Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was the afternoon of the Third Day, Link sat down with Tatl in the middle of Romani Ranch taking in the scenery. In this particular cycle, Link had saved Romani and her cows from “Them”, whatever they were, and he had helped protect Cremia from the Gormon brothers on her delivery to town.

With all these repeated three day cycles they’d been through, they hadn’t been given much time to properly talk to each other, but now Link was beginning to memorize everyone’s schedules and was recording them in the Bomber’s Notebook. This once unfamiliar land of Termina had become predictable enough in these three days at this point that he and Tatl began allowing themselves to take some time to rest during some of them, giving the duo opportunity for some downtime and get to know each other more. So with this in mind, it wasn’t too big of a surprise at this point when Tatl began asking him questions about his past.

“Hey Link,” Tatl began, and Link looked at her curiously, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What’s up?” Link replied.

“Your instrument,” the golden fairy began, “obviously it’s no normal ocarina, right?”

“Glad you finally noticed,” Link replied sarcastically.

“Yeah yeah, anyway, I remember when you first got it back, you had this dreamy look in your eye, not even your deku form could hide it.”

Link’s expression softened at the reminder, thinking of Zelda.

“Yeah, like that right there!”

“Well, you’re right, it’s called the Ocarina of Time,” Link explained to the fairy.

“Okay, fitting name for what it does. So where did it come from? Is it a family heirloom or something? Is that why you looked so pissed when Skull Kid took it?”

Link considered the fairy flying around his head. Did he really want to tell her this story? Sure, she had been helping him, but she also was part of the reason why Skull Kid got away with the Ocarina of Time initially.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh come on! If someone comes along with an ocarina that has the ability to control time, wouldn’t you immediately have some questions?”

Link chuckled at that, he remembered his sheer confusion during his own first experience with time travel after pulling the Master Sword, “Fair enough.”

“Well..” Tatl said expectantly, “where’d you get it? Heirloom? Exploring a dungeon? Come on, give me the scoop!” She was fluttering around excitedly.

“Look, if you must know, this was a gift from my girlfriend.”

That caught Tatl’s attention and she froze, “What?! You have a girlfriend?!”

There were a lot of answers the golden fairy had expected to hear from him about the ocarina, but this was not one of them. Nor did it fully explain her actual question for that matter, but now she was thoroughly invested.

“Yeah,” Link said, rolling his eyes, “is it that surprising?”

“I mean I can’t say you’re not a catch given how much Romani likes you.”

“Romani likes me?”

“... How oblivious can you get? Well, I guess that explains why you turned down living here, you’ve actually got someone to return to.”

Link sighed, “I’ve been away from home for a lot longer than these three days… we’ve reset the three days so many times I’ve kinda lost track of how long it’s been. I miss her a lot.”

“What’s her name?” Tatl pressed, and to her surprise, Link smiled. 

This was the first genuinely happy smile she’d seen from him. Even when getting his normal human body back, he hadn’t looked happy, just shocked and relieved. Whoever this girl was, she must have been really special if he was smiling like this just by thinking of her. She probably could’ve guessed that already, given that she apparently was the one who gave him this powerful ocarina. Link mumbled a name, that Tatl didn’t quite catch.

“What was that?”

“Zelda,” Link said with the softest tone she’d ever heard from the young hero, “Her name is Zelda.”

“Zelda, huh, interesting name. She royalty or something?” Tatl teased. It certainly sounded unique, Tatl didn’t know anyone in Termina by that name, but there was no way that she could actually be a princess or a duchess or anything like that, right?

“Yep.”

“Wait what?!” Who the heck was this guy she was traveling with? Casually telling her that his girlfriend was literal royalty like it was no big deal. If this had been anyone else, she would’ve thought he was messing with her, and yet she believed him.

“Yeah, she’s the princess of my homeland.”

“What?! You- you’re dating a princess ?! How in the world did that happen?”

“I know right?! She’s wise beyond her years, she’s incredibly smart too, far smarter than I am, always reading. She’s gorgeous too, her eyes are a beautiful piercing blue, and she does this adorable little thing with her hair where she-”

Tatl cut him off, as it looked like Link would keep going on gushing about this princess for hours if she allowed it. The golden fairy found it quite adorable actually, but she still had more questions. On the bright side, this Zelda girl being an heir to a throne explained why she would have had such an ocarina, so her initial question was answered. On the other hand, the more she learned about the boy in green, the less she actually seemed to know.

“Okay okay okay, I get the idea. How did you meet her? Are you royalty too or something? Is that how you know her? Why are you out here instead of with her?”

