Archive of Our Own

The one thing that flashed through his mind like a picture he had memorized a thousand times was the brightness of Hyrule Field. It was the way everything felt alive, felt like a paradise left to thrive inside of a dream. To him, that’s what it was. It was home of one of the most important places he had ever been to, a sanctuary he had found when things weren't exactly going his way. 

Link blinked. It all felt like a dream.

Large gates stood in front of him. They were opened, as they usually were, with a wooden sign that stretched over the top of it. The words on it were etched over and over again, dented into the stained wood. It was messy and looked run down, but it always had, and it probably always will. He smiled at the thought. The scattered marks over the surface and the words sprawled out in blocky text was one of the things he loved about this place. It wasn't uniform. It was messy. It was loved.

In big letters, the sign read "Lon Lon Ranch" with a smaller "welcome to" over top of it. In the corner of the sign was a haphazardly drawn horse. To anyone else, the sketchy handwriting in the corner could go unnoticed. To Link, however, it was hard to miss it.

It felt like it was just yesterday when he signed it with his stolen kitchen knife.

In a far off distant place, someone called out his name.

Looking away from the sign, Link turned his head and let his face fall back into the stone-cold expression he always wore.

"Are you alright?" The princess asked. Link only let himself nod, his horse moving into a trot, now siding up beside her. "You spaced out for a few seconds. You know we can't be late."

"I apologize, your highness, it won't happen again."

He would reserve his smile for another time. The ranch could wait.

"So you're tellin' me, that- that the princess fell off her horse twice today?"

"Yep."

"And you, the ever valiant knight, fell off your horse on purpose so she wouldn’t feel bad?"

"That is what happened."

"Oh Hylia, I can't believe I helped raise you."

Link scoffed, rolling his eyes while he feigned surprise. "I'm sorry, I figured you would have thought I to be a gentleman."

"Sure, lovebug, you are a prim and proper gentleman," Malon said in return, mocking a curtsey and turning back to her recipe book. When she turned around again, she had to slap Link's hand from out of the fruit bowl again. Her spoon was held threateningly in her hand, but he knew she meant no harm. Not to him. "Now I thought you came over to help me, not eat all my food?"

With the promise of being allowed to actually eat some of their desserts this time, that’s all he could have asked for at that moment.

He rushed out of his seat, an eager smile on his lips. Malon rolled her eyes, sliding him the recipe book and reciting it from memory while she baked. Each page was turned with care, even despite the wrinkly paper and the torn and folded edges. Link adored this book with all of his heart. Some of the recipes, Malon had told him, were centuries years old. Others were newer, written in a scrawny text only Link and Malon could ever manage to read. His handwriting had never been the best, but she had insisted he added his fruit cake recipe into the book. It was now, as she called it, a "secret family recipe" to match the others.

The kitchen wasn't big. Not compared to the castles, certainly. It was a little crowded, even with just the two of them, but it was enough. They had just enough room to move, and, by now, they knew exactly what to do and where to go. It was a dance. Ducking whenever a cabinet was opened, passing the other a knife when they even spared a look to the other side of the room, sliding a cup or an orange slice whenever they began to speak. Talon had said it was like a different language entirely.

"-then you let it chill for fifteen minutes exactly…" Malon mumbled, spinning around on her heel and searching through the cupboards. Link slid her the recipe book, and she wordlessly thanked him before shuffling through the pages haphazardly. The tears probably mostly came from her. "And we're done!"

"When can we eat?" Link asked, his tone just on the edge of a whine. He dipped his hands into the bowl in front of him, taking a handful of the berries and eating them quicker than he could breathe. Malon laughed, pulling the bowl of blueberries out from under his hand.

"When you lay off eating my fruits."

"So you don't want me to eat at all, then?"

"Precisely."

For the first time that day, Link laughed.

The only thing Link registered for a long time was the ringing in his ears. It was loud, and it was obscuring any other noises in the room, let alone his other senses. The sound was agitating the migraine that picked at his skull. Like an echo, it never seemed to let out. It kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing, and for a long time that’s the only thing Link let himself pay any attention to. But then he relented and opened his eyes, only for him to squeeze them tight shut again and groan. The room had been bright, far brighter than he expected. And his eyes hurt way more than they should have. The colors were blurry and the room had spun and it took all he had to keep his breakfast in his stomach. Not that it was a lot, a lone apple he had eaten in his rush this morning, and that had been hours ago. This would be the only time he would ever say it, but he was thankful he skipped lunch. The mere thought of food made his stomach churn.

