Chapter Text
Zelda: Age 10
“Edric! Stop, running! I can’t keep up!”
Bare feet skidded along the carpet as Princess Zelda attempted to slow her run as she chased her brother through the halls of the castle. The rug bent, and Zelda found herself flying at the wall with blinding speed, grunting at the impact before pushing herself off so she could continue on after her brother.
"Edric!"
"Stop following me if you're tired!" he shouted over his shoulder.
Red carpeted halls lined with polished armored statues and paintings made up the majority of hallways in Hyrule Castle. There were lit sconces along the walls, set apart every few feet. By every door was a brazier, burning bright with a barely flickering flame of perfect oranges and reds.
Hyrule Castle was a peaceful home for many, though not on the days when children played.
Zelda and Edric giggled together as their feet thudded harder and harder into the carpeted hallway.
"Hey!" shouted a guard as Zelda brushed past him, her eyes entirely focused on Edric in front of her. "Be careful, Your Highnesses!"
Hyrule Castle was indestructible. The war to unify Hyrule had proven as much. For which the castle must have been grateful, given that Princess Zelda had a talent for crashing into things in her haste.
No expense had been spared centuries ago when the great palace had been built: thick, sturdy doors still held firm, stained glass windows had only been replaced a few times, the regular windows were even easier to maintain, rooms were painted and reorganized but otherwise intact, gardens and courtyards provided more than enough space outdoors. Long before Hyrule was even Hyrule, the castle stood tall for the one who ruled the land when it was no more than scattered realms lorded over by their own kind.
But naturally, children preferred to be where they didn't belong.
Zelda crashed into a vase that bounced back against the wall, sending it safely back into place on its pedestal.
She nearly lost sight of Edric's brown hair as he turned the corner, and her little legs chased after him. Zelda found herself watching Edric race down a spiral staircase, and with a deep breath and the ease of a natural-born troublemaker, Zelda sat on the railing and let herself fly down the banister, balancing herself for dear life as she slid down one story, then another.
"Crap!" Edric hissed, jumping the remainder of the way down the stairs. He was taller than she was, and his legs allowed him to leap in a way that would send Zelda on her face. She hopped off the banister and raced the rest of the way down the steps, crashing into the door just as he closed it with an echo that rang throughout the tower.
Zelda was a proper lady. She wouldn't curse. But that didn't mean she didn't want to.
When she opened the door, Edric had already made it down a long hallway. Huffing and frustrated, Zelda stumbled over the bent rug from her brother's rush, but she smoothed it out and ran again, calling out his name.
Planting her feet, Zelda closed her eyes, feeling the world rock around her. A natural dizziness overcame her, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. She’d been training to avoid it.
Her vision went white behind her eyes, and with a warmth that spread through her tiny body, she found the center and channeled it straight at her brother.
He yelped, and she could hear him thud to the ground, so she skipped triumphantly to his side.
“You’re insane!” Edric scoffed.
“Next time, don’t take my poe from my room,” Zelda said, green eyes glinting as she ripped an object from his grasp. It was a small circular blob with four long, dangling arms, all knit and stuffed with fine wool. There was a bright pink eyes, knitted with care, and worn colors from years of use.
“I don’t get why you like it so much,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “It’s just a doll.” Edric checked his sister carefully, examining her fading yellow eyes. She knew they’d still be yellow from using her powers. She wasn’t supposed to, but that rarely stopped her.
“Because I helped make it, that’s why! He’s my friend.”
“So sad,” Edric joked, smiling kindly so she didn’t take his jab seriously. He let out a huff and grabbed his sister’s shoulders, leading her a few steps before the echo of two booming voices had them frozen.
“Edric! Zelda!”
Both siblings stopped short at the commanding joint sounds of their parents’ voices, both ringing out their names at the same time.
“What in the Goddess’ name was that?” Queen Isadora asked, pointing to the hallway behind her that Edric had just gone through. “Servants thought you were being chased, and did I see you use your powers, Zelda?”
"She didn't!" Edric interjected.
