Archive of Our Own

The world was ending. Zelda informed Urbosa as much, on the off-chance that she wasn’t already aware.

“Why?” 

“You know why.” 

“Because of Link?”

Zelda made what her father would call ‘a face’. Urbosa’s laugh was as loud as thunder, but unfortunately not nearly as adapt at helping drown out her thoughts.

“That boy loves you, you know. You can see it in his eyes.”

“Ew, Urbosa, stop it. That’s disgusting.” 

“Disgusting? I think he’s a lovely young voe. Strong, kind, and handsome too.” 

She winked and thunder rumbled again. The desert sun shone brighter than ever. Zelda hoped Urbosa knew that this was more evidence that the world was ending, ending because of Link. She crossed her arms over her knees, resting her head on them. 

“I hate him.” 

“‘Hate’ is a harsh word, Little Bird.”

“It’s only been one week since the assignment, and he won’t leave me alone. He’s supposed to be my guard now, my knight, and yet he won’t listen to my commands to leave me at peace.” 

“I’m afraid he’ll get quite a few lashings from your father if he does. You’ll need a better reason than that.” 

“Well,” Zelda sighed, squishing her hands beneath her. “He did ruin my favorite flower.”

It was true. It was his eyes, his stupid blue eyes: they were the same color as Silent Princesses. Zelda used to love the blossoms that refused to grow in captivity—the ‘wildest of all the wildflowers’, her mother called them. However, lately their petals reminded her of something she’d rather not think about. 

On her first outing together with her knight (although it was hardly an ‘outing’: Zelda had gone to do field research and Link had followed, stupidly, like one of the dogs outside a stable after it was fed an apple) they had paused to rest on the edge of a cliff with a view. Link stood, silent as always, silhouette small against the crimson sunset scenery. From her vantage point a few paces away Zelda could have wrapped her index finger and thumb around his waist and plucked him right off the grass. But even though it was Link, and even though she wanted him gone from her sight, she refused to do such a thing. She hated people who picked wildflowers. 

An ancient legend said that if lovers swore their devotion before a freshly plucked Silent Princess their future together would be blessed. It was a sweet sentiment, but Zelda preferred people not interfere with nature—no matter how in love they were. Once picked, a flower only had a few hours to live. Wildflowers should be allowed to bloom in peace, she thought, not sacrificed for the sake of a story.

“Well, speak of the Calamity,” Urbosa chuckled, and Zelda frowned. 

She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was; his stare burned her back even from miles away. She stood up, shaking out her hair. 

“Come on, Urbosa. Let’s go somewhere else.” 

“Sure,” Urbosa agreed. “Link, why don’t you come with us?” 

Zelda scowled. She disagreed: ‘hate’ was not, in fact, too harsh a word. She truly hated the knight with the wildflower eyes, the one who followed her everywhere like a curse, a disease, a blemish on her name. He must despise her more than anyone: more than her father, more than the Goddess. More than herself, if that was even possible.

When Zelda looked in her bedroom mirror she saw cracks, not in the glass but across her skin: hairline fractures spidering across her neck and chest, ruptures she could feel even after she covered her body in clothes and bedcovers and buried her head so far in her pillow that she could barely hear her father telling her get up, get ready, you must pray today, Zelda.

She pulled herself out of bed and into her ceremonial dress, slid gold cuffs on her wrists, and put herself through the ordeal of combing her hair. It was long, heavy, and made her neck itch in the summer heat. If her father didn’t insist on adhering strictly to royal custom with the hope that it would endear the Goddess to her, then she would have already taken one of Link’s weapons and cut the tangled mess off herself. 

…Not that he would have let her. He behaved like her father’s lapdog, following orders as if his life depended on it. Zelda would have thought it shameful, if she didn’t wish so desperately to be more like him. It was hard not to when she was constantly compared to him. Link had pulled the sword from its pedestal on the first try. As far as the kingdom was concerned, Zelda had done nothing but comb her hair and put on jewelry for the past five years.  

She wanted to do more than that—and she did, she did do more—but it didn’t matter when any effort she poured into her research was regarded as a ‘distraction from her real duties.’

And so every few days she combed her hair, and cuffed herself with the gold jewelry. She let Link follow her out of the palace, through the woods, into the Spring of Courage and back out again without any results—always without any results. 

It was the same story every time: on the way back the castle they stopped to rest, he brought her an apple he had picked, they ate in silence. He stared at her. She pretended that he wasn’t staring at her. She bit her tongue, ground her teeth. Nothing brought her comfort anymore. Even the apple tasted sour. She tried to look at the flowers; it didn’t help. She might as well have been staring back at him. 

Link’s eyes were honest, so clear that she could see herself reflected in them. Silent Princess; she wished she knew how to shut up and be one. He may have been horrible at conversation, but Zelda honestly thought she was worse. At least he knew when to stop trying. 

In addition to being silent, Link was stoic, sturdy, like a well-worn stone statue of a hero from centuries past. Zelda had always been a curious girl. The less he refused to move, the more she wanted to tip him over.

“When everyone dies, it will be my fault.” 

Zelda was sitting too close to the campfire, she knew she was. Waves of heat lapped at her skin, uncomfortable and scalding but not hot enough. Never hot enough.

Link cleared his throat for so long that she was almost able to convince herself that he was choking. Much to her disappointment, he wasn’t.  

“They’re not going to die. And you’re trying your best,” his voice was raspy, rusted, like a blade seldom drawn.

“Oh, so you suddenly decide to speak now? What’s the occasion?”

