Chapter Text
He’s finishing the last few stitches in fixing up the kids torn clothing – to the best of his ability at least, when a polite knock raps at the door.
In truth, Teba is expecting it to be some servant bringing breakfast, it’s at least mid-morning and his stomach is starting to rumble. The merge few bread rolls he’d nabbed from the kitchen before sunrise to share with his young, hungover companion weren’t much of a meal.
However instead, when he opens the door wearily, he’s met with the princess of Hyrule. Dressed as prim and proper as ever, hair tied back neatly looking as if she hadn’t been completely drunk and covered in…what he was pretty sure was hydromelon pulp and raw eggs only a few hours ago. The only hint perhaps that she was hungover at all was the darkened circles beneath her soft eyes, and the slight pallor in her cheeks.
“My apologies if I woke you,” she says softly, neat little hands folded in front of her, “especially after all the trouble I have caused. Do you have a moment to talk?”
Unsure what to say, Teba shifts to the side slightly and holds out a wing to gesture her inside their merge guest room. It’s only as she’s stepping past him that he processes that Revali is still sprawled out asleep on the bed, and his feathers raise slightly in guilt. “Uh- sorry, Master Revali is…not in much of a position to entertain right now. We might have to keep our voices down – uh, your highness.”
It’s strange to look at her like this. Princess of Hyrule, defender against the darkness, descendant of the goddess herself. She’s so small up this close, and there’s something so deeply sad in her eyes that it tugs at his heart in a way he can’t quite understand. To feel pity for a princess, what a concept.
Zelda glances around the small room, eyes settling on the slowly breathing lump of feathers under the blanket for a moment before nodding and quietly moving towards the other, untouched bed beneath Teba’s hammock, perching herself down neatly. “Of course. He must be feeling quite terrible, I’m aware that Rito should not consume alcohol in the same quantities as Hylians, I should have known better than to let this happen.”
“I mean, it isn’t your fault. Have you met Master Revalli? When the kid decides to do something, I don’t think heaven nor earth could stop him,” Teba assures her with a quiet laugh, hesitantly dithering in the doorway as he glances around, wondering where protocol dictates him to sit – or whether he’s supposed to stand in her presence. Eventually he clears his throat and moves to sit next to Revali’s sleeping form on the bed opposite. “He’ll be fine. Forgive me if it’s rude to ask, but are you doing alright yourself?”
“A princesses duties stop for no-one. Poorly as I may feel, I must still fulfil my daily tasks. I did bring this fate upon myself, after all, so I shan’t complain of the repercussions of my actions.” The words sound almost recited, her eyes staring resolutely at her little hands in her lap. “I wanted to apologise, but also to thank you for your valiant aid last night. Without you, Urbosa, and Sidon, I am unsure what would have become of all of us, and I wish to express my deepest gratitude for your assistance, and my deepest apologies for causing such troubles for you all.”
Moving his wing to take the carafe of water from the nightstand and pour out a glass for the girl is such an instinctive action he doesn’t even process what he’s doing until it’s in her hands and he’s gesturing for her to drink. However, the young princess does appear as if a little colour returns to her cheeks as she slowly nurses the cool liquid from the glass. “Sounds like you’re really beating yourself up about this.”
Clearly, it wasn’t the response the princess had been expecting because she draws her lips from the glass for a moment to gaze at him without words before returning her glance downwards. “I am supposed to be a leader to this land someday, however, despite the deep importance of the political matters at hand, I allowed my childish emotions around my foretold engagement to overtake logic and in turn I have distracted from more important goals. I was so…foolish. To behave so indecently, to allow whim and wonder to influence my actions above logic and reason.”
Teba’s brow furrows slightly as he leans back, careful not to jostle the sleeping Rito. “The Divine Beasts are important to all of us, but you know – you’re allowed to be important too. I hope it’s not out of place for me to say but, you’re barely eighteen and you’ve spent your whole life in a cage of expectations. Freaking out over being pushed into a marriage you’re not ready for is completely reasonable,” his eyes momentarily drift to Revali, the kid’s dark feathers sticking out slightly at the edge of the blanket, and instinctively he pulls it over to cover him , “I’d run away from home if I was in your situation too. Whether the message stuck or not, I’m glad you made a statement about the way you feel to your father, even if you chose kind of a strange way to do it. You don’t have anything to apologise to me for.”