Zelda took a hesitant step behind her brother when her father, King Rohan, turned his attention to her. “You are both members of the royal family of Hyrule. We do not act like children here! I don’t care how old you are; this kind of reckless behavior is unacceptable! Your mother and I were pulled from a meeting because our children were running like Demise himself was chasing them, but alas, they were simply trying to kill one another! What is going on?”
“Where’s Granny?” Isadora asked, looking around. “Wasn’t she supposed to be with you?”
Zelda hugged her poe closer, feeling it squish in her arms, and her grip on Edric tightened. Granny Lenore, the Dowager Queen, had stopped following them almost immediately once they’d left their rooms and Zelda had knocked over a brazier, nearly setting the hallway afire. Because of Granny’s quick action, the hallway remained safe, but had given way to their shenanigans.
Edric glanced behind him, his sister’s wide eyes already brimming with tears. Though their parents were not unkind to them, Zelda had yet to develop the ability to tolerate criticism, and Edric knew that. If his sister had one flaw, it was that she tried too hard to be perfect, and crashed even harder when she failed.
Spinning, he straightened his back, turned his chin up, and spoke with the confidence any future king should have. “I was careless. I knocked over a light fixture while I was annoying Zelda. I saw it fall, but I was pre-occupied, and Granny took care of it. I thought Zelda was chasing me to be silly, but she was trying to tell me. I’m sorry.”
“Edric,” Isadora scolded. “You will be the King of Hyrule one day. You cannot be doing such ridiculous things. What if you’d been hurt? What if something happened to you?”
“Then Zelda would be Queen.”
“Hey!” Rohan snapped, his eyes wide with a flash of genuine fear. “Don’t talk back. You know that wasn’t a question you were meant to answer.”
“Yes, Father. I’m sorry. For all of it.”
Zelda buried her face into Edric’s back, pressing her poe plush between them as she stifled a sob while he took the scolding meant for her. His hand stretched behind him, offering her a reassuring squeeze.
Queen Isadora ran her hands along her eyes, weary with the stresses each day brought along with it. “Zelda? Is this true?”
“I was chasing him! I’m sorry!”
“Because I also took the poe,” Edric added quickly, stepping aside for them to see the little plush creature clutched in her hand. “It was my fault, Mother.”
“Go back to Granny. Both of you. And make it up to her.”
Granny Lenore was the closest Zelda and Edric ever had to a present parent. When her own parents were in a meeting, Zelda was with the former queen. When they needed to sneak around to find snacks at midnight, Granny was the one leading them by the hand.
Granny had also been the one to teach Zelda how to use her powers. There was almost a stigma from her mother when it came to using her powers, and Zelda was discouraged from it often, save for parlor tricks with Granny or private training with her in the late hours of the night. Zelda didn't know why her mother hated magic so much, but she explicitly forbade Zelda from using it. But Zelda remembered the frightened, cautious looks her parents used to give her, and she always suspected there was something more to that reason.
Since Zelda was newborn, she’d been coddled to the point of suffocation. Handled like fragile glass, she’d grown up under scrutinizing eyes, watching. Waiting. But for what, she never knew. Not until the day her magic began to take root, and then she started to understand: she was different, and they didn’t want any more of a handful than she’d already become to them on that front.
“Go, Zelda,” Isadora insisted, pointing in the general direction of their rooms. She was a queen through and through. Her people came first. Her family was second. But when there was no threat to her people, she was a loving mother. It just... wasn’t her priority. "I don't want to hear anything else from anyone about you two causing a ruckus."
“Yes, Mama.”
Zelda spun on her heels and grabbed her brother’s hand. Edric, three years older than her, heir to the throne, and generally the one who’d taught Zelda her recklessness, was policed far less, despite his future role as monarch. Zelda had a feeling that it was exactly because of his role as the future king of Hyrule that he was scolded less often.
“Okay.” Isadora looked between her children and ran a hand affectionately through Edric’s hair. “Go on then, the both of you.”
Edric gave a tug on Zelda’s hand, and she followed him back. “Thank you,” Zelda whispered, meek and apologetic.
“Don’t worry. They never stay angry at me.”
Edric favored with his father’s looks: shaggy, dark brown hair, blue eyes, and still growing through his growth spurt to predictably surpass his mother’s tall height one day. But in attitude, he was little of either, caring for Zelda in a way neither of them did.
