One of these days, I'll learn to write something for Zelda that isn't angsty and depressing. If you like this, or if you don't, leave a review (mostly because I'd love to chat).
Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda.
"I'll always remember this."
Oh, what a beautiful day. What a perfect way to mark the beginning of his new era. He had kept his promise to her to win the race, and just like always, he followed through with his promise. But should she really expect anything less from a boy whose very essence is the color is of loyalty?
In the air, with the wind rushing around them, it's chilly, but he closes his eyes and smiles so warmly at her that she forgets everything but the way he looks against the bright, clear sky, the way he had looked as he won the race for her. She forgets everything but him.
It's the beginning of a new era for him, and she thinks that maybe it should be a new era for the both of them. She opens her mouth to say the words that have been on her heart for so long that it aches from their crushing weight…
And then they are promptly blinded by a flash, swept away in a torrent of dark wind, their backdrop no longer blue but black. Somewhere inside her, she feels a distinct tugging, and no matter how she clutches at her bird, she cannot stay on. But he, always the better rider, he is able to maneuver and wiggle and hang on. Even as her heart is drawn to him, her very being is jerked away.
Even while she is spun wildly and flails about, she can see him rushing to her aid, a blur on a red streak, and even while she is cast about to what seems like a likely death, he is coming for her, and that is a comfort.
And this is how it begins: both of them ripped from their lives and thrust into a role neither will ever want to play.
They have been blessed by the goddesses. They'll return to each other in some way, in some life, as surely as the air they breathe. Maybe not in every life or in the same way, but they'll return.
This is a first, she thinks. They've returned to each other in different shapes, with different faces, at different ages. Never, though, in all the centuries, have they returned to each other as a wolf.
But it's him, she knows it's him. In this life, she can remember him like she can remember the back of her own hand, now marked by the stamp of her fate, and she can recall all the times she has looked into his eyes in the past. How they were carefree then. How they were noble and lonely at that point. How determined and pragmatic they are now. She almost laughs at that; when they last met, he had been light to the point of being silly, in complete contrast to herself, but here they are, meeting again, and he is hard and wary.
Once they had been friends.
She doesn't laugh because here they are, meeting again, and he doesn't recognize her at all.
Blue is the color of the sea, sparkling in the sun, cloudy in the storms.
She looks at him on the deck of her ship, this boy determined to save his sister through his thoughtless actions—she is not thoughtless or careless, she is precise—but she can't help but to admire his courage, his dedication. Despite how utterly opposite of him she is, and how foolish it would be, she can't help but admire him. There's something about this boy that draws her in, and she doesn't like it, but she does.
She looks into those eyes, so dark from afar, but up close…blue. A familiar, haunting color, one that she has seen somewhere, she just knows it.
So she mocks him. She belittles him in the hope that he'll give up his endeavor and leave her be. Something about those familiar eyes brings back so many familiar feelings, distant memories she'd swear she blocked from her mind: a farewell; a midnight ride and a quick glance back; the weightlessness on the back of a bird, blue too, just before she disappears into a sudden cyclone.
He is all too familiar, but she doesn't know why. She simply remembers.
She does these things because she is afraid.
And just like the sun in the morning and the moon in the evening, he returns to her, clad in the color of his patroness. Shining in green, the color of harmony, he stands there in her throne room still tense from battle with his sword in hand, and what a picture he makes. He's no longer a wolf—at least, not physically. But he carries himself with that loping grace, aloof, discerning; he's clad in the hero's green, but all she can see are those blue eyes which she knows so well.
She rides behind him through Hyrule Fields, and even in the heat of the fight, even with a job to do, she closes her eyes. This is not the first time she's ridden with him. So vividly can she recall a faraway time when the wind had brushed past them and whipped their hair into their eyes, their forms painted brightly against a bright blue sky, and she feels his body behind her, startlingly warm in the frigid air; so vividly can she recall the pure bliss from that day, whenever it must have been.
But when they have finished their task, it is not she to whom he runs. No, he chooses the one who he believes has been with him through the whole ordeal, the princess from another realm; one who he has never met, nor will he ever meet again. He runs up the hill and away from the one who truly has been with him since the beginning.
And this is how it goes, she thinks. They wait so long and go through so much, only to be torn apart, only to wait for the next time.
They have been blessed by the goddesses, always to return to each other, but never to stay.
Sometimes she knows him in an instant; she sees the eyes which she could pick out in a stranger's face. Other times, she knows him simply because this is how all the legends go: the one with wisdom will meet a hero with courage. It hurts more when she knows him in that way.
He comes walking up, intense, a little bit haughty, arrayed in the fabled clothes, and she knows it must be him. The marking on her hand glows, and she rubs at its dull warmth without thinking. The hero of old has come to her.
She's read in the legends that they have been friends once. They began as friends, or they grew into friends. She has read in texts and diaries that she had once loved him, but those words, which she had written once long ago, are as foreign to her as another language. She has no recollection of this boy, just as she has no recollection of the evil they have faced. She feels very indifferent, far from love or even friendship. But so much can change, just as it has already. Maybe she'll love him at the end of this.
She wonders if she'll remember him the next time, if she'll remember this moment as it is.
Saying goodbye should come much easier when it's not the end, not really, at least. But that doesn't make things any less painful.
They've each been blessed to return to each other in another life, but she wishes that would end. She doesn't want to be a princess with wisdom and he a hero filled with courage, each with a destiny to save their kingdom. She wants to meet him at the well in town and take one look into his eyes and fall deeply in love; she wants to have all the pleasures that she sees other girls having, and she wants to spend her life, her only life, beside him doing menial tasks but knowing that when the time comes, she will have given him every part of her; she wants to know that she has not wasted their time because there will always be a next time.
She wishes this not for the first time, probably. After so many lives, surely she's had this thought before.
It's a cruel joke the goddesses play, subjecting her over and over again to this boy, this fair, beautiful boy with his eyes of bright blue, subjecting her to fall in love with him over and over again. If he takes even the tiniest bit of her heart with him each time, it's a wonder she has one at all.
She never voices these things, and so she never knows if he feels the same way. Instead, she swallows her words and lets the smooth surface of the ocarina anchor her to reality; she hadn't said those things long ago, in the very beginning, so they must not get to be said. She presses it into his hand, asking him to take it to remember their time together by. Maybe he doesn't need it—Farore knows she doesn't—but maybe it can be a source of comfort, something she has never found.
His fingers close around the little blue token, brushing hers just slightly, and she looks into his eyes. She wants to remember them as they are now, at this very moment, because no matter that they'll meet again despite the passing of time, be it thirty years or three hundred, they will never have this exact moment again.
She watches him go with his horse, and for once, she prays that the goddesses will hurry him back to her.
And this is how it begins.
She looks to her chosen hero and hopes that, after such a great trial, they can finally be together. But he is not the same boy who she has grown up with; in that gentle face, in those sky-bright eyes, there is a reminder of what he has endured. He is scarred from battles which he undertook alone, and he is fortified now, not the same soft, laughing boy she'd ridden through the clouds with. She looks to her chosen hero and wonders if he'll ever be the same.
She tells him that it's over, that it's finally over, but she weeps, equal parts in relief and despair, because it is not over, nor will it ever be. She wants to believe her own words, yet she—she carries the memories of the goddess. In the beginning, before they'd met their fates, they'd been children, the best of friends, he always a step behind, forever chasing after her. That's how their story was, and somewhere deep inside, she knows that's how their story will be.
They pass back to their time, but she can't help but wonder if it truly matters what time they stop in.