#BUT OOT ZELINK IS SO ANGST AND I LOVE PAIN

[tarulink]

Being an oot Zelink shipper in 2024 is hard because all the hype for them was in the 2000's and 2010's so currently there is very little food *sniff* so I appreciate the fanfics and fanarts from those eras 🫶🏻

that's why I wanna write something about them for this Zelink week 😭

[tired-twili]

Personally, I really don't like angst because another reason to cry? No thank you haha, but at the same time I absolutely love OOT zelink, which is angsty pretty much no matter how you look at it.

Long story short, no, I haven't finished either MM or Oot (procrastination at its finest) but I like to think that after the events of MM Link finds his way back to Hyrule. Obviously no one remembers what happened and that's hard for him~ especially with Zelda. But then every once in a while she starts to remember just snippets of the other timeline and its fluffy because I just want them to be happy ;-; (this is me denying the existence of the heros shade lol) So here's a Lil somethin

~~“Do I know you?” 

Link felt his heart skip a beat, the weight of numerous eyes on him. He shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot, almost tempted to run but something rooted him in place. 

Zelda was watching him curiously, elegant azure eyes married as she studied him, her smile pleasant. Everything from her thick golden hair to the smooth and effortless moments of her lithe body. She wore a gilded crown upon her head, though its weight seemed much more bearable than he’d ever seen before. 

Link couldn’t move as her attendants stared and the guards began to murmur, each as intrigued by the strange figure that had found his way into the castle walls. It was all so familiar, to the shrubs that line the path, statues frozen in the same poses, and even the way the sun glinted against the princess’s hair. Link wanted to reach for the princess, to be in her arms and feel her warmth against him like he did so many years ago- before he’d been torn from that troubled Hyrule. He wanted nothing more than to feel the safety her companionship had brought him. 

But as Link looked into her eyes he knew his desires were in vain. She held no memories of their time together, of the peril they’d endured at each other’s side, or any moment of comfort they had shared. Zelda’s eyes no longer held the pain and grief Link had seen, and for that, he couldn’t help but smile. She no longer carried the pain that had burdened her for seven long years, and for once she smiled without a car in the world, eyes bright and so full of life. 

“No,” Link replied, barely trusting his voice as he smiled sadly, “no, I don’t believe we know each other, You Highness,” he swept into a polite bow, “my name is Link.” 

“Link,” she murmured, something lighting behind her wise eye, “Link,” she repeated. 

Again Link met her eyes, his heart burning as she tilted her head, a glimmer of recognition passing in her expression. All too soon her attendants tugged at her arm, muttering and imploring her to return the duties awaiting her inside. She followed begrudgingly, still keeping contact with Link who couldn’t look away. He held onto that recognition he saw, taking the hope he felt and tucking it away to protect its fragile flame.  

[zeldaseyebrows]

Snippets from your favourite wip ?

This is a really difficult question, since I don’t have a definitive favorite– I love my fic children equally haha. So here’s one from Hero’s Shade TP Reincarnation Pain Train Station because I’m really enjoying writing that one and I haven’t posted anything from it yet (though I do have some concept sketches I’ll post later).

The premise is that long after the events of Twilight Princess, Link seeks out the Hero’s Shade again for reasons and learns about his life and death and how he came to be trapped as a shade until the end of TP (in this story since he’s fulfilled his purpose/gotten rid of his guilt, Hero’s Shade!Link looks like an older OoT Link and not a depressed skeleton grandpa). It was also really fun to write Link basically talking to himself, since I tend to lean pretty hard into the reincarnation aspect for both enjoyment and angst. It’s quite dark because the Hero’s Shade premise is definitely a one-way ticket to angst city, but it has an ending that I think is cathartic and happy since I’m weak as hell for giving zelink a good ending/resolution.

Snippet: 

The corners of the Shade’s full lips quirk up. “Well, Zelda is rarely wrong.”

Link freezes.

“How did you know?” he finally whispers.

The Shade actually snorts and says, “I’m you, dumbass.”

