Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s finally done it. After almost a year since he woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection, after months of careful preparation and honing the Master Sword’s power to its fullest potential, he’s finally killed Calamity Ganon and saved the princess.

Princess Zelda stands not even five feet in front of him, her back to his face, her golden hair swaying in the fresh breeze that blows across Hyrule Field and carries away the lingering stench of malice in the air for the final time, because after a hundred years they finally got Calamity Ganon back he’s gone he’s been sealed away-

Slowly, like a music box being wound, Princess Zelda turns and faces him.

She looks exactly the same as she did in the memory he recovered on Blatchery Plain, like she stepped right out of his dreams and onto the grass. The dirt caking her dress is a century old and flaking. At closer inspection, her hair’s shine is from poorly-dried, century-old rain, and her eyes…

Her eyes are as green as Faron’s forests, and they glisten with tears.

“Do…Do you really remember me?” she asks, her voice shaking as she begs, “Please, please say that you do.”

Link stares at her, at this beautiful girl he only remembers in thirteen fragments, and shakes his head. He doesn’t remember that much about himself, but he knows that he’s not a liar. “Not all of you, Princess.”

Something in her face changes, her eyebrows on the verge of furrowing. “Princess?”

Frowning, Link nods. “Princess Zelda. I…I am getting your name right, right?”

Right? He doesn’t remember hearing it that much in his memories but it’s what Rhoam said on the Great Plateau, that his daughter is Princess Zelda and that he had to save her as soon as possible-

“Is it?” she asks. “My…My name is Princess Zelda?”

“What…” he trails off. “What do you mean? You don’t…You don’t know your own name?”

He’s always known his name, at least, but that’s only because she told him. How could she know his name but not her own? Why…Why doesn’t her voice carry the same assuredness that it had when she spoke to him on the Great Plateau when he woke up, or when the Blood Moons rose, or when he fought the Calamity?

She shakes her head. “I can’t remember anything before the sky turning from red to blue, but…you rescued me from something, didn’t you? The air feels lighter, and it’s as if there’s this…this weight off my back. I’ve never felt so relieved.”

"Yeah," Link manages, unsure if he can say anything else. "Yeah, I...I saved you." 

"What's your name?"

Link, she had whispered in his ear, her voice tender, riddled with a century's worth of exhaustion, and raw like she had been screaming. Wake up, Link.

"Link," he whispers. "My name is Link." 

"Link," she repeats, slowly, like she's committing it to memory, like it's any other word and not the desperate plea that pushed him into waking and forced him into action, like it's not the only thing he knew from the moment he heeded her call and opened his eyes. She offers her hand. "It's nice to meet you again, Link."

Link swallows, staring at the way her hand trembles in the air between them, how her filthy fingers steam where her skin cools from the sudden loss of heat from her power. He reaches out and takes it. "It's nice to meet you again, too, Princess Zelda."  

—

She insists on being called 'just Zelda'.

"I don't even remember being a princess," she reminds him as they ride on horseback towards Kakariko.

“I know,” Link says, tightening his grip on Horse’s reins as he makes a turn. Princess Zelda’s fingers dig into his waist from where she sits behind him in the saddle, the ends of her hair brushing his ribs as she turns her head back and forth to look at what Hyrule has become in her absence. “I’m used to calling you ‘Princess’, is all.”

(Or…she’s seeing all of Hyrule for the first time, like he had when he woke up.)

“All I’m saying is you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” her chin hooks over his shoulder and her breath is warm on the side of his face, her lips ghosting over his skin as she continues, “I’m pretty sure I stopped being royalty the second I lost my memories. You have amnesia, too, don’t you?”

Her weight is warm where she curves against his back, pressed flush to his spine where the Master Sword would usually rest. He put all of his equipment in Horse’s saddlebags for his new companion’s comfort, and she’s apparently taken it as permission to cling to him like the Hateno children do their toys once the sun sets. He responds, “Yeah, I do. I remember a little bit, but not enough to really say that I know who I really am.”

Princess Zelda’s arms wrap fully around his waist as he makes a sharp turn. “Who do you think you are?”  

Link swallows. “I’m your knight, so it’s my job to protect you, but I’m also the Hero of Hyrule.”

“Hero of Hyrule?”

“It’s…” he sighs. “It’s hard to explain, I…I can barely understand it myself. To make a long story short, I’m the only one who can wield the Master Sword—the sword I used to fight the Calamity, the-the thing I saved you from—and I was destined to save Hyrule with you because of your magic. Can you use that, by the way? Do you know how?”

Princess Zelda sucks in a breath, holds it, then exhales, a frown in her voice as she answers, “No. Do you know how I use it?”

Link shakes his head, squinting at the horizon to gauge how long it’ll take them to reach the Dueling Peaks that centers the sun that practically blinds him. “Something about love, I think? That’s what my friend Kass told me when he sang me his teacher’s song.”

“Who and his what?”

Right. Even if she did have her memories, she wouldn’t know anything about Kass and the old court poet’s songs being taught and passed down through their missing century.

“I’ll explain later,” he tells her. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? The rectangle on my belt has all of my food and stuff in there, all you need to do is turn it on and pick what you want.”

“Rectangle?” One of her hands drifts to his hip where the Sheikah Slate lies. “Oh, this. No, I’m fine, thank you. I’m just enjoying the breeze.”

And me, Link thinks, his shoulder starting to ache from the weight of her head still pressing down on it, his body hot from where she’s still wrapped around his back and hugging him close. 

He can’t blame her for clinging to him, though. When he was helping her onto Horse’s saddle her skin was ice cold, and she spent a century alone with a hate-fueled demon that wanted nothing more than to kill her. If he were to guess, the last time she experienced the warm, friendly touch of another human was when he died in her arms on Blatchery Plain, but even then it was pouring rain and he wasn’t exactly warm.

“Do you ever think about how weird it is to feel things?” Princess Zelda mumbles, quiet. 

“What?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows together, wanting to look back at her but unable to because of how close she already is to his face. 

“I mean…” she falters, letting out a deep breath, and her words are slow when she explains, “The air is invisible, yet we can feel it. I can feel the softness of your shirt, but I can’t feel its color. When we were standing in the grass, it was sharp and stabbed my feet, but it didn’t feel like knives or nails or anything threatening. I knew it was grass because of how specific the sensation was.”

He…doesn’t get it. “I don’t know what you mean, Princess-”

“Zelda.”

“Your Highness-”

“Please, Link,” she muffles into his shoulder, her lips scratching against the Champion’s Tunic as she sighs, “Call me by my name. It’ll help me remember it, too.”

“Okay,” he doesn’t mean for his voice to come out sounding so small. “Zelda. I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s all right,” she smiles against him. “I don’t think I know what I mean, either.”

She falls asleep like that, wrapped around him with her head pillowed on his shoulder, her face turned into his neck to hide from the mid-morning light.

—

They arrive in Kakariko three hours later.

Link’s entire body hurts, his adrenaline rush from his battle with Calamity Ganon finally fading, and Zelda is still slumped against him, fast asleep. 

He slows Horse to a stop in front of Impa’s house, stroking his mane and whispering for him to stay still while he carefully dismounts, careful to keep Zelda on the saddle. 

“Link?” Cado frowns, staring at the girl unconscious on his horse from his post at the bottom of Impa’s stairs. “Is that-?”

“Yes,” he nods, wrapping his arms around Zelda and pulling her into him, holding her like a bride. She doesn’t stir at all from the motion, dead weight in his hands, and he’d be more worried if he couldn’t feel her breaths against his neck. “She fell asleep on the way here, I guess the century caught up to her. Where’s Dorian?”

“It’s his day off, do you need-”

“No,” Link adjusts his grip on the princess, cradling her head against his chest. “I was just wondering why you were alone. Can you get the doors for me, please?”

Cado practically runs up the stairs, throwing open the doors.

“Cado, what are you doing?” Impa’s creaking voice comes from inside. “It’s still cold out, do-”

“Apologies, Master Impa, truly,” he glances back as Link starts to slowly climb the steps, careful not to jostle the sleeping girl in his arms. “But Link is here, you see, and he’s brought a guest.”

“A guest?” Paya’s voice drifts outside. “Who?”

“You, ah,” Cado looks back at him again and Link stops. “You might want to come see for yourselves.”

It takes a couple of minutes, but eventually Impa hobbles out to the landing, one hand shaking on her cane and the other hooked on Paya’s elbow. When she looks down the steps to where Link stands with Zelda unconscious in his arms, her eyes go wide and Paya gasps. 

“Hey, Impa,” Link greets. “I did it.”

The old woman blinks, and her eyes shine as a watery smile spreads across her face. “Yes, Link. Yes you did. Bring her inside. Paya, be a dear and make up your bed for the princess.”

Paya’s mouth forms a small 'o' of surprise. “Of-Of course, Grandmother!”

—

Zelda wakes for only a moment, when he’s in the middle of tucking her into Paya’s bed with Impa hovering over his shoulder.

Her eyes crack open and she mumbles, “Where am I?”

“Kakariko,” he whispers, gently pushing her back to the mattress when she tries to sit up. “Lay back down, Princess, you’re exhausted.”

“Zelda,” she sleepily corrects.

Impa chuckles. “Even half comatose you renounce your title. How I’ve missed you, Zelda. I hope you can still recognize me after all of this time.”

Link watches Zelda’s face as her eyes slide to the Sheikah that was a close friend a hundred years ago, and inwardly deflates when no recognition sparks in her blank expression. 

“I’m sorry,” her eyes are closing. “Who’re you?”

She’s back to being asleep before Impa’s face can finish twisting in confusion.

When that confusion is turned on Link, all he can do is shake his head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Explain it anyway,” she orders, voice trembling. 

He does. He tells her about arriving in the Sanctum, about how Zelda spoke to him and said that she couldn’t hold the Calamity back any longer, about how when he defeated its spider-like form it escaped onto Hyrule Field and Zelda used her power to have him follow. He tells her how Zelda gave him the Bow of Light and golden targets to shoot at, encouraging him all the while with Courage need not be remembered, for it is never forgotten. He tells her about the seconds following the sealing of Calamity Ganon, how the sky turned from red to blue and the dark clouds slowed back to their normal white crawl and how Zelda turned around and asked him, Do...Do you really remember me?

“I don’t,” he breathes. “Not-Not enough, so I…I figured you could help. I thought you might know what’s causing this, you’ve been her friend way longer than I ever was-”

“She and the Golden Power are intertwined in a way that’s not unlike you and the sword that seals the darkness,” The old Sheikah woman murmurs, her eyes straying to the Master Sword's absence on his back, and fuck it probably won't be happy he left it in a saddlebag for almost four hours- “It’s a core part of who she is, what makes her, and I’m sure that using it for a hundred years straight has made her lose access to it. Without it…”

“She’s not whole,” he finishes, and at her nod he continues, “So she doesn’t remember.”

“Or…”

“Or what?”

Impa sighs. “It’s not uncommon for those who have experienced a great trauma to block out any memories connected to that event. Zelda is dealing with a century of uninterrupted darkness, it’s not very surprising that her subconscious mind would do its best to protect her from remembering any of it.”

“But why would that make her forget Before?”

On the end table next to the bed sits a half-melted candle, and it's lopsided light makes tilted shadows dance on the edges of Impa’s wrinkles. “There were plenty of horrors a century ago, too.”

—

Link doesn't move from Zelda’s side, even when the sun sets and the moon rises in Paya's window. He's got the Master Sword in his lap, wiping the blade down even though any malice evaporated from its burning touch, waiting for his partner in destiny to wake up.

(It's the least he can do to return the favor.)

He’s only been with her for twelve hours, but he’s already remembering more about her now that she’s a living, breathing human being and not another ghost in his head.

“You’re not a morning person,” he whispers to her sleeping face, keeping quiet even though he’s pretty sure not even another Calamity could wake her. He watches her chest rise and fall with deep, even breaths, and wonders if she’s dreaming. “You like to read. Your least favorite food is mushrooms, but I’ve snuck them into some dishes because they’re good for you. You yelled at me when you found out, but I just laughed.”

He doesn’t remember her laugh. He remembers her screaming at him in a fit of rage, he remembers her sobbing an apology to him later and howling in his arms during the end of the world, and he vaguely remembers her smile. Why does her laughter elude him?

Behind him, the door slides open. “Master Link?”

He looks up and back over his shoulder, met with the sight of Paya holding a steaming tray of rice balls and a bowl of soup.

“We-We figured you must be starving after the battle and all of that traveling,” she says, holding the tray out to him. “Grandmother made her special soup for dinner, the one she usually reserves for Goddess Day? She said that you might remember it because you always ate at least three bowls.”

“Goddess Day?” Link asks, setting the Master Sword aside. He takes the tray from her offering hands, rests it on his lap, and stares down at the soup. The broth is thick and a yellowish sort of white, with different sized chunks floating in it. Meat and vegetables, maybe? Potatoes? “What’s that?”

“Oh! It’s, um…” Paya stares at Zelda, at how her chest rises and falls and how her eyes stay shut. “It’s when we celebrate the Goddess Hylia’s rebirth into a mortal vessel, back when this land was just called the Surface and people lived in the sky.”

“People lived in the sky?” Link frowns. “That sounds weird.”

“A-A-Apparently!” Paya’s laugh is high-pitched and her cheeks are flushed red. “But what do I know, that’s just what Grandmother says! Elders and-and-and their stories, right?”

He stares at the blushing, bumbling Sheikah, and tries his best not to smile or laugh in her face. She’s cute when she gets flustered like this, and he knows a certain armor merchant in Tarrey Town that would greatly appreciate the sight, but if he told her either of those things he thinks she might explode. He settles for telling her, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“I’ll-I’ll, um, I’ll leave you alone to eat, Master Link, please let me know if you’d like more soup or-or even something else! I’m sure Grandmother wouldn’t mind making those meat skewers you enjoyed after you showed us that you reclaimed the sword that seals the darkness!”

Paya starts to run out of her room-

“Paya,” Link stops her. “Thank you for bringing me the food. Could you bring me two cups of water, too, please? One for me and one for the princess.”  

She nods, yelping, “Of course!”

While he waits for her to come back, Link devours half of his rice balls and tries the soup.

Potatoes, prime meat, and Endura Shrooms, he identifies. Probably a little goat butter or milk ‘cause it’s so creamy, and some rock salt for taste. What if I…

He picks up his next rice ball, dunks it in the soup, and chows down, groaning in relief at how delicious it is. 

(He makes a mental note to tell Impa to make the soup again once Zelda wakes up so she can try it, too, before he drains his bowl and goes downstairs to ask for seconds.)

—

He can’t sleep, is the thing.

He’s exhausted, he really is, like-like he wouldn’t be surprised if he took another hundred year nap just so his limbs would stop aching, but he can’t sleep. No matter how comfortable he tries to get in his chair, because the floor only made his battered body scream for mercy even with the blanket Paya brought him, he can’t fall asleep and he can’t stay asleep if he ever does drop off.

As he starts to count the cracks in Paya’s ceiling, his arms crossed as he leans all the way back in his chair, the blanket draped over his legs, Link figures out why: Before, whenever the princess slept, he kept watch. He would sit up all night outside of her tent, the Master Sword in hand and at the ready to swing it, just in case the Yiga ambushed them or any wild animals caught their scent. It was his job as her knight to protect her, and he couldn’t protect her if he was sleeping. 

There’s a vague memory floating somewhere in the back of his head, and he struggles to grasp it, mental fingers curling through a wall of mental smoke. He thinks he was riding on horseback beside her, traveling to…Rito Village? The Spring of Courage? Somewhere. They were riding their horses somewhere, but all that matters is that it was a destination that would take a long time for them to reach, probably half a day’s ride without stopping to stretch or relieve themselves or eat, and it was warm. It was warm, it was humid, the air a suffocating wall he could slice through with his arm, and Link was fresh off of another sleepless, vigilant night. 

He was fresh off of another sleepless, vigilant night, and he was falling asleep in the saddle while the princess rambled on about the Divine Beasts for what felt like the millionth time.

Not to say it was a bad thing, of course, she was allowed to be excited about things that excited her, but Link was tired, and she was starting to repeat herself from the tangent she went on just yesterday while he made them both lunch on the road in Hyrule Field. 

Link? Princess Zelda’s voice drifts into his ear. Link! Are you okay? Wake up!

He jolts awake and flails when he starts to tip out of his chair, catching himself on the end table. His eyes flick to the princess on the bed, because she called him, she-she said his name like she did when he woke up, like it—like he—was important-

Her eyes are closed. Her chest rises and falls with deep, even breaths. Her lips haven't moved, and his ears don't ring with the recent memory of her voice.  

Link blinks, and Princess Zelda's sleeping face turns blurry. He struggles to swallow as his breath hitches.

She doesn't know who I am, either, his mind spirals- She was the only one who really knew and she's gone she's dead like everyone else who knew me she's not coming back I'm not coming back I'm going to be stuck like this forever-

He breaks, slapping his hands over his mouth and muffling his sobs into his palms. 

—

Zelda says only one word in her sleep.

“Sorry…”

He misses it the first time because she’s stirred just enough to roll onto her side and bury her face in Paya’s pillows, but once he’s watching her face he actually sees her lips move as she mumbles again, “Sorry…Sorry…”

“Princess?” he whispers, hovering a hand over her shoulder, debating whether to try and shake her awake or leave her be. “Princess?”

Three golden triangles flicker on the back of her right hand, and her fingertips illuminate with sunlight.

Her sealing power, Link thinks. So it’s not gone. 

It’s not gone, which means…

There were plenty horrors a century ago, too.

She’s quiet for the rest of the night, except for the heaviness of her exhausted breaths and the creak of the mattress as she shifts every now and then.

—

“Sorry…Sorry…”

—

She finally wakes up two days later, her eyes fluttering open while he's fixing the tears in his Champion's Tunic. She’s sprawled on her back, tangled in the sheets, and the only reason he realizes she’s even awake is because her toes brush against his shin as she stirs.

The first thing Link says to her when she’s alert and notices him sitting by her side is, "What do you remember?" 

She swallows, staring at him and rasping, "My...My name is Zelda. I'm a princess, and you saved me from something called Calamity Ganon after one hundred years."

He helps her sit up and hands her the glass of water. “And my name?"

Link...Link...Wake up, Link.

She keeps staring at him, even as she lifts the glass to her mouth with trembling hands and takes a small sip of water. "Link. Your name is Link."

(Like any other word.)

"Do you remember anything else?"

Zelda glances around, her eyes flicking over the art adorning Paya’s walls. "We're in...Koka...Kako..."

"Kakariko," he softly corrects.

"Kakariko Village," she nods. "We're there—here, I mean—to see someone named Impa?"

He nods. "That's all?"

She nods back. "That's all. What about you?”

Link swallows. “I, um…I don’t remember all that much, either. Mostly you and I together, traveling around Hyrule.”

“So you know a little about who I am, then.”

“Only a little. Impa knows a lot more.”

“Can…” This is the first time he’s seen her eyes glimmer with something like hope. “Can you introduce me to Impa, then?”

—

After a semi-awkward introduction where Zelda apologizes for not remembering who Impa is after she’s filled in on everything concerning the Calamity and Link’s quest, they sit on the floor in front of the old woman’s tower of pillows as she serves them tea and leftover bowls of her Goddess Day soup.

“Paya is entertaining the village’s children,” Impa tells them, keeping her eyes on Zelda as the princess lifts a spoonful of soup to her lips. “I figured it would be easier to discuss these things with just the three of us and our varying levels of knowledge.”

