Notes: Written for the 1sentence LJ community. Each prompt is labeled with the continuity its characters are drawn from. "Destiny's Opus" is my own (barely written) fic-verse, which you should just treat as an expansion/continuation of Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask.
Warnings: Contains potential mild spoilers for EVERYTHING, particularly Spirit Tracks. Apologies ahead of time for my run-on abuse. Apologies also for any ideas from other fanfics that my subconscious may have snatched up and stashed away over the years.
#01 - Ring [Oracle of Ages/Seasons]
At one point he amassed heaps and piles of rings, most of them unimportant and now lost over the years, but he could never bring himself to discard the Blue Joy Ring no matter how much he's outgrown it.
#02 - Hero [Twilight Princess]
This was not her Legend, Zelda tells herself when she sees those eyes that glint with feral longing, for she was not that Princess and he is not her Hero.
#03 - Memory [Destiny's Opus]
It was her memory that drove him away, her memory that saved him, and her memory that brings him home again.
#04 - Box [Phantom Hourglass]
She dreaded her rescue nearly more than her capture, stashed belowdecks like undignified cargo with nothing but wooden crates and rats for company, but she didn't count on Link to visit her nearly every day, to tell and boast and sometimes cry a little because he was still young and far away from home, and sometimes merely sit and hold her unfeeling hand for a few hours until Linebeck called their destination.
#05 - Run [Ocarina of Time]
"Run!" he shouts over his shoulder, and she doesn't obey not because the Redead caught her in its death-scream, not because long gowns and high heels weren't made for running, but because the tower is crumbling and he is still entangled in battle and her magic is the only thing keeping stones and gates from smashing down on him.
#06 - Hurricane [Wind Waker]
Niko panics and Mako pukes, but she pays them no heed and keeps her grip hard and white-knuckled on the helm, eyes fixed on the rain-drenched figure poised at the tip of the prow whose hands dance sally-scuttle with the bone-white baton to weave the tempest gales away from their ship's hull, and she laughs in the face of the piddly storm that thinks it could best Captain Tetra and her unconquerable crew.
#07 - Wings [post-Majora's Mask]
It wouldn't work, he explains to her over and over, because there are no owl statues in Hyrule, and she pouts because she so wanted to see him with oversized feathery wings.
#08 - Cold [Spirit Tracks]
Perhaps he should have planned better than to take her to Wellspring for their outing, because princesses who were not ghosts were not made to sit in snow no matter how lovely it made the scenery - but then she huddles up against him for warmth, and maybe he had planned pretty well after all.
#09 - Red [any]
The potion is red but his blood is redder, and she prays to any Goddess who'd listen that it would be enough as she tips the last trembling drops between his red-stained lips.
#10 - Drink [Ocarina of Time (or SSBM ;P)]
She chides him every time for having manners like he was raised by Moblins (to which he retorts he was raised by fairy children and a tree), but secretly she adores the milk mustache he sometimes forgets to wipe off his lips.
#11 - Midnight [Destiny's Opus]
He cherishes his sleep like other men cherish a vintage Chateau Romani, so there are only two reasons he's ever awake after midnight (one being monsters).
#12 - Temptation [any]
One of these days she's going to succumb to the urge to yank off that perpetual hat and see what's under it - possibly more hats.
#13 - View [Wind Waker]
Sometimes she sends him up the mast on purpose.
#14 - Music [Spirit Tracks]
The first time he heard her sing, all the heavens opened up and the ground disappeared beneath his feet and he knew he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love... too bad they were fighting for their lives at the time.
#15 - Silk [Destiny's Opus]
He feels a little guilty for laying battle-callused hands on skin that has only ever known fine silk and lace, but her response seems to suggest she doesn't particularly mind.
