Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Zelda crept on her hands and knees, through the grass behind Link’s house. The warm afternoon sun of another lovely Hateno day played across her golden hair and pale skin as the tree branches swayed in the gentle breeze. Ahead of her, a large blue-and-brown beetle ascended the thick bark of a tree trunk.

She tried to focus on how Link would go about hunting. Of course he would have had the Sheikah Slate - her sheikah slate - to help in tracking these down. A Sheikah slate that was far away somewhere, with Link.

The beetle crept sideways around the trunk to the side of the tree opposite her. She froze, not wanting to scare it away, and listened, hoping to hear when it had stopped moving. She could hear children laughing and running in the town below. The sounds of wheels against stone from wagons carrying goods along the main road carried on the air to her. She perceived the gurgling of water in the nearby stream. And, just faintly at the edge of her hearing, the almost musical sound of Link rematerializing at the nearby Myahm Agana shrine.

Zelda rose to her feet with a measured, silent movement and placed the soles of her feet on already disturbed patches of grass as she moved. With luck, the beetle would still be there when she returned.

She met Link at the narrow bridge that led to the rustic house that she was increasingly thinking of as theirs, though the sign out front still read “Link’s House”. His Snowquill armor was splattered with an impressive variety of monster guts.

“You’re filthy.” she chided him in a soft voice. “Quick, give me the slate, and then follow me quietly. I have a beetle to catch.”  Wordlessly, he took the slate off his belt and handed it to her. Zelda held a finger to her lips and then gestured for him to follow as she hurried back around the house again.

Zelda crouched down in the tall grass once more, awkwardly posed with the slate in one hand. The beetle had moved higher up the side of the tree. She aimed the slate at it and pushed the capture button. The slate clicked and showed an image of the beetle, with a small label under the image reading Bladed Rhino Beetle .

“Got it!” Zelda exclaimed, causing the beetle to fly off into the afternoon air. “Oh, there it goes” her triumphant smile vanished. “I would so have liked for us to catch it... that particular species of beetle is said to have some amazing effects when ingested. But at least we can track them now.''

Link watched the beetle leave, with a momentary look of relief on his face. “I usually head down to Faron Woods for elixir ingredients.”  He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Should probably do that again soon. I used some up today.”

Zelda gingerly took his arm, avoiding the splatters on his clothes as best as possible, as they walked back towards the front of the house. “I see your monster-hunting trip went well. Lady Riju will be pleased that there aren’t as many monsters threatening the Gerudo trade caravans now.”  With her other hand, she flipped through the pages of images on the Sheikah Slate.

“Did you get the pictures I wanted while you were there?” She stopped flipping pages a moment later. “Oh, I see them. They’re mixed in with the ones I just took, though.”  

She paused for a moment, her brow furrowing. “It would be nice if the Slate had a way to categorize these pictures, or sort them other than chronologically. Even if we could just separate ones I took from ones you took. I wonder if Purah could work out a way to do that?  You said she’s the one who upgraded the runes on this for you.”

Link reached over and tapped his finger on one of the Slate’s pictures to enlarge it. “Here’s the Lynel you wanted.”

The screen showed a towering monster;  Hate-filled glowing red eyes, horns the size of a man’s torso, and a great mane of matted white hair, atop a massively muscled torso standing taller than a horse. A gigantic sword was slung across its back, which it hardly needed due to claws that could tear a man in half with a single swipe. The picture also showed Link, standing in front of the beast, wearing a button-eyed cloth mask that was like a child’s caricature of the Lynel’s face. One arm was stretched out towards the camera, holding the Slate out in front of him as he took the picture.

The words White-maned Lynel glowed at the bottom of the screen. Zelda momentarily thought that Reckless Idiot would be a more appropriate label.

“You took a picture of yourself .. standing next to a Lynel?” Zelda’s eyebrows rose. “Where did you get that mask?  Does it even work?”

Link rubbed the back of his neck. “Bought it from a guy named Kilton. I’ll have to introduce you sometime. And yeah, it works, although not as well as the Moblin or Lizalfo masks do. Lynels are smart, they figure it out after like a minute.”

“So, this Lynel...”

“Tried to take my head off about five seconds after I took that picture. I think me taking the picture tipped it off.”  He shrugged. “I still killed it. Collected the horns and weapons, and now there's one less monster to worry about.”

She shook her head. “I was expecting you to take a picture from a distance, perhaps while hiding behind a rock like a sensible person.”  

“Hiding doesn’t work” Link replied. “Lynels can arc their shots.”

“Only if they know you’re there. I thought the Sheikah trained you in stealth?” Zelda quipped.

She flipped to the next picture on the Slate, and was momentarily confused by what she saw. Much of the picture was taken up by the front wheel and mechanical horse-head of the strange two-wheeled vehicle that Link had been calling the “Master Cycle”. The ice and snow covered ground seemed oddly distant, and the picture was blurred, as if taking hastily in the middle of violent motion. “Did .. did you actually jump over a chasm on that thing?  And took an image in mid-jump?” she asked unbelievingly.

Link’s head dropped, and his gaze fell to the stone path below. “The slabs of rock on the side looked like they’d make a good ramp. And I wanted to see if I could make the jump.”

Zelda frowned, then signed in resignation. “I would scold you for being reckless, but I know it would do no good. You’ve always been this way. Even before we stopped Ganon. I was watching you the whole time, you know.”

She looked him straight in the eyes, placing a hand on one of the few clean spots on his shoulder. “But, if it at all matters for me asking, do try to be more careful with yourself. I can’t replace you.” She turned and stepped inside the house they shared. “And I think later, after you’ve cleaned up, we should go talk to Purah. See if she can make us another Slate, or improve the camera function on this one.”

Link and Zelda materialized at the travel gate just outside of Purah’s lab, coalescing out of glowing blue strands of light. They were pressed together in a way that was really quite inappropriate for a princess and her guardian knight, half-embracing and pressing their torsos against each other, both touching the Sheikah Slate at the same time. They had determined that this was the best way to trick the Slate into treating them as a single body for transportation, and Zelda had decided that she really didn’t mind the close proximity required. It seemed that Link had decided something similar, as their disentanglement proceeded in a slow, reluctant manner.

Zelda’s breath caught as she viewed out across Necluda from their high vantage point. She moved to the edge of the cliff to see the sprawling village below.  Windmills turned lazily in the breeze, and smoke rose from chimneys and cooking fires. Sunlight glinted off the water in the stream that ran through the town.  Lanterns burned, some in the colors of conventional fire and some in the strange blue glow of the ancient Sheikah energy. The air was clear enough for her to make out the distinctive shape of the Dueling Peaks far in the distance, and past that the distant, hazy form of the Great Plateau. “Look, there’s where you slept for a hundred years”, she pointed off to the north-west. “And over that way, is where my future lies.”  The Castle wasn’t directly visible from Hateno, but they both knew where it lay.

“Our future.” Link replied softly.

Zelda nodded. “Yes, of course. Although once I become Queen, I won’t have as much time for our research trips.” she replied wistfully. “Never mind. Let’s see what Purah can do to help us.”

Behind them stood Purah’s odd, ramshackle laboratory, appearing much as it had been the last time they saw it. The Sheikah furnace glowed a bright blue, and strange yet surprisingly catchy electronic music filtered out from inside.

Link stepped through the door, Zelda just behind him, into the cluttered interior. Papers were still scattered around. Maps and plans covered the singular large table. Zelda knew well many of those were plans for Hyrule’s reconstruction, having spent hours going over them with Purah and the other Sheikah elders.

They could see no sign of the Director herself.

From the bookstacks in the rear of the lab, a grey-haired man in traditional Sheikah garb and thick-rimmed glasses called out to them. “If you’re looking for the Director, she’s out on an errand.”  Link and Zelda both recognized the man as Purah’s assistant Symin.

