Send a prompt for any show/story/movie/etc. I'm familiar with and perhaps I will write something! (Though probably not promptly)
It takes approximately five “I’m serious!”s from me, three “You think I’d lie about this? Why would I lie about this? You think I’m HAPPY about it?”s from Nabooru (each more offended than the last), and one brief summoning of BOTH Impa AND Brayden to confirm that the story of Brayden the Fucked Up Sheikah Who Brought a Gerudo Home And Got Her Pregnant is true, before she stops presenting us with reasons we’re wrong or lying.
In fact, she stops talking at all.
She just stares at us, as though language has suddenly become treacherous and untrustworthy. Like the things we are saying are SO untrue the Hylian tongue is unable to speak of them EXCEPT as truths. If Hunter were here I would make him say it in Sheikah and hope maybe THAT would work.
“I don’t have time for this,” Nabooru says with a growl. She teleports away with an irritated shake of her head, and Zelda keeps staring at the spot where she had been. As though unaware that a woman named Nabooru had ever been there, or had, in fact existed.
I let it continue for a moment more before I raise an eyebrow. “Zelda?” I hazard. “Are you—?”
But she raises a hand to stop me. “Shut up,” she says. “I’m thinking.”
“About how I’m the King of the Gerudo? Zelda? Zelda? Are you thinking about how I’m King of the Gerudo? Because I am. Zelda?”
“I said shut up,” she replies, her brow furrowing in concentration.
“What are you doing, trying to solve the meaning of life?” I demand.
“Trying to determine if there is any possible way that this is going to end well,” she replies. “Aaaaaaand no.” She sags back into her chair and turns her eyes up to the ceiling. “No there’s not.”
I frown at her, but opt to put aside my offence at this less than enthusiastic response to try to confirm: “Does that mean you believe me now?”
She reaches up with graceful fingers to gently pinch the bridge of her nose. “I believe you as long as I don’t look at you,” she says. “Or think about you too hard. Maybe if you stopped wearing that hat I would believe you more.”
“That wasn’t even subtle,” I accuse her.
“Neither is your hat.”
“You’re just mad because I’m a King and you’re just a Princess.”
“I’m not mad, I’m sorry,” she retorts, dragging her eyes down to look at me finally. “So very, very sorry for those poor women who do not even begin to understand what they have inherited. I will have to send them a fruit basket and a condolences card.” She gestures like she’s signing said card. “Sorry to hear about your King. Our thoughts are with you. But please do not return him.”
“Hey, at least it solves the commoner-dating-royalty problem, am I right?”
“Oh my darling Link,” she says, and rests that elegant hand sympathetically on my cheek. “You’ve always had trouble understanding where the frying pan ends and the fire begins, but this is impressive, even for you.” She rubs her thumb along my cheekbone as I frown at her. “Yes, it solves the commoner-dating-royalty problem, but it introduces so many new and exciting problems I don’t think I could even list them all. For starters, you’re going to have to start attending court events. And I don’t mean parties. I mean meetings.” She withdraws her hand and the illusion of sympathy it offered.
“What?!” I demand. “Why?! That sounds boring!”
“Welcome to the fire, Link,” she says as she rises. “Should’ve stayed in the frying pan. I’ll send someone by with some books for you to start reading to get up to speed on the appropriate behaviour and protocols surrounding a foreign dignitary of your stature, and a few others given the unique relationship between my people and yours.”
“Are you mad at me?” I demand. “Is this punishment?” I twist in my chair as she walks past me toward the door. “Is it about the hat?!” She ignores me as she pushes it open and walks out. “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DO ANYTHING; I AM A KING! “
“A visiting King,” comes the response, and then she is gone.
I turn back around in my seat and stare straight ahead for a long moment.
What the Hell just happened?
NOTE: This letter was written between Return and Reconciliations.
______________________
To the woman who sent me out here against my wishes and despite all the evidence to support doing the opposite;
I want to clarify one thing before I start this letter – I am (clearly) still mad at you. Very, very mad. Officially, I’m still not talking to you, and I still think that if you like Aghanim so much why don’t you marry him? But I wish to invoke my one remaining Temporary Truce Card to tell you this because I have to tell someone and Hunter threatened me with death if I tell either of our dads, and I totally believe him this time. Even Neesha believed him and she never believes either of us.
But I’m going to explode if I don’t tell someone, so you’re like my only remaining option BUT I AM STILL MAD AT YOU AND WILL BE FOREVER.
Okay so.
We’re at this bar. Like a tavern place, but not like a nice, clean tavern place, you know? You probably don’t, you’re a princess. Impa would never let you. Picture the worst dive you can think of, and then downgrade it by like a factor of three. Don’t ask me why we were there, because I won’t tell you, because it was linked to a thing I did that you’re not supposed to know about and Hunter’s a jerk who won’t give me his eraser because he’s mad I’m telling you about this, the thing about him not the thing about me, so whatever I guess this ill thought out sentence stays.
Don’t ask the others either, they won’t tell you. I made Hunter swear on his Sheikah symbol. You can’t break him and you know it. And Neesha…well, Neesha.
ANYWAY.
So the Elite were bored, okay? And I mean so was I. It’s boring here, Zelda. There were kinder ways to kill me than sending me out here, I still don’t understand why you thought this was a good Idea. Goddess. I’m not over it and I never will be.
So the Elite were bored and I had done this thing you don’t know about and we thought maybe we could resolve both of these problems by going to this tavern/dive/trash heap place – except not we, just them. They were like, oh, are you going to a horrible dirty bar with large, dangerous, armed people, that sounds amazing, we are coming.
And I was like, no, I am trying to be discreet here.
And they were like, oh, whoops, we already went and when you walk in the door we will be in there and half of us will be drunk and the other half will be babysitting, but babysitting in Gerudo talk just means finding likely candidates for either fighting or mating or both, I don’t know, I don’t like to think about it.
Oh, and also we took your cousin with us, mostly against his will, but we called him rude for refusing us, and also cuckoo, and also many other words he doesn’t like to be called and poked all his weak spots because we have had a couple months to get to know him and find all those weak spots and devise perfect weapons for poking them because we are HORRIBLE PEOPLE who are taking advantage of the opportunity presented to us by your lovely princess who you listen to despite our advice. And I’m like, I know guys, that was good advice and I should have listened to you instead of her, but please release Hunter, he’s not a toy.
And they’re like, no, this is fun, he is drunk.
Do you know how it came to be that Hunter found himself trapped in a seedy bar with Gerudo and was suddenly drunk? HUNTER, for Nayru’s sake. They shoved a glass in his hand of he didn’t know what and were like, “Hey, let’s toast the fallen! Like Jinni! And that weird little Sheikah girl and that whole mess on the bridge.” And, you know, they meant it, they don’t joke about that stuff, but they had also, opportunistically I feel, given Hunter a glass of the strongest stuff available in that bar, okay? And what was he gonna do? You know what he’s like. So he drank it. And then they started poking him again, and now his defences were down and he was all emo because of the toast, so he drank another one.
