best friends don’t look at each other the way we do
A low stakes, high rewards and self-indulgent Zelink fanfic. Canon-compliant, takes place between BOTW and TOTK
chapter three: She is beautiful, I am a mess
Read chapter two here
My masterlist
Song: Lights are On by Tom Rosenthal
Summary: Link processes his destiny while Zelda slowly recovers. Link meets with an old friend, and realizes how much he wants to Zelda in his life.
Warnings: PTSD, implied self-harm, illness, trauma
Word Count: 3.3k words
Authors note: The last line of this? Scrumptious. I ate that up. Also I’m going to start doing different pieces of art/gifs at the start of each chapter mostly so I can see the differences in the notifications! Thanks for all the support! Everyone has been so kind this is easily the most supportive fan base I’ve ever written for.
Link doesn’t leave her side the entire night, yet again. He sits on a stool pushed against the bed, and watches as she breathes in the sleep. He refuses to sleep, which means he’s gone about four days now with very little actual rest. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, but fighting Ganon on the second day of that no sleep schedule has really taken a toll on his physical health.
In his quiet contemplation as Zelda rested, the weight of what just happened set in. His heart rate rose as he remembered the sight of the Calamity, its spider-like body dripping with malice and disgust as it sneered at him. The stench is still pungent in his memory, his bad ear still beats with the blood that filled his body as he faced his destiny for a second time. He’s supposed to be courageous, unafraid and rarely daunted by his fate, but in reality he’s terrified.
Link doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the feeling in his bones as witnessed by the beast. How he felt paralyzed, how the night before he prayed to the Goddess that he wouldn’t wake up. Make someone else do it, please.
He could never admit this to anyone, and even struggles to admit it to himself. If he’s supposed to be the closest thing to the God of Bravery, why does he feel like such a pathetic coward most of the time? Maybe it was his reckless abandon that caused his status, or the fact that he’s so desensitized to the horrors of his knighthood. But those things do not equate to courage.
What even was courage, he asks himself.
He looks at Zelda. “She is beautiful”, he thinks “I am a mess”.
Link places a nervous thumb to her jaw with trepidation. He gently holds her face, soft enough that it wouldn’t wake her. Her skin is so soft, her eyelashes so gentle, her breathing even. Does she have any idea how beautiful she is when she sleeps?
When day finally breaks, Link realizes how cold it’s gotten in the house, and he takes the brave step of leaving the sleeping princess to build a fire in the hearth. He does so quickly, using a fire arrow. He pulls on a warm shirt, and quickly returns upstairs to Zelda.
She was awake, looking up at him.
“You should keep sleeping.” He whispers.
She groans, “Why did you leave?” She was aware enough to tell?
“I built a fire.” Link explains, "It's cold.”
“Oh.” Zelda whispers, “I am cold.”
Link crosses to his dresser and pulls out a woven blanket from the bottom drawer, draping it over her and the blanket she already had. She whispers thank you. ”Did you dream?” Link asks.
Zelda nods.
“It was me and my mom, we were eating and laughing together.” She describes and Link smiles. He places his hand against her forehead, and feels that she’s burning up. Of course she has a fever, that would cause her body to have the chills, that on top of a cold house wasn’t a good fit.
“How are you feeling?” He asks, vocalizing from a whisper for the first time.
Zelda thinks about it for a moment, she’s so snuggled up in the blankets all he can see is her face. “I’m not sick.” She states. Link is skeptical, but he nods.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Are you going to leave me again?” She asks.
“I might. I think I’ll go into town and get some things from the market, and I should probably send a message to Impa that we’re alive.” Link explains. Zelda frowns.
“I’m scared to be alone again.”
Link frowns, “You’ll be okay. But you need to sleep, your body is trying to recover from-“ He stops himself, he doesn't need to explain any further.
“You need sleep, too.” Zelda replies. She was right.
“I’ll be fine.” He shrugs it off. “But you need to promise me that you’ll be okay if I leave for a few hours, alright?”
Zelda groans, “You’ll come back, right?”
“Of course.”
