A/N: Hello and welcome to my newest fixation! If there's any remnants of html tags in this I'll throw a fit- mark my words, doc editor

Anyhow, Zelink, pre-calamity, and rated M to be safe. Enjoy!

It's dreary, the weather.

A light mist has settled itself in the gardens. Rain drizzles from a gray expanse, thick like wool and as dense as the troubled haze in her own head. They're little pinpricks of chill that somehow manage to seep through the airtight stitching of this stuffy, insufferable dress.

Zelda thumbs through the rose bushes. Her breath fogs over velveteen petals as she searches for the healthiest of the batch. The stems shift without warning, and a stray thorn finds her knuckle. She hisses, pulling away.

Cold as her fingers are, it hurts more than usual: a razor sharp sting radiating over skin that's already as pink as the roses.

The blood on her lips tastes rancid when she presses the wounded appendage there. Better not to let it stain the white of her dress, she thought, or the handmaids may scold her again. However, the memory it sparks serves to make her reconsider which is the lesser evil.

Sand buried her hands. Searing and hot and itching in the heat, but no more burning than the air in her lungs as she desperately tried to level her frantic breaths; it burned no more than her eyes as she tried to see past the glare of sunlight and to a boy with eyes as blank and blue as the sky at his back.

'I'm sorry,' a voice thick and rough with disuse, filled with an emotion completely absent in his face. Red down his forehead. Dripping onto his tunic. 'It's my fault.'

She'd nearly leapt out of her skin in shock. The first words he'd spoken as her guard, and they were an apology?

It'd wrapped vines of thorns around her heart and yanked them tight. She's been waiting for them to loosen, but after two weeks, it's starting to seem like they never will.

The reason is clear. The remedy is clear, but knowing where to find the courage isn't.

Soft, cream colored fabric enters her peripheral. A handkerchief. Zelda follows the length of the arm holding it out and to a face as flat and dreary as the clouds behind it. Link. Of course. She looks away, unsettled more by the small act of kindness in his palm than the ever-haunting knowledge of who and what he is.

"...Thank you," she murmurs, taking it and wrapping it around her finger.

The tip of his head and he's out of sight again. Her expression rots into something bitter as she spares a glance to the basket settled by her knees. Mounds of rose heads. Ingredients for an antiseptic salve she bets will be useless by the time she finishes making it. Especially so by the time she manages to present it to the intended party.

The cut on his forehead is almost healed now that the stitches are gone, after all.

...He could keep it for later, though? He's bound to get more cuts, and elixirs are only really necessary for more serious wounds. Yes- that's it. It will still be useful. It's not a wasted effort.

Zelda comes up with as many justifications as she can while she continues sorting through the bushes. She can't let herself find an excuse to back out. Otherwise, the thorns and the guilt will never go away.

The basket rustles when she grabs it, and she cradles it to her chest as she stands. Crystalline drops on the petals. One or two clinging to her lashes. She blinks it away, and summons the bravery to check over her shoulder.

Link stands ten feet down the garden path, nestled right under an arbor filled to the brim with swift violets. Blue and purple so vivid against the muted colors it hurts to look at. His gaze matches hers for the brevity of a second before he watches the bushes. Hardly unusual; it's something she's trained him to do with all her hostility.

Best not to look the princess in the eye, otherwise she'll yell at you again.

'I'm sorry. It's my fault.'

The thorns constrict, and Zelda holds her roses tighter.

She resents him. She's always resented him.

But this time, it's just because he'd taken the words right out of her mouth.

Zelda's eyes dart from paper to an open book.

They move with her hand as she flips the pages, copying down the information there as quickly as possible. It's a time sensitive task; her father will be back in the castle tomorrow morning, and she's sure the moment he appears he'll be all but kicking her out again now that she has run out of excuses to postpone her pilgrimage in favor of her studies.

And, who knows what punishment he has ready for her after reading Link's report of the desert? It could be a permanent ban from this library. Her study gutted. Confinement within a temple. Anything.

With hindsight baring the full extent of her own stupidity to her, she honestly couldn't blame him if he ordered all three.

Thus, Zelda needs materials she can review as she travels. Things she can hide away- like a squirrel preparing for a harsh Winter.

