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Zelda’s hands were sticky from the frog’s damp skin, and Link’s features were lifted into a minute expression of amusement that made him look exquisitely beautiful. He had gamely licked the frog’s slimy, virent body, and in a show of good faith, Zelda had done the same—she spent the next few minutes spitting inconsolably into the grass, though Link, as always, remained unaffected.
With the bitter taste of frog still on her tongue, she asked, “Shall we race to the pond?” and Link very nearly smiled.
They raced. She lost. Badly. Out of breath, she collapsed to the bank and washed her hands, then brought her cupped hands to her lips to rinse out her mouth. She said, “I don’t think I felt any particular effects, did you?”
He shook his head and she dried her hands on her pants. More research would need to be done.
A patch of blue wildflowers beckoned nearby, and Zelda sat down in the grass and shoved her hands into the mess of them, scooping tiny blossoms and vibrant leaves into her hands. Link knelt nearby and watched.
“Forget-me-nots,” Zelda explained, holding a small bunch of flowers out to him, which he gingerly took. Their fingers didn’t touch, exactly, but she thrilled at the feeling of them being so close. “My favorite.”
“Thought Silent Princesses were your favorite.”
“They are. But these are my favorite, too. You can’t pick Silent Princesses, though, because they’re so endangered. But mother always said I could pick as many of these as I wanted. We used to braid them into crowns. My real tiara was too heavy for me back then. I much preferred the flower ones.”
She lay down amidst the flowers and felt them wreathe around her, the leaves and petals soft as clouds. Holding the gathered bouquet against her chest, she asked, melodramatically, “Do I look very beautiful?”
Link leaned forward, his eyes looking all around at her, and she blushed under his scrutiny. He said, “You look like you’ve died.”
She sat up indignantly, throwing the bouquet at him. It scattered to pieces and rained down around him while he leveled her with that amused, almost-smile.
He reached towards her and she went immediately still, as if she would frighten him away if she moved. From her hair, he plucked a stray flower and held it in the space between them. Then he said, “You look beautiful,” and her heart was so full that she really could have died.
Presently, Zelda considers Link while Link considers the frog.
Link’s hair is pulled back messily and his clothes are rumpled from days of traveling through the wilderness. She can’t remember the last time she saw him talk to a person, but he doesn’t seem lonely. If it were her, she wouldn’t be able to stand it. She’s been lonely for so long. But Link seems perfectly content to be by himself in this different, wide-open Hyrule.
He walks past her without seeing her. After all, she’s not really there. The castle glows a sinister, seething red in the distance and Zelda tries to pay it no attention, tries to look only at Link, instead. He drops the frog rather unceremoniously into a pouch, where it squirms gently.
Later, under a rocky outcropping that protects him from the driving rain of Vah Ruta’s perpetual storm, he roasts the frog over a fire and collects the secretions that sweat from its skin in a little glass vial. Zelda says to no one in particular, Oh, so that’s how you do it.
Zelda talks to him often.
She’s not sure how much makes it through to him, if anything. When he adds the camera rune to his Sheikah Slate, she helpfully tells him how to compose a shot, but he must not hear her because his photography is still quite bad. She says, You are the light that must shine upon Hyrule once again.
The light of Hyrule takes a blurry picture of a bird and does not remember the princess.
But how could he remember her? He doesn’t even remember himself. Zelda watches him lie on the grass beneath the stars, and she despairs. He has dirt in his hair. He smiles in his sleep. He’s a far cry from the person that he used to be, and even further from the boy that she first met—that scrawny twelve-year-old with the sacred sword.
He was smaller than her then, and he’s not much larger now. The sword was nearly as big as he was, and with it strapped to his back, she wondered how he managed to unsheathe it. Clumsily, she hoped. As she watched him walk that long and lonely path across the throne room’s shining floor, she thought hard about him tripping over his own boots, as if just by thinking it she could really make him do it, and she thought so hard that she gave herself a headache.