It’s a few more hours before he leaves, he waits until Zelda falls back asleep, and it’s mid-morning when he finally does. He makes his way into Hateno Village, which is as lively as ever. He first stops in at the general store, buying a few essential items, and telling the store keeper about where he was last.
“You’re telling me you got rid of that thing at Hyrule Castle?” He asks, skeptical. Link just nods and shrugs as he examines a swift carrot. Like it was no big deal. The man laughs behind the counter, “And you lived to tell the tale? I don’t believe it.” He scoffs.
Link sets his items on the table between them, digging out a handful of rupees. “Well, I lived to tell the tale of Naydra last year, you all witnessed that, didn’t you?”
“I suppose… but that thing at the castle is a legend, I never even saw it. Just got told ghost stories of it as a boy.” His voice was gruff.
Link smiles, “whatever you want to believe, you don’t have to believe me.” Link sets to rupees down.
“That’s more than the cost.” The man states.
“Keep it.” Link pushes it towards him before putting his items in his pouch. “Use it to fix your roof, I saw it was leaking.”
The man smiles, “you’re always so good to us, Link. This village owes you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, except maybe your trust. The story will spread and rumors will, too.” Link turns to leave, but stops just outside of the door, speaking over his shoulder. “It wasn’t a ghost either, it was a spider-like thing that hatched out of a cocoon with giant axes and swords.” Link opens his arms up to show the size, “Probably at least the size of three oxen!” The shopkeeper's face goes pale, “But that wasn’t even the hard part!” Link starts to smile mischievously, “Then we took the battle onto Hyrule Field, and he turned into a massive pig. As big as a house, or bigger.”
The owner was dumbfounded, unable to reply at first, but then he shook his head, “You have quite the imagination, Link!” He chuckles and waves him off. Link just grins as he exits the shop.
He makes his way up the mountain to Purah and Symin’s, making a stop at the farm to pet the cows and help the owner with a broken fence post in trade for some milk. It was about noon now, and he wasn’t expecting to take as long to get to the Tech Lab, but the fence was absolutely destroyed. The farmer didn’t know what caused it, but it certainly wasn’t a cow…
The light on the Hateno valley is warm and inviting. It will be the harvest soon. Link had missed his days here. Early on after he woke up, he spent weeks at a time in this little village. Mostly because he was still too poor to afford sleeping anywhere other than his home. It was a safe home base for him when he was freeing the divine beasts. It wasn’t until he had laid his friends' spirits to rest that he became the wild child of the forest he was now. The last year or so he stopped spending more than a few days anywhere, it was the anxiety of the upcoming battle he kept avoiding that caused him to become such a nomad. He learned that it was always free to sleep in trees.
He gets to the lab, and before he can even open the door, Purah is swinging the door open. “Linky! You’re alive!” She cheers, looking up at him.
”I am,” Link replies with a smile, “and Zelda is, too.”
Purah smiles wide, her eyes becoming fiery, “Incredible. Is she okay!” She opens the door for Link, he enters the messy-as-usual lab, setting his sack of goodies down on the table.
“I don’t know…” Link shakes his head, “She’s very tired all the time, and she passed out quite unexpectedly last night.” He sighs. “I’m actually rather worried about her.” He admits. “It took me a long time to wake her up after she passed out, too. Longer than it should have.” Purah walks over to the table before climbing on top of it to Link’s eye-level.
“But she’s alive! And I’m assuming her body has been preserved, no?”
“It has, she doesn’t look a day over seventeen. But her spirit and her mind has changed, she’s tired.”
“Aren’t we all…” Purah shakes her head, “But no one as much as her.” She shrugs, “I would love to run some tests on you two, it might help me figure out my age issue.”
“More tests? I thought you said you were done with me?” Link groans.
“Nope, now that Zelda is here I want to take a sample of her DNA, too, and see if I can reverse-engineer it to cross with my DNA and get me back to my preferred physical age. I’m sick of this.” She gestures to her child-like state.
“When she’s feeling better I’ll ask her. I’m sure she’ll say yes, considering her love of science and all.”
