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dragongirlie56 · 13 days ago

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02-Suitors

This one’s a lot longer than my first Zelink oneshot! Hope you enjoy!

Happy Halloween everyone :)

Here’s the link to my other oneshots ——> Zelink masterlist

Ship: Zelink

Warnings? None!

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Link was a hair away from smacking the stuck up prince with the pommel of his sword. How he has kept his cool through countless suitors he didn't know. (That's a lie. He's been counting, and it's been twelve suitors.)

Prince Curo, with his brown hair and blue eyes, droned on and on for so long Link counted seven times since Zelda had zoned out completely disinterested with what the prince had to say. She normally never did that, she loved to listen to people as much as she loved talking. But the prince didn't even give her any space to get in a word. He didn't once ask about what she liked to do or where she went in her free time or what her favorite dessert was?

She glanced over her shoulder and met Link's gaze with knitted brows. He gave her a smile of pity that probably looked more like a grimace. He could tell she was hating this just as much as he was. No, definitely more than he was. He didn't have to talk to the guy.

"Does he have to follow us? You're perfectly safe with me. See we have guards stationed everywhere." The prince turned halfway to frown at the blonde hero.

Link kept his expression level as the prince stared. He seriously considered jumping him. That would be truly reckless. Though he thought Zelda might be happy if he did and they could make their grand escape.

"But you know, there's a fine line between courage and recklessness! As brave as you are, that does not make you immortal." Link chuckled inwardly at the memory of him and Zelda—of course there was a difference between facing multiple lynels, lizafos, and bokoblins compared to one prince but he thought it would've been worth it. Though he would upset an entire kingdom and the King of Hyrule.

"Yes," she replied, glancing at a picture on the wall. "Link is always by my side."

"I didn't ask for his name, Zelda." Caro shook his head.

Zelda's eyebrows rose and she turned her head towards him. "You will respect my knight who is, in fact, the Hero of Hyrule. Without him and I, the calamity would've taken over your kingdom as well," she replied, her tone firm. "And we aren't on a first name basis. So that is Princess to you."

Link bit his cheek. He noticed it has been a lot harder to hide his emotions (especially smiles) ever since he'd grown closer with the blonde haired girl.

Caro matched her raised brows, obviously not expecting a retort to put him in his place. The prince waved his hand and continued through the gardens. Link noticed Zelda's clenched fists and her apparent frown.

He flicked his eyes back to the prince and watched him walk down the hall. The brunette prince reminded him of a moblin: tall and stupid. Resembling the royal to a snout-nosed blue monster was being generous. Extremely generous.

"You'll see here is my favorite part of the hall." Carl steeped his arm in an arc.

Of course it would be. Trophies were individually displayed in glass cases, many engraved with a bow and quiver of arrows. He only found one that said the prince's name, and it read, 'Participation award.'

Hylia, spare me. Link looked momentarily towards the ceiling.

"I'm an incredible archer so as you can see here I've won many, many contests." His smug smile almost made Link roll his eyes. Almost, Link wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

I could beat him, Link found himself thinking. Was it a bit prideful? Yes. But it was also humble because he said 'could' which gave the prince a slight chance against him. Link thought he was doing okay at balancing his jealousy.

Zelda, much to Link's delight, didn't really react much except for a "Very nice."

"Why thank you." The prince put a hand to his chest and continued on.

"Do you have a library?" Zelda asked, glancing down a neighboring hall.

"... yeah I think so?" Carole's eyebrows furrowed.

"You think?" One of Zelda's golden brows quirked upwards.

"Why would you want to go to one anyways?"

Zelda let out a light sigh as she gestured forward with her hand. "Nevermind. Please continue, Prince Caro."

—————————————————

Orange and pink tinted clouds ribboned the tiring sky. Link and Zelda stood side by side as they took in the beauty of the setting sun. It has been a good hour since their agonizing tour with the trivial prince.

Link's blue eyes flicked to Zelda and he watched the way the fading golden rays framed her face. She was absolutely breathtaking. If Link had paint and an easel he could only dream of capturing her essence in this moment.

He quickly noticed the shift in her eyes, an underlying thought she's held back.

"Link."

He hummed in acknowledgment and tilted his head.

"What would you do in my situation?"

Link cast his eyes toward the horizon. That was a difficult question considering he had an unspoken irritation regarding the princess meeting with suitors who could be potential husbands for her. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth and opened a new door to a fear of his. He didn't want to stop being her knight. He didn't trust another man to protect her like he would—-like he does.

Instead of voicing any of his internal thoughts, naturally, he replied with, "I don't know." Because really what could she do? Deny the King's orders, her father, and run away? Abandon her duties as the future queen of Hyrule? He didn't know what he would do if he was forced into this situation of an arranged marriage.

Zelda nodded. "I don't know either. But I can't... I can't do this... None of them care about me. Or desire to get to know me. The feeling is mutual, don't get me wrong, but... I don't want to have to marry a... a ... mindless buffoon who only cares about his looks and the union for power. He'll take control over my kingdom and I will have no say in it. I'm sure he would forbid me from pursuing my studies."

I wouldn't. I would let you talk about them all day long. Link imagined them in Hyrule Field—like that one day where she showed him the Silent Princess—laying in the grass as she told him everything new she's read and discovered. Her green eyes would light up like they always did. He would be completely content hearing her voice from the waking hours of dawn to the darkening hours of the twilight.

His heart stuttered when she met his eyes. "Can you take me back, Link? Please? I- I can't stay here anymore. My father can't force me to love him or any of them. Not when I..."

Link's heart now pounded frantically against his chest, he was seriously going to have a heart attack someday because of her.

She didn't finish, much to Link's disappointment. "You don't have to-"

"Whatever you wish, I'll abide Z-" His pointy ears twitched as he heard footsteps against stone. "Princess."

Zelda raised an eyebrow but followed his gaze towards the cobblestone path. She let out a sigh and turned to greet the prince.

"Princess. It saddens me to say but this won't work out." The prince shook his head.

Link didn't miss the way the side of Zelda's lip twitched as she fought a smile.

"I must apologize for such a heartbreaking rejection but it had to be done." The prince put a hand to his head.

"I'll forgive you someday." Zelda sighed and started to walk away.

"Should I walk you...?" He trailed off, clearly uncomfortable and reluctant to do so.

"I'm alright. I have Link," she replied simply.

"Right... you said that before. Anyways, farewell. I had a...lovely? Yes lovely... tour with you in the garden."

"Ah... yes... lovely." She gave him a small smile.

The pair watched him walk away until he disappeared around the corner.

"I would've taken you back either way, Zel." Link glanced at her sideways.

"I know. Thank you."

"Always."

They sat in comfortable silence, watching as the last traces of golden light sank into the horizon.

"I'm going to talk to my father," Zelda announced and Link glanced at her.

"About stopping this." She gestured behind her towards the looming castle. "Stopping all of it."

"I'm with you." Link nodded once.

Zelda's eyes softened. "Thank you Link. Your support means more than you know."

He gave her a light smile and held out his hand. "Shall we head home?"

"We shall." Zelda nodded and accepted his hand with a smile that reached her eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Link noticed the way Zelda's arms trembled as she stared solemnly at the oak door of her fathers study. She inhaled shakily.

"You can do it, Princess." The blonde knight laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Zelda tore her gaze from the looming door and met his gaze. He could see the fear in her eyes.

"He'll be furious."

"You don't have to do this."

"No." Her eyes flashed with determination. "I have to." She raised her hand and knocked.

"Enter." The King's voice carried through the wooden oak.

Zelda took a deep breath. With one last glance at Link she turned the handle.

He followed in behind her and bowed before the King. Rhoam stood from his chair and walked around his desk that was filled with documents and empty ink bottles.

"Rise Link."

Link did.

"Leave us please. I must speak to my daughter alone. I'll send her for you once we are finished."

Link briefly looked at Zelda, watching the way her face fell slightly. Zelda turned towards him and they shared a look.

He gave the King a curt nod and with one last glance at his princess, he exited the study.

——————————————-

Rhoam stayed silent until Link shut the door. His eyes flitted to Zelda and he raised his eyebrows. "Why is it that I've just heard of how difficult you were with Prince Caro? There's no chance of union between us and the Wiln Kingdom."

Difficult?

"I don't care." Zelda's words came out before her brain could process their meaning. Though she didn't regret them.

"Pardon?"

"I said I don't care," she repeated.

"Zelda," her father started, his tone stern. "I know you are having a hard time with this suitor situation. But it is my duty as King and your duty as princess to do what's best for the kingdom of Hyrule. Which is why I have promised you to the Prince Elok of Lon."

Zelda's stomach dropped. "Promised? How could you?" Her voice broke. "What about your duty as a father? As my father? Do you not want your only daughter to marry for love? To be married to someone she trusts fully? Why do you want to marry me off to some random prince who doesn't care about me?!" She shouted with tears burning the edges of her eyes like wildfires. "I did what you asked. I trained relentlessly. You already took my childhood away from me... you can't take this away too. It should be my choice. I'm who I decide to marry."

"You are a princess-"

"Who sealed the calamity away! Don't I get points for that? I don't want to marry if it isn't for love!"

The king scoffed and shook his head. "What do you know of love, Zelda? You're eighteen years old."

"I'm in it! I'm in love with someone! Not with any of the suitors and I certainly won't be with this new one. Someone who wouldn't suppress my interests and who I am!"

"Who could you possibly-"

"Link."

Rhoam stared at her, stunned.

"...Link? I thought you despised him."

Zelda's ears burned as she reminisced about her childish actions. Link and her did have a rocky start, much to her accusations and misunderstandings. But she apologized and they ended up growing closer.

She wanted to say, 'If you had paid any attention at all then you would've realized I don't hate him.'

But instead she said, "No."

"Why didn't you come and talk to me about this?"

Zelda's hands shook at her sides. "You never gave me the space or safety to do so. All you do is lecture me."

"I-" Rhoam's hand covered his mouth as he stared out the window. He was silent for a long time.

Zelda's eyes fell to the floor.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was so harsh on you."

In time she would find it in herself to forgive him. She knew that. But now, it wasn't the right time.

"I know it was what you believed was best for me," she replied instead.

"Yes, but I should've thought of you. You're my daughter and I didn't protect you."

She didn't disagree with that.

They were both quiet for a while.

"How did your powers awaken?" Her father broke the heavy silence.

Zelda's mind flashed back to the rush of guardians, the gleaming fires, the harsh rain, and the anxiety that grew in her chest.

But none of that mattered when the guardian aimed at Link. Her stomach dropped to the floor and she felt this overwhelming urge to save him without any fear for her own life. She couldn't let him die, not when she...

Not when she loved him.

She remembered thinking of every moment she shared with her blonde haired knight. Every smile, conversation, and burden they shared.

When she pushed him back to stand in front of him, her hand grew warm and a blinding light erupted from her palm.

"I let Link in," Zelda paused. "...and there wasn't anything more important in that moment than saving him."

Rhoam nodded. "I see... You have my blessing."

Zelda's eyes snapped to him. "What?" she found herself blurting, unsure if she heard her fathers words right.

"No more suitors. If you want to marry Link and if he accepts, I shall accept your wishes. I'll discard the letter I've started for giving your hand to Prince Elok."

She couldn't help the happy tears that sprung to her eyes and the glowing smile that overtook her lips.

"Thank you, Father."

He smiled and shooed her. "Go to him."

Zelda didn't need to be told twice. She threw the doors open and ran down the corridor. She rounded the corner and nearly ran into one of the maids.

"Princess?!" The maid exclaimed, holding her white bandana in place.

"So sorry Ronda!"

Zelda's only thought was to get to her knight.

——————————————

Link's ears twitched at the rapidly approaching steps. He tensed as he reached for the handle of his sword and whipped his head towards the possible threat.

His eyes locked onto golden hair and he lowered his hand slowly as he realized it was Zelda. He scanned her expression and his shoulders relaxed when he realized she wasn't in danger.

Though his brain did short circuit when she ran into his arms and hugged him around the waist. The tips of his ears turned pink and his face went slack. She's hugging me. She's hugging me?

He tentatively wrapped his arms around her shoulders. His heart thundered in his chest and he wondered if she could hear it.

She pulled away—much to Link's dismay—and stood in front of him with a bright smile, one that could light the night sky—-his favorite smile of hers.

Though he was very confused, she never came back from a talk with the King in good spirits. She always sulked and not even her research could pull her out of it.

"Link, you won't believe it!"

He raised his brows as he waited for her to continue, praying his face wasn't as red as it felt.

"No more suitors! No more awful tours!"

"Wh-what made him change his mind?" Link found himself asking.

"Well..." Zelda's eyes shied away from him. He was surprised he was waiting for her to look at him rather than the other way around.

"I told him I was in love with another. And if it wasn't him I would marry. I didn't want it."

"Oh... who?" A small sliver of hope shone through the doubts crushing his stomach.

Zelda took in a breath and released it before meeting his gaze. "You Link. I'm in love with you."

The world seemed to tilt beneath the blonde hero's feet as he stared at her with his mouth slightly agape. He was surprised he didn't pass out or wake up from this insane dream. Because it had to be a dream, right?

"B-but don't feel the need to reciprocate my feelings because I'm a princess. Rejection is a part of life. The last thing I would want is to pressure you especially when you don't feel the same way. What I'm trying to say is you don't have to accept my- my proposal. I know the duty alone would be a huge step and a life change, naturally, but-"

"I- Can you say that again?" Link fell deaf to the rest of her ramble, his brain zeroing in on the fact she declared her love. For him. A mere knight.

"What?" Her hands fell to her side.

"What you said before- are you really in... love with..." His eyes flitted from the side to her. "Me?"

Zelda's eyes softened. "I am in love with you, Link."

He definitely wasn't dreaming.

"I'm in love with you, Zelda. I always have been." He felt like a weight had been lifted off of his chest.

"Really?"

"Really." He held out his arm. When she carefully placed her hand in his, he boldly kissed the back of it. A sly smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

"You missed." Mirth twinkled in her emerald eyes.

"Did I?" He raised a brow at her.

"Mhm." A chuckle escaped her chest. Sliding her other hand behind his neck, she gently placed her lips on his.

He kissed her back and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her closer.

"I love you." Zelda said once they broke away and she started to cry.

Link tucked a stray piece of hair behind her pointed ears. He wiped away her tears with his thumbs before pulling her in for a hug. "And I love you."

#Zelink #zelink oneshot #zelda x link #princess zelda #legend of zelda #loz #Botw #link #breath of the wild #the legend of zelda #tloz #zelda #Zelda oneshots #zelink loz

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sunny-porridge · 5 months ago

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fics that brought me back to life in June

Retired Assets - by @lele5429

Retired Assets flows like a stream. Ravio as the main character is precious, and the way wordbuilding is weaved in with profound relationships and emotions has made it my favorite this month. Five chapters in, I've already held my heart in my hands as the raw emotions mix in with the plot twists poetic prose. Best of all, it has art! Amazing, wonderful art!

—

Since we are made of the Earth and Rain - by FilipaMariaKecharitomene

"But hairband, clearly you're biased, this was a gift fic for you."

Excuse me, I'm a professional.

This piece made my heart soar. It's short, with nothing but heart and humor to give. It's intensely emotional, but it highlights love and hope and appreciation for the goodness of the world.

Also, this short work is part of a series which I highly recommend. Fair warning - "Travel through the Darkness" is a lot more intense and involves quite sensitive topics. So far, I've found it does so with dignity and respect, but if you do decide to read it, please read the tags!

An Unremitting Ululation - by @not-freyja

Surprise, bitch. You thought you had seen the last of me?

They say grief is love persevering. Well, Twilight took that literally.

This may be confusing to follow if you haven't read This is an Adjuration, the first work in this series and the fic of all time.

in the manner that people used to dance - by @rebornofstars

You never expect to be hit right in the feels by re-reading a fic that you remember well. I might say I liked this better the second time - I got to pay more attention to so many little details!

This is a story about what happens to love after death.

Fairy Chime, Fairy Chime - by koogi123 (drlessy)

This one is for the Fluff truthers. Wild is a fairy. Wild gets fairy brain. Legend gets "must protect fairy Wild" brain. So many cuddles. Literally nothing goes wrong. It's perfect. Go read it.

