Epilogue
Word count: ~750
Rating: K
Premise: Sheikah!Link AU, Zelink
Previous | FFN | ao3
—
Link sat with his best friend in the shadow of the tower, watching the harvest ball drag into the night with all its blooms of torchlight and fire. It was nice to have a place to talk, just the two of them. It had been a while. Not that moving between the realms was a difficult thing, not really. But there were other things that got in the way, responsibilities and distractions and things pulling them in opposite directions.
Link tore his eyes away from Zelda, a vision in jewels and silk and starlight, to smile at him.
“How’s Cherry?”
“Pregnant,” Robbie frowned. “Grumpy.”
“I’ll be disappointed if the only reason you came to visit was to escape your wife.”
“No,” he smirked wryly. “Not entirely. Although they say it might be twins, so.”
He raised his eyebrows in a decent attempt to not look mortified for him. “Congratulations.”
Robbie laughed softly, appreciatively. Ballgowns and coattails and croquembouche towers swirled beneath them in amber shadows. He took a breath and held it. Then,
“I had my first Foresight.”
Link clamped his jaw to keep it from going slack. Few Seers had that gift, and Robbie’s abilities had always been mediocre at best. It had never occurred to him that laziness and not his own limitations might have been to blame.
“I hope you won’t take this the wrong way,” he finally said, “but I’m shocked.”
“So was I.” Robbie smiled, something secret glinting in his eye. “It was of you.”
A stiff breeze carried over the plains and the gala below, raking warmth and laughter up into the spires. The fires danced with the courtiers.
“Me?”
He held up his palm, smiling. His eyes looked glassy, but it must have been reflection from the torchlight below. “Can I show you?”
Link nodded, turning so his unscarred eye faced the palm that stared back. They met, and the world went milky and bright.
Hyrule aged, days and nights rippling by like a fan of turning pages. It was history, unraveling from time’s spool and weaving through the weft threads. It was a lifetime in the blink of an eye. It was the first breath and the last. It was a glimpse at the unfinished tapestry emerging on the loom.
Hyrule had a queen. She wore a ring, though her country knew no king. They called her the Shadow Queen. But that was a name born of superstition and fantasy, surely.
Her children were outrageously clever, and their eyes changed color in moonlight. Their hair was platinum blonde, but some insisted it was more like silver. But wasn’t that silly?
They say the queen lived for the night, that she always kept the curtains drawn and the lamps low, and that the only time she loved the sun was when she stole away with her children to hidden palaces that not even the mapmakers knew the location of for certain. They say she was caught more than once out on the terraces, during the midnight celebrations, tangled in the arms of a lover, but no one could say which courtier it was for sure.
Behind closed doors, the staff knew something closer to the truth: that the Queen had a husband who was something of a mystery, but who loved his wife more than he loved life itself. Not that they had ever seen him, of course. But they would always leave out two sets of clothes, and set the table at the head and the foot with settings for the children in between, and sometimes they would find the notes he had left for them with instructions or a thank you in peculiar places (he was always very polite).
The young hires would always cower and say the castle must be haunted, but the older staff would scoff. That was ridiculous. The Queen just had a shadow for a husband. And if they dared ask her, she would tell them as much herself.
Zelda’s reign was long and prosperous and beautiful. Her country was peaceful and blessed, and her rule was just, and they said the world wouldn’t see its equal again for a thousand years. And with a queen as wonderful as that, the people could hardly begrudge her an extremely private homelife.
When it was her time, she passed on to the Spirit Realm, and they say her Shadow said goodbye to his children and followed soon afterwards to serve her in what lies beyond—
Find Chapter 2 of The Wisdom to Change (feat. Gerudo!Zelda and Sheikah!Link) Here!!
Summary: Zelda meets a strange boy in the desert she calls home, and it sets in motion something that she knows has to be destiny. But does she have to be trapped in a cycle, or can she and Link take charge of it themselves.
Part Twelve
Word count: ~1720
Rating: T
Premise: Sheikah!Link AU, Zelink
Previous | Next | FFN | ao3
—
Link spent the better part of three years trying to acclimate to his new circumstances. Trying to get on with his life.
But reintegrating when he’d been completely stripped of self and purpose was an unforgiving endeavor.
He wasn’t a Seer. He was useless at High Magic. He had all the skills to be a Warrior, but the restrictions on traveling into Hyrule remained, and their enemies never made it as far as Kakariko. It didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere. But his lack of a place in society wasn’t really the problem.
It was the listlessness.
There was a void inside him that he couldn’t figure out how to fill, an emptiness where the second heartbeat used to be, a deafening quiet in his mind where there used to be breath. He would sit and listen to the silence for hours. Others insisted that he would adjust to it, that his life could still be productive. They tried to help. And it wasn’t that they were wrong, exactly. It just all felt pointless.
Nothing seemed to matter.
And time soldiered on in spite of him. That summer Robbie met a willowy girl named Cherry, and a few months later he married her. Link stood beside him at their wedding. It was kind of Robbie to ask, considering he hadn’t been much of a friend to him since the Unbinding. By then he was able to look Purah in the eye—that had taken a while, too. He found it in himself to be happy for her when she was promoted, and didn’t ask her about what she had seen in the world above whenever her taskforce sank back into the shadows. And just recently the Matriarch had passed on and Impa had taken up her grandmother’s mantle.
That had been the most jarring change of all. Impa wasn’t like the others. She was quieter, more introspective. She wasn’t a Seer, but she seemed to see things no one else did. And she seemed aware of his timetable in a way they weren’t. She would sit and listen to the silence with him. It was nice.
It was like starting over when she left to begin her duties.
“I should have listened to you,” he murmured to the darkness, to the silence, sitting alone in it one night. “I should have run.”
He couldn’t understand why she of all people had suggested something so drastic back then. Now he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t listened.
Not that it mattered.
Nothing seemed to matter.
Impa met him near twilight a few weeks later, when the shadows were just losing their rosy edges and falling towards midnight colors. She set a furoshiki beside him and started unfolding without a greeting. In case he was listening. She was thoughtful like that. He took the chopsticks when she offered them, and she decided it was safe to speak.
“Have you been up here all day?”
“More or less,” he breathed, opening his bento. A smile tugged at his mouth. “You brought me umeboshi.”
“Purah brought me the plums a few weeks ago.”
“I didn’t know she was home.”
Impa nodded over a mouthful. “She came for the ceremony.”
“The ceremony,” he echoed, the rusted gears in his head ticking and snapping unpleasantly as it all came back to him at once. He stared at her. “That was today.”
“You didn’t miss much.”
He dragged a hand over his face. “Gods. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“I can’t believe I missed it.”
She smiled. “I saved you umeboshi.”
“You did,” he agreed, taking one reverently and letting the sugar and brine dissolve all over his tongue. “Thank you. That was… I didn’t deserve it.”
