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Their road trip to the desert starts like this:
As soon as the Sheikah Slate will allow them to summon the Master Cycle they’re on it, Link driving the bike with a quiet, controlled intensity she hasn’t seen in him since Before.
He won’t tell her what’s bothering him, or talk about what Fi showed him the other day. Fortunately-possibly unfortunately-Zelda can make a strongly educated guess, because he said the words, Good soldier.
(She hasn’t heard them in a century.)
When did he start remembering his father? On the way to Goron City, when her power flared and she crushed those Guardians like bugs? Zora’s Domain, when they investigated Vah Ruta and he was on edge the whole time?
Whenever it happened, however long he’s been seeing his father’s ghost, it’s clearly affected him. He drives the Master Cycle like he doesn’t care if they get into an accident, speeding down hills and pushing it even harder when they go flying, accelerating through the air and crashing them into the ground with expertise.
(Is this jolt of anxiety what he feels when she’s the one holding the handlebars?)
But the difference between Zelda’s maniacal driving and Link’s is that she has fun doing it, actively enjoying the experience, whereas Link does it as if trying to run from something, like if he drives fast enough he won’t have to face his memories.
The Master Sword hums on his back, right next to her face, and she feels nothing from it. She didn’t even notice she stopped tuning into Fi’s emotions until she thought about it, until she watched the burns on her hands fade and tried to understand why she was given them in the first place.
(It’s like she traded spiritual guidance; Losing her connection to Fi to make room for Ganondorf.)
Maybe that’s why touching the Master Sword burns her. Maybe Fi is pissed off Zelda isn’t coming to her for advice like she did Before, on their journey to Korok Forest.
How did you know? she had asked the sword, taking shelter from the rain and resting her shaking legs. That the Hero could be saved?
He is my Master, The voice had responded, heating in her lap when she shivered from the cold. I have spent millennia looking after him.
(Or that’s why she got burned. Maybe whatever is happening to her is putting Link in danger.)
Link starts slowing the Master Cycle down once the sun begins to set, and they roll to a stop below a familiar tree on the edge of Hyrule Field as the first stars become visible in the sky.
(It’s the same place he made her Endura Shroom Stew with carrots and she quite literally passed out on his shoulder. She wonders if he stopped here on purpose, or if this is just that good of a camping spot.)
“Is it all right if we stay away from the stables?” he asks, dismounting the bike and helping her off. “I’d rather us be alone.”
She nods, and he turns his back on her, dropping their belongings down in the grass, under the tree she slept against just over three and a half months ago. He sits before the cooking pot and takes out ingredients for dinner, silent as he starts a fire.
The Master Sword rests against the trunk of the tree along with his shield and bow, quiet. Zelda stares at it for a long moment.
(Link’s father hated the thing. He always glared at it when he thought no one was looking, when he thought everyone was too distracted staring at his son to notice his disdain for the weapon that made him the father of the Hero.)
She walks away from it, sitting next to Link before the cooking pot and watching him toss herbs onto cubes of sizzling meat.
“Link?” she whispers.
He hums.
“Can I ask you something?”
He tenses beside her.
(She was always looking at his father. Staring at Link was never high on her list of priorities.)
He nods. The firelight bathes his skin in an orange glow, reflecting in the blue of his eyes and giving his otherwise cold expression a soothing sort of warmth.
(What a difference falling in love with him makes.)
Zelda asks, “What did you remember about your father?”
Link’s head whips up. “How did you know?"
“You called Yunobo a good soldier before we left Goron City. Your father called you the same thing all of the time.”
He stares at her, searching her eyes. “You knew him.”
“I did.”
(It’s an understatement.)
“Did…” Link swallows. “Did you know his name? I keep seeing his face, and it feels wrong to call him my dad when…”
“Arn,” Zelda softly answers. “His name was Arn.”
“So that makes me-” his lips twist in a frown. “Link Arnson? ‘Son of Arn’?”
“I…” Does it? Her last name is technically ‘Hyrule’, which is just awful- “I think so, yes, but Hylians never use last names. You’re just Link.”
“Huh,” he chuckles. “I’ve never been ‘just Link’ before.”
They go quiet. The meat continues to sizzle in the cooking pot, and Link stirs it around.
“He must’ve been around you and Rhoam a lot, right?” he asks.
“Yes,” she nods. “He was my father’s right hand, and he made me hate you even more than the sword did.”
“Why?”
She grins at him. “He loved you.”
(It’s not funny, not really, but if she can’t joke about her awful childhood, who will?)
At Link’s frown, she elaborates, “He risked his life and his station for you almost every day.”
“What do you mean?”
The memory lives clear as day in the back of her mind. “He knew you were the Hero almost a decade before you pulled the Master Sword, and told no one.”
Link’s eyebrows furrow. “Why would he hide it? Isn’t it a good thing for the kingdom to know when there’s a Hero? So they know there’s someone who can stop whatever evil plagued them?”
“That’s just it, though,” Zelda grabs his hand. “There was no evil besides the stray monster or Yiga Clan attack, and whoever warned my father about the impending Calamity didn’t come forward until you had already been revealed. The king told your father that if he had said something the moment he suspected you were the Hero, they would have had much more time to prepare. If not for the fact that he was your father and protected by your reputation, he would have either been banished or imprisoned.”
(Her father was furious when he found out about Arn’s crime. She can still remember the muffled sounds of the two men screaming at each other in the king’s study, her father speaking of duty to the kingdom and Link’s speaking of protecting his son from growing up too soon.)
He is a child! Arn had roared. My child!
