#sad yet happy

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Crow's Feet

A short post-game TP Zelink story that's kind of sad, but also hopeful. ~5100 words. Also on Ao3.

---

The first time Zelda rode through Ordon, she’d been a child.

Her father and mother had ridden in front of her, speaking much of the way—soft smiles.  Her father’s crow’s-feet had not yet appeared, his face smooth and full of a rapt attention, hanging on her mother’s every word; her smiles, in return, full of a strength Zelda had tried to fill in her absence years later, a valiance and a dedication to her people outstripping all else.

She remembered children playing, stopping to watch their procession through their little village on their way to the far-off southern shores.  One boy had caught her eye among them as her parents stopped, briefly speaking to the elder townsfolk.  He’d seemed shy, barely able to meet her eyes, though she couldn’t take her own off him.

The next time she’d seen him, she’d already fallen: a shadow—less than vapor.

He’d restored her.  Her kingdom, too.

She’d offered it to him: her kingdom.  Herself.  Hoped to watch his crow’s feet appear, as her father’s had before the shadows came to engulf him.  He could look her in the eye, now, after their shared fate.

He chose not to.

She’d respected it—his  loyalty to the woman who already loved him.  He’d promised.

Zelda did understand.

She just couldn’t forget.

---

Years.  Years.

Her advisors avoided the subject of her marriage.  Her rapier never left her side.  Her new throne stood singular, three new Goddesses suspended behind her, the breath of life stagnant, gilded metal.

The governor of Faron Provence invited her to his son’s wedding, finally, in lieu of the marriage they’d hoped for to Zelda herself.  South.

She took many deep breaths in the coming weeks.

---

The second time Zelda rode through Ordon, she held her breath.

The Mayor, of course, came forward to meet them: Bo—a friendly man.  He spoke with her advisor, Minsh, of the wet year they’d had and its effect on their legume crops, Minsh commiserating as central Hyrule had suffered the same.  Zelda listened.

Then she saw him.

He carried a heavy sack on his back, two small children at his side.  They exclaimed at the decorated horses, at Hyrule’s golden banners.

He met her eyes.

He nodded with a small smile as the children began inundating the soldiers with questions.

His wife emerged from a small house, her hair longer, still pulled off to the side, now in a tie with its straw-colored strands draped over her shoulder to run down her chest.  She handed him an envelope, receiving a wide, friendly smile in return; then she saw Zelda’s eyes on her.  She gasped, eyes wide with something more than awe at the Queen of the realm in her village.

Link did not look Zelda’s way again.

---

Their return fell on a late evening, a dusk of lavender blue-fall embracing the dome of the sky.  Lights cheered windows and caressed the air as gentle fireflies.  The procession threaded the village, unhurried.  Not far to the north, a short path through stone glimmered with a multitude of those pulsing firefly lights, and Zelda held a gloved hand up, her voice soft as she called for a halt.  She’d meant to visit each Spring in her time—what better moment than when filled with the light of such life?

She ventured in alone at first.  She would invite her people to see this lovely sight, but she wished for a few moments alone: herself, the Spring, and the golden glow.  A glimmer of something shimmering, more compact for the span of a breath above the surface of the water drew her eye, and with it a silhouette.

She knew immediately, even before he turned at the sound of her steps.

He drew a soft, unbidden breath; he sank onto bended knee.

“Your Highness,” he said, his voice ever quiet, a light hint of rasp.

“Please,” she said in volume of the water’s rippling sounds.  “Rise, Link.”

He did obey, though hesitance split each bend of joints in two or three, the pulsing light behind him dividing each further so he seemed almost to exit one stance and enter the next as a statue reshaped, chiseled by time’s minutia, his face dark against its unconcerned ebbs and flows.

She moved toward the Spring, wishing to see him to the fullest in the dwindling dusk and swelling lifelight.  She kept her distance from him.

The light played as refracted through valley-wide water-waves on his solemn face, the gold as gentle strokes of a soft brush on canvas primed with the deep hues of twilight.

“Are you well?” she asked.

He nodded, shadows caressing his face above that small smile he’d saved yet again for her.  “And you, Princess?”

Her thumbs and forefingers met before her.

His smile sank with his eyes.  She thought, for a moment, he struggled to tear his eyes from her as they moved groundward—as though her dress were the object of his interest, her outline his threshold of restraint.

“I am well, Link.  Thank you,” she said.

The way he looked at her.