When he finally got to the end of the room that felt about a mile long and stood before the thrones, he looked up, not at her father, sitting regal and important before him, but at Zelda, standing at the King’s side. And she was caught by the look he gave her: desperate, insistent, and—frightened.
In his eyes, she saw a wanting to be seen and understood. As if she could deliver that to him—as if he looked at her and saw someone like him. She pressed her lips into a thin line and turned away. There was nothing she could do.
The expression melted from his face and turned him to stone as it went. He set his shoulders and drew his sword—effortlessly, she noted, bitterly. The bright light illuminated everything in the room, but didn’t touch his eyes at all.
Link walks across a field of wildflowers blowing invitingly in the breeze, and Zelda goes with him, not quite walking, wishing she could reach out and touch him. She floats beside him, an invisible sun, and imagines he can see her, imagines they are just two people in the whole world, walking among the flowers. They spiral around him in a whorl of colors—not just blue, but pink and yellow and white, too. These flowers are really special. He stands for a moment, transfixed, and Zelda looks deeply into his face as if she could ever read what was written there.
She says, Please remember me. You’ll remember me, won’t you?
She says, Well, you really shouldn’t have stepped on the flowers, Link, she did tell you.
He travels all over Hyrule, and somehow manages to just nearly miss almost every location connected to a memory of her. It’s almost like he’s not even trying to find them. She wonders, anxiously, if his memories of Kara Kara Bazaar have scared him off. She wonders if he’d first seen her in any other light, if maybe he’d feel differently.
He stands in the middle of the stalls and stares ahead silently, but he’s always sort of staring ahead silently. Does he remember what happened here so long ago? Does he remember the blood spilt in the sand?
With a small shake of his head, he continues to the market and buys a whole big armful of fruit, then sits next to the water to eat it, smacking his lips loudly.
In Ordorac Quarry, she stands next to him and gesticulates wildly, and says, Go that way, go into the spring. Instead, Link spends an inordinate amount of time taking down every single Skywatcher in the area. He almost dies about a hundred times. When he’s done, he harvests scrap metal from their remains and then makes camp on the opposite side of the quarry from the entrance to the spring. He brings out the Sheikah Slate, stares for a moment at the album of pictures without opening any of them and then—he puts it away.
The fire crackles merrily, but Zelda cannot feel its warmth. She sits with her knees tucked up to her chest next to Link, asleep beneath the wide-open sky. She says, It’s okay if you don’t want to remember. I understand. I do.
One hundred years ago, Zelda prayed at this spring until the sun went down, until she was numb with cold, until her fingers trembled and her chest heaved with misted breaths and the pain became less sharp and more dull, and therefore worrisome. Link waited on the shore, and he watched her drag herself from the freezing waters and then just stand there dripping in the moonlight. And he didn’t move towards her, or say anything at all, and she thought to herself, Did I already fail you? Did I fail you, so long ago? They just looked at each other, with his gleaming sword at his back and the gleaming statue at hers. He turned away. She closed her eyes. She could stop shivering, but could not stop her body from wanting to be held.
Zelda watches Link leave the quarry without a backwards glance at the spring, and thinks about being thirteen and hating him. Sixteen and loving him. Seventeen and burying him.
Then she says, But I remember everything.
When the Calamity breaks, they stand together in the war-torn, trampled stretch of Hyrule Field. Zelda takes in a breath of air and smells smoke—but beneath that, blooming wildflowers. Across from her, mere paces away, Link is bloody and bruised and beautiful.
The first thing she notices about him is that he doesn’t have the sacred sword; at his back, he wears a simple steel broadsword, and she takes one look at it and almost asks, Did you really beat Ganon with that?
Thankfully, her words fail her instead. Her sealing light still falls around them like soft petals and dissipates to nothing before it touches the ground. He has an unreadable expression on his face, but that’s his usual. She wonders what he sees on hers.