Despite the urgency of her work, her hand slows. Her eyes begin to dart to the shadow draped along the shelves next to her rather than the open book at her fingertips. It's evidence of a boy who otherwise has no presence, and it makes it awfully hard to concentrate, because all she can think of is the silence he lives saturated in and all the implications that she'd never been aware of until she'd had the simple revelation that his voice is different from before.

Deeper, is all.

It's not strange by any means; it wasn't a drastic change. In fact, it'd be strange if it hadn't, given that the last time she'd ever heard him speak was when they were still practically children.

They'd met when she was thirteen, and he the same age. In the town square, actually.

Link adrift, flitting in and out of view in the passing crowd. And her far behind him, praying that he and the scabbard in his hand were just a trick of the torrid Summer air as she pushed and shoved her way through the rabble to reach him. Wax and wings and heat; a girl throwing herself at the very thing that would drain her of any fight she had left.

Her hand reached his shoulder, grip like a vice. Link whirled around fast enough for her hand to fly away. Wide-eyed. Impossibly blue in the daylight.

That was her first impression of him: that he was furtive and far out of his element. Though, the coming years he'd spend playing out his role to perfection would suggest she isn't a very strong judge of character.

'...Can I help you, miss?' he'd asked after a long silence and an awkward smile. She only stood mute, hand still groping at empty air. 'I-I'm sorry, I'm really dumb. Have we met? Or, um-'

What a stony mess she'd been. What a talkative mess he'd been.

It's hard to imagine someone could go so long without a voice. Baffling, really. Perhaps that rambling boy really was a mirage.

She doesn't want to remember. That feeling of wanting to vomit at the feet of a bright-eyed fool who hadn't a clue in the world as to the magnitude of what or who either of them were. A boy from the country having lived a life of blissful ignorance.

Funny, to think that he's thrived in a world he hadn't been prepared for in the slightest, but the girl who had been born and raised by it is so lost.

A fish somehow drowning in water.

Zelda pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to rein in her focus. Stretching her arms, she leans back to stare up at the library windows overhead. There's nothing but her torch-lit reflection visible: a dark maze of shelves and tables. Even the stars aren't bright enough to shine their way through something as clear as glass.

Sighing with a closed mouth, her attention returns to a scroll that keeps trying to curl in upon itself. Her palm sweeps over to flatten it, dragging ink over the writing, and she clicks her tongue.

It's wadded up and thrown in a nearby bin. She has every intention to grab another and start anew, yet the clock's ticking suddenly strikes her with force.

Normally, Zelda would stay in the library for at least another two hours, ignoring both the call of sleep and the person stuck there with her whilst she does so. It's not a habit she can indulge in with the same peace of mind as before.

In that moment of self-awareness, it occurs to her that the space around them is quiet and dusty, and smells like parchment older than a Zora.

Nothing like gunpowder, fire, or steel, is it?

Slowly, she turns in her seat. It creaks as she drapes her elbows over the back, tucks her chin against them, and observes the only soul who has ever managed to watch her study and not make some demeaning, cruel comment about it.

Late as it is, he must not be as attentive as usual. His face is turned away and lax and lost in thought. It startles him when he finally notices the burn of her stare- blue eyes snapping to hers before his chin does. It doesn't last long before he chooses to inspect the floor for cracks.

Zelda doesn't stop looking. It forces him to take another glance, bothered, and check over his shoulder like there could be someone else behind him. A head cocks when he sees nothing but warped spines and splintered wood.

She feels great sympathy for him; it must be awfully strange to have the undivided attention of someone who has spent years deliberately ignoring your existence. Though, as much grief as people give him for his silence, it paints him as a very typical Hyrulean soldier.

They are invisibility and stoicism at their finest. It's only natural for the best of them to encapsulate both, just as it's only natural for that voice of his to change.

She squints. Her nose scrunches, and her mouth starts moving on its own.

"...This must be terribly boring for you."

Nothing changes in him. Calm as stagnant water, yet as see-through as a swamp.

"Three years spent out there, fighting since you were thirteen. How grand it must have been," she whispers, the words directed at him and nothing at all. The musings of a girl who knows she'll receive no answer. "The youngest knight in Hyrule, charging forward into hordes of monsters with cannon fire and the shouts of hundreds of men at his back... But now you're here, watching a girl scribble away for hours on end. Brooding at her desk… What a waste of time."

