Chapter Text
I don't know much about your life beyond these walls
The fleeting sense of love within these God forsaken halls
And I can hear it in his voice in every call
This girl who slept a hundred years has something after all
He is all you have.
You’ve known this fact for such a long time that it resonates in your very bones. Funny, how odd it feels to have bones again. But as you stand before him, descending in a beam of light, born anew from triumph as he was, but minus the scars, all you can ask him is, “Do you really remember me?”
He seems to think about the answer for a while. Eventually, he nods.
You both know it’s a lie, but you laugh the creakiness from your lungs and you embrace him.
You held him only once before, as he lay dying in your arms. That one final failure that was too much to bear, enough to bring out the goddess in you. It still stings that this was all you could give him, a promise he would be okay, even as he slipped away, and a blinding light you still didn’t understand.
He holds you too. Whether out of attachment or relief or something else, you don’t know. You never really did, and now it is even more complicated. He held you once before too, only once, but does it count? Was this even the same Link?
You collapsed then, falling into him with bitter tears. Your friends were dead. Your father too. He was all you had left, and all you could do for him was blame yourself. Link didn’t even argue, but he held you as he cried. He didn’t say anything to assure you, but steadied you to your feet again, and held your hand as you ran and ran.
You didn’t deserve his sympathy, even then. You were so callous and cruel to him. You treated him like furniture--ugly, unwanted furniture. He was always in the room and always a reminder that you were not what you should have been. He followed you dutifully, and you just wanted to be alone.
Now you cannot imagine what will happen if he lets you go. If you let him go.
Eventually, it happens. The sun wanes and Hyrule Field smells of flowers, and there is a future to consider. Despite having fought for it with every ounce of your being, you have not considered it.
Link whistles for his horse and helps you onto her back. He rides and you do not ask where he is taking you. For once, you learn from his silence.
You cling to his waist until you reach Kakariko that night.
You sleep in Impa’s granddaughter’s bed. Or try to, at least. You have forgotten what it’s like to have a body and do not understand its needs. But you do know that the way Paya blushes at Link makes you feel something ugly that you cannot name, will not name. Before, you would very much want to name it, to research it, to pin it down and know it.
Now, you are not sure.
When you ask where Link will stay, Impa doesn’t seem concerned. He shrugs his answer.
You find him outside, sitting on her roof. The moon is full but doesn’t bleed red. You have no warning for him, no dark prophecy. He cannot sleep and neither can you. Both of you have forgotten how to rest.
He looks down at you, his eyes the same blue that could be anything, mean anything. You hated him because you never knew what he was thinking, so you assumed it was that he was better than you.
You fell in love with him after you asked him what he really thought. Why he was so silent in his vigilance.
He answered you, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. He was afraid to speak. He was afraid to show weakness. He was afraid of being anything less than what he was supposed to be.
He was just like you.
You wonder, is he still?
You break the silence between you once again. “Can’t sleep?” you ask.
He shakes his head and looks to the whiteness of the moon. He turns back to you when you have nothing else to say, and helps you climb onto the roof with him.
You think, as you lay next to him there, that you may still be the same. Different, changed, scarred in not so similar ways, but the same.
You don’t question it when you wake up in Paya’s bed again in the morning. You know how you got here. You know why it was you calmed enough to remember how to sleep. And you know the honeyed apples Impa offers you for breakfast didn’t come from her. You still remember Link’s cooking, after all.
It goes on like this for days. The Sheikah treat you with both respect and awe and like you are a sickly invalid. Impa nags you like someone’s mother, and you realize that she is twice over. Link is around. He’s always around. He is always close by, actually. But he leaves you alone.
He does remember proper etiquette, you realize. Or maybe it’s instinct. He is close enough to defend you, but not to eavesdrop. Prepared to die for you, but not to touch you. He is ready, what for you are not sure, though Impa takes note one day and says it’s a good thing, because surely the Yiga still want both of you dead.
You say nothing to him. At night, when you cannot sleep, you find him. He is not far away. He is never far away. He watches the fish swim in the pond by the Goddess statue. You sit next to him under the tree beside it, and sleep.
He hands an apple to the Korok by the frog shrines that only you two seem to be able to see. When the creature makes a gleeful sound at the gift, you laugh unbidden for the first time since you came to Kakariko. You fall asleep next to an empty offering bowl.
You dream of the day you left him, entrusting his barely breathing body to Purah. It was a challenge to carry him that far, but somehow, you managed. He was shorter than you, but heavier for the density of his muscle. His blood stained your prayer dress, drying brown as mud, but you didn’t care. You had a job to do. You understood your purpose, finally.
