Work Text:
Knit. Knit. Purl. Purl.
Link counts the stitches he knits, worn and calloused fingers holding the needles tightly. Peace is a strange thing. He’s lived in a land full of turmoil for so long that in the absence of evil everything seems almost wrong. Hateno Village is nice but his Hero’s blood still rages in his veins. Link is not built for quiet living so the days drag on, sluggish and boring.
The book has helped. A small text he found in the back of Purah’s home, tucked into an old and dusty shelf, untouched for Goddess knows how long. Link knows nothing about knitting but he sits there stubbornly, the book spread out in his lap, reading over the diagrams.
His fingers are clumsy, winding the yarn around with shaking movements. He’s used to holding a sword, not knitting needles. They are awkward in his hands, unnatural. Repetition , he knows. A blade felt strange in his hand in the beginning, too heavy and long.
It will take practice and Link is mulish and headstrong. The row of stitches is crooked, loose in some areas and tighter in others. A mess. He sighs softly, pulling out the row, nails catching on the yarn as he undoes his day’s work.
#
“I, er, need yarn?”
Sayge glances at Link with a raised brow, elbow-deep in a vat of dye. “That’s a request that’s a little too simple. You’ve got to give me more, boy.”
Link only knows what he’s read in the book that he picked up at Purah’s lab—which isn’t much. He managed to get to page three before he figured it’d be easier to just get the materials and try as he goes. “Well, I don’t—look, I found a book on knitting—”
“Oh?” Sayge looks amused. “Seams as if there’s more to you than I thought?”
Link rolls his eyes at the silly pun but smiles. “I just don’t know where to start, that’s all.”
“Well, we have different types of yarn, of course—but since you’re just starting out, you don’t need anything fancy. A skein of the lower-quality stuff is perfect for practicing stitches.”
An enticing offer but Link has already made a plan of action, one that leads him in a different direction. “I’m actually just thinking of diving right in and making a sweater. So, something nicer? I’ve got the money to pay.”
Sayge thumbs his chin with the hand not drenched in dye. “Well, there’s no need to get the finest of our stock. It’s smooth like silk but wasted when you don’t know your knits from your purls.” He laughs, grinning. “I’ll tell you what—pick a few colors and I’ll set you up with our middling pile. Soft to the touch, springy, and stretchy—perfect for whatever it is you’re trying to make. Socks?”
“A sweater.”
“Ah, yes,” says Sayge with a nod. “Better than socks, anyhow. Easier to make, though it’s a little early in the year for that. It’s Spring! The flowers are still dancing outside.” A pause as he stirs the dye in the vat. “Ideas on colors?”
Link taps his chin, thinking about colors that might suit him but the more he thinks, the less he wants the sweater for himself. Instead, he thinks of golden spun hair that hangs over a shoulder and a toothy grin. “Green,” he says, eyes the color of grassland in his mind. “And a blue. Something rich.”
When they meet gazes again, Sayge is watching him back with a thoughtful look. “Alright, then. Blue and green. Give me a day or so and you’ll be set.” He pulls his arm from the dye vat and shakes it off, skin stained orange to his elbow.
Link takes his hand without a second thought and the bargain is made.
And, as promised, two days later Link picks up a satchel of yarn skeins, expertly dyed bright hues. When Link tries to pay, Sayge doesn’t let him. “Nonsense. You’ve—well, let’s just say that this village owes you a debt. Take them.”
Once back in his home, Link cracks open the knitting book. Follows the diagrams and learns how to hold the knitting needles, curling a length of yarn around one end of a needle. “In through the bunny hole,” he murmurs, reciting the rhyme in the book. Link loses track of time as he purls and knits.
The Calamity Ganon, rebuilding Hyrule in their newfound peace, Zelda— these are the moments that he spends thinking, thoughts spinning to the rhythm of his fingers as he pulls and tugs at the soft yarn.
“I wonder,” he murmurs, his mind lingering on Zelda. There is so much between that lies unspoken. Link doesn’t even know where to start.
