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Chapter Text

Consciousness feels strange as she cracks open her eyes, squinting against warm sunlight that fills her entire field of vision. There’s something hard yet soft beneath her and the sky looks so very far away, feeling simultaneously right and strange. She feels like it’s supposed to be so far away, yet not drifting in it feels right.

She tries to blink away the disorientation, startling as something touches her head. Flinching away from it, she looks at what her mind tells her is a hand. It takes her moments to realize that it’s her own.

A gasp fills her nose with scents and her mouth with tastes that overwhelm her but she pushes it down as an urgency she doesn’t know the source of overcomes her. Snapping up so fast the world momentarily blurs, she gazes around, feeling stiff and uncoordinated and oddly small. 

The sights that meet her feel familiar, green stretching out in all directions towards mountains and landscape – familiar and unknown in equal parts.

She’s looking for… something. Something terrible. Something red . But she can’t see it, whatever it is, it’s…

“Gone.” The single syllable comes out breathily, uncomfortable from her too-dry throat yet it lifts a tremendous weight from her she hadn’t noticed until it floats away. Was that her voice? It doesn’t matter, not when a feeling of lightness makes her feel like the sky may claim her, the sheer force of… relief , that’s it, makes her head spin and her eyes burn.

It takes her a few minutes to process that she’s sitting on a field. Hyrule. her home. Register the uncomfortable feeling that’s a wet garment wrapped around her body, her body, that feels wrong in the right kind of way, too short with too few limbs yet exactly the shape it should be.

It takes more effort than she thinks it should to move the limbs stretched out in front of her, shift her weight onto her feet and try to stand on not enough legs, she thinks. A hand that’s definitely not her own rests under her shoulder as she searches for balance, careful and warm. She follows it with her eyes, finding someone standing to her side.

How had she not noticed?

Her chest fills with several new sensations as she takes in the hylian standing by her, drinking every bit of him in and satiating a desire she doesn’t understand. Striking blue threatens to consume her with warmth, drinking her in with such an intensity it makes her pulse race. The curious itch to reach out and draw patterns in the webs of scars weaving across golden skin makes her hands twitch. The blossoming of purple at his sides and the way his right arm ends before it should make something painful throb through her.

His presence there, at her side, feels like a rightness to the world she can’t fathom, yet her mind provides nothing as to why.

“Thank you,” she manages, the concept of manners coming to her. She clears her throat, swallowing to ease the itch that comes with words. “I feel like I know you, who are you?”

The stranger blinks at her once, twice, the pleasant curve of his lips around laboured breaths dropping and for reasons unknown to her, she misses it once it’s gone. She watches curiously as his jaw clenches and unclenches, his brows twitch, and then his expression shifts into something blank and unreachable.

His left hand moves and the stump that remains of his right shifts, his gaze dropping to the space his right arm should occupy. The ancient fires behind his eyes seem to go out. She swallows her curiosity, wondering why the clearly healed sever seems surprising to him.

‘Your knight,’ it takes her a moment to realize the lethargic motion of his remaining hand means something, another to realize she understands. Her eyes widened a little at the discovery. A knight. Yes, she knows what that is. Someone who protects. And the way words come to mind with the motion of his hand is something she knows.

A strange ache in her chest registers in her mind with the thought, but it’s overpowered by a much sharper stab of something as the knight’s hooded eyes slide closed and his knees buckle under his own weight. She darts forward, but she can’t coordinate her ill-fitting body to do more than put herself between the knight and the ground, hitting the grass with a soft oof .

“S-sir knight?” she asks, rolling him off her and shifting so she can look at him. “Sir?” No response. The stillness of the knight’s face helps to roll back some of the fog occupying her mind, replaced by the icy creep of panic as sense bleeds into her mind – making her aware that she’s now very alone in an unknown location and doesn’t know how she came to be there.

It takes her a while to collect herself enough to decide she should move somewhere and that, from the rapidly darkening color of the knight's sides, he’s sustained some kind of injury. She has no way of transporting him, let alone an idea of where to go, so she needs help. Pulling herself up, she spots what she identifies to be a path and starts walking towards it, even better, she spots a carriage.

