AN: This was written in lieu of a fic where a pre-Calamity fight Link waltzes around the ballroom by himself, hallucinating people from his past and singing 'Once Upon a December' from the film Anastasia. There's a gorgeous piano version on YouTube, which I listened to while writing this.

"Do you know how to dance, Link?"

Zelda had turned to face him, her hand still lingering on the torn tapestry that hung against the wall like a boneless limb. A cloud of dust floated in the air between them, shifted from its century long slumber when Link had forced the doors to the ballroom open.

He bit his lip, chest aching at the melancholy brimming in her eyes. "I..." How did he respond to a question that he himself did not know the answer to? "You're going to have to be a bit more specific, dancing is a very vague term."

She raised a brow, and her lips curled upwards ever so slightly. Link knew that smile; it was the one that never quite managed to reach her eyes, the one that spoke of bravery in defeat, not quite able to hide the slump in her shoulders, the miniscule tremble of her bottom lip. Her voice was quiet, forced. "Oh, I hadn't pegged you as an expert, now."

An expert was the exact opposite of what he was; in all honesty Link had no idea if he'd ever partaken in any form of dancing at all before. "I do a good imitation of the Goron war chant," he offered, weakly. "Grunts and all."

Zelda hummed, eyes glazing over as she focused on some point over his shoulder, likely watching something he couldn't see. She took off then, gliding like a ghost across the open floor, face eerily blank, as if she'd been hypnotised. Link followed a few paces behind, one eye on her back, the other keeping watch for one of the few monsters he knew to be still lurking in the castle.

Even if he couldn't remember, Link could still imagine what this place must have looked like, a hundred years ago. Walls thick with ornate tapestries spouted from the ground to give way to high, sloping ceilings, decorated with intricate-looking chandeliers - one of which had since toppled to the floor below, and now lay smashed to pieces. Sunlight streamed in through the towering windows, causing the dust in the air to swirl and catch in the golden rays. Candelabras grew out of the stonework like branches - hundreds of them - enough to illuminate the entirety of the vast hall in an orange glow once the Sun had set. He imagined long tables of food at the outer edges of the dance floor, the elegant music of a waltz or the lively sound of a polka, the gentle hubbub of polite chatter amongst the attendees.

As they crossed the dance floor together, Link could almost picture the dancers themselves, swirling around him in perfect synchronicity, the men in formal wear, the women delicately holding their thick skirks out from their bodies with gently arched wrists. He could only imagine what it was like for Zelda, standing in this room. His ghosts were blurry and transparent as they glided about him, drowning in thick fabrics and sparkling gems, whilst hers had names and faces.

She reached the centre of the hall and stopped, twirling to face him again. Link could picture her then, in a rich, ornate dress similar to the one she'd worn at his knighting ceremony - skirt flying out around ger as she spun - a shimmering golden circlet perched in her golden hair. She'd have been beautiful, he decided. She always was.

"Do you remember that last ball that was held in here, Link?" his Zelda asked, back in her rags again; second hand boots that were scuffed at the toes and a spare tunic of his that was practically drowning her, a thick belt clinching it at her waist. She wasn't looking at him, eyes tracing the ground beneath her feet, fingers curled in the ends of her too-long sleeves.

He shook his head, mutely.

Zelda sighed, leaning back to look upwards, and drew her hands up until they were clasping at her shoulders, wrapping herself in her own embrace. "It was supposed to be in honour of my father's birthday," she mumured, wavering slightly where she stood, "but in actuality it was a ploy to distract the court from the looming Calamity." She smiled bitterly. "My inadequacies were the talk of the castle, back then."

Link dug his nails into the piece of clothing in his hands, swallowed, said nothing. In front of him, Zelda swayed to a piece of music that he couldn't hear.

"My father had reprimanded me earlier that day - I'd missed a service at the shrine to Hylia the day before because I was out riding with you - and I hadn't spoken to him since. We danced together that night, as was traditional, opening the evening with a waltz, and he didn't say a word to me the entire time." She broke off, and stared at the floor, face curled into an angry frown, and whispered, "Goddesses, how could I have been so stupid..?"

