"I still can't believe I did that," Link muttered as he sprawled out in the grass beside the small pond they'd stopped at.

Zelda scoffed. "I can. You're shameless. Poor Shad was mortified."

He grinned. True. "But, I mean, in my defense, you are the princess. People must kiss your hand all the time."

"As a greeting or a goodbye! Not often in a magic-induced state. I thought Shad was going to pull me away from you for my safety."

Link rolled his eyes, though it wasn't without the grin of a naughty child who'd been caught red-handed. "Well…"

"No, don't finish that thought!" Zelda laughed. But it trailed off. "How do you think he managed?"

Link flipped onto his stomach so he could look up at where Zelda was sitting by the fire. Since he could only see her legs from his low angle, he rested his head down against his arms, getting comfortable.

"He knew who you were and he helped you out with something that could have gotten him killed. I'm sure he came through. We did our part, too."

"I know," Zelda sighed.

Once Link had regained his senses the day earlier, he, Zelda, and Shad had come up with a plan to try to stay ahead of Reese and his desperate professions that Zelda was in fact the princess. Whether a rumor or a fact, word would travel, and it would reach Ganondorf. It was the exact situation that Zelda was most desperate to avoid. He or his scouts wouldn't be long for Saria Town, and they'd been quick to escape.

But not before asking as many people as possible for directions to many different towns and locations. If any soldier came up to the man selling flowers, asking where a blonde girl who looked like the Princess of Hyrule had gone, he'd say that she'd asked for directions to Gerudo Desert. But if he asked the woman selling clothes, she'd say Zora's Domain. Another would say Death Mountain. Another, a secret passage in Kakariko Gorge that led straight out of the kingdom.

And Shad had helped to spread rumors. 'Maybe that crazy soldier was right. After all, I saw someone who looked just like her heading south.' The town would be abuzz with gossip, and it would spread quickly from person to person, each time, tainting the original tale until the truth was so deeply hidden, it could never be fished out.

But that plan had its own drawbacks.

Though they'd immediately rushed from town after buying only the supplies they needed, like the riding pants Zelda had been desperate for, it left many people having actually seen Zelda.

That was how they ended up riding a day and a night before stopping by a pond so Zelda could mash berries into something to alter her hair color, even if it only slightly altered the color, no one would believe that a royal would have done such a shoddy job. Such was a benefit of her people's high expectations of her.

Zelda ran her hands through her hair with the mashed raspberries over and over, blanching every now and then at—what she considered—a disgusting sacrifice she was willing to make. She'd stopped several times to stop from gagging.

"My parents would kill me if they could see me now," she balked, letting the mush seep through her fingers with a scrunched-up face. "It was always proper manners, don't play with your food, arms off the table. Now, it's like I'm a toddler again, dumping food on my head."

Link pushed himself up so he could look at her again. Every time he did, he couldn't help but chuckle. And each time, he felt Zelda whip an intact raspberry at him.

"How much longer?" he asked this time, which was what earned him a fresh pelting.

"You rub berries through your hair next time!"

Striding over for a better look, Link's eyes widened as he started to chuckle. "Zelda, you've only done half your head!"

"It's disgusting!"

"You sew blood-gushing bodies together for some of your living! You see severed limbs! You've been witness to torture! How is this disgusting?"

"I don't even want to touch it, honestly," she said, shuddering as she looked back at it.

"Let me see," he said, moving to the front of her where the mushed raspberries were. He rubbed some of it against his fingers and made a face. "Yeah, it's gross. But you're not eating it."

"I want Helena," Zelda groaned, rubbing more of the red into her blonde locks. "She used to fix my hair back home. Well, I've never changed the color, but she would style it. I'm sure she knew how to do this…"

"Watch you wash it and it's just blonde still."

Zelda's face fell. "That's the worst thing you've ever said to me. If this fails, I'm not doing this again."

He smirked, and Zelda tossed another raspberry at him, which he popped into his mouth. "I can't take you seriously, I'm sorry."

