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writersrhapsody · 12 days ago

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So Many Eyes

Oneshot | 7.3K words | Pre-Calamity BOTW zelink | read on AO3

Like any good soldier, the first thing he sees is the blade.

He’s not sure what woke him—not even sure he is awake—but a silhouette looms over his bed, and a sliver of moonlight arcs toward his throat. Link rolls off the mattress and hears the strange sigh of steel piercing through his pillow.

Every night for the past five years, he’s gone to sleep within arm’s reach of the Master Sword. This is the first time his hand has closed over empty air instead of its hilt.

A shadow detaches itself from the corner. Link flinches away, right into a sharp jab to the back of his knee, which takes his legs out from under him. A heavy boot connects with his chest and slams him down hard enough to drive the breath from him.

Pain tears at his scalp as a gloved hand seizes his hair and traps his right wrist against the floor. He claws blindly with his left until someone restrains that arm too—that must mean a third assailant, because the first one’s boot is still pinning Link in place. Cold metal touches his throat. His gaze travels up the shining stretch of the blade.

The man towering over him wears the plumed helmet of a Hyrulean soldier.

For a moment, the silence is broken only by Link’s breath wheezing out of his stunned lungs. Then laughter fills the room, cruel and contemptuous, followed by a shiver of magic. Crimson leathers replace the familiar uniform, and three white masks leer down at him with the inverted eye of the Yiga Clan.

“So you aren’t fearless after all,” mocks the blademaster whose boot is crushing down on his ribs.

Link slams his jaw shut, emptying everything from his expression. He should have seen this coming. Safety is never to be taken for granted.

He strains against the hold on his arms and tries to kick at the blademaster, who merely leans into him with crippling weight. Link heaves for air. Black spots invade his peripheral vision, along with a soft glow he passes off as another symptom of suffocation until the silvery chime of his sword’s call reaches that place deep inside him. She’s right there against the wall, where his attackers must have moved her.

“Got any last words?” one of the Yiga sneers. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

The iron grip drags on Link’s hair, pulling his head back to bare his throat. Swathes of darkness drift over him like clouds, obscuring and then revealing the white masks with their bloodred eyes. Terror sluices through his veins. The only word he can think is Zelda.

“Glory to Master Kohga,” the blademaster says, raising the Windcleaver over his head.

That’s his mistake; he can’t lift such a heavy weapon without shifting some weight onto his back foot. The lightened pressure allows Link to wrench himself sideways a split-second before the cleaver whistles past his ears and crashes into the floorboards.

One of the other Yiga locks an arm around his neck from behind. He sinks his teeth into cloth and meat, tasting a flood of copper before the man howls and lets go. Link tears his arms free and rolls to dodge another blow from the cleaver, scrambling over to the wall.

The Master Sword sings beneath his touch. He draws it faster than he ever has, the scabbard clanging to the floor as he rises to his knees and stabs the first Yiga through the chest.

The horror of the desert repeats itself. A warm spatter on his face, the sick slide of steel through flesh, the gasp of a life draining out.

Link whips the sword out to block his second foe’s sickle and takes him down with a slash across the neck, then pivots away from a swing of the Windcleaver, robbing the blademaster of his blade with a brutally quick parry. The floor erupts with a fissure he can hear more than see. He’s thrown back against the wall, legs crumpling beneath him. The blademaster’s huge hands close around Link’s throat, but a moment later, the Master Sword opens his windpipe.

The Yiga staggers back, clawing at his neck, and collapses into a small table by the window. A water pitcher plummets off the edge and shatters against the floor, louder than death. The man gasps and chokes and loses the battle, joining his comrades in silence.

Link presses himself to the wall, chest heaving for air, pulse pounding in his ears at a deafening volume—no, that’s the sound of someone pounding on his door. It slams open before his paralyzed mind can catch up. He scrambles to his feet with sword in hand.

Two knights rush through the doorway in their nightclothes. One holds a candle that spills soft orange light over the spreading pools of blood, the unmoving bodies, the white mask that fell from one of their faces.

Link’s gaze crawls over the blademaster’s prone form, finds a tuft of dark hair and a hooked nose, and skitters away instantly.

“Goddess above,” the first knight says, lifting the candle higher to illuminate Link, standing there with his sword dripping onto the floorboards. The second knight staggers out of the room to call for the captain.

