Work Text:
Zelda Dawn Hyllia Alexandros
xxx-xxx
Beloved Princess
Rest with gods and heroes past
and in their arms find peace at last
Link sat staring at the headstone, feeling empty inside. Everything was— off, somehow, as though something had gone fundamentally wrong with the world.
It had been that way for weeks, now.
Footsteps approached, graceful as ever but heavier than usual all the same. Zelda Aurora trod softly over the meager shoots of grass springing hopefully from the soft earth around the settling grave. Her hands rested nervously on her swollen belly.
“What are you thinking?”
It took a moment for Link to open his mouth to respond, but even then, no sound came out. He frowned, eyes stinging a bit as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. Zelda Aurora was patient as he gathered his thoughts. Finally, he managed to clear his throat.
“I just— I wish I’d been around more the last few years.”
Aurora nodded silently, understanding. Carefully, she lowered her cumbersome body down to sit beside him, watching the silent stone.
“I know it wouldn’t have done any good really— it’s not like I could have done anything to keep her going any longer— but I wish... I wish I hadn’t been so distant.”
“She understands.” Aurora spoke with calm certainty. “It’s not your fault, Link. People drift apart. It happens.”
Link hummed, acknowledging the truth. “I just wish I hadn’t let it happen with us.”
There wasn’t really anything to say to that. They sat in companionable silence for a time, feeling time stretch out around them.
“I started reading those legends she likes,” Link said after a while. “About the heroes of ages past.”
Aurora laughed a little at that. “The ones with the giant birds?”
“Yep.”
“Well, they should be good for a laugh when you need one. That’s good.” She gave him a smile that was heavy with sadness and gentle with understanding.
“I’m thinking about carving out a bird symbol and leaving it here for her,” he confessed.
The smile softened further. “I bet she’d love that.”
Silence returned, though this time there was a lump pressing against Link’s throat, keeping it there. His nose burned insistently as his eyes leaked against his efforts to keep them quenched.
It was Aurora’s turn to disturb the peace.
“I think she held on longer so I wouldn’t lose the baby.”
That statement actually brought his eyes away from the gravestone to meet Aurora’s own wet gaze.
“She was so tired, Link. For so long. I could see her declining for months before she collapsed, though I didn’t think as much of it at the time. But when she fell, I knew— don’t ask me how, but I was so certain then, and I’m even more so now— that she was holding on because if she died then, I would have lost this baby.”
Link let his gaze fall to her swollen belly, taking in that information. Honestly, knowing Dawn, he was somehow all the more certain of it.
“That certainly sounds like Dawn, doesn’t it,” he managed to chuckle wetly. Aurora smiled tearily back at him.
“Yes it does, doesn’t it.”
His gaze grew distant again. “And now you’ve only got a month left, yeah?” She nodded in his periphery.
It’s too bad she’ll never get to meet her aunt, he couldn’t say.
Neither of them could. Instead they sat, staring at the cold, gray stone in the cold, dark ground in the quiet, cold world that had been left skewed ever so slightly to the left and upside-down, baffled by the loss of a sister, a princess, a friend.
“You know, there's a game the children in Darunia Town play.” Link was surprised by his own voice, but once it started it seemed to want to keep going. “It’s called Rescue. One child is chosen out of the group to be the ‘hero’ and the rest will scatter about, finding places to be ‘trapped.’ The top of some stairs, an alleyway, sometimes on top of a rock that they pretend is surrounded by lava. It’s a mountain town, after all, they have a number of ideas available to them. And once everyone is situated the ‘hero’ has to go around and rescue their friends, one by one, from their imagined dangers. The more friends who are rescued, the more creative the rescues get. Until everyone is safe, and they pick a new ‘hero’ and start all over again.”
Aurora was watching him with a quiet sadness, clearly not quite sure what to say. He didn’t even know what to say. He didn’t know why he was thinking about this in the first place.
“We played together once. She was tired of meeting with nobles and trying to work things out between them, and she needed a break. So I suggested playing Rescue. She climbed up the east tower and started sliding down the stairs, and I had to catch her before she made it down them. She didn’t make it easy, but when I finally caught her and hauled her up she laughed and said we should play again. So she went and found an alcove in one of the walls of the castle and I had to find her and pull her out of the ‘portal’ before it closed. Every time I caught her she would find somewhere new to play, some new scenario. And when I asked her why I always had to be the hero she said it was ‘cause she always knew I’d be the best at it, since I’d already saved her from a real monster before.” His eyes were painfully dry now, the lump still strangling him slowly in his throat. “She said she always knew I’d be there to save the day.”
Aurora said nothing. Could say nothing.
Link’s eyes went from dry to leaking faster than he could tell as he choked out a last few strangled words: “We never talked about things you can’t be saved from.”
And then he was crying, heaving really, with great sobs that shook him down to his core. It hurt. It felt like his chest was exploding, like he was being suffocated slowly by his own heart.
Aurora didn’t speak, only rested a hand on his shoulder, a gentle weight to keep him grounded as the rest of the world spun wildly out of control.
She guided him when he tipped over to land gently on the still-soft earth and stayed there as he cried and cried, mourning for a friendship that was perhaps not gone before it left, but that had withered and failed all the same before its time. Grieving for time lost and time failed to be spent together and words that were never shared. Loudly, and miserably, and wildly he mourned, and all the while Zelda Aurora sat and listened and knew. Because she felt it too.
Zelda Dawn had pulled away from all of them in those final months. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to say anything that would sting or linger, but somehow the absence felt all the sharper for the early retreat.
Now there was nothing that could be said at all, and the rest of them would have to live with that. The stone sat cold and silent as always, as it ever would, and they were left to look on at it, mourning. Alone.
And what else was there to say?