Work Text:
done
Link’s proposal was just as quiet as him, which was how Malon seemed to like it.
They lead the horses in and it was her turn to take Epona; he made sure to stay nearby until he heard her laugh and a, "What is on your tack? And in your mane!”
He turned, hand still on a horse's lead, as she reached up to near Epona's ear where the halter was the loosest—she pulled the shawl-pin and caught its matching ring, oblivious, before she grabbed the hair comb firmly wedged in a braid, half hidden by the rest of her mane so she wouldn’t immediately know what it was. "Link! What did you—" She paused and her eyes widened, looking at the knotwork carved into the comb—inlaid with white quartz the way her mother's engagement comb was—then the shawl pin carved from a Deku seed's shell and branches. All of it was in the patterns Link had first used to say "I love you" while he lived with the Kokiri, carved in secret while he had been working away from her.
"Well?" he said softly, breaking the silence in a way he still wasn't used to, but at least he was smiling.
She nodded and put all of the pieces into her pocket, throwing herself against him and laughing in a way that made him laugh, too.
They still brought the horses in, two at a time, and kept looking at each other—silently asking if this was real, but also laughing like children that it was even necessary to formalize something that felt like it had already happened.
She took his hand like she always did, dragging him into the house to show her father and his only comment was a joke at how Link had given her too much time to prepare—the summer had been good which meant she'd spend her winter sewing, and come the time of flowers she'd be one of the prettiest brides in Castle Town.
Link just replied she was already there and she tipped into him, blush warm against his neck. It was another moment that everything felt safe, in the long line of moments since she'd pulled him out of memories of what once-was.
They'd haunted him, in the castle; he'd thrown himself into a soldier's upbringing and a noble's upbringing because that's what Zelda needed—he was the Goddess' Chosen who had knowledge of the King of the Gerudo, he had been another voice for the King of Hyrule to believe his daughter: a stranger who knew every song the royals knew, without having any other way to know them than the story he told.
But the only thing that had been the same in that aftermath—the wild, unreal aftermath as Ganondorf was executed for treason he had yet to commit, of Navi leaving, of the Kokiri not knowing how to respond to him knowing so much and knowing he'd grow up—was going to Lon Lon Ranch and meeting a girl who still gave him a song and a horse.
She hadn't called him a fairy boy, this time, but when she found out who he was—used to be?—she'd started again. When he'd finally plucked up the courage to go back to Kokiri forest with her, she'd jumped at Navi's "HEY" and laughed when the fairy demanded to know if Malon still trusted him with Epona.
They were teenagers, and it was new for him—he'd gone from child to adult and those years were blank so it was easy enough to tell stories. Of how he had relied on Epona's Song, in a future that wouldn't exist, because he travelled all across Hyrule and the warhorse had kept him safe and he had Malon to thank. His first stop after waking up had been to save her from a tyrant, and his first stop when he hadn't known what to do in this reality was to go to Lon Lon Ranch to get milk.
She'd kissed him under the Deku Tree and it felt better than anything in his former life, their fingers interlaced and his hands not meant for killing and they'd laughed in a world without death.
He'd only started experiencing problems as his body grew into something familiar, his adult body now with an adult mind and he was once again a soldier defending Hyrule—but his blade's weight was wrong, and people tried to joke he was living in a different life when he'd asked for something longer than the standard issue. Blacksmiths had muttered about how the Master Sword wasn't supposed to be recreated, but they'd done it on Zelda's orders.
The blade wasn't alive the way the real one had been, not an extension of him, but he kept it in his rooms in case. People would tease him, lightly, or not so lightly, whenever he brought it out—it sounded like pity. "Why can't you enjoy the world you saved?" was the most common refrain.
The castle was worse. Castle Town was worse. The soldiers, at least, had the respect of knowing the world really wasn't safe, that’s why they stood on the walls, but the nobles and the commoners found it all a bit dramatic. The monsters were things of legend, sealed away by a Hero long ago and Link had maybe been a bit paranoid, and the Princess had been a bit paranoid, but they supposed it had done well since nothing had fallen apart—it was time to move on. Even if he was a hero in their eyes, it was time to move on.