They didn’t speak as they made their way through the halls this time. There was no running, and the walls moved slowly, boring and drab. The armor held no allure, the lights were dull. It was all around a different experience to return to their rooms than to run from it.
When they reached the door to their joint study room, Edric pushed it open for Zelda, and they both went in with the heads drooping.
Granny Lenore was in front of them, pulling each child into her arms. “Are you alright? When I heard the crash, I thought that it was one of you.”
“We’re okay.”
Granny had a thick royal accent, one the children were developing rather quickly, one where every single letter was pronounced to perfection, and there was a slow, deliberate hang on each word. So, whenever she spoke quickly, like she was now, it always betrayed her fear.
“You are not okay. Come here, little one.” She gently touched Zelda’s cheek and then looked Edric over for injuries. "You didn't hurt yourself on the fire, did you?"
"No, Granny. I crashed into a door."
She tsked and shook her head. "You two need to play calmer games. Like cards." She thought to herself for a moment. "Well, when my sisters and I played cards together, there was often a lot of hair pulling. Perhaps cards isn't the best game. Read a book. I know you two have exams you could be studying for."
"We'll play nicer, Granny, I swear," Edric said, throwing himself on the other side of the couch that Granny sat on. It shook the couch, and Granny grabbed her cane before it could fall over.
She was still young, not yet 70, but her years on the throne had taken a lot out of her, as she warned her daughter it would do to her, and to Edric after them. She offered council and wisdom, but mostly, she enjoyed her retirement simply enjoying watching her grandchildren grow up. They'd become her pride and joy.
“What happened?” a familiar voice asked from the door, snapping everyone's attentions to the new arrival.
Vann, one of Edric's closest friends, was standing just inside the room. “It sounded like you were being kidnapped. Milo said he didn’t know either.”
Zelda clung to her poe a little tighter.
“I took her doll,” Edric said, owning up quickly. "We got caught running around."
Another young boy, Milo, came into the room behind Vann. "That sucks," he said simply.
Milo and Vann, two of the royal wards and attendants to the Prince, were training to serve him when he Edric eventually becomes King. Both of their parents were just short of royalty, with Vann’s parents owning half the shipping lanes in the kingdom, and Milo's family governing a nearby piece of land Hyrule hoped to annex sooner than later.
Vann pushed his dirty blonde hair back and leaned casually against the door frame. "You two? Running around the castle? I'd never guess that."
Edric scoffed and played with a tassel on his shirt. "At least it wasn't Milo and I. Last time, I thought his father was going to have his head."
Milo snorted and glanced out at the hall, as though he were expecting immediate retribution from simply recalling the chaos he and Edric had caused.
Granny cleared her throat. "I'll have all your heads if you come in any further with those muddy boots of yours. Take them off, both of you."
"Okay," Edric breathed pacifyingly. He finally took his boots in his hands and backed toward the door that led to his rooms. “Vann, Milo, and I are hanging out later tonight, but we'll be careful." He turned pointedly from Granny to Zelda. "No, you can't come."
Offended, Zelda's mouth dropped open. "Why not?"
“It’s no girls allowed.”
“What?”
“We’re going to play a game, and we don’t want any girls around.”
Zelda turned to her brother's friends and watched as they nodded along with him.
"It'll be dark and you could get hurt," Vann added, trying to help. "You're safer inside."
"Then play your game inside!" Zelda demanded, crossing her arms.
"No!"
“They’re all my friends too,” Zelda protested, feeling her heart sink as she was about to be left out yet again.
“Yeah, but they were mine first.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It means I don’t want to play a game with you later tonight, that’s all, Zelly.”
“Don’t call me Zelly!”
“Zelly. Zelly! Zelly, Zelly, Zelly!”
“Stop it!”
“Zelly Zelly Zelly Zelly!”
“Enough!” Granny shouted, stepping between them. “By the Goddess, you two do give me a headache some days. Edric, you have a curfew. The fields surrounding Hyrule have been littered with wolfos recently, and the guard is still in the process of taking care of the problem. So you will return early, and you will not leave the castle walls.”
