Chapter Text

Shadows

Ever since Link stepped out of that dark cave on the Great Plateau, he had a shadow. Blinded by the harsh sunlight and overwhelmed by the wide view, it had taken him a while to notice it. Everything had been so confusing back then, anyway.

The first time he truly realized the shadow existed was when the old King addressed him, begging, "You need to save my daughter." The King didn't mean him, couldn't mean him, Link, the boy with no memories and a tree branch on his back. No. He meant her knight. The knight he had appointed to her a century ago. The Hero.

He had nodded in his stead. What else could he do anyway? Prior to the King, she had asked him for help and he might not have known his name, but he would never let her down. He had no interest in exploring why that was, but the voice stirred something in him. A sense of belonging, maybe. If she asked, he would not hesitate.

And besides that - what should her knight do, shadowy as he was? No, it was up to him.

It happened again, with Impa. And then with Purah and Robbie. They all talked through him to his shadow. 

He also accepted Mipha's armor in his stead. He wasn't sure if the knight would have wanted it. Probably not. It was one of the few things in which they were united. Zelda. Always Zelda. He took the armor anyway. It was not his place to refuse it, and it was easier this way. 

Over the months, he adopted his shadow's role often and most people believed him. Maybe they wanted to. Nobody wants to lay his life in the hands of a shadow. Better take a boy and call him a Hero. The Hero. He learned quickly not to argue. It was easier this way, for everybody. They had already given him many names as time passed, little voe, traveler, creep. What was one more?

Some days on his journey, he had believed they could be one again. Someday in the future. When Robbie confirmed that they shared the same body. When he began to wear his clothes, and they fit him like a second skin. When he finally had the sword and suddenly looked exactly like the Hero in his memories.

In the end, he had even tried to force it. He had found himself a chestnut mare with black hair, just like the one hundred years before. Foolishly, he had spent days searching for the white stallion for her. The picture in the slate of both horses next to each other looked similar to his memories.

It had been an idea, a dream, a promise perhaps. We can go back to what we were. 

What I was for you.

The dream shattered when she stood before him in person. She spoke a lot about his shadow. Hero, she called him, too, like the others, Hero of Hyrule. Maybe it was the one time they were one. When the sword glowed in anger and they banished the evil together. All four of them. The sword, the Princess, her Knight, and Link, the boy who only remembered Zelda and nothing else.

The sword didn't mind that he wasn't the knight. It was used to different masters, he suspected, and they all blurred together into one. Close enough.

But Zelda minded. 

He could see how she missed him. Her knight. His shadow. Sometimes she would turn back to him when they were out in the wild, excited words bubbling out of her mouth. But then when she saw him, really saw him, her smile would wobble and he knew he wasn't the one she wanted to see. 

She had sought him out, anyway. Maybe she had hoped he would come back if she only tried hard enough. If he tried hard enough. And he had. But some things cannot be the same when they are broken and patched together again. 

Resurrection didn't mean going back and trying anew. 

It had started innocently, rocking her through nightmares and all that, but she wanted more. Maybe it anchored her, feeling bodily pleasure after all those years of floating nothingness. Maybe she just wanted to push him harder until he cracked and her knight came to the surface again. 

He wasn't sure if he had done this before with her, lips on skin and hair and warmth. He couldn't remember, but what could he, after all? Too little and too much at the same time. It hardly mattered. He couldn't refuse her anything. The only time the knight had ever disobeyed her was when she had ordered him to stay away from her and he was not different. There was no irony in this. He needed her close, as close as she would let him.

And so he ended up with her bare form in his arms, hair splayed over his scars, her breath ghosting over his skin. Sometimes he slept in, but more often he whispered all the things she didn't want to hear from him but from her knight in her hair.

How beautiful she was, how proud he was that she hadn't given up fighting for her people, how much she helped him through everything despite their emotional distance. That he would always stay with her, no matter which role she intended for him. As long as she wanted him to. And that he was sorry. So often, that he was sorry. He apologized in the knight's stead that he had failed her, back then on Blatchery Plain and again when she found out that her knight was gone forever. 

She always slept through it and he was thankful for that. It was easier to live with her here in his house as long as he could get all these things off his chest in the safety of the night.

He never kissed her when she slept. It was enough that she trusted him enough to lay with him, both awake and asleep, and he would never take advantage of that trust. She didn't want that from him. It was hard to resist, sometimes, when the moon was hidden behind a straying cloud and only the stars sparkled their glow on her face. Transparent, vulnerable, just here in his arms and yet so far away. 

It was just a trick of the light, anyway. She was strong, so strong. She didn't need him as her sword and her shield, maybe never had.

Which is why she had told him that she didn't require an appointed knight anymore this afternoon, at the kitchen table, with that same wobbly smile. What she had meant was that he had failed to fit back in his role. That he and the shadow had remained separate. That he had failed to fuse into it, despite all his attempts. That he wasn't her knight anymore.

They would go to Kakariko tomorrow. She wanted Impa's assistance to take the first steps to reclaim her throne.

He didn't expect her to come back. 

"You are free, now," she had said and even the smile that barely was there disappeared. He wished she had asked something. Anything. But she was used to doing the talking with her knight and hadn't even considered that he would answer if she asked. Maybe he would have. He never was sure to find words adequate enough for her.

"You," he would have answered in his head and maybe aloud, no matter the question. "Always you."

But she hadn't asked and now they would leave tomorrow morning, and he would come back alone. Free. Free to live with her shadow. She would be here and she would not be. Maybe the difference wouldn't be so big after all. Because one shadow wasn't enough. Maybe the shadow princess and the shadow appointed knight would be happy here. 

Her weight on his chest suddenly crashed him down and he wrangled himself from her embrace. He would regret it in the next few days or years, not spending every moment of time with her as close as she let him. But her body warmth couldn't patch the hole in his chest, not for long. It was always just borrowed.

He slipped into his briefs, and right when he wanted to push himself from the edge of his bed, she snatched his wrist. 

"Where are you going?" She whispered.

"Packing some things for you. Your fathers' diary and other items from the Castle. They are yours."

Her grip loosened. When he stood, she had already turned her back to him, face hidden in the pillow. Did she even breathe? Maybe it would really not be so different, without her.

Packing the stuff he had gathered for her took longer than necessary. Maybe he dragged it out. Hesitating, his fingers hovered over the picture of them and the Champions. Was it his? Or hers? Then again, it was probably her knight's and her knight was dead. That left Zelda as the rightful owner, so he balanced it on the pile of items.

Back in bed, he laid flat on his stomach. He didn't dare to hug her again. Her breathing was even again, he had long memorized the pattern. Would he forget it over time? Like he had forgotten so much apart from her? You, always you.  

"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice barely over the murmuring of the wind under his roof, "I'm so sorry that I can't be the one you need. I always hoped to live up to him someday, to fill the gap. For you, not for me." His breath hitched and he pressed his face in the mattress. "But I understand. I'm going to be just fine, right? If you… if you ever need me, come back. Always." He sniffed. "If you need him, too. It's ok. I don't mind as long as I can be with you."

The mattress dipped beside him and his heart stopped. But she only turned on her back, snoring quietly. She always snored when she laid on her back.

The following evening, he returned from Kakariko. 

Alone. 

As alone as a house full of shadows would get.