Link didn't know how to explain that he couldn't, and Zelda had started getting dreams of herself being asked to fight, and they'd trained in secret just in case. Impa had been willing to entertain them, knowing that preparation was the best cure for a nebulous threat. She had warned them that it couldn’t cure the nightmares, but they would know they had tools to fight when they woke up.
The first time he'd brought the blade out with Malon, she'd just asked him if she'd ever met him with it. When he said yes, but he'd never had to use it at Lon Lon Ranch, she'd given him a look that made him keep it in his rooms at the castle.
When he realized he couldn't be a soldier and keep his tie to reality, always looking over his shoulder for another Chosen child sneaking into the castle around patrols, Malon had once again taken his hand and dragged him to the place that had always been safe no matter how dark the clouds around Death Mountain would get.
Since moving here, to safety, to newness, to the familiar-unfamiliar, his nerves had settled. He'd even left the Master Sword replica in Zelda's care, somewhere he could ride and get it within an hour should he need to, something that would service well enough until he could get the real blade because nothing else would work, but—Malon had pointed it out, herself: he'd never drawn his blade at Lon Lon Ranch.
He wanted to build his life here, the only place in any timeline that was unchangingly welcoming—all because of the girl who'd grabbed his heart and never let it go.
He was doing chores when Malon's friends started dropping by in response to word getting out he’d proposed, one or two at a time; it meant he was outside fixing the barn, adjusting shingles on the roof in places that used to hold golden skutullas, when he overheard conversations.
"It's beautiful!" made him smile as they wondered how he had learned to carve an inlay like that. She’d responded he’d just picked it up when he was bored, hiding how he’d come from a world of trees because people didn’t think the Kokiri existed.
"You'll be safer than Zelda" made him hide a chuckle at how the only reason he was safe was because of Malon and the ranch. If only they knew, but they didn't, and they'd never understand even if they did.
He was about to drive another nail in when he heard an "Are you sure?" from the other side of the roof. His breath froze until he heard Malon's voice give an incredulous "Yes!" in reply.
He hammered the nail in harder than he needed to, denting the wood.
He stayed up on the roof until he saw her leave, and thought almost nothing of Malon waiting near the ladder with a cold bottle of milk. He drank it greedily, the sun having worn his skin and his heart untwisting.
"I'm sorry about her," Malon said, quietly.
Link shrugged and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to show her he didn't care, not anymore. His reputation came with him, but here, but with her, it just didn't matter.
She hugged him back. "I'm sure your friends will have many things to say."
He chuckled. "They'll embarrass me, I'm sure."
She just giggled and both of them went back to work.
jealousy
The nightmares found him again that fall.
Link didn’t understand. They’d gone, after Malon had dragged him out of the castle that spring. After she had taught him new things that had nothing to do with heroism or the Kokiri—farm work, where it had always been safe; where he’d met Epona when all of this had just been a grand adventure.
The first night, he’d shaken them off and told her he simply hadn’t slept well. She’d given him Lon Lon Milk, like she’d given him so many times, and for the first time it felt like it hadn’t healed him. The nerves still lived under his skin, telling him to run and not stop, to draw a blade—he’d never needed to here, why did he suddenly want to start—and fight it off. To do something, because if he didn’t, the world would end.
He’d gotten a few days’ reprieve, but then—night after night, the moon fell and he couldn’t save them, hands reaching out of walls and ceilings so vivid he had to run his hand along every plank of his bedroom before he could calm down, his shadow coming to life with a blade locked in the Temple of Time and slicing through him, the crops dying in the shadow of the Deku Tree gasping his last.
The sixth night of this—he’d lost track of what memory had flung itself to his conscious mind—he came downstairs and Malon immediately dropped everything she was doing and forced him to sit down. “You look awful.”
He made a grumpy noise of acknowledgement at that.
She stroked his hair in ways that normally soothed him. “Do you want more milk?”
He nodded—it couldn’t hurt.
She took a bottle and sliced some fruit into yoghurt for good measure, placing both in front of him before going to sprinkle toasted, honeyed grains atop the whole pile.
