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The rain is relentless, beating dreary and bitter across the Hylia River.
The tree she is huddled under provides some shelter from the worst of it, but fat droplets of icy water periodically make their way through the canopy above and smack wetly onto her exposed skin. Zelda shifts her booted foot out of a puddle and waits for her knight to answer her question.
I wonder then, would you have chosen a different path?
Link frowns, droplets of water trickling off his shaggy hair and down the blade of the Master Sword. He's saturated after an hour of drills in the rain, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He regards her for a long moment. Then he sheaths his weapon with a sigh. “Maybe,” he says cautiously, “But we're not really talking about me, are we, Princess?”
He joins her under the tree, leaning back against the large boulder behind them and squeezing rainwater out of his tunic. Bright blue eyes meet hers.
“You will unlock your powers,” he says gently. “I know it.”
She starts to protest. “But…”
“But…” he interrupts, putting his warm hand over hers where it folds around her bent knees “...if you don't, you'll find a workaround. Because that's just who you are.”
He squeezes her hand and she smiles gratefully at him. To think that there was a time when the sight of him set her teeth grinding in frustration. Now, she can't get enough of him: his kind, gentle heart hidden behind lithe muscle and deadly skill. His ridiculous puns that kept her laughing even in the face of all that weighs on her shoulders. His wickedly accurate mimicry - a side effect of his keen powers of observation - that she'd discovered quite by accident and which he reserved for her and her alone.
“So, would you?” she says again. “Choose a different path, I mean.”
He shrugs. “Honestly,” he admits, “I can't even remember a time when I wasn't going to be a knight.” He thinks for a moment. “But, if I had to pick something else, it'd be food related. A baker maybe?”
She grins, rolls her eyes. “Food. Of course.” A thought strikes her. “We might not have met though, if you were a baker. That would have been a shame.”
He nods solemnly. “It would.”
“What about palace chef?” she suggests. “That way we could have still been friends.”
“You think?” he smirks. “I could count on one hand the number of times I've seen you speak with Preven.”
“That's because Preven is a conceited ass,” she replies primly.
He laughs his soft laugh. “Alright, fine, I'll be the palace chef,” he concedes.
“And what would you cook for me, my appointed chef?” she wants to know.
He grins. “I hear hot-footed frogs are quite tasty…Ow!”
She elbows him in the ribs, but really she wants to grab his face and kiss him. She turns away, just in case he can see it in her eyes. The afternoon light is fading faster than usual under the sullen sky, the rain so heavy that she can barely make out the Bridge of Hylia. It feels like they are in a bubble, the rest of the world hidden behind a grey curtain.
“What other things would you change?”
“Hmmm?” He's lost in his own thoughts, only half listening.
“If things were different…if you weren't…” She trails off, presses her lips together. Her gaze migrates up into the swaying canopy above her head, as though the wet leaves might whisper some secret advice. For the love of Hylia, you foolish girl, stop talking, she imagines they might say.
She doesn't listen.
“If I wasn't me, would we…”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees that Link is suddenly paying very close attention. In fact, he's staring, a faint wrinkle of consternation and confusion between his eyebrows.
She changes tack, scrutinising her dirty fingernails. “When two people…” She stops and huffs in frustration at her own lack of eloquence.
Link is so silent she wonders if he might have actually stopped breathing. She can't bring herself to look at him to check.
“If I wasn't the princess would you be interested in me romantically?” she finally blurts out, all in a rush, the words directed into the tops of her knees.
She hears his soft, surprised inhale, but he doesn't answer. Minutes pass. She sneaks a sideways glance at him. His face is shuttered.
“Well?” she asks, the word coming out far more harshly than she'd intended.
“Zelda,” he says. His voice is quiet, careful, his eyes soft. She feels the burn of tears threatening to fall. He's trying to let me down gently, she thinks, wishing the Calamity would come and swallow her up where she sits.
“‘Zelda’ is not an acceptable answer, Sir Knight.”
He shakes his head, exasperated at her snide use of his title. “You know I can't answer that question.”
“You can't or you won't?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “It would be wrong of me to answer.”
“So it's about duty then?”
He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and pushes himself to his feet. He shoves the damp hair off his forehead. “I just….” He takes a steadying breath. “There's no point in wondering about ‘what ifs’,” he says at last. “It won’t help either of us.”
“Fine,” she says flatly. “That's fine. Sorry I asked. It was… inappropriate of me.”
“Zelda…” he tries, but she stands up abruptly, turning away to busy herself with her pack, desperate to hide her flaming cheeks and her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“We should set up camp,” she says over her shoulder. “We can't travel in this weather, and it's getting dark.”
Link sighs heavily but does as he's ordered, making quick work of the tent and even managing to light a fire beside the little stone statues that stand in the shadow of the rock face.