Just after the ringing in his ears grew quieter, Link gained the courage to open his eyes again.

The first thing he noticed was that the room was, in fact, not bright at all. The lights were dimmed out, and from where he was he could see the curtains on the window next to him shut tight. The thing that had made his eyes hurt the most was how obnoxiously colorful the walls were. Bright yellow wallpaper decorated with red flowers. A disgustingly bright yellow with a disgustingly bright red to match. His stomach rolled, and Link took in a deep breath.

The second thing he noticed was how deathly quiet the room was. No, the house was. As Link sat up with extreme care, he noted two doors each opposite of each other. One was cracked open, and the other was closed tight. Through the cracked door, he could hear two people talking quietly, and see sunlight peeking through the windows from the other rooms.

It took him a moment to try and figure out how he had got there. The last thing Link remembered, he was fighting a Moblin that had snuck up on him and…

Zelda.

Stumbling out of bed was no longer an option. Link shot through the room despite the way it tilted under his feet. He fell into the wall, swallowing the bile that rose up in his throat and nearly falling to his knees when he stepped through the open door. There was a rush of footsteps and suddenly he was no longer falling to the floor. Instead, he was being helped up by a pair of strong arms. Their presence was warm, and he felt safe even with them simply being close by. But that person didn't halt his thoughts, and Link still fought them back. He had to get to the princess. Did the Moblin get her? Did he fail to protect her? Is she-

"Woah, hold on there sugar." The person said. Their voice was familiar. "Princess Zelda is fine. She brought you back here after you hit your head fighting a monster."

Link only heard part of that sentence. "She's… okay?"

"Yeah hun, she's right as rain. But you need rest-"

"What? No, 'm… I'm j'st fine."

"Tell that to me when you aren't about'a pass out. Go rest, honeybee."

The person slowly turned Link around and led him back to the room in which he stumbled out of. It just occurred to him that he hadn't made it that far in the first place. It was quite the opposite, he barely made it out the front door. It might have been for the best, because as soon as he laid down again he blacked out, be it only for a few minutes. When Link woke up again, the person had to push him back down and remind him again that Zelda was alright.

"She's mighty worried about ya y'know." They said. "If you rest up now she'll be back with a fairy in no time."

"Zzzelda… here?"

"Yes, she went to the fairy garden on the other side of the ranch. She should be back any minute now."

Link shook his head slowly, moving to crawl out of bed. He could only pick himself up slightly and fall back down again, head swimming. "What? No, she… gotta go home…"

"Hun, she said she isn't going anywhere without you."

Looking up at them, Link only just realized it was Malon who had been talking to him. He would notice her red hair anywhere. He should have noticed her voice, too. It was soothing. Not to mention her southern accent being one of the very few he could recognize without having to see who was talking. So much for that, anyway.

"Besides, she can take care of herself. It's you we're worried about." Malon said, bringing the blanket back up to cover Link's shoulder. Her voice was fond, even despite her words being the same ones she used during lectures. "Now go to sleep, before I bring her back here myself."

"Alrigh'… nigh' night, Aunt Lon…" Link yawned, eyes closing before he could see the shock on her face. When she spoke next her voice was softer than it had been before.

"Goodnight, Link."

Before he left that day, he was presented with a book.

"I want you to have this," Malon said, shoving the book into his arms as if she wasn't going to accept any negative replies.

The book was old. He knew that. In fact, Link knew almost every nook and cranny of this thing. He knew every tear and every stain, he's memorized every crossed-out word and which pages had to be sewn anew. He knew where each recipe was, even if it was all scattered and messy and without any organization whatsoever. He knew the entirety of this book because Link has spent almost all seventeen years of his life staring at its contents, hoping one day his own recipes would be enough to make the inside.

"You- mean- mine?" It was all he could make out. Link was breathless, a wide smile on his face as he looked back and forth between Malon and the book in his hands.

She only nodded before saying, "Open it."

On the inside of its worn-out leather cover was a label that read: "For your eyes only."

"Flip to the last page."

Link did so tentatively. His movements were slow, shaky. He didn't quite know what waited for him there, but it was everything he had ever wanted. Right there, in the back next to his mothers and Malon's own handwritten recipes, were Link's. His fruit cake recipe, his pumpkin stew, and his spicy meat and fish fry. Three of his very own recipe's scattered in the back pages of their family's recipe book for ages to find. He knew of one of them being there already, but it hadn't been just his. It had been his and his sister's. But this... it was just his. Just his.

