12. After the End

In retrospect, running away for a few days to meet Link's friends wasn't the best of ideas. That, plus the swearing (no one could figure out where I'd picked up all those words), got me confined to the castle for two weeks. But Link and I had been having trouble before then. Not relationship-wise, just trouble finding time for each other. Or, more specifically, I had been having trouble finding time for him.

It was my own fault really. Even at ten I had been a bit of a tomboy, but I'd been raised as a princess so my boyish tendencies were repressed. Spending seven years as a boy had...warped my princess mind into something completely different. That of a badass.

I was quickly reminded that challenging the pages to fisticuffs was not proper princess behavior. Neither was threatening their manhood with sugar tongs. Neither was swearing when I banged my shin/tripped over my skirts/was startled by Impa. Or just swearing in general.

I was proud of my swearing! I had raised it to...well, if not an art form at least a damn good way of expressing frustration. Other people got to swear all the time, but not princesses. Nooo, call one page a pussy and it's bread and water for three days.

That's why I went off with Link to see his home. My own home was never a home really, just a place where I lived and was forced to embroider flowers on napkins. I was treated like someone special, a dainty china doll, when I was a flesh and blood hylian. Link knew that, because he'd never been told that princesses were perfection. He knew I wasn't, because he'd seen me at close to my worst.

He didn't even tell his friends I was a princess, that's how great Link is. In fact he introduced me as his "true, true heart." It was so sweet I almost cried. But I didn't. I wouldn't cry in front of his friends.

I had a great time in the forest with him and the others. Running around, climbing trees, jamming with the skull kids. The only downside was that Link got a little down towards the end. It turns out one of his skull kid friends had gotten depressed and was sulking somewhere, and Link was worried about him.

After I got back I was grounded, then my lessons were doubled and I was forced to spend hours practicing my etiquette. Is it my fault that stuff is boring as hell? Of course, expressing that opinion just lost me even more freedoms.

I no longer had time for Link, and I told him so, regretfully. But I gave him the Ocarina of Time so he wouldn't forget to visit.

I missed him, desperately, but I knew he was better off not having to wait for me. Knowing that I couldn't hang out with him was at least better than hoping I would and finding out I couldn't.

But I still missed him, so I threw myself into my studies and tried to remember how to act the perfect princess. It took awhile, almost five months, but I eventually made enough progress that my lessons were cut back and I had time again.

I immediately ran away and went looking for Link.

"Zelda!" Saria exclaimed when she saw me come running into the village. "Is Link all right? Have you heard from him?"

My heart sank. "W- what?" I panted.

"Link!" she repeated. "He's at least kept in touch with you hasn't he?"

Wordlessly I shook my head.

"Oh dear..." she clasped her hands. "You didn't know did you?"

I shook my head again. "How long has he been gone?"

"More than three months, but he went off by himself a lot so he could have been missing for some time before that."

My heart was in my knees and sinking steadily. "Th- three months?"

"Uh-huh."

Three months ago, for three days, I'd had some very confusing dreams about Link being turned into different creatures, traveling through time, and being swallowed by the moon. It had all taken place in somewhere that was not Hyrule, despite the familiarity of all the faces. The dreams had been very vivid, like all my prophetic dreams, but had been so ridiculous that I'd ignored them. I was an idiot.

"Oh Link..." I felt tears dripping down my cheeks, and I didn't care this time. Link was lost, somewhere I couldn't reach him, and the goddesses only knew when, or if, he would return. I couldn't even hear the Ocarina at all. "Oh Link," I sobbed.

Saria was looking at me awkwardly. She had been...not cold, but at least distant, to me when I had visited. I was fairly sure she didn't feel the same way about Link as he did about her (he thought of her as a big sister) and had been jealous of me, but I couldn't be sure. Now she looked like she wanted to comfort me, but couldn't bring herself to.

"I- it's all right your highness," she said finally. "Link can take care of himself."

I stared at her, blinking the tears from my eyes. "How did you know?"

"Know?" Saria blinked. "Know what?"

"Who I am. I didn't want anyone to know that I'm...well, what I am."

"The princess you mean? I don't know how I learned it, I just think I always knew. Maybe Link told me."

"No, he's smarter than that." I looked at Link's house. It looked so...lonely. "I'm going to spend the night here," I said, walking toward it.

"Don't you have to be home?" Saria asked, following me. I wondered mildly when I would be taller than her.

"Yes," I answered simply. "But I'm not going anywhere just yet." Link had added one carving to the collection of monsters and stick figures at the base of his tree-home. L + Z, surrounded by a heart.

Link was so sweet.

He was also apparently a lot neater than I would have thought. Though there was a thin layer of dust on everything, all his possessions were on shelves or stored neatly under his bed or in the trunk against his wall. It looked like he had packed up, in preparation for a journey.