He wanted desperately to reach out, to comfort her, but he forced himself to remain still and listen. With Zelda, he had discovered, it was best to let her get all of it out, and then to console her later - perhaps so many years of being heard but not listened to had weighed her down, along with everything else.

In his hands, he twisted the little piece of history that they'd found earlier, the odd looking navy cap - a beret, Zelda had called it, almost smiling fondly - that had been part of the Royal Guard's uniform, before. Link had thought it looked stupid, and more than a little impractical, but he'd still lifted one from the barracks earlier. Saving it from the looters, he'd told himself.

He'd worn one of these, once.

Zelda had that far away look in her eyes again."My parents met at a ball," she was murmuring, a wistful smile stretching across her face. "My father asked my mother to dance with him, and they ended up dancing the night away. I heard the story often. When I was younger I used to sneak in here and pretend I was dancing with my own handsome prince, that is, until someone saw me and I suddenly realised how ridiculous I must have looked." She gave another small twirl, hands releasing from their death grip on her upper arms to swing loosely about her body.

That would have been a sight and a half, Link thought, unable to stop a small smile from claiming his face at the image of a young Zelda, flushed and out of breath and giddy with laughter as she spun in hapless circles by herself. He swallowed it. "From what I remember of you before," he murmured, "you never quite struck me as the romantic type."

Her eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement, but it faded quickly. The humour in her voice was paper thin. "I'll try and take that as a compliment," she said, then faded away again. Link watched her as she stared at the floor, watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she frowned, teeth worrying at her lower lip, brow furrowed.

Eventually, she met his gaze again. "Would you like to dance, Link?" she asked, quietly. "Of course, normally it is traditional for the man to ask the woman, but I rather think our tradition was burned to the ground a hundred years ago."

He blinked at her. "I'm not a prince," he observed, voice light but low.

Zelda examined him critically. "No," she said, "but you'll do."

Despite himself, Link laughed. "I'll try and take that as a compliment." Then he bowed low, flicking the beret out to the right with a flourish and crossing his ankles as he bent into his knees. "Would you do me the honour of this dance, Princess?"

There was that smile again, about as solid as a snowflake in the desert, barely a thin coat of paint covering the misery underneath. This time a small, dim spark reached her eyes, like an ember left behind by a raging fire. "It would be my pleasure, Sir Link," she replied, softly.

Stuffing the beret into his belt, he offered her his left hand, which she guided to her upper back, placing her right hand on his shoulder. Their other hands clasped - chaste and delicate - and Zelda lifted them up to around about his ear height. She drew herself up, and again Link saw the Princess in her, could imagine the heavy jewelery hanging around her slim neck, bangles cuffed around her wrists like shackles. He mimiced her posture, stepping back slightly to maintain what would have been the proper distance between them.

"Not bad," Zelda breathed, drawing her eyes down over his form.

Link felt a dry quip coming on. He surpressed it, and waited for her to speak.

She did. "The waltz is in three time," she explained, voice flat, detached. Link wondered if she was reciting from memory, wondered how many hours she'd spent on dancing lessons growing up. "When you step forward I step back, and so on. You're supposed to lead, but I'll push you around a bit until younget the hang of it. Ready?"

Link nodded, and then Zelda began to hum, so faintly that he had to strain his ears to hear her. So surprised was he that when she stepped forward he forgot to move, and she nearly stood on his toe. He muttered an apology, and the smile returned.

Soon, however, they found themselves falling into an easy rhythm, Link letting instinct take over from his whirring brain. The ballroom was deathly silent, save for the rhythmic one-twothree one-twothree of their feet against the ground, and Zelda's quiet humming. Link wasn't at all surprised at his apparent ability to dance - he'd discovered so many of his skills in the past year-and-a-bit by blindly leaping before he knew if his feet would hit the ground.

Zelda seemed to have noticed too, for eventually she spoke up. "So you have done this before, then?"

Link half shrugged. "I assume so."

Confusion bled into sudden understanding, and for a moment she stilled, brow furrowed. Her voice caught a little when she spoke. "So then this is all muscle memory?"

