Chapter Text
His reunion with Zelda does not go as either of them had planned, with Link passing out in her arms as soon as it truly sinks in that they’ve won. Zelda will tell him later that she had hoped for an embrace, something soft and intimate, and he will tell her that he had planned on hugging her so tight their bones broke, but for now, he sleeps.
And then, despite everything, he wakes.
“I was worried I’d lost you again,” Zelda admits softly from his bedside, her tattered prayer gown traded for an old set of Paya’s Sheikah garb; it looks good on her, Link thinks, even though she fiddles with the sleeves self consciously.
Zelda tells him they’re in the spare rooms at the back of Impa’s house in Kakariko Village, though Link hasn’t seen for himself, with Impa and Purah all but chaining him to the bed while he recovers. Still, the red lanterns outside his window are comforting, the soft sounds of Cado’s cuccos easing the tension in his shoulders.
It’s only been a few days since his fight with the Calamity, and without Mipha’s Grace, Link still has several more weeks of mending before he can be allowed to travel again; though he does not want to leave Zelda’s side just yet, his skin itches for mountains.
“Purah didn’t know if she could heal you,” Zelda continues, hands fisted on her knees. “Though I know you’ve endured far worse this past year, it was still... difficult, to witness.”
Link sighs, but smiles, and gently pats her head. She sniffles and looks up at him miserably, nothing at all like the warrior princess that helped him slay Ganon. They’re just children, Link reminds himself, the both of them. Some world saviours, they are, neither of them yet old enough to even own land.
He motions for her to wipe her eyes and she obeys, nodding to herself. “I know it’s silly to cry about it, when you are fine now, but—”
Link shakes his head quickly. “It is not silly. You are allowed to grieve.”
“You’re too kind for your own good, Link. I know I didn’t say it before, but I’m... I’m glad it was you, that the Goddesses picked.”
Swallowing the sudden bile in his throat, Link forces a tiny smile; surely she would not think so highly of him, if she knew he had not planned on surviving that final battle. Oh, he planned to win, to defeat the Calamity, but he had not cared whether Purah could heal him afterwards or not. “And I’m glad to have fought alongside you, princess,” he signs.
“Please, Link,” she winces, pulling her sleeves over her hands, “I am no longer a princess.”
He blinks, confused. “Queen, then.”
“No, Link, I am not either. You know as well as I that the kingdom of Hyrule is... The world has moved on without the royal family, and I see no reason to change that.”
“If you truly saw all that I went through, then you know that your kingdom is in pieces, and even now Ganon’s old minions run rampant. They need you now more than ever.”
Sniffling again, she simply nods. “I know, you’re right, it is just that—”
“You don’t want to rule.”
Zelda flinches. “I don’t know what I want, Link.”
Link leans back against his pillows and looks at his princess, the woman he had devoted a hundred years and a hundred battles to, but he doesn’t share her indecision. He knows what he wants. He knows he will not get it.
“Then do nothing.” He shrugs at her wild expression. “There is peace at least for now; the Goddesses cannot begrudge you allowing yourself to rest and decide what to do next.”
“Link, I do not...” She bites her lip, but seems to give it a serious moment of thought.
“You are right that you are not prepared to take control of a broken kingdom yet, no matter how badly it needs you. It would be foolish to throw yourself into something you cannot yet control.” He glances at the closed door. “And I’m sure Impa would agree with me.”
She shakes her head again, but she smiles. “Let us discuss this when you are better recovered. Until then, please— Please call me Zelda.” That smile is hesitant and hopeful and everything Link can remember of their last weeks together before the Calamity, the first time.
“Do you have a name in Sign?” he asks softly, though he thinks he knows the answer.
Zelda’s smile falls. “No, no I do not. My father... It was my mother that taught me Sign, she used to call me ‘little bird’ but I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”
“Then I will make you one.”
Her head snaps back up, her hands flying out to grab his. “You would do that?” He smiles back and nods.
“Give me a few days. When my brain is more awake.”
Her laugh almost makes it all worth it.
Zelda falls asleep on the cot across the room from Link, though he knows she has a proper bed down the hall; he appreciates her company more than he can express.
Only when she is properly asleep does the door open, Purah peeking her head into the room and smiling brightly at finding Link awake; she skips inside but closes the door softly so as not to disturb Zelda. Link offers her a tired smile as she pulls up Zelda’s chair and hops onto it, a small wooden box in her lap. “Linky!” she whispers excitedly. Link has vague, blurry memories of her trying to heal him, though he’s not quite sure if it was a few days ago or before the shrine of resurrection, but his instincts label her a friend, and it is easy to relax around her, even with her boundless energy.
“Purah,” he signs, miming her glasses with his pinky and forefingers and his hands turned out. She claps delightedly, but quickly quiets when Zelda mumbles in her sleep.
“So you’re remembering more and more, then?” she asks, whipping out her pen and slate to make a note of it; the quirk is infinitely more charming now that Link is not fresh out of the Shrine of Resurrection. “How are you feeling otherwise? Your wounds?”
“Mending. Stiff.” He rotates his left shoulder and winces. “Did I dislocate my shoulder?”
Purah purses her lips like a bird cutely and makes another note, “Subject has yet to regain memories of his most recent battle.” Flipping her pen dramatically, she tucks it behind her ear. “Calamity Ganon pulled it right from its socket during the first phase of your battle! From what Princess Zelda tells me, you reset it yourself. On horseback.”
Link winces again for entirely different reasons: that does sound like something he would do. “Anything else I did that I should know about?”
“Hmm,” she taps her chin a few times. “Her highness also tells me you switched bows mid-battle, so the Great Eagle Bow would not break.”
