#i still think complicated is an understatement. but i do not envy the task of the translator. as usual the entire discussion transfixes me

[theodysseyofhomer]

I see the original, and my translation, as a promise, or even an enticement, in the first line: Dear Listener, stay with me, because you won't be bored by this character or this poem.  Who doesn't love disguises and schemes? Who doesn't love a long con, at least in narrative? The narrator is promising us, implicitly, that we’ll get an inside scoop on a character whose many layers, turns, names and disguises won’t be visible to everyone he encounters. Uncomplicated characters are a hard sell, if you want the adult listener to stay with you for many hours of story. Complexity, sign me up. I am not the least bit original in seeing the Homeric Odysseus as a complex and multi-layered character, who arouses our intense interest and intense empathy – and who is viewed in very different ways by different characters within the poem, because he contains multitudes. Homeric Odysseus is a very different and far more appealing character compared to the often simpler and often more purely evil Odysseus we find in some other ancient sources (like the scheming sophist of Sophocles' Philoctetes, or the cruel Ulysses of the Aeneid). To me, “complicated” doesn’t suggest either “good guy” or “bad guy”: it’s a promise that this poem doesn’t stoop to those implausible simplifications.

[liv-andletdie]

Puppy Love

Author: liv-andletdie Rating: Teen and up Pairing: TP Zelink Modern AU Notes: Link is a vet at Ordon Veterinary surgery. Zelda is an Aristocrat with a dog who is sick… surprisingly often. Though nothing seems to be wrong with the poor thing.

Available on Ao3

Chapter 6: The Heart to Heart 

It had been six days, eighteen hours, thirty seven minutes, twenty six seconds and counting since Zelda had left Ordon. Not that Link was keeping track or anything.

In those six days Link had thrown himself into his work. He’d visited the ranch several times to check on the newborn kids, fought with a particularly fractious cat in order to insert an IV catheter, reluctantly listened to a man’s own heartbeat when he informed him that his dog had a similar heart murmur, consoled a woman who was upset that her duck couldn’t swim (despite the fact that it was a cucco and perfectly healthy), and solved the mystery of one feline friend’s disappearing waste (turns out it was relieving itself in the garage).  To say he was exhausted would be an understatement. His only comfort was that, at the end of the day, he could collapse in his bed and sleep until dawn.

So it was surprising that he had given that up in favour of peeling potatoes in Rusl’s kitchen.

To be fair, it wasn’t as if he could just leave. It was a longstanding tradition. Every other week he, Rusl, and Ilia would meet up and have a nice home cooked meal together. This time it was the turn of the elder man to host, and for some reason he had requested that Link be charge of potatoes. It was his job to peel and slice the root vegetables incredibly thin, Ilia had been given the easier job of working with the cucco, and Rusl had the hardest job of all, keeping his rambunctious toddler out of the kitchen while his eleven year old son focused on homework.

Link couldn’t say that he envied him. He envied Ilia. The cucco was far more complicated to prepare than the “dauphinoise potatoes” Uli had requested. All he had to do was cut and peel potatoes, tasks which required very little concentration, giving his mind ample time to fixate on a certain brunette and her stunning blue eyes.

It had been six days, eighteen hours, forty five minutes, twelve seconds and counting since she’d left Ordon, and Link could still hear her parting words, sharp in their formality, cutting through him like a knife.  

Goodbye, Doctor Wolfe

“Uhh, Link?”

Ilia’s soft voice pulled him from his reverie. He turned quickly to face her, blue eyes catching on emerald green. Mischief seemed to burrow in the corner of her lips as she held back a giggle. “I think that potato is fully peeled, don’t you?”

Fighting back the slight confusion at her words, he looked down to the vegetable in his hands. There was a large sloping dent in the side where he’d been relentlessly going over it with the peeler, Potato shavings were all over the cutting board in front of him, and starch coated his fingers and palms. Dropping the peeler on the countertop and the potato in a pile with the others, he turned back to face Ilia.

“Here,” she sighed, handing him a clean kitchen towel from the drawer. He nodded sheepishly in thanks, wiping his hands on the rough towelling before returning to his work. He could hear Ilia moving around behind him, her gentle footsteps echoing like thunder in the silent room. She seemed… frustrated about something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He was about to ask her what her issue was when she landed against the countertop beside him.

