The images flipped lazily past her. There was a part of her that thought this was a bit pointless, since the reality from which Terrako had come was not theirs, but Robbie was so proud of the data he had managed to pry from the small guardian that she had not the heart to refuse.Gentle wind made its way through her hair and she inhaled the pleasant scent of the nearby trees. It was a lovely place to get things done. Once they put the roof on, she figured it would be less so. She was surrounded by dusty boxes and crates, with a myriad of shelves that contained an unorganized assortment of trinkets and baubles on the walls. A storage room once it was closed off, she figured. But for now, it was nice.She heard shouting and clattering from below and nearly stood from her seat. She was stopped when Link flew into the room, his wide blue eyes scanning the cluttered and shelves."What are you looking for?" Zelda asked. She was unlikely to be helpful, truthfully. It wasn't as though she had taken any sort of inventory and could tell him where something was.Link looked a little lost, opened his mouth, but then turned back to the open staircase door. He started with, "Uhh-" but before he could say more, Zelda heard Purah shout up, "The livenbridge! Hurry before this thing falls on us!"Link looked back to Zelda, his eyes utterly devoid of comprehension. The princess hopped from her seat and moved to a shelf opposite the doorway. Perhaps she didn't know where the building materials were, but her scholarly eye always took note of technology she came across. She grabbed the small rod and tossed it to Link. A smile broke out on his face, and he nodded his thanks before flying back out the door and down the stairs.Once she heard the lower level quiet down a bit, she settled back into her seat and pulled up the Sheikah Slate to continue flipping through the files. Most of it looked dreary and miserable. She spotted herself in a few images, including ones that appeared to be able to play as a recording, but it seemed to mostly be of her and Link traveling, by horseback or on foot. Perhaps there was indeed profound wisdom to be gained from these treks, but unless Robbie asked her specifically to go through them, she would leave them be for now.There was an image that caught her eye toward the end of the files; one that could play as a recording. A veritable swarm of guardians in a dimly- lit field, it seemed. The prospect of facing so many at once made her heart sink. With a push of morbid curiosity, she tapped the screen to play the recording.The Sheikah Slate whirred, and rather than appear on the screen, the recording played directly before her eyes, consuming the entirety of her vision. It was indeed dark and dingy. The rain was coming down in sheets, and, strangely enough, she could feel the cold. An explosion startled her, and she glanced to her right. A guardian was tumbling down a small rise, falling into pieces as it did.There were so many; skittering around like spiders and unsettlingly quickly, considering how heavy they were. A few of them focused on a single area, and when she turned her head to look, her breath caught in her throat.Link was on one knee, almost collapsed forward, but holding himself off the ground with the Master Sword stabbed into the earth. His breaths came in heaves, and each exhale threatened to send him to the ground. Behind him, she saw herself wearing her priestess dress and covered in mud and burns. She was crouched over Link, pleading hands on his shoulder."Link, save yourself! Go!" she said quietly to him. "I'll be fine! Don't worry about me! Run!"She scrunched her nose at the self that was not her. Perhaps she didn't know this version of herself; they knew very little of this alternate world. But she knew the helplessness in that Zelda's voice all too well. Considering this Zelda was not at that moment shining the light of the goddesses on the guardians, she could only assume that she had yet to awaken her power.She swallowed hard. This was a world in which Zelda's power never awakened? Calamity Ganon had won, and she was unable to assist at all? The distaste she had momentarily held for her melted into pity. She knew enough of herself to be certain that she had likely poured everything she could manage into attempting to awaken the power, and the goddesses were deaf to her pleas even to this point, when there was simply nothing left?Movement jarred her from her thoughts. A guardian was making its way through a pile of its fallen fellows, its blue eye aimed at the two. Link grunted and forced himself upright, using the sword as leverage. His legs nearly failed him immediately. He stumbled, pushing Zelda further back, but righted himself and took a wide stance. The guardian shifted swiftly toward them, climbing over the bodies of the many destroyed and inert guardians to loom over the two figures that suddenly looked so terribly small in comparison.Link stared the guardian down. Zelda could see his legs shivering with the effort of just holding him up. His grip on his sword was equally as shaky, but there was a defiance in his eyes that she knew from her Link (had she always referred to him as 'hers'?) and which had always filled her with a sense of security. But now, it seemed wasted; an empty threat against an uncaring machine.The guardian's eye lit up with a thrum, and the targeting laser centered immediately on Link's brow. The Zelda that was not her surged forward with a cry of, "NO!", easily shouldering Link's weakened form out of the way, and taking a position in front of him.Perhaps it was an instinct, created from prayers and practice and study over the course of her entire life that caused her to lift her hand. Maybe it was a direction from the power itself. Whatever it was, she raised her right hand, and the light of the goddesses burst from her palm. She recognized the following explosion of divine energy that spread away from her, consuming every guardian that remained on the field surrounding them. At once, they all fell still, and a deafening silence fell upon the plain.The alternate Zelda stared in wonder at her hand. "Was…" she began, breathless. "Was that… the power-?"Her thoughts were interrupted by a heavy breath and the sound of Link's form crumpling to the ground. Zelda spun on her heel. Sword still clutched in his hand, Link lay on his side curled around his middle and utterly still.The real Zelda's breath caught in her throat as she watched her doppleganger rush to Link's side. "No, no!" She gripped his shoulders and pulled on his thigh to roll him toward her. "Link! Get up!" Even in his state, he shifted a little to allow himself to be pulled into her arms.A pair of coughs forced their way through him, and he relaxed against the arm that supported him. The alternate Zelda leaned over him, saying quietly, "You're going to be just fine."It seemed a silly and desperate thing to say at that moment, but even if it hadn't been, Zelda could hear