My name is not Destiny.
My name is not Destiny.
A/N: Merry chrism, Ex!!! @exphelk :>> SURPRISE! I’M YOUR SANTA. ALSO SORRY BECAUSE IT’S CLEAR I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ZELDA AND WENT OFF A FEW SYNOPSIS PAGES, BUT ANYWAY. :>> I HOPE U LIKE IT. SORRY FOR THE RUSTY WRITING :’>
ALSO I CAN'T DRAW THAT WELL, BUT FOR YOU, I STILL WILL.
ENJOY?
~Shintori Khazumi <3
She huffs, gripping the master sword by the hilt tighter, a desperate attempt to keep her grounded as she flees far and away from her anxieties and the shadows that have quite literally given chase.
“Damned Ganon…” She curses under shaky breaths, running after the barely visible peeks of light at the end of the forest. “I’m almost- Almost… Agh! There!”
Taking a leap of faith, she finally stumbles onto the clearing, barely keeping herself upright as she spots the tower she’d been hoping for and none of the beasts that had chased her for the better half of an hour.
“Finally. For the love of all Hyrule…” She gasps, taking gulps of air and straightening up, brushing debris and leaves from her tunic before taking the short walk up the path to the tower standing intimidatingly tall- all walls and no doors. She looks around in confusion, circling the ground. “Now where in the world is the entra-?”
“Psst!”
With a flinch, pointed ears struggle to find the source of the momentary sou-
“Psst! Up here, silly~.”
Whipping her head up, she sees her: All brown hair and dignified dress, legs casually hanging out of a window she infers is no less than five stories up.
“Only took you forever and a day to get here, and even longer to spot me.” She rolls her eyes, faux annoyance on her face, quickly betrayed by giggles and kicking feet. “How was the trip?” She asks it so casually, the hero almost- no, scratch that- definitely feels insulted.
“Maybe if you’d be kind enough to tell me where the door is, I’d be more inclined to make small talk after just escaping my demise… Princess Zelda.”
‘Zelda’ audibly gags at the comment, making a show of her disgust to the petrified blonde down below.
“Did you know, I hate that name. Princess this, Zelda that. Descendant and ruler and responsibilities blablablabla-“
“And did you know you could potentially be just a blot of red on the ground if you keep on hanging out over the- BY THE GODDESSES WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOI-“
Without much time to think, the hero braces herself to catch the suddenly and very quickly falling princess from the tower-
“SIKE!”
She hadn’t realized it then, but she discovers her eyes had actually foolishly closed in her pathetic attempt to catch a Princess Zelda floating in air- all happily suspended above the ground amongst the sound of giggles.
“I gotta say…” ‘Zelda’ clicks her tongue, giving the hero a once-over. “Had to catch myself in case I broke you.”
‘What?’
“I mean… You are a rather scrawny looking Link.” She whistles appreciatively however as ‘Link’ instinctively retaliates with a subconscious flexing of her forearms. “Though I could be wrong.” She shrugs, eyelashes batting slowly at Link in blatant flirtation.
“And you are the least dignified Zelda that has ever come into existence…” ‘Link’ retorts, gathering her composure and fixing the sling of her bag that had fallen off her shoulder. Brushing the dust from her clothes, she quips inaudibly, “-and certainly not the wisest tool in the shed, if I have to say anything about it.”
“Hey! I heard that!”
Well, Link thought it was quiet enough. She deftly dodges a stone chucked her way.
“Well, y’know,” ‘Zelda’ runs a hand through her hair as ‘Link’ contemplates that she, does not, in fact, know. “If you have to live out some predetermined fate over and over, wouldn’t you want to add some spice from time to time?”
“Catching a falling Princess from fifty feet is not the kind of spice I’d like to have at the moment, Zelda.”
The princess groans, swatting at the hero’s arm, but missing by a few inches. “I seriously hate that name. Like, can’t you call me something else?”