“Hey, listen,” Link began, “if you keep asking all these questions, then we're going to be here for a very long time.”

“Then it's a good thing that your girl’s instrument can control time.”

Link sighed, “You’re not going to leave this alone, are you?”

“No way! I need to know how you landed a princess!”

“Alright alright. Then I guess I’ll start with this, have you ever heard of a kingdom called Hyrule?”

Tatl paused, that sounded like a name Skull Kid might have brought up once or twice before he’d gone crazy.

“I think Skull Kid might’ve mentioned it, I’m guessing that’s where you guys are from?”

Link raised an eyebrow as he thought back to his first journey and how he’d taught a skull kid Saria’s Song in the Lost Woods. Could he have been the same one from all that time ago? No, that couldn’t be right, that skull kid was just mischievous, he wasn't evil, right? Unless the mask was corrupting him? Questions for later.

“Well, that’s my homeland. I grew up in a place called the Kokiri Forest after my mother passed away, trying to take me somewhere safe when I was a baby. At the time, there was a brutal civil war raging across the whole kingdom, one that I don’t actually know all that much about.”

And from here, Link told Tatl the details of how he grew up in the Kokiri Forest with no fairy companion before eventually destiny called him to action.

“And so, I was told to go to meet the princess in Hyrule Castle. And well.. I kinda had no choice at the time but to sneak in.”

“Well I guess that explains why you were able to sneak around the Deku Palace so easily. How many castles have you snuck into?”

“Well, I actually got caught on my first attempt. I ended up getting help from my friend, Malon when getting in.”

“Who’s Malon?”

“She’s a girl from a place called Lon Lon Ranch in Hyrule. And… y'know, she actually looks completely identical to Romani and Cremia. If you put her and Romani right next to each other, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart until they started talking… Weird.” 

Now that he came to think of it, quite a few people here in Termina looked eerily similar to a lot of the Hylians. Link thought he was getting deja vu for a while but it wasn’t until he came to Romani Ranch and saw the doppelganger of his first friend outside the forest that it really occurred to him. More questions for later he supposed.

“Anyway, Malon gave me this weird egg that hatched by the time I got inside the gates, she had a feeling that her dad fell asleep somewhere out there. She was right, that’s exactly what happened, the man fell asleep right at the secret entrance I needed in order to get in and he probably could’ve stayed asleep for days potentially if I didn’t step in. Long story short, I woke him up with the hatched cucco, so he runs off, somehow doesn’t get caught? I’m still confused about that, anyway, I got into the castle, snuck my way past the guards, and made my way into the courtyard. And there she was, standing in front of a window.”

“So you met the princess, how did that go?”

“Well, I was wonderstruck when I first saw her. I think I was already in love right then and there. I probably sounded completely silly too. Scratch that, I know I did. Navi relentlessly teased me about her for days on end.”

Tatl couldn’t help but laugh and Link laughed with her, it was funny looking back at how much his crush on her made him act silly back then.

“What did you say that sounded so silly?!”

Link blushed, “Well, we had a discussion about the Gerudo King, Ganondorf, who was planning on betraying her father and taking over Hyrule by stealing the Triforce, which has the power to grant the desires of whoever touches it. Her father didn’t act on her warnings at the time, Ganondorf was just that good of a manipulator. I guess just one kid’s word alone wasn’t enough to make an arrest. So she tasked me with collecting three spiritual stones that he would have needed to open the door to the Sacred Realm, which was where the Triforce was hidden. That’s when she gives me a letter that would give me permission to go into the mountains where the second spiritual stone was kept. And then, don’t ask me why, but I said out loud, ‘Wow! This letter has Princess Zelda’s autograph!’”

Tatl cackled at that, flying around in figure eights by him as she laughed, “You actually said that?!”

“Yeah, I did,” he was laughing hard now, he could help himself, it was so silly looking back. He’d completely embarrassed himself in front of Zelda, though she didn’t seem to mind at the time, even smiling a little at him. Navi never let him forget that he said that. And when he went to visit Malon and later Saria afterwards, both girls realized that something about Link looked different, then on both occasions, Navi openly told them that Link was head over heels for the princess. With Saria, the blue fairy told her in exact detail what happened all the way to the point where he got Zelda’s letter. Navi also seemed to exaggerate a lot of details of his body language when meeting her when telling the story too, making him sound sillier.

“She didn’t seem to mind though, but oh boy did Navi never let me live it down.”

“I don’t blame her, I wouldn’t have either! So that’s how you two met, but how did you two get together?! What happened next?” Tatl was now very interested in where the story was going. Now that she knew this wasn’t Link’s first rodeo, now she was confident that he could probably handle the Skull Kid. Now she was far more interested in how this dingus ended up dating the princess even after embarrassing himself in front of her like that.