This is your fault, by the way. All of it. Hunter pretends he’s not bored, but he’s bored. I know he is. This is how bored he was, okay? Look at what you have wrought and be ashamed.
ANYWAY, so then the Gerudo are like, all right time to start fighting and/or mating, it is really hard to tell with some of them. But they’re like, no, we cannot just start a fight with these people, our King-Who-Takes-Bad-Advice-From-Blonde-Ladies will get mad if we do that, you know what he is like, he is a delicate flower who would just faint dead away if he thought we were up to that sort of thing (this is actually how they talk about me, I am not paraphrasing).
But in their infinite cleverness they realized that if Hunter did it all my rage would be levelled at him instead, so they were like, hey, drunk-sheikah-type-person. Did you hear what the guy over at the bar said about Hyrule and the Goddesses and the Sheikah and also your face? They were not kind words, you should tell him how that made you feel.
And then they kind of pushed him toward the guy, and he was like, hey, unkind fellow, why do you say these things about my homeland and also my face?
And the guy, who was also drunk, and also kind of panicking because he recognized Hunter because oh, look, what do you know, he was actually a noble who kind of likes going to these places and pretending he’s not a noble (hmm, who does that sound like, I wonder?), but Hunter was too blitzed to recognize him back, but the guy didn’t know that, and the guy was kind of blitzed himself, so he did that thing they all do, where he got all puffed up and blustery, and was like, what did you say about my face?!
And then Hunter kind of stared at him for a bit because he hadn’t said anything about his face, and was maybe about to realize something was up when one of the Gerudo helped out by informing the blitzed noble that the blitzed Sheikah had compared his face to the underside of a Like-Like, favourably she had felt. And the guy was like, how dare you sir, I thought we were friends, I shall punch you!
And then he tried to punch Hunter, but Sheikah are scary man. Him being blitzed didn’t actually turn off his instincts or his training, just his ability to slow down his reflex actions and match them to the situation as appropriate. She he ducked under the guy’s swing and then came back up again and busted his nose AGAIN.
Dammit, now I need to explain the again, why did I write that? Anyway his nose was broken before and that’s really all we have to say on THAT subject, okay?
It wasn’t Hunter that did it before. This was the first time he broke the guys nose I just meant
It wasn’t Neesha either, stop being prejudiced.
GODDESS DAMN HUNTER FOR NOT GIVING ME HIS ERASER ANYWAY MOVING RIGHT ALONG.
None of this would have happened if you hadn’t sent me over here. Just a reminder.
So he jumps up and busts the guy’s nose, and that’s about the point I walked in the door, and also the point at which the Gerudo gave a giant whoop and leapt into the fray. First blood had been spilled, it wasn’t on their hands, and as far as they were concerned that absolved them of all future responsibility for any additional blood that might be spilled after.
Now I know you’re not going to believe this, but I jumped in there to BREAK IT UP, okay? I was screaming for everyone to stop fighting, and I was pulling Gerudo off of non-Hyrulians, and non-Hyrulians off of Hyrulians, and begging everyone to calm the Hell down for TWO SECONDS and tell me WHAT HAD JUST HAPPENED BECAUSE I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND and then some jackass busted a chair across my skull.
And then I don’t remember what happened, except that I got really angry and I might have stopped trying to help and starting helping, if you see what I’m saying.
YOU SENT ME OUT HERE THIS IS YOUR FAULT DON’T BLAME ME.
YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT, ALL YOUR FAULT.
So it turns out my Noble friend wasn’t there alone, not generally being possessed of a great desire to risk his life so much as to pretend he is risking it. So he had two bodyguards undercover with him, and they weren’t, you know, second-rate. I don’t really want to tell you this guy’s rank, okay, but it’s high enough he can afford someone roughly equivalent to a passive Sheikah or an elite. And he had two of them. And from that first punch they had Hunter and were trying to just take him out.
And of course he’s blitzed, so he can’t do that thing he does where he makes sensible, grown-up decisions. Now he’s just pissed because he’s pretty sure he’s been tricked somehow, and that he should have known better, and that guy just tried to punch him, and these two jerks are trying to kill him as far as he can tell (in his defence, as far as I could tell too. I guess they take assault and battery of high-ranking nobles seriously over here, and these guys didn’t realize he was part of our delegation, he wasn’t in uniform). But, you know, Hunter’s no slouch either, is he? So he gives up on trying to figure out what’s happening and turns his attention to giving as well as he’s getting.
ANYWAY, so the Gerudo (me included) basically mop up everyone ELSE in the bar, and I swear to DIN I heard one of them comment about how “even the THUGS are boring out here” in a put out voice, like that wasn’t remotely fun enough, nobody even died, why’d they have to go and ruin her night like that. And I don’t know who it was, and that’s for the best, because I probably would have continued the fight with HER right there on the spot.
But then somebody started screaming in the back and we all turned to look and I guess Hunter broken one of the bodyguards’ arms, and his hand in the process, and had somehow managed to get a broken bottle in his not-busted hand and was brandishing it like a knife and the noble guy, through his twice-busted nose, was screaming for him to stop and this wasn’t supposed to happen and what was going on.
And all I could think was, oh sure, everyone listens to HIM.
So that was the exciting parts of the story, everything else was boring clean up. I screamed myself hoarse at the Gerudo who looked bored and glazed over, and then I screamed myself more hoarse at Hunter who looked confused and muddled, like he’d look down at the bottle in his hand like he wasn’t quite sure what he’d been going to do with it but he really wanted to know. Also I think he had a concussion and maybe some internal bleeding. In retrospect I feel bad about yelling at him, but come on man. He’s supposed to be the responsible one. I’m just so disappointed.
And then the drunk noble and I talked really quickly and determined that in light of the fact that he didn’t want anyone to know that he made a habit of frequenting seedy taverns, and I didn’t want anyone to know that the Hyrulian delegation had busted a Duke’s nose twice in the space of a week, he would get it cleaned up and claim it was just taking a long time to heal, and I would owe him a favour to be cashed in before I leave for home, and we would have to pay for any healing and care his bodyguards needed and Hunter was on the hook to pay for his own.
Look, it could have been a lot worse is what I’m trying to convey here. We’re all still on speaking terms, we avoided an international incident, and nobody died, and it was just a couple broken bones, some stab wounds, busted ribs, and concussions.
And Hunter started it.
None of which matters because, say it with me now, if you hadn’t sent us out here it never would have happened.
Anyway, now that I’ve told someone the story I am going to go back to not talking to you, beyond a final parting shot:
This is who you’ve chosen for your “diplomatic mission.” Look at your choices, Zelda, and regret.
Maybe-Someday-I-Will-Sign-Off-Love-Again,
Link
P.S., Sorry this isn’t romantic Marni, but I’m still mad. It’ll be a while.
P.P.S., Stop reading my letters, we talked about this.
The first hint that her library was in danger was the tingling of preternatural sense of the place of everything. Whatever the difference caused by the disturbance was it was so small she couldn’t immediately identify it, but something was undeniably out of place.
