Chapter Text
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
Link doesn’t think anything of the parcel wrapped with a silver-blue ribbon that turns up outside the door of his quarters early in the morning—much earlier than he normally wakes. Most packages arrive around noon, but he supposes this one was just a late drop-off. Although he’s not expecting anything, it’s rather normal-looking, nothing to really be suspicious of. He has plenty of gifts come in from adoring fans and squealing girls. Perhaps if it was his princess’s door it’d shown up at, he would have paid it more thought.
He places it on his bed, almost absentmindedly, and tells himself he’ll open it later. Perhaps he’ll even write back. There are sometimes he receives letters proclaiming a young girl’s undying love for him (they’ve never met—he’s just very dreamy), but most times it’s a card and “Thank you for your service, Mister Hero!” It’s quite sweet, honestly, and a little anxiety-inducing. He’s not in the particular mood to start his day off with either, so he settles with the thought that it’ll still be waiting for him when he gets back—whenever Zelda decides she’s ready for bed. Although, truth be told, he still has to stay until she’s actually asleep. Even then, he waits outside her door for no less than two more hours.
It’s hardly even a moral obligation, he says to himself every night. This is my job. He doesn’t enjoy it, but he doesn’t hate it, either. He’s still not sure if she knows he’s there, but the nights that she requests potted roses from the greeneries, he thinks she does. The nights she screams and cries and curses both him and the goddess, he thinks she doesn’t. There’s really no way to tell, and it’s even harder sometimes to figure out just how she feels about him, the boy with the Sword that Seals the Darkness. She doesn’t like him, he knows that, but there are sometimes she tolerates him. There are even times she’s nearly friendly—and other times she’s downright hostile.
It frustrates him, too, he wants to tell her. I did not ask for this. He left his family behind when he chose the Sword. He kicks himself for it all too often, for not resisting the temptation in the forest and simply turning around. It would have been easier— much easier than the life he was living now. It’s more than a frustration, it’s a kind of hurt that fills the husk of his heart when he thinks of his sickly sister and his impoverished parents. Of course, being the legendary Hero of Hyrule, Captain of Princess Zelda’s Personal Guard, and a knight in the Royal Guard pays well. He feels bad on days where he keeps a bit of money for himself, because he needs new clothes or to go buy food, or rare weapons sure to help him on his travels with his princess. The only consolation it brings him is knowing that, this way, he is helping his family much more than he is hurting them.
He has an older sister, too, but she’s always working. He tried insisting a few months back that she didn’t need to anymore, that he could provide for them. She had only laughed with a sweet bitterness that he thought he was perhaps still too naive to understand. His father never could rank up high—a leg injury kept him in one spot in the Hylian Knights, and when Link’s older sister was fifteen, she was expected to either marry or go to work. She chose to work. Link was expected from the day he was born to choose knighthood—what else did they know how to do? And Link’s younger sister, Aryll, was too young and too sick to be of any help to them.
Link’s father was paid the most in the summer months, when it didn’t rain and he was sent on diplomacy trips with the Hylian ambassador to Zora’s Domain. He had all but begged King Rhoam to let him take Link with him, and it was only after putting a sword in his hands did the king agree—not because of his understanding that knighthood was perhaps the only option for Link, but because no other four-year-old boy with chubby hands and clumsy feet could disarm a Royal Guardsman.
From the time Link was four, he was made to fight, to disarm, to kill. It thrummed through his veins like blood—it might have even replaced his blood at some point, when the summer trips began to cease and healthy sunburns no longer colored his freckled cheeks. At twelve, he had obtained the legendary Master Sword, and then the summer trips stopped altogether. He was knighted at thirteen and kept close to the castle, never going on deployments nor stationed too far from his family. Hyrule needed him.
He’d thought it was good at first—his father was getting paid more, they were able to afford medication for Aryll, but Mayra still had to work, and his mother still had her hands full. So he moved himself up. At first, they told him that he was just a child and, no, he can’t go to war in other countries, so he began fighting for his ranking within the knights of the palace. Within a week, he was not the young, naive knight they had thought him to be.
