Work Text:
(gesturing to the universe)
Is this one enough for you?
The problem with being a living, breathing ancient relic is the amount of sacrifice involved. Your slumber can last longer than most of the living gods, but when you awake you’ll forget your mother’s name. He took the place of someone else’s life and now he has to wonder if the stains on his princess's dress are from your blood.
And his princess is sleeping off the trauma of being newly alive on his bed.
And he doesn’t know what his role is, in this capricious new world (the one Zelda’s descent from the heavens created).
And he doesn’t remember his mother’s name, and he doesn’t remember what it's like to hold someone's hand, and he doesn’t remember how to be a person without the person-shaped mask attached, and he doesn’t remember what to do when a girl stumbles into your house following the parade inside her head that stops directly on your mattress where her decent is so graceful; he averts his eyes out of respect to the divinity he barely believes in.
So he perches on a stool, two feet a military graveyard on the wooden seat.
He doesn’t know what he remembers of Zelda, he doesn’t know what he remembers of anything. A kind-of-stranger is sleeping in his house and the only past he can move his fingers through are feelings (something beyond tension or panic, all of the time). He doesn’t know how clean a home has to be for an ex-princess-ex-godess, thus he scoured all of it. For over an hour he wiped windows and dusted, working with the mindlessness of the automaton he’s always known himself to be (this he remembers clearly: you are a sword and nothing else).
What do you do with your life when the world spins so rapidly it collides and shatters into the body of one girl? The girl goes from being a voice in your head to something in the shape of a body currently entombed in a quilt borrowed from a neighbor on her second day of sleep. How long can she sleep before you’re supposed to get worried? You slept for 36,525 days, would her three be too much?
Her body shifts and he’s off the stool in such an instant, his balance is lost and collapses to the floor in what he could interpret as a cosmic narrative parallelogram. Remember your big dramatic sacrifice to save the girl? Remember when you died and didn’t save anyone, and all your friends died too except you can barely recall the sound of their laughter and you can’t do anything about any of that because your big dramatic sacrifice failed?
Remember when you twisted your ankle trying to save the girl again because the thought of talking to her makes your throat tie itself into a bowline knot?
“Mmrh?” She says; and turns her whole body to look at him, collapsed on the floor. His embarrassment is going to eat him alive, it’s going to sprout from his chest and propagate from spores unfurled via the breeze coming in from his loft-bedroom window because Uma-down-in-the-village told him fresh air is good for a sickly young woman. He’s going to jump out that window, he’s going to found a new religion, he’s going to put on clothes that will actually make him look impressive, he’s going to Hold Her Hand, he’s going to remind her there’s nothing to him except a sword, he’s going to fly away.
He’d spent the last three days practicing what he was going to say to her [i don't actually remember the first seventeen years of my life and kind of lied by omission back there] [are you going to restart the government?] [are you going to restart fancy knight parties?] [i never had a choice in any of this] [do you want to see my shield surfing technique?] [i would’ve cleaned up the castle for you but the guardians were going to kill me a second time] [do you like my house?] [is everyone else also pretending to be a person?] [are you going to restart the military?] [was i ever in love with you? be honest] [what’s the point of the rest of our lives?] [what now?] [what now?] [what now?] [what now?].
Instead he peels himself off the floor and hands her the (thank the golden goddesses and all of the dreaming gods!) uncrushed handmade rice ball from his pocket. In his palm is an apology/question/promise/offering/token/piece of salmon surrounded by well-seasoned Tabanthana rice. She grabs the hallowed, precious thing without noise, and devowers some, also without noise.
She chews on the rice while she surveys his bedroom, eyes following the spider on his ceiling he can't bear to kill, the collection of generic images placed on his tables by Boulson Construction, the picture of their dead friends. Neither of them are going to say anything about it, he can tell. Zelda stares at the document/photograph/record/omen/archive/poem/miracle until her rice ball is gone, and politely folds her hands in her lap.
“I missed your cooking,” she says.
“I cooked for you?” he replies.