She looks away, then, something burning in her core. "What a waste of talent."

Her arms slide away, and she begins writing again.

"I'll confess, it's what bothers me the most. That he's taken an asset as powerful and versatile as you, and put you to the most unproductive work imaginable." Zelda picks up her pen before turning the next page of her textbook. Her voice has a harsher scrape to it than her writing. "...Why? Because of tradition? Does he think it's truly best, letting that dictate our methods? Tradition spoils like milk."

The word comes out with more venom than she intends. Her breath catches. She bites her unruly tongue, stamping down a surge of anger. It's a crop better not attended to. It would only grow like a weed, blind her and leave her tangled in a thicket.

It'd nearly killed her once already.

"Hylia, my cursed mouth," she says, her head bent low. "I shouldn't be saying such things to you... Please, forget I said anything."

The pen shakes in her hand. She curls her fingers around her wrist to still it. However, she drops it when the boy speaks words that don't make a shred of sense.

"...It's not boring."

His voice elicits a violent shiver up her spine. Like a splash of frigid water.

Zelda looks over her shoulder. Rigid. There's the barest wrinkle on Link's forehead: a frown on his face that makes it clear he regrets piping up at all. Still, he speaks again with that hoarse voice and a rising confidence.

"It's not a waste, either… because I was able to protect you."

She stares. He doesn't look away. She keeps on. He keeps on. Her heart beats faster.

"...No," she murmurs, the thorns twisting. Her voice wavers, "No, that's not it… The point is that it... it's late, and you haven't even eaten dinner because of me."

Thus, she stands and leaves before he can see the water in her eyes.

The nights in Hyrule are dangerous.

The day, however, is always peaceful.

Things are hardly so black and white in reality, yet, during one outing in particular, she'd been too shortsighted and impulsive to remember that. The sun had been trying its hardest to fry her faster than the fury in the pit of her belly, after all.

In the end, what happened had been entirely in her control; she has no one else to blame but herself for the sharp edges and pale faces now featured so frequently in her dreams- no matter what Link believes.

It was cruel, what she'd done. Petty and childish- and only served to paint her far too well as a typical princess.

Such behavior calls for a punishment. Now planted in the middle of their castle's great bridge, she knows she's finally going to receive one.

And for once, she's at peace with it.

Flags dance in the wind. A line of black and white guardsmen open metal doors to allow one man to pass.

"Welcome back, father," she says, sharing none of the bravado their trumpets possess.

"Thank you, dear."

He doesn't stop as he trods past. She follows without another word, trying to measure whether his disregard is the result of a brewing anger or his usual indifference.

"Tell me of your travels."

"You did not already receive word from him?"

The boy pacing on their heels, that is, mingling with the small river of dark sentinels even farther behind.

"I have," he drawls the notes in a low timbre. Impatience. "Tell me your report."

Zelda swallows thick. "Then… you know there was an incident."

The stroke of a beard. "...Yes, two or three bokoblins. That should hardly be worth mentioning with a guard like yours. What of it?"

...Odd.

Wondering if he misread a thing or two, she rolls her lips and tests his knowledge:

"There was more, actually..."

Plenty more.

( 'There were thirty monsters in that camp!'

'Look at you, you don't have a single burn. How in Hylia's name did you avoid all those electric arrows?'

'Someone tell our Lady-'

Zelda chugged a cool elixir back then, watching Link caught in a huddle of Gerudo soldiers.

There'd been a camp of lizalfos on their way to town. He'd beaten them all back only to discover that it had been proving an impossible challenge for Urbosa's army. Hardly a shock; a single lizalfos spelled serious trouble for even three knights, and the desert was already stretched thin with all the space for its women to cover.

But for Link? Apparently, thirty barely left him winded.

He shuffled back and forth, blinking rapidly at their praise like it actually was a shock. Like he couldn't understand. Zelda may be mild-mannered when in the presence of most, but she's always had a temper that could flare as easily as flashpaper.

Link scratched his head, kicked modestly at the dirt, and flare it did.

