This is it, the last Chapter.

Thank you all for reading this until the end, I hope you enjoy the finale!

The Legend of Link:

The Bastard Prince

20. Link

In time, Ganondorf drew his last breath and the Princess and her Knight recovered from the sight of Zelda's carnage, the sight and sound of her being so savage to him, even after the evil being left his body.

As they'd listened to her swear at Ganondorf, both the Princess and 'Link' had come to understand why the heroes of the past were often said to be silent; hearing the tales of how they had sworn so viciously at Ganon probably wouldn't have gone down well with the royals of the past.

And as they watched her cry at Link's side, his bloody, blue left hand in her grip as she did, they figured it was time to make her move on. Time to take her to Impax so they could return to their own world.

"Zoelda," the Princess went to put a hand on her shoulder before thinking better of it as she saw the mess of blood and eye fluid on it. "I think it's time we call the guards back into the palace. Do you want come with us?"

"No." Zelda replied curtly, not looking up as she did.

"It'll do you good to get out of this room, Zoelda. Get away from the smell of blood and death."

"Princess, please. Go get the guards if you want, but can I at least say my goodbyes in peace?"

The Princess looked down at her once more, a frown at her brow before shrugging and motioned to 'Link'. They gingerly stepped over pools of blood and littered debris as they made their way to the top of the Throne room stairs.

They looked back when they got to the top of the stairs, back on the carnage that littered the Throne room as the soft glow of twilight began to settle outside the window, bringing with it the first few stars of the night.

Blood, two bodies and the catalyst for the events of that week were all that was left behind as they started slowly down the stairs, back to their reality.

"Link?" Zelda said softly as she watched the Princess and her knight leave. All around her, the smell of blood and death lingered heavily, a disgusting and musty perfume that would have made most gag.

But Zelda only saw her own carnage. She had been the one to kill Ganondorf, the one to do it so violently; she had been the reason Link had to die.

In both a metaphorical (and real) way, their blood was on her hands.

And, as she slowly turned Link over so she could talk to his contorted, though still smiling, face; she realised she didn't really care that Ganondorf's blood was on her hands. It had been karma, retribution for a lifetime of crimes.

Link's on the other hand…

"Link, they say that people can still hear things up to ten minutes after their death. It's been a lot longer than that for you, but… there's a few things I want to say to you before I can go. So, if you're still around, would you mind listening, holding on for just a little longer?"

Zelda sighed and settled herself more comfortably, folding her legs under herself as she looked down at his body, folding his left arm over the cut on his torso as best she could, somewhat surprised to find it still bleeding gently as she removed the short sword and placed it in his hand. He had reverted to his natural form in death, his Twili bicolouration even more obvious with the cut that ripped it in two.

So, she took his black hand in both of hers and drew a deep breath, talking to a distorted version of his body behind watery eyes.

"Link. When I first arrived here, I could have so easily died in just a few moments. That Kagarok was close to having the best meal it had had in a long time. But then you were there, putting an arrow through its brain.

"Honestly, Link, I thought it was terribly impressive. I almost gave you a two syllable 'damn' right there and then until you started swearing.

"You shattered all my first impressions of you in one string of swears at a dead monster, Link. And I'm so glad you did. Because if I'd gone on to find you were just what my first impressions told me you were – a pure good, honest Hero of Hyrule like all the others – well, I probably wouldn't have liked you half as much. It definitely wouldn't have been as much fun. It would have been one of the most boring and dreadfully difficult weeks of my life. I-I don't think I could have gotten through it without you making your sarcastic quips at every turn. I don't think I would have lasted half as long if I hadn't had someone I could turn and talk to.

"And that's why I want to apologise for these last few days.

"Gods only know how hard these must have been for you, I truly can't imagine what my rejection did to you. But I also didn't want to lead you on, to let you believe that we might have had a future.

"I realise now that was stupid of me. You were going to die in two days, I should have given you something to cling onto at least. Something to make you want to live.

"… Did I really not make you want to cling on at all after I said I didn't love you? Was a solid friendship with someone who actually knew the real you not enough?

"Because I needed you, Alarink – no, Link.

"Damn, that's going to take some time. Though, I suppose it doesn't actually matter now, does it?

"The point is, I came to rely on you during the first two days. The days you showed me Hyrule and what era we were in. The days I told you who I was and you alluded to who you could be.