“You’re going real slow,” She sighed, an overdramatic tone curling over her breath. He fought back his own smile at her act.

“Don’t you got a cucco you need to prepare or something?”

“Cucco’s all done. I’m just waiting on you and your potatoes.”

“Well,” Link gestured lamely to the cutlery drawer behind him. “Get a knife and start cutting ‘em up if I’m so slow.”

Ilia pushed herself away from the counter, the sound of forks and spoons clattering against each other filling the air in her absence. Link knew she was trying to make as much noise as she could. He was always the more quiet of the two, prefering to let Ilia do most of the talking, but even he knew that he’d been a little quieter than normal recently. Ilia appeared beside him once more. She gave him a slight nudge with her elbow, wordlessly asking him to move along a little before beginning her new task.

The two continued to work silently, the quiet hanging heavy in the air. Beside him he could sense Ilia getting more and more wound up, tension seeping into her shoulders, her back going ramrod straight. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, he could see her chew on her lip before dropping her knife.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s bothering you or do I have to play a guessing game to find out?” She blurted, cheeks immediately going red in a blush. Link felt himself stop in his own task, the peeler falling from his hand to clatter against the counter.

“What?” he breathed. “Ilia... I’m not… There’s nothing-” She cut him off with a raised hand, her shoulders dropping. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

“You’ve been acting off all week,” She started. “You’ve been quiet, more so than usual. You’ve been throwing yourself into your work, sleeping as soon as you get home.” She seemed to get smaller, her body folding in on itself as she lost the strength to stand.  “It ain’t healthy Link. I’m just… I’d understand if you don’t want me prying into your business, but… I’m worried about you. What is it? What’s going on?”

“Ilia it’s… I’m fine”

He wasn’t fine. He was the furthest from fine that he’d ever been, and that was saying something. He was distinctly “Not Fine”. If you were to look up the definition of the word “Fine” in the dictionary you would find, written below in small print, “The very opposite of Doctor Link Wolfe”. It had been a week and he was still wallowing in his sorrows! Sorrows that he wasn’t even sure he deserved to wallow in. So what! He wanted to cry, You didn’t get to take Zelda out for coffee boo hoo. It’s not like she would have wanted to go out with you anyway.

“I’m not fine.”

“I gathered.” Ilia rested a hand against his shoulder, her thumb brushing against his collar bone. She looked ready to launch into a motivational speech, to start telling him that everything was going to be alright, that happiness was just around the corner, and whatever other saccharine phrases she could think of. But instead she simply squeezed his shoulder and fixed him with a sympathetic yet knowing look. “Zelda?”

“That’s so crazy, how did you guess?” He snarked hearing Ilia laugh beside him.

“Well, short of you doodling her name in your notebook, you’ve been sighing like a school kid with a crush for weeks.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her side. “Everyone was waiting on you to ask her out. What happened with that?”

“I didn’t ask her out,” He muttered, eyes fixing on the potatoes in front of him. They still needed slicing.

“You didn’t? what?” Ilia gasped, the sound far too loud for his sensitive ears. “Why not?”

“Because, Ilia,” He pulled away from her, craning his head back to try and protect what was left of his hearing. “I never got the chance to! And now I probably never will.”

Ilia put her hands on her hips, fixing him with a confused look. A manicured eyebrow raised slightly as she tilted her head to the side. “I thought you had plenty of chances,” She said, words slow as if she was trying to figure out a difficult puzzle. “You were at her house often enough.”

“That’s different,” he defended, roughly picking up the vegetable he’d abandoned. “I couldn’t ask her out when I was at work. What if she’d said no? Then the whole thing would have been awkward, not to mention creepy.”

“How would it have been creepy?” Ilia asked, trying to focus on her own potatoes.

“It just would have been! Like… imagine you had a dog and you loved it with all your heart. Then you thought the dog got sick and you called the vet and they just flirted with you and asked you out! It’d be weird,” Link roughly peeled the potato in his hand, slamming it down on the chopping board when he was done.

