Archive of Our Own

“I wish this type of betrayal on no one: being born out of that which will be your undoing.

Imagine, instead: the place where you have a bed of your own & a table to sit across from someone who laughs thick & echoing as an open palm at your smallest joy 

& then the fingers close”

welcome to heartbreak, Hanif Abdurraqib 

Ten long, tight, and watery-eyed minutes do the sages all hug Link and Zelda. They were dog-tired and coming back from various states of gloom damage but still, held on tightly to Link and Zelda as tightly as they held back. 

It reminded Link of how they held him after the fight in the castle. It was a wonder he’d gone so long without being hugged like this before. It felt intrinsic to him, like pieces fitting together. 

And it wasn’t over when they separated. Zelda and Riju didn’t disconnect, instead they gripped tighter, then they released. Zelda held Riju’s head in her palms, eyes running over her quickly. Some long string of I’msogladyou’reokayImissedyouI’msorryforleavingIcan’tbelieveyou’reback shot back and forth between them. 

Link watched tear tracks run freely down Zelda’s face even as she laughed at something else, wide and open. The tears darkened the dirt in small droplets, he watched it closely, making sure no shallow well would form in the ground. 

At night, Lookout Landing descended into a proper party. The Stable Trotters were the conductors in the huge relief and grief ridden symphony. One collective released breath from months of Demon-King-induced panic took form in shouting, dancing, crying, and drinking. 

Zelda shivered as they watched it roil below them, standing on the balcony near Purah’s study. Fall was creeping in on silent haunches, nights snapping quicker than the days. Link forgot about that. Forgot they were still dripping from their landing in the lake. He still didn’t have a shirt on. 

(Who could blame him? Body still coming down from heaven-dropping adrenaline, trying over and over to pinch himself awake from dreaming that Zelda was here and real and back. And the world was here, even though not whole, just a cracked rib to heal.) 

Purah whirled around them in an instant, also noticing Zelda’s shaking. “ Oh Zelda! Where is 

Mubs, she’ll have some dry clothes for you!” 

But Link just pulled out the Purah pad, called up the inventory, and handed it to Zelda. 

She blinked down at it, at his collection of new and strange clothes. Zelda probably recognized a lot of them, come to think of it. There had to be a reason the archaic armor sets fit so well. 

“You found it?” She asked. 

Link looked down to see the Champion’s leathers selected. A perfect replica of the tunic she made for him a century ago. 

He felt sheepish suddenly, remembering where he found the clues that lead him to it. 

“Oh it was supposed to be a surprise,” Zelda’s palm hit her forehead, voice disappointed. “I had a whole plan for after the Castle…” her voice drifted off. 

“Quite silly to think of now.” Zelda sounded timid. She stole a look at him, face glowing with the screen’s light. “I am glad you found it, though.” 

She tapped the screen a few more times until a tunic appeared in a flash of blue energy. It wasn’t the one he’d wear during the day, enhanced by a Fairy and clad in leathers. This one was worn and dyed green. Link slept in it, mostly, when he was at home and not crashing in a stable or by a fire. Though, sometimes he’d shrug it on, on those days he was feeling particularly lonely. 

Zelda pulled out extra pants, too. Told Purah not to bother Mubs. And she handed Link the slate again. 

“You should put something warmer on, too,” she said. And Link’s fingers only moved because she suggested it. 

In the dark of Purah’s study the party was muffled only a small bit. It still fought its way in the walls and windows, showing Link and Zelda what a good time of a world they saved. 

Zelda changed somewhere deeper in the room while Link stared at the screen, wondering what to put on. He was definitely thinking too much about it, but wearing the Champion’s leathers felt loaded. Like maybe he’d get claps on the back for being the Hero. 

But that was probably a different world he thought of. No one looked now at him twice when he wore it at stables or inns. The blue was only blue and heavy with meaning to Link and Zelda only. 

In the end he pulled it out along with some old pants he found in the Depths. 

Zelda emerged, changed and drier, she hugged her elbows close to her body. Her braids were out so her hair dried a little wavy and unkempt, although she did her best to keep it tame. The loose neck of Link’s tunic showed the sharp angle of her collarbone. Link was devastated by the shape. All her small little pieces back together in front of him slugged him with the totality of how much he had longed for her. How every day he’d felt her absence in varying degrees of complete disaster. Reprieve was only brought on by boldface denial. 

“It’s so strange to be back. It’s like…I can’t really believe it even though it’s right in front of me.” She pointed out the window, “You hear the music too, right?” Zelda punctuated with a tinny, deprecating laugh. 

There was something funny about how exactly Link understood what she meant. 

“I hear it,” he told her. 

Zelda smiled, the dark study lit up a hundred times. A thousand times. How did he live these months not seeing her smile? Forgetting it once was treason enough. He’d never let it go, now. 

—

There should have been a word for how Zelda felt. But she couldn't think of one. Which was troubling since she knew a great deal of them. It’s all she did in those long and fatherless hours of her youth: read books she couldn’t understand until she did. 

But here she was: alive but forgetful of how to do it, happy and yet inescapably dim, feeling like she was careening in the air but her body was not in motion. Was it a kind of vertigo? Yes probably, that sounded right. And somehow not. 

She had a compulsion to laugh at the pain of it, like when someone falls unexpectedly. Her pocketful of new, painful memories about people time forgot on the same land everyone danced on now. How funny.

While all these things were pressing on the soft and new flesh of Zelda’s throat she saw Yunobo coming over to her. He wanted her to settle an argument between Link and Riju on the size of the Molduga Link took down a few summers ago. 

(It wasn’t as big as Link remembered it. But it definitely wasn’t small. Adolescent, Zelda remembered. She was seeking one out for her research.) 

When the violinist reached a long and shrill solo section the six of them crammed in front of the makeshift grill a Goron and a Hylian were managing. The smell of the barbecue dragged over a huge crowd already, which the six of them just wormed their way into. When they’d all selected a variety of meat cuts and birds and fish and skewers, Link said it would probably be good to tip them, even though it’s a party and they were making all this for free, for the happiness of it all. 

Every one of them looked at each other. 

“I never carry money around,” Sidon said like it should have been obvious. Maybe it should have, he was royalty. 

“We left so quick, I forgot.” Yunobo said, sheepish. 

“Oh don’t look at me. I don’t carry anything either.” Riju threw her hands up. Hand. One was holding a half-eaten skewer. 

“I have, maybe, five rupees total,” Tulin said. 

“There’s a very good reason I have no money with me.” Zelda was proud of her joke, it got Riju to laugh very loud. 

In the end, Link rolled his eyes and handed the Goron behind the grill a silver rupee for their entire feast because if you love enough people you’ll never be hungry again. 

Once they ate and were satisfied with the amount of stories about the ridiculous vehicles and contraptions Link had built with ancient technology, they piled the bones high on a plate to be thrown out; but first, Zelda plucked out three frail pieces. 

She held up the wishbones like medals, still warm and greasy. “Look! There's three! It’s perfect!” 

Everyone else was less convinced of the perfection because you need to wait at least three days in the sun for wishbones to have any of the dry wishing-power the wive’s tales promised. But Zelda insisted. 

They were outside the gates when Link tried freezing them with chuchu jellies and ice fruits. They became promisingly brittle when frozen but Zelda suspected they’d shatter if they tried to snap them. The best any of the saviors and some rulers of this new world could come up with was building a fire and taking turns holding out the bones to the flame, trying to speed up the drying. 

Zelda felt like it was all just a secret little game they agreed to play to prolong their time alone together: going along with this idea that the wishbones needed to be snapped tonight, the small bonfire right outside Lookout Landing. They were close enough to hear the band but not too close to be rounded up into a story time of how the end of the world was just narrowly diverted, what the Demon King looked like when he fell, or where Zelda was for the past months. 

Link tried to explain Revali’s Gale to Tulin in hopes that he’d be able to replicate it.

Tulin laid on his back in the soft dewy grass and Link hung on a nearby tree branch, waiting for the wind. It took Tulin a few tries to get the power while laying like he was.

But when he did, Link opened his glider and let out a huge whoop along with Tulin as he made it about twenty feet off the ground. But, it was too close to the bonfire and the wishbone Tulin and Link were taking turns holding blew off its rock into the grass which sent everyone (besides Link, gliding above them and largely unhelpful) looking for it. Tulin was shouting apologies around screaming laughter as they looked. 

Finally, Sidon held up the bone, miniscule in his hand, and it shone as blaring as his smile in the night. 

The bones didn’t break, despite their valiant attempts at drying. Sidon and Yunobo each held an end of one, all of them watched the skinny legs of it bend a bit backwards but never snap. 