It’s not as though her life were secret.  Not from anyone in the kingdom.  No husband.  No heirs.

She wondered if the shifting glow would hide it—that the risen corners of her mouth reached that far only, her eyes as polished glass.  “Were those your children I saw on our way south?”

His teeth appeared this time: a true smile, a grin reaching where hers had aspired, firefly light flitting in and out of his clarified gaze.   “Yeah.  Two of them.”

“You have more?”

“A baby girl.”

Those corners of her mouth flickered up and down so many times.

“May I ask their names?” she breathed.

“Of course, Your Highness.  My boys are Matti and Sammel- um.  Sam.”  A laugh puffed out his nose as he hooked a hand around the back of his neck and rubbed, his face half-downturned.  The shadows overtook his face only for Zelda—the light still glimmered in his eyes, her reflection as illusion made reality within the man before her.  “My baby girl is Ayla.”

“So like your wife’s name,” she said.  She wished she hadn’t.  He turned his head to follow the fireflies coalescing in visual harmony, lazy circles over the Spring, his own harmony, the turn of his seasons, the mark of sun upon the dark.

“They’re different enough,” he whispered.

She didn’t ask why he’d done it.  She had, once—once was enough.

“May I call my people in?” she asked, voice absent in breath.  Others could bask in the beauty as she no longer could.

He nodded.  “Yes, Your Highness.  Of course.”

---

Minsh recommended marriage to the son of a wealthy landowner in southern Tabantha.  Zelda declined.

---

The Baron of Hebra province visited Central Hyrule.  He remained nearly two months.  He behaved with charming kindness, and none who had dealings with him in Hebra found him to be unfair—except those who behaved unfairly themselves.  He asked for Zelda’s hand in marriage.

She squeezed his upturned hand, smiling down at him, at his respect for her, his fervency as he knelt before her.

She declined.

---

Minsh presented a detailed account of all the eligible suitors of renown in Hyrule.  The painstaking nature of his work made itself evident in its smallest details, which Zelda appreciated.

She spent nearly two weeks reviewing it.

She sat on her balcony one night, sipping a delicate chamomile tea.  It would not help her sleep.

She resolved to invite three of them to visit her.

She did not write the letters.

---

Minsh presented news on Zelda’s three most favorable suitors.  One had married.

---

Zelda’s mirror revealed a woman no longer possessed of the beauty of early youth.  She stood regal, her face stately, the set of her jaw strong, her eyes glittering and keen, her skin with a dusting of freckles high on her cheeks despite her lady’s maid’s insistence on avoiding direct sunlight.  The thought-lines on her forehead appeared as she considered herself.

---

Zelda’s second most favorable suitor married.

---

Minsh began giving regular updates on the status of those men in the kingdom whose alliance would be favorable.  His voice waxed quiet.

---

The third time Zelda rode through Ordon, she vowed to move with swiftness.  They would be in a hurry.  There would be little time to stop and speak.  The unrest between the islands to the south and the seafarers at the mouth of the river had grown to need mediation.  Other attempts at reconciliation had failed.  Zelda’s reputation preceded her.  Few failed to wither beneath her penetrating gaze.  No one failed to notice the rapier at her side.  It tended to spur agreement forward.

She had avoided it in truth—allowed the situation to simmer.  She nearly wrote to him to request he take a family trip.  She should not see him.

She should not see him.

They rode at a brisk trot, yet cease they did once more, the procession too rare and obvious for the townsfolk to ignore.  This time, children stopped them first in their excitement.  Mayor Bo soon joined them, polite, yet adamant about showing off their new mill.

“Link put most of it together, bless him.  We’d never have managed this grinding stone without him.”

Zelda attempted to put the man out of mind as she inspected the water-powered mechanism, thankful the man himself was a goatherd and not a miller.

They remained an hour, and upon their release Zelda made for her horse with purposeful strides.

“There she is, dad!”

Her heart sank.

“Ayla- she’s the Queen.  We mustn’t-“

“But I want to meet her!  Please?”

A wistful smile threatened Zelda’s mouth.

She turned.

“Hello, Link,” she said, stately as ever, though with uncustomary softness.

His eyes.  They’d changed, somehow.  His skin sun-darkened.  It made the brightness of his eyes a shock, and perhaps that explained it—yet more clarified as his daughter pulled him toward her by the hand: very fine lines—a bare sign of wear.

“You must be Ayla,” Zelda said, turning her eyes on the girl upon her last word.

“You know my name?!”

