Chapter Text
Link tore apart when Zelda fell. Her body bounced off rocky outcroppings and landed on the floor of the cavern with an ungodly smack. A dark pool rises around her, a baptism of blood. It knocks all the air from his lungs, leaves him gasping on his hands and knees, squeezing his eyes shut like maybe if he can’t see it it won’t be true. The castle shudders and groans above him and rock formations on the cave ceiling fall to the ground and shatter. One almost hits him.
He runs. He runs like his limbs are going to fall off and his soul will leave his body if he can suck in a full breath of air. But maybe that would be better than having to go on without her.
In the middle of Hyrule Field, he turns to the castle, rising, rising, rising, rising and he screams and screams and yells til his lungs give out and the lack of Zelda’s presence is a knife in his side ripping a hole clean through him. His arm burns but his most grave injury is her death. Death! The word sours in his mouth and he’s sick into the dry grass and the castle rises further.
Beedle finds him there, some time later. It’s rained, a heavy, devastating rain. The skies sobbed and Link wished he would wash away into the river, float out to sea, be swallowed by an octorock.
“Traveler! Are you alright?” Beedle’s bony hands turn him over and Link feels dead, dead like his best friend. “Oh, goddess, Link! Are you well?”
Well? He’s never been further from well, not even dying on Blatchery Plain a hundred years ago. How could he be well when she is not? He doesn’t respond. His tongue is stuck in his throat like it’s in stasis. He follows Beedle through the rain and thunder and lightning and his legs feel heavier than lead.
Outskirt Stable is in shambles.
Scattered healers tend to the wounded and the hysteric and the stablehand gives Link a bed to sleep on and he’s soaking wet and freezing, but so is everyone else and there is no comfort left in the world, not without her, not without her. He sleeps, but not without dreams. His hands in her hair, bare skin under rough fingertips. Her talking and him listening. Arguments, fights, running, yelling, screaming, falling, falling, falling.
SMACK.
He jolts awake and there’s screaming, more hysteria. Death Mountain is awake again. He looks outside. More chunks of the earth have risen up, torn from Hyrule, launched into the sky. Death Mountain spews malice. It’s in the air, he can smell it. Sickly sweet, it burns his nostrils. His arm tingles.
“What are you going to do about this, Hero?” Aliza mocks him and she is spewing malice too. “You were supposed to save us!” There’s a cut on her eyebrow and she’s in his face now, inches away from him and he closes his eyes. “Look at what you’ve done! See what the kingdom has fallen to!” Link’s tears burn as they fall.
He takes his horse from the stable, the brown one with white spots. She knows that something’s wrong, he can feel it in the way she runs, the way her gait changes, how her muscles shift under him. There are craters everywhere, patches of soil floating haphazardly in the air. His eyes water from the malice in the air.
They go to Kakariko.
The townspeople greet him with urgency. They want to know what is happening. They want to know what to do.
Impa is old and somber.
“Link… why did you come alone?”
Falling. Rising. Falling. Rising. Falling. Smack.
“Is our girl gone?” There are tears in her voice. He can only nod. His arm burns like a fire.
“The hand of Hylia.” He looks down. Shrugs. “It has chosen you.”
There’s a book on a shelf with pages older than him. The hand of Hylia flips through it. Ten thousand years ago. A million lifetimes, (falling, falling, falling), it sealed mortal Ganon deep within the castle. He reads until his eyes blur over and he can’t get enough air. Zelda. Zelda. Zelda. He’s on his knees in front of the goddess statue in the center of the village. Pikango sits cross-legged next to him.
“Hyrule’s scenery is changing yet.”
Link tries to pray.
It doesn’t work. Hylia’s hand is stone-cool and he sees only Zelda falling again when he closes his eyes. He stands up, kicks a rock. Spins around. Sits back down. Huffs out a sigh.
“I stopped praying long ago.” Link looks over and Pikango has abandoned his paintbrush, turned toward Link. “Found that it wasn’t doing much good. Realized that some things are just out of my control.”
Link bites his cheek and tastes blood. Out of his control. He wasn’t there. He didn’t see their hands brush together just as the earth opened up and swallowed her whole. He didn’t hear her scream his name. He didn’t hear her hit the ground.
He blinks and he’s back in his body. Pikango is gone. The sun is setting now. How long has he been here? It must have only been early afternoon talking with Pikango. Has he been sitting by this goddessforsaken statue for hours? He stands and his pony nuzzles his shoulder, nipping at his tunic and it tears and Link bites his lip. It’s his champion tunic, the one she made for him. It’s not his horse’s fault, he tells himself, but he cries anyway, because apparently that is all he knows how to do now.
