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Knock. Knock. Knock.
Zelda sits on the gate of their garden (their lovely little garden of their lovely little white house, so unlike the monstrous empty spaces of the hulking grey castle that haunts her) watching Link finish securing their home. The gate knocks back and forth as she swings, the rhythmic knock knock knock betraying the childish action. It’s something that she’d never have dared to make in the Before. There’s no-one to correct her Now, and that’s both an exhilarating relief and a breath-taking blow. She can’t decide which she’d prefer it to be.
Link, having finished checking the windows, looks at her. That downward little tilt to his brows and his lips freely expresses concern, so unlike the him from Before. Zelda tries to seem perfectly fine, though her former knight always knows. He’s always known, she thinks, it’s just Now he can show it. Any method she had perfected to hide her emotions was lost a long time ago, when she gave herself in return for that sealing Light, just as he lost his mask when he fell in the rain and the mud behind her.
Both of them are unburdened. Both of them are lost.
Despite his concern, Link turns to lock the door without a word. It’s a kindness, she thinks with trembling hands that push her hair aside in the light wind. A kindness she struggles to believe she deserves. She was dreadfully unkind in the Before.
The thought of regular locks and window latches being enough to keep a home safe was completely foreign to her at first. It still is. The memory of so many guards, guards stationed at every turn she could make in her own “home”– guards at bedroom doors and servants gates, eternally stationed in the gardens and near the kitchens and their private quarters and in the dungeons and by the moat and and and and and!– is strangely vivid.
(Zelda might have an idea of what a home is meant to be like now. That wasn’t one.)
Link noticed her unease, of course. Link understood. With a gentle look in his eyes, he told her it was different Now. That this is how almost everyone lived Before, and how almost everyone lives Now. That they don’t need dozens of watchers to keep their house safe (watchers to keep them contained) anymore. That he truthfully only really bothers with the locks because of the Yiga, but he that trusts this Town. Untangling the emotions that word caused was difficult. Link didn’t say anything when she went quiet. He just sat on the floor next to the large squishy chair he’d brought home for her one day and continued teaching himself to read Hylian common. She remembers the heat of one hand unconsciously wrapping around her ankle, a reassurance she thought. One they both needed. One they both need. Link didn’t say a word then either, when she’d slid off the chair to sit next to him. The hand around her ankle slipped away to curl around her shoulders as she clung to him. After a moment he asked her why the spelling of some words changed with the tenses and some don’t and that was that.
Her Link has always been too kind to her.
Knock. Knock —
The pattern stalls when Link’s hand stills the gate beneath her. A smile tugs at his lips briefly, a spark of mischief alighting in his eyes, before he pushes the gate away again. From there he takes over swinging her back and forth. It’s not long before his mind slips away, gaze distant and lips parted. Zelda doesn’t fight to keep him, choosing instead to enjoy the quiet moment, no matter how the gate has grown still in its frame. Link doesn’t notice. Whatever her friend is remembering, she thinks as she watches his eyelids flutter, it doesn’t seem distressing this time. Best to let him find himself.
With a small shake of his head, the boy comes back to himself. His smile is shaky, but she doesn’t mention it. Doesn’t know how to. If only she knew where he went!, Zelda thinks fiercely, though the emotion soon dies like all the others. She’d go with him if he wished, she’d follow him anywhere. He would too, she knows. Instead they wander together.
“Are you ready?” Link asks after a moment of fragile stillness, chest heaving just a little. It’s a very quiet question…
“I–”
… but it still burns. Zelda’s decision cuts off with a sudden stab of panic. She wants to see Purah, she wants to learn and discover and creates how she once did. Oh how she wants! Isn’t this freedom? Yet the thought of leaving their home, of walking through this dreadfully familiar yet not land, past people and views of wide open spaces that shouldn’t be there (that wiuldn’t be if only she hadn’t failed!) robs the breath from her lungs like the violent thieves her father warned her of as a little girl. All he said was a lie. She wants to go, she does! She said she’d go, but it’s…
Link’s hand takes hers. He always understands. He is always so kind. He shouldn’t waste it on her.
“We don’t have to go,” he soothes as though she’s a horse. She abruptly misses Snowdrop (what came of her?). “We can stay. You can swing on the gate and I’ll make something nice for dinner, and then you can explain why the Hylian race apparently needs three separate languages when one works perfectly fine. We can try again another day.”
“I should be able to do this,” she hisses, loathing the burn of her eyes.
Link, her Link who saved her even after she let him die (he died for her), steps closer. Tentatively he pulls her close, burying his face in her hair when her fingers place wrinkles in his shirt. She should be better than this. Link sighs, a great big shuddering thing that must hurt.
