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His very first memory is of holding a sword.
It’s not a bad memory, either. If he squints he can still make out the colors and shapes of the moment; his sister knocking him over, that precise feeling of dirt on his cheeks and grass tangled around his ankles. His sister used to tell him he was too connected (she used attuned, her and her nice words. She was always smarter than he was) to the world. Not so much to the plants and animals but to the ground itself. Apparently his family used to find him at night pressed against the flowers, listening to the world below, instead of in bed where he should have been.
Apparently the world used to talk to him.
But it doesn’t anymore, and his sister doesn’t either, because it’s been about a hundred years and Hylians don’t last that long (most of them don’t, anyway. Sometimes he likes to pretend that she is still around, just hiding, that she got past the kingdom’s border and is at peace somewhere, exploring faraway lands) so Link tries pretty hard not to think of that memory when he can.
On the first night after Ganon falls they eat at Link’s house and don’t look at each other. Well, Link eats, at least, Zelda more falls asleep into her fish soup and without much fanfare, collapses into bed. She sleeps for thirty-eight hours, wakes once to mumble “Uxeefiget” which means exactly nothing, and falls back asleep for another seven.
Link tries to practice with the Master Sword but something in his stomach won’t settle. On hour fifteen he heads into Hateno, buys seeds from a wandering merchant, and tries to build a garden. There's a certain point where he’s on his hands and knees, covered in dirt, baking under the sun as he tries to fit four strawberry seeds into the inch-deep hole he’s made in the ground with his pinky finger, when Link’s breathing evens out and for a moment he feels sane. He feels right.
His sister used to tend the garden, a hundred years ago. It’s since disappeared, so Link will have to restart from scratch. He wishes, sometimes, that he’d listened to her more, but especially now, as he tries to figure out seeds and their distinct desires. She’d been good at that. Green thumb, would be the word. Words.
It takes another three hours to build a makeshift fence around where he’s planted the seeds, and after that, Link finally feels able to practice (behind his house, of course, so as to not disturb the garden). He sets his right foot behind his left and shifts his weight and then—the world drips away, and it’s just him, and white noise clouding his mind, and nothing else.
Is it strange for someone to feel so tranquil when they fight?
The Master Sword hums in his hand, like it’s whispering to his mind. Its hilt feels molded especially for him. He slices at grass and imagines blood welling from the injuries he’s given a monster. The Master Sword is sharp. It cuts cleanly. There are times when Link will strike and for a moment there’ll be no blood at all, the cut is so perfect that it is invisible and he thinks this is it. This is where it all comes into an end and the monster topples over and he remembers he can never really end, anyway.
Link’s heart rate slows and he finds himself calming down and he thinks to himself, is it strange for me to feel so tranquil when I fight?
He’s asked himself this question thousands of times and never gotten an answer. At least it’s useful. Link tries very hard to be useful.
When Zelda finally wakes up for good she pulls up her hair into a ponytail that looks similar to Link’s. Before the Calamity, her father wouldn’t allow her to pull up her hair, because he thought it was unbecoming of a princess. Link didn’t really understand that, but he also didn’t understand a lot of the things King Rhoam did.
He’s spoken about this with Zelda. They’ve spoken about the late King a lot of times. Sometimes he wonders if it would have been easier for her had King Rhoam just hated her.
He hadn’t. He'd loved Zelda more than anything.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
The two sit down at the same table and have breakfast at lunchtime and avoid talking about the things they need to talk about, namely: what to do next.
They have to go see Purah, but it seems as though neither of them want to be the first one to bring it up.
They have to see Lady Impa. They have to see Robbie. They have to see Purah. They have to pay tribute to the families of the fallen Champions, if there’s any family left at all. There is just so much they have to do and the heaviness of it all shrouds the house, thick as honey.
“When I was talking to the ladies in Hateno,” Zelda says, “they warned me of monsters along the shoreline. I figure, if we want…we could go check that out?”
And a weight on Link’s chest lifts.
They make it down to the coast just a little past midday and see pretty much immediately what the Hateno women had warned Zelda about. Bokoblins have built a hideout along the sand. It stretches the length of two trees and the height of another, and there are about seven of them in total, sleeping by a fire.
Link pulls an arrow from his quiver and notches it. He hits the first in the head and the rest wake up, barreling without thought toward the aggressors. Zelda barrels right back at them and takes out two in a flash of gold (it’s like lightning in that it seems to scorch her as much as it does the targets) and before Link can even think about it three more are down by his hand and there’s only one left.
He grips the Master Sword and the ground below him tenses for a moment, like time itself has paused for him.
Then it’s over completely, and the two share an apple Zelda had brought along.
They split apart, Link wandering the shoreline to see what he can pick up and ensure no one else is hiding, while Zelda walks closer to the cliff face and starts examining it.
Near the Bokoblins’ hideout is a fenced enclosure with a few cows inside. Link figures he knows exactly where these cows came from, and makes a mental note to tell the farmers in Hateno where to get their livestock back.
“Link,” Zelda calls as he heads back to her. He’s always liked the way she says his name. She places the stressor a little differently, maybe, or it could just be that he likes her voice in general. It’s good that she’s got an alright voice. Good for royalty to be able to talk to their subjects and keep their respect. (But then, what is royalty, now that the castle’s been destroyed and a hundred years have passed? Link has noted that Zelda never suggests going to the Zora, who live longer than everyone else and whose memories include the last King and his daughter). “Come here.”