“But that is your name, Princess Zelda. Though if you’d prefer I refer to you as ‘your highness’, I would not be opposed-“
“Blegh- Zelda this, Zelda that. What the hell, call me anything but that. I don’t wanna be named after some lady who’s died like, a hundred times. Heck, I bet you don’t even like the name, ‘Link’.” She settles onto her feet, no longer hovering around ‘Link’ like the annoying bug the hero is quickly associating her to be.
“First of all, that ‘lady’ who constantly dies and is reborn again is none other than you. Also, I…” She pauses, actually thinking about her following statement, deep down unsure of its actual honesty. “I don’t mind the name, Link. I think I like it.”
“You think.” She receives a pointed stare.
“Fine, I do!” She huffs with finality.
“Aww, so quick with the wedding vows, we haven’t even gotten to know each other yet!”
‘Link’ goes in for a tackle that has her stumbling forward as ‘Zelda’ smoothly floats out of the way.
“Ooh, is the pretty hero getting a little shy?” She grins teasingly, poking at ‘Link’s’ cheeks, to which her response is to try to bite those offending fingers off. “Feisty.”
“Enough.” ‘Link’ huffs, already physically, and now even mentally exhausted. “Just spit it out.”
“Spit what out?”
Was this coy princess playing games or genuinely clueless?
“Your name. What your actual name is, or preferred name… or whatever it is you want to be called. Just. Get it over with so we can leave this place and return you to the kingdom.”
“Eehh, I thought I had successfully distracted you from that. Then we could fall in love and elop-“
“Name.” ‘Link’ was no royalty, but the authority in that voice compels the princess herself to obey.
“Akko.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Akko.” She gives in. “Well, Atsuko. But Akko sounds cuter and more up-close and personal, you get me?”
“No, I do not get you, Princess Atsuk-“
“Akko.” Link rolls her eyes at the insistence. Well, two can play the hard-headed game.
“Princess Atsuko.”
“AK.KO.”
“Let’s compromise and I call you Miss Atsuko?”
‘Akko’ or Atsuko, or whatever the Princess Zelda’s name is looks as though she is pondering over the offer-
“Akko.”
Link clicks her tongue, turning around on her heel and prepares to march forward, a difficult princess in tow. She is annoyed; she is exhausted, and bruised and battered, and fed up.
“You know what? Let us just… go. I am frankly tired of your shenanigans. I’d like to get this quest over and done with and return home to-“
“To what?”
Link turns wide-eyed at the princess’s interruption. “Pardon?”
“What will you be doing after this, my dear Link?” Akko looks solemn; sounds the part too. Link might almost buy that she is. “After you fulfill this damned, repetitive legend- A curse of a cycle, I would call it- what is it that you can return to?”
There’s a bitterness in her tone, sprinkles of hopelessness and the knowledge of something Link has never tried questioning before in all her years of knowing and realizing that she’s been living- and dying- a never-ending tale of a hero who foolishly charges on, into the constant pull of their destiny just because.
And yet, she does not want to admit to that. She does not want to say she is aware; that she agrees with the one person who probably understands this situation the most.
So she bristles, fixes a hard look. She dons a mask of indifference, cold and resolute.
“What are you implying, ‘Zelda’?”
Said lady scowls, hands noticeably balled up into fists, clenching tighter and tighter, desperately holding her anger at bay. “All I’m saying, LINK, is that you’ve trained your whole life, dedicated, DEVOTED every bit of it to one day maybe going on some wack-ass journey to fight the big bad man with your oh-so-special sword, find the princess, save her, restore balance to the world, and then…? What. Happily ever after? Fight more villainy? What more is there for you to do beyond this, Link? What life awaits you? Have you ever thought of that? Do you even have one?”
Link hasn’t. Link doesn’t.
Link cannot speak.
