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Zelda worries about him, constantly.
She can’t blame him—goodness knows she can’t; she’s been through several of the same traumas that he has.
And yet, Link has still endured more, she realizes.
He will never admit it, but she knows he feels that he failed her more than once—feels that he, personally, let Hyrule go to ruin during the Calamity, during Galeem’s assault, and during the Upheaval.
More than that, he failed to prevent her from falling into the past.
Zelda sighs to herself, watching through the window as Link sits by the fire on the hilltop in Hateno. He hasn’t eaten anything all day, and it pains her to see that, knowing how, before the Calamity, he would eat just about anything edible (as well as things that weren’t, like Daruk’s Rock Roast).
Of course, he is stricken with guilt—guilt because of what she had to go through to get back to their time. The memories are vague, but sometimes, they resurface—leaving her crying in the middle of the night as she remembers the pain of the transformation.
He never fails to run to her side and comfort her. But he locks her out when it’s his turn for nightmares—he yells of Guardians and hands of Gloom, of Lynels attacking out of the darkness of the Depths, and of falling. She knocks on his door, and the cries cease as he awakens, but never once has he opened the door for her as she has for him.
She knows better than to take it personally—for him, it’s his penance… his punishment… All self-inflicted, for her attempts to convince him that it wasn’t his fault seem to fall on deaf ears.
The Master Sword, hanging on a mount on the wall glows and chimes. Even if Zelda can’t understand what the sword is saying anymore, she has a pretty good idea.
“I know,” she says, simply.
She takes two simple mushroom skewers, seasoned with Goron spice, and goes outside to the hilltop, sitting beside Link. He acknowledges her by turning to face her, but sees the mushroom skewers in her hands and shakes his head.
She isn’t having this—not today.
“Eat,” she insists as she holds one out to him, her tone almost as commanding as it was when she was directing the Champions.
It’s still not quite an order—not yet, anyway. But her tone of voice leaves no question that if Link refuses, she’ll make it one.
But the look in her eyes pleads for Link not to drive her to it.
In the end, he listens to the plea and takes one of the skewers.
They eat the simple meal together; she still can’t tell if he was truly hungry or not, but he does finish the skewer.
She’ll take it; he was never chatty even before the dark times, and getting him to talk now seems even more impossible than trying to travel through time had been.
“I am here for you, too,” she says, at last. “I wish you could realize that.”
She glances back at him, and he, at her; his face remains stoic, but now his eyes betray a plea—a plea for help that he could never allow past his lips.
She pulls him into a warm embrace, and feels him go slack in her arms from the weight he has been carrying all this time, but that is the only emotion he betrays.
For Zelda, it is enough.
And so, they remain that way, well into the night.