Chapter Text
Zelda stared into the depths of her tea.
The pale shadow of her face stared back at her with wide, wild eyes in between the ripples made by her trembling hands. It had gone cold, she didn’t know when. She didn’t know when the little teacup had been pressed into her hands, either, or when or how she’d been pulled out from beneath the earth, braced at the edge of a yawning chasm still reaching for Link.
One moment Link had been there, falling into the darkness of that chasm deep below the earth. The next Zelda had been put on the back of a horse by a Sheikah scout, galloping across Hyrule field to the safety of Lookout Landing and the underground shelter there as the castle and the sickly Gloom of the depths rose up and rubble fell all around.
She would be safe in the shelter, she was assured. The old emergency shelter of the royal family had been built strong for a reason, long ago, though it protected a great many more than royalty now that the world had ended once already and was coming crashing down all over again. But how could she be safe without Link? Without her steadfast swordsman in her shadow? Her one anchoring point of stability in a ruined world she didn’t recognise, echoes of a dead past haunting her every step?
He remembered so little of the time that came before, but he was her friend despite the little he’d regained. The past was all that Zelda knew, and she still missed him so keenly.
Because even Link, one of the last relics of a time before Calamity, wasn’t the man she had once known. The Link of Zelda's memories was stoic and professional even to the end; the consummate knight, diligent in the duty imposed on him whose scope spanned aeons of Hyrule’s history. Who trained and fought and strained to shape himself into the image of the heroes who'd wielded the Master Sword in ages past, even when he was too short to fit even the image of a warrior.
The Link who had found her in this ruined world Zelda had barely managed to save was one who’d forgotten all of that; all the years of knighthood around his neck that once strangled him into the silence he could not seem to break even now. The Link who found her was one who fought monsters with brutal ease and roamed endlessly, aimlessly. Who hummed songs as he cooked, was courageous to the point of near stupidity as he leapt from clifftops with a laugh just for the delight of gliding on his paraglider. Who hunted and foraged and broke all weapons except the Master Sword on monster flesh and bone.
Who could not speak a word, though his voice was still there in his throat, but made himself heard all the same. Who poked his nose into every hollow and crevasse, showing her the simple wonders he’d discovered in his time since waking from the shrine; without shame, without the same smothering weight of expectation they’d both laboured under but only she carried still-
Her fingers twitched, fumbling the cup and it shattered on the table. One of the shelter caretakers clucked his sympathy and mopped it up for her, mumbling some patter he meant to be soothing that she didn’t hear past the muffling in her ears.
Zelda only stared down, still, at where the tea had been. Past it, past where the tea and the shards and the spreading spill had been; down, down, down, always down to where she had failed to save her friend, her greatest friend - forced to watch him swallowed up in the darkness and depths waiting hungry deep below the earth. The unfairness of it all closed her throat, blurred her eyes with tears.
She trembled, pressed a hand to her mouth.
Link had been her friend. He’d been a loyal protector for long before that, but he’d been her friend towards the end, once she'd softened and realised he too hated the fate that bound them both. Indulgent in her interests, earnest in his encouragement. He’d never discouraged her passions, even back then, even when no one - least of all her - had the time to spare for passions. He indulged her now, still - a century on and robbed of his memories and the ability to speak - in her fascination with the Zonai.
And that thing waiting in the darkness of the deep had known Link too. Hissing out his name through a dry, dusty throat, shrunken skin stretched taut over muscle and bone, hollow eyes alighting with a spark as it jerked and clawed itself back to something that couldn’t be called life. “How disappointing,” It mocked, breath more than voice. “Is this the best you can do, after all this time? To think… I almost used to respect your skill with a blade.”
It had known him, and it had recognised Zelda, and that horror of a man with a crater in its forehead crackling with lingering power had known them! “And you,” It rattled, and terror seized her fast in that shrunken thing’s eyeless gaze, “Must be Zelda. The princess with the… power to seal darkness.”
Zelda closed her eyes, but it was there behind her lids. That withered thing held down by a disembodied hand bright with a magic she’d never seen, a teardrop gem falling from its back. Link with the Master Sword in hand, protecting her as he’d always protected her, a century ago when it was his duty and still now when he did not remember enough of that time to care it wasn’t his duty anymore. Facing off against that withered, skeletal terror trapped deep beneath the castle for no other reason than because she was his friend.
And he’d been struck down with ease by writhing, groping magic that carried the sickly, slimy taste of Gloom and Malice; sword shattering under the sheer force of that awful power as it crawled up the blade and hilt and burrowed into Link’s arm. His arm rotted down like that mummified man’s, skin shrinking thin and tight onto stringy muscle poisoned black, oozing blood and hanging limp and useless at his side, the sleeve of his tunic and the chainmail beneath stuck in melted flesh.