Link’s lips clamped shut and he promptly turned himself back into a statue. It was a shame, really; Zelda would have thought his voice was pretty had it belonged to another man.

“Besides,” she never knew when to stop talking, ”what would you know about trying? You’ve never had to try a day in your life.”

Even though half a decade had passed, Zelda couldn’t get the taste of blood out of her mouth. At the center of a packed coliseum, a Lynel charged an eleven-year old boy with blue eyes, bare feet, and a rusty blade. The crowd cheered, hoping for slaughter.

“Father, you mustn’t—he’ll die!” Zelda grabbed his arm, but he brushed her away. 

“No. This is how heroes are made, Zelda. You’d best watch closely.” 

For the thousandth time, she mourned the death of her mother.

It was hardly fair, barely a fight. Within minutes the boy had plunged his blade into the Lynel’s belly, ripping a straight line to its tail. Intestines flew, blood stained the blue sky. The princess screamed louder than the slain beast. 

The boy put his foot on its skull and raised his sword to the sky. The crowd erupted. The king lept to his feet, clapping as if the kingdom depended on it. 

“The Goddess smiles on this young soldier,” he announced. “In a few years, he’ll become a hero the likes of which this nation hasn’t seen in centuries.” 

Link was covered in blood. There was no joy in his eyes. 

The next morning, Impa had come to her bedroom to deliver the white dress and gold jewelry. 

“Your father is taking Link to meet the Great Deku Tree next month. It’s time you start praying to the Goddess regularly.” 

Zelda was a silhouette in the window. “I’ve prayed every night since Mother has passed.”

Impa plopped the ceremonial garments on her bed, defeated. “Your father wants you to start wearing these.” 

“Thank you, Impa.” 

She waited until Impa shut the door, then gathered her hair in her fists. It was still hot, and heavy, but with the white dress now waiting for her she didn’t dare ask her father if she could cut it. 

“Princess, you have thistles.”

Zelda whipped around. “Excuse me?”

“In your hair,” Link clarified.

“Oh.” She was almost disappointed.

He blinked. “May I…?” 

“Sure,” she said, because it would be more humiliating to have him stare at her while she tried to detangle them herself. 

He worked silently, hands that could wring a someone’s neck resting feather-light on the curve of her shoulder. Zelda seethed.

She knew he secretly loathed her; he must. Didn’t he understand that kindness was the worst punishment that could be given to someone unworthy? That his devotion made a mockery of her, someone who was unwanted by her Goddess, by her kingdom, by her own father?

“You’re taking too long,” she snapped. 

“Sorry. They’re sharp. Trying not to hurt you.” 

She sighed. As with everything else he tried, he was succeeding. She never felt the poke of the thistles, not even once, only the sensation of someone playing with her hair. He might as well have been braiding it. Zelda bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. 

He was always so gentle with her. She wanted him to rip her apart like a Lynel.

“No more,” he announced, stepping away. 

He stayed silent as the continued through the forest, but that didn’t stop her from noticing how he walked ahead to hold thorny branches out of her way. Scratches gathered on his palms. All Zelda could see was blood.

He was already so cruel to her. Maybe if she turned herself into enough of a monster he would sink his blade into her chest, too.

It had been a bad day—an especially bad day. “It’s always a bad day with you,” her father had said, tapping his foot. I don’t like this new attitude you have. Neither do I, she thought. You’ve become very unpleasant, Zelda. It’s unbecoming of a princess, not to mention ungracious. Maybe if you smiled a little more, the Goddess will finally like you. Maybe if you smile a little more, you’ll stop being a disappointment. 

Zelda slunk through the palace halls, shoulders drooping and eyes downcast, hair a tangled mess. She just wanted to be alone, to sit with herself for a minute—just a minute—far away from her bedroom mirror, from the castle, from everyone. She just wanted to be alone. 

Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. 

Link was adept at masking the sound of his footsteps, but not nearly adept enough to go undetected while Zelda’s nerves were so frayed that she could feel them poking through the surface of her skin. 

Maybe if he hadn’t been wearing a royal guard uniform that day, nothing would have happened. Maybe, if he hadn’t been wearing the uniform, everything would have been fine. 

“That’s too big for you,” she said, pointing at the baggy excuse for an outfit. “You look awful.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing as if he were the one at fault. “This is the smallest size they had.”

The wrinkled gloves and jutting shoulder pads were aesthetically offensive enough, as were the pants loose enough to be called a poorly-designed skirt, but the cap was the worst of all. His overgrown bangs were pressed flat against his eyes, and his ears—an otherwise unremarkable feature on a Hylian—stuck out at an awkward angle.

He looked stupid. Zelda would have laughed at him, if her chest wasn’t smoldering. Didn’t they have any uniforms his size? He was far too young to be a soldier if they couldn’t find a hat that fit his head. He was too young to be a soldier, and yet here he was blocking her way. It was ridiculous.

Link squared his tiny shoulders, the rim of his cap sliding further down his forehead. She rolled her eyes and tried to brush past him. He put an arm out to stop her, firm but not violent, never violent. She stepped around him. He turned and followed her. She grit her teeth.

He may have been her knight, but he never listened to her. He never listened to her, and she was so angry about it that she shoved him out of the way. Or—more accurately, she put her hands on his shoulders and he dug his heels into the ground.

“I’ve told you so many times to go away, but you never listen to me. Just who do you think you are?”

Wildflower in a field, statue in a palace. Link was silent, always silent, silent until death.

“I said, go. I’ll be fine. Why won’t you just leave me alone?” 

