When the blinding light at last faded, the young princess found herself standing before him in the green field. Him. The Hero of Hyrule. She studied his face, which looked so familiar and yet so foreign, like she had only ever seen it in a dream. It seemed unreal, to be physically here with him again. She had always had faith in him, had always believed that he could defeat Calamity Ganon, and yet a nagging part of her brain had also thought that she was undeserving of such success.

"Do you really… remember me?" she dared to ask. She was terrified. If he had no memory of her, after everything they had been through, would it all have been worth it?

For many agonizing moments, the world stood still. The man who stood before her remained painfully silent, and Zelda began to doubt her resolve. What if he hated her, after all this time? It would only make sense. She was the princess who had failed in the one task she was designed to complete: she had allowed Calamity Ganon to wreak havoc upon the land. He was the hero who had righted things. Perhaps he really did-

"Yes." He nodded at her. "Of course I remember you, Princess Zelda."

Link unsheathed the Master Sword and knelt before her, offering the legendary weapon. Zelda stood surprised by this grand gesture.

"I don't remember everything," he admitted. It was hard to read his expression, as his face was now directed at the ground. "But I remember walking Hyrule with you, before the Calamity. I remember defending you from Yiga assassins and fighting alongside the other Champions. I remember the day Ganon struck, when the Guardians turned against us. And I remember…" His voice began to crack. "I remember you saving me, Zelda. Without your aid, I would be dead." He lifted his face, and his blue eyes pierced her. "Thank you."

The next week was a blur. For the first two days after Calamity Ganon's defeat, Zelda's brain remained in an inescapable fog. Unable to focus and sleeping for many hours at a time, her mind drifted between memories from both before and during the Calamity.

Through it all, one constant remained: Link.

Whenever she became cognizant of the present, he was always there, sometimes spooning food into her mouth, sometimes sleeping, but always by her side. No matter what horrible memories surfaced, she could find some comfort in his presence.

Even after she had snapped out of the brain-fog and started feeling more like herself, it took another day for her to be able to walk again. One hundred years of keeping Ganon at bay had taken its toll - Zelda had been without a physical form during all that time, and her muscles were like a babe's, having to relearn how to stretch and move properly. It was a humiliating process, yet Link never laughed at her. Instead, he gave her the Master Sword to use as a crutch. Step by hobbling step she found her feet. By the end of the third day, Princess Zelda could walk Hyrule once more.

Progress remained slow, however. Though Calamity Ganon was sealed away, remnants of his evil Malice remained throughout the land, and that included some of the Guardian Stalkers which patrolled the great plains of Hyrule. They took refuge among the ruins of the Sacred Ground and hid there for another full day.

Eventually, Link grew restless, and that night he wordlessly left their makeshift camp. Zelda, asleep, didn't even notice he was gone until several minutes later, when an explosion bolted her awake.

"Link!" she cried out, fearing the worst.

The night was pitch-black. She scrambled to get up, but her feet - still exhausted from the previous days' travels - screamed with pain, and she was forced to her knees.

A stormy night. They were gone. They were all gone…

Another explosion sounded nearby, and the flash of a Guardian's beam illuminated the darkness. Zelda crawled along the stone of the ruins, willing herself forward despite her body's protestations.

They were trapped. The warrior's wounds were most certainly lethal: his right arm was black from the burns of battle, and he could barely lift the sword.

There! Another flash of light allowed her to catch a glimpse of a lone swordsman doing battle with not just one, but two Guardian Stalkers. They circled him, twin red dots marking the swordsman's chest.

A mechanical beast saw them. Of course it did - their luck had been rotten from the beginning. It launched itself at them, a hulking mass of metal that stood at double her height. Her noble knight attempted to sit up, attempted to defiantly challenge the beast, but to no avail. He collapsed into the sodden mud.

The smell of ash making her nostrils flare with disgust, Zelda crawled towards the battle. She could do this. The power of the Goddess was in her. She could save Link this time. She could do it right.

The Guardians fired.

"No!" She stretched out a hand, but the light didn't come.

Everything happened too fast. One moment, she could see the swordsman illuminated against the backdrop of incoming destruction. Then, with a swing of his shield - the Hylian Shield, passed down for generations in the royal family - Link deflected the beams and sent them back to their masters.

The effect was immediate. The beams, having struck that cruel eye of the Guardian, their only weak spot, caused the machines to whir erratically. Electricity crackled about their forms, and in a burst of Malice-filled light, they exploded.

