Chapter Text
.
.
.
The sun brightens, the snow melts, and Zelda stops wearing black. Link wakes beside her every morning and spends most days at Lon Lon Ranch, picking up the same chores that brought him comfort at a different ranch, with a different red-haired girl.
On the last morning of every week, Zelda clears her schedule and allows herself to sleep past dawn. Rest day, she calls it, though from the way she’s eyeing her stack of paperwork right now, she doesn’t plan to enjoy it the way the rest of the castle does. Still—she gives her people the gift of time. It makes Link proud to know her.
The maid is setting a bowl of oranges on the breakfast table, the first of the season. She glances furtively at this mysterious stranger who’s been sharing the queen’s bed as she leaves the room, but Link barely notices—his attention is on the fruit, on a sudden memory of being very young, the juice sticky on his fingers and the tang of citrus filling the air as Saria guided his hands.
“They’re grown in the south, where your father was from,” Zelda is telling her daughter. “The castle bakers rise long before dawn to make the sourdough. Malon and her father deliver cartloads of milk and butter every week. It’s important to understand how much work goes into every meal, you know.”
Link wrestles his hair into a ponytail and slips the eyepatch on, listening to her wax poetic about the breakfast table, of all things. Part of him wants to ask her to come back to bed. Draw the covers over their heads and never leave.
“Hey,” he says instead. “I was thinking I’d go see Saria.”
“Oh! That’s good.”
Zelda is tousled and beautiful in the morning light, beaming up at Link while she bounces the baby in her arms. He imagines this moment growing around him like vines, reaching towards the sun, towards forever. It’s so easy to get used to happiness. So easy to forget that it can be stolen away by blade, by fever, by an ocarina and a ticking clock.
“Link?” Her smile falters. “Is something the matter?”
The old instinct to lie simmers under his skin, but she’s got a keen look on her face that makes it clear the Triforce of Wisdom chose well. And he’s not here to keep things from her, not anymore. Link pulls on his boots with far more focus than necessary and replies evenly, “She might not remember me.”
“Why…why wouldn’t she? You spent half your life there.”
“That doesn't mean much to the Kokiri.”
“Then neither does your time away.” Zelda’s tone is more bewildered than reproachful. “She certainly remembered you when I met her; I doubt that’s changed in the past year.”
She’s right. She’s always right. But she hasn’t considered that the walls and the rules holding this world together are nothing more than a bedtime story, and all it takes to tear them down is one little melody. Link learned the falsity of that story a long time ago.
Even so, he knows he’s being ridiculous. It won’t be the first time he’s disappeared from the forest and returned an adult. Saria recognized him in the Other Hyrule, even when the other Kokiri did not. Yet somehow, absurdly, the fear remains.
“Would it help if I came with you?” Zelda asks, coming to stand in front of him.
Link raises his head in surprise. She meets his gaze, brow furrowed, with that look on her face like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. The baby in her arms is also peering up at him with great interest. Another Zelda, as easy to love as the others—she’ll probably end up with all her mother’s curiosity and half her restraint, and Link will have to find a way to deal with it.
“It would help,” he admits. “Thank you.”
The baby interrupts by grabbing his sharp nose and making a sound of delight. Zelda bursts into giggles, dropping her head onto Link’s shoulder, and soon enough he’s holding them both and laughing until his sides hurt—the best pain in the world.
.
.
.
He doesn’t hesitate until he’s halfway across the lonely bridge that separates Hyrule from Kokiri Forest. Ahead, the village takes shape just past the mouth of the hollow tree. Behind, Epona and Zelda’s gelding search for grass at the edge of the field. Grey clouds blot out the sun. It’s far too cold to be standing still without a fire. But Link can’t make his feet move in either direction.
Zelda moves in front of him, taking his closed fists and prying his fingers apart to massage the warmth back into them. “We can turn back, you know.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I just…thanks for being here.”
She keeps hold of one of his hands as they walk forward. Time has not touched Kokiri Forest. Not the old creaking trees, not the houses dappled in green-gold shade. Everything is so small. The training yard and the maze that so intimidated Link’s younger self just look comical now.
He always knew deep down that this wasn’t his place, but he did have happiness here. He was safe; he knew who he was; the world asked very little of him. The glow of a fairy in his peripheral vision reminds him of that brief, breathtaking moment when Navi’s arrival allowed him to belong. A blessing that descended so quickly into a nightmare.
“Hey! Big people!”
The warning sends children scampering all around—climbing trees, ducking behind bushes, dragging each other into doorways. They’re not very good hiders, though; none of them can resist peeking out at the scene of Mido marching up to Link and Zelda like some four-foot-tall emperor.