“Stop apologizing or I’m taking it back,” she ordered, and he dutifully shoveled rice in his mouth. “Now ask me how awkward it is to be Matriarch over a council twice my age.”
“You have a gift,” he deflected easily. “No one challenged you. Isn’t that endorsement enough?”
“Maybe they just didn’t want the responsibility. I know I don’t.”
He snorted. “You been training for this your whole life.”
“And it’s still nothing like I thought it would be,” she murmured, and the sudden weight in her tenor soundly deflated the levity. She took another bite and sighed. And then another, too quickly afterwards. He got the feeling she was trying to shove words down her throat.
He took another umeboshi before he called her on it. He wanted to enjoy at least one more bite in peace.
“What is it?”
She watched him sidelong, calculating, deciding. It was a fearsome thing to behold.
“If you could go back to Hyrule, would you want to see her again?”
The question was like a painful light bursting behind his eyes. He waited until his vision dimmed, until his heart wasn’t pounding nauseatingly in his throat. It felt like he couldn’t swallow.
He finally admitted, “I don’t know.”
She pushed rice around in her bento. The unspoken was shifting the shadows from midnight to black, draining the color until the darkness around them was opaque and drab instead of something to be admired. But he didn’t dare ask what prompted that question. He couldn’t.
She didn’t speak for a moment either, weighing his answer. Distilling it. Listening for something unsaid, lingering in the silence.
“As Matriarch, I could countermand my predecessor. Unwrite her law. But I didn’t want to bring it up before.” She put her chopsticks away, threaded her hands. It was strange, seeing her fidget. “I still don’t want to bring it up.”
Link was still holding his meal like he meant to eat more. He didn’t. He forced umeboshi into his mouth anyway.
Impa sighed. “I suppose a better question is, Have you forgiven her?”
His voice was gravel. “Why is that a better question?”
“Have you?”
“I don’t—” He tried to breathe, tried to blink away the specter of green eyes that had haunted his dreams every night as though they were still bound. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a strange thing,” she mused quietly, “to have the power to give you something you wanted so much, and still not know if it’s the right thing to do.”
“Things have changed,” he shrugged. He tried to talk himself into eating more, and then set the bento aside when he couldn’t stomach the thought. “I… don’t know that I would recognize her anymore.”
“And if you did? Would you forgive her then?”
“Does it matter?” he scoffed bitterly. “I’m Unbound. It’s not as though that can be undone.”
Impa went still as a stone. Her eyes were glued to the floor, and rigid, and just a sliver too wide. It sucked all the air out from around them. He moved, his body vibrating like a livewire, angling himself closer to look for her eyes.
“It can’t be undone,” he said, working with every fiber of his being to not make it a question. Her eyes finally dragged up to his, all hesitance and fear and misery, and he couldn’t breathe. “Oh, Gods.”
He went to his feet, turned, paced to nowhere, aching to run or to hide, and dug his fingers into his scalp. He tremored like he was splitting in two. His vision was pulsing white and sickening and his stomach felt inside out. He couldn’t breathe.
“Gods. Hylia. This can’t—this can’t be.”
“I couldn’t tell you until now,” she said. “I couldn’t stomach the thought of giving you hope and then tearing it away from you if I was challenged.”
He didn’t turn, still gasping and shuddering as the possibility rent him open. She moved, took his jaw in her hands. He held on to her wrists like they were the only thing keeping him from being devoured by something faceless.
“This can’t be real.”
“That’s up to you.”
“She doesn’t want me anymore.”
“You know that’s not why she did it.”
He bent his head, swallowing a sob, or a shout. He was being ripped apart and stitched back together at once. It was torture and non-existence he didn’t know how to endure. It was everything he had been grieving for three years, clawing itself out of the grave he had made for it, half-alive and terrifying. Tears spilled from his eyes and ran over her hands, and she tilted her forehead to touch his.
“I can bind you again. Restore what was taken from you. But only if that’s what you want.”
His fingers flinched around her wrists. He hadn’t had a choice the first time. Now that he did, he almost wished he didn’t. Gods, he couldn’t breathe.
“Link. Look at me.”
He dragged his face up. It was tear-stained and petrified. He found her eyes, tried to swallow, tried to breathe, tried not to scream. She thumbed at his scar, and he trembled.
“Do you want to be her Shadow again?”
The words fell out of him like they might be his last.
“Yes. Please, yes.”
Her eyes pinched shut like the words had hurt. But she didn’t fight him on it, or hesitate. She guided them both to kneel, and his heart was galloping so fast it ached. She took his wrists, held them together at the pulse points. The way they had touched when they were tied together, the first time he was bound. The softest, gentlest tendril of magic seeped from her hands and slipped up his arms.
It was like unstopping a wellspring.
The cavern and the shadows shrunk, tumbled away as something in him grew and swallowed him whole, heavy and insistent and dragging him towards someplace else. Towards a castle, towards a window, towards a room, towards a princess. Towards a heartbeat. Towards the sound of a breath.
He gasped, eyes blown and unseeing as he was filled from the inside out, as the void flooded and expanded again to accommodate a devotion and a fire no mortal could possibly contain.
It was so quick he couldn’t gulp air fast enough. Impa shifted, the shadow of her ghosting over eyes that were watching someone else, and pressed a warm, lingering kiss to his cheek. He could feel tears on his face that weren’t his.
She whispered, as the urge to run surged up in him like a flood, “Be safe.”
Part Thirteen
Word count: ~2040
Rating: K
Premise: Sheikah!Link AU, Zelink
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—
Link lurked in the thick shadows cast by the castle spires, listening. Her heartbeat pulsed warm and steady, like a pendulum. The sun was marking its slow descent, painting everything molten and rich. It made him ache, waiting outside the walls for the cover of darkness.
But, oh, to feel that ache again.
He clung to the stones, breathing deep and reveling in the sore stretch of his ribs. The sensation felt like torture before, an unpleasant reminder that they were apart. Now it was a scathing reassurance that he was bound to her. He could have spent forever on the fringes of her presence, fixated on the way it burned. But he knew Peace was waiting for him, and the draw was irresistible.
The light slipped beyond the horizon and he made his ascent, scaling the tower to her bedroom window and stealing inside. She hadn’t come up yet, her heart and her breath whispering to him from some lower floor. Very little had changed; he still knew these shadows like the back of his hand. He slipped into a corner of darkness where the firelight never reached and settled down to wait. It was surreal, being in that room again, hearing her sigh in his head, almost feeling the drum of her fingertips vibrating in his own as she suffered a particularly dull meal. He had forgotten how good he had been at reading her moods, even at a distance.
It wasn’t long before she moved. He could feel her drifting down hallways, climbing stairs, steadily closing the distance separating them. He listened to her heartbeats, counted them, groaned within himself when his own pulse shifted to match. It was like she was devouring him. And he wanted her to.
