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The Princess of Hyrule is not to be touched.

Link knows this, it was one of the first rules that had been barked at him before his appointment. He supervises dutifully as maids and courtiers flutter around her like startled wildlife to stay out of her path, handing her things with carefully tucked fingers and hooded eyes. They are mindful to avoid speaking with her beyond greetings and if she has any needs, which she never does. 

He watches as even the King, her own father, approaches her with tightly clasped fists at the small of his back. His Majesty addresses her with a cold demeanor that’s more suited for the barracks, in Link’s humble opinion. 

And if he pictures his own fist swooping up into the bitter man’s oversized gut when he’s training, he keeps it to himself. 

There are some that are allowed to touch her Highness. Impa and Lady Urbosa of course, and those Sheikah scientists, the loud ones, they put their hands on her freely and she welcomes the touch. Link studies the way her shoulders tick down a fraction at the brush of Urbosa’s long nails across her back when she visits. How she’ll follow willingly, gladly even, when Perry? No, Purah snatches her wrist to show her something. 

His fingers twitch. 

He’s not made the list. He keeps his hands firmly bound behind his back, knuckles gone white with the force of his restraint battling against himself when the sun catches in her hair in such a way—

So, the Princess of Hyrule, a decorative bird in a cage that the King is too eager to throw a drape over to shush her chirping, is not to be touched. 

Except for sometimes when she is. 

Sometimes, Link is required to touch and be touched by her, he is the Hero after all. 

He finds that he likes these moments very much. 

Her hand is small in the dip of his elbow, smaller than he thought it would be against his arm. She’d glided up to him with a stern expression, eyebrows drawn together, lips pushed into a thin line. She wasn’t fond of him, he knew, and he really did try to not be fond of her for her sake.

“Don’t try anything,” she snaps at him, and it almost makes him laugh because they both know it’s ludicrous to even imply such a thing so the threat is null, and he really had tried. 

The hesitation in her eyes as she reaches for his elbow foils any intimidation she’d been trying to throw at him either way, so she hides it by turning her nose up and away when she’s settled into place. 

He has to fight himself to not flex her closer. 

The King drones on, chewing on a lot of words without actually saying much of anything at all, and Link does give her a small squeeze when she stiffens even further than he thought possible at the pointed passive aggression of Rhoam, disguised weakly like progress to his people. He chances a look at her and finds her eyeing him, expression unreadable and so very green before her eyes are back facing forward. 

Her fingers soften against him, just a little, and if he focuses on it, he thinks she may have squeezed him back. 

When the King dismisses the court, the Princess dismisses him and he feels the loss of her touch like a crater in his arm long after her skirts have brushed over his boots on her swift exit from the sanctum. 

He takes the long way back to his room, stepping outside just as the sky is beginning to dip into dusk. The warm tones and bright lights of the sunset bounce off of the pristine exterior of the castle in just the way they’re supposed to, stone walls shining tall and proud against a painted backdrop done by The Golden Three Themselves, he supposes. 

If he knows her Highness, he should be able to see the light of her window flickering in spite of the candy coated sky around them, so when he rounds the corner that brings that window into view he huffs, because he does know her. 

He meanders, contemplating a meal. The Princess is fasting so she will be in her room all night to rest before a day of prayer tomorrow, which means a day of standing for Link, and he knows that light in the study will be on far later into the evening than it should be so he’ll have a testy Princess as well. 

He’ll be sure to pack extra snacks for when she breaks her fast.

When he passes her hallway to see she has a guard already stationed at her door he knows then that he’s been assigned to rest along with her. 

Moving slowly through the motions of his evening routine, the bittersweet privacy of his own room as her Highness’ personal guard feels suffocatingly isolating even though he’s just a few doors away from her and he wonders if she feels the same, just shoved into a much larger box than him. 

He crawls into bed, hand clenched over the spot where the ghost of her fingers held the knit of his sleeve, and eyes as green as the wildest of grass stare back at him when he finally falls asleep. 

“Sir Knight,” barely above a whisper, and her hand is on his arm. 

Link blinks his attention to the Princess, following her line of sight up to the top shelf of one of the many lining the Royal Library. He’s moving to reach for the rolling ladder before she can ask and she snatches her hand back, clasping it with the other in front of her as she waits for him to make his way back over. 

“Thank you,” she quips, already turning away from him. “It’s the green one, up near the left.'' 

