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Link has been strange for as long as Zelda has known him. He had been a prodigy of a soldier, preternaturally skilled with nearly any weapon put into his hands, but so young compared to his fellows that any strangeness could just be chalked up to youth. When his words stuck in his throat, or when they came out wrong, rushed all at once and then full of staggering gaps, it was easy to call that shyness. When his expressions were wrong, coming to his face a breath after they should've or lingering unchanged too long, it was easy to call that anxiety.
It's different now. Link is different now. Zelda isn't sure if he's gone feral in the woods, or if he's simply a hundred years removed from anything that made him want to look normal.
His words come no easier, but he doesn't care—doesn't frustrate himself with it anymore, just moves at his own pace. His expressions are sudden, quick, and just for him. He smiles when he wants to and not when it's polite. None of that is to say he's standoffish or cold: he is warmer and more open than he ever was as Zelda's bodyguard. He is honestly himself, and he is kind, but he's just a few degrees removed from everyone around him.
They both are, though not in the same way. Zelda is the princess (she cannot think of herself as a queen, even if she might be, even without a coronation, even if she is a hundred years an orphan and a queen) of a dead kingdom. Weeds are flowering in its ruins, people have survived, and she is not needed. She has done her part, has held back the Calamity until Link could seal the darkness, but her people do not need a queen. They have proven that.
What right would she have? It has been a hundred years since her father's death, since the fall of the throne, and she could claim her castle, claim her throne, call herself queen, but she is nothing to these people. She has saved them, but they do not owe her fealty for that. She could not save them in time; she could not spare them disaster. They live, and the world where she could have been queen died.
So she stands a hundred years removed from everything she was supposed to be, and Link stands ten degrees removed from other people, and they are as different from each other as they are from everyone else, and that will have to be enough to unite them.
They have both lost everything. They are both unmoored. They are barely adults, and they have completed their destinies, been left to do whatever heroes do when their quests are over.
***
They will make for Kakariko Village, but first they rest and recover. Zelda cannot stand to stay in the castle any longer than she has already, but they are both tired, Link is injured, and they cannot go far. They find a building still standing in Castletown, with holes in the roof and window panes broken out, and it is safe, surrounded by the now-still corpses of Guardians. Link cooks, Zelda frets over his injuries, and it could almost be a scene from before, from their first war, except that it cannot possibly.
Zelda’s hands have dripped gold with divine power, and she has stood with a goddess’s might and blessing against the darkness itself. It cannot be like it was before.
Zelda does not want to go to Kakariko Village. She does not want to go anywhere she knows. She does not know how she fits into this new world, and she does not want to face what remains of her old one. Link has told her that Impa still lives, and the idea of seeing her friend, now an old lady, a hundred years different from who she was when Zelda knew her, is almost too much to bear.
But she goes. They rest and recover enough for the road, and Link presents her with a white horse so clearly descended from the old royal breed that it turns something in her stomach, and then they ride.
Kakariko Village is barely changed, untouched by war. A few buildings are new, and a few buildings are gone, and new trees have grown, but it is the same place. Paya looks so like her grandmother that it wrenches something sideways in Zelda's chest. It is wrenched even further when she is brought to Impa.
It is one thing to see the ruins of the castle she has called home all her life, and it is one thing to think about the fact that a hundred years have passed, that her father has been dead and that she is a hundred years a queen. It is another to see the effects of a hundred years on a friend's face.
They were girls together! For Zelda, it was just yesterday, just last year, that they had been young and anxious and fighting a war they were not prepared for, as much child soldiers as Link. It was just yesterday, and Impa is here, old and shrunken in on herself, smiling a crooked smile that is not like her—not like the her Zelda knew—changed by a lifetime, by more than a lifetime, by a life well lived and an apocalypse survived and—
Zelda does not remember dashing out of the room, does not remember running. Link follows her, not in desperate chase but with a kind of quiet calm, like he understands. He catches up with her, stands a bit apart, gives her space to do whatever it is she needs to do. She thinks he would follow her, loping slow and sure, to the ends of the world. She knows he would.
It does help, a little, to cry and be seen. She has hated crying in front of people ever since she was a little girl trying to live up to her father's requirements, ever since her mother's death, but it is different to be seen by Link.
He says, voice quiet and a little rough, in that start and stop way of his, "I didn't remember her, the first time. She knew me, but I didn't." It is a little ambiguous whether he means that he didn't know Impa or he didn't know himself. Maybe he means both.
Zelda can't say anything, makes some noise but cannot pull her words together, and thinks she knows a little of how embarrassed Link felt when it happened to him before.
Link is silent for a long moment, and then: "It's fucked up, isn't it?"
Zelda is crying, and she is laughing, and she cannot help herself at all.
Link nods to himself, mouth quirked into some expression that just means himself. "She won't be mad. She understands. Let's go back."
What else can Zelda do?
***
They stay in Kakariko for nearly a month. It is by far the longest Link has stayed anywhere since waking up in the Cave of Resurrection, and by the end of the second week Zelda can see the restlessness building in him like a tangible thing. He was not good at staying still before, in their first life, but it's different now. Then, it was a need to keep moving and to be doing something that had looked like a need to prove himself. Now, Zelda sees the way he stills (at two weeks) or flinches (partway into the third) at people’s voices. She watches him range into the little woods near the fairy's fountain just to be alone.