He’d protected Zelda still, even as he staggered with weakness - clutching his swinging, bloodied arm with gritted teeth and grunts of pain trapped in his throat as he kept her behind him. Even as the ground heaved and began to crumble beneath their feet as that monster shoved his power upwards against the base of Hyrule Castle; even as he shoved her as the stone gave out, fingers closing around her wrist and throwing her back to firmer ground before the earth opened up beneath him and he tumbled down into the dark.
She’d tried to grab him too, fingers scraping so uselessly against the leather of his gauntlet and his name all tangled up in the desperation and terror in her throat, in her screaming for him. But he’d fallen, the golden shimmer of her power across his skin her only hope that he wasn’t dead, broken-backed at the bottom of the pit.
Drops of wet heat rolled down her cheeks, her throat so tight it ached.
He’d saved her, again, and this time there was no hope of resurrecting him with the Sheikah shrine; there wasn’t even a body. It was her fault, and she knew that Link wouldn’t care about that, that his first and last thought was her safety and it didn’t matter to him how often or against what he needed to raise his blade for her; none of those truths mattered in the face of the simple fact that Zelda had been the one to insist they explore the ruins.
And for what? Her friend was gone, maybe dead, and what had it earned her? A handful of pictures of murals and a teardrop stone that hummed under her fingers from the desiccated hand holding that horror still? All to sate her curiosity?
Abruptly, Zelda wondered if she understood, now, why her father had fought with her so bitterly over her fascination with the Sheikah technology. The choked laugh bubbling out of her throat came out as more of a sob, and she crumpled in on herself, face wet with tears buried in her hands as her shoulders shook and she wailed into her wrists at the unfairness of the goddesses.
Others in the shelter startled, rushing over to murmur their concerns, hands on her shoulders and rubbing her back, but Zelda could not hear them behind the roaring in her ears.
Had they not done enough?! For all her life she’d struggled to meet the fate imposed on her, praying so uselessly for so long for a power promised by her blood that refused to come until it was too late! Link had fought for her and by her side and had died fighting for her, resurrected by technology they still did not quite understand and losing all his memories in the century that took.
They had ended a Calamity once already, and it cost them everything! Why was there another hanging over their necks like Hyrule’s castle suspended in the sky? Why was Zelda to face it alone?
-:-
Days blurred into weeks. The world overhead had changed while Zelda stared past the ground into greater depths deep below the earth. Chasms and caves and islands in the sky, ruins older than Hyrule falling across her kingdom and strange beasts no one had ever known crawled out of hiding. The Zelda of months gone would have leapt at all the new discoveries waiting for her. Her ravenous curiosity clawed at the weight settled over Zelda’s thoughts even now, but she had little room left in her head to care.
Still. Still, Hyrule needed her. The world was ending all over again and Link was gone, but Zelda was a princess still; the goddess’ power hummed in her blood. This was not the first time she’d shouldered the burden of the apocalypse on her own, and she doubted, now, that it would be the last.
On a clear, crisp morning Zelda squared her shoulders, fastened the teardrop stone to a necklace around her neck and the broken Master Sword to her back, and bent over the map in the shelter. Link would have been better to send to help all the corners of her kingdom, capable and clever and quick to offer his aid; but the steel older than ages he wielded was broken and silent and strapped to Zelda’s back in his absence, and Zelda’s voice was its own kind of steel as she orchestrated all the aid her ruined kingdom could offer.
-:-
The Upheaval was all everyone spoke of at Lookout Landing, if it wasn’t the Zonai or Zelda’s missing knight. But Hyrule had not fared as badly as it could have (and the Calamity was not so distant that all were ignorant of just how badly the kingdom could have fared), and spirits were high, excitement over the fallen Zonai ruins and the world discovered underground near feverish. Once Hyrule Castle stopped rising and the ruins stopped falling the days dawned bright and fresh, discoveries that shook established history to the core waiting around every corner. Despite the empty hollow in her chest Zelda found herself nursing a spark of joy, or perhaps vindication, as she bonded with her people with research instead of faith and heroics as her father always insisted was the way.
At the very least there were no end of volunteers for Zelda’s Zonai Survey teams; better still was that it took little convincing to put them to work on things that were not of the Zonai, too.
-:-
Often Zelda spent her nights staring up at the beams of Purah’s roof. She should sleep, she knew - and did so, though only when the exhaustion heavy in her head imposed it - but she did not wish to see Link fall into that chasm all over again, replaying in her mind’s eye. It was always there, painted on the inside of her eyelids; so she did not sleep.