~ Hello everyone! I appreciate that you're taking the time to read this, and I hope you'll read future chapters as well! ^_^ I cherish all reviews that I get, so please review if it's convenient! DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything affiliated with Nintendo or Super Smash Bros. Enjoy the story!

Like breaking the surface of water, Link awakened.

But he didn't open his eyes. Not yet. He clenched them tightly shut, like a small part of his brain was clinging to some ghost of a long-forgotten survival instinct, his whole body rigid like a board.

He could hear someone talking from far off in the distance.

Confused, he tried listening to the words, but they streamed together; it could have been a foreign language for all he knew. Somebody touched him, his elbow. He stiffened in surprise.

"...becoming responsive again," the same voice said, closer this time. It wasn't a voice that he recognized.

"That's good," said a different voice. "I'm sure he wouldn't be happy if we lost this one."

"Are you kidding me?" said the first voice. "We'd be fired. Killed, maybe. I don't know. Just be extra careful with him, okay? I don't want any accidents to happen."

The other voice mumbled something indistinct.

"What?" said the first voice sharply.

"I said, they could have been more careful."

"Yeah? That's none of our business. The Crew can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it – that's the way it's always been."

"That's not fair," said the second voice sullenly.

"Life's not fair," said the first voice. Link felt a pair of cold, gloved hands flatten against his chest. "Oh, hey, kid, you awake already? Can you hear me?"

Link couldn't respond; his lips were too numb, too heavy for speech. His whole body felt like it had turned to ice.

"How many painkillers did you say they gave him?"

"I didn't."

"Well, can you go find out?"

The sound of footsteps, fading into the distance. The first voice murmured a few choice words in undertone, and Link felt more hands, touching his ribs, feeling his throat, pulling back the sleeves on his arms. More footsteps, and then the second voice said loudly, "Forty milligrams."

"Forty?"

"Yeah. They inject it into him through needles."

"Forty? Are you sure it was forty?"

"Yes sir."

"An hour?"

"That's what the other doc said."

The cold hands disappeared. "That's far too much! Take the needles out right now!"

"But -"

"Do it! Do you want him to overdose? Damn, what was Reynolds thinking? Forty milligrams! Ridiculous!" As he spoke, the man grabbed something on Link's arm – a tube, it felt like – and delicately slid the needle out from under his skin.

"God!" he said crossly. "No wonder he was so still! He was probably close to a coma!" Cold fingers rubbed the spot on Link's arm quickly. Then the pressure disappeared, leaving a slight throbbing ache where it had been. "Reynolds is such an idiot."

"Did you hear what he did last week? There was that other patient, you know, the guy with the blue hair – well, Reynolds was supposed to check up on him, and -"

Then, like a radio losing reception, Link slipped away from the conversation, drifting back into the deep waters from whence he came, strange ideas spinning in his mind...needles, doctors, and blue hair...and soon he was unconscious yet again.

It felt like hours and hours later when he finally resurfaced, but perhaps it was only minutes. Drowning in the dark waters, he had no way of telling. For the first time, he began to wonder.

Where am I?

Some of the feeling was slowly returning to his limbs, particle by particle. He could tell that he was laying on something very soft. A bed? The earlier conversation returned to him in pieces, and confusion reigned in his mind. Painkillers? A bed? Was he in a hospital?

His eyelids fluttered open.

Immediately, he was greeted by blinding white. Startled, his closed his eyes again. Then, slowly, he peeked through his eyelashes.

Yes, he decided. A hospital. Even though Hyrule never had what some might consider a "modern" hospital, he knew enough about them to know what they looked like. He opened his eyes a little more, adjusting to the harsh artificial lighting. Nurses and doctors, dressed in white to blend in with the walls, bustled around several dirty beds or huddled in corners, poring over their clipboards and murmuring urgently to each other. As soon as one nurse made eye contact with him, she hurried over, smiling in a motherly way.

"I see you're awake," she said in a sweet, sugary voice. "How are you feeling, sweetheart?"

Link took a moment to find the right words. Speech was still difficult; his words slurred together almost unintelligibly. "Where am I?"

The nurse felt his forehead. "You're a little clammy. Would you like something hot to drink?"

"No," said Link. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down. "Where am I?" he asked again.