“This soup is wonderful,” Zelda compliments. “How did you come up with the recipe?”

“It’s been passed down through the Impas for generations. In one of my predecessor’s journals, she believed it to be the meal the first Impa fed to the Goddess Hylia when she became mortal and descended from the land in the sky.”

“Wait,” Link frowns. “So your name’s not Impa?”

The Sheikah Elder smiles at him from beneath her hat, her eyes glittering. “My name has been Impa for one hundred and six years, child, just like yours has been Link for eternity.”

“What’s your birth name, then?” Zelda asks through another spoonful of soup. “Because when I asked her Paya told me that you’re one hundred and twenty.”

“That’s a secret between myself and the Goddess. Once I became this generation’s Impa, that is what my name changed to. You were the one who chose me for this role, Zelda, but I know that you don’t remember it.”

“So I knew your name,” The princess frowns. “Well that sucks. I don’t like not knowing things.”

“Welcome to the club,” Link chuckles at her use of ‘sucks’. He has zero memory of her ever using the word Before, and it sounds strange spilling from her noble-accent-laced lips. “But from what we can understand, your amnesia isn’t the same as mine. It’s not a product of magic, science, or a hundred-year stasis.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“You have your sealing power, the magic you used to defeat Calamity Ganon, which means your amnesia isn’t caused by you missing a core piece of yourself.”

Her frown deepens. “So what is it caused by?”

Impa clears her throat, locking eyes with Link for a moment before she tactfully answers, "Your mind is wounded after everything you've had to face. Those wounds have cut you off from your  memories and very identity. I believe that if we give you time to rest and recover, you will start to return to yourself." 

Princess Zelda goes quiet, eating more of her soup and drinking more of her tea, taking a deep breath-

She stops, sets her cup of tea down, and sniffs the air. Her nose scrunches, her face twisting in obvious disgust. “What is that smell? The soup and the tea smell wonderful, I know it's not that, but it...it smells like dirt.”

Impa laughs. “I believe that’s you and Link, dear. You both reek of malice, though you still smell like the Age of Burning Fields, seeing as you’re still covered in century-old grime.”

“So where can we…not smell like that anymore?”

“The bathhouse,” Link answers, his knees cracking as he gets to his feet and holds out a hand to her. “Come on, I’ll take you.”

—

Link sits in the grass outside of the bathhouse, not comfortable enough to leave Zelda on her own.

Zelda, who has been inside for only fifteen minutes when the door slides open and she steps back outside, still in her filthy dress and not even wet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, looking up at her.

“I can’t…” she falters, bowing her head and fiddling with her hands in front of her stomach. "I can’t get my dress off. I’m too weak, my arms are shaking. I can’t hold anything.”

He stands, starts to say, “Let me go get Paya-”

“I don’t know Paya,” Zelda interrupts, shaking her head as he lifts her chin to look him in the eye. “I…I don’t know Paya, and I don’t want a stranger seeing me. Can…Can you help?”

Link stares at her. “You don’t know me, either.”

“I do. I-I mean, I did. I trust that.” Zelda shifts her weight, her scandals scuffing in the dirt as she pulls at her fingers. “I understand if you say no, and if I need to I guess I’ll settle for Paya, but-”

“Okay,” Link finds himself agreeing, doesn't exactly realize what he's agreeing to until he continues, “I’ll help.”

She lights up, her lips curving up into a faint, shocked smile. “You will?”

(He's going to help her take her dress off, which means he's going to see her-)

“Yeah,” he nods, swallowing his pride. “I need a bath, too.”

(He should at least make it even, right?)

—

The prayer dress comes apart beneath his fingers, reduced to nothing but torn, filthy cloth as he pointedly stares at the ceiling, focusing on the lulling babble of the steaming rectangular pool in the center of the room and not the sliding friction of Zelda rubbing her shaking hands down her hips in an effort to brush away some of the flaking dirt.

“Thank you,” her voice is soft. “Are…Are you going to undress?”

On his peripheral vision he sees her looking back at him over her shoulder, the ends of her hair swaying from the movement, and Legend says that an ancient voice resonates inside it. Can you hear it yet, Hero? overlaps the sight and the back of his right hand burns as the Master Sword’s absence from his back leaves a hole in his very being, and maybe he shouldn’t have left it in Paya’s room but he left it once before so he figured he could leave it again but maybe not because Can you hear it yet, Hero? Can you hear it yet, Hero? Can you hear it yet, Hero? Stop following me Stop following me Stop following me Open Your Eyes-

“Link?”

(Like any other word.) 

Zelda, facing him. Zelda, staring at him like he’s the one who’s naked and needs to be handled with care. 

“Are you going to undress?” she repeats.

He keeps his eyes on hers and fiddles with the torn prayer dress. “Where should I put this?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to keep it. Anywhere is fine.”

He lets it fall from his fingers and it gently thumps against the wooden floor, pooling at her bare feet. His shirt, pants, boots, and socks join it. 

Her eyes track over the scars littering his body, lingering on the mess of marred flesh on his ribs that stretches up into the center of his chest where his heart pounds beneath her gaze.

“They’re from Before,” he explains. “From what put me in the Shrine of Resurrection.”

“What was it?” she steps close to him, reaching out her hand before pulling back. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s okay,” he breathes. “You can touch them, they don’t hurt.”

She has scars, too, he notices, faint lines on her arms and shoulders that look like they spread to her back. Her fingertips ghost over the taut skin of his abdomen, tracing the outline of the healed wound that left him for dead in her arms in the pouring rain a century ago, and Link wonders if the real Zelda is somewhere in the shadows lurking in her eyes, if she’s touching his scars, too, and keeping the memories of that night on Blatchery Plain locked away so the Zelda in front of him doesn’t have to face the reality of what’s happened to them both.   

Her hand settles in the center of his chest, where the scar is the deepest. 

“Your heart is racing,” Zelda whispers. 

“Your fingers are cold,” Link lies. 

—

They settle in the bath, Link on one side of the tub and Zelda on the other, and he can’t help but watch her as he puts his feet up on the bench.

She’s sitting on the bench, too, letting her legs float up in front of her and catching herself on the edge of the pool before she starts to completely float on her back, giggling to herself as she does it. The warm, bubbling water is doing wonders for cleaning a century’s worth of dirt and grime from her skin, the steam peeling it from her arms and legs and practically evaporating it from her face, and Link wonders how long it’s going to take all of her hair to completely dry.  

Maybe she could cut it if she wants, he thinks. He can ask her later, but right now his eyes are closing and he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since the night he picked up the Master Sword from Korok Forest and the tax it left on his body had him passing out on the leaf bed the Koroks made for him inside of the Great Deku Tree, the sword that seals the darkness held tightly in his arms like a stuffed animal a kid would hold for comfort. It wouldn’t hurt to drift a little, would it? The Calamity is gone, they’re in Kakariko for Goddess’s sake, and it’s not like there are any monsters around looking to strike. It’s just him, Zelda, and forty trained Sheikah warriors at the ready to jump to their aid and protect them because they saved all of Hyrule from imminent destruction Open Your Eyes Open Your Eyes Open Your Eyes Wake Up Link Wake Up Link Wake Up- 

“Link.”

His eyes snap open and he bolts upright, flinging water everywhere as he flails, reaching back over his shoulder for the Master Sword and his heart kicking into overdrive when his fist closes around nothing-

Where is it where are the monsters where am I where-

“Link!” A warm hand gently settles on his shoulder, pruny, wrinkled fingertips pressing into his collarbone. “It’s okay, you’re okay-”

His head whips back and he almost bashes his face into Zelda’s, catching his breath as he stares at her.

She’s sitting on the floor next to his head, a towel wrapped around her body and another one somehow twisted and sitting on the top of her head, her skin clean of any filth and slightly pink. 

“Kakariko,” she softly reminds him, her eyes searching his. “Are you all right?”

“Y-Yeah,” he manages, breathless. “You startled me, is all.”

“I’m sorry, I just figured I’d wake you because I’m finished bathing and-”

“It’s fine,” Link forces a smile, cutting off her nervous ramble. “Thank you.”

She smiles back. “You’re welcome.”

—

“Sorry…Sorry…”

—

It's been a week since Link saved Zelda, and four days since the bathhouse. They’re sitting in front of the Goddess Statue’s pond, watching the koi fish swim, when she breaks the calm silence between them and tells him, "I like sweets.”

“Hm?” Link glances at her, picking blades of grass and twisting them into knots as best as he can. In the corner of his eye, the Master Sword glints in the sunlight from where it peeks out over his shoulder, strapped to his back.

“I like sweets,” she repeats, rolling up the sleeves of the Sheikah top he bought her from Claree. “I remembered that just now, watching the fish swim, it…it’s weird. I was watching the fish swim, letting my mind wander, thinking about what I wanted to eat for lunch, and this…image of holding a fork and eating, um, I think it was called fruitcake? This image—Memory, I should call it a memory, shouldn’t I—of holding a fork and eating fruitcake popped into my head, as did another memory of I think from when I was younger, stealing pieces of chocolate from some kind of dessert platter from a giant kitchen. I suppose that was in Hyrule Castle because I’m the princess? But….yes. I like sweets. I remembered that just now.”

“I read in the castle’s library that fruitcake is your favorite food,” he tells her. “Do you want me to make you one for after dinner tonight?”

Zelda’s eyes light up. “You would do that for me?”

“Of course,” Link smiles. “You haven’t eaten it in a hundred years. I do have to warn you that I’m still trying to perfect the recipe, so it might not taste like the one in your memories, but I’ll keep trying until I get it just right-”

“Anything you make will probably be perfect, Link,” she smiles back. “I can vaguely remember your cooking, too, and how I never had any complaints, and that stew you made for lunch the other day was delicious.”

A bird lands on the Goddess Statue’s head, pecking at the stone. Link chuckles, watching it for minute, and wondering what Hyrule’s mysterious, nameless Goddess ever did to deserve this pint-sized, avian wrath. 

Did Zelda know the Goddess’s name, before she lost her memories? Her golden sealing power is connected to her bloodline, which according to Impa traces all the way back to the Goddess herself at Hyrule’s inception thousands and thousands, possibly millions of years ago, but he always forgot to ask the old woman for the name of the deity whose likeness is scattered all throughout Hyrule, in every town he’s visited and the only sign of human life in the ruins of every temple he’s discovered and explored. 

He could ask her now, he supposes, but he thinks he’d rather wait until Zelda herself can tell him because wouldn’t that be more interesting? Zelda was pure divinity for a century while she held back Calamity Ganon, he supposes that’s how she was able to wake him up on the Great Plateau with nothing but the sound of his name on her tongue and how she was able to communicate with him during each Blood Moon, but was she the nameless Goddess or was she Zelda? Who is she now but a girl with the name he gave her because it was the only one he really knew beside his own? Who is he but a boy with the name she gave him because he was the only person she could talk to from her confinement in the Sanctum? 

You are the Hero of Hyrule, Impa had told him in the earliest weeks of his journey, when he decided to stay in Kakariko for a bit to familiarize himself with being around other people, people who knew things about him, before he moved on to Zora’s Domain and became faced with people who knew everything about him.  

“Do we have to stay in Kakariko?” Zelda’s question brings him out of his thoughts, and the bird is missing from the Goddess Statue’s head. There’s another blade of grass knotted in his hands. “I-I like being here, don’t get me wrong, I like Impa and Paya and everyone else I’ve met and talked to so far, but there’s a whole kingdom out there and there was so much on the horizon when we rode through Hyrule Field. I want to see more of it.”

“You want to travel around Hyrule so soon?” Link asks, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re strong enough for that?”

“No,” she chuckles, shaking her head, “Not yet, I just…I don’t know, I want a change of scenery. There’s only so many times I can take in the beauty of the trees and the houses and the-”  

"I have a house," he blurts. 

"What?"

"I have a house in another village, Hateno, it's actually not too far from here, only two hours on horseback. Impa's sister, Purah, lives there. She knew you, too, but the point of me talking about Hateno is that I have a house. We can go there if you want a change of scenery but also a place to rest and get your strength back.”

"And what would you do in Hateno while I’m resting and getting my strength back? What you’re doing here, sitting with me and such?”

Link, his cheeks flaming, shrugs. “Try to remember myself. Try to remember you. Possibly work on expanding the house a little, I’m not sure if there’s enough space for another bed for you and the person I hired initially to build the interior is living all the way up north in Akkala, so it would be a hassle to get him to come all the way down south without forking over all of my savings. And, whenever you feel ready enough, it’s a good place to prep a trip around the country from. It’s filled with other Hylians like us, people who are kind, willing to lend supplies for a long journey, and know all of the good sights to see.”

Zelda stares at him for a minute, her eyes flicking down to where he’s twisting yet another blade of grass. Then they flick back up to his and her smile is soft. “You have a house.”

Link nods, more than a little relieved at her acceptance of his idea. “I have a house.”

“When should we leave?”

“Whenever you want.”

He watches her think. Then, “How about now?”

All he can do is laugh. “Impa’s going to kill us.”

She laughs, too. “So that’s a yes, then?”

“Of course!”

—

“Right now?” Paya yelps from where she’s carrying a pile of laundry up to her room.

“Yes,” Zelda nods, fiddling with her hands in front of her stomach. “I hope that’s all right?”

Impa cackles, slapping her knee and answering, “I’ve been waiting for you two to up and leave since you woke up, Your Highness! Link, the whole village was shocked you were able to stay in one place for so long!”

“We-I-” Link splutters, trying to explain himself, “I thought you’d want time to be around Zelda because you haven’t seen her in a century!”

“Which is very kind of you, thank you, but I knew it was only a matter of time before you left again. I’ve cherished this time we’ve spent together, but your places are out in Hyrule, not here in Kakariko spending time with an old woman like me.”

“We’ll still visit,” Zelda promises. “I definitely will if I ever remember your other name.”

“I expect nothing less,” Impa smiles. “Know that I look forward to your next visit, you two, and if either of you ever have any questions that you are always welcome to come and ask me. I can do nothing except thank the both of you again, from the bottom of my heart, for saving this kingdom of Hyrule from the looming darkness of Calamity Ganon, freeing the Divine Beasts from its control, and allowing the Champions of a hundred years ago the final, happy rest that they deserved. I’m sure Mipha, Urbosa, Revali, and Daruk are still smiling upon us even as we speak.”

“So am I,” Link bows his head to her. 

(His Champion blessings disappeared the second Zelda delivered the final blow, so that must mean they’ve all moved on, right? It’s not like he could ask them, or anyone for that matter, so he’s satisfied with the thought of his old, dead friends all happy together in the afterlife, laughing at him whenever he does something stupid.)

Zelda turns to him, a smile widening on her face. “Are we ready to go?”

He nods. “Just let me grab Horse and we’ll be on our way.”

Impa chuckles, her eyes alight with amusement. “You named your horse Horse?”

“Goodbye Impa!” Link calls as he walks out the door. “Great to see you!”

The old woman’s creaky laughter and Zelda’s giggling follows him down the stairs.

—

He feels a little cruel making a point to ride through Blatchery Plain, and to ride through it slowly, meandering through the dead, decaying Guardians and hoping to trigger something of the Princess Zelda from one hundred years ago, but it's his last resort in trying to get her to wake up from whatever mental block is keeping her real self contained.

(It's so ironic that it's almost funny. She went from holding back Calamity Ganon from destroying all of Hyrule to holding back herself from meeting the new him.)

"What are these things?" Zelda's question is heavy on his ears, and her arms tighten around his waist at all of the bumps in the grass that Horse zigzags through. "Robots?"

"Yeah," Link manages, clearing his throat, adjusting his hold on the reins to guide them around a particularly large dip in the dirt from where a Stalker must have tried to stomp them into a paste. "Part of Calamity Ganon's army. They were killed Before."

"A hundred years ago? Why hasn't anyone cleaned them up? This field is nice."

"It's...a monument."

"To what?"

To you. 

He swallows. "Faith."

Chapter Text

The second they pass underneath Hateno Village’s entrance gate, the whispering starts.

“Everyone is staring at me,” Zelda whispers in his ear.

“You’re new,” he whispers back over his shoulder, smiling when he locks eyes with the gossipy women by the well. “And I’m only ever around to dye my clothes or sell things. This is the only Hylian settlement in Hyrule besides Lurelin down on the beaches, so it’s rare that a stranger ever shows up.”

“But you said they were nice, right?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “They’re nice. You just have to let them talk about you for a bit, it’s how the place functions. It’s like one big family once they’ve grown used to seeing you around.”

“A family,” she softly echoes.

He and Impa told her about her father, but she hadn’t asked all of the questions they’d been expecting. Link had answered, He’s dead, isn’t he? How did he help you if he’s dead? His name is Rhoam Boshporamus Hyrule? Was he a good father? with, He’s dead. He was a ghost, and to be honest I don’t even know how that worked. Yes, his name is Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, and no I don’t know why it’s so long. In my memories, all your father is is the King of Hyrule, but on the Great Plateau it seemed like he loved you like he should. His last request to me before he moved on was that I save you. He’s the reason either of us are still alive. 

Then Zelda had asked, What about my mother? 

At the mention of Zelda’s mother, Link had looked to Impa, helpless. Impa had responded, Your mother died when you were six years old from a sudden illness. Neither of us knew her, but from the things you told me and the way your father acted whenever she was brought up, she was a wonderful woman whose loss was felt until the Calamity struck. 

“Did you have a family?” Zelda asks as Link guides Horse up the winding path through Bolson’s “modern”, blocky red and blue houses that have yet to sell, the bridge that leads over the river to their destination coming into sight.

“I know I had a father,” he replies, letting Horse pick up the pace now that there are no people that he has to worry about running over. “You mentioned him once, Before, but I don’t know what he looked like. I have to have had a mother, and I suppose that’s where I learned how to cook a lot of the recipes I know, because I never actually learned them, but…that’s it. I hope I had siblings. Hearing all of the stories people tell me about what their brother or sister did, how fun that sounds, I want that to be true for myself.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“The way you said that, it sounded like there was another but coming. Is there?”

She’s only known him for a week and already she can read him like the books she doesn’t remember that she loves so much. Link sighs and tells her, “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it right now. We’re here.”

He slows Horse to a stop in front of the house, dismounting and holding out a hand to help Zelda down. While he sets Horse up in the stall on the right side, tying his reins to the wooden fence and feeding him an apple or two, he listens to her talk.

“This house is nice,” she says, rising up on her toes and craning her neck. “Is that a second floor? You must’ve paid a fortune for this place!”

“Only three thousand rupees and thirty bundles of wood,” Link grins, stroking Horse’s mane, “As opposed to thirty thousand rupees and my soul. Then it was an extra couple hundred for the interior, but I only paid because I know nothing about building furniture to have done it all myself.”

He doesn’t tell her that the other reason he didn’t take the time to learn how to build his own furniture was because he didn’t want to waste any time that he could use to work towards freeing her from the clutches of Calamity Ganon’s darkness, darkness that was hellbent on swallowing up all of the light of her divine hope that he would come and save her. He’d already wasted a century sleeping in the Shrine of Resurrection, he’d already wasted the weeks it took him to gather his bearings and complete the trials of the Great Plateau, and he’d already wasted the months it took him to free the Divine Beasts and collect enough Spirit Orbs to repair himself just enough so that the Master Sword wouldn’t devour his own soul and add him to its collection of dead Heroes, of which he’d made a swift entrance and exit of one hundred years ago after he failed to protect her on Blatchery Plain and succumbed to his Guardian-inflicted injuries, forced to waste that aforementioned century healing from and forgetting all of his failures, forgetting himself, and most importantly forgetting her.

