#tevali

When Vah Medoh perches directly above the village, there’s a flurry of panic. After a few minutes, as it seems content to simply sit there with its beak pointed toward the castle, the mood turns to conspiracy, which is only elevated when Harth and Mazli fly up to investigate and return with the unconscious bodies of Link and a Rito male that no one in the village recognizes. Teba misses all of it, laying on a small cot and staring dejectedly at the crossed wooden beams of the infirmary ceiling, and by the time Link and the stranger are brought in he has fallen asleep.

He awakens the next morning to see Link curled up on a cot a few feet away from him, clutching the blankets, a hole the size of his hand burned into his shirt on the left side of his stomach and charred flesh underneath. On the other side of the room, a mess of dark blue feathers lies crumpled in a hammock. 

Saki and Harth drift in and out of the room all morning, fussing over the three of them. Link wakes around noon, bringing a hand gingerly to his wound and wincing. Teba sits up and clucks disapprovingly, and Link’s gaze swivels around to him.

“How’s your leg?,” he signs, and Teba huffs.

“Better than your side. What the hell happened in there?”

Link laughs, a breathy little sound. “There was a monster, possessing Medoh. I managed to kill it, but it was a hard fight.”

Teba nods slowly. He finds it hard to believe that this tiny Hylian single-handedly calmed the beast that had shot so many of their finest warriors (including himself, he thinks with a grimace) out of the sky, but according to Saki, it had been completely still for the roughly 16 hours since it landed. And, on some instinctive level, he trusts that Link is telling the truth.

“So who’s this?,” he asks, gesturing at the hammock, and Link looks over. His eyes widen, and he starts to push himself up before falling back onto the cot with a small whimper. A flood of worry rushes through Teba, and before he has time to think about what he’s doing he’s on the floor next to Link, carefully placing a wing on his chest.

“Hey now.” He intends it to be soft, comforting, but it comes out gruff. He tries again. “They’re gonna be okay. Saki and Harth will make sure of that.” Link relaxes a little, and Teba nods approvingly. He stays there, watching carefully, until the silence stretches on for a little too long and he coughs awkwardly and shuffles back to his cot. “...So?”

Link frowns, glancing back over at Teba. “I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

Teba raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t believe you when you said you could calm Vah Medoh, and yet here we are.” 

“I suppose.” He fiddles with the hem of his tunic, looking uncomfortable. Teba watches with a slowly growing sense of trepidation, wondering what could possibly make him so hesitant to answer such a simple question. Eventually, he spells out a name.

“Revali.” 

“...Revali.”

Link nods.

“As in—”

Link nods. Teba can feel the feathers on the back of his neck rising. “This stranger had the gall to claim to be Master Revali, one of the most celebrated Rito warriors in history, who lived one hundred years ago...and you believed him?!”

“He didn’t claim anything. He was barely conscious enough to land Vah Medoh. I...recognized him.”

Teba just...stares. He recognized him? What the hell does that mean? Link swallows and looks away, and Teba starts guiltily. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, and Link gives him a thin smile.

“I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, I just-” He shakes his head. “You recognized him? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Link shrugs. “I could explain that too, and then you’d really think that I’m off the deep end.”

“Try me.”

Link laughs again, louder this time (and Teba’s stupid heart flutters, just a little).

“If you insist,” he responds, and Teba nods. “One hundred years ago...I was the Princess of Hyrule’s appointed knight. I knew all of the Champions, including Revali.” He grimaces. “After we lost, I was...my body was taken to a shrine on the Great Plateau. It healed me, but took away my memories. I’m only just starting to get them back...”

“Link,” Teba says quietly, and he looks over. Teba hesitates for a moment— it feels cruel, somehow, to question what he says, as wildly unbelievable as it is. He forges ahead anyway. “Do you...do you have any proof of this? At all?”

Link gestures helplessly. “I know it sounds insane. Your Elder, he recognized my Sheikah Slate. He believes I’m a descendent of the Hylian champion, which I guess is a lot more believable.”

“I guess.”