"You're in a recovery facility," said the nurse.

Link tried to remember anything that happened before waking up, and found it extremely difficult. He started as early as he could. His childhood was clear as day. As he started getting further and further into his teenage memories, there were missing gaps. Eventually, it was just a huge blank, like a stretch of ocean where you couldn't see either shore. "I don't remember anything," he said. "Why can't I remember anything?"

The nurse looked at him with too much sympathy. "What can't you remember, sweetheart?"

This was such a ridiculous question that Link laughed. "How I got here. Let's start with that. Am I hurt?"

"Your mind is hurt," said the nurse.

Link stared at her. "My mind...?"

"Sometimes," said the nurse, still in that sickly sweet voice, "when you have bad memories, your mind protects you by forgetting them."

"I don't understand," said Link. "What bad memories? What happened?"

The nurse's lips pressed together in a tight line, and he knew that he wasn't going to get an answer. "Calm down, now. You don't want to excite yourself. It could hamper with the recovery process."

"Why do I need painkillers though?" asked Link.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Painkillers. The other people...the voices from earlier...they said something about forty milligrams of painkillers. And they talked about some King -"

"Ah," said the nurse. "Well, hearing voices is a common sign of schizophrenia." She scribbled something down on a notepad. "We'll get that checked out later."

"They were real, though," said Link, more confused than ever. "They were two male nurses, and they talked about painkillers and somebody called the Crew, and they said the King wouldn't be happy -"

"Often the voices in your head are very realistic," said the nurse. "I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, Master Link."

Link tried to wrap his head around the magnitude of the situation, but it slipped away, like water cupped in soft hands, dripping through the slits of his fingers.

"Okay," he said, slumping back in his bed.

"When you're feeling well enough," said the nurse, taking his pulse, "there is a psychiatrist here who would like to see you. He sees all the patients. It's just to get an idea of your...condition."

"I have a condition?" said Link. It's got to be amnesia, right?

"We'll see," said the nurse briskly. "In the meantime, you just get your rest. If you start hurting anywhere, we'll give you more painkillers."

"Why would I be hurting?" asked Link. "What happened to me?"

The nurse's lips parted and her eyes widened, as if she had just realized what she had said. "Oh dear! Don't you worry about that. The psychiatrist will explain everything. Please, don't think too hard and stress yourself out. Well, good day to you. Call someone if you need anything." She dipped her head, flustered, and hurried off.

Link lay in the bed for a while, thinking. Slowly, he wiggled all of his toes. Then he rippled the muscles in his legs. They were a bit sore, like he had been running, but nothing unmanageable. Nothing that he would need painkillers for. He stuck his hand down the white T-shirt somebody had dressed him in, feeling his chest. Thick bandages criss-crossed in every direction. Then, gingerly, he twisted and ran a hand down his back. He winced. It was just as bad, if not worse. Bandages everywhere. He prodded them, wrinkling his nose as the pressure burned.

What had happened to him? And why was everyone so determined that he should not find out? Why was he here? Link's head spun as he tried to recall something – anything. Some plausible reason for why he had woken up in this white-walled place, surrounded by bustling nurses and covered in bandages. He couldn't remember getting hurt. Perhaps he had taken a bad fall off of his horse...And who was this King? Hyrule didn't have a king; just a princess, Zelda.

The name seemed to jar something deep in his conscience.

"Master Link," said the nurse, appearing by the bed with a clipboard. "What would you like to eat?"

"I don't want to eat," said Link, sitting up. "I want to know what's going on."

"The psychiatrist, Dr. Steele, will help you sort out your confusion," said the nurse.

"Then that's who I want to talk to."

The nurse flipped through a few pages on her clipboard. "You're not scheduled to see him until six."

"I want to see him now," said Link stubbornly.

"I'm afraid that the meeting would be too stressful for your current state," said the nurse, equally as stubborn. "If you would wait until six -"

"I have to see him now!" Link insisted, panic creeping into his voice. The more he lay in this bed, the weirder the situation seemed, and the more convinced he became that he was going crazy. "Please!"

The nurse opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. Finally, she said, "Alright. Please calm down, Master Link."

