Chapter Text
I didn't ask to be the hero and on quiet nights I often think back on how different my life would be if I hadn’t left the forest. How different not just my own personal but the whole world would be. Funny how a simple thing like leaving home can lead to so much change.
Link removed his quill from the page, the feather end resting against his chin. He knew what he wanted to say but found it difficult putting the exact words to paper.
Some days I daydream how different I would be if I hadn’t taken those first faithful steps out of the comfort under the Great Deku Tree’s boughs. I tend to not dwell on these dreams as I’ve seen too much and know that the idyllic life that they depict is a lie.
If I had not left Ganondorf would have won and the whole of Hyrule would have been plunged into darkness. Or Termina’s moon would have come crashing down to earth, ending us all.
I didn’t ask to be the hero, but I was asked to be the hero. And the goddesses know that even in those early days I couldn’t say no to her.
Zelda; Princess of Hyrule, Blood of the Goddesses, Princess of Destiny, Master of Shadows, and most importantly the woman who stole my heart.
A loud snort echoed through the clearing causing Link to look up from his journal and stare back at the long face of a horse that was now staring him down.
“What?” He asked the long tan and white face before him. “This is a private journal, it’s not like she’s going to read it.”
Epona stared down her master for a moment before letting out a small whinny and shook her mane before returning to her grazing.
“Is that so? And when did you become a love expert?”
Epona nickered and nodded her head twice.
“What do you know you’re just a horse.” Link mumbled to himself as he stared down at the pages once more.
“Home where you are supposed to be, how you were supposed to be.” Those were her last words to me. Her final words before sending me back through both space and time, back into the body of a boy.
A child with the mind of an adult, what was intended as a blessing was truly a curse. And the salt in the wound? Nobody remembered me, nobody knew of my deeds, and worse yet.
Link paused once more, his hand shaking slightly.
Worse yet, she sent me back before we even met. An unknown boy, unproven in the eyes of the world despite having saved it. It was too much to bear so I fled, ran deeper into the forests I still called home in this time.
Absent-mindedly Link reached into his bag and produced an apple. He took a bite for himself before tossing it in the air towards Epona. She caught it mid air with a loud crunch.
Termina they called it. A land with a curse that felt as if the Goddesses themselves had placed it there just for me. Three days, three days to save the town and possibly Hyrule itself from a crashing moon. Three days that the inhabitants lived over and over, blissfully unaware of their plight. The irony of a mind trapped out of time saving a town trapped in time was not lost on me.
But save the town and Skull Kid I did. Freeing them and him of their curse but remaining trapped within mine. Part of me wished to keep Majora’s mask, proof of the deeds I knew I could accomplish. Alas the merchant demanded I give it to him and despite the trials that I had to endure to the rest of the world it was just a wooden mask.
I departed for Hyrule not long after turning the now cleansed artifact over. Some of the Terminans begged me to stay but I still needed to find Navi and so I headed home.
I continued my search in the Lost Woods, blissfully unaware of how fast word can spread. By the time I found Navi and started back home once more tales of my deeds proceeded me. I was being hailed a hero and made out to be some sort of living legend.
They had planned a grand homecoming for their great hero only to find a boy no more than ten summers old. They decried my deeds as false, my appearance as the result of sorcery, or that I was not the hero of Termina but their child. While I had expected nothing to greet my return this sudden turn from celebration to nothing stung in ways I had not expected.
So I returned to the forest once more, or at least I attempted to for I was no more than a half day’s ride from Castle Town when a shadow descended from the trees blocking my path.
Link let out a chuckle as he thought about what had happened next the memory causing him to cast his gaze across the small clearing that he found himself in.
“Do you sense anything girl?” He asked Epona, who by now had laid down next to him her massive head resting next to his sitting form.
“Pfffum.” She replied, her eyes rolling in her skull to look at Link before blinking twice.
Link’s lips curled into a smile. “Same, but it never hurts to be careful right?”
A gentle toss of her mane was the only reply that Link received this time.
“You’re right it’s not like we would be able to tell if she was here.”
Epona gave one last look at her master before closing her eyes once more and seemingly falling asleep.
“Now where was I..” Link’s face scrunched up as he thought before he snapped his fingers. ”Ah right, being ambushed.”
In hindsight I can say that I am not shocked as to what happened next, but in the moment I was startled beyond belief. Standing before me was Impa and I don’t think she ever fully knew what her words that day meant to me.
