Chapter Text
“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.
“You know,” says the princess, “I do wish you’d come to the tutor’s with me.”
Link’s hands are busy, and so he cannot answer. He is patching his boot, keeping sole and shoe together. The leather is tough, bear hide, and the curved, metal needle from Hateno feels much clumsier in his hands than the elk-bone needle he carved himself.
But Zelda awaits his reply with patience, sat cross-legged on the little bed the inn has to offer. The slate balances on one knee, crowded out by the ruggedly bound journal that claims most of her lap. The quill bobs idly between her fingers. Always patient, always collected. Five years of trying to herd the remnants of Hyrule back into a proper nation have not ruffled her at all.
Sometimes Link hates her for it.
The boot is fighting him, so he puts it down, jabbing the needle into the tongue so as not to lose it. Then, with a slow deliberateness—one he knows will annoy her—Link considers his answer. Equally slowly, he lifts his hands to form his reply.
“Dumb idea.”
Her brow knits, and she looks back down at her notes so she no longer has to look at him. The dull heat of embarrassment seeps between his bones like a poison, the same way it does whenever he’s short with her. He leans back, fingers digging into the fabric of his pants, and considers how much of a moron he is.
After a moment, he picks the boot up again, and goes back to work.
Death Mountain boils the air around them. It sticks Link’s hair to his nape and tars him with sweat, feathers him with ash. He reeks, his lips are dry and threatening to split, and he burns through his waterskin mere hours after refilling it. Zelda is not much better, but as ever, she keeps her composure. Him, on the other hand, him it leaves exhausted and uncomfortable—he’s never been good with temperatures—and more than a little snappish. It would be easy to blame his snotty answer on their location: halfway up the mountainside to Goron City for another mind-numbing political summit. It wouldn’t even be entirely untrue, because he can usually hold his metaphorical tongue.
But there’s more to it than that.
“I know we’ve talked about this a dozen times,” says Zelda, breaking what had felt like a disapproving silence, “and I will not command my knight against his will. But I really think learning it would be helpful to you.”
Down goes the boot again. “Already know it. Don’t need it.”
“You know Prebellum Sign,” Zelda cuts in before he’s even finished the second sentence. “New Hylian Sign is wholly different, Link. I’m sure you’d pick it up quickly, too! You’ve always been a quick study.” She catches herself now, grimacing, and pushes back some of the mess her coiffed hair has become in the heat. “I apologize for the outburst,” she says. "I’m sorry. But it would be good for you to be able to communicate with more people. Practically no one even knows Prebellum Sign existed.”
Link can’t help it: he rolls his eyes.
This makes her drop her gaze again. Her quill scratches at the parchment for a long time. Her eyes are trained on the slate’s blue glow (not him) when she says, “I’m growing worried about you.”
To ask her why would be an insult to her intelligence, and they both know it. It’s obvious to anyone paying the slightest amount of attention to him. Link had thought he could ignore the changes, at first. Later he just tried to hide them: the shortening temper; his mounting reluctance to interact with others; his tendency to pick fights with anything that looks at him sideways. Even he, with his vested interest, can’t pretend he hasn’t noticed these troubling developments. The only thing that hasn’t changed is this: he stays close to Zelda.
He has gathered the idea that after his final trial against the great Calamity he was meant to settle down somewhere, enjoy his retirement. Zelda even tried to release him from service shortly after her return, saying he had done his duty, but did not complain when he continued to show up anyway. He had no idea where else he would have gone, and she must have realized it. The idea of settling down, of letting himself grow dull, rusted, fills him with a panic not unlike drowning.
The sword of the royal family is of no use in peace.
But he is the hero of Hyrule, and the appointed guardian of the princess, and he must try to keep her from worry. There is already too much on her mind. So all he can answer with is (in his antique, dying Prebellum Sign), “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
Zelda sighs, and he repeats himself with more emphasis, bigger motions, pushing himself to look as sincere as possible. Reassuring, as a bodyguard should be. For all his stupid, impulsive lashing out, he doesn’t want her to worry. He does care. Too much, perhaps.
It works. Zelda offers him a half-hearted smile and lifts her hand. Her reply comes as the flat of her palm drawn over her heart, and an upward flick of the wrist to extend her fingers to him. It’s the phrase Zelda signs most often, one that used to bring him more comfort.
“I trust you.”
I’m growing worried about you.