She stares at him, and he knows that he’s said something wrong. She has the same expression everyone else has when he says something weird, out of date, incorrect, or lacking information; especially when he didn’t intend any of that in the first place. He backtracks over his question, trying to decipher which part was the most problematic. Is his ruse up and she’s disappointed that he doesn’t remember anything? Is he talking too abundantly, too little? Was his rice ball terrible? (can you miss someone's cooking derogatory ?). Did he never actually cook for her and she had to steal portions of it himself because he was actually a horrible knight (after all, He Did Die) who never cooked anything for his princess because he was too focused on his own issues? All of this could be true-- he doesn’t remember!
She’s moved on, and instead slowly rises from the mattress where she straightens her gown out and says
“I’m going to buy some new clothes”
So she does.
::
A Record of Horses:
Bluebell: Solid blue mare, found at [location]. Loves carrots, enjoys apples. Fearful of mountainous regions or cliffs, rides much more confidently in the plains. Would be a good mount to transport Zelda, friendly. The first horse I registered, and my best friend over these long few months.
Rose: Piebald pink stallion, liberated from a moblin camp in [place]. Loves sugar cubes most of all, but will settle for most fruits or berries. Aggressive towards monsters, but brave beyond anything in a fight. Could the triforce of courage exist in an animal? This horse? I would give it to Rose in a heartbeat.
Lilly: Solid white stallion, found by a memory (not one of mine, hers). Enjoys oats, clean and fresh apples, the heads of wheat. He’s quite proper, once refusing an entire apple because there was a bruise on it! Looks handsome in his royal armor, and impresses everyone he rides past. I should give him to Zelda, maybe like recognizes like?
Marigold: Solid brown mare, found nearby [area]. Enjoys any food, adores apples. The type of horse that feels like I’ve known her for a hundred lifetimes. Maybe I did? She greets me like an old friend. I know her as a new friend, but sometimes I can’t shake the feeling we’ve met each other before.
Iris: Solid black, orange mane, large. A strange creature. Hard to ride.
::
“I have a confession to make. I’ve put a lot of thought into this, if you don’t mind pausing what you’re doing to listen to me.”
He glances up from the root vegetables he’s been chopping immediately. Carrot, potato, cassava, radish, turnip, all meticulously diced with the most turn-your-heart-off (easy, there's barely one to begin with!) automation he can channel himself into.
Since learning his princess is a vegetarian (sitting promptly at his table, eyes crushed velvet, a hundred diplomatic prepositions lest he be offended) after feeding her fish, he’s had to create an apology in the form of any vegetable he can talk the villagers into selling.
an apology:
1- for destroying his one wild and precious life
2- for wasting so much time in his second life baking bread, catching horses, and collecting rushrooms all because he couldn’t lift his sword without collapsing to the floor; and left his princess in that castle
3- for feeding her meat when he should have known her dietary needs
4- for reading her diary that one time when he barely remembered who she was (even less so than usual) and thought the prince of darkness could be defeated with a well-sharpened guardian blade
5- for taking her to such a modest little house, for being too scared to restart the government, for wanting to spend the rest of his life just baking bread and watching her read through his books
6- for being so busy
7- for forgetting what devotion feels like but knowing it’s a frog in a palm, a horse in the rain, a house in a mountain
So he stares at her with the intensity of a salmon who spends its whole life swimming down a river, and it doesn’t even chose that river or consciously decide to swim, all it knows is to start moving because hundreds of thousands of salmon followed the same movement-- the map is encoded in their blood.
Something like that.
“I realized that in my haste to recover from my hundred-year fight with Calamity I not only took up your only bed without asking, I also did not consider where you would actually be resting. I deeply apologize for my self-focused behavior which is something I promised to myself I would change a long time ago. It would seem old habits die hard, as it were, but your comfort and well-being is important to me. Again, I apologize.”
“Um,” He says. “Okay.”
She barely registers the utterance. All cats are out of the bag, all boy-shaped fish are on the floor. She’s reading from a list on paper.
“You do not have to accept my apology, however I have put a vast amount of consideration into how to rectify this error and have devised a schedule which would equally devolve the bed between the two of us. I am fully committed to sleeping on the floor, or in a chair, while you rest on your turn.”
