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linksthoughtbrambles · 2 years ago

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The Long Climb Toward Summer

A gift for @a03-anxiousandafraid for the Hateno HIdeout Merry Midna's Mixup gift exchange! A huge thank-you to @bellecream for beta-reading this!

BotW AU, Zelink if you squint, about ~7.5 K words. You can read it on ao3, too!

Summary: An unusual winter solstice celebration prompts Zelda to take a close look at her knight—and her people.

~~❄~~❄~~❄~~❄~~❄~~❄~~

The castle staff had outdone themselves.

Zelda had seen a great many balls, festivals, and celebrations in her eighteen years in Hyrule Castle.

She’d seen the astounding centennial New Year’s celebration: a hundred paper lanterns entrusted to the sky, emblazoned with the royal crest, Hylia’s golden wings fluttering westward with the wind, a stream of emblems thanking the midnight for allowing them to pass it by.

The ceremony on Zelda’s eleventh birthday had bordered on ethereal. Clergy from all over Hyrule had come to give Zelda their blessing—blessings for her journey from childhood to adulthood, for the grace to take Hylia’s power within and wield it for her people, and for her own protection, that she may be steadfast in body and mind in the face of the Calamity to come. Shafts of sun had found her as she accepted each with humility. Past sunset, the acolytes lit the cathedral with thousands of teardrop-shaped candles, faith evaporating the kingdom’s tears before her. The experience had left her falling into an exhausted sleep, serene, certain she would awaken transformed into Hylia’s light (though, of course, that hadn’t happened, and the weeks following drew dark curtains about Zelda’s thoughts).

Last year’s ball commemorating her father’s fiftieth birthday had been opulent indeed, boasting a host of dainty foods to coat in warm, velvety cheese and rich liquid chocolate, decorations appearing as though they’d been gilded, brazen, defiant against the early September Sun. The court poet had composed the day’s unyielding sounds: brass boasting a fearlessness of the future. It had been impossible for anyone in that room to brood within solitary thoughts (except Zelda, of course).

She had seen those remarkable occasions and many others.

Yet this—this—rooted Zelda to the spot with unmitigated awe the instant she passed beneath the archway, even driving thoughts of her intrusively persistent knight-shadow from her. She didn’t notice the swift scuff of booted toes on stone as he avoided colliding with her.

The traditional ball at winter solstice had barely altered from year to year within her lifetime; a lovely exercise in lighting the long-lingering dark, it made a night of pleasance and tinkling glass which she typically could no longer enjoy. Bright as they were, candles could not light the deep recesses of Zelda’s heart, nor could they deflect the darkness of black pupils following her in silent condemnation; Zelda, herself, ought to have been the light, by now. She wasn’t.

These previous experiences had left her unprepared for this year’s departure from the cyclical.

Brilliant rays of diffracted, rainbow light peppered the ballroom’s surfaces of stone, white tablecloth, glass, and a hundred other myriad colors and textures belonging to food, clothing, skin and fixtures Zelda couldn’t process all at once except in overall impression: hope—look at the light.

Those soft rainbows scattered in through the room’s tall windows, through the multi-paned balcony doors to the frigid outer air, emerging from an avian menagerie of ice sculptures arrayed just outside. Four huge birds loomed, pristine as polished glass: a swan, a crane, a dove, and an owl. They each bore the appearance of that stance just before flight, angled inward to face the fifth sculpture, still of wings, though not precisely a bird: the traditional three-dimensional representation of the royal family’s crest, the wings encompassing the lower half of the symbol of three triangles. This particular sculpture’s plumes bore extraordinary detail-work in the true shape of feathers, and the surfaces tweaked the Sun’s golden light into all those shapes and colors.

Just within the border of the windows, a veritable flock of birds hung, wings arced in the grace of mid-flight blessed with gentle updrafts—birds of paper. Birds of all kinds: sparrows, pigeons, herons, swallows, hawks, pheasants, gulls, all painstakingly shaped and dyed, gentle suggestions of the true bright colors, the sweet sight of spring ever growing with the birds’ flight north (for they all faced that way) as the Sun’s spectral presence shifted among them.

The gargantuan evergreen tree beside the left balcony door stood as the only familiar monument. Even decorated with shining ribbon, glittering baubles, and dangling spears and spirals of cut glass, its thick needles devoured light—each shaft of brilliance falling upon them splintered, usurped by each spindly leaf’s deep green, diminishing to extinction in silence. The tree’s height and width entirely hid its innards. A large assortment of offerings already lay in thanks at its foot: gifts for the less fortunate in Castle Town, a tradition in the royal family to soften the dual cruelties of cold and dark.

It was why this event posed the greatest challenge for the castle’s kitchen, too—for on this night, the castle fed more than its own inhabitants and party guests. No one in the town would go hungry. Zelda had seen the trestle tables carried far below her, arrayed in a long line to the gatehouses where dinner would be served for any who wanted it. The food at the ball itself would be elegant, but nothing so opulent or plentiful as that on her father’s birthday.