“Alright Linky, what are you here for, I know you didn’t come to just talk, you always need something from me.” She teases.
“Alright Purah… don’t be mad.” He says as he reaches into his pouch to pull out a smashed and destroyed sheikah slate: the same one that got him through his quest.
Purah’s face goes white. “You did not just do that to an ancient piece of indestructible tech.” She reaches for it, taking the device in her hand and cringing.
“Well it wasn’t that indestructible, now was it?” Link asks with an awkward laugh.
“How?” Purah asks, traumatized.
“It happened while I fought Ganon, it kind of… exploded, and then he trampled it as a giant hog in Hyrule field.”
“That is…” She chooses her words carefully, “Epic, Linky.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No! But you’re gonna be when you can warp to sheikah hotspots. You’ll just have to go on foot like the rest of us. Speaking of, did you see what happened to the shrine in the ocean?”
“What?” He obviously didn’t.
“It sunk back into the ground, completely gone! Symin watched it happen! I’m curious about that happening to the other sheikah tech…” She gets lost in thought, and Link realizes that they all might disappear just as fast as they were found. “No one is gonna be more heartbroken about this than the Princess.” Purah finishes her thoughts.
“I’m hiding it from her. She can’t take a heart break in this state.” Link groans, sitting down in one of the chairs by the table. “Purah… I need you to send a message to Impa. I would go myself in person and be back by dinner but I can’t because the slate is gone. I know you sheikah have weird ways of communicating through distance, especially you sisters.” Link sighs.
“Oh she’ll beat you if you don’t go in person. You know how she is.”
“Yes. Which is why I am absolutely sick over this. But I can’t leave Zelda, she’s not okay, and I don’t know how long it’s going to be until she is.” He explains. “Impa can be mad at me all she wants, but she deserves to know that we are both alive and safe, and Ganon is not.”
Purah squints, “Fine. But you owe me.”
“As if saving the world wasn’t enough.” Link scoffs playfully.
“Hey! Don’t get cocky, no one likes a cocky hero. Besides, it’s not like you did it on your first try.” Purah jumps down from the table and Link’s entire body seizes. She freezes in her tracks when she realizes she said that out loud. She slowly turns around to see Link tense and unhappy. “Linky… I’m sorry I didn’t mean-“
He says nothing at first, “Is that what you guys say about me?”
“Link, we've always pushed each other's buttons like that.”
“It’s fine.” He sighs, it wasn’t fine. He signs, “I’m leaving. I don’t need anyone else’s shit.” He always signed when his emotions were at risk of betraying his words. He didn’t want to upset someone with his words. Purah isn’t very good at signs, but she gets the gist.
It was rare to see Link genuinely mad, especially at someone he cared about and knows is good. But that was out of line.
“Link…”
“Will you just tell Impa that we’re okay. Both of us. The calamity is gone and we’ll come visit as soon as we get our strength back.” He grabs his belongings and heads out.
“Wait-“ Purah tries to stop him but he leaves too fast. He takes a deep breath when he gets outside, looking out towards the sea. He walks towards the edge of the cliff, staring out at the horizon, letting the salty sea air blow on his skin. He looks where the shrine that lived in the water once was, and nothing was there but the original mound of island sand it sat on.
Back at home, Zelda is still in bed, and Link frowns when he sees her. He sits on his stool next to her, placing his hand against her forehead again. Her fever hasn’t broken.
“I’m home.” He whispers, and she stirs awake, her green eyes looking up at him. She smiles.
“I had the most wonderful dream.” She sighs. “We were at the beach, you and I, and Impa and Urbosa… and my mother.” Link worries that she dreams about those who have passed, he brushes some of her golden hair out of her face. “We looked at the water and listened to the seagulls. My mother was so beautiful and healthy, not like how she was when I remembered her.”
Zelda was very young when her mother died, and she was quite ill for the years leading up to her passing. Link remembered that, he remembered many of the things Zelda opened up to him about in their final days before The Calamity. “Do you want some water?” Link asks, she nods. He stands up, making his way to the well outside and scooping a bucket of it before coming back in. He finds her sitting up in bed.