“Link,” she says, finally, the first real word she speaks after a century of no one to say anything to. “Do you really remember me?”
He looks at her warily and says, “Not…really.”
Her heart doesn’t just sink. It drops to the bottom of her chest and clatters like a big rock. She struggles for a moment—her body is so heavy and corporeal, and she wants nothing more than to fall into his arms. But she holds herself back and says, “Okay.”
He smiles at her—actually smiles!—and it’s the kind, empty smile you would give to a stranger. It makes her miserable. She follows him through the field, to retrieve horses from the stable, and dutifully trudges behind him as he leads her all the way to Kakariko. He says, “Impa is waiting,” and she brightens, because she really does want to see Impa.
After staying for an appropriately polite amount of time, Link leaves, and Zelda realizes that they hardly even said anything to each other at all. She lays her head on her arms as she stares out the window.
“Why doesn’t he ask?” she says. “I’d tell him anything if only he’d ask.”
Impa says, “Give him time. He’s been through much, already—he is the knight with the Sword that Seals the Darkness, after all.”
“Would you believe that he didn’t even need it?” Zelda says, and Impa doesn’t, not really.
According to Impa, Link is still trying to find himself, which is a statement so ridiculous that it makes Zelda laugh until she honks. Then she figures, well, the same must be true for her, probably.
It’s lucky that Impa keeps odd hours, because Zelda’s circadian rhythm is all out of whack. But Impa is always there for her to talk to when she doesn’t know what to do, or just sit there with when she doesn’t know what to say.
Impa listens when she talks, and comforts her when she cries, and gently walks her through her grief. And Zelda indelicately places her hand on Impa’s face as she’s speaking, and Impa pauses mid-sentence and calmly reaches up to take Zelda’s hand, but then says in tones that disclose more than a little strain, Zelda why did you do that. And Zelda says, To make sure you were really there. Later, when they think Zelda can’t hear, Impa and Paya talk at length about how they think Zelda’s time in the castle may have “taken a toll on her”, which Zelda thinks is probably the kind way of putting it, and is probably even true.
Paya looks just like her grandmother did in her youth, which is really very confusing at first. Sometimes Zelda walks into a room and tries to continue a conversation that she had with Impa during the late hours of the night, and Paya, bewildered, reminds her that she’s looking for her grandmother, not her. And Zelda says, Right, red tattoo, and points at Paya’s forehead, as if that’s the biggest distinction she can find between the two Sheikah women, and Paya smiles awkwardly and says, Haha, yeah.
Just acclimating to normal life again takes so much concentration and effort that she hardly has any time to think about Link at all. So it comes as a surprise when he returns to Kakariko, weeks after they put an end to the Calamity.
The first time Link visits, he doesn’t stay for long.
It’s late into the afternoon, but Zelda has only just woken up. She hears a murmured conversation downstairs, and wanders down to investigate. It’s Link, talking to Impa in the front room. Zelda leans against the wall, halfway down the stairs, and watches.
It looks like he recovered from the injuries he sustained during their battle against the Calamity, and then picked up new ones since. The bandana he wears on his head is really quite funny, but the blue tunic with the cropped sleeves makes her mind go fuzzy with static. She stares at the muscles of his arms, chewing her lips.
He looks up, like he could feel her eyes on him. She’s actually quite unused to him being able to see her when she’s watching him. She jumps when he notices her, then scrambles back around the corner, and when she peeks out again, he’s gone.
Impa says that he came by to retrieve something. When Zelda inquires what, Impa evasively says that it was just something she’d been holding on to for a long time, and then she stares poignantly out the window at the wind blowing through the willow tree outside. Zelda asks, Was it the shirt, and Impa sighs and says, Yes it was the shirt.
The second time Link visits, he seeks her out. She’s in the hills above the village, investigating the shrine by the apple tree. It’s glowing now, but when she puts her cheek against the lit-up parts, she can’t feel it giving off any heat.