“That is…kind. Thank you.” Zelda’s voice is near a whisper, and he watches as she puts down the glass to twist her hands together nervously. “However, I did not come here merely to apologise. I wanted to warn you, about father- he- I have tried to get him to see reason but he-“
She seems suddenly flustered, pressing a palm to her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, and Teba can’t stop himself from moving a wing to soothingly touch her shoulder. “Easy, take it easy…”
Slowly she takes a breath and lets it out in a slight shudder, not looking him in the eye as she speaks. “Father is insistent upon blaming Revali for my disappearance, even despite my countless admittances of running away by my own accord. He is spouting such nonsense about Revali corrupting Link and stealing away myself and Mipha, claiming that you planned this as a way to punish him for the mistakes of his ancestors. He’s convinced that Revali lead the Lynel to kill us on purpose, and he wants to have you both locked in the dungeons for it.” Tears start to spring from her eyes and she moves her soft hands to rub at them with her palms, taking a soft breath to try to steel herself. “Oh, Teba- I don’t know what to do. I didn’t mean for this to happen, it’s all my fault-“
He supposed, in a way, it made sense. If the king was looking for someone to blame, it wasn’t as if he was going to choose his daughter’s fiancé or another kingdom’s princess. Revali was the easy target amongst them. What he couldn’t understand was the sudden escalation from teenage shenanigans to attempted murder accusations. Frankly it seems like a bit of a wild jump.
“He thinks we’re trying to kill you…?”
“He told me about the discussion – about how you’d spoken of the events that spurred the Hebra reform. I believe he has convinced himself that the Rito still hold grudge against the terrible things we Hylians did in the past, and that as the new leader of Rito Village you have decided to take action against his kingdom for it.” She glances up so briefly that he nearly misses it, deep shame and heartbreak in her watery eyes, as if shunned by his confused gaze. “I shall not allow him to imprison you or Revali, I shall do whatever I must to fix this, I swear it. However I needed to warn you of his plans. I’m so sorry that my childish actions have lead to this, you’re in danger because of me. We could end up at war with the Rito over this, all because I was behaving like a child…”
Hebra reform. He’s heard it somewhere – something muttered from Kanelli’s beak at some point in time perhaps. Dammit – Teba wishes he’d taken the time to read up on his own history and politics. It’s got to be something to do with that line of writing – with Tabatha town. He’s flown over it dozens of times – some abandoned little Hylian town ruins on the south side of the mountain not too far from the village. Nothing about it had ever particularly stood out to him.
It's hard to focus on history when the Princess is wiping tears from her eyes with her dainty fingers and restraining shuddering breaths. Cleaned up as she might be, she’s clearly hungover and miserable and terrified, and all he can do is reach over and wrap warm wings around her shoulders until her breathing evens out and her tears stop flowing. Rubbing soothing circles on her back as she weeps quiet apologies into his feathers.
It’s an attestment to how utterly exhausted she must be that she falls asleep in his embrace, clinging to his feathers like a lifeline.
Teba can only imagine and wince at the indignant earful he’s going to get from Revali when the kid wakes up to realise that he’s tucked the Hylian princess into bed next to him.
--
As Teba’s talons clack against the dusty wooden floors of the expansive castle library, he can’t help but find himself silently cursing Kanelli for appointing him a political leader without anywhere near the kind of training he should probably have for this. If he’d known this role would involve so much history and politics, he’d have turned it down on the spot.
The slightest twinge of homesickness aches in his heart thinking about how if Saki were here, she’d probably know exactly what it all meant. She’d always been good with history and all that academic stuff.