“H-help,” the weak rasp of her throat frustrates her as she lumbers towards the figure on horseback, moving further away rather than closer.  Gritting her teeth, she inhales deeper and practically screams. “Help! Please! S-someone’s hurt!”

The figure atop the horse pulling the carriage turns to her and relief washes over her. She stops, gasping for air at the effort of running, and watches as he turns his horse around and closes the distance. Recognition lights up his face as he comes to a stop before her.

“Princess! What are you doing here? We thought you were missing.” Princess? That sounded right to her. A sigh escapes her at being recognised as she points to the pond she’d come from, the outline of the knight easy to make out against green.

“I’m okay. My knight is injured, can you help?” the man glances in the direction she points and he smiles.

“Of course, princess. Get in the carriage, you look dead on your feet.” She offers a smile and stumbles towards the back of the wooden vehicle half filled with crates and a sack of a yellow fruit she can’t think of the name of.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she offers sincerely, relief washing over her. She sits in silence as they approach the pond she’d sat behind, concluding that her and the knight had possibly fallen in it given their wet clothes. The stranger slides off his horse when they stop by the unconscious knight, taking the sight of him in with something on his face that she can’t decipher.

“ Goddess in three ,” he utters. He examines the knight for a long time, eventually bending down to pick up the smaller hylian, not as careful as she feels necessary. She rearranges the crates in the cart before helping the man lower the knight to the floor. The hard surface doesn’t look comfortable when the knight is lowered to its floor so she shifts to the floor and straightens her legs in front of her, resting his head on her lap.

“Where would you like to go?”

She chews her lip, trying to reach for a name or location she knows, but they elude her. Sighing, she runs her fingers through her drying hair. 

“Apologies, I must confess I don’t remember… anything. Prior to waking up a few minutes ago. I don’t know where to go.” She coughs as the words grate against her raw throat. The man looks surprised, mindlessly pulling a bottle from his belt and offering it to her.

“Oh my, that is unfortunate. Here, drink.” She doesn’t need telling twice, uncorking the waterskin and downing its contents greedily, sighing as cool water soothes away the dryness. The man grins wide. “I’d be happy to give you a ride, your highness,” then after a beat: “Would you like me to take you to your home? It’s not far from here.”

She practically wilts in gratitude, thanking whatever deity sent this man across her path. “That would be wonderful…” she curses herself for forgetting her manners.

“Bozai.”

“Bozai. I promise I will repay you for this kindness.” Bozai smiles from ear to ear, climbing onto his horse and turning.

“Oh no need princess, the pleasure is all mine.”

The sky fades to orange and then blue as they travel in silence. A floating castle and a narrow structure glowing azure reaching for the sky tries to entice her interest – but she struggles to tear her gaze from the knight, wondering what kind of battle he’d endured. The angry bruising up his sides and littered cuts and burns all over squeezed her heart with sympathy. He doesn’t stir as they travel, face peaceful, but she worries the sharp rise and fall of his chest isn’t good. 

Was there a battle? Did she have something to do with it? An ache seeps into her head the more she tries to think, so she stifles the urge to piece it together for now and hopes her hands running his damp hair out of his face brings some comfort.

A light jostle tells her they’ve stopped moving, looking up at the sound of a loud whistling from her savior. Bozai slides off his horse, pulling a crescent shaped blade from his saddle with him and looks over the rim of the cart.

“Here we are, princess.”

She looks around in confusion, not seeing anything that looks remotely inhabitable. A fallen tower blocks the path ahead, but as she studies it, it looks like it’s been there for some time, moss growing between the pebbles that form its walls. Bozai stands looking proud, grinning from ear to ear with his weapon in hand that sends an icy chill through her.

A string of loud, rhythmic chimes ring in her ears draws her gaze to the sword laid next to the unconscious knight. Everything about the scene suddenly feels wrong, but why ? The traveller had been kind. Even know where she… where she lived...