He palms an apple, left as an offering to the deity statues and it shrinks to a blossom in Hylia’s hand.
He takes a deep breath in and blows it out, hard.
He picks up a second, third, fourth apple, and they all do the same. Four apple blossoms lay by his feet and he wants to yell. He grabs the last apple with his hand, his own human hand, his hand that won’t turn stupid apples into stupid apple blossoms. His horse stomps at the ground and he holds out the apple and she takes it, practically swallowing it whole.
The sky fades from blue to orange to yellow to purple to black, the darkest night. Kakariko is quieter than it has ever been. Torches are unlit, nobody mils around. Not even Olkin is out and about. Dorian and Cado stand watch at their posts, but Link can tell that it’s through no willingness of their own, but only through loyalty to Impa that they stand guard. The sky thunders. The clouds threaten rain. He feels like he can’t move. He tangles the fingers of his real hand in his horse’s mane and they’re hungry and wet and cold but there’s nothing they can do, nothing can make them feel better. Well, nothing can make him feel better. He can’t imagine ever feeling better again and it’s impossible to breathe. Night curls its long, cold fingers around his throat and he just stands there in the rain, because why would he deserve warmth and comfort and anything other than misery.
But, alas, the monster retreats at dawn.
He leads his horse to a feeding trough, sneaks a carrot from the patch at the top of the hill. Claree stands next to him while he chews. Her eyes are puffy, almost swollen shut. He can’t imagine he looks much better.
“Your tunic is torn,” she says. He bites another chunk off the carrot. “I can fix it.” She reaches out her hand and he jerks back like her touch might burn him. Her lip trembles. “Well, at least let me fit you for new armor.” She beckons him to the armor shop and he follows, without a thought in his mind. She fits him for armor, sends him on his way with chainmail and a leather shoulder plate to cover the tear in his tunic. “You’re gonna fix this, right?” she asked him. She’s not talking about the tunic. He didn’t say anything.
He saddles up his horse and leaves town without talking to anyone else.
*
* *
There are people in the sky, trapped on the islands ripped from the earth. There’s no way to get them down. Revali had taken his gift with him when he passed on after Calamity Ganon was defeated. And besides, the islands are much too high up to reach, even with octo balloons. The kingdom is grieving, for those who passed already, and for those who will pass soon in the sky.
Link can’t bring himself to do much but sit.
He goes to Faron, sits in the waters of the Spring.
He hasn’t seen another Hylian in weeks. It’s just him and his horse out in the wild.
He doesn’t even fight the monsters back anymore. Lets them beat him nearly to the point of death and then pulls up. He can’t bring himself to let them deliver the final blow. If he’s gone, who will mourn her?
There’s a hill, up past the rain clouds where a lone silent princess grows. He stays there for days, until he thinks he might starve if he stays any longer. I’ll be back, he promises her without words. Leans over, nudges the sweet-smelling flower with his nose. She’s been gone for a month, and each morning he grieves her anew.
There’s an odd rock on the ground that moves when he touches it.
He tears his hand back like he’s been shocked. Well, he supposes, it’s not actually his hand. It’s Hylia’s hand. Whatever.
Slowly, he brings the hand back to the rock and it glows neon green. The rock moves again, the earth underneath it cracking and crawling with bugs. Link crawls up to the top of the oddly-shaped rock, careful not to touch it with the hand. And when he reaches the top, he sends it, holding his palm to the top of the rock and squeezes his eyes shut as he hurtles through the sky. He thinks his stomach might drop through his knees or his bones might fall out but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t lift his hand.
(Rising, rising, rising.)
Eventually, after what seems like a hundred years, the rock slows to a stop and Link peeks one eye open.
The air is thinner up here, and he stands up, but immediately gasps back into a crouch, catching his breath. It’s cold, Tabantha cold. It bites at his exposed skin. He doesn’t put on a doublet.
A haggard gasp startles him out of his trance.
A man approaches him from behind— Tye, he remembers. It was him and his wife who constantly searched for a silent princess to profess their love in front of. And despite Link bringing them a dozen silent princesses so they could stay safe near civilization, it never sated them. They needed to find one themselves.
He looks different now, spending a month up here in the cold, in the famine.
“Link?” Tye stumbles toward him, tripping on soil and disturbed tree roots. Link backs up. “Link, I’m so glad to see you! You can help us!” The man isn’t more than skin and bones, wasted away to a shell that rattles when it moves and breathes. “Me and Sorelia,” he looks behind him, as if beckoning her, “me and Sorelia, we were looking for silent princesses, you know, and then we were up here!” Link peeks behind him, looking for Sorelia. His nose burns. “Can you get us down?” Link looks at him, and back at the rock. He shrugs. “Okay! Let’s get Sorelia!” His voice and lips are chapped like he hasn’t seen a drop of water in a week. Link follows him through the brush. His nose burns worse here.