The food was both sickeningly sweet—too much like Kokiri forest, even though that’s exactly why she had chosen the fruit she had, apples and strawberries and persimmons—and so rugged it made his feet itch to run and take what could be preserved long-term with him for when he couldn’t forage.
This was the kind of meal he would get when the roads were good, when the travel was as peaceful as it got, under Majora or Ganondorf— why wasn’t it calming him?
She kept touching him as he ate, especially when she noticed he had an easier time even eating if she was—first gentle touches across his shoulders as she passed by, then sitting beside him and holding his hand on the table as she ate her own breakfast, fingers interlocked like they’d been after he’d proposed. After they’d kissed. The grip was so alien he let her lead, the gaps in his loose fist almost itchy from their strangeness.
He hadn’t been able to touch her, when he’d come back for Epona—a future she couldn’t remember, but she’d listened to intently when he tried to explain. She had been too broken down from living under that man to pay much attention to Link, and now none of that touched her. She had grown up from the young girl he’d learned Epona’s Song from to the young woman who was often singing as she fed the animals; and while Epona was still a warhorse because he’d trained her as he had trained as a soldier, even she had never faced the lands he had ridden her on.
She lacked the sturdiness of the mare who had seen monsters around every turn and learned to cut them down, because there were no monsters. Not anymore.
Link had felt jealousy, before. Small pangs, here and there, interwoven with gratitude that he’d done it. He’d made it nobody had to recover; he’d won, and the woman sitting beside him holding his hand in the present was proof. Zelda had sent him back to enjoy this world.
But now…
She pinched her eyebrows together as he finished the last of his food, blue eyes their own form of helpless. “Did… it help? Even a little?”
Her second question saved him from truly lying. He nodded, squeezing her hand in reassurance.
In that moment, he wished she was the broken girl he had met as an adult. Then he wouldn’t be alone.
She got up and dragged him to his feet, leading him out of the kitchen. “Why don’t you go riding? That tends to help.”
She was throwing things at a wall to see what stuck. He couldn’t even fault her for it, even though he wanted to.
He nodded, hand slipping from hers as he trotted to the pasture. It was the closest thing to a run he allowed himself.
He feared if he started, he would never stop.
grief
He rode to the Temple of Time without thinking.
It shocked him on some level, that there were guards at the entrance asking him to dismount so as not to hurt the crowds in the market. He did, because he was supposed to, because this was the world he had fought for, but he still jumped at every shadow, expecting a ReDead instead of laughing children running around and ignoring the warhorse in their midst. They didn’t see a warhorse, they saw one of the horses that sometimes gave them rides when their parents sent them to Lon Lon for milk, or yoghurt, or some of Malon’s crafts—she made some of the best ropes and ribbons for miles.
Link hadn’t been at the Ranch long enough to be known for anything, yet, and that hollowness ate at him. He was just the lost hero, the former soldier, nothing else.
Epona was calm, the way she always was, because she knew how to be a horse around children. She paused, making him stop, when Link’s tunnel vision and haunted memory made him forget that there were carts in the market, now.
“Oh! Hero-boy,” the cart owner said. “Need anything?”
Link shook his head and walked around.
He left Epona outside the gates and went into the sanctuary and tears welled up on their own accord at how empty the pedestals were. He’d given the Kokiri Emerald back to the Deku Tree, and Ruto had never met him as a child to promise the Zora Sapphire to him as a marriage gift—Zelda had invited him to that betrothal party between Ruto and her now-husband, and he’d gone, silent as ever as he’d been in a loaned a tunic that let him breathe underwater and he’d never been so happy to give something back—and the Gorons had never lost access to their mines so Darunia had never given him the Goron’s Ruby in thanks.
If he asked for those things now, he’d be looked at strangely—the pity of people who tried to understand, but who also thought him a little insane. He’d been insulted at those comments before, but now, faced with his own irrationality, maybe they were right. Maybe he was just paranoid, acting like Ganondorf was around the corner as if his future would catch up with his present.
But Ganondorf, or someone like him, could be there and the Master Sword was behind the secret passage and he was old enough to get it and not fall asleep for seven years should he need it and he wanted to fling himself against the wall to do just that.
He didn’t have the Triforce, but its power still hummed in every part of the Temple. His hand itched, and the columns took on a slight tinge of green as Courage resonated with him.
