Archive of Our Own ^beta

To Weave and To Hold

I.

The waters in the Spring of Wisdom are freezing cold.

Princess Zelda has told him not to come for her; it is of utmost importance that she unlocks her sacred power, no matter the cost, or her failure will result in the Kingdom of Hyrule being reduced to ashes. Link heeds her word; he’s respectful of her command even when he disagrees with it.

Until he’s not. Until, some hours after she’s submerged under the freezing spring on the top of Mount Lanayru, her prayers become weak, slurred. Until her skin turns pale and her lips bluish. Until her words stop making sense, and, though she has yet to lose her strength and fall, she’s still, very still, and Link decides that respecting her word is only worth it when she’s still alive to yell at him for disobeying her.

The waters in the Spring of Wisdom are freezing cold; he groans softly at the thermal shock against his skin. Step after step, he sinks deeper as he strides towards her, and it would be a disservice to her penance to think about how cold it feels.

When he reaches her, the water up to his thighs, her skin is frigid, and it takes her too long to acknowledge his hand on her shoulder; when she does, it comes in a weak moan and a barely noticeable tilt of the head towards him.

He thinks she mumbles his name. He’s not certain; she could still be praying to the Goddesses who would rather drown her than hear her pleas. When her breathing is so slow and shallow, he scoops her in his arms and carries her back to the shore, to the small camp he had built. She shows no resistance, though her lips still try to form sounds.

She still tries to pray.

He lowers her, gently and carefully, by the strong fire, and forces her to drink a spicy elixir to the last drop. She throttles and chokes on it, and he apologizes profoundly for bringing her further misery; when his hands slip under her dress, skirt drenched and bodice damp, he forgets who she is, who they are, and strips her from it to get her back in the winter attire that she had climbed the mountain in.

It’s indecorous — he doesn’t care. They are past appearances when she’s on the brink of freezing to death. Though her skin has gained some of its color back already, she still shivers, so he sits behind her, his chest against her back, and his hands start rubbing all over her body, bringing it friction and warmth.

If the King saw them like that, he would have had his head hanged. Yet, it doesn’t matter; his life is worthless as long as she still lives and breathes. And, when she leans back against him, seeking his warmth and his comfort — he pledges his life for her yet again.

Hours weave in; it was dawn when they started the climb up the mountain, and they would descend it after darkness had fallen. Though he would much rather make the most of what was still left of sunlight, he lets her rest; her well-being comes first, unconditionally — he can still take care of her when they climb down at night.

Her first words come when the sun is almost gone from the sky.

“I failed, didn’t I,” she whispers, pulling her legs closer to her chest. She no longer shivers, and yet — she quavers, under his touch, when she speaks, “my powers didn’t awaken. I have — doomed us all.”

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he tells her, squeezing both her upper arms in support; it is the closest he can offer her a hug. “None of us do.”

“Still—”

She finds that she has no arguments against him; either that or she’s so exhausted that she can’t bring herself to have them. She sighs, closing her eyes as she seeks solace in him, likewise forgetting who they are and the role they play, and rests her weight against him. 

“You did everything you could,” he reassures her, knowing too well that his words mean — nothing , though not from his volition. “Princess.”

The sound of his voice — or, maybe, his vain words — makes her shiver.

“You don’t have to try and assuage me,” she says — ironic, given how tangled against him she is. “It’s not — it’s not your duty.”

He chuckles, and it takes her so aback that, for the first time, she breaks away from him, only to turn around, still intertwined between his legs, and narrow her eyes at him. Despite her verminous glare, a gentle smile remains on his face.

“Forgive me, Princess — I’m your knight,” he reminds her, “that’s precisely my duty.”

“You’re my knight. Your duty is to protect me, nothing more.”

“And that doesn’t include the perils of your own mind because…?”

Her expression falls and stuns; she looks down, embarrassed, and brings her hands together as she fidgets with them. He feels awful, wondering if he’s said something wrong — or, maybe, he’s said something too right. Still, it’s her birthday — her birthday! — and, with everything else she has on her plate, he refuses to be the one to make her feel worse. That is the opposite of his duty.

“Princess? What are you feeling?”

Throughout the turbulence of their relationship, he’s learned it’s better to be straightforward than to ask — are you okay? , for it often prompted a quick yes from her when that was far from the truth. When he asks her what she's feeling, she takes the time to sit back and think of an answer; to try and put her feelings into words.

“My head is heavy.”

He can help with that.

“I have some fairy tonic with me,” he says. “Here, it will surely help with a headache—”

“No,” she stops him when he’s rummaging through his satchel already, her cold hand gentle on his arm. “Thank you. My head doesn’t hurt, it’s just… heavy.”

“Oh,” he utters, and puts his bag away. He gathers — there isn’t a cure for such a thing.