The doorknob turned and he braced himself for the inevitable hammer to the chest, for the crushing weight of that much peace crashing over him at once.
It didn’t help.
For all her elegance and leisurely pace, she still blew into the room like a squall. His heart throbbed near to bursting as she moved, pulling pins from hair the color of sunlight until it tumbled down past her shoulders, reaching with willowy arms to unfasten the buttons at her back, ignoring the room around her as her eyes stared through it to someplace else, some tangle of thoughts even his touch on her pulse wouldn’t let him guess at.
He took a moment while she changed out of her gown to adjust, to gulp air until the rush of lightheadedness gradually faded. He was vibrating with the nearness of her. And it still wasn’t enough. She emerged again in a long silk robe, fixed herself a cup of tea from the tray on her table, and curled up in her armchair with a book.
He almost showed himself then. Almost slipped out of the shadows to tip her book down, meet those glittering green eyes over the pages, and watch them dance with surprise. But fear kept him in place. Fear that she wouldn’t want him here. Fear that she wouldn’t remember him.
Fear that she was waiting for someone else. A lot could happen in three years.
So he sank deeper into the dark and waited. She read and sipped from her teacup in tranquil obliviousness. He trembled with peace and dread. But no one else joined her, and the candles were starting to burn down, and not long after the book in her hands thumped closed.
He thought of waiting until the next day, or the next week, or of not revealing himself at all. Of being the Shadow he should have been back then, hounding her steps in perfect silence and perfect anonymity. But he burned to make himself known. To be seen by those eyes that hadn’t given him a moment’s peace since last they bored through him. She rose from her armchair, and he rose out of the shadow to meet her.
She turned away from the fire, eyes dragging up to his, and the teacup tumbled from her hands and shattered.
“Link.”
Her pulse was flying. He wanted to bury himself in the thrill of it. And to hear that name again in that voice… he let a rueful smile tug at his mouth.
“Hello, Zelda.”
She was frozen on the spot. He took a slow step forward, approaching her as gently as he might approach an injured animal. She looked startled as one. She scarcely breathed. His arms turned open, reached out until they cradled hers without touching them. Ready to support her if she fell, or hold her if she would let him.
He whispered, “You’re trembling.”
She let her arms sink into his touch, holding him where her hands met his forearms, and she had to have felt the shiver that ran all through him. She puffed a breathy laugh, but it was a mirthless sound. Her hands dug deeper, like he might just up and disappear if she let him go.
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” she said—finally, quietly, as though they might be overheard. “Do the others know you’re here? Did they allow it? Did you…?”
“They know,” he assured her, and then licked dry lips to tell her the rest, to tell her that he was bound to her again. But the words lodged in his throat. Because things might be different. She might not want a Shadow. She might not want him.
“Good,” she sighed, shoulders falling in relief. “That’s good.”
Silence descended over them like a fog, thick and awkward, but she still hadn’t let go of his arms. He was happy for that, at least. Happy that her instincts told her to hold on, instead of push him away.
“Where is my mind at,” she breathed, dropping him too quickly and offering him a smile that was decidedly plastic. “Come, sit down. Tell me everything.”
She turned, heart spluttering and breath catching, and made to snuff out the candelabra wicks on her table; he caught her wrist gently before she could get to them all.
He said, “You know I don’t mind.”
She nodded, her lips pulling towards a frown as she worked smudges off her fingers and moved towards the fireplace. He followed, listening to the hammer of her heart in his chest as they crouched in front of the flames. Her pulse just wouldn’t settle. It was like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. It reverberated in his like a swarm of keese trapped in his ribs.
“Robbie’s married,” he started huskily, managing to force his lip to quirk, and she mirrored him. The smile touched her eyes.
“Not to Purah, surely?”
“No,” he smirked. “Her name is Cherry. Purah was promoted a class. She heads her own taskforce.”
“I’m sure she deserved it.”
“Her grandmother passed away,” he added quietly, carefully. “Impa is Matriarch now.”
He waited with bated breath, studying her, watching her for signs that she recognized the significance. Something flickered through her eyes—an errant thought, or the glimmer of an idea—but it faded before he could name it. She swallowed.
“And you?”
His hands fisted on his knees. Gods, but he was a coward. He wanted to hang his head, wanted to hide. But he forced himself to look her in the eyes, braced himself to gauge her reaction when she finally heard the truth.
“I asked Impa to Bind me to you again,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t even know that was a possibility until she told me. Until she asked. I thought…”
The gentle smile on her face melted as he spoke, her brow drawing together prettily in a way that made his stomach drop.
“You mean you’re my—”
Her teeth clenched over the rest, and his mind went silent as she held her breath.
“Shadow,” he admitted, trembling.
She clapped a hand over her mouth, covering a sound. Her eyes were wide and brimming. The moment was suspended, like the painful stutter of a heartbeat, And suddenly they were both talking at once.
“I didn’t—after everything I did, I thought you would never—”
“Zelda, I’m so sorry. I know I didn’t have the right—”
They both came up short, staring at each other. Stray tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her expression had smoothed with confusion.
She demanded, breathless, “What?”
“I thought—” His brow pinched. “You said you didn’t want me to be your Shadow anymore!”
“Because I was trying to save you!”
“And you thought I would never what?” he demanded. “Want you?”
“How could you possibly? After I betrayed you? After I took away a part of who you are when everyone I asked begged me not to do it?” She buried the heel of her hand into forehead, trying to hold back tears, and then gestured wildly with it. “Why aren’t you with Impa?”
“Why would I be with Impa?”
“Because she’s in love with you!”
“And you think I would be so easily swayed?”
“What are you saying? I thought she would make you happy!”
“How could she when I’m still in love with you?”
She held her breath again, the taut silence shrinking and stretching into another stuttering heartbeat. The wide, brimming eyes were back, her expression warping startled, or mystified, or horrified. It was dark and awful. It reminded him of the void that he had spent so long trying to fill.
“I don’t expect anything,” he promised quietly, swallowing doubt. “Three years is a long time. And I know it was selfish of me to do this, that should have stayed in the shadows where I belonged, but… I wanted to see you. And if you don’t want me to show myself again, I won’t. And if—if you don’t want me to be your Shadow—” Gods, the words were literally sticking in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow them down. He was shaking. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stomach the thought of going through that again, of being ripped apart and emptied and stitched back together into some shell of who he used to be— “I can go back—I can tell Impa to undo it—”
Her hands were on his jaw before he could dredge up any more of that awful, awful idea, her lips sealed suddenly against his, confining him to perfect silence. He couldn’t move. Her kiss was purging shadow and darkness and flooding him with her light. It was a different sort of unbinding all together. The sort that he wanted to spend his life chasing.
