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The thermostat on the Sheikah Slate reminded Link that the Flamebreaker armour was a bit of an overkill, but he couldn’t pass up the added bonus of being fireproof - not this close to Death Mountain. Those damn Wizzrobes might be weak, but their prancing around in the air made it trickier to take them down.
Sounds of waterfall muffled the crunch of his boots against soil. The Spring of Power was near. The moon washed the land with a soft, unearthly glow, hanging like an emissary in the sky, ready to see red in another week or so. There was no Blood Moon today, Link noted, a little more disappointed than he ought to have been.
Journeying alone was, well, lonely sometimes, and he was ashamed to say he took comfort in hearing her voice, lilting, yet ominous, telling him to be careful. He checked the Slate once more, thumbing through the same twelve pictures in the album over and over again.
He had already committed each photo to memory, like a prayer, but he always felt better when he got to see them with his own eyes.
Is this what an obsession is?
Tranquil sounds of a waterfall finally bore fruit in the sight of a goddess statue. Link heaved a sigh of relief. This would be a fine campsite for tonight.
An effortless swing of a Great Flameblade over a bundle of wood kindled his warmth for the night. He much preferred the traditional way of flint and wood - something about the sparks kindling a fire had a charm to it. Tonight, though, fatigue triumphed novelty; this Flameblade had seen better days anyway, and it was just deadweight in his growing stash of elemental weapons slung across his back.
Link removed his brace and bulky armour, carelessly stringing them across his bag with his weapons leaning against a tree. He rolled his shoulders and stretched. Like a ritual, he picked up the Sheikah Slate and began scrolling through the album again.
Ever since he started recovering bits and pieces of his memory, the need to remember everything consumed him. He didn’t like to seem desperate, but when he fell asleep every night memories of her...no, with her, turned like a lucky coin. Every inflection in her voice, every vicissitude in her vivid green eyes – now a mystery, an inexplicable yearning in the morning light.
The ninth photo in the album is a spring flanking a goddess statue in the moonlight, crowned by trees above. He looked up at the goddess statue in front of him. He could feel it now - a slumbering part of him stirring. He closed his eyes and waited in anticipation.
xxx
Link clenched the hilt of the Master Sword, his knuckles paling from sheer pressure. At this moment, the very sight of it, the very existence of it angered him, and he wanted nothing better than to break it apart, pulverise its little pieces into littler pieces and feed it to the winds.
‘She hates herself because you exist’, he thought bitterly. ‘She shouldn’t have to. You remind her of her failures, all because it took you nothing to fulfil your calling.’ And suddenly, he wasn’t quite sure if he was speaking to the Master Sword or himself.
Every fiber in Link screamed at him to turn around, just to make sure she was alright. No, of course she wasn’t, but a glance wouldn’t hurt, right? Just a quick peek.
And then what would he do? Was he still a good knight? Could he still stand his ground if he saw her falling apart? Leave her to her prayers? They called it the Royal Distance – five paces away, no, Squire Link, five grown men paces – keep that distance –
He didn’t think he could.
He heard her voice tremble under the weight of her unfulfilled destiny, and it took everything not to charge into the water and take her in his arms, to hold her and whisk her away from this forsaken reality.
“But no matter how much I try, how much I pray -” Her voice trailed off. “I’ve pleaded to the spirits tied to the ancient gods, and still the holy powers have proven deaf to my devotion.” She was silent now, and Link wondered if she was crying. No, she never cried. She denied herself that commoner’s privilege.
It was all he could do to remain still. If she didn’t allow herself to break, how could he?
Just a glance, he pleaded with himself, just a glance and I promise to return to my post.
He dropped the Master Sword into the loamy soil, denied his stoic, unfettering existence for just a moment, and turned.
Against the backdrop of the goddess statue, Zelda looked so small. Here she was, incarnation of the goddess herself, reduced to begging at altars. She was hugging herself again, but this time, she wasn’t chafing her arms to keep herself warm. She was holding herself together; to keep the broken pieces of her heart from scattering and falling apart.
Link felt something in him break too.
He stepped into the frigid waters, the cold biting acerbically into his shin. No amount of peppers or down feathers could protect him from this, but he didn’t care. She had been in the waters for even longer. She was all that mattered.
He waded across the water and made his way to the princess, twice encroaching the Royal Distance, stopping short of half an arm’s length away.
They stood in thick silence.
“Do you despise me?” Zelda’s voice sliced the tension, now ripe with so much unsaid, throbbing under the intensity of the sum of their pain. “Would you hate me if we didn’t know each other? Would you hate me knowing you’ll be sharing the burden of my failure?”
A deep ache suffuses his heart, souring his muscles like he had just stopped after a run, and he could feel the tears prick the sides of his eyes. No, he couldn’t be selfish. She was the one bearing the brunt of fate’s cruel joke. What right had he to cry, when she herself would not spare a single tear for her plight?
