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To be a Goddess is to be immortal.
Zelda is Hylia. Zelda is nothing. Zelda is a concept, a warped painting of a little girl sitting on her mother’s knee, left to dust in a castle that only serves as her battleground now.
To be a Goddess is to be infallible.
Zelda is at war. Zelda is at peace. Zelda is suspended in an ocean, hoping that the waves will crash over her head once more, the way they would when a boy with water-blue eyes smiled at her.
To be a Goddess is to be cruel.
In each glimpse of his life, Zelda watches her boy be happy. Free. Open, in a way he never was with her. He falls to the ground from a sand seal, and she sees him blankly kneeling before her. He smiles at a friend, and she sees him recoiling from her venomous words.
He lives, and Zelda is not there to kill him, as she is for everything else she loves.
Is this not for the better?
-
He takes her into his home, because of course he does.
It’s not immediate. She collapses after they defeat the Calamity, her shed divinity making her mortal body feel suddenly too tight, too constrictive, like the poorly sized stockings they purchase off a stable vendor to get her a change of clothes. Somewhere between being pathetically dragged, half conscious and barely breathing, to Purah’s lab in Hateno, and waking up in Link’s bed while he sleeps on a bedroll below the stairs, they have the conversation about her staying.
“I don’t want to impose,” she says, and he shakes his head and frowns.
“I don’t mind. Really. You can stay as long as you’d like.” He says, and although he’s devoted his entire life, his everything to her, this one devotion feels like sand caught between her teeth, gritty and wrong.
She does stay, for a while. Tries to enjoy the sun shining through the bedroom window, to compliment his (truly wonderful) cooking, to close her eyes and roll over after waking from a nightmare. She shops and gets to know the neighbors, and learns to dust and sweep, despite Link’s protests. In the night, he cooks her dinner, and regales her with stories of his travels while she silently avoids her own experiences of the past hundred years. She doesn’t resent him, does she? But some part of her understands that she’ll never fit in his life, will never deserve to watch someone as wonderful as him give her everything, time and time again.
Link tells her once of a shrine puzzle, where he’d pull blocks out of a stack to reach a key at the top, and the wrong piece would send the whole thing crumbling to the ground. “It’s funny,” he laughs, leaning back into a chair. “I remember that being a kid’s game when I was little.”
And that’s what they are- children playing house, one hundred years of divinity trying their hand at domesticity. She can’t do it, can’t let him look at her the way he does, with everything in his expression so different from the Link before except that stupid undying loyalty.
Zelda cannot kill him again. Somewhere in her mind, the child’s blocks collapse, and she leaves in the night.
-
If Impa is surprised by Zelda’s sudden presence on her doorstep, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she leads her to a spare bed, presses a cup of tea into her hands, and tuts to herself as her granddaughter helps prepare the room for Zelda’s stay. She does not deserve this kindness either, but she has no money and nowhere else to go, and the no-nonsense attitude Impa has grown into since the Calamity is easier to swallow than the Hateno sun shining through Link’s windows.
She’s unpacking the next morning when she hears footsteps thundering up the stairs, and she only has a moment to turn from her bag before Link bursts through the door, breathing as though he’s run here from his home.
She straightens in surprise, blinking before regaining her composure. “I’m sorry, but I believe I told Impa I did not wish to speak with you.”
“So that’s it?” He snarls, and he puffs with anger the way clouds expand with thunder over the bay. “You disappear in the middle of the night, don’t even leave a note or clue to where you’re goin’, and now you ‘don’t wish to speak to me?’ What the fuck?!"
Zelda gapes then, because, really, how does she react to that? She’s hardly seen this man express strong emotion, let alone anger, and has especially never seen him direct it at her. As she stares at him, processing, he seems to break, stepping close to her. “Didn’t you ever think about how I’d feel?”