Every inch of her hones in on Bozai, taking in every bit of his frame. She almost jumps at a barely-there groan from below her. She wills herself to remain still – instincts taking over – and sees the knight’s eyes crack open, blinking owlishly from the corner of her eye.

“O-oh, is this where I live?” she asks innocently, cringing at the flinch in her own voice but something tells her it best to remain calm and warn her knight. Then after a thought, “What do you need your sword for? Is it dangerous?” A tiny flicker of relief sparks in her as the knight’s gaze intensifies, pressing a finger to his lips in a shushing motion and reaching cautiously for his sword. She swallows a sigh, nodding discreetly.

Bozai laughs, a manic sound that makes her want to shudder.

“No, but it will be where you and your cursed knight die. Revenge for Lord Demon King and Master Kohga!”

The knight twists himself into an upright position in time to meet the crescent blade that would have sliced right through her, the metallic shriek of their blades meeting firing through her nerves. Bozai, or the masked figure dressed from head to toe in red and black, jumps back with a snarl.

“Persistent pest . Yiga clan, now! ”

A choir of that same manic laughter fills the night air, a circle of orange lights sparking into existence around them. The knight shoves her to the floor of the cart as arrows whip over her head, and the world seems to slow down with her descent.

The clangs of metal and voices echo in her head all around her under a blanket of white noise, her body feeling disconnected, unmoving and unfeeling and locked into place like her bones were made of stone and why are there people trying to kill them?

A face fills her vision, wild locks of honey framing intense blue fire that in her fear, she wants to get lost in, claim her for its own and let her float away from the pandemonium that’s erupted around her. Like she’d been in too many she has no recollection of.

“- Zelda -”

Zelda? That sounds familiar, cuts through the white noise that feels like a physical pressure from all sides. 

“ Zelda! ” She sucks in a breath as the blue disappears and she’s carefully but quickly set to her feet. A hand catches her own and she’s forced forward into a clumsy run.

The knight is dragging her away from the scene, their footsteps thundering against grass that slopes down and turns to gravel. A gentle but urgent hand guides her to crouch behind a speckled rock, the squeeze on her shoulder and grounding her, snapping her out of her daze. She watches the knight take his sword from his mouth and drop it to the ground, fishing something out of a pouch strapped to his belt.

“W-who was that? Why did they a-attack us? W-what’s going on?” she managed to ask between heaving breaths, likely from the running. The knight’s face expression with something akin to fury , all but throws a small glowing object to the ground in something close to desperation, gritting his teeth as he swipes through glowing pictures, each pant shudders.

An intricate wooden bow and quiver of arrows appear before them in a flash of blue lights and he presses them into her shaking hands without looking up, returning to swiping through the device.

“Please! What’s going on?” she almost cries, fighting the burning in her eyes. Frustration bubbles up like acid in her stomach that mixes with the fear and confusion and why does this all feels so frightfully familiar?

The knights gaze snaps up to her and she feels like she’s staring at a wild animal running on instinct and survival alone. She sees his breath catch in his throat as he takes her in slowly, the frenzied look making way for exhaustion and something pained that twists at her heart. His right shoulder shifts as his left hand twitches, like he’s trying to move the one that’s not there. 

Frustration etches into his features as he glares at the empty space again. His left hand rakes through his hair while jaw working like he’s trying to form words that refuse to form. There’s a tremor in his fingers when they slowly sign two words she, somehow, understands.

‘Won't leave.’

Her breath catches in her throat as his hand comes to a rest gently on the back of hers, the heat of it familiar and soothing.

Zelda lets out a slow breath, calmed by the intense fire of his eyes behind the promise burning away her fears. She has no idea of how she’s sure, but she knows she can count on the knight.

Her lips part to form a response but she doesn’t get a chance to speak. A chill runs down her spine at the sound of paper crinkling from the other side of the rock and that horrid laughter cuts through the air.

The knight bears his teeth, snatching up the sword and flicking through the screen of the small device with a finger.