A good many people had begun to partake, quite a few couples turning about the dance floor, rainbows dappling their flowing forms.

Her father was not among the dancers or the grazers.

He was walking toward her.

The light appeared far less entrancing with him growing in her vision.

She swallowed, her chin raising the merest fraction. Whatever it would be this time, she would bear it. Perhaps he thought she had taken too long in her study of the shrine uncovered at the quarry, time she ought to have devoted to supplication at the feet of the Goddess.

Her father’s heavy boots stopped a few feet from her left. He towered over her, his face turned down, a crease between his brows, a slight frown as he considered her. He glanced rightward toward Link and blinked, his head and eyebrows raised as though carefully evaluating her knight, too.

Her father’s eyes then returned to hers-

-and his face softened.

“Zelda,” he said, stepping forward with a smile—a tired one, but genuine—and taking her hands in his with a sign. “Well. You look splendid tonight, my dear.”

Her mouth nearly fell open. The royal seamstress had, indeed, crafted a lovely gown, its heavy skirt well-suited to the cold should she exit to the balcony, its textured cream fabric catching the light within sweeping curves of royal blue and gold embroidery, irregular yet natural, as currents in a gentle brook. Yet the dress was hardly worthy of surprise. Her gowns were always lovely.

Her father remarking upon it was another matter entirely.

“How very much like your mother,” he continued.

The room seemed suddenly still as he patted her hands and a recollection arrived—an image of him with her mother at the last of these balls while she lived. He’d smiled often, then.

��Th- thank you, father,�� Zelda said.

“Ah,” he sighed. “Come. On this long, dark night… let’s be light, ourselves.” He offered his arm to her. She slid hers in as he led her to the dance floor.

The father-daughter dance occurred each year, but this time… this time, he smiled at her as they joined those already making merry. He spoke of Zelda’s mother: of how she’d loved the solstice ball, how she always pushed him to dance in a far more spritely way than he’d been comfortable with, and how he’d obliged her, of course, since he’d had such difficulty refusing her anything.

“Indeed, daughter, we’d disagreed at first on what to name you. I’d thought it confusing for your name to be identical to your grandmother’s. I thought tradition ought to bow to practicality. For were the two of you in a room, and I were to say, ‘Zelda,’ two heads would swivel my way without some other way to clarify.” He humphed a laugh. “I’d begun to refer to your grandmother as Zelda One, and you as Zelda Two—only in your mother’s presence, of course. I daresay I’d have been in deep trouble were I to refer to the queen as ‘Zelda One,’ especially as our history makes it quite clear that she was, at the very least, the two-thousand-and-twelfth.” He grinned at her, his eyes crinkling. “It turns out, as usual, my wife was right. The name Zelda suits you supremely.”

Zelda’s eyes had grown more watery than usual as he spoke. “Thank you, father.”

He harumphed again.

When the song changed, he nodded to her and walked beside her to the floor’s edge, where a crowd had begun to build. “I hope you shall enjoy yourself tonight, daughter.”

She thanked him again, and he headed toward one of his financial advisors. Most likely, they had business to discuss.

Zelda stood quite perplexed, even lost, her usual context quite displaced.

“May I have this dance?” a voice said.

Zelda turned to find the court poet’s polite, yet warm smile directed at her. She’d always liked him. His company on several of her expeditions had been most welcome. She returned his smile. “Certainly, Zuho,” she said, placing her hand in the one he’d offered, his brows raising at her acceptance.

“Wonderful,” he said.

She’d danced with him once before, last year, and he’d been an obvious mess of nerves when she had, likely worried he’d make a mistake and embarrass himself in front of the Crown Princess of Hyrule. When he’d spoken, it had been stilted and consisting of nothing but facts about the music scheduled for the evening (not that Zelda would complain—she liked to learn, whether it be about guardian remains or music). The current experience differed in its entirety. His smile remained warm and he spoke with her easily about a piece he’d been writing about the shrines they had visited. Then the conversation turned to her.

“I am glad to see, Highness, that you appear in good spirits today,” he said.

“Oh.” The sound of surprise escaped her. Fortunately, she’d made it with Zuho, and not with some landowning bigot who would look down his nose at her for being a Hylian and not an automaton devoid of all emotion. “Yes, well… tonight has been pleasant thus far.”

Zuho’s smile broadened. His eyes flicked toward the solstice tree far across the room. “I see. Would that have something to do with losing your shadow?”

Zelda blinked, then followed his line of vision.

Her knight stood straight and stoic, expressionless, his eyes staring at the far wall with marked disinterest, directly in front of the (still growing) pile of gifts surrounding the tree. He held his hands at his sides as though ready, at any moment, to draw that irksome sword of his.

It was the furthest he’d been from her outside her chambers in months.