"And dammit Link, I thought you might have needed me too!

"I saw your face as you got your shirt ripped, I saw the look you gave me when you asked how bad it was, I saw everything that passed on your features as we travelled through Castle Town. I saw the pain at every nickname, I saw the anger that you felt towards them for not understanding, I saw the disappointment as former lovers joined the crowd and called you all kinds of crap.

"Dammit if I wasn't sympathetic! Gods, I felt for you, I just wanted to understand!

"That's why I asked who your mother was, what the nickname 'Bastard Prince' meant. I just wanted to understand you, Link. And perhaps if I had, I could have said all this to you before it was too late.

"But now here we are: you're dead and I'm sat in a pool of your blood.

"But hey – haha! – at least Ganon's dead!

"Oh, fuck tears, fuck crying…" Zelda wiped her face as she laugh/cried for a few moments before continuing.

"Look, Link. That third day, the time I spent without you? Really fuckin' hard. Yeah, getting to know the Princess was interesting, but Gods is she boring! She's exactly what I expected, and I didn't want that. With you I'd come to expect the unexpected, every step was an adventure, every breath a new lease on life!

"I guess I understand that now; it's easy to live as though there's no tomorrow when you know your days are limited.

"And yeah, learning Immy was alive was great, learning my part in this made me feel more clear on everything, but not knowing what was going to happen to you, not knowing why everyone kept saying they'd never seen you give into your destiny before, damn it made me worry.

"I guess I should have noticed my feelings sooner, the one more out of touch with them did anyway, you dick.

"I'm sorry for running on that fourth day, I'm sorry for letting Ganon get the better of me. I'm sorry for making you worry in the desert. But I'm sure as hell not sorry we got to spend the night together like that, that I got to tell you one of my secrets.

"So here's another secret, one you'll never hear: I loved seeing you get on the Princess' wick, I loved seeing you pull her down off that stupid royal pedestal she put herself on.

"And I loved seeing how shy you were about telling me you were Twili royalty. You know I pieced it together before we got to your realm, don't you?

"Twilight scared me, not for its darkness or weird inhabitants, but because it was new, it was something I didn't know how to handle. So I was grateful for your hand on my back every step of the way, for your sister showing me around before you came back from your talk with your mother.

"Before you came back, as your sister and I looked over the balcony, I couldn't help but wonder what it might have been like to be there by your side, presented and robed – your mother actually approving of me. And when I hugged you while you cried, I realised I could carry on hugging you without ever letting go.

"So why, in the name of Hylia, did I flinch away from that kiss when we came back?

"I can't answer that, I can only apologise for everything that became of us after. Because dammit if it didn't kill me at least half as much as it was killing you! I made a mess of everything because I thought we'd have less to lose if we came into this last battle without feelings for one another. But feelings don't disappear because we don't talk about them. That really only makes things worse.

"So, I'm sorry. More sorry that you can ever know that I didn't just tell you the truth. That I didn't let you go into this believing there could have been a future, if you could find a way to make one, to not die.

"I was scared, Link.

"I have been scared every day that I have been here, in this strange and foreign realm. And I let fear get the better of me.

"I didn't when I was fighting Ganon, not that that really matters I suppose…

"Because now I have to live in the knowledge that I never told you the truth, that I have both yours and Ganon's blood on my hands.

"... And I still don't know how the hell I'm going to get back to the UK.

"So all I can do is hope that it's my destiny to die here, next to you, never having to worry what I missed at home or face my guilt at not telling you the truth."

Zelda laid herself down next to Alarink, in a pool of blood that she could hardly bring herself to care about as she stared up at the vaulted ceiling, her eyesight still clouded by tears, so nothing was really discernible.

She smiled a sad smile much like his had been when he told her loved her one last time, a cry chuckled coming from her lips as she closed her eyes, as she prayed to wake up from this dream and be back on her Uni room floor with everything worked out, the biggest thing she needed to worry about being the exam she had next Tuesday. And yet, she also couldn't bear to be returning to a world where Alarink wasn't a part of her day to day life, where he'd just been a figment of her imagination, a dream she could wake up and forget.

She couldn't go back to a world in which this was just a story she kept to herself, a story she could never tell for fear of being seen as insane.

So she just cried, her heart aching, body numb, shuddering as she lay, creating little ripples in the blood pool she was in.

"I love you, Link. I'm sorry I told you too late."

