Sleep never came easy in an unfamiliar place, even one as inviting as Link's house, or at least it had been when she was near the fire. Now at the top of the house in Link's bed, under all of his blankets, including the two spares he had left her in case she got cold, she continued to shiver. The constant rattling kept her awake and she could never quite tell if the rattling was the shutters at the nearby window, or her teeth chattering. In an effort to try and provide herself with some warmth, she had tried to relight the lamp, but just as Link had said, it would not light again after being turned out.

Cold sleepless nights were not unfamiliar to Zelda. She had endured many of them when Zant had had her imprisoned at the top of one of her own castle towers. It had been cold and lonely, and the large windows made it difficult not to look out at the twilight covering her kingdom, a reminder of her weakness. She had, of course, felt that she deserved the punishment, the isolation and the absence of the comforts her own quarters afforded. As the shadow Kargaroks had sailed passed her window emitting their haunting sounds, she had shivered much as she shivered now, wondering if she would ever leave that drafty tower, if the hero Midna sought would ever be found, and if they would succeed in ridding her kingdom of twilight, and returning Midna to her throne. How strange it felt that not only was the hero found, and not only did he succeed, but she would be lying in his bed not even a year later.

As another squall of wind and rain battered the side of the house and Zelda curled in on herself again, hiding from the intrusive thoughts of more branches falling from the surrounding trees, branches bigger and heavier than the one that had frightened her so much, perhaps so much bigger and heavier that they would crash through Link's roof. The loud scrape of what was presumably one of those branches had her upright in a flash. Heart pounding in her ears, she threw the blankets off of herself and crawled to the edge of the bed, bracing herself to stand and catching herself on the railing as she squinted down toward the ground floor. The fire had almost died by now and she could not see anything other than the slightly glowing embers in the corner of Link's house. Another scrape and her unease pushed her to feel along the railing for the edge of the landing.

She found the top of the ladder and slowly turned her back toward it, before pausing and wondering how on earth she was going to do this with her injured ankle. Would she be able to drop down and catch herself on her good leg without further injuring herself? Would she be able to climb down the ladder without putting any weight on her injury? There was only one way to find out. She knelt at the top of the ladder, holding onto the two vertical sections of wood and inched her way back, putting her good foot onto the rung first. Taking a breath and holding it, she moved her weight onto it, her injured foot coming down to rest on the same rung. She tried to slowly move her weight onto it, also trying to carry as much of it with her hands as she could, but the pain was sharp and fast, her breath rushed out of her with a little blossom of voice that sounded almost like a sob. This was going to be harder than she thought.

She thought back to how Link carried her up the ladders, the way his one hand was just to steady himself and his legs did most of the work, and was struck with an idea. If she could do that in reverse, use her one good leg to steady herself and have her arms do the work then she might just manage. Wrapping her arms around the ladder so as to hold onto it from behind, she slowly allowed them to take the brunt of her weight and she lowered herself down so that her feet found the next rung down. Moving her hands down a rung, still gripping the ladder from behind, she repeated the action. So far it was working, although she could see herself getting as tired as Link had done when carrying her up. When she reached the landing, she felt for the stump in order to sit and take a breather.

Zelda descended the second ladder the same way, tiring out that much faster, but with a triumphant smile she finally felt the solid floorboards of Link's ground floor underneath her bare feet. While still holding onto the ladder, she turned to squint through the darkness again, trying to locate her benefactor. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light the embers gave out, she could see a dark mass on the floor in front of the fireplace. Lowering herself down to the ground she crawled quietly and cautiously towards it. The sounds of the storm outside were duller at the bottom of the house, and as Zelda crawled closer, she could hear sleep heavy breathing coming from what appeared to be a nest of yet more blankets.

Hand reaching out, she dithered on where to rest it, not wishing to startle or touch anywhere inappropriate. Deciding on the highest point of the mountain of blankets, she gently shook what turned out to be Link's upturned shoulder from where he lay on his side. His breathing hitched and he let out a sleepy 'Hm?' as he stretched while turning his head back to look at her. Upon seeing that it was Zelda, and that she was on the floor, the ground floor and therefore not where he had left her, he sat up and stared at her confusedly, looking back up at the top of the house as though there could well possibly be two of her. "Whu? How? You-how?"