Muscle memory Zelda doesn’t recall learning kicks in as she draws an arrow on the wooden bow as quiet footsteps reach her ears, gaze flickering between the approaching red clad figures that materialize out of bursts of orange sparks. Two. four. Eight. Too many to count. Too many to shoot. They’re vastly outnumbered and Zelda doesn’t know where to aim and- 

“ Ack,”

A guttural cry and a metallic thud brings all motion to a grinding halt. The Yiga – as they called themselves – stopped, all their masked faces drawn to Zelda’s left. She follows their gaze. Instead of the shirtless hylian, she finds blackness. A pulsing smog of shadow writhing and swirling around her knight like it’s swallowing him. He falls to his knees, his hand coming up to his head, a pained whimper tearing from his throat as the shadows shift, solidifying into the shape of clothes of black and gray.

And then… nothing. 

“S-sir?” Zelda asks, finding her voice as she watches the figure stand with growing unease, everything in her screaming that something is so eerily wrong about the sight before her. The figure reaches down to pick up the faintly glowing sword with his right hand that wasn’t there before, charcoal fingers curling around the handle.

“Yiga, what are you doing? Kill them!”

Zelda sucked in a breath as she’s reminded that they’re surrounded, the forgotten red clad figures springing into action. Zelda tries to gather herself and pull another arrow from the quiver, fingers stiff from the cold, but by the time she’s drawing her bow, her vision is filled with red. Not the red of uniforms, nor the red of whatever she’d been looking for when she first woken up.

Strings of red streak the air like a liquid web, arching, soaring, and then streaking the ground. Her dress. The world . More terrifying than the very blade that drew it.

Bodies crash to the ground all around her, the masked men clattering to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, taken out in a sweep of shadow too fast for anyone’s eyes to follow.

Amidst it, two glowing red eyes framed with ashen white hair turn to her, the shadow wearing her knights face eerily blank.

He looks over her curiously, illuminated gaze making her skin crawl.

“S-sir?” she stammers, fighting violent shudders that want to shake her soul from her rapidly numbing body. She raises her bow uncertainty but it’s smacked to the ground with a shift of a shadowy arm. The clatter the wooden weapon makes when it hits the ground draws a whimper from her, the sound hitting her ear drums like lightning.

The shadow taking the shape of her knight raises the sword to her, its frantic chiming not reaching her as the sharp, deadly point hovers inches from her face. The world shifts on its axis, nowhere to run or hide and no one to save her as she waits for her end and why can’t she remember his name?

“ Please, you said you wouldn’t leave!” she finds herself begging, her voice a pitiful, alien thing.

The shadow wearing the face of her knight smiles at her. All malice and wicked and wrong wrong wrong .

He rears the sword back, ready to swing and Zelda raises her arms up protectively as the air around her seems to sizzle with energy, useless against the sharp edges of a blade.

Golden light flashes before her, so bright it penetrates her eyelids. When had she closed her eyes? A yell grates against her ears and a thud has her creaking her eyes open to slits, blinking away the dazzle of the bright flash on the dark riverbank.

The light dims, dying down from behind her outstretched hand like it came from there. She doesn’t have time to try to understand as a scuffle from several feet away pulls her attention.

Her knight scrambles to his feet – much further away from where he’d been moments ago – and she gasps.  He gazes down at a strange golden crack down his front, a small patch of skin showing beneath. She watches in bemusement as the dark fabric around it seems to pulse, shadows rippling and healing itself around the tear until the golden crack is gone. No evidence of it ever having been there left behind.

The shadow laughs while staring down at the now untouched tunic, a haunting sound Zelda doesn’t think she’ll ever forget. Red eyes full of mirth fall on here again.

“Exquisite. Thank you, princess.”

The voice washes over her skin like a physical thing, raking at her nerves and burrowing into her insides. She’s not even sure if she’s seeing anymore, but the shadow appears to sink into the ground, that malicious grin never leaving his face as he melts into a pool of shadow flits away.

The scene shifts before her, an image in her mind's eye overlapping her vision of a different scene. The white masks with red eyes of the bodies strewed across the ground shift to ones of geometric green, their bodies draped on the stone floor around a much larger man swathed in glowing red and black.