He sulked, and beckoned the boys into his rooms before bowing to his grandmother in silence, slamming the door to his room behind them.
And Zelda was alone with her grandmother.
Granny grabbed Zelda’s shoulder. “His poor reasoning aside, your brother loves you, Zelda, but you have to allow him space to be with his other friends. I’m sure he’ll play a game with you tomorrow, and they’ll play with you as well. Why don’t you and I go take a walk through the gardens, instead?” she said, offering her hand.
Zelda took it, and followed Granny out from the winding halls she’d just traversed and into the fresh air. They passed the courtyard, the shrubbery, and finally reached the pristine flowers.
“You see this one here?” Granny asked, pointing to a golden rose. “This bloomed forty years ago. That’s older than mama and papa. I did it with magic, much like you used today. When you use it as strongly as you did, I can feel it. You’d feel me if I used it. Watch.”
Granny bent down and set her hand in the dirt, closing her eyes. And Zelda felt it: a tingle run through her body, a trail of magical warmth making her shiver, though it sounded like it made no sense, Zelda had no other ways of describing such a conflicting feeling. But Zelda looked up to see roses blooming all along a hedge. Sprouted from nowhere.
“This, Zelda, is a gift you and I were given. Your mother… can do parlor tricks. She rejected the ability to learn to harness her powers. You know she doesn't love magic. But you and I? We can create life, and we can take it back. We are powerful, and that is frightening to some people. You cannot use your powers for tricks, my darling girl. Your brother’s face was bruised. You used it on him, didn’t you?”
Guiltily, Zelda nodded, holding tighter to the poe.
“I thought so. You could harm him until you learn to control the Golden Power. It’s a rare gift, and when I die, my portion of the power will pass to you and your mother, and you will be even stronger. So please, promise me something: don’t use this as a toy. Don’t hurt your brother with it, for one day, that could do more damage than you meant for.”
“I’m sorry, Granny. I don’t want to hurt Edric. I was just playing.”
Granny Lenore's hand reached out, chilly to touch, and brushed a tear off Zelda’s cheek. “Don’t be sorry. Be diligent.”
The rest of the night passed without seeing Edric and with Zelda sulking with her poe, wishing there were other young girls at the castle she could play with. It was days like these that she couldn’t keep the sleepless nights or nightmares at bay.
Granny always comforted her that her nightmares meant nothing, but Zelda hated them. They were always so real, so viceral. She always felt like she was there in the dream. But Granny assured her that such a thing were impossible. No one could go into their own dreams. They only experienced them like everyone else.
So, when Zelda saw herself as a baby in the arms of her tired mother, she knew this was another dream, not a memory. She was witnessing the scene from the outside.
Hours after the birth of Princess Zelda, the war for the unification of Hyrule had been declared over. A decades long war that rattled the people and the new kingdom was finally cast aside in favor of light and prosperity. Rohan and Isadora had done years of work to cease the fighting, all the while maintaining troops to attack in reciprocation as they lobbied for peace. It put them in terrible positions, forced them to maneuver in ways that were otherwise deceitful, and prevented them from enjoying time at home with the heir to the newly unified kingdom.
But with the birth of the Princess, whose timing was seen as nothing short of a sign, the kingdom seemed to right itself.
Rohan brought their three year old son, Prince Edric in to meet his sister while Isadora was still in the birthing bed, resting.
“Who’s that?” Rohan asked, picking Edric up and setting him beside his mother.
Edric favored his father’s blue eyes and brown hair. But the baby girl in Isadora's arms already showed signs of her mother’s light blonde wisps.
Edric leaned into his mother and looked at the little girl.
Isadora smiled. “Edric, this is your baby sister.”
“Baby sisser,” he repeated, testing out the words that he’d heard in passing for months, but now became real.
“That’s right. You’re her big brother now. We’re going to call her Zelda.”
The boy peered at her. “Sela?”
“Zelda,” Isadora said, emphasizing the Z and D.
“Selda.”
She chuckled and nodded. “Yes. That’s right. Zelda.”
Zelda stirred, almost as if the sound of her name had awoken her. Or perhaps the choice of name upset her, because Zelda began to fuss and cry.