Tulin flapped back and landed on the grass, yelling, “Wishbones are liars!” at the sky. 

They all collapsed in the cool grass, Zelda hooked her pinky around Link’s pinky, the same way her mother taught her to hold the end of a wishbone and decided this is a much better end to tug on. Riju shivered even though it was only late summer, barely autumn. The Central Hyrule air hadn’t even had enough time to properly crisp up and snap away all these hazy, dew-drop summer memories. They all laughed at her, including Riju who’s self defense sounded less convincing around laughter and with the words “I’m not built for anything besides desert heat.” 

They lay there until the fire became embers and clouds rolled in to cover up the pinprick, starry sky. Zelda craned her neck around to see them all, splayed on the ground. She caught sight of white flashes near their heads, one for each pair of them. It felt loaded, the way the bones wouldn’t break even though Zelda knew the only problem was only time. She could only turn it back, unhelpful in more ways than this. 

She has grown more than tired of making wishes but waited until she was sure everyone was staring at the stars and grabbed the bone from next to her head and as quickly as she could, stuffed it in the Purah Pad’s inventory. Even if anyone saw it, they’d think nothing of it. Of how Zelda was doing it because distantly she thought, maybe it’s how Hylia saw her beings. Fragile little things waiting to dry up in the sun, bending until break, tossing another wish up into the far reaching and largely indifferent sky. Zelda’s been awfully high up by this point and saw no evidence of her fickle Goddess, only the frail, wishbone bodies of her friends below. But maybe the Goddess is worth believing in, still, since Zelda will be around to see the snap of the legs in three days' time. 

It’s maybe good, she thought, that she’d get three days. And the three days after that. And three days after that. And so on, until her body dried out naturally in the sun (not by cheating) and snapped. 

—

“Do you wish you could go back?” Zelda asked the construct holding Mineru’s spirit. They were under an alcove, tucked in the dark because people of this time were not so used to others talking to robots so easily. 

Zelda also felt a little guilty, to be asking this. Link showed her around Lookout Landing earlier and she’d seen the lengths people had gone to find her. Purah dragged that huge telescope all the way from Hateno for Goddessake. There was a search team, missing posters, and an episodic newspaper storyline all tied to finding Princess Zelda and carting her home. Certainly she shouldn’t be on the outskirts of this party, feeling sorry for herself and her now robotic friend about a family she lost before she really even had them and a yawning maw in her gut that tugged at her insides like sharp teeth. 

“Yes. But I know it is not possible, no matter what time power exists. And I think, oftentimes, I miss people, not the place or time. If I went back I still wouldn’t have a brother. Sonia would still be gone,” Mineru said.

“Depends on how far you go back,” Zelda offered. 

It’s a sort of sick game she’s been playing with herself ever since time showed itself in her palms: how far would she have to go back to make everything right? Which steps would she retrace and which would she change entirely, to rewrite the litany of pain her life somehow was the epicenter of. 

“Even if Rauru was there, I would still have lost him. He’ll always be gone to me,” Mineru said. 

“Oh.” 

“I thought at first, in my most painful grief, that somehow bringing him back would fix everything. But nothing would make me forget that I know how it feels to lose him.” The construct bobbed pleasantly. 

That’s not something she ever considered, but Zelda suspected she was feeling a hue of it at this moment. She wasn’t the same girl on the missing poster she and Link shared a dry chuckle over. Their princess was left in some other castle. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever see this.” Zelda wasn’t exactly happy when she said it. 

“You are fortunate, indeed.” Mineru didn’t exactly sound happy, either. 

“What am I supposed to do with it all, now?” Zelda asked. She shouldn’t have, despite her connection to the spiritual, Mineru was devastatingly pragmatic. Just like Zelda was. 

“I believe they expect you to live with it, Princess.” If a smile could be in a spirit’s voice, it was there.

That was always the crux, wasn’t it? You’ve survived, now live with it. You loved these people, live with it. We’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel and found you aren’t done—not even close, live with it. 

Zelda looked at the crowd. It was fervor and joy as far as the eye could see. Tin cups clinking, the scrape of rubber shoes on cobblestone, the harmony of instruments in the makeshift bandstand. All the modernity choked her. Thousands of years will pass in the blink of an eye , Ganondorf didn’t know how right he was. Easy thing to say for someone who wasn’t drop-kicked to the other end of those centuries. 

“Everything feels so different. I feel the same.” Zelda said. The same as she did after she fell, that is. Or maybe—wait—maybe she felt the same, still, as the small girl kneeling in a cathedral hoping something bigger and stranger than her would hear. Yes, definitely that. 

“I suppose it doesn’t all come back at once. We thought draconification was permanent, after all.”  

Zelda hummed in resonance. She was still scanning the party, looking for something. She wasn’t sure what it would be until she found Link, a ways away talking to Purah. Talking was a generous term since Purah was telling him and a few others a story but Link wasn’t listening. He looked right at Zelda. No matter where she went he always seemed to be watching her. 

“Nothing is that permanent, I suppose.” Zelda offered, feeling like she was wrong. 

She returned the favor of watching to Link and tracked him politely leaving the conversation and heading up to the turret walls. 

—

Once she followed him, Zelda looped her arms around Link as he leaned on a railing. Her chin slotted into the crook of his neck and her body hummed with the rightness. 

It was a good view, from up here. The party roiled on and Zelda could pick out the forms of their friends dancing along to the music. Parallel lines of people entwined and separated in a dance Zelda knew to be from Necluda, probably taught hastily by Hylians here, picked up even hastier by the stumbling Sages and people from other regions. 

Her and Link were pressed close above it all. She was wearing his clothes, they still smelled like grass and grilled meat from earlier, and Zelda felt a pull in her chest toward this feeling of home she couldn’t place. It’s the same ache that had been there since she woke up. She didn’t understand, she was home. Pressed close to Link watching their friends stupidly dance below, it couldn’t get much more home. And still, all her pieces weren’t here. 

Link put his right hand on hers. He turned his head slightly to press a soft kiss to her temple. Zelda squeezed her eyes shut and felt in bright pulses their waterlogged kiss moments after she woke up. How long did stupor last, while they tried to process that the other was real?

Sometimes, she felt the weight in between her collar bones at the hollow of her throat. It was invisible, but still burned. Zelda felt it now. But the stone was gone. 

She turned her face farther into Link’s neck, making sure no one but him would hear her speak. “Can we go home?” 

Link unfolded them so he could look at Zelda. He tucked some of her frizzy hair behind her ear. 

“Yeah. ‘Course.” There's a lazy smile on his face and his eyes were glossy. Zelda got the sense that he had been waiting a long time to hear her say that. Good thing, because she had been waiting an awful long time to say it. 

—

A day's journey to Hateno later, at three-thirty PM sharp, Link spied Karin across the bridge. He nodded to Zelda at the door and her smile nearly cracked her dry lips, it was so wide. 

Link watched Zelda wave to Karin, who blinked several times, making sure she was real before bolting over. 

What made Link cry was the way Karin sniffled, shoving her face deeper into Zelda’s neck. 

After, Karin led them back to the school where kids still played in the yard. Link had this vision, the whole walk to Hateno, of a small armada of kids rushing up and nearly knocking Zelda over when they saw her. When Karin tugged them up the hill to the school, Link’s vision came true.

Zelda giggled senselessly around the onslaught of questions and cries launched at her. She was up to her knees in crying grade schoolers, and Link was crying, too. 

“Where were you, Miss Zelda?” Aster asked. She leaned on Zelda’s knee while she sat on the steps of the school. Zelda had been excitedly listening to all the kids' stories from when she was gone. (The monster curry story earned Link a very interesting look.) Even some younger kids who lived nearby were here, she held a small boy in her lap who refused to let her go after he hugged her. 

Zelda looked out at her tiny, rapt audience. Link could see her work out how best to say it to them, how to tailor and omit it so the kids wouldn’t worry. 

She pointed up at the sky and Link watched every small head tilt up in the direction of her finger. Zelda even looked out that way, too, like maybe she recognized something in the clouds. 

“There was a kingdom in the sky. I was there,” Zelda said. A kingdom in the sky , that’s what Koko called it before it was even visible. 

And she was right. Nevermind that the kingdom didn’t make its way up there until after its first rulers died. Nevermind that Zelda never got to see it float with her own eyes. Link wanted to take her. 

A litany of questions rocket out after she said that. “What were you doing?” “What was it like?” “Can we go sometime?” 

Zelda did her best to answer them all. “I was helping the people there. They were trying to save our world.” 