She shoved him again, harder this time, and much to her dismay he stumbled back instead of surging forward and taking her by the throat like she wanted him to. Perhaps, in childhood, watching a Lynel charge a child soldier had left her with a craving for violence.

“It’s because my father ordered you to, right? Because you took an oath, right? Because this is just your job?”

Link was quiet, but he was never dishonest. “I think you’re worth protecting.” 

“So you think I’m some weakling who needs protection?”

“No. When people—bad people—see someone good, they get scared. They want to tear them down.”

“So you think I’m a bad person.” 

“That’s not what I meant—“

“Then what did you mean?”

She knew that wasn’t what he had meant, and she knew damn well what he had meant, but she wanted to see him uncomfortable. She wanted to see him squirm and panic and wring his hands until he forgot how to turn himself back into a statue. She scrunched her nose up, using every inch of her height to her advantage.

The tips of Link’s ears matched the color of his uniform; the bridge of his nose wasn’t fairing much better. Zelda felt her own face flush, spurred on by the prospect of a rare victory in combat against the hero who had been chosen by the sword. The deeper red he flushed, the more bloodthirsty she became. 

His eyes, unfortunately, were still the color of wildflowers. 

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I don’t know how to express myself well.”

“You don’t need to. I know you hate me, even if you’re too much of a coward to say it to my face.” 

He blinked, the still water of his eyes rippled. His bottom lip trembled. He swallowed, and the disturbance spread cracks across his skin. Good, she thought, now we match.

It wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to see him break.

“Well I hope you know this, Hero. I hate you too.”

Along with his usual arsenal of weapons, Link sometimes carried a boomerang. Zelda had tried throwing it once when he wasn’t around, thinking it might be fun. Not knowing there was a proper way to catch it, it had come flying back and hit her squarely in the nose. It didn’t cut her, thankfully, but it left an ugly mark between her eyes for days to come. 

“Princess, what happened? Did someone hurt you?” 

She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth.

“I hate you,” she said, throat made of gravel. “I hate you so much I can’t even stand to look at you.”

She turned her back on him, but not before she saw him press gloved hands beneath closed eyes, shoulders hunched and ears burning. 

The pit of her stomach smoldered, her heart was a hard knot. Despite how much of a failure she was, despite how much better he was than her in every conceivable way, she now knew she was the only person in the kingdom capable of reducing him to tears. It was a bitter achievement, but it was an achievement nonetheless. There was bile in her throat, she was sick; she smiled.

△▽△

The sound of a hand being sliced clean from the wrist was something Zelda had no words to describe. It had been a warning—don’t you dare take a step further, don’t you dare lay a finger on her. As far as she knew, Link outright refused to harm other people. He only drew his blade on monsters. And yet tonight, one of the Yiga clan was missing a hand. 

Zelda buried her nose into her pillow. She couldn’t block out the memory, the gruesome sound repeating in her head no matter how firmly she clamped her hands over her ears. 

In some ways, it was a relief: it was better than thinking about how Link had knelt on the ground to comfort her, how her pulse beat against his hand as he helped her to his feet, how his breath had shuttered as he checked her over for injuries, quickly, like he couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t stop himself from worrying. 

“I’m fine, Link, I’m okay,” she said. The worry in his eyes didn’t go away. Neither did the sick feeling in her stomach.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, because she didn’t know what else to say. “Thank you.”

Link didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He loves me, he loves me not… A Silent Princess only had five petals. They were easy to count.

Zelda rolled over in bed, hair itching her neck. Spring had barely begun, but her room was already so hot that it was suffocating. She shoved her blankets to the foot of her bed as she tossed and turned, her hand over her chest where the Yiga had tried to sink their hooks. 

Bile burned her throat, vicious words scalded her tongue. She wished she could take them back, she wished Link had set his blade upon her instead of her attackers, or at least let them finish the job. And yet, he hadn’t. He never would, even if she begged him to. Calloused hands combed through her hair, thistles fell at her feet.  

I hate you. Zelda closed her eyes, rubbing the bridge of her nose. I hate you so much I can barely stand to look at you. 

In the shadow of her bedroom mirror she saw a statue crack into pieces; ten thousand years later wildflowers bloomed atop the rubble. She jolted upright in bed, moonlight catching in the creases of her nightgown. She reached for her diary, knowing that if she didn’t get the words out this very minute she would burst into flames and bring the whole kingdom burning down with her. 

Her hair itched the back of her neck; her pen scratched against paper. “Tomorrow, I shall apologize for all that has transpired between us.” 

She collapsed back into bed, crimson canopy stretched above her. Jotting down her resolution on paper had been easy enough, but going through with it was a different task entirely. What could she even say to the boy who never spoke? When she thought of Link many things came to mind, almost too many to name, but none of them were boy-shaped. Maybe that was the problem, she thought. Maybe that had always been the problem.

And so, the next day, she didn’t tell Link about statues, or wildflowers, how it annoyed her that his cap was too big for his head. What she did tell him was “I’m sorry,” and “I never should have said that,” and “I’ve been awful”, and “I truly feel horrible about everything.” 

Link said, “It’s okay.” 

It wasn’t. Zelda had ended up crying in his arms, which hadn’t been the point—or maybe it had been, it was hard remember to when she was choking on air. He dried her tears with his thumb and swept her hair away from her flushed cheeks, and if the world had been a little less blurry and a little easier to breathe in she would have noticed that his hands were trembling. 

“It’s okay, Princess,” he repeated. “Please don’t cry any more.” 

Zelda nodded, thinking she owed him at least that. 

