Chapter Text
"Goodbye," Zelda tells the graves of Queen Sonia and King Rauru. One grave lies empty, though not for any reason so kind as its intended occupant still being alive. Rauru had sacrificed himself to seal away the Demon King—if not for forever, then for as long as he possibly could. If not for forever, then until she and Link went somewhere that they shouldn't have and unleashed an evil that never should have awakened again. And Sonia... if only Zelda had voiced her worries, if only she had insisted that they bother Rauru with this after all, because perhaps if Rauru had arrived sooner...
It never could have happened. Zelda knows that now; if the Demon King had not become the Demon King, if he had not been sealed away in a desperate stalemate rather than defeated, then Calamity Ganon never would have existed. The Divine Beasts never would have existed. The friends that she and Link had lost in the Calamity never would have been appointed their pilots—in fact, she likely never would have met Daruk or Revali in the first place—and they never would have been murdered in futile attempts to defend them from Ganon's Blights.
It's entirely possible that she herself might never have existed, given the relative timespans involved, and that... she would have been okay with that. If she never existed, then her closest friends in the world wouldn't have died because of her. But Link had managed to come back from it once; she's sure that he'll be able to do so again. And she has new friends now, new friends that it's up to her to make sure Link has the strength to protect—and new friends in this time that she’ll never see again, but will be safe at least from Ganondorf for the rest of their lives.
"Goodbye," Zelda tells the Sage of Wind, a particularly tall white-feathered Rito with a mask that a Divine Beast will later be modeled after. Medoh is his name, and if that isn't incredibly familiar. He commands the winds with an ease that reminds her of Revali, and bears a bow that... really shouldn't exist in this time, she hadn't meant for mentioning one or two things from the bow Link carried around and cherished to result in Medoh reverse-engineering the Great Eagle Bow millions of years before it should have been made.
(He doesn't look at all like Revali, not like the other Sages. If anything, he looks more like an entirely different Rito warrior, one that Zelda isn't all that familiar with but she knows that Link knows well. Unlike with the other Champions, Zelda can't be certain that Revali is related to Medoh at all, which makes her wonder—were they always destined to falter the first time?)
(Zelda doesn't know. She does know that none of the Champions deserved what happened to them—but life isn't fair, and neither is time, and she knows now that she doesn't have much left of either.)
"Goodbye," Zelda tells the Sage of Fire, a Goron who she's certain would have gotten along great with both Daruk and Yunobo if he'd ever had the opportunity—though then again, she's never met anyone who couldn't get along well with Daruk, and Yunobo had certainly been well on his way to taking after his late grandfather in that aspect. His name is Rudania, and while he knows just as well as the others what she must do, he doesn't let her leave to do it without a hug that could charitably be described as bone-crushing.
Zelda certainly isn't complaining. It’s likely to be the last hug she’ll ever have.
"Goodbye," Zelda tells the Sage of Water, a blue-scaled Zora who balances Mipha's kindness with Sidon's enthusiasm and is undoubtedly the one holding their group together, now that King Rauru is gone. Her name is Ruta, and while Zelda cannot see the look on her face beneath the mask she wears, she doesn't need to see it to know that the look on her face is not a happy one. Ruta had already expected to outlive everyone else, save perhaps Rudania; but she had not expected to lose Zelda too so soon after Sonia and Rauru, and if it were at all possible to do anything different, Zelda would.
It isn't as if she will be dying, exactly. She will still be there, in some form, forever; but Mineru's warnings had been as dire as they had been comprehensive, and Zelda is all too aware that what she is about to do will not be living, either.
"Goodbye," Zelda tells the Sage of Lightning, a proud warrior of the Gerudo who had once fought alongside the man who became the Demon King many years ago, before what began as fighting to carve out a life for their people among the harsh desert climate turned to nothing more than lust for power. Her name is Naboris, and she had joined their group last, distrustful of Rauru in particular but desperate to stop Ganondorf from destroying everything she'd fought for. In many ways, she reminds Zelda of Urbosa—though not in the way she remembers Urbosa best.
Her own mother died when she was young; so young that, after a century holding back Calamity Ganon, she was horrified to discover that she couldn't recall her own mother's face. Her father had... not been a stellar example of parenting after that, and while she only realized much of what Urbosa did for her in retrospect...
In retrospect, Urbosa had been more of a parent to her than either of her biological ones.
