It was strange to find normalcy and a rhythm once more after the destruction of demise.
Zelda had more knowledge in her heart and memories clouding her mind than she ever thought possible. For a long time it was impossible to separate the memories of her human life from those of the Goddess so very long ago.
Link seemed to recover quickly enough. He smiled. He laughed. He made himself available in navigating humans to and from the sky and surface. He still had that thing in his heart that reassured everyone he was still Link.
But…
Events such as those that passed did not leave any man, woman, or even Goddess unchanged. Despite Link's smile and Zelda's promise that life was to return back to normal, the task proved difficult. they weren't the same individuals they had been before. They'd grown over their adventure. They changed, matured, evolved into new individuals capable of processing a life far more superior than their mortal whims.
Despite it all, life seemed to eventually morph into some mixture of old an new. People moved down to the surface. Homes begun to emerge in the horizon. Villages and towns spread over the land. Plans progressed. The academy moved down to the surface.
And so life went on, seemingly back to normal. Or at least for anyone who didn't know any better.
Zelda stared out the window. Starry skies and moon-lit snowy hills painted the outside of her bedroom window. At this late hour even the bats and crawling critters of the night were beginning to retire for the evening. Yet the young woman — barely even old enough to be considered that at all — was finding it nearly impossible to put her mind to rest.
One year.
It had been one whole year since they'd begun to break ground on the surface. A year of blueprints, plans, meetings, and changes. Knights and families moved from Sky to surface. Construction on a new Academy of Hylia broke ground.
They were calling themselves Hyli-ans now. Zelda hadn't been certain of the name initially but it was beginning to grow on her.
One year.
Her face fell and she turned away from the window to face the darkness of her bedroom. So much had changed in that one year she felt as if she'd aged a hundred in the short span of time.
Zelda's eyes glanced around her bedroom at the stretched shadows cast through moonlight. Miscellaneous possessions she'd collected over the years seemed to pull the the shadows towards them.
Her Goddess dress for the last two graduations. A crown of flowers the town children had woven her. A delicately carved loftwing she'd brought from Skyloft. A photo of Pippit and Karane announcing their engagement.
Zelda made a face and groaned.
It was silly really to be jealous of such whims. She didn't wish her friends harm. In fact, she had even shared a room with the young woman for a year back at the old academy and though she'd missed whatever event had brought the young couple together, she still wished them the best.
But…
Her eyes fell back to the loftwing she'd glanced at previously. Was it so horrible to wish and pray to the goddesses to find a love like that? A physical, emotional, supportive other who she could share a life with?
She supposed she knew the answer. She supposed part of her had always known the identity of her other, even before he'd traveled through Earth and time to bring her back. She'd known him since her mortal self was young and they had begun school together. She'd grown up with him, evolved with him, explored the skies with him. But Goddess, she wanted more. To think: a long while ago the Goddess had loved only one with such a force that she'd shed her own divinity just to see him in another life.
Zelda's throat began to tighten and skin prickle. There was a weight in her chest that was growing heavier and heavier with each passing moment as she thought about how much she…
She… what? Loved him?Wanted him? Dreamt of what his kiss would taste like or the feeling of his skin against hers? Imagined the way he'd hold her in his arms or wake beside him every morning?
This was childish. She was being ridiculous feeling this jealous, and longing, and lust.
Oh, Goddess, that was even worse!
Zelda finally surrendered to the restlessness with a grunt and huff. Her hair fell over her shoulders in cascading waves of gold with the abrupt shift in position.
This was ludicrous.
The heavy woven quilt tussled as Zelda moved them aside to step off the edge of her bed. Her feet dangled off the side of the mattress and cold air radiating from the ground seemed to threat her feet. It bit at her exposed arms and warned her feet not to proceed.
This was such a foul plan, she needed all the courage she could muster not to back out.
With only a breath to power her on, Zelda slid off the edge of the bed and landed on the ice-cold floor with a low thud.
The winters were even more unbearable down at the surface, it would seem.
Looking around in the darkness, the young woman made quick work of locating her discarded house slippers and pulling a warm blanket around her shoulders.
The door of her bedroom creaked ominously throughout the empty hallway as Zelda stepped slowly out of her bedroom. She wasn't quite certain what she wished to accomplish with this mission in mind, but the thought of spending the rest of her precious night hours alone in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking of him wasn't anything she wanted either. So she moved forward.
