Work Text:
She raced through the halls, a princess in her own castle both hunter and prey. Monsters lurked around every corner, but she sought the worst of them all.
Tears blurred her vision. Her hero had fallen. As she ran she prayed—begged—that he would live. Her powers had at last awakened, perhaps she’d been able to save him. But she would not know until he awoke.
If he ever did.
The thought spurred her forward, the skirts of her gown gathered in her hands to avoid tripping. Her breath was a ragged thing, burning its way through her lungs with each inhale and scorching her throat. But she did not falter. Not now. Not when she was their last chance. A feeble kernel of hope had ignited in her when her powers had awoken. All this time, researching and praying, making pilgrimages to sacred sites, in the vain wish that something would stir within. She had come to believe that Hylia had turned her back on her, that she had deemed her unworthy or unfit to wield the powers her blood afforded. But when she’d seen her beloved knight fall something had cracked and shattered in her. She had not thought of summoning power when she’d thrown herself in front of him. Had barely believed her sacrifice would save him. She knew only that if he died then none of them would see another sunrise.
Now she could feel the thrum of something ancient and powerful flowing through her veins. A sacred light, a holy beast that lurked beneath her skin. And it was hers to call.
It was in the throne room that she made her stand. Watching the dark maw of Calamity Ganon race her way, time seemed to slow for a moment and she thought of that knight. Her quiet protector, her solemn friend. How cruel she had been to him at first, the regret of her actions and words still bit at her conscience when she thought back on them. But he had remained true and unfazed, the perfect knight for an imperfect princess. Perhaps that had been what charmed her, the fact that for every flaw of her’s that was revealed to him he did not treat her differently, did not alter his belief in her. What she would not do for his calm, assured presence by her side now. She imagined reaching for his hand, them facing the beast together. Maybe he would return her grip. Maybe he would meet her gaze and the faintest of smiles would ghost across his features making her heart swell. When the darkness hit that was the feeling that stirred her, that was what she pictured as she called her powers forth and met the Calamity head on.
~*~
A week past.
She did not feel hunger. She did not thirst. All she knew was the thrashing darkness she had caged and the glimmering sphere of her power cocooning them both.
There had been a struggle. Hours of wrangling the writhing shadows until finally she was able to encase them. Now it shrieked and wailed, rattling its confines. But her resolve would not be shaken. For all that had been thrust upon her, every responsibility she had been born with, this was the fate she had chosen for herself. If she must protect Hyrule, she would do it on her terms.
When Calamity Ganon sought to break free she tightened her grip. Its roars were constant and deafening, echoing all around and threatening to crack her skull. But her power protected her, for the first time ever she felt strong, and it was a feeling she could get drunk on.
~*~
A month slipped by.
Her mind began to wander. The fight fazed into the background, her magic unwavering.
She thought of the champions, her friends, and she shed tears of grief. If this nightmare ended, they would not be waiting for her on the other side.
Revali would not lament how long she had kept them waiting.
Daruk would not clap her on the back with a smile and a laugh.
No kind word would come from Mipha as she healed her wounds.
And Urbosa would not hug her and call her ‘little bird’.
There would be silence.
But maybe there would also be Link.
Perhaps that was what fuelled her. Maybe after everything she had lost there would still be one who understood. After all, the nightmare would never end if not by his hand.
~*~
The seasons changed, a year came and went.
She did not feel the summer sun’s warmth or the biting winter wind. No colours of spring or autumn graced her liminal space. The days began to blur and her thoughts took on a dreamlike quality, somewhere between waking and sleeping, never fully one or the other. Her grip on the beast never faltered, but reality slowly started to slip like sand through her fingers. There was only her and the Calamity, time becoming both inconsequential and the only thing she had left. It dragged and skipped and swam all at once. If she could have studied the feeling she would.
But more than anything she dreamed of the day it would end.
A memory surfaced, of when she had still been young and her mother had yet lived. Urbosa had come to visit and her and her mother were going out for an evening ride. She had not been allowed to join them, being told she was too young, that it was past her bedtime. She had bemoaned her youth, longing to be old enough to do whatever she pleased.
Urbosa had simply laughed softly and told her, “Don’t wish your life away, little bird. Each day we are given is all we’ll ever have.”
She wondered—if Urbosa had been by her side—would she have said the same thing now?