“Alright Sorie, let’s get outta here.” Nobody responds.
Link peeks over the brush.
What he sees isn’t Sorelia. At least, not anymore.
He turns and gags. There’s nothing in his stomach, bile splashes in the dirt near his feet.
He tries to say something, something to tell Tye that that’s not his wife anymore, not the person he loved so dearly, say anything at all, but his tongue won’t move.There’s a grizzled noise that comes from his throat, a grinding whine. He runs away, toward the rock, but the rock is gone. His stomach is in his throat and the air is making him dizzy. He sways on his feet. “Link!” Tye shouts, catching up to him. “She can’t walk, can you carry her?”
Link backs away. Shakes his head. Tries to force words out but nothing ever comes. Trips on a root. Tumbles backwards into open air.
The wind rushes through his hair and he falls, falls, falls. It’s almost comforting. Is this how she felt? Was she comforted by the falling? Was she afraid? Did she feel loved? His stomach turns and he feels sick. He closes his eyes.
And falls.
*
* *
Something cold pads his fall midair. He doesn’t open his eyes until the air isn’t thin anymore and the wind doesn’t tousle his hair.
He’s back in Faron, on the hill with the silent princess. And under him? A bird-shaped stone? He stands up and sits back down. His breaths come in quick bursts and he’s trying to fill his lungs but nothing gives and he can’t see straight. He’s tired and hot and his clothes stick to his body and the humidity makes him sweat and he’s hungry and his hands shake as he raises his bow to shoot down a hog. He can barely wait for the meat to cook over a fire before he’s tearing into it with his teeth, so famished he can’t think right.
But when his thoughts return to him, he thinks.
It can turn back time. What the purpose of this odd gift is still remains a mystery. He writes down all his findings about the hand and its abilities in a stolen rumor mill notebook from Lakeside Stable. He’ll apologize to Traysi later, he decides, but right now it’s more important to keep these records. Words scrawled across the pages, writing left-handed because he’s afraid of Hylia’s hand, afraid of what he doesn’t know about it.
Rumor Mill: Volume 6
Traysi here, bringing you the latest news and gossip from morning to night!
Glowing Blue Bunny!
A loooong time ago, there was a skilled hunter. On the way back from a hunt, he saw a light moving in the darkness. Without hesitation, he fired an arrow toward it, and where it had been he found a bunch of rupees. From that day forward, whenever he saw a similar light, he would fire an arrow at it. He always found rupees where his target had been, and he grew quite rich. Or so the sotry goes… I bet you think this is just a myth, right? Then what do you say about all the people who claim to have seen a glowing blue bunny in the forest lately? You probably say, “Oh, Traysi, thank you for writing volume 6!” Sound about right? You should say tat, because the blue bunny is the light the hunter saw! Finding it means finding lots and lots of rupees! I can’t endorse this bit of gossip enough!
Traysi’s Recommendation: ☆☆☆☆☆
Wait, I don’t know how to use a bow and arrow… That really puts a damper on things.
Traysi’s Recommendation: ☆
H and can turn back tim and lift big rock.
Rock like bird? Rockwing?
Okay, maybe the notes would require a bit of clarification.
He couldn’t save Tye and Sorelia, but he was able to save dozens of others who happened to be on a more nutrient-rich patch of land.
He still can’t talk.
He hasn’t said a word since she died.
He returns to Impa. She’s close to death. But she gives him another book she found recently. The hand of Hylia is dyed green on the cover.
Every day he spends in Kakariko, he climbs the pillar just outside of town. It looks over the floating castle in the sky and silent princesses grow there. He touches their petals gently. Imagines that it’s her cheek instead. He tries not to look at the castle, at her final resting place. It knocks the breath out of him every time.
He carves her name into a stone in the Kakariko spirit grounds. She’s not Sheikah, but they don’t mind honoring her there. Especially since there’s no body to bury. He feels the loss everywhere, constantly. It’s been two months, but he still wakes up every morning expecting her to be right there next to him.