The second, was the sound of a footstep. Just one, light as a feather, the whisper of skin against cold stone. She spun, eyes searching the shadows between shelves, simultaneously looking for the intruder and for any damage to her work.
The third and final was a giggle, like the sound of bells. She was at once relieved – it wasn’t an enemy – and horrified – it was worse, it was family. “Nobernal!” she snapped, standing stiffly in the centre of her tower. “I’m not playing games with you. Go find someone else to bother.” She cringed, thinking of her younger sister’s sticky fingers pawing through delicate parchment, smudging invaluable words across irreplaceable pages. It made her heart seize, her throat close with terror.
Another giggle, but Nobernal did not reveal herself.
“I’m busy,” it was half admonition, half plea. “I don’t have time to play, okay?”
“You never have time,” came the sulky reply from the shadows somewhere. “Your books smell nice.”
“Don’t touch them!” Mudora gasped, horrified. “You’re being very rude right now. Come out here.”
“You didn’t say the magic word.”
Where was that damned child?! “I don’t need to say please to little rodents who come over uninvited and disturb me in my work.”
“Not please,” came the chiding response. “The other magic word.”
Mudora scowled at every crevice in the room as she slowly turned, searching for the young sentinel. What was she on about now? Mudora knew every word ever spoken, including all the magical ones, and not one of them could possibly apply to this situation.
She straightened, blinked, then pinched the bridge of her nose between ink-stained fingers and sighed. “Olly-olly-oxen-free.”
There was a rustle of feathers, the brush of skin on stone again, and before she could turn to face Nobernal the latter had engulfed her in a massive hug. Mudora hissed and pulled back, snatching at her sister’s hands and raising them to inspect. Nobernal wiggled her fingers and grinned at her from under her mop of dark hair. “Clean,” she said. “Like you said. I washed them three times.”
Mudora lowered the girl’s hands to stare at her, ire unexpectedly mollified by this uncharacteristic show of respect and obedience. “You listened.”
“Yes,” Nobernal said. “Because I thought maybe if I listened you would not be so worried about your books, and maybe if you were not so busy being worried, you would have time to play?” What had started as a statement ended in a question, and Mudora blinked owlishly at her again.
She turned to glance at the half-open books scattered around the room. Most of them had quills enchanted to run across the pages, but Mudora liked to watch them – sometimes the quills had opinions and there was no room for opinions in her collection – and more than a few books required her hand alone. Even this small delay had cost her, she would have to work double-time to make up for it. She glanced back down at Nobernal.
At her squeaky clean fingers and scrubbed face.
There was still a trail of mud through the front hall from the last time Sirana had barged in here – and when, exactly, was she supposed to find time to clean that up? – and a hole in the wall of the third floor from Khol’s unauthorized experiments with her quills. But Nobernal stood before her with her hands clean and her face scrubbed and could not have left any sticky fingerprints all over crucial pages.
She had listened.
“All right,” Mudora said, too overwhelmed to argue. “Not long,” she cautioned with a nervous glance at her books and quills. “But perhaps a few moments. In the woods, though, not in here.”
Nobernal danced delightedly and then turned and raced for the door. “Count to fifty!” she shrieked as she flew out of the tower and into the trees.
Clean hands or not, Mudora breathed a sigh of relief once she passed under the doorframe, then closed her eyes and slowly began to count.
***
“Nervous?” Valdyx asked. Clearly, she was not, as she sat in a chair, with her feet propped up on the table, cleaning no-one-wanted-to-know-what from under her fingernails with a small dagger.
“No,” Khol snapped, refusing to remove her eyes from the glowing runes carved into the stone table in front of her. Every now and then one would flicker and die and she would start muttering under her breath and moving them around. A large one near the centre flickered and died, and she snarled and slammed her fist down onto the table. “Shut up!” she added before Valdyx could comment.
“You shouldn’t be,” Valdyx noted.
“Then why are you here?” Khol replied acidly, though that was unfair and she knew it. She focused for a second on evening out her breathing to move the runes around to compensate for the loss of the large one.
Valdyx shrugged. “Win or lose, people die. I’ve got a job to do too, Khol. And unlike you I can’t pick sides.”
Another rune flickered out, and Khol moaned. “Why are they so fragile?” she cried, and quickly reversed her previous decisions and began building the runes anew.
“You’re too attached to your students,” Valdyx noted, as neutral as ever, but there was flicker of what might have been concern in her eyes. “They aren’t you. They can’t cast and fight and continue breathing all at the same time.” Khol did not reply, consumed for the moment by the flickering of the runes. Valdyx grunted and turned her attention back out over the field. Though she sat in the chair, she was also out there, streaking among the warriors, catching them as they fell and taking them to their rest. She paused in this work at another sisters’ side, and grabbed this one’s arm.
She ducked as Sirana took a swing at her with her massive, gleaming claymore. “Whoa there, oh giant one. Not an enemy!”
“Valdyx?!” Sirana gasped in horror, struggling to shove her helmet up so she could see her sister better. “I could have killed you!”
Valdyx gave her an amused grin. “You really couldn’t have,” she said. “Listen, I can’t chat, kinda busy, but you need to shore up your defences around the mages.”
Sirana paused with her helmet half-on, half-off her head to raise an eyebrow. “You are giving me combat advice? I thought you didn’t take sides in these wars?” She casually turned and ran a mortal through as the latter tried to stab her from behind. She caught him and lowered him gently to the ground to die.
“Not combat advice,” Valdyx clarified carefully, “family advice. Khol’s freaking out.”
Sirana’s curiosity crumbled into irritation as she straightened. “Damn her. I told her not to come.”
“You know what she’s like. Just shore up defences around the mages. She’s in panic mode now, and that’ll force her to be brilliant. Keep the mages alive and she’ll win this for you.”
Sirana scowled and swept her gaze across the battleground. “I hate defensive positions,” she muttered. “Not my style.” She turned back to Valdyx. “She’s really freaking out?”
“Would I be here if she wasn’t?”
Sirana grumbled and jammed her helmet back down. “Fine,” she said sourly. “We’ll go keep the bookworms safe.”
Valdyx nodded and waved, and then streaked off again to make up for lost time.
Back at the table, Valdyx smiled and continued cleaning her fingernails.
***
“Anduriel.”
Anduriel smiled as she climbed the stairs into the small cottage. “You know,” she said dryly, “while I understand there is no such thing as a surprise visit to you, it would be nice if you humoured me from time to time.”
“I humour all of you often,” Revanas replied with a smile of her own. She rose to her feet and moved to take her sister’s forearm in a solid greeting. “But I’m good at it, so you don’t know you’re being humoured, so you don’t appreciate how often I do it.”
“Fair enough,” said Anduriel with a nod.
“Would you like me to pretend I don’t know why you’re here?”
“No,” Anduriel sighed. “I’d definitely know you were humouring me then.”
