A/N: this is completely unbeta'd and written in my phone's notes app. Spot any errors? DM me! See the end for more notes.
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A Hero's Chance
Prologue 2: Firsts
Chapter summary: Zelda fights.
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For Her, the century lasts both an eternity and only a thousand tiny moments. She is barely lucid for most of Her time battling the Calamity; as it turns out, suppressing an ancient entity's consciousness requires Her to suppress Herself as well. Between the stretches of time spent numb in the bright void of Her magic, She recalls flashes of action—the Calamity bucking from Her grip in an attempt to escape; a set of impermanent arms, glowing with the holy power granted by the goddess blood flowing through Her veins, reaching out from pools of liquid light into the murk and reek of the Calamity's kinesphere; Her lit hands wrapping soundly around a sinewy neck, throttling the monster with a strength She never knew She possessed and dragging it back into the light of the void. Those are the only moments She has a real body, and She can feel Ganon's demonic power churning in a gut She forgot She ever had as it calls its servants back from the dead. Every time, Her eyes take in the red light of the moon like She's never comprehended color before—like She's never had eyes to see with before—but observing the real world in these moments is not what She was made for. Her only task is to keep the demon down in the abyss, and She does. In those flashes Her ephemeral body surges out and pulls the Calamity back into the light, drowning them both.
In the numb eternities between the Calamity's little rebellions, She doesn't know Herself from the light. She sees everything that happens in the land that might have been Her kingdom, once, but feels nothing for it. In the light, She is not Zelda, who lost her comrades, her kingdom, and her freedom to the Calamity; rather, She is the breath of wind that tames the grasses in Hyrule Field, She is every drop of water that sprays and thunders from the rapids in Faron, She is the screech of metal carts as they travel on rusted rails across Death Mountain. She is both everything and nothing, both the Goddess and every insignificant grain of sand in the desert. For most of the century, the Hylian princess "Zelda" doesn't exist at all.
It is amid this jarring sense of everythingness that She feels something change. Deep in a cave on a plateau, Her life-giving waters part as an altar ascends from the depths, revealing someone who has lain there since before She can remember for the first time in a century. She knows this man—Zelda knows this man, and Her entire being focuses on this one moment. Zelda finally, finally regains a mind to think with and lips to speak to him as he wakes.
"Link..."
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Zelda watches his adventures in the time between blood moons, now. The overwhelming ocean of her power recedes with his awakening, and she knows who she is, what she is doing, and what has been done to her for the first time since she started this whole endeavor. She keeps the Calamity down as well as she can while remaining conscious, but it seems Link's awakening strengthened the demon's resolve just as it strengthened hers.
Through Link's struggles regaining his memories, relearning his combat and culinary skills, and mastering both their friends' magics and his own reality-bending abilities, Zelda observes it all. Her newfound consciousness means she can feel emotions again, and she is worried for him nearly every moment he spends on this quest. With so few memories—Goddesses forgive Zelda for that—he is quite a bit more reckless, though no less quiet than he was in her lifetime. He collects fireflies for random strangers, saves travelers from monster attacks while clad in nothing but his undies, eats raw, bloody meat unflinchingly straight-faced, plays matchmaker for more than a few couples. He doesn't maintain his weapons—granted, he has never been good at that—and they shatter in his hands before he can rid himself of them. He climbs sheer cliffs and windmills overlooking canyons and steep, smooth spires, each time nearly falling to his death for the sake of getting a single seed from a childish forest spirit. He rides lynels and mountain gods just because he can.
Once upon a time she might have been annoyed with his shenanigans, but she has waited a hundred years in the stupor of being Hyrule so she supposes she can wait a bit longer. Watching this wilder version of her knight and all of his eccentricities as he traverses the continent is a welcome reprieve.
Still, the Calamity is stirring, and she can't spend another century fighting and waiting for Link to help her. "You must hurry, Link..."
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It's nearly a year after Link woke in that shrine before he storms Hyrule castle for good. He had come a handful of times before in search of weapons and supplies—the day he retrieved his old shield was suspiciously close to his eighteenth birthday, though retrospectively Zelda thinks he may not have known that at the time—but something about his approach this time around tells her he's finally ready. Every shrine has been activated, every Great Fairy has been freed from her watery prison, every Divine Beast is back under control and out of Ganon's hands. Link's bag is overflowing with Korok magic, his armor is overflowing with Fairy enhancements, and his body is overflowing with the magical gifts of their fallen allies and the vitality only a goddess can provide. The Sword that Seals the Darkness glows blue in his hand.
Zelda will help him in any way she can.
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When Zelda lands delicately in the scorched remains of Hyrule Field after the Calamity's final defeat, she realizes the scope of everything she missed during that horrific century. The skin on her arms tingles as the sun shines on it through the smoke in the air. The grass bends and crunches under her bare feet with every step. The air that fills her lungs for the first time in a hundred years is warm, but not hot, and she doesn't mind the taste of ash in her mouth because she can taste again. She can feel again. Her body is corporeal and she is alive. And most of all, in this life at least, she will never have to return to that void of her magic ever again.
"Link!" Her vocal cords vibrate pleasantly in her throat as she finally verbalizes the words she's been projecting to her knight all this time. She stumbles towards where she saw him go down, her shaking legs unused to carrying her own weight. She can barely contain her joy at simply existing, so she can't care less about what's 'proper for a lady' when she raises her voice and calls to him again, "Link, we did it! You were incredible—"
She stops for a moment then. She can see Link's horse across the field, the mare's nose bent over a boulder. Link must be over there, she thinks. But before she can get her legs working properly again, she sees the horse spook backwards as green light flashes on the other side of the boulder.
The princess doesn't think. "Link!" She shouts, running as fast as her unsteady legs will carry her to where her knight should be. She nearly ploughs into the horse's flank when she bungles her stop, but the mare is surprisingly patient with her as it catches her with its broad head. Her legs collapse underneath her as she looks to the place where her knight once lay, and it's only instinct when she slings an arm over the horse's neck to catch herself.
Link was definitely there only seconds ago; the grass is still depressed in the shape of a person, and bloody stains have turned some parts of the ground underneath to mud. Her Bow of Light lies innocently next to an unsheathed and painfully dull Master Sword in the trampled patch of grass, as if they'd been dropped there by someone with every intention of picking them up later. But Link is gone.
A/N:
come on guys there is one fic in the whole archive where Link doesn't keep the Master Sword in the beginning. Calm down. I got my reasons.
Notes:
• yall didn't really think I was gonna abandon Zelda and Hyrule for this fic, did you? Nah. I got BIG plans for ya girl Zelda. And the Master Sword ain't finished either. We're not done yet folks
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Sorry for how late this release is, after I posted the first prologue college really started kicking my ass. Plus I was looking at what I already wrote for Chapter 1 and 2 and I was like "yeah just one prologue ain't gonna fly for my setup" so I had to wait until I could find time between assignments to write up this second prologue
My semester ends May 10th. Maybe a chapter will come out between now (Apr. 19) and then, but if not I'll do my best to finish editing Chapter 1 and post it by that Sunday, May 12. Thanks for reading!