Link frowned. “She never leaves the lab. Especially not since the incident with the age-reversing rune.”

Symin placed the book he had been studying back on the shelf, and walked forward to more properly greet them. “She’s been experimenting with the Travel Rune on her own slate. She used it to take a trip out to the Great Plateau this morning, and said she’d be back tomorrow. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Zelda pulled out the Sheikah Slate. “If she’s that far ahead on hers, we were hoping she could eventually work on making another one for us. Although I suspect that will be a long-term project.”

Symin nodded. “It’s a very complicated piece of technology, and even Purah doesn’t understand how all of the functions actually work  There are many aspects of the ancient Sheikah technology that are still impossible for us to reproduce.”

Zelda sighed. “I feared that. Well, the other thing we were hoping she could help us with was better organizing the images taken with the Camera rune. I would just like to be able to separate the images Link took from the ones I took”

Symin smiled. “Ah, well, that I can help you with. If your slate is anything like hers, it should just be a matter of setting up a second user account.”  He took the slate from Zelda. “We both have our own accounts on hers, so we can keep our research notes separate.” Symin pointed at an inset circular spot with a glowing blue center. “You just press the activation button and hold it for five seconds to bring up the administrator login screen.”  He demonstrated as he spoke.

The slate made a three-tone rising chime, and a grid of glowing blue Sheikah letters appeared on the screen as Symin handed it back to her.

“How did I ever not know about this?” Zelda frowned in annoyance. “Link, did you know about this?”  She shot an accusing glance at Link, who shrugged. Zelda then turned to look back at the screen. “So what do I do now?”

“You press these letters, to enter the administrator password.”

“And what is the password?”

Symin’s eyebrows rose, and he shrugged. “I have no idea. Purah didn’t tell it to you?”

“She didn’t even tell me that there was an administrator function at all, let alone what the password was for it.” Zelda replied angrily. “Do you know the password for hers?  Perhaps it’s the same one.”

Symin shook his head. “Sorry. She keeps that a secret. Director’s eyes only.”

Zelda frowned, her eyes downcast at the slate in her hands. “Well then. We’ll just have to wait until she returns from her mysterious errand.”

Link puttered merrily in the kitchen of their little house down the hill, humming to himself as he made dinner. Using ingredients gathered on his trip to the Gerudo Highlands, he prepared for them a meal of herb-roasted pigeon, and a dessert of wildberry tarts.

Zelda had yet to get tired of the unexpected gift that was Link’s newfound ability to cook. She had expected him to have to learn to fight to defeat Ganon, but never that he’d somehow also become a skilled chef in the process. Link had even managed to recover the recipe for her favorite fruitcake from the ruins of the castle library, and somehow had prepared it for her the first night after she was freed. How he baked a fruitcake over a campfire better than her father’s finest royal kitchens was still a mystery to her, although she suspected that her relief at finally being free and seeing him alive again might have been coloring her perceptions at the time.

While Link cleaned up after dinner, Zelda pulled out the Sheikah Slate. She pressed the button to bring up the administration screen again, and stared at the grid of letters. “It’s designed to not let anyone but the administrator in, but designs can be worked around. And a password can perhaps be guessed, if you know the person well enough.” she mused.

She tapped on the screen, trying various words and names. Typing purah only yielded a response of Authentication Failed . 

She tried other obvious names. Link , zelda , sheikah , impa , hyrule , each time getting the same result.

“Has to be something. What would she pick?” she muttered to herself.

“How about ‘Snap’” Link called from across the room.

“Snap?  Why snap?” Zelda replied.

Link shrugged. “She says it a lot. Might be the password.”

Zelda tapped the glowing keypad, typing in snap .

Authentication Valid

“That was it!  Oh, Link, you’re a genius.”

Link beamed at her from across the kitchen, and she felt a momentary joy unrelated to the thrill of finding the right password.

A new set of runes appeared on the Slate’s screen, completely unlike the ones normally present.

• Language Options
• Parental Lock
• System Configuration
• Account Management

“And here’s what Symin was talking about. Account Management. I should be able to just set up my own account, and then we can keep my research pictures, and your ... unnecessarily risking-your-life pictures separate.”

A tap on the Account Management rune brought up a new screen. New Account . A prompt asked for her name, which Zelda tapped in on the screen.

“That should do it. I wonder if there’s a feature to transfer pictures from one account to another?  Oh, I should make sure my account actually went in properly first.”

After a few moments of looking, Zelda found the Accounts rune. Pressing that took her to another screen. Three names were listed there.

• administrator
• zelda
• link_clone_119

She peered at the third name in confusion. It was obviously Link’s account, but why did it say “Clone”, and why was there a number after it?

“Did you get it?”  Link called again, as he was putting the cleaned dishes away.

“Yes .. just something a little strange here.”

She spotted a notification at the bottom of the screen, in smaller letters under the list of names.

• showing active accounts

With a tap of her finger, the notification changed to read showing all accounts. And the list of names suddenly expanded.

• link_clone_119
• link_clone_118
• link_clone_117
• link_clone_116
• ...

She touched the list of names, and discovered that she could scroll through it.

• ...
• link_clone_88
• link_clone_87
• link_clone_86
• ...

Zelda kept scrolling, till she reached the bottom of the list.

• ...
• link_clone_3
• link_clone_2
• link_clone
• link

No further names were listed.

Zelda felt a horrid suspicion building in the back of her head. She pressed her finger against the bottom-most name, link . The list of names shifted left on the screen, and more words and labels appeared to the right. She spotted a note indicating the account creation date, which was less than a year after Ganon returned. The account deactivation date was less than a day after that.

She tapped the next name, link_clone . This showed an account creation date about nine months after the previous account was deactivated. And it also had an account deactivation date only a few days after being created.

“Strange how?” asked Link, who was now leaning over her shoulder, trying to see the Sheikah Slate’s screen.

Zelda startled, nearly dropping the slate as she fumbled, trying to hide the list. “Ah, nothing!  I’ll just have to ask Purah about a few things when I see her again.”

Link leaned back. If he noticed anything was wrong, he didn’t say. “Okay. I’m heading off to bed. Been a long day.”

Zelda closed out of the account management screen with shaking fingers, as Link headed up the stairs.

Chapter Text

Zelda lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. Beside her, Link snored gently.

The arrangement began innocently and sensibly enough. When they first arrived in Hateno after defeating Ganon, exhausted and with nowhere else to go, Link had offered her the use of his recently-purchased house as a temporary place to stay. Link was far too much of a gentleman not to let Zelda take the only bed, and Zelda certainly wasn’t going to make him sleep on the floor after all he had done. And when the nightmares of a hundred years of horror troubled her sleep, she found his warm body by her side a comforting reminder that in the end, they had actually won .

Link had once mentioned the possibility of having another bed put in, or possibly an entire second bedroom. Somehow, that never ended up happening, as by mutual unspoken agreement they had decided the current arrangement was acceptable. It wasn’t as if her father or any other members of the royal court were still around to disapprove.

She didn’t find his sleeping presence much comfort tonight, as disturbing thoughts raced through her head. She had memories of Link dying more than a hundred different ways, a constant cinema of despair during the years she spent fighting Ganon. She hadn’t really been physical at the time, the entire battle taking place as a strange, half-remembered struggle on some spiritual level, but she clearly recalled being able to see Link as he woke and fell time and time again. When Link actually arrived to save her, alive and well, she had realized the visions were all lies. Now she wasn’t so certain of that anymore.

Eventually, she realized that she wasn’t going to get any sleep until she had some answers. She slid carefully off the bed to avoid creaking the springs, then crept down the stairs to the kitchen. Retrieving the Sheikah Slate from where they had left it on the table, she brought up the map and selected the Shrine of Resurrection, dissolving into glowing strings of light as the slate transported her.