Zelda turned back to Zuho, feeling more than a little pleased. “I hadn’t thought of it specifically until now, but you may be right.”

Zuho grinned.

She danced with the castle’s steward next. He’d always had a bit of a soft spot for her. He spent a few minutes reminiscing on how she’d occasionally steal herself down to the castle kitchen, to the pantry, in search of fruitcake.

“As though the Princess of the realm couldn’t have it delivered to her chamber,” he chuckled.

Zelda grinned. “I have always preferred to do things for myself.”

“Ha! Including cutting the cake still sitting on its pantry shelf.”

“Indeed! It was freshest that way.”

“It also meant you could cut quite a large slice.”

“It was more efficient than cutting two or three small slices.”

He laughed openly. “Ah- Princess. I must admit I miss those days. I hope I shall live to see the next Princess in this castle. Perhaps she, too, will have an extraordinary love of fruitcake.”

She laughed with him.

He bowed out as the dance ended, and Zelda found herself wandering toward the refreshments table, a pensive smile on her face, confused, at first, why that conversation had touched her so. She ladled herself a generous portion of mulled meade and sipped it, the warmth slipping down her throat, coiling outward from her stomach to cradle her chest in the glow of comfort. A child—a baby—that was it. No one in this castle had spoken to her of such things—not ever.

A future.

Children.

Not the looming threat of the Calamity and her ability—or lack thereof—to defend Hyrule from it.

She breathed a puff of surprised air, rippling the surface of her drink.

Perhaps the friendly, calming nature of her first three dances had set the evening’s tone for everyone in the room.

Or perhaps her own demeanor had changed thanks to them. She couldn’t be sure.

But her next dance partner had greeted her with a genuine smile, if a bit closed, and not a single veiled insult passed his lips.

This became true for the one which followed.

And the next.

Until by her seventh dance, Zelda’s countenance had become truly merry. She spoke freely and easily. She and all her dance partners had steadfastly ignored politics in favor of all manner of other, more pleasant conversation.

The minister of agriculture raved about new recipes from an upstart chef in Lurelin who had made razorclaw crab a sudden sensation despite its rubbery flesh compared to its close crab relations’. His detailed descriptions made her mouth water.

The general visiting from Akkala Citadel spoke of the extraordinary fall they’d had that year, of the leaves turning even more vibrant colors than usual, and of children making all manner of fun with them—leaf piles, leaf crafts, leaf imprints left on paper through rubbed charcoal—the mystery of his fascination with them solved when he revealed his own children’s construction of a leaf-crown for him which (he claimed) had left him with bits of dry leaves in his hair for three days.

Then Robbie had claimed her hand for the next dance. She still enjoyed herself. Mostly. She would, perhaps, have felt more comfortable had he removed his goggles for the party. The conversation, blessedly, turned to guardian parts and his pleasure at discovering those miniaturized cores to power handheld weapons.

“Oh-oh YE-AH! I’m like the breeze of pure intellect through the tall grass… of ignorance!!!” Robbie declared.

Zelda very nearly managed not to laugh, but other dancers’ half-stifled giggles crept their way into her gut and she couldn’t help it.

“Laugh if you must. Just KEEP dancing,” he said with a smirk.

At least she hadn’t insulted him.

A brief break afterward found her huddled at the punch bowl, even hotter and more alcoholic than the mulled meade had been, with Robbie, Purah, and Impa chattering about the Sheikah Slate.

“I can’t believe you took a picture of that, Princess,” Purah said with a snort.

“Why shouldn’t I commemorate important occasions, as you have?” Zelda said in self-defense.

“Commemorate whatever you want, but why take pictures of just empty space? You should’ve had Link kneel and take the shot—OH! Oh, no, Princess! You should’ve gotten all the way back into blessing-pose, your hands, like—all the way up to the sky and your mouth like ahhhhh-“

“That’s not how the blessing-“

“Shush, I’m not done!”

Zelda shushed, somehow unphased despite her rank.

“Anyway, you should’ve been like you were blessing Link even though you were already done, and he should’ve been doing the kneeling thingie-“

“Genuflection,” Zelda offered.

“Yeah, that! And you should’ve let Urbosa take the picture. Snappity snap!”

“Urbosa didn’t know how-“

“So?! It’s easy! You could’ve showed her.”

“Mipha seemed more interested in the slate than she did,” Impa pointed out.

“Oh nooo,” Purah said with a sweeping gesture, somehow not spilling a single drop of her hot punch despite it being in her gesturing-hand. “Nope. Not Mipha. That would’ve been awkward.”

Zelda’s brows furrowed. “Why should it be awkward?”

Purah stared at her with an exaggeratedly-dropped jaw. “Are you kidding?”

“Why should I be?”

“You didn’t notice-?“

The visiting trade minster from Labrynna chose that moment to interrupt, asking for her next dance.