And she can’t stand this, the way he looks at her like a bone would look at a greedy dog. So she does what she does best- she lashes out, kicks and spits and scratches and fights, so that he’ll give up and let her go. “How you feel? What about how I feel? All of my friends, my family, everything I’ve ever known is dead! And you want me to- to what? To come back with you, pretend like everything’s normal with you? Play happy fucking family? Well, I can’t! I’m not yours to care for!”
Link recoils then, like he’s been slapped, and some part of her wants to reach out and really hit him, feel the skin give under her fingernails, so that she can hold her hand up and say ‘see, this is what I do to you. So why do you stay?’ He swallows hard, then whispers, “I didn’t think- I didn’t know. I-I’m sorry.”
Zelda looks away. “I can’t go back.”
“But why?” He cries, and the desperation in his voice shatters something within Zelda. “Whatever I was doing, I’ll stop! I swear, I didn’t realize I was upsetting you so much.” He pauses, and when Zelda manages to look up, she sees how painfully he forces his words out. “I know I’m… Different. I know I’m not him. But I’ll change, however you want me to.”
If just living with him collapsed the stack, this would disintegrate each block. Because he’s not wrong; this Link looks so similar to the old, the one she knew before the Calamity, but it’s not him. She doesn’t want to hate it, this new freedom and openness he expresses, but she doesn’t know him, either. And the idea of knowing him, and him knowing her, makes her chest tighten. “You shouldn’t have to change yourself. I can’t make you do that for me, and I can’t go back.”
Link closes his eyes, and takes a moment to steel himself before looking back to her, face blank. “I apologize, then. If you need anything, I… Never mind.”
Zelda doesn’t deserve to refuse the muzzle then cry at the bite, but she does anyways. For the rest of the week, she’s haunted by the expression on his face- not the anger, or the pain, but the blank look, from so early on in their time together -and she weeps wrongfully, laying on the borrowed bed after he leaves, sunlight spilling sickly sweet through the window.
-
The fire crackles as it lights their little camp, and Link watches the night sky silently from his bedroll. He’s not sure he believes all that ‘holy land’ nonsense that the Priestess was waxing before he and the Princess left, but the foothills of Mt. Lanayru do carry a certain energy to them that the rest of the surrounding land doesn’t seem to.
Tomorrow, Princess Zelda will be 17. Tomorrow, they will ascend the mountain, arm themselves to the teeth with blankets and thick wool and spiced elixirs.
But tonight, they’re not on the mountain. Tonight, he has cooked her favorite foods, and even bartered for a portable cooling box, just to bring her some fruitcake he’d made. He could see Hylia Herself tomorrow, and still would not believe anything to be as wonderful as the joy on her face as she ate the cake.
He hears a soft shuffle, and Zelda emerges from her tent, golden hair spilling down her back. Wordlessly, she walks over to him, and sits down on his bedroll as he scoots to make space for her.
“Is it midnight yet?” She asks quietly.
He glances back up to the sky and frowns. “Something like that.”
“Then I’m officially 17,” she says, as if this is a prison sentence and not simply her age.
“Happy birthday,” he says simply, not knowing how to better respond.
Zelda looks to him quizzically, then smiles, the tiny one she saved for court or when she was too sad or tired to smile with her eyes. “Thank you,” and then, “I wish I felt like a normal 17-year-old.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“What do you think they do? Normal teenagers, I mean.” She lays back on his bedroll, and he lays back too, not touching, but close enough to feel the warmth off her body.
“I dunno. Go to school, sneak out, get in trouble. Stupid things like that.” She hums noncommittally, then turns so she’s facing him.
“I… Would you be willing? To help me feel normal, just for the night?”
He swallows thickly, time slowing around them as Zelda leans closer, close enough that he can see the faint freckles on her nose, painted in the firelight. “How so?”
“You said they get in trouble, yeah?” Her mouth is almost to his now, her breaths meeting his in the cold air. “I figured we could start there.”
