Work Text:
Mipha does not tell her father everything that happened.
She takes time—they all take time: her, Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali—to help with the clearing of Hyrule Castle and Castletown before they go back to their own people. Calamity Ganon's monsters have fallen with him, but there is destruction, and there are the bodies, and there are the injured.
They all have their roles, and Mipha is a healer before she is a warrior. The injured are her domain more than anything else, and she does what she can for them, but she sees her share of the dead.
They have lived—the Champions, the Hero, and the Princess—but so many of their soldiers spent their lives to build this future. Zelda may be the Princess of the prophecy, but Mipha is a princess too, and in absence of her father, she is what the Zora here have.
Of course she sees to their bodies. She will see them collected, wrapped, and transported back to the Zora's Domain, so they can be shown the respect they deserve. Urbosa and Daruk are doing much the same for their own people, though Revali has handed off the responsibility to another Rito. Mipha thinks that may be a kindness even Revali is aware of: he has little thought for the dead, little grace for the living, and he has given the job to someone who can handle them with the honor they deserve.
In time—so little time, this has all been so quick—she returns home leading a funeral procession. She is greeted with everything the Zora have to offer: songs for returning warriors and fallen heroes, her father's beaming pride, her brother's relieved laughter and tears. She tells the story calmly, clearly, but haltingly, sure that she should tell it all, but unwilling to tell her father what happened.
What could have been.
***
Mipha watches Sidon grow up. She grows up herself, because she was too young when this started. She watches her noble, courageous, silly brother grow up less burdened by loss than the near-stranger who saved her. She sees who he could have been in every line of him, the Zora who threw himself between her and a Blight without a second thought, and she is so proud. She loves him desperately, both versions of him, and she knows she—that other version of herself—didn’t regret dying, if it helped to keep him safe; only that she couldn't spare him the hurt of her death. She doesn't regret living now, when it has kept him safe among all the others dead.
She watches Link grow too, in that lightning fast, shuddering way that Hylians have. He grows taller and broader, and his face changes, and she loves him too. It is a very different thing, not only because of what she hopes the armor she's made him will mean. She loves Sidon like the rapids, fast and fierce, willing to drag anyone who harms him under, but what she feels for Link is cool, still waters. The days they can steal away from their duties fill her heart with a calm she carries with her through the times they are apart, and she knows that she wants as many of those days as she can get to save against the future when—
Hylians move so much faster than Zora.
She lets out the armor, because he has grown broader, taller, and she gives him a gift with a question attached.
***
Link is tied to Zelda in ways neither of them will fully understand in this life, but he chooses Mipha. He retires from the royal guard, lays his sacred duty aside, leaves Queen Zelda to rule Hyrule in peace, and goes to the princess he has chosen, who has chosen him.
They travel sometimes—for matters of state, to see their old friends—but Link spends the majority of his adult life in the Zora's Domain. He swims and fishes, entertains Zora children, laughs and delights and dances with his wife: free for the few scant decades of a Hylian lifespan, before his death comes and he is reclaimed for the cycle that binds him eternally.
He will remember Mipha sometimes: in starts and flashes, in the face of another Zora, in the care of a healer’s hands. And then she will be gone from him, lingering just outside his reach, just outside his memory, forever.
