Susie_ya/Vane_yaa (ao3/twitter) made me a bunch of fanart for the Numb/Recovery/Embrace set from Ira Deorum, and it is so lovely!! Thank you so much!! 😭😭😭😍😍😍
odd question but have you ever made a follow-up to Tear Stained from your Whumptober collection a few years ago?
Hello Anon :)
Wow I had to dig back a ways for this one! Tear-stained was part of whumptober 2019 (Ira Deorum). I never wrote a sequel, but it was inspired by a post-BotW epic I had planned to write; but since that now sits rather firmly on top of the "things I'll never get around to doing" pile, I'll tell ya all about it!
I feel like I talked a bit about this before but I can't find the post now, BUT ANYWAYS. This story was going to take place several years after BotW and basically follow the structure of the Riddle-Master trilogy. Link and Zelda are married, rebuilding Hyrule, and he still struggles with his memory loss.
He starts having these visions of a Sheikah Monk calling to him from a shrine hidden in the giant pit in the Yiga Hideout. They go on an excursion to find it, and when Link finally meets him, the Monk says he has ancient knowledge buried in his memories and he summoned him there to uncover it. Turns out the monk is actually a Yiga who infiltrated the monks' ranks, and lured Link there to pull information about the Triforce out of his subconscious.
(This was all before the DLC; when I was beating it with a friend I started telling him my ideas for an evil monk story literally as we're watching the post-Divine Beast cutscene and Maz Koshia's fingers move he pointed at the screen like 😱)
Anyways the pit implodes over the shrine entrance once the Yiga has him, and though Zelda and the Gerudo spend weeks digging through the rubble they don't ever find it again.
A year or so later Link finally busts out. The whole time the Yiga (named Qos) was torturing him with mind probes (a la Tear-stained), Link was also absorbing knowledge from him, and becoming incredibly powerful. He figures out how to tap into the Triforce of Courage and use its powers but is understandably Messed Up and consumed with ideas of revenge.
Meanwhile, the Gerudo tell Zelda about the explosion in the Karusa Valley and the reports that Link was seen there. She teams up with Riju and they go looking for him, and eventually meet up with him in Hebra. He basically says, "I'm gonna go kill this guy for everything he's done, stay out of the way," and Zelda doesn't really like the sound of that, and ends up getting herself into some trouble while trying to save him from himself.
The third act is a little hazy, I think I wanted Qos to do some serious damage to Zelda's mind and Link has to back off from his quest for revenge to help heal the damage, and it's pretty awful for him because the only way he can undo it is to go into her mind the way Qos went into his and it's just a lot of trauma? Anyways IT WAS GONNA BE GREAT GUYS. But the Dreaded Harddrive Failure of October 2018 pretty much killed it. I still have some snippets that were saved in my email. Here's one of Zelda Being Not Smart! :D
“So. You are the Zelda of this era,” he mused, watching her with calculating eyes. “You look a lot like mine. But you lack a certain air of confidence that she had.”
“I’m sure she was a formidable woman,” she deflected. She was not about to be baited into defending herself against 10,000 year old notions of who she ought to be. Not after everything she had done. Certainly not after everything he had done to Link. “I understand you’re after something that doesn’t belong to you.”
Qos laughed once derisively. “Who is to say who the power of the gods belongs to?”
“It doesn’t belong to anyone,” she countered, her pulse quickening at his brazenness. “But my family is tasked with protecting it from those who would use it for their own ends.”
“I see.” He folded his hands, as though to placate her. “And you mean to stop me.”
She pursed her lips. “If I must.”
“You may try,” he allowed, giving her a small smile. “But there is no need. I desire the power itself. I have no desire to wield it over others.”
“You tortured an innocent man until he lost his mind in an attempt to get at it,” she said icily, unable to entirely disguise her hate. “You’ll forgive me if I take little comfort in your alleged lack of ambitions.”
“His suffering was unfortunate,” Qos agreed mildly, “but necessary. I do not pretend to apologize for it.”
“I do not pretend that I would forgive you even if you did.”
“There is one thing I don’t understand,” he mused, narrowing his eyes gently. “Given what he knows I’m capable of doing to your mind, I’m certain the hero would do everything in his power to keep you from me. Yet here you are, and of your own volition. Tell me, how did you convince him to let you come looking for me?”
