Disclaimer: I do not own The Legend of Zelda.

Of Shame and Duties

"Do my words sting? Let them. If I had not come when I did, your Zelda would already have fallen into the hands of the enemy. The truth is you were late. You were late, and you failed to protect her."

No matter how hard he tried, he could not make those words go away.

He had failed her... miserably. Breaking a promise he had made to her so many years before, when they were still children playing with toys together in the backyard. He remembered that moment like if it had happened the day before. Closing his eyes, he could see the green skirt she had worn spinning around as she tried to catch a beetle in the bug net her hands were clasped on. Missing time and time again, she nevertheless had kept trying. That was during her "bug phase", when they fascinated her nearly as much as Stritch today.

Link was smiling alone in front of the statue as he corrected himself. That was when she got out of said phase.

Indeed, her love for insects took quite a hit when the Sky Stag Beetle stopped evading her attempts and snapped her right hand's middle finger between its strong pincers.

A young Link had been daydreaming about becoming a knight one day, his back against a tree, when he heard the high-pitched scream that had followed. He remembered snapping to attention, jumping on his feet and running over to his friend. Taking the first thing he could get his hand onto, which was a big rock, he had crushed the poor creature with all his strength. He had then turned to Zelda, who was sobbing and holding her finger with her other hand and wiped her tears with the back of his small hand.

In his mind's eye, Link saw himself take her pained hand between his own and look at her straight in the eyes. In one rare moment of seriousness, something which wasn't his best strong point at the time, he had promised.

"I'll never let anything hurt you again Zel. If anything tries, I'll save you like the knights do, 'cuz I know I'll be one someday!"

She had probably forgotten those innocently spoken words long ago, but he hadn't. He had meant them even back then, and today they were even more important to him. They represented the full extent of his failure.

Sighing, the young man looked at the old stone tablet shard he now held between his hands. Another part of a whole separated from its brothers, all alone and lost in this far corner of the world. What an irony that the Skyloftian who held it felt similar.

[POV Change]

Zelda was angry.

She had asked Impa what had happened after her departure and the servant had answered.

How did she dare? She told Link, who had risked everything for her, that he had failed?

And worse, it was not even the case! His late arrival had been planned from the start by Impa, who needed to reach Zelda first so that she could make her progress on her own path without being distracted. He would have been there right on time had the Sheikah not induced some of the hardships he had met herself. She could have opened the way for him easily, but instead she had blocked it in many ways, either by redirecting enemy patrols or setting rocks in the way.

The awakening goddess understood perfectly the necessity of being separated from her friend until the time was right, otherwise she would not have heeded the servant's demands of restraining herself and would have wilfully jumped in the man's arms. She longed for that moment and often found herself lost in expectation.

If only he knew how deep her feelings for him had become. The many years they had spent together showed how closely knit they were, but she was not sure if he held her as close to his heart as he was to hers. Every time she thought about him, memories surged through her and flooded her mind. She remembered a very special day, a day he had made a promise to her…

She knew him enough to be able to tell he had not forgotten that moment that seemed ages old. And that made her even angrier, because she knew that Impa's words must have hurt him deeply. While Link was not the type of person you could wake up on a moment's notice for any need, he was the type who did everything he said he would. Not a single promise he had made she could think he had not held, except those including getting out of bed before noon, which were anyways occasions for her to intrude in his bedroom (he had given her doubles of his keys, like he had a copy of hers) and watch him sleep for a while before waking him up. He was so cute when he slept, his expression peaceful, like if nothing bad ever happened.

Impa had tried to explain that she intended to give the young hero a "kick in the butt" to make him realize his full potential, but Zelda was still convinced she went too far.

Nevertheless, if anything she knew about the man she loved was right, he would indeed not let himself slack because of it.

So the goddess kept on her path to full awakening, knowing that the moment the Hero she chose long ago would be hers to see again was close at hand.

[POV Change]

Link pivoted on his heels and, taking a deep breath, made his way out of the room. Running and jumping above and around the molten pits of the Earth Temple helped him push away his brooding thoughts until he made it outside.

As he went down the trail leading to the foot of the mighty volcano, the hero encountered a most peculiar thing. Indeed, as Link was sliding down a steep incline, he caught in the corner of his eyes a Mogma that seemed to have a hard time extracting something from the ground. Intrigued, the human turned around and sprinted back up, letting out a shout under the effort.

Still panting, he nevertheless found the energy to raise a surprised eyebrow.

The Mogma's intense fight opposed him to an almighty, godlike... bush?

He seemed so desperate that Link couldn't stop himself from asking if he could do something.

What started as a good intention from a helpful young man nearly ended up killing the Mogma who seemed to edge close to cardiac arrest as he spun around.

"Ah! A monster! Don't eat me!"

Sighing again in desperation, the Skyloftian shook his head. He did not consider himself particularly handsome but he could still tell he did not quite look like a Bokoblin. As he had so many times before, he explained to yet another Mogma why he was not going to eat him and that he was not a threat of any kind. He finished by asking the same question again.

"As I said, can I lend a hand?"

"Well, you can try if you want to! This damned plant is just too damned resilient!"

"A plant? Can't you just break it? You Mogmas can dig through hard rock, a mere bush should not be a problem!"

"That's no ordinary plant lad! Every time I try to cut, crush, smash or hit it, it only flails about and spring back! The more I try, the more I think my bro's tale of treasure under this thing's roots is made up."

"Let me try something…"

Drawing the Goddess Sword from its sheath, Link walked around the mole-man and stopped in front of the ball of leaves that seemed to be so problematic. Letting out a shout, he slashed the plant.

Much to his astonishment, the young man saw his enthusiasm met with cold truth. The Mogma was not lying, the plant effectively bent and sprung back. Tilting his head to the side, the young man tried to use his powerful muscles to rip the base of the bush from the ground, to no avail.

"What the hell is that thing?"

With a whizzing sound, Fi appeared from the handle of the sword.

"Master, my analysis shows an 85% chance that this is a plant. More precisely, one of the extremely rare and hard to find Sprout of the Gods. It is a fabled plant of nearly unbelievable resilience, often used metaphorically by the various peoples of the surface to represent tenacity and unbreakable will. It is not within your ability to remove or harm this plant in any way now."

"Well then… I think I'm done here, my brother will hear about this… I told him to stop telling those lies to everyone…"

Link barely noticed the mole-man leaving. He had once again lost himself in thought.

Another memory had sprung back to his mind because of this plant. He had searched for several seconds when he found it within his recent experiences.

Two weeks before, he had been leaning on Zelda's doorway, observing her drawing a large-scale picture of a plant. This plant. When she had realized his presence, after several minutes (he never disturbed her when she drew, for he knew how much it annoyed her), she told him she had a dream about this bush, seeing it as he was now, in a small balcony carved in the rock of a mountain. She had told him she felt someone would learn a lesson from it. An important one.

Now he knew what. A lesson of tenacity and resilience. He may have failed her once, but he would not again. Not ever again. He would not let himself get broken definitively like a rock, but he would spring back, even stronger.

His will renewed, the Chosen Hero turned around and left, decided to finally reach his loved one this time.