“Did you get up all by yourself?” He asks with a smile. She nods, her face still pale and expression lost. She was much worse today. Link scoops some water out with a cup, and hands it to her. She shakily holds it in both hands, bringing the wooden mug up to her lips and sipping lightly. Link sits beside her this time, but he feels petrified.
In the last two days they've already crossed so many boundaries. He feels as though he has to be the stoic Knight from before, never looking at her for too long, not speaking unless spoken to, and especially not touching without explicit permission. That was a whole lifetime ago, however, and he’s barely the same person he was when those were the rules.
But even so, he can’t help but follow those roles that he keeps breaking. He shouldn’t see her in such a state: shirt too loose, eyes droopy, sighs so gentle and alluring it could tame a lynel.
He knows no one is watching them, no one is there to judge them, but he cannot bring himself to hold her hand as she shakes, even though he desperately wants to. Placing his hand on her head to check for temperature and burns in her hair from her face was already a serious breach of protocol, and yet when he did it, he felt so comfortable, so safe. He felt more like himself.
Maybe what’s holding him back is the knowledge that she didn’t lose her memories. To her, he is supposed to be that obedient servant.
He knows they got very close towards the end. Based on the memories he’s recollected, he knows they broke those rules far more than they should have. But it was always by Zelda’s instigation. She wanted him to place his hand on the small of her back as they walked, she asked him to lace up her goddess dress, she initiated the gentle touches and hugs of despair.
Now, he’s terrified of taking advantage of her in her sickly state, but he wants so badly to lie with her. To finally get some rest of his own, in his own bed, holding the girl he worked so tirelessly to rescue.
He wishes he could rest as a reward.
He reminds himself that her presence, safety and life is reward enough.
And goddess, is that a wonderful reward. Her weight sinking down the bed, her intoxicating smell, their shoulders just barely brushing. She was incredible, completing a feat that no one had ever come close to accomplishing, and here she was, in his home, in his bed, wearing his clothes.
Link's stomach flips, and he immediately forces himself to relax. Realizing how immature his though process was. This was a princess, not a girl in the Gerduo Brothel. He was confused.
“What are you thinking about?” She asks him, pulling him out of his rampant thoughts. He snaps back to reality.
“What?” He turns to see her looking up at him with her shiny eyes. “Oh…” He desperately wants to tell her, tell her that he’s thinking of her and only her. For three years he spent sleepless nights staring at the heavens and thinking about her. How he hungrily searched for every memory just to hear her voice, and how he took her diary out of the castle to read every page, even the ones that were scribbled with doodles and blacked-out poetry. He wanted to tell her that he fell for her the moment she told him to open-his-eyes, and when he finally remembered what she looked like, she was even prettier than what he imagined.
“…Horses.” He says, dumbfounded and foolish. She smiles.
“I’ve always admired how you loved them. You were the best rider in all of the guard, I fully believe it’s because of how gentle you were with them. They trusted you, which made them listen to you.”
The way she spoke was so thoughtful, so intelligent. Link catches himself accidentally looking at her lips, but yanks his eyes away.
“W-What were you thinking about?” He asks.
She looks off, swallowing thickly. Zelda then lifts her hand, holding it palm up, staring at it. Nothing happens.
“My gift isn’t working anymore.” She states. “I tried while you were getting the water, and look, nothing.” Zelda explains. Link looks at her hand, not knowing what he’s supposed to see.
Her hand is so soft, her fingers long and slender, her nails clean and rounded to perfection.
Her wrists are littered with old scars.
Link wants to take her hand. She sets it down in her lap, “I suppose that’s alright. I don’t need them anymore.”
“What was it like?” Link asks. “In that castle.” Zelda shudders. “You don’t have to say.” Link states.
Zelda carefully constructs her words, “Cold. All the time I was cold. I wasn’t conscious usually, but I wasn’t… unconscious either. I know it makes no sense. I was in a sort of trance. Time seemed to move at a rapid pace while also simultaneously standing still.” She looks at him, rotating her body to face him, he mirrors her.
