uh oh
I got bitch slapped by an idea for an AU of one of my own stories, which is hubris I’ve never really dreamed of
but a while a back I did to the waters and the wild, which centers around Urbosa’s grief and fear after the Queen died and Rhoam refused to honor Imelda’s wish for Zelda to be fostered with Urbosa. So Urbosa tries to take Zelda with her, back to Gerudo Town. She gets as far as the stables when Arakna stops her and talks her down.
But what if she didn’t talk her down?
Urbosa and Arakna get out of Hyrule Castle with Zelda in tow, and go on the run. Arakna cuts and dyes Urbosa and Zelda’s hair, finds them clothes more appropriate to merchants, and helps them hide while she goes to tell the Elders and Urbosa’s sister Ubari what’s going on.
Urbosa refuses to let her own actions endanger her tribe, so she formally abdicates her chieftainship and hands the crown off to Ubari. For the next few months Urbosa and Arakna and Zelda live on the run, sleeping rough and rarely staying on one place for more than a few days at a time.
They form a happy enough family unit, though Urbosa wants to settle somewhere for Zelda’s sake, especially with winter coming on. She takes on some mercenary work, Arakna uses her merchant contacts to get food or clothing or a place to stay, Zelda becomes a foraging fiend. They get by. Zelda’s having the time of her life, free of strain and responsibility, and though she misses Mother and sometimes Father she at least can spend time with her Mata and Vante Arakna!
One day Zelda gets sick, though. Very sick. And Urbosa has heard that there is a very great healer in Zora’s Domain, someone who is known for never turning a supplicant away. So Urbosa bundles Zelda up and basically runs the fucking gauntlet through monster infested territory to get her little bird to the Zora capitol.
King Dorephon and his people are startled when a massive woman with a sword in one hand, a dying child in the other, and an arrow between her ribs staggers into their kingdom, tells them to save her daughter, and passes out.
After this inauspicious start, Urbosa and her weird little family settle down into Zora’s Domain as the King’s supplicants, sacred to Hylia and protected under the laws of hospitality. Urbosa confesses some of her situation-- by her culture’s laws, this child is as much hers as the father’s, but she cannot get justice among the Hylians, so she resorted to desperate measures. (Dorephon’s not stupid; he’s heard of the crisis in central Hyrule, has seen the wanted posters. He makes the connection. But anyone who would brave the nightmarish forests around the Domain with just a blade is clearly a devoted parent, regardless of blood, and he doesn’t appreciate being sassed by a man a quarter of his size, so he lets the three fugitives stay.)
Urbosa makes herself useful around the kingdom by slaughtering monsters for them, and recovering lost people and goods. And doing all in her power to serve the Princess Mipha, to whom she owes Zelda’s life and her own. They form a fast friendship, mutually supportive as they rear their respective charges, each of them quiet trying to help the other through her grief (Mipha’s mother, Queen Riona, died a decade previously but she has not had a chance to properly grieve). Mipha finds Urbosa dashing and mysterious and wonderfully kind, and it makes her little unprepared heart go BOOM, and the next thing she knows she’s trying to determine how to make her intentions known to the hot, monster-hunting single mom.
Anyway that’s all I have for now, but watch this space in the future for this political drama/family drama/bittersweet romcom!
