Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda

Five Times Link Was Homeless
(and one time Link knew exactly where he belonged)

"Let's take your calligraphy practice out to the courtyard today, Princess," Impa says.

Zelda looks at her, with Impa's head turned to look out the window and her arms crossed over her chest. That's not Impa's get down and stay out of sight of the windows, I think this is an assassination attempt voice, so she drops her pen and scrambles out of her desk to look too.

She leans her arms on the windowsill and presses her face against the glass. "Why?" she asks. There's an early winter chill in the air this morning, and the cold glass fogs up at her words. She scoots over on her right elbow so she can see again.

Impa turns away to gather up Zelda's pens and inks.

Zelda stretches up on her tiptoes, holding her breath. Outside the castle grounds look the same as always—green lawns, green yews, and the guards on their rounds. She squints harder.

Impa says, "Come along, Princess."

As she trudges down the halls behind her, books squeezed against her chest, Zelda frowns at Impa's back. It's not that Zelda doesn't want to sit in the courtyard, because she loves lessons outside, and the schoolroom is okay but it gets stuffy day-in and day-out. But whatever Impa saw out the window Zelda didn't spot, and Impa's not telling her.

It's not fair.

Impa sets her things on the stone steps, and Zelda plops down beside them with much huffing and ruffling of skirts. Impa doesn't take the hint. So she opens her workbook on her knees, unscrews the cap from the ink bottle, checks her pen—

—and looks up to see the boy in green slipping around the courtyard's arched entryway.

"Link!" Zelda shoves the calligraphy book off her lap and jumps up to meet him, all her crossness with Impa tossed aside too. "You're back! Did you find your friend?"

Link grins at her, and waves at Impa, and he looks just like Zelda remembers him before he left months ago, though maybe a little more scabby about the knees. But he still doesn't look like the boy from Zelda's dreams, the boy she saw with the blue fairy at his side.

Her own grin falters as he shakes his head.

He didn't find Navi. After Link told Zelda he was leaving on a journey he searched all the places he and Navi traveled together, and every inch of the forest, and he asked Saria and the other fairies and even Mido. He even tried asking the Great Deku Tree Sprout if he knew where Navi went, since now that Ganondorf never got to place his curse on the forest he's been growing, but the Great Deku Tree Sprout couldn't help Link either.

Link's a Hylian boy without a fairy again.

Zelda squeezes Link's hand in her ink-smudged ones. She never met Navi in this life. But there are things, sometimes, in Zelda's dreams, ever since she met Link. She's not sure if they're dreams her mind has made up, from Link's stories of the future gone terribly wrong, or if they're her own memories from the life she never lived—but the one thing she's certain of is, Navi's a precious friend and very important to Link.

"Well, you can't give up," she says. "I just know you'll see her again. You have to, after everything you've been through."

Link nods, and Impa crouches down beside them on the grass. "Where will you look next?" she asks. "Do you think you'll leave Hyrule and try one of the neighboring kingdoms?"

Zelda tugs Link's hand and says, "I'll write you an official letter of protection from the Kingdom of Hyrule to give you safe passage! I've never gotten to do one before, but I'll use my fanciest writing and a real royal seal, don't worry."

Link slips his hand out of Zelda's. That's sort of why he stopped by, although not really for the letter, but the letter actually sounds like a really great idea and if Zelda wants to do that for him he'll take it gratefully. But Zelda lent him her ocarina, to keep it out of Ganondorf's reach and to help Link on his travels. And it's been more useful than Link can say, and he's grateful, but it's a royal heirloom and he needs to return it to her now because he's not looking for Navi anymore.

"What?" Zelda says, as Link pulls the Ocarina of Time out of his pouch and presses it into her hands. It's cold against her fingers, not like Link's hand.

He's not giving up, not really. It's not like Link won't keep an eye out for Navi until he finds her again, because he will. And it's also not that he won't leave Hyrule, because he thinks he might. But he's realized...

Link doesn't want to be thirty-five, one day, and for Navi to come back and be bursting to tell Link all of the adventures she's had while she was away, and when she asks what he's been up to in the meantime all he can say is, he waited for her.

He wants to tell Navi about all his adventures too, about the strange places he's seen, and the people he met there, and all the friends he made, and the weird things he ate that he probably shouldn't have eaten. He wants to make memories to laugh over and share with her, and with all the friends he's already got, in the forest and scattered throughout Hyrule.

And he doesn't think he can do that, not if he stays in the Kokiri Forest that isn't his home anymore and waits for Navi to come back.

Impa ruffles his hair, half her mouth turned up into a smile. "May the Goddesses smile on you," she says. "I think you'll be fine, Link."

Link tugs his hat back on straight and clutches his hands over his hair, though he can't help grinning back at Impa, and a part of Zelda squeezes tight and doesn't want to write Link that letter anymore, wants to tell him he has to come back again to get it.

So she announces, "Okay, Link, I'm going to write you that letter of protection right now!" and whirls away to set the ocarina down and fetch her best paper.

Link sits down on the steps beside her to watch, and wraps his arms around his knees. He thinks he'll leave today, after he gives back his house to the Kokiri. He's not sure where he's going yet, or how long. But he thinks, in between visiting all these new places he's going to see, he wants to come back to visit Hyrule, too.

And maybe whenever he's in Hyrule he can drop by Castle Town, and sneak into the palace gardens, and share all his stories with Zelda, too.

If she wants to hear them.

Zelda signs her name at the bottom of the letter with a handful of flourishes, and then adds a few more for good measure. "I have to go to my father's office to get the royal seal," she says, and stands up. "I'll be right back.

"And," she adds, "of course I'd like that."

Link grins, and it's not for many years later that Zelda realizes that the too-full feeling in her chest is one of many places he's burrowed in and made himself a home.