“The world is very large,” he says quietly. “I-it’s a lot for me too. I panicked a lot at the start. Especially once I knew what I was meant to do. There was just so– so much of it! The world, I mean. Life. I, I didn’t know that Hyrule was ever any different. Impa told me, but I didn’t know. Not until… I’m trying, now, to get used to it again.”
His voice quiet, and it is so often so hesitant, but it is a blessing to hear it in the Now just as it was in the Before. Zelda will always try to listen.
“Your memories…?”
“Mhm. Too much yet not enough. I- I didn’t, that is to say–” he groans. “Oh I’m no good at this,” he huffs quietly. Depreciatively. Zelda dares to pokes him in the side like he does her, and her lips twitch when he laughs a little. “Sorry. What I’m trying to say is that it’s okay. It’s okay for it to be a lot. It is a lot. The difference is… We can take it slow.”
“It’s been a month.”
“Exactly,” Link replies calmly even though she can feel his heart rabbiting against her cheek. “It’s been a month.”
They don’t go to visit Purah that day, or the next. Instead Purah comes to them, chattering away with busy hands tinkering with small items as Zelda sits on the gate and Link sleeps in the flowers. It’s a small step, having a rather large personality in their little garden of their little white house, but it feels important somehow. Later Purah will tell her that it is important. They both know her, she says, but their home is their safe space. Inviting someone into it is brave. It sounds nonsensical. False. The cold in her grows that bit louder. Still Link will say nothing beneath the strange little spirit resting atop his chest, and nor will Zelda, and Purah will quietly leave soon after.
Being called brave is a lot, Zelda thinks as she listens to her friend’s small feet patter away to leave her them behind. She thinks neither of them feel it, in this emptiness of the After.
Together they will spend the night on their little garden’s swing gate, shoulder to shoulder, watching the familiar stars and sweeping moon while pretending their cheeks aren’t wet.
Their hands won’t let go.
The following morning, Link asks a question that will start something magnificent. It isn’t said to be so. Truthfully it’s nothing but a wistful little thought brought about by memories once lost. Memories of people lost. Be they lost through time, or by tragedy, is something they won’t ever know.
A creased photo of a round-cheeked little girl smiling as she holds a cucco sits proudly in a little frame on their bedside table. Found, Link was told, in his pocket when they prepared him for the Shrine. Keeping it safe was the one kindness they’d afforded him. Next to it is a photo of a blonde woman dressed in rich fabrics holding a different little blonde girl as they pour over a book. It’s all they have of either of them. They only know the fate of one.
“Hey Zel?” Link’s voice draws her out of her thoughts, halting her fork mid-stab of an egg. “Do you remember the– the–” his fingers begin clicking frustatedly “–oh the things that kids used to play on! The seats that would hang from those wooden frames, I mean. In the little grounds for children?”
Vague memories before her mother surface, achingly comforting but so very distant.
“Swings?”
“… are they really called that? I– never mind.” He laughs slightly, more wry than cheerful. “Do you know how to make them?”
Zelda pauses. Looking away from her breakfast, she follows his gaze lingering emptily on their garden gate. It’s become a focus point of their home, really. The one place where one or both of them can typically be found. A spark of intrigue flares, momentarily thawing the cold in her chest. The next breath comes easier. Link wants this, she thinks. She will always try to listen.
“I think we can work it out.”
It turns out that making a swing might be a little more difficult than they thought. It isn’t that complicated, except it sort of is. Not so much the making the seat (a wide plank of wood with holes to attach the rope through, simple enough when you’ve got fire arrows) as it is getting the damned ropes right.
“Wait, wait, Zel– if we do it like that won’t the other side be uneven?”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to knot it in the same place with the same amount of rope. Otherwise the seat will sit all wonky?”
“I…”
“Or it’ll be really, really high off the ground, and neither of us are that tall.”
Zelda stares at the knot she’s just made. One rope is now significantly longer than the other. Link… might have a point.
“Oh damn it all to–!”
The sound of her friend’s sniggering is infuriating only in how it makes her smile.
They also made the unfortunate mistake of creating the loop at the top without taking into account that it needs to be hung on a branch… a branch that they have no idea the size of, to boot. Undoing said knots is more work than it ought to be. More than one nail is broken in this endeavour. Come early afternoon, however, they have created a makeshift swing (they think) that neither of them quite dare to try. It’s still slightly uneven, quite dangerous primitive looking, and was the most fun either of them can remember having since the Calamity was defeated, if ever. It’s theirs.