Now she’s forgotten him, too, so would it really have been a crime to learn how to make his own furniture from Bolson before he told him about Hudson’s marriage and leadership of Tarrey Town? He’d wanted to save Hyrule, sure, but the real reason for his rush to get to Hyrule Castle was to save Zelda, so Zelda could fill in the many blanks the thirteen fragments of the Sheikah Slate’s photo album left him with, because she knew him more than anyone, could answer all of the questions that Impa couldn’t or simply refused to due to their personal nature and her professional relationship with the knight he was Before, though now, After, when he’s a stranger to everyone including himself, he’s happy to call her a friend.  

“You don’t lock your front door?” Zelda asks, a hand on the doorknob. “I don’t see a keyhole.”

“It doesn’t really need to be locked,” Link walks over and pushes open the door himself, showing her inside the house. “No one ever comes up here except for me, and the people here really are kind. And if they one day aren’t, they’re also smart enough to know that if they steal something, I’ll be able to track it down in a matter of hours.”

“You’re good at finding things, are you?” she looks around the first floor of the house, her eyes passing over the Champions’ weapons that are mounted on his walls like they’re any other objects and not some of the only physical memories of their old, dead friends that exist. 

“I am. I’ve done a lot of odd jobs for people all over…” Link trails off, staring at his kitchen as the door whispers shut behind them. “Oh Goddesses.”

His sink is filled to the brim with dirty dishes, the counter still a mess from the haphazard breakfast he made the morning he left to storm Hyrule Castle and fight the Calamity. Egg shells are strewn everywhere, makeshift pancake batter splattered and dried on the wood and in the bowls in the sink-

“What?” Zelda frowns, looking around the house for a second time, and this time her eyes linger on the vase of Silent Princesses that sits in the center of the dining table. “Has something been stolen?”

“N-No, it’s just…um…” he swallows, moving to the sink and turning it on, picking up the bar of soap next to the faucet and a pancake-batter-stained bowl, knocking the eggshells into the trash with his elbow. “The kitchen’s a mess, I…The morning of the day I saved you I made myself breakfast, but I was in such a rush to get to you that I didn’t clean anything. I totally forgot about these dishes, so they’ve been…sitting here for a week, oh Goddesses I’m so sorry-”

She only laughs, the floorboards creaking as her boots gently thud against them once, twice, three times—she must be looking at Urbosa’s Daybreaker. “What are you apologizing for? It’s not like I’m a stranger to dirt, having apparently been caked in the stuff for a hundred years before we discovered the wonders of bathing.”   

“Sure, but I learned from Impa that it’s rude to have a messy house when there’s a guest coming over, and this is the epitome of a pigsty!” he only scrubs the bowl harder, practically tossing it into the drainboard when he’s done and moving on to the next. Water splashes on the front of his shirt, and there’s a towel just out of reach, hooked into the handle of a cabinet over his head, but he has a million other shirts to change into or it’s hot enough outside that it would just dry on its own-

“These flowers,” her voice drifts over his shoulder, and a quick glance back shows him that she’s ghosting her fingertips over one of the Silent Princess’s petals. He’s almost grateful for the sudden change in subject because it takes her focus away from the absolute disaster that is the kitchen. “They’re beautiful.”

“I picked them for you,” he tells her, his cheeks warm as he goes back to washing, staring resolutely down at his soapy hands as he picks up a couple plates, “I remember you saying that they were your favorite.”

The second he remembered her telling him about Silent Princesses on the outskirts of Hyrule Field near the castle, the second he remembered that damn frog in her hands and how she looked at him, then, how her green eyes glittered as she smirked up at him, coy, and asked him to eat it, he scoured the entirety of Hyrule in search of those six blue and white petals. He was overjoyed when he found some growing by each Great Fairy Fountain and the Master Sword’s pedestal, but was relentless in his quest to actually find one in the wild like she talked about in his memory. 

He found one, one, by Lover’s Pond in Faron, and didn’t have the heart to pick it for fear that Zelda might be mad at him for actually picking the flowers she loved to watch grow and thrive, having rationalized that the ones that grow by the fairy fountains and the Great Deku Tree would grow there once again due to the nature of their respective magics, but now…

Now Zelda doesn’t know anything about Silent Princesses.   

“That was kind of you,” she says, a smile in her voice. 

Link’s ears burn. “I just wanted you to have something nice to come home to.”

“Home,” she softly repeats. “This is my home, now, isn’t it?”

“Only-” he clears his throat, does his best to remove his foot from his mouth- “Only if you want. You…You don’t have to stay here with me. There are plenty of empty houses right across the bridge, or-or I’m sure Purah wouldn’t mind taking you in, or I can even take you to Lurelin down on the beaches, the Hylians there are nice, too-”

“You’re nice, too, Link,” she dislodges his toes from his teeth, and the floorboards creak as she comes up to stand beside him, picking up the towel from the cabinet handle and grabbing a dish from the drying rack. “I think, for now at least, I want to stay here with you. If that’s all right, of course.”

She…She wants to stay here. With him. Even though he’s a complete and utter stranger to her. 

(He’s relieved she’s going to stay, even though she’s a complete and utter stranger to him, too.)     

“Yeah,” he manages, his voice hoarse, “Yeah, that’s-that’s good.”

Zelda smiles at him again, her eyes crinkling, and Link can see the sun just starting to rise. “Good. Now can you please tell me who Purah is, again? And where do the dishes and silverware go?”

—

After a quick rundown of the kitchen and where all of the plates, bowls, and utensils belong, she starts helping him clean everything, taking occasional breaks to dry some dishes before putting them away.

“You really don’t have to help, Zelda,” he tells her, guilty for the chaos of the dirty plates and embarrassed at how dramatic he’s being about it. “If you want to take a seat and relax you can.”

“It’s fine, Link, really,” she flicks some bubbles of soap at his dripping hands. “Tell me about Purah, I’m dying for some information that isn’t ‘Impa’s sister’.”

He chuckles. “To start, she’s Impa’s older sister.”

“Older? How long are the lifespans of the Sheikah?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. The shrines I completed during my quest each had a Sheikah monk watching over its trial, but they looked like skeletons before they faded away, and from what I can remember you and Purah talking about Before, the shrines were built ten thousand years ago, so...”

She laughs. “So their lifespans are somewhere between one hundred and twenty years old and over ten thousand?”

“Apparently!” he laughs, too. “But Purah’s a little different, regardless. She’s a scientist, so she’ll be all over you, asking a million questions about what you remember and such. She’s going to interrogate me about the Sheikah Slate, too, and probably ask you about the pictures you took on it Before, if you remember anything from that.”

“Pictures?” Zelda asks. “The Sheikah Slate can do that?”

Oh, right, Link remembers, inwardly smacking his palm to his forehead, She barely knows what the Sheikah Slate is, Purah is going to have a field day explaining everything about ancient tech all over again. 

“Purah can tell you about that, too,” he tells her, passing her a dripping handful of silverware to dry. “She lives at the tech lab at the top of that gigantic hill, we can ride Horse up there if you’re still not ready to walk that kind of distance. Whenever you’re ready to meet another new person, of course.”

Giggling, she retorts, “I’m still meeting myself, to be totally honest with you, so I think I can handle yet another new face.”

And that wording, another new face, gets him. Link is reminded of just how new everything still is to her, even her own body, her own face. The first time he discovered his reflection in one of the Great Plateau’s many ponds, he sat for hours just staring at his own face in the gentle ripples of the water, pulling all kinds of expressions just to watch the way his features stretched and squashed, how the skin around his eyes wrinkled when he grinned and how there were little dips in his cheeks whenever he widened it, how his eyes were the same exact color as the sky and how, if he widened those, too, he looked crazy.

He wonders what she thinks when she looks at herself in a mirror or the reflection of a lake or pond or puddle, because he can’t imagine ever being put off by the sight of her face, no matter the expression it wears.

—

Fruitcake. Link promised Zelda a fruitcake, so while she’s busy picking out clothes from his never-ending collection to steal before they go out and buy her an actual wardrobe that isn’t hand-me-downs in the next couple of days, he goes out and collects apples. 

He’s in the middle of climbing a tree by the inn when a voice asks him, “What the hell are you doing up there, Link?”

Link looks down from where he’s balancing on a branch, trying to reach a far away apple, and is met with Manny staring up at him with crossed arms and his trademark scowl. 

“Oh, hey Manny!” he smiles at his friend, his fingertips knocking against the bump of the distant apple and causing it to sway on the edge of the branch. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m grabbing some apples.”

“I’ve watched you grab apples from every tree in the village. What do you need that many for?”

“I’m making a fruitcake.”

“For the pretty girl you brought in with you?” 

His ears burn. It should be obvious to him that other people would find Zelda pretty, she’s gorgeous, but why is he so embarrassed when it’s pointed out to him? “Yeah, for her. I promised her that I would make one tonight, it’s her favorite food.”

“Who is she, anyway? She doesn’t look like she’s from Lurelin with the way she was dressed, and this is the only other village where Hylians are born.”

“Tarrey Town welcomed its first baby just last month. Remember, you and Prima helped me make that card?”

Manny sighs. “Link.”

Link finally snags the apple, quietly cheering, “Yes!”

“Link.”

He hops down from the top of the tree and stores the apple in the Sheikah Slate. “Yes, Manny?”

His friend raises an eyebrow. “Who’s the girl? The whole village has been asking me to ask you, Prima was gonna make me sleep outside if I didn’t.”

“She’s a friend of mine. Her name’s Zelda.”

“Zelda?” Manny frowns. “That’s a strange name.”

“So’s ‘Manny’,” Link retorts, grinning when he huffs a laugh. “She’s like me, doesn’t remember much about herself, so I’m helping her settle in. You can tell the Well Women I’m being a good samaritan.”

“You know those women have names, right? If they found out you just call them the ‘Well Women’ they’d probably drown you in it.”

“They’re free to try, I’m not very good at staying dead,” he recounts all of the apples in the Sheikah Slate’s inventory. “Hey, does the shop have Mighty Bananas back in stock?”

“Think Pruce just got a big delivery from the Gerudo last week, pretty sure I saw some wildberries from the Highlands in there, too. Sure your girl isn’t allergic to those ones?”

“Don’t think she is,” Link chooses to ignore Zelda being referred to as ‘his girl’, refuses to acknowledge how the term made his heartbeat kick up a notch. “Why do you ask?”

“‘Cause I am, and I hear it’s a pretty common allergy for us Hylians, like how Gerudo can’t eat Hylian Shrooms?”

He frowns. “Gerudo can’t eat Hylian Shrooms?”

Manny shakes his head. “Apparently not. The delivery girl told Pruce that when he offered some, said something about it just didn’t agree with any of them. Before we could ask any more questions she ran off, saying she had a delivery to Zora’s Domain and then a jewel pickup in Death Mountain.”

“I have always wondered how Gerudo Town gets their supply of diamonds,” Link murmurs, putting the Sheikah Slate back on his belt. “I’ve better get going, apparently I’ve got some fruit to buy! If I’ve got any extra cake I’ll bring you and Prima some, all right? I remember how much you guys liked being my test subjects when I was learning how to make it.”

“Sure, sure. Prima wants me to tell you to tell your girl that if she ever needs something called ‘Girl Talk’, the inn’s door is always open.”

Link laughs. “I will!”

—

“‘Girl Talk’?” Zelda asks, sitting in the grass outside of the house. 

“It’s a thing girls do together,” Link explains, kneeling in the grass and lighting a fire beneath the cooking pot, waiting for it to heat, the ingredients for the fruitcake in a pile between himself and Zelda. He pretends not to notice her stealing a handful wildberries. “Are you allergic to anything, by chance?”

“Impa said I wasn’t. Why?”

“Manny was worried you were allergic to those,” he nods to the berries in her palm. “Good to know you aren’t, though, I’m out of fairies.”

“You could always put me in the Shrine of Resurrection,” she quips. “A quick nap and I’ll be good as new.”

He laughs. “Yeah, but we’d be at square one regarding the state of your memories. I’d have made this fruitcake for nothing.”

“A small price to pay, I think. I’d get to remember how much I enjoy it all over again.” 

“Sure, but Impa would be furious.”

Zelda’s quiet for a second. Then she says, “On second thought, maybe that would be a bad idea.”

Link only laughs harder, dumping the ingredients for the fruitcake into the cooking pot. “Good to know you at least remember how Impa shouldn’t be crossed.”

“She’s really that bad?”

“I can only remember one instance from Before where she got really mad at me. I think it was during the first few months into my assignment as your appointed knight, because you were being super standoffish towards me whenever I asked if you were all right. From what, I don’t know, I’m assuming either a prayer session in the castle’s chapel because we were in the library or a talk with your father, because from what I can remember a conversation with him always put you in a bad mood.”

“Because he was always pressuring me about unlocking my magic sealing power, right?”

“Yeah. So you’re in a bad mood and we’re in the library. I’m helping you find books on plants so you could read up on where we could possibly find some Silent Princesses, and Impa comes into the library to ask you about how your prayers went. You were trying not to look upset, but I could tell you were, so I stepped in and told her that that was private business between you and the Goddess.”

“You did not.”

He laughs at the expression on her face. “Oh, I sure did! Impa, being a devout follower of the Goddess due to her station as, well, the Impa, looked at me like I was a target and she was about to start knife-throwing practice. I tried backtracking as best as I could but she wouldn’t hear it, yelling at me for probably five minutes straight, my station as the Hero with the sword that seals the darkness sitting there on my spine be damned. I’ve never seen her mad like that, and with how red her face was I thought Death Mountain’s lava was going to pour out of her ears, but she finally let up when you started laughing.”

“I did?”

He nods. “Yeah, and it was great because I hadn’t heard you laugh in a couple weeks. We were always traveling to the Spring of Courage and the Spring of Power for you to pray there instead of the castle, and those trips always made you quiet because while you liked being out in the Wild, you didn’t like being forced to ignore its beauty in favor of staring at some old stone carved to look like the Goddess who never answered you. So this was the first time I was hearing you laugh in a bit, and it was surprising because Impa hadn’t heard it in a while, either, so we were just staring at each other in confusion while you cackled at my expense.”

He can almost see it, in his mind’s eye, Zelda with a book on her arm and hunched over giggling while a young, ruby-faced Impa cursed him out like she couldn’t be put on trial in Kakariko for disrespecting the Hero in front of the Goddess Incarnate. He can almost hear Zelda’s laughter in his ears, can almost hear how Impa’s tirade sputtered to a stop the louder the laughing got. 

Sorry, I’m sorry, Zelda had panted once she caught her breath, waving her hand at the both of them. Impa, please, please continue, I beg of you, this is the best thing to happen all week, Holy Hylia-

(Hylia. Is that the name of the Goddess? That would explain where the Bridge of Hylia and Lake Hylia got their names…)

Link remembers how he probably should have been mad that the Crown Princess of Hyrule, his charge, his partner in destiny was laughing at him getting berated for doing his job in protecting her, but how he couldn’t possibly be angry when she was finally smiling, how he turned around and egged Impa on just so she would laugh some more, and how Impa happily complied once he asked for her “real” name when My name is Impa! To think otherwise is to disrespect the decree of the Goddess Hylia and to disrespect the ways of the Sheikah! You of all people should know, Mister Bigshot Hero, because our legends say that the past incarnations of you were friends with past Impas! How dare you-

Link also remembers how he wasn’t listening to her, because was too busy focusing on the way the princess behind him was trying to stifle her laughter into the pages of her book about plants, and how he was busy trying not to laugh along with her. He also remembers the way the corners of Impa’s lips began to curve up the more she ranted, how her voice took on an amused sort of light, how her words bumped as she began laughing, too, and how the castle librarian rounded the bookshelves with a burning glare and his mouth open to reprimand them for the noise, but how he stopped when he noticed it was the three of them and not just any random person needing a book. That had made the three of them howl, and by the time he and Zelda left the library armed with a stack of books on plants and their biology her barbs toward him were softer, and she even thanked him for his help in her research when he left her room for the night so she could get ready for bed and he could take up his post guarding her closed door. The next morning, Impa had tossed A Royal’s Guide to Sheikah Etiquette at his chest, a bookmark already in it, and when he turned to where it marked the page he was met with the chapter titled, How To Respect The Impa and was laughing with her all over again. 

He wonders if that book is still there, gathering dust in Hyrule Castle’s ruined library, or if it was destroyed in the Calamity’s destruction like so many others. He wonders if Impa even remembers that day. He’ll have to ask her the next time they’re in Kakariko, it’d be sure to make her smile, knowing that he remembered it, that he remembered something about her when he and Zelda are probably the only people alive who knew the person she was a century ago, before the Calamity struck and killed all of their friends and the Age of Burning Fields took her children and left Paya in her care, before the Yiga Clan were out hunting innocent people in earnest in the names of the two masters Link killed in the name of the girl sitting next to him because the ghost of her father told him to.

“So,” Zelda brings him back on track. “You were telling me what ‘Girl Talk’ is before we got distracted?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Link clears his throat. “Right. It’s, um, a conversation between two girls about…”

How the hell does he put this without sounding like a sexist asshole? Riju explained it to him during his time in Gerudo Town after one of the women in the bar looked at him funny when he asked what it was, and to try and explain the concept to Zelda, who knows nothing about what he’s going to say, is difficult.

“It’s a conversation between two girls about ’girl stuff’,” he puts the last part in air quotes with his fingers, trying to stress the point that it’s not necessarily girly things but that it’s topics that the larger Hyrulean society believes girls like to talk about- “Like, uh, clothes and makeup and who you have a crush on.”

“What’s a crush?”

“Who you’re…Who you’re attracted to. For example, Manny had a crush on Prima, and I helped him confess his feelings.”

“Oh,” Zelda watches the ingredients for the fruitcake bubble in the cooking pot, the fire crackling in the silence between them. “Do you have a…a ‘crush’ on anyone?” 

And that’s…that’s hard. Link has certainly thought about kissing a lot of people on his quest to save Hyrule, just because he’s helped so many find love of their own and he never seemed to find that one person that sparked any sort of romantic feelings. He thought he might feel something when he started to remember Mipha, when he wore the betrothal armor she made for him a century ago with the words of her ghost echoing in his head and her Grace thrumming in his veins, ready to stitch his skin back together at a moment’s notice, but even with the images of her shy smiles and stumbling sentences whenever the topic of feelings came up swirling in his head he only ever felt the warmth of friendship for the Zora Champion, for his friend the princess of the Domain that nearly kicked him out before he saved it from Ruta’s Waterblight-induced rampage and freed it from the eternal, torrential downpour that seemed to match the grief felt by every Zora there. He’s read the old rumormills in the castle library, the ones about Zelda’s mother and Urbosa before Rhoam entered the picture, how the two women were supposedly in a rather intimate relationship and how those feelings carried over into the Queen of Hyrule’s marriage and future birth of her daughter, how Urbosa always doted on his Zelda like she was her own and-

His Zelda. Why did he think that? She…She isn’t his by any means, she’s her own person with her own life and her own free will and she is not his, but Manny called her ‘his girl’ and that…that felt nice, Link supposes, and that sounded right, because he is Zelda’s Hero and she is his Princess, his Goddess Incarnate, his partner in destiny, his Zelda, and the thought of that speaks to him like she did just over a year ago when she called his name like he was important and told him to, Wake up, Link. Open your eyes, and he did because he’s hers and he would give anything to hear his name on her tongue and for her to make him sound like he’s the most precious thing in her world, like she would give anything just to press his name to his mouth and let the vibrations reverberate through his entire being down to his very soul that pulls him in her direction, that begs him to close the gap between them and-

“Do you?” she repeats.

