The knife clattered to the counter, before bouncing onto the ground. Imogen, clutching her hand tightly as a drop of red hit the countertop, danced away from the counter as the knife fell and rattled on the ground for a brief second before coming to rest.
“What is it, darling,” Laudna said as her attention was pulled away from the book she was reading in the solarium adjacent to the kitchen. She looked up to find Imogen turning and holding her hand, a stream of blood now starting to appear through her fingers. Immediately, she noticed the red streak, and hopped up from her chair, dropping her book onto the table. “Oh!”
Imogen looked around frantically for a towel, only finding a small rag that was already a bit damp. “Shit,” she said as she continued to peer around the counter for something to stem the bleeding.
Laudna, meanwhile, scurried around to the washroom for clean wash rags, and fetched the first aid kit that was kept behind the closet door nearby in the process. Within moments, she came back to the kitchen to see Imogen still looking but unable to focus. “Here, sit,” Laudna said as she walked over to Imogen and slowly ushered her over to a seat.
Imogen looked up at Laudna as she walked her over to the chair she had just been sitting in. Laudna could tell Imogen was biting her lip in an effort to mitigate the pain, the sting quite pronounced still in her hand.
“What happened,” Laudna asked as she sat Imogen down and began to examine her hand. She could now see the deep gash across the palm of Imogen’s hand, a good two inches long, but didn’t appear to be very deep.
“I was cutting apples for a pie,” Imogen began to explain, her hand trembling as Laudna examined the cut. “I got a little too careless and wasn’t paying attention…” her voice trailed off in embarrassment.
Laudna remained focused on Imogen’s hand however, looking it over and taking the wash rags to stem the flow of the bleeding. As she squeezed Imogen’s hand applying pressure, Imogen sat with her head in her other hand, still in discomfort but feeling more calm and less shaky. “It’s okay,” Laudna said calmly. “It doesn’t look bad.”
Over the next minutes, Laudna sat there applying pressure and ensuring that the bleeding had stopped. She took a few rags and wet them, cleaning Imogen’s hands of the dried blood that stained her fingers, wrist, down to her arm.
Laudna cleaned the last of the blood from Imogen’s hands, not wanting to leave a drop not even under her fingernails. She dropped the rags to the floor and took a clean, dry towel to Imogen’s hand, patting it dry over the wound that was still very red and tender. She pulled the towel away and placed it on her lap, as she took Imogen’s hand into both of hers now.
With her hand sandwiched between Laudna’s, Imogen could still feel the slight sting of pain emanating from her hand. She closed her eyes, her head dropping from her other hand as Laudna continued to squeeze gently. Suddenly, she felt one of Laudna’s hands pull away and her hand start to lift up from where it had been resting, being held by Laudna.
She opened her eyes and saw Laudna place her lips to Imogen’s hand where the wound was. It didn’t hurt any more than it had a few moments ago; in fact, she thought it might even now feel a little bit better, though the wound was still quite visible.
As Laudna brought Imogen’s hand back down to the table, she continued to hold it delicately, as she prepared a bandage with her free hand.
“Thank you,” Imogen said as Laudna began to carefully wrap the bandage around Imogen’s hand. Within a minute, she had covered the wound and secured the bandage around Imogen’s wrist, leaving her fingers exposed just enough so she could keep the use of her hand for the next few days as it healed.
“Always,” Laudna said as she pulled Imogen's hand back up toward her lips once more. She kissed the knuckles of her hand this time, as Imogen held it aloft daintily. She blushed before retracting her hand delicately.
Laudna began to clean up the mess as Imogen leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re quite the doctor,” she said with a light giggle, before walking back over to where the knife still sat on the kitchen floor.
Laudna smiled as she gathered the wash rags that were soiled with Imogen’s blood and stood up from the table. “Only for you,” Laudna replied. She left the room with the collection of rags and deposited them into a bin that was nearly starting to overflow with other dirty linens and clothes.
She returned in short order to the solarium, walking past Imogen as she went by and giving her a little tap on the ass as Imogen placed the rest of the apples into the pie crust. She jumped playfully as she felt Laudna’s hand impact on her backside, letting out a little squeal, before saying “be careful, wouldn't want me getting cut again, not unless you’re gonna take care of it?”