He jabs a finger at them. “I’m the boss of the Kokiri, and you’re disturbing the peace! Why are there more of you? One was enough!”
“How nice to see you again, too,” Zelda greets dryly.
Link crouches down until he’s eye-level with the boy who used to make him feel so small. Now it’s the opposite. He’s a giant in his own skin. Too old for this place, too strange, too sad.
“It’s me,” he says. “Link.”
Mido’s eyes widen, and for a moment there’s regret before it’s shrouded by disbelief. “That can’t be. You’re a big person.”
Link was expecting this, but he still finds himself flinching back to his feet, away from the blankness in Mido’s eyes. No matter how many cycles he repeated in Termina, it hurt every single time Romani asked for his name.
Zelda touches his shoulder and asks, “Where can we find Saria?”
Mido folds his arms over his chest, looking up at them skeptically. “She let you in last time,” he tells her begrudgingly. “So I guess it’s okay. I think she’s in her house.”
Zelda thanks him politely and takes Link’s hand, leading him along like he’s still the same child who lived here. Wide eyes and not-so-quiet whispers follow them down the path. The sight of his old treehouse fills him with a phantom comfort that belongs in the past. He tried to reclaim his life here once or twice after returning to this timeline—it never lasted long.
They’re nearing Saria’s home when he spots two girls hiding just around the bend. One of them pokes her head out to gawk at Link. “Why are you so tall?”
“Golden Goddesses, Fado, you can’t just ask someone why they’re tall,” the other complains, tugging on her arm.
He opens his mouth to remind Rela that she taught him to skip rocks over the pond, remind Fado that she used to tell him stories of the Lost Woods—but there’s no point. The girls are already scampering away, and he’s nothing to them; he’s a ghost carrying other ghosts.
“Link,” Zelda says, squeezing his hand.
There’s a flicker of movement overhead: a fairy peeking out from the treehouse’s open doorway, followed by a head of green hair. A shudder rips through Link at the memory of laughter, of music, of quiet understanding.
Saria inches towards the edge of the platform. Goddesses, she’s so small. Yet she made up so much of his world for so long.
Link’s insides are turning to water. This isn’t like Mido or Impa or anyone else. If he had the Ocarina, he’d go back, jump forward, freeze the current, anything to stop what’s coming. Because he’s not ready. He’s never been ready for any of it.
He doesn’t realize he’s backing away until Zelda catches his shoulders. Twisting to meet her alarmed eyes, he gasps out, “I can’t do this, not with her, I can’t—”
“Link,” she insists, holding him still, “just look at her.”
And because it’s Zelda, he listens. Saria is staring down at him in disbelief, tears rolling down her cheeks, and when Link’s gaze collides with hers, she drops off the platform so suddenly that the fairy tumbles off her shoulder with an indignant squeak.
Link’s oldest instincts overrule the shock. He opens his arms to catch her, but the impact is less stunning than what Saria is saying: “Link, I missed you, I missed you so much…”
The breath goes out of him in a shaking exhale. He can feel Zelda still gripping his shoulders from behind, holding him while he holds Saria. The fairy flutters around them in happy circles, and Link’s best friend is crying into his shirt, and even though he’s nothing like the boy who left her behind on that bridge, Saria remembers him—because there are things stronger than time.
“I missed you too,” Link manages, and it’s true; he missed her so much more than he realized until this moment.
By the time Saria’s tears subside, cold raindrops have begun to patter down over the forest. She pulls back to touch his face the way she did when he was little, her gaze lingering on the eyepatch. “You’ve grown up.”
“Took me long enough,” Link replies wryly, lowering her gently to the ground.
“I think you’re just right. Come on—let’s get out of the rain.”
“I’ll give you some time alone,” Zelda offers. He starts to protest, but she’s already letting go of his shoulders. “You’ve been apart for years, Link. I don’t mind.”
“Well…okay.” With a glance at the grey clouds, he gestures towards his old treehouse. “You…can wait in there if you want.”
Zelda kisses his cheek and sets off down the path. Saria peers up at Link, a knowing grin on her face.
“You love her, don’t you?” she asks mischievously.
It’s Link’s turn to smile. There’s warmth in his chest, spreading outwards; all he can do is nod. Saria giggles, a bell-clear sound he remembers so fondly, and leads him into the warmth of her house.
.
.
.
The bed is barely five feet long, built for a child who never planned to grow up. There’s a table, a dresser, an open doorway overlooking the forest—and that’s all. The castle has powder rooms larger than this entire treehouse.
