"I miss sleeping in a bed," Zelda muttered after two days of riding. Though they'd passed several smaller towns, they were determined to get as far from the castle as they could before stopping anywhere, hoping the soldiers were assuming that they were travelling on foot.
She was gripping Link loosely as she leaned against his back, her eyes drifting shut once again, though she had to force them open.
"We can stop again," Link offered, feeling her sagging against him. "You barely slept last night."
"I hate Wolfos," she muttered bitterly. "I might just exile them all one day. Better yet, I might order a great hunt."
"Hold on one second," Link said, stopping Epona and tapping Zelda's arms to let him go. She did and watched as he simply re-mounted Epona behind her instead, wrapping his arms around her waist to grab the reins. "Now you can rest."
Zelda chuckled and leaned back. "You are a chivalrous Knight of Hyrule, Link. One day, I'll commend you. Thank you."
She could feel him swallow hard as she rested against him, but her eyes and mind were quick to shut down, her breathing slowed, and then it was Link who could feel that she'd already drifted off to sleep.
The ride gave him time to think.
Passing the heavy forest on either side of their path reminded him of days long since past when he'd run through similar words with a far more carefree approach and spirit. He could almost see himself as a young boy, climbing trees with several of the local children; friends he'd make for a time before moving away and losing them just as quickly as he'd made them.
The sway of the trees, the creaking branches, the bushes and dirt... all of it brought him back to the days when he used to train, when childhood was stolen from him and replaced by the harshness of a world at war with itself. It reminded him of old friends, soldiers, those he'd lost and those he wished he'd never see again.
He thought of his many years as a soldier. After his generalized training, he'd been sent to the nearby garrison to specialize in open field combat, the perfect soldier for times of war. A close-proximity fight in the trees wasn't his strongest suit. Sure, he could do it, but it wasn't where he felt the most comfortable. Give him a battle, a real battle with hundreds of combatants. That was where he thrived. He was trained to look around and remember his surroundings before everything became a blur, to avoid arrows, swords, and all manner of weapons flying at his head while he tried to end someone's life. He knew how to use his enemies as shields and weapons. They'd trained him to kill.
He certainly wasn't trained for this.
His arms tightened around the Princess of Hyrule at the thought that he might not be good enough for this particular task. He hadn't volunteered for it; it had just fallen to him. She needed someone, and he was there.
He wondered if she'd have been better off stuck in a cell with his old friend Hala, who was a well-trained scout, someone who could see danger before walking straight into it, someone used to the suffocating treeline or using stealth and surprise rather than brute force to approach their enemies. And besides her skill, Hala was a female, and Link wondered if that was something that Zelda would have preferred as well.
Link knew Zelda could see when he looked at her for too long. And he couldn't stop words from spilling from his mouth when he was with her: stories of his life, jokes he'd never intended to make aloud, occasionally flirty comments that should have been reserved for female soldiers from his past or girls in the local taverns that he'd never expect to see again. But never for the Princess. Goddess, the princess, was the one he was constantly thinking about, even now. She was the one he enjoyed talking to. She was the one he liked to flirt with. Sure, she seemed to reciprocate, in fact, he couldn't even remember if she had been the one to start it. But he wondered if she would have felt more comfortable with someone else? He was just some soldier she'd learned to co-exist with. Would she have asked for someone different, if given the choice?
Besides the fact that Link was quite obviously attracted to her- in more ways than just her physical appearance- Link felt sorely untrained for this role as her... what? Personal protector? Her private soldier? Glorified travelling companion? What even was he?
But regardless of what he was, he still felt unprepared for this position that had fallen to him. Sure, he had almost a decade of training and experience. He'd begun training when he was about fourteen, though he was ashamed to admit that he couldn't quite remember if he'd actually turned fourteen when he'd joined the soldiers. But that was the thing; he was only two or three years older than the Princess of Hyrule. The Princess. She should have someone with forty years of service under their belt, someone who knew every single move there was to know, and to think with their brain rather than their hearts.
He could have stopped her from going after Ellie. He should have. An older, more experienced soldier would have stopped her. He let her risk her life because Ellie reminded her of Princess Aelia. He never should have. She was the last great hope for Hyrule, and they'd nearly been captured.
Thinking of Zelda's words about Ganondorf should they be captured again, he shuddered. Thinking of her chained to the wall of a cell like he had been while Ganondorf mutilated her body to coerce her to cede the throne… the thought of it had him gripping her tighter again, like somehow, that could protect her. But if they were captured once more, the only thing Link could do was to offer her a swift death.
And as he tried to picture that, he realized that the word 'princess' didn't register in his mind until much later. Instead, he wondered if he could drive a knife into this girl that he'd come to care for. Could he shoot an arrow into her heart? It would kill him to do so, but she wouldn't suffer at the hands of a tyrannical usurper. But… what if there was still a chance to live, and he'd taken it from her? What if his legacy was 'the man who needlessly killed the princess'? Or worse, what if he just couldn't do it? What if he looked into her eyes as her own hand shook, unable to take her own life and needing Link to do it for her, and he faltered, leaving her to suffer a horrible fate because he valued her life too much?
Or worse than all of it, would he fail her before even reaching the safety of her cousin? Would he find her one night as he found his dear friend Taran: impaled on a bokoblin's sword, wide-eyed, afraid, and alone? Taran had trusted Link, and Link had failed him. What good could he be to the most important person in Hyrule when he couldn't save the people who were most important in his life? The worst part? Link had done everything in his power to save his friend. He'd taken on a horde of bokoblins and moblins by himself until help arrived. He'd nearly died in vain just to get to Taran. If he could so easily fail his best friend, how could he hope to keep the Princess safe?