She stares at him and maybe he finally understands why she loved those frogs so much, maybe he remembers primordial gossip about the princess and her intense eyes, maybe the salmon can learn to swim to a different brook, but it will always be a fish.
“I want you to sleep in the bed” he says, voice already in the river by town, soon to metamorphosize in a way fitting the travels at sea.
“You didn’t listen to me.” She says and the thin blow is so swift he can’t even remind himself that he’s talking to the only thing that ever kept him living, and he (Hylia forgive him) makes a face. He is a ten-thousand years old in a one-hundred year body, if he concentrates he can taste saltwater and he’ll never know what choice feels like. But never did the saltwater taste anything but sweet, never has he done anything but listen.
I heard your heartbeat in a forest of roses. I heard your heartbeat in the silence of rainbows. I heard your heartbeat as it pierced my insides. I heard your heartbeat as it rattled my skin. I heard your heartbeat while mine was ceasing and I’ve never once covered my ears.
“I was listening,” he says. All he will say is what he needs and no more, he knows it’s not enough— will never be enough but it’s what the goddess gave him, and who could ever argue. “I want you to sleep in my bed.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re obnoxiously stubborn?” She asks and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to respond in this situation so he considers what he does know. The world is large and wild hero-- can you let one girl fill it?
(You know death / You know swords / You know food / You know the price of rubies in a good day / You know the forest the most carrots have ever grown in / You know Zelda like you know your lungs / You know courage like you know your left hand)
“I don’t remember if anyone ever told me that.”
From the balcony she has her elbow propped on the banister, and her chin propped in her hand.
“Promise me something?” She asks.
He nods. Anything, anything.
“Get yourself a futon, you are not sleeping on the floor.”
::
Hero- if You could have anything in the world what would it be?
hmm… maybe a nice big hyrule bass?
No, Hero. Anything. The entire world.
okay. maybe a hyrule bass and tabantha wheat. especially the wheat, it's starting to get expensive.
Hero, Hero- a luxury! Something rare and priceless!
oh.
Yes
well, i suppose...
Yes? Yes?
you see, there's this girl i like... well i live with her,
Hero-
and right now i'm living in someone else's place. this guy i replaced, he was in love with this girl.
Hero You are not understanding-
i know he was in love with her because he would have done anything for her, well i guess he already did. I don’t really remember him
Do wish to have this person out of Your life,
gone from everything, keep this girl to Yourself?
oh, no. he died! and i don't want to keep her... i want her to be happy, i want her to be safe, i want-
Hero- what do You want? strength? adversity? fortune?
i want to hold her hand.
That's it?
yes.
Hero, Hero. You do not need the power
of the Triforce to hold a maiden's hand
you're the triforce?
"I" am a manifestation of the Triforce
do you know the other heroes? all the old ones?
"I" do
what about the one where i'm a wolf?
"I" know Him
can you tell him i think he's really cool?
He would not know who You are
oh.
If You wish Hero, "I" would be able to send inspiration and courage
to all of Your former brothers,
aiding them in their darkest hours
i would like that.
Good. Now Hero,
yes?
Open Your eyes,
You can hold her hand
::
( The Hateno house, central room. There is evidence that a change has occurred and redecoration is in process; on the weapon mount wall, one of the mounts has been removed and replaced with an image of a forest, the mount itself leans against the wall on the floor. The central table, normally set with matching plates and silverware, has been cleared. In front of it sits LINK, who props his elbows on said table and is applying blue nail polish to his right hand.)
(Enter ZELDA wearing winter clothes dusted with snow. The spotlight beams directly on her as she enters, giving her the appearance of an angel.)
ZELDA: You won’t believe the advancement we made today! Purah is making incredible progress backwards engineering the Sheikah Slate’s code; she thinks that she will be able to create a copied slate within the year! I think that may be a little too optimistic, Symin and I project the prototype to be in a more physical stage closer to six months or so. However, if anything, today is the closest I have ever been to reconsidering our rate of progress. Of course a hundred years of research and notes to work on certainly improved my speed in development, too.