the lie in her own voice. Link looked up at her with a gaze full of weariness and pain. He drew one deep breath before releasing it and falling back on her arm, his eyes slipping closed.His body went limp. He did not draw breath again.Zelda's breathing stopped with his. He died… Link died there in the rain, in the cold; beaten and exhausted with only herself as witness. The alternate Zelda let his torso lay back, and pressed her weeping face against his chest, still cradling his head in one hand.A knot wound itself in her throat, tears stung her own eyes, and her stomach rolled over itself. This was not her Link, she reminded herself. But even so, she could see him. A man identical to her own Link lay lifeless on the ground. The image was there, and now it was in her head.Zelda was a princess. She was surrounded at all times by people whose job it was, if necessary, to give their lives to keep her safe. It was something she hated but was forced to accept throughout her life. And she was a royal that lived through war. She had seen soldiers give their lives more times than she cared to recall.This was different.The fealty of a soldier is given to a kingdom; the royals they serve change over time. But this was in a world where Calamity Ganon had won; there was no kingdom. There was no army. There was nothing left but a princess and her guard in the middle of a field. The entity to which Link had sworn his allegiance as a soldier was gone. By all logic, he should have fled.But he didn't. He placed himself between her and the enemy and died doing it. Because he wasn't a Hylian Knight… he was Zelda's Knight.It is one thing for someone to say they would give their life for you. They are words anyone can say, and even compulsory in the case of Hylian Soldiers like Link.It is another thing entirely to watch someone hold true to those words. Link could have run, and no one would have seen aside from the woman that likely wouldn't be around long enough to tell anyone. He could have even taken her pleas to run as an order from his princess. If he was anything at all like her Link, there were a hundred ways he could have lived through this. But he made the decision to stand and die rather than forsake her.Link didn't give his life for his kingdom; he gave his life for her. And while this dead Link was not hers, he was just as the alternate Zelda was; everything that was in that Link was in hers.The recording continued, but even if a bit of jostling in the real world hadn't pulled her away from it, she found herself uninterested in continuing to watch the remnants of the horrible timeline."Uhh, Princess?" Impa was in her face, waving a hand.As soon as Zelda sat up a bit straighter, blinked a few times, and focused on Impa, a tension she had not been aware of dissipated in the room. Purah and Robbie stood to her right while Impa was bent down to look her in the eyes."She's back!" cried the Sheikah, standing straight. "You gave us a fright!"Purah grabbed the Sheikah Slate from her and began talking excitedly, but their conversation faded into the background when her eyes settled onto Link. He was standing to the left of the staircase, having just let out a sigh of relief. He smiled at her when he spotted her looking, but when she didn't look away, he squirmed a little under her gaze.Impa asked her a question, but she stood and moved past her. Link looked to his sides, as though there were even room for her to be staring at anyone else. By the time he looked back to her, she had reached him. Any thoughts of impropriety were silenced by the image of the dead Link in the field, and she threw her arms over his shoulders and hugged him. He stiffened in her grasp, but she didn't care. There was an illogical part of her brain that needed to make sure he was there until her stomach stopped doing summersaults.She felt tears sting her eyes, but she fought them away and pressed herself just a little more against him, turning to press her forehead against the crook of his neck. It was then that he finally relaxed, and she felt his arms wrap around her, holding her close. She felt another wave of tears attempt to escape her, but she held him tighter and swallowed them away as well.Around this time, she became aware that there were still other people in the room, and they were currently bent over the Sheikah Slate, their eyes glassy. She assumed they were watching the same recording she had been. She absently raised a hand and threaded her fingers through his golden hair. For his part, Link seemed to have resigned himself to being confused and just held his princess while the others investigated.She could tell the recording had completed because the three of them blinked and refocused around the same time."Ahh… I see," mused Impa. "That makes sense."Link looked up at them over Zelda's blonde head and raised an eyebrow. Purah put the Sheikah Slate down on the table, and the three filed out, Robbie mussing the top of Link's head as he did. They shut the door behind them, leaving Zelda clinging to Link in the fading light of the evening."I saw what happened," she finally said. She pulled away from him just a little to look into his eyes. "In the world Terrako came from." She pinched a bit of the fabric at the front of his tunic and rolled it between her fingers slowly. "You died."There was something unsettling about the way his face didn't display any reaction to that two- word sentence. He stared at her as though she had added a detail not really of any note and was waiting for the rest of the story."You died, Link," she said again. Link's eyes shifted to the side, and right back to her, full of confusion. "You died protecting me… in a field… in the rain… with no one there…" Even as she added the details that had so thoroughly disturbed her, there was no horror on his face. His gaze was steady. He was listening but didn't seem to be assigning any particular significance to the horrible way he had fallen. Perhaps it was simply because she had been the cause of his death that she found it so disturbing, and thus, the story would not be overtly stressing on someone simply hearing about it. But she didn't believe this was the case with him.If anything, the fact that he died protecting her probably seemed like a victory in his eyes. As she had noted earlier, the Link who died in that horrible other world was the same as hers. Same nature, would make the same decisions… same oath that he would hold to, no matter what was happening around him.She took a moment to let it go; there was no way he would share in her horror at what she had seen, even if he were to watch the same recording. She put her arms around him again, and this time, she felt him immediately place a supportive open hand on the small of her back."You have to stick around, okay?" she said quietly. She pulled away to watch him blink blankly at her, but she left her arms on his shoulders. "I watched you die in that reality, and that can't happen here, right?"