Panic fell over the children, realizing this meant their world was in jeopardy. Funny, how little information kids process about their current situation. They probably didn’t think much about the rocks falling from the sky or the way most parents didn’t let kids wander as far from town anymore. 

Zelda tutted, shook her head at them and the small crowd went silent. “It’s alright,” she said, “it’s all safe now. The new friends I made made sure of that. I told them all about you, you know? I said I would have to come back and tell my brilliant students all about the lessons I learned.” 

Fear melted away, Zelda quietly swept destruction back under the bed. She started telling a story about the constructs, Link saw each kid hang on every word. Zelda was crafting small artifacts of memories in the corners of each of their minds, he was sure. 

“Hey! Professor Link, you went to the sky right? My brother told me you fought a monster there, above Zora.” another kid said. 

Zelda looked at him, brow quirked, and mouthed Professor Link? 

“How did you get there?” the kid asked. 

Link smirked back at Zelda then told him, “I’m friends with a dragon.” 

—

In the bleeding autumn night, Zelda had tears in her eyes from laughter. 

“I thought you died.” It sprung like a leak from her taut rubber band cheeks. It didn’t fit the mood, ripe from the funny way Link had taught Navi to weave through his legs following a piece of cheese. “I thought you fell down that hole and died and all I was doing in the past was for nothing,” she continued wistfully, not quite as sad a tone as the words warranted. 

Navi curled up on the floor next to Zelda where she sat, Link dropped his arm, palm empty of cheese crumbs. “I didn’t.” 

Odd to have a dog when you live the nomadic lives Link and Zelda did. But Navi sort of found them. She was at the Dueling Peaks stable the day after the second Calamity, without an owner. According to Link, she slept in the bed next to Zelda the whole night. A few months later Zelda went back to see if the owner ever turned up and they didn’t. So Navi and Zelda went back to Hateno. That serendipity, from what Zelda has heard from other pet owners, was often how it happened to people. 

When they were gone the past few years, roaming the country trying to rebuild, Link took her to the pasture up the hill. Navi herded the cattle and roamed the fields until Link and Zelda returned. An arrangement made sweeter by Link now buying cheese from Koyin.

“Uh huh. Neither did I.” Zelda pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She always ran colder, even in Link’s long sleeves and the quilt she made with Impa last winter. 

Link crossed his legs under him on the floor, the rug tugged at his socks. “Well, happy that worked out.” 

Zelda nodded, then held his gaze. “Sonia had the most amazing stories. She was a priestess, you know? I can’t believe the lives she lived. She told me that once, somewhere in Faron she helped paint these amazing murals on cave walls. It was part of some ritual for a festival they celebrated in the spring. I–” Zelda dropped her head, shaking, “I can’t say it like she did. It all seemed so real when she told it.” 

Link fidgeted, resisting the urge to leap forward and grab her hand. “It sounds real. It sounds amazing. What were the colors like?” 

Zelda smiled, watery and thin. When Link walked up to the broken bridge outside the Lucky Clover for the first time the harsh winds whipped his hair around and whistled in the cavern below. He stood there for a long time, trying to imagine the bridge the last time he saw it, late spring peaking into summer. It got somewhat warm, even in Tabantha at that time, grass verdant and flowers blooming. But when Link stared at that wide cavern, his feet were sunken in a foot of snow. What a difference a fucking blizzard makes, huh? Juanelle had said with humor and guile in her voice. The distance between Link and Zelda sort of felt like that cold cavern. 

“You’re kind. They were amazing. I’m not sure what they were. She called them all sorts of things I don’t remember. I think she said one was like the color of mango juice dripping on your skin.” Zelda picked at the crackers in the box on the floor. Her favorite, Link had brought them from Tabantha a few weeks ago, walked across the repaired rope bridge and everything. Barely needed a jacket. The crackers were probably stale. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The paintings are gone, anyway. So is Sonia.” 

“I wish I knew her.” Link said. Hollow, stale like the crackers. Zelda took a bite of them anyway. 

“I wish you did, too. Although–maybe it’s for the better. You all would have gotten on too well.” Zelda’s cheeks glowed bright red in the low light of the house. 

Link’s heart thrills with the memory of Zelda looking similarly embarrassed over afternoon tea. “Oh I wish they could have gotten to meet your loyal knight. What was he? Brave and true? A dedicated hero! Yes they would have loved me I think!” Link got on his knees, hand on his heart like a player in those ridiculous melodramas playing the Castletown theaters that Impa would drag him to a lifetime ago. 

Zelda, incredulous, threw a fistful of stale crackers at him, which excited Navi. And it became a wild keep-away from Navi since neither of them were sure the crackers were safe for her to eat. 

Navi mouthed Link’s hand as he tried to snatch a cracker from her. It didn’t even leave a mark but Link recoiled like he was mortally wounded, collapsed on the floor in front of Zelda with his hand clutched close to his chest.

“I’m wounded, my lady. In my last moments, know that my heart still beats true for you. Do you have any words for me, before I succumb to this beast’s wounds?” 

Zelda leaned over him on her knees, she looked severely unimpressed. “You’re unbelievable.” 

Link laughed wildly, and Zelda broke too. It was an easy feeling, falling like snow in his stomach that he’d do anything she wanted him to do.

…

The kiss Zelda left on his lips was long and sweet. Link had that sideways smile hanging off his face when she opened her eyes. This kind of smile was a drag of steel across flint. 

“Our first kiss was like this,” Link said. 

It made Zelda pause because it certainly wasn’t. If it was the one she was thinking of, it was under the stars, somewhere between the castle and Kakariko, a stone's throw away from Mount Lanayru and the end of the world. Dark pressed in on all sides of them, somehow the wide open wilderness was the only place they were allowed to be alone. 

The only thing that made it similar to this was their lips connecting too briefly, Zelda’s chest pulling toward him with moremoremore, a string of unintelligible wants lined up for Link to knock down.

“No it wasn’t,” she said. 

Link nodded, smile still hanging. “Yeah, we were in the same spot. We couldn’t sleep and you were just looking at me.” 

Oh. So he’s thinking of their first kiss in Hateno. The kiss that probably should have counted as the first if the too-big and watery weight of the world wasn’t trying to cram itself inside Zelda’s head. 

Then, Link was right, it was similar. Autumn had broken summer’s fever after the long, hot months she spent realigning herself with reality. They were lying on this bed in the nearly morning light and Zelda had reached out to brush some of his unruly hair out of his face. 

Zelda did it again, Link’s hanging smile turned into recognition. She wondered briefly if Link forgot about that starry and rushed kiss, under the weight of the world in the shadow of a mountain. She half hoped he did, after all, there was a reason she deleted that picture before handing the Slate to Impa. 

Link took her hand gently like it was a butterfly and placed it on his jaw. “Then you put your hand here.” 

“I didn’t mean to.” Zelda defended herself, six years (and some millennia) later. 

She felt her heartbeat in the warm feeling of her palm on his skin, felt the electric shock in the raised surfaces of the scars her hand covered. Back then, Zelda didn’t move when her fingers drifted down to his jaw, pronounced at the corner. She held her breath and wondered what part of her betraying body would light up first and give away her desperate, unbridled want. 

More memories crowded in, but they didn’t feel like the wave of the world. It was all him. Him, him, him , until the cows came home like Uma would sometimes say with a chortle. 

“I thought I made you,” Link whispered, eyes closed in the darkness. “Just by wishing.” 

Something made Zelda recoil. It wasn’t him. It was almost never him, anymore. He was the song she sang until she came home like the cows. But wishing is nothing more than a drop in a bucket. It's nothing. Zelda’s had her fill of wishing and willing, no matter how either of them have turned out for her. It’s the limbo in the middle she has a problem with, the uncertainty, the air hurtling around your ears while you free fall. 

“Wishing for things doesn’t make them happen,” she said. It was probably a little mean, but she softened her tone as much as she could. 

Link’s summer sea blue eyes opened in the dark. “No? Then how come I’m here? And you’re here? And the world’s here?” He moved her palm to his lips and left a solemn little kiss there, right at the center. Zelda’s nerves light. 

“Dumb luck?” She tried for a joke, it rang stale. But Link still smiled. 

The Master Sword was warm when she clutched it to her chest. Everything was warm, burning. The world was a distant memory, pinpoint on a map. Ancient texts and droning sermons and hymns said the Sword was a spirit. A woman. She had spoken to Zelda before. Her voice told her to be strong. Do not be afraid. You were made for this. 

