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Link wasn’t entirely sure what his life would entail once he was assigned as the Princess’ personal guard.
He also wasn’t entirely sure why he had to be her personal guard, surely he would be more useful elsewhere and they could work together when they were ready to fulfill their duties.
The Princess looked like she’d been slapped when the King told them of their new arrangement. She lamented his own thoughts, and fully prepared for this response, his Majesty moved slowly forward, gaze steady and steepled his fingers, telling her that having the Hero around could very well help her on her crusade to unlock her powers, a burgeoning scholar should know that.
She’d gasped then, quiet and frozen like a rabbit caught in the sights of a wolf, too petrified to run. Link’s stomach curdled, eyes drawn to the tile under her left foot to keep him from gazing at the King with anything resembling contempt.
From his high throne, he decided to dig the knife in further when he announced that Link would also answer to him and not to her, and his Majesty would be asking for reports.
Her Highness’ shoulders hunched, and the King reclined, too satisfied.
He hadn’t looked at Link once.
After this, of course, the Princess attempted to make it very hard to be around her. She was petulant and impatient, on purpose, and often refused to speak to him directly unless it was to tell him to keep a wide berth.
It was draining.
Sometimes, though, it was not.
The Princess was studious, smarter than she knew what to do with, and dedicated to a fault. She did almost everything with the same passion, even if it was something she did not enjoy.
Though the King was harsh, he didn’t always watch her schedule like a hawk, too busy keeping up appearances in his court that Hyrule most certainly wasn’t going to fall victim to an ancient unknown source of unadulterated evil to bother with his disquisitive daughter and her new shadow. It was on those days that her Highness was easy to be around.
She still would barely speak to him, but she would speak to herself quietly, thinking out loud as they hiked around her land.
The Princess had found a loophole in her leash and collar in the form of field research, learning more about her country could help her unlock her powers, of course, bring her closer to their Goddess who protects it.
She wasn’t wrong, Link supposed.
They never traveled far; she would pine for visiting those huge, ancient machines they were digging from the earth, but so far she hadn’t been able to convince the King to let her. She always had that slate with her, too, taking pictures of literally anything that would catch her eye before scribbling in her journal, a reminder to herself to catalog whatever information about the flower or bird or insect she’d decided to take a picture of in her study when she was staying up too late.
The sun is high, warming their cheeks in the temperate summer that graced the fields around them, and the Princess is sketching a grasshopper.
Link lingers behind her, remaining still as to not spook the subject that is sitting so dutifully for her on a large rock. They always did, he noticed, seeming to swoop in for her attention and then pose perfectly just for her.
Only a few days ago a small fox had crossed their path and proceeded to sit and groom its fiery orange coat while she cooed quietly and penciled in each whisker.
He wonders if she notices that her land seems to seek her attention as if it is a pleasure for it to do so, as if she’s doing it a favor by stopping to indulge in her own curiosity.
Link tries to think back on what he knows about the Goddess as he shifts slowly to survey around them. It’s admittedly not much. She protects Hyrule, he guesses, but the way She’s going about it seems extremely convoluted and everyone just seems to assume that he has some sort of understanding of what he’s gotten himself into by pulling a damned sword out of a stupid rock but he doesn’t.
He’s not sure the Princess does either.
He huffs, shoving the creeping feeling clawing its way up his stomach back down to his feet and watches as her eyelashes flick between her scribbling hand and the large bug before her, her hair falling slowly from its place behind her ears to tumble over her shoulders from all of her bobbing.
The light breeze passing through the copse of trees they’ve found themselves near rustles the leaves about. The Princess, undisturbed, loops her hand around her head and sweeps her hair to follow the wind, pencil carefully perched between two fingers. The bug shuffles its wings, but just when Link thinks it will hop away it settles and the Princess brings her pencil back down to her paper.
It’s easy to just be with her, he realizes, in a way he hasn’t felt before, looking at the way the tips of her fingers have collected charcoal on them as she scribbles in a description of the antennae.
The Princess doesn’t like him, but she isn’t unkind on days like this, her presence all encompassing, and he likes it, despite himself. He feels it curl around him like smoke from a growing campfire and when the grasshopper lets out a small chirp and she smiles, he can’t help but smile too.
Link had noticed it, of course, how could he not? It was his job to know where she was.
The first time it happened she wasn’t trying to be subtle, either, so that probably helped.
