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He dies with the crack of thunder.
Zelda wakes with a start, her eyes blown wide, taking in every detail of the dark night. Her body is still but her soul is trembling. Her heart beats against the walls of its cage. She can’t breathe. He’s not breathing and she can’t breathe. She can’t hear anything over the pouring rain. Her chest is hollow. He’s—
A soft sigh of protest sounds from her side. Under her palm, his chest rises and falls with every slow breath. Deep under the warm skin against her ear, a strong heart steadily beats. Beats. Beats.
The rain fades away and all Zelda can hear is his steady, slow, unobstructed breathing, in sync with the calm rhythm of his heart. The hollowness in her chest fades. She forces herself to breathe with him. She waits for her heart rate to slow. She tries to close her eyes.
All she sees is red.
With a sigh, Zelda sits up in bed. He whines as his arms fall away from her, but she soothes him with a kiss on his forehead and he sleeps soundly again. A bout of lightning illuminates his form—his atraumatic, non bloody form. She steals a moment to watch him, to reassure herself. Only the dull evening light trickling in through the window paints the edges of his visage, but it’s enough to remind her that he is alive. Alive and comfortably resting in their bed, in their home, in their Hyrule.
The hardwood is cold on the soles of her feet. She pulls a shawl across her shoulders. The stairs creak and the door whines. Thunder strikes.
The ground is damp under the awning outside the front door, but the rest of the land is drowning in rain. There is no wind to sway its path, no wind to bring a chill. The summer air is warm, even in a midnight storm.
Lightning races across the sky over Mt. Lanayru. Moments later its thunder races through her chest.
Zelda remembers when she loved storms like these. When she would sit in her study watching the rain beat against her window. When she would blow out her candle so the only illumination came from those brief awe inspiring flashes. When she felt with her whole body and soul the absolute thrill of the thunder roll.
Rain falls. Lightning strikes. Thunder rolls.
All she feels is mourning.
She hasn’t loved storms since the calamity; since the storm stole her everything. Stole her kingdom, her family, her knight. Now the storm is calamity; the lightning that unforgiving beam from the guardian’s eye, the thunder that roar of malice as it reigns victorious.
The rain his blood—coating her hands as she begs him to hold onto his last vestiges of life.
Just like she did before.
Zelda doesn’t turn when she hears the creaking of the door, nor does she turn when he steps up behind her. She doesn’t turn. But she does close her eyes so she can sink into the feeling of warm palms on her shoulders. So she can wash herself in the steady inhale and exhale next to her ear.
His mere presence lightens the weight in her chest. “Sorry,” she whispers. “I did not mean to wake you.”
Lips press to the crown of her head and he leases a calming “shh” into her hair, just like he does every time. And just like every time, it has a warm calm seeping into her bones.
“Nightmare?”
She shakes her head. “Memory.”
His arms come to cross around her front and his heart beats between her shoulder blades as he pulls her close. Reminds her she’s here. Reminds her he’s here. Hyrule is her rock and he is her tether. As long as he lives in this mortal realm, so too shall she.
He doesn’t say any more, just rocks her side to side in his arms. They’ve gone through this enough times. By now he knows that ‘memory’ means her tormented mind replaying his death. By now he knows that holding her close—making his still beating heart known—is the best way to help her.
“It wasn’t the first time I held you dead in my arms,” she whispers. The rocking stills. “A different me and a different you, but not the first time.”
The goddess who fell in love with the courageous warrior with an unbreakable will. The courageous warrior who gave everything he had to protect the land they loved together.
“Zelda?”
His voice pulls her back. Back to the Hyrule that is rather than the Hyrule that was. Back to her home in Hateno village, with the summer rain beating down and the thunder rolling in the distance. Back to a warm body and a beating heart.
“You were taller back then,” she goes on. “And you wore a red scarf that was perhaps the only worldly possession you cared about.” A red scarf warm on the back of a goddess’s neck as it pulls her into a gentle kiss. The most gentle of touches from the fiercest of warriors. “We fought together then too. Fought a great evil.”
“Ganon,” he says, but she’s already shaking her head.
“A great evil that would one day be Ganon. With a sword that would one day be the Master Sword.” A goddess’s blessing on a trusted weapon. A goddess’s love and a mortal man.
His posture stiffens. “You mean…?”
“I knew it was foolish to love you,” she continues. She’s lost in the memory of warm skin and a beating heart. Of soft touches from callused hands. Of whispered praises from hot breaths. Of fierce eyes and the most undying loyalty. “But how could I not when you so fiercely protected the land that I loved?” ...Of red blood and dull eyes. “When you would give your life for it?”
A sheet of lightning paints their sky in blinding white for just a second before it’s gone, leaving only the rumbling of thunder in its wake.
“When you died, I tethered your soul to mine. Shed my divinity. All in the hopes that one day, when that great evil rose anew, we could protect our home again. And maybe—just maybe,” her grip tightens over his arms, holding onto them like they’re all she has, “...we could both come out alive this time. Alive and together.”
The moment is still. Words yield to relentless rain. Lightning strikes, a little further away than it was before. The thunder takes longer to reach them.
He lifts a hand to smooth over her hair and presses another kiss to her head. “It worked.” The words are whispered with a warmth that bathes her soul. “We’re here.”
She closes her eyes to a red scarf growing ever darker. To a blue tunic soaked with blood.
“You still died in my arms.”
“We’re here,” he repeats, and his tone leaves no room for discussion. It makes her smile; eases her mind to be pressed by him, for his presence to be so stubborn and unwavering. Zelda’s hand is taken up in his and he makes her turn so he can press her palm to his chest. To the steady beating of a healthy heart under warm skin. Scarred skin. But warm.
“Yes,” she agrees. In the darkness of night she can just barely see the faint curve of his lips—the softest of smiles on strongest of knights. Link’s smile. “We are.”