Link can’t keep his jaw from dropping. Not at the content of the words, but at the phrasing. He’d known that the Shade was a previous incarnation of the hero, of himself, even before the Shade had told him years ago.  But when they trained before, the Shade had always been overly formal, completely archaic in his stilted manner of speaking. The pinnacle of what Link thought that the hero– that he– had to be. Reserved, stoic, inscrutable, removed.

He hadn’t been expecting the formerly grim hero to laugh and call them both dumbasses.

As Link bravely navigates a complete existential crisis while gripping the mossy log he’s sitting on for dear life, the Shade winks and continues, “And I have the advantage of being dead, so I’m a bit ahead of you on omniscience. Though I still have my moments of idiocy, as we all do. Courage instead of wisdom and all that. Not like our Zeldas.”  

Even if he couldn’t tell from the flashes of memory in his dreams, Link would instantly know from the way the Shade says her name. 

But Link still can’t help asking, “You loved her, too, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The Shade levels him with the intensity of his gaze and his voice. “My love was and is undying.”

[intangiblyyourswrites]

Glass to Sand

This is another response to the kissing prompts I’m doing. Number 15 for OoT Zelink as requested by @eissibee. I’m going to tell you guys now that I’m a fraud—I’ve never played OoT or MM. I WOULD HAVE bought it by now but I’m waiting to see if they’ll port it to the Switch next year. 👀

Thank you @embyrinitalics for reading through this for me! I used her fics and other research to write this. WARNING: suggestive themes ahead, but nothing explicit. Also, angst.

15. A fierce kiss that ends with a bite on the lip, soothing it with a lick.

He’s rough in a way that she doesn’t remember, but the way she remembers is like that of a dream: fuzzy around the peripheries with splotches preventing her from recalling the whole story. He was much more innocent the first time he was an adult—a kid in a man's body. The second time, it’s the opposite, and he grows up sharper at the edges, gaze cutting like glass, keen and perspicuous and not always here nor there. Sometimes he speaks of a falling moon, sometimes he asks her what day it is like an obsession. He’s wounded in places she can’t reach to soothe, but she makes do with what she can.

Sometimes he looks in her eyes and she knows he’s searching for a ghost.

His callus fingertips graze up her arm, catching on the fine silk of her gloves before gently scratching against her pale skin. Beneath her pauldrons, he unfastens the clasps with deliberate slowness, let’s leather slip from metal buckles until they tumble to the ground. Lips find purchase on her bare shoulder, teeth scrape against where her pulse throbs. If he bites, she can’t tell; the twinge in her chest is more prominent.

Everything goes faster. They make it to her vanity and her skirt is hiked up and the bodice pulled down, and he never takes it all off because it’s the same pink and the same dress and he won’t let her be just her without the reminder of another. Hoisting her up on the tabletop, he hooks her legs around his hips and pulls her in by the back of her neck. Zelda, he whispers against her mouth, and then his teeth sinks into her lower lip. He doesn’t drink but he’s drunk on the echo of her cries because wouldn’t she sound the same too? His tongue laps out to ease the pain but that’s not the pain she wants to numb, so she claws at his skin and leaves her mark in the only way she knows how. When they connect, it’s storms and lightning and glass shattering into fragments into sand into storms that swallow them whole.

She’s her and she’s him and then she’s her again in his eyes, and though her body houses these memories (speckles and splotches that are not her not her not her), she doesn’t feel them like he does. He loved her like a child then but now he’s older, and those lingering looks of blue or red register like the pieces of a broken mirror falling into place. He agonizes so endlessly over leaving her behind that he fails to see her slipping on the shorn ends of their scarlet thread.

One day she’ll fall and that would be fine if only she knew for certain he wouldn’t catch her. She’s princess and goddess and everything that makes her capable, but sometimes he sees just her, touches just her, and it’s the hope of the unlikely that will bring her to ruins.

His grip slackens, arms gently encircling her waist and lips soft just below her jaw. I love you, he says, so muffled and affectionate that she can’t tease out who he’s talking to. She hates that he makes it sound like they’re the same.