Tell Him I... - by @thesadpuffin

I've read about a million Post-BOTW Zelink fics. I thought that there were no perfect first-words that Link could say to Zelda, but... I was wrong. The perfect words do exist.

Quiet atmosphere, easy banter - real emotions.

NSFW ZONE ‼️

Well, I lied. This is technically not NSFW, but it is part of a series that very much is.

Rain Falling like Tears - by Anonymous Author

Wild's last memory, as seen from Wolfie's eyes.

During one of the hardest moments of Wild's adventure, he is comforted by the genuine gratitude of an unsuspecting traveler.

#sunny's monthly newsletter #linked universe #legend of zelda #amazing wonderful writing #amazing wonderful art #fic writers #fic recs #fic reccomendations #lu wild #lu hyrule #lu legend #lu time #lu twilight #lu ravio #lu write a thon

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linksthoughtbrambles · 10 months ago

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The Seeds of Love, Well Worn

A gift for @newtsnaturethings for Midna's Merry Mixup! I'm sorry this is so late!!! I am officially saying Newt is also a coauthor of this fic because it is based on a very old, very silly conversation we had that was so much fun! This fic was also inspired by "The Calamity of Link's Cargo Shorts" by @zeldaseyebrows! It is excellent and should be read!! A big thank-you to @bellecream for beta-reading! This fic is also available to read here on ao3. Post-TotK Zelink, Canon-Compliant, Rated T, ~9,400 words

At first, Zelda thought nothing of it. After all, Link was entitled to some eccentricities. He couldn’t be the legendary hero if he were ordinary, could he?

Certainly, his renewed desire to play hide-and-seek with the koroks struck her as odd.

And yes, his sudden willingness to spend time away from her also seemed odd, especially as he’d clung to her so fervently since her fall from the sky—why insist on leaving her behind now?

Perhaps he wished to give her uninterrupted time to pursue her studies. She’d shooed him from her well and atrium often enough, though always with a smile. And yes, she’d been busy with concerns in all corners of Hyrule, leaving her less time to attend to her new garden, and she’d been frustrated with her efforts to populate the lovely pond Link had built into their plateau—had she been short with him? Had she seemed distant? Perhaps she’d hurt his feelings.

“I apologize sincerely, Link,” she blurted that night over dinner.

He blinked at her, all blue-eyed owl. “Huh?”

Apparently not.

His spectacular grin an hour later as he tossed her on their new bed confirmed it.

Definitely not.

Her concern grew as Link traveled further and further afield.

“Link- must you find them all?” she asked. “Surely that’s unnecessary.”

“I need more Korok seeds,” he said.

Her eyes flew wide. “S- eeds?”

“Yeah!”

“Ah. And… how many of these have you collected?”

Link shrugged and jammed his hand in his korok pouch. It emerged overflowing with tiny, golden nuggets. A few fell to the floor as the distinctive scent invaded Zelda’s nostrils.

“Link-“

He deposited them on the table-

“Link-”

-and reached back in, his fist again brimming with the deceptive little pellets. Zelda’s nose wrinkled as she waved her open palms in the direction of his belt.

“Link, this is our dining table!”

“So?”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you want to count them?”

“Well- not here.”

Link blinked at her. “Why not?”

She stared at her erstwhile knight, helpless to shut her jaw.

He didn’t know, did he?

She supposed it had never come up.

To be fair, they did look somewhat like seeds.

“How many fistfuls of these would you estimate you have in there?” she asked quietly.

“Oh, fistfuls? Maybe…” he scratched the back of his head with a squint toward the ceiling. “Maybe about twenty?”

Zelda blanched. “And… that’s not enough.”

He snorted. “Noooooo.”

His obsession struck her all the more strangely.

Link would stop at nothing. In short… he would create a mountain out of a molehill, right there on their dining room table, a tribute fit only for a king.

Or so Link seemed to believe.

She began to wonder if he was unwell.

The Rasitakiwak Shrine activated up the hill just before sunset. Link bounded into her garden at an unreasonable pace.

“Hahaaa!” he kissed her cheek with an intentionally long, wet smack and a shoulder-squeeze.

Zelda couldn’t help but giggle. “Link!” She then wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” he said. “I got sixteen today.”

Zelda’s smile became quizzical as she wondered if he’d washed his hands.

“I’ll be on Hebra peak all day!” Link announced with a sideways smile and two fists proud on his hips.

Zelda tried to appear as though she were not at all worried, and that she was, in fact, happy for him to be so excited about visiting an incredibly dangerous high-altitude frozen wasteland on a whim. “The peak, specifically?” she asked, voice bright, though the slight curl of her lip may have given her away.

“My korok sense is tingling,” he said.

Zelda’s cheek twitched. “I wasn’t aware you had one.”

Link pulled a leaf-shaped mask from his pouch and donned it with a ya-ha-ha. It explained nothing.

She clasped her hands before her with a deep breath. “Will you allow me to accompany you this time?”

“Nope!”

She sighed. “Why ever not?”

“You have things to do! I know you want to-“ he began to count on his fingers- “jam a Zonai charge in that guardian-claw-contraption with Robbie, zip to Lookout Landing and see if Purah’s gotten any Zonai abilities working with the purah pads, weed and water your garden, do your measuring and extracting stuff there, see if any of those frogs you caught are still anywhere near our pond, go to Hateno and check how our critters are doing there, check in with Symin about the school… I mean- you have a lot going on.”

Zelda shook her head. “You’re not wrong, Link, but perhaps you might stay with me today? Can the koroks wait until tomorrow?”

He hesitated. He removed the mask to scratch his nose. “Well- I mean, will they still be there? Yeah! They’re shockingly dedicated to their game, which… is weird considering Hestu stopped playing with them seven years ago.” Link squinted, his eyes defocusing a bit. Zelda kept her laugh silent—a mere flurry of quivers of her diaphragm.

“Huh,” Link finally said, shaking his head, his eyes forcibly wide. “That is really weird, isn’t it? But… I kind of have to hurry. Even if the koroks are… insane. Or messing with me.”

That struck Zelda as disturbingly likely.

Link nodded, apparently resolute despite his targets’ nebulous motivations. “I should go today.”

She couldn’t help her falling face.

“Aw,” he said. He stuffed the mask back in his pouch, took her in his arms, and curled himself around her, pressing a kiss to her hair. “You miss me?”

“Yes,” she said, a little sheepish.

He held her tighter.

Then he bear-hugged her.

“Heh- Link!” she smiled, pushing at him playfully.

“It’ll be worth it,” he said. “Really. Please trust me? I promise there’s a good reason.”

“Can you tell me?” she asked.

He loosened his hold and kissed her forehead with the softness of a cloud. “If I could, I would.”

She studied his eyes a long moment.

He certainly appeared to be his usual self. His eyes sparkled with mischief, with his ever-present love for her, and with that shadow she’d seen in him ever since she’d fallen into the depths, whisked into another time.

The shadow- it worried her, kept her worrying beyond what would otherwise be reasonable. He’d never been the same.

She could even feel it in the cadence of his breath—shortened without apparent cause, always a twinge on the end of each, a restlessness in his fingers as he held her. They just kept moving, even when his hands were still.

Why this would drive him to scour the countryside for korok droppings, she didn’t know.

She ought to enlighten him about that at some point.

It ended on an unremarkable day in late spring, as suddenly as it began.

Zelda had no explanation.

Link said nothing of it.

His korok-seed fever simply ceased.

She wondered if someone else had revealed their nature to him.

He spent two entire days never leaving her side. The most accurate word she could think of to describe his mood was ‘barnacle.’

Zelda-barnacle. Yes, that was it, she thought as she clipped a sample off one of her more mature sundelions, his chin on her shoulder, his nose in her hair, his eyes on her work, and both his arms wrapped securely about her middle. Even his legs were flush to hers a good measure of the way down.

That night, the sound of the shrine’s transport platform reached her in her sleep. She opened her eyes to find Link gone, his place in bed beside her cold. She heard him enter the house soon afterward.

He returned to bed and wrapped his arms around her as though he’d never gone.

“Where were you?” she asked quietly.

He kissed the crown of her head. “Kakariko.”

“Why?”

He chuckled. “Can’t tell you.”

He made several more clandestine journeys, each time unsuccessful in the sense Zelda knew he’d gone. He always returned to bed, and she always asked where he’d been.

“Kakariko.”

“Hateno.”

“The korok forest.”

That one made her sit up. “Oh?!”

He laughed.

She squinted down at him, his bare stomach shaking with mirth.

She squinted hard. “So many koroks…” she said.

“Hm. True,” he answered, mock-seriously.

“…Are you collecting seeds again?”

“Nah.”

She eyed him suspiciously.

Then she tackled his abdomen, tickling hard with all ten fingers.

It hadn’t been wise, truly. He overpowered and tickled her easily, his utter lack of mercy keeping her breathless for the following five minutes.

She learned nothing more from him that night—and he made no more secret journeys after that, as far as she could tell.

The summer solstice arrived.

Zelda opened her eyes to the sight of Link’s lovestruck gaze, the dimple deep in his left cheek. He pushed her hair behind her ear. “Happy Birthday,” he said softly.

His first gift to her arrived immediately, with no need even to leave their bed.

The second waited, a centerpiece on the dining table: a large box tied with a wide, royal blue bow, every bit as obvious as Link’s excitement for her to open it. He’d adopted barnacle-stance once again, using his legs to walk hers toward the table.

She laughed, shifting off-balance as the odd gait forcibly waddled her. He stopped them directly in front of the box, though he didn’t let go.

“I take it you’d like me to open this before breakfast.”

“Yes please,” he said, his laugh higher than normal, burying his eyes in the nape of her neck. “I’ve been keeping it secret soooooooo long.”

She chuckled, her arms and hands covering his, warm, around her waist. “My poor knight,” she said, a habit from days long gone.

He hummed a breath into her, nuzzling her nape and ending with as much of his face as he could tuck into her hair as possible.

She patted his arms and tilted forward. He slid his hands to her waist and leaned around her, watching.

The ribbon fell open easily. She lifted the top off the box and folded back the protective paper to see- “Pants?”

“Take them out!” Link urged.

She lifted them by the waistband. Her head cocked in confusion as they unfolded.

“Shorts!” she said, amazed at the array of large pockets all over them. They were otherwise simple, black, as though to replace her riding pants. Their shorter length would be welcome in summer, and she absolutely could do with pockets. The pouch at her hip wasn’t enough, though Link, of course, would allow her to put anything she wished in his.

“Look inside,” Link whispered, bouncing a little on his toes.

Zelda gave him an amused look. She then held the waistband open and peered downward. As predicted, she saw black fabric. She also saw her own feet on the floor through the leg holes.

“No, no no no no,” Link said. “Look in the pockets.”

“Ah,” she said. Thinking he’d secreted something within one for her, she slipped one strap from its loop, lifted the flap, and rummaged inside.

“Goodness,” she said. “This pocket is quite deep.”

Link produced a snigger.

She eyed him suspiciously once more as she slid her arm further and further into the pocket… still contacting nothing. She withdrew, confused.

“I-“ she lifted the garment above her head. Then she examined the pocket’s outer seam. She pressed her hands on either side of it. It appeared to be utterly ordinary – larger than her hand, certainly, but…

She shook her head and inserted her hand once more. She watched, fascinated, as more and more of her arm disappeared into it, until the pocket’s edge reached her shoulder. She wrapped her other arm around it to feel where her arm had gone inside the cloth.

The answer, it turned out, was nowhere. The fabric pressed flat to her torso.

She gasped, a slow smile spreading across her face as she turned to see one of the biggest grins Link had ever given her.

“It’s like your pouch!” she cried.

“YA HA HA!” Link yelled as she tackled him. “Oof-“

“Oh my goodness- oh- Link- Link think of what I could do with this!”

“I did,” he chuckled.

“Are all the pockets this way?”

He nodded; then he looked up and to the left for a moment, a half-squint on. “Well- yeah they’re all enchanted, but it’s not quiiiite the same.”

“Oh?”

“I had- requests for these pockets. Special ones.”

“Such as?”

“Well…” He opened a larger pocket lower down. “Check this out!”

She did.

And she gasped.

She was peering into a space, perhaps the size of the main room of their new house, with a lush, grassy floor, a medium-sized dogwood tree, and a pond.

With lily pads.

She stared.

She stared more.

She goggled at Link, dully noting his arms supporting her, his eyes positively twinkling.

“is this…. for… frogs?” she asked, her tongue extremely dry.

“Well,” he said waggling his head. “It doesn’t have to be. But I thought-“

She kissed him.

Link examined his work as a myriad of frogs hopped, croaked, and plain-old-chilled out around him, quite proud of himself. The ruby rod was definitely staying put—and unlike one of the old flame blades (damn, he missed those), it wasn’t going to cook every frog that touched it. “I think I got it!” he yelled.

The sound of cloth-on-cloth preceded Zelda’s face appearing in what seemed to be a slit on a dark wall about even with Link’s head.

“Oh!” Zelda said. “You’ve embedded it!”

“I figured it’d work best if it was actually in the water,” he said, trying but failing to see any steam visibly rising from the little pond’s surface.

“Indeed!”

Link wondered if there’d be clouds—like rain—or if droplets would just condense on that nebulous, sky-blue ceiling above. Verrrrrry slowly.

“I’m still concerned about the lack of sunlight,” Zelda said.

Link smiled, pulling his eyes from the unsky to make his way toward her. He stuck his face right up to the opening. “It’s magic, Zelda. Don’t worry too much. It was like this in the sword-trials.”

“It’s unclear whether those were physically real, Link.”

“True, but there were loads of plants inside the Zonai shrines.”

“Hmm. There still are,” she said. “I suppose that suggests whatever the light source is, it’s sufficient for them.”

“Yup. So don’t worry.” He pointed up. “I bet it’s sky blue up there for a reason.”

She huffed a laugh. “I suppose I agree with you, for my instinct is not to take that bet.”

Link raised his chin, proud of himself for the third time that day. “Nice! So… is it testing time?”

“If you’re ready, Link, then certainly. I shall be gentle, but I suspect the fact the pond has remained intact means this will be entirely uneventful.”

The sound of shuffling cloth accompanied the strange sight of her hands, the wall, a painting, and then the ceiling moving beyond the opening followed by a wild motion of the wood, glimpses of Zelda’s armpit, her hair, her nose, and a single green eye as she pulled the garment on. He heard her fasten it.

“Link?” she called.

“Nothing happened down here!”

“Excellent.” She peered down at him. “Link? You are officially in my pocket.”

He snorted. “I’m in your pants.”

“As is typical for you,” she said with a mischievous glint.

Being in Zelda’s pants (literally) turned out to be less interesting than Link thought it would.

She’d warped to Hateno rather than hike or paraglide down to Tarrey Town.

“What if the shorts fall off?”

“Do your pants usually fall off when you paraglide?”

“Of course not, but if they do, you are in them, and you shall hit the water, and if it comes pouring in, what will happen to you?”

Link shrugged. “I’ll swim out.”

“Perhaps, but what if the entry fails to expand?”

“Why would it?!”

“No- we must be scientific about this. Nothing risky is to be done without proof of concept.” Her spine straightened suddenly as though shocked. “Goodness. What if I fall? Same potential result—possibly worse, for we do not know how taking on water affects the weight of the pants-“

Link started laughing. “Zelda, they have a tree and a pond and- DIRT and things. They don’t weigh anything.”

“Yet what if they do, Link?! Perhaps a fraction of their weight is transferred. We don’t know. We cannot test it without removing the material, and frankly I have no wish to ruin that lovely environment in order to haul a tree out. No, the only way would be to add material and weigh the shorts afterward.”

“Ze-“

“Of course, I would do that with the similar pocket on the left rather than disturb the pond...”

He’d been about to suggest he just… paraglide down with her and hop in the pocket in town. They could be discrete about it—ask to use the bathroom at the Hudson Construction office or something—but he liked to hear Zelda talk, and she’d clearly started one of her long thinking-out-loud rolls. So, he’d listened while making mental note of the locations of niiiice, big, heavy boulders he could shove in the bottom left pocket.

And now, here he was, chilling with the frogs, listening to Zelda’s footsteps and chatter with the townsfolk, making yet more mental notes of any jostling (which was… really easy since there’d been none so far), and trying to think of how else he could kick the frog habitat up a level. Luckily, he could hear Zelda even with the flap closed, so he had some entertainment other than the sticky frog that had decided his back was comfortable.