Morning brings no balm for his souring mood. The words follow him all through the next day, unrelenting, like a determined mosquito. They flicker across his mind along the trail to Goron City, they crawl over him as royal and knight are received and shown to lodgings. They hover at the fore of his thoughts. Another irritant to chew through his poor temper. When the young attendant offers to take the Master Sword, he does not even try to answer. All he has for them is an annoyed stare.
As ever, Zelda saves the day. “My knight prefers to never be without the sacred sword,” she says, like this is a normal thing, like Link isn’t being childish, like he couldn’t have forced his half-paralyzed throat through enough syllables to explain that himself. For a moment resentment burns in his chest again, and then the guilt comes rushing back. Some hero.
“Oh!” says the attendant, a Goron on the smaller end. “I see. Of course. It’s just—I don’t think they allow any weapons at political gatherings …”
“An exception has been made for us on our prior visits. Would you be so kind as to confirm that’s still the case, when you’re done here?”
Of course, of course, says the attendant, they’ll find out at once. Zelda thanks them, and Link pretends he did not hear the conversation. Link pretends he is not boiling with an emotion he cannot name, one he feels often around Zelda these days: something like jealousy, something like yearning. Something like bitterness.
I’m growing worried about you.
They settle in. Zelda makes no comment on Link’s attitude, and Link has nothing to say at all.
The summit passes quickly enough. They are provided with plenty of water, and the best attempts at non-rock food the Earth People can provide. (Link tries a dish featuring a kind of giant rodent, smoked over lava, and has to get Zelda to find out what’s in it so he can try to make it himself.) The politics occur, barely three hours in talks, and at the end of it plans for revitalizing the Hylian economy with Goron goods is in the works. If Link has understood it correctly, they will receive a large portion of the bits of the castle that has crumbled in exchange. Apparently it’s considered a delicacy.
Then they’re out again, and Link is thinking about the long trip back down the mountain. Weariness nips at him, but he would jump at the chance to escape the awful heat. But they won’t leave tonight. It wouldn’t do for the princess to be seen hurrying away the moment her duties were over.
“Shall we go to dinner?” Zelda asks as he escorts her down the sloping stone paths, breaking him from his thoughts. “There’s a place to eat our attendant was telling me about. The owner’s apparently very proud of his skill with Hylian food.”
Link nods, and makes himself smile as he does. Zelda’s grin blooms in answer, and he feels his forced expression become honest, his earlier annoyances sheepishly slipping away.
They are not recognized as they weave through the stone arches and curving metal, mostly. If they are, it’s only Zelda. Hellos are called, one or two excited shopkeeps or artisans offer up their samples to impress her. It’s the ideal situation to Link, to be ignored and overshadowed like this, and it mostly only happens among the Gorons. For all he hates Death Mountain, its inhabitants treat him much the way they treat anyone else, and he is fond of them for that. He thinks someone once told him they have trouble distinguishing non-Gorons from each other, especially Hylians, who lack striking feather patterns or the wide array of bodily morphism seen among the Zora. The Gerudo are even more difficult for them. If Zelda were not still in her ambassador’s regalia, she would like as not go unnoticed as well.
But with the nuisance of being noticed at least comes recompense. By the time they arrive at the eatery, he has come into possession of a kind of long bracelet studded with gems meant to enhance sleep, a small selection of worry stones, and a bottle of goat milk that somehow resists curdling in the heat. They’re nice, these tokens, and soothe his mind in some small way.
The Goron running the eatery does not recognize them as anyone other than Hylians, which is itself enough to cause a fuss. In a rush they are swept into the finest seat, a shaded marble table with a view of the city, and the chef rattles off his specialties with breathless glee. All of them sound a bit off, but Link will eat anything once. Zelda is more selective, or tries to be. It turns out to not matter. In under thirty minutes, the table is filled with more than the two of them could possibly finish, and certainly more than they had ordered: kebabs of lizard meat and root vegetables, a great earthenware pot full of a bubbling, thin soup, a platter of beautifully cut fruit. There is even a dark, aromatic drink that turns out to be coffee, which Link has only ever heard of and never tasted.
The face he makes upon trying it nearly makes Zelda spit out her mouthful of soup. “I should have warned you,” she says after she swallows it, hand pressed flat to her chest as if to quell her laughter. “Bitter, isn’t it? Let me see that milk.”
Through some magic or another, she adjusts it until it is palatable, now nutty and bittersweet. He smiles his thanks, and over the next few minutes the two of them stuff themselves to bursting with what is indeed excellent Hylian fare. He can feel the easy camaraderie this table has brought to them lurking around the corners, uncertain, and that sets his mind to wandering.