Link lowers the sword but does not sheathe it. The Yiga came in disguise. Could their magic replicate a face as well as a soldier’s armor? Could they be impersonating this man? Link has known him for years, but that proves nothing. Zelda nearly lost her life to the Yiga’s deception.

Zelda.

Doors are opening up and down the hall as sleep-mussed people shuffle out to investigate the commotion. The second knight returns with the captain, and suddenly Link’s room is full of people, all of them talking over each other loudly enough to wake the rest of the barracks.

“Did they injure you?” asks one of the knights, an ordinarily hard-faced man who seemed incapable of smiling until the day Link saw him wandering the town market with a little girl on his shoulders. There’s something of that softness in his gaze right now, and it tightens Link’s throat until speech becomes unfathomable.

The captain turns away from the bodies, his slate-grey eyes scouring Link up and down. “What happened here?”

The air reeks of copper. His breathing sounds ridiculously loud in his ears and he’s trying to get it under control, trying to be who they need him to be, but all he can think is, If they got to me, they can get to Zelda.

“I asked you a question,” the captain growls.

Link turns on his heel and runs.

Shouts follow him out the door and past the gawking faces that line the hallway, but no one pursues. He races up the stairs, down another corridor, and out into the frigid night. The frozen ground sends vague jolts of pain from his bare feet to his calves, but Link charges ceaselessly for the two towers silhouetted against the stars.

His ribs and lungs are screaming by the time he reaches the top floor. The guards on either side of Zelda’s door take far too long to react to his presence. When they do, their jaws drop open. One even takes his spear in both hands before recognition dawns in his eyes. Link can’t really blame them; he’s rarely seen without his blue tunic and the tie that keeps his hair out of his face.

“Er…Champion?” one of them stammers. “You’re—you’re covered in blood?”

Oh, he thinks blankly, and does not allow himself to look down.

“What are you doing here?”

“You can’t expect to see the princess at this hour,” adds the other man. “Especially not…like that.”

A perfectly reasonable response, but Link has no time for this. He flounders around for the words that will get him into that room, hyperaware of the guards’ gazes and the slick blood between his fingers.

The door swings open all on its own. Zelda blinks owlishly in the torchlight, a messy braid spilling down the shoulder of her pale nightgown, sleepy and confused and alive, alive, alive. He can’t stop a shudder from rattling through his whole frame.

“Link?” she says blearily, her eyes focusing and widening. “You’re bleeding!”

He steps past her into the room. The guards sputter out apologies to Zelda, but she holds up a hand and watches Link scour the shadows behind her changing screen and under her bed. So many possible entrances: the balcony, the windows, the spiral staircase, the bridge connecting this tower to the next.

“What’s going on?” Zelda demands.

“I wish I knew, Princess,” mutters one of the guards.

Warm fingers catch Link’s sword arm. He would know them anywhere, even though touch is a rare and dangerous thing between them, yet he can’t stop himself from flinching violently. Zelda lets go. Of course she does; the blood is already drying on his skin.

“Out. That’s an order.” It’s been months since her voice cut so sharply. Link’s heart slams against his ribcage like a frightened horse kicking at the stall door. He hears the guards retreat and dreads having to follow before she adds quietly, “Not you.”

The door shuts behind them; that’s one entrance secure. All he can see through the windows is black night, interrupted here and there by the watchmen’s torches. Stalking to the balcony, Link flings open the door with his sword raised, checking the platform and the surrounding walls before he closes the door and drags over a small cabinet to act as a barricade.

“Is that your blood?” Zelda is blocking his path when he turns around, arms crossed against the chill he just allowed into the room. “Link. Is that your—”

He shakes his head, sliding around her and taking the stairs two at a time, only slowing when he realizes that she’s coming with him. That’s probably for the best; Link shouldn’t leave her alone right now, though he does hold out a hand to make her wait in the stairwell until he’s certain the second floor is clear.

She follows him across the bridge to check her dark study. There’s nothing here, nothing anywhere, but Link pauses halfway back to her room, listening intently for footsteps, for voices, for the scrape of grappling hooks on the tower walls. The only sounds breaching the deep night are flags snapping in the wind and Zelda shivering in front of him, her nightgown the same color as the quarter-moon that smudges the cloudy sky.

For the moment, they’re safe.