Oh Link, where were you?

Naturally I got in trouble when I got back to the castle, but I didn't care. Link was gone, and I didn't have a damn clue where he was. I was just going through the motions; wake up, eat, lessons, eat, lessons, dress, eat, embroider, go to bed, lie awake, sleep. I did that every day, and somehow the days passed.

Days became weeks; weeks became months; months, years. I just kept breathing in and out, sleeping and eating, and the time crawled along.

After awhile I started to be interested in what was happening around me again. The first day I proudly showed a new piece of embroidery to Impa, it had been a particularly difficult design, she scooped me up in her arms and announced how happy she was to have me back. It took me awhile to realize what she meant.

Things got better and better after that. Not good, I still missed Link, but better. Link's absence was like a toothache, never going away, but not something I had to dwell on. Even five years after he had disappeared I found myself writing down something funny that a page had done to tell Link about later. But then I remembered I didn't know when he'd be coming back.

And then, He showed up. The first of many Hes actually, but this one was the first and He stuck in my mind. His name was Vincent and He was the son of a noble. He was about my age (fifteen) and boring as hell. All He could talk about was his exploits on the battlefield (like a fifteen year old has ever seen battle) and His dogs.

I don't think anyone ever found out I was the one who put that toad in his stew.

After Vincent had been gone for a week, another He came. And I realized what was happening. I was fifteen years old, quite pretty (or so I'd been told), and the only child of the royal family of Hyrule. My father was trying to marry me off.

And so the war began! I was always coolly polite to the suitors when they came, but I slipped the maids an extra tip if they "forgot" to warm our visitors sheets, or happened to mention how mannish I could be. I showed not one iota of interest in anything any of the young men had to say, especially since I usually wasn't interested anyway. I knew more about swords than they did most of the time, and when I didn't I still didn't think they had to be so superior when they explained it to me.

After about eight months of these pompous peacocks I got a brilliant idea. I still remembered how to change myself into Sheik, I had made the spell myself so I wasn't about to forget it, and I used him to drive away many a He.

Soon stories began to spread about the masked man who came to the suitors in the middle of the night and challenged them to combat. The same young man who melted in and out of the shadows and stalked the steps of any visiting men. The same young man who had been seen laughing maliciously at the men as they fled the castle.

Then someone noticed that the masked man was a Sheikah, and Impa was questioned. I decided Sheik should go back into hibernation.

It was too bad, I had liked indulging my manhood again.

It took awhile, but the suitors grew bold again. I was almost seventeen now, and I would have to be married soon if I did not want to be labeled "difficult." Little did they know that was exactly what I wanted. This next batch of suitors were even worse than the first ones. Apparently my father had invited all the good ones first. Well bully for him, I still wasn't getting married. Not ever.

There was one suitor that I got along with, even though I didn't want to marry him; but I couldn't figure out why he wasn't like the others until I found him making out with a squire in the stables. It turned out to be the same squire I had called a pussy back when he was a page. No wonder I had liked that suitor. I had been a gay guy myself once.

I had decided, in some back part of my mind, that Link would return to me after seven years had passed. I turned seventeen, was still unmarried, and started spending a lot more time in my garden. On the day Link had come out of the Sacred Realm, in that alternate present, I stood in the garden all day and waited. My suitor at the time was confused and put off, especially when I didn't even come indoors to eat, but I didn't care.

Link didn't come.

Less than a fortnight later (had all that really happened in so short a time?) was the anniversary of Ganon's defeat and our return to childhood. My new suitor was just as put off as the last one. I didn't care.

Link didn't come.

I didn't know what to do any more. There weren't any more significant dates, so I no longer had the slightest clue when Link would be back. Not even a guess.

I wondered if Link did.

More time passed, more suitors came and went, so did my eighteenth birthday. Two weeks later my father called me to his chambers. Nervous, I went.

"Zelda," he said sternly when I came in. No one does stern quite like a king. "I think there is something you don't understand."

"There are plenty of things I don"t understand," I replied indolently, "but this isn't one of them."

"Then when are you going to choose a husband!" my father demanded.

"Never," I said simply. "I'm not getting married."

"Yes you are." My father drew himself up to his full height, which was substantial, and glared at me. "You may be the princess of Hyrule, but I am still your father, and your king. You will choose from the suitors you have seen over the last few years, and you will choose the one who will make the best king."

I opened my mouth, but I didn't know what to say.

"You may go," my king told me.

I left.

I threw myself on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Who of all those pompous buffoons would make the best king? Hell, I could be a better king than any of them.

I sat up. Yes, of course, that was the answer. There was precedent, I knew. My father's grandmother had been a ruling Queen, though she'd taken a Prince Consort in order to have children.

I almost laughed out loud. How would Impa react when I told her I wanted to be King?