His head shot up.

Neither of them had thought to test whether he could leave with the flap shut. That, to him, seemed a much bigger deal than anything else. What if she was hurt and he couldn’t get out to help her? What if something attacked her? Zelda could defend herself, sure, but he couldn’t be stuck in here, helpless, if someone or something meant her harm. Bokoblins. Moblins! One of the remaining gleeoks he hadn’t yet purged from the depths. He can’t possibly have found them all, and those things could fly like anything, come out of nowhere. He’d never seen one leave a chasm but there was absolutely no reason he could see why it couldn’t, and chasms—dear Hylia, they probably hadn’t found them all and what if she was walking somewhere and she didn’t see it and she slipped and she was falling and falling and falling and he couldn’t catch her again-

“Link?” Zelda called.

Link’s pulse rushed fully tactile in the left side of his neck, audible especially in that ear. Sweat had begun to seep into his clothing.

“Yeah!” he yelled.

“Any motion?”

He laughed a little, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d stopped paying attention—but he hadn’t noticed anything. “I don’t think so!”

He could practically hear her mind whir on that one.

“Alright!” she said.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes at himself. He’d done it again. He really, really, really needed to stop doing that. Hadn’t that been part of the point of this gift to her? Yeah, she loved the pockets, but also he’d had to get used to letting her be alone. He must’ve been driving her crazy. He’d barely been able to let her garden for five minutes without checking on her.

Better that she missed him than got unbearably sick of him hovering around her all the time. It’d happened before, all those… very many long years ago. It could happen again.

He scrubbed his face.

He had to think about something else.

He eyed a particularly quick hot-footed frog.

His nose wrinkled. He wished he didn’t know what its secretions tasted like. He wouldn’t enjoy being stuck in here with nothing but those things to eat. He didn’t expect sticky frogs to be any better, or ordinary tree frogs for that matter.

Not that he planned on eating them. But if it was him or the frogs-

The frog on his back made a soft ‘ribbit.’

Link craned his neck. He could see the moist, blue tippy tip of his stowaway’s nose.

…Eh. Okay, the frog was cute. He could eat other things first.

Grass! There was grass. And flowers.

Could you eat dogwood trees?

He’d have to dig himself a latrine.

…

It would be really gross.

Not as bad as Zelda being hurt. By a lot.

But still… disgusting.

And she’d never let that happen to him unless she was hurt, so it was a moot point.

… Or unless the shorts fell in the lake.

He smacked his forehead. He should know by now that Zelda was always right. Because if lake water started pouring in here and he couldn’t get out because the flap was closed?

He was effed with a capital f.

Much better that he was in here than her. He wouldn’t make it five minutes if their roles were reversed. He’d be hauling her out of here forcibly. Once they knew how it worked, sure.

Hestu hadn’t seemed to know much about it, either. Magic, inventory-expanding dances? He had those in the bag. The mechanics of the bag? Nope.

“No, thank you, Manny.”

Link’s eyes shot to the closed flap.

“It’s a spectacular collection of crickets, to be sure.”

“Turns out Lasli didn’t want them, either.”

Link groaned.

“Eh he. Yes, I heard you telling Link last time.”

He was still on this?

“She didn’t like the frogs, either. But you do, right, Princess?”

Link would not tell Manny Lasli loved fireflies. Because she actually did, and he wouldn’t inflict Manny on anyone for real.

“I know you like them.”

…Link didn’t appreciate that tone in Manny’s voice. Not that he knew what it was, exactly.

He just didn’t like it.

He didn’t like Zelda’s silence either.

He stood and padded barefoot over the grass to try and peek out the flap.

“W- eh- ll. I- suppose I- do like frogs-“

“I have a hundred for you, Princess. Do you want them?”

Link really didn’t like that tone of voice.

“U- ahem. Do you mean the frogs?”

NOT ONE BIT.

Link shoved at the flap, too high-alert to be happy it didn’t resist him. He grabbed the edge with both hands and stuck his head out.

He found himself looking at Zelda’s midriff.

“AaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!” Manny screamed, and he wasn’t the only one.

Several things happened in quick succession.

People and cuccos scattered (Link could hear them), something hit the ground hard and rattled, and several doors slammed open against their stops.

“ARE THOSE DAMN SKELETONS BACK?!”

“It’s daytime, dad!”

“Heavens, Princess, what are you wearing?!”

“MY LAUNDRY!”

“Princess!!! There’s an animal in your pocket!!”

Zelda’s arms shot out above Link’s head. “Oh! No, it’s—" a number of crickets landed on her midsection. “Oh, my,” she said, hers the calmest voice in earshot as Link tried to figure out how to turn his head the right way.

“MANNY WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!”

“BLEHHHHGHGHGHHHH BUGS!” (A door slammed shut).

Someone was shrieking high on the letter ‘E’ as Link, with a great deal of confusion, managed to twist around and see the street.

It didn’t help.

Manny was trying to scoop crickets out of the air and fling them back in the wood-and-mesh cage he’d kept them in, its latch flopping around. The appearance of Link’s eyeballs knocked him back onto his hindquarters with a strange cry, almost as hard as if Link had punched him physically. The cage landed lopsided—which was probably what happened a few seconds ago, too—and crickets streamed outward.

Ivee seemed every bit as terrified of Link’s disembodied head as she’d been of the potential pocket-critter and then some. One of her knees rose and crossed her body as she squealed, dropping her broom.

Her father managed to make a wide-eyed scowl at Link. “What in Hylia’s green hills?! Link?!”

Manny panted, gulped, and leaned forward. “L- Link, man. It is you.” He then looked from Link to the pocket below him, and up to Zelda’s face, an idea clearly forming.

“You-“ Link said, waggling a finger at him- “and me- we’re having a talk. Soon. Got it?”

For some reason Manny grinned wide. “Got it,” he said with a wink.

Link was confused, but he’d take it for now. “Good!” He twisted up to see Zelda. “Hi,” he said. A cricket landed on his forehead.

Zelda shook with laughter. “Hello, Link. Any jostling?”

“Not a thing!”

“Excellent. Well. Shall we continue?” she asked, shooing his cricket away.

“Depends,” Link said. “Do you actually want those frogs?”

Zelda shook her head. “It is far too many frogs. Manny?”

“Y- yes, Princess?”

“You ought to return those hot-footed frogs to the wild where you found them, though keeping a few would be alright. I have enough in here already.”

“E-enough?” Manny stuttered as Link leaned out to see just how many frogs there were and where the heck he was keeping them.

The sticky frog on Link’s back made its bid for freedom.

It launched through the air with a loud croak and landed on Ivee’s hip.

She shrieked, flapping her shirt wildly in attempt to fling it off. Link moved reflexively to yank himself out and recover the frog. Instead, Zelda toppled as Link simply appeared, connected to her leg. They landed in a heap, Zelda on top, with her face in Link’s hair and Link’s legs still dangling in the other-dimensional space.

“I got heavy again, didn’t I?” Link said to the dirt.

Zelda nodded in his hair.

“I’ll get you a new frog,” Link offered.

“No need,” she said, having turned her head to rest it on Link, watching Ivee quiver in fear as the blue terror slowly scaled her torso. “It’s not going anywhere.”

Link rotated his face to look Manny in the eye. “Seriously. You’re still trying this? What do you do, wait by the village entrance and offer critters to everyone who passes you?”

Manny leaned forward conspiratorially. “Only the hot babes,” he whispered.

Link groaned and put his face back into the dirt.

It was better.

“Here you are, Link,” Zelda said, passing him yet another apple.

Not that he wouldn’t take it, but wow, she wanted him to eat today, didn’t she?

“Thanks, Zel!” He grabbed it and made extremely short work of it. He tried to shove the core in his own pouch again, wrinkling his nose when it just hit bottom and got his hand sticky. “Aw. I keep forgetting.”

Her hand reappeared in the opening as she chuckled. “It must feel strange to suddenly have an ordinary pouch.”

“You bet. Don’t know how I managed before.”

“Well, fret not. You shall have access to your many thousands of odds and ends once you emerge.”

Good thing, too. He’d’ve had some kind of breakdown if bringing his pouch inside THIS pouch had broken his pouch forever.

He had over a dozen omelets in there, to say nothing of a now exceedingly rare undecayed eightfold blade.

It struck him real suddenly why she was feeding him so much. He couldn’t just reach in and pull out a snack like he usually could.

He found himself very warm and fuzzy. He turned his eyes on Zelda, still peering curiously at him. “Thanks, Zelda. You’re… really thoughtful. You know that?”

She blinked at him slowly. “You’re… welcome, Link.”

Link now understood his disembodied appearance in Zelda’s pocket was both an asset and a curse.

Sticking his head out among adults, unexpected? Chaos.

Sticking his head out in the Hateno schoolyard? Also chaos. But the screams were fun-kid-play screams, not screams of abject, world-view-upending terror.

The schoolbell rang.

“Awwww,” Azu said. “We just got started!”

They had, in fact, just started chucking insects, sticks, and chunks of bark into the pocket and watching, fascinated, as they fell sideways upon entering the magical space.

Zelda gave an indulgent chuckle. “I’m sure the frogs will be appreciative of your efforts, and It’s not as though we won’t be back. Go to class!”

The children grumbled a little as they traipsed inside. So did Link’s stomach.

“You know, they fed the frogs, but did I get anything? Nope.”

“Hmm. I imagine that’s because they’d eaten their lunches already.”

“Aww. I wouldn’t take the kids’ lunch.”

Zelda hummed a laugh, her forehead wrinkling slightly. “Are you hungry already?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Truly? It’s not as though we didn’t have our own lunch… and quite a few snacks for you.”

Link shrugged. “Hungry anyway.” She was still… looking at him, but not in the ‘oh look it’s Link, he’s so attractive and I’d like to be back at home in bed right now’ way or the ‘look at Link, he’s so silly, he makes me laugh, he might do something else funny if I keep watching’ way.

He could usually de-code if he studied her hard enough—but right now he had to look partway up her nostrils to do it. “You… have your thoughtful-face on,” he said.

“I’m always thinking,” she said with a smile.

A suspicious smile. “Yeaaaaaah, but sometimes you’re thinking harder.”

She cocked her head, still watching him.

He cocked his, too, with half a grimace on.

Maybe it was the ‘he might do something funny’ face.

It couldn’t hurt to try.

Link spun around, spotting a stick Karin had tossed inside. He snatched it up, looked Zelda right in the eye, and took a nice, hearty chomp.

Her head reared.

“Mmm,” Link said. “Sassafras!”

It tasted like skunky-root-beer-meets-a-whole-box-worth-of-matchheads, but the look on Zelda’s face was worth it.

She only laughed a little, though.

He’d have to up his game.

Either that, or he’d just have to be attractive later.

He chuckled to himself. Why not both?

In the meantime, he had a bunch of items to arrange. Now that Zelda had this pocket, and now that it had frogs in it, and the kids had not only seen it but put stuff in it, they were absolutely going to want to visit the frogs and see all their stuff in use in the frog habitat.

Link sighed, looking at the feeble collection of dead tree matter near the opening.

As if on cue, Zelda reached in, a long, curled section of papery bark in her hand. “Would… you like this, Link?”

“Sure—thanks!” he said. He grabbed it and snatched up the rest, intent on turning the kids’ offerings into a tiny frog village in the corner.

“Link,” Zelda said, her voice carefully nonchalant. “Here’s some oak wood.”

Link arrived at the flap and took it from her. “Oh great, yeah, thanks!” He gave her a huge, excited grin and an eyebrow flash. Then he raised it to his wide-open mouth and stuck it right in.

Zelda swallowed, wide-eyed.

He disappeared to the left again with some small shuffling sounds.

She then heard a crack, and a happy sound from Link.

Zelda began to think frantically.

“H- here you are, Link,” Zelda said.

Link turned from his task to see her hand dangling a scrap of leather into the opening.

He bounded over to her, reaching for the offering. Zelda seemed a bit less happy than he’d have liked, her lips pressed together and held there by her teeth. He looked her over. Then he looked the leather over. Not terrible leather. Not great. Nothing special. Big enough to be a blanket for a frog. He snorted.

He’d stuck a few different kinds of wood in his mouth since the stick made her laugh at least a little, but when she got serious he did, too, going about his construction efforts. A bunch more bark, several sticks, chunks of wood, and a sheet of slate later, here she was handing him leather.

What was he supposed to do with it?

She was watching him so closely!

…Maybe she got serious because he got boring? His mouth pulled in deep on the left. He studied Zelda’s downturned face. Maybe he hadn’t gone big enough. “Look. Do you want to see me eat this? Because I can totally eat the whole thing.” He could, too. He’d eaten way worse.

Her eyes flicked elsewhere, then back to him with a little shimmy of her head.

It was cute.

He smiled.

“No, Link,” she said.

He blew a puff of air out. He’d hoped so. “Just checking.”

She looked so expectant.

What was he missing?

“…Thanks, Zel! Be back in a minute.” He jogged past the tree and out of Zelda’s direct line of vision.

What to do with the leather? Zelda didn’t just do things for no reason. Maybe he should just ask her. But she wasn’t saying anything, so she must think he already knew, so it must be something for the habitat and he must be being dense, and-

Oh.

OH.

He was… really thick sometimes. He smiled to himself.

Of course. He’d even thought it was about big enough to cover a whole frog! It could be a little frog blanket. Or a mat. Or frog armor for a teeny tiny little frog army.

Link’s entire form lit up.

No, no. Zelda was studying the frogs, not playing with them. The kids would play with them.

…It would be so cute.

He sighed. He would resist. Little mats? For the cute little frog houses he’d already made with the sticks and stuff? Sure. He could make frog-tents, too. It was always light in the habitat. They probably needed someplace dark they could go hide in sometimes. Yes!

Link got to work, realizing pretty quickly he didn’t have all the tools he needed. He wandered back to the flap.

“Hey, Zelda?”

“Yes, Link!”

“I need some thread and some long, thin lengths of leather. And more rectangles of leather. Maybe…” he thought for a moment. “Thirty-six pieces.”

She stared at him. “Thirty-six?”

“Yep. Just to be safe.”

I am extremely concerned that Hylian mental status is negatively affected by enclosure within my cargo shorts’ lower-right pocket, Zelda wrote in her research journal.

As Link expressed his hunger despite his frankly gargantuan intake of food, I recalled that items retrieved from Link’s pouch emerge exactly as they went in. Food does not spoil. Vegetation does not wither. Animals do not perish. And indeed, nothing has occurred to harm the frogs we’ve placed in the habitat for study. Yet one would think if time stood still, they would not hop (etc.). Clearly, whatever magic occurs is complex.

I would be merely curious rather than concerned had Link not proceeded to eat sassafras wood (notably unhealthy). Indeed, for each piece of wood I passed to him after that, he thanked me profusely. He then appeared to develop an insatiable craving for soft leather! Is he unable to appease his hunger if he enters in a hungry state? And was Link willing to eat these items because he was truly that hungry, or has the space had an effect on his thinking?

I oughtn’t allow him to go back in. It took a good deal of convincing to get him to come out. He insisted he ‘wasn’t finished.’ I had to lower a rope in and ask him to climb it to test the effect of our gravity vs. that of the gravity within the pocket as he climbed. I was quite relieved when he agreed.

“Morning, Zel!” Link chimed from the kitchen—Zelda had made her way partially down the steps to the alluring aroma of honeyed flapjacks.

“Good morning, Link,” she said, her smile a little more tired than it should have been considering her large amount of sleep. She breathed deep. “That smells delic…ious.”

Zelda stared at the low table along the far wall. “Link?”

“Yep?”

“What are those?”

Link followed her gaze. “Oh! Yeah, the leather was a really good idea. I’ll bring those ones in with me today.”

She blinked, shaking her head. “You… what?”

“Into the pocket today,” Link said, flipping one of the pancakes. A few dark spots revealed wildberries embedded in it. “I’ll bring them in with me.”

“Link- I… was thinking perhaps you shouldn’t go in there today.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Well, for one thing we’ve other concerns. We are overdue for our visit to Rito Village. I know Tulin has been anxious to discuss his Zonai stone, and we shouldn’t put that off for any of our modern-day sages. There ought to be- some manner of succession, or-“

“Zel,” Link said, a quizzical look on his face as he slid the honey and blackberry flatcake onto a plate. “This… is nothing new, and none of them are…” he shrugged, waving his pan and his spatula- “old, or… sick, or anything. It can totally wait.”