It turned out to be a rather amusing ruse, she discovered, when he used the dance to ask her all manner of questions about the court poet.

“Forgive me, Princess, but as you’re the only person he’s danced with I’d rather wondered if I could prevail upon you to answer a few questions?”

“I don’t see why not,” she said.

“Is he married?” he said in a half-whisper.

“Is he…? Oh. Oh, no, he isn’t.”

At the end of the song, he made a bee-line for Zuho and Zelda absently wondered whether he’d have any luck. She’d no idea who the court poet did or didn’t fancy.

It reminded her of that earlier eyeline to her appointed knight. She turned her gaze, once more, on the tree.

The Sun had set, and with it the room had grown less bright but warmer, hues of orange-gold spread by the glittering of brazier light filtered through those monumental ice sculptures on the balcony, many candles lit in candleholders painstakingly-placed in a wave-like pattern reminiscent of a southern wind, as though spurring all those paper birds northward to return home. In aid of the usual sources of light in the room, they left the darkness with nowhere to shelter-

Nowhere except that tree.

Its green could barely be discerned in light of such warmth—without the sweet blues of sky in the windowpanes. It loomed, near-black, towering by fifteen-fold over her knight, who hadn’t moved a millimeter in any direction. She watched him, curious, waiting for any sign he yet lived, and hadn’t become a statue, a decoration along with all the other inanimate objects in the room. He didn’t even blink.

She doubted he knew of her eyes upon him, so unwaveringly he stared straight out from his vantage before the prickling black.

Her chin raised.

Now she knew how to be rid of him. Or at least, not dogged by his constant footsteps.

Perhaps she ought to request a ball each week.

She shook herself, ashamed, for a moment, at such a wasteful thought.

It was the first unpleasant moment she’d had since her father’s hands took hers.

It would be the chosen hero who would cause it.

Well, she needn’t allow it to continue.

She scanned the crowd, finding one of the many influential landowners from central Hyrule. This one held nearly fifteen percent of all the land at gatepost town and had been of great help in housing the Sheikah excavating various sites on the Great Plateau. She made her way toward him and began quite a pleasant conversation with fervent thanks for his assistance.

The celebration moved well into the night with a calm grace. Zelda partook of another glass of punch, listening to Impa’s stories of children in Kakariko and how they spend solstice watching the town’s most skilled climber scale the tallest of those peaks surrounding the village and light a single torch atop it, a torch they would keep lit all until dawn in defiance of the year’s longest night. Groups of them would run to the great fairy’s fountain and shower her with hand-made trinkets of polished stone; they’d wonder if she would wear them, and if they would ever see her to find out. They’d give thanks for her water which never froze, and their parents would have to herd them back toward their beds—but they’d keep peeking, whenever they could, at that single lit torch, until the Sun finally rose and began its long climb toward summer.

The Rito had similar traditions—firing blazing arrows in the direction of the sunrise. The Gorons preferred to spend the night basking in their hottest of hot springs. The Zora lit their waterways from below with luminous stone, representing the light of the Sun reaching them even in the darkest night through the earth itself. The Gerudo typically enjoyed the (relatively) cool day and kept the bazaar open all night. Urbosa had told her of the tiny, flaring lights, like shards of fire-arrows for the children, magical embers, that the desert may never lose its heat.

Zelda wondered, not for the first time, what the Zonai would have done. They knew so little of them, with their written history problematic at best. She well knew history books were written by the victors. Perhaps, someday, she would have the luxury to delve deeper into those questions, too.

“So, are you going to ask him to dance?” Impa said.

Zelda stared at her. “Whom?”

Impa raised an eyebrow. “Link.”

Zelda scoffed, smiling. “I am not.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

“Huh.”

“Why should this surprise you?”

“Well. I mean. I figured—since he hadn’t danced with anyone else-“

“Of course, he hasn’t. He’s on duty.”

“He always seems like he’s on duty.”

“W- well…” She thought a moment, trying to envision a time she’d seen Link do something other than be on duty.

He ate food. Quite a lot of it.

Or so she’d heard.

No- no, he’d eaten when they’d traveled together, of course. He’d done so quickly and efficiently. While still guarding her. But that wasn’t quite on duty, was it?

Zelda shifted her feet.

When, precisely, was Link off-duty?

He’d dogged her every step since her father appointed him to her service. A few paces behind her, always. He left her at her door each night and she opened it to the familiar sight of his back each morning, his back adorned with the sword, its blue and gold hilt wrapped in green, and its opulent scabbard on immediate display in her vision.

What a thing to start her day to.

A few nights, she’d been sure he’d been practicing his forms on the bridge between her chamber and study, too. Unless, of course, she’d been dreaming…

“Princess Zelda?” Impa asked, her voice less certain. “Did I offend you?”

“Oh- oh no, Impa, of course not. Why should you think so?”

“You just… I wasn’t suggesting anything.”

Zelda shook her head. “Like what?”