Shadows stretched across the humble wood floors, I disturbed by her muffled footsteps or dragging of her blanket behind her petite frame. Zelda rounded a corner and begun to hear a distinctly familiar snoring.
She paused. This was the men's hall of the academy, and the first door at the end was supposed to be his. Wrinkling her nose and furrowing her brows, the young woman continued much more slowly as she neared the door. When she finally came to the "Link" carved deftly into the wooden panel, she paused and listened.
For a moment there was silence. Maybe it wasn't….
Halfway through her though, a loud snore echoed from the other side of the door and it finally dawned on the young woman why that snore was so distinct from the often extremely heavy sleep and yet so familiar to someone else.
Of course he'd give her father his room. It's the next best room after hers.
Zelda huffed loudly and turned in her spot.
So Link had given her father his bedroom. Of course he had. He would do something so considerate and thoughtful and chivalrous like that. Now the only wonder she had was if her father was in Link's room...where was Link?
She pondered the thought longer than was necessary. As she stood pacing the hall, the cold air only seemed to sink further into her bones and creep up her legs from the floor.
This was absurd. It was during Zelda's thought of the cold and her obvious distaste for the frigid temperatures that a new course of action came to mind.
Down the west wing of the building there were many half finished dormitories nearly ready for occupancy. The rooms weren't entirely finished, but they had been suited with some basic furniture, lighting, and windows. The only thing really missing was any heating for the temperature fluctuations. Link could, in theory, be sleeping in one of those rooms. It would be awfully cold though.
The image of Link in a mountain of blankets with teeth chattering and body shivering from the cold was an unpleasant one in Zelda's head. It was just enough fuel to get her moving again. She hastened her walking pace, making it to the end of the hallway in half the time it took her initially. She rounded a corner before finally coming to the half of her dormitories awaiting new recruits. All the doors of the bedrooms were wide open except one.
Zelda approached it slowly and felt her feet begin to weigh more and more with each step she took. It was the closer she progressed that she began to hear a familiar voice from the other side of the doorway.
Zelda slowed her pace and listened. It didn't make sense at first. As Zelda finally reached the door and pressed her ear to the wood's surface she begun to make out...a prayer?
A prayer to the Goddess.
Zelda felt her breath swell in her throat.
He was praying to her, to the Goddess of Light, Hylia.
Something heavy and hard sank into the pit of her stomach. She could hear it in his voice - hear it in his tone. He was apologizing. To her.
To her?
Her hand was on the door before she even had a chance to question his apology and not long after she found herself peering solemnly into the dark bedroom. Zelda found herself pulling the heavy blanket more tightly around her shoulders. Her heart seemed to thunder in her chest and breath lodged in her throat. She was certain she could feel a vein pulsing in her neck.
But she didn't move. It took a moment for Zelda's eyes to make sense of the darkness within, but once they had, she remained still.
Link sat up in bed, a handful of blankets pooled at his waist. They hid the lower half of his body and bottom portion of his bed. Zelda's eyes glanced over him a moment and the thin cotton nightshirt before settling on his eyes. Even in the darkness, she could see the vague display of pain in them.
Her stomach dropped and air in her lungs grew heavier.
The worst kind of pain is the pain you feel obliged to hide from everyone else.
She'd heard someone say that once but didn't pay it much notice. Now as she stood here staring at those familiar blue eyes...she wondered.
Her feet moved quietly against the rough wooden boards. Link's unblinking gaze followed her movements, eyes growing as she closed the door behind her and moved toward him. He didn't speak until her hand lifted the blankets and she begun to slide in next to him.
"Zelda, you shouldn't…"
It's improper.
She closed her eyes and kissed his cheek and felt him swallow. His skin was ice cold.
"I don't want you to be alone," she whispered to him with barely a voice. He turned back enough to look her in the eyes and finally noticed something very different in her gaze.
For a long moment they sat and gazed and didn't dare break the silence with a sound or motion. The air was cold and bit harshly at Zelda's bare calf, but she waited. She was waiting for him.
His eyes softened and finally he moved. Link pushed himself backwards until he was pressed firmly against the wall to grant her enough space to slide in next to him. Zelda smiled and followed quickly, pulling the blankets over her chest and shoulders before finally taking a long, deep breath.
The sheets smelled like him.
"Are you s-" he didn't get to finish his question when two cold hands gently slid behind his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.
Link's lungs seemed to ignite in warmth from the touch and course through his blood and bones until he felt powered by some unrecognizable force . He separated with a shaky breath but didn't let her go far. His forehead hovered over hers, soft strands of her golden hair brushing his cheeky and flowery scent of her soap lingering from her bath.