And by the Three, Link is trying to resist, but he’s only a man, and he can’t resist the magnet pull that draws his hands to her waist or to tangle themselves in her hair; he can’t resist the softness of her lips, or the way she exhales in relief when he kisses her.
He wakes the next morning, and there’s a little voice in his brain scolding him. It goes quiet when he presses a kiss to the curve of her jaw, and stays quiet when she comes out of the tent as he makes breakfast, curling next to him with a small, contented smile on her face.
Scratch that, he believes this is a holy land. If every damned Hylia statue was resculpted in his Zelda’s image- and this one specifically, her soft smile, the gentle curve of her brow relaxed and sleepy, and her freckled nose reddened from the cold -he thinks everyone would start to believe.
-
Each morning that Zelda wakes in Kakariko, there is no warm body beside her. Nobody hums in the kitchen and cooks her wonderful breakfast, and nobody snores in the bedroll under the stairs.
This is okay, she thinks. She wanted this, and she got it, and she will be okay because Hylia damn her if she doesn’t play her deal for once in her life.
But still, she misses him, even without any right to. She yearns for him, even though she’s thrown away any chance of ever knowing him again.
She needs a distraction. This is decided one morning- partially, and forcibly, by Impa, who frowns at Zelda as she gazes emptily out the window, and tells her in no uncertain terms that she needs to do something more than lay in bed all day -and partially, by Zelda herself, who, after being bathed and brushed and let out like a cat, was now standing outside.
“Fine,” she mutters to herself. “I’ll find something to do.”
Turns out, finding something to do is much easier in theory. In reality, it’s much more complicated when you’re in the middle of a village where you know nobody except the two who just kicked you out, and when your stumble out the door draws every eye to your borrowed Sheikah robes and burning face.
She descends the stairs to Impa’s home with as much dignity as she can muster. And then… she pauses, trying to seem like she has a purpose for being outside, but she hasn’t explored this village in over a hundred years, and she doesn’t think she could find something non-suspicious to do if she tried.
Suddenly, a squealing force bowls into her legs, almost knocking her over. It’s a little girl, and another older one is close behind her, scolding.
“Cottla! You’re not supposed to run off like that- you could’ve got hurt!” The older girl cries, while the younger one giggles and clings to Zelda’s legs. “Koko’s sorry, miss, and Cottla’s sorry too, right?”
“Sorry,” the girl- Cottla, she assumes -smiles up at her, and Zelda suddenly gets the impression nobody stays mad at her for very long.
“It’s quite alright.”
“Hey, you’re miss Impa’s friend, right?” Cottla says as Koko tries to pry her off Zelda’s legs. “We’re not s’ppsed to talk to you! Cause you’re sad!”
“Cottla!” Koko scolds, but Zelda simply puts on her best smile and kneels before the children.
“You’re right, I am miss Impa’s friend. But you can talk to me if you’d like.”
“Okay!” Cottla nods. “I’m Cottla! Do you want to play?”
Before everything, Zelda would have refused. She can hear her nurse and housekeepers now- princesses should be courteous and gentle, but to get into the dirt and play with a child was far too improper. Even before today, she might have refused, too exhausted and empty to even hold conversation, let alone play.
But now? It’s a perfect day; the sun warms her back, a breeze sounds a soft tune through nearby windchimes and pulls at her long hair where it falls down her back. So, she grins even wider, and leans forward.
“I would love to.”
-
Naturally, playing with Cottla means chasing her halfway across Necluda. She sits on the stairs a while to catch her breath, and one of Impa’s guards gives her a small smile.
“Thanks for keeping my girls company, Princess. I know they can be a handful.”
Zelda smiles. “It’s no problem, sir. It was nice to get out of my head for a while.”
“I know what you mean. I don’t presume to understand your struggle but, I grieved similarly when my wife died.” The man looks wistfully into the distance, and Zelda gazes above the mountain, to the setting sun. “I closed everything out and shut down. If it wasn’t for Lady Impa and those two girls, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
“Thank you for telling me that,” Zelda says softly, clenching a hand in her lap. Then, “If you wouldn’t mind, what is your name?”