“Ayla- remember-“

“Your Highness!  Yes.  I’m sorry about that, Your Highness.  I’m not used to talking to royal people.”  The girl’s face seemed a smooth facsimile of her father’s.

“That’s alright,” Zelda said.  “It is easy, is it not, to be overwhelmed by one’s emotions?”

“YES!” Ayla said with a little jump and tightly clenched fists.

Zelda watched the child’s face—not her father’s.  His stature waited, placid, at the edge of her sight.  “I am very pleased to meet you, child.”

“Me too, Your Highness!  I want to hear the story!”

“…Story?”

“Dad never wants to tell it.”  The girl tossed a purse-lipped glare her father’s way.  “He’s all shy about it, but mom said he saved the world with you!”

Zelda’s face fell without falling.  Her indulgent smile remained.  “I see.”  She sighed so lightly a child would mistake it for a mere breath.  “Very well.  If I am to tell it, however, I would ask for all the children to hear it.  What do you think?”

“But they’re not all here now!”

“We shall return here in five days’ time.  Can you see the path far to the south?”

“I can see it way far south if I hang on the weathervane!”

Zelda’s eyebrows shot up, Link’s feet shuffling in the telltale sign of his hand rising to grip the back of his neck.  “Indeed?  Very well.  The next time you see our banners off in the distance, I would ask that you gather all the children in the village to hear the story with you.  What do you think little one?  Is that fair?”

“Yes!!!” the child exclaimed!

Time.  It bought her time to think and prepare, and perhaps to be able to meet Link’s eyes.

---

She told the story beginning just after noon on the fifth day.  The entire village attended.  She spoke from a seat made of a high stump at her own insistence—a place where many could gather about her to sit in soft grass.  She needed no throne to speak truth.

She met his eyes at the right times.

He added to her story in his quiet manner, a few words, enough to bring soft laughter to her: moments of illusion.

She wished.

When her story ended, the children predictably asked question after question.  They ended up taking dinner in the village, sharing the fine wine and mead they’d brought with them.

Zelda returned to her echoing home.

---

Zelda’s third most preferred suitor married.

The first two had children.

---

Years.

Zelda’s mirror knew another, now.  One with softness about her eyes not borne of empathy: a permanent visitation.

Minsh made one final plea for her marriage, if only to continue the royal line.

She tried.

She asked Minsh to write in her stead.

Suitors came.

To say they all impressed her would be untrue.  The Baron of Hebra, now with grey in his beard, attended, his wife of six years having passed on.

Zelda nearly said yes.

She wept in his presence.

He didn’t have the heart to press her further.

He left with assurance.  He would wait should she change her mind.  Even should her courses cease, he would have her.

---

Her heart beat slow.  Calm, always.  Her kingdom thrived.  She would sink as the Sun turning sky to nigthshade and platinum-blond in a single stroke, though deep rose would emerge brief, a chaste kiss against the sky before dark.

Minsh had commissioned a thorough study of the royal family tree.  Should Zelda’s line fail, the next in line for the throne would be her elder cousin Riett, who had married the now-governor of Faron Zelda had visited so many years ago—she’d witnessed their wedding.  Their two children, both female, struck Zelda as a sign, for the royal heredity had always been female lest it break from the throne.  Perhaps Riett had never truly split from it.  Perhaps the Goddesses knew, had always known, Zelda’s heart would end this path, necessitating another.

She knew she must travel again.  Mere letters would not suffice.

She took so much air in deep, close-eyed breaths.

To circumvent Ordon made no sense.  Her heart must bear its own silent sentinel once more.

They would come to her eventually, of course, should time take Zelda’s continuance from her, but that hadn’t happened yet.

---

Zelda rode through Ordon on her stallion.  He’d calmed with the years ,though he’d always taken to her.

The town stood so quiet.

Mayor Bo’s face displayed sags and hollows, new and yet a signature of time.  He spoke with Minsh only briefly.  The smallest village children exclaimed at the horses.  None of them were Link’s.

They rode on.

Zelda had expected her face to fall upon seeing him.

It fell far further with her hope of doing so.

---

She spent six weeks in Faron.  She became reacquainted with her kind, fair-hearted cousin.  She would make a fine queen in the case of Zelda’s passing.  The children’s dispositions appeased her fears—her kingdom would not suffer for her heart’s immobility.  Hyrule would continue.  Their administration of Faron told their story for them.

Their ride back had taken on a bit more spring, and spring it was—babbling brooks and sweet twitterings of birds wooing mates.