"…"

"Do you really?"

"... Huh?" Zelda opened her eyes a few moments later, finding herself in a black space. Utterly, utterly alone. "Where am I?"

"That's not important," a voice said, a voice that sounded a lot like her mother's. But that couldn't be possible; her mother was dead.

Unless…

"Oh, I'm dead too?" Zelda asked, folding her arms a little angrily. "How did that happen? Falling rubble? Ganon wake up and stab me?"

"No, you had a heart attack." The voice confirmed, surprisingly calmly.

"Well, that's rather anti-climactic. What caused it?"

"What do you think?"

"I dunno, stress, panic, fear? An unknown heart condition that only reawakened in Hyrule?" Zelda snapped, not particularly enjoying this whole interrogation thing considering she was already dead.

"Snappy, aren't you?" The voice observed dryly, she could almost see the dead smile of Lanayru's Light Spirit in that moment. "What if I told you there's still time to save your life?"

"I can't say I'd be particularly excited about living one without you, mum."

"… As flattered as I am by that, I am not your mother." The voice said gently.

"Really?" Zelda asked in shock, sitting up and looking alert. "You sound just like her."

"This is just My voice, if anything, your mother sounds like Me."

"Who are you?" She asked the voice tentatively, slightly worried what it might reply with.

"That isn't important." There was a beat of a pause as Zelda scrutinised the darkness, looking for the owner of the voice. "What if I could tell you I could give you your mother back?"

"Don't toy with me." she snapped. If she was already dead, she didn't particularly want to be challenged or given hope.

"I'm not. There are two possible new scenarios I can make out of this one, ones that will allow you to live on."

"Why would you do that?" Zelda asked sceptically, a frown on her features; she didn't like being asked things that seemed too good to be true. "What's in it for you?"

"My line will live on in the normal world, if I let you live. My blood will continue to be split should the worst occur with the current royal family."

"Hylia?!" Said she to the voice incredulously, understanding who it belonged to.

"One and the same." Said Hylia's voice smugly. "These are the two possible scenarios, please, pick one so that you may live on, My daughter."

"Um, sure." Zelda replied dumbfounded to be talking to the Golden Goddess Herself.

"Option one, everyone who was killed under Ganon's curse can be revived. That means your mother, Link's father, everyone killed by the Pestilence, all of them can come back. But, the destruction of Ganondorf cannot take place in this generation. It may take millennia for the time to destroy Ganondorf to be right again and you and Link will never meet."

"What's Option two?" Zelda asked, not wanting to go on without knowing Link, without having met him even if that meant getting her mother back – she'd lost her ten years ago, she wasn't at peace with it, but she could live with her death, this last decade had taught her that.

"Option two brings Link back to life."

"Oh good, so I can either have my mother or I can have Link!" Zelda snapped sarcastically, crossing her arms and brooding with it.

"It does no one good to get everything they want, My daughter." Hylia said philosophically. "Here are the terms of Option two: everything is as it is now, but yours and Link's bodies are removed from the Throne room, leaving My Princess and Alarink as the only ones who know the truth of what happened in there – which they exaggerate to make people believe it was the two of them who killed Ganondorf, and that the two of you were never involved."

"The no remembrance route."

"Exactly. But the two of you will remember and be alive, you will have each other."

"And…?" Zelda pushed, expecting there to be something more to this that the Goddess was building up to.

"And… you will be back in your realm, taking Link with you."

Zelda thought it over. "But we'll still have our memories of everything that happened here? In this timeline, in this Hyrule?"

"Yes, but you will return to your room as though only the waking day has passed."

"Then I chose Option two." Zelda said surely, no room for doubt in her mind as she looked determinedly forward, not knowing where to direct this look in the darkness the Goddess had her suspended in.

"You are sure?" Hylia asked, Her voice pressing.

"Yes. I have lived without my mother, and everyone else has moved on over the last ten years, everyone can carry on without them coming back. And it could be disastrous to leave destroying Ganondorf until later. And I think, I need to remember what happened here, how I helped save a world that doesn't know or believe it. And I can't let Link go, I just can't."

"Very well." Hylia's voice now echoed all around the empty space, a terrifying and ethereal thing. "Then I must ask you to open your eyes."

"They are open?" Zelda replied, confused as she looked around.

"No." Hylia insisted, her voice becoming quieter.

"Open your eyes."