Winter’s bite sinks into him all of a sudden. The flagstones are ice under his feet, the Master Sword so cold it hurts his fingers. Zelda must be worse off without the madness of adrenaline fueling her.

They return to her room in silence. She brushes past him to light a candle on her nightstand. Link is contemplating how to barricade the staircase when she rounds on him, her arms tight around herself and her face half in shadow. “Tell me what happened.”

The old impatience tinges her voice, but it doesn’t hurt the way it used to; he understands now that Zelda’s helplessness always materializes as anger, just as his takes the form of silence. Some knight he is, being the cause of her fear. She’s staring at his clothes, and a vague needle of grief threads through him. He still doesn’t want to look down, but he has a feeling the oversized shirt that once belonged to his father is filthy beyond saving.

There are far bigger concerns, though. His princess is waiting for an answer.

One word. One word to help her understand. As a kid, Link once dropped his wooden sword into the sink-mud bordering the wetlands. Reclaiming it from the thick murk required all his strength. Dredging up his voice feels much the same right now, and all that effort only delivers a thin whisper.

“Yiga.”

“In your bedroom?” Zelda gasps.

He nods.

“Was anyone hurt?”

Link drags in a slow breath through his nose, wishing it wouldn’t tremble so much on the exhale. “Just them.”

Her lips part, but it’s a long time before anything comes out. “You came here,” she manages breathlessly. “Your first thought was to come here.”

He stares at her, his voice drifting away like leaves down a river.

“I…sit down. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She opens the door to speak with the guards. Link stares at a sketch tacked to the wall above her desk, some Sheikah contraption surrounded by scribbly notes, and tries to stop smelling the blood. The sword hilt is sticky with it, but the scabbard is back in his room with the corpses. He should go back—the captain needs his report—but that would mean entrusting Zelda’s safety to that slack-jawed pair at the door when anyone and everyone could be the enemy in disguise.

The castle has never quite felt like somewhere he belongs, but at the very least, it’s always been secure. Now, he can practically feel the Calamity’s fangs at his throat.

“I asked them to check on my father,” Zelda says, stepping back inside and closing the door behind her. “Someone likely woke him with the news already, but I want to make certain he’s safe. Are you sure you’re not injured?”

Link nods.

“But you…are you okay?”

Even beginning to answer that question seems unfathomable. He’s vaguely aware of Zelda rummaging around in her dresser, but he can’t look at her, can’t ground himself, can’t figure out what a hero is supposed to do right now. Stay here? Return to the barracks? Report to the king?

“Here,” she says. Link glances sidelong at the shirt she’s holding out to him. She seems to be struggling to look at him too, her cheeks tinged red with the candle’s glow. “Something clean to wear. I’ve been meaning to return it to you.”

At the Spring of Power, Zelda shook and struggled and eventually clung to him as he drew her out of the dark water and gave her the first dry clothes he found in his pack—the standard-issue black tunic that goes beneath his royal guard uniform and a pair of trousers. Both were frayed and probably smelly, but at the time, Link’s embarrassment was secondary to getting her out of that sodden dress.

There is nothing wrong with you, he told her over and over again, and his voice didn’t tremble once, even with the Goddess’s stone silhouette looming over them.

The strength of that night feels far away. Link wants so badly to accept the shirt, both to free himself of the horrific smell of copper and to avoid snuffing out the hopeful light in Zelda’s eyes. But he has to shake his head.

Her brows knit together. “Why not?”

He glances at the door.

“People will talk?” she guesses, then scowls fearsomely at his nod. “I don’t care.”

Link holds her gaze long enough to see her waver. The rumors are easy to imagine. The swordsman entered the princess’s bedchamber in one shirt and came out in another, all before the bodies were even cold. What does that say about him? About her?

“I don’t care,” Zelda insists, though he can hear how much she does. At the very least, a scandal would infuriate the king, which is the last thing she needs right now.

And he cares desperately. Since he first knelt before the throne with the Master Sword on his back and so many eyes upon him, Link has understood that his strength is Hyrule’s strength. Ignoring his commanding officer and sprinting through the castle like a madman was bad enough. There can be no further cracks in his armor.

He wants to press the shirt back into Zelda’s hands and say, Thank you for trying. Keep it for as long as you want. Keep everything that’s in my power to give.

“I can’t just let you—” she starts, but a knock on the door interrupts her. “Yes?”