He allows her to lead him towards the end of the shelf, long hair swishing like a golden wave as she eyes the other texts on their way. 

She points up when the book is within reach with a perfectly manicured nail, her long sleeve folding under its own weight at the dip of her elbow. He finds himself wondering if her dress is heavy as he climbs the ladder to retrieve her book. It has to be, her golden belt alone must weigh her down like a rope around her waist, tethered to a ship gone adrift. 

He feels he can relate.

“I’ve been curious about how to make elixirs instead of just using the ones from the apothecary,” she says as he makes his way back down and he forces his face to remain neutral. “I’m hoping this will be able to give me an idea of where to start.”

The pads of her fingers brush against the tops of his as he hands the book off to her and he feels it reverberate down to the arches of his feet. 

“There are so many different kinds of elixirs,” she continues, turning on her heel to return to her camp at one of the long tables, facing away from the main doors to keep her carefully hidden behind the back of a large chair.

It was a safety measure, definitely, but maybe not so innocent in the way as just to spare her from assassins smart enough to infiltrate the castle. 

“I’m sure there are more than I even know of, seeing how large this book is.”

Link settles behind and just off to the side of her when she’s hunkered back down, hidden himself by a large pillar. No one can see them from anywhere else but directly in front of them unless they move, and they don’t often do that. The King has bustled in through the doors before, more than once, yelling about something or another and asking where the Princess or the Hero were. If he could find one he’d find the other. 

No one knew. 

The look she had given him when the doors clicked shut again the first time it had happened, with Link not giving her away, was… confusing. The murmured “Thank you,” slipping past her trembling lips was overwhelming, but he knew he’d made the right choice, despite who he actually answers to. 

The Princess comes to the library to hide, if she didn’t mind being found they would be in her study. So they hide. 

He can see her eyelashes dart about as she takes in the new information that’s been supplied to her. Her lithe little fingers caress the pages as she reads, moving slowly towards the next corner in anticipation to turn with a soft push. 

He’s not sure what it is about the library that softens her Highness’ edges, but he does not complain. He finds the rainy days that they’re trapped in there are not so bad, if dull. 

She’s usually quiet, with the occasional comment or rhetorical question chirped out in his general direction, though he knows she does not expect an answer. Sometimes he allows himself to get lost in the sounds of her speaking near him, he’s not always sure of what she’s talking about but the softened tones of her melodic voice wrap around him like a hand-knit scarf, cupping his neck and brushing behind his ears as she hypothesizes over terms he’s not sure the definition of. 

Sometimes he imagines what he would say to one of her questions if he were to answer her; the Princess in his daydreams invites him to sit with her, picks his brain, and smiles at him. Though he knows this Princess would scoff that he had the audacity to listen to her rambling.

“Have you ever made an elixir?” she’s turned to face him and he hopes she can’t see that he’s startled by it. 

Her face is open, eyebrows up. 

He nods, shifting his weight. 

“What kind? A strengthening one surely,” she says, giggling a little at her own joke and Link grinds his teeth to make sure his jaw hadn’t hinged open. 

She’s asked him a question, a direct one, one that she wants a genuine answer to, and not just an attempt to get a rise out of him it seems. She’d joked at him, poorly, but that didn’t matter.

“Sneaky,” he manages just as her expression begins to fall from his shocked silence, and suppresses a cringe as he clears his throat.

Her eyes light up, back straightening as her lips curl into a grin. 

“Sir Knight,” she chides, and he thinks he may faint. Her eyes are sparkling like deep mine emeralds in her gilded head, fingers lacing together under her chin as she leans her elbows onto the meticulously inlaid table. “What were you doing with a sneaky elixir? Not spying I hope.” 

He’s not sure if he should answer her, but she’s already turned back, smile still playing on the pout of her lips and he knows that she’s content without one. 

He wants to tell her, he realizes. He wants to tell her that he’d found the recipe in his father’s coat pocket as a boy and made it, that he’d then snuck out to try and steal some milk from their neighbor’s cow and ended up with a broken arm. That his father had not given him a healing one after making and dumping it in front of him to teach him a lesson.

What would she do with that information? That the hero had decided to steal from a neighbor? From his own father?

It’s probably for the best that she doesn’t expect him to speak very often.

The Princess decides to take the elixir book with her when it’s time for her evening devotions, she pauses after she goes by him as he holds the library door open for her, she smells of clean laundry and rare flowers. 