Her smile, though candid, is a sad one. He chews on his cheeks as he thinks; he is her knight, his duty to her is to find ways to make her at ease.

“Your hair…” he mumbles, “your hair is down.”

She looks at him funnily once again.

“I mean —” he blushes, though his cheeks are already red from the coldness of the mountain. “Your hair is down, but, usually — when you’re not praying, you always have your hair up in a braid. Maybe… that’s why your head feels — heavy .”

What an absurd thing to say — there she is, struggling with the end of the world, and his response is to blame it on her hair. He recognizes his foolishness the moment he says it, except — for some reason, she’s still smiling at him.

“I suppose you’re right,” she humors him. “I think — I will braid my hair, once we leave the mountain. It’s too cold here, my hands — I can barely feel my hands.”

“I can help.”

He’s her knight — he has a role to fulfill, and he has boundaries to respect, and, amidst his duty, he must find which lines to cross. He’s embraced her to keep her warm; to braid her hair — there would be no logical justification for such a gesture, and he only realizes it after he offers it. It’s out of line for his rank, disrespectful for who she is , and when all of this is over and he’s no longer needed, he will be thrown in the darkest dungeon for all his wrongdoings.

Except, maybe — it’s not wrong to her.

“You wouldn’t know how!”

He shrugs, a tentative smile on the corner of his lips.

“You can walk me through it.”

And she is just as surprised as he is when she accepts his offering.

His hands are clumsy but gentle; to untangle her hair from its knots with only his fingers is a hassle, but it proves to be therapeutic for both of them. It lets her — forget . When he finishes, it will all come back to her like a crashing wave, so he takes his time. He takes all the time in the world, knowing very well that time — time is the only thing that they don’t have.

He follows her instructions the best he can, and his best is miserable compared to her worst. When he finishes, something resembling a crown braid is born, and, without a mirror, she accesses it with her fingertips.

She hums in approval.

“Huh. Look at that,” she says, and her eyes glimmer when she looks for his. “You were right. The world is a little lighter now.”

II.

One day — it takes them one day of horse riding to reach the secluded house in the outskirts of Hateno. She is tired; he looks exhausted.

The world that surrounds her is brand new. Though the birds still chirp the same, it is a different world from the last time that she — existed, because she doesn’t think she truly existed in the century that she was light . The world is big, it’s loud, it’s — alive. It’s empty. When the overwhelmingness of its solitude becomes more than she could bear, she comes to find him, and the hairbrush is her excuse to get her through the door.

After they arrive in Hateno, tired and dirty from the road, Link takes her inside and leads her to the washroom on the loft. It is funny, truly, that, after rescuing her, the first place he thinks to take her is his home. Not to the Zora, nor the Gerudo, nor the Sheikah — he has brought her to his house, and, when she notices the house belongs to him , she tries not to think too much about it. After all, he must have been tired; must have been craving some real rest in a mattress familiar enough to him after defeating the Calamity on his own.

Except — he has given her the privacy to wash herself first and a change of clothes. She’d never take his kindness for granted; she has been so desperate to get rid of her white, dirty, prayer dress, and, after having cleaned herself and rinsed her skin until it was red — she is captivated by feeling again — she finds herself alone in the loft of his quiet, cozy house. However, she has forgotten that anxiety is a tangible feeling, too, and, with a knot in her throat, she leans over the handrail to look for him downstairs.

He isn't there; he has left her alone, and the house is so big, so lonely when it is just her. It reminds her of the solitude that was imprinted on the castle walls; it reminds her of a century of isolation, containing Calamity Ganon.

The thought terrifies her, and, as she climbs down the stairs on shaking legs, she finds his silhouette on the other side of the open door, sitting quietly on the front porch steps. The comb she has found lying around becomes her excuse to cross the threshold, and her steps are light when she approaches him, her chest tightening inside and crushing her heart.

“What are you doing out here?”

The suddenness of her voice makes him jump, and she feels — awful . A rare moment that he had let his guard down, and she’s stolen it from him. She brings the hairbrush closer to her chest, feeling silly, and, when he stands up, alert, she can’t bring herself to look him in the eyes.

“I was—” he stutters, “I wanted to give you privacy, Princess.”

Her grip tight on the brush; she doesn’t truly understand.

“The… the whole house?”

“It is smaller than your private lodgings in the Castle, Princess.”

She chuckles, faintly, and musters enough courage to look at him. In him, she sees the reflection of her apprehension.

“It is still your house,” she reminds him, yet it doesn’t move him. She sighs, and focuses her attention on the hairbrush she now fidgets with. “Link, I’ve… I’ve been in privacy for one hundred years, Link.”

