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Wake up, Link!
His eyes shot open.
He was… he was… he was confused. Where was he? What were those lights above him? Why was he wet? He got the impression that all of this was strange, but he couldn’t say why.
Why didn’t he know why?
He took a few long blinks, hoping it would help him orient himself. It helped his eyes adjust to the strange glow, at least, but he didn’t know what to do any better. He pushed himself up and the water began to recede and the glowing blue began to dim.
His brow furrowed as he looked over the large, dark cavern he was in. Seriously, why was he here, in a place like this, naked? Wherever “here” was— he still didn’t know. Where in… where in…
He realized, then, that even if he did know where he was, it wouldn’t matter, because he wouldn’t have any frame of reference for it.
He didn’t have any frame of reference for anything, beyond vague impressions, he realized. Where there should have been memories, there was nothing. He knew things, like that he should remember things when he clearly didn’t, like he should know his name when he didn’t.
He didn’t even know who he was.
Link, please try to hurry, that voice from before spoke to him, making him freeze in his tracks. Please, please, try to remember. Try… try to remember me.
That voice was achingly familiar. An emotion welled up inside him at the sound of it. It was strong, and it felt… good, for the most part, but there was a small twinge of something that… that ached, at the sound of it.
He didn’t have the words to describe it. He wanted to change that.
Link, it had called him. Was that his name? Well, even if it wasn’t, it seemed like a good name to call himself. Something to think of as he began to get accustomed to everything, to who he was.
Someone to be as he chased a pretty voice and tried to discover who he truly was.
Zelda was born a princess.
She was royalty. So she wanted for nothing.
Well, perhaps for one thing.
When she, as a girl, saw the boy that drew the sword that seals the darkness, she didn't much care at first. It was interesting, certainly, but she didn't care to get to know him— he was just a grubby boy, after all. But then she noticed how it made the adults start talking.
"If the sword has been drawn, then surely that means…"
"But can the sword alone truly save us all?"
"And the Princess—"
"The Princess…"
"Zelda has yet to unlock her powers."
Zelda caught her breath. So her parents were talking about her, as she thought. Her mother sounded worried.
"We have you, " her father's rough voice replied. "And she can learn."
"I'm just worried… it feels like something is bound to go wrong."
Zelda left and ran off to play, to do something, anything other than listen. It was hardly her fault that she hadn't gotten her powers yet, now was it?
Was it?
She chose not to think about it, running through the hedges in the garden until she ran into someone, forcing her to stop.
She took a couple of steps back to see who she had run into. A boy, in simple clothes. That wasn't so surprising, since these gardens were open to anyone in the castle.
"What are you doing?" she asked, curious.
He shrugged. "Nothing, really."
“Oh,” she said. “Do you want to play with me?”
He nodded.
Zelda learned his name was Link . They played together the next few hours, until people came looking for them and hurried to pull them apart.
"You can't play with him, Princess!"
"Why not?" she demanded.
The man holding Link back by his shoulders answered that with his reaction.
"Link!" he shouted angrily. "You can’t skip training, and certainly not to play with the Princess! And you need to keep your sword with you, boy!"
He pressed a sword that was too ornate, too grandiose, too large into Link's small hands.
The sword that seals the darkness.
Link was the boy that they called Hero. He was the one they said was blessed by the Goddess. He was the one they said doomed them all.
"He's the Hero," the maid that had fetched her whispered in her ear. "And he's a commoner. Too lowly for you."
Zelda didn't see him for a long time after that moment where he looked shocked, clumsily grasping at the sword in his hands as they pulled them both away.
She knew he was still around. They could hardly cast out the Hero that was supposed to save them even if he had also doomed them.
But she didn't see him. Not until her mother's funeral.
They were doomed. The Calamity would come. Zelda didn't have her powers, and her only teacher was gone.
And her mother was gone.
So she glared at the Hero through her dry tears, though he didn't see it with his eyes downcast and the sword resting on his back.
He really was blessed. Though she was doing her best to curse him as though she had any authority to do so.
