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Zelda watched the pool of spilled tea spread towards her shoe. One of the cats crept forward to sniff it—otherwise, she could have been sitting in a statue garden.
"He didn't mean that, Rusl," Ilia said tremulously.
"I know," came the weary reply. "But Farore above—Ilia, if you hadn't helped the children escape—"
"Don't say it," she begged. Impaz put an arm around her shoulders. Ashei chewed her lower lip, her face far away, while Shad removed his spectacles to wipe at his eyes. Rusl wavered before the open door, like he wasn't sure whether to run through it or collapse where he stood.
I dropped the sword, Zelda thought helplessly. I chose life. But all she'd saved were the meager remains of her guard. Not the scouts, who wanted her dead as payback. Not the people who had died in Zant's raids or the children he stole. Not the softhearted boy from Ordon who had never wanted to pick up a sword.
Link must have harbored some inkling of the truth before today. Killing the shadow beast in the desert had made him physically sick. When she'd told him that Midna had withheld information about the abductees to protect him, he had replied: I wasn't the one that needed protection. And then he'd laughed, nothing but desolation in the sound.
The pain arrived like a sudden bolt of summer lightning. How many times had Zelda stood before her bedroom mirror and seen a monster beneath the pretty veneer of her reflection? How many times must Link have felt the same way?
"Are you going after him, Lady Queen?" Rusl asked. "I—would appreciate it."
"Me?" Zelda said dumbly. She didn't remember standing, but she was on her feet, and everyone was looking at her. "I may not be the best—"
"Please," Ilia said, raising her tearstained face. "You were the only person he could look in the eyes."
Zelda wished for Auru; he always reminded her of a gentler version of herself. Or for Midna, who had loved Link ferociously even as she watched her people die beneath his sword. She only had herself. It would have to be enough.
Outside, shadows stretched from one side of the Hidden Village to the other, darkening the abandoned doorways and shading the cats who watched Zelda's progress. The path was speckled with bright red spots, drying in the afternoon sun; she followed them straight to Link.
He was facing Epona, who stared back with her neck arched and her ears swiveling nervously. The saddle was a lopsided corpse on the ground. The bridle was clutched in Link's bleeding hand. When he stepped forward, the mare's nostrils flared—not from the smell of blood, which she was surely accustomed to, but from whatever else she sensed from her rider.
"Link," Zelda said. "Can we talk?"
He took another step. Epona's head jerked even higher, refusal written in her every muscle.
"If I talk, will you listen?" Zelda amended. "Will you stop scaring your poor horse, at least?"
He didn't answer.
"I should have expected Zant would violate the terms of surrender," she said to his coiled shoulders. "Perhaps I should have raised the sword instead of dropping it. But I was backed into a corner, and I made the only choice I could. Nothing can change it now. If I want a future, I cannot hold myself responsible for the enemy's atrocities."
Link stood unmoving. Blood dripped slowly from his fingers to soak the soft earth below.
"Zant sent the shadow beasts after you and Midna," she went on carefully. "You had no way of knowing what they once were. He gloated to me about how each fight was a trap. You were backed into a corner; you made the only choice you could. We're the same, Link. I would have done exactly the s—"
"You," Link interrupted in a voice that neared calamity, "are nothing like me."
Zelda recalled a throne room full of fire and screams, of bruising laughter, of her sword clanging to the floor. "I disagree," she said quietly.
"You see everything exactly as it is," he snapped. "You don't turn your back on a problem until you've fixed it. You're too smart and too good to be making excuses that I don't fucking deserve."
"I am not making—"
Link turned so sharply that the words died in her throat. His wind-mussed hair would have made him look very young if not for the bloodless face beneath and the violent slash of the red scar. His eyes flashed with a wild, terrible storm.
"Zelda, I knew," he spat. "As early as Kakariko I heard that someone got attacked by a shadow beast, that those who went looking for her found two beasts where there should've been one. But I kept going. And then Midna—she told me, straight to my face, what Zant did to her people—I knew what that meant about those I'd killed, I knew why he'd taken the kids, and what do you think I did?! I forgot, I made myself forget, and I kept going! You would have stopped. You would have saved them!"
"They were past saving," Zelda said, her throat aching, her arms around her ribs to contain her rattling pulse.
Link choked out an awful, grating laugh. "That's what I told myself every time. But the Sols, the suns of Midna's world, they undid the curse. And underneath—they were people, Zelda, they were still people—like the scouts, like Ilia, like my little brother—"
In one sudden, furious motion, he ripped the sword from his back and hurtled it at the wall of the nearest house. The thunderous crash seemed to shock Link even more than Zelda, because he made a sound in the back of his throat, and then he crumpled onto a crate, put his face in his hands, and started to cry.
The worst parts of Zelda, the parts constructed of ice and marble and fear, screamed at her to flee. But Link was shaking with jagged, helpless sobs, and he was still trying to smother them; he was ashamed before her once again, the same way she would be ashamed if their positions were reversed.
But why? She asked herself. He was her mirror.The Twilight had ruined everything he'd considered true about himself, every shred of goodness possessed by the goatherd, the children's role model, the gentle soul with an aversion to violence. Zelda had eroded over years, slowly replacing the person she wanted to be with the person Hyrule needed, but in the end she still understood him perfectly.
She sat beside him on the crate, and after a moment of thought, began to speak quietly. "When I was young, I asked my mother if it bothered her to kill during the border skirmishes. She said yes, of course it bothered her—but the only thing on a battlefield is striking down the person trying to do the same to you. There is no higher calling, no greater good, no right or wrong."