Laudna stopped in her tracks and turned back, approaching Imogen from behind and wrapping her arms around her as she pressed her stomach against Imogen’s back. “I would always take care of it, darling.” Laudna kissed the back of Imogen’s head and gave her a squeeze.
Imogen felt a warmth wash over her, and a shiver as the kisses on her neck sent a shockwave down her spine. “Careful, you,” she said to Laudna playfully. “Let me get this in the oven.”
Laudna stepped away and allowed Imogen to do as she had wished, the apple pie now prepared and ready to be placed in the oven to bake. As she did, Laudna poured them both fresh cups of tea and prepared a tray with the necessities. "Put that in, then come have some tea with me,” Laudna said as she resumed her walk back toward the solarium, carrying the tea tray with her.
“Now that sounds lovely,” Imogen said. She slid the pie into the awaiting oven, then removed her apron and placed it onto the counter. Letting out a sigh of accomplishment, Imogen joined her wife in the solarium, where they enjoyed their afternoon tea as the aroma of a freshly baking pie filled the cottage.
Linktober 2022 Day 2: Bones ~~ A Link to the Past ~~ ZeldaGoesToo!AU ~~ 2100 words
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“Here,” Link said.
The Moon Pearl gleamed opalescent, tinged with the color of soft, red earth, smooth and shining against Link’s battered hand, cracked with cold, calloused with labor. Zelda stared, wondering as always how its sheen drew dark at its edges regardless of how one held it, of the tilt of one’s head—always the side away from sight, not a shadow, the surface itself an impossible concession to that which ought go unseen.
It remained unchanged, always—even in the Dark World—as would its keeper. Zelda eyed the great boulder they both knew to be a lie. A gateway lay within, lay beneath, and they’d cross through it soon, out of the northern forest and into its harrowed reflection. Link had heard its humming first—Zelda felt it soon after; they’d become so sensitive to it.
“Zelda?” Link asked, reaching up to brush her shoulder with gentle fingertips. She couldn’t feel them—her cold-weather wear would not allow it—but the soft sound of their passage against leather attuned her eyes to his, the concern in them curving her mouth, raising her cheeks, crinkling the corners of her eyes.
“I held it last in that place,” she reminded him.
“I know,” he said. “I’d… still rather you keep it.”
“You’ve been going too long without it,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
He didn’t know.
She’d rather thought not.
She aimed to keep her smile, but words, she thought, might wipe it from her countenance. She raised a hand halfway to his face. At his gaze flickering between that hand and her eyes, she retracted it just a fraction—but he neither retreated nor protested, so she completed its path, the pad of her index finger light on the bridge of his nose, her middle finger resting beside it.
“Do you know what happens—just here—when you’re angry, Link?”
He blinked. She found it easy to keep her smile, as she’d hoped.
“This part of you wrinkles—like this.” She drew her nose up toward her eyebrows as though presented with some unpleasant stench. He laughed, his soft voice in his throat and his teeth framed in his lips pulling a grin from her, too. She swept her fingertips from his nose to his cheek with lightening pressure, finally parting from him with a twinge just left of her breastbone. She watched his mouth close into toothless smile.
“It wrinkles far more when you go without the pearl,” she said.
His smile started to leave him, as she thought it would. “Do you mean I get angrier?”
“No.” Link had never been angry with her—not once. His anger had always been turned on others’ wickedness. On Agahnim.
But in the dark, he’d turned those wrinkles toward her anyway. “When you go long without the pearl in the dark… they… frequent your face. They become other things.”
His face flinched inward on itself. His brows remained down, furrowed, as the rest retracted. “Have I frightened you?”
“Frightened me? You? No. Never.”
A held breath left Link, shrinking his chest, releasing some of the pressure between his eyebrows. Zelda registered its flutter in the air—couldn’t resist breathing it in: an inexplicable compulsion. She expelled it in reluctant speech. “It is simply not how you are in this world. It isn’t you. I’ve no wish to see you… usurped by the magics of that place.”
A swallow bobbed his voicebox. “It really is okay. I’m in control.” He huffed a half-laugh with a smile touching one corner of his mouth. “I thought the fur would be the larger issue.”