Edric flinched and fell backwards on the bed, and Rohan went to help him sit back up.
But Edric had already pulled himself back up using his mother’s arm as he looked at Zelda.
“Don't cry.” He looked at Rohan, almost confused while Isadora patted Zelda and tried to shush her calm. "Why she cry?"
"Babies do that. They cry a lot, but not always because they're sad."
But Edric stumbled forward and put his knuckle to Zelda’s mouth, and she began to suck on it while he laughed, her cries subsiding.
“Baby,” Edric said, patting her head with his other hand.
Rohan mussed his son’s hair. “That’s right. Your baby sister. You’re a natural big brother already.”
Isadora leaned into Edric, nuzzling her face against him until he started to giggle, and then she leaned forward to kiss the blond wisps on Zelda’s head, her eyes already beginning to drift closed once again from exhaustion. “Our babies,” she whispered with a soft smile at both of them before gesturing for Rohan to take Zelda and Edric away.
The dream faded out from her birth and she felt herself growing restless as her thoughts darkened. She thought of Edric and the way he could calm her from almost anything, and a part of her subconscious brain called out to him, praying that he could hear her thoughts and would check on her in her room.
Edric had accepted his role as an older brother with open arms, caring for Zelda even when her parents left her in the nursery with Granny and the maids. He'd become her everything from before she could even recognize his face.
So naturally, when Zelda’s pet rabbit died years following Zelda's birth, she ran sobbing into his room as the sun was still rising, wailing as if her own life was in danger because she couldn’t rouse Cuddles from sleep.
Her words were slurs of panic and fear, garbled and hard to understand. He shot forward to hold her, still not sure what was happening, but as others rushed into the room at the sound of a screaming child, they were all able to gather a few words together to realize that she'd lost her dearest pet.
Roused early from their morning sleep, Isadora and Rohan debated for the first time how much to tell their children on what it meant to die. Though Edric knew about the concept of the end of life, they’d never sat down to discuss it. And they weren’t sure Zelda had actually thought about it at all.
When Isadora and Rohan were alone just before entering the nursery, she’d grabbed his arm, shaking. “I don’t think we should tell her. Just explain it to Edric.”
Your father is ill,” he countered, holding Isadora tight. “If we explain this to the both of them now, explaining why grandpapa isn’t around anymore will be easier later. On both of them.”
“She’s more fragile, Rohan.”
“She’s just a girl, not an all-knowing goddess. She needs to learn these things, Isadora, regardless of how much we don’t want her to.”
Isadora relented, and Zelda clutched Edric through their explanation, her tears returning until she was a sobbing mess as they explained that Cuddles couldn’t come back.
“But why?” she’d insisted through her tears. “Why can’t he come back?”
Edric held her tighter, his own face wet from sorrow at the loss of their joint pet. He had to protect her and keep her safe, even if that meant keeping her in a tight hug while she mourned.
“Sweet one,” Isadora said, running her hand through Zelda’s hair. “Cuddles was getting older and the Goddess wanted Cuddles to keep her company. She needs him more than we do now. So he'll stay with her forever.”
For now, it placated them. Zelda was too kindhearted not to ‘share’ her rabbit with the Goddess, and Edric had begun to understand the vague concepts of religion he’d been schooled in his whole life.
Their explanation had backfired on them rather quickly.
Zelda dreamed of herself again, strolling through the back lawn to pick flowers—which were really weeds— watched only by the guards in the distance. Granny had run into the castle to grab Zelda a snack, and the guards watched her until Granny’s return.
But as Zelda went to pick a beautiful sun-yellow flower with soft petals for her mother, she tripped over a small stone and landed face first in the grass.
It wasn’t anything new. Zelda was often clumsy for her desire to move quickly. But what was new was the blood that came from her mouth and pooled in her hand, along with a tooth.
“Edric!” she shrieked, running as fast as she could into the adjacent field where he and his friends were playing. “Edric!”
The guards followed her, but she made it to her brother first, throwing herself onto him just as a friend kicked a ball in their direction. It flew past them, and Edric watched it disappear in annoyance.
“Zelda! That was my—”
He stopped when he saw the blood on her mouth and in her hand.
