Note: Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. This little series will be an anthology of Zelink one-shots that are each inspired by a different type of love, using the BOTW iterations of these characters. Their relationship in that title is so multidimensional that I thought the concept would work particularly well. Some will be post-Calamity, some will be pre, and one might even be slightly AU.

The rating of this collection will most likely raise for a chapter that I have planned, but we will cross that bridge if we get there.

Thanks!

Agape

[agape: unconditional love, the highest form of charity.; persists no matter the circumstances]

The clouds swept across the Blatchery Plain, ushering in a refreshing breeze that whistled through the grass below her feet. It blew gently against the viridescent binding of overgrown foliage that swaddled the now defunct machinery; scores of inoperative Guardians, frozen in the positions they had stalled in a century ago, were scattered across the meadow. A cluster of machines was gathered near the entrance to Fort Hateno, and Zelda shivered as the tragic memory of that fateful night replayed in her mind, again and again. Even now, in the peaceful quiet of the afternoon, she could still hear the heart-stopping chirps of the machines in her ear. Instinctively, her chest tightened in such a way that she thought she might very well be sick.

"Are you okay?"

Zelda turned with a miniscule shudder of a gasp. Link must have noticed her discomfort; he reached out with one hand and placed it on her shoulder, steadying her.

"I…"

Zelda turned to the echoes of the battlefield once more. "I don't remember there being so many…" She felt Link give her shoulder a tight, comforting squeeze, and she covered his hand with her own in reassurance. "I feel like I can barely breathe."

His hand moved from her shoulder, reaching for her own instead, and she felt him tug at her. "We can come back when you're ready."

Zelda wriggled away from him gently, pulling her hand from his grip. "No. It's fine. I'll be alright."

She proceeded deeper into the field, narrowly avoiding small puddles where the rainwater had collected from a previous shower. She moved further and further into the Guardian graveyard, eyeing each machine individually as she passed.

"What a shame," she whispered, recognizing the familiar sting of tears tickling the the corners of her eyes. She glanced behind her to make a note of Link's location and found that he was less than a step behind; he moved so quickly and quietly that Zelda sometimes wondered how it was that he did not descend from the Sheikah tribe.

"Well…I certainly don't regret it." Link grimaced at the empty husk of machine.

She turned to him once more and gave a plaintive smile.

"I certainly don't either. But what a tragic turn of events. This whole place is a reminder of the true extent of our losses. I don't know how I'll be able to face the Divine Beasts. And I certainly don't know how you boarded them, either."

Link nodded in understanding. "What helped is that when I entered them, I didn't have all of my memories back just yet. It didn't always feel like I was walking into my friends' graves." His voice was hardened.

Zelda clasped a hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing. Deep breathes in, deep breathes out, just as Impa had instructed.

"I'm sorry, I…" Link said hastily, noticing her reaction. "I didn't mean–

"No, no…it's fine. I'm so sorry, Link."

Zelda gave him a tearful look, attempting to smile through it. She took his hand of her own volition and squeezed it supportively.

"You've been through so much. You can stay right here, if you'd like. I'll hurry back."

The brilliant blue of Link's eyes shimmered in the sunlight. "No. I'll follow you."

"Let's move further, then," she instructed softly, keeping his hand firmly in her grasp, and they walked further into the plain together.

The waves of green had been littered with crushed stone, and Zelda had discovered a large patch of broadswords that had been plunged in the ground, their hilts raised skywards to honor the fallen. There had been many other men alongside them that that day; Zelda wondered if their bodies had been retrieved in the last one hundred years or if some had been left to wither away in the plain. Under normal circumstances, the vast open space and the pastoral terrain would have made a beautiful burial site.

With a fair amount of distance behind them, the low rumble of activity from the Dueling Peaks stable had long dissipated from the air, but nothing about the region felt empty. There was the murmuring of the river to the East, the wailing call of birdsong overhead, the sound of wild horses neighing in an adjacent field; but between the calm, humbling sounds of the wilderness, other sounds–sounds far more sinister and tragic–filled the spaces. The sound of Link's gasps and grunts of pain as he stood before her. The sound of Zelda's sobs as she watched his worn and abused body shield her. The last Guardian's trill once more, like a death knell–the sound of blood pounding in her ears as she caught the sickening image of the machine's red light locking onto Link's body. The sound of her divine power ringing through her, all around her, vibrating aloud.