“Ah, I apologize. I am Dorian.”
“Thank you, Sir Dorian. Your words are very kind.”
The man smiles to her again. “Of course, Princess. Please don’t forget, I am always honored to help if you need anything.”
“Please, call me Zelda.”
“Of course, Lady Zelda.” She rolls her eyes, but accepts his hand as she moves to rise. “And… Believe me when I say, it’s always much easier when you have someone to lean on.” Dorian levels her with a serious look then, and Zelda nods.
It was a nice day, she reflects as she lays in her bed that night, rubbing the pressure marks from where her too-small stockings had cut into her legs. Maybe making friends with those little girls would help her recover. Maybe not, and she’d lose her momentum the next day.
“Progress isn’t linear,” she whispers as her eyes close, and she dreams of waves of water.
-
Link makes sure to meticulously clean every inch of the kitchen before he leaves with the fruitcake balanced in his hands. He wouldn’t be in trouble for using it, per se, but being caught covered in flour and holding the Princess’ favorite cake would definitely raise questions he’d rather not answer. At best, he’d have to tell the castle’s biggest gossipmongers that he was trying to comfort the Princess because she’d been crying in her room all day- at worst, he’d have to admit he only put in this much effort because he had a big fat crush on her, and he wanted to tell her that he cared about her, even if nobody else would.
He makes it to her room with concerning ease- he might have to discuss raising her security detail if it was so easy to get up to her door undetected, even though she’d hate it -and knocks three times on the door.
“I am not taking visitors. Go away, please.”
“It’s just me, Princess. I, um, have something for you.”
There’s a pause on the other side of the door, then it swivels open and oh, he always has to take a moment to react to how beautiful she is, even with her hair mussed and her nightgown drooping off a shoulder and her eyes rimmed red- right, she was crying. He was here to comfort her, not gawk at her.
She looks curiously down at him, brow furrowing as she looks to the cake in his hands, then to the flour undoubtedly streaked across his cheek and staining his uniform. “You… made this? For me?”
He nods, not opening his mouth for fear of saying something stupid. She checks around them to make sure they’re alone, then quickly drags him into her room, sets the fruitcake on a table, and pulls him into a desperate hug.
“Thank you,” Zelda whispers, sniffling into his shoulder. He awkwardly wraps his arms around her, nodding again so she can feel it. “This means a lot to me.”
“‘Course. I, um, didn’t want you to be upset- not that you can’t be, if you wanna! Just that, your dad was shitty to you and I- oh-”
She smiles at him, unaffected by the stream of dumbass coming out of Link’s mouth, and when he finally clamps a hand over his mouth and announces that he’s ‘going to stop talking now,’ she reaches down and presses a kiss against his forehead.
“Would you like to eat with me, Sir Link?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” he says, pulling away so he can give her his most chivalrous and silly bow while she giggles and curtsies in response. He hadn’t thought to grab plates, but the thought of eating the cake out of the dish seems to delight Zelda, so they do.
Only half an hour past, the cake is gone (versus a glutton and a sweet tooth who hadn’t eaten all day, it stood no chance) and the two relax against the foot of her bed.
“Will the cooks be mad at you for making this?”
“If I cleaned up enough, no. I made sure I left nothing behind, especially when coming here. Didn’t want nobody to talk about it.”
Zelda looks down to her hands, which wring nervously in her lap. “Unfortunately, I… I believe they’ll talk anyways. But thank you.”
Link leans in as close as he dares, reaching over and brushing her pinky with his own. “They shouldn’t talk. You’re doing your best and everyone knows it- they’re just being…”
“Arses?” Zelda supplies, giving a small smile.
“Yeah. Giant arses,” Link replies, dropping his head on her shoulder. She lets her own head lay on top of his, breathing deep.