This did not used to be so hard to find between them. That yearning-jealousy-bitterness boils up in his chest again, and at least now he has the sense to feel troubled by it, even if he doesn’t understand it.
Once the edge of his hunger is blunted, Link shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The feeling follows him no matter where he diverts his attention, like a lame guardian stalker, and feels just as dangerous. If he keeps still without doing something about it he has little doubt it will cause just as much damage.
It’s quiet here, at least, their table tucked away from prying strangers. Not like anyone here would understand him anyway. He catches Zelda’s attention with a wave, and forms each word carefully. He doesn’t think he could repeat himself if she missed it.
“Sorry. About me.”
Her brow knits into a frown. As he’s managed to catch her in the middle of a mouthful of a dense, sweet fruitcake, she signs back her answer. “What does that mean?” Link gives her a look. She swallows in a hurry. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” she says, wiping at her mouth.
“Making you worry.”
This gives her pause. “I’m very good at it, though,” she says, her tone artificially light. “One could say I’ve made a lifestyle of it, worrying about an entire kingdom.”
At Link’s flat stare, the façade drops. Her shoulders sag ever so little, the biggest tell he’s going to get from her in public. Even seeing it makes him antsy, and he takes another bite of his fish more for something to occupy himself than anything else. There was once a time where they could talk for hours about nothing. There was once a time when Link was not constantly second-guessing the blind devotion he still carries for her, a time when he was confident things would be alright. All he wants is to go back to how things used to be.
“I do think we should talk about it,” she says, quietly enough that no one else might hear. “Properly. About what’s been going on.”
Link’s gut does something that he once saw happen to a goat thrown from a cliff by a vulture. The delectable food in his mouth seems to become one with the volcanic ash that floats through the air. He forces it down; something in it not wholly chewed scrapes along his throat. He waits, hoping he does not look as defensive as he feels. Anxiety is not something he has ever been able to afford. There is simply no room in him for it, not when hesitation will put a spear through his gut or an arrow through his hand. It’s always a nasty surprise, then, when it sneaks up on him, like a snake curled in his shoe. Only two people seem capable of invoking this in him. Zelda is one of them.
He waits.
“I’m not sure how best to broach this,” Zelda says. She’s leaning her chin on her hand now, looking him over in her measured gaze. Like they are the only people in the world. She looks so tired. “So I will just try to be plain. You've been so ... so distant, these past few months. I'm troubled by it. I'm troubled that you won’t learn the new Sign, or—”
“Ho, little ones!” cries a booming voice, and Link jumps so hard he slams his knee against the underside of the marble table. Zelda flinches. The chef who appeared beside them with uncanny silence pauses. “Ah, my apologies! I’ve startled you! I simply wanted to see if you needed anything further.”
No, Zelda assures him, everything is lovely, you’re truly an excellent cook. Link nearly pierces his lip with his teeth bracing himself against the pain that shoots through his kneecap. He holds it together enough that Zelda does not ask him if he is okay. He’s fine. He’s always fine.
The chef departs, his ego soothed, and Zelda’s proper posture fails again. Her slim fingers thread up between the strands of her hair, spun gold. “This is probably a conversation that should wait until we are alone,” she says.
He’s fine.
They have been invited to some kind of performance by one of the Goron elders, and according to Zelda it would have been a great slight to miss it. After their dinner they return to their lodgings just long enough for Zelda to change clothing. Link uses the opportunity to check his knee, where a vicious purple bruise has begun to form. He’ll limp tomorrow if he’s not careful.
Then Zelda emerges, and they are off.
The performance might have been interesting if the threat of a Talk hadn’t been hanging over Link’s head. It takes all his concentration just to cram that knowledge out of view. The throbbing in his knee helps, and so he keeps worrying at the bruise, letting the pain distract him. He sits through the whole performance without truly seeing any of it. It’s a strange, mostly silent combination of dance and ritual cannibalism, rocks chipped from one another’s backs and consumed whole. He thinks he heard someone say it’s a depiction of the Goron creation story, but he cannot glean any meaning from it.
He is still focusing on the pain when the play ends. Pain has been his companion since his reawakening, reliable and predictable, in all its many forms: hunger, blisters, scrapes, cuts, great gushing wounds from a monster’s weapon.
(Loneliness, adds the version of Zelda that lives in his head, the one that says things incongruous with his own straightforward thoughts.)
Zelda is, of course, thanked by name by the producers of the play, and then swarmed with people interested in speaking with her. He can read the weariness in her responses and kicks himself again, knowing he has contributed to her concerns. Another part of him, small and selfish, is relieved: maybe he can get away with avoiding that talk.
