Chapter Text
The Master Sword drives through crystalline core, each fracture reverberating up the blade, across the hilt, through the pads of Link’s fingers— sickeningly resonant, his bone hums with each crunch, his muscles heave as Ghirahim spasms before him. Connected, finally; if only for an instant, physically entwined in a way that feels so disgustingly right.
Link’s sinews scream as though peeling apart from themselves. In tandem, the cracks across Ghirahim’s form pulse, chest desperately fluttering. His pearly eyes fill Link’s vision, and for a moment, it feels as though they are drowning.
Ghirahim stills and suddenly jerks back, clutching at his core. An unfathomably heavy, circular pit settles at the bottom of Link’s stomach as that something dissipates between them. The tip of the Master Sword hangs loose in the air, and Link knows better than to let himself stand so unguarded, but finds that he could not care less in this exact moment.
Ghirahim will die.
The truth comes to him in molten metal, in the sheen of inhumanely hard skin— broken, before him.
For once, Fi is silent.
~~~
Zelda beams, her eyes glittering in a way Link has known for years. A well-worn habit, his eyes jump to search for— there. That hidden, almost expectant tug on her smile, as though the face of his closest friend is being worn by something else. Just as starkly, the near-imperceptible lines of fatigue garnered only from undergoing circumstances far beyond one’s grasp shadow her face. Zelda had exited every single trial the Goddess had set forth for her physically unscathed, seeming to exude a divine purity that almost reads sterile as Link thinks back to his mad chase on the Surface. Time and time again, Zelda’s pure white dress swiveled just out of reach, always haunting the periphery of his mind. Every single time he finally thought he’d caught up to her, Impa would pin him back with a glare likened to a predatory animal. Link huffs fondly, remembering how the Goddess Sword seemed to stiffen against his back despite Fi’s emotionless statements of absolute devotion to the Goddess. Though she never admitted it outright, it felt as though Fi was committed to protecting him just as fiercely as Impa was to Zelda.
Impa sure did do a better job, though, Link reminisces with half-hearted bitterness. He knows the scars he accumulated were the product of his own mistakes, his own oversights, his own inexperience, his own attempts to prove himself to Hylia. When he finally clawed his way through Eldin Volcano and reached the Earth Spring, nursing fresh burns all across his abdomen from—Scaldera, Ghirahim called it?—and finally caught sight of Zelda, pristine, not a hair out of place… Link’s only thought was thank the Goddess Zelda didn’t feel any of this pain. The memory of Ghirahim makes something in his chest shift uncomfortably, much like new skin had tugged over his burns after drinking a much-needed red potion.
A worried quirk of her brow colors Zelda’s face, dragging Link from his thoughts. Midday Skyloft sprawls before them atop the Knight Academy roof, legs dangling over the ledge with a journal expertly balanced in Zelda’s lap. Link returns what he hopes is a reassuring smile, pushing his bubbling feelings back to the recesses of his mind. He dimly finds the upturn of his lips helpless.
Zelda rolls her eyes fondly. “Gosh, you practically doze off every time we talk these days! Do I bore you that much?!” She points to the open page of the journal, making a small tap tap on the paper. It is filled with botanical sketches bordered by Zelda’s familiar penmanship filling every available gap. A sharp sensation in the back of Link’s mind distantly informs him that her handwriting had become somehow more… crisp, as though the Hylian script was cutting into ancient stone.
As Link opens his mouth to protest, Zelda huffs and continues, cleanly wrapping up their familiar banter with practiced ease. “There’s still so many herbs in Faron Woods we haven’t checked out yet. I’m not even sure how to begin naming all the ones we have found… maybe we should just leave that to Professor Owlan, though.”
Link nods along, more than alright with letting Zelda chalk up his recent inattention to his old sluggish reputation. He can’t even begin to divulge how deeply his quest scarred, somehow altered— how profoundly a feeling of loss pervades his being despite having won. It felt wrong. “Maybe you should go down to the Surface with Owlan next time. I think he’d appreciate an introduction to the rest of the Kikwis, too.”
Zelda blinks. “You won’t come too?” The blue of her eyes suddenly feels too piercing, the skies above paling in comparison. Her hands grip the stone ledge at her sides. Link falters, throat suddenly thick and tight.
“I… I’m not sure.” Zelda’s sudden intensity recedes, hands springing back to her lap.
“Right. Of course.” She wrings her fingers. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Two old friends bathe in afternoon sun, the quiet settling comfortably upon Link’s shoulders. The sun feels so much closer in Skyloft, the colors of the town rich and warm. The air felt thick and heavy the first few times on the Surface, almost cold— despite the trials he faced, Link remembers the wonder he felt hovering just above incomprehensibly vast landscapes with his Loftwing, casting a huge, soaring shadow that cut through light dappling across each biome. Faron, Eldin, Lanayru—the immense landscapes are still difficult to wrap his head around after a lifetime atop the clouds.
Zelda sighs and shakes her head. “I just— there’s so much Hylia, or, I guess…” her eyes flit to the few clouds flowing across the sun’s rays. “There’s so much knowledge I couldn’t make sure would be retained. Or maybe I just… didn’t.”
Link tears his eyes from the clouds at the rare note of exasperation seeping into Zelda’s voice. She doesn’t meet his gaze. “I’m not even sure anymore. But there’s a lot. About the Surface, about us… I just hope you’ll come to see the Surface as something as beautiful as I do.”
Link’s mind filters through a thousand moments at lightspeed. Amber relics glimmering in the sun. Mushroom spores glittering in the air. Small critters chirping in the trees. Timeshift stones plinking to life.
Fi dancing across water.
Ghirahim—
Link inhales shakily, raking his hands through his hair. “I do think it’s beautiful. I did. There’s nothing like it.” It occurs to Link, then, that Zelda is just as beautiful as the lush forest and sprawling sands below, the moss-covered rock whispering of an age lost, the iridescent sheen of insects thriving in places he could never expect. “It’s all… you, isn’t it?”
Zelda smiles, her lips curving just the way they had when she’d imprisoned herself in that crystal. The weight of an age incomprehensibly beyond her years settles on Zelda’s frame. “We’ve both changed, haven’t we?”
Carefully shifting his weight along the ledge, Link lays his head on Zelda’s shoulder.
“Some things stay the same, I hope.”
Zelda replies by resting her head atop Link’s. They sit watching the arc of the sun and the bustle of the town well after their legs grow numb.