`Where is he?'
She shrank back from him as he yelled at her. `Please, Link, enough.'
`No. Not until you tell me where he is.'
`He isn't anywhere, he wasn't real, Link. It was just me.'
`You're lying.'
`No, I'm not.'
Her heart was breaking, standing there, lying through her teeth.
In the aftermath of Ganon's death she had crept through the wreckage of the castle, her faithful bodyguard in tow. They searched for hours in the rubble, twisting ankles and tearing apart fingertips, until they found him. He was dyed red with blood, his limbs twisted at unnatural angles, and his eyes were blank. They wept, cradling him, whispering apologies into unhearing ears. They buried him in a quiet, secret place and planted flowers around his grave. His tombstone was a sapling. That night a requiem rang through the castle, no one knew who it was for, or who sang it.
Now, she was attending to his final wish. One he had entrusted to her as they prepared to exchange faces. He had asked her to never let the Hero, his Hero, know what fate had made him do. He had asked her to tell these lies, he had said it was better the Hero believe he had been a lie, and for him to come to hate that lie, than to bear the pain of loss. This way, Link might find happiness with another, instead of spending his life in mourning. It was taking all her strength not to cry.
`If he wasn't real, if it was you all along, then tell me what this is. Tell me where it came from and what it means. Tell me what I said when I took it from you.'
He held his hand out to her, one thumb sized crystal lying in his palm. The twin of the one they had buried with Sheik. She had no words for him, no stories or explanations, only sorrow.
`I knew it.' Tears ran from eyes as blue as the sky, `please, please just tell me where he is.'
She took him to the clearing in the copse, newly abloom. He fell to the earth, curling up next to the sapling. She let him cry himself out.
She stood in the Temple of Time, ocarina in hand. There had to be another way. There had to be another life, one where the sadness didn't drag them all to the bottom of an ocean of despair. She played the notes and everything unravelled. The tapestry of time would be woven anew.