"Open your eyes."

It was muffled and distorted, coming through her ringing ears, breaking a cloud of fog in her head and an intense pain in her chest, a numbness in her left arm.

Slowly, and with tremendous effort, Zelda opened her eyes, blinking slowly and rubbing away the dried tears that had almost welded them shut with the back of her hand. She blinked as she looked at her hand, so utterly soaked and coated in dry, brown blood.

She sat up with a start, looking down at herself, the tatters of a purple dress soaked and still dripping blood and gross eye-fluid. The stink of perspiration, blood and death quickly filled her nostrils, causing her to gag and her eyes to water once again.

It had been real. That last week had been real. She'd really been in Hyrule.

"Wake up, Link."

Turning quickly in the direction of the noise, Zelda saw it was her TV, playing the opening sequence of Breath of the Wild; Link opening his eyes slowly, lying on a blue watery background. The headrush came only a second later, her head splitting as feeling began coming back to her left arm and chest.

Moaning and shaking herself, Zelda stood up and turned the TV and Switch off. Turning to look out the blinds, she could see the first stars beginning to glow outside the light pollution, the moon waxing to her fullest. Zelda could only blink at that, the moon had been waning again last night in Hyrule. Either the moon pattern was different in Hyrule or only the daylight had passed here in the UK.

Just as the Goddess had said.

Turning with her matted and gross hair in her hands, Zelda looked at her Uni room: same bed in the corner, same desk on the right wall, same wardrobe by the window, same bathroom door on the left wall. Same box for her TV leaning dangerously close to the radiator under the window, same new Switch set up next to it.

The only difference was the puddle of blood in the middle of the floor, and the man lying in it.

"Link!" She half shouted, remembering at the last second just how thin the walls were and not particularly wanting to alert her neighbour.

Quickly, Zelda was on top of Link, straddling him and pawing at his chest – it didn't really occur to her how incriminating this looked until later. The cut on his armour was still there, caked with still drying blood, but as she pulled it apart carefully, she noticed there was no cut on his chest, just that white scar that neatly cut his toned torso in two. It was only then that she realised he was back in his Hylian skin, somehow losing his natural Twili in the cross between realms.

"Link, speak to me!" Zelda called to him quietly, gently moving his head from side to side to check for caving in the back of it without moving it too much. But his skull was as full as ever, his hair still coated in drying blood, as were his ears and face. The look on his features was serene, a small smile on his lips and his eyes gently closed, the ruby on his circlet now crusted in dry blood.

"Link?!" She called again, gently slapping his cheek in an attempt to wake him up. "Link? Wake up!"

The door opened, and she could only stare in shock as the almost forgotten Danny stood in her doorway, a spare key in his hand.

As pissed as she was to see him, she did love the look on his face as he took in the scene: Zelda straddling a man covered in blood with a sword in his hand, herself also coated in blood and white fluid, the whole room stinking of blood and perspiration.

His eyes were huge, his mouth so agape she was surprised that it didn't split his head in two, and she was fairly certain that if he hadn't been gripping the door for dear life he probably would have fainted.

"Danny?!" She exclaimed at him before remembering to moderate her voice – for all her loud parties in the middle of the night, her neighbour wasn't particularly fond of Zelda spending her time shouting at her wannabe boyfriend. Clearing her throat, Zelda spoke in a more level volume, though her tone was still surprised and pissed. "What the fuck are you doing with a spare key to my room?!"

"What-what the hell is going on in here?!" Danny shrieked, hurting Zelda's tender ears and splitting head. "Who is he?! Is he dead?!"

"Danny, moderate your voice!" Zelda said sharply to him, a hand going to her forehead and smearing it with more blood,

"Moderate my voice?!" Danny shouted, causing a bang on Zelda's wall.

"Yes, moderate your voice, dumbass!" Zelda's neighbour shouted through the wall.

"Sorry, Jenny!" Shouted Zelda back, glaring over at Danny in the door before hissing, "Do not piss Jenny off, for the love of the Goddesses."

"Goddesses?" Danny questioned, still not pulling his eyes away from the limp form of Link beneath her. "I thought you were on Gods at the moment, change your religion again?"

"Is now really the time to be making religious small talk?" She snapped at him, turning her attention back to Link, putting a pair of fingers to his neck to try and find a pulse.

