closed 🌻 a not so welcome departure

[multidisciplinary]

Who: TOTK Link and Zelda
Which: Closed Log (forward dated to October 17)
Where: Wishing Well
What: Zelda is using the wishing well to go home.
Warnings: Major Tears of the Kingdom spoilers, metaphors of suicidal ideation



[ It's a cold night in the middle of October, much too cold for Zelda to be outside wearing only her ancient Hyrulean dress, but that's exactly what she's doing. There's no point in taking her coat—better to leave it in Songerein, where someone else might be able to use it. Even if it can come back to Hyrule with her (which it probably can't), she'll soon have no use for it.

It's time to go home and complete the task only she can do.

Zelda stands before the wishing well, staring sightlessly into its depths and worrying the stone on her choker between her thumb and forefinger. The steps of her plan race through her mind like film on a reel. She's been trapped here in Songerein for three months now, prevented from swallowing her secret stone and transforming into an ageless dragon whose sacred light will heal and strengthen the Master Sword for eons to come. The sword is the only tool that can defeat the Demon King and the princess is the only person who can ensure that it will be strong enough for that task. Zelda tried swallowing the stone when she first awoke in Songerein, confident that even the dream world wouldn't be able to contain the power of a dragon. She didn't count on it preventing the transformation entirely.

But there are other ways to return to one's home world, as Zelda has recently learned. With enough baubles, the wishing well is capable of sending a dreamwalker home and then bringing them back later. The particulars are still unknown to the scientists at the Dream Observatory, but the method is tested and proven. Only this time, the dreamwalker won't be coming back. As soon as she reaches Hyrule, she intends to swallow the stone and transform. Once she is a dragon, Songerein will not be able to steal her back. She will deliver the Master Sword to Link.

Link... Just the fleeting thought of him makes Zelda's heart falter. It was so much easier to accept this sacrifice when she was still in Hyrule and Link was just a goal for her to strive for and a memory of a life she would never live again. To see him again—and for him to know the sacrifice she made—has hurt like a knife in her heart for the past three months. Being with him again after so long has felt so natural, so comfortable, so right. And yet, her thoughts always return to the reality that this will not last. And the longer they are together, the harder it becomes to leave.

That's why she has stolen away to the wishing well in the middle of the night, leaving behind only a letter for Link to find on the kitchen table. She couldn't bring herself to say goodbye to him in person. If she does... If she sees that heartbroken look in his eyes again, Zelda knows she'll lose her nerve. For as deeply as she cares for him, for as much as he deserves a proper goodbye, she can't give him one.

Tears sting the corners of Zelda's eyes, and she roughly brushes them away with the back of her hand. She has to do this for him, for Hyrule, for everyone she has ever loved. Her life, her feelings... they're such a small sacrifice to see the Demon King defeated.

Zelda lifts her left hand and uncurls her fingers, revealing three shiny baubles. All she needs to do is toss them into the well and then she can go home. But as her heartbeat quickens, the princess finds herself unable to move her hand. It will take but a moment. It will be painless. She begins to tremble—from the cold night air, she insists, nothing else. But still her hand does not move. Still more tears blur the edges of her vision. The tiny voice deep in her heart, that she has tried so hard to quash, whimpers 'don't.' ]

Comments

[multidisciplinary]

[ There's a certain irony to the fact that their respective reactions are the reverse of the norm—that Link's thoughts have become frantic while Zelda's have become calm. But perhaps that should be expected when the situation itself is so outside the norm for them. With no precedent for how to react to a kiss shared between them, it's no wonder that they're left out of sorts.

But for Zelda, the sense of rightness about kissing Link trumps any other thought that threatens to come into her mind—even though they stand on the brink of parting forever. She has loved him for quite some time, it seems. 'Love' is the most appropriate word for the immeasurable depth of her feelings for him. She has toyed with this descriptor before, testing the taste of it in her mind. After all, Zelda knows that she loved Urbosa dearly—and her father too, in spite of everything. But her feelings for Link don't quite feel the same as her feelings for Urbosa. They feel like... something else. Something that pricks the princess in her heart at unexpected moments with Link (and others without him). Something she has known, but whose name has eluded her ken.

Link wraps an arm around her shoulder to pull her closer and Zelda obliges with question. Without thinking about it, she lifts her hands and settles them on his chest, fingertips resting upon his clavicle. For one of the rare moments in her life, Zelda allows herself to follow instinct and nothing else. Somewhere deep within her heart, she knows precisely how to fit together with Link. It's as though they have done this before, though she knows that they haven't.

The baubles on the ground, the wishing well, draconification—all of them are completely forgotten for a moment. There's only Link—the warmth and softness of his lips, the presence of his hand cradling the back of her head. Where the first moment of their kiss was electrifying, now it feels like a burning flame. And like a moth, she's pulled into it, her kiss firm and confident against his lips. ]

[skyglider]

[It's-- ...something entirely new, this feeling, this experience. Once, long ago, he had recognized the feelings of --and for-- the Zora princess Mipha, one of his dearest childhood friends, too late to respond or reciprocate. He has a tendency to turn his back on those things, to focus on duty and action rather than feeling or emotion. It's not as though he does not feel. More accurate to say that he does not know what to do with the depths of those feelings...

His conscious mind seems to shut down, in this moment, relying on instinct. Relying on the parts of his heart that normally take a backseat. Her hands on his chest, the feel of her so close in his arms-- if he were thinking about it, it might terrify him, the connotation of those things. What they mean about him, about them, about the future. For now, he desperately does not want to think about any of it, he just wants this moment to be, unrestrained, unfettered by whatever comes next.