A calm quiet filled Hyrule Field. The chitter of the sunset fireflies resumed, and a few startled birds tweeted out their frustration with the disruption. Zelda realized that she had stopped breathing, and released a gasp of air.

Link was by her side in an instant, gripping a hand protectively. "I'm fine," she insisted. "I just thought…oh, why did you have to go off alone like that?"

He hung his head in shame. "No, please, don't think I am ungrateful for what you did, but that was so dangerous! I don't want…"

His lifeless form lay in the mud. "Please!" she shouted, as two Sheikah warriors arrived at the scene. "Please, you must save him! Take him to the Shrine of Resurrection immediately."

She pulled away from him. "We should have done it together."

Link stood up, the glow of the Master Sword's blade providing a pale light in the darkness. In it, she could just barely see the swordsman look at her, sprawled out on the ground, and raise an eyebrow.

"I may not be perfectly myself yet, but I can still be useful!" she insisted. Desperate to prove this, she attempted standing on her own two feet again. Her knees buckled. Link rushed forward, but she waved him away. Gripping a nearby stone pillar, she found her footing and stood tall. Even now, as weak as she was, she stood taller than him. "I am Princess Zelda, and I will not be ridiculed."

He bowed his head and walked away. Though he was of few words, Zelda could still pick up that he was frustrated with her. She sighed, breathing through her nostrils. Well, he would just have to get over it. She was frustrated with him.

The next morning, they awoke to cloudy skies and a drizzling rain. While Link ran off to find them food, Zelda inspected the remains of the two Guardian Stalkers he had slain the previous night.

Two small craters marred the ground, the grass around them charred from the explosions. Several other points around the craters were also marred with blackened grass: spots where their beam-attacks had landed, no doubt. Little remained of the Guardians themselves: small metal shards, a discernible screw. No doubt Purah, if she were still alive, would be thrilled to study the wreckage. Zelda wondered how many of those she had known so well before the Calamity remained, and frowned. Though she might have bested Ganon in the end, it didn't matter. At the end of the day, she had failed when it mattered most.

Link returned with a collection of berries. Their breakfast was short, and Zelda remained lost in thought. How could she possibly make up for her failure?

A gentle tapping on her shoulder arrested her attention, and she found Link's deep blue eyes boring into hers. What's wrong? they asked wordlessly.

"I'm fine," she insisted, though the crack in her voice gave herself away. "I'm just…thinking. I shouldn't be resting here, wasting the days away. I need to be out there, working, making up for…well, you know."

He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

She scoffed. "Oh, you know what I am talking about! I failed, Link. I failed my father, I failed the Champions, I failed…everyone! I failed you! Had I worked harder to awaken the Goddess' power in me, you would never have needed to go to the Shrine of Resurrection. That was my fault!"

Link shook his head. Wordlessly, he stood up straight, kicked the remnants of their fire away, and strapped the Master Sword to his back. Offering a hand to help her up, he said just a single word: "Follow."

She did. Somehow, she found the strength to. Link led her north, across plains littered with smoldering Guardian-beam patches, which littered the fields like a pox. He led her through the ruins of Castle Town, which had been so utterly ravaged that it was almost impossible to believe it had once been a thriving community, a center of commerce and joy.

A girl marched through a town ablaze. It had been abandoned on the first day, over a month ago. Her clothes were covered in soot and mud - her sandals, part of her royal uniform, were practically falling apart.

A spider-like machine scrambled over a burning house. In its haste it fell through the roof, but no matter. Its hulking form crashed through a wall, causing the entire home to crumble.

Before it had a chance to attack, however, the girl turned and pointed a hand in its direction. There was a flash of golden light.

The machine was turned to stone.

He led her across the Castle Bridge, which stretched over the moat that surrounded the castle. The main road was falling apart, no doubt from one hundred years of Malice coating the area. Here, the corpses of monsters - Bokoblin, Moblin, and Lizalfos - littered the area; they were recent additions, no doubt.

Several more machines sought to halt her progress, but like their brethren before they were each turned to stone. The castle rumbled with the snarls of Calamity Ganon as she continued her path. Yet even so, the beast refused to engage with her directly. He was scared. He knew she was coming for him.

Link led her through one of the castle gates, where they passed the remains of a Lynel. Zelda began to realize what the swordsman had gone through just to get to the throne room. No wonder those two Guardians hadn't frightened him. He had fought a whole army just so he could take on Ganon himself.

At last, the throne room. It was broken, covered with the horrible red-and-black Malice that hurt to the touch, and yet the symbol of the royal family, the Triforce, remained defiantly in place. "I know you're here!" she shouted. "I know what you want, but I, Princess Zelda, will defy you to the end. You've taken everything from me, but you know that so long as I still breathe, you will never succeed. Come and get me!"

