Chapter Text
"Link."
Link barely heard Zelda's words, and didn't even bother processing what they meant. He was too absorbed in what he was doing. He didn't have time to think about anything else.
"Link, stop."
The sand was practically scalding between his fingers. The sun was in just the right position to look down into the Mirror Chamber, and every time his skin came in contact with the sand it felt like fighting Darbus all over again. Link cursed under his breath, but continued to run his fingers through the burning sand, searching desperately for anything that reflected, the light, anything-
"Link!"
He felt a hand rest lightly on his shoulder, and even as he spun around to face his attacker and grab for the knife attached to his belt, Link was completely focused on where his feet were, or if there was any chance, any chance at all that he could be crushing one of the glimmering shards of Mirror under his feet.
"Easy there, my friend," Zelda said, her eyes calm even as Link's dagger pushed into her skin. Link withdrew his blade and looked away, ashamed.
"Sorry about that," he said, sheathing the knife as he dropped back into a crouch in one fluid motion. His fingers returned to the sand, and in seconds Zelda had once again retreated to the back of his mind.
"She's gone, Link," Zelda said gently. Link ignored her. "Link. You can't fix this."
"I repaired this mirror once, I can do it again," Link growled. His fingers hit something sharp and he felt the familiar prick of something sharp jabbing into his skin. He hissed, but brushed aside the sand to reveal a small bit of the mirror, no bigger than the pad of his pinkie finger. Link stared at it. "It's smaller than I thought it'd be," he murmured.
"You can't repair it again, and you know it," Zelda said, but this time she made no move to stop him. "When Zant shattered it, you got fourths. Midna's the leader of the Twili, Link. When she shatters it, it can't be repaired."
Link knew she was right, even as he gingerly lifted the mirror shard and placed it gently on the Mirror Pedestal. "I can fix this," he said again, returning to the sand. "She wouldn't have done this if I couldn't fix it."
Link stopped processing the passage of time. He was vaguely aware of the sun shifting from its direct position above to somewhere else, but he couldn't think about where. He vaguely took notice of Zelda's sigh of resignation and her departure, but he couldn't tell what time it was when she left or how long she had been gone. He crouched in the Mirror Chamber, digging and shifting through the sand until he couldn't see the glistening shards strewn around him. If they could even be called shards. The little flecks of the mirror were things that could barely be seen, much less reassembled into something that was glowing and covered in Twili patterns and could create a portal that Midna had jumped through, leaving him. What Link could find scattered amongst the sand wasn't even a dignified memory of the Mirror of Twilight.
Hours must've passed by the time Link finally let himself sit down, defeated. He casually noted that night had fallen, and Zelda was nowhere to be seen.The haze of looking for shards had passed, and Link realized with a bit of surprise that although dusk was falling, it was still sweltering inside the chamber. With legs trembling from being in the same cramped position too long, Link rose and climbed the steps to where the Mirror's pedestal stood barren. With the contents of the mirror scattered around him on the ground, the pedestal was nothing but a pretty and broken container.
Link grabbed the small shard of the mirror he had found off the still-warm stone and tucked it delicately in his pouch. When he looked up, he half expected to see the portal still open on the rock slab, the golden stairs suspended in mid air and Midna beckoning him on with her lilted smile. But the rock stayed just a rock, and Midna was nowhere to be found.
"I'm really sorry," Zelda said. Link snapped to look towards her, where she had been sitting in the shadows, staring out at the mesa in the distance.
"I thought you had left," Link said. Zelda shrugged and stood up, brushing the dust and sand from where it had gathered in the folds of her dress.
"It was getting too hot in there, especially while I'm wearing something like this," she said, gesturing towards her dress. "Also, I wanted to sit down, and I was worried about getting in your way." The two of them stood in silence. "Also, I didn't want to leave without you. It just felt... wrong, I suppose," she said after a while.
"She promised she was going to let me come visit," Link said. Zelda looked at him, surprise and sympathy playing over her features. Link turned away. He didn't want her pity. "She said I could teach her royal guard a thing or two. I told her I would be honored."
"We couldn't have known she was planning on doing this," Zelda said. Link laughed bitterly.
"I've spent the past two years with her, Zelda. I should've known."
"Not to one up you, honey, but I shared a part of her soul with her, for a while," Zelda said, a small bite creeping into her words. "So when I tell you neither of us saw it coming, it was true."
Link didn't answer for a while. "How could she?" he asked after a while, keeping his voice quiet so Zelda couldn't hear it break. Even after everything he'd been through, Link still felt like he had to be polite and composed in front of the Princess of Hyrule.
"I have a feeling it had something to do with keeping our worlds safe," said Zelda. "I can understand that."
"Would you have done it? If you were her?" Link asked before he could stop himself. The Princess didn't answer, and it only made him feel worse. He abruptly turned back towards the chamber. "Maybe we can find some seal to close this place off from the wind. You have some royal mages, right? There's got to be some kind of spell they can use to make sure this stays the way it is. If we can just find everything, we can put it back together-"
"Link, stop!" Zelda said, and her tone made it clear that it wasn't a request, or even a suggestion. "She's gone. I'm really sorry, truly I am, but she's gone and we need to go. I'm sure you don't need me to remind you about the dangers of being out here at night."
"Well unless you want to walk back through the entirety of the Gerudo Desert, you're going to have to help me get Midna back, because she was our ride!" Link yelled before he could stop himself. "She teleported us here, don't you remember?" he asked softly. As the conversation had progressed, the pity on Zelda's face had become more and more apparent, and when she spoke again, it was so obvious that Link felt sick.
"I arranged for some guards to bring us horses. They should be here soon, and we need to meet them." Link turned towards her slowly.
"You arranged for horses?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"When?"
"After Midna left, when you were having your breakdown."
"Bullshit. You would've had to tell them before we left."
"Link-"
"Did you know?" he asked. Zelda snorted.
"Oh, don't be preposterous."
"Not only would you have needed to tell your guards before we left, but they'd have to excavate the rock slide from the entrance to Gerudo. Just how long have you known?"
"I haven't known Link, I suspected!" Zelda said, finally rising her voice to match her own. And even standing outside with sweat slicking her hair to her scalp and her dress looking absolutely filthy, when the Princess shouted, people listened. Link stayed quiet. "And I wanted a contingency plan, just in case. Is that so wrong?"
"You didn't think to tell me? You didn't think that I, of all people, would want to know that?" Link took a step towards her, and for a second he saw fear flash in her eyes. But he didn't back down, and neither did she.
"Careful there, wolf boy," Zelda said, a rough edge in her voice. "Without Midna, you can't transform, so don't try to threaten me. I was only trying to make sure we didn't die in this desert, Link. Is that so wrong?"
He wanted to ask her how she knew, then. He wanted to ask her if there was some sign, something off about Midna that alerted the Princess to her intentions. He wanted to ask her if he had missed something, if he was blind, if he had misread their entire relationship. But instead Link sat down and dangled his feet over the edge of Arbiter's grounds, staring at where the sun was disappearing over the horizon.
"I really am sorry, Link."
"I know," he said. "Me too."