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Akkala Citadel was free. At significant cost, but free.
Zelda winced as she looked up at the fortress instead of Mipha’s hands hovering over her thigh. The large tear in her pants at least made it easy for the Zora princess to apply her healing magic to the deep gash.
It had been a careless moment -- Zelda, too busy raking through Bokoblins on the Master Cycle, hadn’t noticed the Moblin’s flameblade swinging. She thanked Hylia that Mipha had been close.
The Zora’s soft, cool hands touched Zelda’s burned, blood-soaked skin. The sensation was soothing without the magic, but with it, she felt a strange affinity toward her. Like her body naturally welcomed the help knitting itself together. The pain remained, but it was less ... top of mind? Zelda wasn’t sure. She winced; Link always looked so at ease when Mipha healed him.
“So sorry,” Mipha said, quiet voice wavering. “It is different, healing someone for the first time. I will have better control next time.”
Zelda touched Mipha’s magenta shoulder and smiled through the hurt. “I should be strong enough to not let it show.”
Mipha nodded to that, still focusing on the burns. Zelda looked again to the fortress, noting that while it smoldered, it had not suffered serious damage. With some time and organization, they could immediately use it for a base.
“You are ... so strong, already.”
Zelda glanced back to Mipha, blinking. The Zora flashed a rueful smile as they sat in the gravelly, blackened field below the citadel. “You don’t think so. I know a little of what that is like.”
Zelda’s mind stalled out. Mipha? The most gifted Zora to exist in several millennia, according to her people’s history? The Champion of Vah Ruta? Inheritor of the legacy of Ruto, the legendary princess and sage?
How could such a person know what it was like to not be strong? Like all the other Champions, she seemed born into personal power.
“You have led your people so far,” Mipha said as the cool intensified on Zelda’s thigh. “You inspire them with every step and word. You are what a princess should be ... something I only hope to be.”
The Hylian royal softly regarded Mipha as a patch of smoke wafted around them. She hadn’t thought of that. Obsessed with unsealing Hylia’s power, she had regarded leadership almost as secondary. But she, like Mipha, couldn’t count on her father to see what needed to be done.
“We hope to be,” Zelda corrected, then winced again. The blood was already gone from her clothes; her wound started to close.
“Have to be,” Mipha replied, perhaps harder than she meant to. Zelda had never heard Mipha sound that way; the strongest emotion she’d ever heard from her was disappointment.
“ ... What do you mean?” Zelda asked.
Mipha’s hands pressed into Zelda’s muscle. “The Calamity was sealed 10,000 years ago, and it came back as foretold. If we seal it again, how long will it last? 5,000 years? 2,000?”
The prophecy didn’t say, Zelda thought over a low grunt of pain. There were no sages to consult, no ancient-enough tomes to pore through. The sword, if it could speak at all, must not have told Link anything.
Hylia might speak to her Champion, but she did not speak to her mortal vessel.
“We Champions. All six of us" -- Mipha made a point of adding Zelda -- “are destined to fight the Calamity now. What about in the future. Will it be our children? Their children?”
No one knew. There was only today’s war, the struggle to survive now. Their friends from the future spoke of the Champions failing, the Hero failing, of the Goddess reborn sealing herself in the castle with Ganon. Of a 100-year war while the hero slept. Thinking that far ahead seemed impossible. It closed off so much hope for a brighter tomorrow.
Mipha of the Zora, a race that lived well past a millennium, could think far beyond a century. She could not afford to consider just tomorrow. She had to think of tens of thousands of tomorrows.
Zelda’s breath left her lungs at that notion. The final twisting pains of her wound closing up brought her back. Droplets of warmth hit her naked leg; soft sobs filled her ears, drawing her gaze to Mipha.
Forgetting the awkwardness between them, the Hylian princess reached to hug her. The Zora princess buried her head in the sturdy blue tunic.
“When does it end?” Mipha said, fighting back more tears. “When are we free of it?”
Zelda didn’t want to say. Not with the things she’d read ... the legends passed down among Hyrule’s royal family. She closed her eyes and hugged Mipha closer, hoping that would keep the princess’ heart from cracking further.
“And if Sidon is right,” Mipha shuddered in Zelda’s arms. “If Sidon is right ... we are destined to die soon.”
“No.” Zelda pulled back from Mipha, hands holding her friend’s shoulders as she met her watery gaze. “No, we are not. And we will not.”
“But, the future -- “
“Is not written for us here.” Zelda huffed through another passing bit of smoke. “Today, we won. Tomorrow, we try to win again. My sealing power will come. We have Link, the Champions, the Sheikah. We have you. We will not leave this to our descendants. We will defeat Calamity Ganon, Mipha.”
Mipha swallowed, but nodded with a swipe at her eyes. Zelda hoped the princess felt it, too. To be strong enough for everyone, they had to be strong enough for each other. For all of their fellow Hyruleans. There wasn’t a choice about it. They had to change their fate.
“When this is all over,” Mipha asked with another swallow, “I would very much like to visit you.”
Zelda smiled, helping Mipha to her feet. “My first official guest after the royalty is re-established?”
Mipha finally cracked a smile. “Perhaps, just as a friend.”