This book was thousands of years old, maybe even millions. His mother said they have had it for as long as she could remember, and way before that, too. There were recipes that needed ingredients that had gone extinct and that have been needed to be rewritten. There are pages that have been crossed out and rewritten and others that had to have papers sewn over top of holes that were made. There were words that nobody could even identify anymore. It was their family's and their family's alone, and it was one of the things that brought Link his love of cooking.

Before he could say another word or let the tears in his eyes fall, he hugged Malon with all the strength he had and said, "Thank you."

"If it's alright with you, Link…" she began, her train of thought ending before she could finish it. Link waited patiently for her to continue, stopping his training and turning back her way. "Can we… can we go to the ranch again tomorrow? After our visit to the spring?"

"Of course, your highness," Link said, an easy smile on his face. It didn't reach his eyes, but it was still there. To her, it was a step forward. She took it as a success.

"Thank you… I really like it there. It's… it's peaceful. It's different than the palace. I feel like I can just… be. I can exist without anything weighing me down."

"I feel the same way."

"You come home safe now, you hear me?" Malon said, jabbing her finger into Link's chest. "Been hearin' o' monsters down there. Take it safe. We don't want you or the princess comin' home dead, got that?"

Link rolled his eyes, moving away and ducking away when she spun around to face him. "Don't worry about it. I can handle it."

Malon followed him as he walked out of the kitchen and towards the door. He slung his sword over his head, tightening the belt and making sure it wouldn't slip off while he was out. Setting aside the bowl held in her hand and taking off her apron, Malon maneuvered around the furniture and came to face him again. When Link turned her way, she placed her hands on his shoulders, looking him directly in the eye. He held back an eye roll, choosing instead to give her a reassuring smile. Even though his aunt could be overbearing sometimes, he still loved her. She was family, after all. There wasn't anything Link wouldn't do for her safety and, apparently, there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for him, either.

"I didn't ask if you could handle it." Malon sighed, running a hand through her hair. Worry painted her features, and she bit her lip. "I just- be careful, okay? I don't want you to end up like…"

Your mother.

"Don't worry. I'll be fine, I promise." Link said. Though it didn't quite reach her eyes, she smiled and pulled him into a tight hug. He hugged back, pulling away a minute later and waving goodbye, hoping it wouldn't be his last. Never knew, right?

So he headed out to meet the pri- Zelda to escort her to Mount Lanayru. He wouldn't tell her of the party Malon was preparing at the ranch-- he hoped it would remain a surprise.

Their light flickered, purple and blue lights blinking, buzzing, fading to a stop and to simply disappear. The machines froze and died, mechanical bodies forcing to a halt and dropping where they stood. Gasps, yells, screams, the crackling of fire. Everything overloaded his senses, letting his mind cloud up with overload and buzz on with a single thought: Save the princess.

If Link had a say in the matter, he would have also thought to save himself, to save the only hopes Hyrule has of surviving this. To live, to go home, to fight another day. But he didn't have a say, and the only thing that mattered at that moment was to save the princess. She was the light-- his light --that must shine upon Hyrule once again, even if that moment was after his time.

The Guardians ran about on their spider-like legs, moving fast and with agile. There were many of them, the remnants of an army turned against their creators. They were deadly, taking precise aim on anyone they spotted. Link should be taking them out, one by one, using this cursed power he was granted to wield, to use as a protection, but he could barely stand. He could barely breathe, his lungs threatening to collapse on him. Link should be doing his job, both granted by the Goddess Hylia herself and the one the entire world has placed on him.

Save the princess.

But as the seconds went by, and the seconds turned to minutes, kneeling in the mud as the rain fell and fell and soaked into his skin, he recognized that he couldn’t, that there was a force beyond his power willing him to stop, to fall, to die. He wasn't meant to go home, was he?

Zelda put a hand on his shoulder, sparing a glance to the guardian in front of them before looking back down at him. “Link, save yourself! Go!” She said, her voice wavering and her eyes deceiving her. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me! Run!”

Save the princess.

Standing up, beaten, bloody and bruised, Link stumbled back into Zelda as she herself backed away. The fire raging in the field was bright, bringing a stinging sensation to his eyes as he squinted up. A guardian crawled over the rusting bodies of the fallen machines, a red light aiming straight for him. The feeling in his body was numb, was painful, a feeling of white-hot fire burning through his veins. If this was how it ended, if this was how Link died, then he’d go out strong. He’d go out fighting. Link would fall, he would die, he would disappear protecting the princess. Just as he had been told to do, hundreds of times. It was his job, and there was nothing more he wished he could do.