Link exhales slowly. 

“Would you take this to my study for me, please?” she asks, sheepish, holding the book out to him. “I’m afraid I lost track of time and the priestesses are already mad at me so I need to go straight to the temple, and if they see me with this…” she huffs, brows pinching. “I’ll just be going to bed after that so you can be dismissed for the night, I’ll have one of the temple guards walk me back since it’s not too far from my rooms anyway.”

She’s nervous, offering the book to him with both hands splayed around the green canvas of the cover. With her hold on the thing, his fingers dance across hers as he takes it from her. Her cheeks tint, and the ceiling spins. 

She turns and makes it three steps before stopping. 

“Um,” her voice is small. Link gulps as she faces him again, abashed, and he’s not sure how much more of this he can take. “Do you think we could collect elixir making ingredients on our next trip?”

Surely he’s hit his head, he fell from the ladder and died on the marble floor of the library. 

“Of course, Princess,” he says, from somewhere, and she grins, sunny and honest. 

He finds himself smiling back before he can think to school it, though when she lifts her hand in a small wave before quickly clutching into a fist and hastening her way towards the castle’s temple, he’s glad he didn’t. 

Eldin is hot. 

Link tugs at the leather strap at his shoulder, he hates being hot. Everything feels heavier, sticky from sweat and dirt. The ground reflects itself from the force of the sun and he hates it; a distracting, sparkling trick of the eye. At least the desert is mostly flat and dry, he can handle that, it’s easier to stay focused when he doesn’t have to take confusing rock formations into account, even if the sun can feel too close at times. 

Even if a certain group of defects set out to assassinate the Princess is apparently stationed there.

The oppressive weight of Death Mountain, though, with its natural springs and proximity to the Domain bares down on them like the force of the ocean itself and his tunic feels like a sack of rice. He’s lucky he didn’t need a bandage for his forehead, as it would have surely slid off anyway.

He does not mind it as much at night, though. 

Away from the blazing core of the city, the Princess sighs in relief and it tickles his ears as if she’d whispered right into them. 

“It’s like walking into a different room once you’re past that bridge,” she says, voice airy, and Link focuses on his feet for a few paces to make sure he doesn’t stumble from the shiver that shoots up his spine. 

“The lava pools make a big difference,” he says, thankful that his voice hadn’t betrayed his inner plight. 

“Yes!” She exclaims, spinning to face him, her face is as bright as the lava of the city and she steps back a bit before pausing. 

Link catches her eye as he walks up to her, pinching her pinky as he passes, and she turns to continue by his side, a small smile softening her face against the harsh glow around them. The strain in his shoulders lightens at the sight of it. 

“It’s so interesting that it feels like…” she pauses and he can almost hear her searching for the word she wants. 

He wonders if the information in her brain is filed away like her field journals, stuffed full of extra papers and pressed foliage and ‘flat enough’ objects, fit to burst. 

“A wall or something,” she decides on and he coughs in a poor attempt to keep a laugh that tried to escape in. “Oh hush,” she pouts at him, turning to glare at his profile, though there is no bite and he does bark out a real laugh then. “It’s too hot to think of more elaborate vocabulary, sir.”

“Forgive me, Princess,” he relents after a few leftover chuckles fall past his lips. She’s not wrong, she rarely is. 

“You’re forgiven,” she says with a sniff, voice haughty as she turns her nose up and away from him, smile barely contained across the bow of her lips.

She lets him lead her towards their destination, a surprise from him. The smell of sulfur hits their noses before the source of it comes into view, and the Princess gasps beside him when it does, clasping her hands on his arm.

“A hot spring! I had no idea there was one over here!”

He mourns her touch when she bounds over to the water, the toes of her boots teetering right on the edge as she leans her body over it. He’d seen her cast long glances at the steaming pools on their way up that morning, but they were still too far from the city and the sun was still too bright so he hadn’t allowed them to stop, she hid her disappointment well. 

Her long hair falls around her head like a wild gilded curtain and he wonders if she’d want to put it up as he catches up to her, it must be unbearable in this humidity. Is she even allowed to put it up? Was there some princess rule about her hair that he didn’t know about? That same hair in question swishes around her shoulders as she straightens. 

“So fascinating,” she hums, turning to face him. The spring casts her face in a cool mint, her eyes glowing. “Is it safe to go in? It’s not too hot?”

