Day 12 of the 12 days of Christmas prompts orchestrated by @zelink-prompts
Today was actually a free for all, so we got to choose our own prompts. I, of course, couldn’t resist using the best Christmas song of all time, Carol of the Bells by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. That means you get some angst to sprinkle your holiday season with but you probably know me well enough by now to know that angst is all I do.
Incarnation: Breath of the Wild mid-Calamity
“Link,” Zelda said desperately, her hands on Link’s shoulders. She could hear the whirring mechanisms of guardians approaching them. “Save yourself, go!”
Link could barely even stand, his weight depending on the Master Sword spiked into the ground. He panted with an unrelenting fatigue and his body ached with injury that contorted his face.
And yet, he was determined to persevere, shaking his head.
“I’ll be fine,” Zelda insisted. “Don’t worry about me, run!”
Link summoned all the energy he had to stand up, stumbling backwards yet somehow finding his footing as he dislodged the Master Sword from the rain-soaked ground.
Zelda eyes widened as an another Guardian approached to face them, panic overwhelming her heart.
“Link!” She exclaimed. “I’m ordering you! Flee at once! I’ll take the hit and you get to the castle and defeat Calamity Ganon!”
But Link didn’t budge, having not even the energy to assume a battle stance. Somehow, Zelda knew this was it for her knight.
“Link!!” She exclaimed. “For goddesses sake!!”
The Guardian aimed it’s red targeting light at Link, who moved instantly. Zelda was incredibly relieved that he was listening to her until, before she could think to process it, Link had turned around and kissed her with a hand on her cheek.
Her heart warmed with love, a great release of the tense romantic connection between them, and yet at the quickening beeping of the guardian, Zelda pushed Link with all her might to the ground.
“No!” She said as she stepped in front of him, her hand outstretched and a beaming yellow light shining from it.
Link saw her sealing power awakened as he lifted his head from the ground, panting in equal parts surprise and pride as he looked upon her frame.
“Was that…?” Zelda asked as the guardians powered down, lowering her hand to look at the back of it. “The power…”
“Zelda…” Link croaked behind her.
Zelda turned around quickly to see Link laying on his side, nearly passed out but for small slits of blue eyelids.
“Link!” She said, running to his side and sitting on her heels.
“No,” she continued, denying his condition. “No, no, no, no, no.”
She placed a hand on his cheek, tears forming in her green eyes.
“Why didn’t you go when I told you to?!” She asked with an accusatory tone. Her heart clung desperately to the hope that he was going to be okay.
“Couldn’t…” Link said hoarsely before coughing twice into his hand. Zelda’s eyes widened and her hand retreated when she saw that blood had splurted from his mouth “…let you die.”
“Link,” Zelda said with heavy breaths, her pulse quickening, as if panic was attacking her.
Link winced with pain as he brought his hand to her cheek.
“I love you,” he said before passing out completely with one last breath, his hand painting her pale cheek, her white prayer dress with his blood as his hand went limp.
“Link no, I…” Zelda said, scooping him up in her arms and holding him tight, hear tears dropping into his blue tunic, now stained with blood. “I love you, too, I…I love you so much, just…just open your eyes. I want to see your eyes Link. Open…open your eyes. You’ve done it before…you…”
She dove her head into his unmoving chest, her tears falling like the rain into him, her breaths hiccuping as she accepted the truth.
Black Wolves Saga Last Hope Memory 17: Príncipes gemelos [Historia General 1]
La protagonista piensa en los príncipes que iban a asistir a la fiesta.
-Mejojo y Auger...
Fiona: (Ahora que lo pienso...)
Preocupación, al decir eso se me vinieron a la mente aquellos dos invitados que se supone que vendrían a visitarme el día de hoy.
Fiona: (Mejojo, Auger... Zara me dijo que ellos vendrían a la fiesta, ¿pero estará bien?)
Cuando salí al jardín ellos todavía no habían llegado a Scharlmessen..