( While she talks, ZELDA takes off her coat, scarf, and gloves, hanging them up. The stage lights slowly fade on, revealing that LINK at the table is startled and panicking.)
ZELDA: Of course I never expected as much support for the school as I got, I think we’ve managed to settle on a size that will be suitable for both the current needs of Hateno’s children, and possible expansion. A new house is being built past the mayor’s home, did you hear? Since monster activity has gone down I imagine the agriculture out here will be quite enticing to young families-- oh!
( ZELDA stops, rushing over suddenly to the table, grasping LINK’s painted hand with a researcher’s enthusiasm. LINK is visibly uncomfortable, startling with a jump and trying to wiggle himself from ZELDA’S grasp.)
ZELDA: Nail polish! Where did you find this?
LINK: ( mumbling)
ZELDA: What? Speak up!
LINK: Traded it.
ZELDA: That’s incredible! I have not seen any make up of this quality in, well, in a hundred years. Excluding of course the Gerudo who always had a different cultural production of cosmetics than we did and I imagine still create theirs using traditional methods. While I have seen women in Hyrule with makeup on, I have not seen any nail polish specifically- this makes me wonder how fashion was affected by the Calamity, how have I not ever considered this before?
( LINK has given up struggling in ZELDA’S grasp, and waits for her to cease, turning his head to the floor timidly. ZELDA continues to rotate his hand over, analyzing it like a scientist.)
ZELDA: Your application is not half bad-- although typically this would have been applied to your fingers by someone else. At least that was how things were done in my case, do you want me to do the rest of yours?
( LINK looks up from the floor to her, nodding. Their faces are close.)
ZELDA: ( bashful and suddenly pulling away) Ah! Well, I suppose I should grab myself a seat.
( She walks over to the closest chair, picking it up and gently placing it down in front of LINK who has taken his left hand and placed it on the table, palm resting on the wood. ZELDA sits herself tenderly and picks up his hand. LINK passes her the bottle of nail polish, which she accepts and methodically begins to apply to his fingernails.)
ZELDA: This is champion’s blue, did you choose that color on purpose?
LINK: ( opens his mouth)
ZELDA: You don’t have to answer that, knowing you I’m sure it was perfectly deliberate, you sentimental old soul.
LINK: Maybe I just like blue.
ZELDA: ( scoffing ) You know, I cannot say I love this contrary habit you have picked up! You used to completely agree with everything I ever said, no opinion at all.
LINK: I’m not contrary.
ZELDA: ( laughing) So adverse! Is that meant to be convincing?
LINK: …Did he not have any opinions?
ZELDA: No, that was stated in jest.
LINK: Oh.
ZELDA: You were just as stubborn and opinionated then as you are now. There was once a tremendous summer storm at the castle and the tempest had opened up right at the beginning of your shift watching over my room. I told you that given the circumstances you could wait out the storm in my room, which was generally frowned upon but no one would have disapproved. However you-
LINK: -Insisted on finishing the entire shift in the rain and got a head cold.
ZELDA: ( Impressed) Do you remember?
LINK: Kind of. I remember the head cold. I remember sneezing so hard in a meeting the king had to ask me to leave.
ZELDA: That’s horrible! Were you embarrassed?
LINK: I don’t know. I think I felt like I had to apologize for being alive.
ZELDA: ( His statement dwells on her like a crow plunging a rock in glass, like a stone in a cormorant’s stomach, like someone plucking the dandelion but letting it fall) Well, just between you and me… my father was a bit of a hypochondriac, he probably was too paranoid that you would give him your illness.
( LINK smiles and the two sit in companionable silence until ZELDA finishes, proud with her accomplished work. LINK looks the application over, comparing ZELDA’s craftsmanship to his.)
LINK: You could say I was pretty blue trying to do this myself before you came along.
( ZELDA laughs and shoves LINK’s shoulders playfully. He gives an unusually youthful laugh of his own. The two fall into silence again, albeit not uncomfortably.)