She laughed at his sleepy confusion and pushed at his shoulder again, indicating that she wanted him to move over, he complied without thinking, until she lifted the blankets and began to maneuver herself under them next to him. He let out a noise somewhere between protest and still confused sputtering but Zelda ignored him, instead settling down to lie on her side where Link had been and sighing in relief at his body warmed sheets. She smiled up at Link sheepishly, whispering "I was very cold." He blinked at her before pushing out a breath and pulling the sheets up over her, lying back down and facing her.

"Are you still cold?" He whispered back to her.

"A little." He gave her an odd half smile with slightly narrowed eyes before scooting closer. She felt his feet seek hers under the blankets, flinching when he found them and felt just how cold they were.

"You always say 'a little' when you mean 'a lot'." He gave a quiet chuckle as Zelda pouted at him. "I could go get the blankets from upstairs?" He suggested and Zelda huffed exasperatedly at him.

"How many blankets do you have?"

"Well I get one from Uli every birthday. She makes them on a loom from the goats wool." At Zelda's curious look he continued, averting his eyes and the ear tip she could see flushing darker. "Uli and her husband, Rusl, raised me. They live in the village. I used to live with them but moved to this house a few years after Colin was born." His eyes subconsciously flicked up to the pictograph of the children on the landing. "It wasn't that they didn't want me anymore, they didn't want me to move out, but they didn't really have the room for me, and this house had been left empty for a few years after the old Watchman died."

"How old were you?"

"Eleven. Maybe twelve. I don't really remember." He rolled onto his back, staring up into the darkness at the top of the house.

"You lived alone at twelves years old?"

"Sort of. Rusl and Uli, and the other adults in the village, came by every day to make sure I was alright. They taught me a lot, about how to cook food properly and how to store it. How to wash my clothes and generally look after myself. I'm very grateful for them." Zelda stared at Link as he lost himself in thought for a moment. She couldn't begin to imagine what Link's life had been like before he was dragged into the Goddesses' game of cycles. She herself knew of the stories through her reading and teachings at the castle. But while she had grown up, safe and warm, and wanting for nothing, Link had been learning to survive by himself from people who were clearly not the people who should have been teaching him.

"Link, what happened to your parents?" She almost regretted the whispered question as he turned his head slowly to her, examining her face before looking through her.

"I don't know." Zelda looked away, feeling like she had yet again ruined the companionable atmosphere with her insatiable curiosity. "I was found abandoned in Faron Woods when I was a baby. Rusl found me and brought me here. I was maybe a few days old, no-one knows for sure. My actual date of birth is assumed."

"I'm sorry." His eyes focussed on her abruptly.

"For what? I'm not. I could have died out there where I was left. Instead I was found and wound up with a huge family. I'm lucky. Sure, they're not related to me by blood, but if I've learned anything, it's that that doesn't matter anyway. There are people who hate the family they're born into, my real family didn't even want me. Blood, and where we come from, has got nothing to do with love, or the people we choose to care about." His voice rang in the quiet, Link seemingly not realising his voice had been rising as he spoke. He sighed, long and deep, closing his eyes and scrubbing his face with his hands, keeping his face covered as he calmed himself down.

"You're very strong, Link. And incredibly brave. And not just because of the triforce piece you were granted. In fact, I think it was granted to you because of the great courage you already had in you. And you're right, about all of it. You're very lucky to have so many people who care so much about you."

"What about you?" Link had removed his hands from his face, letting them rest on the floor above his pillow as his arms fell to the sides of his head. "What is your family like?" Zelda stared at him, the feeling of someone not knowing about her family history unfamiliar to her, almost every person in Hyrule knew about her family. She had to remind herself that technically Link wasn't from Hyrule and that news about the royal family may not reach this far south very often due to the perilousness of Faron woods.

"They're dead. My mother died at my birth, and my father died a year before the Twilight War. I'm all that's left." He turned to look at her then, and she smiled a brittle smile at him which he hesitantly returned. After a few moments of silence, Zelda suppressed another shiver and moved subconsciously closer to Link, seeking out the warmth another body radiated. He moved his right arm down, opening his side up for her to move into and allowing her to pillow her head on his upper arm. She wrapped her still chilled feet around his leg, being careful to move her left ankle in such a way it wouldn't get knocked if they shifted. He didn't seem to know where to put his hands, his left staying above his head while his right lay palm up on the ground behind her. She wished he would bring it around her shoulders, for the warmth she firmly told herself, not for any other want of comfort. She herself decided against the forwardness of resting her arm across his waist, feeling that that would be too familiar for someone she had only properly spoken to that day, instead nestling her hands against her chest to keep them warm.