Por eso mismo es que me permitieron poder caminatas libres, aunque solo fuera en la parte este.
Y durante esa caminata--... Este desconocido joven lobo me secuestró.
Y por alguna razón, él estaba buscando a Mejojo y a Auger--.
Fiona: (Solo espero que no le pidan a la casa Galland que asuma la responsabilidad...)
Aunque Mejojo y Auger no estuvieron directamente en una situación de riesgo.
A pesar de eso, no es muy bueno que ocurra un escándalo en un lugar a donde se supone que sus altezas iban a asistir.
Incluso si mi padre recibe quejas debido a su nivel de supervisión, él no podrá quejarse.
Fiona: (De ser posible... Me gustaría acabar con todo esto antes de que Mejojo y Auger lleguen.)
En vez de tener que informar la situación actual,
preferiría que hubiera que decirles que ocurrió un problema el cual ya ha sido solucionado.
Fiona: (Pero...)
Eché un vistazo a mi alrededor.
En estos momentos me encuentro fuera de los terrenos de mi casa, estoy en el bosque.
Apenas y puedo ver la torre entre medio de las ramas de los árboles...
Fiona: (...Parece que me será imposible regresar antes de que esos dos lleguen.)
Aún queda algo de tiempo antes de que Mejojo y Auger regresen, pero...
Veo muy poco realista el poder regresar a la mansión y celebrar la fiesta como si nada hubiera sucedido.
Fiona: ...
Fiona: (...Me pregunto, si estarán algo preocupados.)
De repente pensé eso.
Mejojo desea que yo me convierta en su esposa.
Si se llega a enterar de que un lobo me ha secuestrado, ¿él se preocupará por mi seguridad?
Fiona: ...
Fiona: (...Quién sabe.)
No puedo imaginarme a un Mejojo sumido en la preocupación.
Fiona: (En principio, él fue quien me propuso matrimonio y nos llevó a la relación que tenemos actualmente.)
Siendo honesta, ni siquiera yo sé por qué Mejojo me propuso matrimonio.
Mejojo viene muchas veces al mes a verme y también suele traerme regalos de vez en cuando.
Supongo que se preocupa por mí.
Sin embargo...
Fiona: (Por alguna razón no puedo creer en que hace todo eso de forma sincera.)
Creo que me aprecia.
Mejojo siempre me trata de la forma en que muchas otras mujeres sueñan con ser tratadas.
A pesar de eso no siento que me ame demasiado.
*recuerdo*
''Mejojo: Oye, yo en verdad pienso en querer hacerte mi esposa.
Mejojo: Vendrás al castillo junto a mí, ¿no?
Fiona: Sí... pero...
Mejojo: Date prisa y asiente por favor.
Mejojo: Yo quiero estar junto a ti.''
*fin del recuerdo*
Fiona: ...
Una voz amable. Una actitud persistente.
Mejojo es un príncipe encantador.
Sin embargo, cuando veo la insistencia que hay en sus actos a la hora de persuadirme, me veo incapaz de encontrar cariño en sus palabras.
Puede que yo le guste.
Pero no siento que lo que expresa hacia mí sea amor.
Fiona: (Por otra parte, Auger es fácil de entender...)
La actitud que tiene frente a mí el hermano gemelo menor de Mejojo, Auger, es fácil de comprender.
*recuerdo*
''Auger: Oye, ¿no crees que perderás la cordura si te quedas siempre en este lugar?
Auger: Eres increíble~. Yo creo que no aguantaría ni tres días en este sitio.
Mejojo: ...Auger.
Auger: Ah, perdón. Es que soy muy sincero.
Auger: Y no tengo mucho interés en una feita como tú~.
Mejojo: Oye, Auger.
Auger: ¿Eh~? Pero si es una feita.''
*fin del recuerdo*
Fiona: ...
Fiona: (También es terrible que me llame ''feita''.)
Fiona: (Pero tampoco tenía que decir ''este lugar'' en frente de mí, no cuando sabe que no puedo salir...)