She pulled back slowly, stiffly, hardly daring to breathe; then she met his eyes. “I’d like you to stay,” she whispered. “If that’s… if that’s really what you want.”
He nodded, daring to reach for her, daring to tangle his fingers in the silk at her hip and coax her closer. He tipped his forehead against hers and breathed, basking in that hint of nightshade blossom and sunlight and the warmth of her hands still lingering on his neck.
“If that’s what I want,” he echoed, his lips tugging towards a rueful smile. They brushed along her cheekbone and he tasted salt. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I thought you would never forgive me. Not for as long as you lived.”
Funny how not many hours earlier he wasn’t sure himself. And now she was in his arms, and the thought of letting her go for anything, least of all fear or something as petty as a grudge, made his stomach twist. He pulled her closer, buried into the side of her neck and pressed kisses beneath her ear, and she hooked her arms around him to clutch at his shoulders, sinking deep into him as she could.
If he had to choose between fearing her and loving her, he would always choose this.
“I’ll always be with you,” he promised, not for the first time. Not for the last.
She pulled back to smile breathlessly at him, blinding him again with her irresistible light—swallowing him whole, eclipsing him, surrounding him in radiance until he was cast in full antumbra.
“And I will always love you,” she whispered, like it was a secret thing, like it belonged to shadows. “With all my heart.”
Part Eleven
Word count: ~4280
Rating: T
Premise: Sheikah!Link AU, Zelink
Previous | Next | FFN | ao3
—
She dreamed they were back in Hyrule. She dreamed she was bright, that her skin was a sunbeam and her eyes were stars. She dreamed he was caught in her brilliance, suspended between her and the world, black as ink, a shadow ringed in spangled, glittering eclipse, and he was basking in her light.
It was almost painful returning to so much darkness after that.
His arms closed around her gently when he felt her stir, and she swallowed down bitter, disappointed tears built in her throat as she thought of home.
She whispered, "How long have I been gone?"
"Nearly two days."
The hunting parties would be out looking for her by now, flooding every corner of the kingdom with lantern light and torches. She wondered how well the Sheikah had hid their tracks when they left. She hadn't been paying attention. Had they closed and latched the balcony doors? Had she snapped bits of vine from ivy? Had her shoes left marks in the courtyard? Beyond the city walls? Straight into the heart of Kakariko? She doubted they would have been so careless. But if their city was really impregnable, they wouldn't have to resort to such secrecy. She couldn't stay and just hope her soldiers never stumbled upon it.
He kissed her temple at her silence, too lingering, too sweet, before he echoed her thoughts.
"We need to get you home."
She stared out at darkness, at a filmy cloud of mist speckled in cavern glow. She wanted to drill a hole in the ceiling and let in the light, or better, sink her kingdom into the earth and stay with him in perpetual night.
She whispered, the words escaping her lips before she could process them, "Come with me."
His lips curved into a smile beside her ear. "I'll always be with you," he promised again, guiding the back of her hand to brush above his heart. Above where he could feel hers beating beside it. "Just here."
Not good enough, she wanted to spit. But she swallowed it down like a stone lodged in her throat. He kissed the side of her neck, pressed his lips to her jaw, trying to reassure her. But it all felt empty.
She could only imagine one scenario where she could leave him, and he wouldn't help her enact it. She was going to have to get the answers she needed from someone else. And that meant lying to him to do it. Questions of loyalty and morality aside, that was going to be another issue entirely. Her heart would literally give her away.
And as for the rest… he had seen fit to lie to her when he thought it was best. She supposed this just made them even.
"Don't do this to yourself," he whispered, pained, misinterpreting her scheming and worry for dread. "Please. I've made my choices. And I don't regret any of them."
"How can you say that?" she demanded, turning in his arms. "Look at where we are. Look at what's about to happen to you. You could have been safe. If you hadn't—if I hadn't drawn you out—"
"And never heard you say my name?" he returned, just as adamantly, and then, eyes flickering to her mouth, leaning closer to impart more comfort, or to take it, whispered, "Never touched you?"
"No," she snapped, shoving him away before he could pacify her and sweeping to her feet. She meant to say more, meant to argue, but suddenly she was gulping air and fighting tears, and all she could manage was a stubborn shake of her head. "No."
She turned, marching towards the cliff's edge even though she knew she could never get down on her own—knowing that he knew, and that he would be there in an instant. She just about walked off the ledge into the void when his hand found her arm, and he guided her down from their hiding place in vibrating silence. His fingers brushed hers, once they were on solid ground—a question, or a request. Her mind was abuzz with bitter feelings and nerves, and she didn't know how to answer.
"You know what I did regret?" he murmured, threading his fingers slowly with hers, slipping and nudging, until she finally reciprocated. "That I didn't tell you how beautiful you were, or how full of passion, or kind, or ridiculously clever. That I didn't tell you how in love with you I was."
Her face crumpled. "You're breaking my heart. Can you hear that, too?"
But he just smirked at her, drawing her closer with a warm hand on her neck, and she fell into his embrace despite all her intentions to be difficult.
"I'm so sorry," she choked out against his shoulder.
It wasn't just an apology for her temper. She was apologizing for all of it. Apologizing for the way she hadn't left well enough alone; for the way she always pushed him too far; for the way her curiosity and selfishness had ruined his future.
Apologizing for what she was about to do.
He held her until she had no more tears left to cry, and then coaxed her face up to taste the last bit of salt on her lips.
"Maybe, when you're queen," he murmured, smiling softly as he led he back toward the village, "you can build a castle here. Just above us. Raise your children in it. And if they're anything like you, they'll stumble across these caverns when you let them out to play and never turn back."
"I was a very well-behaved child."
"I find that hard to believe."
She let herself imagine it. She imagined white spires framed by waterfalls and green slopes, hidden away in secret places instead of shining over Hyrule like a beacon. She imagined an elaborate bedchamber that she never used. She imagined little princes and princesses, with eyes that shone red in moonlight, whose governesses could never keep track of them because they seemed to be able to disappear in the smallest corner of shadow. It made her want to laugh and cry at once.
Back in the village, two figures cast in waterglow waited at the mouth of the path. Robbie, she surmised from the way he lurched to his feet at the sight of them. Purah was with him, probably dragged along for moral support. He was waiting in taut, miserable anticipation, and it sent schemes whirling in her mind.
She gave Link a sad smile. "You need to talk to him."
He nodded, but his eyes lingered too long. It made her wonder if he sensed her deception. It made her stomach knot. But she was a princess, and far too accustomed to wearing a mask. It startled her how easily her lips turned up, how easily her eyes shone kind and empathetic. How easily she lied.
She untangled her fingers from his and crossed the space to Robbie, offering him that same, false smile, and pulled him into an embrace with her arms around his neck. Then she leaned her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "Stall him."