Then, “I hate him.” It’s whispered softly, at first, but then she takes a heaving breath and starts to repeat it, over and over, as if something ugly and buried deep is clawing its way out of her. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him-”
Link tilts his head up, pulls her down and lets her bury herself into his neck, sobbing and cursing all the while.
He loves her.
This is not something he should think about, while she’s crying into his shoulder, but the feeling burns in his chest, flames lapping against the skin where her tears soak through his shirt. He loves her, and he wants to protect her, take her away from everything and show her true love for the rest of his days.
Oftentimes, when his brain gets overloaded with emotion like this, he starts thinking about random things. Stories, toys, games played with the village children where he grew up. Right now, he remembers something out of a book he read- a father who made wings, so he and his son could escape their prison.
One day, I will grow wings, he thinks, tucking his hand behind her head as she cries herself to sleep. And then we’ll never suffer again.
-
Hurts it hurts
“Link!”
Gods it hurts so bad
“Please, don’t leave.”
His eyes are blurring- distantly, he sees something glowing and beautiful above him, blocking out the rain.
“Don’t leave me, please.”
Someone’s hands hold his head, and he blinks hurts his eyes are getting heavy hurts but he doesn’t want to close them and block out the sun it hurts it hurts
He had grown wings. He’d tried his hardest to fly her- Zelda -away, but his vision darkens as he leans into the sun.
It’s cold it hurts Help
I’m scared. I don’t want to die.
“I love you, Link.”
-
“I don’t know if we should celebrate my birthday, Impa.”
“I missed 100 birthdays while you were stuck in that castle, Your Highness. I won’t miss another.”
“We could at least celebrate it another day. It’s- I don’t think it’s a good message, celebrating the day the Calamity appeared.”
“On the contrary, I think the village would enjoy having cause to celebrate this day, for once.”
Sometimes, Zelda forgets how stubborn Impa is- if she tried to point this out, Impa would laugh and call them the old “pot and kettle,” while if she continued to argue her point, Impa would keep fighting until Zelda folded (probably literally, if Impa used that cane).
So, Zelda sits outside Impa’s house a week later on her birthday, wrapped in one of her birthday gifts (a new properly fitted dress and shawl, so she doesn’t have to borrow one for her ‘special night’). The party is very energetic even at this late hour, and now that all the guests have properly congratulated her and lavished her with gifts, they’ve congregated in the middle of the village to dance. Purah and a few villagers from Hateno have shown up too- Link is there, as well. She doesn’t seek him out, but all the same, she imagines water crashing on the shore.
She’s sipping a glass of wine when Paya comes over to her, awkwardly clearing her throat. Zelda has learned that it’s often better to let Paya slowly start the conversation, rather than try and guess at what she wants to say.
“Are- are you, um, having a good birthday?” She finally stutters out, adding on “Your Highness!” when she realizes she’s forgotten.
“I am, thank you. And you can just call me Zelda, you know.” Zelda bumps her shoulder, smiling. Shy as she was, the girl was very kind, and reminded her of Impa, in a nostalgic, bittersweet way.
Paya flushes, but bumps shoulders back. “I’m, um, glad. I heard t-that Master Link was, uh, really- committed, to making this fun.”
“Really?” Zelda glances at her. “I wasn’t even aware he was coming until today.”
“Y-Yes, Grandmother told me- he brought up the idea, and helped c-coord-nate stuff.” Paya blushes harder, but seems determined to push through her stutter. “I-I heard he baked the cake, with Koko’s help”
“I thought it tasted familiar,” Zelda murmurs, mostly to herself. She had; and had chalked it up to someone finding the old royal fruitcake recipe. But that’s not the reason her heart suddenly tightens painfully in her chest- she hasn’t seen him in months, and yet, he’d still dedicate days, if not weeks of time to giving her a good birthday. She’d spoken so horribly to him the last time she’d seen him, and yet he was still here, still taking care of her, still being him.