Now, Zelda tugged across the old blankets and pillows to hold Link as close as she could. She tried not to hold too tight as she breathed hard, counting on the exhale. Nothing was burning. The world was here, she was in it. There’s no more wishes, just the glow of star fragments, miles away. 

Link felt her panic and gripped back, hands flat and reassuring on her back. He didn’t let go. He didn’t let go. 

—

Something Hateno was good at was getting stuffy. It was cramped and small and all one bedroom, tucked-away quiet. Symin said Zelda could take her time coming back to teaching lessons, which she took him up on. So there was nothing to fill their days except the loud nothing that always took place after they narrowly avoided the end of the world. 

Zelda vividly remembered the way the house here in Hateno was ominous and dark in her first few weeks here. It was mostly due to the mind she was trying to unscramble and the house slowly melted into her entire world. But now Zelda only remembered the horrible calm, stillness like a tomb.

There was too much roiling around in bed between Link and Zelda for it to feel at all comfortable. So when Link looked at her across the table one morning and said, “Maybe it would be nice to go around and see some people.” Zelda tried hard not to fire out an agreement like an arrow. 

And they were off! Into the breach, tossed! Less violently this time. They brought Navi up to the pasture and walked down the big hill, wading through a group of children whining like Navi did about them packed and ready to go. 

“I’ll be back before you know it. Maybe even before the harvest is done.” Zelda patted the soft little heads as she went. 

“But why do you have to go at all?” Karin asked, tugging at the hem of her shirt. 

It was the weather and the restlessness and the Hateno house’s hollow echo of a life she forgot was her’s. It was the raw way Link always looked at her when she told stories of Rauru and Sonia, and the horrible crack she felt in her chest when Link would tell her stories, too. 

“There are many people and things I’m anxious to see again. Maybe if we’re lucky Professor Link will even come back with a new recipe or two to show you.” 

Zelda smiled sharp over at Link as Karin rocketed off her side onto his at the suggestion of another cooking lesson. 

—

Heaving against the wall was so dramatic, really. Zelda almost couldn’t take herself, hand clutched to her collarbones struggling to find purchase as her lungs won some imaginary race. She hoped she dashed away nicely. Not obtuse and head-turning so she could be alone to rewire the connections in her brain that make her perceive the air up here as too thin to breathe. 

She had been well aware of Mineru’s desire to pass on, so really, she was just being dramatic. Zelda had helped her pick a day and a place and a time, all perfect and practical not a pin out of place, like Mineru herself. It felt good then, when it was all plans and times. Now, in the rich, too-thin feeling of the Garden of Time, Zelda felt sick. 

It was Mineru gone, and the five lives sworn to her right after. It was the title she finally decided to take on of her own volition. It was the steely, naive gazes of her friends. As brave as they may be, all of them were too young to understand what their promises meant. How could they when they had only lived the years in their age? Zelda couldn’t blame them; it was a fluke, afterall, that she kept living and living years that weren’t hers in places that couldn’t stop knowing her. 

There was a cool shadow in the corner of her eye, a shape she’d always known. 

“I’m fine.” It was not convincing, heaved out of tired lungs and half said. 

“Uh-huh,” Link said cooly. 

“Really.” It came out a little better, more upright, like her body was now, in the presence of someone else. 

“It’s okay if you’re not,” Link said. 

“Is it?” Zelda looked at him. She tried not to falter under his concerned face. “Is it alright for the Queen of Hyrule to not be fine?” 

“That wasn’t what I meant.” 

Zelda waved her hand out at him, leaned back against the wall. It was better, she thought, in the dark of the crook of her elbow over her eyes. In the distance, she could hear Yunobo gawk at the view again, Riju’s ringing laughter punctuating. 

Link placed his palm on her arm, gentle pressure to coax her out, “Honey.” 

It was soft and tender, the underbelly of a too-trusting animal. He only called her this when he knew she needed to be handled with care, when the syllables of her name might be too much to bear.

“You know, maybe it won’t mean anything, being Queen. Maybe it won’t be real.” It’s wishful thinking. Buyers remorse, Beedle’s chirping sing-song voice would say. Like the kingdom was a truffle Zelda forgot to check for bruises. Link was usually good about inspecting materials before buying. 

“Maybe. It’s a different world.” The century sounded long in Link’s voice and his hand was strong and comforting on her back. 

“It is. Mineru…she gave up her body, her life for it. Lots of people did.” She counted up all of the people she lost every night and lost them again in her dreams. “I made a sacrifice. It meant something.” 

“It did,” Link said. 

“No. It meant something. In the past. It doesn’t mean anything now that I’m back. I—I wasn’t meant to be saved.” 

Link said nothing for a moment. And then, “No one is doomed like that. Certainly not y–” 

“I was. I am.” Zelda looked out at the horizon, if it could be called that. Her fragile little fortress she lifted into the clouds for Link. “Sometimes I think it would have been simpler if I stayed a dragon.” She didn’t mean to say it out loud. It just fell out. And oh, bless Link and his screwed-up-with-worry face, what a mess Zelda’s made. 

She stood off the wall and folded into his embrace. Zelda took his face between her palms. 

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, then his lips. Humanity had felt foreign to her for a while, but lying made it fit back on like a worn jacket.

—

When their wandering took her all the way to a sandstone wall in Gerudo Town, Zelda tossed a slice of hydromelon toward Patricia’s mouth. She barked and jumped up, scarfing down the melon before grumbling like a molduga under the sand. Zelda looked expectantly at Riju.  

“She just listed some coordinates. Underground I think, you’ll have to give them to Link.” Riju turned away to scribble them down and hand them to Zelda. 

She’ll give them to him later. Right now, Link was, blessedly, away helping the guards clear up a lizalfos infestation west of town. They probably finished a few hours ago and by now Link was cooking everyone fried rice and telling them all about climbing mountains or swimming with Zora or how he got his high cheekbones or whatever else Gerudo women found so fascinating about Link. Zelda was sort of happy to have the afternoon alone, with Riju.

Zelda folded the paper up, “He told me he talked to a chicken because it could tell the future.” 

“Recently?” 

“No, when he was looking for me.” Zelda said. 

Riju’s laugh was bright like the sun, “So recently enough.” It didn’t feel that close in proximity to Zelda. But everything felt far away. “He’s probably jealous of Patricia, walking up to any cucco on the road, asking it what to do. What’s the score?” 

“Three three,” Zelda said. The game was whoever’s melon piece got a good fortune, got a point. Bad ones were minus two points, coordinates didn’t count. They’d been playing for a while. 

Zelda wasn’t sure of Patricia and her prophecies. She’d had her fill of future-seeing. The Oracle who told the Royal family about the Calamity asked to see Zelda alone first. It was part of a tradition that came free with her heavy name. Zelda looked deep into her eyes. She’ll never forget the color of them: amber gold, like a swimming sepia tone, a lake of autumn leaves, cold and dead. She looked at Zelda and said, “You will suffer.” No catch, no explanation. Zelda, five going on fifty, said “That isn’t fair.” The oracle sniffed and waved her hand around, “It’s not supposed to be. It's the future. It’s yours.” Not a day went by where Zelda didn’t think of how the oracle was right. 

But she liked the game and how devilishly competitive it made Riju even though there was no absolutely no skill involved. 

Riju tossed another slice toward Patricia. After a moment, Riju sighed. “More coordinates.” She scratched them down and handed them over. 

Zelda flung a slice, it almost slipped out of her grip because of the juice. She wiped her palm on the silk of her pants. 

Riju translated Patricia’s grumbling, “‘You will drown in the love you have, you will become it,’” she sighed, “You get a point.” 

“No, I don't, that sounds violent.” Zelda smiled, expecting Riju to agree. 

But Riju didn’t return her grin. “Come on, it’s good. You’ll be showered in love from the kingdom, the people, your friends, and Link . And everything will be good, you should get a hundred points for that one!” 

Zelda wrinkled her nose at her interpretation. “Drowning means death.” 

“Not always, I guess. Sometimes you make it through.” Riju threw another melon slice. 

…

From the angle of Zelda’s head on the bar, the world looked odd and warped. She was looking through her glass, half empty. How strange it would be to see the world in this way, she thought. Maybe some species of animals do, or bugs. She’d never know would she? It’s possible the Light Dragon saw whatever it did in this oblong perspective. Zelda would certainly never know if that was true, though. Maybe its head swam with the buoyant quality Zelda’s did now as well. How else could you last centuries and eons except for drunk on four and a half Noble Pursuits? How do they do it still, spinning around and around in rigid circular sigils as Link told her? Apparently the Light Dragon circled the whole continent in a wide breadth. Right over Hateno , Link said one night cutting carrots for dinner. 