Ilia was silent for a moment, the only sound was the gentle slicing of potatoes. Link was convinced that she’d dropped it, that she was done questioning him about his failed attempts at romance with Zelda Freaking Harkinian, and that she was happy to just focus on the, frankly ridiculous, Dauphinoise potatoes. And then she spoke, her voice soft and full of an innocent and genuine curiosity.

“What about the park?”  

Link fought back a cringe. The park. Oh man, the park. He’d not expected to run into Zelda when he’d gone for a walk. But then Naru found him and he couldn’t just ignore her! What kind of vet would he be if he didn’t return the husky back to her owner? And then Zelda had let him stay and she’d talked to him and he’d had a really, really great time. He’d been so close to asking her out and then…

“What about the park?” He tried not to sound angry as he reached for a knife to help Ilia with her potato slicing.

“Well, that would have been a great time to ask her out,” She explained, her eyes not straying from the food in her hand. “You weren’t technically on duty so it wouldn’t have been…creepy.”

Link brought the knife down on the potato with a little more force than was necessary. The park would have been the perfect place to ask her out, or at least get her number. There was no threat of imminent danger, no awkward work talk, just two adults and a husky in the sunshine. Two, single, adults. Two adults who weren’t in romantic relationships and- why didn’t he just ask her out?!

“I was going to,” he defended, hitting the knife against the chopping board. “Then someone called me about a Goat and I had to leave.”

Ilia at least had the grace to look sheepish. “It’s not my fault! How was I supposed to know you were busy wooing Miss Harkinian?” she reached for a new potato, stifling the giggle that threatened to rise as Link’s ears turned scarlet. “You still had enough time to ask for her number before you left.”

Enough time, Link decided, was a matter of situation. It was relative. If you had ten minutes you had “enough time” to make instant ramen, but you didn’t have “enough time” to eat it. And that’s not even taking into account the amount of time needed to boil the water or get the cutlery out. Even if the packet says “ten minutes” it takes a lot longer than that to accomplish the task to a high standard. Do you have time to make and eat half cooked noodles in ten minutes? Yes, but why would you?

He would admit that, theoretically, he had had “enough time” to ask Zelda for her phone number before he left. It would have been easy to say, “Hey let me get them digits real quick,” before running off, but would it have been successful? No one wants to eat half cooked ramen, and no one wants to get rejected when asking for someone’s number (especially if that person is Zelda Harkinian!) He may have had “enough time” to ask but would he have had “enough time” to get a positive answer?

His head hurt.

Scooping up the potato slices into a bowl, he pointedly refused to look at Ilia. She was waiting for his response, for him to either agree or disagree with her. Link wondered if he had “enough time” to get her to drop the conversation before Rusl came back.

“I didn’t ask for her number,” he muttered, taking his chopping board over to the sink to rinse it. “She asked for mine.”

It probably wasn’t the best thing to say to get Ilia to drop the conversation, but he wasn’t going to deny that it was worth it to hear her excited cry of “NO WAY! REALLY?!” ring out through the kitchen.

“Don’t get too excited,” he warned grabbing the kitchen towel to dry his hands off. “She only wanted my work number.  Y’'know, for emergencies”

Ilia seemed to deflate at his words, shoulders sagging as she let out a mournful sigh. He wasn’t so sure what she had to be upset about, he was the one who almost made a fool of himself in front of the girl he liked (the girl he liked, goodness how childish could he sound?)

“I guess that makes sense,” Ilia muttered to herself as she lined a gratin dish with the potato slices. Link took a step back to let her work, she was better at organising things neatly than he’d ever be, and while the dish would probably taste the same no matter what he still didn’t want to serve Uli and Rusl ugly looking food. “She’s a busy lady, makes sense she’d want to just be able to call up when somethings wrong and…” She froze, potato in hand. Link could see her eyes flicker as she tried to work something out, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “That ain’t right.”

“What ain’t right?” he asked, leaning against the counter near the sink. Ilia seemed to be still working it out, potatoes and seasoning left abandoned in front of her.

“Well,” she started. “You said she asked for your work number right?”

“Right”

“Okay,” Ilia turned, leaning against the counter to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth set in a determined frown. “Did she know that you don’t have a personalised work number? That you just use the surgery’s number?”

