Lonely at the Top 

"Kogah's cooking something up," Link mutters, voice carried away by icy winds that make his cheeks numb. "Lad got mad when his researchers showed me the autobuild function." He sighs, ice crystals slowly building on his skin where he's breathing out. "I made it to the old Gerudo mine, but then he escaped to Lanayru. Couldn't follow him underground."

His only answer is the wind and the light tingling of the Master Sword's magic in the air.

Link swallows against the tears that'll freeze in the corner of his eyes if he lets them escape. 

He won't. They won’t change anything.

"You know, fighting him isn't that hard. I made a nice discovery, you'd go feral over it if—" Pressing his eyes close, he breaks off. "Anyway, I can attach Keese eyes to arrows and it makes them find their target on their own." A strangled laugh gets half-stuck in his throat. "Would help you with the little drift to the left you're fighting against when we're hunting."

His words get lost in the wind tearing at his clothes. Nothing but silence.

Link's hand scrambles over the scales under him — rough, calloused palm on smooth horn — but it finds no purpose. There's nothing to dig his hands in and nothing to touch but lifeless scales. She used to squeal and dive away from him in laughter when he indulged in the bad habit of squishing her everywhere where she's soft. The sound of her laugh that he still hasn't forgotten somehow (him, the amnesiac!) rings hollow in his ears like the third or fourth wave of an echo. 

He will never hear it again.

He knows this — he knows this! — and it still takes a long moment of an ever-expanding hollowness inside him to sink in. 

“Zelda,” he pleads, but the white dragon continues his stoic flight through the dark-blue night sky without any indication that she knows he’s here. Desperate for a reaction, for something he can feel, he lunges forward and grabs the thick, blonde strands of hair with cold-numb fingers. They are waxen and coarse at the same time and feel so depressingly foreign on his skin that he whimpers.

Her new haircut had been one of his favorite surprises to come home to. He loved to slowly let his hand wander up her now-exposed neck and bury it in the soft hair at her nape when they kissed, causing her to breathe a little sigh of happiness into his mouth. 

Reluctantly, he shoves his hand forward now, digging deeper and deeper into the mane of the dragon but it’s like trying to get a rise out of a statue. 

He knows why she’s done it. He wants to tear at the strands in his hands to bring her back and scream at her that she should have let this demon-tormented land burn and leave the ashes to rot for a life with him, but he knows she couldn’t. It’s duty first for them, always. Not because of old orders of a long forgotten kingdom, but because of who they are. Blood of the Goddess and Soul of the Hero sound like shackles to some, and there were times when the pressure lasting on them made it feel like that, but it’s not so simple. The truth is that it’s what they are at their core. They see the evil rising in their dreams, hear their hearts drum with anticipation of the journey ahead, and feel their souls resonate with the urge to set everything right again. They can’t escape. There is no happiness to be found for them if they refuse the call. To believe they can tell fate a firm ‘no’ and turn around to continue their domestic bliss in Hateno is an illusion, albeit a tempting one. The only choice they can make is between dooming themselves or dooming the world, and as heart-breaking as it is, it is an easy one.

When the first reports about unusual monster activities and the gloom reached them, they didn’t even need to talk about it. Sure, they installed a crew of monster hunters and the scholars did their best to find out as much as they could about the gloom and its consequences, but they already knew that wouldn’t fix anything in the long run. There was nobody else who could deal with the source of the problem. Who else could they have sent down the caves? Robbie, who couldn’t even see where he went half of the time because he forgot to take off his goggles? Impa, with her hundred-thirty years? Purah and Josha, who had excitement for ten but courage for none? Skilled fighters were even more rare to find than scholars. No, it was up to them. They even tolerated the gloom better than anyone else who dared to get too close. Their refusal would mean someone else had to risk illness. The wish to protect everyone they cared about, to not lose everyone who had grown close again, was that duty? Or courage and wisdom? He couldn’t tell and it mattered so little that he had stopped to aks. It was up to them — Blood of the Goddess and the Soul of the Hero, together at least — so they gritted their teeth and set to work.

Now, there's no one left to figure it out but him. Zelda has poured all her wisdom in that now millenia-old, irreversible decision to give him what he needs to fight the Demon King. They have been dragged in a war that isn’t theirs but can’t be won without them. The Sheikah, sworn protector of the royal family — even Impa with all her knowledge and experience — are at a loss. The other races deal with their problems, a warm word here and there is all they have to give. Warm words aren’t going to stop the Demon King. 

He's wasting time; the tingling, taunting Master Sword — how long, for how long has it been in her head? —  just in front of him is a cruel reminder of that. He isn’t strong enough to pull it. The Demon King did too much damage to the vessel that is his body. He should beat the shrines Zelda has prepared for him, always hoping, never knowing he would be able to accomplish them. There’s so much to learn on this quest, so many crazy things he’s able to do with the foreign hand on his body, and he needs to conquer all of them to even have a chance at beating the Demon King. 

