Legend of Zelda fan fiction, Link's POV. Part one.
A lot of Link and Zelda.
Some potty-mouth issues, but very little compared to what I'm used to.



-
Hey there, whichever deity is listening to my thoughts.
Since the title of ''Hero'' has been placed upon me, I've been trying to keep up to it. To think I was first called that thanks to my... inhuman will to help whoever whenever, even if it means painting a target on my forehead and wearing a ''monsters' dream snack'' sign on my back.
Now, it seems as if I'm fighting in order to keep that title. It's a vicious circle, really.
But now, look at me. I'm in bed, as sore and stuffed as a stumped baba muffin. My hardest week yet. First, someone freaked out my dear old Epona... while I was on her back. Wouldn't have fallen, if I wasn't half asleep... again, on the reins. It wasn't a strange kid wearing an eerie mask, nor his fairies like in the legends; it was a kid who thought it would be a great idea to try his deku nuts on us. Guess he forgot big beasts make big messes when freaked. My poor girl destroyed a couple of fences in the nearby village before I finally got ahold of her. Obviously, since she was my mare, I was supposed to help reconstruct the broken barriers. It was my duty, they didn't exactly force it on me. Though I had to bite my lips before calmly telling the kid he shouldn't mess with horses. Or people. Or even cows, and even less cuccos. Afterwards, to take a break from the tiredsome experience, I went fishing. It would have been a calm day, if it wasn't for a woman popping out of nowhere, telling me a huge monster fish had eaten her wedding ring after attacking her. Something about her marriage being delayed if it wasn't found. After all, gold costs a lot of rupees. So, I tried fishing that monster out.
What a monster.
It was a Zora. A cursed Zora. An angry cursed Zora. So angry in his curse, he mobbed the lady when she had walked by sooner that day. That's what he told me when I broke his curse. But before that, he was a monster of an ugly fish. I had figured a ring-eating fish would love rupees; the thing figured that there were plenty more rupees where that came from. So, instead of eating my red rupee, it jumped on land and tried mobbing me. As an experienced fighter, I gave him a hard time, although I hadn't expected such an attack and the struggle was mutual. I had managed to wrestle him down... several punches after been thrown into the shallow part of the river. I saw something shinning behind his neck when I did and broke it with the hilt of my sword: I had finally been able to unsheathe it. Then, he became a Zora again and, after a few confused stares all around him, he thanked me. He gave the ring back to the lady, who gave me a bottle of milk, and then he told me the evil being who had cursed him was a shadowy spirit living within a well inside a cave hidden somewhere near Death Mountain. He was bright enough to show me the way, I was stupid enough to follow him. As soon as we approached the said place, he left me in a rush, wishing me good luck from afar. The hole was small and rather uninviting. Why a Zora decided to go there, I'll never know. There was a nice stream coming out of the cave hidden by unearthly rock formations, but for a Zora to become curious... I was curious to learn what was behind it. Didn't exactly take into consideration the ''curse'' part of the story and walked inside. After around two hundred feet of walking on a straight line, I stumbled upon a lone rock with this writen on it:

''Wake me up before you go... Go!''

Zelda once told me that it was sometimes better to avoid strange rocks. I should've listened to her.
Instead, I poked the rock, tapped it, kicked it, and finally spilled a bit of leftover milk on it. It was then that a small, black spirit fwooshed before me and bitterly yelled:

''Who told you to wake me up? Is it my rock? Curse that rock! And curse you too! What? It's not working? Well, I have something better for you!''

At that moment, the dreaded spirit lunged onto me and hit me, violently. I didn't feel a blow as we know them, I just felt my heart revulse and my blood thicken. A weird feeling I didn't let overwhelm my senses and, with my blessed sword, I cut the thing in half.
Twice.
In a screech of horror, surprise and perhaps somekind of pain, it fell on the floor like an empty bag and floated again, close to the ground and smaller than probably ever before. Like a small glowing apple it stood, eyeing me with its sad eye holes, and started pleading for mercy.

''I'm sorry, dear master! I get carried away!''

''Can you... undo whatever you did to me?'' I asked, dizzied.

I was breathing, but I didn't feel the air around me. My throat was itchy, irritating, burning by the minute. My head, although empty of all toughts, felt full and heavy. The atmosphere felt strangely chilly all of a sudden. My nose was pained, as if something was overfilling it. It was a highly unusual feeling, to which the spirit had answered:

''I can't undo it: it's the flu. You'll have to stay in bed for more or less seven days, doing nothing and drinking water like a horse! Unless you want it to become a pneumonia and die spitting your lungs out!''

To that, it laughed.
Bitter, I didn't bother cleaning my empty milk bottle and used it to capture the malovelent spirit.