“I am sorry. Speaking is…” his brow furrowed into knots. “It’s difficult for me.”

“Can you, maybe, tell me why? Why it’s difficult, I mean.” It was worth a try. 

Link sighed. For a minute, Zelda thought he was intentionally ignoring her, until she saw his hands. He tied them into knots before wringing them out, shoulders drooping. 

He didn’t know how to put it into words, he said, but there were certain memories he kept coming back to. That’s okay, tell me, she said, and so he did: about how he had learned to hold a sword before he was taught how to read, and how one time when he was seven years old he had cried after his hand had been crushed beneath a boulder breaker during training hours. He gave the dirt his tears and received a raw wrist and broken pride in return. 

He rolled up his sleeve, presenting scarred skin. “See, it’s still there.” 

Zelda felt like throwing up.

He told her more: that he could sometimes hear the applause of crowds in his dreams, but it was never comforting. One time while training he had thought the bones in his spine were breaking, but it later turned out that it was only a stiff back from a restless night.  

“Do you find it hard to sleep often?” she asked. 

He nodded.

“Ah,” she almost smiled, "me too.” 

“I haven’t slept at all the past few days.” 

“Really?” she feigned surprise, if only to keep the conversation going.

“Yes. Recently you asked me a question. You said, ‘Just who do you think you are?’”

“Link, again, I am so sorry—”

He shrugged. “Don’t be sorry. I thought it was a good question.” 

Zelda wondered if kindness was another form of stupidity. 

“I kept thinking about it, afterwards. You were frustrated by my silence. I could tell. I was frustrated too. Who am I? I don’t know. I am a vessel for power, a hand for the sword. My purpose is to be as hollow as possible.”

He bit his lip. “Lady Urbosa says you’re jealous of me, but I don’t understand why. You’re so full of emotion, of personality, of life. I don’t know why you would ever want to give that up. Your light is too beautiful to lose.” 

“I’m not jealous, but I do hope…” he nodded, firm. “I hope you never become like me.”

The princess was speechless, blood and dust on her tongue. He had done it. He had ripped her apart like a Lynel. 

△▽△

According to tradition, it was the princess’s responsibility to select a color for the Champions and sew them each a garment. It would have been a daunting task, had she not already had a specific shade in mind. 

“Ah, blue for the royal family,” Daruk had said. “How Princessessy.”

“Did you have to pick such a garish shade, though?” Revali demanded, batting a swatch across the table with one wing. “Something darker would be more suited to warriors who are serious about their craft. We are preparing for war, in case you forgot.” 

“Well, yes,” Zelda replied, “But this shade is the color of my favorite flower.”

Revali shrieked and wind rattled the windows. Urbosa and Daruk laughed, thunder and an avalanche combined. Zelda was surprised the roof hadn’t caved in yet. 

“Don’t you worry about them, Princess,” Mipha said, always ready to come to someone’s rescue. “I think it’s perfect. I would have picked the same shade myself.” 

“Really?” Zelda asked, “How come?”

“I just really like this color,” Mipha said, with a smile on her lips and a glimmer in her eye as if they were both in on the same secret, and it was then that Zelda realized that she was not as good at subtlety as she had assumed herself to be.

“It is a beautiful color,” Urbosa chimed in. Zelda didn’t dare look Link in the eye.

Despite the brief kerfuffle, it was eventually agreed that wildflower blue would be the Champions’ designated color. Zelda spent the next few nights bent over her desk, back stiff and fingers rubbed raw from holding a needle and thread. Golden hair fell over her shoulders, not a thistle in sight. Sharp objects no longer taunted her when she was alone, and silence had become much more comfortable. 

When she looked in the mirror she still saw cracks in her skin, but now light shone through them—faint and feeble, but still there nonetheless. She gathered it on her fingertips, shaking her head with a smile on her lips. “Love” felt much too strong a word, and “crush” too embarrassing, but Link was the only person capable of reducing her to light. Perhaps that was the best way to describe it.

She wrote in her diary less, now that he occupied her thoughts more. She knew he would never see, that no one would ever see, but still—it was embarrassing. She was a princess blessed with divine powers (in theory, yet to be proven), the princess who would save the world. She had no time to be a teenager with wistful daydreams and a diary filled with thoughts of a boy’s eyes and lips and hands.

Besides, she found it increasingly difficult to write about Link. It had been easy when he had been a statue of a hero, but now he had become boy-shaped: a living, breathing boy who had taken an oath to guard her with his life. How could one put such a thing into words? 

Link’s courage is rivaled only by his kindness, Mipha said, but the extent of his selflessness worries her. 

Link is a good man, Daruk said. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge. 

Link loves you, Urbosa said. 

Link is an arrogant try-hard, Revali said. One day he’ll get what’s coming to him. 

The late queen had prophetic dreams, a power her daughter had yet to inherit, but Zelda didn’t need Hylia’s gift to predict the future. Neither did the Champions, apparently.

Link took her hand, as he always did. She smiled, his callouses rough against her soft palm as he helped her onto their shared horse. Just two weeks ago she would have insisted they ride separately, but now she saw no need for two mounts. Not for this excursion, anyway. 

She wrapped her hands around his waist because the horse was small, she said, because she was worried about falling off, she said. 

That’s good, he said, he wouldn’t want her to get hurt. He wouldn’t ever want her to get hurt.

His back was sturdy against her chest; his hair smelled like bird feathers and Tabantha wheat. 

“Were you and Revali fighting again? Was that what you were doing while I was running diagnostics on Vah Medoh?” 

