Chapter Text
When the heroes came looking for who would soon be named Four, they were just enjoying a slow morning before opening the forge for the day.
Grandpa was out of town for a few days, and with the recent festival things were slowly getting back into routine. It was pretty quiet early in the morning as he prepared breakfast for one (Shadow would’ve loved to have breakfast with Link, but it would never come to be).
A Minish had come first, the previous day, rushing into the house through one of the small passages designed to let them do exactly that, and warned them there was a group of strangers asking around about Link around town.
So it didn’t exactly come as a surprise when there was a knock at the door. The villagers would have sent them their way.
“Ah, sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but we were told this is where we could find Link?” the stranger on the other side said when they opened it.
He was some tall blond guy in shining armor, with an expensive-looking blue scarf around his neck. He looked like a high-ranking soldier, but he wasn’t one of the ones they recognized personally. And although his clothes displayed the Royal Family’s crest, it wasn’t the soldier’s uniform they were used to.
“Were you, now?” he asked, looking around at the rest of the rather small group.
Four more of them. Two of them were on the taller side, with markings on their faces. Another shorter but still taller than him, with clothes that looked like they’d seen much better days.
The last one, however, had a presence that made Shadow want to recoil and slam the door on their face. There was something about the sword on his back, something that didn’t feel harmful, per say, but had every alarm going off in his head.
The local hero raised an eyebrow and waited as the fancy-looking soldier answered. They would listen, at the very least, because the last thing they needed was for this group to start spreading any rumors about the rude people living in the forge after they left. Even if they’d showed up at ungodly hours in the morning technically unannounced.
“You see, we need Link’s help with something. Is he home?”
“What do you need help with?”
“It’s… a hero thing. We can tell you more, but we should probably do so inside.”
Shadow wanted to sigh, of course it was a hero thing. The hero let them inside, because of course he did. No self-preservation instincts, these hero types, of course they would let a bunch of armed strangers who came knocking at ungodly hours in the morning asking for help with a ‘hero thing’ into their house.
“Alright. A hero thing, you say? I’ll need more information than that to be able to help you.”
They invited the strangers to sit down in the living room, and the local hero grabbed the half-eaten breakfast and cooling mug of tea before sitting down as well.
“Wait, you -” the heavily armored one with markings on his face and a scar through his eye seemed almost offended at the idea that he was the hero. Shadow bristled, even as the hero offered a calm verbal response.
“ I am the hero, yes. So if you need help, I’m willing to offer it, but I need to know more.”
“Well, I guess that makes things easier. Let me explain.”
And so came the most bullshit tale on time travel and divine chosen heroes and mystery quests Shadow had ever heard in his entire existence.
Granted it might not have been very long, and he hadn’t heard many tales that could compare, but still!
The little hero just nodded along, though.
Even when, at the end of the explanation, came the most ridiculously and obviously fake names Shadow had ever heard. The group even requested a similarly stupid name from them.
Who would ever believe someone had named their kid Hyrule ? Or Time ?
… Four wasn’t exactly any better, though, so maybe Shadow couldn’t really say much on that.
Seriously, did an inability to provide credible fake names come, like the stupidity and propensity for arson, with the rest of the hero thing?
Yeah, that tracked pretty well. Brave of soul, dumb of ass, the hero types.
And so, the newly-dubbed Four agreed to prepare to head out into adventure. The other heroes reassured him that they didn’t need to leave immediately and that he should at least grab his things and leave a note for Grandpa first.
So they left the heroes in the living room and went up to change clothes and put his things into a travel bag, looking around for the right equipment.
The heroes weren’t sure what the adventure was for, what they were truly expected to do beyond helping get rid of some stronger than usual monsters sporting totally-not-suspicious black blood, so probably better to be prepared just in case.
It didn’t take very long to pack the adventure items he’d kept in the house, and then Four stood there, staring at the sword mounted on the wall.
A fake Four Sword.
Not that it was a fake sword, or a bad one at all. It was a work of art just as much as any other sword their forge had made. It just… wasn’t magical. At all.
Which was good, given where the actual Four Sword was now. It probably shouldn’t be used.
But the idea of a new adventure with other versions of the hero…
It brought memories, certainly.
Hero and shadow reached for the sword, plucking it from its place on the wall. It’d been kept as a reminder, for its sentimental value, but it was a more than capable sword, and it would be the one they took on this newest adventure.
They walked back downstairs fully equipped, finding the heroes mostly where they’d left them.
The one with the sword that made Shadow want to scream and kick them as far away as he could from the house, Sky, was examining some of the swords in the shop front, and the armored one with marks on his face, Time, was looking around at the decor, but the others were quietly chatting, still sat where they’d been a moment earlier.
Four went to place the note he’d written upstairs on the kitchen counter for Grandpa to find once he came back, and turned to look at the other heroes, hands on his hips.
His silhouette on the ground mirrored him, Shadow smiling with slightly too sharp, invisible teeth.
“I’m ready if you all are.”
“Alright, everyone,” the fancy-looking knight, Warriors, clapped his hands together to get all of their attention, even if he already mostly had it. “We’re heading off, then. Time to go check in with the local Zelda?”
“Dot.”
“Dot, okay. Perfect. We’re going to talk with Dot.”
Four nodded, and once the rest of the heroes got their stuff together he led outside and firmly locked the door behind them.
Looking around, they couldn’t find any Minish as they started down the road towards town, and figured they might have gone off to inform either the rest of their friends or Dot about the group of strangers.