Naturally, rather than walk right up and inform him how much she hated that innocent look of his, Zelda swallowed down the rest of that foul elixir and concocted a way to express her distaste more indirectly for the rest of that trip:

Running away. )

The second layer of gates rattle shut behind them, pebbles bouncing beneath their feet as they march higher up the castle's winding roads. It's then that her father halts and turns with the hint of a scowl in his narrowed eyes. She cranes her neck as far as it will go, enveloped by the man's shadow.

Her father waits.

"...Lizalfos," she says. "He cleared out a great infestation on his own while protecting me. Lady Urbosa had to thank him personally." His eyebrows raise, taken aback, and Zelda's words have the tremor of incredulity when she speaks again, "He… didn't even tell you that?"

The man's entire face scrunches before it all falls away with a loud gufwah. "Boy, how many times have I told you that you are too modest in your reports! You clean out the desert and choose only to tell me of three bokoblins?"

Her father traipses around her a second time. Zelda's attention sluggishly trails after, his fond chiding only half-reaching her as she tries to process what on Earth is going on- or rather, hasn't been said. Link's posture is perfectly straight, but his face a little sheepish as he tries to brace against the waves of compliments coming from the most powerful man in Hyrule.

"Is there anything else you're hiding from me?" he chuckles. "A molduga, perhaps?"

Hylia, it dawns on her, he knows absolutely nothing.

Link's smile starts to curdle. Her father's hand pats his back with enough force to match a Goron, and, during that moment, blue meets green.

Tell him the rest, her stare insists. Implores. Tell him about that oasis.

If there is a time to both gain reward and deliver real consequences for her actions, it is now.

Like that temper, Zelda has always had a curiosity that could flare as easily as flashpaper.

Link's mouth stays defiantly shut, his expression sours like she'd been the one to blab an awful, awful secret, and flare it does.

"I assigned him to you so that you could follow the Springs' Path safely," her father remarks ten minutes later.

Zelda's hands wring together behind her back, eager to hear the order she already knows he'll give so she can be left alone with the source of all the questions currently lodged in her throat and choking her half to death.

"Tomorrow, I want to hear what conclusion your talks with Lady Urbosa came to. After that, you will quit wasting everyone's time with visits to the Beasts and return to your duties as a daughter of this family."

"Yes, father."

No protest? is the question in his pursed lips. Regardless, he's pleasantly surprised.

"Good. Bring our Champion with you later, I wish to hear more about this camp, as well."

He makes way for the throne room, and Zelda waits until the trail of guards after him are no longer visible before taking off in the opposite direction as fast as her dress will allow. Link follows. Their steps are heavy but muffled against the plush carpets. Static sparks at the ends of her skirt.

They round three more corners, climb up a set of stairs, and push past a pair of heavy oak doors before reaching the walkway to her study. Zelda whirls around, launching into her interrogation before her dress is even finished twisting around her legs.

"Why did you say nothing?"

There is a joke somewhere in that question, she knows. If he sees the irony, he blatantly isn't amused by it. He blatantly has no intention of answering, either.

Seeing no other option, she plays a card she never thought she would, "Speak. That is an order."

"...Unnecessary," is his droning response.

"The monster camp may have been unnecessary, but assassins seem like a rather pertinent subject to me."

He blinks as if he can't see the question in her words. Her arms cross tight over her chest, fingers drumming, and he has to know she won't let him get away with that kind of explanation.

His gaze stretches miles elsewhere. "...Would you like me to tell His Majesty?"

"No… You'll only get in trouble." Her eyebrows pinch, her head swimming. "But, you're captain of the royal guard. You know better- you have to know you did nothing wrong. My father could have punished me, set me straight."

Link takes a moment to mull it over. "...There isn't any point."

"What does that mean?"

He takes a soundless, deep breath, and repeats, "Unnecessary, Your Highness. I have no issue keeping track of you, normally."

Right, he certainly doesn't. Even the walls of Gerudo town had been unable to prevent him from keeping an eye on her; just an hour after she decided that she'd put all her energy into avoiding him, she spied him sitting on the aqueducts in a pretty outfit and stuffing his mouth full of hydromelons.

( 'My, my, however could he have managed that?' Urbosa had drawled with exaggerated wonder.

'You're conspiring against me,' Zelda accused, her foot tapping faster than a rabbit's as she tossed several vicious glares to the waterways. 'To think the day would come.'

