The Legend Says I Love You | Zelink

Chapter 24: Hateno Home

Link shows Zelda his home in Hateno village. The domestic setting, with a little help from Bolson, brings forth a new topic for them: marriage. But, to who?

*

His ten-pace-behind rule was quickly broken once more when he saw her begin to falter in her steps as she passed the town gates. One of the local kids, as usual, was running erratically all over the place and nearly smacked into her. She only narrowly avoided him, stumbling backwards out of his giggling little rocket path, before he sped off again in another direction. She turned back to look for Link, uncertainty and self-consciousness plain on her face. Without a second thought, he was already hurrying to her side.

He could remember when he first woke up, and how awkwardly cautious and embarrassed he'd been around others. Like he didn't know how to be a person anymore, or where he fitted into this new world. The anxiety had driven him back into silence at the time, and he had no intentions of letting it take her somewhere much darker in her spiralling self-doubt. 

"Purah's laboratory is a bit further past the town. It's a bit of a trek, and uphill." He didn't ask directly, but his true question was clear: Do you want to rest? He knew she must have been hungry, as they'd only really snacked atop the horses during their journey rather than stopping completely for lunch. They'd be better off having dinner first and completing the last leg of the journey the next morning. 

"Perhaps it would be a good idea to eat first. Who knows how long I'll spend talking to Purah. We have so much to catch up on..." she mused, confirming his thoughts. 

He nodded and considered their two options: his house, or the inn. He knew he had enough ingredients in his house for at least a risotto, but the thought of taking her to his home for the first time was enough to give him butterflies in his stomach. He felt oddly embarrassed at his humble little shack, full of weaponry and not much else. Not to mention guilty - like its existence was proof of a life, separate, without her. Like while she was locked in a castle he was having a grand old domestic time of things. But the quiet emptiness of his house, he couldn't help but think, called for something more. It called for her, inside it.

Suddenly, he realised, he very much wanted to take Zelda to his house. Besides. The inn would have too many people, with too many questions, and she still looked unsure of even the legs she walked on. Still, he gave her the final say: "Would you like to eat at the inn? Or, if you want, we could go to my place."

"Your place?" she repeated, scanning the surrounding town.

"My house. It's nothing much, but just a little further. If you don't mind, I'd like to show you," he confessed. Fuck knows why. He was always just telling her things, like she drew the truth and a whole bunch of other unnecessary words out of him just by looking at him pretty. Which, unfortunately for Link, was how she looked all the time - intentionally, or not. "I'll cook too, of course," he added, getting caught up in another pretty stare.

"Really?!" He was taken aback by the delight in her response, so much so he took a few steps away. She smiled brightly and pulled him back, hanging onto his arm. "Just show me where to go! I couldn't see last time - I mean, during my time sealing Ganon. Some things were only visible waveringly, at a distance. Like looking through a fog or, to put it more accurately in this case, a haze of malice." He listened without interruption as he led her up a small hill and past the building block-like houses of Bolson's construction. "These houses are really quite interesting! Is this...?"

"Nope," he told her, gesturing on up ahead with his chin. "That one." His house sat low and plain and sturdy-looking straight across the bridge, separated by a steep drop into a pond of water below them. He was, to say the very least, slightly peeved that the old man Bolson himself was also sitting under a large tree in his garden, next to his cooking pot. And Karson. Always Karson.