Link exhaled abruptly, the closest he had ever come to a genuine laugh. Zelda leaned forward in the saddle and hoped for a miracle.

“I wish you two would get along. I think you could be good friends, if you tried.” 

“Revali and I are friends,” Link said, as if it were obvious. “He just hasn’t realized it yet.” 

Zelda laughed, shaking out her hair so she could feel the breeze blow through it. 

“Fighting isn’t always bad,” he reminded her. “Sometimes, people need to fight in order to figure themselves out.”

“Yeah,” she said, flushed but not embarrassed. “I suppose you’re right.”

The sun sank below the horizon, staining the sky crimson. Link hummed quietly as they rode, the same tune her mother used to play her as a lullaby, the one she had taught him a few nights ago during long trip back from Akkala. Zelda rested her cheek on his shoulder and thought about grief in all its forms: tombstones and sunsets and wildflowers trampled under hooves of a horse carrying two halves of a prophesy on its back.

△▽△

The sky above Mount Lanaryu was always grey. The spring water was freezing. Zelda’s dress clung to her, the white fabric transparent against soft skin flushed pink. She felt incredibly fortunate that her knight attendant was nothing less than an absolute gentleman. 

As usual he looked away from her, back turned to give her at least the illusion of privacy. It wasn’t the white dress in the water, though, it was the embarrassment of rejection. It was the humiliation of begging and pleading and being denied again, and again, until she doubted whether anyone was listening, until she was nothing but a girl mumbling to herself in the water.

The material of her dress was light, but once soaked through it tugged on her hips and thighs, fabric heavy enough to drag her down into the sacred spring and drown her.

Zelda sighed, hands making ripples as she let them splash under the surface. She didn’t know why she had thought this spring would be any different. She was praying to the same deity. Why should the Goddess care if she stood in a different spot, if she were one day older, if she clasped her hands a little tighter. None of that changed who she was, deep down. Her father said she was struggling with the Goddess because she spent too much time ‘playing at being a scholar,’ but even that felt too superficial to Zelda. Something was wrong with her, something ingrained so deeply that she could never hope to find it.

Hair dragging in the murky water, she trudged back to the snowy shore. Link was waiting for her, as always, with a warm cloak. The thick cloth felt nice against her chilled skin, but she was more focused on how his hands felt around her waist, how his eyes traced her expression as he pulled the fur-lined trim around her shoulders. 

“Are you warm enough, Princess?” 

Zelda blinked, allowing herself to actually contemplate the question. 

Am I? Am I warm enough? 

The frigid wind stirred her hair. Link’s eyes were half shut, his breath warm on her cheek. Zelda was ashamed. Her kingdom was on the brink of calamity and she wasn’t thinking about prayer, or her royal duties, or even her research. She was thinking about kissing a wildflower boy. 

“Princess? You’re shaking.” 

The world was cold, and he was warm. Yes, that was it. That was all this was.

Princesses didn’t fall in love with their knights; princesses didn’t belong in libraries, or in the wilderness. Princesses belonged in palaces, in sanctuaries; in places untouched by time, weather, or the hands of men. 

Link let go of her and Zelda wondered if he, too, had narrowly avoided disaster. She drew the cloak further around herself, trying and failing to make up for the missing warmth.

Cold tickled the tip of her nose. She looked up, and from the low-hanging sky, snowflakes drifted down to meet her. Emerald eyes went wide, and as snowflakes gathered on her lashes she became afraid to close them, worried they might melt into tears. 

“Happy Birthday, Princess Zelda.”

Cast in the looming shadow of Mount Lanaryu, drowned in the near-frozen waters of the Spring of Wisdom, no one had remembered her birthday. At the very least they had neglected to comment on the date itself, thinking only of the privileges turning seventeen allowed. The guards, all the palace attendants; even her father had forgotten. She had forgotten, too, until Link had been there to remind her. 

“Even though I was born in the spring,” she whispered, the peak of the mountain in her throat. “I’ve always wanted to see snowfall on my birthday. I love the snow.”

“I remember,” Link nodded, serious but no longer solemn.

That was right, she had told him—albeit a long time ago. 

“Really? You remember?”

“I remember,” he repeated, and she heard it in his voice before she saw it on his lips.

He was smiling, as peaceful as snowfall in spring.

“It’s pretty,” he said, pointing upwards, lips still curved and eyes still bright. “The snow.”

“It’s so pretty.” Zelda wasn’t looking at the snow.

Calamity doesn’t always take the form of hellfire and crumbling architecture. Sometimes calamity comes in the form of a boy with wildflower eyes and a heart too kind for his own good. 

Snowflakes melted on the curve of his lips. Zelda watched them fall, and disintegrate, and—just for one moment—she let herself imagine what they might taste like. 

△▽△

Halfway down the mountain, gently falling snow turned to sheets of rain. A few miles further and the air was clouded with smoke and the rain tasted like blood. Stripped of his crown, the king became an old man and the Champions turned into water, wind, thunder, and stone; four Divine Beasts screamed as Hyrule was turned upside down with so much force that its princess was knocked off her feet, sandals flying as she tumbled into her knight’s arms. 

“I’ve left them all to die,” she repeated, burying her head into his shoulder as if she could hide from the disaster she had caused. “I’ve failed everyone. I’m a horrible person.”

Link cleared his throat, choking on words, choking on rain.  “If you’re a bad person, then I’m a bad person too.” 

“No,” Zelda frowned, almost insulted. “No you’re not.”