On the two month anniversary of her death, he returns to Hateno for the first time. Every step is a battle and he is openly sobbing by the time he reaches his house (their house) across the bridge. He opens the door and it smells like her and he drops to his knees and squeezes his eyes shut like that will help him miss her less. He hangs his sword there by the door, or what’s left of it, the remnants of a sword so damaged in battle it’s unusable. It gives a faint trill, but he barely hears it. There’s plates and cutlery on the table from their last meal together. Their bed is unmade, dirty clothes still in the basket waiting to be washed. There’s a notebook laying open on the table, abandoned in the heat of adventure. She was writing something about the resilience of Hylian shrooms and her handwriting makes him miss her so much he can’t fathom how to go on. He wants to run and run and run and jump into the river and stay there until he’s floated out to sea and scrub all the skin off his body, but instead he flings himself off the bridge outside the house and doesn’t come up for air, even though his body screams for oxygen and his vision blacks out in spots because what’s the point if she’s not here to pull him to shore? She is the air in his lungs, the blood in his veins, bones in his limbs, the very reason he’s even alive. He was never meant to outlive her.
His lungs scream.
His whole life, his whole purpose is to protect her.
His vision tunnels.
How could he let her die? How can he go on after this?
Bubbles rise above him and he’s weightless and maybe this is what he’s been waiting for, maybe this is the end.
*
* *
*
* *
*
* *
Strong hands grab him by the shoulders and drag him to shore. Maybe he should have tied a rock to his waist.
“I saw you fall in.” Seldon says. He knows Link didn’t fall. “Hey, uh, listen.” Link blinks the water out of his eyes, but the tears never stop. “We still need you. The princess is… gone,” he treads carefully, “but we still need you. Hyrule still needs you. The world is ending and we need you to tell us that it’s going to be alright because it always has been before. And the kids—“ Link presses his palms into his eyes until he thinks they might pop, “the kids need someone to look up to. Nebb has been asking about you.” Every word is a tidal wave and Link sobs, gasping for breath that he can never catch. “Now, come on son. Uma made a meal for you.”
Uma has fresh lamb and rice. The first warm meal he’s eaten since she died. Not even the joy of cooking was the same without her. Uma doesn’t ask him any direct questions. He appreciates her and she knows. Rather, she talks on about the recent harvest, the weather patterns, and the town gossip.
He sleeps on her floor that night, under a quilt that she made for her children when they were young and lived at home. He wonders if he was ever young like that. Was he ever young enough to be taken care of? Or was he marched to the Lost Woods straight out of the womb, forced to pull the Master Sword from its pedestal, forced to become the fabled Hero before he could even speak? Was he ever loved? Did his mother tousle his hair and did his father wrestle with him after dinner? Did he love Mipha? Did Mipha love him back? Did he love Zelda? Would he have made a quilt like the one he lays under for his own children one day? Was it a matter of circumstance? Or was it fate? Is this all fate? Some twisted, terrible fate that’s been destined for him?
He doesn’t know if he will ever want to return to his house.
But the next day, he does. Inches closer to it like it’s something that will hurt him. Stops and sits in the grass when the missing is too much. Maybe this is all he’s meant to do for the rest of eternity. Miss her.
He finally makes it in the door and climbs the stairs to the loft. The photo of him and her and the champions punches him in the gut and he crawls into their unmade bed which still smells faintly of her, of warm safflina and honey and sweat. Dust clings to every surface in the room but he can feel her there, feel her warm, emerald gaze on him.
But she’s not there.
And she’ll never be there again.
It’s another week until he feels steady enough to get up out of bed. Maybe, he thinks, if he never gets up, he'll dream of her forever.
Nebb knocks on his door one morning. Rolling out of bed is one of the most challenging trials he’s endured. His muscles ache from disuse and his joints crack. He feels old.
“Master Link?” Link crouches down to his level. Can you come play with me? Narah just started school and I’m lonely.”
Link follows him out to the square and brandishes the wooden toy sword Nebb hands to him. He hardly wields weapons anymore and he forgot how right it feels to hold a sword in his hand. In an instant, he’s knocked the toy sword from Nebb’s hand and sent it flying into the cornfield.
The sky thunders and pours. The Holy Sword is an extension of his body, his very soul. It paints an arc through the air. Zelda watches, behind him. Your path seems to mirror your father’s. Her voice is the sweetest song. You’ve dedicated yourself to becoming a knight, as well. He can feel her like she’s still there, hesitantly sitting next to her, pressing his leg up against hers, brave.
“Woah, Master Link!” He blinks. Nebb runs to retrieve the sword.
He’s different now, almost smaller. Certainly paler. Nothing like how a growing young boy like him should be looking.
But, what if one day, you realized you just weren’t meant to be a fighter?
Link is floating outside his skin. Nebb trips. He’s on the ground coughing. His nose bleeds.
A marble rolls in Link’s stomach and he scoops him up in his arms and runs as fast as he can to Nebb’s house. Nikki’s there, in the kitchen, spreading butter on toast. Nebb is still coughing and his nose still bleeds.