He was training, just finishing, actually, carefully putting himself through tedious stretches. The Princess spent her mornings with the priestesses and her handmaids before she was deemed sufficiently repentant and presentable and released until the evening when she’d be put right back in her pretty cage. Evidently, that day, she was freed early because she stomped over to the yard like an angered mother doe who lost her fawn, already in her traveling clothes.
“What are you doing?”
He blinks at her. Her hands are on her hips as she glares at him from behind the low fence of the knights’ yard. He looks up at the sun’s position and then back down to the shadow cast by the stakes near her feet, he usually has another quarter hour before he needs to go to her.
“You weren’t at my door, or in your chambers, and then I find you here just,” she gestures at him sat in the dirt, twisted around to look at her with his elbow on his knee. “Sitting?”
He clears his throat to contain a scoff, coming out of his stretch and standing to face her.
“You’re early, Princess, I apologize.” He says, dusting his pants and she stiffens, bringing a hand to her chest to fiddle with one of the buttons of her blouse.
To say he’s shocked to find a lovely blush forming on her round cheeks as she stumbles to regather herself, squeaking out an apology of her own, would be a poor description of the fluttering he feels in his stomach as he watches her turn and scurry away to wait for him in her study.
After that, every so often he would find her sitting nearby, patiently waiting for him to begin his duties for the day. Link likes to think she was actually trying to be sneaky the first few times she did it, especially since she would sit so far away.
The first time the Princess waited for him outside, he found her under the shade of a large tree in the courtyard adjacent to the training grounds; she didn’t speak until he’d emerged from the small bathing house at the far edge of the fence. As soon as he came up from his quick bow in front of her, she’d snapped her journal shut and began chattering on about how she knows it’s important to train, even for him, she’d said, gesturing at his person with a waving hand, but she had things to do and was losing the day.
She wasn’t, they both knew, but she also wasn’t about to bring up that she had come out to be with him instead of waiting for him in her study.
He found he didn’t know how to ask.
He also doesn’t allow himself to ponder on the fact that instead of sitting at the bench farthest from the yard she’s taken to sitting closer.
Link begins to learn that the Princess will finish morning devotions early almost once a week. He wants to ask if there’s a way to know this new schedule so he could amend his routine but—
He’s selfish.
Though technically his job never ends, and even in the walls of the castle if the need arose he would not hesitate to protect her, it’s nice to be near her without being her guard.
In the closest way to that their time together can be.
It’s early still when he catches a glimpse of her as he moves through his warmup. It’s raining, not heavily yet but enough that since he’s been standing in it for a bit he’s soaked through, looking much more like a wet dog than a hero. The Princess is wearing her traveling clothes, a simple canvas bag on one shoulder and she’s shielded from the drizzle by a large umbrella clutched in her small hand.
“Even in the rain?” she asks when she’s close enough, resting her weight against the low fence, uncaring of the drenched wood against the span of her hips.
She twirls the umbrella a little, expression unreadable but not angry, and she sends big droplets flying like tiny shards of glass as the cover sways.
He doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to, just moves through his last form and straightens to face her. Her shoulders tense once his eyes meet hers and she clears her throat, looking away.
“Oh, you don’t—you don’t need to stop, sir knight, you can finish your training,” she says, twisting the arm loop hanging uselessly at the bottom of the pole in her hand. “I just—” her eyes flick to her right and he follows their path to the covered bench to the side of them, meant for resting in the shade between rounds of drills. The seat is dry. “Can I sit with you?”
He blinks.
Finding that he can’t get his voice to work before her face begins to fall, he nods quickly with a hem, reaching his hand out for her as he strides over to assist her. Her lips tick up and her hand slips into his, smooth and warm as she uses him for leverage to swing her long legs over the low fence with ease, a little genuine thank you chiming out of her like a delicate glass bell. He releases her as soon as she’s steady, balling his fist to hold on to the feeling and watches as she steps towards the seat before turning.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asks, brows furrowed as she looks him over. The hand not keeping her dry clutches at the cloth bag she has slung over her shoulder. “Won’t you get sick?”
He smiles, just a little, can’t help it.
“No, Princess, I’ll be alright.”
She considers him for a moment longer before deciding she believes him, he presumes, as she walks to the little covered area, folding up her parasol and perching herself sideways on the bench. Those long legs push against the other end as she leans back against the false wall and opens a book against her lap, settled.
They have a good hour before he would usually come to collect her, and he wasn’t planning to do his entire training routine because of the weather, but he supposes he will, it’s not raining too hard yet.
Link looks at the Princess riding next to him quietly.