My ride towards the castle was tiredsome. My mind felt as bad as my body. The unfriendly spirit kept pleading for its release, yet sending random curses and hurling random unkind words. Epona was twitchy because of it, and I admit I was starting to lose my patience. I was also getting more and more dizzy, thirsty.

''The horse keeps calling you Link,''

I never knew Epona talked to me... that much.

''Link... aah! I've heard about you! Monsters don't like you, you make it a hobby to slaughter them. What'd they ever do to you, uh? So, they kill people, they eat lifestock, no hard feelings, right? Why do you have to take everything personal?''

Of course, I was set on never letting it get the better of me.

''Maybe you're just a random puppet! A puppet of princess Zelda! It's her duty to keep the land clear, but you're the one doing it, right?''

''She never asked me.''

It's true, you know.

''No, she never did have to ask! I know you heroes. Everything to impress the ladies. Well, I've got news for you: unless you turn out to be a prince, you'll never get in her pants, if you know what I mean!''

''Shut up, butt face!'' I snapped.

That was a drop of vinegar too much. I took the bottle and threw it upwards.

''Please master, no! I am sorry!''

I caught it back because if it fell and broke, I would both lose a bottle and a prisoner.

''Oh, thank you, master! I'm so afraid of hitting the ground!''

I just gave it a cold stare, shoved it back into my bag and trotted on, sore, sick and genuilely annoyed.

Princess Zelda I've met a little more than a couple of years ago, I think, shortly after acquiring the title of 'Hero'. There were violent acts perpetuated not so far from where I lived and, against my caretakers' will, I went to investigate. I was thirteen, I'm convinced. I was old enough to see what was going on by myself. Arriving at the village, I saw worried people, battered children, tortured men and abused wives. The few soldiers left alive were corrupted, thus why no one from Castle Town ever came to investigate the rumours of violence that were floating by.
I kept a low figure for a while, avoiding to get noticed much and hiding the small sword I had with me, stolen from a body I had found there, until I found the man behind all that chaos. It was a strange wizard trying to make an army out of bitter ReDeads. He was weak, as if recently woken from a long slumber, but still strong enough to cause terror amongst the villagers. I had waited for the right moment before being able to get to challenge him, one on one. He laughed. I never was an intimidating fellow, though they say my cold stare can give my adversaries the creeps when I'm pissed. I was pretty angry then, but he was a wizard and he believed in his dark magic. My only training was some little fencing I was taught for fun at the small school in the village I was born in and thinking about it now makes me believe it was a foolish idea to take him on. I did succeed, I did manage to beat him after avoiding most of his magical balls. Yes, balls, the younger me would've laughed at that thought. The few balls that did hit me gave me quite a shock, especially the last one, but I recovered, and I won. The only thing he ever knew was his dark magic and that's what lost him. I later learned, from Zelda herself, that it's the peculiar tatoo on my left hand that helped me against his wizardry, for wizards don't just have balls of painful light as weapons: they also tend to mess up with your mind.

''Everything you've done came from within you, for your Triforce is unused, yet its very presence shields you from magic that would've gotten the better of others your age, and even older.''

The villagers helped me recover from my burns, but by the time all the corrupted guards were completely taken care of by some brave farmers and the royal knights came to settle the case, I was gone. My foster parents gave me quite a talking to, but no more than the other twelve children they had to take care of. I was the calmest one, sort of. The boldest one when time came, but I didn't spend my time rebelling for no reason, unlike the nine other boys. Well, not all nine, but most. After seing what I had seen, I left my home for good. No one agreed, yet I did it anyway.

