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A reflection
This is not connected to any specific Zelda time line, but all of them; Ocarina of Time is the one most referenced, though.
The light from the street lamps is yellowed and grimy as it filters through her window blinds. She is in her bed, the sheets twisted and tangled around her limbs, and she breathes deeply, staring at her ceiling. The cooling sweat on her skin is not the only source of the cold she feels, even with his arm slung over her middle, his hand on her hip. There is a smile on her lips, but no humor in her heart.
It's not as if she's unhappy where she is, for the most part. But who isn't a little unhappy with their lives? But she's been here before countless times, with this same man, over and over and she wonders if it will ever end.
She loves him, she's never doubted that. She's loved him even when he hasn't loved her - and he hasn't quite a few times in the past and he always apologizes, if he can, afterward. Usually, he doesn't even remember.
She wishes she could forget, or simply not know, as he does. Sometimes - sometimes, he remembers, and then he tries to make up for long-past grievances she no longer feels connected to. It's not his fault; she never explained her gift to him, not really, not what really counts.
Her gift is a curse. All of the gifted are cursed, but at least they can forget. Her gift will never let her.
She goes by a different name this time; the long-held tradition she was born into ceased lifetimes ago and the family no longer has any real power. But her brother is a politician and she is following in his footsteps - not by any real choice of her own, but because she must. When everything goes to hell, she must have real power over her country, her people, simply because that's the way things go.
There is the sound of breaking glass somewhere on the street outside her apartment, muffled cursing, a shout, and all quiets again. Her city is far from the sparkling capital it was before, long ago. It is dirty and hard and sometimes she thinks she is reflected in it, or its change came from her. As newer and better things were brought into creation, the wide-eyed innocence that was so clear when it was all new disappeared like so much dust. The world grew and she could not grow with it.
She finds it funny, in a wry, ironic way, how the religious shifted over the last few centuries. Practically no one knows the real gods anymore; they live only in myth and legend and museums. Polytheism gave way to monotheism, the true gods seen as heretical, satanic. Magic no longer exists except in the teachings and items left from history. She knows that the goddesses must be laughing somewhere, to see how far their creation has fallen into disrepair.
That's what their pawns were for, after all. Once things started going terribly, terribly wrong, the three chosen souls were reborn time and time again to fix the world. One to destroy it, one to save it, one to rebuild it.
Honestly, it was exhausting living up to those expectations.
She was not born Zelda this time, but it's the name she will always answer to. It was her name before she was conceived, and will again be her name in the future. She's still a princess, but in a land with a congress and a Prime Minister that makes all the real decisions. She is still young and beautiful and long-legged, because that's what the world responds to best. She still has a glow on the back of her hand and magic in her heart, more literally than figuratively these days.
And she is still wise and knowing, perhaps more so than each life before, with all of their memories and experiences shoved inside her brain. Or, rather, she has lived a thousand lifetimes in a thousand different ways, but she is still the same girl who first sought to open the Temple of Time and hide the Triforce away from the evil Ganondorf.
Death, really, was more like sleeping. She's never once believed that her purpose would ever end. She is blessed by the goddesses and cursed by fate. She will never die because the world will always, somehow, need her. History doesn't repeat itself - she's lived enough of it to know, even without the Triforce of Wisdom - but humanity always manages to royally fuck things up in new and exciting ways, each time.
They are always called during times of peace and prosperity. Well, what history calls "peace and prosperity" - the part that's always left out is that the world is always, somehow, falling to ruin and is usually just taking a spectacularly beautiful swan drive by the time they arrive to save the day. Ganon will rapidly rise to power, Link will destroy that, and she will restore the world to how it should be. "How it should be" is, of course, relative to each situation - she could never take this world and return it to the one of her first childhood. But she can inspire faith for where it really counts and she always tries to be a benevolent ruler - she's rather got that down pat by now.
The sun is rising now, the street lights powering down. A streak of light rises over her legs, over his arm, settling on his face. She smiles when he flinches and screws his face petulantly. Day is beginning again; the time for self-pity and reflection is over until the next five-in-the-morning when she can't seem to sleep.
It is the future, and Zelda has work to do.