No, he thought to himself. No. He'd done well for himself. Sure, he lost some people along the way, but he didn't know any soldiers who didn't have the same stories, the same regrets. He was a highly sought-after soldier; he had a clean record- a good record for one who'd seen combat as many times as he had- and he was respected by his peers and superiors. But, Goddess, he wished he'd had experience with one-on-one guarding. Sure, he could fight on his allies' weaker side so they don't sustain a harsh blow. He could carry someone out of harms way before returning to finish the job. But Zelda had him questioning everything he'd ever been taught. Should he sleep? Should he stay awake all night? What good would it do for him to get too tired to see straight in a fight? What if he tried to find them food and accidentally gave her poisoned berries in his ignorance of wild plant life? Should he let her ride in front of him, resting back on his chest? Was that unsafe? For him, sure. Feeling the warmth emanating off of her, the almost soothing way she breathed, the way she would occasionally twitch, and send his mind into a thousand places to try to reason out the cause. Yes, this was unsafe for him, but is that what any other soldier would do? Wouldn't they have let her sleep? Or... was that just him?
"Link?" Zelda muttered, as if she knew where Link's thoughts lie.
Looking around, Link realized that he'd been lost in his thoughts for far, far longer than he thought. He hummed his acknowledging response to her.
She felt his chest vibrate, and she sat forward. "Can we stop? I'm really quite tired, and I just want to rest."
Link started looking deeper into the woods for a rock formation, a cave. "You're the one who- just yesterday, actually- told me you wanted to ride for as long as possible before stopping."
"Well, this is as long as possible. I want to stay out here tonight and find an inn or something for tomorrow. I can't… I truly cannot go another night without a bed."
"As you command then, Majesty," Link said with a grin. He felt Zelda halfheartedly swing at his leg, but he veered off the path and into the woods. It didn't take long to find a small outcropping that they could stay under in relative seclusion.
Several nights earlier, Link had been surprised to learn that Zelda was more capable than he was at starting a fire. She'd attributed it to her time working in Hyrule Field, and since then, Link had been the material gatherer, and Zelda had been the fire starter.
Within minutes, the fire was crackling with life as the sun set on them. Zelda rested her head on her arms as she pulled up her legs. But over the fire, she could see Link staring at the flames intently.
She didn't realize she was watching him until her brain finally caught up with her, but her eyes drifted over him several times, taking in everything about him. He was sitting against the wall, further from the warmth, but looking far more comfortable with one outstretched leg and his arm resting loosely over his pulled-up other leg.
He had a piece of hair dangling over his eye, and she realized that he might actually be used to having this longer hair, since it didn't seem to bother him. He'd begun to tie it out of his face since having the means to do so thanks to a small piece of twine from the farm. Or perhaps he was simply waiting to cut it for a day when he had sheers, and his self-restraint to not push the hair from his face was far greater than hers. It was silly, but she felt like asking him what he looked like before becoming a prisoner was almost too invasive of a question. She couldn't logically reason-out how that was, but it just struck her as too personal. Perhaps one day, she might feel like she could ask. She found herself longing to know more about the soldier that Fate had cast into her life.
She noticed that the stubble along his face was far shorter than when she'd first met him. She'd remembered seeing him the last time they'd stopped trying to tame it while dangling precariously over the edge of a slow-moving stream with a knife meant for fighting. Honestly, she'd been impressed that he'd managed what he had, and didn't return to her with a bloody face covered in small cuts. Still, it didn't look perfectly tamed or even soft, but then again, very little of him did. She could tell he'd thinned out from his time in the dungeons, but he was lean and muscular. Every part of him was rough and coarse; his calloused hands that held swords, or reins, the fingers that had been trained to draw bowstrings, his skin that bore far too many scars for someone as young as him, and there were sets of lines that seemed to settle permanently above his eyes from concentration. When she wasn't talking to him, his eyes were constantly darting around, and she could almost see several battle and escape plans forming in the hard lines.
She doubted there was anything soft about him.
Except his hair. Or the way those same attentive eyes lost their hardness when he looked to her. Or the…
"Are you admiring me, Princess?" Link said with a smirk over the fire. He was glad to find the opportunity to use that line against Zelda after she'd asked him the same thing.
She hadn't even seen his eyes focus on her, and she felt her cheeks heat up, unsure how long she'd been caught staring. "Yes. I am. You're terribly distracting." And that was true. His eyes reflected the dancing flame as he grinned at her. She felt an incredibly strong rush of butterflies in her stomach that she was determined to ignore.
"How am I distracting? I'm just sitting here. I thought you wanted to sleep."
"There isn't much you have to do to be distracting, Link," Zelda laughed, pointedly letting her eyes rake his body.
A shiver raced through him as he watched her eyes. No matter what she said, Link always felt the conflicting emotions within him, not limited to excitement, a desire to reciprocate her compliments, and panic because she was the Princess. He never knew which would emerge victorious in his mind, though he often found that his voice responded with its own mind: the mind of a young man talking to a young woman, rather than a soldier to his sovereign.
"I know the feeling," he said, trying to keep his face neutral as he turned away from her, trying to channel his inner-soldier, to call forth all the years of training he'd endured. "Sorry," he muttered, though it was a half-hearted apology with very little sincerity, like it was rehearsed. Like it was just the expected response he should give after his implication.
But Zelda smiled, "Despite what you might believe about royalty, we are—in fact—human. Distractions are often welcome." She shrugged. "But you're right, I am tired. Goodnight, Link."
Link chuckled and shook his head, feeling his own eyes growing heavy. But he'd stay up for some time yet, to make sure they were safe enough for the night. He'd be left with the company of his own thoughts, ones that drifted between his old life, and the one he was living now. The one that had the Princess of Hyrule in it.
Zelda laid down in the warmth of the fire, warmed not just by the flames, but also by the heat of Link's gaze.