She could smell the room before she could see it. It smelled like earth, like the desert, and potions, potions everywhere. It smelled forgotten.

There was the distant sound of clinking, someone shuffling quietly, the ruffling of pages, and the silent tapping of fingers. Almost like the rustling of a breeze, a thought the earth once had, not actual human noise.

Her eyes opened slowly, accustoming themselves to the darkness and she turned her head to view the source.

He was younger than she expected, or rather, he was different than she expected. She had never seen yellow hair before, or a man who wore so much green. He looked down at her with a quizzical expression, but no words, as if he had no true need of them. In his hands there was a glass vial filled with a scarlet substance.

A single candle burned, melting into a well of wax, the tip of its finger a bright yellow flame.

She knew the smell and the sight of a red potion when she saw one.

Her first impulse was to ask why she was here, but she realized she would find that out soon enough. If they wanted information she'd find herself in the dungeons tomorrow. If they wanted a political statement she'd find herself in the public square with a machine gun at her back. It was beneath her to ask him such a question, instead she asked the less obvious, the more important question.

"Who are you?"

He smiled and for a moment his face appeared years younger, though she couldn't guess how young, and he looked as if he wanted to laugh. His blue eyes danced like stars.

"You can call me Link."

And that was how Alya of the Gerudo desert was first introduced to the Hero of Time and Champion of Hyrule.

It had been a simple job, in theory, because everything was simple in theory. There was a bomb, a bomb to be placed under his carriage. There were five of them, she had built the bomb herself in a lab back in Gerudo, back in the desert, home. It had burnt her fingertips and she had known in that moment that it would work, it had to work.

There was supposed to be a bombing, a coup, and then a revolution. She was supposed to bring freedom and glory to her people, to her kinswomen. Things were supposed to change.

They didn't.

She had been standing in the castle square, watching the people hustle past their eyes cast down, the noon-day sun like a dragon's eye watching her. It had been cold, her breath was mist that morning, she had been waiting.

Someone else had been waiting as well.

The carriage exited the castle gates, it burst into flames, but there was no one inside. There were guns everywhere, she ran, she didn't know what happened to the others. There were too many alleys in Hyrule. There were too many soldiers as well. She didn't remember what happened next. There was fire, and pain, and a faint thudding noise as her head hit the ground.

The next came in flashes. Screaming, agony, guns, soldiers, vivid light, bright darkness, a somber voice, a quiet decision, a dark room, the smell of potions and books, a soft confident voice at the door that dismissed and sent away. Pain, too, there was still pain in this imaginary world.

She called him the stranger for lack of a name, when she was aware of him. She imagined that they spoke, that they talked of many things, though he had few words which he wished to express. The stranger was old and yet sometimes she thought of him as very young, because of his voice and his eyes. He was ageless, he said that time confused him, and that sometimes he had trouble keeping track of it.

He had stopped trying.

He was like the fever world. There was no time in that place, only vivid colors and the lack of heat. Shivering death and the aching yearning for home and red, red everywhere. He was old magic, the stranger, old deep magic that still echoed in the forgotten canyons but had been forgotten in Hyrule. He did not belong in the world of guns and paved streets. He remained because there was nowhere else for him to go. The old magic had been forgotten.

However these thoughts only existed in moments, because for the most part, he was a shadow upon the walls of her dreaming hell.

There was a soldier at her door. She was sitting up and looking at the stranger who was leaning over a book and tracing dusty lines. He did not say anything but he looked impatient, exasperated perhaps, as if he was dealing with an indulgence rather than a man. She felt quite the same way.

"Champion, sir."

The young man with the yellow hair looked up, dimly, as if his mind would much rather be trapped back in the book than dealing with the soldier. That seemed to be answer enough for the soldier went on.

"The royal family requests your presence."

The man made no move but turned back to his book instead. That appeared to be the only answer he was willing to make because the soldier attempted again.

"You are to leave immediately."

The man slowly closed his book and sighed, he then turned towards the door looking back at her for a moment and then walking slowly out of the room his hands dangling loosely at his sides as if exhausted from lifting some colossal weight.

He left then and it was not until he came back that she began to ask questions, the questions she had not bothered with when she first arrived and awoke. For the past few days she had merely watched him, waiting for the moment when she would be sent off and it wouldn't matter anymore, but the expression on his face and the way he reached automatically back for his book broke her silence.

"They wanted to send me to the dungeons for information." She said watching him through narrow eyes, waiting for his confirmation or denial. Again she had the faint feeling that he was smiling, though she could not see it.

"In part." He said softly his eyes still on his book.

"Well? Am I going to the dungeons?" She asked.

"No."

There was silence then, only the rustling of pages, like distant memories she had half forgotten.

"Why not?" She asked because she knew it's what she would have done had a Hylian been caught wandering amid the desert palace with a bomb in his hand.

"It's shortsighted." The man in green responded, "It's not always wise to do shortsighted things."