A quiet giggle heaved her belly. “That has occurred only twice.”
“Kind of why I was confused. I didn’t really have a choice the first time-”
“And the second time, being by choice, proved extraordinarily useful.” She felt her own eyes sparkle at him, one corner of her mouth wavering, her humor half-tamped in recognition of the nigh-on-hell-maw at her side. “I do believe if we’d waited much longer, you’d have become a wolf.”
His blue eyes flashed, then, fixed on hers.
Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he felt, in his depths, what he would become were he to forsake himself to the relentless darkness in Ganon’s realm.
She had been unable to fathom the form which would be her endpoint, except in its hardness—when she’d become almost crystalline, faceted at her surface, when they first ventured in, ignorant of the Moon Pearl. Perhaps she would be as the maidens—no more than a gem to be carried in a pocket, no more than thoughts reflected within.
Link’s eyes still held hers.
She passed between them in her vision. It would be so easy to lose herself to time here in their brightness.
The way your eyes pierce my surface, she nearly said, I believe they would crack the skin of my reflection.
She ran her thumbs over the nicks, cracks, and callouses on her own hands, the insides of her right hand’s fingers thick and rough from drawing her heavy bowstring, her left palm and span running atop her thumb and index finger dulled, toughened from the grip. These were the signs of strength upon her.
No one ought breach them.
She mustn’t be made vulnerable—not even by Link.
She shook her head, eyes falling to Link’s age-worn boots.
“Please take the pearl,” Link whispered.
“Link- Link, I-“
“Please. There’s… a reason.”
“Of course there’s-“
“I mean, I’m not- just- being kind.”
Her head raised of its own volition to see his arm outstretched, a small canvas bag in the grip of his fist. “The bones,” she breathed.
He nodded. “I… guess you saw me gather them.”
She’d tried not to watch as he had—sliver by sliver, the whole skeleton of their breakfast five days past. “I did.”
He shrugged, the bag lurching toward the hidden portal as though tugged. “I thought we should find out-“
“What happens if we bring them in with us. Yes. Yes, of course. I… Link, I can hold the remains. You may keep the pearl.”
His squinting eyes spoke far more than his lips.
He still wanted her to take it.
She couldn’t allow him to lose himself in that pit of confusion and despair.
“I shall take the remains, Link. You keep the pearl.”
He gazed at her hard for a long moment, those shining blue eyes roaming every line in her face. Searching for a way past her surface. But with four long breaths, he acquiesced, handing her the canvas, its drawstring pulled and tied tight, a light weight in her hand—it had been such a small bird.
Link returned the pearl to his pouch.
Zelda held her hand outstretched to him. He took it.
She took a step toward the illusory rock. He followed. Each of her steps triggered his, and within ten they met the boulder’s surface, the hum of its repulsion shuddering its way through their flesh, their feet, shins, and knees first as they entered its wide base.
Entering the Dark World had never become easy. No ordinary person could do this.
Their legs dug deep, invisible trenches through the sages’ seal’s raw energy. Zelda’d clamped her eyes shut, gritting her teeth against its physical insistence, the swelling dissonance against her ears as the rock’s surface enveloped her hips. A familiar fear gripped her as her very blood fell into one resonance and then another, always at odds with other vibrations, its unpredictable cacophony an earthquake in her form.
Three more strides brought the resistant illusion to Zelda’s clavicle.
Her heart hardened.
She no longer knew whether the seal, her own determination, or the darkness on the other side rendered her heart stone in the crossing. She couldn’t remember what she’d first believed or why. Certain shards of her past resisted her thoughts’ pressure even more strongly than this barrier clawed against their passage.
She heard Link grunt as he forced his neck to phase through a jagged edge of un-rock. The pang which would have sympathized with him resonated instead—crystalline. Reflective. Her strongest self would emerge on the other side of this threshold and resist all of it—the darkness, the despair, and the things which lay half-dormant in the darkest reaches of Link’s gaze, things which had no name, things she wanted unaccountably and irrationally—and unlike the failed lock she had just immersed herself in entirely, she would succeed.
She entered cacophony itself with her next stride.