He was a little wide-eyed when she pulled away. She squeezed his arms, and then glanced back at Link.
"We'll wait at the house," she hinted, taking Purah by the arm and ignoring her sputtered protests. She waited until she could hear them murmuring, until she could hear the sigh of a half-hearted argument, of an apology, of forgiveness. And then the second they were out of earshot, Zelda held her eyes meaningfully and whispered, "I need your help."
Purah pulled her along faster.
"What's your plan?" she asked as they crossed the threshold, snapping the door shut behind them. Zelda took a calming breath before she dared to tell her.
"There's a way to sever our connection," she pressed, "isn't there? A way to break the bond, so he won't be my Shadow anymore?"
Her eyes went wide as saucers. "He agreed to that?"
"No," she admitted, sighing. "He told me it was impossible."
Purah frowned. "I see. Well, it's not. But we didn't suggest it for a reason. We knew he wouldn't want it."
"But it would spare him," she challenged, searching for her eyes, and they both frowned harder when she found them. "It would spare him, wouldn't it?"
It took Purah a long time to answer, and when she did, the turmoil was making her eyes water.
"Yes. Yes, of course it would spare him."
She sighed, shutting her eyes as though she could unsee the betrayal she was abiding. "Then you have to tell me how."
"Do you even know what you're saying? What you're asking?" She checked. Her voice had gotten away from her and her teeth were set. Her fists clenched and unclenched again, as though she were grabbing at frustrated arguments and they were wriggling free. "He won't be your Shadow anymore. He won't be himself anymore."
"I know that."
"He'll be devastated. You don't know what it means to him."
"And if I don't? If I leave things as they are and I go back to Hyrule, what happens to him then?"
Her lips pressed into a line and her eyes strayed, and she didn't answer. Zelda didn't fault her for it. It was a testament to her loyalty. A testament to the differences between them. She knew what she was asking her to do, and it made her throb all over. Because Link didn't want it. But people didn't always want what was good for them.
She hugged her arms, loosing a shuddering sigh. "I just… don't know what else to do."
Even though Purah hadn't moved, it was suddenly hard for Zelda to make her out. It was like she was melting away. Melting into the shadows, where she wouldn't have to stomach being exposed.
"The ritual can only be perform by three people proficient in High Magic," she said. "The Elders."
She swallowed misgivings, trembling at the way they slithered down. "Then I need to find some way to speak with them—privately, without arousing suspicion. And pray that they won't fight me."
"They can't refuse you," she whispered, like it was a confession. "You have the right."
"Then that just leaves Link. If he catches wind of this—"
"He'll do something stupid, like abscond with you back to Hyrule and let the others hunt him down rather than let himself be Unbound. I know."
She honestly hadn't even thought of that. It made her stomach clench.
"I don't understand," she breathed, staring into shadows, into oblivion, where Purah's eyes should have been. Letting the nothingness turn her numb. "How could you all let him suffer when you had this option?"
"Because," she said, her eyes, red as blood moons, rising up to meet hers in the dark, "we don't believe in stripping someone of who they are."
Her brow furrowed. "Even if it means—"
"Wait."
She did, nearly holding her breath. A moment later the door unlatched, Link and Robbie slipping unobtrusively inside. Purah's eyes held hers in warning.
"Get out of the shadows, Purah," Link scoffed quietly. "You look like a ghost."
"I'll find Impa, then," she murmured, setting her eyes to the floor and heading for the door. "She'll want to be there when you go."
Feeling light and shadow drain around her in equal measure, Zelda realized she didn't know which of them she meant.
But then the door closed again, and Link's fingers brushed penitently at her waist, and Robbie busied himself with looking preoccupied with something in the corner—wanting to afford them the illusion of privacy, but not quite able to pry himself away.
"I still can't believe you came all this way," he murmured, smiling. Because of course he would smile at her, now of all times. He dipped his forehead against hers, nudging her gently, meeting her eyes. Hesitantly daring to hope. His voice was just above a whisper. "Maybe… someday you'll find this place again. Maybe I'll dream you to life."
She didn't answer. She was too afraid of giving herself away with a clumsy, half-hearted reply. Her fingers dug into his arms. Maybe he wouldn't even want her find Kakariko again, after this was over. Maybe he would forget her. Or maybe he would never forget, and that prospect scared her even worse.
Robbie met her eyes through the glow, curious. Wondering what she was scheming, and wise enough not to ask. Link weaved his fingers with hers, smile fading as she stonewalled all his efforts to comfort her, and tugged her gently towards the door.
"Let's get you home," he whispered.
He led her through the pitch black streets, up into the narrow corridors that snaked through the stone that was the ingress between their worlds. Her blood pounded hotter and thicker until she thought she might choke on it, until she thought she might be sick, until she thought she wouldn't have the fortitude to go through with it. But then she would meet Robbie's eyes in the dark, probing for answers she couldn't give, and she would remember the vision. She would remember the alternative. And it burned hotter than her guilt.
It was dark as they stepped through the atrium and onto the stone table. But she was getting rather good at being blind, and when she felt Link draw up short beside her, she instinctively took a step back and closer. The blue glow bloomed out of the orbs, revealing what he had seen: a handful of Elders standing in their path, the old woman she had met before at the forefront, and Purah and Impa with them.
"We would speak with her," the woman said—the foremost Elder, it seemed. "Alone."
"I'm still her Shadow," Link argued cautiously. "What could you possibly have to discuss with her that I shouldn't hear?"
The Elder extended her hand, expectant, and Link defiantly closed his grip. But Zelda touched his arm.
"I'll go with her," she whispered. "It will be fine."
His brow furrowed as she let him go, as she stepped out from his protection, eyes clouding with doubt. Robbie drew up beside him, crossing his arms, looking similarly perplexed. She crossed the table and breathed, too afraid to look back. Too afraid to meet his eyes and find distrust welling in them.
Impa and Purah stayed behind as the Elders led her through an alcove into a separate smaller chamber. They turned to face her as she entered in a smothering semicircle. Their stark hair and crimson eyes were harsh in the glow, cutting and bitter, as though they all remembered a forgotten history of Hyrule that she did not. It made her stomach twist, even as she raised her neck higher to address them.
"My granddaughter says you wish to speak with us," the Elder said, flatly.
Zelda swallowed, ignoring her irreverence. "Yes. I know that you have the power to sever the bond between Shadow and host. I ask that you do that for us now."
"So it's true," another murmured, disturbed, but the old woman held up her hand for silence. Her eyes were wider; it wasn't an expression of disgust, or anger. Just shock.
"Has he displeased you in some way?" she pressed. "Harmed you?"
She gave her head a firm shake. "No. He's been nothing but loyal."
"Then why would you deal with him so cruelly?"