"Did you kill him?!" Danny asked in surprise, watching her worried face as she fussed around for a pulse, eyes on the multiple swords on her person.

"Yes, I killed him for being an annoying pain in the arse who wouldn't leave me alone while I was playing Zelda," she turned to glare at him in contempt. "Of course I didn't kill him."

"Then why are you both covered in blood and why does this room absolutely stink?!"

"Uh… roleplay gone wrong?" Zelda joked innocently with a worried half smile, moving to lean her head against Link's chest, desperate to pick up any sign of life. If that Goddess had lied to her…

"Zelda, don't joke right now." Danny said clearly, his eyes hard as he continued to hold onto the door. "Is that man dead?"

Worriedly biting her lip, she lifted her head from his chest and looked over at Danny, wondering if it was time to take Link to the hospital.

Then came a gasp and a choke from below her and she looked down to see Link's pale turquoise eyes fly cloudily open. He was coughing and sputtering, the occasional spatter of blood flying into his hand as he began to raise himself up with Zelda in his lap, but he was alive.

Link was alive.

Zelda pulled him in for a crushing hug, heedless of the fact that his heart and lungs were still recovering. And despite the force of it, despite being in an entirely unfamiliar place and the rift that had formed between them – or perhaps because of it – Link hugged her back tightly, coughing into her ear every now and again.

They both forgot about the annoying British guy standing in her doorway, looking angrily between the two of them.

Finally having enough, Danny cleared his throat, causing the two of them to turn and look at him; they didn't let go of one another, just loosened their grip so Link could breathe a little easier.

"What is it, Danny? I'm a little busy right now." Zelda snapped at him, keeping a hand on Link's arm, as if to make sure he wouldn't suddenly dematerialise.

"I can see that," he snapped, glaring at the two of them and building himself up to shout profanities. "Is this what you've been doing instead of going to lectures today?! You've been riding a guy on your floor, rolling around in - what is that?"

"Oh, is that what's going on?" Link answered with that grin of his – marred by the fact that his teeth were covered in the blood he'd been coughing up - skimming a hand over the surface of the still wet blood beneath them. "Zelda, you really must wake me up the next time you're going to do me in blood."

"That's actually blood?!" Danny shouted in astonishment, looking as though he might faint again.

"Fake blood," Zelda emphasised, giving Link a look to tell him to stop talking.

"Why are you fucking a man in fake blood?!"

"We're not fucking," Zelda said delicately, though she didn't blush or let go of Link's arm as she said it. "We're, uh… Practicing a scene!"

"A scene for what?"

"Uh… Blood Brothers." She said off the top of her head, making both men look at her in confusion.

"Zelda, that's not what that play's about." Danny said simply.

"Yeah, well, I'm not an English student." Snapped she a little flustered, getting more and more angry as the seconds rolled by. "Look, Danny, why are you even here? Didn't I tell you to ta-ta this morning?"

"Ta-ta?" Link asked confused, scratching at the back of his head.

"Don't scratch that, it's where it got carved in." Zelda said gently, taking his left hand away in her right.

"Do you two have matching tattoos?!" Danny asked incredulously, causing the two of them to look down at their bloody hands. Sure enough, Link had a cyan outline of the Triforce on his dominant hand while Zelda had a golden one.

It turned out you couldn't get rid of some things.

"What do ya know?" Link said as he looked at his hand. "Thought that fucker had gone when it got torn out of my chest." He blinked for a moment before looking down at his chest then at Zelda. "Did that actually happen?"

"Yes, it did. I'll tell you in a minute." She replied gently before turning her attention fully onto Danny. "Danny, I've told you once, I've told you a million times, but this time I say it for good. Would you just, please, FUCK. OFF."

Danny looked at her incredulously, like she was the one who had stolen a key and barged into his room without permission. "No. What the hell is going on?"

"Okay, I've had enough," Link sat up more, putting his hand in more of his own blood as he did. "Ugh, gross."

Then he stared Danny in the eye, a serious look on his face for once. There weren't many people who could stand up against that look.

"Listen here, kid." Link began. "I have had a horrible few hours. I've been killed, I've had my heart punctured, a lung ripped clean in half and many, many bones broken. And I might have stabbed a guy in the stomach. Did I get him?" He asked Zelda.

"Link, stop talking." She said quietly, watching the fear on Danny's face.