He was the Hero.
Link paced the halls searching for a new adventure day and night, at fourteen. He challenged anyone who looked at him the wrong way, had accidentally challenged a valued nobleman’s son and was reprimanded by his father for it. But he could not help that he was bored, like a caged lion in need of a new toy. The enrichment they were providing just wasn’t enough, and it was then King Rhoam took it upon himself to induct him into the Royal Guard.
The princess was there at the ceremony, standing beside her father on top the grand landing high above Link. Her face was utterly neutral, but for the slight twitch of her mouth that gave away her annoyance when her father declared Link would save Hyrule. And he was positive he saw her mutter to herself once the king announced, “And you will be working closely with my daughter, Princess Zelda, so I recommend you become close,” with a knowing twinkle in his eye. Link wasn’t quite sure what it was for—it was not a relationship that would come of anything. He knew that by the placid expression in her eyes.
Three years later, he still remembers her faint annoyance fading into outright hatred for the way he follows her around—the Shadow Knight, the Hylians call him, amongst his numerous other titles. The particularly brave gossip mongers go so far as to say the complete neutrality he bears is just a facade, that he really is in love with the princess, that they are having a secret affair, that he would do anything for her.
Two of those things are true, at least—it is just a facade, and he would do anything for her. He hates to think about how people are so quick to assume he feels nothing at all, how other men deign to sneer at him when his princess gives him an order and he does not swoon over her. It is not that he’s not affected by her charms—Princess Zelda is a fierce, beautiful girl—but displaying outright affection (that, honestly, he isn’t quite sure he has in the first place) would serve to have more abhorrent consequences.
The red, white, and blue of the Royal Guard uniform and the sword strapped to his back sets him apart in a sea of knights crowding the dining hall. He always wakes up early enough to visit the other knights—it’s good for his character and they all seem to like him just fine. Besides, it gets stuffy eating with the royal family (although that’s also a breakfast he must participate in—their dining hall just happens to be much fancier). King Rhoam has offered numerous times for him to join them at the table instead of merely standing back, but he sees the dangerous gleam in the princess’s eyes and shakes his head no. He can’t be much of a protector if she kills him first.
The knights’ dining hall is boisterous and loud and they’re all tripping over one another and having arm wrestling matches, and it’s still the most at home he ever feels. He makes a beeline for Klaus and Archie, who promptly shove him in greeting.
“Well, well!” Klaus says, hands on his hips, grin on his hollow face. “If it ain’t Mr. Superstar!”
Archie fans his hand and feigns heatstroke. “Oh my, boys, I think we’ve got a Hero in this room! Oh, he’s making me hot!”
Link doesn’t speak much, but his pride forces him to let out a low, “You two quit.”
“You know we’re only playing with you,” Archie chuckles. “How’ve you been, bud? We haven’t seen you for a hot minute.”
He thinks of the trip he’s still recovering from—he’d gotten back to his quarters and immediately drew a cold bath and then promptly slept for nearly twelve hours. He still doesn’t have the day off, but the king “reckons it’ll be alright if you go in a little later.” It’s code for Zelda needs to catch a breather.
She yelled at him just a few days prior, and is now paying him the silent treatment. Neither one of them had spoken to her father about anything that had happened, but Link suspects he can sense the uneasiness, if not from him then surely from Zelda.
Link nods, the noise in the dining hall suddenly too loud.
Klaus throws an arm around Link’s shoulder and guides the stiff Hero towards the warm aroma of food. “I’ll tell you what, Link, we’ve got the good stuff today.” Link looks at him curiously and Klaus’s grip tightens on him. “Guess.”
“Steak.”
“Ding-ding-ding, we’ve got a winner! Archie, go fix him a plate!” he commands, and plops
Link in the seat nearest to the counters of food. His mouth immediately begins to drool, and he allows himself to relax and bask in the wonderful-ness of cooked meat.
“Is that banana pudding?” he asks dreamily.
