TLOZ: Tears of the Theorist

The world lurches and sways.

For Revali, who has been drowning for so long he lost count of the days decades ago, this is nothing unusual. He can no longer remember the tug of the wind against his feathers; his lungs gave up fighting for breath an eternity ago. When the sword pierced him through, it was almost welcome.

An answer long overdue. Since Ganon's foul creature had seen fit to augment its strength with his own, at the very least he could claim it as a wish fulfilled.

...No. That was a thought born of desperation, when the drag of eternity wore his resolve thin and he could only scream for a release that never came. Now the howling of Ganon's monster falls silent around him and his lungs heave for a breath they haven't taken in too long, and he can only wonder—is this how Mipha felt before Vah Ruta fell silent, severed from the choking Malice? had she been left to fight the agonising moments of her death again, cut off from the connection that's been their torture and their single-thread lifeline for all these long years? The thought fills him with a fury... which passes like a squall, dead before it can raise much more than an agitated murmur.

If this is dying, he thinks, riding the squall's fading draughts to a moment of lucidity, surely it can hurry up a bit.

A patch of the world ls lit up gold. "I know," says an unfamiliar voice. "I can't—"

Then jostling motion, and a weightlessness that's nothing like the phantom memories of his Gale. He struggles against his heavy eyelids and gradually becomes aware of the mossy stone of Vah Medoh's back, swaying disconcertingly some distance away. The steadying whirr of its motors fills his auricles; it sends his balance reeling.

A gloved hand lands on Medoh's command panel. "Take us down," the voice says, and—

It's been too long since Medoh's low song hummed through him with such clarity of voice, their hard-won harmony poisoned by the Blight and cursing him with such discordance that at times he'd wished for everything to cease. Now that song hums through him again as if in answer to another master. Again the fury finds him; again he fights against the downwards drag of his overdue demise to raise hell one last time.

"Don't."

The order catches on the barb of his tongue and bursts, metallic and sour.  He cannot breathe. In and out. In and out. His vision blurs; distantly, amidst the poisonous shades of the dying Blight, light catches on the edge of a metal breastplate he once knew intimately. Ah. So that's how it is. Distantly, he can only think that this is how it was always destined to be.

...Destiny? Such a detestable thing deserves only to be plucked of all meaning by whatever means necessary.

"Do not," he tries again. Another acrid bubble of iron bursts in his throat, but he cannot allow Medoh to be subverted from his will again. For too long has he heard it screaming. With every scrap of willpower he can muster, he fights to maintain his tenous grasp on the Divine Beast which had already been stolen from him once. Never again.

Caught between conflicting orders, Medoh groans. The world lurches again. He tips abruptly forward, a motion caught only by that gloved hand gripping at the terminal again. Blue. His vision is filled with blue as familiar as the scarf he'd once been so proud of, a blue simultanously static and set in fluttering motion. His left wing is caught in a vise-grip; a hand clamps around his thigh, just as tight. He struggles for breath; it comes only in a ragged heave which threatens to drag him back into the realm of the Malice's grip. 

But as the voice re-issues its command—"Take us down!"—and Medoh pitches into an obedient descent, it occurs to him firstly that he is, by some inexplicable stroke of the goddess' vindictive mercy, not dead (—yet, his thoughts supply); and secondly, that he knows the swathe of blue filling his vision, which belongs to none other than...

Well.

"Pluck me for a fool," he chokes out. He hadn't entirely believed Link could actually beat it. "You really did."

Or perhaps this is a dying fever-dream.

The knight adjusts his grip again, jostling Revali into a brief, pained silence. "Stay alive," he orders curtly. "Won't forgive you otherwise."

And despite his weakness, despite the gravity of the situation, laughter attempts to claw its way up Revali's throat. 

"Isn't it enough?" He can't bring himself to add the rest of that sentiment—You won. The thought shouldn't bring him such relief, but it does. One way or another, he'd wanted it to end. Had even directed that wooden-headed knight to put an end to him. Who would have thought there was a disobedient streak hidden behind that dour, emotionless mask?

Who would have thought...

Link's eyes are fixed firmly ahead. He must be following the trajectory of Medoh's descent. The village is still a long way away. A short distance, if one gives themselves over to freefall. An eternity ago, he might have suggested such to Link, if only to try to goad him into reacting. Now, he can't bring himself to. The motivation is no longer there. Even so, it should annoy him that Medoh responded to another's command so readily. Especially Link's. It's a surprise that it doesn't. Annoy him. But anything is better than seeing Medoh under the Calamity's thrall. Anything better than being held against their will. It's enough. It'll be enough.

"Wasn't a real fight." 

Revali forces an eye open and finds a stubborn, mulish set to Link's jaw. "No?"

"Two against one. Doesn't count. You still owe me."

...If that's Link's idea of persuading someone to cling to life, it could do with some work. It probably says something about Revali that it's working.