She ushers them to the beds and holds a sprig of safflina in front of his nose and he’s finally able to take a full breath in. “It’s okay, Link.” He swats at the wetness on his face. Nebb takes a stuttering breath. “It’s whatever’s coming out of that mountain.” She nods toward it with her head. “It’s making everybody sick.”
Link has felt sick since the day she died.
He finds her journal late that night. It’s tucked under the corner of the mattress, peeking out by just the edge. He doesn’t mean to read it, he really doesn't. He thinks he should at least afford her that basic privacy. But it’s right there, waiting to tell its secrets.
The stationary is smooth and the pages are thin– the black ink she wrote with bleeds through in spots, like she pressed too hard, almost scratching straight through the pages. She’d do that on occasion, so worked up about whatever was on her mind that she’d tear the paper.
She was here.
Teardrops smear the ink on the page. He drags the back of his arm across his face and holds the book further away from him, further away from the tears that could blur her memory. He flips to the first page.
Link bought me this journal some time before he fought the Calamity. He told me to write in it. To pick my research back up. “Hyrule doesn’t need a princess anymore,” he said. It made me cry. Tears of joy, but tears nonetheless. It’s like when the stablehands take the ankle weights off the castle horses and they feel lighter than ever before and practically fly through the air.
Link remembers that day like the back of his hand, her first day back in real life, after being trapped in a never ending battle with evil incarnate, a battle that lasted a hundred years. Her legs wobbled like a spotted fawn and he helped her stand, took her back to Hateno. She slept long and hard and she drooled, but Link had never seen someone so beautiful.
Link is different now. There’s no weight on his shoulders anymore. He speaks more freely than he ever did before, and laughs too. He never laughed before. The people of Hateno are kind. They have been to my face, at least. It’s difficult to let go of the image of these people that called me heir to a throne of nothing. But alas. I will forgive.
The next page.
We kissed today. Link kissed me first, and I am unashamed to admit that I kissed him back. It feels strange, rebellious even, to kiss in the open air like we did. Obviously, we kissed before, but always behind closed doors, in the waters of a Spring, when no one else was looking. It was thrilling. But this is so much more. It’s comfortable. And there’s nothing I crave more than comfort.
Every word he reads is another arrow to his back but he can’t turn back now.
I saw her again last night. The woman in my dreams. She’s frightening. I woke up in a cold sweat. She spoke to me. And this time, I understood what she was saying. The sages are crying out. I’ve only ever read about the seven sages, guardians of the Sacred Realm. If legend is correct, I am a sage. If the other six have already fallen, I worry for my fate.
I worry for Link’s, too.
It’s a gut-punch, it’s a shot in the dark. She knew. She knew she would fall.
He’s sick again. He barely makes it outside before he empties his stomach into the dirt.
Impa’s book said something about the sages. He goes back to reading and his oil lamp burns through the night.
In the morning, he wakes to another knock on his door. It’s Cado. Impa has passed. There’s a ceremony, a celebration of her life in Kakariko the following week and he goes.
The townspeople are jubilant, far from the image of mourning that one might expect from a town that just lost their beloved longtime matriarch. He finds Paya where she normally is, polishing the deity statues, face drawn, knuckles clutching the polishing cloth so tightly they’re white. He kneels next to her, sets an apple on the offering plate in front of him.
“Oh!” she jumps. “M-Master Link! Welcome back to Kakariko! It is so good to see you, I’m so pleased you could make it.” Her voice is tight, like strings on a guitar about to snap. He sets a hand on her shoulder and she does snap, tears flowing down her face while she tries to wipe them all away before they can fall and he feels himself reach over without thinking and grabs her hand. “I know I’m supposed to be happy. I know I am. I get to lead the people of Kakariko now. But I just miss her so much.”
He knows, more than she could imagine.
She wipes her face and takes a deep breath, fills her lungs and blows out. A reset.
“The ceremony is in an hour. I have to prepare my speech.” She stands and leaves and he picks the apple he offered back up and eats it.
*
* *
There’s a sage for each of Hyrule’s seven regions. Zelda fell and the castle rose.
He goes back to reading.
It makes him see red.
The churning hate in his gut boils and spills over and he’s running and gliding and swimming toward the east, to the forgotten temple. The guardians that nearly killed him his first time through the temple are silent now, but their husks are grueling reminders of everything he did for Her, all the pain and hurt and heartbreak She’s put him and her and all of Hyrule through.
His arms fly and he hurls stones at the giant statue and they bounce off and scatter across the chamber.
HERO… WASTE NOT YOUR VITALITY ON ANGER.
There it is, the angel’s voice from above. He shouts at her and cries and kicks and throws more rocks.
THE SAGES NEED YOUR HELP, HERO. COLLECT THEIR TEARS, AND HYRULE WILL BE SAVED.