LINK: ( Mumbling)
ZELDA: Come again?
LINK: … Do you think it’s weird?
ZELDA: What’s weird?
LINK: The makeup, me-- all of it.
ZELDA: ( with the earnestness of a fish entering the river) No? Why would I find that weird?
( LINK stares at her for a beat. Two beats. The stage lights turn gold as he swiftly leans over and grabs both sides of ZELDA’s face, kissing her. ZELDA startles in surprise before quickly cupping LINK’S face as well, tangling her fingers in his hair. The lights suddenly flash and the two are back to their original positions. The last sequence was simply a fantasy.)
LINK: ( handing ZELDA the bottle again) Do you want me to do yours…?
ZELDA: ( shaking her head) All of that was a product of the Old World. Ritual, ceremony, conjecture-- I think I want to try being just Zelda for a while. ( a beat) I think… I think I want to cut my hair.
LINK: I could help you.
ZELDA: ( smiling so hard her eyes crinkle) I would like that so much.
( SCENE)
::
You were once younger than today, and completely terrified. Your father insisted you had not always been this scared, that you climbed to the top of the pantry cupboard before you could walk, and swam with the zora faster than anyone. But you pulled a sword from a stone and in an instant the world became impossibly large. You realized there were thousands of living souls in this great island you call home and that now, suddenly, you were responsible for all of them. Thousands of living souls will die (that is a promise/ a statement/ an omen) unless you wise up soon bucko! Time’s a wastin’.
When you came home and saw your mother you realized her forty years of sickness and survival mean absolutely nothing because if you don’t become the perfect soldier in the time it takes your soup to become cold she will be slaughtered like a lamb like a fish like a sparrow like a mom. When she sees your face her lips go thin and she cups your cheeks in her hands. You’ve come back a hundred years older, she says.
You have no idea how you’re supposed to respond to that, so you don’t.
The night before you’re to live at the castle, you overhear your mother behind a door. Why does he have to be so young? She asks, he’s not even old enough to drink, he’s still shorter than me! We don’t have the luxury of waiting for adulthood, your father tells her. Oh, but we have the luxury of using child soldiers? She snaps back, is that another benevolence from our blessed king? Don’t talk like that, someone will hear you. The king didn’t give birth to him! She continues. The king hasn’t even heard the voice of our Hylia directly, how am I supposed to believe anything about this triforce? He’s still our son, your father reminds her. No, she says finally. That ended the moment he pulled that sword. He belongs to the world now.
You have no idea how you’re supposed to feel about that, so you don’t.
I want you to know that despite everything, no matter what happens, you will always be my son. Your father tells you this as both generations walk through Castle Town like it's a death march, like it's the intermission of an opera, like salmon hunting season is gearing to an end and everyone has to really compete with the bears, like it's just Going To Work.
You know he wants some kind of response from you, but responses are currency and you haven’t gotten your paycheck yet so you give him the only answer you can afford right now: a curt nod. Which isn’t even close to how you actually feel about things, because how you feel about things is “close” to a nod in the way that Hateno is “close” to Dueling Peaks. Before this whole mess started you had been considering that maybe you aren’t anyone's son, maybe you’re something else, or, becoming something else. Something you don’t quite have the language to describe, you only speak one of them and even then not well. You’ve tried explaining this to the children of the forest, who you’re not even supposed to see anymore, but all they told you was that you could also become just a child (of the forest that is) if you simply left home and wandered in the woods until the trees took you in. Or, well, that’s how it had been in the old days. They weren’t sure if that worked anymore.
Regardless, your mother had been right-- you belong to the world now. You felt this when you bowed in front of the king and he told everyone in the room that you were the chosen hero and you felt like you were going to throw up a little bit, but you didn’t. When you stand beside the Princess for the first time, you don’t steal a glance to look at her because when the world became impossibly small, it also came with a thousand rules. And even though you may be a sword, she is a goddess, in order of importance it's obvious who goes first. You will be the one to stick the knife in the monster's back, but she will be the one to kill it. You will hold up the entire world with your palms, but she will be the one to save it, et cetera.