She seems content, a soft smile playing on her lips as they sway on their horses along the path, but her words have begun to curdle in his gut.
“I’m trying to be more empathetic, you know?”
Her hair swishes about. He tracks her as she swivels away from him to watch a fat bumblebee hop between flowers as they pass, and she hums, pleased, before facing forward again. The sun kisses the tip of her nose and his stomach sinks further.
“Princess?”
She points that pleased look in his direction and he savors it for one last moment, he’s about to chase it off of her, he knows.
“Yes?” she asks, big eyes blinking, green as the trees just beyond her head.
“I was…” he trails off.
He’s not the best with words, too direct, lacking nuance, he’s been told many times in many different ways. The most recent offense being from that dramatic sop of a court poet who always managed to stand too close to her Highness whenever he would shallowly attempt to make her swoon. Link hasn’t even spoken a word to the Sheikah turned bard, and it took active attention to his training to not roll his eyes at the hypocrisy of claiming he lacked nuance when he was standing right there as it was spoken to the Princess in not so hushed tones.
He clears his throat, she’s patient.
“Did someone tell you that you weren’t empathetic?”
Something he wasn’t expecting flits across her features, cloudy and dark behind the shock of his question before she turns away from him. Her hands are fidgeting where they hold the reins, one picking at what is surely nothing.
“A few people,” she murmurs, voice almost carried away by a breeze that shoves his hair in his eyes.
He paws at his forehead, rough and angry and watches as the same wind moves through her hair, a caress at the nape of her neck.
“Who?” His voice is louder than he intended and he huffs as she turns back to look at him, calm, her smile is rueful.
He feels heat creep up his neck as she looks at him, her eyes moving from his chin, to his cheek, his brow, his wind tousled hair that he’d officially lost the fight against at this point. The softness he finds in her gaze as she takes him in like he’s an entry for her compendium feels too much like whiplash because he can’t bring himself to feel angry when she’s looking at him like that.
He fidgets beneath the weight of it and she releases him with a sigh.
“It doesn’t matter, Link,” she says, shaking her head. She pets her hand down Royal’s neck, pale fingers weaved through meticulously groomed hair. “They’re right, so it doesn’t matter.”
“They’re not.”
She’s blinking at him again.
He keeps his eyes on her as her gaze dances around his face once more, quickly this time, searching for a trick.
There is no trick, they’re wrong.
When her eyes meet his again, her eyelashes are wet.
“They’re not,” he repeats, softer but no less final, and she nods, hands twisting the leather strap between white knuckles.
“Okay,” more of a croak than words but she sits up a little straighter in her gilded saddle and Link feels like he can finally let out a breath.
He watches her as they lapse into silence, her hands slowly relaxing, he wants to know who’s been speaking to her in that way but he doesn’t want to upset her further and his list of suspects is disturbingly long. He clears his throat again, knowing he needs to be the one to change the subject lest they lose themselves to a spiral of their own thoughts seeing as she’s already drifting away. Her head tilts in his direction but she doesn’t turn to face him.
“What are you hoping to research today, Princess?”
Her cheek rounds up like a bun as a smile fights its way onto her face and Link feels the curdle in his abdomen morph into something that flutters. He finds himself mimic her as she straightens further, shoulders proud again.
“I’m not sure yet, I took notes of a few things that we didn’t see last time but I know are near the area so,” she starts and then she’s off.
He sighs, settling back into his saddle as her voice twirls around him, there’s a butterfly she wants to find for a picture, she already knows all about it apparently.
They’re meandering still, making terrible time, but he won’t bring it up; especially not when her excitement over telling him about this elusive bug causes her sway in his direction from all her leaning. Her laugh echos in his ears and her face is the lightest shade of pink when he nudges her back up, reminding her to face forward and Royal’s steps are light under his more empathetic handler’s feet.
‘If you're just going to loiter you may as well be productive about it,’ his father’s gruff command filters through his brain, always does, so he runs through his forms. ‘You’re the one who is in charge of the weapon, it’s not in charge of you.’
He almost wants to scoff at that, his father really had no clue did he?
Link still can’t really figure out how he feels about the darkness sealing sword he’d stumbled upon in those woods. It felt right to hold it, but at the same time he can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t.
Something wasn’t right.
It balances perfectly with him when he twists his wrist just so but it was off.
Off in a way that didn’t make sense.
It’s not in charge of you.