“I know you took the boomerang, that day,” he said, tapping the bridge of his nose. “It left a bruise. You had hurt yourself, and I hadn’t been able to stop you. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful. I feel awful.” 

“Link, that’s not your fault—” 

He shook his head. “You’re crying again. It’s…agh, I don’t know how to say this. I can swing a sword alright, and I can shoot an arrow pretty well, I think, but it’s no use. You’re still crying. It’s been years, and you’re still crying. Lady Urbosa said I could try talking to you, but I’m no good at that. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, and I’ve thought about it a lot, but I still don’t know how I can help. I don’t know how to bring your smile back. Doesn’t that make me a bad person?” 

“You’re the good-est person I know,” she sniffed, smearing mud across her face. “It’s why I couldn’t stand to be around you, in the beginning, and sometimes even still I struggle with it. You’re so…good. You were so good to me and I didn’t even deserve it. I promised myself I’d make it up to you but look, look at what I’ve done. I’ve destroyed everything.”

“If you think you’ve failed, then I have too.”

Zelda sighed, sitting back on her heels. He was always gentle, but he was also stubborn, and both were infuriating in their own right. Muddy water pooled in the indents left by her knees, and she reasoned that if she kept on crying her tears would become indistinguishable from the rain. Her father always said she had a bad habit of leaning into pointless melodrama. Eyes raised to a bloody sky, Zelda couldn’t help but think he was right.

“Nothing matters anymore. Everyone who loves me is dead.”

In response, Link extended a hand to her. It was, perhaps, the most defiant thing he had ever done. 

Zelda knew now, what could have happened at the top of the mountain if she had been just a bit more brave and a bit less wise. But that was when had been snowing, and now it was raining, and it wasn’t even certain whether Mount Lanaryu itself would be still be standing by morning.

As she took Link’s hand, she heard the sound of a stem snapping. 

When Zelda was six years old, she had plucked a Silent Princess and left it by her bedside, hoping to carry its beauty with her into the next day. The next morning, she was met with a limp corpse. Withered petals fluttered to the ground as she cupped it in shaking hands, and with red eyes and a stuffy nose she brought it to her mother’s bedside and lay it on her night table like an apology. 

“Oh, Little Bird, I’m so sorry. A wildflower can only survive in the wilderness, where it has space to blossom. The air in the castle is too stifling for it to breathe.” 

Several stories below, in the soldiers barracks, a military general handed a six-year-old boy the same sword his late father had once carried into battle, guessing, “I think you’re old enough to carry this.”

If she had more time, maybe Zelda would have confessed to him that she felt like she never got to properly grieve her mother because of the responsibility her passing thrust onto her shoulders. Maybe she would have asked him what it felt like, when he first felt the hilt of the legendary sword give way under his palm.

If she had known that the end would come so soon, maybe she would have told him ‘thank you’ for wishing her a happy birthday, maybe she would have told him that he had a pretty smile, and maybe she would have let her lips chase the falling snowflakes to their final resting place. 

Maybe, if the guardians hadn’t found them so quickly, she would have warned him about the wildflower wilting in her hand, but that had happened eleven years ago. The Lynel was dead on the ground, her father was applauding. It was already too late.
 
“Link, go. I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me. Save yourself, run!” 

He may have been her knight, but he never listened to her. He never listened to her, and she was so angry about it that she shoved him out of the way. 

One hand raised between life and death, between the boy and calamity, between herself and the world. Miles from her bedroom mirror Zelda’s skin finally cracked right open, light seeping from the chasm, and for a moment the girl ceased to be. 

She looked down at an empty palm, knees shaking. All this time, and the answer had been so simple. Zelda should have known, she felt stupid for not realizing earlier. Link was the only person capable of reducing her to light. 

The mechanical soldier collapsed, mud sloshed over the princess’s bare feet. Her knight lay on his side, dirt in his hair and blood on his tunic. When Zelda gathered him up in trembling hands he coughed, withered petals falling to the ground. Blood seeped into the folds of her dress, and he opened his eyes slowly, laboriously, as if the entire world rested on his lashes. 

Of course, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to, had never needed to. Silent Princesses only had five petals.

Zelda screamed loud enough to make her ears ring, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of the world collapsing around her. 

The world was ending, and the princess of Hyrule was weeping over a wildflower she had plucked. She was six years old. She was six years old, and it was also her seventeenth birthday, and only one person in the entire kingdom had cared.

Snowflakes fell atop Mount Lanaryu. Zelda shivered, breath coming so sharply between wails that it might as well have been a knife to her throat.

Link’s eyes were closed, lips bloody and pulse still. The world was cold, and he was too.

Zelda had finally gotten what exactly she had wished for, achieved she had been born to do, but it no longer mattered. Ganon had payed no notice; it was clear the Calamity would stop for no one. The Champions were dead, the Hero was slain, and although the Princess could hold divine power in the palm of her hand all she cared about was the dead boy in her arms.

Haven’t you heard, Urobsa? The world is ending, ending because of Link.

Zelda had spent the better part of her youth on her knees, eyes closed and hands clasped before stone cold statues of a Goddess most of the living world had forgotten how to name. She had surrendered her consciousness over and over again, for hours and days and years, until her knees were permanently purple, her eyes forever red, and her knuckles perpetually white.

Now, as she clasped her hands together, they trembled. Her palms were cold, Link’s blood dripped down her wrists, and for the first time in her life, she prayed. 