Zelda unsticks her face from the shrine the moment she sees Link coming up the hill, and then hurriedly wipes her face on her sleeve.
They exchange pleasantries—she asks if he’s been inside the shrine and he says yes. She says, What was in there, and he says, Dead monk, and she says, Oh. Well, was it helpful? And he says, Kinda. They lapse into uncomfortable silence. He’s here for something, and Zelda finds herself in a panic, worrying what it is.
Finally, he says, “I remember you.”
She scuffs the ground with her boot, feeling so nervous she can hardly think. “Oh. That’s nice.”
He waits a long time for her to say something else, and when she doesn’t, he says, “Your horse threw you when you were fourteen. You broke your arm.”
“True,” she admits reluctantly.
“You once tried to sneak a stack of books out of the library by putting them under your skirts and nudging them across the floor, which almost worked until you hit a staircase.”
“Okay, you really didn’t have to go and remember that,” she says, distressed.
“Your favorite food is cake. I once watched you eat three whole slices—”
“What are you trying to prove?” she cries out, because actually, this conversation is not making her feel better and she can’t stand to listen to him keep doling out embarrassing memory after embarrassing memory.
His mouth shuts. He looks at her. He blinks. He says, “I don’t know,” and leaves.
She groans in frustration, and thinks about calling back after him, There are other memories, you know, ones where I don’t seem like such a dimwit. But she doesn’t, and sits there stewing instead, and then becomes convinced that he only really came here to make fun of her.
And he doesn’t even know the rest—that after being thrown from her horse, she spent two years without touching one, until Link gently led her back to the saddle. That he used to take it upon himself to steal library books for her, because as it turns out, he was a much better thief. That the best cake she ever had was one he baked for her.
“I wish he wouldn’t remember anything,” she proclaims loudly when she enters Impa’s house, and Impa has the audacity to roll her eyes.
But even if he did remember—how would he feel towards her, then? Maybe a freedom from responsibility is a freedom from her, too.
A long time ago, he brought her a bouquet of forget-me-nots, and she kept them by her bed and looked at them every night as she fell asleep. When they began to wilt, she pressed them between the pages of a book so she could keep them and take them out to look at whenever she felt sad, which was often.
And once, only once, in a moment of utter weakness, she tried to—she wasn’t sure what, exactly. She only knew that she was tired of putting her own arms around herself every night and pretending they were someone else’s.
He caught her, holding her rigidly away from him. For a moment, she thought it was because he was just alarmed—she had sort of lurched at him ungracefully—but then she saw his face, and his expression was so severe that she stopped everything, even breathing.
His eyes were stony and unsmiling. He opened his mouth to speak, and Zelda decided that whatever he said would be the absolute worst thing, so she blurted out, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I…I forgot myself.”
He nodded in relief. Released her shoulders. Took a step back. Closed himself off again. It was the first and only time she’d seen him really shaken up, as if the idea of her wanting him was so unconscionable to him. But then, he always took his duty so seriously.
He only held her the one time, and it was hours before the end.
Rain came down in icy sheets around them, and blue wildflowers were crushed into the mud beneath her hands and knees. Neither of their bodies held any warmth. She screamed until her voice broke, and then cried until she was empty of everything. His arms around her felt like the final nail in the coffin of her kingdom.
Later, she gathered him into her arms for the last time, but he was already empty, too.
The third time he visits Kakariko, he has the Master Sword at his back.
She’s lying on Sahasra Slope, her eyes closed, and when she feels a shadow block the sun, she opens her eyes to see Link standing over her. He stares down at her with such a serious, brooding frown that she screws up her own face to mimic his, at which point his expression softens into something resembling exasperation. Then, she spots the sword over his shoulder, and feels a nervous sweat begin to gather on the small of her back.