~*~
A decade, and still the tears flowed.
She was used to them by then but the ache in her chest remained. Some days it grew and guilt and grief were all she could feel. Other times it ebbed away enough that she could appreciate the joyful memories.
Her love did not die, did not fester or rot. She had come to understand it through reflection, come to recognise who she held place for in her heart. It should not have been such a shock then, when she realised what her knight had truly meant to her. When she summoned images of him in her mind’s eye her heart rate slowed and calm descended upon her. Was it little surprise, then, that she thought of him often?
Perhaps she had grown accustomed to having him with her in the time before he fell, forgotten to cherish her days with him. Maybe that was why she’d failed to notice it then.
Her many regrets compounded and took on the face of her terrible foe. When she beat it down, the regret went with it. Twin vipers retreating an inch, only to attempt to strike from a new angle. No matter her strength, they would not die. But neither would she.
~*~
Twenty-five years slipped away, but her body did not change.
Her hair did not grow, her youth did not fade. She could not decide whether it was a consolation or a curse. She was now tied to the fate of the Calamity. Should the hero not return, her role would never end. Bound forever to the greatest of evils. A twisted yin and yang watching over the remains of a once great kingdom.
Loneliness gnawed at her bones like an illness, sapping her courage. Even memories of happy times now left an awful void within her. Safety was found only in thoughts of her knight. Her Link. The memory of his bravery feeding her, tapping into the very core of her spirit and keeping it from breaking completely.
He had spoken once, of the strain of his role, how it had stolen his voice. His vulnerability with her in sharing such a thing had warmed her heart then, even if what he’d said had broken it a little. But his was an act of solidarity. In sharing his pain he had sought to make her feel less alone in hers. Even now, it stoked the dying embers in her chest, reminding her of the resolve she had entered this chamber with. Reminding her that despite the path they had all been led down, it was reassurance enough to know that she had walked in this fate with her eyes wide open.
She would not buckle, she would not bend. She would hold the Calamity in this place, until her knight returned, or until she squeezed the very life from the vile darkness herself. She would wait. For however long it took.
~*~
Time flowed on, fifty years leaving her behind.
Memories and dreams over-played, her mind reached further afield for stimulation and she began to sense the world beyond her prison.
It started subtly, a broken fragment of a distant voice echoing faintly, or a few notes of birdsong catching her ear. There one moment, gone the next, leaving her to wonder if she’d truly heard them at all.
But in her dreamlike state colours began to appear. The vivid green of the rolling fields, the perfect azure sky reflected on the ocean. Golden desert sands and crimson lakes of lava. Life began thrumming in her ears as it had so long ago. It was only the gentle rate at which her awareness expanded that allowed her to keep her fragile grip on sanity. It echoed out from her position until the whole land was speaking to her. She became slowly aware of every insect and every rock. Every creature, every gust of wind, every ruin, every sunbeam. The wild pulsed and breathed, and she could hear it and understand its voice.
~*~
The seventy-fifth year she barely noticed.
Only the dull ache of weariness reminded her she had a body at all. Perhaps her power was not so unending as she had once imagined, but it held firm to the beast and allowed her mind to wander free.
She had become one with the world. An observer to the survival of her people as they carved out lives for themselves amongst the rubble and ruin. The threats surrounded on all sides, but they refused to be crushed, tenacious as cockroaches in their will to survive.
Their hearts were a drumbeat in her ears, keeping time with her own and reminding her what she fought for. It was them, they were her lifeblood, the reason she endured the agony. She watched them grow, like flowers of the field. They learned and adapted, created and built. She witnessed their love in every form. Felt their joy, their fury, their sorrow.
How she longed to be a part of it, to walk amongst them and partake in every wondrous and terrible part of being alive. But she existed on the outside, peering through the window at life; banging her fist against the glass and praying someone would hear, would remember she was there. But even if they did, what could they do? Her hope yet slumbered far to the south, and she had long since wondered if her liberation would ever come.
~*~
A century was a long time to wait for the sound of a specific heartbeat.
Faint and faraway, it entered her awareness like a melody being played from somewhere down a long corridor. But it was a sound she’d waited her entire life for, she would never have missed it.