△▽△

Zelda’s friends lost their lives but not their bodies; she lost her body but not her life. Link kept both, at the price of his memory. Ganon’s shadow was poised over Hyrule, looming over ghosts chained to the diseased corpses of man-made beasts, a princess composed of nothing but light, and then the boy. The boy with wildflower eyes that looked down at his scarred body like it belonged to someone else. 

Zelda wondered if a mended tunic and thirteen pictures were a sufficient apology for what she had done to him. She could have guided him more, and she probably should have, but she was afraid of laying claim to any more of his life than destiny had already had. So she used her voice to direct him to the Sheikah slate, and out of the cave, and that was it.

Wind in his hair and worn tunic on his shoulders, Link stared down the sun like it was his enemy. He lost the battle, quickly, wincing and covering his eyes. He sneezed, coughing on one-hundred-year-old dust. 
 
The first thing he had done of his own volition was steal a baked apple from her father’s spirit. Admittedly it had been a case of accidental theft, which honestly made it more charming. Even while enshrined in the dark heart of looming disaster, Zelda smiled. 

Her father’s ghost had teased him a bit, and then granted him permission to finish off the fruit. The old Link would have been mortified for days afterwards. The new Link shrugged and took another bite. A hundred years was a long time. Maybe the long sleep had made him wiser, or maybe he was just really, really hungry. 

Link had always wanted to learn how to cook, he had confessed to Zelda once upon a time, before disaster struck. But between stretching himself to fill the outline of a prophesy and shrinking himself to suit the scrutinizing eyes of every person in the kingdom, he didn’t have any time to pursue hobbies. 

“I’ve always wanted to learn archery, myself,” Zelda admitted, knees tucked to her chest. 

“I can teach you sometime. I think you’d be good at it.”

“Really? I’d like that,” she smiled. “Thank you.” 

The world ended a few days later. 

A hundred years in the future, with a baked apple in his mouth and one foot still in the grave, Link stared down at a bow a Bokoblin had dropped as if it were nothing but a bent stick and string. He learned quickly, though, everything he had forgotten and then more. 

He taught himself how to cook—and improved astonishingly fast, too. It made sense to Zelda, though, cooking only required two things: hunger and curiosity. The new Link had plenty of both. 

From her perch at the peak of impending disaster, she watched him scramble up the sides of cliffs, saw dive into rivers and lakes and lava—which was how he had learned that he was not, in fact, immune to its effects, even after drinking a flame resistant elixir. Zelda was grateful that had happened after Mipha’s spirit had bestowed her grace upon him. There was also protection from Daruk, of course, and lightning-imbuded fury from Urbosa, too. Even Revali had eventually shared the power of a gale with him. Maybe Link was right, about them being friends all along. Or, maybe, redemption was contagious.

Second chances were a beautiful thing.

Zelda had watched Link catch a shooting star with his bare hands, tuck it in his pouch, and then a few days later throw it into a bowl with ingredients listed on a page labeled ‘Princess Zelda’s favorite’ fruitcake recipe. He had ripped it straight from a book in the Royal Library and held in his teeth as he fought off three Lizalfos on his way to the broken palace wall, which he promptly scaled and lept off of, page flapping in the wind as he bit down harder. It seemed he had found what he was looking for. Or maybe, as always, he was just really hungry. 

He had prepared the ingredients for the cake, humming to himself, before taking out the star fragment and narrowing his eyes at the pot. 

Oh Hylia, she had thought, Link, don’t do that. 

However, she was powerless to stop him. The boy had given his life for her, once upon a time. Of course he would throw a shard of the sky into her favorite baking recipe. Zelda had turned herself over to destiny, and destiny had given her a boy in return. Considering the star-crusted fruitcake in his bloodstained hands, she supposed it wasn’t a half-bad trade.

Link looked at the silhouette of the castle, and then back at the cake, and then at the castle, and then at the sword set beside him, once again at the castle, and then finally back to the cake. He wasn’t ready; that both of them knew. However, in his eagerness to try the recipe he seemed to have forgotten that the end of the world still stood between him and the princess. Teeth permanently sunk into a stolen apple, the new Link didn’t always think everything through.

A wildberry tumbled off the top of the cake. He sighed and squished his hands beneath him, puffing out his cheeks like an Octorok on a rainy day. Zelda laughed, trying to remember if he had been this adorable before he died.

He cast one last look towards the castle before wrapping up the cake and bringing it to Amali, Kass’s wife, who had once asked him who he cooks for, and Link had replied ‘someone special’. He had given Amali the fruitcake that tasted like stars and watched with a rare smile on his face as she ate it and told him stories about her husband whom she hoped to reunite with someday. 

“You’re very quiet,” she said, eventually. 

“Yes,” Link agreed.  

Zelda thought differently. He had plenty to say, to anyone who had learned how to listen.

Amali pointed to the fruitcake slice that remained, still untouched on his plate, remarking that he “must not be that hungry.” She was wrong. Link was always hungry. 

Kass did come home, eventually, on the other side of a thunderstorm and many game-like challenges that Link seemed all too eager to take on, jaw set and tangled hair blown back by the wind. It was growing longer by the day, which Zelda chose to interpret as a sign that her plan was working. Impa had once told her that hair contained memories.

“Hurry to the princess!” Impa said. 

Please don’t, Zelda thought. 

In the meantime he caught more stars, stretching his fingertips up to the sky. He caught fish in his bare hands, and dug up carrots and mushrooms from the dirt. He plucked Silent Princesses—many of them, holding them up to compare with the color of his tunic and nodding in recognition. 

Almost, Link, she thought. You’re almost there.

