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It had been too perfect to believe. She was home, it was over. He had the Master Sword, he was there, he was at her side again. Shirtless, even. Yes, too good to be true. But it had been wonderful all the same. She'd been bursting with joy to see him, excited, rejuvenated, and then—
And then nothing. The familiar dull nothing of sleep again. Much later, Zelda would muse on the potential toll it took on a body to turn it back through thousands of years of time. For now she was merely drifting in and out of conscious thought once more.
What a shame. It had seemed so real. She remembered even asking, urgently, "I'm not in a dream, right?" It felt like she had been asleep for so long, she didn't know where the dream began anymore. Maybe she was about to wake up in the grand and ancient Temple of Time—a broken sword still to mend, a secret stone hanging at her throat and waiting to catch in it. Or maybe, even further back than that, she had fallen asleep at her desk again and this entire tale of a Demon King had squeezed itself into one of those powerfully potent twenty-minute naps. What a relief that would be to be true...
But now, distantly, sounds and scents were brushing at her senses. The smoke of firewood. The deep slosh of lots of pouring water. She fought against the weight of sleep, chasing these signals of the waking world. Where was this? The temple? Morning in the castle? Camping in the wild? And she felt the whisper of fabric on her skin, her robes along her legs, her robes were untied they were coming off—
Blurting out in inarticulate panic, Zelda flung out a hand to try to grab back her escaping clothes. Another hand caught hers, rough skin but gentle strength. She knew the callouses on the squeezing fingers, better than any sign language: It's me.
Her throat closed up around his name. The same as a stone. The same as her choice.
"Link..."
Another dream, it had to be. It was already fading again.
When it vaguely resurfaced she was warm, completely limp and relaxed. There was the drip and slosh of water... a bath? And those same fingers were busy coaxing the pins and braids out of her hair. She hummed in pleasure, breathed in the steam and let it carry her away once more...
She returned to the warm feeling of a washcloth wiping down her arm and dabbing at her neck. She tipped back her head against it.
"I like this dream," she murmured. Try as she might, she couldn't make it form properly. All she saw were blurred shapes in dim firelight—a shaggy head, hair loose, bent over her. He was still here. She smiled.
"I miss you," she said softly. "I think about you every day..."
The hands raised her arm and she felt a kiss in the dip of her palm. The hands were still indistinct but they felt whole, healthy, scarred but at least not ravaged by—definitely a dream, then.
After the Calamity, they had sealed him away. To heal, to return. The Goddess's chosen, to end a century of suffering. And at the end of it all, the both of them free at last, Zelda had been lucky enough that she didn't even need to shyly ask the question; Link had stayed. She had gotten him back.
But this time, this time was so similar and yet had to be different. The sight of that horrible gloom swarming up Link’s arm, chewing through it in a way to remind her that it was nothing more than meat… that would never leave her.
And so the sword had to be sealed away, to heal, to return. But she wouldn't return with it, not as Zelda. Link wouldn't get her back. The unfairness of it ached in her. They'd only just started to become something else for each other, something more...
"I'm sorry," she whispered to the hands as they tended to her. She was glad now that she couldn't see his face.
Maybe when she woke up, it would be morning in the Temple of Time. She would go to the altar, a fitting place for sacrifice, and swallow her fate. She would give up Zelda, everything Zelda knew and loved, including this voice she could hear humming old songs in the warm dimness. She would do it for that voice. He couldn’t be hers. She couldn’t be with him. But she knew he would seize the chance she would spend thousands of years making for him, and he would live. She knew he would. That would have to be enough.
The next time her awareness stirred, she felt as if she were wrapped in a plush blanket. She knew Link's arms around her instantly; but they were trying to lay her down, to pull away. With a little squirm of protest she freed her hands from the blanket and grabbed hold of him. Don't go, not yet, because in the morning…
And then the pungent smell of pond muck sharpened all her senses at once.
"Link!" She jerked back instinctively. "What on earth have you been doing?"
She could see more now, a candlestick on a bedside table. Their bedside table. And startled blue eyes.
"You smell like fish!" She couldn't help but giggle. That's right, they had both been soaking wet standing out there in Hyrule Field. Link had dragged them both out of a pond... but...
She pressed shaky fingers to the remnants of a smile still on her lips.
"But wait..." she managed. Her breath hitched. "That was... this is real?"
Kneeling at the bedside, stricken and staring, Link didn't smile. He looked exhausted, face drawn, with sleepless bruising under his eyes. And the look in those eyes as he stared at her was... haunted. All too real.
He knew what she'd done.
A sob cracked open in her chest. She threw herself at him and he didn't pull away this time. His arms were suddenly and fiercely tight. He crawled into the bed as well, wrapping himself completely around her as if any part that wasn't held fast would disappear. They lay like that, entwined, Zelda sobbing into the warm dark hollow of his neck.
The world was here, was real, was coming back to her. The scraping wool of their bedcover. The piercing creak of the one bad hinge on their window shutter. The grime and sweat of Link’s skin on hers, the stink of his battle-weary leather and clothes. None of it pleasant. All of it so, so dear.
How? If she had done it, if it had worked, how was she here? Maybe her friends from the distant past had found a path to the impossible. But she would have to figure it out later. Right now she clung to Link until she ached, and cried; cried in relief, cried for the trembling she felt in Link's arms. Cried for the still freshly bleeding grief of accepting that no matter what she did, she would never have this back again.
Her knight. Her home.
And here she was.