“I sure as hell don’t. Raised as a princess, taught to learn this, learn that, do magic, be wise, be proper and prim, then get locked up in a tower I could so easily get out of and wait like the damsel in distress I’m meant to be while the hero saves me from a villain I’d rather shoot with a beam of magic and call it a day.”
“Then-“
“But then what? What do I have, Link? What do I have after that? I go back home, back to the kingdom, be the queen and eventually rot and die without having seen the world, without having known it, but having the audacity to call myself the bearer of wisdom for the triforce.” Her voice is raw with emotion, with desperation. “Wisdom for fools, is what it is. How can it be wisdom I understand when all I’ve known is what they’ve fed into my mind: A fate inescapable with nothing beyond it.”
Link can only stare. Stare for moments and moments more.
Only sudden terror-inducing howls in the distance, accompanied by reddening skies can pull her out of this stupor. Duty over the heart. Mind over matter, she believes.
“Let’s go. We will talk about this later.” She announces, hand already wrapped around a thin wrist, tugging as gently, but as decisively as she can.
“Will we?”
She pauses.
“Let us leave, Zelda.”
With much more force than what she’d normally deem okay to use on any royal, all-the-more on a princess, Link pulls the lady along, steps growing more and more rushed the longer time ticks.
An abundance of time that she now no longer knows what to do with.
//
The next few days are spent in battle; both against the darkened forces of ‘power’, and Link’s internal conscience. They never get to talk about ‘it’, but Link is certain that she’s gotten on Akko’s nerves to be given such hostile silent treatment.
Or that is, until the bored princess begins chatting away.
And not in the most preferable of situations.
“Have you ever thought of what it would be like to go beyond this land we’ve always been in? Cross a sea so vast you’d think it endless, but SUDDENLY. Suddenly there’s land and a whole new people you’ve never met.” The princess sketches a picture out in Link’s mind’s eye.
She chuckles joylessly, grunting. “M-Maybe I will. Think of it. Later when I’m not fighting a damned minotaur of all things!” She hisses as she pushes her sword back at the heavy axe bearing its full weight upon her, calling upon the power of courage to assist her to no avail.
“Fine, fine.” Akko sniffs, assisting lazily with a flick of a hand. And just like that, the beast is collapsed on the floor, none of the mounting intimidation it had pressed on Link left.
Link curses the ease at which the princess defeats all monsters they had encountered, putting her years of practice to train.
Alas, they tarry on. Onward to the city.
To their home.
//
“Hey, dude?”
“Link.” Link insists through gritted teeth, slicing through the thick overgrowth to pave a way for her ‘princess’. “What.”
“So prickly.” Zelda- no, Akko, comments, swatting away at a fly that happened to cross her line of sight. “Anyway, how much longer are you willing to keep up with this boring schtick?”
“What schtick? And what is so boring about it?” Is the response, ‘boring’ being punctuated with two slashes of the master sword cutting off a particularly large vine that falls to their feet with a dull, wet thud into a shallow puddle.
Akko rolls her eyes, full of ire. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do.” The princess pushes.
“I do not.” Link halts, aggressively turning to Akko, brows furrowed. “So would you drop it and come quietly?”
She is not graced with a response- only an exaggerated huff and an angry princess marching off ahead of her into what Link has not yet realized to be her last fit.
//
“Here.”
“Wh-what’s this?” Akko barely manages the question through her chattering teeth, form shivering all the more as a particularly strong gust of wind reaches them via the wide cave entrance. The fire does little to stave off the biting cold, and they are ill-prepared in clothing for this trip, Link has come to know.
“It will help. If you eat something warm, you’ll feel better.” She says, taking Akko’s frozen hands and delicately inserting the skewer stick. “The soup is almost done. Just give me a moment more.”
“…”
“What? Why are you staring at me?” Link doesn’t have to look up to know, with how that gaze bores deep into her, its weight heavy.
“Do you like me now?” Akko spits out, blunt, tactless. “Just saying since you’re much, much nicer than when we first met.” She lays out her observation.