Zelda tried not to be too sentimental about it. If she was, it would mean she was really in that dragon’s body, flying around. Inhuman and waiting, always waiting. Zelda still didn’t believe it. She’d been asleep, after all. Any manner of odd things happened while one slept. 

The half of the drink she peered through now had been Riju’s idea. Stupid, Zelda thought. But she was glad to be young and stupid still, and she tipped a sip into her mouth. 

As she’s gotten older Zelda’s learned she was a drinker. Maybe that was too strong a term for it. She drank more than she thought she would in her youth when wine glasses were quietly removed from her table settings. But Zelda’s life was incredibly different than it was when she was a child, and it was even more different than she thought it would be then. 

The drink tasted like family. The biting alcohol always left more of a sting than she thought it would, sour and short. But the fruit was intense, bursting with memories of giggling on the floor of the Gerudo palace with hydromelon dripping down her chin. Urbosa would pick her up off the floor and wipe it with her thumb, commenting on her sweet tooth. Zelda thought maybe it was her who first suggested a fruit cake be made on her birthday. It had been a long time since she’d thought of Urbosa like this. 

Being with Riju always stirred it up. They were unmistakably related, despite the lineage being distant and Urbosa being her some-odd great aunt. They had the same cheekbones and noses. Hauntingly, the exact same shade of green in the eyes. It made Zelda’s stomach turn when Link first introduced them. But Riju must have seen this or been warned by Link of Zelda and Urbosa’s closeness, because Riju tread cautiously and kindly. By the end of the night, Zelda was sort of convinced that it was possible the whole Calamity happened in order to put her and Riju in the same place, able to be friends. 

There was a drinking song being sung and across the bar, Riju lifted her glass to Zelda as part of the climax of it. Zelda, still slumped, raised her own, too. She tipped the rest of it back in accordance with the song’s instructions. Riju laughed and the way she still stood and seemed aware made Zelda jealous of the four years Riju had yet to live to catch up with her. 

Technically, Zelda wasn’t old. Her body was twenty-two and ready for the splendors of a long, Hylian lifespan. But she was much older than that, in truth. She didn’t think a number could quantify how old Zelda felt. The people she felt closest to did a decent job: Link, the one hundred and twenty-three year old twenty-three year old; and Impa, one hundred and twenty-six, the old fashioned way. 

She never said it, but especially now, drunkenly swimming in her own head, Zelda felt closer to the Deku tree in spirit than anything else she could think of. 

She made it a point to find it while with Sonia and Rauru, having not been able to pick out its pink canopy on the horizon. When she did it was a tree no bigger than the one in her front yard now. I am already centuries old, Princess. Its voice sounded the same. It explained it was once as large as Zelda knew it to be, towering over Hyrule, but it was starting over. What happened? She asked. I was destroyed, as any being is. Though mine may have been violent and intentional. Something very Hylian. It told her. And you have grown again? Zelda supposed it wasn’t the hardest thing to believe. Nothing is permanent, Princess Zelda. 

Then, Zelda had thought a great many things were very, devastatingly permanent. Death being on the top of the list, right under the claymore and rocks set up in memory of her father, though those were simulacrums. 

A hand washed over her back, Zelda sat up and found Link attached to the calloused, familiar palm. 

“Having fun?” He looked a shade tanner even though they’d only been in Gerudo a day. His scars appeared whiter against his golden skin, Zelda wanted to trace the one on his wrist that looked like a fishhook. A warm glow over his taut cheeks even suggested a small sunburn. The Gerudo voe armor kept him cool but didn’t protect him very much, Zelda could see his shoulders and chest were a little pink. He was so gorgeous like this. Link was gorgeous always, but especially now while she was drunk and he was sunkissed. 

She nodded. What outrageous decorum for the somewhat/almost Queen to be conducting. But Zelda was certain no one would hear of it. The women of Gerudo Town had always been excellent at keeping the very closest parts of Zelda safe. 

“Good. So did I. I managed to beat Buliara’s monster kill count by the end of the day,” Link said. 

Zelda narrowed her eyes and held her hands out like she was holding that holy sword on his back and made a sound like she was hitting him as she swung. Somewhere in her head she realized she was drunker than she had thought. Link stumbled back feigning hurt after the fake blow which made Zelda giggle wildly. Link caught her hands and kissed her play fists. 

“You’re pretty drunk, huh?” He asked. 

She nodded again, “It’s pretty fun. You’re pretty, pretty.” She laughed again. 

Link stayed for one round with the rest of the guard that filed in with him. Buliara told the story of invading the monster camps. She ceded to Link when she revealed his higher score of dead monsters. Link got Zelda several glasses of water while explaining how they were ambushed by one final monster while he made everyone fried rice. 

Zelda laughed then, to no one. I got it right. 

When she thought that snarky thought about the fried rice and the Gerudo women, Zelda had been cross with Link for something she couldn’t remember. Was he too close? Too caring for the anger and confusion she felt back here, on land? Whatever it was, he was too charming and distractingly pretty in the bar light for Zelda to care anymore. If it was something real the dog of her anger would be at her bedside in the morning. 

In bed her head felt watery but Link was warm and the sunburn on his shoulders and back made him warmer. She touched the pink surface of it when she rolled over. It was sticky from the insides of an aloe leaf. 

“Ow,” Link said in an even voice. 

“Sorry,” Zelda whispered.  

Staring at the ceiling Zelda thought all the way back to that afternoon and the melon fortunes of Patricia. As she drifted off she felt so pleasant that she considered Riju was right and she did deserve the point for her good fortune. 

When she dreamt, Zelda floated on her back in a wide ocean and everything was very still. 

—

“You are lying.”

“I am not. ” 

“There is no way those men thought I told them to fight monsters in their underpants .” 

“Sure they did.” Link shrugged, swung around the trunk of a tree like an old bard, just missing the lyre. “It came from the Princess’ heavenly lips.”

Zelda pushed him off balance. They’d crashed at a stable the night before, just like her feverish memories after the Calamity. Zelda had been in the stiff, hay-scented bed next to Link too afraid to admit to him in the audience of the stable that she’d been lying awake for what felt like fifteen hours waiting for the sun to slice its way into the small gaps in the canvas walls. When it did, Link raised himself from easy, dreamless sleep and after stretching said to her Wanna go see the sky? 

The sky he meant was the Great Sky Island. A constellation of wells of land strung together by decaying tracks and waterfalls. A conglomerate Zelda built like a shell to heal Link’s vaguely broken body. The last place she saw before swallowing time. But she liked the way Link said it, full of casual confidence like they were going down to the market. 

When they came with the Sages and Purah for Mineru it was during the day. At nighttime the gold of everything seemed purple. When the moonlight caught bright on the water, Zelda felt a little like she was walking through the stars. 

“The stories you’ve told have been strange, but you really expect me to believe that?” Zelda asked. 

“Now why would I make up something so fuckin’ stupid?” Living in that town full of farmers has made Link shave off the ends of every harsh word, making it sound languid dripping from his crooked mouth. There was something foolishly young in the way it made Zelda’s heart race. 

Briefly, Zelda considered the question. Link would try to make her laugh just for the sake of it. He’s done it often and even more so lately. And this sounded so unimaginably stupid Zelda couldn’t see it. Weeks of men at the Foothills stable, shadowboxing in their boxers. But the voice at the bottom of the well also sounded so stupid. And so did the missing goats. And the talking cucco. It was all so ridiculous she half assumed he was making this up so she’d think everyone was in as much disarray as he seemed to be at her absence. Still, she hadn’t seen the papers yet, but something about Link seeing those things made them more real. 

On the other hand, Link was never a good liar. Zelda could usually smell the deceit on him a mile away. And he seemed hand-on-his-heart honest about talking to that cucco. 

“So you went into that cave naked, then?” She asked. 

Link hummed. “Only got this to prove it.” He held out his left arm and showed her the deep and jagged scar on the soft inside running long to his wrist. “Learned then just how good monsters got at fusing weapons.” 

She stopped while Link rolled on forward, swinging their little pack so it grazed his thigh on every lull. Zelda put her hands on her hips. “You’re bullshitting.” 

Sunset fireflies dispersed in a circle around Link’s feet as he whirled around to her. He flung his arms up, innocent. “I’m not!” The scar gleamed in the night along all his others. Something about the sugar sweet smile on his face kept Zelda suspicious. Like if it was a joke told in front of an audience there would be raucous laughter right now. But there was just them and the loud crickets beneath their feet. 