His heart pounds louder than the waterfall. The sounds of waterfall dimmed into the background, and it was just the two of them in the world, alone together.
Link forgets what hate is when she smiled at him with those depthless eyes. The gentle caress of her fingertips made his deadliest wounds feel like a kiss. And if she had to kill him a thousand times over, he would forget hate a thousand times more, remembering her, and only her.
He thought about the way she’d bandage his wounds and brushed his hair away from his eyes. He thought about how excited she’d been when they were allowed to go outside and explore. Then he remembered about the disdain in her eyes when she knighted him, the resentment in her stride when she presented him with the Champion’s tunic she made.
Still he loved her. He suspects he always had, perhaps even before they met, before they existed.
There were so many things he had been meaning to say to her, but he’d thought so long he could mime them out instead. He could swing his sword for her, hold his shield up high, anything else but use his words, that he knew would fall out clumsy and honest. How else could he say love? Risk execution and reach for her hand? Run his fingers through her hair?
Kis-
“No,” he stopped himself before he could finish the sentence aloud. She gave him a strange look, and he shifted uncomfortably. Answer her, answer her! Tell her you don’t hate her! Tell her you –
“If I had to choose it all over again, I will still be you. It will always be you.” He thrust the nearest stream of thought into the silence, and he felt his cheeks go hot. He didn’t mean to be so direct. He just wanted to assure her. And now he’d breached this unspoken contract between them – that they weren’t supposed to be more than knight and liege.
She looked irritated, if not, absolutely baffled by his conclusion, and his heart was now strumming against his ribs, strange colours rocketing through his vision. Was this panic? Or was this something else?
“But why?”
His palms were sweating through his fingerless gloves, and his flesh was burning, his skin freezing.
“I-“ he stammered, his voice suddenly urgent. “Because… because you’re perfect!”
She frowns,
“-to me!”
He wished he could love her enough for them both, but he knew it wasn’t even enough for him. For every time he thought he could not love her any more than he did, she proved him wrong. It grew and grew with every passing day, and he wanted to hold her tight and keep her in his heart so she could see the safe, expanding world he’d built for her inside.
The shame of his confession – the shame of crossing the boundaries decreed by the kingdom – hit him like a splash of icy water.
She shuddered.
He felt his stomach drop, the nerves leading to his fingers crawling with a thousand ants. He wondered if it was too late to take it back, to leave her alone in her commiseration, and pretend none of this happened.
She spun around, the water shimmering into a whirl, and lifted her face to look at him. Amidst the sadness, there was a brilliance in her eyes. She was so beautiful in the moonlight. Link was struck with awe, feeling his heart in his stomach, the sudden electricity in the air.
She sniffled and crushed herself against his chest, her arms circling around his back. Like a military drill he never prepared for, some muscle memory of love, his hands flew to the small of her back immediately.
A dance, he realises, we’re dancing.
As though they had been practicing this dance forever, through lifetimes again and again. He shuddered, finally, from the weight of their conclusion.
He felt a love so ancient and renewed, and his fingertips were on fire. His heart that had soared and crashed a thousand times before, it soars again so familiarly, just as it had when she smiled at him, when their fingertips brushed against each other, when she shuffled her knees in excitement when she wrote her journal.
“When all this is over,” Zelda whispered so softly, he wondered if he had dreamed her speaking. “Will you stay with me?”
“I will,” he murmured into her hair, determined to commit every sensation, every sound, every scent, every feeling in this moment to memory forever. He wanted to etch this into his soul, a memory for the Link of the next lifetime to remember in dreams. The peace of being in love with Zelda.
“I will always be with you. Forever.”
She lifted her head from his chest, her cheeks flushed under the moonlight, and tilted her face to meet his lips.
Her lips were cold and soft yet the night was colder, and their love sweeter and warmer. He drew his hands up to cup her face, his fingers carding through her tresses, feeling the curls of her undone braid. He kissed her slowly, wishing and willing to convey that he would love her forever, beyond this lifetime.
He pulled back for a little, hoping to tell her, but as soon as they parted, the sensation of her breath on his lips was gone, and he was once again alone at the foot of the spring, with no Zelda in his arms, broken or not. The weight and warmth of her body had felt so real, he suddenly felt bereft and hollow. But now he understood this yawning hole in his heart, and it filled him with both sadness and strength.
When he met the King on the Plateau, he had been so sure he was ready to give up his life to free her, a love he barely remembered. The only tie he had to the world was his duty to this dead man’s mission.
When dawn breaks the hills are alive and green – it is a message from a thousand Royal Distances away, a memory a hundred lifetimes ago – it’s hope.
Even with the Sheikah Slate tucked away in his bag, her smile is as clear as the new day, as warm as the sun in Link’s heart.