With a grimace, she went back to work until her whole head was finally covered with the red berry juice. Her face was buried in her arms as she sat by the fire they'd built, waiting for it to sink into her hair before washing it out. She wasn't sure if she'd wanted to wash her hair out more now, covered in wild food, or when her hair had been matted down with dirt and dried blood. It was a hard choice, but she couldn't decide which had been worse.

"Please distract me," she muttered into her arm.

"Any preference how?"

She shook her head, though she was careful not to move too much. "Don't talk about food."

A moment later, she heard a splash, and looked over to glare at Link. "Really?"

He grinned as he waded close to the edge before dipping under the water and back up, shaking out his hair. "Feels great. Too bad you can't join."

"I think you're actually a bit evil," Zelda laughed.

Leaning closer, Link offered her a lopsided grin in response.

Her eyes drifted to his bare chest and then back up to his smug expression.

"Do you ever forget that you're talking to the Princess of Hyrule?"

But his grin didn't falter. "Do you want me to pretend to be modest now? Trust me, I always remember who you are. Because believe me, if you weren't, I'd…" he chuckled to himself and shook his head.

"You'd what?"

He scoffed. "Nope. I'm not finishing that sentence out loud."

"What?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Nope. You'll have to suffer. Evil, remember?"

"Link!"

"So nosey," he muttered with a laugh. "I get to keep some things to myself."

Her face burned with the possibilities that his sentence left open.

"Fine," she conceded, figuring it might be better left unsaid anyway. "Tell me something else then. I've been dying to ask but I don't know… it seems an odd question. Did you always have…" she tapped her finger to her chin, indicating his scruff, "before everything happened? Or was that your way of keeping track of how long you'd been imprisoned?"

He made a face, thinking. "Eh, no."

"Why the hesitation? Do you not remember?" she teased.

"Well, I wasn't going for anything crazy, but I was a bit too busy to keep a perfectly clean face. I don't know. I had it sometimes, but other times, I didn't. Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "I'm just trying to get a sense of you before we met."

He held out his arms in a wide gesture. "Except for my hair and a bit of starvation, I'm the same as I always was."

"Your hair was different?"

"Shorter. A bit more wild."

"Wild?"

He shook it out again, letting pieces fall where they wanted, then smoothed some of it from his face.

She bit her lip as she smiled and shook her head, knowing full well that there was no hiding the look in her eye as she watched him. It was all but confirmed by Link's return grin as he looked her over. But after a solid look at her, he pulled a blade of grass and began to tear it into several pieces, keeping his eyes away from her for as long as he could keep himself distracted.

"So, tell me about yourself before, Princess. I gather you've never changed your hair with berries. If you just cut it off, you wouldn't have to go through this."

Zelda touched her hair with a grimace. "I once cut it myself as a child and, Link, you've never seen something so horrible as that haircut. My hair doesn't grow quickly, so it took ages to grow back." She laughed and moved closer to Link, dipping her hand into the water to get the gunk off.

"But no, I never have changed my hair color. My sister did once, which is how I learned this. She had Helena dye pieces of it blue. When my parents found out, they made her wash her hair over and over until it came out because it was 'unbecoming of a royal to have blue hair.' I swear, they thought it was funny, but they still couldn't allow it."

"You really didn't have much freedom, did you?"

"Yes and no. I was privileged, but at a price. When my grandmother was alive—not the former queen, my other one—she used to sneak us out of the palace and take us out with only a handful of guards. With her, we saw more of Hyrule than we did on royal tours. We went to Lake Hylia, and to the Temple of Time. She took us to towns and to landmarks. We had the best adventures."

Link watched her with a bemused expression that quickly faded into one lost in his own memories. "I remember my grandparents. I only ever knew my father's. But… if they'd been alive when my father died, my life would have been so different."

"How so?"

He smiled to himself, closing his eyes and leaning on his arm. "I wouldn't have become a soldier. I'd have gone to live with them when I ran away. My grandfather the blacksmith in town, and I would loiter outside and just watch him hammer away for hours at a time. Finally, he noticed and let me sit up on the counter to watch. It was sweltering heat in there, no matter the season. But, I didn't want anything else. He let me make a few things. I hurt my arm pretty badly the first time I tried, but I loved everything about it. My father eventually knew exactly where to find me. I would have loved to live with them. They were truly the best grandparents."

