Chapter Text
As he dives through parted golden skies, the hero doesn’t feel the crash against the pond’s surface on his worn, century-old body.
His skin easily bruises, his limbs feel as though they’re being pulled, and yet he floats with the impossible cradled against his body.
Underwater, Link feels his grip on her loosen, and fear washes through to the very core of his soul. This is real, she is real, but in that brief moment, he thinks his broken heart conjured up a sick imagination of her return. That the second he resurfaces, he’ll look up to see the mindless divine beast roaming the skies as it has done for thousands of years.
The very thought of it drives his vulnerable body further, so he reaches out and the tips of his fingers hook against the fabric of her ancient dress. He breaks for the surface and sucks air into his damaged lungs.
As he treads towards solid footing, in his arms is the mortal girl with an immortal soul, who cursed her humanity and ate the stars. But as he gathers up her unconscious form, he sees the girl who is now full of life. The most precious life for him.
She is home, she is finally home.
~~
Their arrival at Lookout Landing is as unceremonious as could be. There is no fanfare, no cries of victory. But it doesn’t matter, Zelda is just happy to be human again.
Zelda, newly reborn, has seemed to forget how to function with a physical body that isn’t thousands of feet long. She tires quickly and easily loses her balance. But she’s talking, laughing, and able to breathe.
Link, on the other hand, is in no better shape.
The battle against the Demon King had run him to exhaustion. During the former king’s transformation to rejected divinity, Link remembered a sharp tooth piercing his gut. During his dive against the final blow, he recalled the flames of Gloom burning his left calf.
Yet it all didn’t matter; he was going to kill that man. That monster, who forced his beloved to return to the Goddess as an immortal being.
And he does. He took the sacred blade that was tied to his soul and ripped him apart.
(Isn’t that brutal? He stabs a man on his forehead as the world is drowning again and he’s barely even twelve years old. Happy birthday, hero.)
An hour after another attempt at ending the world, Link finally falls against his wounds.
To his credit, he doesn’t completely crumble until he spots Tulin flying towards them, with three other Rito warriors trailing behind him. He slumps against Zelda, who clings onto his arm as if the second she lets go she’s going to disappear for another thirteen thousand years.
Because her body is still so vulnerable, she immediately tips over from his weight sagging onto her. Their descent onto the ground is slow and rather dramatic, like two drunken fools finally accepting the ground as a place to rest.
Zelda is reasonably terrified. She rolls from under him and lays his head against her lap. She’s calling his name, right? His eyes follow her lips as she begs him for something. He hasn't heard her voice in so long, he wishes he could hear her.
He’s not dying, at least he doesn’t think he is. He wonders if he thought the same thing one hundred years ago – when the two of them laid on that dying field during the first attempted end of the world.
No wonder this feels nostalgic.
He should say something to her, she looks as though she’s trying not to cry.
What do you say to the girl whom you love more than the earth and stars itself, that you thought you’d never see her again?
“Hi, beautiful,” he says.
Clearly, that’s the wrong thing to say because she actually starts to cry. Thousands of years ago, a beast wept tears which told the story of a woman who lost her love to time. Funny, there are plenty of stories like that in this world.
But this isn’t about a beast (at least not anymore), or the trickery of time, or bedtime stories to tell children in a small farming village east of Hyrule. This is now about a girl who is scared her beloved is dying in her arms again – except he isn’t dying and he should say so.
But instead, he lets out a weak cough, spitting out bloody saliva.
He feels his body being lifted by strong feathered arms. The Rito are here and from the corner of his eye, Tulin pulls Zelda away from him, frantically asking her something . Wrong move, he doesn’t want her away from him, so Link tries to reach his arm out to her. Zelda immediately catches on and attempts to throw herself past the pre-teen Rito sage to hold his hand. She’s saying something again, but there’s ringing in his ears and too many people talking at once. So he imagines her voice – her lovely voice that he hasn’t heard in months.
‘I’ve got you,’ he imagines her saying, voice sweet like honey candy. ‘I’m right here, I’ve got you.’
~~
He kneels down slowly, one hand gently cupping his heart and the other reaching down to place his on top of hers.
‘Are you the one who called?’ He asks.
She smiles, warmth radiating strong even in a cold and dark jail cell.
‘Are you the one who answered?’
~~
Thirteen thousand years ago, Zelda told the first Queen of Hyrule about the boy who rose from the dead to save their dying kingdom.