“Did he ever… say anything?” Link asked.
Zelda nodded, “In the beginning he would whisper constantly, but it was an ancient language I didn’t understand. The longer time went on, the more tired he got, but the wiser I became. He spoke less, and I was able to pick up on certain words and phrases. He didn’t expect me to last as long as I did, that’s for certain.”
Link listens intently, “How did you do it, last so long?” He asks.
Zelda’s big, green eyes meet his. She takes his hand with hers.
“Because I knew one day you would wake up.”
—
Read Chapter four here
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Okay, so I've seen a lot of complaints about the writing in totk, but I think the critiques are taking too narrow a view. Sure the arcs seem flat if you start from the point of Zelda and Link traveling below hyrule castle, but I don't think that's where you, the viewer, are supposed to start. You're supposed to start the story from the true ending of botw, and in doing so, the character arcs become not only beautiful, but complimentary and fulfilling. Spoilers under the cut.
Why should you start at the end of botw instead of the start of the game? Easy, because the game has to start in medias res, it's the nature of the game, but the story the game tells starts where botw leaves off.
They did this in botw. The game starts in the shrine of resurrection, but the story starts with Zelda's first journal entry/memory and the story is really about discovering your own fall and the rebirth that comes after destruction once hope exists in the light. The character arcs are about Zelda going from stubborn isolated powerless princess to conquering evil with the power of love. Link goes from the stoic knight that puts up with every expectation and falls to Link the amnesiac going at his own pace, at his own freedom, and succeeding.
The same way botw's story starts 100 years earlier, you have to start Zelda and Link's totk arcs from the true ending of botw. From the girl that had come to terms with her own powerlessness and sought to begin rebuilding from ash and the boy who fulfilled his one task, and is still choosing to use his freedom to help the dethroned princess rebuild.
The way Zelda is written is beautiful if you start from there. Because botw ended with her accepting that she had worth and duty beyond the golden power, and totk tells you how she showed that worth through service to her people. That girl that dreamed of being a scholar became a school teacher. That girl that had to fight so hard for her father's love and was convinced that everyone hated her own powerlessness? In her powerlessness she shared her knowledge with people and became loved for it. That girl who we left seeking the Zora, the only people that would remember her, when almost no one knows about the princess who was locked in the castle, is now known throughout the land. The girl that was missing for 100 years with only the sheikah remembering her, she disappears and the whole kingdom fights to find her.
The girl we saw walking away from the ruins of her home and her cage, listening to the distant goodbyes of her long-deceased loved ones, now has a home in Hateno where children run up to her house with just as much love screaming her name.
Now, in the middle of her arc, the start of totk, Zelda goes to confront the ghosts of Hyrule castle. In all her adventures in the time skip, Castletown and the castle are nowhere on the list. They are as destroyed as they were at the end of botw. BUT she has healed and grown, and is now strong enough, and ready enough to fulfill her duty, that she can return.
But she doesn't come back as it's princess, seeking to rebuild, she comes back as the archeologist, seeking to plunder its secrets. She hides the Champion's tunic there, (with a riddle involving light) and gasps in delight over all the archeological discoveries that had laid hidden beneath her feet all these years. She can handle the empty castle as a scholar.
But then she's in the past, and she's without Link, and she's meeting the people that established the kingdom she let fall to ruin. Zelda learns about the importance of being unified, as seen from her requests to the ancient sages, a central theme of totk. Zelda faces her own powerlessness when Mineru tells her there is no way back, and when Sonia begins to teach her control. Zelda immediately despairs over ever having the control and power Sonia wields, and it's the same frustration she had with her golden power when she was younger. But she asks for and accepts help this time (like she should have from Mipha in botw) and she gains control and power and it isn't enough in the past, but she knows how to make it enough.
Having united the sages, they watch her sacrifice in a sign of respect. The sheer ceremony of the moment is like nothing we've heard about what Zelda was like during the time skip. It isn't Miss Zelda the teacher that built a school in hateno, or Zelda the scholar that walked through Hyrule castle, it is once again Zelda the Princess making this sacrifice to swallow the stone.