The question stung like a nettle. She wanted to crumble—wanted to throw herself at the old woman's feet and give way to tears, beg her for another option, beg her to let him go. She fisted her hands at her side instead.
"He'll suffer if I don't."
"He'll suffer if you do."
"I have the right," she insisted, working so her voice wouldn't quaver. Working so she wouldn't burst into frustrated tears. "You can't deny me this. I will have him at my side, or not at all."
"But do you know what you're asking?" she challenged. "Would you know yourself if you were no longer a princess? A woman? A daughter? Would you fear someone who could take those things away from you?"
She swallowed the quadrant of her heart that was lodged in her throat, and terror, and guilt. It went down like bile. She wanted to gag on it.
"He'll adapt," she whispered. "We both will."
"You will not be swayed from this?"
"No."
They frowned amongst themselves, and Zelda didn't breathe, because she was sure if she did that it would stick with a terrible sound in her mouth and she wouldn't be able to hold back the grief that was beating at the gates.
"An Unbinding is complicated," the Elder sighed. "Binding a Shadow to a host is like tearing down a dam and letting the water rush out. It is the natural progression of things. But to undo it is to build a dam through a river that won't stop flowing."
"I see," she breathed, though she really didn't. But the thought of it made her tremble. "What must I do?"
"The burden falls to us. You need only look him in the eye and tell him in your own voice that you wish it."
Of course that was the price: facing him, and admitting her betrayal.
The Elder gestured, palm up, towards the door. An invitation and a challenge at once.
Face him, if you have the courage. If you can stomach the look in his eyes.
She wanted to run out of the room and into his arms. She wanted to gasp into his ear that she would run away with him, that they could keep running and disappear into shadow forever. She would give up her kingdom and he would give up his people, and they would start over on distant shores. She wanted to smile and tell him that had been her plan all along. She wanted to lie.
But she didn't have that luxury anymore.
She turned and followed the gesture out of the alcove, across the stone table in the watery glow of the orbs, moving with leaden feet towards where Link and the others were waiting. Purah was collapsed on herself where she stood, like someone had strapped the great one-eyed door onto her back, and Impa, standing beside her, offered no comfort. Her somber expression said she knew what they were planning. Her fists were clenched so tight where they were folded over her arms that her knuckles were turning white. Robbie's brow was lined with worry. And Link was so stone still and expressionless she couldn't read him at all, and that scared her worse than anything.
When she finally drew up to face him, it took everything she could muster to meet his eyes.
"What's going on, Zelda?" he asked, too quietly, as two of the Elders stationed themselves to flank him.
She took a breath, readying herself to plunge in the knife. Readying herself to confirm everything she knew he must have already begun to suspect. Readying herself to destroy the last bit of good faith he had in her. But there was really no preparing herself for something like that, was there?
"I don't want you to be my Shadow anymore," she said, breathless, her voice possessed of neither power nor conviction, watching his eyes change, watching him veer towards belief in something he had promised himself couldn't be so. "I told them to unbind us."
His voice was just a whisper, laced in shadow and belonging to shadow, driving back every ounce of light she had left.
"You did what?"
She took a breath—to take it all back, to apologize, to explain—but she couldn't form the words, her vision swimming and hazy as the betrayal scrawled all over his face knocked the air from her lungs. The Elders each placed a hand on his shoulders, leading him backward. He let himself be pulled away. He looked numb, hardly reacting as they eased him to his knees.
"You knew," Robbie breathed, suddenly trembling, meeting Purah's eyes as they brimmed and spilled over. "You knew, and you helped her?"
She couldn't answer, lips mashed so hard together it seemed she meant never to speak again.
The Elders' grip on his shoulders changed, fingers curling so only the middle and forefinger were extended and pressed to the arteries on either side of his throat, and then mirrored the hold on the pulse at his wrists, shackling him with the beginnings of the ritual. And that was when it became real. That was when the disbelief in his eyes turned to fear, when the dazed compliance turned to struggle. He pulled—not enough to break free, but enough that they lurched to hold him.
"Don't let them do this," he insisted, his voice full of all the power and conviction hers had lacked and near to breaking with it. "I know you think that this is your fault—that it's better this way—"
"It is," she choked out, bitter tears finally starting to spill. "This is all I can give you. A way to live your life. I can't let things go back to the way they were, can't you understand that? Would you really rather I just leave you here, condemn you to lifetime of torture when we both know—"
"Yes, Zelda," he hissed, straining again, as his own eyes started to brim. "Gods, yes, that's what I want. I know you don't understand. I know it scares you. But this is all I have left. Please. Don't let them take away what I am."
The atrium around them was a vacuum, silent in a way that only a room full of Sheikah possibly could be, making every shaking breath she took that much more deafening. He stared up at her in too much light as the foremost Elder came up behind him, pressing her fingertips and the pads of her thumbs to the sides of his face and his forehead. He flinched, breath spiking, and held her eyes. Imploring her to reconsider.
And then everything stopped, because they were all waiting for her. For her permission, or her judgment, or her absolution.
She sucked a breath to answer and couldn't, her hands pressing beneath her ribs to hold in the cry trying to break loose there and tears spilling down her cheeks. She wanted to respect his wishes. She wanted to give him every stupid thing he asked for. She wanted to be brave enough to let him make his own choices, even if they hurt him.
But she couldn't. She couldn't.
She met the Elder's eyes and nodded.
"Do it."
Link made a sound, something desperate and anguished as his whole body sprung taut, as he made to pull, or run, or tear his own throat out rather than let them go through with it. But he wouldn't come loose, either bound by some magic she didn't understand or weak with despair.
"You can stop this, Zelda, please," he begged, voice vaulting, struggling for all he was worth against intangible chains as the tears he had barely restrained finally tumbled in awful streaks down his face. "Gods, please, no. I don't know how to live without you. I'm scared. I'm scared of not feeling you anymore—of not knowing—"
He stopped, gripped with panic and gulping air that couldn't come fast enough, and screwed his eyes shut. Glowing veins fractured from his wrists and neck and the places where the Elder's fingertips touched his face. The tiniest bit of light in a realm of shadow magic. A testament to how unnatural it was. Beside her Robbie trapped a cry in his throat, unsheathing the dagger, answering a call no one could hear but him and shaking so hard the blade trembled in his hands.
He pressed his fist against his mouth, holding back a scream or worse. He whispered, "Oh, Gods."
And then the veins grew, spreading hungrily up Link's arms, through his throat, up to his eyes. They opened as the glow touched them, too, ringing his irises in light. And then the magic snapped out, so suddenly she saw spots when the room receded back into the orb glow.
The Elders let him go. He fell forward onto his hands, panting. His eyes were cast to the floor.
And just like that it was over. So quick...
She went to her knees in front of him, shaking all over, rattling with tiny sounds that resonated so much louder in the shadows.