"Zelda…" he whispered her name in such a voice it made her breath catch in her throat. She shivered from the sheer promise in the name he spoke and dug her fingers closer into his hair in response. Link didn't push back but instead pulled her in closer.
And then he kissed her again.
Warm, plump lips like velvet against hers tentative at first then suddenly more hungered. They molded so perfectly against hers. Link tugged at her bottom lip with such an unexpected hunger that it made Zelda gasp loudly and break the spell when she forgot to breathe.
Then his lips kissed the tender flesh of her neck just below her ear and Zelda's breath rippled with something completely foreign. She let out a low whimper.
Link tensed almost immediately and pulled away leaving an icy kiss where his searing mouth had just been. His hands retreated from her back and ribs where neither of them was quite certain when they arrived there in the first place. Zelda's eyes snapped open just as he was ready to apologize and she recognized the horror in his eyes.
"Don't apologize," she spoke the words much more harshly than was likely appropriate for the situation but he didn't budge. It were as if her entire body were suddenly fire and he couldn't touch for fear and burning himself.
"This isn't right." They were the first few words he'd spoken in some time and they whipped across Zelda's attention so sharply she felt as if she'd just been cut. "You deserve more than what I could ever give you."
Her mind bubbled.
Link's breath was barely irregular but it sounded as if it were growing increasingly more difficult to steady his voice. "You are...the Goddess," he whispered the name. "And I'm…"
"Link."
She finished his sentence with just a name but Link remained unconvinced. He made a face that scrunched his nose and gave her the sudden desire to kiss it away. It awakened a long lost thought somewhere in the dusty depths of her heart.
"You deserve better," he reiterated his flawed knowledge and attempted once more to distance himself. But Zelda found him once more, slid her hands like silk around the back of his neck and pulled him in so close he could feel her breath on his lips as he spoke.
Her skin was warm against his forehead and he found it difficult to reopen his eyes once they fluttered closed .
"I deserve a love no one will ever understand because it transcends time and mortality alone."
Her words dropped like heavy boulders into the depths of his stomach. Her skin was warm against his forehead and Link found it difficult to reopen his eyes once they fluttered closed.
"I don't know why it's taken so long to tell you I love you because I think I've known it was always going to be you since we were little and had our pretend wedding under the Goddess statue."
Link chuckled at the memory and his hand found her arm and gently pulled on it until her hands slid from around his neck and laced with his fingers.
Perfect fit.
"I think I was always destined to love you, Link."
And always will.
Zelda could tell by the way his fingers held hers firmly and his breath hovered over her lips that he was holding back. Uncertainty was clearly still plaguing his mind but she'd waited enough, dreamt enough, longed enough already.
Her lips were hesitant and they barely moved at all until they hovered so close over his, she could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. Link's eyelashes fluttered against her flesh.
I was always destined to love you, Link.
He moved before her and hot mouth pressed against hers with something different than the hesitant kisses before. It was as if he wasn't just kissing anymore, but tasting, savoring every kiss and lick and smooth curve of her lips and tongue.
A low rumble grew from his chest and without much real consideration for what he was doing, Link pushed back the blankets just enough to crawl on top of her. Zelda instinctive made room for him by parting her knees and it was only then that she realized what a precarious position they were in. Link's hand slid up her knee and thigh and she shivered at the contact.
Link left her mouth and begun dragging hot kisses and licks and nips over her chin and down her neck. It made Zelda curve her neck back, giving him an expanded purchase of her throat and feel the moan rumbling in her chest as it bubbling up to her mouth.
"Link," his name was lost in her voice like a prayer to the heavens. It made his hands grip more firmly and her fingers dig deeper into his scalp until the heat of the blankets was nearly insufferable.
A open palm slid up Zelda's ribs and just barely brushed the soft underside of her breast and she gasped in surprise.
"Sorry," link begun to apologize once more. But Zelda had already learned from that error the first time and immediately released his hair with one hand and found his retreating fingers with her own. Without wasting another moment, she took his full palm against her breast.
"I want you to touch me."
Link swallowed so thickly, she could feel the bob of his throat as he tried to rewet his suddenly parched mouth.
"Please," she asked him much more softly. Zelda leaned up and kissed the hollow of his throat. "I want all of you."
He hesitated.