(She knows that Naboris has children of her own; she knows that she hadn't trusted anyone associated with Hyrule with knowledge about them, and Zelda couldn't begrudge her that. She wishes she'd gotten to know her better. She wishes she'd had the time to know her better. And yet time, ironically enough, is the one thing that Zelda doesn't have. It'll only be harder to do this the longer she takes to say goodbye.)
"Goodbye," Zelda tells Mineru. The tiny blue flame that is the Sage of Spirit flickers in response, before vanishing into the Purah Pad to wait for millennia as Zelda offers it to the Steward Construct who will guard it and Mineru until Link finds them. While Zelda knows she will never see Link again, she knows that Mineru will—and she's grateful, far more than she can say, that someone will be there for Link when he awakens alone.
Zelda had felt guilty over even daring to ask her for such a thing, to ask her for her aid at all. Mineru had reminded her that there was little left for her anyway, that her physical form would soon perish from its injuries. She'd clearly done that in an attempt to make her feel less guilty, and while Zelda appreciated the thought, if anything she felt more guilty for not keeping Mineru from being hurt that badly in the first place.
But she had, she did... there's nothing more she can do now. She's out of time. There are only so many goodbyes she can say, in the end; there is only so much she can do to put off the inevitable. The Master Sword pulses faintly in her hands.
A voice only she can hear whispers, “Are you certain?”
"If there was another way, I would take it in a heartbeat," Zelda murmurs back. She shifts the sword to one hand, unclasps her own secret stone from around her neck with the other. She holds onto it tightly, as tightly as she dares. She tries—desperately, ineffectually—not to cry.
"Goodbye," she tells the sword, tells Hyrule, tells the world. She raises her hand almost to her lips, and the sacred stone gleams in the sunlight. She remembers, suddenly, incongruously, the time she had tried to convince Link to eat a frog for science.
...She would have liked to have seen him one last time, before the end. But her own secret stone has never worked for traveling forward in time, only for traveling back, and she is out of time. She has nothing left to do, except for this.
(For some reason, as she stares down at the stone—as she hesitates, despite knowing full well that it will only grow more difficult the longer that she hesitates—her thoughts go to the Champions. The last time she had seen any of them alive was at Mount Lanayru, mere moments after her greatest failure. Urbosa had been encouraging, despite that, despite the failure that would go on to kill them all. Revali had been aloof, as always, but he'd seemed almost sympathetic despite how she'd failed utterly. Daruk had been crushed, and understandably so, that all her work had been for naught—yet he'd nevertheless rallied the Champions to go off to their deaths.)
(And Mipha... Mipha had been about to say something, hadn't she? Something that helped her focus her powers, something that she was always thinking of?)
Whatever it was, it doesn't matter now. Zelda takes a deep breath. She lets it out. She closes her eyes—it won't be any easier that way, but she can pretend that it will be. She raises her right hand to her lips—
—and, in a flash of light, she vanishes. The Sages murmur among themselves, confused—because of course none of them have ever seen someone turn into an immortal dragon before, but this still doesn't seem quite right. Anchored to the Purah Pad as she is, Mineru remains silent. Watching. Waiting. For what, even she is no longer sure.
Eventually, Naboris breaks the silence. "Is that what was meant to happen? I thought..."
"I cannot be sure," says a voice from within the Purah Pad. "The forbidden ritual of draconification was forbidden for good reason, but I reiterate that it was forbidden and as such has not been performed since long before I or Rauru was born. Still..."
"This is not right," Ruta murmurs, "is it?"
A longer pause, from Mineru. Then a moderately embarrassed, "My apologies, I forgot that I do not have a head to shake in this form, or at the very least not one visible to you all... no, I don't believe that it is. While my ancestors were far more concerned with warning their potential descendants extensively against the dangers of draconification, I doubt that they would be so certain of its effects had they not witnessed them firsthand."
"So we can assume," Medoh says slowly, "that wherever Zelda is, she has not yet become an immortal dragon."
"Not yet."
"Wouldn't it be when -ever?" Rudania points out. "Since she's Sonia's..."
"...Successor," Ruta supplies, rather than acknowledge what had happened to Mineru's sister-in-law verbally.
"It could be wherever," Mineru agrees. "It could also be whenever, as you've said, and I'm inclined to suspect that Zelda's powers may have displaced her in both time and location. Though I'm afraid... we have no way of knowing when Zelda is, never mind where."
"So there's nothing we can do?" Naboris sounds distinctly unhappy about that, and not at all without reason.
"I wouldn't say that." Medoh hums to himself, looking to the skies. "Wherever Zelda is, when ever Zelda is, we can assume that the plan hasn't changed. She has everything she needs to carry out her end of it. We... shouldn't diminish her sacrifice by not doing our part, too."