Zelda tried to swallow the lump obstructing her throat, but suddenly her mouth was dry as sand. “I came without his consent,” she admitted.
“Even knowing the pain the consequences of our meeting might cause him?” Qos’s smile grew wider. “It seems we’re both willing to hurt him, if it serves our purposes.”
“We’re nothing alike,” she spat before she could reign in her emotions. “I’m here because I’m trying to help him.”
“And that will only hurt him all the more.”
Hot tears burned in her throat as she stared at him, at a loss for words. No matter how she rationalized her behavior to herself, the ugly truth was that he was right. If anything happened to her Link would be devastated, and worse than that he would blame himself.
But despite knowing that, and despite having been asked by him explicitly not to confront Qos, she disregarded his wishes and the suffering the consequences might cause him under a banner of noble intentions.
“I can still feel his mind,” he murmured, his eyes drifting absently to the fire. “He’s consumed by his fears, and by his hatred for me. He thinks only of revenge. It must be difficult, being married to a man so devoured by rage. Can you truly think of him as your husband? Can you even love him anymore?”
“Stop it,” she demanded, biting back her tears. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of falling to pieces, even if his words were piercing the most vulnerable, tender places in her heart. She kept her voice steady. “You don’t know a thing about him. I won’t let him lose himself.”
“He already has.” Qos paused, his eyes sliding away from her, away from the fire, out into the night. “You can ask him yourself.”
Fear, cold and unforgiving, coiled itself around her throat. She turned, looking at the darkness. There was nothing. And then in the next instant he was there, standing at the edge of the ring of their fire as though he had always been there. His eyes were grim, his hands fisted at his sides, watching them with such a tangled mess of raw emotion burning behind his guarded expression that Zelda could not help her sudden tears.
“Link,” she breathed. He hardly seemed to hear her.
“I would’ve let her go,” Qos told him, his voice devoid of feeling.
She saw Link flinch. The conflict in him was evident: fear for her, fear for himself, hatred for Qos, a burning desire to kill him, an equally powerful desire to keep her safe. All of it left him immobilized, any action threatening to set off a chain reaction he couldn’t hope to break.
“Leave her out of this,” he warned him darkly. “She doesn’t have what you want.”
“Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. That’s beside the point now. She’s much more useful to me as she is: undamaged, but vulnerable.”
“If you so much as touch her mind—”
“You’ll do what?” he interrupted. “Kill me? I think you’ve already made your intentions to do that quite clear.”
Link took his eyes off Qos in a moment of indecision to spare her a glance. Her heart broke as she met his defeated gaze, desperate and paralyzed with fear. It was her selfishness, her pride, that had gotten them into this mess, and however it played out, he was the one who was going to pay the price.
“I’m in something of a predicament now that you’ve arrived,” Qos went on dispassionately. “I can’t outrun you. I’m not willing to kill you. And I can’t trust you to simply let me into your mind without mounting some kind of reprisal, even with her here. It’s in your nature to fight for her.”
“I’ll cooperate,” he promised, and it was so quick and sincere it made Zelda’s stomach drop.
“I’m afraid that’s not good enough.”
In the next instant Qos was gone, she heard Link shout, felt the Yiga run his hand through her silken hair, just grazing the base of her skull to her scalp, and she saw the unmistakable, terrifying flash of the red, inverted eye before she lost consciousness.
Hope that was a bit of fun for ya! Thanks for the ask!
The dancing scene in "Muffled Scream". So creepy and unsettling and it makes my heart hurt to think about it. I think it was one of the first few fics I read of yours? (I'm not 100% sure) But it's definitely one of the fics I read and fell in love with your writing. It's also one of the fics I recommend first when I send people your way. Bless you for writing follow-ups as well. You break my heart and then mend it. ❤️
ALSO, I'm going to cheat on this ask game and mention two scenes because I thought of them both and NO ONE CAN STOP ME. :D
Memorable Scene #2: "Steel and Silk pt.2" Zelda laying her hand in Link's hand while they lay in bed, and Link, realizing the display of trust she's showing him, just stares at the touch and doesn't even dare curl his fingers around hers. Be still my heart. ❤️😉
I hope you're doing well, Embyr! Take care of yourself first and foremost!
Cheaterrrr!! (But I'm so glad you cheated 😁)
(Also double points for choosing two whump stories, you know how to make me happy dance in my chair 🥳)