Zelda re-materialized in the Shrine of Resurrection, deep inside a cavern atop the Great Plateau. A large open pod, just large enough for a single man to lie in, was against the far wall of the room, with a pedestal off to the side where a Sheikah Slate interface was mounted. Complicated Sheikah machinery encrusting the ceiling like glowing blue coral illuminated the room. Behind her was an open door; the passage that led out to the surface of the plateau.

As expected, her old friend, Purah, Director of the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, stood near the console, unaware of Zelda's arrival. Purah seemed focused on her task as she balanced awkwardly on a rotting barrel in front of the control pedestal, attempting to touch the screen of the Slate she had placed there. Zelda remained quiet, studying the short girl dressed in a white jacket that matched her hair, with comically oversized owl-like metal goggles perched on her head. Zelda had been grateful and overjoyed to discover that her elderly friend had survived the hundred years of the Calamity, but initially shocked at Purah's physical appearance; The senior Sheikah scientist had tested an experimental age-reversing rune on herself, only to be left in the body of a small child when it the rune worked even better than expected. After her initial shock, Zelda had found her friend’s predicament somewhat humorous. She was not in the mood for humor tonight.

The barrel cracked, ancient wood splintering apart, and Purah tumbled to the ground. Looking up, she only then noticed Zelda standing over her. “Zelllldaaa!  How long have you been there? Have you just been standing there watching me struggle?” The Director scrambled to her feet, brushing the dust of the chamber floor off her dress. “How rude! If you’re going to intrude, you could at least give me a hand with this.”

Zelda pulled out her Sheikah Slate, and flipped through the screens until she reached the long list of deactivated accounts. She held it out to Purah. “Explain this. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?  Did you really bring Link back over a hundred times ?”

Purah’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger, and she stamped one foot on the ground, acting for a moment very much like the child she appeared to be. “SYMIN!  That traitor! He told you the administrator password, didn’t he? He wasn’t even supposed to know it. Must have watched me type it in. That useless fool. I should never have trusted him.”

“I’ll have you know that Link and I figured out the password ourselves. Really, it wasn’t very hard. You shouldn’t have picked your favorite word.”

Purah brushed a bit more dust off herself, and adjusted her glasses. “Well, what of it?  I suppose you’re mad at me? Angry that we saved the world?”

Zelda gestured at the machinery of the resurrection chamber. “How ... why?  What happened? This isn’t how it was supposed to be. My Link was supposed to be brought back to life, and then come and save me.”

Pyrah put her hands on her hips, and leveled a stare at Zelda. “ Your Link died , princess. The machine brought him back in under a year, and then he died again. Skull caved in by a Bokoblin.”  Purah sighed. “It didn’t bring him back strong enough. He was alive, but weak. No muscle tone. No reflexes. Didn’t remember any of his training. Like a first-year recruit, weaker than the original Link had been even as a child. He went straight to try and rescue you, and was dead within a day.”

“We thought all was lost, then. But Robbie figured out that the chamber could make another Link, just like the first one.”  Purah continued, excitedly. “Snap! It was amaaaaaazing! Externally indistinguishable copies, down to the same scars. Even managed to restore some of his memories, which was a bonus we didn’t see coming!  Impa thought they were tied to his soul, somehow, which is a distinctly unscientific theory if you ask me.”

Zelda could only stare as Purah went cheerfully on about the wonders of what was apparently a fully functional cloning machine, and the chain of identical, disposable heroes it had created.

“We tried to speed up the cycle, but the machine refused to produce a proper clone in less than nine months. It won’t even start working on a new one until the latest one is dead, either. It’s as if it knows he’s still alive, and refuses to have more than one of him around at a time.”  She shook her head sadly. “It’s a shame, if we had been able to make a few dozen of him at the same time and mob-rushed Ganon with them all at once, we could have defeated the Calamity much earlier.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?  Or him?” Zelda asked incredulously.

Purah shrugged. “Really, we didn’t see the need. The fewer people knew about this, the better. Everyone’s happier believing the true Hero came back and rescued you. You wouldn't even have known, if I’d had the chance to do a proper factory reset on that Slate, but someone didn’t want to lose their photo collection.”

Zelda leaned against the wall, tears welling in her eyes, as memories came flooding back to her.

Surrounded by Bokoblins, armed only with a tree branch, Link’s wooden shield shatters as a blue-skinned Bokoblin strikes it with a dragonbone club, and he falls under a hail of blows.

Three Bokobolin archers ambush Link as he uses a recently-felled tree to cross a ravine. He tries to dodge the arrows, but his foot slips on a patch of mossy bark, and he plummets to the rocks below.

Suddenly face-to-face with a Lynel in the hills, Link runs, and tries to hide behind a nearby ridge, but the Lynel fires a volley of electric arrows that rain down on him from above.

Stalking Smotherwing butterflies in the foothills of Death Mountain, Link doesn’t hear the Guardian coming until it’s almost too late. In his haste he pulls out a bomb arrow, which instantly detonates from the heat.

Caught in a freak rainstorm, clinging to the side of a cliff over a raging river, Link is sure he can wait out the storm, but he didn’t expect the sudden flock of Electric Keese. They dive on him, crackling with electric charge, locking up his muscles and knocking him off the cliff face into the water below.

“I saw every death, Purah. Each time he was killed by monsters, slipped off a cliff, or fell to exhaustion or the elements. I thought ... “  She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I thought they were lies spun by Ganon, to trick me and break my spirit. And now you’re telling me they were all real. Every death I saw really was Link, dying over and over again.”

She looked over to Purah, who at this point had pulled out a piece of paper and was jotting notes. “Theory about Princess’s perceptions while fighting Ganon is supported ... aware of subject’s repeated deaths despite our precautions ...”

“Purah!” Zelda yelled.

The diminutive researcher looked up at her. “What?  Impa thought you might be aware of what was happening, though I didn’t think that was possible. That’s more rupees I owe her.”

Zelda gasped in surprise and shock. “Impa knows too?  Of course she does, she knows everything.” She slid down the wall, slumping to the floor. “How am going to tell Link this?  Is it even Link? My Link is dead, what do I even call the man I’ve been living with now? Link clone number one-nineteen?”

“Tell Link?”  Purah looked at her with a look far sharper than would normally be seen on such a young-seeming face. “Oh, you shouldn’t tell him. That would be a mistake. He’s better off thinking he’s the original. If you tell him the truth, it’ll break him. He’ll end up wandering off into the desert to punch seals for a decade or something to try and find himself...”

“You ride sand-seals, you don’t punch them..” Zelda muttered.

“Aaaanyway, like I was saaaaying , there’s no point in telling him. You two have a good thing going. Keep the secret. Enjoy your nice domestic life together. Then when you eventually become Queen, you can keep him as your protector. Or marry him and make him King. Or banish him, if you really can’t stand what he is. But don’t tell the poor boy. He’s been through enough already.”

Zelda shook her head. “I need to think this over.”  She got back to her feet, regained her composure to a degree. “Symin did tell us where to find you, though I had to guess that you’d be in the resurrection chamber. I didn’t think you’d be visiting the Temple of Time, or anything else up on the plateau. What are you even doing here?  Not trying to make another Link, I hope.”

“I came here to shut this thing down. Now that Ganon’s been sealed away, we don’t need it making more copies of Link. Job’s done, right?”

Purah paused. “Unless ... now that you know, we could just leave it running. Your boy’s a bit reckless, I’ve heard. Still risking his life fighting monsters. You could always have a backup, get your Linky back if he dies again?”

For a moment, Zelda felt deeply tempted by the prospect of never having to worry about permanently losing Link should he die due to another of his reckless adventures.  If they kept the Shrine of Resurrection running, his death would mean merely a nine-month absence, not a life-long loss. She knew, however, that this would be a selfish choice and entirely unfair to Link. “No. He’s died for me enough times already. He deserves to rest. If, no, when he dies again, let him stay dead.”