Zelda watched beauty of sky and grass pass her by.

She both hoped and dreaded a glimpse of him as they rode through the village.

She would receive one wish regardless.

There he was.

He held a mallet, hammering new fenceposts into place—not about his own house.  Ever-kind.

His cheeks stood stark, every bit as hollow as the Mayor’s had been.  Greyed.  Zelda’s lips parted.

Minsh turned to her, expectant.

They’d nearly reached him, and he did not look.

Something stopped the procession ahead, the horses falling into stillnesss.  A child held something out expectantly to the captain far in front.  She heard his laughter.

Link did not look.

A brief hesitation, a motion and cessation, and then she dismounted.

He knew.  His eyes found hers.

He did not smile.

She approached, small steps, pinched brows.

“Link,” she said.

He nodded.  “Good afternoon, Your Highness.”

Too many breaths passed.

“Are you well?” she asked.

His chin moved as though to answer her.

No sound issued.

“…You are... not?” she asked, a depth skirted.

His eyelids sank, so slow, shutting with a flutter.  “Forgive me, Your Highness.  An- an illness passed through.  Ilia died.”

Zelda’s heart found her throat, blood at the apex of her senses, so overwhelmingly loud.

The village had seemed subdued already.  Time had passed.  “H- how long?”

“…Nearly two months.”

Just.  It had just happened before her last passage.

It took so long to find her voice.

“I am… so sorry for your loss, Link.”  Her voice wavered.

She meant it.

Tears threatened her.  It hurt.

She couldn’t imagine his.

“Thank you,” he said.  So soft.  Heavy.

She bowed her head.

After a time, Minsh appeared at her side.  He informed her of their readiness.

She said goodbye.

She mounted and left with tears freely falling.

More fell within the confines of her bedchamber.  They drenched her pillow night after night.

Cruel.

It would be cruel of her to ask him now.

---

Years.

Her heart hurt.

---

It became difficult to see herself in the face her mirror showed her.

Crow’s feet.

Her voice turned hard, though not unkind.  Final.  Finality.  Decisions as weights to be placed and not moved.

---

Minsh recommended marriage one more time.  He’d come to see her late in the evening—no longer uncustomary for him, for they could speak more frankly out of sight of the court.

“My courses shall pass soon,” Zelda reminded him, working a soothing cream into her hands’skin.

Minsh’s head tilted sideways, then the other way.  “Perhaps… or perhaps not, Your Majesty, but… this is not about producing an heir.”

Her hands stilled.

She turned in her seat, turned away from the mirror on her vanity.  “What do you mean?”

The look he turned on her—it fell so soft.  “You are unhappy, my queen.”

Her nostrils flared.  Tears already stung.  “It is of little import.”

His chin pressed upward, pressed his lips together.  “I respectfully disagree.”

“There is no suitor I wish to marry.”

“I did not mean to suggest you should choose a suitor,” he said.

She shut her eyes to turn forward again.  She would not see what the mirror had to show her.  “It would be selfish of me.  Presumptuous at best.”

“Then you know who I would say to ask.”

She remembered to continue treating her hands.

“… Please, Majesty.  Go to him.”

“I ought not.”

“I beg you.  I beg you on your own heart’s behalf.  Ask him.”

“He could not possibly say no should I ask.  I- I know my own heart.  I would be arrogant to assume I know his.  He refused once and has endured much.  I cannot ask him to endure a marriage he may not want.”

“…Go to him, then,” Minsh said, his voice a whispered plea.  “Please, my dear.  For my sake if not for your own.  I… cannot bear… do you know, Your Majesty, how long it has been since you smiled?”

“I smile every day,” she said with a scoff.

“You pretend to smile.  That is not the same thing.”

She lowered her moistened hands, fingertips on the many hair-thin lines upon them.

---

She rode alone but for her rapier and her ever-present bow, though none but her knew of it.

Should she fall, it would be of little import.  The kingdom rested in security, its heirs established should need be.

Need would likely be, she told herself.

She reached Ordon at sunset, osmotic reds, golds, and oranges on the horizon, an issuance from the Sun’s farewell, the sky blooming fall marigolds.

She dismounted near his house, its windows dark.  She did not knock.

She led her stallion around back, finding a willowy girl of perhaps twelve years filling troughs with water.

“Ayla?” Zelda asked.

The girl turned, nearly dropping her large bucket.  “Your Majesty,” she said, voice high and breathy.