If it was his fate, then he accepted it.

Time felt as if it slowed down. He could hear the hissing of fire, its embers flying through the night. He could feel the smoke burning his lungs, stopping him from breathing. He could feel the blood rushing up his throat and into his mouth. He felt the fire licking his skin and the blood coating his clothes. Everything was slow, frozen, paralyzed, at that moment. Everything except for Link and the fire around him and the Guardian taking deadly aim straight for him.

He dug his heel into the ground the best he could. On his life, nothing would harm the princess.

"Don't worry. I'll be fine, I promise."

Oh, if only his aunt could see him now.

A beat. A second. A gasp, yell, a scream ("No!"). A beautiful, warm, golden light in front of him. Everything bright. The air suddenly warm rather than scorching hot. Letting his eyes drift, Link felt his body fall forward.

He was a liar.

He heard her footsteps, her tears and the pitter-patter of raining falling onto the ground, onto his skin. The quiet thumping of his own heartbeat, slow and quiet, uneven just like his breath.

Maybe he was fated to die this way.

It's quite the honor.

Opening his eyes, just as he felt Zelda move him into her arms, he looked up to see something beautiful. Absolutely radiant, and if it were to be the last thing he saw then maybe he didn't quite mind dying. Link looked up to see Zelda, eyes shining just as bright as he always said they were, though this time he noticed the tears falling and the frown on her face. So he cried with her, a weak smile gracing his face.

"You're doing just fine!" She said, holding the back of his head and gripping onto his shirt like a lifeline. He wondered if it were the truth-- maybe he could survive this. Maybe he wasn't a liar, after all. Maybe he could return home to his family. Just maybe.

"I'll be fine."

Liar.

Like a fool, a child hoping for a happy ending, Link smiled, closing his eyes for only a moment. The tears fell down his face as he looked up at Zelda. With so little strength and only a few moments left, as he knew, Link held a hand up to her cheek, wiping away the tears on her face. So he spoke, more to assure her worries than his own.

"Will you be there when I wake up?"

And for a moment, she didn't know what to say. Zelda looked down at him with her mouth open, gasping just before she began crying again. Nodding quickly, she smiled as best she could, even if it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Of course," she said, "of course I will."

So his smiled wavered, and his hand fell. The rain poured on. He heard her sob and tighten her grip on him, as if it was to keep him alive, keep him safe.

You be sure to protect her with your life.

While Link breathed his final breaths, looking up at his princess as his eyes fluttered shut, he believed he had.

When he woke up, he stayed away from Hyrule Field.

Link wasn't quite sure why. There hadn't been a specific reason he could think of. The entire field to him just felt like a terrible sense of foreboding, as if he had left something behind and left it to a terrible fate. While he felt that for the majority of Hyrule, especially at first, Hyrule Field was just… different. His guilt when looking at the field was much greater. It was drowning him. He couldn't step foot near it and instead chose to go only for emergencies, only when he absolutely had to.

It was distracting. Whenever he went through that field, he was distracted. Link got injuries he could have easily avoided. He attracted Guardians he could have easily hidden from. He was messy in combat and he was always looking for something that wasn't there.

That is, until he found a large spot of land with broken walls surrounding it. An empty and forgotten spot of land the Sheikah Slate called "Lon Lon Ranch."

He stayed away from there after that.

Link walked through the house, his hand trailing along the wall as he went. The wallpaper was tearing at the seams, ripped to pieces and faded in most. The pattern was almost entirely gone. The only thing he could fully make out was the dusted orange stripe that repeated every few inches. His mind distantly substituted the other two striped colors, a green that matched his gloves and a sunflower yellow, but he wasn't sure why. There wasn't even a single hint as to there being any other stripes or patterns.

That wasn't the only case that irked him. His mind itched, telling him everything in this room was… wrong. The table was dusty and one of the legs were broken, the top missing of scattered crayons and books and a flower vase with half-dead flowers. The cabinets were no longer a coffee shade of brown that made Link feel warm inside; instead they were falling apart from the edges and covered in cobwebs. The carpet was rolled up into the corner instead of underneath his feet, freshly washed and soft under his toes. The bookshelves were out of place and there were holes in the picture frames and the windows were dusted so much to where Link couldn't even see outside. It all felt different, crooked. It was wrong, even if he had never seen this house before.