In reality – she tells Link three weeks after another attempt at the end of the world over coffee like two friends catching up – she wanted to avoid revealing too much of the future in fear of altering things beyond recognition. Yet one night, while asleep, Queen Sonia the I overheard Zelda crying his name, thus naturally inquired about it.
“I wasn’t sure where to even start,” She tells him while circling her spoon over her steaming cup. “I thought ‘Maybe I’ll just say you were my appointed knight.’ But that’s not all you are, and you’re no longer a knight.” She laughs at this, almost embarrassed. “So I just started telling her about how you were… my hero. Someone who saved me and the world from great disaster.”
But that's not true, for she was the one who saved the world. He was just a fool who did the impossible because he liked the sound of her voice when she woke him up.
(‘Go to bed, boy. It’s late and storming outside,’ he says. His uncle was always loud and confident, but for the first time ever, he sounded…small. ‘I heard a voice.’ He answers him, eyeing the sword his uncle had in his hands. ‘I heard a voice and she sounds…lonely.’)
“Of course,” she continues, “I didn’t get into specifics about ‘ the great disaster’ that befell our home for over a century. I think Queen Sonia understood, though she sounded more interested in learning about you – about us . She immediately began asking me questions about how we met, and what you mean to me,” she tells him, fondly looking down at her hands. “So I opened up about everything to her. About how we met, how I was awful to you at first, and you still saved me from peril. How we became friends.” She reaches out slowly across the table to gently place her hand on top of his. “And now the most important person in my life. Someone I couldn’t live without.”
He stares, eyes vulnerable and wide.
“What did she say to that?” He whispers because he cannot bring himself to say anything as important as what comes out of her mouth.
“She said,” Zelda starts, gently running her thumb along his knuckles, “that you sound very noble and kind. That she knows Hyrule is in good hands with you there.”
“Is Hyrule in good hands?” he asks.
“Of course,” she says, voice filled with all the love her soul could muster. “I wish you could see the person I see when I look at you.”
Funny how he could say the same thing, but he’s not as good at words as she is. So he says something stupid instead.
“Can I kiss you?” He asks, and Zelda’s laughter rings like the school bell every morning at the top of the hill.
“Must you still ask me that, hero?” She giggles as he stands up, pulls her towards him, and tries to kiss the sun.
~~
There’s a story about a princess and her beloved hero, both lost through the cruel flow of time.
They say thousands of years ago, a little princess who knew songs of light and time had a dream of a boy who glowed brightly with the purity of the Sacred Forest. The girl was said to be a prophet, one who could foresee war and tragedy in just a few years time. Instead, she only saw the boy; again and again.
Soon, she began to long for the boy – with clothes as bright and vibrant as the fields of grass she saw from the towers of Hyrule Castle. So much so, she began to see this boy as her savior – her home’s savior.
One day, the boy arrived. He came covered with dirt in his vibrant green tunic, and innocence in his wide blue eyes. Instead of the glow of holy light surrounding him, he was accompanied by a small faerie – one of the hundreds that hid among the trees in the Sacred Forest.
He spoke in a strange tongue, barely understanding what she told him. Yet despite all these differences, the princess knew their spirits were connected.
She tasked him with the fate of the world, without even knowing it. What many don’t know was that she wanted a true companion, a friend, who could listen to her deepest desires. And the boy did listen – for the boy was more curious and eager to learn about what the world had to offer.
The two began to plot their journey – the boy was keen on taking the princess outside her lonely tower. But she sadly could not, as there was a thief hidden in their castle. She tasked herself with finding the thief, and him gathering sacred gems from the other nations of Hyrule. Only then would they use these gems to uncover the weapon that will defeat this terrible thief.
So he left, vowing to return in time. But time is a fickle, awful thing.
He doesn’t return – not until the thief is found and the princess’s towers are burnt to the ground. Blinded by her fate in the boy, the foolish young princess did not see that the thief was right in front of her until it was too late.
So the princess ran, she ran with the wish to see the boy once more. Except she does see him – yet only briefly. Quick enough that he vows again to pull the ancient weapon and fix everything they have done wrong.
So the princess, blessed with time, waits for his arrival. An arrival that takes seven years.
For those thirteen thousand years, the princess weeps. She weeps for her preventable mistakes, she weeps for her lost home, and she weeps for the young amnesiac man clad in blue who was tricked into taking on his heavy burden for her.
No, that's not right. What happened in those seven years?
Right, the princess cursed with foresight has had so much time to ruminate about her regrets. So much so that when the boy – now a man – returns with the holy blade, her tears have hardened her into a warrior of the shadows: a Sheikah.