“I don’t want the Goddess to take me away!” she sobbed, snot and tears mixing with the blood on her face.
Edric grimaced, but he ran his sleeve under her lip, clearing most of the blood away with one quick sweep. “You lost a tooth.”
“I’m dying! Like Cuddles! I don’t want to die! I don’t want the Goddess to come take me! I don’t want to keep her company!”
“Zelda,” he said, “You’re not going to die. I lost some of my teeth, remember?” He smiled at her, revealing two obvious gaps right in the front of his mouth. “It just means the Great Fairy will take your tooth and give you a rupee.”
“But I want my tooth!” she screamed. “I want it back in my mouth!”
“Did you pull it?”
“No! I fell, and now I’m going to die!”
“You’re not going to—”
“Zelda!” Granny yelled, running for them both. She pulled a rag from her pocket and turned to Edric. “What happened?”
“She lost a tooth.”
“Oh, sweet child! That is fantastic! That means you are growing up and getting older!”
But that only rekindled Zelda’s panic.
“No!” she screeched, reaching for Edric again. “I don’t want to die!”
Granny’s brow furrowed as she tore Zelda from her brother to pick her up. “You are not, little one. What makes you think you will? Because of the blood? Everyone has blood. It means nothing.”
“Cuddles got older, and the Goddess took him away to die!”
“Oh,” Granny muttered. “Edric, you keep playing. I am going to take your sister to mama and papa.”
“Okay,” he said, watching Granny carry his panicked sister away.
He couldn’t focus on the ball after that and left his friends in favor of keeping Zelda company.
Night after night for months after, Zelda woke with a panic, screaming until her throat was raw. After several nights, she’d screamed so much that her voice was gone into a rasp that no amount of soup could soothe.
When Granny and the guards would run in to check on her, she’d mutter something about the Goddess again and again until she wore herself out with her incoherent babbling.
“What do you see in your sleep?” Granny tried one day when Zelda was awake, clutching her hand.
“Someone dies.”
And Zelda dreamed of the familiar memories of Granny stroking her hair, telling her it was alright. But again, she saw herself asleep, and saw her mother sitting in the rocking chair in Zelda’s room from then on, watching her daughter scream in her sleep every night, lost to a night of terrors beyond her control.
During the day, Isadora stopped into the nursery to watch Zelda for a bit. Zelda was sitting on a chair with a blonde doll that she’d dressed in a regal blue dress. She’d adorned the head with a crown.
Isadora watched with a smile. “Is that you, love?”
But Zelda shook her head. “No. It’s Linea.”
Isadora froze at a name she hadn’t heard muttered aloud in her presence in years. “Linea? Who is that? That’s… pretty. Where did you come up with that name?”
Shrugging, Zelda bent the doll’s knees and brought her hands together in prayer. Then, she let the doll fall and reached for another.
Horrified, Isadora leaned forward and clasped her hands together so Zelda wouldn’t see them shake. “Did Linea just fall asleep?”
“No. She died because the Goddess didn’t want her to use her magic powers, so Hylia took her away like she took Cuddles. Now her family is sad, and her sister is going to be the next queen.”
White as a sheet, Isadora tried to stand, but stumbled, knocking straight into Zelda’s dolls. Her eyes locked with Granny for a moment before she took a deep breath and half-lunge for the door. “Keep playing. Granny is going to watch you,” she said, barely making it out of the room before she grabbed onto a guard. “Get the king, now.”
Rohan met her halfway, holding up Isadora as she slumped over. “What happened?”
“Did you ever tell Zelda about Linea?”
“No. I’ve never even mentioned your sister. I don’t think she knows she even had an aunt on your side.”
And Isadora fell to her knees as the panic truly set in. She cradled her head and rocked herself.
“Why couldn’t she have been a boy?”
Zelda woke up with a start, tears streaming down her eyes as the dream began to fade. Her heart raced and ached, and she fought hard for her breath.
Then, she grabbed the poe, hugged him tightly to her chest, and pulled the blankets over her face to try to hide from another impossible dream. But the warm shivers of magic kept her from sleeping at all that night, and many nights since.