They were acting out the scene where Zelda becomes distant and troubled after coming back to the world from ambiguous suspension and a terrible choice. The scene where Link rolls out a carpet and leads her home, where he pulls tricks and makes magic until she remembers to love this life again. 

(Enter looming dread) (Enter reservation) 

Zelda always hated plays and poets. Their stories never made sense. 

While their little campfire burned, she told Link the scar could have been from anywhere. He shrugged, it was true. Her boy was bred for violence and too many things too often got too many licks in on him. Don’t you believe me? And she said nothing. Zelda believed him but couldn’t say. 

…

It was Link’s idea to jump in the pool below the falls. There was all this down time of relative stability where the wealth of Link’s courage went wholly underutilized, so he’d get reckless doing pretty much anything. It was much more stressful for Zelda when the Master Cycle still worked. 

Now, he just had his two arms scarred and strong and a high ledge under a deep pool of water. 

“Come on!” Link bared his teeth like Sidon, which is to say like something rabid with glee. He shouted to be heard over the falls spilling over the edge. Zelda was still just trying to get used to how cold the water was on her legs. 

How did he get her up here, their campfire distant below the little falls? Zelda felt each painful pull in her muscle as they scaled the ten or so feet up to the top. Link was there to pull her weary body up with him. 

“I don’t know, Link.” She hoped she didn’t sound as scared as she was, but she couldn’t help it. 

Would anyone really blame her for a fear of falling after what they’ve done? How was Link unfazed and brazen at the notion of another drop? Damn that unfaltering, annoying divine courage. 

“Don’t worry. It’ll be fun.” Link held his palm out in the night. His right arm returned but it was marred, swirling pools of pink and white scars covered it, giving his palm a texture Zelda hoped to one day memorize on touch alone. 

Quickly, she dissected what was scary. The build-up was bearable, the nudge off the ledge wasn’t really a choice, and the fall was inevitable, really. Through deduction Zelda decided it was the interim of air that was the worst. All body no weight, all wind no crush. Just how long had she and Link hurtled through the air on the way down down down back to land? Hanging in the if of flight was unthinkable. It was a nonanswer and, oh, how Zelda dearly loved answers. 

So slowly, she drifted toward the only answer she found and put her palm in Link’s and let him take over. 

She let out a yelp as they hit the air. Goddess, has anyone ever felt this young? Surely not. Maybe every bird is a baby and youth is something with wings. Truly, they are called immortal dragons for a reason. In the rushing air the only feeling was Link’s hand tightly in her own and the smile frozen on her face. Everything stopped until they hit the water. 

Nothing felt impossible after. One good landing (maybe two if you count the other lake) erased every bad notion she had from before. When they came up from the water Zelda held her hands over her head victoriously, and screamed at Link across the water, as they were separated on impact. He shoved his hair out of his face and smiled, gleaming in the night. He gave her some version of I told you so which never sounded gloating from Link, only like joy. Like all things did from him. 

Zelda felt her body in every human inch. The clear, cold water filled her up and spilled over her cupped palms. She felt her arms and knees and back and shoulders that Link could touch touch touch . They spun around the pool like children in their stupid glee. Link gripped her hand tight so she wouldn’t slip on the slick rocks under the water as they walked along the shallower parts. 

Live she heard on the wind, whispered right in her real ear. Live. 

Zelda spoke into the sun kissed cap of Link’s shoulder “I don’t think this was supposed to happen.” Meaning living. Meaning being real. Meaning getting to hold him. 

“Who cares?” Link said matter-of-factly. 

But Zelda still felt like she was cheating something. 

Link saw her shift, felt the energy move in the air with her sourpuss face on his shoulder. He pulled a hand from the water and gently pushed her face up to look at him. The water dripped off his arm, hitting the water like shattering glass. 

Zelda let her cheek rest heavy like a stone in his hand, finger pads warm on the surface. 

“Zelda, do you remember after the Calamity…when you first came to Hateno? It was…it was soon after we first got there and we were taking all those long walks. You were wearing my old shirts ‘cause we hadn’t gotten you enough of your own clothes yet. And I kept asking you, ‘do you like it here? Do you like it here?’ And eventually, only after that fight about Impa and Kakariko, you told me, ‘I like it all.’” Link ran his thumb along her cheek with tender, devastating softness. 

She did remember. Of course she did. She remembered the long walks and forgetting she was a person, lost still in the half-life she lived for a century. Link’s chirping voice crowded her headspace. She remembered the horrible wind chimes and the too-bright sun and the too-real dirt; she remembered thinking, before the fight, it was awful and alive and wished Link would just say that. 

“Yeah. Well, that was a long time ago.” It was wrong to say, feeling like a tin bucket falling in her gut. Clattering and loud. Really, she’d been having a good time. 

Link shook his head. “No it wasn’t. Not that long ago.” 

“I think it was a while back.” Zelda stepped out of his embrace. She trudged through water and mud back to the surface, scaring the shiny bodies of the fish that trusted their momentary stillness enough to swim back around them. 

—

For a long time after the falls, Zelda walked several paces behind Link. He’d peek over his shoulder and see her arms crossed tight at her chest or her gaze set on the tight fists of her horse’s reins, solving some complex equation in her head.  

Link didn’t know where they were going for a few days. Usually her instincts led them somewhere. And it was his dumb idea to go up to the Garden of Time and ruin her mood like this. He thought of maybe visiting Tulin in Tabantha since they’d been making their way north from Gerudo. But there still wasn’t much in eastern Hyrule yet, so it would be long swaths of silent travel. Truthfully, Link thought they’d hop from island to island in the sky after the falls. He imagined Zelda’s eyes full and bright with wonder seeing the hazy dots of them on the horizon. He pictured them leaping weightless at the top of the sky on those islands where gravity acted differently. 

But Zelda had quietly asked to return back to the ground the morning after the falls and that was that. The islands weren’t going anywhere. 

…

It’s only when they get there did Link realize where they were going. He didn’t know who led who, he supposed it didn’t matter when they both were looking over the edge of the cliff down at the Forgotten Temple. It must have been called something else whenever it was made. Link wondered if Zelda knew what it had been called. He wondered if it had been called seventy other, different things in the time between now and when Zelda saw it alive and useful. Probably. But then, sometime before one hundred years ago it had just become Forgotten. 

It's clear that Link leads them down into the mouth of it. It’s cracked open and crumbling, reminding him of the great dead Colgera’s jaw blasting frigid air on him and Tulin on that wind ship. Link moves to open his mouth and tell Zelda about Impa and him discovering the glyph map deeper in the chambers but then he doesn’t. It feels like he’s swallowed glue when he stepped inside the musty walls. There’s not really anything clever he can think to say while he leads Zelda to Sonia’s grave. 

Of course, she knew it was there. She had been there when Sonia was buried. The Light Dragon had skipped over that part but Link could imagine her standing behind Rauru and Mineru and whatever children Sonia and Rauru must have had. Link could imagine the horrible chin quiver that happened before Zelda cried, he could taste the salt in her tears. 

When they get there, it's a scene Link’s played before. He stood at the back of the room, shadowing the doorway, holding the stupid Master Sword at his feet watching Zelda pay her respects. Goddess, what roads they took to end up back in the same fucking spot. 

Zelda looked gray when she turned around after she was finished kneeling next to the little plot of dirt. Over her shoulder as she walked toward him Link saw a silent princess resting between the stems of the sundelions. It was strange, Link thought, how similar they looked. But Zelda was gray and approaching. It was the kind of gray the window became on a cold, rainy day. Enough to keep you inside all week. 

“Let’s go back out.” Zelda settled her hand on his shoulder. She sounded suddenly very old. 

“We should make Rauru one.” It was stupid idea, Link felt as soon as it hit the air. But he was trying to make her more sunny. 

“Were you really that close with him?” Zelda asked. 

Link thought of the man sitting on a ruined wall, feet crossed and kicking, lying to him with every word. He hadn’t known then he was a king but that was never the lie Link got upset about. He felt that he was something of an expert in meeting the deceased kingly father-figures of Zelda by this point. And in Rauru, Link saw the same hunched shoulders he saw in Rhoam. Different sources. Probably. Link didn’t have all those pieces. He certainly didn’t have enough pieces of Rauru to warrant the want of a grave. 

“Well, no. But you were. And it would be good,” Link said. 

So there they were, knees in the dirt they carried in from outside, hunching oddly around the small wall they built with stones from the ruined walls. Zelda planted vegetables under Uma’s watchful eye in their yard two summers ago and it had gone something like this. 

They brought out some silent princesses from the slate since nothing else felt right to plant there. Briefly, Zelda’s gaze lingered on the sundelions. 