"She should not have had to make it in the first place," Ruta says.
"No one's arguin' that." Rudania sighs deeply. "But even fightin' together, none of us stood a chance against that Demon King. Without that sword that seals the darkness..."
"So there is nothing we can do," Naboris says. "Nothing except wait."
Mineru sighs. "Everything is in Zelda's hands now—and after that, it will all be up to Link."
None of them have met the swordsman in the distant future that Zelda speaks so highly of. Perhaps, if they're particularly lucky, they'll briefly be able to see him while passing on their secret stones—but only briefly. Still, this plan is the best chance that any of them have to be able to bring down the Demon King. To avenge those who have already been lost—and those who haven't been lost yet, but will be.
Hundreds, thousands, millions of years later, Zelda's eyes snap open. Her body aches all over. On the plus side, she's at least conscious this time, which is an improvement over the last time she had an impromptu trip through time. She also has her secret stone back around her neck, like she'd never removed it with full intent to commit draconification mere moments ago for her, and what remains of the Master Sword fastened upon her hip where she would normally keep the Purah Pad. She has that little going for her, which isn't much but at this point she'll very much take whatever she can get.
On the minus side: where is she? And when is she?
...It clicks for her far too fast, because she's been here before. The last time she was here was when the Divine Beasts stopped functioning at all—after all, their long-dead pilots had finally moved on from this world. Vah Ruta had stopped working first, becoming fully unresponsive to everything that anyone tried, and yet it is Vah Ruta that creaks and groans around Zelda now, lights flickering between Sheikah blue and a horrible magenta she knows far, far too well.
She knows where she is. She has at least a vague idea of when she is, but anything more concrete—
Oh. Oh no. She hopes she's wrong.
As it turns out, she has the motivation to pick her aching body up off the ground after all, because she can hear the sounds of fighting close by, echoing from the direction of what she knows to be the main control room.
It's looking less and less like she's wrong. She doesn't want to risk being hasty. Being hasty gets people killed.
She rushes quite hastily in that direction anyway. Her heart pounds away in her chest. There are exactly three possibilities she knows of, exactly three points in time where there was fighting aboard this Divine Beast. The first, and most likely of these possibilities, is that this is Link.
This could be Link, fighting Waterblight Ganon a few scant years prior to the gloom's emergence and not too terribly long before the Calamity was, at last, brought to an end. Given that Zelda herself would currently be sealed away in a particular castle, and will be for the foreseeable future... obviously she can't let Link see her. She can't let Ganon see her, either, if that's the case—she can't risk messing up her past self's focus.
However, this could also very easily be the Champion of ten thousand years prior; Vah Ruta's first pilot. She's met Sage Ruta herself, now; she thinks that the Sage of Water would have liked the Divine Beast named after her. She doesn't know much about the last Calamity, but she thinks that it would have been written somewhere if the Champions of that era hadn't survived, and it hadn't been.
She can't do anything to help, if it's Link. But if it's Ruta's first pilot, then... maybe, just maybe, she can do something. Maybe, just maybe, she won't be bound far more tightly by time than she ever was before by anything else.
(She hopes, very much, that it isn't the third possibility.)
At last, after what feels like forever and still somehow not enough time, she reaches the entrance of that central chamber. The sight before her is terrifying. Waterblight Ganon looms over its prey, tiny in comparison, clearly ready for the killing blow.
Her thoughts, her hopes, her fears—all in vain.
This isn't Link. This isn't Vah Ruta's first pilot, either.
This is Mipha, Vah Ruta's second pilot—and there is nothing at all that Zelda can do to prevent what she knows must happen, will happen, and already has happened to her.
Sonia had strongly impressed upon Zelda, while instructing her in how to use her time powers, that time cannot be changed outright. Bent on occasion, yes—but if there was anything Zelda could do to save Mipha's life, it already would have happened. If there was anything Zelda could do to save Mipha's life, Zelda would already know. She doesn't.
(A few scant days before the Demon King murdered her right in front of Zelda, Zelda had asked—with powers like these, why couldn't they change fate, defy time itself? Sonia had only smiled, and relayed a story. The first time Rauru met Sonia, she saved his life and his sister's. The first time that Sonia met Rauru, he somehow seemed to already know her, and she wouldn't understand why until years later. Time can be bent, but never broken outright, no matter how desperately Zelda wishes she could.)