Or perhaps she did, despite having yet to come into her powers. Perhaps she could drag him down with her some way.
Because, as surely as he was blessed, Zelda was cursed.
“I remember something.”
It was easy to notice Impa tilting her head in curiosity, even though she was only on the edge of his peripheral vision. Apparently it was strange how perceptive he was, but it was how he had woken up, like it was second nature to him.
Though, now that he could remember a lot of his childhood (though it was largely vague, but he believed that was normal), he knew that a lot of those things that were now instinctive for him hadn’t come naturally, but rather through years training and practice that had drilled them in his mind so much that now it really was natural and an instinct, and he had a greater appreciation for it.
“Oh?” Impa asked. “Is that so?”
They were sitting out on top of the wooden steps that led up to her house, enjoying the spring weather as they looked out over the comings and goings of Kakariko Village.
He nodded. “It’s strange. I remember the king now, as the king, but the entire time I was with him, he only seemed vaguely familiar, even after he told me who he really was.”
She hummed. “What made you remember, then?”
Link grinned. “I was playing tag with Cottla, in the village. And I remembered playing tag with the Princess once as kids. And then shortly after that, I realized I could remember just about… everything from my life up to that point.”
“Tag?” Impa chuckled. “I don’t remember you two ever playing tag.”
“We were kids,” he answered, tucking his chin over his knee, smile slowly fading at the memory. “We didn’t even realize who the other was, even though I had already pulled the Master Sword at that point. It was fun while it lasted, but it… didn’t end well.”
That was perhaps an understatement. The look of horror she had on her face as the maid whispered in her ear, the pain he felt as he was dragged off to practice yet again. He hated practice at the castle. He was so much younger than everyone else, and it wasn’t fun at all like it had been when he trained with his father.
“And that was all?” she asked.
He nodded. A lie.
But he didn’t know how to explain it to her, the rest that he remembered. The weeks of what felt like torture during practice, slowly beginning to best everyone despite being years their junior and earning their contempt for it, being told he must attend the queen’s funeral as the Hero, and the Princess’s glares drilling into his back the entire time.
She hated him, which was confusing, because even when she had been told who he was a few weeks before, she hadn’t hated him.
But it was even more confusing for him now. Because he still felt the same about her. Something passionate, affectionate, and just the smallest bit sad, towards her. But she hated him, apparently.
And he wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Cursed.
Zelda was cursed.
She had managed to avoid the Hero well enough through the years, and now her father had gone and made him her personal guard.
And he was infuriatingly good at his job. She fumed at the fact as he rode up to where she was standing next to the still closed shrine that refused to open for her.
As he silently walked up to her she ground her teeth together, glaring at him. “I told you,” she hissed, not even trying to keep the venom out of her voice. “I do not need an escort.”
His brow furrowed ever so slightly, but he still said nothing.
She hardened her gaze. “Return to the castle. I am perfectly fine. Please,” she begged, pleading with those unreadable eyes, before feeling ashamed and looking at her feet. “Please, just let me have this one bit of freedom.”
Nothing. He said nothing.
Zelda couldn’t help but wonder if this arrangement would be quite so terrible if he simply talked with her. But, much like the Goddess that bestowed her blessing upon him, he deigned to not speaked with her.
She huffed, and walked forward, past him.
Unsurprisingly, his footsteps followed a moment later.
She was cursed. The bloodline of the Goddess that was unable to use the powers of her birthright herself.
But being forced to suffer in his perfect presence felt like the most damning thing of all.
The Zora Prince was friendly and welcoming.
The Zora Princess had been kind and sweet and gentle, a good friend to hang out with.
He could understand his recalled feelings of friendship with that princess and the ones more recently built with that prince. Those made sense.
The Hylian Princess was nothing like that, not that he could remember. She was stubborn and passionate and never afraid to do what she pleased, no matter the consequences.
And he liked her in spite of it all, in spite of her ire and how difficult she made his job.
Well, like was far too insufficient a comparison to what he felt. But he didn’t know how to label it yet, so it would have to do. Though he knew it was far stronger than anything he had felt towards anyone else.