They manage to break away from the crowd after nearly an hour (which is Link’s personal time limit for letting people harangue Zelda before he intervenes). He’s an old hand at it now, figuring out who needs to be given a hard boundary and how to get it across. Usually it does not involve a blade. It doesn’t tonight, either, just a careful body-blocking between Zelda and the next Goron eager to have her attention, and as they make their way beyond the thinning crowd she blows out her breath and catches his gaze from the corner of her eye, eyebrows arched, and mouths thanks. His answer is to raise one hand and mimic a flapping mouth with it, complete with a nauseated expression. It makes her laugh, and that’s all he wanted.
As their quarters loom ahead of them, his mood founders again. It’s late, but not so late that a conversation could be out of the question. It's this that drives him to steal outside when Zelda retires to the bath, aiming on avoiding her long enough that she will simply fall asleep first.
The moon hangs low over the mountain. The air reeks of sulfur. Goron do not sleep in the same way as every other race, and so activity does not dull at night. The city is lit by the glow of lava and the sparks that fly from the mines. From their lodgings at the ambassadors’ center, he can see into the valley that the Goron civilization has nestled itself in, worn into a bowl by hundreds of years of mining. Always bright, always active. As a people he has found them to have short memories and little interest in the past, and it fills him with envy. Perhaps his next life will see him reborn as a Goron. Or even just a rock. Being Link has lost any charm it once had.
A pair of young ones pass by him, one taller than the other. The shorter Goron’s eyes widen. “Hey!” they call, eager, and Link stops in his absent destruction of a tough little fern that has found its way into his hands. “Hey, aren’t you the champion? Link? You are, aren’t you? Wow!”
He steels himself. He etches on his Hylian Champion smile, and nods.
Not five minutes pass before he is swarmed with rockfolk children, each of them nearly as big as himself. It’s rote by now. They want to see his scars and the sword that seals the darkness. They want to know what the man who saved the princess is like. It seems unfair to give them the truth, so he does his best to make their day. He shows them how his blade resists all damage, the way he can put an arrow anywhere they point to, and he even peels down the collar of his shirt to let them see the scar that devours most of his chest and sternum. The exit wound is even bigger, and both sides are flat and empty craters in his skin, the faint hairs burned away. The only mark to be found is a faint impression of cloth on one side, where the fabric he bound his breasts with had fused to the wound with the heat. The children are delighted, all of them telling him and each other the stories they’ve heard. Some of them are even true.
By the time the young Gorons have dispersed, he has noticed the presence above him, lingering in the glassless window he sits beneath. As the last few dash away to brag of their meeting, he tilts his head enough to see Zelda leaning her cheek on her folded arms, watching him. He lets his sword slide into his lap and lifts his hands, twisting halfway so she can actually see them. “How long?”
“Only a few minutes,” she says. “You’re wonderful with children, you know.” When he shrugs, she adds, “I never really know what to do with them. I’ve certainly made more of them cry than I ever meant to.”
Link would laugh at this if he hadn’t seen it himself. She always means the best, but occasionally you have to soften the blow when you tell a Hylian child he’ll never be able to fly like a Rito. He’s thinking of a clever reply when she says what he has been dreading, her voice full of sleep. “I do still want to talk with you. Tonight would be nice, but it doesn’t have to be.”
He fixes his attention back on the city below. If it had been anyone else, that would have been the only reply given. But it’s Zelda, and as he cannot bring himself to face her again, he gathers himself and forces his tongue to work.
“I’m t—tired.” His voice is craggy and it wobbles around the words. It hurts the same way it always does, a rasping ache where his breath moves over the parts of his throat that make the sounds. “We can tom—orrow. Yeah?”
It takes a long time for the princess to answer. He’s convinced she knows he’s being avoidant. Part of him wishes, even, that she would call him on it, that she would command him to have this conversation at this very moment. He is her knight and her subject and he is bound to obey her demands, and that part of him wants to tell remind her of that. Part of him wants to tell her to take the choice away from him, because he will never make the correct one. The carpenter does not ask the hammer how it wants to be used.
But the lady Zelda is wise above all else, and she only ever treats him—to his growing frustration—like a person.
“Alright,” she says, and a yawn catches her in the middle of the word. He hears her shake herself and exhale, and it’s not a surprise when he feels her fingertips press gently against the crown of his head in familiar affection. “Tomorrow. Try to get some rest, Link.”
And then she’s gone.