“Well, this was when my journey really began, the story of how I became the Hero of Time.”

And it was here that Link relayed the story of his first journey, from Death Mountain all the way to Ganon’s castle in the future. And for once, Tatl was quiet, hanging on Link’s every word. Until the time came that Link told her about how Zelda reset his timeline, then Link, back to his childhood self, but still holding the Triforce of Courage, which was enough proof for when he warned the royal family of Ganondorf’s plans, thus subverting his reign before it could ever start.

“Wow.. you really have done this before, guess Termina is in good hands. Wait, hang on, so everything that you did got reversed?”

“Well.. not quite everything, but everything that happened at least in the future. As for how much got reversed while I was a kid.. uh.. I still had the spiritual stones when I got back, but I don’t know what still happened and what didn’t and what changed. I was sent back before Ganondorf killed the king and queen at least, but the Great Deku Tree…” Link looked down sadly, “he still died. As for the Gorons and Zoras, I’m still good friends, or sworn brothers or whatever Darunia said, with the Gorons. Lord Jabu Jabu, the Zora deity, was still healed, and Nabooru has taken control of the Gerudo tribe now, and she banished any of members of the tribe who sided with Ganondorf. Really everything changed for the better.”

Tatl heard him say this, and yet there was a sadness in his voice, “But?” she prompted him to keep going.

“No one really knows what happened the way I do except Navi, who’s gone,” Link looked sad briefly, but then he perked up for a moment. Something else had occurred to him, “But there is a chance that Zelda at least has some memory of our old timeline. When she gave me the ocarina, she said that even though it was only a short time, she felt like she’d known me forever.”

Tatl’s glow brightened as the young hero’s entire face seemed to brighten when he had this realization. Despite the differences they’ve had, and the sheer amount of times they’d argued, Tatl found that she much preferred seeing Link in such a good mood like this. For so long, he’d often looked sad or moody, sure he was really kind hearted and selfless, but it was clear that there was a lot of pain behind it all. And yet, the moment the subject of this Princess Zelda came up, suddenly it was as though a beacon of hope was shining through all that pain. This princess must be someone very special indeed, but there was something she was missing.

“Heh, maybe she does remember at least some things. But how did you guys actually get together?”

Link blushed, “What?” he asked, hoping to be able to avoid the specifics.

“Well she’s your girlfriend now, how did that happen?”

“Well she invited me to dinner one night at this really fancy place in Castle Town.”

Tatl chimed and flew closer to his face, “That’s it? Come on, I know that there’s more! Give me the details! You can’t just leave me hanging like this!”

“Yes I can,” Link said, blushing at old memories.

“Oh, does someone have an embarrassing story they’re trying to keep buried?” Tatl asked, smugly flying around by his face, “Well, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything embarrassing that day, Tatl,” he said, “I just helped her out with something she was working on, she decided to repay me by taking me to dinner. And then one thing led to another and we became a couple.”

Tatl stared at him blankly “... Sure Link, sure, I’ll leave it alone for today, but mark my words, I will get you to tell me what you did eventually. Mark my words, I will know your little secret before we take on Skull Kid. I’ll keep asking at every stopping point for the rest of this journey.”

“I’m sure you will,” Link chuckled and he knew that she would. The Hero of Time also knew that he wouldn’t budge. While he had no issue telling the fairy his own tales of embarrassing himself, stories of Zelda embarrassing herself in front of him were a different matter entirely.

Meanwhile, far away in the land of Hyrule, Princess Zelda sat at her bed, dreading the night. The past couple of nights had been plagued by nightmares about Link. These dreams hadn’t always made a ton of sense, with Link in fighting various foes in different places all at once. Zelda wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but one thing was clear: Link was in trouble and she didn’t know why. Her only comfort was that she could sense that he held her Ocarina of Time with him.

Zelda looked over at the pictograph on her bedside nightstand of her and Link, his arm around her as they smiled. It was taken only a few weeks before Link had set out on his new journey. Just what dangers was he facing now? Would he make it back to her?

‘Of course he will,’ she thought to herself. The Princess knew that whatever rose against him, he would overcome in order to make his way back to her one day.

“Link... wherever you are, I’m still praying that your journey is safe. We will meet again soon.”

Unbeknownst to the Princess, the very moment she said that, all the way in Termina, Link felt a familiar warmth for reasons he couldn’t explain as he lifted the Ocarina of Time to his mouth and prepared to play the Song of Time once more.