They sit in silence. Link looks at the ceiling, then over at the hammock, then back at the ceiling. Teba thinks about his tunic, a shade of blue more vibrant than he thought possible to make fabric in, an unsettlingly similar blue to Vah Medoh’s lasers. And the eye on the back of the strange slate he carries, identical to the eyes of Vah Medoh’s cannons. 

Saki pokes her head in. “Oh, good. You’re awake. And you—” she points at Teba, “you should be lying down.”

“I’m not putting weight on it,” he counters, “and it’s healing quickly. It was a shallow wound.”

“Hm.” She doesn’t push, and he’s grateful for it. Instead, she walks over to the hammock, bending over to carefully examine the unconscious Rito. “I may have to ask Amali to make him another elixir. His external wounds seem to be mostly healed, but his breathing is still shallow.” She turns to Link. “How are you feeling?”

She dresses the wound on Link’s chest and worries over Teba’s leg before leaving, and a few minutes later Harth comes in with two plates of steamed salmon. Link insists that he can feed himself despite not being able to sit up, and it’s not until after he’s dropped three entire bites of salmon on the floor that Teba insists upon helping him. He apologizes profusely, but Teba waves it off. He’d done the same for Harth last week. Link goes back to sleep not long after eating, leaving Teba alone with his thoughts again. He watches for a few minutes, wondering at the strange sense of protectiveness he feels toward this strange Hylian he met only yesterday.

He doesn’t think Link is lying. Even to him, it’s clear as day that he believes every word he’s saying. Which means that either he actually did wake up in a strange shrine on the Great Plateau with his memory gone, or he’s horrifically delusional. Teba knows which one of those answers he prefers.

Then there was the strange tablet— a Sheikah Slate, he’d called it. On his hip, it appeared to be a plain stone slab, elaborately carved and painted but otherwise ordinary. Teba knew, though, that on the side facing inward it was not stone, but a strange, smooth surface that started off dark and lit up when touched. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but Link had mentioned that it let him fast-travel to any of the shrines he’d visited before.

At first, Teba had shrugged it off as some fancy adventurer’s technology, but now that he thought about it, it was...strange. He’d only ever seen two shrines, the one just outside the village and the one near the Flight Range, and they had both essentially just been elaborately carved hunks of rock for as long as he or anyone else could remember. They’d both flared up with mysterious orange light about a month ago, the same day that mysterious tower had risen in the east and Vah Medoh had appeared, circling ominously close to the village. Maybe he should ask Link what he knows about them...

He sighs and turns away, moving back to his cot and collapsing backwards, suddenly aware that he’s tired as well. He should get some more rest, hopefully be able to leave the infirmary by tomorrow and get back to training within the week. He’s not 100% convinced that Vah Medoh won’t start causing problems again, and if it does, he needs to be ready for it, with or without Link’s help.

It’s difficult to fall asleep— he’s not used to sleeping in the same room as other people, it feels weirdly invasive— but after a while of turning the same thoughts over and over in his head until they dissolve into mush, he manages.

He wakes up to dark skies and Saki holding a platter of meat skewers and three elixirs. She hands Teba and Link one each of the former and puts the platter down between them, before moving over to the hammock and carefully pouring the third into the unconscious Rito’s mouth. She briefly examines Teba’s leg as he eats and tells him that he should stay in the infirmary overnight. He nods.

“Thank you for everything,” Link signs as she re-bandages his wound. She nods in acknowledgment.

“Thank you for helping Teba,” she responds, “and our village. We are all very grateful.”

Link flushes, and Teba tries not to think about how cute it is.

He can sit up now, albeit with a bit of a pained expression. It fades as he eats, but he still collapses back into his pillow as soon as he’s done. “You guys have good food,” he signs, and Teba chuckles.

“Amali is a good cook.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Healing well.” He frowns. “You’re in much worse shape than I am, you shouldn’t worry about me.”

Link just shrugs.

“Well, I do,”

he responds, and Teba has nothing to say to that.

___

Fuckin uhhhh yeah