The woman chortled. 'I'm conspiring for your safety, my bird.'

'In town?'

'There are women in the Yiga,' she pointed out.

Zelda squinted at the glint of her jewelry, despising the logic in her argument. Her own sensibility may have been flaking away with every passing hour he loomed over her, but it hadn't left her just yet.

Having such a soft spot for her, the woman swapped sides the moment Zelda started to pout.

'...You know, I need to get eyes on my desert. Why don't I join you during your survey tomorrow?' A wink from her, mischievous as her voice dipped to a whisper, 'I'm curious to see if he can track a Gerudo in the desert.'

Zelda grinned malevolently, and Urbosa just chuckled again before sauntering off.

Even with the woman's help sneaking around, Link managed to beat them at their own game eventually. How he monkeyed his way up a four thousand foot tall machine was beyond her ability to grasp.

If he'd looked the slightest bit annoyed by her behavior, then Zelda would have settled for a victory at that point. Yet, overnight, the way he regarded her had become different; it possessed that indescribable, immeasurable weight of pity. She'd been on the receiving end of it too many times to mistake it for anything else, especially after enduring it for months during her first two pilgrimages. His expression was just like those knights standing above, watching her crawl out of a spring freezing cold and empty-handed more times than she could count- every one of them too scared of angering a small girl to lend a hand. To so much as offer a word of comfort.

She hadn't a clue whatever engendered that shift in Link, but it made her feel like she'd been standing in those springs again. Bitter and horribly alone. Humiliated.

Consequently, her desire to flee from him grew into a profound need that overshadowed even the prospect of real danger- something which reared its head given the next opportunity.

The sounds of monsters somewhere out of sight were what started it. Shouts and clashing metal: a small troop of soldiers overwhelmed by a sudden ambush of monsters. Naturally, Link left to help.

Stay hidden, he directed with the gesture of his hand.

Zelda was obedient for all the time it took for him to vanish into that storm of dust and mayhem. The devil that was pride was perched so quaintly on her shoulder, pointing to his sand seal and presenting a plan just too simple not to try:

Take the harness and leave.

How he ran fast enough to save her life had also been beyond her ability to grasp. )

"You don't draw the line at sabotage?" her arms cut through the air, hands moving without thought. "I left you stranded in the desert and you're just going to let me get away with it?"

"It was my fault," Link insists.

This stance of his is plain mad. Intolerable.

"How?!" her voice rises, thin and liable to crack. "Did you throw away your own seal's harness? Tell me to leave you behind? There isn't sense in any of this!"

Standing a mere three feet apart, she can see it when his jaw tenses. Eyes close, his mouth twisting into a bitter, amused grin. "...There really isn't."

"Yes! So what else are you hiding-"

His head snaps toward a set of rattling footsteps. Another knight pokes his own onto the bridge, bowing.

"Your Highness," he greets before addressing Link. Both hands point at him with a joking smirk, "Lunch? There's still some prime roast left if ya hurry!"

Zelda's mouth opens to object, but Link is already bowing and running off like there's more urgency in a plate of meat than this lie he's dragged them both into.

The other man sidles into the boy's place. He blinks owlishly upon taking in the foul atmosphere left behind. "...Should I call him back?"

She smiles bright as sunshine, cooing, "No, thank you, Simon."

The knight's mustache curls with a very dubious frown, and Zelda stalks into her study with all the stomping grace of a bear into its den.

Palms on her desk. Nails tap against the oak surface as the door falls shut. Her mind races.

It's clear he won't tell her a thing. Most likely, he would just lie again- given that he apparently has no problem replacing three assassins with drooling bokoblins in his reports to the king of Hyrule.

There's a chance she'd find the will to mind her own business if she wasn't now directly involved in keeping this secret. Moreover, if there's one thing she managed to inherit from her mother, it is that she is a born scientist.

It's only so long that she can ignore a mystery or a question, especially one that revolves around her with such certainty as a planet's orbit. Not knowing who her figurative other half is nags her more than ever, and prolonged ignorance is simply intolerable for someone who prefers the title of a scholar over Goddess Maiden.

Wings flutter. The scrape of talons.

A blue jay caws in the window.

It tells her it's time to do research, and she very much agrees.