It was at that moment that she noticed that it wasn't the green in itself that was odd, it was simply what he wore. His hands were covered in green fingerless gloves, a long green tunic and pale green (the color of the birch trees she had passed on her way from the desert to the castle) loose pants. His hair was a shock of pale gold that settled chaotically on his head, like a bird's forgotten and abandoned nest, and his eyes remained twin shards of broken sky. He looked like a piece of the woods that had drifted accidentally into human form.

"It's what I would have done." She said to the stranger. He nodded as if he was not surprised.

"What are you anyway, to them?"

He smiled then, the same smile he had given when she asked his name, and said "I don't quite know myself, they keep trying to change the rules."

"He called you champion."

"Yes."

"When has Hyrule been in need of a champion?" She asked sharply.

"A long time ago." He said, still smiling, "Even Hyrule faces its demons now and then."

Odd, that was the word she wanted to settle on. The man was beyond mere eccentric, he was odd, different.

The fever had obscured it, it wasn't simply the yellow hair or the bright blue eyes or even the foreign green clothing. It was the way he held himself, as if he himself was not quite sure of what form he had taken.

Or perhaps it was the books.

The books laid so haphazardly against one another. All different subjects, yet the one in his hand, very old but with concepts too modern for its print. Physics, she knew physics, and she knew no book that old should contain those formulas and concepts.

The potions too, were out of place, seeming so innocent as they sat glowing on his desk. They were very sophisticated and it had been long rumored among the desert women that these arts were lost among the Hylian people. They had forgotten their past and in so doing were doomed to repeat themselves endlessly.

"You haven't asked my name, do you already know it?" She asked.

"No."

"You can call me Alya."

She discovered later that it was very difficult to discover just who or what he was supposed to be. Before the mission she had studied the government, finding the weak links, and which death would hurt the most.

He had never come up.

Yet when she looked back she realized dimly that he was there, photographs, always to the side of the picture the edge of the crime scene. Never centered, never in focus, and always walking away looking over his shoulder dressed in green.

It wasn't just the photographs or the histories that eluded him either. In court he was the old spirit, the thing pushed out to make way for modernity, but always there on the outskirts just watching for opportunity. The Hylians felt more than saw him, they paused in their whisperings whenever he passed by.

She was different, they knew her. When she passed the whisperings increased, she was the foreign terrorist that belonged to the champion of Hyrule. That unnamed spirit that was not to be trifled with.

She referred to him as Link and this might have been presumptuous but she preferred a solid name to any vague inexplicable title.

They were standing in the ballroom, both of them to the side, watching as the dancers whirled in each other's arms. The princess sat in her throne watching each pair with strangely clear blue eyes that seemed only to absorb.

Alya had never given much thought to the fourteen year old princess of Hyrule. Link however, said she was a prophet and that her birth had doomed her father to a short rule.

"How do you know that?" Alya asked sharply and he smiled.

"Tradition." He said coolly in response.

Alya regarded the girl with a short laugh, "That's a rather pathetic tradition."

"It's not their fault." Link said with a sigh folding his green clad arms, "They don't know any better."

Something about the way he said it, the way he watched her, made her think that this statement referred to her as well. To everyone in Hyrule and beyond. She suddenly felt that this young man, hardly older than a boy, was older than Hyrule itself.

It was hard to tell what age he was because his face appeared to shift, he had looked older in the dark, sharper eyed with lack of light, but in the hall his bright blue eyes glowed and he looked younger than her.

The dancers hardly spared him a glance, looking only at her curiously, whispering and snickering before their eyes twitched to the young man in green and they looked away again. Yes, he had been here longer than them, longer than any of them cared to remember and she could tell just by looking at their faces. He was the presence of the forgotten magic that had once defended Hyrule's borders.

"So what will happen to the king then, is he sacrificed to the goddesses?" Alya asked watching his face for a sign of emotion.

"Not exactly, not in a way most would view it, but some might call it that." He paused and then relented filling her in, "She's the first born. When there is a crown princess in the royal family she is always given the name Zelda. She is the first Zelda in over three hundred years. It's a sign, an omen that few recognize."

"An omen?"

The room seemed to grow darker as he turned his face fully toward hers his eyes pinning her until all the room seemed to disappear and grow insignificant beneath shadows and dust. His face grew grim and she saw something other than the pleasant mask he had shown her over the last few days; that god-like persona he hid carefully beneath human features had seeped into his eyes.

"It means that her father, mother, any close or distant relative, all will die before she reaches adulthood and that she will inherit the throne through the blood of her people painted on these castle walls. It means that the play will start once again and all the old characters will take their positions on the stage behind the silver curtain. And there we will wait, in anticipation, until it starts once again."

She brought a flashlight into his room, he had stared disapprovingly of it at first preferring his candles, but she responded she couldn't see anything in small flames. On his walls were many things she hadn't noticed before; old maps that yellowed at the edges, brightly painted masks that stared through dead eyes, letters with illegible handwriting, and then drawings. It was the drawings that caught her eye, of places, creatures, and people; many different people all old with only faint color left in them.

He caught her staring at one of them and walked behind her slowly.

"Her name was Saria." He said and she turned to look at him surprised at the amount of nostalgia caught in his voice. Normally she could never tell what he was thinking, she looked back at the girl in the picture, green hair and blue eyes.