Zelda tried to smile.  “I… was hoping to see your father.”  Not speak with him.  No.  He would do any speaking.

The girl looked down, holding her bucket in hands suddenly pressed together at her front.  “He… at this time of day, sometimes he goes to the Spring.  He…” she paused, then shrugged, eyes flicking back up to Zelda’s for a moment.  “He doesn’t want us to see him be sad.”

Zelda’s eyes stung.  “I understand.  Thank you.”

“I think he would like to see you, Your Majesty.”

A short puff of air left Zelda’s nose.  “Alright then, Ayla.  I… shall see if that is so.”

She found him there.

The firefly lights once more, though they’d gathered not only above the water, but above him, swirling in a whirlwind of impossible slowness, far nearer to his hair than she’d have thought, especially since he sat.

The large log hadn’t been there all those years go.

Perhaps he’d placed it.  Perhaps he’d sat there with his wife, arms about each other.  Or perhaps he’d moved it after her death.

Or perhaps it wasn’t him at all.

Yet there he sat upon it, his fingers threaded through each other, his mouth rested upon them, eyes shut in immobility.

She approached with as much quiet as she could manage, but the slight turn of his head said he heard her.

“I’m okay, Ayla,” he said, turning-

-then saw her.

His shoulders fell as he straightened, half-turned on the log to watch her move, so like all those years ago, she moving to stand where the fireflies would reveal his countenance.

Shock.

Shame flamed her face.  She clasped her hands loosely before her, her arms straight and head bowed, and closed her eyes.

She should not have come.  She had intruded upon him.

One does not spend more than twenty years with a dear friend and fail to come to love them every bit as earnestly as the sudden strike of unexpected passion.

He doesn’t want us to see him be sad, the girl had said.

He still grieved his wife.

Minsh had meant well, but she would not stay.  She turned from the spring to leave him in peace.

He rose at her first step.  “Wait,” he said.  She stilled as he approached her, stopping only a few feet to her side.  “Please…”

“Forgive me,” she whispered to the cool grass, its color the ever-blue of blanketing twilight.  “I traveled here at the request of my chief advisor.  I ought not have.”

“…Why?”  The subtle sounds of the shimmering spring nearly drowned his question, consequence all but lost in even so little noise.

Her feet shifted.  “I have intruded upon you.  It was most inconsiderate of me.”

A breath passed.  “I meant why did he ask you to come here.  Your majesty,” he added, with a softness entirely different from quiet—a tone she had not heard since they parted ways all those years ago.

It brought tears to her eyes.  The blanket of sky fell nearer to ground as she considered the dent her thumbs made in her skin.

She could not tell him.  She’d promised herself she would not.  She would ask nothing of him.  He owed her nothing—quite the reverse.  He had saved her from the grip of pure evil, and yes, she’d aided him in battle but she could just as easily have gifted him her magic, allowed him to wield the bow of light.  She had wished to redeem herself.   She had done that, at least.

And what if he did owe her?  Would she hold a debt over him, compel him to bed her without love?

No.  She would die first.

“Forgive me,” she said once more, her voice wavering with resumed steps, hurried, fervent, toward the gate, near black in absent sun despite the thrum of thousands of lights behind her.

“Princ- Your Highness, please, please wait!”  He jogged after her, coming to rest with bare feet shoulder-width apart in her direct path.

She hadn’t noticed at first, his shoeless feet, his trousers rolled up to the knee.  She supposed he’d waded into the sparkling spring with the last rays of sun.  With barely any light remaining, she couldn’t tell whether his skin glistened with moisture.  She found herself staring at the arch of one foot, waiting for a sharp glimmer of reflected light.

His hands met before his stomach.  “I’d hoped to see you again,” he said.

Why? she didn’t ask, hope a selfish thing.

His hands twitched toward her, then stretched outward, palms up.

She considered them.

She so wished to take them.

“Please,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes once more.  Any choice to be made here must be his.  She held her own hands out, palms down, and waited.

His warmth on them drove a sound from her as her chest curled in, constricting her lungs, her face tight and pinched as she refused to believe.  That would not be fair to her should she be mistaken.  She would cease to be capable of sight—need to trust to her horse entirely to carry her back north, toward home.

Her fingers rested in a gentle curve over his; his thumbs each settled on her knuckles.  He remained that way, still, as crickets played a few bars of their nightly music, then stroked her there softly.

She bit her lip.

“I thought of you,” Link said.  “A lot.”

She shook her head.