Rain splatters her as her mind searches for evidence that everything that’s transpired was just a nightmare, something she’d wake up from, find herself anywhere else.

A cold breath slips past her chattering teeth as it sinks in that she’s once again very alone, bodies everywhere and rain making the red stain her dress spread, like it’s consuming the white fabric.

When the breath leaves her, it carries a scream.

Chapter Text

Zelda isn’t sure how long she’s sat there, huddled against the speckled rock and numb from the downpour soaking her dress and darkening the pebble bank beneath her. It takes a long time to pull herself up on legs that feel like steel barrels, or so she thinks. The sky has started to brighten beyond the thick blanket of grey but she can still see the glowing silhouette of the knight’s sword, unable to determine if it’s still there or merely burned into her vision.

She retrieves the bow and quiver – avoiding the still bodies strewed around – glad the latter has belts attached to it. She straps them in place at her waist, trying not to flinch at the pink blotches on her dress the rain hasn’t quite washed away.

Her gaze falls on the device the knight had dropped. There’s something familiar about the weight of it in her hands as she tentatively retrieves it from the dirt, but her mind gives nothing on its use, nor why she feels the urge to hold it up in front of her. Tucking it into the quivers belt, she climbs the sloped ground that’s grown muddy from the rain.

Standing at the top, she looks around, shuddering at the abandoned cart laying there, the odd glowing rock next to the toppled tower and the strikingly pretty pink tree just beyond. 

Nothing. She has no idea of where she is or where to go.

Turning and clasping the grip of her bow in hand, she starts pacing in the opposite direction, hoping her feet knew where to go.

The further Zelda walks, the more the fear that she really doesn’t know where to go sets in through the all consuming numbness occupying every inch of her. She avoids the roads, keeping her distance from any settlements she passes. The unassuming traveller she’d trusted made her weary of anyone she saw, the manic laughter echoing in her head at each settlement she spotted and hurrying her away.

The only thing keeping her from breaking down is naming things as she goes, testing the limits of her memory.

The sun rises ahead of her for the second time – maybe the third, she’s not sure – since she left the riverbank, illuminating the edges of a deep crevice that splits a mountain in half. She tries to take a step forward but the last wisps of her strength leaves her, knees buckling sending her tumbling into the rain-softened dirt.

Laying on the ground, she bites back a scream, tired and helpless and why was she even here ?

Zelda. You know we’ll never truly be gone.

She looks up at the path between the odd split mountain her legs carried her to but there’s no one around. Squinting, the scene before her changes and fades to white.

“Zelda. You know we’ll never truly be gone. Please keep an eye on Sidon for me. I know he’s grown into a fine Zora prince, but please make sure he isn’t getting himself into too much trouble.”

 Zelda stubbornly wipes at her eyes as she stands before four blue silhouettes, the spirits of the champions and her friends.

Zelda sniffs. “I promise, Mipha. You can rest at ease.”

Mipha smiles down at her warmly, bittersweet on her pretty features. 

“Haha, she’s right, y’know. Can’t get rid of us that easily, tiny princess,” Deruk chuckles. “You’ve also earned your peace too. Make sure you take time out of duty and all that to enjoy it!”

Zelda can’t help but chuckle herself at the goron’s infectious laughter. “I’ll do my best, Daruk. Thank you.” She turns to the Rito hovering next to the goron, wings crossed and eyes stubbornly downcast. With a nudge from the taller, he sighs.

“Well I suppose we finally found something that me and that knight of yours have in common. I’m not fond of sentimental goodbyes either.” He waves a wing behind her and she follows his movement, finding the blue clad knight several paces away with his back to them tending to their horses. Zelda’s attention is drawn back to the champions at an affronted squawk.

“Come now Revali, must you insist on spoiling every moment?” The former gerudo chief groans, arms crossed. Rivali gives her a half hearted glare before cheating his throat.

“Fine. I suppose if I had to battle alongside anyone… there’s… less honour with any that weren’t yourself and your knight.” Zelda grins, finding the sincerity behind his words comforting.

“It’s been an honour to fight beside you Rivali. Tales of your skills will be passed on as legendary for generations to come.” Rivali huffs, but the stalk of his beak darkens.

