"Ganon," said Link, his crystal blue eyes scanning the horizon from atop the elegant stag steed he had snuck upon and tamed not an hour before. He would look every bit a forest prince, if only for the absolutely wretched monologue coming out of his mouth. "Ganon! Hm." He said the name like it was just a word, and not a legacy laced in malice and built on the corpses of the Hylian races untold. "That was what that thing was, right? I like that. Ganon. It's a great word. Has a nice ring to it. Sounds like a name!" He turned around and looked at Zelda, smiling through his heresy. "What would you say to calling me Ganon? The thing it's named for is gone forever now, so. You know." He gestured from the direction they had come from to himself. "Battle spoils. It gets to be dead, I get a better name."

Zelda twisted the reigns of her mount, Stew, and pressed her nails into the leather. "Your name is Link," she said, emphatically.

"So says you," Link said, tossing his hair. "But does it have to be? It's really lame. Ganon has such a," he held his hands out in front of himself as if summoning the word up to his level, "grandiose air to it. Link just sounds like," he slouched in the saddle, pinched his nose, and used his most pathetic, nasally voice, "Link."

"Link is a fine name," Zelda said.

The boy himself snorted, and held his nose again in the spirit of a farce. "Weeh. Link. Link. I'm Link, you guys. I'll stand up for you with my noodle arms," he whined. He tired of his play and threw his arms up into the air. They fell on his thighs with a loud slap, and his mount gave him an annoyed leer. "That's awful! Whoever named me must've hated me. That's the only explanation.

"That's surely not true. Your father was just strict, that's-"

"But Ganon," Link continued, deepening his voice and puffing out his chest for that one evil word. "Some old-ass man walks up to me and says," he bent his back again and put a cracking warble into his voice, "Ohhh, sonny, you look the spitting image of a boy who stole the love of my life's heart back when I was an infinitely more strapping young buck than he ever was! Ohoho! I hate that scrawny, effeminate sonovabitch! He had the stupidest name, too- say, sonny, you wouldn't happen to be Link, would you?" He grinned and reached across their mounts to nudge Zelda, "And then I'll say," he cleared his throat and put on his most masculine bravado, "No, sir, I'm Ganon." Link chuckled. "That'll change his tune real quick. He'll probably start sweating or pee himself or something, if he can't outright run away."

Zelda's hands shook harder and harder with each word he said, and something hot and roiling churned in her stomach and turned sweet freedom of her last hundred years of isolation and emotional exhaustion to ash in her own mouth. "But your name is Link!" She cried, tears in her eyes. "First Knight of Hyrule! You're a hero, in title and act! This is serious!"

Link raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, I know. I am serious."

Zelda pushed her mount in front of Link's deer and made it rear up in alarm. Unfortunately, he did not throw Link to the ground. "You would just throw that away and take on an evil name?! You would spit in the face of everything you went through- everything I went through- just for that?! For a practical joke?!"

"What," said Link, "Do you want it? I didn't think Zelda was so bad a name, but if you don't like it, who am I to say who you are or who you aren't? You can be Ganon if you really-"

"That isn't the point!" Zelda screamed at him. Stew's ears flattened. "Nobody is Ganon! Ganon is dead! Long dead! He's gone, and he shouldn't haunt the people of Hyrule any longer!"

"Neither should Link or Zelda," the boy said, soothing his deer and pulling an apple from his pouch. "And yet, here we are."

"That's not the same," Zelda insisted. "Calamity Ganon was an evil- a calamitous evil-"

"Calamity Ganon was a calamity?" Link interjected. "Never would have guessed."

Zelda lost all composure and slapped him across the cheek. "I am Zelda, princess of Hyrule, and you will not disrespect me like this!"

Mild annoyance writ all across Link's features as he touched his cheek and worked his jaw, and then it grew when he finally bothered to look back at Zelda. "Hyrule, you say? Hyrule?" He shrugged. "And where exactly is this kingdom?"

"Here!" Zelda screamed, her arms spread wide to encompass both the tall waves of grass at their feet, the dark forests to the north and the looming, blue mountains in the distance. "This is Hyrule!"

Link shook his head. "No, sweetheart. This could be Link and Zeldaland in a few years if you had taken me up on my first offer, but honestly, this was Ganonland until literally a few hours ago, and from where I'm sitting, it still is."

Zelda slapped him again.

"Ow!" he whined. "You could have at least hit my other cheek and spread it around a little instead of going for the same place!"

"You could have the decency to shut your smart mouth!"

"You could have the brains to listen to what I'm saying, then!" Link shot back. "You've been gone for a hundred years! Your kingdom's done its own thing, and you don't have a military or any kind of force to speak of! You might have a few old fogies who are still loyal to you, but the younger generation has moved on!" Link gestured to himself. "I have moved on! I don't know you from any other blonde girl around here!"

Zelda felt her shoulders start to tremble under the emotional weight she had carried for so long. "That's why you have to remember!"

The two of them stared at one another, hard and unblinking. Zelda fought back the fresh tears threatening to spill down her cheeks and tried to discern what exactly Link was thinking behind his bright blue eyes.

Then, suddenly, he smiled. "Are you hungry? Because I'm hungry."

"What?"

"One hundred years is a long time to have not eaten anything," Link said. He reached out and pinched her cheeks. "When we get to the stable, I'll make us something good. Mushroom, frog, and monster horn omelettes. Mmm! You'll love it." He spun Stew around with a pat to his flank, and they trudged onwards. "Then, we'll look at us a map, find you a place to go, find me a place to go, and part ways as unlikely acquaintances."

"Link!" Zelda hissed. "You don't get to tell me what to do!"

"Ah! Ah, ah, ah!" He held a finger towards her lips. "Ganon. My name is Ganon, and you don't get to tell me who I am and what I'm not to do." Ganon grinned. "If it really bothers you that much, you can be Link."