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The matter first came up in the middle of a dungeon. Link can no longer remember where that dungeon had been; can no longer recall what treasures, if any, they got out of it. They stumbled upon countless places such as that along their nautical journey—by this point, the details of each adventure, every encounter, have been lost amongst the collection.
The conversation itself, though: that memory remains firm in his mind. It had been delivered in shouts for the most part, passed back and forth in the gaps between blazing attacks from some bloated, irate, lizard creature with a serious gas problem. Link had been pressed up against a rocky outcrop for cover—hot to the touch and too-thin by half—as he batted at the sparks trying to catch on his sleeve. "If I die here," he called, "promise me you'll take my body back to Granny and Aryll!"
"Hell no!" Tetra's head popped out from behind another jutting boulder, and she sent him a glare that was somewhat less effective through the soot smearing half of her face. "Sailing back to Outset will take months! I'm not dealing with your rotting corpse for that long!"
Another blast of flame cut through the space between them. Link grimaced and rummaged through his pouch: searching… searching… until his fingers brushed up against the cool magic of an ice arrow. He whipped it out and nocked it into his bow. "Promise, T!"
Tetra eyed the bow, peered at the monster, and ducked back behind cover when another belch sent more fire her way. Under the din of the roaring flames, Link heard her snarl: "Fine! I promise! But if you die, I'm going to kill you!"
A grin tugged at Link's lips. "That makes no sense."
"Just shoot the thing already!"
When the battle was all said and done—the monsters bellows cut down to a squeak, and any embers that lingered on hair or clothing smothered—he had turned to her again. "What about you?"
"What about me?"
Link kicked at a still-smoking pebble. It crumbled instead of rolling. "If you happened to die here—or anywhere we go—what do you want me to do with your body? Is there a home island I should bury you on?"
"You're sure in a morbid mood, today." Tetra rolled her eyes and heaved herself, smudges of ash and all, to her feet. "The sea's my home, Link. If I die, you can just chuck my body into a rowboat and let it take me.
"But"—she set her gaze on the exit of the chamber, scimitar dancing between her hands and a hungry gleam in her eyes—"I'm not going to die here, and neither are you. So shovel the shit out of your jammies already."
She was right, of course. They did not die that day. They tore through that dungeon as they did everything else, Tetra's tenacity a force not unlike that of the waves. Whether she was up against beast, Ganon or the weight of a crown thrust upon her when they found New Hyrule and her bloodline came to light, she stood tall; held firm. Nothing, it seemed to Link, could falter the course of her current.
That is, until they landlocked her.
In all its sleek, shining newness, the temple holds an unsettling echo. Each footstep within lands with a clatter; every whisper is transformed into a roar. Not since his days of delving through dungeons has Link been so conscious of the sound he is making. The beat of his heart fills his ears, and he finds himself reminded of the Hyrule Castle of old—the echoes that pealed from its frozen antiquity.
It felt wrong, back then—to leave Tetra in the basement of that place. It feels wrong to leave her here, now.
She's so still. Peaceful, Link supposes: the kind of peaceful one expects to be upon death. He should be grateful for it—anyone else would—but the only feeling that arises within him is a deep sense of wrong. Tetra could never be this still—should never be this still. Even at her calmest there remains some motion to her; the gentle ebb and flow of a post-storm sea. Anything less than that would be…
Well, this.
The grand doors to the temple open. Close. Heeled footsteps make their way down the central aisle. They aren't forceful by any means, but each one sends a crack through the air nonetheless—a disturbance in the otherwise serene setting that Tetra would be proud of. They come to a stop on the other side of the casket, and Link rips his gaze away from her face; rips his heart and soul in two.
The Queen of New Hyrule stands with her shoulders back and chin high: the very picture of royal composure. Only her eyes betray any weariness, adorned with shadows that are heavy with days of holding a young kingdom together and nights of soothing a teething toddler. Tonight, those eyes—shadows and all—fix on Tetra's face. The corner of a lip puckers under the pressure of teeth.
"Lord Mayer and Lady Loch have enough hot air between them to power the entire fleet of trains for a week," she mutters, "but I was able to get them and the other advisors to agree to no public viewing."
Link allows himself a breath. Just a small one.
"They won't budge on entombing her, though. They say that anything else would be 'insufficient'."
There it is. He closes his eyes. It was bound to happen, as much as Tetra had pushed against it in life—in her reign. The ripples of misplaced reverence levelled upon her had finally become a tide, and with her absence, that tide was now free to overwhelm anything that remained of her will.
It's nothing less than she and Link had expected. It's nothing less than they prepared for.