Zelda feels her eyes burn again as she turns to Urbosa, gazing down at her with a smile as warm as the sands of her desert.

“I’m so proud of you little bird. You’re finally free.” Zelda tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat.

“U-Urbosa, I…” the ghostly woman simply smiles.

“It’s ok, little one. Words are not necessary. You’ve earned this peace more than anyone. Live the life you want to.” Urbosa jerks her head behind Zelda where her knight stands with a wink. “Now, take care of yourself.”

Zelda gives one last bow as the champions fade into the night and stays there long after long after the last of the lingering blue foxfires have disappeared. It’s not until the quiet whinnying of a horse sounds far closer than she’d expect that she notices she’s not alone. Turning, she finds her knight watching her with a kind smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, a clean scrap of fabric in hand.

“T-thank you,” she comments, taking it and wiping her face. She mounts her horse with as much grace as possible in her dirty old prayer dress and they silently send their steeds into a trot through duelling peaks. After a while, Zelda finds herself watching her companion.

“I know you said you’d already said goodbye but are you sure you’re okay?” The knight seems to startle out of his thoughts, finding her with a lethargic gaze that’s partially far away. He seems to think about it, expression thoughtful, and eventually shakes his head.

‘It’s easier like this,’ he signs without elaborating. Zelda doesn’t understand but she accepts his answer with a quiet hum.

“Were you injured in the fight?”

‘I already used a fairy. I’m fine.’ He tacked on ‘Just tired,’ at her unsatisfied look. Zelda sighed but fell back into a less-than-comfortable silence. 

“Hay,” she asks after a while, pulling her horse to a stop. The knight twists towards her, that distant gaze not leaving his eyes and curling worry around her heart. 

“Is something bothering you? You’re awfully quiet.”

The knight blinks at her, seemingly focusing on her fully. The ghost of a smile touches his lips, humour dancing in his eyes.

“M-more so than usual. Or what I’m used to I suppose.”

His brows raised. ‘You think so? I don’t remember us talking much.’

Zelda bit her lip, an uncomfortable feeling turning in her stomach.

“How much do you remember exactly?”

He thought about it, hands resting on his horse’s reins for a while before they started moving again.

‘Just bits and pieces from when I became your knight. The calamity. The champions. When you unlocked your powers.’

Zelda’s heart dropped like a stone.

“That’s all? Nothing before?” The knight shook his head, face frustratingly blank. “What do you… remember about us?”

Silence again. He studies her for a beat. Slowly, a half grin curled his lips.

‘You caught a frog with your bare hand once and tried to make me eat it.’

Zelda flushed. “Oh of course you remembered that,” she huffs under her breath, though she’s grateful for the shift in the awkward air. The knight chuckled.

‘I did try it once. Saved me from a group of silver lizalfos when all my good weapons broke. I could move faster and got away.’

Zelda looked at him incredulously. “You ate a live frog?” He nodded, the distasteful wrinkle of his nose endearing.

‘It’s not very effective. I learned how to make elixirs with them though. It’s much more potent that way. Less,’ he grimaced, ‘wriggly.’

“Fascinating,” she blurts out between chuckles, the scholar in her bursting with curiosity. “How do you make elixirs? I was only ever able to purchase them and I never got an opportunity to make or observe the effects of one. Do you take them frequently?”

Link chuckled at her barrage of questions. ‘I thought I was your knight, not a test subject. I could show you if you want? If…’ He trailed off, that distance returning to his gaze. He sits up straighter when he finally signs again. ‘Forgive me, princess. I shouldn’t be speaking so casually.’

Zelda opened her mouth and closed it, hoping her disappointment didn’t show on her face. She shakes her head.

“There’s nothing to forgive. And please, just Zelda. We were friends before you d-” she caught herself, wringing her hands. She saw him nod out of the corner of her eye, fiddling with his own fingers before signing again.

‘May I ask you something?’

“Of course. Anything.”

‘The Deku Tree showed me a vision of when you returned the master sword to its pedestal. What did you want to ask the Deku Tree to tell me?’