He clears his throat in an attempt to banish the thought of stepping into a hot spring with the Princess. 

“It’s not too hot,” he says quickly, mouth moving before he’s allowed it to and she makes a thoughtful noise, turning back to look at the water. “We can put our feet in, if you’d like.”

He cringes but she, apparently, would like that very much because her face turns into a spotlight as if he’d offered her a sparkling cave of hidden treasure and not a small soak in some stenchy water. 

“Really, we can?” 

Instead of answering, he unclasps the sword from his back, muscles singing in relief from the pressure as he slides the leather off his shoulder, placing the sword down against a rock close enough to where he’ll sit to grab easily. He doesn’t hide his smile when he hears a laugh pop out of her as he moves to take off his boots, then watches in his periphery as she does the same. 

“I’ve read that hot springs have healing properties,” she chatters happily as he steps into the water, and he turns to offer his hand as she pads over to him. 

“They do,” he says, leaning closer when she reaches for him. “Your feet are about to thank you.”

With a giggle, her hand slides into his and she steps into the spring with him carefully. The brush of her fingers shoots under his skin like the shock of an open wire in one of her experiments as her hand slips away and she sits slowly with a long sigh, eyes closed, long lashes casting longer shadows over her flushed cheeks. Link perches quickly next to her to stop himself from gaping at her blissed face, staring hard at his rippling, blistered feet.

“This is heavenly,” she purrs and it takes all he has just to grunt in agreement, it really does feel nice. 

He tries not to give much thought to the aches and pains of his body, but the water lapping at his shins is so soothing that he finds himself wishing he could justify a reason to climb all of the way in. 

“Did you know,” she starts quietly, breaking him from his temptation with a slow lift of her foot out of the water. “That the castle has hot springs under it?” 

He watches as she points her foot, not yet pruned, and rolls her ankle before she gently sets it back down. The spring twinkles and bubbles when he leans back on his hands, taking her in from the angle he’s used to. There’s a light sheen of sweat on her face, the reflections of the water casting soft lines across her cheeks.

“I didn’t,” he says eventually and she smiles a little. 

“Mhmm,” she lifts her other foot, it’s pruny. “I don’t think anyone has been down there for a long time,” she says, resting her foot back in the water. “Maybe they’re dry.”

She accepts his thoughtful noise with a sigh. He expects her to go into detail about their location or discovery but she doesn’t; she must be tired, as weighed down by the heat as he is. She instead pushes herself up to scoot closer to him, and Link holds his breath as her leg comes to rest against his. She pauses, he waits, then she leans in, slowly, as if she’s considering not. 

But she does, and he lifts his chin to make room for her as she settles herself at his side. 

“Is this alright?” Her voice is quiet, he can see over her shoulder that she’s fiddling with her fingers, nervous. 

It’s probably not. 

Having her Highness snuggling up to her personal knight on some hot sweaty mountain, with their feet dipped in a volcanic spring and his weapon laid beside him instead of on him, is probably frowned upon in most circles, vow to be friends, and his name on the list aside. 

“Yes,” he says, despite himself, letting out his breath and allowing the rush of her body on his to descend upon him like a sudden storm of rain. 

She relaxes against him, leaning her head on his shoulder and nestling in. He resists the urge to shove his nose into her hair so he rests his cheek to it instead, pressing the arm at her back closer, touching but not.

Link wants to touch Zelda very bad.

He knows he’s staring too hard at her, but he can’t help it. She’s been looking at that damned mountain for almost a full half hour, her stew growing cold in her lap. He wants to figure out a way to put her in his pack, keep her in there and away from the landscape that gloats at her, from Revali’s seeping pessimism, from Mipha’s mollific grace.

He understands why it was important for the other champions to come, he does, but that doesn’t mean he wants them here, and he wishes he could hold her. 

“Little bird, you need to eat, love,” Urbosa says as she sweeps down upon her like a bird herself and Link tears his gaze away, glaring down at his own uneaten meal. 

Her sigh makes its way over to him and he closes his eyes against it. 

“I need to do my evening devotions,” he hears her murmur, he snaps up to look at her as she sets her bowl down at her feet. 

Urbosa frowns. 

“Zelda, that can wait, please eat—”

“I’ll heat it up when I return. Link?” 