“It’s true.”

She opened her eyes just enough to see their joined hands.

“I… I loved my wife.  So much,” he said.

Zelda nodded.

“But my mind would drift toward you,” he whispered with the barest tremor.  “And… then… you didn’t marry.”

Her first tear fell.

He gathered both of her hands in one of his, then used the other to brush that drop from her skin.  His hand lingered there, curled against her cheek.  “Why didn’t you?”

She promised herself she would not say, but she couldn’t help but look at him.

Her eyes must have grown accustomed to the low light.  The look on his face—as though they were young again.  As though he’d just taken her hands, so like this, to explain—to tell her no.  He seemed every bit as anxious now as he had in that moment.

“Was it me?” he asked.

Her face could not be stopped.

Her upper lip lost slow ground against her lower, propelled by her weakening chin, her nostrils flaring and everywhere around her eyes threatening to pinch them shut.

It only took a few moments for liquid to flow freely on her cheeks, finding that hand of his and then his shoulder as he pressed her to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said—high and tremulous.

She felt his chest shudder, his own moisture striking her hair and shoulder.

He stroked her hair.  Many strokes—long, soft—lingering.

She couldn’t explain it.  Didn’t know why this felt more like coming home than returning to her castle ever had.

She barely knew him, in truth.

She could count the number of times they’d spoken on her fingers.

She didn’t understand.

They sniffled and breathed soft, fluttering puffs of air against each other—his chest, her hair.

“You had to hurt one of us,” Zelda said.

His arms tightened around her.

“It did have to be me.  We’d barely spoken.”

“That doesn’t mean it hurt any less,” he said.

She pressed her face harder to his shoulder.

He began walking them back toward the fireflies, the spring, their embrace unbroken, his feet nudging hers step by step.

She smiled against him.

He didn’t stop until they reached the very edge of the water, its nightly shivers.  He pulled back and turned her gently to the side, hands on her biceps, stepping so all those little lives lit their faces.  He smiled at her—it compelled her to touch his face, the corners of his eyes where they reached for his temples.

Crow’s feet.

He let her feel him, that smile growing sad as he watched her expression flicker.  “Not what you remember?” he asked.

“It’s not that,” she said.  “I simply recall… my father.  His eyes had lines like these.  They appeared not long before he passed.”

He caught her hands in his and kissed the backs of both sets of fingers.  Her breath caught then, too.

“There’s time,” Link said.

“Does that mean- does it mean you will-“ She wished to ask so badly.

“Will marry you?” he asked.

She just stared at him.

“I will if you still want me, Zelda.  I… come here to think.  About a lot of things.  But lately, I keep thinking, maybe I’ll ride into Castle Town.  Maybe I’ll ask for an audience with the queen.  Maybe… maybe I’ll see if she still wants me after all this time and after I hurt her so badly.”  The eyes he turned on her were full of something.  Not remorse, no—he’d already said he loved his wife—and not pity, either.  She wasn’t some helpless creature.  She could have had any of countless husbands.  She nearly took one.

She just hadn’t quite let go.

That was it—in his eyes.  He hadn’t quite let go, either.

“I still want you,” she said, some tone in her voice seeming to stimulate the hovering insects near her to fluoresce in echo of her words.

That hand of his which had stroked her cheek returned.  The other followed it.

His face drew nearer.

She had kissed a man.  One man.  A few times.

Never Link.

The muscles beneath her navel quivered.

His lips touched hers, so soft, so gentle, yet sweeping, a meeting of more than the outermost surface, and in a moment the tips of their tongues touched.  They met three times before Link deepened the kiss.  Zelda leaned into him, snaking her arms around his neck with a high sound riding on a sigh as her body relaxed into his, as his hands found her waist, then her hips, his fingers splaying to feel more of her.  When he pulled back, both their eyes lay more than half lidded, fixed on each other.

“I have them too,” Zelda said.

“What?”

“Crow’s feet.”

A puff left his nose as one side of his mouth turned up.  “I like them.”

She blinked, watching his deepen the more his smile did.

“So do I,” she said.

---

Follow this link for my masterlist.

[pastellpeachz]

Penelope and Telemachus designs (´▽｀)

[kidokear]

Have you seen the Murder Drones Episode 8 teaser???