"What happened to her?" She asked.

One of his hands reached out to the picture and touched the girl's forest green hair, "She faded out of this world." His hand distanced itself then and fell uselessly back to his side, "Once the trees dreamed of being human, children who lived forever, and these dreams were called the Kokiri. They lived isolated for a long time but then Hylians spread and the trees stopped dreaming."

She looked at him and only said hollow words, "I'm sorry."

He shook his head and motioned to the portraits on the wall, "They're all gone now, they can't hear you or me, there's no use in words that mean nothing when no one is listening."

And she realized that they weren't merely for his own memory but a shrine, to those who everyone else had forgotten, and that they rested in the candle light so that only he could honor their forgotten memory.

"So what is it you do here?" She asked him one morning looking at a stack of papers that he had brought in to the room and left on his desk. He flipped through them idly with a red pen, marking here, marking there.

He didn't look up but continued to write, "You haven't figured it out?" He asked a note of amusement in his voice and she felt that had he been another man he would have questioned her worth as an assassin.

She frowned but didn't waste the breath to argue with words he hadn't said, "No."

She found she had picked up his habit of leaving words out of sentences. There were many things she could have said, should have said, but didn't.

She had noticed many things in the weeks that she had been on her feet. He always attended royal events as the champion, a hero retired, not truly in charge of any position but there more for decoration. He was acknowledged but only distantly, as if off-hand, outside of the public eye. However, he was not merely decoration either, he was summoned to meetings late in the night by the king, the guard, the advisor, always by a soldier who was unsure quite what he was supposed to be seeing.

No one crept too close and no one asked too many questions. Although he was young and quite handsome he found himself alone at the balls looking out from the sidelines with a fond smile. No one waved to him in the hallways, no one spoke to him in the library, they would look and then swiftly look away. Yet, anything he asked for he instantly received. Supplies, books, potions, paper, charcoal, ink, anything at all no matter how odd was there at his convenience without a second glance.

At first she had thought he was some royal bastard, kept out of the public eye but indulged dutifully as any other royal shame. There was certainly enough tension, and yet, that wasn't quite it. When the king looked at him from across the room Alya saw a man that was not ashamed but terribly afraid as if looking at some great ineffable being who would stand in the same position long after he himself had died.

"I wait." He answered for her setting down his pen.

"For what?" She asked.

"For when I am needed again." He motioned then to the papers, "This is simply to idle the time away but is overall irrelevant. I try to lengthen this period of waiting as best I can but I fear it's coming to an end and there's nothing to be done."

"What are you waiting for?"

He turned then looked her fully in the face his eyes darker than usual. It was as if he was evaluating her, not as a person or an enemy but a cog in a machine. To him she was little more than clockwork, another step in the game that would lead him closer to the time the curtains rose, "You, in part." He said.

She paled and said, "An assassination attempt?"

"Unhappiness and dissatisfaction." He supplied for her, "The provinces are growing restless there is a southern wind rising through the land and it will become a hurricane. The cry for independence is too strong and it will break mountains soon enough."

Her eyes lit up and she moved forward thinking back to that day, that fateful day where she failed, "So then, there will be a revolution?"

Her hope shattered as she looked into his eyes and saw nothing but pity, a pained pity that seemed too sharp to be human, "No."

He paused and then continued in a softer voice, "There's a story you need to hear, before you'll understand, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell it."

There was once a raw and untamed power in this land; there still is.

We were three, as we have always and will always be three. Power, Courage, and Wisdom. Yet, for all that we are we're unbalanced. Wisdom forgets, sheds her skin, changes with the era and the time. I remain the same, entering in and out of the world, seeking out the silence and the solitude and returning when called. And Power, Power remains caged until one day we can no longer contain him.

We are caught in our own revolution, our own turning of the endless divine wheel.

There was a great war during my childhood and the great three powers all had their parts to play. The land was nearly destroyed and the smell of smoke drifted through the winds. I was charged with the task of defeating Power, who had come from the desert, and driving him back into a cage of the sages' making. It worked and when it was done I was sent back, I thought that was the end, I left Hyrule and returned many years later, changing form and memory, until I realized…

Until I realized that it doesn't stop. The cage breaks and we find ourselves in the same position as before. The wheel, that wheel of revolution, continues to turn as it always has. This is the mark that destiny makes, this is why its so easily read, because we have been here before and we will be here again.

And as I returned I saw the world for the great wheel that it truly was. And I realized, that if I allowed myself to pass on, to forget and be reborn as Wisdom chooses, then I would play that same role again.

One of us had to stop the pattern, one of us had to choose to stop the wheel.

I am their reminder of things greater than themselves. I stand guard and keep the wolves from our throats. I stand guard against the wheel and pray that it is enough for us and for them.

Perhaps it is; perhaps it isn't.

Author's Note: So this is really old and sort of incomplete, but, sitting half forgotten on my computer I figured I might as well post part of it. If there's interest then I'll work on the second half and wrap it up but otherwise I'm fine with this as is. Just figured I might as well get it off my desktop at any rate.

Thanks to readers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I obviously don't own The Legend of Zelda.