With the fate of the world in her hands, the princess – now Sheikah warrior - continued to trick the man. The Sheikah bled him dry, tired the man, and continued to lie again and again.
But that's strange, for doesn’t the warrior love this man?
Yes, it is strange. But it’s also strange to swallow the stars and skies for a sword to be restored. It’s strange to be alive for thousands of years, roaming without a thought of who you once were or who is searching for you in the future. It’s strange how time is; there's so much of it yet you constantly run out.
The flow of time is everlasting and cruel.
What was this story about, again?
~~
It takes about a week of resting in their little cabin east of Hyrule for Zelda to finally break.
“Are you mad at me?”
Link looks up from his half-empty mug. The drink has long gone cold, he doesn’t even remember what sort of tea he’s brewed. Across from him, Zelda studies his expression. She looks at him like she’s scared.
At no response, she repeats, “Are you mad at me…or what I did..?”
He doesn’t understand what she’s asking. In his mind, he tries to go through the past week since their return from the skies. She still forgets to finish her plate of food, leaves her clothes on the floor sometimes, and doesn’t wrap her hair with a towel after bathing – leaving small puddles of water to soak on the ground. But he wouldn’t be mad at her for these things. Annoyed, sure, but mad?
She’s still waiting for him to respond.
“I,” he thinks about his words carefully, “why should I be mad?”
Zelda stares at him, the layer of fear in her brows replaced with confusion, then uneasiness. He doesn’t like that he’s done this to her.
“It’s just…” She sits down across from him, playing with her hands. “We promised not to leave each other.” She says, “I left you.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” He says, a bit too quickly.
“No, it's not about being at fault. Link,” she says, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, “I’m not supposed to be here. I made the decision to leave you. Forever.”
He continues to stare at her. The large scar long under her cheek burns bright against the sunlight spilling from their cabin’s windows. Maybe he should be mad at the injury, he thinks, not her. He should’ve been there to shield her from getting hurt.
“I don’t understand.” She abruptly stands from her seat and begins to pace, her tone frustrated. He doesn’t know if she’s upset at him or herself. “I chose to seal my fate to immortality, roaming to become a mindless dragon for a sword without considering your reaction to learning what I’ve done and you’re not mad.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I thought, maybe, you are a little angry about it but too polite to address it. I mean you haven’t…you haven’t even kissed me since I’ve returned.” She throws up her hands in exasperation, “So I thought, let me ask now.”
(‘Could we start all over?’ she, Zelda the girl, asks him. ‘Where I am no longer your charge, and you are no longer my protector?’ He cannot, he thinks. He cannot because then he dares to think of her as someone he could possibly love. ‘Of course,’ he simply answers, because no matter what his mind conjures up as a barrier, he already loves the girl in front of him. He loves her, Zelda the girl.)
“I never even imagined we would get to see each other again. All those years with you...I…I threw it away. I missed you, Link, more than you’d ever think. But I left you and you should be furious that I did because I said I wouldn’t–”
“I left you too,” he says. Zelda freezes in her words and stares.
“What?”
“I left you two times before.” He shrugs as if it's the most obvious thing. “And you were never mad at me.”
~~
How about a story from a few years ago – seven to be exact?
Here’s a question: What do you say to a girl you don’t really remember, yet longed to see for over a century?
Link watches as the girl with divinely cursed blood running through her veins wraps herself tighter with his cloak. Her gaze is ahead of her, but unfocused. He’s traveled alone for so long that he feels unsure of what to do with his new companion. Is she a new companion? Does she want him with her? Does he?
‘Do you really remember me?’
She asked him with the voice that had guided him for months. Her emerald eyes shine with hope, hesitant happiness present in her lips.
Smile like the sun.
He does, he wanted to say. He does remember her. He remembers how she likes to tap her pen against any surface whenever she thinks. He remembers how she looks at him whenever she doesn’t want to eat her leftover roasted carrots. He remembers how her arms around him felt so warm when he fought to keep his eyes open on that burning dying field, all that time ago.
But he didn’t say anything. He watched as the hope dimmed from her eyes, and her arms fell to her sides.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quiet enough that he could barely hear.
Why didn’t he say anything? Where’s your courage now, hero?
(You couldn’t even tell the girl you spent seven years fighting for that you love her and now she’s sending you away, closing the gates of time. Isn’t that silly for a supposed courageous hero like you?)
An hour later, farther away from her self-inflicted prison, he watches her shrink into the cloak. They barely have spoken to each other. Link has only uttered a few words. Apologies, mostly. They probably haven’t helped; she hasn’t smiled since.