He was still its Hero. Somewhere, somehow, that made everything feel right. He would still carry the mantle if he needed to, and maybe he just needed to remind himself it was there. To try and wake up and remind himself the tools existed, like Impa had taught him in this life.
He looked back at the empty pedestals and crumbled.
It was safer to cry here than anywhere else. Hiding behind the sacred altar, away from sight, and anyone who’d come to the temple would see Epona and know to leave him alone. Even if she had strayed away from where he’d left her to graze, she never went particularly far.
Malon could never get him to hitch the horse in place. She’d given up teaching him when one of her many attempts to tie her somewhere safe had simply resulted in him being unable to breathe. He needed to be able to call her. Even if he didn’t have the ocarina that let her appear no matter where he went.
Link didn’t know how long he stayed there, blearily staring at the wall that was supposed to be open, when the magic shifted.
It didn’t take long for Zelda to kneel beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you thinking of being a hero, again?”
He just nodded. It was close enough.
“I haven’t dreamed of anything that could be,” she said softly. “You don’t need to be.”
Then why can’t I let it go? he wondered, unable to make his voice form words. He’d had an easier time speaking, since living on the farm. Learning words could mean something other than instructions and death and danger. He hadn’t been this voiceless in so long.
She moved her hand to his back. “The future catches up to me, too, sometimes,” she murmured. “Hylia sometimes shows me what the castle looks like, in another life. The way Hyrule can decline, and the way someone like you manages to win. But it takes a toll.”
He just shrugged and rubbed his eyes.
She let out a breath. “Impa never did teach us what it meant, to feel afraid even with the tools. Did she?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe it’s impossible.”
He didn’t want to think about that possibility. Not now. Not when monsters were everywhere he turned.
They sat for awhile, in silence. Zelda knew there was nothing to say to him, and the older they’d gotten the less they had engaged with each other. They’d train with Impa, sometimes, but after they began resembling the last time they’d spoken before, the connection felt too fragile. She was his Princess, and sometimes it hurt to be reminded she could do whatever she wanted with his life. And he would still save her, because that’s what the Goddesses needed.
She had never become Sheik, but at least she knew she would’ve become that. Hylia showing her branches, where the world was safe or the world was doomed but the underscore of it all was: the world was never saved for good. Maybe for a generation, maybe for multiple, but it was never saved for good.
Eventually he got up; Zelda grabbing his wrist stopped him. “I’m sorry, Link.”
He just shrugged free—it hadn’t been her who made that choice, not really, and in the end it hadn’t changed anything; there would be another Hero, another Ganondorf, just like there had been Heroes and demons before him. All it did was made her people—his people—suffer less in this era.
He went outside, called Epona with his ocarina, and headed back to Lon Lon Ranch.
Only to ride straight past it, across Hyrule fields. The first time he’d left the Lost Woods, he’d found out all of the rumours were true and there were monsters—slow ones, he could outrun them easily even as a child—but now he found himself searching for them.
Whether it was to convince himself there were monsters or weren’t, he didn’t know.
He hadn’t ridden far enough for his liking when hoofbeats had him spin Epona around, threatening shout escaping.
Malon stood there, shawl pulled tight around her shoulders with the pin he’d made her. “Link! It’s getting dark.”
He’d noticed. The lengthening shadows made it more likely the monsters would be skeletons instead of corrupted plant matter, which would make them easier to spot.
She brought her horse closer to him—the mare of almost equal build to Epona, born a year later but having inherited more of her father’s blue colouring—and held out a hand. “Come home.”
He sighed, ignoring her hand, and kicked Epona into a run to Lon Lon Ranch, passing by her and hoping the gallop would work out whatever was left under his skin.
For how it took him a moment to not urge Epona faster when he heard thundering hoofbeats behind him again, that was a faint hope.
acceptance
Winter came and began cooling the world. All that did was remind him of Zora’s Domain frozen over, the ice where his shadow had come to life and there were too many shadows around. He found himself needing extra blankets, only to wake up in a suffocating sweat.