“Then to answer your question, I’m not avoiding you – any of you – and I’m not having another episode. I’m fine, and you’re all fine, and everything is fine.” She gestured for Anduriel to take a seat at the thick wooden table as she took hers on the opposite side. “Tea?”
“Yes please. If everything is fine, why haven’t we seen you lately? None of us have. Not even Nobernal, and I know you favour her.”
“I do not,” Revanas protested. “I love you all equally, you know that.”
“Aye,” Anduriel said with a wry tint to her smile, “just her a little more equally.”
“It’s not—.”
“I know what it is,” Anduriel cut her off. “It’s because the rest of us are boring. Too set in our ways, too predictable. Nobernal lives in the present, more than the rest of us. You can’t predict her as well as the rest of us. She’s a bit of a wild card, and you favour those. Don’t deny it, I can see you blushing.”
Revanas managed a scowl that didn’t go to her eyes. “You’re full of it.”
“One of us is,” Anduriel replied demurely. “She’s worried, you know. That you’re mad at her.”
Revanas sighed. “I know, but I’m not.”
“So tell her that.”
“I can’t.” She tried to hide it, and perhaps had Anduriel been any of the others it might have worked, but there was legitimate pain in her voice.
Anduriel’s gaze sharpened and she set her teacup down. “Revanas,” she said slowly, seriously, “whatever it is, let me help. Let me in. Don’t shut me out again. Not like last time.” Revanas said nothing, kept her eyes trained on her teacup. “Revanas, that cost us both too much and you know it. Let me help.”
“You will,” Revanas said slowly. “You will help. I don’t want to let you, it will cost you – us – more than I can say, but I can’t stop you. I’ve looked for ways to…that’s why I’ve been…I’ve been working, Anduriel.”
“Something is coming,” Anduriel supplied, and Revanas nodded, grateful for the help in articulating it. “Something that can be avoided?” Revanas shook her head, and there was something like dread on her face. “Something that can be survived?”
Revanas shrugged. “That’s my goal,” she said quietly. “But things are…I cannot tell. Too many pieces in motion.”
Anduriel’s eyes narrowed as she considered this. For Revanas not to be able to predict at all, to not even be able to guess, was rare. In fact it only seemed to happen when… she caught her breath. “A new cycle?”
“Aye,” said Revanas, and her shoulders slumped. “A big one. A turning point.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“But the last few haven’t really impacted us.”
“This one will,” Revanas said. “That much I know. And it will not…I have been doing what I can to—to manage it. To set my own pieces in motion while I can, to prepare for the eventualities I can identify. Contingencies upon contingencies upon contingencies. Prophetic dreams to certain mortals, influencing certain events to within an inch of the line drawn for me by Our Ladies. Close enough, Anduriel, that were they here I’m sure I would receive a talking to.” She managed a faint smile.
Anduriel leaned back in her chair and considered this. “Is…this conversation part of that?”
Revanas sighed and returned her eyes to her tea. “Aye,” she said. “But it is also because I…I wished for your company tonight. I wished to speak with you at least once before the cycle begins.”
Anduriel felt cold. “You speak as though we won’t have another chance.”
“Maybe we will,” Revanas said uncertainly. “There are many possible paths, and in some of them we do. But not as we are now. I need you to be ready, Anduriel. I believe you’re the only one who can…I need you to be prepared. And I need you to know that I’m sorry. For whatever comes after. Both for what I must cause, and what I cannot prevent. I need you to know that I tried.” She looked up and her face was set in an almost foreign expression of uncertainty and bald emotional need. “Whatever happens, remember that. Remember that I tried.”
“You’re scaring me, Revanas,” Anduriel said breathlessly. Her heart beat like a caged bird against her ribcage.
“Will you remember?”
“I will,” Anduriel said solemnly. “I promise.”
Revanas held her gaze for as long as she could stand, then nodded and turned away. “You have such pretty eyes,” she murmured sadly.
Anduriel stayed with her for the remainder of the night, until the tea in their cups had gone cold, and the light had fled the small kitchen. They did not speak again, and at some point she fell asleep at the table.
When she woke Revanas was gone.
“Where is she?” His voice rumbled like a rock slide threatening to become an avalanche.
Nabooru froze in place, her already shaky breath catching in her throat. She thought, well, that’s it, I’m dead, and was surprised to find this didn’t upset her as much as she thought it would. Death would be simpler, really, than trying to manage the giant hole Natalia had cut into her back, or the implications of her decision to return the favour.
Maybe it was the realization the she didn’t care if he killed her, or maybe it was the nameless hurt sawing away at her ribcage, or the guilt chewing through her stomach, or maybe it was just two o’clock in the morning and she was tired, and lonely, and drunk. But in response to the looming silence between she and her King, itself an echo of the growing silence between her sisters, and the desert, and the wind, she thought, Fuck it.
Then, Fuck her.
Then, Fuck Oaths made to an oath-breaker.
She turned to meet his fathomless glare and said, lightly, “She’s dead.” She thought the lie would feel like a knife blade slipping between her ribs, but it was more like a sudden weight sliding free of wrists ravaged by cold iron shackles. It emboldened her. “I saw her leave. With him. And I hunted them down and I killed her.”
“And him?”
“Ran,” she answered easily. She thought briefly of his retreating back on the horse, Natalia’s unconscious form limp and somehow still accusing in front of him, and decided this wasn’t a lie. Which was oddly dissatisfying. So she added, “crying, like a child.” Petty, perhaps, but soothing for all that.
He stared at her for a long moment, and she stared back, never once breaking his gaze. Refusing to lower her eyes. She knew she should, she always had, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Something in her wouldn’t let her, and she wasn’t sorry.
“If you killed her, where is her body?”
“I threw it over a cliff.” A crack appeared in his once unreadable expression - three quarters surprise, a quarter irritation, giving way quickly to anger. It fed something in her, something reckless and starving and dangerous, and she let her lips part in a wolf’s smile. “It had a waterfall. The cliff, I mean. Big one. Huge rocks at the bottom. Sharp, jagged. Might still be a piece of her left impaled on one if you want to go double check.”
“You knew I wanted her executed,” he says. The rock slide is most definitely an avalanche but she isn’t afraid. Not like she should be. Not anymore.
“And so I executed her. Job well done. I think I deserve a medal, don’t you?”
His eyes flared and he rose to his feet. She had crossed a line and some part of her sagged in relief. Finally. Confrontation. Resolution. Absolution. She clenched her fists and slid her foot back into a ready stance. But he just stood where he was and held her gaze for a moment that dragged on until she thought she’d snap under the tension of it. “Well?!” she demanded.
“Stop cutting your hair,” he responded, and the avalanche had become a single stone, slamming shut on her tomb. “You can inform your sisters of your miraculous victory over a superior enemy tomorrow and give them the details when you tell them that I’ve promoted you into Natalia’s previous position. Congratulations, Nabooru. You’re now my right hand.”
“What?!” she gasped, so stunned she dropped her fists and gaped at him. But he ignored her now, pushing his way out of the room.
“I expect to see you every day at dawn and sunset for updates, and make sure you are working closely with the moblins and the rest of the horde.”
