Her Guilt

~~LoZ~~

Hair as golden as the brightest sunshine fluttered briefly as a wind sprite darted past, and eyes of a soft blue opened to stare rather solemnly into the skies above her. Zelda absently shrugged the errant locks back over her shoulder, unwilling to be pulled from her thoughts just yet – such deep introspection was usually unpleasant and uncomfortable, but also necessary for any kind of growth and maturity, and she knew it.

So here she sat, trying to work through everything that had happened in the last three months, while the rest of the island's population was busy throwing a huge celebration for her return, and the defeat of a threat they hadn't even known was looming. The day was beautiful, bright and warm with the promise of a lovely summer, but that couldn't really touch her at the moment. The last vestiges of a fading nightmare ruled her consciousness, curling claws as sharp as a remlit's into her mind as darkness loomed all around her.

Those claws had a name; guilt. And as far as she was now concerned, guilt had the sharpest bite of all the darker emotions – sharper than one's own terror or even greed. It was a strangling feeling, one that slowly grew until there was nothing else left, and darkness exacted its toll for whatever it was that lay such shadowed hands upon your heart.

Right now, the guilt was so strong she almost couldn't breathe.

The guilt she felt also went by another name – Link. He was her best friend, the man she loved... and the man she had loved even when she was still Hylia. Yes, she had loved Link in his first life just as she did now, and somehow, that made everything she'd done to him even worse – because how could a being claim to love someone, and yet sentence them to the (practically) eternal hell that she now knew she had?

In his first life, Link had gone through horrors that still made her shudder and tears of shame, pain, and immense guilt followed swiftly behind the memories of that time. He'd been so young when he'd died, too... barely twenty-four, and four of those years had been spent hanging from the walls of a dungeon for a betrayal he hadn't even committed.

The worst part, was that her elder sisters, the goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore, as well as she herself, had known that he wasn't guilty, and had done nothing to intervene. No, they had decided that he had to go through those years of pain to temper his spirit in order to become the one true hero. And even worse, her elder sisters could have intervened on behalf of the world and taken care of Demise themselves – but they had left the world to her once they'd finished creating it, and refused to interfere any more than they already had when they'd given her the Goddess' Sword, and pointed her in Link's direction as the only man who could possibly wield it.

After he'd been broken, and then stitched back together, that was. And so she had watched over him as he went through torment and agony for those four years spent in hell's dungeon, learning just what it was about this one of her people that her sisters had such confidence in.

It had taken a shockingly small amount of time for her to lose her heart to him – something that had never happened to any divinity before. A goddess losing her heart to a mortal man? Shedding tears for him and actually feeling his suffering right along with him? Wanting to be with him so much, that she would shed her own divinity for the chance?

Such were words of blasphemy, and had anyone ever actually suggested such a thing aloud, they would have been struck down for it!

And yet, that was exactly what had happened.

She loved him, and she always would. He'd done the once-unthinkable, and captured the heart of a goddess... and without even trying – without even knowing.

Yet, he was still merely mortal, and she was not. They couldn't be together... at least, not with the way things currently stood. But something had finally occurred to her as she'd watched over his final days in the dungeons, just before Demise attacked. If she were to use the power of the Triforce to defeat the demonic pestilence that was rapidly overtaking her lands - and the rest of the world as well – instead of the strength of divinities, she would have to be human. The gods could not use its power, for they had their own.

And it was so. Though it was definitely lesser than her elder sisters, she did have her owninnatepower – as she demonstrated quite handily when she finally faced Demise himself and sealed him away. She hadn't needed the Triforce to fight the demon king... but it was a close enough thing that she knew she could convince her sisters that her new plan was the only way to keep Demise sealed.

She would shed her divinity and become mortal herself, tying her soul to the Triforce and Link's own, and in that way, whenever the demon king tried to return to their world, they would be reborn at the same time - Link to fight and weaken him, and she to seal him away.

Hylia was the Goddess who would be human – and Link, the human whose soul was of such a strength and purity, that he should have been a god.

Star-crossed, indeed.