The Queen swallows, a slight wobble to her chin. It's a tic Link hasn't seen since she was a child, curled up on his lap and asking why the castle sparrows won't eat from her hand like Aunty Aryll's seagulls do. "It's okay," he tells her. "You did what you could."
He lowers his gaze back to the casket; lowers his voice along with it. "I can take care of the rest."
"Once we finish here the priests will…" The Queen steadies herself with a deep breath. "They will seal up the casket. She'll be undisturbed until her funeral. Three days' time."
Three days. Link reaches a hand out, readjusting a lock of hair that sits, off-kilter, to the side of Tetra's frozen forehead.
"Dad."
He looks, once again, to the Queen.
He used to worry, in the past, that she took too much after him. All of his water; not enough of Tetra's salt. With the position she was to inherit, he had been concerned that his influence would only hamper the growth of a strength she would one day need.
But now, as he stares at the young woman before him, Link is content that those worries were unfounded. He meets her gaze, catches the glimmer of fire in flint eyes, and knows that she and the kingdom now nestled between her hands will be just fine.
"Ensure the casket remains the correct weight," she whispers.
Niko rocks up the following night, accompanied by far more people and far more tools than is probably necessary. They file into the temple one by one: an attempt at a stealth mission so dismal that it's easy to imagine Tetra laughing at them amidst the cacophony they bring.
Fortunately for everyone involved, Tetra's memory—and Link—are the only ones around to laugh. The Queen of New Hyrule has designated the three days between her predecessor's death and funeral as a period of mourning. All businesses closed, and all persons, bar those in roles of absolute necessity, instructed to remain at home to rest and cherish their loved ones. The streets of Castle Town would've been quiet on the group's way in; they will be quiet again when Link leads them back out, the most precious of loot in tow.
Niko greets Link with a sympathetic smile and a clap on the shoulder, saving any words he has for directing the ragtag crew he's brought along. It takes some working ("Damn kids these days have no idea how to break into a coffin," Tetra would say), but under his command, they manage to crack the casket's freshly-made seal. There's a collection of grunts, a couple of swears, and even one yelp from a stubbed toe, but no one arrives to stop them. The Queen has done her part so they can do theirs.
Heavy, cumbersome lid now off and rested on the floor, each of the youngsters takes a step back. Their faces form an assortment of uncertainty, unease, and Link files past each and every one, moving to lean over the open tomb.
She hasn't moved. Not one bit. That fact shouldn't be so strange to him ("What reason would a fucking corpse have to move around for?"), but it feels strange nonetheless.
A member of Niko's crew—broad-shouldered, with thick, ropy arms accustomed to work—steps forth as Link is reaching into the casket. "I can carry her, Sir." His voice, by contrast, is light and lilting. "It's no trouble, really."
Link smirks, and behind him, Niko snorts. "If there's one thing you all need to know about the Captain," he says, "it's that she'll always saddle Link with the heavy lifting. We let him off easy now and she's likely to strike us all down."
Or devise some way to assign them latrine duty from beyond the grave. That had always been her favoured punishment, after all. "Scooping up shit until you stop shitting me off."
"Wouldn't us smelling like shit also shit you off, though?"
"Then I guess you're just gonna scoop up shit forever."
The young man helps anyway, promise of ghostly retribution or no. His hands slide under Link's: thick, strong fingers next to gnarled and arthritis-ridden ones, supporting both him and Tetra's body until they are sat in the temple pews. There, Link settles Tetra's head in his lap, perfectly positioned to oversee the rest of the gnarly work.
It's while Niko's crew are refilling the casket—sacks of grain and flour heaved up and placed in the appropriate spots—that they're startled by the creak of a door opening. Everyone freezes, eyes fixed on the temple's side entrance, but a squint is all that's needed for Niko to relax and wave them all back to work. It's only when the new arrival ensnares his shoulders in a tight, familiar hug that Link relaxes, too.
"Glad you could make it," he says, throat thick.
"Of course I was going to make it." Aryll unwraps herself from his shoulders, peering down at Tetra's face. Her brow creases, and her lashes flutter with rapid blinks; a reflection of the same refrain, the same refusal to cry that Link remembers from the nights they sat sentinel over Grandma's deathbed. Dimly, he wonders if Aryll can see a similar echo on his face—a mirrored expression, now grey-haired and craggy with age.
"Whoa…" she whispers, breath shaky.
Link swallows. "Yeah."
"They really fucked up her hair, didn't they?"
