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Things had been different since she woke up in her own time.
Of course, different in the context that she’d lived ten thousand years as an immortal dragon with no sense of herself in preparation for an eventual second chance at a war she lost.
But also, Link had been acting weird.
Well. Weird for Link.
When they knew each other before the calamity (once she stopped hating him) they’d maintained a good professional relationship, and somewhere along the way, it became a friendship. The trauma of what they went through together had forged something of a bond.
Then she’d had to put him in a coma for 100 years.
When Link finally woke up and found her again, he had bits of memory, and it took him a while to get the rest back. He’d once told her that, while he had the memories and knew they were his, they felt disconnected from him somehow. Another life entirely. She understood the feeling.
So, they went back to Hateno, and the house, and she built a school, and began restoration efforts for Hyrule, and the whole time, Link was there; steadfast, mostly silent, and dutiful. Every time she’d goad him about still being so formal - after all, she’d moved in with him, the house was too small and they had to share the bed - he’d make some remark about impropriety (again, sharing a bed ) and shuffle off. Despite everything, despite how close they’d become because of it, he was still her knight first and foremost.
This was different.
She’d about collapsed when he showed her the house in Tarrey Town - complete with a single bedroom and a study built specifically for her use - and ever since they officially moved in a few weeks ago, Link had been-
Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock and she pivoted to see Link standing there.
Good sunset? he signed.
The roof deck was a recent addition to the house - an odd, triangular Hudson Construction house segment that Link had purchased and immediately regretted ( It doesn’t fit anywhere? I tried for an hour and couldn’t get it to work at all, he’d told her) that she eventually suggested they convert into a sort of covered patio that they’d installed on the sparse second floor next to her study, added some chairs, and called it a day. It was a lovely spot to sit in and appreciate the views that the property has to offer.
It was indeed a good sunset. Most sunsets were from the pictorial plot of land where he’d built their new house (it still felt so strange to say that).
“I’m afraid you’ve caught me slacking on reviewing the floor plans for the school,” she admitted. “It’s just… it’s very beautiful.”
He merely nodded.
“Did you need something?”
Do you want dinner?
The only thing that could rip her away from the sunset was the promise of Link’s curry.
They’d had seemingly endless quiet evenings together in Hateno, but she found that she appreciated them all the more since she’d been back. Link listened attentively while she recapped her thoughts regarding the construction of the new school ( “it’s lovely, but Hudson seems to have a proclivity for oddly placed stairs.” ) before retiring for a rather distracted reading session in bed, trying to put thoughts of Link’s recent changes in behavior aside. She wasn’t having much luck, and at one point opted to take a break from reading entirely to instead take up the task of staring up at the ceiling.
What was so different about him, she wondered. At first she’d figured it was just because they had, yet again, gone through a death-defying, impossible ordeal together, but it had been a few weeks and now she wasn’t so sure. With as long as they’d spent together, she’d gotten pretty good at reading him, but the strange moments lately had been throwing her for a loop.
For most of the time they’d known each other, they’d been embroiled in one crisis or another. And if it wasn’t crisis, it was crisis-recovery projects. She was proud of what they’d accomplished, but being consistently in the center of major events tended to leave very little time for-
For the second time that evening, her train of thought about Link was interrupted by the man himself, suddenly hovering in her vision between her and the ceiling. She blinked a few times in surprise
“Sorry. Done with your book?” he asked in his quiet voice. It had always sounded bizarre to her in their earlier days together - almost meek from underuse. Not until she’d learned to sign could she really hold a conversation with him - but she’d heard more of it in recent years, typically when they were alone, or when he was doing something that required the use of his hands-
Which he was doing now, she realized, because one was supporting his weight near her waist as he leaned over her casually.
This! This was the weird thing!
(Not that she minded but that was not the point!)
Her Knight Link would never come within two feet of her unless it involved helping her onto her horse. Her Friend Link was reticent to go much further than that, ever the pinnacle of respect (when he wasn’t apparently running feral out in the wilds trying to save her from the Calamity with half his memories, but she’d missed most of that).
So who was this? It was still her Link, but with some fundamental shift, like walking into a room and realizing it had been repainted a slightly different color.
She realized she had not answered him.
“Zelda?” he asked quietly.
And that was another thing! After years of insisting “Link, we’ve been through enough together, haven’t we? You can stop calling me ‘Princess,’” now, seemingly out of nowhere, he’d started calling her by name. The first time she’d heard it she’d nearly choked on nothing from the sheer surprise, but had quickly stamped it down for fear of having too large a reaction and discouraging him from using it again.
“Yes, sorry,” she sputtered. “You can turn the light off.”
She shoved the bookmark into place and practically tossed the book on the side table before curling up and facing away from him.
It wasn’t that she disliked the recent changes in his behavior, but each time it managed to startle her. Was she reading into this too much?
She stared at the wall as the sound of rain hitting the roof grew to a dull hum, and felt the space between them, as electric as the lightning beginning to pick up outside. With a huff, she resolved to worry about it in the morning.
The next thing that happened was her waking up to the sound of a shout and sudden movement next to her. Her eyes flew open as her half-asleep brain formed panicked thoughts about an assailant, a disaster-
But she only saw Link sitting straight up and clutching his chest, eyes wide and filled with terror. He looked down at her for a moment, breath heaving, before seemingly crumpling in on himself, shuddering as he buried his face in his hands.
“S-sorry,” he barely rasped out.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
His jaw trembled, and he didn't look at her as he took an unsteady breath and nodded.
“About Ganon?” she asked. “I had them too, after the Calamity.”
He surprised her by shaking his head. He took another breath before moving his hands away from his face. They were shaky as he signed.
You as a dragon, he said. You were trapped, and Rauru’s magic wasn’t enough and I couldn’t do anything... Sorry for waking you.