“It’s not as though the pockets can’t wait.”

“Zel, you literally just started testing them out yesterday.” He squinted at her. “You were worried about just keeping frogs in there without understanding how the fake environment would affect them. Right?” He waited.

“Well… yes.”

“And they just plain old don’t like our little L-shaped pond thing. Right?”

“…They do not seem to particularly enjoy it, no.”

“Because they leave.”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t just take the little guys out and put them in our pond.”

“Not if I expect to see them again.”

“And you like frogs.”

“They are fascinating,” she said. “Not that other creatures aren’t – they certainly are – but, at least in our time, their effects on speed, strength, and stamina were poorly understood, though of course we can make some elixirs from them, and now with these sticky frogs having sprung from the caverns opened in the upheaval, there is so much more to learn. It’s not even just the frogs, it’s-“

She stopped at the huge, dimpled smile on his face.

“What is it?”

“You,” he said. He replaced the pan on the wood stove and dolloped some batter in it—then he circled the table and wrapped her up in his arms. “I love how curious you are,” he said.

“Even after all that time,” he said, far more quietly.

She’d snuggled into him, but his tone had her pulling back, examining his face; his smile had vanished. She traced his lips with an unthinking fingertip. “Link…”

He tried and failed to smile under her touch.

She stroked the subtle hollow of his cheek. It disturbed her a little that he even had a hollow of his cheek, with all the food he took in. He never used to. He’d had rounded cheeks, always.

“Sorry,” he said. “It hits me sometimes… how long you waited. For me. Because I-“ he swallowed. “Because I missed.”

She shook her head and crushed him to her, pressed his face to her shoulder. “No, Link. No. Truly. It wasn’t like that. It was as though…. a long dream.”

He nodded against her. She’d told him before—many times—yet it continued to haunt him, evidenced by moments like this. Sometimes she thought he didn’t believe her.

Sometimes she suspected hethought about it far more than he let on—wondered if the occasions on which he acted strangely were fueled, somehow, by that fall of hers into blackness and its consequences.

Not for Hyrule. He’d saved that.

But she’d spent eons and eons so very far not only from him, but from her own consciousness—and self-recrimination kept surfacing within him for it.

Zelda thought of his months-long korok obsession. Of his need to have hundreds upon hundreds of ‘seeds,’ and that need utterly overriding his usual (over)protectiveness of her, even to the point of him going when she specifically requested he stay.

There had been no pocket to affect his thinking, then. Perhaps an oddity of the flow of time had nothing to do with his behavior.

She worried at her lip and thought of the scraps of leather lined up on the table partway behind her. “…Link?” she asked.

“Yeah, Zel?”

His voice sounded thick.

She stroked his hair and took a deep breath. “What is the leather for?”

His eyelashes fluttered against her skin. He lifted his head to look at her. “Frog tents.”

“…Frog tents?”

“And mats and blankets, and I was thinking of making cute little sets of leather frog armor, but I figured that was just me being a little bored and not actually something that would spruce up the habitat, though the kids would sure enjoy it. Maybe we should get them to make some.”

Zelda breathed a sigh of relief. “You-“ she shut her mouth. Should she say something?

“Zelda?”

She smiled, her thoughts turning. “Link- you… you worried me yesterday. Considerably.”

He looked nonplussed. “I did? How?”

She gave him a look, then patted his shoulders—he released her. She walked over to her hung shorts. She reached into one of the storage pockets and removed a birch branch.

She returned to Link and held it out to him expectantly.

He just stared at her. He flicked his eyes to the branch once. Then he stared some more. “Uh.”

“What… would you do with this if I gave it to you?” she asked.

Link scratched the back of his head. “I mean… usually I’d whack a bokoblin with it- ONLY if it was red, mind you. But now with the pond, I could give it to the frogs like all the other stuff.”

She blinked at him. “You could… what?”

“Yeah, I can arrange it around the pond- well… it’s really in the corner, I didn’t want to put it right next to the water. It looks pretty neat already but it’s not even close to finished yet. It’ll be like a little frog village. Little log seats and tents, and an itty bitty frog campfire for them to sit at, and little mats for them to sleep on, and…” he trailed off at the look on her face. “What?”

“You haven’t been eating these?”

He stared at her.

Then he burst out laughing. “What?!”

She spread her arms wide. “You have been- taking bites of wood, and bark, and even rocks—though granted this is not the first time I’ve seen you eat rock-“

“Salt’s a rock.”

“That is beside the point, Link, the darling, obtuse love of my life.” She gripped his shirt with two fists and put some of her weight on them. It made him lean over with a bit of a droll smile on his face. “You were displaying- extraordinarily odd behavior once more. Please, please, explain your actions if not to sate your seemingly inexhaustible hunger while inside the pocket?”

“You thought I was eating wood because I was too hungry?”

“Of course!”

He huffed a laugh. “Why wouldn’t I just ask you for actual food?”

“I wondered the same thing!”

“You could’ve asked me why.”

She blinked, drawn up short.

His thumbs drew gentle shapes on her biceps. His eyes wandered all over her features. One eyelid twitched just slightly more shut. “Why didn’t you ask?” His voice had softened so much.

Her mouth opened and shut, her fingertips on his face again. She made a study of his features with them, moving from place to place.

Link’s nostrils flared a second before she noticed the burning smell.

“Sh-!” he leapt almost comically over the table (comically except that he was Link, so the leap itself was graceful and perfectly executed to place him directly in front of the stove). “Ahhh, this happens so much…” He flipped the offending flapjack with a flick of his wrist. The underside was, indeed, rather burnt, but she knew he’d finish cooking it anyway.

He didn’t turn around.

His shoulder blades shifted as he jiggled the pan.

Zelda circled the table, arriving at his side, his nearer hand still on the pan’s handle. “Link?”

His face turned toward her, and while he showed no outward sign of tears, she knew that face on him. They weren’t far off.

She caressed his bicep, his hairline where his head and neck met. “What is it?”

He half-laughed, shutting his eyes and leaning into the hand at his neck, just for a moment. “You tell me. You… didn’t answer my question.”

Her cheek came to a slow rest at his shoulder, her eyes on his, at a loss to explain. She didn’t know where to start.

Her silence seemed to hurt him, almost bodily. He winced. He moved the pan onto a thick potholder. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut. He took a few deep breaths before returning his eyes to hers.

“Well, you wanted to know what I was doing, so… I was just trying to make you laugh. At first, I mean.” His smile was very, very weak. “The joke didn’t land, huh?”

Her eyes had widened a little. “I.. thought-“

“It’s okay,” he said. A small smirk touched his face. “I’m funnier when I’m not trying.”

A small laugh puffed out her nose.

“Oh ho! Yeah, see? I thought so.”

“I am sorry, Link. I thought it was hunger because you were simply insatiable all morning.”

He flashed his eyebrows twice.

She giggled. “That is not what I meant.”

He smiled anyway.

“You devoured breakfast, lunch, and every other piece of food I passed to you while you were in there!”

He shook a little in a laugh, though his face remained far less than jovial. “How is this unusual?”

“Do you realize how much food it was?”

“OH yeah.”

“And you were still hungry?”

“I’m always hungry. I can literally always eat.”

“You say that, but your stomach must be of limited size.”

Link shrugged.

“I’d begun to wonder if I the space you were in was affecting you.”

“Well, again… I don’t understand why you didn’t just ask me.”

The shadow she’d been seeing in him became all the more obvious.

“Link… you always say you’re alright.”

He shrugged. “I always am.”

“No, you are not,” she blurted, surprising even herself. “Link… I see it in you.” She pressed her hands to his face, cradling him. “You’ve not been- you’ve never been the same since I came back,” she said, almost whispering. “I see it there, in your eyes- and more than that. It’s a change in your entire body, your full self. Yet you always insist you’re alright. I do not ask because-“ she just realized it herself- “you would not tell me truthfully.”

She could see him floundering, but her mouth would not stop. “You have been acting strangely. For months, you were collecting korok- seeds- with such fervor, willing to leave me for long stretches of time, which had up to that point been quite unusual for you—and you refused to tell me what that was about, too. And then-“ she snapped her fingers- “nothing. No more.” She softened at the odd twitching which appeared in his left cheek—she’d no wish to come across as harsh—she simply could not contain it any longer. “Your night excursions worried me at first, too, and then especially when you mentioned the forest.”

“But,” he cut in, “you know what it was about now, right?”

“Yes, obviously now I know,” she said.

He shook his head, then cocked it strangely at her. More quizzical than she’d ever seen him be—there was another word for it. She couldn’t quite place it, perhaps because she’d never seen it on his face.

“So… why are you… still worried?” he asked.

She ducked, seeking his eyes from below. “How can you not know?”

He splayed his hands wide, face up, shaking his head. “I- don’t!”

“Link. You spent months feverishly collecting pellets of korok dung!”

He blinked. A lot.

Then he looked somewhere straight above Zelda’s head.

“Oh,” she sighed, her face in her hands. “I- I am sorry, Link, it was obvious you didn’t know, and that in and of itself wasn’t my concern. Why- why collect them in the first place? Even if they were seeds in the literal sense?”

Link groaned. Then he grabbed her biceps and rested his forehead on hers with a flabbergasted smile. “Wow. Wow. Okay, so, yeah, I didn’t know they were turds. Holy Hylia, I could kill Hestu.”

“Who is Hestu?”

Link shook his head. “Tell you later. No, you know what? I’ll introduce you later. We can shake the maraca tree together.”

Zelda opened her mouth, but Link shushed her with his fingerpad on her lips. “I get it. Why you thought I was nuts. Because that’s what this is about, right? You thought I was losing it, so you didn’t want to ask me, because of course if I was really insane I wouldn’t know anyway, so the answer doesn’t matter. Does that about sum it up?”

Her eyes welled with tears.

“Hey- hey- no, no no no, please. Don’t cry.” He kissed both her eyelids with a loving smile. “Yeah, I’d’ve thought you were losing it if you were collecting feces without it being some kind of study.”

She burst into a tearful giggle. “But not if it were a study.”

“No, pff! Of course not. You’ve studied nastier things. But that’s kind of my point. Like- I really thought I had given the game totally away when I told you I didn’t have enough seeds.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“Did I never tell you this?? Hestu- who you will meet- is the guy who does the magic to expand the pockets. And you have to pay him in korok seeds to do it.”

“What?!”

“Yeah!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“That’s absurd!”

“He’s a trickster. Now I know!”

“What would he possibly want them for?”

“His maracas.”

“His what?!”

“His maracas! He sticks them inside and shakes them around and does this ridiculous dance and BOOM—expanded pockets! He can even make spaces within the spaces which is how I can keep all my swords separate, and my bows, and… and…”

He must have seen the look on her face.

“So…” she said, “if anyone is mad, it is this Hestu.”

Link snorted. “I sure hope so. Because if not, then it’s still me who’s lost his hold on reality.”

Zelda smiled at him. “I would love you anyway.”

He took his time folding her into his arms. “I know.”

“I… am still surprised you were willing to leave me for such long stretches of time. I was becoming lonely. At least, now, I know the entire ordeal was with the aim of creating a truly spectacular pair of shorts.”

He shook with silent laughter against her. “Yeah. Though… I was also trying to leave you alone.”

Her arms pressed him extra-tightly for a beat of her pulse. “Why?”

Two puffs of air exited him quick, fluttering the hair near her temple. “Because it’s been so hard to.”

The shadow in his eyes had risen to the surface, bared for her.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, soft, her lips near his, her eyes treating each of his to touch after touch of her sincerity.

Link cupped her face and kissed her, his lips a bare brush, a gift of pure emotion, nothing taken. “It was. Shhh- I know. I know what you’d say, but it was my fault. I dropped. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t stand. It was because-“ a disgusted laugh left him- “it hurt.”

“Link,” she said, aghast. “The gloom killed your arm while still upon your body! It took even your shoulder. You were in agony-“

“But I could have stayed standing.” The loathing in his unfocused stare found her shrinking, though she knew it directed toward himself. “It would’ve saved me about half a second. When you fell. And I’d have caught you. As it was, I felt the air from your fingers as I missed.”

She couldn’t stop shaking her head, touching his face, his hair. “Please. Please, my love, do not do this to yourself. Do you not see…?“ She straightened. “You do. You do see. For if you didn’t, you would never be willing to leave me alone for a single instant of the rest of my life, ever. Yet you already have. You’ve intentionally forced yourself to do so. And why?”

His eyes shut under her hands’ ministrations. “Because I don’t want to drive you nuts.”

She nodded, her forehead against his so he could feel it despite his shuttered eyelids. “Which means you recognize constant, incessant vigilance is unreasonable. And if it is unreasonable under normal circumstances, it is certainly unreasonable in the case of an agonizing injury—one single moment in relation to it, and that is all.” She kissed his cheek. “It is not. Your. Fault.”

A tear met the bow of her lip.

“Oh, Link,” she said, kissing it away.

“It feels like it is,” he said on nearly no air, his diaphragm having already crushed the rest from him.

She took him against her shoulder as he shook. Saltwater jumped in fits and starts between the peach fuzz at the nape of her neck. She stroked his hair. “I know,” she said. “I know it does. We will work on this together, Link. Alright? When you feel this way, please speak to me.”

He nodded against her, the movement slowed by a nuzzle.

“And also… I do not at all mind you being my barnacle.”

A laugh burst from his mouth, cooling the freshly laid tracks of moisture on her.

“Please,” she chuckled. “Do so as much as you wish. In fact, do so even more, for I enjoy the unique sensation of my strides riding entirely upon yours.”

“You got it,” he said, his hand running warm over her back, as though he were the one comforting her.

She returned the gesture.

When Link recovered enough for his stomach to rumble, she insisted he sit. She served him the one flapjack he’d successfully cooked. She made the rest, and she did quite a good job of it, too (though in fairness, Link had already prepared the batter—by far the trickier part of the task).

They ate on the same side of the table, always touching. While Link had been right—she did want to study the pond-pocket carefully, and sooner rather than later—the day's priorities had changed. She decided to forego her investigation in favor of bed, where Link enthusiastically joined her.

Late at night, Link burst to wakefulness, shooting upright with a cry.

“Whhhhfauuha?” Zelda said, bleary.

“They’re all in on it!” Link said in horror. “Every last one of them. Every single korok.” The look he turned on Zelda might’ve been lucid.

Or he might’ve been sitting up in his sleep.

She just laid the flat of her forearm on his chest and pushed him down, snuggling back up to sleep. He didn’t resist.

“Hi, Hestu,” Link said, his smile completely relaxed.

“Link! It’s good to see you. Did you bring any more seeds for me?”

Link’s smile widened. “Actually, today I brought the Princess to see you.”

“The PRINCESS?! Shakala!!!” Hestu waved his maracas in a ponderous mockery of semaphore.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Hestu,” Zelda said. “Now please, in no uncertain terms, explain precisely why you manipulated Link into delivering thousands upon thousands of korok droppings to you in exchange for your inventory expansion services.”

The maracas went utterly still.

Zelda’s smile remained pleasant.

“Mmmm?” rumbled the Deku Tree’s voice. “What has my grandson been doing?”

Hestu remained balanced on a single, awkward, stubby leg, maracas-out, his only movement a slight shivering of the leaves in his branches. Then something hit the ground with a deep thump.

“I- I’ll be right back!” Hestu said, his wood-moustache shivering as he scampered with all the grace of a land-manatee down the path toward Mido Swamp.

Link stepped forward, feet shoulder-width apart, eyes groundward. He nodded with a sniff.

“What is it?” Zelda asked.

Link tilted his head. “Well. You know that saying about shitting bricks?”

Zelda peered curiously past him. “Oh. My.”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” She clasped her hands. “Perhaps we should collect it.”

Link took an extremely long moment to turn and look at her.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

Link burst into relieved laughter.

“I couldn’t resist,” Zelda said.