Link looked over as he heard someone walk up next to him and relaxed as he saw Prince Sidon sit beside him on the steps, overlooking Zora’s Domain. “What are you lost in thought about, Hero?”
He shrugged, looking forward again. He wasn’t sure what to say, but decided to go for the closest thing to the truth he knew how to say. “Zelda.”
“What about her?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure what it was for himself, and he didn’t need to find the words for that. “I… remember her a bit. But I’ve always felt… I don’t know how to say it, exactly. Ever since I woke up and heard her voice I felt like I… liked it? I feel much stronger about it than that, but that’s the best I can say it.”
Sidon stared at him for a moment with wide eyes. Well, considering that he had hardly said much at all before during his time here, it was probably a surprise to see Link say so much at all, no matter how slowly the words had come out. But soon enough, he looked away and sighed.
“I suspect I know how you feel about her.”
Link frowned. “What is it?”
Sidon shook his head. “No, I won’t tell you. Having a name for it alone won’t help you really appreciate and understand what it means. I think you would rather come to that conclusion on your own.”
He pursed his lips. He had a point.
But relearning how to live was a slow process. And he wanted to be able to know how to feel again as quickly as possible.
Zelda’s breath came in as shrill wheezes. The sun was bearing down on the arid landscape, making the heat unbearable even as it sank into the western horizon. A hot breeze was beginning to blow sand that stuck to her skin soaked in sweat.
Everything about this was miserable. But she had to keep going.
She couldn’t allow the Yiga to catch up to her.
So despite every burning breath, despite her throbbing muscles, despite how the sand slipped underneath her feet and seemed to prevent her from making any progress, she kept going . She couldn’t afford not to.
The toe of one of her boots dug into the sand, making it snag and her ankle pull back too far and—
Pain.
Flaming, burning, intense, wrong in every single way imaginable, renewed with every step she took. But she had to keep going. What was a sprained ankle in the face of death?
It hurt it hurt it hurt.
But she was nearly to the Bazaar now. If she could only just get there—
Two Yiga came into view ahead of her, blocking her path.
She turned to go back the other way, but of course the ones that had been chasing her weren’t gone, these were merely more of their clan.
Zelda tried to turn back towards the Bazaar, figuring she might at least be able to get close enough to draw someone’s attention at least. But her injured ankle finally gave out, making her fall onto the sand.
And try as she might to stand again, she wasn’t able to push herself past the pain and onto her feet. But she couldn’t stop herself from trying to get away, hoping that she could get enough time for someone to find her even as the Yiga approached her, slowly now that she was practically cornered.
The warmth of stone heated through the day seeped through her tunic into her back. She was trapped.
It was completely her own fault, for ignoring the counsel of her father and the advice of Urbosa that something might happen so she should have someone with her in the case that something happened. But she had been stubborn and foolish, wretched thing she was, and went out into the desert by herself despite it.
Zelda lowered her head and clenched her eyes shut. She may have brought this fate upon herself, but she couldn’t accept to watch it as they killed her.
But no blade fell upon her neck. After the sounds of a brief scuffle, she finally dared to open her eyes and see what had happened.
And there, instead of the threatening figures of the Yiga standing over her, was the protective back of the Hero.
She had never thought of Link being and certainly had never felt like his actions were protective before, but that was what they were.
He quickly dispatched all of the Yiga before turning around towards her, hesitantly kneeling down before her. He opened his mouth and asked in a voice rough from disuse, “Are… are you alright?”
Now she remembered. In the garden that day with the boy named Link, he didn’t speak a lot. Didn’t know what to say, he had told her when asked.
Maybe his silence wasn’t something so unbearable after all.
Tears welled in Zelda’s eyes as she collapsed forward into his arms, the emotion of everything that had happened hitting her all at once. Link hesitantly put his arms around her as she buried her face into his chest.
Perhaps it wasn’t proper for someone forsaken by the Goddesses to be in the presence of someone favored by them.
But if it must be, if it could be, then at least Zelda realized now, that rather than her own personal curse, he was the one blessing she had been given.