Malon kissed him goodnight, worry in her eyes as it had been months of this, and they went to their separate rooms—that was for next summer—but once Link had shut the door he grabbed his packs and headed out the window. He’d stocked up on winter gear, and maybe being outside would regulate his temperature.
Just one night. Just one outside with Epona—he’d ride somewhere nearby, that he could get back from in five minutes for morning chores—would help.
Epona startled and nickered in her stall, causing a chain reaction to other horses and Link mentally swore. It was so habitual to never stop, he’d never stopped for anything, hunting skulltulas at night and watching the moon fall. He kept forgetting she wasn’t used to night-riding, not now, and Malon had discouraged him from training her that way because what was the point? It would only serve to remind him of what wasn’t there. Night was for stopping.
But it could be coming. The eras were never safe, him falling into another world—another timeline—proved that much. Even if Lon Lon Ranch had survived before, who’s to say it wouldn’t get destroyed this time?
He reached out to let her sniff, murmuring soothing sounds. He went across a few horses like that, with each moment debating if he should bother getting tack or just hike on foot—that’d be just as familiar, even if he would feel less safe without a protector or a blade.
One he reached for immediately upon hearing a creak in the doorway, nearly throwing up when his hand grasped air where the hilt used to be.
“Link? What are you doing?”
Of course Malon heard him. Of course. If she would be sensitive to any sounds, it’d be horses, and while she wasn’t jumpy he’d forgotten she was attentive. She’d been in such a fog the last time—
She came up on his motionless form, arm around his shoulders to try and turn him towards her. “Come to bed.”
He shook his head and resisted. He could’ve turned away if he wanted, barely, she was strong from working the farm and he was weaker than he remembered from growing up a soldier instead of fighting monsters in a world that no longer existed, but he stayed.
Between worlds, as always.
She made a noise of frustration. “Then talk to me—somehow!”
He stayed still, hands not even twitching, throat tight. This voice wasn’t his voice, honed by yells and shouts as he defied death time and time again. His hands weren’t his either, no power of the Triforce or grown around gripping a blade while he was asleep. Every part of him felt different and what had been a comfort just now made him want to go back.
She put the candlestick down and turned his face towards her. “Then look at me!”
Mussed red hair and worried blue eyes and sunkissed skin, and he knew it should make him feel something but it didn’t and that hurt deeper than whatever he’d been feeling for what seemed like an eternity. The summer of peace felt like a dream he’d woken up from, only to discover clouds were forming.
He couldn’t make himself look away, though.
She seemed to know nothing was shifting the way it normally did. She hugged his still frame, like he’d just come home from war—arms around his neck and her full weight against him. “It’s over Link. It’s over you’re here you can rest.”
He swallowed. “No.”
It was the first word he’d spoken all week, voice dry and cracking and maybe that was more familiar to him than anything else in that moment.
She pulled back, pinching the muscles of his shoulders so hard it hurt. “What do you mean no? It—” She paused when her voice got shrill, when she was about to get angry. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong!”
Tears welled up in his eyes and he looked away, shaking his head, images of lightened pillars in blackness threatening to overwhelm him and he tried to cover his face but she grabbed his hands before he could make it. “What’s next?”
“Me,” she said firmly. “What’s next is me.”
“That stopped working.” His voice felt ripped from his chest, tense and choked and scared. She let him compose himself in silence, still a vice grip on his hands. “I… I don’t know what to do.”
They stood, for awhile, until Malon let go of one of his hands—his right one, held defensively between them like a shield was on it—and adjusted his left grip around her fingers so they’re interlocked, his coiled around hers and her half-formed fist fit in his hand like the Master Sword’s hilt and he could breathe.
She took his right arm around her waist and he’s holding her, or she was holding him, and he tensed at the exposure of his front even as she ran her hand through his hair and down his neck. “Working yourself to nothing won’t help, Link. What—Listen? Is that what she said?”
Her voice was so soft it almost didn’t register she was talking to him—trying to, anyway—like Navi did. He nodded. “Hey, listen…”
She gently tapped the side of his face with her open palm. “Hey. Listen. You won. And even if you keep feeling like this you can hold me. You’re not alone.”