#zelink #tears of the kingdom #totk #post-game #post-totk #legend of zelda #loz #fanfic #romantic comedy #humor #fluff #hurt/comfort #midna's merry mixup #established relationship #link's house above tarrey town #frogs #a little unhinged at ponts

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lifepaint · 3 months ago

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This is my official summer drawing everyone :> In the middle on August HGEHEH

Soooo if its not obvious, this is another huge-ass drawing I had to overwork myself to finish :'[ Made me so mentaly and physicaly tired I couldnt properly draw for a day. Not that I wasnt able to just.. I really didnt fell like it :/

But anyway, here it is <:) At 1st, I thought whether it could just be based on just one franchise, but ultimatly I decided I wanted to do a crossover with various nintendo franchises haha And as you can see, I went overboard with it :P

1st we have Kirby taunting DK for being stuck in the sand.

Then we have Isabbele getting drunk at a bar- (Thnaks to @artsy-n-smartsy for the idea :D)

Then there is Peach gathering seashells and finds a Korok bc those lil shits are everyhwere-

Then Daisy plays beach ball with Samus...

Midna is laying in the sand.. without even gazing at the sun lmao-

Link and Zelda walk together because I had to sneak in Zelink somehow >W>

Charmander and Bulbasaur build a sand castle :>

Squirtle gives Pikachu some refreshment.

And the Mario bros hangout togetehr :)

So, I have about 9 different drawings combined into one HEHE

..In all seriousmess. going back to what I peviosuly said, this took the life out of me twt

I wasnt doing mentaly well to begin with, and the task I layed on myself was a bit much to go through.. doesnt help that there is so much going on in a single frame with many different characters and colours popping out .-.

Also, this drawing has by far the most characters within a frame. (From my portfolio I mean) totalling to 17 characters! I didnt go into this epxceting it to be this many, but life found a way lmao-

For the two people who read my description they are probbaly thinking why I do this to myself, and the answer is that I wanna make the best art that I can... and I dont want to take forever on just one piece. Everyone has their own tempo of course, and thats ok. Everyone should do what they think is right and good for them.. And I have my own way HHEHEHHEUH

I hope ya'll can spot some easter eggs I put in here, even if there arwnt that hidden HEHE

But ok, thats it form me.. as always, hope oyu guys like this :>

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cottagecorrosive · 10 months ago

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*Tears of the Kingdom SPOILERS*

Okay, so I've seen some fanart that may line up with my thoughts, but I just have some stuff I wanna say after beating tears of the kingdom. The ending was very sweet and wholesome and it is literally the best ending possible for the circumstances. HOWEVER, I think it would have been more appropriate (may not be the right word) if Zelda stayed a dragon and LINK completely lost his arm.

So like, it was stated many of time that consuming the forbidden fruit gummy would result in an unchangeable and unthinkable transformation. I'm glad Zelda came back in the end, but as far as themeing goes, I feel she should have stayed a dragon. The monumental sacrifice to transform yourself into something you wouldn't even recognize to MAYBE get this decayed weapon to your companion thousands of years into the future so they can defeat the apocalypse (again). Although, the reason Zelda did so was because she had unwavering faith in Link - and vice versa - even though she is completely unaware of his state in the future. The last thing she saw was Link falling with her and his arm and his sword completely busted. But she still had faith because Link is the only thing in Hyrule that she can rely on. No matter what happens, Link will be there. So she makes this sacrifice to become a dragon and help Link kill the Demon King. There are a few moments throughout where there is some longing between Link and Zeldragon, which are quite somber. And by Link slaying the Demon King and ridding Hyrule of evil, her sacrifice was not in vain. In my opinion, her transforming back into human form takes away from the impact of that decision. While her initial decision believed she would not come back, within the themes of the story it makes it feel less (to me at least). And think about the bittersweet ending it would've been if everything was better and Hyrule was safe and Link just looked up to see her at all times. Sad, yes. But without her Hyrule wouldn't exist.

In addition, I believe Link should have permantly lost his arm. As stated at the beginning, the damage was beyond repair so Rauru just gave Link his arm / power for a bit. And in the end he used said power to heal both Zelda and Link's arm. However, I think it would've been way rad if Link, along with the help of the sages, took on the Demon King and they had to use all their collective powers to do so. And to land a final blow (since the Demon King is literally the most powerful being in Hyrule) they used Rauru's hand to weaken him, and tear away from Link's arm (though it's just a smooth stub now), and use the master sword to finish him. (And I feel the final fight was a bit lackluster but that's neither here nor there). Link would then straight up not have his right arm anymore. And it would've been cool if either Purah crafted Link a new arm from sheikah technology or if he simply lived without it bc disability doesn't need to always be "fixed." I was thinking something similar to Finn from Adventure Time honestly.

In conclusion, I believe Zelda should have stayed a dragon and Link should have fully lost his arm because it would fit better with the themes and make for a more interesting story. What I think both Zelda and Link's arm represent are sacrifice and loss for what you believe in. They were both willing to give up a part of themselves (though Link kinda unintentionally) to protect those they care about and safeguard their home. The end would've shown that their actions were not in vain and that it was worth it. I feel getting things back to "normal" takes away from these themes and the impact of these events. This is my headcanon bb. In addition, all the cute zelink stuff could've taken place between botw and totk so you could have both "haha cute couple" and "I lost my arm and my gf is a dragon now. That's rough, buddy" at the same time. :)

P.S. This is just my opinion I promise pinky. I heavily enjoyed this wonderful game (I finished it after all) and think the ending is really wholesome and great for Link, Zelda, and everyone else. Maybe I just wanna see my little guys suffer. Who knows.

#legend of zelda #SPOILERS #totk spoilers #loz totk #totk #zelda #zelda botw #zelda totk #link #zelink #au #headcannon #totk link

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mailrebel · 1 month ago

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And so, as they say— FOR THE BOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 👀 ✨ 🥰 🤔 💞 ⚔️ 🙂 This is such a sweet ask game and you gave the greenlight to do this so of *course* I'm taking that opportunity to throw ALL OF THESE EMOJI AT YOU mwahahaha think fast, Mail!

Sparrow, I’m going to be frank with you. You seem like the type of person who melts at even the smallest compliment, so I genuinely fear if you’ll be able to survive some of the nice things I have to say about you 😂😂😂 But I appreciate your boldness! CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!

👀 Share the story of how we first met, or how you first heard of me

I actually remember this one pretty well. Ari came into the TP server one day and she was so excited because someone had gifted her a fluffy TP Zelink fanfic. And that fic, of course, was yours. And I read it. And I loved it. And I think I gushed about it in the comments a bit and you probably replied back (I admittedly don’t remember any of what was said between us lmao). And then later we got to meet more through Discord and I kept reading more of your works too, and since we share so many similar interests it seems that we just naturally became friends haha.

✨ Tell me which of my works (fic or art) is your favorite!

This is an easy one. My favorite fic of yours is “Alighting the Darkness”. Not only is it really sweet, and heartwarming, and fluffy, but it also just feels so poetic. To see all the little ways that Link brings light into Zelda’s otherwise dreary life. That is one of the things I love most about Zelink and you executed it flawlessly. Oh, and of course, this is the same fic mentioned in the previous answer, so it’s also the reason we met! So surely it deservers a little love for that too 😂

🥰 Say one nice thing about me

Sparrow, you are just genuinely so fun to be around. Our conversations are always so pleasant, and I especially love whenever you share your thoughts or analyses or your passion with others. Much like Link in your story (will I ever be able to answer one of these questions without referencing that story???), I feel that you bring light into the lives of everyone you meet 😌

🤔 What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of me?

The first thing I want to say is poetry! Because I feel that you have such a keen eye for identifying poetry in the things you’re passionate about, and I know that you’ve done it numerous times for the Legend of Zelda series. All of your works always feel like they have a poetic aspect to them as well, which is probably why I’m so awed by most of them lol. The second answer I want to give is “Gatekeeper fangirl”. If you know, you know 😂😂😂

💞 Guess who my favorite iteration of Zelink is

Hmm…I’m really not too sure on this one. I want to say it’s a tossup between OOT and TP…You’ve written a lot of TP Zelink stories so I’m going to take a wild guess and lock in TP Zelink as my final answer!

⚔️ Guess my favorite Zelda game

Another one that I’m really not too sure about lol. Again, I’m feeling that OOT and TP both hold special places in your heart. And again, I’m going to go with my gut and say that your favorite is probably Twilight Princess! You’ll have to let me know if I’m close or not haha.

🙂 Just wish me a nice day :D

Sparrow, I hope you have a wonderful day. I think that you’re a wonderful person and I wish you all the best 🙏 Thanks for the asks and for always being your kind and awesome self! :)

#Sparrow appreciation #twilight princess #tp zelink #tag games #fanfic #poetry #gatekeeper

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spices28 · 1 year ago

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Welcome!

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. My name is Navi, and I write some Zelink and do a lot of betaing. If you want to keep up with my work, you can follow me here or on Ao3. 18+ only please.

Otherwise, here's a master list of my favorite works:

The Midnight Revelry. (Ch 11/11) A pre!Calamity Age of Calamity or Breath of the Wild Zelink fic. It's got masquerade balls and secret letters <3

Never Been Kissed: A Skyward Sword Zelink story.

Hyrule's First Couples Therapy: a post!totk therapy fic.

What We Thought: A pre!calamity Zelda steals some of Impa’s Sheikah garments to sneak from the castle. What will happen when her appointed knight sees a dark figure stealing away from his princess’s study?

And some of my favorite pieces to beta. Please give the authors all the love:

Long Series:

A Lullaby for a Princess by @wouldyoustilllovemeifiwasawyrm/ (Ch. 29/43) I'm absolutely obsessed with this fic. Link and Zelda marry post!TotK after rapidly getting pregnant. The emotions through this piece are intense, and I absolutely cannot wait to see how it ends up. (This series now also has a bunch of canon Linktober one-shots. Pay close attention to Wild Spirit, Wandering Spirits, Sheep Are Girls, and Brightblooms in the Well)

The Long and Winding Road by @flutefemme. (13/16) A Twilight Princess AU where Zelda is running from her mob boss ex Ganon and finds a home with Link and his son.

One Shots/Short Series:

famous prophets (stars) by @korokposting. Pre!Calamity first kiss. The trans!Link characterization gives me such life.

A Flower Adorned Goddess by @oatmilkdrnkr. Pre!Calamity sweetness and fluff and absolutely adoring Link.

rubies, spicy peppers, and hylian shrooms by @angelicgarnet. Zelda working through her feelings about menstruation with a sprinkle of zelink goodness.

silent princess by @korokposting. TotK -- Link's search for Zelda, and the flower that guided him. this piece is so lovely and sweet

you're too far away by @korokposting. Post!OoT, Link doesn't return to his childhood. A Shink story with lots of Sheik gender feels that are just...so phenomenal. Its breathtaking.

if i've lost you for good by @korokposting. Post!TotK, Link and Zelda confront the trauma of being chosen by Hylia. Grab the tissues and settle in. (And then probably read some of these kid fics after, bc it will emotionally destroy you.) Some of the finest writing on depression and mental health issues I've seen.

anti-curse by @korokposting. Link and Zelda's first kiss post!Calamity. I love first kiss fics and this one felt so tender, vulnerable and real. I've reread it so many times.

#zelink fanfiction #zelink #spices28writes

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troutlawyer · 1 year ago

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*raises hand* I would like to hear your Yona/Sidon/Link court relationship ideas. All the Yona hate sucks :(

Wow I did not expect anyone to actually ask!! Thank you btw

Mostly my ideas line up with one of the posts I've reblogged earlier about Yona and Sidon's political marriage, but I have a LOT of ideas of my own to expand on that. I hope you'll stay with me.

Canon Stuff

Sidon and Yona were childhood friends.

Sidon and Yona's marriage was arranged.

Sidon looked upon Yona as an older sister but hadn't seen much of her since childhood.

He has been bashful and nervous around her since she arrived in the Domain.

Sidon views Link as his best friend and closest companion and apparently values that relationship so much he replaced the statue of Mipha in the courtyard with one of him and Link fighting divine beast Ruta together.

Though I did have a shocked and jealous initial reaction to Sidon and Yona's engagement when first learning of it, I quickly recovered when I put a little thought into the situation. Of course I immediately (and correctly) assumed that the marriage was probably arranged and political in nature, as most royal marriages go.

It also reminded me of my thoughts on Zelda and Link's relationship. Despite seeing obvious love and devotion between the two, I didn't feel any romantic tension between them. I wonder now if this is deliberate: to sort of keep their relationship without a label and sort of highlight their distinct roles as princess and knight in their working relationship, but I digress. I saw the same sort of situation with Sidon and Yona--they obviously love each other, and are devoted to each other, but there is a lack of romantic tension. All of these observations are subjective, and I don't want to step on the toes of Zelink and Sidona lovers--these could definitely blossom into something romantic!

Then I thought about the nature of royal courts back in their heyday, at least the royal courts of Europe, which the system in BOTW/TOTK seems most similar to. There were countless royals, male and female alike, who kept lovers outside of their arranged marriages. Some countries were more strict about it, and of course some relationships were more allowed than others, but it happened all the time.

I also thought about the lives of queer people in times where it was less accepted, especially those who entered into heterosexual marriages. There was more than one reason for these decisions. There was of course the obvious: stay safely in the closet, but sometimes these people wanted to have families, sometimes they wanted to give their spouse a home and a companion, and sometimes they simply felt like it was expected of them. Many times, these people would genuinely love their spouses, even if it wasn't romantic or sexual. And a lot of times, even if they ended up having extramarital affairs, their first priority was to their family and life partner.

Keeping all of this in mind, I developed a few headcanons about the nature of Link, Zelda, Yona, and Sidon's relationships to each other.

Link & Zelda

Link's role as Zelda's protector is his absolute top priority; he forewent speaking or even showing emotion in order to fulfill his duties more efficiently. His vow to protect her is sacred, and I would safely say this means he loves her very much.

Zelda views Link as her appointed knight, her dear friend, and her confidante. Her love for him is what fuels her magical abilities.

A marriage between the both of them may happen, but a political match to secure an alliance would be more realistic in Zelda's future.

Sidon & Yona

Sidon is fiercely devoted to his kingdom and his people. He would do everything to keep them safe and secure.

Sidon finds Yona's kind personality and similar devotion to the Domain compatible with his. They share a goal, and that makes for a strong royal match.

Sidon is the only one in line for the throne after the death of his sister. He must take up the role as king and he must secure further heirs to the throne.

As far as arranged marriages go, getting paired up with a childhood friend is kinda like winning the lottery. They both love and trust each other already, so there will be little risk of awkwardness and/or incompatibility.

Yona is supportive of Sidon and Link's relationship, and is not a jealous person.

Sidon's bashfulness around Yona may be due to how she reminds him of his sister, and he feels uncertain about how he will fulfill his role as king by her side.

Link & Sidon

If they have a romantic relationship, it would not overshadow their duties towards their respective kingdoms.

They would visit each other when duty called, or when they were able to take time away from their jobs.

They may communicate day-to-day by letters.

All of this would be excellent fic fodder in my book!

Now onto why I kind of reject some of the more common reactions of Sidlink shippers.

Yona/Sidon/Link throuple

I'm sorry, but I just don't see any chance of attraction between Link and Yona.

Yona and Sidon calling each other pet names does not indicate romantic feelings AT ALL. I call my friends and my pets "my love" too, doesn't mean I'm attracted to them.

Sidon's feelings for Link seem to be miles stronger than his feelings for Yona.

I don't really NEED Link and Sidon to be officially married to each other. I've never seen their relationship that way, honestly, even before TOTK.

The trend of making a ship poly when a canon love interest is introduced is overused and frankly a boring solution. But that is my own subjective opinion.

"Yona was added to straightwash Sidon"

We know almost nothing about Sidon's past. Just because it feels like Yona came in "out of the blue" does not mean she was shoehorned--there is a lot of empty space for her to have been present in his backstory.

Yona and Sidon's marriage is perfectly understandable. He is a prince, she is a princess, of course it would be arranged and political.

Link was gone for a long time. The last time that happened he was gone for 100 years. The Zora were not obligated to wait for him to come back to marry their only heir.

Sidon must produce heirs; there is no one else who can do it, and as far as I know, Zora and Hylians are not reproductively compatible, and even if they were, I doubt two amab (again, as far as I know) characters could reproduce together.

Zora live a lot longer than Hylians. A marriage between them would end fairly quickly in Zora time once the Hylian dies of old age.

Y'all didn't actually think Sidlink would ever be made explicitly canon, right? Speaking as someone who has been a Sidlink shipper since BOTW: be realistic.

