a/n; it sure has been a while. argh. but i loved me some Link while playing, so this was born, as tiny as it is.
there are a few spoilers to the game - I haven't finished it yet, so there aren't many. they're mostly over gratitude crystal quests, so if you haven't done at least half of the ones in Skyloft, then, well, alert! but they're really vague, so i'm sure you'll be okay.

Call it what you want.

Link thinks about devotion, sometimes. The thoughts come during the smallest tasks, like when he's tying up his boots, or running toward the dock in Skyloft the second before he makes his leap.

But they're thoughtless thoughts. They vanish when he stands up strong in his leather bound boots, and when the wind whips cuts onto his face as he whistles for his loftwing. Devotion comes with the duty. It's imprinted in the contract, whether he takes heed of it or not.

It all rounds up to the duty. The duty is much like the devotion, because he doesn't feel the burden fate tried to give him. If he was paired off with any other girl, he thinks, his mind flickering for a second or two as he spears a bokoblin or swinging onto a vine from his whip, he might feel weighted and tired. He might feel the essence of giving up, of falling asleep for a long time without the pressure of slipping out of whatever makeshift bed he finds.

He knows his role is a small part in something greater than everyone. He's not sure he understands all the cogs that are making it work – the songs, the trials, the elusive mysteries he keeps vaguely uncovering. He'll find keys upon keys inside a dungeon after another dungeon, only to find that the maiden has already flitted through.

She's always out of his reach. The times he sees her, she's something else – something different. She's the same, but she— her spirit, or her soul – is something that spans across the rift of where she is and where he is, standing on the Surface while she is somewhere beyond the reaches of time. He feels it, rattling inside his bone marrow, leeching on his fingers like a stubborn parasite. It's strong, so much stronger than he realized.

But it must be fragile, he thinks, raising his sword as he watches the light of a sacred fire scorch and burn the air. It must be a terrible contradiction if she, and everyone else, needs him. Something as strong and persistent as a goddess, but as weak and unguarded as a blessed butterfly – it makes a kind of sense that someone else was needed.

He wonders why it was him, when he isn't bloating from pride that it is him. He was always too lazy to gather up his presence of an ego, but now that it's the only thing that readily occupies his mind beside the occasional thoughts and wonderment, he can't help but inflate after killing ancient beasts nobody had dared slay.

But the questions spring up, regardless. Was he fated because it was Zelda? Would it have been Groose if he had become her best friend rather than him? Or was it something else entirely, something that couldn't be questioned?

Link wasn't sure. But it circled back to the devotion. He was running because…he was fighting because…he was fulfilling his duty to fate because…devotion. Because she was his friend, and because she wasn't stopping either. Because this was bigger than either of them.

But Link never really thinks about the rest of the world. He thinks about his home, his friends. He thinks about the Surface he always leaps onto, falls into, but never about what it means to land on it, or to taste the dirt in his mouth when he misses the parry to a blow.

In these weak moments he has, he thinks about love. Looking into the glaring eye of the enemy, he thinks about how he's not sure what it means. He thinks about the basics of love that he's seen – like Pipit and Karane—and challenges them. He wonders if they'll last. He thinks of Cawlin and his broken heart, and wonders if the love he felt was worth the hurt. He thinks of Peatrice, and how she reminds him of a flighty, desperate bird, eyes burning in slow, changing emotions whenever he goes to organize his pouch. They remind him of his own altering feelings, how he's not sure how to categorize them, and by that light connection, how it goaded him into telling her he liked her just as much as she decided she liked him. He couldn't feel guilty about it – not after how happy it made her. Her lonely veneer had vanished after that, and he wondered if she'd keep her devotion too, if when he came back, she'd still feel like how she felt before. Link didn't understand the enthusiastic glee she directed toward him, after only a few visitations. He couldn't fathom feeling that for her, but he thought it would give her a greater sense of purpose to look forward to something rather than waiting and wallowing behind an item check counter.

But Peatrice couldn't feel love. She felt the idea.

Because that's what love can be, too, opposed to a lengthy feeling. The idea of a person and an unadulterated affection for them—the want of it. Link's thought, maybe that's what it is, what he feels, that perhaps it stems from his duty that binds him to her. If he fails the duty, then he'll lose any semblance to love he's ever had. He'll lose his best friend. He'll lose the comfortable, playful warmth between them. Maybe, even, he'll lose his life.

In the end, he can call it friendship, call it love, call it ceaseless devotion and duty and all those honorable names that a hero should call them, because that's what it's supposed to be. That's what fate says it is. He'll always wonder the why's and the how's, their connections, how they come together to make a clearer picture. And with these thoughts, he'll run down corridors, overbearing hallways, cleave through demons and the critters that crawl up from the ground and threaten to snatch him away. The next time he sees her, he'll put a name to the faceless feeling, the strange passion, and the drive that wakes him up to each and every dungeon and puzzle and pathway. He knows he will. He has to.

But for now, he'll call it whatever he needs it to be.

a/n; thanks for stopping by!
here's that piece of heart you were looking for.(;
tah tah~