∇ Character Information
Name: Dark Link
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Apartment: 615
Physical Description:
Dark Link stands roughly 5'10" and is lean and muscular. His skin is dark, his hair black, and his eyes red. His clothing is a gray tunic over black, with dark brown leather gauntlets and boots. He wears two dark red earrings in each ear.
Inventory:
Aside from his clothing and jewelry, Dark Link carries the Dark Master Sword and a red and black Hylian Shield, as well as the Fairy Ocarina and roughly half a quiver's worth of arrows. Since arriving at the apartments, he has also managed to find a bow.
History:
[*I'll start by pointing out that this is by far headcanon. All the information in canon is that Dark Link is the miniboss of the Water Temple. His enemy description, courtesy of Navi, is simply "Defeat yourself!"]
Most people are born and grow up. The shadow, on the other hand, merely woke up mostly grown on a small patch of dirt holding a dead tree surrounded by shallow water stretching as far as he could see. A voice he didn't recognize laughed loud and haughtily and informed him that he was Dark Link, made from the shadow of some potential troublemaker, and that when said troublemaker arrived, he was to defeat the boy in whatever manner he chose.
At first, the shadow believed the voice that claimed to have made him and waited. He searched the area to learn his battleground and realized that he was in a room much smaller than the expanse he saw, a room cloaked in a powerful illusion. There were no exits, so with no options, the shadow continued to wait, unaware of the passing of time beyond his prison. As he waited, he kept his weapon cared for and ready and practiced his swordplay.
He wasn't sure when he started sleeping off and on, nor could he say when he started dreaming, but he knew he did both. His dreams were nothing like the wet, mist-filled room that trapped him. In his dreams, he saw blue skies and rolling hills covered in grass, things he couldn't possibly know, yet somehow he did. He couldn't even say for sure if he was remembering things or not, but that made the shadow do something he hadn't done since his first awakening: he started thinking, not about battle but about himself.
After a long time, Dark Link decided that if he knew about things that existed outside of his prison, then he couldn't have been created here as the voice had claimed. He didn't know about the rest of it, but he somehow knew that he was a shadow, so he knew that part was true.
It was then he started wondering about his appearance. For the most part, he had no reflection, but sometimes, when he concentrated hard enough, he could just barely make out a form in the everpresent water, just enough to make out details.
From time to time, the voice would return, reminding him of his duty. At some point, the boy became first a swordsman and then the cursed Hero (though Dark Link had no way of knowing that the change was because Link, his source, had woken from a seven year sleep and was beginning a quest across Hyrule), and not long after, Dark Link made another odd observation. He was wet and cold and lonely. The room that had merely been his room up to then became an uncomfortable place in the blink of an eye. He started sleeping up in the tree just to get away from the water, and when he dreamed, he dreamed of sunny days and campfires.
Then one day, one of the doors he couldn't open did, and in walked a young man dressed in green who carried a shining sword. Dark Link knew that the young man was the Hero the voice wanted him to kill, but at the same time, the shadow didn't leap to the offensive. He watched as the young man searched the room, taken completely aback at the warmth and vibrancy and light and life the young man seemed to radiate; it was entirely unlike what he knew, but it matched his strange dreams perfectly. By the time the ball of light accompanying the Hero found him and started yelling a warning, the shadow had made up his mind.
He drew his sword and fought the young man, and in the end, he defeated the hero... by disarming him. Dark Link couldn't bring himself to strike down the hero because there was something about the man he couldn't explain, something that seemed to draw him closer.
With the letter of his orders followed (though not the spirit), the other door opened. After a long talk, the Hero left to continue his quest to awaken the sages, and the shadow followed, drawn towards his source by a connection neither of them can even actively recognize. The Hero of Time fought Ganondorf and struck him down, and with the help of the sages banished Ganondorf to the Sacred Realm. Princess Zelda offered to send him back in time, but the Hero of Time refused, deciding to instead stay and help rebuild Hyrule.
And so the shadow's first true glimpse of humans who weren't the Hero was of the survivors of Ganondorf's seven year reign of terror, men and women who practically fell over themselves trying to thank their hero for saving them. After the years spent either preparing for a fight, fighting, or watching for an ambush, Dark Link couldn't help but see all of the people of Hyrule as weak and spineless. They were all too cowardly to even attempt to save themselves, but then they all wanted to get close to the one person in Hyrule who actually did something.
The next few weeks did nothing to convince him otherwise. Link was the only true warrior in Hyrule, the only true light, the only one Dark Link deemed as remotely equal. He continued to follow the Hero of Time around, staying hidden most of the time and appearing only when Link was by himself. Dark Link never seemed to care that Link seemed confused by his presence some of the time; he just stayed close.
Until he found himself in a faraway place, that is.
Personality:
Dark Link is a bit of a contradiction. He's the opposite of the Hero of Time, but at the same time, he's a copy of the Hero of Time. He's just as brave as Link, and at least as stubborn, though he's considerably more selfish. Dark Link doesn't have a whole lot in the way of social skills, though that's hardly surprising considering most of his existence was spent with a tree for company.