He grits his teeth and breathes through the feeling he should be used to by now, ignoring the pang in his stomach that had settled like a stone the moment his fingers first wrapped around the hilt. He steals a glance at the Princess as he turns into his form to find her watching him and uses that to propel his set, fighting a twitch in his lips. They’ve been caught in the rain, Zelda deigning to pause and wait it out as to not invite the King’s ire upon seeing the Crown Princess, Goddess incarnate, looking much more like a drowned rabbit than the vessel for salvation.
His arm tenses as anger shoots through him and he quickly moves to grip the hilt with both hands. Knuckles white, nostrils flared, he forces a slow breath in before breathing through it as he shifts his weight to continue his forms.
In truth, he’s grateful for this break, he’s greedy as always. They’ve both been feeling the pressure of Rhoam and the temple with the encroaching date of the Princess’ birthday.
There will be no ball, no joyful celebration for her Highness’ continued existence, his Majesty's pointed avoidance of the subject has made that very clear.
He feels his cheeks heat and he’s lost all semblance of breathing now, channeling the energy to the thing in his hands that brought him into this mess, started it probably.
“I doubt this will let up any time soon.”
Link almost jumps at the sound of her voice snaking towards him between the rain and frowns. He knew she was there he shouldn’t have been startled, he grunts with exertion as he pushes through the ache in his gut.
She’ll speak again, because he knows her, so he waits for her to most likely make a decision on what to do with the weather.
“Your path seems to mirror your father’s,” she says instead and he feels like his insides might boil over. “You’ve dedicated your life to becoming a knight as well.”
Her voice is soft, the sound of the rain against the earth almost threatens to take it before it can reach him. He forces himself to continue his exercise, facing away from her so she doesn’t think what is most likely a terrible expression is meant for her.
“Your commitment to the training necessary to fulfill your goal is really quite admirable.”
He lets out a heavy breath and stops, turning his head in her direction. The Princess is clinical in nature but not like this, and before he has a chance to formulate how he should respond she’s speaking again.
“I see now why you would be the chosen one.”
He’s sure now that his guts are at his feet and he lifts the sword to glare at it directly. What good was it being the chosen one if the sword that chose you wouldn’t tell you why? Or what to do?
“What if… One day…” Zelda’s voice wavers and he jumps to turn to her, lowering the sword to see her curled in on herself, turned away from the sheath sitting quietly next to her.
“You realized you just weren’t meant to be a fighter,” her voice is melodic and sad, he watches as she studies the grass at her feet, kept dry by the tree above her. “Yet the only thing people ever said was that you were born into a family of the Royal Guard, and so no matter what you thought, you had to become a knight.”
He blinks.
“If that was the only thing you were ever told…” she takes a steadying breath and he feels rooted to the earth beneath him. “I wonder then, if you would have chosen a different path.”
The drizzle around them roars in his ears, he understands what she’s saying, he also understands that she knows they don’t have a choice. It’s not a fair question, the highest level of hypotheticals.
“I…” his mouth moves before he gives it permission and she turns to look at him, still drawn, hands paused in their wringing.
He feels the weight he can’t quite handle in his hand, gripping tightly as he traces the soft, heart shape of her face from where he’s frozen. The gemstones she has for eyes are dark like a foggy swamp because of the weather around them and she’s the only thing that makes sense to him.
“Not unless you were there, too.”
Link wakes up alone and hidden.
Her voice rouses him, the tone is soft and measured but he opens his eyes only to realize she’s nowhere to be found. He knows her though, somehow, and when he tells her such, still dripping from the bath he’d emerged from, his voice bounces back at him from too many angles. He doesn’t recognize that voice so he isn’t sure if the words he hears echoed from his mouth are true.
The world he’s been deposited into is quiet, more quiet than the cave he woke up in, and he feels calm despite the gnawing suspicion that he’s missing a plethora of essential information.
The heavily traveled old man turned ghost King that was waiting for him is a pretty good clue that whatever it is, it’s a heavy task to undertake.
But she speaks to him again as he encounters his first monsters, the bumbling red things, and he doesn’t feel scared. She’s with him for a time, giving him tools to use on his journey to retrieve her.
Then she stops speaking.
He understands why, the thought that if he had woken any later it may have been too late for her, whoever she is, sits like a stone in his heart and propels him to his first destination, using the quiet like a blanket to shield him.
He feels a sense of familiarity buzzing around him like a gnat as he traverses the nature consumed land, unable to swat it’s persistence away or catch it in his hand as it gets too close to his face.
