#lis!au

Too many times had the picture of Link’s mangled and motionless body been burned into her mind. Too many times, she’d gone back and tried to find a way to stop this. It was bitterly cruel how, in the end, her final choices required his demise anyway. But if there was even just a chance that her visions were true, a chance that he could come back in due time, then Zelda was going to take it. She was going to let her kingdom fall to ruin, all because she was a stupid child who fell in love.

Love was such a small word for such a big thing.

“Link,” she whispered when she found her voice again. It felt like hours had passed, but if that were true, then they would’ve been dead by now. “Would it be wrong of me to let my kingdom fall, when I have the chance to undo everything?”

Link was quiet. His fingers in her hair had stilled, but he did not try to push her off of him, and that was more reassuring than anything else. She preferred his silence to his rejection anyway, no matter how guilty it made him feel. 

“This is a prophecy,” he said at last. He sounded far away, even a little angry. “This was something that was foretold before it ever came to this.”

“The prophecy did not detail the fall of Hyrule,” Zelda argued, though she had no energy left to argue. “It only told of the rising of Calamity Ganon. We were supposed to find the power to defeat it… We failed.”

He was quiet again. She wished he would tell her something else, that they didn’t fail, but she knew that wasn’t the case. If they hadn’t failed, then she would’ve never had to face this choice to begin with. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, because she feared he would turn out to be just as disappointed in her as everyone else was. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“I told you I trusted you,” Link replied and part of her wished he didn’t. “I meant that.”

It was a big choice for a child. Maybe she was choosing wrong, but Zelda suspected happiness was not something she was destined to come by. She would be heartbroken no matter what she chose, and for choosing Link over Hyrule– Hylia should’ve had the good graces to strike her down. But perhaps she didn’t deserve that sort of mercy, seeing as she could not do what Hylia and every other Zelda had done. In theory, it was simple, but she did not have the strength the women before her had.

On the night of her seventeenth birthday, Hyrule burned. Guardians tore hundreds upon thousands of structures apart, stone brick by stone brick. Monsters and machines alike slaughtered countless innocents. Her friends, everyone she’d ever come to know and love, perished to the hands of a demon she was too weak to fight. Even now, as she tried in vain to awaken powers that wouldn’t come, her kingdom was being demolished. Very little was left alive. Very little was left untouched. She did not know how far the damage went. She did not want to know.

The sequence of events were so similar, if not identical, to the ones that proceeded on the very first loop. Zelda, not for the first time, held Link in her arms, and even though he was a breath away from dying, he smiled.

“I will come find you,” he said, weak and strained but sincere all the same. If she hadn’t cried all day, and all day, and all day again, she might’ve sobbed right there, as his eyes fell shut. Even covered in blood and dust and dirt, he looked peaceful. If her visions meant nothing, and Link was meant to remain truly dead, then she thought she would be okay with that. It was almost like he was sleeping.

And so, holding the tragedy that was the Kingdom of Hyrule in the palm of her hands, Zelda willed herself to ignore that beckoning of the power–that call to try and cut the predetermined strings of fate once more. She did not want to go back. She only wanted to look forwards.  

A century passed. Time continued to flow, even when the world seemed to have stopped for so many. Hyrule never really recovered–not in the way that Zelda hoped it would. Too many lives had been lost. Too many people had lost the urge to go on, to continue their lives when they could not do so without pretending nothing had happened. 

Even when Link returned to her, when he offered her his presence and comfort without a sliver of the man he used to be, they could not be happy. They could not escape the tragedy that seemed to follow them with every story, every iteration, every bit of history that had a hero and a princess built into it. She used to think tragedy was just something forgien, something that was a figment of a dark and twisted imagination, but now, as she sat with a giggling toddler in her lap, safe within the walls of a little Hateno house, decades and decades after the Calamity’s invasion of the world she once knew, Zelda knew better. Tragedy was something inescapable, something she would not wish on even her worst enemy. 

At the very least, she did not have to face it alone. Link was kind and patient with her, just as she tried to be with him, and they were never really happy. Not entirely, not perfectly, and that was okay. She could live with that honesty, because there was only so much one could go through before healing seemed impossible. But she took the rays of sunshine as they came. She gave the love she hadn’t the pleasure to know before. She was living one day at a time, carrying the world with the Hero of Hyrule, the legendary Champion, the silent knight–and if that was all she was going to be granted, then who was she to turn it away? It was better than nothing, and after a century sealed in waiting, she knew nothing well.

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The comfort Link provided was immense, but she could not forget the dream she’d had. A brief celebration with the Champions at the gates of Mount Lanayru, as cheerful as they tried to be, could not make her forget the feeling that hovered heavy over her shoulders. She descended into the waters of the Spring of Wisdom, a violent shudder running through her body at the sting the nearly frozen water caused to her skin. There were pieces of ice floating around, brushing against her arms every so often, but she’d trained for this. She trained for suppressing the needs of her body for the sake of prayer, and she needed prayer more than ever right now. 

She told the Goddess who was not listening about her dream, about how she could not hear the woman no matter how hard she tried, and about her feeling of dread that stayed with her even now. She asked, just as she always did, for guidance. She asked for what she needed to do to reach those sacred powers she could never quite grasp. She prayed that, if she could not fulfill her duty, the Calamity would take her instead and leave her people in peace. She prayed for the salvation of her kingdom, her closest friends, the boy with the sword standing mere feet away from her, her father–Goddess knew he’d done everything he could with her, and it’d been so hard without her mother. She stood in those waters until she couldn’t anymore, until she was collapsing into the water, ready for it to pull her under and freeze above her so she could never escape. 