"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm so sorry—"
She reached for him, to hold him, to touch him, but his voice brought her up short.
He whispered, "Just go."
Purah was sobbing. Zelda's hands hovered in the space between them, empty. She stared for a moment longer at the spill of silver hair shielding his eyes, at the shape of him, doubled over in shadow so deep he was starting to blend. And then she had an inkling of what he must have felt the night he saved her from the Yiga. She felt naked in front of him. Exposed as a liar and a traitor, burning in a glare of darkness. And she wanted to run.
She got to her feet, scurrying back from him like he was a hungry flame. Robbie's hands were fists, and he was staring at the floor where the dagger had dropped from his grip, shaking. The glow was fading—or her vision was?—and it was Impa's hand on her wrist that brought her back to her senses.
She led her silently away, helping her flee, taking her through the great stone doorway, through darkness and darkness that never seemed to end, leaving Kakariko and its shadows behind. They went for hours without stopping to rest, finally stepping out of the deep seated chill of the caverns towards higher ground, toward the humidity and the warmth of a more familiar realm. The journey was so much easier when she was used to being blind.
It was so much easier when there was something to run from, when there was guilt nipping at her heels.
Eventually they emerged from the stone, climbed out from behind a spray of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs into the pools below. They moved through the forest until they saw torches bobbing in the distance. Weaving through the trees like a flock of fairy spirits. Impa ducked away from their glow, but her touch lingered on Zelda's wrist, waiting until the search party was near enough to ensure they would find her. And then she bled away into darkness.
The blooms of torchlight dappled and swam in her vision, swaying, chasing, descending on her and pulling her out of shadow. Pulling her into the light. Banishing the dark.
She whispered, for no one to hear, "I didn't get to say goodbye."
Part Ten
Word count: ~2455
Rating: T
Premise: Sheikah!Link AU, Zelink
Previous | Next | FFN | ao3
—
They’re overlooking the village, shrouded by the spray of the falls this high up. They aren’t saying much. Because there isn’t much to say.
Then Link mutters, for the fourth time that night, “I’m going through the rite tomorrow.”
“I know,” they sigh. “Stop bringing it up. Things aren’t going to be the same around here without you.”
He smirks, unlatching one of his belts without ceremony and holding out the dagger and holster to them. “I want you to be Guardian.”
At first they’re dumbstruck. They want to refuse. They want to slap it out of his hand and tell him he’s an idiot. But instead they clench the sheath tight in their fist, bobbing a nod, and manage, hoarsely, “I would be honored.”
Time pulls out from around them, and he’s bound and flinching in the dark as they carve an emblem into his face, and as magic floods him they can feel a residual, dark knot of it settle unobtrusively in them, and then he’s gone, fleeing towards something none of them can feel without looking back.
The next time they see him he’s kneeling on the antechamber dais, a Seer’s palm pressed into his right eye, trembling and panting as she peers into his mind for answers.
“You’ll need a strikeforce,” the Seer says, once it’s finally over, and summons the rest of the Elders to her as they rush to him from out of the shadows.
“What are you doing back here, stupid?” they murmur, throwing his arm around their neck, and he has to gasp three times before he finally manages a response.
“Needed help,” he gets out, breathless, his neck taut with pain even as he forces a weak smile, and their stomach drops, because they can only imagine one reason for that.
“Yiga?”
He nods long before he can answer. “Yiga.”
Then the Elders turn collectively, frowning, and Link looks like he has to swallow a scream to meet their eyes. One of them sighs.
“Are there any rules you haven’t broken?”
“Just the one,” he manages, voice shuddering out of his chest as his ribs seize.
The Elders don’t seem particularly surprised by that. And they definitely aren’t impressed.
“You must return,” one of them says levelly, and before they can object, mouth popping open with the absurdity of what they’re asking of him, Link nods.
The shadows and the dais melt away, and the castle breathes around them in a whisper. Purah and Impa and a contingent of other Sheikah are with them, and they’re waiting. Waiting for a princess. Waiting for nightfall. Waiting for their greatest enemies, lingering in the shadows just beyond the castle walls, to start a war.
“How much did you tell her?”
He looks a little guilty when he admits, “Anything she asked.”
Purah’s cheeks puff out like she might be about to explode, but Impa is quick to cut the fuse.
“Can we focus?” she breathes, though the look she gives Link says she’s having a hard time doing that herself. “What’s done is done.”
“And when you go back?” they challenge quietly. Link grudgingly meets their eyes. “What will happen to you then?”
“I had to agree to it,” he whispers. “I had to protect her.”
They rub at their forehead, sighing. “You can’t possibly know what that’s going to do to you.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
Impa gets up and walks away. It’s a snap reflex. She has the right idea. It’s getting harder for all of them to concentrate.
Link says once she’s gone, more quietly, wearing a sad smile, “Besides, I have a good plan B.”
They look at him, unimpressed. “What?”
“You.”
They frown. “That’s not funny, Link.”
“I’m not joking.”
And then they really can’t concentrate.
The battle is fierce, and exhausting, and bloody. They take a sickle to the face, though others endure much worse, and Link is a force of nature, coiled over her like something feral, hewing more than one assassin apart when they stray too close. In the end they don’t walk away unscathed. They wrap their fallen warriors to be carried home, and then carried beyond. And the Princess of Hyrule is safe.
Link asks the three of them to stay. He entrusts her to them as he goes back to present the dead and accept judgment. And they can hardly say no to what might very well be tantamount to a final request.
Time stretches and shrinks and snaps, and they’re back home while their relief waits with the princess, and Link is screaming like he’s burning alive.
Impa is holding his hand while he arches off the bed, gasping and screaming and growling, and tears are streaming down her face, and when she turns her eyes on them they’re more desperate than they’ve ever seen them.
“Please, Robbie, I know it’s hard,” she quavers, “but you’re his Guardian. You have to do this for him.”
“I can’t unless he asks,” they grit out, nails biting so deep into their palms that it might bleed.
“He hasn’t asked?”
“No.”
The knot of magic planted in their mind, tied to him, is still quiet, silently rebuking them when their thoughts wander to the dagger on their hip. It isn’t a word, it isn’t a ‘no.’ It’s just a feeling. A feeling that it isn’t the right time.
She sighs, and it trembles. “Why does he hold on?”
“She’s still alive,” they say, and it’s too simple and too awful. “He can still sense that she’s out there.”
Her mouth twists bitterly, and they know where her thoughts have gone. Where she lays the blame. “Then we have to respect his choice.”
Link’s teeth meet and grate, and his spine twists and his eyes screw shut, and he tries and fails to swallow another scream.
“Where’s Purah?”
“She couldn’t take it.”
They nod, swallowing. None of them could have known this was where it was going to end. That one of them—the strongest of them, the bravest of them—could possibly be reduced to this. Before they know why, before they even know they are, they’re reaching with their left hand to cover his unmarked eye.
