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Soaked hair clings to the sides of her face, her nose is sniffling, goosebumps line her skin, and Link curses himself for not taking her home sooner. Cold rain falls from the sky, and the mildest breeze turns it into an onslaught of icicles as they trudge against the wind. Gray clouds create the illusion that the sun has already set, leaving no warmth to be had in the early spring, and her measly travel cloak is hardly adequate protection from the elements. They should have turned back toward the house at the first sight of clouds. Failing that, they should have turned back when the first drops began to fall. But it wasn’t until it turned into a heavy downpour that they finally began their trek back to the village and up the hill, and by then it was too late.
Link had known it was in her best interest to go home the second he’d felt the slight chill in the air. He’d said as much, but when she refused, he should have made her go back anyway. He should have stood his ground, and given her a taste of the stubbornness that she relentlessly presented him. But how could he? Link was weak to the glimmer that her eyes took when she was excited about something, and faced with that research-besotted smile, he was helpless to do anything but her bidding. So when she said she wanted to stay and take more pictures of the local flora despite the promised weather on the horizon, he hadn’t the will to fight.
The world closes around them when they finally get to the house, silence sweeping in as the door shuts away the storm. What was only seconds ago a curse upon them turns into the relaxing lull of rain pattering on the rooftop. The house isn’t warm, but it’s warmer than it is outside, and it has towels and dry clothes that will hopefully allow him to spare his princess a cold.
Link leaves her shivering in the entryway to go fetch a stack of towels and when he comes back, he finds her fumbling with the tie of her cloak. Subtle tremors shake her body and her fingers tremble in their attempts to untie the knot. Setting the towels aside, he reaches out to help her. It’s small, but he doesn’t miss the way her hand flinches at first contact, nor the tiny, quick intake of breath. Zelda doesn’t drop her hands though as he loosens the strings; rather, she hesitantly rests them against his. He pauses. Her skin is icy, almost to the point that it burns where it connects with his, but he would never in a million years pull away from that touch. He doesn’t look at her–doesn’t allow himself to–and only lets the interaction interrupt his movements for a second before he stumbles on, keeping up the facade that such a simple touch doesn’t leave him absolutely breathless.
The cloak falls to the ground with a wet thud. He doesn’t bother leaving to hang it up, not when his princess is still shivering. Not when her hands are still on his.
Link is forced to abandon that point of contact so he can reach for a towel. He draws it up over her head, gently rubbing the moisture from her hair. Her face is hidden from him at first, but as he pushes the towel back further on her head, green eyes connect with his, open and curious and calm.
Zelda usually looks away when they’re this close. He’s seen it a hundred times in as many years. In moments before, green eyes would always glance to the sky, to the ground, to their surroundings–anywhere but him–if ever he stood within reach. He had noticed the dusting of pink on her cheeks and the way her fingers would fidget with the hem of her sleeve. The nervous habit of babbling about whatever popped to mind, and the slight stutter her voice would take. The details had been minute but impossible for him to miss when it was his princess they adorned.
A hundred years ago, he’d always pushed those signs away, or tried to rationalize them as indicative of something else, but he knew. He always knew. He didn’t want to recognize her feelings for what they were–couldn’t let himself acknowledge them–because if he did, well…
Even when he woke up and seemingly knew nothing, he still knew. Maybe it was the way his name sounded on her tongue or the way her voice resonated in his soul. Maybe it was the one single shred of imprinted memory his heart and mind had desperately held on to amidst his slumber, grasping it tight as the only thread that still tethered him to this world. The only force that could possibly draw him back. It was the first thing he recognized–the familiar tug of that voice, the longing for its safety, the desire for more than could be desired.
He knew it all from the moment she told him to open his eyes.
He knows it now in the face that looks up at him from under the veil of the towel. The look is new but old–only novel in that it finally pushes to the surface feelings that had always remained unsaid, but were understood nonetheless. It’s old because he’s always known. It’s new because she’s never shown it.
The look gives him pause, and unlike that simple touch of her hand, this one isn’t shakeable. Link stands transfixed in her gaze, caught in her glow and helpless to escape even if he wanted to. He does not want to.
Frigid fingertips burn his cheek and her gaze still does not drop. It shifts, curious as is her nature, but laden with the weight of 100 years of reticence set free. She’s not hiding. She’s always hidden–they both have. Until now.
“I’m tired,” she whispers, and he knows she isn’t referring to physical fatigue.
Only a week ago they set calamity to rest and retreated to Hateno to recover in peace. It was a new world, a new life, and they had the option of staying here. Their duty was done. Nothing more was expected of them, not if they didn’t want it to be.
And yet, neither of them let go of the shackles that had bound them in the Hyrule that was. It was as if nothing had changed between them–not their feelings, but also not the rules that prevented them from acting on them.