And then, the harrowing silence. A silence riddled with questions of why and how, of panic and breathlessness and apprehension.

Every memory rushed at her, suffocating her. Pulling her further and further into a dark sea of hysteria.

"You saved me here."

Link's voice cut through her thoughts, pulling Zelda out of the torturous memories and back into the current century. She looked around to find that they had indeed arrived at the exact coordinates that her mind had been dwelling upon. When they had first set out for the plain, she certainly hadn't intended to lead Link to the place where he had, for all intents and purposes, died. Zelda gazed up at the frozen Guardian that had nearly taken him from her many years ago.

"I didn't save you here." She dropped his hand, her eyes furiously set upon the machine. "You were practically destroyed here. Protecting me. The only thing I did was get lucky. I…" Her voice rang hollow, reverberating with shades of pain and regret. The unsteadiness of her tones in her own ears caused something to rumble within her, and she could feel the hostility giving way to sorrow.

His lack of a response did little to lift the crushing weight on her form, and with each passing second of his silence, Zelda could feel herself slowly coming undone, as though the fabric of her being was being pulled apart, thread by thread.

"I didn't intend to bring you this far out…oh, how horrible of me." Zelda sank to the floor. "I took you to the most traumatic place of your life. I don't…I didn't mean…"

Not another word was able to slip past her lips before she began to wail, and she wailed in a way that she hadn't in at least one hundred years. Not even when she had finally sealed Calamity Ganon in the fields of Central Hyrule had she sobbed in such a way; in all fairness, she'd been so fatigued at the time that the whole ordeal had felt unreal–like a beautiful, delusional dream that she had devised while locked away inside of the castle. She'd spent so long fantasizing about Link's return that finally seeing him there, with the Master Sword pulsating to life in his hand, seemed entirely illusory.

Still, those wearied tears–tears of sheer relief– had not racked her body as strongly as they did now. Zelda hunched over, her golden hair cascading over her shoulders and shrouding her face from the soft sunlight.

She could feel something small press against her back, and her skin suddenly seemed to glow in the spot where he was touching her.

The revived Link was different from the one she had known prior, but the changes in his personality did not go unappreciated. He possessed all of the same, admirable qualities: strong, confident, assured, understanding. And yet he was not so distant, with a bit more humor edged into his words than she had grown accustomed to. She'd seen hints of it before, but never so strongly as she did now. But perhaps the most enjoyable change had been that he came into contact with her more frequently. A kind hand here, a reassuring squeeze there-gestures he would never have dared to express in days past. And Zelda, having gone one hundred years depraved of the simple touch of another human being, desperately needed every ounce of comfort he was willing to offer.

Zelda raised her head to find him kneeling beside her, his hand still planted firmly on her upper back.

Perhaps she hadn't been the only one in desperate need for contact.

"You sacrificed everything for me," she whispered. Her eyes found his, and the jade in her glance shimmered with copious amounts of gratitude and affection. She noticed his concerned expression melt away to a small, shy smile. "There was no indication that I would suddenly attain my powers and you still fought for me. You had accepted your death."

She was crying steadily again.

"You were my knight; of course, you fought to the death." She gave a sardonic chuckle. "But I must thank you for that. For your service. For your kindness." She raised her hand to cup his cheek, and he reciprocated wordlessly, batting away a lone tear with his thumb.

"And you intervened for me," he pointed out. "You threw yourself in front of a Guardian believing you were powerless. What were you hoping for back then?"

Link's smile, sweet and unfeigned, warmed her. Like the sweetest reward after so much heartache.

"All I wanted to do was protect you. And I..." she hesitated, desperately searching his eyes for a sign that she should press on. He leaned into her touch in a way he had never done before, and it caused something within her to yearn.

"You sacrificed yourself for me, too," he said. "The Princess of Hyrule shielded her knight herself at the very end." Link continued. "I'm deeply honored." He removed her hand from his cheek and brought his lips to the top of it.