Vibrations ricocheted through her form at the threshold of the Dark World—its sharp undulations, a thousand remnants of lightning strikes buzzing ozone in her nostrils in impossibly rapid succession, overlapping in tight disharmony.
Then it stopped.
Link’s fingers had rendered hers nearly numb. He eased off just as she did—she’d been no gentler. The experience demanded the surety of force. As his fingertips brushed hers, a tingling flew across her skin from those points of contact, reaching even the most distant parts of her body. It somehow seemed of greater magnitude than the seal’s relentless emanations.
Link’s soft gasp snapped Zelda’s eyes open.
They stood in a field of something like grass surrounded by something like trees, lit, as all things were in this world, by the unending twilight sun north of Death Mountain’s reflection, filtered to a sheen of diffuse rust through blackened leaves. The field bore signs of abandoned lives, as many places did. Fenceposts… no rails, no pickets. Everything peeling. Everything off-color. The tattered remains of what may have been a palette-bed cast against something which may once have been a crude spade.
For an instant, a tree with a face far past the field drew her gaze, but something above it, looming, seemed incongruous against the roiling clouds, heavy with noxious vapors and gleaming red with their edges twilit: one object still against all that churning. She knew at once why Link had gasped.
Bones.
Bones.
Bones the height of Hyrule castle.
Higher, perhaps.
A spinal column.
Perhaps the ends of a few ribs visible in the distance.
What creatures laid these bones to rest would shatter the earth with a step.
Would these spring to life? Would they be like the un-living crows and cuccos vying for scraps of nothingness in dusty soil? Would it rise, alighting hollowed eye sockets on her and on Link, and follow whatever greed-fed instinct led the skeletal birds to dive toward them, intent on stripping skin from their faces and forearms?
Zelda’s grip-hand tightened reflexively-
And the bag.
She’d forgotten.
She still held it tightly.
Her stare drew Link’s.
And they watched.
And watched.
Zelda’s eyes burned with the air’s acrid vapor.
Time in this place had little meeting, but one booted step, then another, crunched dry straws beneath them. Link entered her line of vision.
“It’s not moving.”
“Indeed not,” she whispered.
She thought deception on the part of a deceased crow unlikely, but held the bag at a cautious distance from her face while tugging its mouth wide.
Nothing.
Link reached out. He cupped the bottom, then closed his hand, his features pinching. “Zelda, would you mind turning it out into my hands?”
She upended it slowly, expecting a tangled mess of bones to fall into his hands at once, rather like a bird’s nest. Instead, a pitifully small stream of dust met Link’s palm.
He pinched some between his fingers and held it to his nose.
“What does it smell of?” she asked quietly.
“Burning,” he whispered. “Just like everything else.”
A murder of skeletal crows chose that moment to rise from the anti-forest’s canopy, nearly-silent but for the passage of their wingbones against the shriveled leaves of their home. Zelda followed their impossible flight northwest and out of sight.
“What are they?” she whispered.
Link said nothing aloud, but his entire stance spoke of thoughts. Before she could ask, he’d already taken the bag from her, dumped the remainder of the dust inside, and walked toward the spade. He gripped its aged handle—metal—and dug a small hole. He placed the crow’s remains inside with surprising reverence.
“I’d wondered,” Link whispered. “It didn’t seem right for this place… to give life.”
Zelda swallowed. Grains of sand.
“Perhaps it denies death,” she said.
The spine in the distance creaked, settling and swaying in the wind, groaning its song of monstrosity into the ground at their feet—discordant—one more foul instrument performing Ganon’s masterwork with no key, no fundamental frequency, no congruent overtones: a symphony of warring sound. Zelda’s skin thrilled to its tune, a sound like the tinkling of crystal in her ears as a distant call meant for her alone. She knew she shouldn’t answer it.
She could resist.
She was no instrument.
And Link was no fool.
He rose, his eyes and ears fixed on her, the sounds of his hand shuffling against his pouch’s opening announcing his intention clearly. A moment later, his palm held the Moon Pearl against hers, his fingers entwined with hers.
“You need it,” he whispered. “I don’t hear it the way you do.”
“You hear other things,” she said.
His hand tightened on hers a fraction—a reassuring pulse. “Which way… did it want you to go?”