He does, doesn’t he? Of course he does, he’s had one this whole time and never even knew it until now. Did the Link of a hundred years ago feel this way, too? Is that why he allowed the Impa of a hundred years ago to yell at him just so she would smile and laugh? Is that why the him of now, of during his quest to save her, he was so dogged in his search for the thirteen locations that would drip-feed her voice in his ears for the months that he yearned to hear it again, that he relished in its presence every Blood Moon? He’s only known this Zelda a week but he’s known Zelda for a lifetime, for many lifetimes according to the legends that are carved into the walls of the ancient ruins scattered across Hyrule, so yes, he does, but-

“No,” Link lies. Link doesn’t remember everything about himself but he knows that he’s not a liar, so the lie is clumsy leaving his lips. He thinks that if Zelda knew him for eight days instead of seven she would catch him in it and call him out on his bluff, but thankfully she doesn’t, because how could he possibly explain the depths of his sudden realization of his feelings for her if he couldn’t even explain the concept of Girl Talk properly? “No, I don’t.”

“I wonder what that feels like.”

It feels like this, he wants so badly to tell her, but while he may be her Link she is not his Zelda, so she couldn’t understand, could she? She can’t feel the pull he does towards her, because she’s only known him for a week. It feels like a breath of fresh air lives in your lungs, like the sun rises in your smiles and sets in your frowns, like I could die happy so long as I get to hear you speak my name. 

“Devotion,” he breathes. “From what I’ve heard, I think it’s something like that. Devotion, loyalty, a promise, whatever you want to call it. It’s…It’s binding in a way no promise ever could be, because promises can be broken.”     

She looks at him, then, like he’s the most curious thing, like he’s a Guardian that she wants to dissect and study and know. “And you think that love can’t?”

Link shrugs with one shoulder, killing the fire beneath the cooking pot and flipping the perfectly-baked fruitcake onto a plate. “I think it can get battered and bruised, but it never goes away. Not completely. Good love never dies.”

“How do you know that?”

Because I came back from the dead for you.

He shrugs again. “I don’t, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it?”            

—

The worst part about baking a perfect fruitcake is waiting for it to cool. 

Link and Zelda sit across from each other at the dining table, the fruitcake steaming between them in the center, sandwiched between two Ice Wizzrobe’s rods in an attempt to speed up the process but to no avail because it really is fresh.

“We technically could eat it now,” Zelda says. 

“Sure, but I promise it’s worth the wait,” Link tells her. “I’ve had it when it’s hot like this and it just gets everywhere. You can barely taste the fruit because the frosting is all melty and buttery and while it is really good, it stops being fruitcake once the fruit isn’t the star of the dish anymore. Does that make sense?”

She chuckles, shaking her head. “Not really, but I’m not a professional chef like you are. If you think we should wait, then we wait. Do you have any more stories?”

“I have plenty. What do you want to hear about?”

She stares at where a wildberry is slowly sinking into the sugary vanilla frosting atop the fruitcake. “More from Before? I think I remembered what you were telling me about Impa, when she yelled at you and I laughed. It’s very hazy, mind you, but it’s there, so hopefully if I hear about more instances like that they’ll come back to me a little bit at a time, too.”

Link thinks back on everything he’s remembered so far, trying his best to pick a story where she isn’t angry or miserable or so serious. He decides, “What about the first time you started treating me nicer than when I was first appointed to be your knight?”

That he remembers very well. 

She nods. “Yes, please. Whatever you think is best.”

It was the night of the day she was ambushed by the Yiga Clan, and they had decided to sleep in the Kara Kara Bazaar instead of camping out in the desert, because they were both paranoid about another ambush despite the fact that Link had easily taken down the group that wanted to kill her, and that that must’ve been a deterrent for anyone who wanted to mess with the Crown Princess of Hyrule because they got their soft bunk beds for free instead of the usual steep thirty rupee price.

Zelda couldn’t fall asleep, and he refused to because she was scared, and she should never feel afraid when he’s around to protect her, so he sat with her on the edge of her bottom bed in silence while she clung to his arm and stared at the Master Sword on his spine. 

(She’d never touched him like this, before, is the thing. She’d never really touched him at all. But she was scared, so he let her hold him for comfort, and to be honest with himself he was scared, too.)

I’m sorry I ran off, Zelda had whispered. I’m so, so sorry. 

(He’d never killed anyone before. Those Yiga, those bastards, those people, were his first, second, and third kills, but the only blood on his hands was in his head because apparently he was good at killing people to protect his Princess.)      

It’s all right, Link had whispered back. Really.

She’d picked her head up from his shoulder and stared into his eyes, vowing, I’ll never do it again, Link, I promise you. I…I never want to feel that kind of fear for my life again, and I realize now that I wouldn’t have had I let you stay by my side. 

It’s all right, Your Highness, he had repeated, staring back into her unwavering gaze. I…I don’t think that was my first time killing. 

What do you mean?

I mean I knew exactly where to slice so the blood wouldn’t stain our clothes, so it would be quick but painful because it was what those monsters deserved. It was my first kill as me, as Link, but I don’t think it was my first kill as the Hero of Hyrule. I…my spirit, my sword, has killed another human being before, so much so that it was like second nature.

(It was the most he’d said to her probably…probably ever. He wasn’t even sure why he was opening up to her now of all times, but there was figurative blood on his hands and literal blood staining the sands of the Gerudo Desert because of something he did, there were sand dunes acting as unmarked graves because of his actions, because of his hands around a blade, and-)

Are you saying that you lose control of yourself, sometimes? Zelda had asked him. That…That the Spirit of the Hero takes over your mind?

No, no, it’s…I have full control of myself, but I know things that I shouldn’t. I dream of things that have never and will never happen to me, because they’ve happened in the past. I’m me, but I’m also a thousand other Heroes trapped inside of one body, one mind, with the sword that seals the darkness as the conduit for our combined knowledge. I…Sometimes I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, another me will end up talking, and I’ll say something weird or strange and get stripped of my title because everyone thinks I’m crazy, but I’m the Hero. I’m not supposed to be crazy, I’m supposed to be perfect. If I’m not perfect, then-

You’re a failure, she had finished for him, her expression softening in some form of understanding. I know that train of thought all too well. 

I know, he had reminded her. I just didn’t want you to think less of me. 

She had frowned at him, then, her eyebrows furrowing together. What makes you think that I would?

You… he had swallowed. You treat me like I’m perfect, too, like you’re just waiting for me to mess up. It’s how all of the other knights look at me because they think they should be the ones wearing the Master Sword on their backs. No one knows how hard it is to actually be the Hero, the weight of the expectations on my shoulders to save the entire kingdom-

Zelda had only raised an eyebrow at him, and his ears had started burning as shame and embarrassment flushed his cheeks. 

Right, he had mumbled. Sorry. 

At least I finally know now that you aren’t laughing at me for my struggles, either, she had nudged his shoulder with her own. I’m sorry I made you think that way, it wasn’t my intention.

Then what was? slipped from his mouth without his say-so. 

She had laughed, then, and it was the first time she smiled since he saved her before the sun had set. I was trying to make myself feel better. I took it all out on you because you were there, and I thought you represented everything that was wrong with me. And now that I know that you aren’t I feel like even more of an ass.

Link had laughed, too. I’ve never heard you say ‘ass’ before. 

Oh, I know plenty of swears thanks to Impa from that day in the library. How’s your study of respecting the Impa going, by the way?

It’s going wonderful, thank you. I think she’ll be very impressed when we return to Hyrule Castle.

They had talked more as the night went on, and when the day’s ‘excitement’ finally caught up to them Link found that he didn’t mind when she fell asleep mid-sentence on his shoulder, the Master Sword’s gentle, pleased humming lulling him to sleep right along with her. In the morning, when they woke, she only smiled at him before they were on the move, heading back home to the castle. 

“Do you remember any of that?” Link asks the Zelda sitting in front of him, who has her eyes squeezed shut and her eyebrows furrowed.

“I remember the itchiness of the sand,” she answers after a minute. “And the coolness of the bunks, the…the warmth of your body as I leaned against you, the low hum of your voice in my ear, but your words don’t have any shape. My…My heart jolts when you laugh, and it feels nice to laugh with you. I think…” she opens her eyes, staring at him over the top of the fruitcake that’s finally stopped steaming. “I think I started wanting to be your friend, then.”

He takes the Sheikah Slate off his belt and stores the two Ice Wizzrobe rods back in its inventory, picking up a knife and cutting into the dessert. He plates two slices of cake and hands one to her, telling her, “I think I started wanting to be your friend, then, too.”

She smiles at him, picking up her fork and getting ready to dig into her slice. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re already friends now, then, isn’t it?”

He smiles back. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”         

—

Once night falls, Link steals a bed from one of the empty houses across the bridge and shoves it under the stairs that lead up to the loft. 

“So that’s my bed, then,” Zelda points to it.

“No, that’s my bed,” he points up to the loft. “The one up there is yours.”

“The one up there is your bed, Link.”

“Not now it isn’t.”

“Link.”

“Zelda.”

“This is your house!”

“This is our house, actually. Remember our conversation when we got here? I was freaking out about the dirty dishes in the sink and-”

“Yes, I remember, but that’s still your bed.”

“Not anymore.”

“Link!”

—

The next time Link goes to Tarrey Town he’s going to give Bolson a piece of his mind, because these new beds are insanely uncomfortable. The mattress is lumpy, so the springs are digging into his back, and the pillows are too thin and he can feel the cricks in his shoulders and neck forming the longer he lays there in the dark, unable to sleep because he can’t get comfortable and this isn’t his bed. 

At least Zelda is sleeping, though, because the loft floor is thin and he could hear her moving around before, and then he heard her settle and go still, and then he heard her breathing slow into the deep, even rhythm of someone who’s probably lost in dreamland like Link so desperately wants to be. 

Do you have a…a ‘crush’ on anyone?  

He rolls over for what feels like the thousandth time before burying a frustrated shriek of a groan in his paper pillows, resigning himself to being awake all night in sleep-deprived misery. He’s just pulling his socks back on and getting up from the worst bed in Hyrule when he hears it:  

“Sorry…Sorry…”

Zelda, talking in her sleep like she did in Kakariko, apologizing for something that he’s been trying to figure out this whole time. Is it for ‘failing’ to stop the Calamity a century ago? Is it for forgetting herself due to the trauma of her time with Calamity Ganon? Who is she even talking to? Herself? Him? Impa? Her father? The Champions? The whole kingdom? 

He’s been wanting to ask her about it but has no idea how. How would he?

Oh, hey Zelda, just wanted to let you know that you talk in your sleep! Oh, what do you say? You just mumble ‘Sorry’ over and over hahaha isn’t that soooooo crazy? What are you talking about, by the way, do you have any idea? Because I sure don’t and it’s been gnawing at me this whole time!

“Sorry…Sorry…”

He tiptoes his way out from under the stairs and sneaks up to the loft, avoiding all of the creaky spots in the old steps because now that she’s no longer comatose and catching up a hundred years’ worth of missed sleep, he has no idea if she’s a light sleeper or not.

He finds her tangled up in the sheets of his bed, moonlight spilling in from his window and bathing her in a gentle white light. She lays on her side, facing the end table, and her long golden hair is an absolute mess from how she must have been tossing and turning trying to get comfortable. Is his bed not comfortable, either? Has he just gotten used to it over the months he’s spent passed out from traveling back and forth from the outer reaches of Hyrule all the way to Hateno? Has he just been too exhausted to notice? 

(He’ll have to ask her in the morning, when there aren’t more pressing questions to be answered.)

Link watches her lips twitch, watches them move to form the soft, sorrowful, “Sorry…Sorry…”, and decides that if she’s having a bad enough dream to be apologizing in her sleep, he should probably wake her up from it, right? Remind her that whatever it is that she’s seeing isn’t real? It’s what he would want if the roles were reversed. 

He steps over to his bed, standing over her, and slowly reaches out to place his hand on her shoulder and gently shake it. 

“Zelda,” he calls. “Zelda.”

She mutters into his pillows, her nose scrunching.

“Zelda,” he tries again. 

“Hm,” her eyes open and she blinks herself awake, squinting up at him, her voice throaty and thick with sleep when she asks, “Link? What time is it?”

“It’s, uh,” he left the Sheikah Slate downstairs so he has no idea what time it is- “Late. Early. Whatever you call it. You were saying things in your sleep, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I was?” she yawns, shifting onto her back and rubbing at her eyes with her fists. “What was I saying?”

“Um,” he swallows. “You were apologizing for something, saying ‘Sorry’ over and over. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”

She shakes her head. “Why are you still up?”

And Link...doesn’t want to answer that, because he fought for the bed he dragged in from the new houses and he wanted her to sleep in his, and to admit that the bed he chose is like trying to sleep on the ground in Eldin is to admit defeat, and Goddesses be damned he is stubborn. 

But now Zelda has known him for more than seven days. So when she stares at him for a second longer and then her lips start to curve up into one of her telltale smirks he knows he’s been caught, that she’s got him pinned to the floor of the sparring ring and that the referee has started counting. She asks, unrestrained glee coloring the question, “Your bed is uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he mumbles.

Her smirk widens into a shit-eating grin. “What was that, Hero?”

And-

Can you hear it yet, Hero? Can you hear it yet, Hero? Can you hear it yet, Hero?

(She only called him that Before, when she was upset. He’s never heard it when she’s happy.)

“Maybe,” he repeats, louder, sighing at how she laughs.

(He likes it better this way. It reminds him of how she said his name, then, too.)

“Well,” she scoots over on the mattress, pressing herself against the wall and lifting the blanket. “I’m not leaving this absolute paradise of a bed, so we’ll have to share.”    

His brain stutters to a stop. He intelligently responds, “Huh?”

“Come on, Link,” she yawns again. “It’s cold up here, anyways, and you’ll hate yourself later if you don’t sleep. I don’t mind.”

She…She wants to share the bed with him. She wants to share his bed with him. She wants to sleep with him, she…

She really trusts him that much?

“Okay,” he manages, choked, before he slowly climbs into bed with her, settling on his side so he’s looking at her. They’re sharing his pillows, now, their faces close enough that he can feel her breath on his lips. “Are…You’re sure you’re okay with this, right?”

“I might be half-asleep but I’m awake enough that I’ll remember this in the morning,” she drops the blanket around his shoulders, practically tucking the both of them in, and Goddesses his bed really is the best bed in all of Hyrule. He watches Zelda close her eyes, listens to her sigh as her body relaxes into the cradle that is his mattress and the clouds that are his pillows, the warm hug of his blanket hiding the lower half of her face. Her words are muddled with sleep when she tells him, “Good night, again.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Night again.”

Her breathing evens out. He waits to see if she apologizes in her sleep again.

The next thing Link knows he’s blinking his eyes open and Zelda is curled around his back, one of her arms slung over his waist and her soft breaths puffing against the nape of his neck, the gentle glow of the rising sun spilling in through the window and bathing them in a gentle warmth that lulls him back to his dreams.

—

Zelda decides she wants to meet Purah a week later, so he saddles up Horse and they make the five minute ride up to the Hateno Tech Lab.

“Purah’s different from Impa,” he warns her as he slows Horse to a stop in front of the door. “Like, really different.”

“In a bad way?” she asks, dismounting and brushing invisible dirt from the back of her pants. 

“No, not at all,” Link hops off the saddle and strokes Horse’s mane, fastening his lead to a railing beside the Ancient Furnace where the blue flame he brought still burns bright. “Just-You’ll see.”

He pushes open the Tech Lab’s door and is met with Purah shouting, “Linky!”

The old woman turned six-year-old hops down from where she’s standing on a stool next to the table filled with Guardian scraps, running over and crashing into his legs to give him a hug. “Long time no see! What brings you back here? Slate problems?”

Symin nods in greeting from where he stands at the bookshelves, sorting encyclopedia after encyclopedia about different pieces of technology and other science-y stuff that always makes Link’s head spin. 

“Oh my Goddesses,” Zelda says, still standing in the open doorway, staring wide-eyed at the tiny Sheikah scientist. 

Said tiny Sheikah scientist glances over at the shocked princess and gasps. “Zelda! You’re-You’re here! Oh, I’ve been waiting for you to come and see me!”

“You knew she was free?” Link asks, frowning.

“Like we could miss the whole sky turning red,” Purah nudges his hip with her elbow. “Plus Impa sent me a letter after you arrived in Kakariko letting me know. How is the old lady doing, by the way?”

“Your little sister is doing just fine,” he adds that just to remind Zelda, who’s still gaping. “But Purah, there’s something you need to know about Zelda.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Um, well-”

“I don’t know who you are,” she says, and blinks like she’s surprised she spoke. “I, um, I forgot who I am after I apparently sealed the Calamity, Impa says it’s because my mind is wounded from my century spent holding it back, so seeing you, Purah, who’s supposed to be her older sister like this is-”

“So you’re saying you don’t remember what I used to look like?” Purah cuts her off. 

Zelda shakes her head. 

“So you don’t remember my awful hair?”

Blinking again, looking mystified, Zelda shakes her head again. She finally comes inside of the lab and closes the door, shaking Purah’s hand when the girl rushes over and holds out her hand for a handshake.

“Oh, Zeldy, this is wonderful!” Purah says. “This means I get to talk to you about ancient technology all over again! I finally get to lecture someone that isn’t Symin! What do you remember about the Sheikah Slate?”

“N-Nothing,” Zelda looks at Link over her head and he only shrugs. 

“Linky!” Purah turns on him, holding out her hands. “Slate me!”

He does, taking the Sheikah Slate off his belt and placing it in her palms. Her hands are so small the slate engulfs them, but she has no problem placing it in the Guidance Stone. 

“Okay,” she starts, motioning for Zelda to come in close. “Sheikah Slate 101 starts now!”

As the two girls start talking, Symin sidles up to Link’s side and hands him a cookbook. 

“I found this in the back of the shelves, I thought you might like it,” The quiet Sheikah man says. “I’d take a seat if I were you, this is going to take a while.”

—

That night, Zelda falls asleep in bed playing around with the Sheikah Slate, armed with a whole day’s worth of knowledge from Purah. 

Link eases it from her limp grasp and places it on the end table, shutting it off before climbing into bed next to her, pulling the blanket up to cover them both. 

(He wakes up in her arms again.)

—

Once Purah starts teaching Zelda about the slate’s runes, he knows there can only be chaos. 

Symin hands him another cookbook, and Link starts reading up on something called a muffin. 

—

“The sword,” Zelda says one day, months later, sitting across from him at the table with a book open in front of her, “It speaks to you?”

Link shakes his head, still trying to stitch up his Champion’s Tunic. “What made you ask about that?”

“The book I’m reading is about Hyrule’s legends. This one mentions that the sword that seals the darkness has a penchant for speaking to its Master.”

“Her Master,” he corrects without thinking. He remembers grabbing that book from the castle’s library to get the answers to some of his many questions about the whole ‘He was Chosen by the Goddesses to be the Hero of Hyrule and wield the Master Sword to seal the darkness and save the kingdom from impending doom’ thing, and how he thought the same exact thing when he read that passage, that the voice inside of the blade of evil’s bane was female but that it wasn’t the actual sword, but something else. Someone else, someone who’s voice he can no longer hear probably because of the way his mind is still healing, because of the way his memories are still coming back to him over the time he’s spending with Zelda.

Zelda, who blinks and repeats, “‘Her’? The Master Sword is female?”