While the rain grows heavier outside, Zelda occupies herself with casting spells to clear the dust away. She can’t help but imagine what it was like to grow up here: close to the earth, far from duty and strife. It’s the kind of life she might want for her daughter, under different circ*mstances. She only wishes Link was permitted to keep it for longer than ten years.
She hears his footsteps on the ladder not much later. He pauses in the doorway, brushing rainwater from his face and surveying the room with an unreadable expression. When his gaze settles on Zelda, Link says, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Coming with me. I’m—I’m really glad I saw Saria.”
“Me too,” she says, though she can’t help but recall the deadened look in his eye when the Kokiri treated him like a stranger, the way he expected Saria to do the same.
Maybe it shows in her face, for Link looks away, pulling off his damp cloak and draping it over the table. “I guess we should wait out the rain.”
“Would you rather go to Saria’s?”
“No, this is…” His gaze sweeps the house again. Zelda still can’t read his expression as he sinks down onto the uncovered bed and props open the window to watch the rain.
“What are you thinking about?” she wonders.
“How short I used to be.”
She sighs, the old wooden frame creaking beneath her added weight. Link allows her to take his hand and keep them both warm with her magic, but his face stays far away. Zelda hopes their horses found an overhang for shelter. She hopes the downpour doesn’t keep her daughter awake through naptime. She hopes Impa isn’t making the recruits run laps in the mud for what she calls character building and everyone else calls misery.
None of the distractions work for long.
“I just want to say one thing,” Zelda begins. “My counterpart sent you back in time with the help of six newly awakened Sages at the height of their power. I couldn’t do the same even if I had reason to—and I don’t. Ganondorf is gone. The Ocarina is safe.”
“I know,” Link says defensively.
“But the look on your face when you saw Saria, when you saw Impa and Malon—even me.” For a moment she’s back in the dungeons under Hyrule Castle, meeting his gaze for the first time in six years through the bars of a prison cell. “I spent years missing you, dreaming of you, and you thought I would forget. I’m only trying to tell you that what you fear will never happen again.”
He turns his face away sharply, spitting the words out with sudden venom: “It did happen again, Zelda.”
She tries not to flinch, but inside she’s fourteen again, and he’s shoving the Ocarina into her hands as he leaves her behind. She didn’t understand then; she doesn’t understand now. Silence stretches between them. Zelda doesn’t break it, no matter how much she longs to; what comes next isn’t up to her.
“I’m sorry. I—” Link gets no further. He just pulls his legs up and hugs them to his chest.
To their right hangs a little sign, proudly scrawled with his high scores from the games they used to play in Castle Town. To their left is a mirror, propped up against the basin and cleared of dust by Zelda’s spells. Now she can see their dim reflections: two adults in a child’s bed, shoulder-to-shoulder and leagues apart.
Maybe there was never any hope. Maybe it ends right where it began. She’ll have his love, but never his trust, and she’ll be that helpless girl watching through a window for the rest of her life.
And then Link shocks her. His fingers are shaking, and his skin is rough and scarred, but he takes her hand and says, “It’s because of Termina.”
“Oh?” Zelda murmurs cautiously.
“Yeah. Well. You’re right that coming back to this time was hard. But if it was just that, I think I would’ve…”
He goes silent for a while, then reaches for a trunk at the foot of the bed and rifles through it. She waits quietly until he places something in her open palm: a gemstone shaped like a teardrop, turquoise and translucent.
“Beautiful,” Zelda remarks, pouring a bit of light into the stone until it scatters little blue shadows around the room.
“Like you,” Link agrees with a faint smile. “I always wanted to give it to you, but I knew you’d have a thousand questions, and…I wasn’t ready then. I—I think I’m ready now. But it’s not a happy story. Promise you’ll tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I will, if you do the same.” He nods, and she gives him back the gem, wrapping both her hands around his with slow caution—as though he’s a bird she could startle away at any moment. “All right, Link. Where did this come from?”
“From the moon. It was…falling towards Termina.”
Zelda opens her mouth, then closes it with lurching horror, recalling how preoccupied he was whenever they went stargazing as children. How his nightmares worsened with the waxing moon. They lean back against the wall, against each other, until Link continues speaking.
“I told you I had friends there. A Skull Kid and two fairies. Well—they weren’t friends at first. They found me in the Woods and stole Epona and the Ocarina. Chasing after them is how I ended up in Termina. It wasn’t Skull Kid’s fault. He…he was wearing this mask, and the soul inside it made him…do things. Like bringing down the moon and turning me into a Deku Scrub. So I—”
“Link, slow down.” She squeezes his hands, which have gone clammy and tremulous in her grasp. “You became a Deku Scrub?”