I saw that part with Uzi and her gun

And I thought that it was a minigun version of it that her tail was helping her support it or something. I honestly thought it was like-

[birdnoisesart]

“kanan”

[solarockk]

Im oh so normal about real life smp and gaslight gatekeep girlboss

[wasyago]

the brainrot won

[ryssbelle]

Thought of this while at work, sorry it's a bit hard to read I sketched it out really fast before my last shift lmao wanted to get it done so I could work on other stuff hehe

If it's any consultation Floyd is mostly talking about himself

[starry-bi-sky]

"Stillborn? No, no, still born." -- DPXDC AU

Based off a comment I saw where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy in the earlier comivs, and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.

Instead of Damian, that baby was Danny! Meet Daniel Brown, the 14 year old foster kid whose been living with the Fenton family for the last two years. He's about two years older than Damian.

His last name, "Brown", was a generic surname given to him because the note he came with didn't have one on it. It just had the name "Danyal" on it, but albeit 'Daniel' was the one that had been put into the system for, I'll be totally frank here, racism reasons.

(I looked it up to make sure, and it's generally not permissible for foster parents to change the names of their foster kids even if it's a permanent residency, and for that reason Danny doesn't have the last name "Fenton".)

Danny's got ✨~issues!~✨ He's been through a handful of homes growing up, most of them terrible for a variety of reasons. Which has, as a result, left lasting scars. He's generally a very sweet kid, just very distrustful and jumpy. He's got the signs of a kid suffering from PTSD, and a handful of other issues including attachment and insomnia. His inferiority complex could rival Damian's, and that's going to make for an interesting mutual hatred for when they finally meet.

(something I'll get into later)

He still has the blanket he was found in. It's made of a very high quality material and is a beautiful emerald green with little golden thread accents, it's high quality as a result has Danny clinging onto a desperate hope that his bio family might be out there, and the only reason they gave him up was because of some outside factor. It's been taken a few times in old foster homes, and he's flipped out each time.

While he still calls Jack and Maddie by their names, he likes them well enough. The bar isn't that high though, and while they're some of the better foster parents he's had, "better" doesn't equal "safest". Their laboratory malpractice. Basically, C- Fenton Parents. They're negligent by virtue of being engrossed in their work, but they do care equally about Jazz and Danny. So he doesn't hold it against them that much.

He kinda prefers it that way, their loud affection is overwhelming and Danny doesn't know what to do with their attention, even if he craves it. It's a bit of a complicated situation.

They took in Danny because they genuinely wanted another child, but didn't want a big age gap between them and Jazz. It was actually Jack's idea to foster, and they discussed it with Jazz beforehand. She was all for the idea. Thus, a handful of weeks later, a ton of paperwork, and inspection later, and Daniel Brown entered their household with a trash bag in one hand and eyes like shards of stained glass.

His relationship with Jazz is kinda strained, but that's by virtue of her constant psychoanalyzing and helicoptering. Like with the parents, Danny's overwhelmed by the attention and also just, straight up doesn't like the fact that she's telling him that there's something wrong with him. He knows that, thank you. He pushes her away when she does this.

Other than that though? When Jazz isn't smothering him and is acting like an actual sibling and not a third parent, they're pretty close, and Danny really likes her. They've hung out a few times on their own volition, and Jazz showed him how to take better care of his long hair.

His school situation,, pretty similar to canon with the bullying, albeit with a few more instances of him blowing a fuse and lashing out against his attackers. He's a rather angry kid, but it's quiet. It builds up, piles on top of itself, until eventually, like a volcano, it erupts and burns everyone within radius.

Danny's got a fire core, not an ice core. Phantom's hair is made of white magma; thick and heavy, setting itself on fire when his anger runs hot. When he gets angry, his skin begins to char and split open to reveal pulsating lava underneath, and he crackles and pops like a raging forest fire.

I haven't decided yet on how he meets the batfam -- i've got two ideas but they're both in opposition to each other, and drastically alter how the rest of the plot goes. But I do know that him and Damian hate each other in the beginning. And it has nothing to do with inheritance or "being the blood son" -- although their blood relation absolutely plays the major role in their disdain for each other.

Simply put, they're jealous of each other for the same thing: thinking that the other was wanted.

Damian hates Danny because, unlike Damian, Bruce knew about Danny since conception and wanted him from the moment he heard about him. He had a whole nursery set up, and still does. He never took it down -- just locked the door. Damian was thrust upon Bruce without warning, and he feels like he forced himself into the family. And while on some level Damian knows and understands that Bruce wants him and loves him as much as his other children, that doubt and feeling of inferiority still remains. He looks at Danny and sees him with what Damian always feels he needs reaffirmed.