The first part of the original plan had worked just as it should have, the war against Demise a success, though many of her people had been lost to it. She had noted every one of their deaths, but it was with nowhere near the anguish that she had Link's. He had given his very soul into her hands for the victory, and it was then, when that bastard demon had been beaten and then sealed, that she had immediately gone looking for her Hero.

Even knowing beforehand what was going to happen hadn't prepared her for the sight. His broken body lay sprawled on the desecrated and malice-covered ground amongst the remains of many demons and other Hylians. Never eyes of a more honest blue would she ever find again save for Link's, and heartsick and guilt-ridden, she had descended to him and clutched his bloody, empty body to her, not caring for the blood that had then stained her white gown. It was his blood, and she deserved to be forever stained by its crimson depths, for her guilt to be eternally known by all of creation.

Devastated as she was by his loss, she spoke her complicity in his suffering and death aloud to his soul, and her own heart that now bled for his. And when she had done so, she tied their fates together as she'd planned, and taken his body and buried it in the very center of what was left of her lands. Then she had shed her immortality, and taken her own life. Her servants, the Sheikah, had already been instructed to lay her now frail, mortal form next to Link's, and then close the grave over as deeply as possible.

From now until the day Demise was finally defeated for good, she and Link would be the very heart of what would eventually become known as Hyrule as their blood mingled and seeped into the earth itself – tying them even more indivisibly to each other.

Zelda shivered as the memories of that time overwhelmed her, and reached up a small hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Oh, she hated herself for what she now knew she had done to him... and the guilt wrapped ever-tighter claws into her heart because she knew that Link didn't blame her for any of it. He hadn't then, even though he had not known her but for a short time before his death, and he didn't even now.

It was certain that she blamed herself enough for the both of them, however, and no matter Link's forgiveness for what she'd done to him in that life as Hylia, he didn't quite know the whole truth of it – the depths to which she had fallen... and all because of her own selfish desire to be near him forever. She had crafted him into the ultimate weapon of war and then condemned him to a life of near-eternal suffering as he was forced to be reborn time and again to fight the same enemy. Even Farore's hand in the matter, as he was her ultimate champion, as well, his courage unmatched by any other, did not lighten her guilt, because she could have shielded him from that fate if she'd simply let his spirit go...

But she hadn't, and for her selfish love of him that would not let him leave her behind, her soul would forever carry the crimson stain of his blood, from that first life and every life thereafter that he lived. Every drop spilled in Hyrule's service would only add to that guilt and the crimson stain that gave it away.

She would carry the mark of her shame for all to see – even after Demise's ultimate defeat and his soul's final dissipation before the power of the Triforce.

Even now, with all her guilt and pain for what this love for him had caused him... she couldn't, at her core, really regret it. And that... made her feel even more guilty. But it still wasn't enough to make her regret it. For her part, she could never feel guilty enough to be able to stand the thought of never seeing him again.

Eternity was a long time... and to be separated from him forever was a frightening and painful thought. It was more than enough to make her understand that despite everything that he had gone through for it, and she herself as well, she would do it the same way all over again, if that was what it took.

In the same way, she knew that, if asked, Link would say the same thing. He would go through hell to stay with her, just as she would to be with him – because he already had.

They both had.

And that knowledge... was enough to keep the guilt at bay, enough to know that the next time they were born, they would find each other again. She just wished that the cost of her love - in terms of his suffering - wasn't so damned high.

But it surely was, and – painful as the thought happened to be - so it would stay.

~~LoZ~~

A/N: Part one of Guilty Parties

In my Zelda universe, you can take it for granted that, for most things, I'm going by canon. But the canon universe was pretty much melted down into insanity with the 'Timeline' confusion, and I'm not going there. In my play-land, the only games I'll be deriving from will be the main canon storyline of the console games, and the Historia. In other words, the manga in the Historia of the beginning to the story (though I'll be correcting a few wrinkles) Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild. (You'll note that I didn't mention Windwaker. I have the game and have beaten it, and it's fine, but it doesn't fit in the main timeline so well, so I'm excluding it. There will be other fics I write as well, and for most of them, this A/N can be taken as holding true for the duration.