“Not for long,” he reassures her, like they’re speaking of a head cold. “Skull Kid stole that mask from this…Salesman. He found me, said he would fix me if I got it back for him. He gave me three days.” Link laughs humorlessly. “I tried. Got the Ocarina. Couldn’t get the mask. The moon was—I was almost too late. But then…you saved me, Zelda.”
“I did?”
“I remembered you teaching me the Song of Time. I only ever used it to open the Door, but—when I played it in Termina, it…it sent the moon back, sent everything back to the way it was the morning I arrived. Just like…just like…”
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. It did happen again—the same feat her counterpart accomplished when she sent him back to a Hyrule that wasn’t yet broken. Zelda has no idea how Link could manage something similar on his own, but right now, she doesn’t care. It’s all starting to make a sick sort of sense.
“I thought of you every time,” he mumbles.
“Every time? You traveled back more than once?”
Link closes his eye, leaning his head against the wall. It’s a while before he speaks. “I couldn’t go back any earlier than that first dawn. Three days wasn’t enough time. So I…I just…repeated them until I got what I needed to stop the moon.”
“How many times over?” Zelda asks quietly.
All he does is shudder, but it’s enough of an answer. One apocalypse flowing into another, and another—not just for Termina, but for Link personally, because every note of that song hammered down the nails that have been lodged inside him since he left the Temple of Time with no past, no future, and no fairy. Since he looked into Zelda’s oblivious eyes and found himself utterly alone.
Of course he believes every problem is his to solve. Of course he expects to be forgotten, expects everything to collapse around him. He’s never known anything else.
“Oh, Link.” Her voice sounds so small and useless. “I’m so sorry.”
He opens his eye to look at her, his mouth pressed into a thin line, and Zelda doesn’t realize she’s crying until his gentle fingers brush her tears away. “It’s okay, Zelda.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make it less than what it was.”
“I’m—it wasn’t all bad. Especially now.”
“Link. The way you reacted to that mask—” She stops suddenly, remembering the wooden face with its orange eyes and round mouth. A Deku Scrub, like the form Link apparently took. “Wait. That was…”
She doesn’t even know what to ask. He looks away, pressing his back hard against the wall. Rain drums on the roof in a steady rhythm. It’s probably been half an hour since he walked through the door, but every second seems slower and colder. She’s about to ask if they should stop when Link continues all on his own.
“It’s called the Song of Healing. The mask you picked up…I…” His fingers are clenched tight around the gemstone, and with her hands enveloping his, Zelda can feel just how hard he’s trembling. “I never understood it, never wanted to, but he was dead, and he couldn’t move on until I played the Song. The mask is…whatever’s left of him. The Goron was dead too, but—the Zora was still alive when I found him, he had people waiting for him, and the Song didn’t heal him. It just—gave me another mask.”
She fights to keep her voice steady. “You carried three spirits around with you?”
“I think…only the bad parts of them stayed in the masks. The rest got to go free.” Link sounds wistful. “That’s what I always hoped. I know it didn’t hurt them, at least.”
“That’s—that’s not why I asked. How did it affect you, Link?”
The words turn him silent and rigid. He glances at the mirror, then away, and says in a brittle voice, “That doesn’t matter.”
“Those people had enough regrets to keep them tethered to the wrong plane until you healed them,” Zelda insists. “When you wore the masks…where did all that pain go?”
Link feels like stone beside her. Her heart thuds once, twice, and then she opens her fingers to let him pull away from her, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and burying his face in his hands.
“It went into me,” he manages, and the horror of realization catches in his throat, as though he never asked or answered that question until this moment. “It all went into me. It’s never coming out.”
Zelda’s first thought is abhorrent: I would trade that entire world to spare him this. It’s probably not true, considering whose blood she carries, and hearing her say it would break that golden heart Link has been giving away, piece by piece, for his entire life. But it feels brutally true right now as she watches his fingers dig into his hair, watches his whole body cave inwards.
“Link, come here,” she pleads, moving to his side.
“No.” He flinches away from her and chokes out the words frantically. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry, I won’t do this, I won’t drown you like they drowned me—”
“Oh, Goddesses, Link.” Tears are rolling down Zelda’s cheeks. She’s freezing, and he’s shaking, and all she can do is grip the hard edge of the bed to keep herself still. “Is that really what you think? You were a child, you had no choice, and I am so sorry, and so angry on your behalf—but it’s not the same at all. I’m asking you to let me help. I’m not going to drown. You’re the one who taught me how to swim.”
