Too late
"It's my fault…It's all my fault…" thinks Link.
No words come out though, just a low, mournful, regretful sigh. He slumps to the ground, his head flops down heavily between his large paws. He looks out the corner of his eye at the large shackle around his leg, and the solid chain tethering him to the dank prison wall. There aren't too many of them, but each link in that chain mocks him, is a reminder of how catastrophically he has failed.
"Link? Huh. How ironic." He sighs again bitterly. "It's all my fault…"
"Yesss… yesss, iss aaalll yerr fault… stupid –hic - ssilly.. wolf-man."
His ears prick up at the slurring words coming from the other side of the bars.
"Oh gods… where'd she get booze from…?" he ponders briefly, then "How the gods can she hear me?! I can't even talk anymore!"
He gets up and pads over to the bars. The smell of whisky is really strong now, the gods only know how the guards haven't noticed it yet. But then again, the Princess is a wily one…
In the twilight his keen eyesight picks out the details of the slumped form of Zelda in the next cell – dirty, bare feet, matted hair, torn robe. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had normal, human eyesight. At least then he wouldn't be able to see her in the dark, he wouldn't have to see her reduced to this. His heart breaks all over again at how he has failed everyone, the whole of Hyrule, but particularly her, the sorrow crushing him so he can hardly breathe.
His mind snaps involuntarily back to the moment it all went wrong – the sound of the river rushing past him, the awful stench of the Bulbins hot on his tail, and then Midna's weight on his back, shifting, slipping, falling…. and then gone. All their hopes for saving Hyrule from Zant, just gone. Too late.
"No. Iss not – hic - too late."
He looks over at his Princess, as she rises unsteadily to her feet.
"Yesss, iss yerr fault – but iss NOT too late. Th' reeeal question… is what are WE going to do about it."