“Robbie—”
“I have to know,” they breathe, going rigid with anticipation. “I have to know.”
And then they close their eyes and pry his mind open.
The pain hits them later, like background noise. And it’s much more like burning alive than they ever cared to imagine. But it was the loss that bludgeoned them first, like a mallet to the chest. It felt like losing an arm, or a child, or freedom. It ached and throbbed and consumed, an unending, incomprehensible torment too empty and too vast to face, pushing them towards an inviting precipice. But, like a distant thunder, a distant wind, they felt her heart, her breath, and it’s a painful push in the other direction, drawing them irresistibly towards life.
And time pulls and stretches again, and they’re back in the castle, staring at a jewelled hairpin as they turn it between their fingers, the knot in their mind still silent as the grave and the void they had seen in Link’s mind sprawling forever in their memory.
The vision ended with a sudden snap of light, so jarring Zelda flinched in the shadow and pressed her hands to her forehead, and Link had Robbie by his left wrist and by his throat, slamming him up against the nearest wall. His eyes were feral.
“She deserved to know,” he choked out bitterly, and Link shoved him again.
“You were terrifying her!”
He took a deliberate step back, breathless, and raked a hand through his hair. Impa was at her side, a soothing hand on her shoulder as she came back to herself, and Zelda trembled. Even in breathlessness they were in sync.
“It’s not his fault,” she panted. “I gave him permission.”
When he turned to meet her eyes, the bitterness in them stung. The words were more of an accusation than a question. “What did he show you?”
Words lodged and scrambled unpleasantly in her throat, and her eyes pulled away to the floor. Even if she had wanted to answer him, she didn’t know how to describe any of it. He didn’t move to comfort her, still quaking, fists still clenched. His knife on Robbie’s belt glinted in the orb glow.
“I can’t let you go back to that,” she whispered, shaken, “even if you do have a Guardian.”
He shot Robbie an icy glare. “Nice.”
“I didn’t mean to show her all that,” he sighed, dragging a hand tiredly down his face. “You know I’m a lousy Seer.”
“That’s not all you are,” he said acidly, turning to stalk out into shadow, and Robbie lurched after him.
“Link, wait—”
“I’ll talk to him,” Zelda breathed, getting to her feet, and stopped to touch his face. It was suddenly as familiar as her own. “I’ll talk to him. I promise. And you were right,” she whispered, mustering the courage to meet Impa’s eyes. “This was my fault.”
She went after him before either could reply, feeling her way down the barely visible front steps. Link hadn’t gotten far; he was at the bottom, the heel of his hand pressed into his forehead and his bangs trapped in his fist. She touched his shoulder, but it was hardly necessary. He knew she was there, and why.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I just—” He turned, sighing, and met her eyes where she stood on the second to last step. His face was upturned, angles alight in the glow pouring out of the house. It looked like he was glowing in light from her. “This was difficult enough without knowing I was burdening you with it.”
“Typical Shadow,” she murmured, smiling, and touched the emblem on his eye as she descended the last two stairs. “Faced with a lifetime of torture, and you waste perfectly good energy worrying about me.”
He turned his face into her palm to kiss it. “What would you rather I wasted my energy worrying about?”
“You need to forgive Robbie.”
“I will. Later. After he’s suffered a bit.”
The waterfall over the village sighed, and she followed its spray up, up, with her eyes into a blue and green cloud of refracted bioluminescence. Into the places he had spent his last night among the Sheikah with his best friend, and asked him to take up a burden she still didn’t understand.
“Will you take me into the cliffs?” she asked, very quietly, and he took her hand, eyeing her suspiciously as he pressed another kiss to it.
“All right.”
She followed him blindly as he guided her over slopes and lifted her up ridges, leading her into secret, abandoned places above the village. The roar of the waterfall was deafening for a while, and then tapered off as they left the pool it plunged into further beneath them. It was cold where he finally brought them to rest, but he sat and then pulled her into his arms, and the warmth of him was enough.
“He was right, you know,” she said, after they had sat in the silence and the spray for much too long, afraid of disturbing the stolen bit of peace with something unpleasant. “I needed to know.”
“No,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to her temple, sighing. “You needed to be left alone. You needed to forget about me and live your life.”
“And leave you to rot down here.”
She turned so he had to look her in the eye, and it pulled a smirk out of him.
“You and your sense of justice,” he murmured.
She frowned at him, and he reclined against the stone and pulled her back into his arms. It was surprisingly difficult staying upset when he was holding her like this. But she was strong-willed.
“I can’t let things go back to the way they were.”
He stroked her hair, coaxing her head down to his chest. “We can talk about it after you’ve gotten some sleep.”
“The Elders won’t let you come back to Hyrule. It will cause too much trouble if I stay. Robbie thinks we should push for reunification.”
“Could we not stage a revolution on my account, please?”
She sank deeper into him, sighing, and rigidly asked the question she was afraid of hearing answered. “What does a Shadow need a Guardian for?”
He hesitated. Listening to her pounding heart, no doubt. “He really is a lousy Seer.”
She listened, too, pressing her ear to his chest. But she could only hear the one.
“I know it’s hard for you to understand,” he finally murmured, pressing his mouth to her hair. “But, for a Shadow, there are things much more frightening than death. The bonds that tie us to our hosts are strong. Some say they last forever, that they carry on to whatever lies beyond this life.” He swallowed, his fingers flexing possessively where he held her. “And sometimes Shadows get left behind.”
She closed her eyes, dreading hearing the rest. Knowing enough from her time in Robbie’s mind to know where he was headed.
“If a Shadow ever outlives his host, the silence usually drives them to madness. Most want to end it before then. They say it’s like having a hole blown through you that never stops hemorrhaging, or being cut in half.” He loosed a shuddering breath beneath her. “I can’t imagine.”
“And when you’re in that condition, committing suicide is difficult alone,” she finished grimly, numb, and he pulled her closer without answering. But his silence was confirmation enough. She remembered Robbie, the horror that had swept through him when Link gave him his dagger, and the powerlessness he felt as he watched him writhe, and shivered. “And as long as I’m alive, you won’t ask him to do it.”
“It just never felt right,” he whispered. “I could still feel you.”
She sighed. “Everything would be so much easier if I could just release you from this. If you just weren’t my Shadow anymore.”
He went rigid, and then slowly sat up, taking her with him. He stared, incredulous, his probing crimson eyes harder than she had ever seen them.
“Who put that idea in your head?”
“No one,” she breathed, eyes widening as she absorbed his indignation. His fear. “Is that possible?”
“No,” he sighed, “it isn’t.”
He pulled her back into his arms, into his chest, and leaned again against the stone, holding her much too tight, and she dug her fingers into his clothes as they lapsed into a heavy, smothering silence.