The sun was setting quickly – a sure sign of cooler weather. They need to find shelter but Link isn’t sure what to say to the stable owner when they arrive. Does he tell the owner that the castle is now safe? ‘Sorry for all the trouble and sudden ground shaking this morning. I’m sure that was terrible for business. But now the castle is safe, Hyrule is freed, and the red in the sky from earlier was just a false alarm. Oh, and I’m with Princess Zelda. Yes, the same one from a century ago.’
Maybe he can edit a few words here and there.
He doesn’t realize the princess is staring back at him until he watches a fly get into his field of vision. He swats at it and then looks away – embarrassed.
“I...” He says, “I’m not sure what to do.” That's not what you say to a girl you’ve dreamed about for months. He should ask if she is hungry, or how she is doing. Maybe he should ask if she has any injuries. Why hasn’t he asked that yet?
“We move on,” she says, simply. “We take what’s left of Hyrule and move on. Rebuild and recover.” She trails off, eyes unfocusing again. Then in a smaller voice, she asks, “Is there…anything left?”
More than you’d expect. He wants to say. But he stays silent again. Instead, he stands up and reaches out to her. Surprised, she hesitates before taking his hand and allowing him to pull her up.
“Let me show you,” he says when he helps her up on his horse. It’s not the first thing he’s wanted to say to her. In fact, he wants to say sorry for dying that day. He could say ‘sorry for failing you a hundred years ago, and leaving you to fight that beast on your own. It was terrifying, wasn’t it? I won’t leave you again, even if you don’t want me here.’
Maybe he’ll get to say that, eventually. Find your courage hero, even if it takes you a couple more months, to talk to the divine girl wearing your dirty old cloak.
(But oh, does she make those dirty rags look beautiful – even in the soaking rain when escaping out of Hyrule castle)
~~
She’s covered in scars.
So many scars it makes Link want to throw up. Not in disgust, of course not. Her body is divine and beyond beautiful. It is because she was injured when he should’ve been there to prevent anything from harming her. It is because something as silly as a thirteen-thousand-year gap between the two prevented him from shielding her from pain. It is because he failed her – failed again and again – so many times even beyond his lifetime . Did he ever apologize for all those failures?
Zelda must have noticed his stillness – for his silence is louder than ever.
She turns around, slowly taking his face in her hands. They are covered in scars, too. Who did this to her?
“Oh, Link…” she says softly, “I’m sorry…”
“I’m—” He takes a deep breath, voice shaking with emotion “No, goddess, princess, I’m sorry. I let you go and you got–” He’s crying, why is he crying? “ Hurt. It must have hurt, oh princess.” It’s the first time he cries since he’s found her and it feels impossible to breathe.
“Oh Link.” She sucks in a deep breath herself. “Oh beloved, oh Link.” Her thumb brushes against his tears as he shakes. “I’m here, right?” She leans in, gently pressing her lips against his eyes. The softness of her voice and the feeling of her warmth against him sends him over the edge. He cries and cries, a tear for each bruise and cut daring to stain her skin. In his rush of emotions, he hears her voice whispering to him. ‘ I’m okay,’ she says. ‘ I’m here and okay.’ But she doesn’t look okay because he failed her seven months ago when he lost his grip.
(‘It’s my fault, Fi. Oh, Hylia, I didn’t – I couldn’t catch her and she fell and now she’s trapped in that crystal.’ He cries and cries against a cold blade as the spirit looks on. ‘I haven’t been apart from her for this long before. Oh Hylia, what do I do? What have I done?’)
She lays his head against her chest and runs a hand through his messy blonde hair. “Beloved…remember when you freed me from the Calamity? We did this exact thing, where I saw your scars and – Goddess – I was terrified seeing how injured you were.” She tells him. He does remember. He remembers most of the scars he received. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal but now he understands. He held her like this while she cried over the smallest cuts on his skin. He held her like she was the most delicate precious thing in the world – and he didn’t even know it at the time, or maybe he did.
“I’m sorry,” he manages to say. He’s now more sorry for crying because he knows she’s strong, but Goddess, he’s messed up so many times it's pathetic.
“No, beloved, no.” She holds him tighter. “It’s funny…these don’t even hurt anymore.” He believes her but there was pain connected to these injuries before so it doesn’t even matter that it no longer hurts. “Beloved, please, breathe with me.”