There isn’t a point in lingering on it. “In through the bunny hole,” he says again, wrapping the yarn around the needle. “Around the big tree, out through the bunny hole, and off hops she.” The stitch slides off the needle, neater than the others.
Not entirely terrible, he thinks with a grin.
#
The summer months bring the heat, rays shining from the hot sun, basking the earth. Link takes his knitting outside but keeps to the shade, settling underneath the large tree just outside his home in Hateno Village.
Over the months, his knitting has gotten better. He’s hashed out the entire back side of the sweater, rows relatively straight and neat. There are parts that are looser, wavering about in wonky lines, but the larger picture is perfectly serviceable.
Zelda will like it nonetheless. She’d like it if it was half-finished and hanging off the shoulder, barely in one piece. Craggy, crisscrossed lines, knots sticking out where he’s melded the colors poorly—she’s the sort that would accept it with a gleam in her eye, laughing.
Link sighs softly as he runs his fingers over the soft, silky yarn. His last row isn’t exactly as he wants it to be so he digs his fingers in through the loose holes, pulling apart the stitches until they unravel.
This is what it’s like with Zelda, always push and pull. Link isn’t unfeeling, his chest warms every time they share the same space, but all they seem to do is dance around each other. She isn’t cold, she’s just a little awkward and hesitant in the way that she regards him.
But then other times, she’s the opposite, dragging touches over the sleeve, or leaning in close against his arm.
Two steps forward, one step back—back and forth, patterns danced into the floor of Hyrule Castle. Not unlike his knitting which sits in a pile across his lap, unraveled yarn piled to the side.
“Just needs some work,” he mutters, fingers getting back to work, stitching a neat new row, this one straighter. “Knit, knit, purl—” Back and forth, back and forth.
Dance steps require practice, just like friendships. Link has never been good with people, stoic in his heroic nature. There is a learning curve and Link’s only been a good student when it comes to the sword.
Zelda, though, is patient. She waited a century for him to come back. She can wait a few more months for him to figure his feelings out.
#
“You’re getting better at knitting,” says Zelda one blustery, cold autumn afternoon. She laughs softly, the sound tinkling through the air. “At least, I assume so. I don’t pretend to know anything about the craft.”
Link barely does but he finds himself smiling. Knit, knit, purl, he thinks as his fingers move almost automatically. His stitches are neat now, not quite straight but even enough to be proud of. It makes the rest of the sweater look a little strange, the sections made earlier looser and less neat.
Character, he thinks. It gives it a little character, which Zelda will like.
“Yeah,” he starts, finally looking at her, grinning. “Turns out that practice works.”
Zelda snorts, so different from the ladylike way she sits on the picnic blanket. Legs folded underneath her, hands clasped in her lap primly; she’s a picture of royalty when compared to Link’s rougher edges and calloused fingers.
“You’ve always been diligent when it comes to practice,” she says, her eyes glinting with amusement. “Why would this be any different?”
“I’m no good with my hands—”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” Zelda reaches out and smacks his bicep, a light-handed touch that’s a tease. “There are those who envy your way with the sword.”
A sword is different from whatever this is. That’s what he mutters, Zelda barely catching it. He meets her narrowed gaze with one of his own. “It’s different,” he insists. “Took ages to figure out how to hold these things and work the yarn.”
“There is a process to everything.” Zelda nods to the half-formed sweater in his hand. “Why would this be any different? It’s just that you’re good at most things.”
“Are we arguing about knitting?”
Zelda blinks, her eyebrows raised. “Are we arguing?”
Annoyance bleeds through Link but it’s minor. Probably not an argument—not a true one at least. He sighs, shakes his head, and chuckles. “Sorry, I just—I’ve missed this, I guess. The way that we…” He gestures between them. The bickering and bantering, the way that they tug at each other.
Zelda treats everyone else with politeness expected of a princess but with Link, she’s always been infuriatingly casual, even when she shouldn’t have been.