Link was a man. A sweet, chivalrous, fiercely loyal, and often times mistaken for naive man, but a man nonetheless. And despite his gentle nature and soft smile, he was well aware of what his beloved Goddess was asking of him and well aware of the power he held in his hands metaphorically and emotionally.
The Goddess.
This was THE Goddess asking him for…
"Please," her whispered plead kissed his heart with butterfly delicacy. "I love you so much."
Finally, he moved.
Link gave her one long, tender and unhurried kiss on her lips and cupped her cheek like she were as delicate as a rose. It melted her from the inside out, softened her heart and soul until she was almost certain she'd slip between his fingers like honey in the summer .
And then he pulled back. Link sat on his haunches, pulling the now suffocating blankets with him and met her eyes with something unreadable.
His hand found hers and Zelda's eyes watched their fingers intertwine perfectly before rendering his piercing gaze.
"Are you certain?"
She wanted to scowl and wanted to huff and wished a moment she could show the impatience that she would typically display. Instead, Zelda simply sat up until her chest nearly brushed against his and she could smell his breath against her nose and be as physically close to him as possible.
And she begun to undo the buttons of his top. Link swallowed thickly the entire time and his hands hung limply at his side as lithe delicate touches pulled each wooden circlet from its loop and cool air kissed the heated flesh of his chest until the fabric slid down his arms and pooled with the heap of blankets around him.
He was glorious.
Of course Zelda knew there was a particular strength required to wield a sword as expertly as she'd witnessed her beloved Link do countless times prior. It took an impressive physical strength and endurance. Despite Link's lean frame, she'd always imagined a decent layer of muscle building up with the countless hours of practice. But beneath the heavy canvas, protective layers. and thick green tunics, she hadn't quiet imagined what she could only assume was a beautiful physique.
Perfectly sculpted lines and shapes as if chiseled right into his flesh like a piece of wood. She couldn't help and stare in wonder at the sandy brown hairs that paired beautifully with the sprinkling of freckles and beauty marks and the single line of darker hair emanating from his navel southward.
He truly was beautiful.
Or maybe he was just beautiful because it was him. Quite possibly it was a mixture of both.
Hesitant fingers grazed against the pale hairs speckling his flesh and Zelda watched as his muscles and skin quivered and rippled under the delicate touch.
"That tickles." Link's voice was so unexpected it actually took Zelda by surprise. Zelda met his eyes. The both of them laughed lightly and Link swallowed her glee with a perfectly tender kiss. His hand slid over her cheek to cup her face and Zelda felt obliged to lean into his touch.
"Zelda," His voice seemed distant and faint. She pulled back a breath to catch herself before she could acknowledge his voice. "Are you certain about this?" He pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. Link's hot breath floated over her parted lips and Zelda shivered as heat pooled in her lower belly. The foreign sensation fluttered up into her chest until she felt as if she'd float away.
Was she?
Link's thumb just barely grazed the underside of Zelda's breast and she let out a low hum in her throat. Her hands slid around his neck and buried into his hair. She pulled him in close and breathed into his mouth as Link's palm slid around the gentle swell and thumb fanned over one pert nipple. Zelda's eyes fluttered as ripples of heat seemed to course up her spine.
"I want you."
The details seemed to come into focus slowly and over time. It was as if everything were defrosting in the morning sun's warmth.
Warmth radiating from behind her, the kind that seeped into your skin like hot water until it left you feeling softened to the touch.
Zelda's eyes fluttered but the bright sunlight filtering in from the uncovered window made her immediately shrink back into the heavy blankets. An even heavier arm wrapped snug around her waist and pulled her closer still until Zelda became vaguely aware of the steady breath fanning across the back of her neck. It was at this point that the memories begun floating back.
Buttons slipping through loops.
Sandy hairs sprinkled over smooth skin and toned muscle that quivered under her fingertips.
The sound of her moan when he touched her.
The feeling when they finally connected.
Well., maybe that first minute hadn't been the most pleasant part of the evening. But then he'd held her close to him and kissed her eyelids and apologized profusely for hurting her and it didn't matter because it was him buried deeply within her heart.
Zelda smiled and closed her eyes as she relived the evening. Behind her, Link's breathing was slow and steady and she knew he was still fast asleep.
Of course.
Asleep or not, he still kept her close to him. He held her with one arm curled snuggly around her waist and another under her pillow as if he'd shield her with his body from the nightmares that plagued her dreams.
She breathed in deeply and let her eyes close a moment savoring the smell and warmth and love that filled her heart.
What would five more minutes hurt anyways?