He tries, he genuinely tries. He said this too, back when he tried to comfort her. It’s so hard to breathe right now, how was Zelda able to do it back then? She’s strong, Goddess, she’s the strongest person he’s ever known.
“Please, Link, breathe.” Her chest moves as she sucks in a breath. Link coughs out a sob before mimicking her. “That's it, darling,” she coos, before breathing out with him at the same time. “Breathe,” she repeats, and he does – again and again – until he’s no longer crying. Her bralette is soaked, a mix of sweat and tears, but mostly tears.
“Would you believe me if I said none of this was your fault?” she asks after silence consumes them long enough for the crickets to begin their calling.
“It was,” he says.
“So no, you wouldn’t.” She laughs lightly. “It’ll take a bit of time, it seems.”
“But it was,” Link repeats. He sounds like one of the children running around the village every morning. How pathetic. Come on hero, gather your courage. “I let you go and you were hurt.” If he had the energy, he would cry again but he has no more tears for this lifetime. Maybe try again in another seven years.
“Darling?”
Link hums in acknowledgment.
“When Ganondorf first set his sights on attacking Hyrule…” She starts, pulling him away from her chest so she can look at him. Even covered in drying tears and snot, she looks at him like he’s worthy of love. “Rauru insisted I stay away from battle. There was a safe house which the soldiers built for the people. He told me to stay there and focus on studying my powers to return home.”
(‘Focus on your prayers, Zelda,’ Rhoam booms. ‘All this studying, all this stalling, Hyrule is about to go to war and you can’t even hear the voice of the Goddess?’)
“But it didn’t feel right to sit around when the land was being attacked. You understand, don’t you?”
He supposes he does. He did the same thing before he even knew the name of the voice in his head years ago – simply because it felt wrong to run away.
“So I did something no one found out about. I went to the Gerudo Highlands on my own.”
At this, Link’s eyes widen. Zelda always had a strong relationship with the Gerudo, but ties between the Gerudo and Hylians have historically been strained; especially during Hyrule's foundation. To risk such a trip…
“I stormed into Ganondorf’s base and demanded he see me.” She smiles warmly and brushes his bangs away from his eyes. “Frankly, I’m surprised it worked. I thought I was being bold and rash. I think Ganondorf was entertained by it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because I just wanted to understand why a man would go so far to start such a bloody war.” She presses another kiss on his forehead. “I knew I wasn’t going to convince him. I just wanted to know why.”
She then adjusts her posture to lay back, bringing him down with her.
“We spoke privately, though I knew I was being watched.” She continues, “He was… intelligent. He knew I would eventually come. He knew I wasn’t of that time as well. To Rauru, Ganondorf was just a man blinded by jealousy, greed, and hatred. And yet I saw someone different.”
So Rauru was just another ruler who thought he knew his opponent. Maybe there’s a guideline to becoming a king of Hyrule: Be tall, be pious, care about the expansion of the land…
…Be an overly confident, blind fool.
“Eventually, I thought maybe I could trick him into a different solution. He understood humanity, he understood how war affected the land and minds of the people. But then I became careless. From hearing him speak, my goal changed. Soon I convinced myself that I could change his motivations, and I think he thought he could change mine as well.”
She pulls back her hand from his scalp and holds it in front of his eyes. On the skin between her thumb and index finger laid a faded white mark, wide yet small. “Eventually we couldn’t see eye to eye. He demanded I tell him of the future and I refused. When I insisted I leave, he left me a gift.” She observes the scar as though it were one of her test subjects. “It was the first injury I’ve gotten. It wasn’t severe, but I think he gave it to me as a symbol of his dedication to his cause.”
Link digs his arm out front under him and holds her hand, caressing the mark.
“It must’ve scared you,” he whispers.
“I didn’t even feel it at the time,” she answers, and he believes her. He doesn’t remember the pain of receiving many of his scars – only the adrenaline of winning the fight. “But I was scared of how everyone reacted to what I’ve done. I thought I made things worse.” She takes his hand and kisses each fingertip. “When I arrived back at the temple, Queen Sonia spotted me first. She immediately aided my wound in secret and asked no questions. I think she understood already.”
They fall into silence. As she presses more kisses along his hand, he spots a long healed cut along her arm. He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes.
Lifting himself with his free arm, he shuffles closer to her and gently presses his lips against hers.
‘ I missed you, you foolish girl. ’ He wants to say, ‘ Never do that again. ’
“Will you tell me about how you got the others?” He asks instead. Zelda smiles like the sun, and presses her forehead against his.
“Yes, of course.”
Courage, hero. It’s just a little scratch.