The only thing that pulled her anywhere were Link’s arms guiding her quickly but carefully out of the icy depths and back to the platform where he’d started a small fire. He was talking, though she couldn’t process his words, as he let her go just long enough to drape her heavy, warm coat over her shoulders. Then she was in his lap, listening to the soft whisper of his voice in her ear, and she could fall asleep like that if her heart weren’t so heavy.

“What if this was my last chance?” she asked quietly, clutching her coat tighter. Her voice was hoarse. 

“Do you trust me?” Link asked. Zelda looked at him then, eyes wide with surprise, but all he did was tilt his head, waiting patiently for her answer.

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation, nodding her head.

“Then believe me when I say this isn’t your last chance. I have so much faith in you, Zelda. So do the Champions and your people.”

“Link… thank you,” she breathed out, wiping at her eyes before her tears could freeze to her skin.

The princess of Hyrule was seventeen years old when her kingdom began to burn around her, just hours after their hero had promised her that things would be okay. Zelda wanted to help. She wanted nothing more than to face the Calamity fueled on nothing but anger alone. If her friends had to fight, then she would not stand aside like some scared child. If her powers did not want to wake, then she would force them to when she had no other choice. 

They hadn’t even made it to the castle. Zelda could do little more than watch in horror as the ancient technology they’d trusted so much, that she’d loved so much, pursued innocent civilians and soldiers like a swarm of spiders, their destruction spread far and wide. Calamity Ganon had already won, and she hadn’t even seen what the monstrosity she’d been plagued with for the past five years looked like. That same pink glow of the corrupted guardians could be seen pouring from the Divine Beasts, too, and all she could hear in the air was screaming. 

She couldn’t run any faster. She couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes. Zelda stumbled, slipping from Link’s grasp, and fell hard against the ground. The sky was dark and the smell of smoke, the stench of death, overwhelmed her senses and she felt like she was going to pass out. Never had she felt so utterly helpless before. 

And yet, Link did not leave her. He crouched before her, offered his company and kindness, and she knew he must be hurting too. Physically, emotionally. He looked so tired, and still, he hugged her trembling form close to him as she bawled for all they’d lost. The end of the world was upon them and still, she was useless. No sacred sealing power, no weapon, not even her passion for research could help them now. It had hurt them more than anything. Her entire world was crumbling around her and it was entirely her fault. What a princess she was, leaving her people to suffer. The Champions, her father, everyone she’d ever known, everyone she’d prayed and begged to be saved—what had become of them? She did not want to know, but the nausea sweeping through her body told her that her guess was as accurate as the truth.

Zelda could hear the scuttling of a guardian nearby, seeking them out, but she could not find the strength to stand. Even when Link stood and gave her a gentle pull, begging her to get up, she could not. She felt there was no point to it now, when everything was destroyed beyond repair.

“Zelda,” he spoke, her name soft and familiar on his tongue. She lifted her eyes to him. “Do you trust me?”

She trusted him more than anything. She trusted him so much, she forced herself to take his outstretched hand and pull herself shakily to her feet. He tugged her forwards, into another run, and gods, she was so tired, but she trusted him. He trusted her. Sealing power or not, she could not do this without him. 

They emerged from the woods together, sprinting across Blatchery Plain, and she tried not to cry again as she heard the scuttle of guardians getting closer. Before she could see what was happening, before she could process the giant blur of red before them, Link had slaughtered the Moblin with ease. She wished it’d ended there, but his fingers slipped through hers as he collapsed to his knees. The red staining the blue of his tunic, the one so carefully crafted by her own hands, told her all she needed to know. He was hurt. Horribly.

She begged him to stand, to leave her behind because something told her that these guardians, that Ganon, was after her. If he could get behind Fort Hateno, just where he was trying to take her, then maybe he could get someone to patch him up. But he didn’t. He hauled himself up with stubbornness that was more steady than him, and faced the guardian’s dreadful, blinking red light with the spirit of countless heroes past. He would die for her. He intended to die for her. She couldn’t let that happen. Gods, please, not him, too.

With a final cry, a beg for the gods of old to spare him, to end this chaos and suffering, to take her instead, Zelda threw herself in front of the guardian and raised her hand as if her command would stop it. Ancient blue met a bright, shimmering gold, and it was like the world had paused in its rotation. The guardian gave a shudder, then fell motionless before her and the pursuit came to an abrupt end. Had she done it after all?

And then, alerted by the sound of rustling, she turned. Link was on the ground. 

“No,” she breathed, swallowed by the startlingly silent night, and she pulled him into her lap, cradling his head. He felt so heavy. His eyes—they looked so dull. He was going to die. He was dying, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was so nauseated, so tired, and when his eyes shut and his lead lolled to the side, the pain that exploded inside of her skull was so intense that she almost blacked out. She could feel something pulling her down, down into the darkness, and she hoped that maybe, finally, death would claim her too.

A strangled shout left her lips as she shot upright in her bed, breathing heavily, looking frantically around her room. Zelda almost threw up at how normal at all looked. There was a stinging in the back of her hand and her trauma was too real for that to have been a nightmare. She stumbled out of her bed, scampering to her window where she found a rising sun, the merry chirping of birds alerting her to a new day, and the diary, open on her desk, was blank.

It was just as a knock sounded on her door that she wondered… Was it possible that the Calamity was real, and that the Goddess powers she’d struggled for so long to awaken, had somehow thrown her back in time?

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