As darkness creeps over the Baumer Hills, they sit under the tree and eat a simple dinner of rice and mushrooms. Zelda schools her face into something she hopes approximates a normal expression, but the silence stretches between them, weighty and oppressive.
Zelda breaks first. “I hope my foolish words earlier aren't going to make things difficult between us?”
“No,” her knight says softly, his gaze on the worn leather of his boots.
“Good. Maybe we can just… forget that whole conversation ever happened?”
“That seems sensible.”
“Right. Good.”
“Good.”
She holds out her hand towards him. “Friends?”
He gives her a relieved smile as he shakes her hand. “Always.”
***
She wakes in the night shivering, the damp ground chilling her even through her bedroll.
At some point, it’s stopped raining, but water still drips down onto the tent from the tree branches above in a dismal staccato. She can hear the soft crackle of the fire outside; Link must be keeping watch.
Her heart aches.
He doesn’t feel that way about you, and now you’ve gone and ruined everything. A tear slides its way down her cheek, dissolves into her pillow. A sob pushes its way from her chest into her throat and lodges there, begging to be released.
How did she get things so, so wrong? His fierce protectiveness, his unquenchable desire to make her smile, were only the fond actions of a friend, nothing more. What she’d caught glimpses of in his sapphire eyes wasn’t desperate yearning, it was duty, vigilance. He watched her because it was his job to watch her.
It is bad enough that she loves him and cannot have him. To bear that burden alone is a thousand times worse. The pressure in her throat becomes unbearable. She turns her face into the pillow and cries and cries.
She forgets that her knight has the hearing of a grassland fox.
Within minutes, he’s crawling into the tent, a hand on her shoulder, concern written all over the sharp planes of his face. “Zelda? Zelda what is it? What’s wrong?”
She sits up, wiping at her face, trying to erase the evidence of her tears. “Nothing.”
He puts a rough hand to her forehead. “Are you sick?”
She shakes him off. “No. I’m fine. I’m just… cold.”
“Oh.” He backs out of the tent, returning momentarily with another blanket. “Here, I don’t need it.”
She knows this is a lie, but she just wants him to leave her to her misery, so she doesn’t argue.
He sits back on his feet, the firelight coming in through the tent flaps turning his skin golden. “Is it… the sealing power?” he asks. “Your father perhaps?”
“No!” she almost shouts at him. ‘For the love of Naydra, I’m just sad, Link!”
He blinks. Blinks again. “But why?”
She can’t believe he’s being this dense. “Because you wouldn’t… answer me,” she cries, horrified as the tears begin to fall again. “Because… Because you don’t feel… what I feel…”
He looks stricken. “Zelda, no…” he’s mumbling quietly. “It’s not… That’s not…” He reaches a hand towards her, pulls it back again as though she’d burned him. “I didn’t mean…”
He grits his teeth. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
She sniffles. “I know that.”
He studies the roof of the tent, chews the side of his cheek. His hand claws the back of his neck.
“The answer is yes,” he says, finally. His voice is very soft, even by his standards, almost a whisper.
“Yes, what?”
He sighs, but when he lowers his eyes to hers there's something unnamed in their sapphire depths that steals the air from her lungs. “If you weren't the Princess of Hyrule, and I wasn't your knight, I would be interested in you…romantically.”
Her heart roars to life in her chest, pounding and pounding as though she were running from a horde of moblins. “And what would you do right now,” she breathes, knowing this is dangerous territory, but unable to stop herself, “...if I were not the Princess of Hyrule, and you were not my appointed knight?”
He is still kneeling on the ground, barely an arm’s length in front of her. She watches his throat as he swallows. His fingers flex. The look he gives her almost sets her on fire. Slowly he raises his right hand. “I would kiss you,” he says, still in that hushed low voice. “Here.” The backs of his knuckles graze underneath her jaw.
She shivers, breathless, waiting.
“Here.” He does the same with his left hand, the lightest touch of his fingers across her collarbone, where her tunic has ridden down.
“Here.” His hands flutter over her neck and she fights to stop herself from whimpering, muscles clenching low in her belly.
“Here, and here.” His thumbs feather her cheekbones, left then right.
Zelda’s breath hitches. Her eyes flit over his face, features so dear to her now transformed with longing.
“And….here,” he whispers, his thumb brushing over her lips. “Over, and over and over again.”
Oh.
They stare at each other, breaths quickening, eyes locked. Zelda's heartbeat is so loud in her ears that she wonders if he can hear it. She wants to kiss him so badly that it’s a physical ache in her chest.
Link lets out a shaky breath, slowly, through his nose. He shuffles backwards, putting some distance between them. “But….” he rasps. “I can't. We can't ....”
“I know,” she whispers. “I know, Link.”
Because she is the Princess of Hyrule, and he is her appointed knight, and there are too many reasons why they cannot give in.
But at least now she knows they’re in it together.