Zelda cannot save Mipha's life, not in any way that will actually mean something. As the Sage of Time, Sonia's protege and successor, she knows this all too well. As Princess Zelda of Hyrule, a title she desperately wishes she could leave behind her once and for all, she knows far too well that she cannot shirk her duty.
As Zelda, a girl who desperately misses her friends—she cannot just watch her die, even so.
Her hands are shaking as she lifts them, as the Waterblight lifts its massive spear. It hasn't noticed her yet. It doesn't notice her at all before it swings, enough force in the motion that it could cleave her entire body in twain—and, without her intervention, will likely do the same thing to Mipha.
She reaches out, desperately, in the way that Sonia taught her. The spear remembers the way that it had just come, and while anything more than forcing an object to relive those last few moments is beyond her, she can do this. She's practiced this.
Waterblight squeals in surprise, but it's not fast enough to keep the own spear from smacking it in its face—or at least, its horrid approximation thereof—and Zelda can't help but be spitefully glad when the Waterblight's own attack, turned against it, sends it flying into the wall.
Mipha—who had been trying desperately to heal her own wounds, with what last flickering amounts of magic she had left—lets out a gasp of her own. "What...?"
"Mipha!" Zelda calls. "Are you alright?"
She's not alright, of course, nor is she anything approaching it. Mipha has to die here, and there is nothing Zelda can do to prevent this—or the deaths of any of the other Champions—from coming to pass.
One thing is for certain: she shouldn't be doing this. She absolutely, positively, should not be doing this. She shouldn't even be here.
But the way that Mipha's face lights up, briefly, at seeing her—for the very smallest of moments, Zelda seriously considers trying to break time anyway, no matter how futile it might be, for that smile alone. It falters, of course, far too quickly. With it goes the will that Zelda had mustered up, however briefly, to do something extraordinarily stupid.
That's... likely for the best.
(Dear Hylia, she missed Mipha... more than she thought. Far more than she thought. Perhaps that's why she is here, to see an old friend who has never been anything but encouraging one last time before the end.)
"How could you possibly be..." Mipha shakes her head, and limps over to join her, breathing heavily. "That does not matter. Have you awakened..."
"My powers?" Zelda wants to cry. For at least three entirely separate reasons, and she's sure she'll find more the longer this goes on. "Yes. I have."
"Good! That is... that is a relief, to be certain." Mipha breathes in and out. Her grip tightens around the handle of the trident she is supporting herself upon, and her gaze shifts away from Zelda, as the Waterblight pulls itself up. It recovered quickly. Too quickly. "Truly, I am... very happy that you have... but you should not be here."
"I know," Zelda whispers. She blinks as hard as she can, in the vain hope that she can hold her tears back just a little while longer.
"I will draw its attention to myself so that you may flee," Mipha decides, forcing herself back to her feet. If one were inclined to be particularly charitable, they could call the position she takes up a fighting stance. Zelda might have been inclined to be charitable if she didn't know, far too well, that this is the time and place where Mipha will die.
"Mipha," she tries, and then stops, because—what can she even say? She doesn't have time to say everything she wants to say, nor to figure out what it is she even wants. She thought she had all the time in the world, until she didn't. Until she had anything and everything but.
"If you are here," Mipha says slowly, "then... Link? Is he...?"
Soon, very soon, Link will be sacrificing his own life in a last desperate attempt to keep her safe. Soon, Zelda's powers will awaken, too late to keep him from succumbing to his wounds. Too late to save him.
Too late to save anyone.
In the end, the Shrine of Resurrection did far more good than Zelda herself ever did, and it can only hold one person at a time. That person has to be Link—he defeated Ganon once, he can defeat Ganondorf again, and maybe then all of Zelda's countless failures will somehow be worth it.
"He is alright," Zelda lies, because out of everyone she knows, everyone she loves like her own family, Link will be the only one to truly outlive the Demon King.
(Zelda doesn't think she would be alright, if she was in Link's position. Then again, she hasn't been alright for a long time already. Perhaps she never has been.)
Lying to Mipha is clearly the right move, in spite of how much it adds to how horribly guilty Zelda already feels. The Zora Champion visibly relaxes, despite the circumstances of this. Despite everything that has happened, and is happening, and has to happen.
"Please, if you can... tell him..." Mipha hesitates. "No, do not. He already knows."
Zelda blinks several times, attempting to parse whatever Mipha is getting at with absolutely no success. She echoes, "Already knows...?"
"It does not matter any longer," Mipha says with more ferocity than Zelda would have expected from her. "Go, now. Please. Before it is too late."