Link was tense.
Every flash of red had him on edge again, though he was never quite able to really back away from it. Infiltrating the Yiga Clan Hideout had been almost a positive nightmare, making him well aware of how they were undoubtedly the cause of his stress, even if he couldn’t really remember it.
But as he looked down at the Thunder Helm, glimpses of memories spread out over his mind like lightning. Dozens of times she was angry with him, rushing off while he followed close behind. Times where she would forget he was there and smile as she focused on her research.
Zelda falling into his embrace after he barely managed to save her by getting there just in time.
His mind latched onto the memory, all the detail of it forming around him. The panic when he noticed she was missing and the absolute rush of fear and adrenaline when he caught sight of her approaching the bazaar with the Yiga surrounding her.
The sickening feeling of slicing through flesh that didn’t belong to a monster, at least not in the usual sense.
And how, in a moment, with his mind still reeling from killing, really killing someone, it suddenly no longer mattered. It no longer mattered, because she was safe, and she forgave him, even if she didn’t actually put into words until later, he could tell she let go of the grudge she had against him for being perfect and following her around. Strange that it took a moment of imperfection, of him losing her to make her realize.
And in that moment, she offered him a smile, slight because she was still shaken from the incident, but still sincere.
He would do anything to protect that smile.
Link realized that was, well… at least part of what he felt towards her. He felt so much about her, that it seemed impossible to sum it up into one word. Maybe it was. But at least part of it was liking her well enough, beyond her apparent value for saving the kingdom or being the Princess, that he wanted to protect her.
Perhaps that was also why he felt such an urgency to tame the divine beasts and retrieve the sword and go and defeat the Calamity she had been holding back for one hundred years.
And now that meant going to find Riju, to quell Naboris. Which he would gladly do.
He wanted to protect her.
“What are you doing?” Zelda asked curiously.
Link was sitting in the tall grass where they had stopped for a break in their travels, looking like he was… weaving grass? She wasn’t sure. That was why she had asked.
He looked up with a pleasant smile on his face and held up the thing in his hands for her to see. Now that she got a better look, she noticed there were flowers in it as well. “Flower crowns.”
That was another thing she was slowly getting used to. Link spoke to her now, now that they were friends. He still didn’t do it a lot, and wasn’t altogether comfortable with it, but ever since she had asked— not ordered, asked— he was making an effort to speak, at the very least when she was talking to him. He did a lot of things when she asked instead of ordered, she had noticed.
Zelda was glad that he seemed to want to be her friend as much as she enjoyed being his.
Not that anyone else wanted to be their friend. The Hero that had doomed them all and the Princess that would seal that doom because she couldn’t awaken her powers to fight off the Calamity? Who would want to be close to them?
Though, she had to say, she did enjoy his company far beyond the fact that he was the only one who would stand hers. She hoped Link felt the same way.
“Do… do you want to learn how to make one, Zelda?” he asked hesitantly.
She hadn’t… particularly wanted to, but if he was offering…
“If you don’t mind,” she answered.
“Of course!” he answered, that shy, hopeful smile showing up on his face again. She really liked that smile, even if she couldn’t wait for the day she could make him beam without restraint.
Zelda sat down next to him, and began picking some wildflowers for her own flower crown while he continued to work on his. Once she had picked quite a few, she turned back to him.
“What now?”
Link bit his lip, hesitantly. “Um, I… don’t really know how to explain it. Could I show it to you instead?”
She nodded. He was far more inclined to actions than to words, so it made sense. And it was an interesting challenge to observe the process and try to imitate it.
Link glanced over to see what she was doing. “Wait. No, you need to do it like…”
He trailed off, the words eluding him and just reached for her hands to correct her physically. But as soon as his fingers brushed hers, he tensed, starting to pull back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Zelda said, reaching for his hand and pulling it back. “Here. Show me.”