She eyed the northwest, toward the murder of stalcrows.
“…Okay. Not that way, then.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not that way.”
They eyed the spine as one.
The maidens and their Dark World forms of pure crystal—so beautiful—unique and powerfully magical—the creatures fought over them, their remains eventually in the possession of some dominant horror, curling itself around the faceted surfaces (and remains they were, for even cut stones, attractive and sparkling, meant an end to all motion).
The groaning, creaking spine in the distance seemed a likely place to find a hulking evil, hoarding its coveted treasures in a forest of wooden faces and fleshless animals. Perhaps, they’d find a gem full of reflected thoughts jammed between two massive vertebrae.
Link and Zelda walked hand-in-hand, each pressed to the Moon Pearl, toward the spine’s deep bellows.
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A huge thank-you to @bellecream - this would not exist in this form without you!
[I hope to do more Linktober prompts - this is a busy time of year].
[Banner font is 'The Wild Breath of Zelda' by Chequered Ink].
Mccree and his daughter, Jesse who isnt used to snow and such freezing weather decides to sneak in and cuddle with his daughter when he maybe starts to get some ideas (just some somno stuff with jesse moving nice and slow and the daughter sleeping through the whole thing)
McCree being a homegrown cowboy, living in the desert is used to scorching heat and cold, cold nights. Never knew just what cold could actually be. Every time a mission takes him to cold places and then when he leaves those cold places he’s always more than eager and happy to forget just what frigid bone-shaking cold feels like.
When McCree thinks about it, maybe that’s to his detriment. If he got used to the cold that makes his teeth chatter and collects ice in his beard then maybe he wouldn’t loathe it as much as he does. Or be perpetually shocked when he lands in a place that has snow on the ground for most of its winter months.
Well, shit. At least the accommodations are nice. Overwatch at the moment isn’t rich, on a budget ‘til funding comes in hot. But nobody wants to stay in this godforsaken hellscape of white and slippery ice so the cottage was able to be rented cheaply. Trudging through the snow, ice crunching under every heavy step. Struggling, cussing at the stuff because he isn’t used to wearing bulky amounts of clothes. McCree’s motivated to keep from freezing in place with the promise of a warm fireplace and his baby girl who’s here working the uncover job (you’re a much more talented actress than he is).
As he’s coming through the door McCree stomps out his snow boots. Already complaining to you about the weather. “Damn, sugar, it’s cold as balls out there you lose a few toes today?” He’s met with silence, talking to himself. What he gets for not bothering to check to see if the couch is occupied by you or not.
It’s not, cause you’re on the floor. Laying on the bearskin rug (the cottage is full of stuff like that. Various animal heads, antlers, mostly every piece of furniture made of wood; your stereotypical cottage in the woods). Laying under several blankets, looks like you dragged nearly all the pillows from the bed to the floor. A mug and an open bottle of whiskey sitting on the brick ledge in front of the fireplace.
Ain’t that perfect.
After he’s stripped down to a t-shirt, boxers, and socks he sits down at your back, you facing the fireplace laying on your side. Reaches over, picks up the mug, and inspecting its contents. Looks like it was hot chocolate, but the smell of it suggests that it was more hair of the dog than a comforting sugary treat.
“It was that kinda day huh, darlin?” McCree puts down the mug, closes the neck of the bottle in his fist and brings it to his lips. Downs a few swigs. Just enough to feel the burn down his throat, a little fog in his head, and the warmth in his belly before placing it back down. He groans as he flips up the blankets and gets underneath the covers with you. You sure did have the right idea.
Jesse cuddles up real close to you, smelling hair, cupping the belly that’s been exposed from the rise of your t-shirt in your sleep. Leaning on an elbow he finds it hard to just let his head hit the pillow. You’re angelic when your sleeping. Soft face even softer, blissful. Lost in what he’s hoping is a good dream, eyes flit back and forth from behind lightly closed lids. Cheeks rosy and glowing. Skin radiating heat underneath the mountain of blankets.
He’s just… a little lost in looking at you. Not sure why he gets the urge to dip down and bury his face into your neck. Maybe cause it’s cozy there, his face encased between your chin and shoulder. And cause your skin tastes good as he flicks his tongue against the nape of your neck. You’re soft, warm, and he just loves you so much.