That he remembers.
Something seizes in his chest and scrambles for the Sheikah Slate on the bedside table, even though his arms feel barely strong enough to hold it up. He searches his inventory until he finds the bow, and yes, yes, he sighs, it is still intact. Damaged, but nothing that Harth couldn’t repair once he finally makes it back to Rito Village.
Purah watches him closely, pen back in her hand, but she does not write, her cute pout now some sort of angry. Link carefully sets the Slate in his lap before he drops it, meeting Purah’s eye and thinking he knows what she is so offended by.
Indeed, she crosses her arms over her chest. “You were not so careful with the Lightscale Trident, nor Lady Urbosa’s Scimitar.”
Be direct, he wants to tell her. He settles for signing, “I was not engaged to Mipha or Lady Urbosa.”
She keeps her angry expression for a moment longer, but it quickly cracks into something sympathetic and sad all at once. “I thought that might have been the case.” She hands him the box from her lap and puts her pen away properly.
Suddenly terrified of what the box contains, Link doesn’t open it immediately, staring at the simple carving of a cherry tree on the lid. With Purah watching resignedly, he lifts the lid and loses whatever breath he had managed to get back after his battle with Ganon.
Revali’s feathers are singed at the ends, but somehow still intact, the tassel in good shape for how ferociously Dark Beast Ganon had ripped it from his neck. The braided cord is in worse condition, torn at the nape and ends fraying, but it snapping had saved his life, freeing him from Ganon’s chokehold and giving him time to put distance between them. He had thought it lost for good.
Purah fixes the bedsheets tighter around his legs in a strangely maternal gesture. “Paya and I inspected Hyrule Field, while you were asleep; I was hoping to maybe find some evidence that Ganon was truly gone, but all we found was that.”
“You kept it safe for me. Before.”
She nods once, as Link runs his fingers over the vane of the centre feather. “It was in better shape when I put you in the Shrine. Impa did not know what to make of it, but I wanted to be sure you would find it after you awoke, no matter how many years later that was.”
Link swallows and nods once, feeling at the frayed edges and wondering if he could bring himself to try and reweave it. Purah seems to know what he’s thinking and produces two halves of a clasp, offering them to him.
“I think highlighting instead of hiding the break would be better. It’s important to remember the stories of things.”
He doesn’t hesitate to take the clasp, turning it over in his palm a few times. “Is it bone?”
“Abalone. From Lake Totori. Impa had it from her last visit to Rito Village and was more than happy to part with it.” She pats his hand as he sighs shakily.
“I have much to thank you both for. I wouldn't know where to begin.”
She laughs at this, wriggling in her seat. “Even if you had not already saved the world, my family would be happy to aid you. We’re your friends, Linky. And don’t you forget it.”
Link’s hands aren’t nearly nimble enough after only a few days to add the clasps, but Purah gives him a small pouch to wear it around his neck until then, and it feels good, to have the feathers close to his chest again. Zelda notices it when she wakes up, but does not mention it.
When not catching up with Impa about the state of her kingdom for the last one hundred years, Zelda sits with Link and asks about his adventures. Before, he might have thought it was only for research, but Zelda sits forward when he talks, eyes intent and reactions genuine; she wants to know because she cares, and that is a wonderful thing for Link to realise.
He starts walking again eight days after the great battle, but it is a hobble at best and Purah refuses for him to try at the stairs. Link resigns himself to needing to build his strength up from scratch, again, but with Zelda and Paya chatting to fill the silence of his exercises, it isn’t so bad.
Paya can tell he’s grieving, even from how little they know each other, and brings him an incense burner once he’s allowed to open the windows. She says it’s one she doesn’t use anymore, but it’s a beautiful clay bowl glazed in green, coiling intricate and precise; she has clay stuck under her fingernails when she gives it to him.
He burns three sticks for Revali the first night Zelda moves into her room down the hall. Paya had brought him cones, too, and he burns one each for the other Champions, the heady scent of shiso and sandalwood filling all the empty spaces in his chest. He lets that be enough.
With Impa putting him through tougher and tougher exercises, Link is exhausted by lunchtime, but luckily his injuries allow him to nap all afternoon without judgement. The morning after he burns the incense, it rains for the first time since the battle, cleansing the smell from Link’s room and taking some of the heartache with it.
He manages the stairs on his own and pulls on a cloak before stepping outside, inhaling the sharp tang of struck metal and clean dirt. He halts on the top step of Impa’s home, as a power kicks him in the chest and he looks wildly up at the clouds. Was that... ?
All at once, the Divine Beasts scream, Link can almost see their heads turned to the sky, but it is not a battle yell, it is not a warning, it is a victory cry.
Something crashes in the house behind him, pulling him from his revere in time for Zelda to all but fall out of the front door. “Link!” There is charcoal on her hands, staining the knees of her pants, and sandalwood incense wafts after her. “Did you hear that?”
He catches her before she trips down the steps, but doesn’t know what to say, when it feels like his heart will pound out of his chest. “Why would they...?”
Zelda looks up, but nothing of the grey-matted clouds gives away their secrets. “I-I was just experimenting, I don’t think—”
Lightning flashes behind Death Mountain, but the thunder clap is much nearer, so loud Link drops Zelda’s hands to cover his ears. She does the same, as rain plasters their faces and a wind picks up, ripping through their clothes.
Residents of the village shout and run for cover, Cado chasing after his panicked cuccos while Koko scoops Cottla into her arms and dives for her home, Cottla yelling in excitement the whole way. Even the dogs chase their owners’ feet to shelter.
Link and Zelda do not follow, watching the sky with hands over their ears.