Love, longing, adoration, dedication, friendship, destiny-- none of it matters. For now, for this moment, they are both here, and whatever it is they are sharing, it's deeper than words. It's deeper than anything he's ever felt, conscious or not. He cannot name it, and yet right now, he knows that it is the most important thing in the world. His arms around her are as firm and as confident as her kiss. If he could hold this moment for all time, he would. If he could never let go, it would be too little of her in his arms.

He barely pauses for breath, drawn to her as she is to him. He must let go, eventually. He must let her go eventually. But, for all his strength and courage and whatever meaningless values of heroism people assign to him, he cannot seem to pull away, drawn into her orbit by the undeniable gravity of his feelings for her.]

[multidisciplinary]

[ The rare silence in Zelda's mind allows her the even rarer freedom to follow her instincts without fear for the repercussions of her actions. As Link is drawn to her, she is drawn just as strongly to him, pulled by a force greater than all the duty and sacrifice and destiny that has hung so heavily over them all their lives.

And now, that force is about to be severed forever...

Fingers that were relaxed against Link's chest now curl closed around the fabric of his shirt, gripping it with growing intensity. Why did it take them so long to reach this moment? Why did she stop herself every time her thoughts flitted in this direction—scared to entertain the notion, even just in her mind, that her feelings for Link might run so much deeper than she realized? Was it some misguided sense of propriety, that a princess ought not to love a "lowly" knight? Or was it fear—ever the constant companion of the princess throughout her adolescence—fear that, should she go out on that limb, she risked losing forever the bond that they already had?

Fear, propriety, ignorance—all of them had held her back, kept her from finding this feeling...finding it with Link. And now it's too late...

Zelda squeezes her closed eyelids more tightly, pulling on Link's shirt, even though there's barely any space left between them. She steals those last few milliseconds, her mouth pressed to his, searing the memory of this kiss into her mind. She has to let him go—she knows, she knows. Just one more second. One more tilt of the chin. One more hungry breath, snatched in a hiss, so she can have just one more taste of his lips.

Finally, finally, and all too soon, Zelda breaks their liplock, pushing out of Link's arms with white-knuckled fists shaking against his chest. ]

[skyglider]

[He has to let go.

All those long seconds drawn out in time contract all at once, and the spell that held them both here begins to disintegrate. Her hands tangled in his shirt, his desperate grasp on her shoulders. He doesn't want to. He wants to stay in this moment for all time, feeling her breath against him, her hands, her touch, her hair, her heartbeat--

He has to let her go.

He knows. He knows, as he has known from the moment he first saw her here, and even though he does not want to, the deepest parts of his heart all know that he must. For a second, just a second, he follows her as she pulls back, but of course they break apart, her hands balled into fists on his chest. Finally she has found a place where he cannot follow her. Perhaps her younger self would feel satisfaction, at that, with all her stubbornness untempered by time.

This is the moment, he realizes, and he doesn't have to see Zelda's face to know it, but he looks anyway, taking in every inch of her that he can before that inevitable final second.

Don't try to stop me, she said before, as though Link has ever been able to stop her from anything. Here, too, he knows that is a battle he would not win. He can't say it in words; instead he kneels. For a moment, he bends his head to her, the same fashion as he once did as her Knight. Then he picks up the baubles. Standing, he holds them out to put them in her hand.

One hesitant moment later,] I ... I won't give up on you.

[His voice wavers and cracks slightly with everything he's holding in, all the love and affection and longing for a different option that's difficult and painful to voice. But his expression is clear, the same fire and determination he has carried for most of his life. A promise, both to her and to himself.]

[multidisciplinary]

[ Link kneels before her and suddenly Zelda feels herself transported back in time to that clear, sunny day when she was sixteen years old and reluctantly sanctifying him as a Champion of Hyrule. How miserable she felt, extending her hand toward him and reciting meaningless words to the crown of his head. Back then, Zelda wanted nothing more than to finish the ceremony so she could escape to her room and forget about the entire wretched affair. Now, she would give anything to be back there again.

Her right hand flinches as she almost beckons him to rise—he is no longer her knight, he need not prostrate himself before her—but he stands and spares her the need. Instead, Link extends his hand and Zelda holds out hers in turn, allowing him to place the baubles in her palm. They feel so much heavier than they did before, as though they turned to lead while they were on the ground.

Zelda's eyes flick from the baubles back up to Link's face, just in time to meet his gaze as he speaks.

"I won't give up on you."

Fresh tears (how does she still have any left to cry?) well up in her eyes and she nods once in affirmation. There's that fire in his eyes, the flame that has sustained him through battle after battle, calamity after calamity, the resolution that sparked in Zelda's heart on her seventeenth birthday and has burned brightly ever since. Her lips twist into something of a smile, on the edge of a pained grimace. ]

I know.

[ There is not a shadow of doubt in her mind. No matter where (or when) she goes, Link will find her. Link will find the sword. Link will save Hyrule.

Slowly, Zelda steps up beside Link, who has been blocking her way to the wishing well. She lifts the hand holding the leadened baubles and tosses them into the well. The deep dark void of the well begins to swirl, churning like a molten midnight sky. She's going to have to jump into that...

Instead of climbing up, Zelda sits down on the edge of the well and swings her legs over the side. The void swirls far beneath her dangling legs, enough to make a person motion sick. Thank goodness the princess isn't afraid of heights.

She turns back to Link. ] I'll be waiting for you.

[ Zelda braces her hands on the edge of the well to push herself in, but hesitates. One final thought refuses to go unsaid. ]

I... I love you.

[ Tears spill down already tear-streaked cheeks as Zelda smiles, a smile with all the warmth and radiance of sunlight. ]

Goodbye, Link.

[ And then she pushes herself into the well, slipping into the churning void and vanishing from Link's life forever. ]