“All is well with the king, Your Highness,” one of the guards says through the door. “Sir Link is wanted back in the barracks, though.”

Her spine stiffens. With a swift glance at Link, she wraps a cloak around her shoulders and declares, “I’m coming with you. My authority still counts for something. If there are questions about why you left to come here, I’ll be there to answer them.”

She braces for an argument, her chin raised in that stubborn manner he recalls all too keenly from when they were bound by obligation instead of friendship. Link just shrugs. He’d rather keep her close in case more Yiga are around. Zelda gives him a self-satisfied hmmph as she steps into a pair of slippers.

“Can I at least offer you some shoes?” she asks.

Link looks down at his bare feet, reddened by the cold and starting to ache from the run over, and nods. He’s not expecting her to hand him the traveling boots that have borne her all over Hyrule. They’re a little tight, but wearing something of Zelda’s—feeling the imprints she’s left in the leather—makes him lightheaded for reasons he doesn’t want to examine too closely.

You’ve been a kindness to me, she told him once. And sometimes kindness can hurt.

Not for the first time, Link understands her perfectly.

The barracks are full of his bedraggled comrades, armoring for duty or chattering in low voices. Most fall silent as Link and Zelda pass by. The two soldiers guarding the hallway that leads to his room step aside without a word.

The Yiga lie where they fell—two piled between the bed and the wall, the third near the table. He catches a glimpse of the blademaster’s unmasked face and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from being sick.

“Finally,” the captain sighs when Link crosses the threshold. “Do you think that sword puts you above obeying orders? The next time you—”

“To whom is Link sworn?” Zelda asks mildly, stepping into the torchlight as every soldier in the room snaps to attention. Her gaze flickers over the bodies, and Link sees her swallow hard before she continues. “The duties my father assigned him as my knight supersede any other order. He left only to thwart any potential attempts on my life.”

“Of course, Princess.” The captain has turned red under his helmet. “My apologies. We were not expecting you.”

“Nor was I,” says King Rhoam. If the captain’s face was red before, it’s flaming now. The king fills the doorway, an imposing figure despite his simple robe and absent crown. Link goes down on one knee, along with all the other soldiers.

Through his messy bangs, he watches Zelda’s hands tighten into fists. “Father,” she greets carefully.

“Zelda. My quarters were quiet this evening. Were yours?”

“Yes.”

Such a veiled way to ask if she’s all right. Link has barely seen his family in years, but distance seems more bearable than what Zelda has—her mother cold in a grave, her father not much warmer.

“I had no wish for you to see this carnage,” Rhoam continues.

“An attack on my appointed knight is an attack on me,” Zelda replies. Link’s eyes sting. It’s been a long time since anyone stood at his side instead of expecting him to lead the charge. He wishes they were alone. He wishes he could uncurl her clenched fingers and press a kiss to her palm.

“Rise, all of you,” the king commands. His stony eyes are on Link the moment he straightens, flashing briefly to his borrowed boots before returning to his face. “Well done, sir knight. Both in stopping the Yiga and in ensuring my daughter’s safety.”

The hair on the back of Link’s neck rises as the compliment draws every gaze in the room to him—except for Zelda’s. If only the king would spare an ounce of this praise for his own daughter.

“Tell us what we need to know about this incident,” Rhoam orders him.

Link’s throat is bone-dry. Zelda’s worried eyes find him again, and he looks nowhere but her as he drags out the answer. “They were disguised as guards.”

“They don’t look like guards to me,” the captain mutters, eyeing the crimson-clad corpses. Nausea climbs up Link’s gullet.

“The Yiga can magically shed their disguises at the blink of an eye,” Zelda points out. “I saw them do just that outside Gerudo Town once.” She catches her father’s glance and adds, “Urbosa handled it.”

“Then the enemy may have infiltrated our ranks,” Rhoam says grimly. “We must interview every guard, search their belongings, review service records…the nobility could be compromised as well. Even the servants. Captain, assemble your people in the courtyard. I will issue orders from there.”

“I can help, Father.”

“You have other duties to attend.” He doesn’t watch her wilt, but his tired eyes return to Link. “I would have your knight remain with you until the castle is secure. Captain, find them a space that you are confident can be defended.”

The king sweeps away, his parting words the first indication that after the castle is out of danger, there will be hard questions about how the Yiga got as far as they did. Watching the captain wince is a little satisfying, even under the circumstances. It’s on his orders that Link receives a relentless number of assignments, on the grounds that the Master Sword grants him advantages everyone else lacks.