He shudders at the memory. Laughter, a stretch of blue sky, her hands gripping his with absolute trust. For a brief stretch of heaven, the gentle current washed away the past and the future, washed away everything but Zelda and Link—and that was all they needed.
“Your pain is my pain,” she reminds him fiercely, her voice steady again. “Let me take care of you.”
Link lets out a sob, thin and strangled, and his voice breaks on the final word: “Okay.”
The moment she wraps her arms around him, he starts to cry, really cry, with all the titanic weight he’s never put down before. Zelda has spent her whole life carrying the hope of her battered kingdom, spent the past two years mourning her father and husband. But she doesn’t know grief like this—the kind that cuts deep enough to change your very marrow until you no longer recognize what remains.
When they were ten, Link could spend a whole day bringing her flowers and listening to her problems. He could spend a whole night drowning in dream after terrifying dream. The memories make Zelda tighten her embrace, closing every gap between them. He presses his face against her shoulder and hugs her back with desperate strength.
Time slows and softens, the rain keeps falling, and Link unravels in her arms. Zelda’s mind is usually pointed in a thousand directions at once, but right now she’s just here in the quiet, listening to his breathing even out, feeling all his love and relief in the way his body relaxes against hers.
At the end of it, he sits up, reaching under his patch to wipe away the tears—but Zelda slips it off and kisses the warped scar that seals his eyelid shut, kisses the bridge of his nose, kisses his starving lips.
“I understand so much now,” she says. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for listening,” Link murmurs, resting his forehead against hers.
“You said it didn’t matter how all of this has affected you—but of course it matters, Link. It always has. Saving the world is a job for all of us together, not for one little boy. I would take it all away if I could. I would give you the gentle beginning you deserve. That’s what she was trying to do when she sent you back in time, I’m sure of it. But some things simply cannot be undone.”
“I know. But…it’s okay. There’s so much I want to keep.” Link tucks a loose curl behind her ear and kisses her with something raw and tender that he’s never quite shown before—something that leaves her with no doubt of what he wants to keep. “I love you, Zelda.”
“I love you, Link. Please never think you’re alone.”
He presses something into her palm—the gemstone that fell from the moon, warm from the time it spent clutched in his grip. “Would you keep this for me? It matches your eyes.”
Zelda closes her fingers around the stone, holding it to her heart, and the miracle of a smile flickers across Link’s face—the first hint of sunlight in the wake of a long storm.
.
.
.
The soil is damp and rich, smelling like home as they dig four small holes among the Great Deku Tree’s roots. Link learned his first lesson here at the base of his old guardian’s corpse: even the strongest souls can wither.
At the time, he blamed himself for being too late. But when he remembers creeping into that dark place in a fruitless attempt to stop the inevitable, all he can think about is how small he was, how overwhelmed. It was never in his power to fix everything, least of all death. The fault doesn’t lie with Link for trying anyway. It lies with a world that demanded so much of him at such a young age.
One by one, he lowers the masks into the embrace of the earth. The Deku Scrub, a lost child returning home; Darmani, a hero whose purpose is long fulfilled; Mikau, safe with the people he loves; the Fierce Deity, whose anger can finally grow into something new. It’s too early for flowers, but Zelda builds a small cairn of rocks before each grave, and Saria cuts five sprigs of holly—the last of which she places in Link’s hand.
“This is what I bring her in wintertime,” she says quietly.
He follows her gaze to the fifth grave, one he didn’t know existed until he learned the truth of himself in a different version of Hyrule. There’s no headstone, just a mossier cairn than the ones they just made—Link’s mother died without telling anyone her name.
He steps closer, but finds himself wavering; he’s never been sure of what to do here. The one time he tried playing the Song of Healing, there was no answer, no lingering spirit to ease into the restful beyond. Back then, the silence made Link desperately, irrationally angry with his mother for leaving him to fate’s monstrous plans.
Now, as he nestles the holly in a bed of grass before the cairn, he’s just thankful she died in peace.
“Were you there?” he asks, no longer scared of the answer. “Did she say anything?”
“Yes,” Saria replies, reaching for his hand. “She said, ‘I love you. Live well.’”
Zelda slides an arm around his waist, and Link closes his eye, listening to the wind rustle through the old forest. Those words are all he’ll ever have of his mother—and they've come at just the right time, when he’s finally ready to follow them.
.
.
.