A shame, Shadow liked to listen to their chatter when they followed the hero into town sometimes.
Although the heroes seemed to speak more than enough to make up for the lack of tiny friends, trying to make small talk about their job and Dot and if any of their previous adventures had dealt with anything like the confusing issues they seemed to be dealing with now.
Four’s eyebrow twitched, and he seemed to resist a huff, the hero’s face finally reflecting how Shadow felt about the whole thing.
It was bringing back some memories, even if the personalities were pretty different.
While Shadow was still trying to get the idea out of his brain as they got closer to town, the world seemed to shift around the heroes.
Things twisted and the world went dark, it felt like the magic pressed together into a ball before exploding outwards, sight coming back as the heroes found themselves in a different place than where they’d just been.
The outward explosion sent them off balance, and Four’s entire body seemed to rebel against it.
He couldn’t keep his balance, falling to the ground and just managing to roll on his side before his stomach emptied of the breakfast he’d just had.
Shadow fought a migraine of his own as the other heroes groaned but seemed to recover much quicker than Four did.
They’d been told to expect sudden portals, but hadn’t been warned about the magic of it all.
It felt like light magic, but thankfully more so like one that was losing power and desperately trying to get them to where they needed to be rather than one that was attacking them.
Shadow wasn’t sure how he would survive hostile light magic if even the heroes were being hit that hard when it was mostly-friendly.
“Four? You good?”
Shit.
Sky was coming closer to them, hands outstretched as if he meant to help them up, and Shadow would’ve loved to hiss at him and put some more distance between them, but Four just groaned and leaned away.
“Good… Fuck, you did not warn me it’d be-” Four cut off to breathe through a wave of nausea, Shadow’s head throbbing.
The shadow closed his eyes, breathing although he didn’t exactly need it, to try and make the pain in his head go down. The light of the sun shining down on them wherever they were now wasn’t exactly helping.
“Hold on, let me-”
Four turned slightly when Hyrule approached, hands raised and glowing slightly. They squinted at him, but let him hover a hand over his forehead and another over his stomach.
The hands weren’t cold, necessarily, but they brought a cool feeling that soothed the upset in Four’s stomach and the throbbing pain in Shadow’s head quite nicely.
“There you go, that should be better.”
Four hummed, wearily pushing himself up and away from where he’d just left the entirety of his breakfast on the ground. Hyrule leaned away, offering them a small smile.
“Thank you, Hyrule. That helped a lot.”
“I’m glad it did. Think you can get up and move? We don’t really know where we are, so we might be finding someone new again already.”
“Ugh… I think I’ve got it, hold on.”
With another groan, Four pushed himself up, a small silent cheer from Shadow when they managed to sit up first and then slowly stand on slightly shaky legs.
That stupid portal had nothing on them!
Hyrule’s hands came to steady him when they swayed a little once standing, but Four offered a thumbs up and leaned away from it, looking around at the others.
The other heroes were mostly pretending not to watch them but still standing around.
“I’m good to go.”
“Very well. None of us recognize the place, and I assume you don’t, given we were also just at yours?” Warriors asked.
Four looked around more properly, actually paying attention to the place around them, but Shadow was pretty sure they’d never seen the bridge they were next to, if nothing else.
The trees looked like any trees they could have found in any random area, but the bridge was unfamiliar and didn’t exactly look new, and the layout of the area itself didn’t exactly spark recognition.
“Never seen this place before, no.”
Warriors nodded, clearly having expected that they wouldn’t know where they were either, and soon the group was moving again, the knight taking the lead at the front of the group with Time and leading them away from the bridge.
Shadow tensed when Sky tried to fall behind to walk alongside Four as they moved, but the other hero seemed to think better of it and stayed with Twilight when Hyrule reached them first.
He noticed, as they walked, how much later in the day it seemed to be all of a sudden.
They’d just left the forge in the morning, still pretty early, but looking up at the sky found the sun going down already, even if it wasn’t necessarily very late.
“Is it usually a different time when you cross portals?”
“Hm?”
“The time of day. It’s a lot later than it was before we crossed it.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess it is,” Hyrule looked up at the sky then. “Hm. I think it happens sometimes, yeah. Can’t say I really notice unless it’s like, wildly different, but Time probably does. He always knows what time it is.”
“Sounds like he has a fitting name, then.”
“Hm. It’s like, his hero title or something I think. … Is Four about your hero title?”
Four went quiet at that, hand twitching with the impulse to hold onto the sword on his back, even if it was only a fake version of it. It wasn’t… entirely wrong.
Shadow winced, not too happy with the line of questioning himself.
“Something like that. More about the sword I used. I assume Hyrule’s just, you saved the country?”
“Yeah… I didn’t really do much, but I guess the goddesses put me on this, and you guys are all heroes, so technically, you know?”
Man could Shadow understand that, given how insistent the heroes had been, back when he’d switched sides before… everything that’d happened at the end.
Four just smiled at Hyrule, though.
“Hey, if you helped people and are being recognised as a hero, then you are a hero. I hope you can accept it one day, I know it can be complicated.”
The other clearly didn’t quite agree, but he didn’t say anything against it.
Shadow didn’t like how he could already relate to this Hyrule guy. His Link had been very insistent about his own role as a hero back in the day, after all.
After his death, the hero had insisted on them both being recognised as heroes, and at this point it wasn’t like the shadow could argue against it.
He hoped it wouldn’t take dying for Hyrule to accept his role, at least.
“Don’t be too harsh on yourself, alright?”