Chapter Text
Wind.
Rushing, whipping, wind. It snaps at her filthy hair, her bedraggled gown, at the tall grasses scorched by malice. Wind scrubs the too-blue sky of the final plumes of smoke from the castle’s shuddering ruins.
The wind cools the magic running thicker than the blood in her veins. It races between her fingertips, the gusts threading with heat as her flesh slowly relaxes from the strain of… everything. She doesn’t want to remember it. It’s over.
“I’ve been keeping watch over you all this time.” Her first words are what they should be: praise, and assurance, and calm. There is joy, but she can’t tell if it’s hers. “I’ve witnessed your struggles to return to us, as well as your trials in battle.”
She cannot explain the how of that, or put her visions in order. Has it been weeks since he staggered from his tomb? Months? More? But he has faced every trial head on. He has struggled even when the path felt sure, even when his enemies fell one by one against him.
“I always thought—no, I always believed, that you would find a way to defeat Ganon.” Because the one thing the Shrine of Resurrection did not take from him was his prowess. His skills with blade and bow and shield remained sharp despite his slumber. Everything else, however… “I never lost faith in you over these many years.”
Everything else? His life from before is gone: his reasons for fighting, the home he left behind, the family who nurtured his values. All of that was taken from him because she knew that, like herself, the cruelty of his destiny would not be enough to stop him from rising to it.
But it’s over. It’s over and now she’s standing in the scarred green hills of Hyrule Field, barely out of sight of Castle Town’s shattered remains. Her kingdom is in ruins, her people scattered, her friends dead, her own father…
“Thank you, Link… the Hero of Hyrule.”
Saying it means it is over. Facing him means he is no longer following her, behind her, supporting her every effort to save what remains of their people and the kingdom they once knew. The task is complete, the war is won, the world will continue turning for another cycle of destiny’s wheel because their legend, at last, is written.
The relief escapes her as words, a thread of sound unspooling on the wind that dances between them:
“May I ask… do you really remember me?”
She smiles, and realizes what a horrible question this is to ask of a man left barely standing at his horse’s withers.
The ash and malice are melting off Link’s bright blue tunic. A streak of dried blood runs down his face from a gash cut and healed over his eyes, his attention fading rapidly in and out as he stares at her, barely breathing, hardly moving. If he looks so young and small in the daylight, then what does she look like to him?
“...I want to,” he whispers, then takes a knee.
Neither Zelda nor his poor horse know if he means to do that as her knight, or if his strength gives out from the same relief that made her question his memories right after killing the evil of their age.
Neither Link nor his poor horse know why she screams when he kneels, but he keeps his feeble grip on the master sword as his princess drops in front of him, begging to know if he’s alright.
Hylian Princesses, it should be noted, are symbols of serenity and temperance to their people. Hence her praise of him. Their composure is paramount, their emotions permitted in only the shyest reflections of joy, sorrow, or anguish. Hence the granting of his title: Hero of Hyrule.
That a princess loves her people immensely is proven by her tireless efforts to engage in public works, to patron the arts, to continue the royal line, and to stride ahead of processions and proclamations. A silent princess is as the sun above: untouchable, but felt and admired by all.
The knights of the realm, appropriately, follow this example of royal discipline. A knight must never draw his blade unless he intends to use it, nor raise his voice unless it is with absolute command. Knights are not city guards or humble militiamen: they act without flinching, speak only when they must be heard, and their presence alone is a warning that they will put to friend and foe alike.
The joy in this silent princess jams something in her chest, seizing around the sorrow seeping through her ribs. The anguish shakes her, and shakes her, and the shaking does not stop when Link rests a hand on her back and pulls her into the embrace she initiated. The pain erupts like smoke from a burning building, scorching her tongue and bleeding from her nose.
Princesses do not make the horrific sounds that scrape out of her. They don’t gag, or claw at people, or clutch at empty weapon belts and the folds of seared clothing. Princesses do not scream, tears running down their faces with their teeth biting into thick blue fabric. A princess must never shriek as if she is dying, especially not when she has spent the last hundred years trapped at the moment of death, fending it off only by the force of golden light that transformed her body and mind into something barely herself.
No knight would ever dare manhandle a member of the royal family. A knight should rather dash off his hand than release a blade like the sword that seals the darkness. He should never just drop the sword, or cling boldly to the princess holding onto him after the weeks upon months upon years of searching for her. No knight of the realm would ever dare press his face down to her shoulder where her flowing blonde hair is tangled with sweat and ash and the sulphurous reek of the calamity. This is not what royal knights do.
“No— no, no…” His voice, already weak, falls softer as they fight to get closer within and then immediately out of this embrace.
Link does not push her away because he fears the great scandal of a knight laying hands on the princess of Hyrule. Zelda does not recoil from him because temperance matters in this moment of resurrection. If these were their reasons, then she would not sit on the soft green grass with her hands held open, reaching for him. He would not look at her, his resolve flaking away like the tendrils of malice disintegrating in the sun, in abject agony, before placing his face between her palms.
They push, and they pull, and they push not because it’s what they should do, but because they don’t know what to do. They have both had their paths laid out before them for their whole lives, before and after the tragedy that unleashed a river of blood so deep it washed both of them away from themselves.
Now they are on the banks of that river, washed up on the wake of that flood, alive, and sitting in the sunlight together. Their kingdom is in ruins, their people are scattered, their friends dead, and they… they are, somehow, alive.
The poor horse doesn’t know anything about princesses or knights or grief or destiny. It just knows not to wander away as the two Hylians sit in the grass together, brow-to-brow, and weep.
They’ve won.
They are free.