"Yes," he said, adding, "I didn't know I could fight, either, until a bokoblin jumped at me and I killed it with a tree branch." And how long ago that seemed, perhaps a hundred years before he'd knelt at her feet in the Sacred Grounds, as opposed to after.

Zelda half nodded, staring at his shoulder. She'd gone, again, lost in another time. Link didn't blame her.

Eventually they lost all semblance of the formal waltz posture, Zelda's right hand moving to cup the back of his neck, while his left slid down to the small of her back, fingers spread wide to grasp as much of her as possible. They drew closer together - close enough that he could feel her warm breath against his throat - her head practically tucked under his chin, hair tickling the tip of his nose, and their clasped hands lost some of their stiffness, lowering towards their bodies.

Being here, in the impossibly lavish ballroom of Hyrule Castle - surrounded by a swirling mass of dancing shadows - was starting to give Link a vague sense of just what had been lost to the Calamity. It was a sobering feeling, in the way that it was sobering to stand amongst the ruins of a village in Hyrule Field and absently wonder what the lives - and deaths - of the people who lived there had been like; regretful, but detached. It felt like he was mourning for something that had happened eons ago, similar to standing at the foot of the gigantic Goddess Satue in the Forgotten Temple and wondering who had built it.

It was guilt he felt, more than anything, Link realised suddenly. Grief, yes, but distant and generalised for the vague sense another life that he had lost. Guilt, however, was what plagued him when he stared at this shattered palace and thought of the thousands that had died because of his failure.

Which, of course, begged the unanswerable question; was it better to have the memories of your loved ones, even if they might hurt, or to never know what you'd lost?

He wasn't sure he wanted the answer, not that he'd ever get it.

"Do you regret coming back here?" Link asked, finally.

Zelda quietened and tilted her head back to look at him, and instantly his ears mourned the loss of her humming against his neck. "I... I had thought, you know," she breathed, voice thick with sorrow, "that I might get some... some closure from, well, from just being here, but now I..."

Finally, their feet drew to a halt mid step, and Zelda looked down again and murmured, "During our travels, I noticed that there was still a small part of my brain that had forgotten about the- about everything that had happened, and was still expecting to return here and find all as we left it a hundred years ago when we set out for Mount Lanayru." She swallowed, fingernails digging into his skin. "I had thought that, in coming back here, that I might be able to dispell that feeling, that I might be able to see what had happened and finally move on, but... but-"

And suddenly, Zelda threw herself against his chest and *sobbed*, uncontrollable shudders wracking throigh her body like the repeated shocks earthquake. Link wrapped both of his arms around her waist, and together they sank to the floor, him with his face buried in her hair, her with her fingers curled in the front of his tunic, sobbing and gasping and sobbing and gasping until she could barely breath.

His eyes were hard as he stared over the top of her head, looking at the throne in the distance, looming over them like a shadow. "Shush," he breathed, dragging his fingers through her hair in what he hoped were soothing motions. "Shush, it's alright. I'm here, I'm here."

Rain splattered on the ground beneath their feet, battered at the canopy of leaves. They ran, both panting for breath. Her hand slipping from his. Mud on her dress, his trousers, his boot. Grey skies overhead. Zelda's tears soaking his tunic. Pain pain pain.

I've left them... all to die.

This time, he sat back, drawing her into his lap to lean against his chest. Her hands clawed against his clothing, pulling him closer, closer, and his arms slid around protectively around her waist. She buried her face in his neck, pitiful shudders still tearing through her body, breath hot as she gasped against his skin.

Suddenly, Link felt a different memory stirring in his head.

A... a small wooden box, beautifully carved with swirling patterns like the sea, perched on the corner of her desk. The lid lifted, and a tiny figurine spun, its silver dress rigid and unmoving, hands frozen above its head. A clinking sound of music - the tune she'd been humming earlier, he realised. This was my mother's once, Zelda had said with her paper thin smile, and Link had looked at her and wondered if she'd shatter into a million pieces under his touch. In his gut, a taboo sense of longing for someone he could never have.

Now, in the dust covered ballroom of Hyrule Castle, the Princess shuddered and cried against her appointed knight, while he rocked her back and forth, singing softly into her hair.

It was enough, for the moment.