She watches him not flinch when it's just the two of them, when she speaks softly about the adjustment, about the state of the world, about nothing at all, and isn't that strange?
Zelda knows they need to leave for Link's sake (she does not even consider the possibility that he would leave without her), but once she has gotten over her initial shock, she needs to know everything of Impa's life.
Impa is a hundred and twenty years old, two years older (a hundred and two years older) than Zelda herself. Even among the Sheikah, often longer lived than Hylians, she is very, very old. Zelda is very aware that this could be the only time they ever speak: her last contact with a dear old friend, with this part of her life. There are others still alive, Link has said—Purah and Robbie, and of course many among the Zora, who measure their lifespans in centuries—but none of them are Impa.
Zelda sits with Impa's hands between her own, feeling the paper thin skin that comes with age, the swollen knuckles, and they talk of absolutely everything. They talk about the days after Link's injury, after Zelda stepped into her home, her prison, and cast herself into holding the Calamity for a century. They talk about who survived and how they rebuilt. They talk about Impa's husband (so kind, from Impa's description, that maybe he even deserved her) and daughter and granddaughter. They talk about a hundred years of crops planted and trees growing and life lived.
It makes Zelda cry sometimes, to know what she's missed and see what she can of her only surviving friend's life, and in those moments Impa draws her close. She wraps thin arms around Zelda's shoulders, strokes her hair, and Zelda knows that this is not just her friend. This is a woman who has buried a husband and a child, who has soothed two generations of nightmares and hurts. Zelda does not quite remember her grandmother, the last queen, who died even before her mother; but she does have the vaguely shaped feeling of a memory of arms like that, of thin, worn hands in her hair, and it makes her cry over other things.
She cannot imagine being as old as Impa. She cannot imagine what her life would have been without the Calamity, what it would be like to marry and have daughters of her own, to grow old in peace.
It's when the tears dry up, when she can make it through their conversations with something like peace, that she knows it's time to move on.
***
They go to the Zora's Domain. Stepping out into the wilds, kicking his horse into a gallop, Link's tension melts away. It lightens Zelda a little to see. They race on the empty roads (she is a skilled rider, but Link moves as if he was made for the saddle, as if he and his horse were some strange lynel, one creature) and Zelda laughs with joy while Link grins against the wind.
Soon enough they get closer, begin seeing Zora architecture, and Link's tension returns. It's a different form of tension, but it's there.
Zelda would have called Mipha a friend, a hundred years ago. Not so close a friend as Impa—who was a constant presence in her life—as their fathers' courts kept them separate, but she had liked Mipha. It had been hard not to like as sweet a soul as Mipha. The Zora had adored their princess, far more than the Hylians had adored Zelda (not they she was disliked, in her time: it was simply that Mipha was loved), but it was impossible to be jealous of her fellow princess. It had been impossible to hate her, the gentle healer and steadfast warrior, dedicated and dutiful.
But Link—
Link had loved Mipha.
Zelda has known that for a hundred years, but she only begins to understand the extent of it as they travel into the Zora's Domain. A hundred years ago, it was easy to think of it as, well—Zelda would not have used the word "crush," she thinks, but as something shallow. Mipha was lovely, to a Zora or Hylian eye, and she was kind, and she must have had many suitors, many interested men. She was friends with Link, Zelda had known, but Mipha seemed to be friends with everyone she met.
And then they get close enough to the Zora city and stop for the night, and Link carefully removes from his pack one of the finest, lightest sets of armor Zelda has ever seen, and she understands.
She has never seen lightscale armor, but she recognizes it immediately. Silver and steel and Zora scales—Mipha's scales, dyed a blue that brings out Link's own eyes beautifully—and Zelda knows precisely what it means.
"Oh," she says, without meaning to. Then, because it is all she can say: "Oh."
Link does not look at her, keeping his eyes on the armor he is carefully, painstakingly laying out in front of him, every piece in place—but he nods. He smiles, and it is a terrible thing. It makes Zelda want to cry.
Zelda cannot imagine marrying, cannot imagine what her life would have looked like if she had, and here is Link—holding the proof of Mipha's love, holding a proposal a hundred years after Mipha has died, never married and a hundred years a widower.
"King Dorephan kept it," Link says, running his hands over the only thing left of Mipha. "I didn't—know." His voice catches.
***
Kakariko may have been untouched by the war, but the Zora's Domain has been touched and still come out unchanged.
It is clear enough that some things have been destroyed and rebuilt, but they have been rebuilt the same. Though it has been a hundred years, it has changed less, seen fewer generations.
King Dorephan carries a few more lines in his face, maybe, and it is impossible for Zelda to say if they are from age or grief. Sidon is much more changed, no longer the little boy Zelda remembers, but a young man of—she thinks—roughly the same developmental stage as herself and Link, for all that he is twice their size and head and shoulders above most of the adult Zora.