He scrambles to stand, shoving his bowl in the dirt, and turns to follow her as she moves quickly past him. He doesn’t look at the others as he makes his way from camp, but he hears Revali’s scoff and has to fight himself to not to turn back and clock him in right his stupid beak. He focuses on the set of Zelda’s shoulders instead, too high, and hastens to catch up with her. 

“Pri—”

“I saw a small statue just up this way a bit,” she says quickly, not bothering to turn or slow to allow him to keep pace.

He huffs, trailing behind on the path until she finally stops short in front of a large, egg-like stone nestled between some overgrown bushes and an ancient oak tree. They’re far enough from camp and tucked around a corner that he can no longer see or hear their party mulling about. He tears his eyes away from the rock to look at her, her hands are twisting up against her chest and he has to touch her. 

“Zelda…” he keeps his voice quiet, he doesn’t want to jostle.

She doesn’t flinch when he brushes his hand across the span of her shoulders, just chokes on a laugh that would have been humorless anyway.

“I guess I was mistaken,” she says, and then she’s on the ground. 

He supports her weight as she doubles over before the rock in the bushes, her fists digging into thick grass until he hefts her across his lap and she scrambles to clutch at his arm instead. Link lets her cry, half kneeling, half laying in his arms, long hair weaving through the blades of grass like spilled embroidery thread beneath them. He keeps her from rolling with a hand clasped heavily at her hip, holding her against him and splaying the hand of the arm she’s trapped across her ribs, as close to a hug as he can get. 

She doesn’t cry long but she slumps over when she does, dead weight, and he struggles to kick his feet out from under him in an attempt to keep her level as she moves to gather herself. 

Zelda pants, gulps, and pushes herself up, sniffling. He lets his grip fall but keeps his hands on her while she steadies herself. He studies her face, flushed and lacking in color all at once, her eyes are dark, like a deep lake that light can’t quite reach. She’s glaring at the rock, frustrated, upset, so he drags her up to stand. She doesn’t protest but she doesn’t put much effort into it as he trudges them behind the bushes and slumps back down into the grass against the old tree, gathering her into his arms. 

She’s limp for a few breaths and then she settles into him with purpose, wrapping her arms about his middle and pressing her cheek into his collar.

“I’m scared,” she whispers once her breathing has fully calmed, it tickles his neck but he suppresses the shiver by running his hand up her back. 

“I know.”

She leans away to look at him, face pinched. 

“You’re not scared.”

It’s not a question, but he’s not sure what to say.

Is he scared? 

No, he’s not scared. Anxious, maybe. Worried, he guesses. 

Not scared.

“No,” he says, petting her hair away from her shoulder to press his chilled nose to her warm cheek, and she doesn’t react to the feeling.

“Why?” it’s as if her voice had tried to protect her from asking that question, and he may not have heard it if he wasn’t so close, if he didn’t know her so well. He’s not sure what to say to that either.

He can’t quite find the words to articulate that he just trusts her. That’s it. That’s not an answer she wants.

“I…” he starts, and sighs, and pulls her closer. “Don’t know, Zelda, I’m just not.”

Her eyelashes tease his neck as her eyes dart around, thinking loudly like she always does. He runs his fingers through her hair, indulging. She allows it.

“At least that makes one of us,” she mutters after a time, resigned, he knows, but she nestles in, finally fully relaxing into his arms. 

He hums his appreciation, tightening his grip and petting up and down her side. The wind whistles around them, cold air from the peak of their next destination sliding down like a freshly washed bed sheet in the breeze. The bushes rustle, he can smell the sap.

“Did you really see that stone as a statue?”

Her fingers don’t stop the idle pattern they had begun to do on his arm when he asks this question.

“I’m not sure,” she says, and he believes her.

The group doesn’t know how long evening devotions take, and Link lets that knowledge seep into his bones so he can sink further into the Princess. They should head back before too long, Urbosa might try to come get her herself and mother her to death if she doesn’t eat before nightfall, and really he agrees with the Cheiftain, but Zelda’s fingers have worked their way between his bracer and under his sleeve to touch his skin and so he casts all other thoughts away. 

He instead ducks his head to lay his cheek against her hair and makes a silent vow to hold her even closer than this when they’re on the mountain.

One of the first things Link thinks he remembers is the brush of slender fingers against his own. 

He finds that he has the urge to pass things off, or share, give to someone who isn’t there. If he gets far enough as to extend his elbow out before he catches himself, he’ll feel them. 