He is the Hero! Zelda’s father had yelled back. He is an omen of Hyrule’s destruction-
(It was the second time she had met Link, the two of them sitting just outside while their fathers argued. He was twelve, holding the too-big Master Sword in his lap, and she was eleven, damp from prayer in the castle’s spring. He refused to speak to her no matter how hard she tried.)
Now, a hundred and almost-seven years later, Link kisses her. It’s soft and slow, gentle, holding none of the frenzied urgency he had kissed her with on Death Mountain.
“Thank you,” he whispers against her lips, cradling her face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she whispers back, wrapping her fingers around his wrists.
“I wanted to lie to you about remembering him. I almost did.”
“Why?”
“I just…” he closes his eyes. “I wasn’t really sure if he was mine. I wanted him to be, because he seemed like such a…a warm person. I didn’t want to ask and find out if he belonged to another Link, if...if I was stealing the memory of another man’s father just to fill the gap in my head where a family should be.”
Goddesses, he’s going to make her cry- “Link-”
“Did I have a sister?” he asks. “I-I had a vision, once, while we were in Hateno, of a girl named Aryll.”
Zelda shakes her head. “No. That must have been one of your past lives.”
Link nods, opening his eyes. “I thought so.”
He leans in and kisses her again. And again. And again. She can’t help the noise she makes when he tugs her closer-
“Shit,” he curses, letting her go and turning his attention to the cooking pot. “Fuck-”
“What-” Zelda’s voice cracks and she clears her throat, her face on fire as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “What’s wrong?”
“Food’s burning-Damn it-”
They have charred meat skewers for dinner.
(Totally worth it, in Zelda’s opinion.)
“I’m sorry,” Link apologizes for the fifth time as he finishes setting up their makeshift bed, which is really just the clothing he won’t be wearing in the foreseeable future piled together for pillows and his Hylian Hood for a blanket. “I know this is, like, a complete downgrade from everything, the food included, I just-”
“Link,” she says, unable to stop herself from laughing as she lies down. “I’ve done this a million times. I think I spent most of my life Before traveling back and forth from the castle, sleeping on the ground.”
He blinks. “Right.”
“And I don’t care that the food was a little charred,” she grins. “Especially when you kissing me was the reason why.”
The fire from the cooking pot, still going strong, illuminates the blush in his cheeks.
“That wasn’t, um,” he lies down on her left, facing her on his side. “That wasn’t too much, right? It didn’t push the boundaries?”
“No,” Zelda shakes her head, settling on her back to stargaze before she sleeps. “Not for me.”
“Okay,” Still blushing, he reaches out and grabs her hand. “Wake me if you need anything.”
She smiles. “Same to you.”
She doesn’t really focus on the stars until he’s asleep, his fingers twitching against her palm as his breathing slows. She’s meticulous in picking out the constellations, finding her favorites, remembering all of the stories Impa taught her when she was young-
“You’re right. This is a wonderful view.”
She glances to her right and Ganondorf is there, lying on his back next to her, his large hands folded on his chest and his red hair splayed in the grass around his head.
“My favorite place to see them from no longer exists,” he continues, voice soft, as if he’s worried he’ll wake Link despite the Hero being deaf to his presence. “Arbiter’s Grounds. It’s nothing more than a Molduga’s nest today, quite literally buried by the sands of time, but this is a good second. I’ll have to remember where we are.”
“Why are you here again?” Zelda whispers, trying to control her pounding heart that will most definitely wake Link, his fingers resting just over where her pulse thrums beneath her skin. “Was your intimidation of me in Eldin not good enough?”
“I...” The phantom swallows. “I actually came to apologize for what I said in Eldin.”
He wants to what?
“I admit I have a temper, and it is in my nature to be cruel, but that monster I became in the face of your fear is not acceptable,” he looks at her. “I am sorry, Princess Zelda. Truly.”
She doesn’t know what to say.
“You don’t have to forgive me,” he tells her. “Goddess knows I’ve committed enough sins.”
“Why are you here again?” she manages to repeat. “Just to apologize?”
“And talk to you. We never got to finish our conversation.”
“Our conversation about what?”
“Us. Your emotions. Your power. I told you I would tell you what I am if you humored me, and you have,” he takes a deep breath. “You do realize that your emotions are connected to it, yes? That when you’re upset, power rushes forth?”
Fear may be your master, but rage bends to your will like any good servant.
(The storm outside of Foothill Stable. Death Mountain’s near-eruption. Link watching her hands in times of stress.)
“Yes,” Zelda breathes. “I’ve realized.”
“What do you make of it?”
She stares at him. “What do you mean?”
“Has Wisdom always come to you this way? When you were trapped, were you thinking of things that enrage you to stay strong enough for a century?”
“No, I…” she looks at Link’s sleeping face. “I thought of him. Of Impa. Of the Champions. My mother.”
“People you love,” Ganondorf breathes. “And does this love still fuel you?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Call upon Wisdom.”
She stares at Link, focusing on the warmth of his hand in hers, thinking of how he had kissed her just an hour or two ago and of the fluttering she had felt in her stomach. She thinks of the way he talks, the way he laughs, and the way he smiles. She thinks of the way he cares for her, even when he doesn’t have to. She thinks of the way he makes her happy, and of the way he makes her happy to be alive.
“I love you,” she whispers to him, not caring that he can’t hear her. “I love you.”
The back of her hand does not tingle or itch. She does not glow gold. The Triforce does not blaze on her knuckles.
(Wisdom does not answer her call.)
“I…I don’t understand,” she turns back to Ganondorf. “Why isn’t it-”
Ganondorf, who is gone.
“Zelda?” Link murmurs, half asleep and squeezing her hand. “Are you talking to me?”