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Sometimes memories clashed all up together but that was okay. Zelda said it happened to her too.
Sometimes he would look at the castle and it would be a towering pillar of darkness. He’d never seen a tower like that. The castle was never taken over like that.
Zelda said that was why she always stole down into the gallery at night. Because she had memories that fitted with the adventure of that hero, long ago.
Link understood those feelings. The first time he had seen the paintings, even though he hadn’t been the Hero at that point, not really, something had stirred inside him.
It had been the memory of touching hands with the princess. Touching more than just hands. Touching lips and soft smiles and little kicking wars under a huge wooden table.
-
Sometimes memories clashed all up together but that was okay. Zelda said it happened to her too.
It had happened since he was young, living in the forest. All the time when he slept he would see images of sitting on the edge of a city in the sky with a pretty girl. She grew with him. When he stopped growing, she disappeared.
But the memories came back when he started leaving the safety of the village. Fighting monsters in the woods. Scaling a great volcano. Seeing the girl again. But it wasn’t the same girl. At least, sort of. Her name was Zelda and the girl in the sky was called Zelda too. He didn’t tell this new Zelda about how he’d seen her before.
He especially didn’t tell this new Zelda about what he’d seen of her when he grew older. The boy who lived in the sky with the sky Zelda had liked sky Zelda a lot. They did things and said things that he just couldn’t understand, not with his mind stuck between child and adult.
He didn’t tell Zelda about those memories. He told her about the memories he’d had about fighting. She told him that she had memories of a Link in the sky too.
Link knew she probably saw the romantic things they had done together in the sky too, but it went unspoken between them.
It just meant he cried all the more when she sent him away from her.
-
Link had always had very faint memories of things. Of Hyrule. He’d never been to Hyrule, but he knew a little what it was like. He knew how to ride a horse without being taught.
But the one thing that always came back to him, time and time again, was the memory of the little fairy. Sometimes he thought he saw her in the edges of his vision. A little blue fleck of light. When he was little, he used to reach out for her. He’d call to a Navi and everyone thought he was calling to his parents. He didn’t call to his parents, there was no point. But Navi could actually be there.
When he woke as the Hero in the spirit’s spring, he understood a little more. The memories weren’t flickers anymore. They were concrete things that he could feel and remember if he went looking. It was strange. He was two people at once. More than that, maybe. He couldn’t feel them all separately. They were one thing.
It was when he saw the old spirit of that skeleton in the land of light that he felt a stabbing pain in his eye. It lasted for days. He could remember losing that eye, and he knew who the spirit was.
Meeting Zelda was another strange part of the memories. The first time he saw her, as a wolf, he felt nothing. But the second time he saw her, with Midna so close to death, he recognised her soft tones. He could hear her words before they came, because he knew her as well as he knew anyone. Better than he knew any other single living soul in this world that, to the people in his mind, felt so empty and lacking in the life it held in older days.
He wanted to tell Zelda he loved her before she was snatched away from him, but she put herself away from choice. He should have known she’d hurt herself instead of him this time.
-
Far in the future, Link was losing himself to the memories. He wasn’t the only one, Zelda was too. So many people inside one small head.
When he first met Zelda, he collapsed into her arms because this was all too much. She stroked his hair with shaking hands. “I just want memories that are my own. Memories I have never shared with another.” She was desperate. Her voice shook too. Link’s voice had given up under the weight of all the minds. He’d never been a loud person anyway. He just nodded.
And they did their adventure together. Because they needed to. The things in their minds would not let them part this time. There would be no final, tearful goodbye as one sent the other away to live a life on their own. They would stay together or the spirits inside them would tear them apart.
“I love you.” Zelda said. “I love you.” She always told him twice, once for her and once for his reply, because he couldn’t reply. “You’re saving me from this torture.”
They were both plagued with constant memories. They had never travelled together, but way back in the beginning they had travelled apart, along the same route. Link found his actions repetitive. Zelda did not. She relished in every breath of fresh air taken. She told him that she spent so long cooped up while he was on adventures that even being free at this stage felt liberating.
Link was happy to make her happy. He was a shadow of what he could have been because of these spirits. He didn’t feel like a person most days, he just felt like a warrior. Zelda probably loved being a warrior rather than a princess.
Next time, he’d just ask to swap. He’d take the dress over the tunic any day.