#16 - Cover [Ocarina of Time (manga)]
The witches bear down upon their dead-end prison, and he covers her body with his own in desperate hopes that she would know a little less pain, and then the fire comes—
#17 - Promise [Link's Awakening]
There are times when he thinks the sea will claim him at last, times when he wishes it would, times when delirium overcomes him and he nearly flies away again on Marin's siren song - but he remembers that he made a promise to return to her in one piece, on his ship and not on his shield, and he pushes the lashed-together pile of driftwood onwards again to blue oblivion.
#18 - Dream [Ocarina of Time]
She doesn't tell him that she has non-prophetic dreams about him, too.
#19 - Candle [Destiny's Opus]
The signal was thus: a single candle after nightfall, lit at the sill of her south-facing window, and she needs only wait scant minutes before the soft chink of a hookshot announces itself at her balcony.
#20 - Talent [Wind Waker]
Nudge is strong and Mako is clever, Zuko cooks best and Niko tells stories, and Gonzo can spit into a tin at thirty paces on a rolling ship, but Link is the only one who knows how to sass his captain and (half-)get away with it.
#21 - Silence [any :P]
He has always been better with actions than words, so sometimes she indulges him and they do not talk of letters or philosophy or politics at all.
#22 - Journey [A Link to the Past/Link's Awakening]
"Please return someday," she says, "for Hyrule will miss you," and she doesn't say whether she speaks in metonymy this time.
#23 - Fire [Wind Waker]
Well... maybe she could've aimed that catapult a little better, but the look on his face was worth every spare barrel.
#24 - Strength [any]
Ganon should've known he never stood a chance to begin with, he realizes as he watches her dance through the barbs and blades of the diplomats' negotiations with a finesse he has never seen even on the battlefield.
#25 - Mask [Destiny's Opus]
He has played many roles - a postman, a Goron, a deity, an adult when his mind was a boy's, a boy when his heart is a man's - so it was easy, nearly easy, to slip on the stony mask of duty and pretend he feels nothing extra for his Queen.
#26 - Ice [Spirit Tracks]
It's a good thing ghosts don't feel the cold in a temple of ice - but a pity that they can't warm a shivering body with a hug.
#27 - Fall [Wind Waker]
Once, just once, the Hero teeters from the toll of the world's demands - and she was there to catch him.
#28 - Forgotten [Destiny's Opus]
"Where have you been since you opened the Sacred Realm?" she asks innocently, and all remnants of his hopes shatter.
#29 - Dance [post-Majora's Mask]
He absolutely, resolutely refuses to put on Kamaro's Mask in front of her, no matter how prettily she flutters her lashes.
#30 - Body [Destiny's Opus]
His body hosts a multitude of faded scars, and each one was known once to exactly one foe before he struck it down, but she is the only one privy to them all.
#31 - Sacred [any]
The sages and scholars proclaim many things sacred about the Princess Zelda - her title, her birthright, her attunement to the Goddesses - but he thinks them fools for missing her heart, her strength, her hair in morning sunlight.
#32 - Farewells [Majora's Mask (and Destiny's Opus)]
"Farewell, then," she says, and he wants to reach out and take her hand or tell her things or kiss her senseless, but he is no longer a grown man who could get away with sweeping gestures of passion, so he bows slightly—as slightly as a boy taught no manners would—and leaves her in the morning mist.
#33 - World [Twilight Princess]
Sometimes he glimpses her looking melancholy—she always looks melancholy—and wishes he had the solution for her, but he had lost it to another world a long, long time ago.
#34 - Formal [Spirit Tracks]
He is nervous, really really train-wrecked nervous, even though she told him a hundred times that it's no bigger a deal than the Engineer Ceremony was and he bore up under that just fine, but every time his eyes fall on her in all her finery his face goes pink and the world goes dizzy again.
#35 - Fever [Wind Waker]
Legendary heroes aren't supposed to get sick, she laughs at him, and he grumbles at her to shut up and that fearsome pirate captains aren't supposed to bring their own deckhands hot bowls of soup, either.
#36 - Laugh [post-Majora's Mask]
Like any proper princess, her amusement is borne on smiles, giggles, and titters, so he considers it a 100-Gold-Skulltula victory the day he tells her about Tingle and she laughs until she cries.