They were silent for a few minutes, and Zelda was just starting to feel like sleep wasn't a complete lost cause when an ember in the grate popped, a little flare of light accompanying it and catching the metal of something hooked over the back of one of the wooden chairs they had been sitting at earlier. She tried to remember if she had noticed anything while she had spent most of the evening sat at the table, but she couldn't place it. Lifting her head up off of Link's arm to squint through the darkness at the vague shape of it, she began to see more of the intricate metal patterns adorning it. It wasn't until she able to make out the shape of the triforce that it clicked into place where she had seen it before and her eyes widened.

"Link? Is that the Master Sword?" She saw Link lift his head out of her peripheral vision.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. I was meant to take it back to the grove today, but I had to turn back when the storm hit. It's dangerous to go wandering around the woods as it is, let alone in weather like this. Though I don't need to tell you that." She heard the amusement in his voice and turned in time to see his lopsided grin turn into a yawn as his head dropped back down.

"I wasn't aware you still held onto it." He shrugged the shoulder she wasn't leaning on as she lowered her head back down to rest.

"No one told me what to do with it when...everything was over. I just assumed I was to keep it safe."

"So what made you decide to take it back?"

"The light spirit. At the spring." He motioned vaguely with his hand before letting it drop back to the floor. "I...asked for advice and they told me to put it back. It isn't mine and the threat is over. I don't need it anymore but someday someone else might, so I have to put it back where it can be found by them."

Zelda was quiet, more questions buzzing in her head and she struggled between selecting which one to ask first, and deciding not to ask at all, aware that she had done almost nothing but question Link over the last hours. She was still torn when Link quietly spoke up again.

"I came back and everything felt different. Everyone treated me differently, things had changed too much. I didn't feel like I could be here for a while, I didn't belong here anymore, but when I travelled with the kids back from Karkariko, I didn't feel like out there was for me either. I was lost and aimless and torn between staying and going. So I asked for help. They'd helped me before, I figured they might help me again."

"And did they?" Link was quiet for some time, when she tilted her face to look up at him she could see his stare was far off and he looked to be chewing the inside of his cheek.

"Sort of. They told me to take the sword back." He huffed a breath. "And to give myself time." He sounded irritated and Zelda thought she understood. She had also been counselled similarly after the end of the war. Take time to heal herself after all she had been through. And to contemplate all that she still had to go through. Although she felt she couldn't complain too much, the time she had taken for herself had ended up with her sharing a makeshift bed with the hero of Hyrule, the very man she had been wishing to find. She couldn't help but feel that the goddesses had planned this. Her ankle gave a throb and she felt they could have done a better job of it, if it had been their design, she could have walked into him during a pleasant walk in the field rather than literally falling into his village and almost breaking her ankle in the process.

"Time heals all wounds. Or so they say." Zelda said quietly. He huffed again.

"Our time is short. We can't sit around waiting for something to make sense again or stop hurting. We do that and our time might run out, then it all will have been for nothing. A waste." The flat, defeated tone of his voice worried her. Why was he hurting? What didn't make sense?

"Sometimes we just have to wait. I know it feels like nothing will change if you're not moving, but you don't have to be moving all the time." She lifted her hand and placed it on his chest in a calming gesture. He turned his head to look at her again but his eyes still held an edge of hopelessness. "You don't have to go looking for or chasing purpose. Sometimes you just have to let things come to you, and figure out what to do with them once that happens." They remained silent for a while, just staring at each other, before a slow gentle smile spread over Link's face.

"Y'know, I reckon they're right about you. You are wise." She smiled back. Then his eyes averted to the side and his smile turned playful. "Though saying that, I'm not sure it was wisdom that lead you to my neck of the woods." He chuckled as she huffed at him.

"Are you ever going to let that go?"

"Nope." He laughed louder when she turned her face away from him and removed her hand from his chest with a 'tut'. But she couldn't help the small smile tugging at the corners of her lips from the sound of his genuine laughter. It was warm just like him. When he had calmed, she let her head fall back into a more comfortable position on his arm and moved slightly closer when he shifted to get more comfortable.

They remained quiet then, and after a while of silence, Zelda noticed that Link's breathing had deepened. Carefully glancing up at him, she could see he had fallen asleep. Shifting herself closer still, another pop from the fireplace caught the gold of the Master Sword's scabbard and she stared at it until Link's soft breathing backed by the rain also lured her into sleep.

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