You entrusted his sword to the Deku Tree, and a message, knowing that it might mean very little to him when he wakes. You understood that you must both make sacrifices to do what must be done, and the fact that he might wake not knowing you is the embodiment of all of that. Then, the picture of your triumph was so clear, so certain. It was worth waiting for.
The next night, he holds you again, and after this third time, you will soon lose count.
Impa tells you that you should let the people know who you are, and rally them to rebuild your nation, your court. The thought makes you lose your appetite for the creamy carrot stew that Link made for all of you. Even Paya seems to understand the severity of your silence and excuses herself from dinner.
Impa insists, “It must be done.”
Link finds you this time, crying in Paya’s bed. You don’t know when you started crying. It feels shameful and silly, even more so to be caught. But Link has seen you do more shameful things than this.
Hating him, of course, was the worst thing you’ve ever done.
When he speaks to you, it’s still soft and low. He can speak. He does have his voice. Just as before, he mostly saves it for you. “We don’t have to,” is all he says.
You start to protest. Of course you have to. Of course you do. It is your kingdom, after all. It is what you worked to save. It lies in ruins and you sit here crying over the thought of ruling it.
But Link reminds you that it isn’t just you. “We don’t have to,” he said. Because it would be you and him. Him guarding you as you sat in the ruins of your father’s throne.
But he is all you have.
“We have to,” you insist.
Link shakes his head. “Not yet.”
He leaves a note for Impa in messy handwriting you can’t recall having seen before. You usually did the writing, the communicating. Tonight, he does it for you.
He does a lot for you. Has done a lot for you.
You ride on Link’s horse, clinging again to his waist, under the waning moon. He takes you up, up, into the hills. To Hateno.
You arrive in the morning and no one seems to know who you are or particularly care. A little boy runs up to Link and asks him to show him his sword. A farmer waves to him. The woman outside of the general store asks him if he needs anything. An odd young man stares at you, but then goes to Link and mumbles a thank you to him for a favor he dares not name.
Link waves them off. He responds, quiet and polite, but clearly trying to get them to leave. He guides the horse as you sit atop it. You feel funny, out of place in a time where people do not remember you, or understand what you have done for them, gleaming white in your prayer gown, unstained as the moon.
You need different clothes.
He brings you to a house you recognize. Link himself never volunteered this information, of course, but another guard pointed out that he lived there as a boy, once, before his family moved to the castle to serve there.
You wonder if he remembers.
The house is small. The house is old. Link stables the mare and you wait for him outside. He opens the door for you, but lets you go in first.
It is a simple cottage, lined with treasures untold. Mipha’s trident. Revali’s bow. Daruk’s hammer. But it’s Urbosa’s sword and shield that bring you to tears.
That, and the fact that the table is set for two.
Link holds you again and says nothing. This is where you lose count.
He lets you go after a while, and goes outside. He comes back with a simple rice bowl topped with salted meat, and you eat it at the place he’s kept for you. You don’t ask him if he remembers this house. You’re pretty sure he doesn’t. But he remembers your favorite comfort food.
You tell him you need new clothes. He nods and keeps eating his own rice bowl.
There’s only one bed, you discover later on. But you do like the sturdy writing desk in the loft, and the framed picture you remember taking with your friends, your Champions. Only you and Link remain.
He is all you have.
You are tired from riding all night. Your body begs you to rest. Your mind knows that Link has given you an opportunity to do so that Impa would not.
Still, you protest, “I can’t take your bed.”
He shakes his head, then realizes he’s going to have to speak to get his message across, “It’s okay.”
“Where will you sleep?”
He shrugs an answer.
You think, maybe, that the place setting was not for you. You think, maybe, that Link didn’t plan for the future either. You think, maybe, that neither of you knows how to live happily ever after.
“You’re not going to take no for an answer, I see?” you half ask, half conclude.
Link nods.
The sheets smell like him. You lay down and give up. He’s never asked you for anything, and now he only asks you to rest where he knows it is quiet and safe.
You let him walk away. One step. Two. The third is unbearable.
You reach for his hand, and pull him back.
You do not name what you feel when he lays beside you, when he holds you again. This time, you do not cry, but in addition to that nameless feeling, there is a weariness and a grief that is beyond tears. You feel it in him too, in the way he breathes shaking breaths into your shoulder.
You sleep into the evening. The sun is red as the moon once was when you wake. Link is gone, but he’s close by. You can hear him humming as he cooks outside.