She loves it.
“…we try it out and then make another?”
“Deal,” she readily agrees. “You can go first.”
Link blinks at her for a moment before grinning wickedly.
“You’re scared to try it.”
His voice is sly and dreadfully amused. Despite her gasp of mock offence, Zelda can’t help but smile back. The cold is more distant than it ever has been.
“Scared? Not at all. I’m being gracious, Link.” She tilts her chin challengingly, Link’s eyes sparkling in return. “I’m allowing you to try the wonky, somewhat precarious looking swing first simply because it was your idea to make it. It’s nothing less than a kindness.”
She nods primly, turning away before she breaks. The barking laughter Link lets out is somewhat wolf-like, and she can't help but laugh in return. His smile when she turns is more a baring of sharp teeth than anything, and it is so genuine it brings tears to her eyes. She memorises it each time.
Goodness but it’s warm here, in their little garden with her best friend. Zelda can barely feel the ice.
Link is giggling as he swings, having worked out how to get higher with every pass of his legs. It seems to be holding, much to her relief. Not that she thinks it would stop him, undoubtedly he’d just pout about needing to rehang it rather than handle the splinters she knows they’ll both soon have. The flare of his hair behind him almost looks like the tail of a shooting star, golden against the greens and browns of nature they adore. A beacon, perhaps. One to call her home.
Golden light, sparkling like champagne she’ll never taste again, bubbles in her chest. How she loves him. How she’s lost.
Link’s toes scrape against the ground, slowing him to a sharp stop. Hopping off, legs teetering yet chortling gleefully, he bows mockingly towards the swing with cheek she’d only ever seen directed toward children and Revali , before the world ended around them.
“Your turn!”
Zelda hadn’t really been allowed to play after her mother died. Anything like this was removed, slides and swing sets replaced with altars and endless prayer. She suddenly feels a little off-balance. Settling tentatively onto the seat, fingers wrapping around treated rope, she sees Link skip out of the way just to pause. He turns with soft eyes to look at her curiously.
“Want a push?”
Nodding feels like a betrayal to her training.
Nodding feels like what her mother would want.
“Only if you don’t shoot me off to Lurelin,” she says breathlessly.
Link lets out another one of those barking laughs, teeth bared in what Zelda knows is a playful grin learnt from that wolf of his that says loudly how entwined they were. She daren’t tell him that though, no matter how she cherishes it. That loss is still a painful thing.
“No promises.”
What can she do but laugh in return? Swatting at him just makes him cackle, whilst a nuzzle to her hair drains any playful ire into a comfortable silence. After a moment of comfort, his hands over hers, they return to the subject at hand. Mischief skitters into the bubbling excitement, fizzing until she feels giggles buzzing in her throat. She swallows it down.
“Three…” he says as he pulls the swing back, and her stomach flips.
“Two…”
The brimming humour in his voice makes Zelda realise this might have been a bad idea right when she notices her feet have left the ground. She’s giggling anyway.
“One,” they chorus– and then she’s flying.
Link catches her (he always catches her) on the back-swing to push her forwards again. Laughter spills from her lips as she’s sent higher, mixing with his barks until they sound like animals. He jumps to send her higher still– her feet lifting towards the sky, unburdened and disembodied, stomach turning with nervous delight as she falls– and then she’s caught again.
She’s weightless, she’s laughing, and every time she falls Link sends her higher.
She’s not alone.
She’s–
Maybe this is freedom, she thinks hysterically as Link dives under to face her with a shout of glee. The ravine taunts her. If she came loose she’d be gone for good, and her feet pump her higher until she sees the bridge that keeps the world at bay. Zelda sees Link’s smile, sees the growing flowers on the ground and the clear sky absent of the blood shed from the boar she’d battled, and in one joyful rush she knows.
She made it.
Zelda scrapes her feet to an almost stop and dares to leap for a hug Link catches her in freely. Laughter races from her lungs in giddy whirls, and Link laughs too, stammering in confusion and oh how she understands! Zelda doesn’t know if she’s laughing or crying, doesn’t know if she might even be dreaming, but she feels warmth for the first time in far too long and Link might be too so she weeps.
She’s home.
Home, with a shoddy childish swing and a best friend that’s perhaps more wolf than Hylian and a pretty little house they both hold the keys to and warmth that fizzes in her veins.
They’re alive.
Maybe– just maybe, Zelda thinks as they crumble to a laughing, snotty heap atop wild grass and the swing knocks Link in the head with a hollow sounding thunk she cackles at– this is where they were always meant to be.