She scribbled something in her clipboard and promptly stuck out a hand. Link swung his legs around to the side of the bed and stood shakily on his own two legs, ignoring her proffered hand. Pain shot up his body like venom. A hiss slipped through his teeth.

The nurse tried to brace him against her own shoulders, but he shifted away, muttering, "I can walk."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" asked the nurse.

Link took a few steps forward, testing himself.

"Alright," said the nurse in a resigned voice. "His office is the open door directly across from you."

She stood watching him as he hobbled forward, gradually straightening up and walking in a somewhat normal manner, if very slowly. He could feel the orderlies staring at him, but he kept his gaze steadily forward, blocking them out, focusing only on that open door. After a few painful minutes, he stumbled through the doorway into a neatly organized office, where a silver-haired man sat at a desk with a name tag that read, steele.

"How are you?" he said, looking up and smiling at Link as though his arrival was completely expected. "You're Master Link, I take it?"

Link nodded.

"Well, come on, sit down," said Steele, indicating the open seat across from him. "And let's have a chat."

Link hesitated, and then plunked himself down in the chair, aware of the calculating gaze that was boring into his head.

"What brings you here?" asked Steele.

"I want to know what's going on," said Link immediately.

Steele overlapped his fingers and placed them on the desk, smiling at Link in a fatherly, sympathetic manner. "That's easy enough! You were in a very terrible accident."

Link waited, but he didn't elaborate. Eventually he prompted, "An accident?"

"Oh, yes," said Steele. "You were hunting -"

Images of the forest, blurred and green.

" - and you fell off your horse -"

His horse, Epona, screaming, stomping.

" - fell down a cliff -"

The sensation of tumbling and tossing, burning, smashing.

" - and were knocked unconscious."

Darkness.

"Some of your concerned villagers tried to heal you," said Steele, watching him carefully, "but they realized that their medical expertise did not cover the extent of your wounds. So they sent you here, where you arrived just on the edge of death.

"You don't remember any of this, of course, which you can blame on your brain, which appears to have blocked out the unpleasant memories. Brains are kind of funny that way."

Link was silent for a moment, processing all of this. So he had suffered an injury while hunting. Except...he almost never hunted. The village usually just ate crops. When they needed meat, they bought it clean and fresh from Castle Town's market; they didn't snag it straight out of the wild. Not unless the circumstances were dire.

He shrugged it off; the details didn't matter. Besides, nitpicking would only waste time, and they were professionals, after all. They knew what they were talking about.

"So when can I go home?" he asked.

Steele's mouth tightened.

"Well," he said. "Well. That's the complication."

There was a long pause.

"I don't understand," said Link.

"The villagers reported some very interesting things," said Steele quietly. "Concerning your behavior. They said that you had been...excuse me..." He picked up a manila folder and rifled through its contents, pulling out a piece of paper. "Talking nonsense," he read. "Yelling at others for no reason. Consulting an imaginary person. Purposefully breaking random objects. Disappearing for long periods of time. Exhibiting odd behaviors that endangered everyone in the vicinity." He shot Link a piercing look over the top of the paper. "In other words, going insane."

"Wait a second," said Link loudly, standing up. "I did not go insane."

"You did," Steele said calmly. "Why do you think that you cannot remember certain memories, certain days, certain people? Your mind is diseased, Master Link. And it's our job to heal it, just like we healed your body."

"No," said Link, feeling both frustrated and utterly uncertain. "I would know...I would know if I was crazy..."

"That's how insanity works," said Steele. "You don't know you have it until it completely controls you. You won't be here forever – just until we get a better idea of your condition...and come as close as we can to healing it. Until then, you pose a danger to yourself and everyone in your village."

"You have the wrong person," said Link. He was trembling. "I'm not crazy. I'm not. Ask anyone."

"We did," said Steele sadly. He handed the paper the Link. "Read that if you wish. It's the full report."

But Link didn't want to read the full report. He wanted to escape this place, to go home and pretend that nothing had ever happened. He threw the paper back at Steele and stormed out of the office, stopped moments later by two guards with iron grips.

"I'm sorry, Master Link," said Steele from behind him. "But we cannot let you go home until we have cured you."

Link was too busy fighting the guards' controlling grips to respond.