“Who–who do you think kept planting those sundelions? They can’t be the same…” Zelda trailed off. 

Link didn’t know. He thought of this too, after the memory where he saw it first. Maybe sundelions never died, he hadn’t seen one wilted in his travels yet. They were only ever bright and tall in the sky. Once he thought maybe silent princesses were the same way until he put one in the vase when he first bought the Hateno house and came back three weeks later to find it shriveled, its petals fell onto the nightstand, withered and small. Link tried to pick one up and it made an unpleasant paste in his hand as it tore apart. He killed a lot of monsters after that. Now, he only wondered about the science behind that. Why some flowers lived on and on while others died in three weeks. 

“I don’t know. I guess they don’t ever die.” 

It was the wrong thing to say. Zelda’s face soured and she dug the next hole with a ferocity so strong she hit the stone a foot below the surface of the dirt. 

“It felt like this when I was getting my memories back. Seeing everything again,” Link said. It was lame and didn’t mean anything. But it was all he could pull out. 

“Oh?” Zelda asked. She was intrigued. The smallest brow raised while focusing still on the dirt. 

“Yeah. I wasn’t who I remembered. At all. I mean you know that. You probably knew that right after the calamity.” Link had gone over that moment, golden and magical in his mind, in stark clinical clarity. He pictured himself as Zelda, noticing every new scar that hadn’t been there before. Did she see the sore-loser way he held his shoulders? Could she tell he talked more just by seeing a difference in his face? “I’m not that person anymore.” 

“And seeing the places in the memories helped? Remembering them?” 

“Sort of. In the end, it was never going to be about remembering anything. Well, most anything.” If Link was feeling a quarter better he may turn on a smile and say something pretty like except you . But it wasn’t really the time for that. They were digging a grave. “It was more like one big, long funeral. You know, where everyone gets up and says what they will remember of you, what you were like.” 

Zelda’s shovel hit the stone again and made a sharp clang . In that same way Link remembered Revali once saying how disappointed he was he wouldn’t get to attend his own funeral and hear all the compliments the mourners would shower his dead bird body with. Link rolled his eyes, a hundred years ago. 

“It helped to treat it that way, I mean.” 

Zelda back at the long hallway they walked down and back up three times to get too much dirt for this little grave. Her lashes fanned out like a seashell without even trying. “I think I remember too much for that.” 

Link took the shovel out of her hand and replaced it with his palm. Back in Hateno, she had these leather gardening gloves that have a coarse inside lining, made coarser by the dirt that seemed ever present in them. Now, her hands were soft and damp from the dirt. 

She looked at him and he searched and searched for anything to say. Link put his forehead on Zelda’s, landing a little closer physically to how close he always felt to her. What could he say to her, kneeling on the grave of the only father that she’d ever known? What mattered when she remembered every pin-drop, hair out of place of the last seven millenia of Hyrule? How could he iron it out like their sheet and make it clean and strange and new? He felt like asking her what do you want over and over until she gave him instructions to carry out or steps to follow. But he’d done that before and it largely wasn’t helpful. 

Mostly, Link wished he could take just an ounce of his easy forgetting and dollop it on her heavy brain. Allow her to take the blessed load off that he was allowed. Certainly she deserved this mercy. 

“I think you should try. At least a little bit.” Link added a salt pinch of humor to his voice, trying to dig up the sunny mood. 

Zelda was hanging in the periphery of his vision but he saw her smile. “I will. I promise.”

—

“ It’s probably just afraid,” Link said. 

Zelda held his arm back from touching it with force. “Yes, and it could act aggressively on that fear.” 

Link gave her a look like Really? But how was she to know about what this wet and shiny thing cowering under a shelter of rocks would do? It wasn’t human but wasn’t animal, like nothing Zelda had ever seen before and she had recently discovered a new species. It was scaly and bright, it didn’t look like it invited touches. 

“What if it needs help?” Link asked in a bleeding dagger heart voice. She forgot how that sounded sometimes. 

“We should still keep our distance.” Was this kinder than saying maybe the creature deserved whatever it got? Zelda felt quite averse to the thing, at first glance. It curled up in an odd circle, watching them with unblinking purple-green-blue eyes. How does nature make scales like that on something that isn’t an insect? Zelda didn’t feel the need to find out, which was unusual. 

But Link stepped forward then, slowly. He approached with his hands out and the thing blinked at him, fear in its odd eyes, Zelda could somehow tell. Maybe she felt it, heart beating in rapid time with this creature. 

As Zelda stood there and wondered why Link was doing this she realized it wasn’t really a choice. He heard the whining as they made their way down the road and here they were, his hand nearly touching its glowing back. 

The creature didn’t react at first, as Link stroked its back tentatively. Then, he scooped it up in one fluid motion, clutching it close to his chest in an odd brown and furry pile. Wait–no the creature was glowing green and blue and scaly. Yes. That was this one. 

Any fear left in the creature’s eyes disappeared. Its eyelids fluttered closed, yellow and bulbous lashes interlocking. It draped its head on Link’s shoulder and he beamed back at Zelda.

“See, Zel? She’s just scared. I think she broke her leg,” Link said. 

Zelda felt her heart beat painfully. Oh, she loved him, didn’t she? She’d known this for some time now but sometimes it was a lot to notice the whole totality of her love for Link. It could dwarf mountains and it probably did scare the gods. 

Zelda reached out and touched brown–no, yellow–fur. It made a low noise in its throat like it was finally safe. Her brain was having a hard time fitting these two memories together. Did they both happen? The dog on the side of the road and…and what was this? A dragon in Link’s arms? 

It was exactly how they’d found Navi, cold and scared by the road. She was small, she was nothing but big paws. Her leg was broken and her owner was gone according to the closest stablehand at Dueling Peaks. 

Link held the dragon and let Zelda pet it, grow used to how it felt on her palms. He insisted they had to help it. That no one else would. That it’s fate would be worse if they left it alone. 

The night was blue and long, there was a tear slinking down Link’s cheek, shining bright in the night. Zelda loved him. 

—

Sidon and Yona get married again. Sort of. A few weeks after everything calmed down, Sidon claimed they got married in wartime and didn’t get to hold all the proper celebrations. Their wedding was sort of a hybrid coronation-nuptial event. But when Link and Zelda received the letters in the mail (one formal invitation, one personal letter from Sidon) Link wouldn’t care if Sidon and Yona had four more weddings as long as he got to see Zelda’s excited gasp when she broke the seal on the invitation each time. 

“You know when we got the invitation, Zelda almost cried,” Link said. The autumn sun was eating him alive, warming his body in an even sheet as he laid on the rocks behind the palace in the Domain. 

“Really?” Sidon asked around shouts distantly beyond them. Link peaked open an eye and saw two Zora guards he knew to be close friends with Sidon throwing Tulin between them on a current of water through the air. It seemed like an elaborate keep away game from Yunobo, in the middle. 

Some Zora tradition, Link thought, this final day of youth Sidon is allowed before his wedding. He wondered distantly what Zelda, Riju and Yona were up to with all her other friends. Probably something less dubious and stupid. Maybe. 

Link nodded. “She was so excited. And she didn’t say why, I mean–beyond the obvious, but I felt like it was ‘cause it meant now she wouldn’t have missed out on it.” 

There was a very small list of people who knew Zelda was just recently a dragon, not for any true secrecy just because it was more effort to explain than it was worth, in her opinion. It will sound better in a thousand years, Link. As the legend. 

He wanted to bring up it's been well over a thousand years, but he was trying this new thing out where he picked his battles, instead of brandishing the sword whenever he could. 

“I’m glad, then. That was part of the reason we wanted to do it.” That warmed Link’s chest from the outside in, meeting the sun at his breastbone. “And my Yona deserved a better party. Certainly not one that was half my coronation.” 

That made Link guffaw and drag his hand through the water to splash Sidon right in the eye. Which, of course, had no effect but to make them laugh.

“You’re too much, man,” Link’s laughter was still biting at his lips, stretching the sun-warmed skin. 

“Like you aren’t?” Sidon bit back. And they agreed to disagree. 

“How is Zelda, by the way?” Sidon asked. He was such a good listener these days, not really the same as the swashbuckling prince Link met five years ago, a little closer to the little kid he used to save from lynels a century ago. 

“Okay, I guess. She isn’t happy.” It sounded worse when he said it than the plain truth that it was. Zelda had happy moments, he knew, but as a total he wouldn’t call her happy.  

“Do you think she will be?” Sidon asked. 

“I want her to be.” 

“That’s not the same thing as being.” 