The dusty old library isn’t particularly well lit – torches lining the walls the only light source, illuminating all the neatly shelved books in a soft orange glow. He has to squint to make out titles, brushing his feathers along each row to sweep away the thick coatings of dust obscuring ancient titles. He’d already spent at least an hour traipsing through everything listed under H in foolish hopes there would merely be a book titled ‘Hebra reform’, and hadn’t had a sliver of luck. Now he was on to T in search of Tabantha – though perhaps it would be more fruitful to search R for Rito.
Would a Hylian library even hold history they weren’t proud of? It was probably a waste of his time, in truth. Searching at least gave him something to do until the Champion was conscious and sober enough to explain the meaning of those words.
“They still sing at night in the walls of Tabantha Town.” He’s muttered it under his breath a few times, as if hoping somehow the words would spark some deeply buried memory from his mind to his school days.
He’s so lost in his thoughts and the search that he gives himself the fright of his life when he walks directly into Urbosa’s legs. At least the Gerudo seems to find is amusing rather than offensive, laughing raucously at the way his feathers brush up as he stumbles back before awkwardly clearing his throat to apologise.
“Nice to see another face down here. I was starting to think it was only me and the ghosts,” she teases – a far warmer presence than she had seemed in that meeting room yesterday. No longer a fearsome chieftain spitting threats of war, just a woman with a few books under one arm and a smile on her painted lips. “Quite a limited selection, mostly Hylian literature. This place would be three times the size if it included Gerudo books. The other domains know us for our unmatched battle skills and cultural restrictions, but very few realise that our people have a long-lived history of writing stories.”
“I’m uh, not much of a reader to be honest.” Scratching the feathers at the side of his neck, Teba turns his beak to try to glance at what titles she’s holding. All he can really make out is a few faded letters, but they appear to be fiction at least. “I’m just down here doing some research.”
“Mm, into the happenings of Tabantha town, correct?” She asks easily, brows twitching up in amusem*nt when he looks appropriately cowed. “I had the feeling you had no idea what those words you were speaking meant yesterday, you didn’t seem as if you realised the weight they held.”
“Master Revali wrote it down as a sort of…I dunno, a get out of jail free card? If I’m being totally honest the words mean nothing to me,” he murmurs, shrugging a shoulder as he turns back to the shelves to continue scanning through titles. “I think things are starting to escalate so I guess I should really understand what it is I’m talking about, huh?”
“A good leader trains their mind just as much as their body, for not all battles in this world take place at the blade of a sword,” Urbosa laughs almost fondly, turning to face the bookshelf alongside him with one hand on her hip. “It makes sense that you wouldn’t know, I believe even back then it wasn’t good courtesy to discus it. Hylians have a habit of sweeping their mistakes under the rug only to panic when they resurface. You won’t find any books on the topic here; any obvious records of such times will have been long since destroyed in an attempt to move forwards.”
“Can’t you just tell me about it then, if you know so much about it? What happened in Tabantha town that’s such a huge deal?” It’s exasperating that she just laughs, perhaps his patience is wearing thing with the lack of sleep.
Pursing her lips, Urbosa just spends a few moments perusing the shelves in search before shaking her head softly and reaching up to pluck one from a high shelf, blowing a layer of dust and cobwebs from its spine. “It is not my story to tell, little voe. In truth, I doubt it’s one you want to hear either. Though perhaps it’s necessary to see things in a clearer light.”
She drops the book into his wings, and he fumbles to catch it, winded by the fact it’s far heavier than he expects. Curiously he brushes his feathers across the cover to read the title beneath the thick dust before raising a confused brow at her, which she merely smirks at.
“Try to focus on the fact that the world has grown, and to use your anger as a tool to keep it growing. Do not let rage suck you under, there’s nothing you can do to change the past, but still so much you can do to change the future ahead,” the Gerudo says thoughtfully, shifting her books once more under one arm before turning to continue her search for light reading, heels clicking against the floorboards. “You’ll find what you need to know in there, but read it at your own caution, bird boy, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Her words, though playful, leave a strange twinge of hesitation in Teba’s gut as he watches after her for a moment more as she disappears into another isle before glancing down at the large book in his arms again. Eventually he calls after her in cautious confusion.
“What am I supposed to learn from a cookery book?”