Auger es el tipo de persona que con toda la casualidad existente decide arrojar frases inocentes o en broma con el fin de perforar profundamente a los demás.
Y una vez que empieza es Mejojo quien comienza a disculparse por él...
Fiona: (...Parece que no le agrado mucho a Auger.)
Eso es lo que siento.
Mejojo, quien a pesar de dedicarme palabras románticas, no logro sentir amor en ellas y Auger, quien no parece interesado en mí.
¿Cómo reaccionarán esos dos a esta situación?
Fiona: (Solo espero que no hagan nada en contra de la familia Galland...)
Ahora que estoy afuera, solo puedo rezar por ello.
sometimes i think about just how sad memory 16 + 17 is. in memory 16, zelda breaks down over not being able to save king rhoam and the four champions, how she's "left them all to die." the next memory is link being an inch close to death, and he would likely have actually died if zelda still didn't unlock her power by the time the beam fired. she would have lost everything, and i want to see the scenario then just cuz angst ❤️
Sometimes? Woof, it's the best part of the game imho and I feel like I'm thinking about it all the time 😂 If Zelda didn't unlock her powers when she did though, I doubt she would have survived for any meaningful amount of time afterwards. 🤔
That having been said, I do have a prompt in my inbox right now that reads, "What if they never made it to the shrine of resurrection, or Link took the blast even though she unlocked her powers?" and I fully intend to tackle it the next time I do some prompts!
In the meantime, I did write Breathe In, Breathe Out, which is memory 17 from Link's perspective, and also Forced to Beg, which is a pre-memory 16 catastrophe scenario. And if you haven't read Even in Death (ffn / ao3) by @intangiblyyourswrites, in which "There is no resurrection shrine. A new Hero is born. And the boy that saves her is not the one she loves," ya should.
(Even in Death also has an AU I'm going to plug here, in which the Link that saves her is a timeline-jumping OoT!Link, which is fantastic. You can read it here: Duality and Solidarity. There's also art!)
Hope that holds you over for a bit! Thanks for the ask!
Masterlist
Word count: ~930
Universe: Breath of the Wild
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T
Themes: Character death, blood loss, fatal injuries
Read on ao3
---
Blatchery Plains is a sea of fire and lights, crippled guardians spewing sparks and smoke foundering in the chaos like so many shipwrecks run aground. The sky pulses red and murky and thick in time with his heartbeat. Red, like the beam of a guardian’s laser about to shred through his body again. Like the blood spilling out of him that he has long since given up trying to stem.
Breathe in.
His lungs fill with embers and smoke as her fingers alight on his shoulders. He’s on one knee, brought low by enemies that just won’t stop coming, by the holes in his body where he ripped shrapnel from himself or where a guardian’s beam ran him through, and he leans on his sword sunk into the ground so he won’t fall farther. Her touch is too soft, too insubstantial, like she’s fading away, or he is.
Breathe out.
She begs him to save himself, tells him to run. He doesn’t have the energy to laugh at her. He could more easily rip his own heart out of his chest, leave it sputtering on the battlefield, and walk away than he could bring himself leave her. Running would be pointless, anyway.
He knows he’s already dead. He can feel it.
He can feel it in the way his vision crowds darker the longer he tries to stand, in the way his heart pounds so hard he thinks it might burst and leaves him feeling weak and wasted when he bleeds out. He doesn’t fixate on it. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except for her.
He can feel the tremors in the earth, vibrating up his sword and through his arm, and he knows they’re about to be discovered. He knows more of them are coming.
Breathe in.
He heaves himself to his feet, swallowing a cry as every charred nerve and fractured bone screams in protest, and stumbles back. He almost has to plunge the sword down again to keep from falling over. But he finds his footing somehow, manages to square his good shoulder forward and keep the tip of his blade airborne in spite of the way lifting it sends pain shooting up behind his eyes. His other arm is crushed beyond use. He thinks his spine might be, too.