Archie is complaining about being their errand boy, but Link is lost in another life, where
there are no mean princesses and the Master Sword is wrapped in bacon. “Baaaccccooooonnn.”
“FEED HIM!” Klaus yells at Archie, giving him a light shove towards the food. “He’s scaring me!”
“What the hell is going on here?”
The dining hall quiets, as it always does when the Captain of King Rhoam’s Personal Guard walks in.
The voice immediately snaps Link out of his food-daydream, and he jumps to his feet in a feline manner, clicking his heels together with a sharp salute. “I’m hungry, Sir.”
Sir Darragh looks him up and down and sighs. “You don’t have to salute me, son, we’re in the same boat here.”
Link tilts his head in a puzzled manner but slowly puts his hand down. “I’m hungry,” he repeats. It is, in all honesty, the most important word in his vocabulary. He is hungry. He wants food.
Klaus, although towering over him, crouches and peeks over his shoulder. “It’s true, Your Knightlyness, he walked in starving and stumbling over himself.”
Link, to his horror, feels his ears heat up with the embarrassment of the image. “That’s not quite true—”
“It better not be,” Darragh says slowly. “Because I cannot imagine the Hero of Hyrule himself bumbling around like a fool just for some steak.”
Link clenches his jaw, and he feels a light squeeze come from Klaus. An apology. Archie comes to stand beside them, plate half-full for Link. “Sir Darragh, I’ve been requesting an audience with you.”
“Yes.” Darragh does not provide any more, and it almost hurts Link to hear the clear dismissal of one of his dearest friends. Archie has, for months now, been trying for an audience with Darragh, if not the king, for a chance to become a part of the Royal Guard. Unfortunately, even Link’s good graces could not help him. Darragh would quickly veer away from the topic if Link ever brought him up, and it is just too hard to speak to King Rhoam if it has nothing to do with Zelda. It’s frustrating, to say the least, when Link is the youngest in the Guard at seventeen, and Archie is nearing twenty-two. If it is one thing the Knights of Hyrule all have in common, it is that they all have families to take care of.
It surprises Link that his own father isn’t in the dining hall, but then, he’s not around much lately at all. His mother once confided in him that it wounded Agnar to see his son a renowned Hero, while he’d had to fight for his place as a knight. Link had told her he understood—understood because that was how everyone felt. Even Archie and Klaus.
It is for this reason Link now stands his ground. Silence would not help his friend. “I have also reached out on numerous occasions, and you have dismissed me in much of the same way.”
“Link,” Darragh warns with a tone of familiarity that Link is all-too-aware confuses the other knights. “Let’s not have this conversation right now.”
Link’s jaw sets but he nods and hopes his expression conveys Fine, but don’t blow me off later.
Darragh gingerly takes Link’s plate from Archie’s hands, the latter only able to stare at Link in utter betrayal. “Sit down, boys. I’ll fix Link’s plate for him. You two eat.”
Klaus takes Archie by the sleeve and sits him down, whispering fervently to him. Link knows he’s trying to calm Archie down, telling him that Link is backing down for him, not because he wants to hurt him. Angry tears fill Archie’s eyes but he presses the heels of his hands against them, and they soon go away. Emotional to a fault—it was just another reason they didn’t want him in the guard.
Darragh orders the knights to continue their usual chatter, but they’re all watching what they say around the esteemed Captain. That, or they’re debating who will assume the role of Captain of the Royal Guard. On the one hand, Darragh has been in the Royal Guard for nearly twenty years, and before that, was one of the best knights the Queen had the pleasure of commanding. A reliable candidate, and an experienced one at that. On the other, what Link lacks in experience and maturity he makes up for in courage and, well, the fact that he’s quite literally the Hero of Hyrule and he’s the one wielding the Sword that Seals the Darkness. At the end of the day, it really balances out to: the older soldiers and civilians think Darragh is the better option, the younger Hylians believe it’s Link.