“You can’t be—!”
He turned and the coldness in his eyes cut her protests short and sent a shiver down her spine. “Mark me, Nabooru. It will not be you who bears the burden of your defiance,” he said. “I will not give you the pleasure. I will find others to bear it for you if you are anything less than your predecessor was prior to her betrayal.” He turned his back on her, satisfied by the sudden grey in her face and her inability to even draw breath to speak. “I will see you at sunset. I suggest you come up with a better story than that for when you speak to the others.”
She stood where she was for a long time after he’d left, then clenched a fist over her heart and sank to her knees, her head bowed at last.
“Daddy? Daddy! Daddy? Daddy!”
I pause with the razor against my face, fingers buried in the thick lather, and hold my breath. Maybe she’ll give up. I’ve seen miracles happen, actual miracles, I don’t know why this couldn’t be one of them. Give up, Pink, I think at her. Give up. Get bored and go back to bed.
“Daddy? Daddy! Daddy?” The door knob rattles as though I’m in some kind of horror story, and I hiss despite myself. “Daddy!”
“Pink!” I bark. “No! Go back to bed!”
There’s a pause, and I know she’s frozen on the other side of the door, processing everything from the words to their tone to the rules she knows she’s breaking, and weighing them against her all encompassing need to know where I am at any given moment. She should really be weighing that need against potential punishments, but she’s not very good at cause and effect yet. Or else just prefers to believe that her actions are not tied to anything, especially not punishments, and everything is obviously someone else’s fault. Like mine. Because I’m mean.
Not mean, little pixie, just terrified.
She’s apparently decided it’s more important to verify that I am, in fact, in the bathroom, so she starts fumblng at the door again until I give up with a frustrated groan and put the razor down on the sink. I move over to the door and pull it open, rough enough to startle her, and glare down at her with my best glare. The one Iah says makes me look like I’m either going to murder someone or burst into tears.
She stares up at me with eyes that she hasn’t quite grown into yet, they’re still so huge. As gold as her mother’s were silver, and they cut me in ways I don’t think she’ll ever understand. In ways I don’t think I understand.
But I can’t let my expression waver, or she’ll see it. And if she sees it it’s done. I lose. Forever.
“Pink,” I snap angrily, “no. Bad girl. What’s the rule?”
I don’t know how she manages it, but her eyes get even wider, like Solstice ornaments in her face. “Teen mints,” she says.
“Right,” I said. “Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes so daddy can try to make himself look like a human being, okay? Fifteen minutes so daddy can try to make himself feel like a human being. No Pinks allowed.”
She shrinks back behind the stuffed angel Lasan made for her, pretending to hide the trembling of her lip but in fact ensures it’s on display. “No Pinks?” she says tremulously.
I shift my weight, try to keep my expression from shifting with it. “No Pinks,” I say sternly. “Not for fifteen minutes.”
She takes what is meant to be a subtle step to the side, trying to angle herself to get into the bathroom around me. “No Pinks ‘lowed?” She takes another ‘suble’ step.
“No Pinks allowed,” I repeat.
“Why?” She asks. Steeeeeeeep. “Why, Daddy?”
“Because it’s a rule,” I say. Which is what I always say. Because I’m not sure I can articulate the real reasons.
Because it takes me that long to put the nightmares behind me?
Because I don’t want you to see them in my face? And I don’t want to relive them in yours?
Because I don’t want to take my life out on you, who deserves it least of all?
“Because it’s a rule, and you have to follow the rules.”
Steeeeeeeeeep. “Teen mints?” Step.
“Yes. Fifteen minutes.”
“How many now?” Step.
“Five,” I say, and add under my breath, “if I’m being generous.”
“How many teen?” She holds up a hand and moves her fingers up and down to pretend she’s counting. “Six, eight, six, one, teen?”
“Yes,” I say, because sure. Why not. “Go back to bed until then.”
“Daddy, what’s that?” she asks, and like a fool I turn to look. She drops all pretense of subtlty and rushes me. She darts into the small room before I can stop her and makes a beeline for the counter.
“No! Pink! No—NO!”
A tiny hand, as pretty and fragile as a rose, going straight for the shiny silver razor hanging off of the counter.
Fear and anger and training I wish I could forget drive me to the counter just as she gets there. I slap her hand away and snatch up the razor, holding it up and away from her. “No!” I snarl savagely, my heart pounding in my chest. “Pink, no!”
She drops the angel and clutches her smarting hand to her chest, lip trembling for real now as her eyes water accusingly.
Ordinarily this is the point when I would break down and apologize, but I can’t. Now that the immediate danger is past all I can think about is what could have happened if she’d gotten her hands on it. If I hadn’t gotten there first. What if she’d cut herself? What if she’d cut herself bad? I’m covered in scars from knives and razors and other unpleasant things, and I earned the first of them when I wasn’t much older than her. Maybe even before.
I couldn’t—
If she’d managed to—
It would have been my fault and I just—
“Get out, Pink,” I snap, pointing at the door. “Now.”
Her eyes spill over and she turns her back on me. She doesn’t wail or sob, just sniffles quietly and tries to pretend she’s not crying, which is how I know it’s real. My heart breaks into a hundred pieces, but the razor is still in my hand, and memories I don’t want are cutting up my mind. “Pink! Out!”
“NO!” she yells, and bursts into tears in earnest. She stomps her way up the little stairs Iah made for her to use when she’s getting in the bath and climbs into the tub. She moves as far away from me as she can get and curls up around herself in the corner of it, glaring at me from behind her arms, still crying silently.
“Pink,” I beg her weakly, “look, this is why we have a fifteen minute rule, okay? Because Daddy’s a monster, and because there are…there are dangerous things in here, okay? Like this.” I show her the razor. “This is…this is really dangerous. You could have been…you might hurt…I don’t know what I’d do, Pink. I don’t know what to do.” Hadn’t meant to add that last part. My hand is shaking now.
She bares her teeth and me, and holds her hands up like claws.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m monster,” she says, breaking her character to explain before quickly resuming the pose. “Me too.”
I stare at her for a second, and then surprise myself by laughing.
“No!” she snaps, offended that I would laugh at her clearly terrifying monster impression.
I raise a hand to my mouth to try to control the reaction, and pull it away in surprise. Forgot about the lather still covering half my face.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the white on my hand.
“Soap,” I say.
She gets to her feet and holds out her hands to be picked up. There are stains on her cheeks but she’s not crying anymore. “Do me! Do me!”
I set the razor down on the far corner of the counter, then move over to the tub and pick her up. She curls instinctively against me and I suddenly feel dizzy, but I let the warmth of her calm my heart and my hands. I set her down on the opposite corner of the sink and pick up my shaving brush and the soap. I show her how I make it lather up, and she watches it as though I’m showing her the secrets of the universe. Then I brush some of it on her face, much to her delight. I hand her the shaving brush, and pick up my razor again as she sets about making as big a mess as possible.