She turned her gaze towards its origin, her mind’s eye sweeping over the lush meadows of Hyrule Field, skimming lake Kolomo and carving a line through the ruins of Gatepost Town, up onto the Great Plateau where it skirted the Forest of Spirits and ignored the Temple of Time in favour of climbing the hillside, chasing the crescendoing music of that heartbeat, all the way to the obscured entrance of the Shrine of Resurrection. She paused at the door, her vision of what lay inside cloudy, but even from there she could feel the pulse of life coming from within.
As the sound grew in strength her very bones rattled in response, and a sob broke from her as she sank to her knees within the cocoon of light and malice in Hyrule castle.
“Link!” She cried out to him, her voice cracking as it was used for the first time in an age.
He was alive.
He was alive!
An image of him lying in the pool in the heart of the shrine reached her and she wept harder at the sight. One hundred years of grief and pain spilling out as a new wave of radiant joy flooded her system, relief coursing through her veins like adrenaline.
She cast out her mind to him, pulling a tether of power with her to bridge to gap, praying she could reach him.
“Link!” She called to him desperately. “Goddess above, please, open your eyes! Open you eyes!”
~*~
He did not remember anything. Did not remember her.
She tried not to let it eat at her, but she was exhausted and every time she observed him blankly looking around a location they had been before her chest caved in a little. But he would remember in time, she reassured herself wearily. He’d met with dear Impa, who’d tasked him with visiting the places pictured on the Sheikah slate in order to jog his memory. She trusted he would find them. He had to.
The thought that when at last they met he may have no recollection of her was more than she could bare.
~*~
To the knight’s credit, he wasted no time in setting out on his journey, but her fears did not begin to subside until she witnessed the first spark of recognition cross his features.
He stood at the ruins of the Sacred Grounds where once, so long ago, she had ceremonially blessed him for his role as champion and wielder of the Sword that Seals the Darkness. A bitter memory that left her tasting acid. But seeing him do a double take as he stood where he’d once knelt before her almost made her laugh. A bubble of warmth rose up within her, and she clasped her hands to her chest in an attempt to hold it there. It seemed her affections had not dulled, even without all his memories, he was as endearing to her as ever.
She longed to call out to him again. He was so close, only on the other side of Castle Town really. But she thought better of it. His former strength was not yet restored, and he had still to retrieve the Master Sword. He was not yet ready.
She could be patient, she’d waited a hundred years for him already, after all. A little longer was nothing.
~*~
Days turned into weeks turned into months as the hero traversed the land, collecting his memories and freeing the Divine Beasts one by one. She swelled with pride at each of his milestones, her gaze never leaving him, though weariness clung at the corners of her mind. Perhaps the monotony of the past century had tricked her senses into believing she was unaffected by the leeching effect of the constant battle. She had existed as an impression of herself, becoming disconnected from her physical being. But now that the possibility of the battle ending loomed on the horizon, she sank a little back into herself again and discovered a bone-deep fatigue that had spread throughout her being without her notice.
She’d come all this way. But what if her powers faltered before the end? Everything was dependant on her holding the Calamity at bay until Link was ready to face it. She itched with the anticipation of freedom, but that old, putrid dread slipped in at the thought of failing again. Desperately, she sent a prayer skyward for her own preservation and the continued safety of her knight. Whether Hylia heard, she could not tell, but her strength clung on—or she clung to it.
When at last the hero found himself returned to where he’d fallen one hundred years before, she could not help but shed a tear, the memory coming back to her too in full force. They had been nothing but children, really, forced by fate to play at being saviours. Though she had not physically aged, she felt unspeakably old now, and a sharp rage spiked in her gut at the injustice of it all. Childhoods lost to the will of the gods. She wondered what he thought of it. If he harboured simmering resentment, or if he mourned internally, if he truly remembered at all. It had taken her a long time to learn how to read him when he’d been assigned to her. He’d held his feelings close right up until the end. He was different now, though, more expressive. It had taken her by surprise initially, but it made sense in a way, he’d had no memories to work from, no inhibitions to hold him back.
She waited now for him to react to his final memory, but he simply stood there, eyebrows pinched together as he stared somewhat vacantly at the inactive guardian before him. The meadow grass rippled in the gentlest of breezes and a warm darner landed briefly on the decaying shell of the guardian. An eerie peacefulness had enveloped that place of bloodshed and death. Or perhaps it only felt eerie to her because she could still hear the atonal symphony of the massacre playing in the back of her mind.