“I-No, I just…” he falters, staring up at the loft where he knows the sword lies silent under his bed. “I don’t know. I think…I think the voice is female, but the sword is just a sword.”

“But doesn’t the voice belong to the sword?”

Again, Link shakes his head. “I don’t know. Do we belong to the pages of your book?”

—

“Can we make the slate able to teleport two people at once?” Zelda questions.

Purah shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no. That much ancient energy would probably fry the whole circuitboard, and we’d lose all of the knowledge you and Link filled it with during your times with it. If you both want to go somewhere together, you’ll have to go the old-fashioned way. But we can make it so it can store more pictures!”

—

“I can sew, I think,” Zelda says the next morning, watching him sew up the Champion’s Tunic for what must be the thirteenth day in a row. 

“You can,” he confirms, nodding to the shirt in his hands, “You made my Champion’s Tunic.”

“That shirt?” 

“Mhm. I’ve been learning how to sew on the side, whenever I took breaks during my quest to eat or sleep or whatever? I didn’t want to pay anyone to do it for me and I didn’t know if you’d be up for fixing it yourself, but-”

“But since I don’t remember anyways it doesn’t matter, so you’re trying to fix it.”

He breathes a laugh. “Right.”

“Well, I can try and fix it,” she offers, staring at where his needle pierces the tunic she crafted by hand for him out of duty and spite one hundred years ago. “I remember enough to know that you should be using cross-stitches instead of whatever that is, it’ll tighten up the threads and not give you so many obvious stitches in the cloth.”

His eyes flick from her analyzing expression to the Champion’s Tunic. She’s right, he knows, but he has no idea how to start cross-stitches, so he’d just been settling for his sloppy framework and hoping for the best. But now that she somewhat remembers how to do it…

He slides everything across the table to her already-open hands before getting out of his chair and moving it so he’s sitting next to her. “Please teach me your ways, I’ve been struggling this whole time and it’s been taking so long. I like wearing this shirt.”

She grins, picking up the tunic and the needle and getting to work.  

The Champion’s Tunic is as good as new forty-five minutes later, and Link decides right then and there that he’s going to repay her in fruitcake.

—

“Your girl must really love that cake,” Manny calls from his post outside of the inn, where he watches Link climb the same tree he did the last time they talked.

“What can I say?” Link calls back over his shoulder, grinning wide. “I know how to make her happy.”

“You still owe Prima and I some leftovers, you know!”

“Next time, I promise!”

—

Three days later he’s sitting outside of the house next to the cooking pot, making the promised fruitcake, when Zelda comes outside and plops down in the grass beside him, the Sheikah Slate in her hands. 

“Those thirteen pictures, the ones I took Before,” she says, the photo album open and the first picture of the Sacred Grounds pulled up.

“What about them?” he asks, stirring the ingredients with a wooden spoon.

“They helped you remember some things, right?”

“Yeah,” he looks at her. “Why, you want to go to them?”

Zelda chuckles. “You have got to stop reading my mind.”

He just smiles at her. “To be fair, you started it. Do you want to go in the order of them or just whatever’s closest?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only if you want it to be easier to put together the timeline of Before, but I can help you with that anyways.”

She stares down at the century-old picture of the Sacred Grounds, of the grand background of a perfectly healthy Hyrule Castle, and tells him, “I think in order. I’d rather this be easier, don’t you?”

He nods, already mapping the route in his head. “All right, then. I have a horse for you at the Dueling Peaks Stable. When do you want to go?”

Zelda goes quiet, her fingertips tapping against the top corners of the Sheikah Slate. It doesn’t take his thirteen fragments and three months of being with her all day every day to read her mind and know what she’s not saying.

Link just laughs. “Just let me finish the fruitcake and then we’ll start packing.”

She lights up, giggling and throwing her arms around his neck, hugging him close. “Thank you thank you thank you! I’ll make it up to you, I promise, I know you wanted to stay here and recover but-”

“Zelda,” he puts the wooden spoon down and hugs her back, not wanting to stain her clothes with fruitcake batter. “I only wanted that because it was what I thought was best at the time, but if you want to go out and try to remember that way I’m not going to stop you. It’d just make me a hypocrite, honestly.”

“So how long until the fruitcake is ready?” she pulls back and picks the slate back up, opening up the map. “And how are we going to each place?”

“Twenty minutes,” he answers. “And that’s a surprise. If I tell you, it’ll ruin the magic of discovering the Wild on your own for the first time. Start putting whatever clothes you want to bring into the slate’s inventory, we’re going to be gone for at least a month. We can even check in with Impa if you want.”

“Oh, yes!” she hops to her feet, but before she goes inside she leans down and presses her lips to his cheek. “Thank you again, Link!”

He sits there, frozen and blushing, because yes she just kissed him on the cheek but she also said his name. 

She said his name like he’s important. 

Chapter Text

“Can I get my white horse, please?” Link asks the man at the Dueling Peaks Stable counter. 

The man shuffles some of his papers and double checks, “Horse Two, you mean?”

Next to him, feeding Horse an apple, Zelda giggles. 

“Yes,” Link sighs. “Horse Two, please. And do you mind dressing her with my royal set?” 

The man at the counter glances between him and Zelda with a pleased, knowing sort of smile. “Of course. Horse Two will be right out for your lady friend, dressed to impress her.”

“I-I’m not-” he splutters, and before he can properly explain himself the man has left the counter to explain the prices of the beds to a Hylian traveler. 

“I think it’s funny,” Zelda says when he joins her in stroking Horse’s mane. 

“What, my naming conventions for my horses?”

“No, that everyone you talk to seems to think that we’re in some kind of romantic relationship.”

Link chokes on his tongue. 

“It doesn’t bother me, I’m flattered that they all think I’m pretty or whatever else they say, but why do you think they think that?”

Because I’m awful at hiding my feelings for you, I have no idea how you don’t know, and I think you wanted to kiss me, too, before you lost your memories, so-

“I traveled alone my entire quest,” he says. “And then suddenly you’re here, by my side, beautiful and around my age. It makes sense why everyone thinks-”

“You think I’m beautiful?” Zelda’s voice softens, her expression open and adorably surprised. She stares at him like his feedback on her appearance is the only one she cares for.

Link so desperately wishes he had the ability to go back in time a minute just so he can kick his own ass. He swallows and sincerely tells her, “I do. I…I think you’re very beautiful, Zelda.”

She smiles. “Thank you, Link. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re very beautiful, too.”

Warmth in the shape of a Silent Princess blossoms in his chest. He’s been complimented for his looks plenty of times, been called ‘handsome’ and ‘manly’ and ‘rugged’, but those don’t hold the same staggering impact that a Gerudo calling him ‘pretty’ in his vai outfit did, those don’t blanket him in a sense of rightness that Zelda telling him he’s beautiful does right now. 

His face burning, he manages a quick, “Thanks.”

“Link?” The stable-master calls, grabbing his attention, the ends of his mustache tilted towards his chin in a frown. 

He jogs back over to the man behind the counter. “Yeah?”

“Horse Two apparently got into some food she shouldn’t have when our groomers weren’t looking. She’s sick, won’t be of much use on the road. Where are you headed? I could send ahead to the nearest stable and get you another ride-”

“No, no it’s fine,” Link shakes his head. “We can just share Horse.”

“I’m terribly sorry about this, I-”

“It’s all right,” Link digs into his wallet and hands him a red rupee. “Here. For whatever medicine Horse Two needs. She knows better than to eat Hylian food.”

“What is it?” Zelda asks when he returns to her side. 

“Horse Two is sick, looks like we’ll just be sharing Horse’s saddle the whole way.”

She shrugs. “All right.” 

—

Zelda slept through the majority of their first ride through Hyrule Field, exhausted from her century spent fighting the Calamity, so as they leave the Dueling Peaks and enter Central Hyrule Link takes the time to explain all of the sights she missed.

“That’s the Great Plateau over there,” Link points to the towering stone wall of the plateau in the distance. “The second memory you’re going to try and get back is by those trees, so we’ll have to backtrack after we hit this first one. I don’t know why the plateau is so high up from the rest of Hyrule, Impa thinks it used to be an island from when Hyrule was flooded thousands and thousands of years ago.”

“Hyrule was flooded?” Zelda leans against his back, her arms wrapped around his waist, her voice in his ear. “Why?”

“Something about the Calamity’s human form almost conquering the whole kingdom, I think. The Golden Goddesses flooded the kingdom to save it from destruction, and mountains became islands that any surviving people lived on. When the Calamity’s human form came back again, wanting to complete his mission of taking over Hyrule, the Hero and the Princess Zelda of that era killed him.”

“The Golden Goddesses,” she repeats. “Din, Farore, and Nayru, right?”

He nods. “Do you remember learning anything about them from Before?”

“No, just what I read in that book back home. Din is for the Triforce of Power, Farore for the Triforce of Courage, and Nayru for the Triforce of Wisdom.”

Her use of the word Home makes him smile. She really does think of Hateno as home. “Right.”

“Why, do you know more about them?”

In the back of his head, there’s a faded, translucent memory of standing before the Great Deku Tree, but he’s much shorter, and the Master Sword does not sleep at his base. A fairy floats beside his head, and when the Great Deku Tree speaks, its Hylian is strange, using words like “thy” and asking weird questions like, Navi, where art thou?

He shakes his head. “No. I wish I did. They’re connected to the dragons, too, or at least the dragons are named after them, and I’ve-”

“Dragons?”

She…He didn’t…Nobody told her-

“You don’t know about the dragons?”

She laughs in his ear, incredulous when she demands, “How would I know about any dragons, Link?”

They’re in Hyrule Field proper, now, the castle straight ahead and growing closer with every beat of Horse’s hooves pounding against the grass, and Link tugs gently on the reins to slow him down as they near the ring of trees surrounding the Sacred Grounds.

“Maybe we’ll see one on the way to a memory,” he says, already planning a detour over Lake Hylia so she can see Farosh, “I’ll take your picture with it.”

“‘Maybe’, huh,” Zelda chuckles, pressing against his back and squeezing his waist, hugging him from behind. 

—

The Sacred Grounds are the same as the last time he saw them, when he was running through them in his haste to get to the castle and save Zelda. Though, this time, there are no Guardian Stalkers on the prowl, waiting for him to step onto the carved stone so they can take aim and shoot to kill. 

“This is the first spot,” Link says. “Just looking around, do you remember anything?”

Standing beside him, Zelda turns her head this way and that, examining the Royal Family’s crest engraved into the stone at their feet. After a moment, she shakes her head, responding, “Nothing. What happened here?”

He grabs her hand and pulls her to the center of the carvings. “You were standing here, in all of your royal, princess-y fineries and clothing. I-” he drops to one knee before her, the Master Sword’s strap tightening against his chest as the scabbard pulls against the curve of his spine, “-knelt before you like this, and you made me the Hylian Champion. You gave a speech about my past lives and how the Master Sword and I are bound to protect Hyrule, that being the Hero was a great honor.”

It was hot, that day, the middle of a sweltering summer, and Link vehemently hated his leather boots that trapped the heat and created a lake of sweat in his socks. It was his first time officially wearing the Champion’s Tunic, the shirt that the beautiful princess before him had painstakingly crafted by hand, but all he could think about was the heavy chainmail beneath it, how what peeked out from underneath the blue cloth burned against his skin from the heat. 

“It was my first time wearing this,” he pinches the Champion’s Tunic, drawing her eyes to where his fingertips connect over his heart. “I told you back in Hateno that you made it for me. Do you remember that?”

Again, Zelda shakes her head, glancing around the Sacred Grounds once more. She’s tied her hair back into a ponytail, but some flyaways wisp out from the hair-tie she borrowed from him and fall delicately around her face, framing her round cheeks and jaw in a way that tugs at a memory in the back of his head, one of when they were possibly children. Did he know her when they were kids? He must have, right, and even now they’re still- 

“How long did it take for your memory of this place to come back?”

Link thinks back on it. “When I first got here, I was dodging Guardian lasers left and right. Once I took care of them, and everything went quiet and I really got to think about it, I remembered it clear as day. Why don’t we wait another minute, I’ll shut up till then. If it still doesn’t come back, we can try something else.”

They wait. A light breeze ruffles the flyaways framing Zelda’s frown. She closes her eyes, her face scrunching as she supposedly thinks really hard, and Link bites his lip to keep from laughing at her.  

She sighs, her face relaxing as she opens her eyes and shakes her head a third time. “Nothing. What now?”

“What if…” he chews on his lip, now, thinking. He falls back from his knee to sit on the ground, his legs in the shape of an M, scooting back so the Triforce is in the dip of where his legs cross. “Sit with me.”

Zelda sits across from him, mimicking his position, the stone Triforce between them in the sun. Link unclasps the Master Sword from his back and places it over the carving, pulling off his shirt.

“Link-” her head whips to the side, her cheeks going red. “What are you doing?”

“You’ve seen me shirtless before,” he reminds her. “Remember Kakariko? The bathhouse?”

When she was naked and he was halfway there and she touched his chest and said, Your heart is racing, when she didn’t know what his scars were from and he had told her, It’s okay. You can touch them, they don’t hurt, when he had lied, Your fingers are cold, so he didn’t have to explain why it was that his heart was kicking into overdrive at her touch, at the sight of her before him, radiant and alive and here.   

“That was different,” she breathes, still refusing to look at him.

“How?”

“We were—I was—It’s different.”

“Just look at me, Zelda,” he coaxes, smiling. “Just my face if that’ll make you feel better. Please?”

She turns her head back to him, meeting his eyes. “Why did you take your tunic off?”

“Because I want you to hold it for a second,” he offers it to her, holding it over the Master Sword. “You made it, I ripped it up, and then you fixed it. It’s yours as much as it’s mine.”

She takes it, their fingers brushing as she pulls it close and examines the fresh stitches she made. “Everything’s holding. I was worried some would come undone during the ride here.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t? Why not?”

“Because I know you. You don’t make any mistakes.”

“Sure,” she chuckles. “Like failing to unlock whatever Golden Power I had a hundred years ago wasn’t the result of some kind of mistake?”

In this moment, talking down on herself for something entirely out of her control, taking the blame for the Goddess that refused to listen to every single one of her prayers for eleven years, Zelda has never seemed more like her old self. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” he tells her, unable to feel any sort of hope about the fact that she’s acting like the Zelda he was expecting to save. “It wasn’t your fault then, and it sure as hell isn’t now.”

“I can’t even remember them,” her voice breaks, her fingers tracing over the white outline of the Master Sword’s hilt on the shoulders and collar of the Champion’s Tunic. She ducks her head and Link has to bow his in order to keep her eyes on his. “I’m sure you knew that, but it didn’t set in for me until recently. I made more than just this tunic, right? I made all of their sashes, the uniforms they died in, and I can’t even remember their faces.”

“You’ve seen their picture in the house, the one over the-”

“I’m remembering the picture, not anything else. Still images of four people long dead, not my living, breathing friends-”

Tears drip from the corners of her eyes down onto the Champion’s Tunic. Link reaches across the Master Sword and covers her clenching fists with one of his hands, unfurling her fingers from their death-grip in the blue cloth and replacing it so she’s squeezing his fingers, instead. He’d hate for all of her hard-work repairing the tunic to come undone by the force of her grief, and her nails were dangerously close to one of the main stitches. He knows that it would only make her feel worse if that were to happen. 

“I didn’t know who they were when I remembered this,” he keeps his voice low, just loud enough to cover the sound of her quiet, hitching sobs. If he distracts her from the fact that she’s crying, maybe she’ll stop. “Do…Can you remember who was who?”  

Her next sob is answer enough. Link pushes the Master Sword out of the way and pulls Zelda into his arms, hugging her close as she cries, curled around the Champion’s Tunic like it’s the last thing she owns. She buries her face in his neck, her shoulders trembling as he slowly rubs her hitching back. 

“Revali was the Rito, the…the one that looked like a bird,” Link can only imagine the face Revali would make at being reduced to nothing but ‘The Bird-Looking One’, but for the sake of Zelda only remembering the one picture and never having met a Rito, before, he has to generalize. “In the picture back home, he’s shocked because Daruk, the Goron, the big rock guy, had slapped him on the back. Revali was prideful, but for good reason. He had invented a new way of flight that launched him straight into the air in a swirling vortex of wind. He called it Revali’s Gale, and with it he was the best archer Rito Village had to offer. It’s why he was the Rito Champion. Daruk was always laughing, happy to just be around us, and like all Gorons he was strong, a warrior. But unlike the rest of the Gorons, he had magic: a magical shield he dubbed Daruk’s Protection that kept him safe from attacks from anywhere.”

“Revali,” she repeats, her voice shaking and just barely a whisper. “Daruk.”

“Mipha was the Zora Champion, the one that looks like a fish, from Zora’s Domain just north of Hateno. She was their princess, and she was both a healer and a force to be reckoned with in battle. Her Grace stitched up any ally’s wounds, and her trident pierced the hearts of any monsters that dared to harm them. She was kind, and she was quiet. She…” he falters. “She wanted to marry me, and I didn’t even know she felt any sort of way about me until I went to fix Vah Ruta after I got off the Great Plateau. I felt awful because I didn’t—I don’t—love her back, but I keep her armor with me as a reminder that I had a friend a hundred years ago, someone who was always there to look out for me.”

Zelda sniffles, clutching the Champion’s Tunic tighter. “Mipha.”

“Finally…” he swallows. He’s not sure how he can possibly explain what Urbosa was to her. “Finally, there was Urbosa, the Gerudo Champion, the tall woman with red hair. She was a fierce warrior who could summon lightning, and she…she was close with your mother. When the Queen of Hyrule died, she treated you like you were her own daughter.”

“Urbosa-” Zelda devolves into hysterics, sobbing so hard she goes silent.

All Link can do is sit and hold her, shielding her from the bright sun with his scarred spine, the discarded Master Sword buzzing in its scabbard, the humming hilt clattering against the stone like porcelain about to shatter.     

—

Zelda is quiet as they ride back towards the Great Plateau, her fingers curled into Link’s back like she wants to rip the Champion’s Tunic from his body. 

“We can swim in the lake,” he suggests, forcing some enthusiasm into his voice in an effort to lighten the mood. “I’ve done it a lot, it’s fun. There’s a little island in the middle with some ruins, I could show you-”

“It’s all right, Link,” her voice is hoarse and empty, exhausted. Her arms are the loosest around his waist that they’ve ever been. “You don’t have to pretend.”

Pretend?  

“Pretend?”

“Like that wasn’t a massive failure. Like I’m not-”

“You’re not a failure,” he cuts her off, firmer than he was when she was crying. Horse whinnies beneath his hands as if to agree. “You’re not. Even if you were, I would refuse to call you one.”

“Why?”

“Because-” he stops himself. Because I love you. He takes a breath, gathering his thoughts together, and continues, “Because I wouldn’t have saved you as quickly as I did if I thought you deserved a hundred years of captivity with the Calamity as punishment. I would’ve stayed in Hateno once I bought the house.”

He thought about it, sometimes, after he bought the house in Hateno: Paying Bolson a little extra for a lock on the door, climbing into his bed, and waiting for the end of the world to strike, waiting for Zelda to die, for her voice in his head to go quiet, for the sky to go red and for the clouds to turn into bleeding streaks of sunlight and for a Bokoblin to kick his door in and eat him alive just so he could catch a break from all of the weight on his shoulders. He stayed in Hateno for two weeks, testing the idea out, keeping an eye on the beach once the Blood Moon passed to see if the monsters became any stronger, but they didn’t. They didn’t, and everything was fine, and Link was resigning himself to living quietly for however much longer Hyrule was going to exist when he had a dream.