It's meant to parallel the moment in botw where Zelda gets swallowed up by the Calamity. But you can see that she is surer of herself, centered, unafraid, and she does not ask Link to save her. She is not praying and looking back and asking Link to come save her. Instead, she tells him to save Hyrule. And it has meaning because she is also Zelda the scholar and Zelda the teacher and the thousand of other things we learn about her activities during the time skip. That is the hyrule she wants to save. That is the Hyrule she seeks to unite by asking the sages to bind their people to help Link in the future.
(She pressed the sword to her chest in a way that mirrored her stabbing herself, this time it is Zelda who died so that Link might live in the future.)
When Zelda tells Link that she's come home, you cannot say she has not changed from the homeless girl who had just learned to accept that her worth did not lie in birthrights and golden power. Zelda had learned her worth in the skills completely absent of any power, political or golden, but in the second half of her arc took up power and leadership again because that was what Hyrule needed of her. Because of the examples of Sonia and Rauru and because her fallen kingdom wasn't united and it needed to be. She is so much more complete than at the ending of botw, or even the start of totk. She has retaken the mantle of Princess, but she knows what it is about now and I don't know how else to say it if you aren't getting it.
Then comes Link, whose flexibility as the player has always required a less complex character arc, and probably deserves its own post, but I want to give it a quickshot anyway. Link leaves off botw probably still missing most of his memories, with the mastersword on his back, this time choosing to protect and walk with Zelda on her journey around Hyrule.
In the time skip, we learn that he sticks to her like glue. Princess Zelda and Link are perpetually paired by the people of Hyrule. Link barely even registers in people's memories without Zelda around, because he hasn't truly left her in all 5-7 years during the timeskip. He is known (again?) as 'Princess Zelda's loyal swordsman'. Is that a sign of him reclaiming some of his past life? Could be. What's important to learn about Link in the time skip is that he is no longer alone. Which is a big step from botw ending Link, who was always alone and had just begun traveling with Zelda again. From the rootlessness of botw, to saving Zelda, to making Zelda the place he always chooses to be, that's how Link's grown in the timeskip. He is no longer alone because he has Zelda.
He has someone worth fighting for now, he has memories of someone precious, someone he scours Hyrule to find. Link's freedom in botw was about discovering himself, but in totk, he is using his freedom to do everything to go to her. HE HAS A HOME NOW AND ITS CALLED ZELDA. Investigating rumors, walking into obvious traps, asking everyone and their dog about her. The goal of the game is to find Zelda. Bring her back.
And then you learn about Zelda's transformation. You see her crying. He pulls each of her tears and memories into himself. And this time it's Link asking 'do you really remember me?'. He has to take up Zelda's role and bring the amnesiac back to herself, give her back her memories. The job's not done because he found her transformed, she needs her memory back, it's not done until she's back and knows herself.
This arc is coupled with Link confronting his own failures. He was at the height of his powers when the demon king Zapped him and he let Zelda slip through his fingers. He failed her, just like he did before. And the people that do recognize him without Zelda all ask him where she is, and he has to admit he failed to them too, something he didn't have to do in botw.
But unlike botw, where he failed and the solution was to get strong enough not to fail/be strong at the same time Zelda is, in totk, the solution is to unite with allies. Unite the tribes, accept their help, and only then is Link and crew strong enough to take on the demon king.
It is only when he also takes up the mantle of Rauru and Sonia and unites Hyrule into a single force, it is only when he accepts aid from the past and pulls their vision of hyrule into the future, that he gets Zelda back. Zelda needed to learn how to take up being a princess again for the sake of Hyrule. Link needed to learn how to unite Hyrule for the sake of Zelda.
And though I would have liked Zelda to be a little dragonish, or Link to deal with being an amputee, it doesn't bother me that much because their arcs weren't about that. I don't think it makes the stories bad writing.
But you have to start from the true ending of botw to get that.