Impa, extremely boisterous for being so small and round and ancient, tells him the Princess left him clues—memories captured for him in the event his time in the cave had stolen the ones he used to have.
Things made a little more sense then, though it was not any easier, and in his exhausted state didn't even bother to notice the massive glowing pool he’d stumbled upon after retrieving the first clue left by her, instead moving unsteadily towards a pair of white flowers with unblinking focus. His head is still pounding and when he’s near enough to touch the twin blooms he lets his body release it’s hold on the weight of standing, curling near the soft glow of the petals, their rare scent at once soothing and familiar. He stares at them, uselessly trying to place their familiarity in the murky dark that holds his memories until sleep finally takes him.
Thankfully, or perhaps not, he wakes again in only mere hours instead of decades this time, and every time after that.
This Hyrule is lonely, the people here are scarce and spread out, and very few beyond merchants have any interest in speaking with him. He talks to almost all of them anyway, he finds that they’re just guarded, hardened by the circumstances they were born into, but when he follows through with running, sometimes questionable, errands for them they are happy to trust him. They offer him their perspective of the situation they know Hyrule is in but don’t understand, they show him how to be resourceful with the little they have available to them, and, his favorite, they tell him stories and gossip about himself.
He likes to make the gossip into a game they don’t know they’re playing, they may never know that it was him, the strange young man who would bring them buckets worth of whatever obscure item they’d requested from him, that was causing such a ruckus. So why not have a little fun?
Time with them is always brief, though, and he easily goes days without speaking to another creature capable of holding a conversation. He finds that he’s mostly okay with this, he’s overwhelmed and confused and his memories fight their way into his brain like the shards of light that protect the monks that train him, exploding away at his touch.
But, there is something missing.
Something beyond just the memories left for him by a princess, and the ones she didn’t.
He thinks, one night while preparing dinner outside of a nearly empty stable, perhaps it’s not a piece of information that is missing.
The quiet is comforting, but he finds himself eyeing the empty stool to his left, someone should be sitting there. Before he can contemplate who, the smell of smoke reaches his nose and he swiftly scoops his scorched meal from the pot.
The shrines are a strange kind of isolation.
Sometimes vibrating with the churning of massive machines, or water, or lava and sometimes so quiet he wants to hold his breath. Deep below the earth, perfectly preserved and completely unfathomable. He remembers finding a runaway Princess near one once, Zelda.
He hopes he’ll be able to show her one.
When he pulls the sword, things start to slot into place, but at not quite the right angle. The sword sings in his fist and is the easiest weapon to handle so far, so he thinks he’s justified when he learns first hand that it can only be used in any meaningful way against malice and feels a little cheated.
He allows himself a short sulk before moving on.
He prepares what could easily be his final meals, eyes drifting to the left of the pot. The stool is still empty. It’s quiet in Kakariko tonight, maybe they know what he is planning to do tomorrow, and maybe they don’t. Either way they leave him be, the villagers so used to his frequent quick visits. He thanks Zelda for holding back the rain after announcing the blood moon, allowing him to cook until he can carry nothing else and then finally makes his way home. He should have stuck to his schedule and went home earlier, but he likes looking at the fire reflecting in the Goddess’ pool and the glow hanging lanterns too, he rationalized as he crossed the bridge to his home hours later than he had planned.
The castle is loud, loud in the way his memories felt when they were forcing their way into his head but real, and everywhere. It buzzes in his bones and settles in his gut, a familiar, but not welcome, sensation. He used to wake up to the same feeling a century ago, when the sword felt like trying to hold onto a pole covered in grease.
He breathes into it, letting it rest there with the knowledge that he no longer feels a step behind the weapon that chose him. They move together now, partners in a dance that’s been going on for far longer than he can even wrap his brain around.
And though he’s sure, if asked, he could recall every minute of the battle that was finally assisting the Princess, he can’t help but feel like he blinked and it was over.
His ears ring against the hovering silence as he heaves, eyes wild, the gold thread from his dreams is about a yard away and her sandaled feet make impressions in the grass and just that alone almost makes him choke on his own lungs—
And then she’s speaking, the ringing in his ears quiets and his gaze snaps up to the back of her gilded head, hair flowing with the current of the wind effortlessly, as it always did.
She turns to face him, long lashes fluttering against round cheeks that haven’t felt the sun for over a century, the wind carries the smell of fresh linen, rare flowers, stark against the scorched earth beneath them and he feels that piece he could never find, despite searching every corner of this country countless times, slot into place.