That all being said, I haven't actually seen much hate with my own eyes on Yona. Maybe it's because I'm not on Twitter, but on Tumblr I have seen absolutely none, save for the odd meme about Link's jealousy, or gripes about straightwashing as mentioned above.

Anyway, thank you for the ask! If you read this far, I hope it was at least interesting ;;^_^

#ask #legend of zelda #botw #totk #prince sidon #link loz #yona totk #sidlink

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aurathian · 2 years ago

Note

Give me the shittiest soulmate scenario you can come up with but with a happy ending for zelink, please. 😆

hi zelmo!!!! happy birthday!!!!! i decided to go ahead and write your request (finally...) since its ur special day!!! when u said soulmate scenario i immediately thought of those tiktok povs so i tried to write something silly. I hope you enjoy!

For some reason, allergy-less Zelda found herself sneezing quite a lot during the spring. She knew she didn’t have allergies; when the problem first presented itself when she was a child, her father had her checked by the royal physician right away.

“No allergies.”

“That can’t be true,” her father, the king, argued.

“She may just be a sneezy kid. Children are not all that hygienic, you know. Princess Zelda will grow out of it.”

She remembered something else about sneezes, too, something from a long time ago when she was still a small child. She was sitting on her mother’s lap, rocking back and forth while being read a bedtime story when she had a sudden sneezing fit.

“You know, little bird,” her mother began gently as she closed the book, “I’ve heard a saying that when your soulmate sneezes, you sneeze too.”

“Does that mean it’s my soulmate's fault and not mine?” Zelda managed between achoos!

Her mother said nothing but only chuckled.

Zelda never did grow out of her sneezing, but she persisted anyway. Her determination to study the wildlife of Hyrule, including the flora and fauna that thrived only in the spring and summer seasons, overrode her debilitating sneezing. It was truly a shame that the most tolerable times of the year for her were fall and winter, when everything began to wither and die and her favorite flower, the Silent Princess, went away until the first melt.

On this particular spring day, the sneezing was pretty awful, but she insisted she venture out into the field anyway to study some of the Silent Princesses. She was determined to unlock the secrets of the soil, sunlight, and environment that helped them thrive so well. Every Silent Princess she had ever taken to her study had died within the night. Because of her insistence, her personal knight Link was forced to go with her as well.

“I won’t force you to eat a frog this time, I promise.”

He only smiled uneasily. It wasn’t the frogs he was worried about.

Link had what was possibly the most vicious and violent pollen allergy in all of Hyrule. When spring rolled around, he figured it might as well be over for him. Despite his great amount of outdoor duties, he did his best to stay inside, away from the flowers and the grass and all the budding greens that emitted pollen that could invade his system. Once he sneezed, he wouldn’t stop for a long while. It had gotten him in trouble during training one too many times.

But duty called, and he went out into the spring field with Zelda, that spring field teeming with malicious flowers and fatal pollen and the evil bees that spread it. When the princess told him the goal was to study some Silent Princesses, he would have fainted had he not been a disciplined warrior.

Zelda did notice his relentless sniffling from the back of her own horse, the way his grips on his reins tightened every now and then and his face contorted into something grotesque every few moments.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded. “Fine,” he choked.

She shrugged and onward they went, deeper into Hyrule Field, before stopping at a single Silent Princess Zelda had spotted. Link stayed atop his horse, wary, fighting his inner mechanisms while the princess dismounted and cheerfully knelt near the flower. He admired her in a lot of ways, but mainly her capacity to appear unaffected by the pollen wafting into her nose as she examined the flower.

“Come down here, Link,” she beckoned, voice as light as a feather and full of wonder. “This one’s rare. The colors are switched around–how peculiar.”

“I think I will stay up here,” he said. “Better view.”

She groaned, shot up, and tugged on his sleeve to get him off his horse. He stumbled down and then he was on his knees next to the flower with her, noses nearly pressed to the petals.

ACHOO!

“Ugh, I’m sorry–” But Link was quickly cut off by– ACHOO!

And now she was sneezing too, and back and forth they went, practically taking turns, trading sneezes, until they finally mounted their horses and swiftly rode away from the field. Link felt less bad about sneezing now and let the occasional one out, to which Zelda would respond similarly into her sleeve.

Link wasted no time when they returned to the castle, apologizing profusely and interrupting with another apology anytime Zelda tried to speak. He put the horses in the stable and made sure Zelda had everything she needed before he sprinted away from her, still sneezing, into the barracks.

As she watched him take refuge in one of the castle structures, sneezing and coughing and covering his mouth with his arm, she remembered what her mother said as a small smile graced her face.

#zeldaelmo #request #bday request #zelink #zelda #link #botw #breath of the wild

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redisaid · 1 year ago

Text

Sad Machine

During (Part 2 of 2)

I finished Tears of the Kingdom and have had many emotions. Please enjoy my angst chronicle of this amazing game with some flavor of what happened between it and Breath of the Wild thrown in. Sorry about all the Zelink, but I can’t help it here.

WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME. DON’T READ IT IF YOU ARE AVOIDING THEM!

10404 Words

Read it on Ao3!

And though I know, since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you She'll go alone and never speak of this again We depend on you, we depend on you

She was all you had, and you let her slip away.

You wake once again feeling cold, numb, and uncertain. The first thing you know is that she is not with you.

Zelda is always with you. Or was. You don’t know where she is now, or why or how.

Confusion is pervaded by fear. You don’t speak often or in great volumes, and you still steel your face to not betray your emotions, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have them. Your words are few, but your thoughts are many. Your smiles are seldom, but there is so much love in you that you don’t know what to do with all of it.

You give it to Zelda, usually. But she’s not here.

The second thing you know is that your arm is not yours. Not anymore. It moves as you command it, but feels strange. Distant.

The third thing you know is that a voice you do not know is commanding you.

All at once, it is the same thing as before. The same as last time you failed. But unlike before, you know who you are. You know what you’ve lost. But you do not know how or why.

Despite the weakness you can feel pervading your body, and this strange, blackened arm with bestial claws that has replaced your own, you do as you are told. You jump, falling down down down.

You think, maybe this is your penance for failing again; to fall as she fell. As you let her fall.

You hope Zelda too, landed in water.

You are completing trials, learning to control new powers, but the echo of the triumph over each challenge is hollow and bitter. The ghostly projection of this strange being that watches over you seems to understand, somehow. He does not ask for your celebration, but seems too, to be steeped in his own grief over this hallowed place where he has brought you. These islands in the sky are otherwise peaceful, serene. The only sound that interrupts your adventure is the rushing of the wind, and the distant roar of a dragon you’ve never seen before, circling high in the sky.

Again, you cannot leave it for fear of falling. At least, not until you are ready.

When you open the doors to the temple, you are not prepared to see her, to take her hand. Zelda is there, but it’s not her. You know that immediately. Still, you are compelled.

All you want to do is embrace this facsimile of her, but you know better. You know it has a purpose, a meaning. You hope, at least.

She wears strange clothes and gives you a power over time that fills you with dread. She gave this to you because you need it, and you instantly feel as if you wish to need anything else.

You turn to Rauru--you know that’s his name now--and start to ask where she is. You don’t speak often, but when you do, it’s for the right reasons. But the look he gives you tells you that it’s not his question to answer.

It’s yours.

When you come back through the temple, and open the doors, you try to find the answer. The sword, your sword, tries to give it to you, but it only knows what it needs, not what you need.

You need Zelda. The sword merely commands, “Hold me up to the light.”

So you do. You do what you are told. It’s what you do.

You see the briefest glimpse of her, serene and strange in some sort of ceremonial garb. It makes your heart hurt for her, when and where and however she is. You remember the last time you saw her in a white dress, what it meant for her then. You remember more now than you did before, about before. Too much, sometimes.

The sword disappears. So does she. A single, desperate message rings through your ears, “Link, you must find me.”

Like you would do anything else. She’s all you have.

You fall again into water, trusting that this is where you must go to do just that.

The height should terrify you, but it doesn’t. A world without Zelda terrifies you. It is the only thing capable of rendering fear from you. People call you courageous for this, but you’re not. You’re always scared of losing her again. She is all you have. She is everything you have.

You find Purah at Lookout Landing, surprised as anyone to see you again. Even more surprised that it’s without Zelda.

Six years now, you have not let her out of your sight. Six years, she has been sleeping in your bed enough that people call it hers and think you’re the stranger there. You’re fine with that, honestly. She is the face and the voice and the call to action. You are the action, and when you’re not, you are the quiet presence beside her, steadying her.

You love her with all of your heart, so much so that you’ve fallen for her in two very separate lives you’ve struggled to merge together.

You’ve tried not to burden her with that, but it was her who fell into your arms, her who kissed you first, her who was drawn to you as you were drawn to her, always.

Six years, and the guards who are looking for you can barely recognize you because they’re always too busy looking at her to see you. You can’t blame them.

You see another vision of Zelda at Hyrule Castle, but this one is different than before. She doesn’t look serene or purposeful. She looks empty.

Despite the confusion of the others, you know immediately that this is not her. But you say nothing, because they would not listen to you.

It’s another reason why you don’t talk much. Only Zelda really listens to you.

You report back to Purah, and she promises much, but has no answers. She wants you to investigate the strangeness in your world that this has caused. A blizzard in Hebra, black sludge falling from the sky onto Zora’s Domain, no word from the Gorons in weeks, and a sandstorm clogging the streets of Gerudo Town with dust.

Weeks? How long has it been? You don’t want to know, so you don’t ask.

It’s been long enough for this latest disaster to get a name: The Upheaval.

You could care less. You just want to find Zelda.

On your way to assist the Rito and ask them to search with you, you find Impa presiding over a hot air balloon and a strange pattern marked on the ground, glowing as if alight with thousands and thousands of fireflies. As you fly over it together, tracing the shapes in your mind and trying to make sense of them, she spouts a legend you’ve never heard before about dragon’s tears. You’re not prepared for what you see when you’re back on the ground, and find the pool with the fabled tear.

It sparkles in the sun, pure and golden. It reacts to your strange new hand. It calls to you, and you specifically.

She left it for you.

The tear rewinds through time in a way that is already familiar to you. Familiar and frightening, for the distance you feel in its pull.

You see Zelda waking up, somewhere strange but familiar. You see Rauru, and with him a woman who looks a bit like Zelda. She gives Zelda a name, Sonia. They tell her where she is, when she is, so now you know.

She is so far before you, so far away in time itself. You want to scream when the vision ends, but Impa is watching, and you have no explanation for what you’ve just seen.

But you know it’s real. You know it was real, one time or another.

And now you don’t know if you’ll see Zelda again, but you do know she left this for you, somehow. There is a reason.

You have to believe in that. Without her, you have nothing. She is everything you have.

So you keep going, hoping to find the answer.

Snow blankets Rito village. Tulin has gotten so big lately. It’s been a while since you were here last. You were supposed to bring him home, but instead, you help him follow his own calling, up into the sky.

At least you’re not the only one chasing after disembodied voices these days.

Tulin sees her first. This time, Zelda is not empty or serene. She is an echo. A resounding path of the inevitable.

To find her again, and understand where she’s leading you, you must do what you do best. You kill, you solve, you find keys and doors and locks and treasure chests. It’s what you’re good for, after all.

But--you miss the six years you weren’t doing this, and instead made her crepes and egg tarts and fruit salads while she told you about what she’d been up late reading the night before. How you’d wake in the night to the evenness of her breathing beside you, and lift the book off of her chest and gently onto the bedside table, then blow out the stub of her candle. The bed was too small, as was the house, but neither of you wanted to do anything about it. You liked the closeness. She did too. She’d sleep tangled in you, head on your chest. You’d lay her back down onto the lone pillow each morning as you woke before her, and got the day ready for her, never the other way around. The morning had to be prepared to meet Zelda, such a force was she to be reckoned with.

You fight a monster in the sky. You crash through ice and snow, destroying its weak points with your very body.

Anything, you think. You will do anything to find her.

What you find instead are answers for Tulin and more questions for you. Sages? Secret Stones? A vision of Zelda, again in a time so long ago it hurts to think about.

But it’s not her. Not her, here with you.

The Rito are forever grateful, but have no answers. Maybe you’re just not looking in the right place. She left these things for you. She left you a trail.

All you can do is follow it.

Sidon has a fiance you’ve never met, and that says a lot about how long it’s been since you’ve been to Zora’s Domain. You should feel worse about that than you do, but you don’t. It’s weird to see the ever-positive Prince of the Zora looking hopeless, but it fits your mood. You almost want to tell Yona not to cheer him up as easily as she does, because you’re afraid you can’t take it.

Zelda was easy to cheer up too. All it really took was any reminder that you were thinking of her, and you were always thinking of her, so it wasn’t hard. If she had a frustrating talk with Impa or Purah, a Silent Princess in the vase on the table was enough. If she had a long day between her various projects and the school and all the little parts of Hyrule she wanted to help fix, any of her favorite dishes were the key to bringing on a tired smile. If the past became too much, the toll of a hundred years of lonely, constant battling, you would hold her through her torment and your guilt.

You knew she never blamed you, but still, you wished you could have fought with her, for her.

Anything for her.

You have to look away as Sidon and Yona look at one another. You can’t take it. You just want to find her.

You take him up into the sky with you, for more keys and doors and waterfalls and enemies. You were made to fight and made to prove your worthiness time and time again, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t grating on you to do it again. With Zelda beside you, it’s easier to accept this as your duty. Without her, you wonder what it’s all for.

There is a sullen flavor to your usual silence that Sidon does not detect. The funny thing about not talking very much is that people don’t really get to know you well. That suits you just fine. Better he stay positive, because you’re not.

But still, you smile a little for him. It’s what people expect of you.

Still, you keep going. You use his water to wash away the stain this strange new monster has put on this land. The Zora are happy. Their problem is solved.

Yours is not.

The road to Death Mountain reminds you of how weak you are. The thing that stole Zelda from you, the thing that knew your name and her name and took everything from you so suddenly, couldn’t even leave you with your body. You pause in your trek to flex the blackened arm that is yours but isn’t yours. It’s capable of wonders, but you hate it.

You want to go home.

You turn around and head to Hateno.

Even the townsfolk don’t really recognize you. You’re still wearing the strange clothes you found in the sky and Zelda’s not here to tie your hair up for you, so maybe you just don’t look like yourself enough. Or maybe it’s because you are a part of a pair and there is no Link without Zelda.

So you don’t blame them.

You were born here, but you don’t blame them. Zelda had to tell you that. It took her years to tell you that. She was so afraid of reminding you of all you’d forgotten.

You don’t care. You remembered the important parts of your past life. You remembered her.

The house is quiet. Your house. Her house. It doesn’t really matter who it belongs to. You both live here. You have for six years.

It was Zelda who encouraged you to give the weapons you’d hung on the wall back to the people that had gifted them to you. “You’ll have no need of them,” she said then, so confident that the world you both fought for would remain at peace.

Instead, the walls are lined with pictures she’s taken. Landscapes and her horse. None of you, because she takes plenty of pictures of you, mostly doing silly things for her when she’s the only one that’s looking. Making faces at her from behind some ancient statue. Balancing a Korok on either hand while perched up in a tree. Wearing her frilly pink apron while you cook. These pictures, you know, she keeps on her Purah Pad, not bothering to replicate them otherwise. She sees you do this every day. You’ll do anything to see her smile.

You never talk with her about what this is and what you are to her. There are no labels and titles like Sidon and Yona have, no expectations. You are fine with that, because words lack the meaning you want them to have. Even Zelda, who says enough words for both of you and more, doesn’t have a use for a word to define what you mean to her, and she means to you.

It’s simple, really. She is everything you have. And now she’s not here.

You fall into the bed, exhausted, but you cannot sleep. You don’t know how to sleep without Zelda beside you, on top of you, limbs tangled with yours. She’s taller than you, like most people are, legs longer, and always threaded in near impossible ways between yours and the sheets. Getting out of that hold without waking her is perhaps what has kept your puzzle-solving skills sharp after all this time.

You love her, but love is not enough of a word. You’re devoted to her, but even that isn’t enough. She is home to you, and that’s about as close as you can get with words. This house is nothing without her. There is no home to go to. You give up and drag yourself out of bed, out the door, looking to Death Mountain’s imposing silhouette on the horizon.

But before you go, you break an unspoken promise, because maybe, just maybe, it’ll be worth doing to find a clue. A sign. If nothing else, a reminder of why you must go on.