"No. Okay, so I might not have stabbed a guy in the stomach, that's currently up in the air, but I know he did throw me half way across a room and caved my skull in. I have been dead for the last hour, and now I'm in a whole new realm, head fuzzy, chest killing and ears ringing. I'm covered in my own blood and have a beautiful girl in my lap, who is also – incidentally – covered in my blood. I'm in no mood to kick your arse, and neither is she. So, would you do us both a solid and fuck on out of that door?"

"Why are you both covered in blood?"

"Were you even listening?" Link asked in exasperation just as the door opened further and a tall woman walked into the room. "We di- Hey, Impax!"

Impax walked into the room, took one look at the surprised two on the floor and sighed, grabbing Danny by the scruff. "Alright kid, let's leave them to it."

"Thanks, Impax, good to see you're still alive!" Link shouted after her.

"Link, don't shout please." Zelda said, putting her head in her hands once again.

"Wait!" Danny called, poking his head back around the door – no mean feat considering Impax was still holding onto his collar. "Just who are you?"

Alarink smiled his grin at him, "I'm Ala-" He stopped himself, looking around the barely furnished room and at the fact he was no longer in Hyrule. Then he smiled a true smile, the first of many.

"I'm Link, Bastard Prince of the Twilight Realm."

"Right, yeah, okay." Danny rolled his eyes and let the door close behind him. "Good luck with that wackjob, Zelda."

As the door slammed shut, Zelda sprang to her feet, bringing Link with her and beginning to look him over.

"Are you hurt? Still bleeding?" She fussed around him, checking all over his bloody armour for any other cuts or scrapes, any places where the blood was still obviously dripping or fresh.

"No, I think I'm- Zelda." Link grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to stop fussing and look at him, his worried pale eyes. "What happened? Where are we?"

"Oh, um…" Pulling a towel out from her wardrobe and spreading it across her bed, Zelda motioned for him to sit. Her carpet might be stained, but her bed needn't be. She sighed deeply before she began telling him how he had died, how she had cried, how she had used the Triforce and Master Sword to kill Ganondorf once and for all.

How the world had fallen still and bloody.

"Wow," Link breathed at the end of it, plucking his robe off and tossing his circlet onto her desk negligently. "So you killed Ganon, Hyrule's safe?"

"For a millennium or so at least, yes." Zelda answered, she had changed into a clean Zelda tank top – this one had wolf Link on it grinning ferociously – and leggings in her bathroom as she told the story through the ajar door, now looking for a pair of trousers or tracksuit bottoms that might fit Link. Finally, she just grabbed a big pair of tracksuits and an oversized hoodie with the Triforce printed on the back and threw them in his general direction. "That's the best I can do."

"You have a real Hyrule obsession, don't you?" He asked as he looked at the hoodie before heading into the bathroom.

"Here, we call it a Legend of Zelda obsession, or just a Zelda obsession."

"A Zelda obsession, eh?" Asked he from behind the ajar door as she began to roll all the blood spattered clothes into the towel, planning on taking them to be cleaned tomorrow, Impax would know a good place. "That's an obsession I can get behind!"

"Behave." Zelda said as she threw the towel into her washing hamper, sitting back on the bed and looking down at the blood and three swords on the floor. She had no idea what she was going to do about them.

"What happened after that though, how did we end up… Wherever we are?"

"Um, after it all, the Princess and Alarink went to tell the guards what happened. I stayed there and spoke to your corpse for a while…"

"Oh?" Link emerged from the bathroom wearing the clothes she'd given him, both of which were noticeably a little too tight. She pointed at the hamper for him to throw his bloody armour in. "What'd you say?"

"That's not important," Zelda lied, looking away from him as he sat on the bed next to her. "The important thing is, after I was done talking, I lay with you and had a heart attack."

"Oh shit, are you okay?" He asked her, forcing her to look over at him and smile sadly. They had both yet to shower, so he was still covered in blood, but he'd made an effort to clean most of it from his face, looking down at her with dripping eyelashes over concerned and exhausted eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Zelda looked away again, looking off at the window as she spoke next, telling him about the terms Hylia had given her.

"Why would you choose this?"

"Because now Hyrule is safe."

"No, Zelda," Link turned her chin to face him, looking her deep in her eyes that were once again tear studded as she willed him to understand. "Why would you choose me over your mother, I know how much you loved her."

"Because, Ala-Link." She corrected herself with a little shake of the head and a half laugh. "Aren't you happy to be alive again?"