Not in this lifetime, anyway.

Hearing someone leave a soft knock on the door, Link turned. Bolson peaked into the door, walking in further once Link had turned his way. He pushed the door open with a huff. In his hands, a box rattled at the sudden movement.

"We salvaged what we could from storage. We figured we would give it to you." Bolson said, handing over the box to Link. "You own the place now, after all. Don't think these folks will ever come back to get it."

In his hands, the box didn't feel all too heavy. There were only few things left inside that could actually weigh something. A few frames with pictures of unrecognizable people, a leather-bound journal with stained edges, and a book.

Link barely noticed Bolson leaving the room, instead turning to set the box onto the dusty counter behind him. Slowly, Link took each item out of the box. He did it with the utmost care even despite the slight shake of his hands. By the time the box was empty, he had five items laying out in front of him, and a hastily written note at the bottom of the box. It wasn't anything important. In fact, it was ineligible.

Setting the note to the side, he picked up one of the frames. It was of two people in a garden. A women smiled up through the photo. She was covered in dirt, even having it coating her hair and face. The apron she had on was stained and almost an entire different color, but something told Link it had once been blue. In her hands were a small shovel and a flower to match the messy garden she kneeled in. The scene had already struck something inside of him, but it only got worse when he looked at the child next to the woman. He was dressed in an oversized blue shirt and shorts, covered in dirt to match the woman. He was playing with a butterfly in front of him, hair tied back into a ponytail.

He didn't know why, but Link felt he had seen this scene before. In a different point of view, perhaps, but he had seen it.

The other two pictures had similar people in it. The woman was in one of the others, messily dancing with a man inside of a kitchen. Link assumed it was the same house he stood in, as the wallpaper was the same, and though the cabinets looked new, they were still there and just as Link supposedly remembered. In the last photo, four people stood next to each other in an orderly way. The woman and the man were back again, and so was the child, except… he had grown up. Many years, in fact. He looked only a few years younger than Link did (give or take a hundred years). Next to him, there was a younger girl who smiled wide. His heart ached for a reason he couldn't figure out.

It didn't take him long to realize these were family photos of the last people who had lived here. An entire century had passed, yet these pictures still remained, only to be set inside of a box inside of their ruined house. Link tried not to think about it and instead picked up the diary.

He spent a few minutes reading through the entries before he decided better of it. There was an unsettling feeling inside of his stomach, and his head hurt, and he realized how terrible he must really be for going through a dead persons things. Not to mention their diary.

Link didn't comment on how the person had handwriting that looked really similar to his.

The book was last, and though he felt like he should open it either, there was something different about it. The leather cover had cuts on the edges, the corners rough and faded over. There had once been a design carved into the front, but it was barely there now. On the first page, there was a label with only a single word on it. It read: "For your eyes only."

The book was filled to the brim with recipes.

That's it. Cuisine that ranged back tens of thousands of years, written and rewritten to cover for faded ink and lost ingredients. The pages were worn and torn and stained all around. There were holes in a few of the pages, too, with more paper sewn over top of it. Some sentences were crossed out with tiny notes written to the side. Others had ingredients circled and highlighted for their importance. Everything was put together with care, even if it was messy. The book felt loved.

Page after page, recipe after recipe, Link felt… different. Happier. As if a weight lifted off of his chest. It was as if he had found a part of himself he had lost. That much was clear when he reached the end of the book, where two newer pages had been hastily sewn in. They were recipes he knew well. So well, in fact, he knew them by heart. Link also knew they were his recipes. Nobody else had ever heard of them.

That’s when he noticed the handwriting for the first time.

The diary had similar handwriting to the recipes. The note did as well, even if the paper had been chewed and rained on and had the ink worn away. Link's diary had the same handwriting, too. Because they were all the same. They were his handwriting. His notes, his recipes, his diary…

Link fetched the family picture out from the box.

Li- Wild clapped his hands together and eyes from around the room snapped to him. He faked a smile, forcing himself to not flinch under so many gazes.

"So… anyone up for dessert?"

"Dessert?" Legend blinked.

"Oh! Me! I am!" Wind said, jumping up from his bedroll and nearly falling on top of Four.

"It is a bit early for bed…"

"You're just saying that because you're a night owl."

"Hush up, Mr. I-Need-Nine-Hours-Of-Beauty-Sleep."