Purah shrugged. “It’s your choice, princess.”  She gestured at the pedestal. “But he’s your hero, so you should be the one to shut it down. I’ll tell you how.”

Zelda smiled. “You mean, you need me to do it, because you aren’t tall enough to reach?”

“I was taller last time I came here.” Purah grumbled. “Maaaaaybe I should have taken Symin along? No, he asks too many questions.”

Zelda stood in front of the pedestal, where Purah’s own Sheikah Slate lay.  The screen of the slate, which was larger and cruder than Zelda’s own, showed a set of runes completely unlike anything she had seen before. “What do I need to do?”

“I already opened the shrine maintenance screen before you so rudely interrupted me. There should be a rune to stop the auto-resurrection cycle.”

Zelda’s finger hovered over the screen.

“Wait!  Before you do this, make sure it’s what you really want.” Purah hastily added. “I don’t think we can restart the process again once shutting it down. It’s going to clear the sample buffers when you do this. We’d have to start over from scratch if we want to resurrect him again, assuming we can get it to work a second time..”

Zelda breathed deeply, then pressed the rune.

A second prompt appeared on the screen.

Clear buffers? Y/N

She pressed on the confirmation rune.

The screen chimed, then went dark. Behind her, the blue glow dimmed. The faint humming sound that she’d barely been aware of faded. The room became a dark and silent cavern, lit only by the faint glow of the Sheikah Slate.

Purah nodded. “That’s it then. Take good care of your hero, princess. He’s the last one you’ll get now.”

Zelda rematerialized at the Shrine on the hill overlooking Hateno Village, with the first light of dawn appearing on the horizon. She made her way down the path, over the little bridge across the river, and back inside their little house. She crept up the stairs to the loft where their bed, and Link, awaited.

Link still snored gently in the bed, though he had rolled over with one arm reaching out to the side where she usually slept.

Zelda sighed, her conversation with Purah still going through her head. But decisions on what to do could wait till tomorrow. She stripped off her boots and outerwear, and carefully climbed back into bed. Link curled up against her, muttered something unintelligible, and fell immediately back into a deep sleep.

Chapter Text

Zelda slept fitfully all morning, passing in and out of nightmares. She remembered the horrible century she spent fighting Ganon, how the beast roared with laughter every time she saw Link die. The first death nearly destroyed her, but she held on, hoping that by some miracle what she saw hadn’t been real. Ironically, she had been relieved by Link’s second resurrection and following death. If the first death hadn’t really happened, then perhaps none of them were real.

But now she knew that her Link, and many others, had truly died. Once again, she’d been powerless to protect them. I failed them all .

Finally, at a shamefully late hour, she rose from bed and headed down the stairs.

Link - no... Link clone one-nineteen, she reminded herself - sat at the table, flipping through the Sheikah Slate’s screens. Rows of elixir bottles were lined up on the table, containing at least half a dozen different colors of thick liquids, showing the astonishing amount of alchemical knowledge this Link developed through trial and error in order to survive long enough to save her. She wondered for a moment if any of the other Links developed similar skills. Could that have made the difference in this Link’s success? If her Link knew how to make elixirs like this, would he have been the one to live?

If she spent more time studying alchemy, and passed that knowledge onto him, and less time in futile prayer or childish temper tantrums, could she have saved her Link?

Link’s voice broke into her self-recrimination. “Morning. There’s breakfast, though it’s gone cold. I can heat it up, or make something fresh if you want.”

“Thank you. That’s kind of you.” she responded numbly as she climbed down the steep stairs from the loft.

Link nodded, still intent on sorting elixirs. “I think we need to head down to Faron Woods soon. I used up a lot of supplies during that last trip.”

Zelda flopped down in one of the chairs. “If it’s all the same, I’d like to make a trip to Kakariko village today.”

Link looked up at her, seeing her disheveled condition and the dark bags under her eyes. “Is something the matter? You didn’t sound like you were sleeping very well.”

She looked downwards, avoiding meeting his gaze. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. I just haven’t spoken with Impa in some time. We should catch up.”

Link shrugged, and started placing the elixirs back into the Slate’s baffling magical storage system. One by one they disintegrated into glowing blue streams of light, vanishing into the Slate’s screen, somehow becoming only a number displayed on a list, another astonishing capability of the Sheikah Slate that they had no idea how to reproduce yet.

“As you wish, princess. When you’re ready, we’ll be off to Kakariko. It’ll be good to see everyone there again.”

Link and Zelda materialized in front of the Ta’loh Naeg shrine, on the hill overlooking the sheltered valley where Kakariko village lay. Below them, in a natural bowl-shaped depression surrounded by hills, she could see dozens of low buildings with mossy, dome-shaped roofs. Zelda heard the gentle music of windchimes in the breeze, and the distant clucking of cuccos. Link took her arm as they made their way down the steep hillside path to the village.

The village felt like a place cut off from time, unchanged by the years of the Calamity. Zelda found it a comforting reminder of the past, after the bustle of commerce and new construction in Hateno and the tragic devastation left in central Hyrule. For a moment, she almost convinced herself that the past century hadn’t really happened, and that the same man walked her through town as before the terrible events of her seventeenth birthday.

The reactions of the villagers to the two of them shattered that particular self-deception. Everyone in Kakariko seemed to know Link, while she was largely unrecognized. Guards greeted him by name, and made him promise to come by to spar with them again sometime. A man stepped out from a field of pumpkins to hand one of the giant, tough-skinned orange gourds to him. “No charge, for all you’ve done.” Another farmer rushed over and handed Link a bundle of carrots, glaring at the pumpkin farmer as he did. Zelda suspected some form of animosity between the two men, but could not investigate before Link led her deeper into the village.

A woman called out from a shop for Link’s attention, and then tried to talk him into buying an outfit for “your lady friend there”. Zelda momentarily expected this to mean some sort of fancy dress, but then learned that the Sheikah shopkeeper offered a dark, skintight outfit that would make Zelda nearly invisible with proper training. Zelda declined, for now, but did make a mental note to come back at some point in the future. She was also quite certain that the shopkeeper had no idea of her actual identity.

“To think, when we went somewhere, I once drew all the attention.” she commented to him. “How ironic for it to be reversed.” She found the sudden look of embarrassment on his face hilariously endearing.

A pair of white-haired children ran past Link, laughing. The taller of the two skidded to a halt, then hugged his leg. “Liiiink!” the child cried. “Koko!” Link replied, awkwardly shifting his grip on the pumpkin and carrots in order to reach down and attempted to ruffle her neatly arranged hair.  The Sheikah hair styling defeated the attempt, and the child’s hair remained undisturbed.

“You have to come help Koko cook for Cottla and Father! They loved it so much the last time.  But Koko needs to make dinner again, and father is at work right now.” The child looked up at him with shining round eyes. “Koko is a bad daughter who will never be as good as Mommy was.” Zelda felt her heart breaking with the familiarity of the child’s statement.

“Of course.” Link glanced over at Zelda. “Do you need me right now, or..?”

She shook her head, and told him, “Go ahead, I’ll be along after I’ve talked to Impa”. And perhaps I should also have a word with that child’s father.

As he headed off with them, still carrying the pumpkin and carrots, Zelda reflected on how good he was with children. With a pang of loss, she wondered if her Link would have been as well.

She proceeded down the path, to the far end of the village. Impa and her granddaughter lived in a house on a hill surrounded by water, at the lowest part of the valley. Waterfalls cascaded down from the hills behind the house, and koi swam lazily in the more tranquil waters near the front. The two guards out front, Dorian and Cado, nodded and let her pass, and she headed up the steep steps and through the front door into Impa’s home.  At least those two recognize me , she thought.