"Well, I mean, I'd kinda made peace with death, and I've achieved everything I wanted to do in Hyrule now, so…" Link shrugged.

"You can make new dreams here, now." Zelda said, looking up at him with sad eyes, hoping he'd understand what she was saying without her having to say it.

"Where is here?!" He half shouted, clearly scared and nervous. "Why would you save me?"

"Because, believe it or not, you dick," Zelda smiled at him, eyes over run with tears but a genuine smile on her face as she realised it was time to start over again, time for her to show him the way in her world. "I kinda fucking love you."

Wide eyed in surprise, Link could only stare at her, looking not unlike that meme of Skyward Link.

With a small chuckle, she lent over and gently pecked his lips, planning to pull him in for a gently hug afterwards. But he got there first, pulling her close to him with all the intention in the world of never letting go, even if it crushed her.

What could she do but laugh and let the tears roll yet again, hugging him back and whispering in his ear:

"Welcome to my world, Link."

AN:

Well, we've made it. 20 weeks later, we've reached the end of the Legend of Link: The Bastard Prince.

Just a quick little note on this chapter itself. I finished it the day before I started publishing this back in November, so it's had less editing done to it compared to the earlier chapters yet at the same time has changed a great deal from what I originally thought it was going to be. The section where Zelda talks to Link's corpse wasn't in the original plan and came into being when I decided that she should have a confession monologue similar to Link's in 12. I like this one less, completely hated it for a while after I wrote it even, but it's really grown on me and I do think it fits the situation pretty perfectly.

Other than that, the ending was planned with the intention that I might write a sequel set some time in the future where Zoelda and Alarink are tasked with helping averting the 100 year gap in BOTW. Whether or not I actually do this is still up in the air, somedays I think it'll work, others not so much. But, I also have ideas for a story with the Princess and 'Link' as the main characters, a few chapters of their time together over the years.

Really, what all this talk of sequels amounts to is the desire for this not be over, for these characters to carry on, have another story that I can share with them.

I still carry them with me 20 weeks on from finishing this story. Alarink has given me some kind of confidence I can't quite explain and Zoelda has helped me discover that a character needn't be fully formed when she's first written, that can come with time. They've both influenced all the characters I have and will go on to write from here on out. And this being the first piece I've ever written over, well, 50,000 words long, it's been a real experience to update it week in and week out, to the point where I'm a little nervous to be free of this updating routine.

But, I was a mess most of the time I was publishing this. My notes have gone from upbeat to passive aggressive to depressive before finally settling on, I believe the best term would be awed. Initially I was frustrated with the number of people reading it being so low but after the supportive comments post 12, after opening up like that in the chapter that still means the most to me, I began to change. I am thankful that there is anyone here at all reading this now, that there have been people who have truly enjoyed it and left such wonderful comments - some of which see things that even I didn't.

When I first started publishing this, I was a depressed, just dropped out of Uni mess desperate to scrape some form of life together as I combated unemployment and tried writing scripts for the first time. Now, 20 weeks on, I have a job lined up, I'm still "in progress" in the script competition I entered (which I'm choosing to take as a good sign) and I'm beginning to feel like myself again. Hell, I saw an old friend on Tuesday who I hadn't seen since before chapter 12 and she told me I had more colour again, that I was more animated again, and that's done more for my confidence than anything else these last few weeks.

I still get low, I still have depressive moments, and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to handle this story being finished since it was such a big part of the last year of my life. But I'm ready to let it go. I'm ready to finally put the year I spent with this story behind me and to start moving forward. I'll still come back and read it from time to time, I can't let it completely go, but I'll begin to move on.

So, I just want to say one last thank you to you all for reading, reviewing, enjoying and all that. I really do appreciate you all and hope that things have improved for you these past 20 weeks as well. If not, please continue to have hope - and if not hope, something enjoyable to read or escape into.

I'll be taking a break from publishing fanfic for a while, though I do have one lined up (Fire Emblem again this time) for when I come back. I need to spend some time with my own stories before I begin expanding on others again, I think.

Regardless, thank you all once again. If you do review or anything now that it's complete, I will still read it and be grateful for you taking the time to do so. If you do want to chat at all, come find me on Twitter and I'll be available (WritesWithQuill) but otherwise, I wish you all the best.

Thank you for joining me!

~WWQ