The rules had changed though. Rather, the rules were gone. They both knew that, and yet for a week they had carried on the habits of a life left behind. Carried on the hiding, the masking, the pretending they weren’t something that they were.
Until now.
It takes all he has just to breathe.
“Me too,” he admits. His voice has never been quieter. He’s regarded as the paragon of courage, but Link has never felt more afraid in his life. He is tired, though. Tired of pretending, and ready to move on if she is too.
Without thinking about it, his hands use their grip on the towel to pull her in just the slightest bit closer. He’s done thinking. There’s no room for thought when Zelda is standing so close, looking at him like that.
She allows it, the corners of her lips curling into the simplest of smiles as she leans in toward him. The fingers on his cheek glide down along his jaw and her eyes follow. She traces a scar from a burn he doesn’t remember, following the reddened skin back into his hairline. Her gaze returns to his as she threads her fingers through the wet strands at the base of his neck.
“Do you remember the last time, before calamity struck, that we were caught in the rain?” He slowly shakes his head. A wistful quality takes to her smile and her eyes fall to his lips. “I nearly broke. We had to take shelter and dry our clothes while we sat back to back by the fire.” He remembers damp skin pressed against his own, and letting his arm rest a little further back than he normally would, just so it would brush against hers. “We passed the time by talking about…things we could not have.” What they would have done with their lives had they not been born under a prophecy. Talks of settling down in a remote village, marrying for love, raising children… “We just barely skirted the topic, because we both knew it would only make things worse, but…”
“I broke,” he murmurs. Her eyes slowly rise back to his with a renewed sort of warmth.
“Just barely.” Reaching for her in a moment of weakness. Stroking the backs of her knuckles with his thumb and holding her hand how he wished he could hold her. Telling her without telling her. He remembers thinking that he shouldn’t. Chastising himself for every second he stayed like that. But he also remembers the way she turned her hand palm up and laced her fingers through his own. “Leaving that cave when the rain let up had been one of the most difficult things I’d ever done.” Ripping himself away from that shared space with her, feeling like he’d left behind half his soul–the only half that mattered. Going back to the castle and pretending nothing had changed. Because nothing had.
“Things are different now,” Zelda continues, pulling Link back to the present. Their heads are closer now and he can’t be sure if it’s because they’re leaning into one another or if he pulled her further in without realizing. Looking at the way she’s watching him, but feeling the heavy beating of his heart in his chest, he thinks it must be a combination of both. “The Hyrule we knew is gone.” A hint of sadness has her gaze faltering a moment. “And while that may hurt, it also…set us free.” When her eyes connect with his this time, they truly steal the air from his lungs. “So why are we still acting like prisoners?”
Link doesn’t know how to answer that. He doesn’t know the answer, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know the words to say it. Words have never been his strong suit.
Besides, he’s done thinking. And he’s done acting like a prisoner. Looking back at her in that moment, he knows she is too, and those eyes are what finally gives him the courage to act on a century of feelings left unsaid. Gently pulling on the towel, Link closes what distance remains between them once and for all.
He feels more than he hears the way she breathes in deep as their lips connect. He wonders if she’s breathing in the same breath he is–a breath that floods his being as if his soul had never lived before. The radiant glow of the goddess fills him, and the feeling is more familiar yet more distant than any of his memories regained–the kiss a fulfillment of promises made lifetimes ago. Even if the legends mentioned something of reincarnation, he had never been sure if he believed it. But he believes it now beyond a shadow of a doubt, because in just that single breath of contact, Link can feel the love of a million incarnations culminated into one. The kiss of a goddess he’s loved before and loves again.
When their lips part, neither of them moves. Link’s eyes remain shut, but he can feel her breath heavy on his cheek, and he knows her heart must be thundering like his.
“Why did we wait 100 years to do that?” she eventually whispers.
Link laughs and rests his forehead against hers. He’s never felt such warmth or relief and he finds himself sinking into it head first. He abandons his grip on the towel in favor of cupping her face in his hands. Her skin is still cold and damp but nothing has ever felt more right being held in his palms. “I would wait again,” he whispers back.
She shakes her head against his and her second hand comes up to hook her fingers together behind his neck. “I won’t.” She speaks the words into his lips and seals them with another kiss. This one leaves him more breathless than the first and he wonders if that effect will ever dull. He hopes it doesn’t.
“I love you, Zelda,” he finally says. The words come out easy, as if it didn’t take 100 years to finally set them free. As if they weren’t locked up in his chest this whole time, held prisoner to a world of rules and regulations he had never dreamed of escaping.
She’s already pulling him in again when she whispers the words that are new but old. Always known but never spoken.
“I love you, Link.”