Instincts

When the Hero of Time crept away from the land that had made him a legend, the Princess of Destiny had said that she believed in her heart they would meet again. It wasn't until he strayed into the enigmatic core of a strange world of masks and giants that he entirely understood how fated he was to fulfill her prediction.

He had left, primarily, because he couldn't stand the devouring loneliness anymore. The journey he was born to take had dissolved out of the history of Hyrule and out of the minds of those who knew him when he returned to his own time. The weight of the memory of that intangible future burdened him beyond expression, and while those who were privileged with the knowledge of what he had accomplished empathized with his affliction, they could never truly grasp the immensity of what he had prevented. Driven by the blind hope that, unlike the others, she might remember, he embarked on a secret and personal journey to find the friend that had companioned him over high mountains; beneath a vast lake; into the house of the dead; even through time.

It was during that journey that destiny made its firm grip over the Hero of Time known; even after he had carried out his obligations to Hyrule, the Goddesses were not content to release him from a sense of duty. His role was created with purpose and he was birthed with an inexorable instinct to defend the biological link between the divine and their world. It caused a literal ache in him, always pulling him relentlessly back towards his responsibility.

He fought the draw for five years. He moved from land to land, the pain in him growing progressively more crippling the farther he strayed from his home. When he thought he would go mad from the torture of it he finally turned back, empty handed, and moved with the unobtrusiveness of a mist over Hyrule's familiar border.

For a while he rested with the Kokiri and told them stories of his travels, gifted them the most harmless of his masks and trinkets from far away worlds. But, though the pain had washed out of him the moment he entered the realm, he was still restless, summoned somewhere constantly. He left them soundlessly on a black night, moved through the cool forest without disturbing the threadbare silence of it and then over Hyrule field on his fiery mare, pushed and pulled as though by a tumultuous wind towards to source of the unending call.

He flexed his grip on his braided reins as the castle bulwark loomed over him. Bitterness warred inside him with relief, the imprisoning nature of his duty setting itself irreconcilably against subservient instincts that ran deeper in him than roots of old, gnarled trees, spiraling endlessly, facelessly, into Hyrule's ancient earth. His horse mouthed the bit, impatient, as though she too were plagued by some deep-seated instinct to protect someone on the other side of the impenetrable stone walls. He nudged the mare forward in one final acquiescence, incapable of denying his innate predestination any longer.

The guards at the gateway could not possibly have recognized him, but after only a moment's inspection they wordlessly opened the gate. Someone took his horse when he dismounted and they lowered the drawbridge for him over the inner moat.

A young guard, probably not many years older than he was, escorted him to the mouth of the castle and told him quietly at the door, "We've been expecting you."

He was brought without hesitation to a familiar inner courtyard; it was greatly unchanged since the last time he'd seen it, unlike the princess who knelt in the grass under the window. She was reading out of a thick book as long as her forearm, loose strands of her flaxen hair that had been tossed free by the breeze from her jeweled pins failing to distract her as they weaved in and out of her vision.

The pain and the restlessness in him melted so thoroughly into nothingness it was as though they had never been. This was why he existed: to protect her. It was incontestable. The utter clarity of his purpose washed away some of the bitterness, too; it was difficult to resent his lack of freedom when his only desire was to ensure her safety. In that same instant she looked up from her book with all the recognition and understanding in her eyes that he had been searching for in Navi.

She rose and met him half way across the courtyard, the way the sun might gracefully rise to meet the moon. She looked ethereal and delicate to him, translucent, like some rare crystal so ancient it no longer had a name. Her shape had changed in the five years he was gone; her frame was willowy and soft, and the bones of her face were more pronounced under her pale complexion. She said, "You came back."

"I couldn't stay away," he answered quietly, dwelling, incredulous, on how much pain he had caused himself by fighting it.

"I know."

A gust of wind swept between them; the leaves in the bushes rattled and the skirt of her dress snapped hollowly. More of her hair twisted out of the pins and veiled her face, but her clear, azure eyes were never hidden. "You know?"

She tilted her head gently, wearing a weak, consoling smile. "It's been hurting me, too."

Later she brought him to her father. The King was hesitant to accept his daughter's explanation, but with Impa's assistance she was able to convince him that the stoic, weathered boy standing in his presence was the most logical choice for head of her personal guard. And so he was knighted at fifteen and given the highest position of authority outside the aristocratic division.

For years he watched her from a distance with an unprecedented constancy. He was as invariable as the castle stonework, always acutely aware of her condition and unfailingly within eyeshot. She could summon him to her side with the most inconspicuous gesture or send his attention elsewhere with the same ease. He held the men serving beneath him to a rigid standard and produced the realm's most disciplined soldiers.

And, though he was always discreet, his unblemished reputation tempted gossiping courtiers more than they could bear.

He was spotted, though standing as unobtrusively in the hall as a shadow, by two young lords and the handful of ladies they were entertaining.