The rest of the ‘teen mints’ are spent with shaving and washing my face and generally trying to make myself look like somebody Andy doesn’t frown at, as she giggles in her seat on the counter and gets soap everywhere. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to convince her to give me the brush back when she tries to eat it and the problem solves itself.
Her face scrunches up in the middle and she starts crying as she learns the hard way it’s more fun to play with than eat. She holds the offending brush out to me in a gesture that says, ‘Fix it, fix it, fix it!’ I take it from her, trying not to laugh, which always offends her. Then I grab the washcloth and try to get the soap out of her mouth and off of her face.
“Now we’re people?” she asks me, as I pick her up again and carry her out of the bathroom to go try to find day clothes for the both of us. “Not monsters?”
“Right,” I say. “Now we’re people.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we’ll be monsters again,” I say. “For fifteen minutes.”
She thinks about that, a serious expression on her little face. “But I’m Pink.”
“Yes. Even when you’re a monster. You’re always Pink,” I tell her as I set her down on the bed.
“Always,” she repeats.
“Forever,” I confirm.
“You’re Daddy?”
“Yes,” I say. “Even when I’m a monster.”
“Forever?”
“Forever,” I say seriously. “Always. As long as I live.”
She makes the monster face at me again, and I make one back at her until hers cracks under a smile, and shatters into giggles.
I let myself laugh with her, and slowly but surely the nightmares fade back into the darkness to wait their turn. Until the sun goes down I’m hers.
“That’s funny,” he said, gesturing at the caged Prince the way one might at a saucy child who’s said something apt, but inappropriate. ”You’re funny. You’re killing me, here.” The half-grin took on a cruel twist. ”Metaphorically, of course.”
“You won’t be able to hold me forever!” the younger man snarled. ”My bodyguard will—!”
“You mean Impa?” Link cut him off, a sudden, eager glint in his eyes. He got up from the simple wooden chair and stepped over to the closet opposite Ganon’s cell. He grabbed the door and wrenched it open. A dark-clothed figure fell out and landed with a heavy thud on the floor at the usurper’s feet. The flesh of her throat was covered in blood, her eyes were open and empty. The Prince recoiled, his hands flying to his mouth. He was unable to keep the grief-stricken cry from escaping his throat. Link laughed brightly at the sound. ”Goddess!” he practically crowed. ”I’ve been waiting to do that for an HOUR! Why’d you wait so long to bring her up?” He stepped over her body and returned to his chair. He leaned forward onto his knees and offered the boy a smile that was all teeth. ”Anyone else you want to hide behind or threaten me with? If I don’t already have them stuffed in a closet, I’ll make a special trip. Just for you.”
Ganon clenched his jaw and turned his face away. Struggled to remember how to think, how to breathe. Rage, grief, and terror tore through his heart like a pack of wild boar, but that was what Link wanted. That was EXACTLY what he wanted. He HAD to keep his head, HAD to get his mind above the screaming of his heart and keep it there. Triforce of Wisdom was no good to him if he couldn’t think.
And he needed to think.
Now more than ever.
“Seriously?” Wrath raised an eyebrow at her sister, her expression just this side of incredulous. ”All this to pick from and that’s what you settle on?”
“It’s my choice,” came the immediate response, just that side of defensive.
“Why?” demanded Ruin, crinkling her nose at the dusty old instrument. She held up a curved dagger with an attractive pattern carved into the blade. ”I picked this,” she said helpfully, as though trying to correct her sister’s clearly wrong-headed decision.
But Rue simply pulled the violin closer, frowning at both of them. ”It’s my choice,” she repeated with a scowl.
“You don’t know how to play it!” Wrath said, her face darkening. ”It’s no good to you unless you plan to use it as kindling.”
“Oh,” said Rue primly, “and what use that necklace, then?” She gestured at the unnecessarily elaborate jewelry in Wrath’s hand. ”None. Or Ruin’s dagger? Dull as a stone. It’s. My. Choice.”
“It’s a waste.”
“Whatever, Wrath, let her have it,” Ruin said, rolling her eyes and sheathing her dull dagger. ”Like she says, it’s hers to waste.”
Wrath sneered at Rue. ”Foolish.”
“The arts of war are not the only arts worth our time,” Rue replied evenly, though she did not loosen her grip on the violin. ”Geru sang as well as she fought.”
“Aye,” said Wrath with a roll of her eyes, “and the Goddess knows we don’t want you singing.”
“So you’ve said. On multiple occasions,” Rue retorted. ”So shut up and stop complaining if I wish to choose an instrument for my voice. It’s not your business anyway.”
“There’s no one to teach you how to play it!” Wrath cried.
“I have a brain, dear sister,” Rue replied flatly. ”It has strings like a guitar, and a neck just the same. I have seen the Zorans draw the bow across them to make them sing. I will figure it out.”
“Aye and we’ll have to listen to you while you make it scream like a stuck Sheikah.”
“You have often commented that that particular sound is your favourite lullaby,” noted Ruin.
“Bad example then.”
“If it will make you go find someone else to pester I promise I won’t play it near you until I make it sing,” Rue said.
“Swear it on sand and sun!”
“I swear it on sand and sun.”
“Fine. But if I hear so much as a whimper from it, I’ll shatter it to pieces. And you along with it!”
“I would like to see you try.”
“All right, whelps!” shouted the Elite heading their patrol before the glaring match could escalate into something more. ”Those who haven’t chosen their spoils are out of luck! Pack the rest of it up and let’s head out before we lose any more time!”
They hustled to obey, not bothering to exchange another word until they were mounting their horses again. Rue tucked the violin safely away in her saddlebag, and the instant it was out of sight Ruin offered her a bright grin. ”Okay,” she said, “so now that the offending treasure has been hidden away, can we all be friends again?”
Rue sniffed and put her nose in the air as she pulled herself up onto her horse. ”We were never friends.”
“No kidding,” Wrath said with a snort, “I never liked any of you. I don’t know why you keep insisting I do.”
“Oh good,” said Ruin, settling comfortably into her saddle. ”It was going to be a long ride if we weren’t.”
Read more break to spare the poor folks on the Motorcity tag, and because this one is a bit longer than usual I think.
____________________
I drum my fingers against the dome of my helmet and listen to the droning of Deluxe’s All News (read: Propaganda) Radio Station. It’s crackling valiantly from the speakers of Hunter’s old squad car. He’s got a yellowed pad of paper on his lap, and a pen in one hand. The other is holding a code book - an honest to Goddess dead-tree book. Every now and then he hears something and he flips quickly through it. Then the pen starts going.
“Where the Hell is Chilton?” Neesha growls. I have to lean over my bike’s handlebars to see her. She’s sprawled out on the ground like a bored cat, waiting for a mouse to pounce on. ”We’ve been here for half an hour.”
“Are you asking because you’re worried, or are you asking because you have the attention span of a gnat?”
She gives me a look as dull as the pavement. ”You asked the same question five minutes ago, so.” She makes a rude gesture at me. ”Besides, we’re on a schedule. More deliveries to make than just his, and we’re gonna miss our window to get out if we wait much longer.”