“Baby?” he whispers into your ear, testing. “Sweetheart?” Nothing. No stirring, no groaning. No shifting to try and get his scratchy, tickly beard away from the sensitive skin on your neck. Carefully McCree rolls you over onto your back, head lolling over to the side like he just threw a doll down onto the floor. A bulge begins to form in his boxers, thick head slowly inching up the inside of his thigh as it begins to rise.
McCree throws a leg over your body, straddles your hips. Carefully pinches the bottom of your shirt between two fingers. Pulls it up and up. Gradual; almost like somethings going to jump out and bite him if he moves too fast. Until he’s finally got the fabric nicely scrunched up above your tits. The swell of your pretty breasts rising and falling gracefully with each deep intake of breath. Cock at full attention, slightly peaking out of the hem of his underwear.
Before he places two eager palms over your tits he pulls the erection out from between the slit. Lets it stand tall, twitching and poking into his stomach as he gropes. Lightly pinches one perky, little nipple while he ghosts his tongue over the other. Looks up through his lashes at your face while he latches on and suckles like he’s trying to get milk. Lavishes your nipples ‘til their a little on the red and raw side.
McCree moves back up to kiss your slack lips. Tasting traces of chocolate and the cinnamon from the whiskey. Alcohol wafting into his nostrils, you must have really drunk your weight’s worth. “Mmm, baby girl,” he mumbles. “I sure hope daddy tells you your beautiful often enough. Cause ya are.”
He traces his fingers down your chest, over your tummy, and shoves them a little too roughly for safety’s concern into your pajama pants. Rubs your pussy through the fabric of your underwear, finding that it is wet. McCree nods as if he was expecting as much. Growls as he presses fingers into the moist fabric, nice and firm against your entrance. Whispers to you while he places a kiss on your cheekbone, “you like when your daddy touches you nice and sweet don’t cha?”
For the first time since he started you moan. So right on cue, it’s scary. Looks at you to find your still asleep. Still breathing deep, heavy, and peaceful. So he sits up and removes your pants and underwear. Staring at your glistening cunt as he spreads your legs open, gently placing them on either side of his hips. His dick pulses in his palm as McCree wedges the fat head between your folds. Drags the weighty piece of rigid meat up. Rubs it against your clit. Warranting more moans. A few whimpers from between your dainty lips.
“Am I keepin ya warm, sweetheart?” he asks quietly. Barely breathing as he presses his cock against your entrance. “Bet your just tinglin from your head to your toes.” Lord knows he’s warm. Sweating as he lays back down on top of you, not quite applying all of his weight. The motion naturally popping his cock into your pussy. McCree whimpers, something pathetic sounding, and braces himself on his elbows.
“Fuck, baby-” McCree pushes in just a little more- “God damn, your tight, so fuckin tight….” Cunt so snug he’s almost sure you’d be complaining about his girth if you were awake. He’s hardly been moving but that doesn’t keep him from being out of breath. He grunts, almost pained as he pushes in further. Your insides are hot reminding him of home, a stark contrast to the weather outside.
Languidly he drags his cock along your walls. Steadily working up the pressure in his core. Giving you sweet kisses, playing with your splayed hair. Stomach jumping every time you whine, whimper, moan or sigh against his mouth. “Are you gonna cum, baby?” Feeling braver he thrusts just a little faster. Your velvet clamping down on him impossibly tight. “Oh shit… fuck, angel… that’s it– cum on your daddy’s cock…cum… cu–”
Just before thick, healthy ropes of cum spurt into your womb McCree pulls out. Closes the head of his dick in his palm and catches it all. Sticky, cloudy cum seeping out from between his fingers. A slight wash of shame enveloping his features as he looks at his palm full of mess. Before he gets up to wash it away down the sink he gives you a kiss and a promise. “I’ll put cha back together in a sec okay?”
As promised you’re redressed, even rolled back over into the position he had found you in when he got here. Now he can finally lay down and enjoy the little nest you had put together on the floor. Cuddle up to you and fall asleep. Not bothered one bit by the cold, in fact, it’s the farthest thing from his mind.