Urbosa’s last words fill her mind, making her pulse race. A short while ago, she’d have happily spilled everything in her heart, locked up for a century while she kept the calamity sealed in the spirit realm. Now, it seems wrong, looking at her dear friend who had forgotten most of himself.

She forced a smile.

“When we get to Impa’s. We’re not far.” 

The image fades from Zelda’s mind as the same split mountain from it shifts back to day, leaving a dull ache in her head. A memory? She bites back a scream, fighting off the panic and grief that threatens to swallow her whole. Any relief she felt from remembering something is overshadowed by the fact that it gives her no indication of where to go from here.

She doesn’t know where the urge comes from, but she has to keep moving. Even if she doesn’t know where she’s going.

“Linky?”

The shape of a person within the gorge through the mountain draws her attention, has her dropping low and shuffling towards a pair of trees off the road and shrinking behind one of them. Drawing an arrow and gripping the bow, she watches as a white haired figure breaks from the shadows and walks along the path. 

“Come on Linky. Everyone’s worried about you. I know you’re around here somewhere!”

Zelda watches from the shadows of the trees as the woman looks down at something in her hands, hoping she’ll just keep walking to find whoever she’s looking for. The stranger holds the thing in her hands up, spinning around, and then looks directly at the tree Zelda crouches behind. Her knuckles go white on the grip of her bow with how tightly she grips it.

“D-don’t come any closer,” she yells as the woman approaches, flinching at the shake in her voice. The stranger freezes half way towards her spot, an audible gasp carrying over the space.

“Zelda?! Is that really you?” Said woman steps out from behind the tree, bow drawn tight. The strangers' sleepy eyes go wide, swimming with concern and relief as she looks her up and down. “I thought I’d never see you again! What happened to you?”

“ Stop ,” she commands. Thankfully, the woman does as asked, concern plain on her face.

“Zelda? Where’s… oh goddess Zelda. It’s me, Purah. Don’t you recognise me?”

Zelda shakes her head and keeps her distance, squinting through the fire in her head and searching for any hint the stranger’s deceiving her.

The woman’s – Purah’s she registers – face falls. “Zely… we’ve been friends for a long time. Oh, wait, I can prove it!” She looks down at the thing she’d been holding and Zelda inhales sharply, recognising the device identical to the one tucked away at her hip. Purah puts the device on the floor and slides it across the grass to Zelda’s feet and raises her hands to show them empty.

“Look! We’re friends. There’s pictures on my pad from before you disappeared,” she encourages, pointing at the device. Zelda slowly crouches, bow still half drawn, and looks at the still image on the device that’s lit up like her knights one was when he used it.

She takes in the image, a group of people happily sat at a table sharing a meal. Amongst them, Zelda sees herself, different to how she looks now, but definitely her from the glimpses she’d seen of her reflection in ponds she’d passed. On one side is the same woman standing before her smiling along with her past self. On her other side, looking pleased at the empty pile of bowls set before him…

Zelda drops her bow, snatching up the device and turns it to Purah, pointing at the man in the picture.

“H-him. W-what’s his name? He was- we were attacked- S-something terrible-” A sob tore from her throat as guilt rushed over her. It was her fault. Whatever happened was because she’d foolishly trusted a stranger. Her words fail her as warm tracks rush down her cheeks. “He… I don’t remember a-anything before… He was with me and then-”

Purah looked horrified. "He's not- Is he alive?"

Zelda's painfully empty stomach writhed at the thought. "N-Yes. I t-think so. He was injured w-when he left. He-"

Thin arms coil around her in a warm embrace and she latches on, sobbing her relief into the taller woman’s shoulder. Purah shifts, bending down and then straightens.

“I'm sure Link will be fine then. He's tough. You, on the other hand, are chilled to the bone. Let’s get you somewhere safe and then we can talk properly, okay? Just hold onto me.”

Link. The name is so familiar in her mind that she doesn’t understand how she’d forgotten. With a shaky nod, she does as she’s told, clinging to the woman with what little energy she has left.