“I know who you are and what you have done. Welcome back, Hero of Time.”
***************
I didn’t ask to be the princess. I never wanted the trappings of duty, to live my life as I was told. State dinners, official meetings over minute details and trade agreements all to be argued ad nauseam. But father was insistent. “Zelda, you are ten years old and while your future husband will take care of the majority of the kingdom’s affairs, you will need to know them as well.”
‘Future husband’! I loved my father with all my heart but telling a ten-year -old that their husband will take care of them. What madness. Let alone the thought that I would relinquish total control of not just my kingdom but myself to some man I barely knew?
Zelda gently placed her quill back into the inkwell before reaching across her desk for the mug of tea that awaited her. She stared out her window across Hyrule field as she took a slow sip from her drink.
The sounds of industry filtered their way up to her, Castle Town was expanding. New stone and wood structures had started to dominate the landscape covering close to twice the amount of space as she remembered as a girl.
“The more things change.” She mumbled to herself as she caught sight of LonLon ranch along with the other fields in the distance seemingly untouched by the rapid progress within Castle Town. Zelda took a few moments longer to enjoy the varied scene before her before setting her mug down and taking up the quill once more.
I remember having my suspicions of Ganondorf since I first laid eyes on him. The man exuded an evil presence that seemingly only my eye could detect. I.. The memories are muddled as it was some time ago but recalling those events sometimes there was a boy with me, other times I alone convinced my father not to trust the ‘evil man from the desert’.
Either way, my father listened because it turned out that Ganondorf was planning an attack on Hyrule and worse still, the assassination of my father. It became clear that the majority of his subjects were unaware of the true nature of his plans, and once they were uncovered they handed him over to us without hesitation.
To reward their honor and in an effort to establish better future relations father offered trade terms that were greatly in their favor. Their new chief Nabooru was more than happy to accept them as it would mean the goods of Hyrule would be exchanged for the bounty of the desert.
Zelda paused as she thought of her friend and fellow ruler in Gerudo. “I still need to think of something to give her for her nameday.” She scribbled a reminder to herself on a spare fragment of paper that was scattered around her desk.
In my naive mind I had thought that proving myself useful and foiling Ganondorf’s plot would prove to my father that I didn’t need a husband to rule the kingdom for me. Instead in his mind the threat of his untimely death meant that I needed a husband now more than ever.
My ladies in waiting called what happened next, ‘the march of doomed suitors’ though they did not make me privy to this name at the time. However it is the most fitting name for what occurred, one after another suitors from every corner of the world made their way to Hyrule only for me to shoot them down.
A sly smile split across Zelda’s features as she thought about the various methods she had convinced the dozens of suitors to reconsider their plans.
I thank the goddesses for Lady Impa. Without her guidance and training I would have never had the nerve or will to press on through the slog of self pompous and preening men that made their way through our court. I -
A knock at the door cut through her self contemplation.
“Come in.”
The door swung open, its hinges grinding slightly as it did so, and a gaggle of handmaidens made their way into the room. The most senior of their number made her way over to where Zelda was sitting.
“Your Grace.” She said with a polite curtsey.
“Atil.” Zelda replied with a smile and a small nod of her head.
“Ready to begin your day?”
Zelda let out an overly dramatic sigh. “If I must.”
“Oh don’t be like that, your grace.” The older woman gave her a warm smile. “Today is an important day.”
“You say that every day, Atil.”
“And every day it is true your grace.” Atil gave the younger woman a wink. “Especially today.”
Zelda couldn’t help but smile and roll her eyes at her handmaiden’s teasing. “I’ll just finish this thought while you get everything ready.”
Atil gave Zelda a small bow. “As you wish.”
With only a glance to the intrusive noises that now dominated her room, Zelda hurriedly finished her train of thought.
I didn’t know at the time that that guiding light would soon be taken from me. Not permanently, but without warning Impa disappeared one day without so much as a word to either myself or my father. The years passed and all we knew was that she was not dead and the Sheikah still had need of her.
By the eighth year of her disappearance I had lost all hope that I would one day see my devoted guardian and close friend once more. Naturally that was when without warning she reappeared at the castle, acting as if no time at all had passed. Unlike her departure she did not return to the castle alone.
No, she had returned with a long lost friend, and someone who I would come to see as a Hero.