She says the word with disdain; privacy would be the last word to describe the prison of her past century. It was torture, and — Link realizes the error in his ways, for his face falls right away.

“I am so sorry, Princess,” he says, and he’s apologizing for so much more than having left her alone in his house. It doesn’t make her feel any better; after all, she would never fault him for anything; not for dying, not for taking his time to come for her, not for giving her his house.

“You have never done anything wrong,” she tells him, and she hopes he understands — the blame of the past is not his to carry. “Link, I… I don’t know how the future will go, and I understand if you don’t want to be in my presence. It isn’t your duty , not anymore. But… just for one night… will you stay with me?”

Her plea is desperate, and she prays she doesn’t sound so pathetic. But to be alone again, like she was for a hundred years past with nothing but a demon to haunt her… few things scare her more.

He takes one step closer to her.

“What about the other nights?”

She sniffs quietly.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that further into the future. I can… I will find somewhere else to stay,” she says, and she deafens the sound of her own words so she doesn’t have to consider the solitude looming over her already.

His eyes widen.

“You don’t want to stay here?”

“Not… not if you don’t want me to.”

“I brought you here.”

“I know.”

She doesn’t understand why everything is so hard. It should be easier, now, now that she is free. It seems — in her centurial prison, she has forgotten how to exist and everything that comes with it. She has forgotten that fear is an intrinsic part of being alive.

“I would like you to stay,” he tells her, and, when she unconsciously sighs in relief, she lets out all the tension, all the fright that she was holding inside.

“Oh. Thank you.”

He nods.

“It is very kind of you,” she says. “Link, I… I have one last favor to ask from you, if that’s okay.”

“Anything.”

She extends the hairbrush towards him, and, despite his promise, his eyes are stunned.

“Will you… will you braid my hair?”

She could have braided her own hair. She could braid her hair better than him and they both knew it. She could have braided her hair while she cleaned herself, or she could have gone straight to bed and fallen asleep.

Instead — she is here, a hairbrush in her hands and sheepish eyes.

“I don’t know how to, Princess.”

“You do. I taught you,” she says, “on Mount Lanayru.”

His fingers intertwine with hers on the hairbrush; it sends sparks down her spine.

“I’m afraid… I’m afraid I don’t remember,” he regrets. “I don’t—I don’t have that many memories of the past.”

The knot in her throat again; she buries inside the heartbreak that he doesn’t remember the act of kindness that saved her that day.

“That’s — that’s okay,” she reassures him as much as she does herself. “Amnesia — it comes from wounds in the limbic system, the parts of the brain that control emotions and memories. Braiding one’s hair — your premotor cortex is responsible for planning and executing movements. Fortunately for me, the two of them are unrelated.”

She doesn’t understand why, but he’s smiling so fondly at her; it is the first time she sees him smile, and it makes her heart flutter as much as it makes the tip of her ears blush.

He accepts the hairbrush and takes her back inside.

When he brushes her hair and she feels his fingers working on her braid — it tells her that everything will be okay.

III.

He has brushed her hair one thousand and one times before.

It has always been therapeutic for him and her alike. It takes the weight off her shoulders, and it brings his guard down to tend to something as precious as her hair.

Except, when he flies high into the sky, finds the Light Dragon in all its glory, and begins to braid her — he doesn’t feel good. 

Legs crossed in front of him and a satchel of silent princesses, his hands work gently on her mane. Since the brutal day he had learned of her fate, it’s become a ritual for him, to climb on her at any time he feels at loss and spend hours away tending to her hair, hoping that she — if she were still there —, would feel slightly better.

She had always complained how heavy the world was; in true fashion, she brought it upon herself to bear its weight for too many millennia to count.

“You always thought the weight of the world was yours to carry,” he tells her, gentle tears falling onto her mane as he weaves flowers in her mane. “Did it ever occur to you — we were always meant to carry it together?”

He sniffs, trembling hands working on. Most days, it is still difficult to accept that she is never coming back; that she will soar the skies as the Light Dragon until the end of time. And, one day too soon when she’s an endless being, he will be gone, and there will be no one to keep her company anymore.

She’s always hated solitude; to think that she’s been alone for so long breaks his heart. To think that she’ll be alone for the rest of eternity — it makes him cry.

“Once I defeat the Demon King — and I promise you that I will,” he says, “I’ll come back, and I’ll stay forever by your side.”

He wonders if there’s any part of her that is still there; he wonders if she can hear him; he wonders if she knows he’s lying, that forever is more than he could ever promise her.

And when he finishes braiding her mane in a thousand small braids intertwined with silent princesses — when he finishes adorning her grave with her favorite flower —, he bows his head in silent prayer that it would relieve his princess from some of the weight of her sacrifice.

Fic by sllentprincess

Art by cantstopdiggi