Zelda rails against his treatment with a passion he finds baffling, but the truth is, he never used to care. The work occupied his hands and his mind, and the captain was right about how badly his skills were needed. But then Zelda tore down the walls between them, and everything changed—because now there’s someone who seeshim, understands him, listens to what he can’t say. These days, when Link is killing things or sparring with soldiers who watch his sword with covetous eyes, all he thinks about is how much he’d rather be with Zelda.

Because of her, time is something to be craved rather than merely endured. So the king’s command is a relief. A gift, even.

The captain’s sour expression makes it clear he’d rather employ the Master Sword elsewhere, but he leads Link and Zelda out of the barracks and down the stone passage that cuts beneath the central castle. Guards flank them on all sides, bearing torches and steel and haggard expressions. Fear must be stalking their thoughts just as it does Link’s. Days will pass before any of his comrades can trust the person next to them again.

But the person next to Link is Zelda, and—Goddess, how he longs to reach out and hold her hand.

The passage opens into the library, an ordinarily cozy space turned cavernously dark and dangerous by this impossibly long night. Link supposes the Yiga are less likely to come looking for him or Zelda here, but it’s so far from being easily defensible that his fingers tighten around the hilt of the sword.

Then the captain trails his hand along the bookshelves that line the western wall, pausing at a case with glass doors and waving over another man to help drag it aside. A narrow passage yawns between the shelves.

“Princess, do you recall where the other entrance is?” the captain asks.

“I do,” Zelda replies briskly. “Let us hope it sees no use tonight.”

“I will station a full unit here. Respond only to this knock.” He raps a four-note pattern against the wall. “Should you need anything, please use the same code.”

He holds out his torch. She lifts her chin without taking it, that stubbornness reemerging in the set of her shoulders, and says firmly, “See that you remember my knight has served your guard and this kingdom better than any other, Captain. He is not a spear to be thrown at the enemy or a shield for others to hide behind. At the very least, he deserves to be safe in his own bed.”

With that, she accepts the torch and slips into the black maw of the passageway between the bookshelves. The captain is turning red again. Link’s been at the receiving end of Zelda’s ire enough to find some sympathy this time, but more than that, her words stir up some unnamable feeling that tightens his throat and sends him scrambling into the darkness after her.

The bookcase slides back in place behind him. He follows Zelda up a short staircase and into a rugged cave of a room. She lights several sconces with her torch, brightening the place one piece at a time: the bunk bed crammed into one corner, the trunks and sealed barrels in another, the water trickling down the wall across from the stairs. Link assumes it’s leaking from the castle’s upper levels until he notices the fountain carved into the stone.

“It’s a safe room,” Zelda explains. “The guards are digging to connect it with the escape tunnels that lead out of the castle. The other side of the library has a passageway down to an underground dock.” She winces. “Royal secrets, technically, but…well, you’ve seen it now.”

The fountain is an ingenious touch. Assuming those barrels contain some kind of food, the royal family could hide here for weeks.

“We’ve used this room twice that I can recall. Once when a Yiga was discovered stealing bananas from the kitchen. And much earlier than that, when they made an attempt on my mother’s life.”

Link feels suddenly foolish for thinking that day in the desert was the first time she’s come under attack. Of course the Yiga have been hounding the princess destined to seal the Calamity for as long as she’s been alive.

He didn’t encounter them until he was fourteen, learning spearwork from an old friend of his father’s at Kara Kara Bazaar, the Master Sword always carefully wrapped to conceal its nature. Word got out somehow, though, because a pair of masked figures found him alone among the dunes one night, wandering to clear the thoughts that were only just beginning to take root back then, thoughts of what the world was asking of him and what it meant to answer.

Link got away mostly unscathed. So did the Yiga. Unlike tonight.

The throbbing pain in his ribs is growing harder to ignore. Zelda leaves her torch in one of the sconces and faces him again.

“Not many people know about this place,” she says quietly. “The guards are right outside; we’ll hear if anything goes wrong. So you can…”

She trails off, waiting for him to say or do something. Link pushes his messy hair out of his eyes in frustration. Maybe tying it back would help him pull himself together, but a glance down at the blue band around his wrist makes him clench his jaw until he hears it creak. For a moment there, he forgot about the blood caking the hairtie to his skin, drying in the lines that cross his palm, probably smearing his face where he just brushed his bangs away. Again, Link feels his blade glide smoothly through muscle and meat. Again, he hears the Yiga fight for their last breaths.