You go into her well for the first time ever. This was her space to be alone, and you left it that way all this time. You’d throw stones down when you wanted her to come out, and she’d laugh and it would echo up to you.

But now, you climb down the ladder.

There’s even more books here than she’s got inside the house. Notes. Research and children’s drawings alike strewn about, but in an organized way.

On her desk is one of your hairbands. Old and worn. You take it to tie up your hair and feel a little more like yourself, but the problem with that is that Zelda has been the one to tie up your hair for you these last six years. She does it better.

You just try your best.

Next to it is a diary. You, silent and sneaky, are guilty of reading just about everyone’s diary in Hyrule. You want to say that Zelda was the exception, but no, you read hers from before, in her study at the castle. Just moments after remembering how harsh King Rhoam was to her, how she tried her best too, and it was never enough for him, you read it. You read how she broke down, finally talking to you about her worries, trying to suss out yours.

And how it made her love you to learn that you too were just trying so hard to be what you were supposed to be.

You don’t remember trying hard, but you remember Zelda.

So you read her diary again, just in case it helps you to find her.

All it tells you again is how much she cares about you. She’s had a new tunic made for you, and hidden it in the castle. She was going to surprise you with it, after this ill-fated adventure.

The people of the village you were born in don’t know you for your wild hair and strange clothes, but Zelda--Zelda would never forget you, never stop thinking about you.

So you go on.

There is no choice to live without her, or to rest until she is found. She is all you have. She is everything.

On your way to Death Mountain, you decide to help out the reporter from the Lucky Clover, who also seems to have no idea who you are. Even with your hair tied up and a fresh set of normal Hylian clothes.

You follow him stable to stable, as his Rito wings always put him ahead of you. You investigate things you already know the answer to.

Yes, Zelda borrowed those tools for the garden she was helping that crazy flower woman with. She’d planned to bring them back, after. You were with her at the time, because you are always with her, but no one was looking at you.

No, Zelda doesn’t sound like that woman in the well when she’s singing. You don’t think anyone but you has heard her sing. She likes the little songs you hum when you cook, and one day, she started humming them back at you.

You don’t remember the words to them. You’re not sure if any of them have words, but they play in your head over and over regardless.

The Yiga impersonator that looks like her is particularly cruel, though. But despite the quality of the image of her, the movements and mannerisms are all wrong. You are not fooled for a second. Your blade is more than ready to dispatch this fiend who took her face, though. Nevermind that it’s a bokoblin part you glued to a stick with the strange teal substance that flows out of your borrowed arm.

You miss your arm. You miss the Master Sword. You miss Zelda.

Even with your hair tied up and your clothes closer to normal, you are not yourself without them.

You’re back at Death Mountain, and the Gorons have gone insane. Of course everyone else’s problems would be indeed disastrous while theirs would be that they’re just eating evil rocks. Of course.

You slap this out of Yunobo with a certain amount of enjoyment you don’t express, but still hold in your heart. What an idiot. Zelda would never give him a strange ugly mask or tell him to exploit his people. Clearly, this was the empty vision of her--the puppet.

You have to be slightly compassionate in realizing that you’re the only person in Hyrule who knows about everything you’ve already seen and learned, but the difference between compassion and annoyance isn’t easy for anyone to distinguish when you barely speak and don’t emote.

You have your reasons for the way you are. Or at least you tell yourself this.

Seeing Yunobo with the Goron kids reminds you of Zelda again. The real Zelda. The one maybe only you know. Not some benevolent--or malevolent if all these rumors are so easy for people to believe--ruler, some pristine public figure. No, you know the woman who sat outside the house you shared, tutoring the little girl who wasn’t quite keeping up with the rest of the class at school. You know the Zelda who was patient with her well into the evening, coaching her that she could do it, she could read just as well as any of them. She just had to keep trying, keep being confident in herself.

You baked them fruit tarts while they worked. The little girl loved that they were shaped like hearts, but you didn’t make them that way for her.

You’re still thinking about this as you watch this strange, hollow image of her disappear into Death Mountain’s crater. Yunobo is fooled and thus very concerned. Again, you don’t want to tell him.

This is not your Zelda.

All this feels intensely personal--these visions of her that are not her. When the blood moon rises, she speaks to you, but it is not her. She doesn’t warn you. She doesn’t command you to stay safe.

No, this is not your Zelda.

You think about it as you ride minecarts across ancient ruins in the terrifying depths of the very earth with Yunobo. He asks you which way you think you two should go next and honestly you have no idea. You’ve just been going through the motions while you wonder at the how and why of it.

Why pretend to be her? To lure you?

Who could possibly understand that? No one you know even pays enough attention to you to know what she means to you. Not even the ancient, nosy Sheikah who accompany Zelda nearly as much as you do.

There’s some sort of giant spider crab with bombs for you to fight because of course there is. There was never a Zelda, never here. Yunobo gets his vision, and the bad rocks disappear. He promises to help you, as commanded by someone or something that feels closest to Zelda, closer than the other versions of her.

You are once again a hero, but no closer to finding her.

You pass through Lookout Landing again, on your way to the desert. You know there are no answers there, but you can’t take any chances.

Your body aches. You’re not sure where the ache lies. Your muscles. Your heart. You think that Zelda would remind you that the heart is a muscle. You miss her so, so much.

Purah has nothing new to say, nothing new to report. But she does mention that Impa is looking for you at the Forgotten Temple.

She sends you off with a message of confidence. As if confidence could fix this.

“You’ll find her, Linky. I know you will.”

You think, perhaps, Purah is maybe the only one who has paid enough attention to understand what being without Zelda means to you.

You make the detour from the desert to the Forgotten Temple. It’s strange to glide into the mouth of this place and not be beset by a nest of Guardians. Zelda was so upset when she learned they’d disappeared before she got to study them in their post-Calamity state. You were relieved that they wouldn’t be a threat to her anymore.

You wonder if all this Zonai tech will stick around long enough for you to find Zelda. You hope it does. You hope she gets to study it. You want to show her how the parts fit together. You want to listen to her ideas and theories and ramblings for hours and hours. You want to make her carts and gliders and hovercraft and all sorts of other strange machines that are new to you, but made out of something impossibly old.

You have to pull yourself together before you meet Impa again.

You find the hidden chamber that marks the locations of the geoglyphs, and what seems to be an order. There are so many. A story to be told, a story you have been missing in your blind pursuit of what you already know to be a phantom.

Impa tells you that these might offer you more clues to Zelda’s whereabouts, that you should seek them out immediately.

You selfishly do, because you want to see her. You just want to see her. Even if she’s not in some place or time where you can reach out and touch her. You need to see her.

Riju and the Gerudo can hold their own for a moment. You need to shoot yourself out of Purah’s skyward canons and find these geoglyphs.

Finding these patterns turns into its own pattern. You shoot into the sky. You fall, again, always falling, toward the glyphs. You search for the tear. You see her. You see how far she is from you, how impossibly distant. You sit down in the place where the puddle used to be and maybe cry a bit. Thankfully, these other locations are remote enough where you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you, for the most part. You pick yourself back up, pull it together, and go do it again.

You watch her confirm how far back in time she is. You watch as Sonia and Rauru take her in immediately, drawn by the same magnetic pull that draws all people to Zelda.

You watch as she meets another Zonai, Rauru’s sister apparently. More names--Mineru. The memory seems to emphasize this for you like it’s something important, so you listen. You watch Zelda take in all the information she offers, wanting only to find some way to come back and help you. Something is mentioned about dragons, and it leaves your hair standing on end as the memory ends.

But there’s more story to be told, so you keep going.

You see the man you can now only assume was the thing you found below the castle. Though in this vision, he is just a man. You’re not sure how it was he became that. Rauru, you realize is his conqueror, and for a moment, you wonder what side you’re meant to be on. But it’s quite clear that this Ganondorf only cares for the destruction and chaos you know he will come to embody. Rauru conquers in the name of order.

You’d like a world where none of this is necessary, frankly. Can’t everyone just be content to live in a cottage with the person they are bound to by their very soul, living to make her smile, and enjoying simple things, like finding out which type of pie makes her the happiest.

You take a break to make a pie for yourself, but struggle to even eat it.

You watch as Zelda reads the evil in this man--this Ganondorf. It’s plain as day to you too. You feel the same all-consuming force from him that is inseparable from the Calamity you thought that you and Zelda had put to rest. The hunger. The greed. The lust for power that knows no fulfillment, so long as there’s anything left to stand in its way.

Despite this dread, the next memory is a peaceful one. Beautiful, even. In a pristine garden, you listen to Zelda talk about you. She says many things, all of them complimentary, but seems unused to anyone listening to them. You realize that yes, that’s true. In all aspects of your lives, neither of you have had anyone to confide in but each other, even about happier things. This memory, at least, makes you smile a bit.

She found a home in the past, people who cared. And still, she was thinking of you.

The confidence she’s built by the next memory tells you some time must have passed there. It takes her a while for her to forgive herself for her inadequacies and see that she really doesn’t have any. She can do anything. You know this.

But you watch as Zelda confronts the dark puppet of herself you know you’ve been following. And now you know it is of Ganondorf and his doing.

You watch too, as she loses a third mother. The Queen who birthed her, Urbosa, and now this Sonia. Zelda only has you and you only have her, because neither of you can seem to keep anyone else. They are always taken from you.

And Zelda here is only a vision, lest you forget. She too, has been taken again.

You watch as this Ganondorf gains the power he so desperately craves. You can only watch, but your sword arm aches to dispatch him. You’re not sure if that’s you or Rauru, but at least in this, you and the foreign invader attached to your body are aligned.

You know this does not end well. You know what happens in the face of insurmountable evil. You’ve faced it before. You’ve been brought down by it.

You know what it’s like to die to the inevitable. To be defeated.

You decide, perhaps, that you should do some good before you seek out any more of these, just to feel as though you can turn some sort of tide here in your own time. You are afraid of the answers the past holds. See? You are not all that courageous after all.

You find Riju under attack in the desert, facing an enemy you’ve never seen the likes of before. The shambling Gibdo are only weak to magical damage, but you are just a swordsman. Thankfully, Riju commands the lightning now as Urbosa once did. You wonder, if she too will fall one day in her efforts to protect and comfort.

But for now, you can help her. You’re honored to be allowed in Gerudo Town as a man, even if it’s to defend the place from this alien invasion. Honestly, you’ve always thought it was a strange rule to be applied to you, of all people. You’re not a man in the way that those Hylians outside the city are, always leering at the strong women on the inside of its walls. You’re not a man in the sense that you care much about what clothes you wear.

Zelda said you looked cute in the Gerudo outfit anyway. She didn’t care much about you acting like a man, or dressing like one. She just cared about you.

Needless to say, you have no words to explain all that to the Gerudo, nor would they care to listen, but it was not a thing that mattered to you, and you wished it didn’t matter to them either. But there’s no time for that. You have a city to defend.

You do so with fire and lightning. Riju’s electricity runs through your arrows and keeps your hair standing on end. This would be exhilarating, honestly, and you can see she’s having some fun with it, but you’re not really. You’re tired. You know this ends with you chasing a phantom.

But you do it anyway.

The temple that rises from the desert is so familiar to you in its darkness. There’s a sense to that that you cannot describe to Riju, not that she’s expecting you to talk anyway.

When she and Zelda get together, there’s no end to the talking, but you can see that they both enjoy it--someone who keeps up with them in rambling conversation--so you stand by silently and smile. Maybe, when this is over, if you find her, you and Zelda can enjoy your newfound immunity from the rule that has kept you out of Gerudo Town. You would very much appreciate getting to relax in the comfort of the palace to visit Riju, rather than having to do so on the hot sands of the Bazaar while you wait for her and Zelda to finish their hours long chats about all of their ideas for improving their respective nations.

Despite the aid of the other Sages’ avatars, the fight against Queen Gibdo is hard. Hard on you, and hard on Riju. Before you both return to Gerudo Town, you take the time to cook a meal. Riju likes rice balls with Sunshrooms in them. You remember everyone’s favorites. Urbosa liked the same thing.

“You’ll find her,” Riju assures you as she helps you shape the rice. “If anyone can, it’s you. You’ll find her, Link.”

This time, you dignify it with a response, warm rice still molding to your hands, “I’m trying.”

On your way out of the desert, you throw yourself into one of those dark chasms in the ground below, searching for a treasure referenced on some map you found in the sky above while searching for geoglyphs. The treasure is not Zelda, and you knew it wouldn’t be, but you think she’d love to study this place too. You would be worried about her down here, though--breathing that gloom-filled, spore-ridden air. It’s fine for you, but not for her.

No, if you find her, you are keeping her safe in Hateno for a bit, or at least until she stubbornly overrules you.

But you can be stubborn too, especially when she is all you have.

You report back to Purah and Lookout Landing. It’s nice to see everyone there. Banners from Hyrule’s various peoples now fly over the research station. Everyone is looking for Zelda, but they’re all chasing phantoms.

You tell Purah as much. As you do, the sky darkens to a red you know all too well. It haunts the nightmares that you and Zelda hold one another through, and has been made manifest in the world yet again. Ganon, Ganondorf, Calamity, Upheaval. The name doesn’t matter. You know this thing. You know it means to destroy you with its hunger.

You will not let it, even as it takes Zelda’s form again, uses her voice to beckon you.

Everyone urges you to rush to a rescue you know is fruitless. But you go anyway.

You want to strip this demon of her face, her voice. He does not deserve them.

You realize as you tail this false Zelda, that this Ganondorf has studied you. Her too. He knows you both. She takes you to the library, to her chambers, to the dining hall. To places you stood beside her, once, when they were full and grand.

Now they are ruins, and she smiles at you in a way that Zelda does not, has not, and never will.

In the throne room, she mocks you. She casts a spell that restores it to what you vaguely remember it to be. She asks if you remember her, and the time you spent with her there.

She hated you. She hated you then. She ran from you. She cried when she thought no one was watching, but you were always watching. You understood the pressure she was under, the sacrifices she made, but you were too afraid to tell her that you understood. Some courageous knight you were.

It was easier then, to let her hate you.

You think this Demon King maybe understands that. Maybe that’s why he makes her voice so mocking.

But he doesn’t know the Zelda who changed her mind. The Zelda who brought you dinner as a peace offering, as you stood guard over her while she worked with Daruk on his Divine Beast one evening. He doesn’t know the Zelda who finally got you to talk to her. The Zelda who said, after thinking about your words in uncharacteristic silence, “I guess we are the same, you and I.”

And how she smiled at you then, tired and weary beyond measure, but still shining like the sun itself.

It took some time after the defeat of the Calamity for that memory to return to you. But now, you will never forget that, in all your forgetting.

Ganondorf is a being born from hatred and hunger. He doesn’t understand you, or her, or what you have, what you are for one another. He mocks you with a life where both of you were trapped under pressure like a bomb about to go off. He doesn’t know the six years you’ve spent waking up next to her. He doesn’t know the way you comfort one another, the way you understand one another as no one ever could.

Perhaps that’s what he seeks to destroy; that which he cannot have.

You steel yourself. You hold your borrowed sword steady in your borrowed arm.

You watch him reveal what you already know, and you fight the puppet that has mocked you this entire time, five times over.

You’re bloody, battered, and bruised when you take your victory prize: the tunic Zelda had hidden here for you. You will wear it when you find this Ganondorf and end him, in her honor.

You go back to Purah, cloaked in the guise of who you’ve been, but with a sword that is not yours, an arm that is not yours, and no Zelda.

You are trying.

She sends you to chase after another sage. A fifth one.

But that’s not where you go. You’re angry now. You’re ready to face what has happened. You want to know exactly what this Ganondorf did to Zelda, where he’s taken her. So you go to see the last two memories she’s left for you--to see the end of the beginning.

You watch as Zelda confesses what she knows of the future to Rauru over his wife’s grave. This isn’t her first brush with inevitable defeat, but you can see it pains her to share that with someone else. She’s put the pieces together. She knows what will happen. She knows he will die.

Rauru accepts his fate. You can still see the gears working in Zelda’s eyes, like some sort of Zonai device, as she tries to figure out a way out.

She’s always trying.

There’s only one more. You still don’t understand. How will you find her? How are you meant to find her if it seems so certain that she will be gone with the rest of them?

