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He must have only felt whispers of her because after the conflict she was beyond anything he could have expected.
Cold was a word used by many, but that hadn’t enveloped the full extent of her demeanour. Talking to her barely scraped the surface of her mind, as if she were holding a lure just out of reach. Where the hero lacked tact and speech, the princess flourished under pressure and flowery words. It was clear that she was telling him repeatedly one message under the guise of many: You don’t belong here.
And Link was an honest man, he didn’t belong here—in Hyrule castle where men with curly beards gaped at the scene of him dressing his own horse. He wasn’t about to pretend to know which fork to use first in a five-course meal or what clothes were proper attire for tea time. If anything, he belonged on a farm with some animals on a broad field of several acres. That was a prize worth the pain he had gone through and a prize he knew the princess was fully willing to offer if he should ask.
Every time he left there would be a passing thought that it would be the last he would be in that town. Then after a week, or a month, or sometimes more he would be riding through the castle gates.
I’ll be gone tomorrow, he would inevitably think.
On this occasion, he had broadened his stay to two weeks. He peered over the banister of those great halls at the sound of thin heels on stone. Two advisors flanked her, chattering away about semantics. Link could barely recognise them because the droning voices tended to blend after a while. The princess cast her gaze upwards and slowed to a stop.
“Sir Link,” she said. It was a plain address that began after her forced title stuck to his name.
He nodded, a simple gesture that snuck in enough time to collect himself.
Then, like always, he cleared his throat.
“I don’t suppose you considered the reason why I’m here.”
The feather of a smile graced her lips. It was barely noticeable and all the same made Link drop his eyes.
“Oh no.” Princess Zelda folded the papers in her hand to herself. “I consider your presence here a great deal, actually.”
There were faint circles just under where her eyeliner was painted. He wanted to ask, but instead squandered the words and took the bait.
Link slumped against the bannister. “Then… that means?”
“That your request is going through the proper channels to be approved. You need not to worry.”
She seemed satisfied by her answer, almost walking away from the conversation until he dipped into the frustration he had been simmering in for a fortnight. The furrow in his brow was entirely involuntary.
“So, you mean to tell me that you’ll have an unfortified castle for up to three months before your bureaucrats approve a new chain of command?”
Zelda’s grip on her papers tightened. “Yes! Yes, that is what I mean. If you’re so opposed, I suggest you go gallivanting on your own again without the crown’s authorization.”
Her advisors scurried after the click of heels. Like her gaze, she left him burning and without space to pursue. Link swallowed, then peeled his sweaty hands from the bannister railing.
Their encounters were clockwork. A carefully engineered mechanism at work to keep the distance until the hour struck with Link’s breaking nerves. He’d dress his horse again to set out anywhere that wasn’t here. Ordon had been that place more than once, but it was never sustainable. The hero had a taste for the beyond now and it was addictive.
If trouble didn’t find him, he would find it. After Twilight had faded, it manifested in rebuilding efforts though that hadn’t lasted forever. Link had passed Hyrule’s borders in search for that high only to fall back to its centre because… well… that he wasn’t sure.
He did know, however, that the answer was within the princess.
So, when a particularly difficult meeting with the advisors came and went, he did something different: he followed her. The liberties of his gifted title paid out in a conversation about resource allocation. There was a grain shortage across Hyrule and the provinces were naturally having differences in the form of her advisors. They had prattled on for hours while Princess Zelda stewed at her desk, being uncharacteristically quiet. Link, like always, watched her carefully because after all the geezers would leave that was when he’d intervene with his own thoughts.
Zelda would seem to listen diligently, but none of his plans ever played out to fruition. This time was different because she left by the time he stood. It was so obvious to him. They’d have to import more grain from neighbouring countries until the soil could turn enough to recover from the almost-calamity.
Was she not even willing to hear him out anymore?
She had nearly circled the castle by the time Link found out that this transpired frustration.
All those moments of being ignored and cast aside for nothing were culminating a fire in his gut. Right as he had nearly caught her by the west wing, she dipped into her rooms, which was a place even he wasn’t bold enough to venture. The guard at the door gave him an odd look that made Link regurgitate a lacklustre excuse for being lost before he took a sharp turn back the way he came.
Of course it would start raining when he saddled his horse.
“Going out so soon, sir?” the young stable hand said with a raised brow.
He mumbled back affirmatively, his fuse having grown short since his last encounter with the princess—if it could even be called that. It was only this morning that he rode in. Epona gave him a sidelong look at his rough tugging on the straps.
Maybe when he began riding out to the fields that the happening was a curse of the goddesses because his fuse had suddenly ignited once more at brunette against green. Her figure was too her to be anyone else. Link dug his heel into Epona and steered her off the path. In the spring, this was a field of daisies, but it was too deep in summer now. She was walking from her white horse towards a dilapidated pavilion shrouded in trees.
“Zelda!” he called out, too caught up in swinging off his horse to remember himself.
Like the pouring rain, she wasn’t acknowledging him either as she lumbered up the steps without even a cloak around her shoulders. Link scoffed, running up to the slanted little building.
Once he reached it, he heard, “Would you just leave me alone?”
The princess was already being accusatory, making the smoulder in his gut ignite into something hotter.
“No, I won’t. You can’t just run—”
“Leave me and be on your way!” she shouted, glaring daggers through mocking eyes.
Link took her words like an attack and countered with, “No! I’d rather be here soaked to the
bone if you’d just listen—”
“I’d rather not.”
“I don’t care if you’ve never heard the word ‘no’ in your life, it’s a good day for firsts.”
Zelda balled her hands. “Hold your tongue!”
“Your heart is just as cold as I thought it was,” he said, his voice edging higher.