During my journeys, I've helped people left and right, earning the reputation of ''Hero'' on the way. My name spread like wildfire and soon monsters came after me in order to gain the renowned title of ''Hero Slayer''. By the time that happened, I had become a better fighter. I've even learned a little magic thanks to some helpful fairies who kept saying it would help me against the big evil to come, whatever it was. So, I could light small fires and send some weak electrical shockwaves.
I have to work on those.
Anyway, It didn't take too long before some royal guards found me and told me the King and Queen wanted to see me. I met them both, and they are nice people, but it's the young princess who kept my attention. To keep it simple, she's simply beautiful. Her hair's like melted gold coins made filaments, yet its shadow's made of furious red undertones. Her eyes are puddle versions of Lake Hylia on its best days. And herself, her presence, is heartwarming. A princess, no doubt, yet behind that distance she needs to keep with us all, she touched me with one stare, one smile. Since she was also a wielder of the Triforce, they let me speak to her after telling me how honoured they were to meet me and how they appreciate my work. It seems my attitude wasn't seen as examplary in the eyes of the guards and servants around us, but I was very polite and soft spoken. I had no idea what I did wrong, until Souva told me the ''huge mistake'' I did, but back to princess Zelda.
She asked her parents if it was alright to show me around the castle a little. That incommodated them a little, but they accepted. Walking with her, I immediatly felt a bond between us. As if some kind of rope had been attached to my heart and made it beat along with hers. Don't know if she felt the same way, but it was the first time I felt this soft inside. Later found out I would be feeling the same for a few other girls, and even later found out it's commonly called an infatuation according to Madam Blova. Except, even now, when I feel dreamy after staring at a beautiful girl for too long, I can't say I feel the same about Zelda. It's just not the same. Whenever her soul moves, I feel it. Kind of... bugging me. The first time I ever felt lust however was in front of a dancer. She had the moves to move my... thoughts. I was quite young, and had blushed violently because of that, but I'm getting a better control on that.
But Zelda... We talked a bit. About important stuff. About Hyrule. Her thoughts, her doubts, her feeling something bad was going to happen soon, as in sometime this century. Then, she turned to me and asked me to tell her what the other girls her age did in their free times. She also asked about me. So I told her about the small jobs they had when they were poorer, I told her about the school, my foster parents. I told her how they took me in without a second thought after my mother died in an accident, leaving me parentless since my father was killed a month before my birth, even though Zupa and Michello didn't have a thirteenth bed for me. I told her about our games, our fights, our problems and resolutions. How my sisters acted and reacted to whatever went on, how my girl friends acted and reacted, only to show her how two-sided the girls I've known could be.
Zelda knows so much, yet so little.
I was asked to come back to the castle every now and then to tell the Royal Family what went on inside their kingdom, and beyond if I ever got there. They say they trust my plain honesty since soldiers and nobles would usually keep some details hidden, or altered, or they would have simply not seen everything there was to see. It was a good deal.
My last error that day was to think like a gentleman from the girl books I've tried to read in my youth in order to parody my sisters and girl friends better whenever they felt like making fun of my ears or boyish habits. Remembering one paragraph I never even finished, I turned to Zelda one last time before exiting the court, taken her right hand and placed a kiss on it. The king smiled, the queen chuckled uncomfortably, the knights twitched and the princess giggled. Since she was apparently pleased, I thought everything was perfect. Until someone tapped my shoulder later on the streets and told me:

''Hello young man. You're Link, right? I am Souva, a simple castle employee, but I was entitled to tell you some things to do and what not to do when meeting royalty.''

Turns out I had to bow in front of royalty, to not look into their eyes until spoken to, to never touch a maiden with blue blood, unless I was a noble myself and even then, only on special occasions. And then some other details I can't remember and just won't.

With time, the crush I had on the princess grew. I thought it was because she was a pretty sight. Turns out I am simply attracted to her whole being. I have the beginning of a lusty feeling towards other girls I've met on the road. I mean, I really feel like touching them. Not her. Well, yes, but not in the same way. Yet I don't think I'm in love. It's really weird. I'm as attached to her company as I am fond of my freedom as a traveller. I'm almost convincing myself I'm doing it all for her when I clearly know I'm not.
That, or the flu is getting the best of me.

Near the castle, the spirit started talking again.

''The castle? Bringing me to the castle? What are you thinking? Think the princess knows everything? I'm useless there! I...''

I threw it in the air, again, and barely caught it back.

''I-I am sorry, my master! I am honoured to meet the Royal Family!''

''You're going to the lab, my dear friend.''

Look at me now. In this bed since yesterday. I can barely sleep at night, yet everyday I take seldom naps when the sun is up. I cough and I blow my nose so often I'm somehow hoping the spirit got what it deserved in the lab. I came here to tell the nobles what I've seen and the first thing Zelda did was to throw me on a bed, telling me I should recover before going anywhere.
I did, once, think Zelda throwing me on a bed would be a pleasant experience. Kind of after meeting that Gerudo dancer again.
I, apparently, was wrong.
Back to my misfortune, the princess knows that no matter what I do, I always end up risking my life. I tried to get out of this fancy, comfy, well-decorated room, but she cast a spell on me! I can't move from here until I am completely recovered. Just from where did she get that spell?
I'll get fed everyday, three times a day. I'll get plenty of water, and some milk when I'm nice. I've tried forcing her to let me go, people outside could be needing my help. I even took my deepest, darkest voice, trying to convince her villages were burning and cattle was stolen, but whatever I feel towards her she feels towards me. Not sure if she likes me as much as I like her, but she knows when I lie and she knows when my panic is faked. Finally, I had no choice but to give in. Seven days...
Hyrule won't fall within seven days.