Though, even with his help, the task was challenging for her to grasp. Yes, she spent quite a bit of time working on Guardians and other ancient Sheikah tech, fiddling with their wires, but that was more a matter of making sure they were all connected to the right places, disentangling them if necessary. The far more minute motions of weaving was something else altogether, something she struggled with.
She grimaced, looking at her finished product with the ends of stems sticking up out of it in several places and looked either too loose or bunched up in several others. Far less neat than Link’s was.
Zelda sighed. “Mine looks awful compared to yours.”
He pursed his lips, considering something for a moment, then leaned forward, placing the crown he made on her head. “There.”
She felt her mouth fall open. “You didn’t have to give yours to me just because I complained about how mine looked, Link.”
“I know,” he answered, expression softening as he looked at her, continuing in an almost worshipful thought. “A crown of nature suits a goddess like yourself far more than the gold or stiff regalia they normally force you into.”
Her cheeks flushed at that. How could it not? From anyone else, it would have sounded like some sort of veiled insult, but this was Link. Link. From him, how could it sound like anything but a testament to who she truly was?
“A… a goddess?”
His eyes widened and his cheeks flushed, and she realized that he hadn’t meant to say that, at least not out loud. But he lowered his eyes and nodded respectfully.
“Of course,” he replied, picking up her hand and slowly moving it upward. “Just because you have yet to realize your destiny doesn’t make it any less true.”
He pressed a lingering kiss to her hand, and she felt the light flush turn crimson on her cheeks.
“You gave me a most amazing crown, called me a goddess, and I have nothing to offer in return but a poorly crafted crown.”
Link looked up at her, blue eyes telling her that she had so much to offer than she had just said. She wished she shared his confidence in herself.
“I would wear it with pride, if you would let me.”
He bowed his head slightly forward, and Zelda only hesitated a moment before lifting it up and gingerly placing it on his head, fingers brushing against his soft hair as she did so.
As he looked back up, she smiled. “I think the crown is better for being worn by you, Link.”
He smiled sweetly back at her.
Link was not friends with Revali.
That much was obvious as he stared at the ghostly apparition of the Rito atop Vah Medoh, still breathing heavily from the fight with Windblight that had just ended. It had been obvious from what he had recollected of him before, too, but he hadn’t really thought much of Revali at all before.
But perhaps that realization was what led him to make one much more important one. That he had been friends with Zelda.
It was beyond her beauty and the way she was so knowledgeable and fascinated with the world. She was kind and interested in people, even him, and he felt so incredibly fortunate to be her friend. He smiled.
They were friends. Close friends that spent a lot of time near each other and naturally built up a strong rapport.
Revali thankfully didn’t say anything, just gave him a curt nod of respect, for once. A nod that Link found surprisingly easy to return.
Friends . No wonder he felt so strongly about her.
It was an accident.
It wasn’t supposed to happen.
It couldn’t have happened, and certainly couldn’t happen again.
Yet Zelda revelled in the way her lips tingled as they brushed against Link’s, not quite a kiss, but certainly not not a kiss either.
It couldn’t be happening, shouldn’t be happening, but she wasn’t moving away. And neither was he.
She had asked him to reach a book for her in the library, purely as a pretense to be close to him as she chased that thrill that happened every time they touched each other. But they were close enough and near enough in height that, when he turned to her, it was their lips that brushed.
And there they stood, in the same position, unmoving. Neither one wanted to move away because then it would have had to have never happened, but also not wanting to press forward into something they both wanted but couldn’t be allowed to have.
But they could hardly just stay there, either. Even if it was late, someone else could come across them, and with how close they were, it would be just as bad as if they were caught actually kissing.
Zelda still couldn’t bring herself to move.
It was Link that did something first, speaking softly against her lips.
“I think I might be in love with you.”
Tears stung at her eyes. She didn’t doubt the confession, not for a moment. In fact, she wanted to return it, but… “Nobody will accept it,” she muttered, still not moving away. “They’ll call you a distraction, the reason I still haven’t unlocked my powers. They’ll take you away and…”
She choked on her words for a moment, the tears now streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t know if I could stand losing you.”