Only he could dump that revelation on her and then apologize in the same proverbial breath.
“Link,” she sat up fully now and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You saved me. You saved us all.”
He still didn’t look at her. Only because of the sacrifice you made. We’re alive because you risked everything to help me. If I couldn’t get you back after that… I don’t know what I would have done.
She tried not to reel at the full breadth of the incredulity that slammed into her chest with the sentence, and instead took up the task of rubbing circles into his shoulder with her thumb. “I would do it a hundred times more. Because I know you, Link. If anyone could rise to the occasion, you could. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known.
I’ve been terrified for months! His hands trembled, but they still managed to move with the rather beautiful fluidity she’d grown to appreciate over the years.
When I woke up in the shrine of resurrection, I knew I had to find you. When I woke up on the Sky Islands, I figured I could do it again…
She waited.
But it was different, he eventually continued. You weren’t a mystery I was solving. The whole time I looked for you, there was an empty space next to me where you should have been.
Seeing him this vulnerable was startling, but somehow she wasn’t thrown. She silently willed him to continue and he obliged.
I always felt like we had time, he said, and suddenly we didn’t.
Hesitantly, she shifted and pulled at his shoulders until he was finally looking at her.
“We have time now.” She allowed her hands to follow their impulses and moved them to cradle his face, so young still, yet weary with hundreds of years behind his eyes. She supposed she looked like that too. Another unique thing they shared. “Oh, Link. I’m so sorry for worrying you. But I’m here now, and I won’t leave you again.”
She felt a lump rise in her throat and tried to push it down. “If I’m being honest, I was rather lost without you as well. But in our darkest hours, with Rauru and Sonia gone, I managed to find a way back here, because I knew you were Hyrule’s last chance...”
The lump was fighting her harder now, choking her words. “Because I knew I had to get back to you.”
In the dark, Link’s eyes were the brightest blue, and his breath was shallow as her name skimmed across his vocal chords like a prayer. “Zelda…”
Then he surged forward and kissed her. Just once. Soft, sweet, and with enough warmth to weather the cold from the thunderstorm a hundred times over.
It only lasted a moment before he pulled back, and she hadn’t managed a reaction other than completely freezing, eyes wide. She watched him take in her startled expression, and then watched his face fall into slow horror.
“I’m-“ he stuttered. “I’m so sorry-“
She cut him off by pulling him back in and kissing him fiercely.
It wasn’t like she’d thought it would be. Actually, scratch that, there was a distinct lack of thinking about what kissing Link would feel like, an absence that was primarily self-imposed. After all, they had a continent to save and restore and save again, so giving into that particular train of thought would prove entirely too distracting.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t dreamed about it. Multiple times. In ways that she immediately had to stamp down upon waking due to the proximity of the subject of said dreams.
Still, she’d figured there would be some coarseness to it. A lifetime of fighting had covered his skin with scars and his hands with calluses; there was a reasonable expectation of roughness.
(And this was nothing to say of any other forms of roughness she’d expected.)
But his arms were gentle as they wrapped around her, his fingertips skimming lighter than a Summerwing Butterfly, and it made her heart ache in a terrible, wonderful way.
Outside, the thunder rolled distantly, a deep, percussive accompaniment to the light sounds of his breathing this close to her ears. She’d already lived ten thousand years, but she felt that she might like to spend another ten thousand in this moment.
When they finally pulled apart, his eyes were hazy. Neither of them moved to let go of one another, so she allowed herself to stare into the blue of his eyes for a moment, at a rare loss for what to say. But at this point they’d spent enough time together that, in a strange way, they didn’t quite need words. They weren’t Link’s favorite method of communication anyway.
So she trusted that he’d know what she meant when she pulled him back down and into her arms, wrapping herself around him in a gentle embrace and cradling his head where it now rested on the pillow and carding her fingers through his hair. He wrapped an arm around her waist and held her just as close.
In the quiet of the room, her mind gave into its tendency to reel, and all the thoughts she’d been repressing roared to the surface.
Link had… feelings for her? She was fairly sure? It seemed unlikely that this was some sort of strange fluke. Certainly it would explain his recent change in behavior.
But what did it mean for them? It seemed almost silly to ask due to the aforementioned having lived together for years, sharing everything, and spending almost all of their time with one another. There was a rather blatant inevitability to… this.
But still, she felt her heart beat louder in her chest as the realization washed over her like high tide: had they been building to this? Was this where it was heading all along? All these years, had he secretly been in love with her?
…Had she secretly been in love with him? She turned the idea around in her mind this way and that, feeling the weight of its validity, but not having an empirical explanation for it.
Of course, she knew she loved him. He was her confidant, her best friend. He’d saved her countless times and she’d only barely returned the favor. He was the most trustworthy person she knew and had come to be not just invaluable, but so central to her life that her time without him had left her floundering. Not completely lost, she liked to think she had more independence than that, but rather…
…an empty space beside her, where he should have been.
A memory surfaced in her mind of her time in the past: Rauru and Sonia smiling at her in a beautiful garden over cups of tea as she described Link to them excitedly. His valor, his incredible determination, and his unwavering kindness. She wished they all could have spent time together, she just knew that the two of them would have loved him.
Because she loved him.
“Link.” The word escaped her lips in a whisper, and she pulled back slightly to look at him-
Only to see his eyes shut, his breathing now calm and even. In sleep, he didn’t look so serious like he often tended to. Instead, he looked almost childlike in a way that she tried not to find adorable- before remembering that she was allowed to find it adorable because she loved him.
Her analysis was interrupted by Link nestling closer to her in his sleep.
Analysis could wait, she supposed, as she settled back into their warm embrace, giddy and exhausted and deliriously happy.
After all, she’d said it herself: they had time now.