But he’d done it. He’d freed all the Divine Beasts and recovered every memory of his from his previous life. The time had come.
A lump formed in her throat as, at long last, she called out to him again, and beckoned him to the castle where she awaited. His brow set with determination at her words, he would not fail. Not this time. That she made herself believe with all her heart.
As night drew in and Link camped alone for the final time, she turned her awareness fully to the evil she had trapped with her, and in a voice for only it to hear, said, “the hero is on his way. Make no mistake, this time you will not prevail. He comes to vanquish you, once and for all.”
Calamity Ganon’s only reply was an unholy shriek aimed at shattering her resolve. But she would not be shaken. Link was coming to end the nightmare. He was ready. All that was left was to make sure she was as well.
~*~
A Bow of Light and a Blade of Evil’s Bane.
The hero faced the beast. With strength combined, they slew the malice, banishing it from their world.
Her powers did not falter, not for a moment when the time came. And as she watched the sky clear from roiling crimson to the pale blue of morning light, she breathed deeply of the fresh air for the first time in a century.
Footsteps in the grass approached from her from behind and she smiled to herself.
“I’ve been keeping watch over you all this time…” she said tentatively, staring at the ground, not yet ready to face him. “I’ve witnessed your struggles to return to us as well as your trials in battle.
“I always thought—no, I always believed—that you would find a way to defeat Ganon. I never lost faith in you over these many years.” At last she turned and beheld her knight again with her own two eyes. Even splattered with dirt and blood, he was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. All wide, earnest eyes and hair the colour of golden Tabantha wheat.
She thanked him wholeheartedly, dubbing him “Hero of Hyrule”, but a twinge of uncertainty coiled in her gut at his stoic silence, forcing her to ask, “Do you really remember me?”
A beat past in agonising quiet where she questioned everything she thought she had grown to understand about him. But then his expression softened and a smile cracked across his face. “Zelda,” he said, and the sound of her name on his tongue after one hundred was enough to have her running to him with the last of her strength and flinging her arms around his neck while his laughter rang softly in her ears. They clung to each other with equal force as they sobbed and laughed and shook with relief, sinking to the ground from shared exhaustion.
They stayed seated in the grass long after they finally quieted, taking each other in through tired eyes as the sun rose overhead.
She reached out a hesitant hand to caress his cheek, cupping it reverently as she stared into his ocean-deep eyes, marvelling at the warmth of his skin. He leaned into her touch, lifting his own hand to hers and holding it in place as he turned his face and kissed her palm, eyes fluttering shut. Warmth stained her cheeks as sparks rippled up her arm from where his lips had touched her.
Then he gave a little sigh and met her gaze once more.
“We should probably go,” he mumbled, sounding as reluctant as her to move. Now that the adrenaline had worn off she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to stand without his aid.
But where would they go? She glanced back at Hyrule Castle, once her home, and now that they’d defeated Ganon she supposed it ought to be again. But it lay in ruin and was probably still crawling with monsters. Her chest constricted when she realised she was as good as adrift.
But then Link squeezed her hand, bringing her attention back to him. “You know, I bought an old house in Hateno. It’s not much, but it has a bed and a bath, and I can cook for us,” he said, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand and not quite meeting her eyes.
Of course, how could she have forgotten? She wasn’t adrift, her lighthouse was right here, illuminating her world and guiding her safely back to shore. She’d seen him buy the house slated for demolition, watched him pay for its loving restoration. She’d simply never considered he might have intended it for more than his own use.
“It sounds perfect,” she replied, eyes a little watery as she gave him her most radiant smile.
He grinned in return, jumping to his feet and placing the tips of two fingers in his mouth and letting out a shrill whistle that made her start. He gave a bashful apology when he noticed her surprise and stooped to help her to her feet without even having to be asked.
Responding to his summons, his horse whinnied as it trotted towards them from where it had been peacefully grazing after aiding him in the fight.
“Hey Zelda?” Link asked, taking her hand once more.
She raised an eyebrow at him inquisitively.
“Let’s go home.” He smiled and instantly she knew those were words she’d never tire of hearing if they came from him. Because home was anywhere as long as they were there together.