While Purah now looked, and sometimes acted like a six year old girl, Impa showed every one of her one hundred and twenty-plus years. The elderly Sheikah woman sat cross-legged on a comically large pile of pillows, and wore an oversized conical hat painted with a single large dripping eye, the symbol of the Sheikah people. Four short chains, ending in spiked metal ornaments, dangled from the hat.

Impa smiled warmly, and gestured for Zelda to approach. “Come, dear, sit and have a talk. What brings you here? How have you and Link been getting along?”

Zelda glanced around, seeing the room otherwise empty, then fixed Impa with a stern glare. “Link clone number one hundred and nineteen and I have been getting along quite nicely.”

Impa’s demeanor instantly changed. "Paya!", she called out sharply. The white-haired girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "Yes, grandmother?" 

Everyone here is trained in stealth , Zelda realized. I can never assume we’re alone.

"Make us tea, and then give us some privacy."

As Paya busied herself with that task, Zelda spoke quietly to the Sheikah matriarch. "Does she know?"

Impa shook her head. "Only Purah, Robbie, and I know. And now you. Keep it to yourself. There's no reason to tell anyone else."

Zelda looked over in the direction where Paya worked, and then back at Impa, whispering furiously. “Purah tells me the first resurrection took less than a year. I remember seeing him rise, Impa, and then being killed almost immediately. I thought it was a crude lie told by Ganon. Link would never die so easily as -”

“Bring that here, granddaughter, and place it on the table.'' Impa interrupted, as Paya arrived with a pot of hot tea. “Now, why don’t you go outside and see how Link is getting along with the kids?” Her tone made it clear that this wasn’t a suggestion.

As the door closed behind Paya, Impa muttered under her breath, “I hope for once that she knows better than to eavesdrop. There are some secrets even she shouldn’t know. Especially considering how she felt about him.”

“A secret you’d keep from me as well, if I hadn’t found out” Zelda replied. “You would hide this even from the royal family?”

Impa poured herself a cup of tea, her hand still steady despite her advanced age. "There were terrible things done in the past, things required at the time but best forgotten now. Your family was never told of many of them, and for that you should be grateful.” The teapot rattled only slightly as she placed it back down.

"But ... how did you even keep this a secret? Surely someone would notice the stream of identical clones of Link coming off the Great Plateau?" Zelda asked as she poured a cup for herself.

Impa sipped her tea. "Most of them never even made it off the plateau. And those that did, didn't draw much attention to themselves. You know how quiet Link is. Doesn’t go around announcing himself to the world. Even if he had, nobody would have believed him. You see, none of the previous ones found the Master Sword, and everyone knows that’s the true mark of the Hero.”

Impa continued, “And if rumors did spread about people claiming to be the Hero, we could use that to our advantage. Spread the idea that there were many who falsely claimed to be him. It helped to confuse the enemy about who the true Hero was, or even if he had returned at all.”

“And Link would find himself treated with suspicion and disbelief when he tried to find help.” Zelda snapped.

“It taught him to be self-sufficient, girl. Made him tough. Made him into the hero he is today. The one that saved you. The one that lived .”

“But if you at least told him, he might have been better prepared for that.”

Impa nodded, and hummed to herself for a moment as she sipped her tea. "We did tell him once. About thirty years after the Calamity, the first time one of them made it here to Kakariko. We thought it time to finally tell him the truth."

Impa reached for the teapot, and poured herself a bit more tea, before continuing. "It traumatized him. He wasn't strong enough to take it. Went for a walk to clear his mind, he said. A Yiga assassin ambushed and mortally wounded him just down the road, because he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. Since then, we've decided he's better off not knowing."

Zelda stared at the untouched cup of tea in front of her. She remembered that death, but not what led up to it. “Would it destroy him now, if I told him the truth?”

“Does it matter?” Impa replied. “He’s happy as he is. Telling him the truth won’t bring him any peace. And he won’t be grateful to you for telling him, or us for what we had to do.”

Zelda sat for a moment, thinking. Her tea grew colder. Then she spoke, her voice trembling with sorrow. “I think ... I think I loved him. My Link. The one who died. I always thought he’d come back to me.”

Impa nodded. “And now? If you never learned what happened with his resurrection, would you still love this one? Still believe him to be the same person?”

“That’s the problem! He’s not the same person. I can see now how much this Link is different. Aside from the memory loss, he’s ... well, he smiles more. He’s more open, more talkative, more carefree. More innocent.”

Impa tilted her head to the side and smiled slightly, the metallic ornaments hanging from her hat clinking with the motion. “Oh, and this is a bad thing in your eyes? You preferred him silent and sullen?”

Zelda shook her head. “No, of course not, but .. it really makes me wonder if he’s at all like the Link I knew. He can’t really be the same person.”

“People change, princess. Even without taking the resurrection chamber into account, even if he was still the exact same man you knew, even if he hadn’t died, what he went through would change anyone, and it sounds like he’s changed for the better.”

“But I don’t think I can just ignore what happened. I saw every death. My Link died, and over a hundred other people who thought they were him also died trying to save me.”

“Your souls are tied together, the Hero and the Princess, even if reborn in new flesh.” Impa sipped her tea, then continued. “It would have been kinder if you never saw what he went through, but we can’t change the will of the Goddesses.”

“Curse the Goddesses! They never helped me against Ganon until after my friends and family were dead. They only granted my powers barely in time to save Link, and it seems that even he didn’t really survive.”

Impa put her empty teacup down. “Child, if I could strip this knowledge from your head, I would. You were better off not knowing.” She shook her head, metal clinking again. “This is why we don’t tell people things. Nobody sleeps well at night knowing too much.”

“So what should I do?” Zelda finally took a sip of her tea, then grimaced at how cold it had become.

“Take this win. He came back for you. You have him. Forget what had to happen to bring this about, and be happy with it. Just, for once in your life, princess, accept what you’ve been given without questioning it."

A soft knock came from the door. "Paya, get that ... oh, she's outside." Impa said. "Zelda, would you?" 

Zelda had already gotten up, and stepped over to open the door. Cottla, the younger of the two Sheikah children, stood there, smiling sweetly while looking up at her.

"Miss Zelda? Link says the dinner is ready and you should come have some with us."

Impa nodded to her. “I think we are done here. Go enjoy dinner with Link. ” she said, placing unmistakable emphasis on the name. “And send Paya back in if you see her.”

Zelda stepped out onto the balcony in front of Impa’s house and leaned on the railing. She smelled the fragrant odors of vegetable stew and meat-stuffed pumpkin, heard the laughter of children and the roaring of the nearby waterfalls. Sunset fireflies were winking yellow-green up among the trees, while koi swam lazily in the ponds and streams. She knew that Link waited for her with a warm meal, and would be the best protector and, if she wished, husband she could ever ask for. Impa was right, of course. Impa was always right.

She still didn’t know why she couldn’t just let this go.

Chapter Text

Link and Zelda sat upright in their saddles, following an old trail through the Faron Woods, with walls of uneven, eroded rock rising on either sides. Broad-leafed trees towered all around them, shielding them from the direct rays of the tropical sun. Zelda heard the distant calls of exotic birds, and rustling of animals in the underbrush.

Link had offered to take her on the Master Cycle, insisting that it could easily carry two people, but she refused. She convinced him that it would be easier to spot the plants and animals he needed on horseback, but really she just wanted the more leisurely and relaxing horseback ride.

Occasionally, they would see old wooden structures in the trees, moss-covered platforms and walkways on either side of the path. “Those used to be Bokoblin outposts” Link commented to her. “Dangerous the first time I fought them, but not much of a threat once I got really good with a bow and arrow. Although sometimes I’d just glide down on them from above and knock them off the platform with bombs instead.”