He closed his eyes and hot tears escaped, his hand sliding up her back until he clung, hand still clenched around her fingers and the sword-hilt pulse it represented. “I wish—” His voice silenced again, wishing now was too close to the exhausted feeling of wanting the fight with Ganondorf to stop. And he didn’t want to let her go to sign.
“That I could help?”
Close enough. “You used to…”
She tangled her fingers in his hair. “I can again, if you let me.”
He exhaled and hid against her neck.
She adjusted her grip so she was holding both his hands again, letting him stay but also giving space to leave. “Let’s get to bed. I’m sure my father would forgive you for being in mine.”
He could just nod, gathering his packs with a practiced motion and slinging them over one shoulder, her hand still in the newfound grip that made him feel like he had some sort of purpose. Despite everything, he still had a nightmare, flinging himself out of the covers when the creak of the house sounded like a ReDead from Castle Town closing in on him because he hadn’t been quiet enough—
Malon gripped his wrist as he stood in a daze, pulling him back to bed as he realized the moonlight wasn’t the ever-present shadow of Ganondorf’s cursed castle. She didn’t complain as he elbowed her unthinkingly, letting him come back to the present.
This time, he was able to sleep.
epilogue
She’d taken him to Castle Town, after Talon had left and come back with a glint in his eye. She’d dragged him right to the tailor’s, getting new gloves in a darker tone than he’d ever had and work shirts in a rainbow he’d had to think about, instead of his blues and greys and greens.
He liked maroon, to his surprise.
He nearly choked as his betrothed, sweet as ever, requested a Triforce on the left glove. And when Malon dropped a purse of rupees with Zelda’s crest on it, suddenly it made sense.
It didn’t help as much as he wished it would, but it made the days a little easier. Slightly. Some days—weeks, even—he could only stay in the familiar, but when he felt like he couldn’t be a hero for another day he put on clothing that was the wrong colour, or the right colour if he asked Malon, and people barely recognized him in Castle Town when he did. Yellow in particular worked wonders, even if he did get teased it matched his hair. “Golden boy” beat “hero boy” any day.
They were laying under the stars one night in late spring—he’d convinced her to try camping, and she humoured him—them both in matching tones of purple and yellow, the blanket under them keeping dew off their backs and long grass brushing against his socked feet. The moon was just a sliver in the sky, large enough to be seen but too small to come crashing down.
“Your hair’s getting long,” she murmured playfully, combing her fingers through it.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, smile pulling on his lips.
She brushed his bangs out of his eyes, carefully pulling the hair to midway down his neck. “It’ll be long enough to tie back come the wedding.”
“Promise?”
She laughed at that, surprised and bright. “I’ll have to teach you to braid, fairy boy.”
He chuckled, deep in his chest, the same place where yelling at opponents came from. “With flowers?”
She just kissed him and he wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her on top of him.
He was back in green and silent a week later, her grip changing back to the hilt of a sword but at least this time it was less terrifying.
“We can delay the wedding,” she said as they went out riding some time later, when he’d cycled from green to soldier-blue. “If you can’t handle one, right now.”
He just nodded, kicking Epona into a gallop and Malon followed after him. The hoofbeats blended with thunder and lightning but also drifted in and out of just being them, riding, like they had hundreds of times before, like when he had raced her to beat her time while secretly knowing he’d always come back to buy milk just to see her again.
He came back from chores a few days later only to hear her say “I think you should leave, now” in the tone she normally used for misbehaving children.
A door slammed and one of her friends stormed off the ranch. He recognized her from the few times he’d tried to interact, and she could never seem to decide who he was—Goddess’ chosen or soldier or outcast from a place that wasn’t supposed to exist, a fairy boy without a fairy. She’d been the same one who questioned Malon at their engagement.
He walked into the kitchen to find Malon’s shoulders shaking. Without even thinking, he wrapped her in a hug from behind.
She startled. “Did you hear that?”
“Some,” he replied honestly.
She sniffled. “She found out the wedding was delayed and didn’t like it. Asked if—”
Link squeezed her. He didn’t need her to finish the sentence to know it was wondering what she was doing, marrying someone with such a loose grip on the present. He’d wondered that, sometimes, himself. “I’m sorry.”