(It is already too late. It has always been too late. It was too late before either of them was ever born.)
Zelda nods, though Mipha has already turned away from her to face her doom.
"Goodbye," Zelda whispers as she, too, turns away.
Mipha answers only in the clanging of her trident against the Waterblight's spear.
Zelda can't help but cringe at every sound, every crash of weapon against weapon—even though the lack of sound would be infinitely worse, and will be when it comes. She doesn't look back. She shouldn't look back. She can't look back.
(Her secret stone had taken her to the time of King Rauru and Queen Sonia for a reason. She knows that reason now; it's no small miracle that Mipha either hadn't seen or hadn't recognized the decayed Master Sword fastened at her hip. Still, her secret stone had also taken her here for a reason, presumably, and she has no idea whatsoever as to what that reason could be. Or, at least, she'd like to think that.)
(Can she really walk away from the death of someone she'd considered a friend? Someone she's realizing, quite suddenly, that she still considers a friend, that she can't think about in the past tense when she hasn't died yet?)
She looks back. Mipha is flat on her back against the floor, holding the Waterblight's spear away from her with her own trident. Both she and her weapon must surely be at their breaking point, and yet she wastes precious moments to look at Zelda—precious moments indeed, when she is already doomed to lose this fight—and to desperately shout, "Go!"
...She can't leave. She can't walk away. Around her neck, her secret stone pulses a brilliant gold, and everything stops.
Well, not everything—Zelda herself doesn't stop. Yet the very fabric of reality around her is tinged with gold, and the Waterblight has frozen in place. So has everything else. The Divine Beast Vah Ruta has stopped quaking and shivering beneath her, its lights no longer flickering between blue and magenta but steady at a color somewhere between them. The water spilling over into this central terminal doesn't move, stops rising. Mipha too lies motionless beneath Waterblight Ganon, and as the seconds tick by for nothing except Zelda, panic rises with the bile in her throat.
"Mipha?" she whispers. No response comes when she speaks, nor does one come when she falls to her knees in the shallow water.
(Of course no response comes. How foolish it was of her, to think that she could change anything at all.)
She fails at not crying, just as she's failed at everything else. She's nothing more, and nothing less, than the champion of failures.
Zelda, whispers the voice of the Master Sword—if she has another name, she hasn't told it to Zelda, and it doesn't seem like anyone can hear her except for Zelda.
"Not now," Zelda chokes out. "I-I cannot do this now."
"Breathe," the Master Sword says, and it's not a request. The blade pulses at her side, faintly but very much there, and Zelda tries to focus on it. Tries to breathe in, breathe out. In and out. She's okay.
She's not okay, she hasn't been okay since the day that her mother died, but physically she's fine. Physically there's nothing wrong.
Emotionally is a different story. She'd known that the Champions must have died in horrible ways, but despite all the terrible things that Calamity Ganon delighted in showing her in attempt after attempt to distract her, she'd never seen it happen.
Not until now.
"Zelda." That voice is more insistent now. "Your friend is not dead. Not yet."
"What?" Zelda whispers. "But—"
"Everything around us appears to be frozen in time. Perhaps it is you that isn't." The sword pauses, considering. "There is a 95.76% chance that this is due to something that you yourself did, intentionally or otherwise."
Something that... she did? But she couldn't have...
Oh.
Wait.
Maybe she could have.
Sonia hadn't even begun to teach her all the things she wanted to pass on. They'd only had time for the essentials before Ganondorf murdered her—but Zelda remembers, quite suddenly, how they had planned to catch Ganondorf's puppet in the act. One moment, Sonia had mused aloud about how it would be better if they could speak privately. The next, she had been no longer across the room but right in front of her, with a gentle hand upon her shoulder, and a mischievous look in her eyes.
They'd planned what they would do, then, after Sonia assured her that Ganondorf couldn't hear what they were planning. Zelda still believes that; Ganondorf had been caught off guard by Sonia not being alone. It just hadn't stopped him from murdering her, and Zelda hadn't been able to stop him either. Sonia hadn't explained exactly what it was she did, but if Zelda's own abilities are the same as hers, then... perhaps she's done the same thing?
Zelda hauls herself back to her feet, intending to wipe her eyes with a sleeve. She remembers, halfway into the motion, that she doesn't have sleeves in this outfit, and wipes her eyes significantly less effectively on her bare arm. Then she starts forward again and... hesitates.