Link’s rustic green-and-brown outfit left his arms and legs mostly bare, unlike his usual blue tunic. Zelda privately thought it looked ridiculous, but had to admit she saw the appeal in the heat of the jungle. Even with her sleeves and pants rolled up, she was sweltering.

“They are all gone now, right?” she turned her head, looking nervously at the platforms.

“Pretty sure”, Link responded. “I cleared these out a while ago, and most of the monsters don’t come back any more since we defeated Ganon.” He pondered for a moment. “Still might be a few octoroks or other dangerous wild animals around, though, so don’t go wandering off.”

They stopped for a while, as Link used the slate to hunt truffles. He marched back and forth through the forest waving the slate around, listening for the faint beeping sounds. Coming to a large tree, Link handed the slate to Zelda, then dug in the ground at the base of the tree, excavating an enormous brown fungus that he presented to her triumphantly. Later, he repeated the performance to find an exceptionally large radish, then climbed another tree to harvest durians as she watched from the ground.

They returned to their mounts, and took a path leading northward up into higher ground. After an hour of travel, Zelda spotted suspiciously regular stone blocks among the trees. “Stop here a moment. I want to take a look at those.” She dismounted, took the slate from Link, and walked into the woods.

“Remember to change the account, so your photos don’t get mixed up with mine” Link called after her. Zelda stopped for a moment, realizing that she completely forgot all about that idea. She used the maintenance login to change the active account, feeling guilty as she saw that Link’s account still identified as link_clone_119. I really need to change that account name before he notices, she thought.

As she approached the stone ruins, she saw how the trees and vines concealed much of their bulk. The woods were full of vast crumbling stoneworks, with no apparent purpose, their shapes carved to resemble giant dragons, boars, and owls. The trees and dirt covering them suggested great and terrifying age, relics of a civilization older than any currently existing in Hyrule.

“The Zonai ruins.” Zelda said quietly to herself, as she took pictures. “Made by a people even older than the Sheikah. We know so little about them. At least we still have Sheikah around to talk to, nobody even knows who the Zonai were.”

She turned her head to look as Link crept silently up next to her. I’m getting better at spotting him - or is he out of practice? He held a finger to his lips, then pointed at a nearby tree, where Zelda saw a large brown-and-green beetle.

Zelda lifted the Slate, and took a photo of the insect. Rugged rhino beetle appeared in glowing letters on the screen under the resulting image. She then nodded to Link.

Link moved forward across the jungle floor, and any doubts Zelda held about his Sheikah stealth training were instantly dispelled. Link flitted like a shadow, his green-and-brown tunic blending in with the forest. His feet didn’t disturb a single leaf, or break a single twig, as he flowed like water across the ground towards his quarry. It was, Zelda realized, complete overkill for the task of catching a beetle, and she suspected him of showing off for her, especially when after snatching it off the side of the tree he presented it to her proudly as a child showing off a hard-earned trophy.

She could only laugh and smile at how proud he was of himself, but that turned to a pang of sadness as she switched the account on the Sheikah Slate back to his name, link_clone_119, before handing it back to him.

Later that evening they met a couple on the path, a round-faced woman and her large-chinned husband, both with the brown hair and more rural accents common among Hylians these days. The pair, Tye and Sorelia, immediately recognized Link, and insisted on stopping for dinner together as they caught up with him.

The four of them sat on wooden logs around a merrily crackling campfire under the decaying remains of an abandoned Bokoblin outpost, as the pair regaled Zelda with the tale of how Link helped them.

“We were being attacked by Bokoblins, not far from here.” Sorelia began.

“I had them in hand. We would have been able to drive them off by ourselves eventually.” Tye interjected.

“And then Link here just dropped in out of nowhere and killed them like it was nothing!” Sorelia continued.

Zelda smiled. “That’s Link. Quite the hero. Always saving people. We can’t seem to go anywhere in Hyrule without meeting someone he’s helped.”

She has no idea who we are , Zelda realized. To them, he’s not the hero of legend, he’s just some kind stranger who helped them on the road one day.

“But that’s not the greatest thing he did for us. Tell him, Tye” Sorelia said.

“He told us where to find a Silent Princess!” Tye exclaimed.

Zelda took a moment to realize that Tye meant the flower, rather than alluding to her. Mistaking her confusion for ignorance, Tye continued, “It’s a rare flower, blue and white with five petals. According to legend, giving one to your love ensures you’ll both have a charmed life together.”

“I’m familiar with the plant.” Zelda replied. “I spent a while trying to make them grow in a garden, quite some time ago. But they aren’t found in the Faron Woods at all, they’re a grassland species.”

Sorelia laughed and slapped her knee. “That’s the same thing Link told us. We were looking completely in the wrong place! He showed us on that fancy map slate he has where to find them”.

“All the way up in western Necluda. It took us weeks to get there, but we found the spot.” Tye added, smiling.

“So Tye here plucked a flower, got down on one knee, and proclaimed his love for me. Of course, we’d been married for years already, it’s not like I didn’t know the guy loved me, but I still appreciate the gesture.” Sorelia turned and kissed her husband on the cheek.

“And have you lived a charmed life since then?” Link asked.

“Well, not long after there was that big light show over the castle, and now all the monsters are gone” Tye said. “People say the legendary Hero came back and defeated Ganon, but I like to think that the Silent Princess had something to do with it.”

Link smiled. “She did.”

The fire crackled as Link poked the embers with a stick. Sparks rose into the air, the leaves overhead stirring in the updraft.

Sorelia leaned over towards Zelda. “So, how long have you two been together?”

Zelda froze, and stammered, “Oh, well, we’re not really-"

“A little over a hundred years” Link chipped in cheerfully.

Sorelia’s brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, but then she burst into laughter. “Oh, it sure can feel like that, when you’ve been together a while! Seems like a lifetime that Tye and I have been married.”

Zelda lay curled up in her bedroll near the glowing embers of the fire. Link kept watch sitting on a log nearby. His Sheikah training allowed him to go for days without sleep, a skill he hadn’t used as often now that most nights were spent at home in their bed. He insisted on staying up while camping, not wanting to take any chances though these woods appeared to be monster-free.

Sleep eluded Zelda, the events of the day and the terrible secret she still held churning in her thoughts.

Silent Princess flowers were rare once. A hundred years ago, when she could find time between religious pilgrimages to unlock her divine power, Zelda tried and failed to cultivate the plant. She knew of the tradition of presenting them as a symbol of love, and thought it partially responsible for their near-extinction. After they defeated Ganon, Link showed her an entire hillside covered with the blue-and-white five-petaled flowers. While he hadn’t actually plucked one for her or professed his love, she wondered if the tradition applied anyway.

He doesn’t care if he’s the legendary Hero. He’s just innately a good person, even with no reward , she told herself. She realized with a start that she didn’t actually care anymore either; her feelings were still just as strong for this Link, even if he wasn’t the same man.

I can’t keep this secret from him. It wouldn’t be fair to let him believe a lie, she thought. She knew the right thing to do; Impa may have been comfortable with a life of secrecy and deception, but Zelda was not.

If you tell him the truth, it will break him. Purah’s words came back. We told him once, and it killed him. Impa’s warning chilled her. She imagined telling Link, and having her leave him, wandering off into the wilderness, getting killed by a monster, or simply hating her forever.

I wish I knew what to do. Goddesses preserve me.

The next day, the two of them proceeded on horseback further eastward along the trail. The ground became wetter, and the trail frequently crossed marshes and streams via crude bridges. The air grew even hotter and heavier with humidity, and dragonflies the size of a man’s hand buzzed past their heads.

Link continued relating the seemingly endless collection of anecdotes from his adventures before finally facing Ganon.