In spite of himself, Link laughs. Aryll returns it with a sad grin, taking a seat next to him and setting herself to the task of freeing Tetra's hair from all the finery that's been employed to contain it. Pins, precious gems and flowers—plucked out and placed into an empty sack Niko passes to them. "The jewellery too," Link tells her. "The shoes." And Aryll strips off each and every piece until Tetra's hair falls in loose, uninhibited waves, and the only royal garb that remains is that of the shimmering gown.
"What about that?" Aryll asks, waving her hand over it. "One of these kids will have a knife on them; maybe we can just cut it off her?"
"I should burn it." The memory of Tetra's voice comes to him. "I should burn all of this crap." Stomping back and forth across their bedroom, skirts hitched so high that the collection of hoity-toit rich folks that now style themselves as nobles would faint if they were to see.
"You might want to take it off, first," Link remembers saying to her, his eyes tracking her bare calves, still corded with muscle after all these years.
"I don't know." Tetra grinned at him. "Setting it aflame while I'm still wearing it is sure to be an image everyone will remember. They can start calling me the Queen of Smoking, Saggy Tits!"
Staring at her face now—eyes closed, grin extinguished—Link's lips twitch.
"We'll leave her in it."
The procession that leads to the train station is markedly quieter than the one on the way in, shuffling feet and Link's heaving breaths the only sounds that break through the stillness of Castle Town's nighttime streets. His bones ache, muscles tremble, but each time someone offers to carry Tetra for him, he responds only with a shake of his head. "You're a stubborn shit, you know that?"
It crosses his mind—as his huffs and puffs mix in with those of the steam engine that carries them to the village of Aboda, as his feet sink while crossing the sand-swathed shore to a collection of prepared rowboats, and as arms far stronger and far less fatigued than his deliver them to the shadow of a ship—that perhaps he will just lie himself down next to her. Join her on the pyre; save everyone else the repeat of this night when it comes time for the depths to carry him down, too.
But, no. No as Tetra's First Mate, he should stick around: supervise her latest ship, the ship that is New Hyrule, for her. He will remain on hand to support their daughter, and to ensure that no more of Tetra's desires are drowned out by those that others wish to instil upon her memory. As much as she had grated against the bureaucracy of it all, Tetra put everything she had into finding this place; into allying and negotiating with the Lokomos; into ferrying all their people from the lost Great Sea to here.
It's only right that Link does whatever he can to uphold that.
There's a lurch as the rowboats are reeled on up; a sinking in Link's gut. The end is creeping closer, now. Everyone else steps out onto the deck of the ship, but he finds himself frozen—eyes fixed on the flaxen hair and finespun skirts splayed over the wood.
"Tide's headed out." Niko's voice is low by Link's ear, and he grasps a small bundle of kindling between his hands. Past him, the others stand by with their own bundles. "We don't have much longer to see this done. You know how pissed she's going to be if she finds out we failed her."
Yes. He knows. He can picture the scowl she will give them; all the tedious, latrine-related tasks she'll saddle them with. Even with that knowledge though, his limbs remain locked in place. The moment he leaves this rowboat, that'll be it—no going back. Link isn't sure he can do it. He wants to keep her here, close enough for him to grasp. He wants to shackle himself to her body until the moment comes for him to accompany her.
But that would make him no different from the ones who wish to entomb her, wouldn't it now?
Back creaking, neck aching, he leans over her. He brings his face close, lets his breath fall onto her lips as he whispers: "You better not have too much fun without me."
The sea breeze dances over them, and in the pre-dawn light, it almost appears as if Tetra is smirking back. "No promises."
Link steps out from the rowboat; steps back from it, too. Stands by and watches as everyone gathers to construct a hasty pyre. The sun is beginning to rise by the time they're ready; a thin flame, licking at the horizon and inviting them to add more. Link certainly isn't about to reject that invitation. He reaches for his pouch.
It's tattered and worn—has been both singed and soaked over the years. The magic within though, holds up well enough. Niko's crew hauls the rowboat up, guides it over the port side railing and down to the waves, and Link buries his fingers into the magical void. He searches… searches… until, this time, he catches the warmth of a flame arrow.
It's been a long while since he's drawn a bow—the aged muscles in this back will punish him later, that's for sure—but if anyone is to do this, it will be him. It has to be. Down by the waves, Niko sets the smaller boat adrift; pushes it into the embrace of the receding tide that will carry it away.
Aryll by his side, and the rest of the well-meaning crew at his back, Link nocks the arrow in place. He aims his shot, draws back his string, and lets the flame fly. It thunks into the boat by Tetra's side, catching the hem of that dress she so despised and kindling, wood and cloth spark to life. They build between themselves a blaze—one that joins that of the sunrise behind them—as the boat wobbles, creaks and slowly shrinks upon a lightening sea.
"So long, Captain."