A hundred years ago she would have scolded him for picking the flowers, but her feelings now were too complex to be yelled as a simple statement. She would have also scolded him for reading her diary (and Paya’s, poor girl), but she had grown fond of his newfound curiosity. "Bare my soul to him,” she had written, with all the earnest pomp of a sixteen-year-old princess. At least she had gotten what she had wished for. 

He climbed trees, and mountains, including Mount Lanaryu, and once he reached the top he had lept into the wind and flown alongside a dragon. Ganon’s eye stared him down and he stared right back, taking deadly aim with a bow that was now far more than a bent stick and string. Afterwards he climbed back up to the Spring of Wisdom and stood beneath the Goddess statue, although it cast no shadow. The sky above Mount Lanaryu was always grey. 

He had prayed, briefly, before stepping away from the spring and raising his eyes to the falling snow. She watched, stunned, as he dragged a thumb across his lip, catching melted snowflakes on it. And then, most iniquitous of all, he smiled. For a moment, Zelda faltered: it was the closest she had ever come to losing the fight against Ganon. She tried not to take it too personally, though, tried not to let destiny get to her head. Maybe he didn't remember. Maybe he was just hungry, as always, and curious what snowflakes tasted like. 

Melt them in a pot with a star fragment, Zelda dared him. Maybe they’ll become my new favorite dessert. 

On the other side of the country Link had climbed another mountain, only to slide down it while balanced precariously on a shield he had stolen from a Bokoblin, who had in turn stolen it from a Rito soldier. On his first try, he had hit a bush and tumbled face-first into the snow, legs flying in the air. He laughed, shook out his hair and trudged back up to do it again, and again, and again as if it was fun, as if he were a child playing in the snow, as if he were a boy who hadn’t been placed into the military before he was old enough to learn how to speak.

A few weeks later Kass finally came home, and Amali had cried, and Zelda tried her best not to be even a little bit jealous. But then Kass had pulled Link aside, and sung a song for him, and the tips of Link’s ears had turned red, and then he had smiled, and then he had tucked a silent princess into Kass’s accordion. Zelda decided she didn’t mind waiting a bit longer, if waiting meant that Link had more time to get snow in his hair, water in his boots, and dirt beneath his fingertips.

Kass had said that the princess was in love with her own knight attendant, with the hero holding the sword that could seal the darkness. Kass was mistaken, Zelda thought. The princess was in love with a boy who had eyes the color of wildflowers. 

Although her feelings towards him had changed, she still despised that sword as much as she had on the day he first pulled it from its pedestal. If Ganon was cursed to die, then maybe Link was cursed to live. 

Zelda was cursed to say things she would immediately regret.

“Do you really remember me?”

She winced, fingers curled into fists and eyes crinkled against the midday sun. Was his blood on her gown not enough? Were a hundred years not enough? Was it not enough for her that he had flung himself headfirst into the dark heart of disaster, just because she had told him too? 

No, Zelda decided, it wasn’t enough. All that had been for the princess in the prophesy. She wanted to know what he thought of her, of Zelda, the girl who had never been quite good enough. 

Link, as always, was silent. 

“Do you…remember me?” she asked, again, wondering if he had heard.

“I remember.” Somewhere, atop Mount Lanaryu, it began to snow.

“Really? You remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, I…” he scratched the back of his head, no doubt searching for evidence of memories tangled in his hair. “Ah, I know. The Great Deku Tree, he said you have a message for me, to be delivered in the tones of your own voice? Something like that.”

Link's eyes were honest, so clear that she could see herself reflected in them. Silent Princess; even after a hundred years of practice she still didn’t know how to shut up and be one. 

“I have always wanted to tell you that your eyes are the color of wildflowers,” the words spilled over fast, as if they had been waiting a century to come tumbling out. “But once a flower is plucked, it must perish. You asked me once if I thought you were a bad person because you didn’t know how to help me stop crying. I ask you, then, does it make me a bad person if I don’t regret that a wildflower boy once perished with his blood on my hands because, because…because it finally made me realize that I fell in love with him?”

She had spent a century waiting, preparing, and yet nothing could have prepared her for how pretty his smile was, in person, without the end of the world between them. The princess’s corpse was flung atop a pile with the other monsters the hero had slain in the Calamity. Smiling, with bloodstained bare feet, Zelda stepped forward. 

“I…” Link’s voice hitched, rusty in comparison to the blade on his back. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” she laughed. “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed too much.” 

“Have I?” he swallowed, nervous. “Changed?"

“Only for the better.” 

He blinked, the still water of his eyes rippled. His bottom lip trembled. He swallowed, and the disturbance spread cracks across his skin.

It wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to see him break.

“It’s alright to cry, you know. You don’t have to be strong all the time. Not anymore.”

Somehow he ended up in her arms, her knees on the ground, his hair tickling her neck, long eyelashes matted and salt tears pooling in her collarbone. She put a cheek on his forehead and one  hand in his hair, another on his back. She could feel the scars through his tunic, now worn thin from wind and rain and sand. Link shook, and he screamed almost as loudly as she had when he had died, but Zelda supposed that made sense. It was the second death of a hero. Only the boy remained, with scars on his back and tears on his cheeks. 

She was the only person capable of reducing him to tears. He was the only person capable of reducing her to light. He didn’t know how to begin talking. She didn’t know when to stop. He had died for her. She had lived for him. Together they had saved their country, or whatever was left of it after they had failed the first time.

The castle they used to call home had been reduced to a wilderness. The fearless knight wept, and the goddess-blood princess had never felt more like an ordinary girl. The world was ending. 

Across the nation, wildflowers bloomed.