It’s a little difficult not to dwell on the absurdity of his being able to stand at all.
A guardian crests the boulder that had shielded them from the other sentries and fixes them in its sights, advancing with heavy, frantic, skittering steps. It’s tainted a lambent, cloying pink, so bright and so close he can smell the malice. His vision constricts and dances in triplicate, so he’s not sure if he’s facing one guardian or three. It tramples the smoking hulls of the machines that had come before it, planting its massive claws like anchors as it rears up and charges the firing mechanism. The beam is red and narrow, whirring and climbing in cadence as it sears into his head.
Breathe out.
He’s too broken to mount an offense. So he holds his ground. He puts himself between the Calamity and the princess, making his body her shield. The light is blinding, but he stares it down. That’s right. Keep your sights on me. He can’t see her at his back, but he can feel her, giving him the strength to will himself alive when his body should’ve given out long ago. But she isn’t running, and that alone makes him want to double over and empty his stomach in the grass, because in a matter of seconds she’s going to be alone with that thing, and there will be nothing he can do to protect her then.
And then she’s in front of him, screaming, pushing him away, facing the guardian in his stead, and she’s glowing.
Breathe in.
Divine power is ebbing off her in waves. She’s radiant. She’s breathtaking. For a single, suspended moment, the light swells brighter, and then it’s bursting out of her and engulfing the field. It’s warm and soft as it floods over him, purging the malice from everything it touches. It must be what being touched by a goddess feels like.
He can’t take his eyes off her, hypnotized as the light casts her in full silhouette. She’s fearless, and powerful, and untouchable. She’s every bit the goddess she was always meant to be. And he can’t help but think she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
When the light fades the guardian trembles, and then the corruption is leaving it with a ghostly scream. Malice is lifting in plumes of smoke all across Blatchery Plain like so many spirits ascending. The machines deactivate and collapse. And he feels a bizarre mingling of peace and horror—as the world flickers out, as he feels himself falling—as he realizes she doesn’t need him anymore.
Then she’s holding him, and her voice is sweet, and perfect, and sounding much too far away. He finds her eyes as he labors through the last of it, trying to take in as much of her as he can as the dark crowds around her. Using the last ounces of strength he has left to keep his eyes open, to keep them focused. Because he wants her to be the last thing he sees.
He takes solace in the fact that she’s safe. In the fact that he fought long enough to see her come into her power.
In the fact that he protected her right down to his dying breath.
Definitely one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the game. This one has a little bit of hope to it too, as Zelda’s power is awakened and you know Link will be all right, while the “Despair” memory was just really sad.
dont think about memory 17 dont think about how link knows he’s going to die and uses his last ounce of strength to look at zelda one last time, the only selfish thing he’s ever fucking done for himself, don’t think about how he finally gives up and realizes he can’t fight anymore but knows he has it in him, at least, to fade to the love in her eyes, dont fucking think abt memory 17
first i gotta say i adore your love of fi. shes so fuckin good and does not deserve the fandom hate at all. she just wants to help!
youve probably posted about this and i just missed it, but i wanna hear about your favorite Fi scene(s)! when did she make you laugh the hardest? what scenes made you cry?
one thing i really love about skyward sword is that the whole map is so dense, and you get to return to so many areas more than once, always finding new things. what did you think about it? its almost the opposite of botw imo, do you prefer a huge sprawling map or a smaller one thats more richly layered?
do you have a favorite item from skyward sword? personally i adore the beetle, i think its such a fun sort of upgrade to the sling shot
this is getting a bit long as ive just now realized tumblr removed ask character limits at some point?? so one last question for now, what did you think of the motion controls? i thought they were a really neat idea that brought a little more immersion to the game and allowed for some really cool and unique puzzles and monsters but i found them to be a little clunky and not as precise/responsive as they needed to be to fully pull off what the developers wanted to do.
