11. The End

"CURSE YOU…ZELDA! CURSE YOU…SAGES! CURSE YOU…LINK! Someday, when this when this seal is broken, I will exterminate your descendants! As long as the Triforce of Power is on my hand…"

I tried to block Ganon's voice from my mind as I took Link and myself to a kind of "shelf" in the Sacred Realm. It would give us some privacy, and since it wasn't exactly "sacred" (trust me, you don't want to know what made it removed) it wouldn't hurt us.

It did, however, look like it was made entirely of clouds. Romantic, in a way, but sappy.

Oh who was I kidding? This was going to be sappy as hell.

"Where is this place?" Link asked when we got there.

"Somewhere we can be alone." I said simply. There was no time to waste on explanations. I looked at Link. I wanted to memorize his face. "Link…you did it. You defeated Ganondorf, you saved Hyrule, I don't think anyone will ever forget you, I…I know I won't."

"What do you mean?" Link asked, he looked at me sharply.

"You…don't belong here Link. This isn't your world." I bit my lip and looked away. I couldn't look into those forest green eyes. "I wish it didn't have to be like this, I swear I do, but…but I want what's best for you, and you deserve to live the part of your life that was taken from you."

"You're sending me back?" Link stared at me. "But Zel-"

"Please don't make this any harder than it already is," I snapped, harsher than I meant to. "Just…just give me the Ocarina of Time and you can get back to your life." Link opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. I didn't want to hear it. "I will work here, to rebuild Hyrule. I'll miss you, more than you can imagine, but it'll be all right."

"No it won't," Link said softly.

"What?" I looked at him, surprised.

"It won't be all right," he repeated. "I know you Zel, it'll be awful for you, but I know you're strong, and eventually it'll be okay. Not all right, but okay."

"So…you agree?"

"That I have to go back?" I nodded. "I guess. If you say that's how it has to be, I'll go along with it. I won't lie to you, part of me really wants to go back, to go home. But most of me… Dammit Zel!"

I blinked. Where had that come from?

"Before I go, I have to say one thing."

"Link-"

Link started digging in his pack. "Don't try and stop me okay? I have to get this out before I lose my nerve." He took a deep breath. "I love you Zel, with all my heart and soul."

I inhaled sharply as the words struck me.

"I think I've loved you since the moment I met you, but it took me longer than it should have to realize it. I loved Sheik too, and I don't have to tell you how much that messed me up." He smiled wryly. "The moment I saw who you really were, this incredible weight dropped off me, but then an even bigger one dropped on, because I knew I loved you, and I knew it was doomed." He had removed the Ocarina of Time from his pack, and now reached out and pressed it into my hand. "Now send me back before I do something I'll regret."

There were tears in my eyes as I glared at him, but I didn't care. "Damn you," I whispered, I couldn't speak any louder. "Why do you have to do this now?"

"Was I supposed to do it some other time?"

I shook my head, and the tears spilled down my cheeks. "No, but it's so hard now…"

He looked at me, a serious expression on his face. "Zel, right now I want to do something that I know I shouldn't do. And unless you send me back fast, I'll do it."

It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then I smiled. "Don't tempt me."

"I'm trying not to."

"I love you."

He blinked.

"Goodbye Link."

I played the Ocarina with shaking breath, sending Link back where he belonged. Back where I couldn't reach him.

Tears stung my eyes and clouded my vision, and as I finished the song, I blinked hard to clear them away. But they didn't clear.

Wait a second? What was going on? Why couldn't I see? And why did I suddenly feel like I was lying in a bed with silk sheets?

Because I was.

I sat up and stared around, dashing the tears from my eyes with a ridiculously ruffled sleeve.

I recognized that sleeve. I recognized this bed, the curtains around it... But how could I be here?

I looked down at myself. Small soft hands with short bitten nails and nary a callous in sight. A small, shapeless torso without a single scar. Muscleless arms that had never lifted anything more deadly than a sewing needle.

There could be no doubt about it. I was a child again.

"What the hell!" I exclaimed before I could stop myself.

There was a gasp from the room beyond the bed. I crawled to the side of the bad and flung aside the curtains, to find a maid previously in the middle of preparing my breakfast staring at me in shock.

"What?" I snapped.

"N-nothing your highness. Forgive me," she curtsied hurriedly.

"Damn," I muttered. "I forgot about this."

"Your highness?"

"It's nothing." I smiled winningly. "Could you find Miss Impa for me?"

"Of course your highness," the maid, I think her name was Jenne, curtsied again and swept from the room.

I climbed out of the ridiculously huge and frilly bed and hesitantly approached the small table on which Jenne had laid my breakfast. I t looked good, and I hadn't had a decent cup of tea in years...

When Impa arrived I was on my third cup of the best tea on the goddesses' green earth, and just finishing my second piece of toast.

"Your highness? Are you all right?" she asked as she came in. She was frowning at me. "That maid you sent seemed rather...rattled."

"Long story," I said with my mouth full. Impa frowned harder and I swallowed before continuing. "Impa, something rather big has happened..."

And so I told her. Not the whole story, I left out all the personal stuff, especially about Link and me. I also left out her tempestuous affair with that younger man, since it hadn't ended well and she hadn't wanted me to know about it. But everything else I went into in great detail.

It took two hours, and when it was over she just stared at me for some time. "That was...some dream," she said finally.

I stared at her, dismayed. I had thought that she would believe me; I'd never lied to her before, not at this point in time, so why did she think it was just a dream? "It wasn't a dream," I said simply. "But I don't know how to convince you otherwise." I stared into my teacup for a moment, until I remembered something. "Oh!" I looked back up at Impa. "What's the date today?"

She told me, and immediately my heart started pounding. Today was the day.

The day I had first met Link.

I spent the rest of the day in the garden, waiting. I was setting myself up for disappointment, I knew, but I couldn't help but hope. It had been sometime in the afternoon, I wished desperately I could remember the exact time, when Link had come. So I stood there, waiting, for hours.

I was looking in the window at my father's throne room, bored, when I heard footsteps and breathing behind me. Heart pounding, I turned.

"Hi," Link said, at a loss for words.

"Hi," I replied, equally lost.

For a moment we stared at each other, then…

"Link!" I cried, flying towards him.

"Zel!" he cried right back.

Suddenly our arms were around each other and we were laughing, crying, jumping up and down, spinning around, babbling incoherently, acting like, well, children. Link was crying "Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" over and over again.

After an eternity of hyperactive joy at our reunion, Link and I pulled apart, looked at each other, and laughed. "Okay," he said, wiping his eyes, "that was fun."

I nodded, still laughing. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."

"So was I." Link took my hand and held it up between us. "But neither of us ever have to be afraid of that again."

And, for almost two months, we weren't.