"Stop that. You're going to hurt yourself." Steele grabbed his arms as well, and their combined strength melted his own; he was forced into submission. "Do you want to put yourself – and others – in danger? You already attempted to commit suicide once. You didn't just fall off your horse – you jumped off of it."

Link shook his head vigorously. This couldn't be true...it couldn't be happening...

"Yes, you did," said Steele, spinning him around to face him. "There were several eyewitnesses. And had you not been taken to this particular hospital, what do you suppose you might have done next? Something doubly as dangerous, I'm sure!"

"You're wrong," said Link.

"You can say that all you like," said Steele sternly. "It's not going to change anything." He nodded at the guards. "Boys. Please escort Master Link to his new living quarters."

Link felt rage rise up in his chest. He thrashed against the guards grip, surprised by how strong he was – how much power he could force through the arms that he had so recently used to hug the village's children. Or was it a long time ago? But the strength wasn't enough. Another guard came running along to help, and the three of them carted him down the hallway.

He was numb with shock and disbelief; he offered no resistance and stumbled along in silence, trying desperately to comprehend what had just been presented to him. After many twists and turns, they reached the blank, numberless door that was to become his prison. One guard unlocked the door with a number pad and the others shoved Link into the room, into total darkness, and slammed the door behind him.

Link slowly picked himself off of the freezing cement floor. Blackness pressed on him from all sides, smothering, like a thick blanket. He ached all over.

"Hello?" he croaked.

Nobody answered him save for the faint rebounds of his own voice.

He felt unsafe there, half-expecting lions to lunge out of nowhere and devour him, or maybe to find a skeleton chained to the wall. Hands outstretched, he shuffled forward until his hands met a wall. He followed the outline of the room, inch by inch. It was a small room – smaller than the cottages back home, and that was saying something. At least it was devoid of dead bodies and wild animals. It was just him and his thoughts.

Link slumped down against a wall and buried his head in his arms. Perhaps he would prefer the lions. His head spun with uncertainty, with raw anger, with horrible shame. Was anything the doctor said true? What if it was? What if he was truly insane?

Okay, he thought, shaking his head to clear it. Let's look this through logically. One step at time. No reason yet to panic...What's the last thing you remember?

But even that simple question was not an easy one to answer. His memory was clouded and fragmentary, as dubious as a half-forgotten dream. Again the fractured memory of falling off Epona came to him, and he remembered flying through the forest with great urgency, but the euphoria of grasping a tangible memory did not last long; the memory became confusing, filled with pain, fear, shouting, and the sensation of falling...

Suddenly something else came back to him. He remembered actually leaving the horse's back. Steele was right; he jumped.

But that did not sit well with him, and it was not just the knowledge that he would never commit suicide. He thought hard, straining his brain to remember. There was a missing element here; what was it?

His head snapped up out of his hands. He had jumped – but not to end his life. To preserve it. He had been trying to avoid something dangerous. The urgency at which he rode suddenly took on an entirely different meaning. But what was that 'something'? What had driven him to horseback? What scheme was at place here?

Answerless questions spun around in circles in his mind until he grew dizzy. Perhaps there was no scheme. Perhaps he was chasing a stray goat or a thief, and he ran into some trouble on the way. Or maybe his mind was creating false memories. It didn't matter. He was still stuck in this cold cell, and everybody seemed to believe that he was crazy.

If I'm crazy, Link thought, how am I able to think about things logically?

There are different ways of being crazy, a snide voice in his head answered him. Besides, if you're sane, how come you don't remember anything that's happened in the past month? And bits and pieces before that? And what about the report? Do you think Steele really took the trouble to forge that? And for what purpose?

He sank down lower. His weak denial couldn't stand up to basic scrutiny. Maybe he was insane after all.

Everything seemed to crumble down around him. The very foundations upon which he built his life seemed to be melting, pitching him into madness. He wrapped his arms around his knees and pressed his face against his knees, shaking. This was too much. He floundered around in his own mind, reaching out for some small scrap of comfort, and latched onto memories of his childhood. Back then, at least, he was certain of his sanity. He clung to those memories as if they were life preservers. Memories of his parents before they died. Memories of the village, his adopted family.

But I'll never see them again, he thought.

He sank back into dark, dark waters and drowned there.