Is this power based on touch? On mere proximity? It certainly seems like it could be the former, based on Zelda's very limited experience with it. Sonia hadn't been in physical contact with her, and then she suddenly was—but Sonia also is... was... a very tactile person in general, so for all Zelda knows that might have been entirely unrelated.
She doesn't particularly want to risk bringing the Waterblight into this as well, but if she managed to step into a space between seconds once, presumably she can do so again. Maybe she can come up with something.
(She knows, far too well, that there is nothing to come up with. Maybe it's selfish, but she wants just a little more time anyway.)
Zelda takes a deep breath. She exhales again, far slower than she breathed in. And she reaches out, very carefully, to Mipha.
The moment that Zelda's hand closes around Mipha's wrist—the part of her that still finds some joy in discovering new things notes that this power is based on touch after all—the Zora princess blinks. Before she can process the fact that Waterblight Ganon isn't pressing down on her anymore, Zelda pulls her out from beneath the monster.
"I'm sorry!" Zelda says hastily. "I don't want to risk it waking up, and I don't... I'm so sorry, Mipha, I wish I could do more, I wish I could do something more than merely buying you more time!"
Mipha stares at her, eyes wide. She doesn't say a word. Her gaze instead sweeps about the chamber they're in, landing eventually back on Zelda—and then going to the sword at her hip. Her eyes, impossibly, widen further.
At last, Mipha speaks. "Is that...?"
"Yes, that is..." Zelda sighs. "Yes. That is precisely the blade you think it is. I'm sorry. I owe you an explanation."
"You owe me nothing," Mipha murmurs, her eyes not leaving what remains of the Master Sword. "As I said, I am deeply relieved that you have awakened your powers, if... mildly surprised that they can do that."
"That's new," Zelda says, "if it's any consolation. So is this." She pats the Master Sword's hilt, though gently—she's been through a lot, and Zelda doesn't want to be the reason that the sword that seals the darkness shatters beyond repair. After all, she has ruined more than enough already.
"I... see." If she had money to bet, she would very much bet that Mipha does not, in fact, see—or understand—at all. "What worries me is that, if you have the sword that seals the darkness, then... Link..."
"He's fine," Zelda says.
She doesn't think that Mipha would have believed her, anymore, if her voice didn't crack. But it does, and all she can do is cringe.
"I'm so sorry," she murmurs, first of all. "He's not fine right now. But he will be. But neither of us will live to see it."
"Oh," Mipha whispers. "Oh."
She says nothing more. Eventually, Zelda forces her gaze back up from the floor, forces herself to meet Mipha's eyes—and finds there's a look in them she can only recall seeing once before; when Mipha realized that her beloved baby brother wasn't quite ready to swim up waterfalls on his own yet.
(She realizes, all of a sudden, that she's still holding on to Mipha's wrist. She lets go quickly. Too quickly.)
"I'm so sorry," Zelda says again, because really, if she spends the rest of her natural life apologizing it won't be enough—and she doesn't even have that to work with anymore. "I don't... I haven't..."
"We failed," Mipha says, and it isn't a question.
"We succeeded! ...Late."
"How late?"
Zelda winces. "A century late. There's... I should not be telling you any of this, I shouldn't even be here, but I... I missed you. I missed all of you."
"You are from the future," Mipha says, and it's all Zelda can do to nod. "A future that I am no longer alive in."
"I'm... s-so..."
She can't even say it anymore, nor can she hold the tears back any longer—so she just starts crying, and hates herself for it. Hates herself for being so weak, because even a hundred and five years after the last time she saw her father alive, even a hundred and five years since she was a princess in anything but name, she remembers far too well that princesses cannot cry.
This is just another thing to add to her long, long list of failures.
"Oh, Zelda," Mipha murmurs gently. There's sympathy in her words, sympathy that Zelda most certainly doesn't deserve—but before she can open her mouth again and try to channel her words into something properly explaining why she doesn't deserve Mipha's kindness, there are arms around her. Holding her. Hugging her.
When was the last time she was hugged?
...Before Sonia's murder, she's certain of that. Sonia in the past was nearly as much of a hugger as Sidon is, or will be, in the future. Right now, Sidon is a quiet child who doesn't speak even to his immediate family, and who actively avoids being around strangers yet routinely sneaks out in the direction of Ploymus Mountain because he wants to fight the biggest monster he knows of.
Mipha is, as it turns out, just as good of a hugger as her brother.
Zelda doesn't deserve this. But right now, she can't bring herself to care about whether she deserves this or not—and so she hugs Mipha back, as tightly as she dares, and she cries.