IMPORTANT Author's Note (2024): Hello there. The fanfiction was written in 2020/2021 and then discontinued while I edited earlier chapters to better emphasize personal themes while streamlining the events of the story. The reboot series was released on archive this summer and I'm now editing its fanficiton counterpart to match. My apologies for any confusion or if there were elements in the original story that you prefer to this one. The readers' support meant the world to me as I was writing the original, and I'd love more than anything to keep sharing this story, which will incorporate the events and characters of the original, so feel free to follow the reboot here on or Archive of Our Own (until I redo it all again lol). I'll be posting both on Fridays for the rest of the summer. Thank you!
Chapter One
Two heroes rode out from the shade of the liberated castle.
"You're going to be fine, Link!" Yelled the first, shouldering the other from the top of their shared pony. "The Sheikah Slate - it's not responding, but we'll find an infirmary or – "
Raw sunshine silenced her, stinging and blinding as it laid waste on a barren sea of summer yellows spinning in the warm wind – Castletown, in her long-forgotten grave. No markets. No stalls. No courtiers. No Sheikah. No children. All that remained was the Satori mountain range standing ominously in the far distance among fuschia ash and fire.
"Ah," whimpered the woman, seeing it now through the eyes of a mortal, blinking back emotions as the holy trance dissipated, rendering her defenseless against the rawness of the wilds. Tears ran down her face. Heat scorched her scalp. Sweat coalesced at her temples and hands. Breath rushed her lungs – she panted as guilt stabbed like a broadsword through the chest despite how tirelessly she had worked to prevent such an apocalypse. Heart swelling, head throbbing, she felt faint, and when she began to teeter off the horse, she squeezed the black-eyed boy for dear relief.
He yelped, scaring her. .
"I'm so sorry, Link!" She huffed, pulling her hand from his battered chest. Blood stained her palm – she studied the vividness of its color before breaking, huffing, and then bursting into tears. "Oh, Link – you're bleeding!"
He nodded her off, pointing a limp finger down a trampled path of mustard weed leading east.
"Mabe?" She choked, estimating the direction, "Is there an infirmary in Mabe?"
He shook his head, urgently pointing father on.
"Show me where!" She cried, kicking their pony into the wastelands, leaving behind brewing thunderheads, coronating the castle tower behind them. Sunlight recoiled like a snatched piece of parchment as they cut through the fields of the Great Hyrulean Bowl, bugs and blossoms flurrying. Dark clouds raided the hillsides as they braved the foothills of the Romani Outskirts. Half-dozen smoke stacks laced the hilltops. On intuition, Link's horse veered off the winding path, plunging them back into the thicket of mustard weeds to escape the stench of burning metal—gargantuan heaps atop the hills.
"Guardians!" Marveled the woman.
Up sprung Link! – he lunged for his sword on his side, blood splattering.
"No! No!" she cried, pulling him back, "They're dead!"
He fell back to her chest. She kicked the horse up the Bowl, where three other guardians lay toppled on their sides, sparking - spooking their horse as it plunged farther down the eastern road. A crisscross took them higher up into the hills, where a twiggy hellscape sat among the fuschia ash brewing from the fields.
"This is… Mabe?" Zelda shuddered, beholding the remnant of the famous hill town. Libraries, training posts, tournament grounds, and schools – ransacked. Slaughtered. Moonscaped. Erased. Beheaded oak trees lined their way toward the outskirts where a smoking prairie sloped overhead—another guardian, twitching.
"I can't believe this." She cried - Link noticing, searching for her eyes as his horse kept to the faithful path. Steep slides of granite took them to the top of the Hyrulean Bowl, where a young forest waved high up in the wind. Within the hour, they breached the entrance, clomping hooves triggering the flight of passerine birds, darting from their nests as the pair cantered through the foliage.
"She knows the trail?" The woman marveled, patting the neck of their pony, and when the owner issued no response, she panicked, "L-Link! Are you with me?"
He nodded weakly - his body, a slouching weight on her chest now.
She kicked their pony faster yet heard a faint voice in the wind of their speed, "Y-You'll be safe. I-I'll get someone to – "
The woman froze, looking down, surveying his face and mouth. Had Link just spoken? It couldn't have been. She checked, locking eyes with him as he took a long breath and wheezed, "S-Someone will… bring Sheikah… to get you."
"P-Pardon?" She blinked – he actually spoke.
"Y-You''ll be safe." He huffed.
"Link? You spoke."
He didn't seem to understand – did not remember his reticence?
"I-I'll make sure you're safe." He repeated.
"H-How could I leave you?" She stammered, actualizing a conversation with her strictly taciturn hero, "I understand – you're without any knowledge of me, but I am the one who's been talking to you for the past two years!… or rather, for the past one hundred years! I am the Princess of Hyrule, commissioner of the champions, and so I am indebted to you!" She pulled him into her arms, "Do not suggest such a thing! I'm not leaving you!"
His chest stilled - she shot up, "Link? Link, are you breathing?"
He nodded feverishly.
"I'm holding you too tightly?"
He looked nervous.
'What's wrong?"
He shook his head, shy eyes blinking fretfully.
"What is it? Can you tell me?"
He started shyly, "No, I – "
"Hmm?"
"Do I call - ?"
"Do you what - ?"
"I-I, um, call you," he trailed off, "Your Highness?' or ''Your Majesty?'"
She studied him incredulously, "Are you asking about honorifics? In a time like this?"
He looked away.
An uncanny laugh broke – she shook away the disbelief, beaming, "You can call me anything you want, Link, Savior of Hyrule! Call me Princess Zelda, or Princess, or better yet, just Zelda is fine!"
He nodded – too shy to return the smile.
But she pushed on, "And do not be afraid to lean back! There's no use in shyness!"
He nodded again – wordlessly, awkwardly – as they rode onward. Rolling maples soon gave way to an apple orchard. Signs of civilization. Zelda scanned the running rows of fruit trees until a rickety old fence joined their stride, and with the last of her adrenaline, she slowed the horse and surveyed the length of it.
"Link?" She huffed, looking down, "A-Are we close?"
He had sunken down into her embrace – weak, lips white, cheeks pale, a battered face turning skull's white. The sockets of his eyes had shaded black, frightening her.
"Link? Link, can you hear me?"
He nodded once more, and with a shudder, he blindly pointed down the length of the fence where a mystery man stood half obscured by the first row of apple trees, hacking away at a fallen limb.
"W-Wait, I see someone!" She yelled impulsively, "Excuse me! Is somebody there?"
The man turned, dropping his ax when he saw them.
Zelda froze, now eye to eye with this stranger.
"What happened?" He yelled, hustling over – clambering the fence, landing sloppily before scampering over to them.
Zelda shook, wanting to collapse into this man's arms and imprudently cry out everything – the Calamity's onslaught, the desecration of Castletown and Mabe, being frozen away for a century, and Link's sacrifice. Yet, all she allowed herself to do was stare at this outerlander-looking man: a bulky gentleman with dark skin and bushy black brows – no less, the second person she had seen in a century.
"Lassy? Lassy, can you speak?"
"A monster." She whimpered, finding her voice, "A monster attacked us in the fields, and he needs help!"
"This way!" Yelled the man, grabbing their horse's reins, "I have a stable!"
On they went – their horse stumbling into a shaky trot as the stranger ran them along the splintering fence.