Impa took another sip of her meade. “Um. Nothing in particular.”

Zelda had no idea what to make of that.

She spent a good deal more time in relaxed conversation throughout the room. She danced with Zuho again and the captain of the garrison at Lake Hylia. A string of dances found her eyes drawn, with each turn, toward the tree, the gifts about it now piled so high they stood taller than her appointed knight in most places. He seemed to shrink with each glance, though he never moved.

It appeared as though the world had grown around him, leaving him in the great shadow of the tree.

Zelda nearly rolled her eyes at herself.

When, exactly, was Link off-duty?

The time must be nearing ten o’clock. The dainty deserts had been served hours ago. Link had joined her this morning at eight o’clock outside her door. For her, this was merely her life—she was neither on nor off duty, precisely—but for him, he had been at work a minimum of 14 hours. He’d eaten something quickly when she’d taken lunch. That was all.

She tamped the groan which threatened to leave her at her inconvenient empathy. Thus far, this had been a perfectly pleasant evening, despite all odds. She’d ruin it for herself should she walk over there. She knew what he’d do if she tried to dismiss him, to enjoy the remainder of the party as a guest and not… whatever this was. It’s not as though other guards weren’t present.

She’d barely said a word to her dance partner. She realized with a start the song had ended, and he seemed more than a little leery of her – then she realized she’d been squeezing his hand hard enough to leave a red mark.

“Oh—please, pardon me. My- my shoes hurt.”

“Oh,” he said. “How unpleasant for you, Princess. Would you like to lean on me? I can take you to a chair.”

She smiled at him a little bit—a son of the richest woman in Tabantha village, and quite young. “Thank you, but I shan’t sit yet.”

He nodded, smiling awkwardly, and bowed out.

Zelda sighed, keeping her hands carefully un-fisted, as she moved in as stately a manner as possible toward her stock-still appointed knight.

He made no sign he knew of her approach until she’d left the dance floor, his eyes only then flicking in her direction for an instant. They seemed a brighter blue than usual. It threw her for a moment—in this deeply red, orange, and gold light, his eyes ought to have dulled according to predictable reflective and absorptive properties of materials in certain light. She cleared her throat, finding it odd, even to her, that she’d suddenly considered her knight’s irises a ‘material’ rather like she’d evaluate properties of guardian parts and various types of ancient Sheikah stone.

She reached him, standing before him and slightly to his left. He continued staring at whatever point in the distance he’d decided to fixate on for the past seven hours.

Zelda took a deep breath. “Sir Link. You have remained in this precise position since we arrived. There’s no need. You are dismissed.”

He blinked.

She shifted her feet. “Please, join the party. There are quite a few guards about. You needn’t remain on duty.”

His eyes moved at that, though not toward her. They flickered minutely, barely a fraction from that point he’d been so focused upon, as if searching for something near it.

Irritation sparked within her ribcage. He never spoke, but why would he not even look at her?

“Knight,” she said, her tone stern, but stopped herself short at the tiniest change of expression on his face.

He’d flinched.

Hadn’t he?

Zelda’s lips parted as she squinted at him, wondering if she’d imagined it.

She took in his form once more, begrudgingly impressed he could remain so still for so long without shifting his weight.

He ought to at least move about a bit.

With that thought came Impa’s phantom words in her ear: So, are you going to ask him to dance?

She nearly rolled her eyes at herself again.

She’d lost her shadow for the evening… mostly. Why would she request its return? It would be foolish.

She studied him, realizing while he was certainly broader than she, more muscular, his height would hardly be different—rather like the young man she’d just danced with. So young.

He might not even know how to dance.

His size would be an advantage there, she supposed. It would be easier for her to lead in a clandestine manner without leaning back to drag him along.

He really oughtn’t continue to stand there. Zelda could imagine what stories would be spun when the warmth and the drink had faded, and the morrow came in cold, stark reality—when people’s voices became spiteful again. They’d say she treated her knight poorly, wouldn’t they?

Yes. That was an excellent reason to stop his pointless vigil. She felt vindicated.

“Knight,” she said, “if you shall not move on your own, I shall instead request you dance the next with me.” She held her hands clasped before her, waiting.

His eyes finally, finally, dragged their way toward hers. The journey seemed torturous. Perhaps he’d been still too long. Perhaps moving something as delicate as eyes required a good deal more concentration after such a long, unbroken stare.

As he found her line of vision, that impression struck, once again, of his blues seeming oddly bright. They matched his tunic, didn’t they? The tunic had darkened more. Something about them left her breathless, her brows drawing together, drawing deep.

Her knight nodded slowly—not the curt nod he usually used. Perhaps he felt stiff.

Zelda’s stomach fluttered. He hadn’t offered his hand. She pointedly looked at it, then joined her eyes to his once more.

He got the message.

His hand rose in a fluid motion, in exactly the position it should have been were he to ask her to dance.