“He’s not normally late,” I point out. ”He’ll be—“
The thundering screech of an explosion cuts across my assurances and puts a smile on both my and Neesha’s faces. Hunter drops his code book and looks up from his pad. “No,” he says flatly, like he’s talking to a couple of poorly trained puppies. He points accusingly at us. “No. Don’t even think it.”
But Neesha’s already on her feet, fastening her goggles over her eyes as she darts for her mech, and I’m jamming my helmet unceremoniously back on my head.
“No!” Hunter cries. “Guys! I have a trunk full of incredibly illegal, ridiculously experimental ordinance! We are NOT running head first into a warzone! The Burners can—“
But the rest of whatever completely legitimate argument he’s making is cut off by the roar of my bike’s engine, and the ignition of Neesha’s jets, and really, who can argue with that?
“Hey there, new blood.” The voice was dry and amused, just this side of mean. “Here for the Tests?”
She turned to look, expression unchanged. Red eyes looked him up and down once, quick and dismissive, and she didn’t bother responding. She turned away again.
Not one to be ignored – and definitely not by a Chosen-wannabe sitting still as a statue outside the Shadow Temple – he launched himself at the wall. He climbed the rough rock easily, and hauled himself over the fence without bothering to think the potential consequences through. When he landed on the other side and turned, brushing off his hands, her eyes were on him again, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
She didn’t know the rules yet, not all of them. But she could smell their breaking on him. Despite herself, her lip curled. “This is a joke to you?” she asked. Her voice was soft, but it wasn’t gentle.
“Maybe a little,” he confessed. He moved in front of her and dropped into a seated position, mimicking her crossed legs, hands set on his knees. “You have to understand, you’re like the dozenth person I’ve seen make this attempt in the last three months. Do you know how many of them made it out the other side?”
“They are not me.”
“Such confidence,” he purred at her. “One of them made a speech. Right where you’re sitting now. It was beautiful, really. About service and sacrifice and the greater good. Like something out of a bard’s mouth. He was confident too.”
She regarded him coolly for a long moment. “I am not here because the bards sing of the great deeds of the Sheikah in wars past. And I am not here because of the rumblings and rumours of Gerudo invasions and secret alliances. The twelve who came before me followed heart and head and stomach. Hoping for glory, or purpose, or a steady string of meals when war comes and rations are tight. They are not me.”
“And who are you?” he asked. “What do you follow, then?”
“My name is Impa,” she answered, “and I follow the Goddesses’ call. I am here because I am meant to be here. And you are a distraction.”
“Oh goody,” he said, the corner of his mouth sliding up mockingly, “a religious nut. My favourite kind. You think you hear the Goddesses call, Impa? They put that Temple there. They filled it with every sort of nightmare you can imagine. And they did it to weed out the garters from the vipers. The chickens from the hawks. You’d better be damn sure you’ve been called, or they’ll rip you limb from limb.”
“I am sure enough I feel no need to argue the point with you,” she responded tartly.
“It’s not what you think, being a Sheikah,” he told her. “It’s not all intrigue and travel and dashing adventure like so many of you supplicants seem to think. There are nightmares in this life, to rival those in the Temple. It’s not just us that goes bump in the night, and you won’t much like what you meet there. You think you know what it means to be a Sheikah?”
Her eyes were hard as garnets. “Do you?”
He stared her down but she said nothing else, offered no other argument. The other half of his mouth slid upwards. “That’s the best response I’ve heard yet,” he admitted. He got to his feet and turned back to the fence. “Yes, Impa, I do know what it means to be a Sheikah. Believe me when I tell you you won’t like it. You should give up now and go home with your life and your freedom.”
“Not all chains are unwelcome,” she answered.
He considered that for a moment, then dropped out of sight.
At sunset the Temple opened, and she entered unafraid.
***
She sought him out the following week, at the celebration of her successful navigation of the Temple and her entry into the ranks of the Sheikah. “Your name,” she said.
He leaned back against the wall and raised an eyebrow at her. “And why would I give you that?”
“I gave you mine,” she replied.
“Your mistake.” He tipped his glass to her. “Names are power, never give them freely.”
“It will be a long few months if you are going to insist on being this difficult.”
His eyebrow went higher. “What do you mean?”
“I spoke with Cierca about my training. Made a personal request for you.”
His carefully guarded expression shattered, overwhelmed by legitimate surprise. “Why would you do a foolish thing like that?”
“Because I don’t care to be one of the things that goes bump in the night. I will be the night itself.” Her face was as hard as it had been the day he’d found her waiting for the Temple to open; not so much as a hint of doubt, or fear. There was a challenging glint in her gemstone eyes. “You think you know what it means to be a Sheikah, Dashil? Show me.”
He stared at her, unable to think of anything even remotely witty to respond with. She turned as he hesitated and started to walk away. Never willing to lose the last word he called after her. “If you already stole my name why bother asking for it?”
“I wanted to see if you knew how to pick your battles,” she responded without looking back. “You don’t. ”
***
Impa was no ordinary Chosen. She never flagged, never tired. Not of the sparring sessions, not of the history lessons, not of the endless recitals of every code the Sheikah had ever felt the need to create – and he was sure the creation of new codes was his peoples’ favourite past time. She felt less like a Chosen, than a Blood with amnesia, who was recovering more of their memory every day.
He was far more likely than she to grow bored and let his attention wander. It was a source of daily arguments. Her hunger for the training was insatiable, and she despised what she saw as laziness and a lack of discipline in him. For his part he hated how difficult it was to get her to do or speak on anything that wasn’t intimately tied with being a Sheikah, or their duty.
“This isn’t a job,” she’d snap. “The uniform doesn’t come off at the end of the day and you go back to being just an ordinary person. This is a life.”
“Aye,” he said, “one I’ve been living since the day I was born. Who are you to lecture me on it? Just because I’ve sworn those oaths doesn’t mean every moment of my waking hours needs to be spent contemplating them.”
It wasn`t until they were out of the training rooms and into the field that they found a balance, but once achieved it surprised them both. Their abilities were beautifully complimentary. Between Dashil’s skill with disguise and deception, and Impa’s uncanny ability to disappear even in plain sight, there was no group they couldn’t infiltrate, no place they couldn’t access. As tensions rose between the Gerudo and the Hylians, and both began to draw their allies closer, they were almost never home in the Caverns. Dashil speculated at one point that Impa had been on more missions than most experienced Sheikah, and he hadn’t even signed off on her training yet.
It was a rainy day, late in the Spring when the Hylians’ declared war on the Gerudo. Knowing it would inevitably be required once word reached the Sheikah Caverns, Dashil finally penned the letter stating that Impa had completed her training and was ready to report for duty as a full-fledged Sheikah. He handed it, with some reluctance, to the messenger who would make the run from Castletown to home with the news everyone had been waiting for.
“So,” said Impa that evening, as they sat under the sheltering branches of a budding tree in the market, “I guess that’s that.” She watched the Hylians run from the rain, as though if they could just stay dry all the horror the declaration promised could likewise be avoided. “Is our partnership over?”