Link sighs, spooning some soup into a cup she’d brought with her.
“I tolerate you now, if that’s what you’d like to know. We’ve been together over a month now, travelling, searching, lost.” Link has no idea where they went wrong on their journeyed path back, but they’ve long since been wanderers, unable to find their promised home. All they’ve uncovered were trials and tribulations, and battles hardly won- No solace in sight.
Princess Akko’s gaze flickered to the cave’s opening with a dash of melancholy, quickly masked into her usual dumb demeanor as she bit on the juicy piece of meat offered.
Link pretended not to have seen a thing, continuing on with her words. “And while I do not particularly hold any dear feelings towards you, time has taught me that we can get along; and I don’t have to like you to be civil, nor to be kind. I am still your ‘fated hero’, regardless of you hating that notion.” Link hands over warm gold that seeps through Akko’s skin, pleasantly thawing the ice over everything, even her heart.
“I don’t.” She murmurs.
“Pardon?” Hands spooning more soup into a wooden mug pauses mid-action.
“I don’t hate it.”
“Hate what?” Link tries to clarify, lost.
Akko clicks her tongue, growling and glaring and… pink?
Link has to strain her ears to pick up her next words, heart doing strange things in its cage.
“I don’t hate you being my hero.”
There’s something in Akko’s eyes that Link doesn’t really get. She doesn’t understand. She still nods as though she does however, something telling her that she must not respond negatively in this one moment.
“I see.”
The princess seems to want to say something still, mouth opening and closing, lips pursing together, eyes darting about.
“Yes?” Link encourages, curious.
“I-if I had to say…” Akko looks away, that initial light pink dusting her cheeks deepening, crawling to her ears.
Link thinks she looks much warmer now.
“…I like the thought. Of you as my hero.”
Link thinks she feels much warmer now.
//
Time does strange things to one’s perception of another. It twists and confuses and plays silly games with one’s heart.
It taunts the poor Hero’s heart with each passing day.
Zel- Akko, Link must remind herself, is not all she’d thought she’d be at the beginning. Which is to say, she hadn’t thought much of her, to be fair.
Akko is actually wisdom- and even courage- personified, enough to put Link’s title and bearing of ‘Hero’ to shame. She’s faced each of their enemy encounters with grace, tactic, power, experience, and bravery.
Link finds that Akko is what she has always believed the Tri-force should be.
It astounds her.
It pulls her in, entrancing.
And one day, she simply discovers herself in a spell, cursed? Blessed? By a face she’d once found irritating, now only mocking her with how beautiful she’d catch herself finding it.
Is it their because they are fated to be together? The hero and the damsel, the Knight and the princess? Are these feelings, too, dictated by Link’s pre-prepared destiny? One that Akko so ardently tries to break free from?
She does not know.
Nor does she know when or why Akko has begun to look at her the way she does now, and smile at her like the sun so warm and comforting in the spring.
She cannot fathom the butterflies she feels when Akko patches up her wounds after another battle, holds her hand as they walk in the dark on their way to set up another camp far and away from home, while they speak of what they will do next from that point onward.
Link cannot even hope to begin understanding how Akko’s screechy laughter had converted itself into the most soothing melodies in her ears the more she hears it.
Link does not remember when they started to share one another’s warmth at night to stave off the darkness and the chill when the moon was naught to be found- but though she refuses to admit it aloud… she likes it. She hopes it continues on, even when they’ve fulfilled the rolls they have to play as pieces of this game they’d come to awaken to.
And as she brushes her fingers through brown bangs, another quiet night flowing into the dawn, she hopes that at least this newfound scene in the play they act out does not get erased by destiny.
//
“AKKO!”
The smoke in her lungs does little to hinder the scream wrenched from the depths of her heart, twisting and churning her insides inconsolably as she crawls forward with her one remaining arm.
No. No. NO.
