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Most people think that the worst part of fighting is the danger of it all. It’s not unreasonable—after all, a man who has never been in a real, life-on-the-line type of fight will always create his fears from the stories he hears rather than any hands-on experience. The risk of death with every dodged blow strikes enough terror into the majority of people’s hearts that they would, naturally, assume that nothing about fighting could be worse than the possibility of their demise.
Link’s father, much like his son, was never really a man of many words. But when he did speak, he would impart upon his son—in the soft and quiet voice that would, over time, associate itself with duty and valour—genuine words of wisdom. Only a vainglorious fool prolongs a battle, he had said, well over one hundred years ago now. No man can fight forever.
Because the real worst part of fighting—the part that gets even the best and the bravest—is the exhaustion.
Link has been in this situation only a handful of times before. He’s usually stealthy enough to avoid wandering unawares into a camp of monsters, and on the rare occasions that he does, it only takes a little extra exertion (and a lukewarm, medicinal elixir that makes him gag before restoring his health) to finish them off. Hardly ever does he find himself genuinely out of options, nowhere near the end of a fight that seems to move seismically out beyond him, engulfing him completely in a relentless attack from all sides.
But there are enemies all around him now, bloody and fragmenting into dark, thick smoke as he slashes through them. His supplies are running quickly towards empty, and for every monster that he slays, another two emerge from the darkness, ambushing him before he can snatch a moment from the air around him. All he needs is a moment— to heal himself, switch out his shield which must have broken at some point, and finish this off. The idea of failing—or, worse, quitting— is not an option. He will get through this; there is no other way.
Keeping his father’s words in mind, he hauls himself up, feeling his legs shake with their lack of energy. Deftly, he impales his sword through the final three monsters, skewering them back-to-back as they fade helplessly into ash until nothing remains. Finally, after what could either be ten minutes or an entire hour, he can breathe.
As he falls to the ground, the world around him begins to darken. A deep red mist, tending towards pitch black, rises from the floor and the pieces connect in his heart before they do in his mind, causing a sense of great anguish and desperation and then, momentarily afterwards, a realisation why.
Link feels ashamed right down to his core, and would never admit this—would not even think the words were he not alone—but he believes that every Blood Moon comes with a silver lining. Although it marks another setback to overcome, he knows that, for the brief minute in which the moon rises to its highest, he will not be attacked. He can close his eyes, and he hears Zelda’s voice so clearly in his mind every time. She warns him, and he smiles, because he is hearing her speak after so long and he would take an eternity of endless fighting without complaint as long as he has this. A brief moment with a memory of Zelda, knowing what he knows and still being so, so far from her.
He waits for her. She had waited—a hundred years, no less—for him. With his eyes closed, and the Master Sword clutched at his side, he banishes the thought of Ganondorf’s puppetry, wanting to see Zelda entirely as herself, not as a pawn in the hands of a monster who will never beat her. The Blood Moon rises into the sky, situated now at the apex of the entire horizon, sending a crimson shiver across Hyrule.
And the silence breaks the sound barrier, bursting Link’s eardrums with a scream. A scream, and a voice—his own voice. He hasn’t heard it in so long. Is he screaming?
Where is Zelda?
Has even the memory of her been taken from him?
He has little time to recover from the shattering of his own heart when a blow lands at his side and he sees that the monsters he had slain only moments ago have been resurrected. Surrounded once more, he has no choice other than to face this head on. If his options are dying or quitting, he’ll take his chances with the one he has the most experience with.
Just as Link readies the Master Sword, two things happen in quick succession. A spear, materialising out of the murky haze beyond his peripheral vision, pierces him in the leg—
—and the entire world starts to burn.
The light is bright enough that it should have killed him already, and yet Link realises that he feels no more pain than he did upon bearing the initial blow to his thigh. Instead, the entire enemy camp disintegrates into even less than ash in front of his eyes, and when he reaches out, his hand—no, his body, flesh and all—is glowing with a marigold, gossamer mist. He doesn’t fall to the ground, but rather is carried to it, on the back of something warm and much greater than him, and he wonders—has he died? He feels very comfortable. Is it supposed to be comfortable?
If this is death, then it’s awfully slow, and it feels like waking up from a nice sleep. Slowly, the aches and creaks in his body groan and protest their way back into well-oiled joints. A breath exhales unconsciously from his lungs, and they fill again with cool, fresh air, expanding into their full size within his chest. His eyes open wide, as if to prove that they can, before closing again and relaxing the muscles of his eyelids completely. He even feels as though he’s just finished a large, warm meal.
In fact, the only other time he feels this safe and taken care of is when he’s with—
Oh. He understands now.
Surrounding him, having saved him once again, is Zelda; or, at least, the form she has been inhabiting for centuries, trapped in the skies of Hyrule as a dragon. The first—and last—time he had seen her up close like this, he had plucked the sword that seals the darkness from between her eyes, and she had screamed like an animal, and he had felt like one. After that, he had battled his way through Hyrule Castle, watched her body crumble in front of him as Ganondorf held her like a marionette, and then the Blood Moon had not brought her back to him, and now here she is.
She’s curled completely around him, radiating a light, champagne glow like a heartbeat pulsing out of her. With every breath, he feels better and better—not just physically in good shape, but calmer; more practical. He doesn’t want to cry, or scream. He can think rationally; can understand the need to reassess his strategy and put an end to Ganondorf’s terror in due time, when his strength has returned. Between reuniting himself with the Master Sword and facing that Blood Moon, he has been a man on a mission, a one-track-minded soldier with a target in his sights. He hasn’t stopped to eat, to rest, to think. His feet landed on the ground of Hyrule and he has been running on empty towards something he isn’t strong enough to face ever since, and it’s only now, with Zelda holding him tightly, that he understands her patience and why it is a virtue.
Right now, she is telling him that it is okay to wait. He’s never been very good at it, and she’s always been a step ahead of him anyway, but he understands what she wants him to do.
As much as he wants to stay like this a little longer, pretending that closeness makes up for distance and time, if he doesn’t get up right now he never will.
Standing up, he watches Zelda unfurl and, for a moment, they make eye contact. He is a boy pretending to be a hero, looking into the eyes of a girl who sacrificed her autonomy to her duty—what a pair they make. If only for a second, they do not have to see anything other than each other, and for this second, it is no longer a burden to be seen. The finest display of love is this: Link and Zelda look into the body, and see the soul.
But then she is gone once more into the skies, and he has to fight the urge to run headfirst back into the thick of it. He’d only get himself killed, and he has to be cautious because he’s still got a lot left to protect her from, and even more that he still owes her. He won’t die with a debt unpaid.
Taking a deep breath, he sets his eyes on the stable a little way down the dirt path, putting one foot ahead of the other and not looking back.