"Thank you, Princess Zelda."

Her breath caught in her chest.

She had once promised herself that she would be honest with Link; that when the warring had ceased, he'd know her true feelings for him. And here they were, a week after sealing Calamity Ganon away, and she had yet to fulfill that promise.

Perhaps that was why fate had guided them here.

"I think protecting you was what gave me that final push I needed. I… I'm just sorry I was so late." Her voice was shaky, and she trembled slightly under his touch. "If I…if I had only…" Zelda struggled to meet his gaze, and her eyebrows knit together in discomfort.

Link cocked his head to the side attentively. She gave a small sniffle.

"If only I had realized how much you truly meant to me before any of this. I keep wondering if...maybe if I had just realized it sooner…our friends would have survived….my father…." Zelda swallowed a sob away, and she could feel her throat burning as she forced it down. "And instead, I didn't realize how much I…"

She took a deep breath and bowed her head with closed eyes.

"..how much I loved you until it was too late."

Zelda felt his hand go limp around hers. She couldn't bear to look at him; she would never survive a pitiful look from him. His silence was unbearable, and each passing second brought more constriction to her chest.

"I'm sorry, Link…I shouldn't have said any–"

"Please don't be. Please."

Zelda opened her eyes as she felt his fingers close around her again, and she turned to face him fully.

He was radiant. His sun-kissed hair was swept aside in a soft drift of cool air. His lips were parted slightly, with a small but joyous expression impressed across his face. He looked positively triumphant, smiling sweetly against a backdrop of stalled guardians and damaged stone.

"What is it?" she asked nervously.

Link's lips closed and he gave a short sound that Zelda could only decipher as a small laugh. Her eyes grew pleading, desperate for him to form a sentence. A mere word would have sufficed. Link's smile widened and he looked down to where their hands were joined.

"I would have kept fighting back then even if I hadn't been your knight."

They shared a silence, and the air of misery and trauma was suddenly dappled with sparks of joy and promise.

"Do you really mean that?" Zelda finally whispered.

Link nodded.

"Truly?"

He cupped her face once more. "Would I lie to you?"

The tears that slipped from her eyes were no longer tears of sadness, though she knew that those would resurface as the wounds reopened; for now, they were tears of complete and utter joy. For now, she would savor every good thing she could find.

And this seemed to be blossoming into something much better than just a good thing.

"And I'll do it again, if I need to. I'll always protect you."

Not serve. Protect.

With a soft cry, Zelda launched herself forward, wrapping her arms around Link and burying her face into the crook of his neck. She felt him lower his face into her shoulder, and she settled into his embrace as his arms snaked around her. She inhaled deeply, and his unique scent doused her with nostalgia, and he let her linger as long as she needed.

She finally pulled herself away to gaze at him.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

Zelda sniffled through a smile, swiping at her eye once more to dry the last tear. "Through everything, you found your way back to me."

An amused expression flickered onto his face. "I suppose even one hundred years and a wiped memory couldn't keep me from you." he chortled. "You were just a voice in my head and still…every part of me knew I needed to find you."

He had the loveliest face she had ever laid her eyes upon. Although his eyes were not as hard as she remembered them, they still harbored the same drive and intensity she had grown accustomed to. But they spoke far more loudly than they had before. They betrayed his thoughts so that there was no doubt in Zelda's mind as to what he was thinking. He hadn't explicitly said some very particular words, but he hadn't needed to–she'd seen it all in just one glance.

If her love had been made of fire, he would have burned for her.

And she had never, not even after a century of separation, loved him as deeply as did now.

"What happens next?" she asked, her voice low and threatening to burst further with emotion.

Although Link spoke in his usual soft tones, his voice brimmed with assurance. "I don't know. But whatever you choose to do, I'm with you. I go where you go. You just lead the way."

Zelda smiled. "I think I'd rather go side by side."

She could see the affection dancing in his eyes, like a spark bursting to life.

"I really like the sound of that."

Her heart soared. Her pulse slowed. And for the first time in a very, very long time, her mind quieted.