A little relieved, she took it and placed her hand on his shoulder as proper-

And gasped.

What was that?

A shuddering, pulsating- what? Beneath her hand on his shoulder.

She stared at him, breathing fast, uncertain. “Sir Link,” she whispered. “Are you well?”

There it was again—that lengthy nod.

She didn’t believe him.

Was that-

His heart?

Could she feel it even at the opposite shoulder? How violently must it be beating for it to be so?

A voice in her head told her quite plainly she oughtn’t switch hands to find out. People would notice if she suddenly decided to dance backwards.

She did it anyway, removing her left hand…

…and placing the right one above his heart.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

She winced, her mouth drawing into an open frown.

His expression remained unchanged.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

“Sir- sir Link. Are you well?!”

That nod again.

That slow nod, and those… bright eyes.

She hardly knew what she was doing. Her body moved on its own, following some instinctual directive, her thoughts far, far behind it as she took his hand and led him around the tree, closer to the windows, away from the light and the eyes around them. She’d thought to speak with him outside, but she realized with another shot of irritation several groups of people had gathered out there, admiring the sculptures and the now-brightening moonlight.

So, she did the only thing she could to hide them completely. She turned, pulling him between the tree and the outer wall—and pushed him inside, both hands on his chest.

The tree’s limbs had grown thick, but on this side the gifts were absent, making it easier to force their way in, branches and needles tugging at their hair, their clothing, and Zelda’s skirt, especially. She paid it no mind, traipsing through it just as she would an irritating growth of bushes surrounding a shrine. Once buried deep in the relative darkness, she released him, finding his eyes once more.

“You are unwell,” she said, focusing on that brightness, on whether it was what she’d thought, but it couldn’t be, because this was her utterly statuesque appointed knight.

He made no answer. A swallow worked its way down his throat.

“Sir Link. Your- your heart. It is hammering unaccountably.” She raised her eyebrows, pointedly ensnaring his eyes with her own. “Have you taken ill with a fever?”

That seemed to startle him. He shook his head.

She took a deep breath, then gingerly returned her hand to his chest—this time directly above his heart.

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

Either his heart’s palpitations had become even more violent, or her proximity to his heart beneath his ribs made the raw severity of his condition apparent. She knew little of medicine, but she knew enough to understand a Hylian heart shouldn’t beat so fast. This—this was the heart of a terrified fox near the end of the hunt, ragged and desperate-

Certain of death.

She stared at her own hand, feeling the hidden heart of her shadow.

She breathed.

Had it always been like this?

Had he followed her all this time… treading in her wake… with this terror ever-beating in his chest?

She finally found his eyes again.

They were shimmering.

She nearly asked him.

So nearly.

But she knew—she knew he would remain silent. Why wouldn’t he? She’d… never been particularly kind to him, had she? She never turned around to check on her shadow—to see if he was well.

Gingerly—with immense care—she raised her hands to either side of his face, approaching at a pace so languid he could stop her should he truly wish to.

Her right hand touched his cheek first, and his lips parted, sound finally issuing from his disused throat.

“N- don’t-“ he said.

Her left hand touched his cheek, and at that instant, liquid pooled, overflowing, streaking down that cheek; he turned that side of his face from her in swift shame, eyes shut.

“No- no, S-… Link…” Zelda said, brushing that tear from his cheek with all four of those fingers which had been at his cheekbone, her thumb hovering, uncertain, near his mouth. “Link…”

The eyelid still visible to her quivered, holding back whatever pain had collected there, but she wouldn’t allow it. Now she knew he’d been hiding such poisonous emotion, she couldn’t let him turn back in.

She brushed that cheek with her thumb, so gently, traced his cheekbone with it.

“It’s alright,” she whispered.

His face changed.

She’d seen anguish before. She’d seen it in her father after her mother’s passing.

She’d never seen it in someone as young as her.

His mouth opened and twisted down, water springing from the eye he’d attempted to seal shut, deep creases appearing between his eyebrows.

Her thumb swept the first tears away as her lips quivered. Some part of Zelda’s core knew, as she drew him against her, as she pressed his weeping eyes to her shoulder, nestling him in the crook of her neck, where her body had learned how to comfort another. It had been so long ago, her mind had forgotten—but her muscles remembered. They knew how her mother had held her, so long ago, when she’d been filled with sorrow. When her grandmother had died.

He heaved and shuddered against her, his tears soaking into her dress’ neckline. He wept silently but for his breath. Zelda sensed his hands’ uncertain hovering, and she took hold of first one, then the other, placing them at her back before returning her hands to him, stroking his hair and encircling his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Link.” She nearly asked him not to hide it from her, but her sinking thoughts churned a realization from deep within. He hadn’t hidden from her. Not really. He’d followed her every step. She simply hadn’t turned around.

She’d even yelled at him. Told him to stop.

The truth had been there for her to see, had she tried.

“How alone have you felt, Link?” Zelda asked.