She chuckles as well, smiling wide. And just like that, it’s back to normal. They sit in the quiet, enjoying each other’s presence. Zelda watches his fingers dance around as he wraps the yarn and pulls his stitches taut, a question on the tip of her tongue.
Eventually, she asks, unable to shelf her curiosity. “Who is the sweater for? You?” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “No, those aren’t your colors.”
Link hides a grin as he turns away. “A friend,” he answers vaguely.
“A friend—” Zelda huffs, her cheeks puffing out. “Who? The size of it—well, it could fit a number of people.” A pause. “Not Sidon—though I don’t think he’d wear something like this. Wool shrinks…”
Link bursts into laughter, the image of Sidon shoved into an ill-fitting sweater almost too much to bear. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just—”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Zelda’s face is as soft as the words that tumble from her mouth. Her cheeks are pink with the cold, and her nose drips slightly despite the way she’s bundled up. Link’s chest tightens with fondness. “In any case,” she continues, brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear, “whoever it’s for will love it, surely. The colors are quite nice.”
Zelda shivers and wrings her fingers to force blood back into them.
Link thinks that the sweater will definitely be the perfect gift.
#
Winter comes in bitter full force, pummeling what’s left of Hyrule Castle with sleet and snow.
“At least it’s warm inside.” Zelda is on the opposite end of the room. Link’s living quarters are divided into a bedroom and a den, and currently, she brews a pot of tea at his dining table. “It would be a lie to say that I haven’t missed the snow, though.”
“What’s there to miss?” Link kneels before the fireplace, coaxing the logs to life. “It’s cold and it’s wet. If you stand in it too long, you lose fingers and toes, or maybe even a limb.” Zelda doesn’t immediately respond, which makes Link look up and catch her amused gaze. “What?”
“Sounds like someone spent a little too much time in the Hebra Mountains,” she says with a grin. “Is that some bitterness I detect?”
Link frowns, looking away. “Listen, you camp up there for more than a week, and see how you’re feeling afterwards. I drank so much spicy elixir that I couldn’t feel my tongue for weeks.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“It is not!”
Zelda huffs and pours out two cups of tea. She glides across the room on quiet, slippered feet. “Here,” she says. “Let this warm you up, at least.”
“I’m not the cold one. You whined about how drafty it is in here—”
“It is.” Zelda moves to sit on the settee an arm’s length away. “Like I said earlier, it’s warmer inside, but there’s still a chill that seems to permeate these walls—”
“Are you sure it’s not from the remnants of the Calamity haunting this place?”
Zelda’s gaze crinkles in amusement. “If I agreed, would it get you to go outside and throw snowballs at the palace guards with me?”
“No. I’d rather take my chances with the ghosts.” Link leans back, a proper blaze finally filling the fireplace. He moves to sit beside her on the lounge, finally sipping his tea with a soft hum.
“So?”
Link’s gaze settles back on Zelda. “So?”
“The tea, silly. Good?”
He takes another sip and pretends to weigh the taste. “Decent. For a queen.”
Zelda cringes. “I prefer when you blame it on my century-long disappearance,” she drawls.
“That’s fun too, but now that you’re properly crowned, I have two things to pick on.” A pause. “Milady,” adds Link. He holds his cup aloft and finishes with, “Hear, hear for Queen Zelda, and her debatable taste in tea—”
“Oh, that’s rude.” But Zelda laughs anyhow and clinks her mug against his.
They settle after that, their chatter turning quiet. Zelda leans to the side, apologizing for accidentally sitting on his knitting. She’s careful as she hands it over, ensuring the needles don’t slide out from the current rows. Link gives his thanks before setting the mug down.
The sweater is nearly done. He’s on the last several rows before the final tie off.
“Are you really not going to throw snowballs at the palace guards with me?”
Link’s eyebrows raise to his hairline. “You might be able to get away with whatever you want but I have to set an example.”
“As the Captain of the Guard?”
“As the Hero of Hyrule.”
Zelda snorts. “Oh, right. I forgot.” She did not, but it’s funny all the same.