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Post-totk headcanons!
heavy spoilers ahead
ZELDA.
this woman spent millenia as a dragon she is going to have goddamn antlers.
so yeah, she keeps small antlers. they glow. big golden eyelashes too, eyes keep a strange glow to them
she's generally more eldritch.
I think she tends to have more memory issues after coming back. nothing too bad, but she struggles a bit sometimes.
Now Link- he does not just get back his arm. Amputate that man.
yeah so he loses his right arm from a bit above the elbow once Rauru disappears for good and takes his arm and magic back.
He gets phantom pains and all, sometimes he reaches for ultrahand and is just like. ah yeah
he takes it pretty well honestly. Purah and Zelda figure out how to make him a prosthesis and he wears it most of the time, but doesn't like it that much - he just would hate to get caught by surprise by monsters or the Yiga and fumble w/ his left arm.
Zelda and Link are always together after totk happens, but like. even more always together. And it's not just Link protecting Zelda anymore, she's protecting him too.
I think she gains a sort of very faint healing power from her time as the light dragon, so she tries to find ways to always be touching Link so he doesn't get too hurt
Mainly because he has the habit to just. not say when he's hurt, or when something's wrong.
The sages ask a lot about their ancestors, and Zelda loves to tell them and Link everything about her time in the past. She warns that she may not remember everything well, but they don't really care.
more than 100 years after the calamity started, some of the champions are starting to get forgotten - mainly, Revali and Urbosa. Daruk literally has his face carved in a moutain and the Zora live so long that most of them still remember Mipha, but Revali and Urbosa are really becoming more legend than anything. Link and Zelda make sure people remember them.
After everything starts to calm down, Link is forbidden from coming into Gerudo Town again, unless there's something happening and he has to come and protect the city, so Zelda visits often and tells him all about how everyone's doing. Riju sometimes comes out of the town and goes on walks with Zelda and Link.
Link spends a lot of time in Rito Village, telling the kids about Revali and how annoying he was- but mostly about how strong and skilled as an archer he was. He doesn't want Revali to be forgotten.
Sidon is so stressed lmao, Link visits him often. He brings gifts for him and Yona and spends time with them and everyone at the Domain. Sidon is very thankful for his friend.
Link hangs out a lot around Mipha's statue, just letting her watch over him. it's one of the rare places he feels safe enough to put his sword down and just relax.
Tulin is SUCH an excitable little bird child. He loves hanging out with Link. They're siblings I'm deciding right NOW
Link shows Zelda his dream house in Akkala and she just loses it. Link. Link you put my paintings around? Link you out our favorite flowers here? Link you got a bigger bed for the both of us? Link our horses are here? Link I'm Going To Marry You
They move here and make the house in Hateno a safe house for everyone in the village and every traveler that might come. They place travel gates near both houses so they can still go to the school.
They get married because I said so-
Back in the King's time the wedding would've been really big and public and annoying, but Zelda isn't having it. She does make a public announcement that they are getting married, but the actual wedding is a small thing (lol small).
They get married under Satori Mountain's cherry blossoms, and invite the sages, Yona, Purah, Impa, Paya, a lot of the kiddos they met in their adventures, etc. they wear flower crowns too. Link cries. Zelda cries. Everyone cries.
Link doesn't really become King because the second Zelda goes yeah you're kinda legally King now he just goes EW. NOPE.
So Link stays the Queen's knight, they're just yknow. wed.
Hyrule is rebuilt! Nothing bad happens again! because I cannot have these babies hurting again
I think Zelda learns how to fight cuz like. Come on this girl is definitely going to want to explore the Depths and Link is not going to let her go in there without a sword.
She's going to love Froxes. like so much. They're Frogs Link!!!! They Are Frogs
She finds she's most comfortable with a bow and gets a strong golden bow made for her (not the bow of light but something similar, way less powerful) and a shield cuz like goddess pls use shields people
edit after finding the dusk bow and that one person in the notes said she should get the dusk bow she gets the dusk bow
omg they build cities in the sky. They make big ass stairs.
anyways pls add on if u got headcanons for post totk.
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