Hasn’t he done enough? He prompts the statue. Her heavenly light dims and he’s alone in the cavernous chamber and he lays on the floor and wishes he could sink down into it.
*
* *
Collect their tears, and Hyrule will be saved.
Link thinks on this for days, just outside Serenne Stable. The tears of the sages. The tears of the sages? He visits Robbie.
*
* *
“Ages ago, when the sages were still on this earth, there was another conflict with Ganon. The sages were the protectors to the Sacred Realm. When Ganon defeated them, they bound together, added another layer of protection to the barrier— their tears.” Robbie hands Link a belt with little vials attached, for the tears of the sages. “To open the Sacred Realm and use the Triforce to seal Ganon away for good, you’ll need their tears.”
Why hasn’t Ganon left the castle? Link asks with his hands and Robbie shrugs. Tucks an old book under his arm.
“My best guess is that he can only wield the pieces of the Triforce you and the princess hold by physical proximity? He’s stronger in the castle because that’s where–” he cuts himself off and Link knows what he was about to say. That’s where Zelda is. “Easier to make you come to him, fight him on his turf rather than tracking you down, with an obvious physical disadvantage.” Link hums and turns to leave. “There is one thing I do know, though.” Link turns back around and Robbie claps a hand on his shoulder. “Our princess would be so proud of you.”
The Spring of Power has risen. It’s a crater in the earth and Link finds the certain rock and climbs to the heavens. There’s a strange formation under the island, something like a temple. There’s doors, so many doors, and windows too. They’re so shiny he can’t see in. Wind rushes past his ears and they’re cold and Rockwing passes the island like an eclipse. He pushes off the rock and clings to a ledge on the strange structure, and watches as his ride plummets back to the ground. His leather shoulder plate makes climbing difficult, but he persists until he reaches the entrance of this strange temple.
Footsteps echo. The floor is marble, shiny.
He shivers.
It’s dark.
He can almost hear time.
Feeling around in the darkness, he comes to a door, completely sealed with trailing vines. The hand of Hylia glows and he holds a shadow of a leaf and it shrinks, retracts back to what it must have looked like years ago, quickly, almost as fast as Link can take a breath.
Puzzles are difficult to think through in the darkness and thin air and it takes Link a significant amount of time to reach the center of the temple, much longer than he thinks it should have taken him. He wants to yell. It wells up in his chest. There’s a pool in the center of the room, glowing, writhing, shouting, pulling, crying. A pool of tears.
The glass vial he selects from the holster on his hip clinks as he dips it into the pool. It shines and he loses himself in the reflection.
Hero…
Link jumps back. The room, once pitch-dark, is now illuminated, blinding. There’s a hand on his shoulder and he jumps out of his skin and his heart jumps through his throat.
You’ve done well to find me here. It has been a long time since I’ve seen another soul.
Link flounders, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
I am Rauru. The sage of light. The barrier to the Sacred Realm has been weakened recently. Have you felt it too, Hero?
Link pants, hands on his knees, room spinning around him. Maybe it’s the lack of air so high in altitude, or maybe it’s the vision in front of him or maybe it’s the vials on his hip or maybe it’s the lack of Zelda.
Ganondorf has escaped. It is your responsibility to keep him from receiving the full Triforce. Be safe and go in health.
Rauru evaporates, and Link does too, lost to a mist of seafoam green wisps of light. He reforms on Rockwing and his bones feel out-of-place, like they always did traveling from shrine to shrine, back when the shrines were still active. The horizon’s changed. The Spring of Power is back in its rightful place in the ground. Emotion wells up in his chest, to see the landscape return to how it should be. It feels right. It feels like he’s actually fixing something for once.
One down, seven to go.
In the in-between, he reads the book Impa gave him. Late at night in the twilight of stables, feeding breaks for his pony. It’s not just about the hand of Hylia— it’s about the whole of Hyrule, the history and the conflict and the beginning of it all. The cycle that they’re all trapped in, the cycle that Demise damned them all to suffer through for all eternity at the beginning of time.
It talks about the Triforce.
How it’s split into pieces, which bestow themselves onto three individuals, to hold and protect. Him, Ganon, Zelda. For all of time. How much suffering has this cycle caused? It hurts him to think about having to endure this again even once more, let alone an infinite number of times, for the rest of time.
But if one person is able to wield the whole Triforce at once…
Link knows Ganon won’t use it for good. He wants power. Needs it like… air or water or whatever his rotting corpse body needs to function. Link can’t let that happen. He'll keep that from happening if it’s the last thing he ever does.