Link shrugged. How was he supposed to know what Zelda knew and what she didn’t know? It wasn’t like he’d interrogated her at the park for information or anything. ”I guess” was the best answer he could come up with. “I mean… if she’s called the surgery before, then she’s seen the website and knows I just use the number on there… why are you looking at me like that?”

Ilia’s grin had returned. A marvelous, wonderful, grin that Link was normally in love with… when it wasn’t directed at him. She looked like she was about to burst into laughter or a childish “I told you so” song at the first chance she got. It scared him.

“Say that last part again,” She prompted pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

“If she’s called the surgery before then she’s… oh,” realization hit him like a pile of bricks, knocking him down and pinning him to the kitchen floor. Zelda’s called the surgery before, she has the number. She wasn’t asking for my work number was she? “Oh shit.”

Link heard a loud gasp almost drowned out by the sound of an eleven year old giggling. Turning sharply he saw Rusl enter the room, a disapproving look on his face as he carried his son over his shoulder. Colin, for his part, was laughing so loud that his cheeks had gone pink.

“Language,” he chided, dropping Colin to the floor “we got little ones in the house, Link”

“I’m sorry,” Link muttered, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. Ilia stifled her own laughter behind her palm, ignoring the annoyed look Link shot her way as she went back to work on layering the potatoes in the dish. “I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s alright,” Rusl sighed, moving to put the cucco in the oven. “Just watch out next time.” He clapped Link on the shoulder, giving him a quick squeeze as he moved around him to the cutlery drawer. “How are those potatoes coming?”

“Great, thanks to me,” Ilia smirked, walking over to the fridge to get the cream. Link stuck his tongue out at her as she went past.

“I had it,” He pouted. “I’d have been done by now if it wasn’t for you”

“You’d still be peeling the same potato if it wasn’t for me,” She said as she slammed the door to fridge shut. Rusl gave her a warning look as he handed the cutlery to Colin. “He was too busy pining over his crush,” she explained unable to hold back the shit eating grin that curled over her lips.

“Link’s got a crush?!” Colin exclaimed, pausing in his task of laying the table. His pale blue eyes lit up with mischief and Link felt his blood run cold at the sight. Middle Schoolers, he thought watching Colin’s grin grow with every passing second. They can smell weakness.

“I don’t have a crush!” He lied, feeling like a petulant child as he crossed his arms in a huff. Beside him Rusl let out a bellowing laugh, a hand coming around to hit him squarely between the shoulderblades.

“Who is she, son?” He asked through his chuckles.

“No one!” Link cried “There isn’t anyone...I don’t… I’m not-”

“It’s Miss Harkinian!” Ilia piped up, a musical giggle leaving her lips. Link endured another rough shoulder pat from Rusl. Colin looked confused as he continued setting the table. “She asked for his number,” Ilia continued practically bouncing on her heels. “Tell him what happened, Link”

Link’s blood turned to ice at her words, freezing solid in his veins. Rusl was looking at him expectantly, the once comforting hand on his back now pushing him head first into an awkward situation. He wanted to avoid this, wanted to run and hide but he was sure that the three of them would find him in a heartbeat.

“What happened, Link?” Rusl asked giving him another less than gentle pat to his spine.

Link looked around the room, eyes darting from Ilia to Rusl to Colin. Each of them stared back at him, waiting for him to say something, anything! They reminded him of a pack of wolves on the hunt. Bloodthirsty and ruthless.

“I...I gave...She asked…” He felt his throat dry up, his palms getting sweaty as he clenched his fists. This wasn’t going to be fun, but it would be better to bite the bullet now… wouldn’t it?

“I wanna preface this by saying that she asked for my number in case of an emergency! So before y’all try to make fun of me, just know that I was only doing what she asked.” He swallowed down the lump in his throat, rolling his shoulders back and bracing himself for the incoming onslaught of teasing. “I gave her my business card.”

“Well,” Rusl said, drawing out the word agonisingly slowly. A smirk hid in the corner of his lips, just barely visible as he spoke. “That seems like the right thing to do if she’s asking for your professional number.” The smirk grew larger, the light of it shining in his eyes. “Was she asking for your professional number?”

