part one: the uneasy fluff), we follow marin and legend during the events of Link's awakening. It incorporates a lot of dream elements, as if reality is falling apart and building around them as Legend and Marin's perceptions of each other change and morph. Marin finds Legend on the beach. An example would be Legend telling Marin about his experience talking to animals and suddenly Marin finds herself being able to do so too. What do you mean the animal village is new? It has always been there hasn't it?
They talk, they play, there is unholy amounts of fluff together and Marin keeps noting how convenient everything is. Monsters appear, oh look at that a hero appears on the beach for her to find! She is lonely and wants to hear about the world? Well, Legend is there to tell her all about it! She dreams of a romance? Well, her perfect imperfect charge is shyly asking her out on a date!
Their time together is wonderful, but poisoned with an undercurrent of extreme wariness of things not adding up. There are holes in the stories Legend tells, he keeps disappearing at times seen following an owl that gives him instructions, he gets quieter and quieter. Maybe he is having a bad day. Maybe she is just overreacting. What is wrong? Something is wrong. Something is wrong. They're supposed to be happy!
Just like in canon, Marin becomes aware of the fact that she is in a dream. So as she catches on to Legend knowing the truth, she resigns herself to erasure.
She keeps singing even if it feels like death to continue doing so. She is only a character, an oracle of the wind fish. She doesn't exist outside of the outlines drawn for her. But unlike her, Link has a history, a home and courage. He must be real. ... turns out he isn't.
In the second chapter (wip title: the five stages of grief), we follow the disastrous aftermath of Koholint. There is storm and Marin barely survives being swept away by the currents (How could she have forgotten how ruthless the ocean is?). And it's on termina's shores that she awakens, together with everyone of Koholint Island. There is a moment of supreme joy. She was wrong! She is real!!! And so is everyone else!!! but then she looks around and... where is Link?
Everyone comes to the terrible conclusion that Legend died for them. Because isn't it obvious in hindsight? He was too perfect, too kind and always had perfect timing! Didn't the legends say that the wind fish always had an avatar he would speak through in form of an owl and didn't we see Link talking to that owl multiple times? What are the chances that someone would just conveniently show up to get rid of the Nightmare for them?
... is that why he was so sad near the end?
Marin does not take this news well at allllllll.
In Termina, Marin becomes obsessive about trying to prove to herself that Legend didn't die, that she didn't kill him. She seeks stories, legends, rumors. Anything to point to him existing outside of Koholint, because for such a well traveled hero with so many stories, surely the people would know him right?
They do! Well, actually they don't.
Link is not there, but his name echoes. In termina there was another boy named Link who saved everyone decades ago and then disappeared in the mist never to be seen again. He was a small child, a hero in green, carrying a bleeding heart. Marin keeps asking and asking and asking and begs for more, but like the stories there is no trace left of this smaller Link except for the love he left in his wake.
This drives her to the edge, to make matters worse, She ends up in Hyrule Warriors where she meets and actual Link, two more in fact! It makes her hope, but also despair, because all their stories rhyme with each other. Mask alludes to getting stuck in a time loop (didn't Link time travel a few times?) and Toon tells her about his adventures on sea (Link was a great sailor wasn't he? He loved the ocean!), the captain is so kind, so chivalrous (Link offered to dance with her a few times...). (Was Link really just an amalgamation of other links? A mirage, an impression of a hero?)
She meets all these loz characters, she read about the history of the hero, but it all gets muddled together. Legend has done so much, its all so difficult to trace... but Marin is surrounded with people carrying grief in her heart, she learns to love and laugh again while war wages around her. She learns to fight, so that no one has to do it in her stead anymore. She learns to come back from war singing.
And then the war is over, she gets to go home with new experiences and a new outlook on things. She has to believe in herself, whether or not she accidentally killed Legend or not. She has to move on. Just before stepping through the portal, Toon wishes her luck in finding her hero again. She smiles at him and--
she wakes up in bed.
The third chapter (wip title: a dream come alive)
Welp. That didn't go well.
In a fit of pure insanity, Marin cuts off her own hair to try to prove to herself that it was all real, that she isn't hallucinating or worse. (Link always loved playing with her hair).
She gets dragged out of the pits of despair by the rest of Koholint village in various small tidbits of finding home in each other in the aftermath of (several) traumatic experiences. Marin is not over it, she is soooo so so not over it, but then she looks down on her arms and legs and sees scars and she cries. So unreasonably happy to be marred by something for the first time in her life.
There is a small time skip and Marin settles back in life, learning how to adjust to a different community and to live in a world not ridden in war but also is also not a cushy wish-granter machine. The carnival of time is starting soon, and isn't that exiting?
But then the hero returns to termina, carrying with him a knife to reopen her wounds.
Marin relapses immediately (it really be like that girl. It really do be like that).
The chain are jovially attending the festival of time, playing minigames and stuff. And Marin tries to approach Time, but he is surrounded all the time by all the townsfolk that are overjoyed at the man's (A man! Something real!) return. But Marin can't help herself really (what does it mean for a dream to return?). She follows him around helplessly (and walks past Legend a few times in her laser focus and bumps into the other boys, even getting roped in playing a game), but when she finally succeeds she can't stand to look at Time, who is everything and nothing to her. He is so so familiar and it makes her bleed.
So she runs off in distress (greatly worrying Time, who does vaguely recognize her, but also this is Termina. You can't really assume you know someone even if you recognize their face). She is found by Wind, who, after she calmed down a little, offers to introduce her to the rest of the Chain, in the hopes of maybe giving her some closure of sorts.
She takes him up on it, but Ah but it's getting late isn't it? She should really get home. Tmr?
But you know how it is with lost things. You'll only find them when you've given up. So when she goes back home fully expecting to crash in her bed, she instead gets greeted by Legend, who was dragged there earlier by an excited madam MeowMeow, and who had been in turn desperately looking for her while she was hiding with Wind.
Happy end!
(Or well, Semi-happy ending. There are a lot of loose ends, which both Marin and Legend having changed so much after the events of Links awakening, I can see them not quite fitting well back together, but they'll try!!! They'll try so hard and that in of it itself is enough for now. (also the logistics of the chain still being on a QuestTM and all the koholint island residents now living in Termina (where exactly is Termina located really?))
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to yap about this and I hope you enjoyed reading it too! This wip is haunting me everyday together with the pre-LU Legend knight fic. (I should go write again...)