In the dream, he was standing in a world made of glass, shallow water lapping at the bottoms of his boots, and a skeleton in armor was standing across from him, a sword in its hand and a shield on its arm. Link looked down and there was an at the time unfamiliar sword in his grasp. The hilt was a purple, bluish color, and the steel blade hummed with an energy that vibrated deep in his gut, like his very soul recognized the sound of its song.

What do you think you’re doing? The skeleton asked, its broken teeth chattering together as its crackling jaw twitched up and down, a crude approximation of a voice leaving its cordless throat. You’re not allowed to give up.

Where am I? Link had immediately questioned. Who are you?

You don’t even know who you are, The dead warrior had sneered. My identity is not your concern at this moment in Time. 

You know who I am?

I know you better than anyone else. I know you better than you once knew yourself one hundred years ago. 

How?

The skeleton raised its sword, pointing the tip of the sharp blade at his face. You want answers, Boy? Win them.

Link blinked and the sword was there, slashing towards his throat, and he instinctively raised the one in his hand to block the strike. The resulting CLANG echoed through the silent realm of his dream, and the glass trembled at the sound of the stranger’s reedy, croaking laugh. 

There’s some fight in you after all, The…knight had mocked, only knights would wear armor like that and have that kind of sword, but all of his equipment is nothing like anything Link had ever seen during his travels through the Wild. His armor was brown, with red streaks of paint—blood?—swirled on the chest plate, his horned helmet adding at least a foot to his already towering height, and his sword sounded like it was made from iron instead of the steel that the humming sword in his grasp was made out of. I guess even cowards wearing courageous skin need to know how to survive in the world he’s dooming to a slow, painful Demise.

What are you talking about?! Link had fought back, then, trying his damndest to get a hit in on the walking corpse, but the corpse was good, was better than him, and had him splashing in the water in the blink of its single red eye, the unknown, humming sword boiling the water it was discarded in. I don’t even know who you are!

Zelda asks, “Why did you save me?” 

The skeleton had held its sword just beneath his jaw, its breath steaming. Look at me. Really look. Open your eyes. 

He did. He looked and looked and looked, and only when he wrapped his fingers around the sword he was given did he really see who he was fighting. 

A Hylian boy his height, with his dirty blonde hair and his blue eyes and his face, wearing his clothes and holding his sword. The only difference between himself and this—this impostor was the blood. The Link standing over him was covered in it, his tunic torn and his hair matted to his forehead, deep gashes marring his cheeks. There was a hole the size of a cannonball in his stomach, the smell of burnt flesh dirtying the air, and his chest heaved like he would collapse at any moment. 

This is what being the Hero means, The Knight panted, swaying where he stood. No matter how hurt you get, no matter how afraid you are, you always get back up. You always face the bastard that’s trying to knock you down. You always fight.

I don’t want to fight, Link breathed. Not anymore. I have a house, I have friends, I have peace-   

And who gave you that peace? Who is responsible for you being here, now, asleep in your house? Whose life are you contemplating?

He had swallowed, the bob of his throat scraping against the tip of the wobbling sword and stinging as it left him with a shallow cut. He rasped, Princess Zelda’s.

Princess Zelda’s, his dead counterpart echoed. She knows who you are. She can answer all of your questions. All you have to do is collect what’s yours and save her. 

Collect what’s mine?

Lifeless eyes drifted to the sword gripped in his dripping hand. She’s been waiting for you, Hero. Both of them have. Save the princess, save Hyrule, and you’ll be saving yourself from a very short life of empty, boring misery. You’ll never be me again.

That… Link faltered. That’s selfish, isn’t it? Isn’t the Hero supposed to be the good guy? Saving Hyrule because it’s the right thing to do?

His corpse laughed. Saving the kingdom of Hyrule is the most selfish thing you could do. Letting it rot would be mercy.         

Link had snapped awake, safe in his bed in Hateno, with a bleeding cut on his throat and a burning right hand. He found Korok Forest and the sleeping Master Sword two days later. 

He rubs the small, rough scar on his neck, dragging the pads of his fingertips over the notched skin, and responds, “I wanted answers.”

For the first time all morning, the Master Sword goes silent. 

—

They reach Lake Kolomo at noon, dismounting Horse and sitting together on the sand. 

“Here,” Link pops a handful of rice balls from the Sheikah Slate’s inventory and passes some to Zelda. “Lunch time.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs. 

A squirrel runs up to them, and Link picks a chunk off of one of his rice balls and hands it to the little guy, laughing as it nibbles through the food. 

“That’s only going to train it to come back instead of going off and looking for food,” Zelda tells him, though the tiny smile on her face as she watches the squirrel grasp for more rice betrays the scolding nature of her words. 

“He deserves it after running around all day.”

“How do you know it’s a he?”

“I don’t,” Link passes the squirrel another chunk of rice, stroking his fingertip over its head and grinning as its bushy tail twitches. “This could very well be a fine lady looking for a meal.”

Zelda unwraps her rice and lifts a ball to her mouth, taking a bite. “This fine lady likes hers. How do you make rice so good?”

“What,” he frowns. “You don’t like rice?”

“I like it, just-” she motions to the still-eating squirrel. “How do you make everyone love you?”

Everyone?

“Everyone?”

“Yes!” she swallows her food, her hands waving around in the air as she continues, “You have so many friends, Manny and Prima, Impa and Paya, Purah and Symin…Everyone in Hateno and Kakariko likes you for who you are, I’m just wondering how do you do that?”

“I don’t-” he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I just…talked to people, on my quest. I helped a lot of them with their problems, some of them paid me, I came back for more. Most of my friendships started because these people were, uh, ‘clients’, I guess. People in need of some kindness that I was happy to give. Why?”

Zelda flicks a bug off of her Hylian Tunic, brushing her long hair off her shoulder and behind her ear. She takes another bite of rice. The squirrel finally runs off, squeaking as if to tell its friends, I ate! I ate! I found food!

“Zelda?”

“I…” she trails off, deflating, bowing her head. “Everyone I’ve met is nice to me, and I appreciate that, but they’re nice to me because they know who I used to be, before I lost my memories. They’re nice to me in the hopes that I’ll get my memories back, that I’ll remember who they are, and that I’ll be able to reciprocate it. They’re not talking to me, Zelda, they’re talking to the memory of Princess Zelda. I’m just a placeholder until she returns.”

“Not to me,” he says.

She blinks up at him. “What?”

“You’re not a placeholder to me. I’ll be honest with you, I’m…disappointed, that you lost your memories. I don’t like it as much as you do, but that’s because you’re the only person who can tell me who I am. I was told that you’re the one who knew everything about me, and at the slow pace that my memories were coming back I was desperate for a quick solution, and saving you was it. So I saved you, and I expected you to tell me who I was, who I’m supposed to be, but instead you asked me the same thing. But to tell you the truth, Zelda, the memories of you that I have from Before, from all of these spots, are...”

“They’re what?”

“Sad,” Link breathes. A bird whistles, flying over their heads. The water of Lake Kolomo laps at the beach. “They’re sad, Zelda. You’re sad. How you were back at the Sacred Grounds is the closest you’ve ever come to acting like Princess Zelda, and no matter how badly I want you to be the person I was expecting, no matter how selfish I am, what I want most of all is for you to be happy. You’re happy, like this, you were happy in Hateno. You deserve to be happy after everything that you’ve gone through. I’m not bringing you to all of these memory spots because I’m trying to force your memories to come back, to force you to be sad again, I’m taking you here because you wanted to come. You wanted to pursue getting your memories back this way, you wanted to explore, and I’m happy to help. Does it benefit me? Down the road, sure, but that’s not why I agreed to show you around Hyrule. It’s not why I helped you get back on your feet in Kakariko, and it’s not why I offered the house in Hateno for you to live in while we rested.”

“Then…” Zelda stares at him like she did on Hyrule Field after sealing the Calamity, like she’s never seen him before. “Then why?”

Do you have a…a ‘crush’ on anyone?

“Because while I may be everyone’s friend, you’re mine. I want to help you because…” 

A breath of fresh air lives in your lungs, the sun rises in your smiles and sets in your frowns, I could die happy so long as I get to hear you speak my name.

“Because?” There’s something like hope in Zelda’s eyes. She leans forward in the sand like he’s going to tell her a secret, sacred thing.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

“We’re friends,” he whispers. A coward wearing courageous skin. “I could never leave a friend in need.”

Disappointment—Disappointment?—flickers on Zelda’s face, gone in the blink of an eye. She goes back to her rice balls.

(Did…Did she want him to say something else?)

Two more squirrels appear at his side, staring at his food with wide, begging eyes. 

(Like what?)

—

They take off their boots and socks, cuff their trousers, and wade into the lake. 

“Can you tell me a story?” Zelda asks, wiggling her toes in the dense sand. 

“About what?” Link questions, doing the same. It never gets old for him, how nice the cool water feels on his bare feet. 

“The two of us. Something you remember.”

He thinks. He could tell her about his first day as her appointed knight, how he had to chase her all around the castle because she was hellbent on being left alone. He could tell her about his first day as her friend, their journey back to the castle from the Kara Kara Bazaar after he saved her from the Yiga. He could tell her about the family meals they would eat with the Champions every month, how the host would change and they would have to travel all over Hyrule just to see their friends, how when it was Urbosa’s turn to host them at Gerudo Town the Chief brought him and Revali matching vai outfits as a prank and Daruk begged for a veil because I want to fit in, too, how Link wore his sirwal with pride and there was a bounce in Revali’s step, how Mipha took the Sheikah Slate from Zelda’s waist to snap a picture of our boys, how Zelda sputtered in response but didn’t correct her.

He could tell the story of that time Impa stole Purah’s goggles and as vengeance Purah stole Impa’s hat, how he couldn’t tell the difference between the sisters for the whole week they wore each other’s clothes just to spite their respective sibling, how even King Rhoam had to look twice before he accidentally asked Impa to explain the intricacies of the Guardians, how Zelda only added to the confusion when she tied her hair up like Link’s and wore the Master Sword just to escape her daily prayers, how when Link shyly asked if he could wear one of her dresses to help sell the act she laughed like she loved him and presented him her wardrobe along with a pair of heels, how he would prefer to wear her clothes instead of the sword that seals the darkness any day of the week and that when he knelt before the Goddess Statue and she stood guard at his back he prayed that it would happen again.

(He’ll keep that one to himself, for now.)

“How about that time we danced?” he proposes.   

“We danced?”

“We danced a lot,” he laughs. “It came with the whole ‘Princess and Hero of Hyrule’ thing. Your father threw so many parties to try and let the people know that everything was fine, that there’s no way the world could end if the castle was lit up by music and fireworks every night, and we had to go to each and every one.”

“Do…” she offers her hand. “Do you remember any of them?”

He takes it. “Kind of.”

She steps in close, staring up at him. “Show me?”

He places his other hand on her waist, lifting the one he’s already holding. “Put your other hand on my shoulder.”

She does. “What now?”

“Follow my lead.”

They sway, gliding through the water, their feet splashing through the surface as he attempts to lead her through his fractured memory of a waltz. 

“I was wearing my Royal Guard uniform,” he begins. “You know, the red and blue outfit with the silly hat you laughed at?” 

She grins. “I do know.”

“I was wearing my Royal Guard uniform, and you were wearing your fancy blue dress, and the party we were at that night was to celebrate some old guy’s birthday. A friend of your father’s, probably someone we didn’t like.”

Her toes brush his in the water and she stumbles not to step on him. “Why don’t you think we liked him?”

He catches her, keeping her balanced, and replies, “Because we laughed when a waiter tripped and spilled wine all over his tunic, while everyone else in the ballroom gasped like he had been shot with an arrow by a member of the Yiga Clan.”

We’re horrible people, aren’t we? Zelda had giggled when the commotion died down and they continued their dance.

No, not at all, he had laughed. We’re the picture-perfect standard of a Hero and Goddess Incarnate.

They had stayed the center of attention for two more songs before King Rhoam finally nodded in their direction, allowing them to stop dancing. Zelda had beelined for the edge of the room, Link ever-so-dutifully on her heels, and picked up two glasses of Hylian wine, handing him one.

I’m on duty, he had refused.

My duty, she had corrected. I’ve seen you eyeing these all night. Go ahead. 

Glancing around the room, making sure no one was truly watching, he took the offered drink and yelped when Zelda then dragged him out of the ballroom entirely and down the hall to the observation room, up the hill of stone stairs and to the balcony under the stars.

“What next?” The Zelda in front of him asks, staring down at their feet in the water to try and avoid stepping on him again.

“That’s all I can remember,” he slowly twirls her, pulling her back to his chest and holding her close. “We snuck out of the party and drank a glass of wine together.”

“Hm.”

“What do you mean, ‘Hm’?”

“I didn’t know Princess Zelda was that much of a rebel.”

And that sparks something in him, opens a door deep in the recesses of his mind, and-

They’re on the balcony under the stars, standing next to each other at the railing. Link’s hands are gloved in white, and Zelda’s taken off hers to dip her bare fingertip into her wine and drag it around the rim, streaking it in red as a constant ringing noise pierces the air. 

You’re good at that, he compliments, watching her finger circle the glass over and over. I didn’t know you could do it. 

One of my many hidden talents, she jests with a smile. Alongside juggling and mountain lion taming. 

He laughs, sipping at his wine and relishing the burn sliding down his throat. Of course, how could I forget. We’d better be quick about this, or else your father is going to send Impa after us. 

Impa likes wine, too, I’m sure she could be persuaded to leave us be.   

He blinks and the memory shifts. He and Zelda are pressed together in the night, their faces so close he can feel her breath on his chin. 

It’s… he falters, staring at her mouth. It’s inappropriate, Princess.

Hero, Zelda takes his face between her hands. Hers are cold from the night air, but they feel nice on his flushed, burning cheeks. You should know by now that I don’t give a damn about the rules. 

He leans in, pressing his lips to hers, and when she kisses him back it’s like the tangled web of their entwined destiny has finally straightened itself out, like everything in the world finally makes sense, like-

He blinks and he’s dancing with Zelda in the shallows of Lake Kolomo, her laughter echoing through the air once they trip over each other and splash down into the water. 

“What happened there?!” she laughs. 

I’ve kissed you before, Is all he can think. And you kissed me, too.

He forces himself to laugh back, “I don’t know! Guess we’re both out of practice!”

She snorts, “I wonder why!”

(He’ll keep that one to himself, too.)

—

Soaking wet, they mount Horse and go on their way.

“Where to next?” Zelda asks.

“Gerudo Desert,” Link answers. He’s decided to skip the memory up at the Ancient Columns because she doesn’t need to be reminded of how much she used to hate him a hundred years ago, he’s told her plenty of stories that drove that message home and told plenty more that let her know that that’s behind them, now, water under a century-old bridge. “The spot where I saved you from the Yiga Clan and we actually became friends. It’s going to be a long ride, we’ll be totally dry by the time we get there.”

“I’m all right with that,” she hugs him from behind, her clothes squishing against his. “I remembered us dancing, back there.”

His heart picks up the pace. How much of us dancing? “That’s good! All of what I said or just the impression of it?”

“All of what you said. The warmth of your hands, the taste of the wine on my tongue, how we laughed at that man getting drenched.”

“Anything…” he swallows. “Anything else?”

He feels her shake her head against the back of his neck, the ends of her wet hair whipping against his ribs. “Nothing else. Why, was there more?”

She tasted like the wine, back then. The wine and something else, something he couldn’t quite describe. Would he taste it again if he kissed her now?

No, he thinks, scolding himself. I can’t pressure her into anything, I can’t tell her yet, I’m still just her friend. She needs a friend, now, not a lover. 

“No,” he reluctantly lies. It’s like curdled milk on his tongue, sour and off-putting. He’d spit it out and replace it with the truth if he could. “Not that I know of, at least.”

—

They board Horse at the Gerudo Canyon Stable.

“We have to walk the rest of the way,” Link explains, stocking up on cooling elixirs. The canyon, which is usually the cold calm before the storm, is thick with an out-of-character humidity.  

“That’s fine,” Zelda ties her hair up again, rolling up the sleeves of her Hylian Tunic. “This will be my first time seeing the desert, I don’t want to miss a thing.”

He just grins, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “There’s not much to miss.”                                                                  

—

Side by side, they trudge through the scorching sand, squinting to block out the setting sun.

"Link?"

"Yeah?"

"You're right, there's not a lot to look at."

He laughs. 

—

The Kara Kara Bazaar is the busiest that Link has ever seen it, Gerudo children splashing each other in the pond and the staff bringing out cooling elixirs to Hylians sunbathing at the last minute, the moon beginning its climb into the darkening sky.

"So this is where you saved my life?" Zelda looks around. "It's kind of like the Ton Pu Inn but...bigger. And with a pool."

"Yeah," Link finds himself agreeing. "I guess it is!"

After a quick run inside to secure a bed for the night, they sit at the edge of the pool and dip their feet. 

"Anything coming back at all?" he asks, watching a male Hylian attempting to teach a female Rito to swim, rubbing her back as she clings to him with wide, fearful eyes.

"Just what you told me back in Hateno, about us talking inside of it after the fact," she kicks her feet in the water. "I remember a little bit of Gerudo Town, I think. Walls of sandstone and women in veils, music drifting through the streets. I..." she closes her eyes. "I'm small, very small, my hands tiny as they clutch a stuffed rabbit. I'm sitting on a bed with purple sheets, the mattress dipping beneath my light weight, and there's a woman standing just outside. Her hair is long, red, and her lips are painted blue. She snaps her fingers and lightning strikes."

"Urbosa."

"Urbosa," she repeats, smiling, keeping her eyes closed. She continues, "After the lightning is gone, I laugh, clapping, begging for another bolt. She chuckles and refuses me with a smile. She...She calls me 'Little Bird'. Do you know what that means?"

"It's what your mother called you," he whispers, rapt with attention. Here, the sun's dying light painting her in a kaleidoscope of fractured color, lost in the throes of her memories, Zelda has never looked more alive. "I don't know why."

Zelda opens her eyes. "That's it. That's all I can remember here."  

"That's good," he tells her.

She sighs, leaning over and resting her head on his shoulder. "Is it? I'm not remembering anything close to what you're saying I should be, only the stories you tell and stuff that relates to them."

And it clicks.  

“The triggers for your memories are probably different from mine,” he realizes out loud. 

"What?"

"These locations were important to me a hundred years ago, so I remembered what happened here when I visited them. But for you, these locations might've just been places where you went about your day."

She chuckles. "I'm sure you saving my life wasn't an everyday occurrence."

"We don't know that. It was important to me because it was my first kills, but-"

"It was important to me because we became friends. Why wouldn't it trigger something?"

Link shakes his head. "I don't know, Zelda. But what I'm saying is maybe we should go somewhere else." 

“Like where?”

The first place that pops into his head is, “Hyrule Castle. Are you up to going back to it so soon?”

She nods. “Yes, I…I don’t remember anything from my captivity there. The castle is just a castle. Maybe...perhaps it’s better that way."

"If you're scared of remembering the Calamity, we don't have to go. You never have to go back there if you don't want to."

"I want to," she insists. "I do, I just...I'm having fun traveling with you. None of this, from the day you saved me until now, has ever really scared me, before."

He glances down at her, frowning. "You weren't afraid when you didn't even know your own name?"

"Not truly," she shakes her head, smiling up at him. "I had you with me. I can't be afraid with you around."

He swallows. You tasted like wine and something else I can't describe. "But the castle changes that."