(They’re not.)

She makes do with what she can.

[tfloosh]

With You

I’m not gonna lie, I chose this prompt solely so I could use this song for inspiration: With You from Ghost the Musical. I have links to two versions of the song, the OBC and this amazing version by Collabro. I recommend listening to the song if you want, but I warn you: it’s sad. So obviously this is some OoT Zelink angst. Enjoy!

It had been a month since Link had officially moved out of the castle, so Zelda didn’t know why she was doing this now. Picking up his leftover things as if she was a common maid. Not that there’s anything wrong with maids or their work. Zelda just didn’t really understand why she was doing this. She could have simply asked any other maid to do all this for her, but then again, she really couldn’t.

The next day on her way into the stables for an afternoon ride, one of the stable hands, Reynolds if Zelda remembered correctly, asked her to say hello to Link the next time she saw him. She had to turn around and head back to the castle so the stable hand wouldn’t see her tears. It was ridiculous. She had a mutual agreement with Link that they would break off their courtship, and he would leave the castle and live his own life. A life without structure and walls. A life where he could be the adventurer he always was in his heart.

But, Zelda mused, that didn’t mean letting go was going to be easy. She had begun advoiding the places in the castle grounds and Castletown where they had taken evening strolls or sat and talked for hours. Her heart ached too much. And then it seemed as if echoes of Link were haunting the castle like ghosts. Try as she might, despite the discipline of her royal training, Zelda could never really keep her mind off Link for long periods of time. Her days were different; her nights were different. It was as if they were taken with Link when he left.

 You took my days with you, took my nights with you.

 Link spent all his time traveling, visiting all those he had met before he was sent back in time to relive his childhood. He reconnected with Ruto, Darunia, even Saria briefly. But what was best was seeing Malon again. She was probably his best friend besides Zelda.

He paused in his thoughts. It still hurt to think about Zelda. He had loved her, truly loved her, but there was no way it would work out. Even he could see that one of them would end up miserable if they stayed together and got married. Link just wasn’t made to stay cooped up in a castle, and Zelda could never leave her duties as Crown Princess. Star-crossed lovers, Ruto had called them. Lovers unable to be with each other due to outstanding circumstances.

There were so many things Link felt were unfinished between him and Zelda, though. There were conversations they never got around to having, like the full story of what happened in Termina, or even his adventures through time with the Ocarina and awakening the Seven Sages. Some part of Link desired to finish these talks. He felt like a child having mental conversations with Zelda, and sometimes he even went far enough to write letters to her detailing his adventures, past and present. But he never sent them.

They had agreed that total cutoff was the best, and no matter how badly Link wished to pop back into the castle like he used to, he respected Zelda’s wishes. He couldn’t stay anyway. But it was hard, knowing his heart was broken, and it would just keep breaking every day. Everything he had hoped, everything he had dreamed all his life had involved Zelda, was now left with Zelda.

 You took my hopes with you, took my dreams with you.

 Zelda stared out the window sometimes, thinking she might see a flash of a red mare, a hint of a green tunic. Her handmaidens doted on her, calling her lovesick. Impa briskly told her it was all in her head. But for some reason, in the back of her mind, Zelda couldn’t accept that it had ended just yet. She didn’t want to give in to reality. The pain was too much, the regret too big. She couldn’t live like this. Her life, her true life, the one filled with smiles and laughter and happiness and love, was with Link. But Link wasn’t there.

 You took my life with you,

 Link couldn’t keep pretending he didn’t care. He held in his pain around his friends, but he knew they all saw through him. Malon always gave him that look of hers that said she was concerned but wasn’t going to say anything out of respect for his pride. But he couldn’t quite comprehend not seeing Zelda every day, not holding her hand or walking around with her. He still caught himself looking around for Zelda when he found a new and amazing place on his travels or saw something he knew she would love or whenever someone said a joke that made him laugh. He wanted her here with him, to experience the world with him. His world, his whole world, the one with excitement and joy and true adventure and love, was with Zelda. But Zelda had left him alone.

 Took my world with you.