There it is, Link thought, The question I’ve been asking myself for the past week.

“Yes,” He replied automatically, fixing his gaze on the kitchen floor, his eyes trailing over the grooves between the tiles. It really needed to be swept, perhaps he should do that after dinner to save Uli a job.

“Are you sure?” Colin piped up. He’d seated himself at the head of the table, elbows resting on either side of his plate. He looked innocent enough, all pale blonde hair and baby blue eyes, his chin resting on his open palms while he kicked his legs below the table. A cunning facade, no doubt. But Link knew too much, he’d grown up with him.

“I’m… I’m pretty sure, Colin,” he sighed. He wasn’t sure, far from it. He kept replaying the moment in his head over and over. She’d paused. Zelda had definitely paused. She’d left a space between asking for his number and clarifying that it would only be used in an emergency… had she?… had he?... No. No, it couldn’t be.

“Are you sure you’re sure?” Colin said, matching his father’s smirk. It was a look Link had seen fairly often in the past eleven years. Gotcha.

“Miss Harkinian’s called the surgery before,” Ilia sounded wistful as she carried the potatoes over to the oven. “That’s the one thing that’s confusing me”

“Oh yeah,” Rusl crooned, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “That is confusing.”

Link could feel his father figure stare at him, the smirk no longer hidden as it curled proudly over his lips. “I wonder why she’d need a number she already has?... unless-”

“Alright, I get it!” Link cut in, already exhausted from repeating the conversation with Zelda over and over again in his own head. “I messed up, I had a chance, maybe, and I blew it.”

It hurt to admit it outloud. He’d thought it countless time over the past week, but he’s always followed it up with, It’s not like she was interested in me anyway. It hadn’t made him feel better about the situation but it certainly hadn’t made him feel worse.

But this! The idea that she liked him back, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and that he blew it for the both of them. Well, that stung.

Rusl pulled him into a hug, resting his chin on the crown of Link’s head. “You didn’t mess it up” he said, the smirk in his voice replaced with a genuine, if bittersweet, smile. “There’s always a chance you’ll see her again.”

Now that would be something, Link thought as he let himself get pulled into the embrace. A heavy sigh escaping him as he rested his forehead on Rusl’s shoulder. “Shiiiit” a sardonic laugh passed his lips. “There’s always a chance”

“Come on what did I say?” Rusl sighed, his own laugh bubbling up. “Little ears are present”

“Oh it’s okay I’ve heard worse,” Colin called from the table causing Ilia to erupt in giggles and snorts.

“From who!?”

“From Talo. He knows a lot of bad words.” He sounded almost impressed as he leaned back in the chair, balancing it on it’s back legs. Ilia gave him a slight reprimanding look causing him to pull his seat back into the upright position.

Reluctantly, Rusl pulled away from the hug, giving Link another pat on the shoulder as he did so. “I’ll have to have a talk with Jaggle,” he sighed running a hand down his cheek as he turned to his youngest son.` “Go get your mother, let her know dinner will be ready soon.” The three of them watched as Colin raced off, the sound of his footsteps dimming as he ran through the house on his quest.

They rested in near silence for a moment. The only sound was the gentle hum of the oven as their dinner cooked. It was peaceful, calm. The perfect respite after a week of stress and shouting and heartbreak and loss. If Link closed his eyes he could imagine that he was standing in the past, back before he’d ever heard of Zelda Harkinian, back before he’d fallen for her, and back before he’d lost her. He could imagine, for a second, that the ache in his chest wasn’t there, and that it was just another family dinner.

“I meant what I said,” Rusl spoke, voice low as if to preserve the calm that had settled. “There’s always a chance Link. Don’t give up hope just yet.”

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Actually hyped for this chapter? What happened I got super excited for it! Looks like I'm getting back into my flow at last! Really quite proud at how it turned out and a massive thankyou once again to @electragoob and @andelynk for helping me out, and @zeldasdiaries/ @missdellarosa for being incredibly supportive and wonderful <3

And that's to you all who are sticking with me through this!

We've got one more chapter and then it's the epilogue