Link pulled back, but only far enough to rest his forehead on hers. It was a comforting gesture, somehow even more intimate than the practically a kiss they had been sharing earlier. “They don’t necessarily have to know, so long as you would have me.”
It sounded tempting. So tempting. But, really… “Could we?”
He brought his hand up to lightly run the back of his knuckles over her cheek. “We won’t ever know unless we try.”
And that was her breaking point. Zelda reached up and grabbed his face, pulling him into a kiss that he eagerly returned.
It began fervent and passionate, trying to convey her feelings for him through it, and morphed into something slower and more languid, wanting to relish in the ecstasy of feeling his lips pressed against hers, before giving one last brief yet sweet kiss before pulling away.
“I think I want to try,” she said, still a little breathless from the kiss and not even trying to hide the smile from her lips. “I think I love you, too, Link.”
He smiled at her, reaching up to gingerly cup her cheeks with his hands, and leaned forward to capture her lips in another kiss.
Link was friends with Zelda.
But he was far from being only friends with her.
He let his hands slide off the book, the exact book that had made him remember. He hadn’t been able to resist going into the castle as he passed near it en route to Death Mountain, almost tempted to go and face Calamity Ganon there and then, only dissuaded by the knowledge that having the final divine beast and the sword to finally quell Ganon would help her more than if he died without them in that fight.
Looking back, it was now obvious that he had always felt that attraction to her, even in his memories. He simply hadn’t realized what it was.
But now the memory of her lips brushing against his wouldn’t stop haunting him. In a good way, except for the fact that it was a terribly distracting thought.
He blushed. He wanted to kiss her again.
He still wanted to fight off the Calamity and get her out of there for all the respectable and appropriate reasons he had before. But he also couldn’t deny that he… would. Like It. If. It. Were. A. Reward. For…
Link must have looked positively like a tomato now, with how hard he was blushing.
He had a massive crush on his best friend that was also the Princess saving them all.
At least his feelings were starting to begin to really make sense, finally.
“This is nice.”
Zelda paused where she had been running her fingers through his soft hair as he laid his head in her lap. “What about it, exactly?”
Link hummed, seeming to simultaneously sink deeper into her lap and lean into her touch as she resumed running her hand through his hair. “Oh, just being able to do this freely, without worrying about being caught, now that we’re away from the castle.”
She smiled, looking down on him. “I concur, but… it will only last until we reach Zora’s Domain. Then the other Champions will join us, and we’ll have even less privacy than normal on our trek to Mount Lanaryu.”
A small frown tugged his lips downward and he opened his eyes to look up at her. “Then we better enjoy this while we can.”
He caught her hand and brought it down from his hair to kiss her hand. Not on the back of her palm like the ones he used to do even before they had begun their clandestine affair, but on the inside of her hand, starting to pepper soft kisses on her fingertips, and slowly moving upward to her palm and eventually ending at the pulse point of her wrist.
Zelda couldn’t help but giggle. “That tickles!”
He grinned. “I think it was worth the sacrifice, if it brought that smile to your lips.”
She turned her hand around in his and intertwined their fingers, bringing his hand up to plant a firm kiss on his knuckles. Both their faces were flaming, but it was so very worth it. “You’re not the only one that likes to see a smile.”
Link’s grin turned even dopier than before. “I can think of something else I like those lips doing.”
“Oh?” she asks, beginning to lean down. “I think I agree with that, too.”
Eventually they had to get up and continue on to Zora’s Domain. But at least they had those few moments together before then.
Tears streamed down Link’s face, mingling with the rain that was falling over the small clearing in the midst of the field of decaying guardians.
He looked towards the castle.
He had to go save her. Now. Perhaps it hadn’t been long since he freed the final beast and retrieved the Master Sword, and he was planning on visiting Kakariko once more after checking on his house in Hateno and then going, but… no. Now, he couldn’t delay.