*
* *
The other temples are no easier and he runs and runs and runs and maybe he’ll fall off the edge. There’s two massive doors with a seam splitting them straight down the middle, a carving of a dragon eating its own tail in the temple of the Dueling Peaks. The story never ends.
He sits on the edge. His feet dangle and the wind whips his hair in his eyes. He met Impa in the center. Collected her tears. She’d held his hand, squeezed his knuckles. It’s the last temple. Well, second-to-last, if you consider the castle to be a temple. To Link, it seemed more of a sepulcher.
He spends some time in Kakariko after he conquers the temple. Maybe for the last time, depending on how the coming battle goes. It’s overwhelming nostalgia. It’s insurmountable anxiety. It’s cold, dead mourning. He’s sitting in front of her stone when Paya joins him. Impa’s stone is right next to Zelda’s and it’s fitting. She’s changed too, like every part of his life, every part of the whole damn world.
She sits next to him. Tucks her hair behind her ear.
“She would be proud of you, you know.” Her voice is still light as a feather, but there’s no stutter in sight. He huffs a sigh. Proud? He’s not too sure about that. “I’m proud of you too,” she takes a brazen step.
He looks at her.
She looks at him, scoots closer.
They’re close. Close enough to touch.
And she does.
Cradles the back of his neck and nudges her forehead up against his. It’s deep breathing and rustling fabric. Her mouth on his and he closes his eyes and breathes her in and she smells warm, like spices and teas and apples. He kisses her back. “Come inside with me,” she whispers and takes his hand. He lets her lead him back through town, up the stairs and into the main house. Dorian and Cado give him a look that he can’t discern.
There’s dust on every surface of the room. Being the village elder doesn’t allot much time for housekeeping, he guesses. His hands are clammy in hers and he hopes she doesn’t notice. She shrugs her overcoat off and her shoulders are bare. He traces her collarbones with his finger and she pulls him toward her, breathes into his mouth. His heart pounds out of his chest.
They’re on the bed now, her bed and her hands are in his hair and they’re breathing and turning and her sheets are soft as they cover themselves. Her hands move, lavishing his neck and shoulders and chest and he thinks he’s crying. She stops at the base of his tunic, waiting with bated breath, asking permission. He’s definitely crying now and he thinks he’s scared her because she’s sitting up now and their chests are heaving, lungfuls of air not even enough to ease the tension.
“Link?” she asks and he responds with a whine, a broken sob and he gasps for air, swats at his burning tears, embarrassed, mortified, humiliated, ashamed, ashamed, ashamed. “Hey,” her hand on his shoulder slides up, turns up his chin to look at her. “It’s okay.” He sniffles. “It’s okay.”
I’m sorry, he says with his hands and eyes and heart and everything but his voice.
“It’s alright.” She gives a small smile. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
He doesn’t waste any more time, marches straight through Hyrule field to the castle. Emotion stays a rock in his throat. The malice is so thick here he can’t suck in a full breath of air without doubling over, hacking and gasping and wheezing. So thick he wants to pull on it to open like a curtain. It’s inhospitable, unsurvivable.
His heart pounds and he soars through the sky. Nausea rises in his stomach the closer he gets to the castle. This is it. This is the end.
His eyes water. He pushes forward. Blood, sweat, and tears. I miss you, he tells her. I miss you so much.
Somehow, the hot springs under the castle are still hot. The source of their heat must have been much shallower than he had thought.
He sees her in his reflection.
“Cut my hair.”
“What?”
“Cut my hair please.” She held out a pair of sheep shears in her hand. “I would do it myself, but I don’t want to knick myself.” The shears have weight in his hands. They almost gleam. The first snip feels monumental– like shedding a second skin. Like there’s weight off her shoulders. Like she can breathe again. When the bulk of it is sheared off, she shakes her head, runs her fingers through her now-shoulder-length hair and smiles, chin tilted skyward. “Thank you.”
He blinks. Squeezes the malice out of his eyes. The reflection is something he doesn’t want to see. He reaches out a hand to touch the water, and he ripples. He’s haggard. Hair long and unkempt. Eyes sunken in, darkened. Furrowed eyebrows. He washes his face, drowns it in the spring, presses fingertips into his eyes until he thinks they might pop, dunks his head under the water until he’s heaving for air above the surface, dripping onto the floor of the mine.
He walks on.
The sanctum is eerie, quiet. Impossibly bright, the sun beats through the stained glass windows and his footsteps echo in the chamber.
He almost calls out her name.
“Link.”
He jumps out of his skin and he doesn’t know why he’s always so surprised to have company.
A deep fog envelopes the room and there’s footsteps, terrible, jagged footsteps.