Knit, knit, purl, he thinks, wrapping the yarn around his needles and sliding off new stitches into a perfect, neat row. Blue and green, alternating. The lines of the sweater are clear now, oversized, and a little crooked in spots, but well-tapered in its cut.
The moment is sweet. Link enjoys the casual nature of their jabs, and is pleased that Zelda can still relax in his presence. It’s been… awkward, as of late—not in a bad way. She seems more subdued at times, though, less prone to teasing, forcing herself into propriety that befits her new status.
“I am thankful, you know,” says Zelda, cutting into his thoughts. “That I can still be myself around you. The thing I’ve learned since becoming Queen is that it’s mostly about putting on a show. I… never want to do that with you.”
It’s as if she’s pulled the idea straight from his mind.
“You still haven’t told me who that’s for.” Zelda watches him knit the rest of his last row, knitting needles clacking alongside the crackle of the roaring fire.
Link ties off the final stitches. “You said that you want to spend time in the snow, but do you have any clothing for it? I’ve only seen that heavy cape of yours.”
Zelda laughs. “Yes, well, as it turns out, wardrobes don’t last a century, even when hanging in closets. It’s been a slow process of working with tailors to rebuild what’s last. Why do you ask?”
He feels a smile tug at his lips, just barely, as he ties off the ends of the yarn and weaves them back into the row. Then, he holds it out, giving it a good shake, taking in the slightly lumpy edge on one side, and the smooth, neater one on the other.
Link folds it gently, and half, and then a third. His callous catch on the weave as he drags his fingers over it, testing the softness of the wool. Then— “Here,” he says, shoving it into Zelda’s lap.
Zelda looks at him flabbergasted. “I— er—”
“It’s for you.” Link waves vaguely at the sweater. “I’m unused to peace. I’m a Hero. Things like courage still boil in my veins and there’s nothing to temper that. I found a book on knitting at Purah’s and thought it’d be a good distraction.”
“Link…”
“A year has passed and my fingers still itch to hold the Master Sword. It… I want to settle down but these hands aren’t built for it. I certainly didn’t think they were suited for anything other than wielding a sword, and Goddess, the sweater’s a mess to look at, but—”
“It is perfect.”
Zelda takes one of his hands and pulls it into her lap. Link falls quiet, self-conscious of the fact that he’s just blabbed more in one go than he has in over a century. She drags her fingers across the backs of his knuckles, taking in every scar that she finds there. Then, she flips it palm side up and does the same, tracing every callus and line.
“These hands have warded off evil. They have saved countless lives, mine included. They are the hands of a Hero.” Zelda smiles as she touches the sweater, fingers sinking into its softness. “They have killed but they have also created. Who would have thought that something so beautiful could’ve been woven by courage with such care?”
Zelda then laughs, the sound like tinkling wind chimes. “At least, that’s what most would say about our stoic knight, yes? But I know you, Link. I’ve known you forever and a day, and I am not surprised.”
She pulls his hand to her lips for a gentle kiss against his knuckles, much like a dashing knight would bestow upon a lady. Link’s heart skips a beat. Up until this point, everything that lay between them has been thick and tangled, but with just a few words, Zelda has raveled it all with expert ease.
“Zelda, I—”
“This is where you should kiss me, I think,” she cuts in, curling his Hero’s hand against her cheek.
He laughs, unable to hold it back. Her skin is warm and Link leans in to chase the heat of it.
It is not a spectacular kiss, more awkward than not. They fumble around with fumbling presses of their mouths, but it is enthusiastic as they both melt into the touch. Link thinks that if the winter is to be cold, with this, at least, they can chase the bitterness away.
When they part, Zelda gives him a wry look. “I know that I said I wanted to throw snow at the guards but I think creating scandalous castle gossip seems more fun.”
Link barks in laughter, knowing there are no servants in his wing of the palace. “You should try on the sweater, at least. I can’t guarantee it’ll fit.”
“I think we should kiss again, instead,” says Zelda.
“Very demanding.”
“Aren’t all queens?”
Link grins before dipping close again, the sweater, and their tea all but forgotten.