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The King's final resting place did not lay on the mountain named in his likeness, nor in the Castle where he died, but instead on a peak where his name was overshadowed by the goddess Hylia herself. No one had visited in the last hundred years since his death; not until now.
"This is it?"
Overlooking the Great Plateau and Hyrule Field, with what remained of the castle as the crowning point just beyond, the view from Mt. Hylia bordered on ethereal. The grave, however, did not.
A simple collection of rocks gathered at the base held up a just as ordinary looking boulder. There were no flowers, no mementos, nothing to prove the one that had passed was missed at all. Only the rough engraving of an inexperienced hand marred the frostbitten stone.
Zelda knelt before the monument. Gloved fingers tracing the initials.
R. B. H.
Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule.
“It’s rather… Simple. Isn’t it?” Link settled behind her, the Gerudo Highlands to their back.
Link remembered seeing the old man stand where they stood now, silent as he stared at the corrupted castle. Knowing now of his true identity, the memory turned melancholy in their mind.
“In all honesty, I expected… More?” Zelda shook her head. “I’m not sure, actually. It’s just that… He always seemed so grand. Ready to attend to his duties as King at a moment’s notice.” A soft, unamused laugh. “Even as his daughter, I never once saw him outside of his royal robes and crown. Not that I remember, at least.”
Snow melted through the knees of her travelling pants. A bitter breeze stinging cheeks through the protective aura of ruby encrusted jewellery; sneaking in through the gaps of her fur coat.
“I know it’s terrible, but I’m still yet to forgive him.” The admittance was hushed, ashamed, “You must think me awful not to. A grudge, one held against my own father, even after all this time.” Her nail caught on the H, where the tail end of one side was shorter than the other; uneven and uncorrected.
Link’s thumb smoothed over the hilt of their sword in turn. It was that same sword that had left them to the cruel ministrations of fate and the desperate orders of a man doomed to die. Just as Zelda’s own birth had done to her.
“All those years of prayer, years I’ll never get back, wasted. All because of him.” She murmured, tracing patterns into the frost. “I never wanted to be Princess. To be Queen. To be the one who carries the blood of the Goddess Hylia. Not truly. I’d never known just what I wanted to be, not until we started to dig.” Her eyes drifted to Spectacle Rock, where Vah Naboris sat; still as the sands its Champion had fought for so fiercely.
“Suddenly my childish conquests into the world of science didn’t seem so redundant. There was something actual, something important, I could apply myself to. I'd finally found what had been missing all that time; what I wanted to be.” Her tone was mournful.
“And the moment I do? He rips it away. Forbids me from happiness. Condemns me to more prayer than ever before. He warned me away from what he feared for my future, but in doing so set my fate in stone: Princess Zelda, heir apparent to a throne of nothing but failure.” Zelda tore her gaze away from the Divine Beast, unable to stomach the sight of it anymore.
“In the end, it wasn’t even my devotion that brought forth my powers. It was you, Link. Someone I’d shunned in light of my own perceived shortcomings.” Head bowed, she rested it against the monument. So cold was its surface that it felt as if her father’s initials were being branded into the flesh of her forehead.
“Hylia was never even listening, was she? She was never going to answer.”
Zelda’s gaze rested heavily on the ground. “Had it not been for him and his gods forsaken prophecy…” Her hand clenched tight, ice flaking under her fingers, the leather squeaking in her grasp.
A gale crested the mountaintop, its breeze bitter as it displaced clothing and snow alike. Zelda ignored it as her long loose strands of hair were whipped every which way, dying down in intensity as it failed to phase her. As it did, she caught the low voice of her companion.
“If it wasn’t for the prophecy, I… I wouldn’t have been a soldier.” Zelda turned to face her knight. Link seldom spoke, and she had learnt to listen when they did. Stood at attention, clearly uncomfortable, Link persevered; voice soft as they continued. “You asked me, once, if I would’ve chosen differently, had being a soldier not been expected of me.” They licked their lips, eyes distant. “The truth is that I would have.”
Zelda allowed them a moment more of silence to gather their thoughts.
“I don’t remember much from… Before.” She understood perfectly what they meant. The time Before the rise of Calamity Ganon. Before the deaths of most everyone they’d ever known. Before the prophecy was ever even uttered. “Most of my memories are with you and the Champions. Tied to the pictures you left for me; to their memorials and treasured items.” Link approached her, snow crunching beneath boots, coming to stand at her side.
“There’s also those that aren’t.” They closed their eyes, envisioning. “There are ones with other soldiers at the Garrison where I'm training, even as everyone else is dismissed… With strangers in what are now ruins, wishing me good luck… There's a couple with someone in Hateno I think might've been my sister…” Link reopened their eyes, staring sightlessly at the grey of the grave before them. “I even remember the day he found out I was his prophecy’s destined hero." They admitted, "The boy hero prophesied to wield the Sword that Seals the Darkness.” Zelda drew a sharp breath, her eyes wide as she stared. Understanding dawning on her.
Link lowered themself to kneel beside Zelda.
“Everything I remember revolved around my duty and those that expected the world from me.” Blindly, she reached out a hand to clasp theirs; eyes trained still on Link’s. “The one memory I have where I’m alone? I’m utterly miserable. Terrified out of my mind." A strangled sigh and a beat of careful silence. "In it, I’m praying to Hylia, crying my eyes out, telling her she made a mistake." Their voice wavered, dangerously close to tears. "I didn’t want to be the hero; I didn’t want to fight. I was a child thrown into the role of saviour before I even knew what that even meant.” They flipped their hand over, squeezing hers in turn.
“I was scared. All I wanted was to go home. I never did.” An abrupt laugh forced its way past their lips, inappropriate yet unavoidable. “Not that I remember, anyway.” They quoted.
Goosebumps covered Zelda from head to toe, a reaction that had more than just the cold to blame.
She hadn’t truly realised it before, so utterly consumed by resentment as she had been, but Link was a victim of Rhoam and his prophecy just as much as Zelda. Now, with everything over and Link’s mind wiped clean, that was all so much more obvious than it had ever been before.
Suddenly, it felt as if the mountain air got oh so much colder than it had been a moment before. Zelda pressed herself into Link's side; they let her do so wordlessly, gently resting their head against her's.
“You lost everything because of his blind belief." Link whispered like a secret, something to soothe her unsettled mind. "You’re allowed to grieve that. No matter how long it's been.” Zelda pulled herself away from her companion.
She watched as a shadow cast itself over Link’s form. In it, Zelda saw the person they used to be: cold, silent, relentlessly obedient to the crown; a deeply unhappy, world weary child.
The shadow passed quickly. Leaving the Link of the present sat beside her; a soft, sympathetic smile on their lips.
"... You are too, you know?" She whispered back. Link brought their arms up to embrace her.
"I am."