King Dorephan greets Zelda as a princess, which she does not think she deserves, but it is better than him calling her queen. He greets Link with a sort of sad warmth and pleasure, and Zelda cannot help but think that Link would have been his son if things had been different.
It is a different kind of pain than Kakariko Village and Impa were. She is more distant from it, naturally more removed from this court of allies than she was from her dear friend. And it is the opposite for Link, who is standing among the family and friends of the person he would have married, who is wearing the proof of her love.
They do not stay as long as they stayed in Kakariko. Link had, it seems, said everything he needed to say to the Zora before ending the Calamity. Zelda has few words to say herself. She tells King Dorephan she doesn't plan to reclaim her throne, and he does not seem surprised. She thought he deserved to hear it from her, friend and ally to her father that he was, but they have surprisingly little else to say to each other.
Sidon is a charming host, eager to show Zelda the wonders of his domain, and it is a nice distraction for a few short weeks.
***
They are unsure what to do next, so instead of making a choice they travel northward through Akkala and visit Robbie. It is still odd, but Zelda is numbed to it after Impa, and she was never so close to Robbie. Really, it’s something they do to spend time while they think, to get away from the Zora's Domain and the weight of Mipha's memory that rests heavily on Link's shoulders.
There are none living among the Goron, the Rito, or the Gerudo who remember them. There are none there to whom they owe anything, except maybe the promise that the Calamity really is gone.
Link brings Zelda to Tarrey Town, a charming little place on an improbable structure of rock; Zelda learns, listening to the terse but perfectly friendly conversation between Link and Hudson, that Link is largely responsible for providing the resources and people that have built the town. Link does not seem to think there is anything special about it, but Zelda is amazed.
Here are people, rebuilding, and here is Link, a part of it.
She ends up speaking to Bolson before they leave, and asks him to reach out to Link and her if his company needs help with any more projects like Tarrey Town. She likes the idea of helping rebuild, in a way that she has not liked anything else since defeating the Calamity.
***
They do go to the Goron city, since they are so close; it is a sweltering thing, but the people are kind. No one knows who Zelda is. They know Link as a hero, and they do not know Zelda.
She is at peace with that.
It is a short visit. Link deals with an igneo talus that has made its home too close to the city, and they spend a few nights in the inn, and they leave.
***
Link says, "I bought a house," and Zelda says, "Show it to me?"
They pick their way back south, swinging west into Hyrule fields instead of traveling back through Zora land, and then further west while avoiding Kakariko. Hateno Village is more changed than Kakariko was, no longer the village that Zelda remembers vaguely from official visits.
But the house, Link's house, she thinks she does remember. He explains that it was old, empty, and about to be demolished when he bought it, and she is not sure if she remembers it or if she just wants to remember it.
If she wants it to be a relic, like they are.
They visit Purah, who Link has warned Zelda has done something strange to herself, but it is still a shock to see a little girl in place of the old woman she should be. Still—it is, after adjusting, a reassurance that someone else is around to stay who remembers but will not die so soon as Impa and Robbie.
But Link's house is charming. The people of Hateno are fond of the strange little adventurer who has set up on the edge of their town, and they quickly become fond of the woman he has brought with him. Someone asks if they are together, and it's not right, but it's not entirely wrong.
There is only one bed, and Link offers it to Zelda, but she insists it is big enough to share until they can find other accommodations. Anyway, it is nice to be so near another person, to be near the only other person who understands. They do nothing but sleep, and sometimes wake each other with nightmares, and Zelda does not think that will change. She does not know if Link will ever want someone other than Mipha, and she does not know if she will ever want someone at all, and it is nice to not be alone.
Link teaches Zelda to cook. She teaches him more of botany: identifying the flowers planted around his house, ranging into the wilds with him to point out formal names and properties of things he only knows by how they cook up. They take turns going down to the market. Sometimes, someone comes to town with a problem—there are fewer monsters, without Calamity Ganon, but still enough to cause problems—and they deal with it for a few rupees, or a basket of food, or whatever the person has brought to barter for Link's sword.
In time, they do visit the Rito and the Gerudo. Revali's family line is gone, and he himself is not the legend he should be, but it is enough to see the traces he left on his people. Urbosa is better remembered, and Riju is young, but Zelda thinks she could grow up to be as great as her ancestor.
Link shows Zelda secret and beautiful places. He shows her dragons and sacred springs, a glowing mountain god stepped right out of fairytales, great fairies and the hidden places of the koroks and forgotten horse gods. He shows her fields of Silent Princesses—so near to extinction in their time, now flourishing.
And after every magical thing, the road takes them back to Hateno, and Link's house, their house, and the small peace they are building themselves around the gentle glow of their hearth. Zelda wakes from nightmares where she glows with a goddess’s light, and it is a relief to see only the low burn of the fireplace on a winter’s night.
She cannot imagine sitting on her father's throne or wearing a crown. She cannot imagine marrying, cannot imagine children, cannot imagine the continuation of the royal line that she feels guilty for not feeling a duty to. She cannot imagine being as old as Impa, her hands worn and thin, her heart heavy with a lifetime.
But she thinks, growing older here with Link in arms' reach might be possible.