Where Link is innocent and warm-hearted, Dark Link is considerably more twisted. He's a bit of a pervert, and he loves veiling his words in all kinds of innuendo, perverted and not, simply because he can. He also likes messing with people. He doesn't like most people much. Despite the humanity he has, he is still a being created for the purpose of battle, and as such, that's how he measures people. They're either capable of defending themselves and thus 'strong' or not and are 'weak'.
He has an especially dim view of people who sit back and do nothing while their precious hero risks everything to save them; to him it's a mix of weakness and trapping others in their expectations. At the same time, Dark Link likes attention, as long as he has it when he wants it. He's cocky and brash and sarcastic and vulgar, and he has no problems telling anyone in earshot exactly what his opinion is.
Dark Link is incredibly attracted with fire, to the point of being a bit of a pyromaniac. Fire is dry and warm and moving, everything his cold, damp, stagnant prison wasn't. When he thinks back on the time he spent in that room, it makes him angry and bitter because he doesn't like the prison now (even if at the time, it didn't bother him). Even when he's not dwelling on his past, he has a bit of a temper, and when he's angry, he tends to be violent, both physically and verbally.
Despite his arrogance, he's also very hard on himself, often referring to himself as "just a shadow", even though he's convinced he's more than that and he prefers to act human. He's spent a lot of time trapped by someone else's will, and it was because of his desire for freedom that he twisted the orders he knew good and well meant "kill the Hero of Time". It's the same desire that still makes him unwilling to follow most orders.
Biggest Fear:
To hear him tell it, Dark Link is afraid of absolutely nothing. In reality, despite the fact he's mostly convinced himself that Ganondorf summoned him from somewhere (though he can't even guess where) instead of creating him, deep down, Dark Link still has that nagging doubt that he's nothing more than a shadow created to destroy a single person and as such has no mind of his own... and that doubt terrifies him.
Powers:
Dark Link is a highly competent swordsman and archer, equal in skill to the Hero of Time. He also knows the spell Din's Fire, which he can use to surround himself in fire, and he can wrap arrows in flames or ice. (Try as he might, he cannot remember how to create a Light Arrow no matter how often he's shown.) He can use the same spell that creates Fire Arrows as a sort of magical lighter; this is his preferred method of setting fires and lighting candles.
As a shadow, he is tougher than a human, able to survive without food and water much longer as well as much more able to tolerate cold -- though Dark Link has enough of a dislike of being cold, wet, or worst of all, both at once that he may as well not be any more tolerant of cold than a human being. It won't kill him, but he won't like it, and he won't shut up about it. He is capable of seeing in the dark (well, natural darkness, anyway) and has eyes like a cat's -- meaning that in bright light, his pupils narrow to slits instead of dots. Aside from his darkvision, his vision is roughly the same as a human's; his longer ears give him slightly better than human hearing. He's usually observant.
He's graceful and has great balance (especially considering that during the battle with Link, he can stand balanced on the Hero's sword). He's very stealthy, though a good part of that stealth is that, being a shadow, he can hide himself in the dark when he wants.
Dark Link is lacking in book knowledge and most any worldly skill that doesn't involve combat or preparing for it, though he is very clever and good with puzzles, and he has a good ear for music. He also has an incredible grasp of innuendo for someone who's spent most of his life trapped in a locked room.
SAMPLES
Third Person:
His first waking thought is that damn, it got cold in here. His second waking though is to yell and find out where Link --
No, his second waking thought is that there is something hard in his throat, and he just tried to breathe it. He hacks and coughs and manages to spit whatever it is out; it skitters across the floor unnoticed. Whatever it was tastes weird, too.
Somewhere in the whole 'get rid of what's choking him' bit, he sits up. This... Okay, this isn't anywhere he knows. What's going on now?
"Link?" No answer. Dark Link growls. Of course Link isn't here; he's never here. Bastard just up and wanders off whenever he wants, and it's up to Dark to track him down.
Still, Dark knows damned well that they weren't here last night. There's a bed, for one, and for another, these walls aren't stone.
"Link!" He isn't expecting an answer this time, so it only irritates him a little when he doesn't get one.
This is so not right.
"All right, show yourself! I know someone's behind this. Link's not mean enough to pull off something like this, so c'mon out!"
There's a long silence. Then the silence is broken by a low growl that grows in volume and content, until Dark is yelling profanities in every language he knows. It's not getting him anywhere, but Thrice damn it, it makes him feel better.
First Person:
[Dark Link is sitting at the table, staring down towards the tabletop, though he's not really looking at anything. He has an arrow in one hand, twirling it between his fingers.]
Damned idiot. I got careless, now look where I am. Tch. There's an in; there's an out. Everywhere, every time. Even that supposedly inescapable Gerudo prison had its way out. 'Course, that would've been a lot harder if the girls had thought to strip us of our gear.
Speaking of which... [He gets louder, looking up towards the ceiling.] Whoever brought me here, you made the same mistake! I'm a hero, y'know. A hero with plenty of gear, and when I find you, I will rip your ass to shreds, you hear me?
[A pause. The arrow stops. He frowns for a moment, and then he smirks.]
Heh. Scratch that. I'm going to make you send me home, then I'll rip your ass to shreds.