It’s all too much—the memories, the weight of the sword, everything that waits for him outside this room. He takes a step back from Zelda, who watches with wide eyes.

“Link,” she says in a voice that makes him want to flee and fall apart all at once.

He’s suddenly aware that he’s gasping for air, that he’s been shaking this whole time and can’t figure out how to stop. When Zelda’s hands land on his shoulders, Link jolts like a spooked horse. She withdraws, but only to lift the sword from his unresisting fingers. After she lowers it carefully to the floor, her palms come away red.

Never blind yourself to it, his mother told him once, her own hands stained with the deer she was teaching him to butcher. Never let it become easy.

Link wants to be blind so badly it hurts.

“Come here,” Zelda says, gathering him into her arms. He struggles half-heartedly, terrified of ruining her lovely nightgown, but she only strengthens her grip and commands, “Stop. Just stop. You’re allowed to be human for a moment.”

Is he? Three dead people on his floor, and the princess of Hyrule is pressing him close to her heart.

Nothing about this is proper. Zelda spent an awful night at his bedside in the infirmary, holding his hand while the surgeon coaxed an arrow from his flesh. Link carried her out of the Spring of Power when she was half-conscious with fever and despair. But those were emergencies. The rest of the time, touch is restricted to helping her mount her horse, offering his arm when they scramble up a rocky slope, sitting with his shoulder tantalizingly close to hers.

They’ve never held each other. Link can’t even return the embrace without worsening both the stains on her dress and the ache in his ribs. But he also can’t bring himself to pull away.

“I’m grateful that you’re safe,” Zelda says, fingers digging into the back of his shirt. “No matter what. Are you listening to me?”

Link nods against her shoulder. She’s so impossibly warm, and he clings to the sensation of her steady heartbeat, listening to his own pulse slow down from near-hysteria to something resembling normalcy.

“Zelda,” he whispers eventually.

“Yes?”

Even the court poet’s eloquent words would fail to capture what she’s just done for him. Link is starting to realize how much of her bare skin is touching his, and desperate hunger rears its head with the desire to tangle his hands in her hair and show her everything he’s struggling to voice.

Link clears his throat and pulls back. Zelda offers him a small, sad smile and leads him over to the fountain, bringing their joined hands beneath the cold flow of water. He occupies himself with speculating about the engineering. The pipes must be channeling the castle’s moat all the way through the earth to reach them here, and perhaps the grate empties out somewhere near these hidden docks beneath the library.

It’s easier than watching the water run red.

All the while, her hands are on his—turning them this way and that, rubbing carefully at the spots where the blood clings on more stubbornly, guiding his arms under the flow too. Link keeps his thoughts far away and his gaze on the little furrow that forms between Zelda’s brows when she’s concentrating, so it comes as a surprise when he looks down to find his skin nearly as clean as it was when he crawled into bed hours ago, not knowing what was about to happen.

“Almost done,” Zelda says, pushing his hair out of the way, just as she did when he came away from that fight in Eldin with two tiny scratches that still somehow made her worry. Her gentle fingers trail water over his forehead and cheeks, and Link shivers, remembering with foolish longing how her body felt against his.

Her lips part, but then she steps back, digging something out of the pocket of her cloak—the same black tunic she offered him earlier. “Please take it this time.”

This time, he reaches for the hem of his bloodied nightshirt without hesitation. Zelda releases a wordless squeak he finds incredibly endearing, whirling around with her hands over her eyes. Noble propriety will mystify him as long as he lives. Not so long ago, she stood in a room of corpses without turning away.

He pulls the shirt over his head and lets it slip from his fingers. Words follow, dangerous and unbidden. “I don’t mind.”

Zelda lowers her hands, though it’s another second before she turns to face him. At first her gaze warms him better than any fireplace could, but then it snags on his abdomen, noticing the angry splotches around his chest and ribs at the same time he does. She comes forward, lifting his arm to find red fingerprints from where the Yiga restrained him, and then circles around to his back, hissing at whatever evidence she finds there. He’ll be bruised by tomorrow, but it’s her featherlight touch making his legs feel week right now, not the pain.