You watch her, talking to you. You’re not there. You won’t be born for thousands and thousands of years. But she tells you what has happened. She tells you what you already know.

But then you watch as the Temple of Time moves to the course you set it on, opening the way for her. You watch her follow your footsteps, follow the same light that you were sure was her, but perhaps is something else--a missing piece you had not considered. That draw, that pull, that connection between you made manifest. It knows what you both need, and it is eachother.

It transports the sword to her, from you. You don’t understand. You curse yourself and wish you’d rushed into that light.

The sword speaks to her. It barely even speaks to you, and now it speaks to her. Its first message is to tell her that you are safe, because even the sword knows she would want to hear that. Its second is to plead with her to fix it.

You watch as Zelda realizes how she can do this. You watch as she accepts a long, grim, and lonely fate to do so. You understand now, and you want to scream. You want to reach out to her and cry and beg and clutch at her hands.

“No, no, no,” you say as the memory fades.

But you know. You know where she is now.

You’d thought the dragon high in the sky just came with those strange islands. You didn’t know. You didn’t know and didn’t understand.

“You must find me,” she told you.

But she was there this whole time, and now it’s you who wasn’t looking at her, this time.

You watch as the sky darkens above you, and there she is. She’s beautiful beyond compare, scales of pure white, a blonde mane not unlike the hair you cut for her and tangled your hands in, horns and claws in a royal teal blue that matches the tunic she made for you.

How could you have missed her? How could you not have known?

“You must find me,” she commanded.

Because she wasn’t lost. You were.

Her eyes, though. Her eyes are wild and animalistic. Frightened. They don’t seem to understand. They react like a deer that’s been shot, knowing pain, but not what it means, not where it comes from, not why it must be.

This is Zelda, but not your Zelda.

You follow her to the far reaches of Akkala as she roars. You race after the tear that drops from her wild eyes just as dawn breaks on the eastern shoreline. You watch one final, horrible memory.

You watch her prepare for this with such grace, such dignity. She’s scared. You’re scared for her, but she walks with a measured pace, accepting her fate. She seals away the Purah Pad with a construct, mentioning this Mineru name again. But you hardly take notice. You’re watching her, cursing yourself for not watching her enough.

She swallows the stone. The process looks painful. You feel a pain tug at your own heart. She shouts one last command for you, one final wish before she loses herself.

“Protect them all!”

She flies overhead as you come to, surrounded by a sweet scent that reminds you of her. You look down at your feet to find that dozens of Silent Princesses have sprouted around you.

You fall to your knees and weep among them.

It’s dusk before you and bring yourself to stand. You gather your resolve. You do as you are told. You pick a Silent Princess, and you follow the dragon into the sky.

She fights you. She’s strong and huge. She doesn’t understand what you’re doing. She’s a frightened animal, but so beautiful. You lose it again as you pull and pull at the sword. You weep and whisper over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The moment she completes her goal, delivering the sword to you again, is wrapped in a quiet serenity, thankfully. Something of her understands. It lets the blade go. It lets you ride her into the setting sun, holding aloft a restored Master Sword, made stronger than ever by her holy power.

You found her. You found her, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.

You stay with her well into the night. You talk to her, telling her all the things you never talked about. You say more to her then than you’ve probably ever said or ever will say to anyone else. You love her. You miss her. She is everything you have. She is your home. She is the strongest person you’ve ever known.

Zelda’s eyes are wild, searching the sky for what you’re not quite sure. The blink every so often. A low rumble comes from her now and then. You want to think it means she understands what you’re saying, but come to the realization that the delusion of that is worse than the truth.

Still, you keep talking. You tell her about the Zonai machines you’ve made. You tell her about the Depths. You tell her about the Sky Islands. You tell her about the new Sages. You tell her about all the little Koroks you’ve helped find their friends and how it made you miss her all over again. You tell her all the things you’ve been dying to talk to her about. Zelda is the one only you really talk to. She always has been. She’s the only one who listens.

When you run out of things to say to her, having circled the whole of Hyrule twice over on her back, you braid the Silent Princess into a bit of her golden mane and glide downward.

You walk to Kakariko. You don’t ride or use the Purah Pad to transport to a nearby shrine or tower. You walk, because it’s going to take you that long to compose yourself again, to pretend to be someone who doesn’t know what he’s lost yet.

Because there’s no way you’re capable of sharing this terrible knowledge with anyone yet.

It’s hard enough to tell Paya that the Zelda who told her to keep people away from the ring ruins was an illusion. It’s hard to say her name.

But you do it.

You find the inscriptions and they tell you where next to go. More inscriptions. More strange armor. More islands in the sky and ruined temples in the Depths below.

You build a body for Mineru. Rauru’s sister, you remember now that you’re separated a bit from your grief by the passing of the days. You climb up onto this robot to ride it, and can only think of how Zelda would love this.

But Zelda is a dragon in the sky with wild eyes. She’s forever scared and crying. She waited for you for thousands of years. She waited and you didn’t even recognize her when you first saw her.

How could you? How could you?

At the Spirit Temple, you want to ask Mineru if there’s anything you can do. If there’s anything that can be done at all.

But before you can, she notices you have the Master Sword, and instead tells you all she knows of Zelda, of the promise she made to her, that you’re working with her now to fulfill.

The severity of it all lays heavy on your shoulders. So you still your question and don’t ask it. To ask for her sacrifice to be undone seems so hollow now. She gave you a command. She told you what to do, how to use all she has given you.

So for Zelda, you will do it.

You will do anything for her.

Maybe when the world is at peace again, and if you survive to see it, you can seek an answer. Or maybe you will live out the rest of your days on the back of the Light Dragon, because you can see no world in which you are not with her, even if she doesn’t realize she is with you.

But first, you have to do two things that seem equally as hard as battling the Demon King.

You go to the Forgotten Temple. You tell Impa to go home. You tell her why. You tell her you found Zelda.

Impa insists there must be a way to fix her. You nod along. You nod along and don’t know if you believe that. But you hope she does what she says, reads over the histories to find an answer. You hope she tries.

She squeezes your hand as she leaves before you. “It will be alright, Link,” Impa promises.

You know she can’t make such promises, but you squeeze her hand back anyway.

At Lookout Landing, Purah is much more pragmatic in her answer. She tells you what you already know. Zelda did this for you. She did this for all of Hyrule. You need to go to where Ganondorf hides in the Depths and make her sacrifice worthwhile.

You turn around to do that. Before you can walk toward the castle and the chasm below it, Purah says one last thing, “I know you loved her, Linky. I know you’re trying to be strong about it, but it’s okay to be sad.”

You are beyond sad. Beyond grief. Beyond anything that has any word you or even Zelda would know. You are guilty too. So riddled with guilt it clogs your heart like the Gloom, stealing breath from you at every inhale, every exhale. You couldn’t catch her when she fell, and now it’s come to this.

You don’t say anything back to Purah. You just walk into the night, then fall into the darkness.

You feel a strange sense of peace as you fall. A simmering anger, purposeful and strong, accompanies it. Yet there is that peace you have only known with Zelda. In her arms, in her laughter, in the past with her you both do and don’t remember. You loved her, yes. She was part of you. You were part of her. You still are.

Why is it so hard for any of them to understand?

So you fight. You bleed. You dive farther and farther down. You are a sad machine. You do as you are told. You do what you must. You hope that the avatars of the sages do not see the tears that stain your cheeks as you fight through the Gloom.

“You must find me," Zelda said.

You did. In doing so, you lost what was left of yourself.

All this effort, all this pain, and still, it won’t fix her.

But Zelda did this for you. She did this so you could save the world a second time, so you do.

This part of the Depths goes so impossibly deep. It takes you a moment to recognize these halls, but you do. You’ve been here before--with her. Here’s her torch at the bottom of the pit, only it’s nowhere near the true bottom of this endless downward spiral. Here’s the column she knelt over, trying to decipher its inscription. Here’s the hall of murals--you thought you might be able to destroy the rocks covering the other side of them back then, and a bomb flower makes quick work of them now.

You see the dragon in the final mural. It was there. She was there. This whole time. From the very beginning, it was inevitable.

It always has been and always would be. Just like you pulling the sword as a youth. Her struggling with her sealing powers as just another Princess of Hyrule. The suffering, the worry, the dread--for both of you, it was inevitable.

But for six years, you knew peace. And for thousands upon thousands of years, Zelda has only known her tears--so much so to the point that an ancient people have created an entire mythology around them.

She was the object of her own fascination. It’s absurd enough to make you laugh, despite the circumstances.

You miss her so much.

You find the bottom, where an army stands in your way. It’s no matter. You will fight through them all or die trying. You have nothing else to do, nothing left. You don’t know if you can stand to be the only one left. Not if Zelda is gone.

The new Sages come to your aid. Like you, they are fulfilling a duty--a promise. Unlike you, they have something to come back to when it’s over.

They usher you onward to confront him, this Ganondorf. This stain upon the land. This proprietor of everything that’s ever gone wrong in your life, and yet the very reason you’ve been given life at all. You fought hard enough six years ago against the manifestation of his rage. It kept Zelda trapped for a hundred years just trying to contain it. You thought that was all. You both did.

But you know that if there’s one thing you will ever do, it will be to end him--to ensure that he cannot do anything more.

He has taken everything from you. Zelda was everything.

He taunts you, but it doesn’t matter. You were made to fight him. Crafted, like a singular Zonai device with a singular purpose. You hold the sword that Zelda forged for you with her tears and hold back your own. You have a job to do.

So you do it.

It’s too easy at first. You realize as he bleeds that he enjoys it. He craves this battle, relishes in the promise that he has spent his own thousands of years waiting for. Zelda, Rauru, Sonia, Mineru, all those names from the past--they told him you were coming. You would stop him.

And he seems eager to see you try.

It’s not particularly surprising when he transforms as you saw him do before--as Zelda saw him do and thought important enough to show you. Even now, she’s helping you.

The Sages join you again, and it seems they’re struck down as quickly as they came to your aid. You appreciate the thought, but you know, you understand--this was always going to be you and him. It was as inevitable as the murals--as Zelda’s sacrifice and all that came before.

You fight. You bleed. The Gloom that emanates from him rots at you, threatening to take your strength as it took your arm. But there is no other way. You must end him.

But Ganondorf too has waited for you for eons. He does not give up the fight. He does not give up the destiny he feels he is promised. He too, will sacrifice everything for it.

He too, swallows his Secret Stone.

You are so used to falling that it’s strange to be flying. His jaws carry you into the sky, too large to crush you outright. You realize what he means to do as you climb higher and higher into the clouds. Or maybe he doesn’t mean it.

Maybe he too is as Zelda has become now, wild and scared. You are merely a piece of food stuck in his teeth, leftover fodder.

You have always been small, but never felt small until now.

“I’m sorry,” you say to Zelda as he drops you.

But she’s not here and she can’t understand you anymore.

But then she is. The Light Dragon soars up to you from the clouds below. You fall to her, always falling. She catches you.

You don’t understand. She’s not supposed to understand. She’s not supposed to remember. Yet she’s come for you. She’s saved you again. She’s always there for you, always trying.

Zelda always was.

You cling to her as she rises, surging upward. You are small and she is so much larger than you, yet still so small compared to the dragon that is Ganondorf.

But a part of her understands. Her job is not done. Neither is yours. You’ve both done this before. You two small beings have fought massive monsters. You have fought back the end of the world together. You will do it again. It is inevitable. It always was.

“Thank you,” you whisper to her, for the reminder.

She roars as Ganondorf breathes gloom at you both.

You dive from her back onto his. You find the weakness in him. The foul clustering of eyes that have watched you since they came from the Calamity. Since that day--Zelda’s seventeenth birthday--when the world ended for the first time.

As you attack him with all you have left, you remind yourself that you always tried to make subsequent birthdays better for her.

Eighteen, or one-hundred and eighteen depending on how you look at it, you took her to Lurelin Village. She got sunburnt as she watched you catch crabs on the beach. You showed her the Lover’s pond one evening, and watched her as she took pictures of the fairies.

Nineteen, you two went to Zora’s Domain. Sidon told her about how you dived off Ploymus mountain. She already knew about that. She watched you, all that time, from the castle. But still, she smiled at him and said she’d like to see you try again. Sidon and you jumped to her cheering, then were surprised to see her follow you both into the water. As if you needed any reminder about how fearless Zelda was.

Twenty, she was in Goron City with you. You took her to the hot springs on the side of Death Mountain. Yunobo made her a birthday cake out of rocks, and you had to quietly explain to him why that wasn’t the best idea. But Zelda laughed and laughed and thanked him anyway.

Twenty-one, she wanted to visit the springs again, so you take her. At the Spring of Power, legs dangling in the water as she sat on one of the stepping stones, she told you that she remembers you speaking to one of the few times you did back then. You’d told her then, that there was nothing wrong with her. She asked if you still thought that. You answered her with a kiss.

Twenty-two, she wanted to climb the peaks in Hebra. You did so after stocking up on warm clothes for her in Rito Village. You showed her how to shield surf down the snowy slopes. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were bright as she finally got the hang of it, and then it was you who had to remind her that she couldn’t do this forever and had to come inside eventually. You warmed her hands between your own in the cabin at the peak.

Twenty-three just happened. Right before you went to investigate the gloom. She was tired from running between the school and Lookout Landing all week and just wanted you to make her favorite fruit cake and stay in bed all day. She read to you from some text the Sheikah researchers had put together about the ruins around the Spring of Courage. You fell asleep on her. You woke and asked her if she still wanted to take a trip to celebrate, maybe to Gerudo Town, maybe later.

“Maybe later,” Zelda told you then. “We have all the time in the world.”

She’s now a dragon, however many thousand and twenty-three years old. She doesn’t remember that you tried to make things better--that you tried to make up for the hand that fate dealt her. But for six years, you did your best.

You jump from Zelda’s back and fall back to it. She’s there to catch you every time, eyes wild.

Even now, she’s still everything you have, the only thing keeping you from falling.

The Secret Stone appears on Ganondorf’s head, cracked. You know it’s time to strike, time to jump one last time.

Maybe six years was enough. For you, it will never be. But maybe, it was enough.

You shatter the stone with the Master Sword that Zelda restored to you. You fall to her, clutching at horns and scales. She flies you to safety, away from the blast that marks the destruction of the reason for it all. The reason you have both been made and unmade, gone in a flash of red.

“We did it,” you whisper to her as the sky calms. “You did it.”

Because really, this is her legend. She gave up everything for this. She gave up her laughter, her rambling, her smile like the sun. You are just a swordsman. You are just the person who loves her with all his heart, and who would do anything for her.

But you can’t. Not anymore.

An odd sense of calm washes over you, pushing at the grief that threatened to overwhelm you like gentle waves. You have spent all your strength. You have nothing left, so you let it.

Maybe, you think, this is how you meet your merciful end. At least, you think, you are still with Zelda as you do.

But you wake, hovering above her. Time seems to have stopped, or slowed so much around you that it is nearly still. Your borrowed arm twitches, then fills with a strange light. It wills you to reach for Zelda.

But there’s nothing you can do.

Still, it glows. It glows and then you see them. Rauru and Sonia stand at your flanks. Your shirt’s fallen off at some point--the tunic Zelda made for you singed by gloom fire so much that it burnt off your body. But that doesn’t matter. They are looking at her. They are looking at you.

They nod. You nod. You understand. They’re going to try.

And for Zelda, for her, you will try anything.

“Please,” you whisper as you feel their power flow through you.

You don’t pray. You ask. Hylia lives with you in your little house in Hateno Village. She shares your bed and cries on your shoulder. She cuts vegetables for your dinners. She sings when she thinks no one but you is listening.

You ask Zelda to come back to you.

And somehow, she does.

The dragon transforms beneath you. Zelda is so small in comparison, but you are even smaller than her. Still, both of you will face bigger and scarier things. You’ll do it together.

And you’re going to. You’re going to do it again and again and again.

You wake again in the sky, and there’s Zelda falling again below you. She’s asleep and serene and so beautiful. She’s everything you’ve ever had and will have. She’s yours again to have. You dive to reach her, making one last desperate grab for her hand.

And this time, you catch her.

#totk spoilers #zelda #botw #totk #fanfic #tears of the kingdom #look i just think link is kind of a sad little guy #sometimes a mad little guy #and he deserves to express that even though he doesn't to anyone #so enjoy a weird second person retelling of this game #zelink

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