“I know. I think she will. It’s hard. It’s like what happened to me when I woke up in this time. But I got months alone to work through it, somewhat. She’s going through it, now.” Link said to the clear sky. 

“Are you happy, now?” Sidon asked. 

Link felt really clearly that yes, he did want to be happy. But he was never sure if he was. 

There was too much rot tied to this one life he got. And he only remembered more of it each day. The time his sister was so sick she almost didn’t make it through the winter, his father slamming doors (always slamming), gripping drooping flower stems in front of his mother’s grave at 12, the hollow feeling in his chest carrying around the Master Sword the day after he pulled it, screams they could still hear halfway across the Rebonae bridge from Castletown during the Calamity. 

The feeling of gloom gripping his lungs and seizing his arm was a familiar feeling, after all. And what person who knew that so well could ever be happy in life? Link wasn’t sure, but he wanted to be. 

“I don’t know. I’m halfway happy. Is that a thing?” Link asked, laughing. 

Sidon laughed too, “I think so.” 

It’s funny, the idea to want happiness only occurred to Link around the time he met Sidon, Yunobo, Tulin, and Riju. It was a strange venn diagram overlap he wouldn’t dare to call a coincidence. He knew he loved them right away, being there for them and helping them was second nature, not an obligation. 

That was probably why, after Zelda returned the first time, Link knew for sure he would want to be happy. And why now, after she’s come back again, Link would do anything to keep what small happiness he has safe, nurturing it to grow. 

“I do want her to want to be happy. She makes me want it, I want to give that to her, too,” Link said.

“Maybe you should just lean into it.” Sidon sounded a lot like an unaffected teenager and Link raised his brow. “Life, I mean!” Sidon continued. “You both have gotten heaping helpings of it, and now look! It gets to be good , too! Just don’t question it too much and live it.” 

For a minute, Link considered Sidon was projecting. Long Zora lifespans meant you saw a lot in your fishy years. Someone like Sidon saw too much. Around for two cataclysms, the same awful cast in both. 

But he and Sidon weren’t all that different, Link supposed. So it didn’t matter if he was projecting. 

The keep-away game added a ball and had become closer to a sport. It made Link want to join.

Sidon stood up and shook out his stiff muscles. “Who knows, maybe you’ll get married twice just because you can and your friends missed the first one.” 

Sidon dove gracefully into the water and under the surface, zoomed a few yards from the rocks toward their friends before emerging again. 

“If it happens, though, I do hope I don’t miss you becoming king!” he shouted back towards Link with that smile made of the same sun that warmed Link’s limbs. 

…

“I must confess I am ready for this all to be done with,” Yona said. Her voice was sweet and singing. In a sour way it reminded Zelda of how people always described Mipha, which was never the way Zelda saw her. 

“Oh?” Zelda asked. Because it was all bright and cheerful and Yona’s delicate head was draped in delicate flowers as they watched lilies roll on the water’s surface, sitting in the afterglow of the Zora’s traditional bridal tea ceremony. 

“Yes. After the festivities, the pomp, I’m ready for life to be as it was. Or—I suppose as it should be.” Yona’s fine hands smoothed out wrinkles on the white cloth napkin.  

Yona arrived in the Domain a few weeks before the Upheaval, Link had told Zelda. Her and Sidon’s courtship was full of dire circumstances, tried by the weight of their people on their backs. Zelda felt she understood many shades of this. 

“Oh yes. That will be nice,” Zelda said like it was a foreign language. 

“Sidon was made for protecting this Domain. His gifts, his character. I am happy he was able to. But I am ready for our lives to slow. For us to get a chance to settle,” Yona said perfectly. “Do you feel the same?”

It was funny, talking about this like they were any other two women at any other wedding. Like the settling Yona desired was at all like the slack-jaw, boozy breathing in Hateno. Funny, how even though that was where Zelda lived that’s not the settling she thought was going to get either. 

“I’m not sure I ever considered it. Everything…happened so fast. And it has been happening like this for so long. It hasn't occurred to me yet that it is over. Is it?” Zelda punctuated with a polite laugh, self-deprecating and bright. 

Yona smiled back, understanding gleaming in a way Zelda didn’t expect. “I’m afraid it is, Zelda.” 

“Oh that’s bloody terrifying.”

“Truly horrifying.” 

Bright laughter echoed like the shine of yellow sun reflected off the silver tea set still steaming between them. A few tables over, Riju caught Zelda’s eye in a funny, knowing look. They were making a scene. 

“You and Link deserve hearty peace. I hope you’re ready.” Yona said it like she should brace for impact. Perhaps Zelda should. 

Settling had been nebulous in Zelda’s mind since returning. Too many other things danced a macabre scene in her head for her to focus on the gold and perfect nothing in front of her. But at this wedding where Zelda just decided she was going to pretend to be a normal woman from a normal place with a normal past, settling felt nice. It felt real. Even when she let the illusion slip and factored in the tragic math of her histories, Zelda didn’t find it a stretch. 

Maybe she was just getting older. Maybe she’s finally had her fill. But as much as she loves her research and as much as she’s sure these duties she’s assigned herself will pull her in a hundred directions, Zelda would not be upset to find herself waking up down the line, a sweet baby in a sling across her chest. They could be a few doors down from Purah, a half day’s ride from Kakariko. Life would feel slow and warm like honey, dripping into her easy palms. Zelda imagined Link’s laugh throughout the days and nights would make excellent music around it all. 

“That sounds rather nice. I think I’d like that,” Zelda decided. 

—

Zelda trailed a finger along the painted wood, tame and white. 

“Do you like it?” Link’s voice strained across the wide open room and echoed of horrible nights in Hateno. 

Zelda nodded this time, sure of at least that. “Of course you’d build a house that is practically just outside.” She gestured up at the starry Akkala sky, roof open like a throat. 

Link smiled, wanting to laugh but holding it back. “It's not finished.” 

“Hm,” Zelda said. It looks pretty finished to her, but what did she know of building a house? Probably about as much as Link did. 

She couldn’t stop walking around, looking at it all laying in front of her. Link hadn’t said it because he hadn’t needed to: it was theirs. Link had built it for them. Zelda could tell that from the star wide look on his face during his entire little tour. And this, this is where I thought we could watch the horses. I put your study on the ground floor, I don’t want you to be away all the time. But you can move it! 

Something in Zelda’s gut was put out of place at it all. The totality of this unfinished dream home in a box sitting plain in her lap made her sick. 

“You couldn’t have known.” Zelda said accusingly, since love for her was a crime that never went unpunished. 

“What?”

“That I’d come back. You couldn’t have known. And you built this.” 

“I knew it.” Link’s voice didn’t waver. 

Zelda laughed sad, like she was at the end of a tragedy, actors wailing on stage before her. That was the end she prepared for, that was what she was promised by that golden eyed oracle. At the wedding the idea of peace seemed so quaint. Part of her must have thought it was shimmering on the horizon like a mirage, always just out of reach. But here it was, all up close and gory in her hands. 

She looked up. The sky pressed in close on all sides of her. Had she really spent all that time in flight? The world was once just a little picture frame to her.

Link stepped in closer. Slowly, he took her hand and then fingers closed. His palm was calloused and his shirtsleeve was still wet from where the horses splashed water on him. The room smelled like wood and a faint hint of salt from the sea. 

“I guess I didn’t know it,” Link said, slow and perfect. “I just believed.” 

And there it was. Wish on a star, kingdom in the sky, hands gripping a broken sword, swallowing a stone, the kind of magic that fairies had, wive’s tales about wishbones. Belief was all that ever needed to breathe between Link and Zelda. 

“Oh,” Zelda said, as if that would cover it. 

She looked at Link and it was just the two of them in this big green wish house which existed so fully it was like Link had invented new shapes to accommodate it. 

“I didn’t know it was going to be like this.” Zelda didn’t know how else to say it. That life spilled before her like a silk spool knocked from the table. 

“I know. I didn’t either,” Link said. 

The house would be finished without a magical arm, the long way ‘round. And it would take Link until the leaves fall off the trees and the cold snap comes to Akkala. But Link would come to love the sweat and hard work that meant he made a place Zelda could love. 

Link and Zelda stood close in the room which was both finished and unfinished, but no one could say which. Link would close up the hole with no magic arm, the long way round. It would take him until the leaves fall off the trees and the cold snap comes to Akkala. Link would like it. They would go between here and Hateno, never really choosing or needing to. In a few years, Link would whisper in Zelda’s sleep that the only wish he would have made with the too soft bone on the night after the world didn’t end a second time would have been this. And the wishbones sit unbroken in the windowsill.