She barely registers as the scene changes in a flash of blue, exhaustion finally getting the better of her.

“Ok you can let go now. Just follow me, okay? We’re nearly at Impa’s house. Well, Paya’s now technically.”

Impa. Someone she definitely knows from the only memory she has even if she doesn't remember who they are. Zelda vaguely acknowledges climbing down a ladder and being led through a town that definitely wasn’t so close before. Too exhausted and overcome with relief to think. She’s ushered into one of the houses and feels the tug of someone stripping her clothes and wrapping soft, dry material around her quivering frame.

The next thing she knows is the softness and warmth both above and beneath her, a floral scent smothering her senses in comfort and she finally lets herself succumb to sleep.

Link hisses when he wakes, every inch of him feeling like it’s on fire inside and out. The dulled ache of the blows he’d taken in his battle against the demon king screamed at him for attention, but it’s dulled by an all-too-familiar burn that coated every inch of his skin.

It’s like he’s swimming in malice of all things.

No matter where his eyes snap, his vision is filled with endless nothing, dark and cold and empty. The only thing stopping panic from gripping him being the fact that he’s had far too much experience waking up somewhere strange with no recollection of how he got there.

Anger and bitterness overwhelms him amidst everything. They’d just sealed Ganondorf. He’d tasted a bitter victory for less than a second and somehow reversed the irreversible and turned Zelda back. Now Zelda doesn’t recognise him and the Yiga are there and his stomach rolls with nausea at the unnatural absence of weight on his right side and the endless darkness surrounding him in all directions feels like it’s suffocating and where is he? 

Laughter reverberated all around and he found himself looking at a shadowy mirror image of himself. White hair and glowing red eyes and slate skin instead of tan.

That’s right, he’d needed speed to fight the Yiga. His ailing body and his unpractised left hand making the small group of them a very serious threat. He’d picked the easiest to find set of armour that would give him the boost he’d needed in his hurry – given that it was the most recent thing he’d added to his inventory.

The exact armour the figure before him wears.

He tries to back away but lets out a hiss as something rope-like and alive coils around his limbs. Thick tendrils of gloom immobilize him and suspend him mid-air. It syphons his strength away and adds to the fires lit on every one of his nerves.

The shadow grins maliciously.

“There’s so much darkness in you, little hero. I couldn’t have asked for a better wearer.”

A grey hand reaches towards him and Link cringes away, heart pounding in his chest as he struggles helplessly. A flash of gold all but blinds him and the shadow hisses, backing away. Link blinks against the sudden flash, seeing a gold mesh like a barrier light up between them. The shadow touches it, hand meeting it like it’s a solid thing and hisses in displeasure.

“That’s annoying. Hmm, no matter.” 

“Please, you said you wouldn’t leave!”

Link looks down at Zelda’s terrified form, huddled against a sky rock. He feels his face contort into a grin as he rears back and swings the master sword down on her.

Gold light explodes in his vision and a new kind of burning hits crackles over his hip like lightning tenfold.

Link heaves a wretched breath as the image fades from his vision and heaves another, getting no satiation no matter how hard he gasps for breath. His side throbs with ghost pain from Zelda’s magic at the memory .

The shadow shudders in delight.

“Magnificent. Did it feel good? All you've done for her and she doesn't have the decency to remember you to thank you for it." The shadow cocks his head. “Want to do it again?"

Link practically snarls, anger and fear exploding in him as he thrashes uselessly with renewed vigour.

“I kill you. If you so much as touch her I'll-"

“Will you now? Not much you can do while I'm pulling the reins on your meat,” the shadow practically sang through a warped smile. 

The scene plays out again in front of him and he bites back a whimper, unable to blink or look away as he’s forced to watch again.

And again.

Until the image of her terrified face remains in his vision after the memory from the shadows eyes fades.

The tendrils of malice tighten the more he thrashes, draining him until he has nothing left to fight with. Through blurry vision, he notices the shadow seems more solid, watching him with predatory hunger.

“Rest up, little hero. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and this Zelda of yours.”

It's a terrifying mercy when he sinks into the nothingness.