“I had just finished a hard fight against three Lizalfos. I was lying there catching my breath, when I heard music, and someone singing. I thought that I must have taken a blow to the head.” He gestured ahead along the trail. “So I followed the sound, and right up here I saw a big blue bird-man, playing his concertina in the middle of the jungle. It was the most surreal experience.”

“That’s the friend you told me about, the Rito musician?” Zelda replied. She couldn’t help but notice the fondness in Link’s voice every time he spoke of the bard.

Link nodded. “That was when I first met Kass. At the time, I still didn’t remember much. I hadn’t met another Rito on my journey yet, and I didn’t even know what he was .” He smiled at the memory. “I need to introduce you to him. Your beauty will inspire him to compose a dozen songs in your honor.” Zelda blushed at the compliment, as Link continued speaking. “Funniest thing. He actually trained under your old court poet.”

“What? We had a court poet?” Zelda searched her memory, trying to recall the man. “I think I was introduced to him, once? Oh dear, I have no idea what his name was.”

They rode on for a moment more, until Link broke the silence. “He was madly in love with you. Kass has a whole ballad about that.”

Zelda felt a pang of guilt at not being to even remember the besotted poet’s name. “He never said anything.”

“Of course he didn’t.” Link replied, sounding a little angry. “You were the princess, far above his station. He was a mere servant. Besides which, everyone knew that Ganon was coming, and your father had forbidden you from any activity other than trying to unlock your divine power. It wasn’t the time for love.”

They rode on for a little further in silence, until Zelda spoke softly. “Of course, all that doesn’t apply now. Ganon has been sealed away for another thousand years, and there is no more royal court.”

“Then it’s a shame he’s long dead.” Link replied wistfully.

They emerged from the dense forest, into a semi-open clearing. To their right, against a cliffside, stood a wooden structure topped with a stylized horse’s head, one of Hyrule’s ubiquitous stables. They dismounted, and Link led their horses over to the stable.

While he did, Zelda took the Slate, and began taking pictures. Worn cliffs of tan-colored rock surrounded the stable on three sides. A narrow ladder led up to a lookout platform that was just barely at treetop height. Frogs croaked in the undergrowth, and large green butterflies, whose images the slate helpfully labeled Thunderwing Butterfly , flapped lazily through the air.

Happy barking interrupted her wildlife studies. She turned back to the stable, to see Link being enthusiastically greeted by a large and quite friendly brown-and-white dog. She wondered if he took the time to befriend even the stray stable dogs while being a traveling hero. Utterly charmed at the display, Zelda couldn’t resist taking a picture of him. Hylian Retriever appeared in glowing letters under the resulting image. And Adorable Idiot , she mentally added.

After extracting himself from the dog’s affections, LInk led her out onto a broad, moss-covered wooden bridge over Lake Floria, a broad expanse of steaming water flowing through the jungle. Ancient, broad-trunked trees rose out of the shallower parts of the lake, supporting the bridge. The land to the north rose as a series of massive steps, with water pooling in smaller lakes before cascading down massive waterfalls to reach the lake. A cool breeze blew across the surface of the lake, reducing the oppressive heat and humidity of the jungle.

They walked out to the middle of the bridge, where a semicircular wooden platform extended out on the northern side. Link sat on the worn wooden surface, and gestured for Zelda to sit next to him. He gestured at the waterfalls to the north. "Watch. It's about to happen."

At first, Zelda only saw the admittedly majestic waterfall cascading down the hill. Then she noticed a strange movement of the air, a sudden breeze picking up over the lake beyond the waterfall. The water began to glow yellow, and small bolts of electricity danced across the surface of the lake. Zelda’s keen scientist mind tried to make sense of the phenomena, but she never expected what happened next.

A massive, wavy yellow horn at least ten meters long broke the surface of the water, attached to a house-sized reptilian head. Water and bolts of electricity cascaded off the creature as it emerged from the lake. Zelda saw what she first thought to be an extraordinarily long neck, but then realized was actually a very long body as she noticed the multiple pairs of surprisingly small legs along the sides. Farosh, the guardian dragon of the Faron region, rose out of the water, undulating as though swimming through the air. Zelda gasped and laughed at the spectacle, even as a small part of her brain insisted that the lake couldn’t possibly have been deep enough to hold that much dragon. Link smiled at her reaction, basking in her honest and unashamed joy.

The dragon’s vast snake-like body stretched across half the sky. Crackling balls of electricity peeled off its sides, drifting through the air before exploding in showers of lightning. Even at this distance, Zelda could feel the hairs on the backs of her arms standing up, as faint electrical charges washed over them. She hugged Link tightly, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Oh, thank you for showing me this, I never imagined this would be here!” Link did not respond, only blushing as Zelda released him and shifted back to where she had been sitting.

Part of her mind reveled in the wonder of the experience. A surreal yellow light flickered across the surface of the water, illuminating the scene with an otherworldly radiance. Though the dragon lacked wings, Farosh’s flight still created great updrafts, the sound of its rushing wind mixing with the roaring of the waterfalls. The great broad leaves of the banana plants and durian trees rustled and tossed at the dragon’s passage. The air smelled of tropical flowers and ozone. Link put an arm around her, pulling her slightly closer as they both gazed upwards.

Another part of her mind considered the theological implications. Farosh, one of the three great guardian spirits of the land, was associated with Farore, the goddess of Courage. Who was the goddess most strongly associated with Link, just as Zelda’s patron goddess was Nayru, the goddess of Wisdom.

Many times, she’d wished for Link to be influenced by a little more Wisdom in his travels. Tonight, she wished for a bit more Courage for herself.

“First time I met Farosh was at a much closer distance.” Link pointed up at the lake that the dragon emerged from. “I saw some submerged treasure chests out in the middle of that lake, and was out on the water on a Cryosis block trying to fish them up. Then suddenly the whole lake lit up with electricity, crackling all around me, and there was this dragon the size of a mountain coming up out of the water.” He smiled, eyes twinkling as he recalled the incident. “I got pretty badly shocked, had to ride the updrafts over the waterfall and glide down here to escape. I nearly died.”

And if you had died, I’d be sitting here cuddling with clone number one-hundred-and-twenty, Zelda thought to herself.

“They’re very dangerous up close. Not out of hostility, but they’re such powerful elemental spirits, just being near them is hazardous.” Link paused for a moment. “And you can’t ride them. There’s too much movement, and no good handholds.”

Because of course Link would try to ride one of the sacred guardian spirits . Zelda wasn't sure if she found the recklessness or the blasphemy of the idea more offensive.

The dragon passed off into the distance. The surreal yellow light faded, leaving only the rosy glow of sunset. A chorus of frogs and insects intensified around them, rivaling the volume of the distant waterfalls. Zelda rested her head on Link’s shoulder.

It would be so easy to listen to Impa and Purah and forget about what happened. To simply accept that this still was her Link. To live with him, pretending him to be the same man she’d fallen in love with a hundred years ago.

But in this case, the easy thing and the right thing were not the same.

Courage, Zelda

Zelda pulled away, and turned to look at him.

“Link ... I need to tell you something.”

Chapter Text

Link neither spoke nor showed any particular expression as Zelda explained how she watched him wake and die over a hundred times during the century of the Calamity. She showed him his incriminating account name on the Slate, and the list of deleted accounts, and spoke of her confrontations with Purah and Impa and their acknowledgement of what happened. His expression finally shifted to concern, as she told him about how she’d felt herself so powerless to help every time she witnessed him die. Still showing no reaction other than concern for her, Link gently took her in his arms and rocked her as she cried.

Twilight faded into night, and the chorus of crickets and frogs intensified around them, mixing with the quiet gurgling of water from below.

Zelda pulled away from his embrace, and looked up at him, expecting to see pain, terror, or anger in his face, but only finding a thoughtful expression there. As she wiped the tears from her face, he stood up, and motioned for her to do the same. He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her close while holding the Sheikah Slate in the other hand. “There’s something I need to show you, princess” he said, as he scrolled northward across the map to the distant Rona Kachta shrine.