After you two, (the sacrificial lambs) were presented to the world like a busy marketplace, the Princess gives you a brief glance before turning sharply and walking out the door. You don’t really know what you’re supposed to be doing beyond following her around so you do just that, strutting off like a gosling that’s imprinted itself onto the wrong species, onto a ghost.
You follow her to the door of her room before she turns around, sighing loudly. I understand that you are perhaps new to this working state of affairs, she starts. So I shall only tell you this once. You are not permitted entrance into my chamber unless I grant you that privilege explicitly, and I am not one to grant that privilege often.
You don’t know how to respond to her, because you don’t know how to respond to a princess, because you’re starting to lose the knowledge of how to respond to anyone; except maybe a frog. So you simply nod your head and upon seeing her eyes, deep-set in her sockets like the nuts you’ve always collected from the forest- you realize for the first time in your short sixteen years of life that before you stands the only person who will ever honestly understand you. Bathed in a silk and organza gown is a girl who is maybe not a girl, because she was born as something else-- born with a profession/a job/a task/a destiny. Before you is a girl born as a deity, born to the world. You see the cracks in her lips and the bags under her eyes, (hidden to an extent) and you cannot help yourself but fall in love with her for it.
Because you were once a shy student and she was your best friend, because you were once a beast and she spoke to you like a human, because you were losing your mind trying to figure out how to get those bombs and she looked up with a wink, because your dreams were connected to hers even before the painting, because you didn’t know anything beyond your ocarina and she knew what you could understand was her harp.
The princess here and now diverts her eyes and turns around. You may guard the entrance to my door if you like, she says, however I do not understand the purpose of such things as there are many other trained guards within walking distance of this location. Goodnight. She turns her back to you and heads into her room, shitting the door.
You have no idea how you’re supposed to think about that, so you don’t.
::
He wakes up from the memory with a jolt, gripping the bed’s sheets in a way that some religions might interpret as prayer. This has never happened before, the memory-within-a-dream, the world-within-a-chest. There’s something cosmic out there-- the blood and bones and guts and skin of the Hyrule all of us had to leave behind. Maybe one day he’ll find it, maybe he won’t. He’s getting there, after all these years. Not to the child soldier he once was, but something else… a person outside of the mask/off the stage/out of the water/away from the bear. The sudden movement has made her shift next to him and she turns around, blinking adjustments to the night air.
“What’s wrong?” She whispers, a habit of hers developed because they used to talk about anything in her room at night, when they weren’t supposed to, when it would have caused such a scandal, when talking was their only rebellion, when he’d make her laugh and she’d tell him that he had to stop it before someone heard her-- before everything ended. So she says.
He shakes his head and buries it in the rove of her neck that’s not absorbed by her shoulders, nothing’s wrong. Well, everything’s wrong and she knows it because she softly threads her fingers through his hair, because he was born in a burning house that collapsed while he was asleep, but that doesn’t mean he still can’t hear the smoke. Because they’re two salmon and two birds and two young adults and two parts of a third and two messages from the sky that maybe the goddess does care, maybe she did cry when it all fell apart.
He was once a wolf, he was once the nephew of a craftsman, he was once the son of a fisherman, he was once a knight in training, he was once a blacksmith in training, he was once a child of the forest, he was once a boy with a sword, he was once the spirit of the world wrapped into a small body, he was once a hundred and twenty years younger than he is today, he is now the happiest he has ever been-- despite everything.
“Hey” he says from inside her neck because he hasn’t yet figured out how to get inside her lungs. “Happy birthday.”
She laughs and cups his jaw (what bit of it that she can) so she can kiss the crown of his head. “My birthday doesn’t start until the sun rises, go back to sleep.”
In the morning he will bake her a fruit cake, their friends will arrive, and the world will become small. She will smile and he will too, but for now he thinks of salmon and thinks that the golden arms submerged themselves in the river; and the salmon, not knowing about the whole deal with history lept from the womb of a river and into the bank where its life began. Where its life began. Where its life began.
Close your eyes hero, the world can wait.