“The fabled Hero… chosen by Hylia herself.” The figure chuckles. The hand of Hylia glows green, indignant. “I see you’ve finally come to avenge your princess.”
A vision of her, falling, falling, falling, always falling appears in the poison mist and he reaches out, runs and grapples to try to reach her, but she is always gone too quickly, always gone too far from him. It tears him open again and again and there’s a strong crack on his shoulder and it brings him to his knees.
Thrashing, swinging, turning, crying, but Ganon is always one step ahead of him, just a little quicker, just a little faster. “You know,” he croaks, “Her last thoughts were of you.”
It’s deeper now than ever, the fissure in his soul. It cries out, weeping blood and tears and wails of missing. All-consuming, he can’t breathe. The room is spinning and there’s only her. Her, touching his cheek. Her, raising his chin up to meet her eyes. Her, telling him to fight. Her, telling him to fight for his life.
And so he does.
He fights like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, like it’s the only thing he can do to make her proud. His lungs burn from the malice and the exertion and the missing, but he keeps going. Ganon is ragged, but not in the same way Link is. Link has nothing left to live for, nothing left to lose, with only one thought left on his mind. For Zelda.
He gains the upper hand, then loses it, then gains it again. Raises his sword above his head and brings it down into Ganon’s chest, over and over and over and over again and the hand of Hylia glows and wraps around Ganon’s neck and squeezes and Link sees light, light, light.
“Link.”
“Zelda?”
They meet like a tide against the shore, pushing and pulling, lips crashing against teeth, fingers in hair, thumbs on cheeks. It’s relief, sweet relief. Like a breath of air after a hundred years of drowning. Like the break of dawn after an endless night.
“Did you do it?” There’s tears in her eyes and he breathes her in, buries himself in her, wishing he could get lost in her eyes. He nods. Her hands cup the back of his neck, fingernails against his scalp. “I am so proud of you.”
There’s rocks in his throat and he grapples. “I miss you,” is all he can manage to say and she gives a watery laugh and holds him tighter against her.
“I miss you too.”
Deep, shuddering breath.
“What do I do now?”
She pulls back. Holds his face in her hands, rests her thumbs on his cheeks. Her eyes shine with unshed tears. “You keep going. Find a reason to keep going.”
She blurs and he blinks. He’s gaping now, a ragged hole, so empty it hurts.
“What if I can’t?”
She presses her lips into a line like she always does when she’s trying not to cry.
“You will.” He kisses her and his tears are salt on their lips. “What are you going to ask for?”
He’s drunk on her and he can’t tear his eyes away. “What do you mean?”
“You wielded the whole Triforce. According to legend, the goddesses will grant you one wish. What will it be?”
“I want this to be over,” he says, without hesitation. “All of this…” he gestures and she understands, “this hurt. The cycle of you and me and Ganon.”
She laughs like a windchime. “That’s brilliant.”
The world shrinks around them and they can tell that their time is almost up, it’s almost time to go.
Zelda’s face draws and she looks back up at Link. “If it works, that means we’ll never see each other again.” Her voice wavers, almost like a question trailing up at the end.
He sighs, tries not to let the sadness consume him. He pulls her closer to him, holds her tight against his chest and buries his face in her hair. “I will find you in every lifetime.”
*
* *
He wakes in the center of the sanctum. Ganon’s corpse rots and maggots swarm. Link thinks he may be sick. The hand of Hylia has gone dark, fused itself to the corpse, petrified, turned to stone. His real hand burns. The symbol of the Triforce is seared into his skin.
He shivers. Wraps his arm around his chest. Tries not to smell the rot.
His body aches, but he stands anyway. Footsteps echo down the hall out of the sanctum.
It’s a beautiful day.
The sun is shining. The air is clearing of the malice. Death Mountain is quiet again, just a mountain.
The castle is back on the ground. It’s easier to breathe now, despite his surely broken ribs.
He walks through the sacred grounds. It’s a bluejay day, just like it was the day of his appointment. His chest hurts and she’s everywhere. He makes it to Wetland Stable by nightfall and rides through the night to Hateno. Rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sits at the kitchen table, stationary and pen in-hand.
Zelda, he writes.
My dear Zelda.
I’ve missed you every day of my life, and I’ll keep missing you forever. You are my light.
I’ll love you forever, in every lifetime.
Link
He brings it with him everywhere, tucked into his pack. Takes it the hill up past Lurelin, the one with the heart-shaped pond. He’d pledged to marry her there one day. Gather a bouquet of nightshade and kiss her until he can't breathe. Slip a ring on her finger and promise her forever.
He blinks.
The stationary floats on the surface of the pond, until it’s waterlogged and the ink is too smeared to read.
He sighs I miss you into the wind.