There are new clothes folded on the foot of the bed. You change into them. The trousers are too short for you, but otherwise fit fine. The tunic is soft, but baggy in the shoulders. When Link returns with meat skewers and fruit cake, you realize these are his pants. His clothes. His house. His food. His bed.
He is all you have.
You don’t mind it. Neither does he. He won’t tell you that, of course, but you know.
A part of you feels you should be ashamed. But you’re not.
You are too tired for that.
“Did you sleep too?” you ask Link over a bite of cake.
He nods.
“We’ll both use the bed,” you offer as your royal decree.
He nods again.
You sleep beside him for a week before you ask him to cut your hair. You don’t have anyone else to ask, and he won’t say no. He won’t ask why you feel an overwhelming need to do this.
You feel like you’re treating him like furniture again for a moment, but realize that you would never trust furniture with this.
Only Link.
He cuts your hair with the Master Sword. When you ask him why, he actually answers.
“It stays sharp,” is his reason.
He slays your hair like it’s an ancient evil. You feel cleansed and light, sitting backwards on a chair outside the house, amongst the flowers. You watch the blonde strands blow away in the wind.
“Cut it shorter,” you tell him.
He does.
Your hair is shorter than his now, and you love it.
You comb his out that evening, untangling it from a worn blue tie. It is still wild and ragged, loose over his shoulders. You put the tie in the pocket of the pants you took from him, and ask him if he has another one, as this one is well past its prime. He does, and you tie it up neatly for him again.
His heart beats you to sleep.
You wake in the morning to a letter from Impa, saying that she and Purah will visit tomorrow. The boy who delivers it to you has no idea who these people are, what they have done, what they have sacrificed. Neither does he for you and Link.
But he is nosy enough to ask, “Who is your friend, Link?”
Link looks at you to answer, sitting at his kitchen table, with your short hair and borrowed clothes.
You don’t know the answer yourself.
So just, “Zelda,” must suffice.
The youth is content with that answer, knowing not what the name means, what fate it decided for you.
Link watches you as you read the letter. He reads your face to know what it says, but you tell him anyway.
“I can tell them to go. Tell them you’re sick,” he offers, in his quiet way.
You’re the one that shakes your head this time. “No,” you add, “I’m all right. It has to be done.”
Link should nod but he doesn’t. He just looks at you and understands. He knows. You know. Both of you are used to doing the right thing, even if you do not want to.
You know now that you do not want to be Hyrule’s Queen. You want to sit in Link’s house and eat his food and brush his hair and listen to him hum. You want the children only to know you as Zelda and nothing else. You want to watch people thank Link for saving their chickens, not knowing that he’s saved them all from something far worse than a loss of poultry.
But you also know that you don’t get to have the things that you want. Not now, not always. You know, though, that you can carve out spaces for them, times and places.
You can start to rule your kingdom from Link’s bed, still, soothed to sleep by his breathing.
Purah is a child and Impa is ancient, and they are both about as old as you, even though you still look seventeen. Somehow, this makes sense. Purah hugs you with her tiny arms, but then clings to Link’s legs until he gives her a pose and a little laugh.
They bring you clothes that look like yours from before, but are newly made. All royal blue and royal seals and triforces and fine tailoring. You don’t want them, and prefer how Link’s pants stop just short of your ankles, and how his tunics are loose around your shoulders.
They have tea at the table and say nothing about the two place settings and the one bed. Link makes them risotto, Purah’s favorite. Purah plans and Impa nods along. You are as silent as Link as you drink your tea and listen to them.
“Nothing to say, Princess?” Impa asks after a while. “You’ve been with Link too long. Where are your words?”
It takes you weeks to find them.
Hateno is thriving, so far away and so little affected by the Calamity. You venture out into the fields, walk along the creeks and ponds. You watch the windmills spin. You pet a friendly cow. When anyone asks who you are, your answer is just “Zelda, a friend of Link’s” and there are no further questions. Link is trustworthy, and has proven himself thus. You are assumed to be the same.
One day, you are feeling up to the general store. Link gives you rupees, and you try not to think how strange it is to be taking money from him, or why money is where you mind draws the line when you wear his clothes, sleep in his bed, and eat his food.
But you take his rupees anyway, and you walk to the general store. You buy rice and milk, and you ask the clerk where the children go to school.
There is no school. There is no education. There is no history or science. The man at the counter tells you he taught his children to read and write and add and subtract and how to run the shop.
“That’s all they need to know,” he tells you.
“But there’s so much more,” you say.
You find your words, telling Link that the state of education in this town is unacceptable and must be corrected. You plan. You ask questions. He nods and whispers answers. Eventually, he smiles at you.