Cool and soft, one has a little notch in the top knuckle from writing so much and hesitant calluses make their way over the pads of them from the scarcity but fierceness of their use, just a ghost against his hand. 

He wills himself to conjure the owner of those fingers, to remember the hands that are attached. 

He doesn’t.

He dreams of those same fingers touching his neck, his arm, cradling his head. He dreams of grass, of gemstones, of vast lakes and deep jungle flora, of herbs used for medicine. He dreams of holding them, sometimes soft and sometimes not, and sometimes they are still when he holds them. In others they’re running. Just running.

He finds a memory of the Princess, but he’s not sure that means he actually remembers her. He thinks he may remember the slope of her shoulder and Impa, old like an overripe white plum, urges him to find more clues from her, despite his very strange waking, or existing? Goddess, situation, he finds this all a little difficult to take a hold of.

He searches for them anyway.

The next thing he’s pretty sure he remembers is the feeling of hair. Soft, spun gold brushing across his knuckles, threading through his fingers, tickling his cheek. He feels it sometimes in the morning, waking up in a soft bed of a stable in freshly laid sheets, a little graze on his jaw.

He finds himself thinking about those phantom touches when he passes hung linens on his way to return a cucco to Cado, again. The scent of them jostles him so hard that he clutches the poor bird tight to his chest. It squawks and pecks at his hands until Link tosses it down in a huff, glowering as it trapses back up the stupid hill.

He dreams of golden necklaces wrapping around his hands, shimmering and invaluable; heirlooms. They climb up his arms like the bottom of his pants soak up water when he steps into the river to feel the current on his skin, but when he reaches out to try and return their caress they fall away, each bead and chain and bauble plinking against the glass floor like a small storm of hail. 

He finds more memories, jostled inside the beasts. He feels a relief, like a weight lifted from his lungs, and a sense of closure he didn’t know he needed when he says his goodbyes to the people his body used to be connected to.

His new body is connected to them too, he supposes, in a different way. 

He also thinks the Princess doesn’t like him very much, but he can’t find a single part of him that feels the same way towards her. 

In fact, he feels quite the opposite. 

It’s confusing. 

It’s confusing to see himself in the same place a century ago, walls secured, faces that set something alight in his head, but he can’t find the context for. Stress evident in the set of his very own shoulders.

It’s confusing to remember the Princess, why she wants him to remember the things she’s asked him to. It’s confusing to parse that he once existed before, had failed before, and now he has a job to do in the future instead and that’s the only thing he really knows besides his name. 

It’s also confusing to be in love with a ghost that he can’t even recall in the first place, one that’s not too fond of him.

But, she doesn’t sound like she hates him when she tells him to be careful, tickling his ears like a summer breeze.

He definitely begins to remember a weight that should be in his arms. It hits him when he’s huddled up in a small cave to wait out a heavy rain in Faron. There’s something missing. The smell of rare flowers, the feel of rich fabric under his fingers as he makes sure his hold is secure. There’s a perfect spot on his lap to be held in and he doesn’t know why. 

He cries, for some reason, about that. About missing the feeling of holding someone he’s not sure the identity of. He wonders if it’s the Princess, he feels like it must be though he’s not sure how with the information he currently has tossing around his head like loose marbles. 

He misses her, he thinks, he’s pretty sure he does.

He dreams of flowers, fields and fields of them, they smell warm and deep and they weigh him down, a solid force on his chest, but he doesn’t mind. It’s pleasant, shaped to fit him, and he’s safe. The roots dig up his arm but it doesn’t hurt, threading through his veins like the intricate embroidery of a lovingly made quilt.

Then there’s a shift. 

He remembers the desert.

All the things before it start to fall into their proper places, and he feels a bit less like he’s turning on a different axis than the earth beneath him, pushing on with a new understanding. She begins to make sense to him again.

He doesn’t have every piece but his brain is filling in the details when he finds himself staring out at the land around him, missing her so much he’s frozen with it.

He remembers the curve of the Princess’ lips, how she smiled at him when he brought her a small bouquet of wildflowers, shy and sweet. He remembers the way she would speak right against him at night when they were traveling, tucked at his side by the fire, lips brushing over the skin of his neck, his cheek, his brow, wherever she would land as she told him her favorite folktales at the end of a long evening before he would cocoon her in her bedroll, returning to watch the stars pass at the entrance of her tent.