“I-I think he’d like to see you,” Paya quietly says.
Zelda gives her a quick embrace- which turns the poor girl into a blushing mess -and springs up to her feet. “I’ll go talk to him,” she decides, her feet taking her into the crowd long before her conscious mind verbalizes the thought. She squeezes through, shouting apologies over the music and noise as she hurries over stray toes and boots.
There! A flash of blue, headed up the hill. She pushes through the rest of the crowd, dropping her glass onto a nearby table and gathering her skirts so she can hurry up the road.
She reaches the top of the hill in record time, considering her layers and heeled boots. For a long moment, she looks around, trying to catch her breath and smooth her undoubtedly wild hair. He’s not up here, she realizes with a pang. Perhaps it had just been another blue tunic.
But then, “Princess?” Zelda turns quickly, and her eyes catch Link’s and suddenly all she hears is water- rain tittering against the windows, waves crashing against the shore, rapids rolling over stones, all to the frantic beat of her heart.
“Link.” For all of her haste to get up here, she has no idea what to say, how to explain herself. Stupidly, she feels her eyes well with tears. “I…”
“I missed you.” Link whispers, and she closes her eyes tight.
“You shouldn’t have,” she says, and her voice breaks. “I treated you h-horribly, and I’ve been avoiding you, and I’ve been taking out my problems on you when I promised I wouldn’t, and-”
She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Link touches her face, endlessly delicate. She breaks, crashing into his warm arms and sobbing out, over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not mad,” Link says, pressing his nose into her hair. “I was, at first. But, more than I was mad, I wanted you to work through your problems. If you wanted me gone while you did that, great. But if you want me back…” He pauses, squeezing her tighter. “I’ll always be right here.”
Zelda pulls back then, so she can look him in the eyes. “I do. I want you with me- I have for so long, but I didn’t know how to apologize and I-” She sniffles, leaning closer. “It was so much. Every night, I’d live through it all again in my sleep, and I couldn’t stand the guilt of being around you, when I saw your body in my arms every damn night.”
He leans closer too, letting their foreheads knock together. “I dream of it, too. My dreams got worse as I remembered more, but… Sometimes, it was the only way I could see you. And that made it better.”
“Link-” she begins, but he shakes his head and keeps going.
“I know- I know it’s too much, and I’m different from the Link you remember. But when I woke up, it was like I was missing- an organ or a limb or something, and each memory I got from you made that feeling go away a little bit more. And then I saw that night on Blatchery Plain, and suddenly I knew what I was missing, I knew what I was fighting for. And I knew I never said it back.”
Every star could fall to earth right now, and it would still be less intense than what she feels now, his face pressed against hers, their tears freely mixing as her heart starts to truly beat again.
“I love you. I love you, Zelda.”
She tilts her head so she can catch his lips in hers, tasting salt and fruitcake and Link, and they sob with relief as they kiss, again and again.
“I love you, Link.” She whispers as they break apart, eyes fluttering. She reaches up to stroke his cheek, wiping the tears away from his beautiful face. “Let’s go home.”
-
The sun warms her face as a breeze plays through her hair. It’s shorter now than it had ever been in her life, but she loves it, and Link choked on his rice when she walked through the door after cutting it, so she’s quite satisfied.
Nowadays, Zelda feels very different from her old self. And often, so does Link. As she leans against the tree in their yard, she thinks that it’s not quite so bad.
Today will be wonderfully lazy. She’ll go pick up some groceries from the general store, and will perhaps be able to catch Clavia to chat. Link will make them dinner, she’ll bully him into letting her wash dishes, and she’ll end the day wrapped safely in his arms, feeling his heart beat in tandem with hers.
If she wakes to a nightmare, she knows he’ll be there to comfort her. And when she feels the sun peek through the window in the morning, she’ll know she’s finally at peace.
Fin.