As the castle quaked, the Princess searched for the power within her.

He stopped just before the throne room. Zelda shook her head, ridding herself of old memories. "Why are we here?" she asked his back.

He turned and pointed. She tried to follow his direction, but… "What are you trying to show me?"

"That's Hyrule." His voice was calm, confident. Everything she wasn't in the present moment.

"Yes, I am well aware of Hyrule, thank you, but what does that-"

He held up a finger to silence her. Then suddenly, like a flood, words came. "Look around you. Look at what Hyrule used to be." He gestured at the castle. "Look at what it is." He swept his hand in an arc, indicating the whole scope of land before them. "See how Hyrule has survived? How, despite everything, Hyrule has endured?"

She wasn't sure she got his meaning. "I suppose…"

"You say you failed everyone. You seem to think that just because your powers didn't activate when you wanted them to, that the last one hundred years is your fault. But it's not. If you hadn't saved me when you did, if you hadn't kept Calamity Ganon at bay for a century, if you hadn't sealed him away for good, none of this would still exist.

"I've seen it all. To find my strength, to rescue the Divine Beasts and wield the Master Sword once more, I have traveled across every corner of this continent. And while, yes, the world has seen its fair share of grief and horror in the last century, it has endured. Joy, and love, and all the things that make Hyrule livable have persisted. Your sacrifice made that possible." He paused. "You didn't fail the world, Zelda. You saved it."

He stopped talking then, leaving Zelda to process everything he had just said. She looked out across at the great expanse of Hyrule Fields. Off in the distance, she could spot the towering Great Plateau in all its majesty. The Dueling Peaks, and Mount Lanayru. Vah Medoh was perched above the Rito Village. The world was green and lush and thriving.

And she was responsible.

As she wiped tears from her cheeks, Link added, "Nobody escapes a war unscathed. You're always going to lose people. When the monster first started attacking Castle Town, my father…" His voice trailed off.

"But if I had awakened my power sooner, if I had worked just a little bit harder…"

"No. Don't ever think that way. You did all you could."

"I…" Words failed her. "Why are you being so kind to me?"

Link sighed. He turned and looked out over the castle. "From the moment I woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection, I was chasing something. I didn't know what at first - with no memories of my past, it was just a gut feeling. But as I started to regain what I had lost, I realized that what I was chasing, the one thing that I needed to save more than anything else…" He turned and gazed at her with his ocean-blue eyes. "…was you."

Zelda cried out and enveloped him in her arms, wrapping him in the tightest hug she could muster. Everything she had been afraid of, all of her worries, had been washed away in an instant.

"Thank you," she sobbed. "Thank you, Link."

They stayed gazing out over Hyrule Fields for another hour or so. The sun flew high overhead, bathing them in delightful spring heat. Zelda had almost forgotten what it was like to actually feel, to have a physical form again. Even though most of her body was still aching with pain, the warm sunlight felt nice.

"So," Link spoke up. He was like that - he could go days, even weeks, without saying a word, and then would suddenly talk your ear off. "What's the plan?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're Princess Zelda. Even when things went horribly awry, you always had a plan. And for the last hour, you've been lost in thought."

"How do you know I'm not just wallowing in self-pity?"

He chuckled. "Well, excuse me, Princess, for assuming you had a plan."

A wry smile graced her lips. "No, no, you're fine. I think…you're right. There is much to be done. We need to plot a course of action, and get the kingdom back on its feet. I assume the Sheikah still reside at Kakariko Village?" When he nodded, she continued, "Then that shall be our first stop. We will need the help of the Sheikah if we are to unite the people once more." She looked down at the rags that were currently passing for her clothes. "And it would be nice to have a change in wardrobe. What think you, noble knight?"

He bowed his head. "I shall go where you go, Princess."

"Good. Then let's get started."

One hundred years of suffering. One hundred years of fighting Calamity Ganon, time and time and time again, restraining her with all her might. Time had no meaning - there was no way of telling whether it had been a day, a week, a year.

…then, a spark. Somehow, she felt him waking up. A bolt of joy coursed through her. The Shrine of Resurrection had worked!

A rumble of fury from her captive. He knew what was going on just as she did. His rage was a bottomless pit, threatening to overthrow her at any minute.

Desperate, she flung a message out. "Link…Link…open your eyes…find me…"

As the beast around her roared with malice, she could only hope her champion would save her.