They come in flashes. He worries sometimes that he’s just so starved for her attention that he’s conjuring far off scenarios to keep himself company. He has no one to confirm or deny these visions, so he chooses to believe they are real and they keep him company when the world feels too big. 

He dreams of the Princess pressing her lips to his cheek and whispering “I’ll miss you” against his mouth, her body molded to his. 

They do not kiss, though he wishes they did. 

He dreams of his mother. 

He dreams of sitting in a chair next to a bed, of holding his mother’s hand. 

“You’re a brave boy,” she says, and there’s a flash of light in the ceiling. 

Her grip is too tight. 

“I love you,” she says, and then he’s underwater. 

Ice crawls up his arm, spreading in fractals from the arrow pierced through his palm that has him pinned against a table made from bright luminous ore. He stands from his chair, tries to fight the spread up his bicep but the water is too heavy and he wakes, gasping and soaked in sweat, just as the ice crystals reach for his throat. 

He finds the Princess’ diary. He wonders if she’ll be upset that he read it, but he can’t find it in him to feel guilty.

He stares at the sanctum. 

He carries the diary in his pack and reads it when she feels too far away. He’s comforted by her harsh words now, he thinks he would have been hurt by them before if he knew she had written them, even after their conversation. There’s a charm in them now, he thinks, in what she’d decided was important enough to immortalize in writing a century ago. The looping sprawl of her script fills in the gaps between what she’s shown him and what he thinks he knows and he can see the smudges of her fingertips across the corners of the pages.

It keeps her human, to him. 

He dreams of her, in a field of tall grass, her dress is free of its belt and her skin free of her ceremonial jewelry. She smiles at him. 

“It’s okay to take your time, you know.”

He blinks. Her voice is omnipresent, echoing around him like when he hears her before a blood moon, but she’s right there. 

“Zelda, I—”

“I know.”

The grass is soft, like the expensive woolen yarn he could get from the artisans in town to send to his mother. 

“You need to get the sword, Link, before you come to me.”

Fresh linen, rare flowers. 

“I know. I—” he sighs. “I know.”

The grass twinkles like little bells as she glides her way over to him, cupping his face in her hands, he melts into her touch. She feels of nothing but she holds him up anyway. 

“I believe in you,” she says fiercely, and he wakes to the sounds of Koroks bustling about around him. 

He finds the last memory, and then Impa tells him that there’s actually another and he feels so frustrated he could scream and so relieved he could cry all at the same time. He knew it wasn’t enough, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t be good, he was still reeling from the memory of her bleeding feet and clutching hands as he held her, rapidly blinking away heavy rain; but he wasn’t prepared. 

Pride, first, he knew she could, then something so deep rooted he can feel it clawing its way into his lungs, body fighting against the weight of what happened.

He's seeing her hold him as he drifts to wherever he went, leaving her all alone to try and sort this disaster out while he’s stuck in a cave, a failure, and he’s struck with the need to have her in his arms again right that second. 

But he takes his time, like she said, lets the feeling hang over him like a curse as he continues on his course. He does what he’s supposed to do, what the monks and Zelda ask him to do. He buys a home, fusses over it little between his traveling and preparations, but takes more pride in it than almost anything else he’s done so far either way. 

He hugs Impa before he goes, and she sinks into his embrace, old and frail like all of the other cuccos he carries here.

He fusses over his home a lot when he decides it’s time, smacking blankets and washing dishes. He paces anxiously, staring at the map on the slate until he falls into bed without even getting under his fresh covers. 

He does not dream.

He travels slowly to the docks of the castle, he hopes he’ll be able to hold her.

And then he doesn’t even really have time to notice how injured he is or allow himself the delayed panic that she’ll be a spirit and not real catch up to him because there she is.

She looks exactly the same, and she’s singing his praises and asking him the one question he hoped she wouldn’t ask.

And she smiles at him. 

She smells of everything and nothing when he crashes into her, like an early spring breeze or shining dew on sunlit grass. He briefly wonders if this is what Hylia smells like before he answers her question, he tells the truth and her voice slides down his spine as she soothes her hands around him. 

He’s overwhelmed. 

The Princess holds him in the grass like all the times he’s held her, will hold her, he feels set ablaze at the thought and the feeling of her arms holding him as close to her as he’s gripping her to him.

Her lips press into his cheek and he thinks a firework may have been set off under his skin. He clutches at her, real and solid under him, he’s surely crushing her but she just holds him. Strong and steady and real.

He just holds her back.