“Those cowards,” she says in a small voice. “Always striking from the shadows. Always hiding behind masks.”

Link shrugs. “It’s what they do.”

Besides, he paid them back tenfold. Zelda shakes her head, grabbing her torch wordlessly and heading back down the stairs. He hears the knock pattern the captain taught her, hears the bookcase slide aside in response so she can talk to the guards. Too tired to be curious, Link pulls the clean black shirt over his head and uses the soiled one to clean the last of the blood from the Master Sword.

Zelda returns with a handkerchief full of icicles the guards must have gathered at her behest. She orders him to sit down on the bottom bunk and hands him the handkerchief to press to his ribs, then sits beside him to ask questions about his pain and his breathing that he answers as best he can.

“And how is your heart?” she says at the end.

“Seems to be working.”

“Link. You know what I mean.”

His gaze strays back to his bloodied nightshirt, puddled on the floor like a dead thing. His father gave it to him sometime during their travels. It’s not like training with every tribe and facing every threat the wild has to offer was easy, but Link took so many things for granted about those years—most of all, his father being there to make bad coffee over the campfire and give up his shirts to keep Link warm.

His father is stationed at Akkala Citadel now. It’s been a long time since Link went home to see his mother and sister. He sends perfunctory letters once a month so they know he’s alive, but he never really knows what to talk about, or how to bring back the boy they used to know.

“I don’t know,” Link says finally. “I don’t—have space to think about that.”

“I think pain is there whether we think about it or not. Even I was convinced I was holding it together until you showed up and saw right through me.” Zelda smiles at him wearily. “I’ve never excelled at hiding what I feel from anyone, but with you…it was impossible from the start, and it took me a long time to be okay with that. So believe me, I understand how hard it is to look inwards. But you’ve helped me. So let me help you.”

He shifts the ice to the other side of his ribcage, watching shadows dance across the rock walls of their shelter.

“Link, please. I can’t just let you bury yourself.”

Hasn’t Link thought the same thing countless times, watching her shiver in the sacred springs, leave behind the research she loves, hold her head high past the whispers that follow them through every town? He looks down at Zelda’s white-knuckled grip on the edge of the mattress, and he knows that if he buries himself, there will be no one left to dig her out.

“I guess I…” he starts slowly. “I think the enemy gets stronger every day. I think things are going to get worse from here on out.”

“Oh,” Zelda breathes, and her fingers clasp together in a compulsive, familiar gesture that breaks his heart. She’s praying, perhaps subconsciously—for her power to awaken, for his words to be untrue, for them both to have the time that fate has denied them. Regretting his words instantly, Link sets the ice down and pulls her hands into his lap.

“I don’t doubt that we’ll win,” he says, though in his heart of hearts, he carries more doubt than he’ll ever admit.

“But you’re afraid of something.”

If only Link could refute that. His chest aches with every word. “I’ve changed. I don’t—at the end of this, I don’t know if I’ll…if my family will…”

Zelda squeezes his hands like they’re something precious, despite the rust-red stains under his nails. Link bites the inside of his cheek. He’s spent years killing his own voice and past and future without hesitation until she reminded him that life is worth living. Silencing others forever has a different weight. One Yiga in the desert, three in his bedroom, more monsters than he can even begin to count—where does it end? How long can he keep going?

“It doesn’t frighten me,” she says softly. “I won’t pretend to understand how it feels to do what you did tonight, but if the cost of your life is that of our enemies, then Hylia forgive me, I’ll pay it. Do you think that’s wrong?”

“No,” he admits slowly. Any other answer would be a lie. Link has never been so quick to deal out death as he was that day in the desert, with that Vicious Sickle seconds away from cutting the sun from the sky.

“Nor do I. The Yiga hunt us sheerly because of who we were born to be. For the same reason, the whole world has demanded that we change. You aren’t to blame for who you’ve needed to become since you drew the sword. I think everyone else who loves you would say the same thing.”

Everyone else who—

Heat spreads from his neck to the tips of his ears. A sheepish smile crosses Zelda’s face as she absorbs her words. Link has none of his own to offer, so he just pulls her close. She twines her arms around his neck, more careful now that she knows about his damaged ribs, and he closes his eyes to breathe in the smell of nectar and ink. Sometime after entering this quiet sanctuary with her, he finally stopped shaking, and he’s only just realized it.