"Listen-"

The room once again erupted into chaos. Wild quickly noticed how they could get riled up over the simplest things. A conversation could be sparked from the dullest observation. They were all entirely different in each and every way, and from what Wild knew, had just met barely a month ago. But they all talked as if they had known each other for their entire lives. It took everything not to admit he wanted to be apart of it, too. There was just something that tried to bring him into the group, even if he tried to keep himself away from them.

Malon sided up next to him, hands on Wild's shoulders. He turned to look at her, but it was clear she hadn't been looking at him. Not at first. She watched the group in front of her fondly, eyes lingering on Time laughing along with Sky.

"You know, you aren't as sly as you think you are," Malon said with a side glance his way. Wild opened his mouth to speak, but she shushed him. "Let me finish. I've noticed how drawn out you've been, these boys are just as dense as a barrel of rocks. What's on your mind, hun?"

Wild rubbed at his arm, trying to find the words he wanted to say. He wasn't exactly sure what made him want to open up to this woman so much, even after he just met her. But there was something about her that reminds him so much of someone he couldn't remember. It was a blurry face he couldn't identify, a laugh that was distorted and echoed in his head. It was a far off memory he might not get back. But the feeling was there, and if Wild had learned anything in the two years he has been awake, its to trust your gut.

"I… everything here gives me… bad vibes." Wild moved away from Malon and fell into the chair behind him. "The- the wallpaper, the stables, the cabinets and the books lining the walls. It's… it's all wrong. All of it. And I don't know why."

There was a pause before Malon hummed and took the seat across from him. "Well… I'm not sure as to why you think that, but, sugar, is that all you're thinkin'?"

No. Not at all. Even though Wild felt terrified, guilty, itchy in every single place, there was something else. Yes, everything was wrong. It was all different. The windows were in the wrong places and the walls were the wrong color and the books had the wrong titles and even the smell was just… wrong. It was all crooked and bent and shaped into something that made him want to scratch his eyeballs out, but it also felt like home. It made him feel warm despite his anxiety, it made him feel safe even while he didn't. It made him feel comfortable and relaxed despite the ice that stabbed at his heart and the guilt that was sunk deep into his gut. It felt like home.

"This place feels like home," Wild said at last. "I don't know why."

"You don't always need a reason as to why somethin' is the way it is, honeybee. You just gotta let it be." Malon said, reaching across the table and taking her hand in his. She squeezed it once and, after a moment, Wild did the same. It felt familiar. "Now, dessert you say? I hear I make a mean chocolate mousse."

Wild cracked a smile. "I bet I can make an even better fruit cake."

Malon hummed, "Sure hun. I reckon I've been cooking for twice as long as you have."

"I doubt it. I'm 117."

"Way to beat around the bush, Wild," Twilight said, snickering as he pushed Wild's shoulder. Wild stuck out his tongue, turning away and gathering ingredients out of his Sheikah Slate. Berries, apples, bananas, sugar. Lots of sugar. When he cooks for Zelda, it usually isn't a lot. Maybe enough for a slice or two, but he was talking about nine other people. Thank Farore he hoards ingredients more than he does weapons.

The kitchen was only Wild and Malon for a little bit. They were a blur of movement, moving around each other with absolute ease. Wild wasn't used to cooking with others, not in this life, but there was… something that was way too familiar with this scene. He knew exactly where she was going, when to duck, when to pass a spoon or to slide her a knife. She didn't even have to ask. He just knew. The gestures, when she spun around in search of a cup. Her tells were almost identical to his. It was… jarring, to say the least.

It was only the two for barely five minutes. Then Twilight sided up next to Wild and cut up some fruit. Hyrule started mixing the batter, and Wind listened intently as Malon recited the recipe out loud and how to do it, similar to how Wild does when he cooks with Zelda. Legend watched intently from the living room with Four sleeping against his shoulder. The kitchen was cluttered with people helping, with desserts cooking over a stovetop and magic being used to chill up some of them faster.

It was… nice.

If Wild chose to let himself relax as Warriors and Sky sided up next to him, following his instructions as they baked, nobody had to know. It might have been obvious, maybe a little, but he didn't mind. Not at all. His shoulders weren't as tense and he felt at ease and there was a smile on his face and it felt all too familiar. He felt all too close to home. It was nice. It was really nice, and he couldn't say he didn't enjoy it.

"You know, he reminds me a bit of Twi."

And if Wild ignored what Malon had just whispered to her husband, then nobody had to know.

He smiled anyway.