This can’t be how this story ends.
They were supposed to return to the city. Akko was to be crowned queen, and Link was to be dubbed a triumphant hero for all the land to see!
And yet.
“ganoONNDOORRRFFFFF!” Link rages, pushing herself upright on that sole upper limb, blood trickling from her lips as she charges with blurry eyes to the grotesque figure waving the princess’s limp body as a victory flag before tossing it to the disarmed hero who catches her barely, falling onto her own back onto the flame-filled ground.
“Goodbye, bearers of wisdom and courage.
… May we never meet again. In this life, or the next.”
The voice booms in Link’s head, it adds on to the nauseating feeling. She barely registers the blinding light from the magic text that encircles them, bright red and glaring. All she can think of is the body atop hers, still warm, still breathing, still alive.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She says while she knows Akko can still hear. Barely, but she feels a hand squeeze her own, a kiss pressed to her collarbone as she tries to roll them over, to shield the princess from the blazes falling upon them.
She feels that hand come up to her face, brushing away the tears she hadn’t noticed had already fallen.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Link repeatedly apologizes through a cracking, wobbly tone of voice, drops clear and red falling onto Zelda’s stunning face.
The hand cups her cheek, a scratched up voice consoling her very soul, muted, but still heard even above the rumbling of the heavens. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Link shakes her head, crumbles onto Akko’s frame, embracing tight. “N-no! No, it’s not- you’re not-!”
Link heaves a deep breath, sobs wracking her frame as she tries not to scream, especially not when the lights in the princess’s eyes begin to dim, growing less and less focused on her.
“A-Akko?!”
It’s a tiny whisp, it’s a barely present kiss.
Link is choked up as the next words are her Princess’s last breath.
“May we meet sooner in another life. May this life never be this way again-…“
“Diana.”
‘Huh?’- goes unspoken, and yet Link knows, wants Akko to know to.
“My name…” She murmurs, pressing closer, lips sealing their goodbyes.
The lights around them flash brighter, consciousness waning and giving into white as they release their souls from this world’s confining shackles.
“My name is Diana.”
//
She fixes her tie. It’s important to make a great first impression at any time. Moreso at an interview.
Being a bodyguard may not require her to be all that smart, but over the years, she’s learned that some amount of wisdom and knowledge does not hurt one’s chances. And so she walks into that hall to meet her hopefully soon-to-be-boss.
“Come in.”
Something about that voice tickles her ears in an odd way. Why has it always sounded so familiar?
She’s sure it has nothing to do with constantly seeing this prominent figure on television, watching all her shows faithfully. It definitely has nothing to do with that.
It’s just, ever since the first time she’d listened to her on the radio… something just-
“Hurry up, next applicant!” The angered manager calls, and she squabbles about, near-running into the room.
The door swings open, the bodyguard steps in, eyes meet…
And all memories come rushing in as fast as her feet had carried her into the conference.
Wide eyes melt into a familiarly smug smile, one that should irritate her, but it doesn’t. It’s so warm. It’s so beautiful.
Just like it was destinies ago.
Her heart stutters then leaps to full throttle, making her chest ache as she drinks in the next few words.
“So, Link. What shall we do in this lifetime?”
She swallows the lump in her throat, nerves or tears, she didn’t know what caused it. It was irrelevant anyway.
She couldn’t help the grin forming on her face, tears stinging, but not falling. Squeezing her fists, then walking forward and holding a very present hand out, she gives her introduction.
“Well, Miss Zelda. To start,”
Akko, Zelda, the princess, her boss- laughs so hard, tears come out. She grasps Link’s hand, holding it tenderly tight.
“Why don’t you call me ‘Diana’?”
END
A/N: MERRY CHRISM EX I LOVE U YEY <3.
Sorry I could only do a little sketchy thing because I'm out of practice and time ;-; <3 HOPE YOU LIKED IT
~Shintori Khazumi
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