HI THANK YOU FOR THESE
i wanna hear about your favorite Fi scene(s)! when did she make you laugh the hardest? what scenes made you cry?
i’m a really big fan of memory 17 from breath of the wild mostly because of what it represents and what it made me feel. fi doesn’t have any dialogue in this scene which is honestly an absolute testament to how powerful it is lmao. the thing is that i watched Fi receive more hatred than i’ve ever seen any character I loved receive, i watched critics and gamer men everywhere go apeshit at her existence because they couldn’t handle the idea of a woman telling them things in their video game, and i watched people list the strengths and weaknesses of skyward sword and list her as a weakness and a con and a downside to playing every time. and nintendo so easily could have never spoken of her again, written her out of the story entirely, all the pieces were there to do so and make it seamless... but the criticism didn’t touch Fi. they decided her place in the story was more important than anyone who hated her and wanted her gone. they foreshadow this in an earlier memory, talking about a voice inside the master sword, and i got so happy at just the cute little homage on its own... but then they made her presence PIVOTAL. it was HER who saved link’s life. it was HER who cut through the darkness and told zelda how to steel herself and what to do and how she could still win, and zelda in turn took fi in her hands and carried her to the forest, whispering reassurances to the sword as it grieved. breath of the wild only happened because fi refused to let her master die, loyal as always, beside him forever.
the fucking SCORE of this scene, the way it’s called ‘zelda’s awakening’ as a fucking parallel to zelda’s lullaby, the horrific and doomed slow crawl of it, the way it sounds like it’s on every SIDE of you and you can’t escape. the errant piano that you already associate with the guardians and their hopeless assault at this point in the game, how it builds to her awakening and then the choir of her lullaby fades in!!! how its normally such a soothing and bittersweet song but link is literally done and instead the tune of it is somber and mournful. the way she bends to cry over him as he dies in her arms and the song of the hero kicks in and sounds like the literal flame of his life flickering out, nothing but soft piano notes. and then... they stutter... they jump around... one note sticks... AND IT TURNS INTO FI’S THEME, AND THE SONG OF IT UPTURNS, AND THE PIANO COMES BACK BUT THIS TIME ITS TRIUMPHANT AND HOPEFUL, AND EVERYTHING IS OKAY AND ZELDA AND FI ARE BRAVE AND BEAUTIFUL AND CONTENT TO TAKE OVER FROM HERE AND NOT DONE YET
breathes. im a wreck.
my other favourite fi scene is the follow fi segment from the beginning of skyward sword and i have written. extensively on the topic, yes.
one thing i really love about skyward sword is that the whole map is so dense, and you get to return to so many areas more than once, always finding new things. what did you think about it? its almost the opposite of botw imo, do you prefer a huge sprawling map or a smaller one thats more richly layered?
gonna be real i dreaded botw the months up to release because i’m not really an open world bitch. i like... direct instructions, and to be told what to do and where to go. i like playing zelda because most of them have a set path to follow and dungeons are straightforward and fun. it’s cool that i ended up liking botw anyways, because by all accounts it’s really not my kinda game!
i love skyward sword’s map :’3 i understand why some people dont, but it just feels like home to me!
do you have a favorite item from skyward sword? personally i adore the beetle, i think its such a fun sort of upgrade to the sling shot
i like the whip hehe snappy snap. koloktos is the best fight in the whole game.
oh the dragon scale too i love just dolphin jumping out of the water x3
what did you think of the motion controls? i thought they were a really neat idea that brought a little more immersion to the game and allowed for some really cool and unique puzzles and monsters but i found them to be a little clunky and not as precise/responsive as they needed to be to fully pull off what the developers wanted to do.
i never struggled with the motion controls. with the caveat that forced motion controls are inherently ableist, i wish i could play every zelda like i played skyward sword xD i felt completely immersed at all times, and because my motion was precise as hell, i had about the best time you could have. my only real issues were swimming and flying, stuff thats mapped to the wiimote when i think the joystick would’ve been better, but it wasn’t enough to ruin it for me or anything. i just... really fucking love swordfighting in this game, it feels SO satisfying to me!!!