Epona shifted uneasily, still standing where they'd left her. Wind tugged at her white mane and howled through the village's empty spaces. Link was already shaking his head.
"No, Link," Zelda said fiercely, "listen to me. You weren't like my mother. You weren't even a soldier. You were untrained and choiceless, and fate thrust you onto a battlefield. Stepping away from it or being killed on it would have meant the end of everything. You knew that each time you swung your sword. As for the Sols…if they could have worked in the Light Realm, if they could have saved Midna's people here as well as there, she would have used them. If she never tried, it was because she knew it wouldn't work. You trusted her, didn't you?"
After a long, frightening moment, Link whispered, "Yes."
He had stopped crying, but somehow he was shaking even more violently, a leaf rattling in the autumn wind. Zelda drew his hands cautiously away from his face. He didn't resist, just looked at her helplessly, his pulse hammering where she touched his wrists.
"She told me it was worth it," Link said haltingly. "But I don't…I…how could it ever be worth it?"
"I'll tell you how I survive," Zelda said. "I hold my actions against the alternative. Had you kept your hands clean, Ganondorf would have given us a wasteland. You gave us a future. And you bear the Triforce of Courage, Link. Once you made your decision, you became an arrow that cannot miss, a blade that never breaks. I think you always knew you were on the right path, because you never faltered from it."
He opened and closed his bloody hands. Stray tears still rolled down his face; he swallowed hard, twice, to keep them back—but his voice was still unsteady when he said, "You're just being kind."
"I'm not kind, Link," Zelda replied tiredly. "And I promised not to lie to you."
Stripped of his last defense, Link stared at her unblinking, like she was a mirage that would fade the moment he looked away. She released his wrists more gently than she'd thought herself capable of.
Instead of withdrawing, Link did something shocking: he put his arms around Zelda's shoulders and drew her towards him, so slowly and carefully that she knew he was giving her the chance to pull away. The small, scared girl inside her wanted to do just that, because she had no idea what to do with this kind of touch, the kind that gave without asking for anything in return.
But when she leaned into the embrace, there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just Link—his solid warmth, his strong body, his familiar smell—and Zelda held him with a desperation she hadn't known she possessed until this moment.
When his tears returned, hot against her collarbone, neither of them felt any shame.
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After what felt like hours, Epona broke the silence, easing forward to nuzzle at Link's pockets for treats. To his great surprise, he breathed out a laugh.
Climbing to his feet, he found that billowing grey clouds obscured the sun, and a petrichor wind shivered through the Hidden Village. He offered a hand to Zelda and pulled her up from the crate, considering her crownless and careworn brow, her sharp morning-glory eyes, the uncertainty beginning to creep into them under his gaze.
"Of course you're kind, Zelda," he told her softly. "Even if they say otherwise. Thank you."
She squeezed his hand, returning the gratitude, and let it go.
They led the horses into an abandoned building wide enough to offer shelter from the rain that had begun to fall. On the way back to Impaz's house, wind tugging clean and cold through his hair, Link found himself oddly calm.
Zelda had gotten him to stare the truth in its wretched face, and though the grief remained, the terror had washed away. For all he'd been willing to die for her from the start, he'd never dared to hope for what she had given him today: the miracle of understanding, of solace, of solidarity. He didn't know what came next, but he knew he had that treasure.
Ilia sprang up to throw herself into Link's arms the second he opened the door. He clung to her, breathing in the smell of Ordon, letting go only when Rusl approached.
"Will you show me your hands?" he asked, as though Link had returned bruised from some childhood adventure in the forest. The scalding from the tea wasn't so bad, and the cuts had already clotted, but Rusl grunted disapprovingly at the sight.
Link blurted out, "I'm sorry for what I said about Colin. I'm sorry for every—"
"I already told you," Rusl interrupted gently, pulling him into a hug. "None of it makes me love you any less."
It was all Link could do to avoid bursting into tears all over again. Over Rusl's shoulder, he read nothing but sorrow and sympathy in Shad, Ashei, and Impaz. Why on earth had he feared otherwise? These people were his friends. He was safe.
He allowed Rusl to examine his wounded hands. The rain pelting down on the tin roof meant they weren't traveling back to the castle anytime soon; everyone was settling down to wait. Zelda sat with one grey-whiskered cat curled up in her lap and a tabby playing with her bootlaces, looking very young and almost ordinary, despite all her wisdom. Ganondorf would have given us a wasteland, she had said. You gave us a future.
Link could see that future in Shad's bright-eyed fascination as he scribbled down Impaz's knowledge of the sky beings. In Ilia, eyes red-rimmed from her earlier tears, smiling bravely at Ashei as they prepared dinner in companionable silence. In Zelda, who was covering her mouth to smother a giggle as her feline friends swatted at each other.
Promise me you'll remember it was worth it, Midna had said, because she'd known from the start that there was only ever one path, and that Link had needed to stay on it no matter what. She'd helped him bury the sins he couldn't face, and it must have hurt her twice as much as it ever hurt him—but she'd loved him enough to carry the burden anyway.
"Everything heals," Rusl told him softly, tying clean white linen around the last of Link's cuts. "You just have to let it."
Link leaned his shoulder against the windowpane to watch the storm pass, his bandaged hands tucked against his chest, pressing those words into his heart.
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