“In this form, yes,” he answered, playing with a small metal disc. “But not for long. We’re far too good together, my dear. We may not always have the same assignments, but I imagine we’ll be working together more often than not in the future. They can’t afford to pair us any other way.”
“Such confidence,” she purred at him, a nearly pitch-perfect imitation of his own words on the day they met.
He laughed, delighted with the impression. “Fully justified arrogance would be a more apt descriptor,” he noted. Then abruptly held out the small disc, as though afraid he would think better of it in the next moment. “Here,” he said. “I wanted to wait until I had signed that damn paper. Knew you wouldn’t approve beforehand.”
Curious, she accepted the token. It was attached to a simple chain, and had a single word carved roughly into the surface – DASHIL. “My name,” he explained roughly. “Freely given.”
“Names have power,” she reminded him, looking up from the token.
“Aye,” he agreed, “and hearts too. But I’d freely give you both if you’d have them.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Though he had gotten exponentially better at reading the subtleties of her expressions over the last few months, he found himself struggling now. Too much riding on it, was the problem. You’d think he’d know better than that by now.
But finally, after an eternal, hanging moment, the corners of her lips twitched up into a warmer than usual smile. “Oh good,” she said, slipping the token around her neck, “I was afraid I was going to have to steal that too.”
The first time he proposes, it’s offhand. At least fifty percent joke, without much thought behind it.
“You know what?” he says. ”We should get married. Imagine the reception! We’d have a half-dozen duels before they served the first course.”
“Well that’s a convincing argument AGAINST,” she notes with a smile and a raised eyebrow. But this, too, is only fifty percent joke.
And the other fifty percent catches him by surprise.
***
The second time he proposes, it’s more formal. Dogged by suspicions about her hesitation, which are slowly driving him insane, he decides to just formally ask her, for real, point blank. Hunter, naturally, thinks it’s a bad idea. But he thinks all of Link’s ideas are bad. Neesha doesn’t know, because why the Hell would he tell her and submit himself to the abuse? She thinks they’re up to “Hylian junk” and does what she normally does in such cases and washes her hands of them.
“Link, this is a bad idea,” Hunter says.
“Shut up, it’s not,” he replies wittily. ”It’s been like…five years? Six? If you count the one before she changed time.”
Later that evening on a private hill in Hyrule Field, nothing but fireflies and the sleepy stars to light the moment, he takes her hand and gets down on one knee and asks her to marry him officially.
Her mouth tightens, her brow creases, and she squeezes his hand with sympathy that is worse than anything else she could have done. ”Link,” she says gently, “that is a bad idea.”
Fuck you, Hunter, he thinks. Goddess dammit.
***
The third time he proposes, he does it the political way. He sits down with Aliza and swears her to secrecy and draws on her knowledge of Hylian laws and together they draft a political proposal entitled: An Amendment to the Treaty Between the Gerudo and the Kingdom. In which it is proposed that the leaders of both nations enter into a political marriage in order to ensure ongoing peace and prosperity for both peoples, even in the event of an unfortunate mishap with the seals on the Dark World.
Zelda gets wind of it before they’ve even agreed on their third draft. He doesn’t know who told her, but he promises them very terrible things mentally while she lectures him angrily about reckless political behaviour, and does he think this is a game, and does he understand the potential rammifications of his actions, and does he ever even THINK about these things? And then she picks up their draft and sets it on fire and teleports home without so much as a goodbye kiss.
And Aliza says, “oh darn.” And he wonders if she’s the one who ratted him out.
***
The fourth time he proposes it is in the middle of a fight. It’s been a long time since he last brought it up, and he doesn’t mean to now, but as always his heart powers his tongue, not his brain.
“You don’t make my life any easier when you pick fights like that!” she cries, livid about he doesn’t even know what because this fight they’re having right now is technically his fifth since breakfast, and he’s not sure which one she’s referring to. ”It’s great for you! You get to walk away and be all Gerudo about it and your people respect you, but it makes me look like I’m losing control.”
“Oh, Goddess forbid it look bad!” he retorts. ”There isn’t one person out there who doesn’t know me or where I’ve drawn lines in the sand. It’s not MY fault they keep crossing them!”
“You’re not a child!” she snaps. ”Your anger management issues are going to start a war. Is that what you want? Hyrule’s the one who suffers when you do this.”
“Hey, what do I care?” he rages back. ”Negotiations are going nowhere on getting the Gerudo recognized as part of Hyrule—”
“Maybe if you stopped assaulting delegates!”
“—and YOU won’t let me take the shortcut. Which is hilarious. Because of the two of us, I wouldn’t have thought YOU’D be the commitment-phobe.”
She purses her lips so tight they disappear into her face and he knows he’s overstepped but that’s never stopped him before, why should it now?
“Marry me.”
“No. Get out.”
***
The fifth time he proposes is two weeks after the fourth time. The interim period was spent breaking things in the desert until his anger and frustration had run its course. Anger, it should be noted, at himself. Because he cannot figure out why this matters so much to him. It hadn’t mattered at all until he realized she wouldn’t say yes. Why does it matter now? Technically nothing is different between them. They love, fight, and make up as much as they always have. This is just one more option on the list of things to fight over.
He tells her as much, the fifth time, as part of his apology. It burns him to apologize, and he makes sure it’s clear he isn’t apologizing for the duels or for making her life complicated. He is apologizing for being a jerk about the marriage thing. That’s what he calls it. The marriage thing. A simple name for a vastly more complicated conflict. Between love and duty, primarily. But also between wisdom and courage.
She holds his hand and goes down her logic again. Explains the inevitable results of them getting marriage. Reminds him that it would change nothing in their relationship, but everything about their circumstances and their responsibilities. And THAT, in turn, WOULD change their relationship. She blushes and admits that she’s sorry too. She is afraid of committing, if it means ultimately losing him. And she’s sure it will. Maybe not entirely, but in little pieces until what they have by then is nothing like what they have now. Until THEY are nothing like what they are now.
She will be Queen. And he is already a King. And their marriage would not be between Link and Zelda. Could not be between Link and Zelda. It’s not that she won’t marry him, it’s that she can’t. Not as Zelda.
He knows the words are wise, and he knows she is right. But he doesn’t care. He’s not afraid of the risk. He’s willing to take the chance.
But she is not.
***
The sixth time he proposes, it is once again off hand. And fifty percent joking.
She has a paper cut, and is sucking on her finger with something dangerously close to a pout. And he grins at her and says, “Hey, you know what would fix that?” She peers at him expectently. ”Marrying me.”
She takes the finger out of her mouth. ”No it won’t,” she says.
They stare at each other for a long, tense moment. And then they both start to laugh. For the rest of the afternoon they have to avoid each others’ eyes or risk descending into a fit of giggles.
He actually forgets about it until he’s in his own bed that night and staring up at the ceiling without sleeping.
High in her rooms in the castle, she curls around her pillow and does the same.