Zelda sighs. "But the castle changes that."

Link remembers the aftershocks that Blatchery Plain left him with, how he couldn't look Impa in the eye, how he stormed the castle just to sit in Zelda's room and reread her diary and cry, promising her through his sobs that he would save her if it was the last thing he did. 

Would Zelda remember that, if they went? Was she even watching him then?

"I want to show you one thing before we go," he says. They're in the desert, which means they're closer to Faron than they were up in Hyrule Field, and Faron means Farosh. "One last trip before we face the castle and you hopefully remember what you want to."

"You think I'll remember everything there?"

He shrugs with the shoulder she isn't using as a pillow. "I have no idea. Hyrule Castle was important to you, it's where you grew up and spent most of your life. It's where you captured Calamity Ganon and held it back for a hundred years. I'd hope you would remember a lot, because if you didn't I honestly wouldn't know where else to take you."

"Back home," she yawns. "You could just take me back home and tell me all of your stories. Those are important to me, too. You're important to me."

She kissed him back, on that balcony under the stars.

"You're important to me, too, Zelda."

—

Back at Gerudo Canyon Stable, collecting Horse, they run into Beedle.

“Beedle?” Zelda whispers in Link’s ear as the skinny man with the giant backpack waves and approaches. “Like the bug?”

“He has a beetle shaped backpack,” Link whispers back.

“Is that supposed to explain everything?”

“Link!” Beedle chirps, wiping his hair out of his eyes. This is the first time Link’s seen his bushy curls in any sort of disarray. “You’re not going to believe the storm I just ran through to get here!”

“A storm?” he asks.

“A Faron thunderstorm like no other! I collected so many worms! Want to buy any?”

Zelda muffles a laugh in her hands, disguising it as a cough.

“Bless you, miss,” Beedle nods at her before turning back to Link. “So? Want to buy anything? Want to sell me any more gems?”

“We’re all right, Beedle, thanks,” he grins at his favorite merchant. “We’re actually going to Faron now, you think it’s still raining?”

“It was heading towards Lurelin, I think you’ll be all right? I caught the edge of it leaving Lakeside Stable!”

Beedle’s giant backpack is dripping, the little horns at the top drooping with the weight of absorbed rain.

Link can’t help it. He takes pity on the guy and pulls out his wallet. “You know what? I actually need to stock up on some arrows.” 

—

“You’re allergic to safflina soap,” Zelda says out of the blue, as they ride towards Faron. 

“I am?” he asks, looking back at her over his shoulder.

“Yes,” she nods after a moment. “I just remembered a time where I had my hair washed with the stuff and you wouldn’t stop sneezing. Impa had to guard me for the day.”

“What brought that on?”

“I don’t know. It just…came to me.”

Time, Impa had prescribed them back in Kakariko, after Zelda first woke up and they ate leftover Goddess Day soup on her living room floor. I believe that if we give you time to rest and recover, you will start to return to yourself. 

—

The Bridge of Hylia. Midnight.

“What are we waiting here for?” Zelda squints at the night sky. “A shooting star?”

"You'll see," Link sees him in the distance, his electric aura lighting up the horizon. He points in his direction. "Look, he's coming over now."

Zelda follows his finger and gasps, running to the edge of the bridge. "What is that?"

"His name is Farosh. He's one of-”

“The dragons,” she finishes, looking back at him over her shoulder, her eyes lit up in excitement. “You took me to see a dragon!” 

“I told you it was a surprise,” he grins. “He flies over here every night and makes his way down to Faron before looping back to the Gerudo Highlands to do it all over again."

"Why?"

Farosh is fast, tonight, closing in on them quick. Link has never seen him in such a rush.

"I don't know. All of the dragons patrol like that, and this is his territory. Naydra hangs around Mount Lanayru and Dinraal flies through the badlands behind Death Mountain.”

Farosh's head snakes over the wall of the bridge, and Link has to pull Zelda back when she reaches out to touch his scales.

"Careful," he says, keeping his voice quiet so as not to startle the dragon he used to antagonize for months, "He's electric, you'll get the shock of your life."

"He's amazing," she whispers, her hand still hovering in the air. "Hi, Farosh."

And Farosh...stops, his hulking body pausing halfway over the bridge.

"Uh," Link gapes. 

"What? What's happening?"

"He's never stopped moving, before! I know as much as you do!”

Farosh turns, his neck wrapping around the fountain at the center of the bridge, his face inches from where Link and Zelda are huddled against the edge, close enough that the warm breath from his nostrils wafts over them as he-he sniffs?

Zelda is still holding her hand up in the air. Her fingers twitch as the tip of Farosh’s nose brushes against her palm.

“It’s cold,” she whispers. “He’s cold.”

Three golden triangles flicker on the back of her hand and Link’s eyes bug out his head. 

“How are you doing that?” he hisses.

“I have no idea,” she hisses back. “It’s just-It’s happening. I’m warm all over, my hands are tingling, I don’t know.”

Farosh huffs. He nudges Zelda’s golden palm, and a groan rises from his colossal throat. The Master Sword hums on Link’s spine. 

Farosh knows, he thinks. The Master Sword knows. 

“I think…” Link pinches himself. Nope, still awake. Still alive. He hasn’t eaten us yet. “I think he wants you to pet him, Zelda.”

“What?”

Farosh turns his head and nuzzles into the golden light radiating from her skin, sliding his cheek up and down her outstretched fingers. His gigantic green eye closes, and a low rumble shakes the bridge like an earthquake is striking.

(Is…Is the giant electric dragon purring?)

“Holy shit,” Zelda squeaks.

“Holy shit,” Link dumbly repeats, his mouth hanging open.

He reaches out to touch, too, and Farosh’s eye snaps open, his pupil narrowing on Link’s face. He huffs again, and sparks jump from his horns.

“Okay!” Link manages, holding his hands up in a show of surrender. “Guess you’re still mad about me shooting you, that’s…totally fair!”

Zelda glances at him with wide eyes. “You what?” 

“It was for the Goddess! I didn’t want to shoot all of the dragons-”

“You shot all of them?”

“For the Goddess, Zelda!”

—

They reach Lover’s Pond at sunset, and Link is surprised to see that the couple he helped get together here is finally gone. He hopes they’re happy, wherever they are, and honestly he’s never been more relieved to be alone somewhere than here, because he’d hate to get asked questions about why he brought Zelda to a place where two soulmates are supposed to meet.

(They’re technically soulmates, aren’t they? And they’ve already met. Twice, to be exact, at least in this version of the story.)

“Goddesses, Link, look at that!” Zelda spots the wild Silent Princess immediately. “A Silent Princess, all alone out here! How do you think the seeds made it this far?”

He shakes his head. “I know nothing about plants. Anything I do know came from my memories of you.”

“Impa was telling me about them, how they only bloom out in the Wild? I think it’s because-”

Zelda is there, rambling about how amazing it is that this lone Silent Princess has survived all the way out here, and…

Link wonders what would happen if he were to lean in and kiss her. It would be so easy, is the thing, to take her face between his hands, to cradle her cheeks because she’s the most precious thing in his world, and lift her so she’s looking him in the eye. It would be so easy for him to ask her, Can I kiss you? and even easier for her to nod because she hopefully feels the same way about this that he does. It would be the easiest task in his life to tilt his head to the right just enough, lean in so close to her beautiful face that he can feel her breath fan out over his lips, and press his mouth to hers, to show her just how much he cares about her, just how much she deserves to be loved and cared for after everything she’s been through, to possibly reach the Zelda that continues to live in the shadows of her Faron green eyes and drag her to the surface with nothing but the pure determination and force of his love, because he fought for her life once and he’d happily do it again, but does he even need the real Zelda anymore?

The Zelda before him now is the one he wants to kiss, and he’s sure the Link of a hundred years ago wanted to kiss the Zelda of a hundred years ago, because he knows from Kass’s song that the Zelda of a hundred years ago wanted to kiss him, and how could he ever refuse her? Is it really so bad that the Link and Zelda of now, of After, who’ve met once again after a century of separation and months of amnesia and relearning each other, all of their respective quirks and likes and dislikes…Is it really so bad if they’re never truly the same as they once were? 

Would this Zelda kiss him back? Is she feeling the same pull towards his lips, towards his very being, that he is towards her? Is this what it means to be a legend, to be a story Hyrule has told millions and millions of times, to be a part in a play that the universe has watched and applauded? They’re destined to be together in some way, shape, or form, they both know at least this much, just like how Link is destined to wield the Master Sword and Zelda is destined to wield her sacred, golden sealing power and how something like Calamity Ganon is destined to try and kill them all. She would kiss him back, he thinks, because at least she’s nice like that, she’s nice enough to indulge him for at least a moment before gently letting him down, but he would very much prefer the first option, where he cradles her face and he gets her consent and they’re happy together like all of the legends say, because they’ve fulfilled all of the requirements to be written in the stars so why shouldn’t they take this chance to shine?

Why shouldn’t Link be able to bask in the warmth of her sun, why shouldn’t Zelda be able to live safe and free with him there to protect her? He might have been her knight a hundred years ago but today, now, he is her friend. They are no longer bound by the duty that was thrust upon them once upon a time, he is longer her Hero just like she is longer his Princess, but still they are already written in the stars. Still they are always together, from now until the end of time. 

What would King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule say if he could see them now? If Zelda’s father could see her gushing over the Wild she suffered a century of darkness and malice and Calamity to protect, if he could see her savior debating the merits of whether or not he should kiss her, if he should permanently change their relationship for either better or worse, depending on her own personal feelings towards him, which is why he wants to ask for her permission so why isn’t he? Why can’t he voice these thoughts? Why aren’t his lips moving and why is his tongue not forming the words he so desperately wants to say to her?

Courage, The legends in Zelda’s new favorite book said of his divine virtue. Unwavering Courage worthy of an indomitable spirit. 

If he’s so Courageous, why is the idea of kissing No-Longer-Princess Zelda so terrifying?

Because she might reject you, That little voice that always came to him in times of great stress, like during battles with monsters or Yiga or when he lies awake at night thinking for too long, that little voice that always voices his worst impulsive thoughts, comes to life in the back of his head, whispering in his ear, Because she still doesn’t know you, not like you know her, and all you are is her mentor in getting adjusted to this new world, this new life. All you are is a glorified guide like Rhoam was to you on the Great Plateau. All you are is a ghost haunting the memories you so desperately want to return to her so you can feel better about your own lack of identity.   

Shut up, he hisses to himself. You’re wrong, I know who I am-

You only know who you are because she told you, because she took those thirteen photos and Impa ordered you to visit them. All you are is a soldier, you only saved her because her dead father is your King and he begged his last living knight to win one more war in Hyrule’s name-

“Here,” Zelda places something behind his ear, and one glance tells him she’s picked the lone Silent Princess and anointed him with it. “You got so many for me, it’s only right that I start to return the favor.”

“You…” he reaches up and touches the delicate petals of her favorite flower. “You picked it.”

“I did,” she smiles. “What, I wasn’t supposed to?”

“No, I just…” he stares at her, at a loss for words. “I thought you would want to preserve the wild ones, they’re…they’re so rare-”

“They’re also beautiful,” she leans in, her hands coming up to adjust his hair, brushing over his scalp. “It would be remiss of me not to pair its natural beauty with yours.” 

She’s called him beautiful before, but this time it’s…different. He asks, “You really do think I’m beautiful, don’t you?”

“I do,” her smile softens. “Is that so bad?”

He can’t help it. His eyes drift to her mouth. “No. It’s not.”

She leans in closer, shifting towards him on the grass. She tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear and whispers, “I think you’re prettier than any flower, Link. I hope I told you that a hundred years ago.”

(She says his name like he’s important, like she loves him just as much as he loves her.)

His breath catches in his throat. She’s going to kiss him, isn’t she? She-She wants to kiss him, she feels it, too, she-

“Zelda,” he breathes, cupping her cheek with one hand.

“Yes?” she’s openly staring at his lips, parting hers.

A balcony beneath the stars, a stifling party at their backs.

It’s…It’s inappropriate, Princess.

Hero, you should know by now that I don’t give a damn about the rules. 

I love you, I love you, I love you.

“I-”

A frog leaps between them and lands in Link’s lap.

“Ribbit!” It ribbits. 

Link and Zelda stare down at the frog. They meet each other’s eyes. 

“Ribbit!”

They burst into laughter, scaring the frog away, and she collapses into a fit of giggles against him, practically sitting in his lap as he snickers into her hair. 

(That little voice goes silent.)

—

He keeps the Silent Princess behind his ear as they ride away from Lover’s Pond, the still-setting sun painting the grass in hues of pink and purple as the moon slowly climbs into the sky to replace it with a sea of stars. 

“Stop at a stable for the night?” he asks over his shoulder.

“All right!” she chirps, smiling wide. 

(He can’t stop thinking about her lips, how close she was to kissing him. He can’t stop thinking about how he was going to kiss her back.)

Lakeside Stable is surprisingly busy, and when Link asks the stable-master what all the buzz is about while the staff takes Horse away to be boarded, the man explains that it’s due to the increased Farosh sightings.

“He’s been around all day today!” The man says with an excited grin. “Like he’s happy about something!”

Link remembers how the sacred dragon allowed Zelda to pet his scales, how he nuzzled into her touch and seemed to smile back at them as he flew off into the night.    

“I wonder what happened,” he shrugs. “Are there any beds available?”

“Just one soft, three normal.”

Link glances back at Zelda over his shoulder. She’s laughing, crouched in the dirt, cupping a firefly in her hands to show a group of wide-eyed kids.  

“We’ll take the one soft,” he says, sliding forty rupees across the counter. 

“Sure thing!”

“Link!”

He looks up at the sound of the familiar voice and-

“Kass!” he greets with a grin. 

“Hello!” The Rito bard smiles back, nodding his head, his accordion in his hands. “Long time no see!”

“Yeah! I thought you were staying in Rito Village?”

“I heard the news of Farosh’s consistent presence and flew down to see for myself. I’m going to Tarrey Town in the morning, I hear there’s a pretty bad thunderstorm hitting Akkala at the moment and I want to see if Farosh being in our realm has anything to do with it. Are you here to see him again, too?”

“No, no, I-” 

“Did you get a bed?” Zelda appears at his side, brushing the dirt from her hands. 

“I did,” he smiles at her. “One soft bed just for us.”

“Pr-” Kass gapes. “Princess Zelda!”

“Just Zelda, please,” she corrects, holding out her hand. “You must be…Kass? Link told me about one of your songs.”

“He-He did?”

“Yes,” she nods. “It’s wonderful to finally put a face to the name.”

“Oh, Your Highness—I-I mean Zelda, I-” Link has never seen his friend so flustered. Kass splutters, “I’m honored to even be around you! My teacher was your Court Poet, he spent the last years of his life teaching me about your unrivaled generosity.”

Zelda shares a quick, worried look with Link, and he translates, Do I tell him I have no idea who the Court Poet is? from the worry that enters her eyes.

Link minutely shakes his head, mouthing, Play along, and Zelda chuckles at Kass, bowing her head and replying, “Oh, thank you. I miss him every day.”

Kass holds a wing to his heart. “How he would love to hear those words fall from your lips.”

“Yo, Link!” The stable-master hangs out of his window. “Your bed’s gonna get stolen if you don’t at least stand by it!”

“Sorry, Kass,” he makes the excuse just so Zelda doesn’t have to keep up the act of being the Crown Princess of Hyrule greeting a royal subject. “We kind of need a bed after our days of horseback, talk to you in the morning?”

“Yes, of course,” Kass bows to Zelda. “It’s been a blessing to speak to you, Zelda. I hope we cross paths again soon, I would love to hear about my teacher in his youth.”

“Yes,” she echoes, nodding. “I cannot wait!”

She practically drags Link away from the bright blue Rito, lightly whacking his shoulder as he turns his face into his shoulder to hide his chuckling. 

“That was so mean,” she hisses, but there’s no real bite in her smiling voice. 

“It’s Kass!” he defends. “You’ll get it soon, it’s practically a sin to disappoint him.”

“Link!”  

—

“Link.”

He groans, burrowing into Zelda’s neck and the warm embrace of her arms tucked around his waist. 

Her finger pokes his cheek. “Link.”

He cracks his eyes open to Zelda staring at him, similarly sleepy.

“What is it?” he mumbles. He’s shocked she’s even awake this early, being the not-morning-person that she is. Usually he’s the one poking her awake.

“We should leave now, no? It’s going to get crazy with everyone trying to get a look at Farosh.”

She’s right, she is, but the bed is so soft and she’s so warm and if Link just closes his eyes he can-

“Link,” Zelda repeats.

“You just don’t want to disappoint Kass,” he slurs. “If we wait we have to talk to him again, and you don’t want to break his heart.” 

Silence. 

He opens one eye. She’s still looking at him. He manages a grin. 

“Shut up,” she affectionately whispers, rolling out of bed. “You know I’m right.”

“Sure,” he yawns, stretching, oof-ing when she throws a pile of clothes at his face. “So I’m guessing you’re gonna sleep the whole way there?”

“Oh, definitely,” Clothes rustle in the dark as she changes into a fresh outfit. It’s so early that the stable staff hasn’t even lit the candles, yet, and she’s nothing but a moving blob of shadow as his eyes adjust. 

He laughs, getting to his feet and changing. “Good to know.”

They set off towards Central Hyrule once the first rays of sunlight start to peek through the immortal darkness of the night, the castle their final destination before they head back home to Hateno.

Zelda, slumped against Link’s back and her even breaths warming his neck, misses the perfect sunrise.  

—

She wakes up when they hit Hyrule Field, yawning in Link’s ear.

“Good morning,” he greets with an answering yawn of his own. 

“Morning,” she stretches behind him. “Oh, wow. We’re close!”

“I’d say in the next hour or so,” he estimates. “You weren’t saying ‘Sorry’, this time.”

“Really?”

“I only knew you were asleep because I was your pillow.”

She chuckles, gently swatting his shoulder. “I can’t help that you’re comfortable.”

The skeleton of Hyrule Castle comes into view, towering over the horizon. It hasn’t stopped being weird that the Calamity isn’t swirling around it, anymore, it hasn’t stopped feeling real.  

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay going back? The way to Hateno is right there.”

“I’m fine, I promise.”

He nods, and Horse neighs in protest when he accidentally snaps the reins one too many times. 

—

Castle Town is strangely naked without the pools of malice drowning the buildings. It sounds more like the graveyard it’s supposed to be, silent and screaming for someone to care for it. 

“I lived here, I think,” Link says, his voice cutting through the quiet and bouncing off of the ruins, echoing into the air. “I don’t know where, but…I remember running through the streets as a kid, pretending I was a knight with my friends and using a tree branch as my sword.”

“I remember walking the streets with you three paces behind me,” Zelda breathes. “You let some kids look at the Master Sword and you smiled at me when they didn’t know who I was. They asked if I was your…”

Is she your girlfriend, Mister Hero? A small voice echoes in his head. Is she? Is she?

“I said no,” he responds. I wished I could say yes. “You bought six bags of tea for your father.”

“And one for your mother. I wanted to…I wanted to impress her. I’ve met your mother?”

He chuckles but finds nothing funny. “I didn’t know I had one.”  

—

They dismount Horse before the large metal doors that Link threw open with Magnesis months ago, in his desperate charge to the Sanctum to kill the Calamity and save Princess Zelda.

Princess Zelda, who is just Zelda, who wants to walk the rest of the way, is first through the open doors.

Link, so used to walking here with her a hundred years ago, has to take three steps forward to stand at her side. 