"Who," asked the lesser informed of the two, "is that?"

"You mean Sir Link?" responded one of his ladies in hushed tones.

"Link?" He chuckled derisively. "What an interesting surname."

"Oh, no, he has no surname."

"No?"

"They say he was raised by wood nymphs!"

"He is quite easy on the eyes, though, isn't he?" chimed a lady with a covetous gaze.

"Go ask him for a dance!" encouraged the older lord.

"I won't be caught wasting my time again," she answered forlornly, unfurling her fan with practiced intimation and generating a soft breeze. "He is not to be distracted from his duty for even an instant. He was delectably polite, but very firm."

"No man is so interested in his duties as that without ulterior motives," he responded suggestively.

The first lady gasped excitedly and shielded her mouth with a tiny gloved hand. She hissed, her eyes wide with anticipation, "Whatever do you mean?"

"Obviously he and the princess are lovers."

A few girls twittered, and the others all gasped.

"Scandalous!"

"Lord Owen, is it true?"

The lord who had only a few moments ago not even known the guard's name answered quite assuredly, to the delight of the ladies in his company, "Most definitely! There's no other explanation for his devotion."

Link had moved out of their line of sight, while they gossiped, into the sweeping, arched catwalks above the ballroom as the princess became obscured in the crowd of guests, and they promptly lost interest without visual stimulation.

He could've been empty plate armor for all the attention he drew to himself, yet somehow he was always noticed, and all the more so as the rumors inflated. He couldn't care less what sort of accusations others made against him for their own amusement, but it bothered him that he was, however unintentionally, involved in tarnishing Zelda's good name. He spent a week being decidedly less attentive for her benefit, sending others when she signaled and keeping as far a distance as he could bear while he watched her, but she did not approve.

Zelda's eyes harnessed his meaningfully over the cacophony of a teeming court one evening and he followed her away from the hall, leashed to her will, beyond the drone of voices raised over music, of shoes moving in step to a dance, and of the shouting of the courtiers who had decided to get drunk earlier than the rest that night. She brought him outside, and then into a long, weather-beaten structure in the courtyard that branched into the garden. The silver arches of the hallway were crafted with woven ivy made of stone; they gathered rainwater that froze into delicate sickles in the wintry night, framing the snow-covered garden repeatedly like a series of similar paintings. Zelda turned finally and waited for him; she glowed whiter than the snow in the moonlight.

"You'll freeze," he reproved her gently when he finally closed the distance.

"Why have you been avoiding me?" she demanded, her soft voice uncharacteristically taut.

"People talk," he began gently, but she swiftly dismissed his explanation before he had a chance to expound.

"I know. I've heard what they say. Do you honestly think I care?"

"I care for you."

The tautness relaxed out of her voice. "I don't need anyone to worry on my behalf."

He folded his arms resignedly and leaned his head to one side, inspecting her cautiously. His eyes dropped to her shoes, more suited to dancing than protecting her feet from the cold, and he sighed inwardly at her stubbornness. Finally he finished, softly, "I was defending your honor. I don't want to be responsible for sullying it."

"I know," she allowed, disarmed, her shoulders slumping minutely when he refused to be defensive; she had prepared a convincing argument in the event that he decided to be obstinate. "But I would rather have you at my side than all the esteem and honor of men. I really am too dependent on you," she mused, narrowing her eyes teasingly.

"You'll get your way, of course," he returned in kind, but then sobered and insisted for good measure, "but I think this deserves your sincere consideration."

"I've considered it, and dismissed it," she informed him coolly, walking back towards the gathering with deliberate haste to ensure it was clear that the discussion was over. Her train, embroidered in jewels the shape and color of raindrops, was caught up in the wind and snow as she moved by him; it billowed up to his waist and gleamed in soft moon-colors. He reached tentatively into the swell of her skirt and let the silken cloth run over his fingers as she glided away.

He followed her back into the ostentatious hall. She melted back into the crowd as seamlessly as a stream rejoining a tarn. He knew, despite her illusory smile, that the pretentiousness of court bothered her even more than it did him. He moved along the rim of the ballroom, bringing the heavy-lidded amongst his sentries to attention with a subtle, disapproving glace as he passed them by, the way the shadow of a raptor might rouse a hare rooting around in a field.

Her eyes, as they briefly swept the room, sent for him. He snaked unnoticeably towards her and when he arrived she was otherwise preoccupied; he searched her quickly for some sense of direction and smoothly took the folded note he spotted wedged between two of her fingers, which were laced comfortably behind her back. He followed his trajectory a considerable distance and then opened his instructions.

Just making sure I'm getting my way.

Link turned to pass her an exasperated glance but when he did she was smiling at him, and he forgot to glare, or even, for a moment, to walk. She anchored him with crippling weight, but he stood under it without buckling.