She turned in his arms and grabbed his face, tears more in her voice than her eyes. “You didn’t choose this. My life isn’t worse knowing you. I wouldn’t have said yes if it was. Some busybody can’t tell me otherwise.”
He just kissed her, at a loss for words for a completely new, comforting reason.
As the summer began blooming, Link settled back into something that resembled last year’s routine. Sometimes his voice choked from grief that these nerves were a part of him, but every time she dragged him back to the present. Teaching him Hyrule’s fields were for galloping through recklessly, racing him until he started laughing when he finally beat her. Showing him every flower that grew, uncorrupted.
Sometimes, she would join him in the past—golden skultullas clinging to various places which is why he was so good with a slingshot, camping when the moon was full and he needed to reset the clock to find more masks before he was strong enough to defeat an equally-masked villain, racing her to get a cow in Kokiri village so he wouldn’t have to buy Lon Lon Milk.
She laughed when he finished that story. “A cow? Over that bridge?”
He nodded, an amused sound just shy of a chuckle escaping. “Stronger than it looks,” he signed.
She wrapped an arm around his waist and squeezed him. “I don’t think you need to race me to get free milk, now, fairy boy.”
That, Link barked a laugh at.
The solstice came and went and there were a handful of celebrations, Malon dragging him to Kokiri Village before he could remember one of those celebrations was about him—about his return to this time and place and as they laid under the stars with Saria trying to make wishes, Link hid against her neck. He swore he could hear the fireworks but Navi was fussing over his hair being a mess, and the sky was unchanging, and Malon kissed his forehead.
Saria pointed out a wishing star and Link didn’t know what to ask for, because he already had everything. The realization surprised him enough Malon asked him what was wrong, and he could only say ‘nothing’ and mean it.
Even if that morning he woke up with a gasp, Navi’s voice in his ear, and it took her actually yelling at him to realize the Deku Tree hadn’t called him.
They went back to Lon Lon and Zelda had sent him a new ocarina with a new melody she had composed: Malon’s lullaby.
The heat came and the crops grew and Link was glad they’d delayed the wedding—his hands ached for a blade and he kept wanting to run to the Gerudo fortress or Lake Hylia or Dodongo’s Cavern. Malon agreed to try keeping the Master Sword replica at Lon Lon Ranch, and it was different. Not really better, not really worse, but when everything became unbearable she often found him training with it. And when he came back for lunch she’d made his favourites and the ache in his chest quieted, at least for awhile.
His hair brushed his shoulders and while it was annoying, it was new, and Link was learning to find the space where the ache felt bearable—he still wanted to run, to check for monsters, but eventually Malon would see him lose track of the world, drape herself against his back, and he’d grip her fingers like she was the weapon to fight demons because she was. Maybe this is what Impa had cautioned him about, that if you didn’t find something—someone—to anchor yourself to, all the tools in the realms wouldn’t help.
It was his turn to take in Epona and he frowned at the extra colour behind her cheek; she dipped her head as he untied strips of fabric around her halter, Malon’s giggle making his ear twitch as he unfurled a maroon ribbon of about the same colour as his new favourite shirt, a green one that matched his hero’s tunic, and a blue one for his soldier’s uniform.
All woven with the knotwork that matched the carvings of Malon’s betrothal tokens, but more complex from the extra length—the promise best friends had always made, to go find them in the Lost Woods if they ever got turned around.
Saria must’ve told her that, when they visited.
He turned to face her, swallowing. “What…?”
She shrugged one shoulder with a playful glint in her eye. “You need to start tying your hair back, fairy boy.”
He shook his head—not because he didn’t appreciate her teasing, but because that wasn’t the question he’d asked—stroking the ribbon with his thumb. “Why?”
She came over to him and tied his hair back with the green to match his current tunic. “Because it didn’t seem fair for me to have the only tokens of betrothal, not when you have hardly anything to remember here by.”
He kissed her for that, soft and sweet and so relieved she had found a wound he didn’t even know he had.
She braided his hair for the wedding with the last of the summer flowers and the maroon ribbon, a crown of the same on her brow and their vows were done more with hands and music than words.
He still hadn’t convinced himself Ganondorf wouldn’t come back.
But he was starting to believe he’d found the home he’d come back to.