"So, if you weren't a soldier, you'd have wanted to be a blacksmith?"

A small smile crept over his lips as he nodded. "Yeah. I used to think I'd take over his shop, but if I didn't, I would have moved so I wasn't his competition. I wanted to go to Kakariko. Not too much country and not too much of a big town. Not a bad place to grow old."

She leaned her head down on her knee, listening intently. "Would you have wanted a family? Or are you a lone wolf at heart?"

He snorted. "I think I would? I don't know. My parents used to end every sentence with: '…when you become a father, you'll understand.' Then my mother kept telling me I'd marry my childhood friend, Rayn, so I had to be nice to her. Personally, I think they're strange things to say to a child, but you must know better than anyone that parents apparently imagine their children married fairly early in their lives."

Zelda chuckled into her hand. "Oh yes. If my parents were alive still, I'd likely be married off already. We weren't prepared for the invasion, and a political marriage, possibly to King Auru or Prince Midos, would have given us the aid of every army in their kingdoms. Aelia would possibly have been married off as well if it wasn't enough, but they'd likely have tried to put that odd. No matter who I'd married, they would have advised me that it was in both kingdoms' interests for me to have an heir immediately to secure both thrones. And if Ganondorf still came with the forces he had, I'd likely be a widower and a single mother to be. I had great things in store for my future, thanks to Ganondorf. For the Kingdom of Hyrule, we'd say."

Link stared at her, unblinking, for some time before he looked away. "Do you want to be the Queen of Hyrule?"

Zelda smiled, though it was devoid of any emotion. "Do you want to be left handed?"

He glanced at her with furrowed brows.

"I was born with this destiny, and I cannot escape it no matter if I wanted to or not. But yes, I do want to. I'll need many advisors, as I'm still young and naïve to many of the kingdom's issues. As I am right now, the technicalities of politics are all still so new to me, and I'll need to surround myself with those I trust most. Though… most of them are dead now. I do like to talk though," she added with a laugh. "That's something I believe I excel at."

"I can vouch for that," Link said with a soft smile.

Zelda hummed a laugh before sighing. "Okay, you made me forget about this horrid stuff in my hair, but it's been long enough. Move over."

Link watched her hop into the pond and immediately dunk her hair underneath the water, sliding her fingers through again and again until she had to come up for breath and then again until all of the raspberry's remnants were gone.

"How is it?" she asked turning to Link, not missing how his eyes weren't immediately on hers.

He squinted. "Redder, but not apple red. Just… blonde red. Orange but not too orange."

Zelda chuckled. "Well, I won't be asking you next time. Is it red, blonde, or orange? Do I look insane?"

Shaking his head quickly, he found his hand absently reaching out to run through a strand of her hair. "You don't look insane. Your hair isn't the same light blonde it was."

"Was this useless?"

"No. Didn't make you any less attractive, if that's what you were hoping for though."

She let out a strangled laugh, feeling her heartrate spike as it always did when he looked at her like that. "You say that so easily."

His hand went over to the grass again. "This grass is green. Also an indisputable fact and very easy to say."

Zelda ran her hands through her hair and shook her head. "Goddess, Link, sometimes you make it so easy to like you."

"Sorry," he said with an expression that warned her that more was coming. "Your hair is hideous. Nothing about you makes it hard to look away. Water is not your friend."

Laughing, Zelda covered her face, feeling her whole body warm up. But she was loath to admit that she'd fallen weak under his charm once too often, and that wasn't something she could abide by.

She waded closer to Link so she was within his reach, and he took a hesitant step back, watching her curiously and cautiously. She couldn't get any redder if she tried, so it didn't show any more than usual as she rested her hand over his heart, feeling it race before letting her nails trail lightly over him for just a second, feeling his muscles tighten under her fingers where they rested on his abdomen.

"It's not me that people are looking at, you know."

She could practically see his eyes darken, and he stood still, unwilling to let himself move with her this close to him. And his breath hitched when he watched her eyes slowly rake over him, a small triumphant smile spreading over her lips before she pushed herself out of the water without a look back.

And she chuckled as she walked away, hearing the sound of him ducking under the water once again.