“What?” you ask him.
He shakes his head.
You keep talking, even in bed. You don’t remember falling asleep. The next morning, the contractor Link told you about is waiting for you downstairs. Link makes him tea and a fruit pie. Probably also his favorite.
You spend the day designing the village school with him, while Link is not so far away, easily being heard chopping wood, catching frogs in the pond, and making a spicy curry for lunch--his favorite, you remember. He laughs when Bolson can’t handle the spice despite best efforts, and steams a nice, mild fish for him instead.
You are proud to say you can handle Link’s spicy curry just fine. You remember the last time he made it for you, when you were going up to Mount Lanayru in your thin prayer dress. He didn’t want you to be cold.
He is all you have.
You find his hair tie in your pocket when you do laundry in the pond. You don’t know how to do laundry, but you can figure it out. Link probably knows and would do it for you if you asked him or even if you didn’t, but he’s been asked to run something up to the lab for Purah, and you wanted to try to do something for yourself. So you sit with your bar of soap and let your legs dangle in the water as you scrub.
You keep the hair tie and find another place to hide it. He knows you took it, so it seems silly, but you hide it anyway.
The children know you only as Zelda. They don’t know what a school is, but you try to explain it to them. You try to tell them it is an exciting thing, to learn, to know more.
They don’t like the prospect of sitting inside for hours on end, but their parents seem appreciative of the project.
Purah visits weekly to talk about big plans and eat a bowl of risotto. One day, she knocks at the door and is not a child anymore. Nor is she an old woman. She looks about the same as she did before the Calamity, but maybe a touch older. When you ask how she managed that, she merely says it’s too complicated to explain and talks about building towns and towers and technology and how to make Hyrule a kingdom again.
She talks about moving on. She asks where you will go next.
There are many places you will go, but you know you want to come back here. So you don’t answer her, because that’s more complicated than however she managed to manipulate her age.
You, Purah, and Link are all right around one hundred and seventeen years old, sitting around your table. You’re all too young to buy a bottle of wine, but too old. You joke to Purah that she should have added a few more years for that purpose alone. She looks at you funny when you laugh, but agrees.
She has Symin bring you a bottle of wine the next day. You don’t even want it and Link shrugs, laughing as he mutters something about Gerudo Town. You get him to tell you stories, sometimes, of things you already know. Things you watched him do. Moments where you entertained yourself with his freedom in your imprisonment.
He was all you had, after all.
Link isn’t all you have, not anymore. But when you agree to go to the ruins of Castle Town and try to plan out a restoration project with the Sheikah, the understanding that he is coming with you is unspoken and unnecessary. Of course he is.
On the way there, you catch a beautiful golden mare for yourself, with his coaching. The thrill of riding her is incomparable, even after you’ve saved the world. But you miss your arms around Link’s waist all the same. But he grins as you ride beside him, confident and sure in your ability to keep your mount steady, as he’s now taught you to be.
Robbie meets you with the others in the ruins. He likes your hair. He’s sad that the Guardians and Shrines and other tech faded away when the Calamity was defeated, apparently no longer needed now that their intended purpose was fulfilled.
Link looks to the distant mountains in the four corners of Hyrule as he says this. You look with him, finding them empty. Your friends are well and truly gone. Their purpose too, was fulfilled.
And still, you and he are left. Only the old Sheikah remember you, and apparently some of the Zora. That’s it. That’s all.
Link is upset. You know this, despite the lack of expression in his face.
That night, you were meant to sleep in separate tents the Sheikah set up for you, but you crawl into Link’s bedroll once everyone else is asleep. You lay silently with him, and know that you’re the one holding him now.
It is the least you can do. After all, you are all he has.
You go other places. Do other things. See other people. Link, as always, goes with you.
You meet the Zora. Sidon is massive now, charming and almost insistently positive. He pulls both of you into a bone-crushing hug. He goes on and on, telling you how Link saved his people, telling you things you already know, like how amazing he is.
You meet the Rito. Their lives are short and harsh and they do not know you. Even their elder does not remember. But Teba is kind and his son is adorable. You watch with the boy as Link and Teba shoot targets at the snowy Flight Range, and little Tulin tells you that one day, he hopes to be just as fierce a warrior as the two of them.
You meet the Gorons. Link makes you drink a bitter-tasting elixir made from lizards. He laughs and mutters it’s payback from making him eat a frog. But it keeps you safe from the boiling temperatures. You barely pay attention to Yunobo because you’re happy that Link remembered the frog.