“The Great Deku Tree,” he says. She waits for him to continue. He doesn’t for a moment, just frowns softly. “Said the words would be better coming from you.” Another long pause, then, “What did you want to say to me? When you put back the sword?”
She blinks up at him. The sky is very bright and blue and cloudless behind him. He blocks the sun like an eclipse. One hundred years is a desperately long time to keep a secret, and not even a very good one at that.
“That I loved you,” she says simply and honestly.
His eyes widen in surprise, like he didn’t expect her to really say it. He opens his mouth. Closes it again. Then he sits down on the grass next to her, and from his pack pulls a slightly crumpled bunch of flowers. Forget-me-nots.
He says nothing, but begins gently placing the flowers into her hair, spread out on the grass around her. It’s such a blushingly tender act that she goes very still, and lets him carefully arrange the blossoms. Finally, he sits back and admires his work.
She tries not to fidget under his gaze, but she doesn’t know what to do. Or say. She closes her eyes, because looking at him is making her heart pound so fiercely that it concerns her, like it might beat too fast and just stop altogether instead. Link lets them sit in soft silence, and eventually, her racing pulse begins to even out. But when she peeks open her eyes to find Link still staring at her, it quickens again.
“Why did you get the sword, Link?” she asks, when she’s finally able to say anything at all. “You don’t need it anymore.”
He thinks for a moment, then says, “Because knowing how you felt about something is not the same thing as knowing how you feel about it.”
“And how do you feel about it?”
He considers her, then says, “Sit up for a moment.”
She does, and the flowers fall from her hair. Then, Link’s hand closes around her wrist. He pulls her forward and into his arms and she falls against him. His arms surround her, warm and wonderful, and he holds her against him like he was as hungry for her touch as she was for his. She wraps her arms around him and squeezes, and he buries his face into her hair and lets out a slow sigh right against her ear. He smells like fresh rain, and grass, and a little bit like horse, too.
“I feel like I should have done this a long time ago,” he whispers to her, and she doesn’t let go for a long time, and neither does he.
When they do release each other, his face is split into such a bright smile that it takes her breath away.
They lie back down together on the grass and talk of anything and everything. The sky melts from blue to pink to a deep, dusky indigo. When there’s nothing left to say to each other, they just lie there with their shoulders pressed together, watching the stars wink into existence.
Eventually she says she has to go back, that Impa and Paya will be worried about her. They’re concerned she’s gone a bit funny since her return. He says, Well, have you? And she says, Yes.
She admits, “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night crying like a child. And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve fallen down the stairs.”
He thinks about this. “Happens to me, too,” he says.
“The crying or the stairs?” she asks.
“Both.”
He stands first, then holds out a hand to help her up. When she takes it, he doesn’t even let go, just threads his fingers through hers and begins to lead her gently back to the village. Zelda feels so light she thinks she might float away.
“I watched you sleep beneath the stars,” she admits, breathless, looking up at the dark and wild sky above them.
He turns his head to look at her, surprised and confused, and she blushes and thinks that maybe she shouldn’t have said that after all. But then he says, “You should try it with me sometime.”
She lets go of Link’s hand before they reach Kakariko, out of a deep shyness. Still, Impa’s expression is more smug than Zelda really appreciates. She dithers in front of the open door as Link waits a couple steps down, watching her go in. Then she turns around and says, “Oh, won’t you stay?”
He grins—and he does.
Somewhere in the Akkala Highlands, Link and Zelda lie together beneath a sky so full and bright it looks like spilled diamonds across black velvet. Wind blows through the grass, and through soft blue wildflowers, and picks up sparks and smoke from the dying campfire. Wrapped in each other’s embrace, they’re warm enough without it. Zelda reaches up to turn his face towards hers, and she grins at him, and he grins at her, and then with her heart pounding in her chest, she leans forward to kiss him. It’s not very good, because she’s never done it before, and their noses bump together, but when they both finish laughing about it, they try again.
And again.
And again.