“Well,” she sighs, squinting up at where the castle peeks out from the cliff it’s built into, “Where to from here?”

He points up the hill. “This way. I’ll show you the Dining Hall first.”   

They walk.

“Why the Dining Hall?”

“It’s one of the only intact rooms. A lot of the castle, probably a lot of the rooms you’d remember stuff in, is rubble. There’s really only the Dining Hall, the Library, your room, the armory, the observation room, and the docks that are really left. And some of the hallways, to get to all of the rooms, but those are torn apart, too. Monsters lived in it the whole time, I always had to clear them out with every trip I made.”

She frowns at him. “You went to the castle multiple times?”

“I had to. For supplies and weapons, and to get the lay of the land so I knew what I was running into.”

“Did I ever talk to you?”

Link shakes his head. “Only to warn me to turn back the first time I entered. I think, because I was so close, the Calamity was fighting you harder than normal to try and free itself. You were probably too occupied holding it back.”

“I wonder,” Zelda swallows. “I wonder if the Calamity had a voice, too.”

I hope it was screaming, he prays. I hope it was afraid of us. 

—

The Dining Hall.

“Wow,” Zelda trails her fingers over a table that Link broke in half slashing Boulder Breaker at a Moblin, blowing away dust. “This is…This is really big.”

“Fit for a king,” Link jokes. “Or a queen.”

“I’m not remembering anything,” she picks up a filthy plate and wrinkles her nose. “Do you have any memories here?”

“Not from Before. This was the first room I entered when I first came to the castle, so I was paying attention to every detail in the hopes that something would come to me, but nothing did.” 

“Then we should move on to the next room,” she walks over to the wooden doors and pushes them open, wincing at the loud whine of them creaking on their millenia-old hinges. “Sounds like these haven’t been oiled in a hundred years.”

“I don’t think the Bokoblins were worried about castle maintenance,” he laughs. “Go to the right, then straight down the hall.”

—

The Library. 

“All of these books,” Zelda gapes at the rows of ruined shelves, running over to one and examining the books that remain. “Just…gone or-or utterly destroyed.”

“I saved the ones that I could,” Link tells her. “They’re in the house, remember?”

“Yes, that’s-Oh! Come here!” she pulls a book off the shelf, holding it out to him. “Look!”

He goes over, and the cover reads, A Royal’s Guide to Sheikah Etiquette.

“The book Impa gave you after that time in the library!” she grins, cracking open the ancient spine and flipping the yellowed pages. “Oh, look at this! The ‘How To Respect The Impa’ chapter, there’s writing on it!”

She turns the book his way and points to the chapter title, where quick script reads, Memorize this, and his century-old cucco scratch has written back, As you wish, O Divine Warrior of the Goddess. Beneath his message is a drawing of an angry face. 

“Here,” he opens up the Sheikah Slate and sucks the book into the inventory. “Impa will get a kick out of this the next time we go to Kakariko.”

“Yes!” she laughs. “What is it that you wanted to show me in here?”

Link leads her to the false bookshelf that hides King Rhoam’s study, pushing it open. She goes inside first, and on instinct from when Lizalfos archers used to roam, he closes it behind himself when he follows her into the small office.

“This was your father’s study,” he says, nodding to the book open on the desk. “That’s his journal. He wanted you to read it.”

Zelda sobers, stepping up to the desk and pressing her fingers to the open pages.

“‘Today,’” she reads aloud, clearing her throat, “‘as the sun rose and a new day was born, my daughter, too, joined this sweet world. In keeping with the traditions of the royal family, I have decided to name her…Zelda. I am not a man accustomed to frivolous musings, but now seems as good a time as any to begin my royal memorandum’.”

He listens to her go through the rest of the entries. The longer she reads, the more her voice wavers.

It’s the final entry that gets to her.

“‘Perhaps I should encourage her to keep researching her beloved relics,’” she finishes, tracing over her father’s century-old script. “‘They may just lead her to answers I can’t provide. For now, I sit anxiously, more a father than a king in this moment. I sit and await my daughter’s return’.”

She closes the little black booklet. 

“Can…” she swallows. “Can you put that in the slate, too?”

Link opens the slate and adds the journal to the inventory without saying a word.

“I-” she stops herself. “I still can’t remember much of him, only what you’ve told me. I hope…I hope the more I read the more I’ll remember.”

“I can tell you about my time with him on the Great Plateau, if you want,” he suggests.

“Maybe…Maybe later. Where to next?” 

“We have to go outside to get to your room. Are you ready to move on?”

After a long moment, she nods.

—

Zelda walks right past the Observation Room, and Link lingers only for a second to stare up at the balcony and wonder, What if.

“What is it?” Zelda asks, when she’s realized that he’s stopped.

“Nothing,” he shakes his head, continuing to walk. “Come on, this way.”

—

Her bedroom is the same way he left it.

“Your journal is there,” he points to where it lies open on her desk. “Your study is right outside, across the bridge. You have research notes, another journal, in there, too."

She flips through the diary, reading all of the entries, and stops on the last one. 

“This says that I dreamt of some kind of woman in gold, the night before the Calamity struck,” she starts. “That she was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear.”

“Yeah,” Link nods. “I think it was the Goddess.”

“I think it was me,” she turns and stares at him. “Because that’s what I dreamt of the night you said that I apologize in my sleep. Golden light and moving lips, saying words I couldn’t hear nor understand. I thought it was another language, but even though I didn’t know what she was saying I knew it was Hylian. I…I was apologizing to myself.”

And that…that’s…

That’s…

“I don’t know what that means,” he confesses.

She laughs. “I don’t, either.”

—

Her study still has the Silent Princess growing out of a pile of dirt on her desk.

“It didn’t feel right, picking it,” Link says, trailing his fingers along the spotless blue and white petals. “You grew this one yourself.”

“Are these-” Zelda squints at a Guardian Stalker diagram pinned to the wall. “Guardians? Like the dead ones on Blatchery Plain?”

“You were studying them Before, remember?”

“Yes, but…” she reaches out and touches the drawing. “I…”

She goes quiet, and doesn’t move.

Link asks, “Zelda?”

She doesn’t answer.

He touches her shoulder, repeats, “Zelda.”

It’s like she’s frozen, like she’s a statue, like she’s lost in a trance like Link was on his quest whenever he was remembering-

His eyes fix on the Guardian diagram her finger hasn’t moved from.

Oh. Oh no.

“Zelda,” he shakes her shoulder. “Zelda, come on.”

She’s finally remembering it, isn’t she? The malice, the rain, the Guardians? Him, dying in her arms?

What was it? she had asked of his scars, back in Kakariko’s bathhouse. 

They’re from Before, he had avoided. From what put me in the Shrine of Resurrection. 

You’re going to be just fine. 

Beep beep beep beep beep-

Link…Link…Wake up, Link.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-

Open your eyes. 

“Zelda,” he insists, hating the way his voice trembles. Come back to me, please come back, please- “Zelda.”

She gasps like she’s been shot with an arrow, a strangled sort of scream clawing its way out of her throat as she recoils from the Guardian diagram, almost tripping over a loose brick if not for him catching her.

She shudders in his arms, her entire body shaking. 

“Link,” she sobs his name, burying her face in his neck. She clings to him like she thinks he’ll disappear if she lets go. “Link-”

She says his name like an apology, like she’s begging for his forgiveness.

“I know,” he soothes, holding her close. “I know.”

“You’re dead,” she hiccups, the words almost impossible to understand through her hysterics, her chest heaving against his side, “You’re dead-”

“Here,” he whispers, grabbing her wrist and tugging her hand under his shirt, placing it on his chest where his heart pounds. “See? I’m alive. It was just a memory. It already happened. The Shrine of Resurrection brought me back, and you woke me up.”

She wheezes into his throat, gasping for breath, and Link slowly lowers them both until he’s sitting on the floor with her curled in his lap.

“You have to breathe, Zelda,” he says in her ear. “Can you do that for me?”

“I killed you,” she cries. “I killed you-”

“You saved me. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have been placed in the Shrine of Resurrection, and I wouldn’t have woken up. I would be dead without you.”

Zelda continues to sob and all Link can do is hold her through it, his heart beating steady and strong under the constant warmth of her palm. 

“Sorry…I’m so sorry…”

—

Eventually, Zelda’s tears stop. She catches her breath.

“What do you need?” Link asks.

She takes her hand out from under her shirt and pulls her face away from his neck, staring up at him. “You’re not angry with me?” 

“What would I be angry about?”

“Because I didn’t-” she swallows. “Because I didn’t know. I’ve seen your scars so many times and I never-”

“You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to relive it.”

She ducks her head. “You really don’t blame me?”

He curls a finger under her chin and lifts her face to meet his eyes. “How could I? We did everything we could back then, and it wasn’t enough. With the Champions dead and the Divine Beasts lost to us, we were going to lose no matter what happened. Calamity Ganon was too smart, but you were better at strategizing, hiding me on the Great Plateau and putting the Master Sword back in Korok Forest. This way, at least, we had everything we needed.”   

Zelda’s eyes drift to his mouth. “You’re sure?”

He nods. “I’m sure.”

She’s going to try and kiss him again. As badly as he wants her to, as badly as he needs her to, now isn’t the time. Not when she’s putting herself back together from a century spent shattering.

He distances himself from her, getting up and helping her to her feet. “Do you want to go back home?”

“Yes,” she says after a moment. He actively avoids the disappointment in her eyes. “Please.”

—

They cross Blatchery Plain.

"'A monument to faith'," she murmurs. 

"What was that?" Link asks.

"That's what you called this place when I asked," she explains. "You said it was, 'A monument to faith'. What did you mean, then?"

He swallows. "I believed in your ability to unlock your power. We all did, us Champions. We knew you could do it, and when you did, here, after all of the death and destruction...it was our faith in you finally paying off. This graveyard of Guardians is a testament to that. So...I think it's a monument to you, to our faith in you."

"Like one has faith in the Goddess."

"No," he shakes his head. "You're not the Goddess, and you never tried or wanted to be. You're Zelda. All I care about is that you're Zelda."

"What if..." she falters, sniffling. "What if I'm Princess Zelda, too?"

He fixes his grip on Horse's reins, weaving them through the dead Guardians. "That doesn't change a thing. At the end of the day, you're still my Zelda." 

—

Hateno is in a frenzy when they ride through the entrance gate, villagers running left and right carrying different supplies, food, and yelling orders.

"What's going on?!" Link demands of a passing villager, pulling on Horse so he doesn't step on anyone. 

"There's a big storm forming by the beach!" They respond, trying not to drop a stack of buckets. "It looks like it's going to be a doozy, and we're prone to flooding with all of the farmland!"

"Link! Zelda!" Manny pushes through the crowd. "Thank the Goddess you guys are back! I'll help you put Horse away!"

"Has there never been a thunderstorm here, before?" Zelda asks as Link lets Manny take Horse's lead and guide them up the hill to the house.

"Not one like this," Manny replies. "Probably not since the Age of Burning Fields!"

"We've heard of storms popping up all over Hyrule," Link says with a frown. "Any idea why?"

"I heard it's from when the sky went red a couple months ago, right around the time you showed up with Zelda? The clouds rushed across the sky, and Prima's dad thinks it's because of that. The weather patterns are all kinds of messed up now!"

Zelda's next breath shudders. She whispers in his ear, "Link..."

"It's fine," he whispers back. Did he do this by facing the Calamity? Is Hateno going to flood because of him? “It's just rain."

They reach the house and Link leaps off the saddle, helping Zelda down. There's a pile of cloth, wooden planks, and nails in front of the door.

"You gotta board up your windows," Manny explains, motioning to the stuff as he settles Horse in the stall next to the house. "In case that tree falls or branches get loose from the wind. You don't need to worry about glass raining down on you at any time from the impact."

"And what about Horse?" Zelda questions, worry in her eyes as their steed huffs and nuzzles Manny's hand.

"He's been through the Calamity," Link assures her. "He'll be fine in a storm. Can you go inside and unpack the saddle bags while Manny and I board the windows?"

(As morbid as it sounds, he can always pay Malanya a visit.)

"Y-Yeah," Zelda hesitates before nodding, rushing into the house. 

"All right, Manny," he picks up a hammer and a few nails. "Let's do it fast, I know you have to help Prima with the inn."

—

The clouds are black and the wind is howling by the time Manny leaves and Link finally goes inside the house. 

Zelda is sitting at the table, scrolling through the Sheikah Slate. He unbuckles the Master Sword, sets it against the wall next to the door, and sits down across from her, catching her attention. 

"Are you all right?" 

"I'm fine," she answers, turning the slate off and setting it aside. "Are you?"

"I'm a little worried."

"Why?"

He motions to the covered windows. "It's never rained like this for me, and for you it's never rained at all. It...It was raining on Blatchery Plain when I...when you unlocked your powers, and the wound of it is fresh for the both of us. The rain, after I first remembered what happened there, sent me into a panic. I thought I was dying again. I don't want the same to happen to you."

She shakes her head. “It won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

Her smile is weak. “I know myself, now, what I’ve…experienced. A little thunder and lightning is nothing compared to a century of the Calamity roaring in my face.”

Right, she…

“Okay,” he reaches across the table and holds her hands. “Good. Because, being honest with you, I’m terrified.” 

(She’s always been stronger than him.)

“Okay,” she squeezes his hands. “What can I do? What do you need?”

“I-” he bites his lip. His voice is small when he requests, “Can you, um…Can you hold me?”

(There’s a vague memory in the back of his head, from when he was small, of waking up from a nightmare screaming. He remembers it being cold and dark, but then warm hands were picking him up and holding him and there was a low voice in his ear rumbling, You’re all right, son. You’re going to be just fine.)

Her expression softens, and he resolutely ignores the sympathy—the something else what emotion is that she’s never looked at him like that Before—in her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

(He remembered it after he broke down in Impa’s lap after he realized that he had to have had family Before, and that they were all dead. He had laid his head in her lap and she had stroked his hair and Paya had made tea for his raw, screaming throat.)

They go upstairs, kicking off their boots, and all the while Link’s face burns with shame.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. 

“What are you sorry for?” Zelda crawls beneath the sheets, opening her arms.

His instincts rear their head and he apologizes, “I’m supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”

“I thought we already established that we’re not officially the Hero and Princess anymore,” she pats the empty space beside her in their bed. “We’re partners, and partners take care of each other. Now come here and let me hug you. I need to at least return the favor from the castle.”

Again, Link bites his lip. 

“Link.”

He takes a deep breath before joining her, letting her wrap her arms around him and hold him close. Her fingers tangle in his hair, and he drags his over the bumps of her spine. 

"You didn't board the window above the bed?" she questions, quiet.

"There's nothing around that could slam into it, it's too high," he whispers. "Or, at least that's what Manny said, and I trust his judgement more. Why, do you want it boarded up?"

"No, it's fine. I want to watch the rain once it starts. I like thunderstorms.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I like them a lot. My mother would sit on a windowsill whenever it rained, listening to the thunder, inside enough that she was under the awning of the window but just barely outside so she could reach out and touch the droplets. She-” There’s a smile in Zelda’s voice. “She would hold me in her lap and tell me about the water cycle of all things, explaining to me how heat makes water boil and evaporate, and then that vapor would turn into clouds, and then it would fall back to land as rain just to do it all over again. I think it’s why I like science so much. It’s why I love the rain. It reminds me of her.”

“Do…” he closes his eyes, soothed by her touch and the rhythm of her speech. “Are there any more stories about your mother that have come back to you?”

“Yes, there are. Do you want to hear one?” 

He nods, and she launches into a story about a time her mother made a fool out of a Rito ambassador.

—

Link wakes to sheets of white rain slamming against the window and a cacophony of thunder.

He looks back over his shoulder for Zelda, not feeling her arms around his waist or her warmth against his back, and bolts upright when she’s missing from the sheets, the space she usually occupies cool to the touch. 

“Zelda?” he calls, almost falling out of bed in his haste to get to his feet, his voice echoing throughout the house. When he gets no response, he looks out into the first floor of the house and she’s not there either- “Zelda?”

Thunder crashes overhead and the candles hanging over the table sway, howling wind rattling the windows even through the wooden boards he nailed over them, and then-

There, just barely, on the edge of Link’s straining ears: Laughter. 

He practically trips down the stairs and throws the door open.

Zelda is standing by the bridge, her arms thrown out to her sides and spread wide like she’s getting ready to hug the torrential downpour that devours her. Her head is tilted back, basking in it, and she turns in a slow circle, her shoulders shaking as she cackles into the next clap of thunder like its told her the best joke.

It’s why I love the rain. 

“Zelda!” he calls, running towards her, his bare feet slipping in the mud. What is she thinking, standing out here all alone while he's sleeping- “Zelda!”

She faces him, and her smile only widens.

(She hasn’t smiled like that since before they entered the castle. What changed?)

"You snuck mushrooms into my food!" she shouts through the noise. "And when I yelled at you, you laughed in my face!”

Link stops. 

You’re not a morning person, he had whispered to her months ago. You like to read. Your least favorite food is mushrooms, but I’ve snuck them into some dishes because they’re good for you. You yelled at me when you found out, but I just laughed.

He...He only told her that when she was sleeping in Paya’s bed back in Kakariko, during that first night after they defeated the Calamity. She was dead to the world, then, not even stirring when he pulled her off of Horse’s saddle and tucked her in, so it’s impossible that she would’ve heard him say that because she was-

"You like pumpkin stew!” she continues. “You think it’s silly that I had to wear my formal dress everywhere in the castle! Your favorite constellation is the Goddess’s Harp! You had a father, a mother, and a younger sister who thought the world of you!”

He staggers in her direction, stumbling to a stop in front of her. They’re so close that she could touch him, and touch him she does, grabbing his hands with both of hers. “You-”

(A sister? He had a sister?)

“Urbosa hosted a dinner in Gerudo Town,” she says, breathless. “She brought you and Revali matching outfits as a prank, and you loved wearing that sirwal. Daruk asked for a veil, and Mipha tried to take a picture. We swapped clothes for a day after Impa stole Purah’s goggles and Purah stole her hat, and you let me wear the Master Sword to sell the act so I could get out of my daily prayers. You prayed to the Goddess while I stood guard at your back, and my father was somehow none the wiser. Or he let us do it, but that doesn’t make sense with what I remember of him, so-”

“Zelda,” he whispers, his voice shaking.

She…

“Link,” hers trembles, her eyes shining.

Link…Link…Wake up, Link…

How she says his name, she…she says his name like it’s important, like he’s important, like she did when he first woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection and heeded her call to Open your eyes, like he’s everything to her-

"Link," she says his name like it’s a prayer.

"Zelda," he says hers like it’s the answer to all of his.

She grins, laughing as thunder crashes over their heads, and he takes her face between his hands, leaning his forehead against hers.

“May I ask…” he starts, his voice breaking, tears hot in the corners of his eyes and mixing with the rain, “Do you really remember me?”

Please, please say that you do. 

In response, she leans up and captures his mouth with hers, one hand fisted in his shirt and the other cradling the back of his head, her fingers tangling in his soaked hair. He kisses her back with just as much fervor, his hands lowering from her cheeks to grip her hips and pull her flush against him.

She doesn’t taste like wine, her mouth instead coated in rainwater, but this time he can taste that second, other thing, the thing he struggled to describe a hundred years ago when she kissed him under the stars on the Observation Room balcony.

Home, he finally identifies, here in the middle of a hurricane outside of their house in Hateno. She tastes like home.

“Yes,” she whispers against his lips, the single word piercing through the pouring rain. She kisses him again. “Yes.”