Link Loses His Arm And Just... Doesn't Have An Arm Anymore AU. Thoughts??

Link loses his arm and just... doesn't have an arm anymore AU. Thoughts??

Thinking about the end of the game when Rauru's spirit moves on and just takes his arm with him and NOW Link can't hold a sword, off balanced, having to re-learn how to do so many things. Starting with eating and getting dressed but then moving toward gardening, riding and grooming his horse, *climbing.* Luckily his fish boyfriend will carry him around but

Anyway. Been rattling that around in my head lately but I wanted to see what your big noggin would do with it!!!!

HI FRIEN!!! :D thank you for the wonderful ask lemme take a crack at this...

I've always thought it was a shame there wasn't any lasting consequences to the shit the characters go through in TOTK. I'm thinking about Zelda and the supposedly irreversible draconification but indeed also Link and his fucked up arm being brought back to normal like nothing happened. If it was a result of time reversal magic then surely they should have lost their memory of the game's events, which is an interesting concept but not the topic. Besides Link has gone through the amnesia thing already, so. Let's focus on the alternative which is: Link's fucked up arm indeed remains fucked up and he loses it altogether.

I think Link would take losing his arm horribly. He is an independant person at heart and suddenly losing so much autonomy would be like getting slapped in the face by a Hinox. Losing his ability to fight like before would be especially trying for him, I think. Not only is he independant, he's a protector. What good is he if he can't defend people? If him losing the use of his arm happens gradually as opposed to all at once, I feel like he wouldn't tell anyone until the last possible minute where he physically cannot move or feel his arm at all.

Purah would make a prosthetic for him, but that wouldn't magically make things go back to how they were. Even though Sheikah tech is cool as fuck and way more advanced than what we have in the real world, I don't think it could perfectly replicate a limb. Link would need some time to get used to it and that would be pretty frustrating for him.

As for the prosthetic itself, I imagine it would function in a similar way to the Divine Beasts. Now hear me out— I didn't see any steering wheels inside those things, so I think it's safe to assume the Champions piloted them via some sort of mind/spirit connection. So in Link's case, he'd have to force his own body to make this connection to this lifeless, inert metal thing, and that would be difficult for anyone – way more difficult than, say, being magically connected to the arm of a dead guy, cause at least that had been alive at some point.

Even when he does manage to make the connection, it still wouldn't be all that simple for him because he now has to learn to control it. Which would probably end up in embarassing or even potentially dangerous situations if the arm only obeys him half the time. (Imagine trying to keep a secret if your main mode of communication, sign language, has been hijacked by a limb that's intent on accomplishing your every thought and impulses! or, trying to sign something important when your prosthetic has decided to go limp and dead. And that's not even touching on how dangerous fighting or even cutting vegetables could become.)

By the time Link gets even halfway used to the prosthetic he's horribly out of practice in archery, climbing, horseriding, even cooking, and basically everything he enjoys doing, and that supremely pisses him off. OH and also. He's just gotten used to compensating for the unfamilar balance of having just the one arm and now he has a heavy metal thing strapped to him and he has to compensate all the opposite ways and it's a mess for him. Not to mention a lot of his horses aren't fond of this weird spooky new thing when he tries to pet them or offer them a snack, which is just the icing on the cake (not Epona though, she's a trooper and she loves carrots too much).

Now I know I've yapped a lot but this is where his support system comes in clutch (that said I'm not gonna describe every sage's reaction cause it pretty much boils down to worried but supportive and helping in their own way). Even though Link is a stubborn little shit who wants to do everything himself and keeps forgetting he's able to rely on his friends, Zelda does her best to help him day to day, even though she's dealing with her own trauma (and in my mind, the aftermath of being a dragon for fuck knows how long).

When they are together, Sidon makes a point to show Link how amazing he still is and always will be in his eyes – not because of things he can do but because he's so determined and never gives up. Neither Yona or Sidon are as skilled at healing magic as Mipha was, but they both try to soothe Link's phantom pain as much as they can, and Sidon has been learning a lot about his new powers while doing this, which is incidentally a convenient excuse – if you want to trick Link into letting you help him, you have to make him think he's the one helping you ;)

Okay that's all I've got!! hope this was a nice read despite how long this was :)