#37 - Lies [Destiny's Opus]
"I wish you didn't have to remember," he said quietly, not meeting her eyes, "you shouldn't have to go through all that again."
#38 - Forever [Ocarina of Time]
They should get to stay together forever, she says, because of all the people in the world the Hero of Time ought to have control over how much time he has, and he laughs amiably with her and wishes it were so.
#39 - Overwhelmed [Four Swords Adventure (manga)]
"Because you are one of the Links, and you too are a hero," she tells him with her voice full of light, and his world crumbles around him - but she is still there at the center of it all, and the light never looks so beautiful...
#40 - Whisper [Destiny's Opus]
Rumors fly like Keese on fire - the Princess is secretly-openly-occasionally-shamelessly consorting, they whisper, with a rustic farmboy—with a squire-in-training—with one of the fey forest folk—
#41 - Wait [Ocarina of Time]
Compared to the hours and days she now spends fretting until he emerged from the next temple, the past seven years suddenly seemed like nothing.
#42 - Talk [guess XD]
"Well excuuuuuse me, Prin—" he says for the last time, before she kisses him for the first time to shut him up for once.
#43 - Search [Minish Cap]
The first ever Kinstone piece she found, she swore up and down that she would fuse it with no one else but him - so he is out in the field again, cutting grass and sifting soil for Her Royal Highness.
#44 - Hope [any]
It's a tossup whether she'll coo and attend to his wounds personally this time, or sigh and drag him by the ear to the healers again.
#45 - Eclipse [Majora's Mask]
The old astronomer had lectured him once—a few onces—on the mechanics of eclipses, but nothing could possibly be big enough to eclipse that goddamn Moon - except her smile in the rare stolen hours when he allows himself sleep, and dreams.
#46 - Gravity [Super Smash Bros. Melee]
He can't help but be entranced by the way she seems to dance on the tip of a breeze - and jealous, too, as his hookshot falls just short of the ledge again.
#47 - Highway [Spirit Tracks]
He may have abandoned one dream to follow the track of another, but she still asks him personally for rides from time to time because she loves the passion for freedom and speed that would never extinguish from his heart - and his bright grin that grows all the wider when she squeezes into his engine cab so that they could face the wind and road and wide open country together.
#48 - Unknown [A Link to the Past]
He has no idea who Zelda is, or why she's imprisoned, or which way his uncle has gone, but a nagging sense of obligation drives him into the drenching night nonetheless.
#49 - Lock [any XD]
She has given up locking her door against him, because he treats it like some kind of blasted puzzle and pilfers the key every time no matter where she hides it—even on her person—especially on her person.
#50 - Breathe [Ocarina of Time]
Neither the mask nor the bandages do her breathing any favors, but she learns to deal with it because they aid her disguise—and because they are nothing compared to how the sight of the Hero of Time takes her breath away.
Misc. author's notes:
Whee look at me expanding my horizons XD This was a really useful exercise and I loved getting the chance to delve into all of these worlds too. A few blabby words on some of the sentences:
#12: Now in convenient haiku form!
Sometimes she wonders
what that dumb hat is hiding—
possibly more hats
#13: ...Years later.
#26: She sure tried though. Aww.
#29: Though sometimes he entertains a little fantasy of her wearing it. :X
#35: I think this happened as a result of #6 :3
#36: I imagine he acted it out, too.
#39: Is it cheating to use Shadow Link? But I think the point is that he is, like Zelda says, all along...
#40: Naturally, they're all correct.
#46: I can't believe I actually got a Smash Bros. one in there XD Substitute with "Clawshot" for Brawl :P
#50: From personal cosplay experience :P Not a practical costume for a ninja at all.
Thank you for reading, and if you review I would love it if you mentioned which ones were your favorites (or least favorites)!
Update 2/14/10: Made sort-of companion art for this piece! Check my profile for the link to my journal.