They materialized in front of a shrine located in a large artificial cavern. Zelda marveled at the ancient, cavernous space as they stepped away from each other. Some of the walls were collapsed, but on the intact ones she could still see lines of writing stretching between rows of bricks. Images of large spoon-billed birds were engraved on some of the remaining columns supporting the ceiling. Behind the shrine, she saw a great dark stone carved into a round shape suggesting a winged woman, a Goddess statue larger even than the one in the Temple of Time.

“Where are we? I’ve never seen this place.” she wondered aloud.

“We’re at the north end of that long canyon that runs between Hyrule Field and the mountains to the west. The entrance to this cavern is hidden halfway up a cliff face, and the way in partially collapsed and full of Guardians." Link gestured at a passage opposite the Goddess statue. “I don’t think there are any active ones left, but don’t go through there until I’ve checked to make sure.”

Zelda took the Sheikah Slate from Link, changed to her account, activated the camera rune, and began taking pictures. “How did you even find the way in?”

“I followed the canyon to see where it went, looking for ore deposits and mushrooms. I spotted the entrance, rode the air currents and dodged a lot of Guardian beams to get in." He paused for a moment, remembering. “It was easier getting in the second time, with the Travel rune. That’s when the event I wanted to tell you about happened.”

Link stepped up the stairs in front of the giant Goddess statue, looking up at it reverently. “It was after I finished the last shrine trial. I think there were around one hundred twenty of them? I lost count somewhere in the high double digits. But I knew I was done with them, because I heard a voice in my head, and it wasn’t yours this time.” He turned to Zelda, still speaking as he did. “The Sheikah monks, the same ones that built the shrines in the first place, they spoke to me, calling me here. They gave me this outfit, and told me about the legacy of the Hero.”

Not for the first time, Zelda felt offended by what the ancient Sheikah monks put Link through. "They waited until after completing all the shrines before they told you who the Hero was?”

Link shrugged. “Apparently it’s normal for the Hero to not have any idea what they’re doing for much of their journey.” He patted the green and brown tunic he wore. “They told me these clothes were worn by another Link once. Another me.” He turned and gestured around at the room. “This entire temple was built long ago, when people lived in the sky. There was a Link and a Zelda back then, who defeated the evil for the first time. Their souls are our souls.”

Zelda nodded. “The cycle of reincarnation. When the darkness rises, the Hero and the Princess return to stop it.” she recited, remembering her religious lessons from over a hundred years prior. Her brow furrowed as she considered the implications, then she gasped with realization. “Of course! That must be why Purah couldn’t get the Shrine of Resurrection to make more than one of you at a time! It needed the soul of the Hero to be free for the process to start.”

Link looked at her incredulously. “Purah tried to make multiple copies of me at once?”

Zelda nodded. “Yes. She thought that having an army of you would make defeating Ganon easier.”

Link shook his head, open-mouthed. “But ... there’s only one Master Sword. And only one Princess. How would that even work ?”

Zelda couldn’t help but smile at the mental image of an army of identical copies of Link all trying to wield the one same divine sword. She blushed and burst into a fit of giggles at the thought of them all attending to her needs at once, and she hastily squashed that train of thought, lest she become highly distracted.

“I am going to have some serious words for Purah next time I see her.” Link chuckled.  His expression turned more serious as he spoke to Zelda. “But if you knew about the cycle of reincarnation, why is this bothering you? What the Shrine of Resurrection did is no different. Reincarnated by the Goddesses, or resurrected by Sheikah technology, it doesn’t matter. I’m still Link.”

Zelda sighed and responded. “Those people weren’t really us, Link. The Hero and the Princess return over and over, but not as the exact same people. That Princess wasn’t me, and that Hero wasn’t you. We can learn about them, we may even share their souls, but they lived their own lives.”

Link shrugged, raising his arms as he did, and his tone sounded a little angry. “I don’t see how it matters. Same soul.” He gestured at himself. “Indistinguishable body, as far as I can tell.” He looked back at the Goddess statue. “And I do have something those other Links don’t. I remember being the Link from a hundred years ago. The one who served you before the Calamity. The one who died for you." He paused for a moment, turning back to Zelda, then spoke softly. “I still remember that I love you.”

Zelda gasped at the revelation, as Link continued speaking. “And I remember more than that. I always seemed to have an instinct for dangers while traveling, as if something was warning me. I knew to look out for the Bokoblins with dragonbone weapons, or that bomb arrows would explode in my hand if I’m too close to Death Mountain. I knew Lynels could shoot over walls and still hit me, even though I never saw that happen. I always thought it was something from my training from before the Calamity.”

He turned towards her, holding a hand to his mouth as he thought. “Do you think that perhaps the Shrine of Resurrection let me remember all the times the other versions of me died? So I could avoid dying that way again?”

Zelda’s eyes opened wide as further realization struck her. “No, Link ... I think that was due to me .”

His brow furrowed, and she could see he didn’t comprehend. “I watched you the whole time. I saw every death." Her voice grew quiet, as the memories came back to her again. Link reached out, gently embracing her, and she continued speaking. “I thought it a cruel torture at the time, but now I see there was a purpose to it. I must have been, without realizing it, somehow warning you through our connection, with each new life, of the dangers that awaited you.”

Seeing the blue-skinned Bokoblin among the group charging him, Link puts his club away and pulls out a bow, firing an arrow through the monster’s head from a safe distance.

After ducking behind a ridge to escape the Lynel, Link doesn’t stop to catch his breath. He keeps moving, something telling him that he still isn’t safe. The electric arrows crashing down just barely miss him.

Link halts in mid-step on the solidified lava flows near Death Mountain, and checks his quiver to make sure it doesn’t contain any bomb arrows. He’s not even sure why the concern suddenly occurred to him.

They stood there silently, as Link stroked her hair. “Thank you, princess." he finally spoke. “You saved me more than a hundred times over. A hundred and twenty deaths avoided. I only saved you once.”

She gently chuckled in his embrace, and rubbed his back. “You saved me twice , or did you forget about that time with the Yiga in the Gerudo desert?" She pulled away from him slightly, arms still around him, and looked him in the eye. “I can’t save you again. The Shrine of Resurrection has been shut down. This is your last life. Do please be careful with it.”

Arms linked, they walked back towards the shrine. “You’re really accepting this well.” Zelda commented. “Purah was sure you’d be driven mad and head off on some wild seal-punching quest of self-discovery”

Link looked aghast. “Riju would have me flayed alive if I harmed any of her sand-seals.”

They both chuckled at that. “I really don’t know where Purah came up with that idea.” Zelda said, then her mood turned a bit more somber. “Impa says they told one of the earlier Links the truth. He didn’t take it well, and the Yiga killed him soon afterwards. Are you certain you’ll be alright?”

“There’s a bit of a difference between being told that dozens of heroes have tried what you’re trying and all died, and being told after the fact that you were the only one who succeeded.” Link replied.

They stood side by side in front of the shrine, as Link took the slate back from her and brought up the map screen. “We’ll head back to the Shai Utoh shrine, spend the night at the stable, then take the horses down to Lurelin Village”, Link spoke while scrolling across the screen. “I know where to get a great seafood paella, and there’s this monument on the beach that you should see." 

Zelda stood beside him, wrapped an arm around and pressing her body against him, as she reached out to the screen. “Oh, but we really must return here soon, this site needs to be documented properly.” she blurted, mind shifting back into archaeological fascination. “And I have an idea for something else to ask Purah. It should be possible for the Slate to remember where a photo was taken. Since it already knows where it is in the world, perhaps there could be a way for it to remember and show that location. And maybe..." Her voice trailed off, as the two of them dissolved into strands of glowing blue light.