Meanwhile, Danny hates Damian because he looks at him and sees him with everything Danny's ever wanted. He hates him because Damian grew up knowing both of their parents, with one of them for most of his life, and then moved over to the other. There was never a moment where Damian was (seemingly) left to doubt his place within the family. Damian was raised with the very same woman who left Danny on a doorstep, with no clue to his identity beyond a little green blanket and a note with only a first name. Damian was wanted everywhere, and Danny was wanted nowhere. Damian is Danny's replacement in his eyes.

(It's the little revelation that Damian grew up with their mother that elevates Danny from being quietly envious of Damian to downright despising him. What did Damian do, that Danny didn't? He could live with Damian living with Bruce -- Bruce didn't know Danny was even alive. But him living with their mom? Are you fucking kidding him?)

Damian never outright attacks Danny physically, but it's not like he hides that he didn't like Danny. Meanwhile, Danny, in all his repressive anger, quietly despised him from a distance until finally one wrong snide side-comment has him blowing up and it becomes a screaming match. They're both just enough similar to each other that when they look at each other they really just see a mirror.

They'll work it out together, eventually. But it'll be ugly and cruel and explosive, and they'll start mending the bridge to become brothers in more than just blood relation in the end.

But yeah, stillborn Danny has... a lot going for him.

[nelkcats]

False Identity

Danny knew that if he wanted to escape Amity and all the chaos that was his life he needed to get a fake identity, move and go as far away as possible. He could probably ask Tucker or Technus, but he felt it was something he had to do on his own.

He made arrangements, destroyed the portal, said goodbye and ended up moving to Gotham. However his hacking job wasn't so good and he was discovered in an instant by the bats.

They decided to investigate him instead of confronting him directly, following Jim's advice that not everyone was running because of something malicious, Danny didn't do anything out of the ordinary.

He seemed to be adjusting to Gotham which was weird on it's own but the strangest thing he did was get a job in Penguin's Iceberg Lounge but that was more because of his job search than anything else.

His past records also showed nothing more than a child with poor grades and troubling injuries, probably caused by neglectful parents.

Damian began to fear the worst and hid the adoption papers.

[skitskatdacat63]

"We need to find more performance, I think we've underdelivered in the last three events."

[blossoms-phan]

literally cannot believe when i think about it like the phagenda feels like it was yesterday and it was so exciting to get tickets and then the start of tour was less than 2 months away and then my show was 3 months away then 2 then 1 then 2 weeks then it came and it was the best day of my life and i was like omg there’s still 2 whole legs to go january is ages away and the last show is in febuary how cool who knows what’s going to happen in the world of dnp during this crazy time and then i blinked and there’s two shows left. like what the fuck

[artuurle]

(AU)

What if you died and something divine loved you so much it couldn't cope with that fact? What if they tried bringing you back but the result was wrong?

More doodles + rambles below:

Now What if what came back was just off. Looks at the divine without the memories that went back decades. It looks, behaves and works in a way just off enough in a way to make the god unable to look at it. it's not you. it's not. it can't be.

.... but what if what got pulled back was still you, but its- YOU'RE wrong and broken in ways you cant understand anymore.

The apocalypse draws closer and closer and you don't know why every day that passes you seem to be falling more and more apart too. The god is gone. You are alone.

....Anyway yeah i fucked up a perfectly normal Lovestory Au. i gave it anxiety is what i did. sorry for horrid typing in 2nd person trying to explain stuff im bad at explaining <3 i draw, not write for a reason lol.

[hollypies]

Accidently stayed up till three drawing these. I'm so tired... I'm in crackship hell . Get me outta here

[harundraws]

CC-art request from anon!

“Javi and nat hanging out?” — here's Javi making a moose for Nat, who knew the kid had a knack for carving wooden animals??

[sefusian]

I find it so poetic and bittersweet that the 2016 revival of falsettos is not only reviving the show, but the story of Marvin and his family. Yet we don't get another chance to see them get a happy ending as it still ends the same as it did decades ago. It's a story of family and loss, and their harsh reality.

[culiehua]

Jem might have considered the fact that his childhood cat had the kitty fierceness of a little dragon (=xiao long) in hindsight BUT I guarantee you he named that cat after soup dumplings as a joke because cat in chinese is mao

xiao long bao — xiao long (mao)

like you CANNOT tell me that this wasn't baby!jem's exact train of thought. I bet he giggled to himself after naming him too