A whimper escaped him, quickly tamped. He shuddered.

Her own tears began to fall.

“I-“ he said.

Zelda gasped.

She waited.

He shivered, holding her harder, but with nowhere near his knight’s-strength.

“Don’t hold back,” she whispered.

With a quiet, high-pitched sound, he pressed her to him, tightening slowly, as though waiting for her to cry out in pain or to push him away.

She didn’t. They soon held each other in vice-grips, the beatings of their hearts speaking directly to each other.

Zelda’s heart lead Link’s on a gentle downslope toward calm. It took time—eyes leaking, hands twitching, spreading reassurance with splayed fingers.

She thought he’d forgotten her question.

His pressure on her back released, though he still held her. His face remained stained, streaked and mottled, but he’d spent the tears themselves. His mouth worked. He wet his lips.

“I know you feel alone, too,” he said.

She pulled her head back to take in his face. She brushed tear-matted hair from it. She bit her lip. “Perhaps neither of us is alone anymore,” she said, her smile as warm as the light of the Goddess herself.

His gaze lingered soft on her smile. He pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I messed up your hair.”

She laughed. “It hardly matters.”

And for the very first time, she saw Link smile. The corners of his mouth turned up. His teeth suited him, framed in his face like that. “I guess.”

The music beyond the tree had been soft quite some time—the tail end of the evening heralded by gentle dances and seated conversation. Link twitched an ear toward the band. “I’m sorry. I ruined the end of it for you.”

“Nonsense,” Zelda said. “I had a pleasanter evening than I’d expected.”

“I noticed,” he said.

“Truly? You appeared as though watching the wall.”

“I just try not to stare at you.”

Zelda swallowed, a sudden fluttering of her heart. Thoughts for another time, perhaps. “You, Sir Link, have had a terrible evening indeed—and a terrible few months—haven’t you?”

His lips curled in, one shoulder raised in nonchalant agreement.

She huffed an empathetic laugh.

She thought of the room full of light, of his standing apart. Of his loneliness.

What would he do were she to return to her chamber to turn in for the night? Would he practice forms on her bridge? Would he try and fail to sleep in his bed? Would he stand with his back to her door until she greeted him next morning?

How could she make this the beginning of a new, less lonely reality for him?

She heard the clack of heavy ceramic as servants cleared some used dishes at a nearby table.

She took Link’s hand.

---

They soon found themselves out in the snow, Zelda’s thick gown bolstered by petticoats and her snowquill boots and coat, Link wearing a thickly padded doublet over his Champion’s tunic as they carried baskets of fresh-baked bread down the hill toward the second gatehouse.

“This is a good idea, Princess,” Link said.

“I’m glad. I… used to do this every year,” she said with a soft smile. She felt his eyes on her, though she had to watch the snowy path at her feet.

“Why did you stop?” he asked.

She sighed, carefully avoiding a patch which appeared tamped toward flat and slippery. “With so much at stake…”

She faltered.

“… And so many eyes on you?” Link asked.

“Oh,” she breathed, wobbling slightly as a foot slipped, but Link caught her elbow, his basket perfectly balanced on one arm.

She studied his face.

“Yes,” she said. Her feet moved again after a few breaths—after she saw another group of bread-carriers behind them. “I feel as though I’m seeing ghosts. As though they’re already… mid-recrimination for the end to come. I think many of them are.”

Link breathed a long stream of air out his nose. “…I’ve seen it, too.”

They kept glancing at each other, breathing clouds silvered by moonlight.

He kept hold of her elbow all the way to the trestle tables, where they relieved two surprised, weary-looking maids with noses red from cold.

“Please call it a night. We shall take it from here,” Zelda said.

“B- but-”

“Princess?”

“Please. I insist.” She held out her hand to take the ladle from the woman nearest her.

The women retreated with tentative smiles and multiple thank-yous, trudging toward the castle with cheerful chatter.

The game-fowl and vegetable stew in the cauldron before Zelda smelled spectacular. They ladled that and distributed hot cider, moisture from the steaming sustenance siphoned by winter’s chill mingling with all that radiance.

Zelda put up a brave smile, her defense against the front of the line as it wafted past her, a slow shuffle of hands holding wooden bowls and cups, mild disturbances of air, speech as they asked after each other’s well-being—as they answered things like, ‘Yes, he’s over the cold - see? He’s just there’ - ‘The shop is shut for the week, but we’ll make do’ - ‘She has another little one on the way, poor thing.’

Zelda filled their dishes to the brim, focused on her work, saying, “You’re welcome” and “Happy Solstice” at the proper times.

Link, beside her, loosed a chuckle. It drew her eyes.

A bedraggled man had wrangled four children in a pristine demonstration of controlled chaos. Not a single small foot nor tiny finger protruded four feet from him, yet within that space entropy, it seemed, would have its pound of flesh. The youngest rode on her father’s shoulders, giggling and kicking her thinly-shoed feet, while a boy nearly as small clung to one weary leg, receiving what appeared to be a rather enjoyable ride on the man’s boot.