It’s just… He lets go of the strands, which feel wrong in his palms anyway, and sighs. It's just… He isn’t used to being so lonely anymore. Sure, he has done all of this before; the shrines, the solitude in the wild, the patching himself up at a campfire with a cloth between his teeth and a needle threading through his marred skin. But it’s been years and now he remembers. Back then she was a sweet voice in his head and only towards the end he realized that the stakes weren't only high for Hyrule but for him, too. Now it's different. He knows Zelda likes her crepes with extra honey in the mornings and that the quiet hours between evening and midnight are her favorites to study in her secret room in the well. He knows how warm she is in his arms on the rare occasions they have time for an afternoon nap. He knows the gasp she breathes into the night when he’s pulling her closer and makes her feel alive.

Sometimes he wishes he couldn't. 

Maybe, one day, he’ll be able to treasure the time they had and the grief of his loss will dull. A couple of peaceful years full of love — it’s more than most heroes had. He should be thankful, but the thing with happiness is that you don’t get enough of it. There’s no such a thing as growing tired of happiness. 

With stiff fingers, he searches for another elixir in his pocket. He could just change into appropriate winter clothing, but he likes to wear the tunic she made for him. The fact she doesn't react to it doesn't mean she doesn't notice. Right? With a defeated grunt, he pulls out one bottle after another, but he has used them all up already. 

Time is flying.

He needs to keep going, anyway. There’s a shrine he discovered yesterday on his way down and if he isn’t mistaken, the last ancient stone tablet is close by so he can glide over when he’s done. He checks his Purah Pad and the paraglider, taking a wistful glance at the sword. Maybe pulling it would turn her back since she would have fulfilled her destiny then? 

He doesn’t really think so, but at this point, he’s grasping at straws. 

It took him two weeks to press every single Zonai researcher he could find for information about the dragons and the Secret Stones. He spent another four weeks hunting every last rumor that had anything remotely to do with the old legends, even the vague ones. Eventually, he settled for simply asking everyone he met about it, but it was to no avail. Nobody knew anything about the forbidden ritual of swallowing a Secret Stone. He got nothing but weird looks about his sudden interest in ancient, unknown practices. Maybe the last stone tablet will reveal useful information. If only he could talk to Sonia, Rauru, or Mineru… or even to the maid who eternized her thoughts on the tablets, but he has to rely on second hand information. 

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and jumps, his muscles immediately taking up their memorized position of holding onto the paraglider. Tulin’s avatar pops up next to him the moment his feet leave the white dragon. It’s the manifestation of the Sages’ loyalty to him, or more to them both, but while Link appreciates Tulin’s deadly aim in battle and his gust of wind, the avatars still have that odd air of hollowness about them that Revali and the others radiated on his quest to destroy Ganon. 

Sometimes he forgets they aren’t dead yet.

“Hey,” he says when he’s close enough so that she should see him. The stare of her greenish eye is empty and she looks right through him, as if he’s the hollow one. (Is he?) “There’s a building plot in Akkala I could buy. You know, for when we have…” The words get stuck in his throat. She dives down, down, down on her own path, unaware of the figure dangling from a paraglider talking to her. He’s only torturing himself when he entertains the idea of buying a house meant for a family he’ll never have with her, but going back to Hateno alone is even worse.

He sinks down to be at eye level again with her, the cold now making his muscles so stiff that he’ll need to change into a skydive soon to reach warmer air or he’ll lose control. “I’m going to beat a couple of shrines now, I promise,” he whispers. "Don't worry. I wouldn't dare to let your sacrifice go to waste."

The white dragon stares ahead. Link stares back at his own, jittering, red-faced reflection in her eyes, and scrambles for more words, something that would reach her somehow, knowing from dozens of attempts that there is nothing. He'll be back tomorrow. And maybe he'll bring her one of Koko’s flower rings. It would make a perfect flower crown for her. He tries hard not to think about Rauru leaving flowers at Sonia’s grave. Zelda isn’t dead, she’s just not herself. And as long as that is the case, there’s hope, slim as it may be. She has placed all her hopes on him, the least he can do is keep going. She has made her choice, and now he’s making his. He’ll be back tomorrow. He’ll get stronger, and he’ll come back every day. Collect lights of blessings, clear monster camps, pull the sword. Keep going, keep going, coming back tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. Keep going. Beat the Demon King.

And then?

He lingers against better judgment, fingers numb and eyes watery until his arms give out and he plummets from the sky, the white dragon not bothering to catch him.

He’ll be back tomorrow.