You meet the Gerudo. Riju is wonderful, a young and bright shining star. She makes you miss Urbosa so much. They agree to meet you at the Oasis so Link can come along. Riju teases him about how he made it into Gerudo Town to meet her. You tease him on the ride out of the desert that he would make a lovely vai. Link bats his eyelashes at you.
He’s funny, even when he doesn’t talk.
He wasn’t very funny before. But you liked serious Link. And you like funny Link.
He shows you the Gerudo outfit when you get home to Hateno. You laugh and he laughs and he does a little dance. You try it on and he says it fits you better. You argue the opposite.
When you go to bed, you lay your head on his chest and realize that you thought of this place as home.
You were glad to be home.
You are glad it’s with him.
Link is braiding your horse’s mane for you when the mayor comes to chat. Purah told him who you are, that rat. He’s honored to have you here. He agrees to let the children still think you are just Ms. Zelda, the woman who so desperately wants to be their teacher. The school is nearly finished, after all.
But he compliments your house.
It’s Link’s house, but you don’t tell him. Because it’s your home and this is confusing. You don’t want to know the word for what you feel and don’t want to define it.
Purah left for her new town outside of the remains of your castle. Symin has been relegated to the role of teacher with you, but seems happy with the job. Anything is better than babysitting Purah, after all. Impa leaves you alone, so long as she knows that you are willing to try.
You want to pretend Link is all you have, just a little while longer.
So you don’t correct the mayor. Sure, it’s your house.
Link doesn’t object.
You love that Link is always around, but sometimes, still, you want to be alone. You want an excuse not to look at him, to study and plan and do the things you’re supposed to be doing.
You ask Bolson to build you a room in the well, so you can think.
You laugh when you find that the frogs have moved in with you.
Link knows about the well. He never goes in. He knows you do. He knows you need a place of your own. Before, it was your study in the castle. Even then, when he was assigned to guard you there, honor-bound, he stood outside the door.
You tinker with things down there. Sometimes it’s trying to replicate ancient Sheikah tech. Sometimes it’s making armor and pouches for Link. Sometimes it’s just reading while playing with his hair tie.
Most of the time, you come up because you miss him.
The first day of school is as chaotic as you thought it would be and more. Symin has the children surprise you with pictures they’ve drawn. When you get home, you show Link one where he is following you, as he always does, and how the child drew him waving, as he always does to the kids.
You talk about the kids over dinner. You talk and talk and talk, as you once did. You feel fuller than you’ve felt in a very long time, and not because of the spread of fruit cake and rice bowls and curry and your new favorite mushroom skewers that Link made for you, though that all helps.
You feel like you’re doing something. Like you’re earning the title of Princess. Not in a destined and divine way, but in a way that matters to people. In a way that they can recognize you for, when you are ready to let them, that is.
You help Link wash the dishes. You insist on helping. When the thought crosses your mind, as you lean over to him to reach for a towel, that you should kiss his cheek, you don’t hesitate. You give into it immediately.
He looks stunned only for a moment. A flush creeps into the cheek you kissed, and doubtless too into the one you can’t see. But you’re the one who broke the barrier. You granted the permission, so Link can break his decorum, or what remains of it.
He holds you again, so many times you’ve lost count, and he kisses you. You don’t talk anymore that night, as you’ve found a better use for your lips, but you still feel just as full, bursting even.
The years pass, Link keeps your hair short and you keep his from being too wild. You finally feel like wearing your own clothes. You learn to accept that most everyone knows who you are now, and that they love you for that. No one says anything about the two place settings and the one bed in what they now call your house, or how the world is calmer now and you don’t need a bodyguard, but Link is always with you. No one asks what happens in Ms. Zelda’s house, in the one bed, when two people live there. Not even Purah.
You assume Impa must think Link sleeps on the floor every night.
You don’t put a name to what you feel for him because some things don’t need names. They don’t need defining. You understand what this is and so does Link. There isn’t a word worthy of it in any language you know. Besides, Link doesn’t like words. He doesn’t need them.
And in this rare case, neither do you.
In the depths below the castle, Link listens to you talk about the Zonai. He holds the torch for you while you search for your Purah Pad to capture the images that surround you both. You can see this place puts him on edge, but your excitement mostly blinds you. This world has been so wonderful to live in again. Together, the two of you can fix this. You can do anything together.
You don’t understand what you find at the passage’s end. It all happens so quickly. The mummified corpse that knew your names. The strange hand. The crumbling ruins.
When he reaches for you, you are reminded of a fact you’ve nearly forgotten after these last few years.
Link is really all you have.
And this time, he could not reach you.
He could only watch you fall. Down, down, down. Then disappear in a flash of light.