“Your butt’s all wet from the snO-oh,” an older brother said with a snort and a poke to the boy’s shoulder.

“Mine’s not!” declared the shouldered sister, her hands pulling rather hard at the man’s hair.

The boot-rider studiously ignored the teasing in favor of wiggling a finger disturbingly far up his own nostril and depositing its findings on the man’s pants.

(The man rolled his eyes).

“Gross,” said the oldest boy, pushing boot-rider’s shoulder with enough force to wobble him.

“No pushing,” the man said.

“He just snotted you!”

“Yeahhh, I know.”

“Did not!” said boot-rider.

No one bothered to correct him.

They reached Link with five cups and five bowls to fill, and while Zelda attempted to formulate some manner of plan, the children’s excitement over cider made itself known.

“CIDER!” “Can we have some, please?” “HELLO!” “Are you a grown-up?”

That last had been directed at Link.

“Heh. Yeah, I’m a grown-up,” Link said. “Should I…?”

The man nodded a weary head that sent his daughter’s arms bobbing with it. She giggled madly.

Link gave his signature curt nod—which, Zelda reflected, appeared far less irritating with him smiling like that—and began ladeling the hot cider into the cups.

“The stuff’s hot, kids,” he warned, apparently unwilling to fill the cups fully.

This did not please the little ones, who complained of his unfairness.

Link’s eyes spoke so clearly. Help.

Zelda drew herself tall (as tall as a relatively diminutive woman could). “Children,” she said.

Her voice cut clear, though kind, through their independent, melodramatic little monologues.

They all looked at her, silent.

She smiled. It was hard not to. “Sir Link doesn’t wish you to spill and burn yourselves.”

“But we won’t get as much,” said shoulder-poker.

“I shall be sure to personally refill your cups once you’ve finished what you have.”

They liked that idea.

Link, however, seemed stuck, staring at the little girl at the top, with her cup of hot cider.

“You’re gonna be careful with that, right?” Link asked.

She giggled.

His eyes widened.

The man smiled for the first time. “She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, it’s more your face I’m worried about,” Link said.

The man chuckled openly. “So, you’re Sir Link, huh?”

Link paled a little, his smile starting to fade back into that blank look he’d worn in front of that dark evergreen.

The man saw it.

Even Zelda could tell he recognized it.

A father would see it.

Zelda’s own father, considering her knight’s countenance behind her, outside her field of vision, before treating Zelda so kindly at the ball.

Zelda blinked slowly. Her father had seen it.

“Nice to meet you,” the man said, his smile kind.

Link tried to return it.

Zelda ladled soup into the children’s bowls, directing them to sit nearby so she could keep an eye on their cider levels. She very nearly handed the little girl her soup-bowl above her father’s head, deciding at the last moment to abandon that idea as unwise indeed.

“I shall walk you to your seat-”

The girl kicked a leg out quite suddenly, tipping the bowl toward Zelda’s face-

-and Link caught it and most of its spilled contents in a clean bowl.

His wide eyes found hers.

“...Thank you, Sir Knight,” she said.

The family passed with relatively few clothing stains, all considered. Zelda had gotten the worst of it with stew on her white sleeves.

“Sorry I didn’t catch it all, Princess,” Link said.

“Oh- goodness,” she laughed. “It’s of no importance whatsoever.”

His return to silence made her eyes seek him. She found him smiling at her—a very different sort of smile from before.

The line moved past them with growing smiles and fervent thank-yous, the voices echoing in the tall chamber sounding every bit as warm as the food. It became quite pleasant, all the faces, and at some point Zelda realized quite a few of them had begun wishing her well. She considered the source of change, wondering and wondering, until she sought out Link, thinking to ask him, and he met her eyes again.

And she’d found it.

Eyes.

She herself had ceased to watch cups, bowls and hands.

She wasn’t sure how it had happened.

---

They returned, tired, well past the light of dawn, among the others, Link carrying one of the massive stew cauldrons while the others required at least two men to bear their weight. Zelda had volunteered to carry one, but Link had smiled at her and piled her arms high with empty baskets instead. She had to peek around them to walk, but she couldn’t stop grinning at the sparkling snow and at her Knight, also renewed in the light—walking astride her rather than behind. She found she much preferred it that way.

“Are you really alright with that, Sir?” one of the maids asked, her crate full of empty dishes rattling as she walked.

“Heh. Yeah,” Link said.

“You must be so strong,” another remarked.

Link’s smile wavered just enough to be seen.

“He is,” Zelda said. “Extremely.”

He turned that smile her way. It said the same thing hers did.

He wasn’t sure.

They might lose.

He might not be strong enough.

She might be powerless.

But they knew something this morning they hadn’t known last night.

They were not alone.