All Link knows is that he can’t tackle on another responsibility on top of Zelda and the impending war looming over their heads. Hell, the princess on her own is too much for him to handle. He still has no idea how he’s supposed to save the kingdom.
The four of them eat in silence, Archie sometimes giving Link a glare and sometimes turning pleading eyes to Darragh, who avoids eye contact at all costs. Link knows he’s been giving Klaus careful consideration when it comes to the Guard, but he’s not too worried. Archie and Klaus are too similar, too close, and you can’t take one without taking the other. Sometimes it feels like he’s on the outside of their friendship. He supposes it’s for the best.
“I expected you to be with the king,” Klaus says, a little too loud, to Darragh. It’s clear the tension is making him uncomfortable. He fiddles with his fork and taps it against his plate a few times—a nervous habit he picked up years ago.
“I had to fetch Link for a training exercise,” he says, a little too honestly. “But he’s useless on an empty stomach.”
Archie is going to come crashing down any minute, Link knows. His friends have always known that Darragh sometimes lets him tag along with training, but he’s sure they’ve never known just how close they were—much closer than just comrades. Link supposes that the form of affection he feels towards the King’s Captain would be a familial type—the way Aryll loves their own father.
“Oh!” Klaus says, eyeing Link’s empty plate. “So… you’re leaving now, then?”
“Why don’t you join us?” Link suggests. Darragh gives him a look. It’s so disapproving, and it makes his heart clench, but really, no harm could possibly be done in training together. And it would be good for Archie, maybe a chance to clear things up, and perhaps he could even show off his skillset to Darragh.
“That’s a good idea,” Klaus says, taking Archie by the wrist. “Don’t you think so, pal?”
Archie swallows and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’d be nice. Thanks, buddy.”
Link hopes he can see the apology swimming in his eyes.
Archie is a fierce, formidable warrior, but Link knows that Darragh can see his slow reaction time, the way he trips over his own feet. With a few more years, he’d be a perfect fit for the Guard, but Link has him disarmed with a parry in the span of time it took for Klaus to get a swig of water.
“Well done,” Darragh praises anyway, even if it’s only for Link’s own sake. “You did good.”
Archie looks on expectantly and, behind him, Klaus grimaces and turns away, no doubt unable to watch. “Good enough or just good?”
Darragh glances at Link as if to say I do not know what to do with the fragile emotional state your friend is in, but Link merely raises an eyebrow in return— it’s not my problem.
Darragh lets loose a sigh. “I don’t think you’re a good fit—” Archie’s shoulders slump. “-- yet. Give it a few years, more experience, less immaturity. I think by twenty-six, you’d make an excellent guardsman, perhaps even for the princess or king.”
At that, Archie’s face lights back up. “Do you really think so, Sir Darragh? Do you think we could maybe do one-on-one training?”
Darragh purses his lips, unsure of what to say. Link intervenes, “He never gets time off, but I’m sure if you had a recommendation from both Sir Darragh and I, then surely one of the guards would be more than happy to train you.” He can see that it was all it took to win his friend back over, superficial as it may be for some. A betrayal is a betrayal, after all.
Archie runs off to find some unsuspecting member of the Royal Guard, and Klaus stretches out his back. “Well, I think that session was pretty good for everyone involved.” He strides to them and holds out a hand for Darragh to shake. “Really, Sir, you don’t know how much that meant to him.”
Darragh smiles, like he knows something they don’t, and grips Klaus firmly. “I think I do.”
“Hey, Link, I’ll see you later, right? Not going on another adventure with your princess?” Klaus asks after letting go. “It would be a real shame. We don’t see you much these days.”
Link thinks of what she said— it seems I’m the only one around here with a mind of my own. Stop following me!--- and frowns. “Yeah, you will.”
Klaus nudges him with an elbow. “She’s beautiful. You better be good to her.”
Darragh waits for Klaus to leave before checking his golden pocketwatch—one that Link had bought him years before, as a thank-you. “It’s 8:45. You have fifteen minutes to be outside the princess’s door in uniform to escort her to breakfast. You better hurry.”
“Yes, Sir.”