Zelda stands at the mouth of a cave, peering into it. The torch she holds casts shadows over the walls and briefly Link is shoved into a moment, across the time-space continuum and past the binding between atoms and electrons, and he can remember his dad making little animal shadows against the walls of their house and his sister giggling and feeling full, and then his mind supernovas and Zelda’s got his arm and isn’t saying anything but doesn’t need to. I’m here. I’ve got you. Her eyes are so expressive, or maybe it’s just that Link is good at reading her. I’ve got you.
His sister blamed Zelda, that Link knew, all the way up until the very end. Blamed her and her family for taking her brother away, blamed them for changing him, for what he’d become. No one had ever warned him that divinity was contagious. The Goddess began to speak in Link’s head, and now time tenses for him.
Link stopped blaming anyone about (a hundred and) two years ago.
“Look at this,” Zelda breathes, and Link does. Along the cave walls is writing, dark umber, handprints and stick figures and the shape of the Goddess Hylia. “These must be—” she’s fumbling for her camera now, eyes wide and with only one hand, so Link takes the torch from her and holds it high— “Goddess, centuries old. Maybe even more.”
The two of them end up sitting along the sides of the cave. The floor is wet and more than a little dirty, and a few feet away from them a stream trickles through. From time to time the current hits a rock and little droplets of water soak their shoes. It’s kind of nice.
At some point they spot a trout swimming through (it doesn’t belong there, the darkness of the cave isn’t healthy for trout, but there’s not much either can do about it) and Zelda points to it, asking with a smile, “What do you call a fish with no eyes?”
Link blinks at her impassively.
“Fshhhh,” she says, and erupts into giggles.
Link pinches the bridge of his nose. Princess of Hyrule, keeper of the triforce of wisdom, returned again and again to rid their world of evil…who also loves to make truly stupid puns. Really, it was impressive they ever beat Ganon at all.
“Oh, c’mon.” She punches his shoulder and Link keeps still, trying not to flinch, trying to keep his mind from hurtling away. He’s better at that with Zelda than with anyone else, staying present. She always manages to keep him grounded. The bright side of their minds being connected is that he can tell when it’s her (when it’s safe). “It wasn’t that bad.”
She catalogues the writing, taking photos of the walls and storing them on their Sheikah Slate. Then Zelda launches into linguistic techno-babble about the potential origins of the writing, and “We’re close enough to the Faron region that it could realistically be the peoples who lived there,” and, “Oh, isn’t this just so fascinating to you?” and Link nods and nods and pretends to not watch the way Zelda’s nose twitches when she’s happy.
They trek back up to Hateno and avoid Purah’s lab, dutifully dancing around any sort of conversation around it as well. Zelda talks about making fruitcake and Link almost tells her about Gotter, the descendant of the royal chef, and then eventually doesn’t, because there’s a tightening in his chest that occurs whenever he thinks of Hyrule Castle and he can’t tell if that’s because of him or if it’s because of her.
Link finds the cow-tender and tells her about the enclosure down by the shore. After, they stop and buy cane sugar and Tabantha wheat and some fruit and then go pick apples in their backyard. At some point it turns into a race, one that Link was summarily winning due to his ability to scale trees “like a monkey,” according to Zelda, when she realized that if she smacked the trunk hard enough sometimes apples would just fall out on their own. Link does not count Zelda’s eventual ‘win’ as real or true because she so obviously cheated.
As the sun begins to set the two cook in Link’s (their?) kitchen together, Zelda focusing on her beloved fruitcake and Link roasting pumpkins. The sky is peach and a gradient from top to bottom and the entire house ends up smelling like apples. Zelda spills milk on Link so he flicks her with some water and the two almost fight then and there when they come to the realization that the pumpkins are burning, so a truce is called.
The fruitcake is fine and it tastes fine, and the conversation is fine and at least not utter silence, and it’s all fine. It’s fine. Nothing’s out there trying to kill them, there’s no darkness polluting the castle (even if Link almost feels lonely without him) (it) (???) so really, everything’s fine.
There’s just that weight. They’re going to talk about Lady Impa and make plans to see her and that will be that. This interim period will be over. They’ll be done making fruitcake and discovering caves and staying in the home he grew up in even if his sister and his dad are no longer here. There’ll be something else, as there’s always something else, and he and Zelda will do it, because they always do it, because no one else can. It has to be them. So it will be. The garden will stop growing, because Link won’t be home often enough to tend to it, and that…really doesn’t matter, because nothing’s grown there in decades anyway.
Zelda sets down her fork and says quietly, “Would you like to head to the Faron region?” She hesitates, searching his eyes, then plows on. “We could search for more caves. And I know you found a stable. We could hike all the way out to Lurelin village and see what is to be done there.” Where no one we know lives. “I’ve actually never been to Lurelin before. I hear it’s beautiful.”
Relief filters through his body. Link closes his eyes and nods, and in the moment, he thinks to himself that there isn’t anything he’d like more.
Later that night, when Zelda’s conked out again and their non-perishable dinner leftovers have been packed away for tomorrow, Link wakes up. It’s the moon that wakes him, half-full and beaming in the night, casting windows of gray light through the glass panes. He watches them travel across the pale wall and finally pulls himself out of bed, softening his footsteps so that they pad along the wood floors and don’t wake Zelda.
When he’s outside the atmosphere is just bordering on chilly, that perfect temperature where you’re ever so slightly cold but not so much so that it’s uncomfortable. The night is crisp, and when he breathes the air feels clean.
Up above, the stars cluster together, looking down at Link. There’s a puff of rose-pink and a cluster of white and little mini-galaxies resting along the skyline. The backdrop is black like ink.
The world, momentarily, is perfectly still. He sits, ground cool underneath his fingertips.
Link lies down, ear against the grass, closes his eyes, and listens.