It made sense that Link struggled for so long to find the words to describe how he felt about Zelda. Because love was so encompassing, so much more than merely itself, that it was difficult to realize it, at least for him. Of course, there was the deepness to which he cared for her, for her feelings and interests and the way she would positively light up when something caught her attention. But there was also wanting to protect her. Wanting the best for her, whatever it may be, because he was her friend. Wanting to be the one to kiss and comfort her because of his attraction to her and feeling so lucky that he got to do so.
Knowing that he loved her so deeply that he could never love anyone else in quite the same way, wanting to spend the rest of his life with her.
Regret that he wasn’t able to be there, to survive, to live to their legendary battle against the Calamity Ganon, because that meant he had made her suffer for the past hundred years.
Drawing shaky breaths, Link turned and looked in the direction of the castle. He had to go.
He had something to tell her.
No.
Time seemed to freeze for one agonizingly long moment as Zelda stared at where Link lay prone on the ground.
NO!
Suddenly she could move again, but not fast enough, never fast enough. Tears streamed down her face even though this should have been a moment of triumph, having finally unlocked her powers even if the Calamity had already come and began to ravage the land.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough for her if she couldn’t share it with him, not anymore.
She sank to her knees next to him, pulling him closer because she needed to try to remember that he was still alive, that he wasn’t dead…
But as she did so, as she cradled his face and felt how much colder he was than he should be, it became obvious what should follow.
Yet.
Zelda pulled him upwards in her arms and bowed her own head until their foreheads met, tears streaming down from her face onto his.
“Zel…da…” Link managed to croak out in a voice rough and raw and barely there.
She managed to control her sobs enough so that she could hear, pulling back so that she could look into his eyes. “Link?”
He opened his mouth again. “I… lo…”
He trailed off.
Her eyes widened, looking on in terror. His eyes weren’t quite unseeing yet, but they nearly were.
“No,” she whispered. “Link, listen to me. You have to be able to finish that sentence, you hear me. You must!”
He didn’t respond.
She bowed her head against his again. “You must. I don’t think I ever actually told you how I felt but I need to know that you would hear and…”
Her voice choked up with emotion. So, her tears intermingling in both their eyes, she expressed to him her love by kissing him, softly and sweetly and sadly.
Zelda couldn’t bear to acknowledge that it was probably a kiss goodbye.
It doesn’t have to be.
She froze at the voice that spoke directly into her mind, a voice that was… strangely familiar.
That shrine you found, it continued. It could heal him. There’s another chance. It would probably be faster to wait for another Hero to be born, but—
“No.” She couldn’t possibly want there to be another Hero. She needed there to be Link. Her Link. “If there’s a chance I could have him back, have him back in any way at all…”
I understand.
Zelda finally took a shaky breath and gathered the courage to lift herself away from him, gingerly closing his now unseeing eyes.
“I’ll wait, Link,” she told him. “I’ll hide you away from Ganon, I’ll hold him back for however long it takes, for however long it takes for you to come find me again, and then, hopefully, I can tell you how much I love you.”
The golden light slowly slowly slowly began to fade as Link held on tightly to Zelda, eyes shut against it because he wouldn't be able to see regardless.
Real. She was real. It was almost too much to believe, after going for so long with her as nothing more than a voice in his mind.
But it was real. She was here, in his arms, returning his embrace just as eagerly as he had wrapped his arms around her.
She laughed, burying her head into his shoulder. "You know, I hadn't been sure if you would remember me, but…"
He held her closer. "With how I felt about you before I even remembered your name? How could I not?”
“Link,” Zelda said softly, slowly pulling back, still in his arms but they could look into each other’s eyes now. “I have something I want to tell you.”
He smiled. He did too. “I love you.”
Her mouth fell open in exasperation. “I wanted to say it first!”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I was in love with you first, so it’s only fair.” Link shrugged. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what order we say them in so long as we both know it and it’s true, does it?”
She smiled. “You’re right. I love you too, Link.”
When her lips found his, it was so much better than he recalled, because it was now, it was happening with a promise to happen again in the future. Because they had admitted how they felt about each other.
Link wouldn’t have known where to begin to talk about how much he loved Zelda, why he loved her.
But he wouldn’t be able to stop. They had a lot more story left to live, after all.