Words died in her throat as her jaw slacked before steeling to utter, “You are cruel!”
“Cruel?! Me? When you stand here amongst rubble that you refuse to rebuild. You’re mocking your name and your heritage—and for what?”
It was then that Link realised he was shouting. Every previous manifestation of her that his mind could create shattered as Zelda’s face contorted and in the realisation of her own diminishment, her bottom lip quivered shut.
There wasn’t room for her to run away like those many other times he’s managed to corner her. Even then, she fidgeted and her eyes darted away from him for an opening—any opening. Instead, the rain mocked the tears Zelda brushed away with wholly unnecessary force. Her arms wound tighter against her bosom as if he were an enemy she was powerless against.
“Do not look at me like I am some—some,” she breathed a hiss for words, “some benign idiot.”
“I made you upset,” Link said, tinged with disbelief.
Zelda’s face contorted with protest yet none came. She stared at the space between them and he at her, taking in the flickering of emotions. The crease in her brow, the frown on her lips, the stammer in her voice—it was all bewitching.
There was an attempt to gain his wits, but he failed to mask hoarseness. “I… All I want to do for you is to help.”
“Now you’d like to help!” she gaped at him. “You chase me down and insult my character, then insist on your good faith. You are beyond confounding.”
She washed over him like a cold shower. Her lips sharpened constants into knives and the anger between her teeth latched onto him with deadly precision. In some way, this was his point exactly. Zelda was relentless in getting under his skin and staying there for days, even in her absence.
How could the confounding one be Link?
Her Highness rebounded faster than him, but it was difficult to sober up when the small hints of her demeanour gave way to something he had assumed from the start and forgot. The falling rain filled their silence with ease. She was angled away from him, glowering vendettas into the floor.
It was too late though, the seal had been broken and even the discrete swipes at her nose were taken in by him. She was familiar while being completely driven from any light he’s seen her under. So much so that irrationality pleaded in the back of his mind to look away, as if propriety dictated that this version of her was inappropriate to look upon.
Zelda’s hair was damp, the ends drying without conformity.
“I am simply tired.”
Link attempted to reach for her, freezing when she reeled back at his movements. “You must be exhausted if that is your angle.”
“It is not my angle, but if exhaustion is the condition that pleases you then so be it.”
“How is it that even when I’m trying to reconcile, you push me away?”
The space between her brow pinched and with a thick voice she said, “Because that is who I’m meant to be. I don’t need your reconciliation, nor your assistance.”
“I’m not going to walk away from this.” He was burning. Still-glossy eyes watched him, void of the contempt he was searching for. “If I am confounding, then you are impossible. I leave your court for one reason and come back for the very same. Perhaps I am what you say because I can’t describe why.”
“Are you to chastise me after all?”
“No.”
“Pity, then.”
“No.” Link glanced away. The softer gaze was rattling.
His breath was heavy in his lungs. The innate spark of the early evening was gone. Her arms no longer held such a protective grip, instead she opted for warmth than safety against him. Link didn’t dwell long on the sudden shift and went to pull at the latches of his cloak.
“I initially came back because I wanted to help the efforts. Pure and simple. Home was good for a time, but it was the same and I wasn’t,” he said, approaching her slowly. When she didn’t shirk away from his reach, Link took the liberty to wrap the thick riding cloak around her shoulders. His fingers brushed the underside of her chin and he couldn’t help but feel the softness of her skin. His thoughts ran amok.
“I’ve seen a world under darkness and my own almost fall to it. I have met my share of people, crossed to lands I could barely comprehend. Laughed, cried, loved, and lost more than most my senior. I could go anywhere yet I still find myself here to watch you fool the country into thinking you’re not human.”
Zelda was silent, peering at him through dark lashes. When she did speak her voice was thick.
“Why? To mock me with your innate goodness or are you to wait to watch me fail for once? You act as if you are the only one to lose something. Unlike you, I didn’t get my family back,” her bottom lip shook before she pressed her lips together. Zelda was glaring at him through thick lashes. “You are allowed to mourn. You are expected to shed tears for your suffering. The world took from you but she gave as well. I, however, was given a short period of grieving and then cast into the spotlight for everyone to scrutinise.
“People love you, Link,” she pleaded. Lithe hands rose to wrap around his wrists that still lingers on the coat. “They see you as their hero and I am no stranger to how you pay their affections forward. But we are not the same. For all the good acts you do out of the kindness of your heart are acts I must do through a pen and paper. The people want to see divinity in me and I will do everything in my power to make it as close to the truth as I can. Even if you and I both know I’m the farthest from a goddess.”
A soft, sad smile played on her lips as if he did know that fact. There was a knife in his side that was twisting slowly, rendering him immobile under her watchful eyes. Certainly, if she knew what she was doing to him then she’d think twice about her divinity.
Link’s shoulders dropped with a sigh. “Then for all my ‘good acts’, let me be an option when your mortality catches up to you.”
“Unfortunately, your southern hospitality will be criticised as my own weakness.”
“Zelda—”
“I would rather be seen as cold and cruel then expose the throne’s vulnerabilities.”
“Help is hardly a vulnerability.” Frustration creased his brow. If she would only listen—
“They’ll imply that the crown is incompetent to rule alone.”
“Then share it!” Link interjected. “It’s obvious I’m ignorant of how this works. The politics and formalities are nonsense to me. I’m very aware that I look like a bumbling idiot in a suit, but that doesn’t compare to the fact that I would like to be present and near you in the untimely event that you do need someone. You’ve driven me cliff-side throughout these few weeks, but you are inevitable and easily my selfish indulgence.”
This time, she didn’t retort. Princess Zelda stared with wide eyes and an odd fever-like redness marred her cheeks. “That is… a strange proposal.”