“I thought of you,” he breathes into her shoulder. “When the Yiga almost—I thought of you.”

“Link,” she says raggedly, and there’s more hope in that one word than any prayer she’s given to the Goddess.

She fits so perfectly against him that it’s hard to believe he’s gone a lifetime without feeling her breath against his neck. He knows with perfect clarity that he would do it all over again if it brought him here into her arms. They don’t cry—they never cry—but they hold each other until she’s heavy with sleep, and even then, Link is reluctant to lay her down on the bunk.

He stays there at the edge of the mattress, alone in the flickering firelight, and allows himself to think of home for the first time in what feels like eons. Insects singing in the summer grass. Sunlight on water. His mother behind him on the back of a horse, her graceful hands showing his small ones how to hold the reins. His father coming home with a worn smile, helmet tucked under his arm. His little sister, all yellow pigtails and muddy legs, running up to give Link a handful of wildflowers and a gap-toothed smile.

Time is impossible to keep track of down here. After some of it trickles by, one of the guards knocks on the door to bring him more ice. There’s something strange in the way he doesn’t make eye contact, something almost ashamed. Link puzzles over that for a while longer, glancing down every so often to watch dreams drift across Zelda’s eyelids. She starts to stir at the second knock, and he trots downstairs just in time for the shelf to slide away, allowing a shaft of near-blinding sun to reach through the gap.

“The castle’s secure,” the captain informs him tiredly. “To an extent, that is. Persons of interest will remain under heavy guard, but the princess can return to her quarters.”

Link nods, surprised he came to deliver the news himself; he’s got bags under his eyes and surely a thousand things to do.

“Sir Link,” the captain says before he can walk back upstairs, and Link freezes, unable to recall a time when the captain used his name. “They’ve moved your things to a spare bunk in the main barracks, the door to which will be guarded at all times. You’re on leave for two weeks unless you receive orders higher than mine.”

Only years of practice keep Link’s jaw from dropping. Two weeks? He’s never gotten more than a few days. Sudden paranoia sparks through him at the memory of the Yiga looming over him in Hyrulean uniforms. At least this time his sword is right in his hand, but—

“The princess had a point,” the captain says impatiently. “We all owe you better. Now go and fetch her, unless you’re planning to ignore orders again.”

This can’t be an imposter; the Yiga wouldn’t know about his insubordinate track record. Link searches the captain’s face for some sign that his sudden generosity is a joke, or somehow a punishment, but the man just holds his gaze impassively. Not wanting to test his luck, Link floats back up the stairs as though in a dream. Two weeks.

Zelda is up and splashing water on her face when Link returns. “Good,” she says when he relays the captain’s decision. “He’s finally come to his senses.”

Link shrugs, still mystified as they emerge blinking against the sunlight to meet her guard escort. For a moment of strange panic, he doesn’t want to watch her go, as though everything he told her and everything she told him will fade with the light of day.

“Get some rest, sir knight,” she orders him. They can’t touch each other again with such an audience, but the fondness is all in her voice and the curl of her lips.

Link nods solemnly, turning in the other direction, then pauses and glances back at her. “Princess?”

Everyone but Zelda twitches at the sound of his voice. She raises her eyebrows in a silent question, and Link nods in response. He’s all right. But without her, that wouldn’t be the case. His life since drawing the sword has made it clear that he can survive anything. But Zelda is the reason an impossible bud of hope still pushes up through the soil at every sunrise.

“Thank you,” Link says, the words clear as a mountain lake, “for lending me your boots.”

The guards all look at his feet in disbelief—him borrowing something from the princess is gossip by itself—but he’s focused on watching the tips of Zelda’s ears grow pink. Link worries that he’s done something wrong until she breathes out a laugh.

“Anytime,” she promises, holding his gaze for one more second before she finally turns away.

He drifts back to the main barracks. A few lower-ranking soldiers are snoring among the rows of bunk beds, but most of the force is out there securing the castle. Link finds his belongings laid out in the quiet corner where he’ll be staying until his room is no longer a crime scene, though the idea of ever sleeping there again is not a welcome one. He slides the Master Sword back into its scabbard, crawls into bed, and closes his aching eyes.

Two weeks, he thinks in amazement, and again his mind fills with the warm memory of home.

Maybe it’s finally time he paid a visit.

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